I met Ray Griffiths back in 1960. We were both in grade 11. He was a nice guy, a good athlete and a real studier. I always had the feeling he was the kind of guy who took life seriously. After two years at St. Pat’s I moved over to Northern – for a reason I will only mention in public when I’m doing my standup bit at Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle in Royal Oak, Michigan. And I only do it there because it usually gets a good laugh.
My daughter Kate – who lives in Toronto – has a good friend there named Mais: a very attractive, young woman from Iraq. One day last fall, Kate and Mais were at our place for dinner and Mais told Sylvia and I about an experience she’d had as a result of her decision – a few years ago – to try on-line dating.
Have you ever been in a situation where somebody said something to you and you had no idea what to say? Then being the schmuck that you are, you went right ahead and said something anyway and as soon as you said it, you knew it was the wrong thing to say. You did it not because you had something to say, but because you knew you had to say something… or at least you thought you did. Don’t feel bad if you answered, “Yes.” I’ve done it too. More than once.
I bought my first Apple computer back in the 80’s and used it for 8 or 9 years before I switched to PC in order to be able to use Windows and the Microsoft Office suite. I was also starting to write back then and everything was being written - and published - in Microsoft Word. Also, all the accounting software available used the Windows operating system while Apple was the darling of the graphic artists and students.
In the spirit of the season
Definition: Claustrophobia – fear of fat people in red suits.
Bill Waterson (Calvin and Hobbes)
“The surest sign that intelligent life exists somewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.”
William E. Simon
“Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don’t vote.”
F.Y.I… That doesn’t just happen in Washington. Brian Keelan
Okay then… so now that pot has been re-legalized, we are back to being a nation where it is, once more, legal to smoke pot. Pot was made illegal in 1923. Over 95 years ago pot was legal, or at least not “illegal”. Why do you think our government made pot illegal, or as Dr. Timothy Leary famously said, “outlawed the number one vegetable on the planet?”
Famous Marijuana quote # 1:
Groucho Marx defined politics as: “The art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then applying the wrong remedies.” The last four years have produced an almost unbelievable amount of controversy and disharmony between the mayor, the council and the staff at City Hall. Many of us are unable to decide for sure just exactly who is at fault. Who is telling the truth?
It was in high school history studying the French Revolution that I first learned about the “Estates.” At that time, there were four of them. The first three estates were the Clergy (usually where a lot of the trouble starts), the Nobility (government – where the rest of the trouble starts) and Commoners (that would be you and I who spend most of our time wondering, “what are the geniuses gonna think of next?”). The fourth estate is journalism and its battle cry was and still is all about a free press.
I basically remember my teenage years as fun years. For grades 9 and 10, I attended Regiopolis College in Kingston, Ontario – my father felt that a Jesuit education would save me from the road to perdition he felt I had chosen as my path. After 2 years I realized I didn’t really like Regiopolis so my dad made me a deal: get all ‘A’s - which in those days was a 75% average – and I could go to school in Sarnia. After meeting the academic requirements, I returned to Sarnia and attended St. Pat’s.
I have two big fears about the impending (Oct. 17) legalization of marijuana:
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