Ben Franklin once opined “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”

And perhaps as a corollary to this, referring to that first group anyway, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.”

The Ontario Government is now bringing in the HST, not the Hubble Space Telescope, but a tax that is equally beyond the mesosphere in terms of sticking it to ordinary citizens.

We won’t bore you with the minutiae of provincial Canadian politics, but let’s just say that this ’Harmonized Sales Tax’ is certain to cause dischord and ensure that when the next legislative roll call takes place, there will be fewer Liberals saying ‘present’.

Here is an ad taken out in a local newspaper by a funeral home, urging the hypochondriacal, and those about to be passed through the international customs gates of life, to book now and avoid paying an additional 8% on burial costs. Yes, we are now literally being taxed to death.

Toronto’s outgoing mayor, who literally swept to victory brandishing a broom at campaign rallies [it can barely be made out here on this filthy city vehicle's 'Clean City, Beautiful City bumper sticker] is now leaving an increasingly dumpy town to his successors and this, well after the city’s lengthy and stinky garbage strike.

Worse, in his last few months in power he’s now reduced to disconsolately pleading for provincial transit funding on of all things, the city’s subway PA system (!)—an open mic night, no sign-in required level of amateur hour.

A complete and total embarrassment.

This is a provincial city after all though.

The transit infrastructure is crumbling, shabby and hopelessly out of date, and yet the province yanked Transit City funding—an upgrade which would’ve brought the city into the 80s if this was Europe and given Toronto a measure of hope in terms of ferrying about the influx of visitors for the upcoming Pan Am Games (Not the Olympics but hey, cities get the games they deserve).

For a city of 4 million, the subway system has only 3 lines (!) and 4 interchanges  (and yet people still somehow get lost).

Compare this to Chicago, a city with a metropolitan area not that much larger than Toronto which has 8 lines, twice as many interchanges, more than twice as many subway stations and actually runs 24 hours. Toronto’s subway runs until 1:45AM and on Sunday morning, the first ones rumble out of the stations at 9:15AM  (!). Curious tourists will watch crowded all-night buses lurch by along the roads normally serviced by trains and wonder what the hell happened to the subway (Toronto boozehounds know the Yonge St version of this all night bus as ‘The Vomit Comet’).

TTC staff make the rather suspect claim that this time off is required for track maintenance, but what do other cities do that run their systems all night or have to fix them when terrorists take a Pelham, 1 2 and 3?

Above is an alternate entrance built for a Greektown subway station. It opened, and almost as soon as it did, promptly flooded. How long does it take to fix a concrete entranceway with barely two dozen steps leading to a subway? You guessed it. Eight months! This, for a construction project hardly of Burj Dubai proportions.

However, this is not too surprising since it took a hundred million dollars and several years to lay down 6km (nearly 4 miles) of lousy trolley tracks. As the National Post put it, “When I try to compute how anyone could possibly spend $15.6-million per kilometre…to lay some streetcar tracks, rejigger some sidewalks and bury some power lines, my brain just freezes.”

If a train link is ever finally built out to the airport….we might live to see it provided there are significant advances in human cryonics.

Here is a token machine at a west end subway station that is in need of a Few Good Men to fix it, as disgruntled passengers have been yelling, You’re Out of Order! incredulously for several months now.  (Note the ever so classy black tarp slung over it) 

The fare system is a complete farce. Instead of being able to get a card from a machine and put whatever dollar value you choose on it (like most civilized places), you line up and buy passes and tokens from someone in a booth—that is, unless to prevent “ticket hoarding”, they decide not to sell you any.

Not too long ago, a cardboard sign slapped onto a wall with plastic tape at an east end subway station directed visitors to the Toronto Zoo bus route.

The insides of the stations themselves are showing neglect and are starting to resemble the spacehip from Aliens with all the exposed pipes. Throw in a few missing chunks of drywall that would not be out of place in an apartment building vacated by deadbeat bikers and you’ve got yourself one hot mess.

The lottery cannot just be written off as an “idiot tax”, however, as it speaks to a common dream: living in luxury without having to be part of a class-action lawsuit against a company that did something that would keep from you enjoying the money much anyway, like expose you to so much toxicity that a Budweiser sign wouldn’t be the only thing glowing in a dark bar with you in it.

Indeed, the prospect of ditching work and taking up residence in a country with ample coasts, bosoms, and tax loopholes is the cubicle reverie of many a solitaire champ. Although you are statistically more likely to be touched inappropriately by a person dressed as your favorite Disney character during your lifetime than you are to win a major lottery jackpot, the appeal of winning defies such rationalizations.

Stories of those who’ve just struck it rich in the lottery inspire  – only the folks who hand out government arts grants due more to reward the bone idle – and it’s nice to hear a rags to riches story that doesn’t celebrate pimping and terrorizing innocent people for decades like every Hollywood gangster film ever made. But there are some lottery winners out there who just don’t deserve it. When they win a jackpot it taints the entire enterprise. Lottery officials would do well to rewrite some of the fine print on the back of tickets to ensure that the types below — Top 7 Undeserving Lottery Winners – are banned from claiming prizes.

Back to bingo, Pops.

7. Really Old People.

Lotteries should have a maximum age limit for players, say 65. Optimally, lottery winners should be between 25 and 35 years of age: old enough not to squander the money on charitable or social causes tied to the ideals of youth, and young enough to still have many years during which they can frivolously piss away their winnings. It could be argued that although the elderly might well be on the verge of hearing that final buzzer sound, they could still pass on their winnings to their family members, but most people resent the recipients of inherited wealth.

6. Strip Club/Gambling Aficionados.

If you enjoy an afternoon spent plugging away at a casino’s nickel machines before rushing off for a happy hour lap dance at the local Gawk and Grope, then chances are winning the lottery will not put you on the noble path to the renunciation of all such earthly vices. As terrific as a seemingly never-ending pot of money from which to pull out wads of cash while pursuing the right and true cause of debauchery, these stories never turn out well.

5. People Who Play in Large Syndicates

Like an orgy with a Chat Roulette Lurkers to normal human being ratio that favors the former, playing in large syndicates dilutes rewards to such a degree that it takes the sheen off participating at all. Whereas one to 10 people could use a jackpot to pay off loan sharks, student debts, alimony or alimony-negating hitmen, spreading the winnings out among too many people means the best you’ll be able to afford is a package trip to somewhere lousy.

4. The Overly Charitable.

There’s something to be said for sharing the wealth if your personal fortunes have just gone from zero, or less if you count the fiver you filched out of your roommate’s wallet for cigarettes, to a number that you could not write out due to all the confusing zeroes. Decency obliges lottery winners to kick some of their winnings into a charitable cause, say the Hemorrhoid Pillows for The Developed World Campaign, or the Fund to Silence Celebrities Spouting Crazy Theories on Vaccinations. But it’s nauseating when a lottery winner donates the majority or even all of a jackpot to charity (like this guy). Philanthropy on this scale has no place in the greedy, “Look at me, I’m living like King Ralph” world of lottery winners.

3. People in Shaky Marriages

It’s a common enough scenario. A marriage deteriorates, going from teary-eyed wedding toasts to bitter snapping about why one’s partner no longer feels the need to suppress farts. An atmosphere of quiet loathing prevails, tempered only by the thought of what a hassle it would be to hire a lawyer and fill out all that paperwork for a divorce. Then one of the parties wins the lottery and the divorce lawyer is staying in the guest room as a fight more brutal than anything ever sanctioned under MMA rules erupts over the jackpot.

2. Previous Winners.

With a level of greed that would make an MTV cribber annex properties and declare an autonomous state, people who have won more than $15,000 in any previous lottery should be immediately disqualified from further winnings. Much like the ugly guy at the party who manages to dupe a drunk into bedding him, lottery winnings are, or should be, like a waiting list for a vital organ, a one-shot in a lifetime experience.

1. People who don’t Quit Their Jobs.

By far, the most aggravating type of lottery winner is the individual who says — company cap atop his creative dead space of a noggin — that this tremendous good fortune won’t change him, and that he’ll keep his job. While it might be fine to utter such a sentiment when the cameras are rolling, as a face-saving gesture to co-workers whose vocational relationship might otherwise turn Brutus to Caesar overnight, if journalists ever manage a follow-up, you should ideally be in another country with another wife.

For SeaWorld public-relations officials, long touting the educational benefit of having killer whales intercept footballs, the recent death of one of their trainers brought unwanted attention. A solution was required.

Here are some choices SeaWorld could have made in the wake of the trainer’s death, along with one they did actually make. Free fish from the chum bucket for those who pick SeaWorld’s strategy:

• Announce a plan to shut down all parks, sending the animals unfit for reintegration in the wild to preserves and banning captive breeding.
• Implement a new policy to lessen the need for humans and whales to interact. This could possibly involve body-checking the odd sea lion into the whale’s tank, or having apes in wetsuits stand in for trainers during shows.
• Please the vengeful by announcing “Tilly Burger Sunday”.
• Give trainers a giant toothbrush and wish them all the best.

The picture might have tipped you off, but if you guessed “Giant toothbrush”, you’re right. Trainers, wisely not wanting to get too close to Tilly, have developed a 2-foot extension to the toothbrush they use to polish the orca’s pearlies. Whether three-time killer Tilly will be dissuaded from satiating his blood lust by this change in his oral upkeep remains to be seen.

Noel recently recorded a segment for the second episode of the Bad Psychics podcast, the Badcast. The topic is psychic year-end predictions. Readers familiar with this rundown of psychic predictions from 2008 and this one from 2009 will be able to safely predict the tone of what he has to say about our clairvoyant friends.

Listen for him at the 13:50 mark, and stay tuned for future Badcasts, as you never know which Shark Guy might turn up!

CLICK HERE FOR MORE PLAYING OPTIONS

Someone once described journalism as “the ability to meet the challenge of filling space” and, with Eye poised on death’s door (death is using the current edition to wipe his boots) it seems its staffers have taken up this challenge; Theater critics have been musing about urban planning, music critics writing about anything and everything—its’ safe to say they’re noticeably a few femurs short of even a skeleton staff.

And this is a shame. What was once a fun little rag full of lively writing from Donna Lypchuk, Bruce LaBruce, Bill Burill, etc, is now nearly exclusively staffed by teen interns, placated with bylines so they won’t go hitting the pavement in search of full-time work.

Over the past few months, the publication, previously known for among other things, placing a premium on the word ‘pastiche’, crappy Venn diagrams and mopping up leaks from the shower has seen a reduction in size to grocery flyer-like proportions— although without the benefit of pointing out the local shop ‘n’ plop has a special on Pert.

Speaking of which, it seems ample endowments are getting in the way of the kinds of navel-gazing that its columnists have become known for of late, case in point:

“We are collectively tit-notized. Big breasts are seductive in a way that’s beyond sex, maybe even beyond the mommy-milk connection. There is the obvious, banal power of big breasts. I can reliably change the dynamic between me and any given male with the release of a button. Watching my breasts move when I walk or have sex or even briefly touch them, makes me feel hot.”

Apart from the obvious issues we have with this—the cheesy ‘soft corn’ writing, if you will—it’s that given the inordinate number of pedestrians taken down in their prime on Toronto streets, watching your tatas move when you walk is probably not the best course of action, especially at busy intersections.

On the plus side, when Eye Weekly finally puts out its last threadbare issue, Torstar’s other, more profitable unit, Harlequin, might be looking for the kind of prose featured above.

And later, from the ‘Theatre’ review:

“Her witty, triumphant displays of vulnerability, including a lip-synched cover of “It’s not Easy Being Green” as lovelorn Kermit, the insertion of multiple clown figures into her vagina as a novel reinterpretation of the classic “clown car”…[Editors' note: presumably not at the same time]  

Such witty, triumphant displays of vulernability can also be found on Patpong Rd in Bangkok, but with ping pong balls.

From ‘How to Drink Better’, “sure, vodka and water tastes a little bland, but really, who drinks alcohol for the taste?” [Editors' note: people over 17?]

Let’s begin the countdown, shall we?

While it’s difficult to watch the journalism profession slowly wither in the digital age, we won’t hold back raising a middle finger to Eye Weekly as it sinks under the weight of its own self-importance and crappy writing. Besides, Now Magazine still has all the band listings.

In 1992, in a move that riled both the previous host, Johnny Carson, and anyone with a sense of humor who had not been somehow decisively thwarted in life, Jay Leno won The Tonight Show spot over the far funnier, innovative legend of Late Night, David Letterman.

Leno then spent years upsetting anyone who made the mistake of turning on the television during a commercial break, figuring it had been tuned into Letterman and then getting into bed only to have the Chin appear on the screen and realizing too late that the remote was out of arm’s reach. His show was popular among the lowest common denominator of comedy fans, which also meant that it was hugely successful for a number of years since a surprisingly huge number of people embrace crap.

