Let's all personally groom in a public place

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Tonight we saw the world premiere of Let’s All Hate Toronto (hot docs), a funny & quirky little documentary about Torontonians confusion as to why the rest of the country dislikes them. I read the blog kept by Rob Spence (aka Captain Canada) when he was travelling across the country holding Toronto Appreciation Days, much to the anger and dismay of Canadians everywhere. There was nothing groundbreaking or insightful about the documentary; it was just good fun.

Except for the really loud lady sitting behind us who, unless I’m mistaken, was cutting her fingernails during the film. Awesome.

.:.

Why, why does our environment minister look just like Lester from Mississippi Burning? And why does he spout alarmist rhetoric like “meeting our Kyoto targets will put us in a recession”?

.:.

All Quiet On The Western Front might be remade. It’s one of the few movies I’d look forward to a remake of…if it’s done right. All this talk about making it into a “big budget, sweeping Hollywood epic” smacks of Pearl Harbor, and nobody wants that.

.:.

On the eve of the Toronto Raptor’s playoff series against New Jersey, I feel nervous. While confident that Toronto is the better team, should New Jersey pull off an upset, the psychological scarring that would result from losing to Vince Carter in the playoffs would be deep and long-lasting. Here’s hoping Bosh hangs a triple-double on them tomorrow, and that Kris Humphries or Joey Graham put sissyboy on his ass once or twice.

[tags]let’s all hate toronto, john baird, kyoto, recession, all quiet on the western front, toronto raptors, vince carter[/tags]

Little boxes, on the counter, little boxes made of ticky-tacky…

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Yeah, I’m pretty much tired of packing now. We’re almost out of boxes; I’ll have to try to locate some tomorrow. You can barely even walk through the apartment now. Tomorrow I’ll have to take the computer down, tear the desk apart and move stuff into the den just to make some room.

.:.

Bob Ezrin: “Thank God for Trent Reznor.” [via Torontoist]

.:.

I had a chocolate & raspberry crepe this morning, from this place. It were awwwwwwful good.

[tags]moving, bob ezrin, trent reznor, nine inch nails, crepes a gogo[/tags]

We have no room to stand, but we have a plan

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The apartment is now a disaster zone. It’s pretty small to begin with, so with all our possesions get crammed into piles of boxes — empty, unsorted, ready to go — it doesn’t leave much room for moving around. Duarte came by to get the printer tonight and I think he felt he’d stepped into early-90s Sarajevo. I’ve taken half the desk apart, all the bookcases have been emptied, the bathroom is all but cleaned out and the storage locker is bare, save for the electronics boxes. Tomorrow is the kitchen, Friday is clothing, Saturday is everything else, and Sunday is the electronics.

.:.

Torontoist says: Happy Birthday, Camros (the organic food place across the street from me). If you live in the neighbourhood and vegan/organic is your cup of tea, you should give it a try. If it’s not but you like sweets, you should stop in and grab a brownie or a piece of carrot cake, courtesy of Sweets From The Earth. So good it hurts (eventually).

[tags]packing, moving, camros, sweets from the earth[/tags]

Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib

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We very stupidly bought tickets for a Hot Docs screening 36 hours before we move. I know, I know. We’re not the swiftest of cats sometimes. Anyhoo, we’re now selling those tickets so that we can stay home on Saturday night and pack our socks and frying pans. If anyone would like to buy our tickets (for a discount, natch) to the following screening please email me or leave a comment:

Ghosts Of Abu Ghraib (description)

Saturday April 21 @ 9:30

Bloor Cinema (Bloor & Bathurst) Isabel Bader Theatre (Charles & Bay)

Dang…I really wanted to see that one too. Any takers?

Hey, I know: how about a show called Video Game Killer Investigations?

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Now that the carnage at Virginia Tech is past and the identities are known, I have another fear: that useful reactions to what happened will be ignored in favour of the irrational. My wager is that politicians will be scared to raise gun control as an issue, but that some bright light will call for the FBI/police to monitor creative writing assignments to screen for violent content, just as calls went out to restrict video games after the shootings at Columbine.

Interesting note from Wired: 8 hours after the VT shootings Reuters had raised the spectre of video games once again.

.:.

Still in a betting mood, I’ve got $20 that says the Globe’s Andrew Ryan is right about the inevitable creation of a CSI channel. I think maybe it’ll start out as a Law & Order/CSI channel; twice as many episodes that way. And hey, maybe they could add on Cold Case and Without A Trace and Crossing Jordan and just call it the Vanilla Predictable Investigation Channel. Their tagline: don’t think too hard.
[tags]virginia tech, gun control, creative writing, video games, csi, law & order, cold case, without a trace, crossing jordan[/tags]

Je suis fatigue

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Oh dear, I’ve forgotten to blog. Packing up your life into cardboard will do that, I s’pose. The cats are digging it ’cause they can scale the piles of boxes and crawl into the empty ones. The Dandy Warhols cover of “She Sells Sanctuary” is not as good as I would have thought. Is this week over yet? As nuts as it sounds, I’m kinda having fun ’cause we’re throwing out a whack (a metric whack, not an imperial whack) of stuff. Speaking of that, Duarte, come get your printer. Mogwai‘s Barry Burns thinks it’s high time Keith Richards dies and I can’t say I disagree that strongly. I’m surprised Trom hasn’t called me for more maple leaves yet; he was pretty much mainlining them by the end of the day.

OK, must sleep. I have four hours of meetings tomorrow and (yay) more packing to (yay) do. (yay)

[tags]moving, dandy warhols, mogwai, keith richards, (yay)[/tags]

It's like a puzzle, but with heat

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One of the things we’d noticed in the new condo was that the thermostats display in Fahrenheit, not Celsius. Personally, I have no concept of Fahrenheit temperature so that had to go. We tried playing around with the settings, fiddling with buttons, looking for switches, but to no avail. It stayed in Fahrenheit.

Tonight, going through some documents, Nellie found instructions on how to change it. It reads as follows:

  1. Bring the heat setting down to 52°F.
  2. Press the up and down arrows at the same time until the screen clears.
  3. Press the up arrow twice and then press the down arrow once. Then press the up arrow again until the setting changes to Celcius.

Well, my face is red. That’s so intuitive; how could I have not figured that out on my own?

[tags]thermostat, fahrenheit, celsius[/tags]

t-minus-8

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Busy day. I reviewed & submitted my term paper, went for a run, went down to see Nellie at the condo, bought groceries, cleaned the apartment, threw out all the old food in the fridge, packed up all the books and DVDs, answered a bunch of work emails and watched the Raptors beat the Knicks.

Something else I finished up today was loading Nellie’s old MP3 player with country songs. She’s giving it to her mother,who wouldn’t know how to loadit with music, so I pre-loaded it for her. It is the first — and last — time that Alan Jackson will ever touch my hard drive.

.:.

On a completely different note, go read this post by Dave at The Galloping Beaver. It’s the most troubling and illuminating thing you’ll read today.

[tags]moving, the galloping beaver[/tags]

I am Jack's [li] tag

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My life is very, very point form right now. Nellie’s down at the new condo painting while I clean up the mess that has become our old place and write a paper for my class. We were up at 6-something this morning to pick up the car (from Autoshare) and drive to home depot, so the only thing keeping me awake right now is a steady Diet Pepsi drip.

Meanwhile, I have these for you:

OK, back to work.