Could Tim Horton's save Canada?

No, this isn't another post up the Roll Up The Rim. My current feelings about that could be summed up in a few not so nice words, but I won't bother to spell them out for you.

What I'm interested in these days is Tim Horton's currency policy. I've noticed in the past few weeks that I'm no longer receiving pennies with my change. That means I could be losing up to 4 cents on each transaction, but I'm not terribly bothered.

You see, I'm a fan of this no-pennies policy. When I was living in Holland, it was the law. After a certain point, the 1- and 2-euro cent coins were no longer accepted anywhere, and change was rounded (up or down) to the nearest 5 cents. I didn't notice that first, probably because I was almost totally clueless about things and was already fixated on the fact that the coin denominations went 5-10-20-50, not the familiar 1-5-10-25.

But after I travelled to a few of the countries of the Eurozone and came home with useless (and rather tiny) 1s and 2s, I had the opportunity to reflect upon and appreciate this policy. Gone were the days of sorting through my change and throwing the pennies in a jar (at least until the year was up and I had to go home).

The different sized bills of the euro currency and grocery stores charging for bags (not law, but more or less universal) were other good ideas that could and should be adopted here (although I think Superstore already does the bag thing).

But that's enough Euro navel gazing. Let's go back to Tim Horton's. While shortchanging your customers, even by a few cents, is almost certainly illegal, the fact that is one of the nation's icons doing the shortchanging might lead to the acceptance of a penny-free world. And this would be a better place for everyone. I have my suspicions that it might only be the university location that is following this practise (apathetic university students, already burned out from waiting 10 minutes in line are unlikely to complain about a few measly cents), but it's a start.

I've been having ideas about a law mandating a drive-thru surcharge put towards environmental measures, and since Tim Horton's has a high number of pick-up driving drive-thru devotees, they could take leadership on that one too.

As an aside, since the Tim's location is always rounding in its own favour (unlike the Holland example), I am sure the employees enjoy a nice little profit at the end of the day. Assuming an average of 4 transactions a minute (that might even be a little conservative) over 8 hours, and an average of 2 extra cents per transaction, that is 4 * 60 * 8 * .02 = $38.40, which is a nice little bonus, even divided between 5 or 6 employees.

I also discovered that my impulse-buy threshold is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $2. A bargain bin at the bookstore had textbooks under $10 including a calculus text for $5 and a computer science test for $10, which were intriguing. But I could only justify picking up A Canadian Writer's Pocket Guide for $2. Besides reminding me that as a Canadian that I am a "traveller" (not "traveler") and that the noun form of "practise" is with an 's' (both used above), this handy guide has a good section on the rules of English grammar, most of which I have been employing most of my life, but of which I have been mostly blissfully unaware. Perhaps my French Immersion education is to blame, and resulting lack of instruction in English. Even though my French skills are rather rusty, I still have a much better theoretical grasp of that language than English. (Do you know what a "gerund" is?)

Another recent impulse buy was a used recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and Coq d'or for $1.95. I'll admit to being a russophile, but so far I had managed to restrict myself in literature to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and in music to Tchaikovsky. But this CD is pretty good, so I hope I can keep this whole Russia thing under control.

Scheherazade - Allegro Molto [11m39; mp3]

I'm headed to Grand Forks this weekend. Sadly, this will be the first time that I manage to escape this province since I returned this country, more than 19 months ago. But the States still have one dollar bills, so I don't know if I can have a good time.

Radioactivity

What kind of day has it been?

Let me put it this way: one of the most productive things I did once I got home from school was alphabetize my CD collection. My CD collection is small, so it didn't take long, but being so small I was surprised how many of my CDs would fall into the "haven't listened to this millennium" category.

Among these long forgotten discs were a good number of discs from my "electronica" phase which spanned my early CD-buying years, including releases from Leftfield, Orbital, Future Sound of London, no less than 4 CDs by The Prodigy, and 2 discs by British techno/hip-hop outfit Pop Will Eat Itself, one of which I borrowed from my friend Mark in grade 9 and never returned.

They're not all bad. I bought a few Daft Punk albums (Discovery and Homework) during this era that I still listen to from time to time, and there is a Chemical Brothers disc that I like. But most of them I'd unload for as little as $2 each. Would a used record store pay that much?

My least regretted purchase from this electronica phase would have to be Kraftwerk's The Mix. I've gone past the point of appreciating this group ironically and now simply enjoy the music for what it is: slow-pedalling, pre-techno, kraut-ish pop.I had initially assumed that The Mix was merely a greatest hits collection because all the big numbers are there: "Computerlove", "Autobahn", "Pocket Calculator", "The Robots", "Trans Europe Express". The liner notes were only helpful inasmuch as 12-pages of pictures and diagrams of robots can be helpful.

