Lowefiles

Everyone’s talking about the Nova Scotia government’s ATV fiasco. I’ve heardabout it half a dozen times this week. And that’s really saying something, because I’m writing this while on vacation in Ontario and Quebec. Now, bulletins from Atlantic Canada don’t much make news up here in the National Capital Region in any sort of on-the-street […]

And in case you haven’t read H.G. Wells’s subtly terrifying short story, that means it’s really, really bad. They seem so harmless, ants. We even praise them for their industriousness.Like beavers. But would you invite a beaver into your backyard? Would you welcome aline of buck-toothed fur-hats-in-waiting marching through the back door to climb up […]

Pardon? I’m sorry. Did I hear right? Did David Paterson from General Motors just explain away with a whisk of his hand the imminent closing of a truck assembly plant in Oshawa, Ontario, because his company just figured out—no, really, only just—that people are buying fewer large trucks and SUVs? GM just—how did he put […]

Stephen Harper’s been to an apple orchard. And he’s got a set of new food labelling guidelines to prove it. Big blooming deal. Our Tory blue-sweatered PM went to the orchard in Beamsville, Ontario, last week to announce the introduction of new laws on food labels. Harper was at the orchard with a big old […]

Oh, those sexy Texan polygamists. You know you’re thinking it. Why don’t you just come out and say it? Those women with their pastel bolt cotton ankle-length frocks and never-once-cut pompadours are hotter than cinnamon toast. You can’t stop looking. Everyone knows Chloë Sevigny’s character Nicki, from the HBO polygamy series Big Love, is the […]

One World, One Dream? Oh China, you had me at One.
 Not because I love the People’s Republic, per se. But because I love the Olympics. Anywhere. Anytime.
 I’ve got a 100-percent buy-in with the touchy-feely, smushy-wooshy, shiny-happy-people vibe the modern games sell. I get verklempt just thinking about the opening ceremonies. Björk in that […]

Prepare yourself. These are words so terrifying, so clobberingly fearful, I’m knocking on wood in the mere anticipation of typing them. Here goes. HRM’s winter parking ban. Shhhh! Not too loud, please. Just mumble, if you’re reading aloud, lest the evil god of the season unleash his white wrath upon us again. (It could happen. […]

Online anonymity: giver of voice topolitical dissidents, community-maker for lovers of quirky sex, forum for corporate whistle-blowers. Also? Licence to be angry. Angrier than angry. Seething mad withrage, motherfucker. Republican Tim Couch, a state representative in Kentucky, recently proposed a legislated ban on anonymous online message boards or comment sections. “Some nasty things have been […]

Freedom may be just another word for nothing left to lose, but free? That’s just another word for having to pay somehow. Yes, this is about the North American Free Trade Agreement. And yes, NAFTA is so boring it makes me want to scratch off my own eyebrows. But here we are, 14 years later: […]

Have you ever stopped to contemplate really bad sex? Nah, I don’t mean, like, too short, too long, getting crushed, getting a tongue inside the ear, getting a phone call, being walked in on. I mean bad in the moral sense. Oh wait, no, no, no, not pre-marital, or extra-marital (I never realized, until this […]

Nike—the super-sports mega-marketer, not the fair-ankled Greek deity—has a hold on the essence of humanity. The company’s most famous sales slogan, “Just do it,” has got us all pegged. Why do I think the marketing giant’s message is so prescient? Because when it comes to just doing it, for the most part, we just can’t. […]

Sigh… February. You know exactly how I’m feeling—call it the February blahs or the winter blues. It’s that feeling like you’re not going to make it to the other end of this minus-a-million degree tunnel; when cutesy ads featuring American Eagle models frolicking in synthetic snow are an affront. Three weeks back, Shubenacadie Sam had […]