Boxing's getting spoiled

This September to December stretch has been a little slice of heaven for a boxing fan like me. There has been a very impressive run of fights booked, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't giddy like a teenager at a Bieber concert.

Canelo-Mayweather was everything it was hoped to be. Floyd gave up approximately twenty pounds in weight to a known power puncher, and didn't even bat an eye at this supposed disadvantage. Not a word of an exaggeration, this was one of the best Floyd Mayweather fights I have ever seen. When you haven't seen Mayweather fight in a bit, especially against a super aggressive opponent, it's kind of easy to forget just how good he is. Watching him against Canelo, I just kind of sat there slack-jawed at how good he is defensively. Simply put, you do not just hit Floyd Mayweather. You practically need to burn 2 minutes out of the round just pinning him down, and then go to the body hard ala Miguel Cotto.

Oh, and the undercard to that fight? Was Matthysse-Garcia. Also a fantastic barn-burner. Both of those guys can pack some serious heat. Turns out Danny Garcia is all that, and that Matthysse is in fact human. Still a real treat to watch.

Next up we had Adonis Stevenson absolutely demolishing Tavoris Cloud. Another treat. It's always nice to see a supposed journeyman or gatekeeper have a late career resurgence to force themselves back into relevance. In some ways Stevenson is a lot like Malignaggi. Both guys were used as stepping stones for bigger better fighters for a long time, until they got hot and started piling up wins against these supposed prospects. God-damn does Stevenson have a right hand on him. Another fantastic fight out of Stevenson, and another fighter coming out Montreal. At some point that city became the boxing hub of Canada, and I like it.

Also on this card? Vera-Chavez Jr. The less said about this fight the better.

Next up will be next weekend. Timothy Bradley against Juan Manuel Marquez. This is one of three fights I have circled on my calendar, because I am unabashedly a huge JMM fan. Sure, Bradley showed in the Provodnikov fight that he can take a hell of a lot of punishment, but in the same vein he also showed that he's too dumb to not take that much punishment. Given that he's bragged since then about how he didn't talk exactly right for two months after the bout, I'm not expecting him to really try to outpoint Marquez. As sad as it sounds, with a supremely gifted counter-puncher like Marquez, that's about the only way to win. If he wades in behind his chin and tries to brawl Marquez, he's going to be fed a steady diet of counter-rights. Pulling for Marquez in this one.

THEN we still get both Klitschko brothers, Pacquiao-Rios and Gennady Golovkin pulverizing Curtis Stevens. The only downside to this incredible upcoming season? Not enough Sergio Martinez.

I'll expand on this later, but it has been supremely disappointing to watch the boxing media cover what's coming up. Suffice it to say, I feel like the current dedicated coverage of boxing is one of the primary causes of the sport's supposed downfall.

2013. Turning out to be a hell of year for the sweet science. I'm child-like excited.

Now if only school wasn't in the way.

RANT SHOTGUN BOOM

I haven't blogged for a while, and for that I apologize. Without my periodic cathartic release, I've built up a backlog of rants that need to be unloaded. Today's blog post will not be my usual long form thinking-onto-a-keyboard but rather a rapid, staccato of hatred and unsettling in-depth opinion.

1) Traveling. Fuck traveling.

I understand the appeal of travel. Go somewhere new. See something neat. Learn about this world we call home. Release, relax, recharge, it's good for the soul. This bit I get, I sympathize and dare I say I agree. What really grinds my gears is people who travel and start talking like they have experienced some life changing spirit journey. They won't shut up about how much their life changed. How relocating to another part of the world for a week granted them magical perspective to understand and solve all of life's problems.

There was no magical journey to life changing wisdom. You just went somewhere for a bit. Nothing changed. Nothing. You're still you, the rest of the world is still the rest of the world, so please oh please shut the fuck up about how you have enriched yourself so much by the act of being somewhere else for a bit.

2) Labels and conditions.

