Archive for January, 2008

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

BTW, for all you peeps who listened to Z95 “back in the day,” that’s JoJo Nickolls (tall funky guy with good hair) showing Bourdain the games.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?.

This is quite possibly one of the most beautiful stretch of days we’ve had in months.

I LOVE Vancouver this time of year. Icing sugar coats the mountains, sun streams in through the trees and your cheeks are rosy with the biting cold.

About 4 blocks from our house is Lynn Creek. It has a large off leash dog park with a beautiful 3km trail running up one side and down the other. We love to take Zizou there for walks. He checks out the puppies for the first half, and sleeps for the second.

The tv commercials proclaim BC as “The Best Place on Earth,” today I’d have to agree.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?.

Does anyone have a list of signs of the Apocalypse?

Is Britney back dating her paparazzo, Heath Ledger burning in hell and a stock market crash on that list?

It’s all happening. Let’s go through them back to front.

STOCKS

The stock market is taking a HUGE header this morning. Unless you’re near retirement, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. If you’re at least 10 years away from retiring, don’t sweat it. Just treat everything as if it’s on sale. It’s a chance to dollar cost average.

I get caught up in micromanaging my retirement portfolio, especially the 6 shares of AAPL I bought back in September for $138. I thought I was a Mad Money Man in December when it 200 and analysts were forecasting 300 for a high. “w00t!” Today, the stock is trading at under $137.

What happened? America just woke up and realized George Bush has been writing war checks his country can’t cash for the past 8 years. It has nothing to do with the turtlenecked one, and everything to do with crazy paranoia. But I’ve got 25 years left of clock punching, so I will BUY, not SELL, and look forward to the future.

HEATH in HELL

I admit it. I do not like organized religion. It may work for you, that’s great, I think a sense of spirituality is an important thing to have, but the blind trust that many put into the doctrines of religion really bothers me. Especially when those who do wave the flag of their belief in bold faced hate against others. Angry, nasty hatred.

Christopher Hitchens has a great read, God is Not Great, it deconstructs most religions for contradictory beliefs, perpetual corruption and the solitary source of all that is wrong in the world. Religion is supposed to be the great unifying force of peace, yet it is under a mandate from ‘god’ that most wars are waged.

Heath Ledger died yesterday. Allegedly of an overdose of drugs. While I may not be a fan of those who abuse drugs - I am not going to issue a press release condemning him to hell because he starred in Brokeback Mountain.

The Westboro Baptist Church issued a press release today, filled with crap like this:

WBC will picket this pervert’s funeral, in religious protest and warning. Heath Ledger is now in Hell and will begin serving his eternal sentence there. [source]

Yes, this is a rogue organization that routinely pulls these stunts, but they do it with Biblical quotes, on the letterhead of a “Church.”

BRIT BRIT

Oh, and Britney is back dating her papi, Adnan Ghalib. They broke up, he “sold” his story to ET for a series of weeklong interviews, and now they’re already back together and tearing things up.

Last night they sideswiped a motorcycle.

The end is near friends, the horesemen cometh.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?.

Welcome to another beautiful day, here's what's up on air:

    - Heath Ledger has died.  You'll get one more chance to see him on screen, his role as The Joker in Batman: The Dark Knight  for this summer has already been completed.

    - Oh yeah, the Oscar nominations came down today.  On my "gotta see it now" list: La Vie En Rose, Juno, There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men.

    - So know that we know what to see, who wants a 2 for 1 Movie Coupon??

    - Something I do believe: Britney is tipping off the paparazzi.
    - Something I don't believe: Adnan Ghalib did his interview with ET for free.

    - La Senza is recalling some lingerie because it's made with lead paint flammable! Still, don't lick the lingerie!

    - Did you lose your glove? Find it here.

    - Louis Vuitton has adjusted their color palette. No more brown, it's all about graphite/black.  Alert your favourite knock off addicts.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

Jerry O’Connell, aka Mr Rebecca Romijn, takes a shot at Tom Cruise’s crazy Scientology video.

