"Unsustainable" is a code word

Thinking unkind thoughts about bureaucrats

                       by Robert LaFrance 

            Frankly, and I’ve said this to Frank as well, I’m getting a little tired of reading in my daily newspapers how this government program and that government program—indeed, the government itself—are ‘unsustainable’.

            Watch for that word; it’s code. What it always means is: ‘Hey, it’s time to centralize even more things in the cities and stomp the rural areas again’. Despite all their denials, we all know that Hotel Dieu Hospital in Perth-Andover is a thorn in the side of the government, which is doing its best to close down its surgery and move it to Waterville. We also know that they got caught at it. Is that going to change their ways? No, it will just delay it a bit. They want to remove that thorn.

            And by the way, I think it’s very inconsiderate of the people in the Plaster Rock area to want medical services. My gosh, that’s unsustainable! If you live on Enterprise Road and break a leg or need an enema, you’ll just have to drive to Waterville. It's only an hour away and you have five pints of blood in your body.  This will happen at least until the government decides that Waterville hospital is 'unsustainable’ because it was built in just about the most inconvenient place the government of the day could think of. No, Plaster Rock area folks are just going to have to learn to have injuries, heart attacks, and other medical problems at more convenient times—and places.

            I know it’s unkind, and please forgive me, but I keep picturing in my mind the day that a Fredericton bean-counting bureaucrat—one of the ones who decided to downgrade Plaster Rock’s hospital to a bandaid centre—is travelling through Plaster Rock and has some medical problem that needs to be dealt with NOW. Would he, she, or it finally realize that someone living in Plaster Rock deserves the same kind of medical care as someone living in the shadow of Everett Chalmers Hospital in Fredericton? Probably not, because he, she or it would be dead.

            You see, governments and some big companies like recessions. Really. I was astonished when I realized this. And government especially like recessions when they have just been elected, because not only can they blame it for all kinds of Draconian cuts to services, but they get to blame it all on the last crowd that was in there. (Liberals, don’t you look so smug; you do it too.)

            Back to the word ‘unsustainable’, if you live in a rural area and read that word in a city newspaper editorial, run for the hills. If the subject is health care, the word ‘unsustainable’ means: ‘close as many of the rural hospitals as possible and move those services to us’. When an editorial refers to the present system as ‘unsustainable’ that means "centralize, because they shouldn’t be living out there anyway".

            Another clue is made obvious when governments and newspapers start comparing the services New Brunswick has to those in a city of the same population, as if that makes the slightest bit of sense. Since our population is about 750,000, we should have the same number of hospitals as Winnipeg, which has a population of 730,000. The day it takes the same amount of time to drive from Port Elgin, NB to Edmundston, NB as it does to drive from one side of Winnipeg to the other is the day when that argument makes sense.

            An added point: recently a man went to a Winnipeg hospital’s ER and waited 36 hours to see a doctor. Then he died. See how lucky we are? He could have gone from Nictau to Waterville in less time, so hey, we’re doing all right, eh?

            The city newspapers are having a great time these days with the NB government’s ideas of making New Brunswick into a province of regions and not municipalities. Apparently we in rural New Brunswick aren’t paying our ‘fair share’ for the vast amount of services we get, like hospital care, the right to go skating in civic centres and swimming in the municipal pools. One New Brunswick city has even charged $500-$800 per person for young hockey players to come into town and play with their school team. Picture that if you have three kids on hockey teams.

            Oh well, that will leave those pesky rural kids lots of time to drive into the cities and break into homes.

            Listening to this (or any other) government, since I don't live in a city, reminds me of the ancient Greek Myth of Sisyphus. For his crimes, he was sentenced to roll a huge boulder up to the top of a hill. Whenever he got near the top, after working for weeks, the gods, led by Zeus, would drive it back down again so Sisyphus would have to start all over.

           Our attempts in rural New Brunswick to stop everything from being moved to larger municipalities can be described as Sisyphean. Or, if you object to using sissy words, you could use my grandfather Muff LaFrance’s phrase: “Bob, you gotta realize, some days you just can’t piss a drop.”

