Have you ever been alone in a crowded room when I'm here with you?

Have you ever been alone in a crowded room; well I'm here with you...

To all my friends who chose to pass on the "skinny jeans" phase (that is still currently phasing), I thank you. I honestly cannot think of a single person who looks good in skinny jeans.

ZOMG TIRED!

I find that I'm using the world "smile" a lot in my informal writing piece. Part of this has to do with the fact that there aren't a whole lot of similes for smile. Grin and beam imply similar meanings but they can't be used in a lot of circumstances because of their specific connotations. And my characters tend to smile a lot. I mean, because your default expression is basically no expression, a smile conveys meaning. And I don't want to exclude the expression indicator because then it changes the meaning of the sentence.

Shrugging happens a lot too but I feel as if you can convey a phantom shrug easily through your word choice. I mean, most denials of information have their own shrug built into the sentence.

"You miss her, don't you?" she asked, gently.
"I didn't really know her," I said with a shrug.
"But you miss her anyway."
"Yeah, I do."

"Overreacting to freak accidents is a major human flaw that needs to be corrected."

I don't know that I approve of this striking business in Toronto.

The strike has always seemed to be a rather unproductive line of bargaining. At least, it seems that way to me. I mean, I remember back in 2002 when this happened and even further back, when the teachers all went on strike sometime during the mid 90s. Or the countless number of TTC strikes.

Striking, of course, has leverage. But it's always seemed... I don't know how to describe it. "Stupid" perhaps, isn't the right term (for once). But it seems... petty. That's the word. It seems incredibly petty.

Because you see, it's not as if the people who are striking are doing so because they can't feed their families. There is no DIRE need for reform. Striking, to me, seems to me to be a last resort kind of thing. Or it should be.

In fact, striking should not even be POSSIBLE during a recession. It just... runs counter to the whole premise of striking. For one point, if you're striking about wanting higher wages, a recession is the WORST time to be doing this (for obvious reasons). How can you even consider it reasonable or fair to do something as drastic as striking during a time when government funds are stretched as they are? And like I said, how can striking be possible during a recession? Isn't the underlying premise of a strike simply that workers will not work? If recession = unemployment, shouldn't it be relatively easy for the municipal government to say, hire laid off GM employees to take the place of garbage collectors? That's just an example of course, but isn't that kinda true?

From civics class (I think it was civics... or economics), I was taught that there are 2 important things that have to be present for a strike:

1. The people striking have to be skilled laborers (so that it's impossible to replace them).
2. Aside from the "skill" part of the labor, the QUANTITY of unemployed people that could take the place of the people striking must be low.

It doesn't seem like both factors are exactly present in the current situation. But maybe I'm missing something. That's possible.

Also, striking tends to piss people off. Right? Like the people in Toronto who can't throw out their garbage? This, I believe, is the ultimate reason why striking is a bad idea. You have to understand that when you strike, NO ONE outside your community of fellow strikers will sympathize with you. Like when the teachers went on strike, same thing. Because think of what a strike is really saying. It's saying "We are willing to hurt/inconvenience our fellow citizens until the government gives us what we want." Right? Like when the teachers went on strike, they weren't really harming the government directly. They were harming the education of all the kids who didn't have school to go to. Striking disregards the people who are actually affected by the strike in hopes that they will blame the government. And the scary part is, they sometimes do. When garbage stops being collected, some people start saying things like "the government should do something about it," rather than "the garbage collectors should stop being idiots and do their jobs". But even then, people will still resent the people on strike. And the strikers are like "Don't look at me, it's the government's fault that I don't want to work." And my response is always "No, it's your own damn fault that you don't want to work."

Look, I respect unions. I do. I'm going to be part of one in a year or so. I respect the work they do and the efforts they bring. But just because effort fails does NOT mean you declare war on the government. Because that's what striking is. It's your way of saying "Well, if peaceful negotiations aren't going to work, I'll take drastic measures". This is extremely petty unless there is a dire necessity from the government oppressing your people or killing innocent civilians. Striking should be a last resort that's only called into place in dire circumstances, not because you're sulking about not getting your way.

Seriously, as a teacher, I would be extremely pissed if I was ever required to go on strike. What about my students?!

Perseverance finally yields results! For the past decade (yes, for the past 10 years), I've been trying to find out the name and artist of a song I heard back in 90s. I didn't know any of the lyrics. All I could do was hum 2 bars from its riff. FINALLY, after sampling over 200 songs from the 90s, I've discovered what song this is. It's Better Off Alone by Alice Deejay.

As a dance song, the 2 bars I can hum are actually the entire song.

Thank god. Now I can die in peace. I can't even remember what it's like to NOT be constantly wondering what this song is called.

