It always seems strange to me when you first get to know someone new. There is no easy way to break through that threshold and create a mutual level of respect and comfort automatically. It’s a slow process of discovery which can only happen if both parties are equally aggressive in wanting to discover that new person. That comfort level is impossible to create with only one person writing an email to someone, or giving a monologue while standing in an elevator together. Without some kind of re...
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Decision Fatigue
> Decision fatigue is real talk when it comes to the web. — Joshua Blankenship, Some Thoughts on Web Content Strategy [http://joshuablankenship.com/blog/2012/09/12/some-thoughts-on-web-content-strategy/] ] Through my life, I have been fairly good at making choices. I don’t spend a lot of time doing price comparisons, looking up reviews of products, sorting out what to order off a menu, and so forth. I tend to enter an environment either knowing roughly or exactly what I am wanting, or it simp...
New Year, New Approach
New Year’s Eve is meant to be a time to connect with friends and family. Not so for me. I have been at home cleaning up my office, doing dishes, and settling down on my couch to catch up on some reading that has been collecting. Reading about what people are up to on Facebook/Twitter, and starting to see some of the drunken shenanigans on Instagram makes me wish I was out enjoying myself like in years past. But not entirely. You always read about how you have to be happy with yourself before yo...
Renewal
> Every now and then, I feel the need to expand on my level of knowledge or experiences to create a change in myself, whether major or minor. The easiest way for me to do this is by reading an article, blog, or book that I normally wouldn’t find myself reading, but I also enjoy going somewhere that I haven’t been yet. When I do this, I set off a mind bomb and become more aware of myself and my surroundings. Me, Mind Bombs: The Need for Self-Renewal As the year draws to a close, I am having...
Skyfall- A Play with Shadows
After watching the latest James Bond film, Skyfall, I tapped a few quick notes: shadows, silhouettes, light, Tennyson....
33 - Unknowables
> It seems strange to me now to think about how I have to unlearn how I lived in my 20s to really live now. As cool as it would have been turning 33 on 11/11/11, I suppose it will be just as meaningful happening on 11/11/12. I was re-reading through last year’s birthday [https://www.foursides.ca/turn-up-that-fing-bass-32-years-old-today/] post earlier in the week, reflecting on what I would like to write this year. Oddly, I didn’t write on my birthdays before last year, so this is a new tren...
Bad Memories
> But what’s a memory worth if it only breaks your heart? If it doesn’t make you smile or give you butterflies, if it doesn’t give you a reason to think positively, what’s the point of keeping it around. Someone who associates me with the idea of being a mistake doesn’t deserve my time; I was obviously a waste of theirs, so … it only makes sense right? — Jennifer Thomson, Mistakes and Memories [http://thomsonjennifer.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/mistakes-and-memories/] Jennifer has been in a wo...
A Case of Mistaken Identity
> Material from earlier theatre can be brought into a production in the same way as personal material is brought in. Just as the performer refines, distorts, condenses, and selects from his life experiences, so fragments from earlier dramas can be worked into the play at hand. Only since the intrusion of stupid laws and notions regarding originality has this rich vein of creativity been stopped. Shakespeare and Moliere without their plagiarisms would be much poorer playwrights. An art that is in...
Paul Carr's 'We Will Always Have the Flamingo'
> The biggest draw of hotels, though, is the people you meet in them. In the past three years, by virtue of having no fixed abode (and very little shame), I’ve partied with Hollywood actresses and Icelandic reality show stars; I’ve talked my way into toga parties with eight hundred bedsheet-clad female hairdressing students (and then been invited to lecture at their college on “the business of hair”); I’ve been thrown in jail; narrowly escaped being stabbed by Spanish drug dealers and I’ve learn...
A Canadian in Vegas Where Culture Goes to Die
I had a short trip to Las Vegas, which was my first time there and the first time I’ve been in a major US city in the past 7 years. It was a bit jarring for me coming here and I thought it would make an interesting story. 1 Quick warning, as if you didn’t know this was coming: an epic city like Las Vegas deserves an epic post/story to go along with it. Las Vegas: Where Culture Comes to Die and Be Reborn as a Bastard Coming from the hotel industry, there is a concept that...
