Author: Dan Dickinson

Water, water everywhere, but trust me, you do not want to drink it

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On sunny & windy days, this is a pretty typical view: beaucoup de sailboats. More pics over at flickr.

.:.

Enough already with the whining about gas prices. Seriously. It’s cheaper than milk. It’s cheaper than orange juice, Coke or cough syrup. It’s cheaper than bottled water. And yet, there are people like this:

“It’s always like this,” Harris said as she filled her SUV at the Esso station at Lake Shore Blvd. E. and Leslie St. “They spike it up on weekends. They spike it up on the long weekend. They always have an excuse. It’s refinery problems, or it’s terrorism in the Middle East, or hurricanes. Oil is down, so there’s no reason for high prices.”

First of all, you drive an SUV, there’s no reason for you to complain about high gas prices either. If you can afford a gas guzzler, you can’t be strapped for cash.

Second…the same free market economy that made you wealthy enough to buy an SUV is what makes gas prices go up and down according to demand. Of course they’re out to charge you as much as they can; why wouldn’t they? YOU KEEP PAYING IT!!

And please, no excuses about “I need my car to get to work.” Buy a smaller car. Take public transit. Bike. Walk. Car pool. Choose to live closer to work in the first place. If you can’t (or won’t) do any of those things, then by all means, produce the contract you signed when you bought your car stating that gas prices would never, ever go up. Don’t have one? Then buy some oil company stock to offset the losses that you’ve chosen to inflict on yourself.

Side note: it’s interesting to watch the Toronto Star cover stories like this. On one hand, the Star wants to stick to big business and take the side of the poor consumer, but on the other hand they want to be the environmental advocate (ironic, considering they’re a newspaper) so they come across as conflicted in these cases.

.:.

As much as I despised Jerry Falwell, and as cold an emotionless as I can be sometimes, and as much as I think it’s hilarious, I simply cannot bring myself to buy this shirt.

[note: if you don’t get the punchline, read this.]

.:.

A week-old post on Torontoist that I didn’t look at until just now has some great concert footage of the Arcade Fire. The scene in the middle of the clip is the best one; my favourite part is how Richard Reed Parry replicates a snare drum sound.

[tags]toronto, lake ontario, sailboats, spire condominium, gas prices, toronto star, jerry falwell, torontoist, arcade fire[/tags]

Working for the weekend

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OK…just barely awake at this point. Got up at 6, got to work by 7, had hectic-ass day, and left work at 8…didn’t feel tired until I got to the Auld Spot, where Nellie & CBGB were waiting for me, and around 1/4 of the way through my second beer (and following a very good veggie burger) I hit the wall. Sleeeeeeeeepy. I finished my drink (I’m not dead, after all), got the bill and then got a cab. I wouldn’t have stayed awake for the subway ride home.

Now…must try to stay awake long enough to watch the end of the Spurs-Suns game 6…Icandoit…

Note to self: remember to write paper (which is due Tuesday) this weekend.

[tags]auld spot[/tags]

Paging languor

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So much for finding a little downtime. Work has been teh nuttiness for the past couple of weeks, I have a paper due Tuesday that I haven’t even started yet and the condo to-do list grows faster than I can knock it down.

Today wasn’t so bad though; despite being at work for 11 hours I had lots of energy when I got home, and I think it’s because of the concert last night. Music is my meditation.

[tags]downtime[/tags]

Us kids know

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Just got back from the Arcade Fire concert at Massey Hall. I’m very tired and I need sleep so this will be brief, but suffice it to say that since AF concerts are legislated under government law to kick ass, we enjoyed ourselves. Point form recap*:

  • I couldn’t take my eyes off Regine. She was completely full of energy tonight, and seemed to be having a blast. The way she was dancing during “Haiti” or strutting around the stage during “Antichrist Television Blues”, she was just magnetic. I watched her far more than I watched Win or anyone else.
  • Chill moments: the end of “No Cars Go”, ‘I don’t want to live in America no more…’, the end of “Haiti” (always so much better live), “Rebellion (Lies)” start to finish and the 2nd encore: “Neighbourhood #1”.
  • I apparently missed the memo, ’cause I wasn’t wearing a hoodie.
  • Massey Hall good: I can walk home in five minutes; Massey Hall bad: the crazy ass seats. No matter how many times I sit in them I will never get used to them. I guess it doesn’t matter; the second AF walked on stage we were on our feet.
  • There were a lot of…umm, older folks at the concert.
  • I have a crush on Sarah Neufeld.
  • The middle of the show dipped a bit, just because the 2nd-tier songs on Neon Bible can’t keep up the intensity of the anthemic songs from Funeral. It was kind of nice, though, to have that texture sandwiched in between all the bombast. I just wish people would resist the urge to clap along to a quiet, lovely song like “Neon Bible”.

Many thanks to my friend BN for miraculously finding us some tickets at (almost) the 11th hour, and to M2 for picking the tickets up and coming along.

Good night.

* “Point Form Recap” would be a great name for a band

[tags]arcade fire, massey hall, sarah neufeld[/tags]

Six of one…

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I don’t get all the hubbub about Scientology. Why is it such a big deal? Why is everyone so freaked out about Tom Cruise or Kirstie Alley or John Travolta being part of this religion? Why would a BBC reporter yell things like “Are you a member of a sinister brainwashing cult?” at Hollywood stars as they walk down a red carpet? Or, more to the point, why wouldn’t he yell it at Christians? Or Jews? Or Muslims, or Hindus, or Buddhists, or anyone else who’s public* about their religious beliefs? Because really, can anyone explain why Scientology should be taken any less seriously than any other cult** that’s currently in vogue? Does anyone give Madonna grief about her designer religion*** as she’s walking down the street?

Obviously, I religion’s silly in general, but I find it particularly baffling that one religious person could look at another and think they’re silly for acting that way.

* really though, in the grand Hollywood scheme of things, the afore-mentioned Scientologists aren’t very public at all. when was the last time you heard someone thank Xenu at an awards show?

** yes, cult; after all, what’s a religion but a cult with some longevity?

*** waitaminnit…is Kaballah even fashionable these days? you never hear about it anymore…

[tags]scientology, religion, kaballah, hollywood[/tags]

Lather. Snort. Repeat.

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My shampoo is tingly. Really, really tingly, almost to the point of burning or poison ivy or something. Anyway, I’m sure it’s meant to be good for my scalp or my hair or both, so I don’t mind the tingliness. However, today, I somehow took breath in just as a big blob of it was running down my face and happened to be just in front of my left nostril, so a bunch of this tingly-ass shampoo shot up my nose.

This, I don’t mind telling you, was not how I planned to spend my nice hot relaxing shower. Now I had to do something, but I also had a bunch more frothing shampoo about to run in to my eyes, so even as my sinuses were disintegrating in the face of this new terror I had to calmly rinse the rest of it from my hair, all while blowing all the air out my nose that I could manage. I wasn’t really thinking about how stupid I must have sounded; instead, all I could think was that maybe I should give baths another try.

Anyway, I didn’t care what the bottle said, I was not going to repeat.

.:.

Last night was the first chance we’ve had in ages to just sit and watch some TV. Actually, to be clear, we didn’t watch TV, but rather watched a few episodes of The Sopranos on the laptop. We’re trying to catch up for the final episode; there’s no way we’ll be able to avoid hearing about the series finale.

.:.

So, we knew it was inevitable that we’d eventually lose some of our view, but we didn’t think it would happen so soon. I suppose those buildings — at the foot of Yonge Street, just west of the Redpath sugar factory — won’t be built for a while, and it’s only a small chunk of our view, but it’s one of the best views we have of the islands. Perhaps, both for the sake of our view and the good of the waterfront, city council will find a way to stop the development and put a park there.

[tags]shampoo, sopranos, toronto condos, yonge street[/tags]

Umm, so…when can I get a 40 exabyte Zen?

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It’s been a beeeeezy day. I was up at 6:30; never really got back to sleep. We got a lot done with the condo today, actually; I cleaned up the den and collapsed a bunch of boxes, and we did even more once Nellie got home. Took a pile of stuff down to our (very small…grrr) storage locker and recycled piles of old cardboard & newspaper. We also set up most of the stereo (no surround speakers yet as we have to buy stands). Somewhere in there Nellie went for brunch and a wine & cheese tasting; I had time to knock off a ton of errands, set up my new Zen, watch a hockey game and a football match (Toronto FC: 3 goals (!) and a win) and get my mother hooked on a web 2.0 geneology site.

.:.

Go watch this. I wouldn’t say it’s the world’s best presentation, but it’s informative.

[tags]moving in, unpacking, zen vision m, geni.com, shift happens[/tags]

"Like Bynes, or Hope."

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The Office is the ballsiest show on American network TV right now. If you watched tonight’s episode you’ll know what I mean when I say Pam’s speech was a great example of that. They could’ve done the easy, obvious thing, which is precisely what most other shows would do. But they didn’t, and it was one of the best single minutes of TV I’ve seen this year.

[tags]the office[/tags]