Where: Grace “I’d like to buy an apostrophe” O’Malley’s at 14 Duncan Street, two blocks west of University, one block north of King, near St Andrew subway. (Yes, Gracie’s sometimes smells bad. See above.)

In the interest of recycling, here’s how this all works.

I just added a tag cloud page. Now theoretically this will change over time but, let’s be honest, there’s not going to be a lot of churn in the coming years. There are some interesting trends there:

• Fuck, we go to the Duke of York a lot.
• Also the Bedford Academy and C’est What, although those have fallen out of favour recently.
• The pub crawl, Kris Kringle and GNWTL events are all relatively prominent.
• I count seven bars that have since closed; there may be more.

It was really just a couple of hours work – Tumblr is pretty easy to set up. The hardest part was figuring out how to use the Facebook “like” operation properly.

Let me know if I’ve missed any pictures!

• We can’t agree on how to spell some bar names. Pauper’s/Paupers and Ein-Stein/Einstein’s are just two of them.
• Similarly, we couldn’t agree how to link to these bars. Back in 2001, a lot of these places didn’t have dedicated websites and we linked to sites like toronto.com, which appears to have done at least one reorganization that broke old URLs.
• I really can’t talk, because I decided not to preserve the old URL structure.
• At some point, we started linking to Ben’s wiki as a central place to gather information for different bars and pub crawl rules and that sort of thing. Great idea, but that wiki is long gone. If I get energetic enough, I’ll add pages locally for different bars and event types.
• We’ve had over a hundred events! That’s more than I would have guessed, especially considering that we’re basically down to three a year now.

When I picked up the project again, I thought I’d try and use WordPress to manage the site. It’s blogging software, but has a fairly robust model that can be twisted into a non-blogging site. It’s all backed by a database. Each event is actually a blog entry, but I manage them separately and display them in a different format than real blog entries.

Technical details: the event entries are in their own category that is only picked up by the relevant pages. The WordPress install is using a modified Twenty Ten theme, which is why it might look familiar (it’s the default theme but I like it better than anything else I could find). I’ve turned off all commenting (I hope!). I’m not proud of some of the code that’s backing the site up – I’ve got the same post template defined in at least three different places – but I think it holds together okay.

I’ve used tags to identify different events (Kris Kringle, Getting Nailed) and the bars that we attend. I’ll be doing an analysis of these tags in the future – there’s some interesting trends that can be seen in the tag chart.

If you find anything out of place or missing, please let me know.

This app has a wide variety of features:

• will broadcast your religious preference so other users of the app will know how to respond to you. Be prepared for handshakes, hugs and holy wars.
• allows you to define your own religion. You don’t have to follow someone else’s stupid rules that don’t make any sense. Make up your own stupid rules that don’t make any sense!
• heretic detection: use your phone’s camera to detect sins happening in your vicinity. This version allows you to track adulterers, witches, bacon eaters and sheep fuckers. More sins coming soon!
• contains a dedicated web browser that removes all references to evolution, homosexuality and dancing from the Internet.
• available in English and French. The French version also forbids people from wearing funny hats in school.

In order for my app to have the greatest market penetration, I’m going to have different versions of it:

Catholic edition: the standard app, except it won’t be available in the public app store. Instead it’s available in a separate app store that is subsidized by taxpayers.

Jewish edition: we’ve removed the second half of the app. To make up for the loss, this version of the app has the ability to secretly control all of the media in your house.

Atheist edition: the app simply shows a blank screen. A blank screen as dark as your non-existent soul, you fucking heathen.

Come out to Sin and Redemption on Good Friday (April 22) from 4pm on to have a few drinks and celebrate the release of Religion 2.0!

-Steve

p.s. speaking of 2.0, check out version 2.0 of the drunks website at drunks.ca.

Thursday May 5, 7 pm.
Seanachai, 1106 Danforth Ave
stumbling distance east of Donlands

I’m in town and at your disposal for one night only, and that night is May 5. Come on out and hear the inside scoop on why I never come to town anymore. Render your approval of my girlfriend Sarah. Hit on her if you think I’m sufficiently far gone to not notice. Or me, if she is.

I apologize for sending this a month and a half early, but I’ve been gone for three years, and I’ve been informed that some of you have lives now. Who *are* you people?

Autumn

We have a reservation under my name.

For anyone who doesn’t know, here’s an old invite with a description.

Anyway, we’ll be returning to the scene of last year’s crime, Sin and Redemption, 136 McCaul St. It’s at McCaul and Dundas, right beside the Village Idiot.

Aim for 4pm or afterwards, although don’t be afraid to show up early.

If it’s closed for some reason, the Idiot is our backup bar.

-S

p.s. I just trimmed some names from the drunks list. If you don’t get this email and you wanted to, let me know.

When: This Friday, December 18, 2009 at 7pm.
Where: Toby’s, 411 College St, on the south side of College, on the first block east of Bathurst.
What: Here an old version of the Kris Kringle overview.

That is all.

>> But wait, where’s the chuckle-filler?

Sorry, I didn’t have time for that part. I was working on something that ends with: “…so Santa asks the elf, ‘What’s a snow job?’, to which the elf replies, ‘Fifty bucks, same as down south.’”

See you Friday.
Ben