Joe Campbell
Written on 27 Jan, 2012 at 8:06 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell “Yes,” Bidwell said, “I want to take part in the anti-poverty campaign.”
“Excellent,” the chairman replied. “We’re meeting here for the next several days to renew our mandate. If you’re interested, we’ve got openings for the right sort of people.” Hoping he was the right sort of person, Bidwell agreed to an interview.
“Join me for dinner at my hotel,” the chairman said.
To show that he was in solidarity with the poor, ... (Continue reading)
Written on 19 Dec, 2011 at 7:26 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell When I was growing up, my teachers insisted that I strive for excellence. So did my parents. Both neglected to instruct me about the superiority of equality. If I failed a math test, there was no amnesty in pleading that everyone else failed it, too. That’s why I gasped on learning about the travails of a retired provincial premier with a serious, progressive illness. It took two years, with ... (Continue reading)
Written on 16 Nov, 2011 at 11:22 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell “You weren’t loud enough,” Molder said. “You should have been on your feet yelling like the rest of us.”
“The quarterback was having a hard time making himself heard,” Bimson replied. “I didn’t want to add to his difficulties.”
“That’s what the home team fans are for.”
“We’re supposed to drown out the quarterback whenever the visitors have the ball?”
“Absolutely,” Molder said. “When the home team fans aren’t loud enough to disrupt the ... (Continue reading)
Written on 28 Oct, 2011 at 7:49 in
Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ducks.
Ducks, like us, are either male or female. They also, like us, bear a label that, in some contexts, refers to one sex, but in others, to both. At least this is so in English. Just as man can refer to males alone, duck can refer to females alone. But, like man, duck can also refer to males and females.
Consequently, it is linguistically ... (Continue reading)
Written on 29 Sep, 2011 at 10:27 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell Bimsom was so splendidly attired that at first glance Molder failed to recognize him. The designer duds, gold chain, silver tiepin and diamond studded ring looked as out of place on Bimsom as a diaper on a dog. “You’re going to a masquerade party,” Molder said, when he realized that the apparition was indeed his old friend.
“I’m going to a fat-cat walk,” Bimsom said. “The fat cats are walking in ... (Continue reading)
Written on 25 Aug, 2011 at 10:30 in
Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell I never could get the hang of watching paint dry. The same goes for watching grass grow. I’m no good at that either. Mind you, I’ve only watched them directly. I haven’t tried it indirectly through web cameras linked to my computer. Maybe web camera viewing makes static images dynamic. You know, the way text messaging makes trivial remarks important.
This possibility, I suspect, motivated my municipal masters to focus web ... (Continue reading)
Written on 25 Jul, 2011 at 8:01 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell Politics is indeed a blood sport. Look what happened to the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois in the recent federal election. The leaders were unseated and the parties beheaded. But the amputation didn’t end there. Some snouts were cut off from the public trough, and if it were not for gold plated pensions, many more would have suffered a similar fate.
Oh, I know that phrases like blood sport, snout in the trough, and gold plated pensions are clichés. But clichés are ... (Continue reading)
Written on 20 Jun, 2011 at 8:38 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell “I go to jazz festivals every chance I get,” Bimson said. “They’re really inclusive. At the last one I attended the organizers included rock, hip hop, rhythm and blues, country, folk, Latin, reggae and klesmer.”
“That’s inclusive, all right,” Molder said.
“You bet it is,” said Bimson, “why, they even included jazz.”
“Isn’t that carrying inclusiveness too far?”
“Only if you don’t carry tolerance far enough,” Bimson replied.
“But jazz doesn’t belong with the other ... (Continue reading)
Written on 26 May, 2011 at 14:03 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
It’s no use. I can’t keep up with postmodern thought. Try as I may, I’m not able to get my mind around the idea that we make our own truth. The lyrics of too many popular love songs won’t let me. No matter when they’re written, they reveal unchanging truths, the kind we discover, not the kind we make up. You might say that the fundamental things apply as time ... (Continue reading)
Written on 11 Apr, 2011 at 19:21 in
Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
Ecologists keep warning us about greenhouse gases and the changes in climate they allegedly cause. There is much to fear, they say, from global warming.
Well, I’ve just learned that one of the chief greenhouse gases is nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is laughing gas. What is there to fear from global laughing? Instead of climate change, ecologists should focus on mood change.
Nitrous oxide reached mood-changing atmospheric levels in the early 1990s. ... (Continue reading)
Written on 26 Mar, 2011 at 17:17 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
It’s awe inspiring how far the pharmaceutical industry has come during my lifetime. When I was growing up, the only pills we had in our medicine cabinet were aspirin tablets.
Now, there are pills for practically every ailment and you get an order of side effects at no extra charge. My financial advisor thinks I should invest in pharmaceuticals. I don’t. I think I should invest in side effects. They’re more ... (Continue reading)
Written on 22 Feb, 2011 at 7:18 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
Dingwall was telling me about a friend who had a heart attack. “Fortunately,” he said, “it occurred in a cab and the doctor who was driving stabilized him and took him to the hospital.”
“The cab driver was a doctor?”
“An immigrant who isn’t licensed to practice here.”
“We’re short of doctors,” I said.
“I know,” Dingwall replied, “but if we licensed all the immigrant doctors, we’d be short of cab drivers.” He went ... (Continue reading)
Written on 22 Jan, 2011 at 11:11 in
Announcements, Columnist, Features, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
I thought I knew what pro-choice means. I guess I don’t. In fact I have difficulty with most pro-choice language. Take sex-selective abortion. It’s about expectant couples who prefer sons to daughters and use ultrasound to find out what they’re going to have. If it’s a daughter, they abort her.
When I learned that pro-choicers are against sex-selective abortion, I was really puzzled. I always thought ‘pro’ meant ‘for’. I never ... (Continue reading)
Written on 8 Dec, 2010 at 13:43 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell
Take care if you aspire to be a criminal. A life of crime can be bleak and unrewarding, unless you go to jail. As long as you’re on the run, you have few options. Once you’re incarcerated, you have more than you can pursue. Like most criminals, however, you may never make it to jail.
If you do, opportunities abound. Among other pursuits, you can earn a university degree, learn a ... (Continue reading)
Written on 10 Sep, 2010 at 9:43 in
Columnist, Joe Campbell | Author:
Joe Campbell If I had a second chance at life, I think I’d come back as a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, whether private or public, seldom die. I could live with that.
Consider the March of Dimes. It was set up to raise money for the fight against polio. Well, in the 1950s, Dr. Jonas Salk figured out how to get rid of polio, and it’s virtually extinct. But no one has figured out how to get rid of the March of Dimes, and it’s ... (Continue reading)
