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Generally I do not follow that whole "Step on a crack and break your mother's back" doctrine; however, I did notice today that my strides are a perfect match for the side walk tiles on the McKenzie King Bridge beside the NAC and over the Canal. One step per tile, no more no less.
E for Effort. So Adbusters run a few different campaigns and I've been thinking about them quite a bit in a quest to inspect the "other side" of the coin. The first is their annual Buy Nothing Day in November. The second is an annual TV Turnoff Week that began on Monday.
My TV's been off (and on) a few times since Monday and thinking back to years past (when I actually did unplug the tube for a week) it is obvious that somewhere along the line I missed the point. You see, with the TV off I would spend more time socializing with friends and/or going for coffee, going to a pub, dining, shopping or buying tickets for shows, museums, galleries or galas -- something different each day. "That's great!" I would proudly proclaim... "I survived a whole week without watching the damn TV. Gold Star."
I found it easier still to participate in Buy Nothing Day. I would just sit at home and watch TV for the day. No problem! "That's great!" I would proudly proclaim... "I survived a whole day without spending any money. Gold Star."
Thinking about how keen I used to be to Buy Nothing and Turn Off TV makes me think about 21st Century Living:
Can you supersize ambition? Does that make you ambitious if you supersize ambition? Around here, our ambition hurts more than it helps Around here our ambition throws an non-perishable item in a donation bin at Christmas And it pats itself on the f'n back because it thinks it's done something decent
Another click on the odometer of life...
...well it's about that time again, another few days and I'll be a different age...
No one sits down with me to do a year-end review, and that's almost too bad since 2005-06 was full of excitement & changes. I'm surprised that so much was accomplished in 365 days! Gold star.
Tonight was my first night attending the Spins and Needles craft night at a pub in the Glebe. It certainly won't be my last. (Wish I had showed up last month for the munnies though)
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Made the most of the nice weather after a great day at work. Left my winter coat in the office and I started walking... an hour-and-a-half later I was more than half way home. Cool.
Oh, and I saw actual fish in the Rideau Canal. They weren't carp either! A good number of Bass and a few large perch were hanging out in front of a BeaverTail stand. In years gone by I've often seen people fishing along the canal and it made me wonder if there were any fish to be caught. Now I wonder if they were smart enough to use a Killaloe Sunrise as bait.
How is it that we can produce so much more wealth and yet fail to secure any measurable improvement in satisfaction? We constantly hear about how, as a society, we can no longer "afford" health care or public education. But if we can't afford them now, how could we afford them thirty years ago, when the country produced only half as much wealth? Where did all the money go?
... the money is being spent on private consumption of goods. Yet if this pattern of expenditure is not making us happier, why are we doing it? ... Are we just like kids at a birthday party, eating too much cake even though it will give us a tummy-ache later on?
Page 112 of The Rebel Sell:
Adbusters magazine, for example, has attracted worldwide attention with its campaign to institute an annual Buy Nothing Day. This ignores the fact that, one way or another, your total income gets spent. If you don't spend it, you put it in the bank and someone else spends it. The only way you can reduce consumption is by reducing your contribution to production. Yet somehow an annual Earn Nothing Day doesn't have the same ring to it.
Page 1 of Re: appoggiatura (the email I just wrote):
Hey Double L, Because I am not a level two-thousand piano player, I had to use a dictionary to figure out what the subject of your email was about...
I never did buy the new chrome lamp. too big to carry home via Via. :( It would have been the best $30 I'd have spend in a long time thou...
It's great to hear that your interviews are getting better and better! Hurry up and schedule three more while you're on a roll!
Sorry to hear about your parent situation... I guess I'm spoiled that my folks have been able to work through any of their problems, although I bet that will be a disadvantage if I ever end up with a woman who thinks that divorce is an easy way out of a disagreement. Since I have very little real-life "duking it out with the Mrs." experience I'm afraid I would probably end up heartbroken on the curb with .75 of our 1.5 children.
So what's the lure of Tokyo? It's distance or is there something more? Saw some of Lost in Translation last night... I wonder if I would handle a visit to Tokyo as well as Bill Murray did? I'm almost interested enough to fly over for a week just to find out.
California Dreaming...
So I've been noticing an exponential growth in the amount of youth walking around Ottawa with longboards and wondering what they do with them since the city's spent a fair amount of money on building skateboard parks for shortboards.
Volga Boatman
I enjoyed a visit to Toronto last weekend, and I'm about to shut my eyes to end yet another great weekend before the busy week ahead. Met up with some good friends Saturday night to visit while we watched some amazing acoustic guitar while Natalia Connor danced some Flamenco. After the performance, the bar TVs came back on playing some random 'live' concert. We didn’t really pay attention at first but near the end it caught our attention. It was some wild and crazy stuff, and defiantly not your average pop-mart tour. It was a taping of a stadium show in Helsinki where the Leningrad Cowboys were singing American songs backed up by a huge Russian Army choir. The best song? Definitely their rendition of Sweet Home Alabama mixed in with the Volga Boatman chorus. Almost makes it worth investing in the DVD.
Had the Boatman in my head for a while this afternoon after a refreshing 11km canoe ride down the high spring waters of the torrent hoasic river.
Leningrad Cowboys!?! Man, they must be about 90 by now. I remember seeing 'Leningrad Cowboys Go America' on one of the coldest nights I can remember during high school - at least I think it was during high school... either way, it was cold and it was a long time ago. And the movie was bad.
bloggery gone awry
So Adbusters run a few different campaigns and I've been thinking about them quite a bit in a quest to inspect the "other side" of the coin. The first is their annual Buy Nothing Day in November. The second is an annual TV Turnoff Week that began on Monday.
, 2:54 a.m.
