somebody order some exploding pants?

for all intents and purposes i'm done the semester. i have to hand in my last paper tomorrow and that's it. tomorrow night is also our program christmas party which i kind of deleted the email about so im not entirely sure when things are supposed to start. apparently it's somewhere in stanley park.
actually, while the semester is over, i guess it doesn't really count anyway. seeing as how i get to spend the next month and a half in rooms and libraries and desks and chairs writing, writing, still writing, there's no real definitive end to anything.
now i have to convince myself not to drop the ball on this and figure 'i have time to take a break'. i mean, yeah, i do need a break after the semester. it hasn't been the easiest four months of university i've ever had.
i keep having little flashbacks to Dhaka. i overheard some of the first years talking about it the other day, cause JR is trying to recruit a few more to go next year. for a minute i felt like running down to his office and asking to go again.
i think im going to try to keep this week low key. ok, well, this week insofar as to not include monday or friday or saturday. any day in between can be low key.
friday will be the first time i've ever gone to another city for a concert. everett and i are hopping on the ferry at some point in the morning and chilling out in Victoria before jumping and yelling and screaming and generally having a blast at NIN. im hoping they dont check for cameras cause i'd like to bring my panasonic in. i can fit it in side pockets in my concert pants. yes, i have concert shorts, they happen to be the same ones i use to go hiking in, so they're long and camo and have pockets on the side. and most important, zippered pockets so as not to lose anything.
i also have to remember to go to the SFU computer store and buy a license for SPSS so i can actually analyze my survey data.
im meeting with my supervisor on tuesday afternoon to find out exactly what the fuck is going on in my head plan wise for this thing. i need to be sure that im totally not going to shit the bed while writing it. that would be bad. bad bad bad.
btw, i hate SPSS. i should have seen this coming. i designed an open-ended survey to collect qualitative data so as to minimize stats work, but basically created qualitative questions that could be measured quantitatively. i have no idea why i never thought i'd have to do stats work when i was super pleased with the fact that i'd done that.
i think i'll step away from thesis work a bit this week to go through the pictures i need to sift through for the photo exhibit in january. i have to do write ups for each one. i also changed the day for that to the 16th. in any case, invites are going out so people will know anyway.
i have this weird thing i do when i live somewhere that after a certain amount of time i desperately feel the need to move things around to a new layout. given that my room is pretty small and the bed basically fits in one way, this has been driving me absolutely nuts. im thinking i'll have to default to the living room, but even then there's only so much that can be moved. lately i've found myself wondering if i'll stay in this place if i manage to find a job in town. this place basically screams male student. but it's cheap, it's bright, and close to transit. also, i dont think i could live in the west end, and i saw that Cascadia mega earthquake show on discovery channel again the other night that first birthed my paranoia of living downtown in Vancouver. well, maybe not paranoia, but creeped out enough to never want to live in a tall building on anything except solid bedrock far enough from the water to not have to worry about a tsunami.
where was i going with this? i dont remember.
my landlord put a giant christmas cactus down here in front of the window. it's huge. it's like whoopi goldberg had hair made of plant and planted it and put it in my living room.
i went to see Transporter 3. it was ok. not great, but it's still good to just let your brain mush out to awesome cars and fight scenes. the plot was probably the worst part, but the saving grace to those movies is always the fact that cars, chicks and fights take your mind off it.

somebody order some exploding pants?

Smemo'd and the Umbrella'd Boy

Smemo and Umbrella Boy had been forgotten until i decided to go back through what pictures i had put up on buzznet. and then all the FOB and MCR emo wannabes hoarded the site and fucking wrecked it.

anyway.

i now present the LIST OF IMPROBABLE CHRISTMAS GIFTS ON AN IMPROBABLE LIST THAT WILL PROBABLY NOT BE CONSIDERED AS PROBABLE.

1. Tokina AT-X 107 DX 10-17mm Fish-eye lens

2. A WRC spec'd Imprezza

3. Nikon D700

4. The always present vintage '57 Gibson Les Paul Custom Black Beauty with triple humbuckers

5. Knoxx SpecOps stock

6. Benelli Super Black Eagle II with SteadyGrip and Realtree APG HD

7. Sigma SD14

8. Sigma 8mm f3.5 DG Fisheye lens

9. Sigma 4.5mm f2.8 EX DC Fisheye lens

10. Nikon AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f2.8 IF-ED lens

11. Two Nikon SB-800's

12. Marshall MG250DFX

13. A house in Manzanita

14. No student loan debt

15. All of the Star Wars Lego sets

16. Hang gliding lessons

17. A trip to Portugal

18. Audi S5 4.2 FSI for those days when driving a rally car just isn't happening.


i just realized i have the set list from last year's HIM concert still tacked to my wall when i didn't even really want to go but Everett pulled the 'come on' thing so i went and laughed at all the 14 year olds who thought they were vampires.

Smemo'd and the Umbrella'd Boy

suddenly there were birds

the internet exists to pander to our sense of narcissism. and for porn. anyone who tells you otherwise is completely full of shit.

oh, and to tell us that it's important that we know that some random Canadian voice actor was injured in Mumbai. cause that's news you need to know. when that whole thing started, i wondered how long it would take for the first mention of some actor or model to pop up. less than a day. like, remember when the tsunami hit and everyone was all 'oh that's terrible!' and then like a day later the news was like 'a super model was caught in it!' and everyone was like 'FUCK THE WORLD IS COMING TO AN END EVEN MORE SO THAN BEFORE NOW BECAUSE A RICH SUPER MODEL WAS THERE SO WHO CARES ABOUT EVERYONE ELSE!'

the internet is also for making us think that.

suddenly there were birds

more than half full but less than mostly empty

im still working on my social policy take home. cause it's fun like that... it's one of those things where you probably could finish it in a few hours, but you're pretty sure that you'll have to abandon any attempt of that at some point otherwise the answers that are already being pulled out of your ass will get worse and you'll just get more frustrated and end up doing that thing where you skip through notes, websites, and end up looking for videos on youtube for 'just a minute' and twenty minutes later you try to remember what it was you were looking for in the first place.

i could easily tell myself i can go work on this thing at home, but i know that if i do, the most work i'll get done is looking at different blog templates to play with. and then i'll have to come back down here tomorrow to finish it off. which i'll probably end up doing anyway. or i could crack open the red bulls in my fridge and give'r til 3am.

one of the things that happens when i work in the lab is that i lose any sense of time at all. at 2:30 i thought it was about 8pm. and ten minutes ago i thought it was around noon. and now it feels like it's about 6:30. it's all a mess and warp of notes and paper and typing and DOTN on repeat. and the odd whiff of humous cause i got lunch at the mediterranean place in the food court.

i have to buy an SPSS license cause i guess i'm now doing crosstabs on my survey results. which pisses me off cause i was hoping i only had to do simple stats on it which is why i made the fucking thing open ended cause i hate stats work and working with quantitative data makes my head explode.

i can't decide what to write now. this leaves me no choice but to go back to trying to gice a succint critique of perceived advantages of the 1996 Seniors Benefits proposal...

more than half full but less than mostly empty

cooking in tin pans

we got out social policy take home today. it's due friday at some point. i won't go any further than to say expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive expletive. i showed it to some other people who all gave me the same reaction. the 'hah, yeah, good luck with THAT' look and laugh.

i've been watching a lot of Top Gear the last few days, and i had to try hard not to sound like Jeremy Clarkson when giving my last presentation of the semester.

crap. i just realized that i missed the new Billable Hours...

i've been tossing around the idea of hopping over to wordpress. i dont know why. i dont know how. but i have been.

