I had breakfast at the Cafe Diplomatico this morning. Had the omelette with a side order of sausages, plus a coffee.

Total bill: $9.07.

I paid with a $20 bill. I told the waitress that I had seven cents, as that way, she could give me back $11 in change.

She gives me back seven dollars. I inquire as to why.

"Oh, I thought you said, 'give me back seven'," she said, sounding slightly flustered.

You were thinking I'd give you a four-dollar tip on a nine-dollar meal? I don't think so! :)

Alberta's Premier Ralph Klein is in the late twilight of his political career.

Throughout his 26 years in elected office, he was known for being, uh, "outspoken." :)

Here's a feature I did for CTV.ca on some of Klein's choicer remarks.

BTW, Klein is going to do some teaching at Calgary's Mount Royal College. Here's an excerpt from the Calgary Sun story:

John Gushue has a post in which he asks people about favourite scary movies and/or particular scenes (his post was triggered by this Retrocrush article on the 100 scariest movie scenes -- which is a very Amerocentric list, in my opinion). Here's my contribution:

While one can take the first 45 minutes of Twin Peaks prequel Fire Walk With Me and erase them, the final scene is the very essence of horror. It's been more than 14 years since I've seen it and I can still conjure it in my mind.

Actually, the final two episodes of the TV series are worth revisiting.

There's several from Japanese director Takashi Miike: Audition, the 'box' sequence in Three Extremes, One Missed Call and Imprint.

A couple from Europe: Haute Tension and Calvaire.

And two in the horror-comedy vein that played at TIFF this year are Severance and Sheitan.

Another TIFF horror movie that got good reviews is All The Boys Love Mandy Lane.

To that I could add Honogurai mizu no soko kara (From the Depths of Dark Water, remade by Hollywood as Dark Water) by Japanese director Hideo Nakata, who also did the original Japanese versions of The Ring and The Grudge.

A Tale of Two Sisters, by the Korean director Ji-Woon Kim is another fine film, as is The Eye, by Thailand's the Pang brothers.

While it's hard to classify, a horror-comedy that's well worth seeing is Battle Royale, by Kinji Fukasaku.

Americans continue to abandon printed newspapers, according to new data released Monday. On the bright side, that's just continuing a trend that's been going on for a few decades.

An AP story from the NYT:

Google moved yesterday to expand efforts to provide software that helps users create and post materials online by acquiring a start-up, JotSpot, which develops online collaboration tools.

Terms were not disclosed.

The collaboration tools, known as wikis and popularized by the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, let users create, modify and even delete information on items that others in a group have produced.

The chief executive of JotSpot, Joe Kraus, said the company would be able to grow by tapping into Google’s large user base and robust data centers.

In July, JotSpot released a new version of wikis that aims to make shared pages similar to spreadsheets, photo albums and other software that people already use.

A few posts of interest from David Akin's On The Hill blog:

He linked to an essay by the CBC's Iran Basen on the Harper government and the news media, posted to PressThink.

And he linked to an article on whether Wikipedia can ever make the grade as a credible source of reference information.

From the Beeb's The Editors blog:

We’ve been looking recently at a site called News Sniffer. Its stated aim is "to monitor corporate news organisations to uncover bias" and it does this by tracking changes to stories on this website and the others it monitors. It also looks for the "censoring" of comments to our Have Your Say pages.

On news stories, it automatically detects and shows where they have been amended or updated, then visually highlights the relevant lines or passages.

The Canadian Journalism Foundation will be hosting an event on Thursday, Dec. 7 on the media and the military.

The discussion will focus on the disconnect between reporting on the mission and the public's opinion of it.

Panelists include Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie, chief of staff for land forces for the Canadian armed forces; John Wright, pollster with Ipsos-Reid; and Lisa LaFlamme, national affairs correspondent for CTV News. She's spent some time in Afghanistan.

LaFlamme, a senior colleague at CTV News, recently received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Wilfred Laurier University.

Congrats, Lisa! (just checking to see if you're reading! :) )

While I'm only going by my vibe from the trailers, I gotta say it looks promising!

And while I wasn't a big fan of Daniel Craig as the new Bond (I still think Clive Owen would have been a better choice), I'm starting to think he's going to do all right in the role.

General Aminullah Amrkhel claims he was too good at his job of arresting smugglers at Kabul's airport, and that organized crime figures had him forced out of his job.