                                                    -end-

Doctor says 'go for a wok'

Who is front-runner in the 2012 Tacky Awards race? 

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Here are some other observations in this post-holiday, post-Valentine’s Day time of year. Some of them make sense too, for a change.

            My old friend Wung Yu from Shantung, China—we worked together in several Vancouver post offices back in the 1970s—stopped by Tuesday to say hello. He was on his way to Nova Scotia for the annual Winter Wok-Fest in Dartmouth, that well-known centre of oriental culture. He was talking about a ‘cementhead’ he works with now. This chap is Chinese but, believe me, cementhead-ism transcends every race, creed, and body type.

Wung Yu explained: “Boy Lung—that’s his name—was telling me that his doctor ‘suggested’ he lose weight and so he should go for a walk every day. I was visiting Cementhead two days ago and he showed me the 47 woks in his apartment. ‘The doctor said I had to go for one every day,’ he told me.” Wung Yu said he didn’t have the heart to tell him that the doctor’s word was spelled w-a-l-k. Many of us spend a certain number of hours every week in what I call ‘stunned mode’ but apparently Boy Lung has his dial set on ‘permanent press’.

            My neighbours from down the road (turn right at the corner, seven houses up on the right) have been in Canada for decades, but one can still catch that English accent—Cornish, actually—in their speech. I was taking a walk (not a wok) the other day past their house when I heard them having what I assumed was some sort of gardening argument, even though it was February. She called him a rake and he called her a hoe. It’s easy to hear words wrongly though, when the speaker has an accent. It reminded me of my teenage years when my math teacher, who hailed from Liverpool—not Nova Scotia—mentioned that she was planning to form ‘a sextet’. You can imagine the randy thoughts that occurred to one whom puberty was pummelling nearly to death.

            We are slowly being ‘dumbed down’ even as we sit at our computers or in our cars. I marvelled at this: the day I bought this Acer, when I put an earphone cord into the computer, a sign came up. “Information: You have just plugged in an audio device”. It also told me when I unplugged it. Many times I have tried to imagine a situation where I wouldn’t know that I had plugged in earphones. Burglars? If they got by the dog, would they head for my office and plug in my earphones? Is the Pope jewish? Then there is that wonderful flashing sign on my Toyota’s dash, the one that tells me, after my tires have spun, that the road is slippery. I would say at that point if the driver doesn’t know the road is slippery, he or she should stay home and watch The Secret Edge of Tomorrow’s ‘General Hospital Storm’ or ‘As the Stomach Turns’. Soap operas are slippery enough themselves, but at least you don’t end up in the ditch unless you sip on too much lemonade while watching Doctor and Nurse have an affair behind the anaesthesia machine that has quit working and hasn’t been replaced.

            I often watch shows that feature opinions from ‘experts’ who are supposed to know what they are talking about. Television networks keep going back to the same people who were saying in 2007 that we could look forward to a long period of prosperity. In any other field of endeavour they would be fired, disgraced, and horsewhipped, but there they are, still prognosticating from within their $2100 Pierre Sandini suits. On Saturday evening I tuned in to a show that boasted two famous economists who each had a surefire way of ending the quasi-recession. The first one, a woman from New York, said people should spend their money and get the economy moving. The other, a person of the male persuasion from Los Angeles, said we all should save, save, so we could have money to buy things later on and get the economy moving.

            Just when you thought you’d seen everything tacky, an American company comes along with a coin to commemorate the killing of Osama bin Laden. I can see a coin or a medallion to commemorate a great military victory (like the Canadiens shutting out the Leafs in a playoff game or vice versa) or in tribute to a great scientist or philanthropist, like Joseph Stalin, but to honour the slaughter of a person by a hit squad, well that’s a bit far off the mark. However, it may win a Tacky Award, so you have to look on the bright side.

