SHE'S PRICELESS...AN EXPENSIVE PRICELESS

THE picture doesn't necessarily do her justice, but this is my lovely daughter.

It seems like only yesterday that I was finally throwing out the soother she would never surrender, holding her at 4 a.m. because of her colic, swinging her round and round the way dads do because their kids ask them to -- and dislocating her shoulder.

Today, just recently turned 18, she's a mere few days away from Grade 12 graduation, an Honours student, already accepted into first year university with scholarships, and trying to sink her now-single father into bankruptcy...like, To Dad, with Love.

Not really. And I do it lovingly.

But in the past six months, being the extraordinarily organized femme fatale that she is, she has assigned to me the grad-related monetary tasks as follows for her big night Tuesday of finally advancing past high school and into a new stage of her life:

1. Grad purse? Dad, $50.
2. Grad shoes? Dad, $75.
3. Grad pearl necklace? Dad, $375 (gulp, I went hog wild)
4. Grad earrings? Dad, $65.
4. Grad fundraising projects? Dad. Sell chocolates, sell baking goods, sell coupon books, finance band trip. Predictably, I simply bought all of these goods myself rather than find the time to try to peddle them to others. Estimated cost to self: $500.
5. Grad pictures? Dad, around $200.

Other:
A. An idea was floating around I would give her my car as a graduation gift. Uh, no.
B. Today, I bought her a heart-shaped pendant/locket thingy that can be inscribed and hold her pic in it ("Silver, dad, not gold"). Around $350.
C. Sigh. Probably, at some point, she'll get the car too...

I'm sure I'm forgetting half the things I should be mentioning. Of course, this cost is a pittance in relation to the importance my daughter holds in my life and, even more, the importance that this day will hold in her life.

I'll be sitting there at the grad reception/dinner Tuesday night, contemplating how that little soother-sucking ball of a bawling baby could have so quickly morphed into the confident, vibrant being she is now.

And my chest will be pumped out just a little bit more than usual...even though my wallet will be considerably lighter.

IS THERE, OR ISN'T THERE?

STRANGELY, but perhaps very fittingly, I'm listening to "The way it is" by Bruce Hornsby and the Range as I start this post...

TWO images from a sunny, winny, wild Thursday prompt me to pose and ponder what may be only the first instalment of my continual, quizzical look at the super self-absorbed universal question, IS THERE OR ISN'T THERE A GOD?

Image 1

As I'm driving into work this morning on a busy street in my Canadian prairie city of about 3/4 of a million people, a man is standing, his head down, motionless, in tattered clothes, turned away from me, in the way of oncoming traffic moving in the other direction.

I slow down and notice a considerate motorist who has stopped in front of the man, his four-way flashers on, his cellphone to his ear, presumably calling the police or some social work agency to alert them to the danger the man is posing to himself.

Alone. Alive, maybe barely. Oblivious or maybe making himself purposely obvious, crying out. Should I have stopped? Stopped the traffic? Approached, asked him what he was doing? Tried to help? I didn't. Off to work. Where's he now? Who's he now?

Image 2

A gentle knock on my apartment door after I've arrived home from work, still contemplating Image 1. Two young, smart-looking men, maybe 20 if that, with name tags that say "Jesus Christ" in big type and then, presumably, their names in smaller type.

I can't read it. All I can see is Jesus Christ.

Black suits, black ties, pearly white message. "Can we talk to you about the word of Christ?"

"No thanks," I respond. "I already have my own brand of faith."

"Well, do you know of any of your neighbors who might want to hear about spreading the word of Christ?"

"No. I guess you'll just have to knock on their doors and ask them yourself."

They're polite and leave, knocking on the next door.

And all I can think about is Sun Myung Moon and the cult that was the Moonies, which a friend of mine was caught up in as a 20-something guy who didn't have many answers to the questions his soul was asking him.

And I wondered just where were the precious hearts and souls of these two young guys, who should be so full of their OWN spirit and verve and free thought...and will they ever get their lives back.

A SPELLING BEE WITH TORI, PARTYING WITH PARIS

I CAN'T HELP IT.

I have become spellbound by Tori Spelling.

I've tried to find the rash, I've searched to see if I still have a soul, I've stopped immediately flashing past all those terribly "important" Hollywood TV entertainment shows (and their pale Canadian imitators) on the boob tube.

