PictoChat with your what?

So, if you don't know what PictoChat is, here's a short spiel:

The Nintendo DS (latest generation Gameboy) has a function which allows you to chat with other nearby DS's. Think MSN Messenger, but with a handheld device. It sends your handwriting, instead of just typed letters.

Anyway, a local Fox network in Wisconsin did a "special report" saying that this is an avenue for child molesters to contact your children. While that in itself is a ridiculous enough threat, they went on to propose a very, very specific scenario, as paraphrased by Tycho on Penny-Arcade:

"While driving on the highway, a child molester who is also driving might look into the back seat of your car and see your child using their DS back there. According to this terrifying report, the child molester can then - while driving their car - produce a DS of their own and utilize it to divine your home address. You will recall that he is driving on the highway at speeds approaching sixty miles an hour. One hand is on the wheel and the other is managing the gearbox. Thus, there can be no question.

He is entering these messages into the DS with his erect phallus. "

Besides the warranted sarcasm (thank you, Tycho, for pointing this ludicrosity to us. And, yes, the situation is so laughably preposterous that it needed to be described with a just-as-non-sensical word), you must realize that:

Man, that's gotta be one tiny member to PictoChat clearly.

I get so pissed that I just want to saw my arms off!

Well, how's that for expressing one's anger?

http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=banish

But what about using it as an insult?

"Arrrrg! You make me want to saw my arms off!"

I mean, how the hell would a person react if someone said that to their face?

If past actions had no effect on it, we must now fight it.

If you check out globeandmail.com, you'll notice that they have web polls. This provides me with an interesting slice of what Canadians think, albeit of a particular demographic.

Anyway, sometimes the polls are silly, some can be serious. Sometimes, a serious poll can have downright ridiculous results.

Here's what I'm talking about: see the poll.
If that link didn't work, here's an image of it:



Now, that in itself isn't the "big kicker" for me. Sure, I'm scientific enough, and cynical enough, that I believe humans, as a whole, and the now prevlant threat of global warming, have a causal relationship. However, I still respect another's opinion. Also, if the scientists can't persuade them with facts, and evidence, what chance do I have?

No, no. The most ridiculous part comes here (or the image below), in the poll immediately after the previous one:


Okay. Did you catch that?

Think about it.

To allow you the opportunity to really think about it, and not just as a passing blur, I am providing you more time to have it really sink in.

To paraphrase the combination of the two polls:
Our actions in the past had no effect, so we should spend our efforts to combat it, as long as the "big players" do also.
(yes, I intentionally used that preposition to lend it sarcasm. If you didn't catch it, it's fine. I forgive you. I promise.)

I'll elaborate further:
Excluding the 27% who feel they would fight global warming "unequivocally" - as they are likely the ones who answered in the earlier poll that "human activity is to blame" - 67% still felt that they are willing to sacrifice to help fight global warming as long as government and industries do so.

What's wrong with this picture?

If our actions in the past, for nigh two hundred years, did not contribute to global warming (as shown by 35% of those polled, who believe that [paraphrase] global warming is real, but is completely part of the natural cycle), how would anything we do at all now even begin to fight global warming? How would sacrificing your own standard of living even begin to help? I mean, why bother to sacrifice at all, if you feel that our actions in the past could not affect it?

This is tantamount to: There is a monster living near our town. We've shown in the past that all our weapons could not hurt it, thought we've tried for two hundred years. The monster is now approaching our town. Let's sacrifice our standard of living to make more weapons in order to fight it, even though we firmly believe that our past two hundred years of effort did not put a ding in it at all.

I hate hypocrites. I absolutely, to very fabric of my soul, hate hypocrites.
(They would go to the 8th level of Hell, according to Dante. That's the level one above that reserved for Judas.)

Either that's what they are, or they are people who lack the ability to think and make logical connections. And I don't believe it's the latter, as that ability is needed to clothe and bath oneself properly; I just don't see that many people walking around with no pants on.

*Yes, I know that a much smaller number of people took the second poll, and one could argue that perhaps only those who felt global warming is human-caused took part in the second poll. If that's the case, then it instead shows that people don't think it's a problem, which I am willing to acquiesce.

I challenge you to a rematch!

Yes, I've been away for, well, about ever, but I feel it's time to make a come back.

Actually, I really just want to share a couple of things I've found. Some real, some just internet stuff, but that I feel everyone should know about.

1) My respect for this guy has increased infinite-fold.
One note before watching it: after the initial shock, wait a little bit longer. Because there is more to come. Much more.
Watch it here.

I mean, how can you NOT respect that performance? A crazier thing: after a while, the message actually hit home. While overcoming the initial shock was in itself shocking, the fact that I then began to reflect on his message made his point even more powerful.

2) How can a guy that says this be wrong?
"Next to God, there is no greater protector than I."
Read about this guy.

