why does western's reading week have to be a week after every other schools? it's ridiculous.....is it so hard to take the same week off as every other student in the province?

whatever....i don't have enough classes per week anyways to mert complaining. but still....it bugs the piss out of me.

in other news, i've gone to all my classes in the last 2 weeks or so. we'll see how long this lasts....

Breaking Baseball News.

it was bound to happen.

yikes. i've been downloading albums at a speedy clip lately.
some standouts:

Idlewild - The Remote Part:
although i never got around to getting their first album (100 broken windows) i have heard most of it before and i must say this new album is a bit of a departure from their previous sound. Although they had a raw, punkish sound last album, the scottish boys also were much more in touch with their folk sensibilities on that album. The Remote Part sounds much more polished, with an almost prototypical pop-punk sound on songs like "(i am) what i am not" and "out of routine".
all in all however, it's a catchy album with some good riffs. Not groundbreaking but superbly done, and certainly a step forward towards more mainstream success for these guys.

Koufax - Social Life:
Unlike their labelmates at Vagrant, koufax don't perscribe to the mall-punk cliche at all, instead producing a NY garagey sound mated with ben folds-type pop. The piano really keeps it going on this album, and it's a cool, fun change of pace from new-wave wanna be bands like the datsuns. garage is the new grunge? whoop-de-doo.....but anyhow, this album is amazing. the lyrics are a bit bland, but the sogns are thrown together with an organic appeal, especially considering these guys are still young and growing. excellent album.

Zwan - Mary Star Of The Sea:
well, surprise surprise, it sounds like the second coming of SmaPum circa siamese dream. which certainly isn't a bad thing. Billy's dropped the rock-god get up (externally at least, we all know the ego isn't going anywhere) and is trying to get back to his indie roots. And he succeds to a certain extent. The songs are great, particularly the first single "honestly" and "endless summer", which swells with the catchy riffs and solos that personified classic pumpkins. it would fit right alongside "today" and "cherub rock". The best part of the album is probably the very last song however, "come with me". Corgan goes totally lo-fi and produces a song that sounds like michael stipe is his muse. there's a harmonica dammit! It's a songwriters song, which is something that can't be said of almost everything since Adore. very impressive. If this album had been full of songs that were all as good as the closer, it wouldn't be as....well.....bland. So nothing new here, but if you dig the sound, it's certainly listenable, with songs that'll be stuck in your head all day.

Massive Attack - 100th Window:
this album lacks the edge, and drama and epic mood of their earlier work. It's an excellent album, but i found myself using it as background music for reading and surfing the net. It just doesn't capture the listener like their older stuff.

The Ataris - So Long Astoria:
you KNOW you're an mp3 pirate when you're reviewing albums not slated to be released for another few weeks.....but anyhow. The Ataris have left any pretensions of being a credible punk band at the door, and have flung themselves full fury into the emo-pop-punk scene which they were being drawn into with their last album anyways. But it's still a wicked album, typical ataris catchiness, energy and wierd but appropriate voice overs, mixed with slower emo sing-alongs. If u dug their earlier stuff, or similar bands like rufio, you'll enjoy this.

Other Stuff:
The Early November - For All This (6/10)
The Lyndsey Diaries - The Tops Of Trees Are On Fire (4/10)
The Used - The Used (6/10)
System Of A Down - Steal This Album (7/10)
Further Seems Forever - How To Start A Fire (8/10)
Nas - Gods Song (8/10)
Missy Elliot - Under Construction (9/10)
Bjork - Greatest Hits (9/10)

well...it took me months and months of procrastination, but i finally got around to watching punch drunk love. i have to say it's pretty much what i expected - and it's amazing.

i imagine people who didn't like magnolia probably would find this movie a bit...uh.....pointless. but then again, if you didn't like magnolia.....well....you suck.

the components of our lives are either incredibly monotonous, or incredibly depressing. it seems the peaks don't seem to fare more than a glimpse in our memories....or at least, we don't reserve much more than a glimpse of them in our minds. we tend to dwell on the darker side of things.

which is exactly the problem with people today it seems. it's become an epidemic of sorts in our society. rampant cynicism. now...i know i very well could be the last person in the world to rant about being jaded.....but i mean.....it's not like i don't know it's a cyclical state of mind. sure...i could go out there and make a concious effort to be optimistic and happy and cheerful all the time. And you know what? I would probably make the world a better place by proxy.

