Bitter Defeat; Tibet raping robber barron communists; Canadian Identity

Every morning when I get up (or, occasionally, early to mid afternoon) I sit down and browse through Canada's paper of record, the Globe and Mail. I like the Globe for a number of reasons. One, I can look down my nose at readers of the Toronto Star, The Toronto Sun or even (gasp!) the National Post! And the second reason I like it is because it rarely prints anything I'm too interested in reading, thus putting limits on my Noisette coffee sipping procrastination.

Although I LOVE the Social Studies section, and my day would not be complete without its fascinating and entertaining tidbits.

Today I'm looking through the headlines and I see this, "Canada fails to qualify for Beijing Games." Whoa, I think! The Olympics! Hosted by the lovingly Tibet raping robber barron communists. And we're not going? This is big news, says I.

Then I realize that only our soccer team failed to qualify. This is followed by the thought provoking question, "We have a soccer team?" And then comes the now infamous third paragraph. (In the news business, they call them 'graphs. I learned that on the Wire.) The third paragraph reads, in full, "The Canadian soccer team has not qualified for the Olympics since 1984."

Nineteen fucking eighty fucking four!? 23 years and counting, we have fielded a team that doesn't even make the very first cut? Now, I'm not a guy who expects someone to be perfect all the time. You don't qualify for the Olympics one or two years, fine. It's a big world, we'll try again next quad. Whatevski, as the kids so philosophically put it. But you barely make a showing for well over half my lifetime... in 1984 I was 9, for god's sakes! 9!! Fire someone! Anyone!

I gotta tell you, we Canadians love nothing more than to be able to point out our short comings. When it has gotten so bad that we have stopped complaining about it... that's bad, my friend. There was a national outcry when our precious short films were nominated for Oscars but then didn't win. "Canada shut out of Oscars" the headlines shouted. No matter that the exact number of people who, up to that point, had actually bothered to see the films was less than the number of people on the Canadian soccer team, here was something we could sink our teeth into and really have a good complain about. But this simply goes past us with a shrug and a jovial 'what-are-you-gonna-do' live and let live attitude. What are we, Poland? "Oops, conquered again. You want us to move our whole country to the east? Sure thing, boss."

I say no! We're Canadians! Our whole reason for being born on this planet to tell other countries "You don't know what cold is" and to ask ourselves "What's Wrong with Us?" And we pass up a perfect chance like this to beat ourselves up and put ourselves down? We're slipping. And let me tell you, there' are plenty of developing nations jostling for our top spot of Number One per capita Whiners. I hear Russia's sinking millions into R&D for self-depreciation.

"It seemed we just didn't have the energy levels," the couch says. What!? Energy levels!? You've been napping for 23 years, what's the problem here? Are you skipping breakfast? Come over to my place, I'll make you a nice fritatta. Bacon, orange juice. I'll drive you to the game.

Actually, scratch all that. I'm sure you guys did what you could. I commend you for trying. Because, really, if you hadn't, I wouldn't have had anything to write about today.

And that's the end, nice sharp conclusion. I'm pretty happy about it. Sharp turn around, surprise finish. Undercut and neutralized everything that went before. Probably one of my better posts so far. Normally I would simply stop writing there, leave you (I hope) with a smile on your face as you went on to TMZ so you could laugh at people richer than you would don't have a lick of privacy. But, I'd like to point out what you, the sophisticated and experienced blog reader, has no doubt already noticed - no links to the article I've been ranting about. I understand that it is standard blogging practice to do so. It is probably even frustrating to you that I didn't. But you know what? This blog is an internet dead end. Once you come here, you pretty much have to make a conscious decision to turn around and go somewhere else. Maybe some day I'll have pictures, and I'm sure at some point there will be something worth linking to. In the meantime, you want context? Added value? Hyperlinks? Here's a little thing called Google. Look it up.