people bitch about the price of cell phone plans in Canada, they should still be making a fuss about the prices of airline tickets. my flight back from Vancouver on sunday is costing me $380. from vancouver to calgary. $380. the last time i flew out I didn’t pay $380 for a return flight. and that’s westjet.

on monday i had to go up to edmonton for a retirement function for a family friend. he’s been a professor of public health at the UofA for 13 or 14 years and is one of the world’s top doctor’s involved in AIDS planning and prevention. it was held at the faculty club on campus and was filled with 80 or 90 people with PhDs, Masters, vacation homes in other countries and people who run charities. so a bit of the other end of the scope from raised pickup trucks and nickleback douchetards wearing white oakleys.

and on that point, why do rig pig douchetards all wear the same pair of white oakleys? do they not realize that the simple act of wearing white oakleys makes them douchbags?

anyway, that meant a night of highbrow entertainment like a concert pianist friend who opened the function, presentation of awards of recognition from diplomats and government officials from other countries, and a choir. given that the man in question is German, the night was full of German composers, operas and jokes.

while I appreciate the fact that I have the opportunity to go have beers with blue collar people one day and sip red wine with the whitest of white collar job workers in not infrequent numbers, I often wonder if i’ll ever go to a more high brow function like this and have someone bust out a banjo instead of a choir. or have someone ripping it up with some SRV or Steve Vai.

my family essentially counts W and J as part of our family, and were recognized as such at the beginning of the function. this inevitably means that at any given gathering there’s always old ladies who walk up to my sister or myself and say “OH MY! I haven’t seen you since you were this big!” then we look at each other frantically trying to remember who the hell they are until we dont have much of a choice except to go with the “let’s just laugh and agree with what they say and maybe they’ll go talk to someone else”. and then we never do figure out who they are. or maybe my sister does since she’s more involved in all that seeing as how she’s lived here the whole time and I haven’t. i dunno.

anyway, in something totally unrelated how awesome is this commercial?