Friday, March 12, 2010

Just Hold Up Your Hand, Dear


You're cousin, Bobby, being the shmock that he is, is texting his girlfriend and walks smack into a moving bus.

You go to the hospital and you get the following report from the Head Nurse.

Bobby is "progressing with difficulty."

Translation?

He's about 12 shakes from dead.

Or. he's "progressing well."

Translation - he ate prunes last night and he read half a newspaper column before drifting back into a sort of coma.

Or, he's "progressing very well."

Meaning, he's organized the ward volleyball tournament and had sand brought in for the first round of competition.

Isn't modern language helpful?

Now, Ontario teachers are getting fed up with hysterical parents shrieking that their little brat got a "C" in multicultural understanding or sex ed or whatever the topic of the day was.

So, ABC's are going out the report card window.

The new cards will say...

You guessed it, you clever ragamuffins, "progressing with difficulty, progressing etc, etc. etc..."

Which means that even if little Hymie or Patel or Shafik or Erin can't spell "mouse" or rhyme it with spouse or house or louse, he/she will always be "progressing" in some form or other.

Now.

Aren't we sleeping better knowing that the education of our children and grandchildren is in such good hands?

Sshhhh...we're making money here!


Big Pharma sells billions of dollars of product to the Ontario Government.

To sweeten the deal, Pharma gives Ontario huge rebates - some rumoured at 40% or better.

That's called doing business.

But, lest other buyers all round the drug-addicted world complain and want maybe a similar deal, Pharma and Ontario carry out their transactions under the famous Cone of Silence.

That's also called doing business.

Now, a bunch of nasty, selfish truth-tellers want this info out in public.

The frightening argument is that this is tax money, public money, that is being spent.

Lots of public money.

God forbid the public should ever know how its money is being handled.

Pharma is now running around with great big black hoodies, trying to shushhh everybody up, lest word get out that they really make such enormous profits that they can easily discount - if the order if large enough, Serge - by almost half.

Keep in mind that pharmaceuticals comprise the biggest single charge in our bloated GDP-devouring health care budgets.

God forbid there might be any transparency in this bazaar.

Just Stop it, You Two


Oh, look.

A B.C. Provincial government is union-busting.

B.C. Health Minister proposes ambulance shakeup

Paramedics could be rolled into new union, but that's a way to break up their local, CUPE official says

What is this - the '60's?

I've now been here in Vancouver almost 50 years.

As long as I can remember, this kind of headline has been a staple.

Can these two groups - government and unions - ever get along in Frontier Land?

I guess that'll happen when the Israelis and the Arabs get it together.

Cellular Division


The other day I wrote about the town of Tofino, which wants no Starbucks, Tim Hortons or Big Macs clouding up its pristine landscape.

As usual, some people called me names.

(There are many among us who know only one way of disagreeing with someone - make a personal attack. They are called children.)

Well, get out the insults, because I've found another little paradise that wants to pull a Brigadoon and stay out of the calendar.

It's the lovely little village of New Denver in the Kootenay Mountain/Slocan Valley neighbourhood.

I've stayed there overnight on a bicycle trip. I like it a lot.

New Denver doesn't want cell phones.

And Telus, being the giant monster that it is, can't brook that idea.

WHAT? SOMEONE DOESN'T WANT US???

So Entwhistle and Co. have gone to all the right authorities to get the RIGHT to do business in New Denver.

The towers are going up as we speak.

Soon the 600 people in New Denver can walk into moving traffic while texting just like everyone else in the so-called civilized world.

One of the "progressives" claims that B&B's and Inns and coffee shops are losing thousands of dollars because tourists won't come to a place with no cell service.

Hogswill.

Cells are an obsession.

Idiots can't see the trees and the architecture in front of them because they must talk and text.

I welcome some No Cell Zones.

Stay small, New Denver.

It's a good thing.