Sorry for the dead-time on the site; in between extremely major dental issues, not one but indeed both computers flaming out and requiring repairs, and everything else I normally have to deal with, this past week has been hectic. I’ve got a lot of stuff hopefully getting this site back up to speed in the next couple of days, I promise.

In the meantime, however, if you are really jonesing for something written by a Canadian with the last name of Bird, go read my little sister’s article on working in a tar-sands camp. It is good. Your life will be enriched as a result.

The smallest house in Toronto is up for sale. If you’ve got $179,000 handy, it could be yours!

In all seriousness, one can joke about the size of it, but it’s roughly equivalent in size to a small condo, and you get a front yard and a back yard. It’s not even a starter home, but as a, say, small apartment? I can see it going in that respect.

The Shenis, a 12″ long golden phallus not meant for use as a sex toy but instead so that women can pee standing up.

The Shenis costs $27.45 USD, including shipping and handling. Alternately, if you are a woman and really, really feel the need to pee standing up, you could always go to your local kitchen supply store and purchase an appropriately sized funnel for about a buck fifty. Admittedly, the funnel will not be shaped like a footlong cock and painted sparkly gold, but it will most certainly let you write your name in the snow with urine.

(I know many a woman has expressed envy over the male ability to do such a thing, which is understandable.)

UPDATE: If you also have too much money, consider the Whizzy, which is like the Shenis, but disposable rather than reusable because it is made of heavy construction paper. Only ten dollars for a pack of ten!

ALSO AN UPDATE: Holy crap, this is an entire industry. The Pee-Zee is a cheap plastic funnel that costs twelve dollars. The Freshette has the advantage of being based off actual medical technology and having relatively ergonomic design, so it costs twenty-two. The Whiz Freedom is eight pounds fifty pence for a custom-designed funnel sort of a thing, and they also have a variant that allows you to collect urine for medical examination purposes. The Urinelle is another biodegradable paper funnel, but it comes in packs of seven rather than ten.

Suddenly, I am scared about the world.

Ever have a moment where you’re driving, and suddenly another car cuts in front of you and you have to brake desperately to avoid a major collision?

Now imagine that, except instead of driving you’re on a bus, and instead of another car it’s the largest type of delivery truck there is short of a full semi. Then imagine the bus driver swearing in Polish at the top of his lungs.

That was my commute this morning!

Wikipedia’s entry for Rip Taylor describes him as “openly gay.”

Now, I’m not disputing Rip Taylor’s gayness, because, come on – it’s Rip Taylor. But so far as I’ve always known, Rip Taylor is one of the last true “silent queens,” in the tradition of Liberace or (probably) Richard Simmons: flamboyant, oft-effiminate manner of performance, sure, but never actually outright admitting their homosexuality, for whatever reason. Everybody knows Rip Taylor is gay – holy shit is he gay – but he never talks about it directly (being the grand marshall of Pride Parades doesn’t count, Barbara Streisand does it too) and I haven’t found any mention of him officially coming out.

So, did Taylor officially admit to being gay at some point, like an interview in Out or similar? I am genuinely curious.

I’m living for the month in a one-bedroom apartment that the landlord is trying to rent as a two-bedroom by converting the living room into another bedroom and the oversized kitchen into a kitchen/dinette/living room combination. It’s not really a feasible proposition, but as a one-bedroom this apartment would be fabulous for a couple; it’s large, and attractive, and very reasonably priced. (Although due to a variety of reasons I won’t go into here, I am currently living here for free.)

The apartment is on St. Clair Avenue West in Toronto, near Dufferin. Those who know Toronto will be aware that this places it smack dab in the middle of the Corso, the Italian/Spanish/Mexican uptown strip. Indeed, just around the corner is a tiny little Mexican diner, pupusas only $2.25 apiece, made on the spot, stuffed with pork, beans and cheese, and loaded down with cabbage and thin, spicy tomato sauce. (And their burros are even better, and only three-fifty.) A gelateria down the street provides some of the smoothest, most delicious gelato I’ve ever had. The laundromat across the street is clean, open twenty-four hours, and obviously entertaining in its way. The fruit market downstairs next to the tiny little cafe I live over (which provides the free wireless I am stealing right now) has fresh pineapples for seventy-nine cents apiece.

Right now, as I study Cooper v. Hobart for Legal Process tomorrow, the back porches that cover the rears of these stores and buildings are alive with Italian and Mexican families, chatting quietly in the twilight. Somebody starts up a CD of slow sambo music, and a chorus of half-a-dozen voices dotting across the night spontaneously arises. Occasionally, there is laughter, of the sort that you only hear when a really dirty joke just got told. Sure, the dirty jokes are in Spanish and Italian – but you can tell by the delivery (and the occasional cuss word you might understand) that they’re dirty jokes.

I know there are arguments for small-town life, but for the life of me, I hope I never understand them, that I continue to understand them as little as I do tonight.

Every year, at Ontario Place, there’s a Chinese Lantern Festival. This year, I brought along my crappy 2.1 megapixel camera with the slippy focus and the zoom function that doesn’t quite work, and out of the 700 or so pictures I took, these are the ones I deem worthy of public viewing.

continue reading "Just Pretend This Is A Photoblog For A Moment"

Those who are interested in such things and who do not regularly examine the sidebar (fascinating though it may be) – you may wish to be informed that, thanks to the assistance of an exceptionally helpful reader, the old Ultimate Power #2 parody is back.

Starter triathlon time: 59:32. About ten minutes for the swim, twenty-two for the cycling, twenty-four for the run, the rest was changeover.

I was aiming for under an hour, which put me in the bottom half of the middle of the pack. Mostly because of the run. (How do people run for fun? I don’t get that at all.) Anyway, I’m happy with it for now, and I’ll do two triathlons next year – a starter in the late spring and a larger “regular” one at the end of summer.

Church documents crimes against humanity.

Whatever happened to Cheri Oteri, anyway?

Site currently under construction. Please be patient. (Mostly talking to myself at this point.)