art class

I seem to be enjoying this class more than I thought I would. I can't say that I'm a great artist, but it's a relaxing and easy class. It's interesting how I can spend a day stressing out about so many different things and after doing something simple like sketching a picture, it seems to be a lot less of a worry than it was before. Maybe because it's easy and rewarding or uncomplicated. In other classes, it seems you have to motivate yourself to do homework or to study. In art, I seem a lot more motivated to just pick up the pencil and draw. I also like how you can talk to your friends thoughout the entire class, while still drawing (at least I can). My teacher doesn't mind me and the time seems to go very fast. I kind of regret leaving art of my timetable next year, (my options are Photography, C.A.L.M, French and Journalism) but hopefully I'm still motivated to pick it up outside of school.

I also just read Lullabies For Little Criminals, the latest book to win the top prize on CBC's "Canada Reads". It was a very interesting, and engaging read. It's also very tragic, one of those stories with adult characters who are not good role models (I've been reading a lot lately, ex. The Glass Castle). Definitely one of the best books I've picked up in a while.

buttons.

This weekend I went across the border to BC, and on the way back we stopped in a town called Nanton for lunch. If you live in Calgary, you'd know Nanton because of it's antiques. So I'm not exactly an antique shopper, but I appreciate the mystery of looking for something on a whim and the sense of discovery associated with this. We went into the candy store (having two teenage boys in the vehicle almost magnetically attracts us to candy stores), I got sour mango flavoured Altoids and also visited the little antique/weird stuff room in the back. They had some neat stuff, I wanted to get a Coca-Cola sign that would've gone well in my room but I already have enough signs and pictures. But there was a big pickle jar with 15 dollars worth of buttons in it (that's 70 buttons!), so it sounds kind of weird, but buttons are kinda neat. And very funny accessories when taken out of their original context. So I bought these buttons, and brought them home with me. At this point I'm beginning to sound like an old person who buys lots of weird things in old stores, but some of these buttons looked really cool. So I sorted them (good, bad or mediocre) and now I have some nice buttons to wear. If anyone wants free buttons feel free to have some from my bad pile. And if I really like you I could give you some free from the better pile!

ps. I filled out an application to volunteer for the folk fest. Finally I am here in the summer for it. Hopefully they'll be some good artists coming this way.

basketball, the oscars, patti smith and stuff like that.

Our basketball season just finished and we unfortunately lost the final game.
It's always so disappointing to lose something you've been so confident about, but even more important was the entire season and how well we did as a team.
Which sounds really corny.
But I really liked playing the games and cheering people on. I'm definitely more of a team sport
person. I enjoy that interaction aspect of it. I think basketball made me rethink gym class too. My mark went up around 8% from last reporting period, which probably means I'm trying harder. We did ping-pong last, which is always pretty fun. It's sounds like a pretty lame sport, but I find it engaging (probably cause I have a really horrible attention span, it keeps me interested I guess).

And the Oscars were a week ago. I love talking to people about them afterwards, it's my favourite part. Like who I thought deserved to win, what I thought of the host, the show itself, the speeches, the dresses. Everybody has a different opinion. I'm glad Scorsese won for best director (even though I haven't seen the Departed, I shouldn't judge it) but I think he should've won it before, in perhaps one of his more remarkable movies. Clint Eastwood sounded like he did a good job and Stephen Frears is always good too. Best picture made sense, although I really liked the Queen and Little Miss Sunshine (probably the funniest comedy I've seen in a long time, excluding Borat). I'm also one of those people who fills out the Oscar ballot with who they want to win (I always lose by two or three). I thought Ellen Degeneres was alright, but not that edgy, she should've poked more fun at the celebrity audience. She was a good facilitator though (as my mum puts it) and she got through it fine. I loved Cate Blanchett's dress, it was probably my fav. That and Penelope Cruz's (she always looks stunning, she was gorgeous in Volver). Gwenyth Paltrow had a very nice dress too.

