Our internet gets disconnected tonight. I am now off the radar for at least a week. Our flight leaves Monday morning, and I can't wait. Mr Right and I are talking again, although his sister hates us both now, instead of just me. Whatever. I've buried two parents before I was 20, I hardly care about some cheap tart not liking me because I have an attitude problem.

Anyway, enough about them. We've been driving around a lot over the past few days, with the car radio on. Some song lyrics have been stuck in my head, as some of my favorites:

Well okay, I still get stoned
I'm not the kind of girl you take home
Cheryl Crow, If it Makes You Happy

You're not the only one who's made mistakes
But they're the only things that you can truly call your own
Billy Joel, Second Wind

I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's
And his hair was perfect
Warren Zevon, Werewolves of London

For there's a guard, and there's a sad old Padre
On and on we'll walk at daybreak
Again I'll touch the green green grass of home
Tom Jones, Green Green Grass of Home

I'll buy you glasses in Texas, a hat in New Orleans
And baby you can sleep while I drive
Melissa Etheridge, Sleep While I Drive

Mr Right and I will be driving again this afternoon, since the sun is shining. When next I blog, the sun will still be shining, but I'll be in a different time zone, sipping sangria on my balcony, living a real life again. Wish me luck.

Bye-bye Britain. Can't say I'll miss you. I will probably never return.

World War III has broken out in the house over the last few days, no thanks to the in-laws. I can barely find the energy or willingness to take a shower, let alone anything else. I may be out there, lurking around other people's sites, but I have no inspiration to write anything of my own. Unless you want to hear about how I would love to smack my sister-in-law so hard her eyes fly out of her head (but I can't because she's pregnant - again). I am physically and emotionally exhausted, and I really wish I'd married an orphan - or not married at all.

In the meantime, amuse yourselves with

The Washington Dispatch
If You'd Rather Be Playing Golf - UK
Right Side of the Rainbow
Right Thinking form the Left Coast
Samizdata - UK
Rational Explications

This is a smapling of some of the sites I'll be reading and commenting on, even though I'm in no fit state to work my own blog.

Hopefully I'll be able to post again before I go.

RG

I found an article on the Beeb's website today. It is regarding the abuse of internet in offices and other workplaces. Directors and other managers can now be held legally accountable if they do not put an end to the illegal use of office equipment (i.e. to create or distribute child pornography).

"If the offence of storing illicit material occurred with the consent or connivance of, or was attributable to any neglect of the senior officer, then the company is guilty of an offence and senior director and senior employees will be as well"

This is akin to saying that because Employee X did thus-and-so, Director Y will have to go to jail, because he obviously condoned the behavior.

Just like it must be George Bush's and Donald Rumsfeld's fault that some goons in uniform misbehaved out in the desert.

Bloody good thing those soldiers hadn't downloaded any child porn - I'm sure the Nanny Statists and Liberal Left would find a way to have Bush impeached for that!

Isis gets a bath before her trip across the Atlantic. 

If this was something Oprah was covering, it would be schmaltz. But I found it on Right Thoughts.

A U.S. Marine from San Antonio is showing off his love for his country and his love for a best friend.

Jeremy Duncan returned from Iraq last June and will go back this August, but he will be giving new life here at home. He will be donating a kidney. Duncan and Jason Tully have been inseparable since the sixth grade.

Marines are tough as nails.

We'll fight them on the beaches, we'll fight them in the trenches, we'll fight them with only one kidney...

This time next week we will be on our flight, tired, squished, and irritable. Today we are in a pile of crap that needs to be packed, tired, squished, and irritable. The charity shops in our neighborhood have done well from this move. So has the library. And our ebay exploits have pretty much paid for the transport of our cat.

Today we continue to wrestle with the steamer trunk, unpacking and repacking it, hoping to bring its weight down. It's nearly as hard as bringing my own weight down!

I wish I was a more devoted blogger, and could continue to search out news stories and stuff the way Michele at A Small Victory has done throughout her moving process. She has been most impressive, not only doing the normal blogging, but revamping her whole site. I don't think she sleeps. Ever. All I can suggest is that if you're bored reading my drivel this week, go read her.

Things I Will Miss - Part 4

Lambs. Too cute for words. Not a lot of lambs in downtown Toronto, frolicking under the CN Tower.

May is a lovely time in Scotland. The sun shines more than once a week. Today we were up early (mercifully minus hangovers), and took a walk in the park. It was nice to have the sun shining down on us.

Last night's dinner out was a blast, with good food, plenty of wine, and good friends.

