Michael R. Barrick

They drive around like other people. Most of them don't even know they are idiots.

The Sun Run was this morning (and it was as much fun to wake up to as past years). The genuinely amusing part can be seen above: Once the runners had all run away, it was time for the spectators to drive away.  Georgia St. is blocked off, of course, so there is a row of traffic cones blocking people from the last half block of Bute St. For some reason one person decided to turn left into the alley leading to Thurlow. Thurlow is one way - leading to Georgia. A parade of stupidity ensued with car-after-car of lost suburban twits (first you've got to wonder about anyone who drives into town early on a Sunday morning to stand in the rain and watch other people run), all turning left down the alley and being sent back by the barricade and police at the far end. The picture doesn't really do it justice because I stood and marvelled at the awesome stupidity for a good ten minutes and only when it started to die-off did I think to grab the camera.

Protesting war? Speaking out against American tariffs? Rebelling against taxes? Railing against Orwellian invasions of privacy?

Nope.... jogging. This morning is the "Sun Run" - Vancouver's "We should have one, too!" answer to the Boston Marathon and yet another lame, derivative, colonial attempt at trying to prove we aren't actually the arse end of the crumbled British Empire. I was awakened at 7:30 a.m. by someone saying "Test. One. Two." into a P.A. system repeatedly. By 8 a.m. this was replaced with thumping techno and a screeching cheerleader "inspiring" people with tones of forced excitement, ironically giving the perfect voice to the hollow "passions" of the 21st century.

This is what gets tens of thousands of people out in the street. A sporting event. The only real acts of genuine defiance and spontaneous outrage in this city in recent memory have been over a cancelled rock concert and a lost hockey game. That's what "the people" really care about - their circuses. We'll allow freedoms to be eroded, accept taxation in excess of 50%, and roll over complacently while our soldiers are thanklessly sent to die for (and more often than not, at the hands of) our "partner" in "free trade" that imposes absurd tariffs on our wood, wheat, steel and whatever strikes their fancy.

And as pathetic and decadent as this all may be, let me illustrate with the utmost clarity to those that took offence why the people in the gym across the street are worthy of the derisions I heaped upon them. Here are a couple of regulars (the one of the far left is in at least couple times a day, every day) watching the rest of the city run by outside: