I would say that it is very likely I would have no idea what an inukshuk was if it wasn’t for this commercial. Maybe they told us in school one time, but I sure don’t remember it. This commercial on the other hand can not be forgotten. I’m pretty sure this commercial was designed by Canadologists to maximize its ability to bore into the minds of the public. And for this, I love this Heritage Moment.

What we’ve got here is a wounded RCMP officer and some Inuit people, right. They’re taking a break or something and the Inuit, as they are wont to do, start building an inukshuk. RCMP Johnny says to himself “I’ve always wondered what those things were about” and he goes to check it out. The woman doesn’t even need to be asked, though. She knows that people all the time be thinking about inukshuks, so as soon as he gets there she has another guy (her son maybe) translate the purpose of the thing: “Now the People will know we were here.”

And is our only great quotable line from this one. But it’s a great one. They even have to bring it back mere seconds later to close out the piece. It probably wasn’t written that way. I’m pretty sure it just had to happen that way because the line was so quotable. So while it only gives us one line, it’s so well done, I give big points for it. Of the Heritage Moments I’ve reviewed so far, only the Superman can honestly trump this one, because it has both quality and quantity.

But meanwhile, we’ve got the hidden non-educational bit of the story. What is the deal here? How did this RCMPoliceman get hurt? Just a simple slip and fall on an icy rock? Was he attacked by Americans trying to get to the Yukon? Did he sprain his ankle giving a roundhouse kick to the a wendigo? We don’t know. It raises questions and I, for one, would enjoy seeing the tale of these people (a family, probably) helping this guy get wherever they’re going. A television show really ought to have sprung from this.

For doing its job super well and giving us tantalizing hints at a story at the same time, this one gets Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

When I was in New York last year, I saw an inukshuk on display at the United Nations building. I’m no nationalist, but that moment made me feel connected to Canada even more than finding a Tim Hortons in a pizza hut did.

Just these two guys on phones today:

This is gonna be pointless, so don’t bear with me. Yeah, don’t. Just ignore this.

So, two weeks ago, while cutting my fingernails, I missed my left ring fingernail, right? I noticed a few hours later, or even the next day, but I figured “Screw it, I’ll cut it next weekend” and just let it be. By the end of that week I was actually looking forward to cutting my nails again to get it all synched up. So then I did. Fascinating, no? But anyway, I realized later that this is the same finger which I got caught in a machine at work a few years back and had the nail completely pulled out. It took months for it to grow back. So now, in the course of my life, I’ve cut this one specific fingernail probably a half-dozen fewer times than all my other ones. And now this fact is on the Internet! Hooray for technology!

Haiku!

See the golden fog.
See how it rolls over there.
Fooled you! It’s not there.

Yeah, I don’t actually have much to say. I kinda messed up my sleeping habits over the last couple weeks, so now I’m up in the daytime trying to right it. But I’m spending the time trying to get a ton of SecGovs done so I have a nice comfortable buffer. We’ll see how I do.

Back when Geocities decided to commit suicide and take all our hard work with it, I lamented the death of my first website, the Adam West Batcave, but I’m just remembering something else that Geocities took too. I had once created a website devoted to telling the world that Patrick D Ryall sucks.

I think I called the site “geocities.com/pdrsucks/” and on it I wrote from the point of view of a person who supposedly knew me in school and had an intense distaste for me. I’m pretty sure I only got a few paragraphs of insane ranting done, but I had always planned to get back to it. Unfortunately, as time passed, I forgot about it. It likely would have come back to me at some point, but then I forgot about it when it mattered most, at the end of the Geocities era. When I got everything from the Batcave, I forgot to get to pdrsucks and save what I had done. I could have transferred it to some blog somewhere or something. So now all that is lost. I never linked to the site anywhere, because it wasn’t finished, so I doubt it exists in any cache online anywhere. It is lost to the ages.

I remember I told Kiiip about it as I was doing it, but I never told Marq. In fact, the entire reason I was building a site about how much I suck was because I hoped, someday, it would get into search engines Marq would stumble across it and be amazed. But now that will never happen…

So anyway, Marq, now you know. Maybe my finally telling you this could be considered your birthday gift since I got you zero ones for your actual birthday last weekend?

Here’s some thing I drew while watching things:

You see, they stopped talking so that she could take their order and she misunderstood it. If I explain it hard enough, maybe it’ll justify its existence.

