School.

Well, here I am. One week away from heading into college. This will be the first time I've been in an academic setting (with serious intent) since I was 19. As I near closer to the first day of school I find certain things are robbing the moment from me.

First off there's work. I had explicitly stated that I could only work certain hours, and yet on the schedule I am set to work almost the exact opposite of what I said was okay. Now I can understand that my boss is a busy woman, and having to remember a thousand things when making the schedule means that new things she's been told may get forgotten. That's not the issue here, what is the issue is that even if I remind her and we rectify the issue for a bit, it will still happen again. I can't afford to have a "scheduling error" occur during a week where I have finals, or I am needed at school to do the radio show. That will only serve to harm my school career and I can't allow that to happen.

Work has become an interesting place to attend in its own right. There's a certain sub-culture amongst retail employees and I can't say I often care for it. I don't mean to blame the matter on my all female staff, but I do find there's a fair amount of "talking" going on. That is to say, be careful what you tell someone because it will go beyond that person to unknown numbers of others. There's no one particular culprit in this matter, I find it's often the case with most of the staff. I know the slips aren't done maliciously, but they still occur and it can be dangerous to truly open up at work. Some people will say that you need to keep your work and social life separate. I can certainly see why, but when you spend as much time as one does at work, and these people become a huge part of your day it's hard to not let them in on certain things.

It's why I need to approach the schedule matter as tactfully as possible. It's like surgery where you need to go in, extract the anomaly and get out without nicking an artery or upsetting an organ. It's not easy, that's for sure. I think that's one of my hesitations with returning back to this particular job. I feel somewhat powerless amongst the rest of the staff. Often times I feel less involved in the machinations of the company, and instead more of a tool that the staff and managers know how to wield to get results. With my sore shoulder and arm those functions are certainly decreased, but I'm often too proud/stubborn/shy to let them know that I'm in pain.

It's an aspect of school that I don't need to worry about. I can be as open or as closed as I want at school and the only person demanding excellence out of me, is me. While the teachers have certain expectations as to what's required to pass the course (hence grades), their investment in me isn't that specific. It's up to me to push myself to do as well as I can and get the marks I need to truly make college worthwhile.

I look forward more to the graduating aspect of school than school itself. That's not to say that I'm not looking forward to school, but I like the idea that once I'm done school I will have opened up a whole new world of possibilities for me. I will no longer be relegated to positions in retail and service. I can actually contribute to society in a manner of my choosing. I can be on air doing something that I love to do, and make a decent enough wage while doing it.

As I embark upon this scholastic endeavor wish me luck, for once I have set foot inside those halls I will be taking my last step out of "aimlessness" and first step into "driven".

Online Hijinks And Mall Malaise.

Well, I went into the college today to pay for parking. I found out once I got there that I was too early to pay for parking. There was apparently a window between when the online registration ended, and when you could buy it in person. This wasn't really explicitly stated on the college website, so my confusion was warranted. The problem wasn't so much that I made this mistake, but that I got the response of "Did you read the website?" from the staff. Feeling I didn't want to waste my trip I went over to Student Financial to see if my OSAP loan was available for pickup. Once again I was thwarted, and asked, "Did you read the website?"

I've had enough of that response, and let me tell you why. We pay people to be staff members at help desks, or information counters. Asking if I read the website is not doing your job, it's avoiding doing your job. You get paid to be helpful and important, not difficult and priggish. There's too many industries where customer service is in serious decline. So often to we expect that people can help themselves with self-serve options at gas stations, help line, banking, etc. This is one avenue where technology is not serving anyone any better. I have little doubt I can explain a situation better and more efficiently than any website.

The only sector in which customer service is not only a must, but it's actually getting better and achieving some amazing heights. This is the server or waiter position. A waiter has an interesting job, in that they are sort of on commission (tips), and the product they're selling is themselves. No matter how good or bad the food is, if the service is exceptional it can make the entire experience worthwhile.

I've found this is why Pier 1 is a bit of a rarity. As a non-commission based company we still try to excel in customer service. It's a bit of an old fashioned approach really. Back when department store employees sought you out and helped you rather than stand at the register waiting to ring you through. And speaking of the mall, here's the second half of this little tirade.

I remember when I was young and loved going to the mall, and my parents hated going. I thought, "That'll never be me when I get older, I love the mall!" Sadly time caught up with me and I find myself loathing the mall, and it's for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that I generally despise the "mall rats" or the teenagers who hang out at the mall. For the ones with money they're decked out in all the latest fashions from American Eagle and West 49. If they aren't packed with money they still look ridiculous as both groups of kids end up looking like their clothing doesn't fit one way or the other. Skinny jeans, baggy jeans, over sized hoodies, unlaced shoes, etc. It drives me nuts how children like this can get money from their parents to actively look like they're missing a chromosome.

