"The Smalrus chilling in da crib." 
~Quoteth David

30/11/01(10am)-I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps.
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps.
I don’t know why nobody told you
How to unfold your love,
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you.
I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps.
With every mistake we must surely be learning,
Still my guitar gently weeps.
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too.
I don’t know how you were inverted
No-one altered you.
I look at you see al the love there that’s sleeping,
While my guitar gently weeps.
I then look at you all,
Still my guitar gently weeps. 
~george harrison (1943-2001 RIP)

28/11/01(2am)-i suppose i should write about whats been going on since last week.

first off, monday and tuesday were normal classes as usual.  so tuesday night, me and dave went out to some place on st. denis to shoot some pool.  looked like a stereotypical canadian bar.  anywho.

got up early on wed so i could start cleaning the house.  cleaned the bathrooms, my room, straightened up the rest of the house, that was about it.  took basically all morning.  then kevin called after he had picked up the car from rent-a-wreck (who rent to 18 and over).  he came over and we left for ct, all set to surprise my parents.  by this time, it was around 415 in the afternoon, and surprisingly, traffic was rather light.  eventually we got to customs, no real glitches there, although she had us a little nervous when she made us pop the trunk (even though nothing was there).  got going back on our way, and around albany, we stopped for gas and i took over behind the wheel.  oh.  just north of albany, we stopped for mcdonalds in a town called warrensburger.  just to say how pointless things can be...this guy came in and told the lady that he ordered 2 filet of fish sandwiches a week earlier and that they didnt put it in the bag and when he called up, they told him to come in a week later to get some sandwiches.  seriously, is there really anything else to do around there?  i guess not.  i mean considering you need a quarter tank of gas if you plan on filling your car anywhere north of springfield, or you'll run out on the way from the exit ramp to the station...

my drive was rather smooth and by 10ish i was pulling in the driveway for the weekend.  mom and dad thought i was elise, coming home from her USY dance early, so they didnt bother to check on who it really was, so i open the door and dad comes down and he's like, "no, its not elise...no its not randy" and then mom came out of the room as i was heading up and she's like, "oh my god, what are you doing here?!?!"  suffice to say, it worked out brilliantly except that kevin and i forgot to switch home numbers in the car as planned and so i didnt have a return ride at the moment.  instead, i ended up having to call all 18 whites in the westport phonebook.  luckily, i got the first one.  unfortuately at the expense of them thinking im a moron.   anywho.  the surprise went really well, they didnt see it coming, and then dad pulled out the fax for the confirmation for their hotel reservations up here for friday.  then dad's like "so, you running the race tomorrow?"  my planned response was to surprise them thursday am, but acting on impulse, as i usually do, i opened the package and dumped its contents on the floor.  dad's jaw just hung down and he almost had a heart attack (figuratively). later, he told me that when i did that, the first thing he thought was "oh shit, he's been training."  ha ha no.  so then i gave him his calvin and hobbes book (since it was still his birthday), and shortly thereafter, elise came home.  it was a good evening, i started watching the first episode of enterprise.

thursday am, i got up and went with everyone to the race.  everyone was walking, but my dad in particular.  he was pissed cause last saturday was set for a personal course record.  but due to throat surgery, he had to walk it.  and it was a beautiful day.  but during the first 7 minutes of the race, i learned a few things that had gone on in the family that they withheld since they thought i was selfish for not specifically asking questions about what was going on at home on the phone.  

thus the weekend seemed to have a much different feeling.  like my parents are aging faster in the last 3 months than i am.  very weird.  after the race, i hung out around the house for a while before we went to the douglas' for thanksgiving dinner.  apparently al's niece or something is interested in mcgill.  hm...wonder if she's good looking...so sometime she might email me.  dinner was good, turkey was excellent.  went home after and probably just hung around online more.

friday was just a relaxing day of sleeping late and hanging around the house.  i think one day i cooked hash brown and eggs for everyone.  maybe friday.  so friday i went back to first federal- i mean, savings bank of manchester.  evelyn was there, and so were donna and jess  ;-)  it was good to see them again even if i had no idea who any of the other tellers were.  jess told me when i visit in december that i should be pimpin it by then.  ahaha.  so told them about tom and jared's 3 numbers in 3 weeks thing and asked her when she's coming to visit and donna's like "he just wants to say he's got one and use you for that."  ahahaha...but no, seriously :-)  at night, mom made me some chicken picatta since i like it- although now i can probably cook it well myself.  ooh ooh...best part- i got a neon molson sign.  yeah, when i get a chance, i'll put a picture of it up here.  friday night, i called up margaret and scott, and sarah d and we went to the equator to see renata play.  good show, and good chance just to see people and chill.  and elise came with lindsey (she pleaded i bring her with).  so after the concert, i drove everyone but sarah d to denny's.  saw tons of people i knew from HS that i thought id never care if i saw again.  funny that i saw joe wojnilo and zack denfeld cause mora judd is always asking if ive seen them recently...now i can say i have.  good times, then dropped everyone off and went to sleep.

saturday was relatively do nthing at home as well other than i took andrew and elise to cinema city to see amelie.  tons of old people in the theatre, which was fairly packed for a foreign flick.  theres stuff i noticed better the second time i saw it, but definitely its a movie id like to get on dvd.  i still think its a great movie, well scripted, well acted., great music, great cinematography, and very touching.  review is still up on my reviews page.  by the time we came home, it was about 630 and then my parents and elise and i went to angelinos for dinner.  i think the fettuccini alfredo gave me foodpoisoning cause i fell asleep on the couch watching the end of snl.  sum41 was the musical guest and it was cool to see the tap guitar on "in too deep."

sunday i woke up, did some packing, etc...jon, sarah c, and jon's friend kory came over.  that was nice cause i havent talked to them much this semester.  it seems as though jon is always too busy to talk to me online, or phone or whatever, and particularly since it never worked out that he was coming up for a weekend, i guess atleast seeing him was good.  as far as sarah went, it was weird cause we havent talked all semester, im still not sure she approves of who i am or what i do here at school and im done rationalizing and justifying my actions here, so at this point, im only as willing to talk as she is and, as with most of the rest of south windsor crew, im not making the first steps anymore.  so they left, i lounged around some more, and then sarah and erin came over.  that was cool too so we talked for a bit, then they left and i was hanging around til around 4ish to leave for school.  finally kevin picked me up, we got gas, and drove up.  this time, i switched in saratoga springs and drove the whole way up from there.  for post-thanksgiving, there was very little traffic on the roads.  atleast im 5 1/2 hrs north instead of 5 1/2 hrs south cause otherwise i might have ran into hours of traffic.  finally got into montreal around 10ish again.

typically i was never really a gung ho, patriotic american. im glad im american, but im not a big "show it off" american (which is why absorbing canadian life and culture has been so easy for me). so seeing all the flags and everything, and everyone just saying the same things over and over....was kinda bleh.  just being gone so long, its changed me differently.  and so going home to the states and seeing what was going on, it felt kinda....alienating...in a way.  i cant say that here is better, but definitely, here is where ive started to make a home for myself...

monday and tuesday were both lecture days and monday night, me, seth, and nick went to frappe to shoot pool.  nick and dave and i now shoot pool m,w,f at gerts during lunch so we can hone our nighttime skills even more.  mon night was chicken with ranch and onion soup mix, also candied carrots and some pasta w/sauce.  tuesday, my coffee couldnt wake me up, and this kid in american politics didnt know what a "kook" was, and if that would be considered a technical term to describe politicians...  oh yeah, i taped part of an iron chef marathon, so we've watched some of that.  tuesday, i also got ray romano's live at carnegie hall cd.  hes a very funny guy, and you can see where everybody loves raymond spawns out of...raybert...

that brings me to today, where hopefully the hyde park will be printed in the daily and people will see the correlation of the backlash against racism breeeding racism.  theres a lot thats been going on here with the SPHR, and while i believe there's freedom of speech, i think that freedom should be restricted to when it incites hate, such as what happened last wed on the metro.

anywho, tomorrow is a new daily.  also is a french test on who even knows what, some pool, economics, conferences, etc...also, tomorrow night is rane at the house of blues in cambridge, ma.  i know none of my friends have any desire, but rane is fucking headlining the House of Blues.  couldnt be finer.  im pooped for now, maybe ill write more in the near future...

27/11/01(11am)-To the editors of the McGill Daily

Just before I left Montreal to return to the States for American Thanksgiving, a man who looked like a skinhead squeegee man approached me on a Metro train.  As the train approached the Berri-UQAM stop where I change lines, he had noticed the half-sewn on Israeli Defence Forces patch on my backpack.  Upon tapping my shoulder, the man told me that I shouldn’t wear the patch and that if he was me, he would be so ashamed for wearing it that he would kill himself.  I hoped that in switching lines, I would thus escape his blatant hate for my being Jewish.  I was mistaken.  The man followed me to the next platform and asked if I knew what was going on in the Middle East.  I merely explained that I’m a proponent of peace for all sides in the region.  He responded by telling me, “The Nazis of 2002 are the Israelis.”  It is in this light that comments made by SPHR president Ahmed Abu Safia disturb me.

Mr. Abu Safia claims that an SPHR advertisement for a guest lecturer entitled, “Israel: The Racist State” denotes that “Israel is racist, not Israelis… The ad isn’t sexist, racist or homophobic.  It criticizes a government.”  With regards to this argument, any government that is democratically elected supposedly reflects the interests of its people.  In the case of a parliamentary government such as Israel’s Knesset, when there is a vote of governmental non-confidence, the Knesset is dissolved and new elections are called for.  If the claim were made that the Israeli government is racist, then the logical deduction would be that the Israeli people are racist as well.  Whether or not the SPHR ad was specifically targeting a “racist ideology” that the Israeli government espouses is not the issue, rather, it implies to anyone reading the ad that Israelis or anyone who is associated with Israel is therefore racist.

Personally, I am a subscriber to the notion that both Israelis and Palestinians should each be able to have autonomous states and that one day, Israelis and Palestinians will peacefully co-exist.  I am not arguing here about death tolls and statistics, who is or is not right, or any of the other various complex issues about Middle Eastern affairs.  An old saying states that one man’s freedoms end at another man’s face.  This not only applies to physical freedoms, but freedoms of speech as well.  The ability to incite hate unto others is no less damaging than physical assault.  My biggest fear is not that the Middle East conflicts will remain unsolved but rather, that the backlash against racism is breeding racism itself.  Advertisements stating “Israel: The Racist State” will inflame the hearts of true Nazis, who view peace-yearning people as myself as racist for aligning with “an establishment with a [racist] ideology.”

