To LOL or Not to LOL

We live in an age where the English language has been completely mutilated by 140 characters, where abbrev's (see what I did there?) have taken precedence over proper grammar and spelling. I'm OK with this since I'm not a language purist and believe that language is a living thing that constantly changes and evolves based on it's surroundings and usage. And with the advent of the Internet, the change in the English language has been exponential - lots of new terms and words are created seemingly everyday. In fact, you might say that a new subset of the English language has been created that's completely dedicated to the online world where words like "pwned" "fail" "brb" and "lol" are common place. It's that last term, "lol" that I've come to discuss today.

Now, I've never been a huge fan of LOL, lol, llloollll, lolz or any of it's other incarnations. For those not in the know, it means laughing out loud (although I don't know how you found this obscure blog if you don't know what LOL is). It's job is to convey the idea of one laughing when communicating online, but I don't think it does it's job particularly well. Laughter is not a straightforward thing.  There are many types of laughter and varying degrees of laughter.  LOL is just not flexible enough to properly capture how much or little I'm laughing and thus it loses all meaning. Especially when certain people (and you know who they are) use LOL in response to any comment (funny or not) and also proceed to place it at the end of every sentence they type. It's like some strange form of insecurity.

I think we've hit a LOL Saturation Point (or as I like to say LSP, mostly because I'm a firm believer that the Internet doesn't have enough acronyms). And I'd like to offer up a number of alternatives for you to add to your online arsenal.

I'm a big fan of using variations of "ha" to express my laughter. It has all of the versatility that I'm looking for. If I like something and it makes me smirk a simple "haha" will do. In fact, I can really change how intense my laughter is by just extending the number of "ha's" I string together. A smirk will only get a "haha" but a video of someone falling or getting kicked in the nads (btw, I haven't heard the word "nads" since at least grade 6) will get a "hahahahhahahah". Notice that I accidentally had an extra "h" in there. That was truly an accident but it helps to sell the sincerity of the laugh. If I'm reacting very strongly, I can add in capitalization - "HAHAHAHAHAHAHA". Man that was funny! If something is a surprising guffaw, try "HA!". If you want more of a nervous laugh, try "hehe". Although technically not a "ha", "hehe" is definitely in the same family. There are other variations too that I don't necessarily use but are also acceptable. "Bahahahaha!" is an example.

This is not to say that I don't use "LOL" but I prefer to use it specifically for occasions where I truly am laughing out loud. And I use it seldom enough that it maintains its relevancy and meaning.

Anyway, this is my lesson for the day. These are the things I think about. It's true. Ask my wife and anticipate the eye roll followed by a smirk. You might even get a "haha" out of her.

Looking for Inspiration

As you may know, one of my passions and definitely my favourite creative outlet is photography.  I've always toyed with the idea of getting a bit more serious about photography and attempting to do it for dolla-dolla-bills-yo but have always hesitated to really jump in feet first.  There are a number of reasons for this: my skills aren't quite where I want them to be yet. I don't have the backup equipment to render my services accident proof.  I'm a bit scared of negative criticism. But I also worry about taking the fun out of it.

What's really great is that with my new-ish job I get to do a lot of the in house photography.  I do events, I do stock photos, pictures of the exhibitions...most of the website is made up of images that I shot.  But last night with the opening of Searching for Tom I felt a lack of inspiration.  I still got the images I needed and some shots I really liked.  But it was the first time that photography felt like a job. It kinda scared me.

Time for my usual counterargument: It was a pretty crazy week of work and yesterday was particularly stressful with me not even getting an instant to think about photographing that night until the moment I pulled out my camera to check my cards were dumped right as people started to congregate for the event.  I usually like to give myself an hour before a shoot begins to mentally prepare. Get in the photography frame of mind. Yesterday did not lend itself to that luxury. I was tired. Everyone was tired, stressed. It was a workman like event...not my usual way of shooting. Also, I've now shot in the atrium at work so many times, it's sometimes hard to get creative when you become very familiar with the space. So, it probably was a bit of an aberration. That's what I've concluded.

But as I look through my images from the past few months, I can't help but notice that most of them are related somehow to work. Which in some ways is great as I get to do something I love as part of my every day job. But it also saddens me to see that I'm not shooting as much just for me. There's been a "forced" quality to my stuff for the past few months. You can tell by my lack of posting on Flickr.

