Thoughts and Musings...

Oh, Southpark

School came early today

Today I woke up dreadfully early (8am) to make the trip down to my school so I could purchase my Metropass (at a discount, or else I wouldn't bother). I also had to give them forms to fill out for a seperate matter. While talking to the woman she said I hadn't registered my courses, but I clearly had - on August 8th to be precise. She told me to go to another computer and print them off. I said I would and tried. I forgot however, that the new system makes it impossible, for me anyway, to print them off. I later returned and talked to another woman who said my schedule had in fact been built and there was nothing for me to worry about.

I've heard of bad experiences with my school involving all campuses, but I've had little to say until today. Sometimes the incompetance of others can be so entirely stressful. Ugh.

I'm ready to be 'Outsourced'

After I was finished with school I went to the mall near my house to check around for clothes. I've come to not liking clothes shopping over the last while. I can't really explain why, but it's just become such a hassle. I looked everywhere, but found nothing I wanted; I've become too picky I believe.

Having given up on looking for clothes I went into HMV to look around for a larf, because the CDs there are usually way too much than I'd spend, and since I don't own a CD player outside of my computer anymore, I don't bother buying them. After that I went looking at the DVD section. I noticed the new Russell Peters DVD Outsourced on the shelves. I wanted to buy it from the moment I heard about it when he was on Jimmy Kimmel Live. Since it was only $14.99 I picked it up. I haven't watched it yet, but I will soon enough. He's freaking hilarious and I recommend him to all :)

Tickets came, more tickets bought

After I got home I found out I had mail waiting for me. Last week I'd ordered tickets for the Leafs Blue vs. White Inter-squad game where half the team plays the other half. I've gone to these things the past few times and they've been pretty fun. I figure it's a good, cheap way to see them and it's a good afternoon spent getting amped up for hockey :) The game is also at the Ricoh Coliseum where the AHL team Toronto Marlies play, which I think will give us more access to the Leafs if the spot is available where they normally walk past. Oh, and the tickets each came with vouchers to go to any Marlies game during the season. T'hey're awesome to watch and always a fun time.

Shortly after getting my tickets I went on the computer to check the ole' e-mail. I found out that Lily Allen, whom I found out about on Myspace, is coming to Toronto in October and also it's hella cheap. Awesome! I bought tickets to it, naturally =D

"Mr hat is a two-timing whore. Now we learn from Mr. Twig." - Mr. Garrison, South Park

Sorry, south park is on and I couldn't help it.
Peace

posted by Sean @ 11:41 PM Comments: 8

I knew this a while ago...

DNA tests confirmed today that John Mark Karr was in fact, not the killer of Jon Benet Ramsey, the six-year old pageant girl murdered in Boulder, Colorado in 1996.

This puts an end to what I've noticed from when this guy's confession to being there first hit news stands. I was walking to my bus on that day and I saw his mug on the front page and it hit me that he didn't do anything to that girl. He was just looking for attention.

The whole incident just seemed to weird and out of the blue to be true. This guy waits 10-plus years and finally comes clean in a case where he definitely would've gotten off scot free? I figure now it's because he'll look for a book deal to afford his sex change operation.

We also find out that his family says he was with them in Georgia and Alabama celebrating Christmas at the time. Another thing is he had allegedly become obsessed with the case over the years.

Too many things were red beacons saying this guy was a total nut-job. If anyone saw him they wouldn't think he was a killer, but just some weirdo with perhaps an enfatuation for little children.

Anyway I'm glad they finally clued in to this whole farce and can now move on to not catching the real killer.

Peace.

100th post for me. yay? sure, why not.

posted by Sean @ 5:55 PM Comments: 9

Leave the Snakes Alone

I can't believe I'm actually writing a post that aims to defend the movie Snakes on a Plane. I feel it's justified though because I've read so much negativity based on complete and utter ignorance to the movie.

Okay so for those of you who have no clue what the movie Snakes on a Plane is about, I'll give you the brief run down. I guess SPOILERS ahead. But who cares about the story?

Guy witnesses murder.
Guy is hunted for this witnessing.
Guy is saved dramatically by Sam Jackson.
Guy doesn't want to testify.
Sam Jackson doesn't give a fuck.
Guy now agrees.
They go on plane.
They get first class to themselves.
Everyone else pissed.
Snakes come.
Snakes bite people.
Sam Jackson gets fed the fuck up.
People work together to fight back.

So you have the outline of the movie. You probably assumed all that stuff would happen already. I'm not pushing this movie based on it's flawless plot line and script writing, I'm pushing this movie's ridiculous premise that attacking a plane with snakes would actually be anything but a fucking disaster.

Movies are supposed to provide you with entertainment. That may be through excitement, laughter, anger or sadness. If people are knocking Snakes because it provides you with three of those four situations, then why are movies made? For once we have a movie that gives everything it's been pushing, and more! This movie will give you excitement, laughter and even anger, but for a different reason.

I wanted to see this movie, but I really could've lived without seeing it in the theatres. I had tried my best to get my friends to watch Little Miss Sunshine starring Steve Carrell. So I'd like to make the point that while I was interested in the movie, I wasn't fanatical about it. I'm still not. This post is out of necessity.

While watching the movie I started pointing out many of it's blatant flaws, of which I won't go into here; this is the form of the anger the movie gives you. After a few times going, "what the hell?" and "that doesn't even make sense!", my friend Alex pointed out to me that I was watching a movie called Snakes on a Plane and that I should stop complaining. It took him to say that to make this movie truly amazing for me. I ended up letting go and actually laughing at the parts of ill-logic. Since it was not a comedy, the stupidity of it's logic was what was funny.

Now for the excitement the movie provides. You've got snakes popping out of every little fucking whole throughout the plane, and people are getting their asses bit (literally). There were also so many characters types in this movie that you've seen killed in just about every other movie of this genre in history so guessing who would get attacked is also half the fun. The excitement factor here was far better than in other snake movies like Anaconda, which just blew.

All I can tell you is if you decide to watch the movie eventually to relax and not be so uptight and hate it for it's flaws. In fact, the flaws are what makes it a great movie.

Alright I'm done.

Peace.

posted by Sean @ 10:23 AM Comments: 15

Do the ends justify the means?

Last night I was having a discussion with my friend Annie over YM and out of the blue she brought up what my thoughts were on stem cell research. I was immediately ready for a good discussion on the subject and it ended up being that way. So what I'm doing here is posting about stem cell research and seeing what the readers of this blog think (however few or many there are, your opinion matters to me).

First off I think it's only right to talk a little about what stem cell research actually is, along with some of the pros and cons involved in the whole situation.

I found a good site on stem cell research that briefly gives people the information they'd require with relatively easy language to understand.

First off, according to the site stem cells are essentially cells that are the 'stem' and they can branch off into many different types of other cells.

There are a few ways of obtaining the stem cells required for research. They are:

1. Left over embryos from fertility clinics where in-vitro fertilization had failed. These embryos are saved instead of being thrown in the garbage.

2. Fetuses from women at abortion clinics.

3. Cloning embryos for the purpose of research.

4. Mixing sperm and egg for the sole purpose of stem cell research.

This area of research creates a lot of mixed opinions and here are some pros and cons:

Pros:
- The stem cells allow for the creation of any combination of body parts without the use of a human donor, which saves lives.
- Many diseases that have been deemed un-curable could be treated properly.
- The requirement for testing on humans and animals would be unnecessary as stem cells react they same way a fullgrown human would to a certain drug.

Cons:
- Shady methods of obtaining embryos.
- Sale without knowledge of the mother.
- Issues regarding religion and social other social faux pas

My opinion:

I believe the ends do justify the means in this situation. I think that those who argue that a human life, whether it be embryo or not, isn't worth giving up no matter what the cause is extremely ignorant. They say it's not ethical to use the embryo for research but it's completly okay to chuck it in the garbage to be decomposed with last nights supper? Come on now!

One situation I vehemently disapprove of is the creation of these embryos for the sake of research. I believe they should only be obtained from abortions or left over embryos from in-vitro. If the doctor fails at creating a baby from in-vitro, why not donate it for research? If a woman decides to abort her child because she doesn't want it due to many different reasons, then she should be allowed to abort it, and that otherwise useless fetus should be allowed to go to research.

