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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2003-01-29, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2003. PAGE 5. Other Views Bored to death? Not on Man is the only anima! that can be bored. - Erich Fromm Yeah - and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how we manage it. Lord knows it’s not for lack of weird goings-on. Canada is the hands-down world capital of weird. Consider: We live in a country that is supposedly half-French and half-English governed by a prime minister who is unintelligible in both official languages. We’ve got Don Cherry and Sheila Copps. We’ve got Celine Dion, who’s anorexic. And Rita McNeil. Who’s not. We've got the Ottawa Senators hockey team collecting pogey. And the Ottawa Senate. Also collecting pogey. Nope - if you're a Canadian and you're bored, get someone to check your pulse. Chances are you’re dead. Still, if the Great White North is too tame for you, all you have to do is pick up a paper. It’s a crazy world we live in and you can read all about it between the front page headlines and the classifieds. Here are four stories culled from the papers just this week: NEW ZEALAND: LET’S ALL DRINK — MAKE THAT EAT —A TO AST TO...: The supermarket owner in Auckland who created a Kiwi tribute to The King. He’s sculpted a massive portrait of Elvis - using 4,000 slices of toast. Maurice Bennett achieved um, texture, by carefully grilling the toast slices to six different shades ranging from Elvis’s sideburns (burnt) to his skin tone (slightly Political characters are They buried Frank Drea the other day and inevitably asked what happened to all the characters in politics. Drea, a Progressive Conservative minister two decades ago, was in a select band of MPPs who were colourful, irreverent, provocative, often humourous, sometimes outrageous and unafraid to be different. There are few of them now as legislators are encouraged to conform, stick to the party line, not rock the boat or even risk a joke because this can be misunderstood. They would recall what happened for example when New Democrat leader Howard Hampton said Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty resembles actor Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates, the serial killer in the movie Psycho, which not even his mother could deny. The sensitive Liberals complained Hampton accused their leader of having the look of a murderer and he felt obliged to apologize. Drea, a former journalist, spoke his mind and this meant he was not chosen for cabinet until Premier William Davis had his government reduced to a minority and had to make him minister of corrections and later consumer relations. Drea was more than a character, because he launched such programs as having inmates work outside jails and offenders serve time weekends and compensation for travelers when travel companies go bankrupt. He used colourful language as, when forbidding drinking in public parks, he said he did not want the province “covered with wall- to-wall, green-grass pubs.” Drea over-indulged in drinking, an old habit, and spoke to a delegation of condo owners under the misapprehension they were Niagara grape-growers,-but Davis kept him, because he was among the few ministers who seemed real flesh and blood. There is no one like Morton Shulman, in the NDP only because he hated the other parties warmed). PORTUGAL: THE ‘WANNA BUY A BRIDGE AWARD GOES TO...: Four women in the town of San Bartholomeu de Messines in Portugal. A ‘doctor on the telephone’ successfully talked the quartet into standing topless at their windows so that he could perform a free mammogram by satellite. Geez. Whatever happened to Dirty Old Men in raincoats? MONTANA: AND THE BLUE PLATE SPECIAL GOES TO...: Stan Jones, Montana’s Libertarian candidate to ihe U.S. Senate who sent a letter to his constituents explaining that yes, his skin had turned blue - probably permanently - because he has been drinking a home-made silver solution favoured by some extreme Right Wingers as a protection against illness. (The Men In Black thing, you know). Ah, but you don’t have to go to Auckland, Portugal or Montana to experience the weird and the wacky. We’ve got a bumper crop right here at home. And you don’t have to live in Toronto or Halifax or Vancouver to experience Canadian weirdness. Russell Jervis is about as un­ metropolitan as Canucks get. He has been Eric Dowd From Queen's Park more, who wrote several books on how to become a millionaire, which would be too materialistic today. Or Liberal Eddie Sargent, who flew his own plane and alarmed a legislature speaker by phoning and saying he was about to land on the front lawn, when he was in his office holding an electric shaver as a sound effect. Politicians are afraid of risking a joke in case their remarks are taken seriously, unlike Andy Brandt, a former Tory leader and longtime minister. Brandt once said he was surprised to see a Tory finance minister “standing with his hands in his own pockets instead of someone else’s” and described a Liberal minister as “able to speak for an hour without a note and without making a point.” Politicians are too guarded to comment like Stuart Smith, an intellectual Liberal leader, who said he was glad an election was over because this would mean he would never have to visit Sault Ste. Marie in winter again, which cost his party votes there for years. There is no-one like Frank Miller. Even after being Tory premier he was down-to-earth enough to sell cars from his sons’ dealerships to people he met in legislature corridors, Final Thought In life, all good things come hard, but wisdom is the hardest to come by. - Lucille Ball this planet farming a spread outside the town of McBride in the B.C. interior, for the past half century. Russell lives a quiet, largely uneventful rural life. He was somewhat surprised therefore, to walk out his door one morning last fall and find about 15 acres of his farm looking like it had been shrink-wrapped overnight. His fields