Rose's Cantina

There we were, minding our own business, eating granola when this came on television. You see that right. It's the middle aged Kelly Rippa twerking an 80-year-old on national television. At 9 a.m. WTF? It was all part of the Hallowe'en show on Live with Kelly and Michael, a program that is watched mainly by geriatrics and shut-ins. Kelly was pretending to be 21-year-old Miley Cyrus and started the routine with a little kitty costume, then she took it all off, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. We saw clips from Miley wearing a similar suit, rubbing up against Robin Thicke. True, Kelly managed to keep her buttocks far away the gas pump of Art Moore, the creepy, undead  Live producer. But she had no shame in thrusting her pelvis toward the audience. Yuck. The difference between this performance and the one put on by Miley at a music award show was that Miley's panties were snug-fitting while Kelly offered up several angles of her own l...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (satit_sirihin) It's Hallowe'en in the Nation's Capital. I see all of your elected and non-elected representatives have already got their costumes out. That creepy castle on the Hill is chocked full of ghosts, goblins and monsters. The Prime Minister is going as a zombie. He's been practising his moves all week, a little hunched over, sliding from side to side, buttoning his coat by rote, murmuring the same few words: "Mr. Speaker, I have been clear." And the makeup! It almost looks like his eyes are bleeding for real. And Thomas Mulcair, Thomas Mulcair has chosen Atticus Finch for his character, getting all courtroomy, dramatic and droll. Too bad Justin Trudeau forgot his costume. Oh wait, it's James Franco! There are a few Snookies and J-Wows in the Commons, too. Plaids, skirts far too short, hair all teased into rat's nests. Sometimes I think MPs with ladyparts are stuck in the Sixties. Down the ha...

  Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (m_bartosch) It's hard to believe, but I've started taping both Power Play on CTV and Power and Politics on CBC. Like many Canadians, I simply cannot get enough of The Three Amigos. It's a car wreck. Who can look away? What will that little nugget Mike Duffy reveal today? That Stephen Harper has an evil twin who was present at all the meetings while the Real Stephen Harper was busy schtupping his executive assistant in the Oval Bathroom? What documents can be found buried in the bouffant de Pamela Wallin? Will Brazeau leave the upper chamber for a career as a Calvin Klein underwear model? Yesterday's performance in the House of Commons was a pure wild west showdown between Crime Minister Hairpiece and The Professor while Mary Anne looked on in the background. How old is that MP behind Hairpiece anyway? Should she be carded before she is allowed in the H of C? Aside from the cancelled cheques and emails, where th...

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (digitalart) I'm not an expert but I do know a thing or two about political fundraising. Back in the 80s, after my journalism career imploded, I took a job as a writer at 102 Bank Street, the rickety old office space rented by the Liberal Party of Canada. My job was to sell the Trudeau government to the Liberal masses through a tabloid magazine and direct mail fundraising letters. The best part for me, because I wasn't really political, was answering the mail from what the Party called its "militants", the people who forked over money to keep the Party operating. This was near the end of the Trudeau era and Pierre had pissed off a lot of people including many of the Party's own supporters. So most of the mail came from people who were pretty mad. It always amazed me how much time people spent crafting these letters. I guess they actually thought that Pierre read all his fan mail. One day, I opened up a letter a...

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Stuart Miles) I'll admit it right here, I am a lazy writer. It's so much easier to conjure up images using pop culture references than to explain away a behavior or to characterize a person. For example, when Pamela Wallin stood up in the Senate to skewer Marjorie LeBreton and Carolyn Stewart Olson for being jealous of her infamy, the image that immediately came to mind was Rachel Macadam torturing Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls. I started that on Twitter and 56 seconds later, another journalist came up with the same reference. Was he copying me? I know he was following me. Of course he was, I said, but maybe (a reference to Louis C.K. I am shameless). Maybe he saw the same movie. As a writer, I will never, ever, win a Nobel Prize for Literature and neither will Tabatha Southey who wrote a shameless piece of satire in Saturday's Globe and Mail about the Senate debacle. Read it here I'm sure that Alice Munro could wri...

