A Weekend of Good Eating

Friday
breakfast: mixed green salad w/ dijon and herb dressing, avocado, tomato, sauteed king mushrooms with caramelized onions and bacon, two eggs, old cheddar cheese

lunch: pork and mushroom jiaoze or potstickers

dinner: smoked mackerel, herbed Gravlox, baby shrimp, Alaskan Snow Crab, yam and potato salad, tempura batter beef, brussel sprouts

Saturday
breakfast: free range chicken laksa and a Hong Kong style milky tea
snack: Chinese chicken bun, mixed nuts
dinner: Mussels in a white wine and cream sauce, radishes dipped in salt with the stalks on, French bread, wine

Sunday
breakfast: Pacific Centre Mall food court Chinese food, bourbon chicken, chicken curry, shrimp and vegetables, an original Orange Julius half Pina colada

dinner: Roast Lamb, five kinds of olives, flavoured rice, stilton and gorgonzola cheese, pear, pepper pate, home made bread, salad w/ mixed greens red and yellow peppers, bocconcini, avocado and cherry tomatoes

Monday
breakfast: Roti Prata with leftover lamb

Chihuahuas on Main

I just witnessed a scene out of some repugnant romantic comedy. An oh so quirky hipster girl walking a Chihuahua with a pink sweater just crossed paths with an equally embarassing male yuppie on his way south with THE EXACT SAME DOG except this animal's sweater was green.

Their eyes met, she did a little hair toss except her hair was underneath a toque. He made some smug comment. The dogs sniffed each other and then they parted.

Main Street is not what it used to be.

Vancouver Violence

Vancouver has felt very violent over the last few months. The incidents I remember are the obvious ones:

A mentally unstable, yet harmles, man gunned down by police at Granville and sixteenth.
Seven men are shot, two fatally, in a restaurant at Fraser and Broadway.
The gangland massacre in Surrey.
The assasination of two gangsters at Granville and Seventieth and the suspected retaliations.
And of course, the latest internet viral craze, Robert Dziekanski's brutal death by taser at the hands of the RCMP.

There's really no point I'm trying to make with this post except to put forth my general mental state. What makes all this violence worse is that the location of the violence overlaps with my yearly, monthly and weekly routines. The victims are all people I share a very specific public space with. Likewise, these killings were commited by the apparatus of power that controls this space: gangs and the police.

This violence isn't new exactly. Much of my East Vancouver neighbourhood as a teenager was grow operations. I've woken up to the pop pop of a drive by and a SWAT teams in my backyard. At least three houses on our block had their front doors baterring rammed and their contents carried out in garbage bags. After the plants were removed from the house two doors down, the police dumped the agricultural equipment on the front lawn. My mom took some planters for her garden. Just yesterday I bought some milk at the local Hell's Angels run supermarket, Super Valu.

But somehow this latest stuff is more disturbing. I think it's because, while I'm never going to get wrapped up in gang violence (I hope), I can see myself in the face of Dziekanski or the animator suffering from depression gunned down by police for acting outside the rules of normal social behaviour.

It took some prodding, but I finally finished a song I gave up on months ago. Here's the MP3:

Potatochips

Trailer Parks are Substandard Housing

A week ago, my friend and I left Vancouver, planning to hit Seattle, Portland and the Oregon Coast. One thing I noticed right away was the trailer parks. Although we certainly have them in Canada (see The Trailer Park Boys), they're less apparent here than the large fields of cheap siding and rust glimpsed from the interstate.

Jokes abound about bad weather and trailers, the most common is calling trailer parks, "tornado magnets" or "tornado bait." This is nonsense of course. Bad weather hits other buildings too, but it's the trailer parks usually suffer complete devastation. These are homes with no foundations, built from the flimsiest of materials and completely at the mercy of the weather.

I'm guilty myself of using the saying "attracted to him like a tornado to a trailer park." The implications of such quips never occured to me until this trip. I mean, all kinds of attention is given to the shanty-towns of the underdeveloped world, even the dilapidation of American inner cities; but I've never thought about the sheer number of rural and suburban North Americans who live in substandard housing. There aren't a lot of tornadoes here in the Pacific Northwest but there's consistent flooding. Images on local TV of mobile-homes being washed away is common. Outside the staggeringly wealthy centres of Seattle and Portland one can see whole towns, endless subdivisions of mobile and manufactured homes.

Another interesting thing driving through rural America is the way the war manifests itself in the endless stream of bumper stickers, pins and billboards. In coffee-crazy Washington state, even the smallest hamlets have three or four drive-through espresso stands. The stereotype of Latte Liberals and Seven-Eleven-drip Republicans doesn't have much currency here. One stand we went to, in the parking lot of the "Faith in Action Thrift Store," dished out Cappucinos to guys in pick-up trucks. It's wall of local soldiers' names had turned into a shrine of sorts, flowers adorned with those little flags Americans love so much.

