50 things you should know about Vancouver

Not all people in yoga wear are heading to the studio. Or have indeed ever practiced yoga.

The person you knocked that smiled and said sorry? They actually wish your children had cancer.

Drivers are angry. Cyclists are angry. Pedestrians don’t give a shit because they own this goddam city.

There is no right answer to the best defence during a bear/cougar/skunk attack. There are however, a squadillion theories.

A flax, goji, matcha, quinoa and milk thistle smoothie makes you fart more than it mops up your free radicals.

Smoking a whole, tobacco free joint without begging for death is something only you guys can do.

Vancouverites are the hugglable bunnies of North America.

You love music but will only show appreciation at the allotted time. Mid-song shouts are punishable by having your MEC membership taken away.

You are being collectively gang raped by your realtors.

If someone enters the bus that is over 40 or looks remotely pregnant you must all stand, smile and sweep your hand across their newly presented throne.

You know an unhealthy amount about condos, bachelors and duplexes for someone that still lives in their parent’s basement.

The Skytrain is a rollercoaster with a hundred riders suppressing their urge to squeal wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Stanley Park and the Endowment Lands remain untouched because Mr Condo Builder has free reign on every other available space, everywhere.

It doesn’t rain that much, stop complaining.

Calling an art gallery VAG is the greatest thing I have ever known.

Main street hipsters, Commercial Drive hippies, Yale Town gym bunnies and Kitsilano yuppies are actually the same people in different outfits.

For rats the size of horses go to Trounce Alley.

Not all gun crime is gang related. But it’s more convenient for the RCMP if you believe that.

Smoking is a social faux pas. Driving a monster truck isn’t.

Being drunk is embarrassing. Owning a miniature poodle isn’t.

You pay too much for your cell and bank services. Especially since they are remarkably crappy.

Good food however, is cheap as chips.

Fashion does not exist in a city where Gore Tex is practical.

Only 4 people have ever actually found the Museum of Vancouver.

Robson Street is a glorified mail-order catalogue.

Granville Street on a Saturday night is like Vegas without the money.

Every small company knows every other small company. Every large company ignores all humanity.

Surrey is talked about more than it is visited on a scale of 1:1,000,000

North Van is not real. It’s actually a visualization to give plebeians something to aspire to.

A two hour drive only makes Whistler seem close when your country covers a large section of the planet.

Free bus rides for homeless people come from heroic bus drivers.

That beluga whale looks like a tampon.

At any given moment there is a protest going on somewhere.

Clubs close at 2am because everyone needs to get to their kayaking/hiking/skiing adventure early the next day.

Nobody can actually tell the difference between a micro brew and a glass of cat piss.

One week of annual vacation is barbaric. Leaving at 4.30pm is nice.

Sushi is the local dish of a mostly white city with a sizable Chinese population. Go figure.

All dating begins with a profile page.

When greeting, look out for the BC hug. It swings towards your genitals at a terrifying speed.

European kissing is too friendly.

Though you can’t see a car for 600 blocks, only cross the road when the green man says so.

Parking downtown costs the same as buying Prince Edward Island.

Canada has two official languages?

The Canucks are never going to win the Stanley cup again. Sorry.

Watching the BC Lions is the closest I’ve come to a homoerotic experience.

Brunch replaces the space where God used to be.

Never admit that you find Gregor Robertson rather sexy. But give him my number if you see him.

You must be for or against the Olympics. There is no in between.

The last person to experience anger in Vancouver left in 1986. We’re passive-aggressive if you don’t mind.

Grouse Mountain is Vancouver’s G-Spot.

Working alone: How to stave off the madness

Talk to people every day. Real ones. With Faces.

Develop personal relationships with your clients. Don’t get caught calling them dad.

Wash, dress and leave the house everyday. This is crucial to remaining part of the species.

Do not watch porn, squeeze blackheads or listen to Barry Manilow. Just because nobody will catch you does not make it ok.

Periodically get a full time job with an hour commute to a cubicle in a business park. Sit next to Clive from accounts as he loudly describes the content of every email he receives.

Understand that knowing your neighbour’s movements is ok. Knowing their bowel movements means you are on the verge of a restraining order.

Convince yourself that, given the chance, everyone would make a full meal for lunch. With six hours of marinating/chopping/flambéing.

Even if you are more creative at night, the rest of the world works 9-5 and so should you. Failing that, get up at 8am, answer your emails and go back to sleep.

Go to the grocery store. Spend an hour there making conversation with every other terminally solo refugee from normality.

How to put Riddims in your Riting

Sometimes copywriting is so ass simple that it makes me want to use my degree for roach paper. It only really boils down to two things – getting people to read your stuff and getting people to act on your stuff.

Writing in rhythms helps to produce easy-to-read copy so your audience actually gets to the end of the sentence without wondering into their subconscious wearing an adult diaper.

For today, getting people to act on your words is your own damn problem.

Where to find rhythms in writing

The fear of missing out: How to diagnose your illness

Your resume reads like the schizoid menu of a serial job-nogamist.

You feel a stinging pain below the earlobes when someone tells you about a fantastic night out they had. You are unable to feel happy for these sadists.

A noise from across the office makes you jump up like gopher. Stretching your neck above the work stations and beyond its natural elongation is worth the slipped disc just to know who’s slapped who with the hole punch. Cue the appearance of 6 other heads; plural, the ‘gophers’.

Saturday night involves constant texting, calling and tweeting to get a minute-by-minute update of every known party in the given universe.

Office politics for the retired nihilist

Authority is defined by your chair – both its size and material. Check the mail room; plastic chairs. The CEO’s office? Luxurious cowhide beneath the hallowed buttocks.

Stationary is your armoury. Obsessively collect as if a stockpile of paperclips will save you when Clive in accounts brings in his AK-47

The vending machine is your main source of nutrition yet also filled with foodstuffs of shame. Choose the least noisy packaging and scuttle back to your cubicle to ingest. Is the space getting smaller or are you getting fatter?

Things that are weird

Yawning in meetings Think it’s because you’re bored? Think again. You’re in an airlocked room full of people. You are in fact suffocating to death.

Cars that honk when you lock them Just so you and everybody for a hundred miles knows that I HAVE LOCKED MY CAR

Grapefruit They taste awful and are impossible to eat. I fail to see the point. This man agrees

False drawers Often found under sinks. You will eventually pull the handles off.

Saying “I slept like a baby” You woke up every two hours and shat the bed?

Twitter – the great business model

From the outset, Twitter allowed third parties to offer applications that utilized what they’d built. Without payment and without restrictions, they literally gave away their investment to other businesses.

But how does this relate to your business if you sell toothpaste boxes rather than online content? Simple. Say you produce boxes for Colgate, and only Colgate. You landed a sweet gig because daddy played golf with the VP and wanted to give you the same ‘opportunities’ he’d been so lucky to receive from his daddy (bitter? Moi?).

“please” get rid of the quotation marks, you’re “killing” me

Every now and then the inner grammar fascist nibbles at my brain and unleashes a torrent of abuse akin spitting tomato soup over the face of a newly orphaned child.

“Quotation” marks produce one of “those” moments. Sprinkle liberally throughout your text and instantly turn it into the kind of illiterate twaddle that accountants write when they’re trying to express themselves. Stick to spreadsheets dear.

The correct use of quotation marks is incredibly simple. The abuse of quotation marks is incredibly complex. It will take you longer to decipher what the typing monkey is trying to say rather than take a minute (literally, one minute) to learn the rules. No need to be sitting comfortably.

9 ways to turn your marketing guff into purchase-friendly, plain English

Find your favourite sentence — the one that makes you really proud — and delete it. It was created with the enormous ego that you’ve been polishing since your teens, you’re shitter than you think.

Mix sentence lengths. This makes your copy more readable because variety is the spice of life etc etc.

Ruthlessly delete the deadly sins of business speak: unique, solution, quality assurance, bespoke, customer centric, moving forward, high level, leverage and manage expectations. Just writing that gave me a little bit of sick in my mouth.

Your product won’t change their life but it might make it a bit better. Tell them how.

The Rules of Dating a Foreigner

Telling people “I dated an Uzbekistani” makes you excruciatingly interesting. Sitting in silence with a man you can’t communicate with is actually the least interesting thing you have ever done.

The nationality of your date reveals much about how you will be perceived. Stump for an Italian and you like it kinky, go for an Irishman and you drink too much.

The relationship in your mind moves at a giddying speed. You’ve met for a drink and you’re already thinking about the genetic perfection of your future children.