Ugh World Chronicles

Riding Transit STINKS!!!

2006-06-13T22:44:00.000-04:00

Now normally I will say that the worst part of public transit is the public part. If I could just have public transit that would pick me up at my door and take me straight to work and home without stopping to pick up other people, that would be pretty perfect. Plus, you know, I would really be doing my part for the environment and leaving my car at home.

There is, however, increasingly less to say in praise of the transit component of public transit. Ever since the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) debuted a bunch of brand new buses in my area I have been growing increasingly dissatisfied with the service provided by the TTC. These new buses are supposed to be handicapped accessible, and they are. In order to accomodate the dozen people in my entire borough that are confined to a wheelchair, the vast majority of citizens that ride transit are inconvenienced. Sorry, but this is mass transit. Majority rules.

In any case, I do have a specific complaint about the buses beyond the reduced capacity, inefficient design and uncomfortable seating/standing arrangement. My complaint is that these buses stink; literally.

They stink of fuel. They stink like diesel. Frequently. It is a nauseating, clinging stink like fresh tar and even after my many years of exposure to commercial inks and industrial solvents it even sickens me slightly. It can be any bus at any time. I know this because I took notes. What follows is an incomplete list. I started taking notes only after I had noticed the stink several times and I stopped for a while. Also, I didn't make notes when it was inconvenient to do so or when I didn't have a pen or my notebook, but I think this list still paints a pretty good picture of what I am up against.

October 17, 2005
#9 Bellamy Southbound • 2:00pm • Bus# 7439 • Fuel Stink

October 21, 2005
#16 Morningside Eastbound • 12:54am • Bus# 7496 • Heavy Fuel Stink

October 28, 2005
#86 Scarborough Westbound • 1:45pm • Bus# 7468 • Fuel/Exhaust Stink

January 10, 2006
#9 Bellamy Northbound • 7:30pm • Bus# 7711 • Fuel/Tar Stink

January 18, 2006
#9 Bellamy Southbound • 2:45pm • Bus# 7711 • Fuel Stink - Loud rattle from heater (same bus as January 10)

January 24, 2006
#116 Morningside Eastbound • 2:05pm • Bus# 7499 • Fuel Stink (+Loads of new graffiti and mysterious big white puddle on seat...)

January 30, 2006
#9 Bellamy Southbound • 2:00pm • Bus# 7728 • Strong Fuel Stink

February 07, 2006
#9 Bellamy Southbound • 2:00pm • Bus# 7768 • Fuel Stink

April 06, 2006
#86 Scarborough Eastbound • 1:40am • Bus# 7435 • Fuel Stink

May 24, 2006
#9 Bellamy Southbound • 2:00pm • Bus# 7772 • Fuel Stink

June 05, 2006
#116 Morningside Eastbound • 1:05am • Bus# 7421 • Fuel Stink

June 08, 2006
#86 Scarborough Eastbound • 12:50am • Bus# 7431 • Fuel Stink and Hot Plastic Smell Like a Melting Garbage Bag

June 12, 2006
#9 Bellamy Southbound • 2:00pm • Bus# 7522 • Fuel Stink

Far from a complete list, but I think you get the idea. Keep in mind these are brand new buses! When I spoke to the TTC Chair, Councillor Howard Moscoe about the reason for buying these awful vehicles, his only response was, "They are mandated by the provincial government." He missed my point - I wasn't asking why we needed accessible buses - just why we got stuck with these particular lemons from Orion bus manufacturers. I intend to make a little Flash animation explaining why these buses are so terrible but I never seem to be able to get around to it. They can't be changed now, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.

Hooray for Transit!

But Can I call Her Fans Paris-ites?

2006-06-13T20:08:00.000-04:00

Just look at the Paris Hilton phenomenon and the way every other teenager looks like a prostitute.
Tom Ford, Designer 1961-

A woman should be less concerned about Paris and more concerned about whether the dress she's about to buy relates to the way she lives.
Geoffrey Beene, Designer (Speaking of Paris, France) 1927-2004

I really wanted to hate the new Paris Hilton single, Stars Are Blind. Really. Really very badly. I wanted to be able to mock it and revile it as I do the woman herself. I wanted to laugh along with others as we marvelled at this scrap of piffle crafted solely to satisfy the immense ego of a spoiled young woman with far more money than talent or grace.

Yes, I wanted that very much.

The problem is, the song itself is not all that bad. It's a pop song featuring over-engineered vocals that amelodically warble some mediocre lyrics over a canned synth-reggae beat track. In short, it sounds a lot like much of the other disposable pop music that bounces about in the top ten for awhile until its balloon, well, pops. Paris can't actually sing as such, but it doesn't matter. The song has been designed to play to her strengths, so she performs a kind of a chanting whispery affair that is as banal as it is forgettable. Certainly it will be very, very successful.

In addition to the song itself is a music video with only slightly less soul and relevance than its musical component. It is described by the Paris camp (crew?) as an homage to the video for Chris Isaak's Wicked Game. I would be tempted to believe that if it were not or two things: Thing One: Paris Hilton takes credit for the artistic inspiration to film the video in black and white. Truly she is a visionary ahead of her time! If her time were 1982, that is. Thing Two: I am not certain that Paris knows what an homage is.

Anyway, in summation: Not terrible. Far from great. Somewhat unadjacent even to good. Just not bad enough to muster any depth of disgust.

Looking around the web I see that there are many, many people willing to tear down the song simply because they harbour so strong a dislike for Paris. I think that there is some intellectual dishonesty there. Just take it for what it is. It is junk pop and a lot of people will love it - there is a fanclub that has recruited member from around the world to bombard a Los Angeles radio station with requests in order to force the track to number one. These are people (well, girls mostly... maybe some gay guys - do gay guys like Paris? Cole Porter did - ha ha!) that can't even tune into the station, but they love Paris Hilton. Go figure.

It is funny that I just saw Nelly Furtado's newest track and I think that the two of them, sadly, are of a similarly weak and forgettable quality. I understand Furtado's single is a solid hit in Europe. And then there is Madonna.

That, pretty much, is why I listen to talk radio.

How Hip-Hop Makes You Stupid

2006-02-08T00:19:00.000-05:00

I don't even know where I was going with this one... I will need to re-read it and give it some though, but it has been sitting as a draft for a couple of months now. I want to tie it into a trend toward de-socialisation where we as a culture define our relationships more through the media which we consume and less through actual emotional and intellectual interaction. Rather than generating and communicating ideas, we are encouraged to consume and regurgitate...

Anyway, the following is still a work in progress:

I imagine that even those who have no interest whatsoever in the current popularity of the so-called “urban” music scene (which is paradoxical for finding its greatest popularity in the suburbs) are familiar with many of the names and faces involved with Rap and Hip-Hop. While they are ostensibly musicians, these personalities pop up in television and movies, on the covers of magazines and in every nook and cranny of current-events media. Many people, whether or not they have ever listened to or even heard the mad rhymin’ stylz of the likes of P. Diddy or Eminem have formed a negative impression of the entire trend. Some believe that Rap music, especially “Gangsta Rap” can be help directly responsible for most, if not all, of society’s ills.

Here in Canada we have a federal politician by the name of Dan McTeague suggesting that rap star 50 (pronounced “Fiddy”) Cent be barred from entering Canada from the United States to perform a few concerts.
“Ridiculous,” say Mr. Cent’s supporters, “Just because he has a criminal record and promotes drugs, violence and misogyny?” Well, in a word, yes. Many Yanks have been denied entry for less.

Here in my hometown, Toronto, Ontario, many local voices are suggesting that our so-called “Summer of the Gun” (too many shootings to count and forty-something deaths – including one killing at the funeral of a teen shot to death the week before) might be a result of the influence of Gangsta Rappers. I don’t think that there is any merit to re-hashing that chicken-or-the-egg debate. I don’t know whether rap music makes listeners become criminals any more than I know whether Ozzy Osbourne inspires lonely teen boys to commit suicide.

What I do know is that Rap makes you stupid.

Now, having said that, there are going to be a bunch of people saying, “But I listened to “Cop Killa” back in the day and now I manage a bank.” Sure. But you were probably smart to begin with. And maybe you got out before the damage was irreversible. It’s like those guys I keep meeting that think that marijuana should be legalised. Their arguments frequently involve a bit of name-dropping and they seem to feel that because a few rather clever folks managed to make some sort of a contribution to society despite being potheads that they should be allowed to smoke up all day. The difference there, though, is that those famous people did more than just smoke dope and talk about how stoned they were. They just went about the business of doing stuff. Robert Louis Stevenson was pretty looped on laudanum (opium mixed with water) most of the time and was able crank out a couple of decent books. If you tried it, you are more likely to find yourself sleeping in a bed soaked with your own urine.

See the problem is that anybody that smokes pot or mainlines Rap music through their headphones is successful not because of these behaviours but in spite of them.

Pot smoking mostly stunts your mental and emotional development. It makes you stupid. So does Rap music, but for different (yet related) reasons. Here, then, is:

How Rap Music Makes You Stupid

Have you ever watched a young man on a bus or in a mall bobbing his head to some inane beat that leaks out of his headphones (and I love those crazy over-sized DJ style ones… that is the kind of fashion that you look back on and ask, “What was I thinking?”) and wondered what kind of pleasure he could possibly derive from that seemingly pointless activity? Well, the answer is quite simple; he’s been brainwashed. Literally.

I will explain.

Humans have used rhythm and repetition as a spiritual tool in religious ceremony since before recorded history. Rap and other urban music styles are so intently focused on rhythm and repetition that even melody is sampled and reduced to a rhythmic element. The lyrics of a rap are secondary to the rhythm and clear communication is often sacrificed in order to keep the beat. This is evident in the frequent forced rhymes and awkward metre of many rap songs. Every aspect of the creation of rap music is forced to serve the beat. Indeed, the creative process most often starts from the beat and works up.

When ancient cultures used rhythm and repetition in ritual, it was intended to render participants receptive to religious instruction. In ceremonies designed to commune with a higher power, celebrants would use rhythm, chanting and dance to transition themselves into a trance-like state of heightened awareness. In such a state, the mind is open to receive communication either through mystic channels or, as in the example of hypnosis, through more corporeal means. A shaman, for instance.

When this ancient conduit of communication is opened by urban beats in the form of rap music, there is no epiphanic experience waiting to fill these hungry mental receptors. Rap music tends to provide a message of materialism and miogyny. Waves of self-aggrandising lyrics that promote the performer as a branded product and present an implied (or often simply stated) endorsement of a culture of drugs, violence absent of moral or social responsibility. One brutally irresponsible example that is, along with its creator, enjoying some not inconsiderable popularity of late is "Gold Digger" by Kanye West. In his chart-topping ditty, Mr. West describes a situation wherein after eighteen years of paying child support (money that is allegedly spent on the lavish lifestyle of the eponymic Gold Digger) a man finds out that he is not the father of the child. If this scenario is meant to paint the woman in an unflattering light, it has failed to make this song a cautionary tale and succeeded only in reinforcing, for me, the image of irresponsibilty that might be at the root of most of the deepest social problems in our culture today. My concern is illustrated nearly daily on the Maury Povich Show. With regular segments devoted to presenting the results of paternity tests (after delving into the sad, ignorant, pathetic little lives of the guests, naturally), the tragic human drama plays out on the television. Time and again the male (I won't say man...), upon finding out that he is not the father, will jump up, pumping his fist in the air or even running out into the seats for congratulatory high-fives from the male audience members. See, the problem here is that if they had never put themselves in the situation where they might have thought there was a possibility that they were the father, there would never have been any doubt. Our culture seem to be swinging so far away from basic moral responsibility. I am not a prude - sex is great and I encourage everybody to do it at least once - but if you feel that you need to have unprotected sex, you need to be willing to accept the consequences from genital warts to eighteen years of financial obligation (and that is the very least you can do). That sense of removal from responsibility tends to extend to a lack respect and consideration for society as a greater whole.

Whew.

I think I might be wandering away from the point here... but it still comes back to Rap.

Accidentally Hilarious?

2006-02-07T00:41:00.000-05:00

I hate to make light of what is the story of a tragic accident, but this is pretty funny right here.

Sadly, the headline relates to the story of a mother and child who were killed when their car slipped into a CANAL. Perhaps when the editors at the Toronto Sun compose their headlines they should have a newspaper box handy to see how it will play on the street.

I just hope that if their is an inquiry into the accident they don't announce, "CANAL PROBE," or the public might think that aliens were abducting folks around town...

Oh, I apologise for this one. The whole thing. Sorry.

Take a Lookie-Loo!

2005-12-11T19:07:00.000-05:00

Hooray! I made a new picture for my profile!

I sure haven't done much else with this blog lately... (oh, crap... I called it a blog... that means... that means... THEY'VE WON! Ooooooh, the humanity!
Oh, man. I had meant to use this space constructively. This week I am trying to get my Christmas cards printed. Hopefully I will have them done in time to deliver around Easter! Now THAT is optimism!

A Letter to Rex

2005-11-22T22:33:00.000-05:00

The following is the body of an email I sent to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation following an editorial featuring curmudgeonly journalist Rex Murphy. It was about 2:00 am and I thought I was being rather brilliant at the time.

Good evening, all...
I had the pleasure this evening of catching a repeat of Rex Murphy's "Point of View" on CBC Newsworld. I say pleasure, because just as I thought Mr. Murphy was about to turn recent shooting deaths in my hometown of Toronto into political fuel for the anti gun registry fires, he addressed my concerns himself. Rarely have I heard commentary that so deftly gelled my own vague perceptions into words. If the gun registry was a legislative effort concocted to communicate a feeling of proactive momentum to the voting public, it is only a single symptom in the overwhelmingly pervasive disease of people-pleasing policy that has permeated our government at every level.
Sadly, the socialist types that dominate the Toronto City Council have fallen for Thomas More's concept of Utopia. They tend to adopt a long term view of society that ignores the realities of the present. The cliché is the midnight basketball program - a suggestion that if the kids in troubled neighbourhoods simply had something more wholesome than crime with which to be involved then everything would work out for the best. Hugs and kisses and rainbows all around.
The simple fact is that we do need comprehensive social programs to address a multitude of elements contributing to the cultural collapse that has us all seeking a pinpoint of light or a hint of fresh air. Unfortunately, we should have addressed the problem thirty years ago. A gun registry is useless because it does not have an impact on fatherless children. It does not alleviate poverty. Registering legal guns does not help a child in my city make a positive choice for the future. It does nothing to keep a superficial culture of materialism, misogyny and drugs away from schoolchildren.
I am frustrated to see my elected policymakers prescribing a change in diet, more exercise and regular check-ups. The problem inherent with a politically correct approach is that it fails to deal with a cancer that is already spreading through our urban body.
We need prevention, yes, but we also need treatment. When a cancer patient undergoes chemotherapy there is necessarily a number of healthy cells that become damaged in the process. It seems that those whom we have selected to govern on our behalf are unwilling to accept the kind of "collateral damage" that must be incurred in flushing the disease from our city.
If we want a remedy, it's time we decided to swallow a rather bitter pill.

Thanks, Rex - you are my favourite Newfie apart from my wife.

Yours,
Joshua Hardaker

Caution: Contents May Be Hot

2005-10-21T22:18:00.000-04:00

The following is a cleaned-up lift of a posting that I made in response to a query about a somewhat tongue-in-cheek moblile phone ad which shows people distracted by their televisions on their phones. As terrible things happen to the animated characters, a legal line appears at the bottom of the screen to warn you against walking into open elevator shafts and so on.
The original posting was on the Southern Ontario/Western New York Radio and Television Forum.

Bear in mind that we do live in ( or directly North of) an egregiously litigious society. It was a question about the necessity of warning lines on all kinds of ads, including car ads that don't seem to have any dangerous driving but still say, "Professional Driver. Closed Course."

The professional driver/closed course one seems a little foolish when the car is just cruising the curves of some idyllic wooded highway, but the legal departments of all of these advertisers are keen to head off any conceivable lawsuit plausible or otherwise.

Those soft palate scalding fried apple pies at McDonalds used to warn, "Caution: filling may be hot." I should hope so. That's why they called it a "Hot Apple Pie." What it should have said was something like, "Caution: contents may be alarmingly and unexpectedly hot as they were just boiling in oil moments ago, moron."

Now coffee cups everywhere bear a cautionary, "Contents may be hot" because one dizzy old broad didn't have the wit to use a friggin' cup holder. McDonalds only lost that one on a technicality.

In another example (possibly apocryphal, but I can't be bothered to verify it), small sample packets of a powdered "lemon" diswasher detergent were distributed door-to-door in (as I recall) New York. In one neighbourhood, comprised largely of immigrants for whom written English was an unfamiliar or unknown language, a number of people became ill after mixing the contents of the brightly coloured package with water and drinking it. Funny, it doesn't taste like the picture...

You wanna believe that the manufacturer and the marketing/promotions firm would want to have a clear and specific warning against consuming their product to back them up when the inevitable lawsuits started raining down.

The "South Park" cartoon has a rather hilarious parody of a disclaimer at the beginning of the show which serves the purpose for which it is intended on a legal and a comic level. How many shows on TV and radio have a disclaimer that "The opinions expressed in the following program are those of the participants etc. etc."

I am not sure, but that Jarome Iginla/Markus Naslund Nike ad must have some proscription against whacking hockey pucks around downtown or jumping off of buildings.

External use only - do not ingest.
Plastic bags are not a toy.
Choking hazard.

I think my favourite, though, was from an animated commercial for Barbie dolls in which the v/o said, "Barbie does not walk and talk on her own." Was Mattel really concerned that a horde of parents might descend on the Wal*Marts of the world demanding that magical robotic Barbie with the Artificial Intelligence chip that their kid saw on TV.

I wish we could rely on common sense, but I am sad to conclude that it probably safer to err on the side of caution.

No Equivocation on Flip-flops!

2005-10-15T01:00:00.000-04:00

Slap-slap-slap-slap-slap… What’s that? Why, it’s the sound of a grown man ambling down the hallway of your office in his flip-flops. How did anybody come to the conclusion that the chintzy plastic shoes your sister wore when she was eight years old should be reborn as urban wear for any adult, least of all men? Tragically, I am inspired to write this after seeing a man walking up to my building from the subway wearing a suit with flip-flops. He was carrying a pair of proper shoes in one hand, and I just couldn’t wrap my head around his mindset. He seemed to have a vague understanding that the flip-flops were inappropriate as he had sensible footwear at the ready, but I really got the impression that if he could get away with wearing the flip-flops to meetings he would. Sadly, if he worked at my agency he could.
Allow me to proffer an advance apology to those inelegant souls who so obviously and passionately disagree with my opinion in this statement: Flip-flops must go!
Outlaw those vile almost-sandals! Restrict their use at the very least. If an illegal act may be decriminalised rather than made legal, I propose that flip-flops be semi-criminalised.
Certainly it would be an exercise in tax money well-spent to post by-law enforcement officers at the periphery of beaches and other areas devoted to overly-casual recreational dress. Those who attempt to leave such flip-flop containment zone still sporting the repulsive footwear will be sternly warned. Those who refuse to comply will be Tasered or, where municipal budgets cannot provide the Taser, simply clubbed about the head until compliance or unconsciousness results (if, dear reader, this seems a tad harsh, rest assured that the skull of the flip-flop wearer is the most impact resistant part of their body and the beating will have no appreciable long term effect).
Please know that my opinion is not some irrational, visceral, snap reaction to a disagreeable fashion trend. My revulsion has been building steadily through this long, warm season; my apathy eroding in inverse proportion to the degree of social acceptance of adults shuffling about in children’s footwear. ItÂ’s not about fashion. If it were, I would be equally perturbed over the popularity of those peculiar sneakers that look as though they are engineered for rock-climbing. It is unfortunate that men seem to have embraced that particular fashion this season but no more vexing than the millions of schmucks that shell out the bucks for basketball sneakers to tour the mall. That is their prerogative and does nothing to intrude on the lives of others.
No, it is not about fashion. It is about a greater cultural aesthetic that exists on a higher plane than the ebb and flow of the dictates of popular culture. This universal constant is the force that sees the blue-haired grannies tut-tutting the latest in youth clothing trends far in advance of the mass abandonment of those same unfortunate fashion choices by all but the most committed adherents. Skinny ties, platform shoes, leisure suits – soon to be joined by the graceless flip-flop in the vast and insatiable dustbin of history.
But not soon enough.
Flip-flops must be eradicated for a more germane reason than simple poor taste. It is just that feet are ugly. Offensive, really. Most of them. Despite what fetishists might have you believe, very few people have attractive feet and this applies especially to men. Those that do have probably already landed employment as catalogue foot models and aren’t displaying the goods for free on the subway. Or so it seems because the majority of those who have been flim-flammed into the flip-flop fashion faux pas have lumpy, gangly, scaly feet with crookedly disproportionate toes capped by crusty yellow toenails. They have been suckered into the trend just like a pudgy girl in the low-rise pants and a belly shirt; neither has the native sense of self-assessment to realize the absurdity of their appearance. Some might say that itÂ’s about body acceptance or self-confidence but it is just plain old-fashioned ignorance.
I don’t know how this or any trend gets started. There is a kind of a trend pyramid with the Innovator (or perhaps the Instigator) at the top, a range of influential Propegators in the middle and at the base of the pyramid a writhing host of Imitators to latch on to the trend of the moment. Sadly, the bottom of the pyramid is rarely able to really pull of even the interesting or attractive trends that the top of the heap so glamourised and by the time they even try, the Innovator has moved on to the next big thing. Perpetually shifting, I guess I just need to wait it out.
As for the flip-flops, I think I can look forward to the sweet cleansing cold of the relentless Canadian winter to put an end to that. At least until the Spring thaw…

I will stop procrastinating ... Starting tomorrow. Promise.

2005-10-01T14:23:00.000-04:00

It seems that it has been some time since I committed any of my inane thoughts to, umm... paper? Data? Whatever.
I don't have anything pressing to share at the moment except a comment that my wife made a couple of weeks ago. She told me that she hadn't really read my weblog posts (although she did print them out) and she actually had trouble reading them. I asked her if it was because I am long-winded and dull and she agreed adding, "You only need to write one entry anyway - all you really say is: Public transit sucks and I hate people."
I think that sums it up rather nicely.
Now I am off to mentally compose a lengthy list of complaints related to public transit and the ignorant clowns that use it.

NIMBY

2005-07-25T21:43:00.000-04:00

In light of the July 7th bombing in London, public transit authorities in New York City have initiated random bag searches of commuters using their subway system. Similar strategies have been considered or employed in other major cities in the United States, including Washington D.C. I am not an authority in a position to effectively evaluate the efficacy of these efforts, but I don’t really think that this kind of program could actually prevent a determined bomber from carrying out their plan. Even a bomb detonated at the baggage check point would be pretty dramatic. Whether or not these searches have an impact on the future of security, or at least perceived security, remains to be seen. I am more disturbed by the attitude of some of the citizens of New York interviewed at the scene of the random searches and also by the reactions of callers to radio phone-in shows here in my own city, Toronto.
Watching the responses of commuters passing through the police spot-checks, there were three basic points of view. The first, and to their credit I think most common, was an attitude of cooperation and understanding, This is to be expected in a city of twenty-odd million that still has the image of death from the sky burned into their collective consciousness. These folks believe that the any and all measures must be taken to ensure the safety of the subway riders.
The second group, slightly smaller than the first approaches the inconvenience of the random searches as a necessary intrusion into their lives in the interest of serving a greater good. They may express reluctance or dismay at having to open their briefcase or backpack to an inspecting policeman, but they are willing to go along with the scheme.
The third group represented in those U.S. broadcasts was the smallest in number, but the most disturbing in its message. They were the rabid civil libertarians. Those of a sort that bristle at the mere hint of some force in authority interfering in any way with their free and easy rose-coloured perambulations through life. If it was not quite outrage that they expressed at having to suffer the indignity of allowing the forces of the establishment rifle through the granola bars and trail mix in their hemp fanny packs, it was certainly a form of open contempt. It is this attitude that I heard echoed in the calls to my local talk radio station.
Now, let me take a second to say that I fall into the second group. I am not going to be very enthusiastic about having to open up my bag for inspection just to ride the lousy transit system. I don’t have to like it to understand the reasons behind it. It might not help the situation, but I don’t really see the harm in it. Now, whereas the first group seems a trifle too eager to cast aside their concern for their personal freedom, they do so out of some sense of patriotism or social responsibility, however misguided. The third group reacts to the inspections as though it is a direct attack on them personally and is a symptom of the ongoing attempts of The Establishment to erode their civil rights. No argument on Earth will convince them that any such action is not just another spoke in the great wheel that is the conspiracy to crush individualism.
Many, and probably most of the callers to the talk shows here in Toronto seem ready to accept the same kind of random checks as were performed in New York. If there is a qualifier, it is that they would be more accepting in the face of a direct threat to the city. This in a city where the Public Transit Commissioner stated that the, “terrorists would have to find us on a map first.” Oh, yes, no unfounded confidence there at all.
The callers that were more troubling were the ones that resist any such measures. They claimed that it would be unnecessary and that the police would use these searches as a fishing expedition to entrap people for anything and everything whether terrorist-related or not. This kind of speciousness always attracts the argument, “If you don’t have anything to hide, you have nothing to fear,” which only serves to further agitate the agitpropists.
My concern is with this watchdog attitude to the perceived efforts to undermine the lifestyle enjoyed by North Americans generally and U.S. citizens in particular. If the same dogged persistence to minute changes had been applied to the steady shift toward permissiveness in our culture, we might not even have come to be in a position to challenge our own freedoms. The decadence and waste of the American way of life is certainly seen as a threat to other cultures around the world. We aren’t just exporting Coca-Cola and blue jeans. We are shipping promiscuity and irresponsibility along with every Britney Spears CD.
Freedom is something to be desired. I cannot imagine that there is any individual or culture that strives toward subservience. Not consciously, anyway. The problem with the flavour of freedom grown in the United States is that it is not seasoned with the salt of responsibility. A responsible population protects its freedom by balancing individual rights against the individual’s responsibility to society. When the American president Thomas Jefferson wasn’t sleeping with his slaves, he made a profound statement that, like many profound statements, has been used many times and in many ways to justify all kinds of behaviour both good and bad. That statement was, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Vigilance does not mean simply looking outward for threats to freedom. It also requires an internalized vigilance that preserves societal values. Change is healthy and there is always room for debate, but as a community we must learn to recognize the value in preserving a foundation of solid values that ensure a consistent and reliably progressive future. Does that mean that we should disallow homosexuality and gay marriage? Should we restrict freedom of expression? Impose curfews? Not at all. Freedom is indispensable to foment cultural growth and development. Humans must feel that they are permitted to take risks in the name of art or science. Our internal vigilance simply requires that we are prepared to take ownership of our actions. We must stand in the face of scrutiny and say clearly, “Yes, that was me. I did that, and I did it because… ” As long as our actions are informed by our sense of obligation to the greater community we should have nothing to fear as long as the commitment to that obligation is mutual.
I don’t really think it is possible to build a society like that. At least, not until after the revolution. Or the civil war. Or World War III. The toothpaste that is the selfish individualistic society of North America has been squeezed out of the tube. Probably from the middle. It cannot easily be put back in.

(I was going to go on and on about crackin’ out the Jackboots and the Broken Window theory of law enforcement, but I got called away for something else and I lost my momentum. I should really write a draft before I start these things… oh, well.)

Will Work For ... Whatever.

2005-07-21T18:27:00.000-04:00

My failed effort to become a host at Scream Channel.

At various times over the last several years, I have used my rather limited artistic talents to try to impress potential employers into if not hiring me outright, at least taking a second look. I would be pleased even to be called in for an interview to be rejected in person. Actually, even a nice rejection letter would be nice.

Instead, my plaintiff compositions are lost to the mystery that is the Canadian Postal Service with nary a word of acknowledgement.
I have posted some of the drawings on my FlickR page. I just think that I could be an interesting and an interested addition to nearly any industry if I were given a little guidance. I think I have always managed to put in a reasonable effort at everything I have done. My biggest hurdle is maintaining interest in any single vocation because I get bored easily.
Here is a mostly complete list of jobs I have done over the years:

Paperboy (also flyers)
Cashier, Cafeteria
Short Order Cook
Night Manager, Restaurant/Bar
Cleaner, Department Store
Dishwasher (several employers)
Server, Catering
Painter (for a chemical manufacturer)
Packer, Warehouse
Shipper
Haybaler
Muralist
Illustrator
Portraitist (various media)
Volunteer Swimming Instructor
Doorman
EmCee
DJ (rather poorly)
Inventory Coordinator
Signmaker
Screenprinter
Print Operator
Pre-Press Technician
Mac Operator
Graphic Designer
Copywriter
Packer, Bindery
Feeder, Bindery
Quality Auditor, Bindery

My current title is “Premedia Specialist,” whatever that means.

I have probably missed some, but I think this list makes my point sufficiently.
I remember my eighth grade teacher used to start many of the stories he employed in explaining our lessons by saying things like, “When I was planting trees in British Columbia, we always yadda yadda yadda,” and, “Now this is like when I worked on a fishing boat and the captain would blah blah blah…” We kids picked up on this and started making up possible jobs that our teacher might have had. Most of them were along the lines of “This is like when I was a Ninja back in Japan,” or “Back when I was a professional wrestler I used to…” Well, it sure seemed funny when I was twelve. But now I am that guy. Except, not a teacher. Just with the boring anecdotes from my lousy employment history.
That is all.

Oh, Yeah!

2005-06-01T22:20:00.000-04:00

Just a quick note to make an observation of stunning social and moral impact: I notice in the most recent T.V. ad for Kool-Aid that the Kool-Aid Man is wearing pants. Well, shorts, really. Does that mean that the creepy pervert invaded the Saturday mornings of my youth naked? Busting through walls in the all-together to provide refreshment to unsuspecting kids in any number of situations of dire thirst. Come to think of it, Kool-Aid Man is giving the kiddies Kool-Aid and he himself is filled with Kool-Aid! *shudder*
I never noticed any discernible genitalia on the Kool-Aid Man before, but I am not qualified in the sexing of commercial beverage mascots, nor was I really looking.
Maybe it's just one of the mysteries of the ages like, "Why does Mickey Mouse wear pants, but Donald Duck just wear a shirt?" Mickey, shoes, Donald, bare feet. Porky Pig with a jacket, but Bugs and Daffy naked! Baffling!
Anyway, now that Kool-Aid Man has pants on, I suppose the dangers of corrupting young minds is passed except for the damage already done.
If you would like to read more than you could ever conceivably want to know about Kool-Aid Man, check out this page. Or don't. You are probably smarter not to.

