I'm at the intersection of College and Clinton St. earlier this evening. There are two women (I don't know either one) off to my left.

The temperature was about -10 degrees Celsius but felt like -19 with the windchill.

One is kvetching to the other about how cold it is. "Yeah, it's a good night to stay indoors and do nothing," the friend replied.

I actually didn't find it that cold, and so I interjected.

"C'mon folks, toughen up!" I said in what I thought to be a lighthearted way.

One gal, the friend, laughed.

The kvetcher reacted somewhat differently.

"WH-A-A-A-T-T-T?!?!" she yelled, stopping and glaring at me.

The friend smirked. I followed up with, "It's winter, so enjoy it!" punctuated by raising my hands and turning my palms up in a "what can you do?" gesture.

"You're a fucking idiot," the kvetcher said, following that with, "Fuck off, you fucking asshole."

As they walked off, the friend looked back out of the corner of her eye and smiled at me again as they headed south on Clinton, and I turned west on College. The kvetcher was still muttering with outrage.

"Merry Christmas!" I replied with as much faux sweetness as I could muster.

Afterthought

I guess know I know how Borat feels. :)

I should say that to me, the kvetcher's eyes did not look to be those of a high-functioning person's.

The subject line of an email from the Western Standard:

Buy a Mark Steyn t-shirt in time for Christmas!

From Statistics Canada (Dec. 6)

The operating profit margin for Canadian newspaper publishers declined for the second consecutive year in 2005, as the growth in operating expenses outpaced the growth in revenue.

Data from the survey of newspaper publishers show that the industry's operating profit margin in 2005 was 13.3%, compared with 14.2% in 2004 and 15.1% in 2003.

Microsoft's Bill Gates once predicted the problem of email spam would be solved by 2006. Ha! Ha! Ha! That's like calling something "raccoon-proof."

From a Dec. 5 AP story on ABC News:

 German authorities have informed NATO-led troops in Afghanistan that two journalists may have been kidnapped in the country's volatile south, NATO's spokesman said Tuesday.

The two journalists, whose identities and media organization were not identified, reportedly went missing in Kandahar province on Monday, said Maj. Luke Knitting, the spokesman for the NATO-led forces in Afghanistan.

"German authorities told us that two journalists may have been kidnapped in southern Afghanistan," Knittig said.

A German foreign ministry spokesman in Berlin, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, confirmed that it has reports of a German citizen possibly missing in Afghanistan since Monday.

He had no information on the other journalist's nationality.

A poll conducted for the BBC World Service and ABC News finds that while Afghans still think their country is on the right track, optimism about the future has fallen significantly in the past year.

From the BBC:

A Yemeni editor has been fined for reprinting controversial cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad from a Danish newspaper earlier this year.
Muhammad Assadi of the Yemen Observer daily was found guilty of denigrating Islam and fined 0.5m riyals (£1,280).

The cartoons caused Muslim anger around the world. Mr Assadi said he wanted to show Yemenis how insulting they were.

Last month a Yemeni editor was jailed for a year for reprinting the images. Another still faces similar charges.