50 Reasons Why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself, Part VI

Friday, Oct. 31st: A Fifth of Vitriol - #9-#1
By Merton Sussex, Chief Disparagement Engineer

And now...Our special time together, wherein we have dissected the many, many patently obvious reasons why Canada ought to auto-bang, has drawn to a close. I do hope you've enjoyed this magical journey...I know I sure have. Remember: Please keep your arms and legs inside at all times until the blog stops moving completely. Then push down and lift up on your lap-bar, exit to the left, and enjoy the rest of your day here at the Diary of Fools.

The homestretch:

9) Curling. How do we know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Canada is about as pulse-poundingly exciting as an insurance broker's seminar at a Ramada in Witchita? Because Canadians Curl. And they don't just Curl...They're proud of it.

So what the fuck IS curling, exactly? Based on the cumulative 27 seconds of it I've watched while flipping stations on the way to something good, it's kind of like shuffleboard. Except instead of a beer coaster, the people playing have a big rock with a handle on it that they slide down the ice, in order that they determine who's the superior...I dunno...rock-slider, or something. Whatever.

Oh, and somehow this is a TEAM sport. There are two people who sort of mince along in front of this fucking rock as it's moving, and scrubb little broomy things back and forth in front of it. In America, if someone has a total lack of job skills, we hand that person a broom and pay them $6 an hour to be the custodian at an old folks' home. In Canada, that same person also gets a broom, but they might get a gold medal, too.

I once sat for an hour and watched houseflies fuck on a windowsill in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon in August the week before middle school started, and that was more fun to watch than Curling. Canada has made a "sport" out of just about every single stupid, pointless fucking thing that multiple humans can possibly do on a sheet of ice...Except for lying down on it and waiting for the sweet release of hypothermia-induced death to grant them an end to their torment.

8) Gordon Lightfoot. Gordon Lightfoot will someday be tried for his crimes against popular culture, and mark my words: He WILL be found guilty.

The charge: proving that it is possible to create audio product that has less spine than a flatworm, lighter substance than a gently floating milkweed bud, and yet still somehow attain acclaim by recording and performing it. He is the 70's-era granddaddy of the entire current flaccid crop of simpering emo pussies that came after him. Without him, there is no Jack Johnson. No John Mayer. No Landon Pigg, James Blunt, or that blubbering vagina from Five for Fighting. Each delicate man-child who subjects us to melancholy whining through soft, wetly trembling lips can trace his lineage directly to the Loins o' Lightfoot. Fuck, even his NAME makes him sound like the prettiest ballerina ever. If you could read my mind, what a tale my thoughts would tell, indeed. Mostly a tale of a whole lot of punching.

I'll bet he bruises like a banana, too. At least, I like to hope he does. Helps me sleep at night.

7) The Aurora Borealis. Also known as the Northern Lights. The Aurora is an environmental phenomenon caused when sun-charged particles attract and collide with each other in the Earth's magnetic field, releasing energy in the form of visible light. But that's really only the why. It's the WHAT that counts.

Imagine a constantly shifting, shimmery silk sheet or curtain made entirely of light, dancing around itself while emitting intense, fluttering explosions of color as it dances for hours on end In the sky. And you're not even on drugs. It's like the whole goddamn planet is having a visible orgasm, and it doesn't care who knows it.

I've only seen it once. It was the night I let some perky co-ed I was trying to put the wood to sweet-talk me into slogging out to this annoying rural bonfire-and-booze party at least 45 miles out from the center of Sisterfuck, Nowhere. It was about what you'd expect: Cliqued packs of hamburger-headed, date-raping frat jocks, and the attention-whore cuntlets who kept theatrically making out with each other in a desperate bid for their approval. At one point, more bored than a drill press, I walked away from the "festivities," and tried to stretch the stress out of my neck a little. And when I rolled my melon skyward, that's when I saw it. And I froze, rooted to the spot.

While I was watching it, I heard some dude say, "Aurora." Sort of yanked me out of my reverie a little. "Yeah, I guess it must be," I answered. "Never seen it before. Maybe it's because I've always lived in cities, and the light pollution drowns it out, or something "

"Pffft. Well THIS is NOTHING," he snorts, waving it off. "You oughta see how it looks where I come from. It's so bright there, it doesn't matter. You'd still see it anyway."

That's when I noticed he was wearing a University of Manitoba hoodie. Incidentally, that's also the exact moment I started wondering how long it would take the authorities to find a body in one of the nearby cornfields. In one fell swoop, this jackass had managed to both cheapen my new and fascinating experience with petty one-upmanship, and demonstrate how much he took his OWN proximity to such a spectacular wonder for absolute granted.

But...I didn't kill him. I just fucked his girlfriend in the back seat of my Chevy later on. I felt a lot better on a FEW levels after that.

6) Sabian Cymbals. In the cymbal world, much like in many brand categories, there are two rival competitors that set the pace for all of the others. Y'know....like Coke and Pepsi. DC and Marvel. Playboy and Penthouse. When it comes to cymbals, the two 500-pound gorillas are Zildjian, and Sabian.

The Zildjian company was founded by Avedis Zildjian in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1623. Yes...SIXTEEN twenty-three. To give you an idea of how old Zildjian is as a company, they started making cymbals because they were shit at alchemy. Yeah, alchemy. And, while the Avedis didn't create gold from base metals literally, the COMPANY has more or less done that in practice. For almost 350 years, nearly every single cymbal sold anywhere in the world was a Zildjian. And going all the way back to 1623, the company had always been inherited by the family's eldest son. That is, until 1976, when Avedis Zildjian III had a choice to make. He had TWO sons. Robert, and Armand. Robert was older, so he was supposed to get the keys. But...There was a problem.

Bob was kind of a fuck-up.

Bob always knew he was the heir apparent, so he figured he had that shit in the bag. He started drinking, going to parties, spending a fuckload of the family fortune, and chumming up to rock stars. Thing is, while Bobby was partying it up on his dad's dime, his little brother was actually learning his dad's business. You can see what's coming, I'm sure.

When Avedis died in 1979, he passed Playboy Bob over in the will, in favor of Armand. And the shit didn't just hit the fan...An entire tanker of raw sewage fucking crashed into the fan manufacturing plant, consuming both in a ball of flame that could be seen from two counties in every direction. There were legal battles. Injunctions. And probably at least one really tense Thanksgiving. But when the dust settled, Armand got to keep the family name, and the Boston facility. Bob got a chunk of the estate, and the production factory in Meductic, New Brunswick. In other words, CANADA.

So, he moved to Canada, and started making cymbals. But. The first thing Bob manufactured wasn't a cymbal at all. Instead, he manufactured a name: Sabian. He cooked it up by combining the first three letters of the names of his children, Sally, Billy and Andy. As an added bonus, "Sabian" sort of sounded Armenian.  Clever!  Sneaky and deceptive, sure.  But, clever.

