Gas prices in Toronto are at $1.09 or more a litre today, reflecting all-time record oil prices of over US$108 per barrel. For all our driving readers, it might cheer you up to consider that it's still cheaper to fill up your car with gas than say, orange juice or Diet Pepsi. By the way, if you do decide to go with orange juice, remember that the pulp-free kind is less likely to gum up......

Monday morning, amidst a first-rate buffet of coffee, chocolate chip cookies, and fresh orange juice at the Four Seasons Hotel, a disheveled group of journalists and bankers gathered to hear the shortlist announced for the 14th annual Scotiabank Giller Prize. Only the second year that the final contenders were culled from an initial longlist of 15 books, this annum the task fell to the jury of staunch decipherers David Bergen, Camilla Gibb and Lorna......

Past Griffin Award recipient Christian Bök once stated, "The Griffin is the poetry award that can drastically change a poet’s life." Christian isn't exaggerating: the $100,000 prize, shared by two winners, is one of the largest poetry awards in the world. In a 2000 speech, Scott Griffin, founder of The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, explained, "the poetry prize had to be of sufficient size to make a statement that declared that poets......

Sharp-eared Ann overheard this one on a city bus: Mother, to whining child in lap: Now listen! I can't make orange juice flow out of my body, can I? You'll just have to wait until we get home!......

Restaurants: Xacutti, Brunch...

This is a bedbug. And while the monstrous little bloodsuckers may not be known to bear tiny little Toronto flags, they are apparently becoming increasingly common in this burgh. The spectre of bedbugs tends to evoke images of peeling wallpaper and unidentified carpet stains and seedy roadside motels called the Palace or the Shangri-La, and yet this association was the product of a relatively short period in the enduring human-insect inter-species scrimmage. Prior to the......