The chocolate croissants from Holt Renfrew: very tasty, and very messy. Do not attempt to eat while wearing a dark suit.

Confluence: Last night Ricky Gervais was on The Daily Show. It was a good time, if a little more subdued than I was expecting. I guess maybe I was hoping for madcap comic genius, but Ricky looked a little freaked out.

“Winchester Cathedral” by Clinic is one of the best songs you’ll ever hear without understanding a goddamn word the singer says.

The latest copy-protection assholes: The Dandy Warhols. Their new CD doesn’t rip. Jackasses.

Models use cocaine? You’re fucking kidding me!

People in Ontario & Quebec say “out west”, meaning the prairies. Somehow we forget about BC. People in the prairies say “out east”, meaning Ontario & Quebec. Somehow they forget about the Atlantic Provinces.

Weird.

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” -Voltaire

Stanzi just sent me this political compass test. My scores were:

Economic Left/Right: -5.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.74

That puts me slightly on the libertarian side of Gandhi (!), somewhere around the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. That hardly seems right, but I suppose I have the luxury of answering a web poll rather than fighting for my beliefs in a jail cell. I’m surprised that I scored so far to the left economically though…you’d think a business degree, a pending MBA and years of working for a bank would have drilled Friedmanesque free market capitalism dogma into my head.

1. The Daily Show. Mocks the news media while showing it up. Watch the Daily Show for a week and then try to watch Leno; it’s like switching from a gourmet meal to a TV dinner.
2. Arrested Development. We just finished watching the first season on DVD, and rather than wait for season two to come out we started watching season three last night. The show’s all about timing and perfectly executed use of the 3-second flashback.
3. The Office. While it can never capture the originality of the British series, it’s still miles ahead of anything else on the major networks.

Have I mentioned how much I want one of these? Ask my wife how much I drooled on the magazine ad I saw last night…

[UPDATE: Actually, what I really want is one of these.]

Few songs can cheer up a generally lousy day like Sonic Youth‘s “Theresa’s Sound World”.

Whew. That was quite a day. Nellie and I are both a little pooped after a visit from my brother, his wife and their three kids. We sat here at our place for a while, had some McDonald’s, went to the Ontario Science Centre (where we saw a presentation with Sony’s QRIO robot…which was really. Freaking. Cool.). After we walked all over that place we went to the Rainforest Cafe at Yorkdale Mall. By that time the kids were pretty much zonked, and we definitely were, so we crawled onto the subway and slunk home, vowing to have redundant operations to ensure we’d never have kids of our own. I mean, we love our nieces and nephews, but our cats would never forgive us (Michael spent their whole visit cowering in corner fo the bedroom).