The Way I See It

The theory goes that when you dream (and most of what we know about dreams is theory, so such conjectures are legitimate), your subconscious goes through your thoughts and tries to sort them out. This means that when you're under a lot of pressure, or big things are happening in your life, you'll tend to dream for longer. Longer periods of REM sleep will eventually translate into more periods of REM during the average sleep period than the usual 4-5, in order to accommodate all the information that needs sorting in a highly complex life. So more sleep is needed. That's the theory. Another consideration is Narcolepsy. Of all the sleep disorders I've looked into, its symptoms most match my own. Another theory is that it's both, they aren't too incompatible after all. Then again, it could just be hypochondriacism (maybe one of the longest words I've ever used legitimately). I always dream.
I had a really good one the other day where I remembered how to fly. Well, it's not really flying, per se, but it's a good feeling of weightlessness, of slowing time while you jump. Try it sometime, take a great big leap (maybe take a run at it) and when you're in the air you simply remember in the back of your mind how to fly, it's either that or forget that you should fall, and just float there for a few seconds, pedaling the intangible aether, until you come back down to rest a few meters on. In my dream I did it for hours. That was my morning.
There are places in my dreams that seem more real than reality. Have I ever told you about the house? It's a great big affair, full of countless passages and ante-rooms. On the side facing the ocean there's a huge sweeping staircase traveling three floors with Victorian glass-doored big balconies on each of the three floors. There's one passage and one room in the house that nobody knows but me, and as many times as I've visited it in my dreams, I have never revealed its location. It's like a sanctuary from any nightmare, protected only by its utmost secrecy.
I still remember the vividness of the palace floating above London. I was only there once, but it was beautiful enough to burn a lasting memory. It was Laputian in style, but once you found your way inside, you were no longer in London, you entered a parallel dimension, one where the palace was much bigger and the towers and smog were replaced by a verdant expanse. It existed briefly near the end of the nineteenth century and from then I suppose it only existed in dreams.
Is there a word for meeting somebody you haven't seen for a while, in a dream, and feeling like you really spent some quality time with them once you woke up? Those don't happen too often, but when they do I wake up with the feeling that I've been missing the part of me that was them for some time and I may have finally got it back. Only to wish they still had it so I'd feel more compelled to search them out. If you're one of those people I apologize and I hope I still have a little part of you.
There's the occasional nightmare, but when you walk the world of the lucid dream long enough, you learn how to embrace them. The dream of pursuit can be turned to adventure. After all, car chases are thrilling and parkour is a sport I've always wanted to take up. The worst is the dream where you, yourself, are the enemy. The dreams where you screw up your own life and you have to explain it to people. And it all seems so real, and there's never any really good explanation. And when you wake up, it's with a sense of relief. After all, it's just a dream.

Will

Choose your own adventure

You stand apprehensively on the university greens, your last final completed. To your East lies the sunny paradise known as the Okanagan and further still, across the great plains, lies the jewel city of Halifax. To your West lies the great metropolis of your birth, struggling under the heavy hand of depression. The paths to the North remain blocked by the winter snows and the impenetrable line of the great mountains. The South is a dead route, a different race of beings to which you do not belong, The emerald key is needed to unlock its gate.

>Survey surroundings
You take in the serene campus that has been your place of learning for the last eight months, it has served you well, but it has not broadened your horizons or opportunities at this stage.

>East
You stand in an expansive field, home to a tame herd of beasts. Beside you stands your faithful blue steed, Mindy.

>Check inventory
In your pockets you find:
5 keys to various doors
1 scribes pen
1 silver harmonica
In your sack you find:
1 pile of books and papers
1 merchants pouch with 0 gold

>Get in the car
Does not compute

>Use Key with Mindy
You mount your noble blue steed, Mindy, you can travel:
East: toward the paradise of the Okanagan
West: toward the great metropolis of your birth

>_

Watching the Watchmen

I'm back from my lengthy hiatus, and while I usually make a policy of not drawing any attention to long periods of time spent without blogging, I enjoy using the word 'hiatus' so much that I'm prepared to make that sacrifice. I wonder why more people don't realize that their ideals are worthless when confronted by reality in all its dirty splendor. Certain ideals, of course, I'm simply not prepared to give up, as Rorschach puts it, "No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.".
I watched the Watchmen movie. I can't say that I was disappointed, but that may be because I set my expectations pretty low. The movie follows the book fairly closely, aside from a few changes to make the story somewhat more believable for a moviegoing audience, but in its closeness to the book, while it was a boon for its many devotees (myself included), it may have constructed its own undoing. I think the best way to explain it is to go with Alan Moore's view, the story was in part designed to demonstrate what a graphic novel could do that neither traditional literature nor film could accomplish. He considered the work unfilmable, and I think he was right. As I watched I was struck by how many times, as a certain scene was happening, I would think to myself, "this is frame by frame the same as the comic, but gee I wish I was reading the comic right now because it did it so much better.". That isn't to say it wasn't a good movie, it wasn't half bad, but I wouldn't recommend ever watching it unless you've given the book a fair shake first. Of course that brings me to the fact that I wouldn't actually recommend it at all. One thing that made the transfer particularly poorly was any of the graphic content. The director, Zack Snyder of 300, unfortunately is of the opinion that the best part of comics is sex and violence. In Watchmen there were some scenes of both graphic violence and some nudity (one of the superheroes, Dr. Manhattan, appears naked in most of his scenes), but while these were treated quite well in the book, taking a back seat to the plot and not at all dealt with provocatively, their transfer to film was heavily accentuated. For that reason alone, especially considering its pervasiveness, I wouldn't recommend the film to anyone. But rest assured, you wont miss anything that the comic doesn't do better anyways (although the soundtrack sounded like somebody raided my music library, which was pretty enjoyable).

