Rose's Cantina

Well, isn't it interesting that Justin Trudeau's image was plastered on the cover of the Globe and Mail today while other newspapers spilled much ink on why the Liberals should resist a coronation. It's the passive-agressive nature of Canada's media to look for prophets and visionaries hoist them up on a pedestal only to later claw them down and serve their livers with nice wine and a salad. Funny, it happens more in Canada than in many other places. Led by an often immature and shallow media we here in Canada are quick to tire of our leaders and want to toss them out of office before they can get their shoes shined and their locks shorn by the Parliamentary barbers. Part of the problem is that our leaders, of late, have been alienating figures. Stephen Harper is hard to love and doesn't even try to appear nice. Tom Mulcair is brooding and has the looks of a Heathcliffe on the moor. And Bob Rae is just, well, kind of weird. Enter Justin Trudeau with his g...

I was recently Facebooking about the fact my son, Nick, finally got his G licence and a job so he can start paying rent. The post ended with me saying that all seemed to be right with the world. Then I got blindsided by a model train loving, crankypants senior who was lurking in the weeds, ready to bounce. Someone asked the question: will your son be getting a car? Before I could answer, I saw this posting. Gord Lovelace :  If your son bought a car, it would be like a self-professed poor person publicizing efforts to repair effete Italian coffee machines and imported furniture that millionaires like me could never afford. Well, well. The glove has been thrown down. He has been at me in the past few weeks over the fact that, while my family may be fiscally challenged, I continue to spend my money repairing  luxury items such as a Starbucks barista machine (gift from my son) and an Ekornes chair (which I won in the divorce settlement). Gord then blorges on abou...

I was noodling around the Menopause Canada website, and decided to calculate my Body Mass Index. It was 32, which is still fat, but a lot less fat than the 36 where I started out. By the way, I challenge the BMI because you calculate it based on your height and weight and it doesn't take into account that I have at least 10 pounds of boob weight, which I didn't ask for, unlike Anna Nicole Smith who is pictured above. Oh well, at least I know I'm making progress thanks to two years of personal straining at the Athletic Club in Trainyards and those magical diuretics Dr. Ben prescribed me along with my blood pressure medication. Speaking of blood pressure meds, I found out this week that I am not supposed to eat grapefruit while on them. And according to Doctor Oz, who is the expert on everything, I'm not supposed to take Ibuprofen either. What a shock. Grapefruit and Advil are among my favorite substances. Along with tequila, which I've decided it's time...

Every fall, Scott and I have the same discussion about pay television. We wonder if getting the VIP package from Rogers cable with TMN and HBO is worth the hundred bucks. We love our Dexter and Nurse Jackie, we adore In Treatment; True Blood and Bill Maher not so much. But watching the Emmys the other night got me wondering why we're missing apparently the two greatest shows on television -- Homeland and Boss , starring Kelsey Grammar. We get hundreds of channels but not the bloody channels that carry the greatest shows on television. To get these shows, we would have either invest another hundred bucks in SuperChannel, which would be insane, or switch. We're not going to do either because we've tried SuperChannel and it pretty much sucks except for carrying the two greatest shows on television. Recently, we added NetFlix to our entertainment portfolio and we found that there are an amazing number of television shows we've missed altogether up the dial. I...

These last two weeks have been a journalism professor's dream. Imagine teaching second year journalism students and being handed the Margaret Wente affair, a shining example of what not to do as a columnist or reporter. Down at the Mop and Pail , I'm sure the mood is not so jovial. Imagine being Jeffrey Simpson and being handed guidelines to follow (published yesterday in the Globe ) -- as if you were a Grade 10 history student who's just got caught cribbing the text book. How incredibly insulting. By publishing those guidelines in yesterday's paper, Public Editor Sylvia Stead dug herself in the shithole even deeper. Now she's tainting all Globe reporters with the Wente brush and sending a message that no one in the newsroom can be trusted. I've got my eye on you, and now your mine. I'd love to be a fly on the Globe newsroom now that editors will be acting like prison guards inspecting everyone's bunk for contraband. Hee-hee...

