Getting Lost In Your Own Museum

It is Thanksgiving today here in Canada, so I'm largely away, but I have an image blog. Enjoy!

Old Man Winter Is Having A Snooze

This is something of a follow up to a post from last year featuring the murder and prompt resurrection of Old Man Winter. Enjoy!

Old Man Winter Lingers; Spring Getting Impatient

Toronto (CP) Spring appears to be taking its time establishing itself in many places this year across the northern hemisphere. Snow and freezing rain in April have been commonly seen. Cooler than normal temperatures have been typical. Science notes that the unusual weather can be tied to climate change. On the other hand, climate change deniers, citing snow in April, are trying to use the phenomenon to advance their point of view. “See? That global swarming thing is a hoax!” Harry McCallister, president of the Harry McCallister Carbon Credits Are A Scam Society, bellowed in a press conference yesterday- if you want to call it a press conference. McCallister was actually yelling at passersby at the corner of Yonge and Bloor in downtown Toronto.

Environment Canada insists that spring is right around the corner- something they’ve been saying repeatedly for the last two weeks. David Phillips, the chief spokesman for the government agency, often given to appearing on or speaking to the press whenever there’s an unusual weather related story, is seen by some as the bane of their existence. Others see him as an affable but somewhat eccentric fellow. “It’s very simple,” Phillips told reporters. “The jet stream has been keeping colder temperatures further south, but it’s got to give out soon. I mean, we can’t just go from winter to summer in one day, right?”

Old Man Winter himself is not available for comment. The allegorical figure appearing in the form of an elderly but vigorous man (think Gandalf in Lord of the Rings) is napping as opposed to leaving. Last year he was brutally murdered by the deranged and now incarcerated Kansas City loon Edgar Knickerbocker, and yet recovered quite nicely to come back to life. “You can’t kill a season,” Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology at Harvard, told reporters. “First, they’re allegorical. Second, they’re immortal. Third, who referred you to me?”

And yet Old Man Winter has been found napping on the Canadian Prairies, near the community of Russell, in western Manitoba. He’s sitting in a recliner, hands over his stomach, snoozing away, his appearance matching the late Jerry Garcia. Standing nearby, a young woman keeps watch, arms crossed, one foot tapping the ground the only sign of impatience. Answering to the name Spring, the woman has been occasionally clearing her throat or saying, “ahem.” All while Old Man Winter has continued to snooze. Reporters who have approached her to ask questions have received a gentle reply. “I’m his replacement. I was supposed to get started three weeks ago, but he refuses to wake up. Until he leaves, I can’t get going. Now it could just be a simple matter of giving him a cuff upside the head or yelling in his ear, but really, I’m too polite for that.”

Whether or not Spring and Old Man Winter actually are the seasons in human form, or merely two escaped mental patients who think they are, is another matter. What is certain is that Old Man Winter isn’t waking up. And if we are to take the word of Spring, that season can’t begin until its predecessor leaves. Which means everything about spring is going to be that much later- spring flowers, spring allergies, Irish Spring soap… well, maybe not that last one. Nonetheless, there are complaints from many people about the late spring.

“It’s like this, you see,” Gerald Keen, a member of the Canadian Snowbirds Association, said from his home in central Ontario this week, where he is quite irritated by the cool weather. He dismissively pointed to the golf course that neighbours his property, a course that remains closed, snow residue still to be seen on the grass. “We bought this place specifically because it’s right there by the golf course! My wife and I retired, and we didn’t want to put up with cold weather and not being able to golf. Well, that latter part is me, because I love golfing, and my wife finds it boring. I don’t know why, I mean, what’s wrong with golf? But there we were, living our entire working lives in Canada where it snows and snows and snows and closes up the golf course for months on end. Can you appreciate just how much a guy like me might miss golfing? Oh, golf, I love you so much…”

Keen cradled his putter as if it was the most important thing in the world to him. Which it might well have been. Then he carried on. “So when we retired, we decided to be snowbirds! We’ve got this place in the summer so I can golf twelve hours a day, and then we go down to Florida for the winter starting in October and coming back in April, so I can golf twelve hours a day. Plus whatever Myrtle does with her time… I don’t know, I’m not really paying attention. What’s important here is… I’m living the dream! And when I get back here for the season, I expect that I’ll be able to get out on the course and start playing. And here we are! They’re still closed over there! It’s not fair! I’m missing out on days of golf! I could have stayed another couple of weeks in Florida!”

The last word belongs to Edgar Knickerbocker, another retiree spending time in less cushy surroundings than next to a golf course. A current resident of Prairie Ridge Psychiatric Hospital in the Kansas City area, Knickerbocker infamously shot Old Man Winter in the chest in Minneapolis during the winter of 2017. He was arrested after Old Man Winter rebooted himself and identified his shooter. The winter hating old codger has been locked up and under strict observation ever since. The man behind the former Facebook page Winter Must Die, And Die Horribly In The Most Agonizing Way, a page that has since been removed from the social network, he looks decidedly deranged these days. This reporter had a chance to sit down with him earlier this week at the facility, where Knickerbocker is confined to padded rooms when he doesn’t have visitors, and spends most of his time in straitjackets, heavily medicated.

