Smog Dog

I’ve lived in Toronto for almost three years now. The whole while, I’ve never purchased (much less consumed) a hot dog or sausage from any of this fair city’s ubiquitous street meat vendors.

Last night, all that changed:

Special thanks to Jenna for getting me intoxicated enough to make it all happen.

The Prosecast is back

Good news in my inbox yesterday. My former podcast-labelmate Cathi Bond (of The Sniffer fame) has launched the second season of her Prosecast for HarperCollins Canada. The first edition features an interview with Vikram Chandra (NYT review of his novel “Sacred Games”).

Congratulations Cathi, and best of luck with the new season.

Hey you with the floss! Don’t even think about flushing that down the toilet.

A few (maybe five) dentist appointments ago, I resolved to floss my teeth every single day. The first month was really tough, but once I got into the routine, it stuck.

For as long as I’ve been flossing regularly, I’ve been disposing of my dental floss in the toilet. I mean, it makes sense: I floss in the bathroom, and the toilet is right there, waiting to receive my stringy offering. I also believe at one time (though I may be wrong about this), I actually wrote a little song about floss in the toilet.

Well, according to an article Jenna sent me today, I should not dispose of my floss in this manner. It seems that floss,

especially newer brands, is shred-resistant, and when strands end up in waste-water, they bind with other waste, creating what one Toronto Water supervisor called a “snowball effect.”

Clumps are formed – one found last week was about the size of a softball – and they gum up impellers, which are part of the pumps in the city’s sanitary pumping stations.

The size of a softball? That’s both awesome and disgusting. The article goes on to explain that this problem is particularly common in downtown Toronto, and advises residents to place floss in their waste bins instead.

I’ll try to do that. Or maybe I’ll just start my own clump of used floss, and hope it grows to the size of a basketball. Is there a Guiness World Record for that?

They turned off the tap

Since moving into my new apartment last August, I’ve enjoyed free WiFi courtesy of one of my neighbours. I’m not sure whether it’s altruism or ignorance, but judging by their router’s SSID (“default”), my money’s on the latter. Anyway, for the past few months, it’s been great — a nice, strong, reliable signal. For free!

But the day I got back from New Year’s in Windsor, I realized something had changed. My old friend “default?” Encrypted! What was I to do?

• Hack the WEP encryption with Kismac?
• Hook up a complicated system of routers in my closet to borrow and redistribute another neighbour’s open signal?
• Go without the internet for a while and see what better things I can find to do with my time?

After some thought, I decided it might just be best to actually pay for my own internet access. Go figure. Now, as far as I know, there are only two companies that offer high-speed in Toronto: Bell and Rogers. I hate them both, but of the two, I hate Rogers the least. So, from Jenna’s laptop, I surfed on over to the Rogers site to see what the damage would be. I clicked on “Internet Services,” then “Promotions.” I typed in my postal code so the site could “provide [me] with the right products and services.”

This took me to a page with a list of specials. One of them looked pretty good:

Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet EXPRESS

• Save $3 per month for 12 months!
• Receive $10 rebate with your online order
• Free Basic Installation
• No term commitment required

Free installation? A discount for ordering online? No contract? “Hey,” I thought, “maybe paying for legit Internet won’t be so bad. Sign me up!” So I clicked “Order Now.” It took me to a page that asked for my name and address. Hurriedly, I typed them in, and clicked “Continue.” Then, this:

Yes, that’s right. I couldn’t order Rogers high-speed because they were “currently experiencing system problems.”

Wow, Rogers. You’re really inspiring confidence in your internet service product with that one.

Yeesh.

Goodbye Marilyn

Marilyn was my bass guitar.

I bought her from Musicstop on Cunard Street in Halifax. She’d been on hold for me for months, and I’d been slowly paying her down, bit by bit, while she waited patiently for me in the Musicstop warehouse. I made the final payment the day after I got back from visiting my friend Jamie Bambury in Kingston. It was the spring of 2001, and I’d just finished Foundation Year at King’s. Life felt really good that day.

I’d had a hankering for a new bass, and boy, did she fit just right.

Marilyn was a real, genuine, born-and-bred-in-the-U-S-A kind of bass guitar. She was sleek, and sexy, and she had five (count ’em, five) strings that let me hit notes I didn’t even know existed. Plus, she was a really pretty shade of blue. I played her for five years straight, and she always sounded amazing to me. In that time, she came with me most everywhere I went, even to cities where I didn’t own an amp to play her through. Those times, I’d just pick her up and hold her. She felt good.

Marilyn was my bass guitar. But now I have a new bass, and as of today, Marilyn belongs to someone else.

Am I sad? A little. But we ended things on a good note.