Do it for Team Coco!

Then the hope of pre-midnight laughter on NBC arose when it was announced that Leno was going to be stepping aside for Conan O’Brien.

Often when current, big shot comedy writers talk about their formative experiences, they talk about being on one of three writing teams: SNL, Letterman, and Conan during his time at Late Night. Conan wrote some of The Simpsons all-time best episodes, including a Shark Guy favorite, “Marge Versus The Monorail”, and he actually improved upon what had up to that point been the funniest franchise in late night talk show history, “Late Night With David Letterman”, with his team’s own hilarious sketches, top among them Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, and the Masturbating Bear.

The first week of the Tonight Show With Conan O’Brien contained more fresh ideas and innovative comedy than any single year of the show under Jay Leno. It seemed that Team Coco was going to extend and improve upon The Tonight Show franchise just as it had done with Late Night. Admittedly, this was far easier to do as it was building from the ground up comedy-wise with The Tonight Show, but still, all positive up to that point.

Of course, rather than fading into an endless succession of Las Vegas stand-up dates playing to rooms full of lobotomized people, Jay Leno announced that he was going to move to 10pm, which he called the “new 11.30pm”. He did the impossible and managed to produce a program that was even more derivative and uninspired than his Tonight Show.

Like being the captain of the next ship on the RMS Titanic Co's cruise calendar.

Leno might have been stroking that big chin of his when he made this decision, as it turned out to be a crafty one. The Jay Leno show comprised lame skits, monologues so bad they almost seemed antagonistic, and set pieces that made one wonder if the writer’s strike had really ended. Much good humor had already been sucked out of the world by the time 11.35pm came on and The Tonight Show began.

For Conan, following the Jay Leno show was like being thrown out of an airplane with a 200-pound weight on your back instead of a parachute. As Leno himself said in this interview when justifying why his own show was tanking at 10pm.: “Lead-ins are important. On the nights when we have a strong lead-in, we are competitive; on the nights we don’t, it’s up to us to try and carry the ball ourselves….”

To salvage the wreck of the Jay Leno Show debacle, NBC decided to give Leno back his 11.35pm slot, perhaps reasoning that it would be impossible for Leno to decimate his own audience by leading into his own show. After a few disingenuous jokes about how he had been “fired again”, Leno accepted the offer, undoubtedly thrilled to steer the Tonight Show franchise back on the path of unchallenging mediocrity that he has long championed.

Below we have identified five traits that we find particularly irksome about Jay Leno. This is by no means a definitive list — we make no mention of Leno’s band leader, Kevin Eubanks, the most uncharismatic man on television — but here are The Five Most Annoying Things About Jay Leno.

5. Shameless Corporate Shill

Network television is run by ads, so anyone on it can be dubbed a corporate shill, but there’s a way to handle that without seeming like the president of the local chapter of the Big Industrial Pollute, Fatten and Stupefy fan club.

The late comedian Bill Hicks once admired Leno, but grew disillusioned when he saw Leno on TV stuffing Doritos in his gob for cash.

This from Alternative Reel’s Top Hicks quotes:

“Selling Doritos on TV? What a fuckin’ whore. And not even when he needed the money either, you know? If you’re a young actor, I’ll look the other way, but the guy makes $3 million a year, he decides to hock Doritos to make more money. You don’t got enough money you fucking whore? You’ve got to sell snacks to bovine America now? It’s Satan fucking him in the ass on national TV man . . . fuck . . .”

To this day, Leno is no stranger to sucking at the teat of Corporate America, as this compilation from a September episode of his terrible recent foray into prime time makes clear.

4. But Says He’s Not in it for the money

It’s one thing to prostitute your creative output in the pursuit of filthy lucre. We can understand that, and we too like our lucre, the filthier the better. But Leno claims he’s not in it for the money.

He told Rolling Stone:

Showbiz is not that hard. People make it difficult. The problem starts when you have to have all the money. I don’t need all the money. I’ve said this a million times, and it’s clichéd, but I’ve never touched a dime of TV money. I put it in the bank and live off the money I make as a stand-up comedian. That keeps me honest.

If the money isn’t important to him, and he doesn’t give a crap about doing anything worthwhile in comedy, then why does he insist on continuing with the show?

Jay trades wits with a puppet. Puppet 1, Jay 0

3. His Nice Guy Shtick

Mention Jay Leno and the most common response you get even from those who would rather watch their own open-heart surgery in the OR is that he seems like a really nice guy.

First, who cares if he’s a friendly guy in real life, and tips generously at places with valet parking? Overly talkative people on the bus are often quite amiable, but we wouldn’t want to listen to them deliver monologues after the news, especially if the experience is not preferable to discount root canal at the dental college. But more importantly and as recent events make perfectly clear: he’s not that nice. Leno undermined Conan with his lousy lead-in show, and even went so far as to say in an interview that he would be happy to take up the reins at 11.35pm again “if [NBC] wanted it”. He said that before anyone suggested that NBC might return him to his old slot, and was basically implying that he’d happily knock Conan out of the position if given the opportunity.

Leno denied having any such ambitions in his Rolling Stone interview: “I said, ‘Guys, whatever you want to do.’ I’ve never been one of these guys that breaks up with a girl and goes, ‘But why? If I do this, will you go out with me?’ I’m more like, ‘Babe, if you don’t want to see me, I’m gone. It’s over. Thank you.’ ”

Actually, he’s more like the passive aggressive guy who gets dumped and then waits for the right moment when his ex is either drunk or suffering from low self-esteem to sweep in and get a leg-over.

Jay Leno, likely in the process of delivering a terrible monologue joke.

2. Horrendous Monologue Jokes

Also in his interview with Rolling Stone, Leno lists extending the monologue from 3-4 minutes to 14 as one of his innovations during his time at The Tonight Show. Since his monologues elicit more groans than recent gunshot wounds, this hardly seems like an innovation worth bragging about.

If these zingers from recent episodes of the Jay Leno show are any indication, he could have extended the monologue to PBS Pledge Drive drive proportion and not registered an increase in funny material:

(on the link between hemorrhoids and marijuana):
“Talk about a doubie up your bootie!” -Jay Leno

“Well, it’s growing more and more likely that California will legalize marijuana. You mean it’s not already legal?” –Jay Leno

“Well of course, the big political story, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid got himself in hot water during the election, when he described Barack Obama as a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no negro dialect.’ See, that may explain why Reid was the Senate majority leader and not the Senate minority leader.” –Jay Leno.

1. He was funny once

It may seem shocking, but Jay Leno was actually funny once. As Patton Oswalt noted in this Comedy Death Ray segment, Jay Leno’s current incarnation is all the more disappointing because at one time capable of producing great comedy.

Here, in a segment from Late Night With David Letterman, Leno does a bit on hackneyed comedy, and it seems a shame that he would go on to become synonymous with just that.

2. Throttle a particularly annoying seatmate with your headphones (smothering them with a toxic smelling airline pillow can still be done from the comfort of your seat provided nobody is looking).

3. Enjoy, and we use the term more loosely than a draw string pant on The Biggest Loser, the latest madcap hi-jinks that have made Queen Latifah an unendurable part of the flying experience.

4. Be force-fed any in flight entertainment pre descent, featuring either Owen Wilson, Ryan Reynolds or Dermot Mulroney [please see our list of Top 10 Actors Whose Terrible Movies are Always Shown in-flight]

5. Aisle calisthenics, thereby robbing people of the ability to cartwheel from one end of the plane to the other to encourage blood flow.

Dexter is worthy of the attention –  it is one of the best shows on television despite some plot developments that would redden the face of even the most shameless, hard-core, “Never mind the fact that she’s already been cremated. We’ll bring her back reincarnated as the fetus of the husband’s mistress, have her age at a super-fast rate and get her revenge!” soap opera writer. The third season, for example, featured Jimmy Smits as a district attorney who, upon hearing of Dexter’s hobby of turning criminals who have slipped through the cracks of justice into steaks, thinks it’s a pretty good idea and even gets in on the action himself, sidestepping judicial niceties and strangling a defense attorney who beat him in court.

It’s a credit to Michael C. Hall’s considerable skills as an actor and the smart, winking tone taken by the show that what could have been merely absurd seems appropriate and a good bit of dark fun. Hall was on form this season, as was John Lithgow – here in his most twisted role since he played the father in Harry and The Hendersons.

[SPOILER ALERT]

By now everybody knows what happened in Dexter’s season four finale, even those who might consider it a sign of the end times that a show featuring an irony-loving serial killer is so popular. Julie Benz, who had played so well the role of a hot June Cleaver to Michael C. Hall’s cleaver-wielding Ward, was murdered by the Trinity Killer, left in a bathtub filled with her own blood. It was just the right ending to the season – emotional, satisfying in terms of the season’s story arc, and a relief to Dexter fans who wanted to see more of Dexter chopping up bad guys and less of him in marriage counseling.

The folks behind Dexter are basking in some well-deserved praise for the season finale and the series will surely be a favorite at awards shows – get ready for some permutation of the headline, “Dexter slashes the competition at Emmys” – but they’ve also set for themselves the challenge of having to follow up on that episode in a way that does not disappoint and embitter loyal viewers. As a fan of the show, I offer my suggestions on possible story-lines for season 5 of Dexter here.  Should the show’s writers take any of these ideas on board, I ask only that one of the criminals carved up by Dexter in season five be named after me. Here are Dexter Season 5 Storyline Suggestions!

Dexter as the Alligator Hunter

Dexter opens the Miami Herald the morning after Rita’s murder. The main story is, of course, a report on his wife’s grizzly death and how a serial killer is again at large just when you thought it was safe to return to your shady Miami doings. Below the fold, however, is a small item about how an alligator found its way into a suburban backyard and made a quick lunch out of the family Cockapoo, “Mrs M”.  Back at Miami Metro, Dexter searches the police database and finds countless other stories of pets and children eaten by alligators. Driven by a desire to protect his family and seek vengeance against such attacks on domestic life, Dexter sets off on a one-man mission to rid the state of the alligator scourge.

Dexter as Eco-Warrior

Dexter is one of the least eco-conscious characters on television. He drives an SUV, often alone, all over Florida, and dumps an unconscionable amount of plastic into the ocean every time he kills someone – both the bags he uses for body part disposal, and the sheets of plastic he uses to catch the spray of gore while he’s carving someone up. Coming to terms with his guilt over his wife’s death, Dexter starts looking at other areas of his life in which he could improve, and realizes what callous disregard he has been showing for the environment. Dexter sells his SUV, starts taking the bus, and joins a Florida everglades conservation society to learn the names of the state’s top polluters, who soon populated his to-be-killed list.

Dexter as Wall Street Avenger

Again, it’s the morning after Rita’s murder and Dexter is reading the Miami Herald except below the fold this time is a story on the economic bailout and how taxpayers’ money is going to help the corrupt, greedy Wall Street bankers who caused the financial crisis in the first place. After calling an economics professor he had in college to make sure he understands the situation correctly, Dexter becomes enraged. While his murders of serial killers and child fornicators improve the lives of people in those immediate circles, he realizes far deeper satisfaction could be had by targeting upper-level corporate fraudsters.

It Was All a Dream

Dexter had fallen asleep on his boat after murdering the Trinity Killer and dreamed Rita’s end. He returns home to find Rita giving a sponge bath to Patrick Duffy, who plays the driving instructor who took her virginity at age 16. Rita tells a shocked and creeped out Dexter that she had invited the driving instructor over out of pity as he had recently been paralyzed in a car crash, and she offered to give him a bath only because the air-conditioning was broken. The awkwardness of this encounter is so intense that Dexter loses his blood-lust completely and develops an interest in rare, collectible soda pop cans.

Dexter realizes he’s basically Batman

Dexter is basically Batman minus that annoying rule that keeps the latter from strangling the Joker and putting an end to his decades-long string of ghastly homicides instead of relying on Arkham Asylum, with its terrible security, to keep him locked up. They were both warped by the murder of their parents at a young age, both have secret identities and both are arguments for vigilantism as the only guarantee that justice will be served. Since he’s having a tough time coming to terms with Rita’s death, Dexter’s sister Deborah pops over with The Dark Knight on DVD to help him keep his mind off it. Having never previously heard of Batman, Dexter is startled at the similarities  between the character’s life and his own. He realizes he is essentially a middle-class Batman who kills people. Dexter thanks Deborah for bringing over the DVD and it appears to have really cheered him up. He gets to work fashioning his own Batman suit until he realizes how completely this would blow his cover and sinks back into depression.

Vince Masuka becomes Dexter’s partner

With Rita gone, single dad Dexter is bound to be starved for adult conversation and he has next to no friends, having punched out the neighbor for trying to make a cornudo out of him. His partnering with Jimmy Smits didn’t work out so well in season three, but he would probably have better luck with Vince Masuka. While seeming less lecherous in this season than in previous ones, Masuka is nonetheless clearly a maladjusted individual; a porn addict largely incapable of relating to women other than on a crude and inappropriate level, and he shares Dexter’s ironic detachment when it comes to horrific crimes. With Masuka’s forensic knowledge and troubled character, he could make the ideal Robin to Dexter’s Batman.

Dexter goes to the nuthouse

Dexter is a pretty high functioning individual for someone who faced such a terrible trauma in early childhood. But being responsible for Rita’s demise is too much and when she rushes to his house after hearing about the crime, his sister Deborah finds him in the fetal position, talking to the neighbor’s garden hose as if it were a magical snake giving him advice on who is likely to win the World Cup. Saddened, but realizing what she needs to do, Deborah commits Dexter into a home for the mentally insane, where a cast of character actors like Gary Sinise could deliver performances in supporting roles that would guarantee them Emmy nominations. A prime time drama based in a mental hospital is long overdue.

Dexter gets lethal injection

Let us not forget, that Florida is one of the US states in which the death penalty is still in force and as one of the most prolific serial killers in US history, Dexter would get moved to the front of the line. Angel Batista questions Dexter on Rita’s death since as the single most commonly cited murder statistic on television makes clear, spouses are to blame in 98% of all murders of husbands and wives. Still not quite in his calm, calculating frame of mind, Dexter makes a flippant remark, “Let me get this straight, you’re trying to pin this one on me”. Batista doesn’t think much of this — he is obviously not a great cop as his working every day with a serial killer and not suspecting a thing makes clear — but he brings it up during a lull in conversation at dinner with his new wife, Lt. Laguarda, who sees it for the implied murder confession it is. The two build a case against Dexter over the course of the season until the Season 5 finale when the line between reality and fiction blurs as former Florida Governor Jeb Bush guest stars, playing the governor who refuses to grant a last-minute stay of execution. Should the show get the green light for a season six, this ending can also be made into a dream using the above Patrick Duffy scenario.

Queen Street transit user's interminable wait for that ride into the sunset

Offering all the convenience of an extortion plot, the Toronto transit system would be the envy of post-war Budapest.

With a pitiful two and a half subway lines servicing a city with a greater metropolitan area of 5 million plus and lumbering trolleys that roll at the pace of meals on wheels deliveries and skateboarders (or mobility scooters if their batteries have been recently charged), it’s no wonder the joke that circulated when we were kids still stands today:  that the Toronto Transit Commission, or TTC, actually stands for ‘Take the car’.

Recently, the TTC took a moral stand against placing an advertisement for the adulterous dating site Ashley Madison on one of its trolleys, ironic as it’s been routinely screwing us behind our backs and to our faces for years with often shoddy service, crumbling infrastructure and stupid make-work projects (see, the Museum subway station makeover, which looks like a sound stage for The Mummy Returns).

Between the both of us, we’ve visited upwards of 20 countries all over the globe and countless big cities throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including New York, Chicago, San Fran, Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, Munich, Prague, Milan, Bangkok, Tokyo and there is absolutely no question that Toronto is a laggard.

Anyway, in the spirit of that long-standing and very true acronym injunction, we thought we’d compile a few of our own—to what end, we’re not sure as our children’s children will be interred before this city sees another east-west line…but whatever….

Here then, are our Top 10 TTC Acronyms:

1. Take the Car

2. Terrible Time-consuming Commute

3. Travel Tardily Consistently

4. Tarnishing Toronto Canada

5. Taxing Travelers Commendably

6. Testing Temperament of Commuters

7. Tortured, Trammeled Commuting

8. Transit to Chide

9. Tiresome Throngs Constantly

10. Terrible Transit Conveyances

Honorable Mentions:

• Treacherous Travel Complaints

• Trolleys That are Caricatures

• Transit Tuning-out Complaints

• Trumpery Transport Company

• Typically Tedious Cruising

• Trekking Tortoise-like Continually

• Tool-around Torpidly, Cruelly

• Too High Token Costs

• Towering Toil Charges

• Toronto’s Transit Caper