The Trojan Prince: A Short Story Review

Tessa Hadley lives in Cardiff, Wales, and teaches literature and creative writing at Bath Spa University.  Her first novel, Accidents in the Home, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. 

She wrote a fiction short story featured in the New Yorker Nov 15, 2010 edition, called The Trojan Prince.
 
The story is about a 16 year old boy named James McIlvanney in a 1920 setting; just missing the First World War. He is infatuated with a girl named Ellen Pearson, who is really his second cousin. But marriage wasn't on his to do list, and thought he may be going away to sea shortly anyway. His floundering over Ellen is interrupted throughout by Connie Chappell, one of Ellen's close friends. The plot goes forward at a fairly slow pace, little suspense, but used very descriptive scenes to help the reader along with James pondering over Ellen and whether or not he'd be happy in marriage with her, or if he should follow his urge to go out to sea.
 
This piece was well written, using great examples of dialogue, point of view, and characterization. However the story seemed bogged down with a slow pace, and only the descriptive writing style kept me intrigued. By the end of the story I did find myself somewhat attached to the characters, the main character James in particular, but was squandered by an ending I questioned of being believable.
 
But overall I enjoyed reading this story and look forward to reading another from Tessa Hadley in the near future.

iPad? Meet the BlackBerry PlayBook

You’ve seen it, maybe even played around on it while you were at the mall.  You might have heard it is ‘magical’, or ‘revolutionary’, even.  If apple is using the word magical to describe its products…it’s not magic it’s ‘technology’, and it’s not revolutionary.. it is unique in that it is the first tablet to be released.  Yes, the apple iPad. I’ve have one for the past few months now, and I’m very happy with it.  I’m planning on doing a comprehensive review of the iPad soon.  But this blog isn’t about that… this is more of a competition.. ya.  People like competition. There are many new slates or tablets (whatever you want to call them) on the way, such as the BlackBerry PlayBook.  Im not gonna pull up the exact specs for you, but I’ll give you the link to em.

http://us.blackberry.com/playbook-tablet/

Upside: it runs flash…iPad does not.   Which means you cant view a lot of content on the web on the iPad…. L But the iPad has all of the apps in the App store and is always growing and now has around 200,000 in total.  That’s a huge advantage, cause if there are no good apps for it, then what’s the point?  Apps ‘are’ the device, it’s because of that, I bought the iPad when I did; because it is miles ahead of other tablet devices I’ve seen in the works thus far.  Can the PlayBook do better?  It has vastly superior hardware, so it has the potential.  We’ll just have to wait and see.. Here’s a prediction though: by 2015, everyone’s gonna have a tablet, or slate, of some sort. It’s gonna catch on once prices drop and there’s more competition in the market.  But here’s the kicker: I was one of the first :p

Beausejour Rememberance Day

Residents of Beausejour and the surrounding area attended the Rememberance Day ceromony held at the Brokenhead Recreational Complex in Beausejour on Nov. 11, to pay their respects to those who lent their service for Canada.  The Remembrance Day ceremony began with the Edward Schreyer School orchestra playing their string instruments, followed by the presentation of colours, and the Canadian national anthem sang by Bonnie Stefanson and her sister Debbie Rattai.

The lights dimmed as everyone in the nearly full complex bowed their heads for the Lord’s Prayer read by Padre Melody A. McKellar, and then were asked to sing along with the school band to the hymn: O God Our Help in Ages Past.  

Padre McKellar read the Prayer of Remembrance, followed by the Master of Ceremonies Judy Trefy who read the names of servicemen who made the supreme sacrifice from the Beausejour and Brokenhead District.  Comrade Walter Zillman said a few choice words: “They shall not grow old, as we who are left grow old.  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.  At the going down of the sun and in the morning:  We will remember them.” 

Then Reverend John Robertson of St. Paul’s United Church took the stand, and prayed for those who sacrificed so much for us to live the lives we do today. 

In attendance were: Reeve of the RM of Brokenhed, Glen Dudeck; Lac du Bonnet MLA, Gerald Hawranik; and the Mayor of Beausejour, Brad Saluk, who paid their respects to the veterans. 

Comrade McKellar recited the poem In Flanders Fields, which was followed by the laying of the wreaths by members of the community as they were escorted by RCAC Cadet Squadron 249.

The ceremony was closed once Branch 132 President Chuck Trefry said his closing remarks and the colours were dismissed.  After the ceremony, people slowly filed into the legion lounge to talk to veterans and their families over coffee and snacks.

