Blogging my way through world problems

When I started writing this blog some ten months ago, I told myself this is just a practice area -- a place away from work to play with words and ideas. I was not trying to solve the world's problems. I was not trying to right all wrongs, though I did hope to praise the just and satirize the guilty. I expected to have few readers and sadly that expectation has been exceeded.

But I lied. O how i lied. Like Ralph Philips, a minor Looney Toons character from the fifties, I daydreamed myself into dozens of blogging adventures -- ranting about Afghanistan, raving about nuclear power and roaring about the Green Party. But it turns out I have not simply been playing -- I care deeply about these things and want to make the world right. Typing away in front of this computer screen, with a cup of fair trade coffee at my side, I've had a few Walter Mitty-like moments where I thought I was making a difference. But we all know that's load of bull cookies (as the venerable Colonel Sherman T. Potter used to say).

The problem with world problems is that there are so damn many of them. Even if young Ralph Philips could keep the world safe, he'd spend the rest of his days playing global Whack-a-Mole, battling insurgents here, terrorists there and global warming everywhere. Even when I push the blog cart down the aisles and toss fresh issues into the basket, they often go bad on me before I have a chance to fully cook 'em. And so I've ended up with a growing list of half-baked blog entires:

• Beware of Run and Cut Politicians


• The Past and Future of the David Dunlap Observatory


• Harper replaces Kyoto promises with false premises


• Afghanistan: You've Never Seen Everything


• The Perils of Expanding the Canadian Forces


• How the "Will of God" Cheapens Human Life


• The Nuclear Greening of Ontario?
  

The obvious truth is that I have neither the time nor the skill nor the patience to type the world's problems away. But damn it, Jim -- that's what I wanna do. Type the world's problems away. It could be worse. I grew up watching Looney Tunes and always had a soft spot for little Ralph Philips. The kid gets grounded by his mom but quickly escapes via his overactive imagination to save the world from aliens in a most spectacular way. But the reality of Ralph, according to Toonpedia is that he "never appeared in comic books, on lunch boxes, or in any other venue. He's such a minor character, he wasn't even with the rest of the Warner Bros. toons in Space Jam". Hmmm... sounds a lot like me!

Ok, it could be a lot worse. In recent months another Ralph Phillips made the headlines. Ralph "Buck" Phillips escaped from prison last April and played a deadly game of Whack-a-Mole with with upstate New Yorkers by popping up in dozens of towns, hiding out in state forests and shooting three New York state troopers (one fatally). He was finally caught on Sept 8th, 2006. This Ralph was 44, old enough to have watched the same fictional Ralph Phillips that many of us grew up with. Now that Ralph "Buck" Phillips is back in prison (aka grounded), I want to know how he will escape in his dreams. Or maybe I don't. I'll just keep typing along my own merry, deluded path.

Comm Ralph to General Staff. Comm Ralph to General Staff. Routine report. Martians captured. World Safe. Over