It was a Tuesday morning, a couple of weeks ago, and it was one of the most beautiful mornings I can remember so far this winter. As I walked to Le Dépanneur Café, the biggest snowflakes you've ever seen were lazily making their descent to the ground. L'Esplanade street was mostly deserted quiet except for me and the crunching of the snow beneath my Columbia boots. Four or five hours of work fly by me like doves until my good friend Elizabeth walks in.

Benoit, the owner, convinces us to buy the CD of his newest musical crush - Erin Lang. I went ahead and paid the paltry $10 for it, while Elizabeth contents herself with a green tea cupcake, also made by Erin Lang that morning. I took a bite. It was pretty good.

I sometimes wonder what parts of my life I'll look back on with fondness in my later years. We tend to morph, twist and deform places, people and things deep in the recesses of our memories, warping proportions and exaggerating emotions. Whenever I listen to Erin Lang, maybe I'll somehow manage to remember the day where giant snowflakes fell on the plateau only to be destroyed under the heel of my even giant-er boot, worked on my laptop for many many hours and ate a dozen green tea cupcakes.

Hanna Z. Mansour, 1939 - 2009

Update: The Funeral will be held on Saturday, January 2nd, 12:30pm at St. George's Anglican Church (1101 Stanley).

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Today at 1:45pm, surrounded by loving family and friends, my Dad passed away peacefully at Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montréal, at the rather young age of 70, following complications from a stroke he suffered in early November. Those of you who are close to my family probably also realized that 10 years ago - almost to the day - his wife, my mother passed away as well. The almost eerie timing of the situation has left us all with more questions than answers, but we're thankful for the time we spent with him and for all the lives he's touched in his time here. We're as grateful to him for everything he's done for us as we are saddened by his departure. He will be remembered as a good man who did good with his life to help others.

In lieu of flowers, donations to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada will be greatly appreciated.

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The Funeral will be held on Saturday, January 2nd, 12:30pm at St. George's Anglican Church (1101 Stanley).

If you have a shaved head and want to keep it, don't let it grow out more than a few days or so. Shaving your head after it's grown out more than a few millimeters is almost as irritating as when you shave it for the first time.

That is all.

This year has had its ups and downs, relationship-wise. I've only got precious little time left as a 20-something, so I dearly hope the emotional rollercoasterness of this ending year is a vestige of times past, and not an omen of things to come. All was pretty quiet in January, pretty intense come spring, awkward in the summer, super-lame at the end of summer, contemplative in the fall, and now, somewhat interesting again.

Here are some songs to summarize - and immortalize - these times.

• Franz Ferdinand - No You Girls
• Theory of a Deadman - Bad Girlfriend
• Jet - She's a Genius
• Puddle of Mudd - She Fucking Hates Me
• The Roots - Seed
• Blackstarr (Mos Def and Talib Kweli) - Beautiful

sans commentaire...

I wasn't planning on getting vaccinated against the H1N1 flu. I tend to take a laissez-faire attitude about this kind of thing, and even if I did catch it I'm pretty sure my immune system would manage to fight it off. Coupled with my irrational belief that people who live in colder climates are naturally hardier, I figured it was all just an orchestrated panic to scare the Walmart crowd into submission again.

However, my family situation has changed quite rapidly over the past month, and I've been spending lots of time around babies and toddlers, not to mention a couple of hours a day at the hospital. Seeing as how the young and ill are higher-risk candidates for complications due to the swine flu, I decided that I should do it not for myself, but to protect those around me. I didn't, however, feel up to going to one of the clinics here in Laval and waiting in line. There's a certain herd-ness to it that bothers me.

There is no love lost between Apple and myself. The limitations imposed on the way Apple products work - especially their software - is one of the greatest blights on digital creativity today.

However, I can see how they are skilled at marketing and design intended to appeal to people who like neat, pretty, packaged things and are willing (and able) to plop down a 300% markup on a computer in order to get bouncing glossy icons and a glowing logo on their computers.

One thing, however, that Apple has somehow never, ever been able to create correctly, is a mouse. Even the most die-hard Apple fans I know draw the line at buying / using an Apple mouse, instead going for one of the more usable offerings from Microsoft or Logitech. For some reason, the fascist, rigid design principles that apply to their laptop, keyboard and software engineering divisions do not seem to carry over to their "Mouse Group" or whatever it's called. I am happy to report that their illustrious history of creating what are likely the most craptastic pointing devices ever to sport a USB plug (or Bluetooth chip) remains intact.

Recorded on my Kodak Zi8 HD camcorder. Although two of the most common criticisms of this camera are the low-light noise and the lackluster internal mic, they both seem to actually be quite decent in this video.