And in other news, my new desktop:
God's hands holding the brain? Or is God emergent from that black box?
Friday 29 October 2010
where is god?
My favorite question, addressed by Dan Piraro:
And in other news, my new desktop:
God's hands holding the brain? Or is God emergent from that black box?
And in other news, my new desktop:
God's hands holding the brain? Or is God emergent from that black box?
Sunday 24 October 2010
why don't christians vote liberal?
I attended Sunday Service at the Beaverlodge Alliance Church today - it was a nice little place, well attended by young and old alike who generally seemed friendly and congenial. Being in what must be one of the most conservative ridings in the country (Beaverlodge is in the Peace River constituency: the Conservative candidate capture 70% of the vote in the most recent federal elections), I started to ponder the topic of Christian voting.
I am in the rather slim minority of Christians who vote Liberal/NDP. Yet why do so few Christians in Canada not vote for the Conservatives? It's a bit strange, particularly since a lot of the hot button issues that polarize the USA don't apply here: no parties are advocating for any sort of rollback on abortion services and none speak of repealing the legalization of same-sex marriages. If we exclude these two issues, what advantages are the Conservatives really left with? Some sort of perceived moral superiority over the "hedonistic liberal policies" like greater appreciation for tradition, family values, etc...? But are such perception rooted in any truth?
On the other hand, I can think of some strong reasons why a Christian should at least in principle vote Liberal/NDP. They are more inclined to put money into health, education, and welfare programs - and generally, these programs tend to subsidize the relatively less well-off in our society. In order to fund these programs, they are more inclined to tax the wealthier - so all those bits in the bible about sharing our wealth together are better realized. They tend to spend more on foreign aid, so I imagine they end up helping the severely impoverished more than the Conservatives.
So, what is really more important: supporting some sort of ill-defined and possibly non-existing difference in moral approach, or ensuring that the least of us in society have a chance at life, education, healthcare, etc...?
I am in the rather slim minority of Christians who vote Liberal/NDP. Yet why do so few Christians in Canada not vote for the Conservatives? It's a bit strange, particularly since a lot of the hot button issues that polarize the USA don't apply here: no parties are advocating for any sort of rollback on abortion services and none speak of repealing the legalization of same-sex marriages. If we exclude these two issues, what advantages are the Conservatives really left with? Some sort of perceived moral superiority over the "hedonistic liberal policies" like greater appreciation for tradition, family values, etc...? But are such perception rooted in any truth?
On the other hand, I can think of some strong reasons why a Christian should at least in principle vote Liberal/NDP. They are more inclined to put money into health, education, and welfare programs - and generally, these programs tend to subsidize the relatively less well-off in our society. In order to fund these programs, they are more inclined to tax the wealthier - so all those bits in the bible about sharing our wealth together are better realized. They tend to spend more on foreign aid, so I imagine they end up helping the severely impoverished more than the Conservatives.
So, what is really more important: supporting some sort of ill-defined and possibly non-existing difference in moral approach, or ensuring that the least of us in society have a chance at life, education, healthcare, etc...?
Wednesday 20 October 2010
taylor swift / beaverlodge
You know how sometimes you can listen to a song dozens of times and never really pay attention to its lyrics, and one day when you're driving your ear just happens to lend some concentration to the task and you hear a really nice line and you say 'wow, this is a pretty nice song'? (the next part of the story for me involves playing the song to death, but that's besides the point)
"i remember that fight 230 am, you said everything was slipping out of our hands, i ran out crying out and followed me into the street, braced myself for the goodbye, cause that's all i ever known, then you took me by surprise, you said you'd never leave me alone. you said, i remember how we felt sitting by the water, and everytime i look at you it's like the first time..."
Why am I citing Taylor Swift? As I was driving up to Beaverlodge, the place I am doing my rural rotation, I tuned into the radio about 400 km northwest of Edmonton and noticed that 3 of the 5 clearest radio stations were playing country tunes (Yes, Taylor is as crossover as you can get, but let's not deny her heritage) - it was a whole new world, a far cry from the Toronto metropolis that I had inhabitiated just 72 hours prior. What was this nova terra like?
