God willing, these may be the last Olympic Games

It's been a time honoured tradition. Major cities around the world bid for the privilege of hosting the next Olympic Games.

The bid process itself costs millions.

Then the lucky "winner" gets to spend billions in preparing Games infrastructure. This is inevitably sold in host countries as infrastructure they were going to build anyway. What it really means is cost-plus contracts to the usual handful of construction conglomerates who dominate the international firmament of big infrastructure projects.

These inevitably outrun their original budgets by two or three or five hundred percent, but the now captive local populations keep shovelling good money after bad because, after all, they're on the world stage now.

It becomes a matter of "national pride."

Meanwhile, to allow those infrastructure projects to proceed, entire local communities are bulldozed and built over. That's just the price of progress, and who wants to stand in the path of progress?

And then the Games begin with massive international media attention and world-class hoo-ha.

For a few weeks international corporate sponsors will get invaluable global screen exposure.

A handful of athletes will become international media darlings and sign management deals that will ensure them a spot on the global A-list for the rest of their lives.

Everybody else will go home and pout for four years, but the host country will grapple with their Olympic debt for the next quarter century or more.

And those corporate sponsors who are the real beneficiaries of this Olympian boondoggle will be busy goading the next wannabe host city into filing a proposal for a repeat performance eight or twelve years out.

It's a bullshit boondoggle from top to bottom and end to end, but it looks like there might be enough pissed off folks in Rio to finally put these truths on the map.

Here's some news you won't see on your evening newscast

How are things shaking out at Incirlik air base over there in Turkey? As far as we know, the place has been locked down since the coup attempt two weeks ago.

"Locked down" means that the 50 to 90 US nukes on site are not under the control of the US military establishment. Yes, they're still being guarded by some 1500 US troops on site, but what's that worth? They're under lockdown too.

That's why you had Marine General Joe Dunford, who happens to be Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, over there kissing ass this week. Normally you'd expect a trip like that to end in photo-ops and lovey-dovey joint pressers. What did you hear after Dunford's trip?

Nothing.

The think tank here at Falling Downs believes the wily Erdogan is holding out for the extradition of Fethulla Gulen before he lifts the lockdown on Incirlik. Will that happen?

Who knows. No question that the rogue Islamic cleric has been a CIA asset being groomed for big things. I suspect the big things he was being groomed for were expected to unfold two weeks ago. That obviously didn't unfold the way we expected.

Now Uncle Sam is up a stump.

Erdogan is talking normalized relations with Russia, Iran, and Syria.

Uncle Sam can't let that happen at any price...

Hold onto your hats!

Heroin addicts can be the kindest people

We damned near lost the Bubbinator today.

No! She's not a heroin addict! Let me explain...

So Junior's been staying at his Bubby's place in town while he works 60 hours a week at the local Wendy's trying to sock away enough money to pay for that fancy degree at U of T. Damned straight; in four or five years he's gonna be at least a shift manager at Wendy's.

So we had him out at Falling Downs for a couple days of R&R, and we brought him back to Bubby's today.

I sit out in the drive with the motor running and the air on because the hounds are in the back. Folks have been getting downright cranky about people who leave pets unattended in vehicles during this heat wave, as well they should. Leave the hounds unattended for thirty seconds, even with the motor running and the air on, and some do-gooder will see it as a licence to smash your windows and call the cops.

That's where you learn those "outstanding warrants" that you always thought were bullshit turned out not to be.

Then you'll be sure to show up in the local papers as the thoughtless a-hole who left his pets to roast to death while you're shopping at Costco or whatever.

That's why I make a point of suffering with the pets in that air-conditioned vehicle with the motor on and the air-conditioner running.

Anyway, I'm sitting there, and Junior and the Farm Manager duck into Bubby's house, and moments later I can't help but notice windows popping open upstairs, downstairs... everywhere there's a window that opens.

Turns out Bubby had left her gas stove not quite on and not quite off. The house filled up with natural gas. Had Bubby so much as flicked a Bic to fire up her bong the entire neighbourhood would have been blown to kingdom come.

We dodged a bullet there, we did, and no, Bubby doesn't actually own a bong, but the experience got us reminiscing about close shaves and near misses. Just a few weeks ago I'd pointed out to the FM the first place in Guelph where I'd had my own apartment. That was a big old red brick place on Paisley Street that some entrepreneurial keener had sub-divided into a dozen or so "studio apartments."

Much like today, if your renting in one of those places in downtown Guelph, you're either a student at the U of Guelph, or down on your luck, or both. I was actually neither. I was just an 18 year old apprentice welder who was seriously pissed because my dear daddy had unilaterally decided to dump my Crown Royal stash down the drain. With no consultation whatsoever!

I know!

Talk about an egregious infringement of my teenage autonomy!

