HYPOCRISY

For years, the corner of Willingdon and Canada Way has housed one corrections or mental health facility or another. Without, as far as I can recollect, a single untoward incident.

Now the provincial government wants to build a prison there, a pre-trial holding joint.

There is little that I like about the Campbell Liberal administration, but this plan seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

Of course, I don't live in Burnaby.

Moreover, I am not the Mayor of Burnaby; nor do I have a wife who is running on May 12th for the NDP.

My name isn't Corrigan.

The good burghers of Burnaby have cried long and loud - just like you and me - about the current wave of gang violence and the felt need for some old fashioned Law and Order.

Like prisons for bad guys, for instance.

BUT...

Not in my neighbourhood.

We want lock-ups for pistol-packing mothers alright, but we want them somewhere on the left side of the moon...say, Lac La Hache.

The Good Mayor, knowing well the limits of his constituents thinking powers and tolerance and seeing a good opportunity to further the political aims of his spouse jumped all over this one.

There will be no pre-trail centre at Willingdon and Canada Way in the foreseeable future.

And all because of down and dirty politics.

NEWS ROUND UP

* In a current story about a murderer who pleads guilty to "an additional" 27 murders, we get this gem:

Mr. Gallant isn't even the most lethal Quebec hit man. In 1985, the Hells Angel Yves (Apache) Trudeau confessed to 43 contract killings.

Mr. Trudeau plea-bargained it down to 43 manslaughter counts and was paroled after seven years.

43 murders down to 43 manslaughters = parole after seven years.

Only in Canada, you say? Pity.

* President Obama may or may not be on the right track in basically assuming control of GM for the time being. Certainly having the federal government micro-managing one of the great stalwarts and symbols of The American Success Story does not sit will in a great many craws.

He may also be right or wrong in bailing out the banks and AIG and tabling an enormous budget.

He may be right or wrong about his troop commitments in Afghanistan.

Only time till tell.

But we can say this. It is refreshing, after 8 years of Mr. Wafflehead, to see someone boldly doing something.

Will it be disaster or reclamation? I have no idea. Do you?

STORY

I had a heart attack.

For those who might have been checking in on the blog and wondering where I had gone, the place was VGH.

Here's the story.

For about a week, I had been feeling the recognizable symptoms of angina - pain the in the shoulders and arms, lower jaw and teeth, shortness of breath and some tightness in the chest.

Recognizable, because I had an angioplasty procedure done at VGH in June 2005, in which a drug-infused stent was inserted to pry and keep open a blocked coronary artery.

On Friday at 6pm, I went swimming at the Vancouver Aquatic Centre. Great time to go, by the way. Very quiet.

I did my usual 500 metres, stopping at the end of each 50 metre length for a moment or two. On Friday, I couldn't help but notice a real shortness of breath and the unavoidable fact that both arms from shoulders to hands hurt and felt heavy and buzzing.

Stubbornly, I persisted, finished my routine, enjoyed a bit of a shvitz in the sauna and the whirlpool, showered, dressed and went home to a quiet dinner and evening.

I went to bed about 11:30.

At ten to one a.m., I woke up suddenly with pain in both arms.

I tried a blast of nitroglycerin, which seemed to provide short relief. I put on my heart monitor, found that my heart rate was low, but o.k. and tried another shot of nitro.

Then I thought I might try to go back to sleep. All along, the number 911 was very much on my mind.

I lasted less than four seconds of pillow time, and sat up with the full realization that calling emergency was my only choice.

Within six minutes, eight uniformed and brilliantly equipped firemen and paramedics were milling around my kitchen.

By 1:30 I was in a bed at VGH emergency ward.

Around 9 am, the doctors appeared, one of whom was my original operating surgeon, the aptly named, Dr. Saw. You can't write material like this.

The doctors confirmed that another angiogram and possibly angioplasty was in order. The "lab" or operating theatre is normally not up and running on the week end, but, they assured me, if an emergency or two appeared, they would be at work and they would piggy-back me into the rotation.

Of course, by the time I had been transferred to the Cardiac Care Unit, around noon on Saturday, two emergencies had presented themselves. I was wheeled in for action shortly after 3pm.

An hour and two new stents later, I was returned to my favorite bed in CCU 15.

I should add that before and after the procedure, there was a most welcome run of friends and family and loved ones all. Do not underestimate for a second, the huge importance of that love and support. It is everything, believe me.

I slept well and on Sunday, the doctors informed me that not only had I had a revisiting attack of angina, but I could now claim my first heart attack. A small one, sure enough, but real. Yikes!

They sent me home at 3pm.

I stood outside in the sunshine on 10th Avenue, near Willow, waiting for my daughter to pick me up.

I thought for a moment about the people who think I am cynical.

If only they knew what an unrelenting optimist I am.

"Only twenty-four hours ago," I babbled quietly to myself, "I had a heart attack. Now I am standing in sunshine. Miracle of miracles!"

Catherine came along with her beloved little pooch, "Rocky," and we went to the pharmacy and bought only $550 worth of medicines for the next year. While the pharmacist did his magic, we had a coffee and a snack.

I slept very well last night. I have no pain. I am tired and weak, but I will walk about one block today as per the post-op instructions.

I am in shock. I am a little weepy with a mix of emotions. And I am happy to be alive.

I may not blog for the next few days.

But, as we say in radioland, "Stay tuned."

As for you...stay young, eat your veggies, sing favorite songs, rarely refuse sex, and keep trying to understand The Mysteries...

BROADCASTING

Monkey see, monkey doodoo.

Now that banks and auto makers have sucked mightily from the public tit, the line-up of Big-Lipped Monsters is getting downright pushy.

Elbowing right to the front in Canada are broadcasters.

Global, CTV and the CBC are all behaving like rink enforcers in the corner shoving and biting and high sticking their way to The Big Payoff.

These people all want taxpayer bailouts.

My answer is simple.

No. No. No.

Canwest Global and CTV have consistently made fortunes by blithely ignoring any vague sense of responsibility to the country they have been fleecing. They basically are windows for American programs. The little that they have focused on local or national texture has been entirely at the end of regulatory shotguns. If they hadn't been forced to do local news or the occasional drama, they wouldn't have wasted a penny on such pain-in-the-ass hard work.

Now that times are tough, now that the sons have blown the father's gifts, now that ad revenues are migrating elsewhere, they want you and me to help out.

Huh?

Get lost.

Fold your cheesy tent, boys.

Let me watch CBS is that's what I want.

You want me to watch you, give me something to watch. Otherwise go the way of Eatons.

I cannot for a moment understand how or why I should pony a penny for your bad practices.

As for the CBC, let's quote the former chair, Carole Taylor:

"...go for broadcasting that is different from what the privates do, that is not going for ratings, but is proving a service that cannot be found anywhere else."

Bang on.

The CBC is a hideously deformed monstrosity, a twisted, unworkable hybrid. It is overgrown and knows not what it wants.

It should be cut in half or to a third and it should produce and show only entirely original Canadian content.

The claim by its current executive that the audience it gets at 7:30 pm for Jeopardy carries into its 8-11 prime time is utter nonsense. If this fool actually believes that fabrication, he has no business in the business.

The remote rules, Dopey.

The minute Alex says goodbye, we are all gone.

More taxpayer money for dunces and dissemblers like this?

No.

It should have absolutely no concern with ratings. It should be concerned only with doing good work.

What a concept!

DEMOCRACY ON TRIAL

Follow as closely as you can the proceedings in BC Supreme Court in the case of Susan Heyes and her civil action against the city, the province, the federal government, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority and RAV project Management Ltd.

You should stay with this story because it is important.

A small business owner's Cambie Street livelihood was not disrupted, but destroyed, by officials who lied to local merchants. The officials said the line would be build by boring underground. Of course, that's not what they did at all. They changed to cut and cover.

Most importantly, they never once considered for a second offering some kind of compensation for the financial and psychological damages they inflicted on innocent, honest, working citizens.

This case is about the heart and soul of democracy.