Single noun explanations are not appropriate devices to make everything better. You can't say "I'm insecure" or "I'm an introvert" or "I haven't had my coffee." No one cares. You have attached a new descriptor, perhaps a shorter one, to describe what many of us already knew; You have some kind of crippling personality a flaw. Take for example people being total assholes. The label "I'm busy" or "I haven't had my coffee" as their justification for their behavior. The expectation is that by this hand waving gesture you have somehow made yourself immune to the hatred you so justly deserve. I don't care if you have or have not had a coffee today, you're still a cunt.

Perhaps the frustrating part of this is that once a label has been assigned, people just don't see the need for any attempt resolution or improvement. You attach the label onto yourself and say "Yup, that's just the way it is." There is no literally other way in the world to say "I'm incapable of functioning like the rest of adults, and that is a-okay."

3) Bad drivers.

Jesus fucking christ, you are literally directing a tonne of metal fuelled by repeated explosions through a populated space. The car is capable of far more than you. Go to a performance driving class. You will rapidly discover that the car is not the limit or the problem, the problem is that you are a distracted dumb slow lump of meat that clumsily tries to direct this miracle of science. You don't know how bad you are at directing this machine, and you think that if anything bad happens you can miraculously get out. Guess what, you can't. And when this situation arises because you're driving like a fuckhead, you get to have the joy of killing someone and/or yourself.



Okay...I think....I think that's most of it.

The audacity of dreams

I am going to buy an OUYA.

It may not be tomorrow. It may not be this weekend. But before the calendar year has expired, I will be purchasing an OUYA. I am aware that it is not running on anything remotely near top of the line hardware. I am aware that many of the games it features will become available on my Kobo. In fact, it is both possible and depressingly likely that at the end of the day my PS3 will simply feature more, better games.

I am going to buy an OUYA because I like dreams.

Tomb Raider, will critically popular, sold 3.4 million copies and this was still not enough for Square Enix to turn a profit. Hitman barely broke even. Some estimates peg MW3 as costing 100 million dollars to produce. This model that every game has to have unbelievable hype and sell like gangbusters is not going to work for very long. Rising dev costs will tank how many games can be made, and the need for guaranteed sales is going to kill creativity. The AAA model is going to kill gaming far faster than it will save it. I mean, look at me. The most fun I had in the last year was easily with either Space Marine or Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. Neither game was particularly huge and neither game stood a chance in hell of matching the CoD marketing juggernaut, but god-damn they just cooked.

This is why I want to throw my money behind OUYA. Games don't have to be marketable or sexy, they just need to be fun. How they're fun doesn't matter, and the mechanics that make them fun are probably independent of the processing power required to generate a photo-realistic city in real time. If this crazy experiment works, devs will have a chance for creativity to matter again. They will have a chance to nurture a product from beginning to end, at a normal person pace, instead of the development hell behind every major title now.

It will not replace my PS3. It will never compete with the big boys. That expectation is foolhardy and unrealistic, and anyone who resorts to that as an argument against the OUYA should be struck with an open hand. What it will do, hopefully, is provide me with an easy to use outlet to find some fun, simple games. Something for me to get into if I don't want to drop 60$ and 20 hours. Maybe I only want to throw down 10 dollars and 5 hours, whatever, hopefully it with fill that niche in my gaming hierarchy.

And, if it doesn't, well I guess I still have my 3DS.

Future Planning

Planning is a weird thing. Generally speaking, I tend to be a person who plans out everything in detail, complete with contingencies and back-ups. This is all done with the knowledge that despite however many hours, how much detail and how much dedication I pour into my plans they're never going to be quite right. I try to think things through in advance, but then lo and behold something new comes along. What's worse, sometimes exactly what I planned for comes along.

I've gotten back onto the job application train. For those counting, this train is now at 150 applications with one phone interview. Whoo whoo. Recently, I've revamped my resume into a new format and I've started using a new cover letter format. Consequently, I've convinced myself that this was the change needed to turn it all around. However, there was a three week hiatus where I did not apply for anything as I was frantically filling out last second grad school applications. One of them has already gotten back to me with a heartfelt "HAHAHAno." What I had told myself, and what I had told my friends and family was that even if hell froze over and I was accepted to a Master's program I would still be applying to jobs right up until day 1. Now I've started to question that.

