Griping
comes easy

by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

People ask how a guy like me, blessed with wispy hair that dances in the autumnal wind, three fine pairs of shoes and a wife with a pleasant round bum, can still be miserable and paranoid.
Well, keep shovelling that coal and the fire will burn. These are some of the latest outrages that have been gnawing like a nit under my skin.

The Grande Bibliothèque If it’s not needed or required, the government will construct it, no expense spared. Mirabel Airport. The Olympic Stadium. Build it and they won’t come.
Now, it’s no secret that Quebecers hate libraries. They’ll cross the street rather than walk past one. Indeed, one-million Quebecers are illiterate and can’t read this simple phrase (although the rest surely can and will). Fewer than one in three Quebecers join libraries vs. half of Ontarians, according to a survey quoted four years ago by provincial apparatchik Louise Beaudoin. She blamed the Church. Apparently, while Quebecers are doing their best to flout all of Catholicism’s other rules, they’re still obeying a century-old reading ban.

So the province demolished the perfectly good Showmart at Berri, a fine piece of art deco architecture complete with an excellent skate-roller-thingy facility. Now they’re building a $60-million pile-o-bricks that’s no bigger—and probably no better—than the Showmart. Do you believe this sucker will cost one-fifth the price of Vancouver’s library? Me neither. By the way, if you’re wondering where they got the cash for the library project, consider that the Parti Québécois government yanked $55-million from the province’s budget for youth protection between 1995 and 2000.

The same government noticed that Quebecers dislike opera almost as much as libraries. So next they’re building a quarter-billion dollar concert hall at Bleury and Ste-Catherine.
Unelected Premiers Bernard Landry is Premier of Quebec. How? Why? Huh? Jean Charest’s Liberals received 44 per cent of all votes to Lucien Bouchard’s 43 percent in the last election in 1998. The Parti Québécois—which supposedly supports the principle of proportional representation—formed a government in spite of receiving fewer votes than the Liberals. Then, in February 2001, PQ Premier Bouchard quit and Landry took over. Bouchard had earlier ruled as unelected leader from 1995 to 1998. So that means that for five of the last eight years, all-powerful, unelected leaders have ruled over us. It’s a stunt worthy of the Brothers Johnson (Daniel and Pierre-Marc), who also both earlier managed to serve as premier without ever being elected to the post.

Now I have this vision of Mario Dumont becoming premier and then resigning when his former manager at Burger King stomps his feet in the hallway and orders him to work the cash.
The right on red ban This doesn’t apply to me, as my entitlement complex allows me to drive with my own personal interpretation of traffic laws. My rules-are-for-suckers philosophy enables me to flout traffic signage in my Ford Taurus, safe in the knowledge that I can go for weeks without even seeing a cop cruiser in this town.

But then some official guy delivered statistics questioning the wisdom of allowing right on reds, undoubtedly after our ruthless, high-powered bicycle lobby showed up at his home and put a gun to his head. But even if we accept the dubious notion that allowing right on reds would save drivers and passengers only 30 seconds a day, then let’s estimate that the average car occupants’ time is worth $20 an hour. That means it costs our society 30 cents every single time a car sits needlessly polluting at an intersection. The senseless delay also steals drivers’ invaluable leisure time when they could be getting off the roads and getting drunk, or playing with their kids, or both.

Inverted sentences Trying to get their point across, ambitious writers often talk backwards. They type things like: “Born in Verdun, Gump Worsley soon earned his reputation as a foul-mouth lout.” A habit I’ve never warmed to, reading confusing sentences. Stop doing this, when will they? :