Some days just suck. This is one of those days.
Things that sucked today:
1. I went to work last night when I didn't have to.
2. A web site I helped make got fucked up.
3. My buses this morning was late
4. My first class was totally pointless
5. Melissa has free passes to Slackers, and she doesn't even know that it's about! Boo.
6. I lost my electric shaver.
7. I forgot my notebook at home this morning, and I have to hand in an assignment late now.
8. Tonight I actually have to do to work.
9. The Shaw newsgroup servers are totally flaky and I can't download the new episode of Buffy
10. Around the world, senseless brutalities and unjust acts continued unabated.
By Ian on January 31, 2002 at 2:45 PM
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This post should be a lot like my real life: Disjointed, angry, and meaningless to those not directly involved.
On Friday, I saw A Walk to Remember. Readers will note that a few weeks back I espoused my love for Nicholas Spark's novel, upon which the film was based. The film featured Mandy Moore and Shane West, who I will not fault for their performances. Both were subtle and effective, doing exceptionally well with their roles. The movie was destroyed, however, by the director and screenwriter. The characterizations were faulty, the plot was mangled, all of the deeper meanings and truths of the novel were stripped away, and all of the best lines were taken with them. The protagonist was changed from a sensitive young man to a total fuckhead, and the struggles that changed him went from dynamic and believable to ridiculous and secondary. I urge everyone: You can pickup the paperback version of the book for less than a movie ticket... and you're certain to enjoy yourself more.
Monday night I went to The Whiskey for a Smash Mouth Concert. I would like to officially award the management of the club with the ianwallace.com Stupid God-damned Fucker Award. The tickets for the event announced that the doors would open at 7. So at 7, I presented myself at the club, and sat down to await the show. Well, await I did, then I waited some more. The show started at 10:30. 3 and a half hours later. 3. And. A. Half. Hours. Later. Nowhere, not on the tickets, not on the posters, not at ticketmaster.ca, was there any indication that there was any significant gap between opening and showtime. But of course there wasn't. If there had been that warning, they wouldn't have sold as many drinks. It wouldn't have been so bad waiting, but with The Whiskey being a night club, it's not an atmosphere conducive to conversation. I enjoy shouting at my friends and at waitresses in darkened, noisy rooms as much as the next guy, but as a hobby, it lacks staying power. I get bored of it after 2 hours, max. I get the impression I wasn't the only one dissatisfied with the event, too. Smash Mouth's lead singer spent the show yelling at techies and roadies between songs, and basically told the crowd that there were a bunch of issues with the equipment. I don't want to blame the Whiskey for that, but I really doubt it was the crew's fault. It's their job to set up the gear, and if they weren't any good at it, they'd have been fired a long time ago. It's hard not to assume that the venue goofed somehow. It was a good show, with the band playing all their big hits as well as a few new songs and a 13-minute long cover of Jump Around that featured a 5-minute drum solo of impressive energy. And I was in the company of the two loveliest ladies in the joint, so it was hard to stay very upset. But I don't think I'll be heading back to that club anytime soon.
On a happier note, I'm now using Blogger Pro to update this site, as well as Stocker Mentality. It's a pricey upgrade from the free service, but I'm hoping that the extra features will pay for themselves. I guess it's up to me: the more I update, the more worthwhile the expenditure will be.
Chris, over at Not My Desk, stole one of my jokes for his post yesterday, but I doubt it was intentional. It was funny anyway, so go check it out.
By Ian on January 30, 2002 at 8:52 AM
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-27 degrees celsius is too cold. Seriously, it's just too cold. As far as I'm concerned, as long as temperatures like that are still being reached, the government of Canada has failed. Arts, social work, employment - they can all be damned. I want weather reform. You hear me, Ottawa? Make it warm!
By Ian on January 28, 2002 at 8:24 AM
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This is funny.
That's all I have to say about that.
By Ian on January 21, 2002 at 8:58 AM
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You know, I don't try to hate the college. Seriously. I'm not naive; I know I can come across as a pretty negative, sardonic type of guy every now and then. (By "now" and "then", I mean "always" and "even more than always", of course). But I honestly go to school in the morning expecting to have a calm, quiet, normal day where I don't have to yell at anyone or contemplate how good a lawyer I would need to get away with the things that school makes me want to do. (Typical conclusion: A very, very good lawyer.) This morning I was a little tired, but dreading my evening at work infinitely more than my day at school. So naturally, my Writing for Business professor, she of the legendary humourlessness, came to class and announced some assignments that I am positive were taken from a book called The absolute most fucking ridiculous things you could possibly ask Ian to do, ever.
