I turned 37 two weeks ago. I knew I'd end up at these arbitrary numbers - 25, 30, 35 - and while I could imagine being older, I couldn't imagine being different. One of the hardest things to conceive is the transformation of self. I thought, perhaps, I wouldn't change, that I wouldn't want different things, or feel differently than I did at, say, 27. The shock, now, is that I'm older, and I can write "older" because it really is the weight of the past that makes me who I am.

I mention this because last year I dealt with something quite strange: age discrimination. I can write about it now because it happened nearly a year ago when I was interviewed for a position at an advertising agency in Toronto. It took me awhile to realize what it was that was going on, but it boiled down to people wanting someone like themselves, and that wasn't me. I was, somehow, too old.

They didn't say it outright; I was given a bullshit line about suitability that I knew, immediately, didn't make any sense in the context it was being delivered. But I wasn't used to the euphemisms and excuses that so many people in the world have to deal with because they don't "fit in" to someone's notion of "acceptable." I'm a straight, white male, and that is, in some ways, a privilege.

I had embraced the Internet in 1993 because it seemed like it could drive a revolution, and make for me a fresh start. I always saw myself as a young man exploring a new world. But you can't stop time. I've been online for almost nine years, and I have years of knowledge about how things can work, or why they don't. Sometimes I feel left out because I'm not fresh to the medium and filled with giddy ideas. But I don't want to be young like I was before, and I'm happy to have dumped some of the weight of pretense, much of my famous anger, and many many other things. :: posted 11:30, September 10, 2001

Last year, the CRTC (which regulates broadcasting and telecom in Canada) licensed more that 200 new channels that would be made available through digital compression over both old coax cable and direct broadcast satellite. I've gone through the decision a few times, marveling at the implications. In part, the commission was saying, Present something reasonable, show that you might be able to do it, and you have our permission. Of course, you had to be one of the Canadian cable players: CITY, Global, Alliance... the usual suspects.

Anyone familiar with American cable offerings will see the few remaining niches filled: classic sports, Animal Planet, a Nick at Night clone, MSNBC, and the Biography Channel. But there are a few surprises:

~ Landscape will offer "the ultimate relaxation channel" with what are essentially nature videos with a new age soundtrack. I have already suggested this to Donna as perfect pet-sitting content.

~ PrideVision will be the world's first gay and lesbian broadcasting service. Don't hold your breath for this appearing anytime soon in the USA.

~ Movieola will be showing short films, animation, and digital media as if they were music videos. I don't know if there is anything like this anywhere else.

~ Drive-In Classics will tap CITY TV's seemingly bottomless vault of cheesy flicks.

~ BookTelevision is also from CITY. It will be interesting to see what they can cook up here that goes beyond Bravo Canada's current offerings.

~ WETV The Green Channel actually started out as an IDRC-supported project.

The new channels launch tomorrow. I could never have enough television channels. The problem, I think, is that regardless of how many there are, something is always missing, and that vacuum, of course, is people. Too many of us have given up on real contact. :: posted 16:49, September 6, 2001

"On Thursday, EnviroLink Network, a Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Internet service provider, took offline two Web sites belonging to the animal-rights activist group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty. The action came in response to a letter sent to the ISP earlier in the week by Huntingdon Life Sciences, a British medical research firm. Citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Huntingdon accused the activists of violating its copyright. Although no charges have yet been filed, under the terms of the DMCA, Envirolink was forced to remove the sites to avoid potential legal liability." From Salon.com. :: posted 21:31, September 4, 2001

The weblog and webcam "scenes" (a term I would rather use conditionally, as opposed to communities) were always about social extension in cyberspace. Or, in the words of Sapphireblue, "Just like high school, but without the learning part." So, of course, there is gossip; Internet Gossip, to be exact. :: posted 21:29, September 4, 2001

Wake up, John! Wake up! :: posted 21:21, September 4, 2001

I remember running into Dustin Hoffman on a rainy New York street some years ago; he had only a month earlier played the part of the Lomans' pale and nervous next-door neighbor, Bernard, in a recording session with Lee Cobb of Death of a Salesman. Now as he approached, counting the cracks in the sidewalk, hatless, his wet hair dripping, a worn coat turned up, I prepared to greet him, thinking that with his bad skin, hawkish nose, and adenoidal voice some brave friend really ought to tell him to go into another line of work. As compassionately as possible I asked what he was doing now, and with a rather apologetic sigh he said, after several sniffles, "Well, they want me for a movie." "Oh?" I felt relieved that he was not about to collapse in front of me in a fit of depression. "what's the movie?"

"It's called The Graduate," he said.

"Good part?"

"Well, yeah, I guess it's the lead."

In no time at all this half-drowned puppy would have millions of people at his feet all over the world. And once having ascended to power, so to speak, it became hard even for me to remember him when he was real. Not that he wasn't real, just that he was real plus. And the plus is the mystery of the patina, the glow that power paints on the elected human being.

Arthur Miller, "American Playhouse: On politics and the art of acting," Harper's Magazine, June 2001. :: posted 15:12, August 30, 2001

What is Palm to do? My Palm III has been having problems lately. Three weeks ago I turned it on to find six months of un-synced-due-to-hubris data wiped. My own fault; I never back up enough, and had jammed so many goofy apps on my Palm, with so many custom databases, that I was scared to run Backup Buddy in case my PC hung. It's working now, but flakey, and although I don't know the exact problem, I know enough not to squeeze it, lest it be wiped again. Common sense, I suppose: don't squeeze the Palm.

So, I've been looking for something new, and doing a bit of research, and discovered to my horror that Palm is in trouble; in fact, the whole platform, the Palm OS, is in trouble. Handspring is bleeding money, and the Windows CE-driven Compaq iPaq is the new hot thing. The editor of Pen Computing even said he dumped his Palm for an iPaq. :: posted 23:17, August 27, 2001

Do you think the stereotypes in gansta rap make it a new form of minstrelsy?

There's a certainly much more anger in rap than I've ever evidenced in coon songs. Coon songs seem more willing to placate. In the rap which we find degrading, you can hear the rage, you can hear the anger, you can hear the self-hate very clearly defined, in the absence of the same kind of tyranny that those who lived in the coon-song period faced. Those rappers are caught in a trick bag, because it's a way to make unconscionable sums of money and a way to absent yourself from any sense of moral responsibility. It's all in the name of 'that's he way we are.' Well, is there more to us than being just the way we are? Do we have no responsibility? Do we have no sense of dignity?

Harry Belafonte, quoted in The New York Times Magazine, August 26th, 2001. :: posted 22:19, August 27, 2001

The Philadelphia Airport has rocking chairs. They are sturdy, white, all identical, perhaps purchased at Walmart, and placed usually three together between plastic plants, or facing a window. Their slogan: "Think of us as a shopping mall with a landing strip." But they can't beat Washington Reagan nee National, with its Smithsonian Store and Sushi Bar.

I was in the air for three hours over Baltimore. There were thunder storms over Washington Thursday night, and the one hour flight went on and on. Stupidly I hadn't had dinner in Philly, thinking I'd be on the ground in Washington before 8. Something like 11, instead.

The hotel driver, Charles, waited for me, and we stopped at a Hardee's on the way to Fredericksburg so I cou8ld gobble my first roast beef in months. I left Ottawa at 3 pm, and arrived at my destination at 11 pm. :: posted 2:55, August 26, 2001

Angry: the article in the weekend Ottawa Citizen about police surveillance of the protest movement. I assume there are no police dossiers concerning the Fraser Institute or international media bully Conrad Black. I wonder if they realize what effect this is going to have on so many of us that had been standing on the sidelines. :: posted 16:47, August 20, 2001

Nice piece at Salon about Love and Rockets. I always found it a hard book to follow, because I read Music for Mechanics in one sitting on the floor of CKDU during a funding drive party. You can't tell the players without a scorecard. I didn't jump in with both feet again until the early 90s, then it disappeared, and now its back. Maggie and Hopey are in their 40s now, and I'll have to check it out. :: posted 16:38, August 20, 2001

Back from Toronto. Two days of project management seminar and one and half days of vacation. Not sure if two days off can really be called a vacation. The other-worldly weather, humid and hot, reminded me of a science fiction story I read as a kid: it never stops raining on Venus, and these lizard people kill you. It's the sound of it that drives everybody batty. Sweat drips onto my glasses, onto the inside.

I've lost my copy of Black & White. It's somewhere obvious. I feel I should be playing it, especially now that the villagers can play soccer and the beast will dance to the Twins.

I had to have a treat this afternoon and sat in the window of the Second Cup staring at a dark pregnant sky. When the rain came, it seemed to all come at once, with great sheets of it sending people scurrying. And somehow the sun shone through it. Very much like a movie. :: posted 23:57, August 13, 2001

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