My Beer Can Baby

YOU MIGHT REMEMBER HER...

I posted about her Dec. 12, a Chinese woman I thought, who I see from time to time riding around on a bike with plastic bags hanging from the handle bars and the rear wheel, going into garbage bins and recycling containers.

Well today, after working all weekend, was a day off. And I was taking out my own recycling and there she was, perched precariously on the seat of her bike in -25 temps, leaning over the giant garbage bin, poking around with a long metal rod, searching.

I decided to approach her. I had worried, back with my original post, whether I should because I didn't want to hurt her pride or embarrass her or possibly scare her. But I called out "Hi" and she looked right at me and got down off her bike.

She had her white scarf wrapped around her face, as she had that day, which was not nearly so cold. Her face was brown and weathered, almost like leather. I couldn't see the smile on her mouth, but her eyes were smiling.

I asked her what it was she was looking for. She couldn't speak a word of English. She brought out from one of her plastic bags an empty can she had fished out. We drink plenty of pop at our place so I offered her all of the ones I was going to recycle.

She looked through them and shook her head, no. After a few minutes, I finally figured it out: she only takes beer cans, presumably so she can return them to the beer vendor for a refund of 10 cents a can or whatever.

I don't drink beer. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. She smiled back, put her hand on her heart and shook my hand. I went back inside my apartment to get more recycling but when I came out again, she was already gone.

I wish I could have taken a closeup picture of her.

I still don't know why she chooses to do this or whether it's her only means of bringing money in. And I don't know what she does with the money she gets from these beer cans. But she sure has a nice smile.

D-D-D-D-DEEP FREEZE

THERE'S COLD...

THEN THERE'S C-C-C-C-COLD.

It was -48C with the windchill when I woke up Friday morning in Winterpeg.

Biting. Numbing. Deadly. My boss refused to let me drive 2 1/2 hours to Kenora, Ontario, to do a story on that town's 100th anniversary of winning the Stanley Cup.

All school buses in Winnipeg were idled, although schools were open (try figuring THAT one out). Hundreds if not thousands of cars would not start.

Those cars that were on the road were almost impossible for other motorists to see due to the plumes of exhaust fumes being emitted from each vehicle in the frigid air.

The "high" today here was -30C (not including the windchill). I took the liberty of checking Saturday's forecast highs in some of the cities or regions inhabited by regular visitors to this blog...

Delhi, India -- 22C

Sydney, Australia -- 25C

Johannesburg, South Africa -- 32C

Seattle, Washington -- -2C

Montreal, Quebec -- -5C

Billings, Montana -- -12C

London -- 12C

Zeebrugge, Belgium -- 12C

Miami, Florida -- 27C

Boston, Massachusetts -- 11C

Jackson, Mississippi -- 25C

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia -- 29C

Winnipeg, Manitoba -- -26C

This is all part of a brutal cold snap that follows on the heels of what so far has been an unseasonably mild winter for the Canadian Prairies. Already, four people have died as a result of hypothermia.

Most were in their cars, their cars stalled and they opted to try to walk for help. They never made it.

This cold is affecting fruit crops in California, the entire American Northwest and Canada's West Coast.

It's supposed to last until the middle of next week.

This is a killer cold, so you won't see many kids outside doing snow angels.

And now, I think I can explain what is causing this freakish cold.

It's this...

FROM THE CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

A new life form of tiny, cold-loving micro-organisms involved in photosynthesis has been discovered in the Arctic Ocean, according to an international team of scientists, including a Canadian researcher.
The tiny plant organism, called a picobiliphyte, is distinct from anything else in the ocean, according to Université Laval biologist and professor Connie Lovejoy.
The picture shows a picobiliphyta cell under a fluorescent microscope. The cell nucleus is coloured in blue, the cytoplasm in green and the plastide, which is responsible for photosynthesis, is coloured in red. The cell measures two by five micrometres.
"It doesn't follow close to anything else we know about," said Lovejoy.
Picobiliphytes are plants containing fluorescent substances that glow under certain waves of light and are small enough to measure in microns — or millionths of a metre.
The discovery came after analyzing DNA sequences of vast amounts of micro-organisms in the ocean. European scientists discovered the peculiar micro-organisms off their shores, while Lovejoy did similar tests in the Canadian Arctic and found the same tiny life forms.
Their odd shape also separates them from typically round algae.

