Blasting Sundays to smithereens (Nov. 13)

      Even Sunday can be a blast these days 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance 

            On the morning after the time changed, I was out in my orchard when I heard a shot. That’s not unusual because certain spouses try to keep me on my toes, but this was a Sunday and this shot, followed by several others whose sounds came from different directions, was a little unnerving.

            “You look unnerved, Bob,” said my wife, as I chuga-lugged a 45-ounce glass of lemonade with a few things added. “Did you see the famous Kincardine Slasher?”

            She has tortured me for months, ever since I saw this community’s equivalent of the Abominable Snowman - in July - and couldn’t resist another dig. I told her about the shots coming from the woods – and on a Sunday. “I think I heard that they allow Sunday hunting now,” she said. “I didn’t pay much attention since I don’t hunt – except you.”

            So I went to the sometimes faithful Internet and Google to find out. Apparently Sunday hunting is indeed allowed now in New Brunswick, from October 28 to November 23. It was a miracle!

            I mean it was a miracle that I had actually found this information on a government website. I would say that all government websites were put together by committees of civil servants. They in turn choose more committees and sub-sub committees from their members. There’s no other explanation, including drugs. At any given time 78% of our government employees are engaged in writing booklets and websites.

            The information I read included regulations on who is allowed to hunt. Apparently any NB resident 16 or over may hunt, and then it goes on to say (if I understood it right) that non-residents 14 and older may hunt. There is no reason given as to why, at the age of 14, a citizen of Iraq (for example) is more responsible than a citizen of New Brunswick. In Iraq’s case possibly – familiarity with firearms from the womb – but other countries where the citizens wouldn’t know a Colt 45 from a can of beer?

            On another subject, I’m not sure if they read my column, but I want to say thank you to all the black bears who have been eating the fallen apples in my orchard. They – and I don’t know how many there are – go into my orchard and clean up all the windfalls, and then they leave me 3D calling cards (land mines) all over the orchard and yard. Some of those calling cards are so big that two big men couldn’t shake hands over them.

            The bears are doing me a favour because when apples fall, they often contain the young of the apple maggot or railroad worm, and since the bears are prompt at eating those apples, the insects are taken care of before they get a chance to come out of the apple and crawl into the ground, ready for next year. So thanks, Bruno!

         Now, to segue neatly from the subject of bears to the subject of hunting itself, I do not hunt because I tend to shoot things that I shouldn’t. The last time I hunted, it was a tall birch tree that wasn’t doing any harm to anyone, and the time before that it was a short birch tree. This was in the fall of 1980. After these rather embarrassing acts, I unloaded my 7.5 mm Swiss Army rifle,  took it into my house in Birch Ridge (ironic name there) and put it in a closet. I called my friend Larry M. and asked: “Are you interested in purchasing a tree-killer?" He thought I meant my Husqvarna chainsaw, but he did finally buy the rifle.

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A few other observations, none of them associated with hunting:

Some U. S. Border Patrol officers in Niagara Falls were being a little overzealous recently when they arrested The Great Herman, a tightrope walker who was plying his trade from the Canadian side of the river to the American side. When he arrived on the New York State bank of the river they 'detained' him because he wasn't carrying a passport.

Canada Geese are becoming more educated these days. As long as I can remember they flew south in 'V' formation. This, they say, is for an 'aerodynamic reason' – the same reason I was tailgated for two miles today by a hockey mom. Saving gas but causing heartburn. The reason I mention Canada Geese and their enlightenment is that this afternoon I looked up and saw about 120 of them forming the 'square root' symbol. What next? The symbol for Pi?

 

            As we all know, the New Brunswick Legislature recently began another session. What would you expect their first order of business to be? Fracking? Calling an election? Closing every hospital except the one up the street from the legislature? Crown Land use legislation? None of the above.