So in school, we have this pretty worthless class called "Enrichment". It's something to do with Enriching our curriculm, I dunno to me it seems like a bunch of bullshit (although we have a couple weeks of health, which isn't completely worthless). For the past couple months we've had to work on this presentation about something we're passionate about. I thought it was lame, and I didn't really do anything. Why would you research something that's a huge part of your life? And then make it some boring power point presentation nobody listens to. So, I didn't do it (yeah okay, so I wasn't trying to be a rebel or anything, I just didn't want to waste my time). But I kinda wanted to get it over with. So the day it was supposed to be due, I got up, picked a random topic (punk rock) and took some kids guitar (he'd just finished guitar class). Then I made up an entire 7 minute presentation incorporating the guitar. I started talking about why this type of music started, and I mocked some lame 70's pop song on guitar, then I talked about people being pissed off at the music industry, so they made music of their own. Then I played some power chords (harder on acoustic guitar with no pick). I talked about Patti Smith and stuff in New York, then moved to England, then to what people think of punk rock today, because of crap like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan. So it wasn't exactly correct, but I made the time limit and the class were somewhat interested. I'm not sure the teacher was though, because I asked her how I did, and she said something like "excellent, you were very enthusiastic". It was loud, random and unconventional (I had to check with my friend to make sure I hadn't dropped any f-bombs), but at least I got it done. This is probably not a good lesson to people who actually want to work hard, but it made me laugh after it was all over.

Now I have to go and write a rubric/self evaluation for it.
farewell!

procrastinating.

So once I arrived to snow and dry at home, I couldn't help missing mexico a little bit.
That can't explain my laziness though.
We have a huge assignment on the Industrial Revolution due Monday. I haven't really chipped into that yet...
Then there's Science, I'm pretty behind on the workbooks we're doing.
and we have this assignment for enrichment (a worthless class) to present about something we're passionate about. It was due last week. I think... I'm still not sure about my topic.
I'll probably go to Kensington tomorrow and interview people on video about something, and present it to the class. It's an excuse to go to Kensington and talk to people.
Then of course I haven't posted for ages.
Ironically the only subject I'm ahead in is math (despite almost failing the last quiz).
Oh well, it's naturally to find yourself a bit behind after a couple days a way.
It's also natural for me to procrastinate.
I do get things done though...
Eventually.

Recuperar la entrada

That means "recover the post" by the way.
Blogger is in spanish, which means hilary m. is in Mexico.
I love it here, it's amazing.
But I have to go. When I have more time I will post more.
Buenas noches amigos!

I'm lazier than I thought

I just noticed that I took a huge break from blogging.. hopefully people don't start to think I'm dead.

I'm not though, I'm quite the opposite fortunately! School's picking up again after midterms, which means I'm busy. I got my course selections done (that's finally over) and I'm ready for a February and March of long weekends. Which has positive's and negative's because long weekends + a lot of homework does not always work. I have some trouble with time management during the weekend. I had a huge poetry anthology due on Monday, which 75% was completed on Sunday night at 12:30 or on Monday morning and at lunch. I still got a surprising 94%, but I could've done better.

Our basketball team lost our first game on Tuesday, which was too bad. It was a team who we'd already beat... But thankfully today we picked up with a very, very, close win. I was a bit late for the game (it involved a trip out to chinook value village on the c-train because we were dismissed early and a trip back arriving 3 minutes into the game). Otherwise it went well, most of our games have been not very interesting because we've won them. This one was geniunely close. But our coach made some weird decisions. He put me on in the last 4 minutes (we were tied) and I played wing which I haven't really for a year. I'm not exactly a scoring player, and I was the last person to pass to for a basket, but our team scored 2 points to put us ahead by one basket, then with 4 seconds left I scored one. It wasn't too bad actually, considering I'm definitely not used to game-securing baskets. My average per game is a measly 2 points. Well actually 2.2 probably cause I scored 4 today. I don't want to think about math though, I have some Simplifying, multiplying, dividing, adding rational expressions homework that is no fun. It combines my two favourite things in math, polynomials and fractions.