 Spencer Ross
U1 Political Science

21/11/01(240pm)- my encounter on the metro just now:

already on the green line going home.  sketchy punkish-skinheadish guy comes in behind me at another stop.  takes place just before berri-uqam stop.

guy: (taps me on shoulder while im facing the door and listening to music.  taps again)
me: (turns around) huh?
guy: (speaks something in french that i didnt hear because of the music.  pause.) you dont even speak french?
me: not really.  a little.
guy: (pointing to israeli defence forces patch on my backpack that's starting to come off).  do you know what this is?
me: yeah.
guy: you should be ashamed to wear something like this.  if i was you, i would kill myself.  you prick.
me: (train stops and i get off to switch lines.  after going up two escalators and having thought i thus avoided the man i wait for the next train.  i was wrong and he saw me).

guy: im not going to be aggressive but do you know whats going on over there?
me: yes.  i just want peace like everybody.
guy: you shouldnt wear that patch for the israeli defence forces.
me: guess not.
guy: the nazis of the year 200- sorry, the nazis of the year 2002 are the israelis.  the defence forces.  (guy walks away, i walk the opposite way and then decide that after being told to kill myself for being jewish, im going to walk the rest of the way.)

(1045am)-happy 49th birthday dad!  i know he doesnt read my page (which perhaps is good), but i cant say i hadnt wished him a happy birthday here.  unfortunately, the beatles "birthday" is reserved for my birthday only :).  anywho, ill write more in an hour or so cause ive gotta do some more cleaning and packing, but this is coming into the final throwdown of the plan.  feelin good about it.

i updated my cd collection listing since there was about 5 new ones i got and a couple i forgot.  sigur rós's cd is excellent.  creed's is heavier but still good (although like their last albums, they use basically the same chords so theres not too much they could do differently but they definitely found some ways.  travis' first album not bad, not as good as their last two.  more later...

18/11/01(615pm)-
                                   Take the Affliction Test Today!

friday was much of a do nothing day.  no canadian poltics lecture and i decided that i wasnt going to macro after the waste of a lecture on wed that i walked out on halfway through.  so basically the only purpose for me waking up was to take my french test, which wasnt that bad.  after that, the usual lunch at shatner.  not sure what i did during the afternoon, probably either walked around or came home, or walked around and came home.  we were invited to the cheerleading party at 737 by kristin and jess, but no one wanted to go.  so me and nick and seth watched my gladiator dvd since nick never actually saw it.  and after that, me and dave went to shoot some pool.  bifteck was packed and we thought about going to st. denis to a place, but ended up at frappé again.  i think kirby the bouncer is starting to recognize us more, particularly after dave called him by name even though weve never introduced ourselves.  must have been lesbian night because the front two tables we often used were occupied by lesbians.  so we tried finding an empty table and there werent any but dre and doug were shooting, so they challenged us.  3 challenges in a row.  its especially hard to do doubles challenges because playing doubles means you dont get to work up a rhythm in your shooting. so without warm up, me and dave sucked, even though we won 2 of the 3 games.  so between the two of us, we split a pitcher and after dre and doug left, we shot singles, but pretty suckily.  we went out late though, so we were there til close and then left.  i think i got an im from jon when i got home, which was kinda weird cause i havent spoken to him much since school has started.  no idea whats doing with him anymore.

yesterday was pretty much a do nothing day and i should have accomplished more than i did.  first off i got up kinda late.  but i guess i needed the rest then.  probably played around online, watched some tv, played some ps-completely anti-productive day.  spoke to my mom for about 45 min or so on the phone and that was about it.  me, seth, and dave went to parc to see red dawn with kristin and jess.  it was a patrick swayze movie about world war III and the russians/cubans paratrooping into colorado and taking a town under seige.  then these boys hide in the mountains with guns and try to single handedly beat the russians.  the movie was horrible.  i mean it was supposed to be cheesy i guess, but it was so cheesy that i had trouble finding the entertainment in it, even though dave was laughing quite a bit.  it came out in '84 but it still sucked, and even the girl from ferris bueller couldnt save it.

so that was that.  came home from the movie, got out my ll bean jacket and thermals and headed out to watch the meteor shower round 3-315.  first i went to 4 frères to get some food and drink since id be up late.  and when i looked up at the sky, i knew it would be a dead night.  complete overcast.  it was a ridiculous shame because i love astronomical events like this, or eclipses, or comets, etc...particularly when they're big.  and this was to be the best leonid shower until 2099.  next years leonids wont be as good and a full moon is supposed to create a lot of light pollution.  so i started walking eastward, deep into the french part of the island, trying to get away from lights of downtown.  go figure, montreal is 3rd ranked city in north america for lights per capita.  so there was no place i could find that did not have lights.  so i was walking for a long while, drinking from my 2L bottle of coke and eating some of my roll of raw cookie dough.  and all the while, i was muttering to myself.  basically i got really introspective, questioning why there was a cloud cover when i wanted to see the meteor shower, why i was going to see the shower alone, analysing why im not an extrovert- why my greatest fear is being alone and yet i somehow create my own aloneness.  i started to delve really deep and i wish i had paper at the time cause i probably could have written an entire song at that point.  why i kept walking was because it was partially therapeutic, both physically and mentally, but also because i was hoping that maybe by peak hours, the cloud cover would break.  that wasnt the case.  

so i sat in this field about 7 blocks from olympic park near the préfontaine metro stop (3.5 km away from the apartment), and thought about how the people back home were getting to see the meteors streaking across the sky.  ive heard it was amazing and really bright.  and i saw nothing.  on top of that all, it made for an extremely depressing evening.  i decided around 530ish that i was going to just quit, since i couldnt see a break in the cover from the direction it was coming.  plus, i looked like a bum and didnt want cops or something to tell me to get out of the park (been in enough "it isnt what it looks like" situations this week), so i found i had enough change in my pockets that i was going to take the first metro train out.  it was there i saw this homeless guy looking for bottles and cans in the trash.  now this is a common place sight to me here in montreal.  in fact, i dont feel bad about throwing cans and bottles in trash cans, because i know someone will pick it up.  but it was 540 in the am and i didnt see why he was up that early.  so it got me thinking, who is this man, where did he come from.  we've all got to be born from somewhere, from someone.  how is it this man is living on the streets looking for bottles and cans.  when did this happen?  did he ever go to school?  quit school?  at what age?  maybe he lost his job.  and what happened to his parents?  did they die, do they know what he's doing?  how did he get to montréal?  does he speak french, or english?  where could he possibly be needing to take the metro to?  where does he go when he sleeps?  how long can he possibly survive on this lifestyle?  and when he dies, where does he die and who knows he's gone?  all these questions i had and i know ive thought of them before, but in the depressing mood i was in and after all the babbling id done, it started to kinda link into how i was feeling- besides the money i have to buy a meal or a shower or a roof over my head- how did my life become different from his.

