Random Thoughts ....

I often have random thoughts about things and I recently thought about time.

Specifically since I have become a parent and noticed a drastic reduction in alone time. This seems obvious, but in wake of both men and women entering in the workforce over the last 40 years or so, there seems to be a rise in complaints about the lack of time to either get things done and/or to have time to yourself or with someone else.

Time garners some of the truest cliches of all. If something is important we make the time for example. Well, be that as it may, in reality between, school, work, and parenting, it is hard to find time to eat in some cases.

My mother didn't work, and raised three boys while my dad worked feverishly. My older brother isn't working and is home with his son while his wife works because that makes the most sense for their individual situation. Perhaps the cluttered work schedules people have is at least partially correlated to the drop in income that the middle and lower classes have been seeing over the years, which necessitates more time for work, but that is another topic onto itself.

I guess my point is that if we want more time to be alone, with others, work, play, and raise children, something has to give. I say it doesn't take a village to raise a child. It takes the village time to raise a child while doing other things.

Green Zone Blu-Ray Disc Review

A few movies have come and gone about the Middle East since 9/11 like The Kingdom, Syriana, and Body of Lies.

Green Zone is based on the novel Imperial Life In The Emerald City. Green Zone refers to the safe area in Baghdad where American armed forces and ruthless corporations set up shop to bring about American democracy after the invasion. The peace, calm, and access to 'American style living' in the Green Zone is a juxtaposition to the utter chaos and bedlam just outside of the Green Zone which many Iraqis and soldiers were dealing with on a daily basis in the time the movie takes place and still do to varying extents today.

Matt Damon plays a soldier tasked with finding weapons of mass destruction after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but keeps coming up empty based on faulty intelligence. Hmmm, sound familiar?

Damon's character then goes on a quest to discover the truth about the faulty intelligence and exposing who is responsible for perpetrating a lie about one of the key motivations for the invasion of Iraq.

One critic called Green Zone thrilling and gripping and while it had great moments, I wasn't glued to my seat as you pretty much know what is coming and the movie becomes a chase movie in the second and third acts.

PICTURE:

Excellent transfer. Some scenes at night seemed to be deliberately grainy which didn't get on my nerves but might for others. Green Zone was directed by Paul Greengrass who directed Damon in The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum and Greengrass again opted for a handheld approach to many of his shot choices which makes for some shaky camera work at times.

SOUND:

A 5.1 DTS Master Audio track has great levels between dialogue, gunshots, and explosions. As opposed to the DTS Master Audio track for Public Enemies, where the dialogue was low and the gunfire quite high. There is a scene where Damon goes to a prison where people of interest are being held and it is eerie when you hear prisoners moaning or complaining in the surround channels.

Overall, it was great movie, but I didn't feel a shiver or gripped to the edge of my seat.

PICTURE: 4.5 out of 5

SOUND: 5 out of 5

STORY: 3.5 out of 5

Attention Bev Oda ...

It's not that its not not alright to have added that extra not into that funding document ....

Which is pretty much how the Conservative's are dancing around this issue.

And Stephen Harper, seriously, you dismiss Helena Guergis because of unproven criminal allegations and don't even welcome her back after she is cleared by the RCMP, while Bev Oda clearly forged a document and then lied about it and you don't even give her a slap on the wrist?

Dude, you would be a horrible school principal.

Got Democracy?

Now that Egypt is in revolution hangover mode, we should take stalk of the disconnect between forcing democracy on one country, Iraq, and tolerating autocratic dictators like Mubarak.

The disconnect is obvious, government foreign policy and mass media tend to focus on what they deem to be important. So while the general public in the West might be praising the people's uprising in Egypt, did Western governments try to push democratic reforms in Egypt, or the media focus on stories about Mubarak's 31 year stranglehold on government before protests broke out?

Mubarak didn't use chemical weapons against his own people like Saddam Hussein did, which made Hussein an easy target after 9/11 (Got WMD's?), but Mubarak's tyranny was more subtle in having monopolies and corruption in the roost he occupied. Hussein became such an easy scapegoat for forcing democracy on Iraq, even though there was not an Iraqi involved in the 9/11 attacks. In fact, invading Saudi Arabia would have made more sense based on the countries of birth of those directly involved in the 9/11 attacks.

