House of Commons Night in Guelph

RON MACLEAN
So House of Commons Night in Canada is unexpectedly in Guelph after the NHL trade deadline, in which nothing much happened except the Canucks' trading Cody Hodgson to Buffalo.

DON CHERRY
Yeah well I think it's a good move.  The Canucks already had too much skill.  What they need is brutality, particularly if they're going up against Boston again.

RON MACLEAN
Doesn't that imply the Stanley Cup is a war of attrition and not a contest of skill?

DON CHERRY
I don't see the difference.

RON MACLEAN
Which gets us back to the current robocalls crisis, which as the Prime Minster says, might be a matter of "sore losers."

DON CHERRY
Well I agree that losers are losers.  On the other hand, faking - taking dives - is not in my opinion part of the game of parliamentary democracy.

RON MACLEAN
So now we have evidence of calls interfering with the electoral process - an offence under the Elections Act - phoning voters to tell them - fraudently - that their polling stations had changed.

DON CHERRY
You make it sound like there's something wrong with that.

RON MACLEAN
It's illegal!

DON CHERRY
Well...OK.

RON MACLEAN
And now, nobody has done anything wrong.

DON CHERRY
All I'm saying is there have always been dirty tricks in Canadian parliamentary democracy.

RON MACLEAN
FRAUD??!!

DON CHERRY
I think you're hitting a small nail with an awfully big hammer.

RON MACLEAN
How is fraud a "small nail?"

DON CHERRY
Look, the Criminal Code of Canada is really a series of assumptions, open to debate.

RON MACLEAN
What do you think of the Nuremberg Principles?

DON CHERRY
I heard it's a good movie.

RON MACLEAN
So that's us from House of Commons Night in Canada, live from Pierre's Poutine in Guelph.

DON CHERRY
I like this town.

RON MACLEAN
Are those gravy stains on your tie?

DON CHERRY
Absolutely!

Eats shoots and smokes

PANDA LEADER
Ah...Panda Flight this is Panda Leader.  Acknowledge.

PANDA 1
[Chewing]

PANDA LEADER
Say again, Panda Flight this is Panda Leader.

PANDA 1
[Chewing]

PANDA LEADER
OK, Panda 1 this is Panda Leader.  Please acknowledge.

PANDA 1
[Chewing]  Yeah, s'up?

PANDA LEADER
Panda 1, would you please remove the fucking bamboo from your mouth and show professional radio discipline.

PANDA 1
[Burp]  Panda Leader, you should lighten up a little.  We're not in Beijing.  You might be on the Standing Committee of the Politburo, but I am not, and in fact nobody asked me if I wanted to spend the next 10 years in Canada, so you might as well get used to the fact that I'm not going to be snapping to attention any time soon.

PANDA LEADER
Panda 1, I find your attitude reprehensible.  We're representing China.

PANDA 1
Whatever.  I'm a panda.  My job is to sit around and look cute while eating industrial quantities of California bamboo, and I'll be really good at both.

PANDA LEADER
I feel your insubordination will have to be reported to the Standing Committee.

PANDA 1
What are they gonna do, send me home to a panda re-education camp?  That'll look good on the world stage:  "Panda sent home from Canada for having bad attitude."  I can see it now, passionate demonstrations from school children against heartless communist autocrats...

PANDA LEADER
You know it wouldn't be like that.

PANDA 1
Wouldn't it?  I can play it pretty good.  I can eat bamboo with the best, and I hear we can smoke the California stuff...

PANDA LEADER
NO!

PANDA 1
Face it Panda Leader, you're a Trotskyite Revisionist and your mindless attachment to the Long March will get you nowhere in today's world.

PANDA LEADER
How did you get selected for this mission?

PANDA 1
I'm cute and I eat shoots and smoke.

Hell in Brussels - coitus interruptus

The Great American Pull-Out

Excerpt from The War Diary of ISAF's Media Operations Centre NATO Headquarters Blvd Leopold III 1110 Brussels, Belgium Thursday, February 2, 2012 9:30 AM Au Repos de la Montagne Montagne de Saint-Job 39 Coffee en route to work. Staggering news from POTUS:  Americans to pull out in 2013!  This is an immense strategic communications challenge. Afghanistan is/was the key to world counter-terrorism, and now it...isn't. Billions spent, lives lost, but it's important to look forward and not back.  11:00 AM SITREP with ISAF and SHAPE.  The French are leaving.  The Canadians have left.  The Brits are thinking about it.  The Germans are seriously pissed off.  All in all, it's looking like the rats are out of here.  3:00 PM Informal discussions. Le 19ième Bar, Hotel Metropole. Stirring speech from the Chief, only slightly slurred. We must present this as a carefully thought-out fuck-up.  Having promoted this whole insane operation by a wholly-owned subsidiary of NATO for some 10 years, advertised widely as essential to the safety of NATO countries, having gazillions of dollars spent in "training" Afghan security forces who turn out in large measure to be tribal opportunists, we now know that none of this matters and the sooner we're out of there the better.  Must look at Brussels housing market.