It’s a great loophole - if you spray your ad on a wall or sidewalk in paint, you’re defacing property. You’re graffiti! If you spray your ad on a wall or sidewalk in solvent, you’re… cleaning it? The technique has been gaining in popularity over the last half-dozen years, but it’s finally made a big showing in Vancouver… promoting something from Telus. I don’t know what, as the URL doesn’t take me anywhere. And it’s ironic (I think? I can never tell any more) that the ad, involving recycling and being nice to trees apparently, involves chemical solvents headed to the nearby sewer next rainfall.

Still, anything is more clever than their Koodo ads.

Is it just me, or is the city being undermined by ants?

About a month ago, I noticed piles of dirt and sand piling up around the cracks in the walkway to my front door. Those piles turned into little mounds, complete with dead-giveaway ant holes. Then, ants. Busy little antholes that they were, the sidewalk was being consumed pretty quick - then I noticed them by the retaining wall closer to my door. Out of curiosity, I pulled back a brick. Bad idea. It was alive down there, and even more cunning, they’d made their egg nurseries, or whatever they’re called, right underneath the brick. So very alien. Ew.

So, after doses of pink poison and corn meal - common wisdom says they can’t digest it, but they’ll eat it, thus killing themselves - common wisdom seems to be full of crap. They’re still there. And why would one of the oldest, most evolved organisms on the planet not be able to tell food from not-food?

I even used a personal loophole in my mildly Buddhist approach to life on Earth - “bugs are icky - if they get in the way, do what you’ve got to do.” I devised that one when I was 6, because dodging bugs while riding a bike never ends well, and my knees and elbows had filed a complaint. Anyhow, I turned to boiling water. It pushed them back, but not for long.

So, my question to you all - is this diving flag syndrome. as in you never notice all the cars and trucks with diving flag stickers until you take up diving yourself. Ants are pretty prevalent, but they seem more prevalent lately, at least in Mount Pleasant area. Is that because they are actually very active this year or is it because I’ve got bugs on the brain?

And if it’s the former, how do we kill them? Ok, ok - how do I kill them? “Take off and nuke them from orbit” is technically the only way to be sure, but a bit drastic, I feel.

[photo by poagao]

This leaf is from a tree right outside my front door.

All the leaves, the pollen droppings and much of the pavement around the tree is covered in this shiny, sticky substance that clings to everything that the leaves, the pollen droppings and the pavement touch…

including the bottoms of shoes so all these bits of pollen droppings end up in my house.

What’s up with these trees?

I live here.

Don’t throw your garbage in my doorway.

That can be recycled.

Photo by Buzz Bishop

Update: I, er, should have at least noted Jeffery’s July 14 post describing these melons in their natural environment.

My fairly good friend and local media personality Buzz Bishop had an interesting post regarding Urban Fare’s square watermelons, imported from Japan.

Buzz was seriously irked by the mere idea of an exotic melon from Japan, for various reasons, and his commentators took some specific umbrage at the potential carbon footprint of these transoceanic melons.

Now, I’m not defending the idea of square melons per se (they’re a novelty, and a pricey one, for sure) but I do like recycling, so I’ve reproduced my comment on the fuel required for shipping these things below.
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I am, and my fiancee will confirm this, a very good tree hugger.  Sometimes I throw away things that could be recycled.  Often I’m not even sure what can be recycled.  I run the air condition in my apartment and leave electronics plugged into sockets when they’re not in use.  But even to someone like myself who is supportive of the environment, I’d like to keep having one, but not really going out of his way to save it the idea of having telephone books delivered seems ridiculous.

When was the last time you used a telephone book?  Granted this is a self-selecting survey since anyone reading this internet page obviously has internet access but I bet it hasn’t been for a few years.  It’s so much quicker to just Google what you’re looking for, and in the case of people you either know them or can Facebook someone who has their number.

But seriously, look at the size of a phonebook.  Think of every home in North America getting one.  Isn’t that a waste?

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Maplewood Farms

405 Seymour River Place
North Vancouver, BC V7H 1S6
(604) 929-5610

So it’s been awhile since you’ve touched an animal, and you figure you should.  You know now that more people live in cities than rural areas throughout the world too few of us have really ever had our clothes chewed on by goats.  It’s that sort of one-on-one nature experiance that keeps us grounded.

“But where,” you ask, “can I touch some animals in Vancouver?  The Vancouver Aquarium won’t let me hug the baby beluga whale and I got fired from my job as a dog walker after I lost Alex Trebark.”

My answer to you, for all your animal touching needs, is North Vancouver’s Maplewood Farms [mwf], which is a great petting zoo.  For just $4.90, $2.85 for anyone 16 and under or 65 and older, there’s a whole lot of farm animals waiting to be petted.

Okay, I’ll be honest this is one of the few things I’ve ever blogged here about where you probably should take kids to.  As part of a late twenty-something couple I felt slightly out of place in a park dominated by pre-teen children and their harried parents.  It was still however fun, and a good photo oppertunity, but for the most part kids will get more out of it than adults.

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It’s kind of clever - diabolical even. Pick the one day everyone is outdoors walking around, pondering a hot dog and looking for the best spot to see fireworks, to launch the new provincial carbon tax on fuel sales! Brilliant! Oh sure, they’ll complain tomorrow, but day one will be buried under red and white flags, explosions in the sky, and photos of tots with ice-cream all over their faces (they may optionally also be looking at fireworks while holding tiny paper Canadian Flags.)

What does this mean to you? Do you have a car? If you’ve answered no, it means little to you, though in theory over time the tax will lessen personal and business taxes - time will tell on that. If you’ve answered yes, then it means from this day forward, you’re paying 2.4 cents per litre more for petrol - and that will increase another five and quarter cents per over the next four years, on top of wherever the price of oil takes us in the coming months.

Never has a hybrid looked so good, and the ZENN and Volt can’t go on sale fast enough! Save the petroleum for vital K-Way production, I say.

Via David Drucker [lm]:

I knew Vancouver had it’s own fling with ’60s hippiness, and clearly we’re one of the most left-coast of the lefty cities on the continent even today, but I was completely ignorant of how much the ’60s and in fact a great influx of hippies had on the development of the city. From the fact that we don’t have a big freeway slashing its way through the heart of the city, to the formation of Greenpeace and even Vancouver’s current political believes all can be traced back to the Summer(s) of Love.

David Drucker found the video above on YouTube from Evening Magazine, a Seattle magazine style show, that demonstrates just how much the hippies shaped Vancouver.

It does seem quite jolly in the clip, but my uncle moved to Vancouver from Edmonton during this period of time and after getting further into a developing drug habit vanished forever. So while it turned out alright in for the city, it wasn’t without a few casualties. I also wonder how much of Vancouver current issue with IV drug abuse began to first develop during this period. Having grown up in the interior I know that the solution to most problems with the homeless, or drug users, is to just ship them to Vancouver.

Also I love how the narrator in the video says Kitsilano.