I cut myself shaving for the first time ever. Goddamn, it hurts.

The conventional vs. the unconventional - A demonstration using Mandy Moore + films

I was listening to the new Many Moore album and I thought I would use it, along with a general trend I've noticed in films, to illustrate something about "the conventional". First, the demonstration/comparison.

The year is 1999. Amanda Leigh Moore is 15 years old. Following in the footsteps of fellow teenage pop princesses, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, she releases a manufactured, immature, pop album, ironically titled "So Real" - an album that is anything but. A year later, she releases "I Wanna Be With You," which is pretty much the exact same thing as "So Real" except worse. These 2 albums made her popular, you see (although not as popular as Spears + Aguilera), but gave her very little credibility in the world of actual music.

I like to compare Mandy Moore's first 2 albums with basically any terrible hollywood film (and there are countless... literally... countless). Big budget films that entertain to some very shallow degree but are stupid, easily forgettable, and are only marketed to be popular for a short duration of time - except that some end up to be immensely popular due to the general lack of depth in film-watching audiences.

Fast forward a few years (and by a few years, I mean 1). The year is 2001 and Mandy Moore releases her self-titled album. Interestingly, though, somewhere along the line, she has started to understand "music" a little better. This shows in her 2001 album. It is still produced, still manufactured, but surprisingly not bad. In fact, one track on that album - Cry - is probably one of my favorite songs ever.

In film, we need look no further than Mandy Moore's own cinematographic debut, A Walk To Remember, to understand this. Big(ish) budget, hollywood film. But done completely right. A Walk To Remember is probably one of my favorite films ever and is, in my opinion, the turning point in Mandy Moore's career, both in music and film. One need only to watch the film and the commentary (she is one of the commentators) to realize that there is something distinctly honest and down-to-earth about her. Also, her rendition of Only Hope makes you realize that Mandy Moore has a voice - and a really good one at that. Britney Spears doesn't even come close to comparing and Christina Aguilera can only compare in the sense that she has a force that Mandy Moore, admittedly, sometimes lack.

Fast forward another 2 years. It is 2003. Mandy Moore releases her "Coverage" album. It is a tribute to a lot of songs/artists that she respects. Britney Spears is not among the artists covered. The only parallel you could draw from this, to film, is a well-made remake. They hardly exist at all but When A Stranger Calls might be a good example.

Fast forward 4 more years. It is 2007. Mandy Moore releases perhaps the best album she's done to date. "Wild Hope" might not be my favorite album ever, but it definitely shows a reinvented version of Mandy Moore's music. It's original, it's artistic, it's folky in some ways. And most importantly, it is pleasant sounding.

You could compare this to any good indie film. I stress the word: good. Garden State is an excellent, if slightly inaccurate, parallel. It's slightly inaccurate because Garden State is a better film than Wild Hope is an album. But for all intents and purposes, it's the same basic principle. A film that garners its proper share of critical praise while being entertaining enough to watch, even if you're not an indie elitist.

You can see where this will land us...

Just recently, in 2009, Mandy Moore releases her latest album, "Amanda Leigh". It's still indie, it's still artistic... it's also bad sounding. And this is a trap that musicians and film-makers fall into ALL the time nowadays. And it's simply this: just because something is indie and artistic doesn't mean it can't be BAD. There is a reason why conventions are conventional... it's because they've worked for eons. In music terms, sure, you can resolve a V chord to a II-minor-with-a-suspended-10th chord... and it'll be new, and original, and never been done before. But it's never been done before because when people tried it, they realized that it sounds GODAWFUL. Same with film. Sure, you can film something that involves some weird, quirky, never-been-done before idea, but there's a good possibility that it's been thought of before and people simply realized that it would make a terribly boring film.

Now, it's not that I'm trying to stifle creativity here. But I think you still need to realize that it's possible to create BAD things. Bad music, bad films. I respect the artists/writers for their attempts, but please, if you intend to share your creations with other people, you have to make sure that it's worth their time. It's like I said in my review of The Royal Tenenbaums: "the best feature of The Royal Tenenbaums is that it did a really good job at being indie and artistic without forgetting that even indie and artistic films should be entertaining". And this is the truth. You can NOT forget the simple entertainment value of music and films. A film does not have to make you reconsider the cosmic nature of death, love, and the universe - but you do have to enjoy yourself while watching it. That might be a convention, but it's a convention worth keeping!

That's the problem with convention. There are many bad things about convention. Its very nature means that it's been done before, in some form or another, in the past. But when we try to distance ourselves from it, sometimes we forget that things don't become conventional unless there are some very good points about them that generate the lasting power they require to BECOME conventions. And when you discard the good things about convention along with the bad, the things you come up with will inevitably contain their own flaws that become even harder to overlook because the good points don't include pure and simple catchiness and entertainment.

