Quarter for your cart?

Until I moved to Ontario, I had never seen shopping carts that required you to deposit 25 cents before you could use them. If the issue is theft, I guess in small towns, the danger of someone stealing the cart is minimal. If the issue is that people are not returning the carts to the corals, then I guess in small towns, the parking lots are significantly smaller so the employees don't have to walk all over the place to bring the cart back. It only took a little while to get used to the carts. The funny thing was when I went back home, the first two or three times, I started looking for the coin slot in the cart and felt weird when I didn't find it.

I often wish the stores would employ a different mechanism than a coin deposit. It's usually not an issue, but I have been caught quarterless at a store from time to time. Then I find it becomes quite the hassle to get a quarter. A couple other stores have come up with inventive ways to keep their carts under control.

One store I went to had a long metal pole attached vertically to one corner of the cart. This certainly prevents the cart from leaving the store, which in turn prevents both theft and excessive employee effort. It also prevents me from wheeling out anything heavy from the store to my car. Another store had a cart that had a mechanism inside that locked the wheels of the cart when it reached a certain distance from the store. Good idea, if you park close enough. Otherwise, you might as well have a pole sticking out of it instead.

It's kind of nice to be just finishing with your cart when someone who is heading towards the store offers you a quarter to take your cart. Usually, it doesn't end up that way. However, I have been in a couple amuzing situations. Once, as a returned my cart, a guy offered my a loonie for my cart because he did not have a quarter and could not be bothered to go get one. Another time, as I finished loading groceries into my car, I noticed that someone had left their cart close to my car, but not near the coral. I noticed another cart that didn't have a quarter in it (possibly a display cart or something) was left nearby as well. So I took my cart and the two carts I saw and got 50 cents out of the deal as opposed to just my original 25 cents. Hardly impressive, but you know what they say about small things. :)

"Artistic" Liberties

This is probably an understatement, but I watch a lot of sports. Just last year, I've been to 21 Toronto Blue Jays games. Then there's all the televised games of both baseball and non-baseball I've seen... the point is, for every full game I've watched, I've heard an anthem singer sing. That's a heck of a lot of anthems sung. In fact, if it wasn't for all the sports opening every game with anthems, I wonder how often I'd actually hear the anthems outside of Canada Day, Independence Day, etc.

I've only been around since 1980, but I am sure that at some point in history, anthems were sung the way they were intended to be sung the vast majority of the time. For that matter, there may or may not have even been a time where the anthems were sung as intended all of the time. Occasionally, a singer would choose to change a note, a bar, or some other bit of the anthem and it would be accepted as an artistic liberty.

These days, I find that over 90% of the games I watch, the anthem has been butchered by the singer because the singer chose not to sing the anthem as it was intended... and that 90% is probably even a conservative estimate! (Then again, there was that one game I went to where William Hung was the "singer" and he didn't intentionally put any artistic liberties in, but it sure as heck didn't sound like the anthem was supposed to sound like!) I think we've reached a point where it has become normal for the song to be sung incorrectly. I understand the concept of artistic liberties and why some people choose to use them, but I find it's rare that an artistic liberty actually helps the anthem singer in question.

Tonight was the 2005 NBA All Star game and the singer singing the Canadian anthem - surprise! - used artistic liberty and mangled parts of it. Obviously the camera was on the singer, but I bet if we panned over to Steve Nash, he'd probably have flinched just like any other good Canadian was probably doing on those notes. Thankfully, when the Admiral brought the choir in to sing the US anthem, they didn't take any liberties and the song sounded amazing. They really did an excellent job. Would it have sounded better if they had taken a liberty? Who knows? Sometimes it sounds nice and sometimes it doesn't, but although anthem singers have proven to us that they're generally willing to take that chance, I really appreciate that this group didn't.

Hopefully, some of these anthem singers will watch replays of the game that include the anthems they sang. Then they can hear just how badly the anthems were mangled. Maybe then, some of them will figure out that the anthems really do sound nice the way they were meant to be sung.

Million Dollar Depressant

I've been stuck at work a fair amount lately, but I decided to make plans tonight to go watch a movie on cheap night at the Rainbow Cinema in Fairview Mall. Based on what I make, I figure I can afford the $4.25 ticket (that's about 5 cents USD for those of you south of the border ;)). I find that although the Rainbow Cinema is not quite as good as the big name theatres that charge an arm and a leg, the enjoyment I got there is at least 75% of what I'd get at the big theatres... though truth be told, it was probably closer to 90%. The thing is, the price of seeing a movie other places ranges from $8.50-$13.50. So I got 90% enjoyment for somewhere between 30%-50% of the cost. How's that for price-performance!

Seriously, I am generally not a supporter of the movie and music industries. In fact, I usually go out of my way to not support them. However, if the cost of watching movies and listening to music were to drop drastically, I would probably watch and listen. I'm one of the few people who gain very little enjoyment from seeing a movie on a huge screen over a large screen. The atmosphere of the cinema just doesn't satisfy me much more than the movie already does. So in short, if I have to pay more than say 20% more to go to a theatre than to just rent the movie and watch it on my home computer or tv, I usually don't go to the theatre. Although, peer pressure makes me shell out the cash for about one theatre movie a year on average.

Similarly, I cannot justify buying CDs at all. I'd seriously consider it if the cost of a cd was $1 per song on the CD that I actually like. Usually a CD has about 12-18 songs on it. I end up liking around 20% or less of them. In my opinion, a poor cd for me would be one where I don't like any of the songs. Average would be about 1-2 songs, good would be 2-3 songs, great would be 4+. So far, I might have listened to a handful of great CDs in my whole lifetime. What a disappointment. It really makes me wonder how there are people who can pay $20 for a CD.

With costs so high, companies should be able to quickly put two and two together and figure out why piracy is as rampant as it is. I'm almost tempted to move to Sweden or some other European country without anti-piracy laws. Plus, the work policy in Europe is definitely a lot more to my liking. Not only that, but I hear great things about European and European-born actresses as well: Sophie Marceau, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Natalie Portman, Rosemund Pike... the list goes on.

Anyways, the movie I went to see was Million Dollar Baby. I heard great reviews, so I figured I had to see it. Afterwards, I would have to say I enjoyed everything up to the last 30 minutes of it. However, those last 30 minutes left me feeling very depressed. Not only that, but I felt that part of the movie just dragged on and on. I can't even say I liked the ending.

Spoilers ahead (read at your own risk!):
If someone very dear to you asked you to help them commit suicide because they couldn't, would you be able to do it? I think the closest I could get is that I could ask a doctor to do it, but I don't think I'd be able to do it with my own two hands. Alternatively, if you had to live the rest of your life bed-ridden, would you? Or would you ask someone to help you commit suicide? Again, this is a tough one. I guess it would depend on my level of immobility. If I could still play video games, watch tv, etc., I'd think I'd have no problem living. If I was completely disabled and just lying there day after day, I really don't know what I'd do. And that's the part of Million Dollar Baby that made me so depressed.