3) Also, to an extent, he beat the cancer form of himself. Not only that, read about what he DID:


4) Oh, and check this out. How many people in general, let alone pop icons, can claim this?

(That's Nancy Reagan, by the way).

5) To go on a different topic, a fictional one at that, this will give you a whole new perspective to "competitive rematch".

6) And now, for something completely different:

You pervert.

Detour

So, I'm going to go on a detour, and not blog about my choir for this post.

Europe has been looking to ban the veil, niqab, that Muslim women wear for quite some time (well, not all of Europe, but rather some countries). Y'know, that in itself disgusts me. I'll confess that I don't know whether those countries have anything similar to Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but I'll go on a limb and say that they do. Their discussing its banning is akin to saying: Christians can't wear crosses. It's a religious garb that's been that way for centuries, and if they are privileged to have freedom of religion, they need to be allowed to wear this.

I see their counter argument that: people should be able to see others' faces, and that this is partly a "counter terrorism" measure. I'm not going to go into the whole religious debate, whether they are anti-Islam or not, but I want to know whether there are bans on people wearing balaclavas, thick and long scarves that cover their faces, a heavy make up. If they truly do, fine. Perhaps this is a law that has been around, and I'll admit to being ignorant. But somehow, I doubt such a rule currently exists... They also mention that it's "impolite" to not be able to see others' faces. If this has always been an issue, has there been laws on this in the past?

Tony Blair said that the garb is "a mark of separation, and that's why it makes other people from outside the community feel uncomfortable.” So... then don't all people who dress differently than "the norm" fit in this category? And is there even a "norm"? EVERYONE dresses differently; we are individuals. Heck. Even people who wear the same thing look different, because they ARE different. Perhaps if we just take Tony's quote literally and paraphrase it a bit, perhaps he really is just commenting that "when people are different, people feel uncomfortable." And perhaps if we read it that way, it's not so bad, since he *could* be relaying this to *everyone* who dresses different, and thus carry the "mark of separation". But somehow, I doubt that...

Anyway, that's the first bit of my rant. The more pertinent issue is that the above quote, Tony's quote, was posted as the Globe and Mail's poll to the public. The quote asks voters whether they agree with that statement or not. So far, 71% of Canadians think YES. WHAT? I've always been proud of Canada's tolerance, and our acceptance of other cultures and and religions, that we celebrate each other's differences. What happened? I am so ashamed of the results of that vote.

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh. Perhaps I should blame the media and the US a bit more than blaming the Canadians. After all, the media does have a slant on all this stuff, and especially the US media. But we still should not be swayed as such.

I've actually noticed a trend for Globe and Mail's poll. I've been noticing more and more that the voters (and I'll say "Canadians", since G&M is a Canadian publication) have been less and less tolerant. Yes, there is still terrorism, and that Islamic Extremists brought it to the forefront, but just because there are some bad apples, should we really toss out the whole bushel? And all the OTHER acts of terrorisms: what religion have THEY been? Why is there such a double standard?!

And to answer myself, yes, people are afraid of the unknown, the unfamiliar. But we seriously need to work on getting over it.

If everyone can understand the meaning of love and compassion as following the sagacity of the Dalai Lama, the world would indeed be a better place...

Rebirth

So, I am going to sticking around here, since I haven't really dived into travel plans at all. I thought about travelling in late October till Christmas, but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I can find someone to do a road trip with... That'll be pretty freakin' sweet.

Anway, I digress. As this is the MRSS A Cappella blog, I'm going to talk about singning. I've started up the choir again. I didn't do my "play cool songs in front of people" when I did my recruting bit, hoping to ride the success of last year, and that people would flock to the choir. No such luck. I had a total of 10 people sign up, and only 8 actually came and auditioned. Yeah. It's this low of turn out. No guys.

What to do...?

First off, do I even have enough people to do a choir? 8 is a stretch. As in, if everyone stays, I can barely pull off 4 parts. And if soloing, someone will have to be singing one on a part. Very, very scary, seeing that while the girls are good, but are they strong enough to go be that alone...? And if one or two people drop out, then we're really, really screwed...

Second, I have a bunch of really cool a cappella songs that I want to do, namely Accidentally In Love that I arranged (at least I got a chance to hear it performed a month back), and they are all SATB (girls + guys needed). I have NO music. I'll probably look around, since I'm in a bind, but just a tough call overall...

But, I'll have faith. I'll see where this takes me. Perhaps I'll be pleasantly surprised. I've started rearranging Imagine by John Lennon into girls only. It's sooo hard to do 4 parts, since when I do a counter melody, I effectively only have 2 parts left to provide background... Not cool.

