Ghost of a Flea in Toronto

Nicholas Packwood writes blog candy. His text is hard boiled sugar that’s packed with cool pictures and compelling captions; his blog posts are short and sweet and super readable.

Ghost of a Flea is politics and pop culture from Packwood’s perspective. He’s very opinionated, and one of the few anti-Obama bloggers left on the internet. Could his peculiar flavour be distilled from knowledge acquired by reading and writing and finally teaching anthropology and religious studies? Ghost of Flea aims to address contemporary themes inside a ‘ghostly’ anthropological context. First published in 2002, this blog has had some moments in the sun.

“From Canadian blogger Nicholas Packwood comes Ghost of a Flea, a blog with an eye on international opinion of the war” – USA Today

Nicholas Packwood considers himself to be more of a “thinker than a linker”, but because of time constraints he sometimes can only point readers in the direction of something he finds interesting. It could be fine arts arts or science, literature or old movies. His passion is his remedy for boredom.

Packwood writes, “Blogging allows me to express my opinions more constructively than by throwing things at the television. Occasionally, blogging also allows me to feel as though my opinion is being considered in the wider conversations of the day. [It] also reassures me every day that I am not alone in my questions and concerns; there is an enormous comfort and support knowing I am not the only person whose television has been saved by this new medium.”

Ghost of a Flea is an interesting blog by an interesting person. In addition to teaching anthropology and communications to undergraduates, Nicolas is undertaking a doctorate in social anthropology, and is also a student in a recording arts program office phone system someday hopes to work in audio mixing and production. You can catch Nicholas Packwood performing his own “dark ambient and industrial music in Toronto clubs, usually of the gothic variety”.

During the US elections, Nicholas preserved his blog’s political theme, and smeared all of the candidates, but mostly Obama. A prime example is Please Connect The Dots. But he understands readers can only take so much rhetoric, so he seems to alter and adjust the percentage of political opinion… On October 30th (which is ALMOST Halloween) Nicholas used Ghost of a Flea to promote Devil’s Night at The Savage Garden, a quintessential Goth club in Toronto. His post Dark Times Demand Dark Music is primed with a photo of Lena Headey.

Ghost of a Flea is concocted to entertain readers, and Nicholas is satisfied with that easy market. He writes, In many ways this is more important to me than if I have managed to convince anybody of anything by the writing, let alone whether we find in time that we disagree about most things.