Gore in Bali, Winter in Canada

Guys, this is seriously mandatory knowledge. Please go here and watch this short speech by Gore upon the topic of the ice caps and the price of burying your head in the sand. This stuff isn't just the next generations problem!

You can read more about it here (and here) and perhaps take a dark kind of joy in seeing Gore take his own country to task while gently reminding delegates from the rest of the world that there isn't much time left in office for that guy and that they should plan under the assumption that the next president will be more on board with dealing with climate change. Canada didn't go unscathed either, nor should it when you look at Harper's awful approach.
Meanwhile, I appreciate that a lot of Canadians are looking at how our winter has been thus far and the way it's shaping up for the rest of the season...then figuring this means things are getting better or that the weather even constitutes a kind of rebuttal to the issue. But just because you see this out the window, it doesn't mean that climate change is over or that "it's just cyclical". As always, if the big news stories leave you feeling overwhelmed and impotent - you can find all sorts of sites with ways for the individual to do their part and even save money along the way (even make money). If you want you know why you should bother, this article is a decent stepping stone towards the answer.

Addendum: Check out this video with Gore outlining 15 ways for the individual to help out and also display the great sense of humor I suspect he had surgically implanted about three years ago.

The Aggregate Rewards of Notebooking

Just a moment I thought I'd share.

In preparation for meeting with folk to discuss future film collaboration in Canada, as well as to help myself decide which script to develop next, I've been spending time at the local library organizing my ideas into index card length summaries - title, genre, length, amount of work already done, novel points of interest...plus the hardest part, a one or two sentence synopsis.

While plunging through my last notebook I reached a blank page and figured I was done. Flipping the page out of habit, I came across several more pages filled with notes. "Bleurgh" I sighed at the thought of having more stuff to summarize. Then it occurred to me that there are certainly worse problems for a writer then having too many neat ideas. Sheesh!

But yeah, hurrah for notebooks. With eighteen months of notes to go through, I certainly won't feel at a loss for concepts to pitch!

Shameless Pilfering

Good old Stephen Fry is at it again, this time with a game show where the points don't matter but you do win said points for not only giving correct answers but also being interesting. It's a great premise and the first episode is a great watch, partially because his old comedy partner Huge Laurie (who most folk enjoy in House these days) is one of the players. You could do a lot worse than to give this a watch.

(I shamelessly pilfered this from that scientifically proven reprobate...Marc)

The realm of dystopian fiction takes another step into reality

Man, the terrible treatment of a friendly street artist is bad enough - but finding out that Britain is continuing to amass the world's largest collection of DNA through law enforcement makes me feel all the better about leaving London.

Great in life, great in Futurama

Gore on China and the US, while at the fourth IPCC climate change assessment.

"Both countries should stop using the others' behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment."

Oh the fallacy of all skyscrapers being phallacies

I'm a goddamn 195 pound blogging machine today!

This, this is a thing to take pride in.

A friend and former coworker from my Network Rail job in London has recently moved on to a position in the rather interesting London Shard Project. It aims to not only be another distinctive part of the London skyline, a la the Gherkin, but to create "a vertical city". I find this highly amusing as such a concept has shown up frequently in the bleak, long-running, British sci-fi comic Judge Dredd. We can only hope that the future residents of this impressive piece of architecture do not succumb to Block Mania. Seriously though, it is a fascinating project - I recommend at least checking out the slick animated building guide and the image gallery.

A Picture Tells a Thousand Canterbury Tales

I was cleaning out my camera yesterday and it turns out that I still have a few pictures from England to share. Not long before I left I decided to head out to see my family in Broadstairs one last time and during that visit my Aunt and I went to the Canterbury markets.Me talking a picture of an old library, fancy that.
I considered checking out Canterbury's famous cathedral (This is the gateway).
But, as George Carlin has informed us with great wit, GOD NEEDS MONEY. At fifteen quid for entry I decided that I'd stand by my desire not to give money to corrupt institutions with belief systems that I strongly disagree with - though I did sneak the following picture by utilizing my camera's zoom function.
I then set off back into the market and pursued the not so new pagan worship practice of shopping. True story.

His other medallion is maybe an illustration of Calvin peeing on Intelligent Design?

Holy crap do I like today's stencil by Posterchild - particularly what it has hanging around it's neck! If anybody is wondering what they want to get me for Christmas then something like that would be a very safe investment in my glee fund.

Yagga Bagga

Yagga Bagga Hey

Yagga Bagga whey

Chomp Chomp Chomp Stairwell wood Michael Ondaatje is what you want to be and maybe I'm high from being tired and maybe I'm on the internet maybe.

American Elf opened up it's archives and maybe you'd like that. Let's not commit to any certainty okay and maybe this kind of an entry makes me a fourteen year old but the world needs those crazy kids goddamn it otherwise how would we all

eat

them for dinner.

Addendum: This is the thing

the thing that we are going to do.

Solar panels will be bought and affixed to a building that is older than pepsi-cola and the British Empire combined. The house will be lived in by good mannered folk who sometimes make ill informed decisions while raising their four bright, identical children. Boys so blond and blue eyed that even Hitler wouldn't complain but somehow the parents are black and we're not talking adoption or stem cells or nothing. It's just the way it is.

These people will give us money for living in the house and we will use this to pay off the solar panels first. This is being an adult. Then the money will pour in. I shall use it to move to Toronto without having to get an office job in Ottawa for a few weeks. You will use it to pay for lessons you have always wanted. In the end, I'll be somewhere different and you'll be someone different.

Then everybody claps and we win.

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