Heyes, who has since relocated her shop to Main Street, is courageous and feisty and determined and she should be recognized as an exemplary citizen for this action.

Of course, she has made a basic strategic error.

If only she had presented herself as a drug addict, she would have been given compensation by the carload: needles, places to shoot, housing, social workers, doctors, nurses, psychologists and the like.

That'll teach you to get up in the morning, shower and dress and go open the front doors of your business and try to earn a living and pay taxes.

What have we all been thinking?

Economics 101

When your personal property tax bill arrives and it sis almost 8% higher than it was last year, all you need ask is, "Am I getting 8% more in services."

But you already know the answer.

I've had the distinct displeasure of driving across the Oak Street bridge several times in recent weeks. Pothole City. 'nuff said?

A student told me yesterday that it took an hour and a half to get by bus from Westminster Highway and #3 Road to 49th and Cambie. But VANOV urges you to take transit. Hm...

Councillor Louie has proposed spending $300,000 to hire someone to save money at City Hall. Nice.

How about this, Raymond?

How about City Hall slash and burn a dozen useless offices on its rolls? How about the City stop trying to be all things to all people? How about leave Health, for example, to the province and the federal government where it belongs? How about getting out of the drug business? How about ending the personal fiefdom that exists at City Hall in Arts and Culture?

No one that I know of at City Hall has come even remotely close to tightening the City belt in the same way that everyone world-wide has had to in this economic climate.

The 8% solution is no solution at all.

Plea

non-postismentis

Tomorrow morning I must rise and shine and leave the house at an ungodly early hour.

Hence, no blog.

See you all on Friday.

Cheers.

REMINDER

Tonight.

7:30...doors open at 7

Alice Mackay Room, downstairs at the Vancouver Public Library, main branch, Robson & Homer

THE LANGARA DIALOGUES - a public debate

RESOLVED: LEGALIZE DRUGS; END GANG VIOLENCE

Be there or be square.

See Jon Ferry's column in today's Province.

ALTERNATE ENERGY FILE

Wood pellets?

Are you familiar with them?

I was not, until this morning when I read a column in the Globe by Neil Reynolds.

Wood pellets look remarkably like dog food or goose droppings, but they are in fact pressed from sawdust and mill shavings and they are amazingly efficient at creating clean heat and energy.

Here in Canada, we produce huge amonuts - 1.4 million tons a year, but use almost none of it to heat our homes or create energy.

Read this piece and then ask along with me when are we going to wake up to the possibilities?

BOOK RECOMMENDATION

"The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga is the best darned novel I've read in many years.

The author, born in India, educated at Columbia and Oxford, won the Man Booker Prize last year for this debut work. He lives in Mumbai.

The book is hilariously funny and stunning.

It smashes the simple-minded exoticism usually given to India by non-Indians. Gone are the saffron and rose blossoms. What takes their place is what makes this book so readable and arresting.

Yes, and Selfishness

To continue the discussion on Values...

Several people have added to the dialogue the elements of selfishness and the "me" generation.

This is the only town that I am aware of that sells new automobiles that come not equipped with turn signals.

Or how else to explain the Daily Guessing Game of what is that car in front of me, approaching me, beside me about to do?

I haven't seen anyone, including the police or professional delivery drivers, use a turn signal in the last three years.

But why would you? That would mean you have some small concern about that rapidly disappearing entity called "THE OTHER PERSON."

I've reported in these pages the three occasions in which I have found infants alone in cars while their deeply concerned mothers were shopping, or in one blazing case, tanning.

To stop before a zebra cross walk to allow pedestrians to cross is to risk their lives and yours and the guy who will invariably race past you blindly on the right to fly through the crosswalk. Why would anyone stop for ANOTHER PERSON.

Why would you want to be involved with the often arduous and difficult and certainly messy task of rehabilitation of addicts and others when you can just give the suckers drugs and paraphernalia and places to get high?

Harm seduction is based on the entirely selfish notion that it's OK if someone wants to be stoned all day, because what's it got to do with me as long as they're not robbing me?

But that's exactly why it's a terrible and self-defeating public policy. Because it has everything to do with you.

