I Should Have An Abstract

2011-08-31T10:51:00.003-04:00

"Evolution is a term to define only one organism and that's the self. The self *is* the universe. The self *is* the alpha and omega and god and infinity. And that's the only thing that evolves, because we are all *part* of the self. Nothing goes through an evolutionary process alone, or without direct benefit to the whole.
So when you begin to think that there's this controlling elite, this controlling "hand behind the curtains" leading the planet to destruction; when you think the end is near, The Apocalypse, Armageddon; and when you think we as a species are doomed, it is not "they", it is you that brought this about. And for a very good reason: you are evolving.
Stop blaming everybody and everything else. Quit panicking about global tyranny and natural disaster and pay attention, because the world is telling you something. It is telling you exactly what is wrong with you and how to fix it."

- Quoted from "Kymatica" link as posted below

2011-08-31T10:47:00.001-04:00

http://youtu.be/MkbvJFEQgJU

When you think about the messages in the video and its overall meaning, then attempt to apply it to yourself in your own life, you can almost fall into a trap of infinite repetition; like seeing a picture of a man holding a photograph of a man who is also holding up a photo, and that photo he's holding depicts the same man holding a picture of a man holding a picture of a man holding a picture of a man, or the visual effect of infinite refection that occurs when you hold a mirror up to another mirror--as seen by the architect in Inception when she pulls two imaginary mirrors parallel in order to infinitely reflect pillars and create a long, open corridor--and ultimately leading to an infinite tautology (like I'm purposefully doing with this very run-on paragraph) in which you've been "told" not to follow the masses and accept ideals and fundamental laws without question, which have been unquestionably passed down the generations by people who had received and accepted this information set without question from, ultimately, a person/human being who was no more of a supreme authority of knowledge to make such judgments, conclusions and statements of law or constitutional ways of being/living life "properly" than anyone else in existence. What you end up with is a continuous, repeating Penrose stairs-type cycle performed ad nauseam if you believe what the video says without question, but, even in not believing without question and following the video's suggestion of arriving at a conclusion on your own and for yourself, you, ipso facto, fall down the infinite well or are forever climbing the never-ending stairs. It's almost an inherent, fallacious, contradictory, ironic, and infinite juxtaposition of the idea that you should accept the fact that you should never accept facts as facts at face value without questioning the facts themselves.

It's this very circular and infinite reasoning style first taught to me in philosophy 101 -- creating an infallible argument that, by its very own definition or set of pre-defined postulates, cannot be refuted to the point of almost becoming a paradox -- that caused me to drop the course a few weeks in. It seemed to me to be a cheesy exercise of banging someone's (or your own) head against a wall and adamantly refuting every point with you own irrefutable counter-position until the other concedes or stalemate is reached where the people "agree to disagree".

Look up "paradoxes" for some interesting reading. Examples are "if god does exist, could he create a stone so heavy that even god himself was unable to lift?", which is a religious iteration of the same paradox "what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?" (you might recall this paradox as recently quoted in "The Dark Knight"). Both are fallacies and are unverifiable as well as impossible to disprove, violating the constituent requirements of scientific "rules", "laws" or theories which is that, in order to go from hypothesis to theory to "rules" or "laws", the original concept(s) usually are or can be unprovable but MUST be falsifiable. In short, you can never really prove ANYTHING to be true, but only by exhaustively demonstrating that every possible contradictory/contrary piece of evidence is false, or at least enough are proven to be false, can you then deductively, but tentatively, assert that "hypothesis A is our best guess at what is 'true' given that all observable evidence obtained to the contrary, thus far, is false." The batman-referenced paradox has two inherent flaws that are waived for the sake of argument, but it is those two very flaws--which are in violation of physics--that are the only two ways of disproving the circular hypothetical question in the first place. E.g. The argument would resemble:

"There cannot be such a force which is infinite and unstoppable..."

"But supposing there was and it acted upon an object so dense and heavy that it cannot be moved..."

"But such an object impervious to any, all and EVERY force also could not exist..."

"But what if it did?" etc. (the wiki on paradoxes illustrates these both in better detail)

However, *neither* of which can exist, or even be thought to exist, unless some physics is totally discarded. One cannot exist if the other one also exists; i.e. they cannot co-exist, which is also curiously referenced throughout Harry Potter in terms of the hero/antihero dynamic where one is the antithesis of the other: "Neither can live while the other survives".

No advice or opinion I can give will resolve this paradoxical concept since, in even trying to provide an illustration of a method in which to "use" the information presented in the video would, in itself, be in contradiction to the original idea.

Some of the most "compelling" or massively (to the masses) convincing arguments rely on these most often extraordinarily well-hidden inherent fallacies to make an idea sound like (excuse the pun, which, whenever someone says that they mean "look directly at the pun to see my cleverness") the unquestionable, irrefutable word of god.

My personal opinion is that the video is interesting and can spark lengthy debates; it does, however, seem to present the ideas at times as though they are accepted and proven fact--complete with historical evidence--rather than present the ideas as a potential theory (thus is self-contradictory). The author seems to be claiming "this is how things ARE", not "this is a reasonable, hypothetical explanation for how things MIGHT be".

I also believe (and have been exposed to the knowledge of) the biological experiments describing organisms spontaneously adapting to use the food source they previously couldn't utilize are well-researched and grounded in good, solid science. The biology doctor (forget his name) seemed fairly reputable and worthy of further study/reading. See/google "the Lenski experiment with Escherichia coli" -- it's a very interesting, extraordinarily precise, careful and exhaustive long-term experiment spanning 20+ years examining various conditions in which organisms spontaneously adapt in order to survive and successfully propagate their species.

The best I can do is state that I've provided exposure to some philosophical concepts which you can choose to evaluate yourself or choose not to and, if you so choose, watch it and take away from it what you will. But again, that statement is analogous to the author's statement that (paraphrasing) 'the American constitution is simply a listing of some of the rights you already have. They cannot be given to you by another person, nor can you do anything with them (such as give them away) except choose whether or not you wish to exercise those rights.' And, yet again, even that is somewhat circular...

2010-08-11T02:55:00.004-04:00

I read to the deaf and blind at hospitals, and teach origami at an old folks' home on weekends. Old ladies help ME cross the street. I once ate an entire horse so whenever someone says "I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse" I can say "I did". My smile alone could bring the economy out of recession, if only I didn't have to compete with McDonald's. Menopause has spontaneously reversed upon meeting me. The windows 7 commercials were MY idea. Instead of "googling", people call me. 3D glasses are required on dates with me. I haven't seen Titanic or The Sixth Sense.

2010-08-10T12:40:00.002-04:00

I remember the days when peanuts were a delicious ice cream topping and not a deadly allergen. Playing hide-n-seek and having to be home when the street lights came on. Listening to MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice and Weird Al Yankovic on my hand-me-down red ghetto blaster.

My biggest financial transactions revolved around a weekly allowance, Christmas and birthdays. Saturday morning cartoons were actually good, like Inspector Gadget, Punky Brewster, Carebears, Transformers, He-Man, G.I. Joe, X-men, Bugs Bunny and Tweety.

We used to pass notes in class instead of text message; call people on the phone and have a huge list of memorized phone numbers; met people face-to-face; used hard-bound encyclopedias in libraries to look up facts; had film cameras, got our pictures developed and placed them in bulky photo albums.

2010-08-10T03:32:00.001-04:00

i am a robot. you are a hurricane. we don't always see eye to eye. giggling laughter. passion. destruction. risk. pain. love. sex. music. conversation. comfortable silence. slow dancing. soulmates and guardian angels. you will be my muse. i will be your storyteller.

one day

2009-10-28T23:54:00.004-04:00

"if I imagined you, body next to another... stop crying to the ocean, stop crying over me. stop worrying over nothing, stop worrying over me...

so... it's been so long since you've said... 'well I know what I want and what I want's right here with you' "

2009-06-22T19:21:00.002-04:00

--my response to a blog post by a friend of mine here

This may come across as crass, but I have an analytical mind so just take it very literally, not personally. It's only my view of things in terms of 'do we matter'. The way I see myself in the world is that I don't matter. You don't matter either. Nothing matters. Well, maybe a little. More on that later.

People that have religion and faith in their lives believe something matters, which is why they have faith and religion in the first place. I respect their beliefs in whatever gods they have. All over the world there are various gods to help societies and cultures make sense of their surroundings. I believe that people's brains are hard-wired to use something like religion as a device to help them understand the world, to give them a reason or purpose for existing in order to preserve and perpetuate the human species. Mind you, this obviously isn't the only instinct used for species perpetuation and survival. But for someone like me who has no 'faith', I have accepted the fact that; nothing happens to me when I die, there is no higher power, I will not answer to anyone for my actions in this life, and nothing waits for me when I die. But that doesn't bother me or scare me -- I've come to terms with it and I'm okay with that. I may have no faith in a higher power ruling over me, but I still live my life with a certain personal code of conduct. I've adopted some principles from the bible as though they were true, only because I think they're good ideas, for example it is a 'sin' to murder someone or commit suicide (and even though I do not believe there would be a hell for me to go to should I ever commit one of those acts, I still never could because it's ingrained in me how wrong they are). I also have my 'own' karma system where I believe that doing good acts is good (it's pretty complicated) but I don't necessarily expect to get an equal return, e.g. it's completely fine if I get back 1 random good thing for 10 things I've done -- I don't keep score.

Although, in the greater scheme of things, I don't believe any of this matters--our hopes and dreams, beliefs, existence--I do have my own personal system of beliefs that I have created. A belief system that is a bunch of ideals and principles to live my life by which, in reality, isn't much different than many other religions out there, except that mine doesn't involve supreme beings and floods and plagues and boils and frogs and the apocalypse and all that fun stuff.

The only thing that matters is right now, and if right now isn't good, what can you do to make it better? If you don't like yourself right now, what can you do to make yourself better? If you don't like your job, friends, weight, house, finances, depression, whatever, right now, what can you do to make it better for later? This is the only life you have so make the best of it. Be as important as you want to be, and be that person for YOU. Do things that make you happy and make you smile and make you feel good when you look at yourself in the mirror. Be yourself, your whole self and as much of yourself as you can be. Be happy with yourself. know yourself. Love yourself. Then go out into the world and find the thing that makes you the most happy and go after it. If it's a dream job or a hobby or a soulmate or travelling the world or whatever, find it and never stop until your heart does.

2009-02-04T05:22:00.011-05:00

Random Facts II

In my head I feel least 4 or 5 years younger than I actually am. I act probably 20 years younger than I actually am a lot of the time, and at that age everyone told me I was too old for my age.

I hate socks. At the first socially acceptable point in any situation, I take my socks off. My feet don't smell, they just like to breathe. I get so annoyed by commercials I see on tv that I have to mute them and if I can't get to the remote in time I will cover my ears and close my eyes and go "lalalalalalallalalalalala" until I hit the mute. Yeah. If TV is pollution for your mind, then commercials are radioactive waste. Fallout. I wanted a ps3 so bad for probably 4 months before Christmas and now that I have one, I hardly ever play it. When I was a kid I wanted a Sega Game Gear

sooooo badly for Christmas and when I finally got it, I accidentally broke it the same day and had to play with a gigantic crack in the screen. Sometimes hoping for something is way better than actually getting it. Except when you're so so hungry and hoping for food, then you get food. In that situation getting and eating the food is WAY better than wishing you had food. I drink a lot of energy drinks. I think one time when I got a case of energy drinks (yes for Christmas again, not like it's my favourite holiday or anything, these things keep leading back to that day)

anyway I was saying I got a case of Red Rave (terrible) energy drinks for XMAS and probably drank the entire case of 24 in a week or two. A little while after that it was discovered that I had a 2 cm diameter kidney stone. I think the two events are unrelated but maybe not. I'm not a doctor. Right now, I have a huge-ass beard. Not an ass beard, but a beard on my face, that's very huge-ass. It's gonna have to go sooner or later. Maybe later. I have tattoos on my forearms and even though some people may claim they know more than anyone about what they mean, nobody actually knows what they really mean and the whole story behind the design.

I'm never telling. Whatever. I like so many movies and so many different kinds of music that when people ask me what kind of movies or music I like, I have no idea what to say. I get stumped. You really need to see me to believe me. Or at least understand. When I'm working on my "get rich quick" schemes I sometimes think about which places I know that would be easy to rob, with a good payoff. Then I remember I'm not a criminal and my life is not Ocean's 11. Or 12.

Similar to one of the best and worst parts of Garden State, sometimes I try to find and do something that no one has ever done before and pretend I'm the first and only person to do some strange thing. Or even something people may have don but I can say "well I've never done this and this before", then I'll do it just for the sake of knowing I did it. I can't think of any interesting examples right now which kind of makes the previous sentences pretty pointless. I don't like cherry flavoured drinks. Or any "red" drinks for that matter. I'm getting better though, choking down that weird "red" flavour. I hate cinnamon gum too. Why on earth do they make such a terrible gum that burns your tongue and hurts your throat? Is that supposed to be refreshing?? It just tastes like someone lit a pumpkin pie on fire in my mouth. I get no enjoyment out of chewing cinnamon gum, quite the opposite in fact. I never sleep. I'm a vampire, I have the fangs and everything and I drink blood on weekends and Christmas morning. Ok, Monster energy drinks, not blood. But man that stuff jacks you up. For the record there is no correlation between energy drinks and my sleeping habits. Sometimes I'll have a coffee when I wake up in the middle of the night, or a glass of Coke, then go back to sleep like a baby, a coffee and cola drinking baby that is. With a beard. I wish my eyes were a different colour. I asked for colour contacs for Christmas but got a stupid ps3 instead. Maybe green eyes I think. I like those brown doe eyes

with blond hair on girls, as for brunettes... I don't care what colour their eyes are but the blond/brown doe eyes combo is pretty hot. It's not like a relationship requirement or preference or anything, I just find them attractive. Eyes are definitely the windows to the brain. Everyone gets so worked up over green eyes, but I rarely even meet people with green eyes so I don't get my hopes up. All my dog does when I take her outside is eat snow so after a while I refuse to take her out anymore because all she does is, well, eat snow.

I never know if she's actually gotta go or just chow down on some frosty snowflakes. Then after a while I figure I better let her out cause she's bound to have to go now, given all the snow she's eaten. Then I take her out and she starts eating again; diving into the snow, mouth open. Then she pees on the floor in the house. My dog purposely ignores me when she's outside, eating snow. She's like in the zone for snow-consumption. I hate getting ignored enough by people as it is, but by a dog? Come on. That's just rude. Being ignored by cats I can understand, they're the snobs of the animal kingdom. My birthday's coming up in 6 days. Email me and I'll tell you where to leave the presents.

2009-01-06T04:22:00.006-05:00

You don't want to see the future, except the one inside your head you created for yourself
You paint a pretty picture of your dreams, guided by the numbers on the canvas all laid out
You tell me that you're happy, contented with the life you expected to have lived up till now
You tell me things can't get much better, always picking up the pieces, making sure they fit together
I see the darkness in your eyes; in each hollow, empty room a part of me dies
I search them fruitlessly for that familiar, golden ray of light just to know you're still alive
I used to be the sun shining in your world, warm on your opalescent skin
I was the wind blowing your hair, giving you life each time you breathed me in

2008-12-07T05:13:00.005-05:00

Eternally trapped in the darkness of this permanent midnight, there is no moon or starlight to guide my way. I fumble through the dark, desperately trying not to spiral out of control and let what little sanity I have left evaporate into the void along with the rest of my senses. The only thing I can feel is the overwhelming sensation that I am going insane; that my brain is about to overload its circuitry like a highly energetic and unstable atomic bomb, brimming with catastrophic nuclear force, loosely trapped in a canister and ready to unleash hell upon civilization. I know that if I allow this bomb to explode it will mean a total system shut down of epic proportions—one that I would not survive. I cannot see, hear, move, or feel. I can’t scream for help. I am trapped inside my mind with only the ability to think. So, I think.

Caught in this black hole of sensory deprivation, I think of those things that make me weak: the senses I lack. Then I begin to I visualize that which I do not have: I imagine light, I imagine music playing, I feel the sun beating against me and warming my skin. I feel the wind blowing through my hair and scents carried in the breeze. I watch myself walk along the beach and feel the sand squeezing between my toes as the cold water washing over my feet. With every step along the beach, I feel lighter and lighter almost like floating above the sand. I feel like I'm in heaven, walking on clouds. While I stride towards the infinite and imaginary horizon, the light begins to spill outwards into the black abyss in every direction. As the light spreads slowly through the darkness, I feel a warm sensation radiating from my chest and flowing gradually to every inch of my body as though someone injected a warm, viscous liquid into my heart which was now suddenly pumping through my veins. The heat finds my hands and I feel my fingers twitch, it reaches my thighs and I can move them a little. My chest is completely full now and burning hot and as soon as this strange, warm tingling feeling washes over my neck and face, hot air rushes through my mouth deep into my lungs and I gasp in a huge breath of air and bolt upright.

I open my eyes and everything is a blurry mess of watery lights and shadowy figures. I hear a thousand voices at once and see silhouettes and faceless shapes all around me as though I’m looking at them from the bottom of a pool. I hear my name and people crying in frantic gasps and orders being shouted while my eyes roll back in my head and forward into focus then back again. I hear beeping, some fast and slow beeps and some at random intervals. I see metal and lights, white cloth and glasses. I start seeing blackness again, start feeling dizzy and I hearing buzzing in my ears while I flail around trying to get free just before I feel a completely different sensation altogether. A thousand shards of glass pierce through my veins in my left arm and the piercing pain instantly passes through my entire body causing every muscle to seize up for a few seconds before going limp, hot and numb. I fall back and close my eyes as the blackness starts to encircle me once again, and this time I'm helpless to fight it-- helpless to fight the inevitable time bomb awaiting me on the other side. A few seconds of lucidity allow me to hear distant voices:

“How much morph…”

“The standard…”

“He musn’t be sedat…”

“But he was going…”

“Do you even realize what…”

Then, as quickly as the shutter of a camera closing, the conversation halts and I’m thrown into a darkroom of my very own, forever black. Awaiting the apocalypse.

