We asked six cats what they think about a prominent story in this week’s headlines.
President Donald Trump escalated his trade war with the Canadians this week by renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America and threatening to increase the punishing tariffs he levied on our northern neighbors.
What do you think about the move to rename the lake?
Images via Wikimedia Commons and Unsplash
In 1996 the world was rendered deeply confused by the emergence of Snow, a bespectacled Canadian caucasian who implausibly sounded like a Jamaican.
Back in the 90s the choice between hip hop and rock was viewed as a binary, and as a kid you were expected to pick one and express a sort of tribal allegiance. And yes, there were racial fault lines involved, especially among people who lived in insular communities.
If you were a self professed fan of rock, you were supposed regard anything even tangential to hip hop as inherently ridiculous garbage that required no talent to produce. I remember seeing the punk band Goldfinger in 1996 when lead singer John Feldman quieted the crowd, took on a somber tone and announced we were going to have a moment of silence for the just-slain Tupac Shakur…immediately before the band’s drummer launched into the noisiest, most chaotic solo he could muster.
The crowd loved it. There was no indication anyone stopped to think about why they were celebrating the death of another person, let alone one the violent end of a rising star who was only 25 years old when he was slain by a gunman who remains at large 30 years later
On the hip hop side, rock was either regarded as a relic, a nonentity or entirely lacking in the spark that made you feel the music.
In that environment, there was a narrow window for white performers to break through as hip hop artists, but until the emergence of Eminem it was a deal with the devil, and the cost was spending one summer on top of the world and the rest of your existence as a punchline.
Just ask Vanilla Ice. Or Marky Mark, who doesn’t exist anymore because Mark Wahlberg wisely switched to acting and would like everyone to forget he once strutted around with pants halfway down his ass. (“Back when Mark Wahlberg was Marky Mark, this is how we used to make the party start,” Eminem rapped in one of his early tracks.)
Purveyors of reggae-hip hop were not exempt from the aforementioned dark pact, which is why the mainstream hasn’t heard anything from Snow in almost 35 years.
The 56-year-old Darrin Kenneth O’Brien was the hottest artist on the planet for a good chunk of 1992, and despite a name that conjures images of a guy singing twee Gaelic tunes, Mr. O’Brien spat reggae and dancehall with a patois that had listeners sure they were hearing a guy from Jamaica.
“People dem say mi come from Jamaica but mi born and raised in di ghetto of Toronto,” the bespectacled, white-as-you’d expect O’Brien chants on his worldwide hit, Informer:
Informer includes an intro and a short rap from MC Shan, a black rapper, for credibility purposes that were essential in the 90s. (“Well, if black dudes are cool with this pasty Canadian guy singing like a coked out Bob Marley, who am I to argue?”)
Ostensibly it’s about Snow, he of a known criminal reputation, being accused of “stabbing someone down the lane” and heroically refusing to turn informer/snitch on some unnamed greater target. The story was frequently worked into marketing materials at the time to burnish the credibility MC Shan already established: Snow isn’t just good at affecting a Jamaican accent, and he doesn’t just have the approval of respected emcees, he’s also a real criminal! He’s legit, okay?
But dig a little deeper and it turns out Snow was involved in a bar fight and was booked into police lockup or a county jail, not a state prison or its Canadian equivalent.
That changes the calculus considerably. It’s like being told someone played professional baseball, then finding out that instead of being a Yankees or Dodgers regular, he pitched 3.2 innings for the Savannah Bananas in their 2024 campaign.
Regardless, Snow’s pact granted him an earworm that blasted from boomboxes and on MTV all summer as people tried to figure out exactly what the hell the guy was saying.
Most of it’s an unimaginative blow-by-blow account of his arrest for possible minor assault stemming from the aforementioned bar argument and the allegedly enthusiastic welcome he received from the drunk drivers, petty thieves, kids caught spraying graffiti and other hardened criminals who populate the cells of Canada’s notorious local lock-ups. A group that was in Mr. O’Brien’s telling so impressed with his cajones, they welcomed him like a lord of the criminal underworld finally returned to his people. Game recognize game and all that.
To this day I don’t know what licky boom boom down means, except possibly the name of a supplementary service at a shady shiatsu salon staffed by undocumented and indentured women of nondescript Asian origin, but the rest is straightforward: Snow is tough, Snow sounds like a Jamaican guy, Snow is respected, Snow is into them irie girls, them irie girls love Snow, bombaclot.
Regardless, Snow walked so that guys like Matisyahu could run, and instead of having their careers extinguished just as quickly as they began, today’s white reggae artists often enjoy long, drawn-out declines playing to small- and medium-size crowds on the sunshine reggae circuit.
