inevitable

things have slowed down a little here, but that is not unexpected.

there are two reasons for this:

primarily, it has been raining non stop for a week. Who knew that was possible? I though the east was constant sun in the summer. I feel like someone lied to me.

secondarily, I really have to face up to my responsibilities:

In the next 3 weeks I have a wedding in Victoria, a conference in Halifax, a doctor's appointment in Waterloo and an LSAT to write.

So, you know I gotta prepare for all that.

in fact, I think I may be scarse until June 13th. Then, I can reintroduce the party.

dogs

whoo doggy, where to begin ...

so, this place is awesome. that must preface everything.

it is gorgeous, everybody is happy, every single girl is good looking and most of the guys are good looking. bi-sexuality seems more appealing with each passing day.

my home is amazing. my cooking has improved exponentially.

work is interesting.

life is just ... you know, good.

adventures:

a) Concertland.

good lord, clubs and concerts here are good. I found my bar ... it is a purely french place which serves $2.50 shots of tequila and turns into a clothing store by day. Marissa (not negin: it was late when I wrote this and I was very drunk) and I danced there. we had fun.

I saw Japanther a few days ago and it was good. I just got back from Duchess Says. Jesus fuck. seriously. fuck jesus. that was good. energy is seriously underrated. Doug has a good thing going on. SLUM records is, most likely, going places.

b) bikingland.

so I decided that, rather than taking transit for an hour and a half, I would bike the 35 km to work. All went well the first day. The ride is beautiful (if long) and I found myself surprising capable of riding 70km a day. well, that is a little untrue. I could not make the last 5 km yesterday and had to eat three slices of pizze to regain balance. but otherwise good.

today ... today sucked.

I blew a tire, not unexpectedly, with all the glass and potholes, but I was retardedly unprepared. I tried riding on a busted tire. That sucked. So I walked. I found a depanneur, got a bunch of wildcat, got drunk and kept walking. I tried riding again. A mix of alcohol and grass made it seem okay. I haven't actually looked at my front tire yet. But the rides were short lived. Riding a street bike on grass with a flat tire while drunk is hard. really really hard.

I walked and walked and walked. I starting yelling at nobody in particular. Old ladies looked at me funny.

I found a store that sold more beer and bought a six pack. During flirtations with the cashier I found out that there was a metro near by and that bikes were allowed on. Victory. I was going to duchess says! (if I had had to walk, which I assumed I would, it would have taken me another 2 hours to get home. as it was I did not arrive until 10:30).

I got come, drank on of the six pack, watched some Casanova and headed to the club. As I attempted to pay, the guy closed the money box and walked away. so, it seems that the night was free. To make amends I bought a cd.

c) myhouseland

I lucked out. my roomates rule. the boyfriend of marie, the parisian, just got a place with a 2500 square foot backyard. If they make me leave I will cut myself.

sleep now.

goodnight moon.

merde

that's right, I am in montreal now.

not much time at the moment, but I thought I would share a bit of my new life.

My apartment, which is gorgeous, is centered on a massive stainless steel cooking space (it ain't your father's table). So, you know, I cook now.

I got off the metro, picked up some fresh veggies, came up to the apartment to an offer of an espresso by this parisian girl who lives here, poured a little white wine, made my own version of pad thai, wandered over to a friend's place to watch the canadiens lose, came back, am doing a bit of work and am waiting for mercedes to come over for a beer.

i can't believe I have only been here three days. it kinda feels like home.

they have both a med and a law school here. why would I leave? except the brutal cold.

the beta band

I don't necessarily want to repost repeatedly from metafilter but I thought, given the ideas in the last post, that I would share this.

Fear of the word 'nuclear' is a big problem. It shouldn't be. Nuclear is a great word.

"Waste" is a pretty bad word, but research is all that is needed.

We must be able to use the waste productively. It is what we do. Find uses for stuff.

it's a whale fish

The Tyee, which I thought was solely an election blog, is actually not.

