THIS POST CONTAINS MATURE SUBJECT MATTER. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
Who says the Olympics are all fun and games? The party’s gotta end some time, and perhaps not soon enough for the young, bushy-haired hooligans wreaking havoc on our beautiful city.
Looks can be deceiving.
The merciless civilian justice system handed down the sentence of decapitation to the cake form of Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games mascot, Quatchi.
The tasteless crime?
Public deliciousness. (No appeals were heard - because who could argue?)
Miga, Sumi, and Mukmuk - Quatchi’s closest friends - chose not to attend the event, likely for fear of the same fate.
In a eulogy delivered on the Vancouver 2010 website, Quatchi was portrayed as an adventurous, fun-loving creature who would never have the opportunity to realize his dreams.
Quatchi is a young sasquatch who comes from the mysterious forests of Canada. Quatchi is shy, but loves to explore new places and meet new friends.
The sasquatch is a popular figure in local native legends of the Pacific West Coast. The sasquatch reminds us of the mystery and wonder that exist in the natural world, igniting our imagination about the possibility of undiscovered creatures in the great Canadian wilderness.
Although Quatchi loves all winter sports, he’s especially fond of hockey. He dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie. Because of his large size, he can be a little clumsy. But no one can question his passion. He knows that if he works hard and always does his best, he might one day achieve his dream. Quatchi is always encouraging his friends to join him on journeys across Canada. He is also often recruiting others to play hockey – or at least to take shots at him!
Oh, another life cut short by gluttony…
If deliciousness is wrong, I don't want to be right!
RIP Quatchi. It was nice eating - I mean, meeting - you.
NOTE: Not that anyone was wondering, but no - I cannot take credit for this fabulous creation. (Unfortunately for us all, this is not the latent super talent I’ve been waiting for.) Cake hobbyist extraordinaire / master photographer Alyssa Fahlman is responsible for this Quatchi (cake and pics!), and though she doesn’t yet have her own TLC show, I don’t expect it will be long before she does - if she wants it.
Unless you’ve been living in an igloo somewhere far, far away from Cypress Mountain, you’d have noticed by now how insanely, uncharacteristically, fantastically festive the city of Vancouver has been over the last 13 days of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games.
I dare you to try walking down Robson Street at any hour of the day without feeling like the lone west coast salmon swimming upstream. Vancouver is known for its seafood, after all.
Some revellers might even describe the international sporting shindig as a zoo. And perhaps they’d be right, judging by the photograph below. We snapped this one last Thursday outside the Richmond O Zone after a rockin’ set of classic 90’s hits by Canadian band Our Lady Peace.
Why a zoo? Because animals don’t wear mom jeans, silly!
Obviously.
So whatever animal came to the party in the wrong outfit quickly learned the error of his ways and found redemption in the form of indecent exposure. Isn’t it amazing what a little Heineken can do?
Now, watch as I cleverly sidestep the obvious pants-on-the-ground joke…
But shopping will never be the same again, thanks to my latest adventure in online shopping - courtesy of none other than the City of Vancouver.
That’s right - I dropped some dough not on the latest sparkly must-have but on parking violations. My very first parking ticket.
The two-headed beast. (Image from CVancouver.wordpress.com)
As peeved as I was about the whole situation - arriving at the meter mere minutes after the time had expired, and already the meter maid (or male equivalent) had paid me a visit! - I was informed by my lovely dinner dates about the City’s merciful policy of giving every driver one free pass.
But it turns out that while I was MIA this fall, the folks in charge decided to put the kibosh on its “courtesy cancellation” program for first time offenders. Probably just in time to cash in on tourists in town for the Olympics, those clever devils!
Which meant that the only way I could weasel my way out of paying the ticket was by going down to City Hall, arranging a court date, and showing up in a few months time before a judge to prove my innocence. And with no evidence or argument really, except that the alarm on my Blackberry was muffled by both the heavy leather layers of my handbag and the blaring music at the Reef on Commercial Drive, I sucked it up and surfed my way over to the Revenue Services Online Payment System.
After all, I earned that ticket, fair and square. (And, more importantly, the amount of time I would waste disputing the ticket, not to prove a point or uphold my principles but to save money, would not have been worth it. Simple cost-benefit analysis.)
I’m happy to report that the fine was surprisingly easy to pay. I simply entered my ticket number on the site and filled my cart with all the by-law violations my heart desired. And when I was ready to check out, the little elf on the other end of the transaction kindly warned me that once I went ahead with this cart, I couldn’t go back and re-fill. Just in case I hadn’t yet made up my mind on how much money I wanted to spend during this particular visit.
So I typed in my credit card info and out popped my receipt! Not as satisfying as the usual purchase, but at least this one was instant.
After the transaction was complete, I was invited to start a new search. But I declined. Maybe next time. (One shouldn’t be too greedy.)
So in the end, my brilliant idea of parking right in front of the restaurant and frugally putting just enough money in the meter to hold us over, and then returning to the vehicle shortly before the time expired if necessary… well, it ended up being one expensive night out.
Entries (RSS)