The funny thing about planning for the future is that you get excited. On paper, UPEI having a stroke and accepting me would appear to be the worst thing ever. Moving to a small city on the other side of the country, signing another lease, enjoying geographic and social isolation all in exchange for a degree that has questionable merit from a professional standpoint? This looks like a raw deal. Yet, for some reason I really really want to. Getting hired in Calgary? On paper, the best thing ever. I could actually make money instead of hemorrhaging cash. I wouldn't have to move. I wouldn't have to reboot socially. I'd be near family. Yet somehow, while I remain hopeful for this possibility, it doesn't seem like the golden ticket to a magical chocolate factory that I had envisioned.

Do I miss university? Apparently yes. Except that I categorically despised large chunks of it.

Right now, I suspect my worse fear is actually that both dreams might come true. An employer AND a graduate committee might think that I am competent. If it came down to it, I don't know which I'd choose. An improved version of what I do now? Or blowing it all up and starting again for a year? I know one of those is good, but the other keeps winking at me and promising impossible things.

The worst part of all of this, this planning, this fear, this hope, this excitement is that all of it, every detail is reliant on someone I have never met reading 800 words about me and determining whether or not I deserve a chance. Despite my best efforts, I can't plan for that.

Window Dressing Activism

The following is one side of a conversation I had with a friend in Ottawa.

"I am about to write something offensive

Remember how the "hot" social cause of the day back in 2003 was global warming? And every fucking wannabe social activist was all like "OH THE HUMANITY WE GOTS TO SAVE THE WORLD" But it was really just an excuse to go to "green parties" and get tanked and then feel like you're not just another alcoholic manwhore/womanwhore? In 2013, a new social cause has risen up to take its place.

Gay Rights has become the new Global Warming.

The cause most socially acceptable to latch onto and preach about, while simultaneously requiring an almost non-existent amount of dedication in order to maintain the facade of giving a damn.

I hate. These. People.

This really crystallized for me while looking at Facebook today. So many photos of people being tanked at 302. And posting shit like "OMG PRIDE 2013!!!" "LGBT EQUALITY GUYS!!!11" You have truly advanced the cause of ending discrimination based on sexual identity by dressing up like a banana and pounding jager. And I know, maybe I'm just a stick in the mud, but to me this window-dressing support of valid and important social causes would seem to diminish and mock the cause."

Phew. There it is. Some good 'ol fashioned hatred.

The beauty of economics...

Every once in a while, I feel a need to get all misty eyed for the field I studied for five years.

I was listening to NPR's Planet Money, a fantastic show everyone should listen to by the way, and was enthralled by their episodes discussing their t-shirt. I was so enthralled I signed up for Kickstarter just to back them, and have since sunk 200$ into other projects like a god-damn junkie. What stuck out to me, aside from the super interesting story of the t-shirt, was their mention of John Maynard Keynes and his description of "animal spirits."

A quick rundown for those who haven't done history of economic thought: For most of time, the dominant way of thinking about economics was the "rational actor model." It carries with it the assumption that all people are blessed with perfect information and perfect rationality, and that all decisions they make are done so in the interest of minimizing costs and maximizing utility. Generally speaking, it worked out pretty well. This sort of thinking isn't 100% accurate, but it does a damn good job of aggregating millions of personal decisions into an understandable form. Keynes wrote in the 40/50's about this idea of "wild animal spirits," this idea that people are far from rational. They are impulsive and impassioned, and make decisions based on things that cannot be quantified by numbers. Recent years, and in fact the 2012 nobel prize in economics, have started to centre around attempts to rehabilitate the rational actor model or at the very least improve it to more accurately simulate real people. One of the topics we discussed in game theory was this concept of asymmetrical or inaccurate information, the idea being that everyone wants to use perfect information but something stops them. This is a line of thought I've always really enjoyed, because it offers some solid explanations for why people make bad choices.

So I look around my house right now. The TV furniture is from Italy, the dvd towers are from poland, my water bottle is from china, my t-shirt is from Vietnam. And these are just the final stages of production. The dvd towers had to be bought from a store, which had them shipped to calgary from a port which received them from poland. In poland, the lumber had to come from somewhere. The tools had to be made elsewhere, and the machines built from parts built somewhere else. In turn, those parts are constructed from metal which had to be mined. All in all, for me to sit where I am at this moment, looking at what I am looking at now, there had to be hundreds of people working in concert.

