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[30 Sep 2008|10:11pm] |
Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net
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[08 Sep 2008|01:29pm] |
Here are some things that are making me feel pretty good right now:
1. Tom Brady is out for the season and one of my fantasy teams is doing pretty well.
2. I'm going to get into "Intro to Canadian History". Makes me happy not because the class is amazing but because I need it for certain teacher's colleges.
3. Liz is coming to see me, and is bringing food.
4. I lost 8 pounds last week.
5. My first "real" payday in almost two months is on the horizon. I used vacation time and had shortened shifts for the last month and a half which has led to very low paycheques. This one should be more normal, like between $450 and $600. Damn good thing, too. I owe a whole lot of money to TD and Visa.
It seems like the only things that are important in my life right now are liz, school, work, my weight, and football. I guess a boring, predictable life is better than one with confusing twists and turns so I won't complain too much, but sometimes it makes me feel like a boring person. Which may or may not be true, but regardless, it makes no sese for me to worry about it.
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[26 Aug 2008|11:49pm] |
My instincts, my intution, my gut, if you will, don't work properly. Everytime I act on them and make an outlandish claim or take a crazy chance, it usually backfires. Meanwhile, when I dismiss them, they turn out to be correct and I've either wasted valuable time ignoring them or I've made the situation worse by neglect. Perhaps this means that I should go with my gut feelings when I have the oppurtunity to think about them rationally. Of course, that sorta takes the point out of intuition being intuitive.
I have a pretty simple mind, and I try adapt to that, I try to make my world, my problems, my interactions, and my plans simple as well. Usually it works out okay. Today, it didn't. My world today was deep, complicated, full of ifs ands and buts, and incredibly ambiguous. Scares the shit out of me every time.
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| At least I've got my health |
[18 Aug 2008|01:01am] |
Issues afflicting my body right now:
-Broken left clavicle
-Sudden, sharp pain in my right wrist, maybe carpal-tunnel or whatever it's spelled as (should probably not type)
-Throat that feels like it's on fire
-Lost my voice
-Skin irritations on my thighs that make walking a real bitch
My body chose the EXACT moment that I go back to work after a month for all these things to start bothering me. Well,everything except my collar bone, of course.
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[12 Aug 2008|04:52pm] |
Right now I'm writing an essay about public executions in 19th century England. It's a relatively interesting research process (but one must consider the competition...)
Apparently, the crowds that would gather at public hangings were one of the major reasons why hangings were moved inside prisons. They were barbaric, obscene, apparently incapable of a higher thought process, rowdy, and it was claimed that any 'decent' human being would be disgusted by what the crowd was taking pleasure in and refuse to partake. These people were just the dumbest, most pathetic individuals known to Englishmen and were an embarrassment to the human race.
I don't know why, but it made me think of the 21st century equivalent to these people: Youtube commenters. Aside from what I'm reading about spectators at a 19th century public execution, I can't think of a more infuriatingly stupid and base group of people.
Livejournal is filled with semi-intelligent people, and so are countless message boards all over da intarwebs. Why, oh why are youtube commenters so different? Someone needs to write an academic paper on it so that I can have a more interesting essay topic.
P.S. - One of the books I read for this essay was by Harry Potter. No joke.
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| Can't remember the last time I used one of my mood face thingies.... |
[28 Jul 2008|03:14pm] |
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Led Zeppelin - Boogie With Stu |
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Everytime I try to change something about myself (my procrastinating ways, my weight, my messiness, my burning through money) I always wind up failing, usually due to an unhealthy mix of a lack of willpower, making excuses, and blaming my problems on others.
Well, I'm gonna try a new approach. I'm gonna try to change everything, all at once, cold turkey. No game plan, no deals with myself, no conditions, no nothing. I'm going eat less (and better), be cleaner and more organized, and be wiser with my finances.
This plan is almost destined to fail in some regard, but I figure with all the things I'm trying to do, I'm gonna wind up getting SOMETHING right. Worst case scenario - it fails like every other self-improvement project I've had and I'm no worse off.