            They are going to pass some strict laws governing those little metal teapots we get in restaurants. The way they are now, one only spills three-quarter of one’s tea. The government wants 100% spillage.
                                                    -end-

Only serious stuff from now on (Lying) (Nov. 6)

A new leaf - only important stuff now 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance 

            I have resolved that, from now on, I shall only write about important stuff in this column. No more frivolous paragraphs and attempted humour. From now on I will only deal with serious topics.

            Inflation for example. This is a subject we are all interested in and should be dealt with in a serious manner, and part of that topic is the Bank of Canada and its interest rate.

            As far as inflation goes, it’s all rather silly anyway, isn’t it? We go to the grocery store one week and a big bag of dog food is $8.99 and the next week it’s $13.99. Bacon is $5.49 a pound, up from $3.00 or so a year ago. And so it goes. Turn on the financial news and someone in a suit is telling me that the annual inflation rate is only 1.1%. Really?

            The price of everything I see or touch – bacon, gasoline, tuition, vehicles - rises a lot faster than that, so where do they get their figures? I can picture some men with ties and women with severe suits all in a small room in Ottawa and saying: “What shall we say the inflation rate is this month? George? Alice?” George says 1.4% and Alice says 1.1%. They flip a coin. Alice wins. Meanwhile, from the back corner, is a little voice that says: “But my rent went up twenty percent since Tuesday!” He is ignored.

            The Bank of Canada’s ‘benchmark’ (whatever that might mean in the real world) interest rate continues at the same place it has been – low – to avoid that inflation. Just last week the Bank’s Governor, Stephen S. Poloz, said they might lower it even more. I have almost a hundred dollars in a savings account, so I’m going to lose big. What if they placed the central interest rate (that the Bank of Canada charges chartered banks) at minus 2 percent? Then the banks could just take our money until we don’t have any more.

            Wait a minute. They already do that.

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            Continuing to be serious about things, I refer you to some television commercials you recently saw. On that commercial was a brand new medicine to cure an illness you never knew existed. If you tend to get nervous when skydiving, there’s a pill for that. The disease, by the way, isn’t common fear of death, but it could be called Vertical Apprehension Syndrome. You just take their little pill called Agamemnon-FX and you don’t feel a bit nervous, or conscious

            What I am saying of course – in a very serious way because, remember my resolution – is that drug companies manufacture illnesses where none existed before and then come up with a drug to cure it. Hitchhiker’s thumb? Could that be a disease? Okay, drug companies, I have come up with the name of the disease; now all you have to do is come up with a drug that cures HT whose symptoms are fatigue, a tendency to swear, and a general cynicism about people who drive on highways.

            New subject: Are we finding that we are continually having to settle for second best in the products we buy? Just yesterday a guy in a suit told me (he was in Toronto so it must be true) that the Blackberry device, which from all accounts is a wonderful social tool, may soon be gone, buried under the many other companies’ products that don’t work anywhere near as well.

            It all comes down to advertising. If Company A has a better product than company B, but Company B’s advertising is far better (more money spent), then people will choose Company B. Back in the 1980s companies had to make a choice whether they wanted to sell the videocassette recorders called Beta or the ones called VHS. Someone in Japan decided that, for marketing reasons, the standard would be VHS. So Panasonic, Toshiba, etc. all switched to VHS and soon Beta didn’t exist. Ask somebody who has used both which one was better and they will almost always say Beta.

            The very machine I am typing this serious column on is using a Microsoft Windows operating system. Also back in the 1980s and the 1990s, Macintosh operating systems were left in the dust by Microsoft because of the latter’s fantastic salesmanship. However, Microsoft systems were far more prone to viruses and still are, and Macintosh machines were much easier to use in some areas. The reason we (almost) all have PCs and not Mac computers? Advertising, but there may be justice in this case; Apple products have finally pushed aside Microsoft ones and they’re making billions.

 

            Okay, I have tried being serious, but I’m going to have to return to being silly, as in next week. Sorry about that.
                                                              -end-

Keep your electronic stick on the ice (Oct. 30 column)

We are all in the same (electronic) boat 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance 

            Whew! I don’t think I have received as many letters about a column as I did this week. They were almost all sent through the actual mail; you know, where you put a stamp on an envelope and send it to someone at a certain address. (Mine is 129 Manse Hill Road, Kincardine, NB, E7H 3A3).

            In my column I was talking about all the automatic stuff we have to deal with every day – and every hour it seems. The car door automatically locks when I start driving, the clock falls back an hour without my telling it to, Microsoft Word corrects my spelling although I can spell.

            “My VCR keeps flashing 12:00-12:00-12:00,” wrote a young lady (64) from Johnville. “What the hell can I do? My husband Harry is about as useless as wings on an elephant and he won’t read the manual because he’s a man. Imagine!”

            I advised her to take a piece of duct tape and put over those flashing numbers and send Harry away. Jeez Louise, is that rocket science?

            George Noxman, a bachelor originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, and now living in Knoxford, NB where he rents a house from Edmund Knox, wrote about his cookstove. “I put on the timer to turn on the oven while I’m away so my roast beast will be ready when I get home from the office – I’m a civil servant – but it never works. I have done this nine times now and the roast is just sitting there cold when I get home. In fact, even the burners won’t work on this new stove, so I cook all my meals in the microwave oven.” He probably also says pizza PIE.

            I sent him back some suggestions: “Dear Mr. Noxman: I think your clue is contained in your letter. You implied – and I inferred – that you have been having this problem since buying a new stove. Might I suggest that you check to see if the stove is  plugged in. However, if it’s a gas stove, use a flashlight rather than a lit match to look behind it.”

            I received a return email that same afternoon. Mr. Noxman, not mechanically inclined, had asked his neighbour, a widow named Adelah Knokwurst, to look at the stove. It turned out to be a dishwasher. She was so delighted with this helpless male that she proposed to him immediately. “I wasn’t sure what she was proposing at first, and got my face slapped,” he said, “but the date is set for January 7^th.”

            A former police officer also emailed with a confidential question: “They give me this here gun, but whenever I shoot at a suspect – somebody robbing a bank or cheating on his income tax for example – he or she just stares at me and runs away. I got a little tired of that, and so did the bank managers, so the next time I answered a call I used my taser. For some reason it made a hole right in the middle of his chest. What’s going on?”

            As gently as I could, I suggested that this officer should perhaps find another line of work, once he returned from unpaid vacation in Renous. It was clear to me that he had gotten his taser gun and his Uzi machine pistol mixed up, which was a lucky thing for the previous bank robbers, but rather unfortunate for the guy with the hole(s) in his chest. However, if you rob banks, you have to expect a bad day now and then.

            A final note on that letter: Since X-rays, radar, etc. may make people temporarily sterile, I might suggest that anybody who has been stopped by this guy for speeding along the highway – or perhaps those first bank robbers I mentioned – shouldn’t despair at their not fathering children for a while. I suspect that what he thought was a taser was actually a radar gun.

            This final comment for the day did not come to me in a letter, but on the television news. As you know, I try and dream up things that are ridiculous, but in this case real life was away beyond anything I could dream up.

            In the country called Azerbiajan, a former enclave of the Soviet Union, elections are held once in a while. There are electronic voting machines and all is automatic as you would expect of a modern country like Azerbiajan, whose farmers are just finding out about milking machines.

            They had an election on October 9, but three days before the election, the results were accidentally published online. The government said they were just testing their equipment and these were really the results of the 2008 election. This was a dubious claim, because the names of the candidates were those in the 2013 election about to take place.

You just can’t make up this stuff.

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Bob actually read a manual (Oct. 23 column)

I find bare things shocking - especially wires 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance 

            This morning I received a real shock shortly after I got up. I must fix that bare wire on the toaster.

