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Google Earth is a heck of a thing, isn’t it? If you’re scratching your head like there’s a wood tick buried in your scalp, take 5 minutes out to download the application and do amazinglish things such as:

– “Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in.” Think of the potential for peeping here. In another 5 years you’ll be able to see right into someone’s bedroom and see them waving back at you. Albeit handcuffed to a bedpost.
– “Search for schools, parks, restaurants, and hotels. Get driving directions.” Sexual predators will not only be able to cruise high school playgrounds from the comfort of their own DNA splattered PCs, but can then figure out the straightest line between their dilapidated hovel and your loved ones.
– “Tilt and rotate the view to see 3D terrain and buildings.” Luckily, if your underage neighbor slams down one of her blinds on you in disgust, you’ll be able to sneak around to alternate windows with just a few simple clicks.
– “Save and share your searches and favorites. Even add your own annotations.” Cheerleader Tryouts. JV wrestling practice. That girl who works at Dairy Queen’s bathroom window. The possibilities are only as limited as your perversions.

I am of course kidding, people. Because there’s no substitute for a sturdy ladder and a pair of Nikon binoculars. But back to the original purpose of this article – I found a great ‘hack’ site that will save you a ton of time and lead you straight to many current and historically interesting Google Earth images. Current ones include the London Blast locations, The Great Wall of China, the Tour de France route, crop circles, Dick Cheney’s house, etc. I think googleearthhacks.com is poised to become a very popular and fun site, so have yourself a wee lookie looksee.

Then take your protein pills and put your helmets on.

– You’re not offended by the term “HOMO MILK”.
– You understand the phrase “Could you pass me a serviette, I just dropped my poutine, on the chesterfield.”
– You eat chocolate bars, not candy bars.
– You drink pop, not soda.
– You know that a Mickey and 2-4’s mean, “party at the camp, eh!!!”
– You know that a pike is a type of fish, not part of a highway.
– You drive on a highway, not a freeway.
– You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
– You design your Halloween costume to fit over a snowsuit.
– You know that the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced “Zed”.
– Your newspaper covers news on 2 pages, but requires 6 pages for hockey.
– You know that when it’s 25 degrees outside, it’s a warm day.
– You know how to pronounce and spell “Saskatchewan”.
– You perk up when you hear the theme song from ‘Hockey Night in Canada’.
– You are in grade 12, not the 12th grade.
– Your beer case handles Are big enough To fit your mittens.
– Every murder is reported.
– You froze your tongue to something metal and survived to tell about it.

This time last week I was ripping around the Big Rideau on a jetski with one of my best friends – chasing boats so we could jump off their wakes. I still have a bad case of ‘watercraft-back’ but it was the most fun I’ve had in ages. Today, I’m back cleaning my apartment, doing laundry, getting a head start on the work week via some pre-emptive client emails and generally pining for the Canadian countryside.

This September, I’ll have lived in the North End for 6 years. I love it here, and I don’t think I’d do as well in any other neighborhood, but I think the charm of city-living is wearing thin. There are few elements of my job that I couldn’t do on a wireless connection from the end of the dock at my family’s house in Portland, Ontario. But I’m required to live in one of only about 5 North American cities where I can do what I do – and they all involve paying small fortunes to live in smaller shoeboxes. I feel like a veal, and I want to appeal.

If I won the lottery, I’d buy an island or every house in my parent’s secluded summer neighborhood. Then I’d move all of my closest friends in and we’d start a commune of some sort. Maybe commune is a bad word – It conjures up images of Waco, Jonestown and Heaven’s Gate. I’m not suggesting anything crazy like a secret settlement that worships me as a prophet. And besides, everyone knows that cyanide is ingested a lot quicker when mixed into Pabst Blue Ribbon as opposed to purple KoolAid. It’s the carbonation, you see. You know, maybe this could work. I’m off to get a $2 scratch ticket. Update: I won $10. Baby steps.

“After the initial shock of stumbling over the truth, what will Britain do? Go back to the Bob Geldof agenda or avenge her dead?”

I checked Al-Jazeera West (CNN) before I left for work this morning and already knew what had happened in the Big Smoke by the time I’d stumbled upon the Park Street T stop evacuation. I should start carrying my camera with me during my walks to work – I come across crazy scenes almost every day during my pedestrian travels. And by ‘crazy scenes’ I of course mean VPLs.

On Tremont Street people were spilling out of the two kiosks and being shepherded onto waiting buses by frantic T employees in bright orange vests. Some displaced commuters headed straight for the Commons instead – unsure of what was going on and visibly confused. State police and city cops were everywhere, and for a moment I thought “Oh no, the Red Line has been hit with a bomb too. Did I remember to turn the lightswitch off and on exactly 37 times before I left the apartment?” The only thing scarier than Al Qaeda is an OCD.

In case you spent the first half of today with your head in the laundry sink, the non-existent terrorist threat didn’t blow up three Underground tube stops and a double-decker bus or kill over 50 people during rush hour in downton London, England. That was some other guy. But regardless, it happened – and if you’re one of my Londoner friends, email a brutha so I know you’re safe. The official death toll is currently hovering at 37 – but that’ll undoubtedly shoot up quite a bit. The Qaedlings obviously chose today carefully – with Blair, Bush and Putin in Scotland for the G8, and the 2012 Olympic bid news announced only yesterday. Why rain on a parade when you can blow it to kingdom frig?

“At dusk, hundreds of thousands of Londoners began a long walk home, with the underground network that carries 3 million passengers a day closed at least until Friday. Thomas Carr, a 63-year-old electrician who faced a two-hour walk home, said he would keep using the underground. “It won’t put me off using the Tube,” he said. “You can’t let them beat you.”

I wish only the best for the people of London, and the penultimate worst for the animals responsible. Regardless of where you stand on the politics, today was a sad reminder that we’re nowhere near out of the dune yet.

When I was a youth, beer acquisition was always at the forefront of my mind. Who has a fake ID, whose older brother is home from college, will Dad notice a few Coors Extra Darks missing, etc. But with the exception of the usual teen-stupidity-induced boozy backwoods car ride, or alcohol-fueled altercation, I was never willing to risk life and limb for a lager. In some parts of the world, however, the value of human life takes a definite backseat to the bitter.

“Alcohol has been banned in two small Australian Aboriginal communities to stop young people from a nearby alcohol-free township from risking their lives by swimming a crocodile-infested river to get a drink.”

You’ve got to admire their drunken spunk. And I’m no authority on the Australian Outback as I personally never got further inland than the Blue Mountains. Maybe it’s miserable. Maybe a crate of Victoria Bitter is worth a wooden leg. Maybe the poor Aborigines in that town have a busted TV set that playes nothing but Neighbors, Kylie Minogue Videos and the new INXS reality show. Go nuts, guys.

The Boston Globe mentioned me in an article on Sunday having to do with people who’d been fired as a result of something they’d written in their blog. Now while this has never happened to me – it certainly fricking should have by now and is as inevitable as a solar eclipse. I was originally really excited about participating in the interviews for the piece, but I now see that they didn’t link to me directly, and didn’t mention the URL properly either. The author was very nice though and I suppose I may get a random traffic trickle from people who see fit to Google me. That or “sad bastard with severely warped priorities and a pathetic measure of acheivement”. But at least I wasn’t bumped by a woman with a purple mohawk. Oh, wait – uncanny.