EDMONTON EXISTENTIAL

“Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign”

Clutter is an undefined crime, it’s not in the books. The flaw of indifference manifested and alluded to in sleek, glossy lifestyle and civic bylaws, that grey area between “Alice’s Restaurant” dumping and hoarding. Clutter thrives in cyberspace, replicating like a virus. It rides the airwaves. It is the embarrassing and involuntary white noise of society assaulting you out on the street. It honks, it beeps, it pings, it blinks, it winks, it redirects traffic, it blocks traffic, it parks on the sidewalk. John Updike wrote “dirt is matter out of place.” Clutter is stuff out of place. Lots of it. It hurts my eyes and ears and tries my patience. Clutter is entropy.

“Zere vill be order! Und ze order vill be enforced!” Who knew I was a closet fascist except for Friday night cosplay. But seriously wokes …

Lawn signs are a particularly irksome bugbear of mine. They appear like dandelions in Edmonton. Everywhere. Coroplast is the commercial name of a fluted plastic product – imagine a piece of cardboard that may or may not breakdown in landfill until sometime late next century. Durable. Like quality plywood it ships in 4’x8’ sheets, two sides good. The most efficient trim size for a stand out lawn sign from an efficient mass production standpoint is 24”x18,” no bleed. A proper sign comes complete with a rugby goalpost wire stand: ram it up and jam it down.

Placing lawn signs is a classic party promotional procedure during an election campaign. Anecdotal evidence suggests they create word-of-mouth buzz or a form of it. Should there be enough of a particular partisan colour on a street or in a neighbourhood, an undecided voter may opt to join the herd. (God knows we’re all good at that.) The other good thing about election signs is that parties are obligated to get their clutter off people’s lawns in a timely manner once the polls have closed. Alas, those regulations don’t apply to causes.

Alberta is United Conservative in all her majesty. Danielle Smith, our glib and shrill premier, tends to float illiberal and ill-considered future policy initiatives with one of two preferred prefaces: “I have heard …” or “People tell me …” Each public musing fertilizes a new crop of plastic dandelions. For the sake of further provincial autonomy, should Alberta withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan? HANDS OFF OUR CPP! The latest blight reads FOREVER CANADIAN. That sentiment may remain true for weeks to come even though Smith’s inane, expensive and failed exercise in direct democracy wrapped over a week ago.

Messages of admonishment and dissent up and down my street are difficult to ignore and difficult to dispute. Neighbourhood redevelopment begs the application of the Universal Law of Wham!: “If you’re gonna do it, do it right, now!” Proper urban planning is not in the Canadian Criminal Code, but running over children at play at high speed is. Ones advocating literacy and proper funding for all levels, aspects and forms of education demand a definitive Animal House statement: KNOWLEDGE IS GOOD. Book banning bad. And maybe Alberta’s healthcare system requires a lot more funding and planning, and more diligent oversight than four health ministers and an active RCMP probe into procurement shenanigans including alleged bribery and money laundering can provide. Curiously, Smith, the Banshee of Invermectin, dislikes the presence of federal police in her province. She’s been told and she has heard that Albertans would prefer their own provincial police force. The deflective signs are not positive.

Climate change, conservation and ecology: inarguably short- and long-term concerns. Possibly crises. Alarms printed on industrial plastic. What is irony if you mean well? Anyway, there must be a landfill nearby.

Before too long the mass-produced outrage, that deeply personal statement upon installation, fades like sun-bleached ink. The messages no longer register; illegible clutter as meaningless eyesores. Lawns as Coroplast sties. Elected ineptitude and the 24-hour news cycle always ensure there’s room for at least one or two more weeds of complaint.

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site  www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.

SAINTS PRESERVE US

That Time of the Month

A calendar year is incomplete without its dates of celebration and awareness. National Coffee Day recently passed like a diuretic. There are special days for doughnuts, hot dogs and pizza. Activists, advocates and crusaders usually designate a week to their causes. Disease-prone organs like lungs, hearts and kidneys warrant a month – provided they can hold out that long. There’s always something there to remind you of your diet, your desires and your death. Happens all the time.

