Fresh off the heels of the March 20th Cow attack on the QEW, the Pigs have followed up with a more devastating attack. Around 8am on Monday morning a group of elite Pig soldiers escaped an unmarked mobile prison transport and took over the 401. The 401 is the busiest highway in Canada and one of the busiest in North America. This confirms that the animal world is stepping up it’s efforts to eradicate humanity. The Cow attack last month caused panic and lost productivity, but no civilians were hurt. This Pig attack was more brutal. The Pigs are said to have caused 4 injuries - 2 serious and 2 minor. The boldness of the animal forces to strike with a 2nd attack so soon proves that we cannot sit by and watch anymore. Our way of life has changed. We must all start eating much more pork, beef and chicken products. We must prepare for attacks on all fronts including air and sea. We have the technology. We have the weapons. We have opposable digits. Now, we must add resolve. We cannot allow nature to win this war. The score is now 2-0. Will we sit quietly without response?

I decided at the last moment to go downtown for the evening yesterday.  I almost forgot about the “perfect storm” of traffic that Earth Hour was going to cause.  It took me over 1.5 hours to get into the city when it usually takes me 30 minutes.  There was a Toronto Maple Leaf home game, a free concert and a general interest in the city…so I was bumper to bumper the whole time.  It made me laugh a little to think of all the gas being burned in traffic while trying to bring awareness to global warming.  Maybe I should have taken the train!

Once I finally got into the city I was impressed.  I met a friend at a pub and all the tv screens were off and it was only candle light.  The atmosphere was really cool!  I kind of wish that some bars would do this more often.  They would save power and create a cool look for the joint.  Hell, even Google turned the lights out on their site!  I found some cool pictures of Toronto during Earth Hour.

Man versus nature…the battle continues! What with global warming, deforestation and the slaughter of millions of animals for food and fun, I assumed we were winning this epic struggle. Every once in a while nature decides to invade with some resistance force. Today, a group of highly trained, elite Cow soldiers escaped from a mobile holding cell and proceeded to establish a new base camp right on the QEW Westbound. This stopped the highway and crippled productivity for thousands of residents. Our local defense mounted a counter attack and were finally able to round up the cattle on side roads and bring order back to the area.

The Cows, once free, displayed their training by taking complete control of a major highway within moments. This attack served as a lesson in our lack of preparedness of enemy animal attacks. Although the Cows didn’t cause any civilian casualties, what would have happened if they managed to communicate to other Cows or their allies? Given their level of efficiency, they could have taken over most of east Mississauga/west Toronto before rush hour ended. The time has come to step up our efforts! Drive gas guzzlers, club baby seals and spray chemicals into the air. We cannot stray on the road to victory, lest Cows take over that road and stop us.

Yes, that title is right. This weekend was yet another massive snow dumping on Toronto. I decided to stay at my friend Mark’s house solely because he has a 62 inch TV. Oh, it’s glorious! I couldn’t care less about Mark’s company, but his TV was enough of a reason for me to show up. Not 10 minutes after I arrive we hear a loud “POP” and then the screen turns off. Uh oh! After 2 minutes of yelling at each other about who was at fault, we determined that the bulb must have blown. His TV is a DLP, and they have user replaceable lamps. It was Friday night and we were already well into the wine, so we left it alone until Saturday. I woke up early and jumped online and tracked down an authorized service provider. The owner agreed to meet me at his shop in downtown Toronto late in the afternoon. So, Mark and I set out on the snow covered roads in our quest for the holy grail. We actually made it downtown early so we stopped in at a bar and had a drink. $226 dollars later we had our lamp! I held onto that thing like it was a baby and we left the city. Once back home we had the thing replaced and we were back to enjoying HDTV. If I am going to be snowed in for a weekend, I had to go out and get that lamp! I grabbed a pic of the tv, the car in the driveway (to prove how much snow we got) and the broken lamp. Sorry about the quality of the pics, I didn’t have my camera on me and was forced to use my phone.

