Okay, so, as I’ve mentioned, I’m in a state of brokeness these last few months. But having just gotten paid and having woken up pretty early by my standards, I decided to get some shopping in. Today, I’m spendin’.

First off, I went down to the comic shop to pick up the stuff in my account. I figure I should at least clean out my account every few months so they don’t hate me. Judging by the number of Captain Americas that were waiting for me, I’d say it had been three months since my last trip to the shop. While I was there, I also picked up the Hark A Vagrant book, since that’s something I wanted to pick up a few months back or whenever it was when it came out, but I wasn’t spendin’ then. Today, I’m spendin’.

Then I went and got groceries from that store that is below my apartment. I think most people will agree that food is not something I should feel bad about spenin’ on. Mostly I think I did pretty good. I got stuff that was on sale and stuff that is frozen, so I don’t panic and assume I have to eat it all right away. But then I went and bought some juice. I love juice and all, but if I’m supposed to be saving money, it is a dumb expenditure. There is water, free water, pumped into my apartment for free! Someone remind me not to buy juice ever again until I’ve got at least $2000 less debt than I’ve got now. I don’t care if I am spendin’, I could be spendin’ more wisely.

One of the other things I decided was worth spendin’ on was a pack of four Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup “bars” which, despite being called bars on the package are actually the regular three cups, which is exactly what I was expecting, I’m not complaining about that. My thought process was like this: “Those things cost $1.50 each in the vending machine at work and this pack of four costs only twice that. Sound logic. I could get them pretty cheap and they could last several days. Probably worth spendin’”

But now I’m actually looking at these things. They have simply got too much associated garbage. There’s the bag they all come in, then there’s the four wrappers for each “bar” and then each one also has a paper support thing and then each individual cup is also in a little individual cup/wrapper thing. I’m not good at math, but I’m pretty sure that adds up to A LOT of garbage. It makes me feel wasteful. Someone needs to get me a better means of enjoying Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups without producing so much waste. Until then, I don’t think I should be spendin’ on them either.

Also, I suspect they will not last as long as I’d hoped either.

Gee, I’m running late with the comics post this day.

First up: Little Choy:

Wait, what is going on here? Oh. I’m being told that Little Choy is tired of insulting humans and that, all year long, he is going to be travelling to other worlds, other galaxies, and other universes to insult aliens. You really can never tell where this guy will turn up next.

And of course, the Phone Guy are, as always, having a conversation on their phones:

A conversation between Kiiip and myself has recently made me realize that God existed before the Earth, so he is extraterrestrial, and thus an alien. Kiiip amended it to make it clear: He’s an Illegal Alien. God has no legal right to live here on Earth and he is taking our jobs and our women (our virgins, even). And then he had a kid, an anchor baby, to give him a credible claim to humanity. Go figure. We shoulda built a fence.

Haiku!

I see frankensteins.
They’re coming for me. Oh no.
I must run away!

Not much of note just now. Trying to get more things done at once than I’m actually getting done. To make things worse, Marq is again Internetless. I’m going to have to find some superior way of making us millionaires. A quicker way.

At this exact moment I’m weighing the pros and cons of taking a nap. Cons are currently winning, but my eyelids are really filibustering here.

Hey, a few days ago was Groundhog Day. I didn’t consciously know it was coming, but I must have subconsciously, because my dream the night before had Bill Murray in it. So that’s neat.

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: