When she sits around the palace, she sits AROUND the palace!

Happy Victoria Day, drunken Canadians! Victoria Day is a famous holiday invented a million years ago in Olde Englande – possibly the Victorian age, I’ll Wikipedia it later – to celebrate Queen Victoria, a frumpy fat lady (note: fat for the time period, by modern standards she’d wear a size Medium at Wal-Mart) who was Queen of Olde Englande And Her Majestic Vermin-Infested Colonies. She married her first cousin and plopped out 9 inbred kids, continuing a long tradition among British monarchs of fucking their relatives. She was so good at being incestuous and fat that we named a city full of smiling, colonial plump-faced white people in Ye Olde Britishe Columbiae after her. We also named a holiday in May after her, because Canadians salivate over the prospect of getting any possible day off from their miserable soul-crushing jobs.

Victoria Day is celebrated on the Monday that follows May 24, leading to the holiday being colloquially referred to as “May Two-Four”. This is a uniquely Canadian reference to a “Two-Four” case of beer, so named because counting into double digits is hard, eh.

Canadians honour the memory of Queen Victoria, the longest-serving monarch in British history, by waiting in traffic all day on Friday to get away from their suburban gated communities and into “nature”, a term which covers the 99.999%-odd percent of our nation’s land-mass that isn’t within the city limits of a city large enough to sustain an NHL franchise. Canadians often choose to observe Victoria Day by mooching off their buddy for 3 days because he’s got a cottage. Oh, it’s ok, you’re not mooching, you bought the guy some hot-crossed buns from the farmer’s market on the way in, and a case of whatever beer is on sale, Lake-something, sure, grab it.

Then you can celebrate our enduring British traditions and our country’s uniquely close bond to the Queen and to the Crown by getting drunk outdoors and sitting around a campfire as some asshole you knew from high school tries to remember the chords to a Tragically Hip song on the acoustic guitar he just happened to have. You suck back another beer and then decide it would be hilarious to jump into the lake, but it’s fucking freezing, because it’s Canada, and it’s only May. Then you drink some more and tell that story of the fat broad from Hamilton from the shallow end of the gene pool that you met at a bar in university – classic story – and in some whimsical, cosmic way, it’s as if Queen Victoria herself was taking her rightful throne in the storytelling of those young Canadians celebrating the day for which she was named in the country which she half-heartedly let us keep.

Long may she reign.

Lord Emperor Blackburn, Conservative MP for the riding of the Death Star whose resemblance to a certain Star Wars villain is well-documented, has become the second Conservative Cabinet Minister over the last couple weeks to lose their shit at an airport over something hilariously petty!

You see, apparently Jean-Pierre Blackburn just loves tequila. He loves it so much, he apparently needs a bottle of the stuff wherever he goes. Even if he’s doing something as boring as boarding a flight, he needs his hand wrapped around the neck of some sweet, sweet Mexican hangover juice. (Before you criticize the guy, wouldn’t you enjoy the odd tipple if your boss was Stephen Harper?) As he was boarding a flight at the Ottawa airport recently, Blackburn – obviously – happened to have a bottle of tequila on him after a Mexican vacation. Now, this is blatantly against the universally-known rule that you can’t bring more than 100 mL of liquid onto a plane, and the less universally-known but more common-sense rule that it’s not a good idea to let people bring their own tequila onto airplanes. They serve it on the plane.

After being informed that he can’t blatantly violate travel restrictions just because he’s an old guy who wear nice suits, he pulled a Guergis and lost his shit. However, it’s unclear what exactly happened. Some are claiming he was just being an entitled asshole, and that he threw his weight as an MP around, threatening and berating the security guards. According to Blackburn, there was only a minor disagreement between him and security because he wanted the tequila to be poured out, and security weren’t complying. Apparently, even though security guards were willing to hold the tequila in storage for him at the Ottawa airport, the Emperor wasn’t falling for their trick, since he was convinced the guards really wanted to pound back body-shots with his precious Cuervo after their shift. Seriously, Blackburn? That was your big concern? That these highly-trained, noble airport security officials who make a decent salary are so petty and douchey they’d nick your stupid $20 liquor bottle? There’s liquor stores in Ottawa, you know.

Anyways, Blackburn is lucky he didn’t get shots from a tazer. Or that he didn’t get sent to the tequila slammer, where he’d spent the night until tequila sunrise, unless he got a friend to tequila popper him out of his cell.  Frankly, I Sauza this coming from a mile away. He won’t be getting any Patron-age appointments.

