Friday, August 31, 2012

Rooftop Golfing....In Kitsilano?

TheReturnOfHSTFridays
ResIpsaSomeMoreVille


"The Fraser Institute, Canada's leading right-wing think tank, received over $4.3 million in the last decade from eight major American foundations including the most powerful players in oil and pharmaceuticals, The Vancouver Observer has learned.

In May, it was found that the US oil billionaire Koch brothers gave the Fraser Institute half a million dollars since 2007. But further investigation shows the insitute received funding from other major US foundations...."






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"...One of my most vivid memories of South America is that of a man with a golf club - a five-iron, if memory serves - driving golf balls off a penthouse terrace in Cali, Columbia. He was a tall Britisher, and had what the British call 'a stylish pot' instead of a waistline. Beside him on a small patio table was a long gin-and-tonic, which he refilled from time to time at the nearby bar.

He had a good swing, and each of his shots carried low and long out over the city. Where they fell, neither he nor anyone else on the terrrace that day had the vaguest idea.....Somewhere below us, in the narrow streets that are lined by the white adobe blockhouses of the urban peasantry, a strange hail was rattling down on the roofs - golf balls, 'old practice duds,' so the Britisher told me, that were 'hardly worth driving away'.

It is doubtful that the same man would drive golf balls off a rooftop apartment in the middle of London. But (it) is not really surprising to see it done in South America. There, where the distance between the rich and the poor is so very great, and where Anglo-Saxons are automatically among the elite, the concept of noblesse oblige is subject to odd interpretations.

The attitude, however, does not go unnoticed; the natives consider it bad form indeed for a foreigner to stand on a rootop and drive golf balls into their midst. Perhaps they lack sporting blood, or maybe a sense of humor, but the fact is that they resent it, and it is easy to see why they might go to the polls at the next opportunity and vote for the man who promises to rid the natiuon of 'arrogant gringo imperialists'..."

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Ahhhh....The branch plant life.

Gosh.

Wonder if anybody has noticed any Titleists bouncing down Burrard lately?

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4 comments:

Lew said...

The attitude, however, does not go unnoticed; the natives consider it bad form indeed for a foreigner to build a pipeline and drive diluted bitumen into their rivers. Perhaps they lack sporting blood, or maybe a sense of humor, but the fact is that they resent it, and it is easy to see why they might go to the polls at the next opportunity and vote for the man who promises to rid the province of 'arrogant gringo imperialists'...

RossK said...

Lew!

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Kim said...

Lol!

Skookum1 said...

golf balls can kill if they hit the head right...certainly cause concussions.....