TriumphAnt

It’s summer, so no great burning issues to write about – just lots of little things to blow ‘way out of proportion. So consider this post an opportunity for Baby Ducklings to muse over the mental state of someone who not only thinks about things like this, he actually pauses to write ‘em down.

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Just as the meaning of “gay” has long since and forever been changed from the days (“Don we now our gay apparel, Fa-la-la-la…” etc and “The Flintstones” television theme song, which promised, “We’ll have a gay old time!”) when it didn’t mean “same-sex”, I fear we’re now losing “repatriate” as a result of our most recent foreign wars.

The term has suddenly (or so it seems to me) become the word to use to describe the return home of the bodies of soldiers killed overseas. I looked it up. The most proximate use says it means “to return to one’s home country” or in definitions offering longer explanations, to return former refugees to the country or village from which they might have been forcibly expelled, or chose to evacuate for any of a hundred local-crisis-driven reasons. But always, it seems, has been the implication that the people so relocated are alive.

Now, sadly, what not so long ago meant something to feel good about – the act of returning home – has been co-opted by a system that somehow aims to make it sound vaguely positive that our soldier is coming back home. Oh sure, in a flag-draped box and maybe not entirely intact, but “repatriated” nonetheless.

So OK, while we’re at it, let’s re-define “back to the land” too, from its original and present use to mean a positive return to simpler times to… well, to this:

“If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam;
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.”

(The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke, 1914)

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Apparently I have a pair of magic pants.

I discovered this just the other day while at home in the early morning, getting ready to go to work. Pre-coffee. After gathering up the Globe from my doorstep, I started upstairs, heading for the kitchen, while looking in dismay at an especially grim front-page photo of a badly injured victim of the July 11 Mumbai subway blasts. At some point near the top of the stairs, there was an apparent disconnect between part of my brain, which clearly signaled my feet they had reached the top step, and another part of my brain that said, “Wait! There’s still one step to go!” (My eyes-to-brain network was still occupied with the Globe’s front-page gore.) In a millisecond, the “No, you’re already there” message had carried the day and, consequently, those selfsame feet only lifted sufficiently high to complete a normal step on a level floor.

The toes of my leading foot slammed into the one remaining riser and, as if that weren’t bad enough, my trailing foot, in an effort to rush forward and help me recover my balance, hooked its toes on the bullnose edge of the top step. (Notice how I try to deflect the entire blame away from me and, instead, to my toes, as though they were wholly separate and sentient entities on the ends of my feet. Passing the buck. It’s the hallmark of being a government worker.)

The penultimate outcome was to pitch me forward violently onto my knees and, in that position, to slide gracelessly into the kitchen, catching a shoulder and chin firmly against the doorframe as I did so, sending the Globe and two seriously startled nearby cats flying in every direction. At that point, I just sagged onto my back, staring at the ceiling, and delivered the routine’s finale – a stream of invective that would have turned a blue sky black.

After some 30 seconds of flexing everything – including my jaw – to make sure nothing was bent into any new, exciting and inoperative directions, I stood up and brushed the previous evening’s pita crumbs off my knees. (OK, so housekeeping is not a priority. Especially with my wife and daughter out of town for a few days.)

It was then I noticed that the pants I had put on a few minutes earlier still bore an especially rough scrape mark on one knee – the visible reminder of a vicious early Spring tumble a few months back off the rolled pavement edge of a sidewalk I use on my daily homeward-bound commute.

So apparently these pants are possessed, and make the wearer prone to falling down.

(I never said it was a “good” magic. Anyone want to borrow them? I’ll be happy to launder them before passing them along. As it is, I think I’ll just roll them up and forward them, Jumanji-like, to some unsuspecting shopper at the local Salvation Army Thrift Store.)

“Prone to falling down”… Get it? Get it? Oh my, there’s just no end to the man’s way with a scintillating pun!

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Wasn’t one of the sidebar storylines in the movie “Caddyshack” about a psychotic golf course groundskeeper’s ongoing battle with a gopher? (Yes it was.) Along my walking route to and from work, there is a similarly epic battle shaping up between the City of Ottawa and those of us who dare to use one of their public parks in its off-season – winter, in order to get where we’re going.

