more late night ramblings

so, without fail, whenever the clock passes 3am, i get into this melancholy, sanctimonious mood where i tend to spew emo-reeking posts about paranoid delusions and broad sweeping social commentary that really deserve to get me punched in the ear. 

i can't explain why. i think my biological clock genetically predisposes me to emotional entropy as a self defense mechanism against my insomniac tendencies. it usually doesn't work. 

tonight however, i choose not to post my psycho-analytical blathering (although i did write it out). 

no, tonight i opt instead to simply ponder what the single most substantial difference in my life would be had i elected to attend the university of waterloo for undergrad instead of western. 

i would probably be working now instead of still in school. i would be in commerce, meaning i am in nothing in particular at all. i would not treat girls who's names start with c as if they carried bubonic plague. 

most importantly however, and perhaps the single biggest reason i am glad i went to uwo:

i would not be as good at basketball. not even remotely close. 

don't think i don't thank my lucky stars every night i went to london. can you imagine if my jumper was still as lackluster as it was in high school? i probably wouldn't even like playing basketball that much anymore. i shudder to think... it truly is frightening. 

 

horseshoe

i'm always mildly offended when people refer to the "Real World" post university/college. 

i mean, i understand what is meant and in many cases the patronization is not entirely intentional. to a certain extent, i completely accept that student life is by definition a fictitious existence, predicated on the idealistic farce that you can be whatever you want if you get a good grade (i'm not cynical in the slightest...)

when someone refers to this "Real World" however, i am always left wondering how strange the concept is that you can exist in the same temporal plane as the person next to you, yet concede they live in an entirely different world. 

i mean, that'd be like some crazy alien showing up and telling you the world actually has five dimensions, but we can only see three and thus are missing out on a whole wack load of "reality" as it were. actually, isn't this a real theory somewhere? but anyways. 

i guess my long winded and completely un-focused point is that part of me realizes that i'm wearing... perhaps not rose coloured, but at the very least mildly pink tinted glasses right now. i am still idealistic. i am still hopeful. i still have delusions of grandeur. and frankly, the notion of a cold and harsh reality scares the bejesus out of me. the idea that i could one day wake up 40 years old and be completely disappointed with the first half of my life. 

then again, a little bloody eyeball mentioned (in a different context) today that worrying about everything will drive you crazy. so yes. i would be remiss if i did not state that one of my goals for the future is to, you know. not be crazy. yes, i dream big dreams lady and gentlemen. welcome to my world. 

on a completely unrelated note, if there was a pivotal moment where one could say, yes, chinese people run Vancouver, this would be it:

those are the mascots for the upcoming winter olympics. and somewhere, a 50 foot fob is searching for his or her missing giant cell-phone charms.

the weekender

an interesting blog post about bottled water by one of the guardian's food critics.

he seems to equate bottled water with sparkling water, which is two entirely different beasts in my mind. i personally feel that sparkling water is much more worthwhile than bottled-water as we north americans are familiar (the distilled variety).

drinking normal bottled water is in my mind the biggest waste of money and resources ever. you are literally paying for something that you have free access to. this idea is unheard of in any other business model -- it's the equivalent of a dairy farmer buying bags of milk from a grocery store.

as for sparkling water, i feel like you're literally just paying a premium for...bubbles. which is pretentious, i will not deny. but at least you're paying for something you can't get out of the tap attached to your kitchen sink.

...in unrelated events, a worker at pearson airport has been suspended for altering her work uniform (a skirt) to be longer, citing religious reasons.

i'm not entirely sure how i feel about this. i'm not going to go all quebecois xenophobe or anything, but i mean...she has the option to wear pants. she thinks they show too much of her shape, so....wear looser pants? is it really the companies responsibility to allow uniforms to accommodate every possible religion?

isn't the whole premise of religion that you have to make sacrifices in your life? why expect your company to accommodate you fully when you knew going into it that the job entails adhering to certain rules?

in my opinion, she should just find a new job or something. i prefer my airport security to be more hottie than dowdy anyways, but hey, that's just me.

the mondays

- there is nothing particular interesting about this story on LPGA golfer Paula Creamer winning this past weekend's Tournament of Champions. what IS interesting however, is if you flip open today's globe and mail to this same story, you'll notice that the headline is different from the AP deck that appears in the above link. in print form, this morning's headline was "Creamer in pink." I shake my head at you, globe and mail. she has an unfortunate last name, we get it. now can we all be adults about it? I won't lie however, i giggled like a school girl upon first reading that headline...

- Another interesting globe story about differing circadian rhythms being a quantifiable genetic trait. being nocturnal myself, i want to believe this is true. but....part of me is inclined to think it's all a fair bit of wishful thinking. the "research" provided is a tad thin at best. call it a hunch, but i'm willing to bet that story was written last minute and submitted late...

- ESPN's page2 has a few great columns up about BB boycotting the HOF, and the ubiquity of asterisks in history. particularly funny is this tidbit by DJ Gallo:

1536: John Calvin develops Calvinism, which espoused predestination*
*Calvin does not really deserve credit for introducing Calvinism, since he was predestined to develop it.

you know what the worst part about being cynical is? (and no, it's not the irony of that sentence.) it's the tainting of good memories.

sure, it's all well and good to be jaded by life to the point where skepticism is a part of your daily routine. this is particularly poignant when the single greatest asset of your professional career is a persistent and enduring need to question every single detail presented before you with a fine tooth comb.

what really bites however, is when you are cynical to the point where even when considering past instances when you were happy -- times when things might have (surprisingly) gone your way, or better than you were expecting -- you begin to question whether you were actually happy after all, or just deluding yourself.

now i realize that sounds terribly depressing, and more often than not, i won't argue that such a state of mind generally does not make an individual the smashingly popular life of most parties.

but, i digress. my actual point is that in lieu of these thoughts, and in discussing happiness, i often consider the concept of joy -- and i wonder if it even really exists. there have been moments in the past where i considered myself the fortunate owner of a "joyful" state of mind.

i may not have been emotionally happy, but there may have been some sort of general state of peace about things, whether it be a mixture of contentment and fortunate timing, or pure and simple indifference.

at the same time however, i so often find myself wondering what the reason was for this seemingly abstract concept that was supposed to exist outside my emotional sense of awareness.

was it real? because at the time it felt real, but in retrospect is seems...well, suspect.

if "ignorance is bliss" is an accepted axiom, then doesn't it only make sense that bliss is ignorance? and if i can equate bliss to joy, i guess the question more simply is:

does joy even exist?

pagination station

it's hard to be purposely vague all the time.

it requires a breadth of communication skills, and knowing how to bend those rules just so, omitting information that is key, yet also divulging just enough information to make things seem mildy interesting.

to pique ones curiosity without really telling them anything at all is an act of salesmanship.

i hate sales.

but i'll be damned if i'm not pretty good at it.

in a way we all have to be good salespeople in life.

some just take longer to figure out what they're selling.

sleepy

there was a time when staying up to watch the west-coast game of the TNT double header wasn't a big deal for me.

now...well, lets just say now I'm starting to think watching basketball on TV might be the end of me. if i was a zombie before the season began, currently i'm a listless zombie, and by this time next week i fully intend to be whatever zombie's turn into when they no longer maintain the bodily functions to stay conscious.

ohbijou concert this saturday and i can't go. who wants two free tickets?