                                             -END-

Hair care in all the wrong places

The case of the persistent shampoo searcher 

                        by Robert LaFrance 

            “Oh my God!” shouted my friend Flug, who had been watching the TV behind the bar. “I just realized that the shampoo I have been using for years isn’t hypoallergenic. My life as I know it is ruined.”

             Sarcasm aside, I do want to report that the marketing of liquids and sludges to clean our hair is getting a little—no, a lot—out of hand. For those ‘older’ folks (over 55) who remember the comedian Jack Benny’s TV show that used to be on between Bozo the Clown and Ed Sullivan, perhaps you remember the show in which he went out shopping for shave cream. There was Jack Benny turned loose on his neighbourhood drugstores. He came home and said to his hired man: “Rochester, I went to every drugstore in the city. I found about a dozen kinds of shave cream with about everything from lanolin to seal oil to space-age plastics, but I had to go to 42^nd Street to find some with soap in it!”

           A bunch of us thugs from the colony were in the club of a Tuesday afternoon, sitting around a round table—which makes sense—and talking about things while sipping some tall cool glasses of lemonade. It had been hot the past few days, crawling up around the freezing point, and we could stand the sweltering weather only so long. We’re Canadians.

            It’s pretty much the same thing today with shampoo, except it is almost impossible (keep reading) to find on the store shelf a bottle that’s just called ‘shampoo’. I invite you to try it. I am being serious. I found conditioner with and without lanolin, styling gel, gluten, and beer. I found dandruff shampoo (Why would I want dandruff?), shampoo for those with split ends, dry hair, oily hair, I found shampoo with amino acid, fructis, with sheep-dip, thickening formula, coconut oil, more beer, glycol, Polysorbate 80, but on no shelf anywhere could I find a bottle marked simply ‘shampoo’.

            “It’s the same with beer,” commented Finsterwald, out of the blue. “You can find red ale, mint lager, Irish red, and IPA, and nowhere can you find just plain beer.”

            “And speaking of beer,” interjected Flug’s nephew George, “I just read a book by Don Cherry. He looked around the table as if he had just divulged the secret of life. We waited. “Well, you know, in that book, he talks about ‘having several glasses of pop’ with Bobby Orr or somebody. I think people should be honest about what they do, like admitting they’re drinking beer, not saying it’s pop. And I think people and companies should make a product and call it ‘shampoo’. There’s no honesty today,” he concluded as he took another sip of lemonade.

            The next day I decided to go to the city - Fredericton, that haven of dreams and the occasional floodwaters. At a big drugstore downtown, I bravely searched for places that might contain what I had been seeking—shampoo. Sure enough, above one long set of shelves was a hanging sign saying ‘Shampoo and hair products’ among other things, one of them being ‘body wash’ which has replaced soap as the stuff people are supposed to wash with. In an age when we’re all supposed to be ‘scent-free’ all this stuff smells like a brothel. Not that I know…never mind.

            Back to the subject of shampoo, there I was in the big city store, or in the big store in the city. Wherever I was, it looked as if I would soon find what I was looking for. There! I saw the word ‘shampoo’!

            No, it was Total Clean Colour Radiant Shampoo which reminded me again of that brothel that I never visited. Then there was Total Clean Thickening, followed by Anti-Dandruff Shampoo/Conditioner, Damage Therapy, Total Repair and Intensive Repair. (I didn’t know hair washing was this dangerous.) Other labels I saw included Dry to Moisturized, Coconut Milk, Revitalizer, Colour Protection, Clear Dry Shampoo (getting close), Anti-Aging, Primed, Classic Clean, Dry Scalp Care, Itchy Scalp Care, Refresh, 2-in-1 Refresh, Sensitive Care, next to Sensitive Scalp Care, Hair Endurance for Men, Smooth and Silky, Herbal Essences, Down Under Natural, Styling Mousse, Hydralicious Featherweight Conditioner, and Shampoo.

            WHAT DID I JUST SAY?

