Smitty’s Loose Change #12

We (the wife) have acquired a new medical specialist, a Physiatrist (fizz-eye-aah-tryst). This is a term invented by another doctor in 1957. It originally was an alternative to physician, or GP, to distinguish from the growing horde of specialists. Over the ensuing 60 years though, it has come to refer to a doctor who specializes in pain management and control.

He recommends and co-ordinates with chiropractors, osteopaths, massage therapists, and physiotherapists. He can prescribe specific medications, but usually leaves it to the patient and their GP. He can recommend exercises for specific muscle groups, for home, gym or physio sessions. As a last resort, he is trained and authorized to administer injections of analgesics or cortisones.

His clinic is not – and may never be – authorized to administer the long-term, IV-drip, pain-med infusions that I drive the daughter 60 miles every 8/9 weeks to get.

***

I recently got a phone call from a polling firm, working on behalf of my electricity supplier, Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro. While seeming simple, the questions were actually rather confusing. They wanted to know why I had chosen K/W Hydro, and what it would take for me to recommend them to another potential user.

They asked about draws, perhaps one or more customers could have their monthly charge written off. The finances are a closed system. It takes X amount of money to purchase and distribute power. If one (or more) people don’t have to pay, then the rest of us all have to pay a bit more. I don’t want to pay any extra, and, if I were to win, I’d feel guilty about the rest paying more.

Then they asked about rebates. If they can afford to give rebates, then they’re overcharging us. The final suggestion was to donate money to charity. It’s a feel-good idea, but, either they’re overcharging, or we’re all going to pay more, to finance that scheme.

I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but the truly bizarre thing about all this is that they hold a monopoly. No other power-supply company can operate in this district. We have Hobson’s choice – take it, or else. The only other options are to freeze in the dark, or buy a Honda generator at Home Despot. And, my bill went up to help pay for this useless survey.

***

I’ve been translating German names again. Some of them give cause for wonder/amusement.
Einwechter = one – of a half. One what?? Of a half of what? I suppose the Germans know.
Kieswetter = cheese weather – which is a sky overcast with small, dark, chunky clouds that resemble cheese curds. How in Hell you get named after rain clouds, I don’t know. No wonder these people tried to conquer Europe – Twice

***

Arbitrary

How you’ve heard it: “His bookshelves are organized in a totally arbitrary way. “What it means: Random, erratic, unpredictable, not based on coherent logic whatsoever.

It may be unpredictable to you. It may appear erratic, but it is not random! ‘Arbitrary’ means selected, or chosen. The books on the shelf may be arranged by size, by color, by the number of pages, or even in reverse alphabetical order of the authors’ first names. You may not see the order. You may not agree with the logic, but the owner arbitrarily chose it. He may even have chosen random.

***

My neurologist, the guy who probably saved my sight – the doctor who was willing to throw me in the trunk of his car and drive me 60 miles to a hospital specializing in eye health – has been charged with 34 counts of sexual harassment, and had his medical license revoked. I did not see that coming.

***

We recently survived another Federal election. One of the son’s co-workers asked him – based on the number of lawn signs – who he felt would be the winner in our neighborhood. The son replied that it looked like Re/Max Realty was out ahead, with Century 21 close behind. The son held out hope for a young upstart named Butter Tart Festival, holding a revival meeting at a local tourist trap. The worker protested, “Aren’t you ever serious?” “Sometimes.” “See, there you go again.” Ya just can’t win.

 

Smitty’s Loose Change #8

How the Media – and the Police – Hell, just about everybody – lies to you

“A traffic stop in Calgary yielded drugs and several weapons, including a semi-automatic submachine gun.”

This is where I say….  Cat <-> Dog, Wet <-> Dry, Day <-> Night.  A semi-automatic weapon fires once each time the trigger is pulled.  A ‘submachine gun’ is fully automatic, capable of rapidly firing through a far larger ammunition magazine.  It’s one or the other.  It can’t be both – says the guy who invented it, and the word.

