“There is not a person in this place who has set foot in Italy,” I muttered.  “Just call a small a small and let me order my caffeine.”

Fast forward to yesterday, when I strode into the Starbucks outside our building and, without hesitation, ordered a grande non-fat two-pump chai latte.   If my twenty-something self had been there at that moment, I’m pretty sure he would have kidney-punched me.

photo credit: Chris Owens

Now, I love Discovery.  They have some great shows on how things are made, how big things are made, how big things are used, and blowing stuff up.  There are shows about sharks, and shows about penguins, and shows about ants.  Between this, and the History channel, there are a lot of really, really interesting programs, and so we parked ourselves in front of the TV and prepared to be immersed in knowledge-building media.

In amongst these informative ones, though, there is an emerging trend of shows that talk — at great length — about one particular means of employment or another.  Fishing.  Truck driving.  Logging.  Actually, there are two shows about logging.

It goes on.

Now, these are interesting professions, and I could certainly be convinced to sit down for a half hour or so to learn more about what goes on in these industries.  But a series?  That goes on for years?  And years?  I struggle with that.

Diggory, however, raised a good point.  In this content-starved environment, we can most likely launch our own show.  We could call it “Extreme Consulting” or “Deadliest Working-at-Home” or “The Incredible Mid-Morning Coffee Making”.  The show would follow all our adventures as we engage in the aforementioned tasks.

Honestly, would it be any worse than watching a guy drive a truck for an hour straight?

photo credit: didbygraham

Having grown up on a farm, this did not sit well.  There is a part of me (a not insignificant part) that recoils at the notion of paying for things like water (and yes, I’ve bought water) or rocks (I’ve also purchased rocks before) or dirt (which we just picked up) or air (which I haven’t had to pay for yet, but expect to at some point during my lifetime).

It’s one of the side effects of living in an urban area, I suppose, where there is no dirt to be had for miles.  So when we wanted to hang some planters on the balcony, for flowers and herbs, off to Lowe’s we went.

The good news is that we now have a nice variety of flowers, herbs, and vegetables in various pots about the balcony.  The bad news is that we also have a leftover bag of dirt in the garage, which mocks me each time I walk by with the fact that I paid good money for it.

photo credit: Hanataro

Today he sent me a link to this article in The Record that talks about the staying power of this band, and how they’ve remained relevant.  My brother-in-law and I have mused about what it is about The Hip that sticks with us, long after the song-of-the-day bands have come and gone.  The Hip don’t generally write songs that snare me at once, to be later discarded; rather, they write songs that grow on me, and these songs only seem to get better with time.

The fact that they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously helps, too.  A qunitessentially Canadian band on a quintessentially Canadian show — it’s like I’m peering into the nexus of the universe, and beaver riding a moose is gazing calmly back at me.

photo credit: cursedthing

Yes, text chat.  A feature that stopped being cutting edge fifteen years ago — and at least fifteen years ago we were using full keyboards, rather than the screen-based abortive hack of an interface that passes for an input means on the PS3.  In spite of this, we PlayStation faithful downloaded this used band-aid of a software update like so many piglets at the proverbial teat, and nobly installed it.  We knew that we could never return to the glory days of yore when we didn’t have the ability to awkwardly shuffle text messages to each other, but then why would one ever want to look back?

I have now an answer to that question.

I was willing to overlook the half-baked lameness of this update.  I was puzzled, but not bothered, by the rabid nature of the comments on Sony’s blog that heralded this as the greatest technological progression since we first trod on the moon.  I accepted this update as progress, even if it was progress that afforded me absolutely no benefit.  I was okay with all of this — until I learned that this update actually completely broke the media streaming functionality of our PS3.

You see, shortly after installing said patch, Elizabeth, Diggory and I decided to watch a movie.  We fired up the PS3, connected to Diggory’s PC-cum-server over our home network, and called forth a movie from the depths of the archives there.

The movie did not come forth willingly.  It was jittery, it was pixelated, it was slow, and it was a big, blocky mess.  Trying to fast-forward or rewind brought the system buckling to its knees.  “This is not ideal,” I commented mildly, shortly before giving up entirely on the film and moving on to the next.  When other movies yielded the same result, though, I began to suspect that something was up.

It says something that the PS3 was the one device in all of this that I did not suspect.  Perhaps it was the ethernet cable we ran to Diggory’s room, I ventured.  Perhaps one of our routers was glitched.  Perhaps Diggory’s PC has become so intensely focused on folding that it can no longer be bothered to share with us the movies it holds in the shadowy recesses of its memory.  Perhaps everyone just needs a quick reboot and some time to think, and all will be well.  I laid out a five-stage plan to tear down the home network, piece by piece, and test it at each and every point to find out what was standing between me and my consumption of video entertainment.

Diggory suggested, almost in passing, that maybe he could bring his PS3 upstairs and we could see if it experienced the same issues.  A quick test, we figured, which involved minimal unplugging of cables and locomotion of hardware, so we might as well try it out.  Up came Diggory’s system, still sweating from its day of folding proteins.  Thirty seconds later, it was connected to the network and streaming video like a champ.

I’ll skip over much of our troubleshooting and discussion, with its corresponding commentary on the state of technology and cultural development, and get to the point where we realized that the only difference between my PS3 and Diggory’s was that he had not yet installed the aforementioned update.  A quick search on Google confirmed our fears: update 2.70 trashed the media streaming capabilities.

At this point, the facts of the situation presented themselves to me like a hammer formed of concentrated light lodging itself in my cranium.  I had accepted an update that provided to me a meaningless feature I will never, ever use, and in return I had traded away the primary function for which our PS3 resides in our house.  What type of Mephistophelian exchange was this, I cried to the shiny black brick inhabiting the space beside our TV.  The echoing silence told me all I needed to know.

My point (if I have one) is to Sony, and it is threefold.  First, if you are going to foist software on a trusting and cash-bearing public, kindly test it before you do so.  Second, if you are going to compell us to install updates, might I ask you to make them worth our while?  And third (assuming you ignore one and two, which I’m fairly certain you will), if you do continue ramming pointless updates down our throats, at least for the love of all that’s holy do not break the very functionality that keeps our wives from just selling the damn thing on eBay.

photo credit: shagy6six6

I really hope we don’t develop the technology to travel to other life-supporting planets any time soon, because I’m pretty confident we’d just wreck those as well.

That is my rant for the day.  And no, I do not think I am blameless in this.

Though I really don’t recall having ever fired any trash into space.

photo credit: makelessnoise

In Violet Light will forever remind me of South Korea, where I was teaching (I use the term loosely) English when the album came out.  More specifically, it will remind of me riding the bus there, listening to the Gord’s vocal flexings on the MP3 player I bought at some sketchy market in a suburb of Seoul.  And of visiting my sister and brother-in-law in Japan, and discussing the album over a thoughtful pint or two.

In Between Evolution came out just as I was heading over to Sudan (again, to visit my sister and brother-in-law).  The track “Summer’s Killing Us” seemed especially appropriate, given the unbelievable heat there.  It was the first time I have smelled heat.  While we were there, listening to the album as we worked, we talked about where we might be when the next album came out, and wondered if each new Hip album would also be accompanied by a change in our location.

World Container was the first Hip album (or full album of any sort, for that matter) that I bought on iTunes, while living and working in Mississauga, Ontario.  Geographically, it wasn’t as exciting a place for a Canadian to be as Seoul or Khartoum, but it carries its own share of memories as well.  It also taught me that, when it comes to really good albums by really good bands, I still prefer to have a physical disc that I can carry from computer to stereo to car for the first couple of weeks, while we get acquainted.  After that, I rip it to my library and listen to it amongst the rest of my music.

And now, We Are The Same has come out, and here we are in New York.  As an added bonus, I’ll also be seeing the Hip at their show in New York in May.

This is probably the only band that has such close ties to memories I have of places I’ve been, and I wonder if, in a few years, this album will remind me of New York the way the previous albums have connected me to the places I was when I first heard them.

photo credit: radiobread

Of course, it sounds like they aren’t releasing the extended editions right up front.  Instead, they’ll release the theatrical (shorter) versions first, and then the extended ones will come along later.  Sigh.

So, now I begin to wrestle with myself: do I buy these movies again, in glorious HD?  Or do I just keep the DVDs that I already own and watch them in pretty-good upconverted quality?

These are the trivial issues that torment my vacationing mind.

photo credit: SuziJane

Then I met my wife.

She wasn’t my wife at the time, but I met her nonetheless.  And, in the course of our courtship, I lent her some books.  Good books.  Hardcover books.  New books with clean covers and sharp corners and crisp spines.  Books that later returned to me looking as though they had spent the better part of their time away in the lower reaches of a badger’s intestines.

This bothered me, at first.  After all, reading a book is still a very visual and tactile experience (which is why I don’t see myself using digital readers, at least for the time being).  So there’s a very visceral pleasure for me in picking up a fresh book and devouring it.  Figuratively.

I’m starting to soften just a hint on this.  As my wife and I sat on a beach in Mexico last week, sipping fruity drinks and reading book after book, and occasionally spilling some of said drinks on said books, I realized that there is something to be said for the well-worn, well-read volume.  My copy of Lord of the Rings, for example, has been read several times and is starting to show its use, and I like the fact that it reflects the re-reads to which it’s been subjected.  I am also starting to appreciate those books in my library that have traveled with me (to Korea, Sudan, Mexico, and even into the wilds of Southern Ontario), and that bear the scars of those journeys.

I don’t see myself taking a cavalier attitude toward my covers anytime soon; just ask my wife what happened when she tried to remove the dust jackets from my hardcovers.  But I am starting to see the other side of the equation; the side that values the content of the book over its appearance, and the appreciation of the book over its preservation.

I’ll leave you to devise your own pithy “don’t judge a book by its cover” remark to wrap this up.  Me, I’m going to wander over to my bookshelves and admire the rows of neat and uncreased spines – at least on the books that haven’t been on vacation with me.  Or with my wife.

photo credit: guldfisken

On the one hand, walking along The Strand yesterday, I could imagine one seeing the oceanfront as being a place where angels touched down, with the mountains in the background cascading down to a crashing sea.

On the other hand, much of the rest of the waterfront is taken up by an oil refinery and a poop plant, which sort of dispels the whole illusion of beauty.

It should also be noted that, in driving through the streets near my hotel, I have come to the conclusion that LA has more adult video stores per capita than anywhere else on the planet.

Wikipedia, or course, has answers as to how the city got its name, but where’s the imagination in that?