Things I Will Miss - Part 3

The Immigrant Diners Club. A group of friends, none of us British, who bonded together out of a need for a little sanity in this insane country. One Irish, one American, one Kiwi, and me. These have been my best friends here, and they are probably what I will miss most once I'm gone.

Everyone has been weighing in on the photos vs the video. I kept my mouth shut, because anything I was going to say had already been said by someone else. I finally saw the video last night. It was either a crappy copy, or it was never very clear to begin with. For that I was thankful. Graphic enough without getting a clear close-up of the knife sawing Nick Berg's head off.

I still feel that whatever I could say has been said already, so I'll let It's a Conspiracy say it for me.

The war raging in Iraq only pales in comparison to the war being fought for the hearts and minds of Americans and others in the world community. Forget about what you saw. Think about what you didn't see. You didn't see pictures of Iraqis raping Jessica Lynch, while her broken arms and legs left her defenseless. You didn't see pictures of charred bodies being dragged through the streets of Fallujah. You didn't see the body of the American hero Pat Tillman after taking several bullets. You didn't see the smashed, broken bodies of people who jumped out of the World Trade Center from a hundred stories up. Why? Because the media knows if you had seen any of these pictures, you would be forced to agree that what we are doing is necessary. You'd be forced to agree that there is evil in this world and it must be dealt with. You'd be forced to agree that George W Bush is right. Right now you can hide behind your cloak of ignorance having never seen the truth. Jesus said, "You believe because you have seen, but blessed is he who believes and has not seen," John 20:29.

Tonight we are off to a farewell dinner with our friends. We have a table booked in Glasgow for us and 12 of our friends. We have had this planned for several weeks now, but it's amazing just how inconsiderate people can be, cancelling at the last minute. This is a problem we've had the whole time we've been here. People seem to think that it's okay to break plans on the day of. Like 3 weeks ago, I had lunch with a friend. It was supposed to be 2 friends, but 45 minutes after we arrived at the restaurant, she called me to say she wouldn't be able to make it. I'm told it's a Scottish thing. People will be happy to make arrangements with you, but a football game, a trip to the pub, or a hangover might cause them to cancel. So I will not miss Scottish people. I can't handle the rejection. But...

Things I Will Miss: Part 2

Sausage suppers and Irn Bru. Of course, that's probably why I gained 20 pounds after I moved here!

The pictures of UK soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners are fake.

Even though the media will continue to drag the US through the mud, at least their partners, the UK, are off the hook.

And sooner or later, people will realize that some of the American soldiers who took part in the abuse could not really be held accountable, nor should they be held as an example of the actions of the entire US army. Lynndie England? Puh-lease. She's the female equivelent of Forrest Gump, and should be pitied, not used as a scapegoat.

It'll die down soon. RightGirl promises.

The Edinburgh Zoo.

We watched the penguins take their walk today. It made me squeal like a little girl. Whee!

This time 10 days from now I will be sitting in the departure lounge at the airport, waiting to start my new life. Or resume my old life - depends on how you look at it.

I have made no secret that I don't like Scotland. But if I had to do it all over again, would I do anything differently? Probably not. Wind, rain, and sheep were worth it, just to be with Mr Right. I think perhaps we would have made this move back to Canada a bit sooner, though. I have been ready to leave since the moment I got here, but Mr Right needed to come to the decision on his own. Leaving your home country to move across an ocean is a huge undertaking, and you need to be emotionally prepared.

In my case, it also helps to be an orphan, because then your parents can't drive you up a goddam wall, like the in-laws are doing just now.

It's cloudy today, but I think we'll go to the zoo. I'd like to see the penguins again before I leave.

...so whoever keeps sending me penis enlargement emails can please stop. You're wasting your time.

Following on from my last post, it seems my own stupid country is proving the point that Western civilization is dying...

Well, we all thought the Netherlands or France would be the first to adopt some form of Sharia law as the thin end of the wedge of catering to Muslim immigrants who universally appear unable to fit in with their host societies. Yet the Netherlands has just put a four-year moratorium on all immigration, including "asylum seekers", has stopped schooling Muslim children in the home language of their parents/grandparents, and has closed down many of its Muslim community centers. And France is banning the headscarf on school property and is shoveling undesirable imams out of the country at a rate of knots.

So Canada has become the first country in the West to kowtow to immigrant Islamic demands that they not only have a right to settle in the country and be free to practice their religion unhindered, but also the right to bring their own laws with them.

Syed Mumtaz Ali, the president of the Canadian Society of Muslims, began lobbying for a Sharia court around two years ago. He claims that the tribunals would allow Muslims to practice freedom of religion, as though they couldn’t before. "Muslim minorities living in non-Muslim countries like Canada are like wandering Bedouins.

