Remember kids, Santa Claus doesn’t exist, and neither do any of the other fairy tale figures everyone tells you to believe in.

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Time for some self-deprecating humour. You know you’ve made it big when IKEA carries products with your name. And here they are, in all their polypropylene glory. The Viren toilet brush and holder The Viren 7 piece bathroom set, for only $ 7.99, what a steal! Followed by the Viren wastebasket, not a bad looking [...]

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I’ve gotten back into chess. About time! I used to play every day as a kid, then I got a life and stopped and now it’s back, not that I don’t have a life, what with school and relationships and work and everything. But chess über alles. So play me on Yahoo! Chess, my handle [...]

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I saw Freddy Kempf at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra on Monday, the 19th. It was a memorable introduction to some new music. Pechenyuk’s Parallax started off with some chicanery, but evolved into something meaningful by the end. Pechenyuk himself came out to bow at the end, which was a bit surprising for some of the [...]

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00:00 Solefald: i wish i didnt have a care in the world, god, it would be so nice 00:01 Lynner: perhaps some day 00:01 Solefald: this will sound crazy, but all i wanna do is get a good job, make money for like 10 yrs or so, save up like mad 00:01 Solefald: see, right [...]

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I don’t know about you, but when I get sick, especially with any kind of respiratory illness, my olfactory sensitivity skyrockets! Just yesterday, stricken by the flu/cold epidemic making the rounds at my glorious school (sic), I boarded the bus and sat on one of the many seats. As soon as I sat down, I [...]

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This is funny, and so well executed! I’ll try to sum up a funny story that happened a few years ago: I got a vasectomy. I met a girl soon afterwards. She was nice and attractive but with a selfish streak that raised a big red flag. She was 32 at the time and I [...]

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I’ve finished yet another of Rushdie’s novels, and he simply gets better with time. Not just for Indian diaspora, his novels display breathtaking command of multiple languages, vernacular or otherwise. My absolute favorite is Midnight’s Children, but it edges out his other works by a cat’s whisker. Rushdie is a real master of prose, I [...]

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So how exactly does one transition from angst to happiness, seemingly at the flick of a switch? Is it that easy? Or is it meant to be slow and torturous? Ah, you’ve just been reading too much Pekar, you say. But seriously! Is it possible to be truly weightless? Isn’t this akin to switching from [...]

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Ordinary life can be pretty complex too. That’s what Harvey Pekar tells us, and he has a hit movie to prove it. Well, I’d never heard of him until the movie came out, but Heather showed me his stuff and I’ve been hooked ever since. So I’ve been reading a bunch of his stuff from [...]

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