Maxed Out

Though email was created in the early 1970s, it remained the rather exclusive domain of pioneering techies until the early-to-mid 1990s, when it was rolled out as a feature by early commercial internet service providers.

As challenging as this last week has been for almost anyone with a Telus email address—and particularly for me—it seems it's time to purge and do a semi-regular Tales From the Inbox column.

Words are so weird it's a wonder any clear idea ever gets communicated using them. This, of course, is a terrible admission for someone who writes words and gets paid for it but familiarity has, perhaps, bred contempt.

A 21-year-old , obsessed by what he considered an invasion of Texas by Hispanics, walked into a Walmart last Saturday with an automatic weapon and several hundred rounds of ammunition and killed 22 people and wounded a couple dozen more.

This weekend, Canadians from coast to coast to coast—with the notable exception of Quebec—will celebrate ... well, let's just leave it at that. They'll celebrate. Canadians aren't really very good at celebrating. It makes us uneasy.

They may still not smoke marijuana in Muskogee—no doubt preferring opioids—but if so, it must be about the last place on Earth.

I am not a violent man. Ornery, crabby, opinionated and cynical, but not violent. I religiously believe in turning the other cheek. If the other cheek doesn't work, I'm usually quick to drop my trou and give 'em the full moon. But I am not violent.

A number of years ago I returned to Ontario to spend a couple of weeks paddling in Killarney Provincial Park. Killarney occupies a small swath of the coast of Georgian Bay.

Oh, Canada! The angst. The agony. The complete and utter dissatisfaction. The revulsion. From coast to coast to coast, Canadians are frustrated, overwhelmed, and, well, simply pissed off at pretty much everything.

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" – C. Little And so it was. Notwithstanding the sky didn't actually fall on Chicken Little's head, soon after the fable was finished the axe did fall on her head.