Remember Terry Gilliam's Brazil? Remember Robert de Niro's character? In a dystopian society where nothing works because of a callous authoritarian government, he's a renegade heating engineer who's called a terrorist because he actually makes things work.

Nearly two months into the civic strike, community centres closed, garbage accumulating, and half the city torn up by construction, Vancouver could use a good visit from Archibald "Call me Harry" Tuttle. For instance, take the fabled promise of covering the city with free wireless Internet access through your laptop or PDA. On Valentine's Day, 2006, city councilors Peter Ladner and Heather Deal argued over who came up with the idea first, but everyone was in agreement that it was a good idea for the city. And what has happened since then?

I've had the privilege of seeing the Taj Mahal in India, and I can honestly say it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

It is also a tomb. It is cold, hard, colorless, mathematically precise,more expensive than the human mind can contemplate, and dead.

Vancouver's answer to the Taj Mahal is the newly renovated Holt Renfrew on downtown Granville, still in upheaval.

Nothing like a garbage strike to make you aware of just how much trash you generate.

That bag contains about one person-week of eggshells, teabags, bell pepper stems, carrot shavings, mushroom stems, wilted spinach and the ends of scallions. (Note the 500 mL bottle for scale) Instead of rotting away with the rest of my trash, attracting fruit flies, I kept it separate and dumped it into a compost heap in the community gardens on W.6th near Burrard.

The boundary between "sport" and "art" has always been a little hazy, perhaps more so than the practitioners of either would like to admit. There are sports that are evaluated for artistic expression, like figure skating, and there are arts that requires intense physical discipline, like ballet or dance sport.

Somewhere in that borderland between sports contest and artistic performance is Vancouver's annual Femsport fitness and strength competition, August 25th, 11am-5:30pm at the Roundhouse Community Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews in Yaletown Robson Square, lower level.

If the leather, latex and metal of Sin City or Sanctuary stokes your fire, but you don't know where to go next, Rascal's is the solution. It's Vancouver's second oldest pansexual play party series, held every third Saturday at the Wise Club, 1882 Adanac. 8pm to 1am, $20 at the door.

Rascal's is like the lower level of Sin City but expanded to fill the entire hall, and therefore a lot less crowded. There's a social area for seeing and being seen, but the action is in a designated area, with some of the finest custom made bondage equipment in the city. Rascal's attendees have a median age a little older than the Sin City or Vancouver Dungeon crowd, and they're more likely to play with the people they came with than people they meet there. There's no dancing, as at Sin City, and no "cuddle room", as at Vancouver Dungeon, but that just leaves more room for play.

While showing a German documentary film crew around our fair city, I explained to them that three of the four daily newspapers available were owned by the same company, not to mention some of the mini-tabs. They were astonished that this was permitted. This kind of media monopolization isn't allowed in other countries.

I was reminded of this when I tried to show a friend an article I had published in the Vancouver Courier a year or two ago. (Disclosure: I still freelance for them.) I visited the Vancouver Courier's site for the first time in a while and found it had been folded into the Canada.com megasite.