2008-11-18T11:19:00.005-05:00

--Random start of a story that I didn't want to write but it wouldn't get out of my head until I wrote it. Might work on it some more, but I'm attempting to write something different and in the midst of writer's block it's good to just write for the sake of writing I guess.

Gordon couldn't think. He didn't have time to think. He didn't even have time to breathe because something was already breathing an icy cold breath from behind him, prickling the hairs on the back of his neck, sending tingles down his spine to the top of his forehead. Christ, he thought. You call this spring? It's fucking freezing out here. He thrust his fists into his coat pockets and began walking briskly down the deserted street–of course everything seemed deserted these days—and kept his head low, not daring to turn behind showing a flash of his white face to whatever lurks in the darkness. A move like that could be just the signal the creature needs to lunge and attack. He turns a few corners and slumps down beside an abandoned building and rests, watching clouds of his own steamy breath billow out of his mouth—strange for nearly the end of April in the South. A lot seemed strange to Gordon these past few days. Everything happened so fast; as though he were in a dream and someone had hit the fast forward button, then decided to spontaneously ejected the tape midway through without letting him view the ending. Why is everything so goddamn cold!? He wraps his arms around himself for warmth and slowly his eyelids get heavy while he sits on the almost-frozen concrete struggling to remember what had happened to him.

#

‘Where am I?’
‘Relax Mr. Eltiers. That is correct, isn't it? Gordon Eltiers?’
‘Yeah, that’s me. Why am I tied down? Who the fuck are all these people? Don’t you know who I am? Do you even know my family?? You know I could kill you all of you and break out of here in less than 30 seconds, right? You do know that, don’t you?’
‘Trust me Mr. Eltiers we know all about you. We have taken every precaution to ensure you cannot escape, so don’t bother trying.’
‘Bullshit, tell me who you are!’
‘You see Mr. Eltiers, you’ve been selected for a special project, mostly because of your… advanced abilities. Try not to struggle. This won’t hurt too much.’

A computer voice announces: Subject number thirteen, trial two-hundred forty seven; commencing DNA stabilization injection one of seventeen.

Gordon feels as though an axe is slicing through his entire skull, made of solid ice. His boiling blood chills in his veins and he struggles to scream before being frozen into a statue and his entire consciousness blinks out in a flash. A solid white smoke envelopes his now rigid body, entombed in a liquid nitrogen-induced coma, if you can call it that. The computerized voice reports: DNA stabilization complete. Suspended animation achieved.

#

Gordon snaps out of his dream when he hears a loud screeching sound coming straight at the left side of his head. He deftly manages to grab catch a fast-moving, furry animal out of mid-air, frothing at the mouth, seething and clawing towards at his face and hands. The rabid squirrel he's caught attempts to bite him and as a reflex he just tosses the mangy rodent as far as he can in the opposite direction. He stares at his left hand in amazement. Huh. I’m right handed too. He thought. Holy shit, how did I do that? He notices a few scratches on his hand and started thinking he might get rabies. He also thought he had gotten bitten, but didn’t see any marks.

It was morning now, not quite as cold, so he decided he would get up and explore a little bit and maybe find some signs of civilization. He still couldn’t figure out why just three or four days ago–Had it been four days?–he was hanging out with his buddies having beers and suddenly he’s tossed into some strange wasteland he doesn’t even recognize anymore. He did feel good though, a little strange and disoriented at first, but physically he felt surprisingly alert and full of energy. He was guessing that’d be a good thing since he may become short of food and water within the next few days if he didn’t come up with a plan, and soon.

After walking for hours and not finding much, Gordon managed to stumble upon what looked like a deserted main street of a small town. No people were to be found anywhere, the store windows where all broken open but nothing appeared to be looted or stolen. It looked just as though nature had taken its course and wreaked havoc over time, causing everything to appear weather-beaten. Instead of looking for a grocery store for some salvageable canned goods, Gordon was compelled to enter another shop across the street: an old army surplus store. He rationalized it to himself that he would most likely need protection from whatever is out there as well, so he should see what is in the store, but the draw to the store was almost as intoxicating as it was instinctual.

As he entered the store he was surrounded by all sorts of weapons of destruction, items for protection and of course some collector’s relics. Most seemed unfamiliar to him, yet he still felt like a kid in a candy store. He found a samurai sword and, having never held one before, he decided to wield it, just for kicks. Grasping the finely crafted steel blade, he swung it left and right with the dexterity of one of the finest samurai warriors. He spun around and sliced clear through a beam behind him, supporting an upper level of the building. The upper floor slightly caved down, creaked and looked as though it were about to give way. He decided to sheath the sword and tie it around his back, for safe keeping. As he went around the store, he noticed he had incredibly advanced skills with almost every single weapon in the shop, yet had no idea how he acquired such abilities, not that he was complaining. He properly unpacked and assembled a complicated sniper rifle complete with scope and laser sight, then repacked it into the briefcase it came in, knew the position of every safety, trigger, magazine clip, chamber, and perfectly sighted every weapon he held like a professional. He found a military issue backpack and duffle bag and loaded up with as much gear as he could carry. Various items from rope, to guns and knives, shuriken, grenades, trip wire proximity mines, night vision goggles, even a rocket-propelled grenade launcher (RPG), with scope. Most, if not all of these items would be foreign to most people but were second nature to Gordon and almost seemed to make him happy. He may have to visit his happy place a few times.

Gordon managed to find appropriate shelter a short distance from the surplus store—the street which also contained, as luck would have it—a rundown grocery store with old food that could still be eaten. He grabbed a big buck knife and a few shuriken and began throwing them at trees nearby and noticed he could hit almost anything from any distance with incredible accuracy. This was really starting to freak him out. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong with his memory or who he used to be. At almost 100 metres away, Gordon focused on the tree and then closed his eyes and laughed to himself. There’s no way I can hit this. He took a throwing star out of his pocket and threw it at the tree, and of course he missed. Hah. I knew it. Then he thought for a second. It’s a little windy out and those stars are kinda light, I didn’t account for that. Maybe I should try again. He looked at the tree again, then closed his eyes but this time he focused on the mental image of the tree 100 metres away, breathed in deeply and then out. He threw the shuriken upwards and to the right a little bit, as hard as he could. Without opening his eyes and in the same fashion, he threw three more as fast as he could. He walked down to the tree and all four hit the tree exactly at exactly his eye level, two in the same groove in the tree, and the other two about a quarter of an inch to the right from the first two. He just stared.

2008-08-28T06:39:00.020-04:00

Sometimes if I have writer's block I jot down random words or ideas and try to make something out of it. Below I've illustrated my thought process when creating a piece in this fashion. Most times I sit down and write a story or poem flat out with little forethought, then edit it afterwards.

1. -Rough Draft, Words/Thoughts

[time sleep fire waiting buried hidden forgotten left knowing always temptation awakened restrained dream honestly i need protecting and you suddenly are always beside me feeling my eyes open up once believed if only i you're the one i never want to lose find you you'll be gone i've been looking for so long without you pushed you away i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry scream lack emotion beauty thank you lost stay up all night don't leave undiscovered eyes inspiration say goodbye keep breathing heart beating kept you warm day we met fate laugh stay close]

2. -Organised Draft, Somewhat Coherent Thoughts

[i've been looking for so long waiting day we met fate time laugh stay up all night heart beating kept you warm inspiration sleep scream don't leave left say goodbye keep breathing i once believed if only i pushed you away you'll be gone lack emotion hidden forgotten buried i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry lost without you honestly i need protecting and suddenly you are always beside me awakened restrained temptation always knowing fire dream feeling my eyes open up beauty undiscovered eyes inspiration you're the one i never want to lose stay close thank you]

3. -Final Draft (after a few edits)

Ever since I can remember I've been looking for something like this for so long, waiting until the day we met, not knowing in which time or place fate would bring us together. My thoughts, problems and worries dissolve all around me while we're together, while we spend each inspired minute talking and laughing, while we stay up holding each other as the hours of the night pass on to the morning. The touch of our skin keeping us warm while the synchronous beating of our hearts lulls us into a deep, dream-filled sleep. Startled awake with blinding lights, our too-good-to-be-true dream started to become a harsh reality and faster than it began, it was being torn away. Neither of us said a word or showed any emotions but were both screaming in our heads 'Please don't leave me!' as we left each other without kissing, without hugging, without looking back and without saying goodbye. Keep breathing. Just keep breathing. Breathe. Then forget.

Take it all and turn back time, put it all out of your mind. Push it away and bury it deep, somewhere in the recesses of your mind out from which it cannot seep. Forget your feelings and kill your emotions until everything's gone. Make it easier to try to forget and move on.

I'm sorry. I'm lost without you and honestly, I need protecting and you suddenly...

Suddenly we're brought back together after what seemed like an eternity had passed. We kept our distance using what little restraint we had left, despite how great the temptation was. The feelings and emotions built up between us like an over-inflated balloon, ready to burst, regardless of how hard we tried to resist. The slightest brush of one against the other, the faint smell of her perfume as she walked by, or a knowing look between us from across the table was all it took to set things in motion and the fires burning again. But our emotions remained just barely balanced and under control; one slight misstep would cause multiple worlds to collide all around us, destroying each other in an explosion more fantastic than a star going supernova.

When the dust had finally settled and there was room to breathe, the world to us had once again become like a walking dream except this time all that once was seemingly too good to be true, too hard to believe was becoming an unquestionable reality. What I hadn't seen before became crystal clear to me in her beautiful sparkling eyes; the undiscovered emotion and passion of which I've always dreamed and which had always inspired me, that I'd been longing for since I first knew what it was like to feel anything, was here in front of me, captured in these eyes looking deeply into mine.

Don't leave me. Stay close, she says.

I wouldn't give this up for the world, she's the one I never ever want to lose. I'm so overwhelmed by everything that I can hardly think of anything to say except:

Thank you, as I kiss her forehead.

2008-05-05T23:53:00.008-04:00

Swishing through the long, straw-like grass, the warming sun kissing their bodies, they run barefoot across the field, hand-in-hand, grinning and laughing like a pair of school children. They have no reservations; if love is blind, they cannot see anything or anyone else except for each other and their smiling faces as they stumble down to the ground near a large oak tree 20 metres away. She rests her head on his chest and puts her arm up around his shoulder while he stares up at the clouds in an almost dream-like state, enjoying this perfect moment they're sharing together and wanting it to last forever. He gently kisses her forehead and holds her close to him as she says,

"Promise you'll never let go."
"I promise."
"Tell me that you love me."
"I love you." He says to her, still looking up at the clouds
"Say it again."

This time he holds her face softly, then kisses her. He looks deeply into her eyes without saying a word, maintaining her gaze while she stares back with serious and half smiling half sexy looks, a little unsure of what to think but completely captivated by his eyes. Finally he hugs her close to him again, leans towards her ear and softly whispers,

"I love you."

She smiles, hugs him tightly and in his arms with the smell of the grass, the beautiful sunny day and the crisp, fresh air, she feels complete.

2008-04-23T02:20:00.014-04:00

The blackened dreams drip dark streams of smeared scenes in my brain and my mind.
No images survive the time; the seconds before I awake I'm blind.
The thoughts never come, the feelings are numb, and everything I do comes undone.
Everything's in slow motion and I haven't the slightest notion of where I'm going, or if my blood's still flowing.
Stuck in a pit, sinking out of air and starting not to care, the narrowing walls are more than I can bear.
Falling slowly again into a restful bliss, the world I will not miss and my absence it won't notice. But I won't be gone, at least not too long.

Sleep, saviour, torture, temporary escape. If only we could sleep forever, together, for never.

I am not me, I am not you and all of the 'yous' are not you and nothing is what it seems. I don't have disturbing dreams. I may have a split personality. I'm only somewhat aware that it exists, not cognizant of who or what he or she is, and some blog entries I see written on here sometimes appear foreign and baffling to me as though I've never seen them before. I'm slowly gaining consciousness and full control of both halves of the whole.

Electricity sparks through my prescription drug-addled brain, medication supposedly used to quell the pain.
Yet it still breaks through the shield, the cozy terms like "blanket" they use to describe how the medication is supposed to make me feel.
How they act on my mind keeping it smothered, ensuring the crippling migraine pain is undercover.

I turn lifeless. I have no feelings. My world moves in slow motion, literally and figuratively, and I have a pair of DJ-sized headphones on that cover my ears completely. I act out of unconscious instinct most of the time and I'm pretty sure my consciousness is at a level of 75% effectiveness when it should be at full potential. Wake up. Put on a happy face.

i am a robot. you are a hurricane. we don't always see eye to eye. giggling laughter. passion. destruction. risk. pain. love. sex. music. conversation. comfortable silence. slow dancing. soulmates and guardian angels. you will be my muse. i will be your storyteller.
one day

2008-02-06T03:54:00.000-05:00

Beautiful. Your mind is a beautiful, intricately designed work of art running constantly and harmoniously synchronised with every other system in your entire body. It has the power to control every action and reaction that you have; it controls every emotion you feel, express or repress; your brain regulates your blood pressure and breathing, keeping you alive, and all of this is done with no effort by us. These are a few simple functions that we all recognise as being a part of our daily lives, but probably forget exist. Along with these actions and being the central “machine” or processing system that drives our bodies and keeps us alive, our brain allows us to consciously take control of it for advanced tasks, while it maintains the more menial duties deemed not important enough for constant conscious awareness. This is really illusory control as not many people realise that our brain is so powerful, so advanced and so “smart” that it is capable of overriding this “complete conscious control” that we believe we have over ourselves at any point it feels necessary. If our lives are in danger, or there is a threat to the brain itself, it can shut down all systems and there is not a damn thing we can do about it.

There are more positive things as well, though. Possibly you could pass it off as the placebo effect, and that is completely plausible. I prefer to think of it more in terms of mind over matter. When I hear “placebo” I think “placating” or someone just given something to shut them up, and I know that may be inaccurate, but that’s what I think. It sounds to me that the effect is happening more by accident and that people are producing results not really by trying all that hard but more by happenstance. They are relatively the same idea, I’m just being picky on semantics when I say “mind over matter” because, to me, that phrase seems like it would require a fair amount of effort and certainly more effort than people having random results in a drug trial. Regardless, both are amazing examples of the mind’s ability to produce an almost magical result out of thin air based on your own pure belief in something; simply by thinking something will happen to you or visualising yourself getting better or having a certain side effect from a drug, those things actually, physically manifest themselves. It’s crazy. Another phenomenon is the “phantom limb syndrome” where amputees still have feelings in their severed limbs, such as a sensation in their hands; burning fingers, itchy palms, when they have actually lost their arm completely. Again, the brain and nervous system are getting crossed wires and mixed signals producing strange results.

This is where psychology comes into play. I take it a step further and use positive thinking as much as I can in my daily life, even if I’m not feeling the best, to keep a “good vibe” going for myself. I start with myself so I feel generally happy. Once I feel okay and happy, not negative or upset about anything, I can project those kinds of feelings outward. Usually if you’re feeling terrible on the inside, it shows everywhere on the outside: your face looks sullen and downtrodden; your posture is sulking and slumped; you walk slower and maybe shuffle a little; have a bit of a grumpy voice, not much smiling; those sorts of things. All of that body language is subconsciously picked up by every single person you walk past or interact with all along the way in your entire day whether they want to absorb that information or not. On the other hand, having a positive demeanour will make you appear all of the opposite traits I’ve just described, and project a positive, happy image to everyone. People obviously will pick this up as well and it will affect them in a positive instead of negative way, like in the first example. People will generally seem nicer, easier to get along with and talk to and even easier to “manipulate”.

It sounds bad since the word manipulation is always associated with negative connotations, but really it isn’t. Essentially what you’re doing is allowing people to act in ways that are more favourable towards you rather than ways that are more negative, simply by projecting a more positive image. If you come storming into somebody’s office with a pissed off face, the person in there is already going to be taken aback and on the defensive and less likely going to respond to you in the way you want, say if it’s to proofread a report you’ve written or approve a day off request. It’s not getting people to do your evil bidding; you’re just trying to get good things happening to good people, namely you.

Probably by this point, if you’re still reading, you may think this sounds a lot like that book or movie or television spot you may have seen called “The Secret”. It may sound like that now, but when I started to write this that was not my intention. If you watch the whole video for The Secret, they really go too far with it and get pretty fantastical with their ideas saying you can visualise yourself into a million dollars within a year and a new car, just THINK yourself into it and it will happen. I’m not Tom Cruise or some crazy Scientologist or fad-fanatic like that, I just love my badass brain and everyone’s brains and brains in general. BRAIIINNS. Ok I’m also not a skin-eating zombie either. I’m fascinated by the human brain and I’ve had a few extremely unique experiences with my own, both good and bad, that have really opened my eyes. I have always been a positive person even though I have been through hell and back (which, in my life, is the understatement of the century) and still kept up my positivity. I have never changed much in terms of my outlook except when I watched the movie or documentary for The Secret. Most of what I saw I was pretty sceptical about, to be quite honest. It sounded like preachy weirdo infomercial type stuff like the Q-Ray ionising bracelet. One thing that resonated with me and that I was able to take from watching it (I always try to find the good in everything as well) was that they did have a main focus and message in the movie, which was basically what I had been doing all along just with a minor change. That was to have a positive outlook on things, but also visualise good things happening to you and picture what you want TO happen to you, picture all of the positive things you want out of life and form mental images for your goals and so forth. But the important thing they said to do which a lot of us, including myself, probably don’t do is to make sure not to focus on things that we don’t want to happen. For example, hoping you don’t get sick, hoping you don’t get fired from your job, hoping your relationship doesn’t fail and so on. That type of thinking is basically just negativity and will put you down anyway even if you’re trying to think the opposite.

