Rex Murphy….satirist extraordinaire

Here are thoughts from Rex Murphy’s Christmas essay in NP. This writer is arguably the most accomplished wit putting words to paper. He eviscerates all things stupid and clueless. 

“Trudeau staying. Guilbeault shutting down the oil and gas industry, banning standard motor cars, many more journeys to climate-conscious China and the United Arab Emirates, upgrading paper straws so they do not stick to your lips. Joly fixing the Middle East. O’Regan catering finally to the last minority, white heterosexual males. How could one not be jubilant this Christmas?

Let the bells ring out, everyone have a Merry Sankofa.

The Liberals may have thoroughly, incandescently botched the last eight years but you just wait — in 2035 and the years beyond, Canada will be the light on every nation’s Christmas tree — or some stick that, by then, will have replaced the settler-colonialist forest foliage of a very outdated Canada.”

How can you not love that woke language replacement for ‘Christmas tree’? Merry Christmas to my loyal readers, pass the link on to your friends. My Christmas wish is to see an uptick in my subscriber base, still FREE!

Read Full Post »

The Bible and Jesus

I’m reading Yann Martel’s novel ‘The High Mountains of Portugal’. It’s rather appropriate at this time of year as the stories take place around Christmas time. There is a load of religious imagery and theme throughout, and the following passages really struck a chord.  Kind of makes you approach Scripture from a more open-mind, and less literal. Certainly makes me appreciate the Bible a bit more. If the name Yann Martel rings a bell, it should. He wrote ‘Life of Pi’, winner of the 2002 Man Booker prize and later adapted into the Oscar winning movie. Read this and keep it in mind when you next read the Bible. 

The miracle of Jesus walking on water is a guide to how we must read Scripture as a whole. The gospels are lesser, their message weakened, if we read them as though they are reports of four journalists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) But if we understand them as written in a language of metaphors and symbols, then they open up with moral depth and truth….Jesus trod the earth with the calm assurance that he would stay with us and we would stay with him so long as he touched us through stories, so long as he left a fingerprint upon our startled imagination….We must abandon this reductionist quest for the historical Jesus. He won’t be found, because that’s not where – that’s not how – he chose to make his mark. Jesus told stories and lived through stories. Our faith is faith in his story, and there is very little beyond that story – faith. The holy word is story, and story is the holy word.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Read Full Post »

Morley’s Christmas Pageant

I re-read Stuart McLean’s short story ‘Morley’s Christmas Pageant’ and as with every Christmas re-read, found myself chuckling at some line on every page. This masterful story teller knew better than almost any writer I’ve read (and I read a lot) how to spin a yarn. It’s become a kind of Christmas tradition for me, the re-reading this tale of a school Christmas pageant gone absurdly and hilariously wrong. Whatever your Christmas tradition, be it watching a favorite Christmas movie, going for that Christmas walk in the woods, whatever it is, may you find joy and comfort in renewing your faith and friendships at this wonderful time of year.

Here’s a paragraph from Stuart’s story, if you have not yet read this super funny tale, you can imagine how it unfolds.

“Dave was staring at Gretchen Schuyler who was at the top of the scaffold, holding her lit candle over her head, as if it were an Olympic torch. The flame was only inches from the brass nozzle of the school’s sprinkler system.”

Merry Christmas y’all!

Read Full Post »

Santa series 2

Read Full Post »

Santa series 1

Read Full Post »

A Kremlin Christmas

Read Full Post »

Feel good Christmas story.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2351343&playlistId=1.5722618&binId=1.810401&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1

A feel good Christmas story. Enjoy it and forget about the Pandemic for a minute!

Read Full Post »

Drake hands out stacks of cash for Christmas!

It was a very merry Christmas for some Torontonians who happened to be on Drake’s route Saturday. The generous rapper is already an icon in the 6ix but he’s now a legend after he drove around the city handing out stacks of cash to random residents.

A video surfaced today of the Raptors’ global ambassador sitting in the backseat of a car, reportedly the Certified Lover Boy’s Maybach, being chauffeured around Toronto, wishing lucky strangers a Merry Christmas while handing over some bundled bills.

In the video, posted by @raptvcom, Drake has just handed a wad of what appear to be $20 bills to a woman who is heard saying, “Oh my God, this is crazy,” while another man says: “Thank you, bro. Appreciate it guys, take care.”

Drake waves and tells them to “be safe,” as his driver pulls away from the curb.

The caption of the video gives a shoutout to Drizzy: “Giving away racks for Christmas. Life’s f***ing unreal man. Legend of the city.”

It is unknown what neighbourhood Drake was feeling generous, how many stacks Drake doled out or just how much is in each stack. But there’s no denying the thickness so it’s safe to say it was a lot. If you happen to be in Toronto to celebrate New Year’s, perhaps Drake will make a return trip to the streets. You never know, he may be making this an annual holiday tradition.

Read Full Post »

Top Canadian museum to be gutted….decolonization!

Put aside a few minutes and read this article. The amount of revisionism and cancel culture in Canada is mind numbing. I used to be so thankful my Mom and Dad had chosen to flee Communism and Nazism for this bastion of freedom and democracy. Not sure they would make that choice today. Celebrate the birth of Jesus while you still have that option. Soon enough we will be repurposing churches into something neutral and less offensive because God only knows how awful it must be for non-white, non-Christian people to have these edifices in their communities. The rather obvious, for me anyway, problem with rewriting history is the fact that eventually you end up with no history at all. Merry Christmas y’all.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/top-canadian-museum-to-be-immediately-gutted-in-the-name-of-decolonization

Read Full Post »

Fox News journalist compares Christmas tree burning to Pearl Harbor!

A Fox News contributor’s hot take on the torching of the network’s Christmas tree went up in smoke.

Rev. Jacques DeGraff evoked Pearl Harbor during Thursday’s lightning ceremony of the new tree to replace the one that was attacked in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

“Somebody asked me, ‘Why are you here?’ I’m here because these colors don’t run,” DeGraff said in comments televised live on “The Five” show.

“Eighty years ago this week, they tried to extinguish the darkness in a place called Pearl Harbor,” DeGraff continued. “We didn’t fold then and we won’t fold now because we’ve come this far by faith. In our tradition, we say ’this little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. And the red, the white, the blue and the light of America, we’re going to let it shinee.” (Lee Moran, HuffPost)

Wow! When you need a good chuckle, the ‘journalists’ at Fox News are always happy to oblige. But it is also scary! Evoking Pearl Harbor as some kind of analogy to the burning of the Christmas tree in front of the Fox News building? American politics is so polarized I’m frankly amazed the country has not imploded yet. Is it any wonder that despots and autocrats the world over are taking advantage of America’s inability to find any common ground upon which a stronger nation could be forged? Get your shit together USA, before China and Russia change the world into something very uncomfortable.

Read Full Post »