Move over the Onion

Apparently the Star is trying to take the Onion's place as the world's source of hilarious headlines:

On the subject of Rob Ford's dismissal of democracy as "irrelevant"

Here's the press conference. Skip to 2:05.

Pathetic Fallacy

After last week's core service "review" pandemonium, the city continues to come apart at the seams as buildings and raised highways fall apart in sympathy with the administrative dismantling of our once great (or at least Good) city.

Admittedly, ours is not the only city which threatens to crush its citizens, but then again, who *wouldn't* want to crush Montreal drivers.

Wrong question

There are a lot of headlines in the news right now asking why His Corpulence will not be attending the Gay Pride Parade. But I think this question misses the point entirely. The real question is: how could the people of the largest city in a country built on acceptance and tolerance, with an enormous and thriving gay community have elected a mayor who would shun the biggest gay event of the year in his first year in office? The parade is obviously a very big deal to a lot of the citizens of this city. If it is this important that the mayor attend, maybe this needs to be made a campaign issue. I think, at the very least, it would make a good indicator as to whether we're electing a tolerant mayor who wants to help all the people of the city, or an angry fat innumerate moron who is ideologically hellbent for (next) election on tearing everything great about this city to the ground.

If you're one of those people who is asking the question, "why would the mayor go to the Pride Parade? Ick," I highly recommend you go yourself. You really have to experience it firsthand. Even if the party isn't your style, it's hard to argue against something that brings so many people so much joy. And hey, who knows, maybe you'll surprise yourself and have a good time anyway.

Ultimately, it is the mayor's personal decision as to whether he attends the Pride Parade and maybe cajoling him in the headlines will change his mind. But I think the headline space is more appropriately used for real political matters. I can't call my councilor and ask him to make Rob Ford attend the Parade, but I can certainly call and write and ask him to push very hard against the mayor's handpicked whipped councilors on the Public Works Committee's recent decision to spend 10s-to-100s of thousands of dollars on removing bike lanes which are, by all accounts, not in anyone's way.

Technology

My favourite thing about technology is how easy it makes bad parenting.

From the Toronto Star:

Also, does anyone really think that a kid who can download a full Bluray quality movie in 8 seconds is going to be spending any time at all in the park?

Easy Does It

It would appear that some of my previous posts have raised the hackles of some Lt. Colonel in the Ford Nation armed forces. Well, tough. I think the second you run for public office, you open yourself to all manner of criticism, lampooning, etc. So I don't ever feel bad for criticising a politician.

You might say his weight has nothing to do with his official position and is therefore not fair game. Au contraire, I retort. I think Ford's weight problem has everything to do with the political woes of this city. Because first of all, he is not simply a bit chubby. We're not talking about someone who could stand to get a bit more exercise but is otherwise healthy. We're talking about someone who is probably morbidly obese or super obese* (worst. superpower. ever.). The health problems that come with that are a serious concern in a civic leader. For example, what if he dies in office? That would be chaos for the city.

But that is really just the obvious problem. The bigger problem is what his weight problem represents -- that is, his lack of self control. While it's possible that there are some genetic factors here, his machiavellian brother has half the same genes and isn't morbidly obese. What is more likely is that diet and exercise are the culprits here. But controlling his diet and exercise is not really his style. And that kind of behaviour spills over into council, for example, when a vote doesn't go his way. And of course this lack of maturity is why so many people love him so much.

Self control is hard, but the new mayor peddles easy answers, such as "Toronto has a spending problem, not a revenue problem." This sounds really good because the problem is easy to fix and falls on someone else – someone else is wasting my money. And then, lo and behold, when it turns out Toronto does have a revenue problem, it's someone else's problem again. And when that someone gives him the same hard line he's been running all around the city, he throws a temper tantrum and threatens to begin a war by inventing a sovereign nation.

Because that's the easy answer. But it's an easy answer that is unlikely to accomplish anything but short-term self satisfaction. This city needs a leader who is interested in more than instant gratification. Great things require hard work.

The mayor's weight problem is just symptom of the mayor's lack of self control. And the mayor is a symptom of voters'.

* According to this extremely unscientific source, Don Cherry is 5'11" tall and Rob Ford is a bit taller than Don Cherry in the photos from the infamous inauguration, so if we give him 6'1" and take a wild guess at his weight being 300lbs, we get a body mass index of 39.6.

Fast Ford Nation

Inspired by top user comment on this Toronto Star article. Thanks to everyone in the lab who helped, especially Andrew.

Ford Nation Passport Cover by CJ Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Worship This

According to Wikipedia, most municipal leaders in Canada are called "mayor". Some small areas villages and rural areas still use the term "reeve". There is one exception to this. Niagara-on-the-Lake gets a "lord mayor" instead or a mayor or reeve. This is apparently in recognition of the fact that Niagara-on-the-Lake was once the capital of Upper Canada.

Mayors in Canada are styled "Worship", as in when talking directly to a mayor you say "Your Worship" and when talking about a mayor you say "Her Worship" or "His Worship". What I would like is for Toronto to get an exception to this rule, the way Niagara-on-the-Lake gets an exception to the "mayor" thing. I think that present and future mayors of Toronto should be henceforth styled "Corpulence". As in "Your Corpulence, Mayor of Toronto, I am writing you to ask that you use the considerable weight of your office..." and so on.

I can't find out where these stylings come from, so if you have any information about that, please leave it in the comments. I asked a librarian friend and she didn't know either but she said she suspected that it's a matter of tradition and that the way to "officially" change it would be to simply get people using the term. So, I beseech you to use the considerable weight of your conversation to make my (admittedly petty) dream come true.

Newsflash: Toronto gets cold in winter!

Toronto has issued an "extreme cold weather alert" for this weekend. Because the temperature is supposed to get down to -18ºC. Seriously? There are cities in Canada that would kill for -18ºC right now (all below -18ºC at time of posting).

I think what's really going on here is this: "Alerts are issued to step up support services for homeless people..." Which I think is important. Minus 18º streets are not a place for anyone to sleep.

But can't we find a way to provide extra services for the homeless without sounding like a city of giant pussies?

Lies, Damned Lies and Opinion Polls

The Toronto Star is trying a new tactic in its war on informed democracy today.

Up until now, opinion polling numbers have been reported as fraction of decided voters. So, for example, when they said that Ford had 39% of voter support, what they meant is that 39% of the 64% of the people polled said they would vote for Ford. Which actually means that 24% of the people polled said they would vote for Ford. This tactic was useful in scaring people into thinking they need to vote strategically – I would be willing to bet that almost none of the undecideds were undecided about whether they were going to vote for Ford.

But this morning, they have cleverly switched to simply reporting that second number. Before, if you added up the percentages for each candidate, you'd arrive at 100% and the undecideds would be extra. But today, if you add up the numbers for Ford, Smitherman, Pantalone and Rossi, you get 76% which is conspicuously close to the number claimed in the article as decided voters.

The Star is using this to show the runaway-freight-train-like momentum of Smitherman's campaign. Of course, if you look at the real numbers, Smitherman's current rating looks a lot like his old rating plus Sarah Thompson's rating. So basically, at this point, all the candidates are within the margin of error of their previous values. In fact, if you look back on the opinion polls, there has been basically no change since July, with the exception of Thompson's dropping out.

So again, if you want to feel all clever because your strategic vote kept the Stupidest Man Who Ever Ran For Mayor* out of office, go ahead. We all know how that ends.

Or, you can do your research, learn about the candidates plans for transit and if you still want to vote for Smitherman, we'll argue some more.


* I realize that there have probably been stupider candidates. It's even possible one of them won.

Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish

I would like to rewrite the old adage, "if you look after the pennies, the dollars will look after themselves."

How about something like:
"If you spend enough time bitching about a $4 million gun registry, everyone will forget the $1,000 million 2-day summit , the $10,000 million in unneeded prisons and the $16,000 million on fighter jets you just spent."

The people of Toronto seem to have this disease even worse. The Toronto Star has decided that Ford's budget claims pass the smell-test. I think there is an important implication when using the word "budget" when discussing a mayoral candidate. Because while Ford's claims to have saved the city $1.5 million in his 10 years in office may stand up to scrutiny (insofar as he spent about $1.3 million less than he was allowed to), it would take cutting the staff budgets and expense accounts of all 1,300 councilors to make up the $2,000 million in taxes he wants to cut right away. What? We don't have 1,300 councilors to cut? Well, I'm sure a man smart enough to eliminate Toronto's bedbug problem will come up with something.

Review: Tati Bistro

Disclaimer: I am not a food critic. I did, however, grow up on extremely good food. I have worked in kitchens. I also have a food theory course taught by a Food Network celebrity under my belt as well. So everything I say is perhaps amateurish, but not entirely ungrounded.