So as the title says, I'm looking for a little inspiration. A new certain something to get me back shooting for pleasure again. New places and spaces usually inspire me, so maybe I just need to explore a bit. What I really need is a proper vacation, but that's a whole other post.

Anyway, let me know if you have any ideas!

So what have I been up to?

Two posts for the price of one today!  So inspired by my last post, I figured I might as well keep it going.

Prior to my post earlier today, I hadn't been around here since September.  Bad form, yes I know.  But it's not like I've been wasting away!  I've been actually quite productive for the past few months.  My wife and I moved to Kitchener, Ontario from Hamilton for my new job as Digital Media & Marketing Coordinator. I spearheaded a new website, kicked ass on the organization's twitter and facebook accounts, relaunched 3 new e-newsletters, started the organization's first-ever content creation committee and am generally having a lot of fun creating an engaging online experience for a brand that likes to do cool shit (as we say internally).  All in all, it's been a good transition.

We're still trying to figure out Kitchener/Waterloo.  Many think of Hamilton as a blight on the map of Canada, but it truly is an incredible place with a surprising mix of grassroots culture, industry, natural beauty, architecture, and a supportive community.  When I tell people in KW that I moved from Hamilton, they look at me as if I'm one of the lucky refugees who made it out of a war-torn country.  And when I try to explain that they just don't get Hamilton or express how great it is, they then look at me like I have Stockholm Syndrome or something.  I'm then told how much better it is here: more jobs & money, lots of stuff to do, lots of young ambitious types, great optimism about the future of the community, good culture, etc.  All seemingly true, but I can't shake this feeling of everything being extremely manufactured here.  Nothing seems quite real or organic - everything very plastic.

Before you jump all over me on this, at this point, this is just an overall impression.  I'm really not qualified at all to turn this into an opinion as I haven't gone out enough, explored enough, or lived here enough to make a proper judgement.  Hell, it took me 6 years of living in Hamilton (to be fair - 4 of them as a student of McMaster) before I felt like I "got" Steeltown and understood what a unique gem it was.  I'm not writing off KW in the least - I'm excited to be here and attempt to integrate myself within the cultural framework. (In case you didn't notice, that was my anti-flame paragraph)

Without a car, "going out" funds, and situating ourselves in the suburban wasteland of the Stanley Park Mall area, my wife and I haven't exactly set ourselves up for success.  I like to think that being an employee of a significant cultural institution will help to counteract this situation.  But living near every possible convenience doesn't help to quell my impression of this being the land of big-box stores and chains and franchises, squeezing the life out of independent retail and authentic ethnic food, all of this effectively crushing this community's cultural soul.  Where are the starving artists transforming formerly derelict areas into bohemian havens? Where is the music scene? Why is the closest bar to me at least a 30 minute walk away? Why are people excited about another franchise, a Firkin Pub, opening up? Why are Kitchener and Waterloo two different cities and why do people think they're so different from each other? And the one question that really puzzles me, WHY DO PEOPLE THINK KITCHENER IS SKETCHY? Have you ever been to another city before? Seriously, this deserves a whole post unto itself.  As my wife said, if you know the names of all the crack addicts, it's not a sketchy downtown. /rant.

Seriously though, I actually like it here so far.  I'm just still in the adjustment phase of moving. But after first living in Windsor and then Hamilton, there is something unnerving about living in a city with no poverty.  It's like I'm trying to find other things wrong with the place because it doesn't make any sense.  I'm looking forward to getting out of winter though, a time that makes every city seem boring.  I look to the summer with excitement and anticipation for a chance to truly explore and get to know our new home.

So this post really went from an update to a weird pseudo-rant.  Maybe as I begin to write more often again I'll have a bit more focus.

Hello? Anyone home?

So in case you didn't notice, I've been a bit absent from the blogosphere.  My apologies.  I hope you didn't miss me too much.  Actually scratch that - I hope you really missed me...that would mean that my online writing services are actually worthwhile and that there's a reason for me to come on here and write every now and then. I just hope you're not too angry with me for abandoning all of you faithful readers for so long.

I've been putting this off for way too long, but it feels good to be writing again.  Maybe you're asking "what's your excuse for disappearing for so long?".  I really don't have a good answer to that.  Laziness? There was a period of time where I was super busy setting up my new life in Kitchener, but things definitely calmed down enough for months now where that excuse does not pass any muster (am I using that phrase right?). So I'm going with laziness.