"Although they are free to live according to the Divine Law to practice their faith unhindered in their homes and mosques, they have practically no say in the making of the laws of the land and governmental institutions do not cater to their needs."

This is nothing I am proud of. All those years of singing about "standing on guard for thee" in school was not supposed to lead to this. Just who and what are we natural-born Canadians standing on guard for these days? Will the RCMP preside over stonings of Muslim women - or even Western women - someday in the not too distant future? Will rape be legal for everyone except the victim? Will it be okay to beat your wife? All your wives?

I knew that Canada was a more Liberal country than the United States, but I thought that there was still some sense at the bottom of it. Once more, I am disillusioned by politics. I really don't know how I will vote my way out of this one. No matter how often I vote Conservative, I will be outnumbered. The whole country seems to have gone mad on a wave of political correctness and communist ideology.

Perhaps moving back to Canada in a week's time isn't the best thing. Perhaps Texas...

The Washington Dispatch has an excellent article on the end of Western civilization.

By 1914 the case can be made that Western Civilization was at a very high apex indeed. Most of the modern inventions and scientific disciplines were in place and making their beneficial effects felt by an increasing number of people. European art had yet to be dominated by anti-artists. Europe was wealthy and well governed, especially in the northern and western countries. This was also true of the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. There were problems with left-wing, utopian fascists just as there are today, but unlike today they had very little support among patriotic, prosperous citizens of any class. There was little of the modern-day impulse to automatically surrender to the very groups seeking to destroy rational society. The mood in the West was optimistic and governments on the whole were eager to support citizens by protecting their lives and property against criminals and leftist scum. Economic life was relatively unencumbered and self-reliance and morality were seen as virtues. People still understood that the government could not protect them from their own stupidity and they were still allowed to protect themselves from attack. People who protected themselves from attack were recognized as heroes. They were not prosecuted for "using excessive force" or being "a danger to burglars."

It's as if we have been giving in to some kind of con artist, whispering in our ear, trying to get us to give him and his cronies the money our daddy left to support us. You can almost hear him, telling us we're selfish for keeping it to ourselves, saying "eat the rich". He stands before us in the mirror, belittling us for being successful. We've grown so accustomed to his rantings, we have dubbed him our concience. But is he? Or is he just the omnipresent voice of the left?

Before WWI the West had gone from strength to strength. Since then we have gone from weakness to weakness. Every disaster has provided more recruits for the evil, Godless left wing. Every year sees standards of education, ethics and morals lowered while government erodes our freedoms and forces more self-destructive social engineering on us. Ironically, the West has remained light-years ahead of the third world in science, technology and other material innovations. But as a people, we are so degraded that we are no longer in touch with the principles of hard work, pride, sacrifice and common sense that made our success possible. We are like spoiled brats living on inherited wealth. We listen to people who tell us that we don't deserve our wealth and must give it away. They tell us that we are racists if we even suggest that our own countries should be defended against an invasion of third-world immigrants. I repeat, we are now told that we cannot even reserve our own countries for ourselves. President George W. Bush and challenger John Kerry both believe this lie and will try to enforce it with all the power at the government's command. Our ancestors were too eager to fight before WWI. We are now too reluctant to fight our true enemies.

The end is nigh!

I finally have a few minutes to myself. My husband is out running errands, I just finished packing up ebay stuff (we're making a fortune!), and I'm savouring my coffee before I have to wash the windows.

Later today we have to visit his sister to make our goodbyes (perhaps I'll fake a heart attack so I don't have to go). I've been on the phone to shipping companies all morning trying to get a reasonable price to send an old fashioned steamer trunk across the Atlantic. Would you believe it's cheaper to send it by air via Parcel Force than to ship it by sea with anyone else?

Everyone except the in-laws seem happy that we're making a break for it. My husband's grandparents are writing us cheques, yet his parents are telling us that we're going to fail. Perhaps niceness skips a generation in this family. I don't ask that they approve of every part of our decision (and after all, his mother would still be breasfeeding him if she thought she could get away with it), but wishing us luck and telling us to be happy would not be out of order.

Oh well, only 14 more days of rain, haggis, and in-laws.

Yesterday was an exciting day of visiting with Mr Right's grandparents, and his parents. In-laws should be outlawed. I love his grannies and his grandpa (it's hard not to), but his parents I could do without over the next couple of weeks. We are facing one of the biggest events of our lives in 2 weeks time, and they have been considerably less than supportive.

Anyone know where I can hide some bodies??

Spent the day packing. My dust allergies are making the evening hell. Going to get stoned on Claratin and red wine now.