Police issue statements like this to appear to be protecting the public – from dangers that don’t necessarily exist.  Newspapers cynically use headlines like this to sell papers!  Don’t you feel safe?  It’s a good thing that liars don’t give off radiation, or we’d all glow in the dark.

***

In Ford though, they see a my-road-or-the-highway politician…. I realize that the subtle, nuanced, ABAB rhyme scheme of, My way, or the Highway, can be a bit difficult for a columnist from Toronto’s poshest newspaper to detect but, come down from your ivory tower, and listen to how ‘the little people’ in the street actually speak, and how they view their political representative, before you disparage him.
BTW:  He got elected.

***

There is none so blind as he who will not see.

(Ontario Premier) Kathleen Wynne is not popular, for whatever reason, whether because there is a hunger for change, or because she is an older, lesbian woman.

Perhaps it’s because she and her Liberal government shut down all the coal-fired power generating stations, before the renovations to the nuclear and hydro ones had been completed.

Perhaps it’s because she and her Fiberals threw away 5 to 10 billion dollars over 25 years, by signing contracts for solar and wind-powered electricity.  They wasted 2 billion dollars by cancelling 2 clean, gas-fired generating plants, because they were too close to rich, influential voters.

They raised Ontario’s electrical rate to the highest in Canada, and almost the highest in North America, causing manufacturers to re-locate elsewhere, losing 40,000 jobs – including mine – thank you very much!

They blew a billion dollars on the Province’s medical helicopter-evacuation fleet – without any improvements or upgrades being achieved.  They blew another billion dollars on a computer system to make all medical files in the Province available to all health-care professionals – only the system doesn’t work, and has been abandoned.

They blew a billion dollars on a computerized payroll system for all Provincial employees.  It is so badly f….ouled up that some workers are a month behind on their pay, and it will take another billion to straighten it out.

Most Ontario voters would accept Marvin the Martian; the premier could be asexual, white, black…. or plaid.  We don’t merely want change for the sake of change; we want change for the better.

***

Skepticism is my nature!
Free thought is my methodology!
Agnosticism is my conclusion!
Atheism is my opinion!
Humanitarianism is my motivation!
Faith is what adults call ‘pretending.’

 

Flash Fiction #121

PHOTO PROMPT © Roger Bultot

I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT

“What are we doing here? If we were any further east, we’d have to trade the car for a rowboat.”

“I told you! To get a little piece of real American Patriotism.  Look at that menu.  They still offer Freedom Fries, and Freedom Toast.  I want to make America great again too, but I think we can do it without building walls, restricting immigration, or Trump’s paranoia.

Trump probably can’t even spell Woonsocket, RI, and thankfully, neither his GPS nor his handlers paraded him through here during his election tour. Order up, and we’ll go talk to some original Patriots.”

***

Go to Rochelle’s Addicted to Purple site and use her Wednesday photo as a prompt to write a complete 100 word story.

***

Have a Happy/Merry/Drunken Whatever-you-wish-to-celebrate.  😎

Alabama Internet

A POST WHERE WE FIND OUT WHERE SUPPORTERS
OF DONALD TRUMP GET THEIR INFORMATION

Bible Belt Computer Lingo

Log On – make the wood stove hotter
Log Off – don’t add no more wood
Monitor – keep an eye on that wood stove
Download – gettin’ the wood off the pickup
Floppy Disc – what you get from tryin’ to carry too much wood
Ram – the thing what splits the fire wood
Hard Drive – comin’ home from the bar after the KKK meetin’
Prompt – throw another log on the fire
Window – what to shut when it’s cold outside
Screen – what to shut in fly season
Byte – what flies do
Bit – what flies did
Mega Byte – what big flies do
Chip – munchies while monitorin’
Micro chip – what’s left after you ate the chips
Modem – what you did to the hay fields
Dot Matrix- ol’ Dan Matrix’s wife
Lap top – where kittens sleep
Software – them dumb plastic knives they give you at Golden Corral
Hardware – real stainless steel knives an’ forks
Mouse – what eats the grain in the barn
Main frame – what holds the barn up
Enter – fancy city talk for, “Y’all come on in now”
Web – the thing spiders make
Web site – where the spiders make ‘em
Search Engine – what you do when yer car dies
Cursor – somebody who swears a lot
Screen saver – a repair kit fer the torn screen door

I think about half of these are deplorable. C’mon Election, before more of these pop up!   😆
***

The wife and I are invading the Excited States again, and won’t be back for a few days.  Enjoy a few laughs on my tab while I’m gone.  I’ll be back with some real live comments, and perhaps a Flash Fiction soon.

Roast Lame Duck

In a comment about my recent, less-than-glowing satire about the boy King Tut Justin Trudeau, Canada’s second-youngest Prime Minister, BrainRants, always the instigator, challenged me to skewer U.S. President Obama next.  That’s as hard as trying to nail Jell-O to a tree.  As Gertrude Stein said, “There is no There, There!”  I’m going to try to roast him, even though he looks like he’s already lightly roasted.

Here is a view of Obama’s reign Presidency, from one Canadian Curmudgeon’s point of view.  It has been a most cynical political presentation, not necessarily from Obama, who may actually believe the hype, but by his backers and controllers.  Oops, I almost said ‘owners.’

I was particularly unimpressed with both the early ‘Birther’ scandal, and then, following it, the ‘His second name is Hussein.  Is he really a Muslim?’, both of which seemed designed to keep him in the public eye,  as a victim of Big Business and those nasty, entitled, entrenched Republicans.

His handlers offered him up as a ‘Black President,’ with the motto, ‘Change.’ The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Obama has been about as exciting as tapioca pudding – and almost as white.

Even the idiot-child, George W. Bush, as POTUS – The Next Generation, America’s equivalent to Canada’s ski-bum, yoga instructor Trudeau, could be counted on for something memorable whenever Dick Cheney let go of the marionette strings.

I think Georgie Malaprop has been misunderestimated. He will always be remembered for comedy gems like, “The French don’t even have a word for entrepreneur.”, and his aircraft-carrier comedy show, titled “Mission Accomplished’ will go down in the annals of humor.

Obama will be remembered for…. Sorry, I dozed off.  He doesn’t have the presence and rememberability of even the least of the Kardashians.

Mr. ‘Sunny Ways’, Sonny Trudeau has been castigated for taking selfies at International Meetings, when he should have been practicing Statecraft. Obama just seems to slouch and stump around the White House, hoping that, when it’s all over, he can get a free copy of the official photographer’s Photo-Ops book, when he has to go back and get a real job, and earn his own money.

Obama has been like the black hole of politics. No matter how much heat or light was shined on him, none of it seemed to escape his event horizon and reflect back upon the public.  His P.R. handlers have had to rely a lot on the females of the family. ‘Here’s Michelle, planting and tending a Victory Garden.’ Probably growing poke salad and collard greens, and trying to remember how to make Soul Food.

Or one of his two terminally-cute daughters – usually Malia, the elder. Here she is, out on her first date, where social propriety and birth control are guaranteed by Secret Service Glocks.  Then there’s the story of how she’s going to take a bridge year between High School and college, to do some studying, because she failed Secondary Geography. “Daddy, where’s Kenya?”

Even with the good possibility that his replacement as President will be either Broomhilda the Witch, or Hagar the Horrible, it doesn’t seem to indicate that a lot of people will miss him when he’s gone. Most of them, intentionally or not, have missed him while he was in office.

 

Two, No Trump

In honor of The US Presidential campaign.

***

Hillary Clinton is out jogging, and she
encounters a man with some puppies. She asks
the man what kind of puppies they are, and the
man responds, “They’re Democrat puppies.”

Clinton thinks that is so great that the next day
she brings Bill to see these puppies for himself.
She asks the man to tell Bill what kind of puppies
they are, and he responds, “They’re Republican puppies.”

She looks puzzled and says, “Yesterday, you told me
they were Democrat puppies.” The man
smiles and says, “Yesterday, they were.
But today, they have their eyes open!”

***

Rev. Jerry Falwell was seated next to Bill Clinton
on a recent flight. After the plane was airborne,
the flight attendant came around for drink orders.

