2030 Is Gonna Suck

I plan to be around in 2030 so I was interested to hear it could be a very bad year. There will eight billion people (two billion more than today), we will need 50 per cent more food, 50 per cent more energy and 30 per cent more water and people will be fleeing the hardest-hit regions of the world and moving to higher ground. It makes you think that 2029 might not be a great year either.


Shisa Smoking Will Kill You

The headline said, Shisa As Harmful As Cigarettes. Then it went on to say “at the worst, shisa was 400 to 450 times more dangerous than having a cigarette.” I read the story because I didn’t know that shisa is a water pipe used to smoke herbal tobacco. Then I read “the fruit-scented tobacco is burnt using coal.” I grew up in the 40s next to railroad tracks where steam engines passed. They burned coal. We inhaled the fumes. We knew it was bad. Now I know why shisa is bad. Now you know why shisa is bad.


Accidental Tourist

You gotta love tourists, they are responsible for a lot of my business because they are, above all else, lost. It wasn’t surprising to read that an English-speaking tourist in France thought the imposing “hotel de ville” in a small town was a hotel. Before she checked in, she used the washroom. While she was doing that, the workers closed the town hall for the weekend and locked her inside. She was freed a day or so later when she posted a note on the front door in French that, roughly translated, said ‘open the door’. Someone did open the door, the tourist checked into a hotel and now she knows the best way to find a hotel, in any language, is to hire a taxi.

California’s Big Jail Break

California is broke so they are thinking of allowing early release for 27,000 of the 170,000 people they have in prisons. Of course, some people are objecting that there will be too many criminals on the street all at once. Proponents says they are nonviolent criminals or criminals who have served most of their time. Bernie Madoff, who has 149 years and change left to spend in New York’s prison system, probably wouldn’t qualify even if he moved to California . . . unless he could come up with a way to swindle the federal government out of enough money to eliminate California’s debt. Bernie, I see opportunity here!