Something to think about this summer: Punta Arenas, Chile, is now dealing with a reality that most people only have a theoretical understanding of, if that: life underneath the ozone hole. It reminds me of those TV movies featuring the kids who had a severe skin allergy to light and lived in a blacked-out house so that they wouldn’t suffer burns from the sunlight.

I’ve been trying to write some sort of end-of-year list for a while. A lot of people piss over that sort of thing because they seem to be under the impression that lists are useless. “Don’t you dare tell me what I’m supposed to like from the year! If I choose to not like Wilco, who are you to tell me otherwise?” If you’re one of those people, then let me just say that you’re totally right. About Wilco and about the enforcing of opinions. Unfortunately, you’ve completely missed the point of the list. Sure, there are a lot of people and places that will put up a top-ten / top-hundred list, and fill the first couple of spots with some blantantly obvious choices like the aforementioned Wilco album. Ultimately, though, end-of-year lists are good for two things. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll see someone make a compelling case for a record you didn’t pick up, and the next day you’re going CD shopping. Even if you don’t, though, reading and writing these things is just fun. If you’re angry about the proliferation of end-of-year lists, I might suggest that you step outside and marvel at the wonders of the outdoors. But not now, because it’s freezing outside.Because this is already longer than it should be (and you should see the previous incarnations!) every record will be summed up in a single paragraph. I thought about ten words, but I’m just no good at that sort of thing.The Good
Mirah, Advisory Committee. Phil Elvrum hasn’t made a good Microphones record since “Oh Anna”, and yet not only does he not ruin Mirah’s second album, he also manages to make a decent contribution to it through his production. As for Mirah herself, the unassuming woman with the sweet voice and the sweeter songs grows into an entirely different person. Simple guitar strumming is replaced with an altogether more atmospheric and fragile sound, but without the vocal histrionics of a Shannon Wright or the self-pity of a thousand female singer-songwriters. More of an acquired taste this time around, but if you were a fan before, she probably won’t lose you now.Sarah Shannon, s/t. Velocity Girl meets Burt Bacharach. You’ll know if you’re a fan after the first three songs, which serve as a great introduction of what the rest of the album is like: upbeat orchestral pop with a singer whose talents were only hinted at in Velocity Girl. Beautiful music that, by all rights, should find some sort of audience today.Dear Nora, The New Year. This came out during the summer, but is infinitely more suited for the winter. Katy Davidson’s brand of understated twee-pop took an even more subdued turn on this between-releases EP. The title track sounds like a couple of teenagers at the end of the night, discovering some instruments in the garage and playing with their hearts on their sleeves because they’re too tired to try anything else.Imperial Teen, On. The only record to put on this summer, part one. Many a summer night, when it wasn’t too hot yet, and you could sit outside and feel the breeze and watch the sun set at 8pm and walk through the park with only a t-shirt on, and feel perfectly suited to where you were and have nary a care in the world at that moment. This was the soundtrack to that.Dressy Bessy, Sound Go Round. The only record to put on this summer, part two. As much as On belonged to the evening, Sound Go Round was an album for those bright sunny days. Far more assured and confident than their debut, with some power-pop confectionaries that aren’t quite so sugary sweet, but definitely more rewarding.Sleater-Kinney, One Beat. After some time off which had a lot of people briefly worried, Sleater-Kinney is back for more. In many ways more convincing than All Hands On The Bad One, and with some interesting new developments like Carrie’s newfound vocal personality. And on top of songs like “Oh!” and “Light-Rail Coyote” and “Far Away” and “Step Aside”, Corin Tucker proves that she’s the coolest mother there ever was with “Sympathy” and bonus EP track “Lions and Tigers”. My favourite of the year.Operation Makeout, Hang Loose. Jesse, Anna and Katie are probably the cutest punk band on the face of the planet, and they play really good music too. Having been accused on more than one occasion of stealing their cues from Sleater-Kinney, Operation Makeout have fought back with some great bass lines and vocal interplay between Jesse and Katie. Hang Loose is loud, fast, and easy to dance to, and god love ‘em for it all and more. Favourite new band of the year.Neko Case, Blacklisted. Not nearly as immediate as Furnace Room Lullaby, and less twangy as well. Despite all that, though, Neko Case still has the power to deliver some heartbreakingly beautiful songs like “I Wish I Was The Moon” and “Outro With Bees”. Plus she does justice to an Aretha Franklin cover. The grand statement next to Canadian Amp’s subtle charms.Saint Etienne, Finisterre. This is what Sound Of Water should’ve sounded like. The world-weariness old tracks like “Just A Little Overcome” and “How We Used To Live” hinted at, Finisterre delivers in spades on a number of tracks. The big secret, though, is that like anyone who finds themselves a little older, wiser, and more cynical, Saint Etienne still knows how to find the party and get away from it all on tracks like “Shower Scene” and “New Thing”.Albums Not Actually Released This Year: Joel Plaskett Emergency, Down By The Khyber; A Camp, s/t; Charming, Champagne And Magazines; Rocking Horse Winner, State Of Feeling Concentration.The Bad
Beth Orton, Daybreaker. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Ryan Adams, why the fuck did you steal Beth Orton’s soul, and how much pain must I cause you before you’ll agree to give it back? Seriously, though, you could see this coming a mile away. Central Reservation took a long time to give up its secrets, and her increasing reliance on electronica as a pretty backdrop rather than a real part of her music was in evidence even then. Bookends “Paris Train” and “Thinking About Tomorrow” aside, there is nothing to save this album.The Others
Breeders, Title TK. After a decade, I’m just glad to see a record from the Breeders, period. However, time may have taken its toll, and while it’s not a big deal that this won’t be the next Last Splash, it would’ve been nice if they’d at least try to do a follow-up to Pacer. Some good stuff, but hard to get behind.DJ Shadow, The Private Press. It sounded good, but none of it stuck. Not even “Six Days”.Mary Timony, The Golden Dove. It sounded good, and some of it did stick. Unfortunately, unlike Mountains, the best parts always seemed to be the ones that recalled the past glories of Helium. The lesson here: don’t tease us with what you cannot give.Weekend, Teaser. This was supposed to be a full-fledged record, but the Weekend simply ran out of money. My advice to them next time around is to not dump so much money on that radio polish production, because it’s unnecessary. Your title album proved that much. That said, it’s always good to see the little band from London put something new out, and I cheered when I heard that they opened for Weezer.Ladytron, Light + Magic. “Commodore Rock” was a great song, and precisely none of the elements which made it so good—the ominous atmosphere, the dissolution into noise, vocals that sounded like a rallying cry—are present on Light + Magic. What the album does provide is still good, and goes in the right direction (towards a slicker sensibility rather than indulging in Kraftwerk robotics) but doesn’t sound like it’ll amount to much a year from now.Kylie Minogue, Fever. I’ll bet that if I actually go and buy this some day, I’ll end up liking it. But, since I didn’t, I don’t know. Even if the songs I haven’t heard from it all suck, though, it’s still miles beyond Daybreaker.The Jury’s Still Out
…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Source Tags And Codes
Most Secret Method, Our Success
Carolyn Mark and Her Roommates, Terrible Hostess
Paper Moon, One Thousand Reasons To Stay… One Reason To Leave

