I think it's time we put couples relations back in their places

This post was supposed to be about how I'm surrounded by idiots and in a way, it still is. A stern warning goes out immediately;

The following article will likely make me come across as a misogenyst, petty man. I want to assure all three of my readers that nothing could be further from the truth. I have the upmost respect for most women, their jobs, as well as how they have to constantly struggle to better their careers.

In fact my own wife is doing this better than I am, right now, and she is the woman I respect the most in the world.

It all began a few weeks ago, when at work we were discussing how our kids were getting overprotected from everything. I have a daughter that plays ice hockey - she's 10 years old - and who is forced to wear a full helmet with a facemask AND a mouthguard!

I said; WTF?? Why both? How exactly will you get a hockey stick in the face if you're wearing a full facemask?

Most men I asked agreed with me. But when it came to women it was a different story. They brought up urban legends about mouthguards preventing concussions, which is not the case, I've read a few articles and studies made that pointed out that no, they did not prevent concussions and if you fall on your head a mouthguard is irrelevant.

On the other hand a lady pointed out, what does it hurt if they wear both? And I was forced to agree.

But then, how far do we go? What's next? Goggles?

Naturally, THAT SAME WEEKEND at the hockey game, as I was crossing the ice with the other assistant coaches, to shake hands with the opposing team's kids, I noticed a kid wearing squash goggles under his helmet. Poor boy, he had on a full helmet with facemask, mouthguard and squash goggles.

Isch...in my day it would have been a whoop-ass waiting to happen.



Then last week, still at work, we were going on about the current Swine Flu crisis. Here in Quebec, what has happened is that the media, essentially television newschannels, radio stations and newspapers as well as internet news sites have all blown the Swine Flu "thing" out of proportion.

They will report every single person that has been hospitalized, died or had complications due to having had the Swine Flu, but we don't hear from the overwhelming majority of people who've had it, and recovered.

They will interview mostly women who have had it and told the cameras that it came with unbearable pain and suffering and that we should all burn our nipples off with a blowtorch rather than take the chance of having it, and then went on about their children having had a vaccine against it.

Naturally with such overwhelming media campaign, the health minister a man told us that a vaccine would be available to everyone that wanted it, in the fall. But he also pointed out that we should not panic.

That's when women got involved and demanded that all children between such and such age and with siblings from such other demographics should get the vaccine.

All the news anchors except one, a man took this to mean that we would be running out of the vaccine and that we would all die, Friday.

They even named the website www.pandemiequebec.gouv.qc.ca which means quite literally: "You will all die this Friday.com"

This brings me to my point, ok well not right away but soon I promise.

I have several friends who have small children, three people I work with, and other acquaintances. They all have the following trait in common, their spouses all women are "stay at home moms".

Yet, as "go to work dads" all of the aforementioned friends, co-workers and acquaintances are forced to get their asses home after work, night after night, prepare supper, make dishes, bathe their respective children, some of which are nine years old and should be able to wash themselves, basically all on the excuse that their spouse is "tired" from staying home all day and watching the kids.

Again; WTF????

I was going to cite myself as an example. I would have liked to help more when my daughter was a baby, unfortunately at that time I was working an evening shift and only got home at 10:30PM or so. I did what I could, got home, raised her from sleep, fed her once more then changed her and back to bed she went until the morning, I got up later than my wife did, helped a bit but after lunch I had to run off to work.

My wife is not a stay at home mom, she is a go to work mom. This is possibly the biggest reason I respect her for. She has incessantly cared for our daughter since her birth and only rarely asked me for anything.

That and everything else she touches and becomes awesome, except for me of course :)

Later, when our daughter was about three, I was laid off work and stayed at home for a few months, at that time I made sure that every night, when my wife made it home from work, the table was set, supper was ready, our daughter was picked up from daycare, bathed and her hair brushed. Ok maybe not the hair brushing part but still.

Another few years later I was home for almost a whole year again after being laid off work, and again I took care of everything except the washer and dryer. Supper was made, dishes were made, the house was spotless and granted, our daughter was in school by then, but I also had time to rebuild an old truck.

I was a stay at home dad for a while. Girls...it's NOT that difficult and tiresome.

Has it occurred to you that maybe you're just lazy?

Or do you enjoy whipping your respective spouses? Two of the guys I mention above are horribly pussy-whipped. Personally I wouldn't give their respective spouses the time of day if they asked, while wearing full glorious lingerie, shoving their tits at me, and sporting fuck me boots.

Not because they're ugly.

Because they're the reverse of misogynists. They clearly hate men. Misandry is it? Is it less frowned upon than misogynism?

Why corporations suck.

A while ago, ok a long while ago, I worked for a large corporation, one of the largest in the world, with over 300.000 employees world-wide not counting all the contract workers they hire to keep their staffing costs down.

It sucked.

I thought it wouldn't but it did and I should've known better because I'd worked for another large corporation ten years earlier, another large corporation with over 100.000 employees world-wide, and that didn't hire people directly but used an agency so they could wash their hands of any claim regarding salary, promotions, etc.

In both cases working there was like working for McDonalds only worse because the scheduling was less flexible and you didn't get any free lunch, or any employee discount worth mentioning.

Enter Archos, a corporation that develops, builds and sells portable media players.

I never worked for them (probably never will) but from the way they work their corporate crap, you know I'd hate it.

Last spring I got myself an Archos 605 Wifi portable media player, 80Gb of storage (on HDD) and was supposed to play, well media.

The normal cost for the unit was 400$ but I paid 200$ for it minus some Future Shop card I had with about 50$ on it, a Christmas gift from my sister.

The issue is that Archos do not sell you a complete product. They sell you a product that is purposely crippled by having some of the more popular codecs be disabled, and having you pay an extra 20~40$ to enable it with a code.

To make matters worse, the operating system they put on these units is quite possibly the worst to come out of a non-Microsoft company, in other words it sucks.

It sucks so much that it took me several attempts to do something simple (connect the unit to my wireless network) because the OS is flawed.

You see, a WEP Shared Key passcode can be in one of two formats, either ASCII (text) or Hexadecimal (base 16 numbers). Like any other device, it will take the ASCII passcode, translate it into hexadecimal and send it to the router for it to authorize, or deny access.

The problem is that the Archos software is so idiotic that it mistranslates ASCII so that the Hexadecimal string it sends to the router is wrong (bitch!).

The only way to figure this out was to change it to hex on my router and notice that the hex string on the router was different from the one the Archos genarated.

An online translator proved that indeed it was the Archos that had the error.

This should've been corrected EONS ago on a device that actually carries WIFI as part of its name. Instead Archos, when ansked about it, simply replied that WEP is not supported.

A bold claim considering the OS has a WEP option for the wireless connection.

I think they were just lazy, or worse...

GREEDY (and bastards...)

Do I like my Archos device, sure, it plays vanilla divx files which is pretty cool on my daily train commute.

Will I buy another one when invariably this one brakes.

HELL NO!

Top 8 Reasons We Will All Die On Friday.

Here are the top eight reasons why we are all doomed to die this Friday.

-Bears.

Recently on a quiet news day, a report came out that a lady, somewhere out in a remote area of Quebec, had been mauled by a bear while her husband had been severely injured while trying to save her.



Naturally channels like LCN have jumped on this and subsequent to that, Le Journal De Montreal made it's cover page about bears in our backyards and how dangerous they were, they also made it very clear that we were all doomed to be mauled by bears, in our backyards, by Friday.

-Crooked investment advisers.

In the last few years a witch hunt has literally gone down, where everyone who has ever invested, and lost, even a single penny, has succesfully sued and won, against their financial adviser.



So now, after a month-long search for this guy above, LCN and The Journal de Montreal have been running long winded articles about how financial advisers were going to get us all killed by taking our moneys, and forcing us to live on the street and starve to death, by Friday.

-Street gangs

Possibly the only real threat in terms of percentage in this list, street gangs first came to LCN and Le Journal De Montreal's attention about two years ago when a white police woman shot and killed a latino teenager in a ghettofied area of Montreal North.



So now, yearly on the anniversary of that shooting, both LCN and the Journal de Montreal make it a point to remind us to stay home that night as if we go out, we might get shot and killed by police women, unless of course we're white in which case they will only give us a ticket for driving while talking on our cell phones, of course this usually occurs on Friday.

