:: Bored? Need a jolt of wackiness? Watch Leonard Nimoy singing "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins"
:: Congratulations to my friend Darcy, who posted the 1000th comment on my site.
:: Super Size Me is playing in Edmonton, and I saw it yesterday. I haven't consumed any fast food from McD's, Wendy's, Taco Bell, etc., for months, but after watching this movie, I wonder if I'll ever do it again. (My one weakness is pizza from Papadopolous in Edmonton.) In the film, director Morgan Spurlock eats three meals a day at McDonald's for 31 days, with three doctors, a nutritionist and an fitness counsellor monitoring his body weight, blood, cholesterol, caloric intake, etc.
Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock hit the road and interviewed experts in 20 U.S. cities, including Houston, the "Fattest City" in America. From Surgeon Generals to gym teachers, cooks to kids, lawmakers to legislators, these authorities shared their research, opinions and "gut feelings" on our ever-expanding girth.It's compelling viewing, if a bit skewed - who would eat 93 straight meals from McDonald's, or any fast food outlet? Also of interest: his girl friend is a vegan chef, and prepares a vegan detox diet for Spurlock, whihc helps him quickly restore his liver function and cholestrol level when his month-long Mac Attack is over.During the journey, Spurlock also put his own body on the line, living on nothing but McDonald's for an entire month with three simple rules:
1) No options: he could only eat what was available over the counter (water included!)
2) No supersizing unless offered
3) No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at least once
:: Nashville is six days away, and I feel completely unprepared for the trip. I'm hoping to change that this afternoon by getting a few things in order.
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Who are the quirkyalones? There are many definitions, but we'll start with this one. Quirkyalones are romantics who resist the tyranny of coupledom. Whether by birth (womb quirkyalones) or through life experience (born-again quirkyalones), we are independent-thinking people who would prefer to be open to finding that magical click (and the myriad possibilities that life has to offer) rather than exist in a stifling or unsatisfying romantic relationship.I remember reading about quirkyalones some time ago, and decided to visit the site tonight.The definition above is interesting to me, because I've always thought of myself as a hopeless romantic. I took the quiz to determine if I meet the qualifications of a quirkyalone. The results:
Your score was 121. Very quirkyalone: Relatives may give you quizzical looks, and so may friends, but you know in your heart of hearts that you are following your inner voice. Though you may not be romancing a single person, you are romancing the world. Celebrate your freedom on National Quirkyalone Day, February 14th!I'm not sure that knowing I am romancing the world is much comfort.
There is also a glossary page:
Deeply single: A state of perceiving the benefits of aloneness and being single—of traveling, going out, going to movies alone.From the definitions, I would choose deeply single as an accurate description of my life at the moment (hell, since 1988, who the eff am I kidding?) But I'm not sure it's because I chose that lifestyle. As for the QAs, I'm not sure what to make of this..."movement", if that's what it can be termed. Are quirkyalones losers, who are using this definition as a crutch to lean on because they can't get a date? Or is it for real - people who like to be alone most of the time, and that's just the way it is. | TrackBack (0) | Comments (7)Perkytogethers: Ahhh, the perkytogethers—the quirkyalone's natural opposite. While there are many people whom quirkyalones can respectfully recognize as not sharing their worldview, perkytogethers impose coupledom on everyone. They are the tyranny of coupledom.
Pseudo-quirky: One who tries to cultivate an air of difference for a charm factor.
Quirky: Goofy, zany, offbeat; unintentionally different, without artifice; possessing the courage to be yourself whether it's popular or not.
Quirkyslut:
One who maintains high standards for a romantic relationship, but becomes more flexible for the Saturday (or even Tuesday) night encounter.Quirkytogether: The state of being that results when a quirkyalone enters a long-term romantic relationship.
Q-A-dar: The uncanny ability to spot other quirkyalones in a crowd.
Spinster: A term which once described every unmarried woman, regardless of age, "spinster" gradually the label came to describe only ladies who never married (women who continued to spin). Those who would like to reclaim this term should buy them selves a really nice set of high-count sheets.
