the same thing only sped up

one paper left and i'll be done the semester more or less. one intersession course before heading off to the Desh. tomorrow, tickets, visas, itineraries.

i finished my taxation paper faster than i'd planned which left me plenty of time to take a walk and take more pictures. deadfall is brilliant. uprooted trees, stumps, forests, they're a masterpiece of nature. it's easy to walk fifty feet through the trees and completely forget that there are four million other people around. i never listened to any music taking pictures today. an oddity, but for the best i think.

i've gotten to know my camera pretty well, i know what it does and does not like. my camera likes trees. my camera likes things just the right distance away. sometimes it likes to go in for closeups, sometimes it likes to take in the whole scene. most of the time, it knows just what it wants.

here's an intriguing fact about today's tree session: it took me about two hours to realize I hadn't yet actually looked up. there was so much storyline going on ground level that it wasn't until I happened to catch a bald eagle flying by out of the corner of my eye and followed it did I look up.

there are things in life that just make you stop and look and think to yourself, wow, that's probably one of the most impressive things I've ever seen, and for the life of you, you just have to stop taking pictures and you're not sure why but you keep walking around in a marveled sort of daze with a goofy look on your face staring at the wide wonders.

I rarely take pictures with other people on these walks. if it's an organized photowalk, then yeah, but that's not the same. you don't have the same sort of freedom to just follow your feet in a group or if you have to wait for someone.

the one downside to this is a self timer. ten seconds is not enough time for this sort of stuff. when you have ten seconds to run like hell over thirty feet of dead branches, wood chips, rocks, dirt and whatever else there is and then turn around, get your bearings, position yourself and strike some kind of pose, ten seconds, cuts it close.

i can fly.

the same thing only sped up

under the cold street lights

under the cold street lights

cleaning out the folds

this has got to be the greatest infomercial in the world. actually, anything RonCo is the greatest infomercial in the world. for some reason, if i'm channel surfing and i run across a ronco infomercial, i have to stop and watch.
i have one and a half final papers left to go after spending 8 hours at school yesterday working through tax reformation. i was about ready to drop and just sleep in the lab but instead headed over to the cambie to watch the oilers beat the flamers with the human gas bomb and ryan and steve. i actually felt better after that. it was probably a good thing that i had a chance to chill out and have some laughs with people who arent in the same class as me every day.

im not working on anything today. i will print things out, but i will not work on anything. this week is going to be a paper blitz anyway.

cleaning out the folds

barley tax has an excess burden

barley tax has an excess burden

if you had to write 2500 words on the concerns of the personal income tax system using diagrams and discussions of tax incidence, excess burden, horizontal/vertical equity, savings, etc., what would you say?

feel free to be very very very specific and preferably have the accompanying charts and graphs as I have no clue what any of it means.

the Do's and Don't of zuppa

dont you love it when you're stricken with those nasty bugs that decide to go throw every possible symptom you can think of in the span of one or two days? i think this one has a propensity to move along with gravity. i offer proof. yesterday morning it started with my head, moved down to the throat, next to sneezing, next to cough, next to stomach and most recently has decided to settle in my GI tract. and this never results in anything other than discomfort and open windows.
were i to have some herbal remedy in my possession, then yes, I most likely would have injested it in one of many ways already, but unfortunately i don't, so i'm stuck with advil and gravol.
i dont really like to go beyond advil and gravol for most things. i dont really like going to the doctors, and im a firm believer that orange juice and vitamin C can cure most of what ails you.
i finished another final paper today. that leaves one 6 page econ assignment, and a ten page Poli paper left and that's the first year under my belt. one coop term and eight months to go and im out in the world with a Masters and i'll probably still be scratching my head wondering what to do.
mym mom asled me a few days ago what I wanted to do when I was done. i told her i didn't know, i'll worry about that when i have to. to which she replied "so, in 18 months." i couldn't really think of anything to say to that.
i dont like to use proper grammar or stuff on here a lot. i do enough of that already. i can get the point across without capitalization. or commas. or semi colons. you get the point. probably the most redundant sentence ever written on here.
im also a big fan of duct tape. just thought id throw that out there.
raul is planning a fotowalk apparently at some point. yes. i dont know when. when i find out i'll probably go and not work on a paper and take lots of pictures and meet some more new people because that's always fun.
when i woke up this morning the first thing i thought, after that first thought about why is there a vacuum running in my kitchen and then sort of falling back to sleep for an hour, was 'i thought i had A Clockwork Orange...where did my Clockwork Orange go?"

