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I was out for a drive to pick someone up from the ferry this morning, and I stopped at a McDonalds to use the washroom. It was packed, and the drive-through line was around the corner. It was about 10am. Honestly, truly, if I ate a McDonalds breakfast at 10am I'd be physically ill. It is amazing the level of punishment the body can accustom itself to over time. Heart disease is the number one killer in North America. Interestingly, in the United States "Unintentional Injury" is the third leading cause of death for men, with about 75,000 per year, and only the sixth leading cause for women, with about 40,000 per year. I'm guessing the reasons for this are workplace injuries (men do more physical labour work) and of course car accidents; men are, contrary to popular belief, much worse drivers than are women, mainly because men are too stupid and macho to drive within the laws and speed limits. Men also commit suicide in much high numbers than women. On avera...

It is very true that the best people in the world at any discipline, skill, sport, instrument (etc). are never particularly well-rounded people. There should be, as my grandma mentioned over dinner last night, a competition for "well-roundedness" with international competitors. In order to win you'd have to be physically capable, perhaps musical and mathematical, moral and charitable, very learned, and so forth. And that's the interesting thing, the jacks of all trades get absolutely no attention from the peanut gallery. But on the contrary, they typically have the healthiest and happiest and most fulfilling of lives. I can't tell you how many young pianists I've met, for whom piano was the sole self-measure of pride and value. And, like all people who have themselves judged for one thing, they are utterly miserable, feeling highs and lows that appear and fade as quickly as do the passing opinions of strangers. --- On a tangent: some of the most miserable girl...

Have you ever watched a hunting show? They're on sometimes on certain networks; basically, cameramen follow around hunters as they track and shoot various animals. Often the host of the show is the hunter being followed around. What infuriates me is that the hunters always define the value of their prey in terms of beauty. For birds it is plumage, for deer the horns, and so forth. "Wow, what a beautiful buck we have here, just gorgeous." This is said, as the cameraman stands over the corpse, and the hunter points the dead deer's head toward the lens. "Just beautiful." And I don't doubt the sincerity. I really don't. I just can't for the life of me understand how a person can see something simultaneously as beautiful and as something to be killed for sport. I see beauty in deer as well, but I don't want to shoot them; hell, I don't even want to bother them. The whole idea of hunting for the most beautiful, or majestic creatures raises...

That's one of my favorite comics. What makes it especially funny in my mind is the idea of the whole world as some sort of food concoction with various ingredients mixed and baked together. I wonder what else is in God's recipe book.

"You know, all I wanted to do was buy some art that people would want to look at. Isn't that what art is supposed to be?" - Hank Hill - Hank is closed-minded, archaic, old-fashioned, and even discriminatory to new ideas. Allegedly! Is Hank asking for so much? Isn't it fair to be able to critise something on account of it not making any sense? What ever happened to criticism as a discipline? Creativity can't be unbridled, or else it won't be understood. The best artists (and writers) have pushed boundaries in ways that were inoovative and new, but still understandable to people of the time.

It is always easy to look at couples who fight over nothing and criticise them. But then, when you find yourself in a relationship, and find yourself fighting over something objectively insignificant, and you find it compelling nonetheless, the equation changes! In class today (ESL teacher training) there was a section on behaviour management. It listed "Attention," "Power," "Revenge," and "Insecurity" as the primary motivations for child misbehaviour. And I thought... how fitting, this list explains a great deal of all human misbehaviour. Hell, most of the bad things I've done since adolescence could quite completely be chalked up to one of the above four traits/desires. Mind you, I don't think I've ever sought revenge upon anyone. There have been a few times (one recently) upon which I took advantage of a spontaneous opportunity, but that's about it. Truth be told, it is hard to resist the desire to hurt someone back when they h...

To continue from yesterday: ... I say " closer to the truth" because we also tend to give some animals much more respect and dignity and consideration than they probably deserve. Just as it is a mistake to treat your farm animals with the same level of regard that you treat farm vegetables, it is also a mistake to assume your dog or cat wants to be, or is just like a person simply on account of similar behaviour. The folks over at PETA, an organization about which I have mixed feelings, seem to believe that animals have a 'lifestyle' that requires our respect. I must disagree with this, and argue that animals (with perhaps the exception of primates, maybe dolphins and whales) are response machines; they don't think in the way we understand 'think,' they don't understand, and they aren't self-aware. What they can do is feel pain and pleasure. Avoidng the infliction of pain upon a creature needlessly seems like a good enough imperative to me...

