| Stingray Apocalypse | |||
| 09:48pm 12/05/2008 | |||
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Yes, there are cyclones and earthquakes all over the world that are horrifying. Nevertheless, I don't feel particularly guilty for also being shocked by the stingray deaths at the Calgary Zoo... It's unreal: at 3pm on Sunday they were beginning to look a little stressed but everything tested out fine, by 4pm they were resting for the most part while some were swimming erratically, by 4:30 they were starting to die off and by 5pm 26 or 27 were already dead. By this morning, the number was up to 34, with a mere nine survivors. I suppose why it's making me blink is because I have a degree in Museum and Heritage Studies, so this hits right between those eyes. I am a little disgusted that on the news comments there are already the anti-zoo remarks, since, y'know, animals don't die in the wild... It is, however, another black mark on the Calgary Zoo in particular. There are perfectly reasonable explanations for why four gorillas and a hippo have died in the last few years, most of which were natural illnesses and occurances that were unforseen and for which the zoo wouldn't have been able to do anything, but it raises eyebrows to have it all happen in such quick succession. I'll be really curious to read what caused a stingray apocalypse in under one hour. I feel intrinsically bad for the stingrays themselves, but I have a lot of sympathy for the keepers. I can't imagine what it must have been like to stand helplessly at the rim of the pool watching your animals just dropping like that. Jeez... |
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| Read 5 - Post | |||
| High School Music(al) | |||
| 09:16am 10/05/2008 | |||
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As gacked from Tracy: What would your highschool mix tape be? Keep in mind that you don't have unlimited space. Post 10 songs in your journal that sum up what you listened to in highschool. 1 - Blind Melon: No Rain 2 - Live: Lightning Crashes 3 - Beck: Loser 4 - Pearl Jam: practically any song off Ten or Vs. 5 - Crash Test Dummies: Two Knights and Maidens 6 - Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit 7 - Stone Temple Pilots: Big Empty 8 - Soul Asylum: Runaway Train 9 - Radiohead: Creep 10 - REM: Everybody Hurts Notes: And what have learned from this list? Well, that Cory was into Grunge in high school, for one, all the way up to plaid flannel and baggy jeans. Also that his high school career was wretchedly depressing... He hadn't known of Goth until the very tail end - the last few months - of it and probably would have been into it sooner if he had known. If he were in high school now, he probably would be an Emo. Some song particulars... For some reason "No Rain" reminds me most of high school even though I wasn't THAT into Blind Melon then. "Lightning Crashes" was, believe it or not, the song I was actually dumped to for the first time. I was the only kid in my school to like Beck. The Pearl Jam "best of" disk should really just be a rerelease of Ten with a couple extra Vs. tracks. I actually did like the first two Crash Test Dummies albums, and not just the singles. I think if you went through high school in the early 90's, Nirvana might very well be required. Unless you were one of those Metalheads who complained that Grunge ruined everything. Tracks 7-10 were because I was depressed. |
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| Read 3 - Post | |||
| Let's all go to the movies! | |||
| 10:23am 06/05/2008 | |||
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So, who wants to go see this with me?... And this?... |
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| Read 2 - Post | |||
| Kids: Don't Fuck With God... Or Bears Will Eat You | |||
| 10:03am 01/05/2008 | |||
| As an entertaining corrective to Mark Twain's Letters from the Earth - being Mr. Clemmens' screed against Biblical literalism - I was admittedly lolling to Cracked's The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses. I particularly enjoyed the stories of Elisha and Ehud of the "I've got a message from God for you". Hah! | |||
| Read 1 - Post | |||
| Home, Home on the Range | |||
| 05:49pm 28/04/2008 | |||
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Guess who's back in Calgary! That's right! ME! The trip back went pretty much flawlessly, and I actually saw more in the past two days that I have in the past three months. My mother arrived Saturday night and after eventually settling on one of Saskatoon's multitudinous buffets, we retired 'till Sunday morning. It was bright and early that day and we got down to Regina in enough time to visit the RCMP Heritage Centre (where I got an awesome/ridiculous-and-cheap Mountie hat replica) and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. We decided to keep on down the Trans-Canada Highway and eventually stopped in Medicine Hat, where we stayed at the "Bel Aire Motel", a classic 1960's style bungalow motel with a great Googie-style sign and which included "TV" and "phones" as an advertising feature on said sign. Then today we got up, breakfasted at Brooks and decided that since we were in the vicinity - which is something that can rarely be said of Brooks - we should pay a quick visit to Dinosaur Provincial Park. That accomplished (and during which I acquired yet another book, this one on dinosaurs in pop culture), we made the final push. And here I am! Home! Yay!! |
