The Corporation

Everyone should see this documentary. You may not agree with its premise, its execution, the opinions expressed, or the people chosen to speak in it, but you have to admit that it does make you think twice about what you see in the media and what you purchase as a consumer of goods and services. As consumers, we can't absolve ourselves of all responsibility for what's happening around us -- to the planet, in the Third World, or in our own communities. We can blame government for poor leadership or lack of regulation enforcement, companies for their bottom-line thinking, or each other for looking the other way and letting things get out of hand. But, ultimately, every time we buy something and don't read the label -- for warnings or ingredients or for where it is made -- we are contributing to a collective ignorance about what it takes to get a product out in the market, from its raw materials to its packaged end. Consumer un/consciousness is a powerful thing.

I saw The Corporation last night and am still thinking about it. For me, that's the mark of a good film.

The Movie Review Query Engine has a listing of reviews for this (and any other) film.

There's Lost, Then There's LOST

What?? How can a person be lost for 400kms, PLUS attempt to cross an international border when obviously destination is in the same country?? (Hand grenade notwithstanding.)

Lost American with grenade closes border crossing | CP

The Cheating Culture

I read this post by David Callahan, who wrote a book called The Cheating Culture, and has a Weblog to discuss (and, of course, promote) it.

There are dozens of comments on it thus far. Some of them refer to a paler shade of cheating -- that is, cheating is OK since it's prevalent in that environment, where it is acceptable and everyone is an aware participant. An equivalent of the "little white lie", if you will... everyone does it.

From what I've glanced at, Callahan seems to be talking particularly about cheating on tests, not spouses, although it will probably be discussed in the book (if I were inclined to buy it)...

There are all kinds of situations in which people are regularly caught in some form of cheating:

* road tests (people sitting in for others)
* drug-enhanced sport
* university exams
* driving as a single occupant in the HOV lane
* sneaking into the cinema
* copying software
* queue-jumping
* job applications
* ticket scalping
... et cetera ...

Some situations seem more benign than others -- how upset are people going to be when you sneak your own food into a cinema (unless it's really pungent or offensive)? Probably not a bit. But if you were waiting in the passport office with a roomful of others in a 3-hour queue, and your friend the passport officer waves you over, imagine the lynch-mob mentality that could ensue...

My question is, when you engage in cheating-type activity -- and we all do (I've committed the above two offenses, I'll say that) -- then how do you rationalize it to yourself? Maybe another way of putting it is, how do you judge it OK/not OK to cheat? Or, do you say it's never OK?

I'll go first.

1) Guilt factor: how many people can this affect? I'd rather cheat a big, faceless corporation than people I know. (I'll put a rebuttal to myself: cheating costs are passed to the consumer.)

Your turn. (I'll understand if you prefer to be anonymous, but if you say you've never cheated, we all know you're telling porkies.)

Domestic Cats & Wild Horses

Michael over Burrard St.

I'd decided it was time to take the whole crew out of the apartment. After a full morning of Thomas the Tank Engine, both on DVD and video, Maddy was so restless she became a whirling dervish and whirled right through my apartment with reckless abandon, leaving nothing standing in her wake. The only way to save the place from total destruction by a 2-year old was to vacate. Immediately. My rug already had pizza sauce ground into it, and she'd produced the foulest-smelling diaper EVER. The contents were beyond anything I was prepared to deal with today, so I left the job to Allan, who was folding laundry. I mean, I've been changing the Ms diapers since Melissa was born in 1999, but the stuff that Maddy generates defies all verbal description of grossness. I can't imagine the potty-training without noseplugs. What is this kid eating that the others are not??

Michael meets Tako.

Anyway... we went to Eliza's place so they could meet her parents and her two cats, Ebi & Tako. The last time the Ms were at Eliza's place was pre-Maddy/Whirling Dervish. Melissa was two, Michael was one, and Eliza had not yet acquired either cat. Her parents have met Maddy and Melissa before, last summer in Richmond, but not Michael. Maddy had fallen asleep in the three blocks we'd driven to get to Eliza's, and Allan was ready for a nap, so we left those two to snooze in the van.

Michael discussing something very important with Tako.

Michael burst in the front door, but as soon as he saw everybody, he sort of crouched and went quiet, like he had to go to the bathroom! I thought, No, not that! But, I asked him if he wanted to see the cats, so he became very animated -- which made the cats take off like lightning to hide, of course. Far out of reach of little boy fingers. Michael then found a Swiss cowbell, which he found pretty fascinating. I tried to explain to him what the bell was for, but what really fascinated him was the object in his right hand: the laser pen. The cats like to play with the light, but even with Michael waving it vigorously, they would not be coaxed out.



Where do wild horses fit into all this? -- you may be asking...

May and Claire

Well, this afternoon, my friend May rang up and asked if I wanted to come to a wild horse benefit at the Arts Club Lounge, on Granville Island. A local musician she'd done a documentary/trailer for last year, Laura Doyle, was performing to raise money for the protection of wild horses in the BC Interior. How could I say no?? I couldn't, so I procrastinated again on my second paper for Advanced Writing and went to check it out in the evening.

Click here for more information about the loss of wildlife in the BC Interior on the website of Friends of Nemaiah Valley, a non-profit society promoting the protection of the environment of the Nemaiah Valley and area in the spirit of the Aboriginal Wilderness Preserve.

May's friend Claire, from France, was waiting for us, and we ended up chatting through almost the entire documentary on wild horses. I was feeling a tad guilty about not paying attention, but the place was packed and our vantage point was extreme stage left, so it was difficult to see what was going on. But, we did pay the cover charge and participated in the 50/50 draw, which was won by a grizzled ol' cowboy who delivered a rousing talk and poem later on in the show. Laura Doyle performed, followed by other musicians, and we ended up closing the place -- not bad for a Sunday night!

Pretty in Pink? --or-- Pepto Bismol Nightmare?

Am I correct in presuming there aren't any genes that determine proclivity towards pink?

But there should be. I got to thinking about this after my post two days ago about Barbie and Ken.

4 years old, and already sullen in pink

This is me on my 4th birthday. I was forced to wear, against my will, a pink and white outfit. I also had it in my head that I was clutching a birthday present which contained yet another ghastly pink outfit. Note the expression of joy on my face.

Melissa loves pink!

This is Melissa, also at age 4, the firstborn of my brother (the eldest of five, and she won't turn five until July!). This was taken last year, the week before her 4th birthday. She ADORES pink. She has pink sandals to match her pink skirt/shorts, her pink t-shirt with flashy fuschia pink sequins on it, and pink hair accessories. She wants Barbie and her pink outfits. Can this child actually be related to ME????

TV Sucks

I joined the TV Sucks community on orkut. Surprise, surprise. My latest post (I can't link to it):

---

SUBJECT: the inevitable cable company phone call
2/13/2004 6:27 PM

This is verbatim:

Cable phone rep: "I see you don't have cable. We have this great package..."
Me: "No thanks, my TV doesn't work, I can only use it to play videos now."
Cable phone rep: [sympathetically, like I'd said I had a death in my family] "I'm so sorry to hear that."
Me: "Yeah well, no big deal, it's been like that for years..."
Cable phone rep: [hushed tone] "Well, when do you think it would be a good time... you know, to call back?" [as if I needed to get past my period of mourning and move on to another TV]

Seriously, sometimes the attitude is that life with no TV renders one socially handicapped in some way. Thankfully the people at my office don't fixate on TV for water cooler talk -- if they did I'd quit.

---

Actually, this exchange took place a couple of years ago, and I've since then fixed the TV myself so it picks up the channels the tenants in my building get free from the satellite dish in the parking lot. So I do watch the occasional show, but for at least two years all I had was snow... but by then I'd bought a computer, and I didn't miss the TV one bit.

orkut

I've gone and done it now... I got an invitation the other day from Ramon Stoppelenburg to join orkut, and found another online distraction. If you haven't heard of it (I first read about it on Darren Barefoot's site), I've pasted this from their FAQ section:

orkut.com is a new social networking service named for the Google engineer who developed it, Orkut Buyukkokten. (Orkut is easier to spell and pronounce than Buyukkokten.) This was created as an independent project and is not part of the Google product portfolio.

In less than 12 hours, I've joined no less than 11 communities (the numbers on the right represent how many members there are in that community at this moment):

Travel Hints and Tips (479)
Travel (125)
Vancouver (210)
Simon Fraser University (55)
Canon Digital Cameras (279)
Scotland (35)
Canadians (258)
Scrabble (276)
Bloggers (1532)
Bargain Travel (45)
Canada (284)
Blogger (59)

It occurred to me as I was thinking of who to invite to join orkut, that most of my friends are not online junkies like me... some of them don't have computers, and many who do have them are not surfers, just e-mail readers and reference users -- movie listings and some news. So, I don't know if they would even be at all interested in orkut. Most of them hardly e-mail. Believe it or not, I have to *write letters* to some of these people if I want to reach them! Fancy that!! We're a funny bunch, those of us Gen-X folk who actually didn't grow up with a computer (I'm still on my FIRST computer, and it's four years old), those who remember the pre-solar calculator days (remember when you actually had to go out and BUY them, they didn't come free with a magazine subscription??), and were in school when Donkey Kong and Ms. Pac-Man were all the rage...

Anyway, before I slip into a death-grip vortex of nostalgia, if any of you plan on joining orkut, just do a search on my name and it should come up... we'll see how many degrees of separation exist between us!

Barbie & Ken Split After 43 Years

Is it a sign of the times that this longtime couple are going their separate ways? If these two can't stay together, who can?

I actually loathe Barbie. How she's managed to last this long is a mystery to me. When I was a kid, I didn't play with dolls, but I totally avoided Barbie. I just wanted her stuff -- not the ugly pink Barbiemobile, but the house, furniture, clothes, shoes, everything else but that and the doll itself. It was unfortunate that everything she owned happened to be *pink*, the only colour I dislike categorically. The main reason I disliked Barbie is that I didn't want to be her. I suppose this was a minority opinion as prepubescent girlie opinions go, but that was mine. Even that young, I thought Barbie's look was garish. Horrible makeup. Straw yellow hair. An inch away from white trash, really, and in her pink-and-white gingham summer beachy outfits she could pass for the dumb blonde in The Beverly Hillbillies. Even now I absolutely refuse to buy any Barbie merchandise for my nieces. When I found out my 10-year old niece, Loraine, wanted a Barbie for her birthday I said "forget it!" I know Melissa would love to get a Barbie, and no doubt Maddy would probably like one, too, but I refuse to give in to the ubiquitous mass marketing of this pink bubblehead clotheshorse. It gets harder all the time -- there are whole aisles devoted to Barbie stuff in the usual places, like Wal-Mart (I shuddered when I walked in there for the first time last year and realized how much of a foothold she's got), FAO Schwarz (how any employee can handle the canned FAO Schwarz music on constant rotation all day long without killing someone is a wonder), and of course Toys R Us. You can't walk through Toys R Us without encountering Barbie's plastic grin every 20 paces.

So, when I read this article about Barbie and Ken splitting up (Muckdog beat me to it), my cynical side was bursting to get out and say something. After all, Barbie and Ken are supposed to be the embodiment of perfection, right down to their pearly whites. Apparently, the Mattel spokesperson says they're "spending quality time -- apart" and will "remain friends", while -- of course -- announcing the arrival of Cali Barbie and her new admirer, Blaine the Australian boogie boarder.

Ha! It's about time. You could tell Ken was a closet homosexual who secretly cross-dressed in Barbie's pink outfits when she was out shopping, and is now relieved he can move in with his gay lover, Tad, and plan their spring wedding in Massachusetts.

Brother For Sale

What's in the water in Washington State???

Mistake advert offers brother for sale

In today's marketplace, I suppose people will believe all kinds of advertising.

Update to the Dalai Lama's Visit to Vancouver

Upcoming Dalai Lama visit to B.C. a huge hit | CBC

The Dalai Lama is coming to Vancouver on April 18, and apparently UBC's War Memorial Gym, which seats 4,000 people, is too small, so they've moved him to the Pacific Coliseum, which seats 12,000 people. The Pacific Coliseum, as a venue, has such crappy sound... I don't like going to concerts there for that reason. It's where the Canucks played before they built GM Place, and it's fine for monster truck rallies or wrestling, but for a speaking engagement?? I hope it all works out for the organizers.