Writings of Faith

My Heart Goes Out to the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair

2012-02-14T14:35:00.004-06:00

Here's a little video I created confessing my love for the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair. Happy Valentine's Day! Although the Fair finished on November 10, 2011 it has taken until now for me to recover my video files from my old computer, which unfortunately died. Now, with my refurbished mac, I was able to compile footage and pictures together with a narrative that explains how the Royal has claimed a piece of my heart.

I look forward to the 90th anniversary of the Fair coming November 2012!

Click here to view it on YouTube.com

Small Things Matter to the Human Spirit

2011-11-23T17:05:00.010-06:00

The TV screens in the subway station update me on how occupy protesters are being evicted and arrested, about the slipping Canadian dollar and the negative global economic forecasts for the future. I think to myself: "in another week, you too will be unemployed."

I pick up the Metro paper and read about how Canada is slipping behind other countries in terms of education. Countries like India are getting ahead because the adult population takes at least one new course a year on average. How do they find time? There are pages marketing different universities and colleges as options to escape the work and make you a better employee if you can afford it, or take a course online while you keep working if you can't.

I look through the window of space between crowded bodies on the subway to notice that the girl in front of me is crying. Her earphones are on, preventing communication with the outside world. Yet her eyes, closing to squeeze out the crystals of anguish, say so much. She is such a beautiful girl -beautiful and sad. I wonder what could possibly be wrong for her. Then I think about it again. I think about the teens who commit suicide, thinking as their last thought that it's a short-term solution to a long-term problem. Then I realize the opportunities for depression are endless.

I hate it when others suffer and there's nothing you can do about it. We're all strangers. Do we just shut it out with earphones and closed eyes and go on with life, treading lightly, taking the easy way out, always anonymous? I often think of things I could do to help people but then the moment just passes me by. To think that all of those people that I never changed who will go on hurting makes me feel even more defeated. But then a light turns on over my head and I remember a fortune from a fortune cookie that I kept in my wallet, for no apparent reason other than that I liked what it said.

It's a silly urge: I want to give her a hug because by now she really looks like she could use one. But not knowing whether she will think I'm weird or be annoyed at me or even how I could get her attention, I decide to tap her on the shoulder. She looks up with tears in her eyes, then down to accept the small piece of paper I'm trying to hand her.

A few moments pass and I worry that now things are going to get awkward. Then she smiles and whole-heartedly says "Thank you!" while brushing the tears away. We're deep under ground but it's as if the sun just came out.

Later she gets off the subway. I never find out what was bothering her but I don't care.

The fortune reads: "The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it."

A Musing #2

2011-10-27T21:02:00.003-05:00

Being aware of your greatest weakness could be your greatest strength.

A Musing #1

2011-09-14T18:57:00.003-05:00

In thinking that through thinking one could never arrive at a conclusion, the thinker once again proved himself wrong.

Condolences for Jack

2011-08-22T20:28:00.009-05:00

I was on the bus on the way to work when I first heard it. A Jamaican lady was talking on her cellphone. "What?! Oh no! That's horrible!" then through her thick accent I could make out her repeating: "Is it breaking news?"

I wondered what was considered "breaking news." Did her son just win a scholarship? Then: "I feel bad for Olivia" and "he had been fightin' his other cancer." By then some bells started going off. I put it together but just to make sure, once she got off the phone I had to confirm my fears: "Did I overhear you say that Jack Layton is dead?"

"It's very sad" she said. She didn't need to say anything more. We had one of those moments strangers rarely share, of taking pause and simply understanding what it's like not to understand -that something would change for everyone, albeit a little bit differently for each person. For some, it's just an ordinary day. But it's sad that the NDP leader of Canada passed away and ended his long battle with multiple cancers, one through which he continued, and no doubt will continue, to inspire optimism. Or is that "sad"?

It was only about a month ago when Jack Layton stepped down as leader of the NDP to focus on his health. He had fought prostate cancer so most figured he would do it again. It's hard to think of him as simply a human. His death came as an eventual expectation but also a devastating surprise. Yet cancer increasingly makes mortals of us all.

Not only is it sad for both Liberal and Bloc Quebecois who watched the way he charmed the country in this last election. Canadian politics were so long dominated by an almost tiring bandying back and forth between the Liberals and the Conservatives, with too many weak and confused minority governments, too many vague promises or partisan political trickery. People wanted an alternative, and suddenly they gained an "orange crush" for Jack Layton, who inspired an "orange wave" which rippled across the country, crested with the white whiskers of his whimsical smile, a smile and spine to back it up, which gained his party a spot as the official opposition to the Tories for the first time.

It will be sad for the NDP party, although I am sure it will only fill them with more determination. New leader Nycole Turmel will have a lot to live up to. Gaping shoes. They need someone whose disgust with the broken political system was matched by such a practical will to do something about it, even as rivals led smear campaigns against him.

He continued to fight for the country he saw Canadians wanting to see. Without disclosing what type of cancer had spread from his fight against prostate cancer, he wrote us a letter -to those battling cancer, to political parties, to young Canadians. The style of his letters are a reflection of the man himself, who didn't address himself to a select few behind closed doors but took the time to empathize with the regular man and the business woman and the struggling family member, the seniors and the poor.

Although I couldn't make it to the memorial at Queen's Park in Toronto today at 4pm, I thought of how far Jack took us ahead. Here's the last letter that he left behind:

August 20, 2011
Toronto, Ontario

Dear Friends,

Tens of thousands of Canadians have written to me in recent weeks to wish me well. I want to thank each and every one of you for your thoughtful, inspiring and often beautiful notes, cards and gifts. Your spirit and love have lit up my home, my spirit, and my determination.

Unfortunately my treatment has not worked out as I hoped. So I am giving this letter to my partner Olivia to share with you in the circumstance in which I cannot continue.

I recommend that Hull-Aylmer MP Nycole Turmel continue her work as our interim leader until a permanent successor is elected.

I recommend the party hold a leadership vote as early as possible in the New Year, on approximately the same timelines as in 2003, so that our new leader has ample time to reconsolidate our team, renew our party and our program, and move forward towards the next election.

A few additional thoughts:

To other Canadians who are on journeys to defeat cancer and to live their lives, I say this: please don’t be discouraged that my own journey hasn’t gone as well as I had hoped. You must not lose your own hope. Treatments and therapies have never been better in the face of this disease. You have every reason to be optimistic, determined, and focused on the future. My only other advice is to cherish every moment with those you love at every stage of your journey, as I have done this summer.

To the members of my party: we’ve done remarkable things together in the past eight years. It has been a privilege to lead the New Democratic Party and I am most grateful for your confidence, your support, and the endless hours of volunteer commitment you have devoted to our cause. There will be those who will try to persuade you to give up our cause. But that cause is much bigger than any one leader. Answer them by recommitting with energy and determination to our work. Remember our proud history of social justice, universal health care, public pensions and making sure no one is left behind. Let’s continue to move forward. Let’s demonstrate in everything we do in the four years before us that we are ready to serve our beloved Canada as its next government.

To the members of our parliamentary caucus: I have been privileged to work with each and every one of you. Our caucus meetings were always the highlight of my week. It has been my role to ask a great deal from you. And now I am going to do so again. Canadians will be closely watching you in the months to come. Colleagues, I know you will make the tens of thousands of members of our party proud of you by demonstrating the same seamless teamwork and solidarity that has earned us the confidence of millions of Canadians in the recent election.

To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to replace Canada’s Conservative federal government with something better was by working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision then; it is still the right decision today; and it will be the right decision right through to the next election, when we will succeed, together. You have elected a superb team of New Democrats to Parliament. They are going to be doing remarkable things in the years to come to make this country better for us all.

To young Canadians: All my life I have worked to make things better. Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me. I have met and talked with so many of you about your dreams, your frustrations, and your ideas for change. More and more, you are engaging in politics because you want to change things for the better. Many of you have placed your trust in our party. As my time in political life draws to a close I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. There are great challenges before you, from the overwhelming nature of climate change to the unfairness of an economy that excludes so many from our collective wealth, and the changes necessary to build a more inclusive and generous Canada. I believe in you. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today. You need to be at the heart of our economy, our political life, and our plans for the present and the future.

And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one – a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children. We can do our part to save the world’s environment. We can restore our good name in the world. We can do all of these things because we finally have a party system at the national level where there are real choices; where your vote matters; where working for change can actually bring about change. In the months and years to come, New Democrats will put a compelling new alternative to you. My colleagues in our party are an impressive, committed team. Give them a careful hearing; consider the alternatives; and consider that we can be a better, fairer, more equal country by working together. Don’t let them tell you it can’t be done.

My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.

All my very best,

Feel free to express your condolences here

Or instead of sending flowers, donate to the Broadbent Institute

Politics

Ace of Base Up In My Face!

2011-08-05T13:19:00.008-05:00

What a sign of resurgence! Since going on hiatus and splitting from their lead singer Jenny Berggren in 2003, Swedish band Ace of Base had fresh faces Clara Hagman and Julia Williamson in Toronto last night, performing at Queer Beerfest at Exhibition Place.

The energy was infectious and there was so much love to be shared! Julia kept forming her hands into a heart shape symbol sharing conceptual hearts with raucous fans, who reached and clambered over fences for a chance to literally connect with the stars. I was close to the front where I felt satisfactorily touched, just making occasional eye contact.

Since flipping the tape over in my walkman back when cassettes were the mode-d'ecouter, I have to admit I hadn't given Ace of Base much thought. Had the singer committed suicide? Where were they now? I was completely surprised by the fact that I would have ever gotten the chance to see them perform! But what is it about them and other Swedish bands like the Cardigans that I love so much? Original members Ulf and Jonas were rockin' out and there were amazing and hilarious doppelganger b-boy dancers to back them up. On top of that, the band was generous enough to do three encores, including an emotional moment where a fan was called up to help rally voices for Don't Turn Around, which was an fitting anthem to wind down to, considering nobody wanted them going anywhere.

It was a surprising end to a taxing week. Despite the global economic meltdown we're experiencing post US debt ceiling disaster, the song glossed over my petty worries with positive reminders like "no one's gonna drag you up to get into the light where you belong. But where do you belong?" Perhaps that's a question we should ask AND prepare for more often. But in the mean (and I mean MEAN) time, you really did see and feel the love. It was a good sign. :)

Events

On Aging, Friends and Surviving Heat Waves Based on the Latter

2011-07-20T21:41:00.008-05:00

I have a friend who shall go nameless because he is rather modest, but we have the same birthday and we met years ago via blogging.

He's a great mentor to have, being a sapient eleven year older version of myself (if I manage to turn out alright, that is). With age comes experience. I feel that we have had similar experiences but he is someone who has had more and come out on top. Of course, he still has problems to complain about. We all do.

If we didn't life would be boring. If life were boring we would invent something. If we invented something it would have new problems. Back to square one!

Through his rapier-witted humour and tell-it-like-it-is-ness but also his friendliness and hospitality, I've come to value his opinions and appreciate his company. I think everyone needs a couple people that are always there for them, no matter what but who won't sugarcoat the truth when you need a lesson about the hard knocks of life. He's that for me.

Originally, he encouraged me to move to the city and he has continued to help me build contacts so that I can really be a success! In a way, I don't know if I would have decided that it were possible to come here if it weren't for him. He's a fantastic support and his encouragement just made it seem easy. Finally by my late twenties I moved to the city that always called to me and I haven't looked back. Well, ok, I have looked back. I enjoy my memories now and then. :)

Now that it is coming up to my first year anniversary of making it in this city (and the day after the anniversary of both our births), I realize how important it is to keep looking forward. Just before I do though, let me explain a bit more and I would like to share some of the banter we txt and email back and forth, to get each others goat.

We always do this thing where we call each other random things. He will say that "you're" whatever he happens to be thinking or seeing at that time, things overheard from others in public or something to make you roll your eyes, as in: you're "blame storming" or whatever cliche phrase or issues reporters happen to be throwing around at any given time; things people say that may have some truth but seem to cause more stress merely by thinking of them than being blissfully ignorant like: you're "you know, drinking from an old Brita filter is actually worse for your overall health than not using a filter at all" or "you know, bananas are going to be extinct soon", you're "fracking", "we couldn't have done it without all our wonderful volunteers" etc.

There's also a "that's me" joke that is often used for self-deprecating and hilarious purposes. It's something not everyone understands. I could point at an old, balding man carrying rubber chicken and say "that's you" and my friend would understand and laugh. You, my reader, might not. It is kinda a "had to be there" kind of thing. Fair enough. We find it funny. Moving on.

He told me straight up yesterday: "See, but now the thing is, when you're thirty, [my real or fictional age in this post] it's like you really have to get things together. You don't want to be forty [my friend's real or imagined age] then thinking about changing jobs." I don't know if I agree with that —these days we're projected to have six or seven careers in our lifetimes, not necessarily one teaching career, one career as a businessman or a doctor and a pension after retiring at sixty-five like our folks but I have been a little worried about being able to retire, being able to be responsible, to support for a family —a family I still haven't had time to start or really work on because I am not a doctor, lawyer or teacher. Most of all I hate the uncertainty: will I ever have a stable, engaging, worthwhile profession to hold onto? However, if the 30s are really "the new 20s" then maybe I can still dream? One thing is for sure: I can't stop working hard to find something I love to do! On the other hand, I need to take care of myself and rest so that I have enough energy to work hard.

My friend jokes about how people start to mention that he's not "that old" they will say. But then you realize that "that old" is relative: "You look like you could be my father's age"...Ouch. As you get older, you may want to be experienced and wise, but it's not so much fun when it's the bags under your eyes and salt n' pepper hair that gives it away. You can't go out all night and roll out of bed the next day ready to take the world by storm like you did in college. I still want to think we can change our minds and get another chance, that "every day is a winding road" -Sheryl Crow. We still dream for immortality! But responsibility sets in...

For me, advancing my career and being stable enough to settle down at thirty five seems challenging at this point. I could have a job and a get-er-done attitude and pull it off, but will I be happy? To be a plumber or to get a PHD. On the other hand, some things can't wait forever. I am considering going back to school for the third time since high school. I used to think I would be married and have three kids by the time I was in my mid twenties!

So, we share our experience of aging together. We watch our weight. We nag each other about whether we made it to that interview or remembered to cut down on the carbs. He shows me tricks on how to save money. I learn to comparative shop. I learn not to be reckless. I learn to be subtle. We ply each other whether there are any budding new life opportunities or leads that could prove prosperous. We pat each other on the back when we've made a proverbial score.

Last night we went out and polished off some wine on patios in kensington market for our birthday and then we went over to a friend's house where we were served copious amounts of ice cream and popcorn. I couldn't resist. My friend couldn't either. He resisted better than I did though after a few spoon scoops. I almost finished the carton!

Today I am sitting in my room in a shared house where I pay rent. There are multiple fans on and I am shirtless as I type this (not to make you picture something you don't want to). It's been a week long heat wave where with the humidity, it feels like 45 degrees. You never stop sweating. You wake up in puddles. I realize there are others in this world who are starving and dying of drought. This is not quite as bad as that. Meanwhile, my friend sleeps soundly in his air conditioned condo. I am in a muggy and self-loathing mood, only regretting last night's regalia for the physical consequences that have transpired (I had very little sleep and ate too much). I have started working out in the last few years to keep off the pounds. I have had to start working in the last few years. But today working out would simply not be feasible. I have just enough energy to txt my friend something similar to what he has already told me:

"The worst thing about 30 is you eat some ice cream one night, you see the fat the very next day. It's like it just fills some cream pocket in your stomach and pops up to say hello! What you never thought you'd see me again? I never left! I came to stick around. Here in this hot sticy muggy hell. But I guess you don't care about silly 30 year old problems what with your established 41 year old condo with constant air conditioning to keep your waifish body from exhausting trying to heat itself"

"LOL"

(I am goading him by ridiculing that he's worried about his figure when he's actually quite fit and boosting him with the fact that he has things together —something I envy). He appreciates it. We always talk to each other this way. It might read aggressive and hostile but that's the way we joke.

There is a pause of several minutes, then my friend texts (txts) back:

"I'm scared to see how hot and humid it's going to be tomorrow"

I am more so. The threat is imminent.

But what does he have to be scared of? He doesn't even need to go outside. It will be air conditioned in his office once he gets there. Is he pushing my buttons cause he knows I don't have air conditioning once we're both off work? It's hard to decipher tone through text. But no, because he offered to let me sleep on his couch so that I can actually sleep. My apartment will be sweltering as they are predicting the pinnacle of the heat wave tomorrow. I will be safe in his condo, protected from the devastating effects of the climate, shielded within a comfortable cool.

What are friends for? For keeping each other from going insane.

Polynesian Bride

2011-07-11T22:48:00.007-05:00

Uh-huh, Polynesian Bride. That's right. I caught this short clip of you a few weeks ago when I went to see you at Sneaky Dee's and now it's unleashed.

Since it was the week after NXNE, it seems most hipsters were too hungover to make it out. Still, this colossal band was able to get those who were there swaying and then dancing more fervently. I came to see my friends band (she's also a math guru) but ended up staying for this multitudinous marriage of many instruments and voices. Just watching them set up was interesting, as I counted over a dozen band members. Luckily, they all fit on stage!

Events

New Dinosaur Species Found

2011-06-11T19:44:00.012-05:00

It's amazing what you can find on the internet if you look hard enough. Look at it as a metaphor for looking for things in real life. Sometimes you find something amazing without even looking!

New dinosaur species have been unearthed in and around California. Discovering a whole trove of discoveries rocked my consciousness with wonder! How had this not shook the rest of the world and if so, why hadn't I heard about it?? Everyone knows that they've found new pyramids but really this? After 65,000,000,000 years?! For anyone who grew up making plasticine dinosaurs, who perfected sculpting every known species of dinosaur into figurines and who now has a whole new challenge ahead of them, this is simply amazing.

How it happened was that I was sitting at my computer not doing too much when I wondered whether Tyrannosaurus Rex's were particularly fast runners or not. Random question, infinite access to the internet. One would assume that they are a predator ergo they would have to be, but I was just doing some cautious fact-checking when I came across this not-so-secret archive of paleontology finds and boy was I excited! I was so excited I didn't even care how fast Tyrannosaurus Rexes could run, my thoughts were racing even faster!

Perhaps I have just been in an archeoillogical bubble, going to my 9-5 job listening to democracynow.org and the good old CBC rather than digging my heels into underground paleontology -the grit of the distant past, but let me ask you, have you heard of a cocketetielosaurus? You have heard of a cocketielosaurus! What does it look like? WRONG!

In fact the cocketetielosaurus is covered in feathers. There are a lot of theories that dinosaurs weren't naked lizards as they are commonly portrayed to us by our mainstream paleontologists but actually fully clothed. This is the proposed theory of renegade paleontologist "Jillian". The cocketetielosaurus very name means "nice bird". But every "nice" smiley face has a hidden frown, the cockotielosaurus is definitely one bird, or sorry, excuse me, one dinosaur(?), not to mess with. If you want to gloat about your trip to Paris, don't do it to the cocketeilosaurus. It's been there done that. It had been all over the world and survived in every climate. "It flew everywhere." Not like the stripeosaurus who despite having a pretty cool stripey coat, went nowhere. There's some joy (albeit vicarious bordering on envious) knowing that the cocketetielosaurus was probably a very light-hearted species. "It played a lot."

There are other dinosaurs whom evolution did not treat them so kindly. Take the cheeasaurus for example. "It was mad because a long neck ran into him." I would be too! Wouldn't you? Funny thing those long necks. They never seem to be attached to a brain! Always running around everywhere without even looking where they're going! Thank goodness Brandon discovered him so that he could share his troubled history with us so that we can gain a better appreciation of the hardship he had to endured to surv...er, get extinct by.

Whichever story you choose to believe, whether humans and dinosaurs co-existed, whether knights of the stone henge were commissioned by dinosaur kings to build them impenetrable armour or that throwing virgins into volcanoes was in fact the causal beginning of the ice age, this is a goldmine of discovery by extremely ambitious young paleontologists who deserve recognition! It tells us a very different story about dinosaurs that we don't often get to see. Perhaps by learning about a vast array of species it can help us better understand our own.

Some of these dinosaurs may still be surviving according to students in the field. The pinkosaurus is one such species. It can be tough to spot because it hides under Brentwood Bus seats but that doesn't make it any less plausible that it could still be unphased out of existence. It's related to, but quite different in appearance than the blueasaurus. Like it's name suggests, it's blue. It's discovery has caused many critics in various fields to quit their jobs immediately.

Probably the most exciting and frightening of these discoveries are the species of killosaurus. Its pictured here with its characteristic "mean" look, smeared in the blood of its prey, its friends and its mate. Paleontologist Justin summed it up best with these three points when he said:

It looked mean.

It liked to eat meat.

It killed other dinosaurs very well.

Thanks to the teachers at Brentwood for supplying shovels.

Silly

Wish

2011-05-01T19:24:00.002-05:00

I am sorry I have been so quiet lately
I had no words even
to explain it to myself

I had forgotten
or maybe I just didn't believe
that the last word has yet to be written

Dwelling in the rain and gloom
can make one feel like the man on the moon
we are not alone

My life sentence
is like an outstretched hand
extended
like the spring buds
you begin to see on trees in May,
There, revivification

And I am just starting to remember
that you always get another chance
But these things take time
the first step is utterance
calling on the natural powers of the universe

I clasp my hands together as a flower, hoping

Something good will blossom

Travel With Care

2011-01-24T14:56:00.006-06:00

I got in a bus accident. That is to say I had an accident on the streetcar. Just as it was slowing to a stop, I unwisely let go of the railing and during that split second it lurched forward unexpectedly. As I was compensating for my weight in one direction, suddenly it went in the other. My feet went out from under me, gravity pulled me down and the edge of a nearby seat caught the soft fleshy part of my abdomen just under the right side of my ribs. Pain shot through my body and the recently purchased items from Shoppers Drugmart went skimming around the car. My friend Todd, as well as everyone else on the bus, watched speechless as I groaned uncontrollably and held my side. Although it felt like ripping in half to reach down and get my things, I did so hoping it would distract me from the pain.

I exited at my stop and continued on my way, groaning all the way home. My friend trailed behind me not knowing what to say, so I announced: “I just have to breathe” and did so deeply, trying to calm my nerves, which screamed and hissed like a wild mink thrown sadistically into the fire. The intensity of this pain reminded me of the pain of breaking a rib, yet luckily, breathing deeply was the one thing that made it feel better, so my ribs must have been fine. It was the lower area not affecting my skeletal system that was seeing its darkest day.

We got to my place and still the pain wouldn’t subside. I would like to think I have a high pain tolerance but I was forced to stay as immobile as possible since everything else hurt. Relaying the incident to someone else, they said: “I hope you didn’t bruise your liver.” Although I had never heard of that before, I waved off the concern, firing back “No, it’s OK. I fell on my right side. The liver’s on the left.” Then just to be sure, I checked the internet. Uh-oh. Apparently my memory of anatomy has faded since I have completed my CCPE: the liver IS on the right side. What I read was troubling: “Having a bruised liver is no small matter, and if not attended to immediately can cause further problems.” I started feeling worried and faint. Was I feeling faint because I was worried or worried because I felt faint? At that moment, I didn’t have time to process or enumerate on the particular strengths and weaknesses of the James-Lange theory of emotion. I felt extremely light-headed and my ears were starting to ring. Was this the result of internal bleeding? Was I experiencing rhabdomyolysis?? In any case, suddenly it felt like my life was in danger. I wasn’t going to die painfully in my room listening to tunes on grooveshark.com. I turned to Todd and said “I don’t feel so good.” Catching my litotes, he stood straight up and said: “Dude, you look really pale!” I had never done this before but what I did next was to call the ambulance.

They told me not to eat or drink anything and to stay on the line. Then they hung up on me. I started going through all the potential horror scenarios in my head, picturing them cutting me open in a desperate attempt to sew up cleaved organs, blood shooting out all over the operating table. I have four sisters who work in the health profession. I tried reaching just one of them to ask if I was crazy. No answer.

Maybe the fresh air helped because as we stood (key indication: I stood) outside waiting, I started to calm down. Only then did I consider that I might be overreacting. I wondered: should I call them back? It was a tricky situation. It wasn’t like a restaurant reservation that I could just cancel. It was one of those Shakespearian “I am in blood stepped in so far that should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.” (Macbeth) Only I wasn’t bleeding. Someone else could be bleeding to death and they would be deprived of an ambulance but how was I to know? It was too late to change my mind now. Maybe someone was in cardiac arrest. Either way, that ambulance was on its way to me.

The way the two men got out of the ambulance, you could tell they were already heading for the stretcher in the back. I sheepishly indicated that the ambulance was for me, like an embarrassed schoolchild saying “here” during attendance. I started flooding them with apologies, feeling silly for calling them and then walked myself into the back, watching my head. The paramedic was a friendly young Asian man who reassured that it was fine, took my blood pressure and temperature then told me that “everything checks out normal, so far.” He explained that he’s also had the pleasure of “rocking his side on the corner of a dock after a couple drinks” before and he was fine. The liver is a “resilient organ made of soft gooshy tissue” so by then I was certainly feeling that I would be fine. I tried to probe again: is this needed? Should we just turn around? But he suggested I goto the hospital and get checked out, if not for anything else, just to get some “peace of mind.”

Well, an hour or so later after wading/waiting through rooms of scarred, wheel-chaired and tragic-looking individuals, I was siphoned through triage where I met Doctor #1. Again, I explained that I wasn’t too worried anymore. He suggested I stay and go through with it anyway. By this point it was just a formality, like showing up for a date even though you weren’t so keen. “You don’t want to get the medical bill” for skipping out early, he warned. “How much is the regular bill?” $45. GTK.

When I saw Doctor # 2 he poked around and tried to figure out where it hurt. There was one particular spot that made me jump but it didn’t hurt too much anywhere else. My back didn’t hurt which would have been a concern for kidney damage.

Because I had just been reading Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box where he explains the obstacles to Darwin’s theory of evolution, namely gradualism in the face of all the scientific advances since the discovery of the microscope, DNA etc., I was particularly interested by the way a health professional such as Doctor #2 phrased his explanation of why I shouldn’t be too worried about the blow to my side: “Whoever designed us has done an excellent job of hiding most of the liver behind the ribcage…” (Refer to Figure 1 at the top of this article). I had just been reading hundreds of pages proposing an alternative to Darwin’s evolutionary theory, namely the argument for intelligent design and what he was saying convince me that we were on the same page. Of course the argument for design vs undirected process has been going on long before Darwin but the word "design" triggered something in me. The fact that this doctor was talking about our ‘design’ as if it was purposefully done by someone (or something) gave me a shiver.

Often, critics of Darwin’s theory are branded as simple-minded creationists with no regard for science. Darwin’s theories are compelling and ‘survival of the fittest’ is one of the most accepted and pervasive ideas in our modern capitalist society. But do we really live in a ‘natural’ world where our survival attests to our fitness? How can evolution explain the gradual steps it took to reach irreducibly complex systems such as the blood clotting system, which relies on all parts to function at all, and would be no better with one set of most of the parts vs another set of most of the parts, for the particular task of clotting? On the other hand, if there was ever a God, maybe he's forgotten about us or he's too busy with other universes to deal with us, as Bernard-Henri Levi suggests, or maybe as Richard Dawkins suggests: if there's a watchmaker, he's blind so he can't fix us anyway. But talking to this doctor was first-hand proof that it was possible to consider scientific theory as compatible with intelligent design.

Maybe the earth wasn’t created in seven days but is it possible that at least some stages of evolution were destined either by a well-planned out environment, to reach the animal kingdom ready-made, with certain purposes in mind? I realize that any time you talk about “destiny” it rings of superstition and if intelligent design were true, it should be just as appealing to an atheist as it is to a theist. Unfortunately, in my opinion, neither evolution nor intelligent design are testable theories until we figure out how to time travel.

Once Doctor #2 laid out my options and prescribed some codeine, I finally had the chance to simply leave. It would take all day just to get in for an X-ray or for some imaging and since my ribs were obviously fine and my liver doesn’t hang down below my ribs like a seasoned alcoholic’s might: "two young healthy guys like us", I left.

Patient Todd was still in the first waiting room, with the other patients. Since there are no cellphones allowed in the hospital, I never got his text asking whether or not he should stay. We ended up back on the streetcar where it all started, heading back to my place. I sat down cautiously and held the bar a little longer than usual. “At least we got to ride the ambulance.” Todd offered. Yes we did.

Personal Diegesis

The Duchess is Historically if not Politically Correct

2011-01-05T12:41:00.005-06:00

The first movie I watched in 2011 was The Duchess, starring Kiera Knightly and Ralph Fiennes.

It's about 18th century aristocrat who was surely the talk of all the coffee houses. As the Duchess of Devonshire and leading fashionista by proxy, she was a trend-setter but also a deal-breaker who broke the mold by having an affair with Charles Grey. Knightly as Georgiana Spencer does an excellent job of showing her (secret) admiration for Grey, who was a rival but who stood for ideas like "freedom", a theme explored throughout the movie through the different compromises Spencer had to make for her family and herself as a woman. At one point the Duke takes her children hostage and threatens to destroy Grey's political career unless she resolves to remain with him and make the marriage work.

This movie showed how different the 'olden days' were, with the sexist assumption that while a man has certain "duties" to his wife, she wasn't able to enforce them on him. They were merely ideals. As a result, no wonder women were thought to be characterized by "trickery" and a low moral character. They had no rights to exercise! Men were free to have their romps but women were expected to remain "imprisoned" in their homes -a word Georgiana tactfully extracts from her husband's euphemistic language ordering her what to do. They were to have no pleasure, sexual or otherwise, for themselves. During an intimate conversation, Grey makes an observation about Georgiana to the effect that she worries too much what others think. She responds that she never thought of it but how petty that makes her seem! The first kiss that they share shows a building from Pride and Prejudice in the background, another period piece to which Knightly is well suited.

Although Keira Knightly is very easy on the eyes, movies like this can be hard for some to watch. Just as I have heard people's angry response to the series Mad Men because it's set in the 50's and thus portrays all of the sexism of that time without editing out history with a politically correct vengeance. It is hard to watch a wife come to the decision that allowing her husband to rape her is really the best choice for her children. You wish somehow that plot would get hijacked. That was the reality of the situation though! Poetic license doesn't work if you want to get a biography right.

I enjoyed this movie because it's an important love story without much love. It made me empathize with the 18th century woman. I felt that although I was lazing around with my laptop, I wasn't wasting time boobtubing. I was at least getting some sense of history.

Movie Reviews

November Silence

2010-11-09T08:13:00.003-06:00

When the world turned its page to its darkest chapters
Children were hiding, no warmth or laughter
Bombs, guns, gas, trenches,
torches, screams, disease, fences

Mothers mustered boys from school to the fields
Boys were called men with the weapons they wield
No other choice, if not them, then who would fight?
Or rage, rage against the dying of the light

The war to end wars we must never forget
Especially in peace, for still we regret
No glory or honour to live at fears bequest
They fought, and fought on, so that we may rest

Death, never sweet, though solemn oaths they take
Far from their families, though their hearts break
So in November, we must stop to think
Take silence for them who no longer can speak

Copyright © 2010 Barrett Cressman

Poetry

Facing Waste with Rebellion

2010-09-05T10:38:00.011-05:00

Give yourself the benefit of a doubtful situation, and make the best of it! If unemployed, you can find yourself in a situation where it can be as easy to get in a slump as it is to mastermind a new escape into the great unknown. Freedom can do strange things to people. Enjoying yourself responsibility becomes a labour of love and a test of discipline. So what I decided to do was to take advantage of Blockbuster's recent Summer Savings Event and get a "movie pass" that allows me to rent as many movies (new releases excepted) for $10/month. Some may say that prostrating oneself in front of a screen is a waste of time, but I think otherwise.

Right now the global situation of our ongoing survival is at least somewhat doubtful regardless of who you ask, for many different reasons. We're stuck in the vision of cities as the same basic box-shaped structure of steel and glass that existed in the 50's, with oil and electricity dependance. But I just recently watched "a genuinely inspirational film" -Artvoice, called Garbage Warrior about a man who made his own destiny and changed many lives. It shows how the possibility of living off the grid can be a lot more hopeful.

It documents renegade architect Michael Reynolds journey as struggles to be allowed to build "earthship" houses out of bottles, cans, old tires and dirt. He spent 30 years in New Mexico developing these self-sustainable structures that not only product their own water, grow food, electricity, sewage etc. they look peculiarly interesting, with their kaleidoscope of light-infiltrating bottles in the walls, and hand-molded rounded shapes. Knowing that these houses actually work and are resilient to various climates only makes them more desirable to live in. What's amazing is that when Reynolds got his crew together to build these villages, they took garbage and practically build the houses for nothing!

Reynolds is a big thinker. But sometimes people with big ideas don't mesh with the mainstream. A result of his work saw his architect licence being suspended because the structures he built didn't follow "normal" zoning bylaws, which is to say, they didn't have electricity, sewage etc provided for them from without. That is to say: they were too self-sustainable. The board handed him a thick book full of zoning violations. One of the most poignant things Reynolds says to sum up costs, the system and the steps he needed to take to be legit is by outlining what the law requires of architects planning to build a new subdivision:

"This is the application for phase 3 and 4 to be a subdivision. We had to provide 14 copies of this [presenting an overfilled binder]. Archeologists had to walk the land and look for arrowheads. That cost $20,000 and all they did was walk around and pick up arrowheads! Engineers had to engineer the terrain and make diagrams and drawings that nobody ever uses. That was $14,000. Just endless horse shit. We have a person who could not see any bigger than the rulebook. And I think that's the issue we have before us right now on this planet. We've got lots of people can't see any bigger than the rulebook and beyond the rulebook is global warming." -Micheal Reynolds

To lose one's licence after ten years of school to become an architect, and then to be told 'no' to literally building your dreams; of course that's gonna shake you up. Luckily, Michael Reynolds doesn't give up easily.

The rest of the movie shows how he fought back by going at the system as a part of it. He had some other colourful expressions to describe how he was going to infect the system with his ideas but one that's blogworthy is that he was to become what he dubbed the "Trojan Horse" by donning a suit and heading to the Supreme Court to fight the limited way the law understands "living" to be. But the culture of fear is still strong...

After Hurricane Katrina came he again tried to propose his ideas and was struck down again. People had no homes. They had nothing. What he was proposing was an immediate solution to their problem, but the law doesn't provide immediate solutions to anything. The whole experience shows how frustrating and absolutely ridiculous the legal system is. It's a "grandfather system" that works for certain things if you have all the time in the world but now more than ever we need swift decisions. The fact that you can have a room full of politicians wasting time, and that that's their job: to kill a bill by filibustering, when it suits them, because doing anything too radical, too immediate, would be a "liability", or a "safety concern" is disgusting, but of course, as many of the ways society works can be summed up: "it is what it is."

When another hurricane struck the Andaman Islands due to one of the biggest earthquakes since the 1900's, Reynolds finally got to put his work to practical use. The island was devastated by flood, with more than half of the residents lives erased. The documentary shows one man pointing to different areas, saying "we sat there" or recounting times with family and friends in spots that bear no record of history. Reynolds meets with architects and explains how his structures are round so that they distribute the force of a striking wave and how, he believes, they would stand up to earthquakes reading 9.1 on the Richter scale.

In the face of devastation, the local residents of the Andaman Islands show immense resilience and courage to get on board. The women are mixing mud for mortar, and making "bricks" out of the plastic bottles children find in the streets. They pound dirt into old tires with sledgehammers.

Reynolds had proposed directly giving people the tools to build their own earth ships, not designing AND building cities as an alternative to taking on the liability of being completely in charge. He wanted to make an "experimental test city" reasoning that if the US could designate miles and miles of land in Arizona just to periodically detonate and destroy land with nuclear weapons, to "test" them, why couldn't he "test" something a little more constructive? On the one hand, the US took extreme risks in testing nuclear weapons that they didn't even know whether they would destroy the whole planet in the interest of "security. On the other, someone wants to take a small risk to provide shelter, when working examples of those structures already existed, and it's considered "radical".

The happy part of the story is that once the board of architects in the US heard about Reynolds work in the Andaman Islands, they finally decided to award him back his Architects licence.

I commend the man as a true "warrior."

Movie Reviews

So Glad to Meet You, Toronto

2010-08-04T12:28:00.010-05:00

My pet fish died the first night I moved here. I almost did too, but it wasn't until a few days later, literally pumping the pavement with my feet, jogging from St Clair to Dufferin to Bloor to Christie in a giant square, trying to get my mind and body in shape, trying to learn my new turf, determined to survive in this new city, that I avoided collapse by going to a nearby park to scout out their water fountain.

I had been "pounding the pavement" in the sense of looking for jobs, too. I am "braving" it, which even I know is a bold and perhaps audacious thing to do, during this time of 9.5% unemployment rates. But what choice do I have? One of the newsletters that I read in an effort to try to glean tips on how to crack the economy tells me to be persistent; and I have been saying that I was going to move to Toronto for years! Since I last blogged, I have been laid off from Johnson & Johnson Inc. after two years of providing Bilingual Customer Service for all the 1-800 numbers on bottles of products of anything from Tylenol to Stayfree Maxi pads at their Information Centre in Guelph, which no longer exists. Now my job function is handled by a hand full employees in Washington, PA. I saw it coming for awhile and the company was gracious enough to provide transition benefits such as job counselling, which I have used to some advantage. Other than that, I have been enjoying my time off, going to BBQ's and taking bike rides through Guelph (where I just moved from), watching the sun rise and fall and blaring tunes on patios, talking with old familiar friends until the scorching air cools and the crickets sing, but now it's time to get serious.

Now it's the cicadas that I hear screaming. The dog days of summer are upon us. Packed in streetcars, people complain that they cannot breathe. It's too hot. Tomorrow it will be 45 degrees celcius with the humidex! But this is no time to stop. I just moved to Toronto three days ago, lucky enough to find a nice second floor room in a house in a quiet neighbourhood last minute via Craigslist, living with an international student. I have always wanted to move to this city of fast movers. I loved the small town charm of Guelph, but I loathed it's smothering effect, it's unreliable service, the incestuously tight-knit community and its dreamy ineffectuality. Guelph has a great music scene, many people that I love and a comfortable downtown that I am sure I will return to again and again, but to see the diversity of culture, the buskers and hustlers, musicians and business people, to have buses that run 24 hours and multiple cities within an even bigger city -that's what I want! I also want career advancement. I guess I want what every immigrant wants: a new beginning.

