Cult

What You Didn't Know About Scientology
by Mark Owen

Dueling Reviews

On "Magnificent City" by Aceyalone Accompanied by RJD2 [Project Blowed/Decon; 2006]

"Aceyalone's most accomplished album...[he] hasn't felt this vital in ages, and RJD2's creative winning streak continues unabated." - Nathan Rabin (A.V. Club)

"This should be great...[it's] lazy and inept, devoid of force and inspiration and chemistry...We deserve better from these guys." - Tom Breihan (Pitchfork)

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #169 (Feb 20, 2006)
Stormy weather, pond hockey and square footage.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #168 (Feb 13, 2006)
New ministers, paclitaxel production problems and driving yourself to emergency.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Link of the week

Report your Saint John crime in Chinese

Comedy

San Francisco Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman interviews Stephen Colbert (4 parts) | Chronicle Podcasts

Unfrying Things

ThinkFilm has acquired all worldwide rights to "Strangers With Candy."

"At this important stage of our company's development, we were looking for a film that combined all of the best qualities of 'Crash,' 'Brokeback Mountain,' and 'Capote.' "'Strangers with Candy' has ethnic slurs, clandestine gay sex, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. What more could we want?" said THINKFilm's head of U.S. theatrical, Mark Urman | IndieWire

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #167 (Feb 6, 2005)
Documenting a trade mission, Nigerian bank scams and focusing on small houses.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #166 (Jan 30, 2005)
McKenna for leader, ice-o-lation and the new crystal methodology.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Stuff

The Pitty Card (dir. Bob Odenkirk) | Sundance

Jed's Other Poem (Beautiful Ground) | Grandaddy

DVD

Wholphin DVD

Event

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #165 (Jan 23, 2005)
Co-op closures, plunger attack and votes for sale.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Meetings

Meetings considered harmful | Signal vs. Noise

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #164 (Jan 16, 2005)
Manure management, historic Barrington and reserved restaurants.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #163 (Jan 10, 2005)
Dusty hospital machinery, whale bones and video game violence.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

The Paper

Flying Cow fined $239k | The Herald

Local Media Watch

Plagiarist suspended from Halifax Chronicle Herald | Regret The Error

Program Bits & Bobs

The tools we use to run and build 37signals | Signal vs. Noise

Startup kit | Nick Denton

Running your company on web apps | Evhead

Favorite Macintosh OSX Applications | matt.makalumedia.com

Essential Mac OS X Applications | Mac Specialist

Geek to Live | Lifehacker

Demo Gods

"I certainly know better than to try to re-record or recreate things that sound cool. Record companies used to do demos, and that's something Mike and I always fought against early in our career. When something sounds great, it's done. You don't want to go back and re-record something that sounds great. The way we recorded with computers in our history, the quality was always good enough. You don't want to repeat golden moments. We always felt like 'We don't do demos, we only do finished product." - John King of the Dust Brothers (Sound on Sound)

The Future

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): "We live in a world with too much music," writes Joe Nickell at Missoulian.com. He's bothered by the fact that everywhere he goes, there are tunes pouring from cell phones and mp3 players and TVs and radios and live bands. As far as you're concerned, though, Nickell is utterly off-base. In 2006, you should take advantage of the profusion; you should immerse yourself in music more than you ever have before. To do so will be instrumental in helping you accomplish your top assignment in the coming months, which is to feel deep, rich, interesting emotions as often as possible. (courtesy Free Will Astrology)

Canadian Innovation

Designer invents winter snow skirt | CBC

Books

"Thanks to Oprah Winfrey, author James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" has sat atop best-seller lists since the TV star picked the nonfiction memoir for her powerful book club four months ago. Winfrey has called Frey's book, which chronicles his years as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal, "gut-wrenching" and "so real." Well, not exactly. A six-week investigation has determined that Frey's blockbuster is filled with fabrications, falsehoods, and other fakery. In a related note, a "rattled" Frey has lawyered up and is threatening to sue us for millions." Details at The Smoking Gun.

Event

"Also on tonight, Gus’s Pub has one of the quirkiest lineups in recent memory, with The Jeff Coll Five (with members of Windom Earle, Death by Nostalgia and Stiff Kitty/Catholic Gaydar), Ceti Alpha (named after the planet that Captain Kirk stranded Khan on) and street poet Jack MacDonald backed by Dartmouth’s Hotel Faces.

As an added bonus, the show will also feature special guest speaker Mark Black delivering an illustrated talk about . . . well, what it’s about is anybody’s guess but it’ll likely touch on growing up in Cape Breton, major league baseball and Star Trek (which is why I know what Ceti Alpha is)." - Stephen Cooke (Chronicle Herald)

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #162 (Jan 3, 2005)
Civic bribes, volleyball courting and hypnotism for the holidays.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

