Loading...
The Citizen, 2000-10-25, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25 2000. PAGE 5. Other Views This gland is your gland Is it my imagination, or are there really a lot more boobs in the news these days? Some days it feels like you can’t turn around without being poked in the eye with yet another mammarian-oriented bulletin. Case in point: this snippet from yesterday’s newspaper. OSLO, Norway (Reuter) - A bare-breasted blonde mermaid atop a rock is making tourists gape along a Norwegian fjord. It seems a comely wench by the name of Line Oexnevad (would I make that up?) has taken it upon herself to personally recreate the legend of Denmark’s Little Mermaid - but in the coastal waters of Norway. Accordingly, Ms Oexnevad, decked out in naught but a long blonde wig and a swishy neoprene fishtail, has shimmied herself up onto a picturesque rock along the Lyse fjord at least a half dozen times over the past three summers, then lolled back and waited serenely for passengers aboard the tourist boats to notice. They noticed. “One man even jumped off a boat and swam over to me,” she marveled. Yeah, well it probably wasn’t the neoprene fishtail, Line. It’s amazing, the power of a simple gland ... or two. The island I live on is currently being gang- banged by an offshore logging company. Not surprisingly, this has elicited a variety of protests from the people who have to live with the results. Logging roads have been blocked, protesters have chained themselves to logging American Presidential elections Are you puzzled by the way the Americans conduct their national elections? If not, you should be, because I can state categorically that these elections have to be the most confusing for everybody not living in the United States and for many who do live there. For this reason once every four years I provide a thumbnail sketch of how the elections are conducted and how the current presidential candidates, in this case Geo. W. Bush and Al Gore, fit in. Are you ready? For openers the two parts of the American Congress are the Senate and the House of Representatives. The latter is roughly equivalent to our House of Commons while the Senate is vaguely, and very vaguely at that, equal to our Senate, the main differences being that theirs is elected while ours is appointed. The American version also has considerably more power. There are two senators for each state while the House of Representatives has representatives from each state, with the exact number depending on the population. California, being the most populous state, has the largest number. Unlike our prime minister who is elected along with the other Members of Parliament, the president is not part of Congress and is elected separately from all the others. Members of the House of Representatives are elected every two years. It must seem to them that they are either getting over one election or getting ready for another. As for the Senate, the 100 members (two from each of the 50 states, remember?), are in for six years but their elections are staggered, which means that one third of them come up for election every two years. There are two main political parties, the equipment, placard-wavers have marched on the legislature. And none of these initiatives have garnered one-tenth the attention that has been lavished on a recently published, simple, black and white 12-page calendar. It’s called Salt Spring Island Women: Preserve and Protect. Each month of the calendar features various women of the island dressed in strategically placed lambs, spruce boughs, here a backpack, there a dulcimer — and very little else. The calendar is not in the least salacious or pornographic - you’d see more flesh on the guest couch of the Letterman show any night of the week - but it is beautifully photographed and the subjects are ... quite lovely in an unHollywood way. Lovely - and clearly unclothed. And naturally the calendar is selling like hotcakes. It was conceived as a modest fundraiser to protest the logging, but it’s turning into a runaway bestseller. They’ve had inquiries from every part of Canada, all over the States, even Europe and Asia. Why? Raymond Canon The International Scene Democrats, who generally resemble the Liberals here and the Republicans who are closer to the Conservatives or Alliance Parties. There are some fringe parties south of the border but they play only a minor role. There is no party even closely resembling the NDP here. Americans are by nature not Socialists. Now for the president, and here is where it gets complicated. Each state belongs to what is called an electoral college and the number of members it has in this college depends on its population. The example I used above of California holds true here. This state has more members than any other. In an election the presidential candidate which gets the most votes in a specific state receives the support of all the members from that state in the electoral college. It doesn’t matter if he wins by one vote or by one million, he still gets all the support. When the results are all in, the candidate who has won the states totalling the larger number of members is elected president. He may, for example, win only a third of the states but if they are the largest ones, he will r — - - —. _ . . ---------------- Final Thought Life’s a tough proposition, and the first hundred years are the hardest. - Wilson Mizner I Chalk it up to the Boob Factor. Despite decades - centuries, even - of what should have been overexposure (think Lady Godiva, Winged Victory, Venus on the Half Shell, Sophia Loren, Xena the Warrior Princess) the simple human female breast