Because it just hasn't gotten weird enough in Canada recently,
Feuding Kitimat families decide to settle their differences by having a sword fight. Severed feet, greyhound decapitations, pride parade hammer attacks; what's next? Random shelaighleigh attacks?

Crash at my pad in 2010 - for $35,000

Vancouver won't get into budget battle with Beijing. "Instead, producers will stick with their original entertainment plan: Loverboy concert on an "ice" stage made to look like Superman's Fortress of Solitude". And if that doesn't wow them... maybe Vancouver's sex trade will.

Hey! Whaddya know? Apparently Vancouver has enough shelter space! Awesome news! "There is room at the shelters. Our shelters run at about 90-per-cent capacity. The issue is not really the shelter space; it is whether the people will go into them or not."

Commercial Drive is so vibrant it could form the hub of the separate municipality of East Vancouver. Yes, great idea. Great idea. That way all that Westside tax revenue can stay in Kits where it belongs.

The second black bear was shot by police in Coquitlam this week, while the... shit, I'm losing count... one more is dead as another BC flight goes down.

Now a breastfeeding mom complains of harassment from Westjet. On that note, Bitches Are Back.

So those Chinese attempts to play God with the weather didn't quite work. My anti-Beijing '08 sentiments are pretty hardened (though maybe not quite cemented - ch-ching!)... so in the slight chance you're interested in sports or shiny things - sorry. I'll give you this Long History of Olympic Politics photo-essay instead. Ok, and a dash of sports: the Olympic five-ringed bicycle; chasing the Olympic dream 'like a deer running from a panther'.

Vancouver will have its turn under the bad-press spotlights soon enough.

"Not far from here, an Olympic drug lab is in place to test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs, but in the mean streets of Vancouver, you can buy and inject heroin, crack or cocaine without fear of arrest."

Way to get the ball rolling, Mr. Hume... but we smoke our crack, thank you very much. And Canada's aboriginal people used to "roam freely"? Did we send our laziest reporters to China just in case their government decided to summarily execute all foreign media? How bout y'all go find something in Beijing to report about, I heard there's a lot going on this time of year.

The I Am Rich iPhone application. Only $999 for the world's best metaphor.

Protesters block Jumbo Glacier construction. Wait, I thought glaciers are good. I thought they were disappearing.

Rising temperatures lower air quality across B.C. Nah, we're just getting in the Olympic Spirit.

Peak oil pundits perplexed by reality. Falling prices do not fit into the theories of those who argue that world production is in irreversible decline. Yeah maybe, or maybe the market is so fucking volatile that the recent craze in biofuels has just meant that rich cunts are in investing in that a little bit more and we can postpone the bubble until we discover some miracle mother load of oil under the Arctic.

Fuck it. Let's build an awesome highway that connects all the islands to Vancouver.

Reviving the dream. Has the Province just given up? This editorial is like some bored real estate agent's Tumblr. What are they actually saying? That if its a sellers market, its good for the seller, but if its a buyer's market, then its good for the buyer? I feel like I'm kindergarten. Did you mean to write this but accidentally take way too many bars of xanax?

Then again, people who read the Province are also likely to put quotation marks around the words mentally ill. What is it, global warming? Is it some sort of theory that hasn't been actually proven yet?

In other news...

Real estate prices are officially down. Nice, now you can afford those extra few square feet to squeeze in Poofie's jogadog.

A quick guide to Beijing's extreme makeover; covers all your bases from turtle blood bans to feline extermination to rainfall-controlling silver-iodide-filled rockets. Apparantly they weren't as prepared for the Muslim separatists. Meanwhile, nature responded in style to that silver rocket bullshit. The government was successful, however, in completely eliminating both Ron MacLean and any sign of natural human life from their capital city.

One of the most interesting pieces yet to emerge from the steady flow of Vancouver history-blogging: The Dope Craze That's Terrorizing Vancouver: a look at how the Downtown Eastside has been a drug haven since the '30s -- we just used to keep it all indoors. Great stuff.

One woman plans to complain to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal after she's told by H&M to take the breastfeeding to the changeroom. Uncalled for, perhaps... but I'd say introducing one's child to H&M at such an early age is the biggest human rights violation in this story.

A visual exploration of how the American diet has changed in the last 30 years, including an overall increase in 1.8 pounds of food consumed per person per week. What we've lost in veal and lard we've more than made up for in cheese & corn. You are what you eat?

World's Worst Person Decides to Go Into Marketing

So how was your Pride? Did you get hammered?

Possible severed foot found on Washington coast. Greyhound could not be reached for comment.

Independent engineer: Threat of more rockslides exists on Sea-to-Sky Highway. Fuck you nature.

Dashing the myths that surround the Olympics. "China is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last, Games host to clamp down on the rights of its citizens". For example, Vancouver will get its turn in only two years!

Time to set criticisms aside, says VANOC chief. "Hopefully, all the stories that people have been talking about will become secondary, and people can go back to marvelling at what this is supposed to be, and it becomes a celebration." Yeah, hopefully we'll never have to hear about Falun Gong, Tibet, East Tajikistan, internet censorship, air quality, or human rights abuses EVER again.

Monday is B.C. Day, so, uh... long weekend! The Straight has got your festival linkfest. But if you're not aching for another street festival (Wow, Vancouverites still can't walk and, check, dippin' dots are still inedible. Ok, maybe the Jamaican Festival sounds fun...) you could go out to Abbostford and check out/sabotage the North West Skydive Boogie. There'll be "dual plane formations of up to 30 people along with high speed landings." High speed landings? Well, I suppose hurling yourself out of a plane and into the dirt is a fitter way to celebrate B.C than street sushi or homoerotic exhibitionism.

And while we're talking Pride Parade; I'm sorry I didn't link to it earlier, but I hope all my neighbors have already placed their orders at Pride Pup, so all those pugs are properly decked out come Sunday. I'm totally ordering some stuff to flesh out my (most certainly hidden) hipster cache. Who needs a V-neck or shitty beer when you've got a sweet ironic barrette?

So Translink put on their dictator hat and decided we'll be building a new, tolled Pattullo bridge. Whatever, I sincerely hope we're not all driving this much in ten years time.

Meanwhile, the combination of that rock slide and the five-hour drunken drive to Pemberton makes it pretty obvious we need to figure out how we're going to confidently get the masses to Whistler and back come 2010. People were already pretty pissed last weekend and they had Tom Petty & Jay Z waiting for them. All those Olympic fools have on the other end is twiggy guys in spandex and bobsled replays. Meh, I'd rather sit in my car with the radio and cheap beer anyway.

'Plan A' will change the face of Abbotsford. You know what'll really change the face of Abbotsford? When we're all forced to relocate there thanks to rising tides. Dudes better open up one of those cupcake joints stat...