I honestly tried these things, these techniques and keeping negative thoughts out and positive ones in. I said to my grandparents before I moved to Toronto “Don’t worry Grandma I’ll be fine. I’ll have a new job and a girlfriend by spring, just you wait, you’ll see.” The funny thing is, I didn’t even try extremely hard to make either of those things happen either. Yes, I put myself in positions where I allowed those things to happen, where it would be possible, but I didn’t say in my head “I am going shopping for a girlfriend” or “ok today I am getting a job NOW”. I just went about my days, applied for jobs as I saw them and talked to people and yes, it’s February and now I have a new job and a girlfriend much ahead of schedule and I couldn’t be happier. I’m not saying I magically willed anything to happen, because who knows. All I know for sure is that positivity projected comes back in a positive way, and you can use that to make things beautiful.

2007-11-27T12:57:00.003-05:00

“I really hate flowers,” she said as they walked down a tree-lined deserted road.

He was slightly confused as he watched her pick a few yellow flowers he didn’t know the name of. “What makes you say that?”

“I can’t appreciate them pre-planted in phony little gardens, lined up in a row. Outdoor flowerbeds make me sick and just ruin it for me.”

“Okay.” he said. “Then why are you picking those from the side of the road? For starters, it totally contradicts your original statement. Why would you pick flowers if you hated them? Besides, you know they’re all going to die anyway.”

“These are unscripted, randomly-growing flowers, freely occurring of their own accord from no set design except by nature itself. Free for everyone and anyone to enjoy. But you see, I’m selfish and I want to take a sample of them home to keep all to myself so I can appreciate their beauty in a different way.” She lightly holds one of the flowers in the air in front of her, examining how the frail stem and petals bend in the wind like women in an exercise class. “I pick them, take them home, and then watch them die.” On saying her last word she lets go of the flower, allowing the wind to pick it up and carry it past both of them, out of their line of sight.

He thought about this for a few minutes as they continued to walk, suppressing the urge to cut and run since he barely knew this person. He decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. “You could always take pictures,” he offered.

“It’s not the same,” she said in a dry, slightly irritated voice.

Again he thought for a second and took a deep breath. “What about like, visiting botanical gardens or going on nature hikes, stuff like that. I mean, you’ve got to be able to think of other things you can do.”

She stopped dead in her tracks, spun around to face him. “You just don’t get it do you?”

He stared at her blankly, shocked. Apparently he didn’t. As he watched her storm away he started following behind, keeping a nice distance between them. About three car lengths should be good, he figured. Her black hair swished back and forth across her shoulders like a ball gown from the force of her walking. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest since it was getting late and a cool breeze had begun to sift through the trees and rustle the leaves.

Finally he could see where she’d been leading him this whole time which he was thankful wasn’t some secluded back alley or remote area in the forest. Instead, he found her waiting at the bottom of a fairly large hill, probably used by children in the winter for tobogganing. To the left was a concrete staircase divided down the middle by a rusted old metal handrail, no doubt used by skater punks in the summer.
“Follow me,” she said as she ascended the long stairway, careful not to touch the handrail.

So he followed her to the top of the hill and was amazed at the view and everything he could see. He was also relieved that he could see his red Celica parked on the opposite side of the hill, a few hundred metres down the road.

She took his hand and led him to a clearing on the hill. “Here, I want to show you something, lay down.”

Not quite sure what to expect, he laid himself back on the grass and looked up at the sky. It was a beautifully clear night out and the sky was the deepest, darkest midnight blue he’d ever seen, only lit up by an uncountable number of stars. She laid down beside him, put her arm and head on his chest, facing sideways.

An unknown amount of time to him passed; he seemed to be hypnotised by the night sky, almost in a trance allowing him to forget where he was. Suddenly he noticed a bright flash and then a trail of pink out of the corner of his eye. “Oh my God, did you see that!? I think I just saw a shooting star! I’ve never seen one before. Tell me you just saw that.”

He was too stunned to notice the smile slowly creeping across the corner of her lips, the cream-colour of her skin luminous in the moon light. “No, I must have missed it.”

“What? Ok, you have to watch with me this time so we can see one together.” He said to her while gently nudging her. “Come on. Lie on your back. Trust me, it was beautiful and you’ll love it.”

She didn’t move. “I’ve seen one before.”

Not surprisingly, he couldn’t understand her thought process. “Okay, well, don’t you want to see another one? These don’t happen every day you know.”

“I like remembering the moment of when I saw a shooting star better than seeing one. A lot of times your memory of what really happened will be more spectacular than what actually happened. Memories are precious, and can be forever.”

Like a flash of light inside his head it all finally fell into place and he wasn’t so confused about anything anymore.

“I get it,” he whispered to her. “I think I understand what you’re trying to say.”
He leaned his head in towards hers so they could touch, then he as well closed his eyes. Much like his strong arms holding her in a close, warm embrace beside him, he allowed himself to fully enjoy and embrace the moment; the memory of seeing his first shooting star and the inspiring moments Violet introduced to him which, no doubt, where to be the first of many. Two memories he now knew he would never forget.

2007-11-24T13:37:00.000-05:00

!ATTENTION!

attrac<---->tion

.e.c.t.i.o.n.

.m.i.s.

.d.i.r.

distraction (don't click it)

You are the illusionist. By chance or by choice, true calling or pure coincidence you are the one I catch in the corner of my eye. Always just a vague, vestigial afterimage left in my memory as you disappear seconds before what is commonly referred to as 'the reveal'. Vanished, like that dark, cloaked magician in misty white smoke at the end of the act. I yell your name but my own ears do not hear. My mind registers a very loud sound being produced in the form of a name; the reverberation shakes around in my head echoing like a scream down a cobblestone and concrete underpass. The contents of the sound are empty, as though your name were never contained within it. I struggle to remember as if I had actually heard it. As if someone just told me their friend's name and they turn their back, I immediately forget what it was, leaving me with a familiar face and a maddening inability to conjure their name. Only this time I have neither your name nor your face, just strange, cryptic memories of unknown origin, as though they were passed to me in a dream...

The dream changes shape and form in every way possible and each time is different. At the dinner table. Driving. Having sex. Walking around some unknown city, thousands of years ago. At a bar with friends. A mild day in October. Watching tv on the couch. The one constant through all of the variables in each setting is that the person is somehow familiar to me. I can sense them as if you were walking with someone and just happened to not be looking in their direction but you knew they were still beside you on your arm. You could feel them there. Each time I turn to look I can only sense and get a feeling of a person, a rough outline that is nondescript, with no defining features and nothing distinctive at all. It’s almost as though I were walking with a half-embodied ghost.

I do know who this person is, I remember. Yet, I don't.

2007-11-06T05:09:00.000-05:00

the sun shines on the snow-covered lawn steady and bright
millions of multi-faceted mirrors reflect its magnificent light
while indoors, the glare still causes you to shield your eyes
yet something about the snow still summons you outside
so you put on your boots, your gloves, and your coat
and head into the cold with a small lump in your throat
once outside, the fresh crisp winter air fills deep in your chest
you stand for a minute, take a really deep breath, and think to yourself, this season's the BEST!

then out of nowhere a flying projectile hits you in the head
leaving your face wet and cold and incredibly red
'YOU BASTARD" you shout at the hooligans in the street
and as you're shaking your fist and yelling, you slip on something with your feet
it's a patch of ice, BLACK ice, the worst KIND of ice, and you fall right on your ass
you start sliding down your sloped driveway incredibly fast
of course on the fall you smack your head and now you're just few bricks short of a full load
it's only after a few minutes you realise you've slid right into the road
no one can blame you for not hearing the snowplow coming, really it's not your fault
seconds later you're covered in a blast of dirty sand snow and salt
after you dig yourself out of a new snowbank... you know, the one now in front of your driveway
not quite in a state of hypothermia but very well on your way
you get up and stumble all sandy and salty to the front of your door
then an epiphany hits you harder than anything else has before:

no, I don't like winter, it's cold and snowy, full of all kinds of suck
yeah i dont care how pretty all the snow is i surely dont give a fuck
the snow's beautiful falling from the sky, yeah when you're by a fireplace nice and warm inside
but outside it frostbites off your fingers then hypothermia's the shit outta you -- that is it's ice-ninja disguise!
and shovelling snow makes me surly, yeah this season's totally balls
i could sure go without winter, no winters at all

2007-11-04T03:09:00.000-05:00

Suspension of disbelief is somewhat of a "device" used in arts and entertainment, such as literature, film and even the physical medium of art itself; drawing, painting, sculpting and so forth. It is both the goal of the one using the device and the one exposed to the art in which the device is being used to have a suspension of disbelief, which is exactly what it sounds -- stopping your disbelief and accepting what you see as the plausible truth.

To simplify, we can use literature as an example. The author will create a story believable enough in the hopes that the reader will suspend all disbelief, i.e. they will be able to cast aside their doubts and criticisms even if the work may contain highly fantastical or quite improbable ideas. The gain of doing this is for the reader; they are able to enjoy the story more, engross themselves in the plot and characters and 'escape' the real world to enjoy the story on a more fulfilling level. Possibly some part of them believes or wishes what they're reading could be true, somewhere somehow.

Recently I've been studying and watching a lot of magic on tv and the internet, seeing how some magic tricks are done, the 'secrets revealed!', things like that. A lot of magic is based on this idea of suspended disbelief. The magician may even study hypnotism, if he's really good, because what he does actually puts you in a very mild hypnotic state and almost regresses you (anyone, of any age) back a little bit towards childhood and innocence. The whole allure of everything, the guise of magic and magicians and all the theatrics, the way they talks and use their voice, everything is designed to make you feel a certain way. This time, instead of allowing you to say, read a book and fall into a state of suspended disbelief in order to become entertained, the magician will directly force this state upon you. Of course, you're more than happy and willing to accept it because "yay magic is fun!" What happens is that your mind starts to loosen up a little bit and becomes more open to ideas and wonderment, even if you are the biggest skeptic looking for the loopholes or "catch" in the trick, you're still lulled into the whole world of magic and sort of at least half-expect to see something amazing or unbelievable. Even if you are looking for the secret, chances are you will be too focused looking for the 'trick' that you'll totally miss what it was anyway and then be amazed at how the magic was done.

Many of the key elements are based on the fact that the magician has forced this state upon you. They talk a lot and move their arms and hands around a lot to "show you nothing's up their sleeve" but all the while distracting your eyes and attention from what's really happening say with their leg or foot or other hand. Once you're at this point the magician will fool almost anyone because he has got you to a state where your mind will see what it wants to see. Some very good magicians can also 'force' certain numbers or images into your mind using hypnosis as well. They can make you see what you want to see, or expect to see.

That's key. Regardless of the truth, people will see what they want to see or see what they expect to see.

It doesn't apply only to arts & entertainment either, just a very good example of where it's effectively used. Ever been dating someone and everyone around you is telling you one thing (usually negative) and you see an entirely different thing? It's hard to see the forest for the trees when you're deep on the inside of the current situation, isn't it? I know, I've been there and I've told people that they just don't know what it's like on the inside: "You don't even KNOW!", gotten all angry and stuff. Then a short while after I broke up with her I would say "Why the hell didn't you guys SAY SOMETHING, you're such jerks!". It's tough. But it's the same thing happening there; you suspend your disbelief, reject the actual reality and substitute your own (Thanks Adam from MythBusters for that gem of a quote, slightly modified). Nothing that anyone says can really make you see the truth and how bad the situation is until you're able to realise it for yourself, and that can take ages. A painfully long time.

Through the good and bad, suspension of disbelief is one of my favourite ideas/techniques in media-type things because I have an easy time losing touch with reality and getting into a good movie or book.

Wow, I can't believe I wrote all of that on pretty much nothing special....unless you could make me believe otherwise.

2007-10-12T19:00:00.005-04:00

Twenty Three Days Too Soon Or Twenty Three Days Too Late -- The Realisations About Love And Fate

Of course he laughs and he smiles when he speaks to the one for which he yearns over the hundreds of miles. The one he adores, she brings light to his day with all that she does although she's so far away.

When they first met a spark flared up, ignited the flames, left them both intrigued and forever changed. This moment was fleeting and quite malnourished, had it been longer the fires might have flourished. Then they were gone, left without hugs or goodbyes, the two parted ways towards their separate lives. Time flew by like leaves in the wind; he'd forgotten about her and she might not remember him. An act of kismet, serendipity, or luck crossed their paths once more and the match had been struck. The memories flooded from each other so fast, one could hardly refrain from interrupting the other with recollections of the past. It seemed only days had gone by since the moment they'd talked last, and although it had been quite some time, neither of them seemed to notice or mind. Hidden beneath their happy conversation, which gave them a chance to reunite, he still felt something was off and not quite right. After the lingering, long conversations faded to an end, her emotions and feelings swept over him; not the passion from a love but the closeness of a friend.

As the time slowly floats by, his feelings towards her grow stronger and he cannot explain why. He has no way to tell if her feelings for him are even there and there is so much about her of which he is still completely unaware. As they talk and interact more of her true self starts to show, perhaps even more than he wanted to know. She offers it willingly and he is more than happy to learn. He opens himself up to her and offers his secrets in return. The bond between them grows stronger by the day despite the many obstacles that stand in their way. Obstacles nearly impossible to move, impossible only if one was willing to put things at risk and if only that one had nothing to lose.

But a disparity starts to grow between that bond in this pair, he feels the amount of his heart being devoted is becoming unfair. He is enamoured with her thoughts, her smile, her eyes, her laugh, her voice...with her in absolutely every way and he tells her this almost every day. He cannot help but to say these things on his mind, but the way she accepts his compliments does not seem too kind. They appear to wash over her as though she couldn't care less, as if his kind words and actions actually cause her distress.

She remains distant and guarded, complicated by her thoughts and stress of everything in her world. He grows more frustrated every second of every day, unable to figure out the enigma of his seemingly ideal girl.

Sometimes she makes him feel like he's all that matters; he's treated like gold, elated and high, and the next day she leaves without saying goodbye. She talks to him about everything she experiences and all that she does, and he takes a great interest in the things that she loves. He comes to her for advice in his darkest times when he needs her the most and his life is bleak, but he feels as though she is simply just waiting for her turn to speak. He passionately pours his heart out to her about his most meaningful loves from deep within his core, but feels that to her it is all just a bore. Just when he is down and out and feeling stabbed through the heart with a knife, she sweetly comes around again to bring him right back to life. She lights up his eyes, his world, illuminates all that was dim and breathes life back into his heart, and he feels like he did right back at the start. Everything seems better this time as his feelings grow stronger even if hers haven't changed at all, and foolishly further head over heels does he fall.

The conversation dwindles and fades; his fairytale turns into a sickening obsession, consuming most of his days. Total lack of contact is driving him insane, torturing his soul and tormenting his brain. Everywhere he looks for little signals or signs, something - anything to tell him everything's fine. Nothing happens, nothing comes, nothing's to be found, and everything he felt in his heart is being driven into the ground. Each day that passes by a piece of his heart snaps, a piece shuts down and a piece fades away that is never coming back. Finally there is nothing left to bruise, nothing left to destroy, nothing to die or to break -- there's nothing left to lose.

His heart just shuts off.

He stopped caring and stopped thinking about her and stopped everything. Just stopped. Nothing. The emotions are gone, the feelings are gone, there's just an empty space where everything used to be and now it's cold and dark, lifeless and...blank. But he moves on and forgets about it, puts it all out of his mind but does not let his heart die completely; it's just dead to her. He realises she never gave the effort and showed the passion that he did and if she really felt the same way deep down, she would have pursued him more.

Other girls come in and out of his life; his heart opens up and warms again. None of them are exactly what he wants but each are a little of what he needs to refuel his fragmented and fractured emotions. He at least takes comfort in the fact that he's mostly recovered, not completely destroyed and able to enjoy himself and have fun again. Having removed himself from the situation, he finally realises how rose-coloured the glasses really were. He can now see how much he wanted to believe it would all work out flawlessly, how much he thought everything was nearly perfect when in fact nothing at all was ever close to being perfect. He had wanted it all so badly he fooled himself into accepting a false reality where anything was possible and nothing could go wrong.

She sits and sulks, speculates and stews about the boy, her boy. Her internet unexpectedly disconnected, derailing, discontinuing, dissolving and utterly destroying all conversation between them. She couldn't call, contact, communicate, or converse in any way at all and this confounding sullen situation simply sent her psychotically over the edge.

She'd been slightly standoffish, subdued and secretive for the duration of their time together since she was worried and wary and quite weary from her past relationship and wasn't sure what she wanted. Some days would be bubbly, buoyant, beautiful days filled with open hearted happiness and heads held high with heaven-sent hope . However some days were dark and dreary, murky and marked by mystery and secluded secrets stuck in safe spots, closed doors with guarded and gauged responses. All of her defense mechanisms are precisely protecting her painful past and preventing the pressure of a new situation from puncturing and piercing through her powerful barrier.

So much time has past that the walls come crumbling down, she's hoping that soon he will come back around. At last she knows deep in her heart that he is her knight, he will find her and make it all right. She's waited so long tried not to make any mistakes, for him she would do whatever it takes. Forever she has longed for this moment to come, her chest starts to swell and her body goes numb. Her heart aches for him just like his had before; there is nothing in this world that she could want more. She counts on him being where he's been for so long, but when she goes to him she finds that he's gone. A tear streams her face but she knows she needn't cry, he would never leave without a good reason why. Of course there's an answer with the time that has past, so much could have happened since they had talked last. She won't lose faith or let her spirits sink low, she'll soon find her boy and her world will be aglow.

Days and weeks and months pass by in a blur and after a while it all becomes meaningless to her. She's nearly given up on her endless search for her boy; not a single message or call, not one word or a sign. There's no response from him with any type of communication she could find. No internet chat, no email, no phone, not the faintest idea of where he resides and for all she knows he might even have died. Although slightly extreme with her irrational thinking, with each passing day her heart keeps sinking and sinking. Her spirits have not quite degenerated or deteriorated to a state of dire despondency, but those depressed, downcast, and dreary feelings start to appear more frequently. In spite of her solitary sadness, her faith remains resolute and strong. To her, everything happens for a reason and this situation is too special and important for it to suddenly go all wrong.

