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Back in April, I contacted my member of the provincial legislature via e-mail to voice my opposition to the government’s plans regarding what I consider to be the giveaway of public rivers for the purpose of private power generation. I received in return a standard form letter telling me how important my views are to the government, and other BS crafted by the Liberal spin office. No big deal – that’s exactly the response I expected.

However, since then, I have discovered that by writing to a representative of the provincial government I am now being spammed by the MLA in question, Lorne Mayencourt, who subsequently resigned as provincial sycophant to Gordon Campbell and is now the Conservative Party of Canada candidate in the federal election campaign.

The first e-mail invited me to attend the announcement of Mayencourt’s candidacy for the Conservative nomination. The most recent message invited me to a Conservative Party rally with Stephen Harper at the Bayshore.

I’ll overlook for the moment the obvious idiocy of a homosexual choosing to join a band of religious zealots who, it’s widely believed, would rather ship him off to a penal colony than shower with him in the Commons gym. My friend Colin, not one to mince words, would equate such misplaced loyalty to a fictional ‘Jews for Hitler’, a rather tasteless phrase but one that nonetheless conveys the idea pretty clearly.

Normally I would frown upon attacking someone’s personal appearance in a political campaign, but since old Lorne has decided to start spamming me, and since he has presumably betrayed my confidentiality by passing along my private e-mail address to the Conservative Party, I figure all’s fair now. Thus, I present you with an image from Lorne’s own web page:

I’m not sure how Lorne expects to attract votes with an image like this. First of all, he’s posing with a man who, when I look closely at his eyes, I can’t help but think of the bastard child of Jerry Falwell and Karla Homolka.

Secondly, what’s with that hair? Is that a perm? And those glasses! A rather poor combination that makes him look more like the fifth runner-up in a Dame Edna lookalike contest than a serious candidate for federal office. How is Lorne going to be taken seriously as the Minister of Social Cleansing looking like that? He’ll never get out of the backbench, if he’s elected, relegated to standing up to support every bit of regressive legislation Stephen Harper’s masters thrust into his hand in the hopes of being looked kindly upon by the men with power and decent toupees.

Oh well. To each his fashion.

For the convenience of my readers, here are the other, more worthy, candidates running in Vancouver Centre:

• Adrienne Carr, Green Party
• Michael Byers, NDP
• Hedy Fry, Liberal

I wouldn’t want to be employed by the cabling company in Bangkok:

While travelling in the eastern US and Canada this summer, I only had my point-and-shoot, and no mini-USB to transfer the images to my laptop. In Asia, I had the DSLR, but no laptop. Thus, I was unable to post any photos. Now that I am back in Vancouver, here are a few to catch up. Click thumbnails for larger image.

In Concord, Massachusetts, I went to see what Thoreau saw. The bath house is, of course, a new addition at Walden Pond:

Also in Concord, Thoreau’s grave. There’s a larger family stone with all the full names and dates, and this small marker on HDs actual pile:

The good burghers of Concord apparently saw fit to memorialise the road they paved over the weir of the indigenous fishers they vanquished, if not the fishers themselves:

On to the commune. Here’s the view of the middle pond, from the lodge house. If you squint you can see white-tailed deer in the water:

The lodge itself, centre. To the right is the temple; to the left, the guest house:

The desk in my cabin. It faced south, toward the pond and was very bright. I didn’t do a lot of writing in it, since there was no power, but it was a great place to wake up:

A side trip to Vermont:

One of the great things about the commune is the casual dress code. Here I am doing dishes:

By the time I got to New York City at the end of July, I was getting a little grizzly, though I fit right in while watching HAIR in Central Park the night before. This was taken on the Hudson, with Jersey in the background:

On to Asia…

Singapore was the first stop. This image appears on a map of Fort Canning Park, a lush historical site downtown. Chewing gum may be forbidden in Singapore, but apparently public sodomy is just fine:

The next stop was Ko Samui in Thailand, an island in the Gulf of Thailand. This photo is at Big Buddha Beach, where we stayed. The clouds look threatening, but it was actually sunny most of the time:

Here’s Larissa at Zazen, our favourite restaurant in Samui. Or at least, our favourite rich, white tourist restaurant. Food was good, but I especially liked the little cubbyholes built into the wall outside, looking onto the beach. Nice and quiet:

Here’s a restaurant we didn’t try, the Mr. Poo Barbecue (a rather unfortunate transliteration of Mr. Phu):

The ferry dock at Big Buddha Beach:

The beach was very nice, and great for swimming, but an unfortunate amount of trash marred it in areas, such as this Fanta can, which had become an intertidal condo:

I have yet to identify this somewhat common bird. This one was seen in Angthong Marine Park:

Angthong Marine Park is an archipelago at which we hiked, kayaked and snorkeled. Here are some of the many small islands:

Next stop was Bangkok, but just for one night. Our room at the Shanghai Inn looked a bit like the Hollywood version of a Chinese bordello. Despite being in the middle of a human and automotive jungle, it was remarkably quiet.

Bangkok is astoundingly crowded and noisy (at least, compared to Singapore), but I loved it, even if I did have to duck into a cafe occasionally to desensitize:

A sample of the electrical work:

Not all streets were a maddening crush. This passage in Chinatown was comparatively sedate, and check out those paving stones:

On the way home I stopped in Korea to see my cousin, Jennie for a few days. She toured me all over Seoul, despite being six months pregnant, and her husband Kevin filled me with meat and Soju. By the time I left, Jennie and I had similar waistlines:

Those Koreans love their signs. Most of the urban areas I saw were built very densely, with lots of apartment buildings instead of sprawling suburbs, and at night they glow with neon and other lighting:

I’d say more, but I’m jetlagged. Off to bed.

I arrived in Singapore on July 28 – my first trip across the date line, and my first journey to Asia – where I met up with Larissa, who was attending a symposium on electronic arts.

Singapore has a reputation for being a pretty rigid place, where gum chewing is against the law. From my brief visit, it didn’t seem so bad. I only saw one cop in the four days I was there and he wasn’t caning anyone for jaywalking. As I understand it, most of the dictatorial power of the state is applied to discouraging opposition to those in control of the government. This has apparently been quite successful, as the same party has been in charge since 1959.

Although we had done no planning ahead of time, we’d intended to take a vacation while in the region. After considering Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos, we settled on Thailand, and flew to the island of Koh Samui on August 1, where we checked into a small, middle-brow resort called The Secret Garden.

I was excited about visiting Asia for the first time, though now that I am here I am less excited about it. Samui, which once consisted of a bunch of fishing villages, is pretty much one big resort where the locals cater to the tourists in standard colonial fashion. Every town is comprised half of resorts, one quarter bars and restaurants, and one quarter tailors who make clothes cheap that bear labels of big designers, like BOSS and Armani. What sort of person would have so little self-esteem to buy an ‘Armani’ suit in Thailand and seriously add it to his closet, I don’t know. If you aren’t rich enough to buy the real thing, it just seems white trashy to try to fake it. Kind of like a labourer putting plaster lions on the fenceposts of his 33 foot lot in East Vancouver. Oh well, to each his own.

I am also disappointed by the amount of garbage on the beaches. I’m not sure it originates directly from tourists, or from poor disposal infrastructure. On the other hand, it seems generally safe here.

I did not bring my laptop on this trip, so I am using Larissa’s MacBook, which I am finding a challenge. Linux has spoiled me. I cannot even figure out how to resize an image or start an FTP client, so there will be no photos uploaded until after I get home.

On Monday, we’ll be flying to Bangkok for one night (where the world’s our oyster), and then returning to Singapore for another night. From there, Larissa will head for Toronto, via Vancouver, and I’m off to Korea, to visit my cousin Jennie for a couple of days in Seoul. Back to YVR on the 16th, the Aeroplan gods willing.

Here I sit in La Guardia airport, where I’ve been for the last six hours waiting for Air Canada to come up with an idle 767 to clear the surplus bodies abandoned after a couple of flights were cancelled this morning due to thunderstorms. La Guardia was apparently named “greatest airport in the world” (quotes not mine, LL) in 1960, but in 2008, it leaves a bit to be desired. Specifically, services. The only place after security that sells hot tea is sold out, and anyone looking to drink themselves silly to combat the boredom is out of luck, too. The universe (ie: Robert Milton) willing, I’ll be out of here by 5:30 tonight.

This wraps up part one of my summer vacation. I left my friends at the commune on Monday and made my way to Manhattan with Tim. On Tuesday, were got up at 5:30 am and cycled to Central Park to sit in line outside the Delacorte Theatre to wait for the scheduled distribution of free tickets to the 41st anniversary opening of HAIR. Seven hours on a blanket in Central Park was infinitely more pleasant than the same at La Guardia, and we got the tickets we sought. They even turned out to be great tickets. The show was great – with the Central Park setting, it was like being in the 60s again. And how oddly relevant it all seems, once again.

Also on Thursday, Tim took me out to a few Chelsea galleries. Most memorable were pieces by Zhang Huan at the PaceWildenstein Galleries. I have since discovered that there is an exhibit of some of Huan’s work at the VAG right now, so I’ll have to check that out too.

Wednesday night, after a day of cycling in Manhattan and dinner at an Indian restaurant, another sort of culture: Mamma Mia (the film, not the play). We’d read an amusingly critical review in the New York Times, and decided to give it a go. It was, as the review promised, awful but entertaining. I suspect that it might be an ideal candidate for viewing under the influence of mood altering substances.

I should be back in Vancouver late tonight, unless Air Canada abandons me in Toronto for the night. I’ll not have time for much more than re-packing, though, as I’ll be off to Singapore on Sunday.