Flags

Politics can make me sick.

Not lowering the flag for every soldier's death = good thing.
Give them respect when they are alive, and you won't have to feel that there is a lack when they die.

That is all.

Myles Mansell

Well, now that makes it hit home. The first soldier that I know personally has died in Afghanistan. We went through basic training together in 1998, and worked together many times since then. I haven't seen him or talked to him in quite a while.

I konw that you will not be forgotten, Myles.

Maybe instead of immediate complaints about political decisions, war-mongering, and charges of following US policy, Canadians could stop for just one minute to appreciate life and the environment in which we live. Compare it to the life lived by the citizens of Afghanistan. And say thank you to those people who refuse to stand idly and let that continue. Personally, I say Thank you.

Keep going, boys and girls.



Here is what his Myles' family posted on his unit's website:

Bombardier Myles Stanley John Mansell was killed around 8:00pm PST Friday (April 21, 2006) while serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Myles was born in Victoria on August 5, 1980 to Nancy and Alan Mansell. He has two older brothers, Michael and Matthew. He lived his entire life in the Western Communities and graduated from Belmont School in 1998.

After graduating, Myles held a variety of jobs including working for his parents in the family business, Mansell's and Ken's Environmental Services, until shortly after his parents sold the business and retired in 2003. More recently, Myles was employed by Roma Builders.

Myles joined the reserves in May 1998 and completed training in Shilo, Manitoba and Gagetown, New Brunswick. Myles had a strong belief in the work of the Reserves and the Armed Forces and felt strongly about serving his Country. The family believes this is probably not such a coincidence as Myles middle names, Stanley and John, were given to him in honour of his two grandfathers, Stanley Mansell and John Yorko. Stanley saw active duty during the Second World War and John served in the Royal Canadian Navy and both were just as passionate as Myles in serving their Country. It was this strong conviction to serve his country that led Myles to volunteer for service in Afghanastan. His family supported him in his decision to do what he loved.

Myles met Lindsay Sullivan in April, 2003 and, this past Christmas, they became engaged. They had intended to be married when Myles completed his tour of duty later this year.

In 2003, Myles participated with the Reserves in battling the Kelowna fires. This ties into Myles kind, caring and generous personality - he was always ready to lend a hand and help out in any way he could, no matter what the circumstances.

Myles is survived by his fiance, Lindsay Sullivan; his parents, Nancy and Alan Mansell; his brothers Michael (Sonja) and Matthew (Sheila); his niece, Emma; his grandmother, Shirley Yorko, his Auntie Janice & Uncle Kazi Kataoka, and cousins Emily, Midori and Marina; Uncle Mike and Auntie Leah and Chris, Luke and Theresa; Auntie Kate and Jeremy; and Auntie Dolly.

-- Mansell and Sullivan Families

The 80s

There is a reason why the 80s are never coming back:
No, those ridiculously tight pants don't quite manage to make it all the way down to my shoes. If you were wondering.

Afghanistan 2

Well, looks like there will be a debate after all. Tonight. I hope something positive comes from this. Keep up to date on Canada in Afghanistan here.

Afghanistan

Are we really still questioning why Canadians are in Afghanistan? Why is it that we must have a debate now, instead of several years ago when the troops were sent there? Maybe most Canadians don't oppose the deployment, but going over the "Readers' comments" in the Globe and Mail is enough to drive me up the wall.

I was happy to hear Liberal Leader Bill Graham state recently that his party does not want to have a debate on the issue at this point (overruling his Health Critic's claim that they do). As for the people who claim that Canadians need to know what the troops are doing there, and open debate (and a vote, no less) in Parliament is the only way to determine if they should stay - well, frankly, you are lazy. What Canadians are doing there has been stated clearly many times by politicians, top soldiers, and the media. You could probably find it in a hundred places just on the internet. Start with the Foreign Affairs website. So inform yourself, or shut up. Seriously. Sure, we can have open discussion on the issue. Perhaps Canadians will then realize that the mission has actually been approved by the UN, that Canadians aren't traditionally just "peacekeepers," and that anyone who wants to sit at the table with the big boys has to earn a seat there. But this mission has already been committed to, and we have no right to back out now. If you still think that Canada shouldn't be in Afghanistan, that's fine. At least be informed. Maybe there will be a vote before any mission extension.

