news feeds nov 5

The election down south is just a few days away and the race is too close to call. Obama and Mitt are neck and neck going down to the wire. Not that it matters, and it shouldn't sway voters, but Obama is getting way better celebrity backers. If you listen to what any celebrity who isn't schooled in such affairs, and don't take it as opinion, well, just.. good luck. I'm not saying that nothing good comes out of it though. Will Ferrell will do anything to get your vote. Jay Z has 99 problems and a Mitt ain't one. I don't live in the U.S. so I don't care all that much, but since they are right in our backyard (or front yard?) what happens down there will affect us somehow someway eventually so I have to care just a little bit. I don't know the fine print of the candidates platforms, and I couldn't make valid arguments one way or another for either candidate anymore than the candidates themselves can find a solution to the perpetually slumping American economy. I'm just saying, if you can give Bush eight years, you can give Obama the same.

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Canadians get to revel in the release of the latest polymer bank note, the $20 bill! On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada will begin circulating the new $20 bill, the most widely circulated of all bills in the country. In late 2012, the Bank of Canada issued the $100 bill as a polymer bill first, ahead of new $50 note unveiling in March. The 10$ and $5 bills will be issued in the new format by the end of 2013. There has been criticism of the new bills. They do not tear, that comes as advertised, but they do appear to melt, or fuse together, like if you have two notes in your wallet and you sit on the bus or something. Just don't roll like a hustler. There is also reports of optical lens in bank machines not picking up the new bills, dispensing money unknowingly to super stoked and potentially dishonest customers, causing major headaches for some retailers. The bottom line is it doesn't look like Monopoly money anymore. It looks like plastic Monopoly money. 

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Gross and inappropriate alert.

Want to bone Justin Beiber? Who doesn't? At long last, a Biebs sex doll is on the market. The plastic, bi-sexual (really?.. it's a doll) blowup sex doll was made by Pipedream Products and is available for purchase on Amazon, prices ranging from $20-$138. The description is the best part since you can't make this stuff up: "When he's not busy beating up paparazzi or beating off, he's up to his high-tops in hot Hollywood tail! But the Beave-ster doesn't have this effect just on women - he turns straight men gay faster than you can peel his skinny jeans off! So what are you waiting for, inflate this lil' pricks ego even more and have your very own Beaver bash!" Justin's name is actually used, it is cleverly disguised as Just-In Beaver, I'm just going to assume to avoid legal issue. Ya, so… ya. Enjoy?

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Phone photographers, at long last, Instagram is available on your desktop in the way of actual profiles. You still have to take the pictures from your phone, but others can view your photos from any device. Instagram said it will be launching profiles for all users in the next week with your (or my) address being http://instagram.com/[user name]. "We're launching Web profiles to give you a simple way to share your photos with more people and to make it easier to discover new users on the web, " the company said in a blogpost. Instagram was launched in 2010 and currently has 100 million registered users. On September 6 this year, a deal that had been in the works since April finally closed, with Facebook absorbing Instagram, and its thirteen employees for a $1 billion cash and stock deal. The program allows you to upload photos from your phone, then apply a filter to it, all while confining it to a square shape similar to the Kodak Instamatic and the classic Polaroid photo with the white border. 

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Have you lost weeks of your life to Civilization 2? If not, you might not want to read on due to the degree of nerdiness. Anyways, I played this game for hours at a time in my early teen years, on the family's first (at least fully functional) computer, a Pentium I with a whopping 75MHz clock speed. Didn't matter, the game ran, and I could stream albums with my Real Media Player. Wow, did the Real Player ever sound like crap. I listened to Offspring's "Smash" and Propagandhi's "How To Clean Everything" about a million times while playing until the early morning hours. Then I just stopped playing for whatever reason (girls), and didn't play it for probably ten years until I saw it floating around a newsgroup, so I immediately downloaded it. There have been many a sequel to Civilization II, played 'em, but for some reason CIV2 hass the perfect mix of simplicity of graphics and complexity of game play to make it my favourite. There is a gentlemen over on tumblr who has been playing the same game of Civ for 10 years. He swears that he does have a life, and has other games on the go, but always goes back to check out his game that he has played all the way until the year 3991 (the game stops keeping score/ends in 2020 if you don't land your spaceship before then). He goes by the tumblr handle Lycerius, and said his world is down to three nations, dwindling resources, and is severely polluted from all the nuclear wars. "Peace seems to be impossible. Every time a cease fire is signed, the Vikings will surprise attack me or the Americans the very next turn, often with nuclear weapons. Even when the UN forces a peace treaty. So I can only assure that peace will come only when they are wiped out. It is this that perpetuates the war ad infinitum." The war has been going on for 1700 years (in game time), and the constant nuclear bombardment has melted the worlds ice caps over and over making it impossible to farm on. Game creator Sid Meier had this to say of the gamer: "There's no way we could have tested for this. I can't say that we ever though anyone would play a game of Civ for that long. It's exciting a fan of the series would dedicate 10 years to playing one continuous game." Once he is done wiping out the wretched American and Viking civilizations he plans to rebuild the World. "My goal for the next few years is to try and end the war and thus use the engineers to clear swamps and fallout so that farming may resume. I want to rebuild the world. But I'm not sure how." 

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Bad Religion's sixteenth full length, "True North" is slated for a January 22, 2013 release through guitarist Mr. Brett Gurewitz's Epitaph Records. The pre-sale is up on the BR site and they also released a track from the album as well. "True North" has 16 tracks so fast, melodic punk rock with not one of the track eclipsing three minutes. Bad Religion's last album was 2010's "Dissent Of Man." In other Los Angeles 1980's punk band news, the Descendents have a documentary coming out chronicling the bands history. It covers the bands early surf rock days as a three piece, the bands Milo-led lineup, the break up/re-group as ALL, then the reformation of the last (and classic) Descendents lineup. The band has released six albums as the Descendents, eight as ALL, and one as Tony All (original Descendents bassist Tony Lombardo's songs with Stephan, Karl and Bill as the backing band). Here's a trailer for the documentary "Filmage: The Story Of the Descendents/ALL":

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Seminal New York indie band Texas Is the Reason is set to play at Lee's Palace in Toronto on March 8, 2013. The band reunited earlier in the year to play the Revelation Records 25th Anniversary Show apparently sparked something in them and have lined up eight shows, most on the east coast omit shows in San Francisco and Los Angeles to close out the mini-tour. The band formed after Norm Arenas left former Youth Of Today vocalist Ray Cappo's project Shelter and teamed up with former 108 drummer Chris Daly to form a group that would leave behind the macho attitude and the religious preaching (Shelter and 108 were both Hare Krishna hardcore bands) of their former projects. The band released one full length "Do You Know Who You Are" after which the were heavily courted by major labels. Tension mounted within the band and they dissolved on the eve they were supposed to sign their first major label contract. Daly went on to play in Jets To Brazil and Arenas DJ'd in Chicago for a few years. Here's a song from their first EP:

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There is still a hockey lockout on. One year ago today, Tyler Seguin sniped his first career hat trick at the ACC against the Leafs scoring three goals of irony as the man he was traded for, Phil Kessel, sat on the bench watching. Bruins 7. Leafs 0. Compared to that score, the lockout doesn't hurt so much.

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london 2012

We are almost two weeks into the Olympics and I was pretty on board when they started, having checked out many events from rowing to swimming to gymnastics. Where I started to get irked was around the badminton match between China's Wang Xiaoli & Yu Yang and South Korea's Jung Kyung-eun & Kim Ha-na. I've seen someone throw a game before, but I have never seen both sides trying to lose. The match didn't feature a rally of over four returns (you can do better than that in your backyard with ten beers in your system), with serves being hit into the net and routine shots hit way long. The same thing happened with the Ha Jung-eun & Kim Min-jung (South Korea) versus Meiliana Jauhari (Indonesia). Both teams were looking for an easier draw next round, but throwing games doesn't really go along with the ethics of sportsmanship in the Olympics. All eight competitors were disqualified. 

