Real Fine Deals

Recently, I was driving through Hope, British Columbia, on Highway 1. The air was heavy with the smoke of forest fires burning to the north. Above the highway, barely readable through the thick atmosphere, was an illuminated sign threatening fines of $345.00 to any persons caught lighting campfires during the extreme fire danger. It seemed like an odd amount—why not at least make it a rounder number; say $500.00?

The City of Vancouver can fine pet owners who fail to pick up their pets’ pooh up to $2,000.00. That seems a bit harsh. While a bit of dog doo can wreck a good a pair of Gucci shoes, a campfire lit in the midst of a tinder-dry forest, has the potential to claim lives.

All this got me thinking about fines in general—who sets them and how the punitive amounts are determined. Unfortunately, my enquiries hit roadblocks after one or two googles and a couple of ‘phone calls and I couldn’t afford the time and effort it was going to take to get past the gatekeepers.

However, I did look into some of the other seemingly random fees imposed upon misdemeanants around the world:

~ If you really can’t bear picking up Spot’s doings, move to San Francisco—the most it will cost you there is C$319.00.

~ Public spitting is best done in Dubai at a cost of around C$148.00, compared to more than double that in Singapore.

~ Littering can be an expensive hobby costing you the equivalent of between $20 and $20,000 Cdn. in Athens, Greece; a mere C$100.00 in Britain; and up to C$1,000.00 in California (making abandoned dog pooh still a very good deal in San Francisco).

~ Edmonton, Alberta, charges up to C$250.00 for pedestrians who insist upon weaving their way through oncoming traffic to get to the other side of the street. In Singapore, jaywalking can cost up to C$1,500.00 and a mere C$180.00 in Texas. For half that price, if you happen to be driving through Houston, you can run a red light instead.

~ If, due to some serious lapse in concentration, you find yourself driving in the wrong direction on a divided highway in British Columbia, it will cost you approximately $109.00 to climb over the divider to put yourself right. Also, according to ICBC, you don’t want to drive over a fire hose as that could cost you $81.00 and, if you ‘coasted down grade illegally’ to do so, you can add another $121.00 to your bill.

When all is said and done, I still think the illegal campfire is probably the best deal. If you live in Vancouver and feel queasy about picking up dog feces. Just burn it—you could save as much as $1,600.00.

Dumpster Diners

Written sometime in the middle of a July:

It’s another record-breaking hot day in Vancouver. The dumpster below my balcony is cooking up a fetid feast for its regulars. There is constant activity down there—old crumpled guys, young spaced-out kids, well-worn women and even the occasional skunk.

I’ve been watching the regular visitors who come to ‘my’ dumpster for the past few weeks. A few of them jump right in, their landing cushioned by the numerous knotted bags with mushy contents that have recently been tossed by those of us living on the apartment floors above. Some of my regulars are fortunate enough to own a pair of rubber gloves—others aren’t so lucky. They all get in there and start ripping and tearing at the bags we had so neatly and carefully secured. Most of them emerge chewing on something—something that I, or one of my neighbours, had already decided wasn’t fit to eat, or was simply tired of. It makes me worry about which bag I put the used kitty litter into.

Those who don’t come for the all-you-can-eat smorgasbord are looking for goods to trade. One woman emerged with a lovely rattan Ottoman last Tuesday. After some packing and repacking, she managed to stuff it into her buggy and continue on her rounds. Another fellow climbed out waving a floor lamp victoriously over his head. Several people have inspected a metal lantern that was tossed into the garbage a couple of days ago. They look at it carefully, turning it upside down, giving it a good shake and then, for some reason, they put it back. I’ve watched this happen more than half a dozen times. What could be so wrong with it?

There is old chap pushing a ‘borrowed’ Safeway buggy who comes by everyday gathering discarded cans and bottles for his inventory. He always stops to sort making sure pop cans are separate from beer cans and wine bottles are separate from soda bottles. If he finds an item in the wrong plastic bag he becomes agitated. He blames whoever happens to be walking past at the time. He blames God. Sometimes he blames ‘Charlie’, whoever that may be.

His younger colleagues on the street mock him mercilessly. But he gives back as good as he gets. He didn’t last this long by being meek.

Last week I watched another fellow try on a white sweater. He tugged it over his head, adjusted the sleeves, turned down the collar and paraded back and forth as if admiring himself in an imaginary mirror. Apparently, it didn’t pass the test. He took it off, folded it carefully and returned it to the dumpster. I wanted to yell out to him that I thought he looked quite dapper in it, but I kept quiet.

We all keep quiet, don’t we? We’re afraid to engage and yet my balcony is so close to the street that I could hand the foragers table scraps directly and save them the trouble of rummaging through the debris. But I won’t. I’m too close to it all.

In the prevailing economy, perhaps we’re all a little closer than we’d like to think. We’ve all heard tales about former CEOs of large companies falling from their lofty perches and winding up on the streets. Some people land there after a chain of unfortunate events—drinking, gambling, divorce; others do not pass ‘go’, do not collect their two hundred and fall directly from penthouse to pavement trading their worries about income tax, crabgrass and golf swings for concerns most basic. I’ll bet they soon get over the annoying back pain that used to disturb their ‘Posturepedic’ sleeps back in suburbia and that twinge of heartburn that followed a late night brandy.

It’s easier to observe the street if you don’t know the stories behind each character. I’m just pleased to see the regulars going about their daily business on schedule and in an orderly fashion much like they may have done in their previous lives. They have created a purpose for themselves—albeit a somewhat tenuous one. And that’s what most of us are seeking most of the time. We’d just prefer to do it from a second floor balcony rather than beneath one.

Well, gotta go. It’s my turn to take out the garbage.

From Penmanship to Blogmanship

I have spent the better part of this summer in Vancouver attending writing and publishing workshops at Simon Fraser University. It has been a tremendous experience.

I am a mature student (in years, if not behaviour) and I am thoroughly enjoying learning and being taught by engaging and intelligent instructors. Our classes are comprised of a variety of students at all sorts of ages and stages in life. There’s always some who know a bit more than most of us and some who know a bit less. Women outnumber men probably 12 to 1, a fairly accurate reflection of the publishing industry in general.

I have been involved with print media for over a quarter of a century. I distinctly remember the pungent aroma and wetness of galleys fresh from the typesetting machine, and the cloying odour of contact cement, particularly on a hot day. With surgical precision, I could splice a single 9 pt letter into a misspelled word if necessary. I could roll out a half point ‘lettraset’ border with perfectly mitred corners to contain a column of text or photograph. I knew my way around a dark room—cranking out PMT headings, graphics and halftones.

I’ve come a long way since then. Like most people, I can now sit at home in my PJs if I want to, typesetting to my heart’s content, clicking and sizing borders at the touch of a button and dropping in photographs and graphics instantly on my laptop computer. Publishing is no longer a smelly job.

I have had my own website for many years. I regard it as larger-than-life business card and portable portfolio with infinitely more potential to inform and engage a potential client or patron .

Up until this month at SFU, however, I had not considered ‘blogging’. In fact, I wasn’t even sure what it was and why anyone would want to bother with it. I am not from the generation that comfortably reads screens and communicates with thumbs tapping franticly on miniature keyboards. I am unlikely to kick a good book out of my bed and cuddle up with a ‘Kindle’. My extensive collection of long playing records is not going to be reduced to an electronic play list that fits in the palm of my hand. Mind you, I am proud to announce that my VCR has gone the way of the obsolete 8-track tape player and I can now watch DVDs—all this within the first decade of the 21^st century!

We, of the bifocal set, are no longer the trendsetters. If we want to participate in the marketplace as fully functional and accessible business people, we have to keep up with the new generation of movers and shakers.

That said, however, I have a few concerns about this new and slightly obsessive age of instant communication:

With so much ‘blogging, ‘twittering’, and ‘chatting’, how do people have time to eat, sleep and have sex? Days, nights, commutes, vacations, mealtimes and even bathroom breaks are spent rattling off messages and checking to see if anyone has responded. Is all this electronic verbosity simply filling cyberspace with self-indulgent pulp?

Why do strangers sharing an elevator travel all the way to the 17^th floor without saying a word to one another and yet, when they arrive at the 17^th floor and settle down at their computers, they are suddenly compelled to blog and blab to the far corners of the world?

Whether I ‘get it’ or not, I feel the pressure to get on with it. During my month at SFU it became clear that a writer in today’s marketplace without a blog is like an artist without a portfolio. A blog is often the first place a publisher will go to look at a prospective writer’s work.

Therefore, I must blog (verb); have a blog (noun); develop blog-worthy (adjective) copy; and write bloggedly (adverb?).

I shall do my best to live up to the responsibilities of blogmanship, but I’ll need your help. If you are one of those people who, like me, is only just beginning to sneak the word ‘blog’ into conversation having finally discovered what it actually means, please drop me a line … before we get to the 17^th floor.