I had my second meal ever at Tati Bistro tonight. The first time was when I treated L for her birthday. We had a lot of (very good, 2007 Bon Courage Shiraz) wine that night. Since I was treating L, I had to very discreetly read the bill. Also, the lighting in the Bistro is... understated. I put down what I thought was a fairly generous tip (since the service had been excellent) and left. On awaking the next morning, I did a little mental math in a slightly more sober state and decided that there`s no way the bill came to what I had originally thought. I should have been a good $20 more. I realized that I must`ve stiffed the waitress.

Not being one to stiff a waitress, and certainly not when the service was as good as it had been, I returned the next day to set things right. The maître d’ hunted through the previous night`s bills to find one that matched my order. Finally, he asked which credit card I had used. I told him I`d paid cash, at which point he said it was hopeless, they didn`t keep the cash bills past the end of the night. I described my waitress and he said he could go ask her, disappearing into the basement. She hadn`t remembered being shafted. So, either I didn`t misread the bill, or I got away with leaving a lousy tip and not being remembered for it.

Tonight we took L`s mom there for Mother`s Day.

The ambiance at Tati Bistro is about what you`d expect from a modern trendy downtown restaurant: a little loud, a little crowded and a little underlit. However, the food and service more than make up for these shortcomings.

Tonight I had the baked goat cheese salad. Delicious. Excellent balance between the baked, breaded goat cheese, the croutons and the greens. My entrèe was the steak frites. The frites were exactly the crispy thin frites you`d expect from a French bistro and the steak was extremely flavourful and cooked to perfection. For desert we ordered the cheese platter to share between the four of us. I can definitely recommend the camembert, the chevrot cendrée and an Ontario cowsmilk cheese whose name escapes me.

I also had the housemade cassis sorbet. To. Die. For. And I know frozen desserts. The extremely generous portion of crème brûlée also received rave reviews from the guest of honour.

The prices at Tati Bistro are quite reasonable; two can eat well with with a bottle of wine and either appetizer OR dessert for around $100. This number can come down a bit (or add the delicious, aforementioned cheese plate) if one can make it when the prix fixé menu is available.

My only complaint about the evening (and it is a mild one) is that the waitress was slightly less attentive that the ideal. She was quite friendly and emminently knowledgeable about the menu (which is surprisngly hard to find in Toronto, in my experience). But she just didn't come 'round quite often enough. It is also possible that this is because she was a little starstruck: in the corner opposite our table sat Rachael McAdams, treating her own mother.

Bohemian Like You

I've had a weird last few days.

I got my flu shot. Swine flu that is. The ol' H1N1. It hurt more than any flu shot I've ever had. Like, mobility limiting in my left arm. Also, I think I've determined that I have some kind of repetetive strain problem in my wrists, since those hurt the most. I had the shot Thursday afternoon. Each day after that I woke up in more pain than the day before. Then, miraculously, on Sunday afternoon, the pain vanished. Three days, almost to the hour.

I bought a table on craigslist. The listing claimed the table was in Liberty Village. Then, the seller responded to my email saying that the address was "XXX-XX XXXXX Ave (Liberty Village)". Weird. Apparently this person was very proud of living in Liberty Village. When I got there, I discovered it was a very up-and-coming neighborhood. The exact kind I usually avoid like the plague. The condo where I met the guy to buy the table had a concierge and all the residents were wearing Lululemon. Disturbing. But I got the table and got out alive and without catching yuppie.

The table was for my sewing machine. Which I also bought on craigslist. I paid $25 for it, which works out to about 50¢/lb. I don't know what year it was built, but I suspect it's older than me. It came with a lot of accessories, but not a lot of instructions. Mainly, none. I tried very hard to hunt them down, but the brand name is Domestic; you try a googling "domestic" and "sewing machine" and see how many hits refer to the brand versus how man refer to the adjective.

In desperation, I posted a facebook status pleading for any kind of lead. Fortunately, an old friend of mine managed to discover that the Domestic company was absorbed by the White company and that all White instruction manuals are available on the Singer website, for some reason. It turns out my sewing machine is capable of all sorts of things I didn't suspect like buttons, buttonholes and narrow hems. Not bad, for an old girl.

