Shameless Plug For the Chris Mulligan Band

Singing Songs for the Turtles

Costa Rican Sea Turtle Fundraising Concert

Time and Place
Start Time: Saturday, June 28, 2008 at 9:00pm
End Time: Sunday, June 29, 2008 at 2:00am
Location: Lancaster House Tavern
Street: 574 Lancaster Street West
City/Town: Lunchbucket, ON

Description
Kameleon (Brandy Miller, Yvonne Jarsch, Adam Webb, Pete Clough, Liam Piggott) and The Chris Mulligan Band (Chris Mulligan, Mark Tonin, Andrew Nowak, HWSRN) together for the first time!

Tickets are 10$ purchased ahead or at the door - 100% of proceeds goes towards sponsorship.

Please come out and help sponsor my volunteer abroad trip to save the turtles!
(I don't know this woman's name. HWSRN doesn't either. She's a friend of Mark Tonin's and the band agreed to play for her benefit. She has volunteered to go to Costa Rica to help save the turtles. Please, will no one think of the turtles?

Check out the cause at:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=13918145487

Please invite all of your friends!!! Everyone is more than welcome!

Larry Fills in the Gaps

Well, of course I was somewhat derelict in my journalistic duties in the previous post. In my provincial arrogance I assume everybody knows who Wiarton Willie is. That's him on the left. And on the right. In the cage.

Willie is Canada's most famous weather prognosticator -- an albino groundhog who emerges (or is coaxed) from his lair every Feb. 2, Groundhog Day. If he sees his shadow, it means that we will have an early spring in good old Ontariario. If not, it means six more weeks of winter.

A few smartasses have sort of worked out that either way, we get six more weeks of winter, at a minimum.

And furthermore, it's been known to snow on the May Two-Four weekend...(Victoria Day holiday for all you loyal British Imperialists.) That's considerably more than six weeks.

Click on Willie to go to a little blurb website about him and his hometown.

Was Wiarton Willie Right?

As I stare out the velvet bars of my window here at the Yoni School for Wayward Poets, it is snowing...AGAIN! Mothercorp tells me it's the result of La Niña, the nasty sister of El Niño.

Whatever.

But get this. A few weeks ago, I was also staring out through the slats, and what did I see? This:



I don't ever recall seeing a cardinal in the snow, or hearing one on the first day of February. I've also heard mourning doves and a chickadee. On the more temperate days.

It's hard to believe now when it's snowing yet again. But maybe Wiarton Willie was right and we'll get an early spring.

Rio '92

Here's a video sent to me by my friend, Even Ludvigsen, an environmentalist from Norway. Watch this. You can't help but be moved.

Yoni School (Federal) Election Watch Pt. 3

Why is this woman waving? It seems that Elizabeth MayorMaynot face opposition in her chosen riding at the next federal selection. M. Dion & the Outremonts has agreed not to run a Gliberal candidate against her cuz she's the leader of the Particoloured Parti Vert. And MayorMaynot may not run a candidate against him neither nor. Separately, they would like to work together in the next Parliament, where M. Dion & the Outremonts expects to be Prime Mystery. Apparently they both have this thing about The Environment. I guess they'd like to have one.

However, MayorMaynot has chosen to run in Central Nova, which is in Nova Scotia, and it's a strong Constipated riding, currently held by Peter Decay, (seen here whistling in the dark) who is the Mystery of Foreign Affairs and also Failed Affairs. (See previous post...and photo below) She'll need a lot of votes to catch up to him. She has one thing going for her though. No one's quite sure if Prime Mystery Stephen Harpie and Peter Decay are interested in having An Environment. So, people who breathe and drink water are a little nervous about them. The Army likes 'em though cuz they plan to buy a bunch of tanks. Elizabeth MayorMaynot definitely wants An Environment. People who breathe and drink water like that.

My take on it is this: Peter Decay should lose. He's been working at it ever since he became Foreign Affairs Mystery. It's a mystery how he manages to avoid being mistaken for the doorman at the Notell Motel. He's a lightweight. A cipher. He lacks the gravitas necessary to pull his weight in the international arena. He has mishandled several major issues. (Like the Mystery of the Murder in Mexico.) He wears gumboots. (Don't get me wrong, I love gumboots, but they don't belong in the House of Common Bawdy Houses....I can't believe I just wrote that! That's exactly where gumboots belong, since you have to wade through so much, uh, uno there.)

