Must be the summer of class action lawsuits. Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases went up in several brilliant balls of sunrise earlier this month, and the surrounding community brought class actions against the facility, the City of Toronto, the Ontario government, and the Technical Standards and Safety Authority. Now hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Canadians have caught class action fever, apparently a symptom of the fear of contracting listeriosis, after Maple Leaf Foods screwed up big time by distributing listeria-tainted meat. Now, I know basically nothing about the legal side of class action lawsuits. Too lazy to do any research. But I know a little bit about the human side, the psychosocial side. I see a class action lawsuit as like the legal equivalent of a pack mentality, with the litigants experiencing deindividuation and embracing a primitive strength-in-numbers philosophy. Thus far the media has cooperated to confuse the shit out of anyone trying to determine an accurate count of confirmed deaths and illnesses from the listeriosis outbreak. Anywhere from five to fifteen people have died, to date, and maybe two or three times that have fallen ill. I suppose those numbers will continue to rise in the next month or two, with the disease’s 30-day average incubation period and all. But I’m guessing they won’t hit the hundreds, let alone thousands. So I find it a little hilarious, a little pathetic, that so many people feel entitled to jump on the class action bandwagon. Listeria hysteria! Oh the mental distress of eating a bologna sandwich and then turning on the news and learning about the listeriosis outbreak and the Maple Leaf meat recall and then wondering if your sandwich may have had a secret ingredient and wondering what symptoms to look for and then learning nausea is one and almost immediately feeling nauseous and dragging yourself to the phone and calling an ambulance and going to the hospital and arriving only to discover that the ER waiting room is filled with people who ate processed meat and now think they have listeriosis. Oh the lost wages from being too distressed to attend work. What’s that you say? Class action lawsuit? All I have to do is sign my name on it and I’ll be part of a big faceless gang led by lawyers going after hundreds of millions of dollars from Maple Leaf Foods? And I’ll get me some of that money? I’m all in!
For better or worse, the class action lawsuit is here to stay. Why not put it to good use? Bring a class action against the Catholic Church. The Pope. Seeking remuneration for lost wages of sin, mental distress (i.e., guilt), and centuries of boys and girls growing up learning very wrong things. The epic battle between lawyers and priests — two thousand years in the making. Watch Holy Water and Habeas Corpus live, only on C-Span.
28.8.08
14.8.08
If---when
“It should not have been there. Nobody did a damn thing. And now the damage is done.”
–quote from BBC News article, Toronto Recovering From Fireball
So. Asbestos I can tell, the air quality following Toronto’s propane explosion is a-okay. This proclamation by no means exonerates any actual threat. Indeed, I’m renowned in certain circles for flubbing air-quality predictions. Who knows what the inevitable if—when cycle will bring. Maybe five years’ hindsight will bring a tear to the eye. Or maybe glaucoma. In the meantime, I’m stayin. I’m finishin my coffee. All right, one more cigarette, said the asbestotic caretaker, wheezing his way up the stairs.
Among the wreckage, a relative absence of bodies. A godsend, if you’re so inclined. Take what you can get, I say.
I need your strength, she said, not your weakness. He wasn’t listening. Instead he was drifting from thought to thought, and most of them weren’t good. Horrorshows and worst-case scenarios.
“It’s been about forty-five and a half hours since the Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases propane repository blew skyhigh in the YouTube event of the year, Melvlem, and most of the evacuees have been allowed back to their homes. And boy I bet I can guess the first thought on their minds as they walked up their driveways: I hope we weren’t looted. Now I’m about five kilometres from Ground Zero, Melvlem, and whether or not there’s really asbestos in the air, lead and silica dust, as many people are speculating, well I really have no idea. But I can tell you this: I’m sneezing, my nose is running, my tummy hurts, I’m having chest pain, not to mention a splitting headache and a fever of a hundred and one and a ruthless case of the chills, I’m coughing up blood and pulmonary fibroids and black cancerdots, a psychopath with a machete is hunting me down, a classified spy plane is shooting at me, a lion is nipping at one heel, a grizzly bear at the other, an alien is trying to get out of my stomach, there's a poison dart sticking out of my neck, a knife in my gut, a spear through my side, a thorny crown on my head, my hands are tied behind my back, my bursitis is giving me fits, my gout acting up, my knees are killing me, and if I don’t run any faster this bullet behind me is going to slam into my thigh any second. Frankly at the moment I could care less about asbestos.”
We interrupt this bulletin to bring you a silly little poem:
Scissors are fun
With them you run
You used to have two eyes
Now you have one.
For Bob Leek and The Other One RIP
–quote from BBC News article, Toronto Recovering From Fireball
So. Asbestos I can tell, the air quality following Toronto’s propane explosion is a-okay. This proclamation by no means exonerates any actual threat. Indeed, I’m renowned in certain circles for flubbing air-quality predictions. Who knows what the inevitable if—when cycle will bring. Maybe five years’ hindsight will bring a tear to the eye. Or maybe glaucoma. In the meantime, I’m stayin. I’m finishin my coffee. All right, one more cigarette, said the asbestotic caretaker, wheezing his way up the stairs.
Among the wreckage, a relative absence of bodies. A godsend, if you’re so inclined. Take what you can get, I say.
I need your strength, she said, not your weakness. He wasn’t listening. Instead he was drifting from thought to thought, and most of them weren’t good. Horrorshows and worst-case scenarios.