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| Post | |||
| Repacking | |||
| 12:10pm 26/04/2008 | |||
| Bloody Hell? How did I accumulate so much extra crap while here? I can barely get it back into my two suitcases, and the whole process is proving tedious. | |||
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| Jesus Man: Year One | |||
| 04:07pm 25/04/2008 | |||
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Yes! As of today, my first year at seminary is officially over. I made it! I survived! And now I can't wait to go back home. I'm leaving here Sunday, to arrive on Monday some time. Then comes the Gerry'ses, kanoodlings, teas and things! |
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| Read 3 - Post | |||
| A Frank Discussion on Geekness | |||
| 10:58am 24/04/2008 | |||
In a way, the Open Source Boob Project has performed a helpful public service. It's not in the desired form of public service - the easy accessibility of sexual gratification without the conventionalities of complicated interpersonal interaction - that the propositioner had wanted, mind you, but rather by whipping up a really good, honest and frank discussion about male-female relations in general and the state of geekdom specifically. They say that the first step in dealing with a problem is to admit it, and the OSBP became a touchstone in allowing those problems to be expressed. What began as a "WTF is wrong with YOU?!?" turned into an examination of what is fundamentally wrong with a culture that tries to reinforce the dominant cultural narrative about sexuality ("women are public property...") focused through adolescent trauma ("... so why can't I get any?") as a form of "sexual liberation". This includes the female corollary, "if my body is public property, why can't I get any?"![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} springheel_jack returned with an interesting examination of it in http://springheel-jack.livejournal.cplasticsturgeon provided the salient 30-second newsclip: "They think women are a public resource like housing or employment and should follow the same rules for nondiscrimination." springheel_jack's thread is a microcosom of what has been floating around nearly all of the journals' comment sections, in bits and pieces.I'm piqued by this discussion because it relates so strongly to where I've come from as well as shown me how far I've gone, and in the process has given me pause to reflect on how my own experience, life and views today have been shaped by my adolescent trauma. One can easily see what I'm on about today, carrying on a blog about Victorian Sci-Fi, posting lists of Studio Ghibli films I've seen and embedding videos of Doctor Who put to Eminem put to "Yakkity Sax". I'm even a card carrying Disney geek (though that's a different and unique geek culture itself). Imagine that without any particular redeeming social graces and one gets an image of me in grade school. Then consider that I still get things shouted at me from passing cars on a regular basis and extrapolate that back to the reaction towards me. I'd like to think that I've by-in-large managed to overcome a lot of that trauma, insofar as progressing as a person, acquiring that missing social functionality, and developing a stronger sense of personality and integrity that allows me to be myself and resist imposed scripts. If I am acting out a trauma script with any particular fervor, it would probably be Geek Social Fallacy #1 (at http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinio I wonder how far open self-examination can go in a culture that is grounded to such a large degree in adolescent trauma and which may resist self-criticism in the guise of self-assertion in the face of external criticism. Another topic of discussion has been the sincerity of the propositioner's apology and the extent to which it was passive-aggressive "I'm sorry you took it wrong and now I won't go to cons because you all irrationally think I'm dangerous because of your misunderstanding". However, despite these remarks, villifying the guy isn't really helpful either. He is also a victim, again not in the way he stated in that he's just so progressive that he's misunderstood, but in that he is acting out the scripts of his own trauma through inept and so-called "sexual liberation". How will the geek scene work with this understanding of itself? |
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| Boob project?! YOU'RE a boob project! | |||
| 08:54pm 23/04/2008 | |||
