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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-09-08, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2011. PAGE 5. Had a couple visiting us from Washington last week. Make that half a couple. The guy was charming, witty, interesting and eager to explore new places. His wife was wired. Almost literally. She’s an Investment Something-or-Other back in Washington and I don’t know why she wasted money on the trip because she never really left her office. First day, she plunked her laptop on the dining room table, flipped it open, turned it on…and seldom took her eyes off it for the next three days. S he was constantly ‘following the market’ or ‘wrangling e-mails’ or ‘checking eBay’. When she did manage to break free of the laptop’s hypnotic tractor beam she still wasn’t really in the room with us. Her eyes would wander and before long she’d lurch spasmodically, haul her BlackBerry out of her pocket and smile apologetically. “Getting an e- mail,” she would murmur. Then she would turn away from the table to peck out her response. She wasn’t being intentionally rude; she couldn’t help herself. There’s a viral contagion sweeping the globe and she’s got it bad. I wish Marshall McLuhan was still around – he’d encapsulate what’s going on in one gnomic epigram. What it looks like to me, is we are, all of us, being wired into one continuous, unblinking, earth-encircling electric circuit. Consider this: in 1815 it took weeks for news of the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo to reach the ears of the citizens of Edinburgh. Last month anyone with a smart phone anywhere in the world could track the London riots in real time Or consider this: a recent Angus Reid poll found that one out of five Canadians – 20 per cent of us – would turn down $1 million rather than lose our internet access. When I read that in the paper I found it so unbelievable I had to check it. Seems like it’s true. In a poll conducted online on May 23 and 24, 1,009 Canadians were asked the following question: “Would you rather receive $1 million and never use the internet again or would you prefer to keep the internet?” Twenty per cent of the respondents said they’d rather be online than be a millionaire. You don’t have to be a tech junkie to be affected by the seductive siren call of the internet. I don’t do Facebook or Twitter (does anyone aside from hospital patients in full body casts truly have time for that?) – but I get ‘way more e-mails than I need in my life – and I spend way too many hours dealing with them. There are only 24 hours in the day and if we’re spending more and more time online it means we’re spending less and less time doing something else. For some people it means less sleep; others lose out on sports and recreational activities. For me, it’s books. I am not reading nearly as many books as I used to. I want to. I still buy books and start them. Then they join the teetering stacks of unread or half-read tomes beside my bed. I just can’t concentrate as well as I used to. I can no longer, as literary critic David Ulin wrote “find within myself the quiet necessary to read.” I think it’s because I’m subconsciously waiting for the book to beep or ping or buzz or transport me to a related video link. I think I’m actually waiting for – expecting – a distraction that will titillate me, divert me, take me away from the grunt work of reading. Oh, I still ingest reams of data – blogs, YouTube videos, favourite websites and clever stuff my friends send me. Trouble is, it’s mostly crap, or at best, entertaining minutiae that won’t mean a thing two months from now. A good book is a three-course meal; an hour on the internet is like OD’ing on Granddad’s bacon rinds. A good book is the opposite of that. It’s the distillation of a premise or an idea or a flight of fancy that someone thought was worthy of preserving in a form that wouldn’t change for centuries. As Samuel Butler said, “The oldest books are just out to those who haven’t read them.” Don’t mistake me – I’m not dissing the internet. It’s revolutionary and it’s mind- blowing. Internet technology is the biggest thing to come along in my lifetime – so far. But when it comes to content, I’m not sure about the shelf life. Arthur Black Other Views Read any good e-mails lately? The night of Sept. 11, 2001, I was at a pool hall in Pickering called Joe’s with my friend Chris and he and I were seriously considering joining the armed forces. Chris and I barely played any pool that night as we drank and watched footage of two planes crashing into the World Trade Center towers. With those images replaying over and over again, we seriously contemplated our futures. News was still rolling in by the hour as survivors were being rescued and reaction from all over the world was pouring in. The image that always stayed with me from that day, and many others, were hundreds of Palestinians taking to the streets to celebrate the death of thousands of North Americans and an event that would change the world forever. How a group of people could celebrate the mass murder of innocent citizens they didn’t even know was a concept many people found very hard to grasp. For two young men on the cusp on entering their 20s whose only brush with war was the Gulf War on TV, it was difficult to understand that 19 hijackers and four planes had changed everything about the world around us. Many stories have been told about that day. There is the story about United flight 93 and how its passengers caught wind of what was happening in New York and stormed the cockpit of the hijacked plane, no doubt sparing more lives while taking their own as the plane made its way to Washington D.C. There are the stories of the first responders developing cancer after breathing noxious fumes for weeks and the missing person posters posted all over New York City in that day’s aftermath. In Canada, there is the story of Gander, Newfoundland where nearly 40 transatlantic flights destined for the United States were detoured. The city’s population nearly doubled due to 6,600 passengers and airline crew members, all of whom were taken in by locals until airspace was reopened several days later. What was eventually called Operation Yellow Ribbon saw Gander and its surrounding communities house, feed and care for thousands of strangers while asking for nothing in return. Two years after the attacks I travelled to New York and visited Ground Zero. It was after the remains of the towers had been cleaned up, but before development of the reflecting pools that now sit in the footprints of the towers had begun. It was jarring, to say the