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[08 Jun 2008|11:03am] |
1. As you can see from my icon, THE WINGS WON THE CUP!. I'm pretty pumped about that. Sports-wise it's actually been a pretty good 2008. Patriots lost the superbowl and ruined their perfect season, Kansas won the final four (don't give a damn about NCAA basketball but I'm happy for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) greenwavedave), Wings won the cup, Raptors made the playoffs....Now if the Lakers can win the NBA finals and ANYBODY but the Redsox can win the world series, it'll be a good year. I seem to hate teams from Boston for some reason...'cept the Bruins.
2. The band has been relatively busy lately after a sort-of hiatus. We weren't doing nothing, Paulo (keys) and Mike (drums) have been working on production-type stuff since we recorded in December. Album should come out around Christmas! Be on the lookout! But anyway, we've found a really great rehearsal space that we're gonna start doing every week again. We also are auditioning singers....the guy we had was a good dude but ultimately uncommitted to the band and not mature enough to take on the responsibilities he had to take on, despite having some talent to work with. We've played with one dude who's pretty good, we'll be hearing from some other dudes before we make any moves, I think.
3. Summer school fucking sucks. SERIOUSLY. I have an essay due tomorrow. Ten pages, which is not too crazy. BUT I don't understand the topic whatsoever. It's "Islamic Culture in South Asia". Definitely one of the biggest regrets of my life (and I wasn't looking forward to it to begin with). But, the postiive side is, if I pass, it will be worth it. And taking this class allowed me to play baseball this summer, so that's always nice.
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[14 May 2008|11:57am] |
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I just got an A- (83) in my "U.S.A. Now & Then" class. It's my first A at U of T and possibly my last. It's depressing and exciting at the same time.
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| If you can work with the public.... |
[06 May 2008|10:00pm] |
Two interesting things have happened at work in the last 24 hours (or so).
Last night, a man in the store was arrested. This guy has some sort of unidentifiable mental problem(s). He would always come in and try to get free coffee. If he wasn't doing that, he was rambling to us in a pseudo-intellectual fashion about wars in the middle east or terrorists or the decline of American culture or whatever he could fathom based on news snippets and talking heads on CNN or whatever. Anyway, yesterday he came in the store asking me if I thought he was a terrorist because he ate at Somalian restauraunts (wtf?). I didn't answer him and he became angry and left me an empty box as he walked out the door, cursing. An hour later, he tried to buy a coffee with money from the tip jar. I told him to put the money back and leave, which he did, cussing once again.
The third time he came in, he had a knife with him. I didn't see it. I was talking to some customers at the time and decided to continue talking to them to prolong my having to kick him out. Apparently he was waiting for me to be finished with them so he could confront me about kicking him out (with some help from his friend Mr. Knife, possibly). A co-worker saw him, called the cops, and within 2 minutes he was handcuffed.
I wasn't shaken up by the incident all that much until some douchebag I work with started sensationalizing the event and telling me I could have been killed, which I was sort of vulnerable to because I didn't even know he had a knife on him until after it was all over, so I really had no idea what was happening. I found it kinda hard to carry on work as normal for a few minutes but after I calmed down and realized that there was a limited amount of damage he could do to me with three feet of counter in between us, all was well.
This morning, I met a man that has been arrested, and quite famously. Truth be told I'd met him earlier, but I had only known him as "quad long espresso in a tall cup with a little water on top". Turns out it was Brian O'Dea, who in his lifetime has been a janitor, a radio host, a fisherman, a television producer, and most interestingly, the leader of a huge pot smuggling ring worth about $100 million. Not knowing this at the time we were chatting and he asked me if did any reading at all, and I said that "I might if I had any reading spirit left in me after doing all my university readings", and we chatted about history for a while (my major). He told me about a fantastic author, Howard (i think it was howard...) Zinn. "He writes REAL history. Not the tame stuff that most universities will tell you about". He asked for a pen.
A few minutes later he returned, and handed me a book. "Here's another real history book, maybe you'll like it". It was a book written by him, and I recognized the title: "HIGH: Confessions of a Former Pot Smuggler". It had been released to some fanfare in Canada, and he autographed the inside of it for me. "Hey Jim, here's a REAL history of the 60's, 70's, and 80's, sprinkled with a little bit of the 50's and 90's. Peace, Love Work, Brian O'dea". At worst, I get a free book out of the deal, but I've read the first bit of it and it's quite interesting.