For the most part, each one of these people played their part because it was the best decision available to them. Somehow the insane, roundabout, varied path necessary to get from metal in the ground to water bottle in my hand made every single turn because it was the least expensive. Dozens of steps, all across the world, all the cheapest available, to put this water bottle into my hand. We live in a world where that is easier than building a water bottle factory in Canada to sell water bottles to Canadians. And still, somehow, this entire process can be totally mocked by me making the decision that I am willing to pay $2 more for a green bottle than a black one.

That is crazy. This entire complex chain of events still relies on my impulse being the correct impulse, manipulated via advertising or otherwise, in order to justify everything that has happened.

Pick an item nearby. Ask yourself "why did I buy it," and "how many people touched this for it to be here?"

Economics. Surprisingly inspiring sometimes.

Another brief tangent

Y'know what game is vastly underappreciated?

HINT

F.3.A.R. The absolutely ridiculous title notwithstanding, F.3.A.R. was in many ways a very good game. So the campaign was kinda' dry the first time through, the co-op was undercooked, and there were a handful of buggy moments. Surely to god we're all grown up enough that we can let a couple cracks slide as long as they're on a cheesecake, right?




Okay, so the analogy isn't strong. Bear with me.

This game will always stick out in my mind for the two weeks I played two things: 1) The multiplayer. Not the team deathmatch, not posession, but "Fucking Run." Hot damn was that a fantastic game mode. Your team is forced to constantly advance from a wall of death, and you have to murder your way through progressively more deadly waves of enemies in randomly generated terrain. It was the kind of frantic, unplanned chaos that results in truly memorable multiplayer moments. You're all like "We got heavy guys on the left, start shooting!" "CRAWLERS FROM ABOVE!" *BANG BANG BOOM* "What was that!?" "A rocket launcher!" "Where did you get a rocket launcher!?" "I DON'T KNOW!" It's the kind of unbridled twitchy madness that you just don't get once you stop being eight years old and playing with action figures. 2) Replaying as Vettel. Seriously fun. It was like a first person Psi-Ops (another wonderful game everyone should play) and that's pretty cool.

Can you get nostalgia for a two year old game? Hm. I guess I can...

Kickstarter is amazing

I would like to take a moment to note how Kickstarter and the internet have completely changed the game of "product planning." Through the magic of instantaneous electronic transmission of information and funds, crowd-sourcing has provided an opportunity for good ideas to receive immediate support.

Let's take a step back and examine the traditional two processes of how a new good or service comes to life.

In the case of a large company with sufficient capital to finance their own projects it goes something like...
1) Idea
2) Preliminary business case for idea
3) Review of preliminary business case
4) New team builds statistical business case based on market data
5) Modify business case for data
6) Present business case
7) Modify business case based on reaction to review
8) Review statistics of business case
9) Present business case again.
10) Receive preliminary budget
11) Build project plan for budget
12) Revise project plan for real budget
13) Present project plan
14) Revise project plan for real real budget
15) Present new project plan
16) Enact plan.

This is somewhat exaggerated, but it imparts the point I'm trying to make. Lot of steps. Lot of revision. There's no guarantee that the idea gets from step 1 to step 16 in any kind of recognizable form. Every single step of the way is there to polish and sharpen and hone every element of the idea into some kind of perfect business model that has minimal chance of failure. At any step where there is a good indicator that the project might fail, it can be canned. There is an overwhelming process focused around ensuring that only successful prospects see the light of day, regardless of how good the initial steps were.

Now, smaller companies, start-ups and entrepreneurs have two ways to go about it.

1) Idea
2) Test out idea
3) Create sales pitch
4) Beg, solicit, acquire investors
5) Enact project
6) Succeed/Fail

OR

1) Idea
2) Test out idea
3) Acquire financing through personal assets (mortgage, etc)
4) Enact project
5) Succeed/Fail

Whereas the large processes focus on overseeing elements to guarantee success, ironically unmaking the original idea, this smaller case is much more similar to "winging it." You go almost straight from the initial plan right to hoping you get your money back.

