An old year is gone and a Baby New Year has thrust it's inexperienced and naive little self upon us with its cheerful and upbeat disposition, soon to be struck down by the real world and whithered into a feeble old man by December's end.

New Year's is, of course, a time for change. Sometimes these changes are for the better, sometimes for the worse, sometimes they are permanent, and sometimes only temporary. Change is a good thing; it keeps some variety and spice in life. The only things in this world that should never change are your devotion to your loved ones, your thirst to improve yourself and the world around you, and the Ottawa Senators' consistent failure to succeed in the playoffs.

My first major change in this young 2003 is one I had been stubbornly resisting (or, more accurately, passively avoiding) for some time: I have been given a cell phone.

I can't honestly give you a good reason why I refused to get one before. Although it provides the convenience of being reachable by your friends at any moment, that intangible sense of privacy and seclusion is lost. No more lurking in the shadows; no more slipping off into the darkness of the night knowing that I cannot be reached. I bet Kaiser Soze never had a cell phone. If he did, then he wouldn't have been so effective. You can't be the mysterious shadowy figure in the corner that oversees all the darkest deals when a MIDI version of Carmen blares out of your jacket pocket every five minutes.

So, my dreams of being a criminal mastermind behind-the-scenes druglord have been shattered by my entry into the real world of mass communication. Now I need a new fantasy personality; I will now have to be the super-high-stakes jewel thief that can trigger explosives and hack security systems with his cell phone, crash fancy galas full of glamorous supermodels, avoid the authorities with wit and grace, and yet still maintain the by-day impression of a mild-mannered software engineer.

Yes, just me and my trusty cell phone. It will be like Penny's book on Inspector Gadget. I refuse to have a musical ringer, though. Those drive me batty.

I quote one of my high school friends: "Slush is without honour".

He also applied this statement to the Mercury Sable spoiler design team, but slush affects many more of us directly. It soaks through your shoes and socks, soaking your feet. It splashes everywhere, coating bystanders in cold, filthy mush. It's slick under tires and causes dangerous driving conditions. While snow is pretty, white, and soft, slush is ugly, brownish-grey, and... well... slushy - but in the bad pants-soaking way; not in the good strawberry-daiquiri sense. Truly, slush is a scourge of our existence. Something must be done.

As a way of attempting to ease our winter burdens and rid our streets of the terror known as slush, we are introducing the "Spudles' Cup of Noodles Slush Fund". Donations to the fund from you - the slush victim - will afford us the time to go out and act upon this menace. Your donations will sponsor research into the field of slush, and support the advancement of slush-reducing equipment and techniques. Your gracious generosity will allow our researchers to experiment with the latest slush-elminating technology - like the Jostling Agitating Churning and Unbinding to Zero and Zilch Impeding Slush Permanently Apparatus (JACUZZI SPA) - and to collaborate with other slush experts worldwide and examine the results of their efforts, like the dedicated individuals at Surfer's Paradise Beach, Australia, who's success has led to the total and complete annihilation of slush in that area.

So please, donate to the Spudles' Cup of Noodles Slush Fund, and help make our world a slush-free one, better for you and your children. Won't someone please think of the children? Give now, for a slush-free future awaits.

After an improbable, incredible, and certainly unwelcome sequence of Things Going Terribly Wrong, my machine is finally back up and running and serving cups of soup in digital packet form. Things Going Terribly Wrong caused several issues including an inoperable TV tuner, a Blue Screen Of Death at bootup, a fried monitor, bad sectors on very important floppy disks, and Murderous Technical Rage. I still need to get the monitor fixed, but aside from that, my machine is in better shape than before Things Went Terribly Wrong, so I may perhaps be able to breath, blink, and surf for porn again.

Ever since a friend of ours moved downtown with his girlfriend, we have decided that every Tuesday will be "Man Night", when just we guys get together to eat, drink, and be merry. Last night was the first successful Man Night, however, as it was the first Tuesday that wasn't a holiday and that a significant number of people could attend.

And, a good Man Night it was. After all, what Man Night would be complete without the filming of a beer commercial outside the pub, complete with lovely young ladies jumping around waving pom-poms?

Last night a group of us gathered to join a raucous crowd 15,000 strong at the Air Canada Centre to cheer on the city's professional lacrosse team, the Toronto Rock. What a wild game; fancy plays, flaring tempers, and a 17-13 victory over the smelly Buffalo Bandits. Only $20 for pretty good seats; it's great value for the money. Definitely must go again.

If ever there was a small-league success story, the Toronto Rock is it. A low-key struggling league playing an ancient but often ignored sport finally returns to its roots, and sets up shop with a team in Hamilton, then soon settling themselves in Toronto. In the four short years that followed, the Rock have acquired three world championships and an average attendance three times larger than most of the other teams, including three of the six largest attendance records in league history. Just to compare, on Thursday, the Rock defeated the Rebel in Ottawa in front of less than 4000 Ottawa fans, and then travelled home the next day to play in front of 15,223 of their own supporters

Toronto has officially welcomed lacrosse back into our city.