The first is based on this premise: A pair of friends have just finished a lovely meal at a favorite restaurant, but things take a turn when one notices that the waiter has scribbled an unexpected—and startling—message on their bill.
UPDATE, August 25, 2022: LOL as the kids say--every video I linked to was removed or blocked. I may try to find alternate sources someday, but for now, marvel over what you might have seen!
SECOND UPDATE: Ah hell, I went and found all of them again. No need to thank me!
When I was the operator of the Locarno Beach concession from 1996-98, I often chatted with the lifeguards there. The head lifeguard happened to be the brother of Terry Jacks, famous Canadian songsmith and he was mentioned from time to time, as his lifeguard brother Craig was also musically inclined and was known to pull out the acoustic guitar on occasion, adding a little extra color to the sandy shores.
Terry Jacks’ most famous recording is probably “Seasons in the Sun” which the wikipedia link reveals was originally meant to be a Beach Boys song. That might have been interesting. Instead, Jacks recorded the song himself and earned a place in the hall of fame for schmaltziest songs ever recorded. I’m pretty sure there is an embedded hidden message imploring the listener to parody the song.
The Irish “boy” band (in quotes because they are all pushing 30, it seems) Westlife did a cover of the song and after stumbling across it, I felt compelled to watch to see if they could one-up Mr. Jacks. I believe they have. I present below the new, even schmaltzier version of “Seasons in the Sun”. By the way, if you’ve never heard of Westlife, that’s okay, as they appear to have had little success in North America while over in the UK they’d sold something like 10 billion albums. Different strokes and all that.
Don’t ask me how I came across the video. Just don’t.
Bonus time! A little more searching and I discovered that Nirvana also recorded “Seasons in the Sun” with, uh…alternative lyrics. Featuring Kurt Cobain on drums:
Ah, what the hell. Here is Jacks himself singing (well, lip-syncing) the song back in 1974. Dig the ‘burns and leather pants.
Okay, so apparently the Beach Boys did record the song and their version is the peppiest but it also adds a verse about a cheating wife and lovers, giving the song a distinctly creepy vibe. The video is a montage of still images. I’m also beginning to think there was a cottage industry in covering this song that I’ve somehow managed to miss for the last 36 years.
I have often cultivated tastes that are a bit out of the mainstream. I’m not saying my tastes are refined or cultured or anything, because my reading list will quickly prove otherwise, but I still manage to avoid by design or accident most of pop culture. To wit:
I have never read a Dan Brown novel
I have not seen either Transformers movies
I have no cable, so no TV — I’ve not seen an episode of House, Dexter or a billion other hip shows
I don’t know most of the top ten musical acts. I’ve heard of Lady Gaga because some things are unavoidable. 😛
This isn’t really good or bad, just a thing.
To complete this random post, the Robert Zemeckis-directed version of A Christmas Carol featuring Jim Carrey that’s out this holiday season looks really really bad. I mean, astonishingly bad.
In this seemingly innocent run I “tweaked” my right calf, a factor I noted in my next two runs. At the time I thought it unremarkable enough that I did not mention it at all. This past Monday I tried running and after half a lap the sensation in my right calf was setting off the proverbial alarm bells. I quit at that point and today went to the clinic. The doctor did a bit of squeezing and found the magic spot, as evidenced by my face going through interesting contortions. The verdict: I had sprained my calf and even more brilliantly, kept running on it, which risked making it much worse.
He wondered if I had extended medical through work that would cover physio-therapy. I explained that I did not and he offhandedly suggested checking the Internet for a little self-help there. He then outlined some measures to take after running: stretching, icing the calf and so on. Oh, and that I was not to do any running for at least the next four weeks.
This, in a word, sucks. I guess I’ll have more time to write now.
I’ve marked Monday November 23rd on my calendar with “I can run now!” My one consolation is the doctor could have recommended six weeks but felt (literally!) that four weeks should be good.
“Canada is the first country to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to internet traffic management practices” — CRTC chairman Konrad von Finckenstein
Here are the dramatic changes the CRTC is putting in place to make sure those big ol’ ISPs like Rogers, Bell, Telus and Shaw keep in line:
30 days notice required before any “network management changes”
traffic-shaping (throttling) only as a “last resort” – but still A-OK!
charging “consumers rates based on how much bandwidth they use each month, or offer discounts during off-peak hours”
The ISPs can pretty much do everything they have been doing and on top of that have now been given the green light to soak subscribers with even higher fees based on some undefined standard of usage. The notion that they would offer discounts for off-peak hours is, of course, laughable.
This has to be one of the mushiest, dunderheaded set of regulations I have ever seen. Not surprisingly, all of the major telecom companies are pretty much fine with it.
…that has the company’s name and the word “scam” attached to it as the first suggestion in Google:
My resume on monster.ca shows that my experience is primarily in IT and tech support, so it makes sense that I’d be contacted by a direct marketer of financial services that works based on a recruitment plan that isn’t quite a pyramid scheme. Tempting but no!
I got a new pair of glasses after determining that the current pair didn’t quite fit my more slender 2009 face. The frames are just a touch bigger than I would have liked but aren’t too bad. Thanks go to Nic for the picture, taken yesterday at Melriches. Getting a decent photo of me is something of a minor miracle.
And for a laugh, here’s a self-portrait I just took of me wearing my old glasses (not the ones I got in December 2008, the ones prior to that). True, I was 40 pounds heavier when I originally wore them, but still, it’s like any fashion sense I had was removed at some point by aliens as I slept blissfully unaware. The old glasses are, to use the technical term, “big ass”.
I first got online back in the late 1980s. I remember trying to play Populous over modem with a friend (we both had Amigas). Later I took my first tentative steps into the realm of BBSes and message boards, connecting through local ISPs and taking part in discussions via Fidonet. Conversations online back then were radically different than now, of course. You subscribed to topics that interested you and every few days you’d receive a new packet of messages. Using a message reader you’d sift through them, find ones you wanted to reply to and then upload your responses, which would also take several days to arrive to others. In a way, it was just a semi-automated version of writing letters. As such, posts tended to be longer and more thoughtful. You didn’t waste a reply with something terse or forgetful because it could be upwards of a week before you got anything back (it was truly a delight when new packets of messages would sometimes arrive the very next day!)
By the mid-90s computer magazines were going on about the two hot topics of the day: Windows 95 and the Internet. I was cruising along with a 14.4 modem and split my time between browsing my ISP’s file database (text-based UI only) and taking my first tentative steps on the World Wide Web using early versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. I was absolutely dazzled that you could do more than one thing at a time on this fancy web thing. I could view a site and download a file. Amazing! Slow, too, but compared to 300 baud modems that downloaded text slowly enough to read it on-the-fly, it seemed like the future had arrived.
BBSes began to die out as message boards started appearing and I stopped using Fidonet (I remember being subscribed to the Music category and reading insightful posts from someone named Patrick Goodman back around 1990 or 1991. He was a huge fan of Queen and I vividly recall his devastation at the death of Freddie Mercury). Like everyone else, I jumped over to message boards which allowed for very nearly instant communication (that was also available via numerous instant messenger clients like AIM, ICQ and others, all of which were built more around one on one conversations).
As the Internet became a larger presence in our lives, it has continued to evolve. Nowadays it is more the exception than the rule that a company has a website. Magazines and newspapers (especially) have sometimes struggled to stay relevant when information can be disseminated quickly and “free”. Myspace and Facebook has ushered in an era of so-called social networking and as news organizations beef up their online components, we have seen many include the ability for the general public — really, anyone with a computer/device that connects to the Internet — to post comments on news stories, giving non-scientific and not necessarily representative but immediate feedback on stories of the day.
I have posted several times here lamenting the state of the commentary made by Joe Public on various news sites. Admittedly, these posters are a self-selecting group, so one should always take their comments with the appropriate grains of salt. But when I reflect on how the public has acted overall, I admit I start to wonder. How intelligent, rational and logical is the average person? Why do I never see evidence of this in the things they say online? 😛
All right, that’s unfair, there is obviously intelligent, rational and logical commentary out there but it amazes and depresses me how often it is drowned out by voices that demand they be heard, however irrelevant and stupid those voices might be. This long post is, I suppose, simply a further lamentation.
I read The Tyee, a website that describes itself in the masthead as “B.C.’s Home for Culture, News and Solutions”. It would be fair to describe its editorial slant as more left or center-left, which often puts it at odds with both the provincial and federal governments, not to mention the Canwest-dominated local media (in particular, the two Vancouver dailies). Yesterday they ran a piece by Geoff Meggs, a Vision Vancouver city councilor, calling for the dismantling of the Georgia viaduct, a legacy of the freeway that never was. A sidebar to another blog post goes into greater detail on how to remove and rebuild the area where the viaduct exists. It seems like a reasonable plan to me and one worthy of consideration and debate.
The comments on the story cover a range of quality but I’m going to highlight a few of the worst.
snert writes:
A silly idea.
Thought up by someone with not enough to do. Kinda like, Oh! Let’s change the corporate logo.
Well, why is it a silly idea? What is the purpose of posting such a comment? There is no insight here, nothing to be gleaned except “I don’t like it”. Well, hooray for you, snert, you’ve made your unsubstantiated opinion known. To what end?
Dr Alexander uses the common ploy of grinding his axe regardless of actual topic:
Instead of restricting access…..
to downtown Vancouver by tearing down viaducts (no thanks, I paid for them, keep them there)….
Perhaps we should restrict Gordo’s access to BC.
We would all be better off.
“I paid for them” is a rationale for keeping them? How about no, it isn’t? And then an unrelated swipe at Gordon Campbell just because. Brilliant.
To be fair, there are longer comments that address the pros and cons of the idea and I offer my thanks to those that contributed them. But it seems so often that people just post lazy, negative crap for its own sake. Am I some crazy intellectual elitist for wanting better? Hell, I wince at half of the posts I make on this site, so I’m hardly one to cast myself as a model to aspire to, but at least I try when I put it out there on a shared forum. I wish more people did.
UPDATE: Nic brought up a term that had eluded me until now that encapsulates this “cranky old guy” view of the Internet: Eternal September. Wikipedia describes it thusly:
The expression encapsulates the belief that an endless influx of new users (newbies) since that date has continuously degraded standards of discourse and behavior on Usenet and the wider Internet.
It is both comforting and disconcerting to see this idea codified in a formal way, such as it is.
I have at least one blog entry every day of the month for October, for a total of 22 entries thus far (including this one) , making October my bloggiest month ever.
I am uncertain as to whether or not this is a good thing.
In other news, I am to walk the dog today while Tim and Sue are off to Kelowna for the weekend. It looks to be a wet experience, if nothing else.
I’ve just finished reading my 13th book this year (scary!), appropriately it was Stephen King’s latest short story collection Just After Sunset. I had read “Stationary Bike” in a previous compilation (and it remains a favorite) but the rest were new to me. As always, some stories resonated more than others, a few seemed more like scenes or mood pieces than stories proper but the highlight for me was the one previously unpublished entry, a story called “N.” that delves into madness (and monsters) in a way that would fit perfectly in the Cthulhu mythos. I’m recommending the collection on the strength of that one alone, though there are several others that are nicely done. If any complaint is to be made it’s that none of the stories are particularly creepy.