However, I recently snagged (well, I paid for it) a copy of the Radio-Activity LP and listening to the title track, realized that The Mix's version had been, well, mixed.

Enjoy 13 minutes of blips and bleeps and perform your own comparison:
Kraftwerk - Radio-Activity (original version) [6m41; mp3]
Kraftwerk - Radioactivity (The Mix) [6m53; mp3]

If you're like me (probably not) and you bothered to read this far (also unlikely) and listen to both tracks (get a life, already!) you'll agree that the original is far better. The Mix version (from 1991) is fine, don't get me wrong, but sounds very much like a band trying, 15 years after the fact, to sound like techno pioneers.

While the later version is almost dance-able (if you're so inclined), the groove of the original (1975) is more "Chariots of Fire". In fact, when the song switches into a C-major for a time, my head begins to fill with images of runners on a beach, and my ear superimposes that melody over the plodding synth.

What else is great about this song? There are so many things to name, a bulleted list is the only way to do it:

• The lyrics. They are so simple, it is like a student singing along to their science textbook. And very positive, too: "Radioactivity / It is in the air for you and me / Radioactivity / Discovered by Madame Curie". Did you hear that? In the air, for you and me. I much prefer these to the political, protest-oriented lyrics from The Mix, which rattle off the names of a few prominent nuclear disasters, and include the rather depressing lines: "Chain reaction and mutation, contaminated population /Stop radioactivity".
• The vocals. Not oversung or overproduced, but unprepossessing as can be, and with that essential, carefully pronounced English that can't quite shake the German accent.
• The fact that the song predates several musical trends by a few decades. Want bilingual lyrics? How about "Radio Aktivitaet / Fuer dich und mich in All entsteht". Suck on that, Arcade Fire!
• Self-referencing, name-dropping hip-hoppers like Snoop Dogg take note: these guys beat you to that punch as well. Sure, it's in Morse code (-.- .-. .- ..-. - .-- . .-. -.-) but it's there.
• Let's not forget that chorus/vox thing going on in the background. Effects like this are common with Kraftwerk, and provide a sense of grandeur which is completely unfit to accompany songs about robots ("The Robots"), computers ("Homecomputer"), methods of communication ("Antenna", "Transistor"), and modes of transportation ("Autobahn", "Trans Europe Express"). I think you could categorize any Kraftwerk song thematically within one of those four categories.
  

And, free of charge, and almost entirely because of its sweet name I give you, from the Radio-activity album:
Kraftwerk - Ohm Sweet Ohm [5m38; mp3]

On a less awesome note, I'm 0/16 in my pursuit of Roll Up The Rim booty. I calculated the odds of going so long without winning anything (again, slow day) taking Timmy's for their word that 1 in 9 cups are winners. 15% chance, which I guess isn't so unlikely, but the same thing happened last year and it's becoming a bit annoying.

And why not check out this myspace page featuring some genius friends of mine and their band. One of the tracks features a cameo appearance by yours truly on 'cello.

Gym rat

I've always been a bit down on the whole idea of "going to the gym". There are at least a few good reasons for this:

• Lots of people go for the sole purpose of making use of such machines as the treadmill and the stationary bike. The latter sounds like an oxymoron, and the former like some sort of pre-industrial energy source. I'm always amazed that people would hop in their cars and drive to the gym to run on the treadmill when they could get the same workout by going around the block a few days, saving time, money and the environment all at once.
• The use of the definite article. As in "I just got home from the gym". Although not quite as egregious a violation as when cottagers talk about "the lake" (Manitoba has 100,000) it still bothers me. Somehow I feel like conversation deserves a little more precision.

Unfortunately, knee rehab requires that I spend some time working that joint with such specialized machines as a leg press and yes, a stationary bike. So I went, not to the gym, but to the weight room at the Pan Am Pool. And it wasn't so bad.

But the problem of creating a good workout mix persists. I wrote about the idea of a running mix a while back, but this is a slightly different beast. The CBC Radio 3 podcast of last week, "Sweatin' to the Indies" (which sounds like a Caribbean vacation, if you ask me), attempted to provide an answer (playlist) but besides the tracks from Shout Out Out Out Out, MSTRKRFT and DFA1979, nothing on there seemed terribly likely to get the blood flowing.

The only song that did anything for me that came up on my faux-Pod (my antiquated minidisc player) during my workout this afternoon was "Alala" from CSS [mp3]. Any suggestions are welcome.

Oh yeah, this song from The Wet Secrets (umm...) is not bad either.