First, we had to analyze and critique the open letter that the CEO of Wendy's published in all the national newspapers after the death of Dave Thomas. First thing to my mind was this: that 100 people had probably already edited that damn piece, and any trace of anything incorrect or inappropriate had inevitably been cut. Second thought through my head was that the Wendy's people appear to be a bunch of stupid fuckheads for pulling the Dave Thomas TV commercials so quickly, so I frankly wasn't interested in discussing the language of their public circle jer... I mean, loving tribute. Fuck them.
Second, we got another of her ridiculous role-playing assignments. "Pretend you're the third executive assistant to the Minister of Small Fluffy Bits Of Lint and Other Fluff That May or May Not Be Lint of Trinidad & Tobago, who is writing a letter on behalf of the second executive assistant who heard a second-hand anecdote to the effect that while the minister was dining at a reception held by the Vice-president in charge of Decorative Crockery for the International Monetary Fund, he ate a bad prawn and felt ill the next morning, but also quite enjoyed the after-dinner music and wondered where he might purchase a recording from the band." While this is naturally an exaggeration for comedic effect (HA HA!), her actual assignments are only marginally less inane. But at least when I've finished her course, I'll be ready for an exciting career in the field of writing letters while pretending to be other people and fabricating all the important details. Assuming that's actually a career field and not the fast track to an indictment on fraud charges.
Thirdly, another round of always-delightful peer-editing, which, as I have mentioned previously, is the only thing I enjoy more than slamming my fingers in a car door while felating a senior citizen. The peer editing came at a very stressful moment during the 80-minute class, and so I sort of lost it. To make a long story short, I informed my professor that I was one sucker who wasn't going to tacitly endorse her shenanigans anymore, and that I had no intention of paying any heed to an editor who couldn't produce, at minimum, a bachelor's degree in English from a fully accredited university, and I may have implied that in the event of a problem with my personal stance on the issue, my professor could go to hell.
After that class, I had hoped to just get a quick bite to eat and head to my film class, which is always fun and thought provoking. Except it turns out I've been de-enrolled from that class, because the various departments of the school can't work closely enough to deduct enough money from my student loans to cover all the classes I've enrolled for. So I need to fork over another $540 before I can get back into my two electives. Thank the kindly gods of postal efficiency that the check for the remainder of my loan money came today, so hopefully I can get this cleared up before the next class I got kicked out of starts tomorrow.
But I'm assuming that the bureaucratic hoops I'll have to leap through will once again preclude a calm, quiet, normal day where I don't have to yell at anyone or contemplate how good a lawyer I would need...
By Ian on January 17, 2002 at 3:49 PM
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I just finished reading a book, a book I've read before and will doubtlessly read again. A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks. It's an absolutely amazing book, one of the most emotionally evocative works I've ever read. It's a captivating story of youth, self-discovery, love and god. Set in the late 50s, it's the story of a 17-year-old guy who finds his life intertwined with the unpopular, withdrawn reverend's daughter. His emotional journey and discovery that ensues is captivating, honest, ocassionally ugly and I think familiar to everyone who's loved and been loved.
I can't recommend this book enough, and I'd have to suggest reading it before the film version hits theatres in a few weeks.
By Ian on January 15, 2002 at 6:08 PM
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This is worth mentioning, if for no other reason than to suck up to Chris: The much bally-hooed Not My Desk is back from a several-week hiatus, with a new design that is simply spiftastic. He even promises actual new content tomorrow! Like we've never heard that before!
But anyhow, head on over there and check that out. It clearly took a lot of effort to put the new site together. I may even forgive Chris for never replying to my last e-mail.
By Ian on January 14, 2002 at 8:12 AM
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My professor just referred to a two-door car as a "coo-pay". Good Lord.
By Ian on January 9, 2002 at 8:13 AM
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I'll apologise for the terrible pun above, but I think that if anyone could forgive such an awful line, it would be Wendy's founder and long-time pitchman Dave Thomas, who passed away yesterday at 69. He was a man who I naturally never met, but who always seemed like a very decent, friendly, human sort of guy. He was said to have visited every location of his restuarant at least once, and would always talk with employees and customers. And he kept on getting in front of that camera to pitch his wares, despite an almost ludicrous draught of acting talent. He was straight-up; he said his prices were good, and they are good.
I think everyone should go have a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger today, in memoriam. Dave will be missed, at least by me.