cooking in tin pans

the shelf in the room

im gonna be perfectly honest and say that the prospect of finishing this degree and this thesis scares the shit right out of me. half the people in my program are already thinking CAREER MUST FIND CAREER! meanwhile i look up out of my daze of essays and research most of the time and think WHY IS IT ENDING SO FAST?
almost every day for the last two months, one of the first things that's gone through my head when i wake up is 'you can always walk away from it'. truly. this sentence goes through my head at least once every other day. i think the part about it that makes me worry is that sometimes i stop to listen to it for a few seconds.
and then i go about my business of heading downtown for class, or to sit in my corner that i hope no one else sits in to work on stuff. and i stare at a screen and articles and word documents for hours and leave to go home satisfied most of the time, knowing that i've taken a chunk out of something i've set before me.
and then i wake up the next morning and think, you can always walk away.
but i won't. and not because it would disappoint my family or my friends or my profs, but because i know if i did i'd disappoint myself the most.
do i have issues with self-confidence? hell yeah i do sometimes, so does everyone. sometimes i wonder if i'll make it through this degree with my friendships and my sanity intact. and every day i get up, and i get right back at it because it's there for me to do.
in a year and a half, this program has seen me get depressed, have panic attacks, have two month long bouts of insomnia, get sick from stress, put strain on relationships, pissed me off, put me $30 grand in the hole, confuse me, and generally beat the crap out of my mental capacity.
does this merit bitching about it? sure it does.
but for all the bullshit i've put up with, and all of it that's left to go through in the next five months, i would do it all over again.
because i think at some point you come to a realization that if you can recognize what you have to go through and still have a good time, then you know that you'll be alright. yeah, you might doubt yourself, but back in the depths of your mind, you know that if you take what's coming at you, hit it back as hard as you can and look up and say 'What's next?'
everyone's going to have those instances where it seems like the whole fucking world is crashing down around you, and at that point it's good to have people around to help you back to your feet. but at the core, there's the reality that you need to be able to be strong enough to get back on your own two feet on your own.
some people believe that some higher power will help them through tough spots and keep them going through life. you know what? hats off to them, they think they have something to lean on. i can respect that. but personally, i think that the biggest pillar of support should be yourself. if you can't put more faith in yourself than anything else, you're never really standing on your own.
i fully expect to be driven near crazy getting this thesis done, but i know that at some point in april, i'll walk out of a room having just been evaluated by peers and profs, and be able to sit back, smile, and know that i'm still standing.
and then i'll probably blow $50 at the Cambie to drink the adrenaline away.

the shelf in the room

Captain Tripps

those guys weren't actually doing parkour, they were jumping off heating vents three feet high with one of them taking pictures to make it look like they really were. and they did more posing on the edge of the roof of Shrum than they did any real running around and jumping off things. i'd like to learn to do parkour but seeing as how my leg is still giving me grief after i strained something in it in october, that might be a ways off. were i to learn it, i'm pretty sure i wouldnt have the presence of mind to take pictures of me posing trying to look like i know what im doing over actually doing it to make sure i know what im doing. know what i mean? besides, action shots of that would be way cooler than just sitting on a roof and getting a backlit shot.

i am so not impressed with the speed of the internet at my place now. it took me four hours to upload 30 pictures.

Captain Tripps

all adders are puffs

i feel like making jell-o but i can't decide which flavour.

all adders are puffs

waiting on thin ice

FINALLY!

Your application has been categorized as 'minimal risk' and approved by the Director, Office of Research Ethics, on behalf of the Research Ethics Board in accordance with University policy R20.0

i made pretty good progress on the draft yesterday, so i haven't had that many things to pick through today. basically all i have left before i send it in today is a completion schedule and a rough outline of the word count per section, which isn't all that important cause my supervisor basically said it's just to see if it's going to be weighted in the right way.

waiting on thin ice

chugga chugga wow

i had uploaded some pictures of the pile of stuff all over my desk but then when i looked at them i realized that i had left my notebook open to a page with info on it that isn't supposed to be seen by anyone not doing my thesis. so they came down. instead you get pictures of George hanging off my ceiling.

i actually managed to get a decent amount of work done at home today. i had planned on going downtown to work but when i got up and it was pissing rain i figured screw that.

