Executions no, firing yes (Feb. 20)

I say we fire all the weather forecasters

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            As the faithful (and long-suffering) reader knows, I used to work for the federal government’s weather service. Although a mere ‘meteorological technician’ I did some forecasting as well, including for a few weeks on television in Inuvik. Before I began my prognostications, the ‘powers that were’ in the department (of Environment) and the station I had a meeting and they gave me this advice:

            “No human being can predict the weather, so don’t even try.” And then one of those powers added: “Unless you are working in Saskatoon. You can look out the window and see a weather system coming from Red Deer, Alberta. Okay, you say, we’re going to get rain at 3:47 pm…”

            This is leading up to a complaint about the weather forecasting in these parts: it stinks. A few years ago we heard that Doppler Radar was going to start being used in New Brunswick and that would improve things to no end. Guess what? It seems that the forecasters now rely on that radar too much and do most of their weather guesses from Tim Horton’s.

            Since it’s illegal to execute meteorologists for bad forecasts (as Hitler did more than once) I suggest we fire a bunch of them and put them to work dredging out the St. John River above Beechwood Dam even though, according to NB Power, that area that didn’t retain any silt although the dam has been there since the middle 1950s. R-r-r-right.

            The storm we received on Feb. 9 was supposed to flatten New England, and it did, but it wasn’t supposed to give us in this area any more than some blowing snow. All day long Feb. 8 I read forecasts from both NB and Maine and both insisted that it would leave us, at most, 5 cm or two inches of snow.

            I had fallen asleep in my easy chair while I was watching TV Friday evening and went to bed at 1:00 am. First I checked the forecast. Zap! Ten to fifteen centimetres forecast for here, just like that. This is called ‘forecasting on the run’. It means predicting good weather when it’s sunny and when you see it’s snowing you predict snow. So much for 21^st century technology.

            A note to weather forecasters: You do realize that the first part of the word ‘forecast’ refers to something that happens BEFORE? If you look out the window and see that it’s snowing, and you then start forecasting snow, you’re a little late. FOREcast, FOREplay, FOREthought, FORErunner…these words refer to something that happens before the main event. Repeat after me…

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            “Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to deal with” goes the old saying.

I continue to hope for either a Senate appointment or a lottery win, but I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with being good-looking and brilliant. Last week I passed the one million dollar mark in the purchase of lottery tickets, all in the hope of winning a million dollars. Makes you stop and think doesn’t it? I wish it had made me stop and think about 1985. But, if we had that million, then the kids and we would just fight over the keys to the yacht.

            New subject: Everywhere I look, it seems that someone is advising me to go and get a flu shot. The only one I’ve ever gotten is the H1N1 a few years ago and I was sick for a week. The upside was I couldn’t work. I know that the instant I type these words I will get hit with this season’s flu strain and fall over in a pile, but even so, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to have Person A hit me over the head with a baseball bat to prevent Person B from hitting me over the head with a hammer. Now here’s a fun fact about flu: The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was supposed to prevent. Gives you confidence, doesn’t it?

            Last week at the club (where else?) I was sipping on a lemonade when Leroy Spade came in and produced a photograph. He said the paper might be interested. “What does that look like?” he said. It looked to me like a headstone (tombstone, etc.) with the name Alcide Phonograf and the date 1903-xxxx. The year of death was covered with duct tape. I asked Leroy what was supposed to be there. He said it should have been 2001, but they couldn’t put that because Alcide had purchased a pre-arranged funeral in 1985 and, not expecting to live past the year 2000, had had the headstone maker put on the years 1903-19­­__, all in metal. Imagine the earth-shattering problem when Alcide passed (meaning passed by) Dec. 31, 1999 without obligingly keeling over.

            And you thought you had problems.    

                                  -end-

Naming communities - Feb. 13, 2013

It just shows to go you, er, goes to show you

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            With not a whole lot better to do because the club was closed and my wife wouldn’t fight with me because of Lent or Ramadan or something, I sat there in my easy chair, the one moulded to my athletic frame, and thought about how places get their names.