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Courtesy of my longtime netchap malakhgabriel, I've spent the day wading into the morass of the controversy of the "Open Source Boob Project". The basic gist of it was an aborted convention meme purporting to be a movement towards increased sexual liberation by having women wear colored buttons to indicate that it was alright for people to ask the button-wearer for permission to fondle their breasts. The original post proposing this meme can be found at http://theferrett.livejournal.com/10876 The whole geekweb seems to have exploded in a tempest over what was a practical teacup, insofar as I gather that the dry run of the OSBP was about 40 people at a single convention with some 1,400 participants. It's a worthwhile tempest, though, in that it articulates the fact that gender and sexuality divisions are still major issues of our culture, and in questioning what so-called "sexual liberation" has done to actually resolve it. If I could find some way of putting a pastoral spin on it, I would almost be tempted to write a thesis on the whole affair. The expansive title would be something to the effect of "Sanctity of the Self versus Entitlement of Others to that Self: Opposing Views of Sexual Liberation in Context of the 'Open Source Boob Project'". Out of those reams of bandwidth, there were a few remarks I found particularly good. I admittedly chuckled at the Open Source Knuckle Sandwich Project (http://hahathor.livejournal.com/120 At http://blogs.feministsf.net/?p=340 springheel_jack gave a very insightful commentary on Libertarianism and the dynamics of white male privilege at http://springheel-jack.livejournal.ckate_nepveu and her commenters at http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/3237As it has been argued, a goodly number of the participants in the OSBP, both gropers and gropees, were women. This in spite of the jaw-droppingly "are you this fucking stupid, no really, are you actually THIS absolutely fucking stupid" remark by the propositioner, And your response seems to come from a personal mindset of, "My body is something so special to me that only people I have firmly vetted and talked to and invested in should be allowed to touch those areas." Which is fine. It's a way of saying, "I only want people I find attractive and/or nice to want me," which is in fact the prevalent societal attitude. What came out to me in reading the outraged replies, though, was how absolutely irrelevant the participation of women in the project was, and how irrelevant the approval of some women towards it is. Something drilled into our heads, understandably so, in preparing to be clergypeople is how sexual harrassment has jack-squat to do with your intention and everything to do with how your actions may create an environment that the other person considers disturbing, threatening, offensive and degrading. We have this curious Libertarian idea, as springheel_jack discusses, that we somehow exist in a social vacuum where the only relevant people are the consenting adults directly participating in the groping event and that this consent is purely an expression of individual free will. Harrassment, simply put, is in the perspective of the one feeling harrassed, not in the freedom of the one who may or may not intend to come off as harrassing.The pro side argues that "it shouldn't matter because you don't have to opt in and if you don't it's none of your business", while the con side replies that "it does matter because it creates an unwarranted and unsolicited sexualized environment that creeps me out." The feeling of it being disturbing, threatening, offensive and degrading heap on further, even if unintentional, victimization by having women telling other women that they have no right to feel that way about how the convention zeitgeist reflects on their female self-image, and that if they do feel that way, they're just sexually unliberated prudes who need to get with it. There is really only one pragmatic response to that, which I saw reitterated a number of times and which reminded me of G.K. Chesterton's commentary about how the best treatment for insanity is not a rational argument but an opened window: "FUCK OFF." In fact, in Christianity, there is a principle in which the energies of rabble-rousing are focused constructively by paying careful attention to not causing unnecessary problems for others. Yes, rage against the machine, but make sure it's the machine you're raging against and not other people's wellbeing. It is worded simply as not allowing your own freedom to cause others to stumble... Don't presume that your freedom gives you entitlement in the wider context of the society you live in. I think it's a good and relevant counterpoint to the idea that individual freedom is absolute and devoid of responsibility to others. I might consider it my freedom as a liberated being to ask to touch someone's boob, but they have the freedom to not have to be asked or to be around the exchange at all in a venue not intended for the exchange, and their freedom trumps mine (nevermind that conventions are private space, not public space, and so the organizers have the right and legal obligation to impose whatever rules they feel necessary for the safety and security of guests). My own feeling on the subject, so far as it relates to me, is that it's annoying because it's just more sex being shoved in my face. On the sexual liberation spectrum, I fall somewhere in the vicinity of "true sexual liberation is to be liberated from the