First off, I would tender my apologies for the lack of entries in the last three or four months in the wake of my decision to forgo internet access at the cost of $80 per month. I decided it just wasn’t worth it the side-benefit having been the number of books I’ve managed to read this summer—over forty to date.
Of course I’ve also managed days of DVD watching and recently began re-honing my classical guitar skills. The latter involves short left hand fingernails and quarter-inch nails on the right—making typing a distinct challenge. Practising has also left me with numb finger tips on the left hand as calluses re-establish themselves.
I’ve also made it back into my weight room in an attempt to rebuild muscle mass hoping to boost my basal metabolism rate so that I may get a handle on the weight gain that has resulted from diminished physical activity in the wake of my retirement. Hours at the wheel of my RV traveling 75,000 KM and a more sedentary lifestyle have reeked their toll in the last three years. What I haven’t lost is my way with words and this promises to be a magnum opus.
First off I have a question for anyone who can provide insight. In watching too many movies and TV Series on DVD I’ve come to the discovery that a preponderance of actors and actresses have blonde tending toward auburn, red, and brunette hair. There must be a technical reason for this but I have yet to discover it. While on the subject of TV I would note in passing that rabbit ears and dipole antennas became obsolete in Canada September 1, 2011 when TV went digital. Unless I’m willing to invest in cable, I’m not, I’ve seen my last broadcast TV.
And in a final related note Blockbuter closed one third of their storefront operations this spring and just recently announced the closure of their remaining operations in Canada. Online streaming and mail-order operations such as Net Flicks spelled the doom of Blockbuster’s clunky operation. I patronized the local outlet due to its convenient location, not out of any love for their practices. Their failings included:
1. the nauseating non-stop commercials to which visitors to their stores were subjected
2. the habit of placing masses of new-releases in prominent shelf space without any respect to alphabetical order
3. their failure to properly alphabetise their other movies—a sin to one who once worked shelving library books
4. making movies full-priced releases for up to two and half years—or as long as their was profit to be squeezed from the market
5. the lack of Canadian content
6. the lack of specialized art house releases
7. the rate at which older movies disappeared from their shelves as soon as they failed to move.
This spring E-books reached critical mass and for online marketer Amazon exceeded print book sales as of April first. For people who prefer to listen to rather than read books MP3 versions of audiobooks continue to become a popular downloadable option. For those who’d prefer to hold something in their hands books on cassettes have become antiques and been replaced by CDs however one can expect to pay up to $60 for popular titles. Cassettes had one distinct advantage over CDs, by their nature they offered positive proof of where you’d left off, the provided a natural bookmark. Expect digital audio versions to become more popular as MP3 technology continues to improve. In particular expect the price to come down as text-to-speech technology improves and artificial voices sound less artificial. Paying a human being to read books on mike is expensive particularly when name actors exact their commissions.
Having spent part of last summer in Newfoundland their ferry service continues to be of interest to me. I noted at the time that the failure of consistent service not to mention its cost would be a deterrent to future visits. Alas, nothing has improved since and the ‘new’ Norwegian ferries have not improved upon the record set by British submarines. It continues to amaze me that a country such as Newfoundland whose people earned their living from the sea for centuries cannot run an efficient ferry service. Harbour access at Channel-Port-Aux-Basque is scary in good weather; the North Atlantic is noted for its fogs, quick changes in weather, prolonged howling gales. Climate change has seen violent hurricanes that would traditionally have blown themselves out long before they reached northern waters batter Newfoundland shores. Ferry service between Maine and Yarmouth Nova Scotia continues to be shut down making the travel bureau near its docks obsolete and causing the failure of numerous motel operations in the area. Bay of Fundy service between Saint John and Digby is priced exorbitantly its continuance is in doubt. Even the new ferry serving Grand Manan from Blacks Harbour New Brunswick has experienced growing pains. Storms on the Northumberland Strait have shut down service to PEI.
Microsoft’s Windows Operating System continues to be perpetually broken. Patches are now issued approximately every two weeks and downloads can be as big as 60 MB, major updates require CD-ROMs gigabytes in size. You may remember that VISTA OS required 2 gigabytes of computer memory just to load the operating system, Windows 7 had its code rewritten to reduce its size to a third of that. Remember that a Commodore 64 had 64 megabytes of memory in total, my latest laptop has 6000.
Hockey violence continues to be a Hot Topic in the sports world and after the Boston Bruins Stanley Cup victory this spring in Vancouver Canada was left with a black eye as rioting left the ice and broke out on the streets of one of Canada’s major cities. Fans became the equivalent of British Soccer Hooligans. The celebrating Boston Bruins players racked up a $100,000 bar bill—one can only hope no one attempted to drive home.
The news on Wednesday, September 7, 2011 was full of news of the fate of Sidney Crosby. It seems ironic that a team owned in part by Mario Lemiux, a player whose career was cut short by back trouble, did lot learn the lesson of a Wayne Gretzky and his shadow Marty MacSorley. No matter how big and tough the player, head injuries and concussions threaten every player—just look at the likes of Eric Lindros. Being hired as an enforcer to ensure the protection of a key star player may not be a glamorous gigue but it is one that Wayne has never denied saved his career and his protector followed him as he went from team to team wracking up record penalties ensuring the message was clear that any attack on Wayne would be met with reprisals.
Still on the topic of Hockey violence one of its chief proponents continues to be a Canadian embarrassment named Don Cherry. The death of his wife has made his grip on reality even more tenuous, his dog Blue often showing more intelligence. I suppose his continued presence on CBC Television mirrors the popularity of online services such as Hockey Fights.com which allow aficionados to download video of the previous night’s pugilism. The NHL has finally been shamed into taking measures to reduce the number of concussions in hockey. Even more disgraceful are the number of young players experiencing head injuries in their formative years as young goons with starry-eyed dreams of professional careers will stop at nothing to get ahead.
Tangentially the youngsters playing hockey and sports in general continue to become bigger and stronger as the North American population in general becomes taller and heavier due to improved nutrition, sanitation, and an enriched gene pool brought on by cross cultural interaction. The science of sports training has resulted in $1000 sneakers, $10,000 bikes, Teflon racing suits that can take swimmers up to half an hour to get into. The science of sports nutrition and training programs for athletes at all levels makes the concept of amateur athletics antiquated. No one can afford to devote the hours to training, access to the facilities required, the diets prescribed, and the nutritional supplements recommended unless he or she be independently wealthy or sponsored by a sports body, government, or celebrity endorsement. Hence the appearance of Sidney Crosbie’s image on a loaf of bread in Oakville Ontario.
Unfortunately bigger, stronger, more aggressive opponents make injuries to vulnerable body parts in players of contact sports more probable. Whereas weight training and body building can increase muscle mass relatively quickly the wear and tear on ligaments, tendons, joints, and spines is slower to heal and the damage is often cumulative. Damage to brains caused by concussions we are discovering is often permanent. The entire world became aware of the kinds of short cuts athletes will take to win when Ben Johnson disgraced Canadians by cheating with a drug meant to treat horses. Steroidal drugs and growth hormones boost muscle growth and stimulate more rapid healing. Unfortunately some can make their users more prone to sports injuries and they have side-effects: aggressive behaviour, testicular cancer and female hormones in men, bloating, heart disease, depression, mood swings, muscle tears, and early sudden death. The extent of hopped up bodybuilding was brought home to me when I visited the washroom of a training centre in Halifax with my brother-in-law and saw the over-flowing sharps disposal container there.
Until recent years Oakville Ontario which has been my permanent home had the dubious distinction of being the richest community in Canada. That wealth was of course concentrated among a fabulously wealthy elite that has been watered down by an influx of poorer neighbours. The extent of that poverty was recently brought home to me when I encountered a panhandler in the parking lot of a mall in an upscale neighbourhood. Begging on the streets had been unknown in Oakville.
Finally tidings of the failure of RIM’s Blackberry Network became big news last week. Having never owned a cell phone of any kind the blackout had no personal effect. However it’s an ill wind that blows no one good news. Although no direct correlation can be proven the rate of highway collisions during Blackberry’s downtime was reduced by up to 40%.
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