Wow! Has It Really Been 25 Years?

Reading my RSS feeds today I came across articles commemorating John Lennon's tragic murder in 1980 -- yes boys and girls, that's 25 years.

Made me think of where I was when I heard and well I don't know how accurate my memory is, I'm pretty sure I was just coming out of an evening Psyc course at Okanagan College. Think I went to the lounge in the Capri Hotel to drown my sorrows.

And as I've probably told you before, my theory is that Chapman was really trying to shoot Yoko who was responsible for fucking up every second track on Double Fantasy.

"Imagine" if Chapman were a better shot!

Why Neil Armstrong Only Took A Small Step

One of my RSS feeds provides famous "Quotes for the Day" and recently one of them was attributed to Neil Armstrong and it had nothing to do with his famous moonwalk.

Here it is:

I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street.


Neil Armstrong in an interview with Walter Cronkite

Some days I think he must have been on to something!

BOOM

I heard a hell of boom about 6pm tonight.

It must have come from all those Lions fans jumping off the bandwagon. Can the nuckleheads be far behind?

Beautiful!

(oh, and I had an Air Transat "hostess" in my condo this pm -- you'll need to email me for more details!)

I make a move to the digital age

While some of my friends are in the process of making significant changes in their lives (moving, looking for new jobs, etc.) I've settled for a smaller change.

After embracing CDs since they were released over ten years ago I'm now migrating all of my CDs to digital formats and have purchased some extra hardware (see photo)

so that I can essentially stream these CDs using my home computer and play them on my stereo.

I've counted and I have about 1400 CDs so the process of ripping them and storing them on the harddrive is proving to be a little time consuming. I'm hoping to have the process completed by the end of the year.

God I need a life!

When Friends Go Astry

A friend of mine recently posted in his blog that he'd taken an infrequent weekend off -- something he claims he hasn't done much while living in Paris for that last view years.



Lex, if this is what happens, I beg you not to take any more time off!

Are The Brits Still Suffering From Mad Cow?

Saw an entertainment news item in the paper this morning stating that the British magazine Top Film has named Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas as the top film ever.

While I think this is a great movie ("As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.") it's some of the other movies in the list that I might quibble with.


Here are the top 25.

1. Goodfellas
2. Vertigo
3. Jaws
4. Fight Club
5. The Godfather: Part II
6. Citizen Kane
7. Tokyo Story
8. The Empire Strikes Back
9. The Lord of the Rings trilogy
10. His Girl Friday
11. Persona
12. Chinatown
13. Manhattan
14. Taxi Driver
15. It's a Wonderful Life
16. The Apartment
17. Once Upon A Time In The West
18. All About Eve
19. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
20. Apocalypse Now
21. Crash
22. Sunrise
23. The Godfather
24. Rear Window
25. Sunset Boulevard

(Really, Fight Club at number 4 -- who are they kidding!)

There Are No Pirates In Russia

Came across this site, Allofmp3 which from my reading of things looks like a quasi-legal site with inexpensive music downloads. This site allows you to choose the format for your"mp3s" (sic) and you pay not per song or album but by how many megabytes you download.

The site is based in Russia and this seems to be how they get around the copyright issues.

Anyhow, I took a chance and created an account with a $10 (US) initial balance and have downloaded 20 songs for about $2.00 (for those of you without your calculators running that's about 10 cents a song!). And while I'm not 100% sure of the legality of the site I'm pretty sure that they don't provide the artists with anything so I'm a little reluctant to fully endorse it. But if you were just going to download it anyway......

These online personality tests are bullshit!

Well thanks to Alex I found a site that informed me that I was, to my horror,

Homer Simpson




Click here to see who you are.

News: Good or Bad -- You Decide

Check out these two links and decide which is good news and which is bad (or maybe they're both good or bad depending upon your perspective).

Good or Bad?


Bad or Good?

Talk About Hyperbole

I realize that this is a serious situation, impacting many, but I'm going to have to stop listening to the media coverage of the pending teachers' job action in good old BC.

This morning, Bill Good was interviewing BCTF President Jinny Sims on Vancouver's CKNW radio station. During the interview Ms Sims equated the possible illegal teacher's strike in this province with the kind of social action undertaken by reformers like Nora (sic) Parks (click the play button below to here this prattle).


Not since the NHL strike/lockout where Trevor Linden compared hockey players to surgeons have I heard such nonsense.

UNBELIEVABLE

If you don't believe me just press the play button below!!!

SI Finally Gets It Right

Will the Flames be the team to break the Sports Illustrated jinx??

Who knows.

But you've got to love their accumen in rationally reviewing the Canucks and ranking them where they deserve based on merit and not hype.

The juice man knows what team to back...and he's acting on it. He'll at least be able to watch some playoff hockey after his move.

When will the rest of you dreamers lose your blinders and see the light?

I can't take it any longer...

The CBC(Radio) strike has been going on much too long.
I've been forced to listen to one of the other news/talk-radio stations and they keep playing these horrid commercials. I really don't know how much longer I can take it.

The Insanity Begins

Well, today at 6:23 pm (PST) Fall began. And with fall, the loss of daylight, the changing of the leaves, the start of another school term, and other awful things.






If you don't believe me just press the play button below!!!

{if you can't hear anything view this in IE}

Blurring of Boundaries

Saw mention of this on TV today.

There's a Flash game(click on image below) that illustrates just how blurred the boundary between pop music stars and porn stars has become.







How high can you score?

It Ain't Me Babe

Well I guess based on the following I have to eat some crow about my previous statements regarding the lack of crime in Port Moody. And by the way, this didn't happen at the Well!




Port Moody Stabbing
Sep, 03 2005 - 9:00 AM

PORT MOODY(CKNW/AM980) - There's been an early morning stabbing in Port Moody.

Police were called to a local pub about 1:20am

A fight between two groups of men began inside the bar and then moved outside.

Three males in one group were assaulted by members of the other group.

A 25 year old man is in hospital being treated for multiple stab wounds.

It's believed the wounds are non life threatening.

A 28 year old man was treated for serious cuts after being hit over the head with a bottle.

The suspects fled on foot but police say they've identifed someone they call a person of interest in the case.

Who would have thunk it?

We'll I'm now totally disaffected with the rest of humanity.

Earlier today while I was once again humiliating myself on the golf course someone behaved in such a way that I've actually lost whatever little faith I had left in man/person-kind.


Believe it or not, while I was on the golf course, someone stole my stinky sandals that I had left under my car while I golfed (not wanting to stink up the trunk)leaving me to have to wear my golf shoes on my ride to the pub!

Is nothink sacred?

Does this woman wear Levi's?

Well I don't know the definitive answer but, I do know that she (along with the rest of Jefferson Airplane) were among the first bands to use their music to sell products (is shill to harsh a word?). In 1967 Levi's began using a song by the Airplane to promote their jeans (click here to listen -- hard to believe anybody would be enticed to buy jeans based on this!). This little ditty was included on 2400 Fulton Street (released March 1987), a two CD compilation of Jefferson Airplane music.

While I don't specifically recall this advertising campaign I did become aware of it while listening this morning to on an excellent CBC Radio One summer show, O'Reilly on Advertising (airing Mondays, 7:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. and Saturdays, 9:30 a.m. - 10:00 a.m.). I've managed to catch bits of a couple of installments of this and highly recommend it (unfortunately, archives of previous episodes do not seem to be available).

Fake Etymology -- Early Urban Legends

Urban legends, urban myths.



Everyone seems to know of an example of a popular story that has no basis in truth -- these are now commonly known as urban legends or urban myths.

Well, today at the pub (yes, I'm aware that this seems to be the main source for many of my entries here so far [maybe I should go out and get a life]), I came across a couple of individuals (Brits!) who argued convincingly that the derivation of the word "posh" was based on an acronym from an expression that related to the phrase " Port Out, Starboard Home", which supposedly referred to the most desirable cabin locations on cruise ships travelling around the British colonies in the Far East. As one online source points out:

"Before
air-conditioning, such cabins would remain in the shade en route".


This false derivation seems to be supported by the online sources I've checked

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/po/posh.htm

http://tafkac.org/language/etymology/posh_etymology_of.html).

When the people at the pub provided me with the apparently false origin of this word I was initially convinced.

I'm now wondering why we seem to be so willing to accept instances of explanations that seem to make common sense. Why are we, as a species so gullible?

I know that one of the most difficult tasks I encounter in my job is to try and foster critical thinking skills among my students. Why can't everyone be the skeptical old bastard that I am?

Kill Bill? -- Not Quite Yet

Over the last couple of weeks I've heard a couple of cuts from last year's
release by good old Capt. Kirk himself, William Shatner and, believe it or not,
it's quite compelling.

In case you haven't heard the album (Has
Been), here's a link that will allow you to stream his cover of
Pulp's "Common People" ... .mov (link from shoutlink.com).

Bill's has also been out promoting the album. 
Here's a link to a page where
you can see his live performance of the song on The Tonight Show last October
(this link also has a couple of other videos of Joe Jackson's recent TV
appearances).

Perspective is everything.

A friend sent me an email with some images of work produced by artist Julian Beever that dramatically demonstrates the importance of perspective.

This first image of pavement art is one viewed from the perspective intended by Beever.



This is the image from the "wrong" perspective.



As I understand it, this type of work represents an optical anamorphose, a specific case of anamorphic images which one site defines as "optical perspective toys."

Here are a couple of links you might be interested in exploring:

Julian Beever's Pavement Art

Anamorphoses, the World of Hidden Images

Can Anyone Explain?

Over the last few months I've created something of a discussion at my local pub. I've asked several people who were born in Scotland if they could explain the difference between the use of the terms "Scotch" and "Scottish". My argument is that it is perfectly okay to call someone who was born in Scotland Scotch. This usage seems in accord with common dictionary definitions as below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Scotch (skŏch)
n.

1. (used with a pl. verb) The people of Scotland.
2. Scots English.
3. Scotch whisky.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

However, when I've used this term to refer to people from Scotland, these very same people appear somewhat offended and argue that the correct term is "Scottish". When I ask these people to explain why "Scotch" is incorrect they haven't been able to give me any reasonable explanations and just say that my use of the term "Scotch" to refer to people from Scotland is incorrect if not offensive.

Does anyone have any idea why this may be the case?