Now that I've been here for all of 48 hours, it would be awfully presumptuous of me to make ponderous generalizations about what life in Beaverlodge is like, and even more presumptuous to make these generalize the Beaverlodge experience to 'small-town' life in general. I sometimes feel that Edmonton, a city of a million, is too small, too narrow-thinking, too uncultured, etc. etc. for my tastes (what a day for gross generalizations, and let it be known I do love the people). But if that is how I feel about Edmonton, what could I say about a place that is 300 times smaller yet? What is it like to live in a city where you can almost say that everyone knows everybody, or that there should at least be no more than two degrees of separation. What is it like when your peer group could consist of only a couple dozen individuals, particularly when you're growing up? More salient to my time here, what the heck do you do on a weekend? The experience should be very different from the city one. As I might expect, the people I have met here are very friendly and welcoming. I am staying at the home of a couple that have hosted medical students for the past 10 years with open arms. The hospital staff is congenial and pleasant. I went for a jog, and in 40 minutes ran in a loop that traversed half of the town's area. There is so much to discover and learn about, a cultural immersion that one might normally travel across the oceans to experience.
From my musings, one idea has stood out: Yesterday, someone at the hospital told me that it was awfully lonely in Beaverlodge if you were an adult and alone. It really is a bit of a small place, without much of a nightlife, wheere everyone kind of knows everyone tangentially, where you can do outdoors things, but Jack Frost might put a bit of a damper on things when things are -40. It occurs to me that maybe one thing that Beaverlodge might really win at is being a place where you could fall in love and raise your kids and grow old together and just really, really focus on one another.
Sometimes couples will do really fun and interesting things together. Go to an art gallery, attend the ballet/opera/symphony, go skydiving, jetset across the world's great cities, book a seat on Spaceship Two and head off into the stars (literally). But what if you were so in love that all you wanted was to be with that person and nothing else really mattered (I exaggerate, and these things are obviously not mutually exclusive, but I hope you get my point). What if you really just wanted to focus on one another, and everything that was going on around you was a monochrome to your sweetheart's colors. Then, maybe, living in a little out-of-the-ways hamlet would be as vivid to you heart as Paris or Milan. I think have always believed that falling in love, really, truly falling in love - intertwining experiences and souls and bodies so intimately - would be even more rewarding than setting out and exploring the world and all its adventures.
At the end of the music video for 'Mine', you see the two of them getting married, having kids, growing older (though they don't get very old in the video, Ms Swift has to look her normally pretty self). For some reason, I've always imagined that in the end the two in the music video would end up growing up somewhere out-of-the-ways, and really just focus on one another. How nice and lovely would that be?? Very...
[I've played 'Mine' on repeat throughout this entire blog post]
"i remember that fight 230 am, you said everything was slipping out of our hands, i ran out crying out and followed me into the street, braced myself for the goodbye, cause that's all i ever known, then you took me by surprise, you said you'd never leave me alone. you said, i remember how we felt sitting by the water, and everytime i look at you it's like the first time..."
Why am I citing Taylor Swift? As I was driving up to Beaverlodge, the place I am doing my rural rotation, I tuned into the radio about 400 km northwest of Edmonton and noticed that 3 of the 5 clearest radio stations were playing country tunes (Yes, Taylor is as crossover as you can get, but let's not deny her heritage) - it was a whole new world, a far cry from the Toronto metropolis that I had inhabitiated just 72 hours prior. What was this nova terra like?
Now that I've been here for all of 48 hours, it would be awfully presumptuous of me to make ponderous generalizations about what life in Beaverlodge is like, and even more presumptuous to make these generalize the Beaverlodge experience to 'small-town' life in general. I sometimes feel that Edmonton, a city of a million, is too small, too narrow-thinking, too uncultured, etc. etc. for my tastes (what a day for gross generalizations, and let it be known I do love the people). But if that is how I feel about Edmonton, what could I say about a place that is 300 times smaller yet? What is it like to live in a city where you can almost say that everyone knows everybody, or that there should at least be no more than two degrees of separation. What is it like when your peer group could consist of only a couple dozen individuals, particularly when you're growing up? More salient to my time here, what the heck do you do on a weekend? The experience should be very different from the city one. As I might expect, the people I have met here are very friendly and welcoming. I am staying at the home of a couple that have hosted medical students for the past 10 years with open arms. The hospital staff is congenial and pleasant. I went for a jog, and in 40 minutes ran in a loop that traversed half of the town's area. There is so much to discover and learn about, a cultural immersion that one might normally travel across the oceans to experience.
