• Two popcorn bowls,
• some mouldy cheese,
• a big ass car,
• a crappy book,
• a free vasectomy,
• and a nice introduction to Canada.

I wonder what his [White] House warming party will bring in.

The Ottawa Citizen has a story today about how teenagers do not wear boots, toques or mitts, even in -32 degree weather. Quoting a grade 10 student walking down the street in the Glebe, the story tells us that teens do not want to wear toques because of the potential to mess up the bed-head hair-do, and do not want to wear gloves or mitts because they cannot operate their iPod with them. And wearing boots, well, that’s just, like, not cool. Throw in a transit strike, and what you have is thousands of freezing teens shivering by the glow of their cellphone screen, trying to look cool (but not cold).

I probably did the same thing when I was a teen. Of course growing up in The Netherlands, it didn’t get much colder than -5.  And we didn’t have cellphones or iPods then to keep us warm, either. I had saved my paper route money for months and purchased a nifty new gadget called a “walkman“, which didn’t operate so well under 4 degrees. Or over 25.

Now I can’t even remember a time when I thought appearance is more important than survival.

As for you teens here it Ottawa, I hope that cellphone freezes to your ears.