Restlessly asleep in her room with her head far from her pillow and her white blanket twisted and tangled beneath her right arm, she bolts upright and awake at the screeching sound of her alarm. Slapping a lazy hand down on her clock and dragging herself to the edge of her bed, she sits for a second with her elbows on her knees and her hands on her head. Managing to finally get showered, dressed and eventually out the front door, she shuffles off to work like so many mundane and mediocre times before. As the day wears on the time ticks infinitely slowly towards five and she has to resist the urge to check her own pulse to see if she's still alive. The recirculated air and cramped, claustrophobic office cubicles, the long fluorescent tube lights that cause her head to ache and throb make her wonder why she'd ever accepted this excruciatingly dreadful job. After what seemed like an eternity it's finally time to go home. Had she stayed in that prison just a few moments longer she was sure, like a ticking time bomb, her head would have blown.

She leaves the building and starts to walk home along the same route she takes every day, passing the cobblestone bridge, the rollerbladers, the dog walkers and cyclists along the way. Following the twists and turns along the asphalt path, she gazes down at her shoes and then casually over at a pair of sparrows having a dust bath. Walking home after work usually helps her clear her head after long stressful days; she tries to purge her mind of negative energy and thoughts in various different ways. While she walks further along, she slowly begins tuning things out such as the light and the sound and notices nothing but the wind in her hair and the force of her feet pounding against the ground. Caught in a light, airy daydream with her eyes staring blankly and half glazed, her head's way up in the clouds, completely dazed.

Slowly walking down the tree-lined trail in somewhat of a trance, she doesn't bother to give passersby even the slightest glance. She snaps from her stupor, her half-awake dream, when a bulky, bluish-black raven screeches from its perch near the edge of the stream. As she swings to her right to see the source of the sound, the raven cocks its head to the side and gives her the oddest look, she clumsily crashes into someone briefly glancing at a book.

As they collide and stumble around, they both say their apologies and awkwardly reach out to retrieve the novel from the ground. There's an odd sense of familiarity when their hands touch slightly as they begin to arise, and once again they stand looking into each other's eyes.

They stand stunned for a second until the reality of the moment becomes apparently clear; he's speechless and frozen, she's holding back a tear.

She grabs onto her boy, squeezes him hard so his chest presses against her face, anxiously awaiting his strong arms to hold tightly around her waist. On the verge of tears, elated and babbling incoherently, she gives her nose a sniff and looks up at him when she realises he isn't hugging back, but standing there stiff. She takes a step back and gives him a quizzical look, he's staring down at the ground and fidgeting with his book. Gathering her thoughts she knows exactly what she wants to say, she's confident that fate has brought them together again today.

-- I'm sorry for how I acted before and how I treated you. I was confused by my feelings and didn't know what to do. I've spent a long time thinking and I know how I feel and it's exactly like you do. Everything will be better, it'll all be okay, we can be happy and we can be together now, just me and you. Nothing will stop us or get in our way, nothing can bring us down or ever tear us apart. It took me a while to realise what you had already known from the start. We can begin again, right here and now and forget about the past. I have all of my heart to offer and the love I have for you is a love that will forever last.

He stands still, silently absorbing this emotional speech. Words he could never imagine coming from her mouth had suddenly touched his ears in a teary torrent of true romanticism, of everything he thought he'd ever wanted to hear. His face is still blank, emotionless and empty, much like his heart is at this moment. There is nothing left to give, nothing left to feel and nothing at all he can think of to say. He begins to stare off a little when he feels someone shaking him furiously.

After getting no response and seeing him stare into space, she starts shaking his coat and lightly slaps his face. Finally she manages to gain his attention as she's becoming more flustered and upset, never had she imagined things would turn out this way when they first met.

-- What's the matter, aren't you listening to me? I love you too! We can be together now, just me and you! It's what you've always wanted this whole time. It's what we were dreaming of and now the dream can finally be yours and mine!

He looks into her eyes. Her red tear-soaked eyes. They wildly search his own, looking for something, an answer, a response, anything. He notices her shaking hands, her wet cheeks, the way she's half laughing in disbelief but mostly crying out of confusion and pain. He always knew they would share something unique and special but never expected it to be a misery such as this. A misery so deep, so utterly torturous and tormenting that it could only be rivalled in magnitude by the beauty and power of the love they would have shared. But that love is gone, never to return and touch his soul again, never to light up his days, bring smiles to his face or make him feel limitless and that anything is possible.

-- No. We can't be together. I don't love you. It's too late. My feelings were there laid out on the table once before, and ignored and my heart was broken. Sometimes when that happens and it's so powerful, your heart gets damaged so badly, a piece of it just dies off, stops working and fades away forever. I can't give you my heart anymore, but you did take a piece of it with you, and I'll never be able to get that back.

He walks by, not waiting for her response, not looking behind, with no regrets and a clear mind.

(this is still a rough draft, it's currently being edited for submission to a few writing competitions)

2007-10-05T00:56:00.001-04:00

End

They stand stunned for a second until the reality of the moment becomes apparently clear; he's speechless and frozen, she's holding back a tear.

She grabs onto her boy, squeezes him hard so his chest presses against her face, anxiously awaiting his strong arms to hold tightly around her waist. On the verge of tears, elated and babbling incoherently, she gives her nose a sniff and looks up at him when she realises he isn't hugging back, but standing there stiff. She takes a step back and gives him a quizzical look, he's staring down at the ground and fidgeting with his book. Gathering her thoughts she knows exactly what she wants to say, she's confident that fate has brought them together again today.

-- I'm sorry for how I acted before and how I treated you. I was confused by my feelings and didn't know what to do. I've spent a long time thinking and I know how I feel and it's exactly like you do. Everything will be better, it'll all be okay, we can be happy and we can be together now, just me and you. Nothing will stop us or get in our way, nothing can bring us down or ever tear us apart. It took me a while to realise what you had already known from the start. We can begin again, right here and now and forget about the past. I have all of my heart to offer and the love I have for you is a love that will forever last.

He stands for a minute, absorbing this emotional speech. Words he could never imagine coming from her mouth had suddenly touched his ears in a teary torrent of true romanticism, of everything he thought he'd ever wanted to hear. His face is still blank, emotionless and empty, much like his heart is at this moment. There is nothing left to give, nothing left to feel and nothing at all he can think of to say. He begins to stare off a little when he feels someone shaking him furiously.

After getting no response and seeing him stare into space, she starts shaking his coat and lightly slaps his face. Finally she manages to gain his attention as she's becoming more flustered and upset, never had she imagined things would turn out this way when they first met.

-- What's the matter, aren't you listening to me? I love you too! We can be together now, just me and you! It's what you've always wanted this whole time. It's what we were dreaming of and now the dream can finally be yours and mine!

He looks into her eyes. Her red tear-soaked eyes. They wildly search his own, looking for something, an answer, a response, anything. He notices her shaking hands, her wet cheeks, the way she's half laughing in disbelief but mostly crying out of confusion and pain. He always knew they would share something unique and special but never expected it to be a misery such as this. A misery so deep and so utterly torturous and tormenting that it could only be rivalled in magnitude by the beauty and power of the love they would have shared. But that love is gone, never to return and touch his soul again, never to light up his days, bring smiles to his face or make him feel limitless and that anything is possible.

-- No. We can't be together. I don't love you. It's too late. My feelings were there laid out on the table once before, and ignored and my heart was broken. Sometimes when that happens and it's so powerful, your heart gets damaged so badly, a piece of it just dies off, stops working and fades away forever. I can't give you my heart anymore, but you did take a piece of it with you, and I'll never be able to get that back.

He walks by, not waiting for her response, not looking behind, with no regrets and a clear mind.

2007-09-12T08:31:00.002-04:00

Part III

(continued...) -edited

2007-08-24T05:50:00.001-04:00

Part II

His disillusionment grows as he suspends all disbelief of this fantasy world, his fantasy girl. A perfect dream from which he'd never wish to wake, however riddled with complexities that would cause the very earth to shake. From outside looking in it is all a person sees but twisted deep within this complex labyrinth, he could not see the forest for the trees.

The conversation dwindles and fades; his fairytale turns into a sickening obsession, consuming most of his days. Total lack of contact is driving him insane, torturing his soul and tormenting his brain. Everywhere he looks for little signals or signs, something - anything to tell him everything's fine. Nothing happens, nothing comes, nothing's to be found, and everything he felt in his heart is being driven into the ground. Each day that passes by a piece of his heart snaps, a piece shuts down and a piece fades away that is never coming back. Finally there is nothing left to bruise, nothing left to destroy, nothing to die or to break -- there's nothing left to lose.

His heart just shuts off.

He stopped caring and stopped thinking about her and stopped everything. Just stopped. Nothing. The emotions are gone, the feelings are gone, there's just an empty space where everything used to be and now it's cold and dark, lifeless and...blank. But he moves on and forgets about it, puts it all out of his mind but does not let his heart die completely; it's just dead to her. He realises she never gave the effort and showed the passion that he did and if she really felt the same way deep down, she would have pursued him more.

Other girls come in and out of his life; his heart opens up and warms again. None of them are exactly what he wants but each are a little of what he needs to refuel his fragmented and fractured emotions. He at least takes comfort in the fact that he's mostly recovered, not completely destroyed and able to enjoy himself and have fun again. Having removed himself from the situation, he finally realises how rose-coloured the glasses really were. He can now see how much he wanted to believe it would all work out flawlessly, how much he thought everything was nearly perfect when in fact nothing at all was ever close to being perfect. He had wanted it all so badly he fooled himself into accepting a false reality where anything was possible and nothing could go wrong.

She sits and sulks, speculates and stews about the boy, her boy. Her internet unexpectedly disconnected, derailing, discontinuing, dissolving and utterly destroying all conversation between them. She couldn't call, contact, communicate, or converse in any way at all and this confounding sullen situation simply sent her psychotically over the edge.

She'd been slightly standoffish, subdued and secretive for the duration of their time together since she was worried and wary and quite weary from her past relationship and wasn't sure what she wanted. Some days would be bubbly, buoyant, beautiful days filled with open hearted happiness and heads held high with heaven-sent hope . However some days were dark and dreary, murky and marked by mystery and secluded secrets stuck in safe spots, closed doors with guarded and gauged responses. All of her defense mechanisms are precisely protecting her painful past and preventing the pressure of a new situation from puncturing and piercing through her powerful barrier.

So much time has past that the walls come crumbling down, she's hoping that soon he will come back around. At last she knows deep in her heart that he is her knight, he will find her and make it all right. She's waited so long tried not to make any mistakes, for him she would do whatever it takes. Forever she has longed for this moment to come, her chest starts to swell and her body goes numb. Her heart aches for him just like his had before; there is nothing in this world that she could want more. She counts on him being where he's been for so long, but when she goes to him she finds that he's gone. A tear streams her face but she knows she needn't cry, he would never leave without a good reason why. Of course there's an answer with the time that has past, so much could have happened since they had talked last. She won't lose faith or let her spirits sink low, she'll soon find her boy and her world will be aglow.

(continued...)

2007-07-18T04:27:00.001-04:00

Part I

But a disparity starts to grow between that bond in this pair, he feels the amount of his heart being devoted is becoming unfair. He is enamoured with her thoughts, her smile, her eyes, her laugh, her voice...with her in absolutely every way and he tells her this almost every day. He cannot help but to say these things on his mind, but the way she accepts his compliments does not seem too kind. They appear to wash over her as though she couldn't care less, as if his kind words and actions actually cause her distress.

She remains distant and guarded, complicated by her thoughts and stress of everything in her world. He grows more frustrated every second of every day, unable to figure out the enigma of his seemingly ideal girl.

Sometimes she makes him feel like he's all that matters; he's treated like gold, elated and high, and the next day she leaves without saying goodbye. She talks to him about everything she experiences and all that she does, and he takes a great interest in the things that she loves. He comes to her for advice in his darkest times when he needs her the most and his life is bleak, but he feels as though she is simply just waiting for her turn to speak. He passionately pours his heart out to her about his most meaningful loves from deep within his core, but feels that to her it is all just a bore. Just when he is down and out and feeling stabbed through the heart with a knife, she sweetly comes around again to bring him right back to life. She lights up his eyes, his world, illuminates all that was dim and breathes life back into his heart, and he feels like he did right back at the start. Everything seems better this time as his feelings grow stronger even if hers haven't changed at all, and foolishly further head over heels does he fall.

(continued...)

2007-07-06T01:07:00.000-04:00

Bored. Braindead. Bewildered because buddies boast blathering BLAH blah blah babbling bullshit between my balefully bruised and burning brain cells; brooding breathing blood and buried beneath bone blankets.

Blankly beaming a blasé, broad and bromidic behaviour, I beg beckon and beseech beautifully brilliant and beloved brainiacs befriended beforehand to bestow and bombard me with a bustling bedlam of brainy brilliant bold or beguiling beauty that will blissfully brighten and bewitch blood, brain, bone, body, and being, leaving me blundering, barely believing and breathless.

2007-05-15T21:40:00.000-04:00

Only Revolutions II

Wow. So I went with my gut and chose yellow. Only because it was from the point of view of a girl and I'm not going to lie--I'm a sucker for girls.

I can't even begin to describe what the book from this point of view did to me. It was like a utopic oasis for my brain.

The words coming from Hailey sped up and slowed down my heart and washed over me with textual pleasure, with perfectly placed pieces of poetry and prose, loving laced with alliterative laments losing me in the pages.

The rhyming and the timing of every herb and every word spinning in my head with every page that I read, the flowers and the leaves the roots and the trees, the different cars and that bar, where they caused such a scene, I'm only halfway through so what does it all mean!?

Oh yeah, and the sex.

Starting Sam's perspective tommorow after some electroshockwave treatment on kidney stones, fun times!

Thanks Mark for writing pure magic ideas into text for us to read and then inspiring people like me to write and to FEEL. You know someone's a good writer when you read their books and you can feel it in your stomach.

I felt this one, the first half at least, and I felt it a lot.

2007-05-14T15:04:00.000-04:00

Only Revolutions I

Go with your gut.

At least that's what I try to do, especially when I play poker. I play a lot of poker. I sit down at ring games with my chip stack, have a look around the table, feel things out. I already have a feeling of who the amateurs are as the cards are dealt around the table; almost everyone looks at their cards even before it's their turn to act -- I don't even touch mine, I'm still observing, watching, analysing. The action comes around to me and I finally look at my cards, 78 suited. I raise 3 times the big blind and mostly everyone folds except one kid. By this time I've seen enough of the table, used enough of my instincts to get an idea of what everyone is about in only one hand. I'm betting the kid has king high with a weak kicker. Flop comes up 6K9. I won't go into the details of the rest of the hand but let's just say I took him for all his money.

I went with my gut.

I read him like a fucking book. But that's what you're trying to do, right? Read a fucking book. So what do you do? Do you take the red pill or the blue pill? Do you start with the green cover or the yellow cover? What's the right decision? Sometimes there is information you can glean from situations beforehand, such as in a poker games, that can make it easier for you to 'go with your gut' and allow you to take calculated risks, but what if you're going into a situation completely blind ?

Then what do you do? No previous information no idea where to start nowhere to go no one to ask what should you do what should you do getting dizzy and confused and spiralling and swirling with ideas in your head of green vs yellow green vs yelllow or should you read on the internet and ask someone to just TELL you the right answer but IS it right or wrong or will it spoil the book and oh no you can't do that you want to read the book with a fresh open mind what do you do what do you do what do you do what do you do??

Go with your gut.

2007-02-13T20:28:00.000-05:00

Anyone that still likes Death Cab For Cutie or The Postal Service should kill themselves now.

Do the world a favour, eat a bullet.

Trust me, we'd all be better off without you. You're going to hell (if there is one) for worshipping a False Idol anyway, why delay the inevitable? Email Benjamin Gibbard and ask him for a bag of quarters or even toonies so you can beat yourself to Death (maybe in a Cab) with it. I'm sure he's got more than enough money to send from selling his soul to the devil and selling out so many times I can't even count.

Not only did I hear a few Death Cab songs like 4 years ago playing in The Gap on a specially made-for-The-Gap ambient music CD when I was walking through the store....but I just saw quite possibly the worst, and funniest, sell out of all time.

So I just happened to be walking by the TV when I saw a commercial and heard the familiar song Such Great Heights playing. I look downstairs to see if someone is on the computer and playing an MP3 really loudly cause I couldn't imagine why on earth that song would actually be on the television.

Then, I saw it. The commercial was for, none other than..............UPS. The United Parcel Service:

United Parcel Service
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United Parcel Service Inc.

Type
Public (NYSE: UPS)
Founded
August 28, 1907, Seattle, WA
Headquarters
Sandy Springs, Georgia, USA
Key people
Michael L. Eskew, Chairman & CEO
Industry
Air Courier
Products
Freight Forwarding Services Logistics Services
Revenue
$42.581 billion USD (2005)
Operating income
$6.143 billion USD (2005)
Net income
$3.870 billion USD (2005)
Employees
407,000 (2006)
Subsidiaries
Mail Boxes Etc.
Slogan
What can Brown do for you?
Website
http://www.ups.com/
United Parcel Service Inc. (NYSE: UPS), commonly referred to as UPS, is the world's largest package delivery company, delivering more than 14 million packages a day to more than 200 countries around the world. It has recently expanded its operations to include logistics and other transportation-related areas. It is headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, USA.
UPS is well-known for its brown trucks, internally known as package cars (hence the company nickname "The Big Brown Machine",

Major competitors include United States Postal Service (USPS)

So....The band, The Postal Service, does television ads for UPS, or the Big Brown Machine. Too bad they couldn't get a deal with UPS's major competitor the actual Postal Service, but they sold out anyway and took the money.

