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Archive for August, 2009

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August 27, 2009

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August 25, 2009

A little TLC for your horse’s Mental Comfort

By Calliope Hicks, EPM (Equine Psychic Messenger)

A little TLC for your horse’s Mental Comfort

It doesn’t take a clairvoyant to know you’re skeptical. Horse whisperer? Horse psychic? I prefer Equine Psychic Messenger or EPM for short.
 
Peace be with you. My name is Calliope Hicks and I’ve been blessed with EESP — Equine Extra Sensory Perception. In fact, I’m the a fifth generation EPM bursting with EESP.
 
The cosmic journey began with my great-great-grandmother Esmeralda Hicks, a gypsy captured by the British, taken to South Africa during the Boer War and forced to tell British cavalry officers what their horses were thinking. Imperialist pig dogs.
 
A lot has changed in 110 years.
 
The other day, in fact, I grew wings. I am now a mobile medium.
 
I found this great old horse trailer just abandoned by the side of the road. I hitched it to my VW bus and dragged it home.
 
It needed a little love, but it’s nothing some bondo, spray paint and incense can’t fix. Incense fixes everything!
 
You wouldn’t believe how many people tell me, “I’d love to have you do a reading on my horse, but, darn it, you’re so far away and I can’t take the time away from looking after the other horses.”
 
Great news! Now I can come to you!
 
I call it my Transcendental Love Cocoon or TLC for short.
 
Some of the horses freak out a little walking through the bead curtain, but the Joni Mitchell 8-track seems to calm the fillies down, in particular (The boys seem partial to The Doors).
 
The secret to opening channels is to provide a comfortable, safe space free from judgment and the kind of hatred that fuels the capitalist war machine.
 
Too bad they don’t make bean bag chairs for horses! Soooo cozy! But, I make do with homemade brownies. Great for cleansing the senses.
 
If you really want to figure out why your horse is lazier than a fat guy, keeps trying to drag you through the infield pond or, by comparison, makes Vlad the Impaler seem like a guy you’d like to hang out with, I suggest you get jiggy with it in a explore-your-horse’s-mind kinda way.
 
First, you’ll need me to use a plunger to unblock your horse’s psychological loo.
 
If you want to have a happier, more confident, more successful racehorse, I highly recommend a session. Just $79.95! (Brownies extra).
 
So, look for my trailer in a backstretch near you soon!
 
It’s the one with the rainbow on one side, Pegasus on the other and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the back with the friendly letters TLC, EPM and EESP floating in a cloud about his head.
 
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August 25, 2009

An old-timer and proud of it

By Merv Oswalt

An old-timer and proud of it

Pleased to meet you. I’m Merv Oswalt and I’m an old-timer and proud of it.
 
I’m probably the last person you’d expect to find writing a ‘blog’ — in fact, before today, I thought a blog was just something that I used to cough up after a smoky all-nighter at the Greenwood teletheatre.
 
Technologically speaking, I basically got left at the hitching post around the time that fax machines and VCRs came into fashion, and I still can’t get my head around email. How is it that I can check messages meant for me on your computer? Are they in my computer or not? How does the computer down at the library have my messages on it? I don’t trust it, but my wife, Bernie, and the kids say that it’s OK.
 
They also think that it’s OK to put my credit card number in that thing. I may have been born in the 1940s, but the last time I checked that wasn’t yesterday.
 
Anyway, as you can tell, I’m not much for technology. I’m also not much for, in no particular order: cowboy drivers, horses that don’t try a lick and robot betting machines.
 
I want a real, live person teller to take my bet and I want them to get it right and placed in time, even if there is a long line and I wait until zero minutes to post to get up from my seat and join the line.
 
I don’t want to fiddle with all of the buttons and have to take off my bifocals to read the tiny letters on the screen. I want to tell my bet to a teller have them hand me a ticket and give me cash, not a voucher, if my ticket wins.
 
By the way, I also wish real banks still worked this way, too, instead of these ATM things or them telling me it would be easier for me if I had telephone or online banking. Easier for me? I don’t think so. Easier for me was when I went to the bank every Friday and took out all the money that I would need for the following week. That was easy. No card, no code, no ‘what’s my mother’s maiden name?’, just a nice lady in a pretty blouse who handed me my money. What was wrong with that system?
 
I guess that’s all my time for today, but stick with me because I have a lot to say. I don’t have a journalism degree, a facebooker account and, as God as my witness, I will never have online banking, but I do have an opinion.
 
And I’ll keep sharing it with you, just as soon as Bernie types it up for me.

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Displaying 4 to 6 of 21