These days, Sabian is the perpetual hot-on-the-heels second-place runner to Zildjian. Each company has its devotees, its own separate identity, and chunk of the market share. However, whereas Zildjian is a nearly 400-year-old company built on tradition, innovation, history and trust...Sabian is a 29-year-old company built on spite, arrogance, greed, and making shit up. Plus, they're fucking Canadian. So As far as I'm concerned, Sabian can stay #2 forever. Because that's how I think of them: as a big, steaming, stinking, coiled-up and corn-flecked "number two" that was more or less shat into being.

Which conveniently leads me to...

5) William Shatner. Ah, Bill. Good ol' Captain Kirk. T.J. Hooker himself. Denny Crane. "The Shat." How very many legitimate reasons there are to loathe your pompous, arrogant posterior. You're the hammiest motherfucker alive. Nobody on the Star Trek Set could stand you. All of the shitty hack impressionists do you, and badly. You've skated your whole career on one legendary role that these days you dismiss and disrespect as having been crap. You recorded a couple of laughably shitty albums. You had someone else write a few sci-fi books that you then signed your name to, and took all of the money and credit for. You once did a nude scene with Angie Dickinson. You'll whore yourself out to shill for any company who sends you a check. You've never admitted to that ludicrous hairpiece. You publicly criticized George "Sulu" Takei for not inviting you to his wedding rather then just talk to him about it privately like a human being. Along with Chevy Chase, you're the only other person I've ever seen roasted where it was obvious that the shit people on the dais were giving you was motivated by genuine irritation instead of good-nature camaraderie. And, lest we forget...you're Canadian.

Bill, Bill, Bill...Is there no beginning to your charms?

4) The Avro Arrow. The CF-105 Arrow Interceptor was to be a jet fighter used in the Canadian Air Force, built by Avro Aircraft Limited in Malton, Ontario. And if you had ANY idea that any of these three things existed prior to the previous thirty seconds, you get a goddamned gold star. I say "WAS to be" because the Arrow turned out to be a gigantic turkey that never got off the ground either literally OR figuratively.

The thing was doomed from the start. During the drafting process, the engineers kept tweaking and refining the math by a few micrometers here and a few pico-grams there in an attempt to squeeze acceptable performance out of the engines they'd decided to use. But...once they had gotten the design to exactly where it needed to be, the vendor promptly canceled production on the engine. Whoops.

So, it was back to the drawing board for Plan B. After another period of painstaking re-structuring, they finally got everything just right a second time. At which point the other vendor announced that their backup engine would longer be in production, either. D'oh! Personally, I like to think that this was deliberate; that these guys got together and punk'd the syrup-sucking fucks, and then had a good high-five over their big, fat burn with some cognac and cigars.

Still, the undaunted engineers went back to work again, reinventing the wheel around yet another engine. That one actually made it far as test flights before being scrapped and replaced with a fourth. However, prior to actual production, that TOO was yanked, and ANOTHER one actually made it to production. In the end, the seemingly simple task of deciding on a motherfucking engine had burned up two years, and millions of dollars. Hooray for Canadian ingenuity!

Then, the Royal Canadian Air Force started popping around to see why things were taking so fucking long. Naturally, they had "suggestions." They had all seen the US Navy's prototype Sparrow II and wanted the same weapons systems in the Arrow. The Avro people objected on the grounds their system was ready to go, but the Air Force was having exactly zero of that shit, and insisted they wanted the same toys that the Americans had. So, the engineers once AGAIN trudged back to their drafting tables, tossing the original blueprints on the world's spendiest scrap-heap in the process. They soon found out that the Sparrow weapons system had been designed from the ground for an entirely different craft, and didn't work in theirs. This began another series of lengthy delays as the engineers tried to reverse-engineer the son of a bitch to work with THEIR plane.

The fatal blow came in 1957, after Canada elected a new Prime Minister who had run on the platform of reining in wasteful government spending. Uh-oh. Guess which money-pit project was one of the first to get the axe? Budget cuts not only dealt the final financial blow that sunk the Arrow for good, but the government added insult to injury by turning around and signing an agreement with NORAD...One that essentially cut the knees out from under the Royal Canadian Air Force by placing it under the jurisdictional command of the United States Department of Defense. Fucking OUCH. Thus, the entire program went down like a harbor hooker during shore leave...Which is appropriate considering how much the whole thing sucked and how expensive it was.

In the wake of this fiasco, Avro lost their juicy government contracts. They tried to sell off the Arrow design to stay alive, but nobody wanted an obsolete plane tainted by the stench of failure. They stumbled along for a few more years, but ultimately folded in 1962, never to be heard from again. Today, when entering the perimeter of Malton, Ontario, the big "Welcome!" signs at the edge of town say "Malton: Home of the Avro Arrow." I find this to be hilarious. They're actually fucking PROUD of this?!? Imagine if Detroit had signs at the city limits saying: "Home of the Edsel!" Fuck, the Edsel was the biggest laughingstock lemon in American manufacturing history...But at least it got put out. They even sold some. 113,352 of them over three years, to be exact.

Little-known fact: Of that 113,352, they sold 7,440 of them...In Canada.

3) Pets de Soeurs. A traditional French-influenced Canadian dessert. I've never had them, but they look pretty delicious, don't they? They're basically deep-fried miniature cinnamon rolls, full of all of the good stuff: Butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, creamed eggs, a little lemon for zest, and traditionally, a healthy splash of Rum. They sound awesome, right? They sure as hell do to me.

So, why are they here? If you spoke French, you'd know. Because Pets de Soeurs translates - literally, as "Nuns' Farts." And...Say it with me...I'm not joking.

Now, this doesn't bother me on a blasphemy level. As a hipster atheist snob, I'm all about the sacrilege. It bugs me because it doesn't make any sense.

Farts are largely without tangible substance. You can't really see, touch, or (usually) taste them. You can hear and SMELL them, sure. But if we're talking about "a fart" itself as an actual thing, we're usually talking about something that's incorporeal. So, why call these things "Nuns' Farts?"

"Nuns' Assholes" I could totally see, and I wouldn't have an issue with that. They're little, round, and have a ribbon of brown running through them. I imagine that's also pretty close to the general description of any random Sister Mary Margaret's puckered brown-eye. That actually makes sense to me. "Nuns' Pussies" might also work, though not as well. You'd have to change the shape a little to really go with that. But snatch is more frequently eaten than asshole, so that helps with the overall conceit.

But it's not just that the name is completely nonsensical. It's also that it's nonsensical purely for the sake of shock value. And shock value untethered to a meaning or a message is about as useful as a pair of tits on a refrigerator. Shock value in CONTEXT can be a powerful thing. But you've gotta have a message. Calling a cinnamon roll a "nun's fart" is just ridiculous. It makes no point about the oppression of organized theocracy, or the futility of the church in the modern age. It cottons to no philosophy about Catholicism's hypocrisy toward sex abuse, nor its draconian stand on birth control. It's pretty much empty rebellion, like a bunch of grade schoolers standing around giggling at a kid who just keeps hollering "PENIS!" over and over. It's meaningless. Funny, maybe...At least once. But ultimately meaningless.

Still, I can't help but wonder if they're on the menu at the West Edmonton Mall Cinnabon. THAT would be kind of awesome. I'd order that shit every day and twice on Sundays.

