Last night I attended the Parade of Lost Souls for the first time. The Parade is a community dress up event held on the eve of Halloween where certain streets in Commercial Drive (a culturally and economically mixed neighbourhood) go all out to entertain with costume finery, strange exhibits and fire displays. Visitors join or follow the parade as it winds itself around the houses bedecked (or not) with Halloween spirit, eventually ending in a grassy field where there are more evetns. Of note are cyclists who nearly light themselves on fire. I was dressed as one of the lead characters from The Brotherhood of the Wolf. No pictures, sadly, as I can't hold a sword and a camera at the same time. The parade is organized by the Public Dreams Society, the same people who also produce Illuminaires, a lantern festival held at nearby Trout Lake which I attend quite often. These two community events are some of the best attended evening family affairs in Vancouver. Of the two, the Parade of Lost Souls is larger and more dynamic. Find out more >>

Today there are a score of stories about the recent phenomenon of local clinics cashing in on U.S. visitors driving and sometimes flying in to get precious flu vaccine shots because of the recent shortage in the U.S. Every day in Vancouver I see the clinics advertising the availability of flu shots with red balloons and big signs. Here is the best article I could find about it >>

Several months ago I became very anxious about the outcome of the Presidential Election. I am a Canadian living in Canada but I admit to following U.S. politics like a fiend, even more than domestic politics. The reason is simple: the United States is the most powerful political force on the planet and affects its neighbours and the world like no other. I have American friends and most of my Internet life is spent conversing with Americans. It's not a complete mystery who I hope will be chosen the next President on November 2nd but I feel I should state a brief case now, not because anything I say might sway a U.S. voter (I can't think of single American I communicate with who lives in a critical swing state) but just for my own record. Maybe months or years later I will look back and read what I wrote and feel much differently. Now I feel strongly.

John Kerry must be the next President of the United States. In today's Economist magazine that right-wing current affairs screed finally endorsed Kerry with reservations. I find myself agreeing with some of the points on Kerry. Kerry is more politician than he is a leader (or at least since he last commanded a Swift Boat in Vietnam). You can't be in the Senate as long as he has without voting based upon temporary alliances, deal-making and satisfying ones own constituency. The neo-conservative ideologues have chosen to show this record as one of vascillation but they would have the same thing to say against any Republican Senator. It is hard and it has been hard for the campaign of John Kerry to show how intellectual flexibility and ability to make new decisions in the face of challenges is not reduced to the charge of flip-flopping.

But in that charge is the essence of what makes Kerry the better choice than George W. Bush. If there is one thing that has marked the administration and leadership of Bush it is his very inflexibility in the face of challenge and his inability to use imagination to tackle problems that develop in a way not foreseen by his planners. When faced with the horror of September 11th, a nightmare that the whole world witnessed, the immediate response by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was to seek a way to strike Iraq and disbelieve advice that the attackers were third parties rather than reliable old enemies. When the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan waned, Bush gave the nod to the diversion of resources toward a greater unprovoked attack on Saddam Hussein when the enemy who had struck at America, Osama bin Laden, was still, and still remains, at large.

Even in the face of mounting losses in the post-war Iraq, Bush refuses to do the one thing that would have given his one-track leadership humility, that is to accept that he has made a mistake and plan new ways of approaching the problem of global security. In editorial after editorial, newspapers who had supported him in 2000 have turned away from hoping that Bush will unite rather than divide the global response against terrorism. In the most telling event of the election campaign, Bush refused to acknowledge he had made any mistakes at all in his four years after he was asked by a member of the audience what his three greatest ones were. Not one small mistake could he admit.

Indeed, this is the President who calls any sort of criticism against his government, on matters both domestic and international, attacks on the country. Time and time again the Bush administration has shut out, sidelined and conducted personal attacks against former members who have provided advice counter to the views of the Bush inner circle. And in one disturbing example, a member of the White House leaked information to the press that broke the cover of a CIA agent.

In a world that has become increasingly fractured by open war, George W. Bush has done even more to fracture politics in the United States. In 2000 he was elected on a platform of unity but polls show that Americans are split down the middle on nearly every major issue. The other half, Bush has called traitors.

In Nov. 2nd, American will decide who is best able to lead the United States in a world rent by conflict. The world can only hold its breath to see whether Bush is given a second chance to change his ways or whether new uncertain leadership is given the reins.

This is a bizarro site for a group that makes bizarro products. The Walking-Chair title product is an chair that will walk by itself. Also, they have the more famous man-pillow that is a pillow in the shape of a man's torso for those lonely single females (or men?). Something I'm interested in is the man-girl ice molds. Check it out >>

Yesterday the science world was abuzz with the news that the remains of several dwarf people (now, of course, dubbed 'Hobbits' but scientifically named Homo floresiensis after the Indonesian island where the discovery was made) were found in a remote island, leading biologists to declare them a new breed of humans. Evidently, they went around also hunting miniature elephants. For some reason I find that the most charming aspect. Who wouldn't want a miniature tusker to help keep things tidy?

I visited the VAG for the first time in several years to see the travelling exhibit, Massive Change: The Future of Global Design, which was laid out in around seven rooms filled with the patterns of technological (and social) change in our world. It felt like a science exposition for people who read Wired and New Scientist. Two of the rooms were full of Dean Kamen's prototypes of his Segway and a hyper-efficient stove. The most interesting rooms had visuals showing how change across the globe sometimes form patterns that are similar across systems. For example, how a gobal map of Internet nodes resembles a cluster of pollen. The exhibit is fairly short - around half an hour - if you don't stop and read the lengthy discourses and mini-essays laid out and sometimes scrawled out (complete with spelling mistakes) on the walls. We saw it on Thursday when admission was only $5, drawing out the young hipster crowd and families.

Enki Bilal's IMMORTEL- For graphic novel fans, the name Enki Bilal means one of the stalwarts of Humanoid's Publishing, a Euro-comic house that has been making inroads into the North American market for the past five years. Bilal is a Yugoslavian artist and writer (and now director) whose visionary science fiction perhaps personifies the French style, rich modernist backgrounds and adult themes encompassing sex, transcendance of being and mythology. North American viewers will be familiar with the Heavy Metal style of Luc Besson's The Fifth Element, a movie that brings across the look of these worlds. Where the Bruce Willis caper movie was grounded into a decidedly Hollywood plot of chases and gunfights, Bilal's Immortel is fully Euro in its themes.

Set in New York 2095, the movie is based upon Bilal's Nikopol Trilogy, about a revolutionary and soldier who is freed from a frozen prison to find himself in league with the Egyptian god Horus in a battle waged across political, mythological and species lines. In the movie Immortel, the corrupt authorities in charge of the future New York are puzzled by the appearance of a giant floating pyramid which fails to respond to their attempts at communication. Inside the pyramid, Horus, the hawk-headed god of war (and protection in this case?) is in his last days of existence and departs from the company of his fellow gods to find a special unique girl who is the only one he can mate with across the galaxies at this time.

Coincidentally, a chance event frees a political prisoner, Nikopol, from his cryogenic prison, releasing him into a city where the underclass uses his name as a byword for resistance against the authorities. New York is riven by class warfare and by fears that aliens have been creating mutants among the humans. A shadowy corporation is contracted by the politicians to sweep up suspected mutants for termination. Still in the first act, one of these operations reveals the girl Horus is looking for, a woman who has no memory of her life, her only link to New York is a leather-clad being we are made to assume is one of the aliens who dabble in the affairs of the city folk. Get all that?

Actually, never mind. The story is as dense as this one summary makes it sound. Suffice to say, all of the disparate characters and elements end up meeting each other. It's messy and probably doesn't do the trilogy of graphic novels justice. I say never mind because Immortel is quite something to see. To begin with, the design is Heavy Metal, the fascination with New York architecture layered with gritty industrial frames. It could be the retrofitted garishness of Blade Runner if not for the odd touches of fantasism: the floating prisons, high vaulted skyscrapers thrusting up through the gribble accumulation of the 20th (and 21st) centuries.

What is more than this design is the striking combination of CG and live action. The production company Dubois has fashioned a look that unhesitatingly places 3D animated characters beside live action with no real attempt to make either fit into the authenticity of the other. In the production actors played to blue screen (in the same manner as Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) but going even farther with the live actors playing side by side with the 3D. The live actors are not trying to be cartoons, the cartoons are not trying to be real. They are simply existing in the different world of New York 2095.

This last production decision should make other digital filmmakers ponder the use of digital backgrounds and digital characters in future productions. The Immortel story is probably too much for it to break through in the North American market. Although it was first filmed in English (the French version was dubbed), the story is not great and has that French girl-worship thing that makes me giggle. The more interesting question for me is whether the look of the production is acceptable. Not only would the method have eventual cost-savings, it really does have a unique otherworldly look. See what I mean. Watch the trailer >>. This fan page has a large gallery of images from the movie >>

An article in today's NY Times shows that HBO's ambitions know no bounds. The article "HBO's Rocky Roman Adventure" is about an upcoming $100 million series about Imperial Rome as told through the eyes of two soldiers who were mentioned in Julius Caesar's writings. The network that brought you Sex in the City, Oz, The Sopranos as well as the current The Wire, Deadwood and Six Feet Under has stumbled a bit in its extravaganza scheduled for fall 2005, making and rebuilding sets on location in Italy. The $100 million estimate is less than the $120 million spent for Band of Brothers though it is less of a risk given that Steven Spielberg was the producer. The Times points out that whereas other networks live and die by advertising revenue, HBO relies on bringing in subscribers who expect innovation and quality. Of course, the classic Roman miniseries if the British production I, Claudius which set the standard for political skullduggery. Rome is not the only network big budget costume series in the works. The Scifi Network is doing a version of the Ursula leGuin epic fantasy: Earthsea.

The tiny, cute cars that are all over Europe are set to hit the Canadian market right now. The Canadian smart model, the fourtwo, features a 6-speed no-clutch manual transmission running a three cylinder turbo-charged diesel engine. Its main claim to fame besides its wonderfully toy-like look is its fuel consumption which its website claims is a combined city/highway rating of 4.2L/100km - one of the reasons why Transport Canada fast-tracked it through approvals. I suppose the other immediate feature is its extremely small size. It is said that you can park the smart perpendicular to the curb. I believe it, having driven up next to one a couple weeks ago in Vancouver. The smart is sold through Mercedes-Benz, the manufacturer who bought out the stake of the original designer Nicholas Hayek, the maker of the "Swatch" watches. It's too bad smart doesn't have the same dealerships as in Europe which originally featured a clear tower full of smart models that looked like candy dispensers. A review on Canadian Driver can be read here. According to that article only 1,000 have been ordered for 2005 in Canada. More about the launch here. I applaud the launch of these vehicles on a purely design basis but for the money, you can also buy a base-model Mazda3 for better performance. My biases aside, I look forward to future smart models including the sexy roadster coupe.

It's 16 days until the election and political news is bound to dominate in the media and it will have more note here. A couple article links of note. Ron Suskind's 10 page report in the NY Times ("Without a Doubt") on how Bush went from an open-minded questioner to the type of leader who surrounds himself with yes-men. The article makes the point that a lot of his style of leadership is informed by his attitude toward faith. Basically, ruling on faith, where opposing views are shunted off to the side and open opposers are punished. The second article is from Knight Ridder ("Blunders, ignored warnings mire effort to rebuild Iraq")and details how the Pentagon civilian leadership ignored warnings from its military planners that the situation in post-war Iraq was ripe for the kind of quagmire and chaos that is the Iraq of today. This weekend already the U.S. has suffered six KIA and is attacking Fallujah for the fourth time this year.