But I don’t want to talk about toasters, or procrastination; I want to talk about my blasted alarm clock and how things are all so automatic nowadays that no one can fix anything. I know, I rant about this kind of stuff all the time, but this time it’s personal.

            It was Sunday morning, October 13, almost dawn when I woke up, but the clock radio alongside my bed was reading 5:45. “How could this be?” I asked myself, since there was no one else awake to ask. I looked at the clock radio on the other side of the bed and it read 6:45.

            I have mentioned before in this column that I have a drug and liquor problem, but it couldn’t have been that, because I don’t use either one. (My problem is that I probably should start.) A quick scan of my face in the bathroom mirror didn’t show any more weirdness than ever, so I was forced to sit down and think.

            Finally, like the waters of the Mackenzie River arriving at the Beaufort Sea, it came to me once I had spent a considerable amount of time thinking of every possible reason that my clock, on time when I went to bed Saturday evening, should flip back an hour.

            Of course! It was doing the automatic fall change from Daylight Saving to Standard Time, but the only trouble was that the clock wasn’t listening when the powers that be moved that time change forward a few weeks from mid- or late October to November 3^rd.

            So it was just a matter of changing the clock ahead an hour, right? Very simple, right?

            Wrong. Guys, I am sorry but I let you down on this one, but after fifteen minutes I started reading the manual. Although it seemed to be in Swahili, I got through it and tried it suggested to set the clock. Of course nothing worked. It remained an hour slow. Finally I decided on a foolproof solution: leave it alone and accept things as they were until November 3^rd.

            When I did finally get up, just before 8:00 am, I went downstairs to check if my VCR had recorded ‘Murdoch Mysteries’ but of course it had not. It too had switched back to Standard Time. Therefore, I had recorded a program about aardvark mutations in Ernfold, Saskatchewan. Exciting, but I would never know if Det. William Murdoch had captured the miscreants.

            In the kitchen, the microwave’s clock numbers were blinking. I decided to have breakfast uptown with some relatives. As I started my borrowed Toyota, I heard a sharp ‘click’ and soon realized the car had automatically locked all the doors. I would have said that I was perfectly capable of locking my own car doors, but apparently Toyota doesn’t agree.

            Everywhere I went and whatever I did, some electronic instrument was telling me what I could and couldn’t do, and when to do it – or not. Security cameras followed me in every store, I couldn’t take the car out of ‘park’ unless I put my foot on the brake, and I found everything I touched had dead batteries.

Let’s accept it: we humans no longer have any say in anything. While this is a common feeling for husbands, now even wives are feeling the pinch, as it were.

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            A friend from Ernfold, Saskatchewan stopped by for the visit on Tuesday. He and his brother were on their way to Charlottetown for a horse breeders’ conference. They co-own a ranch where they raise quarter horses. (I never could understand the term ‘quarter-horse’. What happens to the other 75%?)

            Anyway, Boyd and his brother Bill stopped by for a short visit and Boyd had one of his stories all ready for me. When we had shared a house in Hamilton, Ontario back in the early 1970s, he had always been ready with a good story.

            This story dated from the late 1960s when he was working on a Panamanian freighter, sailing between The Netherlands and Brazil. New on the job and only 19 years old, he had studied his book on nautical terms and the jargon sailors used. One night he was doing a shift on the bridge, watching for other ships, etc. in the area. Four bells (2 hours) into his shift, he saw some lights off to the right and informed the captain.

            “Well, where is it?” growled the captain, a Luxembourgian who was in a foul mood. You know what they’re like.

            “Three points abaft the starboard beam!” shouted Boyd.

            “What?”

            “Three points abaft---“

            “I heard what you said, you moron. What does it mean?”

            “Over there to the right…see?” Thus ended Boyd’s career as a master of nautical terms. He threw his book overboard and talked Saskatchewan trash talk from then until he jumped ship at Halifax three months later.

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