Gregg: "Artifice is the kryptonite of public life..."

"We may all have the right to our opinions but we do not have the right to our own facts..."

More about that here in today's Great Gray Globe...

Sounds of summer

Casa Coyote's entrance is beneath a fencepost right where four downtown highrise properties meet. This, felicitously, means that if the relevant property management companies ever notice, they're gonna have trouble agreeing on the legalities of eviction. They hate each other. And I'm proactively lawyered-up... but I digress, already. Possibly a speed record, even for me. And I just digressed, there, again. Dammit, this isn't starting well.

No, this screed's subject is, ummm, green yard care companies. Four property managers, so four contractors. What they have in common besides motley fleets of green trucks full of implements, is what looks to dumb coyotes to be a fanatical hatred of actual plants.

Anything green that isn't a truck disturbs 'em. They assault quiet with fanatical will. Platoons of beefy college and university students are their foot soldiers. Ill-muffled chainsaws, chemical sprayers, lawn mowers, edgers, hedge cutters, sweepers and blowers are their weapons. Based on the number of noisy, reeking little two-stroke motors alone, it's safe to say that they don't really like nature much. It's stunning the environmental damage one motor of a couple of tablespoons' displacement can spew in a few minutes. You could look it up. These guys have full-on arsenals. The irony of them purporting to be green-care gardeners is not lost on me.

Spring's opening attack is to serially butcher trees on the property lines from all directions, chainsawing potential overhangs until any hint of shade is gone. I'm pretty sure they're paid by the pound, because all of 'em buzz and chip trees regardless of whether they've already been ummm, pruned by their brothers in arms.

Then they gear up for summer: serial waves of earmuffed infantry hit the different properties, spraying noxious-smelling stuff, cutting, and blowing up a storm. They leave lawns no nappier than pool tables. They force shrubs into smooth lollipop shapes. And interestingly, they lavish more love on parking lots than they do on herbiage. Complete pressure-washing after winter, weekly sweeping, vacuuming and blowing through the high season to make sure not a pebble, grass or hedge clipping mars the hot asphalt.

I imagine someone thinks they make things look nice, but the constant noise and the half-burnt petroleum and dust that hang in the air throughout the summer kinda belie this.

Now, ya don't have to be a coyote to know that cities are about noise. And crap. Wake up any weekday before 6 a.m. to swivel your (pointy) ears, and you'll hear Ottawa's duller overnight hum crescendo to a full-blown roar by no later than 6:30. It's what cities do. But if each of these allegedly green companies have to issue their foot-troops with earmuffs to keep 'em from damaging their hearing, waddaya think it does to nearby denizens of high-rise condos - and low-rise dens - who hear all of 'em? And who are left to suck up the smog that squelches any nostalgic aroma of new-mown lawn?

I'm just sayin'...

Ask your doctor

All these Viagra and Cialis commercials make me think there are perhaps two, maybe three, men in our great Dominion, able to get an erection. Yes, if the frequency, tone and urgency of the ads are to be believed, in the words of the incomparable Moe Berg, almost all men, with few and valiant exceptions worthy of the Order of Canada, just can't seem to get it up.

All of which made me wonder if there is a drug available for the opposite condition. Yes, I seek the anti-Viagra. The pill or potion that smites desire and keeps it passive and subservient.

A quick online search turned up several possibilities: Marriage. Salt peter. Fathering a child. Curlers, beauty mask cream, a cigarette, bottle of tequila, frumpy nightgown, granny panties, or furry bunny slippers. Or a bunny wearing furry granny panties.

And for the women: A picture of Dom Deluise. Men that wear socks in bed, leave the bathroom sink in a mess, fail to put the seat down, don't cut toenails, or do and leave them on the floor.

Doctor Phil, where are you when we truly need you?