Friday, November 28, 2008

Quand j’étudie les mécanismes de pouvoir, j’essaie d’étudier leur spécificité

One of these days, I am going to remember that Michel Foucault and Léon Foucault are not the same person, but until that time I will remain a miserable individual.

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Ior mi,' dixit sollemniter, 'egomet, Winnie ille Pu, caudam tuam reperiam.

With my father re-publishing his older poetry, I have come to the realization that those reading it may read passages that refer to me. Those persons might know me, or know of me. Opinions about me are being formed by the written word at this VERY MOMENT. After the Second World War, Christopher Robin Milne grew to loathe his father and all his works, embittered by his portrayal as a young boy. I have no such feelings of vitriol, but I am left wondering: my childhood is set in print, it should last for eons, given the right conditions. If that is all that is left of my name and house in history, how am I to feel about it?

Isn't it funny
How a bear likes honey?

Quid est causae cur?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

The Eternal Waiting Room

Since it has been nearly a week since I last posted, I thought I owed it to my readership of two to update with something.

It's very late at night, and for the second night in a row, I have spent more hours than I wish to sitting in a chair, waiting for call to be over. Technically, it was cue-to-cue today, but they spent so much time on the actors that they might as well of called it rehersal. Fah. It was BORING, and they did not need us.

Okay, posterity placated.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

I'm too tired to update. Argh!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Sometimes It's hard.

It's hard to update frequently when you're computer breaks down for most of a week and then you have a twelve hour crew call. You get too tired to write. I shall try to finish a post of been writing soon, but the words only come out of my head when i am lying in bed at night, trying to fall asleep.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Yeuh, Yeuh, Yeuh.

On any average day, I find our anthem to be a rather dull and tiresome piece of patriotism. Even on Dominion Day, which has since been converted into the generic, banal Canada Day it bores me, and I find dismissing the whole day as irrelevant. Only on Armistice Day does that change. On that day, I find pride in its song, I tear up at its tune. At today's ceremony at Humber, a brief ten minute affair held in one of the cafeterias, I was struck by how few people were wearing poppies. A remnant of remnant had them on, and there was only a few people who were even apologetic for not wearing one. When I inquired as to why the auditorium wasn't in use (It can seat many persons), I was informed that it was because the music department had a class in there.

I was disgusted, horrified to hear such a pathetic reason. Who cares about the music department? They can't practice elsewhere for one single day? Hell, why were they even having a class? All class should have been cancelled. This used to be important.

No more, I guess. What have we become?

Monday, November 10, 2008

To show us where she stood there rests alone Tiber; and that too hastens to be gone.

It is far past time for me to accept the coming of the European Union. I have of late been reading Gwynne Dyer's book "With Every Mistake", and it has convinced me that, however much I desire to ignore it's existence, I have to come to terms with the EU. The Europe of my past, that hopelessly over-romanticized collection of warring states will not come again. There is too much desire for unity, too much need to forget the conflicts of old. And lets face it, modern European states have failed to emerge as decent places. France, for example, had to misfortune to be the home of Charles DuGalle, who left his people an inability to realize that their global empire failed with an almost insufferable arrogance. Great Britain, which could have recognized the potential of it's Commonwealth and created a world-wide federation the likes of which the world had never seen... chose instead to turn it's back on it's creation. It bred a bloated, ignorant middle class instead, and still clings to it's xenophic colonial racism. What a waste. I accepted long ago that Rome would never rise again. It's heirs were squabbling fools and the ponderous bulk of Byzantium did nothing more than grow small year by year for a mellenium. The EU is not Rome's succesor, it has no desire or comprehension of the necessary imperium, nor does it require it. Whether it suceeds or fails depends it's people. If they can accept that they are part of something larger, if they can learn to not to say " I am a German" or "I am Italian" but "Civis Europa Sum"; then sixteen centuries of bitter fighting will have been rocked to sleep. If they can achieve the unity that has so long been denied to them, then the lessons of the past will have been learned.

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Shall we ever find that lovely land of Might-Have-Been

I loathe this city, and it's festering streets of noise. Toronto is slowly destroying my will to live. It's the location of my residence, a concrete monstrosity fit only for demolition. It's halls are filled with the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the forward and the vain, making their usual uproar. they drink to excess and stumble through the corridors shouting and ranting their drunken pleasures. The disease is not the residence, no, this is but a symptom of the disease that is Toronto. The impartial, uncaring nature of this city is reflected in the detached nature of the residence. Cold, heartless concrete, bored and useless staff, a total failure to provide anything for it's inhabitants. A hateful place.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Video Game Morality

There's an odd dichotomy when it comes to "ethical" decisions in a video game. Tot those in the know, we've all been extremely violent towards pixels that resemble our fellow humans. We've fought zombie hordes, we've assassinated merchants and guard captains and hit people in our vehicles, either accidentally or on purpose. And having done these things, we've felt about as guilty as if we had just stapled some papers together, or closed the blinds. And yet I have loudly denounced hunting games as evil, and would only ever play the clay pigeon levels of Duck Hunt. TV Tropes, a website which should be everyone's first reference for anything of value, has named the cliche of a villain proving his true evil nature by inuring an animal a "Kick The Dog" moment. There's something about injuring an animal in a game that is reprehensible, while recreating the battle of Themopyle if fun and exciting. I'd write more, but I've gotten addicted to TV Tropes again.

Trashing Motzart is classy

We tend, for whatever reason, to neglect other Requiems in favour of Mozart's overly bombastic last triumph. Keep in mind that Mozart completed barely a third of this piece before his passing, so the credits that go to him for it are empty.

For your musical delectation, I provide the Agnus Dei from Gabriel Fauré's Requiem, Opus 48.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RSMcgQfM9E

Going among the mad.

It has been said that I should start a blog, merely because people are tired of having to listen to me in person. If I ramble incoherently to the endless abyss of cyberspace, then I can have the satisfaction of having said something without the virtue of affecting anyone by it. Now, normally I would be loathe to do something that all the kids are doing nowadays, but when your own father starts a blog, you realize that you may, in point of fact, be even further behind the times then you had previously assumed. Since Blogger helpfully points out I created this account last year, this idea had no doubt occurred to me previously.

Nietzsche warned of the perils of gazing into the abyss, but what if we shout into it? What if we fill it with words? Humans do abhor empty space. What if we try to fill the internet up? With something other than pornography, I mean. If that a worthy goal, in this secular age?