HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2016-02-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 2016. PAGE 5.
Other Views
Dumb and dumber around the world
Only two things are infinite — the universe
and human stupidity.
And I'm not sure about the universe.
— Albert Einstein
J'm
with the professor. I am looking at a
story about Beyonce and her performance
at the Super Bowl. Due to a previously
scheduled hairdressing appointment I missed
the spectacle, but I'm told that she warbled a
song about taking her man to a Red Lobster
restaurant after sex.
What's got me scratching my head is the
news that Red Lobster sales increased by 35
per cent over after the ad aired.
Um...what's the thought process here? Did
diners suddenly descend on Red Lobster
hoping to get lucky? Did they think they'd
bump into Beyonce at the salad bar?
There's a lot of stupidity -driven content in
my newspaper these days — such as the latest
dog shooting down in Indiana.
Not shooting of a dog, shooting BY a dog. A
duck hunter by the name of Allie Carrier left
her shotgun on the ground — shell in the
chamber, safety off — while she fine-tuned her
binoculars.
Her chocolate lab wandered over and
stepped on the trigger, drilling her in the foot.
in a masterpiece of understatement, an Indiana
conservation officer observed: "We encourage
everyone to take a hunter education course
Arthur
Id:
Black
before they venture out in the field."
Ten point bonus — the dog's name is Trigger.
At least the gimpy nimrod was out in the
fresh air getting some exercise. Not like the
legions of Unboxers who spend their spare
time hunched over their screens watching
unboxing videos on YouTube.
Unboxing videos? Just what it implies.
Videos of strangers' hands unwrapping
packages of brand new blenders, sneakers,
Disney princesses, Star Wars figurines — you
name it. It all started 10 years ago when
somebody selfie'd his own hands unwrapping
a new Nokia cell phone. Last year Americans
watched 60 million hours of unboxing videos.
Not everyone was glued to YouTube. Some
of us were dying our armpit hair.
It's the latest fashion fad, let by those
fashion icons Madonna and Myley Cyrus.
There's even a Free Your Pits website where
fans can get late -breaking pit news and follow
trends. (As of this writing, the hottest pit
colours are turquoise, hot pink, purple and
neon yellow.)
In case you think this moron harvest is
limited to North America, guess again. Know
what the Chinese are buying up by the case -
lot? Air.
Canadian air.
A company called Vitality Air decided to see
if there was a Chinese market for quality,
bottled -in -the -Canadian -Rockies air. They sent
a shipment of aerosol cans to Beijing with a
price tag of $20 a can.
Sold out in four hours.
Now there's a raw material export I
could get behind. Forget your clearcut virgin
timber, your dwindling ore bodies and your
polluting and poisonous bitumen. Sell 'em
Canadian air!
Good to know that stupidity doesn't play
favourites. Gullibility is democratic. You
don't have to be young or inexperienced. Or
blonde.
Nothing is deader than the old 'dumb
blonde' cliche. Dolly Parton said it best. "I
don't care if people think I'm a dumb blonde
because I know I'm not dumb". Then she gave
it a beat and said: "I'm also not blonde."
I never make the mistake of laughing at
blondes. I mean, look at Joan of Arc.
Everybody laughed at her but she went ahead
and built it anyway.
A very belated welcoming party
Several years ago, I wrote about the zoo
that my home had become with my
wife's three cats, my two birds and a dog
(a poodle named Juno, for those whose
memory is as good as mine).
I realized, however, that those who read the
paper may have noticed that I've been walking
around a new dog lately, so I felt I should share
the story about how she came into my life.
A few months after initially writing about
the zoo in our home, we faced some rough
days with the animals.
We had to find a new home for Juno
because, as a puppy, she was just a little more
than we could handle. Ashleigh was working
two jobs and teaching people to ride horses
and, with everything from council meetings to
hockey games to special events, I just wasn't
home consistently enough to teach Juno when
and where to do her business.
Juno then moved in with a friend of
Ashleigh's and has been doing absolutely
wonderfully ever since.
After that, however, some absent-minded
zookeeper (and we haven't figured out which
one yet, so no blame being tossed there) left a
door open and one of our cats, Luna (short for
Lunatic), decided to make a run for it.
Not long after, my wife found a job in
Toronto, so we had to do the long-distance
relationship thing for awhile, which worked
out fine.
However, once Ashleigh relocated back to
Huron County, we realized that the zoo wasn't
quite the attraction it used to be, so we set out
to rebuild it.
Fate felt that we should do the same as it saw
fit to have someone bring Luna back to us.
For those of you unfamiliar with the story,
Luna was returned to us two years after she
went missing. We got a call from a neighbour
in the community saying they had this cat and
had tried calling the company that was listed
on her collar. The company tried to get in
touch with Ashleigh, however her phone
number had changed a couple of times since
Luna's microchip was implanted and the tag
was stamped.
Fortunately, I'm a creature of habit and have
Denny
Scott
Denny's Den
had the same cell phone number since I got my
first phone more than a decade ago.
So, to make a long story (that was previously
covered in this very space) short, Luna came
back to us and has since become the friendliest
cat I've ever seen. Unfortunately, she must
some how know that me being stubborn and
refusing to change my cell number is the
reason she was able to get home because she
won't leave me alone. My wife says the cat is
no longer hers, it's mine; allergy -inducing
dander and all.
