Another moment from my 1998 trip to Japan:
One of the first things I did upon arriving in Japan was to pose for a photo with the worst-named non-dairy coffee creamer anywhere: Creap. As the label implies, it’s meant to be an amalgam of “creamy” and “powder”.
Still, it’s not as bad a name choice as Darkie toothpaste:
More often than not, my reaction after reading the editorial pieces on Accordion City local alt-weekly rag NOW Magazine is to respond with one of my favourite retorts: “Wow. I’ve seen better paper after wiping my ass.”
I have to react that way again after Doug sent me the link to NOW’s editorial piece on Kimveer Gill, the gunman in the recent school shooting at Montreal’s Dawson College. In the faux-intellectual it’s-someone-else’s-fault posturing that passes for cognition at NOW, news hack Carolyn Bennett perpetuates stereotypes about Montreal and Toronto, waxes nostaglic about vandalism and worst of all, pins the blame not on poor lil’ Kimveer Gill, but TEH INTARWEB:
Too bad this seething, hateful young man couldn’t experience the academic society he despised. Too bad he targeted an institution that might have brought him inspiration. Too bad he preferred the false intimacy of the Internet.
Too bad one of the other Vampire Freaks on the Web didn’t stir from his or her tortured swamp of self, have the objectivity to read Gill’s blog and reply with an “Are you okay? Wanna go for tea and talk about it?”
Too bad.
No one really posts blogs to share. People post blogs because they hope for an audience. Kimveer Gill posed for the camera. Posed. Too bad he didn’t have a good friend instead of an online “community.” Too bad he didn’t have a teacher to steer him in a constructive direction.
My experience has shown that you can build healthy, supportive communities and friendships online, and that you can build screwed-in-the-head, dysfunctional rabbles in face-to-face meetings (the NOW editorial board comes to mind), which is the way it’s been done for the millennia preceding the ‘net. Blaming the internet for the homicidal spree of a young maladroit is a facile writer’s crutch; it’s sloppy thinking.
As Doug said to me via IM: “Man, why didn’t anyone tell me that NOW pays good money for disjointed ramblings on topics I know nothing about?”
(It might make a good gag gift for Deenster…)
The Tucows Blog is at tucowsblog.com. In addition to news and announcements about the company where I hold the position of Technical Evangelist, there’s also lots of articles of interest for anyone who does business on the web.
A friend of Davebug came up with an interesting idea: what if you made a periodic table of the elements by take the top Google image search result for each element? The result is below; click it to see the Google Periodic Table at full size.
Are you a developer, QA analyst or user interface architect? Are you looking for a job? Go check out this entry at the Tucows Blog about our Job Fair / Open House that’s coming up soon.
In the previous entry, I made mention of SeatGuru.com, a web site that provides a comprehensive guide to several airlines’ seats, specifying which ones are recommended and which ones are to be avoided. If you fly often and get the chance to pick out your seat, you’ll definitely want to make use of this site.