The sky is falling…

Four straight losses. Down six in the last eight. Definitely not the sign of a championship team. Well, so long as this lovely streak the Canucks are on continues. Tonight’s 4-1 loss to Winnipeg (held hostage in Phoenix, AZ for the last decade) was especially painful to watch.

What’s more painful is how the fans are reacting. Most specifically, the ones that call in to Team 1040. Fire Vigneault they say. Bench the coach. Trade Luongo. Sundin was a mistake. Cripes, if there was any weight behind any of the plethora of ideas to quick fix the Canucks, Mike Gillis might actually be worried about his job.

Luckily, this is the constant whinging of the ‘average’ Vancouver Canucks fan. Having lived and visited a great variety of Canada, it pains me to say that Canuck fans are almost as whiny and hockey-ignorant as the standard Leaf fan. Just as in New York Jr. Toronto, fans in Vancouver are Canuck fans more than hockey fans. Though in Vancouver’s defence, we’ll buck up and cheer a non-Toronto Canadian team in the late rounds of the playoffs.

Look at it logically. At the end of the season, Nonis is out, Gillis is in. Gillis lets the vets go and brings in youth, anchored by our superstar goalie, Roberto Luongo. To me, with a diverse experience in hockey, tells me one thing. We’re rebuilding. But unlike Toronto, it’s not COMPLETELY from scratch. But still, with rebuilding, I would like to tell Canuck fans out there:

It really means we won’t be a big playoff team for a couple of years at least. We must allow time for the team chemistry to develop and the youth to develop into the players and team they can be. Keeping that sentiment in mind, here’s my armchair GM rebuttal to all the village idiots in the GVRD who think they know more than Gillis.

1. The priority right now is to re-sign Bobby Lu. Period. Though we are rebuilding, we’ve gotta show him something in terms of post-season. He’s spent every year of his career, short one, NOT MAKING THE PLAYOFFS. If this rebuilding trend leads us to early April golf, kiss this all-star goalie goodbye.

2. In regards to point one, Sundin helps here two-fold. He gives us more scoring depth, which means the Sedins don’t have to face the strong checking lines every game, and opens up scoring. Our offense is anemic.

3. Sundin isn’t a quick fix. He’s older. It will take time for his stride to really hit. We must all be patient. I’d rather him score like a man possessed in March, not pushing himself too hard now and pulling an end to his career a la Doug Gilmour.

4. Vinnie Vigneault must be patient. Constant line juggling is retarded. You have a young team. Let them grow. Changing things each time you have a panic attack is killing our team.

5. Take that fucking A off of Mitchell’s jersey and give it to Boom Boom already. We’ve endured two Luongo-less months, and if one thing is obvious, it’s the lack of real, heart on your sleeve leadership. Bieksa and Burrows are the only two skaters who fit that bill. Hell, give Ohlund’s A to Burrows while we’re at it. We need to light a fire under their proverbial asses.

6. Bench Taylor Pyatt permanently until some team actually wants to trade for him. Fuck me, look how he plays. It’s like he’s straight from Timbit’s hockey. Why bench Wellwood to have Pyatt? Why not just go to a local rink and find a young kid to play with the Sedins each night?

7. Don’t fire a coach mid-season. Don’t bench a coach. Don’t trade Luongo for Lecavallier. Don’t release Sundin. Don’t… well, you get the point. It seems all of management’s moves are knee jerk responses to fan complaining. If you want to listen to us for one real useful thing, get the fuck rid of the pay-per-view nonsense.

/rant over.

Sometimes you gotta roll the hard six. Like tomorrow, the beginning of the end.

I must be a walking chrome toaster. There are too many asshats around and I just plum don’t fit in. And fuck me, I hate Christmas, with other observations.

I was never originally Ebenezer-esque. Really. Though in all due respect, with my birthday [which I MIGHT give out privately if you email me] falling within a week of the 25^th, and being an only child yielded a big load from Satan Santa. Growing up, not having kids of my own (aside from the two balls of evil fluff) and losing a great deal of the family that I only got to see around the holidays has definitely changed the perspective of the holiday. Nowadays I feel more and more disconnected from the masses, and all this Yule cheer gives me a combination of nausea, depression, and rage.

