That Was Interesting.....

That's it I guess. 2008 is over....2009 looms ahead. I promised myself last year about this time that I was going to make 2008 my best year yet. I didn't really know what that meant, how I was going to do it, how I was going to measure it and if I would even recognize it if in fact I pulled it off. Well, I think I did it. I think I had the best year of my life this last year. It was a strange series of events that changed my job, changed my address, and changed my haircut. I got to make two trips across the Atlantic...once to visit and once to stay. I got to return to academia to meet a host of new people in this world who hail from all over the world. I got to meet long lost relatives who help to understand who I am and who 'we' are. I got to travel to places that not so long ago seemed logistically unimaginable to get to. Yes, if someone would have told me one year ago today that 2008 was going to end with me being enrolled in a masters program in a foreign country working on projects with people that are not just from different countries but different continents I would have laughed as I strolled back to my office to spend another few hours on email and yahoo finance while preparing to teach my evening spin class which, for arguments sake was most likely the most important event of that day.

So as we count down the last few hours of 2008 I toast to the year that was and to the year that soon will be...and who knows maybe this year can be better than the last.

You Move I Move

Several days ago I filled an afternoon with a thrilling compilation of Ted Talks. For those of you who may not know what those are prepare yourself to be amazed. TED can loosely be defined as an ideas showcase in which the worlds best and brightest present topics they are experts on. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, but the subjects covered far extend this original framework. From the intense to the obscure, the entertaining to educational I promise that an afternoon with TED will leave you more conscious about the world you live in....

I recently watched a TED talk with Steven Strogatz. Steven is a mathematician and biologist who researches ways in which mathematics and biology intersect. His TED topic of discussion was synchronization and how creatures seem to take pleasure in synchronization void of being told to do so. This means that in nature creatures tend to synchronize without intention and in doing so share some sort of collective peace and pleasure. I thought the topic was interesting and his talk was well done (as all TED talks are), but I didn't think much more about it after the fact. That was until today....

I have been battling a credit card/debit card cluster fuck of an ordeal that has left me penniless and hungry for the better part of a week now. In doing so I have found activities that are free to keep me engaged in society. Today's free activity was people watching on the main street in Lund. There is a pedestrian mall where people seem to stroll all day from one end to the other. The street is only a few blocks long but it always seems to have people wandering its length. I sat in the middle of the street for a bit on a small bench in front of a 7-11. I hadn't sat there for more than 5 minutes and Steven's talk about sync hit me like a two ton truck. People were moving in exactly the same fashion. Their movements were in symbios with one another. The pace of their steps and the movement of their feet were identical. Now, I know what you're thinking...so what...people are not too different from one another and therefore they walk similar, and the fact that they are walking similar is not a coincidence at all, in fact, it’s the way you would expect it to be so what’s the point.....

Here is what is interesting. The movements of the people were manufactured. They were unnatural ways of walking. The typical person when walking walks with their head in one of two positions (typically)....head facing forward, eyes basically straight ahead, or their head at a small downward angle viewing the ground in front of them. This leaves our weight distributed in a equal manner across our feet and creates a solid base. Watch people on an icy day in the winter....you will never see anyone walking with their eyes to the sky...it would be suicide to do so...walking with your eyes looking up at the sky shifts the weight of our bodies on to the heels of our feet rather than keeping our weight over the balls of our feet which is more stable and reactive (especially on ice). A less exaggerated version of how we walk on an icy day is how we walk everyday. These people on the main street weren't walking like we typically walk. They were walking as though they were snubbing their nose at society. They had their heads at a small upward tilt looking at the world around them. Their pace took on a slower movement and their gate moved more in a sashaying side to side manner rather than a forward one foot in front of the other movement. Ok, so what right...these were holiday shoppers out for a stroll.....right?

I decided that I wanted to split the street up into three parts. An entrance, the middle, and an exit. I had been sitting in the middle portion of the street where sync was definitely occurring. What was happening at the ends?....how were people entering this street and how were they exiting it? I changed locations....Now I sat at the far west end of the street. There is a disorganized park there with a host of criss-crossing paths that cut through it.....I was only there for a few minutes and could tell there was no pattern whatsoever to how people were coming onto the street. Most were coming at a brisk, all business, head down typical Swedish way of walking. It was unorganized chaos compared to the sync in the middle of the street as they funneled onto the thoroughfare. The initial parts of the street as they funneled on proved as an organizational strip. The actions of people in this space resembled jockeying for position in a car race in which the faster cars take a line through the slower cars and prepare to pass them. What was simply amazing about this is that just a few steps past this transition strip of cobblestone the people would slowly sync their pace to that of their neighbors. It mainly happened where those who were moving fast slowed down. In doing so they repositioned their heads and strolled....in perfect sync. Let's move to the other end of the street...the exit.

