Wednesday, Sept. 19, 2012

We’re all philosophers, aren’t we? 

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            My wife and I observe our 30^th wedding anniversary this month.

 

           You will notice I didn’t say ‘celebrate’. How I have suffered! From the day back in 1981 when she begged and pleaded with me to marry her and I remembered I had promised to work in Inuvik for the next five years and she called the company and said I had water on the brain (not far off there) and finally dragged me to the front of the church on September 25 the next year, it has not been wedded bliss.

            I have been picked on and victimized. For 23.5 hours a day I have suffered. And now I…

            PUT DOWN THAT ROLLING PIN!

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            This is Bob’s friend Flug finishing up his column. He, er, had to go away for a few days. I have wanted to write one of his columns for years but for some reason he insists on writing them himself. He says: “If my name is on the column and I get big money for writing it; I have to write it.”

            Too bad this time, Bob. I’ll visit you in the horse-stable though, LOL, as they say on Facebook.

            Unlike Bob’s rather boring columns, I want to talk about something interesting. Just down the road from my house is a chap we call The Perfessor. I stopped by yesterday to say hello and, as usual, he was in the midst of reading philosophy, of which he had been a professor at UNB-Tilley for many decades until they finally dragged him out with a team of horses. Percherons I believe they were, unless a percheron is a fish. I can’t remember, especially since it’s Sunday morning and I have had a late night at the club.

            “You know,” he began, “our prime ministers were great philosophers. Now you take Pierre Trudeau; he was called a philosopher-king. And what about Jean Chretien? He had the cops deposit pepper spray in the faces of demonstrators in Vancouver and then, when they objected, he said he didn’t know a thing about it. The only pepper he used was on salads.”

            “I read all kinds of philosophy,” he  continued. “We’re all philosophers you know…”

            And so it went, with him expounding on the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hiram Kinney, the Seer of Tilley. After about an hour of this interesting talk – he kept my glass full of lemonade – I had to bid adieu and go about my business. “That’s a closet door,” he said as I started out. “The door to outside is over there…no, that way to the road, turn left for your house. It’s red brick.”

            So after I got home and had a slight nap until the next morning, I myself started reading philosophy. He had awakened an interest I hadn’t indulged since high school. Actually, it was after high school. In grade ten, my doctor found that I was allergic to books and studying, but then that cleared up.

            My favourite philosopher these days is Hobbes. Not Thomas Hobbes, the 17^th century English philosopher, but Hobbes the so-called stuffed tiger of the cartoon strip Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin is a rather annoying 6-year-old. The cartoons were written and drawn by Bill Watterson, who has a lot to answer for. Of course he doesn't draw them any more, because I like them.

            So Calvin is in the living room. He is holding a hammer and has already pounded a dozen nails into the coffee table and is about to pound another. He mother comes roaring into the room. “Calvin what are you doing to the coffee table?” she says. He looks at her, then at the hammer and nails and says: “Is that some kind of a trick question or what?” Now THAT’S philosophy. He is comparing the existential to the practical, the arcane to the obvious. What a guy. Hobbes is watching and doesn’t say a word. That’s his comment.

            Calvin asks Hobbes what he thinks happens to us when we die. Hobbes replies that guys play saxophone in an all-girl band in New Orleans. Calvin then implies that the answer shows that Hobbes believes in heaven. “Call it what you like,” answered Hobbes. In all my years (64.33) of reading and studying I have never heard the afterlife broken down like that into an uncomplicated model.

            Calvin asks Hobbes where babies come from. Hobbes takes a look at the back of Calvin’s shirt collar. “You come from Taiwan,” he answered. Anybody who has to perform a father-son or mother-daughter talk with a teenager would do well to remember this. It will save a lot of stress.

            Asked what a pronoun is, Hobbes answered that a pronoun is a noun that has lost its amateur status. I always wondered about that. My high school English teacher, the late Miss Sara Williams, would have appreciated that knowledge. She told us some silly stuff about a pronoun replacing a noun.     

                                                  -end-

Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012

Neologism – the coining of a new word 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            It has been a long time since I coined a new word, like never, and I am rather proud of the work I did last week. I’m not sure if this family newspaper will print it, but I can assure you it is a legitimate neologism, or newly coined word. Remember a few decades ago when you first heard the word ‘cyberspace’? That was a neologism.

            How do I know that this word has never been used before you ask? I looked it up on Google. There’s another neologism (not mine) – I ‘googled’ it. Nothing came up when I typed the word in Google. Therefore it doesn’t exist. That’s the way it is in 2012.

            What is the word, you ask in an exasperated tone? Well, it’s one you should have thought of. Before I tell you what the new word is, I will tell you how I arrived at the historic moment when I coined it. I had been trying for what seemed like hours (because it was) to get some information from a government website. It doesn’t matter whether it was a provincial, federal, Chinese or North Patagonian website.

            I kept getting phrases like ‘at this point in time’ and ‘governmental prerogatives’ and when I phoned any number listed I got voicemail (the civil servant’s best friend) which usually put me onto a loop I couldn’t escape because it would lead me back to where I started. Finally, I walked outside and swore for a while, then pondered the irony that I was paying tax dollars for people who were causing my blood pressure to rise.

