Found this over on Jill Golick’s Running With Eyes Closed site. It’s a great bullshit cleanser from the Writer’s Guild of Canada for the debate between the cable and broadcast companies in Canada who are arguing over who should pay for Canadians to receive local programming.
Yo - fuck heads - the airwaves are ours.
I’ve been watching the repeated showings of the self-serving ads the cable companies and the broadcasters have been running and every time they make me froth at the mouth with rage over their insolent arrogance. They need to have their heads knocked together. The CRTC needs to act on behalf of Canadian citizens and not their fat cat media cronies. Will that happen? Not likely. That’s why the CRTC should get fucked. Maybe if we all say that - really loudly - they’ll get the idea, get scared for their jobs and end up inadvertently doing the right thing.
There’s been a lot of bullshit happening in Canada as the Harper government does its best to look pretty whilst wearing the brown lipstick of the U.S. media industry. You can find out more about the pitiful shenanigans of the music industry, blatantly stacking town hall meetings to discuss copyright reform, and the suppression of alternative voices at these so called “open and public discussions”, on other blogs like Michael Geist and Jill Golick or P2P.net and BoingBoing. I’ve ranted and raved about it before - and doubtless will again - but right now it’s the weekend and I’m lazy and I’m gonna go lie down and read a cheap mystery novel.
In the meantime, here’s a short video of Prof. Lawrence Lessig giving a talk this past February at the New York Public Library (along with Steven Johnson and Shepard Fairey) addressing the very real concerns that our copyright laws are being hijacked by dying media industries to support a failed and archaic business model and in those efforts to stem the inevitable tide of technological and cultural progress they are stealing our voices, stealing our right to speak and hear about our world.
Will copyright laws stifle creativity? If the major media companies are allow to corrupt our elected officils and subvert our democratic processes to assert their right to define what culture is - as in: whatever they sell us and nothing else - then Yes the laws of copyright are a threat to creativity and freedom of speech as well as freedom of thought.
Make noise. Kick these fuckers in the nuts.
Cheers.
P. S. Actually the mystery novel is not cheap, it’s Dashiel Hammett’s classic “The Big Knockover” - in case you were wondering.
This is a cool video Cory Doctorow posted over at BoingBoing. It’s just some neat footage of a neutrally bouyant balloon that is placidly hovering in a room.
A pink balloon.
Those of you who have been reading this blog for some time will know where this going.
Last year, over the Christmas holidays, I posted here (and on Twitter) about the plight of a small, homeless pink balloon named - appropriately enough - Pinky. I can’t replay the old blog post here because when I fucked up my blog it disappeared into the ether of the interwebs along with 2 to 3 years worth of mental gems and turds - but if anyone can find it for me I’d appreciate it. Nor can I lay out the original tweets - entitled Teh Saga Of Pinky - which inspired the blog post in the first place because apparently time to Twitter is like the flat Earth or the simulated reality of the button-eyed freaks in Gaiman’s Coraline. Twitter Time is only visible within a limited distance after which it simply ceases to be and all sense of history drops over the edge into a timeless abyss and is lost forever.
But I digress.
Here’s what I can recount:
We had a small pink balloon show up on our doorstep in the midst of winter. It lingered there but we (myself and my immediate family) being heartless cretins, left it there - just to see what would happen.
It was a loyal balloon that stayed true to its desire to find a home with us until finally I could take it no longer and posted a series of tweets that ended with this picture and asked the question:
“Should we bring Pinky inside & offer protection from the elements - or should we let nature take its course?”
Note: For the record - TwitPic has all my photo posts still archived. Perhaps I should stick pictures with all my tweets from now on.
The response to my Twitter question was an undeniable “Yes! Rescue Pinky!” - and so I did.
In my original post I also tucked in a bit of blather about how human beings like to anthropomorphize things, imbue them with character and feelings, and all too often bestow our care and affection upon objects more than we do on other human beings in our midst. We are all some really fucked up monkeys.
While my original Twitter posts and blog entry have vanished forever I did manage to dig out of my email files this late night drunken missive I wrote to myself on the couch with my iPhone as a nudge to make the blog post the next day about Pinky:
For what is a balloon? Any balloon? It is but a container - a vessel of a moment in time - the encapsulization of the breath of life. And here we have this feeble artifact, this minor player in the grand theatre and parade of life - a lowly, singular, lonesome sagged pink balloon - a vessel of the breath of life constrained, held back, diminished, neglected, buried - and yet persevering against all odds, unrelenting in it’s obdurant determination to not just survive but to also be noticed, to be made note of, to be recognized, named and accepted. Each one of us may only play upon these doorsteps for the most brief of times and yet we are most definitely here and not to be neglected nor discounted nor, worse still, ignored - we are here - as in Horton Hears A Who - we are here, we are here, we are here!
One balloon serves as a rather frail and tepid metaphor for all the many things each of us may ascribe to the story. But it serves well enough -that lone sad semi-deflated rubber sack of air is all of us; it is what we are, how we are perceived and what we yearn to be.
One little balloon - on a doorstep - in a snowstorm.
What a wonderous world this would be when we are finally capable of setting aside the metaphors and allegories and heart warming images to clearly see that all of these stories - that all stories - are about us - about you and me - about us all.
Perhaps one day.
Until then we shall have to be content and find solace for our hearts in the tales of the trials and tribulations of a small pink balloon on a snowy doorstep.
Shortly thereafter my friend Jill Gollick also had an encounter with a pink balloon. She had been away for the holiday season but, via Twitter, got my posts about Teh Saga Of Pinky.
When she got home this was waiting at her doorstep:
I didn’t put it there.
Honest.
While Jill’s tale of Pinky The Second ended in horrible tragedy, our Pinky lived happily ever after.
But this whole errant pink balloon thing is starting to get on my nerves.
First me.
Then Jill.
And now this hovering version of the same.
Where are these balloons coming from? What do they want? Where is all this leading?
Perhaps time will tell.
But not Twitter time, of course - that’s too short.
Should you or anyone you know have any pink balloon stories to share with us please be sure to let me know.
In the meantime, here’s some balloons who don’t need rescuing.
In the shameless self-promotion and recursive blog reference department I give you the post from Jill Golick’s Running With Eyes Closed blog wherein she heaps praise upon my efforts with In Teh Toobs.
I’ve known Jill for about 25 years now since we first worked together on Canadian Sesame Street. Since that time her work as a writer in series television and as an active member in the Writer’s Guild of Canada has been exemplary. More recently she’s been wading into the same trough of cultural chaos I’ve been wallowing in, pursuing the various forms of storytelling and narrative emerging across and throughout the interwebs.
Jill also organizes the Writers Watching TV events held each month at the Camera Lounge, the last one being a Web Creators Show & Tell where I got to show off the first bits and pieces of my work on In Teh Toobs.
Be sure to check out her Story2Oh web series and her most recent venture Hailey Hacks - which is a really cool intro to web wizardry for and by our young digital natives.
At long last I’ve opened up the web site for In Teh Toobs - a new weekly web series featuring the intrepid but hapless canine Cmdr. Riley aboard his trusty and rusty spacecraft, the STFU-1138, as he journeys through the interwebs.
This isn’t a full episode - just a prelude:
Tonight I’ll be at the Camera Lounge talking about In Teh Toobs and other projects for the Web Creators Show & Tell evening organized by Jill Golick. It’s part of a larger series of monthly events Jill has put together under the auspices of the Writers Guild Of Canada called Writers Watching TV.
Also participating tonight are Scott Albert and Christopher Guest with their web series Team Leader and Jill will talk about her new web series Hailey Hacks.
Should be a fun night. If you drop by please be sure to say Howdy.
Cheers.
P. S. I’m trying out a number of different video hosting options for the In Teh Toobs site and while although pretty much set on Blip.tv I must admit I was pleasantly surprised to see the quality of the YouTube post:
Maybe it just looks better on the YouTube site. Let me know what you think - I want to be sure I’m making the right choices.
