This Post is (About) Filler

I was just looking at Blogger's configuration options.  Here's the window that pops up to let you adjust the look of the mobile version of your blog:

It shows you one of those QR codes (and as an aside, don't get me started on them) and a small mock-up of a mobile site.  You'll notice that the sample site has some sample text in it.  Usually in a situation like this, graphic designers will use some nonsense filler text such as Lorem Ipsum.  But take a look at what the folks at Blogger used:

Yes, Sarah Palin's speeches have become the new filler text. 

Bo Knows Pronunciation

Chaz Bono has been in the news this week with a cameo appearance on Degrassi.  I've noticed that you can tell a person's age when they talk about Chaz or Sonny Bono.  There's a dividing line at about age 45 or so.  People older than that can just say Chaz and Sonny's family name normally, while anyone under that age will pause slightly as they remind themselves to pronounce it bow-know, rather than bon-owe.  Similarly, people over 45 will exhibit the awkward pause when discussing U2's lead singer.

But Chaz has made the problem even worse in recent years by undergoing a sex change.  Now any conversations about Chaz will trigger a pause even when using a pronoun, as we have to stop and remind ourselves to say "he" rather than "she."  For instance, discussing the Degrassi appearance I would end up saying, "Chaz...Bono is in Toronto because...he is going to be on Degrassi."

Mistactilation

Definition: during a slow load of a web page or app on a touch-screen device, this is the act of touching the screen to prevent the device from turning off, only to have the desired page/app show up at that instant.  The touch will of course be on a button that causes something else, even slower, to load.

Things the Teenage Me Would Never Have Believed About the Future, #5

Once everyone is sick of collecting baseball cards, they'll start collecting bobblehead dolls.

Sex and Women's Golf (Guaranteed No Cheap Lesbian Jokes)

There's a new LPGA golf tournament this week in Kitchener-Waterloo, the Manulife Classic.  First of all, can we at least wait until an event has happened twice before we call it a classic?

But secondly, the ads for it have placed heavy emphasis on Michelle Wie.  Like a lot of people, it bugs me seeing the attention she gets.  Nothing personal against her, but they are publicising the sport using someone who has played three-and-a-half full seasons but won only two more tournaments than I have.  She's been the face of women's golf for years, despite the presence during that time of two exceptional superstars, Anika Sorenstam and Lorena Ochoa.  The odd thing is, it's not clear why.

It's not unprecedented in women's sports for the uber-successful household-name star to be an athlete who's far from the best.  Tennis's Anna Kournikova, being the obvious example: she famously won as many tennis tournaments as Wie has.  It's hard to imagine a worse role-model for girls: her looks made her the most popular player of her generation, far ahead of players who were actually good at their sport.

In her case, it seemed to be all about sex appeal.  But a few people asked the question, why her?  It seems obvious: she's an attractive woman in a society where sex sells.  But that can't be the whole story - beautiful women are a dime a dozen in our world.  The question is, why did young teen boys spend their minimum-wages on a copy of Maxim with her on the cover, when endless pictures of women are always a Google search away?

Furthermore, why hasn't it continued?  Maria Sharapova is at least as attractive, but with the bonus that she's actually a good player, and thus can be lusted-after guilt-free.  Wie is not unattractive either, but if this were just about sex, Paula Creamer would likely be the face of the LPGA (and look, she's won nine tournaments.)

This whole thing seems to be a symptom of that odd phenomena of modern society where fame is self-fulfilling.  Something arbitrary vaults a person into the spotlight and then they're there for as long as they want.  Why is Wie so well-known?  Because she's famous.  These are the first sports examples of the famous-for-being-famous concept.  In the same way Kournikova taught girls that it's more important to be hot than good, Wie is teaching us that it's more important to be famous than good.

Eurodynamic

Today I saw a truck whose owner was proclaiming his allegiance in the European soccer championship.  But not in the usual way with a flag out the window.  Instead,the flag had been wrapped around the front of the side mirrors: same display of patriotism, no aerodynamic penalty.  Do I even have to tell you the flag was German?

A Hipster's Dilemma

Let's say a band has a song that's being used in a TV commercial. Do you have a responsibility to listen to the song in full, just so you can experience their true vision for the song?  Or it just part of their Faustian bargain with commercialism, that it will be forever associated with chewing gum? 

Striking Writers

A few years ago there was a TV writer's strike, and talk shows had to go off the air.  I was actually surprised to find that they were written by writers, rather than simple computer programs.  I assumed Jay Leno just had a rack of computers backstage scanning the news wires.  When there was a story about, say, children, it inserts Michael Jackson into it and calls it a joke.

Anyway, my point is: enough with the Mitt Romney dog-on-the-car-roof jokes.  I'm not a fan of Romney or dogs, but still, the next comic who tries a lazy joke just because there's an animal in a news story is going to find out what it's like being strapped to the roof of a car headed for Canada.

Thomas is my Hometrain

I recently stumbled across the existence of Chuggington, the poor child's version of Thomas the Tank Engine.  I found this quite offensive - Thomas and I go way back.  I read the original books, before it was on television, and Ringo Starr helped them reach the big time.  When I first read the books, Sir Toppam Hat was still known by his pre-P.C. name, The Fat Controller.