L dropped by my lab today for coffee, as she had the day off. We went for coffee. This is the first time I've been to my local Starbucks in about a week. This is because a week ago is when the $%&#*$ Christmas decorations went up. November is too G.D. early for Christmas decorations. Also, they've changed their medium/bold coffee to Christmas blend. I complained about this to the barrista who, after mocking me briefly, told me we could call it November blend if that'd make me feel better. It did.

After a long day TAing a 2nd year chem lab, I arrived home to a Toblerone bar on the kitchen table. This would have been a pleasant surprise in and of itself, but it turns out that Toblerones come in $#*@%mas themed cases. Fortunately, L had predicted my rage and replaced the *$(#%masy snowman with a badminton playing pirate.




For our final act of the day, just to prove we're still young, hip and with it, we went out to our local tavern for a little live music. We wouldn't normally go out like that on a Wednesday, but the bar is two blocks from our house and the lead musician in the band is a friend. It's extra weird going to a concert and yelling "I love you Barn" and having the lead singer yell back that he loves you too. I think the band has even improved since last I saw them perform, too, which was a pleasant surprise, since I quite enjoyed their playing last time.

And, on top of all that, a random stranger appears to have stumbled across my blog and added a very welcome comment.

All in all, it was a good day.

A Good Price For Butter

I wrote my first closed-book exam in a very long time today. It was... strange. I'm not sure how I did. L wrote an exam at the same time, although in a very different class. I remember now, though, how exhausting sitting and thinking and remembering and writing for two-and-a-half hours can be.

Afterwards, it was decided that we would have boiled celery for with dinner. This probably sounds weird to most of you, but it's something I grew up eating, although only at Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners. The two important things about cooking celery are 1) don't overcook it and 2) make sure it is swimming in butter. We had celery in the fridge, but I used the last of our butter a few days ago.

It was predicted that the temperature would drop by around 10ºC today, which it did between when we got home from our exams and when I went to get butter. So, out into the suddenly freezing night I went.

I also had to drop a movie off at the video store which was suddenly a lot further away than I remember it being. It then took much longer than it should have to j-walk across the street. This was mainly due to what was almost the world's slowest moving 7-car-pile-up on Bloor St. Thankfully, peoples' reaction times were marginally faster than their glacial progression down Bloor St and no such accident occurred, but it was pretty tense at times.

At the first grocery store I had to ask if they even carried butter at all, so skillfully was it hidden. With the milk? Nope. With the yogurt? Nope. With the cheese? Nope. Oh, there it is, in its own isolated cooler along with eggs, surrounded by non-refrigerated items. And the options appeared to be $9/lb organic butter or $10/lb organic butter.

So down the street to the other grocery store I trundled, exhausted, faithless in my fellow man and its butter supply. Where I discovered that they appear to be discontinuing my favourite flavour of Doritos. Or are experiencing some sort of drought. So I lined up with my butter and chips and salsa (which is a woefully inadequate Doritos replacement, I must say).

Finally, I got to the front.

"Butter is on sale, you know," the cashier informed me.

"But not this one?" I asked, weakly.

"No, Equality. $2.99. Go get some, I'll hold your other stuff here."

I considered briefly. I mostly just wanted to get home and stop caring about butter. Also, I have had less than stellar experiences with the Equality brand before, but really, how badly can you screw up butter? I'm not making icing, here. Frankly, $3/lb for butter is too good a price to turn down. I shoved my way back to the refrigerator, grabbed 2 lbs of butter, and shoved my way back.

I crankily handed the butter to the cashier. She rang it up with my chips and salsa. I paid her mostly in change. As I counted out my loonies, the not-unattractive girl whom I had cut off when I returned with my cheap butter looked at the cash-register.

"That's a good price for butter," she said to me, feigning incredulity.

Suddenly, I smiled. A cute girl was trying to strike up conversation with me in the grocery store. It's possible she was just really shocked about the price of butter and needed to tell someone, but I prefer my take on it. And sometimes it's nice to be reminded that you've still got it.

Uplifted, I told her it was and thanked the cashier for making me go back to get it and headed home to clog my arteries with boiled celery.

Lousy Helpful Stranger

I tend to be very good at losing things. Important things. Wallets, passports, important pieces of paper, keys, cell phones, you name it. Fortunately, these objects have a curious way of finding their way back to me. It's kind of uncanny.

