My Pharmadoodle card (Dec 26)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Ho ho ho, bah humbug!

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            “Tis the season to be Polly!” shouted my old friend Paul LeGrand, nickname Polly, as he was doing some last-minute Christmas shopping in Perth-Andover’s dollar store.

            Polly was happy to be nearly finished his shopping for another year, except for one minor problem – it was Christmas Eve and he hadn’t bought anything yet. “I’ve almost started,” he said, as he perused the discount store. He had yet to buy a present for his wife Carnal (known as Carnie to her acquaintances, for obvious reasons) and he was getting slightly worried. The store would close in another ninety minutes.

            I had some shopping of my own to do, so it was an hour and a quarter before I got back that way. I had gone into Cannabis NB for a gift for my cousin Vinnie so sugarplums could dance in his head, and I had bought a new bible for Elf Landon, whose old St. James book had come to Canada in 1873, and I had made a few other purchases before I arrived at the dollar store. Polly’s Gremlin was still parked there.

            He was just coming out. “All finished!” he said triumphantly. “I finally got Carnie’s gift.” He reached into the small shopping bag and brought out a can opener, a key chain and two little bottles of chili powder. “Six dollars,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever spent that much.”

            How lucky a man he is, I thought to myself (which is my favourite way, as comedian Martin Mull used to say). I have to buy for my wife and a teeming mass of four more people. Of course my eldest daughter buys it all with my money but I write on the tags. There’s nothing like the Christmas spirit for me.

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

            Received my December hydro bill yesterday and decided to mortgage our house and sell the dog.

            Geez, I thought heat pumps were supposed to pay for themselves in only a few years. At this rate they will pay for themselves by the turn of the decade, like 2030, but on the other hand global warming should make them obsolete anyway. Why should we need heat pumps when the average temperature in late January is expected to be 23ºC?

            Speaking of the costs of things, I started craving fried baloney early this morning and by 11:00 am it was an obsession crossed with a fervent desire.

            I passed the hamburger section, the salmon and shellfish section and the sausage section of the local grocery store to find myself at the baloney section. Only it wasn’t the baloney section any more, it was the BOLOGNA section. Also, there were two armed guards and a huge German shepherd dog standing there.

            Looking up over the dog’s shoulder, I could see why all those guards were needed. One roll of ‘bologna’ that weighed perhaps a kilogram (2.2 pounds) would cost me $14.99 if I were to buy it. I decided not to and moved along to the potato chip area. The chips were reasonable in price, and, looking back to where I had just visited, I was pleased to see that the German shepherd was tearing into a small roll of bologna while the armed guards were trying to beat him away with their Uzi machine gun butts.

            Walking outside with my paid-for groceries (no baloney), I noticed a Brinks armoured truck parked by the side entrance. Two Uzi-wielding guards were watching a third guard as he brought out a small box marked ‘Bologna’.

            It was all rather unsettling because I remember when I was a kid growing up in Tilley, baloney was considered the ‘other side of the tracks’ kind of meat. Most of the adults, who didn’t know much anyway, called it New Brunswick Steak.

            From the grocery store I drove over to the pharmacy, which used to be a drug store, to get some eggs that were on sale that day.

            That’s what I said, eggs for sale at a drugstore. Looking around, I noticed that the ‘pharmacy’ also had bread for sale, chain saws and I have a feeling that if I had looked around some more, I would have found they were selling chainsaws and real estate. It’s all very confusing for an old person.

            Arriving at the counter with my eggs, I was asked if I had a Trident card, a Freedom card or a Pharmadoodle card (I think that’s what she said) and if I wanted to pay by VISA, Mastercard, debit card, American Express, Canadian Express, Albanian Express or several others that I can’t remember and I said ‘cash, please’. There were three clerks there and two customers in line and they were all stunned into silence. I could hear someone say: “Should I call Security?”

            Finally, having paid for my eggs, I left the store, the pharmacy, and gratefully got into my 2001 Toyota Tercel for the 20-kilometre trip home. My wife met me at the door. “The frying pan is all ready for your baloney,” she said.

