Fish in a barrel
Honestly! I live in Sooke BC, a town filled with beautiful and kind people. It has a surrounding world-class landscape that is second-to-none.
"Where the rainforest meets the sea."
(see here for the heraldry)
But when my cousin from Europe came to visit, I got to see the town through her eyes. It's an incredibly squalid, ugly, grey little town, where the first building with any visual impact is a grey sheet metal building. Lovely owner. Horrible eyesore. This introduction is then followed by the equally dismal. Intermittent sidewalks. A leveling of trees. A quarter of a 
traffic circle. Concrete traffic islands that direct left-hand turning vehicles into oncoming traffice. Gas stations that kiss the non-existent sidewalks. A few years back they tore up the sides of the road to put in sewer pipes, and then returned the roads to their prior condition -- no sidewalks, no beauty, just slabs of tarmac.
Google it. You'll find beautiful pictures of nature. And only this pic (on the right) showing the "downtown." Why? Because there's very little to look at.
Nice people, shame about the place!
Whiffen Spit
Not too sure if this one needs elaboration. Except to say that I am extremely disappointed in the low caliber of some dog owners. And that I can't believe the amount of smooshed up doggie pucks in my neighbourhood (yep, Sunriver in Sooke).
Gifts in bad taste
Olga's wearing the gift she got (yes, smartass, she did get one for Christmas; Santa still likes her you know!). Well, she got it, but she didn't. Oh well. (And, yes, that's a book on Familial Circle that she's reading. That Billy....)
Olga VanTandenburg makes her new years resolution. No, wait. She goes home.
Go big or go home? She goes home.
Unclear on the concept: Off-roading
This week's cartoon is in response to the perpetual South Island Recreation Association's appeal for off-road dune buggy access to public parks. Sigh. We live in a town that highlights nature: "Where the rain-forest meets the sea" we boast. You'd think that finding places to off-road would be in abundance in a place where nature is so vastly spread around us.
May good god strike me down now, this is good old fashion blasphemy
This is a cartoon that I suspect will never make the local papers. So I'm just going to side step them all and send this out into the yune-E-verse. Here goes nothing (except for what I really think...):
Inheritance from Nigeria, just in time for Christmas!
It's Olga VanTandenburg's lucky day!
And you probably thought all emails from Nigeria were scams! HA!
Concrete barriers in unusual places
We have a new concrete barrier in Sooke. Not too sure exactly what it does.
Britt Santowski's cartoon details her frustration with the intersection of Sooke traffic congestion and what appears to be absolutely random traffic design. What do they do? Hire engineers from pre-med school? Jeesh.
A caring mayor? What’s next? Talking pictures?
This week's cartoon requires a bit of explanation to those not from Sooke. We recently had our city council elections. The two mayoral candidates took to the road with banner-waving campaign (reflected in some of my earlier cartoons). Wendal Milne won by a landslide. And what really shocked me was that after the election, Milne once again took his team to the roadside, this time waving "Thank You" banners. I think it was the first time I've ever noticed a politician thanking the people in such a grass-roots manner.
Now I'll shut up. Here's the cartoon:
Olga VanTandenburg lands a short (very short) term contract
Gone political at the Sooke News Mirror. Let them know that you appreciate their choice in Cartoonists!
