{"id":683,"date":"2006-08-01T00:18:24","date_gmt":"2006-08-01T04:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2006\/08\/01\/mr-gumby-writes-a-letter-to-the-edito"},"modified":"2007-02-14T11:25:18","modified_gmt":"2007-02-14T15:25:18","slug":"mr-gumby-writes-a-letter-to-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2006\/08\/01\/mr-gumby-writes-a-letter-to-the-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"Mr. Gumby writes a letter to the editor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many things have conspired to keep me from composing<\/em> or posting or composting<\/em>, whether here at the blog or at my Victoria City Style Council<\/a> wiki, hence no updates to report on the wiki just now. But the local papers did publish a couple of my letters-to-the-editors, which was “a good thing,” I suppose, although I sometimes imagine that angry peasants with pitchforks (oh, wait, that’d be status quo devils) can’t be far behind.<\/p>\n

While I will post an update on my wiki<\/a> with the letters that saw publication, along with some that haven’t, I can’t resist sharing the following especially idiotic letter-to-the-editor, published on the same day as my endorsement of a new downtown development appeared. The letter writer, whose name, surprisingly enough, was not<\/em> Gumby<\/a>, wrote that high-rise development has to be stopped because it … well, because it’s all… well, it’s all sexual<\/strong>, you see, and the politicians should finally<\/em> DO<\/strong> something about it, because all this SEX<\/strong>, you see, is leading to overpopulation<\/em>, and well, I mean, well!, more people just means more… well, more sex<\/em>, doesn’t it? See? Point proven!<\/p>\n

Mr. Gumby wrote the following, which the local paper<\/a> entitled thus:We have too many people<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Re: \u201cTowering dreams for \u2018uptown,\u2019\u201d July 15. [This was the name of the newspaper article both I and Mr. Gumby responded to — Ed.]<\/p>\n

The headline makes me shudder. Developers think that expansion can go on indefinitely. No politician ever addresses overpopulation, the world\u2019s biggest problem. Naturally, people like sex, and developers are never satisfied and think that this game can go on forever and ever.
\nSigned,
\n[For the sake of Mr. Gumby’s children, I deleted his name.], Victoria.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, there you have it. All is explained. (And now you know what the calibre of some of the people who populate this city is.) Canada may be a relatively underpopulated country (and we hope Mr. Gumby is an evolutionary dead-end) and we might not have the population in generations to come to support the boomers coming down the pike now, but since there’s overpopulation in other places like India, China, etc., it’s probably a good idea if we, too, get over all this sex business and stop breeding. Then maybe Mr. Gumby can stop shuddering (I wonder, has he considered shaking<\/a> instead…?), and all will be as once it was, even here.<\/p>\n

But then again, perhaps Mr. Gumby’s worst nightmare will be an influx of ageing, non-child-bearing boomer women, described by Kay Hymowitz as Desperate Grandmas<\/a>? Wouldn’t that be ironic — all those new residential condos filled with lustful women in their second adulthood, prowling for The. Best. Sex. Ever. Watch out, Gumby, if you’re not careful, they’re gonna getcha!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many things have conspired to keep me from composing or posting or composting, whether here at the blog or at my Victoria City Style Council wiki, hence no updates to report on the wiki just now. But the local papers did publish a couple of my letters-to-the-editors, which was “a good thing,” I suppose, although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,786],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-wiki_victoria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}