when your love is unavoidably out of physical reach - whether over a distance of metres, provinces, or hemispheres - but contact is still (thankfully) possible, it seems that there's a sort of tug-of-war of choice that arises, both sides of which offer some comfort and some pain.

in a personal sense, it would often be easier to just let the person go for the meantime, and just learn to get by without them. sometimes there's a lot less missing, and the pain that comes with it, in moving on, if only for a time.

on the other hand, if neglected, even for weeks, a relationship can change and be damaged, sometimes irreversibly. and while staying as close as possible makes the missing part often harder than not, and makes time run more slowly than is sometimes bearable, if the relationship genuinely means something, then it's the only thing to do.

in the end it's not a sacrifice at all when what it offers is the most important thing of all - the ability to tell those whom you love, that you love them.

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on another note, peep the new main page at the lab. it was time for a change, long overdue for several reasons; new inspiration sometimes calls for replacing things that have grown old.

i'm not the only one.

i should be studying, but it was brought to my attention that i'm not the only one who thinks that myspace is incredibly lame. there's apparently a virtual (pun recognized but not intended, though also not removed) subculture of people who think that myspace is crap at its very best, and addictive and damaging at its worst. some of them are just plain hilarious, some not so much, some intelligent, some not at all, and some just plain mean, but all of them speak at least some truth.

reasonstohatemyspace
myspaceruinslives
myspaceisgay
myspaceisfordolts

there are literally dozens more. just google "i hate myspace", "fuck myspace" or some variation on the phrase. i kid you not. i was surprised.

and i thought i was the only one with standards. shame on me for being so nearsighted.

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on another equally opinionated, yet equally amusing note, an opinion writer at the gateway had this to say about dose magazine's recent passing.

thank goodness for standards of quality and dignity. if only they were a bit more common...

prendre un bain de soleil

the most beautiful day in weeks. this afternoon was spent reading, but more importantly sunbathing. not tanning, my friends, this was true sunbathing.

the breeze was just enough that the sun felt perfectly comfortable; almost enough so to fall asleep in. this afternoon's sky was clear and blue, and yet in all its emptiness and clarity, there was enough going on to keep me content just lying on my back for hours: birds soaring to dizzying heights under the wispy clouds continually forming in white and dissolving again to blue, the baby dragonflies that have been growing larger by the day playing a never-ending game of drop-rise-drop-rise-drop, always staying clear of the tiny white fluffs and parachute seeds that float along on the air, looking as lazy and effortless as i felt in the grass.

only a few summers ago i hadn't much appreciation for such tranquility. perhaps, building on the words that mill wrote so long ago, it's an overdue balance to the overdrive way of life that we're told we have to live here.

as with most other things, i'll go with the europeans on this one. an afternoon in the park is often all you really need in life.


here's to you and a park afternoon,
jh..

despite all its obvious detriment, technology, when used benevolently, can be an amazing thing.

it offers a way to stay close, even when you're midway bewteen two of the most important people in your life, and the distances between you collectively span 15 time zones and traverse two hemispheres.

nothing can take the place of actually being with them, and nothing should; but being able to hear a voice, read words of encouragement and support, or even share pictures of places where we can't be at the same time, makes the distance seem a little less long, which makes the people we love seem a little more close.


sometimes that makes all the difference in the world.

on another note...

justin gatlin broke the 100m world record tonight in qatar, less than a year after asafa powell set the mark at 9.77s. you have to wonder, what's the limit? when will someone finally set the record that is never broken? are they going to start officially timing races to the thousand, ten-thousandth, even millionth of a second?

...and what kind of drugs are these guys taking? i mean, dayam! that shit is FAST. like speeding in a school-zone fast.

"man, fuck myspace." - me

you heard it. why "fuck myspace"? the list is long, but the proverbial straw was that those bastards saw fit to give me spyware and a trojan virus. how do i know? because my antivirus program told me as it was happening. that shit is annoying enough that i'm even going to post a blog that i wrote months ago before deciding that it wasn't nice. but like i said, man, fuck myspace.

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myspace is the newest, lamest shit around. and i'm as guilty as some of being a part. but a lot less guilty than others. the first lame thing about it? that it's termed a "social networking site". what am i, a fucking business student? do i wear a leather jacket, too much hair gel, and axe bodyspray? no, i don't. then why, for the love of everything not lame, am i apparently networking? i wish i had a proper answer. i feel like i've been duped.

let's rant. myspace is:

- a great way to waste your time reading pointless shit that your friends blather about nothing. blogs which are readable and contain at least some scrap of worthwhile content are one thing; blogs rife with gross spelling, grammatical, and punctuational errors, that ramble on about someone's 7th-grade-education-level musings on life, and recount mundane day-to-day happenings without appealing to any sort of reason to do so, or offering the least bit of insight as to why they're writing at all, are quite another. call your friends to tell them about how you watched "Lost" tonight. don't pretend that you're being literary. go out and actually read a book (your idiot friends' blogs don't count). learn how to spell. learn how to construct a complete sentence. seriously kids, am i the only one who is alarmed at the widespread and seemingly accepted use of spellings like "definately", phrasings like "should of", the constant confusion of "your" and "you're", and the complete abandonment of "whose" and "its" in favour of the oft errantly used "who's" and "it's"? making a mistake once in a while is only human, but simply not knowing the difference? is our education system this embarrassingly inadequate? come on, boys and girls. get involved.