2) Canadians are WAY too fucking nice. The courtesy of the Canadian people is legendary. You can pour sugar in their gas tanks, and they'll hold the funnel. You can kick them in the ass, and they'll worry that their wallet may have sprained your toes. You can have sex with their mothers right in front of them, and they'll make sure the camera stays focused. Canadians are so polite that they don't even mug, rape or murder each other in respectable numbers like any other civilized country. Who in the hell do they think they are, the fucking Japanese? Since when is common courtesy...common?

What's more, If you've spent any time in Canada, you know the most frequently-uttered word, used even more than the ubiquitous "eh?" is "sorry." They pronounce it so that it rhymes with "quarry," but it's there. It takes the place of the "'scuse me," "beg yer pardon" and "what the fuck did you just say to me, asshole?" that are so prevalent in the States. Canadians are constantly falling all over themselves and each other trying to apologize for nothing. Where in the hell do they get off being so accommodating and humble? What's their angle, their overall ulterior motive? What do they WANT? I don't fucking get it.

I don't trust 'em. The sneaky fucks are UP to something. But as long as they don't bitch too loud that Americans keep sewing maple leaves onto our backpacks to keep from getting kidnapped and killed when we travel abroad, I'm gonna back off.

And...the long-awaited, much-anticipated number-one reason why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself is:

1) Celine Dion.

If you didn't see THIS one coming, you probably have less measurable brain-wave activity than a goddamned rutabaga.

If there is ANY single offense for which Canada ought to be drawn, quartered, and sold for scrap on the world market, one that outweighs all of the others doubled, multiplied by itself and set on FIRE, it's that they foisted this leathery, mongoose-faced, noise-warbling cunt onto the global landscape without so much as the slightest hint of contrition. She is so revoltingly devoid of anything even remotely resembling the faintest, most distant whiff of a flea-market facsimile of something approaching talent that I half-suspect she's a sort of genetically-engineered reverse ambassador; a manufactured repli-humanoid designed by the Canadian government to discourage immigration, deter invasion threats, and serve as a large enough lightning rod for scorn and controversy that she'll make the rest of what's wrong with Canada pale to near-undetectable levels by comparison.

Whether she's pumping millions directly into the Canadian economy by taking advantage of the poor judgment shown by sleep-deprived and buffet-addled tourists at her specially built theatre in Caesar's in Vegas, or screeching the Diane Warren-penned, overwrought saccharin love theme to some bloated, onion-fume-filled bastardpiece of oscar-bait Cinema d'Vagina shit with no redeeming social value, I'm surprised that her personal security detail isn't putting in double-overtime in an attempt to prevent dozens of completely-justifiable assassination attempts PER DAY.

And besides having less musical appeal than a wet belch, she looks like a 6-foot wad of beef jerky lumbering around in a dress and trying to pass for a person. I mean, if you're just UGLY, fine. I can deal with ugly. But to be ugly AND possess all the repulsive fashion sense of a blind, schizophrenic orangutan with Down Syndrome? Not to mention the famous fact that she actually got married to the obscenely creepy, Svengali-like douche who had been her manager since before she got her period. C'mon. If there's not a law against that, there damn well oughtta be.

Celine Dion is so dried-up, nauseating, unappealing and downright repellent on every level that mosquitoes won't even bite her. Rain swerves to avoid coming into contact with her on is way to the ground. She is actually so loathsome that even Reno Gruber would not, if you can believe this, engage in the act of sexual intercourse with her if given the opportunity. That is a SERIOUS declaration. You should see some of the gutter trash he slides his stump into.

In fact, Celine Dion doesn't just top the list of reasons why Canada can pretty much go fuck itself, she embodies the entire concept of people, places, things and ideas that need to go fuck themselves...Because nobody else would so much as even consider doing so.

And with that, we have reached our conclusion. Thanks for playing. Please see the receptionist on your way out for your parting gift and participation pin.

See you guys later. Or, if you're Canadian, maybe I won't.

Tomorrow, and from now on: A much, much shorter post. I promise. If Blaine lets me live after this bloated piece of shit.

The DoF Friday Funk: Stevie Turns Out Sesame Street

And check out the superbad freak-out session by the kid in the red sweater at :40 and again at about 4:10. Apparently, Sesame Street had a fairly relaxed LSD policy back in the day.

Stevie Wonder - Superstition (Live on Sesame Street)

50 Reasons Why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself, Four on the Floor

Thursday, Oct. 30th: Four on the Floor: #19-#10
By Merton Sussex, Unrepentant Bastard

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends. We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside. Part IV of my great big middle finger to our neighbors to the north is commencing apace. Just don't slip in the puddles of bile, because I'm not about to go to the trouble of putting up the "Caution: Wet Floors" sign for the likes of you.

19) Canadian Pennies. Question - What's the only thing more annoying than pennies? Answer: Motherlicking CANADIAN pennies. FUCK. Leave it to goddamn Canada to take something that's already abjectly worthless, and somehow make it even worse.

American pennies are already so useless that there might as well be Sam's Club-sized mayonnaise jars next to practically every cash register in the country for people to throw them into at the end of their transaction. Sure, it might SAY "Take a penny, leave a penny" on the side, but nobody's picking any up. American pennies are so without value that the government actually loses money minting them. The fucking eighth of a micron of copper on the outside is worth more melted down than exchanged for face value. When I clean my house, I actually throw the filthy things away. If you plan on leaving them for a tip in a restaurant, you'd better have a short, clear path to the door. BUMS won't even take them.

BUT.

In theory...pennies are still legal tender. You can still sort of spend them if you hoard them like a hermit long enough. At least on paper, you can dig out the hand-truck, wheel your 55-gallon drum to the CoinStar at the supermarket, and maybe come away with enough actual lucre to buy yourself a lunch that doesn't get passed to you through your drivers' side window.

But Canadian pennies?!? Ever get one back in change? Don't you just want to chuck that leafy, contemptible little son of a bitch as far away as you can throw it the second it hits your skin? And forget about trying to SPEND one. If the cashier catches it, and trust me, he or she probably will, don't be surprised if they regard it with the same contempt as they would a wad of blood-streaked tissue you had just finished rubbing slowly up and down the inside of the hairy, sweat-funky crack of your ass while softly humming the theme from "Mission: Impossible."

18) Avril Lavigne. OOOOH, how I hate you. I hate your stupid necktie and wifebeater. I hate the fact that your caked-on eyeliner makes every raccoon in a three-block radius come running up to try to hump your leg every time you stop moving for more than eleven seconds. I hate your brainless, insipid "songs"with their sub-6th-grade-poetry-class lyrics, and music that rips off actual artists. I hate the fact that you try to be all fake-attitude, pseudo-"punk" when you're actually so harmlessly prefab that the fucking GHOST of Dee Dee Ramone could snap your neck from across a room without even getting within 10 feet of you. I hate the fact that you buy into your own bullshit, and legitimately believe you're the greatest thing since floating soap when you actually have all of the depth of a goddamned Frisbee. I hate your fucking snaggle teeth, pointy nose and nonexistent chin. I hate the fact that you actually have the gall to claim to be a "fashion designer" and an "actress" just because you've got enough money to be able to sign your name to other people's work, and to hire an agent without investing the effort to put in the discipline.