Another thing I brought up in our conversation last night was that pharmaceuticals are a HUGE part of any first world nation and they have a great deal of say in what happens regarding the health and well-being of people. The bottom line is, if they aren't making a shitload of money, they aren't going to approve any means of research that could actually cure people. If this happened, they'd be out of business and the economies of these nations would plummet. Add the support of certain powerful evangelical christians and you've got a no-win situation regardless of the benefit it would give to humanity.

Now if you'd like, you can give me your thoughts on the situation and discuss.

Peace.

posted by Sean @ 3:11 PM Comments: 16

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda

My Mom has left for the weekend to go stay at my uncle's place.

He lives in Oshawa which isn't entirely too far from where I am. Still, to my best recollection this marks my Mom's first time sleeping somewhere other than home. My parents never go anywhere for even a night, perhaps because they'd probably argue the whole time, but that's beside the point. Even on their own they never get away, which is kind of depressing.

Another thing that has been sticking to my mind the past couple days was when she came into my room and was telling me she wasn't sure if she should leave Friday or Saturday morning. I told her just leave Friday, what's the big deal? Her response was that she had never left us and felt bad about doing so. This was so shocking. It made me want her to go take a month vacation to wherever the hell she wanted, but she'd only worry some more I guess. Needless to say I told her she was crazy and to go Friday.

So yeah, on a similar angle I'm spending the weekend with my Dad. I guess it's sort of a vacation for him too, even though he's not going anywhere per say. I'm home but we pretty much keep out of eachother's hair.

I must admit that out of myself, my brother and sister we probably argue the least. When they started turning 18 or so, my Dad used to always be down their throats at every little thing, telling them to move out or do this and that. My sister did indeed move out at 18, but my brother stayed a little longer, moving out at around 24 or 25 I think. Now they're 36 and 33, respectively. My brother has a managable relationship with our Dad now that he's older. My sister and him don't get along that well I believe. They are almost exactly alike and she takes what he says to heart, so that breeds contempt.

As for me, ever since I was like 16 or 17 I haven't had an argument of any substance with my Dad. I've just learned to not take stuff he says so personally or just shrug it off with sarcasm. I also came to the conclusion a while ago that we're alike in many ways so that alone will meen we'd clash a lot.

Anyways, I have to get up early and take him for his regular doctor's appointment. Maybe after I'll see if he'd make the trip out to the flea market. Mmm... flea market.

Peace.

posted by Sean @ 12:41 AM Comments: 6

Beerfest/311

Yesterday was a great day to be outside and have some fun. It was mid-20s Celsius and not a cloud in the sky for the entire day (as you can see from the pics).

Me and my friend Alex went to the Toronto Festival of Beer in the afternoon. We got there around 2pm I think. We had to wait in line as there was a ton of people there. Once we got our cups and 4 tokens and headed in, it didn't seem too crowded, so that was nice. We knew we'd spend our tokens quickly so we picked up 10 more each, giving us 14. For most beers each token gives you 4oz. and two gives you 8oz. (the size of the cup they gave us). The first tent we went to was for Steelback, which was right at the beginning. Gross. I think the next thing we tried was this 15 per cent beer, which cost more than the rest at 2 tokens for 4oz. Uber gross. It got me feelin a little more loose, but I had to throw about 1 1/2oz. away because it was fuckin horrible. I don't know the order of what else I had, but it consisted of my new favourite Heineken, Carlsburg, Kokanee and my first tastes of Foster's and Red Stripe, which taste very similar and equally bleh.

We chilled out watching this guy play some blues on stage, watching human foosball in the Carlsburg area and the rest of the time we stayed by the Red Stripe area where they were playing reggae music that made the day great. We ran into a buddy of ours from highschool and said hi as we were buying that gross 15 per cent beer. We didn't feel like hanging around with his people so we sneakily broke off.

Our long walk downtown.

I call it the Bike de Triumphe. Clever.

Alex is excited and running.

We left the beerfest around 6pm and proceeded to head a hell of a long way down to the 311 concert. The walk didn't seem that long, especially when you feel a good buzz in you. We even managed to stop by Mamma's Pizza on the way.

