Beam Those Socks Up, William Shatner!

My whole outlook on the future of Canadian politics was changed because I decided to search through my coloured sock drawer this morning.

To be politically correct, I suppose I should call it my 'socks of colour' drawer. Anyway I had a half baked idea that I would do something about finding last year's summer clothes. Don't ask why I was looking at socks, I know we don't wear socks in the summer. It just happened that way, okay?

One of my favourite pink socks was waiting for me when I opened the drawer. It had obviously squirmed to the top of the pile overnight. A grim reminder that its mate went AWOL last year and I have been waiting far too long for its return. I was wracked with indecision. When do you actually give up on a lost sock and put the other one down? How long do you wait? I poked at the drawer while I contemplated the question and to my horror I found four more socks without mates!

I did what everyone of us would do in such a dire situation - I googled 'lost socks'.

Not much help out there, but I learned that the Americans actually have a Bureau of Missing Socks. It was a government agency formed on August 1, 1861 during their Civil War. It was run by a man named Joseph Smithson who was terrible at being a soldier but very good at finding socks. He was the first person to document the 'lost sock' phenomena, noting that most soldiers lost only one sock at a time.

The Bureau of Missing Socks passed to civilian control at the end of that war and to this day is still deeply involved in the study of missing socks. They consider all theories from extraterrestrial thievery of socks to... well, ...extraterrestrial thievery of socks.

Hey, at least they are doing something about it, and I think it's time we Canadians stepped up to the laundry basket too.

I feel so strongly about this that I have given up my former goal of finding a home grown monarch for Canada and am now officially on the William Shatner for Governor General Bandwagon. If the Yanks are right then we'll need someone at the helm who has experience dealing with extraterrestrials. And my money is on Shatner. Rick Hanson is a hero, a modest and genuinely nice man who has done much as a goodwill ambassador for Canada, never mind the money he has raised for spinal cord injury research, but can he force evil aliens to return our socks? I think not.

To my mind there is only one man for the job of Governor General of Canada, Canada, and that man is Captain Kirk!


Oh Sh-t. Did I say Captain Kirk? I meant to say William Shatner. Maybe nobody will notice...