Peace Offering Made to CBC Loyalists

My Dear Socialist Friends,

While I will never understand why you think the way you do, I actually do have great empathy over the way you must be feeling today. Sincerely I do. Probably pretty much the way I felt after Messiah Obama won last month.

Anyhow, there's an old expression that when things get so bad you can either laugh or cry. The former emotion is always preferable. In that spirit, I offer you this.

And look on the bright side: Dion is now finished. So is Rae. Michael Ignatieff will likely emerge the new Liberal leader, in no little part for staying away from a regime that he rightly sensed was going to be hugely unpopular with the majority of Canadians, as is now being clearly revealed in polls.

So sometime next year there will likely be a new election with Harper vs. Ignatieff. I won't vote for Iggy this next time but may very well do so the time after that. A healthy democracy requires at least 2 strong parties. We didn't have that during the Chretien years and we don't have that now. But hopefully we will by 2009/2010 and Canada will be the better for it.

Sincerely,

Robert W.
Vancouver, BC

The Ugly Truth of the Modern Yuppie

Today, a friend and I went out for lunch to a popular sushi restaurant on Broadway near Cambie. It was very crowded, which kept the two servers extremely busy. I'm quite sure they were also the owners. We were sat down at a table for two, with an identical empty table right beside us. A few minutes later several groups of others came into eat: one couple, one threesome, and another couple. There were precisely three empty tables at the time: the one for two people beside us, another two-person table elsewhere, and a table for four.

The first couple were the perfect looking aging yuppies: late 40's / early 50's, perfectly coiffed hair - the woman blonde, the man slightly grey, sunglasses covering both sets of eyes. There was clearly an area to line-up but with their righteous noses in the air, they plunked themselves down at the table for four, even though they absolutely knew that there were others behind them.

The male owner, who was running his feet off at the time, quickly surveyed all the waiting patrons and politely gestured for the two yuppies to instead sit down at one of the tables for two. They refused and marched out in a huff. The threesome were seated at this larger table and the other couple quietly sat down at the other table for two.

But the little drama wasn't yet over! A minute or so later, Mr. Yuppie came marching back in, thrust his face toward the owner and exclaimed, "I hope you know that you've now lost two permanent customers!!!" I looked toward the door and saw his female companion waving her finger in scolding disappointment at the poor bewildered owner. They then both marched out a second time.

Whoah! All of this in supposedly laid back, polite Vancouver. I've long sought a comprehensive definition for the term "Yuppie". On the surface it's supposed to just mean "Young Urban Professional". But today I saw a first hand example of what it really stands for: Arrogant, stuck-up, multiple illusions of grandeur, selfish, a completely phoney facade, and just downright RUDE!

Sadly, I see this sort of behaviour all the time in Vancouver. These same sort of people are precisely the ones who won't hold open a door for anyone, be they elderly or handicapped, because doing so would mean actually having to acknowledge that a lesser being was in their midst. If you fit the archetype of a yuppie, please consider spending 1 minute of time injecting yourself with some compassion for every 10 minutes you spend perfecting your outward appearance.