:::GARAGE SALE PICTURES:::

there's some stuff in those pictures that have essentially been sold already, and there's a lot of stuff that i didn't take pictures of.

there are a few more chairs, a few more bookshelves, desks/storage tables, and assorted trinkits including stickvacs, car deck w/cd player, computer stuff, sewing stuff, misc. household trinkits, outdoors stuff (gardening, toboganning, etc.) stationary (envelopes, white board, msg board, etc.) and i have a ton of clothes, lots of it unworn and name brand stuff. i also have some purses my mom doesn't want anymore. also name brand stuff (prada, gucci....etc). shoes, boots, and most of all though is the furniture. lots of bookshelves and desks. come one come all. saturday morning at 9am to 12am approx.

if you're interested in anything in the photos, call me or email me and we'll see if we can work out a time for you to drop by my house and check stuff out before saturday.

this is ideal fo you guys just moving into places of your own for the first time when school starts because i have a ton of pretty useful crap.

i also have a ton of useful crap your parents might like, so bring them along too, haha

chinese people are really bad at basketball.

these are the clips of the best moves thusfar from the Nike Battleground Asia streetball tourny.

apparently, a layup is worth making into a slowmotion clip in hong kong. i think it's funnier that some clips don't even show the guys MAKING layups. just attempting them.

man. they suck.

on the bright side, the girls are more impressive than the guys. and that "classroom freestyle" clip is really really funny.

on the sad side, it looks like instead of a dunk contest, they had.......a layup contest??? what the hell....?

*irene and wendy at macgregor point provincial park*

(i only took 10 pictures the entire trip. i pulled my camera out with about 15 minutes to go before we left the park, so forgive my lack of photos).

camping and garage sale pics are up at imagestation.

regarding the garage sale stuff, i took pictures mainly of just the large furniture. there's actually more bookshelves and cabinets and what not that i didn't take pictures of because they were covered by other junk. also, generally anything you see in a picture is for sale. so a lot of the stuff on shelves and sitting on the floor or on tables is for sale. i'll note in the picture description when something particularly isn't for sale.

as to prices, email me about a certain item and we'll work something out. i haven't set real prices or made any sort of inventory or anything yet.

FINALLY.

page is back up. will have more updates later tonight including a new background, new gallery at imagestation of this past weekend's camping trip as well as further updates on the progress of "simon sells his stuff, part 1"

in totally unrelated news, i've come to the following conclusions in the last few days.

rogers technical support is way to complex. if they would just streamline their customer service network i bet they could save hundreds and thousands of dollars in wages and still be more efficient. for example....why do i need to be put on hold and transfered to 3 different depts when all i want is to ask why my account was disconnected? can't they just ask FOR me and then tell me? yeesh.

also, women in long lines take longer when they get to the front. i was in a long line this morning and every woman would take like, 15 minutes to do the same thing that all the guys took about 6 seconds to do. conclusion?

women don't mind taking a long time to do things when they have to be done.

men prefer to prepare things before hand in order to do whatever they're doing as fast as possible once it needs to be done.

what does this teach us? nothing really. except that if you're in a long line of women.....prepare for a long wait.

phew.

the moving went good. was quick and clean, no real snags or anything. it's still really wierd not living at my house anymore. i went by twice to pick stuff up before i headed home tonight, and i just felt....wrong.

i'm also feeling a bit whiny about living so darn far from everybody. i have to drive all the way up to highway 7. i guess it'll be even worse when i move into my real house, cuz that's closer to 16th than it is 7. argh.

oh well...i guess i have to concede the fact that i'm going to be a 905'er from now on.

great, now i'm all depressed.

on the bright side, tons of stuff to sell. should make for good times. pics up within the week.

this has been an update of nothing what i did today. oh well, too tired to think.

moving day is coming up really quick, so it's been rather hectic what with a mixture of packing and procrastinating from packing.

again, i want to let the world know that i'll be hawking my unwanted wares starting saturday night likely. i'll post an imagestation gallery devoted to the crap i'm selling, and i'll probably have an actual sale day where you guys can come and ravage the remains of my house.

please pass the word along to any other poor university students you know who'd like to get cheap goods for my monetary benefit. i have a tone of desks and other officey furniture, along with trinkits, electronics and yadda yadda....you'll see in a few days i guess when i ship all our stuff out and leave all the cra...uh, i mean, goods.

i think the band i started with cam and steph (to which we added herb as a fly-boy) is pretty much dead. i've been just way too busy as of late. which is ironical, because it's i who claimed their apathy for my previous solo jaunt.

ahhh......isn't it funny how things turn out.

c'est la vie.

went down to the taste of the danforth tonight. observed some amusing behaviour.

i find parents believe that if they're carrying a child, the world should stop in order to cater to their needs. i guess the stress of taking care of kids will do that to you.

one lady pushing a stroller whined constantly that people kept walking in front of her, so she couldn't forge ahead. imagine THAT. a crowd. where people walk. in front of you. hm....

there was this OTHER lady who was carrying a baby, and just using it to push people out of her way. it was pretty funny.....a little human battering ram.

i think it's scary that you can care about someone so much that situations that would normally not phase you - when those you care about are placed in them - you want to have the ability to transcend time and space just so you can go back and kick someones ass.

i mean...you'd think that with the ability to go anywhere at any time, you'd do something productive.

but nope.

when i think about it, i'd want nothing more than to kick some guys ass.

but then i guess meeting Jesus would be pretty cool. but i have a feeling he'd frown on my wanting to inflict a savage beating. ah, the decisions....

[pic: ryan and dora at second cup]
*per usual, highlight blog title and date to get rid of the grey blog box*

added gabe and dora's picture sites to the links section. go check them out. everyone loves pictures.

exam this saturday.....freedom so close.....i can taste it....
c's birthday on sunday.....bbq so close.....i can taste it....

the streaming audio for the new dashboard album is up in full at mtv.com

it's pretty much what i expected....standouts include instantly familiar "rapid hope loss" with its classic dashboard, crafted-for-sing song bridge.

dashboard tries to get away from the monotony that surely comes with being the idols of depressed and heart broken teenagers everywhere, but ultimately the best work shines through when he's doing what he's best at - wearing his heart on his sleeve.

with lyrics like
"And try to understand there's an old mistake that fools will make
And I'm the king of them, pushing everything that's good away
So wont you hold me now?"

from 'bend and not break', and

"Just bend the pieces til they fit
Like they were made for it
But, they weren't meant for this
No, they weren't meant for this"

from 'ghost of a good thing', it's apparent that the band is most comfortable when crying themselves to sleep at night.

attempts at more upbeat songs include 'hands down' (redone from the so impossible EP) as essentially the live version they play at concerts, and 'as lovers go' which is catchy but as is the problem with most of dashboards happy songs (the original hands down excluded) lack the inspiration or emotion that are the bands trademark. furthermore, while the front 5 tracks of the album are excellent and unique, the middle and tail end of the album seems to lack any sort of direction and starts to all sound the same. after a while, you realize the whining is only cool when the music behind it is good. without better song writing, the lyrics are just kind of pathetic.

i present this final lyric from 'carry this picture' as evidence:
"I'll give you this picture and keep it and dont be scared,
And color the coast with your smile.
Its the most genuine thing I've ever seen.
I was so lost and now I believe.
I believe in the coast."

......suffice to say.....i'm not impressed. keep on crying buddy. for all our sakes....and don't take this personally... but i hope women keep crushing your heart so your next album will be even better.

today i found myself wishing i was more into photography.
i think it's really easy to take interesting photos if you just take the time to inspect your surroundings and make a note of what captures your attention. you can be in the same house, walk down the same street, sit in the same chair everyday of your life but it's how that routine responds to changes, and how you view the routine itself that determines the little cool things that make a good photo. maybe one day a rock is just a rock. but at the right time, with the right light, and the right background, it could be a great photo.

i suppose that's the definition of thinking optimistically when you consider it. seeing in everything the potential for greatness as opposed to seeing in everything the potential for failure.

i love how our human interactions and relationships sort of works the same way. I've never understoof people who say after a while someone's mannerisms and quirks get annoying and old. shouldn't it be exactly the other way around? that after spending time with your friends or significant other long enough, their little idiosyncrasies are exactly the things that make you so close to them and care about them?

i'm pretty sure i've said this a billion times, but it's always encouraging when you actually recognize the beauty evident in the people around us and the relationships we have.

maybe that's why there's few photographs more beautiful in my mind than the ones that capture the everyday essence of life. because everyone says a rainbow or a baby are beautiful. Those are almost 'generic' beauty if such a thing existed. but when you look at a photo of something we normally ignore in our daily rush through life and understand why the person who took it thought it was worth taking a photo of....well. now thats a photo.

i just ate 3/4 of a bag of nacho cheese bugles and now i feel really gross. let this be a lesson.....corn snacks are only good in moderation...

anyways, on to the daily rant. today's topic of criticism: chinese music.

why is it there's no good chinese music? it's all pop, or bad rap, or other prepackaged bubble-gummy garbage that has been done to death a billion times in a billion languages. much the way GOOD music transcends language, i believe CRAP music is universally understood to be crap no matter where you are.

so what's the deal chinks?

i mean, japan has a GREAT music scene. sure, they have the pop stuff, but they also have really talented bands and musicians. Artists like DJ Krush, P5, Nine Days Wonder, Melt Banana...i could go on. And japanese music snobs are just as elitist as their north american counterparts. They love the =W=eez, and they're constantly pushing the envelope of math/alt-rock and other experimental genres of music.

there seems to be an abundance of creative energy in japan (just look at all the video games they make).

why is it HK is so different? how is it that i've yet to ever hear of a single Chinese artist who knows how to bring the rock? or forget rock! i've never heard of any good indie chinese music, no punk, no hip-hop, NOTHING. i find it hard to believe in a city that crowded there isn't one good artist. it's mind blowing.

i mean.....mainland china, they have that whole communist thing working against creative freedom, but you'd think in HK someone would have stood up by now and said "yo man. this yes-card music sucks". you'd think there would be some sort of underground scene, and you'd think someone would have made themselves a bit of a name here.

but nope.
are chinese people destined to listen to bad music? what does that SAY about our culture? it's vexing indeed.

no offense to those who enjoy chinese pop.
i think jay chow is great.

FOR ME TO POOP ON.

hehheh.....and i'm turning 21 this year folks. why is it when you're young, older people always seem so old. but when you get to be their age, you feel so immature? enh...that's a rant for another day.