It says that you welcome a city or a community that has entire sub-populations that are stoned and useless and self-hating and dying.

It says that you don't care about THE OTHER PERSON as long as she isn't breaking into your home or car.

To make matters worse, you wrap yourself in the fake cloak of "compassion," and claim that you are helping, when in fact you don't even have the faintest concept of THE OTHER PERSON.

Values. Selfishness.

The other day, my son, the actor, was working in a sound studio on a radio assignment. He and a young girl were the principal actors recording a series of commercials for an educational institution. The girl was 20 years old and, according to my son, very talented and busy.

Half-way through the morning, the producer opened his microphone in the booth and asked the young girl what the clicking noise was.

She is a professional artist being paid good money to record her voice.

The clicking noise?

She was texting.

The "me" generation in full flight.

We have long, long, long passed the point where you could reasonably hope to ask someone on their cell to be quiet in a theatre, a bus, a library, a hallway, probably a funeral parlour.

Every seven year old and his dog has a cell and everybody is jammering all day long about nothing.

Madly destroying the English language saying things like, "I'm like...and then, my mom's like..."

Parents, men and women, now walk down the street with their children, not enjoying the few scarce moments of being together and noticing the world around them and sharing their observations with their children, but jammering on their cells. The kid walks silently beside them.

When my mother died many years ago, I wrote the obit and I said, among other things, that "she loved the fine, small details of life and she loved to share them with us."

The result is that I am life-long curious about almost everything. Airplanes, marshland, textiles, Turkish poetry.

What curiosity can you develop talking your life away on a phone?

So, why has Vancouver gone so far down the rabbit hole?

Identity, values, selfishness.

OY VEY! THIS JUST IN!

The Elders of Zion, the venerable and shadowy Jewish organisation that controls the international banking industry, news media, and Hollywood, has announced that it is disbanding so that members can retire to Florida and live out their golden years on the golf course.

"We had a good run," said one senior Elder, reminiscing over old photographs of world leaders in his musty, wood-paneled office at an undisclosed location. "Maybe we ran the world for just a little too long. Anyway, now it's Obama's problem."

After a humiliating year left most of its financial holdings, as well as the entire civilised world, on the verge of collapse, the organisation has re-defined its mission in terms of bridge games and making it to restaurants for the Early Bird Special.

The announcement comes after a year in which many of the Elders’ most prized institutions suffered disheartening failures. The vaunted global banking system, which lay at the heart of Jewish world domination for almost two centuries, collapsed with astonishing rapidity, requiring trillions of dollars in bailout funds. The newspaper industry, through which the Elders have controlled world opinion, is in shambles, with prominent papers declaring bankruptcy and forcing millions of readers to form their own opinions. And, in the unkindest cut, Hollywood suffered the humiliation of losing the Oscar for Best Picture to Indian film "Slumdog Millionaire".

The organization's reputation for financial probity had also taken a hit amidst rumours of billions in losses in private Kalooki games against Sheikh Hamad bin Isa of Bahrain. According to inside sources, the organization also lost close to $1 trillion with disgraced investor Bernard Madoff.

Even before this past year, though, the Elders were facing hard times as they struggled to stay relevant and attract young members. The organization has tried to project a more youthful image, setting up a Facebook page and founding a new "Hipsters of Zion" youth division, which has sponsored a number of singles nights. But youngsters haven't been interested.

"World domination just doesn't resonate with the younger generation of Jews," said Marvin Tobman, a professor of non-profit management at San Diego State University and expert on Jewish communal life. 'They want the fun of fixing the world, not the responsibility of running it."

These recent troubles have worried even some of the Elders’ sharpest critics. "I always used to complain that Jews ran the world," said Reginald Weber, author of "Zionists and Zookeepers: The Unholy Alliance." "But now, I’m starting to worry that nobody's in charge."

Values, Continued

The Facts V The Propaganda

The views expressed by the various pro drug lobbies are a distortion of the truth.