Too-quirky-for-their-own-good: People who feel that they are too distinctive to adopt a label.
Tyranny-of-coupledom: The prevailing brainwash that one should constantly be or aspire to be in a long-term relationship, that being single is always inferior to being in a relationship, and that romantic relationships provide the key to happiness
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:: To feed my personal NYC obsession, I subscribe to Time Out New York. Although it arrives in my mailbox anywhere from 3-5 weeks after publication, I look forward to each issue. While its content keeps me up-to-date on All Things Pop Culture and All Things NYC, there are always well-written articles that pique my interest and result in further investigation on my part. In many cases, the articles are not necessarily NYC-centric either.
A recent example is the article, "Rush Hour on the Information Superhighway", by Clive Thompson, which appeared in Issue No. 445 April 8–15, 2004.
A funny thing happened on the road to utopia. The Information Age promised greater efficiency, allowing us to explore new worlds online and enjoy more free time. Instead, we're working longer hours and feeling more stressed as we drown in a tsunami of e-mail, blogs and Google searches. And nowhere is this pressure to stay connected more prevalent than in mediacentric New York.Thompson succinctly addresses information bombardment and overload, focusing on four aspects: e-mail and spam, Google and googling, blogs, and TiVo (which, btw, isn't available in Canada yet). As librarians and information specialists, we are bombarded with information from many sides every day. How do we deal with it? Often, we don't - some, if not all of it flows over us like water off the back of a duck. We process a little of it. But being librarians, when we search for information we should know where and when to stop, and Thompson very correctly nails this in his discussion of searching:
That's another conundrum of our age: New technologies seem only to amp up our desire for more. Consider Google. It is by all accounts an informational godsend. But since it offers hundreds of hits for even the most quixotic query, many people have no idea when to stop parsing the endless results, says Joseph Janes, chair of library and information science at the University of Washington's Information School, who teaches a graduate seminar on the site and its impact on the culture. "It can make your life simpler, but it can also lead you down the path to perdition," Janes adds. "You find things that point to things that point to things that point to things, and you wake up two hours later. Or maybe you're looking for something that simply can't be found on Google, and it takes you 45 minutes to figure that out." Janes was trained as a librarian, and he says one thing librarians learn is when to stop: "We know when to declare victory—or to go home if the information just isn't there."Consider that: knowing when to stop. It's one of the many characteristics that define us as information and library professionals, and I think we should be proud of it.
:: Thank you to everyone who wrote or commented about my increased heart rate. Subsequent to having an ECG on Thursday and visiting the doctor, I stopped drinking my Starbucks French Roast coffee. Within 24 hours, my heartbeat was down to the mid-80s. I just checked it again, and the reading was 76 bpm, which for me is remarkable.
Shannon sent a link to an article about high caffeine levels in coffee.
The biggest bang for your buck, with more than double the levels of caffeine compared to the lowest levels, were found in coffee from Starbucks and Second Cup.Of course, at Starbucks, rarely do they serve French Roast over the counter - you have to buy it and make it yourself, which is what I do with it at work. The article does provide responses from the coffee companies, including Starbucks:
We emphasize that any absolute numbers reported on caffeine levels in Starbucks coffee do not reflect what a customer would receive in every cup of Starbucks coffee. There are many variables that contribute to caffeine content from cup to cup.The article notes that "Health Canada recommends no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day." That said, if the data from Starbucks are correct, even drinking 1-1.5 cups of regular drip French Roast shouldn't affect my heart rate. Or should it? In this case, it appears that a particular brand of coffee had an effect on me. On the plus side, the ECG revealed that my heart is in great shape, with no abnormal rhythms of any kind.Regarding Starbucks regular drip coffees, customers can expect an average of 160 milligrams of caffeine per eight ounces.
