Something I do not really write much about on this blog, due to its personal nature, is my illness.

I have suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for over 6 years now.  In recent years I have dealt with it quite successfully, and I sometimes forget there is anything wrong with me.  I think employment + academic success is an example of how well I have handled myelf.

Anyway… one of the symptoms is insomnia.  I have chronic insomnia, and it is no fun.  It has been really bad lately.

Good night? I wish.

Hello, internet.

I have started my first semester (summer, at that) at UBC.  I transfered after spending 2 years at a smaller university in the city.

UBC is a little daunting: the academic standards are a bit higher; the bell curve is not so welcoming, I guess.  I’ll find out.  It’s not like I am any less capable of performing academically.  I went from, as Danny Tanner said to DJ when she started junior high: being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a big pond.

The difference was that DJ wanted to be popular, and I want to be successful in my studies.  Fair enough.

To start things off, I am actually taking an 100-level political science course because it is an important prerequisite.  I would never have otherwise taken the course, and I’m actually enjoying it.  The material is not challenging, but it is very enlightening.

The course is an introductory course to the politics of Canada; it is literally “Canadian politics 101″ and I wish everybody in this country would just bloody take the course.  Being enrolled in this course has reinforced by opinion that a lot of Canadians have no clue how this country is run, and think that our political system is more or less the same as that in the United States (I cry….)

The class is pretty nostalgic to me, because I took a few Canadian politics courses in highschool, which more or less covered the same material as this course at diluted degree.

na na na na na na na na book-learnin!

When I was a kid, I was really into reading books about what are known as “natural disasters”, and weather.  I was always a geek.

Apparently I still am.  Lucky for me, thanks to the Internet, I can now quasi-monitor the Atlantic hurricane season, which is quite exciting.  The United States’ “National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration” (NOAA) has a website for their National Hurricane Center. It’s pretty cool.  On the main page you can see the little map that shows tropical cyclone activity.  It is update pretty frequently  I remember one day last year when I looked at a blob on the map that was marked as “high potential” for tropical cyclone formation in the next 48%, and when I checked back 5 minutes later, it was a tropical depression!!! Very neat.

It’s like you are watching the storm as it develops, except not really.  It’s really cool for me.

So, the geek that I am, this becomes my favourite website from June through November.  Check it out!!!

Sometimes I remember that there I people who know me that read this, even though I don’t know; or, I forget that I know.  Of course, you don’t tell me, cause then you feel really creepy.  That’s okay.  So here are some housekeeping rules:

- if you expect to find me discussing anything to do with, for lack of a better term, “relationship” type stuff: it’s not happening.

- same with work. no work discussions. I do have a sweet job, though.

- other people’s personal lives

- 99.999%-ish of people’s last names

- specifics

A funny thing about blogs, and people who read them without telling the “author”, is that some people think they are getting a sneak peak into said author’s life.  The thing is, I am very aware that anyone can read this.  Despite the fact that it may seem like I put a lot of information about myself out for anyone with internet access and an understanding of Google to find, I’m actually pretty selective about what I include an exclude.

Perhaps it comes as a surprise to people who don’t know me well that I’m a very private person.  All of this online stuff can be describe as the following:

- a cariciature

- a distraction from the full, complete me

- the misleading notion that you have actually come across some top-secret shit that I’d be petrified for you to know.

/end housekeeping.

-A strong disdain for Karl Marx

-loss

-gains

- change/lack thereof/fear of change/awareness of change/ discomfort with the reality etc etc etc

-relationship [s] [?] (see all of the above, save for the strong disdain for Karl Marx)

- effort x 2 x 4 x6 x 2  (see all of the above, including the strong disdain for Karl Marx)

- The happiest day of my life.  Okay, that was in July, 2008, but it deserves a fair mention: sans happiest day, none of the above would exist in the same right which they do.

- Le Temps Detruit Tout (see note just above this).

Sometimes I get carried away and say the wrong things.  I’m aware at the time, and in retrospect I think “maybe I shouldn’t have said that, because I was so close to coming across as well put-together, and there I go without thinking before I speak.”

Sometimes I say things I have already said, several times over.  It’s not that I think I’m particularly interesting; rather, I forget what I have said, and to whom I have said it.  Even if the conversation was meaningful. Other times, the conversation was meaningful, but I don’t know if it was to you, so I repeat myself to understand if it meant anything to you the first time around.

Did it?

