New Media

A perfect Saturday, soon to be followed by a perfect Sunday. What is a supercool weekend for Jonathon Narvey like? Let me take you on a tour of my world:

Saturday, November 22
9 am: Get up, hang out with Sherry for a bit before she runs off to pick up stuff for the party. Start cleaning the apartment so my lovely wife can have said party without being mortified when guests discover dust bunnies under their martini glasses.
10:37 am: Feeling energized for no particular reason, I decide to clean out the closet I’ve been neglecting for 11 months. Soon we have enough new storage space to fit at least eight more monkeys in there. Perfect.
12:30 pm: Realize I haven’t eaten yet. Re-heat the spaghetti I made the night before. Delish. Read Geist magazine, a few articles from Google news. Check some Onion videos on Youtube. Funny.
2 pm: The love of my life comes home. I help unpack the groceries. We hang out. All is good.
4 pm: My mom calls. I forgot to call her on her birthday. I am a bad son. Nice of her not to say anything, though.
5 pm: Seeking refuge from ladies night at Casa del Narvey, I meet Joe and Raul at JJ Beans.
I order a cafe mocha to give me energy for the night ahead. I then proceed to lose three chess games to Joe. I’ve never been able to think more than two moves ahead at chess. Also, Joe actually knows some tactics. Makes winning awfully tough for me.
Meanwhile, Raul is talking about the papers he’s working on. That dude is BUSY. Also, he clues me in that since humans are already exploiting the planet faster than it can replenish the stuff we use, “sustainable development” has become an oxymoron. Somebody better tell the new mayor at Vancouver city hall.
6:30 pm. Joe and Raul have to take off, so I wander downtown. I give Ian a call on my cell. “Railway club. Real pints. Yes?” He’s in. Excellent.
7:30 pm: Granville lager pints are $5.10. Excellent. Chris, Ted and the rest of the crew from Fuzzcat wander in to store their instruments. They’re not on stage until midnight, so we’ve got time to chill.
8 pm: Ian has joined us. Our group ponders the sorry state of media and the way forward for the new Vancouver city council and parks board. Also, Ted reports he has a mice problem in his apartment, which is annoying, because he just finished with a mouse problem in his car.
12 Midnight: Fuzzcat begins rawking out with frenetic ska jump-ity sounds. The crowd is into it. I’m on my fourth pint, enjoying the moment.

Sunday, November 23
2:30 am: A quick stroll with Ian and a five-minute cab ride later, I’m home with the love of my life, who has kept a vigil for my return. I missed her soooooooooooooooooooooooo much. Hugs and kisses. Then shower.
3 am: Five minutes of classic Star Trek while my hair dries. Then off to bed.
9:30 am: Wake up with a dry mouth. Still feeling pretty energized. The cafe mocha from JJ Beans? Perhaps. My wife is still sleeping. I get up and exercise in the living room while looking out at the city skyline through our balcony window.
10:30 am: “Let’s go to the Vancouver Art Gallery!” I agree, it is a phenomenal plan. We call Boris. He can make it. Should I take the camera? No, I decide to just live in the moment today.
11 am: Then I decide to blog about it, negating my previous thought, since even live-blogging is really more about writing about living in the moment, not actually being in the moment.
12:10 pm: I ought to get something to eat. Can’t look at art on an empty stomach. Writing the last sentence of this blog post about my super cool weekend. Right… now.

The defeated and demented McCain supporters in the USA who still think the rest of their country elected a rabid terrorist must be spitting into their kool-aid. Al Queda’s propaganda machine is comparing USA President-elect Obama to a “house negro” (Globe and Mail) and seemed pretty let down that the new leader has decided not to surrender the free world to a poorly-dressed gang of inbred nihilists.

I question the value of giving anything Al Queda’s propagandists might have to say front-page, 11-o-clock news, Google front-page publicity for any announcement they might want to make. Their rants pretty much follow this magical formula:

1. Declare outrage for the latest Western atrocity, real or imagined… or one that happened 10 years ago. Or 60 years ago. Or 600 years ago. It’s all good, when you’re blowing up the infidels.
2. Be sure to mention that Al Queda is simply reacting to unreasoning Islamophobia… because the pretty-much daily world news reports of Muslims blowing up shoppers, kidnapping reporters, stabbing their own “dishonorable” family members, shooting UN soldiers and declaring jihad on Danish cartoonists are all just war-mongering imaginings of the Zionist-controlled media.
3. Mention a recent newsworthy event so that reporters can be sure you made your statement recently, presumably not too long before you go off to visit your 72 virgin goats.

Here’s hoping Obama can do better than the previous leader of the free world in putting out a more compelling message than the other side.

Gregor Robertson’s election in Vancouver has a faint parallel with Obama’s election in the USA, in that the new boss has some huge problems to fix, and a fairly strong mandate for change in terms of voting percentage (despite the poor voter turnout overall).

Robertson has stated his first priority is homelessness, as it should be, but the way he is tackling it should raise some eyebrows. In his own words:

“Job number one is calling together an emergency task force on homelessness and working on solutions to getting people off the street into a safe place to live as quickly as possible.” (Vancouver Sun)

Emergency task force? The homelessness issue has already been studied to death by the outgoing mayor and council. There is already a plan — actually, it’s called the Vancouver Homeless Action Plan (naturally). We don’t need more planning sessions to come up with ideas: We need implementation.

How about this? The cops escort social workers and medical health professionals into the downtown eastside and other affected areas of Vancouver, conducting a census of the mentally ill and the hopelessly addicted. Empower these teams to take these people off the streets for a more thorough mental health evaluation. Those found to be suffering from mental disorders making them useful only for the predators and criminals stalking their neighborhood are hospitalized and given therapy and a roof over their head. These people are to be released back into society only when they can demonstrate the ability to function without posing a threat to themselves or others.

That would be a start. Until the criminal justice system in this country allows local judges to harshly sentence the predators in our city that prey on the defenseless, that may be all we can hope for in the short term. But it would be a start.

We’re all so terribly concerned about companies using or selling our private information… that we’re giving it away for free. Read more in my latest post on Techvibes, Internet Law conference exposes disconnect between privacy concerns and reality.

Lest we forget.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

~John McCrae, 1915