"Overheard"

More than the Jets?

"Nothing says you're from Manitoba quite like... a walleye-skin wallet?"

-- Bill Redekop, Free Press columnist, who discovered the craftsman who invented the fishy billfold.

Really, some of my best friends

"I don't have anything against homosexuals. I have friends who are gay. The person that decorates my house is gay. The person cut who cuts my hair is gay. I have various friends that are gay."

-- Yunel Escobar, shamed Blue Jay, manages to make his gay slur worse.

A Royal kerfuffle

"It doesn't seem to matter so much for men, which mystifies me, as their genitals hang outside their body like ripe fruit. We women are the only sex that doesn't look weird naked. So why are our pictures up on the wall for the world to gaze at? Prince Charles was photographed naked on vacation near Avignon in 1994, but people ran away screaming."

-- Heather Mallick, Canadian columnist, urges readers not to look for the topless shots of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.

Two good reasons

"It goes way back to my first firing from The Young Riders. I was breastfeeding when I began the job, and my child was weaned during the shooting. By the end of the season, my bust was much smaller. I was fired at the end of the year. I wasn't sexy enough."

-- Actress Melissa Leo talks about reasons she gets fired.

Family violence

"I don't care about my father and mother. When they are sending some person to kill me, how can I?"

-- Nusrat Mochi, a Pakistani woman in Karachi, eloped with the man she loved, defying the convention of arranged marriage. Four years and two children later, Mochi and her husband have moved twice to escape death threats and keep their home's location secret from her family.

Season's over, end of the world coming?

"Remember that weekend back in 1997 when almost the entire downtown of Grand Forks simultaneously flooded and caught fire? That was called hell and high water. I was there that weekend, and it's starting to look familiar."

-- Paul Wiecek, Free Press sportswriter, attempts to put the Bombers' season into context.

 

Flag flap

"We haven't made a final decision. But keep in mind that in the past, whenever we had control over these decisions, the Canadian flag was always removed."

-- Éric Gamache, Parti Québécois spokesperson, hints the Maple Leaf might not fly in the Quebec National Assembly once the PQ government settles down to business.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 22, 2012 J2