Also on the list of why I hate malls is the stores in malls. They either have bad, loud music on, have the noxious smell of some perfume/cologne, or are so prim and proper I feel out of place even being in them.

I think this rant lost a bit of steam as I took a break in the middle of writing it to go to work for four hours.

Sleep, Perchance To....Sleep.

Well, I'm wide awake right now.

I've got an early morning shift tomorrow, but for the life of me I have no interest in going to bed. If I fail to take my sleeping medication, the prospect of sleep is entirely uninviting. Sleep feels like a colossal waste of time to me. Not to say that I don't enjoy dreaming, and if I could assure that I would dream I might be more keen on sleeping. As it stands now, however I find sleep to just take up hours upon hours of my life that could be better spent doing anything else. This includes, but is not limited to: eating, watching TV, playing a game, going for a drive, tidying up my room, laughing at the idea of me tidying up my room, writing more blog posts, eating more, etc.

Some people look forward to when they get to go home, curl up in bed and go to sleep. Not me though. I always lay in bed and think to myself, "What else could I be doing now?" The problem is that this begins to cycle in my head and sleep becomes a futile pursuit and I begin to do whatever it is I thought about doing in the first place. I think a large part of this stems from something psychological, but the other part of it is that I worry about not having enough time to do things.

Studies have been done for decades about how much we sleep, and the percentage of our life we spend with our eyes closed, unconscious. It's generally pretty staggering how much of our lives we devote to not living them. I've gone as many as three days without sleep before, back when I wasn't working. I would spend this time doing any number of frivolous things. These things were important to me at the time I did them, but I can say that looking back they were fairly moot.

I found myself panicked this afternoon while driving to work. I think about where my life and the lives of those around me are heading and I can't help but feel like I've fallen behind. Many of my friends are either finished college/university or are well on there way to finishing. Some of them are moving out, moving in with their significant other, already live with their significant other, having kids, and moving out of the city. I've commented before on this matter, but it really started to get me worked up today. I worry that by the time I've finished all the tasks required to start an adult life I'll be too old to begin the things that my friends are doing now. This is probably part of the reason I've moved out twice before, only to come home again. I want to be out in the world, I want to have the experiences that make me mature as an individual. I'm not content to be twenty four and just entering college. That's not to say I'm malcontent with college in general; I am looking forward to the experience very much.

I just don't want to be thirty years old, not be in the career of my choice, living alone.

After Market.

On the way home I got to thinking about a concept for a sci-fi novel or movie. The premise is that it's an alternate timeline, and a bill was passed in the 1990's that allowed for cloning of humans, with certain limitations. These limitations were that cloning had to occur at the embryonic state and only one of the clones was allowed to gestate to full maturity. The other had to be removed from the uterus and used for study.

Obviously this outraged thousands of anti-abortion activists and protests turned into riots and Canada and the United States (the two countries that passed the bill) were in turmoil. Seeking to find a balance, politicians agreed that the bill needed amending, making it so that only families who had their embryo inspected for genetic defects would be allowed to clone their child. The goal was that while one of the children would be born with potential defects (like Downs Syndrome, dwarfism, etc.) the other would embryo would be removed, undergo genetic restructuring and then reinserted into the womb. Thus parents would be given twins, one with the birth defect and the other normal. While this served to appease many of the abortion activists, it still didn't sit well with society on the whole. Issues where parents would blatantly love one child more than the other began to spring up. The challenged children would often be subject to abuse and neglect. A few decades later the bill was amended again. Once again anyone was available to have their embryo cloned, as before, but they were allowed to "harvest" one of the embryos and have it grow in a lab. If the embryo was a clone of a child with a defect, the defective embryo would be aborted and the restructured, healthy embryo would be reinserted into the womb. The excuse is that the soul of the child was preserved in the new embryo.

In the future the practice of cloning embryos came to be a luxury of the super rich who would clone a healthy embryo, but keep the clone in a sort of stasis. It would grow, but would never be awoken and in the event their child became ill, or had severe internal injuries they would "harvest" the clone's organs for replacement.

Wait a minute. I think I just wrote the plot for The Island. Goddammit.

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.

There's a fungus in the jungles of the world known as Cordyceps. Now, Cordyceps are fascinating fungus, if you can imagine such a thing. They are first and foremost parasitic. Now, in general understanding parasitic symbiosis often refers to one living, sentient creature living off of another. Sometimes it can be one plant living off of another. What makes Cordyceps so interesting is that they are fungus that live by infecting insects and basically using their bodies as hosts to grow and spread.

