TriumphAnt

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.