I digress though, my point is that we should be fed up with what governments and mainstream media want to show us about the Middle East as we don't often get the real or full story about what is happening behind the scenes is these 'quiet' dictatorships that are tolerated by Western powers that be.

I have an acquaintance who lived in Libya for a time and he remarked that Gadhafi is good to his people. Well, apparently not good enough when you consider that inflation of food prices in many Middle Eastern countries, is more then double of what it is in North America. Corruption and nepotism seem to be key bones of contention when it comes to the protests on going in the Middle East, but inflation was and is the silent revolutionary trigger that can set off a powder keg. China, you better watch out!

It will be interesting to see what will emerge out of the ashes of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, though it will be years before any significant changes come about. Meanwhile, Western governments who often rely on 'quiet' dictatorships because they have something of value economically that we want, or don't overtly threaten us, or are propagandized as a threat to us, are scrambling to rewrite foreign policy as we speak.

And Glenn Beck, protests a communist plot in Egypt? Seriously, Mubarak was a communist by virtue of the fact that he held power for so many decades. Perhaps we should let Mubarak rule the US for 31 years and see what happens.

Ode to a Wisdom Tooth

You would think that with all the excess wisdom teeth that have been hacked and pulled out of peoples gums over the last fifty plus years that we would have some economic benefit from all those extra molars!

Once upon a time our wisdom teeth were back up teeth so we had a replacement set pre modern dentistry. I'm not bitter at all because I had one of my bottom wisdom teeth hacked out and was in as much pain after the butchery as when the wisdom tooth decided to erupt.

So long as human beings still have teeth, dentists will make money and if I have to go back to school full time, dentistry is something I would seriously consider studying!

My Time at 92 Citi FM

I would like to start off by saying that I really enjoyed my time at 92 Citi FM in the Creative Department under the tutelage of Creative Director George McRobb.

My start was somewhat inauspicious because after my first day my bottom left wisdom tooth literally erupted like a volcano, causing me to miss a few days. Fortunately George was more then understanding about this (more to come on the wisdom tooth front when I get it pulled this Thursday).

George indicated he had a bad experience with a student from ABC Broadcasting and one of my Ad instructors, who knows George indicated that he would quote "eat me alive and then spit me out".

I wasn't intimidated though! I was confident in my abilities to write copy and George did his best to punt work my way from a variety of clients from dry cleaners and promoting radio advertising, to home renovations and funerals.

Overall, I got positive feedback on my ability to craft something that was good to great right off the hop. George was excellent about giving feedback in a no nonsense manner and made suggestions that were really helpful at taking what was a good to great idea, and honing it further. Often I found myself thinking, I should have thought of that! But I did get better at coming up with great copy as the placement proceeded thanks to the initial feedback I received.

A few of the tips about writing creative for radio I received included knowing your client and being a people person. I didn't deal with clients specifically, but I could over hear the discussions about different clients and their individual needs and the inevitable foibles that come with dealing with clients who are human beings like everyone else.

Another important tip I received is that rules are made to be broken once you know them. Such as the rule of threes that I initially thought applied to radio in a big way which George indicated can and should be broken as needed, and to combine ideas and mandatories together to save time and make a message as smooth a read as possible.

I also had some of my spots that I wrote and George edited produced and I have a selection of written copy that I can use for my portfolio.

The Foot Print On The Earth

Wikileaks be damned! When climate gate happened it seems that opinions on human causes of climate changed cooled off.

Lions, tigers, and bears are on the decline all around the world.

Pollution, habitat destruction, and poaching are all whittling away the numbers of said species to the point that I would have to say within the next 50 years or so they will be extinct in the wild, only to be seen at circuses and petting zoos.

Let's face it, most of the resources we consume are going to run out at some point. It's just a matter of time.

Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse, to paraphrase, described resource consumption as two horses racing; one is the move to sustainable development and alternative energy sources, and the other is stay the course, and it is just a matter of which horse finishes first.

What amazes me is the gong show between politics, business and industry, when it comes to talking about climate change, pollution, energy policy, etc.

I will admit to being oblivious to what is happening around me occasionally. However, we can't simply shrug our shoulders when we reach a critical tipping point and say how we're we supposed to know?