From my musings, one idea has stood out: Yesterday, someone at the hospital told me that it was awfully lonely in Beaverlodge if you were an adult and alone. It really is a bit of a small place, without much of a nightlife, wheere everyone kind of knows everyone tangentially, where you can do outdoors things, but Jack Frost might put a bit of a damper on things when things are -40. It occurs to me that maybe one thing that Beaverlodge might really win at is being a place where you could fall in love and raise your kids and grow old together and just really, really focus on one another.
Sometimes couples will do really fun and interesting things together. Go to an art gallery, attend the ballet/opera/symphony, go skydiving, jetset across the world's great cities, book a seat on Spaceship Two and head off into the stars (literally). But what if you were so in love that all you wanted was to be with that person and nothing else really mattered (I exaggerate, and these things are obviously not mutually exclusive, but I hope you get my point). What if you really just wanted to focus on one another, and everything that was going on around you was a monochrome to your sweetheart's colors. Then, maybe, living in a little out-of-the-ways hamlet would be as vivid to you heart as Paris or Milan. I think have always believed that falling in love, really, truly falling in love - intertwining experiences and souls and bodies so intimately - would be even more rewarding than setting out and exploring the world and all its adventures.
At the end of the music video for 'Mine', you see the two of them getting married, having kids, growing older (though they don't get very old in the video, Ms Swift has to look her normally pretty self). For some reason, I've always imagined that in the end the two in the music video would end up growing up somewhere out-of-the-ways, and really just focus on one another. How nice and lovely would that be?? Very...
[I've played 'Mine' on repeat throughout this entire blog post]
Tuesday 19 October 2010
Marginalia at the Edge of the Evening
When I sit down at the edge of the bed at night and reflect upon my day, oft my mind drifts like this:
Marginalia at the Edge of the Evening - Alice Oswald
now the sound of the trees is worldwide
and I'm still here/not here
at the very lifting edge of evening.
and I should be up there. Bathing children.
because it's late, the bike's asleep on its feet,
the fields hang to the sun by slackened lines
and when the wind blows it shows
the evening's underside
(when the sun sinks it takes
a moment smaller than a spider)
I saw the luminous underneath of a moth
I saw a blackbird
mouth to the glow of the hour in hieroglyphics...
who left the light on the clouds?
pause
the man at the wheel signs his speed on the ringroad.
right here in my reach, time is as thick as stone
and as thin as a flying strand
it's night and somebody's
pushing his mower home
to the moon
***
Let us all push our mowers to the moon...
Marginalia at the Edge of the Evening - Alice Oswald
now the sound of the trees is worldwide
and I'm still here/not here
at the very lifting edge of evening.
and I should be up there. Bathing children.
because it's late, the bike's asleep on its feet,
the fields hang to the sun by slackened lines
and when the wind blows it shows
the evening's underside
(when the sun sinks it takes
a moment smaller than a spider)
I saw the luminous underneath of a moth
I saw a blackbird
mouth to the glow of the hour in hieroglyphics...
who left the light on the clouds?
pause
the man at the wheel signs his speed on the ringroad.
right here in my reach, time is as thick as stone
and as thin as a flying strand
it's night and somebody's
pushing his mower home
to the moon
***
Let us all push our mowers to the moon...
attention
I can't sleep and it's almost 4 AM. I have class at 8 AM, but for the last couple of days this has kind of been my schedule. It's getting increasingly harder for me to regulate my body now for some reason, as if by some wayward polarity I have gone from being a model student to a junior high dropout. I've missed lots of classes these last few weeks and just can't seem to get my shit together.
Apart from my bewildering current lack of self-confidence, I can't seem to shake this fascinating study out of my mind. It's not a new one, in fact it appeared in Nature over 10 years ago, but the implications are phenomenal. I wonder if you're familiar with the term hemineglect? It's a disease state in neurology that typically accompanies right-sided parietal damage that causes the individual to not pay attention to the contralateral hemifield. It's peculiar since vision systems work entirely well, they just don't attend to it for gosh knows why. If you ask them to draw a clock they will draw half a clock with half of the numbers, and if you ask them to put on their coat they only draw on one sleeve. I've heard stories of females putting on only half of their makeup and a guy who would only eat half of his meal.
