Ten odd things about the new $20

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, February 1, 2013 - 0 Comments

What? No War of 1812 reference? Scott Feschuk on the new bill

Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

Canada’s new $20 bill has been in the news for an alleged foliage error. But that’s not the only mistake or curiosity on our new currency. Let’s take a closer look.

1. This is the signature of Tiff Macklem, who purports to be deputy governor of the Bank of Canada—but whose name clearly indicates that he is, in fact, a baseball player from 1953. Oops.

2. Our new bank notes are made not from paper but from “a polymer material” that feels like plastic, which raises the important question: Now who’s living in the future, George Jetson? The polymer was chosen by the Bank of Canada to a) stymie counterfeiters and b) give Canadians something new to complain about. Mission accomplished on both fronts! The newspaper in Cobourg, Ont., recently ran a story in which local woman Vickie Skinner described the new bills as “absolutely terrible” and local woman Michelle Scott lamented: “Why don’t they just leave our money alone?” A third local woman said of the bills, presumably while narrowing her eyes: “They look like fake money to me.”

Turns out this is a common complaint. A lot of people seem to think the new bills feel “fake”—and to those people I say: YOU ARE 100 PER CENT CORRECT. All the 20s, 50s and 100s currently in your possession are, indeed, complete phonies. Here, let me personally remove them from your sight. (For the record, some Canadians also claim the new bank notes have melted when left next to a heater or when the rent is due and a new excuse is needed.)

3. Check out all this wasted space. Plenty of room to fit in an ad for Mountain Dew.

4. A critical gaffe in the design process resulted in this bill somehow being printed without a single depiction of, or reference to, the War of 1812. In future editions, the Queen will be rendered as having dysentery.

5. Some experts insist the maple leaf shown here is from a Norway maple, an invasive species in Canada—and not from the sugar maple we all know, love and ruthlessly exploit to market beer (Molson Canadian) and futility (Toronto Maple Leafs). For the record, the scientist who made the accusation was described in one news report as “a hawk-eyed Canadian botanist,” which pretty much makes him sound like a member of the Avengers.

Botanist: Fellow superheroes—I’ve cornered a villainous species of spruce that if left to roam free will crowd out all rival tree life in this forest at some point in the next 200 years!

Hulk: Hulk! SMASH! Eventually!

For its part, the Bank of Canada insists there’s been no mistake: the leaf in question has simply been “stylized” so as not to represent a specific type of maple. (It refers to the image as a “frosted maple leaf,” which is a coincidence because that’s my favourite cereal.) This whole “stylized” explanation totally makes sense because the wacky, fun-loving people at the Bank of Canada are renowned for being creative and “stylizing” things left and right. Wait until you see the new $5 bill, featuring Wilfrid Laurier in a backwards baseball cap.

6. Technically this is not an error—but man, the Queen is really rubbing our faces in it with all those pearls, isn’t she?

7. Unique feature: if you put your ear to the Peace Tower and listen very closely, you can hear John Baird yelling at you to clean your ear.

8. There is a major mistake in this “metallic portrait.” Take a close look: As you can clearly see, it is our reigning queen—Elizabeth II—whose spectre-like image is creepily featured within the bill’s holographic foil. But anyone with even a passing knowledge of the monarchy knows that Victoria, who died in 1901, is Canada’s official Ghost Queen. Get your facts straight, Bank of Canada! You don’t want to make the same kind of error when you get around to honouring Canada’s zombie prime ministers.

9. The Bank of Canada emphasizes that the new polymer bills “weigh less than paper notes”—because, yeah, that was a big complaint about paper money: SO, SO HEAVY. Dude, I’d love to chip in for dinner but I just threw out my back paying for some chinos.

10. Keen-eyed monarchists will have noticed that this is not the Queen’s actual hairdo. It was apparently “stylized” by the Bank of Canada to more closely resemble that of Princess Leia.

