- Ran 3 mi last night, another 3 mi this morning. Haven’t run in a while so my legs aren’t very happy with me right now. Suck it, appendages. #
- Sad that I’ve only been to 5 of these museums, but I should knock off 1 or 2 more in Paris this fall. http://is.gd/wBly #
- @spotlightcity Wow. No, it most certainly does not. in reply to spotlightcity #
- @plasmatron says Mogwai’s Mtl encore was Like Herod & Batcat. b/c they’ve been alternating nightly will I get My Father My King? #mogwai #
- The eternal question: earplugs or no earplugs? #mogwai #
- @Timinator I’m not wearing them. I just feel like I should ask the question. Anyway, it won’t be as bad as last time in tiny Lee’s Palace. in reply to Timinator #
- At the House On Parliament. #
- @fyang Embrace the pain! Rock Action! #
- Aaaaaaaand here we are. First live gig in forever. #
- Just in time for The Twilight Sad! #
- Ummm… @plasmatron was just standing next to me trying to force a stage door open. What the what? #
- Twiligjht Sad: very solid. Good warmup for the eardrums. #
- Mogwai Fear Satan FTW. #
- Like Herod zomg. #
- My mistake My Father My King. #
Author: Dan Dickinson
Balancing the scales of my life. And the ones under my fat ass.
Another 3 mile run this morning. Two 3-mile runs in less than 12 hours, after an absence of god knows how many weeks, has made my legs a little sore, but nothing I can’t handle. I don’t need to do much for the rest of the night, aside from walk to The Phoenix to see Mogwai. That’s tonight; tomorrow is another Hot Docs screening, followed by yet another on Thursday. Busy week, and I don’t think I’ll be seeing much of home.
It should be a good test for me, actually. Clearly I need to try a new pattern since the current one is leaving me, well, fat. I am now 45 pounds overweight, and the heaviest I’ve been since…let’s see, since the 23rd of forever. The pattern’s a familar one, harking back to my Delano days when my weight last peaked: work crazy hours, go home, eat something terrible, get up early the next day, repeat. The increase in working hours gets the better of me, as I lose both the energy for exercise and the patience to eat something healthy. If it were happening for one or two days at a time, that would be one thing, but I’ve just accepted the fact that a 12-hour work day is now the norm.
So what happens to the rest of that day? If you take away boring crap like getting ready for work, commuting, taking out recycling, blah blah blah that still leaves about 9.5 hours. I sleep about 6.5 hours per night, so I have 3 left to play with. So that becomes the crucial eighth of a day in which to get shit done, and therein lies my conundrum. Here’s what’s left to do in the day:
- Eat
- Watch TV
- Read
- Blog
- Exercise
Those things are in approximate order of priority. Now, before you accuse me of being a shit husband, I do spend time with my wife, but Nellie’s hours are just as bad as mine (if not worse) so it’s not as if she’s sitting at home on the couch at 5:15, sighing and lonely. The first two items on the list are spent together. They are usually also combined into one exercise, sadly.
Why that priority? Well, eating is obvious, though my eating habits aren’t the best when time gets tight. But one thing at a time. Watching TV isn’t a real priority, except that it’s one of the few things I get to share with my wife, and the few shows that I watch I really like and if I don’t watch them that night it’s unlikely I’ll be able to catch up later. The PVR helps, but I still watch the same amount of TV in a given week, so it’s moot. Anyway, I watch maybe 2-3 hours a week, so TV’s only eating into about 30 minutes a day.
The next three are the root of the problem. See, I have this obsessive need to keep up to date with my interests. And I have a lot of them. According to Google Reader I scan about 500 news items each day from my 200+ news feeds. Throw in a few daily-read sites, the 85 people I follow on Twitter, and the omnipresent books and magazines, I spend a lot of time consuming information. I like to do this. I feel compelled to do this. I have news feed categories for books, economics, entertainment, friends, humour, movies, music, news, politics, opinion, photoblogs, sports, tech, toronto, travel and TV, and I like knowing about all of those things. But you can imagine what happens: by the time I finish reading this stuff, and then blogging about something…that’s it. I’m done.
So I’m faced with a trade-off: exercise for an hour a day, but read less or stop blogging. Alternatively I could find a job that requires less hours, but I don’t see that happening. I like my job and don’t think I’d be happy unless I was in a job like this one, so…here I am. I’m back to eating into the obvious time sink: information consumption. If it means spending as much time exercising my body as I do exercising my mind, that’s probably not a bad thing. But feeling like I’m getting dumber…that’s not going to be a good feeling for me.
So back to why this week is a good test: if I make sure to run each morning, my commitments during the week (which I usually keep free due to the afore-mentioned compulsion) will keep me away from the computer at night and I’ll see whether hitting the ‘Mark All Read’ button on thousands of news items makes me break into a steady twitch.
Now if somebody could rig up a way for me to attach a netbook to the front of a treadmill and let me click my way through my feeds, then I’d have somethin’…
Tweets for 2009-05-04
- Beautiful sunny Sunday. Unfortunately I’m about to head to the office. #
- @ZoeSasha Every Sunday morning is a Sigur Ros kind of Sunday morning! Uh, except this one. I needed Spiritualized to get me moving. in reply to ZoeSasha #
- Seriously, my productivity at work goes up at least 10% when I listen to any of Spoon, The Toadies, Mates of State or Neutral Milk Hotel. #
- blip.fm needs an ‘artist = dead’ flag so it doesn’t ask me if I’d like to know when Muddy Waters & Son House are playing concerts near me. #
- 1/6 of the way through the MLB season and the Jays lead the division. What the what? #
- Finally listening to the new Bishop Allen. Very twee, but very catchy. Tweetchy. #
Back to the smooth, rubbery grindstone
I just ran three miles, and ran them pretty easily. Didn’t get tired much at all, really. That surprised me a little bit as I’ve become a fat lazy slob of late.
Let’s see if tomorrow goes as well.
Tweets for 2009-05-03
- Oak Ridge boys covering The White Stripes. I feel like I should hate this more than I do. http://is.gd/oC7U #
- Girl next to me at Fran’s was fighting back vomit. I beat a hasty retreat. #
- And now the 2 old men sitting in the barber chairs are railing against the liberal media. Did you know the NY Times backed Stalin + Hitler? #
- @Andrew_D No, that was the Sunset Grill. That’s where I’d planned to go but the line was 20 people long. Fran’s was plan B. in reply to Andrew_D #
- @rshevlin It didn’t kill me so much as make me snicker. The conspiracy theories got worse from there. And no, they were at least 50. 🙂 in reply to rshevlin #
- Freshly shorn. Off to start my Hot Docs screenings. Hope the rain holds off until I’m done my lineups. #hotdocs09 #
- Documentary finished. At The Beguiling now…free comic day! #
- Now at Victory Cafe. Ice cold beer = happy wife. #
- Back in line for Carmen Meets Borat. #
- No, I do not want a Scene card. Stop asking me. #hotdocs09 #
First day of Hot Docs
We saw two Hot Docs screenings today: Orgasm Inc. (hot docs) and Carmen Meets Borat (hot docs).
Orgasm Inc. turned out to be more interesting than I expected. I guess I’d forgotten what it was about between when I selected it and when I watched it today. The overriding theme of this year’s festival seems to be the economy, and money in general, and that was the angle that came out here.
Here’s the basic synopsis: Viagra is introduced and makes a bazillion dollars for Pfizer. Pharma companies realize they’re only reaching half the population, though, so the hunt for so-called female Viagra begins. Now realizing that they need to create demand for this, they use questionable research/statistical methods to trumpet the fact that 43% of American women have some kind of sexual dysfunction, and thus the clinical term Female Sexual Dysfunction is born. Now American women think there’s something wrong with them, and hucksters are telling them it can be fixed with a pill. Of course, no one’s profiting too much yet because the pills keep failing placebo tests, and the FDA rejected Procter & Gamble’s attempt. But don’t worry, all you useless malfunctioning women, soon there’ll be a $10 pill for you.
OK, moving on before I get too mad. In short, the content of the documentary was excellent, but the execution — the film itself — was sloppy and felt amateurish. I gave it a 3/5.
Carmen Meets Borat was much lighter (although Orgasm Inc. did have several laughs), showing life in what must surely be the most awful village in all of Europe: Glod, Romania. It’s where the opening scenes of Borat were filmed, passed off as Kazakhstan, and the villagers weren’t in on the jokes. They were, understandably, annoyed. But the main focus of the documentary is a girl named Carmen, and the changes she and her family went through at the same time as — and occasionally because of — Borat. Then the world’s slimiest lawyers show up and it does downhill. Anyway, it was an example of a documentary that covers a fairly insignificant topic, but covers it very well, and benefits from a little luck. I gave it 4/5.
Nothing tomorrow; I’ll be at work anyway. Also, I have two tickets to a screening of Reporter at 9:30 on Monday night at the Isabel Bader theatre if anyone would like them, free of charge. I’ll be at a Mogwai concert.
Tweets for 2009-05-01
- Can’t get Kim Deal’s wailing/moaning on “River Euphrates” out of my head right now. #pixies #endlessloop #
- @Timinator It must be a conundrum for you. You get to go home early, but the reasoning behind that decision is SO flawed. It must kill you. in reply to Timinator #
- @Timinator OK, well, maybe not so much. It IS sunny out, after all… #
- Until this Advil kicks in I would appreciate it if y’all would refer to me as Captain Migraine. Thanks in advance. #
- Need to find a better quality version of “Lafayette Blues” by the White Stripes. Because it might just be their best song. #
- @mmpartee Morriss, I’d say hi, but I’m still not talking to you following that whole Bruins-Canadiens thing. in reply to mmpartee #
- Just got a huge (but awesome) pile of work dropped on me. The challenge now will be to keep it from ruining #hotdocs09 for me this weekend. #
- @modernmod Because you’re on the patio I hate you with the burning passion of a thousand stars. Big ones, too, not those little dwarf ones. in reply to modernmod #
- RT @gajarga: This will not end well: http://tinyurl.com/dznzal ATTENTION @modernmod !! #
- Dan needs a beer like the Jays need a starting rotation. #
- The server knocked my beer over. I caught it before it spilled. Maritimer reflexes: still intact. Good to know. #
- @modernmod Do you mean Babur? Babar is the cartoon elephant. 🙂 #
- I think our waiter has been eaten by wolves. Or possibly swallowed by the earth. #
- @Weedrummerbhoy What’s to translate? r = ah. Like the British, but more nasal. #
- @modernmod “I’m Confused” by the Handsome Furs = winner. in reply to modernmod #
- @modernmod alright then. while i’m at it: “chancer” by the von bondies. or “21st birthday” in a pinch. #ukula in reply to modernmod #
- @modernmod good choice. one of my songs of the year so far. in reply to modernmod #
Tweets for 2009-04-30
- Waiting for my work laptop to unf*ck itself. Doopie doopie doo… #
- @Timinator Thanks ever so much for tweeting that at lunchtime here in N.A. in reply to Timinator #
- @rshevlin Agreed. Great article. in reply to rshevlin #
- The word “pandemic” doesn’t startle you much if you’ve watched The Wire ’cause you’ve heard so many Baltimore corner kids shout it. #thewire #
- Reason #31 for feeling dumb today: left my umbrella at home. And it’s raining. Oh, and no coat either. So, uh, that’s #32. #
- @Tinfoiling Good choice! in reply to Tinfoiling #
- @Tinfoiling Would that I could. But you’ve inspired me to pick up some I&G for tomorrow evening! in reply to Tinfoiling #
- @Tinfoiling By the way: good luck! The whole country’s rooting for them now. #canucks in reply to Tinfoiling #
- Quite enjoying this Twilight Sad album in advance of their opening slot at next week’s Mogwai gig. #mogwai #
- @plasmatron Don’t worry, you’ll be in Canada soon. Necks are less red up here. in reply to plasmatron #
- @ZoeSasha Yeeeeeeah. Most of it doesn’t look like that. in reply to ZoeSasha #
- @ZoeSasha You might want to check out Gros Morne though. http://is.gd/vKRi in reply to ZoeSasha #
Only through the exercise of candor
Salon published an interesting piece today from Boston University professor of history and international relations Andrew Bacevich called Farewell to the American Century. Bacevich goes further than the WaPo’s Richard Coen — who declared the American Century ended — and suggests it could scarcely end…it was all an illusion in the first place.
In its classic formulation, the central theme of the American Century has been one of righteousness overcoming evil. The United States (above all the U.S. military) made that triumph possible. When, having been given a final nudge on Dec. 7, 1941, Americans finally accepted their duty to lead, they saved the world from successive diabolical totalitarianisms. In doing so, the U.S. not only preserved the possibility of human freedom but modeled what freedom ought to look like.
So goes the preferred narrative of the American Century, as recounted by its celebrants.
The problems with this account are twofold. First, it claims for the United States excessive credit. Second, it excludes, ignores or trivializes matters at odds with the triumphal story line.
The net effect is to perpetuate an array of illusions that, whatever their value in prior decades, have long since outlived their usefulness. In short, the persistence of this self-congratulatory account deprives Americans of self-awareness, hindering our efforts to navigate the treacherous waters in which the country finds itself at present. Bluntly, we are perpetuating a mythic version of the past that never even approximated reality and today has become downright malignant. Although Richard Cohen may be right in declaring the American Century over, the American people — and especially the American political class — still remain in its thrall.
While I agree with Bacevich that the myths of 20th-century America were well and truly exaggerated, I’m not sure his list of American shortcomings would remove from them the title of 20th century powerhouse. Even acknowledging the overblown role in WWII and the failures of Cuba, Iran and Afghanistan, I’m not sure another country could stake a claim to being the preeminent nation of those hundred years. Was it as glorious as Americans seemed to believe? No. But it may have been glorious enough.
Still, Bacevich’s contemplative advice is good medicine for any country who starts to fawningly buy their own patriotic press:
What are we to make of these blunders? The temptation may be to avert our gaze, thereby preserving the reassuring tale of the American Century. We should avoid that temptation and take the opposite course, acknowledging openly, freely and unabashedly where we have gone wrong. We should carve such acknowledgments into the face of a new monument smack in the middle of the Mall in Washington: We blew it. We screwed the pooch. We caught a case of the stupids. We got it ass-backwards.
Only through the exercise of candor might we avoid replicating such mistakes.
Strike my last; this is good advice for us all, countries or no.
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 