Sarah Palin vs. Marg Delahunty

Sarah’s on her book tour, hawking Going Rogue in bookstores across the U.S. She’s getting a lot of attention for her memoir, which was apparently written in an afternoon, by a 21-year-old ghostwriter who’d never met her, while drinking Corona and watching SpongeBob out of the corner of his eye. Well, that’s what I heard.

Among the highlights of the reaction to her book was the Associated Press’s decision to dedicate a team of 11 reporters to the book, picking apart its “facts” and finding mistakes, alterations or historical revisions that prove to opponents that Sarah Palin has no business in politics, no business being a public figure, and no business sticking her nose into Canadian issues.

Wait, let me back up: Sarah was signing books the other day in Columbus, Ohio, when she encountered a Canadian TV journalist. Marg Delahunty had travelled south to quiz Palin — who has hinted at running for president in 2012, possibly with Glenn Beck — but was manhandled away from the signing table and ushered outside by beefy security guards. It turns out Sarah doesn’t answer questions.

The question, as Delahunty reported later: “We told her we’re from Canada, and we’re just looking for a few words of encouragement for the Canadian conservatives who have worked so tirelessly to destroy the socialized medicare that we have.”

Delahunty stuck around, and when she and her crew spotted Palin outside, they went after her.

“Hey, remember us, we’re the Canadians! We came all the way here from Canada!” Delahunty calls in the footage, which aired Tuesday night. “When we asked you that question, we didn’t hear your answer.”

Palin stopped and shared this nugget with Canadian TV watchers: “Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”

Okay, so Sarah favours privatized health care. That’s no surprise. And I am one of those Canadians who treasures our public system, but I also see its flaws, so I would not be averse to exploring change. I’m not going to get into a health-care debate here. I just would rather Sarah Palin kept her nose out of Canadian affairs. We have enough uninformed, stupid conservative politicians of our own to deal with; we don’t need her.

Even if she can see Canada from her house.

When her interview aired Tuesday night on CBC Television’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Delahunty mused aloud, wondering why Palin doesn’t answer questions at her book signings. Here’s why: She isn’t very bright. If you need an example, just consider that she allowed herself to be interviewed by Marg Delahunty, who looks like this:

She’s a comedian, Canada’s Mary Walsh, a bit of a national treasure to some. She’s been playing the super-conservative pundit Delahunty character for a long, long time, dressing up in a version of the Xena, Warrior Princess costume to ambush our public figures with ridiculous questions. Everyone in Canada is in on the joke, and it’s always funny to watch Marg corner the prime minister at some gala and spar with him, the silly questions generating equally silly answers.

I can’t show you the Palin footage, but here’s Marg congratulating our Prime Minister Stephen Harper on winning an election:

Anybody who thinks Steve is a bit of a stiff should watch that clip.

While Marg wore a slightly less ridiculous version of her armour to talk to Sarah Palin, it should have been obvious to everyone around her that this is some sort of comedy … but Sarah didn’t clue in. This isn’t the first time a Canadian has tricked Palin, and I’ll bet you it won’t be the last.

Now you know why they keep her away from reporters.

Zombie Chris Pine In Sex Tape With Vampire Lady Ga-Ga

Are you reading this? Wow, it still works.

Maybe I should start selling ad space here based on my ability to attract many, many readers to empty content with just a few key (and salacious) words. That would free me up to finish my series exploring the ethics of transferring prisoners to governments we know will torture them for information. Writing that would take me weeks, and six people would read it. This took three minutes to write. You can probably tell.

I blame the Internet.

He Sees You When You’re Sleeping

I saw this guy in a Santa Claus parade this weekend. It sums up my humbuggy holiday spirits just fine. Also, we haven’t had any snow, and it feels more like September than the end of November.

Meanwhile, the stupid guy across the road from us has become the only person on our rural stretch to put up Christmas lights. He just moved in, and he’s kind of an asshole (he’s the one who tossed the dead skunk in my yard this summer). The worst part? His entire house is lit up with blue lights. It looks like that night the Smurfs got fucked up on E at a rave and pulled a train on Smurfette.

He was setting up one of those inflatable snow globe bullshit things this afternoon. It makes me wish I had a BB gun.

I didn’t always hate Christmas. In fact, I once had a cutesy Christmas children’s story serialized in a daily newspaper (which you can still read here). Lately, though, I’m just tired of all the fuss and hustle, and I’ll be glad when it’s over.

Zombie Chris Pine

If J.J. Abrams had decided to pull an even harder reboot on Star Trek, he could have gone the oh-so-trendy zombie route and decided to make the new Captain Kirk a zombie. This would have made for a very different film, of course. In the scene where Spock (Zachary Quinto) tries to throttle him, Kirk’s head would have just fallen off. And all those shots of Kirk running around the shiny Enterprise would have been much longer. In fact, I think the entire two hours, six minutes of the movie would have been taken up with the zombie version of Cadet Fat-Hands shuffling from sickbay to the bridge to tell Captain Pike about “Brainsssssss …”

J.J. could have made Spock a werewolf, too, but that would have just been stupid.

You know what else is stupid? The way people land here at the Weather Station. Here are some real search engine terms used to find this site:

1. topless weather
2. shirley jones topless
3. small penis
4. heman tiger name
5. naughty teachers
6. korean wife
7. what to do if you call you boss a moron
8. spirit gum santa beard stay on
9. pictures of famous actors and their siblings
10. moron porn

(It is not lost on me that I’m just as stupid; I wrote the posts featuring those topics (or reasonable facsimiles thereof) in the first place.)

I also find it bothersome that there are posts on this site that took me a day to compose, and they’ve attracted a measly few dozen hits, but the one about the Killer Power Ranger has readership in the five figures, because of the nature of net search, and because people want trendy scandals and that kind of bullshit. I am, believe it or not, a serious writer, and a professional journalist, and I do put a lot of work into some of these posts. Others I just toss off on a whim, and those seem to be the ones people like.

If you’ve read this far because you want to know more about Zombie Chris Pine, sorry. I just did that to test a theory. If I’d called this Weird Search Terms or Weathereye Whines About His Readers, nobody would have found it. But I know from some friends that people are suckers for zombies, so I kind of tricked you.

 

Sw1n1 Flu

H1N1 has worked its wonders on us. As I can’t get the flu shot — due to an egg allergy — I know I’m going to get sick. I live with it. I technicolour-yawned a supposedly rejuvenatory Gatorade across the Shopper’s Drug Mart parking lot a couple of weeks ago. And then I got better.

My daughter is just getting over it. My oldest son got sick today. He’ll be home from school tomorrow. As it turns out, he’s okay with the idea. He’ll trade coughs for movies any time.

No big tragedy. Just this year’s flu.

I’m not making light of it. People are dying. At the current count, about 700 people worldwide have died from H1N1 this year. Seven hundred. That’s 700 lost mothers, fathers, children. It’s horrible.

But it’s no epidemic. Let’s keep things in perspective. For every person who died of H1N1 this week, far more died because of smoking, drunk driving, drugs, bad eating habits, lack of exercise, poor judgment and not looking before crossing the street. And if I, with my compromised heart and lungs, can weather the H1N1 storm, so can you.

Live healthier.

Worst Music Video Ever of the Week: FRSHPRNCFBLR

I usually like MSTRKRFT remixes, particular the version of Wolfmother’s Woman. This? Not so much. And yes, it’s an amateur video, and it has its qualities, but the underlying suckness of the whole thing tarnishes the legacy of one of television’s finest comedy series, and the work of some gifted musicians.

P.S.: What am I, drunk? I made all that stuff up, except for the title.