The Tuscany of Canada

Just watch. They have that big outdoor feast cliché happening in a beautiful field of green.

Finally, Michael J. Fox found a job, and so did Sarah McLachlan, who has been milking her ancient sad song in the service of dying puppies for way too long. Not that British Columbia really needs promoting, but they threw together a host of local celebs who urge you to come see their home. But I was sold on the beauty of BC long ago, first by Steve Martin's "Roxanne," filmed in Nelson, BC, then by Robert Kaplan's "An Empire Wilderness," in which after traipsing through a dystopian American landscape, the author finds a true Emerald City in Vancouver.



Never been, but it sure looks nice. I'm sold. I may even have been convinced that my expatriate destination of choice is no longer South Australia. Oh, wait: "According to the International Housing Affordability Survey of 2009, Vancouver was ranked at 262 out of 265 cities in six countries, so it's less affordable than New York (ranked at 251st place)."

I guess that explains the celebrities.

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100 Meter Butterfly

An Aussie visitor to one of my websites once observed: "They disrupt the everyday and the opinionated links we make between words (& art & music) and experience; the links that speak as if the world were easily translatable into a common language and experience that we all share." I rather liked that assessment, heady though it was.

Here's some more of that disruption of common language and experience. Or perhaps it's really just Middle School humor I still can't shake.

Eight Eight Eight

If you turned this day upside down
it would still be the same
And when you look at it sideways
it goes on without end
and what is a game
played between enemies
anyway
but a metaphor for war

The rain outside blows sideways
trash cans are turned upside down
There are things to do again today
that we do without end
And what is a game
played between friends
once again
but a metaphor for harmony

Please celebrate our triumph
Feel free to wince when we fall
and do try to mind your tongues
We love the gold, the spoils of war
and turning worlds upside down
and what is a war fought overseas
to me
just the game we play