April 26, 2010 | Rants

Ben Franklin once opined “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”

And perhaps as a corollary to this, referring to that first group anyway, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

The Ontario Government is now bringing in the HST, not the Hubble Space Telescope, but a tax that is equally beyond the mesosphere in terms of sticking it to ordinary citizens.

We won’t bore you with the minutiae of provincial Canadian politics, but let’s just say that this ’Harmonized Sales Tax’ is certain to cause dischord and ensure that when the next legislative roll call takes place, there will be fewer Liberals saying ‘present’.

Here is an ad taken out in a local newspaper by a funeral home, urging the hypochondriacal, and those about to be passed through the international customs gates of life, to book now and avoid paying an additional 8% on burial costs. Yes, we are now literally being taxed to death.

April 20, 2010 | Rants

Marge Simpson proclaimed, on a Simpsons sojourn to TO….“Everything is so clean and bland…I’m home!”

Toronto’s outgoing mayor, who literally swept to victory brandishing a broom at campaign rallies [it can barely be made out here on this filthy city vehicle's 'Clean City, Beautiful City bumper sticker] is now leaving an increasingly dumpy town to his successors and this, well after the city’s lengthy and stinky garbage strike.

Worse, in his last few months in power he’s now reduced to disconsolately pleading for provincial transit funding on of all things, the city’s subway PA system (!)—an open mic night, no sign-in required level of amateur hour.

A complete and total embarrassment.

This is a provincial city after all though.

The transit infrastructure is crumbling, shabby and hopelessly out of date, and yet the province yanked Transit City funding—an upgrade which would’ve brought the city into the 80s if this was Europe and given Toronto a measure of hope in terms of ferrying about the influx of visitors for the upcoming Pan Am Games (Not the Olympics but hey, cities get the games they deserve).

For a city of 4 million, the subway system has only 3 lines (!) and 4 interchanges  (and yet people still somehow get lost).

Compare this to Chicago, a city with a metropolitan area not that much larger than Toronto which has 8 lines, twice as many interchanges, more than twice as many subway stations and actually runs 24 hours. Toronto’s subway runs until 1:45AM and on Sunday morning, the first ones rumble out of the stations at 9:15AM  (!). Curious tourists will watch crowded all-night buses lurch by along the roads normally serviced by trains and wonder what the hell happened to the subway (Toronto boozehounds know the Yonge St version of this all night bus as ‘The Vomit Comet’).

TTC staff make the rather suspect claim that this time off is required for track maintenance, but what do other cities do that run their systems all night or have to fix them when terrorists take a Pelham, 1 2 and 3?

Above is an alternate entrance built for a Greektown subway station. It opened, and almost as soon as it did, promptly flooded. How long does it take to fix a concrete entranceway with barely two dozen steps leading to a subway? You guessed it. Eight months! This, for a construction project hardly of Burj Dubai proportions.

However, this is not too surprising since it took a hundred million dollars and several years to lay down 6km (nearly 4 miles) of lousy trolley tracks. As the National Post put it, “When I try to compute how anyone could possibly spend $15.6-million per kilometre…to lay some streetcar tracks, rejigger some sidewalks and bury some power lines, my brain just freezes.”

If a train link is ever finally built out to the airport….we might live to see it provided there are significant advances in human cryonics.

Here is a token machine at a west end subway station that is in need of a Few Good Men to fix it, as disgruntled passengers have been yelling, You’re Out of Order! incredulously for several months now.  (Note the ever so classy black tarp slung over it) 

The fare system is a complete farce. Instead of being able to get a card from a machine and put whatever dollar value you choose on it (like most civilized places), you line up and buy passes and tokens from someone in a booth—that is, unless to prevent “ticket hoarding”, they decide not to sell you any.

Not too long ago, a cardboard sign slapped onto a wall with plastic tape at an east end subway station directed visitors to the Toronto Zoo bus route.

The insides of the stations themselves are showing neglect and are starting to resemble the spacehip from Aliens with all the exposed pipes. Throw in a few missing chunks of drywall that would not be out of place in an apartment building vacated by deadbeat bikers and you’ve got yourself one hot mess.

April 14, 2010 | Rants,lists

Naysayers see the lottery as a way for the government to hoist your average poor slob up by his ankles and shake out what few remaining shekels are left in his pockets after he’s done paying his taxes and satisfying his ever-growing list of vices.

The lottery cannot just be written off as an “idiot tax”, however, as it speaks to a common dream: living in luxury without having to be part of a class-action lawsuit against a company that did something that would keep from you enjoying the money much anyway, like expose you to so much toxicity that a Budweiser sign wouldn’t be the only thing glowing in a dark bar with you in it.

Indeed, the prospect of ditching work and taking up residence in a country with ample coasts, bosoms, and tax loopholes is the cubicle reverie of many a solitaire champ. Although you are statistically more likely to be touched inappropriately by a person dressed as your favorite Disney character during your lifetime than you are to win a major lottery jackpot, the appeal of winning defies such rationalizations.

Stories of those who’ve just struck it rich in the lottery inspire  – only the folks who hand out government arts grants due more to reward the bone idle – and it’s nice to hear a rags to riches story that doesn’t celebrate pimping and terrorizing innocent people for decades like every Hollywood gangster film ever made. But there are some lottery winners out there who just don’t deserve it. When they win a jackpot it taints the entire enterprise. Lottery officials would do well to rewrite some of the fine print on the back of tickets to ensure that the types below — Top 7 Undeserving Lottery Winners – are banned from claiming prizes.

7. Really Old People.

Lotteries should have a maximum age limit for players, say 65. Optimally, lottery winners should be between 25 and 35 years of age: old enough not to squander the money on charitable or social causes tied to the ideals of youth, and young enough to still have many years during which they can frivolously piss away their winnings. It could be argued that although the elderly might well be on the verge of hearing that final buzzer sound, they could still pass on their winnings to their family members, but most people resent the recipients of inherited wealth.

6. Strip Club/Gambling Aficionados.

If you enjoy an afternoon spent plugging away at a casino’s nickel machines before rushing off for a happy hour lap dance at the local Gawk and Grope, then chances are winning the lottery will not put you on the noble path to the renunciation of all such earthly vices. As terrific as a seemingly never-ending pot of money from which to pull out wads of cash while pursuing the right and true cause of debauchery, these stories never turn out well.

5. People Who Play in Large Syndicates

Like an orgy with a Chat Roulette Lurkers to normal human being ratio that favors the former, playing in large syndicates dilutes rewards to such a degree that it takes the sheen off participating at all. Whereas one to 10 people could use a jackpot to pay off loan sharks, student debts, alimony or alimony-negating hitmen, spreading the winnings out among too many people means the best you’ll be able to afford is a package trip to somewhere lousy.

4. The Overly Charitable.

There’s something to be said for sharing the wealth if your personal fortunes have just gone from zero, or less if you count the fiver you filched out of your roommate’s wallet for cigarettes, to a number that you could not write out due to all the confusing zeroes. Decency obliges lottery winners to kick some of their winnings into a charitable cause, say the Hemorrhoid Pillows for The Developed World Campaign, or the Fund to Silence Celebrities Spouting Crazy Theories on Vaccinations. But it’s nauseating when a lottery winner donates the majority or even all of a jackpot to charity (like this guy). Philanthropy on this scale has no place in the greedy, “Look at me, I’m living like King Ralph” world of lottery winners.

3. People in Shaky Marriages

It’s a common enough scenario. A marriage deteriorates, going from teary-eyed wedding toasts to bitter snapping about why one’s partner no longer feels the need to suppress farts. An atmosphere of quiet loathing prevails, tempered only by the thought of what a hassle it would be to hire a lawyer and fill out all that paperwork for a divorce. Then one of the parties wins the lottery and the divorce lawyer is staying in the guest room as a fight more brutal than anything ever sanctioned under MMA rules erupts over the jackpot.

2. Previous Winners.

With a level of greed that would make an MTV cribber annex properties and declare an autonomous state, people who have won more than $15,000 in any previous lottery should be immediately disqualified from further winnings. Much like the ugly guy at the party who manages to dupe a drunk into bedding him, lottery winnings are, or should be, like a waiting list for a vital organ, a one-shot in a lifetime experience.

1. People who don’t Quit Their Jobs.

By far, the most aggravating type of lottery winner is the individual who says — company cap atop his creative dead space of a noggin — that this tremendous good fortune won’t change him, and that he’ll keep his job. While it might be fine to utter such a sentiment when the cameras are rolling, as a face-saving gesture to co-workers whose vocational relationship might otherwise turn Brutus to Caesar overnight, if journalists ever manage a follow-up, you should ideally be in another country with another wife.