Canada’s Somewhat Morose Action Plan

Have you seen the latest Government of Canada advertisement on the television? It’s the one touting all the progress being made by the Economic Action Plan, known in past lives as make-work projects. Leaving aside the obvious debate on whether we really need the government boasting about its own initiatives, there’s something very odd about these ads (you can view the ad here, it’s the one on the top of the page - unfortunately I can’t find one I can embed).

What’s the message the ad is trying to convey? Success. Better things on the horizon. Moving forward. Generally encouraging feelings.

What’s the visual tone of the ad? Greys. Desaturated colour. Clouds. It’s like those ‘Fight Fear’ ads for the Canadian Armed Forces. The total opposite of good feelings.

It’s so odd to see an advertisement that is so mixed up in the message it’s trying to deliver. These things don’t materialize out of thin air, they’re created by ad agencies whose talents are supposed to lie in delivering messages in appropriate ways. I am perplexed about how these came to be, and especially how they were approved by a government that needs all the feel-good messages it can get, considering the Harper government isn’t exactly looking like a bunch of winners lately.

TWIG Notes XXIV

Another week without posting means another week-in-review summary of all the things I didn’t deem important during that stretch.

- I was wondering out loud the other day to my ladyfriend that there hasn’t been a distinct new genre of music for a long time. The 70s gave us disco; the 80s gave us rap; the early 90s gave us grunge; the late 90s gave us electronica (although that fizzled out pretty quickly). What’s happened since then? I can’t think of any new type of music that’s emerged to really change what people listen to. My bet for the future: country hip-hop.

- Is Jack Black funny? I honestly can’t tell.

- In the building where I work, Microsoft has opened a game development studio on one of the floors above me. In the past month or two I’ve run into probably six or seven people whom I used to work with at EA. Thankfully they’ve all been people I’m happy to run into, and it’s started to open up some more lunch-outing options too.

- Early in the week, our washing machine started leaking water, due to a cracked hose. Turns out I shouldn’t have put the dirty dishes in there when we ran out of dishwasher detergent. Who knew?

- For nearly four years I’ve had an account with Zip.ca, a DVD-by-mail service that lets you rent DVDs without late fees. Basically they send you between one and four DVDs, which you keep as long as you want, and each time you return one they send you the next one on your request list. It’s basically the Canadian version of Netflix. I haven’t used it much over the last 6 months, and have reduced my rental plan from four DVDs at a time to one, yet I still end up with a movie that sits without being watched for weeks at a time. It’s probably a good sign that I should cancel my account. For the $12 a month I could probably just get a couple of video-on-demand movies through our cable box.

- I’m starting to reconsider what my favourite season is. I usually like autumn the best, with the changing colours and still-sunny days with brisk nights, and the pumpkins and birds flying south and werewolves and all that stuff. But spring might have to replace autumn, what with the longer days and singing birds and flowers blooming.

Happy Anniversary

It’s the fourth anniversary of blogging at garrettknights.com, which means a traditional gift of flowers and fruit (next year, I get wood). In the four years of blogging I’ve written 370 posts and received 1208 comments. That’s an average of one blog post every 3.9 days and an average of 3.2 comments per post. While I would love to have a better days-between-posts average, I’m actually surprised I’ve even kept with this whole blogging thing since 2006.

Just for fun, what happened in 2006?

In March 2006, NASA lost contact with the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, leaving it to voyage on into the Neutral Zone where, any day now, Klingons will discover its message of peace and destroy it.

In June, Serbia and Montenegro separated and became independent states. And I bet you still can’t point to Montenegro on a map without looking it up (I sure can’t).

Also in June, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq, signalling the end of the war and the triumph of Freedom over Terrorism. Oh, wait, not really.

In August, some would-be terrorists are caught in the UK, and the rest of the world isn’t allowed to bring liquids or gels on airplanes in their carry-on luggage.

Also in August, a bunch of pinhead scientists demote Pluto from planet status to dwarf planet status. In about 80 years the scientific community will have to deal with planetary reparations.

In November, a Jackson Pollock painting becomes the most expensive painting ever sold, at a price of 140 million dollars. Yes, it’s one of the ones that’s paint drizzled on a canvas.

In December, Stephane Dion becomes leader of the federal Liberal party. Remember him? You do?? Why?!

And on December 30, Saddam Hussein is executed. Or was he?

MVM: I’m a Loser, Baby

I realize it’s foolish to bandy about the term genius when it comes to modern rock, because musical genius is usually associated with people like J.S. Bach or Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix or Vanilla Ice. But let’s face it, popular modern music is generally in a sorry state right now. So I’m calling the subject of today’s Music Video Monday a genius because in my opinion he’s the closest thing to a modern rock genius: Beck.

Beck’s parents were both artists (his mother was part of the Warhol Factory, and his father is a Canadian musician) and scientologists. He was born in LA in 1970 and had his breakout hit ‘Loser’ in 1994, a kind of cowboy-twinged slacker rock anthem. Beck’s continually evolved though, and his music has substantially improved with every album. The music he creates generally defies classification, as it blends country, rock, hip hop, and electro sounds to create something new. Compare this to most mainstream musicians and even if you disagree with the term genius, you can’t argue that Beck has made successfully distinct and well-crafted music.

I shall share with you two Beck videos. The first is the video for E-Pro from the album Guero, arguably his best album to date. It’s a fantastic song with a trippy vector-esque computer generated world.

And here’s video two, The New Pollution, from 1996’s Odelay. It was the follow-up album to Mellow Gold, the album that put Beck on the pop-music map. The video is a fun mish-mash of retro imagery - and I’m a sucker for retro imagery.

The Twitter-chatter

I generally think Twitter, the latest internet communication fad, is stupid. Even though it’s essentially a sound-bite reduction of blogging, I think it’s ridiculous. It doesn’t allow for explanations of anything, or deep thought; it’s just a sentence or two at a time. Thing is, Twitter’s become a go-to place for contests, coupons, giveaways, and the Holy Grail of internet timewasting: celebrity culture. Before Twitter there was no way for anyone to find out what your favourite actor or athlete or singer was up to (which in actuality isn’t terribly interesting anyway). But the fact is, it gives people the impression of being closer to a celebrity than ever before. And it’s a weakness that I have and I’m ashamed of - I want to pretend that I can peer into the life of [insert name of hot actress here], or to be eligible for a contest, or some other useless thing, and it makes me think I should sign up for Twitter.

What’s stopped me? Three reasons, really.

1. Twitter will no longer be popular in three years.
2. Twitter will contribute nothing to my life.
3. I’ve voiced my disdain for Twitter for too long to give in now.

But blogging? Totally superior to Twitter.

MVM: One Day Late

It’s been ages since I made a Music Video Monday post, and it’s mostly been because I can’t remember to do it. I probably should have made my feature a Wednesday thing, but Music Video Wednesday just lacks the alliteration that MVM has.

Anyway, while listening to 80s radio on the computer last night, a song played that I hadn’t heard in years. It’s the theme from Electric Dreams, a movie from 1984 that (as a kid) I probably saw half a dozen times. It’s a preposterous story about a love triangle involving a nerd, a computer, and Princess Irulan Virginia Madsen. Electric Dreams was last released in North America on laserdisc - its only DVD release was in the UK - so clearly it’s not even at a cult classic level of reverence among movie watchers. Normally I won’t condone downloading movies, but it’s really the only way to watch it, unless you stumble across a VHS copy, and even then I doubt the condition of the tape would render it watchable. With a 5/10 rating on IMDB, perhaps it’s unwatchable for other reasons too.

So here is the music video for Together in Electric Dreams, with lyrics by Phil Oakley and music by 80s synth superstar Georgio Moroder.