After that I decided to pick up a new cage
for the birds (a cockatiel named Boo and a
quaker parrot named Yoshi) which was a great
investment. The birds love it and often decide
to sit on top of it all day, thinking they rule the
roost.
However cats and birds didn't seem to be
enough for us and it wasn't long until Ashleigh
and I were looking to get a new dog.
When I was growing up, dogs were a staple
for my family. I can remember always coming
home to a dog somewhere up to my seventh
birthday or so.
My mom loves Boxers so we always had
one. I can remember two of them, but I'm told
there was a third.
After my seventh birthday (and the passing
of our last Boxer) we didn't have any more
dogs.
I tried some smaller, easier to manage pets in
my youth including hamsters and gerbils but
there's just something about an animal that is
actually happy to see you when you get home
(and not just because that means meal time is
imminent).
More recently, both my mother and father
have taken in some older dogs that people
couldn't take care of for one reason or another
and I felt that would fit perfectly into the busy
lifestyles Ashleigh and I have built.
So we kept our eyes and ears open, waiting
for the perfect dog to come along because (as
we would find out in a rather unpleasant way)
my allergies to animals actually stretched to
certain breeds of dogs.
It took awhile, but we found our perfect
match in Mikayla.
A friend of Ashleigh's runs a dog kennel and
occasionally takes in rescue animals and she
got in touch with us shortly after Mikayla
showed up.
She's a mix of shepherd, husky and
something unknown and loves walking, sitting
on the couch and, most importantly, doing
nothing when the mood arises for that.
She also loves stopping every five feet, while
walking to try and figure out the scent history
of every blade of grass or flake of snow within
the range of her leash. That's something we're
working on.
She's a friendly dog (provided you're not
trying to take a bone from her), but she did
spend a bit of time in a kennel so she gets very
frustrated (and very loud) when I don't let her
run out and meet every dog within earshot to
give them the once-over with her snout.
We've had her for a few months, but, before
I got to telling the world about her, both
Ashleigh and I wanted to make sure she was a
good fit for the home.
So if you see (or hear, then see) me out
walking in the morning or early evening, feel
free to say hi. She might whine or bark a bit,
but she is just excited to be out taking in the
sunshine.
What's next to the zoo? Only time will tell,
though I can promise you it won't be a cat. We
have more than enough of them.
Final Thought
"Success usually comes to those who are
too busy to be looking for it."
— Henry David Thoreau
Shawn
111
‘! Loughlin
Shawn's Sense
Where there's smoke...
This week a release came across my desk
from the Huron County Health Unit
commending the World Health
Organization (WHO) for its initiative to ban
smoking in movies.
The release stems from the WHO Smoke-
free Movies Report. It provides statistics
regarding to how much smoking is actually in
the movies we watch and how many young
people start smoking because they see it in
movies.
Locally, the Health Unit is a member of the
Ontario Coalition for Smoke -Free Movies, an
organization that aims to only see tobacco
smoked in movies that are available to people
aged 18 and over.
For the record, I think this is a fine idea and
I'm certainly not throwing the Health Unit
under the bus, but I see this as another case of
focusing on the wrong things.
Smoking is bad. There's no doubt. And the
fewer young people out there smoking, the
better. Those trends already seem to be
forming, as fewer and fewer people are
smoking as the years go by.
But, at the risk of sounding like a very old
man, the things I've seen in movies rated for
children aged 14 and up are getting edgier by
the year.
One example is the AMC show The Walking
Dead. This is a show that takes place after a
zombie apocalypse and each episode
chronicles the killing of dozens (if not more)
of zombies, as well as humans. The deaths are
the most gruesome I've ever seen on television.
Heads are stabbed, guts are ripped out and
people are literally ripped limb from limb by
the teeth of zombies while blood flows from
them in excess.
It took until the fourth season for the show's
rating to be changed, which began at 14 and
up, to target people over the age of 18.
I have a hard time reconciling the fact that a
show featuring someone hacking and slashing
dozens of zombies to pieces would be
appropriate for 14 -year-olds, but if and when
the aforementioned character decided to have a
smoke whilst hacking and slashing, it will have
crossed the line into 18 -and -over territory
under the WHO recommendations.
A quick search provides plenty of results.
The body count in the recently -released The
Expendables 3 nearly reaches 500. It was rated
for viewers 14 and under. And that's just one
example.
The case has long been made that young
viewers are particularly impressionable to
what they see in movies and on television.
We've heard for years that violent video games
have bred a culture of violence and that
suggestive lyrics in music have led to anything
from mass murder to suicide.
How firm those connections are is certainly
up for debate. However, if we're going to crack
down on smoking in movies, shouldn't we
perhaps be casting a wider net? What about
drug use? Murder? Theft?
Hell, the show literally called How To Get
Away With Murder is rated for an audience of
15 and under.
This WHO initiative reminds me of another
odd banning request that I've written about in
years past. The popular video game Battlefield
3 was plagued with protests due to a scene very
early in the game that calls for the player to kill
a rat in a sewer.
This is a game in which, over the course of
its hours, the player will have to kill hundreds
of soldiers if he hopes to successfully reach the
end of the game, but killing one rat is simply
going too far.