I found this little animated gif on Lara's blog, the avatar icon for a user calling herself naughtydolphin and thought that it was so awesome that I should post it here.

Maybe it was the feeling of seclusion, being trapped in the suburbs 'till I can find a job and place to live downtown, or maybe it was a desperate need to get back into my activist boots after a paltry two month sabbatical, but my reasons for attending the Keep Transit Public rally were more than just my belief in the cause.

Let's get the details in first: Vancouver has a convoluted (but still partially responsible to the public) board that manages the transit infrastructure (trains, buses and roads) in and around the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD). This board suffers from a lot of the same issues that Toronto runs into in that it's mostly made up of the mayors of all the cities & towns inside the GVRD, so no one can agree where to spend the money. The burbs want more roads and buses, the urban centres want more trains, narrow roads. Nothing gets done and a lot of money is spent. People are mad.

So the BC government, in it's usual cowardice, had decided to abdicate even more of its responsibility and redesign the system to use a hybrid multi-mayor board with a bunch of unelected, unaccountable private business groups who can apparently be trusted to "see the big picture" and not wreck the city for their own interests.

At best, this kind of plan is either stupid or naive. At worst, it's a bunch of rich capitalist politicians scrubbing the backs of their rich friends... and Vancouver will be stuck with the result.

So I went to the protest. I didn't expect much to come of it of course because we are sitting with a majority government and the Liberals here will get whatever they please. It was much like any other small rally (<100 people) but for some reason, it would appear that the wingnuts were the only ones yelling. One moron was shouting "this is Fascist" every few minutes -- though he clearly knew nothing about Fascism. The speakers were their usual overplayed selves (as appears to be the norm with most rallies) and in my own observations of the crowd, I found myself asking a scary question: "It's been 6years... have I become a moderate already?".

I had to check myself to be sure that my ideals were still there: yep, all good, I was just surrounded by wingnuts.

Don't get me wrong, their hearts are definitely in the right place. Bill 43 is a terrible plan and sure to do all the wrong things (though probably a few right things as well) in this province. I just didn't feel like they were being effective and that's the opposite of what I want.

I've had a most disturbing experience just now and thought that I would share.

I'm here in Rome at an ok hostel where I've had occasion to meet a number of really interesting people. In the few nights I've been here, I've met two nice girls from Ohio, four cool guys from Australia, three friendly Germans and a family of four (two girls and their parents) from Melbourne. However, I also met someone else, and this is where our story begins.

His name is Tim and he's from Kamloops, British Columbia.

At first, it was cool to be able to share some of the same background with a fellow traveller. We sat around the common room with the Australian family and chatted about all sorts of fun stuff like politics, the environment, our occupations etc. But as the night wore on, more and more alcohol was brought to the table and I slowly came to remember one of the things I was fleeing from when I left BC: stupid-ass drunks.

To put things into some perspective, I should mention that at the Canada Day celebrations on Grouse Mountain, it is tradition to have to lie to the partiers and tell them that they are out of alcohol as the evening wears on. This is because BC'ers tend to lack that bone in their heads that tells them when they've had enough to drink and without propper corralling, they've been known to get out of hand. The idea for some it would seem, is that everything is always better when hammered, and you're only hammered when you have trouble standing.

Now Tim wasn't too fargone, but I suspect that had he been able to afford more Yeager, he'd have been well on his way. I noticed the signs though early on: his respect of personal space disappeared, his voice got louder and louder, and his insistence on being the centre of attention was punctuated by yelling across the room. It brought me back to 6years ago, living in BC, having to deal with this seemingly consistent malfunction and having no idea how to make these people get the fuck away from me... So I got the hell away from them instead... 4349.9km away to be exact.

...and now I'm going back. Jesus Christ, what have I done?

I really want to comment on this highway renaming business. For those who haven't heard, a bunch of people have created a petition to rename a portion of highway 401 to "Highway of Heroes" to commemorate the men & women who've died overseas who's flag-draped coffins make the procession down that very stretch of asphalt when their bodies return home.

Maybe I'm being irrational, but this kind of thing makes me absolutely furious. For starters, the term "hero" is thrown around far too much and (at least in my opinion) should not be assigned to just anyone who dies in the line of duty.

These soldiers are Our Honoured Dead, people who died because they chose to fight for Canada and Canada sent them into a warzone. That's both respectable and honourable, even remarkable... but is this heroism? No. This sort of renaming campaign just supports a propaganda machine that works to convince people that war is glorious, even righteous -- a lie so far from the truth it makes me ill.

And if that doesn't piss you off, how 'bout the thought that of all the things in this country we could attribute to our soldiers, we choose a stretch of grey pavement. What a terrible way to honour these people.

Just when I think the world is going to hell because of apathy on the environment or international relations, you read about some dumb-ass people that prove that the species is fucked regardless.

I am in awe. I am completely dumb-struck by the ass-backwardness of this photograph. I will instead leave it to the driver to explain himself:

Levester Johnson takes his dog, Armani, an Italian Cane Carso, out for a morning jog on Monday, March 26, in Akron, Ohio. "I was lazy this morning" said Johnson. "I'm on the way to the gym myself. I wanted to make sure [Armani] got in a workout before I left."

That's it. I'm out. This whole "saving the world" thing obviously was a bad idea from the start. Any species this lazy deserves to be erased from history.

Careful, they're not the same thing.

I sifted about YouTube today and found two interesting clips I thought I'd share. The first clip is called Young Americans, a multi-part series shot and produced by troops on the ground in Iraq. The small part I've seen so far looks like a pretty raw look at what it's like over there.

The second part is considerably more light hearted, but unfortunately related. A news crew from New Zeland (I think, it might be Australia) hit the streets of an American city with some simple questions about the world. Stuff like: "Who's Fidel Castro?", "Which country should America invade next?" and "How many sides are there on a triangle?"

You should be surprised at the results, but sadly, you probably won't be.