This caught my eye today in an article on, as if this has not been beaten to death, why people blog.

The Inverse Law of Usenet Bandwidth:
"The more interesting your life becomes, the less you post, and vice versa."

However, the article seems to suggest this not as factual, evidence, but in jest. thank heavens. otherwise i would be f$&#ed. (see how i can that parentally correct? so clever.)

also, good news for the burrito eaters out there: check out the NOW Magazine article on the various burrito fare in the city of TO. the only one that delivers seems to be big fat burrito, but hey, i'll take it. literally. jeff and i ordered it for dinner to night. delicious.

to fuel the controversy...

now, of course, my literal minded friends, this is just for kicks. but still, pretty darn amusing.

(courtesy of the onion)

LP (that's the name of my lap top...jarrod has named his and mine was feeling left out) died the other day. based on opinions since, he succumbed to a virus. he's lucky he did not succumb to alli's fit of brutal and unrestrained rage towards things that are supposed to work and do not. solution: format windows, buy an external hard drive, start downloading. i was most upset to lose my music, however i did get it backed up and it seems to have survived the transfer to the new drive and happily living away from my unpredictable hard drive. i downloaded msn again and life has returned to normal.

my mom, on a slow but steady climb into the realms of technology, has opened up a new flickr.com account to display her wonderful photos. i love this one, simply because it is remarkably striking:

Only in Italy would you be able to get away with such fantastic walls...and flower pots. The one below is just a classic tourist shot. I wish they had also taken one of themselves leaning slightly over. i know, alli, like no one else has thought of that.

However, i still have this memory of being in Greece and wanting to take a photo of myself beside the guards doing the classic point with stupid grin on face, and i just couldn't do it in front of all the people watching. however, i wish, even years later, that i had taken that photo.

planning a small trip to windsor on feb. 11-12. my extended family does this huge fundraising pasta dinner thing and i have volunteered jarrod and i to help with the serving. i am trying to rent a car, however, being under twenty five without a valid insurance policy is proving more than difficult. actually, that will really throw a wrench in my plans if i cannot get that sorted out.

there is this thing that i do that i am really less ashamed of than i should be. i read advice columns. i love them. i love reading people's inane questions about life and love. some make me laugh, some make me want to cry. i am not sure what it is that is so addicting about it: perhaps the same curiousity that drives me to check out The Superficial at least once a day. this crazy need to have some context in which to place my daily, rather boring, existence. yes, i said it. the superficial makes me feel better about myself in a very basic way. what am i saying? that disdain prevents envy? that i am convincing myself that i don't want, what, money, fame, a perfect body? i don't know. mostly i just read them to see "stars" in the same embarrassing positions as us. picking our noses, parking in handicapped spots (okay, i can honestly say i've never done this...but kirsten dunst sure has!), and drinking their coffees. breaking up, making up, and uh, getting down? actually, saying it like that makes it nothing like an advice column.

but i do know that Carolyn Hax offers a basic, common sense approach to life. she gives me a little insight on the bigger picture, on the fallibilities of ourselves and our friends, on how to let things go and how to stand up for ones self, and, on top of all that, makes me laugh. she's sarcastic, almost bitchy, and is absolutely hilarious. okay, maybe i admire her a little. her and veronica mars.




went to see the new world tonight. after getting over the unbelievableness that the girl playing pocahontas was only fourteen when the movie was shot, which was hard enough in itself, i was unable to get over how utterly dull the movie was. now, it was mostly my own fault. i watched Malick's The Thin Red Line, years ago, and i remember being bored then as well. but this time i find myself not only bored but annoyed. i mean, i think i get it. the obsession with nature, of the beauty of it, of the deep innate desire to turn against what is unnatural in this life and embrace what truly is beautiful about our existence. many of the leading characters in his movies have been actors on the natural stage. by this i mean, broad landscapes, intimate details, and constant reminders, by way of images of, say, a bug on a stick, that nature is the stage upon which this is all performed and that whatever drama occurs, the underlying base remains solid, strong, and beautiful. and you know, for the most part, i am up for a little reminder that human beings are not the be all of existence. but i like these reminders to serve a point. i like to see it within a context that i can understand, that makes me feel like a part of the puzzle rather than simply an addition.

i tried to articulate this at dinner the other night, out with some friends. the closest i got was, "Malick is just...weird." pretty lame. but it was and he is. i thought my brother was going to simply die from boredom. and usually he is pretty easily entertained. i do think i heard him mutter to himself, "she's only fourteen, she's only fourteen."