I think I've become a tube boob.

And it's all because of a terrible actress, her equally obscure new husband Dean McDermott (a Canadian), and a little menage a trois ugly style that's playing itself out every 10 minutes in the tabloids and on tabloid TV.

Canada was the playground this past weekend for the biggest "Entertainment Tonight" non-stories of the week, it seems, or at least the Canadian media is making it out to be.

Have a gander:

TORONTO -- Tori Spelling wants lots of kids – and they’re going to have some Canadian genes.
The former 90210 star and her Toronto-bred husband, actor Dean McDermott, admitted backstage at the Much Music Video Awards they're anxious to start making babies.
“We want a McDermott hockey team,” Spelling said. “We started saying we want two. The week we met, we picked out our kids’ names. We wanted two, we wanted three – and then by the time we got engaged we wanted nine.”
The actress used the baby talk to take a shot at McDermott’s spurned ex-wife, Mary Jo Eustace, 48.
“When you have a young wife, they can actually have more children because they start younger,” said Spelling, 33. “I’m young and virile. I can handle it.”
McDermott and Eustace adopted a baby girl just months before he dumped her for Spelling. The couple already had one biological son.

---

A sidelight to this story, or at least one of them, is that Eustace is writing a tell-all book about how she was dumped by McDermott for Spelling, who if I'm not mistaken is the daughter of big-time U.S. TV magnate Aaron Spelling.

And this is dominating the headlines? Tori Spelling and another blonde-haired bimbo somehow given far more than 15 minutes of fame by the moronic North American media. Recognize her?



Read it and weep about why ANYONE really cares...

A Canadian boyfriend for Paris Hilton?
GAYLE MACDONALD

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Toronto — Last week, party girl and serial dater Paris Hilton told David Letterman she loves being single, likes not pouring all her "energy into the man," and was thriving on "getting to know who I really am." In Toronto on the weekend for the MuchMusic Video Awards, she may have had a speedy change of heart.

According to a report last night on eTalk Daily, the heiress was seen snoggling Laval, Que.-born hockey hunk Jose Theodore, a goaltender with hockey's Colorado Avalanche. A source at an after-party at the Courthouse bar snapped pictures of the 25-year-old Hilton and a man identified as 29-year-old Theodore. They were holding hands. Hilton was recently engaged to Paris Latsis, before dating another Greek shipping heir, Stavros Niarchos.

In March, Theodore's girlfriend, Stephanie Cloutier, gave birth to their first child, a daughter. Sources say Hilton and Theodore left the Courthouse together on Sunday night to hit another club.

Eek.

Two more American soldiers are found dead in Iraq, North Korea's sounding off about testing a nuclear missile...and the mass media is feeding the world this pap. And we're gobbling it up.

A WHALE OF A STORY (unfortunate update)

WOE FOR THE WHALES -- AND ALL FOR...THIS?



These are mammals that communicate like us, that live in pods like us, that care for their young like us...and this is what we're doing to them -- making them a delicacy on plates in Japan and other countries.

FRIGATE BAY, St. Kitts and Nevis (Reuters) - Conservation groups on Monday called on governments to redouble their efforts to save endangered whales after pro-whaling nations led by Japan won a majority at an international whaling group for the first time in more than 20 years.

The pro-whaling nations at the International Whaling Commission managed to push through a statement declaring a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling unnecessary and blaming whales for depleting fish stocks.

While largely symbolic, the declaration adopted at the commission's June 16-20 meeting in the Caribbean island state of St. Kitts and Nevis was a show of strength by the whaling bloc after it had spent more than two decades trying to find the muscle to challenge the ban.

Environmental activists, who were also criticized in the declaration, said the whaling nations' success should serve as a catalyst to stir U.S. public opinion, in particular, out of its slumber, and lead to a counteroffensive by anti-whaling nations at the next IWC meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, next year.

"For those governments that have failed to wake up and smell the coffee, this is the final wake-up call," said Greenpeace International spokesman Mike Townsley.

The great whales, the Earth's largest creatures, were almost driven into extinction by commercial whaling before the ban came into effect.

But Japan has continued to hunt whales and has killed thousands in the past 20 years under a loophole that allows for scientific research whaling. Iceland also conducts scientific whaling while Norway has ignored the moratorium.