Blog: OPTIMUSCRIME.COM

Donald Black got catapaulted to blogiverse fame recently as Angry in-the-G-W-N hinted that he might have been tipped off early to Goodale's income trust changes: "Can you blame [the Opposition] for not trusting [Goodale and Black] to be in the same room together and not exchange favours?" But the Blackster swears up and down that the Amateur Journalist Brigade has it all wrong: "I'm outraged that people like me are being dragged into it and all these people putting things about me and my firm and my relationship [...]

The Bank of Canada's inflation calculator informs us that a basket of goods and services that cost $1,895 in 1992 would set you back $2,424.54 in 2005, based on CPI data. But if you happened to be interested in getting, say, a post-secondary education, the fee hikes outstrip inflation just a wee bit: By 2003-04, average Canadian tuition had risen from its sub-two-grand 1992 level to a slightly more painful $4,025. At our alma mater , this year's arts and science tuition is set at $4,193. God help you if you want [...]

Memo to Gilles Duceppe: You will not seem more moderate and less frightning to soft-federalist disenchanted-Liberal voters when you are photographed ogling a writhing raw cod with a Gollomesque glint in your eye. Oh and also, please lose the Cosby sweater. Toronto, meet your Liberal candidates: Tony Ianno's got a quarter-mil trust fund full of nice quiet money from anonymous donors. And meanwhile, Sarmite Bulte is being thrown fundraising dinners by the jackbooted copyright thugs of the Canadian entertainment industry, reports BoingBoing. [...]

We have this hilarious picture in our heads of how to explain democracy and elections to some poor citizen of a one-party dictatorship, and trying to explain how the chicken with the 'debate' sign fits into the system.

Happy New Year, pretties. L-R: Kingston, Toronto, Halifax, Original.

Oh, pretties, how we've ignored you. Our deepest apologies; there's apparently some sort of annual festival that somehow involves a fur-clad fat man breaking into homes to celebrate the birth of Christ. And this lil' holiday is a helluva time-eater, what with the meals and the family and the exchanging of gifts and whatnot. Due to a lack of nerding-time over the break thus far, we fell somewhat off our advent-logging plans. The two songs that were never posted were the 21st (El Gato's Christmas In My City ) and the 25th (Bruce [...]

Glad tidings, pretties: We are still alive, nonbloggery notwithstanding. Unfortunately, some holiday travel to the 'burbs of Toronto has kept us from posting our advent MP3s as planned. So, here they are. Since we're blogging from our 'berry, we can't figure how to post links... So here, instead, are the URLs themselves: December 22 www.optimuscrime.com/music/22- vibrolux.mp3 December 23 www.optimuscrime.com/music/23- sexsmith.mp3 December 24 www.optimuscrime.com/music/24- sufjan.mp3 Stay tuned for the Christmas installment tomorrow! Highlights thus far from Christmastravaganza 2005? Well, we began with a restful slumber punctuated only by [...]

We've been bested in the Advent MP3 game by Old Blue Bus, who've posted 'First Christmas' by Stan Rogers , a song one hundred percent guaranteed to make you all weepy. All we can offer is the world's most languidly-moving 'Little Drummer Boy', a humming slowcore drone stretched a good 90 seconds longer than the Bomboras' surf-guitar version we presented on December 9th. It's pretty, but it's no Stan Rogers. And Low knows it. Look at them ( pictured above ), all meek and mopey. Cheer up, kids. [...]

Okay, so the smoking-weed-in-a-Montreal-hot el-to-end-war campaign was a little sanctimonious. And yeah, Yoko broke up the Beatles. So those who aren't so sure about the post-Beatles Lennon but kind of liked his bittersweet peace anthem might like today's advent MP3: A cover of Happy Christmas (War Is Over) by ' the white D12 ', The Polyphonic Spree. It's an appropriate little ditty for an era where G-Dubz is loosening the term "winning" so as to be so inclusive as to describe things like the US' position in Iraq , or, say, the St. Louis [...]

Today's advent blog track comes from the Flaming Lips. It's an interesting study in contrast -- glossy production, full of electric piano and breakbeaty drums, a Spectoresque study in layered instrumentation. But the vocals tremble and quiver. It sounds imperfect, and somehow honest . It's fitting, really, considering that the lyrics consider how our holiday-time interest in peace and mercy seems to fly out the window once the spruce tree comes down. Singer Wayne Coyne, worried that the song was recorded in a rush, said that he wasn't sure it was [...]

There are those who make gingerbread houses at Christmas. And then there are engineers who make gingerbread houses at Christmas. The gingerbread carousel was made by the housemates of our friend Ian Wong. And if it weren't already a masterpiece of holiday design, their website includes full Solid Edge design mockups for each of the pieces. So, now solidly in the holiday spirit, we offer up a double-dose of Christmas music. Our frequent readers will have noticed that we missed a day yesterday (busy, we're [...]

Holy heck, it's snowy out, pretties. This morning, we saw one of the usual crowd of B&Is ( blonde and immaculates ) tromping her way to an exam with those massive ugly fashion-mukluks on. And... they looked... well, appropriate . So, we're revising our old position on the ass-ugly footwear: They're allowed, but only once we get 30cm of snow. Today's advent MP3 is a little lo-fi gem, full of piano and crunchy guitars and airy vocals. Lovely. Perfect snow-shovelling music. Snow Patrol - [...]

We ordered some pizza to eat while watching the debate. Unfortunately, taking liveblogging notes and eating greasy slices are not compatable activities. So, our account of the debate begins three quarters of an hour into the program. We trust that this will not be too great an inconvenience. We can't imagine that anyone is relying on our precis to form their voting intentions. (And if so, we weep for the state of our democracy.) Fashion notes: Did Paul and Jack call each other before picking out their [...]

Ooh! Huzzah! It turns out that Radio Canada streams the video over its website here . The video's beset by latency, and the sound is a touch metallic. But at least we can see the showdown. Some notes: Jack Layton got first kick at a question about reducing the GST on essential services, and then dropped the ball so badly Stanfield would have laughed. Jack, fer chrissakes. Last election, you wouldn't shut up about GST rebates on hybrid cars, removing the GST on [...]

What in the hell is going on? We unfortunately do not receive Radio-Canada, but assumed we could receive the Prime Ministerial debate in English translation on the CBC. But alas, no! Instead, all we get is Seth Green in a reindeer sweater or Antiques Roadshow or a CNN 'special investigation' into whether a diploma mill will issue fake degrees in the name of a wanted terrorist (answer, yes, duh). We want to see Stevie struggling with his French! Jack Layton pretending he could win a seat in Quebec! Gilles Duceppe popping champagne and [...]

Some hosting companies have luxuries like redundant RAID arrays to keep your data safe. Or automated daily offsite backup to make sure that your data can be restored. They have call centres full of polite, well-trained technology experts ready to support you. And then there's Canaca . There are Starbucks beverages that cost considerably more than Canaca's basic monthly hosting fee. Its rock-bottom pricing ( 20GB disk and 500GB bandwidth, four bucks a month! ) means, however, that Canaca must pursue certain cost savings. For instance, instead of fancy-pants [...]

"Dear Customer, It should be fine now." -- Optimuscrime's hosting company It's not. It's not fine. Our image directory, our music files, our scripting, and the directories housing Optimuscrime Kingston were deleted and have not yet been restored. We were able to republish the missing content on Optimuscrime Toronto using the archived copies Blogger keeps, but the missing images are still causing us serious headaches. And Optimuscrime Kingston is blogless! It's not fine at all, in other words. We're sick, of course, of blogging about our [...]