Some people will eat the pies as-is but not me. I like to take them home, put them in a bowl, microwave them for a minute, and then top it with some vanilla ice cream. It is a delicious and affordable snack for anyone with access to a McDonald’s and a microwave.

For variety I recommend trying the other pie flavours such as Oreo or wild-berry or even mixing them up to create a new and exotic twist on a fast-food standard.

But whatever you decide to do, enjoy the experience. You only live once!

Bon appétit!

Take two apple pies and place them in a microwave safe bowl.

Plop the pies in the microwave for about a minute and then put some ice cream on top.

“It’s cheap and I like it,” he said. “Also, it costs less than Sugar Crisp.”

I used to eat this crap as a kid and I really didn’t like it. I still don’t. It tastes like Styrofoam and despair.

A bag of Safeway brand toasted puffed wheat.

The celebration was founded by employees of Canadian cannabis activist Marc Emery who wanted to host a day-long rally to celebrate cannabis and call for its legalisation.

This year’s celebration attracted an estimated 20,000 attendees up from 15,000 who showed up last year. Many of these people, of course, made their way through the city to get home or to another destination. I spent part of the day visting with friends in Hastings-Sunrise which was a lot busier than usual. Hundreds of people pushed their way through Hastings on their way to or from the big celebration.

In addition to the people I also noticed a spammy sign at the corner of Nanaimo and Hastings had been defaced with homophobic graffiti. I spoke with area residents who said the vandalism took place sometime on April 20.

"GAY" spray painted on spammy advertisement.

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. w00t!

As a gay man I credit the Charter for the advancement of a culture and society that protects and includes gay and lesbian people.

While sexual orientation is not specifically mentioned in the Charter successive rulings prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation and expanded gay and lesbian equality to areas such as marriage and pensions. Gay and lesbian people have also made gains in areas such as employment, health benefits, housing, hate crimes, and adoption.

I frequently read news stories from other parts of the world where leaders attempt to pass homophobic legislation or otherwise use the state to oppress gay and lesbian people.

It makes me grateful to live in Canada but I am mindful that even here we have politicians and governments who would love to push through a bunch of crazy homophobic laws. But they can’t. We have have a constitutionally embedded Charter.

In a 2002 University of Toronto law professor Brenda Cossman wrote an article in which she evaluated the legal implications of the Charter for the gay and lesbian community.

The Charter has been an effective tool in challenging the denial
of formal legal equality of lesbians and gay men. Laws that discriminate against
lesbian and gay individuals and relationships have been struck down as
unconstitutional, and legislatures have been forced to amend their laws to
extend formal legal equality. In so doing, there has been a shift in the politics
of democracy. The Charter critics—right and left—are correct to point out that
courts have done what almost no legislature was prepared to do. The
legalization of politics has delivered formal equality for lesbians and gay men

In early 2011 Saskatchewan’s right-of-centre government told provincial marriage commissioners that if they refused to conduct same-sex marriages they would have to resign or be fired even if doing so conflicted with their religious conviction.

“In my view, from a litigation point of view, it’s a done issue,” Saskatchewan’s Justice Minister, Don Morgan told me. “There’s certainly an option to appeal to the Supreme Court, but when you got a well-written judgment from five of the leading jurists in the province, you would want to accept that.”

The decision came a week after Saskatchewan’s highest court unanimously ruled that proposed legislation giving marriage commissioners the right to refuse to marry couples for religious reasons was unconstitutional.

The Government of Alberta, in contrast, has gone to great lengths to prevent gay and lesbian equality from taking root there. IF it wasn’t for the charter Alberta would be just like one of the 29 US States where residents can be fired on the basis of sexual orientation.

In 1991 Delwin Vriend was fired from his position at a private Christian university because he was gay. He was unable to file a human rights complaint as sexual orientation was not included as a prohibited ground of discrimination in Alberta’s Human Rights legislation.

He sued the commission and the provincial government and the case was ultimately heard by the Supreme Court who ruled that provincial government could not exclude gay and lesbian people from human rights legislation and that such exclusion violated the Charter.

We still have a long way to go with regards to gay and lesbian equality but I’m grateful for the significant gains we have made thus far and I believe we have the Charter to thank.

East Hastings Dollar Giant

Nobody in Vancouver seems to buy umbrellas anymore – every one I know steals them as quick as they lose them. I’m glad that at least one person in this city is doing their part to support umbrella manufacturers!

Here’s a video of the purchase:

There are no major box stores or malls so area residents still shop in many of the delis, markets, and others small business along Hastings. When I went there last week, however, I noticed something different. All of the yellow “Hastings-Sunrise” banners had been replaced by banners that read “The East Village”.

The new "East Village" banners along Hastings in East Vancouver.

Apparently the change was made by the Hastings North business improvement association who rebranded the stretch of Hastings from Victoria to Renfrew “East Village”. The neighbourhood, from Nanaimo to Boundary and Burrard Inlet to Broadway, still retains the Hastings-Sunrise moniker.

I think the name of an area should be decided by the people who live and work there – not a “business improvement association”.  There are many reasons why we may call an area a particular name but I don’t think it’s acceptable to rename a community so that it sounds more marketable. My friend Andrew, for one, is not impressed with the new name. Here’s a short video we did about the area:

“I just gotta warn you that the owners are Falun Gong people,” said Andrew.  I figured he’d learned that from some wonderfully in-depth discussion with the owner. He is, after all, quite the social butterfly.

”Oh well. I don’t think it’ll be a problem,” I told him. “If they don’t to preach to us I probably won’t even say anything!”

