What’s in a name? That’s the sort of question that arises when you watch the Canadian Propaganda Piece I am reviewing this time around.

So this one starts out with some people (Europeans) walking until they are next to some other people (North American Natives, I would assume in Canada what with that being the point). So the Natives speak in some weird gibberish code* and the Head European asks his friendly neighborhood priest to translate. The priest informs the Head European that the Natives have invited them to the nation and it is called “Canada” and, yes, that’s right, this commercial is about the secret origin of Canada’s name. Anyway, everyone is happy to know the name of the nation except one guy: He’s not the priest and he’s not the Head European, so basically we don’t know who he is. We just have to imagine. Probably he’s the ship’s carpeter.

* I am 1/256 Wampanoag, so I am allowed to make this joke. (It’s my only race card, let me play it!)

Anyway this guy is so sick of putting down carpet on the ship that when a chance to show off comes up he is All Over It. Basically he’s like “I know that word! That’s not the name of the nation! The old man is just talking about the village down there!” but the priest stands by his translation and Canada is called Canada forever after.

Once again I’m sure that what we are seeing here is not an actual event that played out. Yes the name Canada likely comes from the word for village in some language (and I feel somewhat ashamed that I don’t know which), but it is a safe bet that the Pedant vs. Priest argument we see unfold here was made up solely for our benefit. And I am totally okay with that! This one has several lines I like to quote and would be easily recognized by others who grew up in the right era. Job well done!

I also like the music throughout this piece. It ramps up the drama of the whole affair, which is good considering this is a commercial where one group of people invite some other people in to talk and the closest thing we have to a conflict is a disagreement over what a word means. Not exactly a drama-explosion no matter how many . So the music plays throughout to keep emotions from dying. In a way it reminds me of the Irish Kids moment and my mind will try to tack on the upbeat jig from that one. Really, if they ended all of these with a jig there’d be a lot more happy endings.

Anyway, as I said, I do like this one. I’m going to give it Four and a Half out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System Cake.

In other news, the comments section of YouTube is, as always, filled with idiotic arguments, in this case about how evil Whitey is for conquering the natives. Now I didn’t stray too far into the comments (I am a human being and we can only take so many YouTube comments), but I didn’t see any discussion of the real scandal in here: Note that the religious man is proven wrong and just flat out denies it. This commercial is CLEARLY trying A) to depict religious persons as stubborn and foolish, or B) Show that God intervened to make sure that Canada got the right name. That is obviously what people on the Internet need to be arguing about. (Edit: I’ve linked to an official video since the original post, so I don’t know/care if that argument is still in the comments)

I am now on the Twitter. Who would have thought that this could have ever occurred? How many people bothered to think about it at all? Apart from me, probably not many. I guess a lot has changed since 2009. I still don’t have one of those mobile devices that let’s one do the Internet from wherever they want, but I’ve softened on the idea that I can’t fit my thoughts into small chunks. I’m totally going to start cutting my thoughts into bite-size chunks now forever.

You can totally see my first post directly under this one. Why is that? That is because Marq, my near-silent partner in this whole website endeavour, has set things up so anything I post on Twitter still ends up here, on the site where I obsessively collect everything I do! Hooray! Thanks, Marq!

So the moral of this story is, things barely change for people reading the site, but I’m also out on other sites. Kinda neat.

Okay, as I said previously, today’s SecGov update is just some single thing I doodled at work one time long ago. But unlike I said previously, it will not be immediately followed by my next storyline. Instead, to give me just a little bit more time to heal my drawing parts, Marq will be back on Thursday’s page with another single page strip. Then, hopefully, next week will be back in action.

In other news, I think I have updated all the automatic credit card payments that I need to with my new credit card information. It is a relief to have it done, though in the process I discovered that there has been a thirty dollar a month payment I have been making for years and I simply don’t know what it was for. All this time I just assumed it had something to do with the site, but apparently not. The website it says I am paying has no explanation of what they do or anything. So I am not giving these people my new information (and anyway I don’t think I would know how to do so if I wanted to).

Assuming this doesn’t turn out to be something important that I don’t understand, it is perfectly likely that I am about to stop paying an unnecessary monthly fee that I have probably sunk thousands into at this point.

I have resolutions to announce regarding my aforementioned missing wallet. It was indeed found in the theatre where it had been assumed to have been lost. I got a call (as expected, during day-person hours) and was told I could go pick it up.

SO I DID THAT!

I am now, once again, in possession of my wallet. So that’s a plus. Unfortunately, I had cancelled my credit cards and my bank card, so now I have to get the replacements for those. But those are the easiest things to replace that were in there anyhow, so it is a small price to pay. As long as I remember to update all my online payment things to the new credit card numbers when I get them. The Internet needs this information.

REMEMBER TO DO THAT PDR!

