Meancouver

Holy shit, and I was pissed off when it was $100,000,000.

Now it just seems like some sort of sick joke, one that you laugh at because it’s true. We the tax payers of Vancouver are on the hook for nearly a billion dollars.

And what do we get for this billion dollar bailout? A bunch of prissy ass condo’s for the rich-as-fuck crowd which aren’t good for anything other then letting the dear Plutocrats of Our Time stew in the sickly sweet, wheat-grass enriched syrup of their plunder.

One man was audacious enough to propose that this glut of housing the City now owns could possibly go to all the homeless people we have decaying out in our streets.  Some elderly-grey-haired-sweater-wearing-well-to-do-Grandma type with ever so innocent eyes came on the TV and said very succinctly that ‘oh we can’t do that, that is luxury housing on prime real estate, we can’t just let POOR people live in such a plush environment, the shock to their systems would be deadly, we have medical studies, very scientific ones I might add, that clearly shows this to be true.  We want what’s best for Vancouver Too you know.’

Snow

Here Canada sits in the Winter of our discontent. Our Government lays frozen and inactive, broken by a hack Prime Minister.

Our Politics have been regionalized and fractured for political gain while our sinking Economy floats rudderless on the heaving sea of a Global Economic Storm.

Our citizens continue to die in a botched war effort, 8 years and counting, in a land far away.  A War that is going to get worse before it get better. Way worse.

Our Winter began harsh and early, the Snowmaggedon snow storm blanketing a Nation that spans a continent. Starting several days before the official start of winter it continues week after week as massive arctic outflows keep smashing into hot moist tropical air and dumping snow and cold on everyone. A cold snap that saw a coast to coast trend of being over 12 degrees below seasonal.

Even balmy Vancouver, the tropics of Canada, stands dumbfounded and uncomprehending as Mayors beg their citizens to shovel their goddamn sidewalks and side streets resign themselves to never being plowed.

A lethal Winter before winter even began, old ladies in the snow, one freezing to death in her driveway, another burning to death in her ramshackle shelter as she lit candles to escape the cold.   Then the numerous house fires of impoverished single mothers in substandard housing.

Meanwhile the polar ice caps melt even faster then the already faster then projected melt rates.

But maybe this is what we need.  We had become the nation of smug complacency, ignoring our politics, ignoring global climate change, ignoring the growing gap between rich and poor.  We still thought we were the best in the world, but while we rested on our Laural’s our nation became something else entirely.

Maybe we need a hard winter to remind us of Canada. Its a hard place to live and we need to work together in order to survive.  So let’s sort our shit sorted and get back to it.