An advertisement for Falun Gong is prominently displayed next to the sign of of Dundas Fish & Chips

When we arrived at the restaurant I quickly realised the owners didn’t need to tell Andrew a damn thing. The restaurant was plastered with Falun Gong posters and signs. They also had a table near the entrance with Falun Gong literature and video as well as a petition for customers to sign.

My friends Margaret and Alex enjoy their beverages while waiting for their meal at Dundas Fish & Chips. Andrew has already received his won ton soup.

“I don’t do religion in the morning or on an empty stomach,” said Margaret who thought it was all kind of creepy.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a religious organisation founded in China  in 1992. Some of their followers describe it as a cultivation of the central tenets of truthfulness, compassion and tolerance. The practice of Falun Dafa also includes meditation, qi-gong exercise as well as the moral teachings of their founder Li Hongzhi.

Falun Gong presents itself as an organisation concerned about human rights, particularly their own. They regularly stage protests, and campaigns to raise awareness about the human rights of Falun Gong followers in the Peoples Republic of China.

A table of Falun Gong Literature and DVDs at Dundas Fish & Chips

But they don’t really believe in human rights for all – especially not the gays who they say are not worthy of being human.
Referring to a discussion about human rights protections for gay people in many western democracies Li said “I told them [the students in the West], ‘To be perfectly frank, your government may approve of it, but your Lord does not!’”

A large Falun Gong paintings in the restaurant.

He has also said that “repulsive homosexual behaviour” bespeaks of a filthy, deviant state of mind that lacks rationality.

Li and his followers predictably use insane superstition to justify their claims. The writings of this “cultivation of practice” make unsupported claims about the existence of deities who have a real hate-on for gay people.

“Let me tell you, if I weren’t teaching this Fa today, gods’ first target of annihilation would be homosexuals,” Li said at the Fa Conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 1998. “It’s not me who would destroy them, but gods.”

Falun Gong stickers and petition at the till

He went on to claim that humans were created by “the gods” who also set out standards of behaviour and that gay people, not terrorists or murderers, are their number one target for divine incineration.

“When human beings overstep those boundaries, they are no longer called human beings, though they still assume the outer appearance of a human,” he said. “So gods can’t tolerate their existence and will destroy them.”

I have no intention or desire of convincing Falun Gong practitioners that they espouse a very homophobic philosophy but I think those gay-positive people who would support them should know the truth.

Somebody wroter "FALUN DAFA IS A HOMOPHOBIC CULT" on the petition! I wonder who that was...

They’ve managed to get support from politically progressive people, including politicians, who are probably unaware of the group’s anti-gay stance. Many of these politicians support gay rights and some of them, including Bill Siksay and Libby Davies, are openly gay or lesbian themselves.

Siksay, who was my MP, chaired an all-party group called “Parliamentary Friends of Falun Gong” which set out to “foster a better understanding of the practice of Falun Gong among Parliamentarians.”

Even babies dig Falun Gong protests!

In late 2011 Davies introduced a petition in Parliament regarding the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in China.

“It concerns the Falun Gong, which is an organization and a practice we are all familiar with, which is the peaceful and beneficial spiritual practice centred on the principles of truth, compassion and forbearance,” she said.

I fail to see how Li’s teachings about  homosexuality are remotely consistent with truth, tolerance, and compassion. Li exhibits a profoundly bigoted, wildly ignorant, and shockingly hostile attitude towards LGBT people normally attributed to religious figures such as Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church.

Oh yeah, they also had food at the restaurant. It made three of us sick. Perhaps it’s part of god’s plan for annihilating gay people!

Diarrhea fuel. I had halibut and fries and Andrew had a double cheeseburger with two eggs and onion rings.

It can be hard to find real ice cream. Companies like Nestle and Bryers tend to emphasize words like “creamy” and “rich” but display the words “frozen dessert” in what I think must be the smallest font size allowed by law.

If you want real ice cream you are probably better off sticking to the generic brands which seem to have resisted the frozen dessert trend so far.

This, however, should not be interpreted as an endorsement of all no-name iced cream flavours. Some of them are downright nasty and there’s no better time to peruse the bunk flavours than an ice cream sale.

Safeway recently had a sale on their store brand ice cream: three bucks for a two litre box!

“You should hurry down there and get some,” advised Housemate. “Otherwise all the good flavours will be gone.”

Well, it turns out he was right. I waited a while and most of the good flavours were gone by the time I got down to Safeway. Here’s what the ice cream section looked like:

It was just the less popular flavours including mocha almond fudge, rum and raisin, and tin roof sundae. Yuck! Who the hell would eat that? Probably just Gino…

As you can see it was getting kind of full:

Housemate, who is not the biggest fan of needles, was taken aback by the sight of an overstuffed needle bin on the coffee table.

”I think it’s time you disposed of that,” he said. “It looks like a drug addict’s dream come true!”

A couple of months ago I was taking in all the cans when I heard a woman at the checkout exclaim “$6.66! Just give me $6.65. I can’t accept anything with ‘666’. That’s the devil’s number!”

I refuse to let such an open display of insane superstition go unchecked in my neighbourhood so I laughed and told her she was being ridiculous.” It’s just a number, madam,” I said. “It can’t hurt you!”

But apparently she’s not alone in her fear. According to Wikipedia there’s actually a word to describe the fear of 666. It’s called hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. Oy!

On March 19 I too was confronted with the number of the beast when I turned in all my cans and bottles. Here’s the receipt:

As you can see I returned 108 cans of Coke. Which is probably a month’s worth of beverages between Housemate and myself. Go ahead, do the math and figure out how much Coke I drink!

Oh yeah, all those bottles of wine and cans of alcohol came from a single party. It was fun! Here’s a photo of the wine: