For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. To most of us, it is simply a stellar Van Halen album from the post-Diamond Dave era. However, it has been brought to my attention that some unsavoury characters have taken to using this acronym in a less than Christian context.

Somebody kill the mike. Well, somebody did.

There is plenty of Canadian comedic talent that makes it big in show business. Carrey, Fox, MacDonald, Aykroyd and O'Hara to name a few. But look for Canadian funny folk succeeding without crossing to the wrong side of the tracks and the selection is much less abundant. Those numbers shrank more last week as Mike Bullard was axed from CanWest Global.

It's almost been a month since I left Calgary and arrived here in Sydney, and through that time it has been a complete roller coaster of emotions.

At first, I was totally happy that I was leaving the terrible weather of Calgary for the tropical climate of Sydney. In this cosmopolitan and modern city, I thought I was in my own urban Paradise. Here was the city of my dreams: the people were friendly, it was beautiful and it had perfect weather.

That soon changed when things began to go wrong.

"Movies ain't as good as they used to be," is an all too common refrain. To these people I would say "ain't' isn't a word" and let them know they're only half-true.

You see, it's not movies that aren't as good as they used to be, it's movie theaters--though after seeing Torque I might revise that statement. Let's face it, theaters are not as good as they once were.

For the last three and a half years, American liberals have been eagerly anticipating the upcoming presidential election and the opportunity to show George W. Bush the door. Yet, as many of them have been figuring out, all is not well in the world of democracy.

I found a short news item in The Globe and Mail last month. It was buried at the bottom of page 16, sandwiched between two much larger advertisements. The headline? "Global warming huge threat, study says."

According to the story, a quarter of all life on earth could be extinct by 2050 because of global warming.

A quarter of all life, a million species of plants and animals wiped out for good. This would be the largest mass extinction since the dinosaurs.

When someone says the word Australia, what comes to mind? The classics always come first: koalas, dingoes, kangaroos, Foster's, Crocodile Dundee and the Crocodile Hunter. But what is the real Australia like, beyond all those stereotypes and symbols we've come to associate with Australians and their country?

I don't care that there will be a tape delay. I don't care that time and tax dollars have been used to debate the issue. I don't even care that this is the second time in a week that the public has been deemed too immature to watch television and make their own decisions. But its bothering me something fierce that nobody cares whether he was right or not.

'Are they getting louder or just dumber?'

"Dumber, sir."

That would be Mayor Quimby questioning an aide if the crowd outside his office were as unbelievable as they sounded. They wanted the "Bear Patrol" but didn't want to pay the "Bear Tax." The solution, or perhaps the problem, was too many immigrants keeping taxes too high. Before the first commercial break, the fear/anger wave had hit bears, taxes and immigrants.

Why? Mob mentality.

At 3 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, sleeping is what most of our diurnal population hopes to be doing. So, tossing and turning with no signs of sleep coming soon, it was at around this time that I found myself cruising the internet looking for something to do.