The exit to the street gives several choices. You can cross a main north/south street and enter a small city square or you can go left or right on that same main street. One option requires you to pause (and check for traffic), where the other two options allow you to simply turn and keep going. There was no real pattern to the way people moved when they exited the street. It was similar, yet more precautionary than the way they entered the street from the west. So, that being said, it was clear through my observations of the 'ends' of this street that the people were independent of one another. Meaning that they weren't all shoppers out for a lovely stroll...they were different people that expectedly would move with different intentions while they walked. What was simply amazing however, was that when they were in the middle portion of the street they moved like one another. In perfect sync. Now, how does this relate to happiness? Is it that as the people moved together they felt happiness, or is it that the ambiance of the street made them feel happy and therefore they moved together by showing 'happiness' in their movements? That's a question for another time I guess...at this rate I don't think my new debit card is showing up anytime soon so I should have plenty of time to fish for the answer.

Berlin's Boar Problem.....Boring

An appropriately timed article in the Wall Street Journal Europe caught my attention the day before I set out on my latest travel escapade. The article was titled 'In Berlin's Boar War, Some Side With The Hogs'. The article describes the 'battle' that city officials are having with the rowdy swashbuckling swine who have established residency within the city proper. City officials report that there are over 7,000 wild boars living within the cities parks and open spaces at present. The piggies most prevalent crime has been the ongoing destruction of gardens, uprooting of city shrubs and bushes, snorting around in cemetery plots, and a recurrent trampling of the training grounds of Berlin's beloved Herta BSC professional football team. In addition to the growing list of victimless crimes, the boars have been responsible for more serious acts including the death of several residents pets, as well as the death of an 'urban hunter' who, after shooting the boar (apparently not where he was aiming), was gored to death by the angry pigs razor sharp upwardly curving tusks. At 113 kilos the adult hogs are nothing to mess around with.....which is exactly why I planned to seek them out to do just that during my time in Berlin.....

The Berlin city plan contains countless parks that pepper the landscape. The city has everything from small inner city platz to massive expanses of vegetation like the centrally located Tiergarten. I covered endless miles of the city by foot walking to and fro the endless villages of the city. Setting out shortly after sunrise and coming home well after sunset each day. Granted I was in exploration mode and wasn't solely searching for swine but, I did train my eye to habitually scour the shrubs and gardens of the cities parks as I strolled along. To no avail did my efforts yield.....the closest I came to an encounter with the beastly animal was the ham on a sandwich I had for lunch the day after I got to town.

Twas the night before Christmas.....

Dear Santa,

You've always been really good to me, so much so that I think you should take the year off. Don't worry about bringing me anything. I'm pretty happy with what I've got. However, if you want to fly in for some digestives and a glass of milk that would be fine. We could rap about the north and complain about the cold together. Oh, and I don't really have any milk so if you do come could you bring a litre with you?

Happy holidays,

JP

Back from Berlin!

Berlin is a wonderful city. Massive, by European standards, in both size and inhabitants. The German capital is alive with vigor and culture and openly will warm itself to those who dare to dig into the many sides of the metropolis.

Despite being awake for roughly 24 hours before I touched down in the capital city I felt immediately upon my arrival, that Berlin was a place I was going to like and sleep (or lack there of) was not to be of concern. I can't do the city justice by simply summarizing it in a single blog entry, so I'll break it out into sections...pieces, that like the city itself, are all connected yet somehow not....I'll post them as I write them with pictures to boot....it won't be all in one entry, but keep checking in and you'll see more as it's added. After all, I'm stuck back in Sweden with no means of monetary exchange nor heat (at the moment)....so I guess the best I can do is write to keep hunger and pneumonia from setting in more so than it has.

Holocaust Memorial:
2,711 gray concrete blocks sit in silence forming a profile from afar that is wavy like a contorted topo map. As you walk into the middle of the assemblage you suddenly realize the stones are now taller than you are. They appear waist high from the perimeter, but from the interior they become giants much taller than a man. We found a rose on the street the morning we went to see the exhibit. There were some delays getting into the exhibition hall that resides below the monument, so we decided to play around a bit with our find. The humidity droplets from the morning mist were hanging on everything in sight. We used the stem of the flower we found to try our hand at some ultra temporary street art. The gray background, gray stones, and red rose somehow produced a reflection of the mood that was rather appropriate. When the exhibition finally opened we made our way down the stairs into the main hall. The exhibit itself winds through several rooms filled with photos. The introductory room had two pictures on its wall that I don't think I'll ever forget. It was a two part photo....the first photo was a group of women undressing in a ravine under soldier watch. Some of them were naked and some were in the process of becoming so. Their clothes lied in piles under their feet as they were being ushered up a small hill. The second photo was the same women's naked bodies piled on top of one another lying dead at the base of the small hill after having been executed from behind. They were mostly face down, but several were turned right side up as they must have rolled down the hill after being shot instead of just simply sliding face down. There was one lone woman who wasn't dead in the ravine. She had her arm reached out grasping in agony for help at some invisible hope that was in front of her. Her back was black with blood from the several holes that were now in her. To her rear was a German soldier raising his rifle at point blank range to finish the job by putting a lone round in the back of her head. The expression on the soldiers face was void and dutiful. I can't comprehend how someone could possibly commit such an act.

With accounts of nearly 6 million Jews being exterminated during the time period memorialized you lose focus that this was an incredibly personal experience for all of those victimized. That sounds stupid and trite to say such a thing, but when I would read or hear stories about 'victims of the holocaust' my mind immediately lumped those so called victims into a singular group that was homogenous. It somehow softened what that really meant....6 million piled up bodies....it's not something that is easily comprehended and therefore impossible to digest. The memorial brings a personal element to the tragedy and makes you realize that there are 6 million awful stories of perish like the one described in the two photos described above. I wonder if we'll ever stop hating each other enough to make 'this time' truly the last.

Berlin Wall (east side gallery):
I grew up in a household where my parents watched the nightly news. We didn't do the whole Leave It To Beaver, Pa in a sport coat at the dinner table talking about our day while Ma served up a 4 course affair in a nicely pressed cooking apron complete with lace trim....no, we were more a burrito in front of the television type of bunch....for that I thank them. I remember watching the day the wall came down. I had no idea what 'the wall' was at the time or why it was significant. I would have been about 8 years old so it may not have been that I even knew where Germany was, yet there was something significant about it. So much in fact, that I remember a video clip of that day. The video was a man (probably about my age now) standing with black boots on the top rung of the wall. Leather coat on his shoulders with a t-shirt underneath and tight fitting denim jeans that were stonewashed (the style at the time). He had a wooden handled pick ax in his hands and was swinging it wildly trying to crack pieces of the wall off for the on lookers on both sides. As someone who use to understand the business end of such a device I know you can't simply smash it into solid concrete for very long before your hands and body are in pain if not broken. Yet he kept going...swinging wildly. It was raw emotion in its purest form.

20 years later a 1.5km stretch of the wall is all that remains. It lies in the southeast corner of the city marking the eastern edge of the regentrified Kreuzberg neighborhood. As I walked along the wall I saw endless murals on its surface. Most proclaiming peace as the central message. Some murals condoned the actions of the eastern block leaders of the past, but most were hopeful. "Give me a wall so I can escape" an anonymous quote etched into the eastern side of the wall.

Fernsehturm (television tower):

This landmark dominates the skyline at the center of the city. It's visible from most places in the outlying city which makes it a handy landmark to navigate by. Below are some pics of it in its glory...the pics capture a few other of Berlin's famous landmarks....do you know which one Karl Marx is?

Murals (street art):

Street art is a constant theme in Berlin. I call it art as opposed to just tagging or rattle caning because it mostly had meaning and wasn't just someone throwing their initials on something. Most the time if you looked close enough there was a message. Below are some large scale murals. I think they're quite well done for being such a massive scale.

The Day The Earth Moved

Today was an interesting morning....woke up around 6:20 to the feeling of my bed shaking. Normally I would blame some late night burrito or a sour bout with a kebab for such an incident but this felt oddly different. I sat straight up in bed and immediately fell back over landing on my pillow. Being the trained ninja I am I rose again and this time took note that my bed was in fact shaking! You can probably guess what it was....yes, an earthquake in Lund!

