DIARY
It’s
no use worrying about gas prices
by
Robert LaFrance
I have a whole pre-spring litany of
rants, raves and gripes about the world in general, and aren’t you lucky? You get to hear some of them.
How about the ‘gas guru’ who is on TV
and radio every Wednesday to tell us that the price of gas at the pumps is
going up or down? Do I really need to hear this? When my Gremlin needs
gasoline, I go to the pumps and fill it; when I figure I’m spending too much
money on gas, I drive less if possible. I know people who listen for that
pronouncement every week and if they hear the price is about to go up two cents
a litre, they dash for town 20 kilometres away and fill up, even if they have
to use a plunger to jam the gas into the tank.
Does any of that pump-watching make
any sense at all? I don’t know. As the monkey said when he left ‘a mess’ behind
the chesterfield: “That remains to be seen.”
A few columns ago (that’s how things
are measured in my world) I wrote about the several Storms of the Century and
wondered how there could be more than one Storm of the Century in the same
century. In the same vein, I am now wondering how many Last Frontiers there can
be.
Those of my generation were told that
space was the Last Frontier, and then that name shifted to The Genome Project,
DNA, etc. Last evening I looked in the TV guide and found a show called
‘Alaska: the Last Frontier’. I suppose this is yet another example of American
hyperbole, like ‘World’ Series, but still I am wondering when we will truly see
The Last Frontier. How about Young People Finding Work That Doesn’t Involve
Paper Hats?
While on the subject of television, I
have been a watcher of the PBS show This Old House for decades and am
finding that it sure has changed.
Bob Villa was the host when the show
first took to the air, and the whole premise of the show was taking an old but
solid house and fixing what was wrong at a reasonable cost. Now the show is a
haven for Yuppies and Volvo owners who spend $20,000 because they don’t like the
window trim. Perhaps they should spend a little more on curtains so they don’t
have to look out at homeless people going by.
Dozing in
my easy chair while listening to radio on my iPod Touch, I fancied that I heard
the phrase “a conference on porn affairs”. Like a government about to
commission a study, I sprang into action. Turned out it was a conference on
foreign affairs. It was a little embarrassing when I arrived at the conference
centre wearing only shorts and a smile. I guess from now on I had better
emulate Frank Drebben (Of the Naked Gun series of movies): “Like a midget at a
urinal, I had better be on my toes.”
Tiny, a 279 pound gent who lives down
by the Kincardine Golf Club and Lounge, is one of these folks who tend to
freeze houses for a living. He stopped by last evening.
I am talking about people who, when
they have been visiting somewhere, open the door as they leave and then start a
conversation, leaving it open as they carry on a 5-minute discourse. Meanwhile,
I am standing there with my teeth chattering as if I had a mouth full of
ill-fitting dentures and facing hurricane force winds.
On the radio show ‘A Prairie Home
Companion’ the narrator, Garrison Keillor, calls what Tiny does “the Minnesota
Goodbye”.
So what can we do about this problem
and why is it occurring? Answering the second question, I am thinking that
people, once they get all their winter coats etc. on, must be thinking: “If I
have to go out into the cold, why don’t I make these people freeze a little?”
As to what to do about it, one method I have used for years is to say: “Either
go out or stay in, preferably go out!”
Joking. I’m too polite. Of course,
once they read this, the problem may be solved because they’ll never visit here
again. They will know who they are. My friend Flug (Richard LaFrance, no
relation) says that when someone starts a conversation while the door is wide
open, he rushes over and warns them about the porcupines that lurk in the shed
near that door. He dashes out and closes the door behind him, then comes back
in a minute later to report all is clear, but they had better dash.
-end-
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