The death of the BMW Z3. According to some in America, Z3s are an “obvious penis substitute”. I don’t think Caterina would be in the minority for thinking so, but here’s the kicker: across the pond in England, Car magazine routinely called them “hairdresser cars”, even in its not-so-mournful eulogy which called it a failed attempt to take on the Miata. Ouch. Take this evidence any way you will; I’ll take it as further proof that by and large, North Americans tend to drive shitty cars.

The death of a magazine. Professor Samir Husni claims that approximately 60 per cent of all new magazine ventures fail within their first year, and that nine-tenths never make it past their first decade. This isn’t as scary as it sounds, considering the failure rates in other media like books, movies, and music. Three-quarters of all television projects never get produced. The success rate in magazine publishing certainly isn’t the problem.The real problem gets touched on in the AP article, although whether it is a symptom or cause of the massive extinction is debatable. Knowing little about the history of the magazine, I can’t claim to know how the medium began, but the magazine has always seemed to occupy a middle ground between books and newspapers. A magazine’s real strength has always been the ability to cover a story in greater depth than a newspaper, with attention paid to in-depth research and design, without having to undergo the labourious process of publishing a full-fledged book on that particular subject. Plus, magazines allow for greater freedom from a design perspective versus most other print media.The trend, however, has tended towards shorter stories of little substance. Pick up most magazines today and you’ll find that they are eminently disposable pieces of fluff, and moreover designed for that specific purpose. An article about Maxim’s failings was written by a former Maxim writer, and sour-grapes potential aside, he brought up one big criticism that appears quite valid. Maxim had slaved all of its content to the Formula, dictating the number and type of stories that went into each issue. The production of the magazine had turned into an automated process closed off to new ideas and spontaneity. Thus you could pick up any issue of Maxim, replace it with any other issue of Maxim, and most people would hardly notice the difference but for the woman on the cover.It’s come to the point where people have stopped buying magazines specifically because they are so disposable; it’s better to buy a book that you can go back and read again, versus a magazine that loses its value after a month. If it’s done well, the stories in a magazine shouldn’t suddenly become worthless once the calendar page turns. That six-page feature on the Porsche Cayenne is still eminently readable two months later, and an issue of Scientific American devoted to nanotechnology isn’t something you’d toss in the recycling with the newspaper. A magazine made up of makeup tips and “will he like me?” quizzes, however, has absolutely nothing to hold the reader after the first readthrough, let alone the first month. The model has to change, or else the failure rate will only rise as people begin to turn their backs on magazines as a medium.
The death of… well, something. This year’s Super Bowl was the home of one of the worst anti-drug commercials ever, the “Drug Money Supports Terrorists!!!” campaign. After receiving a lot of flak, and seeing the rise of the countermeme “Oil Money Supports Terrorists, Too, You Fuckers”, the powers behind this woefully misguided campaign have struck back with a set of commercials that, amazingly, are even worse than the first one. They involve two guys, sitting in a bar, talking about the Drug Money Supports Terrorist ad. It’s nice to see the anti-drug people supporting discussion of their campaigns, because discussion is good. Except when it’s hackneyed and stupid, like these commercials.The latest commercial has one guy asking why he should believe the Drug Money = Planes Flying Into Buildings ads in the first place. Which is a valid question—why, indeed? No facts in the first commercial, or anything remotely resembling evidence. Does the Office of National Drug Control Policy finally give us the cold, hard truth? Nope. Instead, the answer they give is simple: “Because it’s true.” Because it’s true? “Yup.” Oh. So what you’re saying is, I should believe you because you’re saying it’s true. Okay.This just in: Enron didn’t really engage in accounting fraud, and because they said so, it must be true. Fuckers.

The take from Boxing Day 2002: an All-In-Wonder Radeon 7500 and a couple of CDs. As a result, I will be eating nothing but my left arm for the next two months, as I’ve surely spent far too much money this month for my own good.Having spent half the day in various stores and shopping malls all over Toronto, I feel like I’ve gained something approaching the definitive Boxing Day experience. All that’s missing is for me to line up outside a Best Buy in the middle of the hinterland at five in the morning so that I can walk out with a 27″ flat screen television. I suppose there’s always next year. In any case, thoughts:

