August 23, 2007If you let anything come too near you want to hold onto it. And there is nothing a man can hold onto.
Generosity is the purest form of egotism.
PERSIFLAGE is updated on Thursdays. ClassifiedsFor Sale: rare nude photos of Ernest Borgnine wrestling with what appears to be a tiny antelope but may be a dog with antlers strapped to his head like Max in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. $4 OBO. Box 1172.
Tips for Summer Living:Tip #10: Summer is a time for carefree living. Grab hold of life with both hands and jam it in your mouth without a thought for consequences! ArchivesLinksCONGRATULATIONSSpecial Congratulations go out to Melanie-Ann Farberhar who turned a corner this week. Previously Melanie-Ann had only been able to drive in a straight line and if she had to go left or right had to get out of the car, and shove it in the appropriate direction. Way to go Melanie-Ann! Email us: |
The Big Empty ReduxThis article originally ran in the old paper PERSIFLAGE about six years ago. It has now aged like a fine cheese (which explains that smell- no wait, that's your feet). With the addition of some material excised from the initial production and some updating of pop-cultural references, we are now able to present a kind of Director's Cut. Enjoy! New Orleans has been known for many years now (I don't know how many so don't write in and ask – I'm being deliberately vague here) as the Big Easy, presumably because it is fairly large (once again I don't have the precise figures before me so this is something else that you're going to have to sort out for yourself) and because the attitude there is what one might call "easy". Okay, well if that's the case then Winnipeg seems to deserve the honorific epithet Big Empty (I would suggest Fair to Middlin' Empty but it just doesn't roll off the tongue in quite the same way). The reasons for this should be fairly obvious to anyone walking past what used to be storefronts downtown or who is out on the streets at any lateish hour. What is the problem? Do not enough people go out? Is everybody happily ensconced in their respective living rooms settled down in front of yet another CSI spinoff or Law and Order. No. This is not the problem. The problem is that there are just not enough people in this city. Now before you throw up your hands in despair (I know you. That's the kind of thing you're likely to do) you should ask yourself what can I do about this. Well, the answer, surprisingly, is plenty. I know there's not much chance of your encouraging large numbers of people to migrate here in the next few months (especially since, as far as our winters are concerned, the cat is pretty much out of the bag – not a wise move on the cat's part really, it's nice and warm in there) but it is possible to change the apparent population of the city. We can make it look fuller. A lot of people own pets and some of them aren't much uglier than a lot of the folks currently out on our streets. Slap a pair of pants and a hat on your average cat and he/she could seamlessly bolster our legion of boulevardiers. It's not even necessary to teach them to walk upright (stick them outside the Woodbine or the Empire at two in the morning – who's gonna notice?). You monkey owners are going to have to provide the bodies using payphones, driving and doing all those other little tasks for which opposable thumbs have proved so useful. A Fisher-Price cell phone and a cheap suit are all that separates a chimp or spider monkey from the majority of gelati-walkers on Corydon. But what about me, you non-animal lovers say, what can I do, Hugh? Well, pretty much everybody has some old clothes hanging around and something they could stuff them with. Add a balloon head (a very small investment) and you've got a new citizen. Stick some inline skates on your dummy or plonk it in a wagon and your mobility problem is solved. Drag your buddy around with you when you go out and you're doing your part. And besides, a lot of these Ray Bolgerites are going to be better conversationalists than the crowd you're currently running with. So let's do it! We're only a couple thousand bodies short of being the Big Fully. Hugh Briss |
Book Review: Why Roswell?
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