From me, no. From Kim, the author of Reflections on Choas, possibly. You can see her post on Marriage: Institution or institutionalization? by clicking.
As often occurs, people our age (20-25) are "tying the knot" (thank-fully not the umbilical cord, yet) and we are finding outselves involved in weddings. Last summer I went to/was involved in two weddings, thankfully neither requiring any speech on my behalf. One wedding was between a 23 and a 24 year old, the other was between a 20 and a 23 year old (The girl, 20, was married on her birthday. If you are going to gyp yourself out of dating many people and having fun, at least milk the wedding day for gifts. Putting both on the same day means you are going to get half the gifts you deserve 10 years down the road).
I've never heard of totally winging it to make it sound more from the heart. I am pretty sure that's why the one speech from the Maid of Honour at one of the weddings was awful. I was embarrassed for her and I didn't even support the wedding. Regardless of how much you disapprove, I am sure you want to do a good job. I would say the most important thing to a good speech at a wedding is bullshit. Just let it flow like a bad bout with diarrhea (banned topic). If you've ever written a reference letter, just do the same thing but throw in a few "love"s here and a few "happy"s there. Like a reference letter, nobody is really going to care if it is fantastic or just good. So long as it isn't bad, people will love it.
One to two minutes seems a little long. My arm gets tired after 15 seconds and my desire to pound the drink increases as each second goes by. Here's my stab:Harmony. A beatiful thing. Music to many a many ears. Your harmony, celebrated here tonight, is the tune beating in your hearts hearts. Let your hearts beat together. Let them sing each of your own songs. Let them forever sing in harmony for all of us to enjoy.
Too cheesey and music related? Seriously, I actually bullshitted that. You can google search that shit, as non-solid as it may be. At a wedding nobody is going to care if it makes sense, as long as it sounds loving. Note I didn't use two becoming one, I let them keep their own hearts but they had to work together to make something different.
Kim is one of the handful of girls that seem to have such an awesome (and vocal) outlook of what things should be like. This could be due to the lack of religion, it could just be good parenting. It could also be due to the fact that she has a brain, rare in many people. Whatever it is, it is welcome here.
Truthful? Most certainly. Motivating? Indeed. Justified? Of course. Epic? Well, since it beat out marriage in all the preceeding categories...possibly.
Monday, May 29, 2006
Sunday, May 28, 2006
It's official, Johnny and I are taking an entire month off from drinking alcohol. We have set our sights on July 1st (Canada Day) as the first day to drink following alcohol's absence from our lives. At first this seemed crazy. I am not addicted. Habitual and abusive user, yes, but addicted, no. Why stop? Well, first off the calories are just killing me and secondly, I think my body will appreaciate this coming void. I would like to taket his time to look over the bullshit rules of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA).
AA is a notorious 12 step program that has helped many people deal with their alcohol addiction so, like most people, I expected these 12 steps to be solid guidlines that anyone could attach to. Thanks to PMCOL 305 (Drug Abuse), I was shown this assumtion is wrong. Step by step:
Step 1: We admitted we were powerless over alcohol--that our lives had become unmanageable.
This step is saying that alcoholism is like a desease, something like a bactria culture replicating within us that our body can't control. It's as if alcohol forces it's way into your mouth. Last time I had alcohol, I had the power. I was the one bringing it to my mouth, ingesting far too much and the throwing up. What kind of alcohol were these people having? I guess if it makes people feel better about their weakness though, this step can stay.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
So, I guess if you admit that alcohol is more powerful than you, you must be insane? How come you aren't sane just because you have an alcohol problem? Actually, the thing that chaps me most about this step is the capital "P". You capitalize the names of things, and this is a lot like have a capital for God or His or He or Him or Christ. Now, the mystical western god has taken on another name, Power. If it is another name for this western god, the "a" preceeding should be removed. Maybe it was just a typo in the original though, so we can continue.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Nope, definitely not a typo. Apparently this god's name is also Power. Step two should read "Come to believe in the god of the Bible and he will solve your problems" rather than lure people in with a non-specific term and then tell them the only logical assumption for a higher power is God. Steps two and three should be combined into one because together side by side they seem lame.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
Wouldn't you do this as step one before admitting you have a problem? And why is drinking now a moral issue? Moral is another religious word that is replaced in the secular world with something slightly different, ethics. Is it unethical to drink alcohol? Fuck no, it's unethical for people to tell others that they are powerless over alcohol when they aren't
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
Take out God and throw this step in as step number two.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Right, the whole powerless thing. No human could possibly do something for themselves, that might involve work. Useless step.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
Same as step 3
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
Should be placed along with (or instead of) original step four, althouhg this one is more appropriate. This would be a fearless inventory, although not a moral inventory. It should also come a lot earlier.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Damn, this one is good. It should just come earlier than step 8.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Wow, hard time making twelve steps?