If you are interested in a better and more articulate article than this i would check out Pajiba's review of the film, even though i almost entirely disagree with it.

i'm a blogging addict

okay, so, in the spirit of procrastination, after i got home from tristan and isolde (more on that maybe later), instead of finishing my stunning-ly interesting speal on communication technology, i was reading the blogs that were posted on the class web site. the common consensus seems to be that blogging is a terribly self-aggrandizing hobby. the perplexing part...i did not even think of that! how impossibly self-absorbed does one have to be to a) write a blog, b) assume other people will read it, and c) other people will find some amusement in it. i would write more on this, but i keep staring at my own face in my mirror. so smooth and freckly...

here goes: my defense.

i spent a year abroad. belgium. the land of beer. as pictured below. this was an especially fancy brand. and by fancy i mean about two euros fifty cents. the hilarity: its called Kwak because of the glass it is served in. if you were to down this beer quickly, the air lodged in the bottom would "kwak" (air escaping) and explode the beer directly onto your face. you would only attempt this once yourself. but you would try to get every new friend you had to attempt it as often as the opprotunity presented itself.


back to the point of all of this. both sending and recieving mass group emails got my last nerve. very impersonal. i felt like i had no choice but to recieve them (a girl in edinburgh used to write ones that were 4mgs). i always felt like a blog was more pro-choice. people can read if they are interested, or not read, if they are not. that worked. i could read about the people i was interested in. and i could oh so blissfully ignore the girl who bombarded my inbox with mpeg's of her and boys i didn't know smiling drunkenly.

so i suppose that is the view of blogging that i keep with me. i consider it largely a way for my out-of-town friends to keep tabs on me--how i am keeping busy, who's pissing me off, and what makes me happy (that would be a whole new blog). now, i am just hoping it ain't too annoying.

this now has a purpose

well, after joining FIS1311 a little bit late (see ya later information resources and services!), i am catching up with the work to be done. read: i am writing assignment number 1. and, realizing that another requirement is the establishment of a blog, and that this was easier than writing four pages, I decided to take a break to do this. seeing as how (what a lucky ducky coincidence!) this was already established, it will now morph into a school related blog. which means i will be posting assignments every once in a while, and posting links to interesting information professional related links, articles, and other things librarian/archivist/IS-student's might be interested in.

be still, my heart

ah, the man i love...to be absolutely fair, there are photos of me somewhere that have joe louis all over my face. but jarrod did that to me. well, in the continued spirit of honesty, i put the jelly beans on him. alright, we'll call it a draw. good show, old boy.

in lighter news, put in the old five hours at the inforum tonight. thank heavens for ian, else i would have pretty much been alone there. and by pretty much, i mean there was three other people there. and they were doing work. already. every once in a while i come face to face with the fact i am indeed an incredibly poor student.

went to the ol'Leafs game last night. twenty odd leafs versus the mighty great one. it was a tough match, with the leafs finally ailing in the face of four unanswered goals. i hope you whipped their asses pat quinn! for shame! the best part, of course, we neither the fish and chips pre-game dinner julia and i enjoyed but the father/son combo seated next to us. hilariously belligerent (he told us he was married as he sat down), he truly made the experience one to remember. and supposedly he knows gretzky. i am still not sure i believe him. highlight of the evening was definitly the son of said father/son combo removing his shirt after the coyote goals. he was nine. only nine long years to wait, ladies.

it seems blogs are finally catching on amongst the kids i actually know

a friend and i were having a msn conversation, not living in the same city and all, and she asked if i had any updates from the people we attended uni with. nothing too particular, more just, are they happy, are they working, where are they living...things along that line. answers to inquiries that we took for granted when we lived and learned in the same city. and so i answered, mentionning friends in asia, the far far north, europe all over, and it struck me as impossibly incredibly wonderful that the close knit community that was the humanities program, class of 2004, (for better or for worse) are, mostly, through a tie or two, still in contact, still existing, still there...thanks to the internet, to blogs, to msn and email.

so, if anyone is reading this who wonders what happened to who, i'll let them tell you in their own words:

i have a friend, emily, who is living in Iqaluit for four months. she's not even there just dicking aorund, she's teaching Inuit art (i know, why exactly is a white girl up north teaching inuit art to inuits? i'll never know...) her travel journal is:
http://www.traveljournals.net/travelers/ewoods

sofie, a girl i met in belgium, but who is now living in toronto, for a year, doing a master's in social anthropology, writes about coming to canada, a new city, and old friends. hers is:
www.sofieincanada.blogspot.com

alex is living in japan with her boyfriend and, somehow, being as spontaneous and kind as she is, manages to bring japan to all of us...with a fantastic photos and plenty of drinking games.
http://www.traveljournals.net/travelers/quamquam/

mike manages a bit of a traveler's homepage. i think i like it best because, you know, i'm in some of the pictures. but what is so neat about his is that he writes about all the places he's visited, all over, as well as the life he is living now. i do believe i found this, while bored, one day just googling people's names.
www.members.virtualtourist.com/m/943c3/

i know you're bored. so read 'em.