Who's eating the locals?

The local farmers' market is a wonderful thing to go to on a sunny Saturday morning. Most everyone brings their own bags. Many of the bags have advertising - usually for local organic or natural foods places.

This morning I saw a bag I haven't seen before it said: Eat Locals

I'm thinking the Vancouver Zombie Walk is over now... I got some interesting photos like this one from it, but eating the locals just seems downright unsociable.

Oh, the tyranny of the misplaced s.

Are those crows or women?

Crows often sound like they are having conversations with each other. If you get enough of them in one place it can sound like a heated argument.

This week while at the farmer's market I was sitting waiting for my spouse as he did the shopping and I guarded the bags. I was playing a game on my cell phone to keep myself awake and didn't take too much notice of the other people. I was listening to a bunch of crows behind me having a conversation. And then I heard a much louder group on the other side of the street and I was worried there was about to be a crow fight in the middle of the farmer's market!

I looked up at this point, wondering if there was going to be a bird fight... and saw the second bunch of crows was actually a gaggle of women.

Is that supposed to be appealing?

Is the automobile an extension of the human?

Whilst at the farmer's market this morning I heard a snippet of conversation:

"I was broken into! During the fireworks. I was parked in the underground."

I was a bit alarmed when I took that at face value - breaking into a human being sounds painful! Then I realised she meant her automobile was broken into.

It sounded like this person took personal affront at having her automobile broken into. But this sounds like just a crime of opportunity to me. The robber probably had never thought about - and will never think about - the owner of the car! It was truly nothing personal, he just wanted to steal stuff.

So now this woman is traumatized about having her automobile violated. This does not sound like a healthy extension of the self to include your possessions. If you extend that to all of your possessions, you will see yourself getting old in so many ways, and bumped, and bits of you will break down and need replacing, and other bits will be hopelessly outdated and tired.

This doesn't sound healthy, but I think it's a prevalent attitude in the western world. How sad.

Will I ever eat microwave popcorn again?

I'm thinking NO!

It's not that the chemical laden bags of genetically suspicious popcorn kernels are that bad, but we've found a fantastic alternative: organically grown popcorn dried on the cob from our local farmer's market!

It's just the coolest thing! You put a cob of the dried popcorn corn into a paper bag and microwave it on high for about 3 - 4 minutes until the popping slows down. You then get chemical-free lovely bits of popped corn!

Now popping the corn on the cob doesn't pop all of the kernels, but more pops than when we use our hot air popper. And the bits of popped corn are not the genetically enhanced super-size-me bits of tasteless white stuff that you get at a typical movie theatre, but they taste really good! We popped 2 cobs of the corn and had a nice big bowl of popcorn - enough for the two of us.

I highly recommend the on-the-cob organic popping corn! We are looking forward to many cobs from our farmer's market in the future.

Is that an off-leash child run?

Living in Vancouver's West End, we typically go to the farmer's market on Saturdays in the West End. The market is held on a street beside a small park / school yard. In the small park is a new area, a fenced-off area without grass. This is the off-leash dog run. The dogs are kept inside by the fences, so their humans can let them off their leashes and the dogs have a most enjoyable time socializing with other dogs without any fear that they will run away.

This off-leash area is a hit with the dogs. Many of them lead their humans to the gates and look up expectantly - even if the humans claim "You were just in there! We have to go home now!" Watching these dogs having such a great time is also very enjoyable for all the humans in and around the dog run.

This weekend we didn't make it to the Saturday market, so we had to go with our backup plan: the farmer's market in Kitsilano on Sunday morning. It's the same vendors, but the customers are a completely different group of people. We try to avoid this, but sometimes we just can't do a Saturday.

So I was sitting on a bench waiting for the spouse to get back from the first drop-off trip to the car and I noticed something I found really odd. The market is held in a school parking lot, in the field to the south of the market there seemed to be a off-leash child run.

The setup was the same as the off-leash dog run in the West End, fences to keep close-to-the-ground off-leash beings inside, some apparatus for them to climb on, a variety of adult humans around the edges having conversations among themselves, and about as much noise and running and colliding as you can see in the West End dog run. But the off-leash beings were definitely human. Is this an off-leash child run?

So does this mean the dogs are being treated like children? Or does this mean the children are being treated like dogs?