Bigge Blurbs

Beta Republicans

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:50:11 -0400

mikehudack:

“The Republicans knee jerk reaction to anything positive under the Obama administration is so blatant it makes me wonder why we cannot just reduce the entire party to a piece of software. I could totally code the GOP in 20 minutes.”— Justin Day

Photo

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:56:41 -0400

"I asked Danny Burns, a marketing manager at Nissan Canada, why they decided to launch the car using..."

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:16:00 -0400

“

I asked Danny Burns, a marketing manager at Nissan Canada, why they decided to launch the car using social media only.

“When you look at the vehicle, it makes sense.” I took a second glance at the Cube. It looked like a minivan that was squished and gutted. I was reminded of those Suzuki microbuses in Latin America where they shove people in until no one can move their arms.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I replied.

He explained that it’s not a car for the masses, and so it would not work with a mass media campaign. Nissan wants to lure younger buyers, so reaching them on social media made sense.

”

- Thank god the Baffler is returning: http://www.observer.com/2009/media/color-me-baffled-thomas-franks-magazine-lives-again

(http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/tech/archive/2009/06/24/is-it-social-media-if-you-re-being-antisocial.aspx)

"“If I opened a bar in the United States, a bottle of vodka would cost me five bucks and..."

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:35:50 -0400

“

“If I opened a bar in the United States, a bottle of vodka would cost me five bucks and I’d sell a cocktail for $4.25,” she said hotly.

“Here a bottle of vodka costs $35.26 and I still have to sell a cocktail for $4.25, and I have to pay a 10 per cent liquor tax and GST, and I have to go through all these hoops for licensing.”

Cars were circling for his parking spot as Kerim Sursal loaded 50 bottles of wine into his car as quickly as he could.

“Nothing brings Canadians together like shopping for booze,” he said ambiguously.

”

- http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/655286

"Some shoppers question if the five-cent fee is a deterrent or a penalty. Lawyer and mother of two..."

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:17:13 -0400

“

Some shoppers question if the five-cent fee is a deterrent or a penalty. Lawyer and mother of two Tierney Grieve is annoyed, she says, pushing a cartload of groceries in plastic bags to her car where she has defiantly left her reusable bags. “People judge you,” she says.

She needs the plastic to line rubbish bins at home. “There’s a lot of social pressure to demonstrate how socially conscious we are,” says Grieve. “Screw it. I need some bags.”

”

- http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/654243

"Sheila Heti, author of Ticknor “You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” from..."

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:04:09 -0400

“

Sheila Heti, author of Ticknor

“You’re Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile,” from the Annie soundtrack (1982)

Last year, I spent the summer in Williamsburg. One day, I decided to play a game as I walked to the L train. I smiled at everyone I passed. No one smiled back. So I played it the next day, and the next, always with the same result: a slight raise of the chin and a glance away. Give me a break, darlings! Don’t you remember Annie? There’s only one antidote to your misguided attitude: “Who cares what they’re wearing/On Main Street or Savile Row/It’s what you wear from ear to ear/And not from head to toe/That ma-ah-ah-ters.”

”

- http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-06-17/books/lit-seen-a-heavy-rotation-playlist/1

"Meanwhile, Vintage Canada is preparing to put all of Martel’s largely one-sided correspondence..."

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:26:08 -0400

“Meanwhile, Vintage Canada is preparing to put all of Martel’s largely one-sided correspondence with the PMO into a $19.95 book called What is Stephen Harper Reading? Yann Martel’s Recommended Reading for a Prime Minister (and Book Lovers of All Stripes). A trade paperback, it’s scheduled for release in early November this year.”

- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/in-other-words/yann-martel-hears-from-harper——finally/article1174701/

Does Toronto’s tofu tagger use vegetable-based spray...

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:20:00 -0400

Does Toronto’s tofu tagger use vegetable-based spray paint?

"Four years ago, Gary Ross offered a freelance writer $4,000 for a 4,000-word feature. Her response:..."

Sun, 31 May 2009 16:35:24 -0400

“

Four years ago, Gary Ross offered a freelance writer $4,000 for a 4,000-word feature. Her response: “Gary, we had this same conversation 20 years ago.” The then-editor of Saturday Night—now editor of Vancouver Magazine—was having budget problems and could only afford to offer the writer the same rate he gave her in 1985. She ended up taking the assignment. “What’s her alternative?” Ross says. “She will just forego $4,000 in income.”

[…]

Ross also says he’s not afraid to turn to non-CWG members if the agency demands a rate he can’t afford. “How can you raise freelance rates if you don’t have some guarantee that by raising the rates of freelancers, you’re going to somehow improve the income that the magazine generates?” he asks. “It’s a very hard case to make.”

”

- http://www.mastheadonline.ca/news/2009/20090529655.shtml

"Yes, the Australian red with the cute kangaroo is the definition of easy drinking, with a nostalgic..."

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:48:19 -0400

“Yes, the Australian red with the cute kangaroo is the definition of easy drinking, with a nostalgic lunchbox grape-juice flavour. But it’s the Coldplay of wine, so popular it’s uncool. So uncool it might as well marry Gwyneth Paltrow. The point here is to find something edgier. More Lil Wayne or Kings of Leon.”

- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/food-and-wine/bottles-for-millennials-yo/article1154734/

"It’s absolutely excruciating that it takes us this long to make such a clearly positive..."

Mon, 25 May 2009 23:37:56 -0400

““It’s absolutely excruciating that it takes us this long to make such a clearly positive decision for our city that benefits all of our citizens,” said Yvonne Bambrick, executive director of the Toronto Cyclists Union. “If this is how council moves forward on issues, it’s no wonder people complain nothing gets done.””

- http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/639881

Rogers Cable Rant

Mon, 25 May 2009 08:59:31 -0400

Rogers Cable Rant

"All the King’s Voices And so you watched the progress of this man, the procession, really, of this..."

Thu, 21 May 2009 21:54:03 -0400

“

All the King’s Voices
And so you watched the progress of this man, the procession, really, of this handsome, lithe, tall black and white man toward the White House (“All in the Game,” by Mark Kingwell). Then you listened to the decisive way in which he ended each sentence in his speeches, though they contained little, and you knew that you had an obligation to comment, that as an academic philosopher you now needed to bring some clear-eyed thinking to an assessment of this phenomenon.

But there would be no lack of commentary, from the sycophantic to the morose. You knew that simply to add yet another piece of analysis, no matter how clear eyed and dispassionate, would be futile amid the din. And then, watching this man, you thought, this is a bright mind at work here. There must be some small voice in him that stands apart, the real philosopher within the public philosopher-king. Surely there’s a voice within, critiquing all this post-partisan stuff and yes-we-can, even as he declaims it so decisively. You had an idea: that inner voice would be the vehicle for your analysis, an undercurrent, no, a counterpoint to the public voice, only to be tragically stilled in the end, as so many philosophical voices are stilled. Socrates, Boethius, Bonhoeffer; you could name a few more. And, come to think of it, you would be following in the great literary tradition of others who had hard things to say: Galileo, Hume — they both used other voices to say what needed to be said.

So you had the small voice point out the fallacy of the big one. For a moment, you heard another small voice: Are you sure you’re not setting up a straw man here? Did he really say democracy is a meeting of equals? But then you thought, yes, he did at least imply it. In any case, it is integral to his platform and needs to be countered. And as you got into it, into this voice, you knew that you were on to something, that this was indeed the vehicle for truth, and so you soldiered on. You had the man’s inner voice almost consider cheating as a bad business, only to rationalize it as part of the game. A little tour de force of its own, you had to admit, your riff on cheating and spoilsports, a clear-eyed look at the hypocrisy of it all. It is so important to remain clear eyed. You remembered the tiny catch in your throat when this solitary man, young still, and vulnerable, stood in front of the crowd and spoke brave and sombre words into the winter air. You, too, were almost enchanted, but you fought your way free. You saw the words for what they were, and the world as it really is: meaningless.

A last, brief flourish of disdain, and you were done. Point made. You mused about what Davey, that old humbug detector, would think of that! You had perhaps forgotten that in the end Hume’s skepticism was mitigated, that hope can indeed have substance, can spring eternal, in a meaningful world.

Conrad Vanderkamp
Victoria, BC

”

- http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2009.06-letters-june-2009/

Gruff Bike Mechanics With Hearts of Gold: My Highest Recommendation

Thu, 21 May 2009 21:48:21 -0400

Gruff Bike Mechanics With Hearts of Gold: My Highest Recommendation

I Wish It Were Otherwise, But Book Readings Are Not Transgressive

Mon, 18 May 2009 18:27:03 -0400

I Wish It Were Otherwise, But Book Readings Are *Not* Transgressive

Photo

Mon, 18 May 2009 17:35:40 -0400

"Content owners are battling what Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, calls “a revolutionary..."

Mon, 18 May 2009 14:20:24 -0400

“

Content owners are battling what Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, calls “a revolutionary price” in his next book, Free; and many things – from search to user-generated content – will remain free online. Professionally produced content, however, is likely to become much scarcer for those unwilling to pay for it.

“Who started this rumour that information had to be free and why didn’t we challenge this when it first came out?”, Time Inc’s Ann Moore asked this year.

According to Mr Grimshaw, the answer is that a “free evangelist movement [convinced] everybody that the internet was somehow different and any attempt to impose a business model was an imposition on people’s human rights”. Changing that perception will mean nothing less than challenging the culture of the internet as we currently understand it.

”

- FT.com / Comment / Analysis - Media’s want to break free (via predicate)

Don’t tease me like this Toronto. To think this could be...

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:01:39 -0400

Don’t tease me like this Toronto. To think this could be Dufferin station makes me want to weep with joy. But you always ruin something pretty at the last minute.

Except the AGO. What a miracle that renovation was.

"RUSSELL: I remember passing around worn paperbacks under desks in junior high… Jaws, by I think..."

Mon, 11 May 2009 18:23:52 -0400

“RUSSELL: I remember passing around worn paperbacks under desks in junior high… Jaws, by I think Peter Benchley, I remember, was particularly popular because of some surprisingly subtle scenes of what we would now call flirtation that were so gravidly erotic they made every boy just about spurt in his jeans. I remember being excited to the point of leakage, right there under the soccer goalposts in the back field, by a scene in a restaurant in which the lady is getting excited by the gentleman’s seductive language and is wearing a short skirt and bare legs and she thinks to herself she can’t get up from the seat in the diner because she is afraid she’ll leave a wet mark on the vinyl. That very idea - that image, and the idea of its possibility — inflamed me so much that I used it as masturbatory material for years.”

- http://www.bookninja.com/?page_id=5382

elainecorden: jakemadison: This has to be one of the worst...

Fri, 08 May 2009 20:52:27 -0400

elainecorden:

jakemadison:

This has to be one of the worst books I’ve read in a while.

Imagine a 14-year-old kid, who’s only ever read C.S. Lewis books, getting contracted by Disney to write an adaptation of a Bret Easton Ellis novel, but like, with heart.

Plus, the central message of the book (which gets thrown in your face over and over again) is completely deluded and is basically rooted in the same middle-class, North American, navel-gazing docility/nostalgia/cultural amnesia that it’s supposedly battling against.

Barf.

Here is my synopsis of every Doug Coupland book, ever.

Character A: You remember that Thing*? I remember that Thing.

Character B: I remember that Thing also.

Character A: Our shared rememberance of that Thing constitutes a lasting and real human connection!

Character C: And hey, you know what’s fucking hard? Growing as a person and finding out who I am. Because, who I am is like, well, do you remember that very special Christmas episode of Three’s Company, where Jack puts a plant on his head? It was like, you know, the shitty season, after Suzanne Sommers was replaced by Priscilla Barnes? Anyways, that’s what it’s like to hate my job so much? Did I mention I hate my job?

Character A (aside to B): I never watched after Suzanne Sommers left. It just like, when she left, my childhood seemed to evaporate? You know? How stuff was better? In the past?

Character B: I have contempt for and reverence for the same bits of cultural bric-a-brac that you do. This means love. Do you remember when Things meant things?

Reader, along with Characters A&B&C: Yes, we remember when Things meant things! Boy, did I ever have a lot of feelings, once upon a time!

A&B: Let us go forth and use our memories of feelings we once had about Things as a lazy shorthand for actual meaningful connection. That way, neither of us has to grow. The past was really neat, don’t you think? Let’s live there, because our shitty jobs make it too hard to live in the present, and thinking of a way out is just like, totes a bummer.

Character C: Wait! I have a confession: I am fearful of nuclear weapons. Also, cancer makes me sad.

Narrator: Aren’t we all a little sad about cancer? And nuclear bombs? I mean, those are sad things. Sad like when they got rid of the pirate from the McDonald’s Happy Meal Gang because he was too scary.

New York Times Magazine: Trend piece!

All: We always liked the pirate the best! McDonalds does not understand our generation!

Narrator: You should probably be feeling things right now. If not, maybe try downloading an Amish person into your iPhone?

THE END

* Wherein THING= Hiroshima, limited edition Joy Division record, episode of the Smurfs, short-lived pseudo-obscure sitcom from the ’80s, 8-track tapes.