New template today as you can see. It was time for a little switch-up, and I particularly like the relaxed colour scheme of this one. Often we activate a sort of mirror imaging process when we analyze objects. Ever gone into a very old house, all cluttered up with things spanning a century? Ever said something like "Wow, there must be a lot of memories in here." I do, often. Of course we mean to say there must be many memories of the place, not inside it. But, I wonder if that's what we feel when we make the statement. I get a certain feeling that the room, or old object of whatever sort, somehow contains within itself a memory of all the times it has impacted the senses and emotions of people over time. This cannot be true. It is a quirk about the mind, another tiny indication that in order to understand the world, and especially to relate to it, we tend to anthropomorphize it. I believe that our moral compasses are often impacted in unseeable ways when it comes to anthr...

I am all in favour of separating church and state. Churches should be allowed, and I mean fully allowed, to choose who they marry and who they hire. If they don't want gays involved, or inter-racial marriages, or married priests, or female priests, or whatever else, then so be it. My hope, in the longer term, is that churches sticking to these backward ideologies will go extinct and be replaced with new churches that recognize a more modern morality. As pillars of communities, I do see a level of importance in churches (in spite of my Atheism). As my wise grandmother points out, it is in part our loss of having a sense of community with our neighbours that has forced us into insidious self-involvement and detachment from others as we drive long distances to centralized box stores, and to coffee shops surrounded by parking lots instead of boardwalks. There is great merit in the idea of localities and gatherings of small neighbourhood communities. Churches are up to the task, and for...

They say most of the population is sleep deprived. I imagine this is especially true of young people, who rarely if ever go to bed by 11pm. Hell, if I'm in bed at 11 on weekend nights, that pretty much puts me out of the loop! Also, I've recently discovered the value of a good and healthy breakfast! It makes a whole world of difference to take in some fruit and veg for breakfast along with a bowl of cereal, instead of just the cereal. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Batman is a little bit overrated. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but I also thought the plot was a little bit disjointed; it didn't build itself up quite the way a good plot does, and the multiple climaxes thought made the whole thing a slight bit trying. There I said it!

I got my violin today. 16 bucks to rent for a month; I am continually impressed by just how cheap it is to learn new things in this town, given the huge public library and (newly discovered) inexpensive instrument rentals! It will be an experiment, trying to learn this foreign little thing without any teacher. We shall see!

Self-sufficiency is a difficult thing to gauge and evaluate. The more you depend on others the less likely it is you'll be able to hold your own if desperate times should arise. Conversely, the less you depend on others the more unhappy you'll be when times are good. I heard a wonderful quote today. "Chop your own wood. It will warm you twice." - Henry Ford

It is very difficult to do what one believes is the right thing when even one's trusted allies and loved ones disagree. On the rare occasions that this occurs, I find myself in a tremendous bind. And a corollary of this, in a way, is the fact that we conflate difficulty with complexity far too often. "It's complicated" is a phrase used often, but rarely rightly. Difficulty or hardship or conflict, I think, tend to lead to muddled and indistinct feelings, which are in turn mistaken for complexities. Imagine a vaguely painted canvas, in which figures are indistinct and hard to make out clearly. Is the painting more complicated? Maybe, maybe not. Complexity and distinctness are, counterintuitively, frequently unrelated. But what a horror, to fight countless times with a so-called loved one, and simultaneously bear down on the inevitable truth that the issues are stunningly simple, and worse, soluable typically by a few gestures of honesty, bravery, or in many cas...

Day 200. Only two missed days. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. I thought I'd take a moment to talk a little bit about my views on war, POWs and torture. The issue of how and when wars ought to be fought by the so-named free western democracies has been a big one in politics, media, and around many dinner tables since 9/11. Foremost is the issue of pre-emptive war (Iraq being the most clear example of such a policy) and and in the background of this is the issue of national security and its corollary: treatment and interrogation of war prisoners, or the conveniently termed "enemy combatants." I don't know if a pre-emptive war is justified in any circumstance. Seems to me that it could be; imagine that everything Bush said in the runpup to tbe Iraq war really was true. Imagine that once Iraw was invaded it really did turn out that Saddam Hussein had all kinds of horrible biological/radioactive weapons, and active plans to deploy them upon neighbouring natio...