Pipe Smoking Professor

Top Ten Desert Island Discs

listening to CAKE - Fashion Nugget

I was thinking about all the music and playlists featured on this blog and it reminded me of a great top ten list that I wrote up while I was in Nanaimo. During an extra boring talk on STV, the speaker mentioned something about top ten desert island discs (I don't even remember what it was in reference to anymore) and it got the wheels of my mind turning. So I got out my pen and, during the meeting, wrote out my top ten desert island discs. This list is of course incomplete because my musical tastes and library are expanding at an alarming rate, and there is the addition of Exile on Main St., an album that I have not yet bought yet all factors point towards its inclusion on this list. Despite its inconsistencies, here's the list (images courtesy of Wikipedia)

10. - Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning


9. - Gorillaz - Demon Days


8. - Jars of Clay - If I Left The Zoo


7. - Rolling Stones - Exile On Main St.


6. - Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely


5. - Weezer - Weezer (Blue Album)


4. - Velvet Underground - Velvet Underground And Nico


3. - White Stripes - White Blood Cells


2. - Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited


1. - Beatles - White Album


soundmime

Ferdinand

Ferdinand

let's gas this up
and smash a bottle on her side
creeps out slow from steel womb and
slowly, silent climbs aloft
filagree on golden clouds like a silver lining
shock and awe greet down below
Icarus, Montgolfier
can't hold a candle to my cigar
burning up the atmosphere
spitting fire in a few years time
proudly sitting still and silent in the sky
yes it's mine
yes it's mine
yes it's made of Schwarz' scrapbook
and all it's air is second hand
but it holds a certain dignity
camaraderie with the clouds


Pipe Smoking Professor

Renegade

Have you ever bought an album based on the fact that you really love one song off of it, but you don't really know what any of the other songs are like. It can be dangerous. I remember buying Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere for the song Crazy, needless to say I was sorely dissapointed. This past weekend, however, I bought two albums where the opposite was true. I was in Nanaimo for a CFSBC conference and just down the road from the hotel where we were staying there was this epic record store. It was kind of like Zulu Records, but on a smaller and not quite as awesome level. I was ridiculously sucked in and bought a vinyl (Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot) and four other albums (Surfer Rosa by the Pixies, Stereo Type A by Cibbo Matto, Beautiful Freak by the Eels, and On The Beach by Neil Young). The reason why I bought so many is because most of those albums I couldn't find anywhere else (I'm sure I could buy them at Zulu, but it's just too dangerous and expensive for me to go in there), and all are awexome to the max albums. Surfer Rosa and Beautiful Freak really surprised me though. For Beautiful Freak I had only listened to the song My Beloved Monster and really loved it. When I listened to it in the context of the album though, I was amazed that it wasn't even the best song there. The rest of the album was as good if not better than it and My Beloved Monster wasn't even the focal point or the climax of the album. Something similar happened with Surfer Rosa (from which I had only heard Where Is My Mind) the album simply blew away my expectations. I have put off buying the album for a long time for certain reasons, but I can't help but wish I had bought it sooner, it's really an achievement. Very few of the songs are as polished as Where Is My Mind, but they harness a raw carelessness that in this instance manages to produce some sweet tunes. Also it's great to listen to the album and try and find the parts of it that all my favorite bands took their influence from, it turns out the Pixies were more influential than I realized.
Anyways, just a couple stores away from the record shop was a used and antiquarian bookstore so I had to spend some time (and money) in there. Although I still claim that the bookstore in Penticton is the greatest ever, this one manages a close second. While a lot of bookstores succumb to stocking piles of pulpy fiction and harlequin romances, this bookstore steered well clear of anything to do with that. If the standard good to crap ratio for your average second hand bookstore was 3 to 7 (it's probably much less), I would say the ratio for this one was about 7 to 3 (I know, that's a pretty epic achievement). It was like concentrated awexomeness. There was a whole tall shelf double stacked with poetry and two or three of the same entirely dedicated to boats, seafaring, and voyages (along with a large number of charts). The size of what would normally be taken up by the fiction section was taken up by the classics section. The sci fi and fantasy sections were really small, but they still managed to stock all the really great authors like Bradbury or Adams (although my one gripe was that there was no Heinlein). Anyways the books that I bought were: The Vintage Bradbury by Bradbury of course, Captain Cook's Voyages Of Discovery (abridged for the Everyman's Library or it would have easily been half a dozen volumes) by Cook himself, Goblin Market And Other Poems by Rossetti, Of Mice And Men and The Grapes Of Wrath by Steinbeck, and The Sound And The Fury by Faulkner. The best part, of course, was with the exception of Cook they all cost me 3 or 4 dollars apiece so I came out of there relatively unscathed.
The actual weekend in Nanaimo was in itself pretty interesting. The CFSBC is the BC component of the Canadian Federation of Students (although technically they are seperate and autonomous) and it's composed almost entirely of NDPers. Kwantlen's delegation was probably the most diverse group there, we had a Liberal, a Green voter, an NDPite, and of course a Conservative (yours truly). The other thing was that most of the other delegations and the CFS staff really dislike Kwantlen and are super hostile. This is partly to do with the fact that last year Kwantlen held a referendum to try to withdraw from the CFS, but it's also to do with the fact that unlike most of the other delegations (which are mostly composed of hacks that follow the CFS line without thinking) Kwantlen has traditionally been very critical of the CFS and their policies. I think I was fortunate to be part of the Kwantlen delegation because it enabled me to see just how undemocratic and partisan influenced the CFS actually is. We had committee meetings where we dicussed policy and changes, plenary sessions where we all got together and voted, and speakers on stuff like the STV system and student debt. Some of the speakers were really interesting (like the one on STV), but some of them were straight up recycled soft-communist rhetoric (Like the one on raising taxes). As for the committee meetings all our delegation members in their respective committees got horrifically shut down on any ammendments they brought forward and the same followed with the plenary session where motions were voted on (Which was a really disturbing experience). It was also really disturbing to see only one other member local in the whole organization really have the guts to go against CFS line. Overall, however, it was a really educational experience and quite enjoyable, participating in debate and even bringing forward an ammendment in the plenary session (even though it was madly shut down by the hacks). So that was my weekend. Keep it pregnant dudes.

