June 2007 Archives

Check out the Montana Meth Project. They've been airing commercials about meth use and they scare me. I wasn't planning on using meth, but just in case there was a chance, they took care of that. Hell, I don't even want to take perscribed medication anymore.

Scared shitless.

Well, early Canada Day wishes to anyone that may happen upon the site this weekend.

Reuters put up this story about the CN Towers' new lighting system, which is just in time for Canada Day. It was turned on last night, for the first time and seems to look okay.

Have a good weekend.

**UPDATE - New and improved, now with video!

So it looks like we'll be able to pay for all of the stuff they brought in... David Braley donated 50 million dollars to the campus this morning and they're going to use 15 million of it to found Canada's first stem cell research centre, 10 million is going into some kind of venture capital fund and the last 25 million is going to go into an endowment of some sort, to benefit the business school and the health sciences department.

Well, they've been scurrying around since yesterday, putting up a stage, assembling scaffolding and lighting and sticking up large flat screens, as well as from the looks of it, a fairly serious sound system and a board with lots of switches and blinking lights to go with it.

Our own humble president, Peter George, is supposed to announce something big today and even though it's a secret, word on the street is that it will be the second largest donation to a university in Canadian history. Now the largest is $105 million (also to McMaster), so it sounds like it's going to be a lot. Frankly, from the amount of money they've spent setting up for this announcement, it's going to need to be at least 30 million to cover the costs. There are big tents and awnings all over campus as well as outdoor carpet being laid everywhere and exotic plants suddenly appearing at every turn.

Anyway, we'll see what all the fuss us about, in an hour or so.

Sooo, you might think I've been neglecting the old blog, but I've actually been doing you a favour, as life has been too boring to make the cut, even here, so count yourself lucky that I haven't posted anything.

I've been running a lot more and doing things outdoors, but now that it's hitting the 40's, it's time to take a break and retreat to the keyboard. I've also been working on making my room even harder to leave, so I recently decided to turn the most empty wall in my room, into a fabric wall. I thought it would be an interesting look, so I read up on it for a couple of weeks and then took the plunge and bought a bunch of wood and fasteners at the hardware store. A couple of weeks later, I've finished all the frames and now I'm left with deciding what fabrics to get. Hopefully I'll have a finished product to show you, a week from today...

I've also got a link hanging around here. It's about the dark lord, Dick Cheney and his role in shaping policy at the white house. It's an in-depth four part series, so click below to check out the first three installments.

-Cheney exerts influence out of public view - The Washington Post
-Cheney reshaped limits on interrogation - The Washington Post
-Guiding decision-making from the back stage - The Washington Post

I headed into the city yesterday, to check out the new Crystal expansion at the ROM and also to attend a birthday. Before heading over to Toronto, I took a look in the mirror and realized that my appearence was embarassing, so I made for the barbershop. Having lived in Hamilton for three years now, I know this city has many beautiful areas and a large amount of nature, but on the flip side, once you head to the east side of the city, things immediately become sketchy.

Here are a few of the things I witnessed, in my brief time on the east side.

-A seemingly mentally-unbalanced senior citizen verbally lashing out at a blind man, because he didn't like that the blind man had a white cane, leaving the blind man to yell back in anger, almost on the verge of tears
-A mother, walking down the street with her drugged-out teenage daughter, wearing only white (well... formerly white) tube socks
-Two pigeons mating in the middle of a busy downtown sidewalk

West of the main north/south street, you'll see none of this, but once you cross that magical barrier, it's no-holds barred.

After experiencing a days' worth of visual delights - all before 11am - I headed downtown to see the ROM with Baxter and James. That didn't quite work out, as it was too busy, but I did manage to run into my sister and her boyfriend on Bloor Street, where she took this photo. After that bit of randomess, it was off to the birthday, before getting out of town completely. Hopefully it's not so crazy next week, when I try again.

While I was in the barbershop, one of the customers mentioned that they would be a bartender at a speaking event at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, for Colin Powell. Turns out that there's going to be a large protest and they're expecting 10,000 people to turn out. Just because I can hardly believe I'm typing it, yes, Colin Powell is going to be in Hamilton today, at 5pm. Such an odd city.