Here's the opening group. They were pretty good for people I hadn't and still haven't heard of. They weren't the scheduled bands. You also get to see where our original spots were until we HAD to get water after drinking nothing but beer all day and reluctantly gave them up.

I don't know what happened in this pic, but it looks cool.

Here's a clear shot of 311 performing. You can see where we're at now.

I think this picture sums everything up. Totally random with the guy in front of me too.

So we get to the Kool Haus where the concert is, and the lineup is forever. We were pretty far back, but managed to get in close when the time came. The bands that were originally scheduled were Pepper and the surviving members of Bob Marley's group The Wailers. I don't know what happened, but they didn't show. So another band performed and I didn't manage to catch their name, but they sounded pretty good.

After we lost our sexy spots, 311 came out and performed a pretty lively show. I enjoyed the performance quite a lot. The only complaint I have was when Nick Hexum and SA sang at the same time, the sound got really distorted and you couldn't really make out what they were saying at all.

My two favourite things about their performance would have to be when they played Amber and did this drum routine with all the members of the band in between two of the songs. I also liked how they managed to play 24 songs, which was way more than I was expecting seeing as how Metric played about 16 or so.

Overall a great day and lotsa fun.

Peace.

Edit: After actually looking it up, I found out the opening band's name is Panic & The Rebel Emergency... although Panic wasn't there.

posted by Sean @ 7:03 PM Comments: 31

I actually can't wait to get back

School's just around the corner again, and I think for the first time since college began, I'm completely ready to go back. I think it has something to do with actually taking holidays this summer and not working for half of them. I've given myself the chance to rejuvinate my body and mind.

Anyway, a couple days ago I found out my tentative schedule for the semester. Every year they release the thing and it changes up until the first week of school because the profs aren't happy with how it ' works for them'. So this year I hope there's no exception as the frikkin' thing positively sucks. Here is the tentative schedule:

MONDAY

Newspaper Lab - 12:30pm-1:20pm
News/Electronic Media - 1:30pm-4:20pm
Beat Reporting - 4:30pm-5:20pm

Okay what doesn't work here is that we get no break and that sucks. My Beat Reporting teacher will also undoubtedly move the class to the morning, and this will give me one potential work day.

TUESDAY

Newspaper Lab - 2:30pm-3:20pm
Beat Reporting - 3:30pm-5:20pm

Again the Beat Reporting teacher will hopefully change the class to the morning if she can. And again it'd allow me a work day. Tuesdays have been my regular student work day the entire time I've done it, so I'd like to keep it that way.

WEDNESDAY

Beat Reporting - 9:30am-12:20pm
Newspaper Lab - 1:30pm-2:20pm
Jounalism Career Management - 2:30pm-5:20pm

Hmm.. not a lot I can do for Wednesday, except if I'm correct in assuming who my Career Management teacher will be, we may not always have to stay that long for class. Small bonus I guess.

THURSDAY

Newspaper Lab - 9:30pm-1:20pm

The beauty about this day's class is that I'd only go at most a handful of days in the semester, so I somewhat count this as a day off.

FRIDAY

Newspaper Lab - 1:30pm-2:20pm

This class' time slot is shit. Last year it was fine with my gen-ed class until 12pm, but this year we don't do those. I'll rarely get my ass up to go to this I tell ya what.

So as of now my biggest wish is for the Tuesday beat reporting class to move to the morning so I can get myself 2 weekdays worth of work in to accompany my Saturday morning work. The other changes I'm hoping for are just gravy.

Edit: News/Electronic Media = Television, as last year we did radio.

Peace.

posted by Sean @ 2:17 AM Comments: 15

Mmmonitor

Okay so I'm happy right now on two fronts. First, blogger allowed me to upload a freaking picture for once, yeah! Second, I bought myself a monitor today =D

This is the first one I've bought since my brother bought me my first computer way back in 1998. My other one, while it has never failed me, was huge and gave off way too much heat for me to want it around me anymore.

This one's a 19-inch flatscreen Samsung monitor with a resolution of 1280x1024. It is a definite upgrade from my 17-inch normal NEC monitor that's for sure.

