Tag: yay

free food from Dexit

Though I still hate Dexit, I have found a place to use the remaining balance — the Pizza Pizza at the corner of Vic Park and Sheppard. Yes, their pizza is still like damp cardboard, but they have passable salads.

They still need to work on the reliability of their terminals, and training staff. The other day they said my debit was authorised, when clearly nothing had come off the tag. They wouldn’t take the cash I offered (their screen showed a green thing), so yay Dexit, free food!

I’ll be your terrorist for the evening…

I’m at YYZ, and despite the Canadian passport, I’m still Mr Designated Searched Guy. Thought that the passport might’ve changed things, but no. Sigh…

It does mean I no longer have to do those dumb visa waiver things, yay!

And it didn’t help that part of one of the lighting panels started to fall off inside the cabin before takeoff, so we had to taxi back, get it fixed, and head back out an hour later. Gotta love Air Canada.

biccyepiphany

I’m glad we went to Denninger’s for lunch today. I discovered that they sell my favourite biscuit ever, that being McVitie’s Café Noir. Better known to the rest of Europe as Verkade Café Noir from the Netherlands, these brittle sugar/coffee glazed biscuits are the best. When I was a nipper I could scoff half a pack in a sitting, and I haven’t lost the knack. They’re every bit as good as I remember them.

Shame they’re owned by evil big tobacco …

Wild East is cool

I just sold a bunch of CDs to Wild East on the Danforth. I got a pretty good deal on them. This is what I bought with part of the proceeds:

  • Anne LeBaron / Rana, Ritual & Revelations
  • Badly Drawn Boy / One Plus One Is One
  • Devendra Banhart / Nino Rojo
  • Elliott Smith / From A Basement On The Hill
  • Kate Rusby / Underneath The Stars
  • Sterling Roswell / The Psychedelic Ubik

Winsome Newsom

On several people’s recommendation, I bought Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender CD. It is quite remarkable. Her lyrics remind me of Mervyn Peake‘s nonsense poems (… Even mollusks have weddings, / though solemn and leaden / but you dirge for the dead, / take no jam on your bread …). She sings of catenaries and dirigibles, rephrasing words into unfamiliar shapes. It’s not the most common act, a harpist with a fey wee voice who can also raise up a real backwoods caterwaul, but it works for me.

Here’s a video of one of her songs: Sprout and the Bean.

(Norvin, you’d hate it. In fact, you’d hate it so much that I’d advise you listen to it, just so folks around you can experience the ‘neitzen’ effect.)