The Unreasonable Man

Yves Klein Blue - Polka. Heard in the new Mitsubishi ad. Found on the ‘net in <30 seconds. Their music is great… a mix of The Only Ones, The Stray Cats, Feist, The Fratellis and Razorlight all in one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=rQ6tKGFnemU

And yes, about this song - as befits a punk band with these influences, they are certainly drug lyrics. Things like:

“Oh and if you wanna lose your frown / Or your name or even your face / Lick up a dream that seemingly sings with whistling neon death”.

“Sid was at the gates of dawn / And Jimmy said ride the snake / So we bent our spoons and howled at the moon to find what science replaced. / And it turns out it ain’t that much / Though I may have missed it in the haze / Oh it drips in your mind / And fills up your eyes / And you’ll never be the same.”

“But if you’re ever coming down / Or if you ever take too much / Remember that’s much better than never ever getting enough”.

Um, as one even older than “a boring forty-something year old”, I might argue that that is a mistaken viewpoint, guys… let’s put it down to your life experience. A powerful song.

Here’s why I connect with this music: look at the background graphic at their site:

http://www.yveskleinblue.com/

Every single poster on the wall -presumably their influences- is music I love: Lou Reed, David Bowie, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, The Cure… much from the 1970s. Their parents’ music, perhaps?

And they quote Jack Kerouac. What’s not to love.

Ironic, that a band that sings about “boring fortysomethings” appears to be aming squarely at them!

The Hamilton Spectator:

http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/571868

Adds to the list, which now consists of five newspapers.

Even The Economist is saying paper is dead: in particular, newspapers are dead, and they will be online and they will charge per article for reading.

I don’t buy it. Pun intended.

Newspapers and The Economist can be conveniently read in bed, in the bathroom, in the car, over lunch, on the train, and in waiting rooms. Electrical devices, not so much. And they will require battery charging (what a pain: I charge 1,000 items a year ).

Also, newspapers and magazines broaden your view by giving you things to read that you would not otherwise read. My kids’ generation reads McNews. Not much background knowledge there. I cannot believe knowledge will disappear: it never does. We’ll find a way.

Granted, electronic paper would be less wasteful. But a screen or a book reader to read stuff? I do not buy it.

As for charging per article.. this is anathema. You don’t charge per article. It’s the wrong motivator: it motivates to not read. And also - only a few dollars a month - yeah, but for every site you ever go to that means hundreds of new dollars in spending every month. It just won’t happen.

Where I agree: once electronic paper comes of age, we will see changes. No more smearing ink on dead trees.

Until that time: newspaper and magazines please. Even if I don’t always agree with them.

You see… in big cities you are likelyu to get arrested when taking pictures of police activity; in Halton region, they give you awards instead.

When I hook up my camera to my Mac, why does it take an hour (seemingly) to start downloading the pictures?

The laborious sequence is:

1. Plug in camera using USB cable
2. Turn it on
3. In the download manager, click on the unchangeable default location of “Pictures. movies and folders”
4. Select “other”
5. Select Desktop
6. Click on “new folder”
7. Name the new folder (I like “date plus some words”)
8. Confirm
9. Click on “Open”
10. Select “Download All”

Every time! I would please like to replace steps 3-10 by one (or better, no) steps. Since I do this several timesevery day, there is a lot of profit to be gained here.. any ideas?

..at least if they are as clueless as The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national paper.

To read an article online, after the first few weeks you need to pay. $4.95 for one article, which is then available for 30 days for you. Yes you read that right: an entire newspaper is a dollar delivered to your home, but one article, no matter how small, is $4.95 - for 30 days.

And it makes no difference if you already subscribe to the paper.

Clueless is too kind a word. This type of wishful thinking shows they are desperate, but it will only make it worse.

Meanwhile, excuse me while I go to Google cache for my article.

Yonge and Dundas Square

(click for larger)

…until Sunday.

I shall let this review speak for itself: review of IV