The First-Husband-to-be asked for a whiskey & soda,
which was brought and placed before him.
The attendant then asked the minister if he would
also like a drink. The minister replied in
disgust, “Ma’am, I’d rather be savagely raped by a
brazen whore than let liquor touch these lips!”

Bill then handed his drink back to the
attendant and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know there
was a choice. I’ll have the same thing he’s
having.”

😆

Op-Ed Joust

During the recent Canadian Federal Election campaign, which threatened to become as long and strange as the American one, a failed municipal politician with very Liberal leanings had the following rant/letter about the Conservative Prime Minister published in the local paper.

A QUESTIONABLE TACTIC

I’m no fan of Stephen Harper. No surprise there.  But not withstanding my political leanings, I am deep disturbed that he is, by accounts, a five-question leader.

On a daily basis he has been limiting questions from the national media to four, and one from local media, with no follow-ups. I am unaware of any such limits by the other party leaders.

We are in the middle of a profoundly critical debate about Canada’s future, so we need to hear clear answers to the most difficult questions that face our country. But the person who wants us to continue to support him for four years is limiting reporters to a mere five questions a day.

My conclusions may be ungenerous, but I would call this hiding. Personally, I don’t think any of our leaders should be hiding behind arbitrary rules that limit our ability to ask tough questions of them every day of the campaign, and have them answer them thoroughly and comprehensively, so as to be transparent and accountable.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this limit of five is the most telling indicator of how accountable Harper really is and is prepared to be. Maybe not.

John Ryrie

Fortunately, a fresh shipment of snark had just arrived here at Grumps R Us, and I was able to provide him with the following.

 

ON THE JOB

In his, A Questionable Tactic letter of Oct. 14, John Ryrie may have missed a point because, like me, he’s an old fogy.

Today’s banal public media circus is all too full of inconsequential 140 character Kardashian Tweets and Instagram photos of someone’s lunch of baked beans.

By limiting the media to five questions, Harper is forcing them to focus and do their job.  They have to plan ahead and ask incisive questions, more relevant than, “What color socks are you wearing?” or, “Are you betting on the Blue Jays?”

Five serious questions per day should be enough.  This allows him to get on with the important job of governing the country, rather than stopping to feed the Info-tainment industry.

 

Grumpy Old Archon (as usual)

 

Things get strange during an election campaign, as the Americans continue to learn.  Media reporters, and Liberal opponents, feel they can just stop the Prime Minister and pump him for information so they can direct their counterattack.  He’s got two jobs.  One is to run a campaign.  The other is to run the country – until he was defeated (Sadly, in my opinion.)

Perhaps the other party leaders have the free time to kibitz with reporters.  That’s what the P.M.’s Media Office, and press releases are for.  I can hardly imagine, “President Obama, will we be bombing Palmyra?” or, “Pope Francis, are you going to sanctify gay marriage?”

Have you Americans got some odd election occurrences you’d like to make us Canucks aware of?

 

Minutia III

Another self-guided tour through my convoluted thought processes and observations.  Please wipe your feet before entering.  You wouldn’t want to be responsible for me having a dirty mind.

Because of the *let-us-help-one-another* Mennonite mindset, this area has been the birthplace of several, large, well-known insurance companies.  In keeping with my mission of being older than everything except the local rocks, I received a renewal notice for my home insurance.  My provider included a note which bragged that they have been in business for 175 years.

I have Googled myself.  Oh, the Ego of it all. (But it felt good.)  The only person with the same name and middle initial who comes up, is a retired US Air Force colonel, who went on to become a motivational speaker.  He’s appeared locally a couple of times, a few years ago, though I didn’t know it.

Recently, I thought of a friend I had for a couple of years during my teens.  While he was a couple of years younger than me, we were both over-average nerdy, and loners, therefore, we hung out and fit together nicely.  Named for his uncle Elmer, his first name was actually Delmer (D’Elmer).  There not being a lot of Delmers in the world, I tried to look him up, and was sadly surprised to find that he had died two years ago.