So why is kickstarter amazing?

You look at a page and decide whether or not it is something you want to see happen. If you want it to happen, if the idea is something you want in reality, you allocate funds to it that are proportional to how strongly you feel. If it looks like something doable and something you want, then you allocate as much money as you want, if it looks like something poorly planned, then you just don't. At the end, if enough people feel the same as you, AND if the project is successful, you get the thing you wanted. If it isn't, you get your money back.

All the guess work disappears. When a community really wants something to exist, they can make it exist. Instead of a handful of people trying to decipher what the masses want, the masses just tell you what they want. How simple is that? You can pay a product into existence. If it isn't wanted, it just doesn't happen. While there are still failures, this slants the entire process to favour actual successes as opposed to anticipated successes.

Kickstarter, man, it is remarkable in both its effectiveness and its simplicity.

Bamboo woes?

Oh, I'll just start drawing I said.

It'll be fun, I said.

Then I discovered that every time I get off blue layer and ink, everything I did looks terrible, and I can't quite figure out why.

It is super frustrating. Every time I try to move past box-torsos and kidney-bean-feet, I end up making something that looks bad.

Practice, right? Practice.

 

WHY!? WHY DOES INKING RUIN EVERYTHING!?

The Internship Poem

So I applied for an internship with HootSuite today. They asked me to describe myself in 150 characters or less, but being the dunce I am I misread it and wrote a 150 word limerick to accomplish that task. It was so good though, it goes up on here.

*ahem ahem*

 To describe myself in so few words

Including what makes me unique

A herculean task, please be assured

But this limerick might be a treat

A kid born in Saskatchewan

Who bounced all across the west

In June 2012 I had graduation

From Economics, the program's the best

At home my interests are varied

From jiu jitsu to games and sports

The 'Riders are my team, for hockey I bleed

I love politics and cooking and more

From deadlines to numbers

Against leglocks or pucks

I'm stoic and try to be calmer

Under pressure I give no...erm...ducks?

My bosses and coaches all will tell you

No matter what he'll get it done

He sees everything through

You can't teach this kind of dedication

[NAME REDACTED]'s my name

Though flawed I may be

Commitment's my game

HootSuite, call me, maybe?

Actually, upon reflection I don't think that it is technically a limerick. But whatev, still pretty neat though, right?

This conversation was real

Boy howdy, I sure am pretty freakin' awful as consistently blogging. Is this a sign of larger commitment issues? I hope not. Only time will tell if this plot twist leads to a fascinating narrative.

I just had to crank out this conversation though, because good lawdy I couldn't believe it actually happened. The NAMELESS COMPANY for which I currently work supplies customers with paper tape measures in order for them to measure anything they so desire. Obviously, the paper is an excellent material for this as it is super cheap to produce, recyclable and not at all cumbersome. As anyone who has handled paper knows, sometimes the stupid stuff cuts you and it hurts like a bitch.

The following conversation is as close to an authentic reproduction as I can write 24 hours later.  

Customer 1: Excuse me, come over here I would like to talk to you.
Customer 2: (who has a paper cut): Oh no...
Me: How can I help you?
Customer 1: I want you to register our complaint. Your tape measures are a hazard! My friend is hurting right now and this should never have happened.
Me: I'm not following.
Customer 1: Your tape measures are too sharp!
Me: Are you okay [customer 2]?
Customer 2: I'm fine. I did have a question about a ch-
Customer 1: This is a serious complaint!
Me: Sir, we can't control the properties of paper. Papercuts happen.
Customer 1: I do not care! [NAMELESS COMPANY] is a very large company and should be able to find a solution!
Customer 2: About the chai-
Customer 1: Are you taking this seriously or are you just laughing at me?
Me: As previously mentioned, we can't make paper not act like paper. Now what was your question about the chair?
Customer 1: I will be complaining to your head office!



I can't make this stuff up. Good grief. This man has inspired me to go skating and then complain to the rink manager that the ice is too slippery and hard.