But most of all, I hate your fucking fork-on-a-blackboard, eardrum-assaulting excuse for a voice. Seriously. Whoever told you you could sing needs to get tied down, and then have their nipples sawed off with a rusty steak knife. Slowly. Even with as much studio polish as they put on what passes for your singing, you still sound like someone receiving electroshock therapy while simultaneously trying to feed a burlap sack full of feral cats into a chipper-shredder with a bad timing belt. Please, PLEASE just go away.

17) Montreal's Olympic Stadium. The very creatively-named Olympic Stadium was built in order to be the primary competition venue for the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. It was conceived as a grandiose, sweeping structure with a revolutionary retractable roof, majestic buttressed cantilevers, and a gigantic, phallic tower, thrusting upward into the sky with laughably cartoonish mock virility. There was just one problem:

It didn't fucking work.

The genius team of architects and engineers that cooked up this gigantic turkey bit off far more than they could chew by about seven mouthfuls. First, the poor widdle construction workers who were supposed to be putting the fucking thing together weren't getting enough nap breaks, or something, so they went on strike....While it was in the middle of being built. Really. As a result, when the opening ceremonies kicked things off, the stadium was only half-finished. Oopsie! Not only wasn't the tower completed, but the retractable roof was sitting in a warehouse in France. It's okay, though...Because they had them finished and in place in time for the closing ceremony.

HA! Just kidding! The roof actually sat in that French warehouse until 1982. Of course, once it shipped, they slapped that bitch right on and called it a day. Whoo! Fucking with you again! The tower and roof weren't actually installed until 1987. No biggie, though. I'm all about cutting 'em some slack. They only missed their deadline by eleven fucking years.

But wait...It gets better. The roof was finally put in PLACE in '87, but it didn't actually operate properly until a year later. And even then, "properly" is a relative assessment, because it leaked worse than Scooter Libby, moved slower than the second coming of Christ, and froze up altogether in winds 25mph or over...which also tore the Kevlar shielding on the outside into ribbons. That's Kevlar. Y'know...Kevlar? The stuff they put into bullet-proof vests? That. Canadians are such fuck-ups that when THEY use it, a stiff breeze turns it into confetti.

But that's still not the end of the story. Because when all was said and done, the continual delays, repairs, strikes, and cost overruns on the project inflated the final price tag to $1.61 BILLION dollars, an increase of over 1,200% above the original budget estimate. In fact, the stadium project was so expensive that it plunged the entire city of Montreal into such ridiculous depths of debt that they didn't finish paying it off until motherfucking 2006. Best of all, 2006 was a full two years after the stadium's primary tenant, the Montreal Expos, had skipped town to became the Washington Nationals.

These days, it sits completely empty, a bloated, tarnished, money-pit metaphor-slash-cautionary tale about what happens when people as inept as Canadians try to hang with the big boys on the global landscape: They get fucked so hard, their GRANDKIDS get the clap. The irony that a building that looks so much like a giant penis ultimately came to represent the futile, impotent failure of an entire nation is totally lost on Canada because, as we've already established, they don't know the meaning of the word "irony."

16) The Canadian Flag. For chrissakes, LOOK at it. It looks like something you'd wipe up vomit with. If that was a Rorschach blot, I'd say, "Um...it's the bed sheet from the morning a teenage girl wakes up a woman." Canada has the single pussiest flag of any country in the world. Other countries, no matter how insignificant, make pretty good use of color and iconography, using things like crests, stars, shields and stylized kick-ass animals. Canada...has a leaf. A fucking LEAF. That's really the best they could do? We get it, you have trees, and I guess you feel as though that makes you unique, somehow. What, was the daffodil not available? Did the pansies refuse the contract? Couldn't the artist draw a limp wrist, a pack of Virginia Slims and a Judy Garland album?

In Canada, they put it a leaf on the flag. Here, we rake it into the gutter and leave it there for the street-sweeper.

15) Pamela Anderson. Of course, she really needs no introduction. If you have genitals, chances are you've touched them inappropriately at least once while thinking about her. Man or woman, doesn't matter. She sort of transcends the barriers of such common, base concepts as "sexual orientation."

In her lifespan thus far, Pammy has pretty much hit every single benchmark of excellence a world-class bombshell needs to in order to be taken seriously. Playboy spreads? Check. Cheesy acting career? Check. Fucks a lot of rock stars? Check. Sex tape? Oh GOD, check. In fact, the only thing she DIDN'T get around to was dying young. And dammit, even though she's 41 and has crow's feet that could hold a 3-day rain, there's STILL not a man alive that wouldn't pony up a week's earnings for a crack at launching their heat-seeking meat-missle on a deep-cover mission into Pam's TunaTown tunnel, if for no other reason than to be able to say they did. Shit, even gay dudes have to admit they'd at least launch an enthusiastic load onto her big, fake Tupper-Tits if you really put 'em on the spot.

A genuine, world-changing, bar-raising sex symbol comes along once per generation if you're lucky. In-their-day goddesses like Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe and Farrah Fawcett don't just grow on trees...But they were still as American as credit card debt. However, it just so happens that Pam sprang forth from the dewy, fragrant wilds of British Columbia. So fuck the B.C. for drawing the long straw on the lottery this round, and breaking our streak. They didn't deserve it. So watch your backs, punks.

14) The Canadian Football League. Quick! Without Googling, name the teams that played in the championship game last year! Okay, name ONE of them. Alright, fine. Name any team in the fucking league. *Sigh*...Okay! I'll settle for you telling me what the trophy is called. Did you even know there WAS a "CFL" until I told you? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Just like most Canadian "versions" of our stuff, their football league is nothing but a pale, pathetic echo of what they're attempting to emulate. To give you some idea of how sad the CFL is, Canada's TSN channel (their weak-sauce version of ESPN) recently conducted a survey to determine the 50 best CFL players of all time, and coming in at #1 was...Doug Flutie. Yeah, THAT Doug Flutie...The puny twit who got traded around the NFL like a crotch-fungus, ultimately stinking up more home-team locker rooms than BenGay.

This is how low the expectations are set in the CFL...You can be the #1 player of all time, and it's still a largely hollow victory, because you're a joke by any normal standard. Y'know...kind of like being named Valedictorian of the "Special" school. In fact, the only reason the CFL even still exists is because Flutie keeps their panties good and moist by dropping hints that he might toss aside his walker, slip on some orthopedic cleats, and stage a comeback someday.

Shit...If he waits another year, he probably won't even need the tooth-guard any more.

13) Howie Mandel. Howie Mandel is ostensibly a "comedian," even though he's about as funny as a school-bus fire. In twenty-five years, his career has progressed from from playing an irritating spastic weirdo on the non-comedy show St. Elsewhere, to being his irritating, spastic, weirdo self hosting the non-comedy show Deal or No Deal. Hooray for progress!