least, to look across a hole hundreds of feet deep and barely be able to see the other side. It gave me an idea of the level of destruction that happened there that day. At the time thousands of people made their way to Ground Zero each day to take pictures and see the destruction for themselves. Shortly after the attacks, of course, the War on Terror was officially launched. It is a war that continues today and to date has claimed the lives of over 150 Canadian soldiers and nearly 6,000 American soldiers. This campaign carries with it its own set of stories, several of them with local roots. The lasting effects for average North Americans, however, have been things like extended waits at airports and the loss of that ‘untouchable’ feeling, knowing that our way of life can change at any moment, and without warning. Just ask those suffering in the aftermath of the Aug. 21 tornado in Goderich. Several seconds can change the rest of your life and that’s exactly what the attacks of 9/11 showed rest of the world. A decade of change Recently, The Citizen had a front page picture that was to be ran with a caption making reference to Neo in the Wachowski brother’s – Andy and Larry – masterpiece, The Matrix trilogy. The movie asks one of the most outrageous “What if?” questions ever placed in a scenario. What if the world we see is a digital crea- tion, and all of us are in individual tubes being fed intravenously and living through our mind? What if we are held in these tubes for one reason; so the power our brain generates can be harnessed to power a race of super robots bent on the destruction of the few “rogue” humans left. What if there was only one person who could save us? Someone who could see the code behind the world we live and bend it. He could cheat. The editorial department decided, after a few blank stares to the references regarding scenes in which Keanu Reeve’s Neo says things along the lines of “I can dodge bullets?” and “There is no spoon”, to change the reference to something a little more vanilla, resulting in the photo being titled “Up in the air” on the cover of last week’s issue of The Citizen. I decided that, in an effort to have people better understand some of what I write, I have to show where I’m coming from. My early childhood was much like anyone else’s. However, once I found my mother’s collection of J.R.R. Tolkien books and started playing video games with fantastic stories, things began to change. I studied, as part of my Communications Degree, a lot of popular culture from different periods. It left me with the ability to appreciate older music (well, the studying, plus the Meat Loaf and AC/DC albums I had while growing up), older television shows and classic movies. So, if you want to always know what I’m referencing, here’s a brief primer on what I feel to be some of the most inspirational works out there (keep in mind, this is an editorial, this is all opinion. Feel free to respond and tell me why I’m wrong or what I missed, but remember, this is just what I feel). • Tolkien – J.R.R. Tolkien may be one of the most creative minds in literature. He crafted entire species, cultures, languages and a whole new world for his epics. Find his books and don’t be shocked when you realize there’s a heck of a lot more than The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. • Star Wars – Watch the original Star Wars trilogy. Then, play the Star Wars video games, then, read the expanded Star Wars universe novels. Do not watch the Star Wars prequels (Episodes I-III that were released recently). • The Matrix – As I stated previously, this amazing story is told with some of the most outstanding visuals I’ve ever seen. • The Lantern Corps – One of the few DC Comics properties I love. DC recently decided to reset all of its comic book lines; Superman, The Flash, The Justice League and, yes, The Green Lantern. It’s a great movie, but read them all, especially the Darkest Night and Brightest Day story arcs. • The Wheel of Time - Following in Tolkien’s footsteps, Robert Jordan created an entirely new world, entirely new races, entirely new languages and amazing stories that you basically need a character map to follow. Read it. • Final Fantasy - The first video game original on the list, the Final Fantasy series goes back decades to before I was born. Every few years a new Final Fantasy game is released, and there are dozens of them now (as each game seems to be released on at least three different gaming systems). Once upon a time I tried to explain to my mother, who is mostly to blame for my love of great stories, how amazing the plots were in the game. That has never changed. Except for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Avoid that one. • Halo – How to describe Halo? Well, Halo is another video game. It’s not stellar as far as graphics or gameplay is concerned but it does have a compelling storyline, one that will probably have me buying every incarnation of the game ever created. • Marvel Comics – I’ve never been a die- hard comic collector. I don’t think I could stand the waiting in between releases. That said, I will gladly put myself further in the poor house to buy collections of Marvel comics. The stories are rich, interconnected and mostly created by Stan Lee. Oh, and Iron Man, both the original and Robert Downey Jr.’s spot-on portrayal of him, will always be my favourite super hero. Probably because he’s not particular super strong, fast, or agile, but because he is super smart. • 80s Rock – I believe that covers that. • New Country Music – Enough said. • Stephen King novels – We all have our guilty little pleasures. I like most of King’s works, but I loved the Dark Tower Series. Get it, read it, and, take my word for it, don’t finish the last chapter of the last book. King suggests you stop reading, take his suggestion. • Dodgeball –Okay, I know this is a completely immature and asinine movie, unfortunately, I love it. Rip Torn is perfect in it and everyone else is hilarious. Also, any movie that has Ben Stiller getting hit in the face with a flying projectile is tops in my books. • Transformers – Original cartoons, movies, toys, it’s all good. • Ghostbusters – see the reasoning for Transformers. • Buddy Cop Movies –Lethal Weapon, Tango and Cash, Bad Boys, you name the buddy cop movie or anthology and I’ve pro- bably spent cumulative days enjoying them. The list can go on and, who knows, during a slow news week, it may again. However, this is a good place to stop, since I’m nearly out of room. Oh, and Han shot first. Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense Denny Scott Denny’s Den A primer to my brand of pop culture