You have your Ice Age, you have your Stone Age, you have your Bronze Age, your Iron Age, your dark ages, your age of enlightenment, your Computer Age, your Age of Aquarius and, finally, you have your Information Age. Known as the Lack of Information Age in Creeland.
Think of it. The average Cree receives his or her information from a limited number of sources. You have, of course, yours truly, you have your CBC North, you have your television, you have your bush radio, you have your shaking tent, you have your gossip, you have your newsletters, you have your pulpits, you have your annual reports and a few native newspapers, most of which end up in a huge piles in band offices undistributed until a chief comes by and hides them. A very small number of Creeps have access to the Internet, newspapers from abroad, magazines, books, CD-roms and some very unsavoury types like it that way.
Ignorance probably is bliss when you don’t hear of the wicked goings on in the world. Frinstance, on the cover of Photo Police is the story of the mayor of Chapais. Hizzoner, it reads, is starring in his very own home video locals have dubbed “Titanus.” The film’s plot is simple and can be summed up thus. The mayor engages in a menage a cinq with the first lady and several of his female friends. The paper does not say if they were registered voters.
The Honourable Jacques Berube will be seeking re-election next fall.
Meanwhile, Alio Police covered the Great Whale killing with the headline Cree Beaten ToDeath. They got that part right. In the story the man who died is identified as Inuit and they almost make it sound as if there is an all-out racial war up north. The lead goes, “It is public knowledge that certain Crees and certain Inuit are not the best of friends.” They probably don’t bother checking for facts because, judging from their ads, people don’t really pick it up for the news.
The Gazette carried a small story of a Kenyan couple, a policeman and the wife of an elder, who had somehow gotten locked together while doing the “Chapais.” They had to be flown to a hospital still in each other’s “clutches.”
A story in today’s paper tells of a drunk 51 year old man who lost a centimetre of his thingy while masturbating with a vacuum cleaner. The headline says, “Sex With Vacuum Cleaner Sucks.”
The Associated Press did a story on Mexican police academy training practices. Trainees were instructed to “rob with professionalism” and received tips on bribery etiquette. Two of the wannabe cops admitted to murder and one bragged that he beats his girlfriend for the hell of it. The article quotes a report done on the academy, “The policeman always has hopes that a robbery represents not only a moment to carry out his work- arrest criminals-but also permits him to obtain something else: to rob what is being robbed.”
Yes I know… They’re not very insirational stories but you do get the odd hope-filledtale. I just can’t remember any of them right now. Besides, my computer’s word countthingamajig and the clock tell me I’m running out of space and time.
