Free Again

For years it was free to visit the National Art Gallery. Then they started charging admission which sucks! For a couple of years I bought a membership because the student one wasn't very expensive. It was just announced that entrance to both the permanent and special exhibitions is free for Carleton students, you just need to show your student card at the door. This is in place until June 30, 2010!! I'm really impressed with Carleton for making this happen, I think that the National Art Gallery is an amazing place and I can't wait to start going regularly again.

Rerun Time

Just when I get used to a good TV schedule it stops. I know what shows I'm watching this year, when they are aired, where and when I can find them online! This week nothing new is airing. I'm hoping that America's Next Top Model will keep going but everything else is a rerun. I don't know why they do this, I was complaining and asking if it was an election but it turns out it is probably because of The World Series. So this week I can't watch:
-House
-How I Met Your Mother
-Big Bang Theory
-Glee
-Saturday Night Live
-Private Practice
I'm quickly running out of West Wing episodes on my computer so that is making it even worse. I was saddened by all this but then remembered there were other shows I liked to watch that I hadn't started this year. That means a lot of catching up to do with:
-30 Rock
-This Hour Has 22 Minutes

I Burnt My Face

Ok, this is strange and it took me a while to figure out how I did it. I'm on a new skin care washing regime. This includes face cleanser at night then toner and moisturizer morning and night. This morning before work I brushed my teeth, threw some water on my face, and did the toner. Then I bummed around the apartment doing little things, putting away dishes, packing my purse, washing the counters, getting dressed, etc.. Then I sat down on my bed to put on the moisturizer. My face started to feel weird and tight, which is strange because the moisturizer is really nice and normally makes my face feel great. Anyway, I'm really thankful I had decided to put on make-up today or else I would have just left the house at that point without looking in a mirror. (I seriously look in a mirror maybe once or twice a day, I don't even really have one in my room, I'm just not a mirror person.) So, I get into the bathroom and my face is bright red and puffy, not my forehead but my cheeks, nose, chin, and around my mouth. Bright red! I touched it and it was sore. It looked like a really bad sun burn. Anyway, I pile on the make-up, but you can actually see the redness through my high quality, high pigment, mineral foundation, I'm having to layer the stuff on. Anyway, I can't figure out how I did it until I go to wash my hands. Then I realise that it is the first time I have washed my hands since brushing my teeth, and I wiped the counter with a cloth and bare hands. Using a lot of lysol. Then when I did the moisturizer I must have got lysol all over my face. I guess my hands can handle the lysol, but my face can't. Yea, and it is still sore.

Laughed Until I Cried

The greatest nights are when I stay up laughing and talking with friends. A recent evening that comes to mind is "The Night of The Worst Case Scenario Game" with Erin and Jenn. I found these The Worst Case Scenario cards somewhere and they had been kicking around Die Höhle for a while, I kept meaning to send them to my brother as part of a care package. I think they are meant to be part of a bigger game or something but I just had the cards. Bored one night, Jenn, Erin, and I decided to make it into our own game. Just reading them aloud to one another and guessing the right answer. The cards were very strange and we laughed a lot at their strange obsession with hotel rooms and gift giving in foreign countries. The cards are all set up the same. The top has a real life situation like "How to dress a puncture wound" or "How to tell if your phone has been taped". Then the card has three options, A, B, or C. The back of the card gives the correct answer but sadly no explanation why. What brought us to hysterics was a card we came across near the end. In a sea of believable situations related to espionage, survival in the wild, or medical emergencies this one just seems hilariously surreal;

How To Attack An Alien

A) Go for the eyes. It will be the only sensitive area you can readily identify.

B) Never, ever attack an alien. Most cases of alien abduction have been harmless information gathering exercises.

C) Jump up and down and act erratically to distract the alien. Then punch it in the mouth and run.

It was Jenn's turn and some how she got it right, option A. The fact she knew the right answer and agreed with the explanation the eyes would be an identifiable sensitive area was both amusing and a little unsettling. I thought the phrase "punch it in the mouth" when referring to an alien was too funny for words. And, we all thought that option B was a frightening notion. We laughed for ages about this. Every now and then I remember it and still giggle.

Note: Photo by Erin Armstrong-Hivale and this story was originally posted on her blog (see link on Right)

Not The Same Person

I found out tonight that the person who sings Piano Man is not Billy Idol but instead someone called Billy Joel, who is a different person. I thought that Piano Man sounded very different from White Wedding and Billy Idol's other songs but for some reason I didn't figure it out before.
Clarification: I know and love the song Piano Man, and many other Billy Joel songs, I just thought they were sung by Billy Idol. I was quite impressed that Idol had such a varied musical repertoire. I just don't think I paid attention after someone said "Billy" since I thought there was only one "Billy" singer. Turns out there are two.