By Ian on at 1:03 AM
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My freelance writing class features one of my favourite learning tools ever: peer editing! Nothing better than having people you don't know, people who quite possibly rape nuns for a living, people who have to ask you what a word in your paper means and confirm with you that you've spelt it properly, proofing your work. Now maybe 3 or 4 weeks into the course, when we've all learned the fundamentals of proof-reading and editing, this could be valuable. But peer editing the first assignment in the second hour of class seems a little irresponsible. My "editor" marked 4 mistakes on my letter that aren't mistakes in any universe, and her entire last paragraph was an unreadable mess of mis-used words. I'm supposed to take advice from someone in those circumstances? Inconceivable!
By Ian on January 8, 2002 at 11:46 AM
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Well, ladies and gents, It's new a new week and I'm sure we'll all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, at least those of us who are lemurs. Personally, my eyes never seem all that bright, and "Bushy Tail" makes me think of something all-together different.
I have school from 8 AM till 6 PM on Mondays. Looking at my schedule, I never imagined it would be such a daunting experience, but verily it was. I spend almost 6 hours in one room, an extravagently lit Macintosh computer lab. Being around so much wasted computational potential hard on the geek in me, but even more painful is the effect on the eyes in me. I swear to that my head started pounding after 10 minutes in that room and didn't stop until I was half-way home. I think that wearing shades to school might give rise to rumors of a dangerous Corey Hart or Timbuk 3 obsession, but if I want to have a hope in hell of doing actual work in that classroom, I may have no choice. Stupid flourescent lighting.
Never-the-less, I have now experienced the full scope and majesty of my course-load. I offer you my final two first impressions:
Acom 2273 (Introduction to Digital Layout): This class is basically the sequel to the elements of design class I took last semester. The professor is the same, and everyone in the class is familiar with him. So a part of me hoped we could skip the preliminaries and jump right into things. But instead we got all the same speeches about requirements, expectations and standards, but with a new twist - a lecture on the dangers of internet addiction and an impassioned entreaty to not surf the net during his lectures (he teaches in a lab), left we sink into a self-destructive spiral of looking at porno, or other such questionable influences. In a startling and possibly innappropriate tangent to that discussion, he decided to reveal that he is a civil-libertarian who would defend till the death our right to look up bomb-recipes and nazi propaganda, but only if it's "relevant" to class. I was going to keep this impartial, but I just realized these are my first impressions and this is my website.I'll just say it: I'm sick of this professor, and I'm sick of his whole fucking program. I'm looking forward to working with Quark Express more than I have in the past, but I don't expect it will be made a very satisfying experience.
Acom 2279 (Introduction to Digital Photography): Let me start with a discussion of my primary problem with this class. Everyone see the word digital in the title? Good. So explain to me why I have to buy $400 worth of analogue camera equipment, film and paper. Explain why digital cameras or their use aren't even mentioned in the course outline. Explain how it's even fair to place that kind of financial burden on students who are probably already borrowing money just to cover tuition and books. I'm interested in photohraphy. I like to play with cameras, and I think it will be pretty fun to see a darkroom and develop my own pics. But if there's one thing I'm really self-conscious about it, it's my "eye". I don't have any depth perception, I'm color-blind and If I were two feet farther from my monitor, I wouldn't be able to see the words I'm typing right now. In a class where taking "good" pictures is the primary criteria of success, I can't help but wonder if that counts a legitimate disability. So I'm worried about that, as well as my professor, who seems like a bit of an ass. He wanted to take pictures of everyone to use in remembering their names. I told him I wasn't comfortable with it, and he says "I'll just take a quick shot" and points the camera at me. So I said "Now you're really making me uncomfortable" and he looked like he was gonna push it again, so I just explained that I wouldn't mind if he had troubles with my name and that I'd try and make myself memorable in some other way. I don't like being photographed. Not even of my best hair-day do I want someone capturing me for posterity. That's why in 3 years this website has featured only 2 pictures of me and currently has none. And maybe I'm remembering things incorrectly, but It seems that thousands of people have been able to remember my name without the benefit of a video snapshot they could peruse at home. So maybe the first time I miss an assignment, I'll tell the professor I didn't remember it because I hadn't taken a picture of the handout.
By Ian on January 7, 2002 at 11:53 PM
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Since Melissa finds this website to be terribly image-deficient, I figured I should do at least one thing to correct that. She also pointed out that nobody ever visits this site, which I found very hurtful but infinitely less correctable. So I bring you the first image to grace a newspost since Clyde. Based on my last two days at school, If I were going to write a book, this is what it would look like.
And while I'm here... I haven't been able to find any rabid badgers. Maybe you could all start voting for something else in the poll? I'm beginning to feel like I'm worth more to all you people as a bloodied corpse than as... whatever I am now.
Cheers!
By Ian on January 5, 2002 at 10:50 PM
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Man, I wasn't sure I wanted to do this... but it's been a rough day and if I can't rant here, where can I rant? Don't answer that - it was hypothetical.
I'm sitting at school today, wishing I was dead. I had a two hour break between class, and I couldn't find a single person I knew to hang out with. I had a book, but just wasn't feeling it. I'd already checked out my daily webcomics, checked out The Onion, had some lunch and basically done everything I could think of to kill time at Mt. Royal. And I still had an hour till class. I was trying not to mind too much, because it was the first hour of a new class coming up,. and you can't miss the first class. I'm not sure why exactly, but I get the impression it's important: DO NOT MISS THINE FIRST CLASS. So I'm just finding new ways to violate my spinal integrity with poses of various lassitude on one of the chairs in the computer lab, desperately hoping I wouldn't choke on my own tongue while idly wondering if that would be such a bad end to such a boring afternoon.
Finally, 2 o'clock tolls and I make myself present and presentable at the prescribed room, ready for some serious learning. After a few minutes I occured to me that all of the signs of a traditional class - other students, professors, etc. - were not to be found, at least not in any relevant abundance. So off I went to the professor's office, intending to find out that I'd made some stupid mistake, say something self-deprecating and generally get on with the whole attending class shebang. Instead, I find out that the day's class had been cancelled, on the grounds that it was a "lab" and you can't have a lab without a "lecture". God forbid. And apparently, everyone who isn't me had been informed of this via e-mail. When I mentioned that I had not received any such e-mail, my professor decided to speak to me in the most condescending tone I have yet encountered in my college experience. He hadn't received any error message indicating a returned e-mail or bad address, so I must have got it. The look at his address book that I demanded showed that I wasn't even in it, which was also somehow my fault. Obviously, when I diligently filled out the contact sheet at the beginning of the year and made a rather specific point of handing it directly to him, I was woefully lax in my responsibilities as his student. Naturally, I should have forced entrance into his office at some early point and made sure the database on his Mac was definative. But here's the part that really pissed me off: The professor proceeded to suggest that I should have known he didn't have my e-mail address because I wasn't receiving his e-mails during the last semester. I'll assume the absolute abortion of logic that had to occur for that statement to be uttered is clear to all, and won't dissect it further.
At that point I may have said some rather harsh things to the professor that I'm sure to regret if he ever decides to hold a class. But hopefully it will be more clear to him that I am putting myself into alarming debt for the right to study at that college and am sick of being treated as though I know nothing about the subject matter but everything about the inner workings of the faculty and their individual minds.
By Ian on at 12:22 AM
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It's day two of my second semester at Mt. Royal College. I'm still an electronic publishing student, but not yet certain exactly what that means. Colin studies accounting & finance, and by all accounts (no pun intended) is familiar with the various career options and subsequent models of BMWs his education will afford him. All I've divined from the various poobahs of my program is that when I'm done I'll know all about "publishing" and maybe something having to do with "electronics". This makes the whole endevour seem just slightly moot, but I've been promised a fancy-looking document at the end that will tell employers that I've spent a lot of money learning something and that I'd be a better choice for a job than the guy who begs for quarters outside their building. So, I've got that going for me, which is nice.
I figured I'd record my first impressions of the new semester's classes here, so when I start the really intensive bitching later we'll all be on the same page. Let's begin:
Freelance Writing 1311 (Writing for business): Fairly self-explanitory, which should have left the professor plenty of time to explain why I'm required to take it. I've already taken a mandatory english composition class that apparently ensures I can translate thought into written words. I can understand its pertinance as a job skill, but having this second class focusing on business communications seems a presumptuous type of overkill. If I want to learn how to write the perfect business letter, that's one thing... they probably sell books on that. But training design students on the writing of an annual report? Designing an annual report seems like something I should know, but I think the writing is best left to someone who knows how the company in question is doing. Furthermore, who assumed I'd be going into business, anyway? Maybe I'm going to take my degree and work exclusively with circus folk or Alaskan wolfhounds. They're certainly not going to care if I use full-block style in my inter-office correspondance. I'm guessing that they needed a class to fill out the first year in the program and picked Freelance Writing because it's easy to rationalize as a "career skill".