“I had that goddamned season dead to rights!” Knickerbocker yelled, his eyes suggesting the man was unhinged and that the doctors might consider upping his meds. “Ten slugs right in the chest! I sent Old Man Winter straight to hell where he belongs! And what do I get for it? Indefinite detention in a place full of crazy people! Do I look crazy to you?” He looked off to the right, where no one was standing. “Shut up! I wasn’t talking to you!”

Then he returned his attention to this reporter. “Now I’ve figured it out. There’s one way and one way only to kill Old Man Winter. You’ve got to give him some of his own medicine. You’ve got to stab him in the heart with an icicle.” The orderlies started hustling the deranged old coot out. “Wait! Stop! Why won’t anyone listen to me? Winter has to die! You’ve got to kill it!”

In the opinion of this reporter, Edgar Knickerbocker needs his sedatives increased by a factor of ten.

Every Once In Awhile We Have To Sacrifice A Caddy To Keep The Gators Happy



What really happened to Jack Nicklaus



"It took me seventeen years to get three thousand hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course." ~ Hank Aaron

"Baseball reveals character; golf exposes it." ~ Ernie Banks

"The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody put a flagstick on top." ~ Pete Dye

"Golf is a game in which you yell fore.... shoot six, and write down five." ~ Paul Harvey

"I have a tip that can take five strokes off anyone's golf game. It is called an eraser." ~ Arnold Palmer

Ah, the accursed game of golf. You'll note that I don't call it a sport. Not with guys dressed like that. And not considering that your typical golfer tends to be older guys sporting a beer gut, whose sole athletic part in the activity is swinging a club at the ball, before getting into that golf cart and going to the next hole (their heart just won't let them walk that far, their knees ache, and they've got a cigar to smoke, you know...). So no, golf does not qualify as a real sport. And yet, for some inexpicable reason, millions of people play it.

Even the Grim Reaper likes to play from time to time. Doesn't he have enough to do?

This is the time of year, of course, when like the birds flying south to migrate, some of the golfers in our northern reaches are busy. They're playing a few final rounds on the links, getting in as much as they can. Because soon it'll be time for them to drive south, to warmer climates, and spend the whole winter playing golf. It's not enough that they're out on the golf courses sixteen hours a day up here; they feel compelled to spend months in the heat of Florida, the Gulf Coast, and Arizona (at least the North American variety of homo golfus fanaticus) playing their favourite pastime all winter long.

They'd just better mind the local wildlife. Gators find stray golfers a tasty meal. Lots of fat and meat on them, you see, usually basted in alcohol, which leaves a unique taste to the meal.

Up here in summer, the golfers still have to mind the wildlife....

When they're not taking advice from their caddies, of course...

I'm not a fan of the game. I find it tedious, to say the least, and I strenuously object to how much land is wasted on these sprawling courses. No other sport (er, activity, since I've already conclusively established that golf is not a sport) takes up this amount of room. I don't understand its appeal. I really don't get why it pulls in the television ratings it does. Let's face it. As boring as golf is, watching it on television is even more so.

My uncle has a brother (or brother-in-law; I've never clarified which one it is), who's obsessed with the game. That little migration scenario I mentioned above? That's him, by the way. He and his wife live in a retirement community linked to a golf course in Ontario's cottage country. All summer long, he's out early in the morning, on the golf course, playing the game for hours on end. He'll come home at the end of the day, thinking only about the next day's playing. His wife, like so many other golfer spouses, is in effect, a golf widow. At least golf widows know where their spouse is, out on the course. As opposed to being in a strip club stuffing fifty dollar bills in the g-string of a stripper named Amber.

This time of year, with the leaves changing colour, he's no doubt playing his last few days of golf, and getting ready for the drive south to spend the next few months. They've been doing it for years now, wintering in the southern states, so he can keep playing golf.

I've already established it's not a sport. And it's not an activity either, really. It's a full blown obsession.

For a good number of years, the golf world has been centered on one player. The not so mighty (anymore) Tiger Woods. He played the game, seemed to have the world at his fingertips (at least the world that takes this idiocy seriously). And he made a lot of money. Then things started going wrong.

Tiger was indulging his fondness for women who weren't his wife, chasing every skirt in sight. In the words of his chief sponsor, he was "just doing it." And of course, as so often happens in these cases, the wife found out. Elin wasn't happy.

These days Tiger's game is gone. His marriage fell apart under all of the strain. He's routinely fallen behind in competition. It seems the life has been drained right out of him.

These days, Tiger has to play where he can, even during a military engagement.

Tiger takes out his hostility on the photographer, while Cigar Guy lurks nearby

What is it about golf that draws the golfers in? Are they unhappy at home? Are they deluded? Do they like screaming at little white balls and clubhouse caddies? Do they enjoy lying as they write down their scores?

Ouch!

Mind the gators, lads.

Mark Twain said it best: golf is a good walk wasted.

If you're marrying a fanatic golfer, don't say you weren't warned. Get used to doing a lot of stuff on your own. Yes, you thought you could put up with it, but the game often means more to your spouse then you do. I warned you, but would you listen? No!

And if you're a golfer (why? I ask you again, why?), one piece of advice: really... mind the bear. He doesn't like golfers either. It just shows that he has very good taste.