Why is it that competition so often seems to come down to twos?  Yes, I know, economies of scale encourage consolidation of production and anti-trust laws prevent unifying the entire market.

There are several types of pairings.  Thomas vs. Chuggington would go in the "Famous Original & Lame Copy" category.  Along with them, Transformers vs. Go-Bots, Lego vs. MegaBloks, iPod vs. Zune.

Other types:

Polite Classic vs. Brash Upstart:

Coke vs. Pepsi, DC vs. Marvel, McDonald's vs. Burger King

Widespread Standard vs. Hip Underdog:

Windows vs. Mac, Android vs. iPhone, Wal-mart vs. Target

No Real Difference, But People Feel Passionate Anyway:

Budweiser vs. Miller, GM vs. Ford

This Post is in 3DD, But Better than that Piranha Movie

It seems like there have been a lot of TV commercials promoting Designated Drivers.  In particular, it's not the usual guilt trip of "have a designated driver or you'll kill someone."  Now it's more like, "be a Designated Driver and you can still have a good time."  I'm not sure that's the best way to promote it.

I've never been much of a drinker, so I've been a Designated Driver more times than I can remember.  I won't say you can't have fun as a DD, but it's not quite as simple as they show in the ads.  No, I'm not saying you need alcohol to have a good time.  It's just hard to have fun as the only sober person in your group.  Or, to put it another way, it would be no problem to be a DD and have a great time if you were driving for the drinkers you see in beer commercials.  You know, the guys who are acting pretty normal, just a little happier and more at ease.

But that's not usually the case in real life.  There, the DD is chaperoning people who have been drinking all night.  You're not the Designated Driver so much as the Designated Herder.  Now that's a lonely feeling: being the only one in the car who can put together a complete sentence.

If they really want to promote Designated Drivers, they should give tips on how you and your, um, Undesignated Drinkers can make the evening more enjoyable.  Here's my contribution:  There are bars that sober people can enjoy (there are tables and chairs, nice decor, a noise level conducive to talking) and there are bars that only drunk people can enjoy (bare-bones decor, nothing to do but dance, and you have to scream into someone's ear to talk.)  You may start at the first type of bar, but half-way through the evening, the drunk people will start talking about going to a new bar.  Without exception, it will be the other kind of bar, because that's what appeals to drunk people.  But the DD - not being a drinker - won't know that.

So how about rating bars by who the target market is.  Say, a sign at the entrance saying, "You must be at least this drunk to enter."  So you know those are the bars you only go to if you're willing to spring for a taxi.  Or they could have a "Sober Room" where Designated Drivers can talk, or play chess, or watch Downton Abbey or something.

If You're Looking To Start Your Own Country

With the Euro soccer tournament on now, and the Olympics around the corner, we're getting a refresher course in the symbols of nationhood.  To prove I'll criticise anything, here are some of my national pet peeves.

Names

There are about two-hundred countries around the world, with different customs and cultures, but nearly all of them have one thing in common: they have names.  The Czech Republic doesn't; it has an adjective.  That would be like if we didn't call ourselves Canada, we just called it, "The Canadian Country."  Come on Czechs, it's not that hard, let's run through some possibilities: Czechland, Czechia, Czechistan.  Get back to us on it.

The same goes for the Dominican Republic, but it gets a pass because there's already a Dominica, and they seem to be alright with "The Dominican."  Though that brings up the next problem:

"The"

It's really pretentious if you're not just Placeland, you want to be called The Placeland.  I understand The Ukraine now just wants to be Ukraine, Sudan dropped "the" years ago.  I'll give the United States, United Kingdom and other countries with descriptive names a pass.  But The Phillipines and The Gambia, you just sound self-important.

Flags

There are so many flag cliches (three stripes, red-white-and-blue) and flags that look too similar (Poland/Indonesia/Monaco.)  Lets see some originality.  This is especially frustrating for countries that use different colours for their national teams.  For instance, take (the - damn-it!) Netherlands.  Their flag commits the two biggest cliches, and it's the same as Luxembourg.  Yet their athletes wear orange.  Now wouldn't an orange flag be refreshing?  Come on guys, surely this isn't asking too much of a radical country like you.  

And how about New Zealand.  Your flag is almost identical to Australia's.  I know you hate getting mistaken for Australians, so why not get a new flag.  You wear black in athletics, and use that fern thing as a logo. I've seen some people wave a flag with the fern on a black background.  Would that not be the coolest flag in the world? 

A Better New Zealand Flag (graphic by Bamse, used by creative commons)

You could have a big ceremony where you adopt it as your flag and give Henry Rollins honourary citizenship at the same time.  And of course we in Canada would feel much more confident if we weren't the only people on Earth with a leaf on our flag.

Combat Blog

The Olympics are still over a month away, and I have long since become sick of London Calling references and puns in the media. If you must use a Clash song in your news coverage, the financial problems in Europe offers a chance to use Spanish Bombs/Bonds.  Of course, coincidences come in threes, so the lesson is: stay out of the Casbah, there's about to be an earthquake.

