HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1992-05-06, Page 5Arthur Black
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 6,1992. PAGE 5.
Armillaria
Bulbosa....
the movie monster
of the 1990’s?
You like those corny old Monster Movies?
Me too. Mothra. King Kong. The Creature
From the Black Lagoon. Not to mention
those Japanese bargain basement brutes like
Rodan - and my personal favourite Godzilla.
For those of you who chose not to rot your
cerebellums on this junk, Godzilla was a 400
foot high Lizard critter untimely nudged
from the mists of prehistory. For millions of
years he had slumbered peacefully under the
earths mantle somewhere off the coast of
Japan until disturbed by meddling human
nuclear scientists. Godzilla woke up very
cranky. He took his bad mood and his blow
torch breath on a people-stomping rampage
over hill and dale of old Nippon, flattening
villages, incinerating condos and playing
crack the whip with commuter trains until...
But I won't ruin it for you. Godzilla will be
on the Late Show one of these nights.
You really ought to watch these old
celluloid creakers if you can. You'd be
amazed at some of the unexpectedly familiar
faces you can pick out if you look closely.
Would you believe Perry Mason in
Godzilla? Yep, the actor Raymond Burr is
® ^International Scene
_________________________________________________________________________________
By Raymond Canon
Feel sorry
for others
Canadians spent a lot of time feeling sorry
for themselves or complaining about the
horrible way things are being run in this
country. I would assume that most of us can
make a case about how life has not been as
good to us as we would have liked or that
our governments are somewhat less
competent than they might be. However, in
this article I am going to give you a chance
to feel sorry for a few other unfortunate
people. This should not be hard since you
have had a great deal of practice lately in the
two areas which I have just mentioned. Have
you got your crying towels ready? Well,
here goes!
Let's start out by shedding tears for one of
the world most unfortunate people - the
Swiss. For years they have had a rate of
inflation either the lowest in the western
world or among the lowest. Now they are
saddled with, dare I say it, five per cent. This
is just over three times as bad as Canada's.
I'm not sure how they can live with it all; the
country must be falling apart. Perhaps we
should make a law that ten per cent of all the
money won in lotteries should be withdrawn
to pay for food parcels etc. for those
miserable people.
As if that were not enough, wait until you
hear their rate of unemployment. For years it
has been less than one per cent but it is now
an unthinkable 2.5 per cent. I am not sure if I
can stand the sight of those long line-ups at
the social welfare offices when I arrive in
Switzerland this summer. If that five per
cent inflation is not making mockery of the
country's famed stability, the 2.5 per cent
rate of unemployment should.
there - although it's easy to see why he
missed an Oscar nomination that year. And
check out the movie Them next time you get
a chance.
Sharp-eyed viewers will be able to winkle
out Davy Crockett (Fess Parker), Marshall
Matt Dillon (James Arness) and the
unmistakably angular features of an
unsmiling Leonard Nimoy.
I guess Mister Spock must have taken an
acting extra job while he waited for his
executive appointment to the Starship
Enterprise to come through.
I've always been fond of the fictional
monster heroes, but I never thought I'd see
the day when there would be a real one to
get goosebumps over.
I was wrong.
How about this for a monster profile: a
creature that dwells underground, is at least
15 centuries old, feeds on dead and decaying
matter, weighs at least ten tons, is
impervious to fire and ...
... is bigger than 25 Maple Leaf Gardens
put together.
Oh yes, and one more thing.
It's alive. Here. In 1992.
And I'm not kidding.
Armillaria Bulbosa can be found in a huge
hardwood forest tucked away in the
northwest corner of Michigan, near the
Wisconsin border. Scientists have confirmed
that it's there; that it has survived at least one
giant forest fire; and that it has been living
quietly in that hardwood forest since about
If you can stop crying long enough for the
Swiss, we will turn now to the United States
where that famed stock manipulator Ivan
Boesky is down to his last few million. Mr.
Boesky, who had to do a term in prison for
his skulduggery in the stock market, not to
mention a fine of $100 million (U.S.) is
down to his last three homes and has had to
stoop so low as to demand the courts to force
his wife to pay him $20,000 a month in
alimony. When I think of someone actually
having to go without their pate de foie gras
and their vintage champagne, I am ready to
reach for my worn copy of the teachings of
Karl Marx and plot the overthrow of the
government that would permit such atrocity.
If we don't act now, Mr. Boesky will end up
eating at a soup kitchen in the Bowery.
If we can leave Mr. Boesky wondering
where his next bottle of Dom Perignon is
going to come from, let's take a Concorde jet
over to join Mr. and Mrs. Neil Kinnock who
wanted to get into 10 Downing St. so badly
they could almost taste it. Mr. Kinnock,
whose Labour Party led in almost all the
opinion polls from the time the British
election campaign began, started acting as if
he could, on Friday, April 10, be turfing
John Major out of the house. Even Mrs.
Kinnock got into the act, saying a few things
she should not have said. Come election day,
the voters decided that, although the Tories
had been somewhat less than exemplary,
they were preferable to the Socialists who,
no matter how they tried to dress up their
policies, could not sell them. Mr. Kinnock
was so shocked at the outcome, he resigned
almost immediately. He would do well to
reacquaint himself with Yogi Berra's famous
statement, “It ain't over ’til it's over.” The
Greeks, not used to such statements, would
tell the ex-Labour leader he was suffering
from a case of hybris.
Before we run out of crying towels, let's
shed a tear for yet another suffering group of
people, Italian politicians. For quite some
1,000 years before Columbus took his
famous westward cruise from Spain.
A couple of other attributes that should put
Armillaria Bulbosa in the Horror Hall of
Fame: it is impossible to decapitate. If you
lop off one section of it, it doesn't even
wince. In fact, if you got a giant machete and
chopped Armillaria Bulbosa in half, do you
know what you'd get?
Two Armillaria Bulbosas.
Just so you can sleep tonight, I should tell
you that the creature under discussion here is
a fungus. The largest fungus ever
discovered, but a fungus for all that.
If you went to the hardwood forest where
Armillaria Bulbosa lives and stuck a spade
in the forest floor, you would hit the fungus
with your first shovelful. But all you would
see would be white fibrous threads running
every which direction.
That's it. Aside from some sweet smelling
mushrooms that appear above ground once
in a while, that's all there is to Armillaria
Bulbosa. Except that there's a helluva lot of
those threads underground - about 40 acres
worth. And anything that big has got to have
some potential in the Hollywood Horror
movie market. What it needs is a sexier
name. The Monster Mushroom That
Masticated Michigan, maybe. Or how about
The Humongous Fungus?
Whatever they call the movie, I'll buy a
ticket.
And the next time I bend down to pick a
mushroom, I’m going to ask permission first.
time they, and I mean by that, the ruling
Christian Democrats, have been jerking the
population around to the extent that they
make what goes on in our House of
Commons look like child's play. The
economy is in such bad shape that it is
calculated that over 30 per cent of it is
underground. The politicians were so intent
over the years in playing their games of one-
upmanship in the Italian parliament that they
didn't seem to give any care to what was
happening to the country. At just about the
same time that the British voters were
rendering a coup de grace to Mr. Kinnock,
the Italian voters were doing the same thing
to their political war horses. Maybe we
should send over Jacques Parizeau to lead
some form of separatist movement.
Why was I so inspired to write about the
horrible misfortunes of others? Well, I'll tell
you. The United Nations has just released a
survey that shows that Canada is No. 1 when
it comes to places in which to live. With
polls such as that we obviously do not need
any sympathy.
Former Wingham
OPP in fatal crash
A former Wingham OPP officer remains
in stable condition in Belleville Hospital
after being involved in a head-on collision
that claimed the life of three people,
including another OPP officer, on Sunday,
May 3 at 12.32 a.m.
Constable Larry Yuen was a passenger in
a cruiser driven by Constable Andrew Gray
of the Madoc OPP, according to a report in
the Toronto Star. It stated that the cruiser
was heading south when was in a collision
with a 1978 Pontiac carrying Susan Gray
and Leo Quinlan.
Const. Yuen, who, according to a
Wingham OPP spokesperson, left the
Wingham detachment in April 1990 after
being there for about three years, was taken
to Belleville Hospital as flames engulfed the
wrecked cruiser, the Sun said.
TheShort
of it
By Bonnie Gropp
Kids need a place
of their own, too
Recently in Brussels there was a meeting
regarding the needs of senior citizens as
discovered through a survey.
An acquaintance of mine and I were
discussing this issue and I chose not to write
a column on it at the time as she had
promised, albeit reluctantly, to write a letter
to the editor expressing her views on the
subject.
Now, I know all about sitting down to
write a letter- it doesn't get done when I set
out to do it either, Ms H.- so I will take the
liberty of trying to say what she might have
written, being as our feelings are pretty
much the same.
Unquestionably the aging residents of a
rural area have special needs. Transportation
and support systems are only part of a
problem that is often compounded by
deteriorating health, independence, mobility
or finances.
But, ways to minimize the problem are
constantly being studied.
Soemtimes I think we overlooklhe need
in our smaller communities for more
activities for the young people. Certainly we
are fortunate to have so many volunteers
giving their time to such efforts as the
scouting movement and minor sports. But
these are organized activities; I'd like to see
a few more "free-spirited" ways in which the
young could choose to pass their time.
Growing up in Listowel, we had a movie
theatre, public skating all weekend, access to
the high school gymnasium at nights for
"scrub" games and of course Dino's Billiards
and Recreation.
Dino's was not your typical pool hall; its
whitewashed walls gave it an innocent look
not usually associated with establishments of
that ilk. Its proprietor, a 20-something
Italian, was young enough for teens to feel
an affinity to, but old enough to help them
discern right from wrong. He had intended
his establishment be used by male and
female teens and dealt promptly with anyone
not adhering to his rules and code. He was
not impressed by troublemakers and let them
know in no uncertain terms. I remember
skipping school one day with a group of
friends thinking Dino's would be the perfect
hang out. We were admonished so severely
we returned to school after lunch and I never
skipped again.
Though playing pool and pinball was
maybe not the most beneficial use of time, it
did keep us off the streets, yet in the
company of our peers. A well-run
amusement place needn’t be the den of
iniquity one might think.
There has been a fair bit said about a
drop-in centre for our seniors, but what
about some place for our young. With so
many working moms wouldn't it be nice for
our "latch-key kids" (How, I hate that term)
to have a place to gather after school to talk
about parents, teachers and play a game or
two of volleyball under the supervision of,
perhaps, a teenager?
We love our hockey, but wouldn't it be
nice if public skating was a little more
frequent during the season?
What about a local club or some
volunteers getting a wide screen television
and the arena or school donating space for a
weekly movie night?
Obviously, regarding young people, there
is a need for supervision that is not a
requirement for senior recreation, but surely
there are enough people around who agree
there is a need, enough people so we could
come up with options and ideas.
We shouldn't ignore the fact that there are
other generations who need ways in which to
fill their spare time, who need enjoyable
activities to participate in with their peers on
a regular basis. It would be nice for the
young people in our villages - and the baby
boomers, but that's another column - to have
a place to call their own.