Anyways, I don't know how I've been able to not talk about this, I'm going to Puerta Vallarta in less than three days! I'm excited, I've never been, my aunt and uncle have a condo there for a month so we decided to go. I'm completley looking forward to hot weather and an exciting experience! So umm.. buenos dias for now! Have a good february!

lust for life

Iggy Pop and Peter Gzowski
Check this link out, from the CBC archives.
I watched this with my dad last night, it's incredibly interesting.
Iggy Pop is pretty damn smart, cheeky and rude.

One good thing about midterms..

Quality time after school with friends.
We get off at 11am, which gives us potential to hang around for quite a while.
Today we walked to Kensington and had a very nice time.
The weather was great and the stress of an essay in social was basically over, although when we checked our blood pressure in Shoppers Drug Mart it seemed a bit high. Mine was 121/60! (Well, 60 is pretty low). Shoppers Drug Mart is quite an interesting experience, ironically it happens to be one of the highlights of Kensington sometimes (sometimes). We bought a card for my friend who is moving to Dubai very soon. It's for someone's 50th birthday...
Then we headed to Livingstone & Cavell and played with their toys for a very long time. After that we marched down Kensington road to 10th Street, where we craved some Crave cupcakes, did some window shopping and inhaled both the Roasterie and Tandoori Hut. After that it was Vietnamese at "a Touch of Ginger". I had vegetarian spring rolls on rice vermicelli and a mango juice. It was very delicious! Then we headed down the street, and stopped at Trend (the clothing store). After perusing through the shoes, we headed down 10th street a bit more. We decided to go into Hot Wax records, somewhere I don't regularly go when in Kensington. It always does have good selection+good taste though, so I like going in even if I don't buy something. And I was thinking of asking about their policy for exchanging records, I have a whole bunch of my dad's doubles to cash in on. But this old guy and jean-jacket guy with very curly hair and Buddy Holly glasses were kinda looking at us like we were annoying pretentious teenagers so I decided that it was cool. They were probably pretty nice, but when someone is silent when 4 loud kids come into their shop, you have to wonder... I'll probably come back though to exchange my dad's records, seems like a great place. Then we went to Crave and had cupcakes. Then walked back to my house. It was a fun day though, it's interesting to discover new things about places you go to regularly. In celebration of this, I will make a list of my regular places in this neighborhood. People probably won't be interested because a). they live 10 hours away or b). there are many other nice places in this city besides Kensington. Anyways,

Clothing/Accessories:
Manana kind of across from the Plaza on Kensington road. All imported stuff. They have very nice smelling incense, and cool hats. The staff are friendly and the merchandise is very interesting.
Trend fashion on 10th street at the end by Memorial drive. Sometimes they have some really cute stuff, nice shoes and nice shirts.
The Rocket custom T-shirts are always nice.
if you want shirts with bands on them...
head down to Charisma it's kinda gothy, but I find they have an excellent selection of Clash t-shirts.
There's this place called Manhattan-something that my mum likes to go to. It has nice clothing..
Mission and the Source are good if you are into skate-boarding, snowboarding etc.

Food:
Tandoori Hut on the west side of 10th street, my personal fav. for Indian. Great for special occasion kinda things. Good food, good service. You can smell the deliciousness from the other side of the street. Maurya is also good for Indian food.
Charlie Chan's under Swimco on Kensington is good solid Chinese food.
Two good Vietnamese places. Vietnamese Fortune which is beside Chicken-On-The-Way on 14th and Kensington and A Touch Of Ginger on 10th.
Nellie's on Kensington Road is good for breakfast. Bernard Callebaut on Kensington road is always delicious for chocolates (I recommend the little heart things). As well as Crave cupcakes (the icing is so good you don't notice how bad it is for you). On the west end of Kensington road you have Charlie's Bakery with delicious pastries and breads and stuff and Janice Beaton cheese (great variety of cheeses, a lot of them are really good). If you're a wine-ish person there's the Kensington Wine Market in the same area.
Cafe's:
There's a Higher Ground, nice atmosphere, but the coffee isn't very good. Or Starbucks beside it (yeah okay I'm a horrible person). There's also the Roasterie on 1oth. There are more then this, but these are the ones I've been to more than once.

