All The News That Flits

Living in a small town, we don’t get the spotlight of international media focused on us in anyway that is really notable. A few years back a friend of mine called me from Smyrna, Tennessee, a Kingstonian by birth. The reason he called me beside the usual banter that old friends share, was that down in the old US of A his hometown was being mentioned on CNN and other news sources and not in particularly glowing terms. The press down there were reporting that two of the terrorists arrested in Toronto during a massive sweep lived in Kingston, Ontario. “What the heck (or words to that effect) is going on?”, he asked.. “Terrorists? In Kingston? What’s next?” However, what the press failed to mention of course, was that the terrorists arrested were citizens of Kingston only by virtue that they were inmates at one of our penitentiaries. But the damage had been done. The only mention of Kingston in any form of media in all his years in the US was this piece of misinformation. It was only after I straightened him out that he settled down.

There are literally thousands of news items each day that warrant coverage and wading through them at times I am sure is overwhelming for any news organization. So I thought I would offer my assistance to the news media to prevent them from picking up on the wrong story that focuses on my hometown.

There was an ad in the local paper a while back, it made such an impact on me that I clipped it. It was in the Classifieds, right under an ad for Whiskey Willy’s who were looking for some wait staff. The ad read, “Wanted: Volunteer Mars Genesis mission vehicle administrator. Write to...” and then gave the gentleman’s name and address to write to. Now, either there was this incredibly secret Mars mission going on right under our own noses or the gentleman who placed the ad believed he had an incredibly secret Mars mission about to launch. To give him some administrative credit, he also felt that he could find such a vehicle administrator for the Mars mission by placing a 4 line ad in a local small town newspaper. I am sure NASA could get its’ budgetary problems under control by using a similar method.

The other news item involved a teen whose life of crime will forever be punctuated by the fact that he robbed a sex shop. Call me crazy but from every thing I have ever read about crime, one of the primary motivating factors of theft is to steal money. Not this lad. It was reported that instead of absconding with the moola he opted to steal a sex toy. Okay... that’s a bit offbeat but what separates this story from the more mundane new items was that after he was caught by the police shortly after the theft, the item could not be returned to the shop because it had been used. I will just let that thought rest with you for a moment.

Somehow, in his flight to freedom when most criminals high-tail it out of the neighborhood, this criminal had the notion that he should stop fleeing and use his sex toy. Now, I am a pretty open-minded kind of guy and try as I might to rationalize this story, it is beyond my comprehension.

First of all I think, at least for a male, you need to be in a certain ummm, physiological condition to utilize these devices and I would think being at least partially naked might be helpful. How in the world does a fleeing thief, while eluding the police, manage to get in the mood? For most normal people, to do so usually involves at least a nice dinner and a bottle of wine. Maybe instead of a life a petty crime, this guy should write a book. Just think of the options for book titles. Sex on the Run could be one of them or maybe, Now, That’s a Stickup. Those are just two that come to mind. I am sure my friend from Smyrna would prefer to see this kind of story featured on CNN. At least he could say to his American friends that up there in Canada, we don’t blow up buildings, we blow up dolls.