Long Hours Alone: Random Thoughts

I decided to write things down while waiting for tests to finish at work this week...its amazing now useless work makes the mind.

Would you like to hear my mind? So would I. I wonder what it sounds like. Come to think of it, I wonder what colour my mind's eye is.

I wonder if there's Fruitopia in Utopia. Snapple must be prohibited, and no Nestea plunges allowed!

Ignorance is bliss; does this then explain Dubbya's goofy monkey smile?

Boys will be boys; and women will always pretend not to understand them and get pissy about it.

Does day follow night, or night follow day; as burning a question as "half full or half empty".

Its amazing how people allow Hollywood to get away with the misinformation they do, wasting their money on dramatizing something instead of teaching something. Such is the American way, nothing like sustaining collective stupidity. Have you fought a war today?

Ignorance truly is bliss; it is the only way to be happy in a world with 1st world stresses, 3rd world tragedies, and whole world deteriorations. Only in ignoring your boss, turning a blind eye on starving children, and not believing the global warming prophets can one be euphoric. That or large quantities of alcohol and prozac. (Are they putting prozac in childrens chewable daily vitamins yet, no-one better than Fred Flintstone on the bottle marketing meds.)

A Word to the Wise, or Anyone Willing to Pretend

I have come to the realization that I think the best while reading books, which, while sometimes being almost somewhat productive, often increases the reading time of any given book when I have to go back to re-read a portion in which I just saw the words while off in my own little world. In this thinking, I've noticed lately that I develop what I consider to be at the time great conclusions or pose new questions on some of my tangent trains of thought. A lot of the time however I don't know if I've actually come to this point of inquiry or conclusion by my own thought process, or from having seen it elsewhere, perhaps in some other book, or having heard it from some other party. And so, on the rare occasion I have a paper and pen handy to actually write down some of my ideas, I always talk myself out of it passing it off as something I've seen before, or something that should have been blatantly obvious anyways. Boredom spawns some peculiar beasts I suppose, this site as a glaring example. Maybe I should write down the ideas anyways so I can look back at it later, just for shits and giggles. Maybe I should expect more of these obvious conclusions as I get older and further removed from the ignorance of youth. Maybe I should move to the Andes with a following of rabbits, squirrels, monkeys, and anyone that simply has nothing better to do and sit around all day and ponder the meaning of life while drinking oodles of eggnog and eating crates of clementines. Do I hear any objections?

Too Much Time Watching TV...

The one certain wisdom I have achieved in my life is the realization that generally, the worst beers have the funniest commercials. Yes, in two weeks time, or however long its been since my last post, this is the only halfway intelligent observation I could come up with.

On another TV commercial note, as I sit here a commercial for "Ladder 49" with John Travolta dramatizing the life of firefighters is playing on the TV, full of its Hollywood effects and lack of reality, I wonder how REAL firefighters feel about movies like this making profit off a ficticious image of them.

Shortcomings of Technology

Well, its been a couple days since I wrote anything again, just thought I'd drop a couple cents in the "take a penny, leave a penny" tray. First off, in the process of opening a bottle of pop tonight, I noticed that it was one of those look under the cap deals. My first thought was, "its amazing how few people I know actually check these things, I wonder if anyone ever ends up winning?". Good for them if they do anyways. After a couple mindless minutes of struggling with the damned thing, I came to my next disctint thought, "In the at least 20 years since the invention of the plastic pop bottle, how have they not developed an easier to remove seal?". A quick search on the topic actually gave me a date of 1973 for the use of PET plastic bottles. Now I again question, how have these seals not been made easier to remove, or if not easier, at least make them seal better. Now I realize that a majority of people could care less about getting the contest cap out, so why not just make a better sealing bottle?

On another note, someone needs to go about making party going objects more drunk proof against loss or damage. Or maybe the shortcoming here is mine...

"...Somewhere around the world, someone would love to have my first-world problems..." -Matthew Good Band, Omissions of the Omen

Living Life One Day to the Next...