OK, and last but not least, the photo of his shining moment as Mystery of Failed Affairs:


Now, there is one other thing. I think I've posted on this before, but I'm too lazy to look in the archives. The Particoloured Parti Vert has a petition going to have Elizabeth MayorMaynot included in the televised debates. Up to now she's been excluded. Well, OK, she's been excluded because there hasn't been a televised debate since she was elected leader of the party. But you know what I mean. The Particoloured Parti Vert has been excluded. Cuz they ain't got no seats in the House. But they got a pretty good number of votes across the country, and they have a legit message and platform and planks and the whole edifice of an actual party, and they run candidates in all the ridings (except the one where M. Dion & the Outremonts runs, I guess) and the reporters listen to what they say, sort of, and you see their whirling dervish spinning wheel signs everywhere, so why shouldn't they get to participate in the crummy televised debate? If you're interested in signing the petition, go here.

Seals Cycling (Again)(and Again)

Hard to believe it's been a year since I posted about the annual seal hunt. And the picture of McPaulrus Cartnew and whassername? on the ice floe getting illegally close to a seal (which they're not planning to kill...)

Not much has changed since then. For the seals.

Sir McCrustcart Paulney, on the other hand, has had a whole year of divorce-type wrangling with whassername? Whassername? meanwhile has decided to Dance With the Stars cuz her settlement with aforementioned McWalrus doesn't allow her to live in the style to which she became accustomed, for example, jetting off to ice floes in March whenever it felt like March...

(I don't mean to be deliberately disrespectful of whassername? I really can't remember her name.)

(And let us not forget the ironies of an animal rights movement that wants to murder Knut the pampered polar bear but save the seals.) ??? (Not to wish anyone ill, it's not a good thing for Buddhists, but I hope Knut grows up big enough to bite one of them animal rights people on the nose, just to prove he's a real polar bear...)

Online Petition Re: Climate Change

I suppose I take a rather un-nuanced view of environment and global warming or climate change or whatever the heck it's called. There are a lot of people coming out of the woodwork these days to criticize David Suzuki and even my dark-horse saviour of the Democrats Al Gore. Junk science, they say. A bunch of bureaucrats pushing an agenda, they say. A con job, they say.

I don't really know. Here's what I know. It doesn't seem right that we can keep pulling shit out of the earth's bowels and then burning it and pouring it into the earth's lungs at the rate we've been doing, and expecting to increase this besides. Is man affecting the environment? Hell yes! So we probably need to be doing something about it.

Having said that, I get emails. Yes, Larry doesn't have much to do with online petitions. But he's pushed this group before. So one more time...

Dear friends,

Last week, Avaaz campaigners hand-delivered our 100,000-signature climate change petition to the environment ministers of the world's most polluting countries. It worked. The chair of the meeting waved the petition in the air, calling on his fellow ministers to act--and they agreed that climate change would be the #1 issue at the G8 summit in June.

The momentum is on our side. Let's build on it. Next Tuesday, another high-level group will meet to move forward with G8 planning -- and we can keep the focus on the climate issue by showing that the call for action is growing. Can you help us reach our ambitious goal of 150,000 signatures by Tuesday by forwarding this email to ten friends? Your friends can sign the petition here:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_g8

Here's how our campaigner Iain Keith, who presented the petition, describes his experience:

When my turn came to speak to the Environment ministers, I was so nervous that I thought my voice would quiver. But I wasn't just speaking for myself--I was there on behalf of 100,000 Avaaz members, and I couldn't let them down. I walked to the microphone, took a deep breath, and said, "Dear Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, m y name is Iain Keith and I'm here on behalf of the 1 Million members of Avaaz. Avaaz is a new online community where global citizens can go to take action on the biggest issues facing our world. I have here, in my hands, a petition from our members who would like to tell you that they are scared of climate change, and the lack of action being taken. The countries represented in this room are responsible for the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions. As ministers of the environment you are in an excellent position to persuade your leaders to make tackling climate change the number one priority for the next G8 summit. Our members humbly request that you accept this petition as a reminder of your responsibilities, and to help persuade your leaders."

I handed the petition to the German environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel. The meeting continued, with speeches on other issues from other organizations. I wondered if all of the work had been worth it.

And then came Minister Gabriel's closing speech.

I could hardly believe it: he was saying that climate change must be the number one priority at the G8 summit. And he was holding our petition.

"Thanks to increased pressure from people around the world," he said, "the tide is turning. When an international NGO can gather this many signatures" (here he holds up the petition), "we cannot ignore this problem anymore... As Environmental ministers, we have a responsibility both to the environment and our voters to make sure our heads of state act!"

And a few days later, German Chancellor and G8 President Angela Merkel vowed to put climate change at the top of the agenda for the G8 Leaders Summit.

We did it!!

Iain's right. And we can do even more. Can you forward this email to ten friends, and help us reach our goal of 150,000 signatures by Tuesday?

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action_g8

It's amazing what can happen when we work together. Thanks for all that you do.

With hope,

Ben, Iain, Ricken, Lee-Sean, Galit, Graziela, and the rest of the Avaaz team

P.S. For a more detailed report of the meeting, including photos, visit the Avaaz blog