I looked at it today and found this article: 100 Mile Diet.

Premise, if you don't wish to read the article, is that the authors, a couple (I think) from Vancouver decided to only eat food grown in a 100 mile radius from their house. It was tough at times, but they got through it.

The main reason for this? Fossil fuel consumption. Eating foods grown miles away from you causes a large amount of pollution to be emitted by the trucks, trains and boats transporting the food. Okay, sounds good.

An important question, the question one always must ask, is what happens when everyone does it? It is all fine and dandy to have your own little project, to make a point (and it is a very good point), but I believe that it is untenable for the population at large if we maintain a need to have all of our food made for us.

Okay, so the problem is cost. We want the cheapest food possible. With economies of scale as they are, the cheapest food is often going to come from far away. With economies of scale, it is always going to be cheaper to have someone else produce your food than produce it yourself.

Cost is, in fact, always the problem. The 100 mile rule could be used for almost everything, but the economies of scale for electronics and furniture is huge. The problem is that the economies of scale for food is probably about the same. On the 100 mile diet blog they say that costs did skyrocket. And they hadn’t yet had to deal with the incredible demand put on the farmers that would ensue if we all chose to buy locally.

So, what is the problem? Our desire to be happy and the fact that this desire is so closely related to what we have/own. As much as people like to bandy about the idea that friends and family are the most important things a person can have (and that is true), it does not take into account the strain on said relationships that can result from needing to overwork, which is a very real problem if you remove economies of scale. (Although I have read recently that the high divorce rate now is related to the fact that people are so privileged now that they expect a happy marriage as opposed to the supportive marriage that existed up until most recently – with that in mind, family may become better when people have less because there will be more mutual (and necessary) support)

We can try to buy more locally, yes, (we can develop small economies of scale) but ultimately we need to develop better transportation methods, better fuels and better energy sources. While two young and unencumbered people may be able to do the 100 mile diet, I don’t think it tenable for the entire population.

I think food is much too cheap (most things are much too cheap) so it may be the case that, when true costs (i.e. the human suffering costs I referred to a few posts ago) are taken into account, that locally grown foods are more beneficial. Although I still think that, even if prices increased to allow foreign farmers (and all producers) a fair return, it will still be overall beneficial to have a world market. So, alternative energy is the key and maintaining a world market.

One thing I liked from the blog was this:

“A friend of ours has a theory that a night spent making jam–or in his case, perogies–with friends will always be better a time than the latest Hollywood blockbuster. We’re convinced.”

I am convinced too. Stupid movies. Although I finally bought The Wrong Guy. I think a few of my friends and I have definitely bonded over that.

I think I just experienced something of religious proportions.

i love it when people move

last night was semi-debaucherous.

jungle theme keg party at the paper tree.

I picked up a fake fur coat and a lion toy. As I was tearing apart the toy to make myself a mask I discovered electronics. The thing was wired. It played music (jungle music) and roared while moving its mouth. I was the king of the party. I assume.

I also scored sweet roller skates. montreal a go go.

today is the day

Happy Birthday Natalie!

In honour, I ate indian food. my tummy kinda hurts.

terrible prejudice

wow, did I underestimate myspace.

I considered it a disgusting cesspit, where pre-teens went to hide away all their scavenged animated gifs and emo music, where shitty bands went to harp about their unoriginal audio excrement, where 33 year old perverts grasping on to their fading youth went to chat up anything younger.

to some extent this is all probably true, but what I failed to see were the good parts.

as I perused this afternoon, I took the following path (myspace name in brackets):

myself (immutabler) > mercedes (mercedesisawesome) > raf (raf_is_awesome) > some unknown (massinha). It was at this last "space" where I found out about a launch party at club lambi (on St. Laurent).

Why is this important?

because my only goal in montreal is to go to as many art shows / magazine launches / product lauches as possible.

I don't want to pay for one drink in montreal. I want all of my alcohol, for 4 straight months, to be paid for by someone else.

And myspace is going to make this happen. I owe myspace a (free) drink and an apology.

oh yeah.

so, when I was much younger, I had a small problem with really bad music taste ...

anyway, as I was going through some friends' myspace sites I found something posted by papat: an Aqua video.

I thought I would share also.



don't say I never do anything for you.

edit: godfre brings up a good point. I do like centipede now. don't listen to it. just know it exists.

edit2: fuck that, listen to it. All seven are here.

and now for something completely different ...

Dogging:

"Dogging is a predominantly British activity that involves outdoor exhibitionism in car-parks, wooded areas and the like. The term dogging originated in the early Seventies to describe men who spied on couples having sex outdoors. These men would 'dog' the couples' every move in an effort to watch them. When the swinging scene discovered that open-air sex has its own special thrill they began meeting in car-parks, and the doggers found a new and rich supply of voyeuristic fun. Moreover, the doggers soon realised that these couples were actively encouraging them to watch, even performing for them, and sometimes allowing them to join in."

Those crazy brits. Let's emulate perverts!

from the faqs:

"If you went to a nature area or car park and found it fenced off, it's likely a response to too much dogging activity in that area, causing complaints about noise, traffic, trash and general naughtiness."

oh, that's the reason. too much trash.

where art thou?

So, a while back, I went to a presentation by one Romeo Dallaire who was the commander of the UN force in Rwanda.

Wikipedia says "His actions are credited with directly saving the lives of 20,000 Tutsis. There is speculation that Dallaire's forces deliberately sabotaged equipment to slow their UN-mandated withdrawal from the combat zone."

Wikipedia also says "At home, Dallaire was medically released from the Canadian Armed Forces on April 22, 2000, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. At the time of his retirement he held the rank of lieutenant-general. Blaming himself for the failures of the mission, he began a spiral into depression, culminating on June 20, 2000, when he was rushed to hospital after being found under a park bench in Hull, Quebec. He was intoxicated and suffering from a reaction with his prescription anti-depressants, and the mixture almost put him into a coma."

When he came to talk to us, we had heard that his previous speeches were extremely emotions and that he was going to tone it down. We had heard almost correctly. The basic speech was one on leadership and was relatively basic. But it was during his frequent anecdotes, exclusively introduced with “let me give you an example,” that were the most shocking.

The two that I remember best:

The Rwandan army was recruiting children to fight. A UN army troop came across a church which, surprising, held a number of living tutsis. As the army went into the church to rescue the survivors, a number of child fighters appeared and opened fire. The commander had to decide then and there whether to order his soldiers to return fire. He did.

Dallaire used this story as an example for planning ahead. Like, the commander should already have known that he might encounter child soldiers and should have known whether to fire back or not. He should not have been making that decision on the field. Okay, that is a pretty heavy example for planning ahead.

The second story was also about planning ahead. Apparently, rape is used as an act of war, more to intimidate the opposing side than to get any pleasure. After raping whole villages the women, usually dead but sometimes barely alive, would be thrown into pits. Occasionaly, UN troops would come across these pits and find the dead and dying women. The first time it happened, the commander had to radio back to Dallaire to ask whether the soldiers should just move along (the women were going to die regardless) or to jump in the whole and comfort the women as they died. The HIV rate is incredibly high and the soldiers would be putting themselves at very high risk of exposure by jumping in the pit.

Dallaire said before he could make a decision, the commander called back to say it was inconsequential because the Canadian soldiers had already jumped in (afterwards, Dallaire asked all the commanders of the countries that had sent troops to Rwanda – all said that they would just move on except Canada, the Netherlands and Guyana.)

Those were the anecdotes. Now for analysis:

It was obviously terrible over there. The UN tried to help (Dallaire did not blame the UN in his speech, in fact he specifically removed blame from them - he blamed countries for not sending their mandated troops and mainly the US) but public opinion was not pro-intervention (because of Somalia).