- I tended to cross the line a few times, and that damages everything but myself in the end.

- Basically, I reduced everything back to just me, to protect myself, my interests an as a subconscious way to keep outside interests on the outside.

I would prefer not to, but there is a steep learning curve.

- forgetting to use spell check.  I know how to spell, and my grammar is fine when I please.  Technology has made me lazy. I can has smart.

Whenever the semester ends, my body shuts down, and then my brain follows:

The last time I updated this blog was on April 20, 2009 at 12:39 AM.  I wrote my final exam for GEOGS at 6:30PM that day.

When school is finally out, my body finally lets it guard down: it isn’t being forced to stay up way too late, and get too little rest; it isn’t being fed crappy food [as often], because I actaully have time to make proper meals for myself.  It isn’t being stressed out by the awareness of the preceding, unhealthy habits.  It isn’t being stressed out by the pressure of school, and work, and everything else.

For about a week or so, I more or less slept or lazed around at any given chance.  I slept a LOT.  One night I slept for 13 hours in lieu of seeing Mastodon, who I did want to see.

Once my body has caught up on its rest, my brain goes “hey, it is my turn for a rest.”  During the first week or so, my brain was still running crazy.  Any conversation that even remotely related to an area of recent study had to be abandonned, because all I could do was start meddling over theories and ideas in my head.  “Well, this surely isn’t an exciting conversation to have with someone I haven’t socialized with in months, due to me crazy schedule”.   This issue causes for social awkwardness.

Finally, my brain says “okay, see ya in a few weeks for summer school!” Then I go into moderately carefree mode.

The problem is, I like inspiration or motivation when this happens.  I haven’t updated this, because I haven’t had anything of value to share, I guess.   Rather, I haven’t been stimulating my brain.  I know it’s only been a few weeks, and I’m sure I’ll get back into being my geeky old self; but, lately I haven’t had a whole lot of quasi-intellectual/academic shit percolating in my head and I’m not sure what to make of it.

I’d hate to think that enrollment school is the only thing that allows me to think critical.

I think I’m just taking a breather.

I haven’t been writing a whole lot of direct stuff about my life lately, so here is something for stalkers:

I saw Leonard Cohen tonight.  I wasn’t able to stay 100% until the end, cause I had to come home to study for exams, but I saw most of the show.

Possibly the best show of my life.  I am saying this as someone who has always enjoyed Leonard Cohen, but was never a fanatic.

Leonard Cohen was always played in my home growing up.  His music, ironically, reminds me of carefree days of being a kid; of sunny afternoons in the summer, coming in from the kiddie pool and hearing “Everybody Knows” coming from the stereo.

It’s very difficult to describe how unreal this show was.  The man has an unmatchable amount of passion, and emotion that bleeds through everything.  Watching him, just as much as listening to him, was a trip.

I’m glad I’m not a music journalist, because I would not be able to string together a coherent review — it was that good.  I’m close to speechless.

Go see Leonard Cohen if he comes to your city.

There is something to be said about sociopaths, and I’m not sure what, exactly, that is.

Sociopaths have an uncanny ability to cause distraction at the worst possible time, and then distract all required attention away from necessity.

The sociopath draws you in, and makes you think, “alright, I am going to play this game, and maybe  beat you at this game”.  The sociopath makes you all but forget the days you were regularly told “I win; I always win”.

A sociopath can be friendly, and appear so interested when it loses its clutches on the prey that had once replaced you.  It is important to remind yourself of this anytime you interact with one.

Do not consume alcohol in the presence of a sociopath, and if you do, make sure to have an exit plan.  Exit plans do not necessarily need to be tangible; they can be abstract, for example, the knowledge of greener pastures is an acceptable exit plan.

Question the motives behind all words spoken from the mouth of a sociopath, particularly nice words.

Never, never, never allow yourself to be fooled by nostalgia, or tones of voice.

Sociopaths are adept.

This has been a public service announcement.

I’m studying for a final, and just noticed how incoherent my review is…Especially because I typed it.  If you read this, the last thing you would think is that I actually understand anything about what I am studying.  I consider my notes an art form.. Ha.  Here is an excerpt.  Note the disregard for grammar, spelling or logic:

Different perspectives[on suburban structure]
1.SUBURBS LAUNCHED GLOBALIZTION – needs people to consume. American suburbans. Owner ship.
2.Keeps people docile
3Reproduction of labour – mortgage workers are loyal workers
4.Feminist –patriarchical  condition – define gender roles. Dad works; mom locked to children without car. Requires igh injected of unpaid labour.

CBD = agrgressive, dangerous -> Men.  Suburb : PASSIVE, domestic , kids -> WOMENS.

STANLEY PARK – squeamish village. Became a military reserve. Fed govt leased park to vancouvs

Key TERM – TRAFFIC – aggregation – making a whole of things in a specific space and time.  Harder to drive. Further away with no public transportation. Post ww2- traffic incrase

COUNTERURBANIZATION – larger city people moving to smaller towns/”commuter cities” cheaper, less dense. Larger houses. TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT ALLOWS PEOPLE TO LIVE IN RURAL AREAS WHILE ENJOYING CITY AMENITIES. TELECOMMUNITING + CARS.

CLEARANCE IGNORES SOCIAL PROBLEMS. Breaks cohesion . there is community in slums.

Blade Runner – replicants. No emotions. Used inslave labour.  overpopulation, globalization, climate change, over urbanization.

My #1 LOL is referring to the former Squamish village that was in Stanley Park as “squeamish village”

Today I glanced through the 24 Hour newspaper-esque publication that gets brandished at me when I enter the SkyTrain station.  The “Lifestyles” section contained an article called “The best green vacations“.  Alright.  I thought, “this should be interesting”!  Vacationing has to be one of the most harmful environmental practises that there is.  Don’t try to kid yourself: a vacation is for relaxing, being slothful, wasteful and gluttonous.  If you can accept that, you will have a good time.  If you cannot accept this fact, then you probably are the kind of person who buys the Nestle Eco Bottle because you think that by consuming a different unecessary, wasteful product, that just happens to use “30% less plastic” than a regular water bottle, you are doing this fragile planet a service.

While I can appreciate that these businesses may legitimately trying to reduce the damage that they are doing to the environment, while pursuing their goals, it’s silly to think that expensive vacations actually help the environment.

1) YES.  That’s right.  There is the transportation issue

2) Have you ever been to a hotel? Have you seen how much food is wasted?  It may be composted in the end, but a lot of energy is required to prepare that food, only for it to end up wherever.  How about the plates, the dinnerware, the tablecloths, the napkins, and everything else that goes into the process of allowing you to induldge?  These have to be manufactured, packaged, imported, and then maintained [cleaned, generally by some sort of machine] and replaced.  I didn’t visit all of these “eco-tels”‘ websites, but the websites I did visit did not advise me about their dining practises.

3) BEDDING! Let me ask you again: Have you ever been  to a hotel?  Hotels are places that are meant to pamper your goddamn lazy ass. Even the beds I sleep in at Motel 6’s are comfier and have comfier pillows than mine.  My bed is acceptable, but I don’t have 95 pillows on it, and I don’t launder my blankets daily.

I don’t have a problem with vacationing; I travel frequently.  I do have a problem with delusional freaks who refer to looking out for the planet as “thinking green”, and just blurt out catch phrases, have an organic vegetable garden adjacent to a tarry parking lot for a few hundred cars,  and think they are all of a sudden Captain Planet and/or the Planeteers.

GOING BIRDWATCHING IN LIEU OF DRIVING AROUND IN TAXI, AFTER PARTICIPATING IN THE ABOVE ACTIVITIES DOES NOT MAKE YOU ECO-FRIENDLY, YOU SILLY YUPPIE.

Having said that, these places look nice enough to visit.  I’d go if I could afford it.

This past weekend I went on a secret vacation back home to Toronto.  It was pretty cool times.  Generally, when I go to Toronto, I get pretty emo about things: choose a crappy, cliché metaphor, and that will describe what Toronto is to me.  Today, my melodramatic and laughable description is as follows: a sarcophagus of lost years. HA HA HA. HA HA HA. Good one.  It drives me a little nutty, because I always end up dwelling on the past when I’m there..

This visit was probably the least stressful visit I’ve made to Toronto since I left.  I still got wound up over some things, but I guess that’s inevitable.

I also did some totally fun stuff!

I was staying at my friend Brad (and Timo and Meghan)’s place.  Brad is one of the coolest people ever.  In fact, he is cooler than I am.    Tim & Brad have a podcast, which I have referred to, called Comma Error Radio.  Seeing as I was being held captive, not against my own will, at Casa Geeka, I made a guest appearance on this week’s podcast, which basically means I said a few things that made me sound dumb.  So check it out!  The episode has some discussions about video games, movies, our friends in DD/MM/YYYY, pirates, and most importantly - EGG ON ONE’S FACE.  What’s the big deal about “EGG ON MY FACE”?  Well, listen and you will find out!  I’ll let you in on a little secret though: Don’t watch The Spirit, because it is the worst movie ever.

Anyway… That is about as much of my weekend as I am making public.  If I share any more, I might end up with egg on my face.

I am updating my blog a mere day after updating my blog, after not updating it for several weeks.

Alright. So, today my head exploded again, which included my brain. I don’t know how much more it can take.

I was perusing Google News during my lunch break when a headline that this post was named after grabbed my attention:

WHAT IF RUSSIA CHINA CUT OFF YOUR ELECTRICITY?

Very well.  ABC news, eh?

It is a morning five or 10 years in the future, and the headlines have been full of news about escalating tensions with Russia or China. You turn on your lights in the morning to find that they, and virtually everything else, have been shut down by cyberspies.
Improbable? Maybe — but the Wall Street Journal reports that Chinese and Russian spies have penetrated America’s electric power grid, planting software bugs that could all but shut down the system in a crisis.

I remember, years ago, reading this apparently well-known and logical piece of insight that was given to aspiring writers: if you don’t capture someone’s interest within the first three sentences of what you have written, that person will probably not read what you have written in its entirety.   Of course, I’m sure there are exceptions to this rule, but those exceptions pertain to niche audiences who are expected to have enough interest in a topic being discussed that they recognize there is a message beyond the first three sentences.

Essentially, this article is just a creepy example of creepy political juxtaposition:  The majority of the article merely discusses all the doomsday stuff that would happen should the electricity be cut off in the United States.  Did you see Live Free or Die Hard? Okay.

Did you live in the Eastern Timezone during mid-august of 2003, and experience that crazy three-day blackout? I did.  The story reminded me of a slightly more dystopian version of what I saw.

So this story is actually about the horrors of what will happen in our electrical energy dependent society if the energy goes away one day.  It is hardly about terrorism, or spying.

What a stupid, cheap introduction.  I puke on you, ABC.

This morning while riding the Skytrain, I glimped over my a woman’s shoulder, and the some words on her Metro transit “newspaper” caught my eyes: “Province accepting applications for enhanced identification”. I thought “right on; it finally happened.”  Then, the sub-header caught my eyes: “SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER”.

My brain exploded a little bit on the inside.  I’m sorry.  Let’s take a step back here: “Shopping in Seattle is about to get easier”.  This is a newspaper article announcing the introducting of a new form of identification, that uses some a Radio Frequency Identity Chip to simplify the Canada - U.S. border crossing, by transmitting your information to the border guard as you approach.   Fair enough, but I don’t think I even need to explain the implications of this type of technology attached to a personal I.D.  This isn’t new technology; it’s been around for decades, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that as well as being used to simplify a transaction, there is some creepy big brother/panopticism stuff going on here.

And the best thing the newspaper can say is “SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER”??? That is the selling point for a new form of identification, replete with accesible, yet encrypted personal data?

These cards are not mandatory, but who is to say that identification with this type of technology may not become mandatory in Canada in the future?  Plenty of concern has been expressed about privacy issues: These privacy issues aren’t just about what governments may do with our information — as a “Western” citizen, who has grown up in a digital age (excuse the cliché), I have mild “Big Brother hysteria” fatigue, because the notion of personal information being aggregated with that of others’ for political/security/surveillance etc. purposes has become a moot point.  The other concern, that comes with this stuff is the issue of data mining, or the data getting into the wrong person/group’s hands.

But that’s not a big deal, because the upside to all this is that SHOPPING IN SEATTLE IS ABOUT TO GET EASIER!!!!

This brings me to a little aside: I watched a piece on TED a few weeks ago hosted by James Howard Kunstler that discusses suburbia, his concerns.  It’s amusing.  He was featured in “The End of Suburbia”, which I discussed a few weeks ago as well, and he definitely could be seen as a fear mongerer, but the talk had some merit.  Anyway,  sub-header about shopping in Seattle made me think of this clip on TED:  towards the end, Mr. Kunstler says something along the lines of “one of the problems [with suburbanization going out of control, sustainability being a joke, and the world becoming a global Frankenstein] is that we call ourselves ‘consumers’” .  People have to stop thinking of themselves as consumers and start thinking of themselves as people who have more value than just consumption machines: built to work to consume to work to consume.

