Overabundance of bride zombies, but generally a great day! Lots of creativity out there. Some of my faves are here:
Toronto Zombe Walk 2011
Category Archives: You Magnificent Bastard
Steve Jobs
I’m profoundly sad.
I’m not one to get caught up in the death of a celebrity. I didn’t know the man, I only know what I’ve read and seen in cheesey made-for-TV movies. I can’t say if he was a “nice” guy or a shrewd business tyrant. I didn’t follow the man, Steve Jobs, that closely.
But I do know his product. And I know how his product changed the world.
Back in 1996 I won $5000 in a bingo hall while on a weekend trip to Vancouver. I came home with a promise that I would use that money to make my life better. I decided that I was going to go back to school and finish getting my Graphic Design diploma and start working in this “new media” that was touted as the future of how we did things, how we entertained ourselves. The internet was starting to explode.
The first thing I did was purchase an Apple Performa 530. I loved that one piece. I remember being all excited about the 68040 CPU chip inside and how strong it was. I learned as much as I could about how it worked, it’s limitations and it’s strengths and started to create “things” with it… digital files, images, sounds, funny movies.
Speaking of movies… that Performa was my first window to the internet. My first video I ever saw not sourced by TV was The Exploding Whale – a 3:30 minute video that took over 5 hours to download. I started to download it in the morning and then came back to it after a day at work – hit play and pissed myself laughing.
I also got my first internet date from that little box. It went horribly but I can remember telling a friend that I just had sex by picking someone up off the internet. I literally was shaking with excitement. I had successfully bypassed the bars and got laid without drinking or sorry excuses!
The future was going to be awesome.
Wired June 1997 cover
I traded it up for a stronger PowerPC Performa (a tower) and continued to stay with Apple through some pretty rough times for that company. After years with the Tower, I fell in love with the colourful Mac line up. I had a Blueberry ‘Tosh, the one with the funny puck mouse, which I shared with my boyfriend at the time. I can still remember tearing a strip off the Bell customer service rep when they told me that the “guy who handles Mac calls was out for the night” and that no one could help me with my internet connectivity. Thus was the bane of Mac ownership back in 1999.
I left Mac for a while there, convinced by a (now ex) friend that PCs were cheaper and much more modular. Yes they were. Still are. But when I think back to the number of times I had issues with the damn beige box, compared to the number of times I’ve contacted AppleCare (twice in all the years of ownership), I’m reminded of this quote from Steve Jobs:
When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.
I got the iPhone a solid year before it was released in Canada, thanks to a man I do truly love. That lead me down a dangerously obsessive road of hacking and ultimately questioning Apple’s closed mentality towards their hardware and software – when the hackers broke open the phone, allowing it to be used on any network, Apple would release a patch, along with insanely great new features. You’d have to re-lock your phone if you wanted to be part of the fun. After a year of jailbreaking and reinstalling dubious code downloaded from mysterious strangers off the web, when the iPhone finally did come to Canada, I stopped cold turkey and embraced the concept of a “Walled Garden”. I now chant “it just works” and like it.
I came back to Apple 2 years ago after a 7 year hiatus. It was a great day when I transferred what I could from that Frankenstein PC over to the PowerMac I bought second hand. And even better when I upgraded to my current iMac 21.5, which I’m using right now to type this. To my left is my iPad, my iPhone and down there in the junk drawer is my Newton 130. Awesome products that allowed me to make some awesome things.
I tear up every time I see or hear that scratchy video of Walt Disney dedicating the opening of Disneyland, back in July 1955. But those are tears of happiness. I know the strength behind those simple words, spoken in a barely contained supernova of pride. Now, tonight, I had a good cry over the loss of a man who was a visionary, just like Disney who loved bringing the “next insanely great thing” to the masses. I can’t help compare the two.
I never knew Mr Jobs, but have enormous respect for him and his accomplishments. I must thank him for the tools that shaped my life.
Steve Jobs – 1955 to 2011.
Thank you!
Happy B-Day WDW!
Forty years ago today Walt Disney World opened it’s gates to the world, creating, arguably, the last “greatest American establishment”. Steve Jobs and Apple (inexplicably entwined with Disney) comes close as a corporation but it’s not exactly selling “memories”, per se.
I digress.
Covering more land than they know what to do with (27,400 acres of Florida swamp, or 6.5 square miles), Walt Disney was going to create a utopia (or dystopian to some) of modern living, community and recreation, where Disney himself (without any formal urban studies training) would oversee and maintain the city of the future. But after Disney’s death, WDW thankfully became a near-carbon copy of it’s Californian cousin, but with much, much more room. While his vision of a perfect community may never have come to fruition, he did create the means towards a company that brings happiness to millions of people (as well as bitter fodder for millions of others, and in a way, making them happy!).
I’m saying Thank You, Walt Disney World. And I’m sorry it took me so long to get there.
When I was a kid on a Sunday night, I, like SharkBoy, like so many others, would watch the opening of The Wonderful World of Disney on CBC and marvel at the over saturated video of DisneyWorld shown in the titles. Monorail across a beautiful Floridian sunset! Space Mountain! Smiling kids! Cartoons! GARRRAAAHHH!! I had to go!
Later in life, I chose to make animation my career and took to Sheridan College where somehow I shunned all things Disney, thinking it was too structured, schmaltzy and rejected it’s child-like sensibilities, favouring the insane comedy stylings of Warner Brothers (truthfully I still do but in my older age, appreciate the craft of Disney more).
Then I met SharkBoy – and he taught me that loving Disney isn’t a crime, even at 42 years old. He took me to WDW at a point in my life when I needed to believe in dreams and magic and all that shit. I do believe that if I hadn’t experienced Walt Disney World when I did, I might have gone down a really dark path in my life where I think I would have lost my youth. Truth be told, I *am* a 16 year old kid (emotionally) living in a 46 year old crumbling body but I seriously don’t care if people see that part of my personality as a negative.
In the course of writing this little birthday wishes card to WDW I’ve gone back and re-read most of my pre and post Disney blog entries. And I find they make me happy. Go up into the search bar and look for “Disney” and you’ll see it has more written about it here than gay sex, career angst or robots – and I know robots. You’ll see me gush about the anticipation I felt before the trip, the planning of the suitcase, the trolling for facts and for travel tips inside the parks, the scheming of surprising SharkBoy with a trip there without any fore-knowledge, and you’ll see it all made me giddy as a kid in front of a TV on a Sunday night.
I wrote so much about my experiences there that some days when randomly pick up WDW specific travel books, I think to myself, I could do better than that!
And I may…
So I have to thank Walt Disney World for their little resort they have down in Florida. I can’t wait to see you again, old friend!
My first ride ever, in WDW. And also one of my favorite of SharkBoy.
Finding my first Hidden Mickey! I win!
How long had I waited for this parade??
I didn't know about the Water Parks. Thanks SharkBoy! Beautiful!
I was against it when I first heard of Star Wars and The Mouse merging. Now I love it!
Our First Gay Days
Alway perfect...
Added Bonus: CBC’s video effect happy early 80s intro:
Here’s the CBC’s 1984 groovy disco video version:
I Polished My Gun For This?
Yesterday was perfect for the Scotiabank AIDS walk: not a cloud in the sky, warm enough that I didn’t sweat buckets and everyone smiling, working it for a great cause. I managed to crest $2500 in donations – mostly because of you people who come to read and mostly because I did it entirely by social media (aaaand a few donations from family, of course). If I haven’t thanked you personally, I apologize and thank you now. I thank all of you.
She's a Trooper - Pic Courtesy of SharkBoy.ca
As expected, hundreds of pictures were taken and I made a bit of a splash in the pool of corporate teams that filled the walk. But know that I had to justify my presence a couple times.
Googley eyed woman: Why you a robot?
Me: I’m a Stormtrooper.
Googley eyed woman: Not a robot?
Me: No. I’m from the movie Star Wars?
Googley eyed woman: (to friends) Take my picture!
And so it went. One woman hesitantly asked me for a picture, “Because I find you scary.”
“I’m just me!” I say, obviously forgetting what I have on – the symbol of poor aim and jack-booted fear throughout the galaxy.
“I’m afraid because I want your gun in my mouth.” she said. Smiling.
Seriously.
At one point I took off the helmet to hydrate and a young woman ran up to me for a picture. She was wearing a metallic, bright Arabic scarf, thick horn rimmed glasses, tousled hair, and cut off shorts just at the knee. “Why are you in costume?”
“I’m bringing some nerd cred to the Walk. You should know, right?”
“I’m not a nerd!” Woops. Okay. Whatever.
Inside the suit you literally can’t see down. If you hold one flattened palm over your eyebrows and the other on the upper part of your cheek, that’s the range of vision I had, not to mention I wasn’t wearing my glasses. At one point I could hear a woman asking me for a picture and I kept turning around. And around. Until I heard “Down here!”. She was in a wheel chair and I nearly fell into her lap trying to find her.
The Walk itself was ok. I stumbled twice over some pylons down at Queen and Church, very embarrassing, but for the most part I made it OK. Two blisters and a dry mouth. Sharkboy says I was stumbling on the way home due to exhaustion/dehydration but I think it was an inner ear infection.
At home we sat through the news about how “Word On The Street” over in Queens Park was such a success despite the oncoming threat of the printed word by eReaders. This particular story got a full 2+ minutes with lots of cut away talking heads about how great books are. Then, after a ton of world news, the AIDS Walk got a full 20 second spot with a mere mention of why and a scattering of video of people walking. Granted, I was watching to see if I made it on the news but the shocking lack of news coverage depressed me.
Howler Monkey photobomb. Pic by Postbear
I’m kind of bummed that HIV/AIDS is being relegated to the back burner even though it’s not gone away. It sickens me that big pharma has not released any significant 3rd generation drug patents into the wild for cheaper development, researcah and most importantly: distribution. The average cost of a monthly prescription for anti-retroviral medication runs from $900 to $1300 with insurance companies picking up a good portion of that tab (if the patient is lucky enough). Doing the math, that means at the low end of the cost for meds times all the HIV positive people in Canada adds up to roughly $230 million a year in meds alone.
I’m generalizing. But the fact can’t be ignored that HIV treatment is big money.
Over the last decade, HIV has been placed on the same public consciousness shelf as diabetes in terms of “manageable diseases” (did you know those glucose monitoring machines are literally given away for free, but the blood test strips run up to $1.50 each? Test your blood three times a day for a month and that adds up!). The fact that “cures” are dangled in front of our faces ever so often (that ultimately don’t pan out) makes it real hard for me not to put on my tin foil had and think that if they wanted to cure this disease, they could have years ago, but it’s now a profitable industry that can hardly be stopped overnight with a “Eureka!” discovery that halts AIDS in it’s tracks.
I know. I’m crazy. But after being on this planet for 46 years I know that money is the greatest motivator and when it’s flowing in at such an alarming, constant (gardener) rate, then turning off the stream is nearly impossible.
Now if you excuse me I have 9-11 EVP files to listen to.
Photos from SharkBoy.ca and postbear’s Flickr Stream
And I Thought They Smelled Bad On The Outside
Adidas continually fuels my current mid-life crisis obsession, creating a plethora of fuck-with-the-brand (and not in a Blu Ray kind of way) Star Wars clothing line. The Hip Hop Nerd shares this obsession too, but he’s much more resourceful than I (and rich) Ta da!! A trooper helmet made entirely of the Star Wars X Adidas Originals Superskate Mid ‘Stormtrooper’ shoes. Also, check out StarWarsRemix.com where fun things are being made. Does Lucas know? Do we care?
Troop Doodling
Matt Brossard (Fuzzbelly!) is possibly the coolest person on the planet. Seriously.
Out of the blue he sends SharkBoy and I these two prints, saying:
I felt really moved and inspired by your fundraising effort for the Scotiabank Aids Walk. I couldn’t resist taking that inspiration and making something to mark the occasion for you.
When I opened the email and read/saw what he sent I admittedly got a bit choked up. It’s the nicest thing an internet acquaintance has ever done for me. Well, That and a bunch of friends/acquaintances/strangers donate nearly $2000 for the AIDS Walk, of course.
Look sir! Droids! Click to enbiggen!
Your Bounty Hunters are here, Sir! Click to makelargo
Xmas is Coming (Jedi Hand Wave)
Via Boing Boing: Etsy custom R2D2 Sweater:
A Year
I promised myself I wasn’t going to mark this day, my father’s one year anniversary of his passing (actually it was more like the very early morning of the 12th, but who’s counting?) but my uncle mass emailed us sibs and offered his condolences.
My brother John sent along a “I’ve Told You What To Do” response and this photo, which made me smile:
Probably 1975
The dog’s name was Cindy, and it’s taken on our dock which was perpetually in a state of perpetual rundown-ness. In the back was the oil drum raft our neighbours made – a perfect respite from the leaches. The time there at the cottage was so brief, went so fast, that I struggle to remember anything other than playing in the water.
Once, while sitting with my father, a huge praying mantis landed on me and I let out a shrill so loud that cats within a mile radius panicked. Abruptly, Da brushed off the green monster and told me not to be so “wimpy”. I would later remind him of this comment whenever he decorated his condo.
Yeah I miss him more than I can say. But lately I’ve been remembering the good things.
SharkBoy has a tradition of having a beer on the anniversary of his father’s passing. Since Da had stopped drinking, I think I’ll send out emails of advice as commemoration.
Troop Update
I am utterly blown away.
You people have made me so very happy with your generous responses. Here I was all frightened that I wasn’t going to crest $500 and now I may have to increase my goal again.
As of this morning, I’ve jumped to the #9 spot in the top ten Individual walkers over on the Scotiabank AIDS Walk page. Within 6 days of signing up! With 56 days to go!
Thank you thank you thank you. I can’t say this enough.
If you’re up in Greektown during the Taste of the Danforth, come by Re:Reading around noon and get your picture taken with me in my armour! And buy a book, for god sake.
Brave, Proud and by the River
My mom sends me this link to my old home town newspaper: Brockvegas to hold it’s first ever Gay Pride Walk
Oh.
My.
God.
This has awesome written all over it. If you know Brockvegas (it’s really called Brockville, but due to my dislike for the little ‘ville, I call it something more flashy), then you know that it’s either very much old money or very much proletariat (the local WalMart actually scares me, it’s so rough), with barely any “middle class” in residence at all. So it will be curious to see how this plays out. I hid my sexuality and made a promise to myself that when I physically left Brockvegas (oh how many times did I “mentally” leave?) that I would truly start living my life the way I was suppose to do.
I’m really happy that this is happening.
Comments after the article are positive, but I love how most commenters are afraid that peacock feathers, makeup on dudes and assless chaps will be on display.
In time, Brockville… IN TIME!!