It's being reported that the Skane (southern Sweden) region had a 4.7 magnitude earthquake early this morning. The epicenter was north of the southern coastal city of Ystad and east of the city of Malmo. If these things could be a bit more timely I could avoid ever setting an alarm again. I thought a couple of t-shirt designs were in order to celebrate the event. I mean, if you can't laugh about destructive forces of nature what can you laugh about......?

Blue Cows and Black Magic

I've desperately wanted to travel to Latvia ever since I made my way to Estonia earlier this year. There is something about these Baltic states that lure me to them. I'm not sure if it's the drab emotions of the inhabitants, the slightly rough around the edges city centers, or the constant presence of the never too far Kremlin to the east. While not specific, it's certainly something that steers me in their direction. While staking the lay of the land from the confines of my consistently chilly Swedish abode I have discovered a 'lore of the land' that shall be a foci for my travels which embark tomorrow. Blue cows and black magic!

Pagan roots to blame? Perhaps for the magic, however, the cows come natural. My travel partner for the trip informed me of such a species earlier today. The blue cow as it's cleverly titled, is said to dawn it's aqua skin color as a byproduct of the Baltic sea water it has drank for generations. Legend has it that the copious amounts of milk they produce and the blue blood that runs through their veins is a symbol of aristocracy among bovine. Or so the legend goes....

Black magic on the other hand is less elusive yet more exclusive to ye who dare. It's a recipe that goes back 300 years and has been produced in Latvia (and no where else) ever since. The syrupy liquor that's dark as ink and thick as custard is said to have medicinal powers that have cured such majesty as Catherine the Great. With a bit of luck (and on time flights) I shall settle into the lore sometime around this time at the right time tomorrow.....

A Simple Experiment

I would like to describe a thought experiment that has been rolling around in my head the last couple of weeks. It's a thought experiment that I've been trying out to see if it would change the perceptions I have of the world around me. It's oddly simple, but so far, most insightful.....let's play along shall we.

The object of the game is to come up with a universal model (picture) that can be applied to any situation in which there are differing opinions for the given situation. In order to create this model you have available only four pieces (3 dots and 1 circle). For each situation you must place one dot for you, and one dot a piece (for a total of two) to represent the extreme polar opposites of the situation. Everyone's views must be accurately represented. These dots must be placed in relation to the circle so that a clear picture of where everyone stands is represented. Here is a simple example....

Meat eating: I eat meat....I eat far less of it than I use to and maybe only eat it three times a week since I moved to Sweden. The extreme sides of this case would be those who eat meat all day long at every minute, and those who have never eaten meat and will never eat meat. A model of this may look like the following...... The continual carnivore would be in the center of the circle, the dot representing me is above that and to the left....the person who has never eaten meat is outside the circle (outlier).

Now, we have a problem with the above picture. Remember, the goal was to create a universal model applicable to every situation that reflects everyone’s position on the issue. The above picture would not reflect the perception of someone who is a vegetarian. They would not see themselves as outliers in the society (circle)…that person’s picture would have one dot in the middle and two dots outside the boundaries of the circle. So, what shall we do now……well, let’s redraw the circle….let’s stop thinking of the circle as a circle at all…..after all, a circle is a single line that is connected at it’s ends in which (despite my poor freehand drawing skills) every point is equal distance from a central foci…if we were to cut the circle at one point and lay it flat we now have a line to work from as our base. So, the second attempt at the model may look like the following in which the two opposite ends of the issue are represented at the ends of the line and I am somewhere in between……
Ok, now this is starting to get better however, we still have a problem. I said that the only tools we had were a circle and three dots. So, while the circle is in fact a line, a line is not a circle….we must repair the circle to achieve the objectives of the experiment. By definition of a circle we will simply grab the two ends of the line and connect them. Now we’re left with something like this…..

I think we’re getting closer, but we’re still not there. In the above picture we’ve now happily married the vegetarian and the continual carnivore. We no longer can distinguish between the two parties and therefore…per the objectives of our game, not everyone’s view is being accurately represented….we must try again.......

