I don't want to come off sounding like an old fart, but when I was a kid the Eaton Centre's Santa Castle was truly something to behold. The only thing more impressive than Santa's five story tall home was the mile long line of kids waiting to sit on his knee. As you can see above, these days Santa seems to have fallen on hard times. Santa even lost his big chair and now has to make do with a crappy little white bench. Who can blame kids for ignoring him?

While on the subject of how much better Christmas was when I was young, let's take a look at the display windows outside of the Bay. I still remember when my grandmother would take my brother and I down to Simpsons (now the Bay) this time of year just to look at the cool animatronic Christmas dioramas out front. Some time ago, the store sadly decided to do away with this tradition. Well it appears that this year they are back! Well, sort of. Instead of Santa and Rudolph the displays now feature characters from the pseudo-Christian movie Narnia. Apparently this is actually the second year the Bay has been schilling for Narnia. Bah humbug.

Follow up:

While on the subject of shopping, here are some Nintendo Wii fans camped outside Best Buy on the eve of its release. This is the same spot that one day before saw a brand new PS3 smashed into a million pieces with a sledgehammer. These Wii "fanboys" were spared that cruel display as the SmashMyWii.com guys opted to camp outside a Future Shop instead.

A few weeks ago I made a new friend at Kingston's Grizzly Grill. Luckily this isn't the kind of grizzly that will eat you.

Could someone explain to me why the elevator in my building is registered as an "upholstered and stuffed article"? Ever since spotting this a few months ago I've been checking the certificates in other elevators around town and they have all been registered as "elevating devices". I know sofas and plush dolls don't need safety inspections, so perhaps this is some kind of scheme by my landlord to avoid paying for costly elevator maintenance.

Work on the ROM's new $250 million dollar wing is slowly coming along. It's gonna take a lot little metal ROM lapel pins before they ever get their money back.

Here's the last in todays series of unrelated photos. If you ride on any of Toronto's older subway cars you will learn what kind of effect millions of greasy heads can have over time.