for some reason the internet at my place has been slower than shit today and it's annoying the hell out of me. when i get in a good work groove i like swapping between pages at the pace im going. today i've had to sit and watch pages load. i timed my flickr uploads and was hitting the same upload speeds as i was in Dhaka. i bet it's cause the CRTC is being fucking retarded. i really don't understand that. the same issue was brought to court in the US against service providers and they all lost. i'd really like to know why Canada is screeching to a sudden halt in broadband expansion. maybe someone has some crazy idea that because Canadians are all polite they need slower internet speeds because otherwise they wouldn't have apolite handle on things. which really, when you think about it, the reasoning behind Bell's argument was that a small portion of subscribers were overusing the network. ok, well, i would think that those people using that amount of bandwidth would probably have T1 lines, or at least a lot of them would. so why not just fuck with THOSE people and not the rest of us? actually, no, scratch that, cause at some point in the future i'm pretty sure i'll be looking at a T1 line.

our thesis template has everything aligned to the left. this annoys me to no end because everything i write is always aligned fully justified. and for some reason when i update the table of contents it won't pick up my tables. fack.

my ethics application is FINALLY getting sent to the actual review board after six friggin submissions. watch they'll look at it and be like, "can you fix this please, and after you do we'll get back to you in a few weeks." meanwhile my brain is like SPLODE.

i should probably start thinking about making some dinner.

chugga chugga wow

up like a balloon

a title change has been made. to what you ask? to that which has been occupying me for months. fuck off, i can be obtuse if i want. i figured maybe i'd be more motivated to work on my thesis if i gave it a better title. so i did. i think it's clever so i don't care if you dont cause you aren't writing it so there. nyah.

new title: Curing What Ails You: How Policies for Nurses can Improve Health Care Delivery in Bangladesh.

see? much cooler than before.

it's very give and take this whole thesis writing business. you give it another chunk of words, you take a chunk away. you give another chunk, you sit there and think, shit that other chunk in that other section needs fixing now, so you take out another chunk. but slowly, sloooowly, the word count increases. i can probably get up to about 6500 words today and tomorrow just fuckin give'r.

i've been in Vancouver for five years, but i think growing up in alberta and spending 20 odd winters in cold and snow still means my body thinks it's strange that it's not cold and snowy out right now. i was thinking that on the skytrain on my way home after class today. basically i have one class left in the semester and then it's one more semester to go. it's not like im super buried with work since i do have that tendency to go nuts on stuff early to get it done, but today was one of those days where you have that sudden realization of "oh shit...."

had me a few of those, but you never really see them coming do you?

my trial of iWork '08 is up so i had to go back to powerpoint for my Cities presentation this morning. im not spending $80 on a license when one of the people in my class offered me a key for it off a family pack. now if she'd just show up to class... i was a bit disappointed at having to do this cause Keynote rules and everyone in the class was mucho impressed with it for my last two presentations. i was more disappointed cause it's easy to set a soundtrack to an entire presentation in Keynote and annoying as hell in powerpoint and since im doing my paper on noise pollution i wanted to put Rock n Roll Aint Noise Pollution as the background music but couldnt. i could have turned it on in iTunes of course and just run the powerpoint slides, but that's one step too many for simplicity's sake. or i was lazy. either one will do fine. either way i pulled it off fine.

i told my mom the very short list of things i would like for christmas. i should have added a bottle of scotch.

here's how my mind works in weird ways when i have things to do. i sit down, work on thesis while doing laundry, come back to work on thesis, laundry is done, hang half of it, write a bit more, then stop to blog about how i changed the title and mention how i still have half a pile of clean laundry waiting to be folded or hung up.

up like a balloon

brown bagged cookies

Stitch is the best cartoon character ever to exist ever. even more awesome than Pinky OR The Brain.

in second place, even though he's not a cartoon character, comes Mr. Tinkles from Cats & Dogs cause he's maniacal and furry and he masses an army of fun.

there is no point to this really. but know you know how simple it is to entertain my brain.