            There it was! A jug of shampoo, real shampoo, about a litre of it for only two dollars. It came from Australia. The brand name was Roo-Head and it was, simply, shampoo. The world is a fit place to live after all.

           Now if I could do something about world peace, hunger, poverty and recessions, I’d be a happy man, but enough is enough for one day. Maybe I’ll tackle them in the morning.

                                                            -end-

It's the fault of the north pole

Observations with no place to go but up

                        by Robert LaFrance 

            Here is a whole column of observations with no particular theme:

            Whatever happened to the word ‘primp’? I thought it pretty well described what was taking place—the sometimes excessive combing of one’s hair, putting on makeup (I refer to the other gender here, I hope you know), more combing of hair, checking every item of clothing to make sure it’s perfect. No, if what I see on TV is indicative, girls don’t primp any more. They either go to a super-duper ‘beauty consultant’ or they stick their finger in a light socket. Males, don’t bother laughing at that; how can you fasten your belt when the waistband of your pants is at your thighs? I am referring to my nephew Ned in Minto.

            Some days are a little (a little?) weird and I feel like the cartoon character Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes. He’s a somewhat brainy six-year-old who, one day, got out of bed and floated up to the ceiling. “Oh-oh,” he said. “I think Dad forgot to pay the gravity bill!” Remember how I was recently pondering if the government could find a way to tax the wind? If they do, gravity is next, and no kidding.

            We’ve heard a lot about the Mayan calendar that says the world is going to end on December 21 of this year. I says to Flug: “You know that hundred dollars I owe you? I won’t have the money until New Year’s Eve. I’ll even pay you interest.” In hindsight, I am thinking that addendum about the interest was a mistake—‘an arrow in judgment’ as my old pal Fred used to say. What if the Mayans were wrong?

            You know how we look back on certain actions, events, or objects as being part of history? Like the Avro Arrow, Zoot Suits, the Edsel, the War of 1812, and like that. Well, some things don’t last long enough to become part of that history. As the late artist Andy Warhol used to say—or others used to say he used to say—everyone has his fifteen minutes of fame, but some things don’t even seem to have that. I’m thinking of mouse balls. When I bought my first computer in 1994, they had been around only a few years, and now, less than two decades later, computer mice don’t even have…them.

            I am often amazed at how quickly certain words or pronunciations catch on in the general public, but of course the reason is television. It has distorted our speech to an amazing degree. For the first sixty years of my life, the word ‘complex’ was pronounced with no accent on either syllable or with an accent on the first syllable. Now, for the past year or two, people everywhere have started saying ‘com-PLEX’. I know, you probably have better things to do than listen for such things, but that’s why I make the big money.

            What is the most insulting sign you can imagine a business would put up on its door? How about “Back in 15 minutes” with no time put on the sign. Jackie the Hairdresser could put that sign up at noon on Monday and go to Florida for a week and wouldn’t be lying. Mind you, he/she would have a rather hairy lineup at his/her door come the second Monday.

            It is said that my friend Flug never has a headache. It’s because he’s more of a carrier. Along that same line of discussion, someone recently said to my nephew Terry: “Where have you been? I thought you must have had a heart attack.” Terry replied: “LaFrances don’t have heart attacks; we GIVE them.”

            About three decades ago the comedian George Carlin noted that some words just don’t go together in a sentence. He used the example “Hand me that piano”. See how times have changed? I have two pianos that can easily be handed to other people, even though I have no intention of doing so because I like them.

            Here is a scientific observation: Global warming has been, is, and will be a problem. Those who should know blame it on ‘greenhouse gases’ and such like. I think it has more to do with the moving around of the magnetic poles. The magnetic north pole was first located in 1831 and didn’t move much until 1904, when it started shifting northeastward at about 15 kilometers a year. Then in 1989 it sped up again. They say it’s now ‘galloping’ toward Siberia at about 55 kilometres a year. I say it’s them Commies left over from the Gorbachev days. They did something in a cave near Novosibirsk and forgot to turn off the switch when the Berlin Wall came down.

                                               -end-