Runaway Future

Shamelessly stolen from blork blog:

It occurs to me that blogging is the karaoke of publishing.

With karaoke, anyone can sing along and pretend they’re a rock star. You can sing loudly, publicly, and badly — and have fun doing it. You don’t even have to be a good singer to be pretty good at karaoke.

Ditto blogging. Pretty much anybody can start a blog where they write copiously, publicly, and badly, and have fun doing it. You don’t even have to be a good writer to be a pretty good blogger.

On the other hand, some people who do karaoke are very good singers. And some people who blog are very good writers. In both cases, you don’t have to be good to have an audience.

To throw some more Canadian Politics commentary out there, Plurk at Zy.ca posted this view on the Michael Moore commentary that I mentioned yesterday.
An Excerpt:

The conservatives are a major unknown. I admit that things might be great under the Conservatives, but things aren’t horrible under the Liberals. Sure they wasted billions and some of them are crooks, but the Conservatives wasted at least that much money (maybe more) the last time they were in power (and don’t try that, it’s not the same party bullshit ’cause it’s a lie) and they made things worse. At least under the Liberals, things have been getting better … albeit slowly.

More election coverage to turn your attention to:

First off, Michael Moore posted this letter on his website about the Canadian Election. Here’s an excerpt:

Oh, Canada — you’re not really going to elect a Conservative majority on Monday, are you? That’s a joke, right? I know you have a great sense of humor, and certainly a well-developed sense of irony, but this is no longer funny. Maybe it’s a new form of Canadian irony — reverse irony! OK, now I get it. First, you have the courage to stand against the war in Iraq — and then you elect a prime minister who’s for it. You declare gay people have equal rights — and then you elect a man who says they don’t. You give your native peoples their own autonomy and their own territory — and then you vote for a man who wants to cut aid to these poorest of your citizens. Wow, that is intense! Only Canadians could pull off a hat trick of humor like that. My hat’s off to you.

It makes sense…but consider the source…

Also of interest should be this website, which details how the current MPs voted on bills and what they said in Parliament.
Kind of interesting, especially with a guy like Gerald Keddy, who is the South Shore MP and has voted against the party on a number of key issues (namely Gay Marriage and helping students)

Finally, the NDP are running a very interesting contest on their website. The best part is they never have to give the prize away.

Also, to step away from election coverage a smidge, check out the website for the movie Grizzly Man. Timothy Treadwell spent summers with grizzly bears in Alaska and filmed them. He was killed in 2003 by a grizzly and now the footage he took has been put together into a documentary. It’s very interesting website, with video and journal entries from someone who was killed by the one thing he was trying to protect.

Just wanted to draw attention to the Globe and Mail’s Decision 2006 section. It’s really well done. Especially the Voter toolkit.

I took the Voter Analyzer and chose Liberal views for Health, Family, Taxes and Law. I also chose Conservative platform for Defence and Education and the Bloc for the Environment.

Anyway, I’m starting to really look forward to Monday. Should be very interesting.

Last night, on the Colbert Report, Frank McCourt was the guest. I don’t know how to describe him, he’s just really an interesting guy. The author of three books now, Angela’s Ashes, Tis and Teacher Man, he’s doing a lot of press with the latest release of Teacher Man.
Anyway, here’s some of the press he’s done:
CBS News
NY 1
He also did a cool thing with MTV when he stood in on a University class. That can be found here.

I did a good deed today. I went to the bank to get quarters for laundry and the woman ahead of me in line for the teller, left her bank card behind. So I chased her down and gave it back to her. The teller said I was a great person, but then she only laughed when I asked if I was great enough to get two rolls of quarters for free because of my customer service skills.

I honestly hope someone watched the Daily Show tonight. The first half was all about the Canadian Election. I was in tears.
You can find the video here under the ‘New Osama Tape’ link.
This is the New York Times article that he references.

Finally, this is a cool story. Some guy keeps visiting Edgar Allen Poe’s grave on the anniversary of his birth. He’s been doing it since 1949, always leaving roses and cognac. Apparently the task has been passed on to the guy’s son. Pretty interesting.

holy mackinaw, I’ve been busy at work. It’s ridiculous. Normally, I goof off, and so on, but man oh man, I’ve been running straight. Today was the first day I actually feel like I made some progress against the workload.
I had half of my annual evaluation on Monday and I’ve been going flat out ever since. Because my position is split between two departments, I still have to wait to have the other half of my evaluation done.

I have a irk that I can’t do anything about, so I’ll complain here.
I have a subscription to The Walrus Magazine, which is kinda like Canada’s version of The New Yorker. Anyway, the latest issue is out on news stands, but it hasn’t appeared at my door yet.
If I ever own a publishing company (which at this point is as likely as pretty much anything else), I would think you would show preference for the subscribers, or at least the same respect that you give to the stands, so that when I see the latest issue in the window of the Daily Grind, I know it’ll be waiting for me at home.
The only other explanation is that someone else in my building swiped my magazine and while I appreciate their taste, I would be forced to destroy them if that was the case.

If it’s not noticeable yet, this is just a mish mash of things. I don’t have time nor an inkling of desire to ruminate about any one topic for too long. Tonight, I’m going to the gym and then I have a doctor’s appointment.

I’ve been thinking about registering another domain name, but I don’t know what I would use it for. I think it would at the very least be a decent idea, because the name I have in mind would be a little more personal then runawayfuture.com plus shorter and easier to remember.

This is an interesting article I stumbled across a week ago or so. It’s about Albert Hofman, the man who discovered LSD. Here’s the Link. It’ll probably bug you for registration, because the New York Times doesn’t understand the Internet. In that case, go to Bugmenot.com and get a username/password combo.
Wired.com also did an article about Hofman lately, but I don’t like it quite as much. You can find that one here.

If you know anything about Text-Based games, then laugh at this link. The Bush Presidency done like a text-based game. Actually, you don’t have to know anything about them, it’s a self-explanatory funny.

Also, check out the Scanner Photography Project here. His server is on the fritz at the moment, but going to the link provides three mirror sites that show what he’s all about. Using a hacked scanner as a camera, some of the images produced are just haunting.

Oh and Bin Laden showed up again. Whoops, looks like everyone forgot about him.