Co-op fights global warming

In a break with its long-standing tradition of not giving a damn for anything but its own bottom line, Ucluelet Co-op this week revealed an ambitious plan to fight global warming.

The key to the initiative is the massive new bank of freezers installed over the past months as part of the Co-op’s store-wide renovation. The gigantic refrigeration array is being started up in stages, under the careful supervision of BC Hydro, lest the power surge black out half of Vancouver Island.

Once fully operational, the freezers are expected to lower the average year-round temperature in the Ucluelet area by as much as half a degree.

Atmospheric experts estimate this is equivalent to a reduction of approximately 350,000 tonnes of carbon emissions per year. The Co-op will soon announce a program offering these carbon credits to consumers at a low introductory price price of just $8 per tonne.

So in addition to giving Uclutians unprecedented access to over-processed frozen foods, the Co-op will help them continue driving their over-sized, over-powered vehicles free of guilt — “a definite win-win for the community,” says the press release announcing the program. “It’s the Co-op way!”

‘Send us your bags!’

Close on the heels of Tofino’s controversial resolution to ban plastic bags in that community, Uclutians have sent out the message loud and clear to their neighbours to the north: Bring us your bags!

“We love them,” said local power shopper Sarah Debbit, in the Co-op parking lot as she loaded 37 plastic bags of groceries into her minivan. “It’s just like curbs and sidewalks, or paved parking spaces — more plastic bags means more progress.”

“That whole ‘cloth bag’ thing is way too hippie,” said Darrel Stumpf, local construction worker, who pulled a packet of gum he’d just bought out of a plastic bag. “And as everybody in Ukee knows, hippies suck. But plastic bags rock,” he added, tossing the bag to the ground.

Ucluelet has no plans to follow Tofino’s lead with a plastic bag ban, according to the district office.”We actually prefer to put petrochemical plastic waste into the west coast landfill,” said a spokesperson for the Ucluelet Economic Development Corporation. “That’s why we shut down our recycling program eight months ago — it’s all part of our long-term plan. Twenty years from now we’ll have fished out the salmon and hake, and tourism may be declining, but the UEDC will be putting in bids to remediate the toxic leachate coming from our landfill, thanks to all those plastic bags. Between that and the projected new cancer wing for Tofino hospital — and plastic waste is a key part of rising cancer rates — employment should be booming on the coast by 2025! And fifty years beyond that, when all the oil has run out, we’ll be mining the landfill for those precious petrochemical plastic bags.

“You see, we’re always thinking ahead!“

Flip-estate comes to Ukee

Real estate is no longer a smart choice for the savvy west coast investor, according to real estate consultant Atilla Deadwood, of REAM/AXE Realty.

“The old way of buying a house and living in it — or even just renting it out for a few years — is now dead, dead, dead,” said Deadwood. “Only a hopeless housing romantic would operate under that paradigm, now that the dogs of greed have been unleashed,” he adds.

The alternative? “Unreal estate,” Deadwood quips. “What we in the business call flip-estate.”

With a flip-estate investment, he explains, people can buy investment property in Ucluelet in the morning and sell it that afternoon for as much as 30% more than they paid for it. It’s not just that they don’t have to live in it — they don’t even have to see it, Deadwood says.

“This is especially important for out-of-town investors looking at those rickety, 20- and 30-year-old mold traps now being vacated in great number by former residents forced out of town by rising prices and falling opportunities,” Deadwood said. “I mean, it’s dangerous to your health to go anywhere near one of those sinkholes.”

Now people from the city can buy them, basically off the Internet, and get rid of them the same way. They realize a handsome profit and the house will sit there empty, waiting for a flip-estate transaction next week — sometimes even the next day.

But what if somebody should actually want to buy a house and live in it and be part of the community?

“Come on, get serious,” Deadwood says.

Co-oop expansion

Playing what we’ve got — NOT! Tattler sues Edge FM for breach

In a development that sent shockwaves through the broadcasting industry, the Ukee Tattler has launched a B.C. Supreme Court lawsuit against 99.5 FM The Edge radio station for alleged breach of public contract.

Tattler editor Hack Vertue said he filed the suit out of compassion for fading pop stars whose royalty payments are no longer keeping up with their obscenely lavish lifestyles. He claims the Edge motto “Playing What We’ve Got” is directly contradicted by all the public nuking of songs by Michael Jackson, Barbra Streisand and other lame or wimpy musicians, along with any and all rap tunes.

“They have in fact got all this great music and they’re not playing it,” said Vertue. “What’s worse, they’re mocking it. That’s not ‘playing what we’ve got.’ I call it a grave betrayal, both of their own promise and of the public trust. Who among us won’t benefit from hearing [Michael Jackson tune] Thriller one more time? Whose toes don’t start tapping when Fifty Cent comes on?”

Radio stations and other media outlets are watching developments closely. A ruling against The Edge could have massive consequences for media conglomerates country-wide. “Media might actually have to start putting meaning back into its programming,” said one industry analyst. “That would be a seismic shift in the industry, which for years has based itself on putting out increasingly meaningless product.”

In the event the Supreme Court is booked up, Ucluelet Council has agreed to fill in for them at one of the regular COW meetings.

P.O. launches ‘work to rule’ campaign

Ucluelet residents who have grown accustomed toreceiving special favours at the post office will now have to do without, Tattler sources learned today. In a head-office crackdown, workers at the local branch will no longer be allowed to offer the little perks and courtesies they have commonly been offering.