I guess when the producers came up with the idea for a competition show that didn't involve skill, brains, reflexes, or talent, they needed a host who also had none of these things. For chrissakes, the whole fucking game is pointing out suitcases and hoping for the best. A fucking chimp could literally play this game with about the same success rate as the actual contestants do. So, why not hire a chimp to host it, too?

Oh, and make sure it's a chimp with OCD who refuses to shake hands because he's afraid that a few dozen of the quadrillions of microbes on another person's skin might find their way onto him, and start having dirty, microscopic sex with HIS quadrillions of microbes. THAT won't be weird. And on top of that, I know the pube-y curls he used to have were probably falling out on their own anyway, but the head-shaving thing weirds me out. You'd still think a guy who first shot to prominence from putting rubber gloves on his head might try looking LESS like an oversize walking penis as he gets older.

12) The CN Tower. Speaking of cocks...

Much like Olympic Stadium in Montreal, the CN Tower in Toronto was seemingly conceived, designed, and built for no discernible purpose other than to try to help Canada get over its understandable inferiority complex via the magic of architectural overcompensation. It's pretty much just a big 1,815-foot spire, standing turgidly just off the coast of Lake Ontario, waving itself around like a Viagra overdose and screaming "check THIS out!" while gesturing lewdly at its own tumescence.

Sure, they stuck some radio antennas on it, and put in a gift shop and shit in an attempt to retroactively justify its existence, but it's still pretty much just a big erection. One that Toronto has enjoyed rubbing in the face of the world since 1975. Yep...Canada's been pretty pleased with itself for being the global equivalent of that pimply, doughy kid you went to school with who picked his nose a lot, smelled like Gouda, and was never realistically going to amount to much...but who was still the undisputed king of the eighth-grade gym shower once the towels hit the tile.

Or, at least it WAS until late '07, when the Burj Dubai (a mixed-use structure in the United Arab Emirates) passed it up as the world's tallest freestanding man-made structure....even though it's even not finished yet. They're still building it, but even the unfinished project-in-progress is currently taller. When completed, the Burj will stand an estimated 2,684 feet. At that point, it will have have bested the CN by a whopping 870 feet...Or, roughly 10 feet more than the height of the entire Trump World Tower in lower Manhattan. The Freudian implications inherent in a prudishly uptight strict Muslim country (one that almost tossed a British woman caught having sex outdoors into jail for six years) actively whipping out the biggest, veiniest, most throbbingly purple-headed architectural one-eyed yogurt-slinger on the planet are best left un-chewed-on. Even so...Canada's been knocked down to #2...Or, as your high-school track coach used to refer to it, "the first loser."

11) Salé & Pelletier. Even now, the debate rages on. Figure Skating...Art, or sport? The problem is, that's a black-and-white question that fails to acknowledge a likely third option: That maybe it's just a bunch of frilly, sequin-spangled-spandex bullshit filled to near-bursting with horrible music, sprained ankles and repressed homosexuality. Hey, let's be honest: If you can turn down the commentators and STILL tell the difference between a lutz, an axel, and a salchow...? It's time to have a tough conversation with yourself. Maybe go shopping for some leather chaps, and a Pomeranian.

So, figure skating is a viable (albeit flamboyantly panty-waisted) option for the cold-climate nancies who don't have the sack for hockey, but still have a deep, burning desire to strap on some skates and freeze their gonads off. And speaking of gonads...The best-known Canadian figure skaters in the world are still these two shameless crybaby fucks. Too bad they're famous for all the wrong reasons.

You remember. They're the pair of pussies who whined and pouted and pitched a bitch during the '02 Salt Lake City games after their self-superior notions of entitlement failed to result in their receiving the pair of gold medals they simply wouldn't accept less than, nor go home without. To be fair, they had by all estimates admittedly skated a great program. One good enough that the spectators and commentators in attendance seemed to feel they'd more or less sealed up the top platform on the podium, and they weren't shy about saying so. But when the scores were tallied, the Russians had edged them out by a margin slimmer than Kiera Knightley on crystal meth. Naturally, this didn't sit too well with them, and they proceeded to launch a pity party the likes of which the world had never seen before, and has not seen since.

Well, boo-hoo, you ridiculous cunts. Looks like you'll have to settle for silver. You'll have to find some way to live with only being better than 99.999999999% of the rest of the world. Unless, that is, the Olympic Commission buckles like a belt, and gives you what you want in order to shut you up. Breaks down and placates you in order to keep you from continuing to weep big, fat crocodile tears to the world press about how much BETTER than the Russians you were, and how much YOU should have won, and how deeply UNFAIR the whole thing was.

Which, of course, is exactly what happened. The committee folded, and rewarded their terrible behavior. The Canucks got a pair of nice, shiny gold medals to take home, just like the Russians got. For their part, the Russians (though good-natured about the outcome and FAR more gracious than I would have been in the same situation) had to live with their accomplishment being cheapened by the inexcusably juvenile antics of the Canadians, even though they'd done nothing wrong. Some prize.

The Olympics are supposed to be a peaceful summit of the globe's greatest athletes, getting together to compete on a level playing field in the spirit of achievement and camaraderie, and setting a world-class example through good sportsmanship. But in 2002, a different message got sent: Kick and scream until you're blue in the face if your mommy doesn't stop the car and buy you the candy bar you didn't earn and don't deserve. Lovely. What excellent role models you were! I hope you both go to sleep at night with empty hearts, knowing what frauds you are, feeling perpetually ashamed for daring to turn up your classless, spoiled-rotten little noses at the silver medals thousands will never even get their shot at. But I'm not gonna hold my breath.

10) Rush. Hey, guys? I have an idea. Let's start a band! But not a ROCK band...HELL, no. BO-RING! I don't want to do songs people can dance to, sing along with, relate to on any level, or really even understand. I want to do bizarre, overblown songs about wizards, dog-creatures and frozen wastelands. Y'know, real concept-heavy shit full of obtuse, ham-fisted metaphors and half-baked pseudo-fantasy imagery that goes nowhere and means zero.

Wait...you haven't heard the best part yet! I'll SING those words in a screechy, nasally-ululating feminine warble over geeky, inaccessible, jerky math-rock full of soullessly mechanical time signatures from Mars! There'll be a ludicrous abundance of wanky, subdivided, atonal non-melodic noodling that conforms to no known musical structure, and we'll have to constantly count to seven-and-a-half in our heads...Unless we're counting to fifteen and three-quarters. And all that's gonna happen in the span of one 17-minute long song, of which we'll have dozens.

We'll be a smash! Everyone will be too afraid of looking stupid to admit that they don't really get it, or even like it at all...But we'll have all the Tolkien junkies and frustrated musicians standing there in little come-puddles...jaws slack and eyes glassy, eating out of our hands like parakeets! We'll be able to keep it up for YEARS, right? Huh? Is that GREAT, or what? Whaddaya say? Guys...? Hey...Hey, GUYS?!? Where are you going?!?

Guys...?

*************

Wow. This has been a fun week. Of course, the best (or, depending on your perspective, WORST) is still to come...So be sure to tune in tomorrow to catch the final round.

Until then, try not to get run over.

