Montreal’s largest water fight not so large July 21, 2007
Posted by ohdearanotherusername in Adventures, Current Events, Society.2 comments
Montreal’s largest water fight took place today. The event was a flash mob promoted on Facebook by Yaniv Abecassis. The event got a lot of hype, since it had caught the public’s interest and people had its Facebook group by the thousands.
I was super excited to be attending my first flash mob! So I got a super soaker at Toys R Us, drew black marks under my eyes like warpaint and got ready to blast water at the huge mob I was expecting to see. My brother and my roomie and I set off to Parc Angrignon and were there at 12:00. There was no mob. 
We walked around and saw two other people with a watergun and a bucket. (Bucket boy and girl) So we joined up with them to hunt for the flash mob. Parc Angrignon is huge! We really didn’t want to search the whole park, but we walked a bit and found about 5 other people. Oh yeah, and we picked up a TQS cameraman along the way, who was looking for the mob too! Then we found about maybe 10 other people and we all walked back to the field near the metro. People started filling up their water weapons and more joined as we began squirting each other. The war was on!
I stayed there from 12:00 to about 12:45 and I’m guessing only around 50 people showed up in that time. But we had a blast anyways! We kept refilling our guns in the toxic-looking lake. There was a guy with a huge tank of water that he carried on his back in an army backpack to refuel his gun. There was bucket boy, who simply dumped water on people, very effectively drenching them. There were people with huge guns and people with little pathetic squirty ones. My roomie’s gun was a weird rifle that she had to crank for it to spit its little clump of water out! People kept saying, “Well, by the time you re-crank that thing, you’ve been totally soaked!” There were two little kids and a couple older adults. It was fun joining up with strangers to attack people and getting totally drenched on this sunny day! Another cameraman showed up a little later and we staged a battle, à la Braveheart, for the news! I’ll have to watch tonight.
It was a little disappointing that so few of the expected thousands actually showed up. The atmosphere and enthusiasm were present, but the participation was a little low. Still, it was a very exciting experience and I would do it again in a minute. Well, maybe a month.
Eco-guilt marketing July 10, 2007
Posted by ohdearanotherusername in Brainfood, Current Events, Society, Wordwise.add a comment
I’ve been thinking lately about the rising trend of “eco-guilt marketing”. I thought I had coined a term (eco-guilt) but it’s already out there on the web! Eco-guilt: the guilt you feel because of all the harm you are causing the environment.
With all that the media is feeding us about climate change, from Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” to Yahoo’s new Green page, we are constantly being indoctrinated with the feeling that we need to take action to reduce the negative effects we have on the environment. Or as this blogger says, “Eco-guilt is the new catholicism.”
More and more marketers are using our well-honed sense of responsibility toward the planet to lead us to buy their products, from reusable grocery bags to green toilet paper and even guilt-free flying!
Now, I’m not knocking the idea that we are responsible for taking care of the earth and that we, as consumers, should make better choices to protect our planet. But I do wonder how much of our eco-guilt is fueled by corporations seeking profits. And has this rapidly rising concern for all things environmentally-friendly become nothing more than the lastest trend? If we, as members of society, can’t take a step back and question where it’s going before jumping in with both feet, then we are just sheep.
New home July 10, 2007
Posted by ohdearanotherusername in Adventures, Friends, Verdun.1 comment so far
I moved out! I’m currently living…
…in an appartment.
…in Verdun.
…out of boxes.
…with my two roomies: Gabrielle and Rachel.
Gabe likes to play the guitar and she is currently working at Value Village.
Rach likes to make vegetarian foods and she is teaching me about Québecois culture. Yesterday, she showed me some online clips of Stefie Shock and Jean Leloup.
We have been working and painting in the evenings/weekends. My favourite part is plastering. We bought this cool plaster that is pink, but turns white when it dries.
You can look at other appartment photos on Facebook. What else? We are babysitting a guinea pig for two weeks. They are strange creatures that make “Proot!” noises when they’re happy.
