journal features

a fellow named Skot (no longer Scott)

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Vancouver, 2002.07.15

While dropping off a roll of film for development at Custom Colour, I was recognized by Skot Nelson, a former coworker from my days at Trimark in Toronto.

He gave me a nudge as I read my last name to the girl behind the counter. I turned and blinked at him, and said, "Scott!" Just about the last person I would have expected to see after about 5 years, on the other side of the country from where we knew one another. We went for drinks and caught up. It turns out he came out here about nine months before I did, and has had a similar experience to mine regarding employment.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton