theMediaman.com

Several years ago I took a trip to Japan and wrote almost daily on my web site. At the time, I wasn’t even using the word ‘blog’… it was an “online journal”. It was only after that when I decided to start writing a regular blog of my thoughts, frustrations and other innane topics.

While I was there, the only thing that astonished me more than the horrible colour schemes in the billboard ads, were that very few of them had imagery. Aside from logos and a telephone wingding, they were almost always just text. For many years I just chalked it up to cultural differences, until I read “The Death of a Copywriter?“.

As Copywriters are prone to do, the situation is initially illustrated as more dire than it truly is. However, the first half of the article does have a valid point in how Canada’s multiculturism and “new Canadians” require more visual cues in ads than are required in Japan.

In Japan, I remember seeing a lot of Japanese, and little else. In 2001 when my life in Toronto was measured in months, I could still remember living in Barrie, where my high school graduating class had less than a dozen people who were not white. However, even Barrie felt culturally diverse when compared to Osaka.

It would seem that Japanese language-only billboards exclude a very, very small percentage of the population, even less than performing the same action in a white-bred, redneck city like Barrie.

An open letter to the Ontario NDP:

At 8:48 pm on October 9, 2007, I received a call from an answering machine representing the NDP asking me to vote for Howard Hampton because the Liberals “broke their promises”.

On July 22, 2003, Howard Hampton put forward a proposal cleverly nicknamed the “Eating Supper In Peace” act, which would create a Do Not Call list and allow people like myself to avoid annoying and unwanted impersonal phone calls.I will not vote NDP tomorrow.

I assume that the NDP maintains a Do Not Call list? How do I get myself on that list?

-Stephen Clark
Davenport Riding

During Nuit Blanche, the McLaughlin Planetarium seemed darker than ever while there were crowds of people and activities in the middle of the night throughout Toronto.  Sure it closed 12 years ago, but it just seemed more depressing in such an environment.

So, I’m looking at the possibility of opening it up again, even if it’s for only one night next year at Nuit Blanche.  I’ve been brainstorming some ideas for Physics-as-art. Astronomy has seen many changes in the last 12 years since the Planetarium closed, and is almost unrecognizable. The Perimeter Institute has shown that a public arena for Theoretical Physics is feasible. The Ontario Science Centre is too far away from the Toronto Core to be considered “accessible”, and the new proposed area on the waterfront is unlikely to happen any time soon (and certainly not without better transit).

So here’s the question… who wants to help?

There are some very strange things I see in Toronto.  Yeah, there’s the guy screaming on the corner, bad drivers, and watching Paul make a sub sandwich disappear faster than the cashier can make change, but there are scenes where I wish I had a camera. Even if I had a camera in these circumstances, it would be inappropriate to take a photo.

Like when I was taking the elevator in my apartment building last week. The door opened at my floor, and a few people from higher floors (foreshadowing pun) were already on. I squeezed myself in, and glanced around. A single mother that Simone and I have seen a number of times was there with her child. We’ve seen her a number of times, because she usually goes outside in the morning to have a smoke with the baby in the carriage.

A mother smoking around her infant doesn’t shake me like it did in my idealistic youth. However, stapled to the carriage on the ride down was an entry sheet for the Weekend to End Breast Cancer marathon. Before the irony fully hit me, I noticed that one of the other guys with her had an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, and another was ACTIVELY ROLLING A JOINT!

The description of that event was just under 150 words, but I hope you can picture it as though it were a thousand. For even if I had a camera with me, it would have been complicated to ask them to stand still for a photo, and even more difficult to fully compose the absurdity of the scene.

There was a similar moment a few weeks earlier, as a mother jaywalked inches in front of my car with her 12 mo. old tucked sideways under her arm like a loaf of bread. The utter joy on the childs face as his mother crossed traffic while only 30′ away from a proper intersection turned my disgust/horror to hilarity. I was lucky that I had to wait for the next green light, because I was laughing far too hard to concentrate on the road.

Again, it was a moment when I wished I had a camera, but even with one could not capture the complete absurdity of it all.

I abhore Wii-As-Penis jokes for the same reason most people do, it’s too damned easy.  Maybe that’s the strategy that Nintendo was going for.

In any case, Nintendo’s solution to the flying controller problem that has plagued the new console is to supply a rubber that fits nicely over the controller.  It’s even more phallic shaped in case you’re one of the seven people who missed the Wii-As-Penis jokes.

Credit where credit is due… you can order up to four of them for free when you supply the serial number for your console.

Perhaps this is a subconcious Safe Sex promotion.  “Wrap Your Wii”.