With profuse apologies to Premee for immediately pushing down an interesting post about literature and censorship to make room for Shatner and his mountain.

I pulled it out and was extremely surprised to find that it wasn’t a first-year text at all, but a free-range banned book!

There was a sticker on the front that informed me (and yes, I wanted to photograph this instead of transcribing it, but I haven’t seen my camera in weeks):

FREE A CHALLENGED BOOK!

Did you know that someone in Canada is trying to stop you from reading certain books?
Are you shocked?

The book you are holding in your hands has faced a challenge or ban.

It has been freed by a citizen concerned about freedom of expression who would love to know your thoughts.

PLEASE RELEASE ME

We invite you to visit www.freedomtoread.ca to learn more about censorship.

Then there were some instructions on how to report the book on the Bookcrossing site.

And I was like, How great is this? So I hit up the Freedom to Read site as per instructions and was extremely surprised to find that right here in Canada, libraries are banning books that – in my humble opinion, which apparently counts for very little in the world of censorship – are about as innocuous as fat-free yogurt. (To see what I mean, look at the banned book list (pdf). I know, right?)

I am anti-censorship. I would be anti-censorship even if I hadn’t been writing what would have surely been banned books at a stupidly young age. I would be anti-censorship even if my shelves weren’t full of miraculous and controversial Soviet literature. (The Russians, they know censorship. We have no idea in comparison.) I am of the opinion that if it’s written, it was written to be read. (Whether it should be included in public curriculum or not is a subject for endless debate, of course, given my general thoughts on the public school system. But you know how it is. A kid that wants to read will read, and he will find and read banned books regardless of the venue.)

And I think kids need to be exposed to banned books – anything and everything, controversial histories of false events, all the old propaganda, the racist names and idiotic stereotypes, all that. Kids need to be challenged so that they can join the discussion and the debate. Why did people think that this was OK? Why do we no longer think that? What are some ways that we can show that this is wrong, or hurtful, or hateful, or scary, or true? What are some ways we can stand up against this? These are questions kids can’t ask if they’re being fed a steady diet of inoffensive literary pablum.

So I will come clean now and admit that I have never read ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ nor do I know why it was once on a banned or challenged list. I look forward to finding out before I release this book back into the wild.

Readers, thoughts on censorship? Hate speech? Which banned books have you read and loved and/or hated?

But then the travel stories started popping up, replete with recommendations for things to do and places to see and restaurants to eat at. And the slideshows. Oh gob, the slideshows. It’s gotten to the point where I click on every Vancouver tourism story I see, just for a quick pick-me-up. You know, Vancouver is an amazing city. Where else do you have a cosmopolitan, multicultural city centre in proximity to the ocean and oodles of park space, with beautiful mountain views to boot? There is just so much to see and do here – I’m lucky enough to play tourist whenever I have out-of-town visitors, so I’ve seen and done a lot – but there’s still so much more!

And then this morning, my bus came to a full stop at Georgia Street downtown. At first, there was confusion; then we realized we couldn’t go any further because of the crowds that had gathered for the torch relay. My pal Hannah and I stood there just reveling in the energy of the crowd around us, dancing along with the music pumping from the trucks preceding the torch runner, and finally cheering when we saw the flame approach. For a couple of minutes, I felt like I was seven again, watching another Olympic torch pass me by on its way to Calgary. It was exhilarating!

And that, boys and girls, is the story of how the Grinch caught Olympic fever. To the rest of the world, whether you’re visiting Vancouver or watching the games from home, welcome to my adopted hometown. I hope you love it as much as I do.

Well, 74, obviously. What kind of moron could possibly get that wrong? Oh, right—people who can’t see the entire visible colour spectrum; god, they’re dumb! Learn to apply yourselves for a change, you colourblind idiots, you!

And you know, it’s not always the case, is it, that when man messes with nature it turns out better than before? Cane toads in Australia: giant mess. Parasitic wasps in Hawaii, ditto. Kudzu, hey? Oops much?

Which reminded me of those big giant jellyfish in Japan, those nomura. At around 500 pounds they’re bigger than the average sumo; they clean the waters around them of all plankton and they poison fish, they tangle fishermens’ nets, they generally weird out the ecosystem. And there’s more of them every year. But you know why they’re blooming like that? Why the numbers go up every year? (PS. Aren’t they pretty?)