and fences were completely enshrouded with a “dull, slivery metallic-coloured” substance. Brian Thair, a biologist at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George, drove out to observe the phenomenon. “There was so much of the stuff on the tops of those fences that you couldn’t see the posts” he said. “It’s like a white, plastic grocery bag. That’s what it feels like - a plastic grocery bag.” So what was it - UFO’s? A military exercise? A production set for an episode of The X Files'! Nope. Spiders. Halorates ksensius spiders to be specific. Tiny critters about the size of a match head - but Russell Jervis had several billion of them, in his fields, all hard at work spinning silk as fast as they could. “The web swept up over the fence like a breaking wave of surf on the beach” recalled Dr. Thayer, “Then it came down the other side towards the highway.” Needless to say, Russell Jervis had never seen anything like it. Neither had Dr. Thayer. He speculates that ‘something’ short-circuited the routine death rate of the spiders, causing a population boom. We’ve all heard the expression ‘spinning out of control’ but this is ridiculous. disappearing deliver them, then kneel on their driveways and attach their plates. There are few who urge breaking traditions like Liberal Elmer Sopha, who wanted to end the “sham” of lieutenant-governors reading throne speeches as if they play some part in writing them and have premiers, their real authors, read them, which still makes sense. Or fight as hard to keep them as Tory Wally Downer, an Anglican priest who ran the biggest floating poker game at the legisla ure and campaigned for leader declaring he wculd not recognize O Canada as the national anthem and “We already have a flag in the old Union Jack.” At the other end of the scale, there is no one as frugal with words as Liberal Harry Worton, an MPP for 30 years, who almost never made a speech, was a baker and was said to have made only one promise, to “put more raisins in the buns.” This is not to suggest the characters are more worthy than those who carry on with the everyday grind of being MPPs. But they make it more interesting. Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to tne editor. Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed will not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline. The Citizen reserves the right to refuse any letter on the basis of unfair bias, prejudice or inaccurate information. As well, letters can only be printed as space allows. Please keep your letters brief and concise. Bonnie I The short of it A great escape A blustery, cold day. Snow streaming past the windows with the force of a waterfall, propelled by biting winds which slice through you and swirl found you. And I, too bleary-eyed tired to share time with a book, am wrapped in flannel, a mug of steaming cocoa in my hand, all snuggled in to watch a movie. Finding less and less to enjoy in the mindless drivel presented on television, my enjoyment of movies has become greater in recent years. As a youngster weekends were spent at the local cinema. The drive-in, of course, was the place to be once I hit my teens. And as a young mother, 1 and a friend went every Friday night to see what was playing. In those days it didn’t much matter what the show was; it was more about the experience of being there, a social opportunity away from parents, then later away from kids. Now with the arrival of home videos watching movies has beconie a cocooning pastime. And while I’m not likely to watch just anything, I will admit that a desire to escape, to dream, lends to a little forgiveness in what 1 find entertaining. Which means that the general viewing is the feel-good happy ending type of story. War atid chaos, evil and fear are all to prevalent in the real world for me to seek it out on a cosy night, snuggled safely at home. Which is why I am somewhat surprised by my reaction to the first two Lord of the Rings movies. Based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, the saga began with its sequel The Hobbit. A single line “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”, scribbled by the professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford Un.versity while marking exams, led to a fantasy that has captured the minds of its readers for over half a century. My oldest child first became enchanted by the books when he was about 10. I made an attempt or two to read them, but with my head ducking well out of the clouds, the charm alluded me. Thus it was more with curiosity than interest that I settled in to watch the first of the trilogy on film. A now more jaded version of the woman who failed to enjoy the books, I believed it unlikely that The Fellowship of the Ring could work any magic on me. A fantasy for goodness sake with places called Einyn Muil, Mordor. Rohan and Gondor, people named Gandalf, Aragorn. Frodo Baggins and Sauron. Hardly my typical viewing fare. However, with no one more greatly surprised than myself I was mesmerized. The movie drew me in for reasons I don’t understand. (Though I would te less than honest if I didn’t admit that Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn is a bit of a drawing card). That notwithstanding its finish left a pleasant lingering, like a nice wine on the palate. The movie carried with it messages ot strong moral value, of accepting what life gives you, of strength, loyalty and bravery. It was with interest this time then that I went to see the second installment in the theatre last week. While The Two Towers may. as some critics have noted, feel a little like killing time until the trilogy’s conclusion comes to the screen, it is not without the power to affect you on some level. Tolkien’s awareness of environmental devastation, of how power m the hands of one wrong person could be the end of everything is interesting, particularly given the time of his writing. And Frodo’s companion Sam’s belief that there is good in the wor’d and it’s worth fighting for is great escapism.