Vaisakhi

Yesterday I had the dubious pleasure of attending the annual Vaisakhi celebration in Vancouver, not that I had much of a choice in the matter. They had changed the location slighty from last year and this year the celebration and the parade which was the main event were held right on our street. When I looked out my door in the morning the businesses further down the street were already setting up booths and such for the day. Around lunch time my spouse looked outside to see a vendor setting up shop on our front lawn, she didn't even have the courtesy to ask, she just started setting up. We found out that our neighbor had just kicked her off their lawn for doing the same thing. Well that proved to be the start to a less than stellar day.

Over 200,000 people attended this years festival and the street and cross streets had all been closed off to most traffic due to the parade later in the afternoon. The streets and intersections were a crowded with so many people that it was almost impossible to move. My spouse had our six-year-old son's hand but still couldn't see him, and people were rudely pushing even children out of their way, so he was getting battered around quite a bit and was so crowded he could hardly breathe. Our eldest daughter ,who is twelve, while walking as fast as she could in the crowd was hit in the ankle by an elderly woman with her cane. Instead of apologizing the woman berated our daughter for not walking faster. My spouse, who already has back problems was hit hard in the back 3 times by people trying to push their way through the crowd. Our 9-year-old daughter and I went to go to the store to get a few things for making dinner and it took us half an hour to walk the block and a half. On the way home we decided to get some popcorn from one of the many booths set up by businesses giving out free drinks and various types of food. We were at the front of the crowd waiting for one of the booths attendants to hand us a popcorn, as they were distributing them randomly to people at the front of the crowd. Suddenly this man probably in his late thirties pushes to the front of the crowd and shoves my 9-year-old our of the way so he doesn't have to wait. By this time I had enough of the day and told him to fuck off and wait like everyone else.

It wasn't just the behavior in the crowds that was upsetting me. People were standing around and eating on our lawn, kids were trying to take flowers from our garden, there were people sitting on our fence and those who had fully fenced lawns had to barricade their gates to avoid the same. Once our lawn had green grass, but now there's only a bit here and there amongst the bare earth. It was like a swarm of locusts had swept through, only locusts don't leave their garbage all over the place.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the festival itself or the Sikh holiday it represents. In fact last year we thoroughly enjoyed it, and like Chinese New Year it is a great medium for teaching our kids about other cultures and to respect other peoples beliefs. And the day itself represents courage, self sacrifice and equality which are wonderful messages to teach our children. Nor do I blame the Sikhs, as all races, genders and ages were equally rude. What I don't care for is the general lack of courtesy, manners and general human decency (Still on the fence about whether human decency is a myth or not). Celebrating a wonderful event like Vaisakhi is great, but don't ruin the celebration for others. Vaisakhi stands for living up to a higher standard and it would be nice if the celebrants remembered that.

If you'd like to know more about Vaisakhi then go here: http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php?title=Vaisakhi

Mystic Wicks revisited

Recently I was compelled by what in hindsight could only be called morbid curiosity to visit Mystic Wicks, One of the larger pagan themed message boards on the internet. Some years ago I was a member there. They have always had just one rule there, respect. They claimed this meant that everyone should respect one another's opinions beliefs and their right to them, which was in theory a wonderful rule. But in reality things were not quite that utopian. Don't get me wrong, it all started out well enough but eventually the spirit of the rule was apparently banned, much like 20 or so people at the time I was a member. These people were Discordian and not of like mind with the administrators or forum guides, and they were belittled for it. When they tried to respond in kind they were summarily banned. It continued like this for a time and I got sick of it, though the pranks the Discordians were pulling on the administrators were mildly amusing, Finally I referred the head admin and site owner as Adolf Hitler with delusions of Godhood and said a few other things best not said in polite company. I was of course banned and happy to have been so.

Anyway I digress. I was feeling generous and felt I should look up the site and see if it might be deserving of a more favorable review for my first blog entry for this site. So I spent an hour perusing the site before casting judgment. My first thoughts were that the site was not very visually appealing; the color scheme bland and apparently they must have hired a four-year-old to work on the layout. If not they should have, a four-year-old would have probably done a better job. I tried to forgive this and move on to the main issue I was concerned about, whether the respect rule was still enforced in a lopsided manner or had the site adopted some actual rules to keep the drama to a minimum.

I found that the forum had indeed changed. Before the site had been run like a high school student council; all the popular people and the teachers pets running the show and enforcing one set of rules for their friends and another for everyone else. Now it was run more like rabid wolves; they protect their own but nip, bite and generally run to ground everyone else. The site owners who also happen to be the admins seem to want no involvement in the site other than raking in what money they can from the many Google ads on the site and leave the running of things to those wolves. When I was a member the site boasted over 50,000 members, at the time this was written there were now 22,428 members and a whopping 6,988 who have been banned. People aren't just being banned, it's a mass exodus and people are staying away in droves.

For those who do remain, I can see why. It has the disturbing appeal of a train wreck or reality TV; you know it's going to be an ugly mess, but you just can't look away. Like reality TV you know there's going to be people hurt, betrayed and they'll probably be hurt and betrayed next week too, but you watch to see if they'll come back with some sort of revenge, if they'll finally say enough is enough, or whether they're really stupid or naive enough to believe that things there will change and get better.

My opinion of the site is such: Satan himself could not have imagined a more hellish way for me to spend an hour of my time than at Mystic Wicks. It is an hour of my life that I will never get back, and I deeply regret that. I would have much rather spent the time having a root canal without the aid or an anesthetic or something equally painful. I did get one small measure of satisfaction though: When I saw the number of people who had been banned form the site, I realized that I was banned before it became popular.