So I figured I'd teach him a lesson and show how adult I really was. Got my own studio apartment in that flop-house on Paisley Street.

Had lots of adventures at that address. Truth be told, that particular place I'm pretty sure didn't hold any actual students. No, it was more an older crowd of hard core alcoholics with a few younger heroin addicts mixed in. And me.

Late one evening, having wobbled home after a night on the town, I thought I smelled smoke as I made my way to my second floor studio. Plunked down in front of the TV, and was just sorta nodding off... when I distinctly felt the smoke was becoming more pronounced.

I open the door, and holy shit, there's smoke everywhere! I run up and down the hall pounding on doors and yelling get out get out get out!!!

Noticed the studio door next to mine didn't open. Nobody came out. But that's where the smoke was curling out from under the door. Throw myself at the door a couple of times and find myself in a completely smoke-filled kitchenette. On the stove there's a hard-boiled egg so hard-boiled it's on fire. My heroin addict neighbour had boiled up an egg and passed out.

To this day she thinks I saved her life, and I probably did, but no big deal; I saved mine too.

Fast forward a few years, and I'm living on what is today a rather posh street a few blocks north of Paisley, just off Exhibition Park, with the missus of the time and my dear daughter. There's a gal with one arm renting the little house next door. I'm from the mind-your-own-business school of neighbourly relations, so aside from the occasional how-ya-doin' I didn't have much to do with her.

Then one day I read in the local paper that my neighbour had been caught up in a heroin trafficking bust! No shit! Who knew?

She made bail after a couple of days and we went back to our usual neighbourly relations. How ya doin' and all that. A month later I'm having a Daddy moment with my dear daughter, the first of the five Juniors. Take her to a fun fair type of thing at the Speedvale Plaza where they've got carnival rides set up for the weekend. She's about three years old and decides she wants to take a whirl on the Tilt & Whirl.

Well, that's too scary for me, but I decide to trust my three-year-old's judgement and put her on there by herself. First spin around, she's all smiling and happy... all good!

Couple of whirls later she ain't smiling anymore... and thirty seconds after that she's screaming in terror!

I'm screaming in terror too!

I'm waving my arms and shrieking STOP STOP STOP as loud as I can.

Nothing. The Tilt & Whirl tilts more and whirls faster... I think I'm gonna die of shame for not saving my dear daughter... and then a one-armed woman jumps over the barricade around the ride and grabs the ride guy by the shoulder. I couldn't hear what she said, but the Tilt & Whirl came to a stop.

That was my heroin addict neighbour.

The DA ratio

As in the Dinking Around ratio.

As in the ratio between the amount of time you spend dinking around with a car, a boat, or a motorcycle, and the amount of time you actually spend driving it.

First car I ever bought with my own money, twenty dollars of my own money, was an early sixties Vauxhall with leather seats and a four cylinder motor. I bought it from an old pipe-smoking wretch of an Anglophile who I believe was the first person my dear daddy hired on at his nascent real estate brokerage.

Wallace Nodwell may have been an old pipe-smoking wretch, but it was through his connections that we got tickets to the football finals at the Montreal Olympic Games.

The DA ratio on that car was 100:0. That means I spent a hundred hours dinking around with it for every hour I spent driving it, which was zero. I was fourteen years old at the time.

Next up was a Chrysler Windsor with a 383. I believe it was a 1964 model. I didn't have any plans for the Chrysler, but I had great plans for the 383. The DA factor on that one may have been 100:1, because I actually tooled it around the block a couple of times before I pulled out that 383.

Those were optimistic days. Somewhere in my voluminous archives I still have a photo of that 383 hanging from an engine hoist and me posing in front of it, in all my dorkshit 15 year old glory, the way you would in front of a twelve point buck.

Once I got a driving licence, that 100:1 DA ratio didn't cut it anymore. I mean, you bought a vehicle because you had people to see and things to do, and dinking around under the hood wasn't one of them.

Possibly this is because I was always notoriously inept at dinking around under the hood. I was reasonably adept at taking stuff apart, but woefully inept at putting it back together, at least in such a way that it worked. I couldn't do a brake job without having a few odds and ends left over.

That's not a good thing when you did a brake job.

And that's why I've always had such a ferocious allegiance to those guys who can take shit apart and put it back together and HAVE IT WORK!

That's just absolutely priceless!

My old pal Lippert, may he rest in peace, was one of those guys.

I recall when I was testing out an old fourteen foot Arkansas Traveller with a 35 horse Johnson on the Chepstow mill pond. I'd been dinking around with that puppy for months, and now that I actually had it in the water, I wasn't getting nothing.

Jimmy lived ten minutes away. A phone call was made, and twenty minutes later that old girl was on plane!

