Don't have tickets to the Janeane Garofalo show at the Commodore this weekend? Me neither.
I love Janeane Garofalo, but not enough to buy $50 tickets, my love is more like a standing in the rain for over an hour kinda love. Lucky for us cheapskates, there's a not-so-secret-anymore free show at the Media Club on Friday night at 7pm.

The catch? It's first come first serve, so there's the whole standing around in the rain bit, fingers crossed, hoping to get in. Plus, you have to be over 19 and bring a printed out copy of your myspace profile. Good thing I never got around to erasing mine when I jumped on that bookface bandwagon.

Image from Austin360

This is my first year cycling year round. Well, okay, not this week - my skinny city slicks are in no way equipped for ice-covered snow. And while I used to consider myself a "fair-weather cyclist", it actually wasn't that hard to make the switch to year round cycling. Once you're okay with dropping a fair bit of coin on rain gear, that is.

Whether you're a geared-out geek on the bike route or only ride your steed in the sunny summer months, this weekend's Bikes Inside is a welcome chance to get together with other cyclists and celebrate bike culture in the dead of winter. Two days of events including an art-show-bike-ride-party (fun, but not totally inside) starting at Science World and ending at Gallery Gachet on Friday night, and a party featuring performances, a fashion show, and tournament finalists (microcross and bike polo) on Saturday night. See you there, cyclista.

Buy Nothing Day rubs me the wrong way. Yeah yeah, consumerism is rampant and we in North America consume more than our fair share. I totally agree, but I don't see how buying my toilet paper on Thursday night instead of on Friday will change anything. By asking us to "participate by not participating" the folks at our favourite culturejamming magazine are ignoring the systemic forces of capitalism, neoliberalism, and multinationals and putting the onus on us as individuals. We just have to stop shopping (for one day) and that'll fix everything. Or at least we'll all learn something about our consumptive ways and live a little more simply afterwards. I'm all for the personal is political, but tackling the large issues of inequality and economic injustice has to be more than a symbolic one day fast from shopping.

It's the "perfect feel-good, liberal, middle-class activist non-happening" as the folks at Steal Something Day say so succinctly.

photo by streetpix from the BR flickr pool.

With the looming transit fare hike a little over a month away, I can't help but wonder where the public outcry is about TransLink's recently announced $386 million dollar surplus. You read that right - 386 million dollars. $17 million more this year than they predicted. And those bastards are still going ahead and raising fares. Maybe if they put more money into the system I wouldn't have had to wait for 40 minutes for a 135 that's supposed to come every 6 minutes. I ride my bike everywhere now, I can't even deal with TransLink anymore.

To add insult to injury, they're threatening to put in turnstiles at the skytrain stations, and get this, they're wondering where to find the money to do it. Bunch of jerks.

"Tasty" by Dilettante from the BR Flickr Pool (taken at last year's Oddball)

The weekend before Hallowe'en holds more promise than any other for finding fun things to do around the city. If you don't have any house parties lined up and don't want to head to the clubs, here are some free-ish, sort of public, not quite traditional Hallowe'en funtimes for you.

Friday Oct 26th
Hallowe'en Critical Mass: Just like all the other critical masses, but this time in costume. Meet at the VAG at 5pm, ride at 6pm. Veloween Party at the Anza afterwards (8pm and on) $5 with costume/$10 without.

Hallowe'en Skytrain Party: Just like commuting, except in costume, and with djs. Meet at the VCC-Clark Stn at 8:45. Only costs the price of a transfer. Secret party afterwards.

Fright Night: Just like the PNE, but with costumes and haunted houses and drunk teenagers. Every night till Hallowe'en, 6pm-11pm. $20-25, has it always been that expensive?

You're bummed. You thought your garbage and mounds of recycling might be collected by the end of the week. I know, I thought something might come out of Brian Foley's recommendations too - until I read them. I miss my library, and I'm getting tired of driving my garbage to friends houses who have private garbage collection and most of all, I miss my paycheque. As the city strike nears record proportions at 80 days, we're all beyond frustrated. CUPE 15 voted yes and are getting back to work today, so community centres are reopening, but CUPE 391 (my union) and 1004 voted no and are still on the lines.

Why? I'll tell you. Because contrary to what you've been told this isn't about 17.5% or 5 year terms. We're okay with that. We're happy with that. But this offer pits full time workers, who make up less than half of our workforce, against part time and auxiliary workers who always get shafted come negotiation time.