Dear Sir and Madam

Once again, my utter contempt for conventional attitudes towards death has gotten me into trouble. When am I going to learn to just keep my mouth shut and play along? I'll tell you when. When I am dead. While I cannot guarantee that I will keep my mouth shut, I am sure that this will be the one time in my life when I actually behave how others would expect me to given the situation.

Snap!

I have discovered the meaning of life. Well, the meaning of my life anyway. Of course, I cannot really be sure, as I am not really interested in blasphemy or heresy, but I am fairly confident that when the time comes for me to know I will have guessed correctly. Take that existentialists!

Core to the Right

My recent encounters with international relations and vandalism have me wondering how incompatible cultures really are. I consider myself to be a cross-cultural being, a sentient example of contamination, if you will. If I had never been exposed to one of the two dominant cultures in my life, would I still have made the choices that I have recently made? Am I driven by culture or personality? I am personally of the opinion that the two share a dialectic relationship, but there is a distinct possibility that one may dominate that other. What is the influential ratio of culture to personality with respect to individual behaviour?

Apparently Populated by Goats

Please note:

• Geese are returning on the red eye, landing at 5:00 am
• Sleeping with the upper half of one's body elevated by pillows is not as comfortable as one might expect
• This city is designed for rich and/or employed people who get out of bed before the hour of 1:00 pm

Budget Crisis

What is the one thing I care about even less than Canadian politics? Canadian economics. I've long been of the opinion that money should simply not exist. We made it up. It really can't be that hard to get rid of. I find it baffling that so many people are so unaware of their capacity to create change. Instead they rest comfortably in their little houses with their pile of little disappoinments, complacent about how the world violates their every human sensibility. I know we're all lying to ourselves, but I don't know what parts are the lies.

If You Lived Here You'd Have Less Non-Broken Bones and More Crushed Spirits

I do not actually have anything profound or even remotely interesting to say, I just thought that this particular quote was too fabulous to ignore.

Talking Turkey

My room mate is cooking a turkey. I've never been in the presence of a turkey before, cooking, talking, or otherwise. It's surprisingly loud. I wonder if tofurkies can speak as well. Perhaps, being soy-based, they can only say soy-based words.
Words such as:

1. Soya
2. Soybean
3. Meso
4. So you married an axe-murderer

Who would murder an axe?

Belated and Deflated

Happy belated St. Patrick's day, and sorry about the absence. I almost told a baby boomer that I was going to hurl myself off of a bridge today. At least I'm still smiling.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

little pale angry men with black bags are annoying, they remind me of spanish doctors with flat black hats - hhmmm..........maybe it's the spanish out to squish everything that's for a good cause. when we sold tickets to the vagina monologues, one of the spanish professors at school decided to boycott us and do everything in her power (along with two others) to stop us from raising money. for the RAPE CRISIS center. i can understand their anger. guelph is going to hell in a handbasket. exactly one month till hometime!! yay!!

Tripping

The University of Ottawa chapter of Amnesty International was the victim of an institutional oppression of civil liberties today. With no real explanation, a very small, pale, angry man entered the room 219 of Morisset Hall. He was carrying two black bags, which several students speculated contained firearms. The man stood there, reveling in all his pale angriness, until he was acknowledged by Ben. Without wasting time on pleasantries, or enquiring as to why approximately 15 students were gathered in a classroom outside of class time, the angry man stated that Amnesty International would have to find somewhere else to prevent the abuse, torture, and unlawful detainment of human beings around the world. And thus, Amnesty International was denied the freedom of assembly it should be able to enjoy under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The kicker? This man was not any sort of authority figure. He had no position of power. He was just an angry stooge from the multimedia department.

Pay no Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

I may have to start carrying around a notebook or tape recorder. I keep forgetting the fabulously witty comments I've been thinking. Back in the days when I lived on top of hell and worked there after school there was a schizophrenic man who used to carry little squares of paper and write things down at random. I've accepted that I am destined to be crazy. Now I'm just going to enjoy the decent into madness.