And, of course, we have the Phone Guys:

I guess it must be colder for the Phone Guys than it is in the real world. This Winter ain’t had nothin’ on me.

Okay, so today (or Wednesday anyway. For me this is still my Wednesday waking period, even though it is after midnight) a bunch of websites shut themselves off in protest or whatever. Obviously I didn’t do that for the Book of PDR, for various reasons including the fact I wouldn’t know how. Also including the fact that since nobody much really comes here, so nobody would notice. But the main important super serious reason is this: I’m a radical anti-capitalist who pretty much endorses all forms of copyright infringement and piracy or movies, music, and software. I want it mandatory and taught in preschools until everyone has no money ever. So obviously I’m the exact kind of enemy the SOPA bill wants to destroy. Therefore the reasonable people who want the bill defeated but aren’t actually insane would be better off not associating with me. Right? I’d damage their credibility.

(Actually, I don’t think there’s much copyright infringement on my site. The Canadian Heritage Moments, maybe would count? I’m sure there’s a picture of Batman on here somewhere? But mostly I’ve preferred to keep things PDR-related (probably to our detriment).)

Anyway, that’s not the real reason I’m doing this post. At some point I made a promise to use this side to record all my encounters with police officers, so now I’ve got to do that. Unfortunately, though, this one isn’t me being suspicious in any way. Basically I just got home from work and found a situation in the lobby of my building (it isn’t important the details because it involves people I don’t know) and even though everything seemed to be in hand with 911 already called and such, I didn’t want to leave until I was sure everything worked out so I wound up holding the door for the three cops and two paramedics who showed up. That’s pretty much the extent of it.

But here’s what I took from it: All those cops looked younger than me. What The Chunks Is That About?

Okay, so, the first SecGov page to be put up in the new fashion is up there. For now I’m thinking that I’ll be scheduling SecGovs to go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then we’ll see how that works. Still a work in progress all this, but we’re doing our best. Or at least our not worst.

Anyway, here’s a story:

Dr. Skeet Bonzo studied asteroids. But one day, through no fault of his own, just pure dumb chance, one of the asteroids he studied crashed into Skeet’s car. Skeet, who had been in an appliance store when the car had been destroyed, recognized the asteroid even after the impact. “Why, that’s BF2990P” he exclaimed as saw the wreckage. And then he realized something that sent a shiver down his spine: That asteroid’s designation was the same as the license plate number of the car it had just destroyed. “I never noticed that one of the asteroids had the same number as my license plate because I dealt with so many asteroids,” he said to some kid who had wandered to see the damage up but didn’t actually care what Skeet had to say. Skeet, for a moment, was so amazed by the coincidence that he was dumbstuck. “The odds of that asteroid hitting that car were astronomical! I can’t believe that it happened!” but Skeet fought off thoughts he considered unscientific by rationalizing it, noting that the asteroid’s designation existed only as a thing given to it by the scientists, and was not an actual property of the asteroid itself. And besides, given the vast amount of time for coincidences to occur in, they are more likely to. Anyway, because his car had been crushed, Skeet had to walk home carrying the microwave he had just bought. On the way he was mugged and shot. The mugger ran away and, as he lay dying, Skeet happened to notice that the serial number on the microwave was “BF2990P”. With that, Skeet said “Well, that’s just stupid. I’m glad to be getting out of here” and died. Skeet’s fellow scientists decided to pay their respects to Skeet by naming an asteroid after him. A year later that very asteroid came crashing to Earth, hitting an apartment building and destroying one apartment. What apartment? Specifically apartment number BF2990P. And the resident of that apartment who was killed at that time? The very criminal who had killed Skeet and who, by sheer coincidence alone had also been named Skeet Bonzo. Suffice it to say, when they met up as ghosts they all had a good laugh.

Anyway, that’s it for today. I gotta go. In the meantime, I wonder what would be involved, legally, in arranging to get my skull encased in amber when I’m dead…

Now, I’m only giving you Phone Guys today, but that is because we’re changing how we do things. The SecGov comics will now be appearing more than once a week and Mondays will be for other comics like Phone Guys, Little Choys and anything else I want. The SecGov stuff will have a permanent place at the top of the page, with posts like this below, like if this was a proper webcomic site. Sure, people might miss out on new posts if they don’t scroll down past the comic, but I can’t help everything, people. Anyway, should be SecGov up tomorrow if all goes well.

Today we’re beginning the next SecGov Robots story:

Also Phone Guys: