Michael R. Barrick

I just got off the phone with Metro Vancouver's managing editor Fernando Carneiro about this whole Pedobear thing. A few things about this:

1. I remain stunned and amused that due to a careless bit of journalism in a small town newspaper half a planet away, something I did seven months ago as an off-handed visual critique of the 2010 mascots has garnered this much attention, and
2. now that it has garnered all this attention, that the Metro is the first and only paper to have contacted me directly by any means at all.

Not that I actually like talking to the press, since, as this whole thing points out with abundant clarity, journalistic integrity and factual accuracy left the building some time around when the Sun Tower was the tallest building in the British Empire (that'd be an exaggeration to those of you out there that don't get sarcasm and hyperbole.)

It's actually been preferable to have the papers that have so far picked up on this just cutting and pasting from my blog. Cut-and-paste makes it a lot less likely for me to be misquoted as I have been in previous encounters with the media, and as I hope I won't be in tomorrow's Metro.

But let's be clear here, nonetheless. The intent of the image in question was as a visual critique. The minute I saw the mascots I noticed the unfortunate resemblance, and I'm not the only one (damn, though, it was hard weeding those out from all the posts related to Gazeta Olsztyńska's mistake!)

The irony is that I was basically pointing out how easy a mistake like this would be. Sometimes when you're right, you're right.

The other interesting thing about this has been watching how this has progressed:

Thursday: The Gazeta Olsztynska makes the mistake; some Internet-savvy Olsztyn locals see the mistake, LOL, and post some satirical demotivational posters.
Friday: I start getting comments, mostly from people in Poland, and I LOL.
Saturday: Other people are LOL-ing right along, and I remain amused, especially by those that are oblivious (that Spanish sports blog as since corrected their mistake, but the evidence remains in the comments - I should have got a screenshot.)
Saturday Evening: Now it is viral. A story about the mistake, with a link here, makes it to #2 on Digg. BoingBoing blogs it.
Sunday: Now things are starting to get stupid. And by things, I mean comments in my blog (which I screen.) But hey, maybe someone is dumb enough to send me money. Didn't work.
Monday: People go back to work and start seeing what happened over the weekend, and the Telegraph UK picks up the story; there is whole new audience.

Now, I'm kind of dreading tomorrow. When the Metro comes out it will end up in the hands of a whole raft of mouth-breathers that won't get it at all and some of them will end up here. You know the type: people who pick up the dailies like the Metro and just leave them on the Skytrain with their not-quite-empty Starbucks cup; people who have AOL accounts; people who don't know the difference between "your" and "you're" (but don't really need to because they write "UR" anyway); people who talk on their cell phone on the bus; people who have a cell phone and an iPod because they don't know they can get a phone that plays MP3s; and people who still think the Olympics are a good thing.

So getting here at 6am was interesting. I drove so I could get that precious twenty extra minutes of sleep and the first thing that struck me odd was the realization that in all the years I've lived in Vancouver I don't recall ever having driven into town at sunrise in the summer. It's more normal for me to staggering home at sunrise (like last Monday morning). It seemed weird to see the sun rise in the northeast from behind the mountains. The roads were deserted and I only counted seven other cars in the parkade, which by eight o'clock is often full. I knew it was way too early when the Starbucks across the street wasn't even open yet. The building was still locked. I never even bothered to confirm that my swipe-card would work on the main doors and the elevators after hours. Fortunately it did. When I reached my floor I knew I was the first one in because my <sarcasm>favourite</sarcasm> newspaper (the Province) was lying on the floor still. It was nice being absolutely alone on the floor for the first hour until the keeners started arriving around 7am.