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[23 Apr 2008|08:14pm] |
i'm starting to get pretty reative when it omes to losing things. i have offiially lost two keys on my keyboard. on of them is the left shift key. an you guess what the other one is/
my own damn fault for spilling strongbow in the keyboard. All i tried to do was remove them so i ould lean it. but at least the other keys aren't stiky, now!
i just hope the at didn't try to eat it.
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| EMO POST |
[14 Apr 2008|11:57pm] |
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I just want my Final Fantasy VII back. This might sound stupid and childish and ridiculous, but it's one of my favourite all-time video games and I miss it. All the other games Beth stole from me I have gotten back. I've bought them all individually. But I just...can't afford FF7. The cheapest I've seen it go is 70 dollars. I just don't have that cash. I don't know if I'll ever get it. It's value increases all the time.
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[10 Apr 2008|11:46am] |
Apprently, I'm admired?So I was at work last night and one of the people I work with comes up to me and says "Yeah Jim, I've always wanted to ask you. How do you do it? Like, school, work, your girlfriend, volunteering, your band, going out with your friends....how do you do it all? I really admire that you can do all that stuff and still keep it together".
Pretty flattering stuff. I don't think I've *ever* been admired for anything before. The pride quickly went away though when I thought about it....how DO I do it? And then I realize I don't really....I don't do that well in school, I'm kinda lazy at work, I don't see Liz as much as I'd like, the band hasn't done anything in a while....it's kinda just lucky that it's all working out. Which is basically what I said. I guess it's still something to be a little proud of, but I just never considered myself to be one of 'those' people, that just seems to do everything all the time.
Speaking of having a million things on the go, I just wrote, front to back, a 3,000 word essay. Started at 6:30am, finished writing at 11, formatted and printed it at 11:30. I'm reasonably proud of myself because unlike most rushed essays I do I think it's a pretty good job. I did the last essay for this class the morning off, too. It was only 1500-2000 words and took me an hour and a half less time, and I did REALLY well on it (my first university A!) so I'm hoping the same will hold true here. Meanwhile, the one essay I actually took my time on I probably got a shitty mark.
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[08 Apr 2008|11:54pm] |
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I really like that Liz and I can have a major disagreement about something, cool off for half an hour, and I can still call her up later and she'll wish me sweet dreams before I go to bed. It's a nice feeling, not having to go to sleep knowing your SO is mad atcha.
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[08 Apr 2008|09:45am] |
Well this is certainly the most disturbing video I've seen in a long time.
I'll say it's SFW 'cause there's no nudity or anything, but still....WOW
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[03 Apr 2008|01:14pm] |
1. Technology is not my friend this past month. My phone died. Like, really died. It won't get past the loading screen. I bought a new one already, $75....my first ever camera phone. I think it's a step up from my old one. So I guess I'll need people's phone numbers again but I'll do that on facebook, since more people I know are on there. This happened AFTER my iPod broke a few weeks ago (although I've gotten that back from Apple though, all fixed up nice.
2. There's an anti-abortion rally going on outside Robarts, where I am currently. Typical thing...massive posters of aborted fetuses, comparing them to geonicide, calling abortion doctors murders, etc. Thankfully they weren't too pushy, but maybe that's because my headphones were on. When I walked past this morning they were alone though when I walked back there was a smaller group of pro-choicers there vying for attention, which kinda made me smile.
I realized something to; regardless of which side has the moral superiority, the pro-choicers sure win on the rhetoric front. They were all dressed in tye-dye shirts and rainbow hats, with bright colours and smiles and "Hi how are ya"'s. The anti-abortionists - grim faces, dark clothing, pictures of dead fetuses, guilty looks - just didn't seem like an enticing bunch of people. If you're undecided on the issue and are walking by, who are you going sympathize with: a group who wants to guilt you into supporting them and who reminds you of the grizzly side of the issue, or 'smiling happy people holding hands' that want to make you feel good? I'm not saying the happy faces make the pro-choicers right, I'm just saying they've got a better chance of swaying anyone who might be prone to support an issue based on gut emotional reactions, which is probably the only type of person that can be swayed by these rallies anyway.
One thing's for sure, anyway, I bet the hot dog man I talked about earlier isn't selling many franks with those pictures of dead fetuses right behind him. And he really doesn't need any more help NOT selling stuff.
3. I'm listening to Phantom Power, possibly the best Tragically Hip album ever made. Yep
4.Spring's here. This makes me pretty happy. Baseball, no coats, walking to places, the feeling of school almost being over (which is almost better than school being over itself), parties, people coming back from school.....Spring is definitely the best time of year. That's right, I said it. It's better than summer.
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[25 Mar 2008|01:25pm] |
Today, in class, the professor was talking about submitting essays to the Undergraduate History Journal at U of T. "If you have an essay you're particularily proud of, I suggest you submit it. Looks great on a resume". And in my head, I'm thinking "I just finished an essay I'm particularily proud of. But knowing me, I'll just wind up forgetting about it and not being motivated enough to fix it up to the UHJ standards. I was barely motivated enough to write it in the first place".
I totally dismissed the idea, assuming that I'd be too lazy to make it good enough to submit. Am I really that lazy?
I think, maybe instead of lazy, I'm too chickenshit to try.
I've been able to come to terms with a few things in my life. I'll never play football in the NFL. I'll never be the best guitar player in the world, nor will I likely ever be in a band that plays for more than a few hundred people. I'll never be a millionaire. Etc., etc. I think it's good that I'm grounded enough to know that there's no real way for me to acheive these things without altering my life drastically, and I like my life enough now that I don't want to risk fucking it up too bad.
But this attitude of being content with what I've got is maybe creeping into other areas of my life. Affecting things that I CAN change. I just assume that "well I'm not smart enough to get published anyway, so I'm not gonna waste time trying". "I've been overweight for years now already and I know if I start going to the gym I'll just give up like I've done before, and I know when I say I'll diet I won't, so I won't bother trying". "I've got all these songs that I'd like to get recorded but I've made a half-assed effort to do so a few times and it didn't work so I guess there's no point wasting time trying".
I've always felt there's absolutely nothing wrong with aspiring to be normal; to have 2.5 kids and a house with a white picket fence and a car and a 9-5 M-F career. But maybe this whole attitude of not aiming for things that aren't easily attainable is going too far. Maybe I need to stop making excuses for why things won't work and start figuring out how to make them work.
The saddest thing about it is, I guarentee that this time next year, I will look back at this post, and NOTHING will change. Which would suggest that I WANT things to stay the same. I feel like I dont', but maybe I do
EDIT - I did tell myself I wanted to post more and I seem to be doing that. Maybe there is hope.
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| A thought I had, and a post to kill some of my (and your) time |
[20 Mar 2008|02:19pm] |
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music |
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Derek Sherinian - "Inertia" |
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On St George street, U of T's arguable "main drag", there is an assortment of hot dog stands, hamburger/fries trucks, and chinese food-mobiles. There's not much to distinguish between each one....they all offer pretty much the same stuff for the same price at the same quality and wait time. But there's one guy that stands out to me. He sits right outside Robarts (for you U of T'ers who know where that is) and strikes me as a particularily large failure.
I mean, it's my own personal opinion that your life isn't entirely a "success" if you run a hot dog stand outside a university, but I could be wrong. Maybe these people make all kinds of money. Maybe they come from a long, proud line of street-meat pedallers, but whatever. But this one guy just...REALLY fails.
First off, he looks and sounds like Milton from Office Space. Squirrelly and short with a weird lookin' moustache, he kinda squeaks when he talks. He never has any condiments. He doesn't really turn the hot dogs over on the grill at all. He's the last of the vendors to arrive and the first to leave. And today I saw him actually unloading and setting up....he parks his van in the MIDDLE of the road and unloads all his shit, stopping traffic in the process, and he had a bunch of folded-up cardboard boxes that all flew away from him while he was setting up (why would you even need those, anyway?)
All in all, I just find it very entertaining that someone could be a bad hot dog vendor. It just doesn't seem like a job with too much to fuck up in a big way, but he manages.
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