Freestlye.. don't be hatin'

Here's a free style rap by:   B-RABBIT

hey wut up
my name is B
i live in a cup
..of coffee
im double double
..or double trouble?
double dog dare me?
I double down, hit 21
kiss the ground, I finally won
made the right move, in the casino son
these rhymes are getting better the longer they run
till they run off of the page, my words are like a loaded gun

-Bang-

Poo at the Zoo

Last night my girlfriend and I went to Boo at the Zoo.  I thought that it would be fun, there would be people hiding around corners to scare you and whatnot.  Turns out that my memories of boo at the zoo from when I was a kid were very off.
 Nobody even tried to scare you.  And there were kids EVERYWHERE.  I felt suffocated.  When there was a bunch of them in front of us it made us walk so slow.  Thank god I resisted the urge of tossing the little pukes out of our way. There was an Alice in Wonderland themed section;  no magic mushrooms there, but we did see a large mushroom big enough to sit on.. We didn't.  There was a guy juggling torches and playing with fire which was entertaining for a few minutes.. Probably the best site in the whole place.  They charged us 10 bux per person, rather than the normal like 4. What a rip off.  Anyways, I guess the moral of the story is to not go to Boo at the Zoo unless you have a little kid(s) or you are one,  or you buy your mushrooms from the same place Alice does..

A Social Experiment

I watched the movie The Social Network the other night.  It’s about the co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and how he turned his Internet Social networking site Facebook into a multibillion dollar company.  Near the beginning of the movie, Zuckerberg was portrayed in a negative light after he posted a drunken blog online about his every thought.  In it he mentioned things about his ex-girlfriend such as how she wears a size C braw when she only has B’s; he called that false advertising and I agree.  This led to a fight between the two, and Zuckerberg does come off as a bit of an asshole in that scene, and it seems to continue through the movie.  Having said that, I found that the scene in the legal office/room, where they were having the talks with the lawyers, the one lady lawyer tells him that he's not an asshole; he just tries so hard to be one.  That made me connect with the character and feel like Zuckerburg was more like a real person who has struggles like the rest of us.

I think Facebooks popularity rose from the release of this movie, it got lots of media coverage, and after two or so weeks of being in the theatres, the show I went to was near full.  This probably did much more for Zuckerberg’s popularity more than that of Facebook’s though, since you had to of been living under a rock to not of heard of Facebook before, I don't think most poeple knew who Mark Zuckerberg was: and now we do.

The day the movie came out; Zuckerberg appeared on Oprah and announced the establishment of his foundation and his first gift of $100 million to the Newark school system.  I don’t think that it was necessary, and his claim: that the timing of the donation and its correlation to the movie release was just a coincidence, I thought was laughable.  However, when you have over 500 million on the most popular social networking site on the web, it’s going to take a lot to change people’s perception on the site.  I think he just should have made his appearance on Oprah and whatever other shows he appeared on, and saved his $100 million donation until the DVD release.

Sources Used:
http://prpost.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/zuckerberg-hearst-and-hollywood-pr-lessons-learned-from-the-past/

Reader Beware

My personal reflection of the advertising project Buyer Beware

So here I am and the buyer beware project is over, finally.   Up until the last week and a half, this project had really taken a backstage to the controlled chaos that is CreComm.  When the project was first given to us, we discussed what consumer report would the public benefit from the most, if they were to learn about a company/service.  Everyone in the group was aware of pay day loans, and the new government regulations that were coming into affect to protect customers.  So we thought it would be a really good project, if the public knew more about pay day loans, and how financially unfeasible they are, they may avoid them.  So one of our first steps was to find a well known company who provided that service.  We landed upon Money Mart, one of the biggest players in that market.  We delegated responsibilities to each member of the team.  Shaun went to a Money Mart, and learned more about the customer experience in the store.  Tom and Brian looked at government regulations on pay day loans.  Jon went to an RBC and talked to someone there to talk about other options other than pay day loans, such as credit cards, line of credit, overdrafts and other options.  It was my job to talk to Money Mart customers, and get their thoughts on the services they provided.  So I talked to my girlfriend, and asked her if she knew anyone that had used Money Mart before.  After a few days, she talked to some friends and it turned out that Ashton Beaton had used Money Mart before; she was a girl I used to work with at Wal-Mart in Selkirk, so I thought that would be a good source for a customer perspective.  I met up with her at work on her break, and asked her all the relevant questions I could think of and she told me her story. At this point in the project, everyone had their piece typed up and we were ready to put the pieces together.  My piece was the interview with Ashton, which I couldn’t see as a very large part of the main report, so I quickly felt like I needed to add more to the project.  We realized that we needed to do a class presentation, so I took it upon myself to put the Power Point together.  I thought it was important to say why customers choose Money Mart, and look at other options for them.  The last few days we sent lots of e-mails to each other and exchanged our pieces.  By the time the deadline came around, I think the rest of the team felt fairly confident, I was at least.  I think the presentation went well, everyone explained his part of the project clearly, and I think it was easy to understand.  I saw this as a good group effort, and everyone did a good job.