So I'm a little late, sue me.

Sweet heavens is War of the Worlds ever rank.

Rather large spoilers ahead if you haven't seen the movie or read the book

I'm not a movie buff really, but Speilberg manages to pull you into the movie like a dream. By focusing on just one family's plight, always running away from the action, it gives you a truer sense of what something like that might really be like.

I was gunna say something about the first scene where the tripod pops out and starts vaporizing everyone but this guy did it better than I would have:

Perhaps Spielberg's wisest choice in these scenes was to actually let the extras compliment the major actors, rather than just focusing on the recognizable faces. That is not to say that they are not almost always prominent, but it is awesome to see Cruise's reaction amongst about 150 other literally 'devolving' citizens. The panic and hysteria has taken over them all - they trample and kick and punch like nothing that I've ever seen. before.

For those who whined about the specifics and unbelievablitly of the movie- I understand your pain, but urge you to remove the stick from your butt. The movie wasn't about whether or not governments would have noticed huge machines buried deep in the earth or whether 15 people could really over power a huge mechanical arm. It was about pulling the audiance along with only Cruise and Dakota, in an attempt to make you think about how something like that would really be. And by focusing specifically on those 2 (for the most part anyways) and their reactions, as each encounter progresses (The van getting highjacked; Cruise's reaction to Tim Robbins going insane; and Dakota, when in the cage with all those other people, to name a few examples), it manages to do just that. I guess what I'm trying to say is it seemed to be more about emphasizing the specifics of human fraility (and keeping you really realy tense for that matter) than giving a smart story backup.

Albeit, the ending came a little too suddenly and there is no reason for the older kid to have still been alive in the end, it was still a great movie in my opinion.

Peak Oil: a scam?

Something I'm working on.

Corporate Dominance?

This is worth a listen

I found the site off of Life after the oil crash.net surprisingly enough. Like all good arguers, the site in question is posted, I believe, in order to discredit it.

On his site, Savinar states:

If Peak Oil is "Big Oil propaganda" (as some claim), why did Sonoma State University's Project Censored declare it one of the most censored stories of 2003-2004? Surely, if "Peak Oil is Big Oil propaganda", Big Oil would have found a way to get it off the pages of under-funded publications like Project Censored and onto the pages of the mainstream papers and into the 24/7 cable news cycle.

Likewise, if "Peak Oil is a myth propagated by the greedy oil companies to justify high prices", why didn't any of the greedy oil company CEOs offer "the peaking of world oil production" as a partial justification for high gas prices when they testified before Congress about high gas prices?

Strangely enough, it seems to me at least, Savinar answers his own question in the next couple paragraphs:

The answer is simple: the true consequences of Peak Oil cannot be acknowledged in such a highly public forum without crashing the financial markets...

So, why act as if you were suppressing the knowledge of peak oil if it isn't real? How about to strengthen the illusion of the scam itself. If peak oil is indeed not real, it would seem strange that the engineers of it would allow the crash of the exact market they're going to be making money off of.

Also, consider these facts:

-Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and just about all other opec countries, need a certain amount of money to finance different operations within their own respective nations.

-As the price of oil goes up, the price of everything goes up. Right now, "over 30 percent of world output, 70 percent of world trade, and 80 percent of international investment is controlled by transnational corporations. All that while overseas production of these firms exceeds the levels of world exports, making them key players in the world economy. As was stated in the latter point, it's worthwhile to trace where the money is going to go if prices rise.

-If you wanted to create an artificial scarcity, what better way to do it than stop building new refineries and then make the claim that oil is scarce?

-Goldman Sachs predicted in April of 2005 that oil could reach 105 dollars within a years time. But the thing is, Goldman Sachs makes money off the futures market; the higher the price of oil, the better.

-Most importantly, if oil is abiotic, as some people claim it puts a huge twist on the peak oil debate. Last Wednesday, I talked to my local MLA, Ray Prins, and when we got into the discussion about oil being possibly abiotic, he brought up that last Monday, a well, of about a billion barrels, was found 30,000 feet deep. This contradicts the current belief that oil deposits can only be found in depths of 5000 to 10 000 feet deep. I've looked around but found virtually nothing about it, which only further seems to push the idea that a western media bias is being pushed on us. If I can find the article I'll post it up as soon as I can.

I don't want to get into the reasons why peak oil might be real right now because I intend to post a rather lengthy essay near the end of January of March on the both sides of the debate. Anyways, I'm sure anyone aware of the debate already knows the ramifications if it is real.

Also, even if it is a scam, given the ramifications of continued oil and gas extraction I find myself questioning whether I would want it exposed due to the long term by products.

But, none the less, I thought I would post this anyways.

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And, one last thing in relation to the mp3 I posted at the beggining.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has backed a new $685m (£395m) loan for Iraq, in a move seen as an endorsement of its economic reforms. The loan represents the IMF's seal of approval that the Iraq government is taking the correct fiscal measures to mend its war-ravaged economy.

In other words- Privatization, baby.

You know you were drunk when....

Last nine numbers dialed on Daniel's cell phone:

1- 854 442 *7777
2- 575 777 76*77
3- 620 050 50057
4- 500 57
5- 306 060 90
6- 0 052 002 502
7- 528 205 05582
8- 403 303 9603
9- 838 686 81306

Man, do I ever feel like a leach.

I'm done now, I promise.

See-never that simple

One person says one thing, another person says another thing, which leads you to question both peoples reasons for saying such things, and it goes on and on and on.

Maybe a smaller world would be better.

daniel rambling incoherant coherancies

Is it strange to start forgetting certain things at this age? Forgetting how to forget what eats you and remembering how to forget what doesn't...how does someone manage something like that?

These last months have been unlike any others before. It's not that I'm depressed; it's just that...there's nothing really. For the first time in my life there's nothing to really look forward to. I mean there is, but just not in a selfish personal way. The world has great potential in everyway and I, without hesitation, am interested to see which way we'll go. It's just being part of the world, if we go in the wrong direction, that makes me part of that direction, even if I am going against it. Right now, I am part of something I want no part of. Yet, at the same time, I have no where else to go. How do you remove yourself from something if that something is at the same time the thing that's keeping those you love alive? I guess it's not even that simple, if you can call that simple in the first place.

We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and it's bleeding to death

Ask myself a million times, can you honestly be wrong if you had the right intentions? In the end does it really matter? In the end the end will still be here, right? Morals in the face of the products of actions- an analogy where the means justify the ends, or they don't.

I've been wondering for sometime now whether or not souls can exist before their manifested in human beings. Not after, but before. Do you have to earn one? Do you have to lose it? If you believe in that kind of thing anyways. Myself, I have just as much reason to believe in the concept of God and the afterlife as I do not to (Go figure, my whole life is like that).

Well, I'll be damned

I had heard a little bit about this a while ago but never bothered to look into it.

I think the article summed it up rather well at the end.

"If The Onion's parody has demonstrated anything, it's that we should be worrying about adults not being able to distinguish between fiction and reality. The kids themselves seem to have a pretty good grasp of it."

And as stupid as such a case may seem, I can at least understand it. There's enough shit that goes on in the world to make anyone who bothers to look at it clearly, and sometimes perhaps a little to closely, uneasy. Illegal sex trades, drug wars, corporate lobbying at the expense of the public good, enviromental degragration, etc. If you have any ounce of collective concern in your heart or head, which ever such a thing comes from (if not both), you tend to ask yourself why these things happen and in doing so, how they can be stopped.

Premise A leads to premise B, which added up with premise C, leads us to our conclusion. I do it everyday and most likely so do you whether you notice or not. The difference of course being that either you use well backed up qualitative and quantitative evidence to explain why you've arrived at your conclusion, or you use what your up bringing taught you was common sense. The problem with common sense being that morals, in some cases at least, don't make for the best premises to base conclusions on.
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Finished my last test last wednesday. Final mark in french was on A- ; philosophy was a B; and I'm not sure how my International Relations test turned out, but I got my term paper back when I handed in the test and it seems I somehow managed to ace it. I've never had such enthusiastic comments about a peice of work I've done, ever. That felt nice, especially considering the shitty day I had had.

The paper was on the crisis of petro-politics (aka-peak oil) and the environment. I think I'll eventually end up posting it here but it'll be my research essay that I end up posting. The one I just wrote was my argumentative essay and I didn't have nearly enough room to fit everthing in that I wanted to (hell, I'll be lucky if I manage to even in the research essay). Anyways, I promise it'll be good when it's done since I've spent like the last year and 8 months reading the different opinions and potential problems that exist with the topic itself.

But back to the main topic here- yay for me and my marks! Cause I don't ever get marks higher than a B+, at least certinly not final marks or important papers.

New Song...

Tis called- October will Enter

Vocals are getting better; at least I think they are. It could just be that I've sung and heard the same damn lyrics like 75 different times and I've now become so habituatued to them that I can't tell if they suck or not.

Anyways, as always to anyone who comes across this page, advice is welcome.

A little Review...

Playing- David Usher: Long Goodbye

Went and saw Syriana with Mike, Craig, and Andrea last night. While the story is somewhat difficult to follow at times, it is extremely well written and I would highly recommend checking it out. Personally, I don't think the writers could have made it any less simple without sacrificing the essence of the complexity they were trying to explain exists in the current economic and political structures of society today.

All in all, it wasn't the big epiphany about the role oil plays in first world nations that I was expecting, but it certainly does hint at it quite consistently throughout the movie. It's probably that fact that there is no denouement at the end, mixed with all those hints through out the movie that make it that much stronger at the end. Everything pretty much just climaxes at the end and then it's over leaving you to consider everything you've just watched and how it all played out.

I suppose if I had one complaint about the movie it would be that it doesn't really do a good job at explaining the motivation behind a lot of the characters actions in the movie. I mean, there are a lot of things that happen to everyone, but it's hard to pin point exactly what has affected who, at least with certain characters- Matt Damon’s being the obvious exclusion. Maybe that was exactly the point or maybe you just need to watch it a second time to get a better understanding.

Anyways, yeah, you should go and check it out.

I watched a bit of Lost in Translation today; Scarlett Johansson reminds a lot me of Michelle Miller. Man, that girl was for lack of a better word "smoking". Funny story about her; well actually, more about me.

Last summer I managed to get myself a date with her and then in typical fashion screwed myself over before we even went on it. At work, me, her, and this kid who was about 2 and half years younger than me, named David, were in the back of the store getting rid of some carts of carboard. (For the sake of a subplot explanation I should explain that David and her had gone to school together so they did know eachother; they weren't friends, but more so aquantimces.) So anyways, as I was saying, we were all in the back when David started throwing some cardbord at her and making jokes (not in a rude way, but in a way that friends usually do when they're just joking around). It was at this point 2 problems came into play for me:

1- Michelle wasn't doing a very good job of defending herself back (at least I like to tell myself that for the sake of explaining my intervention) and,

2- I had just asked her out the day previously and she had said yes.

My conclusion under the circumstances was if I just stood there emptying the cardboard into the cardbord compactor acting like I didn't notice them it would just seem bad; like I didn't know how to handle myself in situations that could potentially become uncomfortable for both people who understood the situation- which was me having to fufill the stupid western sterotype that men have to protect their women (not that I considered her "my woman" or some such nonsense, but she had just said yes to me asking her on a date so you know...) All in all, it probably would have worked out much better if I hadn't bothered at all but, I guess that's fate for you...or just my lack of common sense. One of the two.

So, I decide I'm going to run at David, pick him up by his legs, hoist him on to my back/shoulders, and pretend I'm going to dump him into the garbage can. What ended up happening was a bit more like this. The first part of my plan, which included running at David, works out fine- the rest, ufortunatley, does not. I'm not sure if I made some sort of strange grunting noise while running the 2 meters to where they were both fighting, but David somehow saw me coming at the last moment and ended up reacting quick enough to put me into a headlock. At this point in time, things could have been salvagable if I had just given up, gone limp and said something like- "crap". However, as I have hinted at earlier, that was not to be. Given that David was 2 and half years younger than myself at the time, I figured I should easily be able to break myself out of such a hold. So, I give a big burst of movement and energy in attempt at breaking free and end up failing miserably. Being somewhat perplexed by this strange 180 turn in events I became determined to, as I saw in my mind, "make things right" So, once again I give a large burst of energy and fail to reach the desired results; so I did what any decent self respecting guy would do under the circumstance- I flipped out and had what I suppose would look the equivilent of a silent tempertantrum while being subdoed by security in a mental hospital (1)

Anyways for about...2 minutes maybe?(2) this struggle continued with us moving all around the back room, me slamming David backfirst into the cardboard compactor etc, while still in the headlock; until Brain, our supervisor at the time, walked in and we both stopped because of course we would have gotten in shit had we not. The whole time Michelle was standing to the side watching; thinking what I'm probably glad not to know (3).

Just picture that whole overreaction on mypart in your head and the subsequent humiliation that occured as a result of that overreaction. And this wasn't just at the end of work either where I could just sink off into the darkness either; this was with at least 3 hours of work left. I spent the rest of the time in a rather shocked mood with a blank stare occupying my face while I stocked shelves with with her, David and 4 others who were working at the time. I don't think I said more than 20 words after that happened to anyone.

Not really the proudest moment in my life. You try going out on a date with an incredibly beautiful women the next day and exercising even an inch of confidence. Given the circumstances, the fact that I actually managed some degree of normality, in my opinion, speaks minions for me.

Anyways, yeah...that movie reminded me of her so I thought I'd share that.

1- Once again, I should have just given up, but at that point it had become a personal matter of pride. I don't consider myself to be a vain person, at least socially, but any guy who's ever been in a situation where they're about to be humiliated, by someone much younger than them, in front of a girl they really like should be able to understand this.

2- I'm really not to sure how long it all lasted. Time has a way of slowing down to dispicable porportions when you're in the dog house so to speak.

3- Not that I considered Michelle to be anything near of a snobby stuck up type girl at all- more than anything I'm sure she probably felt pity for the fact that I thought she cared; but myself, being a guy and all, I found it hard to imagine anything else other out right disgust.

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Random thoughts:

-Not to be rude or anything but there should be a rule about blog posting where certain people should not be able to pass link pasting off as posting. There is nothing more annoying than link posting without discription.

-Marching with Horseflies, a Ryan Dale song (of Limblifter fame) rocks. Go listen to it here

It would seem you cannot view the side bar of my blog through I.E.

For those of you having the same problem on other blogs I'd reccomend downloading Firefox: http://www.mozilla.com/