Once in a while, you happen across something that makes you stop and think.  Seriously stop and think.  About many things.  Life, creation, things like that.  I'm a person who has always been interested in how life began.  We're talking Cambrian life, The Pre-Cambrian Explosion, way, way back to when (it's believed), non-sentinent chemicals came together, and at one point, life started.  Who's to say what it was like, and at what point do you consider something "alive"? Does it have to be self-aware? Does it have to procreate? What about simply taking steps to ensure it's own survival?

Then I found this on the 'net.

His name is Theo Jansen, and he's an artist, a scientist, and...I don't know what else to call him.  He creates.....things....that move under the power of the wind.  Things that take steps to avoid the ocean (they "survive" on a beach).  Things that take steps to ensure they are in a good spot for a supply of wind (their food source).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZK4V2YUA5U

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/162

The first link is a montage of his creations, the second is Theo himself, talking, and explaining.

He's going to set them up to live, wild, on the beaches, in a herd.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm aware these things aren't "alive" as we know it.  But is it possible that when we look at these, we're looking back into the past, into the very same method that life started here?

Stop. And think.

Yeah, it's that time again.  Wal-Mart has cleaned out the halloween decorations and filled the gaps with Christmas decorations.  Normally I don't bother with them until about a week before Christmas, but this year I decided to go ahead and start. Who knows...maybe it'll put me in the mood earlier.

I never realized how much Christmas was pretty much a child's holiday until I left my childhood behind me.  Now it seems like we do a lot a running around for one day....and then it's over.  Or maybe it's the fact that I leave everything until the last minute.  Either way, I've decided to to give it a try.

I've been buying small little things to spread around the house to try and cheer the place up - you know, those fake poinsetta plants, things like that.  At a local 99 cent store I found some cute window clingies and I'm driving my mother mental by running around the house sticking them up all over the place.

The tree won't come down until the week of Christmas.  I like the tree....but it always cuts off so much of our living room. Sometimes you can't see the person you're talking to!  Very pretty, though.

We stopped getting a real tree a few years back.  I'm not sorry to see it go. When I was in my depressed teen years, I couldn't understand why we celebrated Christmas by slicing into a tree, stuffing it into our houses, decorating it, and watching it slowly die. It seemed rather goth to me, heh.  At least now there's little to no vaccuming, and the dogs never seem interested in cocking a leg against it.  More importantly, we know it's not dying.  I understand some people's need to have a "traditional" tree, but man it irritates me when people come into the house and look at our tree like it's some diseased monkey we have nailed to a wall or something.  Oh well...to each his own. Heh.

Anyway, time for me to go.  Now that I've left you with the image of a diseased money nailed to a wall, I shall leave you.

Happy Holidays!

Well, a challenge has been made!  My sister, (http://hearingloss.blogspot.com/2007/10/animeme.html) has passed this very same challenge on to me, so, after sitting and thinking about it for a little while, I picked up that tossed gauntlet.  Here goes.

An Interesting animal I had

This one is a little hard, because I had a LOT of interesting animals.  My sister covered Buster, my first dog, so who shall I tell you about? Shall I tell you about Shin-Su, the giant German Shepard we had, who had a heart of gold (to us. He would have eaten a stranger), who had a ritual where he would dance around any dog cookie we gave him, and would seem to be very upset if we counted how many cookies he had out loud?  Or Murphy, our Black Lab, who at the age of 3 knew the names of all his 12 toys, the names of all the rooms in the house, and the names of all his family? That if you told him to go to the kitchen and get his "jiggy", not only would he go, but out of a pile of toys, he would bring back the exact one?  Or Cosmo, the little dog we had who learned the basics of trading, and would bring you a small piece of paper he had found, or a stick, or piece of plant, and hold it cutely until you offered him a treat? Or even little Ziggy, my first hamster, who not only lived to the ripe old age of 7, but also became an expert escape artist who would occasionally break out of her cage and run free in the walls of the house?  How could I choose?

