practice study design

seven seven seven on a sunday night and outside the rain falls in sheets, the sky hangs in sagging grey bellows, heaving through the air like ships on some unnamed ocean where the crews don't venture out on deck for fear of falling to the ground below.
closed off by the curtain of mist and teardrops that seal the sidewalks like prisons of our own design, trapped in four walls with an exit in every one that always stays shut, too unmotivated to crack them open and breathe in the world that isn't a sunny sky.
so sit and stare, sit and strain to think of some other place that has no walls and no doors but the sky still hangs, fat bags hanging up ready to attack in the most harmless way.
fearless sitting in four walls ignoring the world inches away, separated by eyes that never shut unless we cover them to escape the glare form their constant gaze.
water in my eye from another lost summer day, faithful still to the hope that someday it won't fade away, it won't disappear into the haze of overhanging grey that descends down, down, down to drag me through some when and some where that i don't want to go.
until some voiceless thought goes through your head and tells you, i could drown my self in bottles and swallow all the little pills, i don't need to know the real you because only your picture matters most.
and the same wet sky that sent you into a daze, into a state of disarray, pulls you back out with its gentle caress on the window that you had looked through with disgust, calling out in a quiet song like dewdrops on a fire, telling you that some day some when some where that summer day will come falling back to you.

practice study design

no no, it's a 'refreshment distributor'...

we had our MPP hockey draft today. i dont think i'll place dead last this year, but i probably wont win but whatever.
lessee... Marc Andre Fleury, Chris Pronger, Sergei Gonchar, Milan Hejduk, Jason Blake, Jason Pominville, Jarret Stoll, Nathan Horton, Dainius Zubrus, Jason Arnott.
i wanted Backstrom on D but i think i managed well enough with Pronger and Gonchar, and im surprised i got both of them seeing as how i was tenth overall.

and then we went to Honey Lounge for Sonu's birthday. if it hadnt been his birthday no fucking way would i have gone there. seriously, if i wanted to hang out in a hole in the wall i'd go find a garage and decorate it with shitty christmas wrapping paper all over the walls cause even then it would look better. oh, and my pants actually fit me, but i guess that's not the dress code there.

and how do you take a dj seriously when he uses a Dell XPS laptop that crashes in the middle of songs?

so i came home. oh but the pretty much a trend of me standing in line to get my jacket and one random chick comes up and says she likes my hat continued. see? oilers hat. no sticker on the brim. smyth is still an oiler in her heart too she said.

im totally going to play laser tag when it's my birthday.

jordan and i were talking alcohol fueled talk about the MPP group. less fueled for me seeing as how i really didnt feel much like drinking tonight. but we were both like "this is it, this is The Group." and i started to think about that. about how many The Groups ive had in the last five years. The Pages. The Ottawa Rez Group. The Commie Frosh group. The County Group. The McCow Group. The ROL Group. The Madge Group. The Blogger Group. and now The MPP Group. i think it's weird in a way that there wasn't really that much crossover between them.
when i started this program i actually felt bad for a lot of my friends because there'd be more time chipped away from them to make room for a new bunch of people. which i think kind of sucks considering im pretty fond of the ROL and Blogger groups. but at the same time i cant really say it sucks because im in a 30 person program. but ive never really liked having to drop back on hanging out with friends ive already spent a lot of time getting to know and having good times with and the likes.
even tonight a few people mentioned that they were surprised i came out this time, which i wasnt really sure how to take. i didnt just move here and mesh with the first bunch of people i have to take class with. i dont think anyone can fault me for not making it out to other nights out with MPP people because i had plans with friends ive had here for a few years already.

sometimes i wonder if i'll get overloaded knowing too many people and just want to fuck off into some backcountry town and not have to put up with it for a while. i guess next weekend will have to do for a while.

oh and here's a question, if you add people to your msn list through Adium, does that work fine when you go back to msn? ive added a bunch of people through adium lately and when i go back to use msn only the email address shows up and then nothing happens.

and now i will sleep because why not.

no no, it's a 'refreshment distributor'...

hee like dem hiced pacs

im going to add something to yesterday's list....the printer in the student lounge.

i came in to print some stuff off this morning and it jammed twice, fucked up four times and then only printed every other page. screw it. i'll come back tomorrow to print it off so now im sitting here doing my methods assignment thats bascially a [ractice study design.

so i paid the $2.25 for the saturday globe and mail (didnt it used to be $2?) and im looking through it for a nice article to use and i hit onw about federal spending power and i think "oh this will work nicely" and then i read through it and then it just gives me something else to add to yesterdays list...

david miller.

yes, daivd miller the mayor of toronto. i guess from this article i could also lump in Dalton. alright, Ontario politicians that bitch about Ontario constantly and ignoring the rest of the country. again.

usually i can put up with McGuinty bitching about stuff for ontario because at least he spreads the need around the provine. but when Miller opens his mouth about the federal surplus and says ""The existence of that surplus is outrageous. It is from Torontonians. Almost all of it is our money," i want to punch him in the fucking face.

you kow what? boo fucking hoo. you want to know why the rest of the country gets pissed off at toronto? there ya go. awww, you're highways have potholes? gorsh, best forget about sending any federal assistance to any other ity with infrastructure woes because toronto has fucking potholes. awww, you got taxes because you live in toronto? darn, guess we should ignore the rest of the population that also paid taxes and contributed to the federal surplus.

no really, somone please tell me how at best, 20% of the total population of the country paid 'almost all' of a $14 billion surplus. i think if you throw out comments like miller, maybe you should have an 'im an asshole' tax which would be applied to the whole country to show that the rest of us play fair.

you know what, fine, let miller claim that the majority of $14 billion is from toronto. you can fit the entire popluation of BC in toronto with room to spare, so if we all stay here then we dont have to worry about paying taxes cause apparently no one outside of the GTA really pays them.

hee like dem hiced pacs

ok, who wants to play Rona Ambrose?

i feel like doing a "things that annoy me at the moment" post. just cause.

- the lineup at the tim horton's at harbour center every morning. it has foiled my wishes to have a breakfast sandwhich in time for class every day this week.

- people who have those backpacks that have wheels and handles and instead of wearing it like a backpack they're lazy fucks and wheel it around all the time. hi, yeah, it's called a backpack for a reason turd.

- elementary and junior high kids who have cell phones and wear armani and louis vitton. actually, elementary and junior high kids on public transit. actually, elementary and junior high kids in general ought to cover it.

- the computing lab not being open until 9am and having the only colour printer in the entire fucking building that i can use to print off the assignment i have that has colour in it that's due right at 9am.

- the spider behind my bookshelf. i know you're there because i can see your legs. just show yourself and get it over with.

- people who take intramural rec sports FAR too seriously. hey Zidane, i dont care if you're spanish and wear kappa and puma, it's just a fucking game.

- Bush doing a 180 on climate change. seriously, dont pussy out just because your top science adviser told the world climate change is caused by humans, we all know you dont think so. also, this morning when you touted nuclear energy as clean energy with no emissions you forgot to mention the part about the nuclear waste that no one can process that won't ever go away unless you blast it into space.

- skittles.

- the guy with the really bad B.O. who always manages to sit next you on transit.

- CIDA officials who hand over millions of dollars in foreign aid spending without caring if it results in any progress.

- the Metro and 24 Hours hawkers in the morning. ok look, you're at the skytrain in the morning by my place and i dont want it, you're inside the skytrain station at waterfront shoving it in my face and i dont want it, and then i walk out the front doors of the station and there's two more of you, again, shoving it in my face. last year one of you yelled at me when i said i read real news. you sir, are an asshole. Metro and 24 Hours are rapidly chipping away at any form of informative and important news that people should take issue with and replacing it with front page news items about paris hilton five days in a row.

- not having a couch in the student lounge.

- MLA citation style. if you're not a crazy english lit major there's no real reason to use it at all.

on a positive note, the dude from the NDI actually didnt suck today. and now im 1st year co-rep for the MPP student union.

ok, who wants to play Rona Ambrose?

now we're moving because he's pressing the gas

i totally appreciate finding out that our foreign aid dollars are being spent on programs that are useless. and by appreciate i mean completely annoyed.
we had a seminar after class with a speaker from the NDI who's a friend of one of our profs. he talked at us about Nepal. it was boring. he's coming back tomorrow for our four hour class. yay.
today he told us about how in Nepal NGO's that are set up to promote democracy are pretty much sinkholes for aid money. oh yeah, i really like to know that $4 million is given by ONE institute to NGOs set up by political party front groups who claim they'll make changes at some point on they dont at all, and then our aid agencies come back and tell our government that everything went fine and the aid money was spent successfully. by the by this guy is head of the Nepal division of the NDI and dolls out this money for them knowing this. apparently their idea of promoting democracy in a country where it's run by mismanaged monarchies and maoists is to tell people to be stricter about watching voters.
good to know our tax dollars are being well spent...

also, the guy has some beef with both the NDP and the Liberals yet constantly tried to reinforce the fact that he's not a right wing nut. makes a lot of sense.

i think tomorrow i'll ask him why he's pissed at the NDP and how he justifies handing over millions of dollars to corrupt foreign government agencies and doing nothing about it then lying to our own democratic governments about it. and yeah teh NDI is a Us body, but he said the same thing happens with CIDA.

we had our first MPP soccer game today. we got pwnd like 14-1.

i finished the first draft of our policy brief assignment and it looks roxom just because of the Agriculture and Agri Food Canada header i put on it. i also found out listening to the Star Wars soundtrack on repeat makes for good writing music.

now we're moving because he's pressing the gas

you dont need bills if you can insert coins

our econ prof is an expert at causing glazed eyes.

tomorrow we have our first soccer game for our Policy Gladiator team up on main campus. we're all wearing dayglo colours to distract the other team.

saturday we have our MPP hockey draft.

next friday by noon i can put a few mag rounds into a tree to get the edge off. nothing relaxes you quite like recoil.

k, now i have to go rock my assome looking policy brief draft. best. header. ever.

you dont need bills if you can insert coins

dammit Danny Elfman, it's supposed to be somber

danielle's right, i tend to blog more when im stressed out from school and should be working.

it's cause i want you all to share my pain. really. it's like a puddle of water. you spread it around and it dries up quicker. i bitch about it on here, people read it, not really the same thing but shut up.

after class today i effectively killed two hours by staring at nothing in the student lounge waiting for a flash of brilliance to hit me for the assignment due on friday. nada. whatever. i needed to kill two hours to wait for a profs office hours.

and then six of us sat on the floor outside his office cause he was late and we all looked dead from our overnight assignment. and all the while in my head i was going over how to hybridize the three or four briefing templates i'd found to use for friday's assignment.

then i came home. and i called my dad for a bit. and i sat on the couch and watched daily planet to relax some. then i redid tomorrow's assignment. then i started on the briefing assignment and i totally had a brilliant idea for the top of the page. after that my brilliant ideas sort of stopped hitting me and i went back to having to dredge up websites and emails and slides to start the damn thing.

and then tomorrow i get another econ assignment, another methods assignment, finish this one, do some more practice ones for methods and go talk to my prof about how to do them better, some how fit all of next weeks readings in there and go buy bagels.

so, following danielle's premise, there'll be lots more stressed out blogging about paper writing.

dammit Danny Elfman, it's supposed to be somber

11 hours of assignment, five hours of half sleep, two hours of discussion about senate reform later and one A&W sausage & egger later...

11 straight hours of polisci assignment later i am done right at midnight ready to hand it in regardless of what the fuck it looks like cause after 11 straight hours or fiddling and tweaking and writing i cant look at it anymore...
two hours of class tomorrow...then another 1200 word paper...then recheck wednesdays assignment...then go talk to prof....then try to remember what sleep is....blahhhhhhhhhhhhh....

the southern colonies might be a little vague, but you should write them down

*in a bad Walter Cronkite voice*
we are now into hour six of the overnight assignment for Political Analysis. Here we see a small sample of the readings necessary for our young Policy Gladiators to deftly tap their laptop keys and vocalize the plethora of information needed to complete a massive assignment in under twelve hours.

...

man that totally sounded more like him in my head... anyway... there were six of us sitting up here on the 3rd floor of de old HC, and then five, and now there's four. we have three questions to do for tomorrow morning. ten to twelve pages. i think we're onto hour four of question two. i rewrote half of it three times already. then i said fuck it cause i can look at it again later after red bull.
so i'll start question three.
looks like i'll be missing the premier of How I Met Your Mother, but thats why the internet is a wonderful thing and i can download it later.

oh by the by our questions deal with...

1. specifying the application of equal opportunity to health care policy...

2. how implementation of a guarantee to eliminate federal spending in provincial jurisdictions can be effectively done...

3. the merits of conflict resolution in federations vs confederations...

i'll give you a dollar to write it for me.

the southern colonies might be a little vague, but you should write them down

here's a good start to the day.... you're sleeping then you roll over and kind of wake up a bit and wonder when the alarm will go off, so you lift up your head and look at the clock and it's 7:42am and a second later you think "ah fucks sake" and jump out of bed, grab your towel, and head to the shower all the while thinking you have twenty minutes to get ready before you have to be on the skytrain so you wont be late for class, and planning out the tim horton's breakfast stop, and trying to think exactly how long it takes to get to your locker on the third floor and then back down to the class room and by this time youre half way through your shower and then you remember it's sunday.

it's not brown it's amaretto

i went with everett to metrotown today cause he wanted a messenger bag. you'd think finding a decent one would be easy.
we were wrong.
though he did score a nice casual slash business one at aldo.
i found a radtastic peacoat at buffalo. i'll even forgive the royal purple brit influenced liner cause everett said it was pretty bitchin and then i agreed and then i looked at the price and i dont have a new peacoat. dammit.

my contributions to the matt good tour gallery are up for all to see now. obv check the Vancouver date at The Center. otherwise, most likely youve seen them if you looked at the ones on here cause really, theyre the same. only fewer there. oh well. i contributed.

actually, now that i think about it, of all the concerts ive taken pictures at, this is the first one where any shots ive taken have been put up on the site of the band or musician. i would have thought at least one of my finger 11 ones would have been grabbed by someone but nope. oh well. AND THE ONES IN THE GALLERY LOOK FUCKING COOL CAUSE I KNOW HOW TO TURN OFF MY GODDAMN FLASH.

really, i hardly use it.

it was marlee's birthday today. a bunch of us went to Mugs N Jugs. i gave her $10 to give a stripper and a stripper shoved her tits in her face to get a fiver. we laughed. and then i sang Run to the Hills.

i am still lacking a peacoat.

it's not brown it's amaretto

someday, this place is gonna burn

after i got over the "I want to be an astronaut" thing when i was five or six i wanted to be a paleontologist like Phil Currie. then when i didn't totally get over that ever (ok never...) i decided i wanted to be a geologist. this pretty much went from grade 9 to grade 12. except the difference in grade 12 was that when we went to University Day or whatever it was at the U of A i found out that when you take geology there you get to specialize in an area after your first year. so then i decided i wanted to be a vulcanologist because volcanos are cool. i still say that the next time St Helens goes on a total frenzy im so finding a car and going down there to watch.

ok, so, while i still maintain an geeky interest in rocks and exploding mountains, i've come to realize that living in an area where the ground will someday get very angry is altogether not that comforting. i just watched some show on the discovery channel about what's going to happen to the west coast when the Cascadia subduction zone decides to snap.
let me say this right now, the only reason i will never ever ever ever ever live in a tall building in downtown Vancouver has absolutely nothing to do with high prices of living and everything to do with earthquakes. seriously, this is not something i spent a great deal of time considering when i lived at home or in ottawa. kind of hard to do that when you live on solid granite or in the middle of the prairies. seriously. like when i moved into rez at sfu three years ago and in the rez admin office you find a stack of "what to do in the event of an earthquake' pamphlets. at the time i thought it was funny. now i dont think it's so funny and sometimes i'll walk around downtown between tall buildings looking for places to run too if the ground gets mad.

here's my list of reasons for a potential move out of vancouver ever:
1. i get a job somewhere else.
2. the Discovery Channel induced paranoia of an uber quake that will flatten the city
3. not being able to afford a place to live.

you see how this screws up priorities? honestly, while i was watching the show i was looking around my living room going "ok, well i could stand in that doorway or i could run outside into the middle of the street to avoid things falling on me...how much canned food and water do i have...where's my flashlight...will wireless networks still be up in the event of so i can grab my laptop and live blog the aftermath..."

no seriously. that last one actually did go through my head. y'see??? you see what happens when you mix technology and the fear of a natural disaster?

ps, i still like rocks and some part of me still wants to be a vulcanologist.

someday, this place is gonna burn

chocolate milk and crazy straws

in no particular order here are some pictures which youve no doubt looked at on the way down here.
so i had an ok seat, about halfway down to the left. would have been better if the chick in front of me hadnt kept moving her head in the same direction i was aiming my camera.

what can i say at this point? sixth concert and still fucking amazing. what more can you say to a double encore that closes out the show with Fated/Fine Art of Falling Apart/True Love Will Find You in the End? nothing. totally worth waiting six concerts to hear Fated and FAOFA.

Dala was a good opener. witty banter. i didnt go rush out and buy their cd. only one opening band has ever impressed me enough to do that.

also, people who dont know how to turn the flash on their camera off should not be allowed to own a camera because when the short little usher lady comes and scorns me for your goddamn quintuple burst red eye flash that will do fuck all to get you a good picture from where youre sitting, it's not cool. watch me be all fancy here for a second with the camera type talk of which i really have no idea what it means but here's what i did with my camera with the FLASH OFF LIKE HOW I LIKE TO HAVE IT OFF TO GET A GOOD PICTURE WITH NO GLARE OR THE BACK OF PEOPLE'S HEADS LIT UP GAWD! pretty much the entire show i had it set at f4.9 ISO 400 and a shutter speed of 1/2.5 to 1/1.3. again, not entirely sure what that means, but i didnt have to use a flash to get some decent shots. i did have to use the zoom a lot which sucked.

oh, and my brain had a good laugh at me when after the show i went to say hi to jen. yeah my brain was laughing its ass off cause in my head the whole conversation, however short it was, sounded like the ones i had in high school when i tried to talk to girls on my own. you know, the ones where you say hi and it just seems to hang there and then youre not really sure what to say after? hey Brain, you're forgetting that i can totally make you pay attention in class tomorrow. hah. meh. it's all good.

i bought an oilers hat today too. 2.5 fucking seconds. you'd think they were playing minnesota in the playoffs again.

chocolate milk and crazy straws

Girl Wedged Under the Front of a Skytrain

tonight is Matt Good concert number six pour moi. im goin it alone this time. well, k, i know some people who'll be there but that's a technicality since every other time i've actually gone and sat with friends. or stood. whatever.
ummmmmmm, so yeah, i've never been to this particular venue tonight so as for what Row N seat 14 means, not sure if that's good thing or not. i should have waited til after the presale and scored some better tickets methinks.
seeing as how i missed the last acoustic tour this should make up for it nicely. N is like halfway down the alphabet so im trying to figure out how this is going to affect pictures because having to rely on the zoom too much is gonna suck nutsack.
coincidentally enough, i seem to have hit a bit of a reprieve from class work tonight. on monday we get our first overnighter for our analysis class. noon monday to 9 am tuesday to write a 2400 word essay on three questions. RED BULL.
oh and this time there wont be some bitchy hostess not letting people in to places.

also, i dearly hope that they unfuck the skytrain before i have to go downtown tonight because it was pretty much mass confusion all morning after one section lost power.

also i watched the dollar hit parity this morning eating breakfast. it was kind of neat.