I meet people often, who have traveled to all kinds of wonderful places, but who have not been changed much as a result. This seems off to me. Is it that these people's conditions and dispositions are so solid that a few new sights and sounds are insufficient to faze? Or is it perhaps that some people are simply less receptive to stimuli than are others? I imagine that the latter is true. It isn't enough to simply present an experience to oneself, to stand before it as it were. It isn't enough in life to merely allow oneself to be a part of things, to see new things, and so forth. Experience, even as simple as looking at a piece of architecture or even a blooming flower, ought to be active rather than passive. A full experience demands effort and thought in congruence with an open mind. And this is not to mention an open heart, something I believe I have not had in many ways, to the detriment of past romances. Relationships have what I see as so many painful inevitabilitie...

Music is so physical! I very much enjoy music devoid of our modern electronic enhancements. Live music especially. Instruments have a way of cutting through the air the way that speakers don't. So I did a little reading.. back to the beginning of this blog, and I'm frightfully more melancholy and less humourous than I used to be. There is a trend! This must change; I'm going to be more funny from now on. Starting... well, at some point anyway.

I feel so poorly read. Sometimes I wander through the bookstore - especially the non-fiction sections - and marvel at the sheer volume of subjects about which I know nearly nothing. And of course, it is always a task to sift through frivolity rather than get caught up in it. We live in a world engorged by ravenous and short-lived temptations and excesses, but also a world of deep and tightly bounding repressions of thought and perspective. I find it troubling to exit myself from the enormous set of presuppositions I've been brought up to found my beliefs upon. My hope is to exit from as many presuppositions as possible, and return only to the ones I choose for myself. What I do know is that music is and always be a close friend, with all the endearments, little tretcharies, reconciliations, and loud-but-unsung harmonies that go along with friendship. The written word is also a dear friend. I hope very much to expand my vocabulary so that I may better express myself someday.

Strike yesterday's entry from you memory, I've changed my mind. Much like love, an artistic or intellectual acheivement is more a process than it is an end. Every so often I'll be incredibly stressed, or in yesterday's case just plain tired, and I get melanchoy about these great things. For the record, I am nothing short of happy with the decisions I've made, and the things in life I've chosen to pursue. Though at the moment I have a strong desire to pick up a violin and master it (and I will), I doubt I'll ever tire of the piano's ivory keys. Recognition is icing at most and meaningless at the least. And for love, I do look to experience loving and being loved; this, not in the way that young ones fawn over each other and hop in and out of bed to resolve their transient issues, but the sort that only a years or decades long relationship can create.

Perspective is key. Solutions become illuminated when a new angle of awareness makes itself apparent. And often it doesn't take much! I find it hard to follow my passions. It seems that they either lead me to a state of weakness (necessary for love, I'm told), or to the pursuit of a form of art or intellect the fruits of which will not bear 'fame' or 'money' (:P) until after I've spent years exhausting my initial interest. So, the pain of it is that in order to really stand out in a crowd, one must either be a bit of a nut, or spend one's life repeating the same thing over and over again until it becomes worthy of attention. And we want to stand out, no? Even the introverts, yes? Or we may end up like Wilde's miserable folk: "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone elses opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." Yes, the quote is very.... meta. Almost as though Wilde was trying to avoid being quoted!

130am, I missed day 193 by just an hour and change. Did I do this knowingly? Yes. What, you ask, could possibly motivate me to divert my attention away from this blog for a day? After all the times I've spent rushing home, borrowing other people's laptops or pc's at parties, and if necessary getting up early in the morning to accomodate, what occasioned me to ignore the duty? A girl, of course. And what a girl. Some days really are for the books. They come by once every so often, the days upon which the elements of earth and emotion coalesce into a singular intangible memory. This memory burns into a deep cranny of the mind, like a glowing crackling fire, to stay and warm the soul for many cold days to come. Was today one of those days? Maybe, I suppose I'll find out someday when I look back.

It is almost infinitely hard to share a moment of human silence, of reverence, of serenity, with another person. I don't think I've ever gone beyond simply being in the same place at the same time.

Top ten funniest people on television: 10. Marc Dacascos a.k.a "The Chairman" (Iron Chef America) It's hard to explain why, but you just have to see him say the 'secret ingredient' aloud, he always mispronounces the phonetics in a hilarious way. Quotables: "Today's secret ingredient is.... to FU !" On a side note... I was watching Brotherhood of the Wolf, and I noticed something: So wait just one second, is this guy Asian (as inferred by his claim to be the nephew of the original Japanese Iron Chef Chairman), or Native, as inferred by the movie here? Turns out he's neither; the guy's Hawaiian. 9. Kent Brockman (The Simpsons) Quotables: "Things aren't as happy as they used to be down here at the unemployment office. Joblessness is no longer just for philosophy majors. Useful people are starting to feel the pinch." 8. Tom Tucker & Diane Simmons (Family Guy) Quotables: Tom Tucker: A bit of breaking news. A local family is fo...

