Blog: Articles from November 2005

Anyone in for some “audience participation”?

Okay, so Laura posted this on her blog, and told me to put it on mine as well. I normally don’t like chain things like this, but why not? I’m thinking of having more contest-like participation things for those of you crazy enough to read me.

Here’s the deal: I want you to email me with a completely made up and fictional memory of you and I. It could be good; it could be bad. I like humorous ones, but it doesn’t have to be.

I’d do it by comment, but I suck in that I haven’t bothered adding a queue feature for only single blog posts … the comment system on my blog is terrible in general. But enough about that. Send me an email, and I’ll put the ones I like the best on the site.

Include your name (real or pseudonym), a link to your website (if you have one), and of course, the memory. If you don’t want it put up regardless of how much I like it, simply indicate so in the email. Enjoy.

Oh, and I almost forgot! If you have a blog (or journal, or website, or such), then I want you to do the same thing (do it by comment if your blog features aren’t hand-coded nuisances ). It’ll be fun.

The inclement weather, consisting mostly of snow, made the highways too difficult for the buses to traverse today, so most rural kids did not go to school. That’s okay, small classes are good. Then, during period two, the principal announced that rural buses would be leaving at noon, so most rural kids who were at school left at noon (some stayed).

So we didn’t do much during drama (which was cut short by a drinking and driving assembly that was okay). And then there were only seven kids in physics class, so we did nothing there. I played Yahtzee! with my physics teacher, my biology teacher, a chemistry teacher, and another student. (And I won )

So the Liberal minority government has fallen (and not even mightily), thus the polls shall open soon and the election bells will toll alongside the yuletide ones.

It’s not very unexpected, eh. I mean, we’ve known for the past few weeks that a non-confidence motion was going to happen. We’ve known that the Bloc, NDP, and Conservatives would team up to defeat the Liberals. There was very little doubt.

Then it actually happens.

It was kind of cool to watch it; I’ve never actually “watched” a non-confidence motion before. All the MPs stood up and their names were called out, it is all very ritualistic and fascinating. Just not surprising.

Being too young to vote, I can only gripe and rant, but I like to think I do that well. Let’s just say that I’m disappointed with Paul Martin. I liked the Liberals! Or, at least, I liked their ideology! And they have to go off and ruin the government with their poor leadership and management! Leaving responsible, liberal people like myself with an unpalatable choice to make. Do we continue to support the old, corrupt leadership? Or do we support a new, corrupt leadership.

I do not want to have the say the words “Stephen Harper” immediately after the titles “Right Honourable” or “Prime Minister”. I’d rather have Jack Layton as Prime Minister, eh. But really, I say the Liberals need better leaders to … well, lead them. Jean didn’t work out, and now Paul doesn’t look too attractive anymore either.

This is why Mr. Pilot should run for politics. Most of you don’t know who Mr. Pilot is. He taught my history and geography. He’s funny, but more importantly, he is blatantly direct to the point of offensive sometimes. He is not afraid to say something he means, even if it may not be what a person wants to hear. He‘d at least end the ceaseless rhetoric on the Hill.

If it comes down to it though, I would much rather have Paul Martin as Prime Minister than Mr. Harper. But it’s not like I can actually vote or anything.

I had an awesome day. You can tell, because I only use the word “awesome” when I’m in a good mood, and then I tend to overuse it.

It was raining all today and the rural buses were cancelled, stranding a few peers out in the country. Some got rides to school (whew … good thing too) but a few people couldn’t make it. As a result, my English class was virtually barren, and we did zero work. After those wasted 75 minutes, it was down to the drama room to haul all of our stuff out to the waiting bus.

We went to an elementary school and set up in their gym. It was, frankly, awesome. I mean, everyone had their little mistakes … such as performing an entire scene out of order. But other than that, I think that the performances were all done quite well. Each group had its strong points and weaker points, but the kids, I’m sure, loved it. Good job, guys!

Now tomorrow we have to clean up and do the post-performance evaluation stuff. Joy.

I had to go to the dentist today. *waits for all the sympathetic hugs to pour in.*

Thanks. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it could be; I don’t have any cavities. But I do need to brush better and floss more. I know this, and I have no good excuse for not having shiny white teeth. It just doesn’t happen that way.

I can never decide which is worse: the tooth polishing or the fluoride treatment. Both are sickening, which is unfortunate, because I have a very sensitive gag reflex.

Let’s see … I should get to see my midsemester report card tomorrow and fill out a response form. The actual report card is en route to my house via mail, and we all know how slow the Canada Post can be… . I hate filling out that response form. It always asks me to list achievements, and I honestly feel terrible listing any sort of achievement. Yeah, I’m weird.

I can’t stop saying how wonderful Cabaret was, because it was … wonderful. I loved every minute of it, and was sad to see it end. Two of the best nights of my life.

Anyway, to continue my pageantry of a busy weekend (I have no clue if that last sentence made any sense whatsoever), I went to the surprise birthday party for my friend. It was great. We had this “video scavenger hunt” where we taped our teams doing tasks in public. Then we went back to his house, watched the videos, and watched movies, and such like that.

I feel quite drained now.

I need downtime. And not in the sense that I need time to relax, because essentially I’m doing that right now. I need the burden of Impending Tasks to be lifted … that awful feeling of knowing that you have stuff to do in the future. Unfortunately, I hate being idle and listless … contradictions are terribly weird things.

Yeah … so that’s life… .

Cabaret was awesome!

My friends who were in it kept on insisting that it was worse than last year. Well, I did not go last year (nor the year before that, ad infinitum), but I’m sure they were pretty good even by those standards. It was non-stop fun, and by the time I got home, I was pretty tired.

Muwahahahaha. Good job Neil, Cassie, Cortney, Vivike, Ally, Crystal, Robbie, Ricky, Andrew, and um … anyone whose name I‘m too tired to remember.

Yes, it’s a Friday morning. I have school. And I‘m dead tired. I think this will be an unproductive school day and then work after that. My weekend is also surprisingly busy, due to the fact that I have two unplanned excursions to go on top of the two I knew about. Suddenly it seems like I’ve been catapulted from no life to a very busy life… .

There are times when I think I need a scale. On the far right end, at about 100 or so, there’s Canadians like Stephen Lewis, who make me proud to be Canadian.

On the far left end, at about -100 or so, there’s Canadians like Andrew Uitvlugt, mayoral candidate for Kelowna, B.C., who wants to offer crack to homeless people who will pick up garbage! His idea being to reward them with crack, hoping that their sense of a job well done will make them need less crack.

I have lost all hope that such people will key into reality.

So um … yeah. If you live in Kelowna, don’t vote for him. Because that just might be insane.

You think that driving near a bus is scary? Try being on a bus. I just noticed today that buses are big, heavy machines that are too large for most streets, and that you need to be insane to operate one. (Of course, this is true for any piece of modern equipment. I’m insane for even typing this under the delusion that someone will read it.)

I thought of a cool new design for a T-shirt. (As I order my own from Rock-It Air Wear). An arror pointing up to me, and then the words “Proof of Intelligent Design”. And the best part is that very few people would actually get it. Next time I need a new T-shirt, I’ll consider actually getting it made.

Today’s my dad’s birthday. So to all those nonexistent people who are actually insane enough to read this delusional tripe, please give him some birthday wishes, as I know he’s reading this … right now. Well, actually, now … yeah, hi Dad.

I should go write my novel. I need to get to 50 000 words. But I also need to get my mom to finish her essay for English. So we’ll see how the next hour turns out, then it’s off to bed for another exhausting day of school tomorrow.

There’s such a thing as “too much of the CBC”. That is what I learned today.

I went into work for six hours (because the pay is lucrative but I find it difficult to work for any large amount of time due to the fact I have “school” ). From noon until six today, I mostly sat down in the basement of the Chapples Building and carefully sorted paper from paperclips, the former going into a container to be shredded. This humdrum existence was periodically punctuated by brief trips upstairs to return a full bin and downstairs with an empty bin.

By 5:30 I sort of ran out of steam. I had been listening to CBC Radio One for nearly six full hours by that time. A number of revelations flashed through my mind!

You start to notice how often the host cuts off the guest by interrupting them. I started counting how many times the hosts would say “Okay,” or some other acknowledgement until they had to actually step in and blatantly talk over the guest in order to end the segment. It’s just like listening for people’s intakes of breath before they talk, it’s this bad habit I latch onto after listening to something for any period of time.

Oh, and the hourly world news things? Yeah, they record that. They have about two different recordings for the day that tell the same stories in different orders. After four hours, I realised that they were repeating it word for word. It’s not so much the fact that they record it, I can understand, but I guess no one counts on anyone actually listening to the radio for four hours and finding out that the eagerly-anticipated hourly news turns out to be a rerun from two hours ago.

