LLOYD'S MEXICAN SAINT — NOVEMBER 2011

ROWAN AT OCCUPY SAN FRANCISCO — OCTOBER 2011
BY BRITTA BACCHUS. BRITTA'S BLOG CAN BE SEEN HERE

WELCOME TO SEARS LADIES WEAR
BERNIE LYON — 2011

WHAT? ME WORRY?

FIN — 2011

MAIN STREET

NAT BAILEY — CIRCA 2000
(please click to enlarge)

HURRY UP AND WAIT
For two days I tried to connect with Shaw to get a new password or some entry into a magical realm governed by the resident spirits of outsourcing hell. Estimated time waits were laughably approximate, "Two hours" routinely becoming four hours, and even that being no guarantee. It might be time for Shaw to consider hiring, and perhaps hiring people who speak English, since it seems that expecting people to keep on top of technology is already tough enough.
On my last fruitless attempt, I endured an hour or so of very bad music, on a loop, interrupted only by Shaw's advertisements for itself, and news that my call was important to Shaw, but the reading was, "Your call is of supreme unimportance to us because we happen to rule. Please continue to hold for the next available customer service representative, or for Godot, since an appearance by the latter is highly more likely in the grand scheme of things."
I listened until my ears bled. Swinging Shepherd Blues … I Could Have Danced All Night … Here Comes the Sun … Lara's Theme from Doctor Bloody Zhivago … The semiotics were that there was good news here, if only one just looked hard enough to find it. The good news was that these clips of very bad music in very bad arrangements were very short. The bad news was that because of their brevity, you'd be hearing them come around again all that much sooner.
Eventually, the phone rang. The accent was as unplaceable as it was indecipherable. The brief exchange led to nowhere, though the man on the other end was very pleasant as he asked me if there might be anyone else in the house who knew a little more about computers.
In turn I like to think I was quite pleasant when I asked if there might be someone in his house who had a perhaps firmer grasp on the rudiments of English, and if so to please put him on since I would love to talk to him.
— Lloyd Dykk

THE RECEPTIONISTS — AUGUST 2011
BY BRITTA BACCHUS
(Britta's blog can be seen here)

ZOMBIE WALK 2011 (or just some regular teens...)

BERNIE LYON — AUGUST 2011

THEATRE OF CRUELTY
(courtesy Hammler Schlemmer catalogue)

BERNIE LYON — 2011

OUR DICKY

BOLLOCKS TO KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge Network just gives me gas. All those cheesy English hour-longs with their decidedly long-in-the-tooth "character" actors who must overact or they'll die, and the hoary plots that are always patly resolved just before the 60 minutes are up, and the scenes at the village pub overseen by the local feisty old bag who really isn't the sarcastic old bitch she seems to be. In terms of characters these things heavily favor sprightly oldsters, irreverent priests and jumped up snobs, and the feeling seems to be that "satire" is best slathered on. You could choke on the crusty homilies and the quirky "charm" and the photogenic ruralisms. They crank this crap out by the kilometre. Not that North American television is any better but at least they don't push pornography for the genteel. Not that they wouldn't if they could figure out how to do it. It seems to be an English thing.
— Lloyd Dykk

MARY IN VANCOUVER IN JULY

MARPOLE

The Canucks' Cup run, like war, has brought us together."

Of course, the local newspapers have given the troops their marching orders.
Given the volume of Canucks "news" consuming trees faster than a biblical swarm of pine beetles over the past few weeks, the news desks must have reporters' assignments on a loop: Give me something with a hockey tie-in, and give it to me yesterday! Recipes, fashion statements, trips down memory lane, cultural events — as long as it is tinted blue and green, then it's a tie-in that's a shoo-in.

But I just about did a spit-take of my official soft-drink of the Vancouver Canucks when I read the above headline on an Doug Todd's A4 column in Tuesday's Vancouver Sun.
Curious. Todd, the paper's religion reporter, is one of the few columnists who often dips his quasi-Christian sandals into philosophical and ethical questions that our phantasmagorical culture arouses (i.e. painted Canuck faces), and does so with the closest thing a newspaper writer (as I once was) can come to an emotion like compassion. (That's when you care about things, right?)

Here, however, in tackling the phenomenon of sport, Todd makes some long jumps in logic that seem bush league.
His main thrust, as the headline declares with bravado, is that the Canucks have united our multi-ethnic city around the rallying and trademarked call, "We Are All Canucks."

Continue reading in The Mainlander

DUSK