Big Deal: Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) Switches to Paper Bags, Maintains Python-like Grip on Booze Sales

When it comes to purchasing alcoholic bevvies in our home province, there is only one game in town and that is the retail equivalent of Dodge Ball, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO). When Ontarians speak of going to "The Beer Store", or "The Liquor Store" it is not due to some inherent Canadian fondness for speaking in generalities, but an actual trademark reflecting the incredible heights of the government's creativity.

The LCBO holds a government monopoly over the sale of alcohol. To suggest that this should be otherwise is practically a form of apostasy and categorically dismissed not only by the folks who benefit from such an arrangement (the cashiers who lug your cold ones out of storage for $29 an hour in the case of the Beer Store), but by digit waggers who believe that corner store hawkers would be less than diligent about checking for ID (kinda like R Kelly) and that society would descend into oil-drum fire burning, Hobbesian lawlessness.

Of course, these are the same folks who fail to realize that booze is actually purchased for minors by older brothers or more commonly, the guy who hangs around the parking lot who will do it if you slip him a fiver. [Editor's note: those do-gooders also believe the allure of cigarettes is so compelling to young people wandering into a corner store looking for cheese doodles, that packs of smokes should be completely hidden from view]

Along with a minority of people who are of the ludicrous belief that keeping a government monopoly in place and thus a competition level of zero in the liquor market actually ensures a better selection of booze, moves to privatize the LCBO have been stonewalled by the lobbying efforts of a union that would have made Jimmy Hoffa look like the boss's arse-kissing son.

To mitigate the natural resentment many feel towards monopolies and being treated like infants, the LCBO blows millions of taxpayer dollars making their stores look like Saks 5th Avenue outlets (unless you live in a bad neighborhood where they don't bother, and where a security guard with a baton will follow you around keeping a watchful eye on your purchase of an Antinori Chanti Classico or can of Schlitz malt liquor). To boost its public image, which is often more tarnished than Phoenician pottery, the LCBO has recently taken to fancying itself a steward of the planet.

"We try as a government to demonstrate the kind of behaviors that we want others to emulate," according to Public Infrastructure Minister David Caplan, who is responsible for the LCBO.
[Editor's note: Ontario ranks among the top polluters in North America and is number one in Canada]

According to reports, The LCBO hands out some 80 million bags a year. Now, these will be solely of the paper variety, so the transition between laying down your hard-earned $2.75 for that King can and swilling it right out of the bag on the street will be made that much easier.

Ontarians who've had to make the frozen trek to the nearest government-run liquor store or beer store in the dead of winter, polluting the air with their cars and their curses because they're unable to pick up booze at a grocery store like a normal human being, are unlikely to be too impressed by this too-little-and-too-late bid for good PR.

The Hooch-Drinker's Guide to The Galaxy

There are those out there, largely tin-foil-hat-wearing asylum types (Editor’s Note: For more of this sort of thing, we suggest you check out this captivating investigative piece on little Green Men on a Mission entitled “Cattle Mutilations - Senseless Mutilation or High-Tech Examinations?”), who believe that extra-terrestrials have visited Earth – presumably swooping in on our planet to see the sights and probe the orifices of a few yokels before hitting the next stop on a celestial package-tour.

Neither of us would rule out the possibility that life forms from other planets have visited us (heck we’ve partied with some likely suspects), but one wonders why, like the Blessed Virgin who chooses to reveal her face in the more delectable pastries of the faithful, these sightings usually occur under wholly discreditable circumstances. Even the most popular of all flying-saucer myths, the Roswell incident, has been more or less discredited, with all but ardent New Mexico T-shirt sellers likely to tell you that it was really just a weather balloon.

Most UFO sightings do not get nearly the attention of Roswell or inspire as much debate because of one common attribute that its witnesses share: the fact that they were stumbling wild-eyed from a backwoods still at the time of the sighting (or, in more cosmopolitan areas, just plain drunk).

The Daily Mail, covered such an incident in July, where pub-goers assembled outside their local to witness a starry-happening (that was not the unrelated and more common mooning), and, just yesterday, as the world rang in 2008, SignsonSanDiego.com reported that locals there had also seen UFOs.

Three groups of friends, all partying on New Year’s Eve in the San Diego area, saw a combination of flashing orange-yellow lights in the sky about 30 minutes after midnight. One witness sought to curb speculation that his powers of observation had been impaired by the drink – the newspaper’s exact explanation reading, “Keegan said he and his friends had been drinking, ‘but we weren’t drunk being that it was Near [sic] Year’s”, which suggests the opposite is true, or that the reporter might want a bracing cup of coffee before typing her next story.

Another “amateur astronomer” said he and a dozen friends, who were welcoming in ’08 in his backyard, saw nine red dots that traveled across the sky slowly, followed by four red dots. He was quoted as saying, in hippy parlance : “It was really crazy. It wasn't fireworks."

Our guess? Fireworks.

Then again, who are we to question the National UFO Reporting Center, which said on Tuesday, that it had enough “similar reports from across the country [country, mind you, not county] to warrant an investigation”. Other folks celebrating the most firework-happy day of the year also reported seeing strange bright things in the sky in Santa Monica, the San Francisco Bay area and Canada.