It's Friday afternoon. Less than one hour until the weekend, which will be spent at a friend's cottage on Lake Wahwashkesh in the Parry Sound area. I won't actually be fishing, because fishing is stupid, but I will be relaxing, and not working, and the phrase "gone fishin'" creates the mood perfectly.
While there, I promise to throw a baseball around, swim, play board games, drink beer, and generally have a merry time.
Will be back blogging Tuesday night.
Until then, some links:
What's with David Chernushenko?
Toronto Police officers reportedly pepper sprayed and detained Chilean U-20 World Cup soccer players. It seems like excessive force. I went to the Canada-Chile game earlier this month, and I'm pretty sure if the officers just ran in the general vicinity of the players, they likely would have collapsed to the ground, and at least one would've had to be taken off on a stretcher.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Haiti, which is, the Vancouver Sun tells me, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
Warren Kinsella wrote in his National Post column this week about the duelling memoirs coming out this fall: one from Mulroney, one from Chretien. Fortunately, they come out a month apart, so there's time to read Mulroney (released Sept. 10) and have time to digest, before reading Chretien (Oct. 16).
And finally, an essay by George Orwell, written in 1946: Politics and the English Language.
A very smart man whose name I can't remember once said every who speaks or writes English should be forced to read this essay once a year. For me, today is that time of year.
Here's my favourite part: "Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."