John Gushue . . . Dot Dot Dot

'Humpty Dumpty: Wrong on wall-sitting'

On Tuesday's edition of The Current, the focus was on negative advertising - why they work, when they don't, that sort of thing. There was a hilarious bit from an NPR program from last fall at the show's end, though, that's worth checking out. Here's the rundown from the show's log:

On the eve of the United States midterm elections last November, National Public Radio's Melissa Block spoke with Dennis Steele and Scott Sanders, two self-described 'hired guns' who lend their voices to the notoriously venomous attack ads of American politics. We ended the show today with their renderings of nursery rhymes as down and dirty attack ads ... turns out Humpty Dumpty was a bad egg, after all.

Here's how to listen to it: Click here, scroll down and find the "Part 3" tab (or just click here to start the segment right away), and scroll the Real Player along to the 26:00 mark. It runs less than two minutes, and is a hoot.

Reach out, touch Fey

Tina Fey's 30 Rock is required viewing in our house, even if I'm the only one that's watching it.

Well, I like it.

For a taste of what's been missing from SNL's Weekend Update lately, NBC let this sampler out on YouTube (ostensibly to promote 30 Rock in the days leading up to its launch):

A thought on writing about what you don't know

"When a writer knows home in his heart, his heart must remain subtly apart from it. He must always be a stranger to the place he loves, and its people."
- Willie Morris

A paper cut, indeed

A detail of a work called Half Way Through. More cool cuts with paper can be seen here.

Daily Dot: Creating a holiday

On Jan. 31, 1957 - 50 years ago today - the Canadian government proclaimed that the second Monday each October would be celebrated as Thanksgiving Day, and as a statutory holiday. Many Canadians younger than this proclamation might wonder why Thanksgiving - so entrenched as an American holiday - scarcely generates the same level of excitement north of the border; being much younger (at least officially - parishes celebrated the holiday for many years, although not consistently) would do the trick.

Paper: the frontier for the digital renegade

[Surf's Up, as published in the St. John's Telegram on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007. Click here to read more columns.]

Over the Christmas holidays, I put down some cash and bought a new personal data assistant. The geeks among us call that a PDA - the fancy acronym given to things like a Blackberry or a Palm Pilot.

My new toy, though, isn't flashy; it doesn't come with an MP3 player, it can't take pictures and it doesn't even have buttons. In fact, it's made - with the exception of two thin ribbons - entirely out of paper.

Rather than upgrade my handheld (a Palm Tungsten), I went back to the future and bought an old-fashioned data manager: a slender, clothbound book that has a week-based calendar on one side and sheets for notetaking on the other.

It's sleek, though, and even has a chic appeal - maybe even enough to compete in a brand-conscious age where young consumers ditch their cellphones when a slimmer, cooler model comes along. My datebook is made by Moleskine, the trendy company which manufactures notebooks that are as elegant as they are pricey. I've even had a couple of friends ooh-and-ahh when I've whipped it out of my pocket.

That feature - being able to slip into my pocket - is the key reason I bought it, even though I felt like a bit of a digital renegade.

And even though I still use my Tungsten to keep track of the minutiae of my life (albeit usually through my desktop, not my handheld), I've been finding that a good, old-fashioned combination - pencil and paper - is what I need in my life right now.

Why? A few reasons come to mind. One is that I wanted a portable calendar that flagged the big-ticket items in my life: swimming lessons, family functions, major deadlines. The bits and pieces of my fragmented day? All that stuff goes into the computer, where I can retrieve it when I need it.

Moreover, it's simply easier to scribble something down - story ideas, reminders to myself, a contact's phone number - with a pencil than tapping something electronically. A stylus can't compete with a pencil for ease of use … and don't even get me started about the askew fingers and misshapen thumbs of the Blackberry addicts out there.

Don't think for a moment I'm at risk of replacing my computer. I was surprised to realize that I use no less than 27 different programs on a daily or near-daily basis.

I also noticed four separate programs offer features intended to help me manage my affairs, with calendars, contacts lists and the like. Clearly, that tingling feeling I got years ago, when I played with my first Palm Pilot (I've been through three iterations), is a distant memory.

Here's another thing I learned recently, at my peril. Computers flunk out sometimes. A routine backup of some data failed, and my handheld came up blank - as did the main program on my computer. Fortunately, I had most of that data backed up at home, but it was still a lesson I'd rather not have learned.

So, here I am … back to basics. Each evening, I make a couple of notes in the book, and then tuck it away. I can guarantee that my wife's eyebrows have yet to rise, as they tend to do when its electronic cousin comes out to play.

Elsewhere this week

Hardly Famous
Did you know that Willie Nelson was a door-to-door salesman before he hit it big? That factoid - and loads of others about celebrities' (usually) humble beginnings - can be found here.

Zuula
Google is a daily habit for millions, but there are other ways of finding things. Zuula is one of them. Try it out to see if you come up with different sorts of results.

Twenty-Twenty
What will Canada be like in 2020? The Dominion Institute asked some bright lights - and the rest of us - to use their imagination.

John Gushue is a news writer for CBC.ca in St. John's. Site suggestions always welcome at surf at thetelegram.com.

At 22 quid, that's sooo punk rock!

Want to get that gob-smacked look o' 78? This one will set you back only 22 pounds.

Found here. More on my ongoing T-shirt search here.

Catch!

A statue from Brussels, with an underground bit of a joke. More unusual statuary collected here.

Daily Dot: Churchill's funeral

On Jan. 30, 1965, Winston Churchill was buried following a funeral service at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. The funeral procession was nothing less than a national event; the BBC installed 40 cameras to capture the procession as it wound throught city streets.

A thought on never having enough

"If all the rich men in the world divided up their money among themselves, there wouldn't be enough to go around."
- Christina Stead