50 Reasons Why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself, Three's a Crowd

Wednesday, Oct. 29th: Three's a Crowd: #29-#20
By Merton Sussex, Resident Crabby-Pants

Much like the rash you got after you rumptied with a stripper in the bathroom that time, you had to know this was coming. And in both cases, chances are you probably did something to deserve it. However, you can't make this blog go away with penicillin. Trust me, I've tried.

29) Jim Carrey. Hey, asshole. I know you've got a hard-on for credibility these days, but in case you haven't noticed in your ivory tower? Things are kind of shitty out here right now. So could you shove "The Number 23," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "Man On the Moon" and "The Majestic" up your ass, and maybe try making us laugh again? Oh, you say you've got a movie coming out in December where you play a guy who decides to say "yes" to everything? Great! I'm sure that'll be totally different from the movie where the guy you played couldn't lie! Y'know what? How 'bout you go fuck yourself. Or go fuck Jenny McCarthy, I guess...which is an entirely separate reason to hate you lately.

28) The Toronto Blue Jays. The fact that they suck more wind than a Weather Channel reporter doing a location shot from a hurricane notwithstanding...Having a major-league baseball team in Canada makes about as much sense as having an NHL team in Mexico. Imagine: "¡Atención Mujeres y Hombres...Por favor, bienvenida el jugadores del principio para su GUADALAJARA CONQUISTADORES!" Yeah...somehow I'm not seeing it, either.

27) Nickelback. If I have to explain why, you don't deserve to know. Suffice it to say that when I'm President, Chad Kroeger is getting dragged into the street, and shot twice in the face for crimes against pop culture. In fact, that's one of the biggest tentpoles of my whole platform. Tell me I wouldn't win in a fucking landslide. If you can look at that picture and not want to punch him...HARD...Then I'll give you all of my lunch money for the week.

26) The Canadian Radio-Television and Communications Commission. Canada's answer to the FCC. And, while the FCC can pretty much suck a huge bucket of amputated livestock dicks marinated in hobo urine, the CRTC may actually be worse. The CRTC monitors all broadcast airwaves, ensuring that at least 60% of everything aired between 6 am and midnight is "cancon"...or, "entertainment" produced in Canada. They've even placed an embargo on foreign TV and live radio content on the internet, so that nobody in Canada can get streaming programming from the networks or radio stations. Maybe they're afraid they'll catch something good, and realize just how shitty what they're being force-fed really is. So that means a whole lot of Sarah McLachlan, Three Days Grace and Avril Lavigne on the radio, and just as much "Degrassi Junior High" and "You Can't Do That On Television"...on television. I'd list more Canadian television shows, but I've never heard of any others. So you can well imagine how good they must be.

25) The Blackberry. Every self-important douchebag yuppie everywhere loves his Blackberry more than he loves his own children. And they yap away on them, and send e-mail and shit like they and they alone are solely responsible for controlling the satellites that maintain world levels of kittens, candy, and sunshine. What does this have to do with anything? The Blackberry is a product of Research in Motion...A Canadian company. So now you know who to blame the next time that rectum-blister on the bus with the "smart" phone glued to his temple can't shut up about his fucking kid's soccer game. You're welcome.

24) Eugene Levy. 'Gene got his start on the aforementioned across-the-board awful SCTV. These days, he's best known as the only original cast member to appear in all 36 direct-to-DVD "American Pie" sequels. Open letter to Eugene: YOU CAN SAY "NO" TO BAD SCRIPTS. Not sure you're aware of that. I'm guessing no.

23) Canada is the second-largest country in the world in terms of landmass, but only 36th in population. Kinda reminds me of this flash drive I ordered from Amazon once. It's the size of a piece of Trident, but it came in a box they could've used to ship a '79 Buick Skylark. I'm sure we've got some garbage, homeless people or nuclear waste or something we can store there if you guys aren't using the space.

22) The Canadian Seal Hunt. Every year, the Canadian government sponsors a national commercial seal hunt, reportedly for the purposes of population control and pelt-harvesting. Well, to be fair...it's not so much a "hunt" like normal people think of hunting. One where you're all but required to buy special clothes, specific equipment, then employ something resembling stealth in order to bag a wily prey with a modicum of survival instinct. Not really. It's more like an organized clobber. Whereas in America, there's an entire cottage industry surrounding the sale of accouterments like tree stands, salt licks, game calls, doe pee and motion-activated cameras (and believe me, I know whereof I speak, there), in Canada, all you need to be a "hunter" is a Louisville Slugger, a good pair of waterproof boots and no inkling whatsoever of the concept of shame. Look, I'm never going to bag on hunters. Game-stalking may not be my personal cup of meat, but at least when someone's shooting a deer there's an element of skill involved. Deer can hear better than you, smell you coming, and they're fucking fast. Seal hunters just have to be able to walk a smidge more briskly than a harp seal can waddle, and then have sufficient aim to land their shillelaghs in the general neighborhood of their cuddly li'l skulls. Shooting fish in a barrel is actually decidedly harder. And fish are ugly. Seals look like puppies with swim fins on, for chrissakes. I just can't help but think any latter-day barbarian who can stare directly into the big, soulful brown eyes of a fluffy, snow-white Bichon Frise who looks like he's all set for his big day at the pool, and then feel perfectly okay about taking a giant stick and smacking it in the dome so hard that its brain squirts forcibly out of its ears on both sides has GOT to be a pretty fucking horrible person deep down in the secret place where he lives. I actually thought about throwing a link to some hunt footage in here, but even I have my fucking limits. Do yourself a favor and DON'T GOOGLE THIS. PeTA may be bunch of ultra-radical crybaby zealot extremists, but you know what they say about stopped clocks.

21) Mounties. Most cops are like Batman: their costume is designed to be instantly-recognizable, strike fear into the hearts of criminals, and include a belt loaded up with shit designed to take you down and keep you there. The esteemed officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a uniform designed to stop you, too, but theirs does so mostly through laughter-induced hemorrhaging. That's why their jackets are red...So that when they haul you in, they don't stain the outfit with your chuckle-blood. And before you ask, yes. He really is wearing jodhpurs un-ironically. The Mounties have been around since 1873, when Queen Victoria created the organization for the purpose of bringing law and order to the Northwest Territories. Their first order of business? Cracking down on loose-cannon American whiskey runners. So they've pretty much been a bunch of finger-wagging kill-joy buzz-murderers from day numero uno. [Feel free to insert your own lazy Dudley Do-Right reference here. I'm fucking tired.]

20) Canada is really fucking cold. And for the sake of a little perspective, I live in Minnesota.

Are we having fun yet? Here's to hoping so. You get number four tomorrow whether you want it or not, and then it's onto the big Friday finish.

If you can't feel the excitement, then maybe you can smell it. I think you can still pick up a faint trace of it on my finger if you come over here.

50 Reasons Why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself, Part Deux

Tuesday, Oct. 28th: Part Deux: #39-#30
By Merton Sussex, Court-Appointed Offender

Hooray! Just like Tabasco sauce, I'm coming back at'cha with the number two.