What are You Looking For?

I strongly suggest watching More. It is some of the best art I have witnessed in quite some time.

Monty Pythonesque, eh? You naked...well, clothed in a helmet, elbow and knee pads running toward a cliff? That's not a sight I'd like to see. Before, or after!

God as a Monkey, Hell as a Black Hole

This is why I should not be allowed to take philosophy or art history. One day I'll come up with some crazy idea and the universe will cease to exist. I definitely would not have survived back in the days of the Spanish inquisition. Back when people were persecuted for ideas I would have gotten into trouble so fast they would have had to burn me at a sapling stake. Of course, the stake being so flimsy, I would have fled, and a Monty Pythonesque pursuit would have ensued, but let's not be realistic. This is no laughing matter!

I don't pretend to know anything about funerals - and given today's events, I hope I don't have to know anything about them anytime soon, but that's not looking too likely. But one can always hope. But in the way of control - that's more my area.... I figure it's the same for a lot of situations. Like OCD. It tends to flare up when life isn't going perfectly. If you can't control your life, often you feel like you have to control something - anything. So you'll control how clean a room is, or how many times you chew your food before you swallow it. Something that's trivial and easily controlled, unlike life.

Funerals send messages. They're your last message to your friends and family. Planning your own funeral is a huge comfort to them since they know it is the last message you want them to have. If you care about them, you want them to recieve the right message. It provides closure. It's not pretentious. It's not about you at all, it's about those you love, and it's entirely selfless. See how comfortable you are with your own death when someone you love dies.

Amen to that - if you don't have control, you really don't have anything

I think being able to control what happens to your body after you die is kind of a comfort. Since you can't know what's going to happen to the rest of you at least you can know what's going to happen to your body, which is the only part of you that really has any substance. Control is important.

Control

I realize this is a touchy subject but, well, I'm me, so I'm probably going to talk about it anyway. People tend to plan their own funeral proceedings more and more these days. While I can understand that no one wants to leave their loved ones with such a morbid and stressful task, I can't help but think that this is a bit pretentious. Perhaps I'm too comfortable with my own mortality, but I really don't care what happens to my body after I die. I'm pretty sure I won't have any use for it. Other than trying to make things easy on friends and family, the only reason I can really find for planning one's own funeral is control. For the most part we cannot control when we die, but we still try to control what happens to our bodies after we die.

I think it's pretty clear that Rousseau and Locke and Freud and all those other idiots were...well, they were idiots. Don't waste valuable time on their crazy ideas. I mean, how would desire create reason. From what I've seen, people act on desire without reason, clawing their way to achieving said desire at all costs.

Animal Urges

According to Rousseau, reason is cultivated in response to desire. What happens when we desire freedom from reason? Can we reason our way out of reason?

There's absolutely no way they'll figure out you've come of age for AT LEAST 2 years. Rest easy, and enjoy the spring!

I dare say madame.... are you feeling romantic? any particular reason besides the weather? Spring always fills me with an urge (which I've been feeling since sometime inJanuary actually) of going to the sugar shack..... which isn't exactly true... I just want de la tire..... (as I'm told I say it incoreectly in English - I thought it better to say it in French... so that's my springy comment for today... :)

One Month

I have one month left to figure out what I want to do with my bank account before they try to wrench it from me like blood from a beautiful and jubilant maid. The warmth and ebbing humidity has me reminiscing of April in London. Early spring is my favourite time of year. You can smell the green swelling up under the rain and the humidity starts to get just a tiny bit stifling when it's mixed with winter heating. It's all so romantic.

So forget being a tool of a patriarchal - the Sarah System is the way to go....?
Where personal preferences are disregarded for blind obedience replaces laughter, or even inwardly joy as the chief source of mirth.
Gotcha.
I'll get right on it....