Girl Wedged Under the Front of a Skytrain

thank you for bitching

dear hipster girl on the skytrain with your flashy D&G bag & sunglasses and ipod cranked way the fuck up so that everyone can hear whatever band you think you just discovered and are the next greatest thing ever because you discovered them,

im not sorry that people made fun of you after you got off the skytrain after you bitched at everyone that there was no more room when the train was half full and yelled at people not to push you while you were standing right in the way of the door so people couldn't get on without hitting you.

my suggestion, go take your PMS to a train that isn't during rush hour.

sincerely,

someone who made fun of you after you got off the skytrain for the aforementioned reasons.

thank you for bitching

he can travel through time an hour ago

i made a logo for our MPP soccer slash dodge ball slash intramural team that we're starting.
actually, it's more like a design for a shirt than a logo but whatever.

it's raining again. like that's anything new here. and there's thunder. that doesn't happen that much.

what else...

oh yeah, leave it to a Catholic school board to not provide vaccinations because they're morally contradictory to what the bible says.

oilers vs. the leafs tonight. oilers will own. and i know it's preseason but they will own.

im still waiting for anyone to tell me if they're going to the concert on thursday. and six concerts does not make me a groupie. plus i missed the last acoustic tour.

now i have to go research reduction of protectionism in the milk industry in canada.

he can travel through time an hour ago

hey btw, who's all going to the Matt Good show on thursday? apparently my italian compadres are sitting this one out...weak.

i thought it was a fish stick

the oilers let fly with their new jerseys today.

after all the hype on the oilers forums about how it would look...honestly...i gotta say all i can do is shrug. it's nothing to ooh and ahh over. and the dark jerseys look way better than the whites. the whites almost look like practice jerseys. so i'll still be rockin the MacFarlane third jersey.

however.

yet another reason why the Oil rule... we have Charlie Sheen's twin on the team...

i thought it was a fish stick

fuck you! justice league!

went to everett's birthday last night. will have pics up later. i got there the latest cause i had to go home from north van first and then when i got there they were all playing kings cup and i sit down and really, after a day spent agonizing over math equations and reading many hundreds of pages, when you sit down and then first thing to happen is the person next to you picks up a card and then grabs your dick...you get confused. and then everyone all at once yells out the rules at you and youre all "WOOOOOOOOOAH sitting out this round." and then someone busts out the cranium and it's guys vs girls and sarah had to sculpt a tree hugger and ended up making hitler.

less than two hours to go until the new Oilers jerseys are made public.

fuck you! justice league!

i hear shopping carts

i fucking hate math. as a corollory, i fucking hate math that has to do with economics.
i have a econ assignment due wednesday that consists of five questions. our prof has taught us how to do one out of the five. four out of the five are on matrial we haven't even covered yet.
what the fuck is up with that? it anoys the shit out of me when they do something like that. you know, i get that practicing it makes you understand it more, but i'd think that it's kind of a blow to morale of 99% of the people taking the class when they feel like complete retards when they try to do the assignment and look at the single example in the book as though it explains everything only to discover that you just wasted a whole hour trying to do one question that cant possibly be done yet.

so.

fuck econ.

on to the 400+ pages of Analysis and Issues readings.

i hear shopping carts

stay on doodie longer

fuck it, i finisehd my methods assignment so here's another one.

for all the climate change buffs news about record ice loss in the Northwest Passage was eclipsed by the admission by John Marburger, Bush's top science advisor, that cliamte change is more than %90 casued by human activity. This is another big slap in the face for an administration that continually rebukes mounting evidence that human activity is a major cause, and even had White House saff fix reports on greenhouse as emissions to make them seem less harmful than they really were.
Along with the acknowledgement by Marburger, Environment Canada earlier stated that mean summer temperatures throughout Canada are increasing in a manner consistent with predctions for climate change.
And aparently it's an urban legend that Bush doesn't consider climate change to be important. I'd have to say he thinks it's important because how else would he be able to argue that he thinks there is no concrete evidence to support it, or to promote 'clean' nuclear alternatives. I'm pretty sure that he's conviniently forgotten three mile island...

stay on doodie longer

he's a good case for alzheimer's cause he only remembers who he screws

i really need to get me one of those 24/7 access passes to harbour center cause if i had one right now i'd have gone there after i left north van.

at the halfway break in class this morning i busted out ye olde agenda and scribbled down what needs doing for the next week.

about a half hour ago i was standing in my aunt and uncle's kitchen with a copy of the Globe and Mail out, three class syllabuses out, a highlighter, a pen, and an Econ assignment up on my laptop.

and then i pulled out the agenda again. and then i wrote down what actually needs doing.

and then i stood there for a sec. and a second more. and then i frowned.

and now im at home and another frown has been added because im looking at flights home for thanksgiving and either all the flights i want are sold out or they upped the price $100 again.

dear airlines, im a grad student, fuck you take less of my money.