came in the door around 6 and it was still overcast.  so i hope people at home got to see it.  atleast the night should have been made successful for someone, if not myself.  woke up today around 1ish and then we watched empire strikes back on ctv.  next sunday they're showing return of the jedi and phantom menace.  not much else doing otherwise.  i might try and catch the peak of the showers tonight, but it wont be as good as last nights.  and instead of going to the middle of east island, i'll just stick to somewhere close, or try the skylight when all the lights here are off.  i dont have any assignments or anything til finals so i might do reading this week, other than that no real worries per se. american thanksgiving is this week but this year, theres very few things im finding myself thankful for other than my family.  they say university is supposed to be the best 4 years of your life because you're on your own and trying to find yourself.  i suppose its true, i love school, i love being here, but the whole finding yourself has lost me at the same time and although its a great 4 years here, i guess its also a notsogreat 4 years here.  i kinda wish my friends would visit but i dont know where they went...thats it for me for now, the simpsons is on in 1/2...

(615am)-home from watching the meteor shower.  i didnt watch shit since the sky was overcast.  went by myself  thought about using a homeless man as a metaphor for how i feel in a song,  but not sure.  probably will just come up with some lyrical fragment and thats it.  anyways, ill write more later today i guess...

16/11/01(230pm)-due to a server crisis, i couldnt fix the damn page last night (maxed out my server space).  so in order to cut space down, i had to remove some of the parka 3 mps off my site- atleast til i do some php space reduction over winter break.  in the meantime, theres more coming eventually...

15/11/01(1030pm)-i dunno why, its actually not been so long a week.  well, sort of.  monday i woke up just in time to do lunch at shatner with jon and then do some research for my french history paper due tuesday.  im eventually gonna tack it to my literary page with all my other writings, but thats once i reduce space on the site.  so i did some work at the library, realised that you get more resources and a lot of primary source material when you can use a second language, so my french sort of came in handy in being able to use some of catherine de medici's original letters in my report.  started on my report, went home and cooked dinner- chicken curry and basmati rice.  whoa baby.  i went to the spice shop and got a bunch of different spices and i used them all- generously.  so the food was fuckin hot as hell, and im not one who cant eat spicy foods either.  and of course an all new raymond (i love that show).  and by the time all was over, i started working on the second 2/3 of my 2000-2500 word paper.  yikes.  so i was up for a while doing that.

up til 6am, at which point i ended at 1895 words.  so i said fuck it, im taking a nap.  so i woke up at 10 and finished it.  2106 words.  went to class, handed it in, left.  i dunno what i did that evening but i didnt feel like going out even though i was quite awake for 3 1/2 hrs of sleep.  oh right, it was new music tuesday.  and i ended up gettng rever mieux by daniel belanger, i might be wrong: live recordings by radiohead, and free jazz by ornette coleman.  that got my my 10th initial on my hmv card so today i got the echoes: the best of pink floyd, which came out last week.  all good musics.

wednesday was my full day and after going to canadian politics and french, was lunch at shatner with nick.  i walked out midway through economics because he started talking about mushroom clouds and radiation poisoning and somewhere he was going to get to his point about government spending, but after sitting through half a class of this, i hadnt the patience anymore so i left and headed to arts building quickly for french history conference where we talked about louis xiv, absolutism, and the movie ridicule which we watched in grade 12 french.  stuff from high school just keeps coming back and it scares me.  us politics conference was cancelled this week so we went over to the hot dog stand where it was save the hot dog cart day.  free hot dogs if you signed the petition.  he probably got atleast 1000 signatures.  no one knows why they're shutting it down exactly, but its the only hot dog stand in montreal.  so the tribune put in an article about it.  and my friend tom had a good point in a letter today's daily- not everyone may even know the mayor of montreal, but everyone knows the hot dog guy.  (him and the guy who roams lower field during frosh looking for cans and bottles and looks like santa claus.  those two guys, everyone knows.)  so after that was chillin around the apartment, getting my laundry done, watching some west wing, more tv, the whole bit.

at night was the parka 3/daddy's hands/lifestyles/freezepop show at the lotus eaters gallery.  we're thinking the place is nouveau riche, big contemporary gallery, so i get a bottle of wine and we head over.  but its on the third floor. so nick and dave and i go cause john and his band are already there and we walk down the hall and there's mora (looking quebecois as ever) and shes like "dude, what the hell are you doing here?" so i say im here to see my roommate, he's in the parka 3, and she's like "i own the gallery." now considering that we see each other every 2 months, and the odds are about 1 in 3 million or so that we'd see each other in this city, i'd say that too, is fucked up.