“When I was a kid…if you were caught plagiarizing, you got a zero”. Margaret Wente, as quoted in the blog Mea Culpa by the "anonymous blogger" Carol Wainio. See what I did there? It's called attribution. I attributed the quote to the Globe and Mail's Margaret Wente, but since I got it from Carol Wainio's blog, I double-attributed it. You can't be too careful these days in journalism. It's easy to get caught. Before I was doing this non-paying gig, I wrote for one of these lifestyles blogs for which I got paid a cent a word. Even in that rinky-dink operation, you found yourself in hot water if you quoted  verbatum a piece that was available on Internet. This happened to me a couple of times, but in my case, I was quoting my own writing. The software picked it up and rejected my work as plagiarism. In this day and age, it's hard not to get caught cribbing from other folks, especially when you are a national columnist for the Globe and Mail and ...

As I sit on my perch surveying my kingdom, I watch the weirdos and drug addicts walk down the street and I try not to be judgmental. Who am I? I know nothing about their lives. Maybe they used to be rock stars or soccer kids. Somebody must have loved them. Maybe they had jobs and dreams.  Not today, not on this journey down the road to despair. I live on Saint Laurent Boulevard, a trashy street in the east end of Ottawa, a block from a Quickie convenience store, and directly across from a grow-op. It might not be a grow-op but it certainly is a quick stop for drugs. Stretch limos arrive at all hours and there's a lot of foot traffic, in and out, sure signs of nasty business being transacted within. The place is a dilapitated war-era house, the kind that might have started out as a trailer but somehow morphed into a single home dwelling in what was once an Ottawa suburb. It's certainly seen better days with its unkempt lawn, wooden deck that is oddly out...

More evidence that I am shallow. Scott: Are you going to the gym today? Me: No, I have a doctor's appointment. I can't do both. Scott: But the doctor's only to renew your blood pressure meds. Me: Yeah, and discuss the results of my mammogram. Scott: But your mammogram was clear. Me. Still. Scott: I don't get it. Most people hold down jobs, look after their little kids, have hobbies. And you can't go to the gym and the doctor in one day? Me: Exactly. I am not a well person, headwise. I cannot multitask. If I have more than one thing to do in the day -- other than walk the dogs and do the dishes -- I become a complete shipwreck. I'm recovering from last week. I edited the copy for my magazine, helped Scott shoot a music video (by hanging around and suggesting cool shots while playing Angry Birds) and took in an audiology conference, all in French, a language I do not speak. I'm exhausted. So I need a couple weeks off. Seriously. I have to co...

Okay, so the picture didn't work out exactly as planned. There were no calls from TMZ. No trending on Twitter. Not even one comment. I showed it to Marissa, thought she'd be horrified. She just chuckled. I still think it's good to see pictures of yourself from afar, to see what others see when you accidentally forget to lower the blinds. Besides, I wanted to know what it feels like to have your privacy invaded by paps who intent on smearing your photo all over the tabloids. Now I know how Kirstie Alley feels. It reminds me that I have to discuss my breast reduction with the doctor today. Look at how dippy and slumpy my shoulders are from the over-the-shoulder-bolder-holders. Unfortunately, my naked blogging seems to have had a negative effect on my numbers which are the lowest they've been since I started blogging. Better take the picture down. I seem to be scaring away readers.

I've always wanted to be famous. Also rich. Perhaps notorious. I've never been any of these, but I wanted to know what it was like. So I paid a paparazzo to stalk me and take naked pictures of me blogging. I was hoping this would improve my numbers. And let's face it, I'm not getting any younger or prettier. Actually, my husband Scott took this photo looking through our backgarden. The neighbors were too busy swapping spit or smoking crack to notice. I sit in this window, like Rapunzel, sometimes letting my hair flow through the air vent at odd times of the night. Sometimes I'm naked, sometimes I'm not. But I figure if anybody with a long lens wants to take pictures of me and post them on the Internet, have at 'er. I'm not like Catherine, I keep my nips heavily guarded behind my laptop. Oh yes, and I've decided to issue a challenge to my fellow bloggers. Jenny Lawson, Rosie O'Donnell, Ellen and Oprah. You know who you are! Come j...

