On Monday the search engine Bing sent 1,259 people to my blog based on the search “lotus seed pod” but sent them to the homepage and not the Trypophobia post which actually has the lotus seed pod images.

What they saw instead was the obligatory Wikipedia black-out / SOPA post. Way to go Bing.

Only 1 person went on to find the article and I suspect they were one of the people who searched for it via Google.

In other news: 1,259 people actually use Bing.

The image to the right is courtesy of my friend Steven who does not want to change his search engine to Bing, thank you very much.

Will all the Wikipedia-styled internet black-outs help? Or will slacktivism rear its ugly head and people will simply let Jimmy Wales do all the work? Time will tell.

For now watch this video and, if you’re an American who doesn’t like what SOPA/PIPA are all about, please write your congressperson and tell them so. Since I’m Canadian, all I can do is urge others to act.

EDIT: I just found out you can go here—

http://americancensorship.org/

—to sign a petition if you’re not a U.S. citizen (about half way down the page).

When I first moved to Toronto my impression of the city was that it seemed to be the living embodiment of Canada’s cultural mosaic.

Unlike the American melting pot—where cultures are assimilated into a single nationalistic vision—as a country we pride ourselves on creating a rich, ever-changing tapestry made up of thousands of distinct colours and textures. And on the surface this is how the city appeared.

But the more I looked at it, the more it seemed like the mosaic wasn’t a rich tableau of people from all over the world working, playing, loving and living together, it was more like the rigidly geometric divisions of a Mondrian.

Red here. Yellow here. Blue here. White here. And thick black lines to separate them all.

And, for a while, for a few years, this seemed to me to be a pretty accurate description of Hog Town’s stratified neighborhoods and communities isolated form one another by our sprawling urban geography.

But then I began to see that the city isn’t a mosaic at all. It’s not a work in progress, not a work that’s been abandoned, it’s not incomplete—it’s a mosaic that hasn’t even been started.

Toronto is just piles of coloured tiles on the floor of an artist’s studio waiting to be glued into place. Stagnant heaps of culture jumbled together. And slowly, as the piles shifted and settled over time, they’ve sort of bled together at the edges. Occasionally, as the artist walked around the studio procrastinating, waiting for inspiration, making tea, a few tiles have been kicked across the room into other piles.

A yellow square lost in a heap of blue triangles.

A sprinkling of green rhomboids in among the red hexagons.

And it seems like the artist is paralyzed, unsure of what what kind of mosaic they even want to create. There’s no vision so they just continue to make tea and browse the Internet and read books and wait for inspiration to hit them while the piles continue to settle and spread and bleed as a layer of grey dust  settles on everything.

Since I was looking at something in my hand, I hadn’t even seen their faces. All I’d glimpsed in that split-second was their coat-hanger thin frames from their pricey footwear up to their expensively clad shoulders. I decided the three blondes and the one young man were various forms of EA either from the 17th floor law firm or the media network advertising offices up on the 21st.

If they held positions higher than EA, they wouldn’t have exuded that uniquely sketchy form of bravado that’s entirely devoid of self-confidence yet they hope to pass off as self-confidence. They psychically reeked of the despair that comes from living in fear that others might smell the fear and despair on them.

They bragged about holidays in a slightly aggressive manner that made it sound as if they didn’t really enjoy themselves and made mean-spirited jokes about people they knew in common. The guy actually slapped his knee as he laughed a little too hard.

Being in such a confined space with them for no more than 20 seconds was intolerable. I never did see their faces because I couldn’t bring myself to look up from my shoes as I tried to squeeze myself into invisibility in the car’s mirrored corner.

I don’t think they saw me.

It turns out I may have been wrong about Mr. Burroughs. The delightful little book has me questioning if I’d been wrong to unceremoniously lump him in with Hunter S. Thompson, Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski as a writer who cannot be enjoyed by anyone over the age of twenty-five.

Twenty-three if they are not stoned.

But I could have been wrong. These short, touching, insightful, creative, sardonic essays on the ownership of felines is, after all, the only example of his work I’ve ever read.