obsession over sex"... Not the embarrassed belief that sex is grody and riddled with cooties and therefore should be kept secret, but rather that sex is a wonderful and beautiful and human thing that is at its best when it's not the only subject anybody cares about. The only thing on the topic that disgusts me more than seeing the utter backslide in gender equity represented by "men's magazines" that pose women as objects of consumption along with cars and beer is the fact that the "alternative" answer to the everpresent obsession with sex in our society is to become everpresently obsessed with kinky, excessively promiscuous sex. There is a certain insipid childishness about the constant ambition to be "shocking" and striking out against the supposed sexual-mores of the Squares who, by-in-large, don't care who you're whipping at the club or that your entire performance art piece consists of you taking off your clothes. The Squares, or Vanilla or whatever holier-than-thou term is used, only really raise a stink when they're forced to care to varying degrees of calling shenanigans to charging sexual harrassment by having someone shove it in their face when they just want to get Captain Kirk's autograph or catch the Trigun triple-header. As a white male of privilege, I just want at least a few environments where I don't have to have sex shoved in my face, out of the recognition that there's more to life that the pursuit of orgasms. I haven't really thought that much about it until now, but I wonder if there's a certain subconscious recognition of this in the fact that I prefer cultural environments where obvious sexuality is diminished or, if present, critically examined in the artist's gaze (e.g.: nature, museums of art and history, Disneyland). If I want to see 2D animated boobies, I know to go to the hentai room, and if I want to touch real life 3D ones, I know to develop a real and meaningful relationship with another human being. And as I was pointing out in the links above, I have a pretty good idea of what the large body of women would prefer in regards to the OSBP. |
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| Read 5 - Post | |||
| Studio Ghibli Scorecard | |||
| 11:21pm 22/04/2008 | |||
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I should be studying... I have both of my final exams on Friday (so that I can be ready to leave bright and early on Sunday morning) and it would probably do me some good to review the material. But school being what it is, I can't force myself to do it. So instead, I'm catching up on my Studio Ghibli films. Thank you illicit video uploading! Ghibli shouldn't feel too bad about the illicit part though... There's a fair bit of it that I'm enjoying but wouldn't actually buy, and for the rest, they can only blame Disney for not being on the ball with releasing things (of course, as a $40 set with an utterly superfluous second disk... As though I'd prefer watching the storyboards of My Neighbor Totoro rather than, say, the Region-2 disks of Ghibli short films and museum documentaries). Once they put Iblard Jikan and Ghiblies on DVD, I'm on it. Anyways, more for my benefit than yours, here's my list of Ghibli films finally seen: Panda! Go Panda!, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, The Castle in the Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbor Totoro, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, "On Your Mark" music video, Princess Mononoke, My Neighbors the Yamadas, Spirited Away, Ghiblies, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (a co-production), Howl's Moving Castle, Iblard Jikan, and an assorted mess o' their commercials. Basically anything available on YouTube and Veoh. Next up, to keep me distracted from studying, I really want to see Tales from Earthsea and Ocean Waves (and I suppose The Cat Returns now that I've seen Whisper of the Heart as of tonight). And I can't wait to visit the Studio Ghibli Museum when we go to Tokyo next year. That will be pretty much awesome. Not bad, I guess, for someone who, about a year ago to this time, didn't really care for Ghibli at all. It finally rubbed off on me... I think there was something about Miyazaki and his filmmaking kin that I didn't quite "get" before that has come into sharper focus for me. Their way of envisioning a Victorian Sci-Fi world in films like Castle in the Sky and Iblard Jikan started to resonate with me in a way it hadn't previously (I remember even thinking, the first time I saw Castle in the Sky, that the best part was the opening montage with all the flying ships), and there has been an interplay of their ecological motif for it. Before I absolutely loathed the S-word, I went around calling it "Eco-Steampunk": Victorian aesthetics, design and technology married to lush nature and natural form. It's an integrative view that doesn't eschew technology but which recognizes the basic human need for interaction with the world in which we evolved, let alone for its intrinsic worth. One of my favorite scenes in a Ghibli film so far, and what I think is the most indicative, is from Iblard Jikan. The whole film is a series of paintings put to music, and the one that stirs my imagination the most is of a wood and brass streetcar rolling down tracks embedded in a cobblestone road, on either side of which is a solid wall of ivy, bushes, flowers and trees. This isn't the exact scene, but it's close. From what I've seen of the Ghibli Museum, it is a living experiment in this kind of approach, and I'll be making some very careful visual notes about how to execute it for future use of my own. And then there's the just plain, ol' fashioned charm of characters like Totoro and the Soots. I can't not like them! |
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| Recreational Writing | |||
| 03:34pm 19/04/2008 | |||
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One of the advantages of being proactive about one's schoolwork is that they get to enjoy the last week of school, being devoid as it is of any pressing assignments. It frees up a considerable amount of time that is exacerbated by the sudden onset of bitter snows that I am pretty sure were sent up here by Jolene, who was fussing over the injustice of Saskatoon being warmer than Calgary. With an abundance of time and nothing really to do, I've been reading, and reading some more, and reading soemthing else that has inspired me to pick up the pen - metaphorically speaking, of course, since I'm some kind of cyberwarrior - and expand into the field of writing fiction. The timing feels about right, as my linguistic skills have finally developed to the point where exorcising all these stories floating about in my head wouldn't be a total embarassment should anybody see them. I've cut my teeth, thanks to blogging, on non-fiction writing, and we'll see how that carries over into writing my own stories (rather than writing about other people's stories). It's also nice to be able to write something for myself, which I'm actually interested in writing and which isn't going to be subject to the grading schemes of professors with ill-defined expectations and the mental slippage required to apologise for giving me a low grade on a paper they haven't even handed back yet. I think it goes without saying that I'm considerably frustrated by the "education" I'm receiving. Nevertheless, this sudden surge of writing has got me thinking about projects. And thinking about projects has got me wondering if there are any aspiring writers amongst my friends who would be interesting in seeing published, in a form, Canadian-content stories in the vein of old dime novels/penny dreadfuls? You know, historicals with Mounties and Green Gables and things like that. |
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| High School Quiz | |||
| 10:26am 14/04/2008 | |||
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Via Jo... Fill this out about your SENIOR year of high school! The longer ago it was, the more fun the answers will be!! 1. Who was your best friend? Paul. 2. What kind of car did you drive? I still can't drive! 3. It's Friday nite...where R U? At home, on the farm. 4. Were you a party animal? No... I didn't emerge from my shell until after high school, when I lived back in the city and wasn't surrounded by assholes. 5. Were you considered a flirt? No, I was pretty much socially retarded in high school. 7. Were you in band, orchestra, or choir.. No. 8. Were you a nerd? "Were"? I've always been a big nerd... Now I just fool people by being a cool nerd. 9. Did you get suspended/expelled? No. 10. Can you sing the fight song? I don't think we had one. 11. Who was your favorite teacher? Probably Mr. Kelly, my art teacher, since he wasn't actually a teacher but a real professional artist hired by the school. 12. Where did you sit during lunch? In the library or out by the smoking pad with the group I eventually glommed on to. Not that I smoked, but they all did. 13.What was your school's full name? Springbank Community High School. 14. School mascot? A phoenix. 15. Did you go to Prom? Absolutely not. I didn't even go to my grad. I hated that place and those people so much that I just wanted to get out of there. 16. If you could go back and do it again, would you? See response to #15. 17. What do you remember most about graduation? See response to #15. What I remember most about graudating was the relief that I was finally free of the hole. 18. Where did you go senior skip day.. Huh? 20.Were you in any clubs? Not in school. 21. Where did you go most often for lunch.. ? The library. 22. Have you gained some weight since then? I don't think so, actually. I've been pretty consistent at about 180 for ten+ years. 25. Who was your Senior prom date.. See response to #15. 26. Are you planning on going to your 10 year reunion? That has come and gone and thankfully no one tried to contact me. Let's keep it that way. 27. Who was your home room teacher.. I don't think we had a "home room". 28.Who will repost this? Dunno'. 29. Who was your high school sweetheart? I did "date" one girl briefly, which was a total joke. Otherwise, none. 30. Do you still talk to people from high school? No. Let's keep it that way. |
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| Coming Home! | |||
| 10:25am 14/04/2008 | |||
