One Life…

Some photos from Canada Day in the nation’s capital… I love how people flood the streets every year.

[Show as slideshow]

I just got tagged by Tony - I never do these tagging things, but here we go.

Off the top, my favorite films

- The Shawshank redemption - Best ending ever

- Forrest Gump - Forrest talking about his boy - He’s so smart Jenny…

- Braveheart

- The Transformers (original) - “One shall stand, one shall fall”

- The Joy Luck Club - Yes I confess - just about every scene makes me weep like a baby

- Crash - Way better intertwining plots and subtexts than pulp fiction

- Remember the Titans - “You’re crippling them for life”

- Requiem for a dream - An artistic gem - just about puked from the hollowness at the end

- The Matrix & Terminator 2 - both overplayed - but still epic

- The Lion King - the opening scene was so glorious I teared…

And I guess my five tag’s will be…

Ray
Marty
Brian & Ina
Obahsomah
Yu

I recently saw this add at a public transit stop that is supposedly going up across Canada. No one quite knows what it’s for.

Now this is creative… go obama…

Go to this site to check out this viral video on “The Story of Stuff“. It’s about 20 minutes long but communicates the key messages of extraction, production, distribution, consumption, and disposal with brilliant simplicity.

Below is one of my favorite segments of the video,

I’d love to hear what you are or or plan on doing about it all…

Some thoughts I jotted down while cross-boarder shopping and waiting in the dreaded cheesecake factory lines.

like rats in a cage
or mice in a maze
wherever the sales sign lead
I go where they say to go
joyfully letting this wallet bleed

what a steal
we beat the system, got a better deal
got something shiny, something new
by trading in the old
who knew it was actually my soul they stole

worthy cost savings,
or a life worth living,
I’m not sure, which one, we want more

here we are in line
at the cheesecake factory
waiting for this darn box to beep
watching others go in before us, patiently
filing in and eat and pay excessively

this is life, life in the mall,
they’re all busy buying stuff,
yet I too, am one of them
and i just can’t wait, till it’s my turn to go in.

Check out this speech delivered to the United Nations by twelve year old Severn Suzuki

Not the brightest of videos, but I love the opening lyrics…

When I was,
A young boy,
My father, took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, “Son when you grow up,
will you be the saviour of the broken,
the beaten and the damned?”

Video here

The latest TED talk I’ve watched on Greening the Ghetto. Let me know what you think if you ever get around to it.

Some reason I can’t embed it, see it here.

One early morning a decade ago, I heard on the radio that the first one hundred people to line up to purchase Radiohead’s OK Computer would be given a free ticket to their North American premiere at the Opera House.

I didn’t have a car at the time and ended up pulling a friend out of a test that morning to drive down and line up.  While I was dropped off so that he could find parking, I ran towards the line and was handed ticket number 100, the very last ticket.

We debated this for a while, and decided the only fair thing to do would be to scalp the ticket and split the cash.

We’ve regretted it ever since.

Anyhow, I just discovered that Radiohead delivered a blow to the recording industry today and is offering their latest album for sale directly from their own website, cutting out all the middle men.  On top of that, it’s pay whatever you want.  You could literally put a cent into the honesty box and walk away with the album legitimately.

Kudos to Radiohead for once again doing things a bit differently…