Notwithstanding research carried out by the National Treatment Agency (NTA) which clearly established that the majority of those who have developed dependence, wish to become drug free; here in the UK, the focus for the past 10 years has been on ‘harm reduction’, rather than seeking to engage users into abstinence focused recovery. The outcome of this disastrous and misguided policy has been an escalation in drug related deaths which are at their highest for 5 years, 325 of which are attributed to methadone, the flagship of the harm reductionists, together with a devastating increase in the spread of blood born disease among Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) The statistics provided by the Health Protection Agency for England and Wales are as follows:

• The level of HIV infection among Injecting Drug Users (IDUs) in England and Wales is higher now than at the start of the decade.

• In London where the prevalence of HIV in IDUs is higher than elsewhere in England and Wales, 1 in 20 IDUs is infected.

• In the remainder of England and Wales HIV among IDUs has increased from approximately 1 in 400 in 2002 to around 1 in 150 in 2006.

• The prevalence of Hepatitis C among IDUs has increased from 33 percent in 2000 to 42 per cent in 2006.

• Approximately 1 in 5 IDUs has Hepatitis B infection, which extrapolates as an increase approaching 200 per cent since 1997.

The escalating increase in blood born disease has occurred despite the plethora of needle exchange facilities throughout England and Wales, and the growth of supervised drug consumption rooms

It is self evident from the foregoing that here in the UK at least, it is not the lack of harm reduction measures which is contributing to avoidable deaths and the epidemic of blood born disease being wreaked on our society, but the use of toxic psycho active substances.

It is not so called prohibition which has failed, but the encouragement by way of the tacit permission, and in many instances, the not so tacit encouraging of continued use, inherent in the harm reduction ideology, which has failed users and society so abysmally.

The supporters of Harm Reduction, under their various guises have never allowed the truth to interfere with their propaganda, or indeed their more covert agenda, to legalise drug use; the main beneficiaries of which would be the pharmaceutical industry. Such a move would be to inflict further incalculable harm on society, since it would result in a growth of use and addiction, similar, if not more widespread, to that seen in the late 1800’s when most of the drugs which are controlled today, were in fact legal.

The growth of drug use during that period was the direct result of concerted efforts by leading members of the medical profession in promoting drug use, many of whom were influenced by Sigmund Freud, who was so unethical in his dealings that he accepted separate commissions from two competeing, large pharmaceutical companies, both of whom are still in business today, to write papers extolling the benefits of that destructive substance, cocaine, not only as the ‘elixir of life’, but also as a cure for alcohol and morphine addiction. The rest as they say is history

One has to ask is it a coincidence that many of the bodies, who are pressing for an end to what they term as prohibition, receive ‘research grants’ from the pharmaceutical industry?

Source: Daily Dose; posted by Peter O'Loughlin on 13 Mar 2009 at 6:23 am

My Home Town - Continued

Further to the posting of TURNER - THE MIDNIGHT THINKER...

Yes, identity. Agreed. that is crucial.

And values.

Values are central to this discussion.

It is always risky to open the cask labelled "values," lest a hoard of bible-based, Koran-thumping, Torah-waving zealots jump on board.

But I think the changing and abandoning of certain values is at the core of what has happened to Vancouver - and the world - in the past four decades.

Here is a lift from the morning Vancouver Sun:

"Teachers complained Sunday that school principals are ordering them to never give zeros when marking class assignments, to accept late work and to allow students to rewrite tests as many times as it takes for them to get good marks."

What does that say about values?

It says that we can never say, "No," to the precious little princes and princesses known as children for fear they may no longer love us, or they may report us to higher authorities or they may run away downtown and be given money by social workers to live in hotel rooms.

It says, that in spite of spending billions of taxpayers dollars and completely disrupting the lifeblood of the city on a sports competition called the Olympics, in spite of all that, we, as a society have otherwise made competition a dirty word. Children must cooperate. They needn't compete. Everyone gets a ribbon. Everyone is a winner.

Swill.

Soft-brained wish-fulfillment drivel.

Life is endlessly competitive. In the home, in the 'hood, in business, in politics, in war. Doesn't necessarily mean that is a good thing, but that's real life. Try being 15 years old and living in China and looking for your next step in education. You'll experience some real competition.