Entertainment:
The Plaza Theatre is a great place to go, (you can go see Borat right now). Usually have good picks and they put on a mean Rocky Horror Picture Show. I spend a lot of time playing and observing the toys at Livingstone and Cavell, they have some cool stuff. Shopper's Drug Mart is entertaining for the teenager in you. Page's bookstore has a great selection of books. I saw Tommy Chong there..

Miscellaneous:
If you are a church-like person, Hillhurst United is an engaging and tolerant church. Urban Barn is great for furniture. Beadworks has expensive but very pretty beads.
Disappointments:
There's a store on the corner of 10th and Kensington that always changes. But the point is, it's always a crappy generic coffee shop, don't go there. Chicken On the Way is a legend, but a gross tasting legend indeed.

Now I have to go to sleep, I have a science midterm in less than 9 hours.

We had that meeting at school today where you plan out what courses you take for high school. I dislike talking about the future, because I don't have a clue about mine. I'm staying at my school (it's a ten minute walk). I'll probably do Math 20 Pure, some level of Science 10 (I haven't made up my mind yet), English 10 AP/H and some level of Social 10. Then we need fifteen credits for optional courses. So that's French 10, some fine arts thing and maybe Journalism 15. I have no clue about careers, but I know what I don't want to do. Which is anything to do with math or science. I'm not horrible at either, but they've never interested me. So I took a career aptitude test, to see where that leads me. Some of it makes sense, some doesn't really.

1.
Actor (I like performing arts, but I can't really see this as a career)

2.
Desktop Publisher(Interesting, but not really)

3.
Cartoonist(I like some of those cartoons in the paper on Sunday...)

4.
Animator (I'm not that good at animating)

5.
Anthropologist (I'm not sure if I would excel in this...)

6.
Comedian(My friends might think so, but I'm not sure about that as a career)

7.
Print Journalist(I like writing, but it would be a hard way to make a living)

8.
Critic(I'd probably be a little too critical, but it'd be fun)

9.
Writer (It would be very interesting, but also a hard way to make a living)

10.
Composer(Is that like Beethoven? Do people still do that?)

11.
Musician(Hard to become successful, and I'm not that good at guitar)

12.
Translator (I have a very mediocre knowledge of french, but I don't mind learning it)

13.
Medical Illustrator(Very interesting, I wouldn't be good at that though)

14.
Activist(It's an amazing thing to devote your life to a good cause, but I don't know if I could accomplish anything)

15.
Artist(Art's fun, I'm not bad at it. But I'm no professional)

In Humanities right now, we have a poetry anthology. We need a them and my friend was doing "Life's simple pleasures", I told him that was the most cliche thing I'd ever heard. So I decided to do cynicism. There's definitely no lack of cynical poems. But I wrote a haiku about smoking.

Bars deny smoke ban

We're already sick to death

Have another smoke

MS Paint Contest

I just had a contest with my friend Nigel, to see who could draw the prettiest sunset in Paint. We had ten minutes. The two judges liked each one, so we tied. Then we got Rohil to be the tie-breaker but he couldn't decide. He picked Nigel in the end, after eeny-meeny-miny-mo.

back (momentarily)

I'm sitting in my house, although I'll be on the plane to Vancouver in less than 24 hours.
Christmas + New Years went well. I got some stuff. New pair of boots, pair of flat from Winners (my mum got a lot of presents at Winners), some books, soap. I also got an mp3 player to replace my iPod which was stolen at school (I was too heartbroken to write about it, I guess). Oh, and a shirt from my brother from Junk Star on 17th. James got a lot of drumming accessories, cowbell, double bass pedal, crash symbol. Not to keen on this, but he was pleased. New Years went well, we watched some movie about the President and the secret service and murder, I can't recall the name. Probably because I read some Adrian Mole book during the duration of the film. Adrian Mole always makes me laugh. Before that we were going to watch that Ben Stiller movie at the local theatre, but it was cancelled. We spent an hour or so wandering around the town listening to the Flames game on the radio. Extra Foods in BC closes very early. Then we watched Ryan Seacrest and Nick Lachey and his creepy girlfriend and My Chemical Romance count us down to the New Year. We tried to pop the champagne cork on the balcony of the condo, but it took my dad a minute or so to get it to open. Oh well, it ended up going pretty far. I couldn't really see where it went because there was two feet of snow on the ground. It was very snowy. Which was good, cause I had a good time skiing. We also went to this town, Kimberley and skiied there, but the hill kinda sucked and the town was really, really weird. It was this Bavarian village sort of thing, with all these authentic German restaurants and dollar store. We went to the German restaurant and I had Brie cheese and Indian mussels. So, like I said I'll be leaving for Vancouver very soon to see my family, and that will be very nice. I hope everyones Holidays are going well!

PS. I was reading George Stroumboulopoulos' blog on strombo.com when I came across the interesting idea of making a mix CD and putting it in random places where people will pick it up. So I made a playlist and started burning CD's. It's supposed to be about songs that inspired you or something. I think these songs have inspired me, whenever I hear them I automatically feel really good/cool.

First Day Of My Life - Bright Eyes
Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) - Bob Marley & The Wailers
London Calling - The Clash
White Riot - The Clash
10:15 Saturday Night - The Cure
China Girl - David Bowie
16 Military Wives - The Decemberists
Redemption Song - Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
Warsaw - Joy Division
Tower Of Song - Martha Wainwright
Ohio - Neil Young
My Generation - Patti Smith
Chelsea Hotel No. 2 - Rufus Wainwright
Holidays In The Sun - Sex Pistols
Rollercoaster - Sleater-Kinney
How Soon Is Now? - The Smiths
Teen Age Riot - Sonic Youth
One Great City! - The Weakerthans
Substitute - The Who
Decatur, Or, Round Of Applause For Your Stepmother! - Sufjan Stevens
Music When The Lights Go Out - The Libertines

Yeah, the list is pretty extensive, but it fits on a CD-R. And yeah, I did include two Clash songs but I'm reading a very interesting book about them right now, and the Clash was the first band I was really into.
=)

Yay, holidays!
Finally!
Well, I wish everyone an amazing happy christmas and relaxing holidays, etc. I'm leaving for three weeks today. I'll ski, visit family and I get a chance to stop in Vancouver for a couple days. It'll be quite nice.

Watched the taped version of the Colbert Report last night (along with a 3 hour Ali G Marathon). Quite funny, Chris Funk did a very good job. He impressed my metal-loving brother (quote: that was good for an indie rocker). You can check out Funk's performance and Colbert "performance" at http://www.colbertnation.com.

And here is a cute, weird, Sufjan Stevensy video for the holidays.

The Decemberists vs. Colbert

That's one battle I would really like to see.
So Stephen Colbert had a video of him light-sabering Star Wars style with a green screen and he challenged fans to back it up with something. This is before, my pals the Decemberists decided they would get their fans to back up their performance with a green screen for the song "O Valencia". I personally really like this song and the Decemberists and I wouldn't want to see them being accused of something like... riding on Stephen Colbert's coattails! Which is what Colbert did... well, one thing led to another and now (via Pitchforkmedia) the Decemberists have challenged Colbert to something like a guitar solo contest on the 20th. My brother showed me all of this on YouTube (he's a internet video genius). Here's what Colbert had to say...

And here's one of the video entries...

