I turned forty yesterday--at precisely 6:18 p.m., in fact. Stephen Harper's psychic hairdresser would probably wish me to point out that such an evening birth gave me a Leo ascendant, which explains the total lack of humility, subtlety, tact, and dignified reserve that my Capricorn Sun and Virgo Moon would otherwise have the power to lend these writings (and their author). Blame it on the stars.
Remarkably, even as Israel continues to exterminate the vicious, civilization-hating Islamofascists hiding in UN humanitarian convoys and schools, other less important but more amusing things are actually happening. To wit:
Harper's Back, and More Immaterial Than Ever!
It's good to see our prime minister blinking his soporific blink on the nation's political radar screen again. I was afraid that our Boeing-sized leader had suffered an explosive decompression en route between the Golden Dragon's all-you-can-eat luncheon buffet and a Tim Hortons.
In a touching display of the only form of empathy his IBM designers have apparently made him capable of showing, Harper revealed that he found the extent of current Canadian unemployment "troubling"--leading me to wonder whether Captain Smith is recorded as having found it "distressing" to learn of his ship's impending trip to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Despite it all, though, Mr. Harper believes that Canada will soon emerge "stronger than ever" from the crisis. Well obviously: with 71,000 full-time jobs lost last month, a number the article tells us was "far worse than economists had expected", Canada may very soon achieve the kind of unemployment and resultant widespread poverty that really builds character--the kind of character my grandmother ended up with after the Great Depression, the kind that moved her to vote CCF/NDP for much of her life.
In any case, Harper's admirable sang froid in the face of a looming disaster that may reduce thousands of Canadians to the expedient of subsisting on Alpo but will likely not incommode His Serene Red Neckness beyond the guilt-driven impulse to tip his country-club parking valet a Toonie rather than the customary Loonie should be an inspiration to us all.
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Now is the time to buy. Didn't you hear, commie? In fact, it's more and more a buyer's market as the days go by.
It's all downhill from now on, Sir Francis. Turning 30 was energising for me; turning 40 marked the beginning of the end. I'm on pins and needles wondering what 50 will bring, in 4 years time.
It's all downhill from now on, Sir Francis.
So there I was, somewhat mildly dejected by the passing of my thirties and sullenly avoiding the task of marking the last batches of papers that impatiently await me.
Desperate for procrastinatory pretexts, I decided to lift my spirits by checking to see if anybody had left any witty, diverting or morale-boosting comments for me, only to find Ti-Guy implicitly inviting me to take the Logan's Run option. Splendid. :)
You may be right, Ti, but I don't quite buy it. At forty, Pierre Trudeau was still just a bohemian intellectual living with his mother; his best and most fruitful days were far ahead of him.
By the time John Milton hit forty, his literary output had been negligible. He didn't begin Paradise Lost until he was fifty. Shakespeare wrote some of his most substantial plays (including King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest) at or after the age of forty.
When Stephen Harper was forty, he was just an insignificant shill for a fringe pressure group; now he's become a...well, never mind.
I'll let you know in a few years whether I feel like I'm on the downhill side of the mountain. In the meantime, I'll just note that I'm much healthier than I was at thirty--about ten pounds lighter and actually able to walk up two flights of stairs without drenching myself in perspiration. That must count for something.
Most of us aren't John Milton or Pierre Trudeau. And few of us can get away with the amorality and solipsism of Stephen Harper.
On the plus side, the older you get, the wiser you become. Or maybe that's on the minus side as well, I really don't know.
But you're right. The sun'll come out, tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there will be, as it were, sun.
Glad to see you might be fortunate to avoid contracting "fortyitis". This affliction is manifest by the general belief that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Related revelations from the delirium of fortyitis is that the young have never been so disrespectful, the rich have never been so greedy, our leaders have never been so incompetent, our newspapers have never been so biased, and other than ourselves, all our peers are acting really old and are practically demented.
Of course, usually it's everybody else that appears to have fortyitis.
Happy Birthday!
...the young have never been so disrespectful, the rich have never been so greedy, our leaders have never been so incompetent, our newspapers have never been so biased...
...seems like a fairly clear-eyed analysis to me. :)
I can't be comforted by the idea that this is the way things always are because there's a new element in the mix; never before has the access to information been greater. And it has pained me greatly to discover that that has not helped at all.
The 50's are OK.
...damn kids!
Sorry, when you get older, little irritants sometimes just cause a release of ... expelling... ...you know.
I too am pleased PMSH is back at the nation's tiller. Like him, I find some of the international meltdown a little "troubling".
Pleased to see he is taking the international need of working for common cause and sharing that with his provincial counterparts.
I noticed that Jean Charest has now become the troublesome child. Poor Jean, fresh from a new mandate, and still not happy. Maybe Ottawa should throw several more billions of dollars at his crumbling province. Not so he will fix it, but to organize a spring party.
Anyway, if you're like me (and I know I am), you will feel a greater sense or mortality, want to do some things you've putting off, and will notice physical changes that aren't for the best.
if you're like me...
Tomm, one of the wonderful things about your rhetorical style is that one never knows when you're being ironic.
A much-belated Happy B-Day to you.
Was Harper back? I hadn't noticed. Or cared.
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