For the love of god people, leave Susan Boyle alone! She's 47 years old and has, up until recently, lived her life alone with a cat. She's not some 20 year old who's been on the stage since preschool. If you didn't, at least, see the possibility, if not probability, of an emotional breakdown, you need to get your eyes checked.

Uh oh. I was ahead of schedule as far as my informal writing piece went. Then, being pleased with my progress, I took a short break. Now I'm back up to par and need to start working again.

I miss elementary school. And high school. And university.

This post is inspired by something I read on Karen's blog like 5 minutes ago. I was thinking of posting this as a comment but didn't want to rain on her parade (or should I say, tirade). But it made me think of something that I also thought about when Pearl recently told me about her old boyfriend.

Isn't it kinda weird how no matter WHO you talk to, when they tell you their story, regardless of the kind of person they are - selfish; kind; arrogant; open-minded - it ALWAYS seems like they're in the right and the person on the other end of the story is always in the wrong? Ok, so it's not exactly "weird" per se, but I always find this to be intensely interesting. And it's particularly interesting because this isn't just a "the majority of people do this," kind of thing. Unless I've missed someone, this functions at a 100% predictability rate. And I don't exclude myself. Anyone who's heard my end of the... "Julia saga" will probably walk away with a less than shiny disposition towards her.

It's amazing. It really is. I mean, it's not crazy that after an argument or falling out or disagreement, both parties are in the wrong and in the right. That, as it stands, doesn't surprise me at all. In fact, THIS also functions at a near 100% rate, although I will admit that this is not guarenteed to be always true. But even a 99% probability is good enough for me to say as a general rule, that after a fight, both parties are both wrong and right. The astounding part is really how... automatic and proficient we've become at eliminating the things that we did wrong when we tell the story to a 3rd party.

Ok ok, maybe not "eliminating the things that we did wrong" exactly. But CERTAINLY, we've become very VERY good at admitting that we were wrong in such a way that doesn't excuse the other party's actions. We've gotten so good at brushing over our own faults that when I actually pay attention to how often it happens, it surprises me a little bit. Think about all the times you've heard someone say "Now I know I did (fault) but...". This, I believe, is our way of attacking someone without feeling guilty about the fact that we are attacking them.

Unless I'm talking to Grant, I have very very rarely heard someone's story that didn't cause me to sympathize with that person and feel a repulsion towards the other party. No matter who tells me their story, the automatic reaction is to make themselves look, if not blameless, then RELATIVELY blameless compared to the other party. I stress this key word: relatively. Sometimes, people realize it's impossible to not assign blame to themselves without lying. So, like I said, they assign blame to themselves in a way that makes their faults look better compared to the faults of the other party. And it's getting to the point where sometimes, I hear someone's story and I think to myself "There's no possible way you're telling me the truth." And I've caught people a few times, especially talking about their ex's, when they've told me what must have been an insanely biased story and I ask, "So why did you date him for oh... 4 YEARS?" And the answer is always unsatisfactory because they're trying to hold onto their bias that he was a stupid, self-centered devil's incarnate without admitting that if that's the case, they were idiots themselves for even going out with him, let alone staying with him for 4 full years.

But all this might seem very normal and self-explanatory. After all, it happens all the time. And I always wonder, why do it? Now, I am the first to admit cathartic release by ranting (obviously). But when it comes to ranting about a specific person, it goes deeper than that. Accepting the general maxim that in any kind of disagreement that causes you to rant strongly about someone, you yourself are, in all probability, at fault somewhere, why do we rant against the other party? Well, because we feel wronged. But we don't include our own faults in everything. We don't rant about our own faults. And yet, we have the capability to fix our own faults. So surely, it would also make sense to spend more energy on the part you can fix than the part you can't.

The one thing I always wait to hear from people when they rant about other people is "We were both at fault." And I wait to hear this statement unqualified with a "but..." coming after it. Because it is almost always true. And what they have to say is always a great deal more believable when they admit to this. Until I get the sense that they are trying to understand someone - really understand them and not only understanding them as far as it suits this person's purpose - it really has become very difficult for me to take what people say seriously. It's amazing how much we hate being misunderstood and yet misunderstand other people so willingly and easily.

"Love is,
Being the owner of the company that makes rape whistles and,
Even though you started the company with good intentions, trying to reduce the rate of rape;
Now you don't wanna reduce it at all cause if the rape rate declines, you'll see an equal decline in whistle sales.
Without rapists, who's gonna buy your whistles?"

I love Bo Burnham

I've realized something about listening to music albums. Most of us will have a favorite song on whatever album we happening to be listening to. And I've come to appreciate what a treat it is to listen to an album where the songs that come before and after your favorite song are also good, solid songs in and of themselves. The Lenka album brought this to my attention (it surprises me that it's taken me this long to realize this despite having heard this album for the past few months). Because I think we have a tendency to be slightly more critical of the songs that come before and after our favorites. I mean, that makes sense. The song before is the one we need to "get through" in order to get to our favorite and the song after is the one that confirms that our favorite song is over. So it's always nice (such as in the case of the Lenka album) when the songs before and after our favorites are so good in their own right that they overcome our natural prejudices against them simply because of their relative location in the song order.

I hope Valerie Poxleitner keeps this in mind. I'm almost as excited for her debut album as I was for Jack's Mannequin's The Glass Passenger (<-- although admittedly, this album turned out to be less brilliant than I had hoped).

Eesh. I don't know if I want to have many more scenes with trialogue (<-- not a word). I hate having to think of speech indicators.

At this point, the one fear I have, as I reach the crux of the first half of my informal writing piece, is not being able to write convincingly from more than one perspective. That's the problem with writing a story isn't it? All the characters are supposed to talk in their own jargon and with their own biases. But when you're effectively the only person writing, it can't be very hard to accidentally have all the characters talk like the same person. Because you're essentially the one talking all the time. It's a pitfall I've been striving to avoid but I fear might happen anyway. More than once, I've caught myself rephrasing things because I realized they weren't really consistent with the character.

I want to post about something that happened in first year. This always puzzled me a little bit because almost everybody who found out I did this thought I was insane. I, on the other hand, thought it was the most brilliant idea ever.

I bought a container of peanuts. They were really really salty. Unbearably salty. So I rinsed the salt off them, put them out to dry, and re-salted them.

3 years later, I still don't understand why people thought this was such an insane idea.

Dear _______

They say that you need to give things time in order to put them in perspective. I figured one year was enough. In fact, I think 6 months was enough but I waited the extra 6 just to make sure. I always told myself that if I ever got a chance to talk to you ever again, I'd thank you for making the kind of difference you did to my life.

You see, when we first started talking to each other, I was in a bad place in my life. I mean, it wasn't a terrible place in any practical or economic sense; I was going to school, getting decent grades, eating well and exercising, and fairly sure that teacher's college was the right place for me. So it wasn't bad in that sense. But you see, I felt like I was... emotionally frigid, I guess is as good of a term as any other. I remember watching A LOT of films during those months, mostly because I felt like I couldn't feel (<-- ha!) and watching a particularly affective film was my way of making sure that my heart was capable of doing more than just pump blood through my arteries.

As you can probably guess, I wasn't DOING a whole lot with my life either besides the basic necessities. Part of that had to do with laziness and part of it had to do with... apathy, I guess is the right word. I could never convince myself that making the effort to do things was worth it; or rather, I didn't run into/create any situations/opportunities that I cared enough about to actually risk or expend the energy/time/pride required to see it through...

And then I met you. Formally met you at least (formally meeting you = us talking about Thomas De Quincey between classes in the middle of Mac-Corry). And to this day, I still don't know why this happened or what it was about you that made this happen (probably a culmination of a lot of small things), but for some reason or another, I felt instinctively that you were worth it. You were worth the time; the energy; the pride. For the first time in a long time, I found something... someone about whom I cared enough, to actually risk an all-or-nothing-type situation. And not only that, I realized that I was prepared to see it through all the way, even if it turned out to be nothing.

You were always conscious of my feelings. I know that, now, a year later. And perhaps this is the thing I wanted to thank you for the most. Not only for pulling me out of my funk and helping me realize that I could still care enough about someone to risk my feelings/pride for her. But for turning me down in such a way that didn't kill my belief in sacrificing the safe for a chance at something better. And since then, not only have I regained my ability to feel for all the things and all the people who deserve compassion, empathy, and consideration, but I have also developed a new appreciation for deciding what's important to you and trying, for all the world is worth, to prove that you care. This is why they tell you that you never know whose life you've affected. You've certainly touched mine and made one helluva difference. I guess that's why I still think about you from time to time. Even a year later.

I'm starting to feel like this convocation business is overrated. I'm going to get up at some ungodly hour, drive to Kingston by 1. Get tickets, get graduation gown, and sit around in a room until the ceremony. I will then sit in Grant Hall for another 2 hours, probably bored out of my mind, only leaving my chair for a 3 minute cameo to collect my diploma. Then drive all the way back to Toronto. And I will do all this with the knowledge that I'll have to do it again next year.