As those close to me know, I finished up my summer term exams this week. Since those closest to me work day jobs, I haven't had the chance to get out and celebrate said occasion with some drinking and fun. I spent the week thinking about what to do with myself until my upcoming driver training came up in hopes of getting my license shortly to qualify for a co-op job in the fall, and found myself thinking about what it was exactly I was doing with my life. Thus far I have spent most of my life doin nothing but schooling, and in the past year had gone without a single true day off from all professional responsibilities (those being to school and work). The last year has been a continuous cycle from educational terms to work terms, with holidays in the midst but no time off as I got so accustomed to through the early care-free days of my life. Tonight I was given the opportunity to drink and release some stress in the stereotypical 20-something male way, went out, grabbed myself some nice steak tails at the local grocery store, fried em up, medium-rare, on the bbq and enjoyed with some good German beer. Now yesterday I sat at this computer accomplishing nothing but the passing of time and the wasting of energy with my computer, and listened to a couple emergency helicopters (actually the same helicopter a couple times) fly overhead to the hospital a couple blocks away. That helicopter was carrying the University of Toronto student involved in an accident when his solar powered car swerved across the centre line into oncoming traffic just outside of town. A 21 year old, intellectually gifted (I assume, being as he was involved with a University engineering team producing the alternattive powered vehicle) young man, not much different from myself I am convinced, except with perhaps a bit more personal motivation and direction, lost his life in an unfortunate gust of wind catching his car and making him lose control. I have myself been along the same stretch of highway numerous times with my biological father at the wheel on our way out to a bush property away from the 'city' life here in Waterloo. This thought came to mind yesterday as I watched the coverage on the local news station of an unrecognizable array of fibreglass material, emergency vehicles, and the dark blue van with which it made contact. I thought immediately that I could easily have been in a similar position as the enthusiastic solar car driver, and while he was still alive I considered the implications of living life paralyzed, as opposed to being dead. A couple hours later I found out sadly that for this young man, such contemplations were trivial. As most of the local general population I'm sure felt, I felt sorry for the young man, and hoped he died in peace with whatever he believed in in life, and felt sorry for his family. I was humbled by the thought that such things are really not as impossible as they sound.

As I sat drinking my beer tonight watching the re-run opening of the Olympics, having only casually mentioned the accident earlier in the day, I received a phone call from my mother. Apparently the somewhat recognizable minivan in the local news coverage with which the solar car had collided was none other than my father's with him at the wheel. Needless to say it was quite the sobering experience, even given that I haven't talked to the man in 6 years. It is probably a poor reflection on my character that this only really seemed to strike my conscience when it became a more close to home issue, but it really reinforced with me how much life can be taken for granted, as I spent the week in a negative mood having no way to release my post-exam stress. I was quickly struck by the notion that if I had slightly more motivation I could easily find myself on a solar car team, or some similar project, with the last thing on my mind being an unfortunate gust of wind. Now this is not some experience in which I choose to renounce my silence with my father, or make some concentrated effort to become a more motivated, productive individual; it is just a truly a stirring event, that cliche or not, makes one consider the relevance of life. Some of the biggest cliches are also the truest. Take from this what you will, but I for one am going to be taking day to day events less for granted than I have been, day to day trivial problems, are no such thing when you don't have a life to live like the day before.

Garbage for Sale

I was reading CBC today and came across this. Its not a new issue or anything; basically Toronto is out of economically feasible ways to dispose of its garbage (yet they spend millions to KEEP the Maple Leafs if you can believe it) so they ship it across the border to Canada.

Now, not even on the grounds of the minor issues like the traffic on the 401/402 corridor between Toronto and the crossing points at Sarnia and Windsor, this just seems ridiculous to me, and I completely understand the point of view of the border cities, and the States. It is quite literally shipping our garbage off for someone else to deal with, tell me how this is fair? Of course money has that habit of making the world go around, but honestly, from a Canadian perspective, should we not figure out how to deal with our own crap? Its perfectly acceptable for us to ship our garbage to the States, but deny them some of our water supply which is another back burner point of contention right now? And on top of this, taking the money outside of Canada to accomplish the task? Maybe I'm wrong, but I would tend to think that doing the research necessary and opening up disposal sites within Canada would create jobs, thus helping our own economy, and be a nice step for individualization of Canada from the United States.

Now I brought up the topic of water trade to the States, and while I agree with the stand Canada has taken at present not to share our large amounts of freshwater, I think a recent movement by the Great Lakes bordering states and provinces to 'lend' out water on the principle that all the water is returned to the basin, properly treated, is an excellent start to something. When the need comes, Canada could 'rent' water out, with the assurance that equal volumes would be returned to our own lake and groundwater systems. But the exchange of water and garbage are two entirely different entities...no-one NEEDS garbage, and all the problems that tend to go with it. That being said, I think Canada needs to deal with its problems on its own, and not simply dump them off to the lowest bidder for convenience sake.

Read about the Great Lakes diversion policy here.

Switched to Blogger Format

Well, as much as I wanted to be able to HTML this thing together on my own, I've decided to fall into the preformatted Blogger set-up, with a couple minor tweaks of my own. It looks like I will have to combine my brain farts into this thread as I don't really feel like paying for a more advanced account. I plan on playing with the code some over the next couple weeks (obviously this will be done when I should be studying for my finals). If you have any previous experience with using these templates and want to help me figure out how to make this work leave a comment for me, or e-mail me. That's all for now.

35 Years From the Moon

Today marks 35 years since humankind first walked on the moon. It is one of those things that I wish I had been born early enough to witness, not so much for the political triumph and national pride that it likely held for so many Americans, but from a point of scientific discovery. I hope that I live long enough to witness the first human footsteps on Mars, that is in the event we don't find life, intelligent or non-intelligent there, as I think we have enough issues on our own planet that it would be unfair for us to go claim another organism's planet just on the premise that we can, and they are too simple to do anything about it. Think about the similar situation of early simple organisms on Earth, and the possible "butterfly effect" implications it would have on our evolution if some advanced being came and disturbed things. Not only that, but the threat could exist that an organism from Mars inadvertently brought to Earth on a return mission could have adverse effects here. And now of the Trekkie tangent, I will restate that I would love to be alive to witness the first human steps on the moon, to be part of the first generation to have visited another planet, like the people alive in 1969 who came to recognize Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (with unfortunate lack of recognition, myself guilty as well, of the relatively few further astronauts that have been to the moon), who will go down in history with the likes of explorers like Magellan and Christopher Columbus. The accomplishments of Armstrong and Aldrin of course will be more much better documented, and will not be open to the debate that always goes with the name Christopher Columbus. Such is one of the features of a steadily advancing civilization.

Thoughts about something relevant to my lifetime, relevant in the way that the first steps on the moon were anyways, also got me thinking about important inventions through time, and I came to the realization, that while many people agree that the most important inventions to the human race came with the developments of the radio, telephone, automobile, and most importantly flight, and space flight, I also feel that some of the proliferations of my time will have, or already have had a significant impact on the human race. The most obvious, and undeniable of these has to be the personal computer and subsequently the internet. Granted the personal computer existed in some forms before 1983, but certainly was not a household name, let alone a household occurrence as it is today. Early public bulletin boards, to the best of my knowledge first came into existence in the early to mid 80's, and I think the world wide web after that point was an inevitability, and one that today gives everyone, at least in the first world, almost instantaneous access to almost anything. World news, local news, sports news, radio and TV broadcasts digitally sampled for computers, friends, entertainment and so on are just a few of the broad classes of information, communication and entertainment available at a few keystrokes. It really has tied the world, or again, at least the first world, together, and I can only assume that the same will follow for the countries currently struggling right now to achieve the idyllic first world status. I won't use this as a venue for the whole discussion of international relations for now, but nonetheless, I think it is inevitable that the entire population of the world will one day turn to the internet as a major (but necessarily not the only) tool for communication, entertainment, and information, as the first world already has in my lifetime.

Noises in the Bush

If a tree falls in the bush, and no-one's around to hear it, it better make a sound or we better watch our backs cause those ingenious little squirrels are going to come hunt us all down, and repay us for generations of abuse to their kind. Just think of that next time you're staring into their beady little eyes...there always seemed to be some devious lofty plans hidden behind those black glassy all-knowing eyes. Of course, there could be no other way for it to fall without making a noise, we all know raccoons, bears, wolves, and runaway garden gnomes (because you know the forest is where they disappear to, and all this time you thought it was those "punk kids" down the street) are too technologically inept to accomplish such a monumental feat.

A Whole Bunch of Nothing, And More!

...So here I sit again, adding to the vast number of dead links, dormant sites like those telling me what to stock up on for the coming of the New Millennium, and the Y2K apocalypse upon us, and otherwise useless crap, collectively known as personal web pages. As always, I have plenty of other stuff I SHOULD be doing, but accomplishing nothing always gives you that warm tingly feeling inside, and so here I sit.

My aim for this site is to provide a kind of working journal of media, links, and my own personal thoughts (hopefully insightful, but more likely nonsensical and irrational). I do not expect that any of what I put on this site will be particularly interesting to anyone, but it will provide me an outlet that I will some point look back at and either shake my head at the irrelevance of, or be envious of times past when I had the time to sit and put together things like this. If any of this does manage to have any entertaining, or stimulating value for you, then go ahead and fill up, hell, even help yourself to seconds if you wish...just don't make a mess, and leave a quarter in the jar at the door on your way out.