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Scene Reconstitution, English dubbing added for our international audience:

Eriko: So what’s the weather like over there at the moment?

Dave: Mmn, that’s a good question. Let’s find out…

Eriko: -10°… that’s a bit nippy, innnit.

Dave (fainting): …

Eriko: …?

Dave (slowly regaining consciousness): That’s minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius.

Eriko: What does it give in Celsius then?

Dave: Below -20°, not counting windchills.

Eriko (fainting): …

Now where did I put my baby seal fur-lined thermodactyl underwear.

Eriko:　それでね、 あそこに　天気はどう?

Dave:　そうですね。探そうね。

Eriko: −１０°だね、ちょっと寒いじゃん。

Dave (眩んで): …

Eriko: …?

Dave (ゆっくり起きて): セ氏じゃない、華氏ですよ！

Eriko: じゃあセ氏でいくつ位なの？

Dave: −２０°下。冬風もあるんですよ。

Eriko (眩んで): …

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I am heading off to Canada in a few hours.

A last minute decision to attend the once-in-a-decade get-together organized by the Famiglia.

Why Canada?

I hear picking a remote location with a climate quite openly hostile to the very idea of human survival is part of the whole bonding experience thing. The choices for the 2015 meeting have been narrowed down to the Gobi desert or an island off the Bermuda archipelago. This year, it is a burg south of Montreal in the beautiful, nuts-freezingly cold, province of Quebec.

I have never been to Quebec. Actually, I have only been to Canada twice, I think. The last time was a gig in Vancouver which I masterfully managed to spend entirely in such a state that I barely even remember going there altogether. My memory of that episode stops somewhere around Saturday morning, when I took a cab to the airport straight from the club where I’d been playing the night before and only resumes when I awoke from a 15 hours sleep on the following monday.

Hence, my knowledge of Canadian culture only covers the basic: they like hockey, eat fried beaver tails covered in maple syrup and hate freedom… But I’m sure there is more to it and I intend on finding it.

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Having spent a sizable share of the past few weeks writing and supporting an anti-spam plugin for WordPress, I have been extensively reading and cogitating on the issue.

While I am ashamed to say that I have not come up with any magic answer to the problem (and don’t think anybody ever will), I nonetheless have lots of remarks and ideas I’d love to share. And given the appallingly low level of certain discussions on spam I have read lately, I figure it couldn’t hurt.

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Given that I’ll soon be traveling, hanging out in airports, seeing family, all that… I really had to get my shit together.

And so yesterday I made the painful decision. The trip to that hip Ginza clinic was a difficult one. Coming back to an empty home, even more so.

But it had to be done… lest my warranty runs out before I had been able to get all the crappy pieces of my Powerbook fixed.

Yoshiko gave me back the old G3 I had loaned to her last year when I got my G4, but it’s even more broken than it used to, basically won’t even start (although this would not be the first time and can probably be solved with a bit of soldering iron here and there), but anyway: I could barely stand its excruciatingly slow CPU a year ago, I can only imagine how bad it would be now.

As for the old PC laptop: I gave it to a church months ago. Wasn’t a donation, just a routine exorcism. Unfortunately it didn’t survive the bath in Holy Water.

Which is why I am typing these lines on Eriko’s old piece of junk, running XP Personal Edition…

And God does this thing suck.

Entering acute phase of withdrawal tonight…

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[sc_embed_player_template1 fileurl=”http://www.unknowngenius.com/mp3s/drdave_nye04.mp3″]

(right-click here for download)

This is a draft for a club promotional release, hence the rather mainstream selection and the lack of finish (not had time to even normalize it at the time of this writing, so turn the volume up)… I’ll try to post the final take later.

At the risk of stating the obvious: End of year celebrations are approaching. Pretty soon, we will be getting together with our loved ones to indulge in a feast of holiday gourmet food (or alternatively, staying in with the dog and two bottles of Jack D, if that’s the kind of celebration you are into).

Christmas spirit is upon us… what does that mean music-wise? Well, we had to make an effort.

Now, let me reassure you straight up: there are no techno remix of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in that mix.

But I figured that, after the noisy bad boy from last time, it was time to give you a mix you could safely bring back home to your family and introduce to your parents. I mean, this mix is not exactly husband material, but at least it won’t start snorting lines of candy canes off the christmas dinner table.

Actually, this is family House. mostly. even your dad could groove to that.

Safer to unplug grandma’s hearing aid beforehand, though.

Enjoy and merry chrismahanukwanzakah everybody!