Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off to Work We Go.

Well, here we are. Sunday again, and I'm awaiting my laundry to finish so I can call it a night. Of course, this night is different than the usual Sunday evening, in a couple of ways. First off, I went to see Jackass: Number Two tonight with CG. The only thing I can say is, if you liked the first one, you'll love number two. If you hated the first one, then caveat emptor. Mind you, I have one of the largest collection of Jackass related stuff, so I was in pure heaven watching this one, but even I can admit that some of the stunts were nasty...very nasty. There were a couple of bits where even I was watching it all happen the same way you watch a car accident happen in front of you. You know what's going to happen; you just can't believe it is. But, I got off pretty lucky from the looks of those in the theatre around me. Poor CG was beside me cringing in her seat and watching the movie from in between her fingers...but still couldn't look away. I've always liked that about the series ('s?); besides being absolutely gut wrenchingly funny, no matter what they did, you couldn't look away, even if you desperately wanted too. Worth the price of admission if you are into that sort of thing.

I was questioning as to why I enjoy watching people hurt themselves, and besides the usual reasons of loving see people humiliate themselves, I think it takes me back to my (more) adventurous youth. I was one of those teenagers who would do all kinds of crazy things, just because I could. The crew I hung with never really thought about the reproductions of what we were doing. We were part of the whole skateboarding re-birth of the eighties, and I guess since we were hurting ourselves on a regular basis anyways, why not up the ante. Of course we never though of camcording it. Guess that's the hindsight being 20-20 thing. I can't count the amount of times I'd come limping home from some latest adventure, trying to be all cavalier about it, and trying to hide the fruits of our labors from my parents, all the while just wanting to lay down on the couch and lick my wounds...Of course this did come back and haunt me on (more than one) occasion. The most memorable being the day I decided to give myself amnesia.

One very somewhat memorable day I and my buddies decided it was a good winter day to go tobogganing. This was a common occurrence around here, and since I had a brand new GT snowracer I was rip roaring ready to go. Now, we had taken GT'ing to the nth degree, there wasn't a hill we wouldn't ride, or a car we wouldn't hitch behind. Whilst adventuring around looking for some new hills, we discovered a little slice of pain out of the way from our homes, and since we were already in hyped up state of mind, we figured, why not ride it. The freezing rain we received a few days earlier just made it all the better. Once we got into the back country of where we decided to go GT'ing, we looked around and noticed that there wasn't as much hills as there was cliff's, and why wouldn't we try to ride it. We slowly ramped up doing ten foot drops, then fifteens, then the mother of them all. It was about a twenty-five foot drop in. We were all skateboarders in the summer months, so a twenty-five foot drop in wasn't completely out of the question. Although, when skating a ramp you have a two pound board, and not a big hunk of steel and plastic you are riding like a snowmobile. After a few minutes of contemplating our death's if this went wrong, it was time to take the plunge. My buddy went first and wrecked. He went one way, and the GT went the other. Seeing that just upped the ante in my head. Now the challenge was on with who could land it. I rustled up my courage and did the drop, miserably I might add. Same result as my buddy. Landed on my ass, and decided I just had to try it again. Up I went, watching one of my buddies wreck again on the way down. No one had landed it yet...I had to do this. On what was (unbeknownst to me) to be my last run through everything went wrong. I was flying down the slight incline to pick up enough speed to pull off the drop when one of the skis on the GT caught an ice ridge and started to twist sideways. Of course, this was just on the lip of the cliff. As soon as I took air over the edge the GT continued to twist and flipped me off. I managed a half flip and promptly landed on the ice below using my face as a brake. Apparently I slid about ten to fifteen feet this way with all the grace of a sack of potatoes. I was out cold. Probably had a good chunk of a concussion as well. I came to about five to ten minutes later with everyone clustered around me asking if I was ok, you alive, etc. etc. At this point I had no idea who I was or where I was. We started walking back to the car, with my buddies guiding me the entire way, and I was going through my mind like a rolodex. Reciting phone numbers, addresses, etc. I guess it was like a reboot or something. After convincing everyone I didn't need to go to the hospital (probably wrong) they dropped me off at home and I dragged my sorry ass into the washroom to assess the damage. I looked in the mirror and stared shocked at what was looking back at me. There was half a person looking back at me. I had a little phantom of the opera action going on. The left half of my face was one giant scab. This beautiful visage was almost ruined that fateful winter day. To this day I still can't remember that years Christmas. From what I've heard, it was a good one too.

The other way this Sunday is different from the others is I get to go on a business trip down to St. Paul tomorrow. I guess I should try to get some sleep tonight...

One last thing before I sign off...something has been bothering me of late. I have been thinking of one of those overused clichés and how inaccurate it is. It's this one. "It's better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all". Whoever thought that one up is a fricken idiot. Hear that all ya all? It's a line of crap. Trust the rev on that one. I got another one for ya. "Ignorance is Bliss".

I don't know where the hell that came from. Time to pack for my trip.

Hi, How is This Life Treating You?

I was stumbling around on the Internet the other day (big surprise) catching up on news, etc, when I read about a huge hack that occurred on a site revealing over 300,000 of its user’s credentials. It was on a site I had never heard of, so naturally I hopped over there to check it out. The site is www.secondlife.com. Notice I did not embed that tag in this entry. I do not want that tracked back to my Blog in any way, shape or form. Guess we can tell what this entry is going to be like. Feel free to go check it out. Maybe you should before I go off on my tirade...

So, I go over to the aforementioned site, and on first glance, it looks like a online game of some kind or an MMORPG or something that I wouldn't be interested in at all, but I start digging because something is telling me to. I think it was the dollar signs on the front page.

"Hmmm, money and internet stuff? Yeah, how can I get me some of that scratch?” I thinks to myself. (The dollar figure was somewhere up around $300,000US so of course I'm interested)

As I'm digging around the first thing I notice is there are over 600,000 members to this site. Wow, that's a high number. I have to figure out what has sucked in all of these people to spending there hard earned cash. The next thing I notice is this strange little monetary symbol (L$) and I'm trying to figure out what this is because there is a whole bunch of big numbers associated to it.

This is where things go south really quick folks...You may want to look away. I'm probably going to offend all kinds of people who live on the internet thinking that it's a viable alternative to real life. Then again, I really don't give a shit. Read on Horatio.

Now, the person (people) who thought this up are geniuses. The whole L$ is this sites version of money. After you create your virtual person to live on their servers (not world. Servers. Bunch of disks. It's not real folks) you can go adventuring around and shit, but just like the real world, shit cost money, so you can go exchange your real greenbacks for L$. The exchange rate is pretty good. $1US=$250L. That is if it was real money.

Now you got your little fake you some money, so it's time to go spend it. You can go to the casino and trade your fake $$$ for a virtual pull of the slots and win (or more than likely, lose shitloads) fake $$$. When you get bored of that you can go to the fake mall and buy some virtual clothes, get a virtual tattoo, or change your skin color, just for the hell of it.

And here's where it get's really sketchy, but this is the part I love.

Up until this point, I had definitely furrowed my eyebrows, and questioned the validity of transferring real money into fake money but thought, meh, not a big deal...Just some online peoples having fun...or so I thought.

You got your little virtual online you some good scratch, your threads are pimpin, and gots some tat's to show off, but you don't have anywhere to live (again, it's on a f*ing server people. NOT REAL), so you gotta get the crib to match the style. You can:

a) Go hire a real estate agent
b) Buy a piece of land and look for someone to build your house (arghh, my brain hurts)
c) Consult the classifieds to find somewhere to live...

I'm going to come back to c). Oh am I ever going to come back to c), but let’s talk about the land first. You lease the land from the server owners. Cuz it's there server space at a rate of 5 extra US$ per month, all the way up to an extra $195US per month...Okay? Sure. That only covers the usage fee; you still have to buy the land from someone. You can go to the auction block and see what land is available to buy with prices escalating over a 1000$US for a virtual piece of land. WTF? Ok...breathe...still got one more point to make...relax.

The Piece de resistance...

I don't want to buy my land from the auction. Lets go check out the classifieds (yes, they have their own classifieds section, why wouldn't they?). In the classifieds there are all kinds of things you can buy. New clothes, hair, guns, etc, so I start browsing, because I like to watch a good car crash occasionally. The first thing I notice is people are paying for this friggen advertising space to sell there wares. And it's not little bucks either.

Does this seem like circular logic to anyone else? Spend real money to get fake money, then open up a fake business with your fake money, and start advertising (costing more fake money) so you can get yet more fake money, all the time feeding the server owners with more cash...

You site owners are geniuses...Mega-props to you guys...

But...BUT, and Here it comes, in the classifieds there is all kinds of "adult" themed purchases you can take advantage of. Skins, animations, etc. Now I understand the drive to hack anything to turn it to porn, but...there was (at least) one of the businesses offering a site where you could buy porn. Let me clear this up so it's perfectly clear. A fake business, selling porn flicks, MADE WITH THE LITTLE VIRTUAL PEOPLE!!!. Not real people. The little avatars blowing their virtual loads over each other. Wtf. WTF?

That's it. My brain has exploded. I cannot tell you anything more about this without doing some severe damage to my own synapses, but before I sign off of this one, a bunch of points I have to make.

1) To everyone who is doing this in the hopes of fleecing people out of their real paychecks...Good for you. Exploitation is the way of all things. Laugh about it all the way to the bank.

2) To the Site and server owners. Good for you. See the above point.

3) To the people in it for a good laugh and not paying anything. It's always fun to point and laugh, but be careful, there have many people who've gone in to the bar to just check it out, and walk out with a $300 bar tab.

4) To the people blowing their paychecks on this...WAKE UP. It's not real. Yes it could be fun, but guess what, so is getting real clothes, or a real tattoo, or busting a real nut. Think about all the time you put into this virtual person you've created. Now, what would happen if you put all that time into yourself? Chances are you'd be a lot happier in your real life and not have to run away to a fake world because you life sucks so much.

I think I'm just bitter because I didn't come up with the idea...but I do have a whole bunch of real tattoos, so that helps.

Guys...just let me sleep...Ok?

So I'm laying in here in bed pretending to fall asleep (and failing miserably I may add), when from out of the blue a memory jumps into my head. I'm one who usually prides myself on my memory so it kind of freaks me out when something jumps in there that I know is a memory, but I don't have a really any strong recollection of the details.

Since time began, or at least as long as I am concerned, I have been stricken with insomnia. Most of the time it barely bothers me as I get to accomplish a whole bunch of stuff while the rest of the world is sleeping, but occasionally it comes back to bite me in the ass. The past two weeks has been a pit bull gnawing on my posterior. Usually I'll go days on end with next to no sleep and then I'll crash and burn. When I say crash and burn, I mean hard. I'll fall asleep for eight hours and don't even so much as roll over. Gabriel himself blowing the trumpet of doom into my ear wouldn't wake me. During these down times I have been known to miss phone calls, people at my door, people in my house (when I shared it with others), and miss flights because I never woke up. I currently have three alarm clocks just to wake me up in case I do burn (and have been known to sleep through all three), but I've been going on a stretch of over two and a half weeks now with little to no sleep. Being that I've been an insomniac for so long it doesn't really bother me that much during the “awake” hours, but it sure frustrates the hell out of me when I'm trying to get to sleep. It's during these stretches of no sleep when I'm actually most creative (see point above about frustration). It's a double edged sword.

Moloquin 1 “Can't sleep.”
Moloquin 2 “Then do something...How about a new tune?”
M1 “Good idea...lets fire up some, oh wait. It's four in the morning. Probably not a good idea.”
M2 “How about some filming?”
M1 “Got all the night shots we need for the latest project.”
M2 “Write a blog entry.”
M1 “Great idea, lets get started.”
M3 “Would you guys shut the hell up and try to sleep? You start that now you are never gonna sleep.”

and thus it begins. Slice and dice and no sleep tonight.

