HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-04-02, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 2, 2015. PAGE 5.
It’s not difficult to accidentally complicate
your life in this interconnected world.
Sometimes all it takes is your typing finger.
I discovered this a few years ago while trying
to write an article about bears.
I was born in a big city, which meant the
closest I’d ever been to a bruin was watching
Yogi and Booboo on Saturday morning
cartoons or Bobby Orr on Hockey Night in
Canada. So on a whim, I began my research
by typing ‘BEAR’ into my browser.
Big mistake.
Turns out there is an entire socio-
sexual netherworld of people who self-identify
as ‘bears’. These bears are porky, bearded
guys who are attracted to other porky, bearded
guys. Now I don’t know if they get together to
play backgammon, slow dance or to toss
large bouncing balls back and forth but
it soon became clear that these porky,
bearded guys wanted to know me a lot better
than I wanted to know them, if you get my
drift.
I’m still getting occasional invitations to
meet ‘Gord’, ‘Chuck’, ‘Ted’ and ‘Frank’ for a
friendly drink.
Who knew? Not me, obviously. Sometimes
I feel like roadkill on the sexual highway.
A more with-it guy probably would have
scored a ticket to the Furnal Equinox
convention last year at the Toronto Airport
Sheraton Hotel.
Nearly a thousand people from all over
North America attended. You could tell
them apart from the other conventioneers in
the hotel right away. The Furnal Equinox
people (they call themselves ‘furries’) were all
decked out like foxes, cougars, squirrels and of
course, bears. Which is to say they all wore fur
suits.
Well, correction. Some of the shyer ones
restricted themselves to fake fur ears and/or a
tail, but everybody was ‘furred up’ one way or
another. There were also booths offering
‘parafurnalia’ for sale – teddy bears and other
stuffed animals, not to mention T-shirts,
jewellery and various furry appendages.
This being an ‘adult-themed’ convention
there were also displays of erotic furry art
(think non-human creatures endowed with
decidedly human equipment).
As I say, I was somehow overlooked when
the invitations were sent out, but Deborah Soh
got one. She’s a student of sexual neuroscience
at York University in Toronto and she wrote
about her experience in a recent edition of
Harper’s magazine. Although not a practising
furry herself, Soh was keen to find out just
what kind of people liked to dress up like
Winnie the Pooh or Alvin the Chipmunk and
fantasize about getting lucky with a Grizzly.
Turns out they’re nerds! Academics! Furries
are generally bookish people many of whom
have letters after their names and spend their
non-furry hours hard at work in universities
and colleges.
Well, what the hey? Different strokes and all
that. Let freedom reign ‘as long as it doesn’t
frighten the horses’ as some wag once said.
Besides, according to Soh, furries are, well,
just a bunch of friendly furballs, really. “Most
surprising to me” she writes, “was how open
and welcoming the community was to a non-
furry like me.”
Live and let live, I say. And that works both
ways.
Gord, Chuck, Ted, Frank – if you’re reading
this...let it go. It’s not going to happen, okay?
Arthur
Black
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
For as long as I can remember I have been
very interested in advertisements and
how they alter the view a consumer has
of a good, service or company.
Okay, maybe not the latter so much. I’ve
always had a lot of problems with
advertisements that try and sell a company
without actually selling a product.
Take, for example, Enbridge.
Enbridge Energy is an energy company
(shocker) based out of Alberta.
They provide all sorts of fuel from the kinds
that power a vehicle to the kinds that heat
water in a home but, odds are, you’re not
buying directly from Enbridge.
That might be why, in the two of the
company’s commercials I’ve seen in the last
couple hours (and given that I don’t have
cable, that’s impressive market saturation), the
company isn’t selling anything.
The company claims that, while it doesn’t
help paint a baby’s room or organize her
clothes, it does get the water warm for her first
bath when she gets home.
The second commercial said that
Enbridge may not invite a dog into the
car or open the window for him to see outside,
but it does fuel the vehicle of which he is the
co-pilot.
The advertisements are cute but, in my mind,
all I can think of is “What did you do wrong,
Enbridge?”
These advertisements, the ones that tout
successes, are classic school-age psychology.
I don’t know about everyone else, but
whenever I had to tell my parents anything bad
that happened to me at school, I would
scramble for hours to try and find something I
had recently succeeded at to soften the blow.
For example, if I had detention for
interrupting class or anything along those
lines, I would probably try and find some
recent test I excelled at or wrack my
brain for some compliment I received from a
teacher or principal and tell them about that
first.
I’m not sure if it ever had any real softening
effect on the bad news I shared (and the
inevitable punishment, whether it was being
taken off a school soccer team, grounded or
having some prized possession taken away),
but it seemed like a solid idea.
I know I’m not the only person who sees
things that way, because there’s a running gag
on How I Met Your Mother, a popular
television show that ended recently, based on
it.
One of the characters explained that every
time her dog made a certain face, she knew it
had made a mess. It gave birth to the line,
“Where’s the poop?”
Sometimes, that’s how I feel when these
commercials are aired.