Hey Ben, go die.

2006-06-26T01:10:00.000-04:00

I DONT LIKE YOU IN THAT WAY OKAY!? GOD

I guess I could have written a letter like this before I assumed anything, written in classic Grade 5 stylez:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HeY

dO yoU Like ME? cHeCk onE

Yes No
[ ] [ ]

Maybe [ ]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

hahahaha I couldn't stop laughing when I wrote that. I'm such a loser. Things were SO much easier in public school eh? All you had to do was write a note and pass it to someone in class, check the box, pass back, done deal.

It looks more like a randsom note though.

wE HaVe yOuR DoLl

mEeT US by thE MOnkEy BarS aT ReCesS

bRInG YouR SnAk PAcKs

My weekend, well I went to see NIN in toronto, molson amphitheatre and that was just crazy insane goodness. I couldn't handle it, it was so awesome. I was shaking the whole concert (first time seeing nine inch nails live). I'm a little disappointed cause my ride there got us lost and we had to miss Bauhaus and Peaches perform, and just as we got into the amphitheatre, we heard the BOOMing bass and DON'T YOU FUCKING KNOW WHAT YOU ARE................if you don't like nin or never listened to them, just ignore that paragraph.

So my weekend was pretty great. Gay pride eh? I lived in Toronto at this time last year, staying in a friends place and my buddy Keith kept trying to work something out so he could come visit...It never worked out though, conflicting plans, no time off, etc etc. So finally we had some random weekend planned out, and he was so excited to come visit and 'scope out the ladies' or what have you, and I guess he was pumped cause it was the big bad TORONTO, so it's all the more exciting, in terms of the women. I guess. So yeah he comes up and we get all pumped to go to some bar or do something, we take a cab to yonge and college or some busy intersection and get out, and this guy is ON THE PROWL, and of course I was along for the ride.....so yeah it's only until we get stuck in a mob of people wearing Village People gear, very pretty looking men with makeup on and purses/manbags..do we realise OH YEAH it's gay pride weekend, and we definitely weren't going to be picking up any of the thousand lumberjack lesbians we see milling around. That's my gay pride weekend story.

I've just about run out of coherent sentences, so i'll just use short phrases that have something to do with me in the past few days until i can't think of anything, then randomly end the email.

tired....headache...bored...less bored...kind of excited....kind of really excited....super excited....flip out crazy excited...driving.. cd player loud music...highway..taking back sunday.....yelling out car windows...lost...creepy gas station guy....found...more excited....late...pat down....lost 4 bucks in a STUPID locker...walk back to the car.......pat down round 2....tshirts......BOOOOOOOMDONT YOU FUCKING KNOW WHAT YOU ARE...absolute insanity.....drinks.....driving home...bar #1 - sketchy/dark...bar #2 looks good on outside, sucks inside ....drinks.....home.. ..baked... trainspotting...baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaked.. sleepy....looking for inspiratizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
20 cases of water. hungover. bored. tired. headache.

2006-01-07T22:04:00.000-05:00

After all this time saying I Should Have one....here it finally is:

My Abstract

2005-12-14T01:45:00.000-05:00

A Story for Sylvonna

Once upon a time there was this beautiful university student named Princess Sylvonna Merryweather-Good. She was the smartest and prettiest girl at her school and always studied ever so hard. Her husband was the rich and famous Matthew Good, who spoiled Sylvonna to death with gifts and serenaded her with songs on a daily basis. Her and Matt were ever so happy living in their huge castle/mansion located in Beverly Hills. They were so rich, that Sylvonna would take the private Good Jet to school in Waterloo every day. Sylvonna wanted to be an independent woman, so she went to school to study biology and english so she could fulfill her lifelong dream of being a teacher.

However, Matt had a secret from Sylvonna. Despite his fame and fortune from his ultra-successful music, Matthew Good had a severe drug addiction that made him an asshole to everyone. This drug was called tomacco, and Matthew had his own secret farm of these crazy nicotine-tomato plants. Every day for breakfast, Matt would have a seemingly healthy breakfast of tomato juice and fried green tomatoes dipped in ketchup. Little did Sylvonna know, everything was laced with DRUGS. To make matters worse, Matt couldn't get enough of just eating tomato dishes, and of course any smart princess such as Sylvonna would catch on sooner or later, so Matt Good also raised livestock on the farm. BUT, the sheep and cows were all fed tomacco plants so that the cow's milk, the beef, the sheep and even the pigs all contained this insanely addictive drug. Just by looking in any sheep or cow's eyes, you could tell by their bloodshot and crazy appearance that they were whacked out on the wacky tomaccy.

So one day, while Sylvonna was flying up to Waterloo to take her vitally important Genetics exam, she smelled something funny on the plane. She heard a rustling in the back compartment, and a heavy, frantic breathing sound. She stepped closer to the door and listened....mbmb BAAAAAA AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHA AHAHHA HAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! Suddenly a fanatic sheep busts through the door, completely hopped up on tomacco plants and out of its mind. The sheep had planned to make an escape from the tainted tomato farm and would not let Sylvonna stand in its way. The sheep had clenched in its hoof a bunch of tomacco leaves and lunged at Sylvonna with them. The sheep struggled to force the leaves into Sylvonna's mouth and Sylvonna struggled back to force the leaves into the sheep's mouth, hoping to give it an overdose of the drugs. FINALLY Sylvonna manages to find the super sensitive spot behind a sheep’s ears and pulls its wool as hard as she can! Being in biology, she knew that this would instantly knock the sheep unconscious. While the sheep was out, Sylvonna knew this was her only chance to save her own life and she opened the emergency hatch on the airplane and kicked the sheep out as hard as she could. Sylvonna watched the sheep drop through the air like a rock , its wool flapping in the wind, with a sense of great satisfaction...

Finally she arrives in Waterloo just in time to write her genetics exam. The intense battle in the airplane had sharpened her wits and focused her attention more than a Tibetan monk. Of course she got 102% on the exam, getting the extra 2% on the bonus question about the long and short term effects of tobacco and nicotine-related substances on livestock. When she returned to Beverly Hills, she burned down the Matthew Good Farm, killing every tomacco plant that ever existed. As for the remaining sheep and cows and pigs and even Matthew Good himself, they were all enlisted in an intense 16-week tomacco rehabilitation program where they learned to deal with their addiction through song. The newest Matthew Good album was an instant classic entitled How The Tomatoes Almost Killed Me: Featuring Special Guests the Barnyard Animals. As for Princess Sylvonna, she was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honour, as well as an Honourary Doctorate degree from Laurier University, for her heroic job of stopping the deadly and maddening worldwide tomacco addiction. She lived happily ever after.

The End

2005-11-21T01:43:00.000-05:00

I guess I should mention that I am moving to Japan for sure now. I was offered a one year teaching contract.

2005-11-08T16:13:00.001-05:00

...i just choose not to believe in religion itself or a set of rules used to govern my life. i don't doubt there could be a god, or doubt that there might not be one

agnostic vs atheist: i am scientifically-minded and to be atheist would be against my "beliefs" as a scientist.

i am my own god; i believe in myself and live by my own religion. if i was wrong all along and there happens to be a god when i die, i will not have done anything to piss it off in my lifetime, so i'm fine either way.

2005-11-07T10:22:00.000-05:00

18 hours of interview/info session +
5 elimination interview rounds, 17 eliminated +
5 group presentations +
3 individual presentations +
1 five minute spontaneous teaching demo +
1 fifteen minute pre-planned teaching demo +
sleeping on floors in Toronto apartments +
shaving with skiddy corner store plastic razors +
no change of clothes +
enough information to choke a horse =
----------------------------------------------
1 one-year contract to teach English in Japan

2005-10-07T15:31:00.000-04:00

Oooh yeah thanksgiving time. That means:

1. Whole family coming down from all over
2. Sleeping on couches
3. Eating so much, all we can do is lie on couches motionless and argue
4. 2.5 hours of dishes
5. Multiple turkey dinners starting friday night, ending monday night
6. Turkey leftovers for 3 weeks, involving turkey stew, turkey cold sandwiches, turkey hot sandwiches, turkey soup

2005-10-04T12:54:00.000-04:00

Indian summer but I love the heat...
Still got a bomb in my temple that is gonna explode
But the sixteen gauge isn't under my clothes
Once, upon a time

2005-09-28T02:08:00.000-04:00

What a waste of money.

I am now training Japanese Ninja Fighting Sock Monkeys.

Here's a picture of my mom. She's not impressed.

2005-09-23T12:55:00.000-04:00

Man I wish I came up with google, I'd have like.... a google dollars.

(FYI goo·gol (g?'gôl') n.
The number 10 raised to the power 100 (10^100), written out as the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros....http://www.answers.com/topic/googol)

2005-09-11T19:53:00.000-04:00

I remember where I was. And so do you.

I was working at Com Dev at my co-op work term when the towers were hit. The sad thing? I don't really care anymore. Flashbulb memories they're called: traumatic or emotional events in one's life can solidify memories that normally wouldn't have formed so concretely. People tend to remember exactly where they were, what they were doing or what they had for lunch on the day a certain catastrophic event, natural disaster, assassination, or death had taken place. I think really it causes people to put a lot of importance on things when really they shouldn't. Just because you can accurately remember something more forcefully and readily than something else doesn't mean it should be regarded with the highest importance. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people senselessly lost their lives and it was a tragedy, but it's to the point where no one can make a speech to the public or do anything without saying "a big ups to the New York Fire Department" or "Let's take this time to remember the people who lost their lives on September Eleventh". Now that date will be etched into everyone's mind for the rest of their lives. You can't say or hear the words September Eleventh anymore without thinking that it's not just a date but some catastrophic event. Which it was. Still, you won't see me buying a I heart NY t-shirt or a NYFD (or whatever it is) blue hat. I couldn't even watch tennis today, the men's US Open Championship, without the commentators mentioning the September Eleventh bombings in a morose tone. I'm surprised Roger Federer didn't dedicate his win to the victims who lost their lives on that tragic day. Enough is enough. Can't wait for the "Freedom Tower" to be built. Fucking americans. No wonder they got bombed by terrorists. I only wish they did enough damage to actually take down the economy and the United States as a world superpower. It'd be kinda cool if Japan ran things for a while I think.

2005-07-29T01:02:00.000-04:00

CareerBuilder says:
Wow, I have a shittacular shit story to tell you.

Jesse says:
ok well hopefully i will have a good oen tomorrow, from all the shit saved up from today to tell you about

CareerBuilder says:
Today, my grand mother cleaned out the toilet with this fucked up cleaning chemical shit.

CareerBuilder says:
So, the toilet water was all blue.

CareerBuilder says:
I had to take a hard shit, so I sat down and started to shit. However, this one pice of shit made the water shoot up into my ass, and the chemical was in the water.

CareerBuilder says:
It was fucked.

Jesse says:
did you check your asshole bent over double in the mirror to see if it was stained blue?

CareerBuilder says:
HAHAHA

CareerBuilder says:
No.

CareerBuilder says:
I forgot to.

Jesse says:
maybe you should

Jesse says:
hahaha

Jesse says:
does it sting?

CareerBuilder says:
It did.

Jesse says:
i bet they have anal testing

CareerBuilder says:
For a minute.

Jesse says:
for that cleaning stuff

Jesse says:
imagine that was your job

CareerBuilder says:
Haha.

Jesse says:
ok Jim, now, we're gonna put this cleaning chemical on your anus

Jesse says:
tell us what you feel

CareerBuilder says:
Dude, the water went way up there too.

CareerBuilder says:
I could feel it.

Jesse says:
that's not good

CareerBuilder says:
So I tried to shit to get the water out.

Jesse says:
hahaha

Jesse says:
did it work?

CareerBuilder says:
But that just caused more water to pop up in my ass, I jumped like a foot off the toilet.

Jesse says:
i'm posting this conversation on my website

CareerBuilder says:
So, I did the smartest thing I did all day.

CareerBuilder says:
I flushed, and started to shit.

Jesse says:
ingenius
CareerBuilder says:
Fuck yes.

2005-05-21T20:34:00.008-04:00

Vices become verses
while old cars become hearses
and good luck turns to curses
with guns hidden in purses.

Her soul is on fire
with rage and desire
they called her a liar
and now the situation is dire.

She knows she should run,
her purse and her gun,
but something needs to be done
to put an end to the one
who put her in this place,
who put scars on her face,
and made her feel like a waste
of skin and of space.

She stops just to think
but throws up in the sink,
watches the water turn pink,
then mixes herself a drink.

Soon her head becomes clear
and she wipes down a tear.
Her heart's without fear
as the time's drawing near....

As he gets up to stand
he sees the gun in her hand
and the look in her eye
that wants him to die

He's just about to run
as she fires the gun.
He feels suddenly hot
and sees he's been shot

He touches the back of his head

to find bone, blood, and lead.

Failing to summon the breath to speak,

he blinks a few times as his knees become weak

He falls to the floor, landing flat on his back,

looking into her eyes for one last time before

every-

thing

turns...

2005-05-06T16:30:00.000-04:00

Keith's first blog
"...the beginning of thought, no matter how pure
the beginning of love, no matter how sure
the beginning of life, as it will be
the beginning of death, will set you free"

My Keith-esque reply

the end of time, no matter how fast
the end of space, no matter how vast
the end of energy, only in dreams
the end of chaos, impossible, so it seems...

2005-05-04T18:59:00.000-04:00

Please go buy the new Nine Inch Nails cd. Even if you don't like NIN, you will love this album. I promise you won't be disappointed. It's a great great cd which can appeal to almost any audience, or at least people who can appreciate good music. Seriously, go buy it, cd/dvd dualdisc is your best bet.

2005-04-29T22:05:00.000-04:00

i hope you contract a disease they have to name after you

if you're reading this, it's not about you

2005-03-21T11:56:00.000-05:00

My favourite day of the year again, The First Day of Spring. Although the blizzard outside leads me to believe otherwise. Keep the tradition alive, listen to the gandharvas song, my friends.

2005-03-14T02:59:00.005-05:00

Into the light

Stare a while, till everything begins to melt

‘Till your visual field is wrought with hallucinatory imagery

And the world your eyes see pulsates harmoniously in sync with your heart

Each beat causing the black fringes of unconsciousness in your field of vision to become increasingly larger and darker, creating a tunnel effect

When you shake your head alertly, your brain feels as though it's two sizes too small and rattling around inside your skull, setting off destructive storms of searing, white-hot painful flashes of lightning

As your mind wanders on another tangent, a shocks of electricity rip through your thoughts, exploding them into a million fragments and the flashbulb memory you thought you just had slowly fades away like the after-image you get when you stare at the sun, then close your eyes

You experience everything in slow motion with the volume turned down; your movements, your thoughts, your emotions, your life. Your face always looks sullen, depressed or downcast. You talk quietly because loud noises only make it worse.

Sleep would be your one and only chance of escape, but this torment makes it impossible to relax and drift away. It makes no difference if you’re sitting, standing or lying down—the pain is constant.

Every blink feels like dull ice picks piercing your eyes, drilling your temples, and clawing back of your neck making it nearly impossible to turn your head or even swallow

Soon the nosebleeds will start, hand tremors, chills, fainting, vomiting, cold sweats. You laugh at the oxymoronic term ‘painkiller’, out of breath.

Maybe you’ll get lucky; a collapse to your knees then a loss of touch with reality; a reprieve from the pain in unconscious bliss: a blackout

Away from the light

2005-01-27T03:30:00.002-05:00

...like you're tied to the grill of a truck or a bus or one of those fucking maglev superconducting super trains hurtling away at 200 mph or whatever it is in km/h and your hair is blowing back almost ripping out of your scalp and bugs are hitting the back of your throat and your skin is stretching back and mouth gaping open at impossible ovals like those NASA G force simulator things that the astronauts use and sticks and dirt and rocks are cutting your face gashing your forehead slicing your neck and your eyes are watering and bleeding from their sockets and eventually you get the ropes off and try to smash the front windshield of whatever the hell you're tied to and finally you do but not without slicing open your forearm down to the elbow and spurting and gushing blood everywhere and the second you move towards the open and now broken windshield you are SUCKED inside as though it were some sort of vacuum and violently thrown against the back wall of the cockpit, if that vehicle even has a cockpit, breaking most of your ribs, shattering your left elbow and possibly pulling a hamstring or two. And as you sit there against the wall, spitting out bugs and bark and bile from throwing up in your mouth and bits of teeth that you bit down too hard on and broke and as you're sitting in this pile of your own blood and what’s that, urine? and as bits of fat are coming out of your forearm you start to laugh hysterically because even though you might possibly die from blood loss you managed to cheat death for the time being and you're laughing maniacally anyway showing a sticky smile of bugs and dirt and teeth and mostly blood. You're overwhelmed with joy (you're not quite dead) and sadness (you will most likely lose your arm and will need the blood drained out of your lungs) and so many more emotions that you don't know what to do with it all or how to handle it so you just had to burst out laughing, spraying blood from your broken teeth and tongue you almost bit off. Then you're all cleaned up, that possibly improbable, probably impossible scenario never happened and you are perfectly fit and in fine physical condition and dressed in your best dinner jacket with a lovely lady at your side attending an opera or play or some sort or musical...or..show, an orchestra, but not with as many band members as a real orchestra maybe just like a 12 piece philharmonic type deal that plays the most beautiful rendition of Beethoven's Ode To Joy you have ever heard in your life and being the art-savvy kind of person you are, who attends many galleries and museums and less-than-stellar operas or orchestras featuring mediocre renditions of the classics, including Ode to Joy, you know a good reproduction when you hear one.

And one is like reading Eggers and one is like reading Ballard.