still has the power to shock and...well, titillate. Just another Dumb Male Thing, you think? Not exclusively. Tommy’s Bar and Grill in Maple Ridge, B.C. recently ran a competition tastefully entitled “the Win Boobs Contest”. First prize: a $3,000 plastic surgery breast-enhancing operation. Crass, offensive, sexist and an insult to womanhood, right? Yeah, well at last count the folks at Tommy’s had 2,000 entries in their ballot box - all from hopeful women. Meanwhile, Boob Technology marches on. A company of British engineers named Ove Arup has announced a brand new, state of the art brassiere called Bioform, soon to be available at better lingerie stores everywhere. A press release claims the new bra is revolutionary. Seems they’ve replaced the underwire with plastic bands which they claim “more comfortably distribute the load and reduce stress”. Sounds ... uplifting, until you learn that this is the same engineering firm that designed London’s Millennium Bridge. You know ... the one that’s been closed to traffic because it’s too ... wobbly. Ladies, you’ve been warned. probably win the election. Americans are able to split their vote. This means that they can vote for a Democratic senator or congressman, but can opt to vote for a Republican presidential candidate. It can happen, and sometimes does, that you have a Democratic president but a Republican congress. This is not as bad as it sounds since, unlike the Canadian Parliament where MPs aie expected to vote along party lines anil frequently get in trouble if they don’t, congressmen or senators can vote as they like and frequently do. The president chooses his cabinet from outside congress. There is something to be said for this method since it gives him a far greater choice of talent. Canadian prime ministers are sometimes hampered by a distinct lack of talent in the list of MPs available for such posts. Well, there you have it. If it helps you to understand better the intricacies of what is currently going on south of the border, I have done my job. As to whether Bush or Gore will be better for Canada’s interests, my feeling right now is that it doesn’t make much difference. Letters Policy The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor. Letters must be signed and should indude a daytime telephone numb*^ for the purpose of verification only. Letters that are not signed win not be printed. Submissions may be edited for length, clar ty 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. Bonnie Gropp The short of it Get interested I've always seen the purpose of this column as offering some relatively benign, though not totally without insight, reading. While I will stop short of calling my Short fluff, it is meant to be a light stop amidst the heavier news and views reported in a newspaper. For this reason, I tend to steer clear of the political, the controversial; you can dine on this meatier literary fare with other columns on the op ed pages. However, having attended the all-candidates meeting in Brussels this past week for the upcoming municipal election, I felt compelled to stray a little from my normal path of musings. Let me begin by using an analogy with which I am familiar, that of parents and children. It is common, even in the most loving, democratic of families for a child to sometimes feel that a sibling is favoured. I have four children, whom of course I love equally. Each of them, however, has at some point expressed a view as to which of my offspring is “the favourite”. (Interestingly, they’ve all been labelled as such) Parents, despite best efforts often do or say things that youngsters can misconstrue, albeit sometimes with guilt-inducing deliberateness. When one feels, even wrongly, that the balance of approval, trust and understanding is weighted toward another, relationships can be compromised. Similarily this upcoming municipal election will begin a challenging time. Amalgamation brings together municipalities which must soon give up their independence to work together as a new community. And the people who lead this community will need to, like any good parent, be fair, to treat each ward equally, to pul! t lem logeti er for the common good, not div.de tiem through petty grievances or slights, whether they be oerceived or ea1 That these p.oblems are likely to occur is undeniable; the ugh the marriage ot municipalities seems to be proceeding smoothly, the issue of rural and urban has already caused a ripple now and then. It is for this reason that I was ashamed to see such a poor representation of Brussels residents at the meeting. This municipal election is not like previous ones. Your candidates aren’t the familiar guys and gals you know as neighbours. For example, the three candidates for the position of deputy­ reeve hale from McKillop and Tuckersmith Twps. To most residents they are unknowns. And yet, only a handful of peoplt turned out to hear how these men plan to represent the constituents of Huron East. As a journalist, I attended the meeting and will be atter iing the majority of those that affect our readership area. I will hopefully provide an accurate account of what was said. But that is no substitute for being there to listen, to have the opportunity to ask questions and demand answers. Our editorial staff has covered Jgamation to the best of our abilities Taat there are still so many questions on things that I knew have been reported and explained ad nauseum in our newspaper proves voters who care about the community in which they live need to take ar active interest. I urge you to leant about the candidates and their platforms so that you can make the best choice.