In Which I Welcome Myself Home.

It's my first Canada Day at home in eight years. It seems only appropriate that I might enumerate a few of the many, many, many things that make me glad to be back.

So, without further ado...

Top Ten Reasons I Moved Back To Canada:

10: It snows 362 days a year in Canada.
9: The only occasion one ever has to think about Sarah Palin is to fill space in some stupid list.
8: Overwhelmed by the irreconcilable incongruity of America: so many cops, so few Tim Hortons.
7: Canada's late-night tv host wars were settled long ago. All hail George Strombopolous!
6: Don Cherry on Hockey Night In Canada is a much more reliable source of bizarre outfits than peopleofwalmart.com.
5: Having successfully ousted President Bush, I must now do the same to Prime Minister Harper.
4: I will need medical care in 10-20 years, so I am getting in line now.
3: On Canadian tv, they show boobies [note to self: get a tv].
2: I received an email from HM Queen Elizabeth II promising me cash if I helped her with a certain banking transaction.
1: It's my home and native land, yo.

Warning

The 22nd Toronto Fringe Festival starts next week; with more than 150 theatre companies and 800 performers involved, it's Toronto's largest theatre festival. It's got something for everyone, and some things not for everyone.

It's not just the old bugaboos, either, like "mature content," "violence," or "language" (and one supposes this last one should be inferred to mean the bad, coarse, or vulgar sense of the word, not the French or German). Consider some of the other audience advisory warnings that accompany the synopses of the various productions:

Warning: Awkward Situations, Adult References To The Elderly

Warning: Gunshots

Warning: Smoking Herbal Cigarettes

Warning: Awesome

Warning: Fog Machine

Warning: Trumpet

Warning: Hedonism, Tomfoolery, Indulgently Floral Language

Warning: Language, Nudity, Strobe Lighting, Fog Machine, Simulated Drug and Alcohol Use

Warning: Content, Language, Dancing Vagina

Warning: Content, Nudity, Audience Participation, Lap Dancing, And More!

Mama always worried that I'd end up in the big city, reveling in hedonism, tomfoolery and indulgently floral language - especially in the making of awkward references to grandma and grandpa. (Somehow, I doubt she'd have been able to bring herself to utter the phrase, "dancing vagina.") And now look at me: fire up the fog machine!

Signs of Toronto

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Poutine seems to be well on its way to becoming The Next Big Thing in dining in Toronto. There are a number of restaurants dedicated to it, and even places with other gastronomical concerns seem to want to get in on the action.



Within a few hundred metres of Saigon Flower, there are at least two poutine shops: Smoke's Poutinerie and Poutini's. This sign points to the latter.



Also nearby: the erstwhile Belle's Appliances now houses a dojo in a building that will soon be sold and, like many of its neighbours, redeveloped into something much more higher-rent.



Photographer A.J. Messier said that shooting from that angle gave a nice compositional effect to his photo and allowed him to capture the phone number on the sign advertising giclée printing at very competitive rates.



The owners of the Lens Factory were doubtless glad that the smashed-in window was at their recently-abandoned old location.



The Liquor Control Board of Ontario runs the province's retail liquor stores.



Someone is perhaps mistaken in his or her belief that using three E's in "please" is legally binding.