Best of honeygarlic (and farewell)

So.

It's obvious that this blog's been on the downswing lately, with only one post in the past month-plus.

It's not that I don't have the time to blog anymore, it's that I don't have the motivation. I do a lot of writing during the day, and when I get home, I don't really want to write any more.

For the foreseeable future, honeygarlic.blogspot.com has come to an end after a nearly three-year run and 428 posts - an impressive average of one post every 2.5 days despite the 2010 death spell.

Thanks to all of you who read this, even when I told you you didn't have to (and even when I told you not to). I started this blog with the intention of improving my writing so that one day I could work in journalism, and now I work in journalism, so mission accomplished.

And a special thanks to Dan for being a great friend and the best co-blogger anyone could ask for, only breaking the blog through playing around with the layout one time.

To go out on a high note, I've compiled a list, arranged chronologically, of my favourite posts in honeygarlic history. Some made the list for the posts themselves, others for linking to something really cool or unusual, and others because I drew the ire of the Esperanto lobby in the comments.

(Side note: boo, the amazing 80s cell phone ad that included 'Even use on your boat!' has been taken offline.)

The worst book in the history of the world (9/11/07)
Dan's serial cereal adventures (10/27/07)
Wherein Dan accurately predicts the future in the comments section (10/31/07)
The first comic! (11/16/07)
It's 2010, and the mental image still makes me laugh. I'm a nerd. (11/24/07)
Dan liveblogs computer problems (12/9/07)
My life's greatest regret (2/15/08)
Java games! Funny Farm and ClickRed! (2/28/08)
One of those times when Dan probably got a little too personal (3/31/08)
Crazy dreams (5/3/08)
Best prank ever (5/24/08)
Swedish woman marries Berlin Wall (5/28/08)
The explosions of September 11...1908? (9/11/08)
Exercise! At a playground! What will they think of next?!? (9/15/08)
To be quite honest, this post was the entire reason I started using tags (11/15/08)
Of my random brain droppings, these were the most DayQuil-induced (12/10/08)
Playing tennis...against my house! (3/25/09)
Ryan's night in the emergency room (3/29/09)
The irony of said night of which I was unaware for nearly a month (4/25/09)
Somebody tries to access my e-mail, but not out of malice (5/21/09)
Our backyard is a jungle (5/31/09)
Things I don't miss about university (6/15/09)
Serge Gainsbourg will never go out of style (6/26/09)
The infamous Esperanto incident (10/27/09)
Why do/did I blog? (12/2/09)
Noway Time Hole Leak Plunges Northern Hemisphere Into Chaos (1/11/10)
I bet this looks dumb a few years down the road (2/2/10)
I'm not a jerk, and science says so (4/21/10)

--Ryan

What's new, pussycat?

(No, I did not get a cat. Like that's something I'd do.)

So it's been a couple weeks. I've moved into an apartment, marked the end of my first month of newspaper employment, and had Pizza Hut for the first time since 2003. Oh, and apparently I write for the Regina Leader-Post in my sleep or something. Seriously, it's weird that we'd suddenly go from no Ryan Flanagans (unless you count evil doppelgangers living in Ottawa) living interesting lives to two working as reporters on the Prairies.

Back in the K-Dub, Yappa Ding Ding is distraught over "Waterloo's burgeoning cub zone." While I think she might be a bit alarmist, I'll handily agree that Chainsaw is not a nice place and I've never heard anything about the Vault that would make me want to go there. I've always liked uptown Waterloo about a million times more than downtown Kitchener, and I think the reason for that is because Kitchener has all the clubs which are meant for people to go to in a large group (or with the intent of becoming a large group), then spill out into the street later in the night. Waterloo, by contrast, has all the pubs, where you go with a small group to have one drink (or many), but generally with the intent of not causing a ruckus.

A groom accidentally killed three wedding guests. I'm not going to spoil the story by saying anything else about it.

And I know I've posted clips of the dry, corny-yet-hilarious humour of Dan O'Toole and Jay Onrait on TSN before, but somebody has uploaded dozens of such clips recently, so here's another:



...and that's it, I'm afraid. A few things I've found on the Internet in the last couple weeks. Hopefully I'll be back before long with some original thoughts about something-or-other.