This is an excerpt from commentary on The Canadian Institue of Strategic Studies website:

The intent of the Kandahar mission is identical to previous peacekeeping operations: to give a battered country time to recover and administer to the needs of its people. The difference is that, this time, the recovery process is being opposed by groups who wish to re-impose a medieval political order (a goal not shared by the vast majority of Afghans) and who see no problem in employing extreme violence to establish it. If they must slaughter aid workers, diplomats, as well as thousands of their countrymen and co-religionists in the process, then so it must be.

If Canadians, including Mr Layton, believe that the end – a peaceful, stable Afghanistan - is truly worthwhile, then they have little choice but to support appropriate means to achieve it. And the means must include not only the “stabilization” tasks that Canadian troops have performed for the last four years, but also more proactive operations that will keep the insurgents off balance. Why? Because the aim cannot be achieved by having Canadians standing on street corners or patrolling the perimeters of their base while those who would kill and maim are left to roam the countryside or infiltrate the cities and set off car bombs. Put simply, peacekeeping and counter-insurgency operations (a.k.a. “limited war”) are complementary. One cannot succeed without doing both simultaneously. Afghanistan is too far gone for blue berets to ride to the rescue.

To be sure, peace restoration is not solely a military matter. The rehabilitation of a war-torn country will require diplomatic, economic, social, and technical assistance. Troops simply provide a secure environment in which the other partners can do their vital work. They buy time for the host government regain its footing and take care of its people. This noble goal takes place in a dangerous environment. Minimizing the danger will require good intelligence on what mischief the insurgents are planning, and the will to physically subdue them.

Still, Mr. Layton’s stance is attractive. It is tempting, even preferable, to believe that Canada has no enemies, and that it is not our destiny to offer offence to anyone. It is equally tempting to that believe that our values – which we constantly trumpet but have not defended in earnest for two generations – will simply prevail on their own. And it is easy to be beguiled by the credit our troops have brought to this country when deployed abroad as peacekeepers. How fortunate we have been to have the luxury of embarking, for the most part, on low-risk missions where our forces adhere to a latter-day version of the Hippocratic Oath, and do no harm.

How unsettling, then, is Afghanistan, where harm must be visited upon the enemies of the very progressiveness that Mr. Layton champions back home. How unusual that a self-proclaimed “peacekeeper” has taken sides, throwing its lot in with - wait a second - a democratically-elected government battling the forces of regression. And how haunting are the exhortations of President Hamid Karzai after last week’s suicide bombings in which Canadians and Afghans died together. Like a voice from the past imploring us not to succumb to the isolation of the 1930s, the Afghan leader beseeched the outside world not to abandon his country to the extremists who wish to usher in a new dark age.

Read the article here. Another, newer article can be found here and is more good reading if you wish to be informed on what your country is doing in Afghanistan.

Coffee

Hey, just because they're flying a multi-million dollar helicopter doesn't mean they don't want to Rrrrrrroll up the rim.

A Soldier

Pte Robert Costall, 22, died serving his beliefs, his country, and his friends. Read here.

Seals

Seals are cute. Seals look cuddly. This year, Canadian fishermen will be authorized by the Canadian government to kill 325000 of them.

Well that sounds like a pretty big number. Must really be something, considering how much protest there is against it. Let us do a little comparison. How about fish - I mean, they are marine animals just like seals. Well, apparently 16kg of fish are caught in one year per person in the world. That's a lot of fish. 263 million kg per day according to my rough calculation, and more than ten times that weight in other marine life is sacrificed to catch these animals. But hey, I never see them swimming around here on the prairies. Besides, they have those freaky-looking eyeballs. How about something closer to home - how many chickens are killed? 23 million every day, just in the US. That's a lot. Well, chickens are just small and ugly anyway. Besides, they aren't mammals, like seals. How about a more common mammal - cows. Oh, 90 000 cows killed everyday?

If you are against the seal hunt, that is ok with me. But if you eat meat, you should take another look at what you're protesting. An animal, whose natural predators we have endangered, being killed in its natural environment. Is that worse than the chickens and cows living their lives in pens? Or fish being hauled in and dumped on the deck of a boat by the thousands? Is it because they are cute that you oppose the hunt? This doesn't make the hunt good, but maybe there is something more worthwhile to protest. And maybe you don't even have to protest, you just have to change yourself.

Masked man

Dwayne Roloson finally gets a new mask. Dwayne Roloson finally plays an outstanding game. Coincidence?

YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Nuts in your bedpost

Go HERE now to watch an awesome home music video for Fallout Boy.

If you have a really uptight boss, don't watch it at work. It might be too funny for him.

Squeaky Wheel

I'm a third wheel.

Not just any third wheel. I am a highly-experienced, well-skilled third wheel. I mean, I MUST be good at it, if I do it this much. Well, either that or I just get a lot of sympathy from couples (perhaps occasionally forced onto the male half by a sympathetic female). But I prefer to maintain my dignity and say I'm good at it.

I have been a 3W for tv shows. For movies at home and in the theatre. Breakfasts at restaurants, and beer & steak dinners. Wine and supper by candlelight. Hanging out on their bedroom floor while they are laying on the bed. Shopping at the mall. Snowboarding excursions to the mountains. Trips to the dump. 3W at the Home & Garden Show. 3W at the Sex Show.

And at the end of the day, they go home together. But hey, I know they're happier because of me. Because everyone likes a third wheel to rest on. Right?

Togas and Barbed Wire

Last Friday. Times are good. We went out for lunch for the occasion of a departure of one of my friends. Later, had some free dinner with friends, and we shared in a beer or five together. The plan for the night - Toga Party. Sweet.

After heading back to one of the guys' room, we partook in some more beer-drinking and tried to figure out how exactly to put together a Toga without any sort of training or fastening device. After accomplishing that (well enough), we had to put together some footwear. Apparently running shoes don't go with a toga, so I borrowed someone's Japanese-style bamboo flip-flops. Dressed in bedsheet and sandals, I was obviously ready to go out in the Winnipeg winter. What, we're not walking? Ok, I guess we can call a cab.

Into the cab, and off to the party. The driver had been waiting a while for us with one guy sitting in the back, so he had started the meter. It was already at $8 by the time everyone was ready to go. Some guys refused to get in if he didn't reset the meter. Which he didn't. So they went back inside. They didn't arrive at the party until about 2 hours later.

And what are you looking for at a good toga party? Why, girls in togas, of course. And what was at this party? Craploads of dudes in togas. As usual. What could one really expect?


Eventually some girls came. They wanted to talk to me, of course. And what did they have to say? They lived in my building, and they wanted to know why I never said hello to them. Sweet, I'm so smooth.


Time to go home. I call a taxi, and a few minutes later he pulls up outside. I run to the door and wave, and call back inside to the others. They don't hear me amid the dull roar in the house, so I go and grab them. I go back to the door and...the taxi is driving away. What the? Better go after it....

So I started walking after it. The other people going back to my building come too, seeing as I'm that natural leader and all. I bet they regretted that pretty quickly. It was soon apparent that the cab was long gone, so we thought we should continue walking. Unfortunately, there is a big fence with barbed wire all around it they we had to get past, so we headed for the gate. That would make a 30 or 40 min walk. In togas. And flip-flops. In Winnipeg. In the winter.

Upon approaching the gate, we were greeted by a very bad sight indeed - the gate was locked up. Fortunately, next to the brightly-lit gate there was a bit of a stone wall, the only break in the barbed wire. So I just hopped up and walked along the wall past the wire. Looking down, I saw a bit of snow, so I jumped down. CRAP. I sank in the snow up past my knees. CRAP. Trying to get out, I lost my footwear. CRAP. Soooooooo cold. I was able to help the others over without touching the snow. Now for the long part of the walk. Man, I was cold.


The others were saying, "How does nobody know we're here? Where are the cars? Why is it so cold?"

I said to them, "It is a good thing there are no cars. We don't want anyone around here."

So I got home, was able to feel my toes after about a half hour. The next day, I talked to one of the guys who was at the party. He had to get back here too. He, too, got to the locked gate. He walked up the wall. And the police were there.

Chalk up a third Superfriend of JC Brown that has been taken in by the police. Nice work.

Overstayed welcome

A war against oppression can't do it. Certainly no politician is capable. The men's hockey had a chance, but blew it. But if there is one thing, other than Roll Up the Rim, behind which Canadians can stand shoulder to shoulder in solidarity and support, it is this decision.

Finally. Gosh.

On Flow

It seems that I wasn't totally out to lunch in my earlier post concerning exercise. Since that time I was told about a psychological theory called "Flow," first developed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Yes, that's a real name. No, I don't know how to pronounce it.

So apparently this guy has been interested in experiences exactly like those I was writing about, and has been studying them for 25 years. This theory is generally well-accepted in psychology, and basically tries to answer the question, "What makes people happy?" I will give you and excerpt from introduction to his book entitled Flow: The psychology of the optimal experience which I have just begun to read:

Yet we all have experienced times when...we do feel in control of our actions, master of our own fate. On the rare occasions that is happens, we feel a sense of exhiliration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.

This is what is meant by optimal experience. It is what the sailor holding a tight course feels when the wind whips through her hair, when the boat lunges through the waves like a colt - sails, hull, wind, and sea humming a harmony that vibrates in the sailor's veins. It is what a painter feels when the colors on the canvas begin to set up a mangnetic tension with each other, and a new thing, a living form, takes shape in front of the astonished creator. Or it is the feeling a father has when his child for the first time responds to his smile. Such events do not occur only when the external conditions are favorable, however: people who have survived concentration camps or who have lived through near-fatal physical dangers often recall that in the midst of their ordeal they experienced extraorinarily rich epiphanies in response to such simple events as hearing the song of a bird in the forest, completeing a hard task, or sharing a crust of bread with a friend.

Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times...the best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish somthing difficult and worthwhile...

Such experiences are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer's muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue - yet these could have been the best moments of his life...

Yeah. So this book, perhaps, will be a more articulate expression of my feeling. In 250 pages.

Fighting

I'm sure, as with all hockey fights, this will prevent chipiness, make skilled players feel more secure, and "equalize" what the referees don't call. Oh yeah, and it is part of the "culture," so that automatically makes it good, right?

It's also why you see 8 year-old players drop the gloves playing shinny. Only in hockey.

So stupid.

Fighting in sports is useless.

On exercise

I have always done some sort of exercise. In the beginning, as kids, it starts as running around before we even really knew what the word meant. To me, it was called "play." It wasn't long, however, until I started making this more organized. Then, it was a hockey coach explaining conditioning drills that I, a little 8 year-old with sphaghetti legs on skates, would be doing. Soon came the much-dreaded running of junior high basketball tryouts, followed eventually by a few seasons on the court, mixed in later with high school football and rugby. Around that time, I also started hitting the weights, and have been doing so ever since.

After high school I decided that I should study sport and exercise. Now instead of concentrating on something else when I was running, I would be thinking about the formation of acid, anaerobic threshold, and mitochondrial activity. That does a fairly good job of taking the fun out of it. However, I carried on and eventually (thankfully) managed to forget those things while running or biking or whatever.

I have given various reasons for continuing to exercise. Don't want be fat, need to be in shape for my work, good for my bones, blah blah blah. But there is a more important reason, and even I was not consciously aware of it for a long time. I think I just became aware of it today.

I exercise because of how it makes me feel. Not because of how it makes me look. Not because it allows me to lift more or run faster or have less back pain. This is a real feeling - to me, exercise itself is a feeling. It no longer means a room. It does not have the connotations of a treadmill, or a vinyl weight bench. Not even a sidewalk or a dirt bike path. Those are no more exercise to me than a few strings tightened over a piece of wood are music. That is just a guitar, not music. It is the forming of those callouses on the fingers that move over those strings, the anguish hidden behind words in the lyrics, and their connection to someone listening that make music. In a similar sense, it is not even feet pounding on pavement or a laboured breath that make up exercise. It is the pain running up the legs that soon goes numb; the pull of ribs on lungs starving for air; the fact that the only one in control of whether or not to take the next step is you.

They say that people who exercise regularly, then stop, get depressed. I can see why. Medically, maybe it is because the body stops producing certain chemicals. But I don't think the reason is because you don't see weights moving up and down in front of you, or another lamp post move past you. Maybe it is the effect of those chemicals that I call this "feeling," I don't know. But this feeling is something I need every once in a while. When my body is screaming to stop, I want to know that I can still go. In fact, I think that is my favourite place to be: When everyone is around me has had enough, and I have too. Faces are flushed red, hands are on knees and breath cannot be recovered. I have been in this situation so many times. And I think I can see the true make of a man when he like this. Will he stand up straight and carry on, or will he turn away? When everything is gone, does he still have more? And when I crack a smile, will he put his head back down and concentrate on his breathing? Or will he smile too?

Unhealthy Hypocrisy

Normally, I suppose, this wouldn't really be a big deal. But seeing as I have been preaching about how people are fat, they eat unhealthily, don't exercise, etc, I think it is pretty funny/bad. In the last week, I have been eating like a pregnant woman. Here is a list of the health:
-about 15 Lindor chocolates
-an entire 1 lb chocolate bunny
-Smarties chocolate bar
-huge box of Junior mints

Apparently I like chocolate. Fortunately, I also ran 20 km, biked 15km, and did weights 5 times. Therefore, according to my calculations, if I didn't eat anything other than what I listed...I should break even. I am pretty sure I ate more than that, though. Maybe in a few years they will be designing a new, extra wide airplane seat, just for me.