Outdoor lineups are scary. When I was younger and stupider, I would line up outside the downtown HMV to grab the goodie bags and buy my requisite five-CDs-for-the-price-of-4. I didn’t feel so stupid then because a) they served free hot chocolate in the line, b) it only extended a little bit past the store entrance and around the corner, and c) it was past dawn. Imagine my shock when, after dropping off my brother for work, we drive by a Best Buy close to opening time and find the longest line ever seen outside a box store in suburbia: along one side of the massive parking lot from the store entrance to the street, and then around the corner and down a side street.Just lining up alongside the store is scary enough; this is easily the biggest box store I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The faux-Eurowhatsit storefront is massive. The stretch of (snowy) lawn beside it is even more massive. This doesn’t beat the longest line I’ve ever been in, but it sure beats the line outside the Sunrise store when Sloan did an in-store signing. And these guys were taking home TVs. I’ll never understand, I suppose, until I have enough disposable income to buy 27″ televisions on a whim and a beat-up minivan to take me into the far-reaching depths of suburbia.For many people, Boxing Day is even more stressful than holiday shopping. Ask someone if the $80 DVD player they’re clutching is still available, and they’ll clutch tighter and stare at you suspiciously. They size you up for a split second, quickly mouth “all gone” under their breath, and then escape as fast as is humanly possible given the crowds. It’s like you asked if you could please borrow your baby for a little while, and I’ll bring it back in no time. They get a crazed and paranoid look on their faces that screams “Get away from my DVD player! It’s MINE, you babysnatcher!”Back home, after all was said and done, I saw a news report on TV about Boxing Day, with footage of the opening of a furniture store. All these people started running as fast as they could into the store, past the oak dining tables and the dark-stained armoires, all in a rush to get that precious doorcrasher before anyone else. “Run for the bargains! Run, you bastards, run! Claim your refrigerator before someone else plants their flag!”For fun, try waltzing into a box store just after opening, and swap a bunch of price signs around. For bonus points, see if you can dig up a store uniform beforehand. Just watch out for the police officers at the entrance. (Yes, police. In case someone goes bezerk because they just missed out on the $100 off Canon Powershot which was so rightfully theirs except that that woman—no, sorry, bitch—budded in line.)95% of the “bargains” are crap. Great, I can save twenty bucks on a Minidisc player. I’ll be lining up for an hour for that gem of a bargain. Sadly, most of the sale items are discounted in such a fashion. Everyone’s accepted that you’re going to have to send in a mail-in rebate slip in order to actually get the prices listed in the flyer, but these days the stores don’t even try anymore. Case in point: two years ago HMV stopped doing their four-will-get-you-five sale at their downtown location and replaced it with a regular sale, no different from the ones they occasionally hold with 2 CDs / $40 deals and such. Take away your doorcrashers, and there’s precious little reason to even bother.Even stylish stores do Boxing Day. I ran into some old classmates while at a CD store and spent part of the day with them. Because the two of them are infinitely more fashionable than I, we ended up at a clothing store (Italian?) that specialized in sleek, stylish and sophisticated (but apparently not above stupid-looking flower pattern shirts for men) clothing. Boxing Day madness was on even here. Thankfully, things are more restrained; while you can still find pieces of clothing with close to 50% markdowns, there are no fat people trying to cradle a home theatre system in their arms while enforcing a fifteen-feet perimeter. Lines move quickly and everything is much more civil. That said, I still don’t belong in stores like that, and I was glad to leave.When in doubt, stick to CDs. HMV aside, there were good deals to be had that didn;t involve lining up for an hour in cold weather. Rotate This had their usual 25% off new CDs and vinyl, which would’ve been a gold mine if they had everything I wanted; a lot of other CD stores were doing similar things. 25% across the board—easy to understand, and no one gets trampled for the $4.99 copies of an old Foo Fighters album. Perfect.More cash registers are desperately needed. And here’s why. If you’re waiting in a line to pay, staring at your soon-to-be-purchases like, oh, an All-In-Wonder card, as the length of time you spend standing increases, your desire to spend money decreases. Get people out the door quicker, and you’ll get fewer cold feet which means more sales. Simple.
Boxing Day is now over, but Boxing Week awaits. That said, aside from some clothing—maybe—I’m done for the year. Now back to your regularly scheduled anti-consumerist programming.

A mixed bag of goodies today. Because I like you. And you, and you over there. Not you, so much.

First item in our Showcase Showdown, (a new car!) what happens when you wish upon a paw.The rest of Chopping Block ain’t too shabby,either.
With more of a holiday bent, yet more philosophical discussion courtesy of The Morning News:Does Santa Claus exist?
Once you’ve shopped till you drop on Boxing Day (suck it, America) there’s butone holiday left to look forward to.New Year’s Eve is traditionally the biggest let-down of the year. It’s a vital part of letting go of needless hopes and desires. Next year will be just like last year—only more so — so kick back and enjoy it while you have the chance.That’s why I don’t go out on New Year’s anymore.And since you’ve been shuttled down to the street by your exhausted and patient hosts, you have some “alone” time to appreciate. Here’s a few songs to get you home.
6. The Smiths’s “Unloveable”Because nobody loves me.
Neumu has been running a series of top ten of 2002 listsin December, and by and large they include the obvious choices: Wilco, Doves, Interpol, Spoon,etc. As such, the lists are largely par for the course, with no big surprises either way. What’s really funny, though, is thatI know herand I’m wondering how she got involved with Neumu.