the Do's and Don't of zuppa

i got what was

stayed home today. this is why email is a student's best friend. emailing in papers is possibly the greatest thing you can do when you're popping gravols, wearing two sweaters and drinking large bottles of water.
that was last night. now im only wearing one sweater, and no gravol yet. water yes. im also making lunch. and finishing up my econometrics paper. slowly, bit by bit, one more page and then the table of contents and that should about do it. then one more econ assignment and one final paper and i are done.
last night while i was sweatered up and gravol'd up, i was craving swiss chalet. most satisfying chicken ever. i also felt compelled to watch Beauty and the Geek. you can tell im not feeling well when I actually sit down and watch shit like that and laugh at it.
i think this may be turning into a pretty annoying head cold, but tomorrow i think i'll be ok to go to class.

i got what was

bracing curtains

.
Originally uploaded by edmo

i dont feel good. i didn't get much sleep. the only few moments ive felt good today are those few moments where you're half awake and everything is warm and comfortable. and then you move and you fuck that up nicely.
i made it through the first half of econ this morning, and then through a hazy, headache ridden thought process decided that I couldn't leave without telling my prof that i do not feel well and i will be vacating. she was fine with that and even went so far as to say that yes i look terrible and kind of puffy have you been sleeping alright?
i came home and was out solid. short, strange dreams. i slept/dozed maybe three hours. i dont want to sleep all day because i need to do work on a paper and i'd like to be able to sleep tonight.
i have things dimmed because my eyes are not enjoying bright things right now.
on my way home the world was synced up with my ipod.

bracing curtains

heaving over barrens

Wasteland: pt. 5
Originally uploaded by musicmuse_ca

maybe you got away from it maybe you didn't all you can really tell yourself is one more page one more chapter one more look and you'll have to get along get going get moving get back to something that isn't as real as anything else you can see taste and touch. walking through the haze that isn't really there but sits just as heavy on the crown of your head pressing down with all the weight of a world you have just left behind sitting on the floor waiting waiting waiting for the clouds to open once again and the ink to flow and the soft wisps and whips of wind made by the flutters of a new line of living.
that's where it goes, that's what it does, no one really knows exactly. you can't say exactly. you can't tell yourself exactly. but you know because it's not something you can give up that easily it's a soft set of fingers cushioning your lungs cupping your heart inhalation exhalation mandated by a mindful figure.
can you still see out the window if you look away for just a moment knowing that you can't see anything but what's been trapped etched drawn burned into existence now. something you can reach up and touch something you can look down at and up at and around at and know that it's just as real as everything as is wrong.
which is saying a lot it's saying enough it's telling you fairy tales that ring true, they're true in some other frame of mind but maybe not this one and maybe not today.

heaving over barrens

it's the kind of fatigue that you know after reading to escape because leaving now is almost a betrayal. characters come and characters go but none so boldly as the ones you invest yourself in the most. read a page. read a line. read a mind. now you're him now you're her now you're them and you can't escape yourself even if you close the covers if only for a night. it seeps in it grows it flows it seems just right but to let it go now isn't. it's not/ you can't do that. they have faces and they haves spaces and they have dreams of their own. maybe in words maybe in pages maybe in a blank space. like a canvass that's empty but all the while full. did you read it did you think it did you live it did you want it did you know it did you dream it did you live it did you be it. and if the answer is no ten you haven't read deep enough you haven't read far enough you haven't read between the lines. you didn't do it you didn't dream it you didn't breathe it. but now you can see it feel it taste it know it show it now you want it.
turn the page.

their unsuspecting little eyes

today is a big day in GodSquad land. Dear Santa, for Easter this year, I want someone somewhere to do a sermon that goes something like this:

"Now children, today is the day where we all exercise our obsession with murder, death, and zombies by sending your parents to buy you candy that will slowly rot your insides and force them to hide little plastic eggs all over the house made with lead paint from china for you to find when you wake up in the morning.

