Canadian graffiti

Ever since we moved in, the front entry way of our building was covered in terrible amateurish tags. Last week the landlords (I assume it was them) finally decided to clean it up by painting over them with black spray paint. So instead of a small handful of shitty tags, we have a huge black splotch of bad spray paint. I miss the tags. I hope some genuine graffiti artist sees this and takes the oportunitie to put something decent on there.

Be it resolved

Everyone knows new years resolutions are a mugs' game. Still, here I am with an obligatory resolution post for 201 in the vain hope committing them to elctronic paper might make me, well, commit to them.

Let's go!

Get back to the gym. Three days a week minimum. Or more, if I can manage it.

Run a 5K

Stop caging smokes. Quit altogether or buy your own, you cheap fuck.

Pay down my debt. Or at least get it down to a more tolerable level.

Find a new job. One that challenges me or makes me happy. Or at the very least, makes me not want to harm myself and other.

Keep on bloggin'

Listen to more new music

Eating animals

I've always thought that anyone who eats meat should, at least once in their life, kill an animal they eat so they can better understand the connection between the living thing and the end product. But that's not why I want to kill a pug. They're just fucking ugly.

In your ear

At this point in my life, coming up with a year end music list is akin to cramming for an exam in a class I didn't attend all semester. I certainly don't have the same drive to uncover new music that I used to (it happens) so I have to rely on others. The missus, thank goodness, still keeps her ear to the ground and of course there's always other folk's year end lists to scour to see what I missed (even though more and more of the stuff on the indie lists seems like total shit to me: Wavves? Arcade Fire (I haven't been able to get past their cringe-worthy lyrics since the last record)? No Age? Bleh. Still, as I went throughthis I was slightly surprised by how many good songs I actually came up with.

Aesthetic brutality

Why am I not surprised that the cop involved in not one, not two but three separate incidents of police brutality during the G20 protests was rocking a goatee? Not all guys with goatees are assholes, but all assholes have goatees.

Bumper Sticker Politics and the Pothole People

Toronto’s new, morbidly obese, car loving suburbanite mayor, Rob Ford (aka His Lardship*) took office this week after riding a wave of populist anger to the big chair on city council. Much has been said about Ford’s pledge to “stop the gravy train”: that is, the runaway government spending that has crippled Toronto to the point where it only managed to turn out a $275 million budget surplus while maintaining one of the lowest levels of per capita debt in the country and sporting the lowest property taxes in the region. That this crumbling hell hole continues to be ranked as one of the world’s top places to live and do business is of no concern to Ford and his suburbanite legions.

Truth

“If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” - William Morris

Coming soon...

An exchange on seeing the trailer for The Tourist.

Me: That looks kind of stinky.

D: I dunno. Angelina Jolie is pretty hot. Add Johnny Depp and put them on a speedboat in Europe and I'll be there.

There's gonna come a time when the scene will seem less sunny

I miss bad pints, the smell of cigarettes indoors and girls you won't talk to. Watching them put the chairs up. Nodding at familiar faces you don't know on the way out of the bar. Three a.m. pizza and afterwards the offsales and the old records and heavy eyelids. Falling asleep as the light touches the skyline.
...
I have, I know, a good life, a home, love, friends and family. I know very few people whom I can look at and say with any conviction I envy. The best people I know have what I have. Others have changed or been discarded like old clothes during a spring cleaning. So why regret? Because no matter where I am, I feel like I could have gotten here another way, one that was more exciting or interesting or memorable.
...
Looking back, I can't believe how much of me there is on this thing. the essence of the me who was anyway. The anger, the outrage, the hangovers: all tempered now by time. Yet I'm still fundamentally the same, even though so much else is different. Or is it?
...
I'm on my third city in four years. The biggest city and move so far, and yet I feel like I've come full circle. It's a bit dirty and grey here, just like home. My job now is much like the one I left when I first changed cities. I'm just as unsure about what I'm doing as I was then, but I'm on a different side of 30 now, looking ahead to a future where the margins for error are thinner and expectations higher. It's tough, this grown up business, which is why I'm back here. trying to find a bit of the old me, keeping the reckless, feckless spirit of those boozy old days alive for a little while longer.