Big Wide World

i could make a comment about the disgusting death of a young girl who was shot to death b/c she decided to go shopping on boxing day, or the state of society, or how governments want us going to church b/c its good for the economy, but i feel the need for some light commentary. nothing thought provoking, nothing serious, nothing remotely close to being anything useful. just some completely useless commentary:

i was at work, and since it's christmas, there are many people not at work, we're not really working at 100%, chatting away, the girls started to talk about who the most good looking guy was (obviously famous since non-famous guys are hard to rate). so, my answer at this time, has come back to Brad Pitt. I'm sorry, but god help me, he is.


come on, its the guilty pleasure that most of us have, but nobody wants to admit. it's like justin timberlake. you love him, you just can't stand anybody knowing it. like for example, i will listen to "cry me a river" cause, arg, i do like it, but even if i'm listening to my ipod, and nobody can hear the song, i'm still ashamed that someone might hear it and i instantly feel like a loser. come on, admit it, you doit too. so, brad pitt is that for most of us too. we hate the fact that we love him. but, i'm getting over it. the man is 42 and he is fine.

but then one of the women i work with asked, but who's the most gorgeous man ever. and that was easy. Cary Grant. Hands down the most unbelieveably gorgeous man ever (despit my obsession with partrick stewart-yumm): "Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant" quote by cary grant.

ok, since nancy pointed out that all the things that i'm writing about are on a "hate society" point of view, i'm forced to find something nice or humurous to say. so here it is, just for you nancy pants.

random:
The unique research operation is being conducted about 84 million miles away from Earth. But Ms Bai has argued its effects will “disrupt the natural balance of forces in the universe” and claims the experiment has violated her “life and spiritual values”.
She said: “It is obvious my horoscope will be deformed now that elements of the comet’s orbit and associated ephemera have been changed after the explosion.” Her lawyer Alexander Molokhov, said his client believed the experiment “infringes upon the natural life of the cosmos, and will disrupt the natural balance of forces in the universe.”

Personal:
Went in to starbucks this morning (i know i know, it's like they put drugs in the coffee) and as i'm walking away, one of their people gives me a free $5 card worth one coffee. now, how nice is that. mind you, i'm not fooled. i know, and they know, that i'm paying WAY too much money for one coffee, so this is their way of trying to lure me into say "oh, that's very nice, see, starbucks is giving away christmas gifts for free coffee". i will not say this, and just in case there are starbucks people out there reading blogs, you know that i know that you know that these are ridiculous prices for water, flavour, steam, and a teaspoon full of actual coffee. but me must have white-choc-mocha-grande-no whip. it goes back to what laura penny writes about the large companies that do food drives since they get to write them off as charity and pay less taxes. but hey, i got two of those starbucks badboy cards, and i even gave one to someone at the office who won't bug starbucks cause it's too expensive. so she had a treat this morning. i'm so generous (shush, i know it didn't cost me anything, its the thought that counts right?) see, now i'm even trying to convert people for starbucks. they should be paying me.

two stories today to fill your heart with warmth:

i am reminded of the joke i heard about the man who won a million dollars. he comes home, and says to his wife: "pack your bags, i just won a million dollars", she shrieks, "oh my god, where are we going?", he says "i don't care, just get the hell out". well, it seems that one man in canada is taking this joke to heart. he was married but it was shaky. he kept the win from his wife, they divorce, and a year later he tried to claim his money. even though she's destitude now. so, now consider how wonderful this man is: he sat on a ticket worth $30,000,000 for ONE YEAR so that he wouldn't have to give her any. imagine the self-restraint, the discipline, the greed, the vileness. if you cut him open, i bet he bleeds slime. doesn't it bring a tear to your eye? jokes on you stupid, if you bought the ticket while married, and it wasn't a gift, it's half hers.

the second is just an observation. i go into starbucks in the morning for my white choc mocha grande no whip (arg, i even talk like them now). and then i stand outside and have my smoke (its the two things that get me going at 7am- shut it). and there is a homeless guy there sometimes. nice guy. today, i gave him $2 and like 5 cigs. and while i'm standing there, he's saying merry christmas to everyone walking by. most people didn't even acknowledge him. but i think what's even worse is those that went in to buy their starbucks, paid $5 for COFFEE, and then didn't have $0.25 to give this guy. if you have $5 for coffee, you have a quarter for a guy who, at 7am, joyfully wishes you a warm Merry Christmas. "if you live with apes man, it's hard to be clean...the beautiful people"

there's been a lot of talk about god recently, and i must admit, when watching "the boy whose skin feel off" i started to consider it. aside from personal experiences, i don't think that i've ever been sadder, angrier, sympathetic, and so many more things. its a story about a man named Jonny Kennedy, who had Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), which basically gives your entire body a blister because your skin tries to heal itself, so it keeps blistering and falling off-- your entire life. i can't describe the absolute horror that went through me. i won't even try to describe.

if i were to have a hero, he would be it. how can i complain about the dramas of my life, when this man lived with excruciating pain for 30 somewhat years? do you remember what one blister on your heel feels like? this was his entire body. i'm not going to get into the details, if you want to read some of the horrors of this disease, you can do that... better yet, try to watch this sad but inspiring heartfelt story of a man that despite the hard life that he was dealt, he still had a great sense of humour.

but get ready to cry like a banchee... Jonny Kennedy, i salute you. RIP.

1. when did the problem of people molesting baboons become so big that we actually had to come up with a name for it? cause you know that they don't invent things until it becomes prevalent. i refer you to the "baboonaphile"
(check out definition #2 for that word)

2. apparently, the number 1 killer of beavers (get your mind out of the gutter) is trees. well of course it is... what else could it be?

3. fake snow was first made with fragments of frosted glass... ok, sure when this "proved harmful" (they needed to wait for proof?), cotton batting was suggested, but fire fighters rejected it b/c of fire concerns... so guess what they switched to in order of production? powdered-ammonia then mica (which scarred lungs), and then asbestos.

Early Santas were apparently just as bad, carnival and circus workers with no costumes, who drank, smoked, and were missing teeth. so a random alcoholic who probably didn't have a great understanding of hygene was sitting kids on his lap... probably reaked of ashtrays and whiskey, and when he asked "what do you want for x-mas little girl?, said it through a nasty mouth with missing teeth.

My favourite story though.... in early 1900s meat markets used to decorate carcasses with painted motifs, and would put elk antlers on bear heads, and the ad in Eatons that read "Santa's reindeer all drowned, so he's coming in by train." sweet. (#3 is all from McCormack's book 'Christmas Days')

we'll file all of that under should have known better?

it was a good day today. let's review: it was good that i had to get up at 6:30am. it was good that i had to beat traffic, it was good that i went in to get coffee and realized that i didn't have money, it was good that i didn't know where my debit card was, it was good that i was starving and couldn't buy anything, it was good that i had slept 5 hours and couldn't get coffee. it was good that i worked 9 hours, it was good that i didn't get a break in that 9 hours, it was good that i didn't eat anything all day, it was good that i got a nose bleed in the most random moment. it was good that it snowed hard today, it was good that of all days, i had to go home by myself in the middle of the big snow storm. it was good that i got out of work at 4:45, it was good that it took me 3.5 hours to get home on the transportation system, it was good that i didn't have winter shoes on, it was good that i had to walk home for 15 minutes in the storm. it was good that when i was standing at the intersection, a dumb ass gino decided to keep going 70 km an hour, and it was especially good that after the day i had he got so close to me that he splashed the gaddamn dirty slush all over me.

yeah, it was a good day, how was your day?

i know that it was my own dumbass-ness (shush) that made this situation happen, but it still hurts. i heard him use the word like 3 years ago, and said it wasn't a real word. did i bother to check? NO-OO. did my lazyass just assume he was wrong? YESSS. and every time for the last 3 years i've been saying "its still not a real word", and now, three years later, i have to admit that i was wrong, for all this time, and the word does exist. ouch. though, um, it exists in the urban dictionary, so i'm only partly wrong, cause, well, it's not a real dictionary. ha ha. (ego problems much?) but at least i can admit i'm wrong. and, i knew that he would never check it in a dictionary either, so when i found out that it did exist, i could have just "pretended" (read lied) that it wasn't a real word. see, i'm not that evil. i told him it was a real word, against my better judgment, cause i know he'll make me pay for it, BIGTIME.

ok, next topic. i was watching national geographic today, and they did a show on spiders. since i have a HUGE fear of spiders (yeah so i'm not very original-bite me), i decided to force myself to watch it. its that whole "conquer your fears" nonsense. not like it works. only made me really itchy (that's what seeing spiders does for me, stange isn't it?). ok, but i did learn something. men are lucky that we aren't like spiders. and women, here's what i learned. men get away with treating us the way they do b/c we don't kill them after sex. that's right ladies, be like the red-back spider. ok, obviously i'm not being serious. but honestly, being a male spiders sucks. they get eaten or killed by their female lovers. one spider even flips up his abdomin while he's implanting his seed so that the female can eat it for nutrients to help the eggs grow. um, yeah, are you listening dead-beat fathers? i'm not saying you have to offer your bottom half for mothers to eat, but would it kill you to just sacrifice a little?

