Monthly Archives: July 2009

6 tips to avoid the legal blues

So when I sang the legal blues recently, I should have been more helpful and given some suggestions for avoiding approval problems with lawyers. Here they are: Consider what’s going on. In a time when lawyers are super-super-sensitive, like a lawsuit or merger, ask if you should even be writing the article. Talk to them [...]

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Guilty pleasures

It has rained here most of the day, so what better time to share some of the web sites that never fail to bring a smile: I can Has Cheezbuger, or LOL cats. Talk about creative writing! The silly captions to crazy pictures of cats (and occasionally other small pets) often make me laugh out [...]

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Have you lost your blogging mojo, too?

While countries around the world worry about swine flu (sorry, H1N1), I’m here to tell you there is another insidious virus sweeping at least the blogging world. Yes, some online Dr. Evil is secretly going around stealing our mojo. You know you’ve noticed it. Some bloggers you follow simply don’t post as often. Others have [...]

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The legal blues

Woke up this mornin’ (da DA da da) Sun shiny and bright (da  DA da da) Finished writin’ my articles (da DA da da) They were lookin’ tight (da DA da da) But wait just a minute (da DA da da) What’s that I see (da DA da da) A note from Legal, sayin’ “we [...]

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Storm watch

A thunderstorm blew through Oakville on the weekend, and it brought me back to summers spent at my grandparents’ cottage in the Laurentian mountains in Quebec. The cottage was built in the early 1900s, on a hillside with glimpses of the lake just visible in between the trees.  A screened-in porch wrapped around all sides [...]

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Truly awful writing

Everyone can write, can’t they? But it takes real skill to come up with truly awful writing, like that celebrated by the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This is almost as much fun as the Oddest Book Title of the Year contest. But instead of just finding existing examples — in this case, that fit the [...]

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Twitter signs He’s Just Not That Into You

In the movie, “He’s Just Not That Into You” (seen on the plane on the way home from San Francisco), Drew Barrymore’s character laments the sorry state of communication with the opposite sex: “I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to [...]

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Drowning in insurance papers

My car insurer claims it is working on “greening” its operations, and not a moment too soon. I’m drowning in paper. True, I laid a number of changes on the company over the past two months. I bought a new car that had to be added to my existing insurance policy. I had to keep [...]

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Oh, Canada!

In honour of Canada Day and our 142nd birthday today: A catchy and clever rap; we know that you wanna be Canadian! Canadians share our 100 favourite Canadian things. Hmm, a lot of food listed (back bacon, poutine, maple syrup, butter tarts…). I love that Google has a Mountie (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) saluting in [...]

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