“It’s been about forty-five and a half hours since the Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases propane repository blew skyhigh in the YouTube event of the year, Melvlem, and most of the evacuees have been allowed back to their homes. And boy I bet I can guess the first thought on their minds as they walked up their driveways: I hope we weren’t looted. Now I’m about five kilometres from Ground Zero, Melvlem, and whether or not there’s really asbestos in the air, lead and silica dust, as many people are speculating, well I really have no idea. But I can tell you this: I’m sneezing, my nose is running, my tummy hurts, I’m having chest pain, not to mention a splitting headache and a fever of a hundred and one and a ruthless case of the chills, I’m coughing up blood and pulmonary fibroids and black cancerdots, a psychopath with a machete is hunting me down, a classified spy plane is shooting at me, a lion is nipping at one heel, a grizzly bear at the other, an alien is trying to get out of my stomach, there's a poison dart sticking out of my neck, a knife in my gut, a spear through my side, a thorny crown on my head, my hands are tied behind my back, my bursitis is giving me fits, my gout acting up, my knees are killing me, and if I don’t run any faster this bullet behind me is going to slam into my thigh any second. Frankly at the moment I could care less about asbestos.”
We interrupt this bulletin to bring you a silly little poem:
Scissors are fun
With them you run
You used to have two eyes
Now you have one.
For Bob Leek and The Other One RIP
8.8.08
leaders of men
A bunch of European leaders sitting around having a secret summit, a picnic under a cluster of trees in a lush green meadow near the apex of an Alpine mountain. They’re eating cold chicken, ripping apart the carcasses and playfighting each other for the white meat. One of the guys — no women at this here summit — says, “You know, the other day I captured a whole bunch of ants and put them in a glass jar and watched them wander around in there, slower and slower, until they all died. Watching that sure was neat.”
“Heh heh,” everyone chuckles. A few add, “I did that when I was a kid.” A single cloud drifts across a sky so blue and vast and breathtaking that one of the picnickers idly contemplates imposing a sky tax.
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t think you can do that.”
“How would you enforce it?”
“Simple. Every day there’s a beautiful blue sky, collect a dollar from each taxpayer.”
The chicken is gone, lunch ends, greasy fingers wiped on groundsoil and groundsoil on pantlegs.
“So, you guys, what do you feel like doing this aft?”
Frowns and grunts, hems and haws.
“I dunno.”
“Me neither.”
“What about you?”
“Well actually I’ve been kind of thinking lately about — well it’s kind of silly actually.”
“Just say it!”
“Yeah! Out with it you master of suspense!”
“Oh all right. Outlawing freedom of sexual preference.”
Silence from the others.
Hopeful smile. “Heh heh. Silly, eh? Any of you guys ever have silly thoughts like uh, like that?”
“Brilliant!”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t think you can do that.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Don’t you think it would be nice to be remembered for something?”
A one-and-one-quarter-second pause; then, “I wouldn’t want to be remembered as the guy who outlawed freedom of sexual preference.”
A bunch of American leaders in cowboy hats sitting around a mahogany table in a secret meeting room with smouldering coils of cowpatty incense and high sooty ceilings.
“What do you wanna do today boys?”
“I dunno sir, what about you?”
Mr President chews his chocolate with mouth open and brown drool squirting from the upturned corners of his retard grin. He swallows, twice gulping like a retard kid trying hard to get that big bite of hotdog down. Then he looks up and to his right, the tip of his tongue protruding from pursed lips. Presently he snaps a look straight ahead, at no one.
“Let’s gather up a whole bunch of people,” he says, “and put them in a giant Texas-sized glass jar and watch them wander around in there, slower and slower, until they all die. Wow!” He shakes his head, grinning and panting like a mangy dog. “Watching that sure would be neat.”
“Heh heh,” everyone chuckles. A few add, “I did that when I was a kid.” A single cloud drifts across a sky so blue and vast and breathtaking that one of the picnickers idly contemplates imposing a sky tax.
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t think you can do that.”
“How would you enforce it?”
“Simple. Every day there’s a beautiful blue sky, collect a dollar from each taxpayer.”
The chicken is gone, lunch ends, greasy fingers wiped on groundsoil and groundsoil on pantlegs.
“So, you guys, what do you feel like doing this aft?”
Frowns and grunts, hems and haws.
“I dunno.”
“Me neither.”
“What about you?”
“Well actually I’ve been kind of thinking lately about — well it’s kind of silly actually.”
“Just say it!”
“Yeah! Out with it you master of suspense!”
“Oh all right. Outlawing freedom of sexual preference.”
Silence from the others.
Hopeful smile. “Heh heh. Silly, eh? Any of you guys ever have silly thoughts like uh, like that?”
“Brilliant!”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t think you can do that.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Don’t you think it would be nice to be remembered for something?”
A one-and-one-quarter-second pause; then, “I wouldn’t want to be remembered as the guy who outlawed freedom of sexual preference.”
A bunch of American leaders in cowboy hats sitting around a mahogany table in a secret meeting room with smouldering coils of cowpatty incense and high sooty ceilings.
“What do you wanna do today boys?”
“I dunno sir, what about you?”
Mr President chews his chocolate with mouth open and brown drool squirting from the upturned corners of his retard grin. He swallows, twice gulping like a retard kid trying hard to get that big bite of hotdog down. Then he looks up and to his right, the tip of his tongue protruding from pursed lips. Presently he snaps a look straight ahead, at no one.
“Let’s gather up a whole bunch of people,” he says, “and put them in a giant Texas-sized glass jar and watch them wander around in there, slower and slower, until they all die. Wow!” He shakes his head, grinning and panting like a mangy dog. “Watching that sure would be neat.”
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