GZA raises Halifax’s IQ on January 26
That Genius is always thinking It was fate. No sooner than I had finished watching Buddhist Fist, and drinking a Bloody Mary, but I see a lovely email telling me that GZA is coming back to town. Crazy, right? He’s gonna be into my Holy Ghost Claw style. For sure. GZA plays the Paragon on…
Sealed With a Kiss
This is for the 2 harbor seals I spent 45 minutes watching by the Acadia this afternoon. Of course you aren’t going to be able to read this since everybody knows that Pinipeds and Cetaceans subscribe to the National Post, just to piss off Suzuki and Elizabeth May. Your harbor antics made a perfect metaphor…
To all of the staff at the Buck or Near in Scotia Square
I just wanted to say how much I am going to miss you all when the store closes at the end of this month.I don’t know any of you personally, but you guys have always been so great to me. I just wanted to acknowledge that, and to wish you all luck in whatever path…
To the girl who hit my friend’s car at a 4-way stop
you obviously weren’t paying attention to the 4-way stop because the taj mahal sign is ABOVE and BEHIND the stop sign. you also were not paying attention to what was in front of you because we were already half way across the street. you wrecklessly drove forward while staring sideways at the taj mahal sign!…
duche bag in the ratty van
I was coming in towards town on the bedford highway on Sunday (approx 4:30pm), and was full aware of the construction barriers. I kept a close eye on people coming from Joseph Howe, and even used my signal light to indicate that i would be going towards Windsor Street. Then this guy came from Joe…
Crosswalks & STOP Signs
… are not “suggestions”. When you see me standing at a crosswalk with the light flashing, I am not “waiting” for you to pass, but waiting for you to stop! I know you can see me and just don’t give an eff because you’re so incredibly important. And it’s not called a “slow slightly” sign,…
Go green
OK you guys, we have heard you shout and rage about the environment, but wait, Oh it’s Christmas, time to go out and buy all sorts of useless crap, fueling Chinese industry, fill the air with yet more pollutants so that you can all have a good time and impress your environmental friends. Enough already!…
Too good to be true?
You are so sweet to me, I’ve never been treated with this kind of attention, respect and affection, and you always say the right thing, and you’re hot, and big, and strong, and you say you’re always thinking about me. I’m feeling you too, if we stay like this I think we may have found…
Jealous of your warm and caring Grandmother!!!
Why do I strive to impress her? I always have. She is painfully critical of me and my choices. This is ridiculous, I am a grown ass woman. How she reduces me to this I have no idea. I am a child in her presence, trying so hard no to fuck up and say something…
brewery love
Dear Propeller, Thank you for being open over the holidays. Thank you for the delicious beer. Merry Christmas—christmas beer and cheer
The Customer is ALWAYS Wrong?
In a South End Establishment and Bar…we are the 2 Vegetarians who ordered quesadillas and when they arrived they had chicken in them..no big deal we will just request some new ones. The tab comes and 1/2 of the total for the chicken quesadillas are still there. You refuse to take off the chicken quesadillas…
Athiest Christmas Haiku
A light shines so bright upon the wreath of Christmas cookies anyone?—1
sick of the credit card tango!
customer takes out their card and shoves it in my face I push the machine towards them they look at me like I’m an idiot I ask them to swipe their card/insert it they look at me like I’m dumber than before and say in a very rude tone ” It’s a VISA” I can…
pedestrians
Dear pedestrian, You cannot cross the road against the walk sign and not expect to get hit some day. Stop being a dumbass and clue in that just because you are a pedestrian doesn’t mean you’re invincible. Please don’t bother giving me a dirty look as I slam on my brakes and toot my horn…
To the stupid fucker who injected that virus in the school computers
FUCK YOU! I don’t know how you did it, but injecting a virus into the school computers that uploaded gay porn into every damn computer screen with speakers bursting “I LOVE WATCHING GAY PORN!” What the hell makes you think you’re so damn funny? I’m glad they caught you, but a week suspension didn’t suffice…
Dear Love and Emotions: I fucking hate you!
