It is currently 8 degrees outside...

There is a girl sitting across from me...
at the library...
reading...
"making sense of social theory"...
in a tube top...

A Dispatch from the Desk

Georg Simmel on Retirement:

"Because the majority of modern people must focus on the acquisition of money as their proximate goal for most of their lives, the notion arises that all happiness and all definitive satisfaction in life is firmly connected to the possession of a certain sum of money; it grows inwardly from a mere means and a presupposition to an ultimate purpose. But when this goal has been attained, then frequently deadly boredom and disappointment set in which are most conspicuous among business people who retreat into retired life after having saved up a certain sum. After the loss of the circumstances which caused the consciousness of value to concentrate on it, money reveals itself in its true character a mere means that becomes useless and unnecessary, as soon as life is concentrated on it alone - it is only the bridge to definitive values, and one cannot live on a bridge."

-- Georg Simmel, "Money in Modern Culture"

Henry, Philosopher King

Henry answering questions
Originally uploaded by steveyb.

The first words to my mind today were those of Henry Rollins in a spoken word performance:

Just because someone tries to hand you a big pile of horse shit, doesn't mean you have to take it.

So true isn't it?

Thanks to stevey for the image!

It's Official....."Winter Warmest Ever on Record in Canada"

Thank you, chlorofluorocarbons. Thank you, carbon monoxide.

Cheering, Jeering and Beering

Remember the World Cup in Japan/Korea in 2002? Yeah, that was the shit. Running around town all hours of the night, jockeying for position in any kind of establishment - coffee bar/sports bar/bistro - for a whiff of a game whose rules I barely understand. Cheering, jeering and beering.

For the first time in years, I plan on sitting down to watch the Oscars aka Academy Awards and would like to recapture some of that World Cup spirit. The thought of watching in from home is utter tedium and like the Elections or the Olympics, these types of television events don't motivate me to turn on the telly. But neither of the aforementioned have the advantage of featuring John Stewart or that yummy Jake Gyllenhaal.

Does anyone have any suggestions from around town where I might do this? Copacabana would be nice, I thought.

Another related thought: Elections Canada should have gotten John Stewart to do live elections coverage and announced it up front. People might have felt invested and we might not be in the shit, as we are now.