brown bagged cookies

gonna run down on the water

went for Indian food last night and the first bite with the cilantro dip sent my mind swimming back to the intersection in Sector 3, sitting in a rickshaw outside of Songan, smelling the haze and smoke from the kebab restaurant on the other side of the street. hearing the horns and bells, ringing like a choir with no direction and told to keep playing and playing until the streets are too dark. potholes and piles of crushed bricks, puddles and oil, the garbage on the side of the road. a strange contrast to the world outside. bright, clean interiors, dark, dirty streets. smiling inside, smiling all the way back. because the ride there was fun, the food was good, the ride back was calming even in the dust and noise. things you'd go back to. things much simpler than your own. leaving one city to find another waiting. rain clouds hanging low, unsure of the direction they want to go. standing on the rooftop watching it all blow down. seeing smiles and laughter, sights, sounds, friends. sleeping in nets and knowing that the morning will wait for you with something new. voices at the table, and the day starts again. one bite. one taste. countless memories.

gonna run down on the water

titles of conversations

i gotta say, i like the whole handing out individual tasting glasses this year better than the plastic cups last year. year two of Hopscotch pour moi. danielle was kind enough to drive chad and i cause scotch is tasty and the floor might have been moving a bit by the time we left. i had a decidedly better time this year than last year cause last year i was in a pissy mood and didnt have as much fun. well, ok, yesterday i was in a pissy mood most of the day too cause of the whole three days of writers block thing. but this year i said Fuck IT! im gonna have a good time! and i did.
i like going over to their place for dinner cause the conversations always involve hand waving and yelling and i get to laugh.
topics of conversation were many and broad over the course of the night.
in three weeks i'm going to victoria with everett to rock the fuck out at NIN.
i got a bit of the work bug back today and have managed to add some more to my lit review section. slow but sure. i think the Slayer helps a bit.
i called my dad yesterday after i got home from a pretty useless few hours at harbour center to vent about not being able to get anything done. i've heard a lot of his stories about university over and over and over and over again to the point where I know a lot of them before he starts into one too much, but i listen every time cause there's something comforting in hearing them over and over again. plus there's the odd time where he might drop in a new gem.
maybe i'll go see the new Bond movie tonight. why not?
the ethics office is still giving me grief over my application and research. i've submitted it five times filling it out exactly how they ask me to each time and still they come up with things they dont like. thanks guys, way to make an already stressful project more craptastic.
i should get a haircut.
oh right, i forgot, so wearing a shirt you bought in Bangladesh and wearing an oilers hat are good for many things at many places. for example, they are good for holding people at rapt attention describing the cultural differences in third world countries after you complement them on their spinach dip recipe, and for getting free Big Rock all night because albertans are cool and the Warthog Cream Ale is the greatest beer ever that i hadn't had in forever cause it's near impossible to find the damn stuff in Vancouver. if you know where to buy it, TELL ME.

titles of conversations

i am the voice inside your head

i'm far off my game. i haven't managed to get much of anything done the last three days. it's turned into the game of sit, put everything in front of you that you need to work on, then sit there some more and just stare. or you write a sentence and then you dont like it so you delete it. and you do this over and over until the realization sets in that you've done nothing to increase the word count for about three hours. and the annoying thing is that when you've removed yourself from the situation, when you're not sitting there trying to get the work done and you're thinking about it somewhere else, you've got a completely clear idea of what you need to do, what you're going to write, and where you're going to put it. and then you sit down to do just that, and it's nowhere to be seen.

the abandonment of creativity juxaposed by its nonexistence.

i am the voice inside your head

newsprint for the rest of us

like the last few years Everett and I headed down to the cenotaph at Victory Square for the Remembrance Day ceremony. it ended up being the best one we've been to so far, with the least amount of cheering, no kids with toy guns, and no one talking on their cellphone. well, ok, at one point on the far side of the square some woman was screaming her head off but that lasted about thirty seconds cause some security guys dragged her away. the only oddball who really showed up was this dude with a big placard that said something about "Side Trucer Supreme Being and his Supreme Courts!" and was dropping leaflest on the ground. but kudos to the guy for not making any noise at all, and durng the moment of silence he was dead still and praying, so let this be a lesson to you all, you may be as crazy as you like at this ceremony as long as you stay silent and stil pay your respects. cause people appreciate that.

that would be the destroyer my dad served on. i make a point of finding that picture every year on this day, and probably will til who knows when cause it lets me take a look at just a sliver of what he lived. i know there's no real approximation for any of that, i've heard some of the stories he has but at least that picture does anchor it visually a little bit. i dunno, everyone has their own things they think of today, and this is mine and mine alone.

my landlord just brought down some chicken fried rice. i dont think im totally over the chicken with rice thing yet after this summer, so i'm gonna go ahead and leave it all for my roommate for whenever he appears and i will rock leftovers.

today is also the consecutive integer birthday of an italian who apparently needs to think about no cutting his hair or shaving for six months when close to $200 is on the line. happy birthday buddy.

newsprint for the rest of us

drive straight up that little squiggly thing

so evidently i went through my pictures and pulled out concert ones just cause why not?
i downloaded season 2 of Billable Hours cause it's fucking awesome and Showcase needs to put it on DVD right now.
i made a stirfry tonight. it turned out ok i guess, should have added a bit of honey or something to go with the lemon juice. also fyi, if you can't find bean sprouts to use, alfalfa sprouts are not good to use at all.

drive straight up that little squiggly thing

fighting a fight with the water line

for the briefest of moments this morning, between the hazy, half-sleep of hitting the snooze button more times than necessary, I thought it was July. I thought this because I woke up this morning to the sound of a lawnmower. in november. i have big thick ugly drapes on my window in my room that basically blot out all existance beyond the glass, so i never really know what the day is like until i go out into the living room with it's gigantic picture window and either see pouring rain or, like this morning, get blinded.
on those morning where i get blinded, usually I go 'yayyyyyy suuuuuun!" which is then followed by "noooooooo....cooped up writing papers all day......." and then by the time i leave to come home later today, it'll be dark out, so really, I get to see how nice it is for the duration of the skytrain ride downtown.
i should set my alarm for an hour earlier than it is because i generally hit the snooze button that long anyway, and if i tell myself i'll get up at 8:30, then usually my feet hit the ground at 9:30. i have to make sure i get to harbour center before noon otherwise i risk losing my fav spot in the corner that no one can see.
i've been having very ordered dreams lately. it's hard to explain. they're very formualic, which im not sure if that's weird or not given the fact that usually i have supremely fucked up dreams. but these ones are almost predictive the way they flow. i dunno.
cheerios then head out the door.

fighting a fight with the water line

abstract paper pipe cleaners

i'll have pictures from dario's birthday thing at the Shadow up later. i'm downloading season 2 of Billable Hours cause it's awesome.

im going to try for at least another 6 pages of my Cities paper tomorrow.

i went for a walk through Metrotown yesterday cause i was bored and i have to say that i really dont like all the christmas decorations that are already up. usually when i go through there i always have headphones on cause i really don't like the noise but yesterday i left my ipod at home and i should have brought it cause really, the mall noises in there are creepy. it's like the spectre of credit haunts everyone who walks through the doors and makes people speak in strange shoppy voices.

apparently i can fix other people's Word programs over MSN just by thinking about it working properly. yeah, skillz, i haz dem.

abstract paper pipe cleaners

sometimes i think that if there were to be horrible calamity over night and the world went to total hell, i'd wake up, shrug, and not really care.
i think next week i'll go to the clinic again to see about some sleeping pills. i generally don't like taking pills cause i've got this ingrained paranoia that i'll become totally dependent on anything i take that's not an advil which is probably why i still have 11 ativans left from a perscription i had in february.
my dinner consisted of a beer and a freezer burned, baked enchilada.
i can tell i'm feeling stressed even if i don't recognize it immediately because i've stopped actually hanging my laundry up and started just throwing all the clean stuff in a big pile on my dresser. also that i've stopped putting assignments and notes on a shelf and started leaving them in random areas on my bedroom floor.
i have nothing substantial to say. im going to go try to fall asleep, probably fail at it, and toss and turn til 4am until i do and then get four hours of sleep then wake up and try to figure out how to best approach the day.
good news, i bought milk so i dont have to leave my cheerios hanging.

stuck inside our own machine

i finished my social policy paper. i'm not sure how. somehow i turned one pamphlet and a news release into 20 pages. it's a strange feat if you ask me.

i like this picture. it's one of my favourites that i've ever taken. betcha can't guess where i took it.

last night i actually slept. like, really truly got a full night of restful sleep. im not even sure when the last time i had that was. last year in october i had insomnia for about a month and would get anywhere from two to four hours of sleep for days on end.

this morning i totally dodged what could have been a fatal thesis killing bullet. and for a stupidly simple reason too. i guess i have to be thankful that it was that simple a problem and that all it took was a frenetic phone call to get it sorted out.

im not sure how long i've been here today. i know it's less than 8 hours but more than 6. i also ended up giving an impromptu recruitment session to some of the first years interested in going to Dhaka for their co-op. i need to go to superstore and get milk because it's hard to have cheerioes in the morning without it.

stuck inside our own machine

i'm not saying it's imperative that you do this, just essential that you immediately stop whatever it is you happen to be doing right now and immediate go watch this.

tapestries on tape

yeah, that would in fact be me half awake with my cheek squished on the corner of my macbook. i swear i only put my head down for a second with no intention of falling asleep. well, i couldnt have anyway cause i had 1410am online on listening for a quick mention of my CNGPM entry.
you ever done that thing where you're really really really tired and you try ton convince yourself that a nap is ok but then you try and nap but you try and nap while listening to the tv or radio because there's something on that you don't want to miss so you kind of half end up with one eye half open trying to keep yourself awake just enough to hear and the rest of your brain is like "no dude, it doesn't work if you keep one open" but you're all "hey brain, i promise if you wait you'll hear something of value" but your brain isn't really convinced and it keeps trying to shut your eye and you're losing out and then you hear what you want to hear and you give that dopey, more asleep than awake grin because you heard your name on the radio or tv and you're all "see brain i told you so, now you can fall asleep" but in retalitation for not listening the first time your brain is like "sorry Bucko, im keeping you awake now, in a semi cognitive state that you have to deal with to get your work done this afternoon."

and you're all "...fuck."

and so then you start this grey area of self rationalization where you half want to stay awake to see how much work you can do and THEN sleep, and the other half is like, no man, sleep FIRST because then you'll be rested and do better work. but then the first half is all "but after i wake up i'll be hungry, and i'll lose out on having to make food and not work" and then the other half is like "yeah but food and sleep is good for you and you work better after both" and then the first half is like "but when you eat you'l turn on the tv and get caught up in it" and then the seond half is like "dude, you have no classes tomorrow, you can work late and sleep in a bit and still get stuff done" and the first half is like "this is a good point but why not get the work out of the way today and get other work done tomorrow and not have to spread it out as much" and then the third half is like "can't you two shut the hell up? can't you see i'm blogging now?" and then the first and second half are all "oh, yeah, sorry dude." and then they both pause and then at the same time they're like "Hey third half that isn't mathematically possible, how about you stop doing that and help us out instead" and then Third Half just stares at them like he's all "go on, tell me im an asshole, do it, do it and see what happens" and then First and Second half kind of look at each other and they're like "maybe we should just wait til he's done." and Third Half is all "yeah that's what I thought". except now you've let the third half continue what he's doing so ostensibly you've just gone and woken yourself up a bit more which you weren't really sure you wanted to do in the first place, but really, in the end youre like "ok the three of you need to listen, Third Half, wrap this up, Second half, let's make some food now because it's still early afternoon and then nap cause then you wont be hungry after you wake up, and First half, you've got a plan of attack on how you'll finish this paper, so chill the fuck out."

and then out of the blue Fourth Half pipes up and is all "hey man, how do you split your brain into three halves?"

what? you've never had a day like this?

tapestries on tape

all the vast middle

All praise the true male bible in all it's Legendary Awesomeness as foretold by the exalted Barnabus Stinson.

All should also rock the hell out to the appropriate musical companion to the Bro Code through the newly released Matthew Good Live at Massey Hall album.

All should also keep their head poised in readiness tonight to either nod in approval at the successful election of Barack Obama, or to shake your head in disbelief that somehow the Americans managed to fuck things up again.