            “This is a bunch of BUREAUCRAP!” I hollered at my dog Kezman, who wagged his tail – indeed, his whole body – in agreement. And so, a new word was born. I hereby copyright and patent it.

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            The release of the Perth-Andover and Tobique First Nation Flood Mitigation Study Final Report was a study in balloon deflation. A lot of people actually believed the report would solve their dilemma, as in recommend the moving of their houses, but it really only gave relocations as ONE of the options which the provincial government will now study. They will study the study, as it were. Quite a coincidence, since P-A Mayor Ritchie has been saying right along that this study is just an excuse for more studies.

            Is this an example of the new word I mentioned in the first paragraph? Probably not, since there are quite a few specifics in the report. Its authors suggested that 72 houses in the village may need to be moved, at $100,000 each if the cost of serviced lots is included, and of course it has to be. I’m not sure where they came up with the figure of $100,000 but maybe it’s a matter of buying a diamond ring at Tiffany’s of Paris or at Wal-Mart of Minto Crossing. Same ring, but with some cost added in the upscale version. Maybe the $100,000 cost estimate in the report included a year’s limousine service for the home’s owners.

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            I see on the streets of town many happy faces now that school has started. I’m sure you picked up on the fact that, since school has started, those faces along the streets of town don’t belong to school age children, but to their long-suffering nannies, parole officers, street sweepers, and baby-sitters who – at last! – are now free to pursue whatever may be left of their lives after a summer of stress management.

            Fall is the season of happy teachers too, because they are now doing what they love, teaching fresh-faced youngsters eager to learn and getting the positive feedback from those young minds who are fast absorbing the mental training so happily imparted by their instructors who, if anyone even asked, would be delighted to do their job for nothing, just for the sheer joy of it.

            How’s that for irony heavy enough to be attracted by a very small magnet?

            Now that school has started, so is pun season. One trigonometry teacher I know, someone who tries every day to explain the difference between the words sine, cosine, tangent, and pumpkin, told me that only that afternoon she had confiscated an elastic band that had been used for zapping people with spitballs. “It was a weapon of math disruption,” she said smugly.

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

            Back to that flood report: I have been reading it over and over again in the hope of my vision improving. Obviously I couldn’t have seen what looked like a total exoneration of Beechwood Dam and other dams in the flooding of Perth-Andover. It was even said in a light-hearted, humorous way: “Dam operations are not a significant contributing factor to ice jam formation.”

            Now I understand; a man-made structure that stretches across the river and stops water and ice from going downstream wouldn’t have any effect on flooding. It’s all so clear now.

                                                 -end-

Wednesday, Sept. 5, 2012

And they say you can never go back!  

 

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            There’s an election going on in Quebec and after hearing some of the utterances from all sides of that little deal, I thought of the old saying: “Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.” There’s really not much more I can say on that subject. It only remains to find out if the Parti Quebecois is going to win and immediately start blackmailing the Rest of Canada (ROC) with threats of separation, or is another party going to win and actually pay attention to governing the province. Yes, I said PROVINCE. Thinking about those times a few decades ago when Quebec looked about to separate and didn’t, that also reminded me of an old saying: “You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.” I think they’ve worn theirs out.

            The names of certain places give us a warm glow. Perhaps an encounter with the opposite sex in Ernfold, Saskatchwan, finding that missing Petit Point china teacup in McAdam, or hearing on a pay phone in Vancouver that you've just won the lottery - these things all lend themselves to that warm feeling when you hear the name of the place mentioned.

               I was listening to the CBC news one evening last week when the announcer referred to the Mariposa Folk Festival.  That took me back to the summer of 1967 when I was hitch-hiking though Orillia, Ontario, from North Dakota or Alberta - one of those places; I'm a little vague on details. I stopped at a little restaurant just inside the Orillia city limits and ordered a ham

sandwich on rye bread. Notice how specific I am on that point, like a golfer recalling every putt ten years later. Mustard on the ham, a glass of the coldest milk in northern Ontario...then I saw her.

            I always think of her as a vision, for nothing so beautiful could have been real. She had had a facelift, yes, perhaps two, but that didn't matter. I was in love. (My face could stand a little hydraulic work too.) Her skirts were spotless, as if their owner had taken a lot of pride in a job done well. That 1927 Ford Model T was a sight to behold. Her owner, who said she was the last Model T ever made, and I got to talking and he mentioned he was heading for Toronto very early next morning. Driving HER.

            He said he wouldn't mind someone to talk to on the trip. I took my sleeping bag and bunked down just about in the shadow of the Model T. It was a great trip. Hank Greenberg - not to be confused with the old Detroit Tigers ballplayer - knew everything and didn't mind sharing it. I just listened and drank in the flavour of the old car...and a six-pack of Labatt's 50. When we got to Hogtown, Hank found me a job washing dishes in his uncle-in-law’s restaurant just off Jarvis Street, an area patrolled by females who apparently did a lot of fishing, according to what Gang Fong, the restaurant owner, told me. "They all hookahs, Bob," he would say over and over whenever he saw me looking at one.