Follow Scott Feschuk on Twitter @scottfeschuk

So much for New Year’s resolutions

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, January 24, 2013 at 1:20 PM - 0 Comments

Scott Feschuk lays his Jan. 1 pledges to rest

Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

I am saddened to announce that my New Year’s resolutions, which imbued me with a sense of optimism and gave me hope that I could become a better human being, have died. They were less than a month old.

They passed away quietly after a brief struggle with reality.

There were five resolutions in all, each born of good intentions on Jan. 1, 2013. A sixth—Stopping Smoking—was declared DOA after my youngest son saw it on my list and noted, “Hey, you don’t smoke—that’s cheating.”

Each resolution came into this world with hope, promise and—thanks to a diverse array of unflattering habits forged over years of bad decisions and slack living—the odds stacked firmly against it.

Still, Getting Fit managed to flourish during all three trips to the treadmill and that one decision not to supersize my Quarter Pounder meal. Frankly, I’m still a little puzzled the lady at the drive-through didn’t seem more impressed by my restraint, especially after I mentioned it for a third time. Continue…
The most memorable people of 2022

By Scott Feschuk - Saturday, December 1, 2012 at 6:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photo Illustration By Taylor Shute

Reading about the people who shaped 2012 is interesting and all. But let’s face it: it’s cooler to be ahead of current events. With that in mind, I give you the Newsmakers of the Year—for 2022.

Stephen Harper. As 2022 comes to a close, Harper is celebrating his 17th year at 24 Sussex Drive—which is quite an achievement considering he ceased to be prime minister five years ago. To this day, political scholars continue to study Harper’s memorable 2017 concession speech, in which he announced: “I’ve placed a call to prime minister-elect Trudeau, congratulated him and told him that I’ll be damned if I’m giving up this job or this house without a fight. They’re mine. TRY AND TAKE THEM FROM ME, PRETTY BOY.” Sources say a bearded Harper spent much of the past year roaming the walled grounds of 24 Sussex in a thick flannel shirt hollering, “Canada! War of 1812! Troops!” at pigeons. He has three times gone to court in an effort to prorogue reality.

Xi Jinping. After a successful 10-year term in office, the leader of the world’s largest country was this year given an important new assignment: to take over as CEO of Alberta, which China purchased in its entirety from Canada in 2018. Xi said he looks forward to visiting Banff’s famed “Gigantic Hole in the Ground Where Banff Used to Be.” Continue…
University students: welcome to the best years of your life

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Attention high school students: I don’t know you (unless I do, in which case: Hi!), but as a diploma-having university graduate who successfully completed an entire four-year degree program in only six years, I am fully qualified to guide you through your upcoming life transition.

I’ll admit a lot has changed during the past 20 years. For instance, that Salisbury steak I had one Tuesday in the residence cafeteria has pretty much worked its way through my system. Also, whereas I was taunted and pelted with eggs during Frosh Week, new guidelines now restrict upperclassmen to cocking one (1) eyebrow at newcomers for no more than 12 seconds. Consider yourselves hazed!

For further information on ﬁrst year, please consult this list of Frequently Asked Questions.

Q: What should I not do at university?

Don’t sweat the roommate thing.

These living arrangements couldn’t be more normal or natural. Dave—here’s Phil. You’ve never met, you may not be the least bit compatible, and each of you has at least one habit that will make the other guy want to punch you in the throat—but hey, enjoy the next eight months of stressful, high-stakes academics alongside a complete stranger in this cell-sized hellbox!

It’s fun to envision what awaits you. Maybe your roommate will instantly become your bestest friend and you’ll wear each other’s clothes. Or maybe she’ll have punishing body odour, night terrors and the world’s foremost collection of doom metal. Oh, good, it’s 6:30 a.m. and she’s playing Eyehategod again! All you can do is make the best of it. I knew two guys in residence who hated each other but found a way to tolerate life together by rarely coming into contact. Think of it as useful preparation for marriage.