so the show went really well, although the guys had mic troubles.  they need to learn how to sing into them properly, but i wasnt gonna be the sound guy (although it was hard to hear the vocals because of that).  daddys hands was interesting.  they were the other montreal band.  sounded like lou reed and the velvet underground.  and they were so drunk.  like, i dont know how they played.  the guy was smoking, drinking, and playing at the same time.  and the percussionwas interesting cause he substituted some toms for trash cans and a sink.  but it wasnt so bad.  the lead singer was crazy all night.  lifestyle was from boston, they were good, 80's style synth like culture club.  and the singer of lifestyle was in freezepop so freezepop was on.  thats great.  freezepop.net for their freezepop forever video.  the freezepop singer was kinda cute, i think she was checking me out, but i cant read girls.  but they crashed at our place after the show.

so after the show, dave and angela are gonna take john's amp home, but i volunteer cause i gotta go back anyway.  i was walking back from the show with his amp by myself at 2am and some were heading down the hill in the cruiser, stopped before they got to the light, hit reverse (on a onc way), and got out of the car, asked for my id, my address, etc, took down the serial numbers from the amp, asked a few questions, and then said they had to respond to a call. meanwhile some mysterious assholes in this parked car were making shooting gestures while the cops were taking my stuff down, and then when the cops left, they were harassing me in french and i just kept walking. of course that made me paranoid that cops would be on my case now and there were some that went by the apartment later and i saw the lights and flipped.  so yeah.  that makes me 2 for 2 in situations that arent what they seem.  atleast i didnt get stopped a second time by the prince arthur cops too.

today was going to us politics and canadian politics conference.  i skipped my coffee this am cause i was running late cause freezepop had the bathroom (they left at 11) and so i went without coffee to us politics.  bad news.  even if im rested and awake, i start nodding off.  and thats only a hundred person class and we were in the second row :p.  so me and seth went to lunch at subway in eaton centre, then i went to canadian politics.  my us politics ta had ended up telling my canadian politics ta about my little mixup last thurs :P  anywho, came home after getting the pink floyd cd, then we've been chilling and watching the victorias secret fashion show.  not much more else doing here.

if i updated more regularly again,   id get back into the political swing of things but its been a couple of days.  id like to go to arts tavern tonight but i dont think im gonna.  got my french test tomorrow at 1030.  not like im worrying, im getting an a in the class but still, i shouldnt be goin out.  besides, tomorrow me and seth are going to 737 with kristin and jess and company ;) and who knows what'll happen at 737 feet above sea level in a nice dance club :)  of course thats after class and whatnot.  but now atleast im done with actual assignments/tests til finals (well after french).  anywho, thats about it for now, i'll report it as i see it...

11/11/01(1155pm)-this is gonna be a long week again, i can feel it.  i wish i had the skills to exactly express how i feel on the guitar.  i need lessons, cause there's a lot id musically like to say to people, etc...but i dont have the knowledge how to do it...

(7pm)-ive done it, ive run out of space on my site (100mb)  i really dont want to pay for more server space,  december will really be a big time for me to put the site in php.  by doing that, i'll average about 90% less space.  this week was one of the worst weeks in the last 17-18 months and i think it was capped off by thursdays big mixup.

(side note, there's this thing on france now on CTV and the guy is in rouen and i was there.  i really would like to go back to france.)

anywho.  i believe i last wrote on tuesday afternoon.  i cant remember what i did tuesday but wed i put up my cd catalogue.  i think tuesday when i was really going nuts, (or was it wed), i met up with tom and jared at jareds and then we ended up going to dinner at schwartzs (well it was more a snack for me).  so their point was that if im already at a low, it cant get worse so why not change myself.  so they threatened that if i wasnt on my way to getting 3 numbers in 3 weeks that they would beat me up.  of course, they've both turned into players, looking for just sex, while im looking for long-term, so i dont think it'll be working exactly like how they want me to change. 

thursday was us politics midterm like i said, and then at 6 was my canadian politics midterm.  

Question 1: ID 4 of: Treasury Board, Clerk of the Privy Council, Two Compartment, Legislative Union, Secretary of State, S. 93, Rational Management
Question 2: ID 4 of: Legislative union, Direct taxation, Collective responsibility, Chief of Staff, House of Compensation, Departmentalism
Question 3: "...the 1867 constitution was at odds  with itself in the matter of federalism, providing constitutional resources for the proponents of both unitary centralism and divided sovereignty." -Discuss
Question 4: Describe the major differences between a "departmentalized" and an "institutionalized" cabinet and explain the significance of each for the structure of power in the Government of Canada.

US politics exam:

Part I: ID Antifederalists, Secession, Alexander Hamilton, Madisonian Democracy, Tenth Amendment
Part II Question 1.  What are some of the motivations of people who advocate an enhanced role for the states and a lesser role for the federal government?
           Question 2. What does US v. Nixon have in common with Marbury v. Madison? In what major way do the two cases differ?
Part III.  Answer one question
1.How does the system of grants-in-aid affect the balance in the federal system?  Do grant programs enable Congress to do what it pleases by bribing states into compliance?
2.Did the Constitutional Convention itself exemplify the principles that Madison set forth in No. 10?
3.Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party were successful in promoting 19th century liberal ideas.  At what stage of American history were those ideas supplanted? Why did that happen?  What made people receptive to Reagan's message during the 1980s?
4.In the light of what we have learned about the Pentagon Papers case, the Watergate tapes case, and US v. US District Court, how would you characterize President Nixon's view of the Constitution?
5.The Founding Fathers were far from enthusiastic about the prospect of mass democracy and designed the Constitutio accordingly.  How have subsequent changes in the Constitution itself or in constitutional practices modified their intentions with regard to mass democracy?  Have events shown their apprehension to be justified?