So how do you get someone to pay attention to their neglected field? Rosetti et al. had the bright idea of using prism goggles - those fantastic spectacles that shift your vision an 'X' number of degrees to one side. Essentially if you think about it, if you wear glasses that shift your vision 10 degrees to the right and you're trying to throw darts at a dart board, you're going to miss until your brain processes that it should actually be 10 degrees more to the left. In the same manner, they would apply a prismatic shift to those with left prismatic neglect, so that when they removed their goggles after adaptation hypothetically they would have 10 extra degrees to the neglected side.
AND IT WORKED. Neuropsychological tests showed that they attended to more of the previously neglected field than before. Savings lasted up to four days!
I just can't get over how cool this is. Rehabilitation has been so exciting since the advent of neuroplasticity, and here is a mechanism by which we have the possibility to rehabilitate cognition. Absolutely fascinating!
Link to the full PDF: here.
Apart from my bewildering current lack of self-confidence, I can't seem to shake this fascinating study out of my mind. It's not a new one, in fact it appeared in Nature over 10 years ago, but the implications are phenomenal. I wonder if you're familiar with the term hemineglect? It's a disease state in neurology that typically accompanies right-sided parietal damage that causes the individual to not pay attention to the contralateral hemifield. It's peculiar since vision systems work entirely well, they just don't attend to it for gosh knows why. If you ask them to draw a clock they will draw half a clock with half of the numbers, and if you ask them to put on their coat they only draw on one sleeve. I've heard stories of females putting on only half of their makeup and a guy who would only eat half of his meal.
So how do you get someone to pay attention to their neglected field? Rosetti et al. had the bright idea of using prism goggles - those fantastic spectacles that shift your vision an 'X' number of degrees to one side. Essentially if you think about it, if you wear glasses that shift your vision 10 degrees to the right and you're trying to throw darts at a dart board, you're going to miss until your brain processes that it should actually be 10 degrees more to the left. In the same manner, they would apply a prismatic shift to those with left prismatic neglect, so that when they removed their goggles after adaptation hypothetically they would have 10 extra degrees to the neglected side.
AND IT WORKED. Neuropsychological tests showed that they attended to more of the previously neglected field than before. Savings lasted up to four days!
I just can't get over how cool this is. Rehabilitation has been so exciting since the advent of neuroplasticity, and here is a mechanism by which we have the possibility to rehabilitate cognition. Absolutely fascinating!
Link to the full PDF: here.
Friday 15 October 2010
LTD
I think one of my favorite themes of all time is loss. The level of pain and anguish emanating from events where you lose something is arguably unsurpassed by any other emotional state I can think of. You never forget.
I remember a few weeks ago walking onto the ward Mag was working on carrying a box of Italian bakery for the unit, and little did I know that my timing was impeccably trained to when her patient had just abruptly died. I walked out of the elevator and the air felt weird and it didn't strike me until after Mag burst into tears that this was the air of loss.
Likewise, I profoundly remember what seemed like an equally traumatizing event that happened to me when I was a child. My dad had managed to rescue a little robin from the neighbor's cat that was prowling on it. The robin had a messed up wing and so my dad tried to patch it up, and was keeping it in a tiny plastic basket that kids use to pretend they're going on picnics. I remember one afternoon thinking that birds need vitamin D just like humans do, and I put the basket out in the sun. When I came home from piano lessons, the bird had roasted to death.
I remember a few weeks ago walking onto the ward Mag was working on carrying a box of Italian bakery for the unit, and little did I know that my timing was impeccably trained to when her patient had just abruptly died. I walked out of the elevator and the air felt weird and it didn't strike me until after Mag burst into tears that this was the air of loss.
Likewise, I profoundly remember what seemed like an equally traumatizing event that happened to me when I was a child. My dad had managed to rescue a little robin from the neighbor's cat that was prowling on it. The robin had a messed up wing and so my dad tried to patch it up, and was keeping it in a tiny plastic basket that kids use to pretend they're going on picnics. I remember one afternoon thinking that birds need vitamin D just like humans do, and I put the basket out in the sun. When I came home from piano lessons, the bird had roasted to death.