Ok, let’s start with defining what is meant by ‘extreme polar opposites of the situation’. I am going to make a bold claim here that is the key to our puzzle. The claim is that no single person can accurately define what the absolute ‘extreme’ is. Understanding the ‘extreme’ is laying claim to the understanding of infinity….it’s not something that we as mortals can process. Here’s a great way to think about my above claim….think of the largest possible number you can think of…got that in mind, now, just add one to it and that’s a new ‘extreme’ in your world…..this cycle would go on infinitely and you would drive yourself to drink well before you came to the ‘extreme’ numerical answer. Same applies to society. If we think we know what the ‘most extreme’ behavior is in a society we can simply think of that behavior and ‘add one’.

With this in mind let’s take one more shot at our puzzle. Let’s start with a flat line again (a circle that has been cut at a single place). This time I have moved the dots off of the ‘extreme’ ends of the spectrum as we have proven that we don’t know what ‘extreme’ is……

Now, let’s connect the two ends and we’re left with something like this……

Ok, I think we’ve got it. Let’s test it to see if it truly is universal and a breakthrough in how we can think about life’s perceptions. Choose anyone of the single dots regardless of position. Think of your eating habits with regards to meat. Now, work your way around the circle to find the person that occupies the shortest distance from the dot you selected….you will move either clockwise of counterclockwise depending on which dot you selected….this is the person that is most like you (even if you are different). Now, go back to your dot and find the person that is furthest from you. This person is least like you (and your perceptions).

What can we deduce from this? Well there are a couple of take away points in my opinion:

1) No matter which dot (perception) we are we are never that far away from the other dots (perceptions) on the circle (society).

2) By working through the problem we ended with a picture where every dot (perception) is on the circle (society). Everyone is included in the macro society. Each view occupies equal importance and space. The first, horribly wrong, attempt we made at constructing this model left one dot outside and two dots inside (one as a central focus). This is the worst picture of all as it is completely centered on a single perception and voided the dot on the outside. No one’s perception is ‘wrong’…..if it is their perception, well, it is right to them and therefore not completely false to everyone (as they would be included in the group ‘everyone’).

3) It is always a shorter distance to visit all three dots in succession rather than to visit one dot, change direction and return to our dot, and then move on to the third dot. So, if we want to explore a topic it is most efficient to explore the other perspectives available on the topic rather than to explore one side, return to our base, and then explore the other.

Happy Birthday Grandma

Before I left for Sweden I began a project to better understand the history of my maternal side of our family. The work I wanted to conduct was a combination of family history and gastronomy. I wanted to combine food and culture in some format. I wasn't entirely sure what the outcome of the project would be, but I figured it was a low risk way to glean a little self understanding and was therefore worthy of a time commitment of some sort. Over the course of several days I had an intimate opportunity to interview my grandmother on the history of her life and related perceptions. My plan was to take the oral history I was to receive and morph it into written form at the same time weaving in some reflection into the stories. I wanted to do this while looking through a filtering lens of 'food', and specifically German food. Some of the writing I did I am happy with, some of it I am not....therefore the project never completely came to fruition and is yet one more 'pet project' that will remain on the ever expanding to-do list. That being said, the time I got to spend with my grandmother was the outcome of the project. What she shared was a reminder that the most important things in life aren't things at all....they're each other and specifically in this case, they're family. Despite failing to produce a physical work of my efforts the learning I gained from this experience has sat in the forefront of my mind and continues to impact me. So, in light of my grandmother's 87th birthday I have decided to post a snippet from what I compiled......

Wurst not, want not.

It seems to be a common trait among my generation to perennially take for granted the readily accessible meat options we have available at our local grocer. Not only do we have a host of critters from air, land, and sea for our ready consumption, but we have those options available in organic, farm raised, wild caught, all natural, or any combination of such. It wasn’t always as simple as a glass case and some butcher paper to gather your ‘kill’….no, at one point in our evolution people had to butcher their own animals, cut their own filets and stuff their own wurst.

