Tory candidates executed (Sept. 16)

DIARY

Billy is a member of the Atheist Church

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Flug and I were walking to (and past) the church this bright and shiny Sunday  morning when I saw a fellow on his knees in the graveyard. It was Billy the Barber.

            “I wonder why he’s genuflecting,” I said to Flug, who looked blankly at me.

            “Fetched up on his knees,” I said. It turned out that Billy, on his way to fish in  Bubie Brook, had tripped over a gravestone – his own, as it happens – and fell onto his knees. I wondered about that…Billy has been a member of the Atheist Church since 1954.

            The use of the word ‘genuflect’ got me to thinking though. I wondered about its origins so of course when I got back home I had to look it up on Wikipedia. “Genuflect – verb…to find yourself on one knee after tripping over a gravestone on your way to brook fishing.”

            To quote Joe Clark, I really didn’t expect that much specificity.

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            Speaking of walking down the road, I find that my pessimism is ruining, or at least damaging, what should be my enjoyment of the fabulous weather we’ve been having for the past few weeks.

            I realize we’re supposed to have some snow this winter – Flug told me that – but he said that I should appreciate the sunny, hot and muggy weather of early September. We were talking about it yesterday and he very gently told me that I should enjoy the fine weather while we have it.

            “You’re an idiot, Bob,” he said – as I said, gently – “and if someone gave you a million dollars you would think it should be ten million.” As someone who has been married fourteen times, Flug knows about happiness and how life should be lived – divorced.

            It was no good though. His advice went unfollowed. I went fishing and fell in. Someone tell me why I should be an optimist.

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            Could I possibly write a column and not mention the federal election and politics in general?

            I’m getting so I feel sorry for Stephen Harper – almost. Going forward from the Mike Duffy trial, he has now found that two of Toronto area Tory candidates had to be executed, one of them for peeing in a coffee cup in a restaurant kitchen.

            I never did hear whether that particular cup of java had actually been served, but the idea was enough for me. I believe that happened in Scarborough, and I used to live in Scarborough. It pains me to learn that someone could have drunk Brand X coffee at Larry’s Restaurant on Lawrence Avenue, and then went home to Mrs. Littlewood’s boarding house where I stayed.

            This cup-peeing gentleman and the other former Tory candidate were both caught out by electronics. The first guy was caught by a hidden camera and the other was doing his thing – whatever that was – on YouTube. Lesson learned? Don’t do stuff like that when there’s the slightest possibility of being caught on ‘film’.

            Half a century ago, when I was a teenager, it was quite rare to have one’s photo taken, unless the family was – shall we say – rich. Therefore the majority of the ‘historical’ photos of families are only of people who had enough money to buy ten or twenty dollars worth of film every month. Now we just need fifty dollars to buy a digital camera and a computer to plug it into and we’re good to go (as they say). I haven’t run out of film for years.

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            A few of the recent events here in Kincardine need to be commented on. When I was in school I thought this place, and the Scotch Colony generally, was probably quite dull except for the magnetic hill near the Upper Kintore Burns Hall (burned long ago), but really, the people here are wild.

            Just yesterday I was at Gibson’s Funeral Parlour, Takeout and Hardware store and talking to the secretary Maud who was telling me about all the happenings that had taken place in the previous week. Wow. However, her credibility went severely into question when she commented to me that I was looking like an athlete these days. I was flattered until Flug told me that she had meant one of those racing dogs, and the wrong end at that.

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

            I remember a few decades ago that Canada was considered one of the most caring nations on earth, but in the past decade I have begun to wonder. It took the drowning of a 3-year-old boy whose body washed up on a Turkish beach to make a lot of people realize that we are no longer that caring country. Germany will take 800,000 Syrian refugees in the next year; we have taken 2300 in the past three years.

                                                 -end- 

Mike Duffy, fisherman (Sept. 9)

DIARY

Who and what can last another 40 years?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Listening to CBC Radio this morning, I heard that India and Pakistan were once more in open battle over the Kashmir region that each country claims. Such a report is a bit unsettling because those two countries are both equipped with nuclear weapons.

            Or Nuke-you-ler weapons as George W. Bush would say.

            So I says to myself: okay, there must be a lot of oil or precious minerals in Kashmir, or the Jammu and Kashmir area as it is called, but perusing my Encyclopedia Brittanica I did not find any mention of anything more valuable than a 1975 Pinto car owned by some guy named Achmed O’Kelly.

            Like the disputes between Russia and Japan over some islands, it’s not oil; it’s just a bunch of people who get a little bored.

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            Speaking of the status quo, there doesn’t seem to be one here in Kincardine. Early yesterday morning Flug and I went fishing in Bubie Brook which is just down the hill from my place, and passes in behind Burns Hall. In the past it has been a good source of trout for my frying pan, but this was the first time I have been able to fish this summer.

            About 7:30 am Flug and I, having caught our limit, which I believe is 50 if there are no rangers around, were carrying our stringers of trout along the brook when we discovered we weren’t alone, although how two people could be alone was beyond me anyway.

            It was Mike Duffy. He had a backpack that was fairly bulging with trout. “Still up to your old tricks, are you Mike?” asked Flug, who used to cut Mike’s hair when he, Flug, was a barber on Parliament Hill, and therefore who knew the Senator well. “Are those PEI or Ontario trout, Mike?”

