"Locked out and starving"

Apparently, it's difficult to find a local story to report on these days. When NOW Magazine's “Newsfront” article (October 27 – November 2) is a ridiculous piece about the green bins pushing starving racoons to desperate goldfish eating measures, Toronto must not be doing so bad. Gun crime, corrupt municipal politics, job losses to suburbia, rising homelessness, and urban sprawl are clearly under control: stop the press, we're making it just slightly more difficult to feed the city's raccoons! Guess who's desperate? NOW magazine.

To be fair, I think their arts reporting and food reviews are great. But their news is a terrible forum where facile socialist rhetoric is the norm, as if the paper takes an activist stance for the purpose of being cool and different. (I love the word “facile”. It mashes easy and dumb. It's also used the same way in French though more generally, it means “easy”. Easy like NOW.) How else could one publish an article like “Locked out and starving”, talking about raccoons having their food supply reduced due to (cleverly?) designed garbage cans. Would NOW profile “The Pussycat Dolls” as the hot new music act? Incidentally, would someone please make a t-shirt with the words “Don't cha wish yo girlfriend was a bimbo-like-me?” across the chest? Maybe put “(Bimb-oh!!)” on the back as well.

The article in question is a complete disaster. It starts by praising the organic waste diversion program Toronto has started as a way to reduce the overall output it sends to Michigan (the city has not done it as some ecological incentive). And yes, I concede that there is a point to this program. Quickly, however, the article shifts to explaining strategies to protect the fish in the three ponds in the author's back yard, “various species of koi and long-finned sarasa comets” he's been keeping. Because, you see, the raccoons can't eat garbage anymore, they have to decimate the fish population of this guy's back yard. I think it's perfectly natural and kind of cute. So, now dude wants to buy an electric fence to surround the ponds, which already have waterfalls and fountains. And he's apparently not the only one to want to do this, after visiting a Toronto pet store uncovers more concerned backyard fish lovers.

The tragedy of his lost fish is a “devastating loss”, the author's own words. Yet he's become “something of a zeolot in directing his household's organic waste into the two-wheeled receptacle so it can be returned to the earth.” This strikes me as nothing other than good old fashion petit bourgeois. So NOW, cut the crap. And when you're done, I'll leave the choice up to you to put it in your green organic bin, morons.