Potatoes. Lobster. Mussels. And Anne.

I think that is all that PEI and its residents care for. I’m sick of all of them.

I rolled in on the red-eye early Thursday morning. JD picked me up with Saija, his friend Delaney and his sister in tow. We went to downtown Charlottetown and they ate mussels, I ate fries. The last time I ate mussels I visited the hospital. I figured my mussel aversion was mostly mental, but consider this a bit of foreshadowing. Subtle, huh?

From there we hit the beach at Dalvay in Prince Edward Island National Park.

It’s beautiful. And expensive. 20 bucks just to visit for the day, which seems a bit harsh. We had a quick swim, avoided the purple jellyfish and then I fell asleep on the beach and got sunburnt. It was worth it though. Not quite a Central Park nap, but damn close. After the beach we slowly made our way to Summerside, where JD’s family lives and everybody was staying.

The next day we had all sorts of things planned but they all fell through. We went to a campsite near Malpeque/Darnley and hit the beach again. It wasn’t quite as nice and the waves had chopped all the jellyfish to bits. I avoided the water and we then went to JD’s Aunt’s place for a little bit of a pre-non-wedding celebration. Their place was beautiful and the food was good. They cooked up a few boatloads of mussels and after hearing about it for hours I finally caved in and had three. I didn’t feel very good about it and wished I hadn’t eaten them.

After the party we went back to the beach and lit a fire. JD’s sister went swimming and it didn’t seem to kill her. Other than that, it was pretty non-eventful. We went back to the campsite where we all jammed into three tents. Well. There were two people in two smaller tents and a shitpile of us in a 4 man. I lay down for about 45 seconds before I started to feel a bit odd. I started walking towards the bathroom and made it halfway there before I started barfing. I left a nice little trail of breadcrumbs/vomit all the way to the washroom so that I could find my way back easily.

I staggered around the campsite for a while looking for new and exciting washrooms before heading back to the camp. I decided laying down was a bad idea so I cracked the window in the car and tried to sleep in the front seat. This worked for a while but then I barfed all over the campsite. I was hoping that somehow (miraculously) nobody had heard me attempting to hack up my stomach but the next morning everybody seemed to be looking around trying to figure out who had gotten sick. The drunks all looked fine and were accounted for so I had to admit that it was me. Guess I’m allergic to mussels.

We were supposed to go deep sea fishing the next day and it was pretty much high fives all around once we found out it was too rough to go out on the boat. Krista and I went home and I passed out for a good chunk of the day. Oh. Ya. Krista. Krista is my friend that lives in PEI. She has a very nice house and was nice enough to let me stay here. Good times.

This also happened to be the night of the non-wedding. I didn’t think I was coming out here for a wedding, but I was surprised to find out that JD and Saija had gotten married 6 months previous. Regardless, they decided to have a party in PEI and they held it at the Piping College. Everybody looked at me like I was really stupid when I asked what a Piping College was. I was thinking plumbing, but nope, bag-piping. They had a big stage and a bluegrassy sort of band entertained everybody.

I didn’t drink all that much and ended up tending bar for a while. Dealing with people at a bar is pretty funny. My favourite conversation was when a 60-year-old woman came up and ordered a glass of white wine. We had run out of the smaller wine glasses so I took a 500 ml glass and filled it halfway. “Fill it to the top honey, I’m just about to head home.” There was also one guy that kept asking for Coors Light and seemed more surprised each time I told him it had run out. And JD’s sister who kept leaving glasses of wine all over the place and getting mad when they got dumped out. Good stuff.

The next day was decent. A bunch of people had to leave, so we slowly headed for Charlottetown experiencing stops along the way. This included the bridge, dressing up as Anne of Green Gables and checking out Victoria on the Sea. All decently respectable things to do.

The vomiting and lack of sleep finally caught up to me that night and I slept really, really late. I talked Krista into taking me kitsch shopping and I was disappointed by the things on offer. We ended up at the Frosty Treat and I finally got to experience PEI fries with the works. Imagine the hugest helping of fries you’ve ever seen with layers of fried onions, peas and gravy and then topped off with a sliced up hamburger patty or two. Unfortunately I had left my camera at home.