I spent a few hours a couple of days ago trying this, and there were areas where I full split up certain voices in order to flesh the sound out. The more I do it, the harder it gets. And with the low turnout of girls, can I afford to do 5 parts?

I remember a lesson I recently learned, to just let go of control. If something is so hard for me to shape, why force it? So, I bit the bullet, and split it into 5 parts. Way easier to arrange, but much scarier in terms of end success due to low number of girls. But I'll try it. Let's hope this pans out. Guess I'll find out on Friday...

Catching up

Well, it's been 3 weeks since I've written. One of the reasons is that I'm now teaching with Kaplan in fairly full force. Another is that I've been a tad lazy. And another is that... Actually, those are pretty much it.

So we had our concerts. And, damn, it's fun to perform. I love performing. I lover conducting. I love knowing that we sound great.

On May 31st, we had our first performance, with the Jr. year-end concert. We were on after Intermission, and my name was on the program as "director". Hehe. Director. Leading up to the concerts, there were a couple of possible concerns. One member is going to cut super close on time, and another had other performances within the school. And it's lucky that we're on after Intermission, since that minimizes the problems the best.

Oh yeah, I don't remember whether I've mentioned it, but we're down to two songs. Two songs that, well, sound *really* polished.


Anyway, I got there around 7pm, with intermission slated for around 7:40. Watched some of the groups, and I just have to say that Carrie does an absolutely wonderful job. She has so much fun with her choirs, and they in return. For her Sr. Chamber choir, they need to do a "leadership project". One of them wanted to an all female a cappella choir, and they performed before intermission. They sounded great.

Intermission came, everyone arrived in time. We went and practiced a bit in the choir room, then we went to the gym. Lined up, and were introduced. Then, I realized that the soloist for the first song wasn't there. She was just a minute ago. What happened? I think she was photocopying music. So, I did some tactful stalling. I rambled. I should've thanked the choir and their time, as I had prepared, but I just rambled about myself, which, frankly, I feel bad about immediately afterwards, thinking "why didn't I thank the choir?"

Anyway, she came back, and we started singing. And we sounded good. I'm pretty sure of it. California Dreamin' rocked. Great solo. Then, did Sweet Surrender, and that was awesome as well. I was at first apprehensive about the acoutics, but it ended up sounding fine. The audience seemed to love it. My friends who came thought we did well as well, and that's all the thanks I need. :)


Sooo, the next night, we had a slot in the Senior year end concert. Well, not a real slot, per se, since we were just going to do our thing during intermission, and not actually during actual performance time. But, I wrangled a "speaking" spot right before intermission. Now, I haven't done public speaking for a while. (I mean in front of a full audience: this was the Maple Ridge Art Center, ACT, and it's a full theatre, packed). Anyway, I minimized my ramblings, and let everyone know we'll be performing out in the lobby.

We got out there, and people were waiting for us already. They were gathered around, interested. We did a tiny bit of warmups, and we were off. Same set. Awesome, as before. The audience loved it. Did my thank you spiel, remembered to thank the choir, and that was it.

What a great, great couple of months of leading a choir!


(Yeah, I'm finishing this up waaayyyy later than this occurred, so the details are low.)

Oh, one more thing...

Oh yeah. One more thing: girls with a beauty mark (a la Cindy Crawford and Marilyn Monroe) = extra hot.

Lost

So, I've starting to re-catch up on Lost again. I was watching the season finale last Wednesday, and, while I plowed through Season 1 a year ago, and stayed caught up for half of season 2, it just kinda faded for me for a while. Yes, House was a big reason, and I started watching Justice League, but I just didn't find the time for it.

Anyway, the season finale got me intersted again, and thus I started to catch up.

Some thoughts:
Libby on the show definitely can look good. She generally does in her curly light dirty blonde hair, usually tied back. But in the flashback sequence where she was a redhead, she looked BAD. I mean, like Charlize Theron in Monster, but add sulfuric acid to her face bad. It isn't the redheaded-ness (my thoughts on redheads in show biz supports this: http://mrssacappella.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-are.html), but rather that it was all frizzy and poofy and stupid looking, making the rest of her just as frizzy and poofy and stupid looking.

Trying to figure out the hottest one on there. Kate is cute, but the buckteeth bugs me. It's a bit of a toss up between Shannon (dead) and Claire. And, while Shannon I think has the more All American hotness, Claire's personality and, y'know where this is going, her accent wins out.

When in a tie situation, the accent (Aussie (Perth > Sydney > Melbourne) > Kiwi > Cape Breton > French > Spanish) wins out. British can do it, but it carries a sense of... prudeness that doesn't fully do it for me. German/Dutch/Russian accents are a bit much. Southern charm doesn't do it for me either. And, of course, Chinese/Indian/Japanese/Korean accents just blows.

That said, Sun on the show is pretty cute. And, surprisingly, her accent doesn't detract anything.