            I told her I was just going to my office and didn’t want to talk to anyone until January 2^nd. I didn’t mention that I had made another stop – at the place where they sell Scotch whisky. I will see you in the new year.
                                          -end-

How governments started (Dec 12/18)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Whatdya mean, CHILD-proof?

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            My friend and neighbour (who lives 15 kilometres away) Clyde Hainsworth hates to take pills, but on Monday he had some kind of a dog-ail, as my late father-in-law used to call illness, and went to see Dr. Feinstein.

            The physician prescribed something called Fender-bend – or at least that’s what Clyde called it – so Clyde picked some up at the drugstore; as soon as he got home the trouble started.

            I happened to be driving past his house when I heard a mighty boom that sounded as if it had come from his front lawn. Sure enough, there was Clyde out there in his slippers and not much else, and he carried what looked like a 12-gauge shotgun. A bit of smoke was rolling out from the gun’s barrel.

            He pointed to the ground where little – VERY little – pieces of plastic lay amid a scattering of white pills. “Well, I guess that child-proof pill bottle lived up to its name. I couldn’t get it open and I tried pliers, a hammer and finally Old Barleycorn here.” He patted the gun affectionately. He started picking the pills out of the debris and putting them in his pocket.

            It’s true isn’t it? Those child-proof bottles, easily opened by any child over the age of two, are almost impossible for us alleged adults to open. Whoever designed them was clearly a member of a South American death squad. Clyde and I talked for a while but not long since his ears were ringing and he couldn’t hear much, but I did have a suggestion for him.

            That suggestion was the same one I advise older people to do if they acquire a computer for the first time – get a child to show you how it operates. A month later I again stopped by Clyde’s house to ask how things were going. I was surprised to learn that he had taken my advice. His next pill order had shown up the day before and he had immediately called his grandson Curly, who popped open the container and put the pills in a butter dish. There’s always a way.

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

            “You talk a lot about “the good old days”, Charlotte Beamsley emailed me the other day. “I agree that things are better nowadays, Donald Trump notwithstanding, but we have lost a lot of words from are language and I don’t think they will ever be back.

            “When I went to school, the word ‘gay’ meant cheerful but today you could say it doesn’t always mean the same thing. Indeed,” she continued, “it can still mean cheerful, but there is another meaning built in.” I thought about the word ‘indeed’ that she had used and resolved to ask my thousands of friends how many times they had used it in the past six months. So the word ‘gay’ meaning happy and the word ‘indeed’ that is used to emphasize things have both changed from the good old days.

            Just for the record, I am not complaining about either change, but just pointing out that English continues to evolve.

            Take the phrase ‘rap music’ for an example. Since there is no such thing, the whole thing is weird. Rap is just a beat looking for some music, or you could say it is lyrics looking for some music, but unfortunately there ain’t no music involved.

            While I am on this rant, what’s up with television news readers saying that they had “referenced” something when all they mean is that they referred to it, and what happened to the word ‘affect’? These days events ‘impact’ things instead of affecting them. On the other hand, it would sound a little strange to refer to ‘an affected wisdom tooth’.

It’s all bewildering to me. That’s why I stay home and drink after looking  longingly at the Cannibis NB store as I drive by.

            Do you remember buying water in the good old days? Not. Remember what your dog and cat ate? Right, they ate what you ate, but somewhere along the way they became little icons and angels and could only exist on a diet of antibiotics and TLC.

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

            LaFrance Dictionary…What is the difference between a bureaucrat and a manager?

            A bureaucrat is one whose entire life is centred around inconveniencing others to the point where those ‘others’ are driven around the bend, or a series of bends. A bureaucrat enjoys putting up roadblocks (I’m not talking about the Tobique Narrows Dam here) and when he or she can reduce grown men and women to tears of frustration that is a day well spent. At that point the bureaucrat ticks off another day on the way to its pension. Notice I did not say “well-earned” pension.

            A manager likes to have things work correctly and makes a real effort to bend the bureaucrats under him or her to actually accomplish something. When an immovable object meets an irresistible force what can be the only result? Government.
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Mary-ja-wanna now legal (Nov 28)

NOTES FROM THE SCOTCH COLONY

Legalizing marijuana – good idea?

