Don’t blame me for the Volkswagen fiasco
by Robert LaFrance
If someone had
told me on April 18th that I would have to have an air conditioner
running in the house on September 18, I would have told them they were either
crazy or smoking something legal in Colorado but not here.
It’s either
global warming or Communism, but the weather and climate have become crazy,
like a cross between a wolverine and a Komodo Dragon – and what an interesting
union that would been.
Enough talking
about the weather and even the election – neither of which I can do anything
about – I go on to comment on a story in the Sept. 17 edition of my daily
newspaper: “Province’s former youth advocate gets prestigious award.”
The reporter was
referring to Bernard Richard, former cabinet minister, ombudsman, etc. who
received an unnamed award for “promoting human rights on a volunteer basis”.
While this award
from the NB Human Rights Commission seems to be a good thing, my question is
about the use of the word ‘prestigious’. When is an award non-prestigious?
I’m thinking of
my friend Flug, who recently was named “Best Lemonade Drinker Age 60 and Over”
down at the club. That was a non-prestigious award, but where do we draw the
line? If I get named Kincardine Writer of the Year and go on the Wall of Fame
here, is that prestigious? Or does that fall just under the bar, which is what
Flug did when he received his plaque.
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So many things
these days are misnamed, but I am finding smartphones are not.
Ten days ago I
bought one, a Moto E, for a reason that escapes me. My ordinary cellphone was
working well, I knew how to set everything on it including the alarm, ringtone
– stuff like that – and I needed a smartphone about as much as I needed a
fourth earlobe.
My new phone
zooms. Within twenty seconds I can find out how many tonnes of nickel Argentina
shipped to Albania last year, just in case that subject comes up during casual
conversation.
It seems that
everyone – except maybe Aunt Freda – owns a smartphone now, and several people
actually know how to use them. In my own case it was three days before I
learned how to answer a phone call – true story. My nephew called me about
something and I kept punching and tapping the phone icon to no avail. It turned
out I was supposed to drag that icon over to another, hidden, icon.
“How in the
&^%$#(# am I supposed to know there’s a picture of a phone sitting there?”
I asked Flug. He said that I was an idiot.
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Speaking of Flug,
he’s quite sad these days because (1) he just got divorced from his 14th
(or possibly 15th) wife, and (2) on the same day he asked another
lady for a date and she said: “June 17, 2019.” I have tried to tell him many
times that women are occasionally cruel, like most of the time, but that he
should stay in the game until the last out.
“This ain’t
lacrosse, Bob. I’ve put a lot of time into chasing her around the barstools,
but she was one of them professor types. Once she explained that the words
‘discourse’ and ‘intercourse’ can mean the same thing; that I already knew. We
were text messaging at the time and I asked if what we were doing was ‘textual
intercourse’. The air got frigid at that point.”
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There’s a Yiddish
word ‘chutzpah’ which means (more or less) gall, not to insult anyone of French
ancestry, like myself, and I would say that the Volkswagen company has plenty
of it.
The funny part of
the whole Volkswagen fraud is that no one seems upset by it. People who have
Volkswagen diesels right now figure that the company is going to suck up to
them and recall their vehicles, plus giving them a wad of cash; those who don’t
own the VW cars think they are now going to get a tremendous deal on one, and
those who are don’t own a VW and don’t plan to buy one are just plain too busy
paying off their Prius and Lincoln cars.
This is
undoubtedly the biggest fraud I have ever heard of. On the day it was
disclosed, VW stock took a hit of $21 BILLION. The company is facing fines of
$18 billion but of course will pay about a dollar seventy-one, and their sales
will probably go through the basement floor, for now. The president of the
company has resigned and probably will have his Christmas bonus reduced. What a
fiasco! I’m envious.
-end-
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