Oh Well Look Who's Alive

Hi, everyone! Who's really good at blogging? THE ANSWER IS ME I AM SO GOOD AT BLOGGING.

Yes, it has been a while, you might have noticed. Last I'd posted, back in -- February? Jesus Christ -- back in February, I had expressed my intentions to write more often and in retrospect that was tremendously funny. Oh, I ended up writing more often, all right; my assignment load when printed could probably be expressed in tons, especially given how many assignments in that last stretch were A) twenty pages in length, B) worth 40% or more of the term, or C) both. Ah, graduate school.

So it was mostly radio silence from me around here; we'll call it an extended March Break! I didn't get a March Break in real life, so I'll retroactively apply it here. That it extended to encompass April is unfortunate and pretty awful, but in my defence shut up I was busy raarh grr etcetera. (Defence attempts like these exemplify why people should stop trying to get me to go to law school.)

Yes, times were rough; assignments ran high and frequently, pretty much everyone I know in London packed up to leave on co-op terms, and I turned twenty-five which is probably about halfway to death for me. But it isn't all bad news for creative content around here! I diligently continued my column for Uptown Magazine during these trying times, and now that I'm back in Winnipeg for a bit I was able to go and track down paper copies of my published work because I am a relentless egotist. The columns are also in helpful electronic format, which makes them easier to share -- so let's have a look and see if I can't find some content for you guys to read!



Uptown Magazine! Beware of imitators!

It seems like so long ago, now, but I wrote this column shortly after the Obama visit to Canada as a reaction piece to express how incredibly sick I was of hearing about the Obama visit to Canada.

It was all that the news media talked about for the week prior, it was pretty much all they talked about for the week after, and for the very short time that he was actually in Canada it wasn't even worth going near a radio or television. I like him as much as the next Canadian (and we Canadians love the crap out of the guy) but I get it, he came to Canada, stop talking about it.

To give you some perspective, the Obama visit got more coverage proportionally on Canadian television for that week or two than swine flu and the economy combined are getting right now. And we're all already sick of hearing about swine flu as it is! You can understand my frustration.

And speaking of getting sick and fed up:



Uptown Magazine! The Great Valley Adventure! My column from this issue can be read here, assuming it does not explode and kill you first.

You may think to yourself "how hard it is to produce a product that will not murder people outright?", but that is because you are not a major business. Major businesses can't help it! It just naturally comes with the territory that someone will have an allergic reaction, or use the product in an unsafe manner, or... fall ill and die for otherwise unexplained reasons, or get choked to death by majestically unsafe components. Or whatever. It's always something! Quite literally, always something; there's no telling what the next consumer good will be that abruptly keeps consumers from observing their next birthday.

And, well... speaking of birthdays...



Uptown Magazine! Fight the powers that be!

The thrust of this column is that I am old and busted and all washed up, because I am old and busted and all washed up. Twenty-five? Seriously? God, that's pretty much it for me. Surely if I was going to accomplish something it would have shown up by now; now it's too late, my best years are all behind me, and it's just a steady decline of getting older and dumber and fatter from here until the slow crawl of decay sends me to my grave. Happy Birthday, me!

There's another column in this week's Uptown that'll be online pretty much any second now, I think, so I'll keep you guys posted. And there are Stanley Cup Playoffs to talk about! God, I love the Stanley Cup Playoffs. I've done predictions in the past, and they've never been right, but I've always enjoyed doing them; my extended break unfortunately meant that I didn't get to predict the first round, but rest assured that I would have been mostly wrong.

No time for predictions right now, unfortunately! I'm heading out of town shortly, and I won't be able to come back and post anything until Sunday. So Sunday it is; I'll make (slightly late) round two NHL predictions, direct passersby to my latest Uptown column, and basically just fart around because that sums up the vast majority of my writing. Good to be back!