                                    by Robert LaFrance

            As I write these immortal words, it’s nearing the end of November but I see a gaggle of Canada Geese who were supposed to have gone south a month ago. The funny thing is, they were heading north.

            It was then that I, at the age of seventy, finally realized that Nature’s creatures sometimes rebel against their own mother. The bigger the bird, the more likely he or she is to be a renegade.

            At this point I should tell a story about seeing an ostrich building a campfire in my apple orchard, but I will shock even myself and tell the truth.

            Walking down Manse Hill Road during one of our cold cold days, I heard a thump-thumping noise coming from the top of a hydro pole. I looked up to see a pileated woodpecker, one of those BIG ones who could haul farm equipment if they wanted to, and he (or she or LGBT) was a-pounding away with his beak on a fairly new hydro pole. If he expected to find bugs in there, he must have stopped at Cannabis NB on the way to Kincardine.

            Anyway, he was pounding away and wasn’t the least bit bothered by my walking by and then stopping to fumble for my alleged smartphone. He was even making progress on the pole. I had thought at first it was sort of a mating call he was making, but it wasn’t the right time of year. I recalled some days of my youth when I did similar things, but I certainly wouldn’t have climbed a hydro pole to make my call. Or would I?

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

            Donald Trump, a combination of Machiavelli and Bozo the Clown, must be shaking in his boots right about now, because the Special Counsel’s Report of Russia’s helping him, Trump, get elected in 2016, is just about to drop with a huge splat right on the top of Trump’s head.

I am not sure if there is a less likeable person in the world but surely there must be? He seems to automatically do the wrong thing or fail to do the right thing, like not visiting American soldiers in war zones. He should realize that he would be perfectly safe there; the last thing other countries would want to do is get rid of someone who sides with dictators. I’m sure if he were asked what he thought about troop movements he would think the subject was what Americans call latrines.

            But enough about Donald Trump; as they say, he is his own worst enemy and will soon get taken down, somehow. It’s kind of scary though, that this weird guy can start a war anytime he wants to, maybe with us. At least Loring Air Force base, over near Caribou, Maine is no longer with us. Back when I was growing up in the 1950s, the B-52s from Loring used to fly right over our house in Tilley and scare everyone, every time. I often dashed to the ‘latrine’ when I thought one of those monsters was going to crash on our house. That would have been the biggest rebel bird of all.

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

            I haven’t made a comprehensive study on this matter, but I must say that I am surprised that there is so much stovewood left in western New Brunswick – much of it even legally cut.

            Day after day pickup truck and trailer loads of stovewood go by our estate and it is amazing that there’s so much wood available for the cutting by people who wouldn’t know a chainsaw from a kiwi. It’s pretty scary in some cases.

            Two days ago the dog Minnie and I were walking around Bon Accord – where the public dump used to be – and we heard the sound of a chainsaw. Eddie Crenshaw and his Husqvarna were clear-cutting Bon Accord, one poplar at a time. While I would have expected him to be cutting maple or beech trees – since poplar is about like kissing your sister for ‘last’ – he was having a good time.

            That is, until he discovered that he had parked his Rav 4 and trailer just a mite too close to where he was cutting. Oh well, that’s why God made insurance.

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

            Eddie never was the sharpest knife in the drawer, the biggest mouse in the barn, or the hardiest snow snake in the drift, but he does his best. His daughter Zelda started attending university in September and learned some new words that she proudly showed off to her parents at Thanksgiving dinner last month.

            She said that she had learned a lot about ‘geopolitics’ and both Eddie and Zelda’s mother Gwen were baffled at that one. She went on to say that Canada’s legalizing marijuana had been a good idea, an opinion that didn’t sit well with her parents. They both asked her – at the same time – if she had ever drunk any of that ‘mary-juana pot stuff’ and she said she hadn’t but her friends had.

            Then the conversation went on to politics and Zelda declared that she was ‘pragmatic’. Shocked, her parents said she had to have an abortion right away.
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