While the Aliens almost certainly have faster-than-light technologies, there is no reason to believe that they possess weapons of mass destruction, Ergo, Myrick opposes a first strike on the aliens.:

Mr. Hellyer (Canada’s Defence Minister from 1963-67 under Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Prime Minister Lester Pearson) went on to say, “I’m so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something.”
Hellyer revealed, “The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop.”
Hellyer warned, “The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, “The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide.”

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has a blog. If you aren’t reading it, that’s probably because you’re wasting your time visiting a site that hasn’t been updated in more than a month. The latest post is this:

According to the news, former FEMA head Michael Brown is starting a disaster preparedness consulting firm. Readers of Dilbert could have predicted this. If you’re infamous for being slow to act, your best bet is a job that bills by the hour. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that he used to be a lawyer.
I wonder how someone in the corporate world explains to his boss that he’s recommending the Michael Brown disaster preparedness consulting firm. “He only ignored one part of the country that was completely destroyed. And besides, he’s also a lawyer, so we know we can trust him.”
Sounds like a tough sell.

I have been listening to new Franz Ferdinand songs I illegally downloaded so I can listen to the album while I wait three weeks for my legal Amazon-ordered copy can arrive, However, Boing Boing has made me cycle my iPod to the best Dead Milkmen song to have not made the Death Rides a Pale Cow greatest hits songs compilation.

star says: “I recently purchased a Christian children’s activity book called ‘Listen and Do.’ The copyright date is 1954, and I’ve put up a scan of one of the more interesting pages – wherein a man prays at the feet of Buddha, accompanied by the words ‘His God cannot help him.’”Link

You’ve got a Methodist Coloring book
and you color really well
But don’t color outside the lines
or God will send you to Hell
‘caues God hates war
and God hates crime
but he really hates people
who color outside the lines

The BB link isn’t likely Methodist, but the Milkmen’s promotional Methodist coloring book is here and an ‘honest-to-God’ real on-line Java Methodist coloring book is here. As you can see from below, Myrick is on his way to becoming the next da Vinci. The best thing is that it’s damnation free… the Java app doesn’t let you color outside of the lines!

As I noted before, this blog is now a repository of self-indulgent crap. For more serious content visit AsiaPundit.

One of the things I noticed about Shanghai was a lack of Communist-inspired monuments. They are here. but generally remain in places where it is expected. A more common sight are the modern statues that appear in the city’s retail and business districts. Capitalism rules!

The men with briefcases is in the Pudong area, just a short stroll from the the Jin Mao tower, the first one – a woman using a cell phone – is near my office in Xujiahui. Other similar works are scattered throughout the city. I’ve seen couples with baby carriages and various poses of men doing business.

In Singapore, there were similar statues of everyday life – although they were renditions of of times past. Via my little odd forest’s and Jean Snow’s flickr photostreams come the following.:

Along the Singapore Riverwalk and surrounding the Esplanade, there are statues of things such as shirtless old men squatting on stools (as opposed to sitting) and playing mahjong and Chinese laborers toiling.

In Shanghai, you don’t have statues of such things – but you don’t have to go far to see laborers toiling or old men squatting on park benches.

In either city, it’s pretty normal to see women on cell phones or men with briefcases , but in Singapore it would seem odd to immortalize the commonplace. I’m guessing that the absence of older lifestyle statues in Shanghai is based on the same logic.

A statue of an emaciated laborer isn’t needed in Shanghai because such things aren’t yet a rarity.

In the BBC’s Who Rules Your World poll, Myrick’s picks for his global cabinet were spontaneous. But in retrospect, I’m noticing a disillusionment with modern conservatism.’

It may seem odd that both Clinton and Blair made the cut but Bush didn’t. But the latter is, as referred to by the Economist, the Strangest Tory Ever Sold. And as Bob noted, Clinton was, derisively, referred to by Michael Moore as ” the best Republican president the US had ever had.”

Honest conservatism doesn’t exist in politics. Tax cuts are not met with spending cuts and support of liberty abroad is matched by attempts to curb it at home. For the ’socialist’ leaders, the legacies are welfare and education reforms, a sincere dedication to free trade, and – in Tony’s case – a clear vision of the responsibility of the west to promote liberty and democracy… by force if needed.

It’s confusing. I may never vote again.

Sadly, big-government conservative GWB couldn’t even beat out Pele, (though Condie and Wolfowitz still made my list).

BTW: I’m still more active at AsiaPundit.

Relations between the US and Canada have been tense. There is plenty of fault for this on both sides, with unchecked anti-Americanism on behalf of Canadians and US intransigence on trade issues. But in the long-run, our countries remain linked by a shared history and trade ties. We may not be America’s favored ally anymore, but we are still its top trading partne….

Aww crap.:

For the first time, China has edged out Canada by becoming the top exporter of goods to the United States.

