This isn't even a little bit funny.

It's past the middle of April, and we're into Music Festival week, where I have to drive literally hundreds of km (29 km one way; round that off to 30, then multiply by 15) back and forth to a nearby town for our daughters to compete in piano, vocal and musical theatre. And I don't like winter driving. And what is going on outside at this very moment is winter. I know this is Canada, but even here, we're supposed to have something resembling Spring right now.

In the olden days when people were ignorant and superstitious, they would blame this on the weather gods. But now we have Al Gore.  I'm long past even hoping for a little bit of Global Warming. At this point, I'm praying that our government will let us keep our carbon tax so that we can use it to heat our homes in June. Cuz the planet isn't overheating. Not here. Not even a little bit.

The view out my North patio doors, blocked by the driven snow.

An artistic (blurry) rendering of my patio chairs, buried in snow.
The melting drops on the window in the foreground represent my tears of frustration at Al Gore, and all Global Warmists and politicians who think taxing us will change the weather. 

My "garden."  I use the term loosely. 

Promises, promises

Not that I want to pick on Mr. Gore especially (cough); after all, he's not the only alarmist, but it's possible that he's made the most money off his fear-mongering. (Oh wait, mybad; that's money made from fossil fuels.) And I have just one teeny question to ask him: WHEN IS THE GLOBAL WARMING GOING TO START? and CAN IT START IN SASKATCHEWAN, PLEASE? Pretty please?

Here it is, March, and yes, I know March always has unpredictable weather (heck, so does January, February, April, and so on.  Do my classmates remember the blizzard of '82 that happened on the day of our high school graduation on the last weekend in May?) At any rate, there is such a thing as "normal and "seasonal" temperatures for this time of year, and -26 degrees Centrigrade is NOT IT.

I don't mind the snow--truly I don't, except when it's all over the highway and makes you cancel appointments or makes it dangerous to drive. With the fresh fall of snow, I might even get out to use the snowshoes that I received for Christmas.

But the cold: I can no longer stand the cold. Not in March. Please Mr. Gore, let loose the Dogs of Warming ... or at least open up one of your many vacation homes  to winter-refugees, so we can get away from this chilly misery. Some of us can't afford tropical vacations, because we're trying to keep up with the cost of not freezing to death and stuff.

Too funny not to share.
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Let me fix that subtext for you...

So now Walmart is charging for bags. Because you know, it's not enough that they have TAKEN OVER THE EARTH (at least, all the parts where commerce and trade happen); now they want to save it too! Rah, rah, sis boom bah. 

Fixed: "Together we can reduce continue to use plastic bags waste to keep but YOU'LL have to pay for them; we really couldn't care less about our planet healthier!"
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Free advice for Tim Hortons

"Drive Thru" 

for bicycles and horses and buggies only...no, wait. 

Who is advising you guys? An operative from Starbucks? Second Cup? McDonald's? As Napoleon Dynamite would say, "Idiot!" Timmy's, you've already shot yourself in both feet. Don't aim for your knees now. Time to extract the bullets and bind up the wounds, if you want to survive amongst working class Canadians. Do not cave to the enviro-nazis who hate Ethical Oil (Canadian energy) but don't mind doing business with misogynistic OPEC dictators.

However, if you want to be trampled under by Starbucks, go ahead; assisted suicide is now legal in Canada. If you're gonna stiff blue collar Canadians (and your own energy sector--what powers your coffeemakers--wind turbines?) then I can forego your frosty chocolate thingy, no matter how tasty it looks.
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OK, so March has come in like a lion

We woke this morning to -24C with a -35C wind chill. I'm waiting patiently for the temperature to start turning more lambish. In the meantime, the warmists claim that the "pause" may last for 20 more years. And THEN we'll finally get some global warming. Twenty years is a long time to continue fleecing taxpayers and coercing us to buy curly light bulbs. On a related note, the Prophet Steyn (PBUH), continues to be eerily prescient. And he probably thought he was making a far-fetched joke when he compared climate "scientists" to sex offenders.

Update: Talk about eerie. Mrs. Beazly and I, with NO collusion, and living thousands of km apart, actually each posted about Mark Steyn and climate change within minutes of each other. Brain-sharing, what?
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Weather or not, YOU AGREE.

That seems to be the slogan in some circles of climate science (and government) these days: it doesn't matter what the weather's actually doing because  WE ALL AGREE THAT THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED, and anyone who engages in unwarmthink will be made to regret it.
Mark Steyn on the latest climate craziness.
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Earth Hour

Is over now for you folks in the Eastern Time Zones. I hope you did it up right. It won't start here in SK for another hour, but I plan to have all my lights on, as well as my big screen TV, my home theatre system, my outdoor Christmas lights, and probably (for movie treats) my blender, my popcorn maker, and maybe my oven. Too bad I can't run the treadmill as well, but I did that this morning.

Oh, and I've renamed the event at my house: it's now "Christ, Lord of Heaven and Earth Hour."

I enjoyed this NatPo column, which explains how Earth Hour (besides being stupid and pointless) is also wasteful of energy, and ADDS to carbon emissions (candles pollute! Duh).
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More IWD fun

This just in, via email. Not sure why I received it, because I am not a member of the CWL, but that's a story for another day. You know what? I'm not even going to fisk this, because you gals are all smart enough to do it yourselves.

And I'm tired. I have some dishes to wash, and a school day/week to finish (a.k.a. "mentoring my children in their Education Story") and a long article to write, due Monday. And later I'm going to "take a baby step towards food sovereignty" by cooking dinner, using some veggies I grew last summer in my garden--and I didn't even need a workshop or small group sharing to accomplish any of it!

In short, I'm going to observe International Women's Day by being a MOM, in the Mom Arena. (BTW, the "Food Arena" sounds like MY kind of sports facility. I wonder if that's where they stage The Hunger Games...)

I just have this to add: "Unrecognized leadership roles"??? Has this lady never heard of, oh... women PIONEERS? This is the part that really burns: my TAX dollars are funding this detritus.

Just think on this for a moment: to observe International Women's Day (a feminist feast day), the government (run by feminists) is using confiscated tax dollars to teach women how to cook and raise gardens. Do you know why women lost these skills? Feminism. Head exploding now.

The Tale of Al, and the culture he helped spawn

Have you ever wondered how environmentalism came to take over the universe? The Sultan explains.

Racism was bad, but it wouldn't kill everyone. Neither would AIDS. World Hunger was something for the Africans to worry about. But Global Warming brought back Armageddon in a big way. Like the Cold War, cold basements or bungee jumping, it reminded the numbed children of privilege that they could die at any moment. And it stroked their egos by telling them that, just like in all their favorite Saturday Morning Cartoons, only they could save the world.

 Al Gore, like many a bearded prophet, had gone to his mansion in the wilderness of Belle Meade (median income $194,016) and returned with pie charts and cockamamie theories made up by other people that would make him extremely rich. Idealism was a brand, and unlike Clinton, Gore seemed sincere, if only because he came off as too unimaginative not to be.

Being a greenie offers status that pretends not to be status:

Anyone could afford good art, so those with discerning taste chose bad art. Anyone could vacation abroad, so they bought old farm houses, restored them and painted bad art while trying to grow their own food.

LOL, but, as Far Side's caveman Thag says, "It get better."

Environmentalism was the ur-brand of philanthropy. A philanthropy as big as the planet for a cause so generous that it was completely anti-materialistic. And like all luxury, it was also hugely and obscenely profitable.
[...]
Environmentalism, like all idealism for hire, sells out the one thing that it stands for...  the right to pollute.
The right to pollute is not a small thing in a world where exhalation is pollution. The right to pollute means the right to drive a car, build a factory, buy non-local produce, eat a burger, fly to Miami and exhale. It is nothing less than the right to live.
Communism criminalized commerce and then legalized it on its terms. Environmentalism criminalizes life and legalizes it on its terms. The terms are paying a tribute to one of the many green companies owned wholly or partially by Al Gore and his merry band of green investors who steal from the rich and give to the even richer, and steal from the poor and give to the Gore.

[...] One minute you're warning about fossil fuels and the next minute you're selling your news channel  to a Middle Eastern oil tyranny for 500 million bucks.

[...] Forget claiming that you invented the comma and the cocoa bean while on a conference call with Isaac Newton and just focus on warning everyone that the planet is about to explode. A lie as big as a planet. A lie that was too big to fail. 

"Hollow Men in a Hollow Earth" by Daniel Greenfield.
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I heart Rebecca Taylor

Because she is smart and funny. And because she speaks the truth about the human condition. (Disclosure: my crop-researcher hubby has done some work with GMOs, so I take the hysteria --rampant even in Catholic circles-- with a grain of salt.)

As a former California girl, I am aware that my state of origin is full of contradictions like women who are on the Pill eating nothing but organically grown produce.

heh. 

Californians are not the only one who seem conflicted about genetic engineering. There are many people who would support cloning for stem cells but would not eat meat from a cow cloned with the same technique. I have always said that if I was forced to choose between implanting myself with stem cells from my dead embryonic clone or drinking milk from a cloned cow, I would ask, "Do you have any Oreos?"

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It's their weekend home

...and they probably run screaming from it by Sunday night, due to the claustrophobia. Only in Sweden.

 I understand the whole Small is Beautiful and Sustainable Living movements, but this seems like an example of well-off western eco-nuts pretending to be poor on the weekend, in order to soothe their guilty carbon-footprint consciences. It must be incomprehensible to people in underdeveloped nations who have to live like this all the time. Outhouse indeed.

 But you see, if you embrace the Tiny Sparse Lifestyle meme (even just superficially) then you really feel no obligation to help others escape their miserable conditions--those people who just want, as George Bailey would say, "A couple of decent rooms and a bath." (This clip, of course, comes from an era when people borrowed modestly, worked hard, lived modestly, and were determined to pay off their loans.) Things kind of spiralled out of control in the decades after that. Now we have unionized government workers retiring at 50 on fat pensions so that they can build a tiny crude eco-friendly house out in the country so that they can pretend to be poor and dispossessed on the weekends.

Next week on Houzz: "Hobo Chic: Living Large in a Repurposed Apple Crate"
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If you use cloth grocery bags, you need to watch this.

I always thought the movement to switch to cloth grocry bags was evil, and not just because it was spurred by earth worship. Of course, as Pundette (actually guest-poster PJM) points out, environmentalists won't mind if a few old people die of ecoli poisoning if it will save a turtle, fish or bird.
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I'm sorry but

This just had to be included in our Killer Headlines file:

Bathtub photo lands coal activist in child-porn hot water

Who even knew there was such a thing as a "coal activist"? Anyway, the guy who wrote the article ended it with an unintentionally hilarious bit of irony (considering it's an Eco-website).

"Intimidation should not be a part of democracy." Cuz, like, environmental activists don't know anything about intimidation or anything like that.
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A “culture of renewable bag usage”

...is what you get when you turn your back on Western Civ. and 'real' culture. Just like tree-worship is one of the things you get when you turn your back on God.

City of Toronto bans "single use" plastic bags--for use by retail stores, but they can still sell garbage bags (er... which aren't single-use? or am I just not getting this?) Common sense, adieu. Mayor calls it like he sees it: "the dumbest thing" council has ever done.

Which begs the question: will shoppers on the street get busted by the Polypropylene Cops if they are seen carrying plastic bags in public? Even if they brought them from home?
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I wish this had come from The Onion

Alas, it's American Spectator. U.S. will make it manadatory by 2015 to have "black boxes" installed on your car, which, as Eric Peters points out, won't really end up being 'yours'.

We'll be told it's all for the sake of (groan) "safety" -- just like the old 55 MPH highway speed limit and every radar trap in the country. Of course, it's really for the sake of revenue -- the government's and the insurance company's. Your rates will be "adjusted" in real time, for every incident of "speeding" or not buckling up. It'll be so much more efficient than using cops to issue tickets. After all, so many fishes escape! With an EDR in every car, no one will escape. Your "adjusted" premium will be waiting for you when you get home.

This, of course is just the tip of the iceberg. If insurance companies (and the government) can track where, when and how fast you're driving, it can also monitor how much and how far. But oh! It's for the children! I mean, the environment.

It's almost Orwellian, to say nothing of tritely redundant, that the bill in question is titled "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st Century Act." I think it should be called: All Pigs Who Drive Cars are Equal, but Some are More Equal than Others.

Mrs. B, Thermostate is looking less like satire all the time...
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Every day is Earth Day

For the Earth is the Lord's and everything in it, and Christ died to redeem it. Man is the pinnacle of creation, and the God-Man is the pinnacle of the pinnacle.

It is a truth universally acknowledged

that: 

Given enough time, the primary purpose of every bureaucracy becomes the employment and comfort of its employees.

Daniel Hannan, scourge of the European Union, a guy that the whole planet should heed:

It turns out that Herman Van Rompuy and Baroness Ashton travelled in two separate private jets to the same meeting in Russia. Their flights left Brussels within four hours of each other, both with plenty of empty seats.

Eurocrats are forever lecturing the rest of us about carbon emissions. Perhaps they feel that, by imposing their targets and regulations, they have done their bit, and no further action is needed on their part.

"What do you have against Earth Hour?"

Someone asked me the other day. This guy (commenter on SDA) can answer for me:

A few years past on this night, I found myself visiting my socialist parents in Regina. My parents were all in a flutter shutting electrical devices off, even their beloved CBC went silent. They lit a candle.
Then, they gathered at the front door, and peered out the window as they counted off their neighbors who weren't participating, and those that were showing their environmental concern "on their sleeve" as they say...
Their chatter was mostly centered on this, who was in the club of concerned caring citizens, those that were outside their circle of trust, those folks that didn't care how high the oceans would rise... or what became of their way of life as the topsoil blew away in the next drought.
big sigh. ... Why don't those people c_a_r_e? They're probably Saskatchewan Party supporters.
Meanwhile, dad drives his large Buick, there's 2 refrigerators in the house for 2 senior people, another in the garage, the insulation has never been upgraded from R-12, nor the simple dual pane windows since 1966 as [they're] not broken and the wood frames look nice.

Exactly.

Stupid, meaningless, empty, idolatrous gesture.


Then there's always this (courtesy BCF): "Fighting climate change is now about big business and big politics." Fancy that! Global Warm-mongers are now The Man. 
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Global Warming (TM) fear-mongers changing tactics

The annual 60-minute Prostration to Gaia (Earth Hour) is just around the corner: 8:30 pm, Saturday, March 31--mark your calendars and leave up those Christmas lights!

I guess the alarmism of 1,000-year predictions of sea-level rise didn’t quite catch on. Plan B? Scare people about their health. 

NRO.

Judging by the appearance of Al Gore, they may be onto something. He's evidently being afflicted by some alarming-looking swelling of the face and body.

(Oh my! That was uncalled for! We all know that obesity is an epidemic!! No one really knows what causes it or where it will strike next! And there is NO CURE! Save us, Michelle Obama!)
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The Smorgasbord Stations of the Cross

Oy, I’m so very, very tired of these things. An elderly relative recently complained that in his parish they had to pray some hippy-dippy environmentalist Peace ‘n Justice™ Stations of the Cross. These have been around forever—well, since the late 60’s, but according to the Followers of the Spirit of Vatican II, that is when the Church really began.

More and more parishes are turning back to the many beautiful traditional versions of the Stations of the Cross. You know, the ones that meditate upon (as crazy as it sounds) the actual Passion of Jesus Christ, that guy who died on the cross to redeem all of creation. And not so that 2000 years on, we could bow down and worship trees.

But you still see the odd abomination around: The Wimmin’s Way of the Cross; The Wounded Earth Stations of the Cross; The Dustbowl Farmers’ Stations of the Cross; The Self-absorbed Teenagers’ Stations of the Cross (The 10^th Station: Jesus is stripped of his garments: we pray for those who feel ostracized because they can’t afford the designer clothing that everyone else is wearing); The Animal Rights Activists’ Stations of the Cross; The Morbidly Obese Dissenting Nuns Stations of the Cross. (Some of the preceding are real and some are made up, but the sad part is, you probably can’t tell).

I still remember suffering through my first such Way of the Cross. I was so irked that (of course) I had to write about it to purge myself. It was printed in the March, 1999, issue of Catholic Insight. How I wish such columns were out of date.