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  • Partying=

    The verb partying refers to an involvement in any one of a class of activities that typically involves a number of people - but need not necessarily - gathered together for the purposes of doing a particular activity where fun and enjoyment is a greater priority than the activity itself.

    How's that for a formal definition spontaneously pulled out of my rear end?  I wonder what the OED says?  I was just thinking... because partying can involve lots of different types of activities:  it can take place with a few people dancing to a stereo, or clubbing, or having a dinner with a lot of people, or perhaps staying in and watching movies from a dvd, or a few people with a wii, or any number of forms of other gaming entertainment be they cards, board games, or otherwise, or having food with two or more people at home, or perhaps even one or two people and a bottle of spirits, or perhaps cooking a meal together, or it can be a bonfire at a beach, or many other things.  How do you sum up all of those activities while excluding such activities as dragonboating (a lot of people, all having fun together) or marathons, or hikes with friends?  Well, first and foremost, the intent of partying is always enjoyment itself regardless of the activity one is performing. 

    Am I right?

  • Awe...

    http://sports.aol.com/olympics/story/_a/bbdp/

    us-athlete-cheats-death-to-win-silver/136742?
    icid=100214839x1207613589x1200425572

    It says in the article that US Sabre Fencing Olympian Keeth Smart earlier this year was diagnosed with "a rare blood disease" and that "doctors told Smart he had a low platelet count
    and could die of severe internal bleeding within two days".  Sounds like ITP.  He then came back around, even through the death of his mother, to win the Saber competition at Beijing. 

    I really wonder how he did it - to continue in such a high-trauma sport as sabre fencing (sabre, not even foil or épée) - and am all the more impressed that he did.  Perhaps his ITP didn't end up being chronic?

  • Slight Reprieves

    Sunday 3 August - 16.5 hour shift; 2:30pm-7am.  Saw something on the drive to work, passing by PNE that ended up being a great part of Monday evening (hereafter the joke to be known as my 'Muffin Story').  The shift: Lindsay C got an embarrassing story to tell.  Andre didn't.  Shauna had a fun time.  Daniel got groped.  I had to deal with technical issues involving splitters, projectors, plasma screens, and a really long cable - for over 2 hrs.   I will think twice about sitting on the benches and toilet seats at science world in the future.  lol.

    Monday 4 August - got the day off work since I was already working till 7am, got home at around 8:30 or 9... slept till afternoon.  Evening, dinner with GS'ers plus Brian Alfonso at downtown Cactus Club.  Sad: Amanda C's leaving the GS.  Fun:  Brian, Roland, Amanda and I went for really good bbt after at Kingsway Bubble World.   Hopefully Kayaking with them sometime soon in the next week or so.  Dropped them home (Brian at home, Roland at SW, Amanda at home) - for the first time in a very long time, had a nice long laugh that I could barely stop; I was telling Amanda my Muffin Story just before dropping her off - apparantly it was funny enough to give us both a great ab workout after the filling bbt/bbt food/Cactus Club food.  I needed that nice long laugh, even though it was giving me a headache and was somewhat dangerous considering I was driving, lol.

    Tuesday 5 August - worked all day; was five mins late because i had to wait for the fire inspection who didn't come until 9:10am.  The day was nothing special, busy, hectic.  After work was plenty enjoyable, geeking out at The Dark Knight (finally!) with Ashley, Dennis, and Dylan (newbie from Cambridgeshire who won't be there for too much longer) all from WS.  Yes, a band of geeks, a car with fun music, Old Spaghetti Factory, Imax Batman (waaay too close... dammit people lining up early.... third or fourth row from front... ow, eyes).

    Bravo Heath Ledger, alas, there will be no more of his Joker.  Tho he did need more maniacal laughter ; ).  I still hate the new batsuit; horrible... even in both iterations in this movie.  The ending speech was awesome, and the writing was solid, with strong themes of ethics, duty, heroism, teleology, and villiany.

    These few moments have been much needed after all the harsh stress, daily friction, and the sadness of the last while.