My grandma explains the process as it once was. Typically you would slaughter both a pig and a cow at the same time. The men of the family would bleed out the animals so as to minimize the amount of spoilage that would result from some sort of blunt trauma (like a gun shot) to any other part of the animal. Not to mention that all the parts of the animal were to be used in the process and any waste that could be avoided was desired. Once the initial killing was finished the animal could be divided into its various parts. At this point it was all hands on deck. The animal would be split in two starting just below the underbelly where the ribs connected to the sternum and cutting all the way down to the asshole. The organs, intestines, and other innards were removed and given to the children to process. Next up was the removal of the head. The head was cut clean from where it attached to the neck. It was then sawed in two right down the middle the long way. The brain and tongue were removed and added to the pile of ‘top chops’ that were being compiled by the men who were busy at work cutting, chopping, and sawing the animal into its various parts. Sometimes the women of the family would sneak the brains into the kitchen and fry them up to give to the children who were hard at work scraping the small intestines clean for sausage stuffing. My grandma describes the cooked cranium as having the texture and properties of scrambled eggs. Light in color and the perfect consistency of clumped mush that perfectly replicates scrambled ova. It was just reward for the kids who were hard at work with their dull kitchen knifes scraping intestines (both the insides and outsides) clean on wooden boards, the smell of the swine’s partially digested last meal permeating the air as its waste removed. The casings would soon be loaded into the orifice of the family meat grinder where sausage links would be stuffed using a hand cranked, human powered KitchenAid. The last part of the process was to take the skin of the animal, once all meat and edible parts were removed, and slice it into 2-4 inch strips which were placed on a baking sheet and cooked to a crisp. The end product was a baked form of pork rinds known as ‘swara’.

The barbaric depiction above gives us insight to a concept we have pushed aside in developed times. The idea that waste is just that; waste and not a desired outcome for anything of use. I struggle to understand when this paradigm shifted and we felt empowered to trounce on the very resources that facilitate our highly elevated living standards that those of us in developed countries reap. Perhaps the butchers of the old world were true environmentalists that those of us who claim to be in modern times embody. I know for certain I’ve never understood the waste and recklessness that surrounds us in modern society. Does a field of trees have to be cleared for that mountain retreat so that one can be more ‘nestled’ among nature? Do we have to get our water from plastic bottles with life spans many times our own? Do we need to keep our homes hot in the winter and cold in the summer so as to numb the four seasons? The obvious answer to all of these questions is a resounding NO. Encouragement and awareness that the ‘feet and ears’ are ok to eat is the metaphorical thinking that will allow us to pass the torch to the next generation while maintaining eye contact, for we know that the lies of our environmental abuse have been unearthed and solved rather than buried under a mound of deceit. Our ancestors could then be proud.

Hey Detroit....I Just Annexed You To Canada ah?

The city of fire and flame (actually I don't know their city catch phrase, so I'm assuming here) seems to be making headlines more so than usual these days. It appears as though the auto industry of our fine country is soon to be road kill on a lonesome highway. Ironic don't you think that the country that invented the first automobile, thanks to Henry Ford, should have got out of the business of producing such products 40 years ago? Now I suppose that we could sit around and blame uncompetitive labor practices or unfair competition from abroad for the short comings of this blue collar enterprise but that would lead to some long winded debate that, to be quite frank, I just don't have the 'drive' for this evening. So, let me go on record to place the blame squarely where it's deserved....Detroit.

Some would say Detroit doesn't deserve to be blamed for this. Two such naysayers that would be included in that list of objectors would be Detroit's former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and GM's CEO Rick Wagoner. Unfortunately Kwame Kilpatrick is unable to comment on the matter as he is currently serving a 120-day sentence and facing a $1-million restitution fine after pleading guilty in September for lying under oath. Kwame, or 'the kam' as his buddies call him, also is responsible for some of the worst courtroom fashion atrocities since Dennis Rodman (ok, not from Detroit, but he played ball there for 8 years). The second dissident of my above claim would be GM's CEO Rick Wagoner who plans to spend ten hours in one of his companies lovely hybrid Chevy Malibu's driving to Capital Hill to beg for a lump sum of $12 billion to keep the company afloat. While it is an American past time to 'road trip' and explore our fine country at the helm of the wheel, the best time to do this typically isn't when the company you manage is about to implode and vaporize 100 years of operational history. I tried to reach him for comment on this matter but couldn't get through as he was having engine trouble somewhere outside of Toledo.

The solution here isn't an easy one......some people might even get a little teary eyed when the reality hits them that the city that gave us Rosa Parks, Ted Nugent, Robin Williams, and Eminem has now been annexed to our friends in Canada. Then again, others probably won't notice. Start the bulldozers Toronto...you might want to push this little gift into lake Erie.