i saw the aviator tonight with pavel & emily (sigh, 3rd wheel again... i'm not lonely, just feeling "out of place" is all).

it was a pretty good movie though. dicaprio, despite the fact that i just don't like his acting, actually came off pretty good. the movie paints a vivid picture of a guy with balls of solid granite and an iron will. it's a perfect example of someone who knew what needed to get done and then went about doing it, ignoring all jeers and criticism. it's something i think is worth aspiring to -- without all the psychological baggage that came with.

the kickers for me though were the two female leads in the movie. kathrine hepburn and ava gardner, played by cate blanchett and kate beckinsale were just amazing and illustrated to me what it is that i think i'm looking for out there. i want a strong woman, someone who knows who she is and what she wants and actually wants to go out there and get it. it's a trait i find i put considerable value in and one i hope i find one day soon.

there. blogged just in time to make the sunday cutoff. nearly a whole month blogging now :-)

...and not in a good way.

in fact, these past couple weeks have been just plain mean. the hitch though is that i can't really be sure what the problem is. every day i wake up exhausted, bitchy, tired and i go to work. i go outside and i feel trapped and frozen -- a victim of toronto. work has been overly stressful lately with all the stuff we've been putting live and having 5 bosses doesn't make things any easier. four out of my last 5 days have been busy after work as well. i had meetings with tev the ndp a new friend from the internet and my neighbour who needed a favour. i feel as if this place is sucking the life out of me and it's all going to a dark, frozen hell where all you do is what you have to do... every day.

i decided to take a break today (like i did last weekend) and i really don't feel it helping. probably because i'm still essentially trapped... it's cold, windy and snowing in all sorts of directions outside, not really the best place to let go and relax.

...i seem to remember feeling a lot like this in the midst of the last ontarian winter i had to endure without a break in vancouver. i so don't belong here.

it's been a long hard week at work and so i'm too tired to post anything terribly complicated right now. instead, i'll direct you to the 3 new blogs i've added to my list on the left:

from left to right: omickron is a guy i used to work with back home in vancouver and ran into completely by accident when i moved out here. his blog is rather dark and introspective but worth checking out if you have the time. vive le Canada is a political blog somewhat like a mix between slashdot and this modern world, but Canadian. lastly, the dominion is another Canadian political blog that i check out from time to time.

• 

the Canadian Government has said no to our involvement with the american missile "shield".

score 1 for the good guys. i'm so proud of my country right now.

watching the coverage on cbc, i was mad. but now after reading the in depth analysis on their site, i'm less mad. for those uninterested in reading said analysis, here's the details:

• lots of money for the military
• lots of money to tax cuts
• lots of money for health care
• a reasonable amount for foreign aid
• a semi-reasonable amount for the environment
• a semi-reasonable amount for cities (% of the gas tax)

looking over it now, i try to think about how i would have done it differently and the only area i would have changed would be the tax cuts. i understand that we need to keep industry competitive, but when i'm paying around 33% in taxes and wall-mart is going to get %19, there's a problem. there's also no infrastructure cash for cities, so you can look forward to a whole lot of nothing when it comes to investment in things like transit.

on the environmental front, the sierra club is happy, so i suppose i should be too -- but i'm not. money is nice, leadership is better. i would have liked to see some of the green party's ideas implemented like raising taxes on corporations that choose to pollute, and using that money to subsidise environmentally friendly products. there was also absolutely no mention of kyoto in the budget -- a bad sign if you ask me.

the catch: nearly all of the above is set over 5 to 10 years -- the majority forcast for the latter portion of that time.

the bad, but not surprising news: the conservatives are happy. in fact, harper actually seemed quite pleased when he talked to the press about it. and, since the other two parties are not pleased, [ndp] [bloc] this tells me the budget doesn't reflect the will of Canadians. so for all you people who voted for the liberals thinking that you were helping to keep the conservatives out... well there you go. you didn't vote for liberals. you voted for half assed conservatives wearing red.

cbc has this great flash application that lets you setup your own budget for the country. you can allocate n% of the surplus to various projects from cities to foreign aid to tax cuts. check it out and submit your own if you like. the thing even has neat little caricatures of all the leaders including one of jack layton thinking "why am i so small?".

...if you're paris hilton.

a bunch of hackers calling themselves "dfnctsc" have hacked paris hilton's t-mobile sidekick and posted the contents on the web including phone numbers of various celebrities like eminim and christina aguilera. needless to say, they're all really pissed and the rest of us are just laughing. can i hear a call for linux on cellphones?

tanya sent me this link today about how stelco is considering wind power for it's steel plant in southern ontario. the thinking is that they need to insulate themselves from fluctuating energy prices as well as contribute to Canada's Kyoto target. who knows... maybe we're not all doomed afterall :-)

"you're like him" she said. "a computer -- no feeling".

christine came over tonight. she's a neighbour of mine from down the hall who's internet-impaired (read: she doesn't own a computer). she comes over from time to time and works on her resume. we talk about relationships and sometimes eat food etc... she's friendly, intelligent and nice to look at, so it's always a welcome visit.

i gave her the cube test tonight. the little game where you draw a bunch of objects in a desert to help determine your personality etc. i administered the same quiz to a few friends a couple weeks ago and had mentioned it to her a few days later. she was interested, so we ran her through it while i burned a cd of fun tunage for her.

during the whole thing, we got onto a lot of relationship-centred discussion, and somewhere in between, she made the above observation.

now i know this is how i come across, and i'm not ashamed of it. i rather like the idea of appearing heartless upon first meeting. given all the shit i've been through in my early life, a thick skin was an inevitable development. it's helped me keep my distance from people who would hurt me for the pleasure of it and been useful in intimidating those who would take advantage of me as well as those i care about. but i really don't think i'm a heartless person -- detached maybe... perhaps more so than can be considered healthy, but not heartless... right? be honest, be brutal. be me.

i'm taking the day off. blew the entire day just watching episodes of star trek enterprise that i've acquired over the past few days.... two seasons in 12hours. sad? probably. but i needed a break.

speaking of breaks, i saw "constantine" last night, and might i just say: wo, baby, keanu reaves cannot deliver lines to save his life. damn. the editing was terrible too... not to mention the bozos behind us who kept talking through the whole movie. not that the movie was all bad, but those few factors near ruined it for me. at least the flicks are cheaper now.