Alright, alright, I’m done.

So now we’ve got a combination of tequila, a hissy fit and someone acting like an entitled brat. An episode of Jersey Shore? Nope, Canadian politics! Let’s hear the incredibly predictable opposition response. David McGuinty (Ottawa South) licked a dash of salt off the back of his hand, made this statement, and then bit into a lemon slice:

“These two episodes now demonstrate an arrogance amongst these ministers that is simply unacceptable.”

Yeah, we know, it’s awesome! But everyone knows these stories always come in threes.

Bet now on the Ministerial Hissy Fit Betting Pool! You win if you can correctly guess the well-publicized shitstorm that will hit a Cabinet Minister within the next month. It’s like a Canadian version of Clue!

WHODUNIT: Flaherty (5:1), Nicholson (4:1), Raitt (3:1), MacKay (5:1), Day (4:1), Clement (5:1), Ambrose (2:1), Kenney (2:1), Baird (even)

IN THE: Airport (2:1), Journalist scrum (2:1), Tourist destination (3:1), Restaurant or other place minimum-wage employees can be belittled and harassed (4:1), In front of children (4:1), Secluded wilderness (6:1), Closed-door meeting that still gets reported by opposition via Twitter (5:1), In front of a police officer (3:1), Parliament (even)

WITH THE: Drunkenness (2:1), Felony-committing (4:1), Temper tantrum (even), Crying (4:1), Fistfight (6:1), High treason (7:1), Throwing feces in simian rage (10:1)

[Story: The Star - they mention the hilarious sub-text that Blackburn was afraid highly-trained airport security officers would steal his liquor like they were cash-strapped undergrads at a frat party. CBC omitted that part, shame!]

Here are the best things about Chicago, which is a city, in America, where I was:

1. #1: You can get expensive little espresso things on every corner, they’re basically just ridiculous little shotglasses of bitter coffee but they keep you awake as hell, which is good, because it means less time sleeping on a hostel bed and possible getting bed bugs / mugged.

1. #2: They let you play drinking games in bars.

1. #3: I was in a bar that SERVED ALCOHOL UNTIL FOUR AM.

1. #4: Your wallet feels super-thin when it’s not full of loonies and toonies, which makes your outer right thigh happier.

1. #5: They talked all cute! Chi-caaaw-go. Aht’ll be twinny daawlers. I wanted to bring home my own American because they’re so adorable, but customs frowned on that.

1. #6: When Americans hear you’re Canadian, they’ll try to make a joke about it, but their material just isn’t all that fresh. I mean, when it comes to making fun of Canadians, Canadians are pretty much at the top of our game – no one’s gonna make fun of us better than we self-effacingly make fun of ourselves! So even if we may have high standards, “Hurr, uh, you’re Canadian, so… you drive sled dogs… also… igloos?” just won’t cut it. But God bless ‘em for trying, it was great.

Back to the purpose of this blog, which is ostensibly “Canadian politics” I GUESS, I asked an American and an Australian tourist if they could name any Canadian politicians, ever. From the Australian I got a “no”, but not a sheepish, embarassed “no”, the kind of adamant “no, why the hell would you even ask” type of response you’d get if you’d asked “Hey, you ever gotten pubic lice?” From the American, I got “I don’t think so… wait… Baker… Baker-something?” I accepted that answer as perfectly correct. See, Americans aren’t clueless about the world around them! This dude knew him some Diefenbaker. God bless America.

Matt E.

I’m Matt! I’m twenty-something from a fishing village called Toronto, Ontario. I’ve got a bachelor’s degree in business, which makes it odd that I don’t have any money!

I do all the neat designy stuff for the site. If something looks messed up, it’s my fault! I enjoy drinking whisky. If you want to get a hold of me just send your morse-coded telegram to mail [at] maplerag dot com, where I’ll probably read it!

Jenn B.

I’m Jenn! I’m twenty-something and from somewhere in Canada, what’s it matter to you, creep? I enjoy writing, movies, and just being a sarcastic bitch and a sloppy drunk. I don’t really look as masculine as the way Matt drew me in that icon, but I kinda like my new androgynous look.

I’ll write articles sometimes, and I enjoy drinking rum, because I’M A PIRATE YARR.

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