Griff's Village

I hate taking my blood pressure. I'm fine with dentists. I'm fine with needles. I'm not fine with blood pressure monitors. Haven't been since I tried to donate blood in 2013, and wound up in the hospital for stage 3 hypertension. Now it's ten years later, and there doesn't seem to be much left for me to complain about, blood-wise. I've lost about 100 pounds since then, and I'm able to keep my blood pressure under control with only a little medication. I've been checking my blood pressure every two-to-four weeks since then. I have a decade of experience taking my blood pressure, and my doctor is generally happy with my readings. I still get anxious every time I have to take it. My heart rate jumps up, sometimes as high as 140 BPM or more. I have spoken to my doctor about this. He's told me that there's nothing to worry about, that he doesn't think that my blood pressure will increase again without a change in my lifestyle, and that, even i...

These days, there's a lot of debate on the merits of streaming a movie versus buying a DVD. It's the age-old conflict of the convenient against the familiar, and one that will always find new battlegrounds as technology marches on, yesterday's new ages into tomorrow's old, and unforeseen inconveniences sneak in with modern comforts. It's not a debate that I concern myself with too much. I have a pretty large collection of DVDs and Blu-rays, but I don't see any reason to shun digital. My favourite streaming service is The Criterion Channel. I recently used it to watch Robert Altman's 3 Women (staring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, & Janice Rule), a movie I had always meant to watch, and which will be leaving the Criterion Channel at the end of this month. The Criterion Channel reminds me of watching movies on traditional television in that respect. When I was a kid, if you didn't have a spare VHS tape to record a movie or TV show, you watched it when i...

Like a lot of people my age, I'm a fan of retro gaming. When you grew up on something, it just hits you in a way that news things--however well-made--can't.  So I was happy to learn that Nintendo has started rereleasing some of their Game Boy and Game Boy Advance titles through Nintendo Switch Online. Once I finished replaying Link's Awakening , I began to wonder what else might be on the horizon. Titles like Super Mario Land  or Metroid: Zero Mission --although not officially announced yet--seem like no-brainers. And yet there is one beloved, influential game (or two, it's hard to say) that I have been wondering about more than any other. I was already in my early teens when the original  Pokémon Red and Blue  hit North America, so I was a bit older than the target demographic at the time, but I still loved them. I always liked monsters--especially cartoonish, goofy monsters--and had long wanted a game where you play as the monsters instead of against them.  Po...

Once a year--excluding a few COVID years--Ottawa hosts a music festival knowns as Ottawa Bluesfest. Despite the name, all genres of popular music are represented: rock, pop, rap, country, and, yes, sometimes even blues. This is always exciting because Ottawa is not a musical city. Most big musicians only visit here every couple of tours, if they ever do. That's one thing that I've always envied about Toronto, who seem to get all the best concerts. But there's always something for me to look forward to at Bluesfest. Foo Fighters put on a legendary show  a few years back, and they're making their return this summer. Aside from seeing Foo Fighters again, I'm looking forward to Weezer (who I have never seen live before) and Tegan and Sara (who I have seen live several times). Granted, a Bluesfest show does have its drawbacks. I'm at the age where my back protests if I stand for too long--and since Bluesfest is an outdoor concert, standing is the norm. Bands also usu...

Lately, I've been thinking about the recently-announced revisions to Roald Dahl's children's books. For those who haven't heard: the late Roald Dahl's current publisher, Puffin, has hired sensitivity readers to help bring his classics in line with modern sensibilities. The removal of references to ugliness and obesity are getting the most attention, though I've also read that they updated Matilda's taste in literature. (Kipling's out; Austen's in.) Personally, I'm not one to tell other people what to read, or to let others tell me what I can read. If there's a market for the edited versions of these books, then so be it. These are children's books, after all, and although I'm quite happy to read classic children's books myself from time to time (Thurber's  The 13 Clocks  is one of my favourites), I realize that an adult reading a children's book is probably going to have different experiences--and different tastes--than a ...