Q: What should I deﬁnitely not do at university?

Don’t plagiarize.

Plagiarizing is commonplace now. Recently, a researcher was even censured for his habit of self-plagiarizing. Self-plagiarizing? It’s not worth the risk of going blind, people!

At the risk of overdoing it with the slang preferred by today’s teens, I’m not some rule-loving dip stick from Squaresville who’s trying to play back-seat bingo with the Man. I myself pushed the boundaries as a student. Once I even composed an essay for a friend, who in the place of a mark received a note from the professor that said: “This is a terrific essay, Nick. Who wrote it?”

And that’s my point: if you plagiarize, you’ll get caught. THE ALL-SEEING EYE OF GOOGLE WILL FIND YOU. Kids today are always getting busted for cheating or plagiarizing and I just have to wonder why they don’t do things the old-fashioned way: put in a half-hearted effort, earn a terrible grade and make your parents wish you’d never been born. That method works, folks. It’s time-tested.

Q: What should I not, under any circumstances, do at university?

Don’t pass out in a ditch.

I haven’t done a lot of bone-stupid things in my life—but I did spend one entire night in a ditch during my second year at school. You may be thinking to yourself: I would never pass out in a ditch! But take it from me: drink enough (i.e. too much), stumble out of a bar, start sway-walking home and all of sudden those ditches start to looking pretty enticing, especially once you somersault into one.

Drinking is as much a part of university as later regretting having drunk so much. But here’s a general guideline worth following: it’s more fun to be the slightly tipsy person who experiences, remembers and possibly live tweets the mayhem than the blind-drunk fool who wakes up with a screaming hangover, no eyebrows and his pants filled with poop (his own, if he’s lucky).

Q: Hey, is there anything I should not do at university?

Don’t skip too many classes.

It’s thrilling to have full control over your life for the first time—and it’s fun to blow off the occasional lecture to do something more important, like nothing. But you don’t want to wind up like me. You are reading the words of a man who skipped so many classes in first year that he ended up having to withdraw from introductory geology. I still feel a wave of shame every time I see a—uh, what are those things called again?—oh yeah, a rock.
Feschuk’s dispatch from a world of angry Sea Monkeys

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 18, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

Shutterstock, Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Greetings from the future!

I, a human of a century hence, feel compelled to respond to the wild imaginings contained within this magazine—if indeed that is the correct term for this ancient curiosity, this “Internet with staples.” The definitive historical record of my time, Wikipedia, tells me that several of your “newsweeklies” exist until well into 2013. Good for you, imminent relics!

My point is this: I look at your barbaric 21st-century lives and I have to laugh. I mean that literally—the mood-altering chip put in my brain by the drug companies forces me to guffaw every 98 seconds. Sure, it gets a little awkward during job interviews and funerals but that’s the price you— HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sorry.

This quirk aside, ours is a HAHAHAHAHAHA—sorry, sometimes it acts up—ours is a superior incarnation of humanity. We’re all in terrific shape. We’ve cured cancer and bedhead. We can live almost forever. On the other hand, so can Donald Trump—so yeah, that pretty much ruins it.

We’ve also conquered time itself and developed the ability to send messages into both the past and future. Although my last love letter to Nefertari wound up in 24th-century Cleveland. This Apple Time Maps app sucks.

I acknowledge that some of the predictions contained within these pages turn out to be accurate. We have indeed found new ways to extract energy from the earth and extend the life of batteries. We had no choice after all the wind turbines got knocked over by idiots in jetpacks.

As for these swarms of tiny robots you envision—they too have come to pass. In recent years, they’ve helped rescue survivors from the sites of countless disasters that they themselves have caused.

And, yes, we today grow our own replacement organs the way that you grow Sea Monkeys. (By the way: why do you grow Sea Monkeys? The ones you pour down the sink grow pretty big over time. And mean. Three of them have been blocking the Panama Canal now for 25 years.)

