I spent Friday evening flipping between TV news networks and social media; a voyeur to the dramatic last chapter of the "manhunt" for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings.
That's right, I spent Friday night watching the news. I'm a nerd.
Boston was locked down; its streets ghost town empty, its residents behind bolted doors, obeying a "shelter in place" order.
Margaret Thatcher, arch-Conservative British Prime Minister during the 1980s, died Monday. I'd like to pause and remember the "Iron Lady," who crushed British coal miners, attacked the unions, mortally wounded the social wage, bolstered apartheid, invaded the Falkland Islands, inaugurated a Brave New World of corporate globalization, created the poll tax and declared a class war that has spanned most of my life.
In a sense, Maggie helped to make me who I am. I am one of generations of activists who were forged in the fires of the burning welfare state. What we fight to defend now is but a shadow of what once was.
As a person with albinism, long time social justice activist and quaffer of the odd pint, I'd like to raise a glass to IK Ero, who made a human rights complaint about the unfortunately named "Albino Rhino" beer -- a brand that the Earl's restaurant chain has now decided to retire.
The word "albino" is supposed to take one to the edgy extreme of taste and refreshment. "Rhino" is just a whimsical, though none-too-clever rhyme. And people have a weird connection between albinism in animals and people. Passers-by stop me constantly to tell me they saw an albino squirrel once, or maybe a rather pale snake. People seem to connect me to animals with albinism.
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Late in 2012, CBC's radio drama and sound effects facility fell silent; never to clank, quack, clomp, scream, ding-dong or boing-boing again. Of all the many austerity measures, fiscal cliffs and layoffs that swept the world last year, Studio 212 was one of the quieter cuts.
CBC produced radio plays such as Midnight Cab, Monday Night Playhouse, Rumours, Canada 2056, Borders, Peggy Delaney, Backbencher, Afghanada and more. But that’s all done now.
An extinction-level event is underway.
Lumbering Cretaceous–Paleogene pay phones that once roamed the planet are experiencing a massive die-off, their vandalized corpses fossilized … or stripped for scrap metal.
There is virtually nowhere to call for help in the poorest neighbourhood in the country. I could locate but one twelve buttoned, quarter-eating, graffiti covered, hard plastic sentinel standing near the corner of Main and Hastings -- perhaps the last of its kind in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
Rich hippies have destroyed the BC economy. At least, that's what Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary Political Science professor, says in a recent Calgary Herald article. He despairs that BC, which "squats in the way" of Alberta's world markets, is no longer the "productive resource centre" it once was in his glory days at UBC.
And it's all your fault.
Cooper sympathizes with his premier, Alison Redford, for having to deal with the irritating people to her west.
The Spice Girls have left the stage. The Closing ceremonies are closed. The Olympics are over. "Come out of the cupboard you boys and girls." Hundreds of thousands are packing up their naff mascot cuddly toy souvenirs and de-camping the host city, though there were fewer tourists than in regular, non-Games years. Pin collectors, athletes, sponsor corporation executives, IOC bureaucrats, politicians, pop stars, copyright lawyers, army guys and cops -- lots and lots of cops -- all are evacuating London.
Once again, radio waves are jammed full of Olympics hype, leading the news and displacing regular programming. But the 2012 Games come with theme music from the canon of punk rock.
CBC Radio One's national network is giving over seven minutes of every hour of weekday programming to Olympics reporting for the duration of the London Games. As a back-in-the day punk and critic of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I was nauseated to hear the opening chords of the Clash's classic punk anthem 'London Calling' accompany these breathless London updates.
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As the annual ritual of hockey playoff hype began in earnest earlier this month, the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot of 2011 cast a dark shadow across the usually sunny media cheerleading. However, it now looks as though the Canucks’ playoff run could be over as early as this Wednesday and nobody knows how the notoriously fickle Vancouver fans will react.