i've written two paragraphs...and i could go on for another 20 pages. ranting on and on about the ultimate futility it seems we deal with every day when we wake up. the pointlessness.....the meaningless existence. and i don't deny it. it's the easiest way to face the world. to look deeper and see the beauty in life takes effort. it takes strength. and we aren't all up to that challenge. but it makes the time go by easier. so once in a while.....just.....decide to have a day where you literally stop and smell the roses. you never know what's around the corner....

what happend in the skies over the southern united states this morning is absolutely tragic. may God be with the family and friends of the space shuttle columbia.

it seems like more and more people are using MSN now instead of ICQ. i suppose ever since AOL bought ICQ it was only a matter of time before it became a battle of lesser evils.

in other news.....

well, i'll be honest, i have no other news.
chinese new years will be celebrated by......not.....starving myself.....haha

so i happened to catch the start of an episode of felicity this afternoon.
i don't watch the show, but apparently felicity was saying she was like, sent from the future by her friend via a magical spell in order for her to be able to be with some guy or something.

now, i'm not exactly a huge felicity fan or anything, and to be honest, i've never even watched an entire episode, but uh......huh?
i thought it was about like....college students and stuff??

what the hell! i don't believe.....

well....i'm at home and i'm bored. although i should sleep as i have a fair amount of things to do tomorrow.
but anyhow.

i've been re-evaluating my high school work and stuff....and i think i'm in the wrong program.
maybe MIT was really where i should be.......because lately i've been really interested in journalism.
but.....in terms of poli.sci.....it's a lot of writing. which is good. but it isn't quite the writing i think i'm best at.
i wonder of creative writing and stuff is a feasable future.......hm......to be honest, the one job that i always ALWAYS dreamed of having since high school has been to write for a television show or something along those lines. i wonder how one gets involved in stuff like that.....

finally got the pics from the auto show up.
check it out here!
if u don't like the slideshow format, u can change it to thumbnails.

i'm hoping i'll be able to throw up a "virtual tour" of our house here in london sometime soon.....
could be fun.

hm...
the new "asian" fad in grammer seems to be using the tilde key as punctuation. like...

bye~
nite~

what the hell does that mean exactly?!
i think it's suppose to be a subdued exclamation mark. or something.
asian people bug me.

and just when i thought his de-evolution couldn't get any worse.....he goes from homo toooo....

MC HAMMER??!?!

du's stunning transformation from sisqo....to......homo.

the steel workers of america. we work hard, and we play hard. bum, bum, bum bum BUM! (no pun intended)

hm......randomness and a rant, which first.....?
we'll go with the random news.

went to detroit to check out the auto show last weekend. it was awesome. totally puts the toronto show to shame in terms of scale and production value and just.....everything. it was sooooo cool......i stole ivan's digital camera, so i should have pics of the show up when i get off my ass. i'll probably play around with the camera a bit more before i get a chance to go home. stay tuned for more exciting still-life adventures.....

on a funnier note, toyota's new "youth" brand, called 'scion' makes two cars: one of which is a box on wheels (the better one, frankly) and another which looks like a suzuki aerio (read: ugly and cheap). the funny thing about 'scion' however, is their inaugural sales pamphlet. Asides from introducing the cars, half of it is a magazine dedicated to all things cool. music, pop culture, fashion, cars, everything. it sort of makes me sick. they ramble on and on in it about how they're with 'us', trying to appeal to generation Y and younger. it's soooo sad to see them promoting individuality by (not so subtley i add) push conformity. the sad part is....you KNOW that some n'sync loving, about-to-graduate-to-creed-loving tool is going to see this and go....."neato. if i like this stuff, i'll be cool too!". we all know our only purpose in life is to be "scion folk" after all.....

yes. toyota's certainly has the pulse of our generation under it's corporate marketing umbrella.
on the bright side, if we could somehow arrange it that everyone who falls for this horse crap and BUYS a scion, ends in certain fiery explosive doom, we'd have a conveniant way of ridding society of a legion of mindless idiots. way to go toyota!

awesome......my friend snagged me a copy of LOTR: Two Towers, DVD quality screener.......tres cool. esp. with 4 speakers blasting the fight scenes....it's...almost eerie.