The other evening, Scott and I had a tequila-fueled discussion about my nature. "Don't blame me," I said. "I'm shallow." "Yes you are." "What do you mean by that?" It was one of those discussions that man and wife should never, ever, have. Like, do I look fat in this dress? The dishes are piling up. Do you think I should do them? But I admit, in the brazen light of day, that I admire his courage under fire. He always tells me the truth. And as an enlightened human, I understand that I am the fool for asking. My intellect is of the fast food variety. I don't read anything that will expand my universe. My favorite books are written by the sick, the twisted and the insane. Currently, I'm devouring Darrell Hammond's book, appropriately called God, If You're Up There, I'm Fucked . Previously, I read Chelsea Handler's book, Dear Vodka: It's Me, Chelsea. And, of course, the classic, Running with Scissors...

Dear Editor of the Ottawa Citizen: I woke up this morning to let the dog out and there was a copy of the Ottawa Citizen on my doorstep. A copy of the newspaper has appeared in this very location every day this week. As I no longer subscribe to the print edition of the Ottawa Citizen , I want to first thank you for this kind gesture. But please, keep your paper to yourself. If you checked your records, you would see that I am a Kindle subscriber. I decided months ago that I wanted to make my surroundings a paperless environment as much as possible. I live in an apartment and I do not have room for stacks of newspapers piled high in the corner. Besides, Finnigan's favorite past time is to rip up paper, which means I'm finding the heads of your various columnists scattered about my living room. So stop my free delivery. I don't want your newspaper. Thank you.  

You know you're getting old when you sign up for ObitMessenger, a service that delivers the latest obituaries right to your iPhone. Ever since I signed up to get the Ottawa Citizen on my Kindle, I've missed the obituaries which, for some reason, the Citizen doesn't relay onto the Kindle edition. I can't understand it. As today's Census will attest, and what we already know, is that we are an ageing society and with that ageing society comes more dead people. I want to know who they are. I've lived in this strange burg more than half my life, so I know a lot of people. I want to know who exactly is dropping dead. I don't get out much, so funerals provide an important opportunity to network with the living. My former colleague and press club friend Gord Lovelace was recently asked whether he might consider getting his buddies back together for a Bad News Band reunion. Gord shot back on Facebook that he'd love to, except that most of the band is pla...

According to today's Globe and Mail , the Royal Family is suing the French magazine Closer and trying to get an injunction to stop the resale of topless images of Kate Middleton. All weekend, the press releases were flying: threatening, cajoling, pleading with the French to stop the madness of showing the Royal Teets. Closer's response? Vee fart in your general direction. Ah hem. Okay, it's time for a reality check. If the Palace doesn't want Kate getting photographed for striking the pose, perhaps Kate should consider not striking the pose within eyeshot of a public road. It's not like she's an ingenue who doesn't know any better. Kate Middleton lobbied for the job of the future Queen of England. She wasn't Princess Diana, an 18-year-old child. She was nearly thirty before she took on the job. She should know better, and so should her sister Pippa. I don't know about you, but I rarely have been seen parading about topless or nude fo...

Like most Canadians, I'm laying in my bed crying today over billionaires refusing to let millionaires play with pucks and sticks. I simply do not know how I will cope this winter if hockey takes a holiday. Wait. I have it. Let's ask Madonna, Rosie O'Donnell and Geena Davis to put down their baseball gloves and pick up hockey sticks. They can wear short skirts and long underwear and pointy bras. We'll ask Nia Vardalos to talk to Tom Hanks about coaching. We'll call our team something inappropriately aboriginal like The Canadian Squaws. They can spit tabacky through their front teeth and do commercials about their sisters, all of whom have a mental illness. You know who you are. Seriously. Who gives a shit? Not me. I only watch hockey during the playoffs like most Canadian wives. Mostly, I drink beer and watch for Don Cherry whom I find hilarious. Seriously, he could give Carson Kressley a run for his money in the fashion business, in the blatantly hetero...