The Frosty Treat is awesome. It reminds me of British Columbia 20 years ago. I wish we had things like this. I mean, the food will kill you, but it’s cheap, fresh and tasty. They have frozen yogurt if you’re concerned about your health. I ended up buying a Frostry Treat T-shirt at the kitsch store next door.

My last day in PEI was a long one. Krista drove me in to Charlottetown and I picked up my rental car. We bummed around town a bit and then headed back to Summerside. From there I headed out on the “North Cape Coastal Drive”. I saw some really cool shit. Seaside graveyards. The Bottle Houses. The West Point Lighthouse. And on and on.

To really smash a stamp onto the days forehead, I decided to end it with a trip to the Fisherman’s Wharf (World Famous!) and its 60-foot salad bar. Unfortunately…the line-up was out the door and didn’t seem to be moving all that quickly. This place was a lobster dinner factory jammed with tourists. I attempted to bum my way in, seeing as I was all alone, but the machine couldn’t deal with one person eating on their own. I decided to eat at the attached restaurant that served the exact same food, only with a 10-foot salad bar.

I asked the waitress about the sizing of the pound-and-a-half lobster. She said “It’s not too big. It makes a decent size meal. For a man.” Okay then. Pound-and-a-half it is! Oh. For my 38 dollars I also got salad bar, a bowl of seafood chowder, steamed mussels (which I swapped for a bigger bowl of soup), an amazingly fresh bun and biscuit and dessert. I was pretty full before the lobster came out and I felt kind of sick when she said “They gave you a two pounder.” I felt like I was in some sort of eating contest and first prize was retaining my dignity on the way out the front door. I ate it all and I don’t think I will ever eat a whole lobster again. It’s good, but whatever. I’ll take a claw next time and be happy.

I also spent a day in Moncton. Don't go to Moncton.

Zooey and the Lumberjack Shirt

Well. I have to admit. I have a huge crush on Zooey Deschanel. I think it started a few months ago. The She & Him album had just come out. Zooey had just been a guest voice on a Simpsons episode. And I watched Almost Famous one morning while I was hungover. It seemed like the world was telling me to have a crush on this girl.

A couple of weeks ago my friend told me that she was taking a trip to New York and had tickets to the She & Him show. I pretty much lost my mind. I mean, a trip to New York is exciting enough...but a trip to New York and hanging out with Zooey (after paying for the privilege along with a room full of other people)? Almost too much. I told her that she would have to take some sort of present from me to throw at her on stage.

I'd kind of forgotten about it but my friend was leaving and asked me where my present for Zooey was. I kind of chuckled. And then thought about it a bit. And then thought "What the hell? Why not give her a Lumberjack shirt?" I dug out a small, Navy blue (should have been Royal, in hindsight) and dropped it off with my friend.

So. The show was last night. And this is what my friend had to say about it.

First of all. Excellent show. Zooey’s voice sounds even better live. Really crisp and clear and lilty. She’s also very pretty and charming. One of the guys I went with said she looked like a sparkly cupcake but I disagree. See attached pictures.

I finally got the nerve up during the encore and managed to toss the shirt on stage from 4 rows back and a rather big security divide as well. I was quite proud. Managed to get it about 1-2 feet away from Zooey who seemed semi-frightened by a largish object coming from nowhere through the light beams. Then she analyzed the situation, stopped talking, picked up the shirt, said “What’s this? Oh it’s a shirt, someone’s given me a shirt....I wonder if it’s for me or for matt? Well I’ll save that for later”...something very nice like that anyway. She seemed happy enough. Then she put it down next to her amp and then left it down there until the end of the encore when she walked half off the stage and then returned to pick up her very special t-shirt. In picture 19, you can’t see what she’s carrying in her right hand, but it’s actually your shirt. Because she’ll obviously treasure it forever.

So, I didn’t talk to her but I did get the shirt into her hands. I hope that is good enough. My friend is 5 foot nothing and she literally almost got beaten up by some hard-ass Jersey chick on our way up to the front. I would have gone down with her if it came to blows so I hope you appreciate the danger of the mission you set up for me.

Zooey, if you're out there, I've got a bike here with your name on it. Not, like free or anything. But it will be a good deal. I promise.

Anyhow. Other companies have team riders and expensive advertisements in magazines. Nope. Not us. Free t-shirts for indie goddesses!

Update:

There's an additional photo of Zooey picking up the shirt.

And, there's even Youtube footage of the whole thing.

Hippies beating eachother up makes everything better.

Holy crap. What a terrible day. The funniest bad part of it was the fact that our Internet/e-mail/network at work was down. Everybody was freaking out trying to find things to do. Every time I came up with something I realized I needed a computer. On a similar note...

Have you noticed how useless people are becoming? Everybody has a story about things their parents can do that they can't. Build a house. Make jam. Make bread from scratch. We're basically a useless bunch of tits (not that tits are useless) compared to our parents. Sure, we make up for it by accomplishing such meaningful tasks as:

- Using a cellphone
- Typing e-mails
- Playing video games

We don't even know how the things work that we use and feel all high-tech about and as soon as they stop working, we're fucked. So, getting to the point, if we're this useless, how useless are our kids going to be? Everybody talks about how competitive University is these days and all that. I call bullshit. I think the next generation of kids is going to be a useless bunch of mouth-breathing retards incapable of defrosting a frozen dinner entree. Prove me wrong, kids. Prove me wrong.

So, back to the bad day. Apart from the computers I:

- Almost exploded at work under fears that next weeks vacation was going to be taken away from me (it wasn't...but I still have a bad feeling about it)
- Spent $400 having my windshield wipers repaired. What the hell?
- Nearly T-boned a car that tried to turn in front of me.
- Almost got T-boned on my bike by a woman that ran a stop sign.

I don't know. There's other things. But, this story about peace-loving hippies beating eachother up with shovels made my day. Somehow. I'm sick like that.

And, in celebration of the upcoming Pemberton Festival, I have one final point. I've come up with the ultimate simile/metaphor/comparison for music festivals. Music festivals are the live music equivalent of a trip to Las Vegas. Or a cruise. Think about it. Live music is about so many things. Atmosphere. Proximity. Timing. Location. Vibe. Etc. These festivals basically discard most of what makes live music great (in my mind) and jam a whole bunch of bands and a whole bunch of people into one easy-to-experience watered-down weekend. Just like Las Vegas. Las Vegas has become the place where people that are too lazy to experience the real thing go to experience New York, Italy and Paris which a bunch of other fat, lazy tourists. Or to go get really wasted and fuck strangers. You see what I'm saying?

I'll never be an astronaut

So, I heard from the Canadian Space Agency the other day. I was happy to find out that I had made it to the next round of selection to become an Astronaut. I think they had something like 5500 initial applications and weeded out about 1000 in the first go. The next step is online once again and seems a bit more in depth.

I logged in and the first thing it asked for was my GPA from University. Shit. Now, just to defend myself, I did take Engineering in University, which (at the time) required a degree of competition to get in. And then, I took Mechanical, which also took a bit of competition. So, it's not like the rest of my class were brain-dead buffoons and I could drink my days away and expect to get "A's". I drank my days away and got "B's" and "C's". No matter what I did, I couldn't get my average above 69.3%. I calculated it four different ways (weighted average of all grades, average of all grades, weighted average of yearly averages, average of yearly averages) and the proper way to do it (weighted average of all grades) came out the highest. I just don't think 69.3% is going to cut it.

From there, it asked for a two page essay on why I want to be an astronaut. I can write this in my sleep. I'm thinking of writing "...because it's the coolest fuckin' thing ever." and leaving it at that.

From there it went to a page asking about professional experience. It wanted to know about experience in labs (well...I do put equipment into labs?), experience in production environments (I could have talked for a week about this), experience managing projects (fuckin' hell...why don't they just make me an astronaut now?) and then....oh....no...experience in the medical profession (I've been to the hospital a few times?), experience flying airplanes (I actually wrote out a paragraph equating the skills of ski racing and downhill mountain bike racing to flying an airplane, but I think I will take it out) and, lastly, experience in working with international science communities (I don't even know what this means, so I think I have to say no).

Okay. So far, so good.

The next page will allow me to present other skills that I think will be relevant to being an astronaut. A love of ice cream? A uniform fetish? I don't know what to put here. But I'll think of something.

So, on to the next page.

Oh. God. "Present your experience and expertise in the following:" and the list includes:
robotics (okay...I can BS something for this), astronomy (ummm...I know the big dipper), space exploration (what, is this open to past astronauts?), geology (hey! A degree in geology is good for something!), remote sensing (???), microgravity sciences (spellcheck doesn't even recognize this), meteorology, spacecraft design (what the fuck? Am I going to build the thing before flying in it?), orbital mechanics (once again...I'm a mechanical engineer...what does this mean?), thermodynamics (score!), materials science (score!) in a microgravity environment (wha? Is it different? Shit), applications of advanced industrial materials (okay...), payloads (okay. design it AND load the thing?), satellite communications (okay...there's just too many of these things to comment on), rocketry and propulsion, effects of high altitude, physiology or life sciences, biology (I hope grade 11 counts), space physics, planetary and earth sciences, aeronomy (seriously...what the fuck is that?), geodesy (once again...?), oceonography, aerodynamics (score!), navigation (okay...I can see the relevance of this) and avionics. They want a paragraph for each of these. So, basically, they want Jesus of science to come work for them. What the hell? This is embarrassing. Why wasn't there a disclaimer? If you are not Jesus of science, do not bother applying as you will just embarrass yourself.

And it doesn't stop there. Good lord no, it gets worse. The next page is certifications. Let's see:
First aid and CPR, lifeguarding, scuba diving, military scuba diving (I guess this is different? Maybe at the military courses they say "Now, here's what you really do"), commercial scuba diving, technical scuba diving (seriously, 4 different sections for scuba diving), amateur radio operator (okay...let's get some nerds on board!), parachuting, zero-g experience, high-g tolerance experience, pilot license, recreational pilot license, commercial pilot license (I get it...flying an airplane helps. So does scuba diving apparently), military pilot - transport aircraft (oh, not done with the airplanes yet), military pilot -fighter aircraft (fuck off with the airplanes!), test pilot (FUCK! Again?) and, finally, flight test engineer. Once again, a paragraph for all of these. I have none of these. Not a single one. I'm fucked.

And, finally, the last page, add your resume...well...I guess I can do that. They'll post it in the bathroom and laugh at me while they take their giant astronaut dumps.

Part of me just wants to fill this out and write what I really think. Part of me is hoping/thinking/praying that if I fill it out correctly they'll say "Fuck...this guy is a real loser...but he has heart! Let's send him up!"

Crackheads and Broken Fingers

It's weird. I had definite thoughts this morning that it had been a while since I required a hospital visit due to a bicycle injury. I don't let things like that freak me out though, so off we went.

I sold Matt my old bike a month or two back and he seems to be enjoying it. He definitely wants to expand his horizons as far as bike trails are concerned and is riding things a lot more aggressively...which may sound counter-intuitive but aggressive riding = confidence = riding shit without killing yourself.

So I thought today would be a good day to pop his shuttle cherry. I had a nice trail on Seymour picked out (one of my favourites, actually, and one of the only things I like to ride on Seymour) and off we went. Me, Matt and Marty. We got about 30 seconds into the trail, no exaggeration, and Matt rode head on into a tree. I don't even know how he did it. I think he just panicked a bit on a wooden section and steered it right into a tree. I got a really bad feeling about things. His brake lever was twisted in a strange way and I was really surprised that we were able to bend it back (reasonably) straight. He seemed okay so off we went. Nobody did anything all that stupid for a while and we were having a good ride.

I will admit that the trail had some gnarly sections on it. We were doing okay though. I'd stop above them, point it out, tell them what to expect and generally leave it up to them to make a decision on whether to ride it or not. We got down a bit lower and reached a section that was quite loose. As I rolled into it I said "This is pretty gnarly up here. I'd think about it before you ride it."

Sure enough, I dropped in and it was pretty loose and took a bit of finessing to make it down in one piece. I got off my bike and yelled up to them that they should probably walk it. Marty smacked his nuts off his stem even before he got to the section so he hobbled around for a minute and then decided to walk it. I didn't think there'd be a question that Matt would walk it, but there he went...he seemed to be doing okay and then I saw him heading over the bars.

It was a pretty rocky section but I thought he would be okay. He was yelling as soon as he stopped but I thought it was the good kind of yelling. You know, "I'm okay, I'm okay!" But then he kept yelling and we ran up to see what was up. He kept saying "I think I broke my finger I think I broke my finger I think I broke my finger." I didn't take him all that seriously but then when he suggested we should take his glove off to make sure a bone wasn't sticking out I figured there might be more to it.

So he slowly pulled his glove off and...good lord...it was gruesome. Nothing poking out but it had a really unnatural kink to it. I'm alright dealing with injuries, I just don't really like thinking about it. I suggested we somehow bind it to his other finger and work from there. We had no tape, no knife, no nothing. We decided that we'd splint his good finger and then wrap the bad finger to his good one. This was an okay plan until I was about to touch his finger. He thought twice about it and actually looked like he might get violent if we tried to touch it. We decided to sling his arm up to his chest so that at least his hand wasn't moving around. Then Marty walked him out with his bike and I took on the job of getting mine and Matt's bike out of the trail. This didn't seem to be all that difficult.

We were at least a half hour hike into this trail. At least. So, I ended up riding my bike 15-20 seconds down the trail, running back up and then leap-frogging my bike with Matt's. I hate hate hate riding other peoples bikes but since his was mine only a few months ago, it seemed like it wouldn't be too difficult. Holy crap. By the time we got to the bottom I was ready to collapse. I didn't really think it would be all that difficult but I guess looking back it was the equivalent of a quick 10 minute rip down a trail, followed by running back to the top of it and riding right back down it again for 10 minutes. It was pretty steep so I was absolutely bagged by the time I got to the bottom. Matt made it out without too much difficulty and we had a quick little 10 minute ride out on a gravel hiking path to the car.

I had a few ideas for what we would do with the bikes but they all seemed to be coming up empty. We decided to ditch the bikes at Matt's boss' place down the street. Then we were going to go to the hospital, drop him off, drive over, get my car, pick up the bikes, go back to the hospital...and on and on.

Well, we took him to the hospital and holy shit was it ever bizarre. As we rolled in they were dealing with a couple that had been in a car accident. We saw their jeep later on (about 10 feet up an embankment leading onto the 2nd Narrow) in the evening and it was all fucked up. Apparently they were both wasted and we could overhear the nurses asking the firemen and paramedics how far they'd been thrown from the vehicle. Yikes.

There was also a 10-year-old kid with blood streaming from the top of his head. He was crying a bit, then he stopped, asked his mom why there were so many police officers there, and then started crying again.

Oh, and then there was the squeegee kid lookin' dude around the corner who had handcuffs on that he was gnawing on them(I didn't actually see the gnawing, but that's what they told me) telling people not to worry because they were his own handcuffs. He was sitting there rather peacefully an hour of so later without them on, so I tend to believe him.

So, we got Matt in there and then ran and got the car. When we got back to the hospital they had him in a different waiting room and he'd befriended one of the paramedics that had been treating the couple in the car accident. Apparently one of them had started freaking out and had somehow pulled his IV out and jabbed it into her arm or hand or something. She said it was worse 6 months ago when a junkie on the downtown east side had pulled on out and stabbed her in the shoulder with it. Nice.

So, Matt was telling us to leave him there and he could take a cab home. We didn't think that was a great idea so we told him we'd run, grab some food, chill out for a bit and bring him back something to eat. Sliced brisket sandwich from Memphis Blues...oh man. I'm still feeling it. We grabbed Matt a pulled pork and got back just as the doctor came over to treat him. Incidentally, I've never seen somebody eat a pulled pork sandwich so quickly.

Honestly....that finger....it was pretty funny as when we had it tied to his body the finger poked off at a crazy angle from his hand so it looked like he was flashing a pretty bad-ass "Westside" hand sign. That's how fucked up it was. So, the doctor had frozen it up pretty good before we got there, just kinda marched over and started pulling quite violently on his finger. I couldn't watch. He was telling us that we could have, maybe should have tried to do this while we were out on the trail. We explained that Matt probably would have punched us each in the face if we'd tried to do that on the trail. So, he pulled it back straight, wrapped it to the other finger and then put this fiberglass thing on it, wrapped it and we were good to go. He decided to take another batch of X-rays.

Oh man...those X-rays....the before was gruesome. The bone was completely broken in two and the angle that finger was sticking off at...good lord. The after X-ray was impressive though. The finger was completely straight, just cracked in two. He suggested it might be alright just like that but figured a hand surgeon should take a look at it to make sure. They gave him some Morphine pills and we were off...to drive back over to Seymour to pick up the bikes.

I must say though, all in all, it was a pretty good experience. It was 3 hours at the hospital from check-in to check-out, which doesn't seem all that bad to me. And then, being at the hospital it was pretty nice to look around and think "Man...these people are fucked up. I'm glad we're only dealing with a broken finger." Ladder accidents. Gruesome car accidents. All kinds of shit.

And...I'm really glad that Adrienne (Matt's wife) seemed to take it all in stride as well. I was worried that we'd not only have to worry about the hospital and picking up the bikes and all that, but then we'd have to throw a hysterical wife into the mix, demanding an immediate pick-up to come out to the hospital. Calm and rational is always nice to deal with.

So, I'm definitely throwing some tape and tylenol into my backpack. Maybe some popsicle sticks too. And I've learned a bit of a lesson about riding alone. I mean, we probably would have been in trouble if there had been two of us. Anybody facing that alone would have problems. Three made it manageable.

I'll post the X-rays if I get a copy.

I think we've lost...Plus fishing photos!

I was over at a friends place last night and I met this dude that is some kind of rep for Universal Music. He was a nice guy and I enjoyed talking to him. However, his views and mine on music, labels and the new Copyright bill didn't really jive.

I can't remember exactly what we talked about but at one point he said something to me along the lines of "Only 2% of the acts on our label make money, the other 98% don't. In essence, 2% of the acts are subsidizing the other 98%." His point with this was twofold:

1) Look at how great we are by supporting all these bands that don't make us money.

2) Look at all these bands that don't make money, how can you take food from their mouths?

First up, I call total fucking bullshit on this stat. I was thinking about it today and I remembered this Steve Albini article from a few years back. Read it (if you have any interest in how labels handle bands).

So, maybe it is fair to say "98% of the bands on our label don't get a fucking cent from us" but I don't think it's fair to say these bands aren't making money for the label. And that, my friends, is the entire point. The OLD system was great for the major labels. The bands had nowhere else to go. They had to take what they could get from the majors or nobody would ever hear their music. The NEW system is great for the consumer. And I'm not even talking about free music. I'm talking about access to shit that we never, ever, ever could have accessed before. Freedom for bands to do things on their own or stick with a smaller label. Bands made and found through word of mouth and yes, through file sharing, that would never have stood a chance before. This system will never, ever disappear. These new laws will just create martyrs out of a few unlucky bastards that happen to get caught.

So, on to the fishing. This past week was the annual Ucluelet fishing trip. I was hoping the weather was going to be better, but at least it didn't rain. Ucluelet is a pretty interesting place filled with interesting people.

The first day was salmon fishing in the sound south of Ucluelet. This area is my favourite place to visit in the area. It's always a lot more interesting to have land on either side of you and to watch eagles flying around. Fishing for salmon is also a lot more interesting.

Things started out really slow. We didn't get a bite for a while. I caught the first fish, but it was just a little rock fish. The guides are always baffled by my dad when he wants to keep them. I'm not sure what the hell he does with them, but he likes them.

Eventually we caught some salmon. Poor Mike (my brother-in-law) had the first salmon on but he lost it. You can tell that my dad has to use all his self restraint to prevent himself from yelling at Mike when he loses a fish. Soon after that, my brother and Dad both hauled in a Spring each. One was 18, the other was 19 pounds. Then I got one on but it broke the leader. I was a bit bummed about that.

The next day we headed out to the open ocean for some halibut fishing. As I mentioned, this isn't usually as exciting as fishing for Salmon. There's a lot less to look at and when you do finally snag a halibut it's about as exciting as reeling in an old boot. The other problem with the halibut is the whole "open ocean" thing. Some people tend to get seasick.

I've only ever caught two Halibut in my life. The first one was a couple of years ago and I think it was about 35 pounds. And then, this guy...

Holy crap! 52 pounds of halibut is tough to reel in. It took a lot of my energy to get it to the boat. I have no idea how the guide got it into the boat. Here's another shot from the wharf.

The other cool thing about the day was the whales. We usually see a couple of whales, but I think we saw at least 30-40 whales over the course of the day. Although this picture doesn't really come across as terribly exciting, it is pretty cool just to be able to see an animal that large.

On the way back in, Mike pointed one out to us and we were looking over towards it. All of a sudden it rocketed out of the ocean. It's head must have been at least 15 feet in the air. The only thing still in the water was it's tail. It was crazy. It looked like this Ted Leo cover. No joke.

The next day, we slept in and walked around Ucluelet. Shit is going crazy development-wise. There's lots being cleared and houses being built all over the place. It's nice there, but I'm not sure what you'd do with all your spare time.

The History of the Internet

I love Vanity Fair magazine. I love it. I don't actually read the magazine, but the website has most of the important stories and it's well worth checking out every month.

Especially interesting is this nice little History of the Internet that they've put together. It starts out a little bit slow, highlighting the technical developments in the 50's and 60's that lead to it's creation. But once it gets into the history of start-ups, information dissemination, Monica Lewinsky, etc. it's both informative and hilarious. It's difficult to remember how things were back then. This is a good reminder.

The most important bit of info from that article:

The information is a force that will bring power to everyday people and it cannot be stopped.

So...Why the fuck is the Conservative government trying to create a copyright police state with this new legislation? Why is this story in the Technology section? Honestly, this will seriously fuck shit up. Think about these points:

1) File sharing has created a legitimate form of distribution for independent music. It has created markets for small, obscure bands. Yes, it has busted the monopoly of major label music. It has taken away their ability to sell millions of shitty albums just because that is all that is available. This is not a bad thing. File sharing takes power away from music labels and gives it to everybody else.

2) This law may make it illegal for you to rip CD's that you own onto your iPod or Computer. The music industry said this was okay a few years ago (before iTunes) but now it isn't. Fuck that.

3) This law will allow hardware manufacturers to dictate how their product is used. Want to buy an iPhone in the US and use it in Canada? Nope. Not allowed to break their software locks. Want to use your XBox for something other than video games? Nope. Not allowed to break their software locks.

4) This law will not allow you to download a TV show that you may have missed that week. I mean, you might watch it every other week and you couldn't get back in time and being able to catch up on the Internet might actually ENCOURAGE interest in said show. But fuck you, you can't do it.

5) Not really attached to this law, but the government is working in tandem to make this happen...They actually want border guards to be able to look through files on your laptop and ipod and if they determine that you have pirated content they will be able to fine you and take your ipod or laptop away. I mean, who the fuck knows how they'll decide what is and isn't pirated...they just will and you'll be fucked.

This is a terrible, terrible law. I can't even begin to explain how angry it makes me. This deserves a note to your Member of Parliament. This deserves a note to the douchebag trying to stuff this shitty law down our throats. This deserves telling Stephen Harper to go to hell. Do it.

Oh. To end this off on a positive note, I never imagined I would ever live to embrace Canadian Bureaucracy. Honestly though, going through the motions of Incorporation and all that was very easy. I was shocked to be able to phone the Government up and get relevant answers without too much difficulty. We take it for granted that you fill out a simple form, give somebody $100 and you have a passport in a month or so. Ya, you might have to wait in line a bit, but that's dieing down. I'm thinking about obtaining a Hungarina Passport...holy shit. It doesn't seem like the difficulty will be in proving my eligibility, the difficulty will be the bureaucracy. Tonnes of money. Tonnes of hassles. 8-10 months waiting time. Bizarre.