How I learned to stop worrying and take over the CBC.

Okay, this photo really has nothing to do with the following blog posting. It's just something I see every day: posters. On everything from parking ticket dispensers to fire hydrants. And it matches my colour scheme.

Anyways: it so happens that I'm apparently going to have a story published in CBC's online arts section next week, alongside such Canadian pop culture critiques extraordinaires as Matthew McKinnon and Katrina Onstad. I also have a documentary for Definitely Not the Opera in the works. Yet I couldn't even name a Rolling Stones album if you mind-melded me with what's left of Keith Richards' cerebellum. And while I'm familiar with J-Lo and K-Fed, is there an N-Ritch? A P-Hil? I'm constantly intimidated by the gaps in my pop culture knowledge. Perhaps if I watched more America's Next Amazing Hottest Model Race 6, I would not feel so inadequate.

The only downside is I can't stirfry CDs.

My friends Dan and Terri (whom you may remember from a certain London-area community paper, one which regularly featured such local luminaries as Sass Jordan and Helix on the cover) have a nice little music website going called twowaymonologues. In exchange for the sweet ambrosia of free music, they've let me write a few reviews.

Please check out their site, especially Track-Fu, Terri's weekly dissection of the latest music to hit the airwaves. (And by "hit the airwaves" I mean "find on the MP3 blogs" since the vast majority of radio airwaves have been overrun with essence of skunk turd.) And you could read my reviews as well, if only to suggest some new adjectives. I think I go on probation if I mention "soporific motifs" again. Or at least get an unpaid internship at Kitsch Pork.

Young and Sexy, Panic When You Find It
Loose Fur, Born Again in the U.S.A.
Mates of State, Bring it Back

As an aside, my average score so far is a hearty 74%, whereas when I was an English TA I think my students maxed out at around 66%. The only conclusion I can draw from this is their essays on J. Alfred Prufrock clearly needed more Hammond B3 organ.

A brief tax thought.

I doubt Revenue Canada will consider a bottle of red wine a legitimate business expense for a freelance writer, but it IS, dammit.

Zen and the art of blog maintenance.

It should be stated upfront that, in my overall hierarchy of ruling systems, bureaucracy ranks just above kleptocracy and far, far beneath pornocracy. Yet since I've started this blog, I've become more and more willing to submit to the ironclad "rule of the desk," as long as I can write something really snarky and vicious afterwards. In fact, I like to think my outlook on life dovetails nicely with those poor sods on Fear Factor, except that whereas they eat Cambodian Semen Worms, I fill out mauve change of address forms, in triplicate.

So I was all prepared to spew some fiery vitriol in the general direction of OHIP today. I could have spewed said vitriol three weeks ago when I got my first ever piece of government-issued Ontario identification - my OHIP card - in the mail, and my birthdate was wrong (plus, I looked like a surly homeless version of Elvis Costello on my photo). Vitriol spewing could have also occurred when, three days later, I tromped twenty city blocks to the OHIP office only to be told that without a passport or birth certificate, there was nothing the government of Ontario could do.

No, I was waiting for today. Today was the day I was to take my passport in hand and attempt to get my date corrected. The most delicious part in this tableau vivant was that my passport, though valid when I initially applied for OHIP, had since expired. I was totally expecting to be condescendingly turned away, and possibly even deported.

Sadly, the bureaucratic machine was well-lubed this afternoon, and I'll be getting my new OHIP card in the mail shortly. But if it hadn't turned out this way - if I had to spend two hours of my afternoon in line without results - would I have kept myself calm with the knowledge that by the end of the day, the entire blogosphere would be quaking mightily from my wrath? I like to think I would. Blogging as anger management therapy - discuss.

Anyways, since the above is sort of a non-story, mainly written so I could use the word "pornocracy," I'll finish on a high note by linking to perhaps the worst and most pretentious music review ever. Please, if anyone speaks this ancient, mystical dialect, feel free to translate.

Moon, shrub, shrub.

Wasn't there some mentally-disabled character in Stephen King's The Stand who walked around saying "M-O-O-N, that spells Tom!" or something like that? I don't know why this nice picture of a moon and two shrubs brings that to mind - perhaps I have a long overdue copy of Cujo collecting library fines somewhere.

New graphics.

Thank goodness for my love of procrastination, or I never would have taken the time to design the graphics at the top of this page.

I think they speak volumes about where, in the Ontario vs. Saskatchewan dichotomy, my true loyalties lie.

Crushtastic.

As only one or two dozen people know, I have an innocent schoolboy crush on Amy Millan. Yet who knew it was reciprocal? Not me - not until I found out the first single off her forthcoming solo album was called "Skinny Boy."

That sound you just heard was my 140-pound frame in full, voluptuous swoon. Generally I try to keep my public swooning to a bare minimum, but when it involves Amy Millan all bets are soundly off. Whoops, there I go again. Get the smelling salts.

This new crushtastic development, by the way, also might explain why for awhile there in December Stars were playing a show in Toronto once every five milliseconds. Anyways, go download the song here. The new album is out on May 30.

Required reading.

Baghdad Burning is the website of a young Iraqi woman with a unique first-person perspective on the war in Iraq. I first found out about it two weeks ago when the CBC announced the site's anonymous author made the longlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize - a British award for non-fiction.

It's a spectacular site, and everyone and their parakeet should read it. I've linked to the first month's worth of posts; they go back to August 2003, just after the U.S. bombing began. Scroll to the bottom to read her introduction.

The heart of downtown Toronto.

Another day, another ubiquitous and soulless apartment complex is erected in downtown Toronto.

But for a brief moment on a March afternoon, Toronto's urban planners are foiled by...unintentional visual irony! Look what was unearthed amid the rubble and concrete.

Apologies to those who've (rightfully) pointed out my blogging has slowed to a trickle lately. I blame it on the general malaise of Western culture. Fucking culture. It's SO not getting invited to my birthday party.