It's Time To Get On Your Way

So the dreadful time of leaving University has finally arrived... weirdly enough I'm going to miss London, Ontario; its blizzard snow storms with mounds of snow blowing into my face, its wonderful icy wind that makes my toes, fingers and nose turn blue, its lovely transit strikes meaning I have to walk 40 minutes to and from school, its 3 am fire alarms and fire fighters waking you up with flashlights, its trains that run directly through "downtown" and stops all traffic for 10 minutes, Richmond Row and its lines of overly-tanned, slutty fake-blonds from tiny little towns thinking they are in "the big city," its twenty page paper assignments meaning no sleep for days on end and finally, the comfortable little cubicles at Weldon library, which I can proudly call my second home.



But in all seriousness, I absolutely love Western, especially when its sunny, the birds are chirping and the cute little students are playing outside in the student ghettos. I love the campus and the darling river that runs through it. I love the cute preppy boys that can be found almost everywhere you turn, I love Homecoming and St Patty Day pancake keggars, I loved my experience in residence and the wildness that was Saugeen Maitland Hall with police officers roaming the hallways, I love seeing first years and realizing how little they look and knowing how much they are going to learn about themselves in the next four years, and most of all, I love the friends that I've made here and how we have grown up into intelligent, mature adults together.






One door closes and another opens. I am done school (for now) but now I get to travel and see the world...some people call this a "scary" time in life, but I think its exciting. I think this is when real life begins.

To all my friends who are graduating, I know you're nervous but don't you fret. You keep asking yourself nervously, "will I succeed?". Well I, as well as Dr. Seuss undoubtedly confirm;

Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)

KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!

So...
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea,
You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So...get on your way!


Hello real world, you ready for us?

Moral Guardians of The World? I DON'T Think So.

Hey USA, I really like you, don't get me wrong but SERIOUSLY?

Did you know that in the 1970s, the United States was backing 60% dictatorships in Latin America? ...All for economic and political interests.

Lets take the historical situation of Guatemala.

The United Fruit Company (A US company) owned 40% of the land in Guatemala, while majority peasant population had no land at all. Jacob Arbenz is elected president and enforces land reforms and redistributes UNUSED land of the United Fruit Company to poor peasants/ farmers. He also attempts to reduce U.S. corporate presence in Guatemala. Everything seems sane right? No civil wars, everyone is good, non?

Well apparently not. Because this threatens U.S. economic interests, under the cry of "Communism," the United States invade Guatemala, force Arbenz to resign and place a military dictator, Armas, in charge. Armas undoes land reforms and the peasants are again, displaced.

This is followed by a series of civil wars in Guatemala, peaking in the 1980s. That's NOT long ago, and all because the U.S. had to interfere...

Similar events like so (as in U.S. supporting dictators in order to protect U.S. economic interests) occurred in Nicaragua, Haiti, Cuba and Chile.

So am I suppose to believe then that during Bush's push for the Iraq war, the president/ United States actually cared about the IRAQI people and that Saddam Hussein was an "evil dictator"? ... because they sure didn't care in the 70s! In fact, US supported Latin American dictatorships and then mostly ignored whatever happened to the people afterward...leaving one big mess behind. It's also suspicious that Iraq has a crap load of oil too. hmmm.

Anyway, second annoyance of the day. Ignorance. Watch below.

Roll Off The Tongue

You might recall before I wrote a list of Italian words I find intriguing that I learned from my Italian course. Yes, I like to repeat these words over and over again because they sound cool...You don't have to call me a dork, I know I am and sure proud to be one!
Anyways, I have more lovely vocab to add to the list... I think I have a fetish for double letters...

1) Aggiungere - To add

2) Giallo - Yellow

3) Annoiarsi - To be bored

4) Attraversi - to cross

5) Arrabbiarci - Angry (there's just so much PASSION in this word, especially with the rolling of the Rs)

6) Crociera - My teacher asked me what I thought this word meant and I said... "ummm Croatia?"...nice try...it means CRUISE SHIP. How embarrassing...

7) Milionare -This word sounds pretty and lets say if I was a millionaire, I'd also look muchos pretty in my designer clothing.

Also, I'm taking a Latin American Geography course for kicks... did you know there's a city in Bolivia called Cochabamba? Sounds like a parrrrtaaayy.

Fail

One of my pet peeves is when people say "fail" or "epic fail"... I don't know why. Probably because it's so negative. For instance, someone accidently gets a paper cut and says, "FAIL". Ok really? Is that reaaallly a failure? I mean there could be way worse... possibly like failing a test because you didn't study... or losing a civil war. All i'm saying is there are way bigger things to worry about in this world...
As Rihanna the great would say (or at least her tattoo), "never failures only lessons". Agreed. We should always learn from our mistakes.

Despite my miniature rant, I have to admit that "failblog.org" is pretty funny... below are some of my favorites.

I sure hope this woman never IS a millionaire... god knows what she'll do with the money...


This one is just too hilarious



At least his intentions were right!

