By now, we’ve all heard quite a bit about the $30-million budget shortfall that the Halifax Regional Municipality is facing.
And we’ve heard some of the rather frantic suggestions coming from Halifax Regional Council about how the municipality should deal with that budget shortfall. Those suggestions have ranged from raising the general tax rate, to increasing parking meter fees, to charging more to bury the dead in cemeteries owned by the city.
I’m certainly no financial wizard – just ask my accountant, who has a pretty good laugh every year when I bring him my tax information – but I have creative-thinking skills on my side, so I’ve been putting my head into coming up with some better ways for our municipal government to save money and, hopefully, to perk up those sagging revenues.
First of all, there’s a fully-financially-exploitable phenomenon happening daily, right under our noses, and we’re just not taking advantage of it. I’m referring, of course, to street hockey. If these rollerblading rug-rats want to use our streets for free every day, well, they can just forget it. From now on, when the police aren’t in there busting up some spirited scrimmage (or, you know, whatever the equivalent hockey term is) they should be diligently collecting mandatory street-rink dues. What, we’re supposed to just let these kids have fun for free? It costs money to get in shape and have fun; I know this because that’s how it works for adults. Besides, who has more money these days? The kids are hoarding their allowances and fast-food restaurant salaries, and that is an opportunity ripe for the exploitation.
Here’s another great idea: implement a fine which will be applied to HRM council members each time one of them utters the words “cat”, “dog”’ or “chicken” during a council meeting. Well, unless it’s lunch time, I guess. And in that case, only “chicken” gets a pass. Actually, on second thought, I think I’m going to give the word “chicken” a pass entirely, because I foresee much more chicken-talk in our future, given that many other parts of the civilized world have more or less embraced the urban-chicken phenomenon. Plus, that debate holds a lot of potential entertainment value. So, okay, councillors can say “chicken.” But “dog” and “cat” – still big fines for those ones.
Speaking of our hard-working council members, how about this one? A “talking tax,” to be charged to any councillor who doesn’t make at least one valid point per five minutes of speaking-time during council meetings. I think this could be a big income-generator for the city, because I don’t think the tax would serve as much of a deterrent to the actual behavior, which often seems to be more motivated by grandstanding than actual logical arguing. But I’m just generalizing here; I mean, as a rule, certainly it appears, if the honourable councillors would agree, that in terms of this particular situation, if I could just make the point...
And, okay, not to totally pick on council, but I had just one more revenue-generating idea for our local government: what about a “lip-service levy” each time a city councillor, who travels exclusively by car, recommends that everyone else take the bus? Again: potential to be a big money-maker for us.
See? All it takes is a little creative thinking. I bet, if we all put our heads together, we could collectively come up with all sorts of ingenious ways to dig our lovely city out of its unfortunate $30-million hole.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Tatoo Speling
Nobody’s perfect. We all make mistakes. But thankfully, our mistakes don’t always have permanent consequences.
Unless, of course, we’re talking about tattoos, which are pretty, you know…permanent.
You may have read a recent piece in the Chronicle Herald, which told the tragic tale of a local tattoo artist, an unhappy tattoo customer, and a lawsuit.
It appears that this customer had requested a tattoo on her arm which was to read “You’re so beautiful.”
Unfortunately, both the tattoo artist and the customer seem to have been a bit spelling-challenged, and the tattoo, when all was said and done, actually read, “You’re so beatiful” (sic).
Wouldn’t you just kick yourself? I do have to give these two individuals big points for getting the “you’re” right, though, because I would have thought that it was the more difficult word in that sentence, spelling-wise. But all criticisms of why someone would want that particular sentence tattooed onto her person aside, we have to admit that a misspelled tattoo is a very big problem.
Regrettably, it’s not an unusual problem. You don’t have to dig very deep into the wonders of the world wide web to find other examples of tattoos gone horribly wrong.