My dear Uncle Fridolin was another guy who had the gift. I remember when me and cousin Johnny towed a Rebel Machine back to Guelph behind one of my 340 Darts. I'd picked it up at a Toronto dealership for a pittance, because even though it was an immaculate low-mileage car, it didn't actually run.

That was a very rare car. Me and Johnny spent hours dinking around under the hood. Finally his daddy Fridol came out, re-arranged some plug wires, and we were off to the races!

And my old pal Kipling is another guy who has the DA gift. Kipling makes his paycheque doing expedite deliveries with a VW diesel van that has two million miles on it. Aside from the body panels, there's probably nothing on that van that he hasn't repaired or replaced at least once in the course of two million miles.

It's a gift I never cease to marvel at!

As I get older, I'm more inclined to look for vehicles that have at least a 1:1 DA ratio. That Kawasaki 500 Ninja I bought last year has probably been 1:1, or close to it. An hour of fiddling rewards you with an hour of riding.

The Mustang 50 has been virtually no dinking around at all. It's a 25 year old car. You get in and turn the key and it runs and drives like it came off the dealer's lot last week.

So I'm a little concerned about my current boat hunt. There's a lot of stuff out there with low prices and high numbers on the hour meter. That sounds like a recipe for lots of dinking around.

I've got a canoe in the barn that requires no dinking around whatsoever. Also gives you a decent workout when you circumnavigate Lake Charles. Ya, it doesn't have the adrenaline rush of forty feet of fibreglass coming on plane in five seconds, but maybe I'm gonna have to let that go.

How to buy a yacht

"Yacht" is perhaps too strong a word for what I'm talking about here.

The word "yacht" conjures up images of Trumpian three hundred footers. You know, a heli-pad and a twenty foot Donzi runabout as a tender.

No, I'm talking about affordable stuff in the 25 - 50 foot range.

First thing you have to consider, is that the pool of 25 to 50 foot boats is way heavy on the sell side. Lots of folks selling this stuff; not too many buying.

That's for a lot of reasons, but the main reason is that America's middle class has evaporated. I'll let Hill and Donny sort that business out, but the point is, the boat market that used to be the pervue of the "middle class" is gone like a fart in a hurricane...

If you're selling a forty foot cruiser that's thirty years old with a pair of carbureted big blocks, you don't have a boat for sale, you've got a dumpster issue.

Here's my advice to the aspiring yachtsman. Pick up one of those aging beauties for next to nothing. Play bon vivant at the marina all summer. It'll run anywhere from five hundred to two thousand dollars to fuel up your aging '80's Formula or Sea Ray, so you're gonna have to keep those 50 mph blasts down the lake to a minimum, but by god they're a lot of fun. Spend your winters making up fake invoices for all the imaginary work you've done on your "classic," and keep her insured to the max.

Then, when you get into serious repair territory with the inevitable out-drive or engine problems that will cost multiple times what you paid for the boat in the first place, pull the plug. Preferably somewhere where the water's deep enough that the insurance company's investigators aren't going to insist on a salvage operation.

Good luck, and happy boating!


See you on the lake!

Five years after we liberated Libya, we're liberating them again!

Yup, more US bombs to liberate the people of Libya!

I have a hunch we're gonna keep liberating those benighted folks as long as they've got a single drop of oil in the ground.

Note that we're specifically liberating Sirte, supposedly an ISIS stronghold. But, check out the last few lines of this story from Al Jazeera from a few days ago. Sirte was already liberated!

I have another hunch that the story behind the story is that things aren't going according to script for America's bumboy du jour, General Haftar. It's now come out that at least four of the Nations of Virtue, US, UK, France, and Italy, all have boots on the ground in support of the good General.

You will recall that General Haftar cut short a cosy twenty-year retirement in Virginia to return to his homeland and fight for... the people? ...the oil? ...the USA?

Nobody knows... but it's clear that when General Haftar calls in missile strikes, the USAF answers the call.

What are the top news stories in America as Erdogan seizes 90 nuclear warheads at Incirlik?

I've done my morning review of the mainstream news. The two stories vying for top headline news status are, in no particular order;

- Is Donald Trump insensitive? Has he finally gone too far in hurting the feelings of the Khan family?

- Is Hillary dishonest? Were her Sunday media interviews an exercise in creative bullshitting?

Yes, those are the stories the American public must grapple with today.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the wily Erdogan has for all practical purposes had a lock on some unknown number of US nukes since July 15. Oddly enough, a number of fighter aircraft involved in the short-lived coup attempt on that date flew in and out of Incirlik that night.

Coincidence?

And let's not forget that Erdogan, and Erdogan alone, decides how many Syrian refugees will walk to the EU this year.

Seems to me that should be a way bigger story than Trump's insensitivity or Clinton's dishonesty.