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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-07-07, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 7, 2005. PAGE 5 Other Views Males: maybe too dumb to live I remember the first (and last) time I ever went into a Playboy Club. It was in Neu York City, back in the '80s. Like many another Boomer, I had spent a lot of my teen years with well-thumbed copies of Playboy magazine under my mattress. Come adulthood I'd stopped actually buying the rag, but somewhere in the recesses of my crocodile mind. I still thought of the whole Playboy lifestyle as vaguely hip and cool. So 1 go into the Playboy Club in lower Manhattan, order an overpriced cocktail and what do I see around me? Geeks. Nerds. Big time Losers. Fat guys wearing bad suits and worse toupees leering at women dressed in fishnet stockings and bunny suits. Cottontails with cleavage. That's when it first dawned on me. Males: maybe we’re too dumb to live. And not just human-type males. Consider an obnoxious little member of the Empididae family known as the Dance Fly. This winged denizen of Australia has been observed flitting up to female Dance Flies with pieces of junk which he presents as ‘tokens of appreciation'. While the gal is oohing and aaahing over his thoughtfulness, he's Having His Way with her. By the time the female discovers she's been had in more ways then one. the male has taken off, looking for a new conquest. If that isn’t Hugh Hefner in action I’ll eat my Viagra prescription. Then there’s the primate known as the rhesus macaque. This monkey’s even more...male. A team of zoologists from Duke University has found that the male macaque is willing to give up food in exchange for being McGuinty, it seems, favours Toronto Premier Dalton McGuinty seems to think he can find all the talent he needs to run Ontario living a few blocks from his office at the legislature. The Liberal premier already had a cabinet overloaded with MPPs from Toronto - more than any in history - and he has added a couple more. This means many Ontarians who live elsewhere are not getting their concerns heard by the McGuinty cabinet and their remedy may be to move to Toronto. One ground rule for premiers choosing cabinets traditionally has.been to try to give all regions representation roughly equivalent to their populations. But McGuinty gave Toronto ei^ht out of 23 seats in his first cabinet, more than one-third, although it has only one-fifth of the province’s residents, and by adding two more, he has more ministers from Toronto than backbenchers and they are tripping over each other. The new appointees are Mike Colle, a competent, enthusiastic MPP, who on merit could have been in McGuinty’s first cabinet, but was left out because MPPs in four neighbouring ridings were felt to have prior claims. Now there are five living close together and they could save money by all coming to work in the same limousine. The other new minister from Toronto is Laurel Broten, a former parliamentary assistant to McGuinty, whose main mission has been to slip into empty front-bench seals when the TV cameras were on so ministers' absences would not be noticed. She has occupied more cabinet seats literally than anybody in history. McGuinty represents an Ottawa riding, but ihc most powerful ministers, of health, education, justice and now environment under Broten. are from Toronto, and the finance minister, Greg Sorbara, second to McGuinty, permitted to view photographs of female monkeys’ bottoms. Giving up lunch to gawk at centerfolds. Reminds me of a pimply school kid I once er, knew Moving up(?) to Homo sapiens - even more evidence that males aren’t getting any smarter. I’m no zoologist, but you don’t have to be David Suzuki to figure out that mass self- mutijation is a sure sign of species distress. Once again, male humans are sending out an SOS. Doctors are noticing a staggering upsurge in emergency room crises involving...male handymen. Amateur handymen, it should be added. These are the guys who get a circular saw from their kids for Father’s Day and proceed to crosscut their pinkie fingers off because they really don’t know what they’re doing. And it’s not just power saws. Hapless do-it- yourselfers are filleting themselves with chain saws, amputating their toes with power mowers; tumbling off ladders, whoopsy- daisying off roofs, staple-gunning their thumbs to the wallboard and flash barbecuing themselves while messing with their home wiring system. Dr. Mark Roper, director of the division of primary care at McGill University in Eric Dowd From Queen’s Park represents a riding bordering Toronto, so by another yardstick it is far and away the centre of power. McGuinty has left large areas of central and western Ontario particularly unjJer- represented in his cabinet. He has no minister from the economic powerhouse of Kitchener, Guelph and Cambridge, where the preceding Progressive Conservative cabinet had a deputy premier. Elizabeth Witmer. McGuinty has only one minister from historically political London, which provided two of the last eight premiers, Conservative John Robarts and Liberal David Peterson. The two Conservative premiers before McGuinty, Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, managed with fewer Toronto MPPs in cabinet and Harris, no admirer of Toronto, once said he was fed up with its being seen as the centre of the universe. It would be counter-productive to suggest regions should be represented in cabinet strictly according to their populations, because this would exclude able MPPs who have able neighbors. Ministers also are supposed to treat all areas equitably. But they push harder to remedy problems they know first-hand and sometimes because their ridings will benefit and regions without ministers to press their cases lose out. McGuinty has insulted regions under- represented in cabinet by implying they do not have MPPs competent enough to be ministers and adding Toronto MPPs despite small-town Montreal. |ust shakes his head “People” (read ‘men’) are just not paying attention when they're pushing‘the wood across the saw." he says. "We also see eye injuries because they're not wearing eye protection.” Notice how diplomatically he avoids the word ‘dumb ? Speaking of ‘dumb’ and ‘men’ — how about an honorary dunce's cap for Canadian Fred Gilliland? Fred doesn't seem to he a dumb guy al first glance. As a matter ol fact he seems pretty shrewd. Shrewd enough U.S. authorities say, to have scammed S29 million out of gullible American investors back in 1999. And shrewd enough to scuttle back across the Canadian border, just ahead of the Feds io live in luxury in Vancouver while fighting extradition back to the States. Not quite shrewd enough, however, to outwit one of his fraud victims, who pulled a bygones will be bygones’ routine on Gilliland, chatted him up like an old pal and invited him to lunch just across the border in Pon Roberts. Washington. The draw? "C’mon Fred...I know this restaurant that’s got a two-for-one lunch special on Wednesdays.” Gilliland bit. The border guards, who had been tipped off. let him into the Slates without a hassle. FBI agents were waiting at the back of the restaurant. Once he was in handcuffs, Gilliland’s ‘pal’ smiled at him and said: “Cheer up, Fred... now you’ve got 3,650 free lunches coming to you’. Hey, Fred - ever heard of the Dance Fly? and rural residents complaining often he neglects them and is generous to Toronto. Farmers particularly want more cash because prices for some of their products have fallen to their lowest in 25 years and they lack the subsidies major competing countries provide. McGuinty's solution has been to switch Steve Peters from agriculture to another ministry, but farmers will suspect he pushed for more money and ministers from Toronto, whose flowers are growing well on their condo balconies, were not receptive. Conservative Norm Sterling introduced a private member’s bill to create an eastern Ontario economic development fund to invest money in communities there that need infrastructure and Liberal MPPs scrambled to vote for it. Many small-town and rural municipalities have said they are tired of Toronto wanting more provincial cash to improve public transit while they have no public transit and a huge divide is growing between them. One of their complaints is they cannot make their voice heard as well as Toronto’s and this has just got harder. Letter THE EDITOR, On May 5 of this year, the American government announced the awarding of the Combat Infantry Badge to Canadian soldiers who were in combat as members of the First Special Se-vice Force (Devil’s Brigade) during the Second World War. Any Canadian member or kin of a member who qualifies should apply for the medal by contacting Charles W. Mann (4-3). 850 Huron Terrace, Kincardine. ON N2Z 2Y1 or call 1- 519-396 2774. Charles Mann. Bonnie Gropp The short of it i i i i I’m well thanks Q 'W T'ou appear to be in very good health.’ Funny how your ifaea of a J- compliment changes over the years. These words for a middle-aged gal arc the best medicine in the world. It was that time of the year again, the time when I allow myself to be poked, prodded and punctured, with the purpose of discovering that there is nothing wrong with me. Yet, it was with the heavy feet of the condemned that I entered the clinic, on a stifling day last week, anticipating the hour of wasted time in the over-crowded clinic, followed by a variety of unpleasant procedures. From the weigh-in to the scads of blood tests, to say one feels awkward and exposed is an understatement. 1 fidget through the questions giving age- appropriate answers that simply have to humble a person, segu£ nicely into a blush for the examination, then shudder at the prospect of becoming a human pin cushion. As the cool stethoscope settles onto my skin. 1 worry that my heart may not perform as it should. As the blood pressure cuff closes around my arm with vice-like grip. I concentrate on relaxing. Mustn’t do anything to send those systolic and diastolic pressures out of whack. If all of this isn’t enough my having attained a certain age, my doctor explains, means that there are now several more tests which I should be subjected to. I grudgingly acquiesce of course; since I’ve come this far, to do anything else would be nothing less than foolhardy. Then finally, the initial verdict is delivered; there are still results to receive, but it seems I am the picture of health. And as if I actually had anything to do with it, I am proud. Granted 1 don’t smoke at all, I do exercise a bit, and I sometimes eat right. But mostly, I credit the results to my wonderful grandparents and parents. It seems I’ve been blessed with some pretty good genes; the only thing that tends to run in my family is longevity. So I don’t generally sit in the doctor’s office expecting to hear the worst. But there’s nothing you can take for granted and one’s health is a prime example. A person can count on things all they like but what they get may be entirely different than what they’d hoped for. Coupled with the fact that an unforeseen unpleasant surprise may be discovered by one’s doctor, is the general discomfort of most of the tests, and humiliation of many. Therefore 1 abashedly delight in hearing there’s nothing wrong with me. I will hopefully have another year before I am subjected to the physical and another year of ticking along. There is as well, something almost cathartic about visiting your doctor. After all, a physician has seen and heard a lot from a variety of people. They are required to keep it under their hat The good ones make it clear they’re there to listen and help. There’s not a person in the world who doesn't benefit from being the focus of someone's attention for even a little while. And let's face it. during (hose annual physicals it’s all about you, or about all of you anyway. So, having entered the clinic with the dead weight of dread in the pit of my stomach. I leave it light of heart. I did the smart thing and had that yearly tune-up. 1 was rewarded with a clean bill of health and the sense that I’m doing pretty well, thank you.