2005-01-07T05:32:00.000-05:00

I know that things cannot be forced, that I should not worry about what is to be but only what is. I've stopped thinking about eventualities. Certainties. No longer will I worry about the ending, not everything has to follow the same set of rules we've been taught our whole lives. Introduction, rising action, climax, denouement. Instead of your mind focused on what's to come and final endings , forget what you've learned, live in the present and enjoy each and every minute as it's happening. Nothing is set in stone and we must create our own future as we go along, shape it as we see fit. The future is not friendly, but terribly uncertain and too far beyond our control to actually worry about. We should not be afraid of these uncertainties; not everything was meant to be known immediately. In every drawing, every painting and every piece of creative writing there may be those hidden meanings, constants and linearities but sometimes the meanings are not there for the finding, but are like a secret kept between two lovers, hidden away from the outside world. So much more can be derived from the beautiful words and the clever sentences that all lead to an eventuality not meant for discovery. It may be impossible to discover the hidden secrets, the unknown future, the intended meaning or purpose in anything you see around you and we will never know the ending until it finally happens. The point is not to discover the answers at the end, but just to get there.

2005-01-06T01:33:00.000-05:00

What if how I write is less interesting than reading a newspaper and only presents a fraction of what I really want to say? Each word shrouded in nothing at all and utterly dry and boring to read? What does that say about me? Am I not in touch with my creative side, being unable to conjure parallels between sinking hearts and distant sunsets? What if "we are who we are, people don't change", and I'm destined to write in a scientific, analytical and anything but artistic manner forever? I wish I could get inside your head and find your secret to writing such beautiful passages so that I can amaze you in all the ways that you amaze me. But maybe the secret was not meant to be known and is better left undiscovered. Maybe my thoughts cannot be heard through colourful descriptions or clever metaphors. Words will never be stuck in my throat, everything on my mind will be said in a straight-line fashion with full truthfulness and raw emotion rather than hinting around the actual meaning. If I say it, I mean it more than anything I have ever meant.

2004-12-16T22:43:00.000-05:00

(classic way of starting a blog entry) I really hate it when people take song lyrics and try to analyse their meaning. When they try to break it down and figure out exactly what the artist was feeling or thinking while they were writing a particular song. I will spare everyone the suspense: YOU WILL NEVER KNOW what they meant. Ever. If they wanted everyone to know what they were saying, they would use plain and direcet language in their music, not metaphors or deeply hidden messages that are NOT meant for you anyway. The songs are probably so personal that they are only written for the artist themselves or for someone really special to them, and that special person probably still wouldn't be able to figure out that the song was for/about them anyway. I really hate it. I also hate when interviewers actually blatantly ASK the artist "ughhh what did you mean when you wrote ..." and then the artist tries to come up with something which is probably a bullshit reply just so that they can answer the question, get their exposure and money and get the hell out of the interview. They don't care. This is why I don't analyse what songs mean. I pick out bits of lyrics that I like or that i think are witty and that's about it. I love clever little lines in songs, cool ways of saying things, snappy biting sentences, but I never love songs for what they are "supposed" to mean or because of how "meaningful" the lyrics are to me. I feel that what is said in the songs are for the artist and that I could not possibly even begin to grasp what they're trying to say, so why bother? I just enjoy the song for the way it is put together as a whole, not individual pieces. I enjoy how the lyrics go along with the music and how it is all delievered to you and how it makes you feel and elicts certain emotions (MUSICALLY not lyrically), not because of how I can write a book report on the song and pick out literary devices and meanings and symbolisms. I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this one, and that they really find special meanings in song lyrics and songs really speak to them, and they can relate to the artist and they prevented them from committing suicide and what not, and that's absolutely wonderful. Good for you. I just don't enjoy music in that way, and I personally think I enjoy it more because of it. I take more of a broad view of a song rather than cutting it down into its component parts. I let the music itself, rather than the words that are sung, affect me more. I enjoy the voice and how the person sings and how beautifully this interacts with the music, not the actual semantic content. The fact that some songs might even have a meaning is simply a bonus to me, because everything else that goes along with the lryics are just amazing and impactful to me. That's why I like such a wide variety of music, because I enjoy the sounds of people's voices and the incredible music they create and I don't pay attention to the subject matter of the songs. I don't discriminate on what genre or music I am listening to, on WHO the artist is or what things they sing or play about in their songs. I just like what I like for exactly what it is without devling too deep into what it's "supposed" to mean. Don't get me wrong, some songs have very blatant and very cool and inspiring messages with catchy and obvious lyrics that make you and me love the song and that's just great. It happens. None of the things I say are really hard and fast rules set in stone, but what I am talking about are those songs where the meaning isn't very apparent, where there are possibly multiple interpretations and maybe the song wasn't meant to be figured out. Maybe I am just taking the "ignorance is bliss" route to listening music, and maybe I could get even MORE out of it if I tried to sit down and figure out what songs were supposed to mean, try to decipher incoherent lyrics and see how this song and this artist and his or her lyrics could speak to me, but I choose not to. I just like to sit back and let the combinations of the lyrics and the instruments and the passion of the artists playing and the feelings and vibes of the music wash over me and let my mind wander and get lost in the song without letting the analytical part of my brain try to put literal meaning to things. But I guess that's just basic human nature, trying to make sense of things and put meaning to something when maybe it wasn't meant to be figured out and explained in the first place.

2004-12-15T15:18:00.000-05:00

Breath From Another:

first go here: http://www.nearlycivilized.com/media/index.html and listen, then read this written by Esthero:

'We live in a world where in the same week a man who is accused of statutory rape can also have the largest selling record of his career. Where we are numb to witnessing burned-out and freshly bombed neighborhoods in a land far, far away... but Janet shows us a little tittie and we are nothing short of "shocked" and "appalled." This song is a call to arms. It is a call to my pirate sisters, to my rebel brothers, to demand MORE. More from every moment of your life, but especially to demand more of radio stations, of video channels, of the so-called "keepers of the keys to the kingdom." It is meant to inspire and to motivate -- not to offend. I want this to be very clear: This song is not meant to be a personal attack on Ashanti or Britney Spears (both of whom, I am willing to bet, are also bored to death of the radio)... I was merely trying to make an example of the fact that we overplay and over saturate only a few artists at a time... leaving little to no room for any others. We have no variety. We are stagnating. I am concerned about us, all of us who truly love music, to whom music is a soundtrack of the key moments of our lives, and yet stand idly by while our airwaves are controlled and polluted by people who program music so it doesn't interfere with the frequencies generated by the hamburger commercials they peddle. I really do believe that "what we hear DOES affect our hearts." We are on a bad musical diet and we are getting sick. I mean, a little sugar and extra cheese is great in moderation... But we need veggies and water to SURVIVE. I don't know about you, but personally, I'm starving.

There are revolutionary musicians all around us ready to nourish and enrich our lives. It is up to all of us to stand up and demand that they be heard.

So here is my humble offering, fresh from the oven, homemade with love. Dig in and enjoy.'

2004-12-06T04:43:00.008-05:00

Sometimes everything falls apart.

Sometimes everything falls into place.

Sometimes you can disappear without really knowing it.

Sometimes you feel everyone staring at you and your cheeks hot, flushed and red and you can’t imagine the moment ever coming to an end.

Sometimes things happen slowly, smoothly and gradually.

Sometimes they happen in a rocky, rushed blur that you don’t have a blink of your mind’s eye to react, unfortunately realising this fact after you're already too far in.

Sometimes you're never really certain of anything but still comforted by the fact that things will work out.

Sometimes it takes forever and a day to be even slightly close to any sort of certainty, yet you’re still shrouded and consumed with fear.

Sometimes everything just clicks with a certain someone and it takes something like twenty seven seconds to be certain about this somewhat silly someone beyond the slightest shadow of a doubt.

Sometimes this certain silly someone is totally amazing in every way imaginable and completely redefines everything you ever thought you knew about yourself, everyone you know, and the entire world around you.

Sometimes it is the greatest thing that's ever happened.

Sometimes you wish you could just make everything better, make everything perfect; make them never worry again, but no matter how hard you try, you know you can’t.

Sometimes you get the feeling that everything will be just fine and you’ll never have to worry again, and sometimes that makes you feel guilty.

Sometimes you get so happy and giddy you talk a mile a minute, sometimes hovering on the borderline of being coherent and making sense and people sometimes have to struggle to keep up and make some sort heads or tails of what you're saying but they secretly love the spirited conversation and get excited from just talking to you as everyone gets slightly silly together.

Sometimes you feel so great that you feel like you’re going to explode.

Sometimes you want to keep these feelings all to yourself as though they’re a small special little secret between you and that someone special and especially silly. Some secret that you don't want to share with anyone else so it doesn't escape from the lips of you two to get mainstreamed and cheapened.

Sometimes you make things a little better so sometimes you can have perfect moments together in which sometimes they worry a little less.

Sometimes they start to feel things might be fine after all and sometimes they can forget about the bad things around them, suspending all disbelief and just live in the moments of pure joy.

Sometimes their sorry-filled sulking sad and somber expressions slip away and smiles suddenly show up on their faces.

Sometimes the sometimes' start changing from “sometimes” to "all the time”

Sometimes everything just clicks and falls into place like a perfectly and magically-aligned puzzle constructed from millions of intricate, individual pieces causing you to sometimes think you should somehow disappear completely with your certain silly someone, somewhere, anywhere.

Sometimes you never want anyone else to ever discover the secret to your successful happiness saving it all to yourself like you’ve discovered the long, sought-after fountain of youth; sometimes making you feel you simply cannot contain yourself; sometimes making you want to scream and shout it to the entire city, and sometimes convincing you that sometimes anything's possible making you feel a sweet and sickeningly, yet seductively sweet, anticipation deep down in the pit of your stomach that sometimes makes you feel as though you’re going absolutely insane but you wouldn’t trade it any of it for the world and sometimes…

2004-11-20T02:33:00.000-05:00

A quote I was recently enlightened with.
"People are drawn to the religion because it preaches goodness and love but are taught the non-believer is evil and so are taught to hate while they believe they are being taught to love"

2004-11-06T13:16:00.001-05:00

She looks in his eyes during the silence where most people feel the need to fill the air with meaningless chatter and sub-witty banter but she keeps staring at him past the point where it gets uncomfortable and her body sends the look away message but neither of them shifts their gaze. His eyes—brilliant with thousands of thoughts floating behind them all at once fixated on the blue irises of hers as if he's searching for some yet undiscovered secret in them that will be lost forever, never to be found if he breaks concentration for just a second.

She can't bring herself to look away and even though every fibre of her being is telling her she should; something is keeping her eyes locked and focused on his and her butterflied stomach flips and feels the same way it felt when she was in the backseat of a car, 9 years old, and her dad is driving a little too fast down a hilly country road and she’s giggling uncontrollably—half out of fear and excitement from the reckless driving and half from the anticipation of reaching your destination, never wanting the car ride to end screaming "Faster! Faster!", nearly out of breath.

She's trying to remain expressionless while staring deep into his eyes but the sexual tension causes a tingly wave of heat to surge throughout and overcome her entire body, her eyes close half way for a second and then re-open, slowly. A slight, sly smile, which would be undetectable to most anyone else, but at this distance he can read every single subtle nuance of her face and eyes and there is no room for hiding. Still holding his gaze, she notices his eyes dart quickly to her lips and back to her eyes automatically causing her to wet them with her tongue and part them to take a slow breath in as they slowly move closer, still never leaving each others gaze until their lips finally meet and eyes close shut to fully enjoy and embrace the moment...

2004-11-01T04:22:00.000-05:00

"Not that I want to have sex or anything......but you wanna come back to my place and, uh maybe watch a movie?"

2004-10-29T02:11:00.000-04:00

This is an actual conversation I was either a part of or at least present for:

-Dude that's a convent over there??
yeah
-you mean like, with nuns and stuff?
yeah
-dude............we should totally break in

2004-10-26T14:34:00.000-04:00

oh my gooooooddddddddd someone update this for me

2004-10-19T15:05:00.000-04:00

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

2004-10-14T23:04:00.000-04:00

We can all thank Jaymi for my new layout. Because of her last comment, I decided to post something new so people would have a little bit more to read, but when I posted it, only half of my old template got published and the rest got deleted. So I had to change to this crappy new template that is written in XML that I know absolutely nothing about. So everyone get out your magnifying glasses, cause it's gonna be super small font from now on, until I figure out how to change it.

Maybe that worked. It did. Yes I am blaming this random act of blog erasure on Jaymi because I have nothing better to do =).

2004-10-14T14:16:00.000-04:00

I bought Danny the Dog yesterday, the massive attack soundtrack. It's phenomenal, very complete and listening to it is like almost watching a/the movie (that i haven't seen), or reading a book. It has a great flow from start to end. I also bought memento on dvd and when I opened it up, there were no dvd's inside. I thought that maybe they were fucking with me, seeing as how messed up the movie is, maybe they thought it would be funny to hide the dvd's somewhere in the case....No such luck. I don't think HMV will believe me if I go take it back and try to get my dvd's, especially since it's been like two weeks since I bought it. I also bought snowpatrol, but haven't given it a good listen yet. This is a sorry excuse for a blog entry.

2004-09-22T02:44:00.001-04:00

It's easier to destroy than to create. Probably why my blogs have been rather "destructive" as of late. Destructive as in not very productive. More negative, jaded commentaries rather than creative pieces of writing. It's not good.

.......dreams of teeth falling out, jumping and flying, maddening black and white dreams where everyone speaks in an endless high-pitched ringing screech rather than words with one red indistinguishable and nondescript object appearing periodically, running and running but feeling as if your legs are weighed down and you know you can run faster but

.....completely barren and soulless room devoid of any real personality or character furnished with objects which appear to have been purchased all together at the same time on the same day from the same store, like Ikea

.....ould she trust him when he tells little white lies to spare people's feelings or tells people exactly what they wanted to hear to falsely bolster their self esteem? When he smiles he appears genuine but the look in his eyes glaring out from behind the look he's trying to convey tells her all she ever wanted to know. All she ever wanted was to be completely open with someone, completely vulnerable and at the mercy of another person without the slightest hint of fear, completely comfortable and secure and never worrying about ridicule or embarrassment, completely immersed and involved in another person's life, complete

.......blueness of the water sparkles invitingly, enticingly, however illusory it may be. The logical part of your brain knows that water is clear. The illogical part of your brain wants you to jump in with all of your clothes on. The sand gets in your shoes, your socks, blows in your eyes, grits in your teeth, but still makes you smile as she continues to brush her

....wanted it to rain so badly before.

....rning up the volume gradually from zero in the middle of a song so that the music and words quietly fade in and spill over you unexpectedly making you not quite sure where you are in the song for a split second

......the basil between her hands over the bowl on the counter releasing the sweet intoxicating smells that always remind her of her mother's cooking

....wipes a single tear from her cheek and kisses her forehead one last time before she races to board the train as it's leaving the station

....she loves the sound her pen makes as it scratches along rough piece of paper, the feeling she gets from words furiously spilling out of her and onto the paper in an absolute torrent of ideas no longer hindered by wretched case of writer's block

....songs that make you leave your house and race down the street in the rain at an ungodly hour just for the chance to talk for a few seconds and apologise for being such an idiot

.....eyes closed, hands poised, mind blank.

2004-09-16T03:20:00.000-04:00

So apparently now I take requests. This is a story for a friend of mine, the lovely and beautiful Marija. I'm 92% drunk when writing this so bear with me. I am under the gun. I should probably write this in pink.

I really hate barbie. And the girls that look like barbie or girls that I classify as "barbie-type" girls. These girls are the type that are soooo "pretty", blonde, medium to large breasts, that most guys drool over. Example: pamela anderson. Girls like this make me want to vomit. The super pretty cookie-cutter type girls that apparently every guy wants to be with. The fantasy perfect girl. Particularly unintelligent but getting by on her extreme good looks. Girls using their sexuality to get ahead in life. And it works. Not relying on intelligence or cleverness, but on persuading others with sex. Who needs school when you've got a nice rack and blonde hair? You could grow up to be a fashion designer. Fuck education. Why waste your time and money on something like that to help the greater good of mankind when you could be making serious money coming up with a new fall clothing line? I mean, isn't making money what it's all about? And, if the fashion career doesn't work out, you could always marry rich. Your job in life would be only to maintain your playboy-like body for your man and attend all of the associated parties at the mansion, bringing your rich beau along with you of course. On your days off (i.e. every day), you would spend your time cleaning the condo and thinking up new and exciting dinner ideas for when your husband gets home from his wallstreet job.

All of this is the very message conveyed by the simple measurements and physical characteristics of the plastic doll. No one would buy a sensible doll. A barbie that was of average looks but above average intelligence. Good at making conversation and having intellectually stimulating conversations. Someone who had real ideas and opinions about the world around them. Someone that was independent and didn't adhere to social conventions. That type of doll wouldn't sell at all. Too preachy. I think the only people that a strong and independent woman intimidates are the male chauvinistic pigs that are used to dominating women and having the upper hand their entire lives. A serious threat to their manhood.

I guess beauty and sex sells, and a practical, everyday barbie would not be market-friendly. I don't know who does these market research studies, but someone should definitely kill all of them. I hate marketing and target market-strategies. Is this really the message we need to be sending out to girls in the process of growing into women? Of course not, but since the correct message isn't as cost-effective, we are helpless. We'll be forever stuck with the sexually-driven money making machine of Barbie and everything that doll symbolises.

2004-09-10T01:39:00.000-04:00

I am not pessimistic, or jaded.

I know it seems like that from what I write, but no one really wants to write or read about sunshine and lollypops and rainbows all day. People generally don't bask in your gloriously fantastic life or identify with how great everything is going. They can usually relate to the negative easier than the positive. Usually it's more automatic to write about the bad, and when things are fantastically good, I've noticed that people generally don't have time to write it all down on a blogger site.

Along the same lines of the mass email update, another thing I find is rather silly, is how people communicate with other people via blogger posts. What I mean is that people will write a blogger post with a seemingly hidden message in it made specifically for one certain person, written so that not many other people besides the key person would make the connection. Steph wrote a bit about it on her site (Sunday July 18th post) and I am starting to notice it in my own life now. Of course I've probably been guilty of it in the past, when I went on a tirade and quoted every single quote from taking back sunday because I was mad, but that really was a result of someone rather than meant for someone. I am always a firm believer in saying what you want to say directly to the person and being upfront. Don't hide behind your blog.