It's definitely one of those situations where once you start to put something off, it begins to gnaw at your subconscious and you keep putting it off due to embarrassment, guilt - you know, that bad feeling in the pit of your stomach each time you realize that there's something you should be doing but you're not quite ready to do it yet.

So here I am.  I really don't have anything important to say - but that's been one of my excuses for not writing for quite some time now.  Oftentimes we put off doing something because it isn't quite right yet.  I've found that in my life it's often important to just go ahead and do something rather than wait for the ideal moment, idea, situation...even if that means producing something you're not quite proud of.  The simple act of doing often is worthwhile in its own right.

Anyway, this is a rambling post without any point.  But it does feel good to be writing again.  I'm really going to make a concerted effort to make this more regular.  Hopefully the people who follow along here will hold my feet to the fire :)

Where have I been?

Quick update for you all:  I am still alive.

Now that we have that out of the way, I can tell you where I've been hiding for the past few weeks.  It's been a very busy and somewhat stressful time for myself.  I started a new job at the beginning of the month at a place called THEMUSEUM located in Kitchener, Ontario.  As my wife and I are still situated in Hamilton, I've been commuting back and forth every day.  Since we don't have a car, that means catching the 6:15am bus every morning getting me in to work at 7:50am (can I get a w00t for 5am wakeups?!).  It also means that I catch either the 4:35pm or 6:30pm bus back, getting me home at either 6ish or 8ish respectively.

It's a long day.

And on top of that, we've had to locate a new apartment in Kitchener and begin preparing for the big move.  Of course, every single weekend this month has been booked up with prior engagements ranging from football games to demolition derbies.  Somewhere in all of this, we need to find the time to pack.

So apologies for disappearing for a while, but things should start to calm down in a week or so.  I look forward to updating you all on what's going on and get back to blogging on a regular basis.

See you soon!

The Waiting Game

Waiting.  It's a terrible thing.

As I mentioned earlier, I had a job interview last week and I felt like it went well (but who ever knows about these things, of course).  And now the waiting begins.

Waiting is only a terrible thing if you care enough about what you're waiting for.  So suffice to say, I really want that job.  But it's not that simple.  Taking that job would most likely mean that my wife and I would be packing up our bags and moving from Hamilton to Kitchener.  When I started this job hunt, we agreed that it would be quite the adventure to move to a new city...but that was when we were talking about moving across the continent to somewhere like San Francisco or Vancouver, etc.  Kitchener is even closer to Hamilton than Toronto and that should make it all the easier for us to move, but the excitement of moving is somehow lost with this option.  However, more importantly the excitement of the actual job still persists and really makes me feel more confident in my interest in taking it since it persists in spite of the less than thrilling move to Kitchener (and don't get me wrong about Kitchener...it seems like a really fun place to live, just closer than we were expecting to move, which has stripped a bit of the "adventure" tag from this endeavour).  Really though, this job is cool...amazing space, the people seem great, and the job has that perfect mix of the entrepreneurial and teamwork.

So yeah, the waiting.

Quickie Thought: Post Job Interview Email

I had my first job interview in a number of years - I think it went really well, but you can never tell from these things.  There have been interviews where I felt I did terribly and got the job and others where I reach the pinnacle of perfection and finished a distant second place (or third, fourth, fifth, etc.).  So, I have no idea.

As any good interviewee knows, you must always send a thank you note of some kind after the interview is complete.  These days, these notes take the form of email, so you best be getting that email off within 12 hours (they say 24 hours, but in the age of blackberries and iphones, that doesn't seem right).  I dutifully sent my note off tonight - plain and simple, nothing too flashy.  But I must admit, I was tempted to take a bit of a risk...try something a little off the wall perhaps.

First I need to give you some context.  As mentioned previously, I've been toying with this notion of creating a personal brand for myself around the idea of "professional craziness", which I've now thankfully renamed "professional eccentricity" (I've always said I'm terrible at naming things).  The idea of creating a personal brand is not new of course, but it has become increasingly important in the age of social media when a quick google search will reveal pretty quickly many aspects of who you are, both good and bad.  I'm kind of a mixed bag of often opposing qualities - creative with a analytical twist if you will - so I feel this idea of being professionally eccentric fits me well.  I often bring up hair-brained schemes as solutions to problems in order to think of ways to solve them in a different way.  But I'm generally grounded in reality - I'm not weird or strange just for the sake of it.  There is a method to my madness.

