This Remembrance Day I watched the HBO documentary The Cold Blue, about the what it was like to fly B-17 bomber missions across the English Channel during World War II. It uses real colourized footage throughout with commentary from actual…
Category: Personal
About me.
One is all you get
My uncle Guenter died recently; my dad’s only sibling. He’s been in Guatemala for probably the last 30 years and I haven’t seen him once in all that time. While I only saw him occasionally back in my teens and…
Why community matters
The other day I was bemoaning the erosion of community in our everyday lives and placing the blame squarely on automation. Automation and the never-ending race to achieve greater efficiency seeks to remove people from as many equations as possible.…
Dark humour at the end of the world
My mother died of kidney cancer in February of this year. I was there, and boy I can tell you there was no shortage of visitors to her room in her last weeks, which was a testament to the number…
What is a real friend?
It’s taken me a long time to understand this, but I think I finally do. I used to think that a real friend is someone you simply get along with. I used to think that a real friend is someone…
Eulogy for Ivan Szlapetis
It’s June 9th, and as I write this I sit in a spot on a bluff overlooking the Red Deer river in Drumheller, Alberta, about 150km northeast of Calgary. There’s a suspension footbridge down below that you have to cross…
Tell me again how animals don’t feel empathy?
Monkey in India resuscitates friend after electrocution Suffer through the advertisement to see some incredible video footage. How any thinking person can believe that animals don’t experience feelings is beyond me. For something more on this topic see my previous…
Dear Telus
Dear Telus, Next year, when you drop off the phone book, please just circle around behind my house and deposit it into the handy blue recycling bin located there. Or, if you truly want to be a friend to the…
I don’t want. I want out.
I don’t want what this society has to offer. I don’t want money. I don’t want prestige. I don’t want a fancy car, nice clothes, or a big beautiful house. I don’t want any of it. As far as I’m…
More proof Facebook is bad news
What more information do we need to convince us to get the hell out of dodge? Why are you trading your privacy for the privilege of playing Farmville? Don’t worry, your real friends will call you. The implications of Facebook’s…