century egg #2

two realizations.

1. i have idols! i've concluded that there are two people i have had the opportunity to work with over the past year that have become idols to me. i consider myself lucky to have worked with them and hope to have the chance to work with them in the future!

2. i love music! i absolutely do!

also, i need to chill out.

golden phoenix

i spent the last week thinking about how similar globalism rhetoric is to the rhetoric of the british empire in its heyday, and then i came across an article that made the connection explicitly, and positively. i.e. globalism is great, it is doing just what the british empire did. gosh.

the british empire, in the 1800s, began to relax somewhat in creating a formal empire in favour of an 'informal' empire, where all of the benefits in trading rights and market access are accrued without any of the expenditure in military force and local administration. smart business, that. bush has taken clinton's informal empire and made it explicit and overt. while 'no one is in charge of globalization' was once a central tenet of globalism, the us has become explicit about its mission and leadership role. btw, how much longer can we continue to suggest that a smaller gov't is a goal of globalism when it is only state power that keeps it going? it is a shift in the focus of state 'intrusion', not a general reduction in its activities. oh, and the complicating factor of democratic states electing leaders that don't like globalism? what happens then? if democracy = liberalism, then hamas wouldn't win elections. no wonder peter mackay tripped on that one. this is all making me nostalgic! i read about these things between 2000-2003.

i said on friday that dubai seems taken straight from a don delillo novel. i want to know what he thinks of it all. the biggest mall in the world. a gigantic island, just because. see, the seven emirs of the UAE only got together to keep up with the game. 'hey, nation-states seem to be the hot new thing. let's make one of our own!' ergo, UAE. dubai has been characterized as a city state. perhaps it is just ahead of the curve this time? i think about dubai a lot.

why does everybody need a job? because we cannot sustain ourselves by our own means without over-producing something to trade with someone else? the answer is in economies of scale. what will we do if our supply chains are interrupted?

although i've diagnosed myself with a combination of acute sleep deprivation and a mild form of general anxiety disorder, i'm still awake at 3.30am. i am rapidly accruing comfortable domestic trappings without either the stable income or relatively defined career path. career paths are terrifying me lately. we look at the employment histories of people applying for positions at the university and judge their career paths. i expect to get just under 4 hrs. of sleep tonight.

kensington - cedar cottage

this is the second attempt at a post. i simply do not have the patience to painstakingly reconstruct the entire post that i unwittingly deleted. see, i am using safari, which features tabbed browsing! i often make the mistake of closing the entire window when i mean to close a tab. i just closed the entire window, including my 'blogger.com' tab, without saving a draft. mozilla gives you a warning: 'you are about to close 5 tabs. proceed?' i am now going to finally install mozilla.

a summary!

• i got a case of beer on monday and one of the bottles was empty! it was easy to return it for another case.
  
• i like india pale ales and sean doesn't. IPA was made by the british in india, as they attempted to find a beer that would not spoil in the hot climate.
  
• i am interested in learning more about british india
  
• i am interested in learning more about the end of the ottoman empire
  
• we were told in my POL 327 tutorial that wikipedia is not an acceptable source for a research essay. from an earlier version of the 'political parties of latvia' page: Badass Nigger Foundation or BNF; this is largely believed to consist of Sweet Sweetback, the only black man in all of Europe
  
• i like politics and committee work but i do not like the student society.
  
• i like music.
  
• i like isaac asimov's foundation trilogy a lot, and am now on the second book. we've covered some 200-odd years of history now, and when there are references to historical events in subsequent chapters (every 20 pages or so) i get very nostalgic, even though i only read the referenced event last week. incredible. i only read it on the skytrain and bus, and i only read textbooks at home.
  

also, unsurprisingly, dose is ceasing publication, as of today. on a typical skytrain car in the morning, i will see 15 copies of 24hrs, 8-10 metros, and maybe 1 dose. nobody reads it because it is LAME and it tries too hard. lame pseudo-hipster trendoid cheesy and LAME newspaper. now i feel smug! DOSE was our OK SODA. kinda. quote from the toronto star: "dose wasn't funny". so true, so true.

i am smug about the failure of dose. is this akin to people's smugness at the failure of david blaine to break his underwater breathing record or the failure of the segway human transporter? yes, because these are all tales of hubris! these are life lessons to the rest of us, reminding us to not get ahead of ourselves and always stay grounded. i feel no guilt over my smugness at dose's failure! they were dishonest.

i remember when they picked the new pope! i was in bed, listening to 'the current' on CBC. they had a correspondent in vatican city. "white smoke. the smoke is definitely white this time. they've picked a new pope". several days earlier, kevin, amanda, and i had been discussing the pope selection process over breakfast at the sunny spot cafe. i remember this very vividly!

oh, also! we watched the 'no logo' movie in class on tuesday, and i got very very nostalgic. people marching in streets with nike logos on placards! i read no logo in 1998(1999?) when i was in high school, and this reminded of that time. going to high school, thinking about logos and branding and global supply chains and lifestyle marketing!

kitsault

today, after eating lunch at bao chau and getting dog food, we went to a used bookstore, 'companion books', in burnaby. i got

• the orange r, by john clagett (1978). a science fiction novel about america after nuclear contamination. society is segregated between those who are radioactive, called 'roberts', and the 'normals'. now, the normals believe that they have found a safe new way of producing nuclear power, and only the roberts can warn them of the horrible dangers. i expect that it will be a didactic screed against nuclear energy!
  
• second foundation, by isaac asimov (1953). i am nearly finished foundation, and i now have the next two books in the series ready to go. gar, do you need to borrow this? i will probably not get to it for at least a month.
  
• white niggers of america, by pierre vallieres (1968). the title, of course, refers to les habitants. the original subtitle translated as 'the autobiography of a quebecois terrorist'. this book is considered a manifesto of sorts for the FLQ, who kidnapped and killed pierre laporte 2 years after its publication. laporte was strangled to death with his rosary beads.
  
• decision at delphi, by helen macinnes (1960). i read this many times in high school, and now have my own copy. it's international espionage(!) set against the backdrop of post-civil war greece. i have always related this book to delillo's the names, set in greece some 20 years later.
  
• louis riel: a comic-strip biography by chester brown (2003). i have wanted to read this since it was released! today was the first time i'd seen it used, and it is in immaculate condition.
  

we have begun to move boxes over to our new townhouse on the other side of the co-op. i'll finally reorganize my bookshelf, i hope. jan and i may amalgamate our collections to some extent. we have not yet settled where the bookshelves will end up or what books will go where. we will definitely need at least one new bookshelf.

when i have some free time at the end of the summer, i will go back to companion books and clean out some of their arthur c. clarke. i am also considering picking up some paperback ray bradbury short story collections. i have a huge, hardcover collection with all of his stories, but it is hard to read anywhere but home due to the sheer size and weight. several smaller collections at 3.00 apiece may be a wise investment.

the outer worlds

+6148 songs in iTunes now, which translates to 17.6 days. 2279 of those are still unplayed. my most listened to track is still paul simon, rhythm of the saints. i listened to scott walker, nite flights 5 times yesterday before i backed off, not wanting something to take the top spot after two days in the library.
+four days on the sunshine coast! another camping trip in the middle of june, too. possibly to manning park.
+i am going in late to the peak today. i'd hoped to be in by 11.30, but it's 11.45 now and i'm still at home waking up. i made coffee and read the newspaper. we will be moving within several weeks, at which point i will be able to spend each summer morning making coffee and reading the paper on our patio. once again, i'm hoping to change my sleeping pattern so that i can get to bed before midnight and get up before 8 am.
+i was up until roughly 12:30am last night looking over my schoolbooks for the summer, memorizing due dates, getting familiar with type faces, reading loads. i have an incredible amount of information to assimilate each week. as a palate cleanser, i am reading science fiction. i made it halfway through isaac asimov's 'foundation' this past weekend, and will probably tear through some star trek novels this next weekend. last week i read TOS #79 - the patrian transgression. i love the plots. this one was a well-worn ethical trope. the enterprise is called in to help a local government against rebels forces, but they soon find themselves sympathizing with the rebels in their fight against a totalitarian regime. within the last 15 pages or so, the corrupt elements are rooted out and the system begins to reincorporate the rebel elements, who are grateful for the enterprise's independant legitimization of their cause.
+it is only now hitting home how diminished my influence on campus is. i have no bargaining chip, no 'people' to bring on side. that said, i am probably the single most influential student on campus within significant portions of the administration. this would be super if i was earning a paycheque. i trust that dividends will be paid later. in a sense, i wish that i had run again and lost. it would have been a clean break, closure. i can't go onto campus now without being stopped for gossip by someone, or consulted for either information or advice. this is incredibly flattering, but i will never be able to resume my life as a student. again, that would be great so long as it came with a paycheque.
+everything about the sunshine coast was great. absolutely everything.
+i intend to stop bringing newspapers on to the skytrain with me. only books. i will read newspapers at home.
+how did joni mitchell end up meaning so much? i listened to blue, hejira, court and spark, for the roses, don juan's reckless daughter, the hissing of summer lawns, and turbulent indigo an incredible amount as a teenager.

+some iTunes statistics!

• 11 songs with the word 'paper' in the title
  
• 29 songs with the word 'bird' in the title
  
• only 8 songs about 'death'
  
• 3 monday, 2 tuesday, no wednesday, no thursday, 3 friday, 6 saturday, 8 sunday! 116 'day's, and 9 'week's
  
• 14 'dog's, but only 1 'vacation'