One of the more devious and ultimately creepier Cordyceps is the one called Cordyceps unilateralis. What C. unilateralis does is infect carpenter ants and then it takes over their mind. By controlling the ant's brain it forces the ant to climb upward into the forest until it finds a suitable place to stop. Then the ant is forced to bite down on a stem or thick underside of a leaf. At this point the fungus begins to grow, erupting out of the top of the head of the ant, killing it. After about three weeks of growth the end of the spore explodes sending out tiny spores all over the jungle to infect more ants. C. unilateralis has been known to wipe out entire colonies, so the ants have developed a sort of sixth sense about it. When a fellow ant becomes infected, one of the ants from the colony will carry the "sick" ant far away from the colony so that when it dies it doesn't infect other ants. It's really quite an interesting site to behold, check it out.

My Head Hurts.

I think I've stated in previous posts where I stand on homosexuality, but I thought I'd take some time to try and hammer out some points.

From a purely biological directive we are programmed and even physically built to procreate. I don't think there's any argument there. Fundamentally we have to view homosexuality as contradictory to the evolution of the species. In a black and white scenario, if we were all straight the world would continue onward. If we were all gay, the human race would see drastic drops in population and only artificial means of insemination would continue the species. From that angle being gay may be natural, but it hardly seems productive.

Enter love. Love seems to be the biggest argument in favour of homosexuality. It's stated that if you love someone, same sex or not you can't help it. Love is love. From that standpoint we have to view love as a directive somewhat separate from our design to procreate. While love, it seems is fundamental in long term homosexual relationships, it hardly seems to be the case in heterosexual relationships. Straight people get stuck together for all variety of reasons, often involving someone getting knocked up. So we can either look at love as a potentially deviant expression of human behaviour, potentially seeking to eradicate our species or it lends strength to the argument for homosexuality. Again, in a black and white scenario.

Now some animals species are recorded as having occasional homosexual couplings. This would seem to fly in the face of love as we understand it. Love is a human construct, a word tied to a feeling which would otherwise be neigh inexplicable. Animals tend to function on instinct. To them love is more instinctual and a primal directive to protect your children or home. While some species of animals are monogamous, this doesn't necessarily point to love from a human standpoint. Often times human love is fraught with inconsistencies.

Personally I feel that homosexuality is a widely accepted mental disorder. Now those may sound like strong words, and I don't mean to imply that they're wrong in their beliefs or feelings, or that it can be cured with pills. I'm just saying that there's a component to being gay and being human that doesn't quite mesh. We all have tiny neuroses, the greater of which can be declared as obsessive-compulsive, anxiety, depression, etc. While these are generally diagnosable, not all of them are treatable with medication. They can be curbed sometimes, but not always. We accept these people in our societies and they can lead successful lives without anyone really knowing anything's off. Homosexuality, it seems is the one "mental illness" which requires parades, special clubs, TV shows and all sorts of attention. Usually when people are waking down the street for mental illness awareness it's a charity walk and they're raising money, not eyebrows.

Now for people who read this who don't know me all that well I have to say that if I found out one of my friends was gay I'd be absolutely okay with that. In the same way I know they're okay with my various medical quirks. It's fine by me if you want to be gay, or make out with your significant other in front of me. Doesn't offend me at all. I just want people to be able to recognize the underlying possibilities for what's going on. To say that being gay is just the way you're born and it's natural seems to fly in the face of a lot of other sexuality-related issues that can arise at birth. Those born with hermaphroditism would hardly call their situation normal. While mentally they may be normal, normal is such a weak term to use that hardly anyone can be held to it.

I guess I didn't really have a point in this post, just wanted to get all of that in writing in one place.

Theme Song.

I felt like my blog needed a theme song.

So I present to you the following.



I recommend playing this whilst reading posts.

Mirror, Mirror On The Wall.

I love watching movies. I am an avid movie goer, and watcher. Just last night I plugged through the second and third Pirates of the Caribbean despite having seen them both already. While I'm certain the reasons for watching movies are as wide and varied as the movies themselves, what I'd like to take some time to talk about is the relations we can make to characters in the films.

When we are going through hard times in our lives, and we happen across a more poignant movie we find we can relate to it very strongly. Subtle emotions and images speak volumes to us when we're experience the same feelings. The same can be true of more upbeat times in our lives as well. While many of the more inane comedies can be so steeped in their own world that they're impossible to relate to, I say a good movie always has some fragments of reality.