What to make of 19 October, referendum day here in Alberta? A cynic might presume the United Conservative government is promoting an infection in the province’s body politic. Could be a one-off or the start of something sickly cyclical? There are ten questions in the pop quiz. Almost all of them are moot as they concern federal powers which are above and beyond the constitutional jurisdictions of Canada’s provinces and territories. A few of them are alarmingly xenophobic. The tenth is something of a canary in a coalmine conundrum, sort of a backed-off barroom argument. Should Alberta stage another, separate referendum on secession? The tenth question’s potential follow-up question, the formal, finicky fine print, is whether or not Canada’s wealthiest province should begin the begin, formally unmoor itself (landlocked as it is) from the Canadian federation.

The questions read in conjunction with the government’s 12-page self-cover guide are designed to elicit the UCP’s desired responses. I’m reminded of an idiotic customer satisfaction survey: “Would you prefer to fly WestJet to your Los Cabos vacation getaway or walk?” Not a single one of the questions constituted a plank in the UCP’s successful 2023 re-election campaign. Its platform focused on tax cuts which never came to pass. I view this immanent exercise in direct democracy as Premier Danielle Smith’s Pontius Pilate play. The secession question in particular allows her to wash her hands of her own oscillating ineptitude and pin the blame on the people. Cracked leadership as parrot.

Smith, a glib erstwhile pundit who acquires party membership cards like collectibles, is a political opportunist of the crassest sort. She will suck up to der Trumpenfuhrer or cock an earnest ear to an outlandish conspiracy theory. Whatever it takes; needs must. The prize of power took some machinations and keeping it means doubling down with pandering plausible denial.

In those halcyon days when kids could find summer jobs that paid competitive wages, two friends of mine drove forklifts. JB 007, no pinball wizard, tilted a pallet of Kraft salad dressing. The clean up took days. Pat the Bowie Freak impaled a chesterfield on behalf of Sears. I picture UCP leader Smith driving a forklift designed by multiple committees through a vast ideological warehouse: UCP as UPCs, barcodes ranging from pink Tories to the illiberal right with a long dark aisle of hacksaw-wielding separatists. A lot of inventory, some of it not shelf-stable.

Alberta’s separatists are a fascinating breed. The fifth column embedded in the UCP is not sectarian. It could be race-based, but not in the sense of a distinct nation of people seeking sovereignty. No, they’re a bit too white bread for that. No, imagine a nasty break up. And just for fun, imagine a same sex break up, non-binary could very well apply down the road. An aggrieved party in a snit, bilious with festering resentments of perceived slights and grimly determined to depart with every tangible asset and then some. And by God, the severing will be like Amazon Prime! Speedy delivery at no charge! This breed of Albertan should not be mistaken for a single SKU. Some dream of an awkwardly situated independent country while others fantasize of annexation by the United States provided the Grand Old Party remains in power forever south of 49; Woke 2.0 won’t fly off the shelves.

“Et tu, Brute?” Smith has been emphatic: There will not be an eleventh question on her watch. The next provincial election is a hard date: 18 October 2027. She may wish to table any plans for celebrating another term. The UCP, young as it may be, is already notorious for its backroom daggers; Smith herself is no novice. The referendum is an inadvertent reckoning for the party too. The UCP must come clean about its true mission and that implies one faction or another is delisted in the warehouse. The party won’t disintegrate, but it will fracture, there will be shards. Alberta’s next government will be a minority. The vote will lay bare the province’s urban-rural dynamic.

Elections Alberta is the independent body that oversees our rituals of democracy. The Smith government has slashed its budget while dictating any and all electoral ballots be counted by hand. Nobody expected a ten-question referendum comprised of ten separate ballots. Maybe there was a more efficient way to waste money and time? A single sheet? Electronic tabulation? A short-staffed Elections Alberta will be under scrutiny on referendum day. Social media is rife with disinformation from immediate interested fringe parties and foreign bad actors. There will be complaints and disputes. All unintended and unforeseen consequences are on Premier Smith and her fifth column cabinet members.  

Dispatches from the Crooked 9 is your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of everything meaningless. No AI and little intelligence of any sort since 2013! Visit my companion site www.megeoff.com to buy my last couple of books. You can also listen to songs I’ve co-written with The Muster Point Project before scooting over to its YouTube channel.