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.