Yes, I know it was bound to happen eventually. I just didn’t know it was going to hurt this much. Of course I can’t call you a “fucking bitch” or be mad at you about anything. That wouldn’t be fair. Of course, really, you didn’t even do anything wrong. You ended it because you felt…
No Right Turn on Red
I’m so sick of drivers bitching about traffic and other drivers and car related stupidity. No one cares about your road rage. Do you really think that someone cutting you off earlier makes for good conversation? Or how you waited for 10 minutes in traffic? I especially hate when you are in a car with…
Radio Condom
To the oldest local rock radio station…get some class! Radio ads about condoms..in the morning, in the afternoon..Crips my kids hear that shit. Well they used to hear it because I don’t listen to your station any longer. Is that worth the advertising dollar?! No class Bobby Bass!Les Ismore
I just use you to cash my cheques, I do my real banking elsewhere
Ok, so I’ve been a bluenoser bank customer for 24 years. Same branch for 15. I book an appointment with the teller to see the mortgage person the following Monday. Its pretty much a week away. I go in on the Monday at the agreed upon time, changing my lunch hour to accommodate the meeting.…
feed nova scotia
Thanks to the wonderful people of feed nova scotia who didn’t think it all odd to invite me into their christmas dinner dance even though you don’t know me from adam. It was an awesome experience and you made me feel welcome.–a.m.
Leave a Cold Warps free download out for Santa tonight
Copyright infringement looks so good Cold Warps. Download: http://www.hotmoneyrecords.com/songs/coldwarps.zip Buy a real tape from the band for $5 when you see them next. Which will be New Year’s Eve at Gus’ Pub opening for the Gideons’ final show.
Wu-Tang Christmas carols
Which is the better Wu-Tang Christmas carol: “Hellz Wind Staff” or “Careful (Click Click)”? You decide!
How to bribe Santa with cookies
Now that it’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, shifty-eyed tots around the world are breaking into a nervous sweat whenever the words “naughty or nice” come up. But before they take that long Christmas Eve walk down the red and green mile to their rooms, think about giving the naughtier children in your…
Lower Decked Out for 35th Birthday bash
"I hired Great Big Sea16 years ago for their first show on the mainland, so they were the first band I called to see if they'd consider coming and doing a show for us; they accepted our offer to come and make it a real celebration," says Mike Condy, owner of the Lower Deck. Great…
Where holiday humbugs go to drink
The Christmas season doesn’t offer many respites from the blinking-light, carol-singing, tree-decorating storm, so we’ve unwrapped a few places where you can get out of the cold and into some good music and drinks. –Mike Gorman Bearly’s House of Blues and Ribs Down with all of this holiday cheer flooding the streets? Head on over…
Talking about The Moonshine Ramblers
In a little house on Windsor Street lives a group of hardworking musicians, known as The Moonshine Ramblers. They struggle with the grind of making money in a city where many live-music venues have closed and a sense of community is essential. Since they moved in last year, the Ramblers have brought the community to…
Green Santa ratings 2009
Ho, ho, et cetera. I’m a big recycler with no qualms about regifting or giving people junk from my basement for Christmas. So: a recycled column idea. I’m serializing last year’s Sustainable Santa. Here are the eco-naughtiest and earthly nicest Nova Scotian individuals and organizations of 2009, according to local environmental activists, entrepreneurs and green…
Make mo’ money on Monday: $Rockin 4 Dollar$
Part gong show, part marathon and part support group, $Rockin’ 4 Dollar$ is one of the best events this city’s music scene offers. Every Monday night without fail, 12 performance slots are offered up and 12 slots are filled. (It’s like The Dirty Dozen, but with more musical numbers.) At the end of every night,…
Align your soul’s code, libra
Capricorn (DECEMBER 22-JANUARY 19) I’m happy to announce that 2010 could be the year when you become a more expert communicator. It’s not that you do a bad job now; it’s just that there is always room for improvement, and this will be an excellent time to attend to that. Life will be bringing you…
Terry Gilliam Top Clips
Three questions from Monty Python and The Holy Grail, with Terry Gilliam as The Bridge Keeper. From Brazil, The Ministry of Information, a wonderfully comic yet accurate vision of bureaucracy in inaction. From The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, with two Canadian actors on board, John Neville in the title role and a very young Sarah…
Ritchie keeps Sherlock Holmes elementary
The lure of a different kind of blockbuster, with intellectual gameplay and fast wit, is discarded by Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. It fits the exact mould of a prefab blockbuster. Ritchie portrays Victorian London with a grey and brown emphasis on dust and dirt. But it’s only set dressing. The movie’s too frantic in its…
Holiday Fiction: Home is where the savoury is
As a little girl, I was convinced my Nan should marry Burl Ives. Never mind her on-again, off-again relationship with Poppy (if you ask her, they are divorced; if you ask him, they’re still married): I believed Burl was the man for her. Every Christmas Eve growing up we’d all pile into the car and…
Changing climates
