holy randomness

I've sat here for a long time now, both today and last night, and i can't write anything...
it's worrying. i want to kind of switch it up a bit on here; focus on something positive...well, one positive thing is that i'm listening to jack johnson's In Between Dreams. It really doesn't get much better than Jack Johnson. I was saying to ana the other day how, I can listen to something more complex, let's say for example the Arcade Fire, and I really enjoy it. It may even make me
forget how much i like acoustic music. But all it takes is one listen of neil young's harvest, harvest moon, or Jack Johnson's anything, and i realize that in the end, i appreciate simple, honest sing-song over loops, engineering, and different layers of noise. Simplicity is something you crave when you're surrounded by the complicated. In university, i took a sociology class called something like Canadian Identity--How to Identify the Canadian Character. It was an interesting course, and we focused on topics such as music, hockey, urban character, how we are seen internationally etc. In the end, I decided that to define the canadian characteristic, you could divide us into two groups of characters...1. that character which can be defined as the group trying to find a common identity to unite canadians, usually unsuccessfully, and...2. that character which defines Canada as anything that America is not, and bases the identity on challenging americans, finding things that we do better than Americans, or pointing out their flaws (often not admitting our own similar faults---ie..obesity.)All of this came to mind in the past couple of weeks during the olympics, which I could sadly only keep track of via the internet and the world baseball championships. I found myself, everyday during the olympics, though it shouldn't even matter, going to the medal tally, and seeing where canada placed. After a while, I noticed that I didn't care where Norway was, or Germany, or Russia in the standings. I wanted to see where Canada was and the States...that's all that mattered. When the women couldn't play the States in the gold medal game, it was a let down...like, at least we were in the gold medal game, but it was lesser knowing that we wouldn't beat the states. In hockey, though it was a bitter pill, I took comfort in the fact that the Americans didn't do very well either. So, in the end, despite the fact that it was a world stage, really, all that mattered to me was how much/if we did better than the Americans. I could care less about baseball, let alone the world baseball championships. But, when I saw that Canada beat the States, in the States, it became a matter of national pride. "Damn, feels nice to beat those yanks on their own field", and other thoughts like this. It's moments like that that make me think about our national character and much of it is tied to our neighbors to the south. It's also moments like that that make you thankful that we have a neighbor like that to the south, rather than a Sweden or a Norway-those countries are far too perfect. No, it's better to have a fault ridden, easy target neighbor like america.

In other news, they discovered this new Lobsterish creature in the south pacific.
Ok, I know it's important for some to keep exploring, to keep learning about the earth etc. But let's face it...what is the real significance of this thing?

news conference.

diver...yes, we made the discovery off of easter island a few months ago. it's never been seen before.

reporter...so, it's a very important, significant discovery, then.

diver...yes. very important to the scientific community.

reporter...how? how is this thing important to the world?

diver...(long pause...awkard silence ensues) well, if you look at the picture, this thing is wierd looking. look how wierd it is. it has blond hair on its claws. isn't that wierd?

reporter...so, that's why it's important? because it's wierd?

diver...essentially, yes. Next question.