Ahh..me so happy :)

Peace.

posted by Sean @ 6:22 PM Comments: 7

Because I've got nothing better to do...

Well my holidays are coming to an end. I've had some good times these past couple of weeks. With only two days to go though it seems like there hasn't been enough time. Ah well I guess. Only a month or so to go before I get to go back to being part time and doing the school thing full time.

It's approaching 1:30am and my neighbourhood is still blaring with music. I can feel it shaking my house at times, even though it's across the street from my backyard. You see it's Caribana weekend in Toronto and everyone's in the festive mood. I usually don't give a rats ass if people play their music loud, but when all I notice is my room shaking then it gets me a little annoyed.

So yes. Two days left, and I had a pretty good weekend to end it all. On Friday night I went and had a couple drinks with Alex at the Jack Astor's close (enough) to my house. We went out to have a few drinks in honour of our buddy Tony, whom I talked about in the post previous to this. It was just a couple hours but it was a great night out on the patio. We said hey to this girl Michelle we went to high school with, she works at the JA and seemingly is working whenever we rarely stop by. After drinks we played a game of pool, which actually turned out well compared to the rest of the shit games we normally play. I won, but it wasn't all me as Alex sunk the cue ball on his final shot. I'll take the wins where I can get 'em!

On Saturday I think I listened to the majority of the music on my computer just doing jack all. It seemed like the perfect day to just blare the shit and enjoy myself. Which I did. I ended up going to see Talladega Nights later on. It was a funny movie, but a lot like Anchorman with regards to the plot. As with Anchorman it had its moments but nothing that'll really stick to me as something I'd use in a reference for years to come. Yes this is how I rate the quality of a comedy movie; it works for me though.

Today I went out to the Jays game to see them beat the Chicago White Sox. We got there so freakin' early to get the Cito Gaston (former Jays manager) bobble heads they were giving out to the first 10,000 fans, but we were outta luck. Overall it was a pretty fun afternoon, if not tiring as hell. Soon after I got home I ended up passing out for an 1 1/2 hours I was so beat.

So now I'm up and wide awake. Granted I've been up FAR later than this.

Peace.

posted by Sean @ 1:23 AM Comments: 3

Beyond the Gray Sky

I wrote a long deleted post regarding this song a while ago. Some of you may have read it, most probably haven't, but this song helped me through a lot. It's weird, because I believe this was the first song to truly hit me on a deeply emotional level. As I've posted before, songs mean something to me because I connect them to specific events that happen and whatnot, but listening to this one in a time of need really helped me out.

It's a 311 song written by singer Nick Hexum about the suicide of a friend of his when he was younger. Now I haven't had anyone in my close-knit group of people or family commit suicide (aside: my aunt committed suicide a few years ago, but I wasn't really close with her or anything), but it's a song that I can relate to by helping me get out of shitty situations I find myself in. Either when I'm feeling terrible about something that happened to someone, or when I'd feel so out of it I'd think stupid thoughts.

One of the terrible things that happened was the death of one of my best friends Tony in a car accident a year ago today (Aug 4/05). It really hit me tough at the time. But I think after the original emotional blow of what happened, I was able to cope really well with the whole horrible incident.

Even until this day we don't stop talking about him because he made our group whole. Without him we're always seemingly a guy short when we do things. When we all went to Darien Lake it seemed as if he should have been there. Having his presence among us made us all that much more of a great group of friends. I'm not saying we're not strong now, but without him it just doesn't seem right. In fact, I'd say that if it weren't for our ever-conflicting schedules, we're a tighter knit group of friends now than we ever were. We have the common bond of losing someone very close to us to connect us better and help our friendship thrive. It's unfortunate, but sometimes that's the way things have to be I guess. And even if he isn't there in the flesh, he's definitely there in spirit as just about everything we do is filled with reminiscing stories about Tony.

So yeah, it's a great song in my opinion and I figured I'd post something about it with just over a week left until I go see them in concert.

posted by Sean @ 1:24 AM Comments: 3

Why do bad things happen to good people?

posted by Sean @ 11:26 PM Comments: 7