I am writing from deep in Quebec, at the Hotel des Seigneurs, in beautiful Saint Hyacinthe. I'm covering a conference of Quebec audiologists, if you can believe it. Okay, the speakers are all English so it's not that hard. But I must admit to feeling inadequate everytime I venture into Quebec as a unilingual anglophone. I feel guilty for not sticking with my French courses, even though everybody here nicely switches to English. I wonder what would happen if the shoe were on the other foot, if I had mastered the second language. Would I look down on pitiful people like me and mock them? Of course I would. I'm thinking that I might invest in one of those French courses you do over the Internet so I don't have to practise in public and embarrass myself before hoards of French-speakers who would sit impatiently as I tried to make myself clear in thought and deed. I entertain these flights of fancy now and then, but I admit that I'm too damned lazy to make the e...

I don't want to sound like an old fart, but the teachers who meant the most to me would never think of "taking a pause" because they were at war with the government. The teachers I loved came out to help us with our plays, our sports and our committees. They helped us put together yearbooks and bought our cupcakes. There were always a few who did nothing and it was clear to the kids that they didn't give a shit about them. We repaid them in kind by pranking them and humiliating them. What goes around comes around, you know? Some of these teachers didn't deserve it. I remember a theatre teacher who had a terrible drug problem and another who committed suicide. They had issues alrighty, like everybody else. But then there was Dennis Tuff, the audio-visual teacher who helped us set up a television station at West Park Secondary School back in St. Catharines. Denny saved a lot of kids. If it weren't for Denny, more than a few of them would have gone si...

Eleven years ago today, thousands of people lost their lives at the hands of terrorists. Many of those who perished were the men and women of the NYC Fire Department who ran into the buildings while they came crashing down around them. Like many of the world's political and cultural tragedies, 9/11 will live on in infamy. We should take this time to reflect on the sacrifices made by the brave men and women who died to save others. At the same time, we must never lose sight of the sacrifices that first responders make every day. We made this video to pay tribute to the men and women of the Canadian fire service. The song was written by Pastor Brian Hollins from Shreveport, Louisiana as a tribute to all of the world's first responders. Let us never forget their sacrifices.  

Perimenopause was a bitch for me. Let's recap. For ten years, I had to wear a diaper-sized pad to keep me from wetting my pants. I couldn't walk down the street without getting dizzy. I developed such crushing panic attacks I had to quit my job, after which I rarely left home. I became paranoid. I gained twenty pounds and my boobs grew to the size of footballs. Then I hit menopause and it all went away. That's when I developed hot flashes, the ones that have plagued me for five years now. And yet...not once did a doctor give me a cure for what ailed me. That's because, during my "time", hormone replacement therapy became a nasty phrase. And that's because a big study came out which linked HRT with rising rates of breast cancer. Today, I read about another longitudinal study which has dismissed the previous study. HRT is now apparently great for women at my age and stage. As Adam Sandler once said: "You could have told me that yesterday ...

I'm thinking of instituting a paywall for this blog. Everybody else is doing it. The New York Times allows you to read half a dozen articles a month. When you go over, you have to pay the publisher. Ditto the Ottawa Citizen , which has also recently instituted a paywall and ditched its Sunday paper (come on. Do you really miss it?) It's taken these Masters of the Printerverse three decades to realize what every school girl knows: nobody will buy the cow if they can get the milk for free. Back in the 1980s, I used to work as a consultant for Infomart when newspapers were first digitizing. My job was to run around to various government departments and get them to buy the service, even before it was up. This was a real smoke-and-mirror operation because we didn't have really have a product and we wanted taxpayers to pay us to get it up and running. Strangely, we managed to get a lot of bureaucrats excited about online newspapers, which we convinced them were the fut...

Tomorrow morning, the Canadian Fallen Firefighters Foundation will officially unveil a monument to fallen firefighters on LeBreton Flats in Ottawa. The names of some 1,100 firefighters who have lost their lives will be etched on the memorial which was designed by artist and author Douglas Coupland. Not all of the men whose names are on the monument died rushing into burning buildings. Some of them died in traffic accidents rushing to fire scenes. Some of them died when their hearts exploded from the intense heat at a scene or because of the sheer stress and adrenaline. Still others were pilots and crewmen who died trying to save Canada's wildlands. Many, many others died from cancer they developed as the result of their jobs. A lot of those men did their job for no pay, in the service of their communities. While I commend the others, I believe the volunteers are the real heroes who sacrificed time with their families and at work to protect their neighbors. I know a few o...