he's a good case for alzheimer's cause he only remembers who he screws

no the cd was in upside down

based on the few remarks ive heard about The Mullet, I now present you with the following question:

Should Pat bring back The Mullet? Yes No Leave it to Terry and Dean

Create Your Own Poll!

my parents are in town for the weekend. ive already scored cookies, muffins, books, and some good laughs.

fishnchps time now.

no the cd was in upside down

are we talking about aliens now?

there's a story behind that suit. there is also a story behind that mullet. this is that first story and that second story as foretold in one story about the whole story.

in grade 11 i always wore a hat. always. to the point where if i came in without a hat on my teachers would take a few seconds to realize who i was. this trend continued well into grade 12. being that i made the assumption that putting a hat on in the morning after a shower was way simpler than actually doing anything to my hair, it was easy to see why the hat stayed put. and this was a catholic school too, so even for school masses, the hat stayed put. jesus totally would have had a hat.

im pretty sure i had maybe two or three hair cuts all of grade12. and since i really didnt care about doing anything with it, it was always, "keep it out of my eyes and just trim the back a bit". until one day. one day when i realized the AWESOMENESS of business in the front party in the back. that day i embraced The Mullet as a way of hair. i was enthusiastic about The Mullet. i had faith in, nay, loved The Mullet. i kept The Mullet protected with The Hat. in grade 12 it was a sweet fitted, solid black Detroit Tigers hat with the d outlined in white. it kept The Mullet safe and out of sight to avoid the onslaught of people who would do anything to be in the presence of The Mullet. for The Mullet had great powers, and with great Mullet comes great responsibility.

one day The Hat suffered a demise unlike any other when it was whisked off my head and used as a frisbee in my Social Studies 30 class between bob and brandon. nothing from this scenario would have been out of place as we were all friends and played music together. until Mr. Mac, perhaps one of the grandest teachers of the land, mistakenly thought The Hat was not of my belonging, snatched it out of the air and dunked it in the piranha tank in his class.
my dismay shone clear on my face, and my compatriots disbelief lay bare on their own. it was indeed a tragic sight, momentarily eclipsing the fact that The Mullet was now free flowing in the breeze of the class fan. Mr. Mac, realizing whose hat it was, was quick to apologize and withdrew The Hat from whence he had dunked it, and placed it, soaking, on his own head in penance.
that day, The Mullet flew free and many were quick to pay tribute to it's greatness.
while The Mullet had a deep significance to me, The Hat was to remain my way of head dress for the remainder of the year.

and then, then graduation. whereupon the time came for all young men at in high school who were to graduate to venture out and rent The Tux. kallal and myself had worked out our plan for The Tux, and it was indeed a monumental plan. we were to dress all in white, with coattails and top hats to match. but this plan was forbidden by the Parents of both clans. thus we rapidly hatched new plans for The Tux, where i was to have a traditional black piece, but still keeping the coattails and the top hat. for there is no greater way to pay tribute to The Hat that had carried me through so much than with The Top Hat.
but alas, this plan was again foiled under the ruling that there were to be no coattails, nor was there to be a Top Hat. even an ebony coloured walking stick was disallowed. for sooth, i say. The Plan was rendered limb from limb.

thus was the compromise reached that while our venture to rent The Tux, solely the high priestess of one of the two clans was to accompany was to the purveyor of the rentals and that we were free to choose any manner of The Tux that did not defy the rulings of the clan leaders.

therein, you see how The Tux met The Mullet because The Top Hat was not permitted to the ceremony of the graduation. that day, coupled with The Tux, The Mullet shone fiercely against the sun, and waved strongly in the wind deftly crying out "today is a great day! today a Mullet shall crown this boy as he graduates and all shall see!" and off into the sunset did it ride upon my head, until the next day after dry grad and i awoke with it tangled.

or.

i played guitar in a metal band with brandon and matt. Mullets are metal. i had a mullet.

are we talking about aliens now?

i said dont forget the chair dancing!

i am at Deightons Well with eight other mPPers and we are pretty much well on our way to drunk and it is fun.

we all came up with nicknames form american gladiator.

SAAAAABRE!!!

dude we need more ptichers HAH!

i said dont forget the chair dancing!

ees Rambo! Les get out of heer!

today is the 6th anniversary of 9/11. yep. i'm not going to say anything because i think Neil Macdonald summed it up nicely.

also because i brought it up yesterday.

and because i can watch rednecks make it a lighthearted issue:

ees Rambo! Les get out of heer!

off he goes into the wild blue relativism

I managed to actually finish everything I planned to do today. And I was all good and ready to let my brain turn off for a while and went to check out the 1-18-08 sites for any new tidbits on the movie when lo and behold i got sucked right back in to the social science world because of one picture. also because i just finished doing my readings for my methods course...

shall we observe then:

a movie site was made at Warbloid.com and everyone wanted to know if it was fake or not. the very first picture on the site was a close up shot of a building in New York with some blueish haze to the left that everyone thought came from the monster in the movie. this website has now been unquestionably proven to be false. mostly because of the message posted on it that goes a lil sumfin like dis:

"Warbloid.com went live on August 12, 2007. On September 6, 2007 someone finally figured out that the site was a not affiliated with 1-18-08. What does this prove? People will believe or disbelieve anything because they have an intense desire to do so. If you believe you're getting any information that hasn't been filtered through the cooperate censors, then you need to wake up and get a life. Best of luck to JJ Abrams and his crew, we're sure he will do well. Good luck to the rest of you in figuring out the 1-18-08 enigma, you are going to need it. People are homeless and starving in your own country. Thousands of people are dying in conflicts around the world each day. It's almost election year in the United States and you're pissing away countless hours on your computer searching for information about a movie production. Wake up and do something meaningful with your life! Quit living a false reality! You are accomplishing
nothing and all slaves to the fashion. Whether you believed this site was real or a fake and you're spending hours doing research, then you are a loser. So don't go patting yourselves on the back or we just might put up a few more of these sites to prove our point.
So long brother, Des"

ok, now this might have blown over quickly had someone not found out that the picture of the haze was actually taken from a shot of New York right after 9/11. notice the title asks ARE THEY AMERICAN? oh sweet jebus no! you mean an AMERICAN might actually use a picture of their own tragedy to point out that for all the talk of value shifts after 9/11 that nothing really changed at all? at this point, who cares if the people behind the site were American. it's irrelevant. If you're American and that message or that picture pisses you off then you shouldn't forget this, this or this either. you might want to pay special attention to the comments in that last one that show how far the U.S. has progressed in the abolition of racial prejudice.
were I currently being paid to offer my opinion, I'd probably go on much longer and in great detail about how this is essentially a good use of that picture in that it shows that there are individuals willing to knock down any artificial social boundaries created to make it taboo to speak ill of any misfortune to fall on the U.S. however, I'm not being paid and I don't want to spend that long talking about it so I'll only say two more things.
First, the retaliatory video posted in regards to the message and picture. I'm going to go ahead and say you could make that video in say fifteen or twenty minutes. I'm sure you're all aware of this thing we have called the internet. how much information do you think you could find in a solid twenty minutes about a matter of actual social importance other than a movie online? I bet you could find out at pretty much all of the big issues that will be heading into the primaries as well as background information on them that would give you a well rounded understanding of them.
Second, I think that a lot of people, especially US citizens, will interpret the fake site, message and picture as picking on them. Grow up. If your country decides it wants to ignore the advice of the global community, or more locally, treat Canada as a doormat in regards to natural resource acquisition, the lack of recognition of Canadian waters as sovereign territory, or slandering our government in your media as being socialist left wing nuts, then I think we pretty much have a right to piss you off. If you can't take it, don't deal it out all over the world. Also, even your pop culture needs a slap in the face sometimes to make it remember that it isn't actually the real world.

off he goes into the wild blue relativism

today's show is brought to you by the letter B

B! Big!

B! Bad!

B! Bullshit!

B! Betraeus!

alright, know before you go "learn how to spell!" think about it for a sec. IF you had a cold it would start with a B! and IF you say it with a B! it sounds liiiiiiike BETRAY US!!!

ok kids, what other B! words can we all think of to describe the report or the man who gave the report to the joint hearing of the House Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees? let's go around the room!

B! Bitch! B! Balls! B! Buttfucker! B! Boffo! B! Beeeeeewwwwwwwwbs!!! B! Bollox! B! B A N A N A S!!! B! BAMBOOZLED! B! Blow to American military and foreign policy credibility!!!

yaaaay!

See you all next time when the show will be brought to you by the letter C! for CRAPOLA!

today's show is brought to you by the letter B

i could play that part, all i have to do is go AAAAAAAAARGH!

omgomgomg there's inCREDIBLE news! it's super devastatingly heartbreaking!

Stronach split up with Domi!

THIS IS TERRIBLE! WHO WOULDN'T THINK THAT THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO NOW AND THAT HER BLUE COCKTAIL DRESS WAS BLUE AT THE FILM FEST?

oh right.

ahem.

Dear everyone, I apologize for actually bringing your attention to this. It was wrong of me to do so without pointing out she is a useless MP who thought she could run for office because her daddy is rich, a home wrecking socialite who focuses on ex Presidents, other high profile MPS and Leafs players (actually, no she can wreck as many Leafs as she can), and and otherwise everything-wrong-with-the-public-service slash i-have-lots-of-money-so-people-should-elect-me person.