But much of what you foresee is, to the people of my time, laughably laughable.

For instance, there are many of you—and one moron in particular—who are certain that robots will one day rise up against humankind. As it happens, machines do become self-aware—but turn out to be really great guys. Seriously, they couldn’t be nicer. I’ve got a cousin who plans to get hitched as soon as the definition of marriage is extended to include one person and one toaster.

So there is no “robocalypse.” In fact, our most advanced robots—the ones that developed the capacity to experience emotions—even felt sympathy for humans when 84 per cent of our species was strangled to death in the 2063 rebellion of genetically modified plants. What do you get when you continuously tinker with the genome of a cucumber vine? You get a crisp, tasty, unstoppable killing machine.

Also, the whole “flying car” thing didn’t really work out. We’re as surprised as you are. After all, what could be safer than giving terrible drivers the ability to make poor decisions in literally an infinite number of directions?

My dear halfwits: yours is the age of yearning. You aspire to extend the human lifespan, to make teeth so white as to permanently blind passersby, to live in a world in which all meats are served with bacon on top—even bacon itself. We have achieved these goals. Your primitive minds could not hope to comprehend where we are putting bacon today.

Those of us who survived the cucumber menace lived to forge a new and better society, except for the millions who perished in the global warming floods or the 50-Years Hip-Hop War.

Sure, the advanced machines of our own creation ultimately result in massive unemployment, trigger global fiscal collapse and herald a return to the barter economy. But I wouldn’t trade where I am right now for anything. Unless you have three cigarettes and a roll of duct tape, because then I could buy a chicken.

More important than our many technological achievements is our spiritual growth. We have learned so much about why we are here. In fact, I would venture to say we have discovered the meaning of life—and the meaning of life is HAHAHAHAHA.
James and the Giant Poo

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, August 15, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 11 Comments

Ah, the sweet rhapsodic letter home from an appreciative child at camp

Getstock; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Many kids are currently off at summer camp, away from the lure of electronic devices and the strictures of personal hygiene—and far away from their parents, who yearn for correspondence from their children when not secretly delighting in their absence.

What follows in italics is an actual letter home from Algonquin Park from our 12-year-old son James. It is presented with its original spelling and grammatical errors. Commentary and analysis are provided for your edification. It begins:

One of the many things I am looking forward once I get home is a tolet that doesn’t get clogged so easily and when it gets clogged people don’t keep pooing in it until there is poo two inches over the water level.

Continue…
Some PR advice for you ruthless despots

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, July 12, 2011 at 9:25 AM - 0 Comments

How about a cameo as a lounge singer in Hangover 3?

iStock, Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

News item: Between 2006 and 2009, Sir David Frost and others were paid a large consulting fee to try to improve the international image of Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Memo: To All the World’s Dictators

From: Feschuk Worldwide Consulting & Backrubs

It’s a tough time to be a ruthless despot. Several of your kind have been hounded into exile or targeted by air strikes. Those who remain face a growing sense of anxiety and, even worse, increased odds of getting stuck beside Kim Jong Il at the next dictators’ brunch.

To ensure you’re not the next to be toppled, you could turn for help to a renowned public figure like David Frost. According to news reports, the famed broadcaster was paid £57,000 to help the Libyan leader become perceived as a “thinker and intellectual.” Alas, it’s tough to argue this was money well spent. Gadhafi is today viewed as a thinker in much the same way that Kim Kardashian is viewed as a petite.

Continue…
Take a seat, esteemed colleague—if you can

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, April 29, 2011 at 8:15 AM - 8 Comments

FESCHUK: Will Harper win 155? Or fall short of a majority? Our fate, and theirs, is in the tally.

CP/REUTERS/ISTOCK/GETTY IMAGES

The campaign is finally winding down—but with all the talk of a coalition, there remains confusion over what the results on election night will mean for the parties and for Canada. Let’s clear things up once and for all.

