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Happy 11 Month Birthday Sasha!

Here’s a picture of you having an upside down Chicken Fight with your grandpa, dad and brother, risking that you might not make it to your first birthday if we move wrong! 😉

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Posted 16 March 2014 § Baby § Humour § Pace § Photo § Sasha § Shea § Sports ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Saturday Snap – Smile Pretty!

I haven’t managed to get a good, straight-on photo of it yet but here’s a blurry, half side-view of Sasha’s new smiley face which is this weird scrunchy, open-mouthed, toothy thing that’s a mixture of cute, ugly (in the nicest way!) and scary all at once! 😉

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Posted 15 March 2014 § Baby § Humour § Photo § Sasha § SaturdaySnap ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Friday Fun Link – “Linda! Linda! You’re Not Listening to Me!”

God, I find this funny…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP8RB7UZHKI

Posted 14 March 2014 § FridayFunLink § Humour § Meme § Video ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Suggested Reading Times on Books – Yay or Nay?

Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, did something fairly unique with his first book, “Without Their Permission” by including a “suggesting reading time” logo on the back cover.  This logo estimates the book would take about five hours to read and that this is the equivalent of a cross-country flight from New York to San Francisco.

A writer for Flavorwire is not impressed, pointing out that everyone has a different reading speed, that some books are denser than others, and that you can’t win – if you’re a slow reader, you’ll feel guilty and if you’re a fast reader, you’ll feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth.

I’d seen the logo on the book myself and thought it was an interesting idea but didn’t overthink it either.  I do think it’s interesting that the time estimate for this 272 page book is 5 hours which works out to a page a minute which is basically the same calculation that I use to estimate (roughly) how long it takes me to read most books.

Rather than focusing on the actual time estimate, I think the interesting part is trying to match the reading time to how long a flight might be which clearly positions this book as the kind of thing that a business traveller would pick up in the airport bookstore and then read on the flight when the in-flight movie sucks.

Posted 13 March 2014 § Infographic § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

How Pro Wrestling Prepared Me For The 21st Century

As I may have mentioned on this blog before, I grew up watching professional wrestling.

When I was around 7 or 8 years old, it was pretty amazing to see heavily-muscled, fantastically-named guys like the super-heroes I read about in comic books – whether good guys (The Dynamite Kid) or bad (The Mongolian Stomper, The Cobra) – battling each other on TV each Saturday afternoon.

I eventually realised wrestling was fake (the preferred term for those in the industry is “scripted”) but have continued to be a fan, off and on, ever since.

One of the reasons I remained a fan is that the sport offers all kinds of appeal beyond that childhood appeal to comic book reading fans.  Though scripted, I enjoy the athleticism of the wrestlers.  I enjoy the soap opera-esque storylines (some call wrestling “a soap opera for men” although obviously, the sports is enjoyed by many women too.)  I like that it’s a sport where the participants regularly interact with fans, before, during and after matches and this interaction often becomes part of the show.

As I learned more about wrestling and the behind-the-scenes terminology, one of the concepts I came across was the idea of something being “a work” – eg. anything that is planned to happen.  (In wrestling, the opposite is a “shoot” where somebody goes off script and says or does something that wasn’t planned in advance.)  This also leads to the concept of the “worked shoot” where something is done to look like it wasn’t planned but actually was to add controversy or interest or whatever.

The point being that an early introduction to the skepticism needed to be a wrestling fan has helped give me tools to navigate our meme-driven, 21st century reputation economy.

A couple recent examples…

Which is all to say that I’m not claiming that being a wrestling fan has made me immune to these hoaxes.  But I do think it’s given me a level of skepticism that I realise everything is potentially a “work” as well as an ability to appreciate a good “work” – whether done by a news outlet, a web site, a clothing company or whatever – both useful skills to have.

Posted 12 March 2014 § Internet § MemoryLane § PopCulture § Randomness § Sports § Wisdom ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: ,

Sasha vs. Pace At The (Almost) One Year Mark

Pace didn’t leave our sight for the first year of his life.
Shea found me in the garage a day after we brought Sasha home.  “Uhm, where did you leave the baby?”  (She was in her crib sleeping.)

Pace only ate healthy, nutritious, homemade food.
When Sasha finds crumbs or dropped Cheerios on the ground, we call them “floor treats”.

Pace was very flexible with routine as we were spending the week in Weyburn (where I was working) and weekends in Regina with lots of time on the road in between.
Sasha turns into a banshee-sounding baby if she doesn’t get put down in her own crib every night.

Pace had blonde hair from an early age which made me, as a brunet, wonder who his real father was?
Sasha has red-tinge in her hair, which makes me, as a brunet, wonder who her real father is!

Pace co-slept with us through most of his first year.
This will get us kicked out of the Attachment Parenting Guild but Sasha’s been in her crib ever since we brought her home.

Pace’s room is painted blue.
Sasha’s room is painted pink with a green feature wall (which provoked some of Pace’s first sibling rivalry: “How come she gets two colours and I only got one?”)

Pace was best friends with Shea’s parents’ dog, Snoopy.
Sasha with our cat, Koko?  Not so much…

Pace’s best trick?  “What does a monkey say? gets a “Oooh-oooh-oooh” response.
Sasha’s best trick?  All you have to do is say “Rock and roll” and she starts sticking her tongue out like the love child of Gene Simmons and Miley Cyrus.

Pace took his first steps two weeks before his first birthday
Sasha?  Well, we’ve still got a couple weeks to keep working on it! 😉

Posted 11 March 2014 § Baby § Humour § List § Pace § Sasha § Shea ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Music Monday – “There’s a light/And I can see it in your eyes/There’s a memory of/The way you used to be”

Hard to believe but yesterday marks one year since the most recent NDP Leadership convention where Ryan Meili lost to the eventual winner, Cam Broten, by just 44 votes (less than 1% of all votes cast).

As a cathartic process after the loss, I’d compiled a list of “44 Reasons We Lost” in my personal journal.  I’d tossed around the idea of using that as the basis for a similar list on this blog to mark the anniversary.

But then a funny thing happened – I didn’t even remember that yesterday was the anniversary of the convention until someone on one of the many secret societies I belong to on Facebook mentioned it.

And then I also realised that there was no point in posting a list like that.  Yes, there might be some value to be gained in sharing some thoughts about things we could’ve done better as a campaign.

But there was also much risk that a post like that, even if it wasn’t meant that way, would be read as criticism of members of Ryan’s team.  Or re-open old wounds.  Or bring back the nightmares I had in the week after the loss.  (I only wish I was kidding about that!) 😉

Anyhow, one of my more tongue-in-cheek reasons for why we lost was that we picked the wrong song for Ryan’s convention entrance.

There was a lot of debate within the team about which song would be best and after much back and forth, the song chosen was “The Obvious Child” by Paul Simon.

That made sense for a lot of reasons – Ryan has strong connections to Africa as does the song, the music is very upbeat, the lyrics are relevant and the title is right on the nose about what our message was by that point – Ryan was (or should have been) the obvious choice for NDP members.  (Maybe too on the nose given how things turned out!) 😉

One of the songs in contention was “Stompa” by Serena Ryder.  I liked it for a few reasons – in Ryan’s 2009 run, we’d used “Past in Present” by Feist and like that song “Stompa” would be a call-back to that campaign as another song by an alternative Canadian female artist who was gaining increased mainstream success.

“Stompa” also had some fitting lyrics and a great beat like both the Feist and Paul Simon songs we eventually used in the two campaigns.  And since “Stompa” had been used on the popular TV show, “Grey’s Anatomy”, it would be recognizable to a wide swath of convention goers, even if they might not realise where they’d heard it before.  (Shea was actually the person who pointed out that it’d been used on Grey’s when I first played it for her.)

(Hard to believe I just realised that also gave it a medical connection too which subliminally reinforced one of the things Ryan was best known for.)

Anyhow, maybe I’ll still post that list of “44 Reasons We Lost” at some point in the future – maybe for the next NDP Leadership Race?  Although I don’t think Ryan will be a candidate next time around – it looks like he’s doing quite well with his current endeavours.

Happy Anniversary, one day late! 😉

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7lTpkCKPyM

“Stompa” – Serena Ryder

Posted 10 March 2014 § MemoryLane § MusicMonday § Politics § PopCulture § Saskatchewan ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Saturday Night Live Cast Members Through the Years

Probably like a lot of people, I feel most strongly about the casts I watched when I was in my formative years circa 1989-1991 or so – Dana Carvey, Mike Myers, Phil Hartman, Dennis Miller, etc.

 

Posted 09 March 2014 § Humour § MemoryLane § PopCulture ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

Saturday Snap – Watching For Daddy

Something cool to see whether I’m coming from or going to work…

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Posted 08 March 2014 § Baby § Family § Sasha § SaturdaySnap ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged:

Friday Fun Link – Who Owns The Copyright to the World’s Most Retweeted Photo?

Ellen Degeneres arranged a “spontaneous” selfie with some heavy hitters at the recent Oscar telecast.  After tweeting it, it quickly crashed Twitter, became the most re-tweeted photo of all-time eclipsing Obama’s “Four More Years” tweet many times over, and becoming ripe for parody.

But it also quickly led to a question about who owned the copyright to the photo – is it Bradley Cooper who actually “snapped the shutter” (or did whatever the smartphone equivalent is)?  Is it Ellen who “commissioned” the work? Is it Samsung who paid Ellen to use a Samsung Galaxy as part of a paid product placement advertisement?  Or could it be someone else entirely?

Posted 07 March 2014 § FridayFunLink § Humour § Internet § Meme § PopCulture § Technology § United States ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , , , , ,