Dinner with the playwright brother last night:

“How many hits on your blog?” he asks, as we settle in, post nosh.

I puff out my chest, “Over a million a month!” *

Collectively the eyes of everyone sitting at the table bug out, Mom included. “A million?!” Mike blurts.

“Yup!”

“You know, you’re doing what I do for a living… Free.”

“Uh.”

“Did you enjoy that pie? Soulpepper paid for it.”

Don’t worry. My site is still ad free and there are no embarrassing “tip jar” links anywhere.

Yet.

Though, it was a nice pie.

* I don’t mention that “hits” are pretty relative, especially if you’ve had a computer virus associated with a missing file from your site. But it sounds good. I actually count “page views” which, despite being down for 8 days this month, have already passed the halfway mark of last month. Thank you, faithful readers!!

This is like standing outside the changerooms at the Gap! Choose the hefty Bear body type and don’t skimp on the facial hair!

(via Bacon N Ehs – baconandehs.blogspot.com – cut n paste kids, “blogspot” is on my banned list due to spam.)

Sorry for the downtime again folks. Not sure what happend that time. MySQL took his SQL and went home I guess.

I’m going to “borrow” an idea from Blamblog and look to my outbound fave Blogs for “content”. I mean… Let’s look to my blogroll and see what they’re doing today:

Bondcliff.net hasn’t updated his site since May. Hmm. I like him as a person but as a blogger, he sucks. Go and slap his ass into gear!

Uncle Al hasn’t written anything since the Zug meeting back in July. Again, a great guy but not really a blogger, is he? Well let’s keep on down the list, shall we?

Daryl’s site ain’t a blog. And he hasn’t done much since the beginning of July. What the foosh? No wonder I am only on the C-list of Bloglebrity! I link to lame-os! (Just kidding, D. I know you’re busy)

Rants abound from Hairy Fish Nuts. You should go back to his site a few times a day and bait Squeamish into incredible anti-leftish rants.

Dawn’s Brain critiques a web development site from Arizona I sent to her. Yeehaw! Rednecks and Flash!

Shawn (2fruition) wants his lurkers to come out of the woodwork and just say Hi. I’d do that but I’m afraid I’d get the people from JulieAndrews.org or the CityTV forums pages. Brave man!

Spyke is concerned with his calluses. His shyness is his power!

From A to B (cut n paste, kids: fromatob.blogspotdotcom – it’s a blogspot) encounters his friendly neighbourhood ghost again via his girlfriend and as a result, has some tough questions.

Day 7 of peeing into a bucket for Not Well Planned. And a camera. Up her butt. Ew.

The Waiter deals with juvinile vulgarity with a deft hand.

And finally, Blamblog is jamming on creepy religious websites that turn homosexuals into productive elements of society.

Nothing like trying to learn htaccess for your personal blog while at your day job.

Diner: Oh hey! Long time no see!

Waitress: Yeah!

Diner: How you been?

Waitress: Been better. I’ve been off a couple weeks because of my toe. They had to remove it.

Diner: No!

Waitress: Yeah I haven’t been the same since the 6 months I had to take off because of the (muffled whisper).

Diner: Tsk. That’s terrible.

Waitress: I know. The whole cyst. Right out of there.

I look down at my eggs, over easy and leaking into my well done sausages. The toast suddenly seems too limp to sop up the yellowy liquid.

Waitress: They say the toe was because of my hormones or something. It’s because I’m menopausal. Or something. I can’t tell these days, my head is so dizzy.

Diner: Ha! And you’re up and serving! You’re dedicated!

My fork and toast are long since down and getting cold on my plate.

Waitress: I gotta keep moving! You wind up owing your life away.

I got my copy of Steamboy last weekend and got a pleasant surprise:

Someone in Japan knows about Coronation Street!

I’ve been waking up all week with a bit of a sore throat and this morning I really didn’t want to go to work. I walked Sharkboy to his office and then wandered over to the Subway where all bedlam was breaking loose.

I went down to the northbound platform, passed the yelling TTC guard: “All Southbound trains from Eglinton to Bloor are not in operation!!” When I get down there another guard is yelling “All Northbound trains from Bloor to Eglinton are not running!”

I wander out onto the street where the busses are to pick up us stranded travellers. I swear there were close to 400 people waiting for busses that weren’t there.

I sigh. I find a payphone and call work and white lie about my throat and the trains and my supervisor, blessherheart, says “Riiiight! See you tomorrow!” and hangs up.

I’m in my underwear, working freelance and I’m making ice cream right now with my new Salton machine I got for my birthday. I so want to start working at home these days…

WEEEE!!!

Tonight, I walked right past Tim Allen who is filming Zoom in the hollowed out Maple Leaf Gardens.

He had a frizzy hairdo and a deep tan. His skin was terrible: I’ve seen better leather at Ikea. It was like it was for the movie Christmas With The Kranks. Actually I never saw that movie, I only saw the trailer. But you know the part I’m talking about: Tim gets a faux tan and botox for his big trip south and comically spills food out of his semi-paralized mouth.

Tonight he looked a lot like that but with about 10 minders standing around him.

His eyes looked glazed over. Arh arh arh!!

While racing to a meeting with a freelance client, the streetcar I was on stopped to let someone off. A car screeches in front of the front doors and the driver jumps out. He yells at the driver: “I want to talk to the fuck that threw his drink at my car!”

The driver lets this guy and his girlfriend on and they stand at the front, straining to see over the few of us that are standing in the semi-busy car. I look back past the crowd to see who’s got the scaredy face. He starts to yell into the streetcar: “Who did it!?”

The guy advances towards the back, ignoring me since I am nowhere near a window. “Who did it? Who threw their fuckin’ drink out the window onto my car?” He’s a pissed pasty guy in a tank top, his face a vision of red fury. He’s going to pop if anyone says anything.

After a few repeats of “Who did it?!” no one comes forward. “So that’s how it is? You fucks!” and angry driver turns and leaves the streetcar dragging his girlfriend with him.

At this point I wonder: Has the driver used proper conflict diffusement in this situation? Does the driver have conflict diffusement training? Do TTC drivers get this kind of training? He’s allowed a visibly upset (murderous!) guy onto his car to kick the crap out of someone. His only comment being “Find him and I will kick him off so you can talk to him.”

Maybe regular reader “The Busdriver” can comment on this?

With all the shootings within the last few weeks here in Toronto I admit that I have been wary about large crowds. But in this situation I didn’t recognize that I was standing in the middle of an incident that could have been hazardous. Sadly I feel that I have to be concious of things like this these days.

I know of a beautiful 2 bedroom condo sublet at Bloor and Bay. If anyone is interested, comment here with email!