The eighth day of Christmas

I rather gave up on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day as holiday material years ago. My idea of a party never grew much beyond cake and ice cream and games, and I'm an unaccomplished drinker. Alcohol doesn't loosen me up; it just makes me sleepier and stupider than usual (when it doesn't make me positively ill).

Yesterday evening found us parked in front of the television eating potato chips and tortilla chips and watching, amongst other things, the very last Royal Canadian Air Farce New Year's Special The Final Flight. The Royal Canadian Air Farce, which was on CBC radio in the seventies and eighties and has been on CBC television since the early nineties, isn't what you'd call biting political satire, and has never been as hip as say, The Kids in the Hall or Codco, but in between the lamer gags there's always been a gem or two. CBC television, in its questionable wisdom, has decided to cancel the show despite healthy ratings, presumably because of the desire to attract a more desirable demographic. (I hate to break it to you, CBC, but that demographic is hunched over its computer, playing games and downloading stuff to watch illegally.) All the same, I noticed that elder daughter, all of sixteen, guffawed several times during this final Air Farce, which featured, among other things, longtime news anchor Peter Mansbridge pretending to be a Newfie, and the infamous Chicken Cannon firing for the last time at five chosen targets, including the CBC logo. Prophetic? Maybe...