Author: Dan Dickinson

b Profitable

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Here’s how today went:

  • Got haircut
  • Rousted Nellie out of bed and got some breakfast (well, brunch; it was after 12 by this point) downtown at b Espresso Bar. I like it there
  • Stopped in at Henry’s to see if they have the wide-angle lens we’vebeen looking for. They do. We shall go back soon and see if they’ll take our old camera on trade
  • Went to the condo sales centre. We just wanted another look at the model suite similar to our unit, but Nellie was convinced they wouldn’t show us if they knew we’d already bought, so we pretended to be in the market for a new condo. We had a look around, and also got an updated price list. This was interesting, as the one remaining unit like ours listed for $53,000 more than we paid, and our particular unit’s much better (much higher, 400 sq. foot balcony, higher ceilings, better finishings, etc.). Nice to know that 3 years of waiting has paid off fiscally…so far
  • Watch Montreal lose to the Islanders
  • Tried to nap
  • Bought groceries
  • Worked on paper for MBA course
  • Wrote this

.:.

After giving the Arcade Fire‘s Neon Bible several listens, I’m convinced it’s at least in the same ballpark as Funeral and has the potential to be just as good, if not as…I don’t know, epic. It has two brilliant songs, “Intervention” and “Antichrist Television Blues”; are they as good as “Neighbourhood #1” and “Rebellion (Lies)”? I’ll need a few hundred more listens to know for sure.

.:.

How cute is my wife? Tonight, while I finished up a paper for school, she watched Pretty In Pink in the other room. Wait, wait, that’s not the cute part (in fact, I find everything about that movie fairly repulsive, especially Molly Ringwald). Here’s the cuteness: when I took a break and went into the bedroom to watch a bit of the Raptors game, she slid a piece of paper under the door that said, in huge letters, “Je t’aime”.

Awwwww.

[tags]b espresso bar, henry’s camera, spire condominium, arcade fire[/tags]

Quel match

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I just finished watching the Montreal/Nashville game…and what a game it was. 6-5 the final with the Canadiens winning in the 4th round of the shootout. Montreal never led in the game; they trailed by 1 or 2 goals the entire night until Sergei Samsonov (!) tied it with 48 seconds left. Nashville scored 2 goals by bouncing it off Canadiens’ defenders, so it would’ve been a tough loss. Honestly I was ecstatic that they’d steal a point on the road against the best team in the NHL; that they won it in the shootout was just a bonus.

Jaroslav Halak is now 3-0 since being called up from Hamilton. Let the canonization begin.

[tags]montreal canadiens, nashville predators, jaroslav halak[/tags]

All of a sudden I have new music

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Bought three new albums today, from three different online stores:

  • Explosions In The Sky . All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone (from eMusic)
  • Great Lake Swimmers . Ongiara (from Zunior)
  • Clinic . Walking With Thee (from Puretracks)

By the way, if you haven’t heard of Zunior, it’s a great place to find Canadian music. Their prices are excellent, they use MP3 format, they include the album art in the download and you can even download high-quality lossless files for an additional $2/album.

[tags]explosions in the sky, great lake swimmers, clinic[/tags]

Hypocrites 1; Telus 0

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You may remember me talking about how Telus is now selling porn via their cellphones. Well, they bowed to pressure from some customers and the Catholic church — who, let’s face it, really are the moral yardstick by which we should measure ourselves — and stopped the service.

Russell Smith weighs in with a logical, sensible response. Not that I expect his column to change many minds; sense and logic haven’t exactly carried the day thus far.

The way I see it: you can hate porn, or you can love porn, or you can admit that (as Smith points out) the definition of what’s porn and what isn’t is fuzzy at best. What I don’t understand is how you can argue that porn on cellphones is somehow more evil or damaging than on TV, computer screens, magazines or phone lines.

.:.

I just finished my uncle’s WWI book; I don’t know exactly why, but this time around I found it even more engaging. Maybe it was that The Guns Of August provided such a good introduction, or maybe I could just keep all the place & officer names straight this time. Anyway, I blasted through it in record (since I started the MBA, anyway) time. I’ll start Paris 1919 today since I’m home on sick leave.

By the way, the best line from the book was the very last:

“When he read the peace treaty, Marshal Foch burst out, ‘This isn’t peace! This is a truce for twenty years!’ The Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919. Twenty years and sixty-seven days later, Great Britain and France declared war on Hitler’s Germany.”

