THE MAN WHO FELL FROM SPACE...

-- "Renowned 56-year-old Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner, famous for his record-smashing stunts — including a 24-mile skydive from the edge of space in 2012 — has died in a paragliding accident in Italy." --

BUT, BUT, BUT, ISN'T CANADA A HORRIBLE RACIST COUNTRY?

-- "According to our calculations, this is the fifth Pakistan International Airlines crew member in as many years to have mysteriously disappeared during an international layover. Toronto is the most common city for crew members to go missing in. A PIA spokesperson said the airline would start seizing crew member passports on arrival in Toronto to make the process of fleeing slightly harder." --

ON TOP OF THE WORLD? IT CAN CHANGE IN A SECOND

-- "Oriana Pepper, 21, a British woman training to become an airline pilot died after being bitten by a mosquito in Belgium. She died on July 12, 2021 — five days after she was bitten from septic emboli in the brain." --

LIFE, IT'S OWNSELF

10 Iconic Cemeteries

BREAK OUT THE ALE

The bill introduced in Maine requests that non-profit organizations that own more than 20 acres be allowed to hold open-air cremations. One such organization is Good Ground Great Beyond, who are hoping to hold these Viking-style funerals. Maine would become the first state to allow these types of funerals, but Missouri came close back in 2019 before their governor vetoed a similar bill.

It was a kinder, gentler time...

REMEMBER HANDHELD MISSILES OF DEATH?

"I put a lawn dart through the back window of my neighbor’s Ford Taurus and spent the entire summer mowing his lawn."

A BANG AND A WHIMPER:

"As a kid in the 60s, my uncle looked up 'gunpowder' in the family encyclopedia and headed off to the pharmacy with his pocket money." 

"He could barely reach up to the counter, but they were happy to sell him a pound of each ingredient."

THE MIGHTY LIVINGROOM VOLCANO:

"I had the one that let me melt down metal and pour it into molds. Playing unsupervised with molten metal was lots of fun!"

"When I was 8 or so, my grandfather gave me a big glass bottle of elemental mercury."

ALSO THE SWINGIN' SIXTIES:

My mother, after 6 years in Canada, completely forgot the Scotland of her youth...

"One of my earliest memories is being babysat by my widowed, paternal grandmother in Glasgow... Granny gave 4 year-old me & 3 year-old Neo-Bro a hatchet and a hammer, respectively... and shooed us out the door to play on the wooden tenement stairs."

IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE IT'S TRUE

And the hits just keep on coming.

The pen is mightier & easier...

...than an actual vote...UPDATE: 42 Executive Orders in Nine Days

"Voting is for little people."

AND PM CARE BEAR GOES FULL GULAG ARCHIPELAGO:

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." • Voltaire

Pretty impressive shift for a guy who refused to stop planes coming in from China.

And if you test negative, you still have to quarantine at home.

Nobody gets out alive

4 Palliative Canadians approved for end of life psilocybin therapy through section 56(1)

SHUTUP AND TAKE MY MONEY...

"Basically, it is a bit like the Chevrolet El Camino or Ford Ranchero, a small, car-based pickup truck."

Arrogant loner with odd hat fetish...

...priceless art collection & private castle in walled-off city-state says... having bags of money is evil...

Tax cuts for the wealthy constitute a “structure of sin,” Pope Francis said Wednesday in a passionate address calling for international wealth redistribution.

GO BIG...

...or go home...

"The scariest movie of 2018... starred a rock climber named Alex Honnold."

It's the little things...

...that make life worth living...

A little local colour

"The rivers in Bradford have turned YELLOW, after the city dubbed the ‘Curry capital of Britain’ began polluting its waters with the hugely popular dish. An underground river which flows through the West Yorkshire city became stained yellow with waste which was dumped from local curry houses."

Not all heroes wear capes...

...mostly it's about "grace under pressure"...

Jesus take the wheel, er... chainsaw

So yesterday, I almost got my horoscope irreparably altered by Mother Nature. Let me explain.

I'm a little short on firewood this year, so I was down front, felling a large and obviously dead maple tree. It was located in a brushy, swampy area, one of three large trees in close proximity to each other.

Not an especially technical drop, but my first mistake was not making a thorough pre-inspection, I failed to see a significant limb threaded through a fork in one of the adjacent trees that also counter balanced my projected fall line.

As a result, when cut free, the tree tipped and spun, remaining nearly upright and balanced on the stump. After a more careful inspection, I realised that the tree was, much like a bow at full draw, now under considerable pressure. Taking this into account, I mapped out a cut that would allow the almost 36 inch diameter trunk to shoot straight backwards when it was released. I also cleared an escape lane 90 degrees to the anticipated direction of release. Unfortunately, the trunk hung up once again on the stump, jammed against the impinging piece of wood I had cut loose.

Realising that I had created something very much like a scaled up deadfall trap for the zombie apocalypse, I decided I would back away and do the sensible thing. Instead of cutting further, I would go get my splitting axe from the garage and knock the locked up piece of wood free from a safer distance.

My second mistake was momentarily forgetting about Newtonian physics... specifically gravity.

I started to walk out the path to retrieve the axe, all the while congratulating myself on my newfound patience & wisdom. Curiously, I had somehow discounted the chances of this multi-ton people-hammer conforming to the physical laws of the universe just as I walked past it.

Yeah... don't ask, 'cos I don't have an answer.

Of course... somebody always wins the lottery. About 15 meters down the trail I heard a loud crack and turned to witness the entire tree shake like a wet dog, shoot backwards about 10 feet and drop like Hillary Clinton at the WTC.

Had I been a little slower to set off, there was a pretty good chance I would have been knocked sideways into tomorrow.

There endeth the lesson.

**********

RELATED: With apologies to CSN&Y...

"Teach... your husband well..."

"Anyway, this morning I'm sitting at the computer typing away and suddenly the volume on the radio in the kitchen goes way up."

A reader responds... "That's sweet. A lot of women would have turned the radio down."

Okay, looks like I'm going shopping

"The recipe came to us by way of Colonel Harland Sanders' nephew, Joe Ledington of Kentucky. He says he found it in a scrapbook belonging to his late Aunt Claudia, Sanders' second wife."

With the oil temperature just right at 350 degrees, the chicken soaked in buttermilk and coated just once in the breading mixture, we had our final tasting.

How was it? Well, really good. In fact, tasters agreed the test kitchen fried chicken was even better than the Colonel's.

Just click on the recipe.

Less than conspicuous consumption...

...and proud of it...
Call me wacky... but, perhaps... harnessing your ego to all your shiny new possessions isn't really a prudent financial strategy.

Fwiw... my two vehicles are older than my teenage son.

More fun with polls at the Globe & Mail

Or, I suppose... you could could just bring along every little ethnic, tribal, political or religious grievance that caused you to flee the old country in the first place...

And let's not even get started on the folks who want to rip the country into pieces...

In the two years since the 2008 parliamentary crisis, most Canadians have come to think of Gilles Duceppe as the disquieting but silent partner of the failed Liberal-NDP coalition bid. It seems he was a lot more than that.

In a book released this week Duceppe casts himself as the driving force behind the Liberal-NDP coalition agreement.

He credits the Bloc Québécois with providing the gist of the economic pact on which Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton agreed.

**********

RELATED: From the folks who...

...brought you lead-painted baby toys...

The exposure of Mr. Zhang’s faked credentials provoked a fresh round of hand-wringing over what many scholars and Chinese complain are the dishonest practices that permeate society, including students who cheat on college entrance exams, scholars who promote fake or unoriginal research, and dairy companies that sell poisoned milk to infants.

Don't miss the part about the airline pilots.