What a Trillion Dollars Looks Like

We've heard "A Trillion Dollars" a dozen times the last few months. I thought I had an idea what it was until I saw this!

Seen at the Food Court

An attractive lady, twenty or so, possibly Asian, was dining alone. A young man was standing out of her line of sight, awkwardly holding his lunch tray, studying her. He seemed to be thinking of something to say. Apparently making up his mind, he approached the table, and looking at her meal, he said, “How cliché, Chinese food!”

Quickly taking in his Mediterranean good looks, she responded, “And your Souvlaki is not predictable?”

“I’m not Greek, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said.

“I’m not Chinese, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she retorted.

A split second of awkward silence, then spontaneous laughter.

He took a seat facing her; an animated conversation starting immediately.

There’s a line that you’ll never find in any play book.

The Art of Saying the Right Thing

"I was watching this lady with a retarded child the other day, and the child did something very interesting. As a matter of fact, it amazed me..

You can't call the child retarded. Call it mentally challenged.

You don't realize you are being rude, but explain, why?

Because retarded has been given a negative connotation, and its use might hurt some child's self-esteem.

So changing the name of the condition will make the negativity go away.

Maybe, and at the very least, create a positive atmosphere and foster the child's self esteem.

You may not remember, but retarded was a name we substituted for idiot or moron, for much the same reason you use mentally challenged.

Yes, we have progressed. And continue to do so.

If these word changes improved the lot of retarded people I would agree, and play along, but I don't see it. What it does do, is create resentment. Resentment, because if I don't have the correct phraseology, I might not say anything in fear of being rude. That's censorship. I resent the mother of the child already, and I don't even know her!

Censorship is a strong word, unless you can talk in a socially approved manner you don't really have anything to say. That being so, you should be gently discouraged from speaking your mind.

So nice people like you can do all the talking.

Ha! Ha! So funny!

So people like me are isolated from the discussion by you erudite people because we have some form of insensitivity handicap that you don't feel like patronizing. Possibly because we don't evoke feelings of pity and superiority. Social engineering does not remove injustice, it simply shifts it.

There are many people who believe they are right in this regard.

You're right, it's just another In-Crowd. An elite. If you don't expose your feelings, or use the jargon of the group, you're an Out. Like fashion, it doesn't matter if it makes no sense, the group has the secret language of the coolness that they alone know, and if you don't understand it, you are a geek. This gives me hope.

What do you mean?

Fads and fashions eventually fail. Fads and fashions build upon themselves until the crooked blocks of contradiction cause the whole system to fall. As the blocks of contraction are piling up, the real cool people realize that the group has let in too many mindless mimickers and they get out. Remember the 60's? The long hair, beards and bell-bottoms became a uniform. The slow, 'whaaas happenin man' hippie talk became a caricature of the smoked-out dopie. All the sensate proponents of hippiedom cut their hair, bought an SUV and screwed their buddy to the top long before the dopie even knew the revolution was over.

So, what did the mentally challenged child do that amazed you so much?

I would like to tell you, but I simply don’t have the words to describe it."

Today's Aphorism

Politeness: The most acceptable hypocrasy.
Ambrose Bierce

Maple Leaf Fan Syndrome

This isn’t a recent revelation. The thought scratched the back of my mind for years, and eventually it occurred to me: Maple Leaf fans show all the symptoms of Battered Wife Syndrome. That included me. An illustration of this occurred when I decided to give up supporting the Buds: it was a tough, tough decision. This should not have been so. I had suffered decades of disappoint and mistreatment at the hands of the Leafs; I had made a considered decision, so it should have been easy for me to take the door. Unfortunately, as a Maple Leaf Fan Syndrome sufferer, it was difficult for the victim to leave the abuser.

Before I go any farther, I want it known that when I refer to the Maple Leafs, I mean Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, the insensate, faceless corporation that owns the Leafs. The actual team is a bunch of good guys, who love hockey. The MLS&E apparently doesn’t like hockey, and as it happens with a human abuser, it sees its poor treatment of the fans reinforced every time a game is sold out. Every game is sold out, so the process of abuse continues. The MLS&E might even believe that the fans are enjoying the bad treatment.

The hypothesis took deep root when various hard-core Maple Leaf fans discovered I left the Leafs. I noticed that they sided with the abuser and argued vehemently that I was being disloyal. This is denial. They often boasted that they had persevered as fans for decades: a classic demonstration of poor self-esteem, perhaps feeling that they deserve the poor treatment. More symptoms.

Abusers isolate their prey. No one can deny that the Maple Leaf fan is the most despised by every other fan, particularly Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver. This concentration of external hostility has the added effect of binding the Maple Leaf fans closer together in an us-against-them mentality.

The Syndrome can be passed down from generation to generation from both sides of the relationship. It is saddening to think of the many little boys and girls who are channeled into a lifetime of mistreatment by that first blue hockey jersey.

Leaf fans begin every hockey season with optimism. They are soon met with disappointment in the form of humiliating losses. Their hope seems dauntless. They are dealt punishing blow after punishing blow as the one they love loses and loses. Just before they are crushed totally, the bully presents the victim with a bouquet of flowers in the form of a win. This rekindles hope. Hope takes wing as more wins occur; alas, only to come crashing down as losses abruptly reappear. This continuous pattern, (reward and punishment), is common in abusive relationships.

As with any destructive human relationship, the Maple Leaf hanger-on is induced to stay by promises of improvement or change. The Leafs have had at least 15 different coaches in the last 40 years and have changed the General Manager about as often. Few of the dozens of highly touted draft picks or trades have panned out, but these maneuvers have attained the desired effect: the fan-victim, hungry for and seeing signs of love, rationalizes. This year the Maple Leaf fan has accepted the story that the team is now rebuilding, a process that needs no Stanley Cups for years to come. The fans have given those wily Maple Leafs permission to finish near the bottom of the standings so that they can obtain a good draft pick next year. The closer to the bottom, the better the pick!

