Saturday, June 22, 2024

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today...

PassTheSaltAnd
PepperVille


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Update at the Bottom of the Post - Upshot? Always put more trust in your kids' power of recollection, and the Archives, than in your own rickety memory.
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It was twenty years ago today that I ambled down the rickety stairs to the unfinished basement with the converted octopus furnace and headed over to the little nook in the corner surrounded by bookshelves I still have now and fired up the modem.

And then I wrote one my first blog posts.

Surprisingly, like all the rest of the early posts, it wasn't about BC Rail.

Instead, it was about how the Campbell government's assembled propaganda team was attempting to move public opinion just enough to force the feds to drop the offshore oil drilling moratorium.

Ultimately, that scheme was a sparkle pony that just wouldn't fly.

But many more such schemes and ponies would follow.

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Why did I do it?

The posting, I mean.

And why do I keep doing it?

Well...

The only thing I know for sure is that it's better than just yelling at the TeeVee.

Plus, I guess, it forces you to learn stuff about stuff.

Or some such thing.


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The early post in question
was based on the reporting of Sean Holman's long gone, and much missed, Public Eye Online.
Message in the subheader?....This!
Update: Bigger E. sent pixel patterns via the fancy palm pilot thingy in which she noted that, in days of yore at least, I was much more likely to yell at the Cluffmaster Flash playing on the VW (not-so)Microbus sound system than at the television...And you know what?...The Archives, circa 2012, confirm her side of the story...Imagine that!


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11 comments:

NVG said...

Campbell, Clark and BC Rail Trial got me writing on my blog, and then when the BC NDP were elected I stopped writing. Five or six months ago, I started weeding out just about every post I've done on the BC Liberals.

I've lost interest.

If I left it up to my kids, they wouldn't be selective.

DELETEd Pops!!!

https://blogborgcollective.blogspot.com/

GarFish said...

“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”
― Richard Wright, Black Boy

Chuckstraight said...

Been following and enjoying your blog for some time now- not sure exactly. What sparked my interest was the BC Rail stuff-learned my trade there.
Keep up the good work.

Danneau said...

Still love reading your stuff and use the crawl for a jumping-off. Funny listening to Paul talk about the twenty-years-ago stuff, the light music side of the blog alongside the more wrenching social and political stuff. I realized that it's now a dozen years since I redid another McCartney ditty for my wife's sixty-fourth birthday. Kudos for staying relevant and simultaneously sparkling.

NVG said...

RossK, If its 2024, now ..... 2102 would be

"... And you know what?...The Archives, circa 2102, confirm her side of the story... Imagine that!!"

Keith said...

Been following your blog for years Ross, all part of my daily routine.

The R.W.N. Jobbery still continues trying to put us back into the 1930s, but now with added risks to our collective health.

Many thanks for keeping the light on.

Lew Edwardson said...

Glad you started, and glad you continue. The main theme of each of your posts is always thought provoking, but the links to tangential subjects have opened many doors for me. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve clicked on one of your “add-on” embedded links and wound up spending an afternoon exposed to new information or entertainment I wouldn’t otherwise have gained.

Thanks for keeping on keeping on.

Trailblazer said...

Many years ago BC Mary opened my eyes to non reported news!
Life has become more interesting and frustrating ever since!


TB

RossK said...

Thanks Everyone!

I should also have mentioned in the post that another reason I still do it is that I truly enjoy the comment thread discussions.

By way of numbers...During the first five years blog life just over 30,000 comments were published on this site. Those were the days of the really raucous, and enjoyable, 'rock-em-sock-em' comment threads. However, all those comments are gone now due to the great Haloscan massacre of 2009.

Of course, it's important to remember that those were the pre-Twitter, algorithm-free days.

Since then, the wobbly blogspot platform has logged another 26,000 comments here.

Through all that I've only had to restrict/moderate the comments twice (other than to regularly put a block on things sent more than two weeks after a post has been published as this helps shut-out the spam).

The first came back in the old days from a Dipper-hating fellow who became quite unhinged. In the end, I had to remove his comments when he became threatening.

The second was a long-lived swarm that first arrived when I started writing about the pros and cons of the various COVID vaccines as the initial safety and efficacy data were being published and commented on by experts with bonafides. Looking back on it, I think I must have initially been put on some kind of anti-vaccine list as a 'sympathizer' when I wrote about the very rare vascular issues that arose after inoculation with the non-mRNA version of the COVID vaccine. However, later it appears that I was viewed as a turncoat when I wrote about the efficacy of all the vaccines (except, of course, the Sputnik version). Weirdly, the swarm of more than 2,000 comments, many extremely vile, ended abruptly in late 2022, presumably when I fell off the list and/or the last unhinged person moved on.


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RossK said...

Graham - crazy about Otis! and thanks for the Deadcast heads up.


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JP said...

I've been following you for years.....on and off.....you and the commenters add a lot toward my sanity.

The only issue I have with this post is the reminder of the piece o' shite puffmaster.
My brain's defense systems have been protecting me from those evil memories.

Ross, you bastard! ... a la south park