Crash

So I managed to get into a motorcycle accident on Friday morning. It's taken up some of my time so I haven't posted in a long while. The next snag is that I leave tomorrow for the Gorge for three DMB shows which equals radio silence until next week. Have a great Labour Day long weekend!

-new pictures have been uploaded to my Life In Macro set on Flickr - my fav:

-still haven't got my last trip pics uploaded so I'm throwing one up here - let's go Iconic; this one is of my English friend, what he refers to as 'his' bridge, with San Francisco in the background

Sun Burned Again

Trust me, I'm not complaining about that!

I'm back from my weekend in San Francisco. It was a wonderfully relaxing, intellectually stimulating, huckleberry of a time. My friend was travelling with his 15 year old son, Lineker, and the three of us prowled around the glorious areas of town that have nothing to do with cable cars or Fisherman's Wharf.

Mike and I shared discussions, debates, conversations, philosophical and ideological ruminations, and enjoyed each others' company - perhaps the last time for three years.

I miss him already, but there's no time to dwell...Gorge is next week!

San Francisco pictures to follow...eventually...

Rewards

The upside of massive credit card debt = loads of Airmiles reward miles.

And I am using some of those miles to give myself the reward of visiting my friend from England while he is in San Francisco this weekend.

I'm off to the airport - see you next week!

Even Though I Like My Job

I called a friend of mine who works at a concert venue in Rochester, NY the other day. When he answered, loud music and static came through the receiver along with his voice loudly saying, "Hello? Spage?" "Chris?" I replied, "Are you at work?" Not able to hear me he shouts, "I'm at an O.A.R. sound check right now, let me call you back later!"

Before we hung up, I strained to hear some of the musicians' notes as my eyes drifted back to my monitor and the multi-year funding grid spreadsheet I had been working on. *sigh* Jealous.

versus

That's Revolutionary!

Get your clothes wet to wash them? How innovative!

Words #3

A word that has been finding its way into our conversations a lot lately...

hubris [HYOO-bruhs]

-excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance

"As both capitalist and communist states—not to mention the technological world—have evolved under the illusion that men purposefully built them, ideological optimism seeps into every niche of our lives. It is made worse by mass culture which feeds our most destructive illusions, fostering the belief that if we’re only justified (and who isn't?) if we only calculate things correctly, if we only do the right thing (and who doesn't?) then the future must yield the desired results. There must always be a way. And so hubris turns to false certainties, everyone expects to be a winner, and each morning is a mind-blowing surprise."

-Stephen Vizinczey, One of the Very Few

Winnipeg is West, Vancouver is What?

As evidenced in policy, action, and opinion, when those in the East look to the West they can't seem to see beyond Alberta.

And now they're seriously talking about Winnipeg as one of the cities in the West and conveniently leaving Vancouver off the list?

This is from an article about Canada having the lowest crime rate in 25 years.

"Higher crime rates are more the trend in large western cities, such as Winnipeg, Regina and Saskatoon, Melcher said."

True, it seems as though they might be saying that Vancouver doesn't have the same "higher crime rates" - not only is that not true, but the chart in the article shows that BC and Saskatchewan moved about the same on the crime scale between 2005 and 2006. So you can see why it appears once again that Ontario-goggles, providing fog to overshadow the land beyond Calgary, have struck again.

And for the record I have no beef with Manitoba, so if they like being Western, they're welcome in my house...they can take Alberta's place.

Serious Reporting

Want to see the most interesting wobble fall on heels I've ever seen?

This video is from an NBC news piece about a model who fell twice on a Paris runway during Fashion Week.

Can you help but laugh?

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Stoner Geeks

That's what we are. A girl I met in Amsterdam said that she got the feeling that I threw the wickedest parties. She would be wrong about that. Being an American in Amsterdam I knew she had a wild frat party in mind. When I chill with my friends, we relax, toke, and have high-minded philosophical discussions about things most do not expect.

Wookiee: You know what Will Ferrell is? He's an even-more-insane version of Bill Murray. He's Bill Murray squared.

Spage: Well, I don't know if 'squared' is really the right term.

W: You're right...Will Ferrell is the inverse log of Bill Murray!

S: Yeah, I think that's more accurate.

W: Will Ferrell is 10 to the power of Bill Murray.

QED


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Local God

Instead, this guy thinks that it's his job to master; "Thou shalt drive at the speed I decree - whatcha gonna do about it? You're trapped behind me! Bwah ha ha ha ha."


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Awesome / Sad

From Wired News I learned that Americans who watch The Daily Show as their primary news source (!) know more about current events than those who watch CNN, read the daily papers, or watch the evening news (!!).

Plus, see the chart showing how Americans know less about politics today than they did in 1989.

Toker Nation

Well, I'm a few days late posting it here (too busy toking), but earlier this month the UN's 2007 World Drug Report was released and "Canada has the dubious honour of leading the industrialized world in marijuana use". Woo!

Some interesting things about the report are in this article which focuses on the world usage of what's referred to as 'The big five'; cannabis, amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, and ecstasy.

Some fun facts:

☺ 16.8 per cent of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 64 smoked pot or ingested one of its derivatives last year, well above the world average of 3.8 per cent for the same demographic and ahead of almost every other country in the world.

☺ Of the estimated 200 million people who used illicit drugs last year worldwide the vast majority, 160 million people, used marijuana - "which if they all lived in the same place would represent the seventh-largest country in the world." (!)



Happily Canadians are into the harmless drug, for the bad ones:

Iran, Russia and, oddly, nearby Estonia, have the biggest heroin problems (Canada is well below the world average here). Australia and New Zealand appear to lead the way in amphetamine abuse. (The Philippines have higher numbers but it is based on a small study.) Australia and the Czech Republic are the hotspots for ecstasy.

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Braemar Tribute

Not because he died or did anything particularly special today, but because in the spirit of image searches (see last post) I have a little album of icons to share. These have been sitting on my drive waiting for the right moment to be busted out, and it has arrived. So here they are; all of the 'Braemar' images that I could find. Enjoy, Brabe!

Spage Images

Strangely, before this week I had never done a Google Image search on my name. A couple of days ago I was looking for an image to accompany a post and typed 'ask spage' into the search and the first two results were pictures I took and sent to Mike Doughty that he posted on his blog. I found that I get the same search results only when I type in the letter 'a' itself before or after 'spage' or a short word starting with the letter 'a'. ('art spage' yields three pictures I took for Doughty as the 5th, 6th and 7th search results, while 'are spage' gets the number one and two spots.)

Curious, I tried just searching 'spage' and the pictures end up in the number 3 and 4 spot. The number one result? A picture of a naked guy with his penis through a plate of noodles. It's titled 'Food Fuck'.

I won't post that picture, but I will post the second result from 'spage', and that is Scott Page's homemade replica of Mad Max's Interceptor.

Man I love the Internet.




Note: Wookiee reminds me that these search results can change drastically and quickly so I can't vouch for the searches after today!

ID4

ID4, that's what I've called Independence Day since the movie came out in 1996.

Shifting gears, I leave you with a link to a post on Matthew Good's blog from today. Because it's true. When will we all use the immense power we have to make changes?