My favourite media moment at the Copenhagen climate conference came last Thursday when Evo Morales declared: “Capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity.” Bolivia’s president was being interviewed by Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, heard at noon weekdays on CKDU. Morales, speaking through a translator, described the irrational and unlimited industrialization that destroys the…
Holiday Fiction: Hill days
Inside this paddock I watch Laura brush down her horse. It’s New Year’s Eve, and the second time I’ve come to see my equine roommate ride. Our landlord went to Florida for Hanukkah and didn’t come back, so we’ve decided to spend rent on Laura’s private riding lessons and a keg. The Bengal Lancers stable…
Spanks, sweat and stim
Q I’m a woman who wants to be spanked. But I’m overweight and self-conscious. Men who like to spank women like to spank petite women. Sometimes I’ll search kinky sites or online forums and find someone who might want to spank me. But I get scared and I back out. Most recently, I’ve been talking…
The wonders of Terry Gilliam’s worlds
When Terry Gilliam laughs, it comes out as a maniacal giggle. You may have seen the documentary Lost in La Mancha, about the director’s failed third attempt to make an adaptation of Don Quixote. His giggle echoes through the doc, despite the massive disappointment of a production that falls apart. Gilliam’s laughter in the face…
Nine is not Italian
Despite its nauseating refrain of “Be Italian,” there’s not an Italian actor among the main cast of Nine. Rob Marshall’s song-and-dance take on Fellini’s 8½ is a let’s-play-dressup front–a fictitious reduction of another director’s autobiographical classic. Marshall’s numbers have neither flash nor scope. They enter the movie as psychological explorations of Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis),…
Did you hear about the Morgans?
Estranged couple Meryl and Paul Morgan (Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant) witness a murder and are forced to flee their chic New York lives into the protection of Sam Elliott and Mary Steenburgen, the sheriffs of slow-pokey Ray, Wyoming. Diabolically inert and tonally clunky, but obviously going for a ra-ta-tat romantic comedy throwback, what…
Busting a move against breast cancer
“It takes a community to kick cancer’s ass,” says Joan Helson, a breast cancer survivor. Helson learned she had breast cancer on her birthday. Since then, she’s become an advocate for the importance of early diagnosis and treatment and a participant of a fundraiser to buy the mammography equipment Nova Scotia needs. According to the…
Blunt and Friend play cute royal introverts in Young Victoria
If you are like me, you know most of your history of British monarchs from the films based on their lives. The Young Victoria is set just prior to Mrs. Brown, and just after The Madness of King George and copies both films’ playful marvel at their subjects exalted lives. The wide swath of Victoria’s…
Local activists return from Copenhagen disappointed
Nova Scotian activists return home from the Copenhagen climate conference with one adjective in their hearts: disappointed. Thea Whitman, a Kings County member of the Canadian Youth Delegation, is distressed that so little has resulted from 15 years of conferences. “While the Copenhagen Accord cites a goal of limiting warming to two degrees,” she says,…
Avatar falls flat without third dimension
James Cameron’s Avatar finally drops amid excitement about his epic visuals and budget and disappointment in the paper-thin plot for which they serve. Sam Worthington, via a 9-foot-tall blue Avatar, infiltrates the Na’vi tribe in order to coerce them off of the land above a rich energy mineral deposit and eventually goes native when human…
Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s Noise control
Hours before Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s Machines at Play opens at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the gallery is chaos. Yellow ladders loom among pushcarts of tools and cleaning equipment. Gauthier’s work fills the air with honks, scratches of graphite, gurgling bubbles and piano flourishes. It’s a bit much for Gauthier, the 2004 Sobey Art Award…
Special Noise and Play Guitar come home for the holidays
Play Guitar It’s always a heartwarming family affair when Play Guitar and Special Noise come back to town. Both bands are fronted by brothers Christian Simmons and Jef Simmons, respectively, and Jef also plays with Play Guitar. I have actually started associating the holidays more with Play Guitar and Special Noise shows than, say, Santa.…
Beavers at Christmas
I’m so happy the two of us are creating our first solo Christmas. Thanks for our teeny tree, the twinking lights and the feast will be one to remember! Much love you, baby, and here’s to all the Christmases to come.—Mrs. Beaver
I hate the way Im treated by banks…
Why is it that when I go into a bank to take out one or two thousand dollars (which happens once a year for my trip down South after I save for months)that a bank wants to know what Im using it for, is it really any of their business? That happened to me twice.…
Holiday Rush=loss of respect
To all those running out to get their last minute holiday items, or heck, even on those everyday outings, when you are being served by staff please take the time to be respectful to them. A please or thank you always goes a long way. You may not be working then, but we still have…
Christmas Thanks!
