The police

I remember when I was 15 (around the time of my ulcer trouble), bicycling to school on a rainy day.  I was always sure to stop at intersections with a red light or a stop sign, and even signalled my stop, but on this day my bicycle skidded into the intersection in a hydroplaning motion. (I'd never had this bike out in the rain before and the brakes didn't work as well as I expected.) I thought, "Drat!"

A policeman in his car saw me, stopped me and chewed me out.  He called me "my man" and I've hated that expression ever since. (Don't ever call me "my man.") I stammered out that the bike had slid on me, but that didn't mollify him.  What bothers me is that I ended up blubbering.  Fifteen-year-olds do not blubber!  I feel like a failed a basic test in life.  I wish I could live my life over and stand up to him.

It had really started when the local newspaper ran a letter by a shoemaker whose shop was near the police station, complaining that the local cops were lazy and always hanging around the station.  So the police became more visible at this time.  But a week or two after this incident, they all got fired.  I can't say I feel any sympathy for the fired cop who'd bullied me.  Indeed, I wish I'd had the chance to say to him something like "I'm the boy on the bicycle you made cry.  I'm pleased that it didn't save your job!"

I recognize that being a policeman can be a tough, dangerous job, and I accept that most cops are doing the best they can.  But too many are ignorant jerks who abuse their power and rely on fellow cops keeping their mouth shut.

Aliens

Is there intelligent life on other planets?  Well, the universe has billions of galaxies, and if you assume that just one galaxy in a million has one planet like earth, then that's thousands of worlds out there! Maybe there's a world where Hitler won the war.  But they're clearly too far away for any chance of communication. (Light and radio signals take millions of years to travel between galaxies.) I have a feeling that even if another planet knew of us, they'd be prudent enough to leave us alone.

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the Milky Way?  I'd guess there's a pretty good chance that our planet has no counterpart in the galaxy.  All the requisite condition coming together with the result of intelligent live evolving--stuff like the moon being big enough to create tides, so sea life will spread onto land--all that faces steeper odds than winning a lottery.  Intelligent life is a miracle even great than we know.

I've never seen a U.F.O.  I wish I would someday.  But I have seen some science fiction movies from the 1950s involving aliens landing on the earth.  The interesting thing about them is their obvious Cold War subtext.  Some of them, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and War of the Worlds and Invaders From Mars, play on the period's paranoia and fear of The Other.  But there are some with a more liberal vision, like The Day the World Stood Still and It Came From Outer Space.  More recently there was Signs.  When I saw that one I liked it at first, but the next day I decided it was nonsense.

Outhouses

When I was young, we had a beach cottage with an outhouse.  I'm not really nostalgic about that.  The last time I used an outhouse was in 1988, I think, at a gas station in Maine.  You'd think that all gas stations would have flush toilets by now, but I suppose that American regulations are looser.

Dolly Parton said about the toilets in her mansion: "It has four rooms and a bath.  When I was young, we had four rooms and a path!"

It's easy to forget that the flush toilet is largely a recent invention, though the Minoans in ancient Greece had a version.  A lot of the world still uses outhouses.  When I was a kid, I was watching a colourful historical epic with fancy costumes and wondering, "Did those people go to the bathroom?" Back then, of course, they had outhouses!

Today's young people in the developed world have never used an outhouse.  I guess that in some ways they have it easier than we did.  Yet I also think about some of the pleasure we had that they miss out on, like Sunday funnies back when the newspapers provided more space for comics, TV shows like Ed Sullivan, or dorky enjoyment like the old Walt Disney movies. (Disney still makes movies, but they aren't as "square" these days.) And there's nothing quite like the old radio shows.

Watermelons

I used to like watermelon.  I'd even eat some of the white stuff in the rind!  Today I think they've even developed a seedless variety.

Did you know that originally all watermelons were round?  They only developed the oblong variety in the 20th century, because it was truck-friendly.  

There used to be a prop comedian called Gallagher who was always doing odd stuff with watermelons.

