My last over the fence conversation ended with a nasty declaration of “punks” and it was spoken with no lack of emphasis. My neighbour was referring to the authors of some graffiti she’d seen on the drive home. “Why would they do that?” In her mind it was an unerasable scar, an affront, the first step on a slippery slope to de-civilization. She was miffed.

My own thoughts are a little more tempered and mostly recollected. Coming out of Montreal on the southbound Amtrak in the seventies: the trackside graffiti alone were entertainment for hours. Or how about that afternoon at the old GCTC on Sunnyside, sprucing up the walls, covering a declaration in bright red and yellow spray paint that “Jeremy Rules…Long Live Jeremy.” These recollections seemed to point more to pained authorship than criminal mischief, and that mystery and profundity may be locked in every aerosol can. There is an urge all right and it is likely youthful; it is texting in very large and public fonts.

“Urge?” Instinct might be closer to the centre of the target. Every time I look at the cacophonous and over-subscribed boards of an NHL rink I am reminded how strong the will is. It is the corporate need to be recognized and claim the space. And we allow it, practically demand it. It is not advertising. I don’t watch the game and have a sudden desire to leave and make a quick bank deposit or buy a doughnut. It is graffiti, paid for by the square inch and consumed by the square mile.

There has to be a sequence on the genome that demands such displays. They have been around forever. Stonehenge a mystery? Not really. What were those large stones displaying when the priests and locals met for a little ritualistic foreplay and pagan worship? The paints and pigments have long worn off but I can see the message as clearly as an electronic billboard: “ochluk…the best in elk horn knives.” The next year it would have been simply “ochluk.” Then the exclamatory “och,” which has survived. There it is.

So I say give them a space. Give them some raw concrete or the side of a building. Do the Orleans Berlin wall. Give them the yourspace fence. Let it out. Remember, Jeremy rules.

T.J. Snodgrass

Elections are much like chinese food, you have just finished eating and you are full of it.

But then you see the fool that was elected, like our federal MP, then you cannot wait to engage again in an election.

You then get to eat your fortune cookie, and you read your fortune “…may we live in interesting times”

Aah summer! Unlike some red-green climate change doomsayers I for one look forward to a warmer climate, exotic plants and animals and an ocean beach that only takes me an hour to get to on a Sunday afternoon in March. And then there are the secondary benefits.

There is nothing quite as inspiring to the male “drive” than the flip-flop clad red toe-nail painted feet of a beautiful woman on a beach by the ocean…or anywhere for that matter. I say let’s herald in the coming warming trend and spew out those Green House Gas emissions into the atmosphere. Never mind the increase in medicare cost caused by more people with respiratory problems coming to the emergency wards. With summer starting in April and ending in October, and I do mean summer not Spring and Fall…summer, and the horizon festooned with red toe-nail, flip-flop wearing lovelies the more SUV’s we buy the quicker we’ll get to that ocean-beach playground, probably sooner than the city of Ottawa and its amalgamates will build an LRT system.

But hold on, we don’t have to wait for the flip-flops and hotter air. After all this is Ottawa and these days there is no greater concentration of GHGs than in the Nation’s Capital. And some people don’t think that CO2 emissions are caused by human activity! Nowhere, I might, add, is this warming trend more concentarted than in Ottawa-Orléans, and no one wears the flip-flip, sans the red toe-nail polish - thankfully, better than our own M.P. Royal Galipeau.

So how is it that Monsieur Galipeau wears a flip-flop so well? In a recent public information pamphlet M. Galipeau says that he will not bring jobs to Ottawa-Orléans because those jobs are simply a way of “…awarding federal jobs for political reasons either to reward a faithful, federal riding or to buy votes in a coveted riding.” This is of course consistent with his insistence that if people want jobs in Ottawa-Orléans they “…should vote Liberal”. Oddly he may actually get his wish. But what is really odd is that in the same pamphlet M. Galipeau says he will promise “new Jobs” from the “New Economy”. Then he has the temerity to say that “Steeling jobs from other Canadians to move them to a coveted riding used to be in vogue, but is unfair and outdated.” Indeed, unless you’re a Conservative. Flip-flop!

Well M. Galipeau, perhaps you should tell this to your boss Mr. Harper. How happy would the boss man be with his straw boss if he knew you would suggest to him that the Portrait Gallery was stolen from Ottawa and moved to Calgary? I think the RCMP should start an investigation right around the middle of the next election about allegations of the theft of art from the National Capital.

And then there is the cape crusader’s side kick, that boy wonder of the “New Government of Canada” Pierre Poilievre, born in Calgary Alberta by the way, who stole the RCMP from Ottawa-Orléans to put it in his west-end riding of Nepean - Carleton “Holy Liberal License Stephen!”. Flip-flop!

And finally M. Galipeau seems to think anytime jobs are created they are somehow allocated according to some pre-established criteria. I think he will find, if he can keep staff long enough to do the research for him, that there is a kind of economic criteria that the conservatives use to justify their “thefts”. It’s called neo-classical economics and it suggests than under the stupid theory of marginal utility and the sterile calculus of neo-con economics it makes perfect sense to steal because it makes economic sense. Or wait! Maybe the conservatives are just so vengeful that they felt it necessary to do the eye-for-an-eye thing and offset Jean Chretian’s Shawinigan art gallery nonsense in 2003. However, we should be reminded that that was not a permanent gallery and does not own it’s own collection like the portrait gallery now in Calgary. Anyone out there who thinks that jobs will accrue for Calgarians raise your hands. Do Calgarians need more jobs? Now everyone that thinks so raise your hands. I thought so! Is this not political favoritism? Flip-flop!

You see M. Galipeau ensuring economic development for Ottawa-Orléans is a part of the reason we elected you and apparently according to your pamphlet you seem to understand this.. You say you have new federal jobs for Ottawa-Orléans? M. Galipeau I know you have some inkling of what a zero sum game is therefore it strikes me as contradictory or at least flip-flopish to suggested that any jobs accruing to our riding will somehow not impact other ridings in Ottawa or Canada for that matter. Better check with the boss on that one. Or perhaps you are going to personally train people to give tours of the House of Commons since by now you must have a thorough knowledge of the highlights from the ahem resources you “borrowed”. But perhaps that would take you away from your more important responsibilities, like being substitute speaker. This, in fact has no doubt been a priority for you, witness the pride with which you wear its garbs in public outside the House of Commons. Wow! Can you do that or did you buy your own for effect? Unlike the priority of bringing new jobs to our area, one which you seem to have suddenly discovered, your tenure as M.P. has been an unmitigated promotion of your own political careerism. Flip-flop…well done!

M. Galipeau stop contributing to Climate Change. And if you want to be seen wearing flip-flops please make them the foot wearing kind, sans the painted red toe-nails…please!