Glee

So many people have told me to start watching the new TV show - Glee. I hadn't gotten around to it until last night and I must say it did not disappoint. I had read a bunch of reviews where critics praised it and tons of my friends have raved about it. I thought it could never live up to the hype, however by the end of the first episode I was hooked. It sits on the great line between pure frivolous escapism and smart funny satire. (Plus it has some really cute guys in it who sing and dance, so hot!) You can catch most of the episodes online at Global TV Online and the rest is available on the deeper darker areas of the internet. I think it airs on television on Wednesday nights for the people who still enjoy things the old fashion way. Trust me on this, Glee will move you! (I think it is better watched in succession, but that might just be because I like to watch everything in order.)

The Recipes Of Depression

Prepare any recipe well ahead of time
Don`t pre-heat the oven
Hide the knives
**
2 Celexa
4 Welbutrin
3 Effexor
Toss together and serve over a generous helping of Crown and Coke
*
3 Balanced meals a day
8 Hours of sleep at night
Regular exercise
Bake for 6 hours with a well greased Hash Pipe
*
Prozac 3 times daily
Weekly group therapy
Individual counselling
Stir with Incessant Gambling and Unprotected Sex
**
Combining all three recipes makes for a delicious late night meal

But the next morning can be killer!

-C.S

A Fiction Workshop Jump Start: "Recipes to Cure Depression"

Then!?!

MSN had a really neat photo article called Now & Then: Heartthrobs Through the Years. I could not believe that they listed Leo here as a "Then" as well as Freddie Prince, Jr and J.T.T.! It makes me feel so old. It was nice to browse through and drool a little though.

Monday's Child

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

I always thought the year I was born that I was actually born of the holiday Victoria Day, which would mean a Monday. That would be great, then according to the poem I would be pretty but instead it turns out I was born on a Thursday so have 'far to go.' I don't know what that means. I think it either means that I will have to work harder in my life or that I will be really successful. Find out what day of the week you were born online.

Skylon-4

The attack squadron was now in orbit over Skylon-4. This would mean that Toby would be quiet for at least 15 minutes. Carol went into the living room, away from the TV. “Bless television,” she thought. “Bless bad children’s shows selling toys, candy, and fast food chains to my captivated 4 year old. Bless animated aliens and their annoying ramblings on Skylon-4.” Carol closed her eyes slowly as she sunk into the quiet comfort of the overstuffed designer couch. She tried to ignore the nagging voice in her head that reminding her that years ago she hadn’t even wanted a TV in the house while she was raising her kids.

-C.S

A Fiction Workshop Jump Start: "The attack squadron was now in orbit over Skylon-4…"

Fiction Workshop Writing

I haven’t wanted to put any of my Fiction Workshop writing on Always Standing since I didn’t feel that the blog posts of my short story went over very well. However, most of the stuff I’m doing in class is very short. We call them ‘Jump Starts,’ the instructor gives us a topic or starting sentence and the class just writes for 10 minutes or so. I really enjoy it, it is the most pressure free way to write. The story doesn’t have to be anything or go any where; there is no planned purpose of it other than to just spend 10 minutes writing. It is great! I guess this is similar to the One Minute Writer that Steph always does on her blog. I rarely finish a story during these exercises and sometimes it comes to a clean little end. Since they are small I think I will start posting some of them occasionally.

The Eyeballing Game

This is interesting and addictive. Some people are bothered by pictures on the wall hanging slightly crooked. Others may not even be aware that something might be amiss. This game tests the ability to see if things are straight or crooked. The best way to figure out how the game works is to simply play it. The game shows you a series of geometries that need to be adjusted a little bit to make them right. A square highlights the point that needs to be moved or adjusted. After your done, the 'correct' geometry is also shown. You do each challenge three times. It tallies up your average error. The lower your average error, the better. I got a 4.9. How did you do?

I Made A Bowl

This took me FOREVER. I painted it at The Mud Over over something like 6 separate trips and a total of over 20 hours of sketching and painting. I'm happy with how it turned out and now use it to keep my pill bottles in beside my bed.