In the tiny town of Drain, Oregon, every filthy little thrift store was covered in "Support the Troops" stickers. A bridal boutique display had dresses in red, white and blue and the old man outside wore a stars and stripes singlet. Fifteen miles down the road, we arrived in a considerably different town: one with vegetarian cafes, a freshly painted pub/bakery/bookstore celebrating it's monthly Art Walk. Baby boomers and some even older dressed in the rural ideal (immaculate leather boots and LL Bean hats) waved large rainbow peace flags as they marched down the block with placards reading "Bring the Troops Home Now." We were the only audience.

The next day, in a suburb south of Tacoma on the edge of a highway on-ramp there was another flag waving ceremony, this one "in support of the troops." It's where I took this picture.

Happy birthday Abra!


See the rest here

Seven Ways to Amazing Health: Aaron's Miracle Diet

Fasts are stupid. So are ridiculous diets. Here's Aaron's miracle fast for instant health:

Buy two bushels of spinach, fry them with as much garlic as possible and some chillies. Add salt, and maybe some sesame oil.

Get a large filet of black cod, make a sauce out of miso paste and cooking sherry. Pan fry the thing. Add diced green onions

Eat everything together as quickly as possible on top of steamed brown rice.

Fasts are stupid.

My Birthday so Far or Why I'm Happy to be Twenty Three


woke up free of angst for the first time since last summer.

checked my email: inbox 1738

new text message from Eva in Ghana

put on Nina Simone, In the Morning

thirty eight new Facebook messages

breakfast: Roti Canai, onions and two eggs

watched some of a western on TV, the "Indians" were white guys with dark stuff on their faces

played the piano

cleaned the cat litter, fed Atilla

did a load of dark laundry in the bathtub, colour saving detergent

mom called to say the reservations is for six thirty at GUU, my favourite

put on my grandpa's wool shirt and walked through Victoria park

Bonnie Prince Billy, Ease Down the Road on the headphones for the first time since Will Oldham assaulted me

got Abra a Latte at Abruzzo and hung out at Magpie Magazine Gallery

complained to her about Ricepaper being hidden from view

she let me have the new Giant Robot and a Waxpoetics FOR FREE

at the people's Co Op bookstore I noticed a gorgeous magazine amidst all the anarchist zines

"holy shit," the new Ryerson Review of Journalism

two lesbian bike punks making out on the corner, I think I went to highschool with her

sat in Victoria park reading the Ryerson Review of Journalism, the sun finally came out

watched the old men play Bocci

two mexican kids smoked weed on the bench nearby

went home, put on Professor Longhair

wrote blog entry

Free Association Videos


Unfortunately for the LAPD, these brown people are a FOX camera crew.


Nina Simone says, "I would have been a killer" in this excerpt from the documentary La Légende.


Two epic songs.

But You Hit My Heart With A Harpoon

A writer from Ricepaper loaned me a couple books by Adrian Tomine. He's a graphic novel/comic writer/illustrator from Berkeley, California. The last time I was this excited about an author was when I read Hemmingway's complete short stories. Sleepwalk and other Short Stories just blows me away, it's sixteen animated stories about the emotional lives of literate twentysomethings. It's eerie how much I identify with some of the characters. It's the rare graphic novelist who is as good a storyteller as he is an illlustrator. Tomine is briliant on both fronts

On my way back from Seattle today I listened to Herman Dune's I Hope that I Can See You Soon maybe five times in a row (thanks Jason). The video for this song is just as amazing.

The CanWest Museum of Human Rights

The Canwest Museum of Human Rights?
from This Magazine's Blog

Philip Gourevitch, in his essential We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families, describes the ridiculousness of reading a newspaper article on Rwandan atrocities while waiting in line at the Holocaust Memorial in Washington.

During a speech at the museum's opening ceremonies, Bill Clinton called it "an investment in a secure future against whatever insanity lurks ahead." Gourevitch writes, "Apparently all he meant was that the victims of future exterminations could die knowing that a shrine already existed in Washington where their suffering might be commemorated..."

Gourevitch goes on to chronicle not only the horrors of the Rwandan genocide (a word the Clinton administration was loath to use) but the west's complicity in the act. Not only for acting too late, and acting incorrectly but for a creating the historical circumstances that lead up to it and ultimately for supplying the resources with which to carry out mass murder.

This week we've been hearing a lot (especially if you live in a Canwest owned town) about Gail Asper's coup in securing federal status for the Human Rights Museum to be built in Winnipeg. Stephen Harper, always the intellectual, described the partnership as such, "never before has there been a collaboration of this scale to develop a national museum, but if ever there were a Canadian cultural institution suited for a public-private partnership, it is this one, because human rights can never be the exclusive preserve of the state."

