My buddy Jess drove all the way from Salem, Oregon to hang out with me. We had fun all week… cooking bacon, drinking tea, cracking dirty jokes, stuffing our faces with sweets and yelling at teenagers. She’s awesome! The highlight of her trip, at least for me, was watching her interact with my cat Khan. He absolutely adores her. Here’s a cute video of her giving Khan kitty-spa treatment.
“I want cupcakes!” I demand.
I’m hanging out with my friends Jess, Paul and Michael. We’re walking their dog Buster when I am overcome with an insatiable craving for cupcakes!
There are a few chain stores in Vancouver that are dedicated to selling just that, but they are located several blocks away from where we are.
“I’m not sure where to get cupcakes around here,” says Michael.
“They sell ‘em at Starbucks!” I declare.
“Well then why don’t we go check out Starbucks and then if they don’t have them there we’ll go to Choices [a grocery store] and get a whole bunch of really good ones!” I’m not sure that Michael or Jess want to inhale a plate of carbs and sugar but they are incredibly supportive of my demand/desire to do so.
We arrive at the Yaletown Starbucks and as soon as I open the door my gaze zeroes in on a platter of seven cupcakes. My gaze drags my body right to the curved glass pastry display.
“How much for all of them?” I ask the young barista. “I want all of the cupcakes!”
Before he can answer I start to haggle. “If I buy all of ‘em can you give me some kind of deal?”
He gives me a knowing smile and offers to throw one in for free and waive the GST.
“Kick ass!” I say feeling quite proud of myself. “I got us a better deal for cupcakes!”
I pay for the cupcakes, which came to something like $13, and wait for a while. I thought for a moment that they simply forgot my request but when I crane my head behind the counter I notice three staff people carefully gift wrapping the cupcakes like the treasures they are.
They placed the three vanilla cupcakes in individual gift boxes and the four chocolate cupcakes in a four-pack container thing. They then placed them in two lovely gift bags.
Starbucks cupcakes
The three of us decide to eat one of the cupcakes on the Starbucks patio and then bring the other four back to Michael and Paul’s house and pretend that we had only bought four, thus scoring an additional cupcake. Paul had gone back to his house with the dog earlier, so he would never know.
Michael and Jess
The cupcakes were a bit stale but still extremely yummy. Someone compared it to an explosion of sex in their mouth.
A couple weeks ago I visited my old friend Steph in Nanaimo. We went to a silent auction at the Royal Canadian Air Caedts hall where she won some yoga stuff and I won a $50 gift certificate to Future Shop. It was a wonderful weekend but in my rush to catch the ferry I left the gift card on Stephanie’s table. d’oh! Fortunately she mailed it off to me but it wasn’t what was inside the envelope that made my day.
She addressed the letter “Mr. Marmalade Chrstopher”, a name I like to give when a business needs my name to call over the loudspeaker for any reason.
The name may be fake, but the stamps are not. Postage recently went up to 57 cents but Stephanie still has some old 48 cent stamps kickin’ around. Not enough? No problem for Steph! She has loads of 2 cent stamps stuffed away in one of her flimsy Ikea drawers.
So, in addition to the 48 cent stamp there are also four two-cent stamps and one one-cent stamp.
“I had enough to do it in all .02¢ stamps,” wrote Stephanie on the face of the envelope. “But they wouldn’t fit 
wink”.
Letter from Stephanie
“I had enough
If you ever need to feel old or irrelevant there’s perhaps no better place to hang out than your local thrift store where items that seemed so marvelous and useful in your youth are unceremoniously stashed between faded Christian books and stained tweed blouses.
The other day I was at the Salvation Army store at West Boulevard and 41st in Kerrisdale where I happened upon a few objects that show how distant and irrelevant my own youth has become.
The cd rack which was full of albums and singles that I still listen to, I can’t imagine the sad soul who would get rid of Jewel’s “Pieces of You” album or Sugar Ray’s flawless “Every Morning” cd single but it was good to re-add them to my collection at only $1.99 a pop.
I did, however, spot a few items that really are irrelevant and silly.
Observe this very bulky Oritron DVD player manufactured at a time when most DVD functions were accessible through buttons on the player itself. If you lost your remote, like I do all the time, you could still play your movie. Not bad.
Oritron DVD Player
It also has another special feature that you don’t see on many players anymore – Y2K Compliance. It still has an official-looking silver sticker which reads “Year 2000 Y2K Compliant” and assures potential customers that it is “certified” by an unspecified “international testing laboratory”.
y2k sticker
Still, some people in the ‘90s were laggards when it came to new technology. I was using a Beta until sometimes in the mid ‘90s and didn’t get a DVD player until 2003 and I imagine there are still people out there who only have a VCR so they might appreciate the value of this Safety 1st VCR Lock. For $1.99 you could save hands, sandwiches and other body parts from the unforgiving wrath of a VCR motor.
Throughout the Olympics I’ve really been impressed by the presence of other Canadian provinces and Territories in Vancouver. It’s good to see and feel the presence of the different regions of Canada. It’s a lot more substantial and real than a series of provincial and territorial flags neatly assembled at some public space.
I really think that that’s a diversity is a huge part of Canadian identity and geography plays a huge part in that.
Yesterday I was downtown and noticed this cute truck advert at the corner of Robson and Homer:
Compliments of Ontario, Canada
My first thought was “how nice!” Then I read it and thought “hmm! I didn’t know that Ontario provided water to Vancouver. Neat!” Then I thought “Hmm… maybe this is a statement about our public water and how Ontario water is better…”
Then I turned to a lady wearing a trillium emblazoned sweater who was packing up water bottles and Ontario pins.
“Is it true that Ontario provides metro Vancouver with water,” I ask.
“Oh no,” she says smiling. “It comes from that fire hydrant right over there. It’s very local water.”
Vancouver fire hydrant
Still, I thought it was pretty cool to see a physical presence of Ontario right here in Vancouver. The water wasn’t from Ontario, but the sentiment sure was. Adverts of British Columbia normally tout the natural or “God-given” beauty of the land. That was accidental and speaks nothing of the human accomplishments out here. I think a kind gesture, like a glass of water, speaks more about a place than some over the top nature photos.
The other day while running errands Housemate decided to bring home some supper from McDonald’s. It really was a thoughtful gesture. Housemate is always buying me McDonald’s. He’s really cool that way.
Usually it’s great, but this time it was a disaster.
He comes back with a Big Mac meal. The Coke is cold. The fries are cold. The Big Mac is cold. Cold McDonald’s food tastes like dog food mixed with wet shoelaces. It’s nasty. Dinner is shot, but at least I have a cold drink. But really, there’s no excuse for this as there’s a McDonald’s not far from our house. Even when I walk there the food is still hot when I come home.
When I ask him “What the fuck?!?” he informs me that he picked it up at a McDonald’s that’s like a half-hour drive from our house! Housemate, who is a chemist and PhD student, completely forgot about Einstein’s theory that McDonald’s food purchased closer to home will probably be lest nasty for Nathaniel and his cat. Shame!
“Just put it in the microwave!” He scolds. “I don’t know what it is you have against the microwave but when I heat stuff up in there it tastes fine.”
He nukes his Quarter Pounder and fries and the kitchen fills up with the aroma of melting stray dogs. It’s wrong. Heating up cold McDonald’s in a microwave has little to do with food preparation. It’s some kind of unholy necromancy. I don’t know how he can call himself an atheist ‘cause that there was full on sacrifice to the devil.
McDonald's in the microwave
Although he insists there is nothing wrong with re-heating McDonald’s food he was quite adamant that the above photo NOT be taken or posted anywhere on a blog. But as a journalist and maverick I believe the public has a right to know.
Friends don’t let friends bite into cold McDonald’s food.
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Khan poses with Housemate's lottery winnings
Many working class people fantasize about what to do when they win the lottery but a fantasy for many became today a reality for my housemate who won $10 in the lotto.
