I blame Donald Trump for EVERYTHING (Feb. 15)

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When New Brunswickers have power outages…

                        by Robert LaFrance

            A few years ago, maybe as many as ten (the time goes so fast!), the power here went off one windy August day and didn’t come back on until 54 hours later. That was not fun, but I can’t even imagine, and don’t want to, going two weeks without power as some households on the North Shore did.

            I blame Donald Trump.

            There is no reason in the world for blaming Donald Trump for an ice storm in eastern New Brunswick, but I’m finding that everybody else blames him for everything bad that happens.

            A pothole in Cabano, PQ, bends the wheel and rim of a 1988 Gremlin. Blame Donald Trump. A Baptist minister in Ernfold, Saskatchewan left his car headlights on all night and ran down his battery. Blame Donald Trump. I think it’s great. Before he came along I would have blamed myself for leaving my show shovel where a car could run over it, but now…? Blame Donald Trump. He must have distracted me.

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            As I write this important column, schools all over the province are closed because we had a whack of snow, freezing rain, ice pellets, tornadoes, monsoons, etc. and they sure needed to be closed. However, not everyone thinks so.

            “Them kids need to learn, the same as I had oughtoo learn when I went to school,” said Flug’s cousin Clyde when he heard that the school buses (or busses if you prefer) wouldn’t be running today. “Youse can’t make a difference in society if youse don’t go to school.”

            I have a son and a daughter in the NB education system and I’ll tell you what:  When I turned on the radio at 6:00 this morning and heard that school was cancelled, I rejoiced. While it is possible that they could be injured or worse in their own driveways, it’s not as likely as it would be if they were fighting ice pellets etc. on the Trans Canada Highway. Good work, whoever in the school district made that call.

            In this world, the spectrum of brain power that individuals possess comes somewhere between moron and genius and I don’t know where on that spectrum Clyde is perched. And…duh…don’t even bother wondering about me. I – and Donald Trump – were the ones who left the snow shovel where someone could run over it.

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            I don’t often comment in these pages about current political issues, but I must criticize Prime Minister Trudeau for not doing more about alternate voting systems. After all, world powers like Burundi, Guyana and Kosovo use the proportional representation system, so why can’t we?

            Joking aside, I can’t figure out why the federal government didn’t make more of an effort to find – or at least study – other systems that may work here. The thing would have gone to a referendum anyway, right?

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            I hate cross-country skiing, absolutely despise it. And if I ever tried it I would probably hate it even more.

            Were I to get up in the morning and say: “What a nice day! I think I’ll strap some boards into my shoes and go out into the field to frolic!” would that really sound like me?

            I’m kidding you a bit. Back in the 1980s, I used to cross-country ski with Gary Smith who was at that time a resident of Birch Ridge where I owned an estate – fifty acres of land and a pretty solid one-and-a-half storey house. Maggie of Maggie’s Falls fame lived there at one time.

            One day Gary came over to my estate and suggested we go cross-country skiing. Since Donald Trump wasn’t there to protect me from my own folly, I agreed to go on this mad journey – after we had drowned a couple of bottle each of lemonade.

            It wasn’t too bad – in fact it was quite fun – for a while until we came to the top of a hill. There was a ski trail and although it was quite steep, I knew I could negotiate (as hockey announcers say) it without too much trouble.

            Boy, was I wrong! Halfway down I was yearning for some kind of braking system. The firs and maples were zooming by and I soon realized I was going to cross over to another world if I didn’t do something drastic. Gary was waiting for me at the bottom but I didn’t get there. I dove into the snow and rolled over a few times, my skis flying into the woods.

            Eventually I did get to the bottom and pointed down the trail. “How do we get home?” To my dismay though, that trail ended there. “We’re doomed!” I cried. He pointed to the hill we had just ‘negotiated’. That was the only way back home. I think it was Thursday morning by the time we returned.

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               I hate Gary Smith.

Holsteins in the kitchen (Feb. 8)

DIARY

A ray of hope: spring is on the way

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Okay, so the weather outside is frightful, but the thought of spring is delightful; let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

            I know we Canadians are going to suffer too, but how I pity the people south of the border, now that the new crowd is in power. The snow, such as is falling as I write this, will get a little more acetic, but it may not matter if Putin decides to level North America and his good buddy in the White House.

            My cousin sent me an email from Ontario and said that she, her husband and daughter are going to Florida this month – if they are allowed in. She has dark hair. “That man may ruin the country. I think you know who I mean,” she wrote.

            One final word on that dreary subject and we shall go on to better topics. All I ask is that each American citizen look over the history of Germany from the late 1920s to the end of the 1000-year Reich a decade and a half later. Those who can understand history will see many similarities.

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            Did I get this wrong? I heard that the SPCA is about to press charges against farmers who keep their cattle outside in the bitter cold. “If humans can live in a nice warm living room, so should our four-legged friends,” said Elroy Griggs, spokesman for the alleged animal protection organization. “I won’t insist that they should have television – at least a flat-screen one – but people certainly should enlarge their living areas to accommodate dozens of Holsteins and Black Angus. Right now I would draw the line on work horses.”