According to international trade data released this week, goods sold to the U.S. from Canada during July dropped by $4 billion US from the month before. That’s enough to make China the world’s number one seller of goods to the U.S.

“This is perhaps the wake-up call that people need,” Nancy Hughes Anthony, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, told The Globe and Mail. “We have to take it very seriously and be prepared to compete.”

Inspired by Backstroke of the West, Myrick offers Batman of the East.

We saw our first in-cinema movie here just before going on vacation; checking “Batman Begins” at the cinema in Xintandi. The tickets were 70 yuan each, making it 140 yuan for the two of us (not including snacks).  You can buy the DVD on the street for 7 yuan. This is one of the reasons why people don’t go to movies in China (another is that the authorities only allow a handful of decent films in each year).

Still, as a fan, paying US$17 for two tickets rather than less than a buck for a bootleg DVD wasn’t a big issue. What was an issue was that three times during the showing, sloppy edits in the film ruined my experience.

Naturally, I picked up the DVD to see what I was missing.

The censored Chinese cinema version of the film cuts out scenes of (a) Bruce Wayne robbing one of Wayne Industries China outposts, (b) Bruce kicking the snot out of prisoners in a Chinese work camp, (c) Bruce and Alfred ordering defective helmets from China.

These scenes were all available on the DVD. About a third of the movie wasn’t, the Russian bootleggers neglected to add a reel, but I only picked it up for the censored scenes, so it was decent enough for filling in the blanks.

As the DVD was a new release, the bootleggers didn’t have time to translate the script into subtitles though. So they just borrowed an existing track from errr… the Intrepreter, perhaps.

Among the highlights.:

Ra’s Al Ghul is more Zen, or something.

His offer to turn Bruce evil is a lot more attractive, or it would be if Bruce wasn’t already a billionaire. Still, this does provide some insight to the motivation for all of the other henchmen.

Carmine Falcone is a lot more vulgar.

Bruce’s initial impression of the Batmobile is much more excited and off-the-cuff.

Bruce uses Japanese when he fires Earle.

Probably due to the success of the X-Men films, the producers decided Batman could use Wolverine’s keen sense of smell.

He’s also more violent; he keeps the “no-gun” rule, but nukes are seemingly ok.

Myrick, now a married man, has returned to Shanghai. I’m more active on AsiaPundit, and I encourage  everyone to visit, but I will try to keep this site active with at least one post a week. I warn you though, all posts here will be self-indulgent crap.

While I was back in Canada, people often said things like this to me: “You’re a foreign correspondent? In Shanghai? Wow, that must be pretty exciting!”

Indeed, it is. My life is filled with excitement and danger.

But there is also “glamor and glitz.” For instance, I’ll be spending tomorrow evening with a Star. Or at least a former star.

Ha! Aren’t you all jealous? I’m going to meet Jeremy Miller! This guy knows Alan Thicke!

It should be a fun evening. It’s an open secret that all former child stars are party animals.

As Doogie Howser said in Harold and Kumar.. Laaap Daaance!

Sign from a Shanghai Mexican bar.:

I don’t cuss on the other blog or on the Good Beer Blog. And I won’t cuss on the just-launched Shanghaiist. But those sites are ’serious’ projects and this is just a place for rantings. If I’m pissed off, this is where I’ll cuss.

I won’t go into details but Air Canada and Scotiabank are conspiring to ruin my vacation. I was going to call them something foul, repeatedly, but I’ve calmed down a bit so I’m only going to call them something foul in condensed cockney rhyming slang (that way none of you gits in North America will be offended).

Air Canada and Scotiabank are staffed by a bunch of berks.

The word has Germanic cognates including old Norse (kunta), middle-Dutch (Kunte) and possibly High German (Kotze meaning prostitute), which all point to a pre-historic germanic ancestor kunton. A Latin word, Kuntus, meaning wedge, might also have been an influence. The word would appear to have entered the English language during the early Middle Ages; in 1230AD, both Oxford and London boasted districts called ‘Gropecunte Lane’, in reference to the prostitutes that worked there. The Oxford lane was later renamed the slightly less-contentious Magpie Lane, while London’s version retained a sense of euphemism when it was changed to ‘Threadneedle Street’. Records do not show whether it was a decision of intentional irony that eventually placed the Bank of England there.
The word has good Shakespearian usage, though even he was a little subtle. Hamlet asks whether he can lie in Ophelia’s lap, ‘I mean, my head upon your lap?’ and then says ‘Do you think I meant country matters?’ and follows up with ‘It is a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs’. Ophelia answers non-committally to most of this. A slightly more bawdy use of the word appears in Carry On Don’t Lose Your Head, one of a series of British comedy films of the 1960s, in which actress Joan Sims refers to her husband, ‘The Count’, deliberately pronouncing the word ‘Count’ with just enough room to be (mis)interpreted while still getting past the British film censors.

You know you’ve been outside of Canada too long when…

What Slanguage Do You Speak?