Sealed-up trash bins leave trash littering the streets. 

A good idea trashed
     This bus stop furniture was a great idea. All over the city local real estate agents smile out at us from the signboards on these nicely designed, well constructed units. Supplied by Creative Outdoor Advertising, of Gormley, Ont. (head office Jupiter Fla.) each offers four reasonably comfortable seats, designed so rain and snow will wash them but won't pool on them, and a high ‘counter’ on which you can rest a heavy bag of groceries or lean an elbow. Then there's the big signboard — the raison d'être for the whole thing — and finally a discreet swing-top trash disposal bin.
     But the trouble with trash disposal bins is that eventually you have to go around to them and collect the trash. Somebody had the bright idea that there'd be more profit in keeping the ad revenue and disposing of the trash-collecting duty. So they sealed the swing-tops shut and drove screws into them to make sure they stayed sealed.
     Now the real estate agents still smile at us, and the trash collects on the ground.
     You look good on this thing, George. But it doesn't look good on you.

Nicholson Baker

Pleasures of poetry

     This comes under the heading of “other stuff.” One of the most enjoyable books I’ve seen in a long time is The Anthologist, a novel by Nicholson Baker (Simon and Schuster, 2009). Its narrator is a second-rank poet whose wife has decamped, tired of supporting them while he dawdles and daydreams instead of writing the overdue introduction to a poetry anthology he’s produced, and 
earning a fat cheque.
     He’s a lovable idler, well intentioned but easily distracted. Anything — a falling leaf, an ant in his driveway, some bit of historical trivia — is sure to sideline his latest effort to settle down and produce the few remaining pages his publisher is demanding. Perversely, what distracts him most frequently is the impulse to tell us about poetry.
     Unmistakably, Baker loves poetry. His protagonist knows many of our leading poets personally and has a scholar’s intimacy with their predecessors all the way back to Horace. He quotes Coleridge and Kipling as readily as Alan Ginsberg and Theodore Roethke (whose surname I never knew until now rhymes with “set key”). Above all, he talks about poetry’s origins, its meanings, its usefulness as mnemonic, its role as the foundation of language and a compiler of vocabulary. He teaches us new ways to think about verse, new reasons to embrace it, and new places to look for it.
     Too few people in 2011 have more than a hearsay awareness of poetry. But those lucky children raised on rhyme — Dr. Seuss, A. A. Milne, Shel Silverstein, Dennis Lee, who you will — tend to reach adulthood with an appreciation of words’ weight, flavour, value and versatility that will enrich them for life. Baker’s delightful exposition of that should inspire you to run out and pick up a poetry anthology or two for yourself.  
         

She knows parking signs aren't meant for the likes of her.

How sweet

to be elite

     She parked her snazzy little convertible right in front of the No Parking sign, and strolled into the Masonville Loblaw, swinging her snazzy little skirt as if she hadn't a care in the world. And she probably hadn't.

     No parking? Fire route? How perfectly ridiculous, my dear. Do you see anything on fire here? Yes, of course there are plenty of parking spaces just over there. They're for ordinary people, dear, who aren't in a hurry. Well, they may be only a few steps away, but if I felt like walking I wouldn't have brought the car, would I?

Have a nice trip
     Ever noticed how many London sidewalks have become obstacle courses lately? One slab higher than the next? Some slabs canted sideways? Others cracked and sinking inward? Year after year, freezes, thaws and downpours render our urban footways more uneven. It craves wary walking.
     The problem is substandard installation: insufficient soil compaction, insufficient gravel underlay, stingy concrete pours. The solution is certainly not what the city's providing: grinding bevels on upraised edges, and packing black asphalt into low spots. The grinding doesn't correct the unevenness, and the asphalt is as unsightly as patches on a business suit. Both makeshifts leave the impression of a hick town that can't do the basics properly in the first place and can't be bothered properly fixing the inevitable damage. Once upon a time we'd have replaced these sections, and done it right.

     A quarter-inch height difference in adjoining slabs is enough to stub the toe of an incautious pedestrian. In today's London, variations can be as much as two inches.

     Does no one at City Hall walk? It's time they had to. Bureaucrats there who think ground-off edges and black-top patching are the answer to that are clearly not thinking of users who might have impaired vision or mobility issues. Or people of any age who expect to be able to walk down a sidewalk confidently without having to worry about each footstep. Or visitors who look at our streets and think, “My God, when did this city start turning into a slum?”

Too much in your face
   The latest ‘improvement’ to Facebook’s interface ‘invites’ you to tag people who appear with you in photographs but doesn’t offer you any provision for declining the invitation. You're presented with only one choice: OK.
    Well, you do have one other choice: you can quit Facebook altogether, then reopen the program to get a new page. But the next time you click on the name of a ‘friend’ — or even a ‘friend’ of a ‘friend’ — you'll get the same razzmatazz.
    Nosy? These people make the Homeland Security snoops look like recluses.
    Facebook would have you believe that this is all aimed at promoting ‘connectedness’ among people the world over, broadening global friendship and understanding. Yup, that's what the KGB and the Stasi were into, too. They just wanted to get to know you better. And so do their present-day counterparts in our own beloved governments, not to mention a million enterprising ad men.

Bunch of clucks
    Government taxes you to pay for enforcement of rules that make your food taste worse and cost more. Rules punishing small-business enterprise that politicians profess to encourage, hurting the farmers they profess to defend, and promoting the very cruelty to creatures that they profess to deplore.
    Say you want to sell apple pies at a church basement fund-raiser, hot pasta dishes from a market stall or home-made desserts from an ice cream cart. For finest quality you want the freshest ingredients, right? For instance, the freshest fresh eggs you can get. So you find a reliable farmer and get your supplies daily direct from the hens.
    Nope, says a food inspector. You have to use government-inspected eggs. That means you have to deal with a third-party supplier who can afford to pay for the time-consuming inspection process (and will of course pass the cost on to you).
    But, you say, that will put my own prices up, and the eggs won't be as fresh by the time they get to me and into the food. My farmer can sell eggs at the farm gate to anyone who drives up. Why not to me?
    Sure, people can buy farm eggs to take home and eat themselves, the inspector says, but you can't put those eggs in food you're selling to others. You have to use inspected eggs.
    But, you say, most of your inspected eggs come from places where the hens spend their whole lives locked into nesting boxes, being fed chemicals to make them lay more. It's barbaric. Who knows whether anything from those Frankenfowl is even safe to eat?
     Trust me, the inspector says. I'm with the government.