Our office summer party was held on Toronto's Center Island, a short ferry ride away from downtown, but by virtue of that fact, definitely out of the city, in practice. The morning of the office party, I awoke to discover that my wallet had gone missing. By the process of elimination, I managed to deduce that it was either A) in the gutter somewhere between an Indian restaurant out Gerrard and Coxwell and my house or B) in the Alumni Theatre. I had seen some improv there the previous evening.

I finally reached someone at the theatre and they said they didn't know if my wallet was in the theatre. I should try to contact the improv troupe as they were in charge of the theatre for the duration of their run. Being actors, none of them would be up until about 4PM. I had vague plans to be on the 5:30 ferry with a bunch of my coworkers. I finally managed to talk to someone from the improv troupe just before leaving the office. They had found my wallet in the audience! I could come pick it up after the office party.

So I hauled ass over to the office party and had a good old time. Also, a cold, wet old time, as I was the first person to go in the dunk tank. I think I probably also spent the most time in the dunk tank out of anyone. In any case, eventually the party wound down and it was time to head back to the mainland and grab my wallet at the theatre and head to the after party. I went to grab my cell phone out of my pocket to send a text message before leaving. Bam. No cell phone. So here I am, freezing to death on Center Island, about to miss my ferry and completely bereft of wallet and cell phone. I chose to give up the search for the cell phone, as it was now quite dark, and take the ferry back with my coworkers.

I got the wallet back. I tried, unsuccessfully to call my phone from other phones.

The next morning I got an MSN message from my friend T. Someone had found my phone and given T his number! He was on the island. I called him from my house phone, took the ferry over and got my phone. It had fallen out of my pocket when I was drunk and climbing trees. Let that be a lesson to me. Yeah, right. I asked him how he'd managed to give my number to T. He said he just went to my phone book and looked for a girl's name. I laughed. Apparently people who don't know me still know me pretty well.

The way my lost objects always seem to find their ways home is quite handy, sometimes. Unfortunately, though, it can backfire.

I was at the movies with L on Friday night.
"I have to go pee," I told her.
"Me too. Hold this," she said, handing me her shopping bag, which I automatically took, being taken off guard. A split second later I realized what had happened.

The bathrooms at this particular movie theatre are up a flight of stairs. I raced up the stairs ahead of her and dropped the shopping bag on the top step. I turned around to watch the look of dismay on her face only to be confronted by a stranger with a helpful grin on his face, holding the bag I'd dropped. I glumly took it from him and said, "thanks." I'm not sure if I've ever seen L look so smug.

The joke's on her, though: I made sure I touched the bag with my hands before I washed them.

Muscle Memory

I grew up in the Niagara region but I live in Toronto now. It's a little less than 200km, I think from downtown Toronto to my parents' house. My parents live in a small town and on top of that it's not really in the town so much as on the outskirts of it.

The important part is that I didn't have a lot of local entertainment growing up. Pretty much any time I wanted to have fun, it required driving to Niagara Falls or St Catherine's or Welland. All three have movie theatres. Niagara Falls had Clifton Hill, which is the main tourist drag. It's got arcades and haunted houses and really good people watching. St Catherine's and Welland have malls. Any time I wanted to find anything that was even remotely exotic, I had to go to one of those malls. I spent a lot of time in malls as a teenager. There really isn't a lot to do in the Niagara region.

I also spent a lot of time driving around with no particular destination. There isn't a lot to do but there are a lot of roads. I used to really enjoy driving when it was mostly done bombing around those sparsely populated rural areas. I used to be able to find my way home from almost anywhere without a map.

The trip from Toronto to my parents' house is not that hard. It involves 1 highway and 2 roads after the highway. I used to be able to do door to door from my place downtown in about an hour and a half and that was without breaking the speed limit too much. With the volume of traffic these days, and construction, I haven't made the trip in under 2 hours in over a year. One time this summer it took almost 3 hours. Stupid construction.

Fortunately, this time, I had advanced warning about the traffic so I decided to take an alternate route. I exited the QEW at the 406, which goes through St Catherine's, to circumvent the clog. No map in the car, but no problem, right? I grew up doing this. Apparently my brain doesn't remember all that highschool wandering. I drove past the exit I needed to get me back to the QEW. I got off and turned around and missed the exit again.

Finally, exasperated, I got off the highway and drove to the big mall in St Catherine's. Evidently I spent enough time at that mall that I managed to make it home from there without even thinking. Good old muscle memory.