I got a $13 hair cut today by a woman from Vietnam who remarked that this city is so loud. I guess she was considering what it would be like for me compared to where I came from. I can't imagine it being quieter in Vietnam. She made me feel better about things, telling me not to take the first job that comes my way, but to find something that I really enjoy which, she said "would be a whole lot better for you." She made me feel like she knew me personally as she cut my hair. I suppose that's her job. I am used to having my mother cut my hair, but my mother can't take care of me now. This woman who was cutting my hair was at some point was just like me, moving from Vietnam to Vancouver, then eventually to Toronto to make a new start. For $13, I was impressed with her work, so I tipped her another $3, and grabbed her card for future reference.

I don't have a job but that's no reason for me not to keep busy. I am looking forward to volunteering for a festival which starts in September.

I am excited about it all. The festival will be to die for. I just hope I survive in Toronto long enough to experience it. With a smile on my face, and the help of a few friends, I am sure I will.

Now, to leave you with a song that I have started to play again. I feel like I can really connect with this song right now, as it's written about all the hopes and dreams one has when they move to a new city, and how it never turns out exactly like what you might expect. Perhaps that can be a good thing. For the writer, there are always mixed feelings. Here's Elliot Smith, with Angeles:

Personal Diegesis

Time to Sit Up

2010-03-25T20:10:00.003-05:00

This is what I need to do more of. For years I thought that the way you burn fat was genetically predisposed, so that certain people lose fat in certain areas faster than others. But as this video points out, when you work a specific muscle group, the blood flow increases to that region, and since fat needs oxygen to burn, this increases the metabolism of fat in that region.

Some people eat a chocolate bar and it "just goes to their hips". Me, I'm a belly guy. But apparently I should be doing less running and more sit-ups, cause my legs are getting huge and it's because they have to carry that extra belly weight! Time for "thinking position" (not featured in this video).

The Hours

2010-03-23T18:35:00.006-05:00

Sometimes waiting for time feels like this song.

you wait so long for a specific moment, and then it just passes you by

you feel robbed, angered

if moments lose meaning, then time all feels the same

we numb ourselves for our own protection

for a moment can gloriously majestic, but uncontainable

once you've lost someone or something really important to you, you wonder: does the losing ever end?

we are an eternal fire

you hope and wait for things to get better

stop waiting

Music video: Phillip Glass, The Hours

Gloomy Sunday

2010-01-31T17:01:00.006-06:00

There are many internet rumours that this is the song that supposedly causes people to commit suicide after they listen to it which is why it was called the "Hungarian suicide song" in the US. The original Hungarian composer Rezső Seress who composed the music to go with the poem by László Jávor actually did jump to his death from his apartment building...but it wasn't until thirty three years after writing this song.

My mother, who is a true "Hungarian" (although she was born in Canada and has only been to Budapest once or twice) would definitely appreciate this song. It seems that I too can be a 'gloomy guy' and I am drawn to melancholy melodies and minor keys. My Hungarian grandfather seemed influenced by the gloominess and difficulty of the great depression that inspired this song. He always told us to save and conserve our money and at least made a good case for how hard things were growing up in poverty. This song echoes that despair from a World War that shattered Europe. In the literal English translation of the lyrics, the protagonists chase for "dreams" are met only with an empty "carriage of sorrow" that returns "without you"; imaginably the bride he is waiting for. Although "tears are" his "only drink" in that version, suicide is not explicit.

In the Desmond Carter version done by Paul Robeson here, it could be interpreted that death severs him from his love and thus steals him to the church rather then allowing him to go there with her to wed:

Sadly one Sunday I waited and waited
With flowers in my arms for the dream I'd created
I waited 'til dreams, like my heart, were all broken
The flowers were all dead and the words were unspoken
The grief that I knew was beyond all consoling
The beat of my heart was a bell that was tolling

Saddest of Sundays

Then came a Sunday when you came to find me
They bore me to church and I left you behind me
My eyes could not see one I wanted to love me
The earth and the flowers are forever above me
The bell tolled for me and the wind whispered, "Never!"
But you I have loved and I bless you forever

At the end is added: "Last of all Sundays", for him at least.

This Paul Robeson version is my favorite. Robeson's deep, baritone vocals make this an emotive and truly gloomy experience that makes your heart swell along with the dynamics of the melody. The lyrics are also a different translation than the cover done by Billie Holiday, which added a third verse to explain that the singer was only dreaming of her lover's death (but was still banned from BBC radio anyway).

Paul Robeson had a hard enough life as well. Not only would it have been tough being a black actor in the 1930's, he was famously the first black actor to play Othello on Broadway, but he was also an athlete, a lawyer, an opera singer, he was heavily involved in social activism against the Jim Crow laws and the racism that was prevalent, which would be why he became a target to the CIA and victim of a passport ban. He apparently attempted suicide after a wild party at a Hotel in Moscow but his son believes that he might be been drugged by a CIA agent because of the hallucinations and paranoia his father described to him three days later, which he never had before or after that experience. The symptoms described are consistent with what might be caused by LSD, a drug the CIA was experimenting (or using others to experiment) with in project MK Ultra. Robeson later died due to complications from a prostate surgery, which is chilling considering that prior to the surgery he had expressed concern over what might "be done" to him by the US Government.

I cannot imagine living with constant harassment by society and that society's own government, but music is a better escape than suicide. Please listen responsibly.

Heros

An Old Man's Industry

2010-01-05T19:02:00.008-06:00

Nothing like a broken drawer handle
that hangs down and
catches on the drawer below it
making such a nuisance
that to pull out my
Phillips screwdriver
and fix it once
is not enough
because it's only to discover that
the screw that someone
put in there is too short,
with its head barely popped out of
the other side
though it gives the illusion
that it holds fast
the truth is:
it was hanging on by one screw the whole time!
one yank and it's out again
one should have known
can't go on like this
always frustrated
when trying to open
there's got to be a solution
might as well switch it
with the bottom drawer
no one uses it anyway

That's an investment!
To not be repeatedly pissed off
every time I reach for a spoon
To not curse under my breath
when that damn drawer
still hasn't been fixed

someone else might as well
get ticked
rummaging for a spare bag
in a sorry place to put em'

Nothing like a broken drawer handle

Poems

My New Year's Resolution

2009-12-31T12:31:00.003-06:00

Looking back on the aughties (2000-2009), it seems like the decade just flew by, yet so much happened nevertheless! The grunge nineties gave way to a...somewhat undefinable time. We survived past the Y2K glitch that could have caused so much damage had the bravery of computer programmers, who corrected the two digit year format in machine's programming, not saved us, and then we just went on...The aughties birthed a more technologically social culture with the introduction of Facebook. Bush came to power in the US, and then there were a rocky eight years that launched a war on terrorism, hurricane katrina, the tsunami of Boxing Day 2005, replaced more recently by the "hope" of Obama's election last year.

The global downturn didn't hit us as badly in Canada, (so says Stephen Harper) yet we've reached the end of our wild spending days. Our government is going to have to be fiscally conservative now for awhile. Finding a decent, stable job in Ontario can be a daunting task for anyone who finds themselves suddenly unemployed, due to "corporate restructuring" and considering the education system itself always drilled into our minds that education was the foundation of hireability, it's frustrating that our youth in Ontario are faced with the least government funding for education and the highest tuition rates ever! (Thank goodness my company is the one paying for my Pharmaceutical Accreditation that I'm currently taking).

Now, on the brink of 2010, we collectively continue to fantasize about the apocalypse occurring in movies like 2012, while we make weak promises at Copenhagen about reducing greenhouse gases in some other decade in the future. As my father argued with me over Christmas, there has almost always never been some global crisis that hasn't appeared to be capable of imminently wiping us off the map. In the 60's, the rate of population explosion seemed to make the possibility of feeding the world impossible. Now we produce enough food, we just have other political problems preventing us from sharing with the poor...and the "new" threat is global warming...

On the other hand, it's an exciting time to be alive. I'm excited to see the US healthcare system start to resemble at least an option not unlike our Medicare. We have many challenges -one being a large, aging population for which we will have to provide and care for. Yet I'm excited to see what kinds of technological interventions will prove as breakthroughs with recombinant DNA technology and stem cell research. I look forward to traveling the world, hopefully making it to Venice before it floods, maybe go visit my friend Kazuto in Tokyo, writing more songs and watching many more HBO series' before I'm through.

Today I will opt for a New Year's Eve unlike many others. I will celebrate it from the comfort of my own apartment, raising a glass of champagne to a new era: the "tens"? I will virtually kill many mutant zombies playing Halo 3 and play countless Füssball matches with my friends over fig chutney appetizers and mango brie creations. Done are my days of spending shameful amounts of money and time planning, rushing, fighting my way through crowds to ring in the New Year with strangers. With just a few close friends and a little hope, 2010 will start off just fine.

Christmas Cookie Fiasco

2009-12-16T20:30:00.004-06:00

Whew! I just sat down for what seems like the first time today, after making sixty (YES! 6-D!) cookies for a cookie exchange! (In reality, I sat for all nine hours at work, never once raising my ergonomic desk to the 'standing' position). Anyway, I thought it was hard work, all that stirring.

I had to do it in three, approximately (I don't have measuring cups) doubled recipes of "Haystack Cookies". (I used a coffee cup). Some people know of them as macaroon-like imitations.

What turned out are three distinct batches.

I forgot the salt in the one batch. I think it's strange that baked sweets (which, in this case doesn't even apply, since these cookies are unbaked) even call for salt. I managed to remember the vanilla last-minute.

I put my butter and milk and cocoa and sugar in a pot and got it to a boil, stirring rapidly for five minutes. Then, because it still wasn't carmelized properly, I stirred it for another five.

Each time I did the recipe, I improved and strategized on previous errors, sometimes adding more of one thing and less of another, and also, as mentioned above, sometimes "strategically" overlooking some ingredients entirely!

I'm going to mix all of the batches together and see if anyone at work notices that they're not the same.

Queen Kake Brings Blog Back From Dead

2009-11-20T18:30:00.013-06:00

Queen Kake and I were discussing how our blogs have been rather...uneventful as of late. She made me believe that maybe my blog wasn't dead?

She reminded me of good old times a camp, and posted this cute picture of us. (When WAS that? '98??). It got me thinking that even if I don't see all my friends every day, I can still READ about them online, and that's kinda like seeing them right? Blogging's fun! It's interactive! Caramba! (Sorry, I got carried away. I'm not even very good at Spanish so I'm not quite sure if that's a swear word or not). But the point is, that I guess just by sheer mutual will, that this, this right here, is proof that we can coax our blogs back to life?

We wondered if perhaps some pictures would spruce up the place. So with some phonecamèrashotz, I'M BACK TO TELL YOU WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO!!

First of all, I have to say it's been a beautiful fall. Hardly any snow.At the beginning of November, I took a Friday off work and went to Toronto. There I visited my little sister Ashley and walked around Toronto sight-seeing (I could walk there for hours). There was some excellent graffitti and street art to be seen:
On Sunday, following the tradition of Prince Charles and Camella, (who were there on Saturday), I went to the Royal Winter Fair and went to the Rodeo. Here's a picture of a horseman riding on the horse that the man on the ground just jumped off of when they switched mid gallop!
Other than that, I've been getting pretty intensely into Battlestar Galactica (almost finished Season III). Best quote:

Sharon (aka ceylon Sharon): How do you know that you can trust me?

Maj. Adama: I don't. That's what trust is.

and studying pretty hard for my Council for Continuing Pharmaceutical Education, not in that order of priority though...I swear, which I finish in January.

When I have time, I decorate my fridge:And if I still have extra time, I blog.

Going to Nuit Blanche

2009-10-02T20:13:00.004-05:00

Kindness is a portal I slip through this night
you only get to see what the cool kids see
by seeing through them and through them the me
different angles, colours, angels, mothers, lips-

Speaking, entreating, retreating, repose,
a parallel dimesion reaching out its smooth palm.
I will take a cheap umbrella and a six megapixel cam
through kensington, art, crowds and song, nuit blanche...

Summer Progress Report

2009-08-16T13:50:00.002-05:00

Woe is me for not having an air conditioner! As the summer weather starts to actually feel (uncomfortably) like summer, it is time to realize that there is not much of it left! Still, it has been a busy/productive summer for many people, getting out to cottages, sailing, swimming, camping, starting new romances (and putting others behind).

I have wrapped up an activity sandwich complete with biking, two weddings, made good headway in my completion of my CCPE and started hosting open mics at Wally's (Oh snap! I better practice, that's tonight!) My friend shared this discovery as well. Nick Pitera:

I can't believe how precise his voice impersonations are!! Part of me is glad he's too busy to attend my open mics...

But I still have a few things that I want to do this summer, including

-actually catch a fish, not just go "fishing"
-goto Canada's Wonderland
-perfect a cover of Lover, You Should Have Come Over (Jeff Buckley). Maybe tonight?
-go back to and complete recording of my first album
-catch a VIA rail train somewhere without it going on strike

May we all achieve what we can, and milk this season dry. Good luck!

I Totally Got YouTubed!

2009-07-08T18:27:00.008-05:00

Ever google yourself just to see what will turn up? Maybe people aren't as narcissistic as me, but when I did that today, I found out that someone totally youtubed me!

Remember that singer songwriter competition where Aralie.com told you you would be recorded and uploaded, Barrett? Yeah, but they told me they were having trouble doing that after the first few contestants and so therefore they weren't going to do that for me. Excuse the conversation with myself. Boy, did I get a surprise!

It's a nice surprise of course. I'm happy to have my original music on record. It's not the best performance (and I kinda squirmed watching myself recount the Batman Begins plot) but at least this gives you an idea of my music. Watching myself play is such a bizarre experience but it also serves as a reminder that I REALLY NEED TO GET A NEW GUITAR!! (I do not heart the tone).

The song is actually called "Lay Down and Die" and it was based on something my mother told me (viz. that you CAN'T "just lay down and die") when I was going through a rough patch in my early adulthood. My father, at that time, gave me a card quoting Winston Churchill which read, on the outside: "If you're going through hell..." and then on the inside: "keep going!" I have always remembered those words and I can always compare whatever bad situation that I'm going through to the fact that at least I'm not actually going through hell. I haven't lived through war, for example. Sartre said "hell is other people" and sometimes they are but I'm thankful to live around people, not in a bunker, waiting for certain death.

Events

Just a Thought

2009-06-04T21:47:00.005-05:00

Ideas are like viruses,
if you get exposed to them,
they grow in you

Ideas are a very dangerous thing

because..
they have the potential to change

And who knows
rather
who would imagine

that we could observe the world
and come up with our own conclusion?

The facts are right there!

Ideas. Get infected by them
and you will never be bored...

Cool T's

2009-05-25T20:54:00.003-05:00

I'm trying to curb my out-of-control online shopping addiction, but must admit I was lured onto threadless.com by an ad that was on Facebook, and ALMOST spent money. The designs on some of these T-shirts are amazing! Everything from punk vampires and vintage iconography to quirky spins or out-there messaging put on by diverse individual artists. For example, the Hooray for Cryptology T-shirt really caught my fancy. Thank goodness it was sold out anyway.

But it's more fun just browsing through and looking at the designs. If I were ever going to get a tattoo. I'm pretty sure these would at least give me some ideas.

Another Missing Child

2009-05-20T11:20:00.007-05:00

As I took the bus to work this morning, each with a Child Missing poster taped near the doors, helicopters loomed overhead, looking for the remains of Tori Stafford, believed to have been murdered the first day of her abduction, and disposed of in a rural area of Guelph, about an hour from her home in Woodstock.

Michael Thomas Rafferty, 28, of Woodstock, Ont. and Terri-Lynne McClintic, 18, were charged with the abduction and taken into custody today. Mr. Rafferty pulled his shirt over his head while he left the Woodstock courtroom today to hide his face as a crowd of gathered people shouted insults at him, and warned of what was to come.

Since Tori disappeared on April 8, she has been kept in the news by the persistence of concerned and commited parents and friends who organized candlelight vigils and news conferences to keep the issue top-of-mind and in the eyes of the media. The key to identifying the suspects was the grainy image of Tori with a woman with a puffy white jacket, taken from the adjacent school's surveillance system.

It's creepy to think of such abductions and murder taking place literally so close to home. Why is it that Southern Ontario is full of rapists and murderers like Paul Bernardo?

I've recently gone fishing at Guelph lake, near where the helicopters were searching. Only last week my friends were giving themselves chills recounting how a girl had been abducted and raped there in the 80's. Although the trails and nature are beautiful -I hike there often, the place now seems tainted. After such a long search, this story seems fated only for a tragic ending...

News Reviews

My Town Exports Freaks

2009-04-26T19:05:00.003-05:00

I was bored/surfing/tooling the internet for something to look at, such as Vice's 'Do's and Don'ts' photo fashion series when the familiar face of the Great Orbax, a former freak resident of my city, Guelph, jumped out from their homepage, on Viceland.com.

Click here to watch the interview

He took Physics at the same university that I went to, was friends with friends of mine, and I would see him out viewing championship wrestling or go to see his 'Freak Shows' when he hosted them annually at the E-bar. (You can still see the "Freak Show" graffitti in a blood drip font on the side of my building. Someone must have done it to advertise one of the shows. I think someone complained about it to Dr. Orbax, who himself didn't encourage it, but was a victim of being loved and promoted by arsonists.)

At the Freak Shows, I always suspected that both practice and skill were involved in his odd, physically dangerous stunts. Attempting things like smashing cinderblocks with sledgehammers on people's bodies, were something only someone very calculated and careful would ever attempt (if they were in their right mind at all) and putting tubes down your nose down into your stomach, pumping in blue and yellow liquid, and manually pushing green liquid back out? That was something else! However, accidents can always happen, which is why Cris Angel stuff like this always takes so much meticulous preparation. When I saw this trick performed once, and the hammer came down, the "China Doll's" stomach, on which the cinder block lay, was not even bruised, but little did anyone know that one of the chunks of smashed block would hit her foot, and make her bleed on stage. Dr. Orbax knows that the distribution of force in that cinder block will allow it to shatter without it doing damage to the body behind it, but he couldn't anticipate where the pieces would land once the block broke.

I'm sure the China Doll is fine today, and Dr. Orbax hasn't suffered too much more than 3rd degree burns all over his body. As for myself, I have a weak stomach for seeing people get their tongues caught in mousetraps and the like, but I'm entertained to think someone who I know from my city is world-renowned enough to be interviewed by Vice Magazine.

This April Fool's Joke is on the Taxpayer

2009-04-01T12:37:00.011-05:00

Harper is a walking contradiction. When you think "Conservative" you don't naturally think of a 'leader' who spends money that he doesn't have. But that's what he's urging countries to do globally: spend OUR money. In the UK, G-20 protesters took their frustration out on the Royal Bank of Scotland, smashing it's windows and condemning the greedy cash-grabbers, even as bankers waved money and taunted them from above.

You would think we would learn from history. Politicians argue that, were we to have injected enough money into the economy during the great depression of the 30's, we might have avoided it altogether but there has to be a limit somewhere. You can't save by "overacting" and overspending. Perhaps Harper knows that his indulgent decisions will be reflected in the years to come, not in the next quarter. By then he will be out of parliament anyway. It's precisely this thinking that has led our financial institutions to economic collapse in the first place.

Newsflash: Banks don't stimulate the economy!

Politrix

Biology Blast: Epigenetics in the News and Can your Hair Really Turn From Grey to Brown?

2009-03-21T13:12:00.005-05:00

When I was studying biology in university, we were taught that we had one set of genes that determined everything from hair colour to which thumb naturally folds over the other when our hands clasp. You had one book of instructions. That was it.

Of course, we knew that obviously you could control (to a degree) the way your body kept in shape, or how it aged. You just needed to watch your diet and get enough exercise.

But last week when my friend, who suffers some premature greying, told me his grey hair "was turning brown again," I didn't believe him. Maybe that's changed too.

In lectures, we were taught that there were genes that didn't express themselves, like when someone is a "carrier" of a gene, but doesn't necessarily go on to develop breast cancer, for example. Still, we understood, that when two recessive genes were matched up from both parents, an offspring could express the trait of which neither of their "carrier" parents did. Sometimes this was dangerous, other times, it merely resulted in blue eyes.

Now it seems the whole study of genetics and DNA has had a revolution! I watched a BBC documentary which featured some geneticists who were studying the possibility of something outside of genetics affecting the way genetics themselves were operating. However, it was just a theory at that point. It proposed that we shouldn't only be talking about the set of instructions our bodies operate by, but which of those instructions are operating when, and how.

This is the relatively new (unless I'm the last to catch on) study of 'Epigenetics', best described as a set of "switches" in our genes that are either turned "on" or "off". We already know that specific deletions of genetic material can result in very different syndromes depending on whether the carrier is a man or a woman, now it seems as if a gene does one thing in one man and absolutely nothing in another. So genetics can't be explained by the genome alone. There's now the all epic epigenome.

I realized that scientists have now adopted epigenetics and are finding more applications for its study. Dr. William King was awarded researcher of the Month by the Canadian Cancer Society this March, for finding links between methylation, a DNA function which regulation the division of cells, and the possibility of detecting high risk patients, before they even develop colorectal cancer.
Read Article

Epigenetics has both exciting and chilling results that can be drawn as we learn more about it. With genetics, our thinking was that we could do whatever we wanted to to our bodies, and while that might affect our own health, it wouldn't have any affect on our children's health, or their children's. They would inherit the same chance of suffering from any various disease, it was up to them to protect themselves from the environment. But now, epigenetics has suggested that things like stress may have an affect on the way even our children's genes might be operating.

The preservatives, amount of exercise we get, the computers, cell phones, cigarettes and machinery we're exposing ourselves to day in and day out may not mutate our genetics today, but what if they have a sort of accumulation snowball affect? Perhaps environmental factors could have effects on our epigenetics, so that chemicals we're dispensing, polluting and eating today, affect the way future generations bodies work. Either way, the course of our evolution depends on whether or not we find out what exactly epigenetics is and how it works, and how best we can work, so that we don't destroy human epigenome, so that we can preserve life.

Health

Bitter Green, Sweet Spring!

2009-03-18T19:35:00.003-05:00

"Bitter Green, they call her, walking in the sun."...Because it will be the first day of spring this Friday and I can't wait for more sun! Because I will probably be singing this Tony Rice song at karaoke tonight. It reminds me of driving around with my dad in his pickup truck when I was a kid, listening to the "oldies but the goodies".

Another one of my favorite pre-summer songs is "First Day of Spring" by Gandharvas.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

2009-03-06T08:59:00.003-06:00

I will be! I've been anticipating this movie for years, ever since reading Alan Moore and Frank Gibbon's The Watchmen and it is finally here, as of today! There were many trials and tribulations involved in bringing this graphic novel to the screen, scuffles over ownership etc. In the end, the director of 300 (Zack Snyder) was able to make the movie.

Since the date of release kept getting set back, I re-read the novel in excited anticipation. Because I don't like large crowds of screaming teenagers, I won't be going tonight, opening night. But you can bet your secret superhero suit I'll be there next week!

Movies

What Katie Perry Can Teach Us About Poetry

2009-03-02T20:44:00.003-06:00

Do you ever get sick of songs you have heard a million times? Of course you do! But Katie Perry's song 'I Kissed a Girl' probably tops it for this past year (or was it 2007's?) song that everyone can love to hate (or secretly just love).

There is still yet another way to beat a dead horse even deader, and that's to try an innovative exercise, employing the song. An exercise to rework our minds out of the most grueling overplayed (or is that just my fault for still having it as my ringtone?) brain-washing song's control over our psyche's. Bring it down from the inside; like a Trojan Horse.

This is an exercise you could really do with any song, whether it be Otis, Regina or Winehouse. But the goal of the exercise is to take a song and write alternate lyrics, while maintaining somewhat the same form and rhythmic flow.

The following may not a perfect picture of greatness, but I think I might have somewhat achieved the goal. I'll warn you it's a little stream-of-consciousness and as such, doesn't really make any sense at all, but here goes:

I kissed a girl and she liked it
I like the weave of her homemade plastic
I kissed a girl She's Earp, Wyatt
Her gunshot lips laid me in the casket.

And I reel so long and she falls so right
I think I might get dressed up tonight

I kissed a girl just to quiet
the longing urge I've felt to not deny it

I don't even know where I live
I've got amnesia
I wore my pants all inside out
well, whatever

don't dare me to
don't dare me not
I think that's ten cents I've got

I kissed a girl just to fly it
don't you tell me that you've never tried it

Yes! Don't tell me that you've never tried it! It's fun making up alternate song lyrics! That's probably how I made it through so many mindless part time jobs in the past, because I entertained myself. I invite you to add on, write alternate lyrics for songs we might know. See if we can guess which ones they are!

Thank God for Black Adder

2009-03-01T14:33:00.004-06:00

Forgoing cable TV during these cold months, I have strived to get my entertainment where I can get it: on DVD or the internet. Convenient for me, I live just across from a public library whose free movie supply has yet to be exhausted. Although I'm familiar with Rowan Atkinson from Mr. Bean, Black Adder is a cult comedy that somehow slipped my notice...until now. I've blazed through and rewatched episodes from season one and two all last week.

The costumes are great, the characters witty and the plot about a scheming royal makes for a great series that seemingly never ends. The Black Adder is like the Coyote from Roadrunner, in that he has plan after plan to do his enemies in. The only consistent result is that he always fails.

No other theme song pumps me up as this one:

The sound of hoofbeats cross the glade,
Good folk, lock up your son and daughter,
Beware the deadly flashing blade,
Unless, you want to end up shorter,

Black Adder!
Black Adder!
He rides a pitch-black steed,
Black Adder!
Black Adder!
He's very bad indeed,

Black, his gloves of finest mole,
Black, his codpiece made of metal,
His horse is blacker than his vole,
His pot is blacker than his kettle,

Black Adder!
Black Adder!
With many a cunning plan,
Black Adder!
Black Adder!
You horrid little man!

Movies (and shows)

Let the Clock Decide Your Fate

2009-02-20T20:00:00.004-06:00

Excited for the weekend, but too tired out from the week, I lay "napping" on a Friday evening. The faces of people and things dance on my eyelids, and I'm impressed by the beauty that is a familiar part of my every day. When the mind is quieted, the important parts emerge. I strategically utilize the yogic breathing I learned this week to try to lull myself to sleep, but it just makes me more alert, remembering how I laughed uncontrollably due to the massive blood flow to my brain, as I stood on my shoulders.

I'm trying to get healthier as the spring nears, and so I've taken up yoga on a semi-casual basis. I like it for the mental discipline it offers, and of course because my body could use it. I want life to be more like a breath that doesn't slip away without being noticed.

I can't sleep on a Friday evening, but I could use the rest.

I decide that I will open my eyes to look at the clock.
If it is an even number, I will stay laying until the alarm goes off, and either fall asleep, or continue meditating.
If it is an uneven number, I will get up and do something.

It is 9:35pm.

People Should Be More Like these Peruvian Shanty Children

2009-02-06T08:36:00.006-06:00

Photo: Mariana Bazo/Reuter

"Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven." -Matthew 18:3

When I saw this picture, firstly I thought: people should be more like this. Content, playful, making do with what they have. Secondly, this picture makes me miss warm weather, warm heavenly weather, not this icy hades that has been dominating the scene, weather which allows us all to play outside, children and adults alike. I've started playing Squash on Tuesdays, but what I really crave is to be out in a park playing soccer. Damn you groundhog!

Will Naked Apes Take Over the World?

2009-01-29T23:15:00.007-06:00

"Unless we can colonize other planets on a massive scale and spread the load, or seriously check our population increase in some way, we shall, in the not-too-far-distant future, have to remove all other forms of life from the earth."*

That was written in 1967!

Author Desmond Morris apparently thought we were pretty close to a population crisis, but I was baffled by his estimation of what will happen in another 222 years:

"In 260 years' time, if the rate of increase stays steady - which is unlikely - there will be a seething mass of 400,000 million naked apes crowding the face of the earth." *

We now have almost 7 billion. I don't know, is the rate if increase staying steady? I think it's growing exponentially! We might be there soon...

*Morris, Desmond "The Naked Ape Trilogy: The Naked Ape, The Human Zoo and Intimate Behaviour" (Random House, UK: 1994) p.162

Does Abortion Make you Gag?

2009-01-27T22:42:00.008-06:00

Since Obama reversed the "Global Gag Rule" yesterday, family planning groups that offer abortion and/or abortion-related services will have access to funding again, a decision lauded by many as a wise no-brainer.

The rule began with Reagan, who presumably wanted to endorse a certain image of family -one that would never consider abortion for their own family or any other, even if it saved a mother's life. So he brought in the ban. Clinton banned the ban. He didn't like it. He thought perhaps women should have a choice for themselves. But Bush was a fan of the ban. He was against stem cell research. He was against many things that could have helped science and health care be more progressive. He wasn't going to condone or make it possible in any way for women to have the choice of abortion, not on his watch!

But now, on the anniversary of the Wade vs Roe decision, Obama has lifted the oppression that has been placed upon many women and girls around the world.

Pro-choice activists are ecstatic.
Religious fanatics are horrified.
Many are probably relieved.
Others won't be able to sleep.
Yet others "would rather not talk about it"

Let me ask you this: Whether or not you were going to make one decision or another about your unborn child, whether they were in their first trimester or a few minutes old, wouldn't you want to know all your options?

Politics

Intellectual Property on the Internet: Making AdSense of Google Geeks

2009-01-18T12:51:00.006-06:00

I'm trying to do some research on how Google AdSense works. It's the program that organizes the Internet according to key words and click ads. Obviously, Google is a web giant concerned with maintaining ethical practices. So it has it's own policies regarding types of websites their ads can be linked to, and one of those requirements is that the sites it is hosted on isn't infringing on any copyrights.

I was thinking that maybe if I were a bit more Internet savvy, I could make a bit of pocket change while helping out Internet users all over the world! But I would have to make sure to comply by Google's policies, which I read painstakingly.

So where do I start?

First, I was stuck at what constitutes "fair use" in terms of using parts of copyrighted material as say, you would do when quoting an author in a review you write about them on the Internet. If I was hosting an ad for Google, could it be on a page that has a Felix the Cat cartoon on it? Hmm, what if I drew the cartoon of Felix the Cat? Would I have to cite original animator Otto Messmer? I guess I should make sure, I thought. After all, I wouldn't want to sign up with Google AdSense and then end up having my account with them brutally suspended for unwittingly tramping all over someone's licenced material. I'm not even sure how I get other sites to host the ads, nevermind sort out which ones were infringers, but here I am. I'm paranoid about plaigarism.

There are different ways to infringe on someone's licenced material, but the largest factor the courts usually consider is whether your "use" of the material has an effect on the market ie. are you providing an accessible copy of a Rembrandt painting, and as a result, does it diminish the value of the original? Are you making money off of it? If you were, I think you would be conclusively infringing on whoever owns that painting.

But in clarifying the distinction between copyright infringement and fair use, I got a real kick out of the examples used by chillingeffects.org, an organization about online intellectual property rights. Note the references to Startrek:

"Only material that originated with the author can support a copyright. Items from the public domain which appear in a work, as well as work borrowed from others, cannot be the subject of an infringement claim. Also, certain stock material might not be copyrightable, such as footage that indicates a location like the standard shots of San Francisco in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Also exempted are stock characters like the noisy punk rocker who gets the Vulcan death grip in Star Trek IV."

It goes on to explain how licensed material has to be in a fixed form of expression, so that:
"if I perform a Klingon death wail in a local park, my performance is not copyrightable. However, if I film the performance, then the film is copyrightable."
Source

Watch Startrek much?

With the ever-increasing need to classify ever-increasing amounts of information on the internet, I think it's going to be an increasing challenge/opportunity to maximize information use without violating creative property.

Opinions

Barack and the Middle East: Will We See a Change?

2009-01-04T12:55:00.010-06:00

Some would suggest that the US has always been Israeli-biased. This article criticizes Barack Obama for remaining silent regarding Israel's recent bombardment of Gaza that started December 27th. But should we be surprised that the not-even-yet President hasn't been very vocal about his condemnations of Israel? Is it weird to see him hanging out with Ehud?

Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Infitada states: "It ought not to be difficult to condemn Israel's murder of civilians and bombing of civilian infrastructure including hundreds of private homes, universities, schools, mosques, civil police stations and ministries, and the building housing the only freely-elected Arab parliament."

Sure. Easy for you to say. You're right though. Someone should say something. Preferably someone who has a plan to do something about it. But you try walking into a gang fight and say "Hey, this just doesn't feel right" and see how easily you walk out. Now try to imagine you're soon to be President of the US and you do that. See what I mean? It takes a very careful Politician not to derail the trajectory of their campaign before they even take parliament. As Barack's spokesperson said: "There is only one president at a time." And anyways, when President's have condemned leaders like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (for his Anti-Semetic remarks) in the past, what has that done? Could you really call that a "change"? Last time I checked, Iran still isn't a pro-Israeli nation.

It just doesn't seem to be the best idea for Barack to sever ties with Israel before he even takes office. Or worse, get too entangled internally. Why should he further alienate America from itself or others? The US supplies Israel with it's weapons. What does it think they are going to do with them?? Perhaps this is more of a weapons proliferation issue in general that US foreign policy should examine more in-depth? Barack will get his chance to initiate that starting January 20th, 2009.

Hopefully, we'll see some major changes when Barack Obama actually takes the stage but until then, I don't think we can blame him for being so tight-lipped. I would hope what Obama has to say to all those Palestinian refugees screaming "Let my people go!" would be a responsive "Yes we can!" I would hope Obama would think of his daughters in the place of all the innocent Israeli OR Palestinian children being rocketed to death, even if he doesn't say so. The fact that he's keeping good diplomatic ties with Israel doesn't seem a bad political move* but maybe it is just too early to see him playing hop-scotch with Palestinian orphans. Or, (and here's a novel thought) he might have other priorities.

As this month's Times Person of the Year interview suggests, Obama has a long laundry list of to do's. Although, the top three main things that keep Obama awake at night are:
1/Nuclear Proliferation
2/The Economy
3/The Environment
(not necessarily in that order)

Should the list be amended? Do you think the Middle-Eastern struggle, which has been going on for as long as I can remember, should be this President's particular responsibility to solve?

*What if toppling the Hamas government is the only way to end rocket fire between the two nations? And at what cost?

Politics

More than just Dreaming of a White Christmas...

2008-12-23T09:10:00.003-06:00

Environment Canada says this may be the first coast to coast white Christmas in a decade! Vancouver got hit with snow, which doesn't apparently happen too often and the East coast is battling some 163 kilometre per hour winds. Here in Onterrible, we're used to the big snow dumps that have given rise to the term "snowmeggedon" since the beginning of November already!

Merry Christmas...and bundle up!

Oh Christmas Tree

2008-12-12T11:25:00.004-06:00

Things are getting pretty festive around the office...at least in my pod. Here's my podmate, who is the social committee leader, who spearheaded our departmental competition to see who can decorate their surroundings the most. Note the look of sheer enthusiasm on his face as he proudly perches on his desk, post garland affixing, seconded by the 'thumbs up' gesture.

So far it looks like our pod might even win, considering we're the only pod to participate. But the end date for the competition has been extended, so I'm *sure* everyone will catch up sooner or later. My contribution was a large blue sock or "stocking" not pictured here.

I'm definitely in holiday mode. At least I'm anticipating it. Tonight, I look forward
drinking egg nog and caroling my face off with friends.

UPDATE DECEMBER 18:
No, the hangover from the eggnog wasn't too bad, especially considering it was just eggnog. However, thanks for your concern. And things have been turned up a notch here around the office, to my chagrin. It seems that my competitors were strategically holding out until the last day before the competition finale, at which point they went out on dollar store shopping sprees that left us looking like a couple of bums. As a result (wait for the disbelief)...we DIDN'T win our pod decorating competition! That's according to our judges. I'm not satisfied with their conclusion. Let's let you decide which pod says "Christmas" to you:

I have always wondered why Frosty is called Frosty when he's not Frosty, he's snowy. Anyway, the lyrics to the popular song can be seen on the window behind him, in case anyone's wondering.

Here are the dollar store pimps I was referring to earlier. At least they didn't die of Bah Humbug disease. I like them though cause they are my neighbours, and because they didn't win, either.
And here's the winner. "Starry Night" was their theme. Lame. I do like the little Santa belaying down the string of lights though. I bet his arms are sore.

I've Been Searching For a Heart of Gold

2008-12-05T14:42:00.006-06:00

If it wasn't for the rapid-fire bidding finger of some stranger on Ebay, I would be on my way to see Neil Young play in Toronto tonight. Instead, within the last minute, someone suckered me out of an incredibly cheap ticket. I bid $60US then they bid $61. I went to bid again when the message came up that the sale was final and that I was out of luck. As a result I get to see my friend who's visiting from Toronto...so life is always full of serendipity.

Something else that kinda sucks/could be full of serendipitous potential:
I've been cut back to part time. So I suppose I will have more free time to play guitar and/or look for another part time job in 2009. My boss assures me that the decision is probably temporary and she realizes it's kind of a "kick in the face" but it's merely based on business needs, or lack thereof.

It seems my work situation is always changing. I spent last year working three part time jobs, then this summer I replaced them all with one full time job. Now, just as I am coming into being eligible for Health Benefits at work, my schedule is changing again.

I'm glad that things are kept interesting though. I'm going to try to rebuild my karass -those people in my wheel of fate (if you can call it fate) that allow me to actualize and whom I help actualize. In Cat's Cradle Kurt Vonnegut talks about the fictional concept of karass as those people who often unknowingly work together to bring about God's will, not to be confused with your granfalloon: a group of people who think they are connected, based on a superficial commonality, but they really aren't. An contemporary example of a granfalloon might be...people who think Sara Palin's not very intelligent?

