SteveCastellano.com

got comped to the artist’s gala opening of the new AGO tonight. a+++ would visit again. you’re probably not supposed to take pictures of the art.

…on the History Channel. It’s their answer to Shark Week, I suppose. I’ve still managed to avoid both the movie and the book, though I did accidentally read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, one of whose co-authors appears, dressed like D-Day from Animal House, in this evening’s greasily compelling conjectumentary Beyond the da Vinci Code. So while I figure out how to create a podcast with my DAW looking like this, I’ll leave you with the brilliant Andrew Maxwell’s review of Dan Brown’s bafflingly popular tome.

The most puzzling thing about this ad is how someone who posesses enough unstupid to be able to successfully post an ad on kijiji doesn’t know how to spell “guitar”, in spite of owning one. Do I know where you can buy a guiter tuner? Aside from a MUSEC STORE, no, I’m effin’ stumped. Though it’s nice to see you’re keeping your options open with respect to digital vs. analog – I gather you’re willing to consider a $10 analogue stroboscopic tuner, or perhaps a tuning fork?

Hooray! Someone at Rogers read my comment form submission!

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May I, just this once, out loud, say, to product marketing managers everywhere, particularly those responsible for marketing the Swiffer, in words that paraphrase David Milch, by way of Brad Dourif as Doc Cochran:

What earthly use is my protracted suffering to you?

Why did you feel the need to concoct the ponderous Five Signs of Clean, and then put them on display in such an insidious fashion that I might not discover them until they were on a shelf in my home? In my home, where my wife sleeps, and my cats play with their toys?

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. There may be vast, untapped capital sitting amongst the lint in the pockets of people who are too stunned to know when something is clean. Or maybe it is a sincere, altruistic attempt to educate people who live in filth, so that they are not shocked into cardiac arrest when they find themselves in an environment that is not caked in grime. Well, in that case, I’ll happily climb aboard that parade float and spread the good word. For those who are not lucky enough to have Swiffer wet refills under the sink at home, or have not yet realised that they can click the above image for a closer look, the Five Signs of Clean are, in order: See, Smell, Touch, Shine, and, wait for it, Trap & Toss.

And there we have not only a valuable lesson in household hygiene but also the most baffling use of bullets in advertising since Crest promised that their Pro-Health Toothpase protects against whitening.

If you didn’t have a stylist you should probably still tell people you did.

I just saw your work in the new indigo community ad, and two things occurred to me almost immediately: 1) oh yeah he’s the roots guy; and b) wow if you wear too much roots stuff all at once you risk looking like a real knob.

By comparison, Dan Aykroyd comes across as avuncular as ever, and while Ben Mulroney’s picture is not all that funny on its own (he’s shown holding his father’s autobiography), it becomes truly amusing when you get to the indigo site and find out that Bret “the Hitman” Hart is reading Bill Clinton’s.

This week in national news, a remarkably decent Steven Harper meets officially with the Dalai Lama. China stamps feet, threatens sanctions, leaving hungry Canadian children wondering where their next meal of lead-based paint will come from. In related news, the Canadian government plans to respond to China’s well-documented record of human rights abuses by sending a delegation in 2008 to run around in striped shorts.

There are a lot of raccoons in my neighbourhood.

Well, duh. This is Toronto. Everyone has a raccoon story. I have two good ones, both of which involve raccoons sneaking into the house to eat cat food. Both stories conclude without incident.

Last night I overheard an animated conversation across the street. This is not unusual, as the people across the street seem incapable of conversing at any decibel level below full-out holler. Usually I just close the door, but as I was changing the front porch light bulb this time, I was around long enough to get the gist of the conversation, and to realize that it was more of a diatribe than a discussion. And the person who was holding court was on a bicycle.

Let me say this first. I have a bicycle, and so does my wife. I should ride my bicycle more, and this city, and western civilization in general, would be better off if everyone did. But the bicycle is, unfortunately, the vehicle of choice for self-righteous gasbags. Think about it.

This guy was going on about how people are dangerously, nay potentially fatally, complacent about raccoons. “People even give them water,” I heard him say. “Look, this guy won’t even come out from under there.” He stomped on the porch steps behind which one had just disappeared. “They’re wild animals. People just don’t get it.”