2004-09-09T01:41:00.000-04:00

Oh, and what's better than the mass email life update? (and by better I mean much much worse...) The reply-all to a mass email update, 4 of which I've gotten today from no one I even remotely know.

2004-09-08T03:54:00.000-04:00

Wow. I can't believe people's lives have come to this: Mass-email life-updates. It's SO sick. Is this their idea of keeping in touch? Sterile, generic emails addressed to everyone and no one at all giving out addresses and phone numbers and other contact information despite the fact that the only form of "contact information" this person uses and apparently needs is email. I doubt very much that 2% of the people reading the mass email actually WRITE down the contact info, update their little hand written paper and pen address books and actually plan on calling/snailmailing this person or dropping by their new place of residence.

I fucking hate it. I feel like everyone is turning into robots. I burnt my index finger and it hurts when I type, so I'm stopping. I'll keep you posted as to what's happening in my life via this blogger site, or perhaps maybe possibly a mass-email life-update.

2004-08-20T16:27:00.000-04:00

"the only time I've ever said "I love you" and really meant it was in a dream"

2004-08-08T18:35:00.000-04:00

I've been working a lot lately, I got finally got my full/part time thing figured out and I have non-stop full time hours now; looks like I was right and everyone else was wrong. I sure have no free time at all anymore and I seem to be in some sort of a standstill. In limbo. A steady state where nothing good really happens and nothing bad really happens and where nothing at all really happens which I guess is really kind of good. It's more that nothing is changing and that's what sucks. It's boring. It's non-dynamic. It's static. It probably explains my lack of posts on here lately because there has been nothing new to report. I guess this is what happens when you take an inventory of your life and your "friends" in it and end up cutting most of them out because they are dragging you down; all of the drama gets cut out along with it. A very tricky catch-22; do I keep crazies in my life for just the sake of entertainment, arguing, and a little "spice", or do I cut all these people out and reduce my life to a boring equilibrious standstill? I guess I've already made this decision. Maybe something drastic and dramatic will happen soon and unexpectedly........maybe not.

2004-07-30T15:12:00.000-04:00

So I can use a different text colour now?

Anyway, those of you who read this site regularly are probably really mad or super bored or just stopped coming, and I'm sorry. I'm super super busy and basically have time to work and sleep or possibly go to toronto on my days off, but that rarely happens. I promise I'll write better stuff when I get a free day.

2004-07-24T16:10:00.000-04:00

Wow....work makes you busy

2004-07-11T18:14:00.000-04:00

So I hit a transport truck on the highway.

2004-07-09T14:35:00.000-04:00

My last post purposely used the words "axe" and "rampage", since I have been reading/just finished reading American Psycho, by Bret Easton-Ellis. The book was insanely psychotic, to say the least, and I got physically ill reading many passages in it, it's very gruesome and descript. One thing he does, which I love because I tend to do that as well in writing, is that he has enormously long run-on sentences, sometimes composing 3/4 of the page in one gigantic paragraph. Anyone that knows me or receives emails from me is well aware of my tendency towards this style of writing. I'm running out of books to read, I need Chapters badly.

2004-07-09T00:49:00.000-04:00

Toronto: Fantastic. What's next.....

Also, I've been on a rampage of giving people the axe. I don't know why.

2004-07-04T13:02:00.000-04:00

Spiderman 2 was not bad. And now I'm going to Toronto on my forced days off. Should be fun.

2004-06-24T23:33:00.001-04:00

I want to write something, I don't know what. Something creative, and relaxing. Maybe a little bedtime story for someone? It sucks because usually I only talk about things that are currently pissing me off on here, and when things are going well, I don't really have much to say. Which is not to say that when there is an obvious lack of creative or venting quotes that things are going "well", cause things are generally fairly good, I just don't seem to be inspired to write very often. I need a new muse, the old one sort of burnt out.

I keep thinking about water, I don't know why, maybe it’s because I’m an Aquarius, you know The Water Bearer. I’ll try to explain what I can see and feel, so let’s to a little bit of guided imagery. Ok close your eyes and I’ll describe everything to you in detail and try to picture it in your mind as best you can. Wait, no don’t close your eyes, that’s not going to work. Ok, you’ll have to read it the old fashioned way I suppose.

You know the feeling of being in warm water, like an overly heated pool at night or the hot springs in Nagano Japan with the Snow Monkeys, but with just your ears submerged and head floating so that everything you hear is like a faint, muffled echo of the actual sound? You can feel and sense vibrations of anything moving beneath the surface much more readily instead of hearing them. It's like trading in one ability for another; one sense becomes weakened while the other is heightened. Pure relaxation washes over you from the buoyant feeling of almost weightlessness while you float there with your eyes closed in a near-meditative state. Picture the sensation of the water's edge on your face as you sink your head in a little lower so the oval of air-exposed skin on your face gets smaller and you can feel the water tickle over your skin. The oval grows and shrinks as you breathe in and out until you exhale one deep breath and sink completely under. The water feels alarmingly hot on your face at first but then beautifully warm as your skin adjusts to it. You know your time of pure tranquility beneath the water level is very limited by your lung capacity, making it a borrowed and fleeting moment that only lasts for a short while, like an amazingly bright flash of lightning or a shooting star that you're not sure you've really seen because you only caught it with the corner of your eye.

The only bad part of being in water like that is getting out and being cold, unless you can get a huge towel or nice bathrobe to jump into before you run to your room and get under the covers, which sounds like a good idea.

2004-06-22T08:38:00.000-04:00

My little brother Kenny just graduated from public school, and he won the phys-ed award too. Good work Kenny!

2004-06-21T00:23:00.000-04:00

I know posting song lyrics is so cheesy, but when they're soooo good, I can't help it. This is from the new (newest) massive attack album 100th window, with songs co written and sang by sinead o'connor.

What your soul sings

"....your mind can never change
unless you ask it to
lovingly rearrange
the thoughts that make you blue
the things that bring you down
only do harm to you
and so make your choice joy
for joy belongs to you

and when you do
you'll find the one you love is you
you'll find you love you..."

"...so no longer pretend
that you can't feel it near
that tickle on your head
that tingle in your ear
oh ask it anything
because it loves you dear
it's your most precious king
if only you could hear

and when you do
you'll find the one you need is you
you'll find you love you"

Everyone should try to get this song, I think it's copy-controlled, so you cheap bastards can't download it off the internet. The cd is like $30 bucks, but well worth it if you like massive attack. Sinead does a couple other songs too.

2004-06-18T18:07:00.000-04:00

And now it's official.

2004-06-18T07:06:00.000-04:00

Time for some convocation/graduation. It's sort of funny, and fitting; I drove myself TO university and moved myself in to residence, and now as I'm leaving university, I'm doing it myself again.

2004-06-15T10:41:00.000-04:00

someone suggested writing that post from a couple days ago in proper japanese haiku style, so here goes (fairly accurate, 5-7-5 syllabic, with seasonal references)

Sore feet, cut-up hands
grave summer at casino
no life, but good tips

2004-06-14T23:35:00.000-04:00

J says:
I'm coping with my stress by reading trashy romance novels...there's a 50% chance that my brain will shrivel up and fall out my ear before I get a job.

Jesse says:
i don't know why you do that to yourself

Jesse says:
or how it copes with stress

Jesse says:
i really really don't get that

Jesse says:
how you knowingly read books that aren't good

J says:
they're not BAD they're just sleaze....

Jesse says:
i don't see how they could be good

J says:
Well, they are light, and fluffy, and you KNOW how they're going to end...

J says:
And really, how can reading 40 pages of sex in a grocery store be bad...sigh...

Jesse says:
that's nto what i mean

Jesse says:
i guess i just don't get that...

Jesse says:
reading something purposely "light and fluffy"

Jesse says:
like, reading a book because you know it won't be too mentally taxing

Jesse says:
like reading soemthing you know is going ot suck because you're not in the mood for something amazing

Jesse says:
i can't wrap my head around that.

J says:
Its better than watching TV, and I need to shut my brain off sometimes...

Jesse says:
i know

Jesse says:
i know exactly for what purpose you do it...

J apparently in the newspaper says:
I think to much

Jesse says:
maybe that's my problem

Jesse says:
exemplified by my inability to comprehend purposely reading low brow books

Jesse says:
i guess i've only used book to turn my brain on, not shut it off. i don't think i can shut mine down much

Jesse says:
as is obvious in how many messages i keep writing and how i can't stop

J says:
I just need to sometimes, or I'll think myself to death

J says:
Ever since I read hamlet man...I'm scared

Jesse says:
no no you don't die, from over thinking

Jesse says:
i do it constantly

Jesse says:
you know how in harry potter...

Jesse says:
how they say if you drink unicorn blood you will only have a half life?

Jesse says:
that's what happens

Jesse says:
you keep thinking yourself to near death, but never actually die

Jesse says:
it's like cutting something in half indefinitely; it never really quite goes to zero

2004-06-13T12:12:00.000-04:00

Work. Busy. Sore feet. Crazy tips. No life.

2004-06-05T18:27:00.000-04:00

I just took the kids to see Harry Potter today. Everyone has got to go see it, it was really amazing - probably the best movie I've seen this year.

Megan! You NEED to go see it. If you have no one else to go with, I'll take you for sure. You're going to love it

2004-06-02T01:10:00.000-04:00

-kkccchhhhhk-
-jtownE to howeizzzA mah sizzzah, do you copy?
-howeizzzA we have just received confirmation of your landing in country codenamed Red Team Charlie, over -kkccchhhhhk-
-requesting immediate correspondence via blogger post indicating your current location and mission objectives, over -kkccchhhhhk-
-DO I make myself clear sars?
-jtownE over and OUT.
-kkccchhhhhk-

2004-06-01T19:39:00.000-04:00

Blast you GLOMMOPTICUS!!!

(you know who you are. ok maybe you don't know who you are, but we know who you are, check the hint in the term that aptly describes you and your glomming ways)

2004-05-30T16:09:00.000-04:00

the Howe is BACK

Let the mutual defunkification begin!

2004-05-27T23:47:00.000-04:00

Yeah so work was good. 9 hours of watching someone read through papers. Basically I learned that the cameras are always watching me and I'm not allowed to say anything about anyone or anything to anybody. I can't even shake hands inside the casino. Or date my supervisor, who is super hot. Two more paid days of this to go!

2004-05-27T07:10:00.000-04:00

First day of work consisting of: Orientation day #1 of 3.

blech

2004-05-24T17:42:00.000-04:00

someone just hit my site with the search "nude beech". ahaha

sorry, not going to happen

2004-05-18T18:29:00.000-04:00

Here's a portion of something I wrote to someone some time.

......i've also had a head x-ray, two cat scans, and an ultrasound on my neck. i've had a brick dropped on my head (i swear). i've had a couple concussions. i was on antidepressants to treat migraine headaches (didn't work). i've severed my two last fingers on my left hand down to the bone, everything you can think of in them was cut by a lawnmower when i worked at zellers as as stockboy in highschool. i play guitar.

i graduated in chemistry from waterloo and have no desire to pursue that field. i'm a good writer and photographer, artistic, literate and stylish (?), but i majored in science. i feel pursuing an artistic career is selfish, but i want to. chiropractors are quacks. i love simpsons so much and the fact that you use quotes from it. i also applied for a job at walmart for the photo shop but didn't get it. hahaha. love chili and pitas, and who doesn't like pizza. i've eaten chili for every meal of the day for a week and a half straight, including breakfast.

that's nice that you love the cock, the current joke at my expense is that *I* love the cock, and one time at a party my friends were throwing a keggar and people who paid got humourous messages written on their hands in permanent black magic marker. mine was 'i heart penis'. with heart written out with letters. Quote: "From now on we'll be spelling EVERYTHING with letters." beneath that was written in pen later on in the night was 'no i do NOT'. up my arm was written, again later, in black marker, 'yes i do, more than anything in the world'. i don't love the cock. some guy at this patiobar, arizonas in thorold wears an 'i heart vagina' tshirt every time. the heart is a picture this time, not spelled out.

my nickname with my group of friends in guelph is 'ladiesman', but it couldn't be further from the truth; i've never asked out a girl and i'm too afraid to hit on someone/ask them out. i've dated, just never initiated the relationship, just sorta went along with it. therefore i never get what i want. i'm a huge chicken. i also like to write very long emails/messages, and this is probably the longest message you've recieved containing more than you ever wanted to know. I also only/mainly have female friends (except the guelph boys), which my one friend refers to as my 'harem'. some of the girls in that group want to date me and have asked me out but they couldn't be more wrong for me so i said no. i always date the wrong girls. i attract the wrong and crazy ones and can't seem to find a good one, right for me. i have (my family has) two dogs and two cats. i don't really like cats, at all.

music is most important in my life. i sometimes have insomnia (it's 5am). i wrote a long message to someone else like this and i think i freaked her out and she stopped talking to me. so i asked you if i freaked you out. someone told me i was intimidating. after you called me "rad", some other girl called me rad like the next day and i laughed my ass off. she didn't get it.

i have a weblog website but can't really think of anything to post. i usually use flawless grammar, spelling and punctuation and i don't know why. i don't know why i'm not now. i can't believe you spelled "hawt" like that. writing like this is fun. are your eyes sore? don't you hate when people ask you questions in emails as if they were talking to you and you have no real way of replying to it after the fact? and don't you also love how you can write an email to someone and they can't interrupt you or stop you from going on and on and on and on so you can pretty much say whatever you want and they just have to read it. i do. does this have a word limit?

i would like challenge you to a simpsons quote competition, with no internet cheating. i should stop.

2004-05-18T18:28:00.000-04:00

and you just don't get it

2004-05-13T02:25:00.000-04:00

"this was for a girl i had a big time crush on, now i'm just crushed, bigtime"

2004-05-13T02:12:00.000-04:00

This song, mad world (tears for fears cover, donnie darko), makes me want to cry. I love it.

"all around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn our faces
bright and early for their daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere
there tears are filling up their glasses, no expression, no expression
hide my head i wanna drown my sorrow, no tomorrow, no tomorrow

and i find it kinda funny, i find it kinda sad, the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i've ever had, i find it hard to tell you, i find it hard to take, when people run in circles it's a very very mad world...

children waiting for the day they feel good, happy birthday, happy birthday
and i feel the way that every child should, sit and listen, sit and listen
went to school and I was very nervous, no one knew me, no one knew me
hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson, look right through me, look right through me

and i find it kinda funny, i find it kinda, sad, the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i'd ever had, i find it hard to tell you, i find it hard to take, when people run in circles it's a very very mad world,...mad world..."

2004-05-11T01:54:00.000-04:00

wow, ok the sort of cheesiness (unless it's totally 100% true) of this kid's question to Trent Reznor is totally offset by his amazing reply. And people wonder why I love Trent Reznor so much....you all should too (love him):

Question to Trent:
"i just want to let you know that you are personally responsible for preventing me from committing suicide. when i started high school, i bought the fragile unfamiliar with most of your previous work. i was feeling really really shitty with situations concerning my mother, situations in high school, peers, and whatnot. anyways, buying the fragile, i slowly, but surely began to realise the message you portrayed in this album. after repeated listening, the title track still stands up to me as a message of hope, as a way to escape everything that seems to destroy my psyche and bring me down. i was very close to ending my life prematurely, but listening to the fragile made me realise that there is beauty in the pains of life and hope is in everything that life can give you, no matter how torrid it may seem. thank you, trent reznor, if i hadn't bought the fragile, i wouldn't be around to e-mail this to you"

Response from Trent: (fucking amazing)
"thank you for your kind words, but give yourself the credit for getting through whatever it was you were going through. it seems to me that there are some people who treat music as something that plays in the background occasionally, and there are some -- probably anyone who's reading this -- that music has a much more important role. music is the soundtrack to every aspect of my life -- songs vividly remind me of places/events/feelings/people. music has been my best friend and made me feel connected when i've been at my loneliest. it's weird and great to find myself in a position where music i've made has touched some of you. keep your shit together!"

2004-05-09T03:20:00.000-04:00

ever get a pen that makes you want to write? i know it sounds weird......but i found one. i wrote some stuff too, good stuff...but it's not for you.

2004-05-08T19:26:00.000-04:00

Why am I the biggest fucking chicken in the world? I have no idea. Couple examples, this past friday and the friday before. Starting with the furthest friday first. This really cute girl keeps looking at me allllllllll night, smiling making eye contact, circling like vultures with her wing-girl friend. So I just sit and watch and sit and watch. Keep in mind that this girl is probably as close to my """""perfect match""""" as you can get. yes i used excessive quotes because there is no such thing as a perfect match. and i'm in a bad mood so i'm gonna stop using proper grammar and punctuation and spelling and. suckers. yeah so then FINALLY she circles around for like one last time and does this, tell me if this is a tiny teensy weensy little signal.....(and for everyone i've told this story to like a hundred times and you laughed at me a hundred and one times already, bear with me)......yeah so the girl circles around again, walks by me and looks right in my eye, stops, says hi, flashes a big smile, then walks away while looking back at me and firmly brushing along my arms as long as she can.......I don't remember what i said, it was probably something like high-pitched "hhhHIIIi..." and then fishy face gaping mouth 'uh..uhh....'...followed by nothing, then fishy face some more, and then more nothing. Then she dissapeared, and the next time I saw her was a picture of her on the arizona's website...smiling sweetly as if to rub it in my face. Then some stuff like that happened last night (the more recent friday) at arizonas again, but the story isn't nearly as interesting so i am (ABORT abort!) stopping with the writing.

