Four Years
I saw this photo on the tumblr of a friend of mine a few weeks ago, and I’m just getting around to writing about it. It’s part of a bigger series of weird interesting facts about the body, but this one stuck me as the most prominent. (The rest are here if you’re curious - http://www.icanhasinternets.com/2011/10/mind-blown/) 
And I feel like this is not only true physically, in terms of all our cells and stuff, but also in terms of who we are as a person and emotionally. We all know we go through different stages in our lives and they happen at different times for different people. But would it be too far of a leap to assume that maybe these changes occur every seven years when all our cells from our “previous self” have finally disappeared?
Seven years ago, I was 14. I was in the 9th grade and was in the middle of maybe my second style cycle. I had ridiculously long hair, thought I was hot shit because I wore pink, played drums in a shitty junior high band and listened to Sum 41 and Blink 182 all day. I had had some random “girlfriends” but not a first kiss, and had played hockey almost all my life. I had dropped out of band class because I had hated it the year before. And I think this was about the time I got my first Facebook page. It was a few years later that my brother graduated and went to Australia, and my parents went to meet him shortly after, leaving me alone on my first week of high school. Getting to band practices in October in Calgary by bus at 6am was not fun.
I'm kind of proud to say that I'm still friends with that guy who I am wrapped around.
If you know me know, I’m sure you’ll hardly believe that that’s what I used to look like. (Aside: Part of me wants to retake this picture when we get back together at Christmas time. Kind of like these ones – http://irinawerning.com/back-to-the-fut/back-to-the-future/)
Somewhere in my grade 12 year I went through another shift. I think it a big part of it was during my trip with the high school band. It was during this trip that I discovered the rewards and the hardships of the career path I was slowly beginning down. I got thrown into a huge leadership role and kind of reveled in it. In grade 12 I was also playing and coaching hockey, had a few more girlfriends, had a first kiss, made a Grad Film, played a solo for our entire graduation class + families, and got accepted to my first university of choice. My musical tastes branched out more, I now liked screamo and emo and acoustic and punk and rock. I had almost mostly given up the drums and picked up the guitar and a mixing board. I even made a CD (Granted it’s terrible and I never want to have to hear it again – but those of you with a copy! Hold onto that sucker, you can sell it for millions later). I fought with my parents a lot – mostly about my current (and as I found out later, crazy) girlfriend.
I also cut my hair short for the first time in a while. You can always tell when a guy is ready to move onto the next stage of his life when he cuts his hair short and gets rid of the mop top shaggy teen look. Some guys keep it going out of high school, but it usually gets cut eventually. So far, the 7 year trend isn’t coming true, it seems to be closer to 3 or 4 years for me at least.
Incredibly, these people are still friends with me...
And this is where I’ve kinda plateaued. I haven’t changed much since then. Still super tall and skinny, 6’5″ 150lb, a broomstick some have said. One or two more girlfriends, maybe a bit more experienced. My style hasn’t changed all that much, I’ve grown into my “professional hipster” mentality and have learnt to rock it. University kicked my ass in my first two years, calculus almost killed me. I met one of my best friends and girlfriend here and learned a lot from her. I’ve had the same recording job now for 3 and a half years. I’ve become “that recording guy” in the school of music. Music has become one of the biggest factors in my life. Not only is it becoming my job, but I am always discovering more things about it and more styles that I am enjoying. I breached the 10 000 song mark this summer. I don’t fight with my parents anymore, or my brother – I think the distance was good for us. And I’m almost done my degree. Hopefully two more semesters and that’ll be it.
So now, it’s been 4 years since that last “style shift” in grade 12. Hold on.
It’s been 4 years since high school.
4 years.
That’s kind of gross. Most of my friends now are people I met when I was in high school. I still talk to all those people. I always wanted to be that guy who made all these great friends in University and went to all these parties. I always told myself I wasn’t going to be like my dad and never go out (at least he tells us he never went out – except for the one time he threw up over a bridge into a river – he does like to tell us that story). But I didn’t go out. Well, I didn’t go out A LOT. I mostly stayed in, I was content staying in. Partying was never my thing. I have met some great friends here though. I’ve got some Bro’s who I hope I’ll keep in contact later. And really, that’s what I’m thinking about now. What’s later? What’s next?
I’m almost done my degree.
What am I gonna do after? I’m feeling like that’ll induce another “style shift.”
Where am I going to be in four years? Who am I going to be in four years? Who are you going to be in four years?
(Also – a little more Nicole Byblow for your listening pleasure)
Go Get Your Face Fixed
YouTube – New Era Commercial – The Trash Talking Begins.
“There’s like 20 grand here!”
New Star Wars Kid
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640
So! In case you missed it – this ad:
was played during the Super Bowl, at the time of publishing it had over 15 000 000 views.
