Category: Miscellaneous

As anyone that has been to my blog before today can tell, I have updated to a brighter fresher appearance tonight. I’ve also added a cool elf icon for IE’s bookmarks and Firefox’s regular display. There are still some bugs to be worked out, but as far as a much needed update goes, this one has me very satisfied.

Today in my “fundamentals of Art Making” class we watched a video called “Culture Jam” (IMDB link). It is a documentary that depicts a group of individuals and their efforts to thwart The Man.

Basically there were three types of culture jamming happening. One group known as the Billboard Liberation Organization took it upon themselves to alter billboards in an interesting or humorous way usually creating some kind of social or political commentary. Another group, through dramatic performance, raided The Disney Store in Times Square and announced that they were from the Church of Stop Shopping. He told the people shopping there not to buy anything because of their bad labor practices. He was consequently arrested. The third Culture Jammer shown was a girl from Toronto that put “no logo” and other anti-commercialism stickers on the ads and buildings around her.

Personally, I tend to think that the billboard guys were by far the coolest. My reasons – which didn’t seem to go over to well with the class – were that the Billboard Liberation Organization created a new piece of art that was well thought out and esthetically pleasing. It also was often humorous or thought provoking. They don’t believe in actually damaging the billboards and other than “time lost for advertising” there is no harm done. In fact it could be argued that they do the original ad a service because it brings more people’s attention to the modified ad.

The girl with the stickers on the other hand is in a lot of ways nothing more than a self-righteous vandal. For example there was a TV advertising something in a bathroom and so she wrote, “Never stop shopping” or something like that on it with a black felt marker and to top it off stuck an Enjoy Debt sticker on the screen. She also stuck No Logo stickers on a La Senza ad at a bus stop. She stuck them right over the woman in the ad’s chest and face. Seeing those stickers there doesn’t inspire any anti-corporate or anti-consumerism attitude; instead it makes me hate the person that vandalized the bus stop.

This short flash based clip is a scholarly review of a “Heavy Metal Umlaut” article from Wikipedia. Basically he goes through and explains how the Wikipedia changes over time and the patterns typical in such work.

I found the speed at which the “vandalism” was repaired to be particularly interesting.

Ann Coulter tries to tell a Canadian journalist on CBC that Canada sent troops to Vietnam. When he corrects her, she refuses to admit that she’s wrong.

Have the terrorists won? I can’t believe this was backed up in court!

This is a great New Media portfolio by a fellow Canadian. Check it out: Steve Seeley’s Portfolio.

(Thanks Jason.)

It hasn’t even been a week since Anna-Maria left Lethbridge to pursue her acting career in Vancouver. It feels like she’s been gone for SO long. I feel awful.

In order to cheer myself up, I decided I am going to work on a redesign of my blog. I know my idea of fun may not appeal to most but it’s what I like doing and I’m also making myself waffles. Eating waffles would put anyone in a good mood.

I’ve been meaning to do this redesign for quite awhile now. Since I’ve got pretty much the whole day to do whatever I want and nothing but the quiet sound of my crumbling heart to distract me, I’m thinking I’ll be able to get a lot done. Hopefully sometime within the next couple of weeks I’ll have a new cross-browser compatible and fully CSS compliant webpage.

I’m in the process of trying a new recipe. Actually pretty much all recipes are new to me considering I don’t do much cooking. Now that I’m an official bachelor I guess that’s going to change.

So I’m cooking up some delicious smelling (and hopefully delicious tasting) dall. It’s an East Indian vegetarian dish and it’s great — at least it was when Anna-Maria made it.

I’ve decided to go on a trip to Malaysia. It’s part of the cultural studies class I’m going to take next semester. It’s 6 weeks long and after I’m done, with the exception of one applied studies class and the internship I’ll be done my degree. I’ll be pretty happy to finally be done school.

The middle finger on my right hand is swollen. At the end of my 50 Breast I jammed it into the wall. Then at the end of my 200 free and 50 free I also finished with my right hand and hurt it again and again! I can’t tape it – because that would be cheating, but I’m not sure it would make much difference anyway.

I didn’t race this morning. I am looking forward to my finals tonight and the 4×100 relay. We have some really fast free-stylers so I’m hoping that we are going to get a team record – if not for the 4×100 tonight then the 4×50 tomorrow.