RG

Today is my Dear Dead Daddy's (DDD's) 64th birthday. If I were home in Montreal, I would be on my way to the cemetary with a bottle of rye to do shots with him, like I do every year.

Dad, I promise I'll be there for your next birthday, when you'll be old enough to collect your pension, wherever you are.

Happy Birthday, you ole bastard. Miss you.

This Sasser virus is driving me batshit. Although I haven't actually got it, my virus protection is working double time (I increased it's security and firewalls this morning), and I'm starting to think that the virus is the better option!

Every two seconds, my good pal Norton warns me that some outside site is trying to access my computer, and asks me if I want to block it.

Yes, I want to block it, for fucks sake! But isn't that what I hired you to do?? So just do it and let me get on with my surfing! (There he goes again!)

Whoever invented the virus that is putting me through this shit needs to be strung up by his hairless balls.

How do I know it's a him, and that his balls are hairless, you ask?

Because only a pre-pubescent male geek has that much time on his hands (between wanks, when he has other things on his hands), and is that malicious and disrespectful.

Die, Geek, die!!!

This article by Steve Dunleavy expresses the anger felt by a survivor of an Islamist attack.

In 2000, a top Bin Laden aide stabbed prison Louis Pepe guard in the eye, causing blidness and brain damage. Yesterday he was sentenced to 32 years for the crime. The scene in the courtroom was ugly.

yesterday, his brain half gone, somehow, from somewhere within, Louis managed to confront his vermin attacker with a man's challenge.


"I want to see you someday . . . Don't know where, and it ain't gonna be a nice day," Louis said, struggling to find the words.


It was as lucid a sentence as he could muster - and from then on, it seemed that the physical and emotional strength had left him.


Louis spewed out the anger of almost being made a vegetable, interrupting Mamdouh Mahmud Salim's attorney, Richard Lind, with shouts of "I'm dead, dead, dead!"

Instead of letting him vent, with every right to do so, the judge threw him out!

Judge Deborah Batts, who might need a crash course in courtroom diplomacy, had Louis wheeled from the court, which prompted an angry walkout of 40 fellow court officers.

Louis's sister, Eileen Trotta, exploded in fury, "My brother is brain damaged - it's an outrage to do that to him. She [Batts] is not an American."

Give the whole article a read. Mr Dunleavy is anything but objective in his editorial, but I agree with him completely.

I live in the UK. When I open my mouth, it is obvious that I'm not from around here. Many people, desperate not to offend, ask me "Are you Canadian?" At first, I thought these people were really good at detecting the slight nasal-ness that makes a Canadian different from an American. Then someone told me that whenever they meet someone from North America, they always ask if that person is Canadian. Apparently, it really offends us "Canucks" to be mistaken as "Yanks". Especially in today's political climate.

This is a point I have always wondered about. When I was a teenager, and my friends went backpacking through Europe and Australia, they would sew Canadian flags onto their backpacks and jackets. It seems that this would give them better service and treament around the world. After all, everyone hates the Americans.

Everyone?

And I have read many conservative blogs, which I very much enjoy and read on a daily basis, that do a lot of Canadian-bashing. It seems the US hates Canadians.

All of us?

Ever since I was a little kid, I identified with Americans (my parents blamed television), and as I grew older, I felt it more keenly. America is big. It is powerful. It does things in broad strokes, just like I do. When I was 18, I tried to join the army - the American army. Why? Because I could make a difference. I could be a part of making a change, not just cleaning up the mess afterwards (peacekeeping). Well, because I had no relatives in the US, and was not a US student, I wasn't permitted to join.

I have always been an American in my heart - my nationality was always just an issue of geography. I followed the last American election closely, but didn't even know that Jean Chretien had retired as Canada's Prime Minister. So I could never understand what the fuss was about between our two countries. We are so similar. We have the world's longest open border. We look the same, we talk the same (barring regional variances). We worship the same deity (for the most part). So why do we hate each other so much?

Is it that Canada is like a whiny younger sibling, jealous that big brother gets all the cool toys and dates? And that big brother affectionately chucks us under the chin, and doesn't really mean any harm by it? Personally, I don't care. Canadian or American, we're just nextdoor neighbors. We don't always agree. Sometimes we borrow your stuff, and sometimes you borrow ours. I hope that continues, and that both sides quit sniping over nothing. I'm proud to be a North American, to have the wholesome goodies that come with being Canadian, and the courage and drive that comes from being American.

If you meet someone on the street, and you think they might be American, just come out and ask them. Quit being such a PC pussy - if they get offended, they're not worth talking to anyway.