Carnival of the Canucks, Part 1: A Beer in a Tree

G’day, eh?!, and welcome to this week’s edition of Carnival of the Canucks! This week’s theme, seeing as we’re two days away from Christmas and since the Carnival is all about notable entries in Canadian blogs both notorious and unheard-of, is The Twelve Days of Christmas, as performed by the two greatest guardians of Canadian Culture, Bob and Doug Mackenzie.

For those of you not familiar with the Mackenzie brothers’ rendition of the carol, their gifts were:

• Eight comic books
• Seven packs of smokes
• Six packs of two-fours
• Five golden toques
• Four pounds of back bacon (for you Americans: this is what Canadians call “Canadian bacon”)
• Three french toasts
• Two turtlenecks
• And a beer in a tree

And now, the first set of links…

“The horror…the horror…”: Brett Lamb tells funny stories of his experiences as a shopping mall Santa Claus.

Packing tips! I’m flying with The Redhead to attend the wedding of my friends Ashley Bristowe and Chris Turner in the amazingly scenic little town of Canmore, Alberta. Thankfully, Eva at EastrernBlog has illustrated the proper way to pack my stylin’ Boss suit.

It took Boston’s deepest blogger to point me to one Adam Yoshida, who by his writing is a super-patriot. By super-patriot, I am using the MAD magazine definition, which is “someone who loves his country while hating 94% of it”. He has a great polemic about what’s wrong with Canada (not enough like the US, which in turn is not enough like Palpatine’s Empire) called The Northern Abyss (PDF link), wonders why Howard Dean took so many damned Marxist courses and why his family keeps such a low profile and starts his latest blog entry with:

The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is more than just a liberal court. It is an active enemy cell, a disloyal institution which has taken the side of America’s enemies in the War on Terror.

He’s the new Ed Anger!

From the West Coast… Tim Bray has some lovely photos of his neck of the woods, the west coast, and also presents his notes on Quicksilver, the first of a trilogy by Neal Stephenson (whom I met recently).

More stuff soon…keep watching this space!