I've seen Scott Pilgrim vs The World twice now. Once with my dad and uncle, and again with some of my friends. I commented to my buddy Scott that part of the reason I enjoy the movie so much - aside from the fact that it's a total nerd fest - is that I can picture characters like those in the movie in my own life. It's comforting in a way to know that if the people in our lives are elaborate enough to appear by-proxy on screen then perhaps our own lives are not quite so dull as we may think.

Take a moment. Think about the things you've done and experienced in the past five years. Try and sort through the grey and find those splashes of colour. There's some legitimately amazing things we do in our lives that would be worthy of any silver screen. I know that a lot of the time people can get caught up in the doldrums of their life, and find that they're just spinning their wheels. While it's true there are some people out there who are really quite two-dimensional and uninteresting, I find that more often than not people are brimming with vivacity. The effects of love, anger, sadness, joy, etc. all have stories behind them. Stories that can be told with a look in ones eyes, or over pages and pages of a blog. We need to learn how to listen to these stories. I know I'm not great at this, often times when people are telling me a story I feel obligated to follow suit and tell them a story. This isn't always necessary.

Sometimes people want or need to talk and they need people to listen. Knowing the time and place for your stories is part of the craft of being a quality person that people like to spend time with. Those people in our lives who want to tell the stories don't always require us to pass judgment on them, or give advice. They just want to talk, whether it's to hear their own voice or to make their opinions known. I know I like to tell stories so as to add depth to my character. I think that I've had a fairly remarkable life, and I think there are some people out there who'd like to hear about it. Likewise I enjoy hearing the stories of my friends. When they've got something going on in their life and they want to talk to me about it, I welcome the opportunity. It's through stories that we really learn about people and grow closer to them.

I know when I was in high school I had a romantic ideal of what it meant to have friends. It was hushed evenings at cafes, sharing stories and dreams and building connections that would last a lifetime. Through high school I was disappointed by my clime which was filled with teenagers to whom friendship meant who you had on Facebook. I am finding now though as I move further into my twenties that I was just thinking ahead. I am getting those opportunities to share my life and stories with my friends, and they with me.

I know not all friendships last forever, but I can hope that for now the ones that I do have will last as long as they can.

A Time And A Place.

Topical Treatment.

Just to prove how "with it" I am, I thought I'd take a moment to discuss this new craze called digital drugs. For those not familiar with the term, let me break it down for you in as simple a way as possible. Digital drugs, or "iDosing" is the process of using simplistic, repetitious sounds emitted through headphones in order to stimulate certain parts of the brain thus getting you high. The sounds are often combinations of white noise, digital "whirring" or "screaming" and any variation of monotone notes being played continuously. Imagine the sound a fire truck or ambulance makes. Now imagine it doesn't change in pitch or volume, but instead holds one note for several minutes. That's what it sounds like.

Now the belief held by many people (young and old) is that this is sufficient enough to induce a drug-like effect on the mind and body. Teens are using it to get high, as I'm sure bizarre clubs in big cities all over the world are pumping this noise into their halls, providing "free highs" for their patrons.

I think there's really a few ways to look at this. The first and most obvious is that people are stupid. If you can convince enough people that a bizarre enough set of circumstances are providing a desired effect, they'll believe it. It's a combination of the placebo effect and mass hysteria. People are dumb this way, but certainly not alone in this mentality.

The second and perhaps most controversial way to look at this is that it's actually working. The brain is a very complex organ, and the possibility that a series of sounds are inducing highs is not to hard to believe. Epileptic seizures can be triggered by noises, as can migraines and many other neurological disorders. Our ears, eyes and brain rely on one another very closely and intense intrusions in any one of them can result in a response from the others. Something like synesthesia is a perfect example of this. So could simple audio files be causing hundreds of teens to get high? Sure, it's possible.

The last option that comes to mind is that it's been a while since parents have had something new to fear and needed to created a panic around something that wasn't there. For years and years the variety of drugs has remained relatively stagnant. There's a finite list of chemicals from marijuana to heroin that have existed for a while now. Sure there's variations therein, but otherwise not much of a change. Having something "new" and "exciting" to be terrified about really seems to be the boredom buster for white, upper middle class North Americans. We become confronted with one terrifying bit of news only to have it fade just in time for something else horrific to happen to our planet. The truth of the matter is that there's plenty of horrible things happening on a regular basis on Earth, we hardly need to fabricate any. Even within the realm of drugs there's horror stories to be told; the effects of meth and heroin, the violence inherent in the world of drugs and narcotics. If my child came up to me and said, "Dad I'm doing iDosing, and you can't stop me." I'd first laugh, and once I had stopped laughing I'd send him on his way. If that's the worst thing a parent ever has to hear their child say we should all be so lucky.

It's really a matter of perspective. People who live in comfortable living situations in countries like ours are rarely subject to the depths of human degradation. We can't start to fathom the lives of people in war torn countries. We can't understand the living conditions of women who have to subject their bodies to the perversions of patrons just so they can make enough money for another high. We're lucky, each and every one of us. If you've got the time and means to sit there and read this blog, then you've clearly got the luxury of a life and time than many don't.

My only concern about iDosing is that it actually made headline news.

Lost In Translation (Yeah I Went There).

I feel bad for foreigners trying to make a decent living in white Southern Ontario. I don't just mean the Pakistani family who run a Chinese restaurant and serve Jell-o. No, what I mean is the ethnic groups who don't quite get that North America's not the magical promised land they saw in the movies.

What made me think of this was a fitness video I stumbled across on Youtube. Don't ask me how I found it, but there it was. A curvaceous fitness instructor built like 2 parts stripper, 1 part soccer mom. She had a very thick accent, one I couldn't immediately place. I don't think she realizes that the reason her video has over 8 million views is because she's built like femme fatale from a comic book. This isn't the first time I've been witness to this kind of doe-eyed optimism from attractive foreigners. It may be a cultural thing, but here in Canada if you're that kind of hot, you tend to know it.

Now there's the possibility she knows this, and is using her body to sell thousands of mediocre exercise tapes. That's entirely within the realm of possible. If that's the case, then kudos to her for taking advantage of man's inability to think straight when something hot, sexy and foreign is doing push ups.

The other side to this coin is one of foreigners attempting to do business in Canada as though they were still in their country. In Canada we have price tags. These are not suggestions, but instead they are tiny bits of information that tell you whether or not you can afford something. You can not offer me what you want and we'll haggle. This isn't Calcutta or Morocco. This is southern Ontario. I don't mean to sound like a racist prick, but it's really not fair that other cultures try this here and if we don't smile and nod we're somehow ignorant and insensitive. If I went to another country and attempted to carry about as though I was still in Canada there's a very likely possibility I'd draw unwanted attention towards myself. I am fascinated by the market cultures of different countries, I really am. I don't think that what they do or how they do it is wrong, but it is the way they do business in their country. I expect a certain amount of respect for the business practices of my native country. When you get first generation immigrants coming into the store and clucking their tongue at the prices, or looking for discounts it's as though they're saying, "No, you're doing this wrong. This is how it should be" and it's an affront to how I was raised.

Perhaps I got on a bit of a soapbox there, but I think I made my point pretty clear. Cultural differences are marvelous, but they should never be practiced in the work place or school. I don't care if your religion says you're allowed to carry a dagger under your robes. On the off chance another kid gets a hold of it and stabs someone, you'll be held accountable. Schools should be grey scale information factories where we learn and develop and work should be at best a mildly enjoyable experience where we put in our nine-to-five. Once you start trying to accommodate each and every race you get bogged down by legislation and bureaucracy.

It's probably a good thing I don't say these things out loud.

Oh Boy.

Anger turned inwards is self loathing.
Anger turned outwards is judgmental hate.
Take the time to feel anger, and put it in its place.
Like a vial of cyanide, it remains innocuous until tampered with.

Don't let it engulf all that you are, for when it does it becomes you, and you lose yourself.

Values.

There will always be someone to complain that it's too bright out,
or that it always seems to be raining.
That winter's too cold, summer's too hot
and that fall and spring are indecisive seasons.
They will criticize beauty,
mock the homely
and say that the best of us are still
only human.
They will complain that silver linings are not gold
and that we make our own luck.
They attract tragedy because they do not know blessings
and for all the beauty in the world,
they will seek out the grim and subversive.
Romance is for movies,
friends are for saps,
love is a vagary.
They ignore us, but yearn for our pity.
They are paintings of sad people,
offering nothing in return for the
misery they dispense.

The brightest days illuminate our world,
and the rain brings quiet to the cacophony.
Winters are crisp, summers' too brief
and the balance in between stabilizes us.
The beautiful are fortunate,
the homely more so
and all that's best in us makes us
human.
We can frame our success in silver,
for often luck and chance play a roll in our triumphs.
We make our own comedy in word and song,
and for all the grit and grime in the world,
there is still beauty in oil slicked pavement.
Romance is for everyone,
friends make us whole,
love is complicated.
We can ignore the deprived, but secretly we pity them.
They are half-finished works of art,
requiring our hand to finish
what someone else started.

The Things You Never Forget.