Something I forgot to mention before, though: Just hours before I lost the wallet, I also lost my sunglasses. This was less significant. Sure, I hate to venture into cursed natural light without my sunglasses…

…but I lose sunglasses at a rate of something like three or four a year. I don’t like to lose them, but I’m hardened to that particular loss.

Still, after I looked for the missing eyewear, the waitress in the restaurant told me she’d keep a look out for them so when I went downtown to get the wallet, I stopped in at that restaurant, it being practically next to the cinema. The same young lady was working there today and she was not only able to return my sunglasses, she had the perplexing story that they were apparently already behind the counter pretty much as soon as I’d left the previous day. It is unknown how that occurred. My current leading theory is that I did not, as originally thought, lose the glasses while sitting, but perhaps near the door as I first removed them upon entering. From there they were perhaps found by some other employee found and put behind the counter even as we ate. Could be true! But we’ll never know!

So anyway, in these two days I have managed to lose a bunch of stuff and then get it back. The moral is: In life, stuff happens, deal with it. This is a common moral in my life.

Something I’ve seen many times over the years over the years on television and the Internet is people saying that talking about one’s dreams makes one a bore. Basically what it all boils down to is the message that “Yeah, dreams are weird, we get it.” Well I hate to go against television and the Internet, but I am here to say that I totally like hearing about dreams. I often like hearing about dreams more than I like hearing about actual things that have happened to people.

Maybe somehow the complainers have just been so overwhelmed by descriptions of dreams that it has grown tiresome, but as someone who doesn’t do a whole lot of talking to people (and talking about dreams makes up such a small, small portion of that talking) this is not a problem for me. I love the surreality of dreams so much that my own occasionally remembered dreams are not enough to fill my interest. Hearing about good strangeness from the subconsciousnesses of others is the only way I can think to fill the void.

I’m not, however, one of those people who likes analyzing what the “symbols” in dreams mean. My dreams are typically so bizarre that I have doubt that any such meaning is in there. Plus, the oddness is what I like most about the dreams, so why ruin it?

With this in mind I’m going to repost something from the Contains2 era. Though the dream in question happened years earlier, I had discussed it often enough that the details were still fresh in my mind on Saturday 22 of June 2002 when I posted this:

The OJ Simpson Bus-Boat Dream

Okay, I had this dream once, years ago (I think it was in grade ten, so whichever year that was). I’ve had myself a lot of strange dreams (and it seems like 75% of them are set in malls, is there some sort of symbolism behind that?) but this dream is up there in it’s not being surreal, not just being wacky. I’ve told it to many people, and now I’m going to write it up here to prevent me from forgetting even more of it than I already have.

I don’t think it actually started at this point, but this is where my memories kick in:

I’m in my own house, and I’m a butler. I’m going through my various duties and I happen to look out my window. Just as it does in the real world the window has a view of the Atlantic Ocean. Out there, driving on the ocean at the horizon is a bus, which I immediately recognize as the OJ Simpson Bus-Boat. Not finding this at all strange, I go back to work.

But when I look out the window again, I see that the Bus-Boat has changed course. It’s heading directly for my house! I dive away from the window, and I hear the Bus-Boat crashing onto the area in front of my house.

Things get blurry right here again, but I think I talked to my parents for a few minutes about the Bus-Boat having crashed in front of our house. When my memory comes clear again…

A panoramic, birds-eye-view of the Bus-Boat (now that it is on land it’s a boat. A military ship actually, maybe even a carrier) as it is cordoned off by military personnel and helicopters circle it (military or media? I couldn’t tell you). It’s about the size that such a boat would really be, and takes up the length of my street (Himmelman Drive, Boy!). In the real world, the road is curved, but the boat manages just fine.

Things get blurry again and then me and a guy who I knew from school at the time are disguising ourselves as water deliverymen to sneak into the Bus-Boat. I don’t know what happened inside, but when we came out I had found a secret device: An Electric Arm!

I don’t think my memory is blurry here, I think the dream just skipped scenes and suddenly I was wearing the Electric Arm and leading a team of commandos or mercenaries or something. We’re fighting this ogre and he’s got us cornered on a winding staircase that has a big brass pole at its center. The ogre repeatedly charges at us and I hold him off by hitting him with the Electric Arm. Each time I strike the ogre numbers fly out of him and he moves back. Eventually we’re at the top of the stairs and the ogre is at the bottom resting against the brass pole. Brilliantly, I use my Electric Arm on the pole, sending a shock down and forcing the ogre to run away.

I think the dream went on, but that is all I can still remember. For a dream I had like six years ago, I think that’s pretty good. (Wow! I don’t even think I did the math wrong, I think it really has been six years since grade ten.)
If there is any meaning behind that dream, I certainly don’t get it.