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ATA 3 SCANT c ~ > Sr Da fe HR WI LARA fA Wa ANA LA MTN Y RHEE ADR RAAIRE Rat Tr -- Ce. er-- RR ER RR ain N FRR Z 'Creenoegce/ (here are you 7' A by John Gast Chat "Have you given up on your house renovations?' someone asked me a couple of days ago, in reference to a series of horror stories I wrote last year on the trials and tribulations of a reporter-turned-renovator. I showed him a gangrene-like left thumb, green- ish purple from a self-inflicted carpentry job a couple of weeks ago, and a gash in the left leg of my jeans caused by a dislodged chisel. Actually I've done quite well over the past few months. I've built an addition out back, an overhang out front, some insulation up top, and some propping up down below. Now I'm ready to do some work on the house. The way I figure it, as long as the hospital keeps a good supply of plasma, the drug store stocks up with band-aids and the hardware store keeps selling me another summer of puttering down...er...around the house. One of the things I've been promising my wife to do is to straighten out the slight dip in the living room floor. Not that it needs any straightening, mind you, it's just that my wife wants to rearrange the furniture and everything slides to the centre of the floor. I told her a hundred time that it's cozy with the furniture like that. There's a feeling of togetherness, of security with the family huddled in the centre of the floor like that, I tell her, but she keeps accusing me of being afraid to go down to the basement. I tell her that's nonsense, and to prove the point, grab a kitchen knife and follow closely behind her down the basement stairs. Just as we move slowly past the furnace, it kicks in (the furnace has it in for me, as I'll amply prove later) and I whirl around, wildly thrashing for the beast's jugular, but my wife calms me down. Not to worry. A furnace's bark is worse than its bite. We got orie of those dug-out basements with a creaky, cob-webbed door that leads to a crawl space. It's dark as pitch in there, and it reminds me of a scene in the movie "Them" about these giant spiders that go galloping after people, draining their bone marrow or hemoguber or some such thing. "Need a light!!" I whisper to my wife. I volunteer to go get the flashlight, but she's already up the stairs. I stand there with paring knife ready to take on the first crawler as it bounds through the door at me. blades, hammer handles and crow bars, I'm all set for Behind me, the furnace kicks in and I just about lay an egg. My wife, meanwhile, has discovered the flashlight is dead. 'Must be Marnie," says she. "Caught her playing with it this morning." Now comes the stupid 'question. "What would anyone be doing, playing with a flashlight in the daytime," I asked. Answer: "She's 'fraid of the dark, hon." We improvise, stripping extension cords from all over the house, plugging them together. On the end is a huge table lamp, the other end in an upstairs electrical outlet, On my back, I inch head first along the dry dirt, dragging the lamp along between my knees. It gets tighter and tighter, and the moving light throws weird shapes on the short upright poles. I think of that crazy kid with those trained rats I saw at the movies. Wilhelm or Wilfred...and those horrible rodents. Suddenly...no more shadows. No more light. I've inched too far. I've come unplugged. : Sheer terror. I'm sure one of Wilhelm's rats is nibbling at my shoe laces way down there where I can't reach. I can hear the soft pad-pad of the hooves of the spiders on the soft, dry dirt all around me. I remember a flick about a horrible three-eyed green glob that ate San Francisco, and I can hear that one, too. My wife, through with the toaster now that her - cigarette's lit, plugs the cord back in, and I can see again. I put a jack under the beam, give it a few cranks, and the snaps, crackles and pops are deafening. : It says crank slowly-one or two turns every 24 hours in the instruction boo, but God knows I don't want to crawl back under tomorrow, so I crank like hell. Above, I can hear the furniture sliding back to the outside walls. I shove a few bricks and pieces of two-by-four in the gap, lower the jack, and slide out . from under. Never to look back. The living room is back to normal now. Well almost. My wife's complained a few times about the climb to the coffee table, and I've got her convinced that it'll level out when it settles. My next project is to fill in those cracks in the rliving room ceiling and walls that I never noticed before. I've already purchased the sledge hammer and hacksaw blades to do that job. Plan to start on it soon. SS Censorship In an editorial in the STAR a few weeks ago, we questioned the value of the Purity vs. Porno movement that seems to be gathering steam in North America. Our point was that while the proliferation of pornography isn't exactly a sign of a growing good taste in our society, it hardly warrants the kind of moral crusading that 'is going on today. We noted specifically, that police are overworked In their attempts to keep the lid on the hundreds of thousands of rapes, murders, assaults, and other serious crimes, and to ask law enforcement agencies to take on the duties of regulating the public's reading habits would be ridiculous. > What do we mean by ridiculous? We didn't have to wait too long for an example. In Oshawa last week, the Robert McLaughlin Gallery was almost closed down when some question arose about the suitability for public showing of some of the works by artist Dennis Burton. The question of what was art and what was 'not suitable for public viewing" was made by Durham Regional Police Superintendent Ken Young, in a review before the show requested by Mayor Jim Potticary. ' The fact that we have a 'politician and a policeman making such a judgement is perhaps the . best example of what the opponents of censorship are talking about when they say that the cure is worse than the disease. : ' In some ways, the point made by the anti-censor- ship group has already been proven. The anti-porno outrage was Initially aimed at the spread of what might be called supersick porno. Bestiality, incest, sadism, children, and worse. But to many, it includes the Playboy centerfold and garage pin-up. "In future, it might include a book or two, a work of art, or perhaps even a political opinion. Need Participation Somebody at last week's annual meeting of the" Scugog Ratepayers' Association mentioned. that something should be done to "get some new blood' into the organization. z That's an understatement, judging from the sad turn-out at the meeting and some previous meetings of the organization, as one might get the feeling that the body will have to be dragged to shore, resusci- tated before the new blood is administered. The association has, beyond a doubt, supplied a service to the municipality. It' gives citizens, interested in what their local government is up to, a chance to stay informed and in so doing lets local politicians know that somebody cares -- and is watching. The Ratepayers' suffer, of course, from the same problem effecting most other organizations. Not enough people do care...or are watching. It seems that the only time participation swells is when some local, emotional issue arises, and that's given the Ratepayers' a reputation of negativism. ' Perhaps, before we criticize government of going their own way without the input of the citizenry, we should present a posture of concern and partici- pation. Spending Orgy As an example of how big cars are regaining their former popularity, a Canadian dealer reported that a customer recently bought a Rolls Royce for which he paid $92,000. Can such a shocking expenditure for a car be justified? Of course the buyer would probably reply, "It's my money -- | can do what | like with it."" But can he? The answer isn't all that simple. On a smaller scale, the same question could be asked of millions of affluent Canadians now indulging: in a headlong spending spree for luxuries. If it isn't electric toothbrushes, it's snowmobiles, $50. dinners, pleasure trips to Africa, expensive stereo sets or that aren't really needed but feature a What about its effect on inflation? How much ger can we drive big cars that gobble up our limited fuel resources. Are we justified in carefree buying when millions all over the world live in unimaginable poverty? The handling of one's money is really a moral issue. We can go on acquiring more and more material things that reflect self-indulgence. Or we can challenge each impulse to do so. Unchurched Editorial