I've moved

This blog is now at:

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London: Fresh Off the Plane & Delirious

Still got twenty minutes on this computer so I thought might as well, even though I don't really have much to say since I only got off the plane three hours ago.

London is very pretty in a bustling city-that-works kinda way--not that I can decribe it better than the next person--and very green. It's already quite warm here, although the morning air still carries that English chill.

I'm staying in Earl's Court this time in London, which is right on the damarcation line between central London and that other aptly named "Zone 2". It was an Aussie slum before but has come a long way in gentrification. I actually like this area a lot, again for its workaday quality. On my way here I actually saw people jogging(!), grocery shopping(!), and people of colour(!). There are tons of restaurants on Earl's Court Rd., most of them touristy but not as touristy as central London locations. This main drag reminds me of the Annex in more ways than one.

'Cause You Can't Betray a Car Shaft

After sleeping through the Canadian political spectrum both literally and metaphorically, spawning an excruciating book chronicalling said process, and consequently fulfilling every Nietzschian mantra about women, Belinda Stronach has finally decided to stop doing any more damage.

Amen, sista.

Urban Foibles: Ghost World

Just as I started a campaign of virulent hatred against the pigeons of Nathan Philip Square, I saw these two having a moment in the setting sun.

I hate doing or saying anything about this, and hate even more what this might say about our baser instincts, but hating on something as a collective act of solidarity often bring people closer together than anything else might.

I was on the crowded west bound platform of Bloor Station today, standing really close to a stock type of downtown westend -- black blazer, ironic cap, girl-jeans-worn-by-a-guy, the works -- as uncomfortably as I do when I have to stand that close to anyone, let alone a walking cliche of a human being. The train arrived, doors popped open; we rushed in and settled across from each other, which was when I caught a whif of library musk. I turned around, and saw an elderly man with a beret, reading, or rather liberally sniffing, a yellowing pocket-sized romance, his porous nose forcing its way into the binding.

Bizarre things seem to happen a lot around me, and in any case I'm often the only one who finds it funny. I jerked my head the other way, came face to face to a stern woman in her 50s, and played contortionist gymnastics with my facial muscles as I tried really hard to pretend that nothing was happening and I was not crazy. Then I noticed the westender with a smirk on his face, gazing through his aviators (pretty atrocious eh?) at the old man; then glancing in my direction, his faint suggestion of a smile broke into something altogether more tangible.

Thus is how we bonded for a moment, two people unlikely to have liked each other and to like each other in the future, accomplices in hatred and contempt; I was Thora Birch to his ScarJo. Meanwhile the old man sniffed on, unaware of his role in this meaningful moment.

Urban Foibles: Cannibalism Next Door

Toronto, you've given me more and more reasons to love you.

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Those who think that Toronto is merely a more vanilla New York City--a 110% correct assessment--should nevertheless heed this human interest story from the Star, the sheer grotesqueness of which earned it the top spot on the website's GTA page. Wincing and feigning disgust aside, more than a few of us are secretly elated that Toronto is finally breeding its own crop of passive-agressive psychos par excellence, instead of the much more mundane variety that haunts Spadina and Bloor in search of people willing to buy his dreamcatchers. It's a rite of passage for this young city of ours, no?

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This story also confirms my long-held suspicion that cannibalistic pigeons are a greater threat to North American civilization than Iranian nukes or governmental ineptitude. The Mad Pigeon Disease shall no longer be the bane of the Land of Horse Manure, but will instead strike the heart of civilization, Eaton Centre.