Hello and sorry for the lack of blogging, it's been pretty busy lately.
School works kinda slowing down, though I still can't wait for the break. I'm getting very tired of some classes and I can't wait for a break from them. Take french. I really dislike going to French class everyday. This is odd, I like learning french and I also like french... but I don't like what we're doing in french, or how the teacher treats the assignments and us. It's sad because it can turn something that used to be interesting to something that's rather boring. I'm also getting really bored in Performing Arts, a subject with the potential of being the least boring. Strangely, I'd rather miss either of these classes then a class like Math, which isn't boring. Hopefully after the break things will become fresh as daises.

Santa Claus is coming! Hear the banjo strumming!!

You know who's anticipating Christmas when you hear that...
Sufjan Stevens!
Whilst at Megatunes the other day, I decided to buy the Christmas CD from your favourite state-obsessed, christian, with the breathy-indietastic voice. By the way, I didn't just say indietastic. It is entitled Sufjan Stevens songs for Christmas (singalong!). I originally bought it because a). Yay, stickers! b). Yay, Christmas cd! c). Yay, indietastic! and it is fitting its purpose for me quite nicely. Basically you have a bunch of Sufjan written Christmas related stuff and traditional christmas related stuff. Some of it is pretty mediocre, but there's a lot of good songs. It's pretty flexible too, there's some cool songs about Christmas, some Jesus-y songs about Christmas, some traditional Jesus-y songs about Christmas and this all means that it's fun for the whole family! A couple other bonuses are the awesome cartoon about how Sufjan Stevens saved Christmas, the songbook with all the chords and lyrics, the cute stickers, the cute pictures, the cute story, etc... So kids, if you like cute and holidays and funny and indietastic! than I suggest you should buy this CD, and if you don't want to buy it because you think this review is silly, just go to www.pitchforkmedia.com, and you'll get an intelligent, non-biased (winkwink), wholesome and most of all indietastic! review!

ps. I'm using the exclamation mark in the middle of the sentence because Panic! At The Disco can.
pps. I used indietastic 5 times.
ppps. One song's called "Get Behind Me, Santa". Yay!

Politically Correct Elf

Today I spent 6 hours outside, walking. It doesn't sound very appealing, but it wasn't bad. I was walking and talking to people and I was in Kensington. Today I was an elf, for "Christmas in Kensington". Basically you spread cheer on the streets and in stores by greeting people and giving them candy canes on behalf of the Kensington Businesses Association. You also are supposed to plug any meters that are below 20 minutes and pay for parking. I gave a out a lot of candy canes and saved a lot of people from tickets. Mostly we walked up to people and said "Happy Holidays" (some guy asked us if we were trying to be politically correct, which had never really occured to me) and asked them if they wanted a candy cane. Typical responses were "Okay..", "How much do I need to give you" and "I'm on a diet, no" or people ignored us. But most of them were really nice, and we had people honking horns and waving from their cars. There were a couple interesting occurances though. One time I asked a man if he wanted a candy cane and he started running away from me, an old man gave me a dollar and refused to give it back, some guy started mumbling weird things at me, a lot of old women told my friend and I we were "really cute". There were also some very good carollers and a band with trombones and trumpets and stuff. Next Saturday, you should seriously come to Kensington, you'll be put in the holiday spirit! And someone might fill up your meter for you...

The Vending Machine

Unfortunately I didn't post something for the blog, but I will post something I wrote for another purpose. It's probably too long for one post, I'll chop it in half to add suspense and intensity (not). I had to hand in a piece of writing that related to Utopia. So I wrote this story and handed it in. It's not very good, but it's more interesting than an essay:

Mr. Hall was quite an ordinary man. He lived with his wife on the outskirts of the city in a small lemon coloured house. He had a neat white picket fence along a tidy green lawn and a small dog that often barked at the shifting laundry on top of the lawn. Mr. Hall was a husband, and a father of two well-mannered children. He wore tiny, smooth glasses above his nose and his well-kept brown moustache. He was a thin man who was perhaps a little less than six feet tall in height. He wore plain cotton shirts and long beige slacks.