The folks across the street seemed to be listening intently to the impromptu lecture, and managed to stop yelling at each other long enough for me to hear what someone else was saying. He was on a bike after all. He must be some kind of goddamned expert on nature.

I watched him ride off down the street, and I watched the raccoons descend from my neighbour’s tree – and extricate themselves from under the porch – in his wake. I wasn’t too concerned for their safety. But it got me thinking about how often the person you’re too polite to tell to shut the hell up concludes the interaction by riding away on a bicycle.

People who repair bicycles, in particular, like to give you the impression that they possess some kind of rare and arcane knowledge about the intricate workings of these fantastical machines. I was with my wife when she purchased a new seat for her bike recently. It was an impulse purchase made on a Saturday, and when my wife asked if they could install it for her there at the shop, there was a lot of hemming and hawing about how long it would take. Fair enough. Busy day, Saturday, great weather. I asked if it would be difficult for me to install myself.

“Not if you have the right tools,” the bike guy replied.

“What kind of tools do you need?” I asked.

“An allen key.”

“I have allen keys,” I said, brightly.

“Yeah, you probably don’t have the right kind. It’s not a standard size. If you use the wrong size you’ll just destroy it, and you’ll have to come back here anyway, and it will end up costing you more.”

So there it was, obvious to those in the know, heretofore a mystery to me. It is only possible for someone who possesses the secret knowledge of the bike repair guy to attach a seat to a metal tube. The masons can’t do it. Don’t bother calling Opus Dei. Just try not to be a complete idiot and leave it to the bike guy.

This is known as “gatekeeper” behaviour, examples of which you may find in the person who holds the key to the supply room at your place of business, counter staff at your trendier downtown diners and bakeries, and developers: poorly socialized brats and bullies who, upon discovering that you require access to their specialized area of expertise in order to get on with your day, use that fact to fuck with you and establish their superiority. Seen Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome? This is Master Blaster syndrome. If you’re a Simpsons fan, we’re talking about the Comic Book Guy.

Obviously, I’m as powerless to stop this kind of behaviour as you are, and that, in a nutshell, is why it persists. There will always be someone who knows more than I do in any given field who is willing to use that knowledge to be a dick rather than for the greater good. But I’m trying to be more Zen about it. So to you I say, there is no information of dire importance here. You’ll be fine if you ignore everything you see on this site. The sun will come up tomorrow if you don’t add me to your RSS aggregator.

When confronted with a gatekeeper, polite indifference is your best bet. Here are some sample lines you can try:

• “I just bought this bike ’cause it was on sale. If you get a good one someone with a bic pen and a meth habit will just steal it.”
• “That’s a lovely top you’re wearing. So, like I said, I could really use some stickies.”
• “I don’t use the internet much. If I can’t scribble it in my Moleskine it’s probably not worth remembering. Plus there’s always the library. And TV.”

Default screen saver: RSS Visualizer.

And do I care what is feeding it? Not really. It’s a screen saver. It runs when I’m not around. So I leave it on the default, which is Apple Hot News. And once in a while, out of the corner of my eye, I see something interesting, and then it all seems kind of worthwhile. I think at one point I had O’Reilly’s MacDevCenter feed running but it was a little too interesting. And I spent too much time staring at my screen saver. Until I realized hey, I’m staring at a screen saver, at which point I nudged my mouse and just went to the O’Reilly site instead.

So, to recap: RSS Visualizer with Apple Hot News, just interesting enough.

Until now, as it seems to have turned my MacBook into an all-day commercial for the iPhone.

I’m sure the iPhone is a fine thing if you like that sort of thing. And I’m an early adopter, a gear pig if you will, so I understand why it is generating a lot of excitement. But I don’t need one. I have a phone. And to be quite honest, I spend enough time on the internet and listening to tunes and sitting in front of Apple products already. I’m not looking for ways to fill those few remaining internet-free moments noodling around with wireless data devices. Hell, I don’t even have an iPod. And someday I plan to read a book.

Anyway, you can’t get them in Canada yet, and when you do the data charges will break you, mostly because Ted Rogers is a tit.

So Apple, unless you’re ready to start putting Hot News back into the Hot News RSS feed, maybe you could re-name it Hot iPhone Marketing, and I’ll be over at the O’Reilly MacDevCenter if you need me. Because Guy who stood in line for 8 days to buy iPhone says It’s the coolest thing ever is neither hot nor news.