It turns out that a nomura isn’t killed by the average fishing net, so they land on the deck of the boat pretty well intact. Of course, you can’t have that; if you tip the stupid thing off the side, it’ll just get caught in the net again. So the fishermen generally take their work knives and slice it into several large pieces before shoving the rest overboard. But it’s been discovered that if you ‘breach’ a nomura, it’ll empty all its, um, what’s a good term for mixed company, all its genetic material into the water (this happens whether it gets sliced by knives or snagged on a piece of coral). So what are the fishermen doing? Creating a soup of eggs and sperm in the water. Fertilization, maturation, blooms.

Which makes you wonder if there’s anything that we can do, us humans, about the nomura (aside from making more nomura). Things like this, to me, are a pretty solid argument for the preservation of as much biodiversity as we can. Who’s to say that the natural enemies of the nomura won’t come seething up from the depths and take advantage of the bounty? Then, who’s to say that the ten species on which they depend will be there to ensure that happens? Or the ten species that each of those species count on? Or etc ad infinitum.

Anyway, the moral of this post is:
1. Things depend on things, even if we haven’t discovered the relationships yet.
2. Particleboard is heavy.

So Thursday evening I was feeling some pressure in my left ear, but this morning I woke up with undeniable pain, and a persistent stomping throb, or throbbing stomp, the unmistakable call of the wild ear infection. I was all, “What am I, four years old?” So I did what all reasonable four year-olds do and went crying to my mommy, who said, between large mouthfuls of her lunch, “An ear infection? Oh, stick a clove of garlic in there.”

“MOM. NO.”
“But I saw it on that Doctor Oz show! It’ll kill the – ”
“You always told me not to stick anything in my ears.” I paused. “Also, garlic?”
“It’s got antibacterial properties!”
“What if it gets stuck in there?”
“Well, at least it won’t get infected.”

Anyway, ear infections are usually viral, Mom, so just KNOCK IT OFF.

Anyway, though, I got to thinking about my usual cold/flu regimen, which goes like such:
1. Zinc cough drops (preferably cherry flavour)
2. Ibuprofen
3. Lots of whining

Not so much a standard home remedy as a standard drugstore remedy, unlike my crazy mother’s garlic advice. Then I was like, “But how crazy is it?” We don’t necessarily head ‘er to the drugstore for every little thing, we do subscribe to quite a lot of home remedies. Cranberry juice for urinary tract infections, ginger ale for motion sickness, toothpaste on a zit, toast with honey to cure a hangover. For all that we pride ourselves as being a modern bunch with the Better Living Through Chemistry and medicines done up in nice little foil packs, I think most of us would honest-to-Gob rather smear some baking soda on a beesting than drive to London Drugs for one of those Benadryl rub-on sticks. Am I right?

Readers, do you have any family/home remedies you swear by? (Or, in the case of hangover cures, at?)

I think there’s only a few stubs that I’ve ever lost. Once was for Star Wars Episode One (of which I’m not too distraught over) because theatre employees collected our stubs at the cinema door. (Yes, that’s the stubs of the tickets they had already collected. Weirdos.) There’s also a James Bond movie missing because my parents bought the ticket for me one winter holiday and I had forgotten to ask for my ticket.

I’ve noticed that many of my stubs have started to fade. The one for the movie “Blue Streak” is illegible to the point where I can’t make out the date. Squinting at it made me feel old. I know, I know… 29-and-a-half isn’t very old at all, particularly when most people regard their 30s as their favourite years. But I feel cheated of the typical youth experience, having spent my teens and early twenties in the closet.

It was a different time then, mind you, and even negative experiences helped shape who I am now. Entering a third decade will be exciting; and although there’s stuff to mourn in the transition, I’ve got some stubs to remind me that there were good nights with good friends; it wasn’t all bad.

Do any of you collect these things too?

Winter is biting
With gharstly icicle teeth.
Please euthanize me.

Next, the cure for winter: a trip to somewhere non-wintry! By which I mean the newly-renovated, yet still wonderfully familiar, Muttart Conservatory, whence I dragged my half-frozen carcass on Sunday.

A pointy colourful thing:

A delicate yellow thing:

A fluffy pink thing that tried to assassinate me by falling onto my shoulder and tumbling pathetically to the floor:

Can you feel the warmth? The humidity? The churning processes of photosynthesis that have all but ground to a halt outside? Take a deep breath and focus on the plants.

The desert pyramid is also good for dispelling winter blues, albeit less humid.

Just think, guys, only four more months of winter to go! We can do it!