so in essence, writing a lot of my canadian poltics exam was like writing my us politics exam and in that light, studying was a little easier while i was stressed cause both exams mainly dealt with federalism.   so after the exam we hung around here a bit, had dinner and then went to dani and leahs and so me, seth, dave, steve, and the other girls went to gerts.  thursday at gerts is always packed but ever since they started letting party promoters do these things, its kinda sucked.  so the person spinning sucked, he couldnt fade right at all, each song just cut right into the next.  and the music he played was kinda shitty too.  when its packed, you really dont get to shoot pool, so i was watching a few guys, some of nicks friends were there and watching also.  it was ironic cause earlier in the day, i had commented to myself that its been so tame that i hadnt seen a barfight since my first night in montreal last year.  go figure, there was a scuffle, cue stick broken, and a bottle smashed over this big shot guy's head before security moved in.  thats what you get when you think you own the fuckin table.  so i was just wandering around and there was another cute girl from my french class there and a few other people i knew and so we all ended up dancing though.  ehhhhh.  so that was thursday night.

thursdays midterm fucked up my entire plans for friday cause first off, i kept forgetting the headphones for the language lab, so i had to do the lab on friday am.  but had i known about the canadian politics screw up, i woulda done it for wed and taken the 15$ trip to ottawa that was sponsored by the political science students association.  they were going to parliament, meeting with a few peopla, touring a few offices, it woulda been really neat.  no.  instead i wake up thinking that im gonna do the lab, go to class, and after class come home and sleep.  after lunch though, i end up staying a bit longer with nick, then pick up my letter of attestation for discover mcgill at the first year office, and then head home round 230 for a nice 4 hr nap.  oh, and then theres the car i want to get.  nix the volvo c70, and ill go for their safety concept car.  wow.  didnt really feel like doing much then, nor going out, so i just watched black sheep, ponette, and possibly something else.  and i also talked to sarah d online, which i hadnt gotten to do in a while cause usually shes busy or cant talk, so that was good.  of course it screwed up my sleep schedule majorly so i didnt get up til later on saturday.  despite the fact that i didnt get to go to ottawa, i think that friday was probably the best day of the whole stressing week.

saturday, woke up late, and didnt do what i wanted to get done but i spoke to my parents and my sister briefly before going to the hockey game.  was my habs vs. the number 1 team in the east- the ny islanders and we beat them 3-2.  huge win for us, both in the standings and mentally.    seth went back to the aus office after but nick and i went to celebrate at frappe.  so we were shooting some pool and both of us kicked ass and even though i lost 4-1 to him, it was pretty close games.  plus we dubbed a shot of mine "the mitchel."  so then these older guys challenge us and they lost to us 3 games in a row, mainly on the 8 ball, but they were close games.  and then i lost on the 8 ball and didnt want to challenge them back again.  so by then, jon, jared, marcia, sarah, and christine were there and so i hung out with them, but by then i alreeady had a bit over a pitcher of labatt, so i was pretty gone.  but i talked to christine a bit after marcia and sarah left and then we all went to fattouch for shish taouk.  mmm.  i could still say ive got interest in her still.   its weird cause when im a beer drunk, im a little different then if im a hard liquor drunk.  when im a beer drunk, i dont remember things as well and i hangover, whereas a liquor drunk will make me just more relaxed and goofier, and i remember a lot more of what goes on, and dont hang over.  so i dont even know what time we got home from fattouche, but being drunk, i almost ended up giving some of my own secrets away when i got home, so luckily i didnt and just went to bed.

like i said, when im a beer drunk, i hangover, so i woke up late this afternoon with a headache, feeling kinda lazy, and watched star wars on ctv.  tonights the simpsons, plus the habs vs. rangers game on RDS.  tomorrow im gonna call elise and talk about thanksgiving, and also ive got my french history paper to write for tuesday.    thats bout it for now though i think.  not sure what dinner plans are tonight cause its me and john and nick and nick doesnt really feel like cooking.  but simpsons are on and its finally a new one.  tonight possibly and tomorrow will be busy but hopefully this week will be better than the last.  im gonna make chicken curry with basmati rice tomorrow for dinner.  watched a curry recipe on julia child's master chefs on pbs yesterday, should be good.  so thats about it for now.

and so in honor of remembrance day (or veterans day in the us) ill stop with the famous john mccrae's(1872-1917) 1915 poem, "In Flanders Field"

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

08/11/01(215pm)-well heres an oh shitzy...i just had my us politics exam (okay, but very sketchy on the us v. nixon/marbury v. madison comparison).  so im meeting with del, my ta, during lunch in shatner (how come i always see my polisci tas after class when im eating lunch in shatner?) so we're talkin for a bit, a little about the test, but mainly about sports and then he says he has to leave and i talked about my gov't of canada midterm this week.  he knows my ta in that class, chris, and he said he and chris were covering an exam tonight and am i sure that its not mine, so i look at my syllabus and it says thurs nov 8.  but i swore it said nov 9.  so i get back here and the syllabus in the book says nov 9.  but then why would they cover an exam tonight if it wasnt canadian politics, after all one syllabus says its tonight and i didnt get the date in lecture, just the time.  so now i gotta start studying for that for tonight because of a stupid mix up.  plus i gotta go and do my french dictée for tomorrow.  so i guess this means that tomorrow wont be too bad a day and maybe i could even start some work on my paper...meh. thats about all i feel like writing for now, mainly cause ive gt an exam in 3 1/2 hrs

07/11/01(1030pm)-i put up a list of all the cds i own (atleast all the ones i could find without searching, and that i could see from where im sitting.  i count 149, but theres gotta be a couple im missing.  damn, thats a bit of money on cds, i sure love my music.  view the list.  tomorrow is us politics midterm and fri is canadian govt midterm so its gonna be kinda hectic and hairy so no updates for a bit (so i say).

