Tag: Me and Mine

Two Years

Noonish tomorrow I will have been doing this blog for two years. I was blogging for years before that at other places but for two years, I have had this pulpit. I can’t for the life of me think of anything of value that has come of it other than the daily pleasure at seeing the stats and the converstaions with some of those people represented by those stats. Some things I might draw from the 1849 posts prior to this one:

  • I like music less than I thought I did and I like sports more. A quick look at the number of post under category tells you that. Unlike sports where I have a deep and abiding relationship with my favoured teams, I have an interest in politics similar to my interest in NASCAR and Formula 1. I watch for the crashes. I am quite surprised by those who are strongly Tory or NDP. I dislike Tories but only due to their consistent record of practical incompetence rather than for any theorical basis. I vote NDP but whenever I think I will pop round for a night of envelope stuffing, the whole fellow traveller thing puts me off.
  • I find the discourse of the nature and place of the web and blogging is quite poor. Participation in the medium appears to qualify in itself as expertise. Could there be a more classic example? The web is less interesting and less important that fans grant it but it is more promising than most futurists project. It wil be replaced by an unknown and this era will seem quaint. That is as certain as death and taxes. We will obey fascist ants controlling it all one day.
  • Very little consideration is given to the downside of the medium of the internet generally and blogging speficically. Far from being a self-correcting system, it is most often a self-justifying one, confusing opinion for fact and popularity for reliability. I have not become more intellegent through blogging. I have likely become stupider. Will may be feeling the same thing. I have warned people away from its use in professional contexts and been later thanked. Yet I will continue to do this. I can’t think of a process other than blogging where so many people in it feel it a curse. Maybe relying on employment for income. Quitting is often a badge of honour. It is a fantastic waster of time and productivity which, like pollution, is never calculated into the cost-benefit analysis.
  • Blogs do not compound knowledge or create opportunities for collective advancement of a proposition. Where there is a shared interest there can be growth in an idea but for the most part it is genial yapping – not a bad thing in itself but I have also come to have quite visceral dislike for individuals who I have never met and who otherwise have absolutely no affect on the course of my life. On the other hand, I have learned much about being gay in America, being a former artillery officer, being on anti-depression medication, Kylie Minogue and central and western New York State.
  • Of all the things I post I am happiest about the photos. I am proud to share my ribs with you. I have chronicled the sparking of my new fascination with the USA which has little to do with 9/11, the war on terror, societal envy or access to sun in the winter. It’s the BBQ and the bold freedom to celebrate slow cooked meat. I love the experience of experiencing and that is always better with a smokey tomato based sauces. And beer. And jets on sticks.

I may have more to say about this before the end of tomorrow and some of you might care to point out the hypocrisies in what is above. That is fair. Anniversaries ought to be days of atonement as well as celebrations.

Seven Hours

Who knew that the beaches of New England were 7 hours away from Lake Ontario? Who knew that once you have 512 MB on your camera you get 342 photos to look through when you get home? Who knew that I would have first-and-first-cousins-once-removed-in-law-to-my-second-cousin with whom I might go to see the Bruins play if the NHL ever gets going again? Who knew?

One More Day Closer to Deadwood


New Englanders in Iraq bowling candlepin

I am taking a week off this spring. There is a Boston wedding to attend which will be fun but that is at the end of the week. First, we are off to the Gulf of Maine coast in search of friends and family and a good amount of candlepin bowling. Ontario teases you with five pin as well as Freddie Flintson big ball ten pin but I grew up with candlepin – played only in Atlantic Canada and New England. Whatever I play, I score pins in my head one point at a time like candlepin – like I measure distance in feet rather than metric. It is fair and equitable every pin being meaningful. I do not, however, throw a ball like the Friday night Brookfield Elks softball pitchers of my 1980-ish teens at the Beazley Lanes near little T.O.’s Fletchers Restaurant and the old Crappy Tire. They might as well have been throwing fastball, ball bouncing once on the wood before hitting the pins well off the floor. Pins in the gutter and, half the time, into the next lane. You can’t do that with Freddy Flinston big ball. First time I played Freddieball with Jim from Newfie after passing the bar we hit strike after strike. Like shooting fish in a bucket. You also leave the pins where they fall, leaving you to deal with them through the second and third balls. No sweeping machine delay. You can hit the deadwood among half the others still standing and miss them all, guided by those down to the gutter. Cruel mistress the deadwood. Gotta learn to play the deadwood.

The game dates from the 1880s, when a shipment of narrow pins – later widened to two inches wide – gave a guy an idea. You can find an inordinately detailed history here…and another here. I recall hearing that Howie Meeker brought it to Newfoundland after he left the Maple Leafs and before he was Don Cherry before Don Cherry on Hockey Night in Canada. In 2003, CBC radio’s Inside Track ran an 11:30 minute piece on the sport. [Click the link and a .ram or RealAudio file will trigger.]

Funtime Lanes in Holyoke, near our Sunday night stop, has 20 candlepin lanes…maybe the most westerly in North America. Smokefree and bumper bowling for the weejins. Practice.

Scissor Sisters

Listening to this for the first time, I am struck how my Elton John, Queen and disco pre-teen pre-punk junior high self was as entirely immersed in what gay culture made it to Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia AM radio. It does make one want to revisit the discography from Captain Fantastic… and back.

Interesting to compare the similar trajectories yet quite distinct 70s nostalgia choices of these folk, The Darkness and Franz Ferdinand.

Easter Monday

In the UK today is called a bank holiday but here the banks were even open. Is there a country more keep to drop holidays than Canada? It is on all the evidence the best day to buy meat as the entire A&P meat section was on about 50% off and, so, it has been a day or roasting and braising and stockmaking and freezing amongst a bout of keen spring cleaning.

The day has not been without personal growth. This morning, on NPR, there was a discussion of the short lived genre of boogaloo. I don’t think I knew there was in fact a genre as I only really knew the word from “Back off Boogaloo” by Ringo Starr on one of those really poor early 70s albums he foisted on unsuspecting tweens to mid-teens. Apparently it was a word used by pal to Ringo, Marc Bolan of T-Rex – the greatest band no one much listens to anymore. Not even me as I only have lps and the turntable is in storage. But this is not about Ringo but the recent release of The Rough Guide to Boogaloo:

Boogaloo originated in New York’s inner-cities in the late 1960s and spawned an array of excellent bands and vocalists, but it has never received much broad recognition. The Rough Guide to Boogaloo aims to change that, nicely showcasing the trademark blend of Cuban salsa rhythms and American soul.

I have and enjoyed the introduction to the first wave provided by The Rough Guide to Ska and have just bought but not listened to The Rough Guide to Dub. This series serves as a preliminary step to deeper obsessions which often require hunting out Trojan Records compilations.

2005 Hockey Sports Pool

OK – I couldn’t get up any interest for an all-hockey pool either. So we are going to go with a mixed sports pool this year. Have your picks in by Friday 18 March 2005 at 5 pm EST – that is this week.

The Rules

A. US College Basketball – CBS Sports should provide all you need.

1. Name the final four teams in the mens NCAA championship. 5 points for each correct pick.
2. Ten points for the NCAA mens basketball champion.

B. Hockey – check TSN.ca for helpful household hints.

3. Name the winner of the Memorial Cup, Canada’s Jr A Men’s hockey championship. 10 points.
4. Pick four scorers in the Memorial Cup. One point for each goal or assist.
5. Pick the winner of the AHL’s Calder Cup. Ten points.

C. Fitba – try BBC Sports for information.

6. Pick the two teams in the English FA Cup Final. Five points each.
7. Pick the winner of the FA Cup. 10 points.
8. Pick the winner of the Scottish Premier League – not a Cup, #1 in the league table. [Ed.: Hint – it will likely rhyme with “Brangers” or “Beltic”.] Ten points.

D. Baseball –
Try the home web sites for Boston and the Yankees.

9. Who wins when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 11 April 2005? Ten points.
10. Who wins when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 13 April 2005? Ten points.
11. Who starts as pitcher for each team when the Red Sox and Yankees play on 14 April 2005? Ten points for each correct pick.

Comments? Other questions – other than my weight – you are interested in?

Five Things

I usually do not like “memes” or viral bloggy games and tests that never cumulate or provide us with sound statistical charts but I am too lazy to stick by my usual paper standards this morning. Why? Nils has a good post following on one of these themey-thingies called 5 Things I’ve Done That You Probably Haven’t. Nils are pretty good – except that he is in the entertainment industry and a former radiohead so all his access to celebrities are cheat-a-ramas of the umpteenth degree. And frankly, Nils, anyone who has tried and failed to waterski has waterskied upside-down if only for a moment.

So what have I done? My mind is drawn to celebrity and thinks I ought to go without reference to current work related things:

  • I spoke with Tony Randall in passing (who hasn’t);
  • I taught Billy Bragg to play bar room shuffleboard (rehash, yawn);
  • I invented the term “vitamin K” for Keiths ale (and I am sticking by that one);
  • and…and…good lord…I really am dull…

See, this is why I am no good at these things. I think of things like “I didn’t really like the pie at Helen’s of Michias but really enjoyed the view and the staff’s pleasant attitude” or “I was very happy when me and my grannie-in-law did shooters the night the Jays won the World Series”. So, if you know me, please tell me what I did that makes me as cool as Nils. Hmmm. I did participate in the invention of the one-afternoon game called “bumball” where five-a-side boot a soccer ball high in the air towards the other team and one of them has to trap the ball only with their arse without falling at which time the entire group shouts “BUMBAAAALLLL” as loudly as they can. It was undergrad and it was just before, during or after happy hour…I think.

The Road

A morning meeting in Newmarket, three hours west. You learn as you wrinkle there are morning people and there are middle-of-the-night-get-in-the-car-drive-to-Florida people. I like dawn being part of my morning person lifestyle. Dawn is an hour and a half away.

While I am enjoying the delights of the rental car – ooooh, a grey Taurus – why not perhaps comparable partake of the delights of the archives? The link usually sits down to the lower right. Today, you can enjoy the past, my past, right here ordered by date and topic for your perusing pleasure. 1616 posts of pure time waste. 22 months of my life – gone. Find the dullest or the wrongest post.

Conference

Being at a conference – even a good one like this – is like being on an elevator for two days, all looking in the same direction. The room we are sitting in is a bit something. Clearly a nod to generic euro-aristo, fake faded tapestries, gold trim on cream wall, far too many bevelled mirrors. The site of wedding parties – grannies have sat where I have sat ecstatic at the match and finding themselves surprisingly beyond their two wine limit. High school pals have proven themselves less than they were remembers. Five hundred bands that have not made it have not made it here. The room shows it bit. The aged gold upholstry has aged more than intended, gone pilly. Faux antique finish now looks less faux but not antique either. Beers have spilled on this carpet and been cleaned up again.


Many still keen early on

Conference orgaization has always interested me in in how it is as mannered and structed as a high Anglican mass. Who decided we need to meet like this? A few years ago I discussed creating a consultancy in disruptive converence giving, playing with the format, the book of common prayer, with the goal of making people think and learn. It only got as far as me saying and writing “zymurgy” whenever “synergy” was expected and even likely still heard.


Fast-talking man needs to get more information out after lunch is over

Two presenters present two ends of the scale. A hyper interested fast talker cannot get all his ideas out. He sounds like a bobolink, his words falling upon each other. He should attempt multiple information streams, speaking about one thing, his power point slides working on another theme, the hand-outs giving more on something else. He could be flanked by two blue-glow screens on different subjects, his pace and volume steadily increasing. Another speaker is from MegCo and he is grabbing us with the topic “what is outsourcing” – he is a good speaker but someone else, a committee perhaps, wrote his script, told him to run TV ads as part of the presentation. Apparently, “key consultants say that outsourcing has great growth potential” – dandy. Twice he refers to his power point lap top as being “McGivered” and says that we have to bear with him. How would disruptive conference consulting deal with this moment? Someone in the crowd might laugh too much at the ads and say out loud “hahaha – I saw that on TV!” If the speaker is a “recognized leader” does that make those in attendence at the conference “recognized followers”?


Friday afternoon the seats start to empty

I am a fidgetter. I fidget. I move to the back of the room so I can get up fuss with my papers, go get a juice when the speaker is not on an area that applies to me like the jurisdiction of a tribunal I cannot reach. By the end of Friday afternoon, even the speaker jokes about we who remain.