Help, I’m an elf!
(It takes a minute or two to load. Try it yourself! The voice record function didn't work for me, but it's still pretty funny.)
Babewatch
Am I the only one who snickers to note that our local strip club is located on Broadview Avenue?
The street art on the sidewalk is similarly amusing. The four corners of Broadview and Queen E. are inlaid with steel equations, part of Eldon Garnet's "Time: And a clock" series that runs from the Don River to Empire Ave.
The sidewalk outside Jilly's just happens to have the one that says "Time is money : Money is time".
Arrrgh!
Damn it!
My wonderful, impregnable, Raccoon Check strap-equipped raccoon-proofed green bin was violated last night.
It seems I didn't cinch up the buckles tight enough, though it certainly looked air tight. The procyon horribilis managed to tip it over and top the top open a crack - enough to fish out a bag of stale bread and coffee rinds and redecorate my porch.
To its credit, though, the strap kept the lid mostly shut, so only one of the five bags inside was ripped open. I'll have to be more careful with keeping it buckled up tight.
This isn't over, vermin.
(The cynic in me expects that one day I'll discover my impish neighbours have read this blog, and are sneaking out at night to open the bins themselves. Actually, that'd be a pretty funny joke. Except that they'd soon discover that raccoons have learned to key their car.)
How the other 1/1000th live
Today CBC staff got a chance to walk through the model suite for the new Ritz-Carlton skyscraper soon to be built next door to the Canadian Broadcasting Centre in Toronto.
It was an interesting opportunity, since the sales centre is not generally open to riff-raff like you and me. Plus, gorgeous as it is, they're going to bulldoze the thing next week to make way for construction in January 2007.
And it's not like I'll be living there when it opens in 2010. The units start at close to a million bucks for the smallest condo (which is still about the size of my Leslieville house) and can run ten times that for the 10,000 square foot penthouse. There will be restaurants and a spa open to the public, but no underground connection. Once it opens I expect people like me will repelled by force fields, or tasered for even looking up at the building.
Which will be quite daunting, actually - the south side is catilevered outward ("toward the lake"). So if you ever look up at a skyscraper and feel it's toppling on you, this one will really freak you out.
Up at the very top (both elevation and socio-economic) the penthouse is still available, but they've already sold half of the condo units which make up the top half of the building. There's money to burn somewhere, obviously - some of it in Singapore, where a sales office for the building was also set up.
The interior was stunningly appointed, of course, with marble everywhere, floor to ceiling windows, and so on. It's gorgeous, but a little hard to wrap your head around... the "woman's closet" is the size of my "master bedroom", and if I sold all my RRSPs, I could buy a parking spot ($45,000)
So, this may be as close as any CBC employee gets to the Ritz-Carlton. However, the R-C will be getting close to us - we'll soon permanently lose the patio outside Ooh La La, and the informal motorcycle parking there. They're shifting around some east side bike racks, too.
Anyhow, it was nice to step out of the rain and momentarily (after they checked my ID) imagine life as a super-rich. The event was billed as "Meet the new neighbours," and I'm glad I did. It may be the only day they'll want to meet me.
Loading ...An offer we can’t refuse
Today CBC held an internal “Town Hall†to announce the corporation’s new vision for an integrated news service. The gist of it: dump Canada Now, get back into local news, integrate newsrooms with all media lines, and ramp up Web 2.0 stuff (which, I hope, may pave the way for Radio 2.0 and TV 2.0, which right now nobody really has the cash or cojones to attempt. Except Zed. But Zed’s dead, baby.)
Generally, it’s all sensible stuff, either undoing recent mistakes or doing what you’d do if you were building a broadcaster from scratch. I won’t get into the details of the announcement – I’m sure they will be reported and discussed at length elsewhere. But I was fascinated by the language involved.
So what exactly is this new CBC news thingy? According to CBC-TV VP Richard Stursberg, it’s an “offer†– he used the word exactly 26 times in his talk and Q&A.
Not just an “offerâ€, but an “integrated offerâ€, a “mobile offerâ€, a “multi-platform offerâ€, and so on. Which prompted a word-wise colleague to ask: when did “offer†replace “offering†as the noun of choice?
What’s the difference, anyhow, between “a special offer†and a “sacrificial offering� Time to dig into semantics again (I still get at least a dozen hits each week to my post on Is Chairman Sexist?)
Turns out there isn’t really much difference. Both mean “something that is offeredâ€. Offer connotes more of a proposal or an attempt, while offering seems to be more of a gift, but they are almost synonymous.
Offer:
1. The act of offering: an offer of assistance.
2. Something, such as a suggestion, proposal, bid, or recommendation, that is offered.
3. Law. A proposal that if accepted constitutes a legally binding contract.
4. The condition of being offered, especially for sale: thousands of bushels of wheat on offer.
5.
a. An attempt; a try.
b. A show of intention.
Offering:
1. The act of making an offer.
2. Something, such as stock, that is offered.
3. A presentation made to a deity as an act of religious worship or sacrifice; an oblation.
4. A contribution or gift, especially one made at a religious service.
In English, the term has a religious origin: “from the Middle English offren, from Old English offrian, to present in worship.â€
But no religion here: the announcement made clear this “offer†is going to be “platform agnosticâ€. The idea is that content is not dependent on the media line it ends up on – a story is a story, and the medium is not the message.
It still seems religious to me: I imagine all these Stories, or Ideas floating around like lost spirits looking for a corporeal host. But it makes sense, at least in the early phases of a story. Gotta leave room for specialists after that, or it’ll suck. Anyhow, it’s apparently the way of the future for the New York Times in the U.S. (sorry, EPIC 2014) and Freeview in the U.K.
A final note on terminology: I had to wince at the name for the plan: myCBC. That’s the name CBC.ca uses for its customizable web offerings (look for the Sign In button at the top right of CBC.ca – it sets your local weather and program grids, newsletters, etc.)
It’s a really nice idea, and I’d totally dig it if CBC Radio and CBC-TV were truly customizable. But that’s Buck Rogers territory – even the myCBC part of CBC.ca leaves a lot to be desired. The wince comes because the implementation of the personalized part of CBC.ca was a drawn-out and generally horrible experience. I'm sure it'll be easier when dealing with three+ platforms, right?
Oh, and we’ve missed the boat on the URLs, not that we’d use them - unless we want to pay off the Computer Business Centre in Long Island and the Macgregor Yacht Club of BC.
Actually, in an ideal CBC 2.0 future world, you could listen to it on a yacht sailing from B.C. to Long Island… where do I volunteer?
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