HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2012-04-19, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2012. PAGE 5.
Afew years back, William Kinsella, one
of Canada’s finer short story writers,
was attending a reading by Canada’s –
and probably the world’s – finest short story
writer, Alice Munro. Kinsella noticed a
curious thing. As Munro read, the audience
laughed repeatedly and uproariously. Reading
audiences are normally about as jovial as
Stephen Harper with mumps. After the
reading, Kinsella mentioned it to Munro and
said that he’d never thought of her work as
funny. Munro smiled and said “Bill,
everything is funny.”
Well, exactly. Take cement. Superficially,
few things could be less funny than cement. It
is bland, undifferentiated, mostly grey, the
epitome of unsexy – again, like Stephen
Harper.
But unsexy doesn’t mean unimportant.
Bland old boring cement is the elemental
binder of human architecture. Without cement
we wouldn’t have the Taj Mahal, Chartres
Cathedral or the George Massey tunnel.
Builders figured that out centuries ago. The
ancient Romans even gave us our word for it.
They call the mixture of crushed rock and
burnt limestone they used ‘opus
caementicium’.
So cement is a certifiable big deal – but
funny?
Actually, yes.
Cement plays a critical role in one of my
favourite barroom stories. A Readymix truck
driver stops by his home during a work run to
discover a shiny Cadillac convertible parked in
his driveway. He tiptoes to the bedroom
window, peeks in, discovers his wife is
entertaining a strange man within. Tiptoes
back to his cement truck, backs it up to the
Cadillac, places the chute in back seat of
Cadillac and dumps his load.
Such a satisfying story – almost too good to
be true. In fact, it IS too good to be true. It’s
an urban legend that’s been making the rounds
for the past 40 years at least. Sometimes the
cement-filled car is a Cadillac, other times it’s
a DeSoto, or a Triumph TR3. Some people
insist it actually happened to Don Tyson,
president of Tyson Foods, Inc. That story goes
that Tyson’s wife spied her husband’s
expensive new Cadillac parked in the driveway
of another woman’s house, so she ordered up a
load of concrete and had it delivered – through
the passenger’s side window.
Except it never happened. In 1992 the Public
Relations department of Tyson Foods, Inc
officially declared the story to be a fake. They
also said they’d been hearing it for at least 20
years.
Great story. Too bad it never happened. But
here’s one that did – last month on a highway
outside San Francisco, an impatient guy in a
Porsche 911 found himself at the end of a long
line of cars that wasn’t moving. He honked, he
shook his fist, he said several bad words – then
he put his car in first gear and drove around the
line of cars.
Right into a lane of freshly poured cement.
The Porsche sank about a foot before it came
to a rather final stop.
True story – and it reminds me of another
barroom story. Guy is tooling along a country
road in his Porsche, well over the speed limit,
comes over a rise and hits a cow broadside.
When the cops show up the guy is standing,
bleeding, by his totaled sports car wailing “My
Porsche! My beautiful Porsche!”
The cop says “You yuppies make me puke.
You’re flying down the road ‘way over the
speed limit; you kill an innocent cow – and
look, you tore your right arm off! And all you
can think about is your Porsche?
Guy looks at his empty right sleeve and
wails “My Rolex! My beautiful Rolex!”
Arthur
Black
Other Views The cementing of relationships
Last week marked the 100th anniversary
of the Titanic’s maiden voyage and, of
course, its collision with an iceberg in
the North Atlantic Ocean.
This, however, was news to some people
much to the dismay of those of us who like to
consider our fellow man intelligent.
It was April 10, 1912 when the Titanic began
its maiden voyage. Four days later (April 14) it
struck the infamous iceberg and the next day it
sank, killing over 1,500 people.
But it was last week, when all forms of
media were awash with coverage of Titanic
anniversary ceremonies, that many were
introduced to the real RMS Titanic; not the
1997 James Cameron film starring Leonardo
DiCaprio and another one of my teenage
celebrity girlfriends Kate Winslet.
It’s tough to believe, but many news outlets
were reporting a quirky story featuring dozens
of Twitter posts from young people admitting
that they knew nothing of the ship’s history and
thought the Titanic was a fictional ship where
DiCaprio’s Jack and Winslet’s Rose found love
despite the efforts of Rose’s fiancé Caledon
Nathan Hockley (played by Billy Zane).
With the Titanic, we’re not taking about an
obscure corner of history; this was a major
event. And when Titanic (the film) was first
released in theatres, there was no attempt to
hide its non-fiction roots.
So when comments like “Nobody told me
the Titanic was real. How am I just finding this
out?” or “I didn’t know Titanic actually
happened, thought it was just a film” are made,
how are the normal among us supposed to
react?
I wouldn’t exactly characterize myself as a
‘history buff’ but I certainly had an
appreciation for it growing up. It was easy
growing up loving baseball as much as I did, a
sport that wears its history like a badge of
honour on its sleeve more than any other.
When I was a kid Babe Ruth was my
favourite baseball player. To put it into
perspective, Ruth had been dead for over 40
years when I was ‘a kid’.
Of course I’m not saying every kid had to be
like me, burying his nose in statistics books
and learning about baseball in the 1920s, but is
a slight acknowledgement that there were
people on this earth before you too much to
ask?
For some I guess it is.
To be sure, a small sample on Twitter (which
doesn’t exactly require an I.Q. test for
membership) shouldn’t reflect the majority, but
it is stunning to think that many North
Americans are oblivious to one of the largest
tragedies of its time. Especially now. We are
living in an age where more information is
available than ever before, and yet we have
people looking dumbfounded when discussing
the 100th anniversary of the Titanic.