The park, such as it is, is rather hilariously named “The Garden of the Provinces”. And I say “hilariously” because the provincial and territorial floral emblems on display there are actually sculpted and coloured stone reliefs mounted in a concrete wall. You enter and exit the “park” by way of wide flights of stone stairs. And the park is also home to two large steel and stone fountains. Its actual growing greenery is made up of two large rectangular enclosures in which several trees and patches of grass struggle valiantly to find access to sunshine and carbon dioxide in an urban location scant feet away from one of the City’s major downtown access routes.

But as it relates to pedestrian travel, this “garden” park is ideally situated to be passed through, because it lies on the line (picture the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle) between two busy points of pedestrian gathering that would otherwise require a walker to travel along one side, turn 90 degrees and then travel along the other. So the diagonal trans-park path is a very well traveled shortcut – winter and summer.

But during the winter the City puts up a chain slung between two posts at each of the park’s four entrances (or exits, depending on your direction of travel) from each of which is hung a sign proclaiming, “Closed for the Season”. They have no deterrent value at all, however, because inevitably about a day after the chain barriers go up, some pedestrian will tilt one post (which are mounted on heavy concrete blocks about a foot square) onto its side, effectively laying each chain down along the ground. And all winter long, people continue to pass through the park.

Now I’m thinking that one – if not several – of the City’s lawyers has entered the picture, because on a recent blazing hot mid-July day, while I was walking through the park along my hypotenudinal path, I chanced upon a work crew at one entrance vigorously erecting a phalanx of heavy-duty black steel fenceposts, fastening each to the ground with four enormous anchor bolts. The poles are about three feet apart. Each has a welded steel “o” at the top, through which, no doubt, later this Fall a chain will be slung that could stop a runaway bus.

As I watched one worker, I asked him, “Is there going to be a gate?” He replied, “Yes, but in the winter it’ll be closed and locked.” Then, I guess he decided the mere fact of my stopping offered him an opportunity too good to miss, because he switched off the power bolt-driver he was operating and asked me, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ?”

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I muttered quietly to myself. (So I guess that could mean “Yes”.) Without waiting for an answer, he pressed gamely on, “No, really, Jesus changed my life. And His spirit has been with us for over 2,000 years now without any changes, and a lot of other religions have come and gone, or had major changes in that same amount of time.”

On a different day, I might have waited for more of the sermon, or pointed out to him that the Pima Indians of Arizona still have a spiritual culture that had already produced ruins by the time Jesus was going about “my Father’s business”, not to mention some of the inherent messaging contradiction exemplified by actions like forcing “Love Thy Neighbour” and “Thou Shalt Not Kill” onto people at ruthless sword-point during the Crusades or by way of bomb blasts in Ulster. Instead, I opted for a graceful (I thought) retreat and wished a good day on him.

To matters more secular, as I walked away I began muttering more earnestly about the whole process of erecting a large black solid steel fence at the entrances of a park (as the workers bolt their all-encasing way around its perimeter over the next week or so) that presents itself as a bit of urban retreat from the countless nearby glass, steel and concrete towers. Does our government (or in the case of Ottawa, “Do our governments…”, because we are ruled by four: the Governments of Canada, Ontario, the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission. Cross the river and you can add the Governments of Québec and la Ville de Gatineau – formerly Hull. Each also comes with its own police force, by the way, which leaves us as one of the most complexly governed and policed jurisdictions on earth – not to mention taxed, because everybody gets a bite of our paycheque every two weeks as well. But I digress.)…

Where was I?

Oh yes, does Big Brother really need to impose himself this thoroughly and this expensively on our day-to day lives? Why not just post a sign on a pole: “Park pathways are not cleared in the winter. Use at your own risk”?

And make people responsible for their own choices.

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I got back to my desk after a recent run for coffee to discover that someone had placed a survey form on my chair while I was away.

