i don't understand how gas can cost 59.7 at 7pm, and 71.2 at 9pm.

someone explain the pattern of gas pricing to me, because i don't get it. darn communists.

(p.s. i am fully aware of the irony behind blaming a capitalism driven phenomenon on communists. but please. let me have my moment of grief).

uploaded the pics from the retreat and the darknights pics.

the new background is helen and her wierd space beenie man. it's like a giant stress toy. but in hugable, baby proportions. it proved very strangely soothing.....

anyways, highlight the blog title and entry date to clear away the blog box and see the picture better.

(i.e. highlight "don't read this." and the date right underneath it)

nice. just got back from a really good weekend up north in collingwood. It's really therapeutic once in a while to just get away from the frantic pace of life in the city and relax surrounded by the subtle nuances of God's glory in nature and the relaxed state of mind it seems to bring forth.

a single day up north seems to last longer than an entire weekend here in the city. asides from being a physical reprieve (i know, it's not like my daily life is exactly a grind, but hey...i still lead a moderately urban life) it was a good weekend to reflect and meditate on issues that have been on my mind as of late.

nothing like some time to yourself and good conversation with others to get yourself to step back and see things in perspective.

anyways, pics will be up shortly (along with pics from darknights i guess since Gabe borrowed my camera, haha)

oh, and to those who sign the guestbook at the end of each imagestation album - leave your name! other viewers don't know who the signee's are (except wendy. good job wendy!). although duane mentioned richards slave mother, so that sorta gave it away. but under less specific circumstances, you can see the confusion a lack of identification could involve for all those reading it.

hehheh. richard's slave mom. no one's going to understand this except my housemates.....

happy independence day!
wait a sec....sorry. too much american tv.
anyways.

i think picking courses for the next term is always a strange experience. you get really into the classes you sign up for. almost excited about them. you spend more time trying to rearrange your schedule to get fridays off than you worry about what will be the most useful course. not to mention the pain of having your prefered courses filling up before you get a chance to sign up.

ah yes. it's all fun and games until you actually have to start school.
now that it's summer, i kinda want school to start. during the school year, i can't wait till summer, or for the school to burn to the ground.
we are a fickle species indeed.

also, i uploaded some of the pics we took at our squatters shack out in london before school ended. they're amusing. well, i think so at least.

asides from that, retreat is this weekend. hope it goes well. can't wait to see some stars and take plenty of idiotic pictures. oh, not to mention the westnile. you gotta love the westnile.

uploaded the pics from the BBQ on monday. I'll get around to posting the pics from Cam's birthday sometime later i guess. Imagestation is infinitely more user friendly than MSN was i must say. go check it out. (and ivan, you can upload the pics from the hike if you want, it's a pretty simple process)

on an unrelated note, i've watched michelle wie play her first few holes at the LPGA U.S. Open and i'm really really impressed by her. Not only is she a monster off the tee, but she's mature and confident playing among women more than twice her age. I think she'll be a great role model for little girls getting into golf, especially asian ones.

i can't get over the fact that she's 13 years old, and she's 6' tall. yeesh. the best part is, she's like.....fairly cute in the prototypical asian teen sort of way. meaning she'll probably have a lot of influence in the world of professional sports as she grows older due to her marketability. you go girl.

grandpa Du has joined the mass of the blogged! may we welcome his senile ramblings and eventual trudge towards marriage with open arms and minds.

we took some pretty stupid pictures at a bbq this past weekend. i'll post them up to imagestation when i have the time to resize them all to managable sizes. this pic is me pretending to look.....i dunno. stupid, apparently. anyways, it's been pretty fun filled these past few days. won't bore anyone with the nitty gritty details, as unless you're stalking me (and i very much doubt you are) they're likely irrelevant.

other randomness: i'm baffled by the concept of time.

who's to say i can't just start living according to my own time? that i can't make up my own measure for life that has passed. if i decided to live by a 25 hour day, who would have the right to tell me i'm living "wrongly"? i'm not conforming to the status quo, certainly. but i'm not doing anything wrong perse. i'm merely being different. difficult - but different.

so where does time come from? do we really need to standardize our schedules in order to run efficiently as a society? would anarchy ensue if time were suddenly abolished from existence? or is it a concept that was merely made tangible by the advent of numbers and counting? did early man have a concept of time? i think about our ability to "tell time" according to our internal clocks. if someone threw us onto an island or perpetual day, surely we would have trouble keeping any sort of accurate time. a sundial perhaps, but lets say...uh....the sun doesn't move (it being perpetual day and all).

were early waches merely triangles that said "light-medium dark-dark"?

if it wasn't late, i'd do a little research into this whole "time" thing.
from now on, my excuse for my chronic punctuality problem will be that i run according to my own definition of time....

"i said 3pm!"
"according to my personal time, it IS 3pm!"
"oh. well then, i'm sorry i yelled at you"
"that's ok, it's early in the morning"

i have a strange urge to go to the AGO. haven't been there since years.....ago. hehheh. i crack myself up. if only it weren't so darn expensive...

Saw this site linked from kicksology and gave it a check. It's SOOOO cool!
Crooked Tongues
yes, i'm obsessed with sneakers. yes, this is an excellent sneaker site.

that is all for today.

i finally got around to fixing the pics page. haven't posted anything on imagestation yet, but all you guys can feel free to throw your pictures up there and stuff if you want. it's a communal archive, so don't be shy!

TheStar.com - Top stars to join Stones in T.O. show

the second i see justin timberlake sharing the stage with AC/DC, i can start praying knowing the end times are near.

ever open up blogger just for the sake of blogging, then sit in front of a screen for a good half hour typing and deleting and retyping dozens of possible posts before you just give up and post a load of crap?

yea. thats me now.

i hate when you have a bunch to say, and no one to say it to. that's the problem with having your pensive, self-reflective moments at 3:15am i guess.

ok.
so i've been getting a fair amount of email fowards about this....and enough people seem to have been talking about it that i feel the urge to rant about it. Gay marriages are now legal here in Ontario.

and you know what i say - as a Christian, and as a member of our society? I say - fine. I have nothing against Gay people getting married. I've been starting to get really peeved by everyone claiming hellfire and brimstone about this, and how we can't let such sin occur right in our city and country and yadda yadda.....and i like, TOTALLY think it's nuts to take that stance. to BAN Gay's from marriage - i think - is the type of thinking that starts religious wars. it is oppression of other, and imposition of beliefs on others.

I think C.S. Lewis makes a parallel point about marriage in his book Mere Christianity.
"A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives."

do i think homosexuality is a sin? yes. it's in the bible (Genesis 19). but what does that have to do with marrital status? What happened to hate the sin, not the sinner? will preventing gays from marrying reduce the number of gays? no. will it help spread Christ's words and love? no. beating someone over the head and denying them the same rights as us based on religious beliefs is fundamentally wrong to me.

Jesus accepted the company of prostitutes because they confessed their sins to Him. As long as they recognized their transgressions, they were saved. Similarly, although homosexuality is a sin, it's still something that can be recognized, and confessed, and worked at.

do i believe it is a scientific/genetic thing? possibly. i'm unaware of any evidence either proving or disproving this theory. but the fact remains that it's a sin. and i think that if God has called it a sin, there must be a way to be forgiven for it and cleansed before God's eyes if someone truly seeks to be saved.

warfare against gay marriage - to me - is hypocrisy. It is Christian conservatism taken too far....and is along the same lines as pro-life terrorism. WWJD? can you really see Jesus running down to jarvis and church and screaming into a megaphone that a certain group of people should be denied equal rights as others?

did Jesus believe in segregating the lepers? the prostitues? the gentiles?

no. Jesus came to save all of us. gays included. They are sinners, but you know what? so am I. so are you. so is everyone else in the world. What gives us the right to judge our sins as less than theirs? that we're "better" than them? is our lying, our lustful thoughts, our pride.....are these sins not as evil as homosexuality?

not to God. at least that's what i believe. we're ALL sinners.
I don't SUPPORT gay marriages. i'm not gonna go down and celebrate a victory or anything. but i accept it. i think it's fair. And to the next Christian who tells me we have to stop this, to pray for an appeal, and that the world is going to hell around us:

yes. it always has been, and it always will be. That's why Jesus came in the first place.

now, i ask YOU, as a Christian - what are you gonna do about it?

this pic was from cammie's wonderful day of excitment. refered to in some history books as "last saturday". what can i say? steph is a middle child. i think that's all you have to know. poor...poor bri....

i also added some more links to my stalking list. woohoo!

hm....
you ever get really bored and start looking through people's ICQ info? i know i do that every so often. one of my favourite past-times is looking for people's webpages, because i enjoy going through sites of people i know. they're such microcosm's of their lives, as i'm sure this site is of mine.

it actually makes me feel kind of bad when i go through the info of a friend i haven't talked to much in YEARS and go through their website. you realize how much time has occured since you've lost touch.....how much life has gone by unshared with each other. I've always been one to sort of go with the flow.....keep in touch with who i can, and i can admit that i'm really not one to make an extra effort to stay connected with people when i don't see them for a while.

i think this is something lots of us university students have to sorta "deal" with. I have to say however, that i'd much rather lose touch with a bunch of people and maintain/keep deveeloping some real frienships rather than cling on to old ones half assed. i believe i'd rather drift away from someone mutually than have them every once in a while ICQ me or something with no actual interest in my life, or intention to develop a relationship, but merely out of obligation and to make themselves feel better.