AND THE KID HASN’T EVEN SEEN STAR WARS! WHAT THE FUCK. I was watching Star Wars when I was eight. Six can’t be a stretch. Especially if he was playing him in a commercial. Talk about a lousy research actor.
The NHL Needs to Screw It’s Head On Right
Image by clydeorama via Flickr
Over the years since the lock out, the NHL has been refining it’s rules on body checking, in particular dangerous checks from behind and hits to the head. In the more recent years, the guys behind the NHL have made rules defining a blindside hit, and bumped up the amount of games that would be given if an incident should occur.
Unfortunately, this is all great in theory, the NHL has not done a good job of this in practice. There are many hits that should be penalized more heavily; suspensions for 5 or 6 games versus suspensions for 2 or 3 and fines.
A clear example of this happened last night in two separate games.
In the first clip, the Tampa Bay Lightening’s Mattias Ritola hits Matt Moulson from behind into the boards. In the replay you can clearly see him leaving his feet and jumping into Moulsons back. Moulson has his back turned the entire time and Ritola makes no attempt to avoid the crushing check. This was given only a two game suspension. I haven’t found out what has happened to Moulson
In the second clip, Calgary’s Olli Jokinen cross checks the Coyotes Wojtek Wolski in the face. Granted it was a glancing blow off the shoulders, but still a cross check to the head none the less. Wolski was not injured and returned to play later in the game. This cross check was given 3 games suspension.
Frankly I think the NHL got this one wrong. Much has been written and said about the discrepancies in the suspension handouts. This was no exception. The Ritola hit should have been given 4 to 5 games according to the new rules, while the Jokinen cross check may have been bumped up due to his prior history.
Hopefully within a few years the NHL will figure it out and get a call right.
But that’s just an opinion from another guy in the stands…
Related Articles
- NHL suspends Lightning forward Mattias Ritola (theglobeandmail.com)
- NHL Wheel of Justice (sports.yahoo.ca)
- NHL suspends Jokinen, Ritola (cbc.ca)
Woooo!
Hockey Season has started! So jacked. The two teams I want to make it this year are the Phoenix Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche. 
I don’t think they will make it to the finals just yet, but that’s yet to be determined.
I’d like to the see the Ligthening make a run this year too, I think they can do it with Stevie Y managing.
My pick for the cup is San Jose over Washington in 6.
Anyways, mmm Hockey.
I Blame My Dad for My Coffee Addiction
My Eighth Grade Drink of Choice
I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was in the 8th grade. Anytime before then, my mom would treat it the same way she let me try alcohol. A sip here or there of the most wretched stuff, trying to deter me from drinking it. Apparently I had terrible times sleeping as a kid whenever I had hot chocolate or anything of the sort.
When I hit junior high I now had the freedom to wander wherever I wanted at lunch and eat and drink whatever I wanted. This accounted for me going to KFC every Tuesday in the ninth grade, but that’s another story for another time.
I first started out with the really sugary drinks – a caramel macchiato or vanilla fudge brownie latte, something with lots of flavour and whipped cream on top. When you’re 14 your only goal is the awesome whipped cream and not really giving two thoughts about the coffee.
But when I started going to high school, things changed a little bit.
Firstly, my dad gave me a ride to work everyday. This was a symbiotic relationship for the both of us. He got me to school on time, and since I was up early, it meant that he went to work on time too. I really enjoyed the morning drive with my dad, it was a consistent time of the day that we had together. We got to talk about sports or news or family stuffs and the drive wasn’t too long that we could ever get into anything to deep.
Now, the best part of driving to school with my dad, was stopping at Tim Horton’s in the morning. There was a drive thru about 2 minutes from my school on the main road, so it was the perfect pit-stop before school/work. Every Canadian knows Timmy Ho’s is the place to go for coffee, and being recently introduced to the drink, I was weary as what to order. I knew I wouldn’t want black, but I didn’t need to have coffee with my sugar.
Timmy Ho's
From seeing enough Tim’s ads on TV, I knew the classic All-Canadian coffee was the double double. I went with that and haven’t gone back.
One of the first things I ever bought when I moved into my first home away from home was a coffee maker, and a big container of Folgers coffee. This was a mistake. I still have about half the grounds left in that container. My roommates bought me Tim Horton’s coffee for my birthday, and I’ve never wanted to drink anything else.
I still stop at Tim Horton’s on the way to work in the early mornings and if I’m at home, I’ve always got my coffee maker ready to go.
Most people think that coffee addictions are on par with any other addiction. Frankly, I like my addiction. It brought me closer to my dad and will always be something we have.
So here’s to you Dad.
Image via Wikipedia
Twitter Shows It’s True Colours
Pulse of the Nation: U.S. Mood Throughout the Day inferred from Twitter.
A study recently at Northeastern University in Boston created a mood map according to different tweets in the United States. The researchers there analyzed the 140-character long messages, deciphering mood and ranging it between least happy to most happy. There is a psychological word-rating system that is used to look at the 300+ million tweets and determine if they are happy or sad.