“This is it!” said Regional Post Office Sub-Branch Oversight Specialist Thomas Frown by phone from Vancouver. “All those special favours you’ve been getting because you live in a small town … the mail redirection, the help wrapping parcels, the free-and-easy P.O. boxes, the buying of stamps when you’re a few pennies short, the looking up of postal codes, the courtesy stamp-licking … all that will be terminated as of today.”

A terse press release said, “The Ucluelet post office franchise has been getting away with murder in the customer service department, acquiring a coastwide reputation for friendliness and service beyond the call of duty. We are coming down hard on those responsible. This type of behaviour is simply not in the cards for a faceless, profit-driven private crown corporation.” The press release went on to say that, from now on, all customer transactions were to proceed “by the book” only. The picture abovet shows the current Canada Post rulebook being delivered to the Ukee post office.

Ucluelet post office personnel are being scheduled for intensive 6-week refresher courses in post office regulations, on a rotating basis over the next few months. Staff, looking grim, would only comment that according to regulation 21718.37.2(c) they were no longer allowed to comment.

2nd ‘hand’ store under suspicion

Ucluelet’s newest thrift shop finds itself in the eye of an investigation by a department of the Ministry of Public Parts (MPP), following allegations that it may be a supply link in an organ-trading ring.

Investigators point to the coincidence of the shop’s “curious” name (2nd Hand Cargo) and its “convenient” location directly across from the Lodge, Ucluelet’s premier drinking establishment and “a likely and bottomless source of, shall we say, ‘inventory‘ on Saturday nights alone.”

MPP investigators countrywide have long been searching for clues to the infamous bargain-basement “double-double” transplants, consisting of two kidneys for $2, or the “2-for-a-buck cornea specials” widely offered via spam on the internet. Americans, their bodies failing from gross obesity and unable to afford the obscenely expensive operations in their own country, have reportedly been flocking across the border to take advantage of the offers.

Corner Cupboard, the St. Aidan’s Church basement thrift shop, fell under suspicion last year, but MPP called the investigation off when it was pointed out that, with no available refrigeration and the shop only open Saturday mornings, any body parts on the shelf would hardly keep from one week to the next.

Princess moo-ves on new initiative

Oak Bay Marine Group, which owns Ucluelet’s Canadian Princess resort, will launch a bold new marketing initiative when it opens for business this year at the end of April. At a press conference this week, the Victoria-based resort company announced it will be selling Canadian Princess sportfishing packages to herd animals of all species, not just homo sapiens.

Last year’s test marketing on small groups of Alberta Red Angus (pictured right, click to enlarge) indicates wide market interest, said Oak Bay director of marketing Darryl Potsdamm. “We feel this initiative meshes perfectly with the ‘pack-em-in’ ethic that is becoming the norm in West Coast tourism.”

Duke Ledbaluun, a Canadian Princess charter captain who took one herd out on an offshore halibut trip late last summer, is enthusiastic about the initiative. “Them bovines had a [expletive deleted] great time,” he said. “The people on board had tons of fun too,” he added, “once they got over the [expletive deleted] smell.”

Long known informally as the “cattle boats” of the industry, Canadian Princess charter craft will soon bear that moniker officially. And company principals are delighted with the change, said Potsdamm. “With a whole new class of customer already accustomed to being jammed into inhumanly tight spaces, the passenger count on our vessels will skyrocket — along with revenue,” he said with a grin.

Related West Coast businesses are reported to be watching the development with interest, with some tentatively adding oats and hay to their box-lunch menu options.

Although the manure problem remains to be fully worked out, Princess managers believe they should be able to simply hose it off the deck once the boats are back at their berths in the Inner Harbour. “Given the extent of our environmental impact already, this little bit extra shouldn’t be an issue,” said one manager.

Potsdamm concurs. “Barring an outbreak of Mad Cow, we expect to be driving cows, horses, and possibly bison up the loading ramps alongside the Japanese and American tourists by early summer,” he said.

Westerly News shows backbone!

In an apparent editorial slip-up, “The Voice of the West Coast” may have accidentally expressed a firm position on a local issue in an editorial published last month.

The Westerly News, known region-wide for its craven refusal to take a stand on anything at all, has not yet issued a comment.

The editorial opinion would not be noticeable by the lay reader, say linguistic analysts. But specialists have been parsing the column and teasing out its various threads of meaning, and preliminary evaluation tends to indicate that the piece did indeed express a definite, if veiled, point of view.

“Computer analysis reveals that the article takes a cautious but firm stand against litter,” declared professor Flatbush Addle, of the linguistics department at UBC.

Others were not so sure. “We cannot say for certain this is a moral position, and not a simple artifact of language,” said language arts specialist Duckwaddle Twurp, of SFU’s department of philosophy. “Much more analysis will have to be done before the intention behind the words will be known.”

The news about the Westerly’s daring and unprecedented stand was broken by a national media watchdog organization. The announcement has shocked local residents, sending a thrill of serious journalism through the region. “The Westerly never expressed no dang opinion ’bout nothin’, good nor bad, for fear a pissin’ somebody off,” said long-time reader D.D. Hoyle, 73. “It’s a sign a the end times.”

Others see the dark hand of media ownership concentration behind the move. “I bet CanWest had something to do with this,” said summertime resident Shoozee Dragonfly Dreamcatcher, by cellphone from her summer residence in the Tofino Co-op dumpster.

Inside sources claim the column was actually a personal essay, written by a staff member for a class she was taking, that got into the paper by accident under deadline pressure. The editorial board is said to be composing an extended apology for the error, and to be tightening up the editorial system so that all potentially contentious issues are rendered indistinguishably bland.