I made a hard decision last night. For about 6 years I’ve been a faithful Globe and Mail subscriber, but last night I cancelled my subscription. I was incredibly annoyed by two things: 1) their move to paid-only content on their site, and 2) that someone like myself, already paying $28 a month for the paper edition, would be forced to spend another $8 to get to the same articles online. I can understand paying extra to get additional online stories and functionality, but paying twice for the same content just pisses me off.

I often link to stories from my blog, in order to discuss or further a point. I will no longer use the Globe as a source for many stories (nor could I; many stories are off limits to the general public).

So, as much as it pained me to do so, I ditched them. The Globe has lost my monthly subscription fees, and my advertising-revenue-generating web traffic (light as it may be). I’ll hate not being able to read my beloved Globe in the mornings, but I disagree with what they’re doing. I encourage all of you to cancel your subscriptions if you feel the same way; if you’re not a subscriber, send the Globe an email (Letters@GlobeAndMail.ca) to complain.

Cleaning out my hard drive, I’ve found some old concert reviews & such from before the days when I had an “official” blog (what I used before I built before we called it “blogging”). They’ll be posted here in the next little while. Since I’m going to properly timestamp them I’m not sure they’ll show up in the RSS feed; if they don’t, these are what I’ll be posting:

• Sigur Ros – Sep 2001
• …Trail Of Dead – Mar 2002
• Spiritualized – Apr 2002
• New Pornographers – Jul 2003
• Blue Man Group – Jul 2003
• top ten cd list – dec 2001
• top ten cd list – dec 2002

Never, ever try studying while listening to The Fiery Furnaces‘ Blueberry Boat. It’s like playing chess next door to a cockfight.

We’ve now bumped into Stanzi twice in the last 48 hours. I think she’s stalking us.

A quick scan of Rotten Tomatoes for Ladder 49 review gives you the few key words you need to know: “safe”, “earnest”, “flat”, “boilerplate”, “predictable”, and so on. Good enough to be entertaining for a couple of hours, not good enough to make me ever think of it again.

Things like this have been written on walls around where I live. I’m thinking of taking a walk tomorrow down all the side streets around here to see if I can find more…

We went to see Friday Night Lights (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night. When I first saw the ads I simply thought we were going to have another Another Given Sunday or Varsity Blues on our hands, but manoman…was I wrong. It was a football movie — not a high school movie — but it was a football movie that managed not to be enthralled with football, simply enthralled with the lives and the pressures of the kids who play it.

And what made it that much better — to me, anyway — was the soundtrack, compiled almost entirely of music from Explosions In The Sky. Mostly it added the same nuance that Billy Bob Thornton did, but by times was nearly as ferocious as the performance by Tim McGraw(!).

Without a doubt, one of the best sports movies I’ve ever seen. Nearly up there with Hoosiers (imdb | rotten tomatoes).

We walked down to the construction site today, to see our beloved hole in the ground. A fine hole it is too.

And may I just say that even walking past the Eaton Centre is getting annoying?

JibJab is at it again.

Had drinks with a friend from university last night. The Rebel House is quickly becoming our most frequented neighbourhood pub. Maybe it’s the beer selection, maybe it’s the Muskoka short ribs. I’m taking another friend there in a week or two. His last two trips here I took him to C’est What and Smokeless Joe’s, so the RH seems like the next logical place.