Of course, this branding has trickled over into my quest for a job in social media.  And I want to work for a place that is going to accept me for who I am and not stifle my creativity and zest for new ideas and ways to do things.  So my cover letters are a little bit more "familiar" than the average potential hires out there with phrases like "get-it-done-ness" and "you won’t see me shiver at the sight of an Excel spreadsheet" and "you need someone fearless enough to walk up to the edge of the cliff, but have the presence of mind to strap on a bungee cord".  Maybe this writing style of familiarity turns off potential employers, but they probably are not places I want to be working at anyway.  Kind of like a weeding out process, similar to my reason for having a beard as I always rationalized that I wouldn't want to meet a girl who didn't like beards.  It worked, I'm now married to a beard-obsessed wife.

This is a roundabout way of saying that I wanted a little something different in my post interview email.  My idea was to end the email with "And in the words of the Gingerbread Man in Shrek 'Pick me! Pick me!'".  Nuts? Yep.  Even nuttier when I recalled afterward that the Gingerbread Man only said this during the menu loop of the Shrek DVD.  I've only seen the movie like 2 times and somehow this stuck in my head.

Yeah.  Probably a good idea I didn't do that.

A Lazy Man's Vow

BLARG! No picture adequately describes this post.

I have become lazy.  A very lazy blogger, if you can even call me that right now.  Sure, I post almost every day, but I would hardly even label them as posts - "Film Quotes of the Day" are hardly a full day's work (not that blogging is supposed to be a full time job or anything).  A quick look at my DVD collection, a hop, skip, and jump to IMDB for a quote and boom! you have a post.  A monkey can pull off that shit.  The fruit flies currently invading my apartment have been more productive lately.

I had my first meditation session in months tonight (as an aside, you should really try it...I've had my best ideas in the 2 month period I practiced meditation) and I decided, to quote wrassler Owen Hart, "enough is enough and it's time for a change".  And in my world, changes mean vows.

The purpose of this blog was always two-fold - to bombard the millions of avid readers of this blog with my view of the world and to be a practice range of sorts for me to develop my meager writing skills into something hopefully at least mediocre.  I feel that I have failed miserably on both fronts.

So! With that said, I will guarantee at least 3 blog posts a week on top of the standard fare of Film Quote of the Day posts.

That's that.  Prepare to be mildly accosted by me with posts.  Beware.

A sneak preview of what's in store: Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan, Craig - The Bonds and Their Relative Strengths.

Life Gets in the Way

Hi avid readers!  I must apologize - posting will be slow this week.  I had about three good blog posts lined up to write and then my sister-in-law goes into labour yesterday and well, you know.  Obviously family in these situations take precedence over such important topics as ranking the actors who played James Bond, deciding where the Big Ten should hold its conference championship game in football, and of course finding out about what I learned this week on the internet.  I know you're disappointed but too bad.

Anyway, congratulations Mark and Susannah on their beautiful new boy Eli.  I know you'll make wonderful parents!

Cereal Milk and Other Glorious Inventions

I wouldn't say that I'm some crazed inventor or anything, but I do have a few ideas percolating up in the old noggin.  The first from my stockpile of million dollar ideas came about during my second last year of high school.  With the success of ebay, I started thinking of different ways the internet could be used to buy and sell.  My idea was an online marketplace that we would call ibuy.com.  It was basically the opposite of ebay: someone who is looking to purchase a specific item would post on this site describing what they were looking for.  Others who had a good or service that fit this description would reply with a price they would sell it at.  If someone else also had the good or service, they could offer it at a lower price - simple reverse auction.  I was pretty excited about it at the time and even had a teacher willing to invest until I did a bit more research and found out that there was a site similar to this idea.  Obviously it hasn't been too successful as I can't even remember what the company's name was.  Oh well, I was not deterred in my inventiveness.

The next idea hasn't been figured out by anyone else yet as far as I know, but I'm pretty confident that it's not something I'm ever going to follow through with - so, internet...here's a present for you.  I never came up with a better name, but I call it Cereal Milk.

Reader: Huh?  
Me: Let me explain.

As a child, my favourite part of breakfast was finishing the bowl of cereal and being left with the most sugary, the most sweet, the most tasty part of the whole breakfast...the leftover milk.  MMMmmmmm!  Now this might sound disgusting at first, but you put sugar in anything and kids will eat it, amirite??