Back to the point. As I'm laying here an image pops in my head. It's of a girl I think I used to go out with back in a past life. It's vivid enough I can make out a lot of details about her. I can see her hair and how I think it's longer than when we started going out, the look of barely impressed resignation on her face, the small tattoo on her hand just above the webbing in between her thumb and forefinger, and a couple of other things that I really shouldn't mention in my blog, but the damnedest thing is you think I could remember her name or whereabouts in the time line this all took place? Damned if I know. I think that's the freakiest thing. Floating memories in the eddies of my brain that really don't have any docking point to attach to. Now, in all realism I can guess when about this would have taken place, but it bugs the shit outta me that I can't nail it down for sure.

Someday I'm going to catch that leprechaun that's been core sampling my brain and make it put all my memories back in order. When your brain feels like an etch a sketch that's usually a good indication that you had better get some sleep soon or things are really going to get silly.

One last note before we try this sleep thing again. Work on the film is progressing, albeit slowly, but that's pretty much what it is always like in preproduction. The devil is in the details as the story goes. On a plus note it looks like the new production company is going to be getting off the ground soon. A bunch of ideas have all been white boarded and I think we're going to go ahead and shoot at least two of them (besides the full length picture). There were at least two that we green lighted. One that actually had me laughing out loud, and the other thinking about in a very dark, morose way. Both should prove interesting to film. Here's to hoping anyways. There is a good chance one or two of the shorter ones will be available on line in time, so keep watching for them. I'll post them whenever they are in the can, and everyone has agreed to it.

Sayonara folks.

But I don't want to go to bed...

So, what happens when you are really good at something, and do it for a living because you are good at it, but have absolutely no passion for it. It's a huge conundrum. I've been debating this one for years. I remember sitting down in grade eight with my “guidance councilor” having the talk about what I wanted to do with my life, and oppositely, what I should do with my life. It's not like you can't enjoy what you do, but if there is no passion for it, or your passion lies in other areas, it can turn into a sore or bitter point for many people. I consider myself pretty lucky (meh) in the aspect I have done many things in my “working years” that I wanted to do instead of doing things that I had to do.

Without blathering on for paragraphs about my various careers thus far (and those that will probably occur in the future), I think it's time to open the debate portion of tonights festivities.

One of the (many) problems I have with the scholastic/guidance/parental advice systems that we currently have in place is from the time we are very young, we are all encouraged to try to decide what we want to do with our lives based purely on monetary gains rather than passion. I firmly believe that there are thousands of creative geniuses out there that will never realize their potential because they are guided towards becoming something to try and become rich. Guess what? You aren't going to be rich. Get used to it. You aren't going to own a Ferrari. Get used to it. If you do, you can come back and tell me I'm wrong, but the vast amount of people that think they are going to be millionaires sure have a nightmare to wake up from down the road. What I'm afraid of is when they realize it. You want to know why so many people snap at the workplace these days? This is definitely one of the contenders from that list. Dreamers are rarely encouraged to follow there dreams anymore.

Why not enjoy life instead of slaving away doing something you hate and slowly killing yourself?

I've always believed that it doesn't matter what you are worth, as long as you are happy, or at least content with your life.

Over the past X amount of years (insert any number you want for the X, any number works), I've encountered many people who have become so disillusioned with the system that they simply don't want to work. Do I think this is because these people genuinely hate working? Well, yes, because they have probably never had the chance to discover what they are passionate about. If given the chance and opportunity to discover what they love, I can guarantee that they would turnabout.

Now, the caveat with this whole thing is just because you are passionate about something, it doesn't necessarily mean it would be a good career choice. We all have to eat, pay rent, etc, and the reality is that we do need something for a source of income, but that doesn't mean that you have to put away your aspirations forever. For example, I work in an office environment just like my guidance councilor said I should, but that doesn't mean I put away my guitar, camera and film ideas. I still do those, and maybe someday I will be doing that as a career, but I have made certain compromises within myself to be able to do these things. Even though I do my 40+ hours a week I still come home and work on my film or write a new tune. The trick here is to keep those feelings/dreams alive and not let them die. If you keep working towards them, at the very least, you won't look back with regret when your forty asking yourself “What if?” Regret can be a bitch.

To paraphrase a very famous quote “When you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life”.

And on that note, I should probably get some sleep tonight before work tomorrow...