I went to the new Liquor Store at King and William this morning. It's gigantic! The main lesson I learned from the shopping experience is that the Ontario government really really wants me to drink whiskey. I don't like whiskey, so they're out of luck, but I was impressed by the horribly in your face marketing scheme showing good looking people my age dubbed "the Whiskey Generation" atop every display in the store (including wine, beer, liquor, you name it...). On the bright side, I picked up some new chocolate mint flavoured Baileys, which is tres yummy, and a 6-pack of Mill St. coffee porter.
This afternoon I discovered the Decembrists - they're an American indie band that writes folklore inspired lyrics but otherwise reminds me of Death Cab for Cutie and everybody else in that scene. I remembered the songs from Lindsay et al's performance at Bards in the Shell, which I thought was really cute. The real thing definitely did not disappoint.
The City has decided to cut KWLT a small break by letting us defer half the cost of putting in a new 4" water line for our ridiculously unnecessary but nonetheless required sprinkler system. This is very good because we need to get the thing in before the ground freezes. Yay for the development folks cutting us a break for once - granted it's not a huge break, but from that department any victory is miraculous!
And finally, since I have a reputation for political ranting, my rant for today is about Canada becoming the US. I'm reading a primer on public administration that claims Canadians no longer really care about independence. It claims that the NDP is the only truly nationalist party and it has lost most of its support in recent years. Apparently survey data show that most Canadians will trade their identity for expanding export markets and have replaced indignation with fatalism when it comes to integration. Until recently I would have said I felt that way as well - I didn't want to be the US, but figured that our slow cultural demise was inevitable, so why fight it. The Bush administration has changed my opinion though - they are systematically stripping their country of civil liberties, respect for basic human rights, and economic stability. We can't go down with that ship. It's time Canada started seriously looking at alternative markets for our exports because the twilight of American culture is here.