An Interesting animal I ate

I confess. I once ate a bug.  Strickly by accident, I swear, and I know a bug probably isn't all that interesting, but the woodlouse had crawled into my sandwich without me knowing.....don't ask how I found out it had been in there....

An Interesting animal at the Zoo

Well, we don't have any zoos out where I live, but if you want to count TV as a source....then there's this little animal I saw....and can't remember the name of. Crap.  It's small, and I think it's a member of the lemur family....but each of it's 5 fingers on one hand is geared towards a specific task.  One is extremely long and skinny, and he uses this to get into cracks in trees and winkle out grubs. He has another one for combing his fur, and so on.  Very specialized.

An Interesting thing I did with, or to, an animal

This one is a little hard.  I have personally rescued 2 dogs who have been abandoned and living wild, and took them to the local SPCA, saved a cat who had come down with it's owners during summer, escaped, and had been living wild for 3 months in the winter. I often think the SPCA must cringe when they see me coming.  I took Cosmo to the local SPCA's Walk-A-Dog-Athon one time with a cute little sandwich placard he wore, advertising the SPCA. 

An Interesting animal in it's natural habitat

I'm not sure if you can call it natural habitat, because they live in our cities, our towns, our dumps, and our forests. Crows.  You really, really, need to watch your crows. They are so smart, they make you stop and think about just how little we really know about the animals that share our space.  We feed a family of crows at our house, and I feed a group at a spot near where I work.  I take my car on my lunch break to a certain place to eat my lunch.  A few crows showed up one day, and I tossed them my crusts.  That was it.  That was all they needed.  They recognised my car, and from then on, any time I pull into that spot, they come flying out.  When I got a different car, it only took them two visits for them to realize I now drove something new.  As I drive through the town, they will watch me from time to time, and if I show any sign of heading to that spot, they're often there waiting for me.  And through this, and through the ones at home, I've learned much about them.  Did you know they hide food for hard times?  I often see them picking up a rock or bit of grass, and placing it over a small piece of food.  They all raise the young, and boy do the young get away with a lot for a while.  I've watched adults teaching youngsters how to look for bugs under dried blobs of grass, and catch bees as they fly by.  But the most remarkable thing I've seen about crows is how they learn to recognise you.  The ones around my house know my mother much more than they know me, and for some reason they're a little wary of me.  Even if I wear mom's winter coat with the hood up, they wait until I'm well back inside the house before they come down.  But they love mom. They even know her voice.

My house is one of those typical houses with a pull-down ladder that leads to the attic.  My father recently got tired of having to go up the stairs and grope around in the dark for the light switch, so he arranged it so that you could turn on the light in the attic by turning on the laundry room light, the laundry room being just below it.  Of course, every time you turn on the laundry light, the light in the attic goes on too.

Our house, in a rural area with forest directly behind it, is prone to getting the occasional mouse or shrew who drops by to check things out.

So now, whenever I go into the laundry room at night, and turn on the light, I have the image of these little mice, running around up there, doing their little mousey things, and suddenly, there is this bright, blinding light, illuminating everything, and a little mouse looking up, squinting....

"Yes, God?"

Ok.  It's bad enough I am drowning in Spam.

It's bad enough most of the Spam is trying to sell me things I really don't want.

But I don't know what offends me more:

The fact that these people think I have a penis?

Or that I would want to enlarge it.

This says it all.

Some time ago, my Sister suffered a serious condiction to her life; she went totally deaf.

It wasn't a sudden event, not exactly.  Her hearing had been going for a long time, getting worse and worse, and then one day, she woke up completely deaf.  Unable to hear anything.  I didn't live near her, but I did my best to help her, by writing and telling her how her life wasn't going to end, that there was wonderful new technology out there that would help, like the Cochlear Implant.  A little while later, I was able to go visit her, and I taught myself some Sign Language so that I could talk to her (I confess, once I stopped learning it, I tended to forget it, and ended up having to resort to notes and things again).  She taught me a great deal of things as well, things she learned from her own Sign Language classes both she and her husband were taking.  I am very happy to say that she did indeed get the Cochlear Implant, and now she can hear again, can talk to her loved ones, can even listen to music!

