We heard the record executives cry out from our gutters and ghettos that file sharing is hurting sales figures, eating away at their profits, driving them out of business, taking food out of their families’ mouth, leaving their children in rags and shivering in the col…oh. uh, Never mind.

Toronto’s a funny place. 5 cm of snow and most people either stay home from work or leave early. Heaven help these people if they suddenly had to move to the prairies or one of the atlantic provinces…

I think Chromewaves mentioned this a while back, but January 25th is shaping up to be a monster day for me: new CDs by Trail Of Dead (which I can barely sit still for) and Low, and DVD releases include Some Kind of Monster, When Will I Be Loved, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and most importantly, season 2 of The Wire. Goodbye paycheque.

Looking at the sidebar on Chromewaves, I see he links to Banana Boys, a novel by my former colleague Terry Woo. It’s still weird to see Terry’s name everywhere…linked from cool music sites, on Amazon, in ads for the play this past year…I still think of him as the guy who sat across the aisle from me…

Still fellating Chromewaves, he tells us that Metacritic is now reviewing books. Sweet.

from the CBC: CNN lets Tucker Carlson go

“Linkage between Apple’s iPod and Playboy could offer the latest in hand-eye coordination exercises.” Heh.

from P2Pnet

I’m a happy boy now. Canada just pummeled Russia to win the world juniors.

Olympic champions, World Cup champions, World champions, World Junior champions. Canada owns.

Someone in my hallway is singing “Knowing Me, Knowing You” by Abba. Loudly. Badly.

BBC NEWS: Gervais writing Simpsons episode

Kick ass!

While sick as shit and pretty much restricted to the couch, there’s little else to do but watch movies. And so we did.

• 11’09″01 (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a collection of 11 short films, each 11 minutes & 9 seconds long, that somehow dealt with the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks. Some related to it in only the most obscure of ways (like the Japanese soldier who thought he was a snake), and some concentrated on it in very uncomfortable ways (such as Alejandro Gonzalez Inniaritu’s playback of TV & radio chatter from that day over a black screen, interrupted only with frames showing people jumping from the towers). Many dealt with the global impact (or lack thereof) of the attacks. Very, very interesting, and more than a little depressing.
• Garden State (imdb | rotten tomatoes), on the other hand, was anything but. Funny, smart, reminiscent of Grosse Pointe Blank (one of my all-time favourites), and (though I usually hate this term) heartwarming. I can see why my friend Stanzi likes it so much.

Had to go to Shopper’s to get some sinus meds, as I can no longer breathe through my nose and my head is killing me. Decided to pick up a small case of pop while there; as soon as I lift it off the pile the other end opens up and cans go flying everywhere. Some nice guy — who I think has realized that I’m very sick and very out of it — helps me pick them up.

Thus, armed with a bad mood, I walk home. Some guy in front of me tears open a new pack of smokes, drops the plastic and foil on the ground and lights up on front of me, blowing smoke back into my face. I mutter, “asshole” a little louder than I should, and he turns to look at me but doesn’t say anything. I don’t know if I was more pissed about having smoke blown in my face, or about the fact that he just tossed his shit onto the sidewalk, like he’s entitled to use Yonge Street as his personal dump. Fuck him.

MAN, I hate sinus colds.