I Wanna Go Out And Do Something Fun and I Don’t Mean Walking Along Some Silly Nature Trail

With every passing day, Downtown Winnipeg gets more and more desolate. The Winnipeg version of progress is truly sucking ass. It seems to me that while we were all home nurturing our children, the boring, anti-fun league took over the city.

It must be that the current generation of 20 somethings don’t like to go out in public if they can avoid it. Why wouldn’t they be totally fine with living imaginary lives with imaginary friends via the internet? They are for the most part, nerdy, pudgy and unattractive. They can’t spell either, but I am willing to leave that alone for the moment.

When we 40ish citizens were their age, we rebelled against all things lame and sucky. In the ’70s and ’80s, we kind of took it right to the limit with glam, punk rock and all manner of partying. Then, the fun came to a screeching halt when AIDS put an instant stop to the sexual revolution.

So we took the most logical next step, we got married, had kids and left the party scene unattended for a bit.

Who would’ve predicted that by the time we were ready to go back to the bars, they would all be gone?

Not just the bars either, EVERYTHING is going away. Retail downtown has been replaced with main floor offices of the most uninteresting kind.

Main Street and Portage Avenue used to have coffee shops, stores and nightclubs for miles. If you weren’t sure what to do with yourself, no problem! Head downtown for a little hustle and bustle. Do a little window shopping, pick up a copy of the latest Joan Jett album or bump into a couple friends and have lunch. Saturday night? Maybe check out a bar, see a band, catch a movie or go to a fun restaurant. Limitless.

I was downtown today for example and what was there…

Well, there was a Christian bookstore, a new Manitoba Hydro office, a bunch of clinics and a lot of different parking lots. Portage Place is there of course, but I was alone and I had my fancy new coat and purse, so I wasn’t really in any position to be fending off the local street gangs.

A couple Saturdays ago, I went to go see a band at The Albert. The ATM was down, so we ventured out to find another one. There is one in The Gentleman’s Club, but the user fee is SIX BUCKS. Screw that, so we walked over to Portage and Main. There are 4 banks on that corner, and another 2 on the corner of Fort and Portage. Think any of them had a bank machine? No, and big surprise, the streets were deserted.

I head downtown 3 times a week and every time I do, there is something else being torn down. It’s so sad. Even skid row is almost completely erased.

It started when they ran the prostitutes out of the exchange in the mid eighties.

I’ve said this before, we used to have impeccably well dressed and glamorous whores and when we got rid of them, all that happened was that we got stuck with horrible, filthy, scummy, cheap ones.

I’d rather we kept the beautiful ones.

Everyone used to whine and complain about Higgins and Main, because of the bums and the drama. The city started by tearing down the Carousel and The Savoy. They have since replaced them with vacant lots and a lovely park full of huffers and peed on hobos.

The last few years have seen the destruction of everything that was once Main Street Winnipeg. We are down to The Bell Hotel, which is closed, The Manwin, also closed and the New Occidental.

It would have been nice if the city revitalized that area with nicer retail and some prettier clubs, but of course the 20 somethings wouldn’t bother to frequent places like that. Sure looks to me like the new 20 somethings have rebelled against our generation and all things fun. They have their internet lives and appear for all intents and purposes, to be asexual.

If someone had bothered to ask me 5 or 10 years ago, if I would rather have parking lots, homeless shelters and offices along Main instead of the skid row bars and hotels, I would have told them not to waste their time. There is still a crazy amount of crime in that neighborhood anyway. None of the problems have gone away, have they?

I would’ve preferred the strip the way it was.

Neon lights, drunks all over the streets and endless hullabaloo. At least that was interesting.

Let me put it like this, maybe an evening at the Bell isn’t my idea of a good time, but who am I to judge the people who think it is? I also don’t think that the scene at Whiskey Dix is any fun either and that hell hole stays open somehow. I happen to love the Albert and I wouldn’t want City Hall to take that away from me.

We can’t allow the boring to be in charge of what kind of action is going to remain acceptable within The City of Winnipeg.

Just like the groups that save the Heritage Buildings, we need a lobby group at City Hall to protect all things fun. Who wants to volunteer?

Gulf War Syndrome Is Still Better Than Dying; Isn’t It?

After much thoughtful consideration I decided to cave and get the H1N1 vaccine for the kids and myself. Turns out that I would prefer vomiting, diminished consciousness and gulf war syndrome to any kind of death.

Feeling greatly relieved and smug about my decision making skills, I spoke to the family. The one sister is definitely getting it and the sisters in law are all going along with her. All the nurse friends and whatnot are getting it too. My kids agree with me and are adamantly against dying as well.

Then I told the husband.
He’s dead set against it.
Great. Why?

He’s positive that the vaccine is more dangerous than the swine flu.

Big fight and back to square one.

More research on the internet and more phoning around.

Nurse Dan was unavailable for comment, but the pawn shop guy and the head shop guy are both against it. Uh huh.

David Icke has tons of dire warnings all over his website, including this very informative rap.

If you have not heard of this guy, please let me be the one to tell you about him. He is a former soccer player who now writes about all manner of impending doom and says that the Queen is a shape shifting reptilian. Overall, Mr. Icke’s website is most interesting. My favorite thing on there is the claim that H1N1 is an attempt by a “secret society network” “to cull the human population and turn the rest into little more than computer terminals”

Good God above.

Anyway, the sister in law went to one clinic and the line was 6 hours long. The sister went to another and the line was 2 hours long, but she’s still there and it’s been longer than 2 hours.

Then I read about 2 severe reactions that happened here in Winnipeg.

What am I doing about it? Good question.

I can tell you that we all had a flu recently and that may very well have been H1N1. So, I called our doctor and made an appointment. We are all getting a blood test and we’ll see if the flu we had was indeed swine flu. If it was, then great. We all have antibodies and we should be fine.

Otherwise we will get the shot and risk getting gulf war syndrome.

What’s A Kiddie Pack?

So the other day, Stephen Harper announced that his government intends to “crack down” on tobacco marketing aimed at youth.

Um… OK.

Buddy, there is no tobacco marketing anymore.

The only people talking about smoking on TV are the ones in those anti-smoking commercials. Maybe those guys should shut up and maybe kids will forget about smoking altogether.

He says that they will introduce more laws (oh goody) so that tobacco companies won’t be allowed to sell small packs anymore. Harper refers to these 20 packs as “kiddie packs”. I am very pro smoking as everyone knows, and I have never heard this term. Could it be that Mr. Harper knows more about smoking than me?

Nope. Not possible.

Harper would have us believe that cigarettes are “too affordable”. Once again; wrong. Trust me when I say this, cigs are not cheap.

My own children never once expressed even a passing interest in buying one of these so-called “kiddie packs”. If you had ever met my kids, then you would know that if something is being marketed, then they definitely want it. So it’s also not even remotely probable that there is tobacco marketing of any kind going on whatsoever.

So I guess that problem is solved. Can we start lobbying for laws against other poisons now? Like maybe, aspartame?