Essays in Idleness

Ottawans should be aware that they may buy on the Internet horns that provide the same volume and timbre of sound that a giant truck rig can produce, when it is advising lesser vehicles to get out of its way. And there are enterprising foreign companies that can supply louder.

The rule is: honk for ten minutes, every half hour.

There is a special alarm to be used when trucks are backing up, and this could be imitated, too. I haven’t seen such a thing advertised, for popular use, however; so will save the idea for some day when I need a few million dollars. No doubt there are government subsidies that will pay my “research and development” costs, if I hire staff who are exclusively Diverse, Inclusive, and Equilateral.

Hell, we could do the front horns immediately, in Parkdale, except they would be drowned out by other vehicular and industrial noise in the district, to which Parkdelians have become accustomed.

When I was in hospital last year, I realized that only the nurses could not hear the multiple alarm buzzers sounding constantly through the corridors, and in all wards. The nurses had “tuned out” this very painful noise, to the extent of complete indifference to it. Only their patients were dreadfully exposed, at all hours of the day, through the time until they had also adapted. At night, when many had passed out from exhaustion, and ceased calling for a nurse, there was relative peace. The nurses had to wake their customers on purpose.

Loss of brain function is completely silent, though.

I sympathize with the auditors of truck horns, through the middle of Ottawa, many of whom are people I have met, and some were sensitive musicians and choristers. It must be torture for them, as it is for most who are subjected to the modern, progressive world; and if the clamour continues for more than two years I can imagine that it might become more irritating than the Batflu restrictions. This is what I imagine, but, in reality, the majority will get used to it, and only a small fringe minority with unacceptable views will express displeasure.

They must learn to stop worrying, and love the Honk!

“Two weeks to flatten the curve,” would be a good motto, for the truckers who now occupy Ottawa. This could be reviewed after two or three years. Meanwhile, there are provincial capitals to occupy.

A beloved priest, who describes himself as a “romantic distributist and promoter of localism,” has been romantically distributing an inspiring essay by the theology professor, Douglas Farrow of McGill, on Substack. It is an elegant tribute to truckers and the freedom convoy. Shockingly, the much-denounced Father Farrow does not seem to be an enthusiast for same-sex marriage, either. Someone must have read his book, Nation of Bastards, which I hereby recommend.

He, he, and I are among the “small fringe minority with unacceptable views,” up here in the True North Strong and Free. But when you add a professor of ancient languages I know, with numerous children, and some Sikhs I watched on YouTube in Vancouver, waving “Fuck Jagmeet” signs, you may see that the Liberal majority is crumbling.

Of course, the Mayor of Ottawa, a Liberal shill, began telling the protesters to, “Go home, you’ve made your point!” as they were arriving. The CBC, and the other Official broadcasting networks, filled their newscasts with rumours that truck drivers had displayed ill breeding in Ottawa food courts and malls, and had “desecrated” the Terry Fox statue on Parliament Hill, by leaning a cardboard anti-mandate placard against it. Oh my, oh my! They were also flying the Canadian flag upside down, my God! One star commentator on CBC speculated that the Russians had instigated the whole thing.

In Parliament, and in the remote location where the Trudeau boy was holed up with his family, we heard more of these CBC-quality responses. Our ruling class is turning up the lies and the sleaze and the hoaxes, to seize the high ground, in their usual way. But the polls suggest a change in Canadian public opinion: from the world’s most complacent, compliant, and brain-dead citizenry, to lockdown opponents.

Public opinion is transient. Watch it dissolve!