TWIG Notes XIX

Another seven days go by without blogging, producing another quick summary of events from the week that was.

- On the weekend we went to a Vancouver Canadians baseball game with a friend and his friends. I’d never been to a Canadians game, nor been to Nat Bailey stadium. It was a good time, in spite of the home team getting beat like a rented mule. The lone run scored by Vancouver produced a free meal at A&W, and the end of the game featured quite a good fireworks show and a streaker. I’m fairly certain we’ll go again.

- In January I made some bold predictions about all kinds of silly things. One was that budding Hollywood starlet Leighton Meester would have a sex tape surface. Well, looky looky! I was right! (No, that link is obviously not work safe)

- The 2009 edition of the BC Lions debuted on Tuesday in a preseason game against Edmonton. I’m keeping expectations low for the Lions this year: they lost two of the league’s best players and one of their more consistent receivers over the winter. The preseason game was ugly, without a doubt, although preseason is almost totally meaningless. I’m predicting a fight for 3rd place in the West, probably with a win-loss record of 9-9.

- The most interesting news in our world in years - the brink of revolution in Iran - is already forgotten, thanks to Michael Jackson dying. I won’t comment much on this, because I don’t really care one way or the other about him, but I won’t say that is isn’t newsworthy. For whatever you can say about him, be it his talent, his showmanship, or his perversions, Michael Jackson wasn’t just the King of Pop. He was the King of Pop Culture, and no one in the last century came anywhere near him in terms of worldwide recognition. If the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, MJ was bigger than the Beatles, which puts him just below Colonel Sanders and Xenu in the Important World Figures list. He was the biggest celebrity ever in modern times. And now he’s dead. And Iran won’t be in the news again for weeks.

- While not exactly noteworthy to anyone, since it deals with make-believe, Mandy Moore is no longer my pretend girlfriend. Sorry Mandy, but you’ve still not proven to be more than merely adequate at either singing or acting. You can’t rest your laurels on that one role in Saved! five years ago.

- When the stock market collapsed, and I lost my job, I pulled most of my RRSPs out of mutual funds because I lost faith in them. In the past few weeks I’ve been wondering what to do with that money, since right now they’re earning barely more than 1% interest. I was tempted to reopen a mutual fun based investment, but then the markets took another tumble this week. I wonder if I can just buy gold with it. Then have that gold formed into teeth. Then replace my normal teeth with gold teeth.

I will likely be on haitus for another week, as I’ve booked some time off work and will not be around much.

White Pine Elephant

Yesterday the company I work for kicked off a three-day conference in the new Vancouver Convention Centre, which gave me the opportunity to check out the newest ‘boondoggle’ that the provincial government has given us. I should disclose before I go any further - as evidenced by my use of the world ‘boondoggle’, which is an awesome word - that I have a severe distaste for the VCC mainly because it is the metaphorical penis enlargement for the Vancouver business community, a community that is probably least deserving of metaphorical penis enlargements.

Anyhow, my positive impressions:

It’s enormous - almost 500,000 square feet. Cavernous, one might say, once inside. It does feature huge windows on all sides, which adds to the sense of enormity. It also makes plentiful use of salvaged pine beetle wood - every wall in the place is covered in it. It also has no trash cans, just different types of recycling bins.

My negative impressions:

The size, use of glass, and carpet panels makes it feel like YVR minus the gift shops, fountains, Bill Reid art, and fish tank. The carpet tiles are grey, which on a dreary Vancouver day will certainly fit in well with the dreariness. It’s also architecturally boring, in the context of Vancouver. It’s got the same overall design as every highrise condo in the city, which means it doesn’t stand out, and to me that’s a lost opportunity. Every room in the joint has a flat-panel TV screen outside its doors, to display meeting information - how is that considered ‘green’, something the VCC likes to brag about?

Overall I give it a thumbs down, because it’s uninspiring in terms of design, because it cost a shade under one billion dollars to build, and because convention centres are essentially glorified car showrooms. The actual tangible increase in quality of life for people could have been better served by spending a billion dollars somewhere else. And the ‘business’ of convention centres is dying - this beast isn’t going to pay for itself for a long, long time (somewhat relevant: the only meeting booked at the VCC the day I went was the one for our company).

