It's Not All It Seems

A few interesting non-music things and mostly pictures today. 

I did a very small campus walk today, haven't covered the entire campus.  There is some interesting architecture here, but it's kind of difficult to see because there is construction going on everywhere.  No doubt they're preparing for the Republicans who said they would leave the US in droves if Obama got elected.  But then, they'd have to have a national health care plan if they were here, so what's a Conservative to do?  A dilemma.

But I digress.  Here are a few pictures of the campus:  The gothic building with glass on either end is unidentified as of now, and the dark one with a lot of glass is the Darth Vader Business School.   (Okay, I made that up.  So sue me.)  Some of the buildings I could see the names of, others I think I was seeing the backs of.               The all glass one is the library.  It must not be as new as it looks, because an all-glass building like that doesn't seem particularly energy efficient in a place as cold as Vancouver.    And on that topic, they are having a drought up here.  Check out the grass in this picture.  Pretty much all brown.  But they don't have water-saving shower heads.  You could get waterboard training in the showers here.  Actually, it's pretty nice.  

On the other hand, paper products -- like table napkins especially, are about the softness of newspaper.  Paper towels are much less soft than those at home.  Toilet paper is about the same quality as in most public buildings in the U.S. 

But now, I must tell you of a conspiracy I have discovered.  FAKE TREES!  As I was walking around the campus today, I noticed this little grove of cedar-type trees.  They were growing very close together.  But when I walked closer, they were not growing at all, but were cut trees nailed into sort of Christmas-tree stands.  Not the kind that keep the tree watered, but just nailed onto pieces of wood.  Not easy to see in a picture, but the first picture is of the little grove of trees, the second is a closeup of one of the stands.  If you care, you can click on it to enlarge.  But wait, that's not all.  These were real trees, and they probably hadn't been in these stands very long, because they were still flexible and not dried out.  However, as I walked around this grove, I found an ominous sign of even more perfidy. 

There were large tree-trunks with holes drilled into them for the insertion of branches.                       Why would they need fake trees in Canada?  Have they secretly depleted their entire stock and don't want the rest of the world to know?  What do they have more of than trees in Canada?  Is it particularly ominous that the fake trees were located outside the business school (which by the way is located on Agriculture Lane)?  Another conspiracy.  You know these Canadians sit up here acting all polite and stopping for pedestrians and not shooting each other and watching hockey games where the players have all their teeth, but I'm here to tell you.  They have fake trees!!  It's clear that there's a conspiracy up here, and I think the U.S. should graciously allow Fox News and Rush Limbaugh up here to investigate and report on it.  We can't have this so near our sacred borders.