Our first installment of this series, posted yesterday, has already generated some controversy! Some scrotum-sniffing bum-wipe without the balls to leave a name decided to leave us some love in the comments. His take on the whole idea of Canada as a nation engaging in a nigh-impossible act of self-copulation read, in part:

"I was under the (mistaken) impression that you weren't one of those stupid Americans -- you know, that horde of morons who can't find their own country on a world map, who aren't the least bit informed on anything that goes on beyond their borders? So much for that.

I suppose the very existence of another country (where people have a different culture, speak a different language, do things differently) is highly disturbing to a cretin such as yourself.

Naturally, if you don't understand something, it must be crap and you must make fun of it.

Your ridiculous rant, by showcasing a pitiful ignorance of the facts, reinforces the stereotype that many Americans aren't educated, open-minded, friendly, curious, aware, or otherwise knowledgeable on anything save perhaps Wrestling and NASCAR."

So...You choose to demonstrate your anger towards my perpetuation of an egregious national stereotype with...The perpetuation of an egregious national stereotype? Nice shootin', cum-wad. I suppose it's perfectly fine when YOU do it. Thing is, I'm guessing you MEAN it. Whereas, if you'd bothered to read past the end of your pinched, bony little nose, you might have grasped the overall thrust of the concept a little better. Y'see, this is a SATIRE PIECE, tool. Or, as our good friend Askov Finlayson put it: "Way to demonstrate that Alanis Morrissette isn't the only Canuck without the faintest grasp of what 'irony' actually means." In any case, thanks for forcing me to shatter the whole conceit of the joke by making me take you tenderly by your soft, pink little hand and explain the basis of the humor to your oblivious, brain-dead ass.

Oh, and for what it's worth: Fuck you. NASCAR sucks. If I wanted to watch a bunch of rednecks go around in circles for a few hours, I'd tune into the C-SPAN satellite feed from the floor of the Alabama State House.

Gee, I wonder. Will today's installment stir up any additional shit-flakes from the bottom of the bowl? Only one way to find out:

39) SCTV. Saturday Night Live is funny sometimes. MAD TV is never funny. SCTV was not only not funny, every time it aired, it created a humor DEFICIT that actually reduced world laughter supplies by a measurable percentage. Plus: Rick Moranis. Yeah, I know. That's why I said it.

38) Canadian strip clubs let you feel up the dancers. This was actually decided by the motherfucking Canadian Supreme Court. Really. Shit, our Supreme Court would NEVER go on record as supporting something that awesome. Well, okay...MAYBE Clarence Thomas might. But somehow, I can't see Ruth Bader Ginsburg spending too much time carefully crafting a concurring opinion on the matter. In any case, up to this point in the list, we've already established that in certain parts of Canada, it's conceivable that you could have a joint hanging out of your mouth, a table in front of you full of Timbits and Poutine, and then while reveling in your baked, munchie-placated bliss, get away with fondling the tits on the stripper. And we're only on number 38. We're barely into day 2, and even so...anyone who still wonders why Canada can pretty much go fuck itself is probably too stupid to turn on a computer anyway. And yet, there are still 37 more to go.

37) Canadian Whiskey. Okay, so maybe the pot, donut-hole and nipple-filled paradise I described above wouldn't be PERFECT. Because chances are, the bar would still be serving up this revolting swill. My grandpa used to drink Crown Royal. Used to say it would "put hair on your chest." After trying it myself, I can verify that Crown Royal would also put hair on a garage door. It tastes like lukewarm Clydesdale piss that's been squeezed through a dirty sweat sock, then left in the sun for a week. And that's supposedly "the good stuff." Besides, most Canadian Whiskeys are blended, meaning you never know what's actually IN there. Could be peat moss, could be cigar ash...Could be the sludge some barkeep poured out of the rubber drain mat at the end of the night. They're not telling. So you shouldn't be drinking.

36) Quebecois Secessionists. No, you CAN'T have your own country, you stuck up, fromage-eating dicks. Put on your big-girl panties and close your baguette-holes, or man up and move to Marseilles.

35) Mike Myers. If you looked up "diminishing returns" in the dictionary, this picture of his doughy, smirking face would be riiiiight next to it. Wayne's World? Really funny. The first Austin Powers movie? Pretty funny. Every other Austin Powers Movie? Not funny. The Cat in the Hat? The exact OPPOSITE of funny. The Love Guru? Even the goddamn TRAILER was cringe-inducingly horrible. In fact, the cumulative force of the audience's collective wincing come opening night was so substantial, it actually jerked the globe far enough out of rotation that we lost four-and-a-half seconds off of the lunar calendar for the year. At this rate, his next project will be such a black hole of unfunny that it will literally suck the jokes right off of the screens of the other movies at the multiplex AS THEY'RE PLAYING. Plus, the rumor mills are full of stories about how much of an absolute bastard he is to work with. So at least he's got that going for him.

34) "Aboot." Ha ha ha ha! Look, I know Americans hardly speak standard English most of the time, but what the hell? Who STARTED that? You're kidding, right? C'mon. Really?

33) Maple Syrup. It's fine. There's nothing wrong with it. It's nice with pancakes. None of this explains why Canadians are so gay for the stuff. If Canada ever had to impose sanctions on another country, this is pretty much all they'd be able to threaten to withhold. And the upshot of that would be that people would either start buying it from Vermont, settle for the twin terrors of Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemima, or forgo sugary amber goop altogether, shrug, and reach for the Smucker's. Not a lot of leverage, there. And speaking of Canadian breakfast foods...

32) Canadian Bacon. Fuck you. That shit's not bacon. BACON is bacon, and it is the king of meats. Anyway, everybody else just calls it "ham." So get over yourselves. Prosciutto is less pretentious.

31) Labatt's Blue. Ever drink it? Okay, fine. Ever drink it AGAIN? That's what I thought. This miserable excuse for beer is so exquisitely shitty that the girls at my college wouldn't even touch it. After they were already drunk. And it was the only thing left.

30) Universal Health Care. In Canada, everything from wart removal to a heart transplant is free. You just go to the clinic or hospital and get it. There is no bill, and no insurance company to fucking deal with. The government feels that health care is a right, and not a privilege. So, why isn't it like that here? Why is the US still the only industrialized country without nationalized health care? Simple. Despite the fact that it works just fine everywhere else, the Republicans would have us believe that this is an impossible system to implement, doesn't work, and removes personal choice. This is because the GOP's mouth is firmly attached to the collective penis of America's insurance companies like a lamprey on a trout, and the lobbyists make sure it stays there due to the billions the industry stands to lose if it doesn't. Sure, maybe the Canadian system isn't perfect, but ask any Canadian if they'd trade THEIR health care system for ours. Don't worry...when they hyperventilate and pass out from the uncontrollable laughter, you can take them to the hospital without having to look inside their wallet first.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment. Who knows what might happen? Hey, if "Mr. Anonymous" tells five friends, and THEY tell five friends, and then THEY each tell five friends, we could have the entire population of "America's Hat*" in the comments threads by Friday, all firmly but politely telling us what unbelievable dicks we are! At least, I HOPE we do.

Ah, who am I kidding? I'm sure he doesn't have any friends.
*Translation for our sure-to-soon-be-booming Canadian readership: "Tuque d'Etats Unis."