[tags]telus, cell phone porn, russell smith, WWI, treaty of versailles[/tags]

My Nomad's current playlist

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  • besnard lakes . “for agent 13”
  • bloc party . “i still remember”
  • broken west . “down in the valley”
  • champion . “keep on”
  • cinch . “get up and get out”
  • hands . “so sweet”
  • kristin hersh . “in shock”
  • loney, dear . “i am john”
  • pablo . “wall street”
  • prids . “let it go”
  • silversun pickups . “lazy eye”
  • talking heads . “sugar on my tongue”
  • wrens . “13 months in 6 minutes”
  • youth group . “sorry”

[tags]nomad, playlist[/tags]

By the left…quick March!

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The first week and a half of March is looking pretty sweet:

  • March 2: Black Snake Moan and Zodiac hit theatres
  • March 6: the new Arcade Fire album Neon Bible drops (officially, anyway; I’ve already listened to it, but I’ll still buy it)
  • March 9: 300 comes to theatres

Of course, there are more good movies (like Sunshine) and albums (like Ted Leo‘s Living With The Living) coming later that month, and then comes the sports fiesta — March Madness, NHL playoffs, NBA playoffs — during which I become one with my TV. Besides, it’s usually starting to feel pretty spring-y by late March/early April, and spring’s my favourite time of year.

[tags]black snake moan, zodiac, arcade fire, 300, sunshine, ted leo, i love march[/tags]

Congestion: media & traffic

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I used to think John McCain being the American president wouldn’t be too bad, but between his continued support for the Iraq war and his recent statements about overturning Roe v. Wade, he’s become as unpalatable as the other candidates. OK, maybe not as unpalatable as Sam Brownback, but unpleasant nonetheless.

And I, like most people, am shocked to find myself agreeing with something that Newt Gingrich said:

“Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Friday said the early kickoff to the 2008 presidential race was ‘stupid’ despite a recent poll putting him in third place among Republican candidates.

‘I think the current process of spending an entire year running in order to spend an entire year running in order to get sworn in in January 2009 is stupid,’ Gingrich said at a news conference for his new book, ‘Winning the Future.'”

Amen. Or something.

.:.

Once again, the topic of a congestion charge for driving in downtown Toronto has been raised.  This time we get the hilarious input of CAA spokesperson Faye Lyons:

“In our view, this is just another tax on the already overburdened motorists.”

Absolutely. Overburdened motorists are tragic figures in today’s society, what with how they’ve been forced to shell out tens of thousands of dollars for a comfortable vehicle in which they can ride to work alone. I mean, c’mon, what do you expect them to do? Car pool? Work closer to home? Take public transit? I ask you, sir, have fascists taken over? Is that what’s happened?

Ahem.

Obviously I’m all for this idea. I do think you have to be careful about how you charge people living downtown but still have legitimate needs for a car (families, for example) but if you make the charge a flat fee — say, just over twice the price of two TTC metropasses — I think that’d be fair.

[tags]john mccain, sam brownback, newt gingrich, toronto congestion charge[/tags]

Which reminds me: Le Gourmand is selling whisky-filled chocolate now…

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Guinness Marmite? My brother is going to lose his mind.

.:.

Bought three DVDs today. Well, I didn’t really buy them; I sort of won them, kinda-like. Anyway, here’s what I picked up:

  • Brick
  • The Departed
  • Heat (special edition)

Between the special edition sound level and my fancy-pants stereo, I can actually hear what the hell Jon Voight’s saying in this movie. Speaking of Heat, every time I watch it I’m amazed by how many good actors are in it: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Val Kilmer, Jon Voight, Tom Sizemore, Natalie Portman, Dennis Haysbert (President Palmer!), Amy Brenneman (Judge Amy!), Ashley Judd, Ted Levine (Buffalo Bill!), Mykelti Williamson (Bubba!), Wes Studi (Magua!), Diane Venora, Danny Trejo…plus Jeremy Piven (Ari!), William Fichtner, Hank Azaria (Moe!), Henry Rollins, Tone Loc and Xander Berkeley (Mason!) in bit parts. Amazin’.

[tags]guinness, marmite, brick, the departed, heat[/tags]

"Do you feel bad about this?"

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We just got back from watching Little Children (imdb | rotten tomatoes).  It was good. Very good. It was good enough that I think it’ll take a few days for it all to sink in. There were a lot of things under the covers that need to marinate, and I try not to decipher things while I still watching a film. This one’ll still be catching up with me two days from now, like In The Bedroom did.

[tags]little children, todd fields[/tags]