:: It is a long weekend in Canada, Victoria Day, and it's been somewhat lazy. In no particular order, so far today I worked out, weeded a section of a filing cabinet (and fed my paper shredder a lot of paper!), cleaned up stuff in the background of my web site, cut the grass in the front and back yards, watered the small patches of dirt in which plant life can be found, loaned a copy of Time Out New York to someone who is leaving for NYC on Wednesday. I still want to clean one of my bathrooms today if I can find the energy, and add some decorative rock to the base of my little oak tree in my front yard. I also want to put up my backyard canopy, with the help of a neighbour. And go for coffee and read a bit. I am feeling lazy and overwhelmed with life - no different from any other day.
:: A federal election has been called in Canada for June 28, which also happens to be my birthday. At this point in my life, I find most politicians to be without many ethics or principles, if any. In my front yard is a sign supporting the local Liberal candidate. I doubt he'll win, but I would never vote for the right wing. This time around, I don't know if I will vote at all.
:: Two weeks from now, I'll be in Nashville. Three weeks after I return, it's off to Winnipeg and Newfoundland and then back to Winnipeg. A few weeks later, it's September. Summer moves by too quickly. It's isn't fair.
:: The guy who came to my door on May 19, asking for $5 to refill his daugher's inhaler, never returned the $5.
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:: I was just on Cindi's site, and she's posted about the return of Andy Kaufman. Yes, you read that correctly. I mean, good feckin' grief. Turns out, the 20th anniversary of his death from lung cancer was May 16, 2004. Yahoo! - YAHOO! - is running a story saying Kaufman is alive and living on the upper west side of Manhattan; don't they check their sources? Didn't they see Shattered Glass? His blog, Andy Kaufman Returns, is up and running. Snopes sez it's all a hoax. But you can't help but feel just a wee bit suspicious, knowing that this is something Kaufman would pull off, even from the grave. Kinda creepy, eh? Wait! Maybe Yahoo! DID check its sources. Maybe he IS alive!
:: Earlier today, I visited my physician at the Family Medicine Centre in Edmonton. I do that often, for blood pressure checks, mostly. This visit, however, was because on Tuesday afternoon I noticed, or rather, I could feel that my heart beat was higher than normal. I work out 4-5 times a week, 30 mins on a Precor elliptical cross trainer, and usually get my pulse up to ~160 bpm. I spend 5-7 minutes cooling down on the machine, during which time my pulse drops to ~110 bpm, before finishing my workout.
On Tuesday, near the end of my workout, my heart was was pushing 170 bpm for a couple minutes, and it felt good. However, I noticed that when I cooled down, it was still above 130 bpm. The rest of the evening and all day yesterday, I could feel my heart beating faster than normal. Despite having a physical scheduled for June 1st, I decided to see the doctor today. I had an electrocardiogram done, and the test suggested I have a condition called Sinus tachycardia, meaning a P wave greater than 100 bpm. The ECG also confirmed that my heart is beating normally, i.e., there are no erratic rhythms to suggest other potential problems. As well, I experience ventricular ectopic beats every so often, yet the ECG recorded not one VEB (this is a good thing!)
So what's the upshot? My heart could be receiving extra stimulation, such as from caffeine, wild sex, or nasal medication with Epinephrine as an ingredient. Well, I drink black coffee, maybe 1-1.5 cups in the morning, occasionally a second cup later in the day, and have one or two lattes on the weekend. Been doing that for 25 years. I'm not using any nasal spray. I gave up wild sex a few weeks ago. But I did change my coffee from a Costco-sold brand to a fresh one-pound supply of Starbucks French Roast about a week ago. Hmmmm. The Starbucks French Roast could be driving up my heart beat. Well, Dr Bell is suggesting I lay off that coffee until I see him again, which is like, a total drag. I mean, I don't smoke, don't drink except socially, don't use drugs, there's not many vices left, y'know.
BTW, I did work out again tonight, kept it to ~160 bpm near the end, and feel fine. My pulse at the moment is 97 bpm...