What about other values?

What about giving heroin addicts needles and places to shoot and giving crack addicts clean pipes to smoke?

What do those public policies - aided and abetted by pseudo-science and the agreement of the silence of the masses - say about our values?

Do you rally want to live with a using addict? Do you want to aid and abet misery? Because heroin addiction and crack addiction and alcohol addiction are misery. They are degrading hideous nightmares. Don't you want to see people get off the cycle?

What are your values when you want to help them stay stupid and miserable?

You think you are reducing harm?

Why? Because a criminologist hiding in a tiny cubicle in academia told you so? Because it is the official story?

But would you actually walk across the street to give a drunk a clean shot glass?

Values.

Vancouver has rightly and sadly gained a world-wide reputation as being soft on crime and soft on drugs.

You actually can still rationalize that your little weekend pot habit is cute and O.K.?

You have no understanding of the murderous trail that has put that pot into your hands?

Our courts long ago abandoned "protection of the public" as a core idea in sentencing.

Psychos, murderers, rapists are released every day on parole, mandatory parole, probation, time-served, double-time served, anything that will recognize the inalienable rights of the accused.

And the rights of the community?

Values.

It has been said often enough that we get the Shakespeare that we deserve. Or the politicians. Or the pop singers.

And perhaps we get the Vancouver that we deserve.

Gangs that can't shoot straight haven't sprung willy-nilly from the ooze without warning.

We have nurtured them by being laissez-faire, laid-back, oh-so-cool tolerant of the worst in our own behaviour.

We let our young girls dress like whores in public and we let our young boys emulate gangsters. It's cute, apparently.

A mother and a daughter shop at Costco wearing matching grey sweatpants that say something adorable like, "Ass" across their ass.

We make a point of parking in handicapped spots "just for a minute," even when there's a whole empty lot available. We are teenagers all, pathetically rebelling against the social compact.

Nobody can tell me what to do.

Values.

Every time we speak of public policy, whether it is about garbage or botany or tax rolls, we are speaking about our own values.

Vancouver might be a healthier place if we truly cared about what we really want in our lives.

Sooooo Good

MEMORIES OF IASI'S

Dear David As the snow comes down even in Tsawwassen. You have brought back some memories. VI,S steak house was great but the place across the street from The Penthouse was IASI’S and served the best VEAL PARMISSAN one could ever eat. That was the GOLDEN TIME. Regards Bill

TURNER, THE MIDNIGHT THINKER - ON VANCOUVER

I found this entry fascinating. There a re many reasons for all of this change which you find somewhat regretful and express so eloquently in this blog..It is a complex issue with more factors than there are spokes on a bicycle wheel.

But this is what I thought was important about one of these spokes. Vancouver and it's citizens have gone through an identity crisis (also most other rest of the planet).. And this crisis s a response to the “Marketing” of everything.

You refer to the jazz clubs and the smiling Buddha. They no longer exist in any real terms. What does exist are trendy places that are more often and not big franchised brand names playing background music that is being marketed and likely will actually not feature any musical instruments...often just loops on a computer. This transitioned store front is often inhabited by young people who have spent more money on their Nike shoes then you would want to pay for a suit.

And it is worth it to them.

Because they are not buying the coffee, the music or the shoes. They are purchasing a phantasy identity shared by their peers lasting just a bit longer than the current advertising campaign planned for them.

All of this is exactly as socially real as a tupper ware party because that is the quality of the fabric of the social interactions dribbling into the psyche of the participants..

It started with our generation. We have morphed along with the creeping incremental ism of internalized marketing messages. The generation of our kids and there kids have know nothing else. It is no longer about who and what you are. It is about who and what you are perceived to be. You are not what you eat. You are the goods and services you consume and dispense.

Having laid this groundwork....to tie it to crime, murder, mayham and violence.

If you cannot find a way to perceived identity paradise by doing “good things”...
then you can get there by doing “bad things”.

In exactly the same way you don't have to work for the Province to write a blog
you don't have to work for “the mob” to be a gangster. Get some dope and sell it. Or make a game plan with your friends and you have your own little mob.