Dear CBC, thank you for reporting this as some kind of Canadian celebrity drama. Unfortunately, no one really cares about her or Domi soooooooo....D for effort.

i could play that part, all i have to do is go AAAAAAAAARGH!

have you seen the short, weird looking guy?

i spent five hours today getting nicely acquainted with one of several rolling chairs in the MPP Student lounge doing readings. and by readings i mean readings AND practice math equations. yes. practicing. math. math i haven't seen since grade 12. math that i forgot existed. math that i quietly hurrah'd myself over when i suddenly remembered Mrs. Hallonquist's classes on linear equations. math that i was then assured by a second year MPP'er that i would learn all over and never use again.

and then after five hours of that, i walked up granville to golden age and picked up Wasteland: Cities in Dust Book 1 and came home and sat on the couch and read that.

and then i started to read an article by a guy from the U of T who thinks that an original work consists of basically rehashing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into his own 'unique' idea of an 'Equal Opportunity Society'. Sorry, but arguing that your work is original when in fact it's entrenched in part of the Canadian constitution, in my mind, does not make for an impressive use of original thought. maybe pre 1982 it would be the most mind boggling thing in the world, but not so much anymore.

im pretty sure eight hours of reading on a saturday is unnatural, but whatever. i got what i planned to do done. even with the comic book break. hah.

you know it just occurred to me that i still haven't read Mostly Harmless...

have you seen the short, weird looking guy?

you mean they're sponsored by beer?

somehow overnight my head decided to pick up a nice little head cold.

danielle is no longer a clodhopper virgin. seriously, how do you go through life not knowing what clodhoppers are?

oh and we need an impartial judge to determine who makes better food, an old Italian grandma or an old Ukrainian grandma.

there are also three fewer FUBAR virgins in this world. but i dont know if three counts cause two fell alseep. how do you fall asleep to fubar?

you mean they're sponsored by beer?

a healthy diet of advil, vitamin c and Uncle Bens

I'm tossing around two possibilities as to why my eyes are still itchy and my head still hurts. 1) some ignorant little fucking insect or arachnid bit me which would make sense given that there's what looks like a mosquito bite on my right foot, and given the regularity of spider spawnings here it would make sense that they're taking their revenge for the vacuum cleaner. 2) some allergy decided to dredge itself up from the deep dark backwaters of my immune system and decided "hey let's fuck with him during the first week of class."

oh, and as of next thursday i will again be unemployed because as of today my schedule decided to fill up with extended lectures, extra seminars and moving classes around. whatever, it's a shitty job anyway.

this is the first time ive had a laptop for school. thus i am discovering the merits and not so merits of it. good thing: he who can wikipedia what the prof is talking about fastest looks the best. bad thing: he who fails to realize that the explanation to the profs next question is not the next sentence ends up going "uhhhhhh." good thing: he who has laptop can look up microeconomics equations in class. bad thing: prof draws a lot of graphs when writing notes that are not the same as those online. good thing: you save on paper and ink. bad thing: you can't use a highlighter on a screen. better thing: not having to wait for a free computer in the labs.

tomorrow is the first Issues class and i hope that we end up talking about a pending election and that someone brings up strategic voting cause i HATE STRATEGIC VOTING.

yesterday afternoon was Methods and our prof for that class is the youngest on the faculty and he was like "who wants to go to the Black Frog for a drink after?" so i think six of us went and it was sweet cause that place is like the hub of all Oiler activity in Vancouver. Dear regular season games, i will be finding a seat there after class probly.

a healthy diet of advil, vitamin c and Uncle Bens

do you know randy white?

my eyes. hurt. maybe it was the classrooms we were in this afternoon but fuck...

had econ this morning. our prof is interesting. it'll be a good class.

had methods this afternoon. it was pretty cool. a bunch of us went to have a drink with our prof after class.

then i came home all geared up to do the fifty pages of reading for tomorrow only to realize that i left the link to said fifty pages locked up in my nice little grad locker all the way downtown. sooooooo i either hope that the emaisl i sent out to a few people asking what is is come back orrrrrrr i go in early tomorrow and just read it then. and then never leave another paper in that locker ever again..

sleep is a precious commodity.

do you know randy white?

from the makers of metamucil

dear sore body resulting from the queens of the stoneage concert that was three days ago,
please stop being sore because today was the first day of school and you did not make it any more fun being sore and tired.

fyi rosé sauce on fresh pasta with some fresh diced tomatoes is redonk.

also, how come it's so friggin hard to find issues 2 & 3 of Marvel Zombies vs AOD? Seriously. I cant read 4 & 5 til i have those.

the guy from Future Weapons just made a Transformers joke. it's sad because he is quite possibly the shittiest show host. ever.

from the makers of metamucil

beans beans the abusive fruit

apparently the simplest way to make danielle go mad with italianism is to eat a raw green bean.

in other news...went to see Queens of the Stoneage last night with Everett, Erin, Mike and Sarah and spent the whole time about five feet from the front bar getting crushed to death and it was AWESOME. and i sweated so much it'll probably take me three days to reabsorb enough liquid to get back up to where i was pre concert.

i also did a little bit of moving things around in my room with the addition of another shelf, the removal of that shitty closet thing and the installation of a simple hanging bar which will not collapse because a metal bar bracketed into studs totally beats a twenty dollar ikea closet.

tomorrow north van. mayhaps another stop at the comic book store.
tuesday first day of classes. more free alcohol.

beans beans the abusive fruit