Are You Tired of the Pot Wink?

Nearly all of my friends smoke pot once in a while.

I never do, of course, because my mother reads this blog.

But I've certainly been around it plenty of times. Wink, wink.

Justin Trudeau may be playing a dangerous game, coming out as someone who has not only been around marijuana, but actually took a drag or two off a joint. More than once. He inhaled. I think what he and his advisors are betting on, is that a lot of us are tired of the hypocrisy that surrounds this drug.

Yes, my police officer friends, I am fully aware that pot is illegal. That's why my friends who indulge keep their stash and their accoutrements hidden away in rafters or back closets. And yes, there are big scary men connected to trafficking who booby trap lovely farmers' fields and yaddda yadda yadda.

Here's what I also know: if I wanted to get high this afternoon, this pie-baking, church-going, mortgage-paying, middle-aged lady could have my hands on some marijuana in, oh, about five minutes. So, clearly, what we're doing now regarding the criminals etc., isn't really working.

Trudeau knows this, and he knows that you and I know it. He also knows that most people in this country have, at some point, smoked some pot and they didn't become wild addicts or go on killing sprees or whatever thing is being said now to dissuade the kids from trying it. They giggled. They ate a lot of chips. They slept well, and that's about it. Nearly all of us would rather be around someone quite high than someone quite drunk. The high guy doesn't get belligerent, or make a pass at your sweetheart. They giggle, make no sense for a while and then they go to bed.

Furthermore, when we encounter someone who says they've never, ever smoked pot, we expect we're being lied to. Well, we're being lied to or we're talking with someone really boring or backward, or maybe a religious nut who's about to give us a lecture on abortion and evolution. We wonder how they ended up at the same party as us.

It's the sentiment about the boring and backward that Trudeau is trying to tap into, since I suspect he knows he's never going to appeal to the anti-abortion, questioning-of-evolution crowd.

Trudeau is looking for votes from people like me, people who are tired of what we see as the boatloads of bullshit that have surrounded conversations about pot all our lives. We're also people who don't quite trust anyone so dull, so incurious, so non-rebellious or so ideological as to never to have touched the stuff.

Will the strategy work? I guess we'll find out in about two years.

Questioning the Fan

OK, so let me get this straight:

The Toronto Maple Leafs have not won their league for 47 years, and yet they are the most profitable team in the NHL.

They also have the most expensive tickets.

This week, the Leafs increased their prices for this year's games and introduced tiered pricing whereby tickets to 'desirable' games will be even pricier. You will pay extra for say, the Canadiens, or Pittsburgh.

The Toronto Maple Leafs did not make the playoffs in the 10 years prior to 2013.
They fell spectacularly apart in game 7 of the first series this winter, blowing a several-goal lead in the final few minutes of the game.

So, Leafs fans, tell me this, and I mean no disrespect; I am genuinely curious: Why on earth are you fans of this team? Can you explain your loyalty? Because I just don't get it.

Frogs and Locusts Next?

As I arrived at my Mom's kitchen door Thursday, I stopped for a few minutes to listen for the sound of hoof beats from the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

There at her table sat my mother with her laptop, reading facebook. My mother. On the Internet.

As I drove onto the property, I noticed the flowers growing on both sides of the barn door. Flowers. At the barn.

But the biggest sign that something has drastically changed in our world was the trip to the farm on the former County 62, also known as the 8th line. There was pavement. Real pavement. Not that cold-rolled stuff that lasted about five minutes before the first pothole ten years ago. Not the gravel that preceded it, not even calcium-coated gravel. Asphalt. Pavement. The real stuff that they put down on real roads. Sometimes with lines painted on it.

People in Hell, this is your warning: put on your parkas!!

Review: Orange is the New Black

Don't take the time to read this whole post before you sign yourself up for Netflix and watch Orange is the new Black.

But be prepared to have a messy house and hungry family, because you'll sit down for the first episode and find yourself five hours later, still mesmerized. I was.

I cannot stress enough how unbelievably amazing this made-for-Internet TV show is.

The writing, the character development, the production values, the acting (oh, the acting!), it's supremely superb, easily the Very Best Thing I have ever watched on television, ever. Better than Mad Men, better than the Sopranos. Seriously.

The cast is mostly women, the plot follows a privileged New Yorker sent to prison for a year ten years after she was a money mule for her then-girlfriend's drug cartel. The rest of the cast is also women, also locked up, and their stories are told with a mixture of flashback and narrative, but thankfully, no narration. It's funny and scary and sad and angry-making, all at the same time. In a four-second closeup, the lead actor, Taylor Schilling can convey betrayal, lust and the develop of her own revenge plot, without so much as an eyebrow raise. The rest of the performances, including those of Kate Mulgrew as a Russian mob worker who now runs the prison kitchen, are truly amazing.

I don't know how the writers managed to put so much comedy in the midst of so much drama and angst, social commentary and people behaving badly; I can only marvel at the supremacy of their work. The layers, the references are truly magnificent.

SO good. You will not regret one minute of the 13 episodes. You'll only regret that season two just started production last week, which means it will be a while before you find out what happens to Piper next.

One Year Later

I did something today I haven't done in just under a year.

I walked out my front door on the way to work.

My very own front door.

It was 51 weeks ago this weekend a hoodlum in a stolen car smashed into my house, destroying the porch attached to my century home.

Yesterday, the contractor put the plywood down on the new roof. By the time the project is finished, it will be fully a year since the crash. I suspect the hoodlum, who pleaded guilty to five charges, has already served his time and is getting ready to do some more.

I don't think it's normal for a project like ours to take a full year. But the crash happened in August, it took until Christmas for the insurance company to figure out what the ancient porch was worth, and a while to get approvals to build. Plus, my sweetie and I changed our minds on a few things.

It's been a tough year, explaining why the front door is inaccessible, giving directions down the driveway, cringing every time someone comes into my home through a laundry room that somehow, is always, always messy.

Really, we weren't hurt and we lost nothing. But my tiny project and small inconvenience has given me more sympathy for our neighbours in Calgary flooded out this year, and in Lac Megantic, victims of criminal negligence where so much has been lost and it's going to take far more than a year for most people to walk out their front doors again.

REAL Rude

Did a socially conservative women's group just 'out' a federal cabinet minister?

The group, REAL women, which advocates for restrictions on abortion and which says it's for equality for "women in the home", has put out a news release bashing John Baird.

The release says in denouncing Russia's new homophobic laws and offering Canadian cash to gay-rights groups in Kenya, the Foreign Affairs Minister is trying to "further his own perspective on homosexuality."

The group goes on to say, "It is a fact, that homosexual activists in Canada are intolerant of any resistance to their demands, and, as such have become a tyrannical minority."

I guess the brand of 'equality' REAL women advocates for, doesn't extend to gay women.

I wonder what Baird's colleagues in the federal cabinet would have to say about that.