Scenario: Conservatives win 155 seats or more. According to the Tories, a Stephen Harper majority would usher in an era of robust economic growth, deficit reduction and unprecedented prosperity—although it’s still not entirely clear how all this will happen when the Conservatives are planning little more for the next five years than a new tax credit for playing the flute.

For their part, some Liberals now estimate it may take as little as 20 minutes after the dawn of a Harper majority for the entire country to catch fire. It’s all there in the party’s new slogan: “Ruuuuun!”

Continue…
Greetings, tiny citizens of tomorrow!

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 10:17 AM - 3 Comments

FESCHUK: Forget 2011, Harper wants the voters of a future Canada, and better to start young

CP;Istock;Getty Images; Photo illustration by Taylor Shute

Last week in this space I used the raw power of genius to prove beyond doubt that although Stephen Harper has not yet broken through with a majority of Canadians, he has accomplished something even more impressive. He’s broken through the space-time continuum.

Predictably, there remain among you a skeptical few who doubt Marty McHarper’s ability to move freely across time in his campaign DeLorean. It is to these closed minds I pose the following query: if McHarper can’t visit the past and future at his whim, what else could explain how his views on gay rights are plucked directly from the 1940s?

Check and mate, my lessers.

McHarper’s mastery of time and space has given him the power to bypass the boring old election of 2011 and instead blast forward to woo the voters of a far and distant Canada. A hovercar in every spaceport!

Continue…
There, isn't that better?

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, February 21, 2011 at 9:39 AM - 48 Comments

FESCHUK: Yes, he called democracy in Egypt a tube of toothpaste, but our PM has a way with words

CP; Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

It was a time that few will soon forget. As the Egyptian people rose up and chased their president from office, Stephen Harper took the measure of the moment, stared history in the eye and offered the following words to posterity: Those Egyptians, he said, “are not going to put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one.”

Other world leaders reached for eloquence. Our guy reached for the Colgate. None of those fancy historical allusions for Stephen Harper! He put it in plain, straightforward talk that even a hard-working Joe who also happened to have a serious brain injury could understand: Democracy—it freshens your breath AND prevents cavities! If the regime in Iran ever falls, we can look forward to Harper’s seminal “can’t put them horses back in that barn” address.

There’s the guy we used to know! The guy who never left the continent before he became leader of the Opposition. The guy who before winning power famously declared during a CBC town hall that he felt kind of worldly because his wife had travelled overseas and told him about it and stuff.

Continue…
I know how I’d live as a rich man

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, April 22, 2010 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

And it’s my last chance to convince some fool of my Five Surefire Ideas for getting me there

Getty Images; Photo Illustation by Adam Cholewa

Like anyone beyond 40 who has a mortgage, car payments and an investment portfolio heavily weighted toward sofa-cushion change, I am coming to grips with the fact I may never be rich. This is a shame because I’ve spent most of my life planning what I’d do as a man of unfathomable wealth and influence. In all honesty I think I’d be pretty good at it, and not just because I have a natural affinity for talking down to foreigners. Wash the Bentley, Miguel—not the driveway.

As one who since 1996 has insisted on riding in the backseat of his Corolla while holding a jar of Grey Poupon, I know exactly where I’d live as a rich man (a summer home in Tuscany, and winters on the moon). I know exactly what I’d spend my money on (caviar and revenge). And I know exactly which person I’d speak in (the third). Bottom line: Scott Feschuk believes Scott Feschuk is ready to be very wealthy.

Lest you think me selfish, I’d be generous enough to give a small portion of my vast fortune to philanthropic pursuits. But I’d be petty enough to give it to the charity that agrees to name the most stuff after me. Sure, my millions could help cure cancer, but instead please join me at the grand opening of the gleaming new Scott M. Feschuk Centres for Lactose Intolerance.
Alas, at my age it’s time to give up on implausible long shots, like winning the lottery or me working hard. Instead, this may be my last chance to convince someone of tremendous resources and limited due diligence to buy into one of my Five Surefire Ideas for Making Me Obscenely Rich. Continue…
It’s all a blur, and it’s not the vodka’s fault

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 8:31 PM - 1 Comment

It’s a time to revel in the power of the human spirit and the limits of the human credit card

Photograph by Scott Feschuck

Strolling through Whistler Village during the Olympics, hooﬁng it to the venues, coming together for dinner at night—it’s just like summer camp, except everyone here is thinner and better looking than me. Which makes it…fine, it’s just like summer camp.

It’s hard to be cynical here. The Winter Games are not a place for cynicism or, apparently, snow. They are a place for marvelling at the abilities of the human form, revelling in the power of the human spirit and testing the limits of the human credit card. Picture in your mind shelves crammed with Olympic knick-knacks, stacks of T-shirts and piles of stuffed mascots. This is what every Whistler retail outlet, and Jacques Rogge’s bedroom, looks like.

Mostly, though, the Winter Games are a place for passing through checkpoints. I’m telling you: if getting scanned, searched and body-wanded a few hundred times is your idea of fun, you owe it to yourself to spend a couple of weeks at an Olympics, or fly once to the United States.

Continue…
It’s the best of times, and the worst

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 2 Comments

Some see all the glory of the Games. To others they are an abomination. Both have a point.

With the beginning of the Olympics, the attention of the world is now ﬁxed squarely on Vancouver and Whistler, and you know what that means: this is the perfect time to steal the world’s stuff. Cover me while I swipe the Mona Lisa (thanks, I owe you one) and Coldplay’s instruments (now you owe me).

There are those who contend that the Olympics are an athletic Kumbaya to the world, a bonding experience in which we are all spiritually enriched by the pulse-pounding thrill of assorted Scandinavians proceeding downhill quadrennially. There are others who believe the Games are a folly, an abomination, a…a…a follomination!—not to mention a great way to keep in tip-top protestin’ shape between G8 meetings.

In truth, there are pros and cons to the Olympics. Let’s take a look:

Continue…
Let's consider the prorogue from Stephen Harper's side

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 18, 2010 at 4:28 PM - 112 Comments

You expect the PM to act human, watch the luge and also go to question period? Get real.

Canadians have been hard on the PM since he made the decision to “prorogue,” and not just because doing so forced some of us to learn a new word. We don’t like that he’s treating parliamentarians with contempt and disdain. After all, that’s our job.

But let’s try to see things from Stephen Harper’s perspective. Yes, he abruptly shut down the institutions of our democracy over the holidays for a second straight year. (Once more and it will become a Christmas tradition on par with watching It’s a Wonderful Life and trimming Mike Duffy.) And yes, he didn’t even bother to cross the street to visit the Governor General—he just picked up the phone and ordered the No. 2 from Rideau Hall: prorogation with a side of crazy bread.
Continue…
Time travel

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at 3:17 PM - 29 Comments

Susan Delacourt points to Scott Feschuk’s mocking of the opposition’s response to the government’s decision to prorogue Parliament… in 1999.
Caption Challenge Vol. 2, No. 1

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, January 4, 2010 at 4:59 AM - 69 Comments

Welcome back. As you may have read, the Monday Caption Challenge was prorogued over New Year’s and is today being reconstituted as Monday Caption Challenge Vol. 2. This is certain to stymie any and all investigations into whether we’ve been complicit in the torture of innocent verb tenses.

(Once again, I am playing chess while the rest of you are playing checkers – which may help to explain why I am so very, very lonely.)

For our first challenge of 2010, we go all the way back to the year 2009 – an innocent time when men were men, dogs walked on four legs and Susan Boyle and Lady Gaga ruled the album charts (though not yet as a Hall & Oates-style duo).

I snagged this Korea-based photograph from the Prime Minister’s official website, which as of this morning Continue…
What’s a holiday without any guilt?

