Pique'n Yer Interest

An animal dies. Lying where it falls, it's washed over with sediment, mineralized, converted to rock and pushed down into the earth.

The artist motions for silence.

I've managed to stay away from criticizing the municipality since I've started working here, choosing instead to educate the public on how to deal with a crummy roommate and how to kidnap that roommate's dog.

For a while there I considered disconnecting from Facebook, which I had taken to calling "bitchbook" because of the sheer number of people using one of the greatest technological advances of all time to complain about their daily lives - with problem

"Get back in your vehicle!" The words rang in my ears. Strolling from my parked car in Marketplace I'd turned to find a young RCMP officer beside his black ghost cruiser, lights flashing wildly.

I begin this week with a mea culpa . Two months ago I told you about Kai Nagata, the 24-year-old journalist who rose to the rank of bureau chief at CTV Quebec.

My editor thinks I'm nuts but I listen to music when I'm writing. For one, it's an effective way to drown out the office chatter when I'm on deadline and a steady rhythm can help loosen the word flow.

I've lived in four provinces and spent at least a few days in nine of them. And I can say with relative confidence that B.C. is the lamest in Canada when it comes to its public policies on alcohol.

What is wilderness? The thought hovered last week as I rafted a 100-kilometre stretch of the Wapiti River from remote northeastern B.C. to northwestern Alberta. Other than the launch and take-out points there'd been no sign of humanity.

I saw a man and what a man he was. He was in mid-20, a slender fellow, wearing skinny jeans, slim-fitting leather jacket and a red scarf. Hardly the archetype of alpha-masculinity. But he had a beard. And not just any beard.