You know that old saying, "as phoney as a three dollar bill."
Well, let's try "as phoney as a Canadian $20 bill."
It seems as if the happy gang down at the Bank of Canada didn't get the Canadian maple leaf right on those new plastic twenties. You know those sleazy, slinky polymer bills that you can't tell whether you have one or four of in your pocket. They, along with the phoney new $50 bills, built from the same oil refinery, are bringing a certain ugh factor into our colourful currency. No better way to get us to switch to plastic cards to do all our business transactions; that and eliminating the pennies. Great inflationary move. Way to go B of C.
Apparently the maple leaf on the phoney $20 is the roguish Norwegian maple leaf, not the revered Canadian sugar maple. The con artists at the Bank of C attempted to wheedle out of it by stating that they had consulted a well respected botanist to help them design a "stylized hybrid" maple leaf to adorn the new oily bills. When asked to identify this so-called respected botanist ... or tree study expert, they turned silent. Jeepers, even the guys who build our money can't come clean anymore and they're not even politicians. I can see a politician being unable to come up with any transparency, but Bank of Canada minions?
Before you know it, our meteorologists won't be allowed to give us any weather predictions under governmental guidelines and restrictions regarding speaking in public.
And speaking of phoney ... how about Lance Armstrong? He's phonier than our $20 bill.
At least one person is thankful for good old Lance ... Gary Bettman. Armstrong came along to take the bad guy heat off him.
I couldn't waste time listening to Lance on the Oprah channel last week, but heard and read enough about it after to form a semi-educated opinion.
Livestrong Lance is not that nice.
The world of professional cycling is in a mess with arranged races and paces. And here I thought only soccer, boxing and wrestling were the sports that were fixed.
How long will it be before the NFL will be fighting the fixers? With billions of dollars involved in their game, and that's not counting the gambling dollars ... it's only a matter of time, if it hasn't already happened. We knew baseball and basketball had been compromised in the past as well as college football in the U.S., so the pro version is next, I would think.
Which, of course, leads us to wonder what goes on in the gambling and fixing circuit when it comes to the NHL? It seems that this league is running under the radar so far, but no guarantees that it'll be clean for long either. We all know the Maple Leafs have been throwing games for years ... without any incentives, so maybe they should do it for some under-the-table compensation. Who would know the difference? If you're gonna look bad while losing, you might as well be paid for it. Hey, it worked for Michael Ignatieff and that Mitt guy, didn't it?
Latest update (well, latest in my world) on Internet scams. It seems the biggest online scams in the past couple of weeks have been vehicle sales and dating services that have caught the attention of the Internet trolls. Good money to be made in scamming these two industries.
My advice is go to the local vehicle dealers and your local ... oh, I don't know ... church, bar, library, grocery store to find a date. Or, you could make one up if you're a Notre Dame football star.