2004-05-04T20:56:00.000-04:00

There should be a mathematical relationship describing the tendency of someone to spend a great deal of time online as a function of whether the person is dating someone or not. I notice I have more online "friends" that talk to me almost all day when they're single and then not at all when some new flame comes into their life and fires them up. I guess people use the internet as a way of connecting to people when they have not much else to do. This is why I don't rely too heavily on any online conversations I have with people because they're so different than real life. It just kind of makes me mad because I try to be the same online all the time and a lot of people put on different faces depending on what's going on in their life or depending on what sort of image they're trying to convey. I really hate msn and other online chatting things so much, but I still can't do without it since so many people I would not be able to have contact with if it weren't for the internet. I guess it's my iron lung in a way. Something you absolutely despise but, because of situational circumstances, you have to keep it around and it sort of keeps you going. Patients on an iron lung hate it because it confines them to a room, limits what they can do and figuratively and literally weighs them down, but if it weren't for that enormously complex breathing apparatus they'd be dead. Same with radiohead's song my Iron Lung, about their other song Creep. Look into it.

2004-04-24T20:33:00.000-04:00

Jesse says: you drive me crazy
MissBliss says: i know
Jesse says: in a bad way
MissBliss says: in a good way
Jesse says: pfft
MissBliss says: in a " i wanna stick my hand up your skirt" kinda way, right?

2004-04-21T02:36:00.000-04:00

I can't sleep, this is why. I want you to read this and feel the pain that just sort of hit me again.

Picture a majestic old mansion-like house, a hundred and twenty years old, solid oak standing tall and strong in a country field like the great trees from which it was built. Picture this magnificent house full of vitality, history and beauty. Now picture that same house fiercely scorched by fire, all the character and flaws and subtle nuances that made the house beautiful destroyed and lost forever in the flames. Picture it being rebuilt, salvaged in a heroic attempt at restoration that will never reclaim what once was. All that's left is a sterile shell, the empty framework of a defeated giant. It is still a house, but one without history, without heart, with no soul -- nothing left of the house that once spoke of age-old stories and secrets of previous inhabitants. Like a ferocious lion that was once king of the jungle, but is now in captivity, spirit broken, tied to a wooden stake with a weak and frail rope he could easily break free of if he only still possessed the will. He doesn't. He's broken, with no fight left, gone and lost forever like the memories of the old house.

This is what happened to my cd collection. JK stole a piece of my soul I will never get back. I guess I have to give her credit for at least paying enough attention to me to know what would hurt the absolute most. Five years ago is a long time to be bringing up old wounds, but this one runs deep.

2004-04-20T02:48:00.000-04:00

In case you didn't get the invite.

Take my Quiz. Do it, do it now.

2004-04-19T02:53:00.000-04:00

I'm going to do something a little strange. I'm going to take you on a trip through a photo album in your mind. Since I can't post photos on here this will be an exercise in imagery.

This first picture is me sitting, holding a camera with the strap around my wrist beside an ex girlfriend of mine at a family function. My family is very strange and comedic, and you can tell this girl is forcing an obvious fake smile, while two relatives of mine beside her are beaming with authentic ones.

The next series of pictures are all headshots of me, taken by me on a crappy disposable camera that wasn't mine. Most of the pictures are very close, too close for comfort, but still very funny; I have the biggest smile on my face in every picture. My favourite of this set of five pictures is one where my nose is in the top left corner, one half of my smile is in the bottom left corner; my head takes up 2/3rds of the entire photo. The other 1/3 is a hand with a bluish-green ring on it, which is funny because I don't wear rings, especially bluish-green ones. This hand is obviously a hand of someone holding the camera trying to stop me from taking pictures, which explains my huge smiles in every shot.

The next set of 4 pictures was not taken by me, but by my sister Sylvonna taking pictures OF me at christmas. It's really funny because I, for the most part, hate christmas at my house. I get meaningless and thoughtless presents from my parents which seriously hurt my heart. Instead of getting depressed, I was opening all of my pictures with feigned enthusiasm. The first shot I'm holding up a necklace and sort of modeling it and smiling a coy, sarcastic smile. The next shot is of me holding up a t-shirt I got from my older sister that has a picture of a headless stickfigure and the caption reads "need head". Classy. I don't wear extra extra large (medium or large, thankyouverymuch), and I generally don't wear shirts with any sort of identifying features or logos, let alone one that has 'need head' on it. The next picture is of me holding my long skinny hands out and putting out a pouty lip as if to say "where's my presents", and the very next picture is of my little brother Samuel ceremoniously holding up his presents for the camera, my dad opening another meaningless present and me yawning and overly large, exaggerated and dramatic yawn. You can see down my throat.

That ends roll #1, very long time ago.

The next set of pictures is around new years (I never said YOUUUUUU COULD WEAR THATT!!!!!!). The first couple are beautiful pictures of my sister Sarah, my best friend Sara, and the three of us all dressed up and ready to go, but completely blurred out and useless, since I had shutter speed on way too low and the aperture open way too much for a handheld shot in the current lighting, so they were all ruined. I went to the camera store to tell the guy that my camera was screwed up and roll after roll is getting ruined. He told me I was an idiot and schooled me for at least an hour on aperture and shutter and what they both meant in laborious and grueling detail. He actually left work after he was done telling me, as he was done his shift...

The shots that did come out of that roll were amazing, and the photo place comped them all for me because they thought they were screwed up, but they were all blurry on purpose. For these last few shots I had the camera working properly. I took pictures of myself reflected in my guitar, and they made for a very eerie and fuzzy shot, like vaseline smeared on the lens. They look really cool; two or three of the shots again outline my very long and skinny hands, they seem to catch my eye when I'm taking pictures for some reason. My favourite guitar-reflected shot is a picture of those very same slender fingers putting a portishead cd into my cd player, the background and ground itself are very undefined and it looks as though the cd player and hand are floating randomly. The next picture was at the height (or depth) of my depression. I didn't shave and I wore a hoodie with the hood up almost 24/7. I decided to do a couple self-portraits that turned out very good, if you like the serial killer look. One didn't turn out and is very blurry, but still makes for an interesting shot, and the other that wasn't so great was very shadowy and it even scares me to look at it for too long.

The next pictures were taken with Phil at the tattoo parlour, taken by best friend Sara, but I instructed her on using my camera incorrectly (she's good behind the lens as well), and they also all turned out in the exact same boggling blurry fashion. There is a hand-held shutter speed setting on my camera, under which you can't take handheld pictures clearly without a tripod. We didn't stay above that value. Anyway, the pictures are in the process of me bleeding and tattooed, one with glasses on, shaggy hair and hairy chest, Phil working his magic. Next, showing the absolute redness of my back (fairly clearly) with Saturn almost finished. The third and final phototo, showing the triad of Aquarius my sign and two ruling planets, arranged shoulder neck shoulder. The last photo, which I really like, and which Sara may not have realised at the time, is a photo of the flash on the wall. Centering the picture is a spread of sharks. No shark jesuses however just sharks. Funny all the same.

The last picture rounding out the roll (which may be two or three combined) is of BW from a behind-left angle, hair done up in a ponytail, drinking champagne on her champagne birthday, one of the first times we hung out. One hand contains the champagne glass and in the other, in clear focus in the picture is a biological psychology textbook, showing a neuron and axon and all the dendrites. Did I mention it was her champagne birthday!??! STUDYING!?

Next roll. The first picture is of a cat. I needed something to take a picture of and the cat was there. It's a pure white cat, and the picture is of it sitting in the sun with a rainbow cast across its face. This is the same cat that my dad tried to convince me was nice, saying "let him lick your face, he won't bite, he's a nice cat". I said no, he's going to bite my face off I know he will, that cat's a bloody bastard. "No no no let him lick your face, he won't bite....see I'll do it". He puts his face up to the cat and it affectionately licks it a few times and stops. "See! go ahead try it". Fine. I try it. I put my face up to the cat and it starts licking it. Lick Lick. For a second I'm like, aww what a sweet cat, my dad was right....next thing I know, lick lick CHOMP. The cat bites me in the face after a couple licks, and bites hard. I knew he was going to do that, the little bastard.

The next few pictures are cottage pictures. There's one of a horsefly perched on an evergreen tree, and the fly is in amazing detail, it's retarded. The next one is of a toad in the green grass. First in profile, and then head on. I lay down on the grass and the lil guy hopped right up to the camera so I snapped a few shots. The next shot is off in a bog somewhere where I was with my grandpa on the four-wheeler; he needed to build some bridge or something. The picture is of 10 or 12 majestic trees past their prime, old sun-bleached soldiers standing leafless, lifeless, bare and tall in front of a lush green and dense younger forest backdrop. The next shot is one I perched my camera on a rocky cliff to take. It's of my two sisters and I strangling each other on the edge of a gigantic cliff. The drop-off isn't as drastic as the picture makes it out to look, there are few sublevels, but in the shot it looks as though we're as close to the edge as we could be and we're screwing around like a bunch of monkeys, perilously close to death with each others hugely smiling faces in our choking hands.

The next picture is one of my favourite pictures. I say "hey grandpa smile I'm going to take a picture", having already focused the camera on his unsuspecting face for a few minutes. He throws his arm up to shield his face and the shot is ruined. Or so I thought. I look at it now, him sitting there in the cottage on a couch, his strong and overly muscled arm is shielding his face, and you can see that his hands are so tough and worn and haven't really relaxed in 65 years. Hands that never stop working, nails permanently stained, old t-shirt on with paint on it, forearms muscled like no tomorrow, indicative of countless hours spent using a screwdriver or wrench or hammer, muscled in a way that only those tools could shape slowly and continuously over the years.

I managed to get an amazing shot of some minnows for the next picture, in 3 feet of water, looking down from the dock, in perfect focus. There is still something reflected in the left of the picture shining on the water's surface I have yet to figure out. You can see the sun dancing off of the ripples in the water, the sand below and the shadows of the minnows drawing your eye falsely away from the real fish. There is also a reflection of the minnows at the surface of the water, which look like a bad blurry picture of a minnow. So the light hitting the same minnow is casting three different images, making four minnows look like twelve.

The next couple of pictures I have are profiles of my sleeping sisters in the car on the way in to town. It's a long drive. I took a few cloud pictures next, since the weather wasn't too favourable for sun tanning. The one day I managed to get a perfectly centered picture of the only cloud in the sky, which was obscuring the sun. The next two pictures are probably the most amazing shots I've gotten so far. The first is one of my sister Sylvonna kneeling in front of a few daisies, her hair done in braids close to her head. You can see every freckle on her face, coming out to meet the sun. Her face isn't smiling, just looking at the camera, slightly off centered and framed by daises in one of the most beautiful pictures I have ever seen.

The next is a very close up shot of a dragonfly, completely surrounded by bright green shoelace plants. The leaves of the plant are not much thicker than the dragonfly perched upon it, and it looks like the shot is taken in a rainforest. Very multifaceted and the bright blue and black dragonfly contrasts the green foliage behind it.

The next two pictures are back at home, one of my brother Samuel and the other of my brother Kenny. Both pictures are done in lighting that hits their face at a certain beautiful angle, completely blacking out one half of their face. My brother Samuel is adorable and you can see a stifled cuteypie smile peeking out through the shadows. The picture of Kenny is a rather stoic shot, for a 13 year old. It's a nice head shot where half of his face is obscured by shadow, the other half lit up to show his pale skin and serious face. It's hard to take pictures of kids when they are so used to the expected say cheese and smile!!! type photos. They didn't understand when I said don't smile, have no expression on your face. Although, the pictures of Kenny and Sam turned out great; they managed to not really smile, except Sam, who had the slightest hint of a smile creeping over his lips, making the most amazing picture I could have ever asked for. The same shot like this I tried with my sister Serena did not make for a good photo, however. She was unable to de-expression her face, and the look of her not smiling is of her going "like, uh, whatevER, how am I supposed to NOT smile" in a sort of sarcastic, who-do-you-think-you-are kind of facial expression.

The next roll is the roll before I took my camera to Japan camera and had the guy instruct me endlessly on photography. Some shots actually turned out. I had my camera with me on my way to school in the summer term, the term I decided to go back to school for some extra classes, to get me out of the house and to stave off the depression. I took a bunch of pictures while cutting across a parking lot. I took pictures of the clouds reflected in minivan windows. I also managed to get a couple pictures of the sun without my camera blowing up. It won't let me take shots when too much or too little light gets in, so I wasn't able to get pictures of the sun previously. That and the fact it burns my eyeballs staring at it trying to focus the camera, magnifying its rays though the lens. The best shot I got is like the sun you always see in movies; the one where a beam of light is coming out of the sun in triangular patterns to the north, south east and west directions, with other triangles of light coming out of the northeast, southeast, southwest and northwest directions of the sun. Looks like a star or a sun you would draw in a grade school picture. It also has those characteristic circular light patterns coming off of the sun to the right, you know the ones that look like sun after-images that illustrate the beaming nature of the light so often shown in movies.

The next picture is a great shot of me reflected in a minivan window. In it you can see my spiky hair, squinched-up-and-sweaty-from-the-sun-picture-I-just-took face, along with the slender skinny fingers again. Behind me is a perfect backdrop of clouds and sky, such that it looks like the picture is taken from a plane. The only ruining aspect of the picture is the gigantic and blurred window seal and car door frame sticking out like a sore thumb in the extreme left of the picture. I'll have to crop that out.

The next picture I took, which really started me off on my "extreme" project, that has yet to be developed, is of my hair gel. I have this Dep hair gel that is apparently SO extreme.....The first shot I have, which didn't turn out, is of the extreme gel rating scale at the bottom of the bottle. The scale starts at 4, meaning not so extreme and goes to an explosive TEN!!!!! that is way off the scale and like 3 times larger than any of the other, lesser numbers. Also, they spell it X-treme, with a black and yellow super bolded X. So obviously this gel is way off the end of the extreme scale. The next shot is of the same bottle, at the top there is this yellow little word bubble that says: New energy complex!!! So apparently this company has discovered a new form of energy that is some sort of "complex", which they have isolated and put to use in hair styling products. The next picture is a picture of a door which says EXTREME going from the top left to the bottom right. Also attached to this extreme door is a note saying "this computer lab is booked for the remainder of the term. If you have any questions, please email gripe@esqkids.ca”. They might as well have said "if you would like to leave us a nice little note, please feel free to send us an email at the following email address: stopfuckingcomplainingyousonofabitch@esqkids.ca. Or maybe that's just me. I just sort of liked the juxtaposition of the words "please", "gripe" and "kids".

The last roll is from my black and white roll that I basically had to send away to china to get developed. It took a small piece of my life away. The roll consists of mostly pictures that didn't turn out, a couple pictures of me dropping my camera on my trampoline when I was figuring out the aperture time delay while it was open and splaying light from the full moon all over that piece of film. Also some other needlessly black and white pictures, e.g. a picture of the moon on a dark black night, good thing I had my B&W film cause if it were colour, the white moon and black sky wouldn't have looked quite the same..........I got about 10 or 12 good shots out of 27 on this roll, a couple of the full moon and clouds on a pitch black night, pictures taken handheld, which is pretty amazing, since they aren't too crappy with long shutter delays. I really should have used a tripod with a huge exposure time, but I don't have a tripod. I tried holding my hand REALLY still, which never works.

One picture I like, that I took for my friend Sara, is a very Coupland-esque picture of all my products I had lined up in the bathroom. I had most of the crap on the back of the sink, razors, hair gel, shampoo etc, but then I decided to cram it full of as many products I could find and take a picture of it, inspired by the book shampoo planet. It turned out okay. It looks more cluttered than impactful. The other needlessly black and white picture I took was of my black and white cat, framed by a white railing in my house. It would look exactly the same in colour, and probably with more detail, since this B&W film was pretty shitty. These shots of this cat are shortly before it went feral, and we had to take it out to the 'beach (crystal beach, not THE beach, you monsters) and let it run wild with the other street cats. I have his life pictured in my head like the movie Aristocats, so I'm sure he's fine. Anyway, the picture is of him and you can see the insanity in his eyes; the first two shots are of the cat crazily looking off centre and not at the camera but framed by the poles of the staircase railing. The last two shots are of the cat leaning his head out the railing between two rungs, with one paw sticking out and eyes half closed as if to say he's so tuckered out from all the crazy cat play.

Remember that shot I told you about with my brother Samuel and half of his face was shadowed out and he was backdropped by a nice purple couch and wall (I left those last parts out, but he was, and it looked cool)? Well, this is the same shot, but in black and white, I ran out of film on the other roll and had to switch to my black and white and got one more shot of Sam. This one is equally as adorable; I fixed the light a little bit so that both sides of his face are visible, but he's got his chin lifted up a bit higher and is smiling a small adorable but not full smile, and looking off to the left of the photo. He's the cutest kid.

The last three shots took me like 4 hours to set up and none of them really turned out that great AND they should have been done with colour film in great detail, since my guitar is so colourful. I was taking pictures of my guitar, and the colour pattern on it is called "sunburst", so you can imagine what that looks like. I've seen people on tv with my guitar now, and I swear I had it first. Well my colours at least, they probably have the expensive version of my guitar. It's bright orangey-red in the middle and sort of explodes into blackness on the edges, it’s really cool. But it REALLY loses all of the effect in the black and white photos, and I should probably redo these. I have a couple pictures of it starting at the bottom bridge and pegs looking up the fret board. The strings are kind of stretching up and away from the camera, giving the picture a lot of depth and dimension, but still it didn't turn out the way I wanted. What I was trying to do was get some sheet music I had reflected in the black and very shiny pick guard thingy of my guitar. I have one shot where the sheet music is appearing to be floating in space and completely in focus reflected in my guitar, but the rest of the guitar is so blurry that it looks way too obvious. I have another of the same shot with both almost in focus, but I still kind of blew it and they didn't turn out the way I wanted. If I had a tripod, I would have been golden, getting the music and guitar in perfect harmony (ha.ha.) I mean focus. I should probably stop complaing and making tripod-related excuses and just go buy one.

Well that's about it for the imaginal picture show. I wish I was actually going through these pictures with someone else, and not just pretending...