English 2243 (Introduction to the study of film): Now we're cooking with grease. I get to watch movies, talk to people about the movies in class, write a few papers about how The Matrix ruled and then take my nice easy A home to cuddle when it's all over. Proving that there's no such thing as a free lunch, I had to pay for my lunch today... wait, I mean that as cool as the class seems straight off, it seems to be populated by people who are either: a)looking for an excuse to watch movies and lay low for 4 hours a week, or b) convinced that they are serious conneseurs of film because they watch movies like Amelie and claim to like Atom Egoyan. You know the sort; they dismiss everything popular because discussing popular films makes them feel common and dirty.
As readers of my movie reviews will know, I'm into movies. I watch movies the way certain aquatic mammals breathe oxygen. But I've rarely met a movie I didn't like. Film making is a creative and collaborative endevour of the highest order, and just because I don't get it, or don't find it funny or sad or exciting or whatever it was supposed to be doesn't mean that it wasn't a valid effort. I may be able to recognize certain elements of film like narrative style, cinematographic details, literary or historical reference, etc, but that doesn't make me a "better" movie fan. I don't like films just because they're in Italian. And I don't hate films just because they've got a big star in them. I could rant about this forever, and I'm guessing that at least one paper I write for this class will afford me a better opportunity. I'll finish this by saying that Paul Verhoeven is not a genius, and Starship Troopers, while certainly a leader of the giants bugs in outer space genre, is not in even the slightest way, not even a little itty-bitty bit, not in any conceivable fashion brilliant..
Linguistics 2211 (The nature of language): I wish to avoid any undue rudeness here, but I find it deliciously ironic that my linguistics class is being taught by a professor whose use of English is of the seriously halting and stumbling variety. While she seems emminently capable and learned, watching her as she searches for a word to describe something, gets visably frustrated and starts over is somewhat akin to watching Marie Curie die from exposure to radium; with so much knowledge of it, I wonder how she's not better equiped to handle it properly. I suspect, without raising any issues of competancy here, that today's 50 minute lecture could have been disposed of in half an hour by someone more adept with english. Vectors of instruction aside, I'm sure this course will become a favourite of mine, since I've always been fascinated by the origins and evolutions of language.
I've got two more classes yet to experience, so once I've had my first hours of those I'll add my recaps here.
By Ian on January 4, 2002 at 1:21 PM
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Well, as promised, I've put up a bunch of the assignments I did for my first semester at Mt. Royal College. Mostly essays, so you don't need any basis of understanding in the topics to enjoy them. You'll find them on the right, underneath the poll and the link(s). Take a look!
By Ian on January 1, 2002 at 6:40 PM
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Well, anyone familiar with this site o' mine has probably noticed that things look a little different around here. I'm still a big fan of the previous layout, but but it was getting a little old, and (here's the honesty bit) I think it was a little extreme for what I was doing with it. A design that makes navigation easy and interesting is great, but borders on overkill here at ianwallace.com, where there is virtually nothing to navigate to. I was neglecting almost every feature, from the reviews to the count-downs to the monthly babes, and it showed. This new asthetic direction isn't designed to curb the neglect, it's to make it less obvious. I do want to do more here, and I'm sure that my new educational focus (electronic publishing) will make it possible for me to post more schtuff on a more frequent basis. In fact, here's a promise: You'll see all my school work posted here, no matter how lousy it is, no matter what the topic, no matter how many stolen jokes from Not My Desk I've incorporated into it. And you can quote me. You can't nessecarily make me do it, but if you feel like quoting I invite you to go crazy.
For the first little bit, maybe even just the first few days, there will be no formal sections here. If I've got something to show you, you'll be able to find it here - on the main page. But I do want there to be some foundation material and recurring features, so I've set up a small poll using juicy codes from the bit-merchants over at Bravenet. Let me know what you want, and I'll be sure to tally up all three votes and ignore them as vigorously as I'm able.
Since the friends section is nicht mehr vorhanden für Zugriff durch Besucher (literally: gone.), at least temporarily, I'd like to give some "shout-outs" to my "peepz": Chelly, Christina, Colin, Jess, Kat, Michel, Nick, Stacey and Steve-O as well as Melissa and the rest of the ultra-"dope" E-pub "crew". Werd.
And finally, in acknowledgement that things happen in the world even when you're not looking at this website, a happy new year to all. If I may quote those most numerically-inclined of ravenesque ornithoids, "...there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last."
By Ian on at 3:21 AM
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