What this comes down to, according to Dallaire said, is feelings of relative worth. As crazy as it seems, 900,000 foreigners may not be worth, according to public opinions, the lives of a few of your own citizens.

In fact, from wikipedia:

“Dallaire ordered ten Belgian soldiers (whom he considered his best men) to protect the new prime minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana. The soldiers were intercepted by Hutu extremists and taken hostage, after which Madame Agathe and her husband were killed. Later that day, the Belgian soldiers were found brutally murdered. Belgium was outraged that Dallaire had put its soldiers in such danger, and promptly withdrew its forces.”

Belgium withdrew its forces?

This is a really important topic, because this relative worth thing comes up constantly. The excess of energy we use, the toxic waste we ship to china, the farmed food we consume. All of it makes our lives a little better and make the lives of foreigners and the lives of our future generations (pseudo-foreigners – they don’t live here yet) much worse. This is not as immediately drastic as not sending troops to save lives, but it will have the same effect.

The more passive murder we can work on, and hopefully will, although I certainly like my creature comforts. The more active murder we have to deal with.

My friend Jon Cooper writes in his blog, “We are failing the “Rwanda Test”. In response to well-documented ethnic cleansing, resulting in massive human suffering and mortality, the response of the UN and the international community has been appallingly, comprehensively impotent. The AU Peace and Security Council has the “The preparedness of the Government the Sudan to accept the deployment of a UN operation in Darfur” as its first condition for a UN deployment. Given the active role of Omar Bashir’s government in instigating and perpetuating the massacre, it is unlikely this condition can be met any time soon.”

He also writes, “Even as thousands die every day, we bow to sovereignty.” He thinks, and perhaps rightly so, that this is more a policy thing, a problem dictated by laws and mandates. I think it is much worse. I think that our inability to care about those not directly linked to us is going to be our downfall. This is all economics. Externalities are not being taking into account. The suffering of other people is a big fucking externality.

Read Jon’s post.

oh my god.

in honour of some of my intrepid friends:

worms in some guy's colon.

oh god, why?

nyp1

it is very early monday morning and I am sitting in the toronto bus terminal after just having a long conversation with a older irish homeless drug addict who would not admit that he was not going back to ireland as soon as he got his passport from ottawa. I am somewhat confused as to whether he is in denial or has his story down so well that it just feels wrong to deviate from it. He was intelligent and obviously missed ireland. i wonder how he ended up here.

last night I was in NY. Nicholls and I planned a mini-vacation and met up. We could not have picked a better weekend. The sun was out and the weather was gorgeous the entire weekend (well, except for one rained-out patio breakfast which, in all fairness, we were willing to endure). We stayed at Sahm's place on an amazing street called St. Mark's. It was so quintessentially community. We would sit outside on the fire escape, basking in the sun, and just watch the multitude of people and types do their thing.

It was a high school reunion with Colin, Mike, Francey, Sahm and I (and both Dan Otero and Gilbert Nye were on the cell phone at some point in the weekend). It is relatively unusual to have such a close high school clase, I think. Most people seemed to have hated high school.

So, what did we do? It can be summed up succinctly with the word consumption. We ate and drank a lot. Colin noted that ovens in NY are usually used for storage.

Friday's festivities started out at 3:00 with margaritas at a small mexican place across from S's with C, F and M. They had 2-for-1 drinks, so we had 4 each. By 4:00, the conversation had turned to sex. F noted that it was way to early to be having that conversation. Somehow that initial drinking binge lasted until 4 in the morning. We went to a back room bar where a minor celebrity was in an even more back room. I tried to convince a girl that we could get in if she came with me. We continued on to a japanese themed bar where we worked really hard to get a seat in an somewhat coveted area and the onto Francey's work where it was decided that the full plates of food on the table next to us were probably up for grabs. They were not. We determined this when the owners came back from the bathroom to find their food on our table. Francey brought us a lot of alcohol. Silly francey. Onto a bar where we apparently met Sahm's girlfriend and colin and i realised that we were too good for other people. This is where my recollections end. According to sahm, after a few more bars, we ended up back at his house where he and I ate ice cream and watched porn. I am skeptical but know it could be true.

Next day. Hangover. Breakfast outside fails. We hold off starting to drink until 6 when we have retardly expensive margaritas at a terrible place called Senor Swankys. We are surrounded by drunk jocks. We realised we are in the middle of a giant Greenwich Village pub crawl. We try to join but it is too late, so we just drink in the same bars. Back to Sahm's. We head out around midnight after taking in 8th and Ocean. TV is terrible.

To a small bar where I force mike to do a whisky drink keg stand. I forget that he is tall and ungainly. People are kicked. We leave. We find a matress which entertains us for at least 10 minutes. It entertains everyone around us. I find my own personal bar. There were actually attractive single ladies sitting at the bar drinking just waiting to be picked up, picked up. I decided that it would be my local if I ever moved to the city. Then to the final bar of the night, where I ended up pouring B52s because the bartendress did not understand layering. Talked to Sahm's girlfriend for hours. Walked home. No porn.

Next day was the best. The whole crew met up, ostensibly to go furniture shopping, but francey, mike, colin and I took the soccer ball and disk into central park. We wandered for hours looking for green space. It doesn't exist so we improvised. When an uncaught throw hit a lady in the head, we knew it was time to leave. Whole Foods in the rotunda and then a walk home. We didn't go to any museums, any special shows. In fact, the weekend was pretty ordinary, but there is just so much life.

Still, I couldn't live there. No green space, no outdoor soccer. I would go nuts.

posturing

after some agressive posturing on my part about how I was going to purchase expensive new york clothing to allow me to lord over my more provincial friends, my natural impecunious nature resulted in the purchase of only 1 item of clothing: a single, small, white, $3, "I heart NY" t-shirt. I will never wear it, but whimsy got the best of me.

the slogan is apparently registered. so don't go around saying that you heart new york without a good team of lawyers.

tucker max is a bad influence

I was introduced somewhat recently to the entertaining writings of one Tucker Max. If you haven't heard of him, you should check out his blog. He is a drunk, philandering asshole who got a book deal.

Anyway, I think he is great.

So, I was in Toronto with Mark and Leslie and we started off the night doing various shots of everything. Wine, vodka, bourbon, etc. We seemed to be matching shot for shot, but I soon realised that I was slurring and they were not. I tried to hide it.

We left the apartment. I am not sure where we were going, but we did have our squash racquets.

We came across a graffiti covered alley and stopped to play squash. I believe the allay was actually a garage for ambulances because every now and then an ambulance would leave from the garage behind me. The paramedics were, as I remember, nice. And I was nice to them. Squash continued.

Strangers, coming across a tall curly headed man and his obviously drunk friend playing squash in an alley from where ambulances were emerging, stopped in interest. Matt's emulation of TM started. I told everyone who stopped, in no uncertain terms, to Fuck Off, because we were trying to play a fucking squash game. I yelled at them until they left. It was pretty funny. Apparently, some of the fake anger was lost because I couldn't stop laughing. Still, they left.

We moved onto a bar which had obviously been the site of some sort of reception, or at least that is what makes the most sense because I found a bunch of great food scattered around the place and brought it back to our table. I mean like full plates of vegetables and dip. The friends didn't exactly like me stealing food but they didn't exactly not eat it.

I faded pretty quickly after that. But I think I can build up a better tolerance. And then I could be an asshole all night. I am way too nice a guy.

The next day, with my mother, I went out to the Art Gallary of Ontario, went to an excellent Italian restaurant (we had risotto), went swimming and was in bed by 12. The next, next day Mark, Leslie, my mother and I went for yummy breakfast and then we went to Niagra Falls. See what I mean? Too nice. I haven't yelled at any strangers for like 3 days. Terrible.

niagara

I have been.

