Matt P: "It's free and easy under here!"
Matt B: "Oh, hooray for everything."

Key distinctions:

• America is the kid who moved out at age 15 as a loud, if needless, "fuck you" to his sires. Canada is the kid who lived in his parents' house until he had graduated college, found a stable job, and stocked away a bit of money "for emergencies."
• The current state of the Canadian dollar is the best kept secret, ever.
• There were lots fewer fat kids in Philadelphia than there were in Chapel Hill. Whether this is geographic, random, or an actual improvement is unknown. I only know that I saw less than three kids where I wanted to actually lead them away from their parents and check them into a foster home.
• The things that you aren't regularly confronted with about America - i.e. the stuff that doesn't come from Los Angeles, Washington, or New York - are the reasons the country is worth defending. I tend to forget that on an annual basis, but America is significantly more than cruel sexual and racial stereotypes, violently inept politicians, and a smoking hole in the ground.
• Matty Price and I will never be able to explain the "buttered loaf of bread" joke to you in a way that will make you understand why we think it is so goddamned funny.

Last night after I got home and unpacked, I grabbed my iPod and headed out the door... and ended up walking to Queen and Spadina (!). I was just saying to MP the other day that it's been a while since I've done a solid city walk... this one wasn't so much planned as that's just the way things worked out. I was at City Hall before my brain twigged to how much I wanted a burrito right then. So it all worked out.

Teen Girl Squad got rid of Vinyl! No General Grievous for me, at least not for a while. Honestly, though, with my 2008 fates as uncertain as they currently are, adopting a kitten might not have been the best idea anyway.

It is almost impossible to describe how much the DVD universe has changed since the release of the first My So-Called Life boxed set; little things like how getting a TV show onto DVD no longer involves a 1-year petition, a high price point pre-order, a small production house transfer overseen by a designated fan, a collectibles distributor, a 10-month wait, and filing complaints with the FBI. Now here's version 2. I don't know, the pieces are all there, but it just feels... a little easy?

And relatedly, in spite of any previous claims on this site, I am now thinking that I will be going hi-def at some point in the next year after all... and the winner of the format war is... Blu-Ray!! The reason for this is that there are actually only four titles that I would buy the player for: three that start with "Pirates of the Caribbean," and one that's about giant robots fighting each other. I'm sure there would be others eventually, but those are the forerunners, the decision-makers, the reasons I'm doing it. The idea of seeing Transformers or World's End in anything less than the best presentation possible hurts my brain and makes my heart go puppy-sad. So.... that'll be 'spensive. New TV, new player, new speakers, new living space... all so I can watch Optimus beat the shit out of Davy Jones.

What? The players don't let me do that?