Housemate wanted

Yup, Casa de AccordionGuy needs a new occupant. If you’re in the Toronto area and looking for a place to live, and would like to live with two great guys — one of whom is Toronto’s most fun accordion player ever, perhaps you’d consider moving in chez moi.

The house is historical, but the interior’s been renovated very nicely. The house has been featured in Toronto Life magazine and on the TV show Love By Design (where I was a participant). Simply put, this place is a catch. Here are the details:

• The room: I’m offering you the largest bedroom in the house. It’s one of the basement rooms, but it’s comfy.

• The housemates: Me and Paul. If you need to know what I’m like, I suggest you read this blog. Paul and I like to cook, we like having company over and we’ve been known to throw a decent party.

• Furnished living room, dining room with exposed brick and hardwood floors. Really nice and comfy couches. Decent-sized TV with VCR and DVD with stereo speakers and sub. Dining room has a Parsons table to impress our friends from OCAD, which is nearby. Nice, real art. We could use a new coffee table if you’ve got one.

• 2 full bathrooms. Nice ones too.

• Central air, heating and vaccuum. We’re civilised here.

• High-speed internet. And wireless, too!

• Decent kitchen. We’ve got a dishwasher, microwave, toaster and slow cooker. We could use an electric kettle if you’ve got one.

• In-house washer and dryer. Because psych outpatient like to hang out at laundromats and sniff my underwear.

• Small deck in the back; we have a gas barbecue and a patio set.
• There’s a garage, but it’s already occupied by Paul’s and my car. The landlord offers bike space.

• Killer location! Just off Spadina between Dundas and Queen, putting you within walking distance of Chinatown, Kensington Market, Queen West area, Club district, the big Paramount theatre, SkyDome. A slightly longer walk gets you to College West, the Annex, U of T, Eaton Centre. You’re close to transit: Spadina, Dundas and Queen streetcars or just a short walk to St. Patrick or Osgoode stations.

• Utilities: we pay for electricity and gas, the landlotd pays for water

• World’s nicest landlords. They also happen to be our next door neighbours.

• The upstairs neighbours are pretty cool too.

• The bottom line: $750/month for rent, and we pitch in evenly for utilities and groceries.

We’re looking for either a male or female housemate, non-smoking preferred, who’s reasonably (but not pathologically) tidy. We tend to take turns cooking dinner (we’re both meat eaters), rent DVDs fairly often, go out a fair bit (see the blog) and have friends over. Currently, we both work from home.

Does this sound like the kind of house you’d like to live in? Drop me a line.

I’m playing accordion in the studio, but I’m wishing I was at South by Southwest!

I would’ve killed to be at the Fray Cafe. Wes tells me the accordion would’ve been a big hit there, but I already knew that.

Wil “More than just Wesley Crusher…much, much more!” Wheaton put it very nicely in his blog entry today:

I’d like everyone to put down the flags and quiet the dogs of war for a moment, and remember the people who lost their lives six months ago, today.

Thank you.

Murdoch, the Middle Kingdom and the Media

Me so horny, President Jiang! Me love you long time!

I’ve been busy getting my new computer set up and working on all kinds of things Peekabooty-related. Hence the paucity of postings for the last few days. I’m back now, and to make up for missing time, let me direct you to an article on the Peekabooty site that I wrote called Murdoch, the Middle Kingdom and the Media. It covers Rupert Murdoch’s decade-long campaign to get broadcasting rights in China and all the ass-kissing involved. Read it and be amazed (and angered).

Much love to my homeboy G-dogg at Blogaritaville for givin’ me the 411 on Rupert M.

…but that something is not a Scandinavian woman named Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer. For those of you who don’t see the significance of her surname (or perhaps mistook it for the catalog name of an IKEA buffet table), her surname is a hyphenation of her family name, Eklöf, and Berliner-Mauer, the Berlin Wall. She added its name to hers because the Wall is her, um, husband.

It’s all here in her website, The Berlin Wall – The Best and Sexiest Wall ever existed!!!

The Berlin Walls. Look at the way she’s groping him — in public, no less!

From her site:

The purpose of the construction is completely irrelevant in this context. For example, the Berlin Wall symbolizes communism to many people, but not to me. I have no interest in politics. The Berlin Wall is my husband; its as simple as that…

…My attraction to The Berlin Wall and other constructions is BOTH emotional AND sexual. I love them as beings (I deliberately use this word here), I enjoy their company… and I am turned on sexually by The Berlin Wall…

…My sexual feelings towards them are very intense. My feelings towards The Berlin Wall are far more deep than most people think.

As you might well imagine, Mrs. Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer considers November 9th, 1989 to be a tragic day. Luckily for her, she knows that time is a dimension and in a twenty-eight-year sliver of the timeline, her husband still exists. Unfortunately, despite what some people may believe, we’re stuck with being dragged forward throught the timeline, one second at a time. Until time travel is possible, she’s done the next best thing:

I have fixed my mind within the period 1961 – 1988. That is the time when my husband existed and (for me) still exists in his full glory. I have done this by erasing most of my memories outside that period, enabling me to co-exist with my husband in those happy times.

Don’t feel sad for her because she’s stuck in 1988. She gets to enjoy George Michael’s Faith and Billy Ocean’s Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car as brand new songs forever!

Recommended Reading

• The history of the Berlin Wall.
• Objects sexier than the Berlin Wall. Even from a purely design aestethics point of view, the Berlin wall is downright ugly. Perhaps Mrs. Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer should consider the designs by Apple, BMW, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright or lesser-known designers like my friend Lee Kline.
• Some of the worst poetry ever written. The love poems of Eija-Riitta Eklöf-Berliner-Mauer to her hubby, the Berlin Wall.
• By the way, the title of this post is from Mending Wall by Robert Frost.

Congratulations, Cory!

If you hadn’t yet read in the news in BoingBoing or blogaritaville, my friend and former boss Cory Doctorow has left OpenCola to join the EFF as their Outreach Coordinator. Once again, he’ll be doing an evangelist’s job, convincing corporations that it’ll be in their best interests to give money to the EFF. It’s a job he loves with a cause that he believes in.

Congratulations, Cory, on getting a to-die-for job and for escaping from OpenCola, the urinal mint of the P2P field.

Happy Birthday, Eileen!

My sister, Eileen, and her son, Aidan

Here’s to the best sister a brother could ever ask for.