            Now that Robbie Burns Night – both shows – is or are over, I want to point something out. Or as the late Sara Williams, my high school English teacher would say: “I want to point out something. The helper word ‘out’ should be near the verb.”

            However one phrases it, I want to point out that around this house where the Burns Night MC lives, complete with rolling pin(s), the year is divided into two parts: ‘Before Burns and after Burns’. Recall when history teachers and others talked about Caesar being born in 100 BC, and the Norman conquest of Britain was 1066 AD? Those letters act about the same as BB (Before Burns) and AB (After Burns) around here. That reminds me, I must dry my kilt. I accidentally dropped it into the fireplace.

            I know he’s just trying to make money, but Clyde Dinja, whose tattoo shop is just down the road, has had an ad in the Kincardine Times and Dubiety: “Tattoos removed! Only $99” and his business is booming!

(Sounds like his company sells dynamite.)

Here is his secret: Clyde doesn’t erase tattoos; he adds another tattoo – this one flesh-coloured. He has a long shelf of small vials of various skin colours. In spite of what might be the prevailing ‘thinking’ in the White House, there are various colours of human skin. Mine is sort of a mottled eggshell as laid by a Rhode Island Red which, by the way, will soon he deported from that country to the south. Only white hens allowed.

Here’s some recent news that reminded me of the days long ago. When I was in my early 20s I was working in a bank in Hamilton, Ontario, and decided to invest some money in the stock market – common shares. I chose a Nova Scotia Company, Clairtone, which made TVs; I invested about $450 of my VERY hard-earned money into shares, hoping to see it worth $600+ in a matter of months and go on from there. It didn’t quite do that.

One month later my shares were worth $125 and within three months they had disappeared altogether. (The same with Stelco and Nortel shares in later years, but that’s another story.)

What made me think of this was a recent news story that the former Clairtone plant that had sucked up my money had been purchased by a company that will grow and sell medicinal marijuana. Ironic, and I’ll say no more about that.

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Here’s a phenomenon that has appeared over the past few years – the endless repetition of the same commercial as if the viewing audience has a short attention span.

Where was I? Oh yes, commercials. I was watching an English soccer game last weekend and at the halftime break there was a Guinness commercial, and then the same one, and again, and again. And yet again. What’s going on?
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There are only 'alleged' killers now (Feb. 1)

DIARY

Sex and violence? Or sects and violins?

                        by Robert LaFrance

            My friend Flug is a bit of a prude and any of his 17 (or is it 18?) wives would agree with that assessment.

            We were walking down to the club one night last week when a blue Ford pickup truck came slowly up the hill. On the back were three young, nubile-looking (I think that means sexy or ‘hot’ as they say) women, and Flug was outraged at their dress or lack of it.

            “Girls nowadays don’t know how to dress,” he roared. “Don’t they realize they’re acting like fallen women?”

            “Geez Flug,” I said. “As soon as I get back to the house and the Internet, I am going to write The Language Maven website and tell them that Queen Victoria is still alive. That’s the way people talked in Victorian times.”

            He just mumbled something and then we looked up the road where one of the women had fallen off the truck and had rolled into the ditch. We started running up to help her, but she got up laughing. She looked right at Flug and said: “Well hello!” and when I saw him smile I knew I was looking at wife #18 (or is it 19?).

            Imagine, Flug marrying a fallen woman…she might even be a strumpet and a harlot.

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            It doesn’t matter where I turn, there is the ubiquitous Donald Trump.

            I tuned in to the Mensa Network this morning to hear the voice of the U.S. president who was lecturing the interviewer, and apparently was doing it in Latin, a language I had studied in school.

            “It’s summum bonum that we have to look at,” he was saying. “The highest good for the greatest number. I say we get to work on that wall right away and quit talking about the size of the crowd at my inauguration. Size matters, but it summum bonum in the end.”

            Then the announcer’s voice came on: “And that is an example of what Donald Trump will do for America during his first few weeks in office. He plans to put in a new wall between his Oval Office in the White House and the Secret Service offices. Dominus vobiscum. May the Lord be with you, Donald.”

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            I really think that some people should leave the humour business – especially puns – to those who are well trained in it.

            I refer to CBC Radio News reporter Shane Fowler, who recently did a story on a gathering of 10,000 to 15,000 crows that have been hovering around downtown Fredericton when, in other years, they set up housekeeping all winter at the UNB woodlot up the hill. Since the collective noun for a group of crows is ‘murder’ he referred to ‘this large murder of crows’ that had moved from downtown back up the hill to the UNB woods.

No one he had spoken to, scientists or sidewalk theorists, could account for this sudden uprooting of birds from the downtown. To sum up, he said:  “It is a murder mystery that may never be solved”.

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As a freelance journalist, I write for publications all over the place. I have even had a photo in Newsweek magazine (April 1983, of former jockey Ron Turcotte) and usually the editors and I don’t talk much, but on Tuesday I received an email from an editor in Manitoba. He said I should use the word ‘alleged’ a lot more.

“For example,” he said, “if you were reporting on the Whitechapel killings in London in 1888, you should say: Jack the Ripper, the ALLEGED killer, and you shouldn’t even use the name Jack because the killer – I mean alleged killer - may actually be named Jack and you would influence the jury by using that name.”

“Don’t you mean the ALLEGED jury?” I asked. “We have no proof that those twelve good men and true are the jury, or just people who came in off the street to use the washroom.”

“Well, I…”

“And furthermore,” I said, “maybe some of them are called Jack, and then the finger of suspicion would point at them. How could a jury of Jacks convict a prisoner named Jack?”

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It used to be, when I was growing up, that when we took a job with a big company, one could reasonably expect to live out his working days getting a paycheque from that same company. That has all changed now. I saw a recent TV ad that referred to a company that had been ‘serving Canadians since 2002.”

That’s why I was so surprised this morning when I ran across the name of a Vancouver company I used to work for when I lived out there. (I guess that’s logical enough.) Russell Food Equipment, where I enjoyed many a happy lunch hour trading quips with my co-workers, is still going strong and is indeed flourishing. Very unusual.
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Facebook has its good points (Jan. 25)

DIARY

The fact is, it ain’t there no more

                        by Robert LaFrance

            Some people hate Facebook. There’s no other word for there feeling, unless you want to say ‘despise’ or ‘loath’. I can understand their hatred, but I find FB a good source of information about whether Joanne-Lee is planning to make pancakes in the morning or if Jimbo has finally recovered his sense of smell after inhaling too much ammonia fumes at the clean-up party next door to the church.

            Facebook is valuable – no, vital – if we want to know what our ‘friends’ are doing. For instance, this morning about 4:30 I couldn’t sleep and came into my office where coincidentally I am now, and I went to Facebook.

            I learned that my old friend Jeramie Crookbook had been accused of cheering for Donald Trump at the latter’s inauguration. It turned out that he had been struck in the head the night before by a rolling pin. I refer to Jeramie being struck, not Donald Trump. I doubt if President Trump has ever been struck on the head, but about half the American people clearly have. Enough said on that.

            No, I guess it wasn’t quite enough. I mentioned journalists and implied that they are very happy about Trump’s ascension to the U.S. throne (as he sees it). I know I’m quite pleased. Think of all the stupid things Trump is going to do in the next four years!

            George W. Bush, possibly the third stupidest U.S. president in history, kept us journalists hopping. He said: "The vast majority of our imports come from outside the country." Or how about: " It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it."

            Trump will simply deny there’s any pollution and go on from there.

            Here in reality land, a race is going on. A government spokesperson has said that about 19,000 Syrian and other refugees will be coming to Canada this year, but Hermie Bloch of 201 Green Street, Silicon Valley, California, has vowed that U.S. emigrants to Canada will surpass that number by spring.

            “We voted against Trump, as did the majority of the American voters, but there he is,” Bloch said at a recent U.S. refugee meeting in the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles. “Now he’s going to take his revenge on us.”

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            To get off the ubiquitous subject of that gentleman in the White House, I will now drag a few comments out of the notebook I always carry around with me.

            I am thinking we need to define the phrase “a number of” that we often hear in newscasts and other places. Reporting on an earthquake in northern Turkey, a CTV journalist said that, in addition to the deaths near the epicentre, “a number of residents of the town of Safranbolu were killed…” What number was he referring to? Was it 27, 14, 91 or some other ‘number’?

            Still on the subject of broadcasting, particularly radio, I wish that those journalists would say to the interviewees: “Please clear your throat, and don’t interrupt my question because people can’t understand two people who are talking at the same time.”

            Here’s a note I made in late December, a few days before Christmas: “Flug and his yellow tape”. That referred to the fact that my friend Flug (Richard LaFrance, no relation) who lives a snail’s sneeze from me, had yellow police tape strung across his driveway. When I got up about noon one day and saw that, I went over to ask the former Parliament Hill barber just what was going on. “I figure that out of every ten people who come in my driveway, I don’t want to see six of them. That tape should give them a hint.” I told him that surely what would happen was that those six would barge in anyway, and he wouldn’t even see the other four, and so it turned out. I’m rarely wrong when it involves human psychology.

            A week ago I went to see a show uptown and there in the front row, as always, was Glenna Foreplaigh. She was videotaping the show. Her daughter Vivian was sitting beside her. Talking to Vivian later, I said it was nice that Glenna taped the shows so she could see them later. “She doesn’t see them later and she doesn’t see them when they’re going on,” Vivian said. “She’s got a closet full of videotapes and DvDs and has never seen then.”

            A lot of things in life aren’t as they seem, did you ever notice? Of course you did. Some of the phrases we use don’t make a whole lot of sense. Canned milk, for example is  labelled ‘evaporated milk’. Excuse me, but if it’s evaporated it ain’t there no more, right? Then there’s that barrel of ‘burnt oil’ that is found in every repair garage. If it’s burnt it also, like evaporated milk, ain’t there no more.
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