However, perhaps Twitter isn’t the place to
go when seeking knowledge and wisdom.
Barack Obama, the president of the United
States, is on Twitter and he has the eighth-most
followers in the world. Ahead of the leader of
the free world? Kim Kardashian, Shakira,
Britney Spears, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Justin
Bieber and in first place with over 22.6 million
followers Lady Gaga.
Instead of hearing what the president has to
say or reading a history textbook, most would
rather follow Lady Gaga, the genius behind the
song “Bad Romance” and its lyrics “Rah, rah,
ah, ah, ah, roma, roma, ma, gaga, ooh, la, la,
want your bad romance.”
Clearly it’s not history that’s on the minds of
these people.
A ‘Titanic’ failure
Once upon a time... less than two years
ago, it was explained to me that
budgets need to take into account the
wear and tear that use has on capital
investments.
Basically, budget makers have to account for
the cost of owning an item over its life cycle
and save money for its repair and replacement.
To me, that sounded fairly straight forward.
It’s not a practice I adhere to because who
has the expendable income to save up for a
replacement car or house? That’s why we pay
insurance, right?
But just because I don’t subscribe to it
doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense or
shouldn’t be done.
It’s like being told you should see a doctor
so many times a year; I wouldn’t need to take
off my shoes to count the number of times I’ve
seen a doctor since I graduated high school
and most of those were for work and had
nothing to do with medical issues. However, I
would still encourage everyone to do better
than me and visit their doctor regularly.
I would also encourage everyone who can to
put aside what money they can to prepare for
“life cycle” events in their homes, vehicles and
other major purchases.
For example; a good chunk of my income
tax refund (fingers crossed) will likely be
going towards a new computer.
My laptop became a desktop when the
screen burned out just over two years ago;
something I wasn’t prepared for.
I’ve since used it as a desktop computer with
a monitor, but I realized some time ago that it
was probably not going to last much longer;
five years is the shelf life for a lot of computers
now-a-days.
So, if someone like me who is financially-
planning challenged and pretty horrible at
math can handle the idea of needing to plan
ahead (for important stuff like computers and
televisions), why can’t Minister of Defence
Peter MacKay?
MacKay is at the centre of the F-35 fighter
jet controversy that has taken headlines for the
past week or so.
An audit of the process used to determine
whether the jets were to be purchased or not
revealed that someone in the Ministry of
Defence had decided that the price tag of $25
billion was too much to keep the
Conservative’s popularity soaring so they
nixed the “life cycle” planning portion of the
purchase (including fuel and salary) and gave
the actual cost of just the equipment: $15
billion.
MacKay claims that the Liberal government
made a similar mistake when purchasing
helicopters in 2004 and also, while not
refuting the findings of the audit, says he
didn’t know that things had to be presented
that way. Paired with him referring to the
wrong document during a recent press
announcement in Halifax, his gaffes have
resulted in Liberal critics calling him “not too
bright.”
MacKay states that when someone buys a
minivan, they say it’s going to cost $20,000.
They don’t say it’s going to cost $20,000 plus
fuel, insurance, a salary for the driver and
repairs.
In one respect, I agree with him.
When I bought my car, I was told it’s going
to cost (to leave a little mystery) between
$10,000 and $20,000 which I would pay off
over a certain number of years.
I have to believe that, had I looked at things
the way MacKay is, I probably would have
gone for something smaller, like a motorcycle.
I’m not sure about other people, but between
insurance and fuel I probably spend more than
$200 a month.
So add $2,400 annually to the price of a
vehicle over, say, an average lifespan of six
years and you’re probably increasing the cost
of the vehicle by 33 per cent.
If I had to think about the cost of a vehicle as
being 133 per cent of the sticker price, I might
start questioning the purchase. Maybe I would
spend the $2,000 to get the old clunker
repaired instead.
So, I can see why MacKay says that.
Unfortunately for him, comparing a mini-
van to a fighter jet is... well, let’s just say it’s
not an apt analogy.
I guess the primary difference is who is
buying the minivan.
When I’m spending my money I can make
whatever silly claims I want to try and
rationalize the expenditures I’m making.
When MacKay is spending my money,
however, I want every nickel and dime
accounted for.
I want to know that over the course of the
vehicles’ usage they are going to cost the
Canadian taxpayers an additional $10 billion.
According to Statistics Canada, the current
estimated population of Canada is (at the time
of writing this column) 34,765,580.
According to recent statistics,
approximately 1,182,000 of those are under
the age of 20 this year and most of them are
uneligible to vote
That means that the people of Canada, who
are responsible for electing MacKay and the
Conservatives, will each be ponying up an
additional $297 throughout the life cycle of the
jets.
That’s a month and a half worth of car
insurance and gas for me.
I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be
spent, however hiding these kinds of things (or
worse, the extreme negligence involved in
being ignorant of them) should be completely
open to the public.
Before anyone adds this piece to my
previous one regarding Conservative attack
advertisements and thinks I’m anti-
Conservative, let me state that I am not trying
to show you who to vote for or support.
I am simply looking at the biggest gaffes
because they make the biggest headlines.
If the Liberals or NDP were in power and
making the same mistakes I’d be making the
same argument.
It seems that PM Stephen Harper is
clenching his fist a little too hard around his
cabinet and party members because these
blunders keep oozing out from in between his
fingers.
Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
The true cost of F-35 fighter jets