A Little Off the Top

2005-04-27T22:33:00.000-04:00

In the politically correct climate of North America today, we are encouraged to avoid stereotypes of any kind. We are enthusiastically chastised when we say or do anything that might tread, however lightly, on the sensitive toes of our fellow man - er, human? Homo Sapiens? Or is that Queer Sapiens these days? I don't suppose it really matters when even animals have advocates that would afford them equal and possibly greater societal rights than the people who care for them and sometimes eat them. Witness a recent advertisement for a beer, Stella Artois, that was pulled for depicting a man trading his prize pig for a beer. The animal rights freaks were a little put off by the suggestion that the pig was made into the dinner special by the innkeeper. Extra! Extra! People eat pork! Wow.
See, political correctness blunts the senses, particularly that of humour. The unfortunate thing is that this shift toward total inclusion and sensitivity is rather inconvenient. Stereotypes just save so much time.
Gender stereotyping is a good one. Girls can't drive. Guys won't ask for directions. Women fall for the romantic comedies and real men don't cry at the movies. Before anybody starts butting me buts, I understand that there are obviously exceptions to every rule and there are probably very few really archetypical examples of either sex. There is probably even some guy out there who really appreciates light jazz played on the traditional Peruvian pan flute. One, maybe, but that constitutes an exception, not the rule. The broad strokes are easy and most people recognise the bigger picture without having to get into the nuanced detail.
Men are different from women. All the knee-jerk reactionary contrarian Hippie socialist arguments in the world can't change that. Besides the rather delicious physical dissimilarities, we each approach the elements of our daily lives differently. Men and women dress differently, we socialise differently and we definitely groom ourselves differently. On the subject of grooming, one specifically defining gender distinction is in the care and maintenance of our hair. Our culture places a great deal of importance on hair generally and on its upkeep in particular. I can not pretend to really understand the hair salon experience even from a male perspective. I can relate my own experience in the world of men's barbershops in an effort to foster a better understanding of what motivates manly conceits.
Women aim to get the hairstyle that they want. You know, the one in the magazine erupting from this model or sprouting from that celebrity. Men get the haircut they need. Not necessarily a good one, or even a pretty one. Utilitarian and sufficient to make it through to the next one. Many times, it is the same haircut the man has been getting since the end of highschool or college. Simple, right? Not really. That male haircut is a deceptively complex ritual with roots that spring from the most fundamental follicular essence of manliness. Allow me to illustrate my own experience at the barber to highlight my own admittedly incomplete understanding of the phenomenon.
The barbershop I have been using for the last six years has a pretty typical set up. It is a long, narrow space in a commercial plaza and is situated next to a used book store and a shoe repair shop. There is a Canadian flag out front and a red, white and blue barber pole that probably used to spin around at some time. Inside, there are three chairs and only two barbers. Eight or so old office chairs fill the waiting area where patrons read current newspapers and old magazines. The walls are decorated with large posters of outdated hairstyles as though someone might come in and say, "Hey, I think I'm in the market for a big lacquered pompadour like, ummmm… that guy!" while pointing at the appropriate photo. At the entrance are a half-dozen frames holding the autographed pictures of some minor celebrities who have been in for a trim.
When you arrive, the barber says something like, "Hey, Handsome! How you doin' today? You wanna cuppa coffee?" In my world, this is spoken with an Italian accent. Of course, that's because I only trust Italians to cut my hair. I used to have a Greek barber for a while named Peter. He had Playboy magazine in the waiting area, in case a woman wandered in by mistake, I suppose. I had to stop going there, though. One time on a hot summer day, he was cutting hair in his undershirt. Sitting so close to a paunchy, sweaty Greek man whose body hair had captured the remnants of previous haircuts sent me searching for new talent.
If you want the coffee, you have to get it yourself. You tip the spigot on the stainless steel coffee urn and fill yourself a nice styrofoam cup. The coffee is weak and only lukewarm and the styrofoam invariably attracts stray clippings of indeterminate origin. Try as you might, you will never get every one off of the cup. Even if I don't get a short, prickly remnant in my mouth, I can never avoid feeling as though I have.
When my turn comes, I go to the first available barber. I learned my lesson about playing favourites when I used to go to another barbershop before moving to the area where I now live. I used to go to a place with three barbers, but I always got my hair cut by Tony. I'm not even sure how it happened. I think he must have cut my hair by random chance a couple of times and I mentioned that I thought he did a nice job. In a while, I was just passed over by the other barbers because they thought of me as Tony's customer. I really only ever went there because it was beside the bank where I cashed my paycheques and since I got paid every two weeks, I got my hair cut every two weeks. All I ever wanted was a fast and convenient haircut. Tony turned out to be a drunk and started showing up at the bar where I worked. After cutting him off a couple of times and forcibly ejecting him from the premises, I couldn't go back to the shop where he worked. I had to move on.
Several barbershops later, I now find myself in the chair of either Rocky or Tony. Both know me and whomever I face in the mirror, he will ask about my wife and daughter, about my job and my (neverending) home renovations. Both know that I don't follow sports, but with the skill of professional barbers everywhere they will move on to weather and current events. This talent is one that barbers share with the better class of bartenders - the gift of inconsequential gab. The ability to speak about a range of subjects with any customer with the appearance of sustained interest and without raising any real controversy. During the course of this chit-chat, my hair is made magically shorter with an effortless grace that comes only with countless hours hovering over thousands of shaggy scalps.
At the end, the barber will finish up with the hot shaving cream out of the the stainless steel heater-dealie machine and a straight-razor. Ahh, the straight razor. I have never shaved myself with a straight razor, let alone another person, and I feel that any barber that still uses the straight razor is worth patronising. Bonus points if they have the heavy leather strop nearby. The razor finishes up the stubble at the base of the neck and a quick brush dusts some of the loose hair clippings from my face and head to settle, no doubt, on the stack of styrofoam coffee cups. The remainder will work their way into my shirt gradually throughout the day causing mild discomfort.
That's it. End of haircut. Total elapsed time: less than fifteen minutes. Well, longer if the waiting area is full when I arrive, but then I am rewarded with a faster cut. For all of that, I wind up with the same haircut I always do. The same, basic, utilitarian trim I have been getting for sixteen years. If Tony cuts my hair, he will occasionally say, "You shoulda getta the flat top. You havva the righta hair..." and I often agree and promise to think about it. I pay my thirteen-fifty (the price went up after the New Year) and say goodbye. I always leave with a, "See you in a couple of weeks," but I never get back in fewer than four.
Simple, fast, uncomplicated transaction. That is what appeals to men. I am totally loyal to my barber, but I don't emotionalise that committment. Faithful, but flexible - I arrive on my schedule and the relationship exists solely on my terms - I may never stray, but I reserve the right to consider my options. My barber never calls me to ask what I am thinking. I never have to go out with his friends. I have never had to spend Christmas at his parent's house. If my barber suspects I might have gone for a little trim on the side, he never mentions it and always welcomes me back with open arms.
Ladies, please don't try to send your man to a stylist. You are messing with his most perfect relationship.

Cheese with that Whine?

2005-04-23T02:33:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks - perhaps even a month - ago I read a story in the Metro commuter paper about a member of the Ontario Legislature (MPP; Member of Provincial Parliament) by the name of Lorenzo Berardinetti (Lib-Scarborough Southwest) who was all up in arms about an "eye-opening trip to the mall with his wife." It seems that the 40-ish (guessing - I imagine he is in his late thirties to early forties...) Berardinetti was stunned to learn that women pay more than men for such services as haircuts and drycleaning. Awesome. Groundbreaking.
He has even gone so far as to present a bill at Queen's Park to address the issue in law.
Now, I don't want to say anything untoward about "sort-of" lawyers because "sort-of" lawyers are often the most egregiously litigious, but, um, where have you been living all your life? When I first read the story I sort of chuckled and dismissed it, but now it looks like this doggy has legs and I am getting concerned.
Taking Mr. Berardinetti aside at Queen's Park, I might say, "Um, Dude ... that is the way of Things. It is the way It is, the way It has been and, God willing, the way IT shall always be."
My concerns are many. I am the first to admit that I look for the negative side of every situation, but I see nothing positive in this.
First, to the people of Scarborough Southwest (so near the Beach, but not quite...) I ask, "Do you really think that a man who is so out of touch with the fundamental workings of day-to-day life is adequately prepared to properly represent your interests in government?
Second, I wonder how it is that a man can come to graduate from University, work as a lawyer and enter politics with such an incomplete perspective of the world. I might understand if you had come from a humble working-class family and you didn't really have any exposure to drycleaning - but then, you would still have to have been aware of the difference between a barber shop and a salon!
Here's the thing. Traditionally, men's clothes have been easier to clean than women's. Usually a man gets a simpler haircut than a woman. Usually. If a guy wants something fancy he has to go to a stylist. Men have understood this since Fred chowed down on Brontosaurus burgers. Barber shops for guys, stylists for women. No problem.
Until now.
In the interest of fairness, we should pay the same for identical services. That is just common sense. What Berardinetti fails to grasp is that we don't get identical service.
I guess my fear is that rather than seeing women get a better deal on their fancy-schmancy services, I and every other man will just end up paying a lot more for our stuff.
Wealthy Barber indeed.
I was going to go on and on in this vein, but I think I will just end it here. It's a silly effort at legislation. Well-intentioned, perhaps, but foolish.
So foolish that I am sure we will see it pass. Ah, well.
Now I think I want to write about my barber shop experiences in my next entry.

Pope Idol

2005-04-21T22:13:00.000-04:00

I put together the image of John Ratzenberger as the Pope as a joke. It was really just a moment of inspiration when I heard the name of the new pope over and over. Certainly I had heard of Cardinal Ratzinger before, but the increase in media mentions sparked the parody.
Now, it seems, some actual news outlets were reporting that John Ratzenberger had been named Pope. Incredible! That is so absurdly surreal that I can barely believe it. First for the irresponsibility of those news outlets (although it is in part due to their urgent efforts to distribute information immediately) and second for the coincidence with my own little effort at humour.
A quick and disorganised perusal of various weblogs, forums and sites around the WWWeb reveals many folks that share this misunderstanding. There are even other people that have made composite photos. Although mine is the best that I have seen, if I do say so myself.
And I thought I was being dreadfully creative. Ah, well. As I wrote in a previous post, there is nothing new under the sun.

Is There a Doctrine in the House?

2005-04-21T01:15:00.000-04:00

Let me start by saying that Michael Coren got me thinking today. He is filling in for Jim Richards this week on CFRB Newstalk 1010 between 8:00 and 11:00 pm in addition to his normal stint between 6:50 and 8:00. Some of his show today was dedicated to issues of the Christian faith and specifically the Catholic Church in light of the recent appointment of Pope Benedict XVI. At one point a caller made a point of stating that he was an Atheist (now, should Atheist be capitalised?) and Coren asked him to explain how he had come to be an Atheist. The caller was not able to explain his decision beyond it being a matter of belief, but it made me realise that while I have described myself as an Atheist in a previous post, I am, technically, an Agnostic. I could go back and change the word in the previous post, but that would be revisionist history which would be at odds with the Truth and I can not abide that. Instead, I offer this correction.
I will describe myself as an Agnostic because I can not discount the possibility that there is a greater intelligence at work in the Universe. I choose, however, to believe that such an intelligence is so far beyond the scope of our human minds at this point in our evolution that we are incapable of fathoming the reason or intent of such a force. Thus far, our efforts to define this force seem little more than vain anthropomorphism of such Truths as our primitive souls have been lucky enough to comprehend. I also think that organised religion has largely stunted the intellectual momentum of the general public by spoon-feeding an accepted perception to the faithful rather than encouraging free thought and development. I am not Catholic, but I am pretty certain that there is very little room for creativity in the Catechism.
Is religious education a waste of time? Well, no. To further add to the confusion, I must also state that in order to disagree with any argument, a person must understand the counterpoint to their own assertion. Theologians are more accepting, or at least tolerant, of divergent faiths than zealous believers because they have given measured consideration to their own religion and found that it stood up to scrutiny. I don't think that many people can or will make that distinction and fewer still are willing to make the effort to understand their own faith, let alone the faiths of other people. Then again, many are called, but few are chosen (Did you recognise Matthew 22:14? The Bible is just chock-full-o'-truths).
I believe that statement. I believe it as I believe fervently in much of the fundamental Truth of the Bible and the essential Truth of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The call to be a seeker after the Truth is made to all of humanity. Few are willing to take up the challenge.
I might believe in a God, I just don't believe in worship. A God that demands that kind of appreciation is as flawed as any human. God needs no ego. He transcends that nonsense. In Freudian terms, God is pure id, but where a person has an id that is concerned with the primitive, instinctive, animal aspects of our nature, God is all about creation, life, energy and light. God can not help but express His id through the existence of all things. He is existence. Why create an entire Universe from nothing? Presumably God had been the Everything in the Nothing and had caused there to be a Something from that Nothing that is now our Everything. And so, from the school of thought that brought you the question, "If God is all powerful, could He create a rock that was so large that He Himself could not move it?" comes the question, "If God was the Everything, could He create a Something so vast out of an incomprehensible Nothing that it could also contain Him?" While the concept of the Creation myth is common to every developed culture on Earth and as such is part of my evidence for a Universal (hey, doesn't Catholic mean universal?) Truth, I prefer to believe in a continuum. A Universe without beginning and without end where energies play against each other in a never-ending ballet of the forces of physics. No Creation. Just a sprawling forever that may or may not include an unknowable Architect.
Naturally the question of the nature of God is not one that will be answered in a weblog. The mysteries of Heaven confounded society before the development of language and will follow humanity into whatever future we may devise. I will pick up this train of thought with the notion of salvation and whether the quest to be saved is in and of itself, salvation.
Until then, I remain a screeching monkey; trembling in fear at distant lightning.

Oh, I Hope God Has a Sense of Humour!

2005-04-19T22:58:00.000-04:00

Sacrilegious? Irreverent maybe. But funny.

Rome- Vatican officials have been embarrassed to find that they have named the wrong man to become the new Pope.  While the Cardinals who gathered to select the next leader of the world's Roman Catholic faithful meant to name Joe Ratzinger to the office, a clerical error resulted in John Ratzenberger's name being entered in the official announcement. Due to ancient and established church law, the name must stand as written and so the Church of Rome has sent emissaries to Hollywood to convince the Cheers star to accept this honour.  John Ratzenberger could not be reached for comment.