Having been cut to part time, I am reminded that the people I speak to on the phone daily do indeed have a hand to play in deciding my fate, even though I never see their face. They could well be part of my extended karass. Or is it moreso the people who DON'T call who hold the power?

Personal Diegesis

Dead Rockstar Café

2008-11-17T19:08:00.004-06:00

There's a place I can't go called Dead Rockstar Café
It's lost somewhere between Andromeda and Bombay
But possessed by a geist, I got a small sneak peak
of bumps in the night and things that go creak

The wood was so nice, the drinks quite a rush
I sat in the corner where I could keep things all hush
But then came my idol, appearing at the bar
real as in flesh, brandished flaming guitar

He set down his radiantly lush purple coat
shining black afro, dark as hell's mote
safe here in heaven, tho death doth us part
and brings back together those souls of lost art

Reaching across times longest forearm
he takes the stringed instrument down without harm
thumbs a brass note of distortion to quake
move and groove under, electric vibrate

Timeless and spaceless, servers never ask why
Excusing Jimmy Hendrix while he kisses the sky
Red house a yonder does call us along
Our souls a rumblin through on the great old bard's song

Like Otis said he'll just stay the same
out on the dock you see both ends of the game
Elliot smiths words to brighten, and tighten the air
of Cooke's long time coming, glass half full of glare

Since Shakespeare had hair on his chinny, chin, chin
The corporate pigs captured Kurt, and did himself in,
But lifeless, love can't kill, his ghost feels no pain
Spiteless, these artists pass on like Kobain

In symbols and structures that work in our minds
People suffer while we have such good times
Life's for the living, but there you don't stay
Nothing is wasted in Dead Rockstar Café

Poetry

A Change Gonna Come

2008-11-04T07:08:00.005-06:00

I'm ready for a change. I think America is too. It's already spoken, and that's just the first wave of change...

Here's me supporting, with my "Barack's How I Roll" T-shirt.

The Finished Product

2008-10-27T17:59:00.002-05:00

Remember how I was working on this? Well, here's the finished product (I know it's not the clearest picture). Tonight it was reported that the zine itself is finished! That means that my story submission, the paintings, comics and poems of other contributers etc are all wrapped up in one, glossy, pretty little book. So, in a few moments...I will get to see the first issue of Vox Populi.

Notes on the Canadian Election

2008-10-12T12:43:00.003-05:00

The "You Have a Choice" that AVAAZ.com sponsored from K-OS, Ed from Barenaked Ladies, Ben Kowalewicz of Billy Talent, Adam Gontier (Three Days Grace), Sarah Harmer, Hawksley Workman, Jason Collett (Broken Social Scene), Darren Dumas (The Salads) and the Arts Offstage Choir. Written and produced by Ian Lefeuvre (The Hundreds and Thousands) and K-OS.

To be frank, I don't really like this song...the lyrics are decent but it's too folky kumbayaish for me. But perhaps it will strike a chord with you. In any event, it has an important message that these elections (both this one and the US one) will have an effect on the environment, by either accelerating or reversing the destruction our politicians have allowed to happen. If you're Canadian, it's also fun to hear and guess which familiar voice is whose.

I Find Myself Drawing

2008-10-10T18:05:00.003-05:00

I'm working on a background for a new zine that will be coming out soon. It's called "Vox Populi". I didn't name it. So don't ask me. Anyway, it was quite nice to get out of a rainy, moody night and spend some time colouring and doing some sketches with my friend.
Here's one that was kinda spontaneous.
And this is the glossy street where I live. It looks sultry in the synthetic, traffic light...
A blind contour!

My Mother's Garden

2008-09-29T20:17:00.004-05:00

Fall has come, and so do the rotten tomatoes. Gather them up while they still have some juice!
Coming home to my mother's garden. I feel serene and reflective, away from all the come and go of a busy week...ready to gather fresh produce...and some of my wits about me before I go back at it again!
Flowers burst forth like gaping eyes, incredulous at their own nature.
The rhubarb's violetly livid stems.

Particle Acceleration or the Death of our Nation?

2008-09-11T08:45:00.003-05:00

Please note, this image is outdated and inaccurate. The Hadron Collider will not fucking kill you dead in May 2008. We already know that. Please update your schedules to anticipate being killed fucking dead in the next month or so.

Last night a few of my friends we’re talking about science. I wasn’t really paying attention (science, schmience) until one friend of mine groaned and said “We’re all going to die!” “Why?” I asked, suddenly intrigued by the prospect of death. “It’s going to create a black hole and implode us!”

It took me another moment to gather that they were talking about the Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, which sent its first beam of protons racing at nearly the speed of light yesterday.

The collaboration of scientists at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland want to activate its other arms later this month. The idea is to send two streams of protons in opposite directions around its 17-mile long circular path, and watch what happens when they smash into eachother. Their hope is to gain insight into dark matter and the origin of the universe.

But what if something completely unexpected happens? The scientists themselves EXPECT something unexpected to happen. We have less than a month to live before seeing (or not seeing) for ourselves. That’s how long it will take scientists to align the beams for a head-on collision. My friends swear apocalypse is coming. I hope to prove them wrong. (Well, it won’t really be me proving, it will be the protons).

Maybe we will just end up in another dimension.

News Reviews

John McCain, I am your Father: On Presidential Candidate Speeches

2008-09-05T15:00:00.004-05:00

“Ask not what your country can do for you -ask what you can do for your country”

Remember that quote? Was it a Democrat or a Republican that said it? Its first utterance was over thirty years ago. However, the nugget of its motivational power has been used over and over to promote candidates during election. That’s right. It was said by John F. Kennedy in 1961 during his inaugural speech.

This time, it’s the Republicans that seem to have an undying penchant for chiasmus. Chiasmus is a neat literary device, but it registers not because an argument is particularly puissant, but because it sounds nice. It’s a cool language reversal trick. Check out some recent examples of it:

“We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us” –McCain

“Some Candidates use change to promote their careers, McCain devotes careers to promote change” –Sarah Palin

What a strange election season we’re nearing, both in the US and in Canada! It’s a time of nasty speeches, and lots of different kinds of rhetoric.

I was surprised, hearing McCain’s speech last night, how much he sounded like an echo of our Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006, when he promised to “change” the political stage by ushering in a new era of “transparency” and “accountability.” Those were the two things McCain promised last night of his own government. But if McCain’s promise is anything like Harper’s, then we can infer that by “transparency” that McCain means anything but.

Another thing I noticed about the McCain campaign and Republican speeches in general is how much they seem to ooze Peggy Noonan. For anyone who doesn’t know, Peggy Noonan is Bush’s speechwriter. She’s a brilliant woman. She writes brilliant speeches and brilliant articles for the Wall Street journal. One of her charms is tailoring her speeches to whoever is speaking. In Bush’s case, she does great work to disguise her work by mimicking his loose speaking style, dropping articles here and there to make it more Bush. I even suspected Palin’s speech was written by Noonan, but apparently not. Noonan’s reactions to Palin’s speech are interesting. It turns out Palin’s speech wasn’t written by George Bush’s current speechwriter. Rather, it was written by his old one, Matthew Scully! He worked for Bush for five years starting in 2000.

Of course, just because someone else wrote her speech is irrelevant. Many politicians have their speeches written for them. One thing Sarah Palin deserves is credit for delivery. She’s feisty. But what it points out is that McCain really is a lot like Bush. It’s the same people working for them both.

It always seems like someone is pulling the strings, but it’s hard to tell who. McCain likes to downplay how much of a Bush puppet he is yet the two of them are almost indistinguishable. There is an inverse relation between the public’s support of Bush and McCain’s implicit support of Bush. If you don’t believe me, check this out:

It’s funny that Palin attacks Obama’s “bitter” comments and tries to set herself up as the victim of that comment; a comment he made BEFORE it was announced she would be McCain’s running mate. She also attacks his words as becoming a “cloud of rhetoric.”

Obama’s speech focused on a vision of America that was based on tolerance and freedom. On the other hand, it is obvious McCain is only interested in the rights and freedoms of the few who support ongoing war. The word “fight” appeared repeatedly. He focused on an America he says he’s served “first and last” however much he was an “imperfect servant” of his country. It’s still unclear how applicable or relevant his experience as a POW during the Vietnam war is, but it seems that that type of experience is what resonates with Republicans, as if being a politician is merely a measure of how tough you are.

The idea that McCain deserves our respect as a politician because he deserves our respect as a soldier seems weak to me, but unfortunately it might be what the average voter will buy. And unfortunately the frequency of exposure that the media has given Sarah Palin will only help the McCain campaign. Ironically, Palin has given McCain more media exposure than ever, and that is exposure is largely due not because of her experience or skills, but because she is a woman, she is an Alaskan and her seventeen year old unmarried daughter is pregnant.

It makes you wonder what things would be like if Hilary Clinton was still in the race. Will Sarah Palin get John McCain Hilary Clinton’s votes?

Poem for a Rainy Day

2008-08-28T08:55:00.002-05:00

The sky threatens to please me
negotiating clouds,
swollen with black pride
test their waters

raining isn't for everyone
but when I see that cool cleansing ambition
fit to wash the stickiness out of the air
fill holes with puddles
give ducks glee
and let us marvel from safe windowsills
I cannot resist goading it on.

You may laugh at my counterintuitive hopes
Paint me a backdrop like Golgotha
you can resurrect the sun some other day
today must be soaked through

For I have been saving up for this.

Poetry

Are We Too Soft on Babies?

2008-08-20T14:07:00.007-05:00

The beloved "journalists" of theonion.com decided to make fun of our Johnson's® Baby Shampoo, namely, our NO MORE TEARS® shampoo formula, here at Johnson & Johnson's. Click here to read article

Fortunately, no one has called us to ask what kind of company goes out of their way to give babies a "healthy dose of reality"; to break them down and prepare them for this harsh world...not yet anyway.

Silly

Musharraf is History!

2008-08-18T09:54:00.003-05:00

With Musharraf's resignation as President of Pakistan (which he did to avoid impeachment) it effectively leaves one of the most politically instable, volatile countries without a leader.

He took power in a coup, ousting previous leader Sharif from power in 1999. Since then he has been a key ally of the US in its War on Terror, but considering he's a tyrant himself, his actions haven't done much to speak against militant extremism. Taliban soldiers crossing over the Pakistani Afghan border have been US' biggest threat in that war.

Although his resignation has so far been the best thing for the Pakistan economy (the rupee has shot up in value), it's anyone's guess as to how this will affect the country in general and who the next president will be. Under Musarraf, democracy has been stalled, assassinations have blocked the possibilities of elected leaders like Bhutto from ever taking power. Now that Musarraf is gone, people celebrate in the streets...but no one knows what will come next.

Politics

What We Have Here, is a Failure to Communicate

2008-08-14T08:50:00.006-05:00

So, it may be a little annoying to have to divert your attention from the cheerleaders, the lip-synched performances and fuzzy mascots of the Beijing Olympics. It would be so much more convenient if world events took a pause and a traditional, Olympic ceasefire were actually plausible. Apparently, many still haven't caught on to the fact that there's a "conflict" raging on, not in America, but in (or near) Russia. Jason highlighted (on Facebook) the fact that this can be a little confusing for some.

Here's a little (horrible) map I drew to try to "get" the geography of it all:

I'm not an expert, but I'm skeptical of our media considering that it hardly explains how this "conflict" started, just that the US condemns Russia and that we should support Georgia, even if that means supporting their attacks against Ossetia, a part of Russia, who, as far as I can tell, doesn't want to separate.

Of course, there are opponents on either side, arguing that Georgia is liberating Ossetia, that Russia is full of propaganda or that the Georgian attack originated via US pressure. It seems pretty sketchy that there are reports of Auswitz-like round-ups of residents, reports of 1000-2000 Ossetian residents being killed etc. Perhaps the US might be eyeing their oil and hoping for a reason to get soldiers on the ground?

I appreciate the following comment from John Doe in response to Mary Whitt and Free Market and the Globe and Mail article Russia: Forget Georgian territorial integrity

It helps me to "get" the situation a little better by relating it to the Quebec referendum that occured in the nineties. It also highlights important differences as well. (Sorry about it being a quote of a quote of a quote):

john doe from toronto, Canada writes:

Free Markets from Canada writes:
"Georgia if it were a freedom loving country, it would let Ossetia and Abkhazia have their own independence? Just like Canada let Quebec have their independence? Right...."

Free Markets, you're obviously not Canadian, you're American. You're talking through your hat: Quebec has not even had a successful referendum in favour of separation, despite two
tries.

Martyn Whitt from toronto, Canada writes: "John Doe your analogy is wrong Kuwait was an indepedent nation, Ossetia has never been. Here's a slightly closer hypothetical analogy for you; the 6 Nations near Brantford don't let Canadians in to a section of territory for 16 years after being sponsored by and given U.S. passports."

Why don't we stick to the Quebec analogy? Picture this:

Quebec separates, but anglophones and francophones in the eastern townships and Ottawa valley decide, by a strong majority, to separate from Quebec. Quebec invades, Canada sends in troops massed at border.

Remember that Georgia was a part of the Soviet Union until just a few years ago.

Thoughts on this?
Politics

Is Canada Doomed at the Beijing Olympics?

2008-08-12T08:58:00.002-05:00

For the 2008 Olympics, which are popularly deemed as China's "coming out" party, it seems Canada may just stay behind. Somehow the Olympics managed to get underway this week, despite the poor air, the algae clogged waters, the human rights abuses etc. but now that they have, can Canada compete athletically??

If we don't win in rowing, it's going to be really pathetic.

Some Partnerships Were Made to Die

2008-08-06T08:26:00.003-05:00

Hélas! The Bell Beavers are dead. Their long-running ad campaign was laid to rest on Friday.

Personally, having worked for Rogers Communications (Canada's clearest wireless network), I was biased to hate them, and won't lose any sleep knowing that I won't have to endure another annoying ad ever again. I cringed when I heard Norm MacDonald's voice (aka Frank) on the radio, busy overlooking some important detail whilst running some scam to get cheaper internet or phone service, only to be saved by the smarter, savvier Gordon, with his better Bell deal. On the other hand, I realize they were a Canadian cultural trinket, an era gone by.

Sigh...As a Canadian, I'm damned if I liked them, damned if I didn't. But, there will always be more beavers in the creek.

You Know You'll Be Seeing Me Soon...

2008-07-18T18:26:00.009-05:00

It's going to be a dark night tonight! Images lurk on screen, and through the twisted underworld! See you around, Bats!

HAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHA!!!

UPDATE...Now that I have seen it, here's the review:

It is too early to say, but I suspect Dark Knight will be the comic book action movie of the decade. Meticulous in the timing, selective in casting, pseudo-technical regarding Batman gadgets, the swift action and punching dialogue all make for a ticket well worth it at the theatres (if only the lines weren’t so long).

The movie is a reinvention of Batman. As such, it takes the opportunity to take previous origins and turn up the volume, without simply doing a remake. It’s loosely based on the many Batman-Joker sagas dating back to the original comic released in May, 1939, but the characters have free reign to do what they have never done before. (I was initially confused during the lead up to the movie, thinking it would be based on Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which is set ten years after this plot).

Doubt not that Joker and Batman need each other. They are so perfectly aligned, or should I say complimentary? It keeps the film’s tension taut like a Heraclitian bow. No CGI that I could detect, this movie was shot on real streets that sit in for a majestically dark Gotham city. It was a refreshing watch compared to say, the X-Men, which is good for what it is, but can never be Dark Knight. Costing $185 million to make, it seems the most value-added features were those that were truly priceless (although the Motorcycle-transforming Batmobile, armor and stunts are cool). But it made records and topped sales over other comic book hero blockbusters like Spiderman 3.

Of course, no critic can ignore that most of the movie is eclipsed by the brilliantly bang-on performance of late actor Heath Ledger. Rumors circulate that the Joker character itself was what drove him to suicide, or that Jack Nicholson, who previously played Joker, had warned him about its darker side. Supposedly Ledger locked himself in a room, perhaps the set for his character’s interrogation, until he had mastered Joker’s voice. His immediateness as the Joker, with all his scarred-smile-licking lips and cool, twisted humour, and the fact that you can watch him and lose yourself in the moment, forgetting that poorly missed Heath is dead, is an ironic example of a true artist in his prime. Although the Joker spends the majority of the time off screen, the little surprises and quirky appearances make you ever suspicious that he is up to something behind the scenes. It is this sense of sneaky omnipresence that is the most riveting aspect of the movie.

It’s also what works so well with the theme of darkness and lightness, two sides to each coin, good disguised as evil, and vice-versa. Bruce Wayne is the generous and wealthy bachelor-playboy who is constantly trying to rebuild Gotham city from a sense of despair, disorder and apathy. He tries, through works of philanthropy and coordination and with considerable help from Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), who gives Batman his legal backing, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who conducts Bruce Wayne’s business when he’s too tired from being Batman and fresh orange juice and Psychotherapy provided by Wayne/Batman’s empathetic butler, Alfred (Micheal Caine) to rid Gotham of its corruption.

The best dynamic is possibly between Batman and Alfred. Batman’s temper scorches beneath the surface, but Alfred puts him in check, warning him that analyzing Joker is like dealing with an entirely different species, void of human emotion. “Some men just want to watch the world burn” is thus a fitting key to Joker’s psyche.

The coordination and rigging of the plot by both Batman and Joker can only be explained by their keen intelligence and resourcefulness of their respective teams (although, of course Joker would never rely on anyone else and has no loyalty to anyone). Joker is an exceptional planner, as any modern terrorist would have to be. Batman’s use of sonar is a good reference back to the Bat character as well as an analogy of his blind faith, or an intuition based on feeling that he must do what he must, though it brings with it an unethical comparison to wiretapping and surveillance at the cost of liberty. (This troubles Morgan Freeman's chacter, Lucius Fox)

District Attorney Harvey Dent is quickly appointed by Wayne to be the “white knight” of the future. He’s seen as the hero “with a face” who will watch over Gotham, once Batman is gone. But if you know what happens later, you realize that the frequent reference to faces in conjunction with the good guy lawyer played by Thank You For Not Smoking actor Aaron Eckhart, isn’t just a coincidence. Unlike Batman, Dent doesn’t break the law to fight for it, but works within the system to try to reform it, at least until you see his other side.

Director Christopher Nolan, for whom this is the second Batman movie, doesn’t waste an opportunity to comment on the current global climate of terrorism, fear and paranoia. Joker is a criminal to boot, a criminal without dignity, a criminal’s criminal, who doesn’t believe in rules. “This city deserves a better class of criminal” says Joker, and Ledger delivers. There is an ongoing dialectic throughout the movie of what society “deserves” whether it be fiend, friend or hero. It is a nagging argument for and against fate.

The Joker is so scary because he has no second thought about others or himself. It is as if he does crime more for the fun of it than for any material reward, and that's a proven. He’s also so unsettlingly charming as a comedian that you can’t help but laugh at his “jokes”. As long as he has his thumb on the detonation button, he will get what he wants, or no one will. Throughout the movie, he playfully tests out the limits of human vulnerability, with his sociopathic games.

On the other hand, Batman stubbornly prefers order and obsesses about control, not wishing to waste one second of his time. Christian Bale does well as the duplicitous figure, altering his voice in and out of costume, to keep with his disguise. The only distinguishably consistent thread between Batman and Bruce Wayne are perhaps Bale's tightly packed bat teeth. Batman's impatience is reflected throughout the movie by having him stick around just long enough to say what he wants to say. After Batman promptly disappears mid-conversation, Commissioner Gordon remarks to his colleague “He does that.”

All in all, this movie really “gets to you”. I think Eckhart’s performance worked better during the first rather than the latter half of the movie, but then again the halves were lopsided. Critics have complained that the action happens too fast for viewers to understand what’s going on, but considering that this is most noticeable in the opening scene when you are waiting to be blown apart by the action, I think it’s warranted. Like a post-911 clean-up crew member, you put the pieces back together, as you go along. Joker’s one-liners have already stuck with me much longer than Heath has. I certainly think he is deserving of the posthumous Oscar. I couldn’t have anticipated a better summer movie full of surprises.

Movie Reviews

Getting Out of the Rough Patches

2008-07-16T16:55:00.006-05:00

Do you recognize this girl? I think she is cute, even when she's going through a rough patch. This commercial won the Best TV Creative Award at the Uncommon Courage Global Johnson & Johnson James E Burke awards 2008. And I'm going through a patch of intense learning right now, getting trained at the company that made it.

Some of our commercials get a lot of complaints. For example, another Nicorette commercial features a little smoking monster whom some smokers believe is intended to stigmatize them. When you lend artistic creativity to an idea/situation/current event by "making fun" of, in the sense of either making something more entertaining or by putting something down, you are going to have people sitting on either sides of the freedom of expression fence. Take Obama's caricature on the latest issue cover of The New Yorker, as an example. Though, it is important to keep in mind that often for every person who calls in to complain about a commercial (or a product, a label, how to dose, for smoking cessation counseling or to find out where they can get Rogaine for Women) there is someone else who happens to like the way things are, who doesn't bother to call. That's just how market research works.

If something works, you don't need to fix it. On the other hand, as a responsible organization...we're always looking to consumers for tips on how we can improve. Our first responsibility is to listen. No matter how irate and insane someone sounds. After all, there is a thin line between insanity and genius. We have to listen. We can't simply assume that the person on the other end of the phone is...just going through a rough patch.

The Tastiest Dinner Ever, on Independence Day

2008-07-04T19:40:00.004-05:00

I come home weary from the week and ready for the weekend even though there were only three work days. But within those three remaining days I learned much about Tylenol and Motrin, two pain assassins that work in very different ways, so that I can respond to consumer questions at my shiney new job. I clean the apartment, half awake, turning my brain off and my radio on, using lots of chemicals, putting on my weekend hat. But first there is something I need to do before I can relax. I clean hard. So much so that it is steady and lasts for about two hours. When I am done, I feel dirty in comparison, needing to shower myself after touching all that filth. Now I smell as good as the floors and sinks do. I love the smell of chemicals like I love the smell of gasoline. That's not the only reward. It's dinner time. I pour a gingerale on ice head out to survey the city from my balcony. I begin picking away at the assortment of food that I've arranged on my plate.

red pepper slices dipped in artichoke and asiago cheese dip
ripple regular chips
Carr's garlic and herb crackers
on Danish blue cheese and
some tomato boats
sprinkled with pepper

A sprig of parsley

PS-Happy Independence Day Americans!

A Modest Note on my Absence

2008-06-20T19:50:00.005-05:00

I am so focused today. A nuclear bomb could go off in my backyard and I wouldn't flinch. This week has been amazing! So many accomplishments, fact-finding, positive adjustments, new perspectives. Amazing. One way of contextualizing it may be the simple fact of new job, which I have been meaning to tell you about...but it's also about timing. It's so many factors really. It's like: you need new challenges to push you, to make you prove to yourself who or what you really are. All past familiarities are left. All comforts and taken-for-granteds abandoned. It is now that I must summon up all my strength. I feel like so many things in my life are synchronizing right now, that I can't even decide what to say. I'm a little blog-shy, is what I'm saying. (But thank you for caring! People obviously still have the skill of literacy!!!) Please have patience with me is what I really wanted to implore of you, dear reader...I will be back soon. :)

Walking Drawings

2008-05-15T15:25:00.005-05:00

Great is graffiti. Even better: animated graffiti! Graffiti is illegal, but it's a way for rebellious artists to take back their space and define it in their own
image(s). I have seen lots of beautiful graffiti in different parts of the world but not enough in Canada. More people should be more brazen with their spray cans!

This video was sent to me by my sister, who found it on, and also likes to visit Zefrank.com.

On the other hand, there are certain kinds of graffiti that some could go without. Toronto Sun reported some graffitti that wasn't quite as impressive to firemen in Toronto. They found blue paint splattered over a granite memorial commemorating fallen firemen, inspiring reactions such as "despicable" and "cowardly". They are pressuring the government to punish the vandals severely.

Part of me feels like they are being irrational though and reminds me of how some Muslims reacted with outrage when a cartoonist depicted Muhammed in one of the comics. They rioted, burned embassies, sent death threats to cartoonists, but what did it accomplish? I feel like spending millions of dollars to repair the memorials would be an equal waste of effort, especially considering it might have cost them an additional $5 to coat the granite with a cheap protective plastic covering in the first place.

Whenever freedom of expression and people's sensitivities are at odds we're forced to face the fact that someone's drawings, statements and actions will never mean the same thing to another person.

One man's terrorist is another man's graffiti artist.

What Epictetus Might Say

2008-05-09T19:30:00.003-05:00

I realized that things can be a lot of fun, as long as you have variety, because, naturally, the universe is abundant.

Poster Girls

2008-05-01T08:19:00.003-05:00

I am all for finding true love,
yet when we dress predators to disguise them as prey,
should we be surprised that it gets easy to be lured away by things that don't matter?
(Or those that don't care?)

Not only that but attraction gets diluted
in all the polluted neural pathways
distraction seems most suited by how the moon, off of the ocean, plays
In a reflection, can you see true beauty? Look closer.
(Is it returning your gaze?)

I want to find true love, but yet I can hardly stop staring,
when through a store window,
I see the erect nipples of a mannequin saying "hello!"
Some surprising compromise between a familiar friend and a strange saviour.
The store display entices, but I pass on as routine behaviour.

Cash is ass, or so we're taught, taught to buy and breed.
We starve because we can't eat bills, soul saturated in greed.
My imagination is all I have, my concentration breaks.
If there is no real girl for me there's only so much I can take.

(So)
I have a momentary arousing distraction in the pinstripe of the mannequin's pert form.
But it is nothing special.
Because we've replicated the female figure and mass produced it in plaster!
It's now the norm.
Our tough job is to distinguish reality and make genuine decisions based on it.
But beauty's diagrams are severed and scattered all over the sex-crazed streets on posters of teens posed in sheets.
(Somehow I feel cheated)

Is that how I have trouble finding one real live woman's body to hold throughout the night?

All these ads, telling me how to act.

I am stalked by a cold, two dimensional army of pornstars.

©Copyright SirBarrett 2008

Poetry

My Sister's Trip To Hawaii

2008-04-22T08:42:00.003-05:00

...resulted in this.

This is my older sister and her fiance. They are something else. He's an physicist studying distant galaxies in space. She's a public health researcher. When my fourth sister (not her) was born, I cried. I cried because I thought to myself: "This was my last chance to have a brother, and now you've blown it mom!" I guess it turns out I was wrong, however. Now I'm finally going to get a brother (in law)!

Congratulations Saul and Celine!

On Obama's "Bitter" Comments, and the Bitterness They Have Perpetuated

2008-04-15T22:42:00.005-05:00

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." -Barack Obama

These comments made by Barack Obama at a fundraiser in San Francisco have caused such a stir in his candidacy that the now famous words could easily be considered one of his greater "gaffes" yet. He has had a hard time reexplaining what he meant, trying to defend his "cling(ing) to...religion" statement by saying that "Scripture talks about clinging to what's good". It is a shame what he originally said doesn't seem to have registered with white working class American voters and that the news has put such a negative spin on it. It seems to have done more bad than good for those he was trying to reach.

I think many people are simply looking for something, anything to criticize Obama about to keep the democratic candidates rivalry alive. This "clinging to guns or religion" statement is a good opportunity for that. It's a hot button. But arguing that he is a snob who doesn't deserve the white working class vote is not fair to what he actually said. I think Obama's statements are only vulnerable, precisely because religion, immigration and security happen to be very sensitive issues in the USA today and people are ready to jump into an argument about them before they have even allowed anyone else to finish speaking. I give him credit for talking about them at all. I mean, there are fanatical Christians (of many types) on the one hand and staunch militarists running the White house on the other. Americans are still at war with terror because they still feel terrorized. You can't fight terror if you encourage fear, if you feel disillusioned, burnt out, or seduced by radical "solutions" to problems that have practical ones. What Obama wants to avoid is the same social phenomenon that has echoed throughout history, that whenever experiencing moments of instability, societies tend to react by segregating themselves into smaller groups based on superficial commonalities rather than practical purposes. They spread hatred or racism or classism and it is never productive. It is always destructive. They attack others because they are feeling insecure about themselves. They find a scapegoat and then they torture them to make themselves feel more righteous about their own forms of government. Well here is a newsflash: peace and security don't happen through divine intervention or at gunpoint. You have to relax. Say you consider yourself religious AND patriotic. How are you supposed to compromise the idea of Jesus Christ dying for our sins with the fact that the US army (et al) are at war and are sacrificing others lives for a "democracy" they themselves seem to be unsure of. Did you expect there not to be any cognitive dissonance between those two things? It's a slippery slope when you start agreeing with the "give me democracy or give me death" kind of attitude, because often that leads to some unpredicted forms of both. It is also a desperate and fear-driven mentality. Why does it have to be an ultimatum?

So I disagree that what Obama said about small town Americans should be taken with so much offense and I think his description of small town behaviour (although I will admit I have never been to Pennsylvania) actually rings true in a lot of cases. However, I invite anyone to explain why, if I were a white working class small town American, I should be offended by what Barack Obama said. When you are down on luck, you cling to that which gives you a sense of security. It's natural for us as humans. I don't think he was implying that whatever that is for people is necessarily ineffective. Different strokes for different folks. Why can't we live and let live on this issue? Now we have to crucify Obama? For some people, religion IS their bread and butter and it brings them peace of mind. And? Other people like to sleep with a tech nine under their pillows. That's fine as long as there aren't any missionaries interrupting my dinner or drive by shootings on my street. But I would also wish that for others, too. It's a problem though once everyone starts fighting for their own agenda and giving up on working together. No one gets any sleep. I don't think he was demonizing religion OR firearms at all. He wasn't specifically praising them either. He was just suggesting that sometimes the reasons you gravitate to them aren't always healthy, hence the use of the word "cling". I think what he was criticizing was the fact that if you are "clinging" to those things as a reaction to uncertainties in your life instead of as an act of free will, you may be going towards them for the wrong reasons. To cling to anything too hard, that is to say, to rely on one thing firmly, is like building a house out of sand on a beach right next to the shore. When the tide rolls in, your entire livelihood could be gone. So diversify your portfolio! Speak other people's language! Get to know your neighbors, ESPECIALLY if they have a different lifestyle than you!

People often distort what Barack says, though. Now Hilary is using this as an opportunity to suck up to Pennsylvanians and McCain is using it to argue that Barack Obama is "out of touch" with Americans. People distort what Barack says because they don't like the subtle hint that he might be telling them something they don't already know, or something that they may know, but are too afraid to admit.

Politics

A Final Farewell to my Grandfather

2008-04-09T12:38:00.007-05:00

In loving memory of Steve Benjamin Peta
Born~November 5, 1918
Passed Away~March 28, 2008
Age~89

Steve Peta: Farmer, Teacher, Principal, father and grandfather, was best described by his boundless generosity.

He was generous with his time, in hospitality and with his stories.

Contrasted with his generosity was a balanced, conservative attitude towards spending. He would always tell us not to waste our money on things that don't last. "Save your money!" He would say. "Put it in a bank today and it will be worth something tomorrow."

He always seemed proud of all his grandchildren. He was ambitious for them to achieve more. He constantly encouraged us and remained interested in what we were doing. He told us: "Study hard so you can get into a good school, so that you can get a good job." Supposedly this made sense merely coming from a retired school Teacher and Principal, but it somehow seemed to come from some place deeper. It was part of his character to be competitive, to strive harder and get farther than anyone would expect of him. And he would go about this in his own consistent, deliberate way.

Because we lived provinces apart, I fondly remember being visited or visiting my grandfather. When I was fourteen, I remember the giddy excitement of flying out to see my grandparents, with no parents! We visited his wheat farm, which was the most desolate landscape I had ever seen. It must be something to be able to bear it out here, I thought, watching the oil pumps eerily moving up and down. But despite farmer suicides being high in the area, presumably because it was so lonely out there, my grandfather told me about how the "chin coulee"* ghost was there to keep him company. He would see him in the mornings, sitting on the fence.

Steve was a man who, because he was generous, enjoyed the company of others. Imaginably, because he had experienced poverty to a greater degree than my generation, we were forced to appreciate what we had more through him. For example, if we were full from eating his food and wanted to throw out the leftovers, he would say "Eat some more! It's good food!"

When we got together, he was always happy to see us. He would walk up and throw his cane against a chair and shake my hand with vigour and ask: "How is Barrett doing?" picking up right where we left off.

We will always remember grandpa's antics. I remember thinking that he was tough because he did push ups into his sixties and stood over six feet tall. He demonstrated to us children the proper way to eat soup in the military: up and across! He joked that while doing target practice, someone shot his belt buckle and his pants fell down. It was lucky that I had a grandfather that I knew. If it wasn't for him tripping and breaking his wrist at just the right time (during the draft), he could have been sent to war and never returned before I had the chance to meet him...

Instead, my childhood was filled with his stories of jackrabbits, chin coulee* ghosts and the classroom.

He would make juice and call it "kickaboy juice" because its sweetness gave you a kick in your mouth. He always had a tiger tail sticking out of the gas tank of his old boat of a New Yorker. When I asked him about the odd appendage, he merely asked "What do you think is powering the engine?"

In more recent years, grandpa Peta's health was fading, though his mind was always tough. (In his mind he was always invincible) but his body was losing strength.

I think he would want us to remember him in the ripeness of life, because he always struck me as someone who was practical, who wanted people to enjoy what they had while they had it, because tomorrow it could be gone. There's an expression: Life is wasted on the living. Not so with him. He wanted everyone to use their abilities and not waste a single moment.

Steve may be gone now but he will be remembered fondly. We should be happy he lived such a rich and colourful life because he recognized it when it was there. In his letters to me, he would chronicle the changing of the seasons, the snow, the crops and the forecast for next season.

Apparently, the promise of spring was not strong enough to make a man in the winter of his life hold on for another season. May Steve Peta rest in peace.

*Although the word "coolie" has taken on the form of a pejorative racial slur today, I always thought my grandfather meant it to refer to the Asian laborers that would have worked with his father (my great grandfather) when he immigrated from Hungary to work on the Canadian Pacific Railway. On separate occasions, described the racism that was present in those days, with Asians often having to perform the most dangerous jobs like laying dynamite to blast out the mountains. Sometimes they would lose their lives. I now realize that the name he had for the ghost was the chin coulee ghost, referring to the particular valleys and landscapes of the great Canadian west.

Personal Diegesis

A Hoarse Head

2008-04-08T00:01:00.003-05:00

Sorry folks, I haven't been blogging lately...my schedule has been tighter than tetris. But this video pretty much sums everything that has happened recently and brings you right up to speed...or DOES it???

How the Hog Lies

2008-03-20T11:54:00.003-05:00

Today is officially the first day of spring, but somehow, as I survey the cold dandruff falling from the skies, I get the sense nature is running on her own schedule. The groundhog is a liar.

Here was an email sent to us employees at Ontariocolleges.ca:

Hi Everyone:

Happy first day of spring, unfortunately we are not over winter yet.

Please continue to be aware of the ice that may still exist around the parking lot. With milder days and colder nights we can expect to see ice in the morning. In an effort to be environmentally responsible our maintenance company will not spread salt unless a significant area of the parking lot is covered in ice (or more snow!).

Kinda sad...but it just means we will have something to look forward to for a little longer!

New Move

2008-02-28T14:31:00.002-06:00

I'm so excited I could clap my hands but haven't yet because I am dreading packing. I will be out of my place in no less than two days!

College Versus University Versus Neither

2008-02-26T14:26:00.006-06:00

This is the new campaign that has been launched on our website, here at Ontariocolleges.ca. Obay is (a fictional drug that parents prescribe to their children in order to control them?) the brainchild of Smith Roberts Creative Communications. There have been posters, billboards and radio ads launched with it as a new communications campaign geared towards debunking myths about college and encouraging applicants towards making the next step towards a brighter future. :)

Although I give the campaign credit for its creativity, I'm not sure I understand the intended outcome of the campaign. The other thing I don't like the kinds of praise that some parents are giving about their children's experience in college while belittling university in comparison. This mother for example, commented on Universities being "big" and "impersonal".

Possessing both a University and a College diploma, I found benefits to both College and University however, I disagree that any generalizations can be made about either. I disagree that college is more "hands on" as is argued pervasively, or that Universities are "impersonal". Actually I had some very small, intimate classes in University, and some very theoretical (not hands on at all) classes in college.

To get back to the add campaign and its usefulness, I've had many comments from applicants that they are very impressed with it and relate to it. The one good experience about both my college and university experiences was the fact that my parents never pressured me to take a specific program. They realized that higher education was important but also that it's the experience of learning itself that needs to be appreciated.

I realize that I am a bit of a statistical oddity, in that although I went to college and university, my current position has nothing to do with my education! But is this really that strange in current times? If we were to credit the skills gained through school as what jet-propelled me into my current career(s), we could but we have no way to prove whether these skills came about as a result of school, or whether they would have been instilled in me otherwise (education moves in mysterious ways). I am reminded again of the graffitti I saw recently that states "My bike takes me places education never could".

I look at the statistic 90% of graduates who enter the labour force are employed within six months, and 93% within two years" with some disdain as it seems to mask the fact that that could be in ANY profession. Although I am part of this 90% I still had to experience being laid off and I am STILL looking for work in my desired field almost two years after completing both a university degree and a college diploma!

Things could be worse. I could be addicted to Obay.

Or, my parents could have tried to control every aspect of my life since I was a baby...

We Are All People Every Day

2008-02-22T08:41:00.005-06:00

There I was, sitting in a cab again.

I have been taking cabs a lot lately...which is starting to run up my costs. It's more than a $20 cab ride to work, because it's so far away from where I live. That means that in essence, for part of my shift, I'm working for free.