There's a sign on the desk at the Ottawa Women's Breast Health Centre at the Civic Hospital asking fellow travellers to dump out their change into a jar. The centre is expanding and needs the support of those who use it. I used it yesterday, and dutifully donated my coffee money to the cause. My donation was pretty pitiful considering most of the money in that jar was in the form of fives and tens. I didn't have more on me, or I would gladly have given it. Catch ya later. Yesterday was my call back from the breast-cancer screening I had done two weeks ago. The radiologist noticed a small "nodule" which one of the technicians explained was a "density", and he wanted to get a better boo at what it was. So my left breast was squeezed and contorted, slathered with cream and examined with an ultrasound paddle. Then I sat in a pretty little room with several women of all ages, shapes and sizes while I waited for the verdict. In the short half hour I ...

It's been a whirlwind day. I'm so excited, I can barely stand it. This morning, we went for credit counselling to try to get a handle on some debt we accumulated while running our business (into the ground) a few years back. Our journey took us into deepest, darkest Vanier (I actually saw a sign that said: 'Welcome to Las Vanier'. I fully expected to see either the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson or Marlon Brando.) Unlike the people you visit when declaring personal bankruptcy, who are all bubbly and sweet, the credit counsellor was dour, inscrutible even. But by the end of the session, we had him rolling in the aisles laughing about the $600 Shyla racked up on our Rogers bill for "ringtones" and our quest for boarders who don't put down "no fixed address" as their previous location. He commiserated about the doggie debt of $3,000 we owe to our 26-year-old and told us his own tale about nearly being put into debtor's prison himself by th...

Dear Quebec: Today is an important day in your history. According to the polls, you are poised to vote in the Parti Quebecois -- again. Didn't you learn anything the last time? The PQ are the modern day equivalent of the Catholic priesthood: self-serving, with beliefs based on irrational thinking. They will take your money and your children. They will keep you down on the farm. Pequistes want to take away the basic rights of some of your citizens, make it difficult for them to get an education in the language of their choice. They will -- and already are -- driving many citizens out of La Belle Province. Your housing prices will go down. Your insurance will go up. Jobs will fly out of Montreal like the monkeys in the Wizard of Oz. But you know all that. You know you're better off in Canada. Admit it. We know it's hard being different. But vive la difference! We understand sometimes you get restless. You want to play tummy sticks with the Europeans. I have o...

Twenty years ago, when most parents were getting their kids ready to go back to school, I was tending to the burial of my mother, Vera. A few days before, she had slipped into a coma at St. Joseph's Hospital in London, Ontario after developing an infection from an operation to remove most of her intestines. It had been Vera's choice to go to London, after checking herself out of the Toronto Hospital, the place that had been her home for most of the previous year. She was fed up with spending her days attached to an I.V. pole, with doctors doing test after test, and finding nothing. She wasn't in any pain; she was just tired of being treated like a medical misfit and took a chance on moving to London to stay with my brother, Gary. The visit was not a long one; before she knew it, she was in excruciating pain and was immediately booked into the OR and sliced open. It took a doctor with a scalpel to locate what all the fancy equipment could not find: the bowel blockag...

I finally realized last night that I have become, officially, unhinged. This happens to me once in a great while when I'm under an enormous amount of stress. It's been a bad economic time for our family with Scott changing jobs, Nick not having one, and me working only six months of the year as a magazine editor. Our rent is too high and our bills were getting away from us. We also have a Mastercard that we've been unable to pay off for years now because of the crushing interest payments. We've made some course corrections in the last month or so which will finally make our living situation manageable. Our plan is to have all the debt paid off in two years and finally start saving again. It's not that we're spendthrifts but we've faced several crises in the last couple of years that started to sink us. It began with the toxic oil spill on Smyth Road. We had to make an emergency move which, despite having insurance, started to eat away at what savings...