Today at work (that is to say Sunday evening), we had a staff meeting. I always enjoy staff get togethers because it's a good opportunity to get to know your fellow worker in a much more casual setting. One of the workshops we had to do was to arrange some of out tasting party products into an imaginary dinner party. We had to create a menu, and then describe to the other groups what each dish was for, and how we planned to have everything arrange. My time spent as a waiter kicked in here and I found myself regaling the staff with what was basically an imaginary meal.

It's interesting how we never really forget the important things we were taught. There's parts of math I have certainly let slip, but I know how to do the basics like add, subtract, multiply and divide. With language, we remember how to form sentences and the use of punctuation. We may get lazy about these things at times, but fundamentally we still know how to do them. It's like the saying, "it's like riding a bike". Granted, there are things that do require a certain amount of regular practice to stay sharp. Things like foreign languages or martial arts. Artistic skills, dance and writing all required regular practice in order to stay at your peak. That's part of the reason I've found this blog so useful. It's acting as a writing gymnasium, keeping me sharp for college coming up. I imagine once school starts my posting will become fairly erratic. I'll go through droughts of writing, and then when something momentous happens I'll post several times in one day. It should prove to be fairly exciting.

I do worry about relationships I'm bound to have in school. This doesn't just mean romantic relationships, but friendships as well. I like the group of friends I have now. It's a good size, and I know them really well. Some people like having fifty people they know, and talk to on Facebook or MSN. I'm more concerned with having a smaller group of friends whose lives are layered on top of one another. The connections you make with friends like that are much richer and emotion-laden. It's a much more fulfilling way of living, if you ask me. Events are more profound and important and you get to feel like you're actually part of them, rather than an observer. While I'd like to be friendly with my fellow classmates, I don't seek to befriend them intentionally.

I wonder if I still know how to make friends with new kids at school?

Sex Ed.

I have to say I'm fairly uncomfortable with the presentation of sex on television. It's not really the quantity of it that we hear mentioned on TV shows, but rather the cavalier manner in which it's dealt with. Shows like "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" display high school students with an alarmingly promiscuous lifestyle. Now I'm like any red-blooded guy, but I still think there's rules that should be kept in place when it comes to dealing with sex.

First of all, I'm annoyed at the way guys are often portrayed in these scenarios. We're either pushy to have sex or just drooling idiots when in the presence of a topless girl. There has been so much talk about how females are presented on TV that we don't often hear about the guys side. Shows like "Two and a Half Men" could be used as an interesting example. The women that are paraded through that show are always gorgeous and buxom and dumb. Charlie Sheen has his fun and then tosses them aside. Certainly not a winning score for either gender. Alan, his brother in the show falls into the goofy, drooling, awkward with girls category which is equally disappointing. I miss shows like "Fraiser". Not so much for Kelsey Grammar's namesake, but for David Hyde Pierce's character of Niles. He was moon eyed (pun intended) over Daphne, but once they were in a relationship his character was very grounded and three dimensional. He was first a person, and a man second. It was refreshing to see on television. These days there's so much trash TV (I'm looking at you MTV) that the sexes are shown in such an ill-light I'd be embarrassed no matter which gender I was.

Call me old fashioned, but I believe in a certain amount of discretion and responsibility when it comes to sex. I think we're heading in the wrong direction to be so liberal about all of it. You know where I stand on deviant sexuality choices (bi, gay, etc.) and this is just more of the same. Somewhere along the line we were told that we should be totally comfortable with our bodies, and that sex is nothing to be ashamed of. We took that message and twisted and perverted it so that sex lost any significance it may have once carried. I've heard talk from students as young as thirteen years old who mention their first sexual encounter, saying it happened because they were bored. Bored! You know what I did when I was thirteen and bored? I played a video game or went out back and burned something in the fire pit. Hell, I wasn't talking to girls in any meaningful capacity until I was 18. I admit I wasn't exactly a player in high school, but when I think about the number of ugly people with children, I really don't think my looks were going to keep me from fooling around.

We need to establish a sense of importance back into the world of sex. We need to empower it once again, and make it something important. In some religions, sex was the path to true enlightenment and to God. It doesn't really get much more important than that, does it? Many parents these days are teaching their kids that sex is okay and nothing to be ashamed of. I think statements like this need to include addenda that stipulate that sex before a certain age is forbidden. There's too many kids dropping out of school because of pregnancy, too many sexual assaults happening because people have been fed inappropriate ideas about sex. We need to scare our children again, and set them straight. I know if I have kids and they ask me about sex, I'll tell them two things; the purpose of sex, and the perils involved therein. Then I'll beat them with a sack of potatoes if I find they've been screwing around. Once their 18 I'll ease up, but to think that children (and they are children) are fornicating before they fully understand their own bodies is mind-boggling. You require incredible amounts of documentation to get your firearms licence along with testimonials from people in your life assuring the government you're not going to go on a killing rampage. This should be the same for sex. We should issue sex licences. There's too many stupid people going out and making babies that will grow up in broken homes only to become fourteen and get knocked up to make more stupid babies. I think that government issued sex licences should be implemented. Included in these would be tests for IQ, genetic disease and hereditary quirks.