The Unkindness of Strangers

I'm feeling pretty bitter about living in the city right now.

So a friend of mine needed a bike. We tried and tried to find her one and nothing seemed to be quite right. Bikes in the city of TO are way over priced, I think. Especially used ones. So anyway, I dug up some parts and grabbed my mom's old racing frame and went to work putting together the coolest bike ever. During all of that I realised that what I really want to do is put together a fleet of coolest bikes ever and use them to give bike tours of the city.

Since I had a big pile of bike junk already from the first bike, I was already well on my way. I bought a clunker off of craigslist and got another one for free off of craigslist and chained them and all the parts up out front.

I had a friend, H, come visit from out of town. I get around mostly on bike these days so I figured if she and I were going to hang out, she'd need a bike. Also on my bike-to-do list was teaching my friend, A (of breakfast buddy fame) to ride. Can you believe she's never ridden a bike before? Anyway, H and A are of similar size so I figured that the clunker bike was an ideal candidate for both tasks. I fixed it up. H said it was a really smooth ride, despite looking like a pile of rusty bars.

So yesterday morning, I got up and looked out the window at my pile of bike stuff, including the now-functional clunker. Or, rather, not including the clunker. Overnight, someone had stolen it. No teaching A to ride. Great.

After dim sum with the Usual Suspects (I know, dim sum on a Saturday, what the heck?) I met up with an old friend and wandered around the city a bit. I had a small pick-me-up when we ran across a group of buskers on xylophones at Bloor and Spadina. It was really neat. There 5 xylophones.

That temporary regrowth of faith in my fellow man was quite dispelled this morning, however, when I looked out my window to see some guy with a pair of pliers ripping apart one of my frames.

"Hey!" I yelled out the window, "that's my bike!"

"It's not a bike, it's a frame," the guy responded quite calmly. Your logic is infallible, I thought.

"Thanks," I snapped. "It's still mine."

He gestured to my pile of bike stuff and asked if it was all mine. I told him it was.

Without any apology or atonement whatsoever he said "okay" and walked away from the pile.

I think I'm going to get a pellet gun, like one might use for deterring rodents in the country. Not strong enough to really hurt them but enough to sting them and make sure they don't come back for a while.

That way, instead of semantic debates about the differences between the word "bike" and the word "frame" I can vent my frustration and get the point across all at once.

Something In The Air

Ah, Chinatown in the summer.

For those of you who don't know, I live right next to Chinatown in downtown Toronto. I lived in the area once for a few years, moved away for two, then came back. It's a really great place to live, mostly. It's very convenient. I can walk about 20 minutes and reach almost anything - the ROM, the club district, work, the harbour, Queen Street, Little Italy, Koreatown, Yorkville, the list goes on. And except when I'm trying to sleep, living on a major streetcar route is very handy. There's always that one streetcar with the deformed wheel that, instead of gliding silently up the tracks goes "cl-clack cl-clack" as the flat spot hits the track on ever rotation of the wheel.

On the weekend I took a little walk through Chinatown after visiting my garden. There is a Tim Horton's now in Chinatown. I grew up in a small town where Tim Horton's is something of an institution. It is a little unnerving to see something that you equate to small town Ontario with Chinese writing all over it.

After grabbing my iced cappuccino, I walked home. The intersection of Spadina and Dundas is a loud one, to say the least. For as long as I have lived in Toronto, there have been four noisemaking fixtures at that intersection.

First is the old man in front of the dollar store. He claps backscratchers together and sings "Harro. Prease camban yeen. Sank you," over and over all day long. I think I've only ever walked by there once during normal business hours and not seen him. I was pretty worried but the next day I went and he was back. Phew.

Then there's the old man who plays that two stringed Chinese instrument whose name I can never remember. I think it might be called the er hu. He's got the classic Chinese long whispy beard and mustache. I used to quite enjoy listening to his music. Over the years he's gotten less and less musical. It mostly just sounds like random notes now. Interestingly, though, his clothes have gotten nice and nicer. Maybe he discovered that people would give him more money if he sounded pathetic than if he sounded good.

Across Dundas street from the er hu player is Falun Gong. Recently they have taken a much more pleasant, although no less noisy tack. There used to be weird pictures of people being tortured by the government and stuff. Now they have pictures of peace marches and things. But still noisy. Always with the noise.