This is the TV…the reason why I keep Mark as a friend:

Here is the broken lamp:

This is Mark’s car in the driveway…yeah…trust me…it’s under there:

Everyone who knew me as a kid knew that Wendel Clark was my hero. The Toronto Maple Leaf left winger was like a god to me. Blessed with one of the most deadly wrist shots the NHL ever saw, he also had a mean streak that was a mile wide. Add to this a fuse that was ridiculously short and you had a stick of dynamite that was ready to go off every single game. The way he played was simple: all heart. He didn’t care about preserving his body to ensure a long career. He had too many operations on his knees and back to count. His personality on the ice was a contrast to the man off the ice. Humble, soft spoken, polite and shy were words that described him best. In 15 seasons of pro hockey he missed over 400 games due to injury. He only played in 793 games but he still managed to put up 564 points, including 330 goals. He was even better in the playoffs, scoring 69 points in 95 games including 37 goals. The numbers don’t do justice to the impact he had on Toronto. At the end, he was a shadow of the player he used to be. His body simply was too wrecked from the years of throwing his 5′11″ , 195 pound body at targets larger than him. But it took very little from him to bring the crowd to it’s feet. In his final days, I recall him going end to end on a patented Wendel Clark rush. He didn’t score, but the crowd stood and cheered at a deafening volume for over 5 minutes. They knew it was the last time they would get to see that sight of the old freight train coming down the wing. He retired at age 33. The loudest cheers in the Toronto rink are still reserved for when Wendel comes out of the press box and makes an appearance on the ice. I just thought my blog was an appropriate place to pay tribute to a person who helped shape my life simply by the way he played a game.

Not a good day to be in downtown Toronto today. Firefighters have been battling a 6-alarm blaze since 5am this morning. If you live in Toronto, this blaze is affecting pretty much the entire block near Queen and Portland. The heavy winds contributed to spreading this from building to building. There are no injuries reported as yet. The winds are also blowing the smoke from one end of the city to the other. This is causing massive traffic delays all over the place. You can read the full story from CityNews.

I also grabbed a neat little description of the “6 - Alarm” part of this story. I have never actually understood what the number of alarms meant. I assumed it had to do with fire fighting resources. CityNews again helped me provide this:

• 1st Alarm

2 pumpers, 1 aerial truck, and 1 district chief

If it’s downtown or involves a highrise building, a highrise truck is used. If it’s a working fire an air supply truck, which provides breathing cylinders, and a heavy rescue squad are called.

• 2nd Alarm

5 pumpers, 2 aerials, 1 squad, 1 hazardous materials truck, 2 district chiefs, 1 platoon chief, 1 air supply vehicle, and 1 incident command vehicle.

• 3rd Alarm

8 pumpers, 3 aerials, 1 squad, 3 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 air lights, 1 hazard, 1 command vehicle, 1 division commander

• 4th Alarm

11 pumpers, 4 aerials, 1 squad, 4 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 air supply vehicle, 1 hazardous materials truck, 1 command vehicle, 1 division commander

• 5th Alarm

14 pumpers, 5 aerials, 2 squads, 5 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 division commander, 1 command vehicles, 2 air supply trucks, 1 hazardous materials vehicles, other support staff if needed.

• 6th Alarm

17 pumpers, 6 aerials, 2 squads, 6 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 division commander, 1command vehicle, 2 air supply truck, 1 hazardous materials truck.

• 7th Alarm

20 pumpers, 7 aerials, 2 squads, 7 district chiefs, 1 platoon, 1 division commander, 1 command vehicle, 2 air supply trucks, 1 hazardous materials.

This last weekend we decided to do a little pre-valentines day celebrating. After much debate, we finally decided to go camping. When I say camping I mean that we stayed at an expensive hotel downtown Toronto and went drinking! That’s how a brown guy camps. One of my repeat and favourite places to spend a night in the city is the Soho Met Hotel. If you are looking for a place to impress someone, this is it. You get treated like royalty from the minute you walk in. The rooms have king sized beds covered with fine linens, of course. You also get a nice changing area that leads to an amazing bathroom. The thing is built like a personal spa that comes complete with a tub and separate glass shower. For the geek: you can make calls from the phone that is beside the toilet. Man, they thought of everything! Room service was prompt as our espresso’s were brought to the room within 10 minutes. After stumbling around town drinking, it is always nice to come back to a made bed with complimentary bottles of water. From arrival to departure the Soho gives you the complete experience. I threw together a couple of pics from the room below.

The final nail is in the coffin. The Toronto Maple Leafs suck. That isn’t just Leaf-Bashing, I am actually a fan of Toronto. But, the ever generous GM has handed out far too many multi year, 4-5 million dollar deals than any other executive in the league. The buds now find themselves in the position of having to dismantle the team and build from scratch. How do we do it?

• Immediately fire GM John Ferguson and coach Paul Maurice. We aren’t winning anyways, so why delay this? My dog could easily sit around and coach a team to lose games. Put all efforts into convincing Scotty Bowman to consider Toronto (like he did in the off season until we stopped returning his calls!) and give him full control of the hockey operations. FULL control! No more idiots from MLSE making choices without even understanding the game of hockey. Pay him whatever he wants. Whatever number he asks for, he is worth double that.

• As soon as that is done, get on to dealing Mats Sundin. It is sad when you have a guy who has over 1,200 NHL points and is still going strong and you have to trade him. But, thats just how bad things are in Toronto. Trade him, because the team is more important than any one player. He is still a dominant player and would certainly make a huge impact on a contending team. That means that the Leafs would be able to walk away with a nice package of prospects and draft picks. Let the big Swede end his career with a team that actually has a shot at winning a cup. Boston did it for Ray Bourque. Why can’t Toronto do it?

• Deal Tomas Kaberle. He is 30 years old and is still under contract for 3 years. He might be the best defenseman in the league when it comes to break out passes. His vision and hockey sense are incredible. He actually does have market value. The scary thing is that he gets better every year. But, the Leafs can’t win in the next 3 years. So, if he does continue to get better, the Leafs can sign him again when his current contract runs out.

• Now, here is the real tough assignment: what to do with Jason Blake, Darcy Tucker, Bryan McCabe, Hal Gill, Pavel Kubina and Andrew Raycroft? They don’t play nearly up to their salary level. And, that salary makes it impossible to trade them. So, demote them. That’s right, send them to the minors. Why? There is no salary cap in minor leagues. They would have to clear waivers, but if any team is willing to pay their salary then they can have any of these guys! If not, let them rot in the minors until someone does want them or we have a use for them. That allows Toronto to pursue free agents with plenty of salary cap flexibility. Most teams cant afford to make choices like this. Luckily the Leafs are one of the most profitable companies in sports. Regardless of what they say, we all know they can afford to throw 20 million dollars down the drain if they felt so inclined.

This may seem harsh, but what other choice does Toronto have? The only other option is to play at the bottom of the league for 4 years and then try to start rebuilding. Waiting with any one of these steps is only delaying the inevitable, and prolonging the pain of fans who have been denied a winner for far too long.

Football:

Wow, those New England Patriots just keep finding ways to win. The Pats pulled out some last minute magic to defeat the Baltimore Ravens 27-24. This bumps New England to 12-0 on the season. Tom Brady and crew seem to always find ways to win, even in this squeaker. The New England QB padded his person touchdown stat to 41, only 8 shy of the record set by Peyton Manning in 2004.

With the bandwagon gaining steam as week after week the Pats knock off another team, a perfect season seems like a realistic possibility right? Not gonna happen! My gut (which should always be followed) tells me that the team to end this winning streak will be Pittsburgh. Yes, the steel-town boys will knock some sense back into New England this coming weekend. My reasons? Well, New England managed to go unpunished for some sloppy play this week. If not for some mistakes from the Ravens, they would have lost. The Pats only managed to convert on 2 of 12 third downs. Not quite the domination we saw earlier in the year. Tom Brady also has a sore shoulder, and some tough hits could make life difficult for him. Normally these factors wouldn’t be too much to overcome, but the weight of perfection is heavy. The Steelers will have some extra emotion on their side trying to derail the Patriot machine. Look for Pittsburgh to take this one by a touchdown.

Hockey:

The Leafs look to win 3 in a row for the first time in about 7000 years as they take on Nashville. The Predators only have 13 wins this season, but have been playing well of late. Lucky for them they are playing a Toronto team that has only managed 10 wins. Wow, what a sad state Leaf-Nation finds itself in. The emotional choice says the Leafs will pull out a win and add some hope to a season many have already written off. But, I have been fooled by this team before. I say the Leafs win (fingers crossed, voodoo doll with Preds jersey being stabbed in the eye, deal with Satan pending).

Basketball:

The Raptors improve to 10-8 with a win over Charlotte. This was pretty impressive considering Toronto was without stars Chris Bosh, Andrea Bargnani and T.J. Ford. The bench stepped up and 6 players ended the night with double digits in scoring. At least one aspect of Maple Leafs Sports and Entertainment seems to be working properly!

Baseball:

Baseball sucks. Watch a real sport you candy-ass!

With my friend Derek in town for a trade show, you know there had to be a gathering of the boys downtown Toronto last night. D-rock had a rather large hotel room at the Renaissance Hotel in the Skydome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Center). We met up at the hotel and went to dinner at Canyon Creek Chophouse. The place is quite cozy, with soft lighting and big booths. It is very similar in feel to The Keg. The beer on tap wasn’t extremely cold, but it was Friday night and anything cooler than room temperature would have been ok. We only had one pint before switching to bottles, they were much colder. The meals were absolutely fantastic. I started with the Chophouse Salad. Now, normally I am not a fan of vegetables but this was something that even I enjoyed. It has sliced tomatoes, sweet onions with crumbled blue cheese topped with raspberry vinaigrette. A very nice start, even for a carnivore. The top sirloin I ordered was cooked as requested, a healthy medium-rare. It is a sin to order a steak cooked more than medium…look it up, it’s in the bible. All in all, a very nice meal and a great start to the evening.

After that we headed to Shmooze. Now, this used to be a pretty popular bar/club downtown. I am not sure if it was because of the cold weather, but the bar was almost empty at 10:45pm. The area that gets converted into a dance floor still had all the tables out. Not a good sign. So, we headed to Devil’s Martini. The club didn’t have a cover charge, which was a bonus. It was also fairly quiet but it definitely picked up by around midnight. It got to a nice level, busy but not packed. You could actually walk around and order a drink without too much effort. Our group seemed to be a little low energy, so I had to use the Emergency Party Starter - shots of Yagermeister. Tastes nasty but it always does the trick. The rest of the night was some fun dancing and socializing. We capped the night off with some pizza and headed back to the hotel. You can be certain you had an interesting night when you wake up in a king sized bed beside one of your 200 pound buddies.

So, I now find myself suffering from a little booze-flu. I wonder why I feel so thirsty when I drank so much?! We all know the usual hangover cures like rest, water, vitamin C and headache pills. But, being a geek I searched out hangovers on Wikipedia and found an interesting list of alternative remedies. So, these are some common folk remedies that apparently can help cure your hangover:

• drinking a large amount of water before going to sleep.
• lining the stomach before drinking (with either food or a perceived protective substance such as milk)(note: many people that drink milk prior to alcohol consumption ‘lose’ their ability to feel how much they have been drinking.)
• taking vitamins before sleep
• having a greasy breakfast the following morning
• not mixing drink types while drinking (especially beer and wine)
• avoiding pre-mixed drinks such as “Gordon’s Spice” or “Smirnoff Ice”
• consumption of menudo
• consumption of tomatoes or tomato juice the following morning
• having a “hair of the dog” i.e. another alcoholic drink upon awakening (Note: this may work in the short term but consuming more alcohol will only prolong the negative effects of alcohol metabolism)
• (popular in Scotland) consuming the soft drink Irn-Bru, despite the fact that the amount of caffeine in the drink should increase hangover symptoms.
• drinking a raw egg with a shot of whisky in it.
• Sex
• Eating a foot-long submarine sandwich and consuming vanilla ice cream afterwards.

A raw egg with whisky in it? Are you insane? It’s those choices that got me to this hangover in the first place! I am going to stick with my formula - a hot shower, a greasy breakfast and a nap. It may not be as flashy as the cures listed, but it works for me.