            I washed dishes long enough to buy a bus ticket back to Orillia. It was a great summer. And they say you can never go back.

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

            There must be many oxymorons in the English language – perhaps thousands if we look hard enough. On the other hand, anyone who spends a lot of time searching for oxymorons, a word whose definition is ‘a phrase contradicting itself’, doesn’t have enough to do. Dare I give one example as ‘happily married’? PUT DOWN THAT ROLLING PIN!

Another one might be ‘boxing gloves’. They look like mitts to me. And then of course there is the hospital phrase ‘semi-private’. Maybe ‘jumbo shrimp’ is another, but my favourite is ‘oxymoron’ itself. You’ll have to think about that one for a while; I know I had to.

            One of these days I’m going to write an entire column called ‘Ideas or actions that should never have seen the light of day’. We’re not very far away from April 12, so I am thinking that a really REALLY bad idea back in 1912 was the Titanic captain stepping on the accelerator when he meant to put on the brakes. Those icebergs don’t give worth a damn, something like my Aunt Bella. Come to think of it, if she had been on the bridge of the Titanic she would have kicked the captain right out of there and got safely to New York and maybe went on to Orillia.

                                                                -end- 

Wednesday, August 28, 2012

Martha and Elvis had a great summer  

                                                            by Robert LaFrance

 

            I am not sure why this summer has spawned so many wonderful observations and comments; it must be the warm and dry weather that leads to warm and especially dry humour.

            A couple was standing beside a store in Grand Falls mall and gazing at a 24-hour clock within the store. The clock read 14:23. It was twenty-three minutes past two o’clock. The man scratched his head and said: “I don’t know, Martha. It must be one of them new metric clocks.”

            Among the gems in my notebook was this: at exactly 1:07 pm on Friday, March 23, when the Perth-Andover flood was just getting to a vigorous stage, I was sitting on the hill and about to go home and hope that our mountain wasn’t flooded. As soon as I got in the car and turned on the radio, I heard the 1960s song ‘Downtown’ by Petula Clark. Part of the lyrics was: “Downtown, everything will be fine…” Not in the least funny. The irony could have been picked up by a magnet.

            After a bean and salad supper in June, a country music group was playing the theme from the TV show ‘Red Green’. Getting up from the table, one former musician asked another: “What key is that in? “ There was an extra noise and the other chap answered: “I think it was the key of B Flatulence, Clyde.” (Those with perfect pitch like my son and brother will know it is in the key of ‘C’.)

            Lo and behold – and I mean both – one day after I saw Martha and her husband looking at the new metric clock, I saw them in a grocery store. I swear upon every bible in Christendon, she was saying to the store worker: “Hello dear, I’m about to start canning. Do you have any of them Perry Mason Jars?”

            Several people have remarked this summer on the decreasing sizes of electronic devices. In its day, the Sony Walkman was a wonderful invention, but in 2012, it seems to be something out of the Dark Ages. Remember the original computers that took up whole rooms? One evening at the club I was saying that the iPod Touch I held in my hand contained thousands of times  as much information as that roomful of computer. “For every million brain cells we lose in our old age,” mused Flug, “music players get ten percent smaller.” Then he collapsed onto and into a bag of Doritos he had placed strategically under his chin.

            Remember Martha and her husband (whose name turned out to be Elvis) from earlier in this column? They were at Squeaky’s and buying some Doritos (speaking of Doritos) when he turned to her and said they had to go home and turn on the computer so they could ‘surf the innertube’.

            Thinking about so many millionaires in the world who shouldn’t have their money because they had gained it under false pretences, and thinking that I should have it just for being a nice guy, I picked up my guitar and attempted to sing “Roy Rogers” which is an old Elton John song. I recorded it too, which marks the first time I have ever heard a digital voice recorder cry out loud. So now I know I can’t sing, but can Bob Dylan? Neil Young? I enjoy listening to them both, but can they sing? Then I remembered growing up and listening to country music heroes like Ernest Tubb who couldn’t carry a tune with a crane. However, don’t ever say a word about Hank Williams (the real one) around me or it’s Boot Hill for you.

 

            About a month ago – I think it was late July – my wife was driving our Toyota BMR Off-Road AWD Sport (Corolla) downriver when all of a sudden it looked as if a piece of the windshield rubber was coming off. Then she realized it wasn’t part of a windshield wiper, but a snake. A small garden snake, a Maritime garter snake as they’re called, had somehow crawled out there, probably up from the engine area. She almost (1) hit a motorcycle head-on, and (2) went in the ditch, but she hung on. She was still shaky when she was telling me about it hours later, but, sensitivity not being my strong suit, I asked her if it could be called a windshield viper. When I regained consciousness, I could hear the words ‘horse’s asp’ ringing in my battered ears. When I could focus, I made a note: “We’re getting aluminum frying pans. Cast iron doesn’t give worth a damn.”
                                                          -end-