Spring into flu - and other media created illnesses - part deaux · Thursday April 30, 2009 by colin newell
10 reasons you know you might/might not have swine flu!
- Number 10 – It’s Friday. 99% of cases appear on Fridays.
- Number 9 – The sun is shining. You feel good. Don’t be deceived – you are not well!
- Number 8 – You partied on Thursday night and your throat is sore the next day. It’s swine. Stay in bed.
- Number 7 – You had a pulled pork sandwich at your favorite BBQ joint. You feel queasy. This is swine flu.
- Number 6 – You really don’t want to go to Mexico with your girlfriend – that anxiety you are feeling? Swine.
- Number 5 – You woke up next to a stranger you met at a Vancouver club. Is this swine? No but you are crazy.
- Number 4 – Home sick. Updating Facebook. Boss catches you. You’re fired. Swine.
- Number 3 – You find yourself in an actual James Bond movie… but it is not a movie, it’s real – and James nemesis, Fang, has locked you into a mysterious machine that makes you look sexy and 60’s retro chique… Swine.
- Number 2 – You have just smoked 3 cartons of Lucky Strike and are not feeling so lucky anymore… and we all know smoking is harmless
- And the number one reason you may or may not have swine flu…
- You haven’t had a weekend off since Christmas… and something had to give!
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Spring into the truth - I mean, why not - America and Canada · Sunday April 26, 2009 by colin newell
Keywords being Napolitano, McCain, 911 Myth – Border security – Terrorists from Canada.
Okay. Listen up. I saw no point in writing my own spin on this… because James sums it up with aplomb.
Bottom line (for those too weak to click on the link above…)
911 terrorists did not cross the Canadian border into the US prior to the 911 attacks. They came from Britain, the United Arab Emirates and… Florida. Yea. Florida, where they were doing flight training. And they had been in America “legally” for some time.
One of the most obvious sub-thoughts about the American zeitgeist is the following (which I believe to be true…)
- Americans spend about as much time thinking about Canada as they do wondering if their next breath contains life giving oxygen (which is to say, rarely)
Americans are not alone in their blithe ignorance of Canada. I had a telephone conversation with a colleague in Australia who was unsure about what currency stiffens up our wallets; American dollars, Euro, what?
Actually, mate… we live in Igloo and we don’t use money – we trade Hudson Bay pelts and get from A to B by canoe… generally in inhospitable weather…
and that has been the rumor for over a hundred years…
as for the right now from the Canadian perspective?
Get used to explaining to our Southern friends…
as if they will listen.
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Spring into inactvity - our new generation of lazy kewl · Monday April 20, 2009 by colin newell
One of my favorite phrases is Hip to be square…
When I turned 40 (more than a few years back…) I was worried that I would become entirely invisible to all those young people around me…
click on photo at left for the latest Corner Drip cartoon
And considering that I work at a very popular Canadian University populated largely by 20-somethings, that would have been a whole lot of invisibility.
I mean, everyone wants to be, even slightly, relevant.
But I was wrong. And I am still sorta cool. In a grand illusion kind of way… But for the most part, for reasons just outside of my grasp.
And I really do not think it has anything to do what what I am doing…
It has more to do with what everyone else (in the young’n age bracket) are not doing.
I figure I am just out there living the dream… burning the candle with a flame-thrower… drinking 5 cups of coffee at a time so I can keep up with my own timetable.
And it is not like I am that busy. I work for 7 hours, taking about an hours worth of breaks a day – come home and make a gourmet dinner with my wife – put in about 2 or 3 hours on writing projects and web site obligations… shower, rinse and repeat.
Seems like that would have been considered a normal day… in 1974…
A movie making student friend of mine describes me as the coolest guys he knows…
I look behind myself every time I hear stuff like that. Surely I am not the calendar boy for Good as it gets. Dang, I was expecting to be a geezer by now… wearing tattered polyester pants and a weedy Nike golf shirt from Value Village… smelling vaguely like a combination of Canadian blended whiskey, Aqua Velva and sketchy personal hygiene.
But no…
Instead, life on campus has forced me into Gap-ville. I wear Levi’s, Fluevog shoes, cotton monochrome banana republic t-shirts… and I (gasp) shower every morning and shampoo with an all-in-one volume enriching organic formulation…
What have I become? Is this the future for the middle aged? Retro-chic into our golden years? Who is going be rad if the young folks won’t come up to the plate? Sigh… guess it’s gonna be me and my similarly aged hunky stud dudes.
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Spring into weird behavior - Billy Bob Thornton on CBC Q · Wednesday April 8, 2009 by colin newell
CBC Radio host and national media treasure, Jian Ghomeshi, has a heart of gold… and a vocal delivery that sounds like a combination of crushed velvet and a tropical breeze.
And after listening to and watching the interview with B-List actor, C-List musician and certifiable dirt-bag – Billy Bob Thornton… I am pretty confident that Jian is a saint.
For me, Jian Ghomeshi is the sound of Canadian pop culture and the Canuck perspective on, well… everything. His recent interview with Gordon Lightfoot was nothing less than seminal – my point being, what other radio personality can so radically define and describe how Lightfoot is so quintessentially Canadian… that one really does not know where the fabric of Canadian culture and pop history begins and the very nature of Lightfoot’s music ends.
And so it was as Jian Ghomeshi attempted to make sense of Billy Bob’s mini-melt down and tantrum – while maintaining some semblance of continuity… meanwhile Billy Bob’s bandmates in the band the Boxmasters looked utterly wilting as their leader attempted to lead Jian down a David Lynchian avenue of nonsensical answers, suppositions and self-indulgent rhetoric.
I mean really. Who in their right mind would compare himself to Tom Petty and then when stimulated for details on his music, Thornton instead provided a Lewis Carrol on a zine he subscribed to called Famous Monsters of Film-land.
Drugs were clearly on Billy Bob.
Then again, it was 6 o clock this morning in the CBC studios in Toronto… and if you watch the video closely you can see Billy Bob combine an air of utter contempt and at the same time giving the viewers a sense of the darkest American zeitgeist available to Thornton – my wife pointing out… “That dude looks evil…”
Evil. Arrogant. Self-important. And stupid.
Wasting perfectly good airtime on CBC radio.
Anyway. Have a look at the video. You will be glad you did.
And play it safe: Do not call Billy Bob an actor!
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Surfing Vancouver's crime wave - bullets chapter #1 · Wednesday February 11, 2009 by colin newell
There was yet another round of gun-play in Suburban Vancouver, this time involving two vehicles circling each other through a Shell gas station and a Tim Hortons parking lot in Langley – Wednesday morning.
Startled employees at the gas vendor noted that half a dozen shots were fired as two vehicles circled the pumps before heading across the street to the Tim Hortons parking lot… Ostensibly for double-doubles and timbits.
Ok. So you know how I feel about gouging at the pumps? And although this is probably frightening for the staff, doesn’t this activity serve several useful purposes?
-Gun fire at gas stations can lead to unexpected explosions… burning or killing the bad guys. That’s good, yea?
-And if gas stations become known as shooting galleries, maybe people will drive less and the price of gas will go down.
Besides. If the explosive column of flame and smoke does not slow down the mobsters then maybe the lethal dose of trans-fats at Tim Hortons will.
Vancouver area police are currently issuing this stern warning to gangsters, mobsters, crime wannabees and their cracked out Ho mistresses…
“Stop! Stop! Stop this incessant nonsense or we are going to park outside your home and allow journalists from Global-TV to ask embarrassing questions! So stop it already!”
Yea. That will work.
I have an idea. Eliminate this useless war on drugs. Legalize and regulate the hard stuff. And leave the unemployed gansta types to find a career in that other criminal realm…
Politics.
Move over Gordon Campell, this homey wants a piece of the action!