Sunday 10 October 2010
city exploration
My community medicine (=public health) elective in Toronto has been quite, quite light, so I've had plenty of time to explore the city itself. Now, even if my elective was busy I would have taken the time to explore, as city exploration is probably one of my most favored leisure activities. The first thing on most travellers' lists is probably to see the top ten tourist attractions of a particular location, and understandably so.
But I am more drawn to the crisscrossing streets with their eclectic shops and to the neighborhoods, rich and poor, and to the nature and the parks that let the city breathe. In essence, I am drawn to the city's interstitium, all the stuff that makes a city a city found between the tourist attractions and the ritzy downtowns. There is little I like more than hopping on a bicycle (walking is too slow, driving is too fast) and pedalling through a virgin (to my eyes, at any rate) city, trying to find its nooks and crannies and the things that make the place unique. I am not a terribly well travelled person by any stretch of the imagination, but the more I do see the more I love urban exploration.
If you know me, you'll know that I am absolutely, 110% in love with Vancouver - the mountains that are close enough to bike to, an ocean that you can walk/bike along for dozens of kilometers, and a temperate climate that enables you to do both. That being said, I must confess that I have been rather impressed with what Toronto has to offer. Perhaps it's because I am here during fall and they say that the splashes of red and yellow gradually replacing the deciduous green and the autumn breezes make for perfect travelling weather, but these things aside I am loving the fact that the city is filled with different neighborhoods and different ethnicities and different curio shoppes and districts. Quite a vibrant place really - not too bad a place to think about living in.
But I am more drawn to the crisscrossing streets with their eclectic shops and to the neighborhoods, rich and poor, and to the nature and the parks that let the city breathe. In essence, I am drawn to the city's interstitium, all the stuff that makes a city a city found between the tourist attractions and the ritzy downtowns. There is little I like more than hopping on a bicycle (walking is too slow, driving is too fast) and pedalling through a virgin (to my eyes, at any rate) city, trying to find its nooks and crannies and the things that make the place unique. I am not a terribly well travelled person by any stretch of the imagination, but the more I do see the more I love urban exploration.
If you know me, you'll know that I am absolutely, 110% in love with Vancouver - the mountains that are close enough to bike to, an ocean that you can walk/bike along for dozens of kilometers, and a temperate climate that enables you to do both. That being said, I must confess that I have been rather impressed with what Toronto has to offer. Perhaps it's because I am here during fall and they say that the splashes of red and yellow gradually replacing the deciduous green and the autumn breezes make for perfect travelling weather, but these things aside I am loving the fact that the city is filled with different neighborhoods and different ethnicities and different curio shoppes and districts. Quite a vibrant place really - not too bad a place to think about living in.
Friday 8 October 2010
chance encounter with a shaman
I met a shaman.
It's true. Sobey's is apparently the hub for all that is strange and odd. The universe funnels all bizarreness into this one location where you can purchase fried chicken and a pop all whilst enjoying the circus that wanders through.
I was sitting at that same table on the same day minding my own business studying mirror neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex when this rather rotund man dressed all in black ambles in. He looked out of place with his matching rollie-suitcase and obsidian-colored duffel bag which he plopped down at the table next to me that just moments before had been occupied by résumé-plumber-trucker guy. He eyed the room, then eyed my textbook, then grinned widely at me. Noticing that my earphones were on, he started gesticulating wildly to the point where I had the option of doing two things: A. Humor this guy or B. Briskly pack up all my belongings, walk away while pretending to ignore his protests for attention, half-run-half-mosey to a quiet location all the while stealing quick glances back to see if he's following me then setting up shop in a place where I won't be disturbed hopefully.
I have the bad habit of doing the former because I like to hear people's stories, so I pulled off my earbuds and set them down. He proceeded in a very thick immigrant accent to tell me how he's a shaman and sometimes he has to make sure he doesn't think certain things otherwise they happen, and often he thinks bad things and bad things happen to people. He's been trying for a long time to cleanse his mind and try not to think about things. He told me how he owned a three-quarters of a million dollar property just somewhere around the Caribbean islands and how he had three wives but he put that all behind him and sold all his wares so that he could tell the world about the truth. He said he operated on Whyte Ave (you might run into this guy sometime, excitement!) trying to tell the drunks about the truth.