My theory is that this cold-loving algae has migrated south in search of food or publicity and to sustain itself, it has brought the Arctic temperatures with it. I hope this is not the case.

But most of all, I hope my car starts. And if it does, the first thing I'm going to do is head out and buy a new pair of longjohns. Fingers, legs, noses and other bodily appendages can freeze in a matter of minutes.

The B.uS.h Presidency

REMEMBER THIS PICTURE?

AND THIS ONE?

These were pictures taken in March 2003, beamed around the world, of a democratically barely-elected "leader" of the world's greatest superpower, emerging from his little cocoon halfway around the world to rub Islam's face in it.

Unable to corral Osama Bin Laden, and with no other whipping boy to conquer and punish for the horror of 9-11, George W. Bush invented the "War on Terror" under the guise of something he called "Operation Iraqi Freedom."

He dreamed up, in his own little far-right-wing, puzzled head, the story that Iraq was a haven for terrorists and that it had, within its borders, what came to be known as WMDs -- Weapons of Mass Destruction.

It didn't matter that UN inspectors were never able to find the WMDs, and that almost the entire rest of the planet did not support an invasion of Iraq. But from his Oval Office, he ordered one anyway. Someone had to pay.

And the pictures above are him with that stupid smirk on his face showing up on a U.S. aircraft carrier to spit in Iraq's and Islam's face to declare what everybody already knew would be a very quick American victory over Saddam Hussein's forces.

Saddam, of course, was eventually captured in a hole in the ground, was checked for lice and other things in a very public humiliation, was imprisoned and, just last month, was executed for the vile acts of horror he perpetrated upon the Iraqi people.

And he deserved to die. But has his death helped the "War on Terror?" Or has it escalated it?

As Americans finally revolt against the fact that more than 3,000 of their own soldiers have perished in the years since then in this doomed-to-fail "War On Terror" in a country they can't begin to understand, it was a more reserved Bush on national TV last night.

The smirk, if you noted, was gone. But he opted to compound the many wrongs -- and do what polls suggest the majority of Americans don't want him to do, and and what all his generals told him from the get-go that he should do.

He wants to send MORE TROOPS to Iraq. More to die.

His presidency has been deep-sixed. Take out the u and the h in his last name -- it's the B.S. for Bullshit presidency. And no, I'm not American, and perhaps some U.S. citizens might be offended that I am opining at all.

But the whole world is watching this. And the whole world is involved and has a stake in it. And your man Bush is the guy, whether we understand why you elected him -- not once, but twice -- or not.

Today, of course, the Bush people are out in force trying to lobby for the lost son of a president's plan. It's all over CNN. There still is no true contrite admission that the B.S. administration absolutely screwed this all up aside from vague references.

No, now it's all about how whatever happened before, this is what must be done now to preserve the U.S. of A.'s integrity and legacy and all that crap. And to continue the "War on Terror."

Sen. John McCain, who appears to be the favourite to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, said no matter what people think of the mistakes already made, he wants to hear what the Democrats would propose to do if America pulled out of Iraq.

And I'd like to know what America will do when the inevitable happens if it sends more troops in: that the addition of 21,500 more young souls isn't going to change a country that is beset by religious strife that Americans, Canadians and other democracies can't understand.

McCain seems to be saying that a U.S. troop withdrawal will leave Iraq in a state of chaos. What, it isn't in chaos now? Why does America think it can just parachute its own style of democracy into a place that isn't ready for it, doesn't want it?

If the U.S. wanted full control, it should have gone in to Iraq with overwhelming numbers right from the start. It didn't. Now it's paying the inevitable consequences. The sooner U.S. troops leave, the better; the fewer American lives lost.

