a year teaching english in korea...
then, a year backpacking through 33 countries, from korea to ireland...
and now i'm home in vancouver, and trying to figure out what to do next...
this is the story.
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THE DYNAMICS OF COLOUR
Monday, March 27, 2006
Colour. An embossed form of light, as concrete is an embossed form of the combination between sand and water. Then what would we do without colour; to answer this question we must ask some of the earth's lesser creatures. Cats, for example, cannot fathom the perception of colour as we, humans, do. In my own mind this confuses me. Colour, or embossed light, makes such an impression on my life that without it I would most certainly die.
Mixtures. Now upon impregnating the colour yellow with blue, you can create green, and most certainly a beautiful green if the inceptive products are pure and in equal mixtures, for an offset of this balance could create perhaps and equally beautiful or equally appalling green, which brings us to another side of this wonderful thing called colour.
Shades. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, an offset in the peculiarities of the balance between originating colours can create a utterly different colour which will still be entitled the same as if the starting products were in equal balance, yet not exactly, for more yellow could create yellow-green or on the other hand, more blue would therefore create blue-green.
Brightness. Now a mistake made by many of those I know is to call the two shading colours colours, for in the right minds-eye they are nothing but in actuality shades. Which can be in turn used to formulate levels of brightness in your colours. Now listen, a change in brightness will not affect your colour title as would a change in colour levels, but it will create a new effect which can only increase or decrease the popularity of your colour. By adding the shade white we can brighten and in turn by adding black we darken. Spectrum. When splitting the embossed form of colour we now know as light, in the shade of white, we can create a beautiful array of colours called a spectrum. White light creates red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. In this catatonic state of split light beams, created through the use of a mass spectrometer or more simply a prism, we see an exquisite set of colours.
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THE BRICK TESTAMENT
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
i just happened upon this website called the brick testament. a reverend in the us has put together lego scenes to describe the stories of the bible. all the quotes are directly from the old and new testaments. it's pretty hilarious actually. i think it was intended to be quite serious though, to 'spread the word' as they say. i laughed my ass off.
one of my favourite sections is from the old testament and relates to the laws passed down by god to the people...
for over half a century villagers in the northern town of nong khai, thailand, on the banks of the mekong river, and across in laos have experienced an awesome sight. on the full moon of the eleventh month of the lunar calendar, without fail, giant fireballs have risen out of the water. they are believed to be the fire-breath of the mythical naga serpent creature.
a rare closeup of a fireball
locals say that the naga serpent (commonly depicted in buddhist artwork, often as the hand railings to temples) breathes these strange fireballs as an offering to buddha.
between 6 and 9pm on the day of the event, smokeless and soundless, brightly coloured balls of light begins to rise from the surface of the river and float towards the sky.
scientist still have not been able to explain this phenomenon, but it is believed the fireballs are gaseous and released from rotting material at the bottom of the river.
US Army soldiers apparently caught a 'naga' serpent in the Mekong River near Nong Khai in 1968.
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PLASTIC FANTASTIC?
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
what really bothers is me are people who don't think about the environment...at all...
i can't stand it when i'm in a convenience store and someone buys a pack of gum and gets it in a bag...or when they're carrying more than one plastic bag, each one with only a few things in it...the clerks don't even ask anymore, most don't think twice about dropping a few bananas in a plastic bag and then reaching for another one to fill with three apples and a tomato...it's ridiculous...
get this: i was in shoppers drug mart the other day and bought a chocolate bar which the clerk immediately put in a plastic bag, i said "oh, i don't need a bag..." and she looked at me like i was weird, then took the chocolate bar out, crumpled up the bag she had just used and tossed it in the garbage...i should've reamed her out...
the numbers are really staggering, the US EPA says that somewhere between 500,000,000,000 (yes 500 billion) and 500,000,000,000,000 (yes 500 TRILLION) plastic bags are used every year...it takes anywhere from 300-500 years for a plastic bag to decompose, leaching toxic chemicals into the soil...
they persist today, i think, because of their cheap production costs...only about 1 cent per plastic bag, compared to 4 cents per paper bag...that's a big difference for grocery stores who go through hundreds of bags per day...
what people should really do i think, is carry reusable bags, or really think about whether or not they need that plastic bag...if it's small enough to carry in your pocket or hand why don you need a bag?
in europe it's really sort of fashionable to carry your own reusable bags to the grocery store...no one would ever think of using plastic bags and tossing them out...this is how we have to start thinking...
if every person on average used five less bags per week, we'd save about 312 billion bags per year...
travelling in india and china was especially distressing...travelling by train through the suburbs outside Beijing, i couldn't help but notice entire sections of dead trees lining the tracks covered in white plastic bags...and in the deserts of Rajasthan in India and most of the city waterways were thousands upon thousands of white plastic bags...it's such a problem that they've bee declared illegal in several major Indian cities and you can get a fine if you're caught carrying one...
i took the following two photos in Chennai, eastern India (Madras)...the stench from these waterways was overwhelming and wafted in over the city in the 40C heat...people lived in this squalor...
cows in India and other animals eat the garbage on the streets mixed in with these bags. they cause twisting of the digestive organs and intestines and the animals suffer a slow and excruciatingly painful death...
just think about what your doing, recycle paper, reuse bags, don't take them if your don't need them...
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SNOW DAY
Friday, March 10, 2006
i came home from work last night, ate a little dinner and watched some tv...around midnight my eyes drifted to the window as giant white flakes of snow began dropping from the sky, it had snowed earlier in the day, wet snow mixed with rain, but this stuff now was real snow...more than we've had all winter...and TWO WEEKS BEFORE SPRING!!! not good...it's early morning now and it's still coming down, hopefully not for long...
the snow coming down looking towards granville street...
the same view the next morning...
the courtyard below my window...
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YOUR FINAL ANSWER, EH?
Monday, March 06, 2006
i got a call last night at midnight from my friend scott in surrey. he needed to ask me a question. "is brian a name in the bible?," he says... "what?" "brian, is it a name in the bible?" "um why?" "i just need to know." "well, i'm gonna go with no..." "ok see ya." he was playing scattergories and i was the life line... and no, brian is not a name in the bible... brian, c'mon?
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THE SHOW
Saturday, March 04, 2006
ben rocks out...
so the ben lee show was cool...he's still small enough that he can hang out in the crowd during the opening act, but big enough to write songs for big movie soundtracks, including There's Something About Mary, and to get enough people into richards that it felt full...i like the place as a live venue, it's small and kind of grubby looking (ie: i wasn't worried about spilling beer on the floor)...he started off with a bunch of songs from his new album, Awake Is The New Sleep, then finished with a few oldies...there was a short encore, in which he decided not to leave the stage and wait for two minutes, but to turn his back and enjoy the clapping before breaking into "Catch My Disease", one that i was particularily looking forward to...here's a few pictures from the night and some short videos...
Cigarettes Will Kill You
Gamble Everything For Love
sarah and leah under the great ben lee...center>
Ben on the phone
he took the phone from some guy in the audience who had his fiancee on from australia...
saw a poster for ben lee last week and bought my tickets over the phone while crossing the granville street bridge on the number 17...the show's tonight at richards...i'm thinking of bringing my camera so i'll and post some photos here later...
been working a lot and not doing much else. last week kristin and i went to galiano in the gulf islands for a couple of days in a cabin on the water...i'll post some pics from that trip soon too...