06/11/01(1030pm)-i finally got a copy of the song that the lyrics below are from.  its a very short song (particularly for rane, clocking in at 3:35).  very melodious and very mood fitting.  its now on my mp3 site.

(6pm)-"They say I close my eyes/Too Much/But if they could hear this song/They would join me in this somber retreat" ~WEW

i hate new music tuesdays cause i always end up in hmv after french history is done.  nothing worthwhile was out today (including britney), other than maybe the 2 disc pink floyd set thats supposed to be really good, definitive pink floyd.  but i might get it some other time.  so instead, i headed upstairs to the classical and jazz section.  i must say, hmv is probably one of the best retail music stores i know.  they have about anything you can possibly look for.  and its still cheaper than music shopping in the states.  i felt like i needed some more study music, so i ended up buying the dave brubeck quartet's take five, yo-yo ma's classic yo-yo, and a 2 disc set of 4 mozart piano concertos.  sometimes i actually take a break from rane but once in a while :P i like the dave brubeck cd, and im definitely wanting a few more classic jazz cds in my collection.  i have one by this guy greg osby, but he's more modern, a little more free jazz.  and then there's miles davis' kind of blue, which is another interesting album.  ive also got to get some coltrane, coleman, etc in there.

anywho, saturday night the yankees lost the world series.  as one of my friends has in his profile: "im glad that the red sox fans are so proud that a team located on the other side of the country won. the yankees really must be a horrible team for making it this far.
hope you enjoyed your early rest derek lowe." sunday i spent studying for economics.  i have some kind of reading problem.  even when im well rested and even when im reading pleasure reading for myself- i cant pay attention and often times fall asleep after like 10 minutes.  thats why it takes me so damn long to read now.  cause i cant get through what i need to.  i dont know what the problem is, although my dad says its something about circadian rhythms, that even though im getting enough sleep, im off cycle with normal rhythms so its like ive got perpetual jet lag.  hm.  maybe i should just move to west coast cause i would have normal rhythms for someone who went to bed at midnight there and woke up at 7 am.  and then iin a study break, me and dave went to shoot some pool at frappé.  im good but just on the edge.  im definitely more a worthy adversary to dave now than i was when i first started seriously shooting last year.  so yesterday i got up and too my macroeconomics exam.  it wasnt too bad but who knows.  30 multiple choice in an hour.  about 15 were interpreting graphs and the rest were straight up questions.  some of it was difficult though.  came home, did i dont know what, tried to get in an earlier night.  for dinner, it was chicken with country french dressing and french onion soup mix, with pasta and sauce, and wine-cooked cucumbers and string beans.  movie schedule at parc looks awesome this month and i gotta see mulholland drive cause its playing there all month. and apparently at monsters, inc (which i wanna see), they're showing the star wars episode II trailer, which looks really good and makes me wanna find natalie portman :)  i still cant get this amelie movie out of my head.  that and the rane song "the words"  im thinking of doing my open mic the week of american thanksgiving cause ive got 2 more midterms this week and then a paper in french history due next tuesday.

today i got up, went with seth to us govt and then to french history.  only something happened to boulle so he's resting at home the next 2 weeks and thus the TA didnt have lecture notes prepared so he cancelled lecture today :/  so i found john and we went to shatner and ate lunch and then he left to read and i went to hmv.  on the way back, went to get my haircut and it looks pretty good.  the guys are thinking of having an american thanksgiving dinner here and then inviting all the girls.  yippee. :P  what planning.  spoke to my parents last night and my mom was yelling at me, making me feel guilty, so basically my disgruntled mood should be all nice and set by the end of this week.  social stability here is definitely a problem for me and so it didnt really help matters.  that was about it for yesterday and tonight is a big hockey game, we're playing colorado here at home.  i kinda wish i went cause patrick roy is the reason i started following the habs back in kindergarten (thanks to chris frechette), and even though he left the habs for the avs, they're my western conference team because of him.

in other montreal news, there's a new mayor now, gerald tremblay, who is replacing the 7 year incumbent, pierre bourque.  the megamerger had a lot to do with this vote and those who opposed the merger tended to vote tremblay.  right now, the merger still takes effect in january, even though there's some who are trying to get the courts to reverse the referendum-voted decision.  so municipal politics in montreal should definitely change a little, although bourque has said he wants to be the leader of the opposition.  and the expos, our dear old expos.  baseball is thinking of dropping 2 teams and its not been a secret that the expos could possibly be going.  theyve been a losing team since they almost won the pennant in '94 when the strike occured, their ticket sales are horrible (i think new britain rock cats sell more tix than the expos) and no one likes olympic stadium.   i wouldnt be surprised if the team goes, so i guess its good i got to see a few more games here this year.

