Hometown Hysteria

While I playfully ridicule Edmonton's efforts to strive for greatness far beyond the reach of a landlocked, redneck city, I must remember to acknowledge it does try, and its attempts, however less-than-successful, are harmless -- unlike the city from which I hail.

Vancouver, how you and your hockey hooligans have shamed me. Trying to be "so ghetto, so thug" now are we? You, whom have peppered yourself with pockets of prissy perfection (Point Grey, Kitsilano, Yaletown, West Van) are now home to gaggles of moronic meat-heads whose sore-loser mentalities cannot be kept in check with merely a few consoling beers; instead they choose to riot as if a greater power had just taken away their reason for living. In just two hours, gangs of jersey-clad heathens beat and pillaged our fair city, injuring many of its inhabitants and visitors, forever shattering its pristine image. Good work you fist full of assholes. Didn't your mother ever teach you to play nice?

Edmonton may be a place that prides itself on the ability to consume the most beef and booze, while functioning at a level high enough to stand consistently as the richest province in Canada, but seemingly simple in its nature, its greatest complexity is its wealth of lovely inhabitants. How so many warm, intelligent, attractive people came to call E-town home may confound some, but the reasoning makes sense -- cost of living is still relatively low and wages are the highest in the country. Whether they are born here, recruited here or acting as a support system for a loved one who brought them here, many of the city's citizens choose to stay; maybe it's because one cannot help but fall in love with the people.

Don't take this isolated declaration of appreciation for the place I currently call home as any indication that I want to settle here. I miss my peeps in Van; like me, they have decorum and didn't engage in, as my Dad so eloquently puts it, "scumbag" behaviour following the big loss. The few friends of mine who are interested in hockey are surely wearing their disappointment with looks of melancholy for a few days and moving on. To the hoodlums responsible for defaming Vancouver's stellar reputation: lighten up; try breathing deeply; a dose of Bikram's torture chamber might put things into perspective for you; if all else fails, try my no-fail daily dose of mocha -- it heals all ills -- certainly makes me a little sweeter.