What a strange place. The falls are, as expected, beautiful, but the city and culture that has sprung up around it is incredibly weird.

Casino's and Spiderman Rides and Butterfly Gardens and Parrots. All things I would expect to be related to a large waterfall.

in online

According to Ian Davis, the managing director of McKinsey (guess where I have been spending my online time) "12 per cent of American newlyweds last year met online."

What?

12% is like 250,000 - 300,000 marriages.

I think that is a tad depressing. I have a few friends and acquaintances who are out exploring the world (zeemer: ASIA!!!) and lament the fact that people in North America are not as friendly or outgoing with strangers as they are in other places. I brushed it off because it is so easy to make friends in all of the life experiences I have had so far (travelling, university, roomate filled accomodation) but 12% is a scary figure. 12% of people obviously looking for a long term relationship had to resort to anonymous communication to actually meet a person.

Shit ... we have to introduce more community. Grandparents first, then strangers. There is no reason why people cannot be meeting people around them.

Of course, I hate it when strangers bug me. Fucking strangers. I am reading something asshole. Can't you see the fucking earphones?

Whatever happened to that book project where everyone was supposed to read the same book so we would have something in common other than a general feeling of distaste for americans?

People should be required to talk on buses. I am going to start talking to people on buses. I will tell you how it goes.

posting problems

some (lots) of all y'all have no real idea what my past and future chemistry research involves. I won't be doing it for much longer, but here is an accessible piece about the future of the research.

NAMD, the simulation program to which they refer, uses the CHARMM force field. I will be working on a competing force field, AM1.

floating furniture

i want all my furniture to be floating:

in the heat of the night

Montreal was freaking great. The city itself is dirty as fuck, although that is probably due to the recent thaw. They have the parisian mindset that dogs can shit everywhere and humans just have to deal with it. The best part is when you see bags of dog shit on the pavement - the owners were considerate enough to bag but still just left the bag on the street.

The architecture and graffiti are so interesting. I was staying at a place in the plateau and the buildings are all gorgeous. I think I am going to try and find a place there. It will be expensive, but it is close to everything fun.

The people I hung out with were all medical students and were just great. Extremely smart, interesting, accomplished and excited. They all loved what they were doing. I felt good in their midst. I think they liked me. They better have fucking liked me. Why is medical school still a draw? fucking medical school. Two of the people I met and spent a long time talking to were both around 28 and in their second year. They had been teachers for 5 years before moving onto medicine. so, in conclusion, who knows.

The miami vice theme (which was the theme of the main party) was great. To prepare we spent a few hours dressing up at Value Village and then we played Miami Vice drinking games. Miami vice, it turns out, is a great show. The drinking game is hard. Tubbs never talks. Nobody got my joke about Tubbs telling people that his name was Mr. Tubbs. Come on. He is a black detective from the south. Fuck em. Miami Vice is corrupting. I think I may change my wardrobe to miami vice.

The weekend was marked by excessive meat consumption. I broke my vegetarianism a little, but not as much as expected. I had told myself that I could make an exception for a Shwartz's (sp?) Smoked Meat Sandwich, but when I got into the restaurant I couldn't order. I settled for a bite of a friends. It was amazingly tatsy, but didn't feel right. I may really be a vegetarian. Damn. I made up for the lack of meat by consuming an unhealthy amount of cheese. We hit up a cheese market and I picked up 4 great cheeses for 10 bucks. I am in trouble. We also bought loads of regional beers. I am in trouble on that front as well. Regional beers are hit or miss but when they hit - wow.

We had to stay in montreal an extra day because two or our tires were
slashed. We think they were slashed at Value Village and because our car had Ontario plates. Mark, the guy we stayed with, thinks it might have been because he shot an unseen dirty look at a bunch of french teens. Mark has issues.

photos should be posted shortly.