-Cell phones

Speaking of cell phones, the leading cause (not) of car accidents in Montreal apparently is cell phones while driving, never mind the kids acting like douchebags on the back seat of cars, or the parents looking behind them on the seats rather than at the road ahead, never mind the pityful state of the roads, the deficient signals, inapt drivers, elders at the wheel and teenage wannabe hip-hoppers in those impossibly low Honda Civics and Volkswagon Golfs.

I'm not posting a photo of a cell phone because frankly if you've never seen one, you probably aren't reading this on the Interwebs.

In either case, both LCN and Le Journal de Montreal have issued several warnings about cell phones, how if they don't kill us by this Friday by having a cell phone driver hit us all, they will certainly kill us within the next 25-50 years by giving us brain cancer.

-Falling bricks



Almost three months ago, a really unlucky woman was sitting on a restaurant terrace, on seats that apparently SHE requested, enjoying lunch with her husband on their wedding anniversary I think, when a 500kg slab of granite fell on her, having dislodged itself from the 18th floor of the facade at the building they were at.

It also severed some of her husband's fingers in the process.

The city closed down the whole street for almost three months while investigations were run to make sure this could not happen again. Naturally LCN and Le Journal De Montreal issued articles where they both announced that it would be adviseable not to walk within a 50 foot radius of high rise buildings in Montreal for otherwise we would be crushed to death, by Friday.

-Various epidemics

From the HINI flu to SARS en passant by Tuberculosis, Syphilis and the good old runs, LCN and The Journal of Montreal (there) have been busting our chops all summer with contradicting articles on whether or not we would all die on Friday unless we had been inoculated by a supposed vaccine which apparently is composed primarily of spermicide.

So now we're all running around with our sleeves over our hands, not touching anything and carrying disinfectant and antibiotics everywhere we go, this in no way will contribute to actually building a superbug which would be resistant to disinfectants, vaccines and antibiotics.

No really. Most of us have something called an immune system that normally should be able to kick those microbes complexive asses, and for those of us who don't, you know who you are and indeed, you should take precautions but for Christ's sake, leave every one else alone.

-Russian submarines

Yep, on a slow news day all newschannels and papers picked up the news that Russian subs were maneuvering off the coast of Nova Scotia, possible preparing a strike.



A strike against what? The Canadian army? What would they need submarines for in that case? Seriously, if the Russians wanted to invade Canada they could just walk in with some of their (seriously) hot women



and quite honestly if they provide us with that caliber of women, I think we should let them have the damn country, maybe they could do something about the road systems and our overall morale.

-Supercolliders



Apparently a failure in CERN's Hadron Collider this last spring is the only thing that saved humanity and indeed the earth itself for you see, this thing apparently creates BLACK FUCKING HOLES and I don't mean the kind you can find in Looney Tunes, the real, huge, solar system eating kind.

They are due to switch it back on this Friday...

Cuba, their road-system and the tarantulas.

I recently went on a week's vacation to Cuba. The tropical weather, abundant flora and fauna, as well as its friendly people contribute to make this a great place to vacation.

Too bad the United States, and their douchebaggery, are preventing this country from being "all it can be" for the time being.

While I was there I saw a bunch of things I'd never seen before, tarantulas for instance, there are plenty. Here in Quebec we have squirrels, chip-monks, seagulls.

Over there they have iguanas, tarantulas and hummingbirds.

I'm not very fond of the tarantulas, yes, I know, they're harmless and will only bite if attacked, and their bite is not lethal like lots of people think.

They are not to be confused with black widow spiders, some of which can be found as near as Ontario. Black widows are tiny black spiders with a red mark on their backs.

Tarantulas are huge, and vary in color. The ones we saw were all black, and huge.

Fucking huge.

If you've never seen a real tarantula up close, imagine the biggest spider you've ever seen, then make it bigger. No. Even bigger than that. Bigger...

Bigger.

I saw two, one touched me (yuck!) on the leg and ran away, but it was a baby, only about as big as a hockey puck. The one that came close to my daughter was even bigger. At first we all thought it was a crab. Yes, a crab. That's how big it was.

Luckily I had had a nice share of local vitamins (rum) and I could handle it. I'd hate to run into one of those, in close quarters, when sober...

Both encounters happened at night, and outdoors. We heard other visitors of the resort we stayed at telling one another that they had a huge spider in their room and they had to call the front desk for them to come and usher the spider out, and that apparently they showed up with a broom, and did just that; ushered the spider out.

Well what else would you do? I suppose to them, who are used to it, having a tarantula in the house is akin to us having a squirrel.

Still, I was disgusted. Other than that we had a wonderful time, the beach was incredible, the water was of the most incredible blue, the sand white.

Awesome.

Also the road system in Cuba is interesting, it's not very modern, if fact, it reminded me of the road system in Italy when I left back in 1979, only older, and with less asphalt.

There are also plenty of Suzuki trucks, mostly Vitaras, which is their version of the Sidekick, and Jimnys. I'd buy a Jimny if it were available here. Consider it a more friendly version of the Sidekick, more rounded, probably with a bigger engine, the one I saw had a 2.0l Diesel engine.




There were also lots of classic American cars, some of which in such impeccable condition that when inevitably, the US borders are reopened to Cuba, and vice-versa, Americans will flock in to buy them. They looked brand new.

Also they had roundabouts. They are practical and would work great in Quebec if the transport minister was smart enough to develop them. Instead of pulling stops at each corner we'd have limited corners and a couple of roundabouts.

But not like the failed one in Vaudreuil which is way too tight to be of any use. Some decent size ones where trucks can turn, not just bicycles...

Television, radio, Internet and paper news suck really badly.

Last week end a video surfaced on the local news, it was a young seven year old boy, driving what looks like the family car, on a dirt road, with the whole family on board. He is driving at a whopping 40km/h, but none of the car's occupants are wearing a seat belt.

His father is sitting next to him with a camera, filming, and on the back seat there are two more children and an adult woman, presumably the mom. Everyone is cheering him on like he is some hero.

It was later discovered that the dirt road is a private road and is thereby not under the jurisdiction of our Transport Ministry, hence, what they were doing was perfectly legal.

As such, I have no problems with it either, they are doing 40km/h on a straight, wide, dirt road. I'll admit that personally I might have been wearing a seat belt but again, they are not on a public road so it's not mandatory.

The kid could have been driving a 4x4 motorbike, or a vehicle so defective that the Ministry will not issue it a registration license, like an old Jeep or maybe a Sidekick, there are hundreds...

Later still, it was discovered that the video, had been on youtube for two years, so now the kid is actually nine years old. So why did it make the news now?

Simple.

There is nothing to talk about if any interest.

In May, we were "promised" a plague that didn't really happen, yes some people died of H1N1 but in terms of percentage, not any more people that would die from a regular flu.

H1N1 is just a normal flu. It can be defeated by our immune systems as long as we are relatively healthy. I can see how someone with lung cancer or emphysema could be in dire straights if afflicted by this new flu, but other than the regular suspects, we should all massively be OK. Regardless of what the news says, we will not all die by Friday, at dusk.

Last summer we had the Listeria alarm, where Maple Leaf almost went under because it was discovered that some of their meats, and also some cheeses at large, were "contaminated" with the Listeria Monocytogenes bacteria.

This summer? Nothing. Nada. No Listeria, no Salmonella, nothing toxic has become loose, not even Kraft Dinner.

There is a serious problem when a boxer, not even a well known one, dies in Brazil, and it makes the top news for two full weeks.

When a chlorine leak causes a few kids to have to rinse themselves off properly at a public pool is the day's top story, it's been a slow news day.

When there is talk of the Quebec Nordiques rejoining the NHL (will never happen), and it makes the headlines, it's been a slow week.

So, because there is nothing menacing, nothing they can use to scare us into thinking that by Saturday morning, we will all be, well, guano, they start digging.

They caught Earl Jones, who was the most wanted man in Quebec for almost a month. More wanted than the guy who kidnapped Cedrika Provencher, more wanted even than a Lamborghini Galliardo, or a Nintendo Wii.

So now?

Can't they all go on vacations?

