The yul

Bob
Hunter

THE OTHER day an elderly
Canuck couple were awak-
ened from a midday snooze in
the bedroom of their little
suburban home by the sound
of a bucket-sized chunk of
blue ice and chewed-up food
and frozen urine crashing
through their roof.

When the media asked somebody
at the nearby airport what had gone
wrong, the reply was: “Oh well, it
happens every couple of years.”

That is, an in-coming or out-
going jet dumps the contents of its
toilet on people living beneath its
flight path once every couple of
years, and nobody does anything
about it? {t's just considered one of
those things that happens?

You mean, in addition to being
mildly stressed in a background sort
of way all the time about the chances
of a satellite screaming to Earth in
red-hot bits and obliterating my fam-
ily before my eyes, and in addition to
fretting endlessly about break-ins,
rabid raccoons, mice, termites, heat-
ing bills, appliance meltdowns,
jammed sliding doors, and all the
other horrors of modern life, I have
to factor in the possibility of being
pooped on by a passing plane?

This is a serious
public relations set-
back for the airline
industry.

In terms of the
scale of the damage, I
would rate this right
up there with that
video an outraged
passenger shot, and
then released to the
media, of the crew on
a Juxury Jiner dump-
ing garbage overboard
in plastic bags.

The sad part, from the airlines’
point of view, is that the damned
clump of icy crap came barreling
down in the middle of a big
Canadian suburb, well within range
of the daily TV news cameras, so we
got to see what a disgusting thing it
was.

You would think there would be
tules and fail-safes against planes
dumping on suburbs. Stringent,
Draconian rules. Tripie-redundancy
fail-safes.

But no ... You-know-what hap-

ns

It’s bad enough there are already
seagulls migrating between dump-
sites and rookeries, who have a ten-
dency to let fly whenever they feel
like it, which can be right over your
sundeck.

Ihave actually only been hit once
by flying bird guano, and that was
while sitting at a sidewalk cafe, hav-
ing a drink with a few friends, and
having just said something incredi-
bly stupid. Whap!

It reminded me sharply that there
probably is a God out there watch-
ing. Some things can only be
explained that way.

But icy drek from a jet has noth-
ing to do with God. That’s an indus-
trial issue, maybe a labor relations
issue. Who knows? Maybe it has
application under the Charter.
Everything else seems to.

1 think this lump of yuk from the
sky is highly symbolic, possibly
even a metaphor. Yes, another one!

_ One thing you can say about
modem life is that it is full of poten-
tially metaphorical material.

Think of all the other technology-
inspired hassles we have to deal
with, which have also reached that
exalted category being something
that happens every couple of years,
and therefore is virtually just part of
nature, like the chances of being hit
by lightning or mugged by a squirrel.

Once incorporated as a “normal”
part of life, these little problems
never go away, they just become part
of the background noise.

Like the risk that a law firm
might not do its title search properly

STRICTLY PERSONAL

and the house you are trying to sell
turns out to have been built over a
sewer trunk and your swimming
pool is therefore illegal and will have
to be filled in, and the guy who is
buying the house from you pulls out
of the deal because the Central
Housing and Mortgage Corporation
won't back a first-time loan on a
house that does not conform with the
bylaws, even if no one told you
about it when you bought the place
in the first place.

66 You would think there would be
rules and fail-safes against planes
dumping on suburbs. Stringent,
Draconian rules. Triple-redundancy

fail-safes. But no... 99

Like getting a registered letter
from a collection agency saying that
this is final warning before they drag
you through the courts because your
name showed up on somebody’s
credit card after they left town, and
you are now going to have to hire a
lawyer on the other side of the coun-
try to defend you because the collec-
tion goon is convinced you are his
prey even though you are totally
innocent.

Like hiring a furnace repair man
to fix your natural gas-powered pool
heater, accepting at face value his
announcement, because he was this
rugged old guy with an honest face,
that a $400 valve would have to be
replaced, only to discover later that
the part could be obtained for $50,
and then getting worm down by the
guy's answering machine, and even-
tually running out of time and energy
to devote to the cause of going back-
wards after a few hundred bucks,
what with moncy spilling as freely in
every direction as it does these days.

Like telling a power utility that
you no longer want to use a certain
appliance, which you happen to be
renting from the company, but which
has proved not to be useful, only to
find that no matter how many times
you phone them up and complain
about the rent still being added to
your monthly bill, the utility contin-
ues for a full year to bill you, and
when finally you get through to a big
enough bureaucrat to get them to
stop billing, and moreover have them
promise you a credit, then they for-
get to pass that along to the account-
ing department, which you have to
start phoning.

Or the lawyer who insists, as you
assume 4 mortgage to buy a house,
that even though the people whose
mortgage it is haven't
paid their last month's
instalment, there’s noth-
ing to worry about, it
will all work out, and
the next thing you
know, after you’ ve
signed, is that the collec-
tion arm of the trust
company you're dealing
with calls up to warn
you that you're about to
be dragged through the
courts 1 you don’t pay
up that last instalment
immediately, and as for anybody’s
claims that it’s not your responsibili-
ty, “you'd better talk to your
lawyer...”

Icy yukky stuff falling from the
sky. It’s everywhere.

There’s nothing you can do to
protect yourself, either. There are too
many planes flying over, metaphori-
cally speaking, and far too many
idiots with their fingers on the flush
button.

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