The Lunatic Fringe is alive and well (UPDATED)...

TO SUPPOSEDLY WRAP THIS UP ON SUNDAY, AUG. 10:

I salute the people in the pic above, who showed up Saturday to safeguard the family of Tim McLean, the young man who was killed and beheaded on a bus.

As it turns out -- and why should anybody REALLY be surprised -- the wacko, anti-homophobic so-called religious idiots from the Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas were nowhere to be found.

After all their chest-thumping about their plans to protest this kid's funeral to press their point that Canada was being punished by God for its permissive laws that actually legalized homosexuality, they stayed away.

Maybe in fear they turned back to look at Kansas and they were turned into stone by God somewhere in the Canadian Shield after they had snuck across the border?

Maybe He didn't part the Red River and they got eaten by catfish?

Maybe He purposely gave them the wrong directions to Winnipeg and they're up on the shores of Hudson Bay being eyed as prey by polar bears and being eaten alive by swarms of foot-long mosquitoes?

Or maybe they just showed their true colours and decided they wanted to save their own skins and didn't want themselves to be "beheaded" by the mass of mindful people who showed up to protect McLean's family?

THESE PEOPLE ABOVE ARE WHAT TRUE HUMANITY IS ALL ABOUT.

These Westboro Wackos are the real crazy cannibals in this whole thing, far worse than the very tortured soul who immigrated to Canada from China and who's accused of beheading this young man.

He is mentally ill, obviously, and has severe emotional problems that caused him to do this. But these religious zealots are much worse -- they're just morally bankrupt and supposedly of sound minds and hearts.

It was gruesome, gross, repugnant.

But it's real and it's where we seem to be at now where people like this, who are far worse than any Muslim fundamental groups, can figure they are so blindly right that they can do take their twisted beliefs and terrorize a family and a country that is reeling.

I can't believe stuff like this can happen. It boggles the mind. Our tiny brains, as proven by this Westboro group, were never intended to have to cope with the light-speed changes that our planet is going through now.

It's unbelievable. But it's all true. And that's scary.

The REAL Donnnnnnn...

THIS IS THE DONNNNNN (Homo Escapeons) THAT MOST WHO VISIT THIS BLOG KNOW.

A guy who can't swim without the help of a flotation device...

A guy who pretends he's fearless and brave but who stomps beetles to death and curses innocent squirrels and other wildlife who invade his backyard -- from the safety of his window...

The party animal of all party animals...

...and the guy who's quick with the middle finger...

...A man with no end of goofiness...

...and whose undisputed lifelong ambition has been to pose for Playgirl.

YET THERE IS MORE TO THIS MAN THAN MEETS THE EYE.

He is the ultimate father and protector of all those loved ones who live in his realm.

AND SO HEREWITH, WE PRESENT YOU WITH THE MOST RECENT INCARNATION OF NEIGHBOURHOOD JUSTICE AT WORK.

We introduce Donnnnnn, the nincompoop neighbourhood patrol guy.

I sent him these pictures so he could do a post on it himself. He opted not to before he leaves on vacation, so I had no choice but to come out of my own respite from the Blogworld to reveal this to the planet.

Yes, this is the immortal and immoral Donn, with his son's plastic handcuffs, only hours before his first patrol with another neighbourhood nannie with a cute yellow vest thingie and cool, authoritative hat.

Just like this youthful dragonfly above -- which was drying its wings on Donnnnnnn's ledge -- he will hover about his neighbourhood, his keen eyes of justice peeled for suspicious looking characters, etc.

Doesn't it look like he's having a piss here on his own backyard bench?

Well, anyway.

Donnnnnnnn has become quite an upstanding citizen of late. Only last month, he finished up his season as head coach, chauffeur, cheerleading squad, mascot, cook and other things of his community's local six-year-old soccer squad.

He most certainly is a talented, upstanding citizen.

I just wanted all of Blogdom to know that.

I NEED A VACATION...

And I'm takin' one. Sayonara!!!

King's Park (Saturday --no, make that Sunday -- in the Park)

SOMETIMES, WE CAN BE A PRETTY QUIRKY, QWAZY BUNCH OF QUACKS.

We lament the loss of green space to urban sprawl in the major cities where, increasingly, more of us live.

We talk about the importance to the planet of oxygen-producing trees and how the destruction of forests is so terrible.

We whine about living in concrete jungles, those of us that do.

Well, I rode out on my bike to my closest nearby sizeable green space last Saturday (CORRECTION--SUNDAY!).

It's called King's Park (we're still SO colonial).

Pic No. 1 below is a Google Earth image of the park itself. Pic No. 2 is a Google image from farther away, with the little yellow pin marker on the left showing where I live.

It's about a 15-minute bike ride.

It's a gorgeous expanse of green. It's beautiful, it really is. Winnipeg has many beautiful green spaces and parks. But aside from one or two of those parks, I always come away from them thinking the same thing.

Why are so few people there to take advantage of them?

Only minutes from this greenery sit houses row on row, barely 15 feet apart. As urban neighbourhoods go, it's great...mature trees, not far from the Red River.

But all of the pix I'm showing here with people in them are pretty much the only people I saw on a sunny, warm Saturday summer afternoon.

Where are all the dog-walkers letting their pets run free on the off-leash area that's as big as 20 football fields? Not one.

There was one group flying kites. There could be hundreds.

There were scattered friends or lovers (or both) out to walk the trails.

Hey, maybe they were all at home blogging on their computers or out at the cottage or watching the latest instalment of How to be a top model or something.

Hey, people are going to do what they want.

But this is their tax dollars at work. As the world pretends it's trying to go green, it's very fashionable to talk about how to be green. All the polls say the environment is one of the public's top issues.

Ask Al Gore.

Meanwhile, though, the rivers and streams and trees and huge stretches of grass that are set aside for our public enjoyment just beckon us to be with them, and in large part, it seems, we ignore them.

And I'm among those people, far too often.

And I don't know why we do that AND complain about how our environment is crumbling into a brown, oil-laden, smog-filled atmosphere that will kill us.

Who knows, maybe that will happen eventually.

But for right now, there's all kinds of beauty out there to enjoy. And it's not that far away.