by George Le Masurier | Mar 2, 2017
I’m writing today’s column from The Office of Medical Terror, otherwise known as my bedroom.
I’m doing this because a monster truck of influenza ran over me, then backed up and ran over me again, and afterwards dumped a load of pneumonia on me. The truck also hit my wife at the same time, and turned our house into a disease-ridden wailing ward that we might have to burn down … a popular Comox Valley solution.
I should have gone to the doctor right away, but I figured he would be busy finishing junior high school.
Instead, I self-enrolled myself in the latest scientific treatment for my current condition, which consists primarily of lying around on the couch watching the popular daytime television show called “Whatever’s On,” and drinking enough water to lower the neighborhood aquifer.
During the commercial breaks, when I was able to stay in the room, I enjoyed voluminous advertising for all kinds of new drugs, with names like Confusadril, Preventidrool, Krazyglucosamine and Miketycin.
Each one sounded like just what I needed, because I might be that one person in 200 million suffering from the distilling of my carpal femur. That made me wonder if Dr. Teenager knew about this. Or, if I should have run out and bought some of that Phenaminafenafinaphen myself.
But just as I was mustering the heroic effort required to lift my frail and lifeless body off the couch, I heard somebody who talked faster than an angry Spanish mother-in-law caution me against such rash action. He said:
“Some adverse reactions may occur. These include comas, brain tumors and, in some patients, the rapid growth of hair where you don’t want it. Ears will fall off in less than 1 percent of all users. Some patients may notice the growth of extra toes. You should not take Phenamin if you are drinking orange juice or breathing air. Watching television while taking Phenamin could trigger a hallucinogenic reaction that may cause some patients to spontaneously combust.”
Maybe it was just the high fever, but these commercials seemed to be speaking to me. They seemed to be saying, “Geooorgie, buy these drugs. They might not kill you. You might only grow an extra foot. Get up and go buy them right now, and pick up an extra pair of shoes while you’re at it.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I decided to plop myself back down and use a more traditional cure: boring myself to death … whoops, wrong result. Maybe Dr. Teenager has a study break.
MEDICAL UPDATE: Dr. Teenager prescribed antibiotics, and the travel agent wrote a script for two weeks in Mexico.
by George Le Masurier | Feb 10, 2017
When civility in modern public discourse declines, it attempts to drag other forms of decent human interaction into the murky abyss of lost social conventions.
The genuine apology, for example, teeters dangerously close to collateral damage. In the Trump world, you never apologize. You just don’t “talk about it anymore.” In the new lexicon, “I’m sorry” are dirty words.
Have you offended the parents of a war hero, an honest judge or a whole race of people? Just announce that sometimes you say the wrong things, which you regret, but don’t be specific.
If you’re an Olympic swimmer who committed a crime in a foreign country and then committed other crimes and told lies to cover it up, obfuscate your apology with sad-sack whining about your personal trauma. Forget the part about pointing a loaded gun at less-privileged third-world people.
But don’t forget when an apology is required.
For example, after 35 years of shirking its legal obligations and moral duty to carry out the terms of Mack Laing’s Last Will, which it accepted along with valuable waterfront property, his personal possessions and his money, the Town of Comox has never officially apologized for its breach of trust.
I’m sure that Laing’s family in Manitoba and Oregon would appreciate the gesture.
The problem isn’t just that the apology has fallen out of vogue. People seem to have forgotten how to do it properly. Lesson number one: atonement isn’t about you.
After a well-known actor recently made some anti-gay statements, he said, “This is heartbreaking for me.” As a corporate CEO acknowledged environmental wrong-doing, he said, “There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”
Confronted with the past collective sins of the town, in respect to Mack Laing’s Last Will and trust, Mayor Paul Ives has said, “That was then, this is now.” And went on to justify tearing down what Heritage B.C. considers a significant landmark.
A genuine apology doesn’t hedge. It doesn’t include modifiers that dilute personal responsibility. It doesn’t impose limits on accountability or suggest a partial defense by casting some measure of blame on those offended. It promises to do better.