Through her, I learned a lot about how people view the deaf.  And there's a huge group of people out there who feel that a deaf person (who has been deaf from birth, or became deaf at a very young age) should not have the operation to have the Cochlear Implant.  They feel (for right or for wrong), that looking at their deafness as a problem is wrong, and that you're not broken, so why should you be fixed?  There is a rich deaf culture out there, and to some of them, having this operation is like a betrayal.

As a person who has been able to hear all my life, I can't imagine someone not wanting that for their children, if it's available.  I can hear music, birds chirping, and other sounds that, to me, are vital to my well being.  I cannot argue for their side, as I have not stood there.

However, I have recently read something that puts an interesting view on all of this.

Glow Magazine, Canada's Beauty and Health Magazine is a magazine I read a lot, simply for the reason that I like the fact that you can buy all the things you see in there in Canada.  No more contests you can't enter, no more items you can't buy.

And I came across a article called Baby Talk, by Karen Robock.  And in it, they have discovered that babies can talk to you, using simple sign language, long before they are able to speak in words.  They are discovering that you can ask your baby what's wrong, if she wants her diaper changed, if she's hungry, gassy, you name it.  Some research has shown that babies can learn simple sign language as early as four to six months of age.  There is evidance that not only do these babies learn to speak vocally earlier, but that they have a more extensive vocabulary of signed and spoken words.  One woman says she remembers her son, sitting up in bed at the age of 11 months, and telling her he had had a nightmare about a stinging bumblebee.  Can you imagine how easy it is then, for a mother to comfort and soothe her child?  Another mother reports that at 6 months, her little girl is happily signing I love you to family members.

Maybe there is something inside us that allows for recognistion of sign language as a more primal mode of communication.  It's felt that our earliest ancestors couldn't make a lot of the vowel sounds, so they would have used a primitive sign language to get their point across.  So maybe deaf people shouldn't feel that others see them as broken, but rather firstborn in the language of man.

I'm listing this under blogging, because MySpace doesn't have a heading of online comics.   

I found some of the BEST online comics out there.  I like these two for different reasons, including artwork, and storyline.

Here is a "modern" one I like.....

http://tmi-comic.com/index.php?strip_id=1   It starts off with some real-life pictures of the creator, and then jumps into the comic.

And here is a fantasy-based one, that I sadly can't find a banner for:

http://jaadrih.comicgenesis.com/d/20060505.html    Once again, go to the very start so you can understand what's going on.

Enjoy!

Everyone has their own chosen movies, and in general, I have never agreed with these "movie critics" telling me which movies are best, and which suck.  For starters, they all seem to be looking for some "deep hidden meaning" in a story, and as most authors will tell you, there are no deep hidden meanings.  The author just wants to tell a story.

That being said, I see nothing wrong with suggesting some movies that I think people should watch before they die.  Some do have deep meanings, movies that will leave you breathless, and perhaps a better understand of how this world works.  Some are about characters that overcome great odds.  And some are just good, spine-tingling movies that will leave you breathless for no good reason than that you sit back and think "wow."

So here are MY suggestions of movies everyone should see.

1. Jet Li's Hero.  One of my favourites. While it is sort of viewed as a "kung-fu" movie, there's a lot more to it.  It looks in depth into the world of China before it was united into one country, with many warring states, and deals with one man's choice of just how to bring about peace.  The imagery in this movie is utterly astounding and breathtaking, and the scenes of The Forbidden City (or what would become The Forbidden City) are enough to make you feel very small and insignificant. A definate must-see.