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50 Reasons Why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself.

Monday, Oct. 27th: Part 1: #50-#40
By Merton Sussex, Anger Management Consultant

We here at The Diary strive to be atypical when it comes to the material we toss up for your comedy consumption. To that end, we rarely, if ever, bother with stupid lists. Why? Because EVERY FUCKING BLOG ON THE INTERNET IS LOUSY WITH LISTS. "10 Lamest Superheroes." "20 Movies About Robots." "15 Songs About Masturbation." You can't swing a dead cyber-cat without hitting a virtual junk-drawer full of dumb fucking itemized bullet points paired with snarky observations. Christ, those talentless hacks at Cracked.com are getting fat off of nothing BUT lists these days. Lists are lazy, hackneyed, and more common than fucking cold microbes.

So, I thought I'd do one. Why? Two reasons:

One: I like fucking with your expectations.

Two: Because fuck Canada, that's why.

Now, make no mistake. This is not a list of reasons why Canada supposedly "Sucks." On the contrary. This is, simply put, a list of reasons Canada can go fuck itself...Which encompasses a far broader set of criteria. Sure, some of the stuff I'm about to bring up is here because it does sap my will to live, and is Canadian in origin. Other things are here because they're way better than what we've got south of the border, and I'm pissed that Canada has 'em, and I don't. So, it's really equal parts annoyance and envy. So bear that in mind before you get upset and write me hate mail.

In the interest of keeping things moving, there will be a new installment posted every night this week. So, it'll be kinda like one of those old miniseries things your mom used to dampen her drawers over, except with less Richard Chamberlain, and more profanity. Which is a distinct improvement on both fronts.

Got that? Good. All right then. So, here's part one of "Fifty Reasons Why Canada Can Pretty Much Go Fuck Itself":

50) The Juno Awards. Has there ever been anything more insignificant? Let's get something straight: There are only six real awards in the universe: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Grammy, Nobel, and Pulitzer. Every other award that supposedly exists is just a poor man's version of one of those, given out because someone was pissed they didn't win one of the big ones. The Juno Awards are no different. They were created in the first place because so few Canadian musicians were any good by American standards, and weren't going to be cleaning up at the Grammys anytime soon. Is it hard to win a Juno? Well, there are only, like, 6-7,000 people in Canada at any given time, at least 1,000 of which claim to be "musicians." So, that definitely ups the odds. If you can fart in the general direction of a recording studio, chances are you'll at least get a nomination. Besides, any award Bachman-Turner Overdrive can win is obviously a joke.

49) Legally-enforced bi-lingualism. Canada has two federally-mandated official languages, English and French. Now, while I, unlike many, have nothing against the French, I do find it laughable that there are actually government funds wasted on offices for snooty Quebecois fucks with rulers (metric, of course) who go around to make sure that any sign posted in both English AND French has the French printed at least twice as large. I'm serious. Which leads me to...

48) The Metric System. Yes, it makes sense. Yes, it's easy. Yes, the rest of the world uses it. But you can have my gallons, miles and Fahrenheit only when you pry them out of my cold, dead fingers.

47) Loverboy. Yeesh. What an amazing legacy of pure, undistilled rock and roll, huh? These guys oozed Velveeta even when they were popular, which was for all of about two weeks during the fall of 1981. Does anyone, anywhere believe that so much as a single one of these greasy losers was EVER able to enjoy a sustained period of "makin' love to whoever I please"? I'm gonna go ahead and put my chips on "no." Plus, you're fifty and fat, Mike Reno. Take off the red leather pants. Just wait until I leave the room first.

46) Tim Horton's. At last count, the per capita ratio of Tim Horton's locations to actual people in Canada was 1.3:1. Reportedly, this is mostly because they rock (the Horton's, that is...not the people). From what I've heard, Tim Horton's is like Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts all rolled into one, but WAY better than either. So why in the fuck can't we get any HERE? And yeah, I know there are some in Detroit. There's also one in Kandahar, Afghanistan. And no, I'm not making that up. Honestly, I'd feel safer at the one in Afghanistan.

45) Vancouver, and their lax pot enforcement. Total disclosure: Your old Uncle Mert has never so much as smoked joint one in his life. Really. Reason being, it's against the law. Yes, I know that's a lame reason. But my dad was a cop for 30 years, and it's in my DNA not to break the law. Shit, I son't even speed or jaywalk. So, I've never smoked pot. But I don't get down on people who do, because I've done the research, and I know the facts. Apparently, so does Vancouver. Vancouver has an extremely unofficial (but nonetheless universally-observed) "do not enforce" policy in place when it comes to the pot laws. In fact, Vancouver mayor Phillip Owens has spoken on record several times as saying marijuana should be decriminalized. According to people I know who have been there, you can walk down the street puffing a spliff, and if you walk by the cops...? They make you put it out. That's it. Really. Relaxed-as-George-Michael's-asshole pot laws is one more thing, like Horton's, that Canada has, and we don't. So, fuck them for being cooler than us on that front.

44) Poutine. One MORE thing that they have, and that I want. For the uninitiated, Poutine is steak fries with gravy and fresh cheese curds. Apparently, you're never more than 50 feet from being able to buy this stuff in any urban center in the entire country. Just look at that fucking picture and tell me you wouldn't eat a gigantic pile of that shit every day and twice on Sundays if given the opportunity. C'mon, as fat as we are in this country, as willing as we are to eat anything that tastes good (especially if it will kill us), we can't get some goddamn Poutine up in this bitch? I cry bullshit. We have the ingredients. So let's get on the ball.

43) Alanis Morrissette. Bitch makes me crazy. Between the hiccup-y falsetto voice-hitching, the fact that every other song she does is about how much she hates anything with a penis, and that she can't write lyrics in the right meter so that every word has the em-PHA-sis on the correct syl-LA-ble, I want to stuff her in a steamer trunk with a rabid wolverine and push her off a pier. Yeah, we know you went to India. A LOT of people go to India. Shit, more than a billion people fucking LIVE in India, so it's not like you're special. Shut the fuck up and put some goddamned clothes on.

42) Government System. Lemme get this straight...You're located in North America, you speak French, you're a British parliamentary democracy/constitutional monarchy, and you still want us to believe that you have your own identity? Does the Queen ever even still show UP once in awhile, besides on the money? Oh, that reminds me...

41) Canadian Money. I know it's been worth more than ours lately. I don't care. It still looks like the stuff you'd buy "Marvin's Garden" and "(Hershey) Pennsylvania Railroad" with in "Monopoly: Gay Edition."

40) Hockey. It's really the only sport worth watching. It's exciting, fast-paced, and there's always the potential for a fight to break out. Hockey's pretty cool. But it's not a goddamn religion. So maybe you ought to try reading a book once a decade, eh, Pierre?

Okay. That's all you get for now. Want some more? Then come back tomorrow. I'm gonna dole out these here packets dealer-style: A little at a time, and first one, as always, is free.

Ah, who am I kidding? They're ALL free. Don't say we never gave ya nothin'. Now scram.