Fear and Loathing South of the 40 : Meeting Your Needs

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Needs Lube

The good news, Montreal is getting some brand new metro cars. ’bout time. We have the oldest fleet of subway cars in operation. The bad news, they don’t fit in the tunnels! (No kidding, what genius planned that one out.) The new bombardier manufactured “Azur” cars are bigger, 13 tons heavier and will hold 8% more commuters per car than the old MR-63 models currently in use. Apparently the cars also consume up to 30% more electricity than the old cars, a fact the Société de Transport de Montréal (STM) will not confirm or deny. Due to the size and weight of the new cars, parts of the existing tracks had to be reinforced and approximately 200 meters of tunnel needed to be grinded down. “The way the cars are made, if the suspension was broken, or punctured tires caused cars to lean to one side, they wouldn’t pass through some … tunnels,” said maintenance union president Luc Saint-Hilaire. Due to this little miscalculation the STM has admitted to being roughly eight months behind in their transition schedule. Now this is me just thinking out loud here, but if you wear an extra large you don’t go and buy a medium, you following me here. I mean you can’t shove a watermelon down a garden hose. Who plans this stuff? Sheesh. I can tell you one thing — it is about to get more expensive to take the metro.

Needs Another Few Hours

Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre gave the thumbs up to a pilot project that will allow a handful of bars on Crescent and St-Denis to stay open until 6 a.m., serving alcohol until 5:30 a.m. In a previous interview about the pilot project the Mayor has said, “When we close the bars at 3 a.m., everybody is getting out into the street at the same time. And then you have some people fighting, you have some security problems, and of course you have the noise that comes with it.” My question is what will be different if we close the bars at 6 a.m.? Except for the fact that people will have three more hours to get shitfaced? Not really following that line of logic. On the other hand we will have drunk drivers leaving the bars just in time for the morning rush hours. Way to go. The pilot project is to run from June 12th to July 5th. Not sure about this one, maybe just me being cynical. I would appreciate comments, let me know.

Needs a Clue

Please indulge me a moment cause I am not, I repeat I am not, taking what happened to Malaysia flight MH330 lightly, at all. It is horrible and my heart goes out to all the families involved. But it has been almost two months and there are still no solid leads on the missing airplane. I am sure that I am not the only one wondering what the hell is going on here. I mean North American Intelligence can tell if a sherpa in the Himalayas farts too loudly in his sleep, we can put a piece of machinery on the planet Mars, doctors can grow human vaginas, for christ sakes, but we can’t find even a hint of what happened to a missing Boeing 777. What the fuck? Sorry I had to get that off my chest, I just feel so badly for these people.

Needs a Gag

Speaking of feeling bad, poor Ron Maclean put his foot in it last week with a comment he made suggesting a French referee shouldn’t have been ref-ing the game between Montreal and Tampa Bay last Tuesday. The backlash was immediate, but so was the apology, and I believe it. Lighten up people, Maclean has been doing “Hockey Night in Canada” for what, a million years. He didn’t mean anything by it. Don Cherry came to his defense on ‘Coaches Corner’. Good on you Don.

Needs Brains

Now if you want a comment to get mad about, here you go. Last week, Jeremy Searle, a councillor for the Côte-des-Neiges-Notre-Dame-de-Grace borough finally apologized for a comment he made on April 8th. Searle’s comment was “perhaps” in 10 years “we could eradicate them (them being separatists, more specifically the PQ) like the ash-boring bugs that do far less damage than they do.” Ouch! Holy Jumpin Jesus! Searle stood by the statement in a TVA television network interview, but finally last Wednesday he apologized, “Having reviewed the video from the borough council meeting, I recognize that my comments, while not ill-meant, were entirely in the wrong and tended to give an impression that I certainly did not intend.” You have to admit, he’s got balls. Not a lot of brains maybe but a good set of balls.

Last week at a Glance:

Don’t Smoke the Purple Stuff…

Health Canada had its first recall on Medical Marijuana. BC producer Greenleaf Medicals has advised consumers not to smoke a batch of its “Purple Kush” (I love it) after Health Canada turned up “issues” with its production practices. Really, issues with production practices for a company that grows pot? Is there anyone surprised here? What Health Canada did not say was what the adverse effects of smoking the recalled pot might be. But here is what they recommend you do with the wacky weed: “Add water to the dried marijuana to render it unusable, mix it with cat litter to mask the odour and dispose of it with regular household waste.” Seems like a lot of trouble, I mean how bad could it be? Lets be honest, we’ve all smoked a bit of skunk weed in our times.

…because if you do

Here is one that has been keeping me up at night. Carl Kerby, one of the founding members of the Creationist organization Answers in Genesis, finally put right how the dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark. Here it is in his own words. “I see some people that like to mock and ridicule, especially about the dinosaurs. How did they put the big old dinosaurs on there?” he said. “Well, I would suggest to you they didn’t take the big old dinosaur — they would have taken the younger ones. You think of a guy like me, if you’re going to go repopulate a planet, you’re not taking me with you. I’m old. My repopulating days are done. You take my son or my grandson. My grandson is a whole lot smaller than I am.” So there you have it. Whew, I’m glad that’s cleared up. Maybe this guy has been smoking the “Purple Kush?” What do you think?

Last Word of the Week:

Last week CBC ran a story about “biosolids” that I happened to catch. Now friends and neighbors, maybe some of you already know what biosolids are, but this cat did not, so let me give you the skinny. Biosolids are a product made of sewer sludge – which is largely human waste, treated, dried out and spread on farmers fields. No you did not misunderstand. I said largely human waste. In other words, “Poop.” At the beginning of the article they have a quote by a Canadian farmer named Jack Folkertsma, “Some people just don’t like it at all and want nothing to do with it and they can’t even really give you a reason why.” Well Jack here is a reason. It’s people poop. After doing some research it actually looks like a great idea. I have only one problem with it. If someone is selling my poop, I want my share of the profits. I mean I won’t even have to work anymore, just eat, and I will be a poopin’ machine! People this opens a brand new avenue for me, for you too, so look into it.

Questions, comments, complaints? Contact Ken Gaucher at [email protected]