No, apparently it will rain.

The real reason for speed limits

I was watching Top Gear, which has become one of my favorite shows, and they were discussing the best roads to drive in the world.

They came to the conclusion that it was a specific road, in Italy, in the Alps, it is a sinuous road with no real enforceable speed limit, and no traffic.

They went on in their discussion and Richard Hammond wondered why there hasn't been an evolution in speed limits since the last 50 years or so. He reflected that after all, cars went from a top speed of 8MPH to 150MPH and more.

But then there are many more cars out there, which at speeds in excess of say, 80km/h, don't handle properly, or they do but then the driver doesn't know what to do with them in order to keep them in order.

And then there's something else: Debris.

Just this morning on the way to work, driving a whopping 95km/h, I had to dodge a pail of some type of white gooey liquid, most likely paint, that seemed to have dropped off...

...a Transport Quebec truck.

Nice.

Other interesting artifacts I've dodged in the past include ladders, shovels, rakes, a lawnmower, several mattresses and other pieces of furniture including an ottoman, animals - both alive and not -, pedestrians on highways and once, I dodged miraculously, three bricks that had dislodged from inside a tunnel and dropped in front of me.

Other times though I wasn't that lucky.

Once on the 132 in the South Shore, I was rudely cut off by a cement truck that was coming out of a work-zone unannounced, and I received a complimentary block of semi-dry cement across the hood of my Tiburon. It shattered my windscreen and redecorated my hood.

Another time still in the Tiburon a windblown, metallic garbage can, blindsided me and hit the passenger side of the cockpit, causing minor damage to the side mirror.

So there you have it. The real reason for speed limits is debris. Just ask Felipe Massa.

Lucid dreams

Why is it that I can never remember the better dreams? I know I have them, occasionally - actually, quite often - I wake up in a condition that well, er, suffice to say that it leaves no doubt about the kind of dream I've been having.

Yet I never remember those.

The ones I do remember are traumatic, like last night.

I woke up at fourish from a horrible dream in which I was scrambling for a gun, to shoot at incoming zombies, yet all the zombies I could see were the zombified remains of my two dead dogs, in cages, on the balcony.

Through it all I wasn't scared at all, in fact it all felt weirdly "normal".

Then I went back to bed and eventually fell back asleep after a few minutes. And the worst of the dreams started, I suppose.

In this one, I had parked my old car in front of my mom's house, where I grew up. I then took out a shovel from the boot, dug up -I kid you not- my dead father's bones from an underground chamber, removed the brown, slithery, oily bones from what was essentially a wooden box frame, placed something in their stead, and replaced the bones on top.

I was in the process of filling the hole when my mom came out and told me I wasn't allowed to do that, to which I replied: "Do what, dig up dad, or bury the roof?" Pan the dream camera to the front porch of my mom's house where the front part of a triangular roof was resting against the cement wall.

Yep.

All true.

I'm not sure what the Freudian symbolism of all this is, I suppose in the dream I try to hide something by burying it, and that quite possibly it might be something that might have shocked my father.

On the other hand I'm glad that my dream didn't involve any unicorns.

Adventures in the daily train.

I stumbled onto this blog entry earlier today and made a mental note:

I too have been confronted by the bad manners of other commuters. I was raised mostly by my grandmother, she had what more or less would qualify as custody of me, unofficially of course, while I was growing up and she thought me manners. Now I'm in my late 30s and well mannered, I can say "please" and "thank you" and "good day" to people.

Even servants in restaurants, hotels, etc. I once even thanked a police officer after he gave me a speeding ticket. Granted, in the US. Still...

So it's always with some apprehension that I take the train, people don't have manners. Even older people. Yesterday, I arrived in my train a few minutes early, sat by a window, took out my Archos media player and started watching Dollhouse on it.

As I was relaxing a man came to sit next to me, and he took up, I kid you not, 2/3 of the double seat.

As if that wasn't enough, he then took out a laptop and placed it on top of a huge bag on his lap, which of course also meant he had to have his elbows up really high, right by my face.

As a result I sat there like an idiot, munched against the side of the train, in about 1/3 of the space this inconsiderate bastard next to me was taking up, watching my Archos screen with an elbow in my face. In retrospect I should've told him to go fuck himself, please.

Occasionally, very occasionally, a pretty girl will sit next to me. This is very, very rare. In fact, I don't remember the last time it happened.

In the morning I've condemned myself to sit across a lady that works in my office and happens to live in my neighbourhood, she's talkative and relatively pleasant but, consider that I enjoy watching my tv shows onto portable media devices in the train.

I'm not usually in the mood for chitchat with her.

On the other hand, there is a woman that takes the train in the evening and that disembarks at my station whom, I definitely wouldn't mind chitchatting with.

But that's also going to be improbable at best.

Incidentally, the red-head at the ice cream parlor gave me another free milkshake last Friday.

Also yesterday, as I was crossing the park in front of the Sun Life building with the chimes playing, a young girl in her twenties approached me and asked me what the sound was.

In a way, I was in a hurry to catch my train so I didn't want to start a conversation with her but part of me wanted to. She was cute, is that wrong?

The Hershey Kiss.

This morning I took the train, for a change it was late by about five minutes at my station, which was soon explained by the fact that it kept stalling. It firstly died in Sainte Anne, then slightly before Montreal West, twice.

The metro was also having trouble, I suspect that raccoons got into the engines and broke them.

I got to work half an hour late, but I digress.

In the train, the air was very romantic, the wagon I sat in had no lights, nor heat.

A few stops farther, a young girl took a seat facing me, about three rows up.

She immediately huddled herself in her jacket and shut her eyes, with her arms crossed upon her chest, elbows resting on a large red duffel bag. She had dark hair tied up under her hat, perhaps in a ponytail or a chignon. Right as she closed her eyes I noticed a bunch of boys taking the seats directly behind her.

One of them discreetly set a Hershey Kiss down on the seat next to her and ducked back in his group.

She was sleeping and didn't notice the boy, nor the Hershey Kiss, I started watching a Frasier episode on my iPod, but kept on glancing up, naturally curious to see if she would notice the gift.

A few other passengers who had witnessed the scene, were all keeping tabs as well.

Eventually she woke up long enough to wrap a mesh scarf around her neck, but failed to notice the chocolate delicacy, instead she cozied down a bit farther in her jacket and pulled a hoodie over her head.

As we neared her stop she yawned, opened her eyes and stretched. Picked up the duffel bag and laced the strap over her shoulder, then spotted the Hershey Kiss.

She had a slight double-take when she first laid eyes on it, but quickly caught herself and kept cool. She got up and walked away with the boys in tow.

The Hershey Kiss remained lonely, on the seat. Perhaps someone else picked it up but as I left, it was still there.

I exited the car by the rear and completely lost sight of her and the boy. I suppose they went to the same school, perhaps taking the same class. From all appearances they were high-school seniors or first year college students.

I couldn't help but be reminded of my own courtship with my wife. At the time she also chose to ignore me, sometimes cruelly, yet, here we are.

Here we are.

The 7.10$ glass of milk.

Today I had lunch later than usual, normally my lunch at work is around 1PM. Today, because both the other guys in my team failed to tell me they were going to lunch later, I went out to lunch at close to 2PM.

So I headed down to the food court, at that time it wasn't very busy, even though it's Thursday. I decided to eat there instead of bringing it back to my desk.

I hate eating at my desk, because I'm scheduled to eat at 1PM, lots of co-workers don't realize that when they come and ask me questions for projects etc I'm actually on my lunch hour, which is of course not paid.

That is a pet peeve of mine.

At any case I was having some chicken breast and Greek salad when I noticed the pretty red-head who makes the best milkshakes in the area walking by. I've always found her attractive, partly because she is exactly my type, and partly because it's a well known fact that the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Lots of women wrongly assume the best way is through the ribcage, with a knife.

She is much younger than I am, probably in her early twenties, not that it makes a difference these days, my sister is about to marry a man who is not only one of the nicest persons I've ever known, but also about 20 years older than she is. She's never been happier.

Me neither, my wife makes me quite happy. But the sight of the milk-shake girl, who besides the fact that she has red hair, also happens to be curly -I'm a sucker for curly hair on women- reminded me that I hadn't had a milk-shake in a while.

