Sights of Toronto

I have taken to carrying my camera with me when I'm walking around.

A cool alley mural...



The clock tower building is a fire station. Cool, huh? I love the architecture of this building.

A February Weekend in Toronto

I went to see a play on Friday, Medea. It was interesting since I had never seen a Greek tragedy before. Of course, everyone dies at the end so it's a bit of a bummer.

The weather was positively spring-like this weekend. See, it's melting and there are puddles everywhere...



The weather was even nice Saturday night...



We had a lovely sunset on Sunday. You can see the moon rising as the sun is setting. I took these pictures from my apartment window. :)

Yay! New Episodes of The Colbert Report and The Daily Show Tonight!

Both shows were on holiday last week so yay for that.

On a less joyous topic, I was watching the news at dinner time, and they were reporting that the biggest food bank in Toronto did not have enough food to feed 170,000 people who use food banks every month (which is such a high number for a city of 5 million people, by the way). Anyway, it prompted me to get off my butt, which is a good thing. Went to the grocery store, filled a bag with food, and dropped it in the donation bin. I feel ashamed that I need to be prompted to remember to give to those in need.

Okay, I must got back to marking papers...

One more thing, if you missed SNL this weekend, you missed the awesome Laser Cats short film. So so funny. Go watch it.

Amazon Celebrates 10 Years, Heat & Terrorist Attacks

How is that for a post title? LOL I'm having varied things on my mind. I actually mostly have work things on my mind these days (I'm buried in books) but I need to talk/write about other things so here goes nothing...

I was browsing Amazon.com last night to see when the third season of NewsRadio would be released on DVD (soon, please, Mr. Simms!), and I saw that Amazon is celebrating its tenth anniversary, and having various activities to celebrate. One of the coolest things they are doing is the Special Deliveries. A celebrity delivers a package containing a book he/she wrote, a DVD of a movie or TV series he/she appears in,... As far as publicity stunts to flaunt the wonderfulness of a company go, I thought it was pretty cool. I loved the clip of the girl whose Sex & The City DVDs were delivered by Chris Noth. Hee. The girl moved from Greece to NYC, and she said her cousin would tease her, asking if she had met Mr. Big yet. Her cousin is in for a big surprise, pardon the bad pun. LOL

Besides that, it's really hot in TO. We are under a smog advisory, a humidex advisory, and an extreme heat advisory. Yikes. We beat a heat record today; it was 34°C (93°F), 40°C (104°F) if you factor in humidity. It's supposed to be like that until Saturday. It was actually kind of funny how they kept reiterating on the news how hot it was, getting Joe Q. Public on the street to comment. Gee, I didn't notice it was boiling hot! It is kind of funny that they have created emergency cooling centres in a few points in the city, yet the province has asked us to turn off our ACs to conserve electricity. Apparently, the hydroelectric grid is at a breaking point. I'm all for turning off lights and non-necessary appliances but the AC? Is kind of crucial this week if I don't want to turn into a melted brain. We didn't have it on last night, and it was just unbelievably uncomfortable. We do turn our AC off when we're not home but that's kind of as much as we can muster for now.

Terrorist attacks... It's really terrible what happened in London. So, now, of course, they are saying Canada is probably next. That's not exactly a surprise to me. But according Public Safety minister, we're not psychologically ready for it.

My inquiries are three-fold:

1) How can you ever be ready to get the crap bombed out of you?

2) Is she suggesting we should now live in a constant state of paranoia to ensure readiness?

3) Should I buy more duct tape?

Of course, I am living in the Canadian city most likely to be bombed (we have earned this title 4 years running! How lucky are we?). Honestly, I don't really buy the idea that we can be ready for it. Sure, we have to protect ourselves against it but are we going to live our lives in constant fear that the other shoe is going to drop? What a terrible way to live. I think it's this powerlessness against these groups of extremists that is most frustrating. How can we stop them? The war of terror sure has done diddly squat.

The Daily Show was back tonight! In a new studio too! The studio looks nice but the only thing I'm not liking about it is the words constantly floating behind Jon's head. They were distracting me big time; I felt like it overloaded my attentional resources. It was nice to see him satirize the media sensationalization of the London attacks. Marci Hamilton, who was there to discuss her book God vs. The Gavel , was quite an eye-opener on the overprotection and exemption from the law religious groups receive in the US. She was talking about how the Catholic Church has been seeking protection under the First Amendement for keeping its eyes closed on cases of child abuse. And it seems to have been working. Truly disturbing.

I Like Random Quizzes...

A Tom Cruise animation was linked at the Television Without Pity boards. It's all about joining the Church of Scientology, and is very funny. Anyway, they have a "quiz" to see if you're ready to join Scientology, and I am:



Hee. That made me laugh.

It's a beautiful day in Toronto. The sun is shining brightly, and it is not too hot. :)

I had a nice night out yesterday. Long walk, good company (Hi David, if you're reading :)), tasty coffee, it was very pleasant. We went to the first non-denominational cemetary in the city. Sadly, we got there not long before they were going to close. Who knew cemetaries close? Anyway, we need to go back to find the famous tombstones. I was thinking that I don't find cemetaries creepy at all. I did when I was a kid but somehow, death doesn't scare me as much as it used to. There is something oddly peaceful about it all. Mind you, it wouldn't have been exactly cool to be locked in there at night since that sounds like the beginning of a horror movie but still... LOL I love the history you find in cemetaries too, and I like reading tombstones. One of them said "She was a lot of fun." I think that's a very cool thing to have there for eternity.