The most intelligent words I heard Wednesday were from Barack Obama, the U.S. Democratic senator from Illinois whom I hope will be the next U.S. president, based on the little I know. He was very fair and didn't say what he could have said about Bush.

No, he said what should have been said all along -- that American troops need to come out of Iraq. That Iraq needs to be its own country and not a puppet democracy with its mouth sucking America's nipple.

No matter what the consequences.

America is a great nation, full of some of the most advanced, imaginative people on Earth. But it has a terrible leader, one it doesn't deserve, one who has plunged it into a huge military and moral debt that has tarnished its greatness.

If that can't change by resignation or impeachment, then I sure hope it changes in 2008.

Alphabet Soup

KJ tagged me on this alphabet meme. In a moment of weakness or insanity, I am complying. This has taken me far too long as it is but I basically went with the first word that popped into my head.

A is for ALL grown up, Almost. That could describe me, but I'm talking about my kids. My daughter's 18, my son's 15. I'm more amazed at my son now because he's growing like a weed physically and changing inside even faster.

B is for BLOGGING, of course. And that means getting to know the likes of you and being enriched and entertained by you and laughing with you and doing those little winky thingies.

C is for CHRIS, my first name. Never fully felt comfortable with it (Chris Piss!!!, the teasing would go as a kid). It was like being a Boy Named Sue. When I was calling bingos as a young man, I was nicknamed Basil. Not sure why...

D is for DEPRESSION, a condition that runs here and there through my family tree. It's the boogeyman of life for some and 15-20 per cent of the world's population suffers from it. They shouldn't have to endure society's fear and loathing of them any more than a person who has been stricken by cancer.

E is for EASY, which life sometimes isn't. There's always the temptation to ESCAPE. And you can't. So you might as well ENJOY.

F is for FLATULENCE, a subject I know KJ doesn't like and, therefore, the reason I chose it. My own personal record for longest fart of my lifetime is seven seconds, recorded and timed on an outdoor hockey rink at age 12 or so.

G is for GERRY, my youngest brother. We look a lot alike (poor guy!) and act a lot alike. We spent hundreds of hours playing hockey in our basement growing up and are good buds.

H is for HEART, something I'm coming back to (my own and the overall definition of what having heart is) more and more each day.

I is for I, as in me, and what I want to be.

J is for JALALABAD. Just because I've always loved the name and I've been there.

K is for KAREN, both the one who tagged me on this meme and another who I hurt and left behind.

L is for LOST, something we all have been at one time or another and a place I have been to more times than I would like.

M is for MONICA, my little wisp-of-a-thing daughter who has always been so responsible, so together, so committed to what she wanted to do.

N is for NANNY, my grandma who grew up with us and taught me a lot about how to love and laugh and cook, and who spoiled me rotten and loved it when I teased her to hone my skills for future teasing of females.

O is for ORDINARY, which thankfully I have always considered myself to be.

P is for PYTHON (MONTY), which still brings a laugh to this day. It's also for PAUL, the middle name of my oldest brother Doug, who calls me Kaboobie and once said to me: There is love in silence.

Q is for QUIET, which is what I mostly am, at least comparatively.

R is for REAL, another thing I strive to be.

S is for SISTERS, of which I have three: Lori, Lisa and Shauna. They have taught me many things about life from a feminine perspective. And man, did I tease them growing up...

T is for TAFFY, the golden lab we grew up with.

U is for US, as in me, myself and I. My kids are right there, of course, but not always physically.

V is for VESTIGES -- those last remnants of previous lifetimes -- and continuing to work on leaving them in the past where they belong.

W is for WITHIN WITHOUT, this strange pseudonym I started out with in an unknowing way back in May and which has, strangely, more or less proven to be fairly accurate. And rewarding.

X is for the X FACTOR...and I don't even know what mine is yet.

Y is for saying YES to the challenge to be open-minded about things I could never understand before but which I accept now.

Z is for 'ZIS is ze end.