Wednesday, January 26, 2005
energy, bruises, pictures, and war
Onwards, upwards, forwards, etc.
Went stunting Monday night, despite the fact that the Boy wasn't going, and he claimed no one else I knew would be there either. It turned out that everyone was there: my favourite tops (Lins and Tiny), a number of vets who know what they're doing and offered me advice, the crazies rehearsing their routines for the Best of the West competition in February, and a couple of girl bases who I hadn't met before but who turned out to be pretty cool. The stunting was good, once we got them to stop giggling. For some reason stunting with girls is a lot goofier and lot more playful than stunting with guys. Guys are always trying to outdo each other, but girls more often than not are happy to just help you get the stunt up. Or sometimes just to giggle so that you can't put anything up.
We took some photos of a pyramid we finally managed to pull off, and of me with Lins in hands. One of the girls is supposed to email them to me, so when I have them I'll post them here. Then you'll all have no choice but to believe me.
Speaking of posting photos, when I go to Flickr to upload stuff, I sometimes look at the really cool feature that tells you how many times people have viewed your pictures. A photo of my cats gets on average 2-3 clicks a week, tops. A photo of the Boy and a cat gets about the same. A picture of me, however, gets an INSANE number of clicks. "My Hair is too Long" got 13 clicks in less than a week! The photo of me and Dag in Spain also got a lot of clicks (21), although it has been up for a lot longer. And the photo of me in front of what I described as "a surprisingly erotic" fountain in London got 23 clicks. People are awfully predictable. They go for the girl, even if she's fully dressed and not doing anything even remotely sexual. I don't have gender statistics, but I'm going to go ahead and wager that it's not mainly girls who click on my photos.
I could make them private and just avoid the whole thing. But that would be much less amusing for all concerned.
Went to capoeira again tonight. Ava wasn't there, which was too bad since she makes things much more entertaining. We didn't do anything new this time, which was a bit disappointing. I had ambitions of learning a backflip right away. But I guess it's best not to crack my head open for the time being. There are still a few more things I'd like to do with it.
I found this great book in the library today when I was supposed to be researching something totally unrelated. It's called Making People Disappear: An Amazing Chronicle of Photographic Deception, and it's about how authoritarian governments (particularly Facist Italy, Nazi Germany, Communist China, Stalinist Russia, Castro's Cuba, etc.) actually altered photographs, LONG before the age of Photoshop, to physically delete people who were no longer in political favour and to make their leaders appear more flawless and infalliable. It's a brilliant book which I have trouble putting down.
No one does it like the Communists, right K.?
I desperately need some new wake-up music for the morning. I'm currently listening to the Rolling Stones, but they're not really doing it for me anymore. I need something that's either so bad or so good that it'll make me pop out of bed the minute it comes on. Any suggestions? I tried the White Stripes' self-titled album, but the grating guitar was so bad to wake up to it just made me turn it off and go back to sleep.
It's possible that I'm actually not getting enough sleep, but I really don't know how I can go about getting more. I'm simply not tired until 1:00 or 2:00 am. I expected that getting regular exercise would deplete my energy reserves, but it's actually done the exact opposite. I'm always fidgeting now, not cause I'm nervous, but because I have too much bloody energy. Working out for five hours at a time only gives me MORE! I've become this energy monster who just grows and grows like the Incredible Hulk, or like gremlins when placed in water. My energy level runs out WAY after my muscles do, which is probably why I hurt all the time. But considering how many people I see at school every day who seem so tired, wasted, sick, and really on their last legs, I am pretty much glad to not be among them anymore. It's not like I don't ever get tired, it's just that now I have a backup generator for some reason.
A hell of a lot of guys Bush sent to Iraq got killed today. For some reason his teary little press conference just makes me even more angry. It's like a parent crying for a child they've spent years beating, but only when someone shows them the bruises. And then they turn right around and discuss why beating your children until they bleed is an effective form of discipline and that to give it up now would simply spoil the child. Then they go back to beating it some more. I have no sympathy. If you're going to expect us to buy that you feel bad for men who die in combat, how about showing it by not sending them to fight in pointless wars in the first place?
And another thing. This free and democratic elections in Iraq business is a pile of horseshit. How can you say you're having fair and impartial elections when the people going out to vote are putting their lives at risk just by going to a polling station? The people who will vote will inevitably be the most politicized and the most extreme, because they're the only ones who are hard-core enough to leave their houses on election day, and how is that a democratic representation of any society? That and the idea of imposing an election on a sovereign nation you've brought to its knees by bombing them into the ground is not exactly based on democratic principles. I won't claim that the United States is a democratic nation, they're more like a Constitutional Theocracy with Money and Power and Brawn as the heads of state, but they've deluded themselves and others to such an extent that there's almost nothing left to do but laugh at the perverseness of it all. Which is why I watch the Daily Show religiously.
It's at times like these that I am so glad to be a Canadian, SO glad to belong to a country that doesn't give a crap whether it's a world power, as long as the D.A.R.T. team makes it to Sri Lanka in time to deliver their aid, as usual. For the first time in my life, I'm thrilled to be part of a peacekeeping nation. It may not be the most efficient way to go about getting your way in the world, but my parents taught me to share. And the Rolling Stones taught me that you can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.
Okay, so it sounds better with musical accompaniment. So do most things in life.
More pics coming soon.
Goodnight.
-N