Len Me Some Sugar, I Am Your Neighbour

Is it just me, or has "Steal My Sunshine" been on radio/musak a lot suddenly?  I know, it's a hot June, it's the appropriate time for a song so associated with summer.  But it hasn't been this heavily played since it was in the charts.  It's as if someone suddenly decided we had collectively gotten over being sick of it.  

It's weird how old songs can come and go in popularity.  I think it has something to do with how heavily programmed radio is now: if the focus group likes a given song, it gets rotation on all that conglomerate's radio stations.

Perhaps they also try out old, over-played songs to see how people react.  About a year ago I was surprised to hear "Hey Ya" in a supermarket.  I haven't heard it anywhere since, so I guess it's still too soon.

Holmes on Hollywood

When the new Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr. came out, I was one of the people questioning whether it was really true to the original stories.  That's even though I haven't read the originals, nor do I particularly dislike the idea of remakes and resetting - I saw nothing wrong with the BBC's modern-day Sherlock - it just seemed to me like Downey and company were making a steampunk action movie with a main character named Sherlock Holmes.

But here's another way of looking at it.  Imagine that Bollywood decided to take on Sherlock Holmes.  I'll just stop and let you come to terms with that picture: Holmes noticing minute details in the middle of ornate dance numbers, a bejewelled Watson following on elephant-back.  Of course, the Indian film makers wouldn't be literally saying that people are breaking into spontaneous choreography in the middle of crime-solving.  Just like the dancing street gangs in West Side Story or opera characters that take ten minutes to die, it's merely their style of storytelling, a flourish of style not to be taken as a direct copy of reality.

And I'm starting to think that's how we should look at Hollywood movies.  Explosions and fights are just their show-stopping song-and-dance.  Freed from an assumption of literalism, you can see today's blockbusters in a new light.  Transformers was a commentary on imperialism, Battleship really was true to the game.

And just imagine how they would take on other timeless stories: the aforementioned West Side Story or its inspiration Romeo and Juliet could be retold as a romance between post-apocalyptic genetically-engineered supersoldiers.  But: they're loyal to rival warlords.  The final scene where they fake their demise by fighting to the death before being resurrected as cyborgs will be a classic tear-jerker.

The Declining Value of the Euro

It's European (soccer) Championship time again.  And with it comes the traditional claims that it's just as important as the World Cup.  Usually that's done simply by pointing out that many of the world's soccer powers are in Europe, and conveniently forgetting that Brazil isn't.  But this year the boosters have doubled-down and claimed that the Euro is actually harder to win than the World Cup.  This is justified by the idea that there are no weak teams in Europe, as opposed to the World Cup and their insistence on having three North American teams.

But when I think of your average World Cup, I don't really remember it as European teams dominating everyone else.  I remember it as Germany and one or two other European countries doing well, while the rest of Europe chokes against African and Asian teams.  So I looked up the 2010 World Cup results, and a quick sum of the records shows that the European teams had a record of 13 wins, 10 ties and 10 losses against non-European teams.  A winning record to be sure, but it hardly indicates that the European teams get a "break" when facing non-European opposition. 

So it's pretty clear that this attitude of Europe being head-and-shoulders above the rest of the world in soccer is out-of-date, and no amount of upsets against South Korea or Mexico is going to convince them otherwise.  Suddenly the continent's inability to face it's financial problems makes a little more sense.

Movie Marketing Challenges

About that ad for Cosmopolis, where Robert Pattinson asks a woman to tase him:  At first I thought it was a poor choice of scene to show.  They're trying to promote it as an intellectual movie, yet the rich young business man driven to self-punishment out of boredom with the modern world seems kind of heavy-handed.

But it's actually brilliant marketing.  Between people who want to see Robert Pattinson shirtless, and the people who want to see Robert Pattinson get tased, that probably covers 90% of movie goers. 

BTW, I started reading the book Cosmopolis, but lost interest.  I had no idea there were dinosaurs in it.  Maybe I'll have to pick it up again.

Back to the Future

I'm in day two of three with a cell phone as my only Internet connection.  The odd thing about it is that it's so much like old school Internet: slow connection, limited downloading, id's mostly text.  So now I'm off to the app store to look for a Gopher app.

Day One With a Mobile Phone

Lots of jackets have pockets specifically for cell phones now, but what they need now is to add weights to the other side so it won't be lopsided.

By the way, I've prided myself on being one of the few on the Internet with proper spelling, punctuation and grammar.  We'll see how long that lasts, thumb typing on a touch screen.

I Want to Pay What the CEO Pays

I really don't get these employee pricing sales that have become an annual event with car dealers.  Sure, they need to get rid of their inventory over the summer to make way for the new models, but why not just have a big percentage discount? 

I assume they're trying to tap into some public anxiety.  It's sort of like when furniture stores have a "We Pay the Tax" sale.  People hate sales taxes, so that sounds way better than a "13% Off Everything" sale.

But is the automotive employee discount really something we all get worked-up about?  Yes, we're often jealous of auto workers conditions, but that's hardly the reason.  They need to give away full health benefits, pensions, and job security with every car.