Ranting and Roaring

There’s now a blog for news about Janes’ Blogosphere. Check it out, and save yourself a ton of time reading blogs.

Australian man killed horribly in bizarre performance car/machette accident. Details to follow.

Reader Capt. J. M. Heinrichs writes to add: “When you are from Vancouver Island:
1. ‘go East’ means going to Vacouver; and
2. ‘Eastern Canada’ means ‘somewhere East of Hope, B.C.”

Also, one (especially if one is a swiler) goes “down to Labrador”, not “up”.

When a person from Western Canada says “the East”, he means “Ontario”, and sometimes “Ontario and Quebec”, worthwhile geography seemingly running out somewhere a few hundred kilometers east of Montreal. When someone from Ontario says “Canada”, they mean “Ontario” and when someone from Toronto says “Ontario” they mean “Toronto” and when they say “Canada” they mean “Toronto”. When anyone from west of New Brunswick says “the Maritimes”, they often mean “Atlantic Canada”, but it’s pointless to explain the difference. Yes, we know you want to visit “down there” “someday”. When a Newfoundlander says “home”, he or she means “Newfoundland”. True story: when the answer is “home” to the question “where do you want to go” at the Air Canada travel desk, the destination is inevitably Newfoundland or Jamaica. Sorting out which is usually not difficult.
I’ve never heard people in BC refer to places in Canada outside lotus land (sign at Alberta/BC border: “Welcome to BC, now go home”), so I can’t really help you out there.

There may be a test on this material.

As you’ve probably seen, I’ve been on a very reduced posting schedule for the last few months. This reason for this is in part that I’ve been working on a website to massively reduce the amount of time it takes to read my favorite blogs. It also tracks who is linking whom on an entry by entry basis, making it easy to see intra-blog discussions as they develop. It’s in fairly good shape right now — reasonable Beta quality, due not in part that my friends Bene Diction and Dean from Blogs4God have been testing it with their user community for the few days. The main website is here, but the best way to use it is to dive right in at any of these pages:

• InstaPundit’s BlogTrack
• Damian Penny’s BlogTrack
• Natalie Solent’s BlogTrack
• My BlogTrack

Enjoy, mail me your feedback, and if you like it, tell your friends!