First time screwing around with a wacom bamboo, which I just bought. Turns out the learning curve from paper to technology is way more involved than I had expected. EDIT- AND it turns out blogger doesn't handle tiff files well at all. So...that is something.

The Jarome Iginla trade

I'm not sure if this is actually how I feel, or if this is the result of my brain spending all night desperately trying to rationalize what just happened.

Phew.

Okay. Let's do this.

First, let's identify downfalls of the Flames organization over the past few seasons. They have no big centers and their prospects either have little skill and skating ability, or are very very very small. At the NHL level, they have not had a true "grind line" since 2009 instead filling the third line with 2nd line tweeners. The fourth line has been a random collection of goons, and usually can't see more than 5 minutes a night for risk of them letting in too many goals.

The Boston deal? That deal made me mad. A depth defenceman and an undersized russian with skating problems. Make no mistake, of all the pieces Calgary potentially had coming back Khokhlachev was the best, or at least had the most potential. That said, he reads like the stereotype of russians that don't make it in the NHL, so that is a huge question mark. Unfortunately, the KHL factor is a very real consideration now. Perhaps the biggest flaw with Khokhlachev is that the Flames already have him, he's just named Paul Byron. Another undersized skilled centre won't really help the organization. The real piss off was the conditional 1st rounder. For the return to be based on whether or not a player likes an organization is an unreasonable risk. That deal was basically Bartkowski and future considerations, which is very frustrating.

The Pittsburgh deal is the better deal. The Flames get a first rounder, likely late, and effectively replacing their 2nd in this draft. Okay. A guaranteed pick. Good, we need those. Now, what do the two prospects project to? First, worth noting that before joining the Flames as Assistant General Manager John Weisbrod was the head of scouting for the Boston Bruins. He spent a looot of time scouting the American college ranks. Also, during the lock out most scouts watched a ton of college hockey. If Weisbrod says these guys are good, I'm inclined to trust him. What do these players bring to the Flames? Size. Skating ability. They project as max 2nd liners, likely 3rd liners. Having shut-down players who can skate is a very desperate need for the Flames organization. They get those in this deal.

Would I have preferred Derrick Pouliot? Absolutely. But clearly the Flames are intended to do this rebuild the right way. I.E. Not just putting the sexy name into the lineup and waiting for results. Instead they're acquiring players who will play a role. More Ottawa style than Edmonton style. And I like this. Ottawa's rebuild is basically my gold standard for how you do a rebuild.

Farewell, Iggy. You were the best thing to happen to this city since oil.

On Video Games...

My video game docket is, at the moment, the fullest it has been in almost five years.

The PS3 is currently loaded up with Transformers: Fall of Cybertron. Yes, I'm playing through it again, because I need more Optimus Prime in my life. Currently warming up in the dugout is Dishonored, a game that I put two hours into and just ran out of time to play. Behind THAT is the last ~1.5 hours of Assassin's Creed III, a game that I really really REALLY liked, and is currently standing in the way of me playing through the Zone of the Enders remake.

Also worth noting? I'm planning on buying Bioshock Infinite today. So...goodness. Looks like I might need to call in sick a couple times. That is a lot of video game I need to get through.

I just want to mention one of the things which stuns me the most about Fall of Cybertron. In my previous post about how the ratings system appears to be broken I briefly touched on this, and I feel like it deserves mention again. Fall of Cybertron might be the best adaptation of external source material I have ever had the pleasure to play. What is persistently astounding to me is how everything in this game is covered in a glossy sheen of childlike excitement for everything you do. The progression of the plot reads like something a five year old would come up with while playing with his toys.

Need to get to the gates to help defend them, now we need to get the neutron cannons online, oh now we're shooting at tanks, now the cannons have become Metroplex, now our city-size robot is fucking shit up. In addition, the design of everything in this game is done with an absurd level of scale. City size guns are a thing, which is AWESOME. You enter ancient structures with kilometer high ceilings, look out upon endlessly built-up robot city, you have god damn Metroplex as something akin to a summon.

Randomly, Optimus yells out things like "Liberty is the right of all sentient beings," like some kind of house sized Robo-Lincoln. Seriously, everything about this game is like your inner five year old was given an insane budget and asked to make a Transformers movie that didn't suck. You really really need to check this game out.