don't get me wrong, i'm not talking about specific people or situations. i'm merely saying that i don't believe there's anything wrong with drifting because as long as you know how to get a hold of the person, you can always get together and touch base with them when you decide you actually wanna chat and see whats going on with their lives.

i'm pretty much in awe at the amount of superficiality there is in this world. how much emphasis we put on facades and outward impressions.

but does not putting that extra effort - to msg someone just for the sake of keeping in tough....even when you have nothing to really talk about..... - does that make me a bad person? a bad friend?

you know.....i don't think it does. and people who are concious of this and feel bad about it, i don't think you should. why? well, go ask the friends you haven't talked to in a few years if you're a bad friend. my bet is they'll say no. in fact, they'll probably think you're being silly.

being a true friend to me is to be YOU at all times, regardless of what sort of status quo that may or may not buck. i think it's important to remember that sometimes, because it's so easy to lose sight of what friends are all about.

i took a brief stroll down my archives just now. hard to believe this piece of garbage website has been floating around in its various incarnation for 4 years now. i still remember my very first website. it had rainbow swirls in the background and was essentially a giant shrine devoted to Alicia Silverstone, complete with picture and animated torch .gif files.....ah yes, good times.

I managed to even look up one of my old old never finished sites on google.

check out the sadness here.

the links don't even work, except for the links button. yes. it's true...i played a lot of quake back then. you can also see the beginnings of my mp3 addiction. weeee....

got really bored and started taking random pictures. i thought this turned out pretty funny.

anyways, apparently my parents are more paranoid than i thought, because i was looking through our medicine cabinet today and found a bag of face masks (a la SARS protection).

riiiiight.....and these are the people who are cooking my meals. i wonder what else they aren't telling me...

been suffering a bit from withdrawl over my deceased mp3 collection lately....i was really not looking forward to the prospect of buying back hundreds of dollars worth of cd's, and having to chose which ones i wanted, then finding them for a decent price.

complicating the situation, the radio SUCKS. asides from 91.1 jazz, there's really no consistantly satisfying station. even 102.1 has been buggin me as of late with its constant insistance on playing theory of a deadman over and over until my ears bleed and i cry for the sweet release of death.

luckily, i was really bored this afternoon and thought i'd give the radio stations on my tv a once over. (thats rogers digital cable, for any of you who have that little plastic box too).

one word: relief.

there is some absolutely EXCELLENT music on the television if any of you digital cable subscribers are also sick of the radio. first, i flipped to the "new rock" station, expecting to here more puddle of mud...but was pleasantly surprised to find them playing tool. "not bad" i thought. lets see what else they got. next up? finch. in my mind, i did a mental sigh of satisfaction. here was a rock station. a real rock station. sure, linkin park was up next, but at least they didn't play any of their singles. this rock station plays non-released songs it seems, and generally good ones at that. can't complain, as it puts 102.1 to shame.

next down the list.....the adultalternative station. curious, i click to find them playing aimee mann. niiiiiice one. next up was some old lemonheads circa my-so-called life soundtrack era. i was instantly sold.

the kicker was the contemporary christian station i think. plays ccm countdown artists, both old a new, from all genres. can't say every song is great, but at least it's a consistent source of christian tunes. I noticed they played the new Jars single. pretty cool.

bonus are the world music, ambient and smooth jazz stations. all nothign exceptional, but better than their radio counterparts by leaps and bounds. (the only other place to find good ambient/downbeat/triphop on the radio is CHRW back in london, but even that's relegated to the 6-7AM time slot on thursday mornings).

so what can i say? i'm quite pleased. although my parents aren't home now, allowing me to crank up the volume on it loud enough for me to hear it down in the basement. i'm assuming my parents won't be too pleased with that when they're home.......hm....

movie stars spend waaaaaaay too much money on clothes.
it's sick. $1200 american for a purse? uh.....i hope it's a purse that contains an unlimited supply of bread and water, because you could have spent that money doing some good for starving people who need food and drink.

we need to stop idolizing them now, before it gets any more out of hand....

memorable conversation of the week:

me: "our relationship with God is kind of like....we're abusive husbands who beat the crap out of our wives, and God is the wife, who for some reason beyond us loves us unconditionally regardless of how badly we beat Her...kinda sick eh?"
helen: "yea. It's like we're walking gift certificates that have yet to be redeemed"
me: "oh sure. leave it to a woman to relate everything to shopping"
helen: "and leave it to simon to relate everything to women"
me: "....touche"

maybe you had to be there. just thinking about it makes me laugh so hard it hurts.

you think that as you get older, you start to appreciate your parents more? you start to see the little glimmer of wisdom in their constant nagging?

or do you think as you get older....you can just relate to them more?

maybe a little bit of both i guess.

regardless - i'm going to find me a woman that doesn't eeeever nag.
yes......that is my dream.....