And finally there is the guy with no arms who plays the keyboard. Sometimes the blind flautist plays with him. Seriously. The no arms guy wails out the melody with his stumps and the keyboard's built in drum machine and chord library take care of the rest. His tunes are usually original (and loud) and quite catchy (and loud). Did I mention loud? Anyway, this weekend for the first time I can remember, I heard him play a cover — there is something quite touching about a man with no arms playing Oh Canada for spare change in Chinatown.

No Discretion

My current abundance of oustanding parking tickets and my search for a laptop computer have yielded memories of when I used to work at the computer store.

The reason I have a lot of parking tickets right now is because Toronto's parking enforcement people are ruthless. I arrived in an area at about 7:00 AM and pay parking didn't start there til 8:00. The machine won't even dispense tickets until 8:00 AM, so I came back around 8:20 to put a ticket in my window. There was already a tag (that's what the city of Toronto calls parking tickets, I guess so as not to confuse them with the tickets you buy from the machines) on my windshield. It had the time 8:06 on it. Ruthless.

So, back to the computer store. One day a cop came in, in uniform, with a laptop in need of repair. I had noticed that a few weeks before the parking officers started wearing bullet proof vests. Up until that point, I hadn't ever noticed a bullet proof vest on a parking enforcement officer.

Apparently the cops don't feel any more kindly towards the parking people than I (or I suspect most of my fellow Torontonians) do.

"Hey, " I said, "do you know if there was a shooting incident with a parking ticket officer?"

"I didn't hear of anything, " responded the cop, "but I wouldn't doubt it. Those guys don't have any discretion: they'd ticket their own mothers."

Mysterious Ways

I had dinner at my favourite Thai restaurant last night. It reminded me of the time that C, my girlfriend at the time, and I were making pad Thai and I said there had to be sweet peppers in it. She swore up and down that there just weren't supposed to be peppers in pad Thai. We asked a jury of our peers and the verdict came up that no, in fact, there simply weren't peppers in pad Thai.

We went out for Thai food a few weeks later and I order pad Thai, as usual. And lo and behold, in it where nice strips of sweet pepper. C decided that prior to that there never had been peppers in pad Thai, but the Universe had changed, in accordance with my insistence, and now there had always been peppers in pad Thai.

I was out for Thai food last night because I had two friends in from out of town, J and S.

I have known S since grade 3. She and I competed all the way through grade school and highschool and are as close as brother and sister now. She always won the popularity contests — she's way hotter than me — but I kicked her ass at calculus. S is now back living in our hometown and working at a really cool consulting company.

J has been one of my best friends steadily since about grade 10. His birthday is a week after mine, so we have managed to make sure that no matter where we both live, at the very least we have a joint birthday party every year. One year we celebrated by driving to Queens University and... creatively redecorating parts of the campus. J is now living in Ohio and doing his dream job — designing boats.

J actually drove a company truck up to Toronto this weekend to make a delivery somewhere just outside the city. It worked out nicely cuz he got to come visit and didn't have to pay for gas or put any miles on his car. S was already in town when J arrived and he managed to find us walking up Spadina. We ran out and jumped into the enormous company truck and road with him up to the parking garage. He'd expression some concern, prior to this point, that his truck might not make the clearance for the garage.

"How tall is the truck?" I asked.

"Dunno."

"Well, how are we going to know if it'll fit in the garage?"

"Only one way to find out!' enthused J.

It turned out there was about 3 inches of clearance. We nearly clipped a number of cars and ran over a group of pedestrians trying to make the turn into the garage off the crowded, cramped street. In the end it was alright. We had a bit of a scare when the antenna scraped a few beams, but you get used to the noise of metal scraping across cement after a while.

I've been asking the Universe for a lot of non-pad Thai-related favours lately. This weekend I asked it help S run into a nice man so that she can move to Toronto and be happy. Evidently, the Universe felt this was a funny request. While the 3 of us were at the Eaton's Centre, instead of running into a nice man for S, we managed to run into a guy from our hometown, which is about 200km from here, who was in town for the day with his wife to see Phantom of the Opera. What are the odds?

As we were walking home from the Eaton's Centre, up a side street that I almost never walk on, who should walk by but my ex-girlfriend, C, and her boyfriend. She managed to not even say hi to us and only made eye contact with J, not S or me. I hadn't realized we weren't on speaking terms. Ouch.

I suppose I should stop asking the Universe for favours for a while. Fortunately, I've already fixed the pad Thai problem.