Kids Living in Sewer

In Bogota Colombia, street kids live in the sewer, taking drugs and getting high in order to cope.
"This was at the height of Colombia's "Dirty War", and the whole reason the street kids had gone down into the sewers in the first place was to get away from the violence. But then the paramilitary death squads who had chased them off the street started to come into the pipes and shoot them or douse them in gasoline or rape them. Ten-year-old girls were giving birth and trying to raise babies in the middle of sewage (the early onset of puberty having been brought on by the constant molestation by adults and older kids as well as the general stress on their bodies). It was about as fucked as things get."
Take a look at the rest of the story below by VBS TV.

Thought Alice To Herself

My film project is done! and I love it. I am so proud of myself... am I allowed to say that? Anyway, enjoy below :)

Thought Alice To Herself- Stop Motion from Jules Leo on Vimeo.

Google Map Car Chase

Look at this- pretty cool.

Satellite Car Chase from Honest Directors on Vimeo.

Epitome of Heartbreak

This four year old says it all. Oh, how love can attack us at any age. She's madly in love with her 15 year old Bible Camp Counselor named Steven. Apparently she's been crying about this heartbreak for four weeks.

Before I Die

Call me crazy, but I need to do this before I die.

Daily Smile

I hope this makes you smile wherever you are in the world. For some bizarre reason, I could NOT stop laughing when I first saw this. Something about the combination of Hilary's horrid outfit, her awkward butt shaking and then the outstanding replication by a skinny man shaking his butt. Call me immature... but just wait till you start laughing yourself!

But Daddy, I said I want a MILLION $$ Tree House!

Stolen pics from forbes.com and its list of unique tree houses around the world. Ummm... can someone make me one? I especially like the pineapple tree house!

please, by all means, paint my urinal

Clark Sorensen is a San Francisco artist who sculpts and creates fantastic urinals. If I collected urinals, I'd have his collection. I won't talk too much... just take a look below.

Blame it on the forest

I am internally confused. I am a hippie but I am also a consumer who really loves her starbucks coffee. After much deliberation and psychoanalysis, I have come to the conclusion that this internal conflict has derived from "The Enchanted Forest".

What is this enchanted forest you speak of? Well let me explain to you a very complex yet enlightening story that I believe is the origin of my internal conflicts with nature and money.

In elementary school, our playground was a forest. We had huts, trees, stores... we basically replicated everyday society in hobbit form. It was a place of adventure and delight- some of my BEST memories of childhood took place here.

Firstly, I am a lover of nature and a hippie at heart. Perhaps this was embedded in me by my 24/7 running around in and out of trees, hiding behind bushes, rolling around in the mud and transporting worms from one side of the forest to the other.

But there was something that did not fit in to the "nature" of the "enchanted forest". The architect of this beautiful playground had placed wooden tables that resembled "stairs" in the middle of the forest.

As confused, naive, little people, we thought, "what on earth are these?". Well, replicating society, we concluded..."ahhh, these are shops and display stands so we can make lots of money and be rich!". So what did us little people do?

We decided that our main currency in the forest would be "spotted leaves" and these table stands would be our shops. If you don't know what spotted leaves look like check out below.

Ironic as it sounds, when we were little, money did grow on trees. At least until the trees ran out of leaves.
(If you have not caught on by now, this is where my internal love for money and consumer products comes in).

Our stores consisted of little creative products, sporadically priced. We sold ivey leaves wrapped into cones and filled with soil. We sold pine cones with leaves jabbing through it. We sold rock dust and wooden sticks with branches wrapped on one end. I know what you're thinking... you're thinking, WHY on earth would ANYONE waste their money (in our case, spotted leaves) on these useless tools?

My answer to you is simple: why don't you ask yourself why you bought that t-shirt from that store the other day... yes that shirt, you know which one...the one with the the sparkles on it...
you answer, "because it is aesthetically pleasing and it looks pretty".

Well, so did the ivey leaves wrapped into cones filled with soil! Both are useless, but pretty.
Anyway, i'm getting off track...

Us little people became obsessed with spotted leaves. Everyone had to have a ziplock bag of it. We needed it...we didn't really know why but we knew we needed it. One day, there was a buzz of controversy going around the forest. The teacher's had wrapped caution tape around the last "spotted leaf tree" so we could not get to it. I remember exactly what it looked like:

It resembled the charlie brown christmas tree... it was terribly pathetic and had only ONE spotted leaf dangling from the top. We all wanted it, we wanted it SOOO VERY BAD... but we knew we couldn't take it or we would get into trouble. We had exploited the spotted leaf trees so much that we had no more spotted leaves.

It was a very sad day.

six years later, I went back into the "enchanted forest" to see if anything had changed. The new little people were running around like hippies but bartering at the shops like fools. This time, their currency was "prickly leaves"

But why prickly leaves? well, because there was more prickly bushes than spotted leaves in the forest and they needed something new to exploit.

I think to myself, "ahhh, nothing has changed." Just like me, these new little people will grow up internally conflicted and confused about their love for Dasani Water and Starbucks as well as their love the ocean the the trees.

I guess they'll just have to wait until they are 22 in order to reflect back and realize that it was really the fault of the "Enchanted Forest" that has contributed gravely to all their internal confusions.