Whenever an oil company explains how it is
employing hundreds of people, whenever an
energy company says it makes your every day
happen, whenever a commercial touts a
company that doesn’t have any direct sales
model and next to no interaction with the end
consumers of its product (by selling through
various other channels such as gas stations or
utility companies) I have to ask, where’s the
poop?
Sometimes, the question is easily answered.
Oil spills, or oil line ruptures, for example, can
breed ‘apology’ commercials or commercials
touting the good the company is going to do as
a way to make amends. It’s pretty apparent
those companies are trying to cover their
assets.
So, when I saw these Enbridge
advertisements, I had an immediate urge to
start doing some research and finding out why
its public relations squad is trying to increase
the company’s stock as a good, responsible,
wholesome corporate citizen.
It didn’t take me long to figure out the
company is pushing being penalized to the
tune of $264,000 by the National Energy
Board for safety and environmental hazards
caused by pipeline construction in
Manitoba.
Maybe I’m off base on that, however. Maybe
there is some huge, bad announcement coming
where the company is going to lay off
hundreds of people or increase the price of oil
or... who knows?
Now, I’m not going to start calling the
company evil for what it’s trying to do, after
all, I did exactly the same thing.
I am, however, going to say that whoever
is in charge of public relations and the
corporate image needs to have a job review
pretty soon.
I’m going to assume I’m not alone in
wondering why a company that has no direct
interaction with someone who is watching a
video about the new Halo video game online
or watching a trailer for an upcoming movie,
again online, would push their corporate image
so fervently at me.
In the end, the only reaction I could
ever see anyone having is to wonder why
Enbridge would be trying to convince the
average consumer, who will likely have
no idea which company is responsible for their
oil natural gas, that the company and brand are
good.
From there, logic follows that it must have
done something wrong to want to try and
present such a positive image. Like I said
before, it’s school-age psychology.
So whoever was responsible for that,
whoever made the decision to spend the money
recording and placing those advertisements in
front of me should really give their head a
shake (and then have their head thoroughly
shaken by their boss). It had the opposite
effect.
Unless, of course, those ads were placed
by a competitor in which case, bravo, you
figured out how to make me distrust a
company I had no interaction or opinion on
whatsoever.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
This is my rifle...
The world is changing when it comes to
crime and law enforcement – there is no
doubt about it – but often in Huron
County we think that change doesn’t
necessarily affect us.
One of the most eye-catching items in North
Huron’s 2015 budget (as seen in this week’s
issue in a story written by reporter Denny
Scott) is the purchase of six carbine rifles for
the Wingham Police Service at a cost of
$10,000.
As most readers will know, the Wingham
Police Service is a very small police force
made up of a handful of police officers whose
jurisdiction is an area of just over two and a
half square kilometres and a population of
under 3,000 people.
Despite the force’s size, however, these are
real police officers that have to deal with real
crime and real risk on a day-to-day basis. Still,
I have to think that the image of carbine rifles
is alarming to the average Huron County
resident.
At a March meeting of North Huron
Council, the point was made that criminals are
advancing their arsenals, so police forces must
too to enforce the laws in those communities.
There has also been discussion at various
levels to the contrary, suggesting that the dog
(police) is indeed wagging the tail (criminals)
on the issue, rather than the tail wagging the
dog. The finger has been pointed at police in
numerous communities for perhaps escalating
militarization that has heightened tension on
both sides.
This issue was just explored late last week
on Vice, an HBO news series that began as a
counter-culture magazine founded in Canada.
Reporter Thomas Morton went to training
facilities to further explore intense police
training and to communities like Ferguson,
Missouri where the relationship between
police and residents is shaky to say the least.
He suggests that items like rifles, tear gas and
military-grade vehicles are being used more
simply because they’re available, not because
they’re always necessary.
He found that over the years since the
suggested militarization of police began, the
bar has been gradually lowered from situations
of extreme danger and full-scale riots as cause
to use these items down to run-of-the-mill drug
raids with a low risk of violence or peaceful,
non-violent protests and assemblies.
A similar case is made in Radley Balko’s
Rise of the Warrior Cop, which points to the
“War on Drugs” in the U.S. as the turning point
between community-based, proactive policing
and the rise of special weapons, military-like
tactics and SWAT teams. In the U.S., much of
this military equipment given to police forces
is deemed surplus from the military and is
given with the condition that it be used a
certain number of times per year.
On one hand, in the case of Wingham, you
can suggest that the majority of crime in the
small town is non-violent and not threatening
to police officers. But on the other hand, that
can only be the case until it isn’t. The murder
of OPP officer Vu Pham and the Hullett
Wildlife Conservation Area murder late last
year suggest otherwise.
Yes, the majority of Huron County days are
free of violent crime, but that certainly doesn’t
mean they all are.
So, to those coming to my column looking
for answers (I can’t imagine there are many of
you), I don’t have them. I certainly hope these
rifles don’t have to be used, but I also hope
they’re not used simply so they don’t collect
dust.
Other Views
You’re protesting a little too loudly
Bears? Oh, fur crying out loud
Most of us spend too much time on
what is urgent and not enough time on
what is important.
– Stephen Covey
Final Thought