Here was a man who lived a very ordinary life, not ordinary in a monotonous repetitive sort of way, but there was nothing particularly exceptional about Mr. Hall. Although, perhaps one might notice that Mr. Hall had a very interesting occupation. You see he was a specialist; Mr. Hall spent most of his adult life restocking vending machines. When he left school and became an adult he decided to get a job that didn’t require a lot of effort, but gave him a consistent salary. This is the reason why Mr. Hall began his long career of restocking the vending machines. Employed by the refreshment businesses his job was to drive his truck to a list of various establishments, schools, hospitals and offices. He visited each institution every workday and saw the same, faceless people who acknowledged him with a mild look of familiarity and boredom. Sometimes the children at the school would ask him if he enjoyed his job, if he ate any of the candy from the back of the truck. Mr. Hall would just shake his head, no. Although they might dream of being around candy all day, his life was much too tedious for the shock of sweetness.

Each day Mr. Hall would wake up at five forty-five in the morning to prepare for the day ahead. He would shower, put on a clean uniform, brush his tidy, thinning hair and eat his breakfast. He ate the same breakfast every day, a piece of unbuttered toast, black coffee and two hard-boiled eggs. After he was finished he would put on his little cap, and make his way to the factory that supplied the refreshments. This factory was his home base and everything began there. He would find his truck at the factory and stock it with the candies. When he finished loading the plain cardboard boxes inside his truck, he would drive past the cold metal gates and out into a world that needed him.

Mr. Hall’s first stop was a school; every morning he would enter this dull parking lot. He grabbed his cardboard box full of bright candy and headed toward the cafeteria with its blinding fluorescent lights and dirty, speckled floor. He arrived at this school very early; he wouldn’t have to take the chattering and questions of the students. Days happened like this, they just came and went so repetitively they faded into a single blur. He moved through red doors and stairways, cafeterias and waiting rooms, walking through his entire way with a fast pace that never changed. He didn’t notice his day was over until he reached the last name on his list, the name of a school in the middle of the town. Mr. Hall had never cared for the schools, but they were an important part of his occupation. He made his way into the school cafeteria, the same as all the others with white cinderblock squares, brown tables and the bright glow of the vending machines. Vending machines like big aliens, out of place in this dirty and dull cafeteria. He moved from one bright glow to another, blue, red, yellow. They were all different, candies, cola, juices. There was one that sold different flavours of milk. Banana flavoured milk was a very odd concept to him. Mr. Hall had memorized each product, each row, each of these machines. This was not because he particularly enjoyed the products but because they had been repeating in his view since he began this job. He moved to each vending machine quickly and with all the skill one can acquire after years of doing his job. He finally reached the last vending machine and he was looking forward to coming home and resting. The last vending machine was a standard brown one, with a clear front so the bright candies it sold were visible. He was finishing the last row of candies, neatly placing chocolate bars on the rack. Mr. Hall was pushing the cold metal rack back into the heart of the machine when he felt a tremor run through his hand. He looked around for any indication of what caused it. Then, without a second to think he found himself lying on the floor, in intense pain with bright lights blurring above his head. He came to his senses with an overwhelming sense of claustrophobia, the pain and the brightness was clouding his senses. He realized now that he was stuck, his legs trapped beneath the heavy machine, his face inches away from the metal racks and their bright candies. Amazingly, the racks hadn’t severed his body and left room to spare for his arms. Perhaps this was because he was so thin, he wondered if he was that lucky to be spared.

