Audi R8

Audi bought Lamborghini a while back and turned the design esthetic around with the Murcielago. If it weren't for Audi, the lambos would end up looking like hideous bloated camaros. It's a good thing that they killed the Canto. The Gallardo was another fine piece of form as well, simple, clean and really well suited to its Italian/German heritage.

So Audi learnt quite a bit while screwing around in Italy and are now releasing the R8 supercar which has a fair ammount in common with the Gallardo. Next year, a hundred grand and change gets you something sweet like this

What's on my player

I'm stuck in the 80's, working this rainy weekend to this:

Lauren Hills & Bob Marley - Turn your lights down low
BEF - Ball of Confusion
Nick Cave & Shane Mcgowan - Rainy night in soho
23 Skidoo - Another babys face
Booker T - Red beans & Rice
Deep Purple - Hush
Led Zepplin - Over the hills and far away
Lou Reed - Vicious
Altered Images - Legionaire
Front 242 - Headhunter
Sisters of Mercy - Marianne
The Cure - Catch

My last word about Dawson

This is going to be my last post about Dawson.

First off, let me get this off my chest - I've said it before but now I'll elaborate. Kimveer was an idiot and we're pretty lucky that he was. If he was a little smarter he would have slaughtered a lot more people. He was dramatic, emotional and crude - like an furious animal with a gun. Things could have been much much worse if he was smart, patient and precise. He wasn't so much insane as insanely furious.

Second, many people have been struggling with his motivation. There are no shortage of theories going around and many people think that he was just plain batshit nuts. I'd say that this fellow didn't have such a bad life but at the same time he didn't have such a great life. He was awkward, shy and introverted. He was pretty immature and relatively stupid. His mom had breast cancer and his dad had a serious heart condition. He still lived at home with his folks and didn't seem to be getting laid. None of this explains more than a bit of depression. If that was the end of the story, he'd just stay at home and listen to sad songs about bad hair. Something however made him internalize his mediocre suburban angst to the point of external combustion. It probably wasn't one thing in particular. The dude was bipolar and isolated and eventually went batshit psycho because nobody figured him out or those that did failed to rat him out.

What to do then? Don't allow access to firearms to urban people without regular deep pschoanalysis at their own cost. Keep recreational firearms locked down in an armoury at the firing range. Give hunters their guns only during the hunting season and make them check them in the rest of the year. Let rural folks, farmers and remote villagers keep their guns as is. Keep the registry to take guns away from batshit psychos. Last but not least, convince depressed youth to take some responsibility for their destiny and not blame others.

My final thought is that this Gill guy had a really stupid haircut for a goth. That guy was no goth, just a cowboy redneck bully jock dressed in black. What a fucking idiot.

6:00 AM Dawson college memorial 

Dawson media outpost on Monday 6:30AM 

Front gate 

Dawson entrance where it all went down 

Dawson entrance where it all went down 

Dawson entrance where it all went down 

De Maisonneuve and Atwater 

De Maisonneuve and Atwater 

Dawson Sherbrooke St. gate 

Memorials in Montreal

I just got back in Montreal tonight and drove by my office. There's a steady stream of people dropping off flowers in front of Dawson and on the fence on the corner. It's heartening to see how many people have been paying respects.

The last time I had seen a wall of flowers, pictures, notes and heatfelt thoughts like that was in NYC along the wall of the church around the corner from the twin towers in October of 2001.

Kimveer was a pathetic idiot.

Staying alive in Montreal

At 1:15 this afternoon I got a call from one of my employees. He`s sounds totally freaked and tells me there`s a shooting going on. Where I ask - right here he says. He tells me there`s bodies everywhere. I thought he was kidding. He tells me there`s a couple of shooters and they`re evacuating the buildings around. He says he sees bodies out the window of our office. Fucking hell.

Outside my office window, 17 stories down my employees watched mayhem break out and bodies on the street. One fellow was missing in action. Luckily he turned up locked down in a bank. Everybody I know so far is OK, luckily I am in Ottawa right now.

Really strange watching CNN international coverage of bodies everywhere outside my office, the view that I see every day. This is the street that I walk down every day and past the people, stores, day care and school that I see every single day. Except today there`s blood everywhere, a swat team and a dead body on the sidewalk and today I`m seeing it on CNN.

Of beans and stuff

I haven't written much for a while because I got a little tired of having a one way dialog with myself here in this column. Sure, I talk to friends from time to time and they know what I've been up to but it's really boring to write words publicly in one direction.

So what the hell have I been up to? For one, I've been traveling 3 days a week and pretty much living in hotels for most of the summer. Weekends up north as usual, lots of boating, bbqs and parties. We've drank an ocean of tequila and cervesas and had the firemen and public security over for a weenie roast on one glorious summer evening.

I haven't driven any of my motorcycles much this summer but I did get a new exhaust for my boat that is supposed to push the monoxide underwater. Took a bit of modification to get it to work well but now it's done.

There's been a cyanobacteria bloom in neighboring lakes that is a little worrying, you can't drink the water, bath or shower when it's around. So far there hasn't been a problem in my lake. You can half your property value if it becomes serious.

I'm off to Costa Rica with a few friends in November, I'm obviously looking forward to that immensely, I need the break in a big way.

This is cool.