--Ryan

The journalist's secret

Since I'm still new to this world of full-time journalism, people back in Ontario occasionally check in with the Thompson Citizen to see what I'm writing about. In my parents' case, they read it every week. Which means they then want to talk to me about all the stuff I wrote for that paper.

Which is all well and good except for one little thing: I've forgotten most of it.

It's journalism's dirty little secret, and it's even more true here than it was at The Sputnik. By the time the newspaper comes out, the last thing any reporter wants to do is read it.

An example for you. Yesterday was Monday. By yesterday, I was already writing things and saving them with an August 4 publication date. I'll get them back from my editor mid-week, probably look at them a couple more times by the end of the week as I'm seeing how well the paper is filling up, and then read every single word again Tuesday morning when I'm proofreading.

So by the time the paper is dropped into my lap Wednesday morning, I've already seen the layouts of the pages, read every single article (multiple times if it's mine), and really have nothing left to be surprised at. My mind's already moved on to the next week, and when someone asks me about something in that day's paper, it feels like I'm reaching back into the distant past.

It was the same thing with The Sputnik - I knew what everybody was writing, I'd already read most of it, so I couldn't devour the paper the way I did before I started writing for it.

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While I'm revealing journalistic secrets, I might as well include a hat-tip to people who do so in a much better and much funnier fashion.

Stuff Journalists Like was first brought to my attention a few months ago, then I promptly forgot about it until my editor e-mailed me a link this morning. It is exactly what you'd expect - explanations of why journalists behave like the snobby, disheveled bastards we are.

Overheard in the Newsroom is journalism's answer to PostSecret, Texts from Last Night, and so forth.

Lastly, the new Google Image Search is striking, but I think ultimately awesome.

--Ryan

Hello, world!

I'm starting to settle down into the rhythm of the job, starting to get familiar with the town, starting to feel I don't need to introduce myself every time I make contact with somebody.

But one lingering question remains - what the heck do I say when I answer the phone?

At Chapters it was easy. "Good [morning/afternoon/evening], Chapters Kitchener, Ryan speaking, how can I help you?". Sometimes I'd leave off the first, third, or last parts because I felt it was too much to say at once. But it got the message across, and it worked, because most of the time, the caller was looking for help from whoever answered the phone. We were all interchangeable.

But now? If somebody calls me, it's because they're looking specifically for me. Or sometimes, the previous holder of my job. Or, on rare occasions, anybody at all (it doesn't help that the switchboard lists my title and extension *before* the news editor's).

So, if I give my name, it makes sense, because then people will know they dialed the right number. So I've used "Hello, Ryan speaking" and a simple "Ryan Flanagan" already.

A lot of people up here, even businesses, seem to just answer with a simple "Hello". So I've tried that.

Not really liking the habit of using my own name, I've also tried - keeping in mind that very rarely has a caller talked to somebody else and then been sent to me - "Thompson Citizen, Ryan speaking", and, for the ultimate in pretentiousness, "Thompson Citizen, news desk".

I still haven't found a greeting I'm comfortable with, though. Any suggestions?

--Ryan

First thoughts on Thompson

So, I've been in Thompson for two and a half weeks now. What do I think?

Well, it's still hard to say in some respects, but I've noticed a few things.

For one, the people are friendly. Very friendly. There are a few possible causes for this--strong Newfie ancestry, people not wanting to be on the bad side of a reporter--but I think the most likely culprit is that it's a transient town. Most people don't live their entire lives in Thompson--aside from the mayor, I'm not sure anybody has (40 years is the most I've heard, it's worth keeping in mind that the town was only created in 1956). You get people coming and going every few years, so reaching out to strangers is only natural because it's the only way you'll know people down the road.

Traffic is another huge difference. It's a smaller town, so of course there aren't as many cars on the road, and they're generally not going as fast as what I'm used to. It's already starting to feel weird to go above 50, really. I'm going to kill myself when I come home in December if I try to drive on the 401, or even the KW Expressway. Driving here isn't without its own set of challenges though--crosswalks are all over the places, and so are pedestrians, some of whom don't bother with the crosswalks. Maybe that's why everyone goes so slow, because they might need to suddenly slam on the brakes when somebody darts out in front of them.

Why are there so many pedestrians? Same reason there's so few cars--it's easy to walk almost anywhere in this city. Everything's so densely packed and was designed so that all retail/commercial would be in the same basic area, and it works great. I'm not sure anything in town is less than a five minute drive from where I work or where I live--maybe some of the more residential areas, but I won't be going out there too often.

The sunsets look beautiful, though they're late at night and there's always buildings in the way. Some weekend, once the sun starts setting at a more reasonable hour (I mean, I've never seen it dark here--I've woken up at 4:30 AM a few times, and it's already getting light out!), I plan to check out a sunset from a better location.

There's not a lot to do. The theatre only has one screen, there aren't any concerts, and I've been warned not to go to the bars (though I wouldn't without knowing anybody anyhow). Luckily I've got enough to do to keep me busy, but I think I'll get stir-crazy before winter hits.

And that is what I think of Thompson thus far.

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Here's a video where the creator went to far more work than the joke deserves. The effort makes it more enjoyable.



Also, Polkaroo is now on Twitter. Hurry, before you miss him!

--Ryan

Here comes the Sun

What to write, what to write, what to write...

...yeah, not anything about my life in Manitoba yet, sorry to those of you who were looking for that. Think I need to figure out what my life in Manitoba is before I can write about it.

So instead I'll talk about television. But not in the way I normally talk about television.

You may have heard about "Sun TV News". It's a new all-news network being proposed by Quebecor, owners of a successful French-Canadian media empire and the Sun newspapers, and fronted by former Conservative PR guy Kory Teneycke.

Because Quebecor is known for its right-wing populist leanings, and because Teneycke has openly mused about how Canada needs an equivalent to FOX News, many have jumped to the conclusion that Sun TV News will in fact be that equivalent. Don Newman, the longtime CBC political broadcaster, has done so, for one.

Now, Mr. Newman is a smart man and while I think he comes off as a little blustery and hyperbolic at times in that article, I do agree with his general point. It's okay for news to accidentally create different viewpoints or interpretations of stories, because most news stories do have two or more viewpoints. The problem is when something calls itself "news" and decides to always emphasize the same viewpoint based on ideological predisposition rather than truth value. Having a liberal news channel and a conservative news channel and a socialist news channel is not the good idea that Teneycke suggests it is, because it means that when people disagree on the news, they will be doing so because they understand the same story with three different sets of facts. If the news all comes from organizations striving to be objective without any ulterior motives, people will still disagree, but at least they'll all agree about what they're disagreeing on.

Thus far in the game, Sun TV News has not had a lot of defenders--and that's perhaps to be expected, as how many media types are going to defend somebody who is calling them obsolete? (Teneycke has stated, and if I'm paraphrasing it's not by much, that Canadians care more about the opening of a new Victoria's Secret store than they do about Parliament Hill, and that his network, unlike other Canadian news channels, will talk about what Canadians really want to know.) To me, that sounds like Teneycke is planning for his channel to be more focused on celebrity and water-cooler-du-jour topics--in which case, isn't that already what CP24 is doing?

Actually, when I think about it, there are a lot of parallels between CP24 and Sun TV News. Trying to be "hip" and "engaging" to win an audience, and using a cable news channel to supplement a broadcast station that practically nobody watches. (I mean, how many of you even knew there was a Sun TV station near the beginning of the dial before reading this sentence?) Not to mention that Sun TV News isn't exactly going to be full of household names...their "big hire" thus far has been David Akin, who is a solid journalist, but far from a known commodity outside those political circles Teneycke is claiming he wants no part of.

Really the only defense I've seen of Sun TV News, aside from those mounted by people involved with it in some capacity, came from, of all people, David Haskell (one of my more frequent professors during the past four years), published in a smattering of newspapers across the country. I'm not sure that I agree with the premise that there is a liberal bias in Canadian media to begin with (unless we're accepting the popular-in-Internet-arguments phrase "the truth has a liberal bias"), and even if there is I think it's less about ideology and more about storytelling. A couple years ago, CTV's Kitchener station ran a series of stories on a man who was laid off due to the recession, unable to find a job, and ultimately ended up homeless. The liberal story would be "this poor man! He didn't do anything wrong so he should get assistance and maybe we can help with that!". The conservative story would be "this man needs to claw his way back out of homelessness". It seems pretty obvious that the liberal story, as is almost always the case, is at least the more compelling.

