At the risk of aneurysm - Ian

Browsing through CBC Calgary, I came across a couple of articles that I was thinking of commenting on, but I touched on the topics of both in my last real article. The first was regarding a crazy cat lady that is being sought by Calgary Police after her house was found with 96 cats, 2 of which were dead and 10 that had to be euthanised, and one dog. The second was that Calgary Health Region cannot afford a new specialised ultrasound machine. Thanks, Rascal. We know you'll get us back one day.

Here's the headline of the day. One in ten Calgary homes is selling for at least one million bucks. Can you believe this? There are some nice houses here selling for over a million dollars that you could buy in the Greater Toronto Area for well under half that. Shit, some you could buy for perhaps a quarter of that. And what are some of these rich shitheads doing after they've bought the place? They're tearing them down to build a new house in its place. Apparently, there's quite a lot of money floating around here with the oil barons in town. This news comes on the heels of a story I read earlier this week that Calgarians are buying way more high-end stuff with their oodles of money than they ever have before. Why? Because they can, I suppose.

This really gets me for a couple of reasons. Reason the first: I can't find a house to rent because everyone is just selling them for 800,000 bucks in the Crackton area of town, when this same house in Oshawa would just have the keys in the lock and a wad of cash underneath it, with a note begging the first person by to take it. The key would probably just be made of chocolate though. That's just as well, seeing as the lock is just precariously balanced in the door itself and it's also made of mud.

Reason the second: This city is like Tiny America. The gap between the poor here and the rich is growing daily. I complain about my job, but really, I'm not doing so badly. Sure, I could be making more, but I've done alright for myself, keep my head down and do my job well. I'm going for 10 days to England and Germany in June to catch some World Cup, I pay too-high rent for my apartment, but I still manage to keep my head above water. There is a growing homeless problem, people doing far worse jobs for far worse wages than me, while some oil baron is paying 5000 bucks to give his dog radiation treatment, buy a house for a million bucks, spend hundreds on a Flames ticket and complain about the homeless problem, urban sprawl and all the new people trying to move here to get in on the prosperity train. Did I mention they just passed a new tax for people who want to buy a house out here? That's right, keep out people just looking to get a fresh start and get in at the bottom. No, they're catering only to the already well-off.

I could go on about this for awhile, but I'd get myself even more worked up. I think I'll look back at the archives of The Bull and wonder what ever happened to my basketball skillz, such as I had when I was but in high school so many moons ago.

Alpha Sierra Sierra, over and out.