Category: Uncategorized

Take My Junk Mail…Please

What do you notice?

Paul Lima had a vague feeling he wasn’t getting any mail. When his mother phoned wondering why he hadn’t cashed his birthday cheque, “the penny dropped,” the Toronto freelance writer says.

He called Canada Post, which said he had changed his address in person on Nov. 17.

“Not me,” he said.

I noticed how little the guy must have been getting in the mail. But how long was the person not noticing the daily junk mail and bills? There must be something that would have been noticed if two days went by. What do I get in the mail? Banks statements of sone sort or another. Bills. Magazines. The Child Tax Credit mailbox money. Yet – what a drag to have it happen.

Chat a la Friday

Once again it is the day before Saturday. It has been a good week around
here. No rocking out or anything but spring sprang and, really, that is half the
battle of the entire calendar:

  • Update: It must be a requirement that you can prove that you have
    been hit on the temple with a hammer recently to get to be a conservative
    columnist. It has to be. Look at Andrew
    Coyne’s shell game     in his column today:

    Of course, part of the reason the provinces are so
    loose with the coin is the benefactions of Uncle Ottawa, which Ontario and
    Quebec in particular have proved adept at squeezing in all the right places. The
    McGuinty government, which made the fictional “$23-billion gap” its war cry,
    quietly pocketed over $13.2-billion in federal cash last year, a 34% increase
    from just two years ago. Quebec, likewise, enjoyed an 8% increase in the last
    fiscal year.

    It is not surprising, given the fine fiscal
    understanding behind Tory-nomics, that he would not get the difference between
    gross and net in his stunning analysis of Ontario’s position but equating Saudi
    Albertia and Quebec as co-horts in economic solidity it dumbfounding. Compared
    to this, David Frum comes across as
    lucid.

  • Update: “…an eccentric old uncle who’s ignored…” Discuss.

  • Update: pause a moment for the
    250 year old tortoise     that passed away in India. Born around 1755.

  • The Flea has posted a link to the best hoax
    (unless the turtle story turns out to be one) that I have ever seen on the
    internet. I am a huge sucker and the use of a gesticulating professor was a
    brilliant diversion.

  • I was thinking about the bleating cry of the Boing Boing the other day when I read yet
    another rant about how the law of ownership should be amended because people
    have figured out a better way to steal…when it occurred to me that I have
    never seen a fair trade argument in relation to Digital Rights Management. How
    is it that we are so concerned about Juan Valdez and rightly seek out better
    coffee and other goods which are sold with fewer dollars going to the middle man
    and more to Juan but we do not use the same model for Juanita, his guitar
    playing cousin? Maybe because we would steal all Juan’s coffee if we could?

  • I gleefully watched LSU
    beat Duke     last night but realized quickly that no one in the pool
    saw the
    loss     coming so no one gets the big points on question #1. I hearby declare
    after 5837 have declared it before me that Glen “Big Baby” Davis is the new
    Shaq. I remember the, what, 1989 LSU March Madness and the side of beef that did
    ballet called Shaquille O’Neal. It was deja vu all over again.

  • Was Stevie always this chubby
    or has someone done this
    to him?

Portality

Ugh, a portal. That is apparently what Google does not want said of itself.

Although Google dislikes being described as a portal, Sullivan and industry analysts said its new finance section leaves little doubt where the company is headed. “They are being fairly careful about it, but they are walking very rapidly toward becoming a portal,” said Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li. “They have a lot of other services gunning for them, so they have become most keen about building user loyalty so the users don’t have a reason to go someplace else.”

Am I loyal to Google? I use the mail, like Picasa and search through it. I map my travel with it. But am I loyal? I don’t look to it for innovations that will improve my web experience and think of this site and my browser as my portal. In the late 90s there was a urge to create portality, that control of the web. The Federal government had people shopping the idea back then holding meetings stakeholderly. One in PEI attracted millions in public money only to become a wasteland of tumblin’ tumbleweeds.

They seem to be a curse. But why? Are we all still a little Soylent Green about the internet? Do we think that anyone who wants to control us as a conduit must not have our interests in mind? I think it is more that the web is not apt for portals, that the whole thing is an annoyingly unindexed and disorganized playground of surf, idleness and interest and anything that thinks it can organize it for me bundle it all tied in a big bow is missing a point.

Stewed Fruit And Crust

Last evening I was witness to a dish of wild blueberries, oats butter and sugar: blueberry crisp. But then I thought for a moment that it might have been blueberry crumble when I was a kid. I knew we never called it Blueberry Brown Betty but others in school might have. Brown Better always struck me as the sort of thing New Brunswickers might say. But these are distinct but related to blueberry grunt, more dumplings than crust. There must be more in the matrix of grannie-approved stewed fruit dessert terminology.

Then it was the question of onomatopoeic foods. Do people have grunt after bubble and squeek? And what about my dream meal: mahi-mahi with piri-piri sauce on a bed of cous-cous served with cocoa? Makes you think.


Man contemplating piri-piri sauce