I purchased a blender last week.  I purchased it so that I could make healthy food, from scratch, instead of paying 6$ for a styrofoam takeout container of soup for lunch during the week (I do it occasionally, but a part of me dies inside every time…).   I already made my own soup, but I didn’t have anything to blend it up super quickly.  I made this purchase because it was something useful, that I could not fashion myself out of belongings I pick up off the ground, and in the long run, it actually saves me money (not much time, because making soup takes a while) and makes me less dependent on other people to eat the food I would prefer to eat. “NOT SO!” says the cardboard box whence the blender came! The cardboard box announced to me that the blender is for “the fashion conscious consumer”.

Knock Knock?

Who the fuck buys a blender for its aesthetic value?

Who’s there?

The same people who get excited about losing another ounce of privacy if it will make their shopping trip to Seattle easier.

Lately I have been writing about topics that interest me.   These are just my blogs; my way of killing time and writing about stuff that doesn’t need to be structured for school.

I don’t really talk about my personal life so much, and I prefer it that way.

I also don’t think it’s fair for me to talk about people who have no control over what I say about them.

It’s too bad, cause I’ve got something to say.   About the disappointment of false freindships.

Luckily it only pertains to one person.

Hi.  It’s 2:56 AM and I’m about ready to go to sleep for a few hours, before embarking on a 14 + hour day.  Perhaps when I return from work & school I will make several pizzas.

Anyway, I realized that quite a few of my friends who have blogs read this blog frequently, and have mentioned it to me.  I also realized that I forget to read those same blogs as often as I should.  I just joined the 21st century and actually started using my Google Reader.  HOORAY.  If anyone has any blog reommendations that I should add, let me know!

I just read an online article titled “Why it’s okay for newspapers to die”. It reassures that, “[t]he loss of print newspapers is akin to the loss of the horse and buggy.” In other words, the only thing about the news that is going to change is that it will be online, instead of printed on paper.  This argument is rather technologically determinist; the author of the column makes no effort to hide this when she refers to “creative destruction”, which is basically what happens when you pair technological determinism with a laissez-faire economy (read: globalization).  I have to disagree with the comparison to the “horse and buggy” for a few reasons.

First of all, there is a big difference between people switching from horse and buggies to cars, and the Internet going online.  For one thing, when people switched from the horse and buggy to the automobile, they were merely switching forms of transportation.

I could really go out on a limb and argue that the shift from horse and buggy to automobile was helped plant the seeds for the demise of a print industry, but that would be getting a little out there.  Still, consider this little summary of suburbanization etc. 101 :  the invention of the automobile initially allowed for wealthy citizens to live in suburbs and commute to work.  This reduced urban density, somewhat.  After World War 2, when there was a great deal of wealth in Canada and the United States, a great deal of people could afford to live out in the suburbs.  There was a huge boom; lots of people could buy cars.  Communication was increasingly shifting away from being “face-to-face” and turning into something that required other forms of technology, such as the telephone.  Luckily, thanks to transportation and young boys with paper routes, newspapers could still be distributed across these large urban areas, and people could still get their news, even if they lived quite far from the centre of the city.  Exciting! Oh yes, and population density decreased further.

I’m not going to get into economics and infrastructure development, cause that’s boring….  Anyway…  If you couldn’t already figure it out, the spatial diffusion of people certainly influenced the way communications technology was developed and used.  There were new needs, so there were new solutions.  Complimenting this change was the new phenomena of media mergers, buyouts and vertical/horizontal integration.  I’m not going to get into this either, because this is my blog, and not a scholarly research paper.  This publication by the Parliament of Canada is helpful if you would like to know who owns what in Canadian media, however.

[If you don't find irony in me blogging about the death of print media, just wait till I touch on the "blogger" problem.  If you can't wait: THIS IS JUST A BLOG; DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH, AND DON'T BELIEVE ANYTHING I WRITE UNTIL YOU FIND YOUR PRIMARY SOURCES OF INFORMATION.  If you are interested in the topics of infrastructure development, technological determinism, the evolution of the mass media, or anything else I am referring to and don't have access to a good pool of information, I will be happy to provide you with some good sources of information.  Otherwise, I'm not getting into it.  Additionally, if you would do not agree with some of the facts that I claim.]

