Talking to Bev

When I was negotiating the sale of a couple of surplus parts cars to a scrap dealer, I was told to call Bev at the tow company. I call the number. A dude answers the phone. "Can I speak to Bev please." "This is Bev, how can I help you?" Momentary pause. "Oh sorry Bev, my mistake... " Next day Bev rolls up in a big drop-deck unit. He's a rotund middle age dude. I apologize again for having thoughtlessly misgendered him. "Sorry man. I guess it's like that Johny Cash song. Did having a girly name make you stronger?" "Actually, it worked out pretty good. When I was in high school, girls would tell their parents they're going to Bev's place to study for the test. That went way better for me than it did for any of my buddies."

What trading a basketball player for an arms dealer says about US-Russia power dynamics

What it says to me is that one side holds a significantly more potent hand than the other. This exchange is a symbolic manifestation of American decline. Americans generally won’t notice. After all, every American knows Putin is evil, and freeing a Black lesbian from the clutches of an evil homophobic dictator can be sold to the US public as a triumph of Western values. You know; democracy, human rights, freedom of speech… all that good stuff that our ruling elite squelch at home but promote abroad. PM Fluffy is all for anti-government protests in Iran and China, but God forbid, not in freedom-loving democratic Canada. By all accounts, the Russian arms dealer was a serious person. He made serious money arranging the delivery of serious weapons to a variety of the enemies of Western values, resistance groups all over the world. The American basketball player was just a basketball player. This exchange occurs in the shadow of the US/NATO-Russia war in Ukraine. Western media have assured us Ukraine has been winning this war since February. It is considered impolite in the American vassalsphere to question that fundamental truth. After all, we have been treated non-stop to reportage praising the many glorious imaginary victories of the UAF. They drove the Russians out of Kyiv and Kharkiv and Kherson. They have the momentum! Momentum or not, their geography has shrunk by 20% and their GDP by 40%. How is that “winning?” How is that momentum? Ukraine lost this war in February. The collective “West,” the aforementioned vassalsphere, orchestrated by Washington, has invested many billions of dollars in keeping it going. If our US masters, leaders of the “free world,” trade a basketball player for an international arms trafficker, I’m reading weakness on the cusp of disintegration. American exceptionalism and the empire it spawned are well past their stale date. Canadians should consider how tightly they want to tie their ship of state to an empire in obvious decline.

My kids already know I'm a slob, so why would I tidy up on their account?

The Farm Manager and I have found ourselves on opposite sides of the question; do you tidy the house when the kids are coming over? To me, the answer is clear and clear-cut. My kids know I'm a guy who has a jar of pickles and three bottles of beer in the fridge and nothing else. They know Dad's vacuum cleaner stalled out before they were born. They know Dad's place and they know Dad never puts on a show. What you see, three bottles of beer and a jar of pickles, is what you get. On top of a generous diet of KFC and Mickey D of course. On the other side, the FM will spend days tidying up the joint if kids are dropping in. Who does she think she's fooling?

Man electrocuted by heated car seat

The Owen Sound Sun-Times reports that one Gustav Wagner has succumbed to injuries from an electrical fire in his car. In a scenario reminiscent of Adam Sandler's famous song, "Piece of Shit Car," the seat springs poked him in the balls just as he experienced some routine bladder leakage on account of his enlarged prostrate. Unfortunately for Mr. Wagner, unlike in Adam Sandler's day, cars now come with "heated" seats. Electrified seats, in other words. Can you say "electric chair?" After reading that, you can bet I'm gonna pay the extra for the shock-proof adult diapers.

What World Cup fans in Doha have in common

Aside from being football fans, what they have in common is they can afford the discretionary expenditure of several thousand dollars. Even when they come from the poorest countries in the world, where the vast majority of the populations live in grinding poverty. That goes double for the many fans from the poorest countries, where folks live on $2 a day, who are chilling in Doha for the duration. They're spending tens of thousands, and often hundreds, to stay in five star hotels for the entire month of the competition. The World Cup may be the pinnacle of the beautiful game, but for those who actually found their way to Qatar this is just another circus for rich people. Another thing they have in common is they're not easily swayed by appeals to social justice. So Qatar cancels gays and treats foreign workers as slaves? No worries! The Beautiful People demand the show go on.

How to have fun while embracing decrepitude

My old pal Kipling gave a ring the other day, so we could coordinate the next breakfast at the Teviotdale truck stop. We got around to comparing notes on the toll the years are taking. He recently fell off a storage bin he was filling with firewood. Hasn't been able to lift his left arm over his head since. Time to let go of the dream of operating a muffler shop, I guess. For my part, between the eye surgery and the shakey hands, my bathroom reno looks way different than the last bathroom reno I did 30 years ago. It's taking three times as long too. You mighta been a git-r-done kinda guy somewhere in the past, if only in your imagination, but once the get up and go has got up and left it seems to take forever to get nothing much done. So where's the fun in all this? "Fun" is perhaps too glib a word. But you can get a lot of satisfaction out of staying the course, never giving up, learning from your mistakes, keeping your nose to the grindstone and the pedal to the metal, and 101 other cliches. Point is, at our age we win just by being here, so let the fun times roll... Savor and celebrate! Just book your hip replacement early.

Lesson #1 for the elderly: never trust a fart

You know you're getting old when you can't trust a fart. Time was, you could rip 'em forth on demand. Farting was, at root, a competitive sport, at least for guys. I saw this play out during my career as a high-school sports coach. Take a bus trip with the boys soccer team, and the lads were constantly one-upping one another with the lethality of their farts. On the girls bus they didn't fart half as much, and when they did, it didn't smell near as bad. So you grow up confident in your ability to fart at will. You can even use a well-timed fart to make a political statement. Drop something silent but violent at the next all-candidates meeting just when the Green candidate is speaking and see what happens. I'm pretty sure that's what derailed their last couple of leadership hopefulls. Then you get old. You find yourself in a place where farting isn't just fun and games anymore. You're at that all-candidates meeting thinking you're making a political statement, and whoopsie... What's that running down my leg?