Happy Holidays

The big story here in Denmark is of course the environment conference in town. Until a few decades ago, Denmark was almost as important as Canada, with their massive land holdings that included Greenland and north of Norway.

As the story goes, one night in the 70's, an important minister was negotiating with Norway and signed a treaty selling a vast territory, for a small sum of money. The Danish official was apparently drunk out of his mind when he signed the document and now that territory is worth billions in oil and water reserves - perhaps the worst property deal in modern history. Denmark will be out of oil in 15 years and Norway is now the richest country in the world on a per capita basis and has enough oil to make a Saudi jealous. Lessons to be learned for this coming holiday season - if you're drunk, don't sign anything.

Hard to believe 2010 is only a few weeks away. This will be my last post until the new decade and want to say thanks to everyone that visits and posts. I'll be in Toronto Dec 24 - Jan 2 and hope to see you for a couple of cocktails.

Happy Holidays.

Bennifer

As the first decade of the millennium toilet bowls to its conclusion, it's safe to say this hasn't been our best ten year meal deal. America had a particularly bad time of it - at one point, Ben Affleck and J. Lo were considered the best actors and top celebrity couple and George W. Bush was a popular president. Could they have picked any worse? No, really? If they chose a chiuaua as president and went tabloid crazy over a married pair of old man farts, they'd at least have expressed a sense of irony and might have done less damage to the countries reputation.

As we get a bit of distance from this decade, wouldn't be surprised if it makes the 80's seem like a sensible period of cultural and political history.

John Daly

Just read John Daly has lost over 100 pounds and is apparently living a clean, normal life and making his way back into golf. He's "writing" a book and there's talk of a movie on his life. When asked, John suggested Matt Damon would be his choice of actor. No shit. If you've ever heard Daly talk, you know what a complete moron the guy is, but still, his transformation is notable.

If someone would have said twelve months ago that Daly would be where he is and Tiger would be where he is, I would have punched that someone in the kidneys to teach them a lesson not to say dumb things.

Perhaps it's too soon to suggest that people do actually change, but what is clearly a certainty is that our perception of people changes. And it changes often.

Amsterdam

The Dutch recently celebrated their Christmas style day, "Sinterklaas Dag" or something like that... It involves Santa, a horse and a bunch of people in blackface pretending to be elves. That's right, blackface elves. They're short and they're in blackface and they're helping a fat guy in red. It's so perfect I want to cry. The elves' job is to help Santa onto the horse and do other laborious tasks, while looking freaky and short on sleep. No reindeer, no bag of gifts, just a bunch of weird, trippy shit and strong liquor. And there's a guy named Black Pete, but not really sure what he does. Maybe he controls the blackface situation.

Dutch racism is so completely blatant and in your face, it blows me away that nobody seems to have a problem with it. I know a black guy in Amsterdam and he probably has a party to celebrate just how fucking hilarious and wrong the concept is. Motherfucker just rolls with it. My Dad has the same idea, making Jew jokes left and right. So, who are these people we read about that object to Christmas Trees in schools and other displays of ethnicity and where the fuck do they come from? Why object when you can embrace the chaos?

Was watching a positive news story on Denmark the other day and felt a strange, "twank". Perhaps it was pride, but I doubt it. Later, I felt twisted inside - can you be nationalistic to more than one country? Obviously, I could give fuck all about Denmark, but there's something inside of us that wants to feel like our home is a special place. It's as bizarre as it is fundamental. You can have pride in your city, your school, your district, your province, your country... where does it end? Better yet, where does it begin?

Sports = Redonkulous

Well, it's European handball playoff season over here. I think. Who can fucking tell? Women's handball is more popular than men's, at least on TV... Watching the German channel right now - they've got the cross country skiing thing with the guns like it's the most important event in the history of mankind. There's a Canadian woman somewhere. Oh look, she's in 112th place.

Are all sports... dumb? Probably. I can remember the look on artsy dudes faces walking by the ballpark - they weren't thinking baseball looked cool. I used to think, "fuck the artsy guys - they don't know shit". But, maybe the slick fuckwads had a point? When I think back to the games I played as an only child, throwing a tennis ball against the wall, making up some idiotic system where Canada would narrowly beat Russia in dramatic fashion, if I could throw the ball so it bounced in a puddle or in between two cracks - what's the difference between a dumbass game and a professional sport? What's the difference between a cult and a religion?

That said, I absolutely love the Leafs, no matter how crap they are. The NFL isn't bad either.

Tiger

Bet you guys are sick of the Tiger Woods stuff in the news. It's a non-event over here. Saw one little thing about it. It's not that Tiger isn't huge here, these fucksticks just have a different idea about dealing with personal stuff in the media. I'm not suggesting it's wrong to care what's going on in Tiger's life, but somewhere along the way we've lost our perspective. Just because someone is on your TV all the time, doesn't make him your friend. His image may be in your living room, but he doesn't know who the fuck you are and you don't deserve to know shit he doesn't want you to. Lucky Tiger's a golfer - that sports fan base is probably the only one that could keep a sense of decency about the whole unfortunate incident.

Toronto

Holy fucking shit am I looking forward to coming back to Toronto this Christmas. I don't think anyone, ever has been this excited about heading to Toronto. I'm getting anxious and it's three weeks and a day away. I'm looking forward to...

1) Male bonding
2) Ghandi butter chicken roti
3) Casual cocktails
4) Swatow sweet and sour chicken with rice
5) Family blah blah blah
6) Friendly gamesmanship with colleagues
7) California meatball sandwich
8) Trainspotting
9) Christmas punch injestilization
10) Bar drinking