I try to catch the bus but our bus system is probably the worst on this planet. You have to go right downtown if you want to be sure to catch the bus. If you try to catch it along one of its routes you never know when it will come. There are numbers on the signs that you can call that are supposed to give you time estimates based on the GPS systems in the buses of when the next bus will come. You punch in the bus stop code and then an automated voice is supposed to tell you when the next bus is coming by. It's a good idea in theory but the automated service only lasted about a week before the GPS systems in the buses stopped giving the system accurate times and the automated voice went haywire. It sounds like someone melted the voice machine tape (I realize most machines are digital these days. The voice became all garbled and incoherent. I called it once and it told me the next bus was in 72 minutes. Disheartened, I walked a little off only to see the bus whiz straight past me. On the other hand, when the bus is on time, sometimes it's full so all the bus driver can do is wave as they go by, and that's no fun for anybody (well, maybe it is for the bus driver).

So there I was this morning, sitting in an exceptional position: on the bus downtown. I was so impressed with myself that I had showered, shaved, made myself breakfast (it's usually just 50 cent coffee from the machine) walked downtown and made it on time. My day was going to be perfect, I thought, I was set for work. Then the bus pulled away, did a three sixty and headed in the opposite direction from that which I intended. So there I was morning, sitting on the WRONG bus. I pulled the cord to be let off and dialed the familiar taxi number.

Despite my best intentions and strongest resistance, there I was, at the whim of Red Top Taxi. The worst part is: I couldn't blame the buses. It was I that failed to read the outside of the bus before onloading. At least I wouldn't be late considering the taxi takes a mere 10 minutes compared to the bus' 45.

When I got to work one of my first calls lasted not the usual minute or so, but ten minutes! This is a sample of the caller's concerns:

"My question is I study in George Brown college for a year and a half, and I pay $85 for the application, I paid already, I pay thousands of dollars for school and now they ask me to take English assessment test. I am not beginner. I take many courses in English, all my courses in college in English. What is the reason for this? I pay $8 for my transcript, what is the reason? Now my transcript is not worth anything? Who protects us, that is my question. Who protects us? I think maybe I talk to this person, I talk to that person, it's all for make money. My question is why? Why is my question. You understand I already take college. I am not beginner. Why Centennial college ask me for English test?"

Her voice inflected up and down like a wild rollercoaster, and the questions all flooded my ears before she would give me a chance to respond. She went on and on. I explained that in order for the colleges not to request an assessment test, they need to see the grade 12 English mark, for which they need a high school transcript submitted. The caller obviously didn't want to submit the transcript on moral grounds, arguing that it would be impossible to get into college anyway without high school and therefore that the college should assume applicants like her had grade 12 English if they had submitted college transcripts. When I explained that the application process doesn't work that way; that the college needs to see the transcript as proof, the applicant's response was: "That is no good. I think that answer is no good" and started at the very beginning again. Eventually, I asked them if they would like me to have someone else give them the same answer that I did and they said "Yes". So that's what happened.

Reassuringly, the next applicant was a young man with a medical degree from Iraq who had provided all of his documents, including a landed immigrant card and his transcripts. I was proud to tell him that his international assessment of academic credentials was complete and that all he had to do now was wait for a response from the colleges. He was anxious to get online and check whether they had accepted him or not, right away.

People all come from different walks of life and this is what I see on a daily basis. There are those who argue with the system and seem to get nowhere, take me nowhere, make me feel nothing but frustration. There are others who through hard work and empathy, inspire me with their determination and excitement for new opportunities.

Diversity is what keeps me going though. I know that not every caller is going to be a treat to deal with, but we're all just people and the most I can do is make a consistent effort to do my best. I tell everyone to have a great day at the end of the call, no matter whether it started with them shouting at me or not. That way there's always the hope of improvement. So here's wishing you improve too. Hopefully your day turns out better than mine started. We are all everyday people. I'll credit the Smarties commercial for that. It's brilliant!

Just a Note on Valentines Day

2008-02-14T11:26:00.005-06:00

If love hurts then should you avoid it? Well, according to the band the Smiths: "I am human and I need to be loved...just like everybody else does." So love is unavoidable? It's part of Maslow's needs. We grow through its challenges and its upsets. There are libraries full of song lyrics about love, Petrachian poetry, Sex for Dummies etc. and we can see its proposed expression through the purchase of everything from a set of roses to a diamond ring. We can see why this holiday is a commercial success. For some, this is enough of a reason to boycott it.

If you're one of those guys who is unsentimental perhaps you'll make it through the day without having to do very much at all. But if you have a girlfriend, watch out. She may pretend not to make a big deal about it, but she's expecting a bit of extra love. My roomate's girlfriend just showed him her love by bringing him Tim Horton's coffee (but he's still sleeping). Loss of points? We'll see.

As for me, last night I was walking alone and I saw that someone had written "LOVE" in the snow. It was a nice idea but it reminded me of the pressure of loving at this time of year when everyone is particularly vitamin D deficient. I walked a couple steps further and then I saw the word "CALM" so I breathed. I'll be having a calm, casual, light-love occassion, listening to Roy Orbison...and possibly treating myself to a tan the salon.

HAPPY VALENTINES ALL!!

Why Women Live Longer Than Men

2008-01-24T15:56:00.000-06:00

Possibilities are Endless

2008-01-02T15:31:00.000-06:00

"Become a possibilitarian. No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilities -- always see them, for they're always there." ~ Norman Vincent Peale

It's not only a sad time of year for me but a necessary time to regroup with myself, look into the mirror and ask questions like: "Who are you, really?"

While relationships can be so uplifting they can also be downright exhausting. Sometimes it takes getting out of a relationship to mend the one that you have with yourself. :)

Between my ex and I, when times were good, they were so, SO good but then when they happened to take a downward spiral, I felt like I was falling out of the Twin Towers. I think a lot of it has to do with a sense of security and trust, being able to be independent despite being together. There were always times when we *knew* that we weren't being fair to each other and so, to be nicer, we broke up.

Relationships can be filled with so much pleasure and cause so much pain. But if they don't work, it's time to get out and re-examine things. In the meantime, it's important to stay busy so that you don't lose your mind.

So, when I'm not browsing around for a new prospective wife on here I'm busy answering calls and cooking up dishes for restaurant patrons...and it makes me HAPPY to not be so involved with the multiple identities of me, me as far as my other is concerned, and regular old me.

I relate to the blundering Presidential Candidates who were just recently on their campaign tours in that I don't get a lot of sleep, and when I don't get a lot of sleep, silly and hilarious things happen. When Hillary Clinton naps are shortened, she says things like "we had 300 people outside, literally freezing to death." (Quick Hillary, get out your Websters and lookup "literally"! Iowa is not having a state weather emergency). My SNAFU was misanswering a phone call the other day, not with "Customer Contact Center, how may I help you?" but "Customer Chaos Centre, how may I help you?" I think my subconscious was saying more to me in that instance than when I dreamt I was an adopted member of the Adams family.

Who will I be tomorrow? Will I wake up with a dorsal phin growing out of my spine? Will I start drinking tea and speaking in an English accent? When I was first single, it was surprisingly horrifying. I felt like I couldn't handle it. Life tested me by completely separating me socially against my will. I lost my cell phone and my keyboard got ruined. I was cut off. That was important though. For once I had no distractions and so I went on a cleaning/organizing rampage, finding out why I wasn't receiving mail (because Canada Post is afraid of unshovelled driveways), how I could get a new phone, how I could organize my life. Now I'm starting to be delighted by the surprises. I'm shape-shifting. Possibilities are endless.

Alone on New Years

2007-12-31T10:17:00.000-06:00

I try and try but cannot sleep
The thoughts of you straight back will creep
It’s lost our love, our love’s not right!
So I’ll be alone tonight

Amongst the people
Crossing paths
Wearing faces
Like a mask

Look into
Their great abyss
Which looks straight back
and gives a kiss

Meeting at
That very hour that
Serves for when
Our love went sour

Since it’s so
That every moment
I can’t help but think of you.

Light the candle
Hope it lasts
New years begun
A year now passed

But in my eyes
I see again
Those same sad thoughts
Pain makes us men

Sad because the happy’s gone
Gone with all my fun
I used to be a brighter man
But now I want a gun

Looking back
I’d change no thing
But search for something
New to sing

Changing tunes
Is hard at first
But once you taste
You start to thirst

Not unlike
re-finding youth
You give your
old age a new boost

Learn to feel
And to forget
Let go the ‘stop’
Bring back the ‘let’

Different faces, places, charm
Finding that it’s difficult
Trying out whatever goes
Try to avoid the harm

To be me is strange itself
It’s like I’ve taken a hot bath
And being used to having you
I come out with missing half

You can’t help but reminisce
Half a year was spent on this
Times we laughed and cried and hurt
My heart feels choked inside my shirt

Please come here, commemorate
My soul feels just like two flood gates
I feel lonely, let me hold
No let me kiss, let me be bold

No man can ever hold back time
Nor should he ever want to
So as the time progresses on
Relationships will slip through

As the time comes crashing down
It frees us from its cost
But I will be alone tonight
Because my love is lost

©Barrett Cressman 2007

Poetry

Deck the Halls

2007-12-28T09:43:00.001-06:00

"Customer Contact Centre, *cough* *cough* how may I *cough* help you?"

The frankest answer would be: "Get over your cold!"

I work in a shared cubicle, where virus thrive off of computer keys, desk tops and telephone surfaces. The sounds around me are equally...phlegmy.

So I've been packing my pockets with cough candies and hoping for the best.

Stephen Sellout

2007-12-19T13:58:00.001-06:00

This was avaaz.org's ad that was printed in Canadian papers on December 14th, the last day of the UN Bali Summit on Climate Change.

Getting Your Roast On

With all the snow and holiday hoopla, it might be difficult to focus on anything other than what to stuff your stocking with. But let us remember that life isn't all chestnuts roasting on a an open fire. Our planet is in danger of getting roasted out of space!

Deal or No Deal?

Imagine the world as a mystery suitcase. It's not. We know what we put into it.

The UN Bali Summit on Climate change last week seemed to be moving slowly but progressively towards some specific targets. Not surprisingly, the US was undermining those talks by blocking the conference. Then Canada (WHO SIGNED THE KYOTO PROTOCOL!!!), with just a few days to go, used that as an excuse to block other Kyoto countries from moving on, arguing that a deal without the US was no deal at all.

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

That's why we can't take our eyes off our dear leaders or what they are doing. When Stephen Harper was elected as prime minister of Canada, he promised to make politics less corrupt and more transparent. Well, now we have to stick it to him if we expect him to represent our interests, not just the interest of the powers that be and corporate cozeners.

Luckily, outraged protesters managed to pressure Stephen Harper to eventually go with the consensus to reduce carbon emissions by 20-40% by 2020. The US also finally caved.

It is long way from specific binding targets but it does show that we, the people, still have some power over our politicians.

There's something wrong with Canada but it's not our belief in the purpose of the Kyoto Protocol.

We can't stay silent or else that belief will never translate into action, which is what the world needs more now than ever.

Environment

Death of a Furnace and The Big Bad Frost

2007-12-04T11:13:00.000-06:00

Sit down children! Come round and let me melt the snow off your collar with a little tale:

Once upon a time there was a valiant old furnace. It burned day and night to warm the hearts and minds of its inhabitants. But the inhabitants were busy playing their instruments, having parties and messing up the house. They didn't have time to think about rising gas prices. They didn't have time to thank the furnace. They didn't even have time to fix a window that was broken! And it was winter time! They took the valiant old furnace for granted while its heat was being constantly wasted. Still, it kept the house as heated as it could, as a good furnace should.

Then the big bad frost came and things weren't the same but the furnace was only more inflamed with passion! It pumped and it pumped to protect its little inhabitants from the cold. However, when the furnace wasn't looking, the big bad frost got wind of the furnace's efforts, sneaked up behind the furnace and blew its pilot light right out! What could be worse? Try as it might, the furnace could not get a single spark of energy to rejuvenate its former fieriness.

It would be nice to be here right now.

Remember how in Season Pangs I suggested that people need spirit to get through this season, especially if say, their furnace were to break down in minus 15 degree weather? Well, it seems I've really jinxed myself because MY FURNACE HAS BROKEN DOWN! Meanwhile, it's simply a lucky coincidence that this comes at a time when I have a broken window and when the wind chill makes the cold even colder than minus 15.

So I bet you can guess that I'm not lazing around in my Hawaiian T-shirt.

The repairman will be by shortly to confirm that the pilot light is out, which apparently is normal considering the high winds that make it feel like it's minus 18 outside. Although I might be a master at hotwiring my thermostat with a paper clip, I'm not going to mess around with a machine that has the power to blow my house and I up. When the repairman comes, he will show the furnace the way, the truth and most importantly, the light, (aka a match to the pilot light), then my valiant old furnace will come back to life.

Meanwhile, I've been expressing my "spirit" by wearing my boots in the house, burning candles and watching my breath as I sip hot chocolate with marshmallows. I feel now as if I know what it is like to live in an igloo. The water in my toilet hasn't frozen yet though, which I take as a sign that maybe the spirit alone has enough in it to kindle a little bit of warmth.

When this is all over I'm going to hug my furnace.

Silly

Truth

2007-11-27T14:52:00.000-06:00

The world conspires against you to show you the contradictions and crises in your life.

Then, if you are still looking, it offers you a route to a solution.

©SirBarrett 2007

Poetry

Season Pangs

2007-11-22T14:12:00.000-06:00

It started last night. Like they had been attacked by some sci-fi virus, the water molecules in the falling rain started to mutate and change their structure. Now the ground is completely covered with white, cold, ice crystals. Of course, by this time of year, it usually doesn't seem like some alien weather pattern that has taken over the planet. We're used to snow.

But so far we have had it fairly easy with the occasional rain and temperatures mostly above zero. Now however, the fact has really hit me: winter is just around the corner. The inevitable second thought is: Christmas is just around the corner!

I usually loathe winter, the cold, getting sick etc but I am at least looking forward to some of the things this frosty season has to offer. For example, being safe and warm inside is so much more rewarding when faced with the prospect of sub zero torture. Maybe I'm simply turning a negative into a positive but welcome to the winter of my discontent, I have to. Otherwise I just may not make it through to spring.

So let's be merry and list off the gifts that winter has to offer:

1. Holidays. They are there, really. Just hold on and keep pumping. It may not seem like an immaculate conception but everyone needs some time off. It's also really nice to see friends and family visit again, back from the far off regions that they have moved away to.

2. Spirit. I know this can be a curse to some, including mothers of children that repeat various versions of jingle bells over and over but smile. Have some spirit. It will come in handy when it is minus fifteen and your furnace breaks down.

3. More food. I have many friends who enjoy snacks. They complain that they look like a walrus but who can argue against cookies and hot coco? Certainly not anyone whose mouth is full.

4. An excuse to stay in. "It's too cold to go out" is actually a valid reason not to uncurl from your book and covers. It feels so nice by the fire. On the other hand, having to go anywhere can be a nightmare. Run for cover!

Anyway, so it is not a very long list but I am somewhat excited. I am also terrified but I am somewhat excited...to catch up with old friends, have snowball fights, sing carols, set up lights and watch the snow pile up. I'll be watching it from this side of the window as much as possible.

Music Video of the Week: Hide and Seek

2007-11-15T12:27:00.000-06:00

If you recognize this song, chances are you saw it somewhere on TV. It was used in The L Word, on a preview for season 3 of Lost and in a preview for Heroes. Despite hearing many good things about both shows, I haven't seen either the L Word or Heroes. However, it seems that good music can even make it's way onto bad shows as well, as I discovered.

If you're like me, you rolled out of bed the other morning, made breakfast and turned on the TV thinking: I'll just watch something. Anything! The more mind-numbing the better! You don't even consciously think the thought but part of you admits that were a horrible show such as The OC to come on right then, that despite its malingering actresses (Micha Barton) and all its Californication and cheesy drama, you still wouldn't have the will to shut it off. Well, that depends. I usually last about 30 seconds before I want to perform an abortion on my eyeballs. But imagine my case: not paying for cable and therefore only having the choice between the OC and the Doodlebops (or no TV). What's it gonna be? So I left it on...and then my ears perked up. This is a good song!

Imogen Heap was like a child prodigy, learning several instruments at a young age and teaching herself to mix and produce it on Atari computers. The melody of this song is so melodic and robotic at the same time. It's the sound of a pretty machine.

That's how these rotten shows capture your attention.

Words For Rice

2007-11-13T12:05:00.000-06:00

Do you consider yourself a voracious vocabularian? Then perhaps you should try out this, a fun quiz for a good cause.

In the last ten minutes, I've donated 500 grains of rice through the United Nations World Food Program just for choosing the correct definitions for words. This literally is food for thought. So it is nice to know that while I'm excercising my brain cells, someone who really needs food is getting fed.

Undead Images Dance in the Streets

2007-10-31T15:23:00.000-05:00

No, I'm not possessed or insane. The windows are really speaking to me.

Not only is this week exciting with the prospect of encountering a ghost or being attacked by a poltergeist, but there are many more reasons to light up the supernatural season with so many special events going on in Guelph!

I like getting in the mood of Halloween, where everyone is someone or something else. Last night at the restaurant where I work, all the waitresses were either devils or angels. It was interesting to see which choices they made, especially considering that in some cases they dressed up as their complete opposite!

But back to the whole Halloween et allness of this week. There are many shows playing, such as last night's Meredith Grant or this Friday's Dragonette show at Peter Clark Hall in the University of Guelph. (SO excited! SO excited!) Also, since movies are a reproduction of a living moment, sealed in time, outliving their source of inspiration, forever undead, what better time for a cinematic festival than this one?

All week, a rotating reel of illusions play across shop windows downtown Guelph. You can see these unnatural flashes of light and sound on unexpected places such as a parked car or a brick wall as these surfaces become projection screens for the local Guelph Festival of Moving Media. (Pictured above)

I notice that while trick or treating was a serious sport when I was a small tike, (we were out way after dark) the anxiety around the ritual has increased since those days and children don't tend to go unsupervised or very long past dark on Hallows Eve. It seems parents are paranoid about having their children abducted, poisoned or both. Perhaps that's for the best considering that although little Timmy may be dressed up say as a Samauri, he might not have the same defenses as a Tokagawa black belt and therefore NEEDS YOUR PROTECTION. But what might get little Timmy may not be a razor in an apple or anything so bad as...THA BOOGIEMONSTER!! BOO!! (Sorry, just wanted to try to scare SOMEONE)

In light of these concerns, please remember to make sure your candies haven't been tampered with and if a hand reaches out from the ground, don't shake it. If you're going to eat a lot of sugar, remember to maintain proper dental hygiene by brushing twice a day and flossing at least once a week.

Feel free to roam and become one with the dark forces of nature, watch horror movies, play ouija board and if you're still looking for last minute costume ideas, here are some pictures of what my friends have come up with:

Events

Halloween is in the Foul and Filthy Air

2007-10-26T07:51:00.000-05:00

If you, are planning, on going out this weekend....DON'T!
If you, are planning, on watching scary movies...DON'T!
If you, are planning, on checking your basement to see what that strange noise was...DON'T!
If you, are planning, on reading this blog at midnight...DON'T

DON'T check this blog. DON'T read the newspaper. DON'T go out this weekend. DON'T go to your basement. DON'T!!! It could be the last time you DO anything!
(Reference to the fake horror movie trailer in Grindhouse, which BTW I LOVE!)

Hopefully everyone has a safe and happy holiday being zombies, mummies, fairies and thieves! The celebration of death and the mystery of the spiritual has just begun!