I was wondering what the truth was when he turns and points to the University and asks me why I would go to this place of stupidity to study. I asked him what he meant, and he said, "This place is stupidity. You cannot frame the world in a classroom. Why do you go to a place of stupidity to study the truth? You will not find truth in a field of stupidity. I have learned not to lead with my mind but more with my heart. You cannot know the world if you don't experience it. In the same that you go geese hunting, you cannot try to go find the geese, you need to let the geese come to you. I have learned that sometimes it is better in life to not seek the truth but to let the truth come to you."
I thought he had a point, but at this point I thought he was also insane. He didn't seem schizo and he had a tremor when he moved his hand so I was thinking alcohol, but he didn't smell of cheap Boxer beer. I liked what he said, and told him that sometimes you need to frame the world in order to understand it better, like in pieces for better scrutiny. But you also need those experiences to learn the world too - how can you describe Rome in a paragraph? And sometimes in order to learn what things are, you need to know what they are not. Sometimes you need to experience stupidity in order to know that it is not the truth.
He was starting to irritate me when he started talking about how much he hated certain religions, and began listing them. He described how he wanted to start a new colony based on this model of society that was outlined to him in a book he was holding. I wrote down the title, "The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti" which had a foreword from Aldous Huxley, and perused it a bit, flipping through the pages on love and on community and on family and such. Something to read on a rainy day.
I had to go back to class so I shook this man's hand and wished him all the best. I had fun talking to him even though my conclusion at the end of the day was that he was balls out fucking psychotic.
But he's a shaman. Don't get to meet one every day.
It's true. Sobey's is apparently the hub for all that is strange and odd. The universe funnels all bizarreness into this one location where you can purchase fried chicken and a pop all whilst enjoying the circus that wanders through.
I was sitting at that same table on the same day minding my own business studying mirror neurons in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex when this rather rotund man dressed all in black ambles in. He looked out of place with his matching rollie-suitcase and obsidian-colored duffel bag which he plopped down at the table next to me that just moments before had been occupied by résumé-plumber-trucker guy. He eyed the room, then eyed my textbook, then grinned widely at me. Noticing that my earphones were on, he started gesticulating wildly to the point where I had the option of doing two things: A. Humor this guy or B. Briskly pack up all my belongings, walk away while pretending to ignore his protests for attention, half-run-half-mosey to a quiet location all the while stealing quick glances back to see if he's following me then setting up shop in a place where I won't be disturbed hopefully.
I have the bad habit of doing the former because I like to hear people's stories, so I pulled off my earbuds and set them down. He proceeded in a very thick immigrant accent to tell me how he's a shaman and sometimes he has to make sure he doesn't think certain things otherwise they happen, and often he thinks bad things and bad things happen to people. He's been trying for a long time to cleanse his mind and try not to think about things. He told me how he owned a three-quarters of a million dollar property just somewhere around the Caribbean islands and how he had three wives but he put that all behind him and sold all his wares so that he could tell the world about the truth. He said he operated on Whyte Ave (you might run into this guy sometime, excitement!) trying to tell the drunks about the truth.
I was wondering what the truth was when he turns and points to the University and asks me why I would go to this place of stupidity to study. I asked him what he meant, and he said, "This place is stupidity. You cannot frame the world in a classroom. Why do you go to a place of stupidity to study the truth? You will not find truth in a field of stupidity. I have learned not to lead with my mind but more with my heart. You cannot know the world if you don't experience it. In the same that you go geese hunting, you cannot try to go find the geese, you need to let the geese come to you. I have learned that sometimes it is better in life to not seek the truth but to let the truth come to you."
I thought he had a point, but at this point I thought he was also insane. He didn't seem schizo and he had a tremor when he moved his hand so I was thinking alcohol, but he didn't smell of cheap Boxer beer. I liked what he said, and told him that sometimes you need to frame the world in order to understand it better, like in pieces for better scrutiny. But you also need those experiences to learn the world too - how can you describe Rome in a paragraph? And sometimes in order to learn what things are, you need to know what they are not. Sometimes you need to experience stupidity in order to know that it is not the truth.