Screw You, Cockney Lizard.

Given the near-failure of credit systems in the last few months, one has to wonder why we’re conditioned to believe that we need a credit history. Here we have banks and lenders telling us, for years, that a person isn’t a person until he or she has a credit rating. I understand that our way of life is now based on how good (or bad) we are at borrowing money we don’t have, but isn’t it a bit retarded that the banks and lending institutions basically failed to borrow and lend properly?

Anyway, where I’m going with this is the Sisyphean task of my ladyfriend trying to establish a credit rating. She was one of the few that never signed up for the ‘free candy’ of credit cards while in college, a time when young adults are introduced to usury and the ‘pleasure’ of credit. Little did she know that, once she became a real adult, it would be extremely hard to establish a credit account. The only choice - wait, if there’s only one, I guess it’s not choice - is a secured credit card, whereby she pays a credit card company between $300 and $500, to hold for a year and use as collateral as she shows that yes, she can join the elite club of humans who learn the rare skill of using plastic to pay for shit.

The fact that people generally become more responsible in their mid-twenties, compared to age eighteen, one would assume those people would be better borrowers. Well, this is true - more responsible people learn to pay back what they owe rather than just rack up debt they can never pay back *cough cough student loans cough*. But why would my ladywife, or anyone for that matter, send a company a cheque for multiple hundreds of dollars just so she can borrow that same amount? Does it not make more sense to just use those dollars to pay for something right away? If I said to you, give me five hundred dollars and I’ll lend a maximum of five hundred dollars you at 20% interest, wouldn’t you tell me to go to hell?

So I’m left wondering if a person really needs a credit history. Is it a necessity of life? I don’t see why. If the state of our Western world proves anything, it’s that one shouldn’t buy something that one cannot afford. So my ladywife can’t get a loan to buy that Amphibicar she’s always wanted. A dream shattered, but only at the cost of being smart.

I don’t believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein or Superman

Bicycle races are coming your way
So forget all your duties oh yeah!
Fat bottomed girls theyll be riding today
So look out for those beauties oh yeah

Yes, Saturday was bicycle day, when my ladyfriend and I came home with two nearly identical white folding bikes. At the same time we bought helmets, which took a while as it isn’t easy finding one that fits my fat head. As soon as we got home, though, we busted those bad boys out and rode them around Rocky Point Park, where we discovered seat replacement was going to be a priority before we rode again. The included seats were basically vinyl stretched over hard plastic - not exactly comfortable, to say the least. Sunday, with an armful of seats and a lock (and some freeze dried ice cream), we took another spin around the block, and Monday brought a trip to the library. I can say that the old adage is entirely true: riding a bike is as easy as riding a bike. It seems to be a skill that cannot be unlearned, despite not straddling a bicycle in almost a decade.

There’s no photos of either of us on our bikes, at least not yet. In the meantime, please enjoy this photo instead.

The Final Birthday-Related Post

I’ll keep this one short because I’m quite tired of talking about birthday events. But I do feel the need to ‘close the loop’.

Last weekend was the Birthday Bet-A-Thon, where about ten people showed up during various parts of the day to join in the gambling of money and eating of roasted meat products. Personally, I had my worst day of betting in the four years I’ve held the Bet-A-Thon, winning a total of 70 cents (and losing the $45 I started with). The big winner of the day - and likely to be the biggest in Horsetravaganza history - was my friend Nigel and his fiancee Tracey, who hit a ridiculously long shot $4.80 superfecta and won roughly $850. I’d like to thank everyone who reads this blog that showed up, both for showing up and for gifts; I appreciate it all. Flickr photos are on the way.

The other birthday-related item: we still do not have bikes. The shop had only two folding bikes left and neither were assembled. Methinks the run of sunny, warm weather means bikes are hot sellers right now, so we’re waiting until this upcoming weekend to get our bicycles (they’ve been promised to be assembled and ready to go by Friday).

That is all. Regular (non-birthday) blogging shall commence shortly.