Fast forward to now, and you will find a combination of a few problems: a very large amount of the media controlled by a few companies, consolidation of resources [i.e. less reporters, but just as many/more newspapers and magazines], a less diverse group of stakeholders, and the competition of the internet.

The awesome David Byrne (yes, that David Byrne) wrote a nice entry in his online journal, expressing his concern about the decline of the newspaper institution.  David Byrne echoes what I have to say about blogs, which is that:

“Blogs and Internet news sites can’t fill the gap, as they don’t have the resources to sustain a team of reporters working and digging into a story — sometimes for months before anything sees the light of day.”

These blogs are at least secondary sources of information, for the most part, and often link to other news sites, which link to news feeds, and so on.  Just look at what I’m writing.

Another problem with moving a newspaper from print to online the format in which the different stories are presented.   Go most online news sites and you will see the “most popular” list of stories (Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star, CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, etc.).  My completely scientific and untested opinion is going to suggest that these articles are more likely to be read than the others.  I am also going to suggest that being online is distracting; unlike sitting down and reading a newspaper, where you don’t have many other prominent sources of stimulation, reading an online newspaper puts the reader in a position to stray away from what he or she was initially planning to read.  The reader also may skip out on the shorter pieces, which can often be found tucked in with the larger stories, because there is the opportunity is not there in the same way for the eye to pass over the “smaller” headline.

Back to this horse and buggy issue: with the exception of the clown car, I do not recall reading of any sort of widespread consolidation of passengers as they left behind their horses and buggies: if there had been four buggies, all which could seat four people, the 16 of these people did not all pool together and hop into one sedan.  Yes — there were buses, but mass transportation had long existed, in the form of the boat and the train; I’m only talking about private, individual transportation.  What is happening to the media, is in some sense, an information clown car — dozens of newspapers being piled into one source of information.

CanWest is a media clown car that would make a real troupe of clowns jump for their money.  CanWest owns a frightening amount of Canadian media, and you can also find a lot of interesting research articles from over the years discussing what this means in the world of communications and democracy.

CanWest is also experiencing some MAJOR financial problems.  There have been reports that CanWest may sell some of their newspapers, magazines or television stations to other buyers; but, realistically, who would those buyers be?

The biggest question of all, however, is: what would it mean for the Canadian public if all of the newspapers printed by CanWest ceased to print, and went online?  What would happen if CanWest, as unreliable as it is, ceased to exist and we were left with only skeletons of an industry?

Hi. Blog blog blog blog blog.

If you read this blog, then either:

1) you are in my family, so you like to keep a tab on me

2) you are a friend of mine

3) you are stalking me

4) you actually think what I write is interesting, which makes you odd, but okay…

5) you google-blogged something like “AC/DC” (cause I wrote a blog about when AC/DC came to my work, and AC/DC fans found me right away), or a band that I link to, cause my friends are in it: my blog comes up when you search for those bands, apparently.

ANYWAY.  If you read my BLOG, then perhaps you may like my twin brother’s blog.  My awesome twin, Byron, is quite different from me.  First of all, he is not female.  Secondly, he is responsible and rational.  Thirdly, he knows a lot of stuff about computers.

Anyway, Byron is awesomely articulate and inciteful.  Often his blogs are about computer tech issues that I couldn’t understand for the life of me, but some of his blogs are about politics and whatnot.  Those blogs I understand, I am always so impressed that I have such a smart, smart twin brother.

Another plus to Byron’s blogs is that he writes coherently.  I do not always write coherently. Duh.

The title of this blog post is the name of a  film that I watched in my Urban Geography course this evening.  As far as I know, I’ve been living under a rock and everyone else has known about this documentary (made in 2004) except for me.  I had always been disenchanted by the Al Gore/Inconvenient Truth/Oil Oil Oil conspiracy stuff that has been going on for the last many years.  It’s not that I am ignorant, or against it — I just haven’t been too interested in getting all militant and obsessed about oil as some people have.  Anyway…

We watched this film in class. I would recommend people view “The Depletion of Oil and the Collapse of the American Dream”, not because I agree or disagree with its content, but because it had some thought provoking qualities.   The most impressive part about the documentary was just how prophetic it was.  Several scientists and academics make some predictions, which at the time seem unbelieveable to a global society so uneducated about what keeps their livelihoods from falling apart; and these predictions, for the most part, occurred — often, impressively, at the dates predicted.