Halifax

Halifax is an awesome city. I have been three times now and always enjoy myself. It is so interesting and colourful. There is tons to do, even though I didn't really make it to any of the tourist places this time. Instead I got to hang out with my brother and had a couple of driving tours with Anna's Dad while hearing about Halifax history from a true Nova Scotian. Anna's parents also had a traditional Kitchen Party while I was there, complete with musicians playing banjos, fiddles, guitars, etc. I definitely joined in singing Barrett's Privateers, great song! Spending time with Little Brother Mike was so nice since he is rarely in Ontario anymore. The course he is on right now sounds pretty cool and he loves being in the Maritimes again. My parents are going out to visit him this coming weekend. I'm jealous and wish I could go again. Halifax such a nice place, you totally need to go if you haven't been there.

Thanksgiving Sonnet

This poem will sit at fourteen lines long.
Perfected by Shakespeare, however my
Iambic-pentameter isn't strong.
Lines are ten syllables, thought I should try
My hand at a Sonnet. The rhyming scheme
Is beyond specific but I will keep
Writing these poems as if in a dream.
Wait that's a lie, shouldn't get in too deep,
This is the last poem. Holiday's done.
My plane leaves tomorrow, so much to do.
I'll miss Halifax as it is such fun.
But I need to get back, school work is due
Soon. Don't worry it is still on my mind,
Happy Thanksgiving, now back to the grind!!

-C.S.

Thanksgiving Limerick

The Limerick is another poem that's small.

I like it much better there's no need to stall.

It's so much easier,

Just couldn't be breezer,

Wishing a Happy Thanksgiving all!

-C.S.

Thanksgiving Haiku

I hate all Haikus

Have to get it over with.

Happy Thanksgiving!

-C.S.

Poetic Thanksgiving

I am leaving tonight for a little trip to Halifax for Thanksgiving weekend. I'm going with Anna and staying at her parents. This is a much needed Anna visit since she now lives in Montreal and it is harder to stay in touch. I was so much easier when she worked full time on campus! I am also going to see Little Brother Mike who is out there training, something to do with scuba diving or blowing things up or both together or something. As everyone knows I miss him terribly and love him so much, can't wait for the visit!! I want to keep the blog going since I really don't like to take long breaks from it. So, I thought I might write you some poems for the holiday! Stay Tuned. Happy Thanksgiving!

Time Management Games

I really love Time Management Games. It is the strangest style of computer games but basically it is what it sounds like. They are similar to simulation games but there is a higher emphases on speed. Usually it is some type of shop scenario; a restaurant, spa, salon, bar, florist, bake shop, etc. I first found the genre with Diner Dash, which is still a classic. I have since rediscovered it with Sally's Spa and Sally's Salon. (See picture Right.) I actually got into them again because Lindz just got a new iPod Touch and I found Sally's Spa for that and it is amazing. Actually inspired a deep desire to get an iPod Touch or even, dare I say it, an iPhone. I digress. Anyway, I wonder if these games are enjoyed more by girls since they all have very girly themes. What does that say about what women find enjoyable? They are pretty hard to find online to play, you usually have to download a free demo which only lasts an hour or so. I keep being tempted to just pay for a full version of one. They are just so much fun, despite sounding so very lame.

I Can Always Justify It

*Phone conversation this evening about going to the mall*
Me: So I think we should take a cab there.
Ottawa Erin: Oh, ok, why?
Me: 'Cause you know, we are running late, it is raining...
Erin: Really? It is raining?
Me: I don't know, it could be!
*Turns out, it wasn't raining*
Erin: What do you mean you don't know if it is raining?
Me: I'm in a basement apartment!
Erin: It has windows.
Me: Yeah I know, I'm looking out one. It doesn't seem to be raining, but still, it could be! I think we should take a cab.
*Turns out, the whole evening it didn`t rain at all*
**Still took a cab though**

Only A Matter Of Time

I have only had Google AdSense on my blog for a couple of days and already I'm adding more. I am worried that it is going to be too much, that readers will find it distracting, and that it means I'm selling out. However, I really like that I can customize the colours of it so that it matches my blog. I love the matching!! I'm sure I will soon find out that the money comes in so slowly it is barely worth the aesthetic compromise but for now I am curious to see how it all works.

So Much Junk

I don't what has been going on with me these last few days but I have been going crazy with the junk food. This, coupled with no longer training to run, is going to have a pretty negative effect on my body very quickly. But I crave it all so bad....
-chips
-apple crisp
-smarties
-french fries
-cake
-nachos
-chocolate milk
-pop
-sour candies
-brown sugar, just plain
Note: In the last three days I have eaten all of the above, some multiple times. However, I have a plan. I'm going to try not to eat any more junk food until Halloween. Then all that candy, chips, and other goodies will taste so much better. I may end up eating some bad things over Thanksgiving but I figure that will be alright since it is also a holiday.

Envying My Future Self

"Every publicity image confirms and enhances every other. Publicity is not merely an assembly of competing messages: it is a language in itself which is always being used to make the same general proposal. Within publicity, choices are offered between this cream and that cream, that car and this car, but publicity as a system only makes a single proposal. It proposes to each of us that we transform ourselves, or our lives, by buying something more. This more, it proposes, will make us in some way richer - even though we will be poorer by having spent our money. Publicity persuades us of such a transformation by showing us people who have apparently been transformed and are, as a result, enviable. The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And publicity is the process of manufacturing glamour.

It is important here not to confuse publicity with the pleasure or benefits to be enjoyed from the things it advertises. Publicity is effective precisely because it feeds upon the real. Clothes, food, cars, cosmetics, baths, sunshine are real things to be enjoyed in themselves. Publicity begins by working on a natural appetite for pleasure. But it cannot offer the real object of pleasure and there is no convincing substitute for a pleasure in that pleasure's own terms. The more convincingly publicity conveys the pleasure of bathing in a warm, distant sea, the more the spectator-buyer will become aware that he is hundreds of miles away from that sea and the more remote the chance of bathing in it will seem to him. This is why publicity can never really afford to be about the product or opportunity it is proposing to the buyer who is not yet enjoying it.

Publicity is never a celebration of a pleasure-in-itself. Publicity is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of other. Publicity is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour.

Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable. In this respect the envied are like bureaucrats; the more impersonal they are, the greater the illusion (for themselves and for others) of their power. The power of the glamorous resides in their supposed happiness: the power of the bureaucrat in his supposed authority. It is this which explains the absent, unfocused look of so many glamour images. The look out over the looks of envy which sustain them.

The spectator-buyer is meant to envy herself as she will become if she buys the product. She is meant to imagine herself transformed by the product into an object of envy for others, an envy which will then justify her loving herself. One could put this another way: the publicity image steals her love of herself as she is, and offers it back to her for the price of the product."

--John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Link - Always A Mess

New Link on Right

Blogging is great! Through my influence or otherwise a bunch of my friends have been slowly starting up their own sites over the years. Ottawa Erin is the lastest!! As a personal rule, I don't feature or link to a blog until it has at least 5 posts completed. This gives the writer time to get used to the format and gives readers enough material to get a sense about what the blog is about. Also, a lot of people start blogs and abandon them, I need to see commitment! (See section of an XKCD comic called Superlative on Right.) Erin's blog is called Always A Mess and is part of an effort to clean up her life, "sometimes habits are hard to change". She has been keeping a lot of clippings, pictures, cutouts, ripped bits of newspaper and other scraps for years now. They have been kept in pages of books, old shoe boxes, tucked into the back corners of drawers and every other imaginable place, I know this is true because I helped her move a few months ago. Now Ottawa Erin is attempting to clean up by cataloging all of it and new materials she finds on Always A Mess. One other thing, she has two really cool features at the very bottom of her blog, a Fish Pond and a collection of quotes. See Link to Erin's blog in My Links.

It Was Time

I finally got Google AdSense. I don't think I will add too much yet, I'll maybe add more later on. (Yes, there is a pun to be seen there, but I'm choosing to ignore it. I hate the puns.) Right now it is just one small banner at the very very bottom of the blog. I'm trying to ease myself and others into it. I figure if I can make money, I should try to make money. I don't think it will take me long to add a side bar one below my Blog Archive, maybe in a couple of weeks once I have gotten used to it.

Blow Your Mind Hole

I saw this little bit on an episode of West Wing sometime over the last week. It has been haunting me ever since. I have always know what it says to be true but to see it presented so clearly really blew my mind. I wanted to share it on Always Standing but didn't know how. I figured I would have to further research what they are talking about and write a post on it. I also could maybe find the episode online somewhere and direct everyone to the proper point in it. On a whim I thought I might be able to to find it on YouTube to see if the exact clip I wanted was available. I didn't think I would have much luck since West Wing is an older show and this was an obscure section in just one episode of its seven seasons. Turns out when I typed in just 'west wing' without even further qualifiers this was the third clip listed. I guess it was interesting to a few other people too. Enjoy!