Park Ranger

The Final Playlist

I was thinking about funerals the other day, and I had this crazy idea. So here's how it works. What if, at your funeral, when you were being lowered into the ground, or as they're playing a slideshow of pictures of your life or something, they started playing some really crappy music? Like what if they broke out some Kenny G? I can tell you right now that I would definately not be okay with that. I mean it's not like you would mind because you would be dead, but it would certainly be a comforting thought right now if you knew they would play music you liked. Seriously folks, this stuff is important. I mean not only should it be music that you like, but it should be appropriate for the occasion, and then you want to consider the message you're going to send with the lyrics or lack thereof. So I started making a list on Monday afternoon and by 3:00 Tuesday morning I had whittled it down to 30 songs (2 hours, 11 minutes, and 14 seconds of music). Now these were all great songs, but as I starting looking into funeral rites (wondering how I could acommodate so many songs) I began to realize that I would have to pare this number down significantly (as in under ten songs (or even less)). Another thing I realized is that the deceased doesn't really have any say in how their funeral is conducted, their family has the final say on pretty much everything. So I had to make the list actually fully appropriate for the occasion (and trust me, there were a lot of songs that definately weren't) so that there would hopefully be no objections. Some of the songs (Running To Stand Still and Heroin) are explicitely to do with drugs, there's good reason for this. Songs like Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds or Purple Haze are explicitely to do with drugs and provide a fairly unique experience because of the state in which they were written, but in essence they're condoning drugs (which I'm not cool with). However an important distinction needs to be drawn between them and songs like Running To Stand Still or Heroin (although Heroin may or may not have been written under the influence) which are written from a sobered perspective and expose the dark side of the drugs (in both of these cases, heroin). To me songs like these provide an exraordinary impetus to live and do something with your life. Whenever I finish listening to Heroin I have to get up and do something because the portrait of the wasted life displayed in it is so powerful. Now one could make the arguement that to listen to songs that are about the life well lived are even more powerful, but this particular breed of anti-drug songs are the shadow which proves the sunshine, we need both. However, if there is truly a lot of objection on the inclusion of these songs in my funeral, all the most potentially controversial songs have been included in the first category, from which songs can be taken out if absolutely necessary. So without further ado, here's the actual list of 10 songs.

Anytime during funeral, reception, etc:
Matthew Good - Champions Of Nothing
The Velvet Underground - Heroin
Bob Dylan - It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
U2 - Running To Stand Still

If on a Sunday:
The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning

Important songs (slideshow or something):
Pixies - Where Is My Mind
Kings of Leon - The Runner
Jason Wade - You Belong To Me
Pink Floyd - Wish You Were

Casket lowering:
Josh Garrels - YHWH