Canadians are good apologizers. We’ve apologized to Chinese Canadians for a 19th Century head tax; to Japanese Canadians for stealing their property and imprisoning them in internment camps; to Inuit peoples for relocating them to a harsh place without survival assistance; and, for turning away nearly 400 Sikh migrants on the vessel, Komagata Maru over a century ago, knowing they faced certain death.
And we do apologize right.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, addressing the abuse of Indigenous Canadians in the residential school systems, he said, “Our goal, as we move forward together, is clear: It is to lift this burden from your shoulders, from those of your families and communities … It is to accept fully our responsibilities, and our failings, as a government and as a country.”
A genuine apology is often uttered to relieve a person or an organization of its guilt and shame. But the refusal to apologize attempts to mask any feeling of guilt or shame that might make the person or organization look weak or vulnerable.
Most everyone has said or done something they regret. But in the absence of any reparation, these things can hover over our sense of well-being like storm clouds. A simple, heartfelt apology can clear the air.
So, let’s not be like Trump. Let’s not apologize for apologizing, where contrition is appropriate. Let’s embrace moments of introspection that manifest in words that heal and move us forward.
by George Le Masurier | Jan 31, 2017
When people start suggesting that highly paid writers such as myself – rumored to be in the high single digits! – start writing about British Columbia’s spring provincial election campaign, we do what any other sane person would do: hide under our desks until those people go away.
Well, that’s what we used to do before they invented Google. Now, whenever I want to avoid writing by wasting a lot of valuable time, I call up Google. I Google recreationally, or casually, you might say. With No Strings Attached. In other words, I Google without any meaningful commitment.
I don’t know why, but suddenly, in an era when a U. S. president promotes his executive orders on Twitter, this seemed an appropriate method to research a piece about the upcoming election.
I discovered, for example, that there really is such a thing as a “good politician,” because Google (Canadian version) returned 50.9 million hits for that phrase. Unfortunately, this is the Year of Trump, so I got 51.8 million hits for “bad politician,” perhaps signaling a negative trend in governance.
However, the results for “straight shooter” (8.78 million hits) encouraged me by crushing those who speak with a “forked tongue” (572,000 hits). I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the fact that the phrase “we’re here from the government, and we’re here to help you” tallied a pitiful 94,600 hits.
But did you know that someone out there has already searched with almost every adjective you can think of in front of the word “politician?” … Someone who may be eligible to vote.
We apparently think our politicians are less “sleazy” (351,000 hits) than “silly” (614,000), and, even more surprising, “intelligent” (821,000 hits).
British Columbians might consider saving ourselves a lot of time and expense by dispensing with political campaigns altogether and just decide the spring provincial election by the number of Google hits each candidate receives. It would be kind of like online voting.
If we switched to Google-voting, local NDP candidate Ronna-Rae Leonard would crush her Liberal opponent, Jim Benninger, by a vote of 1,530 to 1,400.
But both the B.C. Liberal Party (497,000 hits) and the B.C. NDP Party (457,000) would lose to the B.C. Green Party, which tallied an astonishing 11 million hits.
Google-voting wouldn’t out well for NDP leader John Horgan, however. He would lose to Liberal Christy Clark by 14 million to 463,000. However, once again, the Green Party tops the polls. Green leader Andrew Weaver collected 18.8 million hits.
On a positive note, “Elect Justin Trudeau” snagged 26.6 million hits, more than doubling the vote for “Elect Kevin O’Leary.” Although, when you search for O’Leary’s self-imposed nickname, Mr. Wonderful, he turns in a respectable 13.3 million. But, thankfully, not enough to win.
I have no idea what this means, but there appear to be more “goofy” Liberals (354,000 hits) than “goofy” NDPers (127,000 hits).
In the end, however, this Google- voting system might not work.
While the concept of “voting” is encouragingly strong (178 million hits), it might come from a worrisome number of illiterates. If you misspell the word “vote” by adding an extra letter “o”, it takes an extra 62 “Os” until Google cannot find any more results.