Film

'This Film is Not Yet Rated' given NC-17 Rating | Yahoo! Finance

Film

Movie report card : Palermo Ranks 2005 movies | The Coast

News

Yearly Review | Harpers

Recipe

1 bag of party mix + 1 bag of all dressed chips = a bowl of indecisive mix

News

100 things we didn't know this time last year | BBC NEWS

Lists

The Ten Best Top-Ten Lists | AlterNet

Video

Top 50 Music Videos Of 2005 | DoCopenhagen

Hobbies

rednecksurfing.wmv | Google Video

Neighbourly Love

"Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York...Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he's nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada...Canada is essentially a stalker, stalking the United States, right? Canada has little pictures of us in its bedroom, right? ... It's unrequited love between Canada and the United States. We, meanwhile, don't even know Canada's name. We pay no attention at all." - MSNBC host Tucker Carlson | The Chronicle Herald

Award Winning

It's official. Holly Dazed won first prize in AFCOOP's Super 8 Holiday Party and Screening at the Seahorse tonight! More importantly, it was magically in focus. There was tough competition from filmmakers Megan Wennberg ("Tis The Season"), Cam Erais ("A Shitty Christmas"), Jamieson ("Agoraphobia"), Joel MacGregor ("Fortune Cookie"), Steven James May ("Memoria"), Josh Edmonds ("How To Make a Halfassed Super 8 Christmas Film") and Ron McDougall ("Duet"), but we pulled ahead of the pack and got to take home an autographed copy of Mr. December from the AFCOOP nudie calendar. Plus, we didn't even stack the audience. Now, to find the best (cheapest?) way to get the film onto DVD for future generations.

Update: Scott taped the screening on video last night and added the chipmunk effect. Holly Dazed is now available in QuickTime format. Here is a bit of publicity from The Coast.

'Tis The Season For Virtual Greetings

Me Want Book

The CKDU Top 10 of 2005

01 -- Dog Day* -- Thank You -- Out Of Touch -- L*
02 -- B.A. Johnston* -- My Heart Is A Blinking Nintendo -- Just Friends -- L*
03 -- The Burdocks* -- What We Do Is Secret -- Black Mountain -- L*
04 -- Alpha Flight* -- Battle Royale -- Independent -- L*
05 -- Special Noise -- Special Noise -- Out of Touch/Youth Club -- L*
06 -- Wintersleep* -- Wintersleep -- Dependent Music -- L*
07 -- Windom Earle All Stars* -- A Series Of Minor Personal Tragedies -- Independent -- L*
08 -- Holy Shroud* --Ghost Repeaters-- Level Plane -- L*
09 -- The Stolen Minks* -- The Stolen Minks -- Independent -- L*
10 -- Broken Social Scene* -- Broken Social Scene + EP -- Arts & Crafts

from CKDU's Top 100 of 2005 (Discussion)

Music

Belle & Sebastian "Another Sunny Day"

Think

The 5th Annual Year in Ideas | New York Times

Happy Holidays

List to End all Lists

Lists: 2005 | Fimoculous.com

Radio

"An in depth portrait of John Lennon, told through the original audio of Jann Wenner's seminal 1970 New York interview with Lennon for Rolling Stone magazine. The most famous interview Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner ever did was an extensive interrogation, on tape, of Lennon shortly after the Beatles had broken up." - BBC Radio 4

Work

"Encourage creativity. Google engineers can spend up to 20 percent of their time on a project of their choice. There is, of course, an approval process and some oversight, but basically we want to allow creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can post ideas ranging from parking procedures to the next killer app. The software allows for everyone to comment on and rate ideas, permitting the best ideas to percolate to the top." - Google: Ten Golden Rules | Newsweek

Column

Atlantic News Perspective #161 (Dec 5, 2005)
Nunatsiavut, Oxford's Christmas Season and an unofficial Stompin' Tom figurine.
By: Iain K. MacLeod

It's a Wrap!

Production wrapped on the no-budget, 3 minute short Super 8 film Holly Dazed. As co-producer, camera-person, light supplier and part of the creative team, I would like to thank the rest of the cast (Sam, Scott, Amanda and Markus) and crew (Lynn, Steve and Glen's mom's sweater) for all their hard work and dedication on the project. Also the various locations (Alantic Film Festival, Profac, CBC Radio Canada, Chadwick Foods, Kick Ass Shoes, Nubody's and the Park Lane Parking Garage) that put up with our shenanigans. A big fat "no thank you" to Alexandra's Pizza for taking about two hours to deliver two medium pizzas. Another shout out to Amy at The Maxwell's Plum for serving us during our impromptu wrap party event, about 5 hours after we began shooting. The film was produced for the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative's annual Super 8 Holiday Party and Screening taking place on December 15, 2005 at the Seahorse Tavern (9 PM). Fingers crossed...I just hope it is in focus. And there was enough light. And it is funny. And why didn't I take any pictures? Damn.

Economics

Treasure Chest

Dead Letter Office

An Open Letter to Larry The Cable Guy by David Cross

David Cross vs. Nardwuar

Yawn

Satellite Radio On The Air in Canada...about two decades too late, I think.

Sweet Zombie Jesus!

"If you’re a member of the long-suffering Christian majority, have you been cowed into feeling guilty about this special time of year?" - Political correctness a blight on society | Halifax Herald

"What happened to this country. It was founded on Christianity. And you may talk about the bylaw – but what about the B-I-B-L-E? What about some righteousness, what about some holiness?" - Proposed adult entertainment club sparks lively debate | Halifax Herald