  • DSC_0011
    Kiwi
    :(

    Kiwi, you will always be missed.  The house is quiet without your calls, even with the other birds still there.  You, who for the last seven years flew around the house as you pleased, from the glass chandelier to the kitchen light fixture to the bird stand, and flew out into the hallway to find us whenever we stepped out of sight, who always got his bit off the dinner table, who always stayed out of trouble, who was so healthy and happy we couldn't have seen it coming, who'd fly out and find mom for safety whenever the vacuum was turned on, who would climb down the side of Lorita the Amazon's cage to sleep near her when you were left out overnight, who was smart enough to chew discarded feathers into neck-and-pin-feather-scratching tools, and would snuggle up and try to preen whomever's neck you were on, and who took to watching over Newton the parrotlet when you were out.

    I will remember your little trilling caw in my ear, on my shoulder, and that you trusted me enough to let me help you get those itchy pin feathers every time I returned home for a visit.  Even though I was away more for the last few months with work and my studies, you held on long enough for me to come see you in the hospital a few times, to wing greet me and tail wag those last few times and tried to step up on my finger through the plastic walls.  Though the infection's complications took you quickly and painlessly in the end, we know you loved us all and we all loved you back.  We fought alongside you and did everything we could, but you were taken before your time.  You will be missed.

  • A HUGE pet peeve of mine.

    Spell checkers.  Even ones with supposedly 'international' English.  Telling me to Americanize my spellings.  Dammit!

    I will damn well use CANADIAN/UK English AS I PLEASE, so freakin' stop telling me to spell 'colour' as 'color' and 'judgement' as 'judgment'.  What *is* that?  Jud'g-ment?  Jug-ment?  Does that remotely look like it's supposed to sound?  There's a purpose for that 'e' to modify the 'G' sound.  Look it up, it's an accepted alternate spelling.

    I WILL NOT ASSIMILATE.  RESISTANCE IS NOT FUTILE, you manifest-destiny spell checker!

  • Falling leaves...

    It's not even August and there are already some walkway trees all up and down my road that have dropped all of their leaves, bases surrounded in radiating piles of crinkle-crackle paper-bag brown husks once-green, lone red stragglers hanging to branches by a thread. 

    These interspersed between fully live trees create an odd mishmash kaleidoscope of seasons and colours. 

    What's with that?

  • Hahaha...

    I just realized:  Poison apples - whose only cure is a kiss from one's true love - are the dumbest way ever conceived to kill a fairy tale character (at least in our modern Disnefied fairy tales).  The cure is always all-but inevitable at the end of the quest.

    Dumb as Knowledge.   Also as ripely Expectant.

    And yes, I see the metaphorical significance(s).

                                       ....then again, they'd be the ultimate tool of evil in the real world.

    --

    You can guess what movie I just watched on itunes.  Don't laugh!  It was $3.99 and I wanted something light and funny to watch over dinner.  Don't ask me why I chose this particular flick - perhaps it's that little part of me that wants to believe in fairy tales, or to pretend that fairy tale girls exist (the kind that are happy, expressive, optimistic, and sweet).  Actually, I kinda got reminded me of that pretty redhead I had a crush on that one summer in orchestra *sigh* - tho I'm fairly certain that one wasn't a fairy tale girl.  lol.  I never did see her again after that summer.

  • Sorry guys.  I'm no longer gonna show any concern for friends; the entire endeavor seems to be 'passe' in our times and people don't really care for anybody they don't have a vested interest in these days anyway.

  • Just a thought...

    ...about all this Bill C-61 business.

    Proposed modern copyright laws seem to hinge on one major premise - that people given the choice between ethical and unethical action will generally choose the latter.

    This is not about stealing one person's creation and presenting it as one's own.  Granted, this happens but it is definitely not the norm.  Uncredited plagiarism ought to be illegal and it is.  Of course, this plagiarism also needs to be distinguished from non-malicious use of purchased material (or of material that is disproportionately difficult to purchase by obscurity or otherwise).  I sincerely believe that credited use and other such use of such material without the intent of misrepresentation - placing music on a cd as background music in a personal video and then crediting the artist at the end, or sharing a track with a friend with the intent of introducing said friend to a new artist, or listening to a cd on speakers in a public place without presenting such material as one's own - should be a legal right, since these actions only serve to promote the original artist in the end.