you know. i don't think i was created to be employed.
i have a pretty good feeling i just wasted 150 bucks on a pink bowtie....

you know what's sort of wierd.
photographs.

i mean, forget the whole ability-to-capture-the-essence-of-time-and-space-on-a-little-piece-of-paper thing for a second, and go look at a photograph. particularly, look at one that you have some sort of sentimental attatchment too, and that has people other than yourself in it. don't you look happy? or pensive? or funny? (if it's not one of the three, i can't imagine your photo really meets my description...)
anyhow, stop looking at yourself you egomaniac.

look at the other people.
what are they thinking? surely seeing this photo brings up a memory in your head. how you felt, what you were thinking exactly when it was taken. if not, the photo wouldn't mean much to you.
ever wonder what the photo means to the other people in it? what they were thinking about the exact same moment, time, experience that you so fondly remember? do they attatch similar emotions to this picture? why? why not?

it's wierd. i mean, i'm looking at a photo right now, and the thing i can't get out of my head is what the other person is thinking in that photo.....maybe i'm just nuts. but for some reason this is blowing my mind right now. and no, i'm not doped up or anything....but thanks for asking. i realize i sound a little neurotic at the moment, but i dunno. it's just.....wierd, that i have no idea what's going through the other person's head when this picture is taken. and it applies to all my photos. i wonder what they're thinking.....

kinda makes you wonder what people are thinking all the time eh? when you're on a bus. or walking down the street.
but that's a rant for another day....

argh. i lost my script.
for the last few months i've been writing this script for a short film, but i seem to have lost it in my many windows re-installs.
dang it all......

it's tragic when you lose your art. it's like a piece of you is missing.
not to be cliche or anything. but....think about that for a minute, and you'll understand.

there's something about a big cup of milk and some good cookies that appeals on the most basic of levels for me. it's just so satisfying. more so than a billion bottles of gatorade and a billion bags of chips.

eat a cookie and savour the sweetness. the milk's refreshing taste is amplified by the cookies textures, which turn soft and go down nice and smooth, while the palate is cleansed for the next cookie to be consumed.

mmmmm.....maple walnut fudge....
personally, i also hold any sort of lemon based cookie in the highest regard. they're a1.

new years seems to get less and less eventful every year. i suppose as you get older and the years start to pile up, each year passing seems to be less of a deal in retrospect as there's so many already gone by. then again, there's still that sense of nostalgia the comes with new years, and you can't help but think of the year that has just passed. the really crazy part is how quickly it all flew by. I sometimes forget that this past year i was still in first year. since we all count by school years, i guess it's sometimes hard to remember that, but indeed we were merely freshmen and summer was a puny 3, 4 months tops. summer always feels like an eternity until it ends, but we'll leave that for another day.

so yes. new years. when we realize how fleeting life is. and there's those that sulk at this fact, and those that take it as rationale to enjoy life to it's fullest. after all, you only have so many days to have fun. where's the efficiency in moping around?

asides from looking back, i guess looking forward is an equally important aspect of each new years. expectations, anticipation, the mystery of another chapter of our lives, ready to be written. i use to think i could have gut feelings about years. that, hey, this one's gonna be big. but as i've experienced, this is silly; they all end up big, especially when you least expect it. predicting life is like looking ahead at an invisible road. you could guess, and it might even be educated. but you just never know what's gonna happen. when the bottom will drop out, or you'll take a corner too fast. that's the fun i personally think. conversely, i suppose that's the tragic part of life, but if you don't accept both sides of the coin, there isn't much point in living.

anyhow.

resolutions are for idiots i always thought. silly idealists who dream big and have zero ambition. but maybe there's something in a new year after all? some.....intangible appeal about the possibility of a fresh start. to be able to change who you are at the stroke of midnight and take on the world, fresh faced once again and ready to mend past mistakes (or at the very least, leave them behind).

am i one of these people? as i said, apparently i am when it comes to school years. i thought i would be more responsible this term, but that doesn't seem to be the case. and now that i have one term left to drastically determine my future educational paths, i fear i may be unable once again to change.

in a new year however, one can't shake that little nagging voice...annoying as it is:

fresh start!
hope springs eternal. one can only believe it's this voice that makes people such survivors.