As a too long spring break mercifully comes to a close, certain questions come to mind that have been clogging my brain lately (that explains a lot some might say). So as a salute to the spring cleaning of my head and for lack of a better column idea, this week’s offering includes questions that may or may not have answers but hopefully by airing them gives me some kind of momentary peace, along with a slight bit of entertainment value. I know, I know, that’s a lot to ask, especially from this space in the newspaper, but here goes anyway….
…..It’s April already and it still feels more like winter than spring, what gives and where’s global warming when you need it locally?
Actually, now that I think about it, spring break often brings crappy weather, maybe we should go back to when it was attached to the Easter holidays, at least by then, this year anyway, it may actually feel like spring?
And speaking of Easter, which is still three weeks away, and is our first statutory holiday since Jan. 1, Christy Clark has been premier for several weeks now and has still failed to come through on her promise to give us a holiday in February – recall referendum anyone?
On second thought I guess she’d actually have to have a seat in the legislature for that tactic to work, I’ll have to start the lobbying process right now: what do you think of the slogan “Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, that’s all I ever really wanted to say?” (with apologies to Paul Simon).
And speaking of politics, I kind of feel sorry for the provincial NDP who are trying to run a leadership race that’s going on way too long and nobody really cared about in the first place and now they have a federal election campaign to try and overcome, but then again maybe they should’ve held on to their perfectly acceptable leader who they trashed in the first place?
And speaking of the federal campaign, sure let Elizabeth May and the Greens into the televised debate amongst the leaders, it doesn’t amount to anything significant anyway. The prospect of the five, including a separatist who only has MPs in Quebec, going at each other’s throats for 90 minutes on TV will not change anyone’s minds or, indeed, reveal anything remotely useful for Canadian voters so what’s the point?
What we should also have is a debate between the two candidates who have a chance at becoming prime minister and we might learn something useful about our choices and their stances on important items of interest to Canadians, instead of all this calculated electioneering stuff that’s about as honest as a bad April Fool’s joke, except we’re all paying the price for it, but then that wouldn’t be Canadian now would it? Don’t you love it when ‘fairness’ and a reluctance to alienate anyone results in a complete waste of time?
Can it be considered child abuse that I insisted my kids get up and be out of their pyjamas by noon every day on their spring break? They were supposed to make their beds too but I don’t want to sound too much like a drill sergeant, or risk generating any sympathy for the little darlings?
Actually they had a pretty good spring break, a little skiing at the Star, a little road hockey in the cul-de-sac, more than a few sleepovers and definitely too much gaming, which I get upset about but then I remember how I used to spend hours in my youth playing the board game Strat-o-Matic Baseball, including figuring out averages and ERAs, and I’m sure my mother worried how I would turn out and I think it turned out OK, right mom?
Still, a couple nights ago I gave three teenage boys a ride somewhere that lasted 20 minutes and for 15 minutes of it they were talking about some game called Starcraft, I think, and with the lingo and teenspeak, it was if they were speaking a foreign language: should I be concerned?
The Canucks clinched the regular-season title last week and everyone’s happy but if they happen to be eliminated in the first or second rounds of the playoffs, who will remember that and how many bandwagon jumpers will still be fans?
Glenn Mitchell is managing editor of The Morning Star. He writes a weekly column titled Mitchell’s Musings.