For example, one young gentleman with particularly healthy self-esteem (apparently, much like our unfortunate local lady) had the following words tattooed in a lovely, ornate script, right across his back: “I’m awsome.” Another, rather optimistic tattoo lover had these words indelibly etched into his wrist: “Tomarrow never knows.” And a lover of the theatre, one must assume, had the famous smiling and frowning masks inked into his or her skin, with the words “comedy” and “tradgey” loving spelled out above each one.
That IS tradgic. Perhaps more tradgic is the realization that expensive, protracted and painful laser treatments are about the only way these people will ever erase these little oopsies. “To young to die, to fast to live” reads one young man’s arms. To bad he was in to much of a hurry to consult with someone about those tricky missing o’s.
Remember that “you’re/your” point I made a moment ago? I’ve found at least five examples of that particular apostrophe error implanted into the skin of various folks, all of whom have some sort of point to make about what you are or should be doing in relation to them. One young tough has these tender words tattooed across his knuckles, just to let us know a bit about the type of gentleman he is: “your”/ “next”.
Perhaps the lesson here is that some tattoo artists may have actually become tattoo artists because they are excellent at visual expression, but they aren’t all that keen on, you know, words, and writing and stuff. And that maybe the cool kids should just run their ideas through a spell-check or something, or maybe have a teacher or someone’s mother do a quick-double-check before the needle goes in.
Maybe our local woman’s lamentable experience can serve as a teaching moment for other tattoo seekers. Heaven knows, none of us would really want to be in her position – stuck with an ugly tattoo that was supposed to proclaim to the rest of the world just how “beatiful” we are.
Unless, of course, we’re talking about tattoos, which are pretty, you know…permanent.
You may have read a recent piece in the Chronicle Herald, which told the tragic tale of a local tattoo artist, an unhappy tattoo customer, and a lawsuit.
It appears that this customer had requested a tattoo on her arm which was to read “You’re so beautiful.”
Unfortunately, both the tattoo artist and the customer seem to have been a bit spelling-challenged, and the tattoo, when all was said and done, actually read, “You’re so beatiful” (sic).
Wouldn’t you just kick yourself? I do have to give these two individuals big points for getting the “you’re” right, though, because I would have thought that it was the more difficult word in that sentence, spelling-wise. But all criticisms of why someone would want that particular sentence tattooed onto her person aside, we have to admit that a misspelled tattoo is a very big problem.
Regrettably, it’s not an unusual problem. You don’t have to dig very deep into the wonders of the world wide web to find other examples of tattoos gone horribly wrong.
For example, one young gentleman with particularly healthy self-esteem (apparently, much like our unfortunate local lady) had the following words tattooed in a lovely, ornate script, right across his back: “I’m awsome.” Another, rather optimistic tattoo lover had these words indelibly etched into his wrist: “Tomarrow never knows.” And a lover of the theatre, one must assume, had the famous smiling and frowning masks inked into his or her skin, with the words “comedy” and “tradgey” loving spelled out above each one.
That IS tradgic. Perhaps more tradgic is the realization that expensive, protracted and painful laser treatments are about the only way these people will ever erase these little oopsies. “To young to die, to fast to live” reads one young man’s arms. To bad he was in to much of a hurry to consult with someone about those tricky missing o’s.
Remember that “you’re/your” point I made a moment ago? I’ve found at least five examples of that particular apostrophe error implanted into the skin of various folks, all of whom have some sort of point to make about what you are or should be doing in relation to them. One young tough has these tender words tattooed across his knuckles, just to let us know a bit about the type of gentleman he is: “your”/ “next”.
Perhaps the lesson here is that some tattoo artists may have actually become tattoo artists because they are excellent at visual expression, but they aren’t all that keen on, you know, words, and writing and stuff. And that maybe the cool kids should just run their ideas through a spell-check or something, or maybe have a teacher or someone’s mother do a quick-double-check before the needle goes in.
Maybe our local woman’s lamentable experience can serve as a teaching moment for other tattoo seekers. Heaven knows, none of us would really want to be in her position – stuck with an ugly tattoo that was supposed to proclaim to the rest of the world just how “beatiful” we are.
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