The First. There’s this WalMart commercial playing in Canada for Christmas. Theircampaign, for quite a while, has been “let’s put regular people in our commercials and havethem talk about how great WalMart is”. This has not exactly been a high-quality campaign;we might believe that an aerobics instructor would go to WalMart to buy music for herclasses, but it’s not going to convince anyone that WalMart is actually a good place toshop for music. Instead, WalMart has outed one of its customers as an idiot who buys musicat a “music marketer” with high prices, no selection, and a laughable storeorganization budget.We’ve suffered through her shenanigans, as well as: the woman who borrowed her wedding dressfrom a WalMart employee (charming but this makes WalMart look good how?); a group of collegestudents in Nova Scotia who shop and bond at WalMart (thus breathing new life into theworry of parents everywhere, “we send our kids to school for this?”); a group of teenagersin Calgary who do nothing but shop, shop, shop (because not only are they stupid, they’realso filthy rich). The latest commercial takes the cake, though. It’s a Christmas-themedcommercial, featuring a mom who sees the need to buy three Christmas trees. Forher, “Christmas is a full-time job.”You really have to see this commercial in order to feel the full effect, but this woman isdisgusting. She’s the kind of person who actually goes out and buys the same stupid sparklytrinkets most people try to ignore, if they don’t outright hate them. Perhaps, for New Years,she’ll go out and buy some novelty glasses in the shape of the number 2003. That’ll show theJoneses.The Christmas mom is not alone, of course. There’s that insipid Discovery commercial withthe man who continues to one-up his well-meaning neighbour in the arms race of Christmasdecorations. His final blow consists of a huge display including landing lights in thedriveway. No doubt, that’s so that he can see it at night from his $80,000 SUV. We’vesunken to a new low: buying gaudy, disposable Christmas ornaments just because you havemoney to burn. For fuck’s sake, the only thing that makes you people better than the assholewho bought that Escalade EXT is that you wish you were him. It’s not too late! Put thecredit card down, and step away from the WalMart automatic doors.And remember: Christmas is best celebrated when you decide against wearing that day-glored and green wool sweater with the reindeer on it. Your family’s too nice to say anything,but it just makes you look like a tool.

The Second. Could someone please tell me why, despite doing everything in my powerto make things right, I cannot burn a SVCD disc that actually works? I burnt a VCD of thelast episode of 24 a scant two days after it aired, which is great, but now I’mtrying to catch up on Scrubs and Firefly with SVCD rips and the discs lookfine but don’t actually play on anything. It really makes no sense at all. The only recourseI can think of is to convert all of the MPEG2 files into VCD-compliant MPEG1s and burn asVCDs, but that would be a bit of a shame, wouldn’t it? Meanwhile I have a mountain ofsemi-coasters, only recoverable by sticking them in a CD-ROM drive and copying the MPEGdirectory onto the hard drive (and even then, sometimes there are audio sync problems).I’m so confused. I also wish I had my actual computer at home instead of these jury-riggedtime bombs.

After watching the pilot episode of Firefly, “Serenity”, the fact that the showhad been cancelled seemed that much sadder. Practially any hour of television would’ve been better than having to endure another half-season of American Idol and Joe Millionaire; in fact, having your face ripped off by wild cougars ranks a close second, losing out on top honours as Worst Thing Ever only because you die quicker. So to see Firefly disappear from FOX’s schedule when American Idolis returning for a second season and Fastlane still lives and breathes is justanother event that leaves you shaking your head, wondering if maybe television just doesn’tlike you at all. (Except for 24, which you can either explain as statisticalanomaly or a complete fluke.)Some oddities about re-airing the two-hour pilot, though. Mainly, why try to attract newviewers by re-airing the whole pilot after the show’s been cancelled? Why cancel ashow that looked so good out of the gate after less than half a season? And then, furtherresearch turned up the answer: “Serenity” was intended to serve as Firefly’s pilot,but was actually replaced by an entirely different introductory episode. From allindications, it sounds like “Serenity” was a great episode but less than indicative ofthe series’ overall quality.This is especially unfortunate as there seemed to be so much in “Serenity” worth saving. The “westerns in space!!!” theme wasn’t as laboured as I’d feared, and the characters were good enough that seeing one of them shot was a classic “you can’t die, you’re one of the good guys!” kind of moment that you never see these days. (Except, of course, in 24.) Another great element of the pilot was the striking cinematography. It lookeddifferent than your usual television drama, and this in an age where shows are trying toget away from the standard drama look of static cameras and lingering shots. Many of theshots in space were well done, and the director(s) actually tried to emphasize the depthof the environments by using long shots and zooms in an effective manner.Even if the rest of the series was only half as good as “Serenity”, Firefly stilldeserved far more of a shot than it got. Unfortunately, that’s only par for the coursein television land.

