Global Cooling?

Ahoy, Mates! I'm back from my rejuvenating vacation visiting the wilds of Canada. That's the large, white area North of the USA on your maps and GPS's, for those of you who weren't geography majors. When The Cap'n puts up a sign that says "Gone Fishing," it ain't just for show! And as always, it was a relaxing success - but still packed with enough adventure to make it noteworthy. My girlfriend caught the biggest large-mouth bass of her life, a sweet 19-incher weighing 4 pounds. The guide we had with us said "OK, let's see you beat that..." And so I did, on the next cast. I thought my line was stuck in the weeds, but then the weeds started moving away while I was reeling in. About 10 minutes later, a 23-incher was in the boat, and the scale came to rest at 6 pounds even! Of course, after taking a few photos for posterity and bragging rights, we tossed 'em back in for the next crew to enjoy. Another feature of the trip was our annual "shore lunch," where we cook-up a couple of the little 1-2 pounders with some beans, back-bacon, potatoes, onions and other goodies over a campfire during a break in fishing. This year, the new adventure was a Chip-wich. Our guide had us help him in slicing up a couple of large potatoes, super-thin like paper. He then threw a fistful of bacon and sliced onion into the boiling oil of our cast-iron skillet, followed by a couple handfuls of potatoes. Sizzle! Crackle! Crack! Brown! Two minutes later, we had fresh campfire potato chips. He said to take a large chip, stack a piece of bacon on it, then a piece of onion, then another chip on top, creating the ever-so-tasty-and-maybe-not-so-healthy Chip-wich (chip sandwich). Since I am a modest Cap'n and very aware of my curvy figure, I stopped after about 20 of them. Ok, it may have been 50. But it's hard to stack and eat and count, so get off my back! All I can say, is that's as close to Heaven as I've ever been on this old rock.

The other thing of note on this trip was the temperature. We've been up on the Rideau Canal in Eastern Ontario numerous times, when it's been 80, 90 or above during mid-July. This time, we may not have even seen 70 degrees once (it's hard to say, with Canadians figuring everything in that crazy "Celsius" thing the way they do). I can tell you that every morning we had 3 layers on when we set out on the lake, and with the wind and a bit of mist, it was downright nippy. Even traveling through Pennsylvania and New York, we kept hearing about how cool this year has been. I liked one of the headlines from a weather guy on the Canadian Broadcasting Company: "Well folks, the Summer that never was, continues to never be."
I'm not complaining though. The Canadian people (also known as Lumberjacks and Mounties) are so incredibly warm and friendly, it always feels like home away from home. Since they don't use pesticides in Canada, you always have to keep an eye out for the wayward mosquito or 2 or 3 or 50. But without pesticides, and most fertilizer being the natural kind, it means just about everything you eat or drink there is organic. In the USA you pay a lot extra for that, but in Canada it's the norm. So here's to our frozen neighbors, another job well done. SALUTE!

The London Daily Telegraph recently raised questions about researchers from Cleveland State University, and the project they chose to write about in recent anatomy journals. It seems these curious scientists chose to write about female anatomy, and for their subjects they chose to analyze and assess the physical traits of 195 female characters, all of whom were high-visibility cast-members from the first 20 James Bond films. After delicate and time-consuming research, they revealed their surprising results: More of the women were brunette than blond. Yes, it's a stunner. If that weren't enough to shock the public-at-large, there was even more. They determined that a full 90 percent of the 195 femme-fatales were young, slim and of above-average looking. Holy cow...these guys certainly got to the BOTTOM of things!

Welcome to the 19th Century:

A New York Auditor was recently checking into some strange-looking issues, which he felt were possibly fraud-related. To his amazement, they were not fraud but factual. The New York Police Department spent $99,000 on a contract for "typewriter repair," which will take on increased importance since between 2008 and 2009 the NYPD bought thousands of brand-new typewriters, both manual and electric, costing the city almost $1 million dollars. With everything that's happened in the world, the NYPD is still not even close to computerizing some of its daily-use forms, such as property and evidence reports. Can you imagine the shock of young recruits, raised on Dells, I-Phones and Blackberries, being shown to a desk at the Precinct with a manual Underwood typewriter? It's Back-To-The-Future all over again. Maybe Sergeant McFly will figure it out.

A pair of beekeepers were married last month in China wearing outfits completely covered with thousands of living bees. The groom said he has been working with bees for more than twenty years, and it was an obvious choice for starting their big day. According to the bride, "it was an amazing feeling to have a carpet of living bees moving over my body." Let's hope the groom can leave as lasting an impression as his winged friends. The more than 250 invited guests reportedly stayed as far away from the couple as possible during the event.

My question is Who played at the reception? Sting?