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
Same as every other God rule in here. ZzZZzzZzzzz
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
A spiritual awakening, eh? Maybe it's because the brain isn't being pounded to sleep by stimulation of GABAa receptors. Maybe it's because you can actually feel the real world now that your brain isn't getting the shit beat out of it. Sure, carry the message to others, but don't make it spiritual.
Modified 4 step program (1/3 of the bullshit)
- Step 1: Admit that you are drinking more than what is healthy and that people are being hurt by your ways.
- Step 2: Take an inventory and write down a list of the people you've hurt and consider how they will be better off without you abusing alcohol.
- Step 3: Apologize to people that have been harmed and work on avoiding alcohol so they are never harmed again.
- Stop, rinse, repeat as necessary.
- Step 4: Help other people who have had problems with an alcohol problem
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
If you're bored, read this article entitled, "Kids outsmart Web filters" on CNET.
Summary: Some schools suck because they censor the Internet. Geeky kids who go to these schools discover ways of getting around the filters, mostly via web proxies. One such kid sets up a proxy on his home computer. He didn't face disciplinary action (what a twist), but they tracked his IP and prevented access to the proxy (bastards!).
This is what I found interesting about the article:
"This is a hot new trend among kids for getting around Web filters," Wolff said.
Hot new trend?
Anybody who attended a Calgary high school in the very late 90's - early 00's will probably remember BESS (the Ban Everything Site Sieve (not actual acronym)). This was a device the CBE employed in order to prevent perverts like me from surfing porn at school. I believe the system used some kind of blacklist/whitelist + very primitive filtering mechanism to determine which sites were worthy of "innocent" eyes.
Unfortunately, BESS sucked balls big time. If you needed to research the sexual habits of the common slug, GOOD LUCK! Even the word "sex" would promptly cause BESS to prevent access to a site, thus censoring all the sexual education available on the Internet. It wasn't just sex-related stuff either. Anything that had swearing, mature content, or pretty much any useful content was blocked.
For the first half of grade 10, I tried fruitlessly to guess the BESS administrator password so that I could disable it when I needed to. This was pointless. In the 2nd half, however, I suddenly became brilliant. I set up a Red Hat Linux 5.2 server on my home machine, downloaded a simple perl CGI web proxy script, and memorized my IP Address.
I went to school the next day and did a demonstration for my Computer Science teacher, Mr. Brown, who also despised BESS. I found a site on the Internet that was blocked by BESS, surfed to my home machine, entered the URL, and magically displayed the blocked content. Hurah! Suck on it, BESS! And the hot "new" trend of today was started ... 6 years earlier.
They ended up removing BESS the following year, so I could finally get rid of RH5.2, which sucked balls as well. The school board replaced the behemoth with the honour system, which worked much better in my opinion.
Monday, May 15, 2006
Here's something that I've recently discovered:
Ex cathedra (from the Catholic Encyclopedia):
We teach and define that it is a dogma Divinely revealed that the Roman pontiff when he speaks ex cathedra, that is when in discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the universal Church, by the Divine assistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that his Church should be endowed in defining doctrine regarding faith or morals, and that therefore such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves and not from the consent of the Church irreformable.
Aside from being the longest sentence I've seen in a while, the above definition of "ex cathedra" can be summed up in (very) laymans terms to mean "something all Catholics have to believe because God said so via the Pope." Note, I took the word "Christian" and narrowed its definition to only the subset of "Catholic." This is because not all Christians subscribe to papal doctrines - those who do are pretty much Catholics, whether they are Roman Catholic or Anglican (or anything else).
Ok, now here's a quote from Evangelium Vitae (March 1995), written by Pope Jean Paul II:
Nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent person, or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. Nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action.
It's important to note that this writing was presented ex cathedra. So applying our definition of "ex cathedra" to the above writing, we determine that as of 1995, all Catholics have been "told by God" to be against abortion and euthanasia, amongst the other ways of killing innocent people (like murder). It's also important to note that this dogma applies to ALL Catholics, including judges.
Now let's sidestep into the point of this post. In the latest US Supreme Court there are 2 Protestants, 2 Jews, and 5 Roman Catholics, 4 of whom are not only devout Catholics but staunch conservatives. However you count it, the Catholics have the majority, even if Judge Kennedy may or may not be devout. So if the other 4 are bound by this dogma, c. 1995, to uphold the Catholic belief of "No Abortion for You," it would only take one more vote to reject the US Constitution in favour of privately held religious beliefs. This is scary.
Every Federal US Justice takes an oath under 28 USC #453 to "faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all of the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitutional laws of the United States." So, if a judge (or four) is bound by his private faiths to take a specific side of a constitutional issue, how can he be impartial? He can't.
There are a couple of possibilities for these judges when the issue of abortion comes up (and I say "when", not "if"):
- The judge holds his/her authority and responsibility to the country more important than his/her personal beliefs and thus votes in favour of abortion [the correct decision]
- The judge disqualifies himself/herself from the proceedings, indicating that his/her impartiality might reasonably be questioned (under 28 USC #455(a)) [a respectable, but possibly counter-productive decision]
- The judge holds his/her private beliefs more important than his/her responsibility to the US Constitution and votes against abortion [the wrong decision]
In an ideal world, #2 and #3 wouldn't even be on the list. In this world, however, I have a feeling that #3 is the only one that these judges would consider.
Now, before you accuse me of being impartial in the opposite way, I will turn you to Article One of the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution. It states that legal existence is granted to those "born or naturalized in the United States." Thus, since a fetus is neither born nor naturalized in the first place, it does not legally exist as a person.
We could discuss abortion for hours (or years) in all three levels of the moral hierarchy (Philosophical Ethics, Law, and religion). From a phil. ethics point of view, we could make valid arguments on both sides of the abortion debate. And in the religious point of view, well, argument is kind of pointless.
As far as these judges should be concerned, the only moral framework they should be using is the Legal one and thus, according to the US Constitution, a fetus is not a person so abortion is legal.
END OF DEBATE.
Now this is cool.
David Silverman (one of the directors of the Simpsons, as it turns out), modified his sousaphone so that it shoots flames out of it. It's powered by propane and has an adjustable flame height.
Here's a quote from the original article:
We talked about attaching fire wicking to the top of the sousaphone bell, or something with propane shooting out of the top. But I'm not a carpenter or welder.
Fortunately, she knew a terrific carpenter/tinkerer. And one with a strong knowledge of propane, so things don't go boom in the night. I was hoping for something propane based, and a system where I could manipulate the flame height. Also, because the bell of the sousaphone detaches, I needed the fuel line to be able to detach in the middle as well.
Shanan Brown took on these problems, and solved them with a simple and ingenious system. A copper pipe attached to the curve of the left side of the horn, and a trigger device attached to that, prior to where you attach the propane tank. This allows my left (free) hand to work the trigger. The pipe continues up the side of the bell, and across the top. There is had been drilled with several tiny holes to let the gas escape. And finally - after seeing it in operation - the addition of two copper slats as a wind screen.