      I heard recently that my old friend Jean-Marc Carisse and his wife Pat had opened a new photo studio, photo gallery and café on Elgin Street . The old one used to be in the prime real estate on Sussex Drive, which now looks like more like Damascus than a leafy street in the nation's capital.   We can thank Fortress America for turning the once picturesque Sussex Drive into a hot mess. So it's just as well the Carisses headed down to the Sens Mile.   If you haven't visited Carisse Café, and you're interested in a walk down memory lane, you must go there and scarf a Panini and chase it down with some lovely cappuccino. Jean-Marc has filled the place to the brim with memorabilia from his 40 odd years chasing after prime ministers and MPs on Parliament Hill.   There are also lots of photos of celebrities. Jean-Marc nearly got in bed with John and Yoko during their time in Montreal, and he's got lots of cool ...

Sophie the pug had her ladyparts removed last week. She looked so adorable when I picked her up with a little Halloween bandana tied around her neck. "Ah," came the collective sigh from the waiting room. "Now, make sure she wears her collar and keep her quiet," the vet tech told us. "We don't want her to rip her stitches." I nearly choked on the complimentary dog biscuit I was consuming. "Really? How long do we have to keep her quiet?" I asked. "At least a week." I just came back from taking Scott to work and found Sophie up on the kitchen table. She had knocked down a tray of little applesauce containers and she was busily hoovering up all the dog treats. As I was answering a few emails she was tearing up the carpet and wrestling with a number of items, including underwear that she had dragged out of the bedroom. Then she jumped on Finnigan and began to gnaw on his ear. Then she humped Gordie under the table. This has be...

Ray Stone called me from California. "This place is great," he said. "You should come down. I can see the fireworks from Disneyland." Fuckin' guy. If you don't know Ray Stone, well you are a nobody. Cause Ray Stone knows everybody. He was having dinner with Rich Little and Dick Van Dyke the other night, he said. "What the..." was all I could say. Who has dinner with Dick Van Dyke? Dick was regaling him with the story about the time, a few months back, when he was driving along and smelled smoke. He pulled over to text his wife for help and a swarm of do-gooders, thinking he was asleep -- or dead -- dragged him out of the car. Good thing they did, he said. A few minutes later, the car caught on fire. Ray liked it so much, he drew a cartoon. That was a good one, Ray said. You might wonder if Ray is making up these stories, but he always has photographic proof. Here he is with Dick and Rich mugging for the camera. He went on Pierre...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Marcus) It's been a rough week for our beloved Prime Minister Stephen Harper. He's getting a Goldring shoved up his arse by a member of his own carcass, I mean Caucus. Even some Conservative bagel eaters in the Senate cannot stomach his attempt to toss The Three Amigos into the Rideau River. Pretty soon Tories will be eating their own tails. I bet Stephen Harper can't wait for Calgary. At least at the Convention, there will be some Tories who have his back. Just make sure they leave their weapons at the door. How needs a hug, huh?

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (naypong) Yesterday was the perfect day to be sick in Ottawa. As I lay prone on the couch, clutching the recently spayed pug Sophie to my chest lest the evil Finnigan break her stitches, I was able to distract myself with some good television, some very good television indeed. First came Question Period, with Tom Mulcair giving a masterclass on interrogation. "Will the Prime Minister?" "When did the Prime Minister?" "With whom did the Prime Minister?" He was really getting Harper's goat. You could almost see the red rising in the Prime Minister's cheeks. You couldn't really. By the look of him, Harper has been undead for some time, hidden away in the bowels of a boat headed back and forth to Europe in a quest for some very fine wine and cheese to ply the voters of Brandon Souris. Harper was clearly pissed at that little nugget Mike Duffy who has been delighting the rest of us with his tale...

We have exclusive video from today's Senate proceedings....

  Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (naypong)     Stephen Harper rose in the House of Commons (yes, he was actually there!) yesterday looking like the whitest man in Canada. The pallor of his cheeks matched the color of his hairpiece and he was all droopy eyed. Doesn't seem like all that travel is agreeing with him. Or maybe Mike Duffy's lawyer made the blood drain from his earthen cheeks. In any event, Harper looked like a bag of warmed over dog feces yesterday. I haven't watched QP in years because it's stupid, ridiculous and pointless. But I couldn't resist after watching Don Bayne rub the lotion all over the skin of Stephen Harper to make it easier to peel off. I know Don Bayne only slightly. His criminal office represented my son when he got caught in a five finger discount at Walmart. Now, I suppose the firm is becoming a little more uptown, defending murderers and Senators. Harper managed to stonewall the House until everybody's eye...

