I am rather annoyed. (Perhaps I should clarify that brief statement. In fact I will translate it from my English vernacular to a more suitable North American parlance. If I was a commander in chief with access to a variety of excellent ordnance I would be using them right now almost certainly incinerating a portion of downtown Toronto in the process.) However, I feel rather annoyed covers it.

There I was innocently disembarking from the five-oh-six west bound streetcar when I fortunately looked to my right once more before striding off in the direction of the sidewalk. Although not as nimble or agile as I once was, fear and terror is a wonderful motivator, a black Lincoln Navigator plowed past the streetcar and I just managed to leap back on board before becoming a traffic statistic. The driver did not even see the streetcar, let alone me, he being preoccupied with texting or some form of activity with his phone.  The streetcar driver hit the horn and bell but the guy didn’t even slow down because he needed to get through the light which had just turned red.

After my heart rate stabilised and I had collected my thoughts sufficiently I texted the Lincoln’s plate number to my attorney with a brief note explaining why. By now I imagine his car is a burnt out wreck, his house has been foreclosed on, his wife has left him after seeing crude and disgusting pictures of him on the internet and his daughters are on their way to a lifetime of servitude with a Saudi prince. Life lesson: do not fuck with my attorney.

However what annoyed me more than anything is the fact the TTC retrofitted all the streetcars with cameras. I have no idea how much this cost, and I am not going to try and find out, suffice to say, I’m betting it wasn’t cheap. For the life of me I cannot understand why they did not add one more camera to the outside. It could have been door activated and then anyone who decided that where they were going was far more urgent and more important than the lives of disembarking TTC passengers would have been caught of film, or data or whatever media that they store it on.  

Then these swine could be viscously dealt with. My first thought was a public thrashing. Dundas Square would seem to be the obvious choice, there is plenty of room for media satellite trucks and the stage could be used for some pre-flogging entertainment, perhaps after this thing picked up some momentum the screens surrounding the square could show replays of past whippings and a panel set up to dissect the floggers style, comparing him, or her for that matter, to great flagellators of years gone by.  Then I dismissed this because I’m sure there would some outcry or whining about how barbaric the punishment was.

So I settled on the old fashioned stocks. This would be a long-term situation, I believe for the first offence two to three days should suffice. The beauty of using stocks is they are easily transported in the back of one of those TTC pick-ups I see roaming endlessly around the city. Have you noticed that you never see one actually parked and the occupants doing something? I digress.

From Wikipedia “Since the purpose of putting offenders in the stocks was to expose them to ridicule and mockery, passers-by were encouraged to throw mud, rotten eggs, mouldy fruit and vegetables, smelly fish, offal, and excrement (both animal and human) at those being punished.”

      Isn’t this just perfect? I think it would be an excellent deterrent, after seeing these scum endure forty-eight hours of humiliation on a dedicated web cam site I’m sure that instances of near misses would be down to a few drivers who enjoy that type of public degradation. Anyhow, that’s all. Message ends.