Now to that LOVELY mixture, add the following asshats (whom increase my sense of separation from the rest of humanity).

All 308 elected Members of Canadian Parliament. We’ve just gone through a whole election. Just. And we may have another one as a gift for the new year.

For the background on it, read the wikipedia article.

Simply put, another election in the spring won’t change a thing. A difference in the results of maybe a handful of seats, that’s it. Still another Harper minority, trying to push an elimination of federal political subsidies. Followed by another no confidence vote. At the rate of the idiocy of these twats, all the funds intended to stimulate the economy will be spent in countless elections to prove nothing. Clearly another election will not change the mandate from the masses.

So our choices are these. A lone Conservative minority [read Reform minority], pushing an agenda that will silence the opposition voices (1984 anyone), or a coalition between the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc (which I tend to prefer, though this may be a wide, grey line between who we chose and who’s actually in office. George W. Bush anyone?)

Out in the Canadian West, we’ve been bombarded with ads on the TeeVee and Radio by the Reform Party, slamming the move, putting Canada’s fate in the hands of the Separatists. Well, for Harper and the Reform Party, the flaw of logic in this move is two-fold. First, consider the major political gaffe in calling out the Bloc. Harper (now twice) swore an oath to serve the whole of Canada, including Quebec, and the lot that want to separate. Harper is force by ethics (which easily explains the logic flaw) to keep Canada whole, and is shooting that whole purpose in the foot with the smear campaign.

Second, he’s demonstrating an absolute lack of respect to Parliamentary protocol. Unless he’s spending millions of dollars to spread a message out to 308 people. The rest of us can’t do a fucking thing until the no confidence vote. Not one thing. Money well spent Mr. Harper?

Looking at it more thoroughly, we are in a catch 22. Stephen is correct. Canada voted overwhelmingly against Stephane Dion and the Liberals. However, we also voted with a strong enough majority against Stephen Harper as the Prime Minister. We just couldn’t decide whether it be Dion, Layton, or Duceppe.

So who’s right? Everyone, and no one. You see, the funny flaw in all of this is that we in Canada never cast a ballot saying we want Harper as PM. Or Dion. Well, I hope you get the point. We voted for our MP to be our voice in Parliament. I really think this is a concept lost on the many, as political affiliation seems to be the only gauge for choice. So what from here? The only viable solution would be to enact legislation requiring all minority governments to have a coalition to keep policy in check.

Sadly I doubt that will happen.

Nor will people shut up about Brian Burke, Mats Sundin, or Sean Avery. Are there no stories to cover in the sport of hockey these days that we have to turn yet another professional sport into a tabloid? I mean, for fuck sakes, the NFL is all about handguns, MLB is the steroid witch hunt, and now hockey has become the land of slamming celebrity ex-girlfriends and their new partners using the ever so prominent catch phrase ’sloppy seconds’.

Enough about Avery already. Fuck me, I don’t care what they do with him post suspension. Can’t the Team dig up more about anyone but he, or Sundin and how he just had to wait 8 months to sign a $10 million deal with Vancouver (he’s really not coming here), or how Burke will be great for the Leafs. Frankly, the only thing Burke will do is allow the Leafs to do the one thing they’ve been good at. Being the clown force of the NHL, upstaging real talent. Don’t believe me? Then ask why they decided to retire Wendel Clark’s 17 the same night the Canadiens mended the way between the franchise and netminding great Patrick Roy, arguably the best goalie ever. It’s like the Leafs retiring Borje Salming’s jersey the same night the Oilers retired Gretzky’s 99.

But it shouldn’t surprise. Toronto is full of classless, low life gits. I guess the economic turmoil is karma for the rest of this. Suck Leafs suck!

Interdum vos ut volvo ferrus six.

What gives more indigestion… Maple Leaf Meat products, or the Maple Leafs?

I think it’s fortuitous that I’m off this week. Ironic that it still took me over twenty four hours to pull my ass off of the sofa with a thought long enough to poke at some keys and make this post, but meh, I need the break from the physical grind of slavery otherwise known as work. Fortuitous in the sense that when I’m at work, for convenience sake, I have sandwiches with deli meat. Gods, when will they ever devise a microwave for a five-ton so I can reheat my meals dammit! Still, for us ‘deli meat’ eaters, we’ve had to deal with this. Mmmm. Sweet Listeria monocytogenes. Well, I can handle pasta all week. Even with crappy store bought sauce.

The initial plan was to be away. Then $1.50 per litre happened. Not really feasible with my not-so reliable car. Bah. And with a potentially very rainy week, the idiot box is the main source of entertainment. But in all reality, I hate television in the summer. Everything’s a repeat (not that the vast majority of programs are shit). And if it weren’t for the Olympics, the only sporting fare for most of the summer is Baseball. I used to be more passionate about Baseball. Now I just follow the standings until September, and then start watching, so long as it doesn’t interfere with anything else. But to watch a regular season game now is the equivalent for me to watching Darts or Competitive Snooker.

But we did have the Olympics. Just finished in time for it to NOT be on for the week off. Rather, in terms of the Olympics, I got to hear Jim Rome slam the Canadian Olympians for having an 0 for in the first week of Olympic competition. How we’re the embarassment of the G8 by being the only nation uncompetitive in the games. It was good to see the local personalities on Team 1040 comment back and stick up for the Great White North. Though with the call ins, the defense of our great nation turned into a dick fight about how to fix the problem.

And it’s the solutions the proletariat come up with that start to identify the problem. People will call in constantly and call for more money. We just need to pump more money into better facilities and the problem will just go away. And in that answer, the problem is inherent. We just don’t care. Put it in perspective. An Olympic champion just doesn’t all of a sudden wake up at age 18 and say ‘I want to be a 100m track champion.’ Those who succeed start young. Very young. Building a world class facility does not make up for that 13 year gap.

And to boot, let’s look at this. To be a runner, does one really need that world class facility? We have roads. We have tracks at schools. Weight machines all over. To be a swimmer, can’t we start in our local pools? Other athletics? Football? Diving? Cycling? Obviously what is missing here is passion and leadership, not facility. We need to give a shit about more than just hockey. Fuck me, do we ever care about hockey. The attitude is right there. Gold or bust. It is a slam against our national character if we can’t beat every other country at the game WE made. We need to care. We need a system that grooms athletes for other sports at an earlier age.

Still, having said that, we got 18 medals, finishing 19^th by Gold medal count, and tied for 14^th by overall medal count. As a whole, our best showing since 1996. And if you look at it this way, if we did as well in the first week of competition, we’d have shown 36 medals, for 8^th place overall in medal count. What was really funny though was Rome just happened to be on vacation the week Canada did well. Coincidence?

Still, all of this gave us something to talk about for two weeks. For the six weeks prior to it, all we heard was Sundin, Sundin, Sundin. Where will he go? The ‘Nucks offered $20 million for two seasons, which he balked at. Nearly two months later, and nothing. The latest rumour is that the New York Rangers are the front runner, though they can’t offer him even close to Vancouver’s money.

But the Rangers effectively lost Jagr to get Naslund. Gave up a two cup captain for a zero cup captain. If this is Mats’ team of choice, I wonder. Wonder if he’s going there to win a cup. Avery-less, I don’t see the Rangers doing much more than making the playoffs, as the roads will this year once again in the east probably will go through Montreal and Pittsburgh. Has Mats played for the Leafs long enough to suffer permanent brain damage?

Or have Canuck fans, some of whom still believe Mats is coming here, believe a Leaf will not only come here, but will take a mediocre at best Canucks squad and lead them to the promised land? Here’s a hint. No matter what Mats decides, come April ‘09, his hockey desires will take a back seat to hitting the links, whether or not his team of choice is in the post season.

Leaf Damage, or Maple Leaf listeriosis, you decide.

Interdum vos ut volvo ferrus six.