Cats, Comics, and Car-Crashin' Cops

Good evening, gentle readers. I have been conspicuous in my absense. My apologies.

Shortly after my last post here, I got a call from the Humane Society; they had found my missing cat, Maceo, but in the month that he'd been missing he'd suffered a tail pull so severe that the spinal damage left him incapable of bladder functions and largely unable to use his hind legs. I kept him in my room for a couple of days on the advice that he might show some improvement, but ultimately I had to have him put down on Friday.

You can imagine the mood I've been in about that.

I went to the Manitoba Comic Convention on Saturday, if only to cheer myself up a bit; I ran into some people I hadn't seen in a while and I purchased a few things of interest, one or two in particular that I'll definitely want to be posting about here when I'm feeling more up to it.

Some things, however, demand immediate attention. To the news!

You've seen it, I've seen it, we're all well familiar with it by now -- Harvey-Zenk will serve no jail time, instead facing the harsh penalties of (oh dear) a nightly curfew and community service work.

Yes, seriously. Community service work. Because obviously everything went so well the last time he was serving the community.

Now, many people have expressed indignation and outrage in the aftermath of this case, railing for some sort of necessary change to result -- but you and I both know that substantive change never actually happens in Manitoba. So when I read the news, I like to think more productively -- and by that, I mean I try instead to think of ways I can use our province's significant deficiencies to my advantage.

So, in keeping up with the local news, I now know exactly what to do if I ever hate somebody enough to want them dead -- just bribe or befriend a cop, get him good and plastered, and have him kill them with his car. It's foolproof! And a contact in East St. Paul told me that the deepseated police corruption and injustice have been the lay of the land out there for years (and he made a point of recalling examples as he passed this along) -- so nobody would even bat an eye about it!

But what if, instead of a murder, I need a property crime or a nonlethal violent assault committed? Well! If that's what I'm in the market for, I could easily locate and pay some underage gang members to do it for me -- and if I paid them extra for their silence, neither I nor they would ever face any serious consequences! Brilliant!

But, wait! What if, hypothetically and presumably by accident, you kill somebody yourself? No problem! There's a specified field out northwest of the city where everybody dumps corpses; people will assume the body you left there was some prostitute, the death will be chalked up to a serial killer, and you can rest easy knowing that the murder will never actually be solved!

(To readers from outside the province, and I know there are plenty of you: this is normally where I would put a conciliatory message indicating my facetiousness, and I'd like to, but I'm afraid I'm not actually kidding about any of the above. Winnipeg's still a lovely place, though! We have a new arena! And a really ugly new bridge! So please come and visit us before we're all dead.)

Tonight is Halloween, of course, and I love a good Pagan holiday as much as the next candy-chomping cynic. But I don't need ghost stories or scary movies to get my spook on! I live in Winnipeg!

Our Provincial Government can't get cropburning right, our Mayoral Office can't get traffic lights or Daylight Savings Time right, and our police forces actually make us feel less safe -- Happy Halloween, everybody!