The City of Ottawa never does anything halfway with the exception of the pedestrian bridge over the Airport Parkway. It builds overpasses along the Queensway over the weekend. It blows up football stadium like jihadists. And when asked to deliver a second poo bin to the Conroy Pit, the City of Ottawa delivers! The newest edition goes six feet down and has enough capacity for the feces of thousands and thousands of dogs. Wowee! We, the dog walkers of the Conroy Pit could not be happier. Thank you, Diane Deans. Thank you, CBC, for making this happen. Our dogs can now poop knowing their contributions are going to a first class poop station.

If this were the wild west, there'd be a lynch mob out to string up Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente for her Saturday column in which she compared so-called Alpha females to the rest of us slugs. Slugs, you know, the women who choose family over career, either out of obligation, love or necessity? Okay, she didn't call us slugs, but she might as well have. Alpha females, in whose company Wente counts herself "are highly educated with full-time careers (and then some). They work like dogs. They have fewer children than most. They’re far more likely to be married to their first husbands...They’re devoted to their children, but never put careers on hold for them". And, according to Wente, they are better mothers, ensuring that their kids go to the best schools and make the right choices, as opposed to the 80 percent of the rest of us. Yeah, you read that right. I know what you're saying. This is so much bullshit from a woman who has never had kid...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Suvro Datta) My inner cobra is showing again. She comes out and strikes when least expected. Let me demonstrate. Cobra: Why are you parking here? It's a handicapped spot! Husband: There's nobody in the whole parking lot. Who cares? Cobra: (looking around) Exactly! You have 200 odd parking spots in this mall and you're going to take this one. Move the car. And so he does. Husband: I took out a hundred dollars so you'd have money. Cobra: Oh, thanks, hon. Do you want some money for lunch? Husband: I already took it out of the hundred. Cobra: Are you shorting me? Every girl has a cobra that grows where her umbilical cord used to be. Its egg was planted there whilst we were arguing with God in the Garden of Eden. The Baby Skylar has a tiny one. It's a nasty little thing that comes out when her parents try to get her to go to bed. She calls her little Cobra "no!". As we age, the Cobra spends most...

PHOTO COURTESY OF FREEDIGITALPHOTOS.NET (IMAGEWIZARDY) Okay, Laureen, put the bills on the table. Why is the damned cable bill so high? Are you renting movies again? There's nothing else to do in this effing place after I find the cats and feed them. You know we're going have to economize. We can't live rent free forever, and the Rogers bill is killing us. And what about these roaming charges? How did you manage to spent thousands of dollars on roaming charges? Hello! We travel a lot, Steve. I need to keep in touch with my peeps who are planning the Fur Ball. Still, Laureen. We can't afford all these charges. The cable bill is out of control and you don't watch half these channels anyways. And we have to pay extra for Sun News! Well, you are Prime Minister, Steve. Maybe you can do something about it. You know, throw a bone to the shut-ins and hipsters. Okay, now let's talk about how much you spend on ringtones.  

"What do you want for breakfast, an omelette, an Egg McMuffin or a smoothie?" This is a question I ask Scott every morning. These are the choices. There are no other choices. Lately, the question has been met with stone cold silence. By the time he answers it, it's 11 a.m. and I could eat pug stew. Scott is not a breakfast eater, but I have to be. I'm following Chris Powell's eating and exercise regime which means I have to eat breakfast within 30 minutes of getting up. I have to have it before I go to the gym or walk the dogs. Scott is like a camel. I have to give him credit, though. At first, he was giggy with the routine. He ate breakfast without complaint until he could not face another egg. "I can't eat breakfast when I get up," he moaned. "We're different." Wiser words were ever said. Men and women cannot lose weight together. It is an impossibility. They eat the blue plate special. We get cottage cheese and a...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Gualbert107) Is there any reason to keep living? Fans of Brigitte Jones got the word recently that she's been re-engineered into a widowed singleton after the passing of one of the sexiest men alive, now dead, in Helen Fielding's new novel: Brigitte Jones, Mad About the Boy. The bloody cow just killed Mark Darcy off. And we are supposed to accept this? Perhaps it's not proper to shoot the messenger, but please. We didn't get to go to Brig's wedding and watch lipid-eyed Mark dutifully pick her up off the floor after her first drunken dance. We didn't get to witness the birth of their children with Mark patiently sitting through a drunken Brig popping out a wee one placenta first. Nope. We got the shaft. That damned Daniel Cleaver is still slithering around in the background making oily passes at anything in a short skirt -- male or female, apparently -- and Brig has taken off with a man-child before Mark Darcy i...

  In honor of the celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Hinterland's Who's Who, in Gatineau today, we give you The Captain and Tennille. You're welcome!

Maybe I caught it at the gym or down at the market. Maybe I got it tossing around a Kong with Finnigan in an e Coli infested yard. Maybe it was lurking in the half-priced duck we ate early in the week. For whatever reason, I caught a bug that lingered for most of the week, causing my stomach to churn like the waters off North Carolina during hurricane season. Fortunately, it wasn't the type of bug that had me holding a pail puking while my butt was permanently glued to the toilet. My stomach was just sour. I don't get sick very often. It's one of the perks of being a shut-in, writerly sort of person. If you don't go anywhere, you can't get anything. But in the past few years, I've been putting myself out there in the cold, germy world. I go to The Athletic Club nearly every day. I'm at the supermarket sometimes twice a day. And, of course, I'm rocking the dog park on the weekends. So I guess you could say I was asking for it. It's a ...

A few months back, Loblaw introduced a new program called PC Plus in Ontario. It is basically a loyalty program, the same as Air Miles, except all you can do is buy groceries with your points. But who doesn't like to get a free turkey now and again? And, on paper at least it is pretty sophisticated. Every week, you get an email giving you special offers based on your love of, say spinach or green onions. Buy these groceries and you get massive numbers of points, not one or two like Air Miles. Each 20,000 points nets the consumer 20 bucks worth of product and the purchase of a number of products can bring in more than 1,000 points. One weekend, Loblaws offered 2,000 points for the purchase of 80 bucks worth of groceries. That's 20 bucks worth of swag on an 80 buck order! Chaching. Unfortunately, the program has a few glitches. For one, good luck finding the products. Two weeks ago, there was an offer of 1,200 points for the purchase of Cascade bathroom tissue. So Sc...

In the end, Dr. Gordon J. Blackstone, professor of puppy philosophy, wasn't rocking Addison's Disease after all. It cost us a couple hundred bucks the other day to hear the news. We didn't care. We were just happy that Gordie would live a better life over the coming months. At twelve and half, he is a modern veterinary miracle. At age two, Gordie developed stones in his bladder which blew up his tummy like a hot air balloon. It took two operations to set him straight. The first one, the vet botched because she had trouble sewing up his fat tummy. We were grateful that she offered another vet to fix her handiwork. The second health crisis came a couple of years later when he developed pancreatitis. The resolution of this situation required us to make him homemade dog food with brown rice, vegetables and meat for years. The smell of shepherd's pie still makes me nauseous. He doesn't need that concoction any longer. Now he eats regular chow. I often wonder whe...

Photo courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net (Tom Curtis) Gather 'round, children. We have much to be thankful this Thanksgiving. We get to live in one of the most beautiful cities in the country, if not the world. Nobody gets more free stuff than we do in the nation's capital -- except maybe Mike Duffy! There's the canal, the Rink of Dreams, bicycle lanes that go on longer than Beyoncé's legs, dog parks where our canine love interests get to fly through the woods off leash, a vibrant market with fruits and vegetables hauled in from Mexico and three levels of politics. Three! And now we have something else for which we must be grateful. That's right, children, Ottawa will soon be the home of a $3 billion expansion of rail and roads and bike paths, thanks to our good Mayor Millhouse. Just this week, he announced that he's intending on fast tracking a complete makeover of Ottawa's transportation infrastructure -- all of which will be ready by 2023...

Photo courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net (Salvatore Vuomen) My son Stef called to say he'd had a successful trip to Vegas. He won a $2,000 slot jackpot on the first night which basically paid for all his entertainment for the rest of the week. "Mum, you can't believe the place," he cooed. "There was an actual Venetian canal that ran through our casino." Funny, in Ottawa, there is a horse track that runs around ours. Las Vegas was built in the desert and millions visit it and lose their shirts every year. Ottawa's casino is in a cow pasture and its revenues are declining. That's because casinos in the U.S. are run by the mob, 'er, business people. In Ontario, they are not run. They are controlled by the government. I saw the other day that city counsellors were pissed that the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Commission will be controlling the number of slot machines that are placed at Rideau Carleton. There are a few councillors wh...