The social media doesn't bother me as much, since you can say what you want (within reason) in this day and age, not to mention that something that may appear to be accepted in some cultures may not in others. So, I take that with a grain of salt, and actually am kind of surprised by how many athletes have been expelled because of Twitter and Facebooking comments (like the pictured Greek triple jumper who was expelled just before the games).  

What did it for me, and many Canadians was the Canada-US female soccer game. The Canadians are leading the Americans 3-2 with time almost expired. Canadian goalie Erin McLeod held the ball for more than 6 seconds and apparently that is a violation, but one that it seldom called especially at such a crucial time of the game. The US is awarded a free kick and on the ensuing play the ball, at least semi-indirectly, hits a Canadian defender and we get called on a handball, then American Abby Wambach scores on the penalty kick awarded to them for the aforementioned handball. The US won it 4-3 in extra time. Forward Christine Sinclair, the best female player on the Canada team and arguably the world, said after the game "the ref decided the result before the game started." FIFA (who apparently is governing body at the Olympics?) is looking into the incidents/comments to see if supplementary action against the Canadians is required. Yes, the Canadians comments are being looked into. Not to the absolutely TERRIBLE refereeing. 

Maybe I'm just sick of London 2012, and wish it would stop pre-empting all the baseball games, but I just can't wait for them to be over. You get pretty excited at the start, then it wanes, slowly, as you watch the games unfold, then you become sick of them because of the politics and apparent match fixing. It's on every channel, every morning, then recaps all afternoon. And we're not doing too great on the Canadian front. I think we are better suited for the winter Olympics since everyone thinks we live in igloos anyways. But we can ski, skate, play hockey and curl... so spread that on your discus and smoke it!

aug 4 - round 1

There has been a lack of updates over the last bit. For anyone who actually cares sorry about that... summer time, you know? Lots of work, a bit of play, checking out the Olympics and a ballgame or two, some beaching and a mean sunburn. But, I haven't seen Batman yet… but here a sweet pic of the Toronto harbour I took last night, so yous know I'm not just sitting at home watching re-runs of Seinfeld. Even though I do do that.

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Alright, back to work:

Retired porn starlet Jenna Jameson has put her considerable, hrmmm, assets to work, backing Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. She announced her support for the candidate at a San Francisco strip club. "I'm very looking forward to a Republican back in office. When you're rich you want a Republican in office." Interesting for a woman who has done several campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which doesn't exactly mesh with the views of Republicans. Not to mention the whole Seamus Romney ordeal, where Mitt's family dog took a ride on the car roof, calling on animal rights activists to picket at many Romney events. Mitt also hasn't been a friend to the porn industry in the past, going as far as to vow that he will "vigorously" crack down on pornographers while in the White House. Ron Jeremy spoke a little more eloquently than Jameson on the upcoming election, saying he will be voting for Obama but this Mitt "means well." "I think he's a good man. I think the fact that he's such an amazing father proves a lot. I give him a lot of credit. He's raised some good sons. When a man is a really, really good father, that's very important." Will Romney/Jameson unseat Obama/Jeremy in 2012? Stay tuned.

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Dude! You won't believe who's trying to be my friend on Facebook? She's super hot. 6'3", blonde, has 38DD breasts and is into all the same things I am! How crazy is that? If she looks like the aforementioned Jenna Jameson and wants to be your friend then you are being hit up by a spam account. There is 83 million fake Facebook accounts out there, some quite malicious that can make your account send out virus filled messages without you even knowing about. Others are duplicate accounts for people who are too cool for school and have reached the maximum allowance of 5000 friends.  There's another few million peeps who have way, way too much time on their hands and have created profiles for their pet or baby. Facebook says all these go against the company's terms, saying that pet profiles should be created as pages, and that if you have 5000 Facebook friends then you probably don't have too many in real life so you should look into that.

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A woman from British Columbia was surfing craigslist, probably to find a used waffle iron, only to find that her new baby was available for sale on the online classifieds website. She has posted the picture on Facebook but did not adjust her privacy setting to make her pictures available to friends only. The picture was stolen, then reposted, showing that if you aren't careful with the information you make available on your profile, shit happens. And this isn't even the worst case scenario, that being complete identity theft. This isn't the first baby post on the site either. A woman in Dallas tried to actually sell her child on the same site. So the ad in BC was fake, which could lead to mischief charges when and if the RCMP find the perpetrator, who also has a dead dog available for purchase. It's obviously someone's idea of a joke, but if anyone actually answered either of the ads they might want to take a look into those folks..