            I grew up in Tilley, where the nearest community neighbours were Medford, Lerwick, and South Tilley. South Tilley? Then why weren’t we called North Tilley? I’ll tell you why: I don’t have any idea.

            The naming of communities is either an art or a sadistic exercise. Sometimes they are named after ‘important’ people who almost immediately are found to be horse thieves or some kind of knave you wouldn’t want your dog to marry. Then you’re stuck on the horns of a dilemma, as the saying goes – hoist on your own petard. This phrase comes from Hamlet, by the way, just to show you I ain’t no literary dilettante.

            During World War I, the town of Berlin, Ontario, had to change its name to Kitchener; during the Gulf War, or one of those U.S. (excuse me, UN) wars to save humanity, France wouldn’t support the U.S. so some of the American intellectuals renamed several towns that had the word ‘French’ in them, as well as renamed ‘french fries’ as American fries. As H.L. Mencken wrote many decades ago: “no one will ever go broke underestimating the stupidity of the American public”.

            Andover, NB, used to be called Tobique, and at the same time the beautiful Tobique River was named, well, the Tobique River. So something had to give. The village of Tobique became Andover, which didn’t protect them, because in 1966 they became the western part of Perth-Andover. Meanwhile, Tobique First Nation is today often referred to as Tobique.

            Back to the subject of Tilley, does anyone know where that name came from? I’ll tell you. It was named after one of the Fathers of Confederation named Sir Leonard Tilley; he was also the Premier of NB for a while. How he held these jobs I do not know, because he didn’t drink. Alcohol I mean. Imagine. And Tilley was named after him.

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It is not possible to watch an hour's television programming without having to endure a commercial for a miracle diet. Usually the number is more like six commercials per hour, and there is no doubt that each of the companies represented is making money, else why would they spend millions for those ads?

            Accordingly, after a certain amount of research, I am here to report that there is a sure way to lose weight, one that does not involve a fad diet, pills, exercise, or reading. With this method, the average glutton will lose up to ten percent of his or her body weight within a week. After the decades of individuals trying to erase the avoirdupois deposited there by time and Burger King, a 'miracle diet' is finally a reality. This diet is something each of us is capable of; at one time or another we have all gone on this diet, but perhaps at the time we didn't appreciate its full glory.

            The great secret? Get a toothache.

            Over the period of one week as I struggled with the trauma of an aching molar, I went from a waistband of forty inches – and God only knows how many kilopascals or ergs that might be – to one of thirty-five. I started out looking like the late Luciano Pavorati as he was about to launch into his favourite La Traviata aria and ended up looking like something the cat had dragged in and wouldn’t eat.

            Forget all those fad diet books like "Dr. Atkin's Diet Revolution" and "The Great Carbohydrate Slaughter", because with TTD (The Toothache Diet) one does not chew food, he eschews it. The sight of a potato chip was enough to send me bleating for the Tylenol VIII bottle. My weight loss plan didn't require weird menus containing things like organic pomegranates, Tofu Lorraine, and mung bean sprouts. While I wouldn't want to go through it again, it sure worked for me as a replacement for pilates, poetry, and that weird elevator music those exercise shows always feature.

            The prospect of writhing in pain and going into a fetal position in the corner was enough to dissuade me from taking a big bite of that chocolate cake or apple pudding that would have resulted in my mouth exploding. Therefore, once the antibiotics and codeine (with 1500-mg of Motrin every 90 minutes) had relieved the worst pain, my stomach had shrunk to the size of a tennis ball. It's totally awesome, copacetic, and organic, man.

                                                -end-

Phone call for Robert LaFrance!

I am ready, aye ready, to serve Canada

(and help myself)     

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            Note to Prime Minister Stephen Harper: It has been a while since a Senate seat has come open in this area, but I just want you to know that I stand ready to serve my country when I get the phone call. Indeed, I am also watching my email, telephone answering machine, carrier pigeon roost, and group mailbox for word that I have been elevated, or at least my bank account has been elevated, to the Senate.

            The Senate of Canada has 102 seats, some of them filled with bums** at least part of the time. We don’t want to ask too much of older folks, like Sen. Denise Batters of Saskatchewan. She’s 42. Two Quebec senators, Claude Carignan and Leo Housakos, are 48 years old and 45 years old, respectively. Prime Minister Harper has given these people lifetime pensions of (base salary) $133,000 a year plus all the perks, for thirty or more years.

 

                 **Euphemism for human being.

            Don’t get me wrong; I love the whole idea, but I want to get in on the gravy. Please don’t think I am some kind of tree-hugging, green sprouting do-good-nik, because I’m not. I just want to get up in the morning every Friday morning, go down to my (electronic) mailbox, and find a deposit there in the area of $3000.

 

          NOTE: As a senator, I would be obliged to appear in the Senate 76 times each session.

            Mr. Harper recently appointed five more Senators, whose list of names I notice did not include mine. One of them was actually elected by Albertans, so that was democratic. Yeah. He’s Doug Black, now Senator Doug Black. He was especially noted in the media because, during his previous job with the University of Calgary, he broke several expense account records. He spent more than $28,000 between February 2011 and August 2012 whereas the previous guy in his job, Jack Perraton, claimed a total of $434 expenses in three and a half years. Senator Black is the fox that we Canadian taxpayers just let loose in the henhouse.

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            Another person in the public eye lately has been New Brunswick’s Health Minister Ted Flemming, who just might be described as a loose cannon. His opinion of those against ‘fracking’ to get natural gas is that they are ‘hillbillies’ who are looking at the world from their shacks.

            Also, he spent several weeks giving the impression that our doctors are quadruple billing, kicking dogs, and are just generally there ripping off the system. He was going to root out all these crooks. Then reality struck and the cannon had to be once more secured to the deck. It turned out that a tiny percentage of doctors overbilled the Medicare system, and most of that was because of errors.

            Another statement of his I found particularly amusing was his assertion that if the province closed 7 out of 22 emergency rooms, patient care would be ‘virtually unchanged’. Although he did not mention Goldilocks and the Three Bears, I wondered if that were going to be his next story.         This is clearly a man who lives in or near a city, has a family doctor, and does not plan to slip on the ice while visiting Riley Brook.

 

           I am wondering if it may not be a good idea to bring a busload of these government ministers, bureaucrats, and city editorial writers to northern Victoria County. They would be given downhill skis and airlifted to the top of Mount Carleton. Perhaps a few hours later these people might find that we who don’t live in the shadow of a city hospital might possibly need medical care just as much as those who do.

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            Although I didn’t intend it this way, it has turned out that this week’s column is all about governments and their peccadilloes. (I thought for a long time that a peccadillo was a lizard, and maybe it is.)

            This last topic is about the proposed new provincial ridings. A lot of people are upset about their new ridings which pay much more attention to numbers than to the language spoken in a certain area. The Tory government, with the connivance of the Liberals, hired a commission to redraw the province’s boundaries and lower the number of ridings from 55 to 49. The new riding here, where I live, is going to be called Carleton-Victoria and will go from Centreville to (roughly) Saskatoon. You might say it is a Titanic riding, as we think back to 1912.

            North of us will be Victoria-la-Vallée, which will include Grand Falls, St. Leonard, St. André, Drummond, and other strongly Francophone areas like Four Falls, Medford, and New Denmark. A note though: Although the area Nictau is listed as belonging to the riding of Victoria-la-Vallée, the people of Nictau will vote in Carleton-Victoria. MLA Wes McLean straightened me out on that.

            We must keep in mind that this is a PROPOSAL. When my (future) wife proposed to me in 1982, and begged and pleaded I might add, that was merely a proposal. Get my drift? How I’ve suffered.   

                                                -end-