According to Canwest News Services, "It's unclear how much say the Asper family, whose private foundation is putting $20 million into the museum, will have in the running of the museum. However, Harper said major contributors will serve on its board."

Call me an alarmist, but somehow "the Canadian state," in partnership with a right-wing media behemoth, defining human rights in my community doesn't sit right. Even worse, this is all happening in a structure expected to tower over Winnipeg in the form of an ancient Babylonian Ziggurat. Why such an obscure--and ugly--architectural reference, if we're giving homage to the great slave-labour empires of antiquity why no go with something a little more pleasing to the eye, a Pharaonic Pyramid perhaps, or maybe a couple Kremlinesque domes.

Last summer I visited the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site in Atlanta. The memorial to one of America's greatest heroes is a small National Park Service red-brick building across the street from his childhood home. The once thriving middle-class black neighbourhoood is now depressed. Only blocks away, I saw hundreds of people encamped underneath massive highway overpasses, many laying on bare concrete, amidst posters that said re-elect Ray Nagin as mayor.

The exhibit chronicling MLK Jr's life and the history of the civil rights movement was moving as was the video presentation that acknowledged the radical path he was on right before his death. In the section of the centre aimed at children I found a booth admonishing us to make ethical purchases. The exhibit gave an overview of sweatshops around the world and listed some organizations fighting child labour. "Great," I thought, but turning around I noticed a large plaque with the words "this exhibit is proudly sponsored by the Coca Cola corporation."

Coca Cola is one of Atlanta's biggest companies and they have a budget with which to sponsor culture, but this is the same brand that many student groups have been trying to kick of campuses world wide for human rights abuses in Colombia, India and other countries. The month before, I had watched a Colombian bottling-plant labour organizer weep as he recounted being tortured at the hands of the paramilitaries hired by Coke to imprison him and harass his family.

I'm not sure if it was the same feeling Gourevitch experienced outside the Holocaust memorial, a combination of shame and frustration, but my visit had been ruined and one of my heroes dirtied.

Cornell West talks about the Santa Clausification of Martin Luther King Jr, the rebranding of a political radical into someone cuddly and safe. I'm not sure if he knows that, like Santa Claus, MLK is now a shill for an authoritarian beverage company. And pretty soon, Canadian school children will have the privilege of learning about "Human Rights" from the number one purveyor of anti-labour, anti-muslim, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-women sentiment in this nation.

Vaisakhi Day in Vancouver Photos

Vaisakhi in Vancouver

Greeks, Sex and Alanis

from This Magazine's Blog


Some things have been bugging me a lot lately. I worked a sorority ball the other night and it was by far the most embarassing thing I've ever witnessed. My university didn't allow greek associations and so until now I never quite understood what my friends meant when they admitted to hating these people.

I'm not one to rail against debauchery, I have no problems with people doing silly things and getting wasted, partying, having meaningless sex or whatever, but these people, the "sisters" and their fratboy dates, really bothered me. On the way in, girls already had to be helped into the washrooms to puke, they could barely stand up. The conversation ranged from meaningless to insecure. "There's this brand, kinda edgier than American Eagle, but not, like Abercrombie or anything like that..."

The drunk organizer couldn't understand how to speak into the microphone and even the seniors were basically illiterate. Their "roasts" of the graduating class were the saddest excuses for rhyming couplets I've ever heard, and, even in this hyper-sexual day and age, genuinely shocking, but more for the sheer magnitude of mainstream sex acts described rather than anything subversive.

On the other hand, I saw Alanis Morissette's parody of The Black Eyed Peas' "My Humps" video which everyone is talking about. It's brilliant, but wasn't the original song satire to begin with? That's the only way I can explain lyrics that bad. My question, if the original song is a commentary on the commodifying nature of mainstream culture then what is Alanis' version?

Anonymouz & Copasetic: The ILL-Legitimate Crew

The Vancouver Gateway Project

from This Magazine's Blog



I've been spending some time in Seattle lately visiting an ailing grandfather which means I've been stuck, bumper to bumper, on the I-5 for literally hours a day. I'm talking about the commute between my grandfather's house in north Seattle, the hospital and downtown, three places quite close to each other. Just the sheer number of cars that role through Seattle each day, all day, is quite astounding. Rush hour is especially brutal.

The on-ramps have stop lights to space the cars getting on, this can mean waits of up to twenty minutes when busy. Once you're on, it's six/eight/ten lanes of bumper to bumper in both directions. When you finally get off, whether in north Seattle or downtown, you're stuck in even more congestion.

This brings me to the Gateway Project; the BC government's plan to "improve" regional transportation, specifically the plan to twin the PortMann bridge and widen Highway 1 into East Van (aka my back yard). I think it's a horrible idea. Vancouver currently has minor (by North American standards) rush hours, which some think can be solved simply by adding more highway.

It was Jane Jacobs' book Dark Age Ahead that introduced me (I'm young) to the idea of "induced demand" that more freeways mean more cars, hence more congestion especially around major off ramps. My place in East Vancouver already gets plenty of commuter traffic to begin with and would become unbearable.

But don't worry about me, Jacobs' main argument against highways is that urban neighbourhoods, the economic and creative heart of the city, are often destroyed or significantly altered by megaprojects like these. Imagine the harm it could do to the cultural life of Commercial Drive and Strathcona to have thousands more cars per-day inching through the Downtown Eastside. More traffic would then necessitate extending the freeway even further into the city. The last time we allowed something like this to happen, Vancouver's only black neighbourhood was destroyed to create the Georgia Viaduct. I like to think that in this "post car, post racist" age, there are better ways to organize a city.

A vocal movement of people opposed to the project already exists, check out gatewaysucks.org for more info. Similarly, the David Suzuki Foundation's briefing document (highly recommended reading) suggests that highway construction is only a (very) temporary solution to traffic congestion and ends up doing far more harm than good.

The answer to the traffic problem, according to almost everyone who studies the issue, is light rail and more busses. The B-Line experiment--articulated express busses to the university and the airport--has been such an overwhelming success in terms of ridership and affordability, why not replicate it everywhere else?

American Logs: A Photo Essay

An Evening Walk: Photo Essay

The European Hotel, Niagara Falls

Stuck in an Elevator

I spent an hour in the elevator at work today with one of my co-workers. For the first twenty minutes it would jump up three floors and then jerkily drop a couple. Eventually we got in touch with security over the emergency phone and they managed to stop the car inbetween the eleventh and twelfth floors.

It took the Otis repairman fourty five minutes to get there at which point I had taught the girl my foolproof Tic-Tac Toe strategy which she immediately used to defeat me.

In better news, Nick and I pulled off our first catered dinner in grand style. We served four courses and earned all kinds of amazing compliments. Looks like we might be doing a couple more very soon. We started with Nick's very own "pear and butternut squash soup with a blue cheese coulis, grilled pear slices and chopped pecans. Following this was a salad with both white and green asparagus, cherry tomatos and roasted red pepper dressed in garlic parsely oil. The main course was a beef tenderloin steak, on a plate with mascarpone mashed potatoes, bacon wrapped green beans and a veal bone demiglace. The dessert was homemade cheesecake topped with a blueberry wine reduction and organic blueberries that came from Nick's family blueberry farm.

I served and helped plate the food, poured the five different wines, made the coffee and after dinner decanted Courvoisier into the hostess's family heirloom brandy serving tray (or whatever it was), cleaned up and was out of there in five hours. It was unbelievably smooth. The only thing I was worried about was that at the rates we charged the couple, we had no backup ingredients in case something went wrong.

My Reading List

Something which I think needs repeating is that Anarchism is not just some hardline ideological position (although many assholes indeed practice it that way). Charles Demers' interview with SFU professor Mark Leier, author of Bakunin, for The Tyee, is refreshing in that neither man is trying to one up the other which allows for a pretty earnest discussion.

Leier: No, I don't think bowling leagues are the anarchist utopia, but they, like much of our lives outside of the workplace, are organized without hierarchy and oppression; the most meaningful, truly human parts of our lives already work best when organized on anarchist principles. Yet I also believe that in its function as critique and as a vision of the future -- perhaps the only one that doesn't end in our extinction as a species, or, as Orwell put it, as a jackboot smashing a human face, forever -- anarchism is not only desirable but possible and necessary.

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Planet of Slums by Mike Davis is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the major social issues that will define the next century (massive rural-urban migration, the disintegration of the post-colonial state, exploding megalopolis' of absolute poverty). He's also a magnificent writer. In fact, I'm so impressed, I plan on reading his earlier book, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (2001) as soon as I pay off my library fines.

If you want a taste of the book, you can read Davis' original article for the New Left Review or dig up that New Yorker from a few months ago with George Packer's article on Lagos.

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After informing the world of my love for Faulkner (really anything southern), many suggested that I check out Carson McCullers and so I'm reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Some of her characters thus far are too obviously vehicles for ideas rather than people, and her dialogue can be a bit grating (especially her black characters) but overall this book has won me over (and I'm only half way through).

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So what's your favourite new Neon Bible (Arcade Fire) song? Currently I'm digging The Well and the Lighthouse but that's just because it's the obvious catchy one.

Pictures from an Abandoned School in New Orleans One Year After Katrina