This one is interesting. We’ve got dapper John Matheson standing in a dark void, struggling over how to convince Canada to agree on a flag. That is pretty much the entirety of the thing. His speech in the void. We’re told, in the end, that Canada does eventually agree, but that is just an afterthought. And it is weird, if you think about it too much. Which is exactly what I do.

At first we could suppose that he’s just having a soliloquy in the Flag Committee Room, but it isn’t so. John is talking to someone in that void. It’s possible that he is talking to us, via a breaking of the fourth wall, but he says when the other politicians walk in “I was just talking about you” and I doubt he’d have said that if he was talking to himself. This indicates that either his special awareness of the medium is already common knowledge, or there actually is someone in the void with him. In either case, he then demonstrates another magic ability: Whichever flag he is thinking of forms from the ether just by saying “this” and making a simple gesture of his head for the benefit of the person he was speaking with. What I’m saying is John Matheson was probably a wizard. In real life.

Also, he’s doing an awful lot of walking around in the void. Just saying.

Anyway, to business. I have made a big deal about the ability to quote them being the biggest factor in my liking of a Heritage Moment, but this one kinda goes against the grain. A few lines are pretty good (“But blue is not an official Canadian color*” and “Prime minister AND Mr. Diefenbaker…”), but really they don’t stand alone as well as examples from, say, the Superman minute. Does this work against this one? I’m going to go with “no”. You know why? Because this whole monologue is so strong that if I had the mental capacity, I would commit this whole commercial to memory and quote it in its entirety whenever I felt like it. And that would be sweet.

Apart from quotability, I have to say that looking at all the Alternate Earth Canada Flags is kinda fun. I bet this was one of the cheapest and easiest Heritage Minutes to make, but it does not suffer for it. And looking back at this from my present times, I can add that the “I wonder, I wonder” also reminds me of the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, which is another plus for this Canada History Commercial. I am fully willing to give this one Five out of Six Pieces of PDR’s Reviewing System cake. It’s simple, magical, and I like it.

*And yes, I’m still gonna spell “color” the way I prefer even though the speaker would have spelled it another way. This is how the Nation of PDR rolls.

This guy is Paco McZap. He’s a lazy wizard from the Wrong Alternate Universe.

Previously on the Book of PDR:

Back in early 2009 the computer I owned was very virused-up and went and died. A tragedy to be sure, but the part that stings the most is that I had been writing a book and had none of it backed up outside of that computer. While most of the book was meant to be a collection of short stories from back in the Contains2 days it was framed by a sequence starring none other than the gentleman above.

Paco McZap was a young man who was discovered to have great potential as for magic, but as it turned out he was stupid and had a very “when am I ever going to need that” attitude towards his studies so he just became a lazy wretch who used magic to summon pizza delivery men to his tower quicker. I was quite pleased with how my attempt to tell his life story had been going so I am reluctant to try again because I don’t think I’d do it as well, but I’ve not forgotten him altogether. To prove this, I have drawn a picture of him. There you go.

So, last week I totally got an extra half of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in my pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.

See?

Do you see?

As you probably know, since Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are awesome and everyone should know how they work by now, the average pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups comes with three individual Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. The pack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups I bought last week had the normal three Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and an addition half of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup! You can kinda see how the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup on the right was a little bit damaged by the extra half of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup which was smushed into the package with it.

Now it is unfortunate that sudden and unprecedented confusion for me on how to get the pictures from my camera to my computer delayed me a week in sharing this amazing news to the loyal public, but sure I couldn’t make such a claim without photographic evidence. People would assume I was just making it up for the fame. But I feel the announcement is not so abated because nothing else of interest has happened to me in the interim to mitigate its importance.

I got an extra half of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup everybody!

It has been some time since last time so this time I’ll take the time to… uh… post.

Anyway, I’m like really close to finishing Adventure Dennis. Like really close. So all you fans who don’t actually exist need not wait much longer.

In other news, I have not yet received any powers from aliens or wizards or the Secret Government. So… That’s about all I have to say.

Okay, so it was like 10:00-ish when I walked Marq to the bus stop as he left for work. Let’s say I got home at 10:30 or something. Then I watched about an hour and a half of Strangers With Candy while I read comics and baked cookies. Then I showered, then did the dishes. I wasn’t wearing my watch and I figured it was about one, one-thirty at the latest. For someone who lives on a night-schedule, that’s plenty of time to still do something. Only when I looked at the clock on the phone it was effin’ Four O’Nine!

Logically, I assume I experienced a blackout caused by abduction by aliens, or perhaps time-travellers. Maybe wizards. In any case, I feel utterly violated by the probing that I assume took over two hours of my time. If I don’t gain superpowers from this, I’m going to be very unhappy. I could have spent that time building a tree fort. Or buying snake warmers. Or washing a sword. Or something…

Haiku!

Which way is the store?
Y’know, the one that sells ham.
I know that you know.

Honestly. I was multitasking! That should have saved me time, not allowed it to slip away unnoticed. Curses!