2. Hotel Rwanda.  Obviously, this is a sad movie, dealing with the genocide that took place in Rwanda, and how one man protected many people in his Hotel.  It shows in great detail how people were forced to do what was necessary to live, how the Peacekeepers were furious as they had their hands tied and could not actually act to help these people, how much time was literally wasted as the rest of the world debated just what makes a Genocide, and how the Rwandans were forced to save themselves.  It's one of those movies that opens your eyes to how this world works, and leaves you thinking, "There's got to be a better way."

3. Enemy Mine.  This might be hard to find, but it's a beautiful movie - one of my mother's favourites - dealing with two races, one known as the Dracs, and the other Humans, fighting in deep space.  It's a remake on the old "enemies must come together to survive and become friends", but the cultural aspects of it are awesome.  Possibly the funniest line in the whole movie..."Your Mickey Mouse is a big stupid dope!"

4. DragonHeart.  This is one of my favourites for many reasons.  1. There's a huge big dragon as one of the main characters. 2. Sean O'Connery voices the dragon. 3. Again, it's a movie that tells the story of a hero having to do what is necessary to save lives.  4. There's a huge big dragon as one of the main characters, and 5. It's actually rather funny in places.  Oh....and did I mention the big dragon?    One of the few movies out there that us Dracophiles can enjoy, for the dragon's wings are actually long enough, and thick enough to possibly support the dragon's body, as well as centrally placed on the torso.  These things are important to us Dracophiles, you know.  Ending is very sad.

5. King Arthur (2005) with Clive Owen as Arthur.  While I didn't think this movie was going to be any good, due to the age of the characters (they all appear to be teen-aged, or in their 20's at the oldest), I was pleasantly surprised.  The reason I like this is because it's historically accurate.  No Camelot, no knights in full armor, this is what the real Arthur was all about; ancient england during the Roman invasion. A good movie.

6. Pirates of the Carribean:Curse of the Black Pearl, and Dead Man's Chest.  These are two of those good, enjoyable movies that you can watch and laugh at. Not too serious, not lecturing, just enjoyment.

7. Howls Moving Castle.  This one is an anime from the same person who animated "Spirited Away", and it's very good.  It's not your typical "girl is placed under a curse and meets a handsome wizard and falls in love, etc etc".  It's funny, it's amazing.  The animation is awesome, and just the whole "moving Castle" thing is fascinating. I mean....what a wonderful imagination!

8.Godzilla.  While I'm a fan of the original foam suit with floaty tail Godzilla, the one who generally kicks rocks as his enemies such as Mothra, the more up-to-date movie with Matthew Broderick is really good. I love the eye candy, and of course, it has a giant reptile. What can be better?  The end is sad, though.

Well, that's about all I can think of right now.  If you have some spare time on the weekend, why not give one of them a whirl?

Where's the green? Where's the GREEN!?

I'm starting to go into withdrawal or something. I'm finding myself sitting down in my living room, looking at Sears Cataloges, not looking at the clothing, but looking at the scenery behind the models.  Ahhhh. Flowers. Grass. Sunshine.

I've started up a new hobby; jewelry making.  It's just something I'm picking up at the moment. I've made my mother a few "African" style earrings, and I'm working on making myself some necklaces.  Who knows?  If it turns out I'm any good at it, I can try to sell them.   Speaking of selling things....apparently we're going to be getting a Farmer's Market here.  Finally. I really hope it takes off, because it's such a good way to get fresh, clean, and cheap produce, and you know the farmer is getting the proper price for it as well.  Eliminate the middle man, and everyone's happy.  I'm hoping it will be like the Farmer's Market I went to with my sister in New Brunswick, where they had lovely crafts there in the winter.  Maybe I can earn a little money that way. I'm teaching myself to knit (starting a little baby jacket - my first "real" project if you don't count a little sweater for my dog),  so that should be interesting!

Just heard they're shutting down parts of the Burin Peninsula Highway due to the storm.  Man, I hate winter.

Spring! Where are you!?