And now we make the jiu jitsu

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is hard. It is punishingly, ball bustingly, verge of tears hard.

That said, I'm probably not going to stop anytime soon. The interesting thing about BJJ is that the reason it is so hard is also the reason it is so effective, and perhaps why the best in the world are so much better than the rest of the world.

The thing with grappling is that you can go balls-out, 100%, with no mercy. You can try out new things, you can look for new techniques and you don't get your head caved in. Consequently, when you're starting you get absolutely slaughtered. During this slaughter, you try out ways to fight back. You last a couple more seconds. You do that again and last a couple more seconds. After you last a few more seconds you try out something else, and see if it works. You learn to how your body can move in ways you never knew, how to feel when you're in danger.

I can't think of many other things where you learn by failure. It seems to be such an effective way to learn, difficulty aside, that it makes me wonder why this method has not been adopted in more areas.

Sidebar: GSP Diaz. Holy shit that is gonna' be cray cray.

when did radio get good?

I'm experiencing an interesting change of opinion about a great many things over the past few years. Fart jokes became lazy and unfunny, the non-fiction section became compelling, The Bay is a store I frequent and radio became a form of media I enjoy.

For most of my life the radio was that thing you listened to exclusively in the car. It was there, and you listened to it to get your fill of crappy pop music because that was just the only option available. Then I discovered CBC radio two. It provided me interesting, atypical music with a maple leaf emblazonned on every possivle surface. What I had not expected, however, was that RadioTwo is the gateway drug to RadioOne.

Let's examine the audacity of RadioOne for a moment. Commercial free, relatively unbiased talk radio, dealing almost exclusively in issues of national interest, supplemented by region specific content in two languages. That is a ridiculous thing to exist, and I love that it does. Jian Ghomeshi is the first hit RadioOne gives you, promising that the first one is free. Then you wake up in a cold sweat, queuing up missed episodes of Alberta at Noon while listening to Blue Sky, and you realize you're just another canadian content junkie. If CBC would just release a RadioOne app for Android I would rarely not be listening to something not-CBC.

Sadly the rabbit hole goes deeper. First I found NPR. This was my gateway to podcasts, and there was no going back. Podcasts, man. Podcasts are the hardcore variety of talk radio, the bath salts if you will. Currently I'm mainlining Freakonomics, with Jay&Dan waiting in the wings.

Was radio always this good and I'm only now growing up? Or are we experiencing a radio revival, an air wave rennaisance? More importantly, do I care and where can I find a podcast discussing that very subject?

Being judgemental...

There's no way around it, I'm a pretty judgemental guy.

How you dress, how you speak, your build and your company are things I'm most likely to judge you by. Spiked hair, over-developed biceps, small legs and accompanied by either a friend of a similar profile, or a comically skinny friend who is vaguely annoying? I'm going to assume you're a douchebag. Dressed to the nines, unwilling to maintain eye contact or relax your posture, probably with a watch prominently displayed? I'm going to assume you're a douchebag. Perpetually annoyed by everything about every situation you're in? I'm going to assume you're a douchebag.

You can see how this is becoming a problem for me. My social life is extremely limited at the moment, consisting of my two roommates whom I see sometimes, and the folks at my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu school, with whom I don't converse because we're too busy trying to kill each other. When I do actually meet someone new, it seems like I start scanning for flaws in people, reasons why I could not hold a conversation with them for more than the requisite 5 minutes. The big one seems to be that I cannot stand people with a status obsession. You know the ones. The ones that need to be better than you. Bigger, stronger or wealthier, more successful, or "clearly" knows how everything could be better.

Here's the problem I have: I'm a competitive person. Unhealthily so. I've gotten it more or less "under wraps" nowadays, but every time I feel this disdain rising up for these people I find myself wondering the same question; Is the problem that they are awful people? Or am I the awful person here? Is it that they are obsessed with superiority to others or is that me?

Let us ponder this.

I mean, I like to think the number of genuine friendships I have serves as proof and a check on my ego, but I can never really be sure.

Anyway, lunch time.