R.I.B. - Fourth Time's The True Charm
Too many annoyances out there - too much crap all over the place - to promptly attend to, really... And why bother dealing with any of it in depth either? Thus, we chose to adopt the expeditive and most efficient method, permanently: blast it all to pieces piece by piece, take no prisoners, spare no one! But doing so in a less painful way, with little doses at a time! Now don't get us wrong here: in doing so, we do not hope that it will be less painful for everyone involved - at all! Au contraire, we hope it will sting, stab, bite and burn even more furiously since none of these topics (with one glaring exception now and then, really - but, to be honest, there are so few of those it makes one want to cry, really...! But that is another story.) hence, none of these stories deserved or was dignified with a full post to call its own anywhere else on the TLB Prime Network - at blogging time, that is!
So here we go again...
MORE R.I.B. - RAMBLINGS IN BRIEF!
=====================================================
Laval (one half of Culbec... Quawbeck... Québec's very own God-forsaken version of Sodom & Gomorrah...) is likening itself to Horseman-country these days...
Oh really now - we are horseman-country all of a sudden?
I don't remember seeing Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard and J.J. Dillon galloping around these parts when I was around said forlorn parts, lo, those many years ago, pal...?
I never heard of any legendary quatuor of guys on the Rouge Et Or gridiron daring to pretend to be unstoppable, merciless "Four Horsemen"...?
I never even saw a single horse in all of Laval!
Not even on the rare treks out to le Centre de la Nature...
So, why in blue blazes would the turgid town of Laval be anything remotely like "horseman-country" nowadays?
Because of local boy turned promoter Normand Latourelle and his Cavalia - that's the only possible reason now!
Sure, Latourelle is creative and I personally appreciate the lyricism he adds to his art through the simultaneous use of image, music and live artistic performance. Multi-media is the future and until the day we can add holograms to that mixture, Latourelle and his peeps are the ones who do the most out of it all indeed.
I loved the Light show on Parliament Hill (Mosaika) - and he is behind that. The Cirque du Soleil has been something else, innovative, fresh, since its very beginning - and Latourelle was there at the beginning of that adventure, too. Cavalia is magical in its own way, and so is Odysseo, which is even more equestrian in nature than the former show!
But a horse - as the face of Laval?
That's too much - and an insult to all equines out there!
The horse is as out-of-place in the slums of Laval as the name Latourelle was - the latter being a typically French from France name that should have probably never have come to North America in the first place - but that is all due to the bigger Historical Mistake that was la Nouvelle-France in the first place - let's not get into that here now...!
Laval deserves a rat as its face - or something like that!
A stray cat - it has so many!
But not a noble beast like the horse - never!
Next!
=================================================
After Canada-bashing (more specifically Culbec... er, Quawbeck... er, Québec-bashing, yeah! But I kinda need to "think big" this time and take the whole piece of wasteland as a whole, though a fractured whole it may be - maybe - thanks to the efforts of a small -and getting smaller with each passing day- group of separatists themselves split up in-between several factions such as the BQ, PQ and now the ridiculous-sounding CAQ -LMBO- but that is another sad story to bash later on... When we have nothing else to bash... er, do.)
Sooooooo... after Canada-bashing, let's go for the jugular of the largest piece of frigid wasteland there is on the damnable planet: Russia!
Russia won't give up on its sorry excuse for a space exploration program - one guesses that they are so eager to be able to start migrating to another place, any place, even another planet in order to escape Siberia and its surroundings without having to simply "defect to the west" - which is a defeat and dishonour, admitting in fact that the sworn enemy's pastures are indeed greener (which they are, even in winter, but that is besides the point right now...)
Russia, therefore, is wasting too much time, energy, space also not to mention money and technology with their prolonged space program - and going nowhere at all with it. That's beyond pathetic - that's downright sad.
The exclamation mark on all that is the return of Phobos-Grunt, the unmanned probe sent out quite some time ago in the hopes that it would hop onto Mars orbit after enough elliptical rounds and would be sending back info about that particular moon of our neighbour planet (I guess Deimos is not good -or bad, lest I say devious- enough for our former comrades there...? Hey - it is Deimos after all! Ask the Warlord about it... But we are digressing again - big time!)
Phobos-Grunt is about to meet an ignominious end indeed, as reported by the abc.com journalists Ned Potter (no relation to Harry - ha - easy one, I know) and Gina Sunseri - right here.
Why not embed though, for what it's worth: the video of the report -maybe even two, three or an entire series of reports- that may still be viewable right here for some time to come yet...? Here it goes:
Commercials included - wow. Thanks, abc! Sometimes life can be... a little uncomfortable indeed. Tis so true. I just had to go myself, a mere moment ago - thanks for making it easier to go. (Thanks abc - still - not Dulcolax!)
There went nothing - indeed.
But back to our scheduled ramblings now...
So, as we were saying, as Phobos-Grunt grunts it out (another easy one - I know.) and goes it out with a whimper, scientists and assorted experts in the field just hope that they are right and that the astronomical (pun fully intended - duh) amounts of toxic fuel in its tanks will burn up in the upper atmosphere upon re-entry...
Once again it's the poor Indian Ocean that is set to receive the big chunk of crap from outer space - with all the unholy, ghastly cosmic germs that it might have collected wherever it may have roamed...! The Indian Ocean was forced to swallow similar crap in October when the German ROSAT space telescope "scattered debris" into it -and, personally, it is not surprising to me that a ROSAT would just scattered debris, not accomplish much at all, be totally unhelpful and then disappear: it's just like the ROSATs I know to be that way! But that is another story- and so... poor Indian Ocean, again; it only took a two-month break before it has to get it again?!? Not fair - there are five oceans, all equal in the Eyes of God, the only pair of eyes that matters - right?
Well, okay, fine - it was the Pacific's turn to swallow crappy space junk back in September when the U.S.' own NASA UARS space satellite sent debris down - thanks NASA UARS! (Proof positive -or negative, really- that you can be American, live the American Dream and still come crashing back down to earth and fail miserably! God Blessed America!)
Experts only hope it misses their precious Florida this time around (one of the slightly, extremely remote possible sites of crashing.) Don't worry - oranges are safe. As they repeat ad nauseam, the seas cover up three-quarters of the earth, and so the odds are re-entry of the piece of space junk and therefore its crashing will be at sea indeed. Let the fishies get it - again. Damn surface-dwelling shitty space explorers...!
This Phobos-Grunt fiasco is all about the proper planet alignment - again! But it has little to do with that alignment abundantly spoken about as 2012 drew nearer and nearer - thank God! Still - the space exploration obsession can be dubbed to be as crazy as anything else of the sort: especially in the light of it going nowhere and not even fast at that but slow - ever so painfully slow...!
Phobos-Grunt (argh - what an annoying name! But we are learning Russian without even noticing, here! For "grunt" is the Russian word for ground; not the same meaning at all that it has in English, see? Still makes me want to grunt...) is the 19th failure of the kind... Aye, folks: Russians are 0 for 19 in these attempts to reach, probe, research Mars and poke Martians. While Americans completely ignored the old adage that has curiosity killing the cat and dispatched their cool cat of a probe called Opportunity, a rover that latched onto Mars in 2004 very successfully. And, now, they are set to launch another one this time to be called... Curiosity.
"Truly a travesty for the exploration of space," said Charles Vick, who follows Russian space efforts for GlobalSecurity.org, "A loss for all concerned."
Vick was interviewed by abc over all this waste of resources and is convinced that it was a lack of funds halted the Russians from properly testing the spacecraft launched as well as maintaining a proper level of quality control. They even dare say that "the worst damage was to Russian pride." What...? What about the polluted oceans, risks of contaminations and further desecration of our oceans, huh? Allegedly none of these concerns Roscosmos chief, Vladimir Popovkin, who supposedly "went so far as to suggest that someone had sabotaged the probe" - making the case for Russian pride being the real and perhaps sole casualty here. It would not be beneath Americans, sure, but...
Popovkin was so mellow in his accusations though: he stated that "it would not be desirable to accuse anybody, but today there are very powerful means of influence for space vehicles which cannot be excluded," in an interview with the Russian daily Izvestia, subsequently translated by ABC News. Popovkin gave no specifics, didn't even sound irate over the 19th failure - if it's not taking its toll on him, why bother advancing a theory of sabotage at this time...? All it did was create a lack of cooperation - as "sources say the U.S. government, mildly offended, stopped helping the Russians track their errant probe in its final days." Could this be the dawn of a new cold war? A space age stone cold war over not-much-of-anything-at-all! Way to make your mark, Popovkin! Makes me think of a Popo I know... But that is another story too!
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has no choice to swallow this one up - again. Just like the Indian Ocean has no choice. (Hey, if I was one of the fishies in the Indian Ocean, I'd get a class action suit going against the damn Roscosmos! Inept space explorers! Pigs In Space would do a better job than you guys - sheesh! But that is just supposition - just like any sabotage talk is...)
Roscosmos is, in fact, quite apologetic about this latest debacle and reassures that "most of this debris coming back down to Earth will burn up in the atmosphere, but 20 to 30 chunks of charred debris, weighing about 450 lbs., could make it to the surface" - whcih, again, should be the sea, not terra firma and therefore not the top of your head or the roof over it. Just where precisely it might actually crash will not be crystal clear until just a few hours before impact: indeed, technology is that good it can only warn us until it actually happens.
That's just great.
The world's space agencies are all reassuring in unison though: they all agreed that any one person's chances of getting hit by debris are tiny -- something like 1 in 20 trillion, based on the spacecraft's orbit and the amount of debris that might survive re-entry. Thus, the chances that, out of the seven billion people on Earth, one of them -you, maybe- somewhere, could be hit are more like 1 in 3,000.
That's still better odds than winning the lottery - a lot better.
(And remember that, if this one doesn't get you, the next one might - the Earth's orbit is cluttered with all kinds of space junk that we, collectively, as the space exploring human race, sent up there, with gusto. And then there's asteroids, comets, spaceballs and other unidentified objects for which we have no safety net at all. Maybe the odds are up to 1 in 300 now?)
With these reassuring numbers - let's just move on!
Next!
==============================================
Back to Canada-bashing, in closing...
And right back to the infernal germ-infested suburbs of Laval...!
Each and every year, there are rankings compiled and made public as they are published in the favored and reputed magazine for Canadians to read - MacLean's Magazine.
Perplexing it is, each and every year, to note that the rankings change ever so-slightly, like nothing evolves (or de-evolves for that matter).
Also perplexing is the fact that troglodytes in townships such as Laval still cannot spell MacLean's right... (they think it is McClean's - and this comes from budding but approved journalists working for the great, mighty Quebecor! Granted they are toiling on writing copy for little freebies such as the Courrier Laval and the like - but still! Can PKP possibly be happy with such twits? Can I possibly give a flying hoot about that? So - let's move on!)
Most perplexing it is to see such disparate numbers - like, how can Laval be 40th in "violent crime" (good show, Lavallois - good show!) but 63rd overall out of 100 cities? Slacking up on the theft, shoplifting and assorted misdemeanor category, guys? But pretty violent nonetheless - great!
Laval is one of those places that is both benefiting and suffering badly from its proximity to another big (bigger, really) slum-urban-commune (hey - they used to call "la communauté urbaine de Montréal" - okay? Not me - them!)
All of the creeps who start finding it to be "too hot" in Montreal, go north - immediately north (by northwest) is the inviting not-so-virginal, ripe to consume territory of Laval - where crime can flourish! The Clouseaus there are as clumsy as their famed French counterpart, see? And the most inept at Scotland Yard would be a genius hailed by Holmes if he ever had the opportunity to work with the Laval clods! Good thing such a time travelling experience, crossing the barriers of fiction and reality as well, is totally impossible - it's a good thing for the character created by Sir Arthur, that is! But we're digressing once more...
As they migrate from Montreal to Laval, the criminal element does not do the same once it also gets "too hot" in their new lavallois surroundings - no. Instead, they just play cat-and-mouse with the Laval police and start going from block to block, district to district, coming back to the first spot periodically because, well, because they can. There is no intrinsic need to go to another town further north - Laval has everything they need: all the customer-base they need, proximity to the other one, vastly profitable, over in Montreal; plus all the troops they might need as one or two of their foot soldiers eventually does spend some time "en dedans" - which is to say that the cops do finally make something "stick" -somehow, eventually- and do nab some of the acolytes, small-time crooks always, for periods of no more than a maximum of a few months at a time. And after that time is done, they're right back on the streets doing what they do... period.
Prince Georges, British Columbia is purported to be number one in the overall crime rate sweepstakes - not Toronto, not big town Vancouver right nextdoor, not Montréal... What is this sith? Is this rigged or something? Somebody at MacLean's has some gripe with Prince Georges - the luxury condo they wanted to buy there went to somebody else? All speculation here - no accusations!
Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Regina have the meanest streets, they say now. What the hell - the Sasquatch, Winnie The Pooh and Regina Spektor built their criminal empires while no one was looking, surpassing the true giants in the field, just like that?
And what of Edmonton? Just a mere few years ago it was number one - Canada's answer to Detroit in the USA! Just on the sorriest field, not in the car industry nor on the ice (NHL joke). How could it have improved so fast over there? Did the Calgary Hitmen come over and clean up the town or something? (Another hockey joke. Ha.)
Any top ten of "Canada's Most Dangerous Cities" that does not have Laval in the top ten or twenty (at least!) is blind to the truth - that is all that I have to say! Numbers don't lie, they say - and it is true that they don't. Alas, the numbers taken into consideration by MacLean's magazine do not reflect the entire truth as I was apt to witness it, circa 2006...
And things do not evolve for the best so rapidly in these matters - no way.
That last part was 100% serious, MacLean's!
Just to be clear...
Next time!
So here we go again...
MORE R.I.B. - RAMBLINGS IN BRIEF!
=====================================================
Laval (one half of Culbec... Quawbeck... Québec's very own God-forsaken version of Sodom & Gomorrah...) is likening itself to Horseman-country these days...Oh really now - we are horseman-country all of a sudden?
I don't remember seeing Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard and J.J. Dillon galloping around these parts when I was around said forlorn parts, lo, those many years ago, pal...?
I never heard of any legendary quatuor of guys on the Rouge Et Or gridiron daring to pretend to be unstoppable, merciless "Four Horsemen"...?
I never even saw a single horse in all of Laval!
Not even on the rare treks out to le Centre de la Nature...
So, why in blue blazes would the turgid town of Laval be anything remotely like "horseman-country" nowadays?
Because of local boy turned promoter Normand Latourelle and his Cavalia - that's the only possible reason now!
Sure, Latourelle is creative and I personally appreciate the lyricism he adds to his art through the simultaneous use of image, music and live artistic performance. Multi-media is the future and until the day we can add holograms to that mixture, Latourelle and his peeps are the ones who do the most out of it all indeed.
I loved the Light show on Parliament Hill (Mosaika) - and he is behind that. The Cirque du Soleil has been something else, innovative, fresh, since its very beginning - and Latourelle was there at the beginning of that adventure, too. Cavalia is magical in its own way, and so is Odysseo, which is even more equestrian in nature than the former show!
But a horse - as the face of Laval?
That's too much - and an insult to all equines out there!
The horse is as out-of-place in the slums of Laval as the name Latourelle was - the latter being a typically French from France name that should have probably never have come to North America in the first place - but that is all due to the bigger Historical Mistake that was la Nouvelle-France in the first place - let's not get into that here now...!
Laval deserves a rat as its face - or something like that!
A stray cat - it has so many!
But not a noble beast like the horse - never!
Next!
=================================================
After Canada-bashing (more specifically Culbec... er, Quawbeck... er, Québec-bashing, yeah! But I kinda need to "think big" this time and take the whole piece of wasteland as a whole, though a fractured whole it may be - maybe - thanks to the efforts of a small -and getting smaller with each passing day- group of separatists themselves split up in-between several factions such as the BQ, PQ and now the ridiculous-sounding CAQ -LMBO- but that is another sad story to bash later on... When we have nothing else to bash... er, do.)
Sooooooo... after Canada-bashing, let's go for the jugular of the largest piece of frigid wasteland there is on the damnable planet: Russia!
Russia won't give up on its sorry excuse for a space exploration program - one guesses that they are so eager to be able to start migrating to another place, any place, even another planet in order to escape Siberia and its surroundings without having to simply "defect to the west" - which is a defeat and dishonour, admitting in fact that the sworn enemy's pastures are indeed greener (which they are, even in winter, but that is besides the point right now...)
Russia, therefore, is wasting too much time, energy, space also not to mention money and technology with their prolonged space program - and going nowhere at all with it. That's beyond pathetic - that's downright sad.
The exclamation mark on all that is the return of Phobos-Grunt, the unmanned probe sent out quite some time ago in the hopes that it would hop onto Mars orbit after enough elliptical rounds and would be sending back info about that particular moon of our neighbour planet (I guess Deimos is not good -or bad, lest I say devious- enough for our former comrades there...? Hey - it is Deimos after all! Ask the Warlord about it... But we are digressing again - big time!)
Phobos-Grunt is about to meet an ignominious end indeed, as reported by the abc.com journalists Ned Potter (no relation to Harry - ha - easy one, I know) and Gina Sunseri - right here.
Why not embed though, for what it's worth: the video of the report -maybe even two, three or an entire series of reports- that may still be viewable right here for some time to come yet...? Here it goes:
Commercials included - wow. Thanks, abc! Sometimes life can be... a little uncomfortable indeed. Tis so true. I just had to go myself, a mere moment ago - thanks for making it easier to go. (Thanks abc - still - not Dulcolax!)
There went nothing - indeed.
But back to our scheduled ramblings now...
So, as we were saying, as Phobos-Grunt grunts it out (another easy one - I know.) and goes it out with a whimper, scientists and assorted experts in the field just hope that they are right and that the astronomical (pun fully intended - duh) amounts of toxic fuel in its tanks will burn up in the upper atmosphere upon re-entry...
Once again it's the poor Indian Ocean that is set to receive the big chunk of crap from outer space - with all the unholy, ghastly cosmic germs that it might have collected wherever it may have roamed...! The Indian Ocean was forced to swallow similar crap in October when the German ROSAT space telescope "scattered debris" into it -and, personally, it is not surprising to me that a ROSAT would just scattered debris, not accomplish much at all, be totally unhelpful and then disappear: it's just like the ROSATs I know to be that way! But that is another story- and so... poor Indian Ocean, again; it only took a two-month break before it has to get it again?!? Not fair - there are five oceans, all equal in the Eyes of God, the only pair of eyes that matters - right?
Well, okay, fine - it was the Pacific's turn to swallow crappy space junk back in September when the U.S.' own NASA UARS space satellite sent debris down - thanks NASA UARS! (Proof positive -or negative, really- that you can be American, live the American Dream and still come crashing back down to earth and fail miserably! God Blessed America!)
Experts only hope it misses their precious Florida this time around (one of the slightly, extremely remote possible sites of crashing.) Don't worry - oranges are safe. As they repeat ad nauseam, the seas cover up three-quarters of the earth, and so the odds are re-entry of the piece of space junk and therefore its crashing will be at sea indeed. Let the fishies get it - again. Damn surface-dwelling shitty space explorers...!
This Phobos-Grunt fiasco is all about the proper planet alignment - again! But it has little to do with that alignment abundantly spoken about as 2012 drew nearer and nearer - thank God! Still - the space exploration obsession can be dubbed to be as crazy as anything else of the sort: especially in the light of it going nowhere and not even fast at that but slow - ever so painfully slow...!
Phobos-Grunt (argh - what an annoying name! But we are learning Russian without even noticing, here! For "grunt" is the Russian word for ground; not the same meaning at all that it has in English, see? Still makes me want to grunt...) is the 19th failure of the kind... Aye, folks: Russians are 0 for 19 in these attempts to reach, probe, research Mars and poke Martians. While Americans completely ignored the old adage that has curiosity killing the cat and dispatched their cool cat of a probe called Opportunity, a rover that latched onto Mars in 2004 very successfully. And, now, they are set to launch another one this time to be called... Curiosity.
"Truly a travesty for the exploration of space," said Charles Vick, who follows Russian space efforts for GlobalSecurity.org, "A loss for all concerned."
Vick was interviewed by abc over all this waste of resources and is convinced that it was a lack of funds halted the Russians from properly testing the spacecraft launched as well as maintaining a proper level of quality control. They even dare say that "the worst damage was to Russian pride." What...? What about the polluted oceans, risks of contaminations and further desecration of our oceans, huh? Allegedly none of these concerns Roscosmos chief, Vladimir Popovkin, who supposedly "went so far as to suggest that someone had sabotaged the probe" - making the case for Russian pride being the real and perhaps sole casualty here. It would not be beneath Americans, sure, but...
Popovkin was so mellow in his accusations though: he stated that "it would not be desirable to accuse anybody, but today there are very powerful means of influence for space vehicles which cannot be excluded," in an interview with the Russian daily Izvestia, subsequently translated by ABC News. Popovkin gave no specifics, didn't even sound irate over the 19th failure - if it's not taking its toll on him, why bother advancing a theory of sabotage at this time...? All it did was create a lack of cooperation - as "sources say the U.S. government, mildly offended, stopped helping the Russians track their errant probe in its final days." Could this be the dawn of a new cold war? A space age stone cold war over not-much-of-anything-at-all! Way to make your mark, Popovkin! Makes me think of a Popo I know... But that is another story too!
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, has no choice to swallow this one up - again. Just like the Indian Ocean has no choice. (Hey, if I was one of the fishies in the Indian Ocean, I'd get a class action suit going against the damn Roscosmos! Inept space explorers! Pigs In Space would do a better job than you guys - sheesh! But that is just supposition - just like any sabotage talk is...)
Roscosmos is, in fact, quite apologetic about this latest debacle and reassures that "most of this debris coming back down to Earth will burn up in the atmosphere, but 20 to 30 chunks of charred debris, weighing about 450 lbs., could make it to the surface" - whcih, again, should be the sea, not terra firma and therefore not the top of your head or the roof over it. Just where precisely it might actually crash will not be crystal clear until just a few hours before impact: indeed, technology is that good it can only warn us until it actually happens.
That's just great.
The world's space agencies are all reassuring in unison though: they all agreed that any one person's chances of getting hit by debris are tiny -- something like 1 in 20 trillion, based on the spacecraft's orbit and the amount of debris that might survive re-entry. Thus, the chances that, out of the seven billion people on Earth, one of them -you, maybe- somewhere, could be hit are more like 1 in 3,000.
That's still better odds than winning the lottery - a lot better.
(And remember that, if this one doesn't get you, the next one might - the Earth's orbit is cluttered with all kinds of space junk that we, collectively, as the space exploring human race, sent up there, with gusto. And then there's asteroids, comets, spaceballs and other unidentified objects for which we have no safety net at all. Maybe the odds are up to 1 in 300 now?)
With these reassuring numbers - let's just move on!
Next!
==============================================
Back to Canada-bashing, in closing...
And right back to the infernal germ-infested suburbs of Laval...!
Each and every year, there are rankings compiled and made public as they are published in the favored and reputed magazine for Canadians to read - MacLean's Magazine.
Perplexing it is, each and every year, to note that the rankings change ever so-slightly, like nothing evolves (or de-evolves for that matter).
Also perplexing is the fact that troglodytes in townships such as Laval still cannot spell MacLean's right... (they think it is McClean's - and this comes from budding but approved journalists working for the great, mighty Quebecor! Granted they are toiling on writing copy for little freebies such as the Courrier Laval and the like - but still! Can PKP possibly be happy with such twits? Can I possibly give a flying hoot about that? So - let's move on!)
Most perplexing it is to see such disparate numbers - like, how can Laval be 40th in "violent crime" (good show, Lavallois - good show!) but 63rd overall out of 100 cities? Slacking up on the theft, shoplifting and assorted misdemeanor category, guys? But pretty violent nonetheless - great!
Laval is one of those places that is both benefiting and suffering badly from its proximity to another big (bigger, really) slum-urban-commune (hey - they used to call "la communauté urbaine de Montréal" - okay? Not me - them!)
All of the creeps who start finding it to be "too hot" in Montreal, go north - immediately north (by northwest) is the inviting not-so-virginal, ripe to consume territory of Laval - where crime can flourish! The Clouseaus there are as clumsy as their famed French counterpart, see? And the most inept at Scotland Yard would be a genius hailed by Holmes if he ever had the opportunity to work with the Laval clods! Good thing such a time travelling experience, crossing the barriers of fiction and reality as well, is totally impossible - it's a good thing for the character created by Sir Arthur, that is! But we're digressing once more...
As they migrate from Montreal to Laval, the criminal element does not do the same once it also gets "too hot" in their new lavallois surroundings - no. Instead, they just play cat-and-mouse with the Laval police and start going from block to block, district to district, coming back to the first spot periodically because, well, because they can. There is no intrinsic need to go to another town further north - Laval has everything they need: all the customer-base they need, proximity to the other one, vastly profitable, over in Montreal; plus all the troops they might need as one or two of their foot soldiers eventually does spend some time "en dedans" - which is to say that the cops do finally make something "stick" -somehow, eventually- and do nab some of the acolytes, small-time crooks always, for periods of no more than a maximum of a few months at a time. And after that time is done, they're right back on the streets doing what they do... period.
Prince Georges, British Columbia is purported to be number one in the overall crime rate sweepstakes - not Toronto, not big town Vancouver right nextdoor, not Montréal... What is this sith? Is this rigged or something? Somebody at MacLean's has some gripe with Prince Georges - the luxury condo they wanted to buy there went to somebody else? All speculation here - no accusations!
Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Regina have the meanest streets, they say now. What the hell - the Sasquatch, Winnie The Pooh and Regina Spektor built their criminal empires while no one was looking, surpassing the true giants in the field, just like that?
And what of Edmonton? Just a mere few years ago it was number one - Canada's answer to Detroit in the USA! Just on the sorriest field, not in the car industry nor on the ice (NHL joke). How could it have improved so fast over there? Did the Calgary Hitmen come over and clean up the town or something? (Another hockey joke. Ha.)
Any top ten of "Canada's Most Dangerous Cities" that does not have Laval in the top ten or twenty (at least!) is blind to the truth - that is all that I have to say! Numbers don't lie, they say - and it is true that they don't. Alas, the numbers taken into consideration by MacLean's magazine do not reflect the entire truth as I was apt to witness it, circa 2006...
And things do not evolve for the best so rapidly in these matters - no way.
That last part was 100% serious, MacLean's!
Just to be clear...
Next time!
posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ at 7:20 PM
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