I can hear you now, "Something, something Master Race, something, something."

Eye Eye!

For he past few days I've been having a terrible time with me left eye. It's been sore and it feels like I have pink eye (or conjunctivitis for you biology students). If it hasn't fixed itself by tomorrow then I will have to make a stop at the urgent care clinic or the optometrist to get this rectified.

It's funny how certain ailments cause us to behave different. As an example, if our nose is bleeding we often just cram some tissue up there and tilt our head back. While the blood loss is probably greater than most people would ever experience from a simple cut or scratch we've told ourselves as a society that nose bleeds are hardly cause for alarm. Now, if that same amount of blood were coming from any other orifice we'd freak out and head for the hospital.

We treat different parts of our body in very different ways. While my condition has given me very heightened awareness of my own body, even I fall victim to a certain apathy in regards to certain conditions. For example, if I have a headache or migraine which I've started to develop this past year I just take some Tylenol and go about my business. It hurts and it's inconvenient, but it's hardly enough to stop me in my tracks. In contrast this eye fiasco has left me very uncomfortable and feeling actually "sick". That is to say, not at 100% capacity in terms of health. I think when it's our eyes, ears or mouth we exhibit special caution when things go awry. Our eyes are so sensitive and if we were to go blind we'd feel truly lost. Our ears let us hear, and to go deaf would be a terrible fate. And our mouths let us eat, and they show our smiles. If we've got cavities or a toothache we often tend to it immediately.

There are people I've dealt with in life who are very quick to curl up in a ball when they have the slightest ailment. They don't handle colds well, and bumps and bruises are cause for pity. I don't mean to single anyone out, but it's often women. I get frustrated by this because for one it usually comes across as a pity play and that's really low. Also a lot of people have a lot greater ailments they have to deal with on a day to day basis. Take someone who's got MS or Lupus. Two conditions that are all engrossing and life controlling. Sure, some of those patients will seek to garner sympathy for what's wrong with them, but a lot more of them will just silently cope.

I think the kind of people who roll with the punches in life well are more likely to keep a tight lip when it comes to personal ailments. This isn't because they're bottled up and have to put on a tough front. Instead they know that either it's a passing matter not worth mentioning, or it's a chronic condition that both they and their love ones don't need to be reminded about all the time. The sort of person who is quick to say, "Oh woe is me" are the kind of people who let you know when they got a paper cut or stubbed their toe. To them, pain and discomfort are matters to be announced in the vain attempt to receive relief for their infliction.

Next time you close your hand in a door or whack your head on something while standing up take a deep breath and just breathe out the pain. Don't hoot and holler and plead for sympathy, it's very unbecoming.

Nature Of The Beast.

Birth. There is nothing so equally terrifying and empowering as giving birth to something. On the one hand you could be unleashing a monster upon the world. A snowballing behemoth that cannot be shackled or reigned in by your pleas and commands. And on the other hand you could be creating hope. That which you have spawned may offer enlightenment and information to the masses.

This blog feels somewhat out of my hands at times. It's points at me and says, "You there, write something." What started out as a place to put short, whimsical musings turned into an obligation, but like so many things we give birth to it's an obligation of love. I want to inform my readers of new and fantastic things. Whether this is legitimate facts, or just a different way of thinking I feel like I have this fantastic vehicle in which to do so. The one thing that differentiates this blog from an actual living and breathing creature is that at any moment I can choose to change its purpose. If I wanted to keep a record of all my recipes and cooking endeavors all I need to do is change the background and change the nature of the posts. If I wanted it to be my own little "120 Days of Sodom", I could do so. I imagine I'd alienate my readers and anyone that they mention my blog to, but that's the power I wield.

One of my readers has often complimented me on the nature of my posts. While flattered I don't know entirely how to take this news. It feels like in an attempt to stimulate conversation and discourse I have instead eked out a sort of bland fan base. Now this isn't to say I don't appreciate my readers and the compliments they bestow upon me, but fundamentally I'd rather have everyone argue with me and have an intellectual tête-à-tête than have people "like" what I'm writing. I know I'm smart, I've never really been in question of that fact. To receive recognition for the nature of my posts makes me feel like people didn't really know that I'm smart. That's kind of off-putting.