He was starting to irritate me when he started talking about how much he hated certain religions, and began listing them. He described how he wanted to start a new colony based on this model of society that was outlined to him in a book he was holding. I wrote down the title, "The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti" which had a foreword from Aldous Huxley, and perused it a bit, flipping through the pages on love and on community and on family and such. Something to read on a rainy day.
I had to go back to class so I shook this man's hand and wished him all the best. I had fun talking to him even though my conclusion at the end of the day was that he was balls out fucking psychotic.
But he's a shaman. Don't get to meet one every day.
Thursday 7 October 2010
robot unicorn attack
http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html
It's Erasure's 'Always' playing in the background...
It's Erasure's 'Always' playing in the background...
when recycling makes me sad
Environmentalists, don't cringe, this has almost nothing to do with the environment. I was taking a stroll down Danforth Avenue in Toronto when I saw an old Chinese lady paying close attention to a huddle of stuffed garbage bags. She was handling something, which she happened to fumble. Now, it happened to be a rather windy day today, and in a couple seconds the pop can that she had dropped had rolled a fair distance down the street. She scurried after the can, which she quickly recovered and returned to her garbage bags.
A part of me has often wondered if people such as herself don't take some pride in being able to eke out a living by cashing in on recyclables (and along the way, doing her bit to green the earth) and thereby avoiding the need to panhandle - perhaps what is pathos to me is condescension to her. But oh boy it's hard not to feel a pang of disheartenment when I see the elderly climbing into dumpsters to make a nickel-and-dime living, a semi-regular occurence near the apartment I live.
A part of me has often wondered if people such as herself don't take some pride in being able to eke out a living by cashing in on recyclables (and along the way, doing her bit to green the earth) and thereby avoiding the need to panhandle - perhaps what is pathos to me is condescension to her. But oh boy it's hard not to feel a pang of disheartenment when I see the elderly climbing into dumpsters to make a nickel-and-dime living, a semi-regular occurence near the apartment I live.
Wednesday 6 October 2010
tips/tricks
I am currently at the Sobey's on campus attempting to read some neuroanatomy notes, but my interest is piqued considerably by the gentleman that is seated at the table right beside me. He is holding a résumé, looking slightly forlorn as he peruses the pages of his vita. He's dressed in garb that makes him resemble a trucker (but we shouldn't judge a book by its cover, right?). After a moment of looking around awkwardly, he sidles up to the café counter and orders himself a beer.
He sits down to read the newspaper left at his table for a few moments, then someone arrives. He stands and they shake hands briefly, and then the man begins perusing his résumé and critiquing its components.
I know I shouldn't judge, but I can't help myself. Here is a man who hasn't dressed up for this rather important meeting, who is sipping on an alcoholic beverage while he discusses how there was a lapse in employment between the years of 2001 to 2004 and how it is likely a future employer will notice that. I can see his plumber butt from here as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, doling out $60 for this help session.
I don't know why this is relevant, but this strikes me as an important moment in my life that I should capture for further analysis.
He sits down to read the newspaper left at his table for a few moments, then someone arrives. He stands and they shake hands briefly, and then the man begins perusing his résumé and critiquing its components.
I know I shouldn't judge, but I can't help myself. Here is a man who hasn't dressed up for this rather important meeting, who is sipping on an alcoholic beverage while he discusses how there was a lapse in employment between the years of 2001 to 2004 and how it is likely a future employer will notice that. I can see his plumber butt from here as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet, doling out $60 for this help session.
I don't know why this is relevant, but this strikes me as an important moment in my life that I should capture for further analysis.
Monday 4 October 2010
Introductions
One day Joey and I were chatting over some bottomless beefsteak fries at Red Robin's (fyi, only the breast of the robin is red, the rest of the bird is quite brownish-grey), when I lamented on how rarely he updated his blog. A little hypocritical of me, as my track record is far inferior to Joey's. As our chat traversed the pitfalls and tribulations of our blogging experiences, it occured to me that things might, just might work a bit better if we both contributed to the same blog. Mutual prodding to make posts, half the posts to make - what a lovely idea! And so ROBOT UNICORN (because they are so awesome (http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html - thanks Tim) BUDDIES (because we are buddies) was born.
Hopefully it will stay alive and magical for a while too...
Hopefully it will stay alive and magical for a while too...
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