| Hooray! The semester is almost done! My assignments are all written up, which is nice. I have a presentation on Wednesday and again on the following Wednesday, I'm leading worship on that same latter Wednesday which will give me an opportunity to finally wear that black cassock I bought in Edmonton for my actual robes (what Sanctuary sold in irony I wear in sincerity!), and I'm doing both of my final exams on the 25th. My momma' will be rolling up to Saskatoon on the 26th and we'll be leaving on the 27th. We'll be taking the long way around through Regina so I can go to the RCMP museum, which is just how I roll, being the Canadian culture and history buff that I am. Then I should be home on the 28th. Yay! Finally! | |||
| Read 2 - Post | |||
| Finally! My Madagascar Video! | |||
| 08:47am 07/04/2008 | |||
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It seriously took forever, and involved me burning a DVD from Windows Movie Maker, then ripping the video from the DVD, then putting it back into Movie Maker so I could reduce it to 100MB so I could get it online. It would be so much better if Movie Maker wasn't a piece of garbage. Anyways... enjoy! Isle de Madagascar on Video.ca |
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| If I Only Were a Goth | |||
| 11:22pm 30/03/2008 | |||
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My new favorite song... The video is irrelevant, but the song has my Gothy McGothGoth stamp of approval... |
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| Read 1 - Post | |||
| Quote of the Day | |||
| 05:04pm 18/03/2008 | |||
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This seems especially relevant to my Madagascar experience: "Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going. Travel is glamorous only in retrospect." ~ Paul Theroux |
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| Read 2 - Post | |||
| Today's Awesome Prize Goes to... | |||
| 03:58pm 13/03/2008 | |||
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Eminem's "Without Me" mixed to "Yakkity Sax", put to scenes from Doctor Who... |
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| Cinque de Saturday | |||
| 09:09am 08/03/2008 | |||
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I'm a day late on labyrinthman's Friday Five, but whatever... shut up... 1. What song would you sing to your newborn child? (OR if you already had a child, which song did you sing to him/her?) I never gave it much thought because I don't want one. 2. How do you think animals think? (i.e. in animal language, human language, etc.) I've always wondered what it must be like to be an animal and experience pure emotion, action and reaction without being burdened by inceasantly thinking about it. I think animals do have personalities... I see it all the time... but I don't think they think in the same way that human beings do. 3. As a child, did you have a dream to make a difference in the world? Can you describe your dream? I don't know that we develop a sense of needing and being able to make a difference in the world until we're adults anyways. And then comes the realization that no matter what you do you make a difference, and the only question is whether or not you're going to put more effort into making a positive difference or just coast along. 4. Do you believe in God/a Higher Being? Everybody believes in a Higher Power... That much is inescapable. The question implies a personified version of that Higher Power, though, as opposed to something like Scientific Laws or the Force or something. I could just blurt out "yes", since I think it's pretty well-known that I do... but I always find the question worth unpacking since there are so many different ideas and assumptions that go into it. And I enjoy throwing it around and twisting it up anyways: if the Higher Power is merely the universe and Scientific Laws, and we're part of it, and we're beings... 5. Do you believe in aliens? "Belief" is sort of the wrong category for the question... Either there are or their aren't extraterrestrials, and the only way to resolve the question is with evidence. So far I haven't found any evidence to convince me. Looking out at the universe and at the history of earth, I'm actually not expecting to get any evidence either: I'm suprised that there's life here let alone out there, and if by some miracle there is not only life, but sentient life, it could be anywhere in an infinite and expanding universe, and we'll probably never meet it, making the whole point moot. That could change if, y'know, they landed, but so far... |
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| Sweet! | |||
| 07:36am 05/03/2008 | |||
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Powered By TheirAdult Toys Well, I am pretty dishy... |
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| Oy Vey... | |||
| 07:30am 05/03/2008 | |||
| It's funny cuz it's true. I feel like this quite a bit lately... | |||
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perpetual_lent |
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Friends Info Calendar Voyages Extraordinaires: Scientific Romances in a Bygone Age |
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