#7 - I ran across the Ryugyong following links on the Sinai Hotels post earlier this week. Now that's a big, creepy, empty building. I can't decide whether it's creeper than Prora (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prora) but they have somewhat parallel backstories--both of which make this WDW thing look pretty small potatoes.

My favourite urban ruins site: http://detroityes.com/home.htm

#6 -
Monkey Doodle looks psychotic. Maybe it's the fact he has no arms. But it's particularly that look in his eyes. Sooooo.....what's on his talking tape to instruct the kiddies?

At least Mickey looks sort of like Mickey--Bugs looks nothing like Bugs at all. Any idea when the Disney copyright gestapo first started swinging into action?

Call me a space cadet--hadn't realized Bakka had moved back to Queen. I had stopped going there not long after the move up to Yonge, and then I was out of the country for four years.

Are they anything like the old Queen St. Bakka? When they moved up to Yonge, it seemed like half the store and a lot of the ambiance disappeared.

Allen's, one of my favourite Toronto pubs, has Guinness cake on the menu. I've had it and had assumed it got its name due to its rich colour and cream cheese icing "head." I'm not really a beer drinker (although I love it in various kinds of batter) so I assumed it would taste "beery." Guess I was wrong.

Damn good cake--some of the best. You know, maybe I should try Guinness. I've always loved the way it smells and pours.

#49 - Depends what you mean by "calligraphy". A lot of the scripts we now call "calligraphy" were once merely "handwriting"--and as such were plenty useful, especially in the pre-printing press era. If it weren't for them, we'd have diddly squat surviving from any author pre-Gutenberg. And I don't know that we would have ever gotten to Gutenberg without some system of writing.

Incidentally, the typefaces used by Gutenberg look an awful lot like calligraphy. go figure.

Some of the skills on the list are truly obsolete--primarily those that involve technology that is simply not used any more.

Others have evolved into artforms. Calligraphy is still taught and is practiced enough that you can buy the supplies at any Michael's, Hobby Lobby, or other such craft store. I also know plenty of artists who mix their own paint.

And others elicit a WTF? Driving a car? Driving an manual transmission? Anyone who's ever been to Europe and has laughed all the way to the bank because of the ability to rent a regular car instead of one of the few automatics set aside--at considerable premium--for us North Americans will know the usefulness of that.

And some are just wistful thinking - e.g. Windows Vista salesmen.

Actually, my first Web gateway was Lynx. Yep, text-based browsing. Gotta love it.

I was a Usenet junkie. I spent hours reading newsgroups over my old 2400 modem connection. I thought about it today and realized that it's probably been months since I checked any of my old Usenet haunts (now mostly Google groups). Most of them are struggling these days--not at all like the communities I remember in the early 90s. Of course, the communities aren't necessarily gone--just moved elsewhere.

You really could smell the smoke from downtown. I was crossing over into Union from the GO station this morning and could definitely smell it. They shut off the intake to our building all the way at Bay and Adelaide it was so bad.

The only upsides are that Suspect Video had two locations (so they're not likely to go under) and the folks that own Duke's have already vowed to return.

For folks who haven't been around TO in a few years, this stretch is still definitely "old school" Queen W, not like further up the street, where Steve's, Silver Snail, and Active Surplus are some of the few signs of the old days still left.

#6 - that was my first thought as well.

I heard about this years ago back when I was a Usenet junkie and read alt.folklore.urban.
I had always thought the *only* thing required for Turtle membership was the "you bet your sweet ass" line. Had no idea they had membership cards and initiation fees.

Alas, no one has ever asked me the question.

#7 - One of my favourite bits of ecclesiastical Visio is the flowchart for sex as per the medieval Church.

It starts off with "Feeling randy?" and then proceeds to step through a series of decision boxes about places and times one might have sex. (e.g. "Are you in church?" "Is it a feast day?" "Are you on top of holy relics?") If the answer to any is "yes", you are directed to a huge terminator box in the centre that says "Stop! Sin!"

Also...I had forgotten how long they made the IIc! My junior high's computer lab had one in 1981-82, I believe, and by 1988 I had gotten my Mac classic. Those things were warhorses in a lot of schools, though.

Oh god, the memories. My dad's company was the first Apple dealer in Columbus, OH and I seriously coveted having one for my very own. Never did get one, but I did get a Mac Classic a few years later.

