Judging from the carnage on the roads today, many Canadians have once again forgotten how to drive.
It happens every winter: the first bit of snow and ice magically causes mass amnesia in the part of our brains concerned with responsibly operating a motor vehicle.
It's not as if there weren't enough assholes on the roads in the middle of June.
I never found driving, what very little I did of it, fun. That's because I couldn't banish the thought that I was supposed to be controlling a ton and a half of hurtling steel and glasss, while trusting a bunch of utter strangers were doing the same...all at speeds up to ninety or more feet a second. That thought wouldn't leave my mind; it wouldn't even recede into the background. Ninety feet a SECOND! Christ! Put baldly like that, it almost seems an invitation to suicide.
There are still a lot of people out there who claim to enjoy this kind of thing. Their numbers do grow fewer, though, as the proportion of utter strangers who so obviously can't control their steel and glass grows ever higher. I've heard from more than a few people who report that driving is no longer an activity they enjoy.
As usual, I blame cellphones.
Well, that's one of the things I blame. Think about what you do at home while you're on the phone. Chances are, whatever it is, you're not concentrating on everything going on around you. Never mind "hands-free"; cellphones should not be allowed in cars. Period. Pagers, okay. Pagers with a button that connects you to 911, great. Telephones, no way.
People these days tend to think of their cars as little mobile living rooms. If your car is your living room, buddy, you need a life.
This stuff is exacerbated when conditions deteriorate...particularly, it seems, if you're in a minivan or something like one. Glare ice? Driving snow impeding visibility? Fuck it, the speed limit's eighty, so eighty I'll go. I might even go faster, because I can. And if you get in my way, you get the finger. Get off my road.
In my world, a driver's license would expire every sixteen months. You'd have to retake your road test to get your license back. Why sixteen months? Because that guarantees that, sooner or later, you'll be confronted with winter driving.
With this kind of system in place, I'm willing to wager we'd see fewer cars in ditches, fewer people spinning their tires...fewer brain-dead morons...on the road.
-----------------------------------------
The papers suggest the government might fall over the gun registry.
A rogue Liberal MP (the best kind of Liberal MP!) is proposing a bill that would effectively kill the gun registry. All 99 Conservatives are certain to vote for it. The NDP will vote their conscience. Most if not all of the Bloc will vote with the government. This last is no surprise: the Bloc has a vested interest in the status quo. They have arguably more power now, with the balance of a minority government, than they did when they were Her Majesty's Official Opposition.
So that leaves the dissident Liberals. Enough of them and poof! new election.
Won't happen, I know. But a taxpayer can dream.
No, I don't support the gun registry. It's redundant (we've had one since 1933); it's costly (approaching two billion dollars and still not even implemented yet); and it's useless. Correct me if I am wrong (somebody, please, I'm begging you, correct me!), but I don't think the gun registry has saved a single life.
Now, just because I think the gun registry is an appalling piece of trash legislation, does not mean I am against gun control. Again, if I may be indulged, in my world three groups of people would be allowed to own guns: soldiers, peace officers, and hunters. Showing a gun in the commission of an offense would add two years to your sentence; firing it would add five; shooting a person, regardless of where, would add twenty. These sentences would be mandatory. You couldn't plea-bargain them away. (Actually, I am viscerally against the whole concept of plea-bargaining, but that's another blog.)
I'm sorry to any NRA members out there (okay, really, I'm not), but guns, in my view, serve no purpose except killing. I'm reminded of a song by the Arrogant Worms, a Canadian folk group:
Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun?
Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun?
Nobody'd ever get shot, 'cause everybody had a gun (Makes sense!)
Wouldn't it be great if everybody had a gun?
Okay, so I'm all for gun control: fanatical on the subject, perhaps. Why don't I like the Liberal gun registry, then?
Because it so obviously doesn't work. Criminals have this nasty habit of leaving their guns unregistered. Sad, but true. And even when the gun is registered, the registered owner is so rarely the guy who fired it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This may seem a heresy, especially today, on the 15th anniversary of the biggest mass shooting in Canadian history, but I really don't like programs that deal with 'violence against women'.
I don't deny it exists. On the contrary, a part of me aches every time a husband shoots his wife or a boyfriend stabs his girlfriend.
However...
Whatever happened to violence against MEN?
Most of the violence perpetrated by men is against other men. And women, though they are 'the fairer sex', are not exempt from murderous urges. There are no programs for this...only for violence against women. How about we change the focus and make it violence against PEOPLE?
Just a thought.
---------------------
Did you know the Waterloo Regional School Board can suspend you for throwing a snowball? Even if it doesn't hit anyone.
Given those standards, almost every kid in my public school growing up would have been suspended...or expelled. As would more than a few of the TEACHERS.
What's wrong with this picture?
When I was a kid (he wheezed), fights were common at school. You settled things with your fists, and win or lose, you went home. Weapons were unheard of.
Now, Johnnie and Jimmy are as like to stab each other with pig-stickers, and Jeremy and Jordan will whip out their cellphones (goddam things) and call up their respective gangs, and before you know it, you've got an all-out brawl on your hands.
Suspension...never understood that concept. How many suspended kids actually enjoy school? Wouldn't they much rather be at home? So why "punish" their misdeed by sending them...home? Makes no sense to me.
I tell you, there are days when I would like to go and live in a cave somewhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment