Shameless plug...

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Consider this brief post an example.

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"Pssst... wanna buy a medal?"

If Canada as a country and its politicians were truly serious about funding athletes it would not just be presented as lip-flapping, self righteous rhetoric every 2 years or so, pre- and post- winter and summer Olympic Games.

If this was truly more than just so-called jingoistic nationalist pride, we would not only be talking about it on a much more regular basis, but steps would be taken to actually effect change much sooner rather than later.

Why must we also believe that it is up to various levels of government, specifically Federal, who “must” find the funds to initiate programs at early ages and then continue to foster these athletes every step of the way as they, perhaps, might one day make the National team in an Olympic event? If a corporate sponsor wishes to fund the next 10 years of so of track and field development in this country, why not allow it? In some ways it’s occurring now (Visa, anyone?) but perhaps it is still being done in such a way that it is condoned.

Hey, why not increase GST to 6% and take that 1% national sales tax and use that to assist in funding apparently much needed athletic programs?

Why is it that we don’t seem to make the same amount of noise pre- and post- Commonwealth or Pan-American Games for that matter?

People point to the US, to Australia and yes, to China as examples of what happens when money is put behind athletes as they are nurtured to their potential – natural or otherwise. Look at the medal haul of Great Britain these past couple of weeks. An increase over four years ago. Exponential? Perhaps. Coincidence that in four years time they will be hosting the next summer games? Again, perhaps. Can you imagine that their programs were not artificially inflated and funded by whatever means possible as a pre-cursor to the London Olympics in 2012?

But where might it all end? Does it then come down to the country, the government or the corporate sponsors that inject the greatest amount of funds that will “win”?

And for what?

The notion of Olympic athletes being true, unpaid amateurs was shattered long ago. The Redeem Team? Give me a break.

And this fuss over athlete’s ages? In gymnastics, they must be 16 years or older during the year of the games themselves. So why is it that a 14-year old diver from Great Britain is allowed to compete with nary an indignant squeal?

Oh yes, find me the lobbyist that managed to persuade the IOC that BMX bikes and their athletes should be considered as an Olympic sport? That ungodly noise you may have just heard are thousands of Greeks attempting to roll over in their graves at the notion of that being considered a sport, never mind one included in the Olympics.

I’m beginning to digress.

Hypocrisy. Frankly, that’s really what the underlying theme here likely is. And it’s a shame.

The best natural, amateur athlete may actually never see any world class athletic competition in their or even your lifetime. And in that regard I’m not just talking about Canada. What about a country like Ethiopia? Not exactly a world–beater in most any category and yet they have the ability to magically produce distance-holic automaton runners at the drop of a hat. And they are considered an underdeveloped nation. How can this occur? Do you think that government bureaucrats in countries like that might decide to pick the best of the best bare-footed athletes tending to goat herds on rugged hillsides, offering them and their families food, shelter and clothing – and for what? Glory on the world stage in front of an audience of over one billion people? Two days after the event, how many people will remember that athlete’s name?

How many of us know about Michael Phelps? Usain Bolt? Not to take anything away from either gentlemen, but it’s all just so hypocritical, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, the real “winners” are the marketers, the agents, the managers and, let’s not forget the chemists. The athletes themselves are merely shells, vessels to be used by their governments and sanctioned checkbook training programs.

So, what’s my point? Too many contentious issues here to make but one. At the end of the day, why not just tell it like it is? What would happen if one of two things were to occur?

1) Have an event that avoids any contact with raging consumerism and commercialism and have only athletes participate that have regular day jobs – no marketers; no consultants; no supplements; no chemicals; no endorsements… Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

Or,

2) Take it to the extreme and use any and all advantages, natural and otherwise and use unlimited dollars to supercharge all athletes and events.

Either way, create a completely level playing field and then see what happens. And the chances of anything like that ever happening?

Ever see a little movie called “Chariots of Fire”?

An unexpected oasis…

Last evening while eating dinner and enjoying a bottle of Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler Riesling with a couple of gently seasoned grilled Atlantic salmon steaks I turned to Sheryl and asked if she felt like going for a drive Saturday?

Instantly an assumption was made that I had an ulterior motive. Not the case. Not really. Although one can hardly blame her for thinking something was amiss given my history.

A few weeks earlier, I had driven north to the wonderful village of Haliburton for an initial meet and greet with the Managing Editor of the local newspaper, Martha Perkins. We spoke for a while, exchanging ideas and anecdotes. I found myself looking out of her office window at Head Lake. The newspaper’s office is across the street from this lake which is surrounded by trees. Thick forests. Quite the National Geographic setting. Due to the wet summer we’ve been experiencing everything looked quite green and radiant.

It was on the drive home I started thinking more about our conversation and specifically about the surrounding environment. In many ways I was reminded of parts of Scotland – a country I had no idea how much I missed until I returned in November 2005, some 30 years after I left.

As usual, I digress.

Martha had kindly given me some magazines her media group had recently published plus that week’s edition of her paper. I had glanced through all this material that evening but only really got down to reading it a few nights ago. An insert in the paper caught my eye. It was a flyer/menu for a restaurant called SummerKiss. OK, so it was just a menu… or so I thought. Considering the restaurant’s location, Moore Falls (truly a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village); the scope of the menu itself was quite surprising. Sure, there were the usual suspects of country “fine dining” – burgers, ribs, chicken wings et al. But some things really caught my eye. Steamed mussels in a chili coconut sauce. Grilled squid salad with lime, coriander and onion served on pea shoots and fresh bamboo shoots. Salmon Filo with a saffron cream sauce. Not what one would expect of a restaurant in this part of the country and almost off the beaten track.

But I was intrigued.

So late this morning, we headed out on an adventure. I decided to use the GPS to get us to Haliburton first. The roads we travelled were not the same ones I had taken weeks before. GPS can do that to you sometimes. No matter. We were going for a drive anyway. Sheryl and I had pleasant meaningless chatter on the way there, pointing out views and vistas as we drove.

To get to where we wanted to be, Moore Falls, we had to go north to go south. Stay with me. Eventually it all comes together. It was a beautiful day for a drive. The temperature was in the low 80’s; there was a breeze and a fair bit of humidity. As I said before, if you blink… we actually did drive past this place. Hard to fathom since it is an orange and yellow building with green doors. Believe it or not, the colour scheme actually works in an awkward twisted way.

TLATO was skeptical upon seeing the building. She had seen the menu before so figured she’d give it a chance. And she was hungry. At this point, we’d been driving for three hours or so, had been drinking water and passing by many lakes. Nature was calling. Screaming actually. Going in through the double green doors, we looked around and surprise, the two main rooms looked pretty good. Washrooms are a pretty good test of any establishment. She headed one way, me the other. Surprise number two. The washroom, although small, was what you might expect to find in some higher-end big city restaurant. And they were clean. We decided to eat a late lunch on the patio overlooking Moore Lake. Surprise number three. The patio furniture was not only comfortable, it was clean. Spotless.

Our ice cold beers arrived. We poured them into ice cold glasses. Stainless steel flatware and a black linen napkin were placed in front of us as we poured over the eclectic menu.

We shared an appetizer. Calamari. OK, to some, typical bar food. The menu said Panko breaded. They were. And tender and piping hot, too. Served with a deliciously sneaky chili lime dip. OK so far. Our server when asked, volunteered this was the second season here. On Highway 35, south of Minden in beautiful downtown Moore falls – a place my GPS had no record. Things were apparently going well and the season was a success. Our entrees arrived; Mango Chicken and Pad Thai with chicken and shrimp. The surprises continued to come. The food was very good and very well presented.

Lunch was a success.

As the heading says, truly an oasis. In the land of roadside chip trucks and fresh fruit and vegetable stands, there are sometimes some very pleasant surprises. And truly, you cannot judge a book by its cover – or its location… or the colour of the building… or the colour of the doors.

The drive home was more straightforward and without event. Almost anti-climatic. We’ll make a point of returning one day soon with friends.

Why some people are not taken seriously...

I'm all for free speech. I believe in a democratic process. Pretty much.

Having said that, there are times when I literally and figuratively have to scratch my head and ask aloud, "What on earth were these people thinking?"

Most Canadians are uncomfortably familiar with an incident that occurred on a Greyhound bus on July 30. Vince Weiguang Li, 40, of Edmonton, has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean, who was stabbed and decapitated aboard said bus. Many media outlets appeared to take ghoulish "delight" in describing the events that occurred on this late night Prairie bus trip. Perhaps there were some details that were not necessary to be reported to the general public, including moments of alleged cannibalism and other atrocities.

The Canadian judicial system will no doubt deal with this whole trial in its usual inimitable fashion. My money is on a verdict of not guilty due to criminal insanity or whatever the correct legal wording is; in other words, Li was not responsible for his actions. Then who is? Was it not Li that was observed by several eyewitnesses on this bus, by all accounts methodically and without emotion plunged a hunting-type knife repeatedly into the neck area of the sleeping and hapless, unsuspecting victim, McLean? And being charged with second-degree murder, no less?

OK, so that was bad enough.

And now, leading the charge from way left of centre... An animal rights group has tried - and thankfully so far failed - to run a newspaper advertisement comparing the beheading of McLean to the treatment of animals by the meat industry.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, said on its website it would run the advertisement in the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic. However, city editor Tara Seel said the newspaper had no intention of running the ad, which refers to “an innocent victim’s throat” being cut, in reference to the slaughter of cows, chickens and pigs on factory farms.

And here is what the advertisement looks like.

“Like human victims, animals in slaughterhouses experience terror when they are attacked by a knife-wielding assailant,” Lindsay Rajt of PETA said in a news release. “We are challenging everyone who is rightly horrified by this crime to look into their hearts and consider leaving violence off their dinner plates.” Rajt said the ad was intended to be shocking and is meant to spur people to think about the terror and pain experienced by animals who are raised and killed for food.

Hard to believe. How dare you. Shame on you PETA. PETA's strategies in recent years have often been questionable. This is just the straw breaking the proverbial camel's back. This tactic is deplorable. This intended action has or will likely polarize people against this issue due to extreme and frankly, thoughtless tactics. Rather than people (the general population - meat eaters and veggies alike) feeling sympathetic for your cause, you've caused them to close off from the possibility of supporting it.

I love animals as much as the next person but there is no comparison between the two. Way to lose the fight for humans and animals alike.

Normal service may be resumed shortly...

This Saturday morning, Sheryl and a friend, Nancy, are flying down to Florida to spend a week at our condo on the east coast.

Being in Florida during the steamy summer months is not my idea of a good time; you have no need for a watch at this time of year. Each day around 4.00pm, the heavens open and it pours for at least 15 minutes. We're talking monsoon-type rain, not the wishy-washy pitter-patter-type. This is the pull-off-to-the-side-of-the-road-if-driving rain. Then, the temperature increases by another 10 degrees until the sun reluctantly decides to set on another day of someone's idea of paradise. Don’t get me wrong. Florida I do quite like. There is, however, a time for it and July and August would not be those times to me.

Anyway, those of you that know of TLATO and her pre-vacation/trip habits will be more than surprised to hear that our bedroom has NOT been a staging area for pre-packing these past two weeks. Nay, a suitcase has yet to make it up the basement stairs. You see, Sheryl has been very busy of late and then last Friday came down with the Mother of all colds. Picture a disheveled, red nosed sniffling women shuffling through the house in flannel jammies and a thick chenille bathrobe (the day time temperature in the old homestead is hovering in the mid-80's) with a backpack of Kleenex hanging off one shoulder, a supermarket baggie tied to said robe's belt to collect used Kimberly Clark product.. A sorry sight, indeed. Monday, she was feeling slightly better - actually wearing girl-type seasonal clothes. Something however happened. Not quite sure how, but her left leg went one way, the ankle the other and before you know it, we had to deal with a severely sprained and swollen ankle.

So here we are a few days before I score major brownie points to drive them both to the airport early Saturday morning and nothing, I repeat nothing, has been looked out, never mind packed.

I'm beginning to worry.

"Don't", she says in that reassuring voice husbands have heard a million times, "I'm actually quite organized!"

Now I'm really beginning to worry and for those that know me, this is not normal behavior.

"I've already taken lots of my clothes and things down there these past few trips," she states. "And, of course, if I forget to pack anything, I can always buy it while I'm there!”

Now I'm moments away from an anxiety attack. Is that the plan? ‘Inadvertently’ under pack to purchase more?

"Don't be silly," she laughs. "I'm just joking!"

Can someone please show me the amusing side to this? Anyone that is married or has been in a long-term relationship will know exactly what I'm thinking. Anyone male that is.

Another woman? Not so much.

Say it isn't so...

Guinness.

The very word, to many people the world over, conjures up so many images. For me, there are three things that come to mind immediately.

Years and years ago in the UK, there was this one Guinness television commercial that I still remember. A grizzled barman pulls a slow, deliberate pint of the black velvet into a glass. After the brew settles, the drinker then takes a pen and crudely writes his initials in the thick, luxurious head of the Irish nectar. Slowly, the glass is raised and even more slowly the beer is consumed. At the end, the camera moves in to show the foam in the bottom of the glass, the initials still intact and quite visible.

A few short years after that, while on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts (yes, I know…) we visited the Guinness brewery in Dublin. To say that our Scoutmaster was a lenient sort would be an understatement. Fact: the following summer in Kandersteg, Switzerland, there was an unfortunate “incident” involving local wine, a railway embankment, a fast-moving river and the local police. Suffice to say I consequently developed an “allergy” to wine – something that stayed with me for the longest time. Anyway, we were somehow “able” to sample small amounts of this local brew. I have to admit, back then, in my early teens, my palate was not what it is today and I really did not like it much. I did, however, consume enough to the point of walking into an electrical box on the Dublin streets shortly thereafter. Twice. Resulting in some interesting facial bruising and the assistance of friends to concoct a believable tale for any and all authority figures over the next few days – my parents back in Glasgow included.

My third memory fast forwards a few years. I was working with the largest private publishing firm in the UK. “Headquartered” in Dundee, Scotland. During my time there, I wrote many different pieces; from articles for some of their local, daily newspapers to horoscopes for popular women’s magazines; from World War Two scripts for adventure comic books to “Dear Abby” type advice columns. Practically every Friday lunchtime, shortly after being paid (in cash!) a number of us would wander over to our favourite Indian restaurant and eat the hottest dishes we could manage, washing them down with a few pints of Guinness. Needless to say, the combination was deadly. People would go out of their way Friday afternoons to avoid the newsroom. Copy boys would rather be berated by fierce, draconian editors then venture into the haze of that soiled, wrongly-warm environment…

In today’s Toronto Star (thanks to the LA Times) there is a story – “Irish stew over fate of beloved Guinness”. Long story short, it seems that the consumption of Guinness in Ireland is declining thanks to the influence of imported beers. These beers are persuading a younger generation in their drinking habits. One brand was mentioned by name. Budweiser. To me, that’s not beer. I consumed some wonderful beers growing up in Scotland. Since moving to Canada over 30 years ago, I have yet to develop a taste for North American beers. Too cold. Too fizzy. Not enough taste.

Now, Guinness sells more beer in Nigeria than it does in Ireland. An amazing statistic considering Ireland is the world’s second biggest beer-drinking market after the Czech Republic.

I find all of this hard to swallow.

Enough already!

Yesterday afternoon, it being a lazy Sunday and all, me and TLATO decided to take in a movie. Together. It took about twenty minutes of polite conversation before we decided upon the latest instalment in the Indiana Jones saga.

I think the last time we saw a movie together was when the Daniel Craig /James Bond flick hit the big screen. So, it's been a while.

Got to our local megaplex and found that to purchase a ticket for the movie, we had to go to the long single file line at the concession stand.

Strike one.

While standing on line, I contemplated getting a drink, a club soda, but when I saw the size of the containers they were offering with what looked suspiciously like handles, I decided to forgo this cool treat. The exorbitant "I-really-had-not-planned-on-refinancing-the-house" price tag was the final straw.

Strike two.

The movie itself was OK, perhaps 6 out of 10. The very first episode, all those years ago, still ranks. In fact, to my mind, the number of sequels that have managed to surpass the original amounts to ... one. Godfather 2. Perhaps two, including Kill Bill 2.

I digress.

After sitting through the advertisements, the trailers and then the movie itself, some time had passed. I have borderline hypertension and take meds for same - including a diuretic. Sitting for that length of time is bound to have an effect on a body - especially with all the raging water in the third act of the movie...

I continue to digress.

At the end of the show, nature called. No surprise. We agreed to meet after taking care of things. Standing there, in the tiled sterile environment of the men's loo relieving myself, there was almost an unfortunate accident (for me - can't speak for the other fellow...). Booming through heretofore 'hidden' speakers in the washroom ceiling came a commercial. A frickin' advertisement for a well-known pizza conglomerate who happened to be in their 40th year of business! I'm sorry, but this completely unexpected invasive interruption was the final straw. I'm using the facilities. I'm taking care of business. In a washroom. Granted, it was a public washroom, but still, can we not expect some respect, a little decorum if you will without my being jolted into some marketer's idea of reality while widdling on the leg of the unsuspecting fellow to my left?

Strike three.