Finally, in a triumph of man over ape, the phrase “Elect George” returns 69.9 million hits, while “elect Curious George” only swings 347,000. So there’s hope.
by George Le Masurier | Dec 8, 2016
It landed on our doorstep with a resounding thud. It measured about the size of a thick hardcover novel. It weighed more than 100 copies of “War and Peace” bound together. But all there was to read was a simple card, which said, predictably, “To my brother. Love, your sister, Lynne.”
It comes every year. It is fudge … the traditional Le Masurier Christmas Fudge.
At some point during my childhood my mother went on a fudge-making binge. I have no idea why she did this. Maybe for a small-town housewife in the 1950s it was a more acceptable means of relieving stress than, for example,12 straight days of hard drinking.
Or, maybe someone just gave her a recipe and told her how easy it was to make. In any case, she made so much fudge every holiday season that we all got sick from it.
That just goes to prove how truly amazing the human body really is. You can feed your body a five-pound block of cocoa solidified by a railroad car of sugar and eggs, and the stomach cramps you get will make it seem like your body is rejecting it.
But in reality, your body is magically turning all that fudge into something really useful like fingernails and eyebrows. At least, that’s what mom told me.
After she dealt with her baking neurosis and addicting me to chocolate, she made fudge just once a year, for my birthday, which is a week before Christmas (still time to send large cash gifts!).
When I moved away from home, my mother continued to make fudge and sent me a box or two every year for my birthday. It had all the attributes of a great gift: hand-made, conjured wonderful childhood memories, edible and, most importantly, made of chocolate.
My parents have both passed on now, bless their souls, but the Christmas Fudge tradition lived on in the embodiment of my sister. She insisted on making fudge every year and sending me a birthday box the size and weight of a cement block. It must cost her a small fortune in postage stamps.
Of course, over the years, we’ve added a few new Christmas baking traditions of our own. So, by the time we get through my mother’s daughter’s fudge, a Gingerbread House, the annual nuts and bolts party mix and my son’s Ritz Bits smothered in a rich ranch flavoring that will give us all instant heartburn, we should almost be ready for Christmas dinner. And the Day After Christmas dinner and New Years Eve dinner and New Years Day Watching Football dinner, with a few lunches and breakfasts and late-night ice cream snacks thrown in.
When Jan. 2 finally rolls around, none of us will be capable of anything more than crawling from chair to couch and back to bed. And none of us will have any idea who ate all the fudge or what kind of body parts it turned into.
The good news is that modern medicine has developed new surgical methods, such as the kind performed on Al Roper, to look around inside your body and find the fudge that got stuck behind some fat cells instead of making new fingernails like it was supposed to.
Fortunately, my mother’s daughter no longer considers birthday fudgeness an appropriate expression of her sibling affections. We now exchange nice, low-fat emails instead.
by George Le Masurier | Jul 1, 2016
Ah, Canada Day. God save the Queen … and after Brexit, maybe the whole damn United Kingdom.
There’ll be parades today, hot dogs, kids on bikes, a shrill seven notes from an overabundance of bagpipers marching slowly, steadily toward you, like the Scottish Walking Dead, and bright red maple leaves flying everywhere.
In American backyards, on their July holiday, people light up a couple thousand dollars’ worth of high-octane fireworks happily sold to them by American Indians. Ironic?
But at 149 years old, Canadians deserve to celebrate. Here’s my list of the Top Ten most unique things about Canada.
10 — 5-pin bowling
A truly Canadian sport. Balls without holes. Pins on string. And three rolls. A less dramatic version of real bowling, which involves 10 pins and an adult ball. If the Coen Brothers had made the movie “The Big Lebowski” in Canada, it would have been called “Little Lebowski.”
9. — Quantum Computing
Canada leads the world in the use of subatomic particles to process complex calculations more quickly. If you want to know more about quantum computing, ask our Prime Minister
8 — Dinosaur bones
When archeologists get together, it’s never in Hilda, Alberta. But that’s where you’ll find the world’s largest bed of horned dinosaur bones. Thousands of bones clumped together suggests several horned dino herds drowned in the fast rising waters of a tropical storm.
As an aside, a super-majority of Canadians accept the concept of evolution. Even more of us believe Bigfoot is real.
7 — Legalized same-sex marriage
While other nations floundered with the most important civil rights struggle of this century — same-sex marriage — Canada figured it out in 2005. It took the U.S. another decade.
6 — Caesars
Canadians are not boring and we will not abide a blah-meh Bloody Mary. We add Worcestershire and tabasco, maybe lime and a stalk of celery, or, if you’re lucky, a fat dill pickle.
5 — Mike Myers
We could name a long list of famous Canadian comedians, but why not single out Myers, the mastermind behind the Austin Powers vs. Dr. Evil trilogy of movies? Scottie, Noooo. On the other hand, we also gave Justin Bieber to the world.
4 — Election spending limits
When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, it opened a Pandora’s Box of shady campaign financing practices south of the border. But Canada has spending limits on federal elections that restrict political donations and third party advertisements. Thank goodness.
3 — Neptune
Not the planet. But the University of Victoria research project hailed as one of humankind’s most ambitious scientific endeavors. With Ocean Networks Canada in 2007, UVic created a large-scale underwater observatory. More than 800 km of power cables and fibre optics span the northern region of the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, collecting data down to 2,660m, allowing ocean scientists around the world to do long-term research via the Internet.
2 — Variable gravity
Forget the latest fad diet. There’s only one sure way to lose weight in this life: move to Hudson Bay. Due to the Bay area’s unique geology, gravity exerts less force here. A 150-pound person willing to put up with extreme cold and sleep year-round with those colorful blankets will enjoy about a one-tenth of an ounce more spring in their step.
Scientists don’t all agree why a part of Canada has less gravity, but it’s likely either due to mantle rocks flowing down toward the Earth’s core, or because glaciers pushed them aside during the Ice Age. Or maybe it’s magic.
1 — Ketchup Chips
You can’t get them anywhere else. And they turn your finger tips red. And that reminds us of the big maple leaf in our flag.
Happy birthday, Canada
by Jill Severn | Jun 22, 2016
It was probably among the first things your parents taught you: Don’t interrupt. But the online world has become so full of interruptions it’s time to give it a good spanking, or at the very least make it go sit in a corner and think about what it’s done until it’s ready to apologize.
First there were the pop-up ads, which were annoying enough to inspire pop-up blockers. Soon the blockers were evaded, and eventually we sighed deeply and learned to click on the little X that made the pop-ups go away.
Those were followed by pop-up video ads, and we have now learned to click on their little Xes. Many of us are so resigned to these interruptions we don’t even sigh, growl or cringe any more.
After all, the content we’re reading online has to be paid for somehow, and the pushy presence of those ads may be, on balance, no worse than the television ads we’ve put up with since the Ed Sullivan show, which, to millennial ears, sounds like the dawn of time.
But an escalation of distraction may come from the merger of Microsoft and LinkedIn, the professional networking site with 433 million members. The leaders of these two companies are breathlessly thrilled to tell us that in the future, while you are on an online conference, you’ll be able to pull up LinkedIn profiles of the people you’re interacting with, so you can check out their birthplace, schooling, business background and whatever other information is on their profile.
This means you won’t be paying much attention to what they are actually saying. You will become just like the teenagers whose faces are in their smartphones unless you ban phones from your dinner table. We question whether these corporate giants are onto an intelligent strategy, particularly in light of recent research showing that 98 percent of people really can’t successfully multi-task.
But the real horror lies in the possibility that this merger will invade Word, the ubiquitous Microsoft software used by nearly everyone who writes anything. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Randall Stross, a business professor, reports that in a powerpoint presentation, the leaders of the two companies showed a graph called “a professional profile everywhere” with a disturbing set of arrows, one aimed directly at Word.
This arrow may be a dagger to the heart for writers everywhere, who want nothing more than to be left alone while writing. Does anyone want an online intrusion saying “here’s an expert who knows more than you do about this topic”? Surely not. We have Google for that, and it can be distracting enough, taking us down rabbit holes of tangential information so arcane we lose track of what we came there to find out.
What anyone who writes – whether it’s a letter, a novel or a thesis – really needs is simply to be left alone. So, note to Microsoft and LinkedIn: Don’t interrupt. Please.