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Older and wiser? Snoop Dogg announced on Monday that he has converted to Rastafarianism and will be changing his name to Snoop Lion since referring to someone or yourself as a dog is considered quite insulting in their culture. Snoop visited Jamaica in February (there is even a documentary that shows the transformation), and said he was born-again. He is also well versed in a chief Rasta sacrament "ganja" or marijuana to us North Americans, which "creates peaceful feelings and communal harmony." I hope Snoop didn't put his head up his ass by saying he was the re-incarnation of Bob Marley. He says he will now make music his kids and grandparents can listen to, dropping his first reggae album called "Reincarnated" this fall.

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A sweet unidentified lady from China was upset that drivers always zipped through the crosswalk near her house, and with the police doing nothing about, she took matters into her own hands. On the tree next to the sidewalk she tied a blow up sex doll to the tree in hopes of slowing drivers down at the mere sight of a potential date. It seems to have worked out for her, based on the photo with stopped motorbikes and onlookers. In a related story, the elderly woman's son, who on a trip to see his resourceful mother, was mortified to see his longtime girlfriend tied up to a tree and has filed a report with police, who again did nothing saying "she just looked, based on facial expressions, really surprised the whole time." This is the second time the China has been in the news about sex dolls since last month 18 officers spent the better part of an hour rescuing a blow up doll from a river thinking it was a drowning woman. 

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news feeds june 25

If you use the facebook app on your iPhone, Blackberry, Android, whatever, then you maybe have noticed the 'Friends Nearby' button. It was quietly unveiled officially today and has already been dubbed the "stalking app" since it could open people up to "potentially awkward or threatening interactions with strangers on the social network who know you're nearby." Why are you friends with them if you think they are going to harm you? Guess that's the difference between real friends and virtual ones. It's honestly not that big of a deal, since you see where your friends are when they get tagged or tagged themselves somewhere in your news feed. So that doesn't really bother me as much, but what I don't like is, over the weekend, facebook changed every user's defualt email to [yourusername]@facebook.com. Seriously, check your profile right now.. I'll wait. I had to check myself to believe it but sure enough, there it was. Their privacy concerns have been well documented, and I'm not really concerned, because well, I just don't care but it seems like a sneaky move. Just like the forced timeline layout. 

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Ebooks are killing the publishing industry. The rise of ebook has been slower than say that of streaming television or downloading music, because readers are usually loyal to having the book in their hands. In 2011, ten percent of all book purchases were digital whereas in 2010 30% of all music sales sold digitally. And by the end of this year that could double to almost 20% since even the most loyal book buyers have been switching over. However, the same study found that digital book readers are among the biggest buyers of printed books anyways. Seems like the people who bought a couple of books a year is the audience that has been lost. I know it might put some people out of work, in Canada, British Columbia has had a long history of logging but is it really the worst thing in the world to not kill these huge trees? With declining air quality rate and expanding population couldn't we use the oxygen they produce? Call me a hippy I guess...

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Talk about dad of the year. Or dad of the last thirteen years. Bryan Martin is the father of a high school senior named Brenna and for the last thirteen years has been collecting stories, praises and signatures in a copy of Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the Places You'll Go" from every teacher she has had from kindergarden all the way until this year. How he kept it hidden all this time is possibly the most impressive part, but also, that's brilliant. Like, who thinks of that? Brenna called the gift "moving, touching, nostalgic, and thoughtful," posted a link online, and posted it on her Reddit account (I don't know what that is). Her dad did know what Reddit was and commented on the post saying, "I cannot believe Brenna posted this... she has always been the light of my life. Doing this was just a small way of letting her know." Doesn't that just make you all misty?