Choosing My Religion

2005-04-16T02:21:00.000-04:00

With the death of the Pope so much on the minds of people these days, I have been recently been reviewing my own opinion of religion. Specifically organised religion and systems of faith and belief. Not so much for myself, mind you. I am pretty much a lost cause in that respect. I am concerned more about my daughter and her exposure to the church.
Now, my daughter is only a year old. Her only faith at present involves her belief that crying in the night makes a bottle appear. A faith that is often tested and normally fulfilled. I know that when she is of a certain age (as yet undetermined) she will attend Sunday school. That Sunday school instruction will most likely be provided by the Salvation Army, as that is the church to which my wife's family belongs. Why would an atheist have his child instructed in the ways of the Christian church? Well, my friend, the answer is a very difficult one and one that can only be explained in a rather long and boring weblog entry.
And here it is.
For a start, Pope John Paul II was a great man. Truly a man who rose to a powerful position of privileged influence that might tempt the morality of any man, yet he dispatched his duties with a grace and dignity that serve as an example for all humanity. Those who would belittle him for failing to concede to the pressures of Catholic reformists on issues such as the ordaining of women or on birth control do not really understand the man. The Pope is not a politician. He is not a religious fanatic. He is the head of the largest formally organised religious institution in the world. An organisation that is by its very nature immune to the whims of public opinion. Faith can not be swayed by logic, friend. If you don't like it, take it down the street to Martin Luther's place. I think Henry VIII can give you a ride. So endeth the eulogy.
On to my personal beliefs, then.
I can't say that I received much in the way of formal religious training as a boy. I went to Sunday school with my friends, but my parents just dropped me off and picked me up when it was over. We never attended church as a family except to see someone married. I stopped attending Sunday school because my brother was traumatised by an Anglican minister that had him thinking that the Devil would reach up through the ground to claim him if he was bad. The notion of sin is not an easy one to communicate to a child. My parents probably thought that in the interest of forestalling future psychiatric expense, our religious instruction should end there. Can't argue with the reasoning, but that decision meant I had to do a lot of catching up later on in life.
When a person is left to explore religion on their own and absent of any formal instruction or direction, there is a vast and difficult terrain that must be negotiated in order to form any kind of conclusion. Free from the limitations of faith, a searcher will give the Baghavaghita equal shelf space with Zen koans, Buddhist meditations, The Book of Mormon or Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet'. There are certainly many adherents to each faith represented. How is it possible to choose a single religion when so many obviously intelligent people can and do make a case for their own? Well, except for the Scientologists. Those guys ... well ...
Kidding. Sort of.
My point is simply that all of these people have a firm belief in any number of faith systems. Some have inherited these beliefs and trust and believe their church leaders through tradition and ignorance. Others have made a careful study of their faith and have been inspired to apply themselves to a particular school of spiritual instruction. If any one of them is right, does it necessarily make the rest wrong? I don't believe so. Wars have been fought over such distinctions, but I think that no matter what the approach, the destination is essentially the same. Humanity has forever been a searcher after Truth.
Truth capitalised. To veer off on another tangent for a moment, I would like to look at the quality of truth (not capitialised, you see). Truth, justice, morality and judgment are always part of religious doctrine. The degrees of severity are variable; Krishna and Hinduism permit the notion of Karmic destiny to serve the role of Roman Catholicism's fiery furnace, for example. I think most people would agree that modern human civic law has been built on a foundation of religious teaching. There may be some cases cited where a judge's decision smacked of existential liberalism, but essentially the courts are concerned with the truth. A truth that is divulged through the presentation and interpretation of evidence. Unfortunately, case law - devised to protect the interests of society generally - sometimes gives the appearance of the courts being bound too closely to The Law and somewhat disengaged from the pursuit of truth, but in general the law exists to determine the truth of a case.
My defense of the vagaries of criminal and civil laws aside, what does this have to do with faith? Well aside from the miraculous conversion of many of those facing sentences or parole, it does interest me in one respect. When a jury hears a case, they are reminded (at least on television - my only other legal training comes from reading Twelve Angry Men) to convict only if convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt. No one faith has been able to do that for me yet.
Now I don't need a sea parted, or wine from water or a stone to reveal golden hieroglyphs. I just want someone to convince me that by following a certain doctrine I might be better able to protect my spiritual best interests. Hmm. That sounds kind of like a, "What's in it for me?" attitude. I don't really intend it that way, but on reflection, it strikes me that a good proportion of the really evangelical proselytising types had that kind of an approach when trying to sway me to their carefully partitioned branch of the belief tree. What really matters is the fundamental Truth (ah, the capital again) of it All (also capitalised).
It seems to me that I live by a simple rule that is the basis of so many faiths. That rule is expressed quite succinctly in Luke 6:31, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." See? Religious writings are an endless source of wisdom. I just think the worship aspect is a little bit overstated. I imagine that many Christians would place Witchcraft, or, more properly, the Wiccan faith at the far end of the religious spectrum from their own observances, and yet their beliefs have a similar sentiment in, "Do what thou wilt, but harm no one." This is generally accepted to include one's self, therefore precluding suicide and self mutilation, presumably.
This notion is often incorrectly confused with the Selemic statement, "Do what thou wilt shall be the extent of the law," as popularised by professional bogeyman Alistair Crowley. In these terms, it has no purpose but to satisfy those who would live to be vulgar, self-serving social parasites. Welcome to the MTV Generation.
An exaggeration, naturally.
So, back to the Truth. Having grown up in an ostensibly Christian culture, I have been surrounded by the mythology and practises of the faith throughout my life. I exchange gifts at Christmas and I attend church at Easter. I had a Noah's Ark colouring book as a kid and I still bow my head when someone else offers a prayer. Just the most superficial observances, really. The problem I have is that shadow of doubt. I have to consider the Gnostic gospels as unearthed at Qumran. And it seems that the Council at Nicaea made some rather arbitrary and self-serving decisions regarding the contents of the Bible, as did the editors who worked at the behest of King James (I or VI depending on your national outlook). Then, there are the scriptural literalists who look at even those portions of the Bible that seem to be obvious allegory as literal, historic fact. On the other hand, those who seek endlessly to determine the obscure esoteric message that Has Been Written between the lines. The Living Word proponents kind of freak me out a little too. Was Jesus divine, or just an important teacher? Certainly, He was baptised by John. I presume he was also taught by John. Did Jesus brother James really found the ministry on which all Christianity is based and did Saul, later Paul lift that faith and twist it to his own ends? The Jewish notion of the Pesher allowed the Gospels to record current events in a Biblical context, thereby ascribing allegorical narrative to emphasise important aspects of the teachings of the Christ (another peculiar misnomer courtesy of the Greeks). What of Martin Luther? A substantial body of religious doctrine hinges on the protest of a single man (to over-simplify the matter). Yet another branch of teaching springs from the roots of an English king's desire to divorce (yet another historical over-simplification). So many questions, so many conflicting answers. I am left to my own spiritual solutions (too often in solutions of spirits...) without subscribing to any existing dogma.
And that is me. Well, part of me. Part of the reasons for my own peculiar system of beliefs, but this entry wasn't about me specifically. It was about my daughter and her religious instruction. And it still is.
My daughter has an entire lifetime ahead of her. In my role as parent, I have a responsibility to provide her with as much ammunition as I am able to allow her to overcome life's obstacles to the best of her ability. If I have one article of faith is that one must understand one's opponents in order to best them. Without a solid foundation in Christian teaching, my daughter will be at a loss to comprehend many of the great works of Western literature. The symbolism of painters from the Renaissance through to the Pre-Raphaelites will remain impenetrable. The lyrics of hundreds - thousands of songs will be naught but words. In short, religious education allows you to better understand your community, your culture, your history and your future. A foundation in faith teachings makes better, more introspective and therefore altruistic citizens. Whether or not a person believes, that understanding is essential.
And that, friend, is the thought process that allows an Atheist to send his daughter to Sunday school.

I am a Passenger

2005-04-14T02:13:00.000-04:00

In the spirit of keeping these things short, I offer a couple of transit-related observations...

The Dictionary Guy
I rode in to work the other day and sat next to a guy who was reading the dictionary (should that be capitalised?). Now, that in and of itself is not terribly strange - Toronto is a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic city that draws immigrants from all corners of the globe for many of whom, the English language is a challenging obstacle. What made it strange was the fluorescent green 'Hi-Liter' pen he used to mark the book.
Picture, if you will, a twenty-something guy with blonde hair cut in a page-boy style sporting a short, neatly-trimmed beard and wire-rimmed glasses. Dressed in loose, casual clothes, he looks like he could be a university student on his way to class. Nothing out of the ordinary.
In his hands, he holds a small, pocket dictionary. It is open to a spread that begins with "Tam-O-Shanter" and he begins to slowly scan the page using his highlighter. After reading each definition, he carefully draws a single fluorescent green stroke through the lead word.
Word by word, entry by entry he works his way through the book. At his stop, he packs up and leaves and I am left to wonder why. What purpose does it serve? Does he memorise each entry as he reads it? Is it a kind of bookmark?
I will never know.

Culture Shock
I am forever convinced that there is no merit in stereotyping. It is easy for a great many - too many - people to form their perception of an entire nation based upon a foundation of popular stereotypes. My experience today is proof that this practice is fundamentally flawed. My example from today's experience is China. How can one form a preconceived notion about a country that on the one hand has produced some of the world's most graceful acrobats and on the other hand, was the birthplace of the man who sat across from me on the subway today?
Allow to paint another mental picture: Pudgy, puffy and slack-jawed, he wore sneakers, tight white pants, a grey golf shirt and a nylon windbreaker. To cap off this stunning ensemble, the forty-ish gentleman sported gold-framed aviator sunglasses (on the subway, remember) beneath his bowl-cut mop of hair.
For several stops he sat with his feet up on the seat in front of him - not just up with knees bent, but with legs splayed open. Not an attractive look for a man in tight white pants. When the train got a little more full, he was forced to put his feet on the floor (thankfully) and began a diligent excavation of first one nostril and then the next for about four stops. When his efforts yielded something of interest, he would examine it briefly before placing it in his mouth for further analysis.
This, I submit, might constitute the polar opposite of grace and dignity.
When a country, a race a culture can produce such divergent personalities, I think it follows that any kind of stereotype is impossible.
Until next time...

Back in the Saddle

2005-04-14T01:03:00.000-04:00

In an effort to ease myself back into the creation of these entries, I thought I should address some of my outstanding (in the sense that they are incomplete as opposed to exceptional) Blog® ideas. In the back of my sketchbook I keep a collection of little notes scribbled in the book, on scraps of notepaper, on receipts, news clippings and so on. I keep telling myself that I will use all of this material one day to write something. Weblogs for now, but perhaps if I find the right thread I will one day be able to stich these loose patches together into one cohesive quilt of insight that will comfort generations to come.
Or maybe just the weblogs.
Either way, what (I promise) will follow are several short (again, I promise) entries gleaned from my notes, starting with this one.
Starting now.
I am much bothered of late by a television commercial that has been running for the electronics & entertainment chain, 'Best Buy'. If you have seen it, the premise is that Best Buy has so enormous a selection that a person could be lost in the aisles for what seems to be an interminable amount of time. In this commercial, a man is wandering among racks of DVDs when he encounters a teenaged boy.
"Dad?" inquires the incredulous lad.
Seems the father has been gone so long that his boy has aged appreciably, almost to the point of unfamiliarity, but not quite. Any problems so far? Nope. Good ad. Strong premise. Fine performances all around. So where's the beef?
The boy continues, "You told Mom and I you were just going to get some movies."
And there you have it.
Have what?
My problem. It grates at my psyche. I wake up in a cold sweat over it. It has all but extinguished my appetite and diminished my will to live.
Well, I exaggerate, but my problem is this: "...Mom and I..."
It should be "...Mom and me..." In this instance, because the father is the subject and the actor in the sentence (You told...you were going...) the personal pronoun should be me. Not a big problem, right? In addition, spoken language is far more forgiving than written, particularly where familiar conversation is concerned, so it can be overlooked. In fact, if it were dialogue taken from a fictional work and lent sincerity to a character's 'voice' I would think nothing of it.
But it's not. It is a commercial. A short message crafted by an ad agency for the sole purpose of communicating a client's message to potential customers. A very special kind of writing. Because I work in advertising, I know that almost nothing happens by accident in commercials. There are so many fingers in the pie and everybody wants to contribute just so they can say they had a part so that no decisions are made easily. This script went through several stages and passed through many hands before it ever made it to TV and at every step, this little error got the green light.
Just to bug me.
I think it goes back to aggressive over-correction back in the early years. Kids are constantly told: "You mean Jimmy and I went to the mall..." and so on without a proper explanation. In this case it is easy because if you take out the mom, the sentence makes no sense. You would never say, "You told I you were just going to get some movies." I think people are scared to use the personal pronoun 'me' simply because of this well-intentioned childhood trauma.
So now that I got that off my chest, it's time to move on to the next entry. For those of you who haven't already done so, you may go back to sleep.

Technology Hates Me.

2005-04-01T02:26:00.000-05:00

So after an unexpectedly long hiatus, I finally sat down to write another entry. These things are just stream of consciousness, so I don't really know what I'm writing until I'm done (Except for the CFRB thing...that one I planned out). After about an hour of kvetching about the state of local public transit, I hit 'Publish Blog' and was rewarded with a 'The application Netscape has unexpectedly quit'. Yeah. Unexpected. No kidding.
Anyway, it was about the TTC (Toronto Transit Commision) and I will try to re-write it but now it will suffer from self censure and editing. I think I did a good job on the first draft and I hope I can do as well on the second attempt.
This after I seem to have become a 'Kernel Panic' magnet (MAC users know what I mean...). One at work and two at home. Rare as the 'Kernel Panic' is, why should I see it 3 times in one week?
Just the way it is for me and computers.
On some completely unrelated matters:

1: Burger King rocks, McDonalds sucks. Bringing Back the Burger King is awesome, and they should bring back the animated Burger King too (watch this, kids, as I twist my ring; like magic we're at Burger King!). One on one, Burger King would kick Ronald McDonald's ass. Maybe they are both magic, but I have noticed that Ronald's allies are mysteriously absent lately. Where is Officer Big Mac? Where did Mayor McCheese go? Did the Hamburglar run up against California's three-strike rule? What about his protegé, the Cheeseburglar? And the Fry Guys? And how did four-armed Grimace become regular Grimace? (And why is he named Grimace when he is so jolly? I had an old friend that went to McDonald's Hamburger U (Trust me, you don't want to know...) and she told me Grimace is purple because that is the colour of three milkshake colours mixed together: vanilla chocolate and strawberry...but I guess his extraneous arms went the way of Ronald's paper cup nose...)
2: P. Diddy/Puffy/WTF... Why does anybody care if Sean Combs makes a line of shiny new hubcaps for cars that no real person ever cares to own? Then again, why have the media been calling him a 'fashion designer' when all he does is permit lousy sweatshop tracksuits to have his logo slapped on them? P. whateverthefuckurcallingyrselfthisweek Diddy is the epitome of everything that is wrong with the fashion industry, the music industry, television (his MTV show sucks so hard), movies (gangsta rap Ocean's Eleven? I'm gagging at the thought of it!) If you are buying into this man's products, you are doing nothing but making a single man very wealthy. I see you on the bus every day. You really need to get out and accomplish something for yourself. If you spent the time, money and energy that you devote to acquiring 'Sean John' branded clothes to bettering yourself, you might be pimping your own tracksuits to the slack-jawed masses on MuchMusic.
3: Scrubbing Bubbles... or something like that. A couple of years ago no manufacturer would present a new product without attaching a recycled or a post-consumer waste, or at least an 'environmentally friendly' (vague enough to be permissive, specific enough to placate the latent Hippies...) tag to the thing. Now there's a flushable 'toilet wand'. Why make a product that never needed to be? How difficult is it for the average person to use a regular toilet brush? Or - Heaven forbid - reach into the clean water that came from the same water main as your drinking and bathing water and scrub it with a friggin' sponge? The 'Swiffer' thing amazes me too. I have a reusable version. It's called a mop. Of course, if these products were manufactured by clients of mine, I might be more charitable, but they are not, so: Stop making shit that ends up in landfills!
4: Dr.Who: I am looking forward to the Canadian debut of the new Doctor Who series on CBC here in the Toronto area. I have read some conflicting reviews, but they tend to be quite positive. I have spent many happy hours in my life watching the old series and I hope that the revival of The Doctor is on par with the resurrection of the Star Trek franchise. The Made-For-TV-Movie® version that featured Sylvester McCoy was truly terrible and not in keeping with the Dr. Who legacy at all.
That's about it for now. I am full of complaints and observations, but that's all I have for now. Except for the Mr. Sub ads here in Southern Ontario. They rock. "Just Can't Get Enough..." Is that Depeche Mode or Erasure? I'm not sure, but those commercials are awesome. I need to try to re-construct my last effort.
But it was really whiny.
Not like this one.

A Map to God's Place

2005-02-21T17:26:00.000-05:00

"There is nothing new under the sun."

How many times have you heard that? How many times has it be spoken since first it was written for a Bible that was still being assembled and this notion became a part of Ecclesiastes and of our culture? Many times and many ways has this sentiment been repeated by countless writers and orators. Rather than take from this its simplest connotation alone and say that any effort at originality is futile, let us examine this statement and use many, many words to describe a notion that was set so succinctly almost three-thousand years ago.
What a person living in the fertile crescent of 940 BCE know of computers, or MP3 players or CDs? Even an eight-track player would be beyond comprehension to an ancient Mesopotamian. They would know music, however, and there is constant thread leading back from your iPod to the first humans to bang one thing against another and call it music. It might take a lifetime to properly research that thread, but the genealogy of the MP3 would reach backwards through association with the compact disc, cassette, vinyl record, wax cylinder and written sheet music all the way back to an oral tradition of demonstration and repetition. Naturally, the thread is not directly a straight line, but part of a more intricate web connected to data processing, storage and retrieval, the physics of light and sound, social and cultural changes and so on.
In essence, everything exists because of something else. Things are either created as an improvement or modification to an existing product or idea, or they are brought to life to meet a perceived need. If, then, all ideas build upon experience and observation of pre-existing conditions, would it not be possible with sufficient diligence to follow the thread backwards in time to a single inspiration? The one original idea? That source would, for all intents and purposes, be God.
What form might this complex map of mentality take? Certain threads of inventive thought would radiate outwards from a single point as from an Edison, Aristotle or Da Vinci. Some would become a complex tangle around collaborative engineering processes such as space travel and communications. Threads connecting much creative and intuitive work would wind themselves around institutions such as laboratories, universities and corporate juggernauts.
How far back might that thread stretch? What is the prerequisite for insight and the ability to interact with the environment. Imagination and innovation are present in the earliest days of humans as tool users. Did these characteristics spring forth spontaneously at some random point in our development or were we capable of the same thought process as foragers who had yet to recognise the need for tools? If the thread were unraveled and that line followed back far enough, it might just be a map to God's place.

Roll Over, Rover!

2005-02-16T22:20:00.000-05:00

Dogs are not people. They simply are not. They walk on four paws and their forepaws are paws, not hands. They roll in dead things and sniff the genitals of other dogs. These are not, for the most part, human attributes. Dogs are not people. Get over it.
Maybe some people don't understand. I am here to help. I want to help. I want to help the woman who came in from a wet, slushy Toronto winter's day to sit in a coffee shop with her wet, slushy mutt. The coffee shop in question is of the sort that is set up in malls and concourses throughout the city. Some of the small, round café tables spill out into the common promenade allowing patrons to bask in the fluorescent light as a warm and steady breeze of mechanically circulated air caresses their pallid cheeks. The woman and her dog sat at one of these tables, just beyond the door of the coffee shop proper.
In addition to her animal companion, the dog lady was also accompanied by a companion of the two-legged variety. He joined her shortly and they relaxed to enjoy their decaf low-fat mocha lattés or whatever it is their type likes to drink to impress others. Fido, on the other hand, demonstrated greater sense than either of the human two-thirds of their little group and began to explain that this was not, perhaps, an ideal arrangement for an animal. Unfortunately for those of who took German instead of Canine in grade 10, it sounded a lot like, "ARROUPP! YEE! YIH! ROWRRRRUH! OWP! OWP! Naturally, the two custodians of the charming beast leaped to their feet and took the pooch out to the street and - no, wait - that's not what happened...
They joined forces in scratching at the pup's sodden fur and speaking to it in what I can only describe as baby talk. "Uh-goo-goo-goo! Who's a good boy? Yes you are! Yes you are! Yeshiyeshiyeshiyesh....." Ugh. This was effective for about thirty seconds before the dog picked up the second verse of his plaintiff song. I left for work without confronting the pair. The older I get, the more I realise that some kinds of ignorance run so deep that all of the argument in the world will never get to the root.
These people, these dog people, take their miserable mongrel charges with them everywhere they go. What is the deficiency in their life that compels them to make an accessory of their pet? Just the other day I saw a man walk into a bank with his dog. I will say again: a bank. Not a guide dog. Just a regular kind of short-hair Labrador. Wearing booties.
Now maybe, just maybe, if you were taking Sparky for a nice, healthy stroll through the slush and crush of the downtown city sidewalks and suddenly remembered that there was a critical bit of banking that absolutely, positively had to be taken care of before the end of the business day you might be forgiven for dashing in with your dog. "No time to get you home, boy," you might say and upon finding no appropriate fixture to which you might tie your furry friend outside the bank, you might slink sheepishly through the doors making all apologies with your eyes if not with words. You might. But I don't believe that was his story. No, I rather think that his story was dramatically less, well, dramatic. More along the lines of, "I need to go to the bank. I think I will take my dog." Followed by the mental equivalent of, "Tum-tee-tum, tra-la-la." No thought given to respect and consideration for other humans. Dogs make some people uncomfortable. Dog owners like to counter with, "Well, he isn't bothering anybody." Oh, but he is. And now, so are you. These are the same people that like to say, "My dog has never bitten anybody." Of course not. No dog ever bites anybody until the first time.
I am in and around the Holt Renfrew Centre nearly every day. Holt Renfrew fancies itself an "upscale" shopping destination, meaning less attractive clothing at higher prices than most places. I see many shoppers wandering about with their dogs. Some in booties, some in sweaters and some being carried in special designer bags with just their heads and paws peeking out. Some owners even coordinate their outfit to match or complement the dog. It really makes me question the concept of social Darwinism when people with the financial means to toss away money on over-priced designer label goods haven't the mental acumen to recognise the absurdity of their behaviour.
Dogs are not people. They simply are not. No matter how much you wish it were otherwise, it is not. It never will be. Call your dog your baby. Get a few and call them your children. Buy it gifts and let it eat at your table. Let him eat right off your plate and your Prince is still a dog. Even if you swap "doggy kisses", no matter. If you believe in a literal afterlife, you will never see your dog there. Dogs don't have souls. I am pretty sure most churches will agree with that. Maybe not some of those freaky southern snake-handling churches, but ask nearly any priest, pastor, rabbi or imam and they will tell you, "Sorry, Timmy, but all dogs do not go to Heaven. Not even the very good ones."
"Why do you care?" the dog people howl. "It's none of your business. We are not hurting anybody. If it makes us happy, who are you to interfere with that?" Well, it's like I said before. I want to help. Consider charitable organizations. Charities that help the disabled, the homeless, children. Charities that make a real difference in the quality of life for people in our community. These charities struggle mightily to secure the funds needed to carry out their good works, but let a newspaper run one story about some poor pooch, abandoned or abused and the dog people draw open those purse strings and the contributions pour in.
How is it hurting? When you devote so much time and concern to the health and welfare of animals at the expense of the wellbeing of your fellow humans, you are failing to meet your obligation to society. Dogs are not people. People are people.

Embracing Ether

2005-02-08T22:53:00.000-05:00

Dreams are curious things. Twice last night I awoke with the vivid memory of a dream imprinted in my mind. I wrote down all that I could remember of them before they slipped as smoke into the place of vanished dreams. If I can decipher those notes accurately, I will try to transcribe them here without changing or embellishing the content unnecessarily. I will add a few comments here and there to explain context for those who are not me or have not met me. At last count, that is still most people.
Dream the First:
An ex-girlfriend enters a coffee shop where I sit at the counter with my wife and daughter (although my daughter, barely a year old, would never be able to sit on one of those vinyl mushroom stools - she is too little and very squirmy). She is Jessica, a girlfriend from highschool. We haven't dated for over thirteen years and I last saw her about nine years ago.
Jessica takes a seat and I join her, sitting opposite at a small, square table with two chairs. With my back to a wall, I can see my wife and daughter over Jessica's left shoulder. In dreams, as in all memory, our friends never age so she appears to be in her early twenties.
"I had a dream about you the other night," I tell her.
There is not the least trace of surprise in her eyes. "I know."
I ask her if she wants to meet my wife and daughter but at the mention of my family her features fold in upon themselves in anger. I look down at the little table and see nothing but a ring of coffee staining the artificial wood.
"Why am I sitting here without a cup of coffee?" I wonder to myself. I hate it when people don't buy something.
The dream ends there. Like a Zen koan, it is open to meditative contemplation.
The coffee shop is a complete fiction and has appeared in my dreams before. It is based mostly on "Donut Deluxe", a real coffee shop where I used to spend far too much time. The dream version is fluid and changes depending on the dream. I recall going into the back rooms of the place in dreams, although I never did in real life.
Dream the Second:
I am walking along the sidewalk of a small town with a guy named Peter whom I knew only briefly about ten years ago. He's a pick-up-drivin', NASCAR-watchin', mustache-growin', mullet-sportin' redneck - you know the type.
The weather is fine and the streets are lined with low buildings and trees with full, green leaves. We come to a t-shaped intersection that seems familiar just as a small, articulated delivery truck is about to turn the corner from the through street in to the side street.
"They can never make this corner," I say.
Peter steps into the street and signals the truck, guiding it perfectly around the corner. The truck is blue and white with some sort of a round company logo toward the back. We carry on without any mention of the truck.
We cross the street, pass the first store on the corner and enter the second. Inside, it is a motorcycle shop with a large garage in the back and a small reception area at the front with a counter. The man behind the counter asks Peter, "Come to get your Harley?"
Peter says yes, and the man turns to me, "What about you?"
Somehow at this point I am holding in my hand something that resembles a gas-powered edge-trimmer crossed with a Segway scooter with motorcycle tires. In my dream I understand that it is some kind of motorcycle.
"No," I say, "I drive a Pinto - or, what would be the exact opposite of a Harley?"
Peter says, "Well, they do make a Saab."
And that is all I remembered of the dream. I do know that I woke up wondering if the exact opposite of a Harley-Davidson would be a Saab. Anyway, those are two dreams that I had last night, so analyse as you wish. They probably tell more about my personality than I might consciously be willling to share...

When Life Gets In The Way Of Living

2005-02-03T20:09:00.000-05:00

I have been trying for some months now to sit down and actually get back to painting. Painting pictures, that is. Seems I have been doing quite a bit of painting lately but mostly of the tray and roller variety. I have a bunch of junk rattling about in my skull and I need to throw some of it down on a nice canvas. I can feel the cool, soft, sanded gesso beneath my fingers now...mmmm - catharsis...
Every time I think that I might get down to work, there is always something else to distract me and lead me astray. I reckon that as many as five years have passed since last I painted properly and as I thought about it today, I wondered why. Well, as John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you are busy doing other things," and I have been busy doing a great many other things. I started to write a list:

Went back to college, graduated at the top of my class
Worked for two ad agencies and two print shops
Got married, had a baby (or rather my wife did. I watched.)
Moved twice
Went to the East Coast three times (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland)
Went to Northern Ontario twice (Timmins)
Stood as best man at my brother's wedding
Quit smoking after fourteen years
Gained thirty pounds
Lost twenty pounds
Got grey hair and more hair in freaky places
Bought a car
Cursed the car every day since
Bought a house
Learned plumbing & electrical
Built a basement apartment for my father-in-law
Renovated rest of house
Cut down dead crabapple tree
Met my new nephew Gavin, courtesy of my brother and his wife
Made website: http://joshuahardaker.netfirms.com (badly in need of updating and a re-design)
Made this weblog

The work around the house required an enormous amount of time, effectively doubling my work-week for about six months and it is still not finished. We just ran out of money. I tore out the pre-existing panelled rec-room and put in an all-new apartment with new walls, bathroom, kitchen, carpet, tiles, plumbing, electrical, cabinets and appliances. I tore out mouldy carpet, sanded and refinished my hardwood floors, changed doors, painted, put up new trim and replaced my entire upstairs bathroom. I still need to get new cabinets for the kitchen and re-do that floor as well as changing my patio door, building a new porch on the front and a new deck on the back as well as a fence to keep the dog from the redneck's yard out back from coming over. Oh, and build a new shed. Possibly with a greenhouse attached and I hope to make an elevated rain-barrel system to have a gravity-feed garden hose as well.
While I lament my lack of accomplishment in the painting department, I realise I have produced a bunch of output in the last five years. Boxes and boxes of stuff will attest to that. I have made screenprints, woodblock prints, lino cuts, watercolours, acrylic sketches, collages, pen-and-ink illustration, scratchboards, marker renderings, pencil sketches, and digital graphics for print and web. There's also a pile of graphic design work I did for work or for pleasure. All of these methods and media were used together and seperately to produce cartoons, greeting cards, invitations, my website, promotional pieces for myself and for others, t-shirts, signs, packaging, brochures and many forms of advertising and communication.
Toss in some furniture refinishing and sewing some curtains and I guess I have had a busy couple of years. Now I feel better. Maybe I will start on a painting tonight. After I take out the trash. And put together my new drafting table. And clean up the storage room to put away the old drafting table. And finish sanding the vanity table I am working on so I can stain it. And varnish it. Sigh.

Goodness, Gracious - Governor General Does It Again!

2005-01-21T18:17:00.000-05:00

The governor general of Canada is in the news again, but refreshingly it is not for her wanton spending of taxpayer’s dollars. Instead, Madame (Right-Honourable etc.) Adrienne Clarkson has had her feet put to the fire by the good people of Alberta. Now, if you hail from Ottawa, as does our much-maligned governor general, you may need a bit of explanation; Alberta is a province in the western part of Canada. Part of that nuisance area you have to fly over to get to Vancouver. Maybe you’ve even been to Banff? That’s sort of Alberta.
It seems that those cow-poking (well, you might as well poke ‘em - the U.S. won’t buy ‘em!) Albertans have their bullfeathers ruffled over Clarkson’s no-show at a memorial service for the recently departed lieutenant-governor of Alberta, the late Lois Hole. It seems that the globe-galloping governor general had departed herself, some ten days prior, for a desperately well-deserved European shopping trip (no sense spending any of that holiday cash here at home). A little difficult to pack it all in at a moment’s notice to jet home for the service. After all, Hole passed suddenly on the sixth of January only two days before Clarkson’s departure and giving the governor general a scant fortnight to make arrangements to attend.
Put aside for a moment the frantic ministrations of her lackeys back at Rideau Hall to explain her inability to attend, ie: “It’s an urgent personal matter...” and then, “Umm, she’s awaiting the inauguration of Yushchenko in Ukraine...” followed by, “She, er, has a long standing appointment to see Queen Elizabeth?” to the final, sheepish, “Well, actually, she’s on vacation and can’t be bothered.” Clarkson should have flown back for the service. She has no trouble jetting about on Canada’s dime for her own purposes, so she should be obligated to interrupt a holiday to see to something like an official engagement. Maybe it wouldn’t be practical or easy to attend, but it would look good in the press and if it is just about optics, so be it because the entire post of Governor General of Canada is only for appearance sake! Not an elected official, the governor general should project grace and dignity and a deep respect for the honour that has been bestowed upon them with the job. Don’t meddle in politics, don’t make too much fuss and don’t spend millions of tax dollars in conspicuous demonstrations of excess. Just collect your cheque and entertain some folks down at Rideau Hall in between ribbon-cutting ceremonies. Simple.
The reason I think that the Clarkson should have been there for the memorial ceremony is really even simpler than all of the political malarkey and is removed from my personal dislike of the woman herself (oh, did I mention that I am heavily biased?). I base my opinion on the demands of good old fashioned professional courtesy. Let me explain it simply without a massive history lesson:
Canada is a constitutional monarchy. That means that we have a constitution of our own and determine what best serves our sovereign self-interests while retaining the British monarchy as our symbolic head of state. In carrying that cultural vestige forward with us, we also kept the office of the governor general. The governor general represents (in symbolic form only) the interests of the British monarchy in Canada. Each Canadian province has a lieutenant-governor (that’s leff-tenant-governor to you Yanks!) to serve as the Crown’s proxy within their respective purviews. The governor general’s failure to attend the memorial service is akin to a corporate CEO ditching a service for his CFO or a vice-president. The ethics of the job dictate that one should drop professional differences and make some token effort to acknowledge the passing of a close (professionally) colleague.
Her failure to attend has reinforced the perception of western Canadians that Parliament Hill doesn't much care what goes on past Thunder Bay. Combined with the public perception that Clarkson is using the office of governor general as a means to add the resources of the public purse to her own, this does little to ingratiate Clarkson and her vice-regent pseudo-spouse John Ralston Saul (Oh, man. I need another entry to tackle that one...) in the hearts of Canadians. Look to the example of the governors general preceding you, Mme. Clarkson and reflect on the motto of Ray Hnatyshyn: Moderation In All Things.
When Adrienne Clarkson sashayed into the posting back in 1999 at the behest of then Prime Minister Jean Chretien, she spoke to parliament and quoted from Samuel de Champlain, “As for me, I labour always to prepare the way for those who follow.” I think that the Canadian people should labour to ensure that there is no governor general to follow Queen Adrienne.
Oh, and how about an elected senate while we’re at it, eh?

