Great, lets go with VML, supported on the majority of desktops out there, used by high profile sites such as Google, It's a much better option albeit more complicated than canvas.
First I thought you were joking, but that is actually a great idea!
VML does integrate with HTML, not just XHTML, which was one of Dave Hyatts major criticisms against SVG.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_07.html#005928
It's certainly a lot more work to implement that canvas, but if it became supported by other browsers than IE, it would be useful on the wold wide web a lot sooner than canvas or SVG. Even if Microsoft committed to support SVG or canvas in a future version of IE (which I think is unlikely), it would still take years for the implementation to penetrate. OTOH VML is already widely supported - it's just ignored by developers because it is perceived as proprietary, and because Flash has an even wider penetration (and better tools).
regards Olav Junker Kjær