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Remember that Simpsons where Homer's arms gets stuck in the vending machines, but he's not really stuck, he just didn't let go of the soda can and treats. I like that episode. Anyways, some moron in California got his arm stuck up a pop machine, not doubt trying to beat the San Diego heat with a Fresca. Unlike Homer, he was genuinely stuck, and struggled to get loose, scraping and bruising up his arm before he was busted by a rider on the nearby San Diego trolley system who phoned in the police. They tried to get him loose using axes, a crowbar and and an air chisel with minimal success. Eventually he was freed when a rotary saw had to cut through the machine's locking system. No charges have been layed yet, petty theft has been mentioned, but NBC San Diego said that the kid never actually got the soda he didn't really steal anything. Air tight, NBC, air tight.

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Rayce Veitch, Rudy Olsson, Stu Miller, Zach Giannotti

A shoutout to the boys in Crimes In Paris. Great friends, great guys to work with (or party with) and one hell of a band. They formed in Muskoka when they were all in high school and dropped their first record, "Modern Ghost Stories" in 2010, and are currently recording their sophomore album "Corrupt the Kids" at Metal Works in Toronto. You can check out their debut record, track by track, at www.crimesinparis.com, along with the video for the song "Running Ink." If you enjoy great music, soaring melodies, and more pop sensibility than most bands this young, give them a listen. A young band of veterans, look out for "Corrupt the Kids."

Crimes In Paris cover Don McLean's "Vincent":

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Cool, Armstrong, Dirnt

Green Day has not one but three albums slated for release in the next seven months. The band were jamming together at their space in Oakland, and apparently the songs kept pouring out and it had outgrown a single and double album, so the result, is three albums titled "Uno," "Dos," and "Tre," will be released 2 months apart from each other this winter on Warner Records. The album will apparently be lighter in tone than the last two albums, with the last one "21st Century Breakdown" reaching the point of super-serious. Green Day's continually evolving sound (or evolving since 97's "Nimrod" - before that the albums sounded pretty similar) is described by frontman and main songwriter Billie Joe Armstrong as "power pop - somewhere between ACDC and early Beatles." An indepth story with Green Day members Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, drummer Tre Cool and producer Rob Cavallo on the making of the records will be the cover story of the new issue of the Rolling Stone hitting stores this Friday.

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Youk as a White Sox tonight

It's been a rough go the last while for the Boston Red Sox. They had the epic collapse last September, beer drinking during the game and in the clubhouse for starting pitchers, their two time World Series winning manager Terry Francona left, or was let go, depending on which reports you read, and the builder of the two World Series championships, president Theo Epstein fled to the Cubs. And now, Kevin Youkilis has been traded to the Chicago White Sox for a utility outfielder and a minor league pitcher. Will Middlebrooks has been doing a great job at third base this season after given a chance to start regularily while Youk was injured. Youkilis has been having a tough season, at least by his standards, with his average about 60 points lower than his career mark. Middlebrooks, on the other had,  has been having a very Youkilis type season offensively, hit at a .325 clip with 9 homers and 34 RBI. David Ortiz is the sole Red Sox who was a member of the 2004 championship squad and along with Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Dustin Pedroia and Jacoby Ellsbury, are the only holdovers from the 2007 Series title. The Red Sox currently sit 5.5 games out of first entering Monday nights play. Good luck to Youk too, White Sox have a good team this year and he can only help.

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James VanRiemsdyk

The Toronto Maple Leafs are doing what they can given the high prices of acquiring talent out there. They have shipped off defenceman Luke Schenn to the Philadelphia Flyers for power forward James VanRiemsdyk after a pretty quiet draft week. While the coveted big centreman is still being looked for, with not much out there free agent wise, there hasn't been much luck. Not to mention the goaltending situation, which the Leafs have made a bit less complicated by shipping the rights to the the "Monster" Jonas Gustavsson to the Winnipeg Jets (who just locked up their starting goalie on a five year deal, meaning if a deal gets done Jonas will be backing up Pavelec), still needs to be resolved but there is little out there, and maybe even less now since Luongo said he wouldn't waive his no trade clause to go for the Leafs, not that we neccesarily wanted him anyways at the term and dollars left on his contract. 

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