Category: Me

Realization

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve listened to the song “Criticism As Insipration” by Pedro The Lion probably a hundred times, because I love it. But I’ve never really absorbed the lyrics until today. What Dave Bazan’s singing about, that could be me.

I know I do this to people. I feel bad, because I know some people don’t like it, but criticism (or the expectation of it) is one of the only ways I can get motivated, so I guess I externalize that.

Anyway. Little self-analysis there. Back to work now.

[tags]pedro the lion, criticism, self-analysis[/tags]

Alone time

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Nellie’s out tonight with some friends, doing girly things. This leaves me some time to myself in which to do manly things. Gonna hammer up some drywall.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ho ho ha no, but seriously. It gave me a chance to catch up on a few things, listen to some music, blare some hockey (Buffalo just tied the game against Ottawa with 10 seconds left…3 goals in the final two minutes!) and be by myself. Not that I don’t love spending time with her, but introverts have an alone-time-to-social-time ratio; when it’s not met, we get cranky. And since tomorrow looks to be very social, and work was a little stressed today, tonight was a good recharging.

.:.

Downloaded music in my “preview” queue right now:

  • Gomez . How We Operate
  • Snow Patrol . Eyes Open
  • Sebadoh . III
  • Calexico . Garden Ruin
  • Tool . 10,000 Days
  • Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris . All The Roadrunning
  • Bruce Springsteen . We Shall Overcome
  • The Concretes . The Concretes
  • Pilate . Sell Control For Life’s Speed

I’ve given up on the Fiery Furnaces disc, despite what Cokemachineglow says.

.:.

[tags]personal time, introvert, gomez, snow patrol, sebadoh, calexico, tool, mark knopfler, emmylou harris, bruce springsteen, concretes, pilate, fiery furnaces, cokemachineglow[/tags]

ScaryStupidScary

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I think that when my guy at Harry Rosen teases me for spending way less than usual, I have a bit of a clothes spending problem. And here I was proud of myself for walking out with only a pair of shoes (these ones, in fact).

.:.

I watched a pile of movies this weekend, most of which we’ve had stored on the PVR for a while and I just hadn’t gotten to (along with the fifteen or so still on there):

  • Warrendale (Allan King Films) was a CBC documentary made in the late 60s that the CBC refused to air. It was about emotionally troubled kids living together in a house with some (remarkably patient, by the look of it) caretakers, and seemed shocking in a few ways: the language the kids used (you’re used to any TV made during the 60s being scrubbed so clean that to hear a little boy screaming “fuck you!” over and over is startling), and the methods they used to control the kids (calming them during tantrums by wrapping up their arms and legs). It was also a little weird to see a teenage girl being bottle fed by the same woman whose face she was screaming in earlier that day. Interesting, certainly, but hard to watch.
  • The Rules Of Attraction (imdb | rotten tomatoes) wasn’t so serious, but it was depressing in its own way. I’ve come to learn that I don’t really like movies based on Bret Easton Ellis novels, and I’m also more certain than ever now that I despise the 80s; Ellis, if his books even remotely resemble an accurate picture of what things were like for rich college kids, has just given me more reason to despise them. I’ll say this for the movie: it managed to keep me from thinking about Dawson’s Creek every time James Van Der Beek was on the screen, which is no small feat.
  • I got back to the serious stuff with Ghosts Of Attica (imdb). I knew little about the Attica riots, since they happened four years before I was born, but if you’ve seen Dog Day Afternoon and you watch enough Oz you pick up a few things. It ended up being a similar story to a topic I’d discussed recently with friends: the Kent State massacre, which happened just 16 months before the Attica riots. The problem — social unrest and mass uprising — and the response — a violent overreaction by police — were eerily similar in both cases. Whatever horrible things the Attica prisoners did to get themselves thrown in prison (ignoring any bearing racism or poverty might have had on their incarceration), they didn’t deserve to be shot in the back, and the guards surely didn’t deserve to be shot in the same cowardly way by their would-be rescuers.

.:.

We also downloaded the first season of Deadwood this weekend; I watched the first couple of episodes, but I’m just not as into it as Nellie is. She’s always had a bit more of a western fascination than I.

.:.

Now that basketball’s over with (for me, not the Raptors…although I think even I played later into the year than they did…) I’ve gone back to running. I only did two miles tonight, just enough to get back into it. My legs felt a bit tight, probably since I haven’t run on a treadmill in a while. It should be warm (and dry, more to the point) enough soon to run outside, but that doesn’t last long; by June Toronto’s too choked with smog and humidity to run outside. For me, anyway.

Clinch already

Dan Dickinson

Montreal beat Boston tonight, so they’re that much closer to the playoffs. Atlanta and Toronto both won as well, though, so a playoff berth isn’t assured quite yet. We were at The Rebel House when the Leafs scored in OT to win the game, and some yahoo yelled, “Bring on the cup!” Uh, make the playoffs first, pal, then win a playoff round or two. Then we’ll talk.

.:.

Speaking of The Rebel House, je suis tres full.

.:.

Je suis tres sleepy aussi. I couldn’t sleep last night , what with the cats doing the Lindy Hop on my head. Gonna try to watch the latest Sopranos episode before I crash. So early on a (pseudo) Friday night, but I just can’t stay awake.

In which I contemplate my own navel

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I saw a preview of Brick (imdb | rotten tomatoes) tonight at the Varsity. I really, really, really liked it. About the only way to describe it is a juxtaposition of noir and high school styles…like an episode of Veronica Mars starring Bogart and Lorre, written by Mamet as he wrestles Hammett to the floor.* Dialogue so dense and fast that you have to work to keep up at first, a plot that expects you to pay attention, a staggering main role played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt…yup, the kid from Third Rock From The Sun who’s become an indie hero. If you like good movies, you’ll like this. At least, you should. Get thee to a cinema.

* side note: Mamet vs. Hammett is a play just waiting to happen. You heard it here first.

.:.

I’ve heard about this before but it’s the first time I’ve seen detail on it: NBC will be releasing 10 internet-only episodes of The Office this summer that’ll feature more of the background characters. More Kelly & Ryan!!

.:.

Scientists claim that “Jesus may have appeared to be walking on water when he was actually floating on a thin layer of ice, formed by a rare combination of weather and water conditions on the Sea of Galilee.” Why would they bother pointing this out? People that actually believe a bearded dude named Jesus walked on water aren’t going to suddenly believe it wasn’t a miracle just because you say so, no matter how sound a theory you throw at them. You can’t reason someone out of a position they were never reasoned into.

[via]

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Sometimes I wonder why I blog. I’m not like most people who have a specific topic for their blog; I throw pretty much everything that enters my mind up here. I’ve owned single-purpose blogs before — radioDan (music & movies), skirl (general stuff that eventually became this blog), and Girlfriend Du Jour (my future wives) — but it gets to be a pain in the ass and so I consolidated the first two into this one. I still post to Girlfriend Du Jour ’cause it’s so much fun. I think being a generalist is more important, or at least more interesting, to me than going in-depth on a topic like music or movies or technology or…I don’t know, maple syrup. Whatever.

I think it has to do with how we were raised. None of my brothers or I focused on any one thing, though we were usually pretty good at a few; we were encouraged to play more than one sport, or learn more than one instrument, or read from a variety of sources. We all seemed to fit in a couple of social worlds as teenagers (at least, that’s what I remember; my brothers were basically out of high school by the time I arrived), so I could hang out with the skids or the jocks or the smart kids. I was on the basketball team, but I was also in the jazz band. I had long hair and played in a bad rock band, but I also knew more about computers than anyone in my school. I grew up on a farm but I feel at home in a city. And so on.

I think I’m still the same now. I feel like I have so many interests that I can’t keep up the way I’d like to, and it comes across in my blogging: scattershot, brief summaries of thoughts that whip through my brain. The categories over on the right are pretty much the breakdown of any given moment inside my head: music, movies, sports and the news are constants, and the hundreds of news feeds I read every day give me plenty of content. Books, food, my friends’ blogs, politics, Toronto goings-on and whatever subject I’m studying for the MBA right now are usually top of mind as well. Work keeps my mind focused on technology, especially developments in how people — the general population, not just geeks — will be using it in the next few years.

And in true Dan form I’ve forgotten why I even started writing this post. Arrrgghhhhuiworuowytwhgkfdnkf. Oop, wait, I’ve got it now: would this blog be better off if I just picked a particular topic and went with it? Or is it ok the way it is? I can tell by the stats that more than half the readers are not friends and family who just want to know what I did last night, but I wonder if my attention span could fuel (tolerate?) a single-topic blog…

OK. Bed now.

A damnable doctrine

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I was listening to an old episode of Alan Cross’s Ongoing History Of New Music podcast, in which he talked about the cocktail party effect.The Wikipedia article talks about recognizing one voice in a crowded room, but Alan talked about being able to recognize a song playing on a stereo, even in a very crowded and noisy room (like a bar). My brother and I have always been really good at this, to the point where I can sometimes name songs that no one else hears. I could never understand why that was; do my brother and I just subconsciously listen for music in the background? Could be. Do we happen to know way more songs than most people and therefore recognize something? I doubt it; I know a lot of songs but I’ve been in bars with people who know as many or more and who didn’t hear what I heard. Are some people better at “source separation” than others? I have no idea. Maybe I’m like Bruce Willis in unbreakable and this is my superpower. ‘Cept not-so-super.

Does anyone else do this? Identify songs from hearing one or two measures here, a couple of notes there, scattered in the background of a noisy bar? Is it that no one can do it? Or that no one but us music obsessives tries?

.:.

Salon has an interesting interview with Edward O. Wilson about “why we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions, denies that ‘evolutionism’ is a faith, and says that heaven, if it existed, would be hell.”

“Possibly the greatest philosophical question of the 21st century is the resolution of religious faith with the growing realization of the very different nature of the material world. You could say that we evolved to accept one truth — the religious instinct — but then discovered another. And having discovered another, what are we to do? You might say it’s just best to go ahead and accept the two worldviews and let them live side by side. I see no other solution. I believe they can use their different worldviews to solve some of the great problems — for example, the environment. But generally speaking, the difficulty in saying they can live side by side is a sectarianism in the world today, and traditional religions can be exclusionary and used to justify violence and war. You just can’t deny that this is a major problem.”

It’s good readin’. It also reminds me why I’m eternally grateful to my parents for making me read and think, as opposed to memorize and recite.

.:.

[bragging uncle] My nephew, who’s 6, finished second in his age range in a chess tournament last week. [/bragging uncle]

Where's Andrei Kovalev?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Sorry, busy lately. Bad, bad blogger.

.:.

Here’s why the Toronto Maple Leafs are just like the Republicans: they claim to be victimized, oppressed everyday joes who just want a fair break, when in fact they already get every break in the book. But by whining, bitching, moaning and crying foul at every given opportunity, they convince everyone that they’re the poor put-upon underdog and get preferential treatment. Witness the 12 minor penalties called against the Canadiens last night, including 7 in a row. The Leafs, meanwhile, got away with stuff like Bryan McCabe cross-checking Chris Higgins into the net, resulting in Higgins’ cheek smashing into Ed Belfour’s skate blade. No call, of course, and the Canadiens were called for another minor just when they were threatening to get close in the 3rd. Did the Canadiens deserve to win? Probably not. But when you’re playing your third game in four nights and the refs hand your opposition four power play goals on twelve chances, it’s pretty much impossible to pull one out. In general, the game was shit; the penalties called on the Leafs were equally ridiculous, just fewer in number.

Still on hockey, the Canadiens traded Jose Theodore to Colorado today. I, and every other Habs fan on earth, are remembering the last time Montreal traded their superstar goalie to Colorado and praying that history will not repeat itself.

.:.

Two more basketball injuries, but nothing major. My big toe got cut last week — I think I broke the nail about midway down and it cut into the nail bed — and it got stepped on enough this week that I bled through another sock. I also pulled my tricep while working with a friend; I was pretending to guard her, slipped on the dusty floor and stumbled backward for a few steps…you know, those few seconds when you know you’re going to fall but just keep stumbling backwards, and it seems to last for an hour…anyway, I knew that I was about to run headlong into the wall so I kind of let myself fall, but my right arm kind of twisted as it bore the impact and I strained the muscle a bit. Still, I got it worked out before we started to play.

Some younger guys showed up with Miggles; they started off on fire, jumping all over the place and running up and down and just oozing energy…that lasted about 10 minutes. By the end of the night one of them looked like he needed oxygen…

.:.

Wal-Mart, graduating from tacky to evil, has enlisted bloggers to say nice things about the company. They can all blow me, them and their little flying markdown happy faces.

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I’ve listened to the first 1/3 of the not-yet-released Fiery Furnaces disc Bitter Tea, and I fear what we have on our hands here is Blueberry Boat v2.0. It’s too bad; I had such fuckin’ hopes for us.

I have the sudden virus.

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I seem to have come down with a cold in the last couple of hours. Bam, just like that. Stuffed up, sort throat, the works. Booo, colds.

.:.

Sometimes I like doing geek stuff again. Taking computers apart, setting up hard drives, creating databases, generating something. It’s nice to actually see a tangible result sometimes. Meeting minutes don’t count.

Fortunate son

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

A lot of times, when I read the news, I realize how lucky I’ve been. Everything’s kind of been stacked in my favour for my whole life. I’m a healthy, straight, reasonably affluent, atheist white male who lives in a prosperous, peaceful country that’s all but devoid of natural disasters. I don’t have to worry about racism, mudslides, discrimination due to religion or sexuality, poverty, sexism, or gunfire.

Does this make me The Man? Am I keeping somebody down? Is my foot in someone’s ass? I hope not.