This reminds me of an idea that Reid and Mike had in high school, which was to create a flaming trumpet. Although, if I recall correctly, their idea involved kerosene (or was it gasoline?) and a lighter of some sorts, perhaps a Zippo. However they were planning to do it, I'm sure at the very least, the trumpet would have melted if not completely burned off the lips of whoever was planning to play it (Mike, no doubt).
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Ok, here's something that has really pissed me off lately: People who suck at filling in the "Subject" field in an email.
As the name suggests, the Subject field is used to indicate what the actual message is about. Seems simple, doesn't it? Apparently not, since a significant portion of my email is ambiguously (or stupidly) subject-ed.
NOTE: If your name appears in a "From" entry and you want it bleeped out, please let me know. Also, I don't mean any personal offense to any of the senders on the "bad" list - I'm just in a ranting kind of mood.
Let me begin with some examples of good subject lines:
- From: Reid, Subject: The Remository
This is a great subject line because I knew exactly what the email was about before opening it. Even though most people would scratch their heads at this one, it showed Reid knew his audience (me) and which words were meaningful to me. - From: Tristin, Subject: Your Blog! about Five Star Affair
Yet another great subject line. Without reading the email, the subject told me that Tristin had read this blog, specifically the post I made about FSA, and had feedback to give me in regards to that post. - From: Apple, Subject: Time Sensitive: Please verify your email address
Not only did they tell me what they wanted directly in the subject line, they also indicated that they needed it quickly by specifiying "Time Sensitive." Marvellous! - From Rob, Subject: ONB - Rehearsal Schedule April/May/June
This is a great subject because even though I naturally assume that emails from Rob are concerning One Nite Band or the Jazz Orchestra, he included "ONB" in the title to clarify this. Reading the rest of the title told me right away that I'd be looking at a rehearsal schedule and would need to open my calendar to adjust dat,es if necessary, for the months of April, May, and June.
- From: Rob, Subject: May 27th @ Rafter 6
Now, this one was pretty good because coming from Rob, I knew it had to be related to either One Nite Band or the Jazz Orchestra, and thus the date and location specified was most likely related to a gig. The thing I would have really liked to see in the title was the word "Cancelled." You see, to get this information, I had to open his message and read the email, but by adding one word to the title, he could have saved me from reading the message entirely. - From: Jenna, Subject: Going Away Party --SURPRISE
This one was okay because I could assume that I was being invited to a surprise going away party. What I would have really liked to see was the name of the person who the party is for and perhaps even the date of the party. An acceptable title would have been "Surprise Party for ***** - May 11." That would have made my day. - From: Haysam, Subject: Apples and Oranges
This subject puzzled me at first. I thought, "What the fuck?". But then after reading the email it made sense. You see, he was asking me to help him install Microsoft Office on his Macintosh laptop and made a reference to Apple and MS to be incomparable. Clever, but confusing at first.
- From: Dawn, Subject: Quadrus Development Inc.
This email started a long thread of conversation between me and the human resources manager at my new company. We had been previously introduced a number of times and so I could easily associate her name with the company name. Why, then, did she feel the need to put the company name as the subject of the email? The message is obviously going to pertain to Quadrus, why not put a title like, "Invitation to Corporate Event - tonight, 5:30 pm @ Stampede." That would tell me everything I needed to know and the message itself could be a more formal icing on the cake, with all the pleasantries of conversation.
Furthermore, she used this same thread of conversation to start a new, completely unrelated discussion with me. A new topic deserves a new subject line. - From: James, Subject: Hey Guys
Ok, "Hey Guys" is not a subject in the loosest sense of the word. It is a greeting used at the beginning of a message body. The message itself was a series of unrelated questions, so a possible title could have been "Questions about forgotten gear, next rehearsal, and Saturday Night." That would have been much more informative. - From: Lauren, Subject:
Yes, the subject field was left blank. Why??? How could a message not have a subject if the message itself was not blank? Not to mention, that every email I get from this person has a blank subject, so these all end up being threaded into the same conversation in my Mail program. That irks me a bit. - From: Rob, Subject: Tune
Okay, this is pretty ambiguous. What exactly is this message about? Is it about a song that I should hear? Is it about a song you found? Is it about tuning an instrument? So many possibilities!!!!
- From: Zeev, Subject: from Zeev
OH MY GOD! Every email he sends me has this exact subject. Has he never used an email client before? I mean, how could he not realize that the sender is displayed next to the subject of every email, thus completely eliminating the need to respecify the sender in the subject. FUCK! It makes me want to crawl in a hole and convulse.
Monday, May 08, 2006
For those who haven't seen it:
Watch the single greatest moment in Colbert's career.
And for those new to Stephen Colbert, he has a show called the Colbert Report (pronounced: Colbear Repor) on Comedy Central, on which he pretends to be a far-right wing news pundit for the purposes of satire.
Finally, yes, I am at work, bored, in a training session.
Friday, May 05, 2006
Ok, I'll openly admit that I'm not the least bit interested in Harry Potter, however, I found some fan-fiction titles that I would gladly read. This is from boingboing:
Harry Potter fanfic we'd rather not see
- Harry Potter and the Uneventful Year When No One Tried to Kill Him
- Harry Potter and the New Love Interest Who Happens to Have the Same Name as the 15-Year-Old Girl Writing this Fanfic
- Harry Potter and the Uncomforatble Oversexualization of Minors
- Harry Potter and the E Street Band
- Harry Potter and the Things You Have to do to Get By in Prison
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner Detainees of Azerbaijan
- Harry Potter and the Wand of Franchise Extension
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Pizza
Hope you enjoyed that as much as I did (moderately).
Thursday, May 04, 2006
I'm now employed, making money (although my first cheque doesn't arrive until June 10). I think I'm really going to enjoy working for this company, especially if I get to join a client project and get some real, real-world experience.
There are other things I'd like to be doing instead, such as recording with Reid, recording other people, and producing albums, but the last two of those three may be elusive. I'm thinking this Five Star Affair thing was more of a whim than anything, even though I know my ears would be beneficial to their project.
Perhaps I was thinking too ambitiously, though, when this opportunity first came about. If they recorded everything at their own studio, there's no way I'd be able to do quality control on the recording process itself. Sometimes, no matter how much "pixie dust" you put on a trumpet track, it will still sound like ass if it was recorded the wrong way to begin with. Thus, my ideal scenario would be to discover a band, get them into my studio, and release a single - EP/full length to follow if the single is well received.
Now, this could take a while to find another band worthy of recording who doesn't already have studio connections, so in the mean time, I'm going to work on laying down tracks for Child of the Internet. The hardest part of this album is going to be finding the right singer, but we're going to advertise in FFWD, craigslist, etc.... If anyone else has any good ideas of where to advertise for an unpaid singing position, please let me know.
For those who aren't savvy, Child of the Internet is the album that Reid and I are working on. Our process is probably somewhat similar to The Alan Parsons Project, in that we're not actually a full band - we are producers and songwriters who can play some instruments, but we have to outsource many of the roles, such as vocals, bass, and piano. We're also similar in that we're writing an album, not a collection of songs.
Note the difference between these two: an album, much like a photo album, is made up of parts that are somewhat related. A collection of songs is just a bunch of songs. The songs on COTI, for the most part, deal with the effect of the Internet on today's youth. We already have some freaking sweet cover art that Reid made, but it isn't safe for work. Not that I've ever hesitated to post offensive material on this blog... I just don't want people to see it until there's music to go with it.
Our other project, Computer Mics Never Sounded This Good, will be a tribute to our favourite artists, and will include reworked/rearranged versions of existing songs. (This will be a collection of songs, not an album.) Before the idea for COTI came along, this was to be our first album, but the topic of the Internet was too enticing to resist. Mmm, I can't wait to record one of the "intermission" songs that I came up with... I can't reveal anything, but Internet junkies are sure to enjoy it.
Well, I've been blabbing on for a really long time now, so I think it's time to go. Sorry I didn't really rant about anything, but I just wanted to put down in writing my goals for the next couple of months: COTI completed by September.