I'm not worried about Obama winning. How not worried? I'm leaving the tv alone to go eat spaghetti and watch the new Russell Peters dvd instead.

Onwards to comedy and victory!

Obama Five!

all the vast middle

you har so nex to eem

i hadn't heard about this until today. yet another reason why Québecers are awesome. seriously, why would Palin think that Sarkozy would really phone her and talk about random shit like this hahahaha.

in a few weeks i get to meet the head of the Canada Revenue Agency. i'll be sure to ask about how i can get someone a tax break. maybe.

you har so nex to eem

Busy Bees
Originally uploaded by TGKW

i had one of those odd little moments of clarity this evening while drinking a beer with my leftover mac & cheese. it had mostly to do with the fact that for dinner I was drinking beer and eating leftover mac & cheese while watching How I Met Your Mother and felt ok about it.

i'm not really sure how to explain it more than that.

i'd also like to thank miss604 for her mention about my entering the CNGPM competition.

i named this acorn Wally

i have two papers due this semester. the first is due on the 18th. it's my social policy paper. the point of it is to conduct a thorough analysis of a provincial in-kind benefit program and come up with 20 pages of depth.

ok, normally I'd have no complaints because for some reason I can find amazing amounts of information on virtually any subject. i can be working on my own stuff and someone can ask me if i know anything on what they're doing, and in ten minutes i can have more info for them than if they'd spent all day on it. and no, that's not much of an exaggeration as I've done that several times before.

but this time. oh this time. im looking at the BC Healthy Kids Program. and there is NOTHING. and by nothing i mean i've somehow wirtten ten pages based soley off a single brochure and press release from last year. oh, and one sentence from the Employment and Assistance Act and Regulations.

i even spent an hour on the phone with both the HKP and MSP trying to get information and all I got from speaking with four different people was "ummmm....you know I'm not sure...?"

HOW DO YOU FUCKING WORK FOR A VERY SPECIFIC PROVINCIAL ASSISTANCE PROGRAM AND NOT KNOW WHAT THE FUCK IT DOES OR WHY IT EXISTS?

i can stretch things in a paper, but really, there comes a point where you just can't stretch it out anymore. it's not like you can expand fifteen pages on "it provides up to $700 in dental or eye care for children whose families receive MSP premium assistance." if you can make that 15 pages, please, please tell me. i'd love to know. i've hit ten mostly because i threw in some quotes about why children's health is important and repeated the same shit over and over and over and over and over.

i went to talk to prof about it earlier and told him about the virtual black hole of information that exists on this program. now i'm supposed to 'intuit' the rest of it. there's not much you can intuit a lot on "it provides up to $700 in dental or eye care for children whose families receive MSP premium assistance."

i even switched from Times to Arial because the letters were bigger. yes. that's how much trouble this thing is giving me.

schmragh.

i named this acorn Wally

what do you mean your pants don't pull up?

so i haven't used facebook pictures on here for a while so i had no idea they turned out this large when you poast them. meh.

btw, that grey fedora i have totally fucking rocks with my grey two-button suit. spectacularly. except i don't have any pictures of it on my own so i'll have to wait and see if anyone else does.
fyi, leaving your camera sitting on the table while you aren't there and myself and dario are there will most likely result in us stealing it and taking obligatory stupid pictures that we hope you won't notice until much later but wouldnt care if you noticed right away cause it's still funny that way.

go see Zack and Miri Make a Porno cause it's awesome.

i kept thinking the time change was supposed to happen tonight, as in between sunday and monday, but then it was pointed out to me that that makes no sense cause it would make more sense to do it between saturday and sunday. this is why i say that time travel exists. we do it every year. just like that. no super machines. just roll back the clock and there you have it.

this week i'm going to blitz my social policy paper. and pick what class i want next semester cause I only have to take one. sweeeet. then next week im going to blitz my Cities paper. and that's pretty much it for the semester except for a social policy final.

we're trying to get Dario to not shave or cut his hair for six months and then he'll look like a terrorist.

what do you mean your pants don't pull up?