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 8:30 AM - 23 Comments

I feel guilty that I paid too much for my coffee. And I feel guilty I didn’t pay enough.

I feel guilty. I feel guilty about eating this steak. Did the cow have a good life? Did it experience a series of wacky cow adventures? When the time came, I hope the farmer gently held its hoof and whispered, “There, there.” In future, can I pay extra to make this happen? (I can see the sticker now: “Organic, pasture-fed, lovingly consoled.”)

I feel guilty about meat in general. I see pigs in those trucks on the highway and I feel guilty. I see pigs in a blanket and I feel guilty, and then hungry, and then guilty for feeling hungry. I see a plate of veal and I feel guilty that we didn’t let the little baby calf grow up to be penned in, force-fed slurry and slaughtered, as nature intended.

I also feel guilty I didn’t get the strip loin. The strip loin never disappoints.

Continue…
Monday Caption Challenge No. 2

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, December 7, 2009 at 7:16 AM - 41 Comments

UPDATE: In future, I plan to again – and perhaps permanently – resort to democracy to resolve the caption challenge, but this week I am happily siding with the mob and conferring victory upon DanielBlouin. If ever there were an entry that fit the criterion of “funny cuz it’s true,” this is it. Well played, sir. Please flip me an email at scott.feschuk@macleans.rogers.com and I’ll dispatch your prize via the infotainment highway.

And a REMINDER: Queries for the Tuesday Mailbag on Wednesday can be sent to that same email address or placed in the comments below this post. Several questions already this week about relationships and personal matters. I’m like Ann Landers without the moustache.

•

Hey, look – it’s world-famous Liberal MP, and former hockey player of some kind, Ken Dryden. He’s on the ice as part of the Montreal Canadiens’ 100^th anniversary celebrations, which – by my rough estimate – have been going on for the past 40 years (or does it just feel that way?)

Your mission: make with the funny.

* The winner of each week’s caption challenge, as declared by a jury of me (or, on occasion, a guest juror of considerable wit and Internet access), shall receive a prize valued in the tens of dollars. And not just dollars but Canadian dollars (aka the good kind of dollars). You’re welcome.
The “Help Stephen Harper Name His Next Senator” Challenge

By Scott Feschuk - Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 9:49 AM - 127 Comments

*Update: Challenge winner announced in the Comments below.

In today’s Ottawa Notebook, Jane Taber describes Tom Flanagan as “super Tory strategist.”

Does she mean “super,” as in “especially good at what he does?”

Does she mean “super,” as in “possessing extra-human powers such as the ability to strategize faster than a speeding Stephanopoulos?”

Or does she mean “super,” as in “I’m sorry I had to take a whole day off from saying nice things about Laureen Harper or directly quoting Conservative talking points, so I’m doing this instead?”

More important, the Notebook points out that Senator Jerry Grafstein is soon retiring, which gives the Prime Minister yet another opportunity to appoint someone new, or the rest of Mike Duffy, to a seat in the upper chamber.

[Brief pause to allow outraged readers to use comments to assail fat joke...]

I’m actually pretty sure there are a couple senators stepping down before Grafstein, but the point remains – soon it will be time yet again for Stephen Harper to respect his promise never to fill a single Senate seat through patronage, except for all of them.

Suggestions:

Janine Krieber – Think of the play this would get: the disaffected wife of a former Liberal leader welcomed into Continue…
Tired of wasting company time reading the same old sites?

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, November 9, 2009 at 8:05 AM - 11 Comments

Come join me at Twitter, where every now and then I’ll be tweeting as The Voice in Stephen Harper’s Head.
Fixes for some common problems

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Evolution too slow for you? Happier talking to the kids about sex than money? I can help.

Most of the time this column pokes fun, usually while finding a way to reference Charlie Sheen. But this week I’m here to help. There are problems in the world and I aim to solve them—much in the way the presence of Charlie Sheen “solved” my desire to ever watch Two and a Half Men.

