Maxed Out

With apologies, this week's column is more or less a rerun. Not because I'm busy but because I've been asked, repeatedly, to run this again. Especially now. When I first wrote it, in January 2009, my timing sucked.

New mayor has a mandate

Well, it's crunch time. Depending on which mayoral candidate you follow or favour, this campaign's been an interesting six weeks or an endless three years.

Fifteen years ago, around this time of year, I made a rare appearance in the Pique offices and asked Bob Barnett what Pique was going to do about the election. "Sell some ads... I hope," was, as I recall, his answer.

Since there haven't been any scandals on the local political front this week and since it's still too early in the game to waste the ones I'm keeping in my back pocket, I'm taking a break from politics this week.

Stop it! Stop it right now. I'm going to rip the tongue out of anyone who calls last week's tawdry episode NominateGate. Watergate was called Watergate because that was the name of the building the Republican plumbers broke into.

"Hello." Uh-oh, no response. Fookin' auto diallers. "Hello idiot machine." No... I hear breathing. I hear... eewwwuu... what the....

We are the Whistler brand, all of us. I'm certain this is going to come as a shock to some of you but the cutoff for filing nomination papers for next month's municipal election is Friday.

Monday is Thanksgiving. On some calendars, especially the ones printed for the U.S. market, it's called Canadian Thanksgiving. It seems preposterous to call it Canadian Thanksgiving in Canada though. Apologetic and subservient almost.

Some temptations simply can't be resisted. They should be given in to immediately. Temptation is like water, the universal solvent.