A buncha bees almost stung my daughter last week and it got me thinking: when will climate change finally rid us of these damn pests.
I hate bees. I hate everything about them. And that’s not just me doing my usual “hot take” thing, I genuinely despise the little buggers.
Oh, but what about honey?
Well, actually, we solved that back in 2021, when the world’s first bee-free honey was produced. It is molecularly identical to real honey, but made through “synthetic biology and precision fermentation” which doesn’t sound all that delicious, but to date no human has been able to taste the difference between it and real honey. And it’s better for the environment.
Oh, but what about pollinating flowers?
Well, actually, we don’t need bees for that either. Lots of flower species pre-date the existence of bees on Earth, so clearly we don’t really need them. Magnolias existed before bees did, and they were pollinated by flightless beetles walking from flower to flower.
So no, we don’t need bees. Y’know what else we don’t need? Communities In Bloom.
According to its website, Communities In Bloom is, “a non-profit organization committed to fostering civic pride, environmental responsibility and beautification through community involvement and the challenge of an evaluation program with focus on the enhancement of green spaces in communities.”
According to me, Communities In Bloom is, “a scam where a bunch of old white folks get to go on fancy vacations and be paraded around various towns and given the VIP treatment under the guise of being judges.”
On its surface, Communities In Bloom seems harmless. A silly little friendly competition between towns to see who has nicer flowers. But dig deeper and the scam starts to reveal itself.
I remember sitting in a Port Colborne council meeting some years ago where they debated pulling out of the Communities In Bloom program because of the mounting expense. While it only costs a mere $1,000 or so to register for the competition, council noticed there were a lot of hidden costs, like the fact that the city had to also pay for hotel accommodations, and meals, for “judges” from Communities In Bloom to spend two days in the city.
Of course, if you’re going to enter the competition, you need something for these so-called judges to look at, which means forking over a wackload of money on flowers. A common trajectory for towns was to get involved in the competition, be awarded third place or something, then ramp up spending the next year in some misguided attempt to “win” only to realize how silly this all is a few years later and pull out entirely.
While initial expenses may seem small, the costs quickly get outta hand. It took them a few years, but eventually Pembroke realized they were nuts to be spending $46,000 on the Communities In Bloom competition, and council eventually reconsidered all that silliness back in 2012. Similarly in Fort Erie, a staff report in 2018 found the competition was costing upwards of $30,000 and “hundreds of hours of staff time” so they made the smart decision to pull the plug also.
Pelham is still involved, but I would wager in a couple more years, when someone tabulates the costs, they too will realize the folly of their ways.
Perhaps to help them along, I will revive the lost art of “floriography.” This was a popular thing back in the 1800s, kinda like a Victorian-era version of texting emojis, you would send flowers to someone with different meanings. Yellow roses meant friendship, daffodils meant unrequited love. And for Pelham council, I’ll be sending striped carnations, which in Victorian floriography meant, “refusal," as in I hope you refuse any further funding requests for Communities In Bloom.
James Culic only spends money on flowers when he’s in trouble with the wifey. Find out how to yell at him at the bottom of this page, or send in your own floriographic blossoms with a letter to the editor.