In my first year of university, on a whim, I decided to try and replicate that sweet nectar.  I put a bit of sugar in a glass of milk.  It was...ok.  Being the brilliant person I am, I decided to take the Tim Allen approach - more power!! Ar Ar Ar!  So I dumped a whole whack of sugar in there.  The result: O.M.G. (with an F in there if you like)!!!1! - yeah, it was in the middle of the MSN days and internet abbrevs were all the rage.  In any case, it tasted just like the milk after finishing a bowl of cereal.  I suddenly had an epiphany.  Imagine selling this stuff through companies like General Mills or Post as if it was one of their cereal brands?  Like Trix Cereal Milk or Count Chocula (my personal fave) Cereal Milk??  You change the flavour slightly for each brand, market it like cereal, have a few toy freebies attached every now and then BAM! you're selling this stuff like hotcakes.  I mean, this right here is genius - health trends be damned.  But I was never one too interested in being a food product manager for a Proctor Gamble et al.  Alas, the dream remains elusive.  But someone really needs to do this...like now.  Seriously.  I'll buy a case a month.

My next idea is really a good one, but pretty boring as well.  As our society continues to be ever more reliant on electronic devices, we seem to be going through a whole heck of a lot power bars.  And damn those engineers that came up with those stupid super fat plugs that take up like 2 or 3 other outlet slots when plugged in.  Enter the "Outlet Extender" - yeah I know, I need to really work on these product names.  The Outlet Extender is a very simple device.  It's basically, umm, well...easier to explain in pictures:

The giant plugs that don't fit plug into the Outlet Extender which in turn plugs into the power bar, freeing up the two outlets that would normally be covered by the giant plug when plugged it into the middle outlet.  An elegant solution for a more civilized age.  But it's just too boring for me to be bothered with.

So there you go, internet.  Gift wrapped just for you.

Professional Craziness

Have you ever tried branding yourself? Like, have you ever thought about how you try to present yourself to the world? I'm working on this hazy concept I have running through my head called "Professional Craziness". It's this nebulous notion (how's that for an alliteration, teach?) of mixing creativity-on-steroids with the ability to reel it in to make some semblance of sense to your bosses, company, and most importantly, your audience. Let me give you an example...

Back in university, I was entered in this really intense marketing competition called The Apprentice. It was similar to the TV show: we were split into two competing teams who would be challenged by a real world case each week by a sponsoring company (someone like Xerox, Frito Lay, Pepsi, etc.) and we had to create a unique marketing solution to the problem and present it in the next week's boardroom meeting in front of a panel of judges and often 70+ audience members including students, faculty members, media, and prospective employers. The big difference between the competition and the show was that our motto was "You're Hired", not:

Anyway, it was really intense and both groups would pull out all the stops. Leading into our third week of competition, I felt like we needed to hit a new level in our presentation for the next challenge. Xerox had laid down the gauntlet by asking us to develop, write and design a new sales collateral piece for their SMB sales agents. So we went to work on what we thought would be a unique idea on collateral design. Meanwhile, as we began prep for our presentation, I proposed an absolutely bat-shit crazy idea. The presentation would take the form of some pseudo trip along the yellow brick road à la Wizard of Oz where we would encounter strange travelers who would give us advice on how to build the best sales collateral possible and we would finally meet the Wizard himself to whom we would sell this new-fangled sales collateral. My favourite (favorite for my American readers) part of this was that the wizard bit would be prerecorded and projected up on the screen - eschewing powerpoint altogether and forcing us to time our "lines" to match up with the recorded wiz. This hair-brained scheme all sprung from my love of the movie quote:

Despite my enthusiasm my group members unsurprisingly didn't quite go for this. However, I took this kernel of an idea and shaped it into something a bit more palatable - a recreation of a high-level Xerox manager assigning us this task and then us presenting it to him "live via satellite" (i.e. rerecorded projection) complete with hilarious synchronicity improvisations and low-budget production values (this was before the advent of youtube, where everyone now knows how to shoot a Hollywood level film). It had the crowd in stitches and firmly in our corner. Now that's "Professional Craziness".

Do I have this illusive attribute? I would say I'm a Pro Crazy young padwan aspiring to be a full blown Jedi of Professional Craziness. And I'm looking for my yoda.