- a fantastic way to stay in touch with a bunch of idiots you've met at the bar, or people from high school that you haven't seen in 8 years and really don't care about, but don't want to insult by not adding them to your friends list.

- all about having a friends list that becomes meaningless through adding dozens of people who aren't really friends.

- myspace groups. a lovely way of keeping the cliqueyness of high school alive well into the "adult" years. but i guess people need to make themselves feel special and unique somehow.

- a great way of setting up a tiny little shrine to yourself on the internet, complete with crap songs that automatically blare through your unexpecting viewers' speakers, a trite and self-lauding profile bio that's meant to let everyone know how effing cool you are, or how modest you are about how effing cool you are, and lastly, but certainly not least, lame photographs of you at the bar with your moron friends, or lame self-taken shots of you posing with either shirt off and hair gelled (boys) or tank top and push-up bra on with pouty face and too much make-up (girls).

- a great way of avoiding having actual contact with people. but i guess it's an improved way of keeping up the charade of friendships.

- an awesome way of making the already complusive habit of e-mail checking even more enticing and addictive. if they're serious about whenever-you-get-the-chance e-mail, cell phone, and profile checking lowering your iq, then fuck myspace. like "mod" kids, that shit can't be cool.

- completely unreliable. half the time you can't log in, and when you can, you probably can't see what you actually do want to see, and if you write a letter to a friend, chances are that shit's getting lost in cyber-space, with no way of getting it back.



an apt analogy could be that myspace is the walmart of the internet. it's huge. it's frustrating. it's poorly maintained. it's of a makes-me-feel-cheap-and-kind-of-gross low quality. it's like the walmart-kiosk-mcdonald's kids' meal version of having a real website/blog/photoblog. nearly everyone has used it at some point. it's wildly unpredictable and wholly undependable. it has something for everyone, and for everyone it has a million things that they don't need. once you're inside you usually end up wandering around for hours perusing useless shit that under any other circumstance you wouldn't be interested in, and in the act you're making yourself not only less intelligent but also more "white trash", even if you're not white.

ultimately it's no different than nexopia, or friendster, or any other junior high/high school kid targeted they-won't-let-me-on-dating-sites-so-i'm-stuck-here network. except that it's completely personalizable, much like a "tricked-out" honda civic, complete with shit that flashes, shines, beeps, makes you look cheap and uneducated, and blares loud, bad music at whoever comes across it, without warning and without want. another fitting analogy. hot damn, i'm on fire today.

then again, i'm not finished school yet. maybe i'm blessed with the ability to keep in close touch with my friends without needing to depend on myspace to keep me in the know of those in my "extended network". oh, wait - half of my best friends live across the globe. so much for being blessed. i guess that means that i actually communicate with my friends, even the ones who do live thousands of miles away.

on the upside, it's a really good way for bands to get their name out to the people who will probably like them the most. but when you get 10 requests a day from random bands wanting to be your "friend", it gets a little ridiculous.

some people are genuinely funny with it, too. it's good that people can make fun of myspace and use it creatively all at once. big ups to "hub mall".

and exception must be made for anyone whose (note the correct word usage) profile song is "ABC" by the Jackson 5. you simply can't go wrong with that joint.



in the end, though, as is usual with life, things aren't quite that simple. i'm forced to admit that i do still have a soft spot for myspace in one way; ultimately i likely wouldn't ever have discovered my sometimes dizzying affinity for shortcake and raspberry jam without it. at the same time, though, i've given myspace more of my time and energy than i know i should have, and thus, for my own self-respect and because i know i need to do it, i bid myspace a bittersweet farewell.

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but mostly bitter. thanks for the spyware, jerkspace.

i've been wanting to write something for a while, perhaps something about exams ending and ushering in summertime, or a bit on how i seem to be suffering from springtime allergies for the first time in my life. maybe even something about how much i might miss certain people who could possibly be travelling with friends on the other side of the world.

i won't write on those things, though; it all seems sickeningly selfish and trivial after reading something like this article from the independent. (link originally posted by a friend on his blog.)

if you're here because we know each other, then please give the article a read. it's not that long, and although i don't know what i'm going to try and do now that i've read it, maybe one of you will.


thanks,
jh..