With everything being about shopping lately (xmas coming up and all), I started thinking about economics a little, and the popular cliche of "money can't buy you happiness". It seems that this has been widely researched. Former studies suggested that it couldn't, new ones suggest that it can. Here's my theory. First of all, i think that a lot has happened in the years between the studies, and what possibly held true then does not mean that it holds true now. We live in quite a different world now as we did even as little as 10 years ago (in a world of gadget happy, billion dollar, capitalism that is the WEST). so maybe it wasn't true then, but it is true now. that's my first opinion.

Second, and for those that know me, you won't be surprised by this, I think money can buy you happiness. not just b/c when i go shopping i feel better (though i do, and my perception is my reality- and most of you feel the same way so stop being in holier than though denial). I think that given a few conditions, money can buy you happiness. i think that you have to have good family, friends, and people in general around you who won't rob you blind, stab you in the back, or stab you literally, and good security after you become rich. i think that you have to have some control and wil power. and i think that you at least have to have some half a mind so that you can process everything that's happening around you. under these conditions, i think that it would make you happy. think about it: you have a family member who needs a transplant- you can buy it (let's not talk ethics here, this is Economics 101 not philosophy 101).

and, lets not forget that money (read capitalism) is, despite what logic dictates, a leveling playing field. if you're part of a minority, if you're disabled, if you're somehow different, being able to buy what others have makes you feel like you're part of that community. it makes you an insider. we bond as a community by the things that we have. its sad, but true. at least in the west. i don't mean family or friends, but definately with the larger community that is the city, country, society that you live in.

finally, let's assume that money can't buy me happiness, i'm not opposed to renting,

so there's my two cents this holiday season. happy shopping.

i'm not sure how to even understand this. is this a joke? is it real? there are moments in life when you simply scratch your head and think "am i just not getting something here?".

that's what happened to me when i read this article: "Jerry Springer: The Opera" This cannot actually be a real thing. someone is pulling my leg. god i hope.

it seems that someone thought that it would be a good idea to take the jerry springer show, and make an opera out of it. where is this person, i want to shoot him before they ban handguns in Canada. but i repeat the words of the article, even if you can do it, doesn't mean you should. it's like making a third "Final Destination" (oh wait, they did that too). are we just running out of ideas, and do we just have money growing on trees?

i was watching TLC the other day, and there was a story on titled "The Man with the 7 second Memory" It's a true story about a man named Clive Wearing, who, because of a freak virus travelling to his brain, has no memory of anything longer than seconds at a time. The only things that he remembers is that he loves his wife, and that he plays the piano.

20 years ago, before this happened, he was a very vibrant, intelligent music composer. But one day, he came down with what everyone assumed to be the flu, and a week later, the virus destroyed his hippocampus and just like that, the man cannot remember anything.

it was just the most devestating thing to watch. I mean imagine what that means. Its not just that he can't remember things, people, places. Every time he turns around, he's seeing everything for the first time. He can't read, cause he can't remember the sentence before, he can't develop his mind, he can't grow as a person. he's stuch in this emptiness, this vortex, of nothingness. He explains it as death.
i cried like i've never cried before. i've cried tears of sympathy before, of course, but this was so much more. Who are we if not a collection of ideas, theories, thoughts, and memories. that's how we become ourselves. i just felt so much for him and i imagine that being reduced to just this void of no continuity woul be devastating. so i cried and cried. really, if you have TLC find out when it's going to be on and watch it. it'll break your heart.

i don't know where my sudden luck came from but man i wish i could stretch it out to last for a couple more years.

here's what i mean: i got the job at the law firm pretty much without any stress. someone i know mentioned me to one of the lawyers, he said to call, i called. i went in, spoke to another lawyer, and five minutes later i had a job. part-time.

then last week, i get called into the office, and boom- just like that, i am now working full-time. how awesome is that, i ask you?

now i have settled on my new big buy. it's going to be the Treo 650 Smartphone



it's a phone, a pda, and has bluetooth and wifi, so web and email access at any time, anywhere. man, it's a power toy. but with me working full-time and somehow squeezing in school (full-time ha ha), i'm always on the go, and well, there are a lot of "reasons" to get it, so why not. i want it i want it i want it (not demanding much).