The radio personality Captain Midnight made a list of the worst song titles ever, and one of them was a coon song from minstrel shows a century ago: "Plant a Watermelon on My Grave and Let the Juice Seep Through." (Other coon songs are "Got a White Man Working for Me" and "If the Man in the Moon Was a Coon.") But the Captain missed the worst song title ever: "Daddy Swiped Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan"!

A race

Races don't interest me so much.  So what if you're only second fastest?  Is it worth it for a jockey or auto racer to risk his life just to come in first?  There's a famous line in the Book of Ecclesiastes, "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong." That book was written over 2000 years ago, yet it seems surprisingly modern, even existential.

I recall the space race from the 1960s.  Did it really matter whether the Americans or the Russians reached the moon first?  Unlike many people I don't remember where I was when Apollo 11 landed. (I felt sorry for Michael Collins, who had to stay up in the Command Module while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the surface.) They left a plaque saying "We came in peace for all mankind," but it was an American flag that they left behind.  they could at least have left a United Nations flag as well, like when they reached the top of Mount Everest.

And don't get me started on arms races, which only benefit national elites and manufacturers.  At the end of his presidency Eisenhower warned against "the military-industrial complex," yet where was Ike for eight years?  If he'd taken on the M.I.C. at the start of his presidency American history might have taken a different course.  But instead he largely took the path of least resistance.

Superpowers

What superpower would I most like to have?  Seven-league boots that could get me anywhere in a short walk!  Invisibility has an appeal for little boys, but crossing the street can be dangerous.  And I don't feel the need to be strong enough to lick enemies in a fight.  The superpower that scares me most is the ability to read people's minds.  What if you find out that people don't like you as much as they pretend to?

In a discussion on Facebook someone was asking, "If you could be a superhero, what would your name and power be?" I answered, "I'd be Bigmouth, who stays home and rants." Another time there was the question, "What comic book character would you become and what would you do with your powers?" I answered, "I'd be Richie Rich and spend my money on the nearest escort service!" Money is the real power.

The superhero movie I'd like to see is one where Superman and Batman team up against Wonder Woman and she kicks both their asses!  I like to think that Wonder Woman could wipe the floor with any three male superheroes.

Classroom films

I remember seeing classroom films when I was young.  There was Holiday From Rules, in which a bunch of bratty kids who hate rules get put on a desert island without any rules, leading to anarchy. (If you ask me, micromanagement vs. chaos is a false choice.)

There was also one in a western setting where a bad kid in a black hat challenged a good kid in a white hat to a foot race. (White Hat was a better kid than Black Hat because he did things like eat a hot breakfast.  I don't do that today!) The main thing I remember was that Black hat tried to cheat by running across a railway line, but got his foot caught in the ties just as a train was coming along!  Unfortunately, he got saved by White Hat in the nick of time.  We should have all booed.

Then in Grade 8 we saw a British film teaching school lab safety through comedy.  It opened with a slapstick western scene involving dynamite, complete with an Indian saying, "White man speak with forked tongue!" But that had no relation to the rest of the film; it was just to grab our attention.  The main part of the film had this big doofus called Bernie in a school lab making mistakes we were encouraged to spot. ("My microscope bulb is burnt out.  I'll use the sun!")

You can find a lot of unintentionally funny classroom films on Youtube.

Royalty

I don't care much about the Royals. (I'm a small-R republican.) I think that Canada should get rid of the monarchy and have a president instead. (Realistically, it usually takes a war or a big economic crisis to make a nation give up monarchy.) Canadian monarchists are the most fatuous people in the world.

I'll admit I feel greater sympathy for Prince Charles than for those Whitehall bureaucrats he's been interfering with.  And I agree with him that a lot of modern architecture is garbage!  Someone said that to understand Prince Charles you have to remember his German roots.  He wants to be another Prince Albert, but times have changed.

Prince Philip, on the other hand, is royalty's answer to Archie Bunker!

Elizabeth II has now replaced Victoria as Britain's longest-reigning monarch.  She's also a far better queen, hard-working and conscientious and unfailingly polite.  I imagine her father would be proud of her.

The future King William V has a degree in art history.  That might actually prove useful for him, considering the huge collection he'll inherit!