Do they even see the show? (Feb. 25)

It will pay for itself in five minutes, or not

                                                  by Robert LaFrance

          Today I want to share an important question with my faithful and longsuffering readers: what is the polite way – or is there a polite way? – of kicking the upside-down ice castles (UDIC) off someone else’s car?

          While many reading this will think it’s kind of a frivolous question, there is an important point involved here – etiquette. Although, as the late Will Rogers used to say, “I am just mangy with etiquette” I have never heard from the experts what should be done when you get out of your vehicle and see on the vehicle next to you, just behind the front wheels, huge almost triangular chunks of ice that once were slush.

          It is a rather satisfying feeling to kick those UDICs (choose your own word) off a vehicle. For me, it’s a feeling that I’ve accomplished something that day, but the question is, should we kick them off other people’s vehicles without their permission?

          Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of it.

          I suppose one reason I don’t kick those things – there must be an official name! – off someone else’s vehicle is that there’s a good chance that someone will be watching – and filming.

          Everybody in the world seems to have a video camera these days and they’re not afraid to use them. Ever since the days when six or eight white Los Angeles police officers were filmed beating and stomping Rodney King, everybody decided to get their own camera. And of course there are cameras in many stores and all over the place in the cities.

          You see, the chances of my kicking one of those ice castles off a vehicle and not being filmed by some local Steven Spielberg are low; even so, it’s a temptation.

          I often wonder if all these people taking videos are even doing it legally. Every street corner and variety show in Christendom holds someone taking videos. What do they do with the files when they get home? During the fifteen years when I was allowed (in spite of my obvious talent issues) to play guitar, bass guitar, piano etc. with the Wednesday Evening Fiddlers there was almost always someone filming the show, and sometimes even the jams. Whatever happened to those digital and other films? Perhaps some of them were sold to illicit theatres in Macao and Nigeria. Then the one doing the filming be a videopath but we all have bad days.

          Just as a side note, I want to mention that sometime in the 1990s I asked an older lady who had been filming how she was enjoying the show. She said she never saw one because 99% of the time she was filming and had the camera to her face. I asked if she watched after she went home and she said she didn’t have time.

          It just occurred to me that the lady’s attitude might very well apply to 2015 as well. Anyone filming the action as I kick the ice castles off the vehicle next door in the grocery store parking lot probably wouldn’t realize what they were seeing anyway.

          Perhaps I’m free, free to kick away, but probably not.

                              *****************************

          On another subject, we in this estate are enjoying the heat pumps we had installed last July, when they were also great air conditioners. Although we have seen a significant rise in our hydro bill, it has been worth it because we no longer use the wood heater in the living room. I’ve done a lot of cursing over the years as I brought wood in from the shed, which is at the other end of the house.

          The reason I bring up this subject is that when we bought the Fujitsu air-to-air heat pumps everyone we saw told us said the heat pumps would “pay for themselves” in five years, seven years, whatever, which is a great big fat load of bunk. It always is when people say that. Our electricity bill is up $80 a month and we save $81 worth of wood. Do the math.

          About eight years ago we had new windows and siding put on this house that was built in 1887, and the $12,000 we spent would “pay for itself” in ten years. As I said, a big fat load of bunk.

          What happened was that we used the same amount of wood but were much warmer. The old windows had been a little draughty. I would say I could have thrown a cat out one of the holes anywhere, but cat lovers might object to the idea. They don’t have much of a sense of humour when they are discussing their little darlings.

          So the conclusion of my exhaustive studies on whether these expensive renovations can “pay for themselves” in five or ten years is this: no, they won’t. Just do the upgrading and get it over with.

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'The Phantom Road' is real...rough (Feb. 18)

In the year 2025, when it will be…similar

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Occasionally I find myself with not enough to do – or, more likely, being too lazy to do what I should be doing – and I imagine newspaper headlines in the future. This morning I was thinking about reading a daily newspaper in the year 2025. Here’s an example:

            “Saint John – The murder trial of Dennis Oland is about to continue after a 6-month hiatus because the defendant was not up to continuing due to age-related physical difficulties. Mr. Oland, whose lawyers have requested and received 397 delays, is on trial for the murder of his father, Richard Oland, in July, 2011.

Coincidentally, this week Philip Gandolf, charged with murder the day after the Oland murder and sentenced the next week after a short trial that relied on circumstantial evidence, yesterday returned home  after serving 14 years in a federal institution. Mr. Gandolf told me that he had been lucky to only serve that much. “My family is neither prominent nor rich,” he commented in explanation. Not that I agree with that. I'm not cynical that's for sure.

                                    *****************************

            Another news story, this one from Victoria and Carleton Counties, referred to Route 105 from Tilley to Bath. The headline called it ‘The Phantom Road”.

            “A janitor in a local D.O.T. office,” began the page E31 item, “found stuffed behind a filing cabinet an official document creating Highway 105, a route that the department had studiously ignored for years because the road did not officially exist. Transportation Minister Red Green, replying to a reporter’s question during a media scrum in the legislature, said things would change from now on.

            “Now that we know this and other lost roads exist in reality instead of legend, they will be fixed. We intend to put a new surface on Highway 105 so that when tourists are directed to take ‘the scenic route’, they will not pass out from laughing and create traffic hazards. Your calls have been important to us, but due to unexpected high volumes of complaints about Route 105 we have also been unable to repair other roads.”

            The minister went on to say that the upside to the whole situation is that tourists are ‘flocking’ (I believe that was the word) to see The Pothole Capital of Eastern Canada.

                                                ********************************

            As I continued to scan the newspapers of the year 2025 (it was late at night) I moved to the automotive pages where the editors and writers were all agog at the newest wonder devices. Remember how about 2012 or so we were all so amazed at backup camera, automatic backup technology, automatic this and automatic that?

            On November 2025 the Bricklin Automotive Corporation (Yes, Malcolm Bricklin Jr. is now living in Minto) came out with the last word in this technology. It is called the Zizzaz and it can come up to your bedroom and wake you up, cook your breakfast, lift you down to your car in the garage, and drive you all the way to Moncton where you may see an Ivan Hicks show. Then Zizzaz can bring you back home in one piece. What an invention!

            Of course there are a few minor flaws in the technology. One day last week about 6:30, just when Flug and his 14^th wife Zsa Zsa were getting reacquainted (as it were), Zizzaz came into their bedroom, picked up Zsa Zsa, and took her to Austin, Texas. A software glitch without peer so far.

            I have often wondered in the past decade as this junk has been laid on vehicles, where does it end? Would I really want to rely on computer software to park my brand new Volvo? What do I say to the insurance company people if there were a collision? “I was sitting in Mary’s Bake Shop having a doughnut and relying on my car to park itself.”

                                                ***********************************

            Usually the news about dogs and cats isn’t on the front page, but in this 2025 paper I am perusing there was indeed a story about house pets, which, in the old days would have lived everywhere but in the house. The new law – they are official declared human (if that’s not too insulting).

            Any day now I expect to hear about a new law that makes children sleep in little houses on the porches, and the dogs and cats take over the bedrooms inside the house. It would be cruel to expect little Fido or Ginger to go without their own bedrooms. Occasionally I hear about someone spending $3000 on an operation on their 16-year-old cat while their kids’ dental surgery waits until next year. IT’S A CAT!

            Ah, well…in the French phrase: “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. As I look around today at the multi-billion dollar pet food industry and the money spent on pampering house pets, I realize that it ain’t gonna change until the cost of a brain transplant comes down to $75.
                                         -end-

Buy my wife a new car? (Feb. 11)

Valentine’s Day – thanks a lot guys

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

As I write today, it’s as if I am in the eye of a hurricane. It’s not snowing. What is going on?

            I can say, without fear of contradiction as they say, that this is the first day in the past ten that it has not snowed. Some days it only snowed for fifteen minutes, but others it was 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes. And now I look at the forecast: “Tomorrow snow will begin in mid-afternoon and will continue until the evening – two months from now.”

            It is nearly St. Valentine’s Day. This is the time of year that we go out and buy cards for anything up to five dollars (including a CD of Beyonce lying down on a floor) to show our loved ones that we haven’t forgotten them, be they in Korea, Fort MacMurray or Tilley. Somewhere and sometime over the years a romantic holiday has become an occasion to send roses and cards and profess our love and like and if we don’t do that we might be accused of non-love. We all get it, don’t we? Remember Christmas and all those soft-focus jewelry commercials?

            According to Wikipedia, that Feast of St. Valentine was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the late Middle Ages, and “in 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending greeting cards known as valentines…Since the 19th century, handwritten valentines have given way to mass-produced greeting cards.”

            Thanks a lot Hallmark. Nice going, guys and gals.

            My Aunt Biddy, always a sentimentalist with everyone but me, thought I should buy my bride a new car to make up for all the rolling pins she’s gone through over the years, somehow making it sound as if I had been a less than ideal husband, but I thought a $3.29 card more than atoned for any alleged misdeeds of mine over the years. Flug, who had been reading my column over my shoulder, then paraphrased a line from a P.G Wodehouse book. “I always thought she was half-baked, but now I know they didn’t even put her in the oven.”

            “Does that mean you agree with me, old friend, that Valentine’s Day is yet another money-grab?” He said he hated to say it, but he did, in fact, agree. “My third - or was it fourth? – wife Gelnna always wanted me to take her out to supper (or ‘dinner’ as she called it) on Valentine’s Day, so one day I drove her all the way to Tilley Takeout but it was closed until May.”

            “That marriage didn’t last long, did it Flug?”

                                                *****************************

            Speaking of bird watching, I just saw what I am quite sure was a California Condor as he or she stood hopefully on my bird feeder. Only minutes earlier I had seen a mountain plover pecking around the snow-covered lawn.

            “Bob, I want to be diplomatic here,” said Flug, and I knew he had no intention of being diplomatic, or even making an attempt thereof. “Bob, you are an idiot,” he said diplomatically. “A mountain plover, like the bubonic plague, is only found in the southwest U.S.A. and Madagascar, and a California Condor is only found in one state. Before you ask, it’s California.”

            The point I am making with this narrative is that bird books are just about as useless as a birth control device for a gelding. One I often refer to is ‘Birds of North America’ which, like a computer ‘help’ file, is useless unless you already know the answer. But, since you already know the answer, it is similar to what my Aunt Germain used to say to me: “Well then, what’s the good of ya?”

            What brought me to this edge of despair was that when I looked out at my bird feeder an hour ago there were several different kinds of birds besides the usual chickadees and slate coloured juncos. It looked as if someone had opened a box of sparrows and dumped them there. I dashed for my bird book.

            It reminded me of my success at lotteries. Although I have been buying tickets since 1955, I have never won a thin dime, or even a fat one. So it is with identifying birds via ‘Birds of North America’. The ones I do recognize were drummed into my head by the likes of the great naturalist the late Fred Tribe and by the very knowledgeable Murray Watters.

            So I looked and looked and looked and could not find a photo of ANY of the sparrow-like birds on my porch. I went over it again, then again, then once more. “I think that one is a neagle,” said Flug, referring to a bird about the size of a chickadee.

            “I don’t know what a neagle is,” I said, “but if you mean an eagle, you’re an idiot, so at least I’m not alone.”

                                                   -end-

Storm of the Century - not (Feb. 4)

This looks like a job for…whom?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            My daily newspaper’s top front page headline read: “Provincial judges want more pay”.

            Well, I thought to myself (which is my favourite way of thinking), that makes sense, the price of gas is going up – I read that in the paper too – and the property taxes in New Brunswick are almost ten percent of what they are in Ontario.

            New Brunswick Provincial Court judges make $205,000 a year. My first reaction was: Most lawyers make more than that, but I am sure that many of them would make the sacrifice to become a judge, and the present judges who don’t think $205,000 a year is enough could retire to the Turks and Caicos Islands where the cost of living for most citizens is somewhat lower than that in NB.

            The Provincial Court judges had their salaries frozen about five years ago, and now, when the word ‘bankruptcy’ is being used to describe New Brunswick’s financial situation if things don’t improve, the judges chose to make their request – clever timing.

They want a salary of $250,000 a year and they want all that back pay they missed because of the wage freeze. You’ll have to make your own comments about this; I know many government bureaucrats make more than $205,000 a year for doing less, but all I ask of the judges is this: please don’t compare your salaries with judges in Ontario, Alberta, and BC, where the cost of living is slightly higher, like astronomical.

                                                *****************************

            As I write this, we are just digging out from under the third Storm of the Century in the past six years.

            I am not sure that it’s possible to have more than one Storm of the Century in the same century, but CNN, the humongous news organization in the U.S., now seems to routinely call every blizzard the Storm of the Century.

            Therefore, when I was watching some news coverage of the January 27 storm as it struck the northeastern U.S., I was once more surprised that the Storm of the Century had, unlike lightning, struck twice – no, three times – in the same place.

            There was a little humour in the coverage though. New York City, where the mayor had wisely shut down everything, including subways for some reason, received less than six inches (we would say 15 cm) of snow. One of the reporters was filmed on a street as he described the ‘massive storm’ and behind him an old lady with a broom was sweeping about an inch of snow off the sidewalk in front of her closed business.

            Boston did get whacked though, and the mayor is a hero, unlike the New York mayor who was criticized for overreacting. Just think if there really had been a ‘massive storm’ there, how he would have been criticized, but at least lynching is illegal now.

                                                *********************************

            It’s amazing how unimportant many important things get when you’re sick. During the above period of time – The Third Storm of the Century – I was struck down by what my late father-in-law Lloyd Morton would have referred to as ‘a dog-ail’ and I would describe as a brutal cold. I couldn’t stop coughing and therefore couldn’t sleep and therefore felt terrible and therefore coughed even more, etc.

            When I am feeling well, I try and keep this office (in my home) fairly neat, but when I have a cold, things pile up. I now have old newspapers and other detritus lying on top of my computer, on the floor, and all over the place, while I try and make my way around in here where it’s not too roomy at the best of times.

            One’s ability to think is also compromised. To try and avoid waking the household with my coughing after I awoke at 4:00 am, I went down to the living room and my easy chair where I covered my legs with a blanket because it was a little chilly. I turned up the room heat and turned on a 1000-watt heater, then put on a toque until the place warmed up. It did warm up about ten minutes later, and I thought (to myself) that I could survive with one or the other, since the furnace was providing enough heat now.

            So which one did I choose? Instead of turning off the 1000-watt heater, or even  turning it back to 500-watts, I took off the toque. Brilliant. That’s why I’m not president of Bell Canada.

            A final point before I go back to bed: As I look out my frosty window, it has now been snowing almost non-stop for two days. I thought about phoning the premier, or perhaps Senator Mike Duffy, to see if I might get a favourable change in the weather, but I discarded that idea almost immediately. This looks like a job for…who? Please suggest someone.

                                                 -end-