question of the day: education

well, folks, i guess we've come to a conclusion about the question of "what is happiness".

the answer, aptly stated by one "s" is : happiness = warm bath
stay tuned for more insightful answers to the critical questions of life.

education is necessary to wholistic human development. DISCUSS.

good luck with that one everyone.. go ahead and sign anonymously or not if you like.... i'm sure everyone would love to hear what you say... i'll start writing back too, i promise!

*sam - you'd BETTER comment!

the second holocaust

not to take away from the wonderful discussing happening one post down (i plan on adding to it soon enough) but this link just got sent to me. the author implies that a second holocaust might be in its embryonic stages at this very moment.
i'll let you judge for yourselves. feel free to comment...and since it seems that we like anonymous comments... please, by all means, be my guest.

question of the day

alright..
in addition to the questions below... i would like to ask the following.... (this has come up in more than one recent conversation.... eek!)

what is happiness?

and if that doesn't cause what a good friend of mine calls a "brain fart".... i don't know what will!
but write your thoughts.. sign them anonymously if you're just that self-conscious....

initiating contact

Here are a couple of photos I thought were slightly interesting... I was messing with my camera yesterday and found a few interesting "modes"... sam.. the one at left is just for you! stay tuned for more! (sorry for the formating... blogger and I are not getting along very well today....)
In any case.... I wanted to discuss well, several things, but I won't bring them up just yet....
for today's post, i thought i'd go back to my "seinfeld" motif.
my title for this blog entry "initiating contact" sounds a bit awkward, i realize, however, i think it suits this entry perfectly.
anyway, so, my question for the day is:

what is the procedure on the "call back"? or, in this disgustingly technological age, "msg me, sometime, eh?"

i do believe this was actually discussed on seinfeld - but it was in regards to the morning after... as in, so you have a "great" night with someone... then you're obligated to call them back, etc etc..
in my case, i'm speaking a lot more generally... for example, many people say "yeah, i'll give ya a call sometime" - friends! not just some person you go out on an awkward date with... or one of my friends does the "i'll call you right back, ok?"
now, i must admit, i am very much "contact" shy. so i feel weird calling even my best friends - what if they're busy, or don't want to talk or... a million what ifs! however, if i tell you i'm going to call, chances are, unless something stupid happens, that i will.
on the other hand... people that go through the horrible experience of leaving me a message (with my parents or voice mail).... well, good luck on getting a call back from me... i'll do everything in my power to avoid it. excuses, staring at the phone.... perhaps even dialing and then hanging up.. ahaha (i can even SEE sam saying aww, tah)
in my defence, I KNOW i'm not the only one out there with callerphobia. not to be confused with cholera, although both are potentially deadly. eheh
anyway, let me know your thoughts.

handsblog

in an effort to impress me, jonathon has posted the most updates in one day to date - earning him a place in guiness record history.
might i say, dearest jonathon, if this feminist were possibly lesbian, she would consider going straight just for you....
ahahahahaha
more on feminism later.

by the way, his posts really are quite funny. OAW is too.. but they're two different classes of funny. which makes them both funny! so you should check them both out.. links are to the right.

of course, a note...

well, scroll down and you'll find my latest update of poem of the week. a friend of mine put in some requests today about possible topics i could write on, and i plan on fulfilling my promise to him. so rumi it was. i opened up my book to this poem and to "form is ecstatic" (note: the titles are given by the translator, coleman barks - when rumi wrote, it was just a flow of writing.... his volumes of poetry have no beginning or end).
personally, i like "form is ecstatic" better... but i decided to put "wake and walk out" up.. mostly because it discusses the need to investigate truth.
however, my opinion is beside the point.. i'll let you have a read over it and leave some comments.. then perhaps i'll explain what i think rumi is talking about....

Wake and Walk Out

By: Rumi

If I flinched at every grief, I
would be an intelligent idiot. If

I were not the sun, I'd ebb and
flow like sadness. If you were not

my guide, I'd wander lost in Sanai.
If there were no light, I'd keep

opening and closing the door. If
there were no rose garden, where

would the morning breezes go? If
love did not want music and laughter

and poetry, what would I say? If
you were not medicine, I would look

sick and skinny. If there were no
leafy limbs in the air, there would

be no wet roots. If no gifts were
given, I'd grow arrogant and cruel.

