Thursday, March 31, 2011

“This Will Go On Your Permanent Record!”

There used to be a time when school teachers, and/or school principals, would toss out the threat about what would accumulatively be lurking inside the hidden documents that culminate in your life.

Many would cower in fear if that instructive mantra was vocalized in their direction, usually with an accusatory finger wag for good measure, to get them to toe whatever line the educational overlords were trying to drive home.

In an era that predated computers and hard drives, you envisioned some large monolithic government building somewhere, teeming with reams of paper in file cabinets devoted to every transgression you ever committed or even thought of.

You probably didn’t give that file a second thought after a threat was levelled, until some point later when you went out into the job market for the first time. Perhaps you were filling out an application for a part-time job handing out flyers in a chicken suit outside “Bob’s Bucket O’ Beaks” when it hits you that maybe the day, back in the third grade, when you gave Eddie Terwilliger a pink belly during recess, might finally come back to haunt you and crush your dreams of wearing a giant foam head.

Or your thoughts of getting into the prestigious college that your parents have bankrupted themselves to cover your tuition costs, have been dashed because, contrary to what your classmates said in Grade 5, Mrs. Johnson didn’t like your rendition of Stars & Stripes Forever played in underarm farts.

It’s just amazing how the line, this will go on your permanent record, had such a controlling effect on large portions of the youthfully naive population. Those were simpler times. However, in today’s information age, even with the capability of collecting massive amounts of data on just about everybody who ever roamed the earth, that line has become somewhat of a quaint idle threat. That’s because today’s youth are creating their own permanent record far more damaging than any of their teachers could have ever possibly dreamed up.

Today’s permanent record consists of Twitter tweets, Facebook status updates, sexting, and YouTube uploads that leave a permanent trail of stuff that you might have thought was either terribly amusing or pithy at the time that it was placed. You may have even forgotten about them and moved on with your life. But now every potential employer, insurance company or financial institution has the opportunity to “go to the cloud” and find out everything you’ve done since you first figured out how to type.

And it’s not just the trail of what people say about themselves. It’s also the way people talk online about, and to others. Read many of the comments to newspaper articles, blogs, videos, political websites or any other forum where one can spew, and you will usually find a diatribe of unhealthy discourse that, sadly, many of the authors are under the misguided theory that none of their words can be traced back to them. The pen is mightier than the sword, but a pen can only do a small percentage of the damage that a keyboard can.

The term “social network” is bandied about so often today. Used correctly it is truly a marvellous thing. However, as the online community continues to grow and spread around the world, I’m finding that there is way too much “network” and far too little “social.” It seems that a large percentage of the population might end up with a very unflattering permanent record.

That’s the Stuph – the way I see it

Monday, March 28, 2011

The Stuph File Program - Episode #0084

Welcome to the latest edition of the Stuph File Program.

For a program list of the items included and all their accompanying links in this one hour show, you can find the information on my website in the Stuph File Program section, or just follow this link to #0084.





To download the podcast, right click here and select "Save Link As"

Featured in this episode:

  • Tea Krulos, blogger, Heroes Of The Night
  • Chez Pazienza columnist, Huffington Post
  • Darren Taylor, Professor Splash
Click logo for iTunes podcast subscription If you have any comments or suggestions, or items for the mailbag, feel free to click on the "Comments" link below to add your thoughts.

That’s the Stuph – the way I see it.

Monday, March 21, 2011

The Stuph File Program - Episode #0083

Welcome to the latest edition of the Stuph File Program.

For a program list of the items included and all their accompanying links in this one hour show, you can find the information on my website in the Stuph File Program section, or just follow this link to #0083.





To download the podcast, right click here and select "Save Link As"

Featured in this episode:
Click logo for iTunes podcast subscription If you have any comments or suggestions, or items for the mailbag, feel free to click on the "Comments" link below to add your thoughts.

That’s the Stuph – the way I see it.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Fun With Audio

I was never a juvenile delinquent. I spent way too much time as a child with tape recorders and mixing boards. This is how my idle mind manifested itself.

Luckily for me, this idle pastime became a career. For many years I hosted a nightly radio show (now I do a more compact weekly version of that show online called The Stuph File Program).

One of the things I quickly discovered is that the world is filled with odd and wacky people, making for odd and wacky news stories. That’s how the whole Stuph File portion of the old radio show came to be.

Over the years I had done several recorded pieces for the show. Some of the rare items, such as my recording of Oh Little Town of Bethlehem were very serious in nature. Most of them were done with humour in mind.

I was going through my old files recently (since I’m anal retentive I have just about everything, catalogued and properly labelled) and I came across a segment that was something I was going to try to do as a regular feature.

Since I was doing the Stuph File News on a daily basis, I thought it would be interesting to occasionally do a Stuph File Moment In History. I found the one that I did (and subsequently aired) concerning the story of President Jimmy Carter and a killer rabbit.

While it was well received at the time, I never followed through and did any more of them (for reasons I don’t even remember). Perhaps someday I will look at producing shorter, tighter versions of this for the current show, but in the meantime I thought I would share this item from out of my archives so here it is:



(To download Stuph File Moment In History, right click here and select "Save Link As")

Also, another piece of audio I found was when Pope Benedict spoke for the first time after becoming Pope. I was listening to him from the balcony in St. Peter’s Basilica and all I could think about were the Benzedrine Monks of Santo Dominica and their CD Chantmania and wondered what it would be like if I found a way of putting the two together. This was the result:



(To download Sexy Pope, right click here and select "Save Link As")


Using a religious context they say that idle hands are the devil’s play tools. So I guess I could say the devil made me do it!

That’s the Stuph – the way I see it

Monday, March 14, 2011

The Stuph File Program - Episode #0082

Welcome to the latest edition of the Stuph File Program.

For a program list of the items included and all their accompanying links in this one hour show, you can find the information on my website in the Stuph File Program section, or just follow this link to #0082.





To download the podcast, right click here and select "Save Link As"

Featured in this episode:
  • Dan Piraro, cartoonist, Bizarro
  • Daniel Okulitch, Broadway & opera singer
  • Stuart Nulman, Book Banter
Click logo for iTunes podcast subscription If you have any comments or suggestions, or items for the mailbag, feel free to click on the "Comments" link below to add your thoughts.

That’s the Stuph – the way I see it.

Monday, March 7, 2011

The Stuph File Program - Episode #0081

Welcome to the latest edition of the Stuph File Program.

For a program list of the items included and all their accompanying links in this one hour show, you can find the information on my website in the Stuph File Program section, or just follow this link to #0081.





To download the podcast, right click here and select "Save Link As"

Featured in this episode:

Click logo for iTunes podcast subscription If you have any comments or suggestions, or items for the mailbag, feel free to click on the "Comments" link below to add your thoughts.

That’s the Stuph – the way I see it.