I need to get myself to a sink city. See, I live in a source city; No-one in their right mind moves to Winnipeg. If you grow up here, this place isn't that bad, but as soon as people here realize that we have mobility rights in this country, they generally get the fuck on out.
Sink cities are generally peopled by migrants who moved there willingly, and generally without their existing social groups. Barring the increasingly popular hermitting option, they tend to form new ones. Source cities on the other hand...well, not so much. They're characterized by limited gathering opportunities (not for lack of trying on the part of proprietors, people just don't generally hit new bars after their first year of legality), and insular social cliques usually formed early in life. Block-rocking ragers in sink cities somehow morph into "get-togethers" in sources. In a sink city, four friends out on a weekend is a pretty solid indicator of misdemeanour level shenanigans. In a source, nothing says Friday like a Blockbuster night.
Not that I'm doing much to resist the situation, given that more than three quarters of my friendships here predate high school, and some even predate elementary school. It is, however, why I'm staying in on Tuesday.
Blasphemy, I know. In all honesty though, I've never had a New Year's that was worth the hangover. I've even got more options than usual this year, two possible out and out parties, and a couple of sketchier deals. The problem is, I've already got a pretty accurate social map of these scenes, and it'd basically be me making small talk with folks that are uncomfortable with people they didn't go through puberty with. And as much as I like staring down random shirts, (by the way ladies, the secret's out: We know about under wires. As Mr. Rock says "You got a WonderBra on, your titties ain't that big.") I like my cleavage with some semblance of intelligent conversation.
Fuck uneventful New Year's parties, fuck "just having a few people over", fuck cab companies that can't handle the call volume, fuck minimum drink prices, fuck radio station sponsored "events", fuck all that. Next year, I'm bribing my way into an unused retail space, painting the windows, laying in more booze than my guest list has blood, knocking together some bars, renting a system, and fucking shit right up.

Every now and again, you come across something that's so much better than anything you can do, that you just have to pimp it. In that spirit, all of you should spend Christmas Eve reading Izzle Pfaff!
Seriously, this guy has comments sections that are funnier than anything on my site.

Seeing as Rafi beat me to the punch on reviewing the new LotR, I'll just take a minute to point out a strange coincidence from yesterday. I ran into a guy I know from the gym at Waterloo, at the University of Manitoba gym. Apparently he was home for the holidays. Small, and very strange, world.

Now Running On Winnipeg Streets Near You: March of the Fucktards, a touchingly spastic vehicular ballet, set against a haunting snowdrift backdrop.
I live (under protest) in the winter capital of the civilized world, but every year after the first snow, people who could drift their fifteen year old pickups through a parking lot U-turn last spring forget completely what that white stuff all over the road is.
People doing forty down the bare pavement highway because it's snowing (not even a storm, just some snow), people slamming on their brakes, then throwing up their hands in surprised terror at the fact that they've lost traction, but keeping the brakes locked up anyway.

IBM finally got around to rejecting my new grad application a couple of days ago. The thing is, I know a guy who got in there the same way I was trying to, and I know for a fact that I'm smarter than he is. It's not a knock on the guy, because he's about as bright as they come, but I knew him pretty well, and I'm just a little quicker than he is.
The trick is, he went to the U of M and rocked a ninety-plus average, while I went to Waterloo and didn't. I knew this kind of shit was going to happen, but it sticks in my fucking craw like you wouldn't believe anyway.
I'm not saying he doesn't deserve the job he has, or that he won't do well at it, but the mental image of some two-year program HR bunny sorting resumes into GPA > 4.00 and GPA < 4.00 piles does nasty things to my stress level. They might as well just tack a little "PS - Next time take the easy way out" on to their form letter. Fuckers.

There's a childlike glee to be had in the destruction of old papers. Or any papers for that matter.
I just shredded two full garbage bags of my brother's old bank statements, contracts, assignments, and associated detritus. Whee!

There are certain things that are just too pathetic to blog about, like when you trip running up the stairs to record the new Buffy, roll your ankle, chip the bone, and severely sprain it.
Then again, there are certain things that are just too pathetic not to blog about, like when you severely sprain the same ankle playing badminton against your retired father two months later.