NIMBY

Not in my backyard! I wouldn't want a hog farm to be built upwind of me, because of the stench. I wouldn't want an airport built next door, because of the noise. I don't want a church in my neighborhood, because of the traffic in stupidity (but too bad, I'm stuck with several of them). There are lots of reasons some kinds of properties are incompatible with residential living, but here's a new one. Tenants in a pricey Vancouver highrise are protesting the construction of a hospice nearby. I'd love to have a hospice go up next door; they tend to be quiet, tasteful, well-maintained, and good contributors to the community. But these residents are objecting because of the unpleasant effluvia the hospice would produce.

Wait, what? What could a hospice produce to poison a neighborhood?

"'Death is the Yin and 'Live' is the Yang," it [a letter to the hospital] read. "If the Yin and Yang are near to each other, 'Death' will bring bad luck, meaning sickness and even death . . . The ghosts of the dead will invade and harass the living."

That's right. Upscale residents of a condominium complex with units worth about a million dollars are afraid of ghosts. Dying people must be tucked away somewhere remote where they can haunt the place of their death without their restless spirits stinkin' up the good neighborhoods.

I'm hoping that these complaining, over-privileged superstitious nitwits remember this when they are old and dying — as they most likely will be someday — and courteously excuse themselves to go gasp out their last breaths in some place where civilized people won't be troubled.

I recommend the hog farm. It might expedite their departure from this planet if those final breaths are taken somewhere where the soft breezes waft over a fecal lake before arriving at the rickety bed in the drafty shack in which they lay dying. Their ghosts probably won't want to hang around long afterwards, either.