And I’ve really been enjoying them as I evacuate my bowels on the toilet. One or two are just the right length for the job and several can be combined if needed for a longer session.

Actually, this is the only book I’ve read by any of the four writers I’ve mentioned here.

In my mind, they’re all inexorably linked to a fifth writer: Everyone’s rite-of-passage purveyor of adolescent angst, J.D. Salinger—whom I have read.  But no one over the age of twenty-five should.

Even if they’re stoned.

But I’m beginning to suspect the link is, in fact, exorable. Perhaps I will exorcise it in the new year.

Perhaps, microwaved Doritos.

I think someone was heating up Chinese food.

Anyway, we always seem to have to pee at the same time.

A couple of weeks ago I realized I’d been going through what is commonly known as a mid-life crisis. Which means, I suppose, I’m going to live to be 78. Whatever age I manage to make it to, I was subconsciously feeling like I have accomplished nothing in my first 39 years of existence.

I suspect I won’t undergo these kinds of growing pains upon my “Big  4-0″ next year since my anxiety this year was centred around the feeling of OH MY GOD I ONLY HAVE ONE MORE YEAR TO ACTUALLY ACCOMPLISH SOMETHING BEFORE I’M 40!

By October of next year it’ll be a moot point since it’ll be all too clear that I wasted another year ineffectually pottering about in my basement, quietly grumbling at the world for ignoring my undeniable greatness, and dejectedly admitting the world has far better things to pay attention to. Really, the same routine I’ve been following for 39 years now. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But every year I do try to fix it. With my birthday falling so close to the end of the year, this is when I make my resolutions. This year my overarching goal is to feel like I accomplished something by the time I’m 40.

The problem with this goal is whenever you accomplish something, that merely means you’ve made it up another rung of the accomplishment ladder and you feel like you haven’t accomplished anything worthwhile. I read somewhere, probably in an article about Steve Jobs, this is just the way ambition works.

Truth be told, in the last three years I’ve accomplished more that I had in the previous 35. Professionally I make more money, the podcast has maintained a small audience (though how many downloads are actually listened to is unknown), I’ve sold more of my music  (and finally put out a vinyl record) and had more media coverage for said music than ever before, yet it still feels like treading water.

So what rungs do I want to climb before the end of November, 2012?

• Take Moonwood on tour this summer, whether it’s just four crappy cities in Ontario or a dozen cities in Germany and Scandinavia. Touring is something I’ve avoided (it seems like a horrific experience) but have always felt not doing it has delegitimatized my status as a serious musician. Perhaps it has more to do with myself not being very serious about being a musician in general, but I have always blamed it on the lack of touring.
• Actually do something with Nerd Hurdles other than stagnate indefinitely. Although I’m one of the most derisive eyerollers when podcasters whinge about the futility of podcasting and start dropping hints they’re going to kill their show, lately I’ve become more sympathetic to that attitude. Not that we don’t have fun doing the show, but we have fun together anyway. We don’t need to actually record our random bullshit.
• Get rid of the beard. It’s started making it hard to do things. I need to hold books way out in front of me as if I have poor eyesight, or really big boobs. Plus, it keeps getting in my food at an ever increasingly disgusting rate. And also, I haven’t seen my face in over three years (long enought to forget how much I really hate shaving). I’m wondering if I’ve noticeably aged under there. It’s become a bit of a fascination for me. First I’d like to enter a beard contest though. And when I shave it off, do it for charity some how. I bet I can auction off a merkin made out of my beard.
• Open a music venue in South Etobicoke. This is a terrible idea doomed to failure purely based on geography and TTC limitations. But there’s pretty much absolutely nothing down there—not really even bars with crappy cover bands—yet there’s got to be people who wish there was. There’s a freakin’ music program at the college next door to our house! Still, I’d like to give it a shot. Do something community building in my neighbourhood for once in my life. Maybe if I get laid off.
• Finish the rewrite on my novel Terminal Park and either get some sort of publisher interest in it or self-publish it for the “Kindle” market.
• Refresh my study of Taoism so that I can go back to not caring about not accomplishing anything.

Maybe I’ll just focus on that last point.

That is, if you define “danger” as the possibility that somebody on the subway might actually speak to you. He possesses those overly alert, slightly manic mannerisms which are clear indicators of a Talker. Sort of like how you know from twenty paces that a dog is going jump up on you and lick your face.

The alarm bells he’s set off in my head are clearly silent for the well-dressed, middle-aged woman carrying a plastic shopping bag who plonks down beside him. She’s either far braver than I or hasn’t assessed the situation to the same degree. Due to the her slightly oblivious, preoccupied expression, I suspect the latter.

He immediately begins talking to her. Judging from the look that’s crept into the corner of her eyes, I’m glad to be wearing my iPod and unable to make out exactly what he’s saying. After I notice her loud, nervous laughter, I remove one ear-bud to evesdrop.

He says, “You only have one bag today.”

“Yes. Just the one,” she says and laughs nervously again. Her body language is now beginning to migrate from politely accommodating to closed-off.

“Where do you shop? You shop at the mall,” he asks and answers.

“Sometimes, yes,” she confirms unnecessarily.

“I know you. I seen you there. You’re always running around with three bags. I watch you all the time. Three bags.”

Looking confused and a little more worried, she says, “Oh. I go to the camera store sometimes,” offering him more information than I would have.

“I’m a janitor there. I see everyone. I watch you lots. I seen you always have lots of bags.”

It’s clear by looking at her that she’s quickly come to understand the magnitude of the error she made by sitting beside the scruffy man. The look of worry has spread from her eyes to flood her whole face. This is too uncomfortable for me so I stick the ear-bud back in and focus on my book.

When we arrive at Bloor Station the woman sheds her increasingly unhappy expression and brightly says, “This is my stop. Bye-bye!”

Her bubble is immediately burst when the man says, “Bloor? I’m getting off here too. Now I’m stalking you. Hahaha.” The woman doesn’t respond in any way other than looking exponentially more worried so he quickly adds, “Don’t take that literally.”

The woman nervously laughs one more time, but there is real terror in her eyes as they part ways.

It was our third anniversary the other night so we decided to go somewhere a little special, a little fancy. Since there aren’t too many restaurants on the Shore that provide “special”—much less “fancy”—we finally got out to the relatively fancy Quebecois eatery, Café Du Lac, which Mandi has been curious about for some time.

Our experience was special right off the bat.

When we arrived a smidge after 5:30, the doors were still locked and we met another couple who were also waiting for the place to open. Also waiting on the doorstep was a twitching and writhing pigeon with its head and wings twisted at unnatural angles. Its feathers were filthy and ruffled and its beak opened and closed in palsied silence. I thought it might have had distemper—or whatever disease avian scavengers are susceptible to—or maybe had its neck broken by flying into the building. It was hard to tell, but it was certainly dying.

The man of the other couple was probably in his late forties and wore a dark sports coat with a white shirt that had the top two buttons undone in that calculated, casual manner. His brow was knotted under his neatly cropped dark hair and he said, a little stiffly, “It should be put out of its misery.”

I had a few skeptical thoughts at this point. The first was that bird was in some kind of misery at all. I suspected it was so far into a state of shock that it was beyond suffering. I did think the creature needed to be removed from the doorstep and left somewhere to quietly expire which, by my estimation, was bound to happen very shortly. My other skeptical thought was that this man wasn’t reacting out of empathy for the bird’s supposed suffering but was merely reciting the correct rote response he thought applied to the situation.

I was less skeptical he was a robot or, perhaps, a slightly sociopathic doctor. When the waitress unlocked the doors and he asked her for a towel (supposedly to lay over it while he stomped on its head), he seemed oblivious to his wife’s horrified reaction.

While the hostess-server went back to the kitchen to ask the chef for a towel, and a few neighbourhood boys stopped to gawk, we took the opportunity to squeeze past the wife and get away from the dying pigeon. Something the man seemed determined to stick by. After seating ourselves, the chef walked past with a towel and the server said to us, with a raucous, semi-hysterical laugh, “I can’t believe this is happening! There’s always something crazy on The Lakeshore! Everyday it’s something else. My husband doesn’t believe the stories I tell him every night. He doesn’t believe it’s possible.”

Living a few minutes west of the restaurant, we knew it was entirely possible. The increasingly, though subtly, distraught wife was standing just inside the doorway, distancing herself from her husband’s single-minded determination to extinguish the bird. Mandi called over, “He’s going to kill it with a towel? Hardcore!”

The server laughed at that. The wife gestured she was unsure of what was going to happen next and muttered something to the effect of, “He needs to put things out of their misery.” Whatever was about to transpire, she didn’t seem to be terribly okay with it.

Soon the chef returned with a small bundle and the server said, “No! No no. What are you doing? No. Don’t bring it in here! NO. Couldn’t you walk around?”

The chef continued with the bundle out the back door followed by a troop of wide-eyed neighbourhood children. Moments later a woman came in and said, “Where’s my son?”

The server said, “He’s out back. There was a dead pigeon.”

The mom said, “Oh. Okay then,” with the resigned shrug of a mother used to her child’s ghoulish fascinations and left.

Watching her exit, we noticed the other couple had also vacated the scene. Dealing with the removal of the bird must have affected their appetites. I’m not sure if they were concerned the cook had been in close contact with possibly diseased sky-vermin or if, as Mandi conjectured, the woman was just too embarrassed by her husband to eat in front of us an the staff. That was okay with us, we had the room to ourselves.

With the business of the bird out of the way, we got down to the business of food. We were slightly disappointed to find the only selections on tap were Great Lakes Brewery‘s bland dad lager, Golden Horseshoe, and their decently hoppy but fairly standard pale ale, Crazy Canuck. Great Lakes makes far more interesting varieties but they sadly don’t seem to make it to the taps very often. The only other beer choice was St. Ambroise, which suited us fine.

Since it was a Tuesday, we took advantage of the prix fixe menu. Which isn’t exactly “fixed” since, contrary to the website, the steak frites entree is five dollars more than the mussels or the poutine. Also contrary to the website, the steak frites doesn’t come with caramelized onions but with an apple confit. A slight disappointment since I’m not a fan of cooked, spiced apples and was really looking forward to the caramelized onions. Also disappointing to me—though probably not to any one else—the housemade ketchup was flavoured with nutmeg or some other disgusting mulling spice. Mandi seemed to enjoy it as most people probably would. I gave it to her to go with the absolute mountain of frites that came with her absolute mountain of mussels.

Interestingly, the steak frites was also relatively short on the frites. Though by “short on” I mean there were plenty, it was just interesting how many more came with the mussels. Which was also proportionately a much larger serving than the steak itself. Again, the steak was a decent portion, just noticeably smaller than the largest bowl of mussels we’d ever seen. The steak was also a tad on the salty side (though not as shockingly so as the salt-lick known as  Queen West’s  Parts & Labour). The mussels were reportedly good, by the way.

If you’re the type who wants value-for-dollar with the prix fixe menu, I’d suggest getting the soup of the day, whatever it may be. That night it was glazed carrot. We didn’t order it for various reasons. The salad option was a standard tossed greens that wasn’t bad, but not thrilling. Go with the soup, I’m sure it’s good.

The third entree option, poutine, which also neither of us ordered has an opportunity to have seared foie gras added for an additional cost which, in retrospect, probably would have been worth trying.

In case you’re wondering, the server confirmed for us—after we inquired—the bird was in fact not put out of its misery but was merely left to die in the alley. She prefaced this information with, “I don’t even want to talk about it…”  in a delighted manner that suggested she really did want to talk about it. When we left we drew a dead pigeon on our bill which caused her to cackle from the back, “I love it! I’m going to keep this forever.”

Food: 4 gourmets out of 5
Decor: 4 modern furnishing out of 5
Location: 5 scuzzy ghettos out of 5