Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
It is indeed winter, although some days it feels more like March than January. Not that I am complaining. The cats are the ones with full dibs on complaining these days. There are a surprising number of things to complain about when you are a cat (or at least when you are one of my …
The room is about eight feet square, with baffles on the ceiling made of foam that looks like upside down egg carton innards, black acoustic panels on the walls, and grey industrial carpeting on the floor. All of this makes it look like a rec room renovation that veered way off the rails. The room …
When I lived in Cabbagetown (a completely non-suburban place, in fact about as urban as you can get) in a row house with a Victorian exterior and early 1990s interior (which was perfectly fine because it was the early 1990s at the time), the kitchen was a white womb of hard surfaces. The cupboards were …
The goose migration is finished. Although they do, of course, fly, I cannot imagine them being classy enough to leave from an airport on even the most discounted of discount airlines. Geese must leave from a bus station, after they have eaten discarded French fries and pooped on all available surfaces. “Bus departing on platform …
In my own defense, I am far from a Luddite. I have been paid lots of money to tell people what technology they should use and why. However, I am a practical person. I do not need new gadgets just for the sake of new gadgets. My iPhone 5 was doing just fine up until …
About a week ago, the mayor of Toronto, the premier of Ontario, and the prime minister of Canada announced that the decade-long renovation of Union Station was complete. I was not there for the ribbon cutting, but I would guess that neither were they, since complete is not the word that immediately came to my …
There is an article in this month’s Vanity Fair about a movie that’s going to be released on Disney+ in November. It has been salvaged from reclaimed footage of the Beatles’ final live appearance, filmed while recording the tracks for the Let it Be album in January 1969, on the roof of the building that …
I agree with John McAfee. Actually, let me qualify that. I do not agree with John McAfee that Russian roulette is fun for the whole family. I do not agree that poisoning your neighbour’s dogs is a appropriate way to handle a property line dispute. And, I do not agree with evading taxes. Avoiding, maybe, …
The good news: the hummingbirds are back. The bad news: the racoons are back. It is possible that I aided and abetted the latter because of my method of composting, which involves flinging vegetable peelings over the deck railing into the forest at large. In my own defense, the height of the deck provides the …
As you may know, last week the Greyhound bus had its last victory lap. No canine rescue happening here. No bucolic retirement pasture for the hound, that, truth be told, I have called horrible. Even though I steadfastly maintain I was right, I do apologize for dissing the dog. Because I, like many other people, …