Spring into inactvity - our new generation of lazy kewl · Monday April 20, 2009 by colin newell
One of my favorite phrases is Hip to be square…
When I turned 40 (more than a few years back…) I was worried that I would become entirely invisible to all those young people around me…
click on photo at left for the latest Corner Drip cartoon
And considering that I work at a very popular Canadian University populated largely by 20-somethings, that would have been a whole lot of invisibility.
I mean, everyone wants to be, even slightly, relevant.
But I was wrong. And I am still sorta cool. In a grand illusion kind of way… But for the most part, for reasons just outside of my grasp.
And I really do not think it has anything to do what what I am doing…
It has more to do with what everyone else (in the young’n age bracket) are not doing.
I figure I am just out there living the dream… burning the candle with a flame-thrower… drinking 5 cups of coffee at a time so I can keep up with my own timetable.
And it is not like I am that busy. I work for 7 hours, taking about an hours worth of breaks a day – come home and make a gourmet dinner with my wife – put in about 2 or 3 hours on writing projects and web site obligations… shower, rinse and repeat.
Seems like that would have been considered a normal day… in 1974…
A movie making student friend of mine describes me as the coolest guys he knows…
I look behind myself every time I hear stuff like that. Surely I am not the calendar boy for Good as it gets. Dang, I was expecting to be a geezer by now… wearing tattered polyester pants and a weedy Nike golf shirt from Value Village… smelling vaguely like a combination of Canadian blended whiskey, Aqua Velva and sketchy personal hygiene.
But no…
Instead, life on campus has forced me into Gap-ville. I wear Levi’s, Fluevog shoes, cotton monochrome banana republic t-shirts… and I (gasp) shower every morning and shampoo with an all-in-one volume enriching organic formulation…
What have I become? Is this the future for the middle aged? Retro-chic into our golden years? Who is going be rad if the young folks won’t come up to the plate? Sigh… guess it’s gonna be me and my similarly aged hunky stud dudes.
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Spring into weird behavior - Billy Bob Thornton on CBC Q · Wednesday April 8, 2009 by colin newell
CBC Radio host and national media treasure, Jian Ghomeshi, has a heart of gold… and a vocal delivery that sounds like a combination of crushed velvet and a tropical breeze.
And after listening to and watching the interview with B-List actor, C-List musician and certifiable dirt-bag – Billy Bob Thornton… I am pretty confident that Jian is a saint.
For me, Jian Ghomeshi is the sound of Canadian pop culture and the Canuck perspective on, well… everything. His recent interview with Gordon Lightfoot was nothing less than seminal – my point being, what other radio personality can so radically define and describe how Lightfoot is so quintessentially Canadian… that one really does not know where the fabric of Canadian culture and pop history begins and the very nature of Lightfoot’s music ends.
And so it was as Jian Ghomeshi attempted to make sense of Billy Bob’s mini-melt down and tantrum – while maintaining some semblance of continuity… meanwhile Billy Bob’s bandmates in the band the Boxmasters looked utterly wilting as their leader attempted to lead Jian down a David Lynchian avenue of nonsensical answers, suppositions and self-indulgent rhetoric.
I mean really. Who in their right mind would compare himself to Tom Petty and then when stimulated for details on his music, Thornton instead provided a Lewis Carrol on a zine he subscribed to called Famous Monsters of Film-land.
Drugs were clearly on Billy Bob.
Then again, it was 6 o clock this morning in the CBC studios in Toronto… and if you watch the video closely you can see Billy Bob combine an air of utter contempt and at the same time giving the viewers a sense of the darkest American zeitgeist available to Thornton – my wife pointing out… “That dude looks evil…”
Evil. Arrogant. Self-important. And stupid.
Wasting perfectly good airtime on CBC radio.
Anyway. Have a look at the video. You will be glad you did.
And play it safe: Do not call Billy Bob an actor!
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Surfing Vancouver's crime wave - bullets chapter #1 · Wednesday February 11, 2009 by colin newell
There was yet another round of gun-play in Suburban Vancouver, this time involving two vehicles circling each other through a Shell gas station and a Tim Hortons parking lot in Langley – Wednesday morning.
Startled employees at the gas vendor noted that half a dozen shots were fired as two vehicles circled the pumps before heading across the street to the Tim Hortons parking lot… Ostensibly for double-doubles and timbits.
Ok. So you know how I feel about gouging at the pumps? And although this is probably frightening for the staff, doesn’t this activity serve several useful purposes?
-Gun fire at gas stations can lead to unexpected explosions… burning or killing the bad guys. That’s good, yea?
-And if gas stations become known as shooting galleries, maybe people will drive less and the price of gas will go down.
Besides. If the explosive column of flame and smoke does not slow down the mobsters then maybe the lethal dose of trans-fats at Tim Hortons will.
Vancouver area police are currently issuing this stern warning to gangsters, mobsters, crime wannabees and their cracked out Ho mistresses…
“Stop! Stop! Stop this incessant nonsense or we are going to park outside your home and allow journalists from Global-TV to ask embarrassing questions! So stop it already!”
Yea. That will work.
I have an idea. Eliminate this useless war on drugs. Legalize and regulate the hard stuff. And leave the unemployed gansta types to find a career in that other criminal realm…
Politics.
Move over Gordon Campell, this homey wants a piece of the action!
Bonus blog - things that make me steam · Monday February 2, 2009 by colin newell
Picture at left – a portion of my ham shack – the receivers – one of which used to be used to pick up an actual Sputnik satellite (upper left Radio Shack DX150B circa 1973)!
From the Canadian wire and on Global TV news today…
Four Toronto college students have accomplished a technological feat that their teachers are calling a first. The Humber College seniors made contact with the International Space Station on Monday with a radio system they designed and built themselves.
School officials say that, to their knowledge, that’s never been accomplished by students at the college level.
These school officials have;
never used an internet search engine…
have never researched an article…
and have been living under a skull crushing pile of gravel for the duration of their miserable lives…
Hello. Has anyone ever heard of Amateur Radio? Ham radio as it is also called is a hobby enjoyed by about 1 million people Worldwide.
And thousands of student radio operators, if not tens of thousands of student radio operators (at various high-school, college and University amateur radio clubs…) have enjoyed the thrill of radio contact with orbital space craft, shuttles, space stations etc.
I am one of those people. My call sign is VA7WWV.
My first radio conversation, prior to actually having my own license, was as an 11 year old conversing with a rescue mission in Managua, Nicaragua after the 1972 earthquake that killed 5,000 of the 400,000 population, leaving 20,000 injured and over 250,000 homeless.
And as for space communications… We have been doing it since Skylab, every shuttle since, the Mir space station and the current international space station.
And to the good folks at Humber College…
Do your homework!
Winter follies count down to Hawaii boast #3 · Saturday November 29, 2008 by colin newell
As we get closer and closer to our departure for the wonderful tropical World of Polynesia… something occurs to me.
We are heading into Winter dang it and I, like many other people, are feeling ever so slightly under the weather.
Ah. Bad form on my part. I should properly introduce myself.
You know me as Colin the blogger… but to my family Doctor I am none other than Doctor Internet.
And it’s not that I spend any more time than most people diagnosing myself – because I do not. Because I never really get sick.
It’s just that I spend an inordinate amount of time diagnosing everyone else – whether I know them or not.
Example: Standing at a Bus stop downtown. Notice an elderly man that looks like he has been smoking since the age of 3. He is weathered and he is taking quick shallow breaths. What is wrong with him? Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Emphysema. It is an easy diagnosis. I pull a Q-tip out of my white lab jacket but decide against taking a sample of his DNA.
Example: I sit over lunch with one of my coffee-foodie colleagues and comment on the sad condition of his finger nails as he tucks into his favorite bowl of Pho… Discolored and disfigured finger nail. Irritated nail bed. My diagnosis: Onychomycosis
I pull out a pad of blank paper to write a script for Terbinafine (Lamisil) and then it hits me…
I need a new stethoscope…
Seriously though. It is that time of year where half the population is sniffling and snuffling – I bet as you read this you are feeling a little tight in the chest, a little short of breath. It is ok. It is the time of the year.
Me. I wrote a prescription for my wife and I almost a year ago. It is called 2 solid weeks of tropical weather… and I get the feeling that I may have to re-write this prescription in time for next year.
Counting down the days to Hawaii, I am Colin Newell and I am NOT A DOCTOR!
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