More Bits ‘n’ Pieces

1. Here’s another drive-by shot from the “Live and let live” highway. I am nothing if not tolerant, indeed respectful, of local customs and traditions, but in light of the following I have a simple and practical suggestion that, dare I say it, might well make the difference between life and death.

(From the Globe and Mail, 20 May 2004): “U.S. accused in attack on Iraqi wedding party / Baghdad — A U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party early Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said… Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said partygoers had fired into the air in a traditional wedding celebration. U.S. troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.”

Um, Iraqis: given that you are presently occupied by a large military force that most of you consider to be hostile, and given too that a great many of your countrymen are shooting them or blowing them up at every conceivable opportunity, resulting in the mutual perception by those same occupying troops that a great many of you are hostile, you might want to consider – hopefully just for a temporary period but starting NOW – celebrating a happy event like a wedding with something other than gunfire, even if it is directed skywards. And no, I don’t think switching to firecrackers would work. Maybe try throwing rice. Or hiring an orchestra – but leave out the drums. Just don’t do anything that makes a loud bang. And come to think of it, don’t shout. A lot of these guys can’t tell a happy Arabic yell of “Hurray!” from an angry Arabic yell of “Go to hell you bastards!”, and might just as swiftly shoot someone screaming at him to come over for a celebratory glass of Arrak.

The life you save might be your new in-law’s.

Don’t mention it. As they say on the Internet, HTH (Hope This Helps.)

2. What goes up… etc.

the “what” being a large, ten-year old, pressure-treated wood play structure that combined an elevated deck with a rope ladder, “Tarzan swing”, fireman’s pole and slide. With two of three long-weekend days actually offering sunshine in lieu of their forecast rain, dismantling this monster became the outdoor project of this year’s Victoria Day holiday weekend.

When I first built this structure, I decided to augment its huge nuts-and-bolts manufacturer’s fasteners with galvanized steel twisted nails. This would be a play structure for the ages! Of course, thinking so far ahead as the day it might actually have to come down again never occurred to me – Mighty Builder! – as I guyfully pounded in hundreds of the three-inch long tributes to perma-carpentry.

On tear-down weekend, I discovered that galvanized steel combined with pressure-treated lumber is indeed a potent structural combination. I have never before (and with the unanimous support of my Anti-phlogistine Rub A-535-starved shoulders – will never again!) pried, hammered, wrenched, reefed and just flat-out wrestled with anything so fiercely bound together! Eventually, I did manage to find some workable systems that slowly forced the tower apart, but only by amalgamating the combined use of tools like a cold chisel to open a slight gap, and a wrecking bar and eight-pound sledgehammer to lever the joined timbers apart.

Meanwhile, the City of Ottawa recently circulated brand new garbage collection rules and lumber – any lumber, not just the apparently toxic pressure-treated stuff – is no longer eligible for curbside pickup. Sigh. I figured about three years’ worth of placing a couple sawed-up pieces a week in with my food garbage oughta just about clear it all up. But, on a whim, I plunked about 30 pounds of broken board bits into a garbage can and set it out with the rest of my garbage. Next evening, when I returned home from work, just like the story of the shoemaker and his renowned elves, in its place I found a freshly emptied can and a woodpile about 30 pounds lighter.

3. Visits with old friends: Last weekend, we also took advantage of Queen Victoria’s largesse in agreeing to allow a national holiday to be celebrated in honour of her birthday by scheduling not one, but two family movie nights.

Offspring’s school orchestra was recently in concert in a performance that included the themes from, among others, “Dances with Wolves” (John Dunbar’s theme) and “Forrest Gump”. And frankly I had forgotten just how good both these movies are. (I had also forgotten just how fast kids grow up and was surprised too by the fact that, at 13, offspring not only sustained her interest, but admitted to enjoying both, despite long segments that would give new meaning to “ponderous” for most kids.)

Even “Forrest Gump”’s array of 60s allusions apparently didn’t divert from her enjoying the movie.

4. Election rant #1: And away we go.

It is an election campaign truth (just trust me, OK?) that when Campaign Rhetoric sits down on a grimy barstool beside Common Sense, Rhetoric without fail at some point during their long night together will get stinking drunk and flatten Common Sense in its headlong rush out the door to puke in the street for all to see. Well, as this note is written, the campaign is barely six days old, and Rhetoric is already clearly on the way to the mother of all hangovers. From the media (a May 28 column by one Jack Aubry, in this case):

“’I believe that when Paul Martin cancelled affordable housing across this country it produced a dramatic rise in homelessness and deaths due to homelessness and I've always said I hold him responsible for that.’ – NDP Leader Jack Layton, May 26, 2004, Toronto. Spin: Layton creates the first real controversy of the campaign by accusing Martin of being responsible for a dramatic rise in homeless deaths in Toronto because of his budget cuts to social housing. The prime minister is irate over the comments, rejecting the link to his budget cuts and demands an apology. Counterspin: Conservative leader Stephen Harper agrees Layton has gone too far on the homeless issue, but then appears to blame Martin for deaths caused by the failure to replace Sea King helicopters: ‘Well, I think this one is getting a little more direct, when you're putting people in the sky on dangerous equipment, you know I think you are putting their lives in jeopardy.’
Opposition's body count for Martin: more than 100 homeless and at least 10 helicopter crewmembers.”

So Common Sense picks itself up from the slime-soaked floor of the Great Canadian Campaign Bar and Grill, dusts off its corduroy pants, and promptly gets punched in the face by Rhetoric’s equally drunken wife who demands, “Well would you vote for a mass murderer who has killed (so far) 110 Canadians? Would’ju?!!”

And Common Sense presses a triple-ply Kleenex to its bleeding mouth, stumbles from the bar, slips in the fresh pool of what Rhetoric thoughtfully just spewed all over the street, and thinks, “Actually, they’re all complete idiots and I may just not vote at all this time around.” Common Sense heads sadly home, but happily finds a re-run of “Back to the Future” on TV.

Bits ‘n’ Pieces

1. In the wake of all the coverage of fresh new outrage over the first state (Massachusetts) to offer officially-sanctioned same-sex marriage licences in the US, I suspect what is most galling to the anti-same-sex people is that the couples lining up to apply are happy but ordinary looking people, often closer to the end of their lives than to the beginning, who finally are able to enjoy one tiny shred of official sanction of their lifelong relationships.

I think that the rabid droolers shouting for “marriage” to be constitutionally entrenched as a “union between one man and one woman” are just pissed off by the parade of people they see strolling arm in arm past their vitriolic placards being waved spastically around the courthouse steps. You see, having seen countless porno movies that show incredibly lithe and fit same-sex playmates climbing gymnastically all over each other, the protesters must look at these smiling and happy, mostly middle-aged and many overweight gay couples and wonder what door all the lesbo vixen co-eds that they thought would be lining up for the licenses are using. Now there would be something we could sink our teeth into, dammit! (So to speak.)

2. Down the street from where I live, there is a submarine sandwich franchise that obviously has suffered somewhat under the current Atkins no-carbohydrate diet trend that places bread somewhere down beside dog poop on the list of nutritionally beneficial diet components. They recently rolled a sign out by the street, advertising in garishly neon-coloured lettering, “Atkins-friendly salads now available. Cut Your Carbs!” That, at least, was the message on one side of the sign.

Drivers coming the other way, however, were being told that the new menu would enable them to “Cut Your Crabs!”

3. Yesterday, family and a friend went for a leisurely bike ride along one of Ottawa’s reasonably well-maintained cycle paths. Our turnaround point was at a gentle bend on the Rideau River shoreline where people congregate to toss bits of bread to ducks, swans, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, unbelievably aggressive seagulls, sparrows, Canada geese and, to landward, chipmunks and the occasional red squirrel. And all of the aforementioned, in turn, congregate in often enormous numbers for the handouts. It’s a small but lively local wildlife restaurant with great appeal. At one point, daughter and friend picked up a few scraps of tossed bread that hadn’t quite made it into the river. One chunk got dropped in the process quite close to the end of an eight-inch diameter culvert and suddenly, a large brown nose thrust itself out, followed by an even larger brown ground hog that made it abundantly clear that carbs are not just allowed, they are featured on its diet!

It’s early in the season and I have this fast-forward-a-month vision of the chubby rodent darting back to the shelter of its culvert after seizing on one more baked morsel, only to find that an eight-inch steel diameter front door opening will not yield one tiny bit to a nine-inch diameter waistline. I fully expect that the resulting rescue effort will probably qualify for front-page coverage at about the same time as the local newspaper-reading public is utterly fed up with the coming election trash talk.

4. I’m not normally averse to body piercings. There are exceptions – I hate even seeing someone with a tongue post when I’m anywhere close to the process of enjoying a meal. But for the most part, I generally try to keep my wheels on the “Live and Let Live” road – although I do reserve the right to voice a drive-by opinion from anywhere along that road.

I discovered another exception recently. I was in the “Fasteners” section of our local Home Despot, in search of a specific kind of toggle bolt, when a male voice behind me said, “Can I help you?” I turned around to find myself face to face with a billboard for an upcoming National Geographic television special about a previously unknown tribe of Borneo headhunters. This guy had a lower lip stud you could use to tie up a horse. His earlobes were both pierced by steel drum rings that were fully an inch in diameter, giving him a one-inch diameter steel-walled hole in each lobe. The upper curve of each ear was further pierced by some five or six smaller rings. Both eyebrows had rings driven through them and the entire surface of both his arms, where they emerged from the short-sleeved shirt he was wearing, was covered with enough tattoos to render the discovery of an uncoloured skin patch all but impossible. His name badge proclaimed him to be “Chris”.

Two thoughts occurred to me in swift succession: 1. “There is no f***ing way you can help me, Chris!”; 2. Obviously Chris is exceedingly well-versed in hardware because he has rammed at least half the store’s inventory through several visible – and probably invisible for the moment (Thank God!) – parts of his body. I took #1 thought’s advice, however, and said, “Uh… thanks but I’m just reading some labels.” “No problem,” he replied, and clanked off in search of another customer to shock into considering voluntary sterility.

I probably should have listened to voice #2 because despite reading labels, when I got home I discovered I’d managed to buy entirely the wrong kind of toggle bolts.

But I just can’t bring myself to converse with someone who lisps because his tongue keeps colliding with an oral embellishment whose insertion, a scant decade ago, would have made an Amnesty International list of top ten tortures.