lotusland - nervous politics from a laid-back city

translink lols

has anyone ever witnessed this? apparently, two people shagged on the 351. do not lick translink furniture.

this is more interesting than anything going on in politics right now. 

ian mulgrew says our pro-lizard stance is making us lose face

The criticism that a toad, a lizard, perhaps even a cricket or a millipede may die during the show's run makes a mockery of Vancouver's world-class pretensions.

It makes us look like a city of philistines.

yeah, the crux of the article is 'if you dont think a model panopticon full of ugly little creatures is the height of culture, youre a backwater hick.'  fair enough, bro - nobody said my neck wasn't red.

i thought dada was meant to be unsettling.  if you're an unfeeling knob, you might be disturbed in that "bentham's prison full of animals, oh, the irony is so grossly inappropriate!" sense.   mulgrew fancies this is really what is grinding animal rights activists' gears.   as compelling as the bentham-on-my-mind theory is, reactions are likely more visceral than that due to the fact prisons and creepy-crawlies are involved.   if mulgrew is writing this sanctimonious cage-liner in order to stir us into a dadaist frenzy, this is actually brilliant journalism.  somehow, i think he's approaching it from the "only a hick would care about spider rights" place. 

i'm not giving him much credit, because he does a few things in the article that make him seem like a philistine or poseur.  firstly, he claims artist huang yong ping's work is brilliant because it "resonates with insight into the current clash of civilizations, faiths and ideologies."  anyone who uses the phrase 'clash of civilizations' is, at best, intellectually lazy and definitely too much of a philistine to go around calling others out on their lack of ze culture.  secondly, he refers to foucault as a 'legal theorist' when anyone worth their weight in avant-garde intellectual street cred knows that we refer to these french people simply as 'theorists' (or social theorists, if you must) because disciplinary boundaries are just that fucking passé.  ok, so this evaluation of him isnt exactly serious.  i guess what i am hinting at is that vancouver is a hick city, and that by equally pretentious standards, ian mulgrew is also a hick who writes missives for the village news. 

next time, avoid the 'it's good because i can bring up foucault in conjunction with it' and stick to something more moralizing and pedantic... like, say, the fact kierkegaard would agree with you, and want the vancouverites to make the jump from the moral to the aesthetic.   

"This brouhaha over creepy-crawlies is bush league," he maintains, going on to discredit the normative claims of the protest as "the equivalent of condemning fishing because anglers use worms."  well, dude, i have news for you - some vegan animal rights hippies would protest that.  and because we dont live in the communist china you so touchingly invoke at the conclusion of the article, we let them go around and do so.

if the humane society tells people not to see the exhibit, then it just gets more press.   if people are revolted, it recalls the halcyon days of dada. 

yeah, vancouver does need awesome art exhibits, but it doesnt need hacks from the village news reminding us that we are hicks if we take issue with them.  and fuck this 'world-class city' shit - didn't toronto copyright that phrase to help them feel better about themselves?

2007 - so far, so wtf

so i go to cuba for a damn week and i miss the great bc place deflation.  whatever, fine.   do all the fun stuff when im not around, vancouver.  i dont know if people are aware this was an international story.  i found out about it watching french tv - tv5, to be exact.  they reported it as an embarassment for an olympic city.  go whine to london, france.

my new years resolutions are

1. update this blog more often, with lies.
2. do more on the radio - i like media that involves a bunker.  i should show the radio some more love. 
3.  learn how to drive.   i do not know how to drive a car. 
4.  get the hell out of this weak ass bitch of a city. 
5.  organize a ridiculously large party.
6. drink frequently at the biltmore and at koerners.
7. regularly do some kind of workout that doesnt involve a gym and perhaps involves the outdoors or other people.  seems healthier, and everyone at my gym is a douche, anyway.

thats ambitious enough, methinks.

dont drink the water

so i was watching coachs corner.  not only was don cherry wearing a gold lamé jacket, but he was making quips about vancouvers water situation.

everyone back east:  you are unduly obsessed.

1. yeah, it was brown for a few days... but as bza said, just pretend its iced tea
2. yeah, people punched others out in costco for bottled water.  this merited a lol.
3. NOBODY in vancouver drinks tap water, ok.  the only serious threat was that of no coffee.   shit, tap water?  seriously, do you also think we ride the peasant wagon?

the real problem in vancouver is the snow menace.  and by vancouver, i mean a small radius around sfu.  and by snow menace, i mean A GOOD THREATENING 5 CM.  it looks like a christmas movie out there, and folks, its mayhem!  families in the neighbourhood were locked in for hours waiting for the member of the household with the suburban assault vehicle to return and deliver them to starbucks.

in which ainge is vaguely apologetic

to the 20-70 people who bother coming here to see a whole lot of old posts, i apologize.  i know the blogosphere is running laps around this pithy url at a neck-snapping pace and that this blogorevolution of the netroots and pyjamacrati is a by-the-second type deal.  (yes, i hate that jargon too).

quite frankly, i have nothing to say right now.  my opinion on the middle east isnt original or needed.  vic toews and his plan to imprison children (and the fact that crazy mofo is our justice minister) aside, the tories have begun to bore me.  the green race is pretty much a done deal, which means its pretty much boring besides the bickering surrounding council seats and constitutions.  i couldnt give one tenth of an iota of an unidentified flying fuck about liberal leadership fundraising, mostly since rae and ignatieff are the front runners.

W says "brb, condos"

apparently this is only temporary as the landmark will be tacked to the stupid condos being erected.  for those who dont know, the woodwards building is being converted into a nyu-wannabe yuppie condo and embedded art school thingy.

metro vancouver shitty and poorly edited as usual

so if you read todays metro, youll notice that all the world cup game times are written in eastern standard time.  vancouver edition, my arse.  fuck you, metro.  the italy-ghana game is at noon.

a much more useful tool is found on fifa's site, which enables you to see the game time for pretty much every time zone on god's green earth.

italy vs ghana:  12 pm pacific motherfucking standard time.  be on commercial drive or be square.

lol n00b

today i start my new job.  isnt that exciting, looking down at the world from the peak of mount noob.

(ps my kingdom of loathing characters name is heidi hole, for lack of inspiration)

city of vancouver contemplates whoredom

i fucking hate whoever came up with this idea. 

How would you feel about dropping off your taxes at Starbucks City Hall or catching the symphony at the iPod Performing Arts Centre?

The City of Vancouver is looking at selling the rights to name its city-owned facilities to corporate and individual sponsors.

and in response to this...

Universities have the Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University and the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts at the University of B.C. "Is that OK for public facilities?" said Medland yesterday. "If it's not OK, why not?"

it's ok because that is a private donation from a public rich dude who likes their name attached to things, rather than an ad for a company.  if it was called the wosk's furniture centre for dialogue, that would be an ad.

main street video is hella stupid

seriously, who made this?

-50 points for repeatedly saying "uh, main street has a lot of old neighbourhoods" without supplying any actual historical notes beyond the bit about heritage hall and not really discussing any neighbourhood besides south main in mount pleasant.  jackasses. 

-20 points for scene hair and -30 points for scene hair trying to be witty. 

-50 points for excessive shots of cool activities, such as snowboarding, mopeding, skateboarding, and being a self-absorbed university student.

the mount pleasant segment of main is cool because it has amenities, ok.  it has late nite bingo, karaoke at the veterans club, good restaurants, 24 hr coffee shops, and not a lot of old people telling you to shut up.  i could make a better video than this.