Kylie Minogue, Come Into My World (Fischerspooner Remix). Personally, my electroclash obsession began and ended with Ladytron. Aside from a little Adult. here and some Peaches there, the rest of the genre has passed me by, and so I know nothing of Fischerspooner besides this track. Kylie, on the other hand, left a huge impression on 2002. Thus the impact of “Come Into My World” as a single is blunted considerably by the fact that it takes far too many cues from first single “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”. When subsequent singles like “In Your Eyes” turn out to be just as stunning, if not more so, then a rehash can’t help but look somewhat disappointing. That’s precisely why the Fischerspooner remix is practically essential; it takes the track and changes it enough so that the obvious similarities disappear. Ironically, the remix does so by adopting some of the first single’s icy demeanor, an aspect mostly missing from the original song. The dirty bass synths and redone vocals give the track a new sound that stacks up well against Kylie’s other Fever singles.At the same time, Kylie adds something to the electroclash sound that doesn’t surface very often: some real personality in the vocals. Most of the time there’s an ironic detachment that gets played up, almost to the point where vocals aren’t sung, they’re spoken. Even with Ladytron’s duelling singers, neither Mira nor Helen sound particularly human. Mira’s monotone is obvious, but even Helen’s seductive voice sounds like a calculated pose, like a robot trying to be sexy. To their credit, I imagine that the manufactured feel is, in part, what she’s going for, and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s interesting to note, though, that in an interview with Shift magazine, a Ladytron member suggested that synthpop won’t leave the underground until someone big like Britney Spears or Kylie Minogue makes the sound their own. Britney Spears wants her next record to sound more ‘hip-hop’, which no doubtwill fail miserably; meanwhile Kylie’s redone “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” in the style of New Order’s “Blue Monday”, and now this. My money’s on Kylie.

Trapped in a loveless relationship, but don’t have the courage to break it off? Subtly tell your partner to go to Hell (or the closest Earthly approximation thereof) with the Lonely Planet Guide to Antarctica! If your worser half is too opaque to take a hint, why not select one of the many, full-color photos depicting the harsh, barren ice shelves and write ‘this is what my heart feels like’ on it by way of dedication? As a last resort, you could always fake your own death and head south yourself. At least you’ll know where to find the Youth Hostel.

If ever you needed evidence that happiness is a zero sum game, look nofurther than the holiday season. On the one hand, all those shiny happypeople who will go home, enjoy a big dinner with the family, and open uptheir presents. They’ll look out the window just as the snow begins to fallon Christmas Eve, all warm and cozy in their Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeerwool sweaters, and believe that for one or two days, everything is goingto be alright.And then there are all the people who commit suicide over a last shot ofJack Daniels. Suicide rates go up during the holidays. How could they not?All those people walking around with huge smiles on their faces. Even ina normal state of mind, it’d make you want to wipe the smiles off of theirfaces. Imagine if you desperately wanted to smile but just found that youcouldn’t. All those people in their warm homes singing Christmas carolswith the family, while you sit outside with only your bottle of whiskey forcompany. That’s pretty sad right there, but unfortunately there’s nomechanism in place for happiness redistribution, no welfare state for euphoria and joy.Which is fine, because really the holiday season isn’t a zero sumgame. Those shiny happy people? Not actually happy. Or, at least, it’s notquite so simple. If you ask people about what they do for the holidays, chances are that a lot of them will start talking about stress and anxiety. This is funny for a moment, and then disturbing thereafter. It’s a holiday, and people still can’t escape stress and anxiety. Everyone’s concerned about giftgiving and fancy dinners and having everything be perfect. I suppose it’s different from working in an office, or at school, or whatever it is you strange people do, but it’s like jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. And life isn’t like a Hallmark special, where all the tension of having the perfect holidays and dealing with seven generations of family all works out in the end. No, undoubtedly there will be several cases where someone will run for the phone to dial 911 to report a homicide.And don’t think that if you don’t celebrate the holidays that you’re suddenly off the hook. You’ve suddenly become an outcast to society. What do you mean, no Christmas tree? No dreidels and menorahs? You mean you sit at home on Christmas Day, like any other day? Maybe you’re one of those people who up the suicide rates during the holidays. For safety’s sake, I’m borrowing your gun for a couple of days. No, I can’t actually do a suicide watch on you. I’m too busy looking for a last-minute Christmas turkey!But cheer up. Even if you can’t buy your way into a New Year’s Eve party, or bring yourself to care about Aunt Carol’s gift of flame-proof underwear (aww, how sweet! one step closer to my dream of being a firefighter!) take solace in the fact that in this great nation of ours—I’m talking about Canada, but please feel free to replace that with the US, Americans, because you probably would even without my permission—there are thousands upon thousands of people who are in exactly the same situation as you. Desperate, lonely, and maybe a little sad. Waiting for real life to kick in again so that you can at least distract yourself from your miserable life.Where’s the solace? There are thousands of you. If you’d all just go out to the bars instead of sitting at home, maybe the suicide rate would remain normal—and the desperate sex rate would skyrocket. See, the holidays really are a wonderful time of year!