    What concerns me more is the charge that, given the choice between two options, people will naturally take the choice that destroys what they value.  The two choices I speak of are these:  first, paying and supporting the creator of something for which we enjoy a (and I do emphasize this) fair and reasonable rate dependent upon what we - the audience of that material - feel it is worth; and second, instead taking that material with no returns, thereby letting that creator suffer and be unable to continue to create that work.  It is a question that strikes at the very heart of human nature, and by introducing the type of copyright bills which are currently at issue, the government's answer is thus:  "Guilty until proven innocent". 

    That's not how our country works, and it is not how our basic human rights presume.  Making the assumption of guilt wrongly puts all Canadians into the role of the criminal and 'justifies' the removal of our rights to actions we really ought to be allowed to do.  Curtailing and funneling of our rights to act into corridors whose tolls are collected by companies is exactly what those who stand to collect those tolls would love to see. 

    It's under this light that we see the wealthy industry lobbyists who cry loudest for such draconian laws and who claim to be representing the artists as actually having their own checkbooks foremost in mind - it's really a matter of greed.  As for the artists who protest alongside lobbyists, most often these
    are the ones who really aren't in dire need of extra cash or promotion.  It is clear from the growing number of independent artists promoting their work for free on sites like Myspace that many artists welcome the kind of attention to which I listed at the start.  Intransigent record labels who fail to adapt might just be heading the way of the extinction now that tools exist for artists to directly market and distribute their work to willing audiences.

    An interesting article on this subject with details on loopholes and implications can be found at Michael Geist's blog at the following link:
    http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/3026/159/

  • Unicorn born, auspicious occasion?

    One year ago, in research nature preserve in Prato, Tuscany, Italy, a unicorn was born.

    Granted, he isn't the same as the equine Western mythical unicorns we have come to know in modern times, the other previous European incarnations that have existed, nor the giraffe-like or chimerical Unicorns of China and Japan: the Qilins and Kirins (though there have been interpretations of Kirins as decidedly deer-like).  He is a Roe Deer with a single horn, and in a very unusual fashion - not only does he only have a single horn, but it is dead-centre atop his forehead, and he carries the fitting nickname of "Unicorn".

    20080611152409990002- 'Unicorn' deer genetic anomaly born in nature reserve 2008
        Center of Natural Sciences/AP

    For more details, the original article can be found at AOL News: 

    http://news.aol.com/story/_a/unicorn-deer-found-in-italy/20080611173709990001

    Supposedly a unicorn - at least the Chinese version of one - appeared the night that Confucius was born and according to Chinese mythology, their appearances are said to herald the coming of prosperous times and the arrival of new rulers and leaders.  There is an oft-used phrase that when a unicorn allows his presence to be seen, it is to signal a very auspicious occasion.  Perhaps the return of the mythical Unicorn to reality also brings with him the tidings of better times to come.

    Personal updates:

    Just got back from dinner.  Zhongxi's birthday.  The gift I'd ordered for him had been overlooked in shipping so I had to substitute another gift for it, a cigarette-lighter-car starter jumper cable that you can use to hook up two cars via their cigarette lighter ports without having to mess around under the hood.  I thought it would work since he had to come down to help charge my car battery a few weeks ago when my car battery went dead.  Family had dinner at Prince restaurant again as usual.  Mom got a great mango cake from T&T; she gave him the mp3 player she'd got for his birthday when we were at Fry's Electronics Depot in Oregon.  Mom and Dad also got Zhongxi a hardwood apache helicopter model.  Dunno what Karen got him but she probably gave him his gift before we got there.  Mom came and picked up me and then Karen to drive down there since Zhongxi coming from work, and Zhongxi and Karen drove me home after.