The Day After Die Hard

by on December 25, 2011

Last night my family gathered together to indulge in our favorite Christmas tradition. Once the last present is wrapped, the last ornament is hung with care, and the last baked good is crammed into the gullet of the pleasantly pickled patriarch (me), we huddle together on the couch and watch the Greatest Christmas Movie Ever.

We aren’t a sentimental bunch, but there’s something purely touching about watching John McClane stumble …
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The Robot-Harvester Is Coming

by on September 10, 2011

Behold the pigeon of the future.

Russian designer Olga Kalugina has come up with a design for a robot that could collect small bits of trash, recently disposed hypodermics and discarded, post-rumble switchblades. This is the Robot-Harvester for Pedestrian Areas the modern urban world has been waiting for.

There is a video too. Try not to flinch if you are worried about the upcoming robot take-over, and about how much …
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Fashion Hell: Xuly Bet

by on September 5, 2011

I knew that, at some point , I would have to expose my true cynicism about the fashion world. To be fair, I’m all for the guy who invented the t-shirt. That’s about as far as I go in terms of choosing a favorite designer. Okay, Levi Strauss had some good ideas.

So today, The great Wikipedia Oracle bestowed upon me the fashion line ‘Xuly Bet’, concocted by Lamine Badian …
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Art History Lesson: Cupid & Psyche

by on September 4, 2011

I was pleased to open up Wikipedia, click ‘Random Article,’ and discover some porn. Not porn as we know it, but rather hot, throbbing first-century Roman action.

Above is a sculpture known as Statua di Amore e Psiche. Or, to put that more Englishy, Cupid & Psyche. This statue can be found in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. I hope I’m not the only person who had to re-read that …
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Itineris 2011, Day 15: Conclusion

by on July 19, 2011

Fifteen days, 8000 kilometers, and nearly one hundred hours inside the confines of the Bulky Red Buffalo. A big kudos to Toyota for building a vehicle that put up with us, and did its part to destroy a few thousands bugs along the way.

We are home.

For the first time since the day we left, the temperature dropped below 25 degrees Celsius. For the first time since the day …
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Itineris 2011, Day 14

by on July 18, 2011

Somehow we have planted our feet in Regina with the hope of making it home tomorrow. This journey home has entered a very dark and very weird place. It’s creeping up on eleven o’clock but it feels like we’ve been up all night.

The day had greeted us with an innocent smile. We had no reason to suspect what devious notions were lurking behind its cherubic little façade. The drive …
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Itineris 2011, Day 13

by on July 17, 2011

The gist of today’s report is this: We Are Still Alive.

Tonight the forces of exhaustion, full bladder, and determination met up in the dark cavern of our collective soul and… hell, this day just kicked our collective ass.

Our alarm chirped us out of our dreams at the inhuman stroke of five this morning. By 6:30 we’d poured our weary souls into the Bulky Red Buffalo, which had been …
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Itineris 2011, Day 12

by on July 16, 2011

As our near-week in southern Ontario gets set to roll its credits, it seems that our feeble and fragile wireless internet connection is about ready to snap like the last fibers in an unravelling thread. We’re lucky to hit a single bar of connection for longer than a few minutes, so as I write this I’m not certain if this will be posted tonight, or tomorrow morning from the nearest …
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Itineris 2011, Day 11

by on July 15, 2011

Our morning began with a visitor for Mary, Jodie’s lovely, quirky, and gently racist (let’s call it ‘extremely ethnically aware’) grandmother. Mary’s friend was a kind and mainly quiet lady, and as they sat together this morning watching President Obama’s address to the nation, Colton observed that she had a mild oral gas situation. Her burps came in a continuous stream, like bubbles rising in a perpetually well-used water cooler …
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Itineris 2011, Day 10

by on July 15, 2011

For most families with kids our age, today was the day parents had to decide whether or not to allow their brood to venture out to a midnight screening of the new Harry Potter film. Because we’re on vacation, we instead spent some quality time at a Jewish old-folks home.

My grandmother lives at Baycrest, which is located in a deeply Jew-y neighborhood of Toronto. I loved the area, as …
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Itineris 2011, Day 9

by on July 13, 2011

Poang. Ektorp. Jokkmokk.

It sounds like dialog from The Day The Earth Stood Still, but in fact it’s just a sampling of the cast of characters from our long day of building IKEA furniture. I didn’t know where they come up with their names, but a quick stumble over to Google translate is all it took to make me feel like a schmuck. Swedish words. They translate to Points, …
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Itineris 2011, Day 8

by on July 12, 2011

Yes, that is a naked-man light switch cover. In the same bedroom where we sleep alongside pictures of pandas, angels and family, not to mention the high-five clown, the Triplets of the Damned and the myriad of Jesii I wrote about yesterday, there’s just a wee dose of smut in charge of the electrical system.

It’s a quirky feature of a most quirky house. Fortunately, we are embraced in the …
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