theMediaman.com

OOOooo… I feel so revitalized. After years of buying Samurai Pizza Cats toys, T-Shirts, a Ranma 1/2 SNES cartridge (even though I didn’t own an SNES) and countless other crap, I’m finally selling something!

Although, technically it’s just something I bought for way more than I could afford and it didn’t work as well as I had hoped. Now I’m just trying to get my money back.  A digital HDTV tuner and powered antenna.

If you have a clear view of the CN Tower and want to buy it from me, I’ll give you a deep-discounted “Friends Only” price. Let me know before the auction is over so I can cancel it.

I’m falling further behind on documenting my New York trip, but something happened last week I can’t stop thinking about.

Simone and I went to see Harry Potter on Thursday night. Rushing from the Lick’s on Eglinton to the theatre, we stopped in the 7-eleven so I could pick up some snacks. I miss the contraband now that they don’t prevent you from bringing in your own food. Still, it wasn’t the adrenaline rush I was going for in this case, it was the sugar rush.

When I walked in, there was some commotion at the counter. I walked by it and picked out my chocolate bars (two for $2!).

Walking up to the counter, I watched as some bald guy was trying to buy smokes. Apparently, his ID was in French. It certainly looked legitimate, but I didn’t see specifically what kind of ID it was.  What I heard next from the older lady speaking to the uncomfortable teenager with her behind the counter was, “if you can’t read it in English, you don’t have to accept it as ID”.

Now, I’m not entirely sure that’s correct. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. A Canadian ID is a Canadian ID as long as it’s written in one of the two official languages.  If it was a Quebec ID card like a Health Card (again, I didn’t get a good look at it but it was orangish in colour), I’m certain it would be written exclusively en français.

The guy trying to buy smokes was clearly upset, and probably at least a bit offended.  I’m not going to play sympathy with his role, because that won’t illustrate my point (which I’m getting to eventually). However, I won’t say that he’s wrong either.

Showing the older woman that I just wanted to buy two chocolate bars, I got her over to the second cashier to ring it through. As she was doing so, she said back to the other fella, “let me tell you a story”. I was focused too much on not involving myself to remember the details, but the story did illustrate a circumstance where she visited Quebec and was refused service because she only spoke English.

You know when you leave a situation and you think of the perfect thing to say later? (”Yeah, well the JERK store called…”) This wasn’t it. I thought of the perfect thing to say right there and then.

It wasn’t harsh. It didn’t take sides. It was more like a comment where they wouldn’t be sure if I was agreeing with them or insulting them. The issue, as I will discuss later, is understanding WHAT I was insulting.

“No,” I would say. “If it’s in French, then you have to accept it. We are in a bilingual country,” as the Francophone had pointed out earlier. “However, Quebec doesn’t play by the rules the rest of the country does, so only French ID is accepted in Quebec.”

Part of me want’s to sympathize with that fella, since he’s the victim of prejudice in this circumstance.

Another part of me, the one that grew up with Quebec getting special treatment from the Canadian government - at the financial and social expense of the other nine provinces and three territories - wanted to simply give into the bigotry and say, “now you know how the rest of us feel”.

Since moving from the white-bred, redneck city of Barrie to the functionally multicultural Megacity of Toronto, I’ve been filtering more and more of what I say before I say it. I figure that’s a big reason for my occasional bouts of stuttering. It’s not that I’m thinking negative thoughts or racial slurs, it’s just that so much more of what I say could be blown out of proportion. A misheard comment could result with foot-in-mouth disease when I was in Barrie. Here, a misunderstood comment could be a racial slur.

I admit that if I had said that comment out loud, there would have been some venom in my words. My hesitation wasn’t the fact that the guy didn’t look like the kind of person I wanted to risk upsetting, although that was a contributing factor. The idea that I’m an English, white, heterosexual, Christian male aged 18-35 means that any comment I have regarding any minority race, religion, race, sexual preference or gender equality issues can very easily be interpreted as 1) sympathetic to the cause, 2) patronizing, or 3) prejudiced. My words always have to be chosen carefully so that I don’t get misunderstood as 2 or 3.

To sum it up, I wanted to insult the Quebec Government’s totalitarianism and the Canadian Government’s protection of such Nazi-esque laws…

…but I’m sure it would have come across as a “dumb frogs” comment.

Actually, maybe to some extent it was. Sorry, I’m not perfect. I’m just some Redneck*.

^{Disclaimer: Using the term “Redneck” is okay because I’m White.}

Curious what ever happened to the Smurfs Movie that came out shortly after the cartoon series took off, I checked it out on IMDB.

I knew that the Smurfs were a French creation before it was English, so I wasn’t surprised to see the film title was also originally in French (La Flûte à six schtroumpfs). However, I was surprised to see that the movie came out in 1976 - five full years before the cartoon series was produced, and seven years before being released in English.

Apparently more faithful to the source material, this kind of explains why there was no Gargamel, Azreal or Smurfette. It also explains why the smurfs are in the dark for the first half-hour of the movie.

