Vision Vancouver pushing all the right buttons

According to the June 25th Vancouver Courier, Vision has nominated "young" people for parks board, contrary to what Mayor Gregor Robertson said about the NPA being a party of "angry old men."

One of them is Trish Kelly, described as "a natural food company employee and self-described LGBTQ community member of Métis and Ukrainian descent."

Among the other Vision people being nominated for school board and city council:

Albert Akukalaqq, 28, a blind Inuit man who lost all four of his limbs in an attack by a killer whale. Despite his handicaps, he is the owner of a thriving business which creates authentic circumpolar native carvings. He has also been prominent protesting the Vancouver Aquarium's "confinement" of large mammals.

Da-Xia Xangpao, 30. She became president of the Shaughnessy Residents' Association even though she and her husband Ming-húa arrived in Canada only in late 2013. She is an avid cyclist and wants to ban all cars from her area ... unless they have a value of over $200,000.

Surjit Dhillander, 36, local vegetarian restaurateur who is at the forefront of the "Don't move to Surrey" movement among Vancouver's Punjabi Market merchants.

Favorite cereal?

Many years ago when I was working, I took a poll of the people at my company as to what cereals they liked. I was very surprised that most of the people liked bran cereals, because most of the people there were young. In my experience, bran cereals are associated with old people who have digestive problems. When I told them that I had 4-5 different kinds of cereal in the house, ranging from sickeningly organic to utter trash, and I enjoyed mixing them up with a little bit of each cereal in my bowl, they looked at me as if I was crazy.

Charity donation boxes in Vancouver under the microscope

Vancouver City council is talking about regulating the charity drop boxes which litter the city, just like the litter which is in front of many of them. This is a good thing, because this issue has been in the news for a couple of years and no one has seemingly done much about it.

There was an article criticizing these boxes in the Vancouver Courier two years ago, which produced some nervous responses from local charities that if council regulated or took away these boxes, they would suffer.

A couple of days ago, there was an article in the Province about this issue. And guess what appears in the Metro paper yesterday, a TWO PAGE SPREAD AD FROM VALUE VILLAGE saying how great they are (all of which is attached, along with relevant links to the previous articles).

Value Village, in case you don't get it, is connected with the disposition of many of these articles which are collected by the local charities.

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June 5, 2014 story, The Province

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Donation+disasters+have+City+Vancouver+working+plans+regulate+mess/9904487/story.html

[The above link no longer works.]

Courier article from March 29, 2012

http://www.vancourier.com/news/dumped-donations-soil-vancouver-thrift-store-sidewalk-1.376303

Courier article from September 2, 2011

http://www.vancourier.com/news/donated-books-for-charity-sold-for-profit-online-1.374347

Letter responding to the above Courier article, from September 7, 2011

http://www.vancourier.com/opinion/editorial-and-letters/letters-of-the-week-1.375399

Letter responding to the above Courier article, from September 28, 2011

http://www.vancourier.com/opinion/editorial-and-letters/charity-bins-play-vital-role-for-non-profits-1.382067

Are you a "record rescuer"?

Every few months there is some article about how there is a "resurgence" of interest in vinyl long-playing records. Current vinyl sales, according to one article I read, are about 2% of all music sales these days, which I thought VERY high. But new records are far from cheap, and there is no way I would ever go back to them because of this and the fact that I suffered for years listening to crappy scratches and so forth.

I think part of the "vinyl resurgence" has to do with people suffering from terminal nostalgia who are what I call "record rescuers" (yes, I count myself among these deluded people). They cannot bear to see records in thrift shops which are going to be abused (if they are not already) and/or "not going to a good home." These rescuers are like people who burst into tears when they see puppy dogs and pussy cats with big sad eyes up for adoption at the SPCA (and, I suspect, a lot of people on Facebook).

An advantage of being 3 years old

A friend of mine's daughter is 3 years old today. Being 3 is very much like being 65. When you are 65, you qualify for lots of cool deals, like an all-encompassing bus pass and discounts all over the place. When you are three, you can finally play with all those toys with a label "Not suitable for children under the age of three"!

Something else on Facebook which is stupid

On the left side of one of my main Facebook pages under "shit I normally never look at," there is this category "What is your relationship status?" Under this is a line "1 more pending item." So I clicked on that. Under this it says that one of my FB pals has "listed you [meaning me] as a family member." Except this guy is NOT a family member. He is no relationship to me whatsoever. There is a drop down which says "Choose relationship," with various crap like brother, sister, etc., etc. (a long list). There is no "none of the above."

No laughs at the fish market

I thought this was pretty funny, thinking "cleaning" means washing the fish (rather than removing guts, etc., which is what it really means) -- especially since this guy was using this weird vacuum-like device to do something vacuum-like in the fish tank.

But then he got all annoyed when he saw me taking pictures of another sign which said words to the effect "Osaka Supermarket is not legally liable if a crab should pinch you," and started screaming at me, "No pictures allowed in the store!"

I guess he thought by doing this I would steal the fishes' souls or something.