But Snow, pioneer that he was, saw his star fall within months, culminating in Jim Carrey parodying him as Imposter in an In Living Color skit. In the 90s, there was no way back from this:
A licky boom boom down!
The evil, insidious Canadians have sent their terrible Canadian air south into America as the tip of their invasion force! Because they’re jealous of our freedoms, of course.
It’s mid-July but it’s seriously nasty outside with a permanent beige-gray haze over everything thanks to Canada.
I’ve been sitting here with the AC running, and when I opened the windows last night Bud mrrrrrrp’d in protest and the whole place immediately stunk of funky Canadian ash. I could actually feel the filth as I inhaled and closed the windows again.
This is unacceptable! I know President Donald Trump was joking when he called Canada the 51st state and summoned Justin Trudeau to kiss the ring in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election (and has properly and correctly blamed the Canadians for this unacceptable situation), but it’s time to start seriously considering invading that frozen hellscape, subjugating the Canadians, and getting it through their floppy little heads with their beady little eyes that fires can be doused, and that modern countries have these organizations called fire departments which are called upon when things combust.
I mean, who just sits there and says “Aboot that fire, that’s some smoke, eh?” and allows it to continue burning? Canadians, that’s who!
I’ll stop it there lest people really think I’m some crazed American who actually wants to invade Canada, but seriously, the air quality is awful. I hope this clears quickly.
And yes, I am aware Canada has remote wilderness that is difficult to access and manage. However, I hope this doesn’t become a regular thing. It’s 2026, not 1850, and human ingenuity has led to the development of some seriously powerful, rugged vehicles and tools that make it possible to manage forests — if the will and the resources are there.
Canadians are suffering too, so it’s not as if they’re happy with the situation. Let’s hope they demand more effort and less talk aboot how difficult it is to manage remote forests.
As this weather image shows, distance does not provide protection when it comes to this sort of thing, as we’re at the mercy of winds and weather patterns. Casa de Buddy is in that tiny corner just north of the city, right smack in the middle of the deep red indicating high risk from air pollution:
Meanwhile Bud and I will remain indoors with the windows closed, watching the South Park movie and singing along to Blame Canada!
Today’s a good day to do something special for your little pal(s), and to help spread awareness that felines are sentient, intelligent animals with feelings.
Happy International Cat Day!
Today marks the 23rd annual observance of the special day, which was established by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a nonprofit originally founded in the late 1960s to stop the commercial hunting of seals off Canada’s coasts.
In more than half a century since, the group has expanded to an international operation with projects aimed at improving conditions for wild and domestic animals. They do wildlife rescue, rehabilitation, preserve management and more.
International Cat Day was intended to help raise awareness about cats, their behaviors and the best ways to interact with them and give them good homes.
For those of us who are already wrapped around the paws of our feline overlords, it’s an occasion to do something extra for our buddies. Here at Casa de Buddy, that means spending more time with little man, giving him catnip, and his favorite human food treat: cheese.
The thing that matters most to him is Buddy Time, when we hang out, play games with his wand toys, and eventually he snuggles up in my lap.
We hope all of you are enjoying International Cat Day and have the opportunity to spend some extra time with your furry pal(s) today. For all they do to improve our lives, a little expression of gratitude is the least we can do.
The trail camera is operated by a team studying the behavior of wolves, but this felid became the main character for a short while, posing majestically right in front of the lens.
Happy Monday! We’re starting the week off in style with an amazing video courtesy of the Voyageurs Wolf Project.
As its name implies, the project is a collaboration between wildlife biologists, ecologists and academics to learn more about wolves, specifically how they survive in the summer months.
While there’s a wealth of research on the behavior of wolves during winter, the pack animals go their separate ways in the warm weather to raise newborn cubs and hunt smaller prey.
Because it’s much more difficult to track individual wolves under the cover of heavy brush compared to following entire packs in the snow, the project relies on a combination of GPS collars and trail cameras. The latter pick up all sorts of wildlife in the Minnesota wilderness, which is how the Voyageurs Wolf Project captured this clear, close-up footage of a stunning medium size wild cat:
That’s lynx canadensis, better known as the Canadian lynx, and the footage is so perfect it’s as if the wild cat said “Ah, a trail camera! I’m gonna sit right here and let the humans see how beautiful and regal I am!”
From its pronounced ear tufts to its snow-soft fur and dark stump of a tail, this lynx is a fantastic example of its species. Canadian lynx are well adapted to the demands of their environs in Canada and the northern US, with heavy coats and soft, wide feet that allow it to traverse snowy landscapes quickly and silently.
They’re famously elusive and difficult to track in the wild, but maybe all we have to do is give the lynx a chance to strut its stuff.
Top image credit Carlos Delgado/Wikimedia Commons.
Pain In The Bud 