Author: Dan Dickinson

The home stretch

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The paper’s due in three days, and I’m almost done. Just a few more sections and then the clean-up. Hopefully I can get it done a little earlier than planned; I need a couple of days to prepare for the film festival. I’ve also been taking time away from the office (it’s my company’s custom MBA program, so they kindly give us a little time off when we really need it…until now I just hadn’t really needed any) and I’ve been neglecting some important work. I’ll be glad to get back into the normal swing of things. In October.

.:.

Need to move a giant statue of Ramses II? Google Earth can help you do it. And I thought it was just for showing me local pizza joints…

.:.

In what might possibly be the oddest headline I’ve read in a while, the CBC informs us of “New clues into identity of 19th-century legless, mute Maritimer“. Good, ’cause I was wondering about that.

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Speaking of mute, Gilles Duceppe should really give it a try sometime.

“We have this ridiculous economic policy that when exports grow, the economy gets stronger and the value of our currency increases. Then exports decline and things get worse. It’s always like a yo-yo,” Mr. Duceppe said yesterday.

You know what else Gilles? When I turn my stove on, the water in my kettle boils. When I turn it off, it cools down again. It’s always like a yo-yo! Actually, that was giving him too much credit; what he’s saying is the boiling water in my kettle is causing my stove to switch on, and the cooling of the water switches the stove back off.

In theory — and only in theory — this man could be our Prime Minister. As much as I dislike Stephen Harper, at least he seems to grasp basic economics.

[tags]ramses ii, legless mute maritimer, gilles duceppe[/tags]

Deepak Chopra: even goofier than the Christians.

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There was a very good interview with Michael Shermer yesterday in Salon called The Joys Of Life Without God. He has a very reasonable approach to his atheism (by which I mean he’s not a “militant” atheist who’s as intent on bending religious followers to his will as they are his). His arguments are nothing we haven’t heard before, but he has a great way of putting them:

“When you study world religions, it’s obvious that, throughout time, all of these different people are making up their own stories about God. If you lived 1,000 years ago, hardly anybody would be a Christian. If you were born in India, you’d likely be a Hindu. What does that tell you? From a Christian perspective, it means we need to get more missionaries over there to tell them the truth! From an anthropological perspective, it’s another case. Christians today might say, I don’t believe in Zeus, that was a silly superstition. Yet for many people that was a real god. So it turns out there are 10,000 gods and yet only one right one. That means we’re all atheists on 9,999 gods. The only difference between me and the believers is I’m an atheist on one more god.”

He also touches on an issue that’s always kind of bugged me. Typically I hear people describe agnosticism as the belief in some sort of higher power, but you’re not sure what it is. I never bought that; to me — and I think to Shermer — it’s the idea that, if you think scientifically, whether or not there’s a God is completely irrelevant.

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This is how occupied I am with this damned paper: I haven’t even watched the videos Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant did for Microsoft. I at least managed to get a quick walk in after work today, dashing over to Whole Foods to pick up some lunch for tomorrow.

OK, off to do four hours of writing.

[tags]religion, atheism, michael shermer, ricky gervais, microsoft training video[/tags]

Compulsory license this, biznatch

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T-minus six days with which to finish this cursed paper. I have 5,527 words so far; I need at least 8,000. I spent last night trying to figure out which parts of the paper need more fleshing out, where I can add more research…and I think I’m pretty close. With any luck I’ll finish it Thursday night and I can use the weekend to clean it up.

All I really want to do is peruse the full film festival schedule, which was released today. [Brad Pitt…squeeeeeal!]

[tags]term papers, film festival[/tags]

Headz!!

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Big news for my old home town (kind of; I grew up on a farm about 25km away): a game company plans to open a plant there, creating 1,500 jobs. Considering the town is only about 1,200 people today, that’s significant. Increasing the town’s population by 125% in the next 18 months or so should be all kinds of fun for the infrastructure planners.

There’re weird rumours, too, that I’ve heard through the grapevine (read: my mother) about a commercial featuring the Hanson Brothers and a woman who lives down the road from our farm. It’s all very surreal.

By the way, to help you figure out where this magical story takes place, here’s a map.

[tags]parrsboro, headz games, hanson brothers[/tags]

Sweedeedee

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Madonna reminds me of a little kid, the kind who can’t stand not getting attention. So when no one’s spending much time thinking about her, she just does something naughty, like kissing a black Jesus, simulating masturbation in the Skydome, or — her latest — performing a mock crucifiction.

The press, silly bastards, keep falling for it…for now, anyway; at some point they’ll realize what the rest of us have: that Madonna’s all used up and hasn’t released a decent album since William Orbit made one for her.

.:.

The Modern Mod sent me Cat Power‘s Covers Record today as I had nothing else to listen to. Halfway through the first listen I bought it legal-like; the cover of “Kingsport Town” alone was worth the eMusic download.

[tags]madonna, cat power[/tags]

The best music of 2006 (so far)

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In alphabetical order only.

  • asobi seksu . citrus
  • band of horses . everything all the time
  • neko case . fox confessor brings the flood
  • the heartless bastards . all this time
  • jolie holland . springtime can kill you
  • amy millan . honey from the tombs
  • mogwai . mr. beast
  • rainer maria . catastrophe keeps us together
  • regina spektor . begin to hope
  • the yeah yeah yeahs . show your bones 

Interesting…I just noticed that all the singers there are female, except Band Of Horses (who’s singer is high-pitched enough to mistake for female sometimes) and Mogwai, who barely sing at all.
[tags]best music of 2006[/tags]

"No one gets left behind! No one gets left behind!"

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Last night I took a much-needed break from my term paper and took CBGB up on their birthday gift to me: dinner at Live Organic Food Bar , a vegan/raw food restaurant that’s sprouted in our old neighbourhood since we moved away. They’re being quite supportive of our long journey into vegetarianism, and thought a trip to a top-notch veggie restaurant would help ease the transition. And did it ever.

First of all, it’s a nice little spot; room for 20 or so inside and a back patio that we would’ve stayed on if it weren’t a bit too humid. The service is very friendly, casual and patient with first timers like us who kept making annoying remarks like “What the hell is mockzarella!?!” (which I still don’t have an answer to). The menu is 3 pages of liquids (including 5 types of organic beer) and a single page of food, the contents of which rotate every couple of weeks.

Let me preface the next part by saying that I really wasn’t sure what to expect. Anyone I talked to who’d been to Live was a vegetarian already, and I wasn’t sure if their expectations for a meal were the same as mine. In the end I was worrying needlessly; delicious food is delicious food.

We started with a raw food sampler: four small samplers which we cut into four pieces each, then swapped so everyone could share. I tried a little piece of what I think they said was dehydrated kelp or something, but it was really tangy (reminded me of the saltiness of dulce…which I guess makes sense) and tasty. Next up was some kind of cucumber cannelloni with a filling that I couldn’t place, but DAMN it was tasty. There was a pizza-ish dish with a dry crumbly crust & olives that was quite good, and some other morsel (which I can’t remember right now) that tasted…well, refreshing is about the only word for it. Tastes sweet and light, like summer. My palate isn’t really refined enough to describe it more than that.

Then came the mains: CB got what they called the geisha bowl, which was a huge bowl of rice, tofu, fresh vegetables, etc. She liked it (and had enough left over to take home). Nellie got some kind of enchiladas with mushrooms and other stuff that I can’t remember, ’cause I was busy with what GB and I (each) got: fried plantains with four flavours (an amazing spicy mango/pineapple chutney, guacamole, salsa and…something else that I couldn’t indentify but tastes fantastic) for dipping. I don’t remember liking guacamole (the last time I had it was 10 years in Ottawa, with my brother, at some Mexican place in the Glebe, I think), but this stuff was good. The mango stuff was ridiculous; I wanted a bottle of it to take home. Anyway, it didn’t look that much food, but I was nicely full by the time I finished.

Not too full for dessert, though. I’ve heard Live’s desserts are pretty good, considering they’re made without…well, pretty much everything. CB and I each got a piece of dense chocolate tart with coconut shavings; it was really thick (we referred to it as “the brick” for the rest of the night), and it was damn good. GB and Nellie, unfortunately, took a chance on what turned out to be an enormous slab of…well, fig. With some slightly sweet topping, but really, it was like eating a handful of creamy figness. They didn’t much care for it, and I didn’t like the bites I had. Lesson learned: always order chocolate when you have the option.

All in all, I had a fantastic meal. I experienced tons of new flavours and combinations, I left feeling satisfied but not bloated, and I didn’t even occur to me that I was missing something by eating a vegetarian meal. Highly recommended.

By the way, their website doesn’t actually seem to do anything, so here’re some reviews: Now Magazine | Eye Weekly | Toronto Life | Chowhound

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After dinner we walked down to the Cumberland theatre to see Little Miss Sunshine (imdb | rotten tomatoes), one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in months. My jaw actually hurt from laughing when we left. The previews made me think it would be one of those movies with slow, subtle humour; in fact, it ranged from that subtlety to outright slapstick in places. The characters were so well fleshed out and were played so well, the whole film just seemed to fall together perfectly. Easily one of the best films of the year. Highly, highly recommended.

[tags]live organic food bar, little miss sunshine[/tags]

Sleaziness = ratings

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The wall-to-wall JonBenet Ramsey coverage is as baffling as it is disgusting. Yes, it’s tragic that a little girl was killed; it always is. But would the news networks consider it as tragic if she weren’t a tiny white [shudder] “beauty queen”? Or if they hadn’t harangued the parents with insinuations of guilt?

Is this story more important than the cease-fire in Lebanon? Than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Than the looming problems of Iran or North Korea? On CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and CTV (all linked above) these stories were buried underneath such breaking news as a chocolate virgin mary and Justin Timberlake dissing the latest American Idol chum*.

I guess I’m not surprised; the networks are just giving the idiots what they want. I’m just disappointed that they all sink to the bottom of the cesspool, hand in hand with smiles on their faces.

* don’t even get me started on the irony.

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Wired has some details about the Microsoft MP3 player (aka, the Zune). If that thing has 80+ GB of storage, I might be getting me one.

[tags]jonbenet ramsey, network coverage, chocolate virgin mary, justin timberlake vs. taylor hicks, zune[/tags]