Problem: A poll indicates that Canadian parents are more comfortable talking to their children about sex than discussing the ins and outs of money and personal finance.

Solution: Son, have a seat. Comfortable? Good, that’s good. Look—it’s time we had a talk. [Deep breath.] When a man loves a woman, and also a motorboat, he may feel the urge to engage in the act of “earning.” Continue…
Sarah Palin's no slave to syntax

By Scott Feschuk - Friday, October 16, 2009 at 4:31 PM - 50 Comments

She liberated the English language from rules. So it’s only logical she wrote a book.

I wasn’t asked to write the foreword to Sarah Palin’s forthcoming memoir, but that didn’t stop me.

Maverick. Iconoclast. Renegade. These are all words Sarah Palin would have trouble spelling correctly.

The political phenomenon from Wasilla, Alaska, burst onto the national stage in the fall of 2008. She was unlike anything Americans had ever seen before, unless they’d seen Tina Fey, which most of them had. Continue…
He looks so human. Encore, encore!

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 15, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 5 Comments

One small step for Stephen Harper, one giant leap for the political strategist in us all

Enjoyable though it was, Stephen Harper’s performance of a Beatles song at a ritzy Ottawa gala may wind up being a moment we come to regret. It raised the stakes to the point that all future political photo ops will require, at minimum, a pair of hip-hugging satin trousers and a “surprise” appearance during Tango Night on So You Think You Can Dance. Be warned: even as you read these words, Jack Layton is grooming his chest hair and thinking, “Right foot back, left foot pass—and then I rip open my sequined blouse.”

The “humanization” of Stephen Harper has been almost a decade in the making, and frankly it’s a relief to finally see some progress. There have been so many failures along the way—when he hired that lady to pick out his ties, when he sent his kids off to school with a firm handshake, when he publicly devoured the flesh of the weak (I’m paraphrasing). No matter how many times he pretended to write a book about hockey, he just couldn’t connect with the common man. Continue…
This immortality thing worries me

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 8, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 10 Comments

Can we live without death—that great escape from debt, tedious social plans, even pants?

Immortality! Gilgamesh strived to attain it. Indiana Jones had it briefly in his grasp. And I’m sure Madonna’s plastic surgeons are trying their best—but come on guys, gross.

According to one renowned futurist, the goal of living forever may no longer be the fevered dream of whoever keeps jabbing Botox into Sylvester Stallone. Ray Kurzweil says our understanding of genetics and technology is expanding at such an exponential rate that within two decades we will have “the means to reprogram our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, aging.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Sex and the City XXXVII: Samantha’s Bawdy Bicentennial. Enjoy the threesome with Betty White. Continue…
If the end comes, don’t count on me

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, September 17, 2009 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

The toil of rebuilding civilization will expose me for what I am: a completely useless man

Given the choice, I’d prefer we don’t have an apocalypse. Sure, on some level it would be cool to live in a dystopian hellscape in which man is pitted against beast and one’s very survival depends on staying a step ahead of the ruthless hordes of flesh-ravaging mutants, but then again I already spent two years working in politics.

Despite being a human male with my very own testosterone, I am afflicted by a number of great fears: heights, tight spaces, unicorns (that pointy horn isn’t for show, little girls—what do you think caused Care Bears to go extinct?). But my greatest great fear is the unfolding of a scenario under which the vast majority of humanity is wiped out in an unspeakable cataclysm . . . and somehow I remain alive.

You’d think the prospect of improbable survival against absurd odds would bring relief, even joy. Perhaps for you and the resulting zombie king. But the toil of rebuilding civilization will inevitably expose me for what I am: useless. Completely useless. Skill-lacking, mistake-making, job-avoiding, thumb-hammering, handyman-calling useless. This is no false modesty: 40-plus years into my existence, I cannot be relied upon to construct anything more complex than an enchilada.

Continue…