Thanks so much to the person who picked up my wife’s parcel that fell out of her backpack and took the time to follow the return address and put it in our mailbox. What can we say? People like you are why we believe in humanity. Hope that wonderful deed comes back to you!—G and…
Drugs OK, Skeletons Not OK
I was talking with some friends about Brittany Murphy dying. None of us were particulary big fans and few of us had even seen a movie by her. All my friends assumed that she died of a drug overdose. I randomly suggested that perhaps her skeletal body had something to do with it because people…
Bitch about bitchers about the overnight parking by law
ok here it is not a bitch but an intelligent input about how we as hrm rate payers – going to get the by law amendedt to a compromise that satifies both the city and drivers at large. . I’ve seen the bitch posted ten different ways but it all comes to this . Whether…
Claire Campbell Post-Copenhagen Debrief
Copenhagen, climate change, environment, Claire Campbell, Dalhousie College of Sustainability, activism
Emily Rideout Post-Copenhagen Debrief
I asked Sierra Club Atlantic representative and Dal student Emily Rideout for her post-Copenhagen thoughts. What were her feelings about the conference and the outcome, and what’s next for the climate movement? Here is Emily’s response: There was some progress made in terms of process that may help us create a real climate deal within…
Thea Whitman Post Copenhagen Debrief
I asked Kings County activist and member of the Canadian Youth Delegation Thea Whitman for her post-Copenhagen thoughts. What were her feelings about the conference and the outcome, and what’s next for the climate movement? Here is Thea’s response: I am disappointed – you might even say devastated – to see this as the result…
Costa Elles gets new liquor license for old Seven space
Shoptalk has learned that Opa Greek Taverna kings Costa Elles and Chris Tzaneteas have been granted a new liquor licence, for a new establishment to go into the location of their late, lamented wine bar Seven (1579 Grafton Street). The former licence for Seven has been transferred a new Dartmouth Crossing location of Opa, to…
City tweets beat all
I have to say: I love Tim Bousquet’s city council meeting live tweets. They are strangely amusing and, well, the best coverage I have seen of council meetings. You’d have to use brute force to make me watch the proceedings on Channel 10, but the Coast Twitter feed is perfect.—Graham MacDougall, Halifax
Scream shame
I am writing in response to an article that was published a couple of weeks ago by Lezlie Lowe regarding a vigil being held at the Spring Garden Road library (“Screaming mad,” News, December 3). Jean Steinberg, despite her claims, did not invent, create or otherwise in any way contribute toward the notion of having…
Hypocritical Uteck
Councillor Sue Uteck: I find it interesting that you are able to condemn the winter parking ban tickets issued last Sunday evening as a “tax grab.” And yet less than a week earlier you were on CBC radio promoting the new HRM “tax reform,” a proposal designed to lower your own taxes, and raise taxes…
Will be parking it somewhere else
This full-time parking ban is absolutely outrageous in this time of economic turmoil. This city is so ass-backwards with the way it runs its day-to-day operations and with the way it treats its citizens. Fifty dollars for parking on the street! Where are people supposed to put their cars? Up their asses? The city’s public…
Winter wonderland
I think it’s absolutely wonderful that the HRM has begun issuing winter ban parking tickets, particularly on a rainy Sunday evening—the first night of the ban —when no snow removal efforts were underway. I was under the impression that the ban began on December 15, as were most people I had spoken with regarding this…