Problem that is occurring that is occurring here is the same problem that occurs in most blogs on the Internet. There isn't the benefit of editorial control or advisement. “The so called mob” was an enduring institution with a code and occasion bouts of wisdom.

Hard to survive long without a basic honesty, integrity and most definitely - loyalty

How ironic.

In my opinion a large factor of the transition in society of which you write about here is brought on by creating perceived needs based on the marketing of ideas, products, and identity. Our youthful gangsters stand at the extreme end of loyalty to that perception.


They have bought in big time.


Marketing Marketing Marketing.

MY HOME TOWN

Here's this morning's Province lead headline:

17 hours of violence in Lower Mainland

The article chronicles the various shootings, stabbings, punchings and maimings visited upon our eager heads this weekend.

I find myself babbling.

"Why?" I ask the kitchen floor, "are we so prone to such lousy behaviour in such a beautiful setting? You would think that the ocean and the mountains would extend a sense of calm and patience."

The floor has no answers, other than, "Hey, Mr. Philosopher, try sweeping me on occasion."

When I first came to Vancouver from Winnipeg about 45 years ago (My mother was still sending me out of the house in grey flannel shorts, which is why my nickname was "Stovepipies."), Vancouvr already had the reputation for being a wild and woolly western port town. Hookers and junkies and deals gone sour, that sort of ambiance.

There were jazz clubs and pot and lots of really bad food.

Hey, it was a barely adolescent village with a natural waterway. Sailors from Russia and India mixed it up at the Smiling Bhudda and, if they could still walk or had a buck left in their soiled jeans, they made it up town to Vy's Steak House or that Spaghetti joint across from Philiponi's Penthouse.

Yes, there was heroin on the street, but it was not more than a blip, a cottage industry, patrolled by a few violent, crazed narco-cops, who kept things in line, so to speak.

Obviously, we need a couple of those good old SFU Criminologists or Sociologists to write us the definitive explanation (and no one has done one yet) of how we went in just a few decades from mildly amusing silliness to the sheer madness that prevails today.

Honduran drug dealers plying the Trade on the steps of a community centre that wins awards for civic spirit.

17 Hours of Violence.

A neighbourhood that was once a little seedy and strange and known simply as "the corner," that is now the worst and most expensive 4 square blocks in the known modern world.

Of course, it is not just the headlines.

Daily, every day, each day, daily, you and I suffer the indifferences of so-called ordinary white, middle-class assholes who NEVER use their turn signals, who ALWAYS find the opportunity to turn LEFT in a traffic circle, who NEVER stop pedestrians in striped crosswalks, who ALWAYS speed and change lanes and pass through SCHOOL ZONES, who exemplify in every possible mean chizzly way what it means to not be a citizen.

I have no idea. Not a clue.

Greed. Entitlement. Selfishness. No civics classes in school. Absent parents. Set-em-all-free courts.

You tell me.

I'm going out for brunch. Then I'm going for a walk along the water. Then I'm going swimming.

Tonight, I'll watch the rest of the tape I made yesterday of one of the greatest movies of all time, "From here to Eternity."

I'll watch the consummate skills and artistry of Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, Ernest Borgnine. I'll cry for sure.

I love Vancouver. But, let's be honest. It is a Lorelei, signaling to us, dragging us to a watery grave.

It is like craving the raspberries that give us hives.

THE SCHOOL OF GREED

“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent..."

This is the straight-faced quote from Edward M. Liddy (a relative of Gordon Liddy of Watergate infamy?), the government appointed boss at AIG.

He is speaking of the many, many hundreds of millions of dollars that AIG will be paying out in bonuses to the executives who destroyed the company.

The Company they destroyed has now received about $170 Billion in taxpayer bailout monies.

That's quite a trick.

You ruin a huge multi-national financial institution that triggers a worldwide collapse of economies and you get paid performance bonuses, while the taxpayers (teachers, nurses, ditch diggers, cable guys, posties, blackjack dealers) give you many Billions to stay afloat.

Why were none of us ever taught this strategy in Economics 104?