I just saw a completely deceptive ad for the Toyota Prius.
First it shows people doing things like planting trees and cleaning up parks. Then it says that the guy driving a Prius is “cleaning the air.” That is an absolute lie!
Don’t get me wrong. I think that driving a hybrid is a great step in the right direction, since it obviously doesn’t make the air as “dirty” as a non-hybrid. But last time I looked into it, hybrid technology does not remove emissions from the air in any way, shape, or form. And they didn’t just try to imply that it cleans the air. They flat out said “[some guy's name] is cleaning the air”.
As if (some) people who drive hybrids weren’t pretentious enough, now you’re going to try to make them think they’re actually reversing air pollution?!
Remember that season that came between summer and winter?
Not only woud the leaves turn pretty colours (which inevitably happens – a lot of that has to do with the amount of daylight/darkness), but there used to be a period of time where temperatures were less than 25 and more than -10. And I’m not talking about a few days. Back in my day, fall (aka autumn) used to last for a month or maybe longer (it’s been so long since this increasingly rare phenomenon has occurred, I can’t really remember it exactly).
Remember sweaters? But not heavy bulky sweaters that you wear in winter to try to stay warm when it’s -30 outside. There used to be a day when you could wear lighter weight sweaters, and (get this) you could wear them outside.. without a jacket!! I’m not making this up people. Days like that used to exist, and for long enough that it was worthwhile spending money on clothes just for this season.
As I mentioned in a previous post, my favourite band Piebald broke up just under 2 weeks ago. As soon as they announced the break up, and that the tour they were currently on was now their last tour ever, Matt and I bought tickets to go see them for one last time in Detroit.
I had the day off work, and Matt took the day off. We got in the car at about 11am and started driving. After stopping once and getting stuck in traffic a couple of times, we got to the border at about 3pm. We had the friendliest customs guy I’ve ever encountered (although I’m not sure the 3 cars in front of us he took about 7 mins each on to x-ray and “chat” don’t feel the same), and we were at St. Andrews Hall a couple of minutes later.
Our plan was to go to some mall in the area before the show (the tickets said 5pm, which was when we assumed the doors opened), but there were already kids lined up, so we decided to park the car beside the venue and walk around the city. The only problem is that neither of us know where anything is in Detroit, and although we’re used to all the homeless people hanging around Toronto, this wasn’t our ‘hood and we felt a bit uncomfortable. So we were back to the line by about 4pm.
Turns out the doors opened at 4:30pm, and the bands started at 5pm sharp. Sweet! (I like early shows.. turns out some of the bands didn’t.)
Rubens Accomplice made several comments about how it was sooooo early, and whined about it pretty well every time they had a chance. Despite the inflated egos (and the bass player’s need to cut his frizzy hair off.. not to be mean but I guarantee they’d be more popular if he did), they turned out to be an alright band.
At 6:15 sharp, Limbeck hit the stage (after smoking directly in front of us during the first band.. gross. I like the Smoke-Free Ontario Act). They were a fairly good alt-country band that got some feet tapping.
The next band was Steel Train who were also great – this was a good line up for once. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t mind hearing an opening band, let alone three!
Finally at 7:15, Piebald go on. Yay! They always put on a great show, and this was no exception. They played almost all my favourites, and had a great time doing it. I was worried that no one in the crowd would know them (I’m pretty sure that’s why they’re breaking up, and I’d heard of only a couple of people being into it at other shows), and while most people were there for The Format, there were still a good number of people singing along. During American Hearts, Travis climbed up on a speaker stack and threw out a bunch of those little army parachute men.
After they played, (we left before the Format played) we waited around to try to talk to Travis, just to thank him for everything. We couldn’t find him, but Aaron walked by, so we followed him outside, and chatted with him for a while. He’s a quiet talker, but a great guy. I rarely will talk to people in bands because I don’t want to bother them, but it was him keeping the conversation going. Turns out their converted Grease Not Gas van (which Aaron’s all about – he started the project) blew up the day before, and they were finishing the tour off in a rental cube van. Boo.
I’m sad that this is probably the last time I’ll see them (although reunion shows are the new cool thing!!), but I’m glad it was such a great time. I’ll always remember the 6 times I saw them in the past 5.5 years (in Buffalo the first time, then in Toronto (not necessarily in this order) at The Horseshoe, Lee’s Palace, and The Rockit, then again in Buffalo, and this last Detroit show), and I’ll always have their great albums.
Piebald, I’ll miss you. You were a great band.
Thanks for all the good times and all the great music!
So the other day I finally remembered to look up this gem from my youth:
and while watching it, I realized a lot of what we found entertaining when we were kids seems a lot like what someone would come up with on acid. (I’ve never done acid, but I think the effects are pretty well known)Now I know what you may say – that’s clearly from some time around the 70′s, and there were a lot of drugs back then. But let’s not forget our friends from the 90′s, the Teletubbies, the brightly coloured creatures who spoke in broken English and had a baby’s face for a sun. And then there’s the latest (well at least the latest that I’ve heard of), Boohbah. If the linked site isn’t enough, here’s a clip (not the best quality, but after an hour of searching and going through every result for “Boohbah” on YouTube, it’s the best example I could find. It’s really long, so if you don’t have time, skip ahead to about 2:30).
So what does that say? I guess that maybe being on acid makes it so that our mind is entertained by the same things as a 6 year old…
Okay, I know there are tonnes of posts and pages dedicated to netiquette, but these are a couple of things that REALLY bother me..
1. Resizing my browser
I don’t have my browser maximized because I have a widescreen computer, and it just looks stupid when I have the screen maximized. I like to keep my browser down to a more “old school” size so websites don’t have huge blank sides, and it takes a few minutes of tweaking for me to get it how I like it.
Re-sizing my browser is like coming into my house and rearranging my furniture. I had it a certain way for a reason, and there is NO reason for your website to come in and change that. If you have a little pop-up site that will leave the main window the size I set it at, fine. I can close the pop-up and still keep my browser at the size I like it. But if I click on your site or a link within it and it resizes the main window, not only have you changed the default size that I took time to set up, but I also surf with multiple tabs open, so now you’ve changed the way I’m viewing other sites.
2. AutoPlay sound
If I click on a YTMND link or go to a MySpace music page, I’m expecting the possibility that they will AutoPlay. Pretty well any other site, I’m not. I work in an office, and it’s quiet. I hate when I go to a site at work, and it suddenly starts blasting out sounds or music. It’s even worse when it starts instantly and without warning, and worse still when I can’t turn it off. And regardless of if I’m at work or not, more often than not, I have music on. Who are you to intrude on that?
So.. if you do either of those things, unless you have some unbelievably amazing content to make it worth my while, you’ve pretty much made it so I’ll never visit your site again. But maybe that was your intention?
This is my new blog, Party of One. I’ve been wanting to get this going for a while (especially since my old blog was accidentally deleted). I’ll get going this weekend!
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