:: Last night around 10:15 pm, my doorbell rang. At the door was a man in a baseball cap, maybe mid-30s, holding an inhaler. He told me his name and address, (he lives across the avenue), and said that his wife had the car and his credit cards, etc., and needed to refill his daughter's inhaler immediately, and had no cash, and that he needed four dollars. I studied him for a moment, told him to wait a minute, retrieved a $5 bill, and handed it to him. I thought, what's five bucks, and he seemed like a nice guy. He thanked me, I asked him to bring me $5 tomorrow when he had a moment, he agreed, and left. I haven't seen him since.
I'm still giving him the benefit of the doubt for now. If he doesn't pay me back, c'est la vie, I suppose. Maybe I have too much faith in the basic goodness of people, I don't know. But refusing his request at that moment didn't seem like the correct thing to do, and it was only $5, after all.
:: Here's something of concern: Robert sent an link to an article about a service about to debut on Monday, called DidTheyReadIt.com:
DidTheyReadIt.com, which will launch Monday, allows anyone to secretly track e-mails they send. You'll see whether someone opens your e-mail, how long the recipient keeps it open -- even where geographically the recipient is reading it.The ability to track e-mails you've sent to others to this degree of detail, without the recipients knowing, will test the limits of e-mail privacy, or should that be the invasion of e-mail privacy:
The service comes from Rampell Software of Cambridge, Mass. DidTheyReadIt.com will cost $50 a year. You register on the Web site, and then every time you send an e-mail, you add .didtheyreadit.com to the end. An e-mail address would look like this: president@whitehouse.gov.didtheyreadit.com.It's 1984 all over again. | TrackBack (0) | Comments (15)You can also download software that adds tracking code to all outgoing e-mail.
Next, you go to the Web site, log in, and see a list of all the e-mails you've sent through the service. A box shows what time each e-mail was read, how long it was kept open, whether it was read multiple times and the Internet service provider that was used by the recipient when opening it.
In most cases, the site will be able to tell you the city where the e-mail was read -- though not the specific address. It can also tell you if the recipient forwarded the e-mail (though not to whom it was sent), and whether it was read by the people to whom it was forwarded.
DidTheyReadIt is invisible to the recipient. It works with any kind of e-mail, including Web-based e-mail such as Hotmail. DidTheyReadIt maintains that it collects no other information about either e-mail senders or the recipients.
An existing service called MessageTag can track whether an e-mail was opened. AOL can do the same for e-mail sent to other AOL users. But neither allows the extensive monitoring of DidTheyReadIt.
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:: My pal Jennifer lives a few blocks away from me. We've known each other for, good God, almost 15 years. I drove over to her place tonight to meet her sweet 16-week old little girl, Charlotte. Check out the cool pic of Charlotte and Uncle Randy. It was nice to get out of the house, meet the Little One, and hang with Jen Jen, and go for a nice walk. The weather was overcast and mild and humid and just right. Thanks, Jen!
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:: Jennifer notes that Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Coldplay Martin named their newborn girl "Apple", and Gina Davis's new twin boys were christened Kian and Kaiis. Her response and mine to these developments are similar: WTF???
I had a lot of respect for Paltrow and Martin up to now, as they keep their relationship out of the public eye, making efforts never to walk down red carpets together, etc. But "Apple"? Good grief. From the Herald Sun (Melbourne Austr.):
The Eye's Western District spy suggested Apple could get hitched to Christine Applegate's brother and become Apple Applegate, then get rid of him and take up with Bill Gates' son and she'd be Apple Applegate Gates.What's with the weird baby names? Yes, I ranted about this earlier, and will continue to rant about this stoopid practice. The Herald Sun, notes that these handles aren't the first odd celebrity baby names:
A Knight's Tale star Shannyn Sossamon has a son called Audio Science, while Almost Famous actor Jason Lee has a boy called Pilot Inspektor.Audio Science? Pilot Inspektor? There really, really oughta be a law. Why, you ask? Check out Horrid Celebrity Baby Names.
:: It's confirmed that Dennis Farina will be replacing Jerry Orbach on Law & Order. Orbach will be missed. I think it will take time to warm up to Farina.
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:: Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, debuted at the Festival de Cannes today. Oddly enough, I cannot locate the movie's official web site. Reviews of and commentary on the film are already in, from sources such as: BBC, Associated Press, Time, and The Hollywood Reporter, which reports a 15-20 minute standing ovation for the film after its screening and offers a review. A definite must-see film for 2004.
An expansion of this list is on my post at Blogcritics.com.
| TrackBack (0)Here is another family story, this time from my Mom, about her father.
When I was six years old my parents moved our family to the north end of Winnipeg. We lived approximately one city block from King George Public School which was located on the corner of Selkirk and Arlington. It would have been so easy to send five of their six children there for school if our parents hadn’t been so adamant about us getting educated in the Catholic school system. This meant we had to be up by 7 a.m. to be ready to catch the streetcar (yes, I did say streetcar) and be on time for school which for us was St. Mary’s Parochial School. Our school was located directly across from St. Mary’s Cathedral on St. Mary Avenue.What's interesting for me is that with each short story from my Mom or Dad about their earlier lives, I get to know a bit more about my grandparents, and uncles and aunts, and life before I was born, thus enriching my life experiences as well. We have it so good in the 21st Century - I can't imagine walking the distance my grandfather did every day for years, at times in -40F weather, no doubt in blizzards, snowstorms, and rain showers as well, simply to save a few pennies for transit fare. Unselfish love, indeed, there is not enough of that in the world today. You were amazing, Grandpa. | TrackBack (0)Not until we were finished school and were out working did our mother reveal to us how our father would walk to work on many occasions, so that there would be enough money to pay for our streetcar tickets. Our father was a barber and the barber shop where he was employed was on Fort Street, just off Portage Avenue, in downtown Winnipeg. This was an incredibly long walk for anyone on a cold winter’s day, no matter what his age may have been. I remember to this day the feelings I experienced upon hearing that our father made such an enormous sacrifice for us. It really spoke to me of unselfish love, something our dear parents were filled with. While by the world’s standards were classed as a very poor family, in my heart I always knew that God had blessed us with the kind of riches the world could never have given us.
When my father took a stroke in December, 1979, the doctors and nurses would comment often about the fact that not one day passed that some or all of dad’s children were there to visit him. We would bring our mother and go to spend time with Dad, who, although paralyzed on one side of his body, never lost his ability to speak. How do you help anyone understand that what we were attempting to do was to give back to dad some of the love he had given so freely to our mother, and to all his children and grandchildren. - Loretta Reichardt
:: steely who? the original band names, lists some of the names that Becker and Fagen considered for a band name, before settling on Steely Dan. As if! My favorites are Thunderhurl and Hard Donut. This is most likely another brilliant parody by Walter Becker, who writes the most colourful parody and satire pieces for his band's web site.
:: Allison (friend at work) told me about The Word Spy: "This Web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't "stunt words" or "sniglets," but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources." The full list is here, along with the Top 100, as measured by page views. Some words and phrases, like metrosexual, jump the shark, google, NIMBY, flashmob, and blog (duh), you will or may recognize.
Among those I'd not seen before, these are some of my favorites:
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:: There are times when I am embarrassed to be living in a province with leadership characterized by its collective arrogance and close-mindedness. Actually, it's 99% of the time. Recently, our premier behaved like a spoiled brat, when he appeared before a provincial public accounts committee. When asked to produce a receipt for a golf trip, he lowered himself to the level of Beavis and Butt-Head:
Klein: "Is the honourable member suggesting I am lying?"The press Klein received following his whining was all negative, even from his usual conservative supporters. He was ridiculed in political cartoons and on radio shows, but the best response had to be from CBC Radio in Edmonton, which produced a 48-second segment, weaving Klein's schoolboy outburst with Robert De Niro's "Are you talkin' to me", from Taxi Driver, and Joe Pesci's "I'm funny how, I mean funny, like I'm a clown" sequence from Goodfellas. Listen and enjoy, and consider that this man runs the richest province in Canada, where the next budget surplus could top $8 billion CDN, erasing the last amount of debt the province owes, but a province in which the roads and infrastructure are deteriorating rapidly, and education and health care continue to deal with cutbacks and layoffs. And my apologies to Beavis and Butt-Head, no offence intended.
Blakeman: "No, sir, I am just asking for the document."
Klein: "Oh, why would you ask for the document if you are not suggesting I am lying?"
Blakeman: "Because this is the public accounts committee, sir, and we can ask for that kind of information."
Klein: "Oh, I see. In other words, you're saying you won't take my word for it. I want to know if she's calling me a liar. She doesn't believe me."Blakeman tried to respond, but Klein cut her off three times, repeating: "You don't believe me."
On the last page of the report, the premier lists his sources, including 10 websites. Word for word passages from the essay are found on those sites – and a count found 58.7 per cent of the lines in the essay are the same as those on the websites listed.
It's time for Ralph Klein to go.
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:: Taking a few days off from posting didn't help all that much. I'm still knee deep in e-mail (aka electronic messages), although I did get the number from 65 to somewhere under 40.
Today I perform in a Mother's Day concert with Amelia (click the pic on the right). The concert is at 2:00 pm, at St Luke's Anglican Church, 8424 95th Avenue. $10 at the door if you're looking for something to do with Mom, or otherwise. A few days later, Amelia is off to Vienna for a few weeks, to visit her brother and his family, and take a break from Edmonton life.
It was quite nice yesterday, warm enough to sit outside for coffee with a good friend I hadn't seen for at least 18 months. There is a dusting of snow on the ground this morning, and the temperature is -2C. Enough with the sub-zero weather, already - it's MAY, dammit!
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:: The images from Iraq, of American military personnel torturing - er - abusing - er - humiliating Iraqi prisoners are causing much debate in the press and media. On Robert's site, Den Valdron presents an editorial, suggesting that the pictures represent "a culture of pathological thinking and inhumanity". Derryl discusses the impact of the choice of words to describe what has happened (is it torture? abuse? frat prank?), and how the military attracts not only the best and brightest, but those who also trip on power.
Jon Stewart, on The Daily Show, upgraded its coverage of the war in Iraq from "Mess O'Potamia" to "Giant Mess O'Potamia". Perhaps most disturbing is how US media giants, specifically those which support the war and the US Administration, are chosing to selectively cover news of the Iraqi conflict. Bill Moyers explains in his column on The Media, Politics, and Censorship. For example:
On Friday a week ago on NIGHTLINE, Ted Koppel read the names of the dead and showed their photographs. But their faces and names were blacked out on ABC stations owned by Sinclair Broadcasting. Sinclair accused Koppel of "…doing nothing more than making a political statement."Sinclair's web site as of May 8, 2004, has an explanation for why it chose to pre-empt the April 30, 2004 broadcast of Nightline, in which Ted Koppel read aloud the names of US servicemen and women killed in Iraq. Also included is a letter to Senator John McCain. Ted Koppel insists that the decision to read the 721 names of those who died "was to elevate the fallen above the politics and the daily journalism, to let their names and faces remind us of what has always been true: When the American people fully understand the cause for which our troops are fighting, and when they accept that it is essential to our national welfare and security, no burden is too heavy, no cost is too high." Joe Conason, author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth, writing in the New York Observer, responds to Sinclair's actions. | TrackBack (0) | Comments (1)But what about Sinclair's own political agenda? With 62 stations the company is the biggest of its kind in the country and has lobbied successfully in Washington for permission to grow even bigger. Its executives are generous contributors to the Republican party.
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:: With dozens of e-mails an ever-increasing number of electronic messages to answer, together with work, home and musical projects requiring attention, I'm taking a short break from posting. Be back soon.
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