Is it "working for the Man" if "the Man" is trying to make positive change?

A while back I posted about a film I'd seen named Scared Sacred, a film about the power of hope even in some of the most challenging places and circumstances. Turns out that the distributors found my post and wondered whether I'd be a "blogcaster" for them. That means promoting the film using video in my blog. Well, tech-savvy as I like to think of myself, I'm not sure how well this is going to work but I'm going to give it a go anyway. If this works, you can have your speakers on... It's Flash-based, that means you'll need Macromedia's Flash Player on your computer. Gramma, that means I think you're out of luck. :( Sorry. Definitely an interesting film, even if I am "selling out" to the folks that made the movie (and The Corporation).

Be Proud!

Everybody should be proud of themselves. Everyone should feel attractive. Everyone should be in Toronto for Pride weekend in hopes they can feel the same way. Of course, not everyone who "feels" attractive will necessarily seem that way to say... Me. Still, I applaud the hairy man in the banana-hanger for trying. Shudder.

While I think there is nothing more important than being proud of oneself and finding oneself attractive, most people would likely agree that it's not so bad to hear it from other people. I know that I don't mind it. But I have realized that who it comes from does control how much it means to me. I'm touched at the thought either way. That being said, the sixty-something man who was telling me how gorgeous I was this weekend (extremely suggestively) didn't make me feel as good as... well, most anyone else telling me. Still, awfully thoughtful (except for the roaming hands).

Happy Day

Turns out yesterday was the happiest day of the year. Personally, I think it would've been a better day if I didn't need to get out of bed and go to work. Still, it wasn't a bad day at all.

Now you might be thinking: it's a Friday, in the summer, sunny... that makes it a happy day. Seems to be a little more complicated than that. How about: "O + (N x S) + Cpm/T + He"? Crazy Welsh academics! Then again, who am I to argue?

Aren't we just soooo organized? + Updatedness

Do you find it annoying when you're given a "tag" to describe you? I guess if the tag was "Coolest, good-looking, smart guy in the world" I could probably handle it. Tags by their nature seem to boil things down to much more bite-sized pieces. So, funnily enough, I don't get that tag very often. I'm more likely to get "nice" or "sweet". Don't get me wrong. They're not bad, in and of themselves, just incomplete.

I'm noticing more and more that "tags" are being used to mediate our interaction with the web. Flickr, where I host photos uses a tagging system. I myself am guilty of being incomplete in my tags. Where, when, sometimes not even what. I am trying so hard to be organized that I am missing out on some of the great details of life. And what's life without the details?

Thankfully, with Flickr still as a guide there are some people that are on top of their tagging (scroll down, the tags are on the right side) with nothing very little being lost. Hopefully we can be more genuine and just a little less organized (this coming from a Virgo).

UPDATE: Funny to be looking back at this as I am labeling all of my previous posts thanks to google's new technology. Funny too that I am still being incomplete in my "tagging". It feels like fewer different tags rather than specificity with hundreds of different tags is the way to go. Maybe I am being "more genuine". :)

0:55

I had hope. Even down a goal I thought they could do it. With 55 seconds left in the third, that hope evaporated. But who am I? I didn't care what Edmonton did all season. I cared because they were the Canadian team in it. Can you imagine how the Oilers must've felt? What a major disappointment. With their goal within reach, they watched it disappear. Lots of emotion, lots of energy. Now, just imagine that we were putting that energy to good use. You know, pushing our government to make positive social and environmental changes rather than cheering on a team of people who get paid an ungodly amount of money to play. Just a thought. Maybe hope doesn't have to end with 55 seconds left on the clock. Maybe it can start now that hockey's over. Oh wait, World Cup. Drat! Saving the world might have to wait 'til next month.

The Root of All Evil

As we hope for better things to happen in our work environment, our home environment, the environment environment and generally the world around us we witness good things happening. Sometimes we even participate in them. But I'd venture to say that we still see space for improvement. Why is that? Why isn't everything all gumdrops and lollipops? Well, recognizing that there's always more to it, I'd venture to say that general apathy is keeping us from getting to the place we want our societies and world to be. What's the old saying? "Idle hands are the devil's tools"? I saw Why We Fight this evening. To tell me that wars take place due to the pressures of the "military industrial complex" is like telling me I have hands, every day I wake up that point is plainly obvious to me. Not to take away from it, just to say that it exemplified my feelings (that's a good thing, I guess). The closing, and perhaps most effective, quote for me was: I think we fight because basically not enough people are standing up saying, "I'm not doing this anymore." I consider it representative of where we stand on so many areas of challenge in the world and a healthy reminder when I think that I'm "just one person" or I am hesitant to make the sacrifices necessary to live the changes that I think and talk about. Sure, it's a little melodramatic to tie my personal apathy to the root of all evil. Then again, I am left-handed and us lefties are a shifty bunch.

There... But not really there

We've all been there. You're physically there but your mind is not. Maybe for a split-second, maybe for a minute, maybe for as long as your partner is telling you something "extremely important", you were just taking up space and not taking things in. I myself have fallen victim to it (though never when being told something "extremely important" by someone who is "extremely important"). ;)

I must admit I've fallen prey to my imagination a bit of late. While I couldn't tell you for the life of me what I was thinking about, my mind has taken me on wonderful journeys which have taken me (figuratively) far away from what I should be taking in. An ongoing battle. Funny thing is, this is all happening in another context of "There... But not really there". I'm participating in a training program this week that has brought people from throughout the country and beyond. Being at home for it has some benefits but I am recognizing how I'm here, but with the added layers to my life this week, it is difficult to be "here" like usual. Not a great revelation but what I was thinking.

Wherever you are. Be there.

100th Postiversary

It seems like barely 6 months and 23 days since I thought I'd give this whole blogging thing a try. It turns out I had more to ramble on about than I thought. Proof: This is my 100th post. What to do for my 100th Postiversary? I could marvel at the wonders of the world. I could complain about the postively un-June weather or tell you that Kinky Boots is a cute and predictable movie. Instead, I'll explain the title of the blog "Standing in the Hall". You've waited 100 posts. I'd say you've earned it. I was looking through a book of quotes put together for me by a wonderful friend more than 10 years ago (yikes!). It was a gift as I got ready to embark on a 7-month personal odyssey in the form of a Canada World Youth exchange. An odyssey it was, for many reasons, but I'm talking about quotes. Those quotes were a valuable inspiration and my intention was to add more to the book and return it. A cyclical gift, if you will. Well, that never happened. Her loss (I'm clearly a terrible friend). The good news is: I still have it and I still add quotes. The title of the blog came from a quote who's source I don't recall but that I identified with at the time: "God never closes a door without opening another but standing in the hall can be a bitch." Though not a religious man, I enjoy the image it conjours-up. To me, it emphasizes that there is a "light at the end of the tunnel" but that it's not as simple as just setting your sights on that to help forget the bad times. It acknowledges the darkness that is an inevitable part of everyone's life rather than just being sacrine sweet. It is not as though I was deep in the darkness when I started blogging back in November but I did feel at an "in-between" point. Perhaps that's where I live my life. If I don't, so be it. I'm still keeping the name.

Now that I've got that out of the way, it's time for my 100th Postiversary party. I don't care how you celebrate, just make sure you do.

Today

Today was a good day. That could be a wholly unremarkable statement but in this case I don't think it is. If someone asks you how your day was and you tell them it was a good day, that seems unremarkable (though not a bad thing). When you can proactively say: "Today was a good day" without being asked it seems that you are taking that extra step to be explicit about it. The day itself doesn't have to be remarkable but sometimes the acknowledgement of it is. Remarkable, unremarkable, marketable... I don't care. Today was a good day.

Repetition, Repetition

I'm still thinking We Feel Fine is one of the coolest things on the web and I'm happy to have had the chance to share it. I couldn't help thinking when I posted about it how everything is all about repetition out here in interland. There are so many sites that collect stories and such only to bounce them out again. Enough that the site titles take on new meaning. When Fark.com posts a link to a story or site causing the site's server to collapse under the weight of all the traffic some people would say it was "Farked". The "Digg Effect" is when a link ends up on Digg.com and the same thing happens. Do you think sites fall to pieces when I link to them because there are so many of you reading this that their server can't handle it? Ya... sure.

So I didn't create the sites that I find. So what? Sometimes you need someone to do the dirty work for you. Find the good stuff. Separate the wheat from the chaff and all that. For that, it appears, I'm your man.

How do you feel?

I waste plenty of time on the magical interweb. Sure, I learn plenty from it but most of that stuff is probably stuff that I could live a long and happy life not knowing. I'm not talking about wanting to be ignorant and escape bad news, just that nobody really cares that "the Black slug is the only species of slug that when disturbed contracts into a hemispherical shape and starts rocking from side to side to confuse predators" (Thank you, Wikipedia).

I'm okay with using some of my energy for such inane pursuits. I think that is, in part, true because every once in a while you come across a real gem. If not a gem, then at least something that strikes you as an interesting and valuable use of your time and that of those that put it together. I think We Feel Fine might just be one of those gems. So, this site "harvests" blog postings of people talking about how they feel. To someone who has yet to unlock all the wonders of the interweb (now that they've got it on computers), that is pretty damn impressive in and of itself. But wait my friends, that is not all they have in store for us. Not only does the site pick up blog postings with words like "feelings" or "I feel" but it also captures the "feeling", be it happy or weak, big or amorphous. Impressed yet? You ain't seen nothin'. It uses some of the info built into many blogs to figure out gender, age and location. Wow, eh? Not done... it then cross-references the location with the weather report from when it was posted. It then takes all of this info and presents it in a visually stimulating way. You can just see all the feelings as colourful shapes bouncing around. Each one that you settle on with your cursor will tell you where they were, what they were feeling and what the weather was when they posted. You can select by where in the world, what the weather was, the feeling, gender, age...

Check it out. Don't be stupid like me and do it after 11pm when you need to go to sleep because you'll want to spend lots of time on it. As for me, I feel happy. I've found another gem to go along with Talk Like a Pirate Day and am happy with life outside of the glow of the computer screen. That being said, I have some feelings to explore.