by
Robert LaFrance
You won’t believe this, I know, but
I sometimes write falsehoods in this column. Get up off that floor, you needed
to know this shocking truth.
My point is that other people lie too, and their
lies sound so much like the truth that even I am fooled. A Facebook entry
pointed me toward an interview with right-wing moron Sarah Palin, former
governor of Alaska, former U.S. vice-presidential candidate, and present
ditsy-head who is rapidly getting rich addressing groups of right-wing morons.
Go to a website called The Daily Currant (Hint: The
word ‘currant’ means a berry.) and look for the story on her being interviewed
by some alleged reporters.
They asked her what she would do about the bombings
in Boston and her answer was “invade the Czech Republic” to clean out that nest
of terrorists once and for all. In the interview, which I reiterate was a hoax
but sounded real to me at first, she said: “Let’s go after all the Arab
countries”. As we know, the Boston terrorists didn’t come from the Czech
Republic, but from Chechnya, a part of
Russia, although they would rather not be. Russia wants to keep them, so there
must be oil involved.
Moving to Canada (always a good thought), I am
looking forward to the fishing season that starts just about now. Always a
brook fisherman, rather than fishing for tuna and cod in Victoria County’s many
lakes, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than get my feet wet along a
sparkling sylvan stream, slip off a rock and fall in, hit my head on an
overhanging rock, fight bushes for three hours without getting a bite, or hook
onto a big one only to have it fly off the hook as if it were a student’s
algebra textbook on the last day of school.
And speaking of losing that big one, something that
has long irked me is the fact that people never believe me when I tell them
about ‘the one that got away’. I recall last June when I, fish-less, came home
and described one that I had hooked and lost. “Bob, that little brook wouldn’t
even HOLD a fish the size you describe! I’m not sure the St. John River would,”
said my first wife. Remember decades ago when it was ‘love, honour, and obey’?
Now it’s narrowed down to: ‘Don’t believe a word he says.’
Turning to sports, I hear now and then that some of
the Canadian NHL hockey teams have hopes of getting into the playoffs. I’m
assuming that the Toronto Maple Leafs will be winning the Stanley Cup again
this year, and it’s good that the Habs, the Jets, Canucks, etc. will be right
up there too. I haven’t watched hockey for a long long time (the late 1960s),
so I assume some things have changed, even though I am sure the Leafs still
dominate the league.
One thing that has changed is the amount of violence
now tolerated. When I watched hockey back in the Stone Age, Maurice Richard was
thought to be a wonderful hockey player. However, if he were to play today, he
would last about three weeks before his first suspension, and less than a
season before his final one because he was nothing more than a talented thug. He
broke sticks over the (bare) heads of at least two hockey players, something
that even the NHL frowns on today. It also should be noted that his famous
50-goal season occurred during the Second World War, when most of the top
players were in uniform and overseas.
Now I’m going to move on to a very serious subject -
the kitchen bulletin board and hoarding in general.
On the kitchen door – the one leading out to the
woodshed where my wife gets the fuel to keep the house warm in winter – is a
bulletin board. At least I thought it was a bulletin board; I haven’t seen it
since 1995. One day last week I was walking by there and it fell down. The
railroad spikes that had been holding it up had finally succumbed to metal
fatigue.
There was a notice there about a meeting in 1997
(missed that one), several store coupons that had expired before the turn of
the century, blurry photos of a rabbit that had jumped onto our porch in 2004,
and all manner of grocery lists, reminders, and junk.
Which leads me to the subject of spring cleaning. I
can hear the sound of a hired tractor-trailer as it backs up to the door. If we
fill that 45-foot trailer with junk, it will put quite a dent in the junk
inside this house. That’s ten percent of it out from under our feet. (NOTE: The
dog Kezman is looking a little worried, but he’s not on the list. This time.)
-end-
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