People make predictions all the time.  I think when most predictions turn out to be fact, people are mildly entertained, or just neutral, or unaware.  Other times, obviously, the predictions are incorrect.  What stands out about what these people claimed would happen, is that they were predicting the equivilent of an apocalypse.  The inability to satisfy an overwhelming and exponential “need” for oil, for consumption, for a chaos theory kind of mob-mentality, consuming behaviour, means the death of a life that recent generations [from certain countries] feel entitled to, and inevitably leads to the loss of social cohesion and norms.  Most of the speakers in this film didn’t go so far as to predict a dissolution of any sort of social contract, but they do insinuate it.

So, pretty crazy stuff.

What I did take issue with, is that this film is, as can be expected, one-sided.  Obviously a film that is attempting to plead, intelligently, to the public, and to the slightly-above-layman audience that it needs to collectively WAKE THE FUCK UP and change if you want your children to see tomorrow is not going to present a lot of counter-arguments.  Fair enough.  I think anyone intelligent enough to watch this film (it’s pretty easy to follow, but not for Cletus) with an open mind can understand that it is one sided, and has a clear agenda.

Having said that, I study arts and social sciences.  I consider myself adequately educated in these areas, and can understand concepts.  However, I do not understand much about physical sciences; so, when the scientists in this film say that it takes more energy to create hydrogen power than it does to use it, or that such and such uses up so much oil, or that something is scientifically ineffecient, that isn’t good enough for me.  I would like, at least, a brief background to explain to the uneducated viewer in me: “this is why this is like THIS”.  It is important to recognize your audience, and this film obviously was not made for scientists.  If this film had been made for scientists, I would not have understood half of what was in it (or any of it?)  This film was made for people like me, like the general audience I referred to above, and most of us are not highly educated about these topics.  This film is like “Oil Mear-Mongering 101″, which is why it is so easy to watch.

Bottom few lines: Movie:

-interesting and thought provoking. Check it out!

- freakishly prophetic

- lacked empirical data for the physical scientifically uneducated geek in me.

Good night.

I was talking to some people about a short story I wrote back when I was teenager.  The story was about how I will die.  It stemmed from me telling them that “every time something great happens in my life, I thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I died today?’”  Wow.  That is so Vonnegut.  Anyway.  This is a little piece called “Social Anxiety hey hey hey” that I wrote when I was in highschool. Ha  ha ha.  Grammar etc. has not been edited, so that this can be enjoyed in its natural form.  Hilarious.

One day I’m gonna go outta my house and people will be all ‘Oh my god. I recognize you’. And I’ll say ‘what? what are you talking about? When did this happen?’ and it will seem like a horrible joke. [It's like that story I read in grade 9 English about the man who woke up and discovered he was the mayor of his town and didn't know how.]
‘I’d hate to become the people I hate’ I’ll complain. So then I’ll hop in the minivan with my dad and go to Wyoming. And go to Albuquerque and head west. Yeah, ba by. On Route 66. cause we never finished the trip. We only made it to Albuquerque last time. And then we’ll reach the coast. And I’ll be happy cause I made it. Then something disasterous will happen. I’ll be in West Hollywood eating a snocone on Santa Mon ica Boulevarde at a crosswalk. The cross walk will say ‘walk’ and i’ll walk. Then out of nowhere will come a speeding Chrysler that runs a red light and collides with me. Blood, Leora and Snocone all over the ground; All over the windshield. I’ll curse my self as I’m dying ‘I always said I’d die the one time I didn’t jay-walk …’

Hello Internets,

In contrast to recent discussions of dystopian cities of Gamblor and my disdainful fascination with the mainstream media’s coverage of various phenomena, I would like to “plug”, if you will, a website/blog/podcast.

Some fine gentlemen in Toronto, Tim (and contributing geek, Brad) have a blog called “Comma Error”.  Tim has done a bunch of reviews of recent video games, and dude knows his video game shit.  Tim and Brad also have started doing a podcast, which is pretty entertaining.  So check it out.

Also, now I shall plug myself, for the millionth time today: plug plug plug. For those who haven’t heard me brag about something that isn’t totally extraordinary:  I was accepted into UBC today and offered the President’s Entrance Scholarship.  It’s nothing too fancy; just based on academic merit, but I am still stoked.  I still have someone else’s money paying for my schooling, as a recognition of my brain power.  Woooooooo.