It’s on FunnyOrDie, the site that brought us Will Ferrell’s crazy landlord last summer.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

So is Heath Ledger.

Actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday at a downtown Manhattan residence in what authorities say is a possible drug-related death, the NYPD said. He was 28. [source]

Yes, I always get my drug overdose celebrity death news from the Wall Street Journal.

If you want a more celeb focussed approach, check out Pop Crunch.

It’s a tragic death that will be milked for the rest of the week on ET and happened in enough time to kick Britney off the cover of the weekend tabloids.

Facebook and blogs are covered with laments already. Personally, I think it’s Darwin at his finest.. drugs kill, mess with a bull and the horns will get you .. but that’s not my concern…

How did you find out about this news? Surfing on a website? Email alert? Facebook status update? Text message? Twitter? A friend told you? The radio?

Or will you read about it for the first time in a newspaper tomorrow.

This is a world where when news breaks, it breaks fast. I found out from a friend who just heard Sarah Bartok mention it on 95Crave. When I logged in to Twitter, it was all over the tweets.

So how did you find out? Did the internets win this war of breaking news, or did word of mouth get to you first?

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

Back at it in the glorious sunshine for a new week!

    - Today is Blue Monday, statistically calculated as the worst day of the year. 

    - It's also Black Monday as global stocks took a HUGE header.  Sucks if you're near retirement, if you're young just look at is as all the stocks are on sale, and it's a chance to stock up! You know, like a BOGO event at Payless.

    - Yes, it was a wild weekend in the TDot for CBC's Test the Nation.  Team Blogger won it, and I've been blogging all about it.

    - In the US, it's Martin Luther King Jr Day.  It's not our holiday, but it's still a great chance to stop and reflect on the message.

    - America seems to think they're over it, but the more they focus on race and gender, it proves they're really nowhere close, are they?

    - I warned you last week not to sit too close to watch Cloverfield!

    - Meg Fowler may be single, but she prefers football to dating.

    - If you prefer dating to football, check out Cravin Misbehavin - cheap tickets on sale tomorrow. I'm giving away tix all week if you know your candy trivia, the theme this year is Candyland!

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

It’s the most important day of the year.

America likes to think that with Obama and Hillary running for the White House they’ve overcome and realized Dr King’s dream. With stories like this, I dunno.

Dr King’s dream will be realized when you no longer have to ask those questions. When you accept that a black man can be as successful as a white woman.

When they are EQUAL, and not debatable, then freedom will ring. We may be close, but we’re not there yet.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?

I spew many many many ideas, comments, theories and opinions on this site. They’re all conveniently tagged “bitching” for you to easily peruse.

Many of the things I talk about get picked up later by someone else and explained much more clearly, and less vehemently than my original post.

It happened with my discussion on AdSense becoming invisible, and today it happened with digital media.

Seth Godin writes:

Blockbuster buys DVDs for $15 or $20 (probably a lot less in volume, but I have no clue what the real number is)…
Blockbuster then rents them out 30 or 40 or more times each, meaning each rental costs Blockbuster fifty cents. Not to mention rent, surly clerks, cost of capital, advertising, etc.
In the case of online rentals, all of these intermediate costs immediately disappear. Gone.
So, why try to mimic the current model when it comes to pricing if the costs are mostly gone?[source]

Compare that with what I wrote 2 weeks ago.

..with digital sales rising, the books should really be balanced because of the decreased costs in manufacturing and transporting music that’s digital. All you have to do is upload a song once and you’re done. You don’t have to burn cd’s, print artwork or stuff jewel boxes, all you do is throw the song on a server and cash the cheques. [source]

Seth’s words are more properly, concisely and persuasively phrased than mine, but you can see the ideas are the same.

Did Seth steal my idea? No. He just explained it better. Comme toujours.

The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?