So I decided that after my chicken was finished, I'd go walking in the interconnected malls for a while, then go for a milk-shake to bring up to my office.

I finished my meal, got up and started walking aimlessly. I was looking for a gift for my wife in occasion of our upcoming wedding anniversary/Valentine's day.

I failed to find anything interesting, at first I wanted to look at jewelry, but my wife, who is impossibly allergic to gold cannot wear earrings.

It was all triggered by a navel piercing she got after ignoring my advice telling her not to do it.

Also because of her job where she's not allowed to wear jewelry I prefer to give her something else, besides I gave her a diamond ring last year.

I walked through a couple of stores, shoes, purses, pens, perfume.

I decided that I'd get her a certificate for a massage.

I'm actually going to find someone who does that in your home, I'm sure it exists.

If not I'll just go down to MATIS and get her a gift certificate there.

On the way back up to my office I stopped at the milk-shake place and the red-head wasn't there. I suppose it was her day off. Instead there was a girl, four times her size, who for 7.10$ made me a 500ml glass of milk.

So now that I've got my wife's anniversary gift under control, I can only hope she gets me what I really want for mine: A threesome.

I think I can talk the red-head into it.

10 reasons why mass transit in Montreal sucks.

10- The douchebag that has no manners, runs everyone down, elbows his way passed old ladies and cripples while carrying a huge backpack, just so he can sit down and play NHL'07 on his laptop while on the train. This is not only rude, it is a can of whoop-ass waiting to open.

9- The annoying obese woman with the squeaky voice, the fur coat and the cell phone. All three are out of fashion.

8- People eating non-snack foods, just like the people at the movies who are having a burrito while we're all trying to watch The Boy In The Striped Pajamas, eating a full course meal in the train is heavily frowned upon.

7- Rude children who go to private prep high-schools, wear ties and suits but behave like complete asses. The parents deserve a slap on the head.

6- Gassy people, people who had garlic bread for lunch, keep burping, fall asleep on their neighbors shoulders, etc. YOU ARE IN PUBLIC.

5- The overall condition of the train/bus/metro cars. Where I live (Montreal) even the newest wagons are 5 years old, and they were rubbish even as they were being built, the doors don't close/open properly, the seats are designed for short travels and anything in excess of 20 minutes sitting down will put your ass to sleep, the windows are dirty to the point where you can barely see outside or they simply have graffiti embedded into them.

4- The scheduling. It sucks. Why is it that at the peak of rush hour we only get a metro every 5 minutes, sometimes you are standing on a pier and you have two empty metros go by the other way, stopping at the empty pier across the rails, while your side of the pier is filled with people and there is no metro in sight.

3- There is no shelter at the train stations and where they have shelter it is on the wrong side of the tracks so that in the morning when the pier is filled with people, they are forced to stand outdoors because the shelter is on the other side of the train tracks, where it is never used because that is the side used to DROP people off in the evening after work.

2- The shelters are too small, the average shelter can fit four adults, two if the obese fur coat/cell phone lady enters. There are also about eight seats available at train stops where on average 50 or more people are standing waiting for the train.

1- The trains are constantly late, and if they are not late you can bet your ass you'll run into one (or more) of the above douchebags in them.

They are late even and especially when the temperature drops below -15°C and/or it is raining/snowing heavily or there is a thunderstorm. Oddly though, they are on time on days where people don't all work, like half-staff days and the couple days before/after the Christmas holidays and the summer vacations.

If you look at their website, they have a STATE OF THE NETWORK link which of course is completely useless to us as we wait outside for an extra 50 minutes by -25°C with no Internet connections.

Toronto looks better than Montreal (!)

This week, much to my dread I had to travel for work. They sent me to one of the cities I get up at night to detest; Toronto.

Toronto is the cradle of the evil Maple Leafs.

It is also where all the douchebags I used to work for three years ago live and thrive.

Is anyone surprised to hear that I didn't want to go? Much less by plane.

I don't fly. At least I don't fly well. It's a bone-mass thing. I can float but I can't fly properly besides, if God had meant for me to fly, he would've stuck a rocket up my ass.