Today is the day where all the Old People tell you that today is important because a long time ago an Arab man that we tell you is a White Man came back from the dead after being hung up on a big piece of wood for days and days with rusty nails. But don't worry, they didn't know about tetanus back then, so he couldn't possibly have had gotten that what with those iron spikes driven through him.

Today is the day when the Old People make you put on Sunday School plays about how the Zombie Man needed to rise from the dead while trapped in a cave by a multi tonne boulder, body wracked by starvation, rot and wrapped in mouldy rags to come back and tell his friends that he'd done it for the good of all Men.

You see kids, back then, no one did things for the good of Men and Women.

See kids, it's important to realize that the Zombie Man came back like a bad character from a George Romero movie because it let's us tell you now in the present that it's ok to only really act on what he told everyone in the Way Back Time on one weekend a year. Today we make you reassert your values in the Hope for All Mankind (and what are we missing there?). When today is over, and Tomorrow is over, and there won't be any more Easter days for a whole year, you will go back to living your lives not living up to the Zombie Man's expectations. You will go back to wanting your toys and candy and movies and when you hear your parents go 'Tsk Tsk' while they watch the news, they'll tell you it's nothing you need to worry about, just less civilized folk who don't appreciate Freedom and then ask you you if you want some peach cobbler.

Now kids, I know this next part might be hard to believe, but did you know that not everyone thinks Easter is about the Zombie Man? For a long time, even Way Back before the Zombie Man lived, they didn't know about it! All over the world were People who didn't believe in the Zombie Man and his Friend in the Sky. Then through a series of fear driven assaults, we killed all of those people who didn't want to believe in the Zombie Man, or we spread diseases that killed them because our Missionaries we sent alllllll over the world to tell people they were uncivilized and heathens, and could never share in our obsession about death if they didn't join us. Did you know that some of these People didn't even think the world was made by the Sky Friend just 6000 years ago because they'd been around far longer than that!

Now kids, I know your parents tell you that it's important to help your fellow human beings, and that being humble is important and that giving to the poor is important. But don't worry, they won't really give away your toys that you don't really play with anymore to a charity that will take them to kids in far off countries who haven't had a proper meal for days. After all, how are you supposed to play with your New Easter toys with as much smugness if you can't look at your whole collection and think about how much stuff you have and you're better than other kids because you have so much.

And that's why this weekend, every year, we remind you that you should be penitent for just a day or two so you don't have to feel guilty.

Now we get to watch a movie! And remember, Jesus died so people could make this for you!

How'd you kids like that? Now, if you really want a good example of someone who will uproot themselves from their lives with tv's and dvd's and ipods and takeout every night, then you should follow in the footsteps of Marnie the Nurse because she actually does what most of your parents and most likely you, will never do."



Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to chow down on a chocolate bunny, and work out more of the project I'll be working on in Dhaka to help directly improve access and efficiency of nursing services in the country. What are you doing today?

their unsuspecting little eyes

two cents for a day's walk

i listened to the Headstones all day. not these jackasses that stole the name and logo, the real headstones. there are few bands i regret not having seen live more than this one.

yesterday i never left the house. at all. never went outside. i sat in here and finished a paper. and then after i was done, i stayed in here some more.

so today, i did not stay in here and do a paper. i walked down streets i'd never been down and took pictures of things i'd never seen before. sometimes all you need to do to feel normal again is point yourself in a direction and just keep walking. and when you run out of road, turn left and keep going. when you do this, never look at the world like you would on any other day. on these days it's important to look at the world and realize that it's all the same but all different at the same time. if you take a step forward, it might be the same sight, but it's not the same perspective.

two papers to go, homeward bound for a week, back for two, then off i go into the wild blue.

two cents for a day's walk