I Can't Take Another Tribal Council!

2005-01-14T20:17:00.000-05:00

The folks over at the CBS Network have started revving up the hype machine for the next installment of the "Survivor" franchise. This time it's Survivor: Palau and is set in the South Pacific where a stunning twenty hapless contestants will be dropped off and left to fend for themselves on and amidst tropical jungle islands. I don't know how well it will compete with that other real reality show, you know, Survivor: Tsunami that used to be on the television alot more than it is now. That production has a cast of millions and, unlike their counterparts in the artificial reality department, they won't be going home to their comfortable ranch-style bungalows in Phoenix or Denver or Jacksonville in thirty-eight days.
I watched that first Survivor series. I think it was called Survivor: Fat Naked Gay Guy. It was entertaining because it was new for me and it was still new to the contestants. Even the series that followed immediately after that first one (does CBS put out two series per year? It must be something like that because the next run is number ten...) had lost some of its charm because the people they threw into that mix had already watched the first bunch. No matter how many unexpected little wrenches the producers toss into the works, every cast of castaways has some inkling of what they might expect. That loss of freshness and the myriad of derivitive copycat shows that litter the primetime schedule has diminished my enjoyment of the program to the point that I no longer even keep tabs on the show, let alone watch it.
What has happened to scripted television? All of those poor, unemployed television writers out there flipping burgers. More art, less artifice. We have allowed so many television channels to propegate that there is simply to much time to fill to bother with the expense of hiring actors and building sets and so on. Hey, what would Fox be without COPS?
Has our culture deteriorated to the point that we have to denude our entertainment of all culture and creativity? If I wanted that, I'd be watching sports. The next time we sit selfish and slack-jawed facing the mindless, meaningless radiation that eminates from our television sets, maybe we should take a second to wipe the drool from our chins and give some real thought to some of the folks around the world (and even in our own backyards) who don't have television. Or a home. Or food, clothing, work, money, shoes, parents or many of the other things that most of us are fortunate enough to take for granted.
Take a minute to think about the survivors.

Miserable Miscellany

2005-01-07T19:20:00.000-05:00

I don't have time to compose my thoughts sufficiently to create a proper entry, but here is what is on my mind right now:

If bad driving were a universe, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada would be the nexus of that universe.
You may think that it is other people that have problems driving and talking on their cell phones. You are wrong, it is you. I know. I have seen you.
Speaking of cell phones, respect those around you. Nobody else cares about your pathetic life or the lives of your simpleton friends, so keep your conversations brief and quiet. If you have one of those really tiny phones, do yourself and everybody else a favour and get an earpiece. You are irritating enough without the endless, "What? What was that? I didn't hear you..." etc. as you pass the stupid thing back and forth from your mouth to your ear.
When you pass through a door in a public place, make at least some tiny effort to hold the door for those behind you.
If I hold the door open behind me as I pass through, don't slip in without extending the chain of courtesy to the next person. That's just rude.
Public Transit does not employ a maintenance staff to be your personal maid service. Rather, they do, but they shouldn't. Transit is like camping; you pack out what you pack in. This week I saw somebody's McDonald's remnants laid out on the seat as though they had used it as a table. Which they probably did. Which is profoundly disturbing. Oh, and a nearly full Slurpie that was melted. Did they forget their whole Slurpie?
When you are waiting for the bus, let those who were there ahead of you board first. Don't try to jam on. It takes longer and, more to the point, makes me angry.
The music that you like to listen to sucks. Really bad. So does my music. That's why I listen to it quietly.
QuarkXpress vs. InDesign - Very few people care about this stuff, but my studio is switching to InDesign. I don't see it as necessarily bad or good, but I am more familiar and comfortable with Quark and since I work exclusively with printed matter, I don't see any real benefit to the change. Either we embrace the whole Adobe CS package, or slap a Quark6 upgrade in there and keep chugging along. Since my employer is one of the larger ad firms in the world, it is pretty big news.
I finally bought Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again in trade paperback. It collects the three graphic novels that formed the follow-up to Miller's (Oh, and Lynn Varley's - sorry!) Batman: The Dark Knight quadrilogy from the eighties. Nice work. Gorgeous. Doesn't hit me like it did back in the day, though. That first miniseries turned the world of conventional comic book work on its ear.
Now I wish I could draw comics for a living.
I have very nearly almost started getting around to working out the necessary details required to look into the possibility of the potential of my beginning to develop the preliminary aspects of new comic. Maybe. I am thinking four pages. Working title: Someones at the Door. No dialogue, just drawings. Black ink for the drawings with maybe watercolour, maybe Photoshop, maybe both.
I am becoming increasingly searchable online, but still not through Google. Odd, but I can find several references to myself with Yahoo, Lycos and whatever Dogpile uses.
The best food new food I have tried recently is jalepeno pepper stuffed olives. Yum!
I miss having a radio at my desk all the time. My new office is one of these "open concept" things that Hippies like to talk about. I don't like looking at other people working and I think it is safe to say that they don't want to be looking at me.
I can't draw really well on the subway or the bus (or at all, sometimes...) so I try to sketch out rough ideas while I am on transit. Now I need to take a sabbatical to try to catch up on the rough sketches I have made.
My fantasy: retire to a workshop where I can design, print and bind my own limited edition books. My reality: work until I keel over dead. Better top up that life insurance...

That's about it for now.

It's About Priorities, People.

2005-01-04T15:49:00.000-05:00

It is my intention to use this space as a tool to develop my writing skills. I imagine that if I work to my full potential, I might one day qualify as a kind of a gonzo hack. I am still a long way from reaching that goal. It seems that as of yet, I have succeeded only in creating a long-winded series of whining complaints.
So why stop now?
I have been meaning for the last little while to get around to addressing some statements made by Prince Charles relating to people knowing their place in society. He received a slew of negative press in return and was consistently quoted and paraphrased out of context. My problem is not with the Heir Apparent, but the various media that failed to properly exploit the opportunity for meaningful, constructive introspection.
What Charles said, or rather wrote, in a memo to an aide is this, "What's wrong with everyone nowadays? What is it that makes everyone seem to think that they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities? It's social utopianism which believes humanity can be genetically and socially re-engineered to contradict the lessons of history."
He goes on later to suggest that people tend to believe that they can become "pop stars, high court judges, brilliant TV personalities or infinitely more competent heads of state without ever putting in the necessary work or having natural ability."
The media, by which I mean the big "M" Media that are the amalgam of sources making up the amorphous juggernaut that feeds the needs of our modern information age, dropped the ball by failing to explore their role in making themselves the instrument for this aspect of social engineering. Now, naturally, we are the Media and the Media are us, so we are all to blame for fomenting the unrealistic and unattainable ideals that have become so tightly woven into the fabric of our Modern Western Civilisation.
We have made news out of celebrities and celebrities of those who bring us the news. Our culture has largely discarded real experience and replaced it with the vicarious voyeurism of reality television. After the Second World War, it was necessary that we become a disposable plastic society. Mass consumerism drove the economies of the industrialised world from the fifties through the seventies and allowed us to grow healthy and prosperous. Now, entertainment and leisure are the commodities of the new economy and we ship their manufacture overseas. Marketing creates a perceived value in the mind of consumers where none actually exists and the result is the desire to purchase the intangible – lifestyle, peer approval, comfort, status. In short, brands.
We have allowed and encouraged the growth of such brands as Tommy Hilfiger, a company concerned solely with branding. The total square footage of garment manufacturing facilities owned by the Hilfiger label is zero. The entire company exists only to create in consumers like you and me a desire to own clothes, linens, housepaint and other lifestyle elements produced overseas and stamped with a Tommy Hilfiger logo. I don't mean to single out one corporation. This is just the way business is done nowadays.
What does this have to do with what Prince Charles wrote in his memo? Well, it has to do with the fallout of this mass branding culture. In the spirit of Image is Everything, branding ignores quantitative and reinforces qualitative values. It must, or else there is no justification for selling a four dollar t-shirt for thirty-five. To this end, many brands attached themselves to popular figures in music, acting and sports. In turn, many celebrities launched product lines of their own despite having no specific knowledge of, for example, the clothing or perfume industries. The actual commodity retains less actual value as the perceived worth of the brand climbs. We are buying less and less stuff and more and more lifestyle.
Now with the increasing importance of celebrities in our community, the trickle down is that we begin to feel less important because we are not celebrities. Fame gets cheaper as it becomes less enduring. We look up to people on game shows, read about the tiny details of a rapper's life and follow the wedding plans of a talk show host. Gradually, these people become more real than our real life; part of our virtual family. When we watch them so closely and follow news of their fortunes and failings, their spending habits, their personal problems and intimate secrets, the lifestyle of the famous seems so much closer. So much better than what we have to put up with every day. Our culture turns to celebrities with no more authority than you or me for their opinion on politics, the economy, religion and whatever else may come along. They have everything they want and then some. They sure are pretty. Better than going to work at the factory every day.
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. The fact of the matter, however, is that somebody has to go to the factory. And the coal mine. And the power plant. People need to pave roads, mill lumber and gut fish. That infrastructure is more important and lasting than the music industry, or the movie industry or the fashion industry. These are the trades that have the skills and abilities to move the human race into the future. Not fashion models. Not game show hosts.
I think it is quite telling that the top three searches through Google in 2004 were American Idol, Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson in that order. Not George W. Bush or Osama Bin Laden or, "Hey, where the hell are those weapons of mass destruction anyway and how many more civilians are going to die in Iraq?" Nobody really wants have to think about the tough stuff anymore. That's like high school math. When am I ever going to use that again?
I heard an interesting response to a question about the nature of God the other day. The question was about the message God was trying to send by blasting the coast of the Indian Ocean with a massive tsunami. The answer was that maybe we should look instead at the message we can send through helping our neighbours to recover.
It would be nice to see a period of serious reflection in the wake of the tsunami. We can all benefit by taking time to assess our personal priorities and taking a responsible place in society.

On the Town - with Joshua

2005-01-04T15:19:00.000-05:00

Hmmm... Was that Mr. Andrew Krystal having a rather loud cellphone conversation for the benefit of patrons at a coffee shop a safe several blocks from CFRB's Yonge & St. Clair headquarters? Well, whoevever it was, he had some very nice things to say about himself by way of comparison with Mr. Peter Shurman and Mr. John Moore. Perhaps phone guy feels Mr. Krystal's vast talents are being squandered in the Sunday night timeslot gulag? Just speculation, of course.

CompuSmart, PeopleStupid

2004-12-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

Well, after my optimistic posting of yesterday, it saddens me to report that things have now gone from bad to worse. My miserable Mac G4 remains at CompuSmart having been looked at by, at last count, nobody. I am left with no computer for the holiday break and now I will get none of my little digital projects done and I have nowhere to download my Christmas pictures. In the absence of a sincere apology or resonable explanation form the CompuSmart frontline staff, I have resorted to e-mailing the head office in Québec. Unfortunately, the customer feedback field on their website has a limit to the number of characters that may be submitted, so I had to break up my message into four pieces. I share with you now the entire text of my complaint:

Greetings,

I feel I need to lodge a complaint regarding the service department at your Scarborough store in the Kennedy Commons location.

On Tuesday, December 14, I dropped off my Macintosh G4 for service. I realise that because there are far fewer Macs than PCs, there is only a qualified technician available on Tuesday and Thursday. When I dropped off the machine, I was told that the single technician would be going on vacation and would not be working on Thursday, December 16 or Tuesday, December 21 and would return the following Thursday. This concerned me, as I wanted the computer repaired as soon as possible. As I am hoping that the data on my hard drive can be recovered, I asked that the technician take a look on the Tuesday (December 14) to let me know if it would even be possible. I was told that they would call me to let me know, and that the latest they would look at it would be December 23. I was further told to disregard the notice on the work order indicating a "14-19 day backlog" and that the computer would be looked at by the following Thursday (December 23) at the latest.

My wife called to follow up on December 15, and was told that the technician was gone and that nobody had even looked at the machine. We waited out the week and called to check up this morning (December 23) and were told that "the best thing to do is wait for us to call when (the computer) is ready".

As I write this, it is the evening of Thursday, December 23. I have just called the store to be told that my machine still has yet to be looked at, that it is in queue and that the EARLIEST day that the technician will see it is Tuesday, December 27. While the service representative who answered the phone is the same one that took my Mac, he has no memory of doing so, and keeps repeating that there is a 14-19 day backlog, the work order is in queue and that the technician will be in on Tuesday over and over. He also apologised on behalf of whomever may have given me the impression that my computer would be ready (or at least assessed) by December 23. As it is he who gave me such an assurance, he is apologising on his own behalf!

Finally, my wife has called the store tonight (December 23) to see what she could find out and as it turns out, the Mac technician didn't even get in today because of the weather. Information that might have been passed along on our call this morning.

My concerns are these:

Knowing that the technician was leaving on holiday, I would not have left my computer if I hadn't been assured that I could get it back on December 23. I work downtown Toronto and could easily have brought it to four other places quite near my office. If there is insufficient staffing to cover holidays, customers should be made expllicitly aware of this.
In the event that work is not expected to be completed or attempted within the timeframe suggested at the time of drop-off, the customer should be notified of any delays or problems affecting the projected date of return.
While I understand that Macintosh users are in the minority, when the single available Mac technician is indisposed for a period of time, should there not be a contingency plan in place? What if on Tuesday, December 27 the technician is ill or has had a skiing accident? And has to also miss the following Thursday? Will Compusmart simply continue to allow a backlog of jobs to continue piling up in the "queue" until the work order suggests a 90-120 day backlog?

I am left now to collect my computer from the store and have it serviced elsewhere. I will not get it back any faster, but I will not have to deal with this kind of amateur-level customer service. Computers are not inexpensive, and for many people, like myself and especially at this time of year, they represent a sizable financial investment. I feel that the degree of customer service should reflect this rather than sinking to the level of a fast-food restaurant.

I did not bring my computer to Compusmart for convenience sake and, at an estimated $375 for service, neither for economics. I bought the Mac from Compusmart, and have had good service at your store in the past, but this has been an outrageous experience. I am disappointed and angry at my inconvenence and for the time I have already lost in dealing with this situation (it took thirty minutes just to fill out the work order in the first place).

As the service technician seems not to be concerned about losing my business, and as a subsequent call to speak to a manager was directed back to the service desk, I am submitting this email in the hope that somebody who cares will understand why I must take my business elsewhere.

-Joshua Hardaker

Grrrrr. So Frustrating!

2004-12-22T20:19:00.000-05:00

I hope to be able to pick up my home computer tomorrow. I have had to put it in the shop to retrieve the data from my hard drive. Unfortunately, my operating system went down and was beyond recovery (the machine actually restarted under an older version of my operating system with an empty desktop. Ahh, those reliable Macs. I was running OS.X Jaguar on my G4, but the thing rebooted in the original OS.X 10.0.2. Crazy. And boring, no doubt. I will upgrade to OS.X Panther over Christmas, so I hope that there are no further problems...).
It is incredible to realise how dependent I have become on that thing - maps, shopping, little bits of trivia, favourite sites; all beyond my grasp for the last week or so. It is so easy when the world of information (and disinformation) is at your fingertips.
I am still trying to Google myself - or rather to get my name more Googl-a-ble (my new word! feel free to use it!) but the entries in this blog don't show up. I show up for a couple of other things, but this site and my actual website (Portfolio Pages) aren't searchable. Odd.
Anyway, none of this is either here nor there. I am trying to do a really clever and well-written entry, but I seem to have less and less time these days.
The office tower where I work will be shutting off all power except emergency lighting at 11:00 pm, so my servers will shut down in about two minutes. When they do, it's bye-bye Internet, so bye-bye everyone for now!

SeeNoHearNoSpeakNo

2004-12-14T20:47:00.000-05:00

SeeNoHearNoSpeakNo
Originally uploaded by Ughman.

I think I can safely assume that everybody has heard an older person, or perhaps simply a pessimistic person, say that our society is in decline. Going downhill. To Hell in a handcart. I'm sure you know what I mean. "When I was a boy..." you might hear them start, or, "These kids today..." The rest of that sentence can involve anything from that "Hippety-Hoppity" music to facial piercings, but the sentiment is the same. In their perception, we are not marching boldly and gradually into some new utopia; we are lurching gracelessly toward a savage and sudden collapse of the Great Western Empire.
The thing is that these whiners are completely right!
The way I see it there has been a shift in the predominant social attitude away from collectivism toward a selfish sense of self-importance and entitlement. It is a false ideal that springs from a misguided interpretation of the fundamental ideology of western democracies: that all men are created equal. The statement might be true. It is when people put it into practise that it falls apart.
I think of it this way: Windsor and Newton manufacture a fabulous line of watercolour inks. They can be used for painting and colouring and have worked well for me. Now when these bottles of ink roll off the packaging line, they are essentially identical. Equal. Now in the hands of a talented artist, these dyes have the potential to become something breathtaking. Alternately, they could dry out in the back of a drawer like mine until they are just so much colourful dust.
People are a lot like that. We all arrive pretty much equal and we face a number of challenges as we travel through life. Some face greater adversity than others, but the ways in which we rise to overcome obstacles forges the character that we become. The problem with the whole equality thing is that some people seem to feel that that equality is a perpetual guarantee.
It is not.
Certainly we can agree on some basic human rights and the provision of fundamental civil liberties, but we have to remember that there is a society at work here and the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few. We need supervision and we need boundaries. We have created government, police and the courts to establish and maintain order in our culture and it has worked pretty well, but it is failing. Governments are more concerned with image and spin than with drafting necessary legislation, Police are worried about lawsuits, underfunding and internal corruption and the courts are increasing hampered by case law and precedent set by lenient sentencing.
It is time shift our collective focus from individual rights to civil obligations. You deserve to receive no more than you give and it is time to rebalance the scales of economy, justice, education, medicine and politics. It is time for us all to stand up and be accountable for our actions.
Before I ramble on for too long in this vein, and start to quote from Marx and Engels, let me explain why I am so concerned at this particular moment. It has to do with rugs. Well, shopping for rugs. You know, carpet, floor coverings. Allow me to explain.
Last Saturday, my wife and I went to a local department store to buy an area rug and a hall runner. Zeller's (a Canadian chain of stores like Target, or Kmart in the U.S.) was offering a buy-one-get-one-free sale on all floor coverings. We are in the market for rugs after I tore up our miserable forty year old wall-to-wall carpet. Now had I known that the store opened at nine o'clock, we would have arrived then, but instead we showed up at eleven and the store had been open for two hours. Really, I should be wiser by now. I should have cruised right on through the parking lot. Maybe go to the hardware store. Maybe just go back to bed to dream pleasant dreams untainted by the horrors that I saw instead. I should have been wiser. But I was not.
Now, I understand that rugs are meant to be walked on. Some are special and attractive and go on the wall, but most are supposed to go on the floor. In your house. After you buy them and take them home. It seems that in Zeller's rug department last Saturday, this convention was thrown away as casually as one might throw a twelve foot runner into, say, the aisle of a department store. The entire section was littered with carpet. Throw rugs, area rugs, doormats, all strewn the length and breadth of the place. A crumpled heap of sisal here, a mass of burber there. In one place, about twenty rugs of varying size, shape and manufacture had been laid flat on top of one another like some monstrous synthetic flaky pastry. Incredible. Adding insult to injury, the style and colour we wanted was all gone. While supplies last. Sorry, no raincheques.
What is it that causes a mass of people to behave this way? To abandon every last shred of moral decency? To resurrect the long buried primitive mind and embrace the animalistic id? I call it Wal*Mart-isation. As the cost of material goods declines, so the perceived value of the products is eroded also. This kind of behaviour just doesn't go on in more costly stores. Nor, I suspect, would it take place if there were sufficient public disapproval. I don't see it, though.
"Tsk, tsk. Will you take a look at that. Oh, well. Not any problem of mine. Somebody else will clean it up, I'm sure."
Or worse:
"If they do it, so should I."
And if I, to the embarassment of my wife, should confront one of these savages I am subjected to verbal abuse. I might say something like, "Hey, buddy, do you mind?" and get a cheery, "Who the fuck are you?" in response.
That's the attitude I'm concerned with. "Look out, Jack, it's ME comin' through. I couldn't be bothered to shower or shave today (or yesterday) and I am wearing greasy sweatpants, but I am very important because I am a bloody citizen and I very nearly almost voted in the last election and I don't know his name but I sure don't like the guy who got in and I sure might have voted for the other guy but I was probably drunk or asleep or watching Sur-bloody-vivor!" Ideally, I should be allowed to pound on that person until my hands hurt, but then I would go to jail. With a more concentrated bunch of rather impolite people. And worse things by far would happen to me. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Stop it. Ow.
O.K., now I have vented. I must go compose a more thoughtful essay about how truly dismal the future looks through the cracked crystal that is my jaded pessimism. Cheers for now.

The World is my Oyster - and I'm Allergic to Shellfish!

2004-12-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

What a week. A month. A year. Listen, I am not actually allergic to shellfish, but the title of this entry is just reflective of how I feel when everything kind of starts to go into the crapper at once.
I have a new job that pays about 25% more than my last job, but I don't seem to be stuffing any excess cash into my mattress. Christmas is coming and my home computer died yesterday, my bathtub leaked through the floor and damaged the basement ceiling the day before and on the weekend my car's check engine light came on (again).
I have been trying to write a new blog all week, but I am also trying to get my Christmas Cards done (A four-colour wood block print that might have been a little bit too ambitious to start in November...).
Oh, and while working on the wood blocks, I stabbed myself in the thumb with a chisel. Nicely done.
So, I will be tearing drywall apart and replacing some fifty year-old drains this weekend. If I get my home computer up and running, maybe I will write a proper entry as well.
Oh, yeah, and update my website. And finish the new animation for the opening page. And get my laundry sorted out. And start on some drawings - after I set up my new (used) drafting table. And clean up the storage room to get my old drafting table in there. And unpack the boxes for my computer room. And put up the shelves in the computer room. And the shelves in the laundry room. And get some Christmas presents. And get new shoes before winter. And so on. And so on. And so on.

Fists of Rage

2004-12-02T04:14:00.000-05:00

Fists_of_Rage
Originally uploaded by Ughman.

I hope that this can still be read as a JPEG. Helpful advice for anybody with rage problems like myself. I made this about a year ago and used myself as a model for all of the illustrations. If you click it, the picture will appear in a new window from FlickR. Enjoy!

Hey, Newstalk 1010 Toronto, Wha' Happen?

2004-11-24T00:48:00.000-05:00

Do you remember the movie Working Girl? The end of the movie where Melanie Griffith's character rejoices in winning that prized office? Remember that as the camera pulls away from her window we see the entire building full of windowed offices. A little further and there is an entire block of windowed offices. Keep going and see the millions of windowed offices that blanket Manhattan and indeed, the entire Eastern Seaboard. If we really ever stopped to consider the futility of what most of us, as individuals, accomplish in life, we just wouldn't bother. Maybe some people have given up on life simply because of that one scene in a shmaltzy Mike Nichols film from the eighties. I am just reminded of it because I can look out the window of my office on the 32nd floor of my building right into the office of some other worker drone who probably feels pretty good about looking down on all the rest of the peons about town. I know I do.
Before I get all Tess McGilled here, let me move on the the Airing of Grievances. Well, not just grievances. Comment, criticism, praise, platitudes, vitriol and venom. Lets just see where it goes as we ask: "Hey, Newstalk 1010 Toronto, Wha' Happen?"
The story so far:
I like talk radio. I prefer it to music radio mostly because the music playlists are often not very deep and I don't like to hear the same song twice in one day. Or even twice a week. Talk radio, especially a call-in show, is usually pretty entertaining. I listen to CFRB 1010, called "NEWSTALK 1010" now, here in the Toronto market in Canada. It is available online via http://www.cfrb.com and listeners from around the world can log in anytime. That said, I have been a loyal listener of the station for about ten years now and I am about to sound curmudgeonly when I say, "CFRB sure ain't what it used to be back in the day..."
I don't want to sound too whiny by talking about the folks that have moved along to be replaced by lesser lights in the broadcast firmament, so I won't mention John Oakley (sorry, man, but I can't handle MOJO radio) and I will instead focus on the schedule as it is today. A recent shakeup of shows and times has only made everything so much worse.
Lets take a look:

Iain Grant: If you are up really early or if you stay up really late, you can catch Iain Grant's Early Edition. It's pretty laid back and it won't really wake you up, but it's a good warm up to the morning show and Iain is a good guy to brush your teeth to. Smart and adaptive, thinks on his feet, and good with the banter during crossover to Woloshyn. 8/10

Ted Woloshyn: Nice guy finishes first. Or second after Iain Grant, I suppose. Ted is a funny guy in a kind of understated, "wait 'til you meeet my uncle, he's really funny," way. Charming and likeable in interviews and always able to offer a pretty thoughtful view on the events of the day, Mr. Woloshyn is a well-rounded professional and a soothing ointment on the frustrating drive to work. 10/10

Bill Carroll: If Rush Limbaugh actually thought before he spoke (and grew a beard and lost a few pounds) he might be something like Bill. Bill is aggressive and staunchly conservative. Staunch but not stubborn, Bill calls it as he sees it and doesn't hesitate to bite the hand the feeds his political animal. I think that he sometimes goes a little too far in criticizing the Ontario Liberal Party (Lots to criticize, mind you) and I am glad to see that family life has not softened him too much. This Scot has mellowed like a fine single-malt and kept his tasty edge. 9/10

The Motts: Paul and Carol Mott are the husband and wife team that fill out the day at 'RB. While they play at opposites, it is pretty clear that there is a lot of consensus between them. Carol tends toward the social and liberal end of the political spectrum while Paul adopts a macho, red-meat conservative attitude and the two of them share great exchanges with callers without resorting to bickering. Smart and funny, Paul and Carol are able to put the news of the day into a pleasantly accessible context whether it is hard news or general interest. Their long commute must allow them a good deal of time to talk about the news. 8/10

John Moore: John joined CFRB when the afternoon slot became suddenly available a little over a year ago. He filled in for the AWOL host for a week and eventually landed the gig full time. John has alway done a great job presenting little tidbits of entertainment gossip on The Morning Show, and he did a pretty good job during that week of emergency fill-in, but his repertoire is severely limited. Repetitive and slow paced, the afternoon show needs a jolt of adrenaline. If you have seen John on television you realise that his interviewing style benefits greatly from the editing process. He has difficulty maintaining a smooth flow during interviews and seems to have trouble straying too far from the script (despite his constant references to his past as an improv performer - which reminds me: When John was interviewing Lily Tomlin one time, he asked if she would consider a career in politics. She said she could never go to Washington as a politician, she was more of a Paula Jones. Funny. Subtle. John Moore stepped all over that little gem and squished all of the humour out it). Maybe he will improve tomorrow. Or The Day After Tomorrow. 4/10

Six-O'Clock News Hour: Dave Trafford is doing a fine job presenting the News Hour. The news team at CFRB is exceptional and always does a top-notch job. Even CFRB interns are great as evidenced by the stellar performance of one (I apologise for not remembering the name!) during a hostage situation in the summer. Great news package every day worth switching over for this alone. 10/10

Michael Coren: If you have experienced British cuisine you may know it's a little frightening for a start, but you grow accustomed to it. Michael Coren is a bit like that. Once you have developed an appreciation for his dry wit, he can be quite enjoyable. The Michael Coren Show in its current one-hour incarnation leaves me wanting more whereas his old three or four hour show on Sunday evening sometimes seemed too long. Maybe a two hour show would be just right. He gets a bit obsessive over Middle Eastern politics, but is quite knowlegable in that area and reasonably balanced in his approach. His crusading Christianity can be a trifle tiring, but he manages to keep a tight reign on it most of the time. I understand his faith demands proselytisation. I'm just not buying. Michael is an irreverent prankster when the spirit (and I use the word advisedly) moves him and he is not above some occasional silliness. Seldom predictable, always entertaining and worth listening for the interplay with the crackpot moths who seem drawn to Coren's flame. Too bad his television show isn't as much fun. 9/10

Jim Richards: The Showgram. The Feel Good Edition. The Three Hours of Love. Jim "Jimberly" Richards (AKA Vanilla Rage) of the Richmond Hill, Ontario Richards brings in a late evening show that is usually pretty entertaining. Then there are those long, awkward silences that sometimes get pretty painful as Jim pleads for callers. His produced segments like The Truth and The Drill are usually creative and funny with just a few duds and the syndicated Onion Radio News has an appropriate home with the J-Dog. Themed call-in segments may fall-flat sometimes, but they help less imaginative listeners by providing a template for their calls. Jim has also shown himself to be respectable interviewer and has the good sense to behave himself for the serious stuff. When news events require him to shift out of Showgram mode, he always puts in a strong, professional effort. Weekend fill-ins for John Donabie have always been quite good and I don't think Jim does anything that would upset the Weekend Morning Blue-Rinse set. Might do better with a more reliable audience, but that's chicken or the egg thinking. Under-rated. Go Brave. 7/10

Mark Elliot: The host of The Nightside magically transforms into the facilitator of People Helping People once each week. Mark is passionate and well-informed and brings a rather unique perspective to the airwaves. Most of us can't be a gay alcoholic drug addict and if you are, well, you probably couldn't get it together long enough to host a radio show. Mark relates to his audience well, and while I may not be in his target demographic (at least for People Helping People) I find his show entertaining and informative. I am amazed at the number of old drunks that phone in for support that I imagine would be pretty quick with the fag jokes at other times. I think Mark even helps some of these people. 7/10

John Donabie: John is a real pro. He sounds great and has the perfect attitude for morning radio. Always a treat on the weekend and even more when he has the chance to fill in for Woloshyn. He really has a tone of easy familiarity about him that makes it feel like he's just having a chat with you in the kitchen over coffee. When John interviews a guest the listener gets the sense that he is really interested in what the guests have to say and actually listens to their responses. Mr. Congeniality - as smooth and mellow as that first lazy coffee you drink with the Sunday paper. 9/10

Lisa Christiensen: What I know about cars could be written on the bookmark Lisa uses to keep her place in the vast volume of her knowledge. Not my favourite show, but the pace is good and Lisa knows her stuff. Is it wrong to give her extra points for being a woman in a male-dominated profession? I don't think so. 7/10*