He was one of the guys who helped me *adopt* the naïve young tourist in my Unreasonable Expectations  post.  He was 50 pounds heavier than skinny me, and the cool kids razzed him about being fat, but most of it was muscle.  He would dive from as high as I would, and sneak into the water like a greased seal, raising less of a splash than anyone else.

Also dead, from that same crew, was an Indian from the res.  While he was a year older than me, these two both died two years ago.  Not as surprising, but still disappointing, was a notice of the recent death of the wife of the couple who owned and ran the beach bowling alley from my Bowling For Summer  post.  She was the one who served us crisp, golden French fries when we were done swimming.  In her thirties when I was a teen, she must have been like my mother, into her nineties when she passed.  Tempus fugit!

John Wayne made a hockey movie….Whaa??  Never east of the Mississippi until 1930, he was the lead in a 1937 sixty-minute flick about the non-existent, New York Panthers, called Idol of the Crowds, two years before his break-out role in Stagecoach.  He valiantly laced up, and could skate fairly well in a straight line, but any *hockey moves* had to come from camera angles.  Usually clean-spoken, he was quoted as saying he spent two days in a hospital, probably with a sprained ankle, because, “I’m from California.  I’ve never been on (expletive) skates before!”

If time is money, does that make ATMs time machines??

I exercised my franchise and voted in the recent Provincial election.  Despite having let them waste $4/5 billion dollars, the mindless, entitled yobs in the big city voted the same rogues’-gallery back into power.  Please, Nanny-State, we’re too stupid and lazy, waste another billion or two – but take care of us.  My grandson was going to have to pay off the already existing debt.  Now I just hope that he never has kids.

Since the road which runs behind my house was the electoral boundary line, on my side were election signs for four or five different parties, while on the other side of the road were the same parties, but with different candidates.  Always interested in the word-value of names, I looked a couple up.

A candidate on my side was named Weiler.  Her name, in German, has the nice meaning of hamlet, or small village.  Her compatriot across the line was Wettlaufer.  I don’t imagine he discusses it much.  It translates to *bookie*, one who bets on races.

I took the wife and daughter to a plant nursery recently.  Patiently wandering around, waiting, (yeah, right) I ran into the Bidens.  They are small, pretty flowers with two little rabbit-ears on top.  The person/people who discovered and named them felt these little protrusions looked like teeth.  Biden = bi-den = two-toothed.  So Joe Biden is related to plants, although I suspect he was adopted.  He’s not as good-looking, and nowhere near as smart.

There’s a small hotel in the neighboring city.  It began as the manor house of the local brewing family.  It has a strip bar in it, which….I might have gone into – once – just to ask for directions.  It has become the House of God on Sundays. Some time between last call Saturday night, and two-for-one lap dances Sunday evening, a team of volunteers cover the nudie posters, and $4-a-beer signs, and turn the bar into a church.

For a few hours on Sunday afternoons, the gentlemen’s club becomes a Holy place, a social place, and a place where people in need can find safety, and trust, and food.  They may also find God, but that’s not the main goal. This is a place of Christ-like support and acceptance for strippers and druggies and drunks who, too often, find themselves excluded and unwanted in mainstream churches.  Good on ya all!

Walking past the coin-counting machine at the grocery store recently, I spotted and grabbed four discontinued pennies from the overflow tray.  When I got them home, I found that three of them were 25 Ore coins from Denmark.  I have several Danish coins, but not that denomination, so I added the newest, cleanest one to my collection.

Politically Correct

By the time I post this blog, we will have gone to the polls to vote in one of the most important by-elections in Ontario in many years.  The Ontario Provincial government is controlled by the Liberal party with a slim minority.  The Premier bought our local, long-term, female Conservative representative with a five-year job as head of the Health and Safety Bureau, at half again her representative’s salary.  He had hoped to get a Liberal elected, or at least a third party NDP member, to solidify his stance.

When he did this, one of his own long-term members resigned because of stress, partly caused by the chance of an imminent, non-confidence election.  So both parties are down one vote, and the balance is still precarious.  Whoever is elected in these two ridings will determine how Ontario is run for the next decade or more.