 its weird, lately i feel a lot more into rane like sometimes i just have these weird rane bouts.  interesting yesterday, the entire newsgroup got an accidental business email from the manager to dan about payment and whatnot.  and it was something that we shouldnt have seen, but did.  he later apologized, but its weird.  definitely its a side that most people dont see, and although they know it exists- push it so far out of thinking that it doesnt matter. i think the first time i saw it personally was in august rehearsal.  i showed up a few minutes before they said i should (early? *gasp*)and they were having a tides meeting discussing indian summer and it was interesting to see how they worked as a business unit cause it is still a business. and then there was rehearsal when they were doing the words towards the end and alan was yelling at trav and whatnot over simple drum things that travis was going easy on in practice, etc and there was this huge argument and i was thinking "uh oh this is the end" but then again i thought, "this is the creative struggle that a lot of bands go through. but what we see on stage isnt the behind the scenes". which is why i got a whole new appreciation of how rane works that day, and it made me appreciate what they do on stage even more.  it made me think that when you dont get to see things behind the scenes, you start to take what you see on stage for granted. which i guess is why i could back my friend nate in his review on the webster show from last friday even though i wasnt there. in principle. cause some nights you just plain suck, you cant win them all. but people who arent as into each cymbal sound as nate dont notice these things like how to write a setlist and whatnot. it wasnt til last year that nate told me that some songs were tuned differently so you cant jam from certain songs into certain others. like i guess you cant do a feeding>apple because they're both in different tunings. in some respects it takes away because you then know too much but in other respects, it makes the good shows even better when you know that kurt's hit that marimba solo on the spot like in rehearsal or when the band has a tiring night.  which is why im hoping to jam again in december.  maybe thats whats gotten me more into it and what theyve been doing, why ive been anxious to get friends and anyone i know to see shows and sell cds and everything, because theres not just the music but the atmosphere and business that comes with it- seeing 5 guys come from playing starbucks in dinkytown manchester, CT to headlining fuckin House of Blues in Cambridge, MA.  or playing the famous Mercury Lounge in NYC.  the fans dont just create themselves.  you gotta get people into it.

anywho, thats enough ramble for me, i got music to listen to, a hockey game to watch, the world to bitch at, people to try and comprehend after so long, figuring out life and other shit.  oh, and the simpsons halloween special.  ill write more when i got shit to say.

04/11/01(245pm)-i saw le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain with tim, dave, john, and angela last night at the cinemania film festival at musee des beaux arts..  excellent movie.  i havent done a movie review in a while now, but i enjoyed this one so much that i thought it worthy to be reviewed on my reviews page- both in english and french.  also i put up a copy of the gauge along with the words (you and I) on my mp3 page.

03/11/01(3pm)-bunch of people have looked at the montreal pictures but i dont think anyone realised theres more pics than just the 5 pictures from the tv shooting.  theres like 19 more pictures and no one looked at halloween.  oh well.  i think im finally convinced that much of my problems lie in the fact that ive shaved my goatee off about 95% of the time since ive been here.  and as ive been saying, i think it gives me bad luck.  case in point.  the canadian politics midterm which i thought i smoked, especially after talking to my TA who graded them- i got an f.  granted, it will hopefully be reweighted by schultz after fridays midterm since he said hes going to reassess anomalous first midterms.  but still, i wrote 1 1/2hrs straight, i knew the material and everything.  i fail to see how i failed.  the goatee must explain it because the next day (yesterday), i got back my french test and i got an A on it- barely studied, was tired and hungry.  and i had started growing the goatee back.  another case in point, kristy.  none of the girls came on halloween and i think its cause my goatee was off.  its like that 5th season seinfeld episode "the opposite"

George comes to the realization that he should try to do the opposite of everything, so he does, his luck changes and everything begins to go his way including getting a girlfriend, a job with the Yankees and moving out of his parents house. Things begin to be unlucky for Elaine after she buys a box of "Jujyfruits." Kramer appears on Regis & Kathie Lee to promote his coffee table book. Rachel wants to break up with Jerry and he readily agrees, because his luck has been "even Steven." Elaine's eating of "Jujyfruits" causes Pendant Publishing to go under, and later she realizes that she and George have traded places.

i swear, if i do the opposite, then maybe ill get a job with the yankees.  the cosmos are weird sometimes.  heres another two cases.  lose a bet with nick on the canucks-habs game.  it turns out to be probably the worst game in habs history with only 17 shots total and a 4-0 loss.  without a goatee.  i lacked a copy of rane's new song "the words (you and i)",  one of the two songs i got to hear first when i jammed with rane.  with a goatee, i found out that it was misleadingly labled and i thought it was another song i wasnt in as much of a rush to get, and when i downloaded it, i found it was the song i wanted.  that song is now up on my mp3 page.  excellent song.  excellent.  beautiful music and even more beautiful lyrics.

anyway, so theres the scoop with classes, basically the same as usual and ive got 3 midterms this week.  outside of classes not much has been going on either.  wednesday was our halloween party and i was a bit worried about competition with other halloween shit going on here.  and of course i guess i had reason to be cause a lot of people went to le swimming for pimp 'n' ho night.  the party went well i guess.  as evident in the pictures, i went as alex delarge from clockwork orange, and the costume was really good, people seemed to like it.   unfortunately, none of the west side girls showed up so it kinda sucked cause i was hoping id get a second shot.  hopefully some other time though.

oh, tuesday, we also got a new dvd player for the apartment, thanks to seth and nick.  its awesome, panasonic.  plays vcd, mp3 cds, dvds, cds, etc...its sick.  so i got the swordfish dvd and we watched it.  also watched my clockwork orange dvd.  so yesterday shrek was out on dvd.  i got that, we watched it too.  last night was also canadian humour night on cbc.   tonight, me, john, and dave are going to see the movie amelie at musee des beaux arts.  should be good.  i saw the preview at the apocalypse now redux and we all wanted to see it.  besides, now that my french listening is good, i might not even need the subtitles as much.  thats about it for now though.  the simpsons are on and im going to watch that, do some work, etc...if i think of anything else to say, i'll add it later...

02/11/01(2am)-all october entries but the last one have been moved to the october page through the reflections page.  cant really update now, but i will tomorrow.  in the meantime, the pictures from the tv show shooting and the apartment/halloween party are at www.smalrus.com/montrealoctober.html . more tomorrow on what could be better.

Reflections read from recent to oldest.
For Past Reflections, Click on the "Reflections" button on the navigation bar.