I Likes Me My Dragonette

2007-10-17T10:15:00.000-05:00

Whether a good day or bad, you can always go for some Dragonette. If you like the Peaches, you will probably like them too.

I'm excited to see this sexy, salacious electropop band on November 2nd, when they visit Guelph. This group is made up of singer Martina Sorbara, who previously had a solo career in Toronto. She happens to be the daughter of Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara. Other group members include two others from Toronto and one from the UK, husband Dan Kurtz (who is part of a jam electronic band called The New Deal), Joel Stouffer and Will Stapleton.

For more information on the band or concert dates near you, visit dragonette.com

Me This Morning

2007-10-12T07:32:00.000-05:00

It's still early but I'm not awake yet. I was lucky enough to find this gravestone which will conveniently do to describe my energy level. Scrambled eggs and coffee make concentrating and grinding to the end of the week bearable but I can't wait to go home, watch Star Trek and take a nap...

Taxing Sweets

2007-10-04T09:09:00.000-05:00

Do you think putting a tax on your sweet and salty pleasures would curb your craving for junk? Half of Canadians surveyed by an Angus Reid poll think it's a bad idea but perhaps at least it would pay for your quadruple bypass down the road...

In a country such as Canada, where taxes pay for our healthcare, welfare and roads, it makes sense to tax those behaviors that are damaging to society to pay for the damages that result from them.

Take obesity for example. At least a third of adults are overweight and diabetes alone costs Canadians more than $9 billion a year. Since our lifestyle choices -getting that double-double at Tim Horton's every morning that eventually adds up, the government could be making a killing off of the types of foods that kill. Shouldn't the government be doing something to prevent heart disease, strokes and other health complications related to being overweight, especially when health depends so much on prevention?

Everyone hated Brian Mulroney when he introduced new taxes like the GST. If we work in a convenience store, we pay income tax to sell our goods while our customers pay tax again on every product to buy them from us! It's highway robbery! However, we've gotten used to it. Maybe the strategy could work in other ways...

What the government should do is tax more selectively and strategically, taxing people for buying certain types of goods (or bads) that are bad for health and the environment, create more tax breaks for people buying hybrid cars, recycling and throwing out less garbage. The Oxford study conducted in the UK proposes to add a 17.5 percent Value Added Tax to fatty, sugary and salty foods thereby dropping death rates by 1.7 percent. It would be great incentive for companies to make healthier products!

If taxation better reflected the types of services that the money goes to pay for, I think justice would be sweeter.

Health

I Don't Like It but I Guess Things Happen That Way

2007-09-21T18:57:00.000-05:00

First, let me say that I am thrilled to have been able to stay at the same house this year, instead of having to move to a new one like all the other nomadic students in this university town. This is one of the first years I've been able to stay settled somewhere. It was a struggle trying to find that third roomate last minute after having about four people flake out on me but things hung together. My new housemates are great...but you'll find exceptions to almost any rule.

I had to fight myself to keep my eyes open while working at the call centre today. This week has been run, run, run. I was like, "TGIF, man!" The fact that they have comfortable chairs conducive to slouching doesn't help either. Ragged cubicle monster that I was, it was bearable just looking forward to going home and taking a nap.

When I got home, I was welcomed with pizza and roomates who were gathered in my room watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, my Sopranos replacement. I know it's probably not "cool" to take naps on Friday nights but Friday nights are like Monday nights for me because I work Saturday mornings, early. So I watched a couple episodes with them before winding down for that much anticipated nap.

But, alas, I no longer control my surroundings (was there a time that I did?). It is now 8:06pm and after about half an hour of lying in my bed to no avail, with the heat, humidity and sounds of screaming children wafting in through my window, a loud buzz started up from my basement. The unmistakeable sound of a guitar amp turned up to max. Then came the bursting, banging accompaniment of drums. That was when I knew my plans were foiled.

It is hard living in a house full of rock stars.

If you're interested in hearing the same sounds that I heard when I was hopelessly trying to sleep, visit my friend Elliot's band Brides

Sleep Deprivation

This Night's News

2007-08-30T14:17:00.000-05:00

Many more die on this night’s news
Brought to you by round-the-clock crews
“Natural” disasters, floods, bombs, pain
Edited and angled in a sixty second frame

It is just a snap shot
Taken from the sky
The speakers rush behind their desks
No time to ask them why

Watch our biggest blunders
waltzed across our face
And as the world keeps spinning
The faults quicken their pace

To fall, us all,
Into the ocean –adrift
The end of an era
Over, swift.

Welcome to Jonestown
Have something to eat
Here, drink your poison
Here, you will sleep

Messes we do pile
Solutions we do lack
Things we thought we’d buried
Come to haunt us back

Humanity seems horrid!
Someone get a broom!
We let the cat out of the bag
An elephant’s in the room

It should send us a signal,
Like a satellite
The little things we do today
Will hit us tomorrow night

We should send a signal
to the satellite
With the
little things we do today.

©SirBarrett 2007

Poetry

Police in Protesters Clothing

2007-08-23T08:52:00.001-05:00

Bush and Harper together at the Fairmont le Chateaux Montebello, Quebec, Canada, for the Leadership Summit on Monday, August 20, 2007. Photo by Evan Vucci (AP/Evan Vucci). [Source]

Were the police in Montebello, Quebec involved in some conspiracy? The recent allegations by peaceful protesters at the Summit suggests they were.

{Read Fake Summit protesters provoked violence: Union in the Globe and Mail}

Last week protesters, (among them my housemate), gathered to show their disapproval of the meeting between Prime Minister Stephen Harper, US President George W. Bush and Mexican President Felipe Calderón. There were three protesters wearing bandanas and the same boots as officers. They held rocks and advanced straight through the police line. However, when protesters checked into the situation to find there is no record of their arrest, they became suspicious that they were police planted as protesters to incite violence and thereby give police a justification for the tear gas and violence that ensued.

My roomate got his first activist lesson at the protest, gaining advice from other protesters to carry a rag soaked in vinegar for the seeming inevitability of gas at any protest involving high profile politicians. He said it was confusing and eerie trying to run around through the cemetery across from the Summit, where police in riot gear were omnipresent.

It was a shame that despite there being mention of the protesters, there was no message reported by the mainstream media regarding why they were there. The results of the Summit were equally ambiguous with Stephen Harper and George Bush differing on their opinions of Canada's Arctic Sovereignty and Calderón responding to the fact that his country was currently experiences hurricanes. Bush stated that "We believe it's an international passage. Having said that, the United States does not question Canada's sovereignty over its Arctic islands" (National Post) but seemed to contradict himself by suggesting that the Northwest passage is open to the US whenever it pleases. Stephen Harper hinted that Canadians may end their mission in Afghanistan after their commitment of staying until 2009 is complete but that depends on parliamentary support for the mission or lack thereof.

There was no open mention of the Security and Prosperity Parnership of North America, which is what I am really interested in hearing about. This document, drafted in March of 2005, is already underway as a strategy to, in effect, erase North American borders or at least make them more accessible to an elite echelon of "trusted travelers".

The SPP has many people concerned about transparency because there has been little to no mention of what is actually going on. What is known is that several corporations have been formed into "working groups" such as the transportation working group NASCO, which is currently building "SuperCorridor"s where certain traders can gain expedient access through our borders. Others argue it is a necessary solution to our current crisis over the flow of trade between NAFTA members but why haven't there been any congressional meetings? What has been agreed upon between the US, Canada and Mexico? Why the secrecy? Wasn't one of Harper's main missions to restore the transparency and accountability of the Canadian government? The SPP would give certain groups free access to the sky, roads or water and make use of biometrics to track, identify and record their movements.

Stephen Colbert on the Colbert Report had a fun time making fun of Stephen Harper as a "Dudley Do Little". Take a look:

Canadians should also be asking questions about our water pipelines to the south and exactly which projects will be undertaken to strengthen our sovereignty in the arctic region on "military, economic and social" fronts. When Summits like these occur, it is easy to be reminded of George Orwell's 1984 in which there are but three major states comparable to today's three trade unions: APEC, EU and NAFTA.

In a convoluted argument designed to reinforce his apparent support for "democracy", George Bush bantered about, distinguishing the differences between "bottom up" and "top down" political transition in Iraq and why it's difficult to make democracy work there. The analogy could easily be applied here in Canada where the interplay between protesters and policemen was quite evident. Interestingly though, sometimes the two forces get lost in each other and the enemy is actually within.

Politics

Volleyball Update

2007-08-23T08:49:00.001-05:00

We lost.

V is for Volleyball and Wednesday

2007-08-08T14:58:00.000-05:00

Ever notice that W's look more like double V's than double U's? That's because they are!!

This is my volleyball team "The Saints" and I posed after a victorious game on one of the various beach volleyball courts that we have been playing on every Wednesday night.

We've lost some and we've won some but it has all been good times thanks to our team spirit. We have some experienced players and some, well, less experienced although each person brings something to the team. Cathy, a school teacher helps with her enthusiasm. For example, last week we had a competition to see who could get the most dives. Her and I were tied at five each by the end of the game. Leah uses a nice strong voice when calling out the ball. Chris takes the cake when it comes to powerful serves. We're just trying to get him to be less powerful so that they go in. Basia offers consistency, Mike offers skill and direction as to where people should be on the court. Rotations can be confusing. Everyone needs to coordinate.

So there are just a few more weeks of play left as the summer has been vanishing as quickly as our fear of diving into the sand. We will have fun tonight...and hopefully spike some mean hits down on the opponent's court.

Retraction

2007-07-24T13:55:00.000-05:00

I seem to be regaining traction as this week begins.

I take it back what I said the other day about work being dull. It can be dull, but that depends whether or not you make it fun.

After all, how can work be dull when you have enough time between calls to read articles online or start a new Facebook group?

Hush Little Darling, Don't Say a Word

2007-07-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

Everything seems so sad sometimes. You have a fun day with friends and food and drink but it's so fleeting and then you have to return to business as usual to find that it's all work and no play and you are Jack.

I woke up this morning under rested and the first thing that happened to me is that I got hit by a car. I was riding my bike on the sidewalk when I clearly saw the SUV approaching. Then, either because I was still waking up or because the driver was or, because of a more subconscious feeling that I sometimes get right before I do something stupid that nothing really matters, neither of us stopped. We just drove right into each other.

I was knocked off my bike and my leg was bleeding a bit from scraping the chain but other than that I was fine. A little shocked, I occupied my mind with trying to get the chain back onto the bike. The back wheel was totally bent out of shape. The driver got out of the car and asked if I was ok. Neither of us was angry. She was an older woman and she kept looking around to see if anyone else saw what happened and seemed concerned for herself saying that she didn't know what to do now. Should we call the police? Should she take me to the hospital?

I explained that I was fine and I figured then that all the wheel needed was a simple readjustment with a ratchet. But I needed to get to work NOW. So I asked if she would give me a lift for the next few blocks and left my bike locked and standing there, a little crookedly though.

Work was typically dull. I answered calls and slouched, trying to track the pattern of call types for the day. No matter what it is, there is always a theme. For example: today's theme was people forgetting their passwords for their online accounts. Today was the day the universe wanted people to fail at signing in. So I would reset their passwords and make sure they didn't have capslock on and that would be that, send them off with a brand new password that they would one day forget again. The fact that there are these patterns though (the next day it will be completely different) and that person after person will call needing to have their password reset or need our mailing address or call thinking it were some other number out of thousands of options of problems that inspire people to call me for a solution, gives me faith that there is some order to things and that even if life can be boring, it is not meaningless. Is it the Jungian concept of universal consciousness at work or is it because shared causes in the environment simply hit everyone at once? Who knows.

I routed through my pockets to see if I had bus money since I now had no functional bike to ride home and found none but in a dash of serendipidy my parents called and offered to pick me up from work so that we could go for dinner. After work, when everyone else had left, I was still waiting in the parking lot for my parents. When I gave them a ring, it turns out they had gone to my old place of employment, thinking I was there: another reminder of how things change so quickly -that we mix up our passwords, forgetting that we had already had them reset to a new password.

They found me though and agreed to help me retrieve my bike and bring it to my house. I started to explain what happened with my bike as we drove to the plaza where I left it and then, as is typical of relating frustrating things, relating them too becomes frustrating. My parents seemed angry at me that I got hit by the car. Were you wearing a helmet? Did you get the lady's phone number? Well why didn't you? they asked. I'm the victim here!!

When my dad saw my bike he got even more furious. "Your bike is f--ked!" Thanks for the frankness, dad. "It boggles my mind that you didn't even attempt to get the phone number of this lady!!" (I can tell that my parents are angry when either of their minds are specifically "boggled" by something).

Eventually we had a decent dinner together once we had changed tables, spilled our drinks and switched positions as to avoid the glare of sun in our eyes. Then it was that time for my parents to get on my case about things. The 'what is your plan' talk I always dread but always need.

Q: What am I going to do about work?

A:I have to figure out where I'm going to be living in just a little over a month. And how is that going to work? I can't keep working two part time jobs that barely pay enough to live.

Maybe I should travel. Maybe I should apply to teacher's college. But then these questions always give me a moment for pause and for frustration and for comparing to options that haven't worked in the past. What is it going to solve if I keep trying to escape into something new? I feel jaded. I feel that I can't talk. There's nothing positive that can come out of my mouth, and I'm searching. So instead of saying anything I fill my mouth with food.

I hate those moments when you know you don't know what to do but you have to try something. My parents feel helpless too and that makes it worse because they try to help me but I don't know what I want. I just keep going in circles it seems. I'm happy most of the time but is that enough? I want a future. I want to make something of my education, of my skills, of my diverse experience. Right now I'm just trying to pay the bills.

Then my parents take me to see Ratatouille, an excellent animated film about a rat who goes out of his way to prove that anyone can cook. It's bright colours and family appeal were a much needed opportunity to veg. I forgot about facts and submersed myself in the streaming fiction. It was as if I wasn't in the doldrums but rather off in belle Paris. But then two hours later that was over too. I had to return to reality.

Sometimes everything seems so sad you just don't want to think about it. You think maybe you should just go to sleep early tonight.

Speed River

2007-07-11T13:27:00.001-05:00

when idle time idly looms
I go to the Speed river's side
There to survey the quiet loons
my iPod offering a ride*

Sitting still, tucked in a nook
whittling down the daily hours
rapt in leisure with my book
til the sweet sunlight doth sour

Not to bother at the market
nor with industry or hay
Not a farmer nor accountant
for I afford to laze all day

Seagulls join me by the dam
where cigarette butts line the wall
They will pick and prattle on
until the stones they land on fall

Here I can be at such peace
watching seaweed slowly drift
Though water under bridges heaped
will be my work for 'morrow's shift

*I don't actually own an iPod, nor are there loons at the Speed River in Guelph, Ontario. These are two fictions which I took the liberty of writing. However, I was listening to CBC radio on my phone and watching the ducks while children fed them bread.

@ Copyright Sirbarrett 2007

Poetry

Hey Guys, Where's My Toenail?

2007-07-03T10:52:00.000-05:00

I was faced with one of the oddest images when my friend lost his toenail yesterday -a fleshy, nailess wonder! He walked out onto my porch with toilet paper scrunched around the toe, little red blotches caking its surface. Then, in the voice of some alternate personae, he is said in a false naive tone: "Hey guys, have you seen my toenail?" If I had, I would have probably cringed and looked the other way because I'm assuming that if a toe without a nail looks that odd, a toeless nail does equally so.

My other friend's curiosity was so turned on and she was so awed that she wanted to touch the toe. Her erect finger slowly neared the oddity then she screamed with glee as she made contact with the wet pudgy surface which was once covered by hard shell.

I don't know how people can spontaneously lose a toenail but in this case he "accidently" picked it off. It's on a toe that has been permanently bent under another toe (a result of squeezing his foot into shoes which are too small for him). Apparently the toenail was all gnarled and dried up so it didn't take much to pick it off.

We joked for awhile about toenails going missing, pretending to nonchalantly inquire about their whereabouts: "If you see any toenails lying around that aren't yours, let me know ok?" "Hey, would you happen to have an extra toenail? I lost mine." "Toenails can't just get up and walk away!"

Anyway, enough about toenails. I was just about to eat lunch but maybe I'll wait for a bit.

Silly

The Magic Number Eight

2007-06-29T12:53:00.000-05:00

I was tagged by Chloe

RULES:
We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I’m obsessive about windows. By 7pm when it starts to cool down outside they can be open but by 7am first thing they must be closed to shut out the heat for the day.

2. Being the only son of a cattle farmer, I was to take over the family business and be a herder. However, when I was about six my father asked me: “How old do you think you have to be before you start helping out around here?” “Seventy-five,” I responded. So there’s still a chance I’ll do it when I get to that age.

3. I’m lactose intolerant intolerant. In other words: I couldn’t live without milk. I have a love of cheeses including stilton, brie and havarti. Soy’s no substitute (although I do like chocolate soy milk too).

4. My career aspirations include: teacher, speech writer, novelist, poet, media relations director and musician. The jobs I’ve had in the past include: concierge, salesman, bus boy, cook, restoration technician, food sampler, career liaison, security guard, camp counselor, care giver, teacher’s assistant and call centre agent.

5. I absolutely hate it when others fail to screw the toothpaste cap back on the toothpaste.

6. As a child, I once lied on an eye test because I thought glasses looked cool and I wanted them. Instead of reading the letters that were there, I made up alternates, thinking this was a very clever way of pretending not to be able to see properly. However, my mother was my optometrist and, seeing through the act, told me my eyesight was perfect.

7. I tend to come off as very “mellow” to people. Sometimes I can be shy and choose to observe things rather than get tangled up in them but if you get me on certain topics I won’t shut up. I attribute this to having four sisters who were so busy and talkative that I had to wait my turn and think for awhile before I had a chance to speak. I compensated by getting out of the house, building forts and playing in the woods with my bow and arrow.

8. I like to spend sunny afternoons reading William Carlos Williams, playing the accordion and drinking green tea.

TAGGED:
Vesper
Mitzee
Paul
Lorena
{Illyria}
Jason
Kunstemaecker
Cocaine Jesus

The Reckoning

2007-06-22T17:19:00.000-05:00

She says it was nothing
And he won’t lie to her
It would be treason to switch tactics now
Though his pleasure has jaundice
Insides a sick mess of syphilis
So the fiery game of kiss and stay quiet has turned against him
After years of commissioned psychotherapy
He could have sworn they were sitting in opposite chairs
But he now realizes: she always had him in hers

Sold for a spear, then pierced with it,
He carries his frame like a recycled trash heap
Down a willowy road
Whistling through the cracks in his face

The irony of it is
That you never know until it is too late,
Then you know too much.
Your skull can still rattle in its cage
But then it becomes accustomed to that prison
This is why you have nothing to worry.
For soon enough, you will know nothing.

Until others have experienced that break neck poverty,
Traveled sudden dead ends
Witnessed the hollow infant eggshell eyes
And hearts too frail to flutter at the hint
Of issues too large to swallow
While they are starving
By his reckoning fault
Out by the badlands
At the sharp steel gates of despair
Many will walk around, oblivious, never even wondering:
What is the bitter taste of betrayal?

@Copyright Sir Barrett 2007

Poetry