My personal experience with Maple Leaf Fan Syndrome ended happily. As with any syndrome: awareness must occur before a cure. My revelation came slowly as relatives and friends ridiculed me. They asked tough questions. They pointed out how pitiful and predictable other Leaf fans appeared to be. The post game interviews with coaches started to sound alike. Then an escape was made and sanctuary was given to me by the Montreal Canadiens. My self-esteem has returned and I am now empowered to resist abuse.

What’s this I hear that the Canadiens just fired their coach? In the middle of a playoff race, you say? I am so happy that Bob Gainey took the reins; nothing bad can possibly happen!

Jack Layton Calls on me to do the Right Thing

Good old Jack Layton mailed out one of his brochures recently. In it he called for an economic stimulus package. With the expected criticism of Stephen Harper he touted "green infrastructure", (what's that, a bridge made of flowers?), and explained, "a billion dollars invested in infrastructure creates twice as many jobs as a billion spent on Harper-style tax cuts...and injects $2 billion into the broader economy," (What's "the broader economy"?)
Jack, of course, is fighting for the spending of our money on a wiser, cleaner economic stimulus package. Jack Layton preaching on economics.
Dear Jack, please rethink your hatred of tax cuts. A tax cut effectively gives the tax payer the direct power to implement his/her own economic stimulus package without employing the wasteful middleman of government. Just for once, can you please trust us to spend our own money properly!
After all, if you and your fellow travelers hadn't blown our taxes on boondoggles and crony-boosting, and spent it on infrastructure, (as your job required you to do), infrastructure investment wouldn't sound so attractive.
Seven of these brochures were in my mailbox, delivered by Canada Post. Seven. Green Infrastructure?

More Redundant Words and Phrases

Green; economic stimulus package; infrastructure.

Today's Aphorism

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Abraham Lincoln

Global Warming Opportunities

I'm trying to avoid mentioning Toronto, but when things happen here that are happening all over, I'll resist the temptation. Our mayor, David Miller, like most politicians, loves the global warming scenario. It gives him an opportunity to spend lots of our money on stuff that seems to be good, and since results cannot be measured, we'll have to depend on him to assess the value. There could also be some good potential revenue sources. An example of this is his stated intent to have as many electric vehicles in the city fleet as soon as possible. Along with this he and council are encouraging us to replace our gas powered lawn mowers with electric ones. Two problems with this: 1) Ontario has no extra electrical power capacity, so how are we going to add all those vehicle batteries and mowers to the grid? 2) At least half of our power is coal generated. Last summer one of my neighbours proudly showed me his new electric mower. There was nothing wrong with his gas-powered one. I remarked that it was a very nice coal powered mower. He stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

Somebody Do This, Please

I'd do it, but I'm not up to the task: Somebody should change their name to, ANON. Tons of literature is attributed to this name. Can you imagine how much of the world's unattributed bathroom humour you could take the credit for? Speaking of bathroom humour, I work with a bunch of guys who, ahem, should I say, maybe have a male pointer that is so small they can't control it without tweezers and they pee on the toilet seat. I have posted this sign with some success:

Daddy stood as real men do
Cause his stream was sure and true.
Since Mommy's aim was not so good
She'd plant her butt upon the wood.
So, if the bowl you cannot hit,
Squat like Mom you silly twit!

This is original, and if you have changed your name, you can sign it ANON, otherwise give it credit to my washroom moniker: GERP

Today's Aphorism

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. Benjamin Disraeli

Trying to Put Orthodoxy Into Perspective

I write this because I find it hard to believe that man is as responsible for GLOBAL WARMING as the usual suspects tell us. Forgive me for being so stupid, but I got really suspicious when they started to refer to it as CLIMATE CHANGE. Odd, if THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED, why go to the ambiguous when you started with a definite?

Truth be told, my suspicion of the orthodoxy began when a GLOBAL WARMING religionist explained to me that the current changes in the sun cycle were not a factor. Odd again, because the lynchpin of his theory, be it WARMING, or CHANGE, was the Greenhouse Effect, a theory that depended on the sun's indirect effect on the planet. Derided as irrelevant, that climate change on Mars is mimicking ours without the benefit of our atmosphere or a human race, my suspicion meter went off the scale.

Let's not get into the science. I probably wouldn't understand it because I can't get past the knowledge that water vapour is the largest greenhouse gas at 90+ per cent. That makes carbon dioxide a small part of the whole. Our concentration has been on mankind's contribution to carbon dioxide, a small part of that whole. How are we going to save the world if we are concentrating on our small part of a small part of the problem? Never mind going after water vapour, how could we ever compete with the oceans?
That brings me to an exercise that helped me put some of this into perspective.

The exercise is to calculate how large an area the world's population would occupy if everyone assembled in one place.

Assume 7 billion population. Each person is given a .5 meter X .5 meter square to stand on. That's 1,750,000,000 sq meters or 1750 sq kilometers. A 41.83 km square. That's probably close to the size of Metropolitan Toronto.

To illustrate this, take out a standard 8.5 X 11 in. (215.8mm X 279.4mm) sheet of paper. The world's area is approximately 510,072,000 sq km., land and water, so a sheet of paper this size would represent 19,853 kilometers X 25,692 kilometers, or so. Use a normal ball point pen to mark a dot on the sheet the size of the dot on a letter i. Darken the dot just a little as you would for emphasis. If that dot is just under 1/2 mm in diameter, you have successfully represented the biggest meeting on the planet.