Note: I don't think so

www.openoffice.org

Slowly but surely, I am freeing myself from his evil grasp. That's right, folks, one day I may not even recognize this man anymore. Today, I took another step away from Bill Gates and Microsoft, and maybe you should too.

How did he do it? Well, he had a damn good software suite. Everyone started using Windows. And then he struck, because now EVERYONE just HAD to have Windows, then Windows XP, or they felt as though they were in the stone age. And if you didn't have MS Office, you wouldn't be able to be functional in society. Thankfully, some people got pissed off about that and decided to make the world "better," instead of just "more Miscrosoft."

For me, it started with Gmail. I used it for a few days and was hooked. Yahoo has a decent webmail service too. I can't even stand Hotmail anymore. It is absolutely terrible. But it is the one that everyone heard about first, so they all still have their same horrible hotmail account with the name they came up with 8 years ago, if for no other reason than because they are afraid to change. After using Gmail, you too would realize how bad Hotmail is. I think I would rather go without email than use Hotmail again. Gmail has more storage, more sensible layout, a mailbox search function, and the best invention yet in email - linked conversations. There is even a chat function from right within the inbox. Hotmail has nothing.

Next, Internet Explorer got the boot. Mozilla Firefox, despite its annoying habit of not playing embedded .wmv files (or whatever those video files are), is far easier to use. Extensions, tabs, popup control and adblocking - all sorts of things that make it far superior. And, of course, the fact that - despite some recent problems - its security is still far better than that of Explorer is also a good thing. There is also an email program that works with Firefox called Thunderbird, but I have not yet tried it.

Today I took the next step. The omnipresent MS Office would be the next to go. Computers rarely come equipped with eveything Office, such as Excel, Powerpoint and Word. Rather, they have Notepad, which isn't very good for making presentations or spreadsheets. If you want to buy the newest and best MS Office, it would cost you about $300. If you decide instead that you have had enough of Microsoft taking all your money and/or controlling your life, yet still want to be compatible with your work and collegues who are slaves of Microsoft, then GO TO OPENOFFICE.ORG and download Openoffice. This program contains everything you need (and even stuff you don't - if you're not a math nerd and can find a use for OO Math, you're a smarter man than I). You can open all previous Office documents including Powerpoint, Excel, and Word. You can build spreadsheets and databases. Best of all, you can even save your documents in Office format to ensure their compatibility with the computers of your stone-age slave friends and companies.

I have tried Word and Powerpoint documents, and they turned out perfectly in the new programs. There was a slight difference in the presentation of an Excel spreadsheet, but that was only in the presentation of a graph (the data remained identical).

So get to it. Download Openoffice. And bring us one small step closer to bankrupting Bill Gates.

Better than the Jets

Well, you know the men's team isn't better than the Jets. Or not much, anyway. But what I was referring to is someone who came out of Winnipeg - this makes TWO good things from this city. Nice work Cindy Klassen, 5-time Olympic medalist.


Sexy suit, too.

Me

I'm bored. There's no doubt about it. There are so many things I don't know, so many things I don't know how to do, and yet I am bored. Shouldn't I be out doing these things? Yes, you are probably right. Unfortunately, something seems to be in the way. I call it: my job. It's not much of a "job" at this point, really. I go to class and learn french, 5 days a week. Some people would consider this an ideal situation - getting paid to learn something that could be useful in many aspects of life, both in and outside of work. Unfortunately, as you know, this also means I live in Winnipeg, in a single room. No kitchen, no living room, certainly no garage, none of that sort of thing. As well, I will be leaving in a few months so it seems as if I shouldn't get anything started. The things that I tell myself I would be doing if I weren't here are starting to pile up. I figured that, today, I would write these things down lest I forget/slack off and don't do them when I have a chance.

I want to learn how to do more home renovations and repairs
I want to learn how to be a great cook
I want join a sports team
I want to learn to do woodworking
I want to visit the east coast
I want to build my own cabin someday
I want to live in my own house
I want to fly
I want to go back to New Zealand
I want to live near to my friends
I want to go to France
I want to go hiking/camping/mountain biking more often
I want a bigger TV
I want to have a private bathroom
I want to talk to someone other than a teacher in french

Eyes on the goal. Head up. Keep going. And hopefully, one day soon, I won't be making any more excuses.