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November 2007 Archives

November 1, 2007

Not shown: sexy but somewhat dopey physician sidekick

It’s that time of year again—time, that is, for the annual roundup of Halloween-themed NFL cheerleader costumes at SI.com. The usual staples are all there: sexy witch, sexy pirate, sexy nurse, sexy Sherlock Holmes…

...wait, what?

November 3, 2007

Good idea, bad audience

Big Dwight with little Dwight

Rob Cockerham, popular webmaster and semi-pro Halloween costume competitor, had a tough innings at the big game (the Zone Ball in San Francisco) this year. Start here to watch him build the larger-than-life Dwight Schrute Bobblehead. Go here to see more than a decade of past costumes.

November 7, 2007

Are you sitting comfortably?

To paraphrase Jean Chrétien, I’m no editor, but I would have put this item on the front page of the University of Alberta’s Gateway instead of burying it halfway down the police-blotter page:

On the morning of 26 October, a homemade motorized couch valued at over $1000 was stolen from the west exterior of a house on 87 Avenue and 110 Street. The motorized two-person love seat, powered by a lawnmower-style engine, was located two days later. There was substantial damage and some parts were stolen, but it should be fixable.

Despite its placement, the item attracted a pithy letter from a reader, reprinted here in its entirety:

What no one was thinking when they found out that fucking motorized couch was stolen: “OH NO!”

The response from the owner of the couch rates high indeed on the Unintentional Comedy Scale. If you ever find yourself writing the sentence “I feel that I must heartily disagree with the claim that no one cared about the theft of my motorized couch”, some re-evaluation of your life may be in order.

November 8, 2007

Time will run back

A roundup of recent punditry for your checklist:

My column for last Friday’s Post was a look at the many dimensions of the Saku Koivu/French language controversy, written with what some may find a surprising amount of sympathy for kooky shit-disturber Guy Bertrand. (Key question: if Quebeckers are so eager for the Montreal Canadiens to be competitive that they are willing to overlook their own starchy rules about language and culture, why isn’t the same attitude extended to companies that are also competing internationally for top talent and market share and creating far more real permanent jobs in the province?) I also have a bonus column in today’s edition about a strange moment in tech history that seems imminent: the personal computer, having sucked the functions of dozens of other media devices into itself like a black hole, is about to explode and belch those functions outward into a world of ubiquitous wireless connections and embedded processing power.

There’s more on the Post’s Full Comment site, where you can read speculation on the Blue Jays as a player in the A-Rod sweepstakes and see an example of egregious spin in Alberta’s controversy over oil royalties.

Keeper of the flame

At 107, Canada’s last living Great War veteran sounds and looks as though he’s incredibly good shape—good enough, certainly, to put a few more Remembrance Days behind him. And get a load of the 78-year-old trophy wife!

November 10, 2007

Tommy this, an' Tommy that

A column for Remembrance Day weekend.

November 11, 2007

Eddies [click image for larger version]

Photo of attractively curling cigarette smoke

November 16, 2007

Life imitates Chuck Palahniuk

Seriously, do not click on this link unless you have a strong stomach. There’s a reason the subhed on the interview is “Conclusive Proof That There Is No God and Humans Are Essentially Evil”.

Good old-fashioned agitprop

My Friday column for the Post is a contribution to a continuing series on capitalism and conservatism. It will be refreshing to those who don’t think I write about pure ideology enough. I’d also like to call attention to this unsigned editorial about the Vancouver airport taser incident, which is the product of the editorial process functioning at its best: I think literally everybody who was at the morning meeting had a hand in influencing it and pushing it beyond the pious clichés in other papers.

Katastrofala omslag

It’s Swedish for “catastrophic [album] covers”, and no one does catastrophic album covers like the Swedes. I’m prepared to pay top dollar, incidentally, for any MP3s of The Schytts.

November 18, 2007

Something I didn't know existed

A colour photo of a WW2 barrage balloon. (þ: Shorpy, a very cool vintage photo weblog)

November 19, 2007

Pretty sure it was actually 'grow a pair'

Monday’s Edmonton Journal contains a feature in which David Staples inquires into why and how the Edmonton Oilers seem to have built up the NHL’s strongest group of fan weblogs. The strength of wit and analysis in the “Oilogosphere” continues to be a mystery: while there are a half-dozen or more pretty amusing sites dedicated to the Oilers, the equally large and demographically similar Calgary fanbase can’t seem to add to its grand total of 0.5. Is this some bizarre accident of history or geography? Can it have anything to do with the example set by the lone “hard-nosed” trailblazer who laid the Oilogosphere’s foundations? We may never know.

November 20, 2007

Golden nuggets of history

Quietly taking place today at the University of Alberta: a celebration of the non-monsterized chicken.

November 25, 2007

Holy cow

I’ve spent much of the last four days receiving and half-reading confused, panicky e-mails from the IT people at the National Post. The upshot of most of the missives was that the NationalPost.com website was in the midst of a major transition, and that if I or anyone else were so unwise as to upload a weblog entry at the wrong moment, there would be nothing left but a smoldering crater where once stood the thriving suburb of Don Mills. I, of course, don’t have to be told twice not to do any work. Most of the time I don’t even need to be told once.

All the tinkering behind these e-mails has now paid off in an outstanding new look for the National Post website. Check out how classy my Friday column about the Iraq War looks with the new design: you’d almost think that guy knew was he was talking about!

November 28, 2007

Bonus midweek Coshery

A column about the tediousness and bogosity of those year-end poverty reports.

Michael Ondaatje is not impressed

Kate Beaton is a lady who makes very funny comic strips about historical figures, roommates, and being from the Maritimes. Important note: the drawings themselves are actually funny, which is rare, almost unprecedented, for a webcomic. Er… that is all.

Has hat, will travel

Matt Welch, the pioneering L.A. weblogger and erstwhile assistant editorial page editor of the Los Angeles Times, is switching coasts to take over as the new editor-in-chief of Reason magazine. Will he be investing in Nats season tickets? Stay tuned. The saturnine Nick Gillespie will leave aside his current magazine duties to assume full-time responsibilities as grand pooh-bah of Reason’s wildly successful website and the new online documentary/news enterprise Reason.tv.

Ratatouille... or just plain rat salad?

How can a set of hundred-year-old book illustrations be used to humiliate an entire cultural industry? Stephen Worth shows the way with a tirade which leaves behind the unsettling implication that modern animation audiences are settling for much less than they ought to demand.

About November 2007

This page contains all entries posted to ColbyCosh.com in November 2007. They are listed from oldest to newest.

October 2007 is the previous archive.

December 2007 is the next archive.

Many more can be found on the main index page or by looking through the archives.

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