Haskell does have one good point, though. There is generally a noticeable anti-organized religion bias in the mainstream media (Catholics, oddly, seem to get spun in a positive light more often than most other denominations even though their scandals get covered just as quickly). I'm just not so sure that the best way of fixing that bias is a conservative network (which would in turn be followed by a liberal network pushing the "normal" back in the CBC/CTV direction), especially when said network has never said anything about promoting organized religion.

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And for no good reason, some footage of downtown Brantford as it looked in 1992.



--Ryan

Playing catch-up and putting it on a big burger

So like I said, I haven't blogged for a while. But I have been bookmarking stuff to blog about, so let's have a gander at what's in that folder.

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There's a new world record for the world's biggest hamburger. An Australian chef spent over 24 hours cooking the 90kg monstrosity, pictured...in the article, as they don't allow hotlinking. Boo.

Nonetheless, this article fails to answer what I consider the most important question about the story--what happened to the burger? Did people eat it? I assume so, because it wouldn't last long in a museum and what's the point of cooking a burger if you don't want it eaten? But how did people eat it? Clearly you'd need one heck of a knife to cut something that big, but even then, how can you get single-serving portions that contain each ingredient?

Really, making the burger isn't that interesting. Great. You made a big hamburger. Ho hum. Now what are you going to do with it? That's the real question.

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I guess I could ask the same question about CTV buying the set from Friends.

Okay, great, you've got a television set. But what can you possibly do with it? It's not going to make you a lot of money, people aren't going to pay $50 to stand around and look at where a sitcom was filmed. And you can't really reuse it, because it's too steeped in mystique for any show (especially one that already has to live with the stigma of being Canadian) to use without evoking memories of "Hey, those guys are on the set from Friends!".

Gotta say, though, I love the little jab that CBC took at their rival in the report. "These guys have a bunch of new shows, but they're most excited about furniture! Aren't their screwed up priorities just adorable?".

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Finally, because I'm still on a New Pornographers kick, here's Alan Cross interviewing two of them (part one of a 20-minute interview):



--Ryan

Rising from the depths

You may have noticed that this blog has gone much longer than usual between updates, even by my normal summer standards.

That's because in the last few weeks, I've graduated university, found a job, and moved to Thompson, Manitoba, where I'm now a reporter/photographer for the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News. (I've also apparently become quite the lacrosse player.

In the extremely unlikely event that anybody reading this cares about the goings-on in Northern Manitoba, you can read my stuff from the paper at their website.

Originally, I was debating whether to keep this blog going after I started at the Citizen. If I'm going to spend all day writing, do I really want to do more of it when I get home? I've decided that the answer to that is yes: it's something to do, and things to do are in short supply at the moment. Plus I have an ever-growing list of things I want to share on here.

So, the blog's back. I don't know how often I'll be updating, it could turn out to be a lot, it could turn out to be barely more than I had been, but I'm not going anywhere.

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On June 15, before I skipped town, I had the enormous pleasure of seeing The New Pornographers in concert at Toronto's Sound Academy (that's Dan Bejar on the right).

It was a great show, full of excellent music and little downtime, marred only by an unenthusiastic crowd. (There seemed to be a prevailing atmosphere of "I know these songs, but I'm not used to other people knowing these songs, so I'll just stand here with my hands in my pockets.")

If this reserve bothered the band, though, they never let it show. "Sing Me Spanish Techno" led off a high-octane set of four songs without even a second's pause, and the band played for nearly two hours without any sort of intermission--the music was stopped occasionally for some banter, but even that was enjoyable.

The songs played were a great mix from all of the band's five albums, and pulling "Execution Day" out of mothballs was quite the surprise, as it is almost never played live. Might not have quite satisfied the fans who kept asking for "something obscure" and generally trying to show off their knowledge of the band, but it was a lively little song that they should really play more often.

The biggest reactions were generally reserved for songs from the Challengers album, which surprised me a bit as many consider it the weak point of their discography. But it did come at the zenith of their popularity, so perhaps Challengers was the first "new" album for a lot of those in attendance (as it was for me), and thus a stronger emotional attachment. Conversely, "The Bleeding Heart Show", once a crowd favourite, seemed to float over the heads of much of the audience.

A three-song encore concluded with "Testament To Youth In Verse", in which the crowd was led through the chorus--providing a neat effect which is rather unusual for The New Pornographers.

--Ryan