Entitled, “Persons Requiring Emergency Evacuation Assistance”, the form solicits my needs in the event of a looming building disaster sufficient to precipitate a general evacuation. In my case, and based on several previous fire drill experiences, this will involve a hike down 12 flights of stairs into a growing people jam at about the 6th floor, as floor after floor of emergency-exit-bound evacuees fill the staircase.

There are 12 specific disabilities listed under the question, “Type of Disability and Assistance Required”. Included are choices like “pregnant”, “wheelchair”, “back problem”, “blind with dog”, “broken limb (cast / no cast)”. The list concluded with an “Other (Specify)” option.

So I thought about what would be going through my mind if any level of this building were ablaze and ever-thickening volumes of smoke were accumulating in the hopelessly crowded top-to-bottom chimneys that are our emergency exit stairwells.

So I ticked the “Other (Specify)” box and wrote in: “Ever-increasing panic (Someone to hug!)”.

Then beside the question “Would you like us to assign persons to assist you?”, I wrote, “You bet!” and penned the name of a singularly attractive administrative assistant whose torque-converting wardrobe has an entire floor of guys starting to look forward to “Casual Friday” by about Tuesday every week.

We’ll see how this turns out, but I do labour in a work / life balance-focused department. If they’re at all serious about it, well then the mental health of employees should be every bit as much a priority as our physical health.

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When I went to my regular Friday take-out lunch restaurant early in July, it was the first workweek-ending trip there since the GST had been dropped by one per cent. (I am somewhat of a creature of habit and have exactly the same thing, every Friday – a couple of Thai dishes that I like a lot; they’re not overly heavy and they’re both really tasty. Add the same drink and the total bill has always been, for many months, $13.94.) For the past couple weeks, I’d been joking with the ladies behind the counter that I was looking forward to the huge savings when the new, reduced GST came in.

But they didn’t joke back. No doubt wanting to ensure I harboured no major discount illusions – or delusions – they kept insisting worriedly that yes my lunch cost would go down, but maybe ten to 12 cents. Tops.

So on this first Friday in the era of the 6 per cent GST, I ordered up precisely the same items and the cashier rang it in: $14.10. Then she actually pointed to the total and said, “Like the new number?”

“Well,” I replied, “it’s always been $13.94 so what item have you raised the price on?”

And she was flabbergasted. “No prices raised. Didn’t you pay $14 – something?” “No. I’ve always paid $13.94, every week for months.” Then suddenly there were the other two counter workers gathered at the cash. The frowning trio pored over the paper printout receipt and, item by item, they agreed the prices were correct and told me it was my recollection that obviously was not. As a salve to my obviously failing neural powers, they then gave me the receipt. Which, when you think about it, does nothing to buttress either their argument or mine, since all it says is “See? You paid what we asked you to pay.”

“Look, it’s not a problem,” I said, and paid my new “reduced” price of $14.10.

But over lunch, I thought some more about this. OK, so if the actual prices are the same – and the entire counter crew seemed adamant this was the case – just as I am utterly positive in my recollection of $13.94 – then that leaves as the only possibility an error in programming the new reduced federal tax into their cash register. And if that’s the case, then every single customer that’s gone through their restaurant since July 1 – if my bill is an example – has been paying just slightly over 1% more, not less (taking my difference of 16 cents as a percentage of $13.94). And, given this is a pretty popular place, that makes a not insignificant total windfall for them, that will only accumulate if the error is allowed to stand.

In the grand scheme of things, paying 16 cents more, once a week, for a lunch I enjoy doesn’t bother me in the least. But what does bother me is the vigour the three counter workers applied to the process of trying to talk me out of the accuracy of my memory of the total I have been paying for months, and their insistence that their bills are indeed now reduced to reflect the single point drop in GST.

I have a good friend who occasionally is given to arguing little quirks like this with some force. He jokes, in fact, that he has “gone ballistic” so many times with one particular local hardware big box company that he’s been banned from every one of their stores in the capital and now has to drive to Arnprior just to buy his tools and building supplies.

Unfortunately, I have only a current receipt, nothing from the pre-reduced GST era, which reduces us to a discussion of “you say / I say”. But this sort of gang challenge to one’s recollection is precisely the sort of thing my friend would love to get into with them.

