By Agnes Smyth-Jones
One of the good things about getting old (supposedly) is that one is stripped of gross desire and blind ambition and left (hopefully) with a husk of bemused wisdom. Unfortunately, I am not finding this to be true. In fact, I just seem to be acquiring an ever-growing list of things that piss me off. For example:
5. Letterboxes. I believe this is the term filmmakers use to describe the annoying black bars they insert on the top and bottom of their precious movies when broadcast on television. The purpose, I’m told, is to force your TV set to better approximate the orientation of a cinema screen. All right. That’s why I allowed my generous nephew to buy me a new flat-screen TV. He said movies would be now oriented correctly. That is a lie. I sat down with a nice bowl of sugared rhubarb last Friday night and every movie I tried to watch had some form of letterboxing. Finally, I turned to dependable old TCM for a Barbara Stanwyck marathon and the letterboxes were so thick it felt like I was watching through backwards binoculars! Give me back my old RCA!
4. Hockey playoffs in June. Really! The lilacs are out, the goldfinches have arrived, and the ice-creams trucks are patrolling the suburban streets. Do we really want to be watching the boys of winter at the height of summer? Shorten the season and give everybody a break, including that overstuffed sofa Don Cherry.
3. Mayors. First we had those Quebec mayors taking money for services not rendered. Then Sam Katz in Winnipeg was accused of hosting a $3,000 staff lunch at a restaurant he owned. Now we have Toronto’s Rob Ford supposedly smoking crack cocaine with some gangster pals. This in between groping women politicians and putting back a daily mickey of rye before lunch. Abolish the Senate? Why not get rid of our mayors?
2. Eavestroughing. Is there a bigger scam? Our old house had no eavestroughing and we never had water in our basement for 37 years. Of course you have to slope your garden earth away from the foundation but that is only sensible. After Rodney died, my generous niece paid to have eavestroughing put up. She said it was practically the law. Now, all I do is pay for a company to come by every few weeks to clean out leaves, seeds, acorns, pine cones and God knows what else. Squirrels love the troughing for impromptu drag races. And in winter, everything freezes, backs up under the shingles and creates ice dams.
1. Michael Douglas. What was the old dear thinking? Confessing to a journalist that his throat cancer was transmitted to him through oral sex. That is to say heterosexual oral sex. That is to say cunnilingus. Now let me be clear. It took Rodney several years and two copies of The Joy of Sex before he got comfortable in those southern latitudes. Ladies my age know that most men regard that area of a woman’s anatomy as only slightly less mysterious and frightening than the rainforests of New Guinea. And now a Hollywood actor has set us back to the days of Stanley and Livingstone. What next? Padlocks? (If you think I’m making this s*** up, click here.)
Of Eavestroughs, Mayors, and Cancer Caused by Cunnilingus
Columns
By Agnes Smyth-Jones
One of the good things about getting old (supposedly) is that one is stripped of gross desire and blind ambition and left (hopefully) with a husk of bemused wisdom. Unfortunately, I am not finding this to be true. In fact, I just seem to be acquiring an ever-growing list of things that piss me off. For example:
5. Letterboxes. I believe this is the term filmmakers use to describe the annoying black bars they insert on the top and bottom of their precious movies when broadcast on television. The purpose, I’m told, is to force your TV set to better approximate the orientation of a cinema screen. All right. That’s why I allowed my generous nephew to buy me a new flat-screen TV. He said movies would be now oriented correctly. That is a lie. I sat down with a nice bowl of sugared rhubarb last Friday night and every movie I tried to watch had some form of letterboxing. Finally, I turned to dependable old TCM for a Barbara Stanwyck marathon and the letterboxes were so thick it felt like I was watching through backwards binoculars! Give me back my old RCA!
4. Hockey playoffs in June. Really! The lilacs are out, the goldfinches have arrived, and the ice-creams trucks are patrolling the suburban streets. Do we really want to be watching the boys of winter at the height of summer? Shorten the season and give everybody a break, including that overstuffed sofa Don Cherry.
3. Mayors. First we had those Quebec mayors taking money for services not rendered. Then Sam Katz in Winnipeg was accused of hosting a $3,000 staff lunch at a restaurant he owned. Now we have Toronto’s Rob Ford supposedly smoking crack cocaine with some gangster pals. This in between groping women politicians and putting back a daily mickey of rye before lunch. Abolish the Senate? Why not get rid of our mayors?
2. Eavestroughing. Is there a bigger scam? Our old house had no eavestroughing and we never had water in our basement for 37 years. Of course you have to slope your garden earth away from the foundation but that is only sensible. After Rodney died, my generous niece paid to have eavestroughing put up. She said it was practically the law. Now, all I do is pay for a company to come by every few weeks to clean out leaves, seeds, acorns, pine cones and God knows what else. Squirrels love the troughing for impromptu drag races. And in winter, everything freezes, backs up under the shingles and creates ice dams.
1. Michael Douglas. What was the old dear thinking? Confessing to a journalist that his throat cancer was transmitted to him through oral sex. That is to say heterosexual oral sex. That is to say cunnilingus. Now let me be clear. It took Rodney several years and two copies of The Joy of Sex before he got comfortable in those southern latitudes. Ladies my age know that most men regard that area of a woman’s anatomy as only slightly less mysterious and frightening than the rainforests of New Guinea. And now a Hollywood actor has set us back to the days of Stanley and Livingstone. What next? Padlocks? (If you think I’m making this s*** up, click here.)