Photo courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net (AKARAKINGDOM) I went to The Bay a week ago in search of underwear. Sophie had gnawed on one of my last good pair and so I had no choice but to enter the horrifying world of women's undergarments. For years, I've been buying Jockey because they are cotton and last so long they will, no doubt, end up in the landfill for decades to come. In the meantime, they grace my arse for at least five years. I was shocked to discover that all the sizing has changed. As I perused the never-ending racks of multi-color gitch, I realized that the highest number they went up to was a size 10. WTF? Fortunately for me, I ran into the wife of a friend who was replacing her nuclear panties and she schooled me on how to buy modern underwear. "Just ask the girl at the counter for a tape measure and you'll compare your hip size to the chart." Seemed easy enough. I was a size 9! Well, it turned out I hadn't factored in the bunch...

Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net (Rosemary Ratcliffe) I met my cousin Pat for coffee at Starbucks yesterday, and something terrible happened. We were in mid-gossip when I felt a prick between my second and third toe. My sandal went flying and so did a tiny little wasp which had insinuated itself into my shoe. "Quick," I said to Pat. "Can you go in and get some ice? She came back with a barista who was holding a teaming bag of ice wrapped in a cloth. You realize, of course, that there isn't much flesh on your toes, so the little bastard manage to stick its stinger right into the bone of my toe. And then he died a well-earned and nasty death under my shoe. Funnily enough, it didn't swell or hurt, so I continued my conversation with Pat and I went off to do some errands. About 3 a.m., my foot started to hurt like a bitch. The itch was so bad, that the sensation travelled to my other foot and up both my legs. So I crawled out of bed and reached for...

I was shocked to hear yesterday that there is something called The Black Dog Syndrome at rescue shelters. According to the Ottawa Humane Society, people are biased against black dogs.   So this October, the OHS is offering all kinds of special deals to people in hopes of adopting out all the black dogs in the shelter.   I can't understand this. At least half the dogs at the Conroy Pit dog park are black. There are black pugs, Labs, Newfies and poodles chasing each other's tails, sniffing butts and lifting their legs all around the place. Most of them look alike -- like my own dog Finnigan -- which makes me wonder if there is a local lothario about knocking up all the Berneses and Danes. There are so many of them that we have taken to calling them The Black Gentleman Society. Often, I have to check to make sure I'm taking the right dog home. A black dog is a thing of beauty, danger and mischief. We buy ShopVacs to pick up their hair. We put shower curt...

Update: This week, we switched back to Rogers after spending far too long using Bell's crappy television service. For those with Bell, read and weep. For those considering Bell, think twice even if you hate Rogers. RS I've always been an early technology adapter. I had a Betamax. That tells you everything (if you're over 50 at least). My first computer was a "Portable". It weighed 40 pounds and I had to lug it around town on a gurney. I've been through probably 15 computers in my lifetime. Apple is the best. It's also too expensive so I have a piece of shit HP, the one I'm writing this blog on. I've had cable, internet and now Netflix. American Netflix . That's how far ahead of the curve I am. I get all the newspapers for free. How? I disabled my cookies so they can't track me when I'm on the newspaper sites. Even the New York Times hasn't cottoned on to that trick. Hahaha. That will be a fifty buck consulting fee. Bein...

I opened my water bill a few weeks back and I couldn't believe my eyes. The bill said my water cost was $350. Two bills ago, it was $125. I called up the city, on the famous 3-1-1 line Hello, City of Ottawa. Hi. I'm calling about my water and sewer bill. It's doubled in the last three months. Silence. I'm hoping you can tell me why that is. Why what is? That my bill has doubled. How many people are currently living in your house? Five. Oh. Well, we estimate that every person uses $50 worth of water. And one is a baby. To my thinking, she uses about three litres a week. Yes, as I said, we estimate that every person in a household uses $50 worth of water. Well, that makes it $250. Hah. Well, then, you must have a leaky toilet. You should have the toilet checked. That is the primary reason why people's bills go up. We don't have a leaky toilet. You'd be surprised. Go into your bathroom and tell me: is it running? No. Perhaps you should ...