Mark Cullen: You can learn alot from Mr. Cullen and he has never steered me wrong where my lawn is concerned. I recommend CIL Golf Green grass seed to everyone I know because that stuff is awesome. Friendly and helpful, the show can be a little bit dull when it gets into too many blotches-on-my-apple tree questions. Keep those knees dirty! 7/10*

Frank Cohn: The Radio Renovator is of great help to me and has been since long before I bought my house. I like to listen to pick up tips here and there. Frank is easy to listen to and manages the difficult task of explaining very visual concepts over the radio. I think that he gets a sense of the confidence level of the callers and really does them a great service by directing them to call a contracting service like Handyman Connection if they seem to need help. The greatest weakness of the show is the peculiar "co-hosting" by Christina Chernesky. Her frequent interjections are neither constructive nor neccessary and she should resist the temptation to turn every question into a (suspect) anecdote about her own experience. 6/10*

Chris Robinson: The Travel Show has always been a thinly disguised advertisement masquerading as information, and a little infotainment is fine here and there. The trip giveaway makes the show a guaranteed success (even though email entries kind of take away from the interest in the giveaway-it's more fun when the winner is a caller from the show). For those planning a vacation and those who simply dream of one day being able to go, The Travel Show can be helpful, but some of the questions that listeners ask could be handled at the top of the show (like Wheel of Fortune just gives players RSTLNE now) to force callers to think of something other than, "What kind of currency do they use in (insert destination here)," or, "Can I snorkel in (name of Caribbean Island here)." Again, Chris Robinson has his charms, but Chernesky makes for painfully irritating interchanges and interactions with callers. 6/10*

Christina Chernesky: CFRB has had years of trouble filling the Saturday day slot. Karen Horseman, Erica Ehm and the late Dan Gallagher have all taken a turn in the big chair. Now it comes down to Chernesky. Each successive host has made me sorry for not appreciating the previous one while they were there. Chernesky makes me sorry I wore hearing protection for all those years in heavy industry. A cavalcade of clichés and sorry old stories about her own life; she just can't let a guest or caller tell a story without making it into a Chernesky special. Everything that has ever happened to you or ever will happen to you has already happened to Christina. Or her sister. Or her father. Or her neices. Or her friend from university. Who the hell cares? Just listen and nod and smile (or the radio equivalent) and pretend (or pretend harder) to be interested. When people call in and say, "Hi, Christina, I love your show," I want to go find those people and how they could possibly love the show. Are they just being kind, or have they had some sort of cranial trauma? C'est ca. 2/10

The Real Estate Show: This show is hard to grade and be objective about because my interest waxes and wanes with my housing situation. If I was looking to move, I would pay more attention to the show. The information about the local housing market is interesting if only as a news item, and there are always people out there buying and selling homes, so the show is works for all of the people some of the time and some of the people some of the time. 6/10*

Alan Gelman: Car Talk is the second car maintenance and repair program on CFRB Saturday. Alan is a proper grease monkey and seems to be an actual honest mechanic. Amazing. Down-to-earth, Alan really helps people out in the mystifying world of the automobile. He keeps the show moving and has a good rapport with guest and caller alike. A special treat is when the guy from POINTTS (sorry if I can't remember the name just now...) comes on and people call in to find out if they can get out of their speeding tickets. Come on, folks. Just admit you were in the wrong and pay up. Take responsibility for your own actions. 7/10*

Peter Shurman: The Shurmanator (wow. That gets tired really quickly) rises from the ashes to take a mysterious new spot on Saturday afternoon. Peter is a good old radio guy from way back. A pleasant guy with a great radio voice, Peter does an adequate job keeping the tubes warm for the duration. He promises controversy on the weekend, but seldom delivers. Too centrist to take a really hard line on anything, he knows his stuff but he could take a cue or two from Bill Carroll in the controversy department. 7/10

Taylor Parnaby: Always the real deal, Taylor's wrap up of the Week That Was is concisely and neatly trimmed into a fat-free bundle for easy digestion. Taylor has the charming clipped presentation style of those solid old news anchors like Cronkite and his Tattered Little Datebook is a little hokey, but always informative. 10/10

Your Opinion Counts: John Wright from Ipsos Reid joins Donabie to go over opinion polls from the previous week. It helps to put the news into perspective. It is most interesting because the changing nature of world events means that each week people are polled on different topics from sports to politics to culture and religion. Good guests and informed comment. 9/10

Dini Petty: A bizarre little effort from Pink Chopper Pilot, Dini Petty. This show is produced on tape, runs for an hour and has all the momentum of a Prozac Nation Parade (if there was such a thing). It used to be odd when CFRB ran a sort of syndicated "Best Of" show from Mitch Albom's program, but because they had a week's worth of material from which to craft the show, it was usually pretty good. Now, Dini seemed to do a pretty good job on Cityline back in the day and she went on to some success with her eponymous show on the CTV Network, but on radio she just doesn't have any pizzazz. It just feels like she is phoning it in from home. In her pajamas. Her interview with one of Canada's first female air traffic controllers was painfully dull and turned embarassingly self serving for Dini as she regaled the audience with tales of her own piloting days and about commercial flying. I have heard enough about Dini and her petty complaints about commercial flying, thank-you very much. 4/10

Mindshift/Strange Days Indeed with Errol Bruce Knapp: I should begin by stating my bias upfront: I am fascinated with stories of UFOs, alien abduction, strange conspiracies and the parade of Things That Go Bump In The Night. I have been listening to EBK since SDI started three-hundred-and-some shows ago. That said, on with the critique. SDI has always been a nice bit of background entertainment for a Saturday night. The new combined Mindshift/SDI is still good, but not quite the same. The UFO show did tend to run a little long before and the new two hour format is more digestible (since nothing earth shattering seems to happen in UFOlogical circles week to week). Mindshift was difficult on Sunday nights before and tended to plod along at a sleepy pace. Unfortunately, the slot was first established by Richard Syrett who put on a dandy show with a wide range of eerie guests and topics. EBK's show runs slower with less variety, tending toward the psychic and ghost material and eschewing the broader field of crackpot (?) conspiracy theories. I enjoy Errol, but having read many books on the subjects of both ghosts and UFOs, I can follow along pretty easily. To a newcomer, I think the show is a little inaccessible. Valuable for being one of the very few spooky shows still chugging along. 6/10

Sue McGarvie: The show is called "Love and Relationships", but it ain't about platonic love and it's not about your relationship with your dog (at least, I sincerely hope not). If Dr. Ruth was the host it might be called "Zex und Zex". It's a sex show. Frank discussion about sex and sexuality from the boring to the bizarre. Everybody could stand to learn a little more in this area, and the show is usually informative. Not to make fun, but callers who ask questions about fundamental misunderstandings about the whole sexual process are always entertaining. I listened to Sue's first show a while back now and she has improved quite a bit in filling the sometimes tedious stretches between calls. The most amazing thing is that anybody would call management to complain about the language or descriptions used on the show. At midnight on Saturday, people that get that upset about hearing the words penis and anus in the same sentence should be in bed. Asleep. Alone. 6/10

Dr. Mickey Lester: Even before I had my daughter, I enjoyed Mickey's show. In his new streamlined one hour timeslot, Dr. Mickey's comforting radio-side manner reassures panicked parents every week. While some topics are bound to repeat week to week, I find that I have picked up a fair bit of information that was relevant to me and my family over the years. If nothing else, the show will send listeners away with conversational ammunition to use with co-workers and friends when the subject of children comes up. Easy listening. 7/10

Mary Tabak: The Parent Coach has moved in to take over what used to be the second half of the Dr. Mickey Lester Show. Useful to parents of older children who are struggling with questions of communication, discipline or development. I am not yet in the target audience for this show, but it moves along at a steady pace and isn't insulting, offensive or tedious. 7/10

Dale Goldhawk: Goldhawk fights back with his unique take on consumer advocacy. Great voice, charismatic and intelligent, Goldhawk manages to make return policies and customer service stories vaguely interesting. The show is worthwhile even if it just gets peoople to start to think before buying or buying into anything. 7/10

The Health Show: When I said about The Travel Show that a little infotainment was alright, I didn't mean The Health Show. The show may present an unbiased viewpoint, but is frequently blatently sponsored by a pharmaceutical or clinical company directly related to the topic of the day. Additionally, a one-hour show on a single health topic can be tedious and rather specific to just a small group of people suffering from a specific ailment. Often educational, but best enjoyed by the elderly and hypochondriacs. Now if only they could cure that nasty case of Chernesky they seem to have contracted...6/10

Dr. Joe Schwarcz: The Dr. Joe Show is a rookie player in the CFRB lineup, but I think he's been around for a while on CJAD in Montréal. Fun and informative, Dr. Joe has a genuine infectious enthusiasm for the science of the world around us. If only he had been my high school chemistry teacher I might be a scientist today instead of a bitter hack writer and artist. 7/10

Spider Jones: The Loveable One is what we like to call a good egg. Outside of his radio gig, he does community work and seems to really care about the future of youth in our society. Passionate and bright, Spider's take on the world is usually pretty refreshing and unpredictable. He has a little trouble with people's names, but it is pretty endearing over time. Awesome memory for sports statistics and usually hooks up with some interesting guests. I think he mentioned once that he had written a book, too. 7/10

Marc Saltzman: The whiz kid is all grown up with kids of his own. A good show for consumers of electronics and software (and most of us are), Tech Talk really does bring a confusing and overwhelming topic down to a level that even I can understand. He is good in interviews with a pleasant, conversational style and really keeps up on the computer and gaming industries. Great giveaways courtesy of corporate guests ensure steady questions from listeners. 6/10

Karyn Gordon: I must admit that I don't have much to say about Bridging the Gap with Karyn Gordon. It is a new show and similar to The Parent Coach from Sunday morning. Again, I am outside the demographic for this subject and not really very interested at this time. It wouldn't be fair to grade this one yet.

Nancy Woods: The Portfolio Chef does seem to know her stuff, but the delivery is stilted and wooden (wooden stilts?). I know that the subject matter is pretty dry and for the most part we don't want to sit around delving into the minutiae of finances and investment. For my part, my interest wanes where interest is concerned and I don't wish to invest to much time in investments. Just a really boring hour of radio, unfortunately. The show could be spiced up through the addition of a seasoned host (just not Chernesky). 4/10

Focus Ontario: Now this is the kind of show that I really enjoy on the weekend. Bill Carroll hosts what I think is a radio spin-off version of the Global Television show. Solid, smart and entertaining, the politics are tempered by the distance of a few days and can be viewed in the round. Worthy fare for good old 'RB. 9/10

Ask Ellie & Lisi: Ellie Tesher brings her newspaper advice column to the air. The twist here is sharing part of the show with her daughter who sometimes disagrees strongly with her mother. Not too much tension, though, as they seem rather inconveniently to actually like each other. Might be more fun with lots of raised voices and cuss words. If you can't decide what you want to do on your own, you have much bigger problems than any radio program will ever solve. Servicable time filler of interest to the Dear Abby crowd. 6/10

Andrew Krystal: Joined each week by his biggest fan, himself, Andrew Krystal dishes up more of the mediocre mouth-breather fare that stood him in such good stead amidst the jock-sniffing set over at MOJO Radio. He whiningly delivers weak humour with an "oh, wait I just thought of a really funny comment about what you said five minutes ago" sense of timing. He has his loyal followers, though. They are always thrilled to get through on the phone (although some of that excitement might be over learning to use the phone...) and tell him how much they miss him over on the OTHER station. They feel a void in his absence. I feel one in his presence. A void is a vacuum. A vacuum sucks. And so does Andrew Krystal. I just listen to the whole show expecting the fart jokes to start. 2/10

In Closing: Some of the specific topic shows get lower grades than they might because I am comparing the programs across the entire schedule. Because they do not generally explore a range of material, they lose points against the typical open-format shows which mix topics, guests and call-in segments.
I wrote this entire review off the top of my head in two sessions, and some of my opinions might have been influenced by the most recent show I listened to for each host or program, but I tried to think about a range of shows to inform each review. CFRB is still my choice for talk radio in Toronto and remains far superior to American talk radio which tends to stay away from the kind of diverse comment heard on 1010. We live in a complex city with issues that are unknown to most of middle America, or even rural Ontario. CFRB provides a valuable measuring stick in the ebb and flow of the tide of public opinion.

UGH: Relevance & Irreverence

2004-11-22T19:10:00.000-05:00

Let me open my first real entry by explaining why I am UGH. Or more properly lowercase: ugh. A quick look around the 'net will produce a gob-smackingly high volume of pages that reference this little three-letter word. Understandable, really, as it is as useful and succinctly descriptive as it is phonetically blunt.
The Miriam Webster online dictionary defines the word this way:

Main Entry: ugh
Pronunciation: often read as '&g or '&amp;[k] or '&
Function: interjection
-- used to indicate the sound of a cough or grunt or to express disgust or horror

I used a similar definition on a t-shirt I produced ages ago and on business cards and letterhead for my freelance work. I have used ugh as a name for my company (registered as a sole proprietership in the province of Ontario, Canada) and as a personal monogram for about fifteen years now. I came to use it through a round-about joke that I shared with my Aunt Nancy many moons ago...
(This is where the image should go wavy and zoopy harp music should play indicating the fade to: FLASHBACK!)
I used to work for my Aunt Nancy in Toronto's Kensington Market at a store called, "Get Dressed". One dreary Saturday afternoon as we looked out into a damp street devoid of the usual bustling crowds of Bohemian bargain hunters, I indicated the vacant storefront across the street.
"I think I am going to open a store over there," I told my Aunt.
"Oh," she asked, "And what are you going to sell?"
"The exact same stuff as you," I replied, "But at half the price."
"Oh Really?"
"Yes. And I will open an hour later and come to work in my pajamas and every morning I will look across at your store as I drink my coffee and I will say ugh."
"Ugh?"
"Yes," I went on, "In fact, that is what I will call the store. Ugh. Just ugh. But not the word, just the sound. And when I answer the phone I will just go: uuuughhghghghghgh. Actually, I will hire somebody to answer the phone and just do that. That will be their whole job."
My dear Aunt Nancy was not especially impressed. Or concerned.
Later in life, as I began to do freelance and contract work, I wanted to open a business banking account. To this end, I went to the appropriate Ministry office to establish myself as a sole proprietorship. As I waited in line to file my paperwork, I was still deciding on a name but by the time my turn came up, I still hadn't chosen one. Remembering that day at the store, I wrote down: Lowercase u, lowercase g, lowercase h. That's it. When the clerk told me that for an extra five dollars I could search the provincial records to see if anybody was using the name, I suggested that I probably didn't need the service. The clerk read my choice and snickered, "No, I guess not."
I have been using it in various capacities ever since. I even reverse-engineered the acronym to come up with a longer name: Underground Graphics House. Appropriate because I have for many years been working out of my parents' basement, and later a basement apartment and an apartment that was half underground. Now I have a house and I am happily above ground, but I still like the ugh and I decided to use it for the name of my blog.
Additionally, I called myself ughman on the NTN trivia game that is played with radio frequency keyboards in bars across North America. I haven't played for a while, but when I did I got onto the national scoreboard from time to time, so drunks across the continent have seen my name up there on the idiot box.
Now that I have made something of an introduction, I will carry on with (hopefully) more interesting entries.

Be Gentle, It's My First Time...

2004-11-22T19:03:00.000-05:00

The Blog is off and running. I hope I can keep up with it. I have been less than diligent in updating my existing webpage at http://joshuahardaker.netfirms.com so I hope that I manage to get in here more frequently. I just want to use this site to make some of my opinions known to whomever might be so bored and tragic that they have time to drop by. I have no idea what I will write about, but I expect that public transit, money and my local talk radio station (CFRB 1010 in Toronto) will enter into it soon.
Write to you later,
Josh.
Remember: You shouldn't feel bad about being stupid. Everybody else is too.