I have one exam left, on Saturday. Then I get to blow this popsicle standfor (not so) greener pastures. Unfortunately, this last exam is forSoftware Architecture, which those in the know also like to call “the worstcourse ever invented by human minds”.Software Architecture is a course for those who value procedure and well-defined rulesets, for those who enjoy creating extravagant diagrams for extremely simple concepts like “this software uses a client-server architecture”. Thank you, but I don’t believe that it is necessary to expend the energy necessary to draw two boxes and a connecting line, and then label the boxes “Server” and “Client” in order to communicate this concept.Software Architecture is a course for those who love Microsoft; otherwise why the emphasis on Microsoft architecture and design processes? That’s only a half-serious criticism, of course. More serious is the fact that some of the information in the course actually seems like it would be quite useful to a programmer working on a large project. It is, in a sense, a course designed to teach the basics of project management. This is all well and good, but truth be told, most people don’t really enjoy this sort of thing.This is fine, since most people have to do things that they don’t enjoy. A more merciful instructor would probably realize that hey, software project management isn’t terribly interesting or hard, and while it is very important that you grasp its significance, class, I will try my best to minimize the time spent on this painful subject so that we can all move on to the next course, Database Systems or Quality Assurance or Reaming Out Your Own Ass With A Submarine Propeller Shaft. Anything to get beyond this mind-numbing course as quickly as possible.Apparently, someone in the computer science department decided that a slow and painful journey would somehow give us more character, and thus SoftwareArchitecture became the beast it is now. It is amazing that, out of all the courses I’ve taken here, it should be Software Architecture that has made me rethink, no matter how briefly, my choice to continue in Computer Science. I suffered through the boredom of first-year Calculus, only to find that when I became a medial it ceased to be a requirement for my program.I screamed in agony along with everyone else when I took Intro To Computer Science II, taught by a adjunct lecturer who couldn’t teach to the smart students—she would explain every concept twenty times—nor could she teach to the students having trouble—she would always explain the concepts poorly, as if she barely had an understanding herself. Algorithms and Data Structures broke the backs of many a second-year student’s attempts to maintain a consistent attendance record, and the final classes barely managed to number twenty people out of a total number of anywhere between fifty to seventy-five. No one ever takes those attendance numbers into account when judging universities—I’m looking at you, Macleans.Through it all, and nary a scratch, but the ride may be about to end. Software Architecture has taken things to a new low. Out of twelve weeks worth of lectures, I have probably missed about seven or eight in total. Thankfully, this is the sort of course one doesn’t actually have to attend in order to gain any useful information, and so it’s likely that come Saturday, I will at least be able to pass despite the dismal attendance record. That’s besides the point. Considering that I’m here for a bachelor’s degree, and not necessarily for however many hours of instruction, I’m not actually losing money every time I skip a lecture, like some people like to think. On the other hand, if I’ve skipped a full two-thirds of the course, you have to wonder how much the course—and, by extension, your education—is really worth.

Please raise your hands, all of you who claim to be happy. I posit that 95%of you are full of shit, which means all five of you can put your hands down. (Roundingerrors. What are you going to do?)According to Sut Jhally, a series of surveys about the happiness of the Americanpublic found that people valued social relationships over material goods, whichmeant that the consumer culture that said you had to buy things in order to behappy was fundamentally flawed. You were being suckered into buying productsbecause you were under the impression that more products equalled a better sociallife which equalled happiness. How sadly mistaken you were.So a new iMac won’t get you happiness. We’ve known this since the beginningof time. Can anyone attribute the quote of “Money won’t buy you happiness”?It’s practically passed into general usage, along with such phrases as”One in the hand is worth two in the bush” and “Fuck your mother!” The nextquestion to ask, and one for which I have found no answer so far, is why isthe consumer society so successful if it doesn’t give us what we want? Ifwe already know that a shiny widget won’t bring us true love, why do we persistin buying them? Did some huckster approach American society one day and say”Here’s a brand new and much easier way to get someone to fuck you, and good!”or have we turned to commodities because we were already so desperate toget it on that we were willing to do anything, no matter how pointless, forlove?Because I’m not being very straightforward right now, let me rephrase that.We buy things because we’re unhappy. This implies that even before Henry Fordbuilt his assembly lines and allowed millionaires to pump out millions ofBarbie dolls and Prozac pills, humanity was fundamentally displeased with itslot. You just know that there were legions of people in the eighteenth centurywho felt the same sort of philosophical angst you do today, only they were moreconcerned with the basic amenities like food, shelter and guns. Either that,or you were a woman or a racial minority, in which case you’d given up hopelong ago. So, in a sense, we’ve made a great deal of progress since then.And yet, we’re still pissed off with our lot. Activists are throwing shit atwindows and singing protest songs. Joe Somebody, when he’s not starring ina crappy movie, is sitting in an office contemplating suicide, or else he’sjust been laid off from the eraser factory, too bad so sad. Hey, at least you’renot a farmer who has to cut off a limb every winter in order to feed the family.Mmmm, cannibalism. But I digress.Killing each other didn’t make us happy. Subjugating one another didn’t do it,either. Spending tons of money hasn’t done it yet, and you know society will neverget to the point where everyone just has one big neverending orgy. In the meantime,everyone who isn’t already convinced that God will take them into the blessedafterlife is left wondering what the hell’s going on, and why they feel theneed to distract themselves, lest they devolve into self-pity and start lookingaround for the nearest firearm that will fit in their mouth. Hell, some peopleare convinced that that is the way to the afterlife.So what’s the answer, people? Is humanity resigned to a fate of eternaldissatisfaction? Or is there an answer no one’s figured out yet?And now, back to your regularly scheduled program.

Because everyone likes a gimmick with a good hook. The first ten songs that come up in Winamp set to random:

1. Solex - Santa Monica (Kissing A Man With A Beard) - unreleased
2. Belle and Sebastian - Fox In The Snow - If You’re Feeling Sinister
3. Pearl Jam - Nothing Man - Live On Two Legs
4. Dead Can Dance - Black Sun - Aion
5. Phofo - For All Your Minor Triumphs - unreleased
6. Photek - Ni Ten Ichi Ryu - Ni Ten Ichi Ryu
7. Pavement - Major Leagues - Terror Twilight
8. Polvo - Lazy Comet - Today’s Active Lifestyles
9. Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane - The Trinity Sessions
10. Velvet Underground - Sweet Jane - Loaded

The two Sweet Janes? Complete fluke, I tell you. Not only that, a telegraphed fluke - I was thinking at the time, “wouldn’t it be strange if…?” The winner of the “What was I thinking?” award goes to theDead Can Dance song, the only track I had to skip past. The next five, for some more fun:

11. Passengers - Miss Sarajevo - Original Soundtracks 1
12. Bangs - I Want More - Call And Response
13. Sloan - People Of The Sky - Twice Removed
14. Sneaker Pimps - Spin Spin Sugar - Becoming X
15. Photek - The Seven Samurai - Form And Function

What can we conclude from all this? Just one thing - don’t trust Winamp to put together a good mix.