American elections can get crazy.  This election is serious enough, but still just qualifies as silly.  Many people complain about the fact that women don’t make up half the politicians, as they do the population.  The bitchers seem to imply that men are somehow preventing women from having an equal representation.  It’s possible that most women just don’t want to lower themselves to take this thankless and befouled job.

One of the three major party leaders is female.  Two of the three major party candidates are women, including the party with the lady boss.  Generally these three parties are the only ones seriously considered.  One of the two big parties will probably win the seat, although votes lost to #3 might change the final result.  If enough votes go to the NDP party, from voters dissatisfied with the top two, we might end up with a minority government in which the NDP tail could wag either the Liberal or Conservative dog.

On Friday, Aug. 31, the local paper finally printed a page listing candidates for other than the big three.  There are seven more people who will be listed on the ballot, three of whom don’t even live in the riding, for a total of ten.  The only place I know that has that many choices, is Italy.  Of the seven, two more are female.  One is running for the Communist Party.  Americans need not worry.  This is Canada, and this is a kinder, gentler Communist Party than the one Joe McCarthy tried to root out.

Of the five men, one represents the Libertarian Party, which supports government-funded religious schools.  The guy from the Freedom Party, on the other hand, wants to stop public funding of Catholic schools, and allow private liquor sales like they have in the U. S.  One man represents the Pauper Party.  As you might guess, he is a fiscal conservative, deeply and rightly concerned with runaway spending and mounting debt.  While finance is a major concern, it is not the only one and, like the lady from the Green Party, which fixates on the environment, they’re both a one-trick pony.

We have one man running as an Independent, offering not much more than financial conservatism.  He may not believe in Area 51 and Elvis still being alive, but I get the feel of a conspiracy theorist.  The final candidate is the most colorful, in both senses.  The other nine are all various shades of white, from snow to paper.  This guy is black.  He comes from a small city the other side of Toronto, 75/80 miles away.  He represents the Peoples Party, and speaks of helping the poor, something this region still does not have like Toronto does.  He can be seen in YouTube videos, wandering the streets of Toronto, wearing long white robes, angel’s wings or a fake white beard, loudly and colorfully approaching passersby.

Ordinarily, cards are mailed to voters at least a month before the election, to tell them that they are eligible to cast a ballot, and giving the location of their voting booth.  This time, the cards arrived in the mail on a Thursday, and we vote the following Thursday.  The premier also chose a *strange* date, Sept. 6^th.  Primary and secondary schools, community college and two local universities are just beginning fall term.  Parents are busy and students old enough to vote are in the middle of moving in and getting class schedules.  I believe that the premier is hoping that only die-hard Liberal voters will bother to come out, to support him.

Because this is a pivotal riding, in a pivotal election, everybody and his dog wants to know my opinion, or influence my opinion.  The phone calls are unendingly maddening.  This is Decima Poll – Harris Poll – Rogers Poll, etc, etc, etc.  If the election was held today, what party would you vote for?  Who would make the best premier?  This is the Liberal candidate.  Please vote for me.  This is the Conservative candidate; please remain on the line for a telephone, town-hall meeting, where you can ask a real live candidate, real live questions.  This is the female leader of the NDP Party.  Who the F**k cares?  You’re not running in this riding.  My wife’s having a heart attack!  I need to call 911!  Get to Hell off my telephone line!

*Okay, we did our civic duty and went out and voted today.  The beige-skinned elections *greeter* stopped us before we even got to the school gym where we voted, and demanded to see our registration cards.  He examined the two, separated them and handed one back to each of us.  He told us that we voted at table 231, “See it right there?”  No! We’re old folks, and we’re still out in the hall.  Let us step inside.

The male returning officer made a small fuss that I had the wife’s card and she had mine, so we told him it was his buddy in the hall that got them mixed up.  He had to tell the young female Negro assistant that she should look for us on the list under S.  Still learning the alphabet I guess.

They elected another Liberal to replace the one who retired in the other riding.  Our riding, which has been staunchly Conservative for years, rejected both of the leading parties, and elected a socialist NDP.  The government still rules with a minority, but the Conservative party has less authority, and has been told that their confidence and support needs work.  This is going to get interesting.