Checkered Lounge Pants

My beloved Val and I took the customary 90-minute drive today to the Rez (Delaware First Nation) in Maroviantown to stock up on cigs for Val. It seems like only a few weeks since I made the last run. I took Joe’s son, Simon, with me last trip. I told him we were going to tour the tepees when we got to the Rez. Needless to say I was spinning a yarn to rev up his imagination for the ride, He was bummed when we got there and he saw the driveways filled with Hummers and Harleys instead of the stereotypical images I had yarned for him. I soothed his youthful imagination with a gift of a couple scratch tickets from the store(here he sits as we plan and map the best trail home). HEY…the Ontario Indigenous Nations do pretty good, trapping and hunting smokers and gamblers with $10 to $20 bags of smokes (200 in a bag). Considering a tariff carton is some $80 under the feds, the market is better than historically traditional sustainability for the Rez, and for smokers, its not a bad deal either.

Krystle's getting married next month. Going home for the wedding. Yup, going home. Its the first wedding of the Y generation of our clan. Krissie is my niece. Traditions have changes so much from us boomer's. I was the oldest sibling and I got married first and had the first kids.......lets see, Krystle is the second born, daughter of the third son in the lineage from my generation. What does that tell me?? That the Y boys are milking the cow for free. Anyhow, Cams birthday on Sunday. That would be the 28th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helen's. I sent him a singing card. I thought it appropriate, a graphic of a neo-audiophile settled in a recliner awaiting the assault of a wall of monitored and speaker equipped tunes accompanied by the melody of "Play that Funky Music". I inserted a Blockbuster gift card for two new releases of his choice. He will appreciate that more than treasures immeasurable. Grammy sent him a card depicting a neolithic humanoid a

So, what is the price of gas in your neighbourhood today? I drove by the local gas bar (pictured facsimile) that borders the local dealers cartel (price fixing at its best) and it was $1.18. I slowed to pull in, but the pump area was a mirror image of the chaotic streets of Italy and Greece from my backpacking days of the 1970s. It had all the ingredients of the bumper cars in the summer fairs. I decided to drive by, when; I noticed the cabby’s from the neighbouring town also lined up for fuel. Well, that was a signal or omen I could not ignore. Speaking of high prices, if you have been paying any attention at all this week, you will have undoubtedly heard about raising prices in rice, milk, wheat, Soya and corn. OMG, I used to reel in revulsion at the thought of the marketeering of water. But the agri industrialist price fixers have taken a page from the petroleum marketeering hogs. The media reported that the rice producing countries were copying the neoglobal industrialist business