There is only one rock and roll song which has been improved by the use of a saxophone: “Long As I Can See The Light” by CCR.

As usual, each year, I stop buying stuff about a month before xmas, just on the off chance that someone’s brave enough to buy me music. Really, the pickings are pretty slim at this point. Really, all I want are:

• living things . black skies in broad daylight
• pelican . the fire in our throats will beckon the thaw
• rogue wave . descended like vultures
• the zephyrs . when the sky comes down it comes down on your head

Apart from the Rogue Wave disc, those are pretty hard to find (and not at all cheap when you do). Shit, given how hard my preferred music is to find I’d prefer that someone just buys me something I know nothing about, or gives me an eMusic gift subscription. I’m too hard to buy for, apparently.

Hmm, I guess the new Clearlake comes out in December as well. As long as there’re a few left on my wishlist on the 27th when the sales start (not the 26th; I’ll be in Nova Scotia where shopping on Sundays or holidays is verboten) I’ll be happy.

Breath Capture, ladies and gentlemen.

Surely, the apocalypse is nigh.

You should watch Bowfinger (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The previews made it look pretty bad, but it was actually really funny. They do a good job of skewering the movie industry & Scientology at the same time.

This is how I know winter has arrived:

• Umm…it’s snowing.
• The people who drive in from north of the city are late, frazzled and whining about how much more snow they have than us here in the downtown. Waah.
• The sidewalks were icy this morning, so I instinctively shifted to the “winter walk”, something I think Canadians are born knowing how to do, even in dress shoes. It makes me (and T-Bone, apparently, as she mentioned it this morning) think of all the Caribbean students at Dal who had to learn how to walk on snow and ice, especially up the hill downtown.
• I want hot chocolate when I get to the office.
• We have to think about shopping for presents soon.
• I’m craving my mother’s apple pie.

My Nomad just played “Big Dumb Sex” by Soundgarden and “The Littlest Birds” by The Be Good Tanyas back-to-back. If you’ve heard these two songs you’ll know how funny that juxtaposition is.

This is the second time today I find myself defending Fifty Cent. This MP is either 1) an idiot, or 2) playing for cheap votes.

From the Globe and Mail: “‘Tis the season to be suspicious”

According to a study released today, 32 days before Christmas, by the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft, 40 per cent of Canadians are so concerned about security that they will not shop on-line for Christmas gifts…The study asked respondents about the types of on-line security products they use, their greatest on-line security fears and their familiarity with threats such as “phishing.”

These people are dumbasses.

First of all, “phishing” has nothing to do with online shopping, unless you buy things from sites advertised in spam. This is akin to paying the $100 “processing fee” for the free vacation that the nice lady just called you about, even though you don’t remember entering any contests.

Second, you run a FAR greater risk of fraud or theft every time you give your credit card number to Ticketmaster over the phone, or hand your card to a waiter in a restaurant.

But the biggest dumbasses are the people who sponsored the survey, and the Globe who published the result under a scare headline. If 40% of people are so concerned that they won’t be shopping online, it’s reasonable (though not definitive) to think that 60% of people *aren’t* concerned enough to avoid shopping online.

As big a twat as I think the man is, I have to agree with him on this.

You know when your dentist says, “Whew…I never want to do a filling like that again!” that it wasn’t fun for him. I didn’t find it so bad; after the two needles I just sat there and watched CNN. Granted, my upper left gumline now feels like an innnertube, but there was no pain and you don’t really have to do much except lie there and listen to him drill shit. Still, he said that the cavity was so deep that the gum had started growing into the gap over the old filling, so he had to, and I quote: “Get rid of some of that gum tissue.” I suspect that I’ll understand what that means in a few hours when the freezing wears off.

As I said earlier, it’s not even my fault that I have this goddamn cavity. I’ve always taken pretty good care of my teeth, and this is the only cavity I’ve ever had. But when I was younger — maybe 11 or 12 — I had some appliances put on my teeth to keep them from crowding together. My orthodontist, who was both a sadist and a putz, left the hooks from this appliance on my upper back teeth in case I ever wanted braces. They stayed there for six or seven years, and I never did get the braces, so finally my usual dentist took them off. “Uh oh,” says he. “They put this on wrong. It’s too far from the tooth. A cavity’s formed where food got in between.” Brilliant. And he tells me this just a few days before I move to Toronto, so there’s no time for him to fix it, but it doesn’t hurt anyway. I guess the nerve wasn’t exposed or something.

A few months after moving up here, as I’m eating some french fries, I feel something crunchy in my mouth. I start to freak out ’cause I assume something hard and sharp was in my fries; turns out a big chunk of that tooth had just broken off. I find a dentist post haste. He gives me my first filling, during which I fall asleep and he has to prop my mouth open with some kind of spring-loaded tarpaulin. I ignore his instructions about not eating for a few hours and promptly chew the shit out of my tongue.

So, anyway, more years go by and that filling just wasn’t doing the job anymore, hence my trip to the fun chair today. All seems well for now, but talk to me around 1:00 and see if I’m still in a good mood.