This is a great tool which seems to get to the heart of what I journaled about a while back: how well does your ‘hood walk?

 The results? What I expected. My neighborhood in SF got an 85 (out of 100) and my neighborhood in Winston got a 48. I’m actually surprised my neighborhood in WS got so high a score. But then, I never much planned to be able to walk farther than my yard - thus my desire to grow ever more abundant foodstuffs on my property…

I watched it again on the train ride to my sister’s today. It is a truly heart-warming movie. I first saw it many years ago and it’s remained one of my favorites ever since. I’m thoroughly convinced that it has played a larger part in my longing to live in Toronto than even my trip there last fall.

Ah, beautiful Toronto.

I guess I shouldn’t be so smitten for something so unattainable. My relationship with Toronto has become akin to an infatuation with a rock star: the fantasy won’t go away despite the absurdity of the reality…

Proof that labor unions kill people.

Really, with the type of advanced GPS, computers and robotics technologies out there, would human beings still be working in mines if not for those wonderful “job security” protecting watchdogs?

If someone offered me a job where I was sent thousands of feet into a mountainside to blow up rocks inside said mountain, I would tell them to go to hell. I don’t care if it’s union wages. If I was really desperate to get a six-figure salary despite the lack of a high school education, I’d become a pirate or a gangster. It’s safer.

Whilst I’d like to see everywhere, there are 5 cities outside of the US and Canada that I absolutely have to visit one day:

1. Singapore
2. Moscow
3. London
4. BudaPest
5. Munich

I really want to spend some time in Latin America one day, and I’d love to visit Australia and New Zealand and the Nordic countries, but in terms of specific cities that I crave to visit, these are the places I’d choose if I were going abroad before I’d try a big tour of any kind…

In any case, they’ll have to invent some way other than flying to get there economically before I go, anyway.

Great, another ranty “In Your Face” album from The Cure. And to think they are screwing up an entire tour for the sake of it… Ugh…

After which Album did The Cure/Robert Smith start universally sucking on record?

Don’t get me wrong: I love The Cure. They were my first really big favorite band and I still collect their records (and will continue to buy the swill they churn out), but I thought 2004’s The Cure was absolute crap - it was no different than the paint-by-numbers alternacrap on every white-teen-to-twentysomething Clear Channel station today, like Robert Smith woke up one morning and said “I want to make Blink 182 sound edgy!”

Maybe I’m just an old-timer. But then, when Wish came out, I loved it even at that time and still love it now, and despite the fact that so many long-time fans abandoned The Cure for “selling out” with that record. However, when Wild Mood Swings came out, I hated it, though I’ve grown to like it years later - the important thing here being that it was the first Cure album that I didn’t totally fall in love with and stay in love with since I’d started listening to the cure and being a hard-core fan in 5th grade (really!). Everything since Wild Mood Swings (with the exception of a certain song here and there) I’ve not liked when it came out and not grown to like since. It’s sad really.

But the same risible guy is behind it all, and the fact that he’s still out there touring and playing all the old songs I love is enough to garner my timeless support.