An Unfortunate Display of Excessive Xenophobic Hostility

I love Canadians, and in theory find the Canadian accent charming, precise, literate and intelligent. In practice, however, their manner of speaking infuriates me.

I give you as an example the Canadian woman who comes on to tell you, "We're sorry, the number you have reached is not in service." The way she says "o" in "sorry" and "not" makes you want to hurl your phone against an innocent bystander. It sounds over-enunciated, mannered and affected. Your rage is compounded by the utter irrationality of an Houston, TX-based American phone company hiring a Canadian woman to record its messages. And of course you are livid at having misdialled.

It takes several bottles of medication before the feeling subsides.

Yeah, We're Talking Heavy Metal.

So just for once, let's talk heavy metal. This is not your heavy metal kind of blog, not usually, but I was flipping by VH1 and there was an early video of Deep Purple doing "Highway Star". Ain't nobody gonna take my car/gonna race her to the grou-ou-ound! The desperation of Ian Gillian, the screeching -- the commitment.

Oooh it’s a killing machine/It’s got everything...

My God the man was in earnest.

But a note on proto-metal bands of that period -- early 70s: they were dirty. As in grimy. Physically unclean. Beads of sweat mixed with iron filings and God knows what. Stringy hair. Underwear not changed for weeks. Sometimes I think that hygene didn't really make it as a cutting-edge cultural phenomenon until like 1981.

La Enchilada de la Virgen

Another apparition of Jesus Christ in a bread-based entree: this time, a quesadilla.

Might not our Lord have appeared thus to Mary Magdelene and St. Peter on pita bread or a lavosh? And similarly, is His bidding not served by waffles, tortillas, naan, injera, mu shu wraps?

There is a slight tension connected with the mystery: is it, as it seems, a shameless hoax, intended to prey on the gullible, or does the seller really see this supposed image? And, if so, is he only slightly less awed by the Virgin Mary in his Eggo than the man who in turn purchases it from him for over $10,000? Perhaps the biggest regret of the people who sold that grilled cheese sandwich with Jesus' visage for $25,000 is that they needed the money for their kid's dialysis so badly that they had to put it up on eBay. And even then they had to think about it for a long time.