I decided to take the train, it's about the same price and all things considered is quite a bit more relaxing than flying, it also takes about the same time to go from Montreal to Toronto by train than by plane.

You must be at the gates to check in two hours before your plane takes off, you're not allowed any metallic objects larger than a penny and you have to check any luggage larger than an iPod Nano. As a bonus they anally probe you before you get on the plane, sometimes even searching YOUR SHOES, then when you get off the plane you have to go through the tedious process of recovering your luggage, and sometimes, it's not even there!

So it takes five hours to go by train, but you can show up at the station with your ticket 15 minutes in advance and you'll get on, luggage and all, then getting off the train is simply a matter of stepping down a half-dozen steps. So five hours are actually five hours and I got to keep my shoes.

By plane, the one single hour has always turned into at least four for me.

At any rate, the actual journey by train was very pleasant both ways, I was slightly worried upon leaving Dorval because a bus of school-children going on a school trip to the CN tower showed up before the train left and I didn't want to join their exclamatives.

Mercifully they had reserved a whole (and different) wagon so I spent most of the trip on a seat much larger and more confortable than the ones on the planes (coach) and with noone sitting next to me I almost got to sleep !

I spent both trips back and forth watching episodes of Frasier on an EEEPC with the occasional break, I also listened to the new Franz Ferdinand CD which I also seem to enjoy way too much for dance music.

On the way back I was sitting next to a charmingly cheerful young girl from Halifax who was heading back home after a month in Toronto. She spent most of the trip back sleeping or singing softly along with her MP3 player.

She wasn't very good looking, in fact I wouldn't have given her the time of day under other circumstances. She did have her charm though, slightly pudgy and definitely anglo-Canadian. She also spent some time on the phone with someone named "baby" and she said it with a sultry, very attractive voice, something I've grown used to not hearing.

Not that my wife has an entirely screechy voice, only when she wants she can sound like grinding teeth. She seems to want to sound like that quite often.

My dentist, who also happens to be my wife's dentist, recommended a toothguard for that.

But I digress...

As for Toronto itself I had a decent enough stay, my first impression was one of cleanliness, there are much less people than in Montreal and the roads and sidewalks, at least the ones I walked, were immaculate and everyone I met was polite. I only saw one peddler compared to the dozens I cross by everyday from home to work in Montreal. The peddler was very polite and very distinctivly asked me for money, it was a welcome change from the Montreal peddlers that sound unintelligible at best.

Only I could review the peddlers in Toronto and compare them to the ones in Montreal.

I stayed at a very nice upscale hotel (thank you hotwire.com) for considerably cheaper than normal and the room and service were impeccable, I only found that the glasses and cups in the room were not quite washed properly much in the way that they, er, weren't clean.

Dinner at the hotel restaurant proved expensive, but the food was delicious and the portions were plenty for a thinner guy like me. I had the best tenderloin steak tips ever, surrounded by two types of mushrooms and some mashed potato swirls that were containing something delectable I had never had before; Truffle oil.

Truffle oil has a delicate flavor to it, somewhat remingniscent of olive oil but less "nosey". It was also to be found in the sweet pea dipping sauce served with the bread before the main meal.

The 12$ salad was appallingly expensive, for 12$ I was expecting a BONSAI salad, instead I was served a normal mixed greens salad in a bedding of cucumber and tomato. It was very very good but definitely not worth 12$.

The 32$ tenderloin steak tips on the other hand were definitely worth every penny.

I also had some beer. (for the record)

Not much but enough for me to want to get up to my room after dinner, take a shower and go straight to bed.

In the morning I was rudely awaken by some construction workers outside the window of the "upgraded" room I was offered for "free" by the front desk when I arrived late the night before. It was pitch black outside that same window and I had no way of knowing that it was going to turn into Alexandria, circa 4000BC, just as the slave workers were intent on putting the finishing touches on the pyramids.



The view from my hotel room window at 6AM. I shot this then got my earplugs in my ears but couldn't get back to sleep.

Actually I had a great time and my original hesitations about going were completely overwhelmed by the people and cleanliness of Toronto.

Kudos and well done Toronto, Montrealers would have a great deal to learn from you.