Sometimes we jump right to the end of the game, in order to find the feeling of victory. I've made the mistake, in the last year, of reading quite intently into literary theory while avoiding building up a library of literature. I'm finding that, the more classic fiction and good contemporary fiction I read, the better my understanding of over-arching themes becomes. This is an obvious point and truism, but it does get lost on people, myself included. And it is also a clear point that life can, or at least tries to, reflect art. The stories we read, or watch in the movies, will eventually play into our expections for how analogous relationships in our own lives will play out. Or, is it that art reflects trends in life and culture? The answer to this chicken-and-egg question is also the answer to who we should be blaming when we see violent children (with idle parents) mimicing the television. But, as I find is the case with some of the most pressing thoughts on our minds, the ...

I'm not a professional photographer; in fact, my knowledge of the technical aspects of it is, while more than none, somewhat minimal. But when I'm taught about photography by people better at it than I, they always speak of a photo as an artistic work, a thing that is 'composed' analogous to the way one might paint on a canvas. And that's great, because I can't paint or draw worth a damn.

Got a new camera today. Ten zillion kagillion pixels, or something like that. Does it even matter anymore?

They say facebook has changed a lot of things, but I'm pretty sure that it hasn't. Give it another year or so; people will be sick of it and it will drop in popularity like so many social networkers before it. Remember the old days when everyone had ICQ, and nobody thought it would ever go out of style? Though, facebook is the new 'officializer' of relationship statuses. Aside from a select few like myself who keep their relationship status off facebook altogether, and another select few (usually girls) who are "married" or "engaged" to their best friend of the same sex, relationship statuses are usually quite accurate, and serve as a romantic news feed for all of a person's friends. The rest of the so-called newsfeed on Facebook is pretty much useless and made-up. Another interesting phenonenon is this new gauge of popularity; a person is a popular as the number of photos there are of him or her, and as popular as the number of his or her friend...

Today's topic will be something I promised myself I'd never write on: personal lamentations about the opposite sex. It is the quintessential blog entry, made popular the point of absurdity by literally millions of utterly, shatteringly, achingly and painfully mundane people with their mundane issues and their mundane problems and their mundane lives. Will mine be any different? Almost certainly not. Though, I offer it to you with the assurance that I don't expect you to find it the least bit interesting, or even read on. In fairness, this is my blog's 250th entry (including before the 'days' started), so I think I've earned a bit of mundanity, yes? Show me one girl, just one, who is single, smart, attactive, emotionally available, genuinely happy, and doesn't have a swath of confounding issues (a.k.a. "drama") about ex's or family or friends or self-confidence or drugs or whatever other things that effectively ruin dating. Somebody please s...

Canada Day is one of the days upon which I am the least proud of this country. The sight and sounds of tens of thousands of teens and 20-somethings completely drunk and/or on drugs yelling and screaming and vandlizing and warranting every cop in town to be on duty to prevent violence... it is a sad sight. I just see a group of people much the same way they might be at a hockey game, or at New Years; it isn't a day to be proud, but a day to party and follow a mass mentality of arbitrary celebration. I wonder if a mass mentlity can ever be a good thing, perhaps for motivating a just war or just cause against poverty or something like that? I still imagine not, because the mass can only ever motivate itself by one thing, and no issue is ever that simple. But then I imagine if people did what I am implicitly asking them to do - know and understand the nation and the world of which they are a part, and celebrate only for real, meaningful, independent reasons - their nationalism would di...

Playing chess against a computer program is very frustrating. I'm here on facebook with 8 or so human opponents and often after I make my moves I'm in the mood for more. So I play the chess computer facebook has on the application. I can defeat the 'easy' setting without trouble, and I can defeat the 'medium' setting most of the time, with a lot of hard thought, but I cannot for the life of me win, or even draw the 'hard' setting. When I play people, the games are always chock full of mistakes. We all make moves we wish we had back just a few moments later. I'm good enough at the game that I can avoid blunders (moves defined as being inarguably bad for a player within a 1-3 move projection), mind the full board, and simply wait until a mistake comes along that I can exploit for the win. But good computers never make mistakes, and they do not fall into traps. A trap is a move that offers a seemingly highy intuitive opportunity for response. Intuition...