By 5:30, I was running out of steam. Rex Murphy’s Cross Country Checkup was on. Rex Murphy is cool, not because of who he is, but because the CBC actually pays him money to pontificate with his large vocabulary about any sort of subject. It’s the kind of thing that only the CBC can get away with; those American stations all have their personalities who espouse their points of view, but Rex Murphy seems like the only one who can be blatantly biased and still come off seeming like an intelligent individual.

I think it’s the accent.

Anyway, so I was listening to Cross Country Checkup, where there’s an issue and people from across the country phone in with their take on it. Today was “gun violence amongst inner city youths,” in response to the alarming increase in (you guesed it) gun violence in Toronto. Scarily enough, I was actually tempted to phone in. I was saved from actually touching a phone by the rationalisation that I had nothing to say on the subject. I‘m sure that, had I touched the phone, something disastrous would have happened, like, say a meteor strike that completely wipes out human life on the planet.

The moral of the story: listening to the CBC is good. I like the CBC. I just don’t think I’ll ever try listening to it for six hours straight ever again.

I remember a lot of things. It comes with having a brain whose neurology is more complex than the fastest supercomputer. It comes with having a mind that can look up into the stars and wonder why we‘re here. It comes with those little packs of Smarties you get at Hallowe’en.

Today is Remembrance Day, so I figured I should post something about that before I continue my little existence on this small planet as it whirls around the star we call the Sun. You see, even though I’m not a fan of wars, which get in the way of more important things, like supper, I have enormous respect for those who risk their lives in war. Because they put their lives on the line, and sometimes even died, for a cause and for a people and for an ideal that they hoped would live beyond them.

Which is why we have as much a duty to them as they did to us back in those fateful days. We have to continue devoting ourselves to forging that ideal they upheld, and to making the world a better place; that is the best way to be true to their memory. Shiny plaques, statues, and music help too.

As I move into the weekend, I‘m still jumpy because I lack my own computer. It makes me feel unhinged (not mentally, but physically, since it is probably my most valuable material possession). But, since I’m living from my USB drive now, there is one positive consequence: I write more. Seriously, because I don’t have a television on to distract me and I’m too lazy to visit more than only a few favourite sites, I‘m getting a bit more writing done.

Meh, we’ll see how it goes. My weekend shall look something like so:

• Eat supper
• Make tea
• Write on computer/read
• Watch Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes
• Watch the first hour of National Treasure
• Roleplay online
• Make more tea
• Write/read
• Fall asleep
• Wake up realising it’s Saturday

I’ll get my opinion of The Plague out sometime … whenever.

And yes, that guy over there who borrowed The Great Gatsby from the library last week, learned it was on hold, and forgot to start reading it until today? That was me.

So CBC News: The Hour had its season premiere tonight. I loved this show, and I still do. I have been waiting all summer for it to come back, because I can finally watch something each night and get up to date on all that “news” stuff happening in our world.

They changed the format a bit … and the guy working the cues needs to pay more attention to which buttons he (or she) is pressing and when. So while I mourn the loss of last season’s opening music, I think this season will grow on me.

So to start of the season, I shall now blog about politics!

One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Canadian politics is the fact that, especially with a minority government, our government is technically always on the verge of “collapse.” In the U.S., you vote someone into the White House as president and they stay there for four years. In Canada, Paul Martin has been struggling to stay in power within the last year alone.

Now, to change the tune about, how about that Gomery Report, eh? I actually liked Jean Chrétien better than Paul Martin, because at least you couldn’t understand when he was a lying and when he was being incomprehensible. However, his latest reactions to the Gomery Report are blatantly selfish and just goes to show that the public really doesn’t have any power.

What’s the point of setting up a public inquiry if you’re just going to do what you want after the results are delivered anyway?

Canadian politics. So much more interesting than your average politics, because we spell colour with a u.

I don’t like bragging. And I don’t like seeming like an elitist egotistical person, even though sometimes I think I come off that way.

But yeah … I have 100% in biology class as of today. So unless I do fantastically badly on our mitosis / meiosis quiz tomorrow, my mark will most likely be 99-100% for midterm next week. Sickening, eh?

As if I don’t already attract enough attention in class, what with my crazy dancing, reading, question-answering, question-asking, and other atypical behaviour. I‘m beginning to think that reputations are a lot more trouble than they’re worth, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how I could get rid of mine without completely changing my apparent lifestyle (and I’m just too lazy). I think people care way too much about what other people are doing.

To offset my elation, however, I do have an 89% only in drama. It’s up 1 per cent, but I‘m still a little miffed. I don’t blame the teacher or the class, both are excellent, so I‘ve only my own stubborn inflexibility to refuse. I think it’s my writing that has brought my mark down. Oh well, I still have half a semester to go (I‘d like it to be above ninety).

Anyway, trot off to deviantART and read my friend’s poem, My Eden". It’s quite amazing and, frankly, made my day.

I decided to be kind and not call this post “Harry Potter and the Half-Baked Prince.” That might have been too strong.

I don’t know many people who have not read the book and not read spoilers, but if you don’t want the surprises to be ruined, you can turn back now.

No?

You see, I think that book 6 of the Harry Potter series was not as good when stacked up against its predecessors. I think that several parts were okay, but overall the book was quite anticlimactic.

The problem with Harry Potter is not its writing, it is its success. Success does weird things to authors. For Rowling, in my opinion, success has decreased my enjoyment of her storytelling. For some reason, the series seems to have lost something because it’s no longer relegated to the back shelves of a musty bookstore. Yeah, I know, I’m odd.

One good thing about The Half-Blood Prince is that Harry Potter and friends are finally growing up. Rowling promised us this in prior books, but for me, it has come too slowly. The characterisation in the book is vivid and great, that is something that I enjoyed through and through. It is the plot and resolution therein that I found lacking.

The book kinds of ruin the unity of the series. It really throws a lot of things out of the window. Firstly, it introduces a new plot twist via the “Horcruxes” of Voldemort. Good idea. Tad too late. Now when I review the series in my mind, book six is this sort of huge bump in the road that sticks out rather unpleasantly. In other words, too much happened too fast.

It is also quite anticlimactic. This is partly not Rowling’s fault. The penultimate book to a series, especially when it is the second book of a trilogy, usually suffers from the lack of resolution. The first book works because it leaves the reader wanting more, and the third of course resolves everything. But the second book is just a step along the way, with neither a proper beginning nor end. Book six suffers from this, but Rowling can only do her best to temper the effect; it’s very hard to stop it.

Overall the book was enjoyable and caused a lot of pathos (especially Dumbledore’s death) but I found its unity to be lacking. Good characterisation, but the distribution of action was uneven enough to make the book a little difficult to read.

But I find comfort in the fact that the books remain better than the movies.

I had a pretty good Hallowe‘en. After work, I went over to a friend’s house for a party and had a really good time. I caught the tail end of Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, saw Shaun of the Dead, and then we watched the beginning to Monty Python’s Life of Brian twice (because two friend came in late, so we restarted that movie, but then everyone had to leave at 9).

Ever notice out many funny people are either British or their last name is Adams (or both)? Not all, of course, but just many. I love Monty Python so much that if ever I make a movie, it shall be a British comedy only slightly less funnier than Monty Python.

This entire week seems like it will be very hectic and rushed for time. I certainly feel that way. I suppose that part of it is due to the fact that teachers are preparing for midterm marks that are coming next week. Hallowe’en, of course, had a bit of pressure with it, and having it on a Monday amplified that impact.

Brought my computer to school today, along with a note saying that the school or my drama teacher wasn’t responsibile if it got lost or stolen. The bag fits in my locker, so thankfully I did not have to lug it around to every class. I used it in drama to write up our script for “Sleeping Beauty,” since I type faster and more neatly than I write. We’re almost done the script; it is turning out well and I like working with my group. Oh, and we had a fire drill during drama too.

I need to write more on my novel …

And I got The Plague today, but the first half of the first page was ripped, so I couldn’t read it; I will not skip that part. I think tomorrow I’ll borrow a copy from a kid who isn’t reading it and just read that paragraph, if the teacher can’t find me another copy.

And I’ve speculated on the absolute minimum work I must do in biology to maintain my grade (99%, I believe). It’s not so much work as homework, because she doesn’t check it. She gives us stamps for some assignment, but there is a very loose time limit. I by no means intend to slack off, but I am not as motivated as I should be. I do like biology, however. It is probably my most challenging class this semester.

Oh! And I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I borrowed it from a friend because I haven’t been to the library yet to grab any new books. This entry’s already quite long, however, so I’ll talk about my take on it tomorrow or something. Until then, have a nice night.