Oh yeah. Michelle Rodriguez can both be somewhat okay looking (e.g. "cleans up nice"), and just plain gross looking.

And girliest man on there? Eko and Boone (also dead) are a toss up. ;)

The corporate world

As for the rest of my trip, nothing crazy. Visiting my old work was good. Seeing old colleagues, catching up, was... as plainly as this word can be, nice. I use this word because the one connotation I'm looking for is offered only by this word. It's the usage where it's... nice. Not overwhelmingly exciting, or as plain as okay. But... nice. It gave me a good sense of why I'm not there anymore. The people were great, for sure, but the environment, in retrospect, and even near the end of my tenure, sapped me. Perhaps it's just the effect of having a job in itself, or more likely, the corporate world, but it just... dulled me a bit. While I probably wasn't spending quite as much time studying for the MCAT and going to school from January to April than when I was working, I felt I had the energy to do something more. Thus the choir and the various volunteering. Even weekends, even though they were study filled, didn't seem so boring, like I was vegging/wasting my time.

I'm not insinuating that the corporate world affects everyone the same way, but the fact of the matter is that it, on average, makes life a little duller for most people. Sure, the money was great, and with those new means, a person can do things that fills their life, but not often enough, not that I have seen with my eyes as the norm, does the money fulfill lives more. A new toy or new additions to toys don't amount to as much as something that hits a person's psyche, a person's emotional, spiritual, and achievement needs. Perhaps for some, it does, but not as much as you'd think.

And if you think that you'd put the money to "good use" and "good will", yeah, you have the means to do it, but it doesn't occur enough. Not as much as you thought you would contribute. Generally not. But, hey, that's okay, too. I don't want to harp on the corporate world. It suits people's needs. It meets people's want of stability and structure. But truly fulfilling? Rarely.

One last note: I was talking and thinking about the big 2 out there, Google and Microsoft, and how they enter new markets and how they enter areas where it's already entrenched (gaming for Microsoft, and a little bit of everything for Google), and my initial thought was: why? They already have billions. The products are good. Why keep expanding? Why can't they just work together, and get along?

Oh yeah. Capitalism.

Naive? No, I don't attribute it to that. I've seen enough to not be surprised about a lot of things, and that having seen the world for twenty odd years has made me realize what's out there.

I attribute it to optimism. I think, I'd like to think, that the world out there is nicer and kinder than it is. I want to. I don't get crushed when I look more closely and see that it's not, but nor does this hope fade. It's what I have to do.

It's like...

So last weekend (you can see where this series of entries are going. I'm catching up), I went down to Seattle. Visited, saw some old friends. Not as many as I could have, but enough to respark the connections.

One of my good friends down there just started dating this girl. The one big thing that I've noticed is how comfortable around each other they are. Maybe I've just been out of the game for this long, or that I haven't seen new couple for a long time, but even after only about 2 or 3 weeks, they connect like they've been together for 2 or 3 months.

I'm pretty sure it's a good sign. I wish it the best, and hope it goes well.

It's finally arrived.

Wow. After about two and a half months, we've finally arrived. The raison d'etre of this blog, is imminent this week.

Wednesday and Thursday are the big performances for my little choir. We have a whopping 2 songs, sung by an astronomical 9 people. While I chide on the numbers, I assure you, that we sounded pretty good on our final rehearsal.

After ups and downs, extra people and more than warranted dropping out (started with 14, went to 15, now 8 plus me), and many missed rehearsals due to holidays and pro-D days, we've reached the penultimate point a couple of days ago.

Ran California Dreamin' briefly. Thank heavens, people remembered the nuances that we've painstakingly worked on the rehearsal before, 4 weeks ago. Only minor touch ups, and we spent only 15 minutes on it, as I wanted to.

Sweet Surrender. I surrendered last time. We had 15 minutes left, but it wasn't going anywhere. It was somewhat looking the same, in that we alwasy go sharp. Now, normally, going sharp is not unacceptable. If the whole group does so together. But with this group, everyone seems to go up individually. I'm quite sure it starts with the basses (guilty here), but we don't even sync up when we go up. After anoub 20 bars, half the choir's gone up. It takes another 20 bars for the rest to catch up.

So, a student suggested we just start a semi-tone higher. I've never done that before, and immediately assumed that we'd just continue to go up. But, miraculously (and not quite so), it worked. I guess either the group just natrually wants to sing the song at the new key, or, more likely, it just starts to get too high, and it's just not possible to go another semi-tone up.

Spent the bulk of the time on it, even worked in some dynamics. By the end, we sounded good.

I'm going to miss the choir and the singing. Most definitely. But there's still two performances, and still need to do a coffee house type thing for all the non school attendees, such as you guys who read this blog.
Polished up Sweet Surrender, and (we start on an F#, but