Fifty Shades of Black by Arthur Black

his fingers bleed.
    It makes no sense. And yet there is an intersection in downtown Vancouver that features a Starbucks on the northeast corner, a Starbucks on the southwest corner, and two independent coffee shops on the other two corners! They all appear to be crowded and they’ve been in business for years.
    So what do I know?
    Well, I know that some coffee shops seem to be feeling the pinch on their bottom line. They’re taking down the “Free Internet” signs and taping up the electrical outlets in an effort to uproot the laptop squatters. There’s a café in Chicago that’s even resorted to flat-out bribery. If a squatter voluntarily gives up a seat when the place is crowded, management will buy that squatter a drink on the house.
    Which, presumably, said squatter will sip while standing outside on the sidewalk, looking in.
    Not every customer who goes to a coffee shop is a space hog, of course. A lot of customers line up and get their orders to take out—which again would make sound, efficient business sense if the customers were ordering a double cheeseburger with a side of fries to go.
    They are not. They are ordering concoctions such as a half-skinny, half-chai, iced Frappuccino with whipped cream and a spritz of hazelnut syrup and an organically grown cinnamon stick on the side. Or possibly a demitasse of Ethiopian high-mountain dark roast pour-over with a decaf espresso shot and a lemon slice.
    It’s ironic. Coffee shops have been around since Shakespeare’s time. They are the social equivalents of watering holes on the Serengeti—great places to meet with friends, catch up on the latest gossip.
    The only problem: it’s getting harder and harder to find anyone whose nose isn’t buried in an iPad or—radical thought—to find a place where you can just get a cup of coffee.
    Of course there’s always the Canadian solution.
    No upholstered chairs, no baristas at the bar, no po-mo computer graphics on the wall. Just fluorescent lights, Formica tables . . . and a queue that moves like Jeep chassis on a Chrysler assembly line.
    Timmy Ho’s. Make mine a double-double.
    To go.

 
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    Of Beavers and Bullets
    K now what I like best about Canada’s national symbol, the beaver?
    It’s not imperial. Not for us the American eagle with its razor talons, the British bulldog with its gobful of teeth or the ballsy Gallic rooster that struts symbolically for France.
    Canadians chose a docile rodent with buckteeth, a potbelly and a tail that looks like it was run over by a Zamboni. We could have opted for a ferocious wolf, a majestic moose, a mighty bison or a fearsome polar bear.
    We went with the flabby furball that wouldn’t harm a black fly.
    Maybe that set the pattern for our provincial emblems because they’re pretty bland and inoffensive too. British Columbia has the Steller’s jay; Newfoundland and Labrador went for the Atlantic puffin. For Ontario it’s the common loon (perfect—what with having Ottawa and all) and New Brunswick stands behind the mighty black-capped chickadee.
    I’m not sneering about this. I think it’s positively endearing that Canadians chose non-threatening, peaceable symbols to represent their provinces. For our prickly cousins to the south, it’s a little different. They go for state guns . Arizona has just proclaimed its official state firearm: the Colt single-action army revolver. It’s the long-barrelled, six-cylinder shootin’ iron favoured by Wyatt Earp and various other sanctified thugs of the American Wild West.
    Arizona was late off the mark—the state of Utah has already declared its official state firearm: the Browning M1911, a semi-automatic .45 calibre handgun.
    Is the Browning M1911 for hunting elk or target shooting? Nah. Its purpose is to kill people, period. It was developed by gun maker John Browning specifically for the US Army, which had put out tenders for a