If there were no way into God, I
would not have lain in the grave of

this body for so long. If there were no
way from left to right, I could not

be swaying with the grasses. If
there were no grace and no kindness,

conversation would be useless, and
nothing we do would matter. Listen

to the new stories that begin every
day. If light were not beginning

again in the east, I would not now
wake and walk out inside this dawn.

overheard at western

i would also like to point out to you a new link in my links section.... overheard at western is my latest favorite site... second only to my own blog. :P
check it out. it rocks the socks off handsblog!
KIDDING!

my sister and i

i've been told to find shots of me smiling. here's one for now... you people do realize i had to go back almost a YEAR to find one? hehe i'm kidding... but really...
i'll update with something decent later tonight...

my blogger and i

well, sorry bout that... blogger and i have been having some interpersonal difficulties. fortunately, they seem to be resolved at the moment.

my question for you tonight is this: why do we do what we do... in short: what makes us humans tick? and then think on a smaller scale: what makes you tick?
it strikes me, as i sit here, dying of sleepiness... that the immediate reply to the above question is 'well, it's important to...." mr. x - or myself, or whoever... but then, why is it important to that person?
for example, i'm currently studying biochemistry... it's important to me yes... actually, i'm loving my classes - but what makes it important to me? (by the way, i DO know why it's important.. my question is general. i.e. this is not a life issue for me!)
another example... this one completely different... you know that irritating thing person y does? why do they do it? why is it that my brother taught my sister to say "ahhh" after she takes a sip of water?
you see, while humans are creatures of habit (hence this blog)... we still have quite a bit of control over what we do.. therefore, i submit that we allow certain actions to become subconcious, but that we do, in reality, have quite a bit of control.
anyway, i've lost my train of thought... and well, since my writing is more of a junkyard of thought, i doubt that any of you understood what i'm trying to get at regardless, so meh.

take care all

newspapers, editors, and God???

well, this past friday, (most of you know this story from personal experience, i realize), every student at the university of saskatchewan got an email from the president himself demanding that the sheaf, the university's student paper, formally apologize to all students, faculty and staff for publishing a comic entitled "capitalist piglets" and not publishing the comics of the Prophet Muhammad.
i read this and was like "what the hell is he going on about? comparing capitalists to a Prophet?" i think i thought a few curse words as well, and then got over it and was like, meh, even our president's on crack.
the weekend went on, and i hopped onto the bus this morning and an acquaintance of mine (mr. x) sits down in the seat in front of me and we start to chat. he mentioned the email from the prez, and i was like, "yeah, why's he so for publishing those comics of Muhammad??" and mr x is like, what? didn't you SEE what they published?
dear friends, my university's student paper was stupid enough to write that they were not going to publish any of the comics portraying the Prophet Muhammad, out of respect, etc... and then, published the most blashemous (and i've travelled, folks, i've seen my share of blasphemy.... can anyone say father ted???) most blashemous, disrespectful, explicit (as in i don't want my sister going anywhere NEAR those comics) and wrong comics (yes, more than one) about Jesus Christ Himself. i dare not recount what they've portrayed the Son of God as....
all this.... published on Ash Wednesday.
you'd think maybe they could've done the standard "pick on feminists due to international women's day" instead!
so here's the thought of the day, folks... what has led our society to such decadence that it is drawn to portray not only great historical figures, but Messengers of God, in such a manner that would've been demeaning to any individual... i, personally, cannot understand it.
and so that's that for the sheaf and i. it's officially sunk in my mind.... i mean, before i was like, yeah, it's trash.. but so's everything else... but no, this.. this is a new low.
i agree with jonathon. we should make a bonfire out of this week's papers. (the fools didn't even remove the paper from the racks.... that's how i got a look at them...)

trapped... with myself!

hey everyone.. well, i don't normally do the whole "talk about emotions" kinda thing.. but this is as close as i'm going to come to it i hope....
sam has been a loving ST and gotten me to get my ass off msn and into my books... so i'm basically under study-arrest (very similar to house arrest and cardiac arrest..) and tonight, i even started on the coffee.. it's disastrous, i know. but with the fast and all, i find that i'm just not motivated during the day, and at night i'm like: must work!
anyway, the moral of this story is this: most of you have one of my many email addresses... USE THEM and also leave comments on this here's blog... i am going to die if i'm going to stick out the no-msn thing till my last final.. which is on the 22nd of april... *gulp*
i will be updating this blog more regularly.. i want to get back to my poem of the week.. and possibly add in quotation of the week as well.. or of the day, whichever works....
stay tuned this week for a commentary on international women's day (march 8).
anyway, i must be off..
check out the links i have up.. there's some pretty interesting stuff there.. and quite a diverse array of blogs, and websites! ...i'm a particular big fan of news with herr heinz and of views from central canada... *also note... the link titles i've put up are not the actual titles of the sites/blogs necessarily.... so don't judge these sites by their links... *that cliche was for you, sam!

take care everyone!
and if you live in saskatoon.... have a safe and not too stuck time... (i've been getting stuck all week, and driving like matt damon in bourne supremacy... i just need the soundtrack now!!!)