They found that people were most happy first thing in the morning (odd – I guess Tweethards are also morning people) and later in the evening. On a weekly trend, Sundays are the happiest, followed closely by Saturdays (no surprise there) and Thursday evenings found people the least happy.
“Even though individual tweets are pointless to anyone besides your followers, in aggregate there is a lot of meaningful information that can be an instrument to see how people feel about things, whether it’s public reaction to a politicians speech or a consumers attitudes about a brand.” said Sue Lehmann, one of the researchers.
This makes me wonder how much the government can use this information to judge it’s populous and determine where they have to campaign more. Say after a great Obama speech, the western coast is tweeting all red, then the government can learn to campaign better in that area and have to tailor it’s message better to those people. For me personally, I’d like to see the MoodMap for specific days, like when Lebron James announced he was going to play in Miami. (Maybe this explains Ohio’s grumpyness – See below).
There’s a time lapse video included here, and just so you’re not confused; The map is skewed because of the large population mass found in each region. You will see California bulge and shrink as more users in that area Tweet. See more in the picture below.
A cartogram is a map in which the mapping variable (in this case, the number of tweets) is substituted for the true land area. Thus, the geometry of the actual map is altered so that the shape of each region is maintained as much as possible, but the area is scaled in order to be proportional to the number of tweets that originate in that region. The result is a density-equalizing map. The cartograms in this work were generated using the cart software by Mark E. J. Newman, available at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/cart.
I found it particularly interesting that during the time lapse, you can see that the states of New Mexico (on the top left corner of Texas) and Ohio (in the middle of the map, with the little hook on the right side) seem to stay red for the entire course of the day. Now, I don’t know if this has to do with the lack of tweets coming from that area, thus making the small sample size skew the results, or if people in those two states are really just grumpy all day long. Note to self: Do not go to Ohio/New Mexico on Vacation.
This Week In News
Well it’s been a while since I’ve done this…. So I feel like reporting some news! Thing you might have seen or might not have! Enjoy!
Some crazy 13 year old kid climbed to the top of Mount Everest today. He promptly then called his mom. Great. 13 year olds are doing things I’ll never do in my life. Good grief. http://highschool.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1087094
The youngest climber to reach the peak of Mount Everest hugged his tearful companions and told them he loved them. Then 13-year-old Jordan Romero took the satellite phone and called his mom.
“He says, ‘Mom, I’m calling you from the top of the world,’” a giddy Leigh Anne Drake told The Associated Press from California, where she had been watching her son’s progress minute by minute on a GPS tracker online.
In other news, Venus Williams won the French Open – and decided to wear her lingerie to the match.
I guess that’s one way to make tennis more exciting. At least she decided to wear underwear.
I saw IronMan 2 today. It was pretty good. Probably better as a renter. All the toys were pretty cool and all. But the plot was weak and the battle scenes bland. The final battle only lasted 2 minutes or so. When I think of good end battles, I automatically thing of Return of the Jedi – and how long the fight between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader – and then Lord Sidious went on. I was expecting that from IronMan, or something similar. But alas. Whatever. Scarlett Johannson was pretty dang good looking though. Must be the curly dark hair and leather body suit – Girlfriend taking notes?
In Albertan news, some kid who wants to wear a kilt to graduation isn’t allowed. Part of me wants to be on his side and say go for it – stick it to the man and stand out. But part of me is just like – eh who cares, wear it to the dinner, when people will actually see it. Just my opinion.
New Nike Football Commerical
Pretty dang cool commercial. Pumped for World Cup.
“I’m not a big football (soccer for us Yanks) fan though I know the majority of the world is, but watching this new Nike Football commercial for their upcoming Write The Future campaign totally gave me chills. The spot was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, who you might also know as the director of movies like Babel and 21 Grams as well as the producer of football movie Rudo y Cursi. The story follows several of the biggest football stars out there, though I could only name Ronaldo, going through the “what if’s?” and potential outcomes of the matches they’re playing.Watching it I was totally riveted and actually got a little emotional, it definitely hit all the right buttons for me. Iñárritu’s direction is spot and the team he worked with should absolutely be commended for creating such a rad commercial that nearly feels like a short film. I love when Wayne Rooney’s kick gets intercepted and all of England rejects him, tearing down his posters, the stock market crashes and all hell breaks loose… and he knows he has to make up for it quickly in order to divert disaster.If you’re curious, the players in the commercial are Cristiano Ronaldo, Didier Drogba, Wayne Rooney, Fabio Cannavaro, Franck Ribery, Andres Iniesta, Cesc Fabregas, Theo Walcott, Patrice Evra, Gerard Pique, Ronaldinho, Landon Donovan, Tim Howard and Thiago Silva. Plus it’s fun to see Homer Simpson, Gael Garcia Bernal (who starred in Rudo y Cursi) and Kobe Bryant.”