I wish I had hung on to some of that early Apple swag (even then, it was hard to come by, but I had an original "rainbow apple" sticker on my bedroom mirror.).

#2 - Agree with you there.

"U2 is more than a spy plane"--I would imagine it would be so for anyone born after, oh, about 1982 or 83.

"Music has always been unplugged" - wha? The great era of "unplugged" was the early '90s. I haven't heard this term in ages--unless they're referring to iPods and the like (which are just the descendants of the Walkman)....

"Michael Moore has always been angry and funny." What was he before? Moral Majority member?? Even before Roger and Me (1989), he was essentially the same guy.

"Off the hook" - people do still leave their phones "off the hook" - even if there is often no longer a hook. Doubt if the class of 2011 would miss that one.

"The world wide web has always been an online tool since they were born." yeah, technically. I doubt any of them would recognize the WWW of the pre-Mosaic age. I remember reading it with a text based browser in 1993 and not being terribly impressed.

Holy crap, guys, that cheap Pizza Pizza they brought in for lunch at work is sitting in my stomach making it crave Massimo's and Cora's even more. Must find an excuse to get over there.

I grew up in Columbus, however, and I love the regional style. Donato's makes a decent version, but what's that damned pizza place on 5th ave? Rotolo's. That's it. Love that stuff.

And Adriatico's on campus. different style, but gooey and sloppy and wonderful, if I remember right.

But I would also kill for good Chicago-style pizza in Toronto once and awhile. Columbus now has it (up at Wholly Joe's) but I haven't even found a knockoff in TO since Uno's died.

#13 - Holoprosencephaly is probably behind cyclops kitty, but not sure about this one - does it ever produce three eyes rather than one? Not sure whether this is the same thang.

Main nitpick here: Most of the designs shown aren't needlepoint, they're freeform embroidery (often called "crewel" in the '70s, although technically crewel has to involve wool fibres).

Needlepoint is all half (tent) stitches and is a counted technique usually worked on canvas.

I'll go back to my anachronistic little stitching hole now.

Pretty sure they're using this stuff here in Toronto, too.

Detroit may not realize it (or be proud of it), but I suspect they're getting tourists just for its urban ruins. I've made a trip there myself primarily to see them, especially the dead skyscrapers and Brush Park. I first found out about them several years ago from Camilio Vergara's book on urban ruins, and have been fascinated ever since by the phenomenon. Detroit really is the capita if you're looking for that sort of thing.

The Michigan Central Station alone is fascinating, especially when you spot it from the Ambassador bridge, the daylight shining straight through hundreds of shattered windows.

Interestingly enough, here in Canada all of our Radio Shacks became "The Source by Circuit City" a year or two back...seems they had licensed the Radio Shack name in Canada and Radio Shack refused to renew it. They were supposedly going to open their own chain of stores.

The Source stores are still essentially Radio Shacks in look and feel. And still no actual Radio Shacks. Not that it seems that it would make much difference. I had kind of hoped they would give our two major chains (Best Buy and Future Shop, which is owned by Best Buy) some competition but it doesn't seem to be going that way.

#22 - I went straight from 2400 to 14.4. Now that was speed.

Netscape was my first real browser (I remember Lynx, pine, trn, all of those lovely text-based tools). I lost track of it around the time my husband convinced me to move over to PCs from Macs so he could play games. #19 has it exactly right.

Interesting to see that Cold War us vs. the enemy (Russkis) feel to the whole thing.

The costume section on the linked site is a hoot. All kinds of military outfits for boys. Girls could be a majorette, a bride, what appears to be a some sort of generic "historical lady", a nurse, a cowgirl, or what appears to be Princess Grace.

Although the stuffy purist in me balks at the term "cockney" (if the artist lived in Paternoster Row he was certainly no East Ender -- and the text is mostly in Anglo-Norman rather than English) this looks to be a fascinating glimpse at popular concepts of religion in the 14th century. Anyone who's ever seen any of the extant medieval mystery plays would likely be familiar with the presence of craftsmen and rich townsmen(who paid good money to be there) in the plays. Noah is very typically portrayed as a drunk, with his wife as a nag. We often assume that medieval people were stuffy about their religion. Quite the contrary, actually--a lively sense of humour is more typical. The Age of Faith was also an age of fart jokes.