            Duffy couldn’t help but laugh. “I just felt like having a feed of fried trout before I continue on my way,” he smiled. “Nothing like New Brunswick brook trout. And by the way, before you ask, I don’t have a fishing licence but I’m a senator. The prime minister said I could fish here all I want and…”

            “Prime Minister Stephen Harper gave you permission to brook fish wherever you want?” I asked, my jaw dropping until it hit a birch stump by my foot.

            “No, Prime Minister Mulcair,” he uttered, to my amazement. “It’s all been settled. Harper stepped down yesterday morning and handed over the reins to Mulcair and the NDP.”

            And the NDP allow Senator Mike Duffy to fish in NB brooks whenever he wants?   I want to speak to his lawyer. And by the way, has anyone ever asked himself who’s paying Mike Duffy’s legal fees? If he couldn’t afford to repay either $32,000 or $90,000 to the Senate, where is he getting the money now to pay his lawyer, whose billable hours must be worth about two million by now?

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

            Going from one old dog to another, I recently read that research from the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Vienna, Austria, had made an extensive study of how to keep your dog from getting sunburned.

They were pretty cagey about how much this study cost, but I gathered it was in the $80,000 range.

Here’s the first major tip - keep him out of the sun.

I don’t think I would have thought of that. The study went on to say that you can put sunscreen on your dog and if it’s really hot and the dog has very short hair, you can put a sweater on him.

Eighty thousand dollars, huh?

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

            Finally, this item is for people who have bought asphalt shingles with a 25-year guarantee, or maybe even a 40-year one. Did we ever ask ourselves – in the unlikely event that we live another 25 years or forty – who would be around to replace our curled up shingles?

            My friend Flug, bless his soul, bought some 25 year shingles about 15 years ago and is now finding they have curled up and the wind is flipping pieces of them to parts unknown. He took a few to the hardware store where he bought them.

            “Are you kidding me?” was the reaction. “That company has been renamed three times in the past decade and is now bankrupt. They’re all like that.” Flug came back to his home in a sad mood and said he would never again buy 25 year shingles.

            “I’ll get the 40 year ones next time,” he said. Hence his childhood nickname – ‘Cementhead’.

                                                        -end-

Do I love flagpersons holding up traffic? (Sept. 2)

DIARY

Shall I return it parcel post?

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

            Okay, let me get this straight…a 7-foot python got loose in south Fredericton, but the authorities said that it was no danger to humans.

            Hmmm…

            I decided to do some research – don’t be shocked! - just in case this huge snake was a fast slitherer and was heading north. My dog, a Great Dane named Fluffy, would also be interested, and maybe even Bert, my Himalayan pony.

            The missing snake was a Colombian red-tailed boa constrictor but, according to its owner, a Mr. Gallant (not the premier): “it lacks the size, strength and temperament to be a threat to people”.

            I’ll tell you what: one day in Hamilton, Ontario, I stopped at a pub to have a cool beer (they were out of lemonade) and a brawl started after about five minutes. A big guy hit a sweet little old lady with a chair and she just looked up at him and smashed a beer bottle across his nose. She also “lacked the size, strength and temperament to be a threat to people”.

In other words, if a 7-foot boa constrictor comes around my mailbox, he’ll get a parcel he’s not looking for.

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

            A lot of people who come to road construction sites and are held up there by flagmen who are mostly women now don’t appreciate it much, even though it means they’re going to soon be driving on new roads.

I enjoy it. There’s such a camaraderie among the held-up drivers. As I am waiting, I see the other drivers happily gesticulating to various people that they should set up a barbecue. Others wave happily in the general direction of the construction, especially those people who are clearly late for appointments and suchlike. Often they wave with only one finger. Some people read or listen to their radio. Super high-tech drivers check their e-mail and play Zoomata.

Finally the line starts to move, but only one space because one of the vehicles close to the front is being hauled away for parking in a restricted zone. The driver is trying to explain that he’s been waiting in line for half an hour and not parked. The officer reads from his notebook the definition of parking: “The vehicle in question stays in the same place for more than 30 minutes.” Several other tow trucks are lining up to haul away the other cars, but just then the line starts to move. The tow truck drivers curse. Meanwhile the one driver whose car they did get protests too much and is Tasered by the officer.

On the other side of the river I see a terrific line of vehicles, and as I zoom away I say to myself once again that when I grow up I want to be a flagman. What a responsible job, and what a chance to annoy people! Looking at my watch, I see that I had been stopped for 37 minutes. It was quite a party!

            *************************

            Following are a few other points that must come up in some people’s lives:

            What if you were a terrorist and were applying for a job, let’s say at Sobey’s or Wal-Mart? You fill out the application form, and of course as a religious zealot you must tell the truth. When it comes to the line that wants you to list your previous jobs, what do you say? It seems to me that these (or most other) companies would frown if you wrote in “terrorist”. What do you say? Perhaps your last job was blowing up a jet in the desert. Could you say ‘aircraft refurbishment technician’?

            As a computer owner (or does it own me?) of 21 years standing I can truthfully say that NOT ONCE in all those years has one of those online Help files been of any help whatsoever. The people who write those things are either so stupid that it’s a miracle they can put on their shoes, or so intelligent that they’re in another world entirely.

            Speaking of online, last week I bought a flute from eBay and was amazed that it arrived the next afternoon, and delivered by a drone. That drone was named Steve. I was further amazed to find that ‘shipping and handling’ made up 70% of the cost. I asked Steve if, next time, he could dispense with the ‘handling’ and just ship it to me. He said that ‘shipping and handling’ was like ‘odds and ends’ and couldn’t be separated.

                                                  -end-