Weekends are speedy devils

My weekend went by a little too fast. I haven't even caught up enough to finish my math homework. Yesterday I recall waking up late and seeing my friends school play. Then... I believe I spent the rest of the night watching TV. What a dreadful, horrible thing to do. Oh well, first I watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest on APTN. APTN is Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, and I watch this once and a while because if a movie features someone who is aboriginal or partially aboriginal they'll play it. Like Cher movies, they play Cher movies. But last night they were playing Cuckoo's Nest because "Chief" is in it, that is Chief Bromden. I have never seen the movie before, but I just finished the book so it was appropriate timing. This movie was number 1 on my to-see list. Number 2 is My Beautiful Laundrette, does anyone know where I can attain this? Anyways, the movies a bit different from the book. In the book Chief is the narrator and everything that goes on is from his eyes, which makes it very interesting because Chief sees a lot. The book was very good though, it took me a couple days to get through which is a good sign. The movie was also amazing, Jack Nicholson was excellent. The theme of the book crossed over really well into the movie. I never cry in books, and rarely in movies, but for some reason I was really sad at the end when Chief's talking to McMurphy about leaving. I'm going to try to use this book as a base for one of my utopia projects coming up, about "Planned Societies".

After the amazingness that was One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest I watched TLC for about 4 hours. It's a horrible channel, but it's always somewhat interesting. I watched a bit of W too, they had some sort of Johnny Depp theme, with Benny and Joon+Don Juan de Marco but I've seen them both. So then I watched about 2 hours worth of "Little People, Big World" which is easily the most pointless show on TV. If they want to promote tolerance of people who are different, why is there a show about the fact they're dwarfs? But for some reason I kept watching it, maybe it's addictive or something. Remind me never to watch it again, once I was in Vancouver with my mum, and I watched a five episode marathon until 12 o'clock. I worry about myself once and a while. I also am worrying about finishing my math homework (I hate this entire unit), who needs to know about Rational numbers?

Fake Fire

So a while ago, I talked about a movie being filmed a couple blocks down the street. Well, a couple nights ago they finished filming. This was interesting because, they finished with a fake fire. From my bedroom window I could see the spotlights, and we walked down to the set to see what was going on. There was a pretty big crowd off on one end of the sidewalk, and we joined them. About 20 minutes later, there was a flame that came out of one of the windows, then died out. Then they had to take the shot again, this time the flame lasted longer, and there were fire fighters running into the building. The final time there was a flame was after many people left, and this time it lasted longer, with a huge explosion in the middle. It was a pretty interesting experience. I'm excited to see the movie, not because it's a made-for-TV adaptation of a romance novel, but because my neighbourhood's posing as little Italy in it. Very cool.

And to an unrelated subject, I was in the car today, listening to my Satellite radio and I decided I would listen to "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'", from Scissor Sister's latest album. I turned up the volume and was soaking in the dancingness of this song, until I had to go into the "Midtown Market" CO-OP. So I was in CO-OP, getting some milk and as soon as I opened the freezer door, this very song was playing behind the freezer. I stopped for a second and listened to it, before closing the door becuase I realized people were staring at me. It was very cool. So here's a Scissor Sister's song that makes me happy whenever I listen to it.

Left-handed with scissors

Today I tried to cut my first hairs. My brother, who has icky shoulder-length head-banging hair. My mum and I were sick of it, so we persuaded (I don't know how) him to let us cut it. So I got the scissors and started cutting the back of it. Meanwhile, I'm not doing very well, and my mum's totally exaggerating how bad I'm doing. Then James starts to get scared, and we're laughing at him because his hair is lopsided. Finally, it's finished (My mum took up cutting after that). He didn't like it very much, and it wasn't exactly fabulous... but at least it's not past his shoulders. So it's a bit of a bowl cut, but his bangs are kind of... stylish? Well probably not, but at least we tried. *Update: We took him to the hair dresser's and now all the long greasiness is gone! I can actually see his face, wow. It's about 5 inches shorter though, so he'll take a while to get used to it.


Parent teacher interviews went well last night. My parents spent time talking to James' teachers too, so I hung out with my friends for a lot of the time. There was a used book sale going on in the lobby, and I went to look at the books they had for sale. 75% of them were cheap romance novels, so I understood why they weren't doing very well. But they were fun to read, and my friend and I were reading them out loud, cause they were so corny. I bought one, to support the food bank or something... It's called "Inadmissible Passion". I haven't read it yet, and I don't think I will. But it would make for an interesting conversation piece.