A week or two ago Housemate purchased what he described as a “222 ticket” who has since misplaced the ticket and receipt.
“I bought some of that fake orange juice,” he says. “You know, that stuff you hate. What do you call it. Ah, SunnyD!”
The SunnyD, according to Housemate, came to “$3 and some change” which leaves approximately $6.50 in change.
He asked me to use the $5 bill to buy some “beverages” a word we use to describe those 12 packs of Coke you can get. I, however, have no intention of going out to buy anything. I’m feeling lazy so the $5 will just have to sit in his wallet for a bit longer.
As for the change, he has “no idea” as to how he’ll spend it.
Well, tonight I went to a wonderful Christmas party at my friend Caitlin’s house. Her mom and dad did a wonderful job feeding and drinking us up. They are probably the most gracious, kind hearted people I know.
But that’s not what I want to address here.
I come home and find this note on my computer:
Nathaniel - I fed Khan already (about 2 PM) you do not need to feed him again tonight. I also gave him lots of treats.
It’s from my housemate. He’s worried that I feed my cat too much. There was a time not too long ago when Khan managed to “double dip” on his wet food servings by acting hungry as soon as one of us came home. Housemate, for example, might feed Khan before going to work in the morning but by the time I wake up his food dish might be empty. Thinking he hasn’t had his morning wet food I’ll fill up his bowl.
Aware of this situation and ever worried about Khan’s expanding waste line housemate left me a note .
But why did he used crappy old WordPad instead of Microsoft Word? I asked him!
“It was just a quick little note,” says housemate. “WordPad is a smaller program which has the same functionality for small typing jobs. No spell checker etc of course but you can type into it and print stuff.”
Fair enough. But it would have been good if I saw this note BEFORE Khan approached me with his sweet “feed me” meows. But, housemate wanted to be kind to the environment and so he did the note on the screen.
So… here’s a shot of Khan eating his third feeding of the day:
Khan eating supper
Props to housemate who gave me a $25 Future Shop gift card. I used that to buy batteries for the camera that took this photo.
The other works I noticed this poster near Hastings and Willingdon. It’s since been ripped down and replaced with fireworks adverts so I thought I’d blog about it.
It’s a message from Bill Bennett extolling the virtues of Expo 86. Bennett was the Social Credit premier of British Columbia from 1975 until 1986. I’m too young to really have any kind of visceral grudge against him, but I know of a lot of my older friends do.
But as much as I disagree with the Social Credits it was really refressing to see the words “Premier” next to a name and photo of someone who isn’t Gordon Campbell.
But why then are these 23 year old posters plastered across the city? It was a real “what the fuck” moment to see this alongside movie and concert notices. My first thought it was that it was some kind of Olympic initiative to quell anti-Olympic sentiment among the masses by appealing to that bullshit hipster nostalgia for all things ’80s.
I might be right.
There was some barely visible text on the bottom left corner of the poster with a url to the Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver. Their website says it’s the largest non-profit photographic art gallery in Western Canada.
The piece is part of the public installation “Something’s Happening Here” by Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw. He’s taken a bunch of old posters and images from Expo 86 and they have been plastered all over Vancouver as part of the so-called “Cultural Olympiad”.
A press release for the exhibit describes it as such:
“Something’s Happening Here joins an ongoing dialogue on how global events like Expo
and the Olympics impact on civic space through an architectural legacy of buildings
and monuments, and signifi cantly, how such events live on through a collective civic
memory.”
As a B.C. history buff I think the old posters are sort of cool. Vancouver seems to be a city that moves and changes so quickly that it seems to lose connection with its history. So I think most iniatives to preserve our history are good.
But the haunting question here is: what history do we choose to present? Or more accurately, what message are THEY trying to cram down our throats?
While arts and community organizations across the province are being slaughtered with funding cuts it seems that there is still enough money to plaster the city with Expo pride. It’s as if they are saying “people were all excited and proud to host Expo so you should feel the same way about the Olympics!”
Art is invarialbly used as a tool by the people to question or critique the status quo but it is also used by the establishment to drive home their message.
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