Gifted Typist

What a difference a year makes and a gender makes in the Canadian sport of hockey. In Torino 2006, Canadians were tut-tutting the Canadian women’s hockey team, telling them to tone it down and stop scoring so many goals. It didn’t look good. It lacked class. It wasn’t Canadian to dominate like that. Then this [...]

It turns out that we might have been fooling ourselves with the “hi” to “hey” controversy. We were discussing when the word “hey” became the new “hi” and wondering if this was a Friendsism creeping into the language. It was at this point that the intrepid Holly entered the discussion with a very productive search [...]

The last few weeks I’ve been noticing “hey” or “hey there” being used to open certain CBC programs – as in “Hey there, welcome to Q.” This leads a typist to wonder if “hey” isn’t replacing “hi” as a casual greeting. I first noticed the Hey-for-Hi transposition on the TV program Friends, as in: Ross [...]

Call me a prickly pedant, but will someone please tell CBC radio news announcers that the correct pronunciation for President of Russia is vluh-DEE-meer POO-tin, that’s Vladimir Putin WITH the T. Some have taken to calling the man Pooooo-n, dropping the T altogether. You may say Pe-shaw – what’s in a T? Well, a lot [...]

Hooray to CBC for it’s excellent segments on the Great Canadian Mullet. The pieces aired on radio yesterday and today on Sounds like Canada. This content is perfect for radio. It’s funny, self-deprecating and wry. And it’s so very Canadian. You can listen here  and here. CBC needs more Great Canadian Mullet celebrations and less [...]

I am so glad that CBC radio took a good 2 or 3 minutes of its World at Six newscast to bring us the Canadian perspective on the product launch of the year. I mean, let’s face it, there really wasn’t much news coverage of the iPhone launch, was there? The CBC is doing Canadians [...]

Every morning this week the CBC radio broadcast has lead with hockey. Hockey this and hockey that. Hockey here, hockey there. Hockey up to the eyebrows. People, hockey is over for the season. It’s summer now. Get out. Enjoy the fog and rain, if you’re in Nova Scotia. But you have to move on. There [...]

The people who are running the minority federal government in Canada are not Tories. They are a group of neo-liberals and social conservatives emerging from the Western alienation Reform Party which reformed under the new banner of Canadian Alliance and then reformed again under the banner of Conservatives. Lately there is a new movement to [...]

After sloshing about in a vat of blancmange broadcasting for the past six weeks, we are finally FINALLY released from the longed-for make it end announcement of the CBC Seven Wonders of Canada. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Now, before you Canuckite CBC patriots come-a-charging with your burning spears and Maple Leaf branding pokers, [...]

The saga of Canada’s Paris Hilton of motherhood Mommy Blogger suing the maker of the movie Knocked Up is itself worthy of a movie, or a soap opera. The Mommy Blogger wrote a chicklit book called Knocked Up: Confessions of a Hip Mother To Be about a media chick who gets knocked up after a [...]

No one is more surprised than this typist to hear how good the new CBC Radio arts program is sounding. Q is hosted by Jian Ghomeshi weekday afternoons at 2 pm on Radio 1. Launched a couple of weeks ago, the show covers the arts, entertainment and popular culture. Being CBC its focus is (and [...]

Praise to the CBC Radio gods who have released Promo Girl (AKA Shauna MacDonald) from her daily duties. The short slots promoting CBC Radio shows are now handled by Promo Boy (AKA Jeremy Harris.) While the scripts are still overwritten at times and falling short their aspirations to wit and humour, it’s an improvement over [...]