Quick, Gouge my Eyes Out.

I hate the Vancouver Sun. I hate its politics, I hate its simplification of things complex, I hate its letters section, which sometimes includes a photograph of the letter-writer, I hate its cover photos and headlines.

OK, you got me: I hate that the building it’s housed in refused to give me ice cream last summer. It was a bright, sunshiny day and in the space between my building and the Vancouver Sun’s building, a steel drum band played ’70s rock covers while people wandered between signs that declared that day “Employee Appreciation Day!” blissfully eating their well-earned free ice cream. My colleagues and I approached one of the ice cream trucks and asked for an ice cream and the lady staffing the truck said, “Oh, the ice cream is only for our building. You have to show us your building ID.”

So we went back inside and ate our lunch quietly, alone.

No but really I hate the Vancouver Sun because over the years it has stopped even trying to publish writing that is not ASS in nature. Today I winced as I read the following, a description of the so-called “umbrella jerks” of Vancouver:

“They jab us with their tips on buses and in elevators. They guide the runoff from their closed umbrellas into our shoes as we ride the bus. They rake our eyes with the dangerously pointed metal tips arrayed like a dozen dangerous eye-poking things around the perimeter of their tent-sized brollies.”

Sorry, whose dangerously pointed metal tips? And did you seriously just write, “…like a dozen dangerous eye-poking things”? And did you seriously write this? Or did your hamster?

I have no problem with the content of the story. It’s the middle section of the paper, the part that is all about what shampoo Rob Feenie uses and who charges the most for a fancy latte in the city. I don’t expect much. And it’s winter in Vancouver which means if we’re not hearing SAFE DRIVING TIPS FOR THE KILLER SNOW on the radio we are hearing about umbrella etiquette.

But “…like a dozen dangerous eye-poking things” is not even writing. It doesn’t count. You suck you suck you suck and you get PAID to suck and you get FREE ICE CREAM to suck and that is just not fair. I am going to start carrying an umbrella just so I can jab you with the eye-poking things. In the eye. Dangerously.