I still remember seeing it at the Cineplex in Eaton centre, and again at a friend’s birthday party. I must have been about seven years old to see it in 1983, which would put it as one of the first movies I remember seeing (along with 1983’s “Never Say Never Again” and, of course, 1981’s “Empire Strikes Back”). In those days, blockbuster movies stayed in theatres longer than a weekend so it’s difficult to gauge exactly when I saw any of those films.

They might be sitting on the promotional value of the original, since there is a new Smurfs movie script in development, but they’ve been working on that for years. I don’t think we’ll see it in this decade. So where’s my DVD? Or high-definition transfer to HD-DVD?

With over 400 episodes, they are supposed to start releasing the seasons on DVD sometime this year.  However, we can probably skip the last one where they travel through time.

Simone and I made the trip out to Sportsworld in Kitchener this weekend. I got to show her how all the fun stuff in Kitchener (well, except for the drinking establishments) were all on the south end of Kitchener while all the students lived at the north end of Waterloo. I guess it was a pretty good strategy in order to keep overwhelming piles of cash from rolling in.

Sportsworld (or as it’s called now, “Moose Winoski’s With An Arcade And Mini-Golf“) was the scene for the First Annual Tang-Del Monte Mini-Golf Tournament. I managed to win, but all the scores were close so it wasn’t a Tiger Woods-like conquest.

I did manage to win the punching bag game. While my first attempt numbered in the low 200’s (out of 999), it was only because my fist glanced off the side of the bag. On my second attempt I scored in excess of 700 points. Damned good, when you consider that the two athletes in the group (Reg and Ben) got high 500’s. They seemed more confident in their abilities, so they didn’t need to go a second time. I, on the other hand, have a fragile ego and needed this victory.

Now I want to watch Rocky Balboa just for that “blunt force trauma” motivational speech.

Finally, I beat Sony. I bought a new analog controller component for my PSP for about 13 bucks US. With shipping and 95 cents on the dollar, it cost under $20. My hands were really shaky when I took the casing off my PSP, but I managed to replace the part. It’s working perfectly fine and now I can’t wait to get a copy of Crush and start playing.

So, while Sony gets a point for coming out with a new PSP that will have a feature I have dreamed of, I win this round. I’ve already ordered a new part that I can use to replace the controller on my brother’s PSP (same break, same weekend). So, together we save over $200. Sounds like I’m winning, Sony.

One of my favourite successes in the operation is lifting up the VOID sticker with an xacto knife and getting at the screw without damaging said sticker. Done carefully, you could easily crack open your PSP and get at the innards without voiding your warranty. Done poorly, you better hope that you can make ALL repairs on your own.

In the interest of full disclosure, replacing the PSP controller component is one of the easiest fixes a person can do. The second is replacing the faceplace… something I’m seriously considering now. Unfortunately, the biggest manufacturer of faceplates had to shut down operation.

I guess Sony was too busy suing Lik-Sang to focus on building quality parts that don’t crap out just out of warranty.

I’m going to have to do an email change soon. I’m starting to get dozens of spam per day again.

Everyone has their stories on spam, and I don’t intend to focus on that in this entry. However, one of the more interesting series of spams that I’ve been receiving is “pre-approved mortgage”, “your loan approval has gone through”, and so on. I’m not really sure if this is a phishing scam, a spam for a shifty bank in the Cayman Islands, or a bit of both. In any case, I was a little upset to get such a phone call from my very own Financial Advisor through CIBC.

“Our system has chosen you for a pre-approved Line-of-Credit for up to X dollars.” I found this funny, since I had just arranged a LoC with this person for the exact same amount two years earlier.

“Well, I don’t think I need that now. I’ll take a look at my finances this weekend and let you know next week?” That was fair enough, I thought. I don’t need it, but it might be handy if there’s a lower interest rate than some other loans I’ve got.

“No, you see, this is a ‘pre-approved‘ Line of Credit without any need to show proof of revenue. If you apply for a Line of Credit next week, then we’ll need to go through the whole approval process with proof of revenue.” So, because a computer thinks I’m worth it, then I get to go further in debt with them while they don’t have to do as much paperwork. I’m starting to see how this ‘relationship’ is balancing out.

Frankly, I didn’t like having a ‘limited-time offer’ proposed to me by the one person who should be encouraging me to value careful, rational thought when it comes to my money. “No thanks, I’m not interested”, was the nicest thing I could think to say.

In addition to that event, my FA used to work Saturdays on appointment up in York Region. No longer. However, with both Simone and I living downtown and working five days a week, there’s no time when when we can go meet with our own, personal representative of CIBC.

Nothing against our FA, but clearly there’s a portfolio of clients that doesn’t require the effort to work on Saturday anymore. That’s no good for us since the branch is way up in York Region. So now I’m seriously considering moving FA’s, or even banks.

I wonder what the Caymans are like, this time of year?