The
proper way to hunt deer – with noise
by
Robert LaFrance
Last week’s column began with saying
how spoiled we all are these days, and just hours after I sent it to the
newspaper I heard a new word that aptly describes the condition – “affluenza”.
Speaking of afflictions, I was over
visiting my friend Flug just this morning and found that the old fellow had a
bad cold.
“My sinuses are about ready to
explode, Bob,” he whined. “I was up all night-“
“He snored from midnight to 4:00 am
and then from 4:30 am to about half an hour ago,” sneered his wife Magda. “I
slept in the basement with a stick of cinnamon in each ear.” I didn’t dare to
ask why she did that.
“I did wake up around four,” Flug
went on, as if she hadn’t spoken, “and decided that a hot toddy would help me
sleep. I poured some brandy in a glass, then some hot water and maple syrup,
but found I had put in too much water, so I added more brandy and then more
water. I almost filled that water glass before it was just right. I got back to
sleep okay.”
***********************
Observations:
“So I was visiting my Aunt Lulu last
week,” began my niece Megan. Are you finding that more and more each week,
people are starting sentences with the word ‘so’ as if that follows from
something else, but doesn’t?
The Empire State Building, finished
during the worst part of the 1930s Great Depression, is almost exactly the same
height as the Hartland cover bridge is long. I found this bit of information
hidden (with good reason) in my notebook, the one that I carry around in my
shirt pocket. I don’t have the vaguest idea why I wrote this down, or why I
thought you would be interested. So why are you reading this?
The former Mayor of Montreal – yeah
that mayor who worked hard to block the Canada East oil pipeline to the
Maritimes – spent $40,000,000 of the city’s money on a light show splashed all
over Jacques Cartier Bridge while taxpayers sort of thought feeding the hungry
and things like that might have been a better idea. It was shocking therefore
when a woman named Valérie Plante beat him in an election a few months ago and
is now the new mayor. Voters have no sense of humour, do they?
Do you own a Toyota Corolla car? Do
you switch your headlights to low beam and find that people just don’t believe
you’re serious, they ‘bright’ you? It happens quite often with me. I suppose it
has something to do with the way I put my hand on the dimmer switch, or it
could be that Toyota headlights are simply too bright, unlike the guy who
bought ours.
Something else I want to ask the
all-knowing reader: when you hear a government or other official announcement
that Canada’s inflation rate is one percent, are you a bit sceptical? Are you
finding that the piece of equipment or other product you priced last year now
costs 50% more? I think those who estimate the inflation rate are themselves
living in another world. The only things whose prices are dropping are pieces
of computer and other electronic equipment. When I bought my first cellphone it
was $200 or so (in lieu of signing a contract) and now the price of what is now
called a smartphone can be as high as $1000. No kidding. Oops! I just found one
that costs more. The Mobiado Grand
Touch EM Marble costs $3100. Just in my range – for a house.
I
have also made a few notes about occurrences during the recent deer hunting
season. Wearing the brightest orange and phosphorescent clothing in eastern
Canada, I took a walk on a woods road. Soon after I started, a ‘wheeler’ driver
zoomed by, on his way to venison, he hoped. A minute later I heard a deep
pounding noise. It was this ‘hunter’ sitting still and playing rock music on
his boomer. I looked beyond him and saw, to my amazement, two deer emerge into
a clearing. I could almost hear them saying to each other: “What the hell?”
Our fairly new Governor-General
Julie Payette was on the hot seat for a few minutes because she implied that
she was dubious about ‘divine intervention’ and she scoffed at people who doubt
that humans have caused climate change. As a scientist, she would have been an
awful liar had she endorsed those two theories, and as an awful liar she
wouldn’t have been eligible to run for political office until her term as G-G
is done.
Speaking of science, I am often
baffled about some of those scientific terms, like ‘semi-conductor’. Is it a
conductor or isn’t it? And where’s the rest of it? It almost sounds like a
really short train conductor. It’s ‘problematic’ as they, when they mean ‘it’s
a problem’.
Well, it’s not my problem anyway.-end-
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