Several years ago, I sat down to an evening meal at a different Thai restaurant close to where I worked at the time. It was a frequent lunch stop and I thought it’d be a great place for a supper for my wife and me. After ordering, I carefully explained to the waitress that I have a highly sensitive shellfish allergy. Reviewing my order, she assured us there was no shellfish anywhere among its items. A few seconds after I’d had a couple bites of a beef curry, I started to get my reaction. We immediately ordered a couple glasses of ice water. (So swift is my reaction that it only takes a tiny amount to set the alarm bells off, and the water “flush” of my lips and mouth usually helps bring it to a sufficient halt that I don’t have to be rushed to the nearest hospital.)

But with the water, the waitress also brought the manager, who was adamant that I was not having my allergic reaction. “You can’t,” she argued. “No shellfish in your food.” There again was that, “The customer is always wrong” argument. My wife and I have never been back.

(To make a long story short, I have since discovered that Thai curries frequently begin with a broth that includes varying amounts of fish sauce, and Thai fish sauce almost always includes a shrimp paste or some other shellfish component. In one of life’s little ironies, the only brand I have found so far that has no shellfish in it at all is one called “Four Crabs”.)

I haven’t got a conclusion to this story. Neither, I hasten to add, do I have an anti-Thai bias in my choice of preferred restaurants – just an anti-this-particular-restaurant bias in the second of the above two examples. But sometimes I do wonder if my very Canadian-ness is all that’s standing between me and a leap to my feet, followed by a string of introductory expletives by way of making my key point, “DON’T TELL ME I’M CRAZY! I KNOW (a) WHEN I’M GETTING A REACTION; or (b) THAT I PAID MORE THIS WEEK THAN I DID LAST WEEK BEFORE THE GST REDUCTION!”

Which on most days I guess makes me feel pretty darned good that I am a Canadian.

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Is this a problem over there?

In a recent search for rice vinegar to use in a sushi recipe, I figured it would probably be best to buy a bottle from a country with whom one might reasonably expect to associate the production of rice-related products – China or Japan. I usually buy groceries at a humongous store that carries everything under the sun simply because they have the floor and shelf space to enable them to do so. Sure enough, they had about 16 different brands of rice vinegar to choose from, including ones decorated with labels that carried what I’m sure must have been the bare legal minimum requirement of English and French.

One included the rather ominous (I thought) admonition: “For cooking. Not to use as beverage.”

Wine tasters will tell you that a really great dry wine includes a measure of astringency they characterize as its “pucker power”. I can only imagine that, if they ever get hold of a glass of this rice vinegar, it’ll immediately eclipse the world’s great Bordeaux among oenophiles everywhere. Once they unlock their jaws sufficiently to render their judgments, that is.

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He ain’t crony, he’s my brother.

News of the recent appointment of Poland’s new Prime Minister made laugh. The country’s President, Lech Kaczynski, appointed his identical twin bother, Jaroslaw, to the post, making Poland the first country in history to have its two highest posts of government occupied by identical twins. What made me laugh was this observation from the Associated Press story about the announcement. When first elected to government office, “Both ran on a pledge to fight the cronyism that has since flourished.” (San José Mercury News, July 11)

Princeton University’s WordNet defines “cronyism” as “favoritism shown to friends and associates (as by appointing them to positions without regard for their qualifications)”. See? Doesn’t say anything at all about twin brothers. So there. Cue the ethnic humour tape.

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And finally, some days, despite all the glamour and non-stop glory of work as a Government of Canada media analyst, I do occasionally wonder if maybe I boarded the wrong career bus.

To wit, this line from a recent (July 9) Ottawa Citizen story about the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund:

“Even though the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan has an astounding $96 billion in assets, that’s still not enough to support the generous benefits its members receive.”

No, that “b” in “billion” is not a typo. Ontario’s unionized teachers are supported in retirement by a pension plan whose $96 billion balance still leaves them unable to cover its expected payouts.

Is it just me, or is anyone else going to laugh hysterically if the next unionized teachers’ strike in this province includes “improved pension benefits” as one of the trigger issues?

À la prochaine...