We do many things in life solely for the reason of recognition. This is how many of us measure self worth. I know that part of me wanted to write this blog with the intent of people reading it and going, "Oh John's quite clever." It's a good portion of why I do anything. However I also found that once I got the ball rolling I was posting more for me than for anyone else. I was writing what I wanted to, and as avid readers know I've had some rocky feedback as a result. I welcome that kind of feedback, I really do. In my post about The Matrix, Christian flat out disagreed with me. Great! I love my friends enough to know that if we don't see eye to eye on something it's not a deal breaker. I often purposefully stand opposed to their interests for no other reason that to stimulate a constructive conversation.

I think what I'm trying to say is it's difficult to have something as unwieldy as a blog and still use it to communicate a message. I'd be really interested for someone who doesn't know me to read the entire blog and compose a character profile of the writer. See how it is I'm coming across without the bias of already knowing me. When I reread my posts I try to do this, and I think I come off as a smart ass with women issues.

I humbly request that my readers blindly send this blog to their friends or family. Anyone they think wouldn't mind spending a bit of time to go through this all. Get their take on the whole thing and report back to me. While I am limited as to who I can get this blog out to, I figure I'll just abuse the "pay it forward" technique.

By this time next year it'd be fun to have Obama as one of my readers.

I Don't Think That's What They Meant.

I just finished watching Back to the Future, and it made me think about the strange morales one could possibly glean from movies. So I've decided to compose a brief list of some I think are fun.

Back To The Future: Beating people up will keep your wife hot, make you successful and will turn local bullies into retarded suck ups.

The Matrix: The likelihood that strange shit will occur to you after you don't sleep properly for days and ingest strange pills is very good.

The Prestige: Nikola Tesla was a magician.

Royal Tenenbaums: Owen Wilson is only allowed to drive permitted he is high and the car is a convertible. This results in a happy ending.

Batman The Dark Knight: If we want to achieve the height of an actors career we have to drive him crazy first, and then kill him.

Alien: If you're in the depths of space and you get a distress signal, don't investigate. Instead blow up the mining colony and run.

Terminator: Whatever Linda Hamilton doesn't kill will become governor.

It: Clowns aren't scary, you're just a wuss incapable of being scared of something original, like meteors. That's a legitimate phobia.

The Fountain: If your wife is going to die anyways, guinea pig the potentially magical cure on her first instead of the monkey.

Blazing Saddles: Mel Brooks is likely to give up on a film in the last ten minutes.

Road To El Dorado: Lie to natives. It will result in sex, wealth and adoration.

Baz Luhrman's Romeo and Juliet: Pete Postlethwaite is fucking awesome.

Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet: Juliet from '68 was hot.

The Fifth Element: Casting Milla Jovovich as herself always makes a mediocre plot entirely bearable.

The Resident Evil Trilogy: See above.

The Da Vinci Code: If you spend enough time confusing the audience with wikipedia-grade information, they won't notice sub-par acting and ridiculous haircuts.

Pi: If you're worried you're too smart you can solve this matter with a power drill to the temple. Evidently this makes you happier.

Moon: If you bump into yourself while alone on the Moon, attempt to solve the matter by arguing with Kevin Spacey as played by Microsoft Sam.

The Ghost Writer: Having an excellent script, superior acting and fantastic atmosphere will not save you from obscurity.

Paranormal Activity: If you hear noises in your house at night, burn it down and move to Nepal, it's just safer.

Neon Genesis Evangelion The Complete Series: Convincing yourself you understand every facet of this movie is like convincing yourself you know exactly how the teleporters work in Star Trek. You may understand all of the theories surrounding it, but as soon as you put them together you end up with an inside-out goat.

Jurassic Park: Playing God is a bad idea because Jeff Goldblum said so.

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Terrifying children and desecrating a holiday will make you famous with pre-teen goths and Helena Bonham Carter.

Blow: Movies with Johnny Depp that don't involve Tim Burton or drug induced visuals can still be awesome.

Crash: We're all horribly racist.

Zombieland: Two things will survive the apocalypse; wit and Twinkies.

The Last Airbender: No matter how large the fan base, how seasoned the director, how great the funding, how astonishing the visuals you can still fuck up.

Memoirs of a Geisha: Comments such as "The book was better" are irrelevant if you don't read and think Ziyi Zhang and Michelle Yeoh are brilliant.

Watchmen: To be friends with a god-being you must be comfortable with blue nudity.

It's 4:20, there's no way all of those are as funny as I find them to be at this moment.