The Least Windiest City in Canada

kelowna, BC

it has an average wind of 5.4 km an hour. this is where i intend to live one day.

what is calgary the best for?

the sunniest winter in canada: average 366.2 hours of sun. even though that sun can sometimes be while its minus 20 degrees.

calgary also has most sunniest days year round, most sunny days in cold months.

victoria, BC has the lowest snowfall

medicine hat is the sunniest year round

prince rupert was the rainiest place in the country to live.

i hate wind.

farewell

An Idea that will never be proven wrong

SI was just going to write this in a comment to Graham's last post, but then i decided it was deserving of it's own post. Graham talked about connecting his idea of 'the absurd' to the particle theory of matter. I don't know anything about science (and i am quite proud of my 14 percent in chemistry 12... which i blame on Josh Mann), but i do realize that good philosophy needs to be based on science.

Immanuel Kant, who was a philosopher/political theorist/ racist german/ genius, put forth some really good ideas. His political theory often rested between a battle between the individual and the state. How can you be an individual, when you need the state to protect you? How can we have an orderly state, when everyone wants to be an individual?

In answering these problems, he based his theories on Newtonian Physics. At his time in the late 1700's, it looked quite clearly that Newtonian Physics explained the universe perfectly. His ideas were held in high esteem, until about 1898 when science similar to Einstein's relativity, proved that Newtonian Physics did not explain the world in a universal way; rather everything was relative. We haven't disregarded Newton's theories, rather we just accept the fact that there are 2 good scientific ideas.

Most people looking for a grand unification theory (a theory that combines Einstein relativity and Newton), want to go to something along the lines of quantum mechanics (or string theory or something like that). We live in really weird times because we don't have a science that explains our world universally anymore. Rather, everything has to be a dualism between these two competing views.


I don't remember where i was going with this.

Obligatory random philosophy thoughts

I started writing out this school of philosophy called "adjectivism". The name I chose had absolutely nothing to do with the adjectivism found on the many results on google, and in fact, was a pointless school of thought that I was playing with for one reason only: it had everything to do with language. I wanted to use language as a basis for an entire school of thought, because language is after all one of our defining features. Unfortunately I lost interest in it, but today I was randomly reading some existentialist stuff (just Albert Camus, and no, not L'etranger (the outsider)) and it hit me that I can simply use adjectivism as a little mini-theory in the greater whole of the works.

What I was writing today was completely related to cyclical reality; a term I use to describe the truth that everything returns to its place, and everything is connected. This is not new. At all. What I was interested in was applying Camus's idea of the Absurd to the cyclical view of the world. He says that the absurd becomes apparent at any point of a persons life, and can be triggered by a random event. I know exactly when mine happened, and it's a shockingly stupid story. I was watching a Sugar Ray music video (I'm so sorry) and there was one line that went "my mother god rest her soul". After hearing that line I became, for the first time, aware of the mortality of my parents, and through that I had a horrible realization myself: I was going to die at some point. I was thirteen years old so this thought was quite a shock. Everyone says and sort of knows that they're going to die, but for some reason I went into a blind terror that lasted about a day. I couldn't eat and I couldn't sleep and everytime that fucking sugar ray song came on I freaked out and couldn't hear it anymore. It was like that earlier short essay I wrote; I felt like I was on the edge of a cliff. That was my first experience with the absurd.

Anyway.

The absurd, in the philosophy I've been working on, is the arrows that connect the elements of a cycle, or the borders on a map, or the lines on a chart. Like a particle of matter you can continue breaking things down until, like atoms, you're left with "The God Particle". This hasn't been discovered yet, but apparently we're close to finding it. So the way I want to formulate this philosophy is in direct relation to particle physics and will revolve around dissecting each segment of an absurd thought down to it's components so the true nature of emotion and thought can be analyzed, or at least in my own head. I can't say if what I'm writing or thinking will do anything for anyone else, but self analyzing is incredibly fascinating to me.

And I came up with the name "psychological Divisionism" after the artistic movement Divisionism. More on this later.

Thinks I learned from retail, ie conversion rates and pimpin ho's

Retail is really stupid. You're payed to be a middle-man, essentially. But I don't give a shit because it's easy, and I don't have to do any bending or lifting or running or hammering or kick-pressing or steel tempering. Or even sod laying. So right off the bat I prefer retail to every other single job I've had.

But customers are the problem. With the exclusion of the rare friend who visits me at work I think the people who shop at HMV may be a separate species... possibly half person half anteater. Or perhaps part armadillo. There are really very few people who come into the store that you cant categorize as one of the following:

Emo kid
This is such an easy one. Emo kids and record stores go together like emo kids and a human sized blender, or in simpler terms, completely fucking naturally. We allow loitering, and anyone who's met an emo kid knows that loitering is the national sport of the emo nation. Having bangs fucking with your depth perception may also be a factor, and loitering will eliminate any chance of bumping into something, or accomplishing something in their worthless lives. The term emo kid encompasses emos from age 12-50. Emos. Gross.

Stupid bitch with a stroller
First of all, lose some weight. Second of all fucking ziploc your kid, or better yet, wear a condom. Strollers are like parade floats, gigantic, annoying when you're trying to get somewhere fast, and are a massive magnet for pedophiles. One woman with a stroller blocking one isle pisses off at least 20 people who would have bought something. As my first manager at HMV once said "if these stupid chicks with babies fuck up my sales one more time I'm going to nerf gun their babies back into their baby-holes".

Person who has apparently never shopped before
Detecting one of these is easy. They will walk up to you and say

• Can you look things up? Like to see if you have them?
• Do you have a gospel section?
• Where are your DVD's?
• Anything that could start a conversation, ie their kids, pets, diseases

Occasionally they won't say anything, but they will pay in exact change. Let me break something down real simple for all the readers of this blog. Cashiers are 200-100000 times faster at counting change than you will ever fucking be. I don't like to toot my own horn (that's a lie) but I can count change faster than most people realize they even need any. And so can anyone who's worked cash for more than 6 months. Counting your pennies is not saving me time. It's making me furious. So furious that I'm going to do what I usually do when that happens, and mark your receipt as non-refundable. And then kill your family and burn your house down. Exact change is for chumps.



The next category I will treat with care because I have serious issues with people who discriminate against the group I'm about to talk about, but it's a problem nonetheless.

Handicapped people, specifically the people who are either their relatives or caregivers.
I write about some offensive stuff that can be seen as sexist or racist, but you will never read a sentence that bashes people with disabilities. People who pick on the disabled (CARLOS MENCIA) aren't worth anyones time, and should be ignored. The problem arises when irresponsible family members think that we have enough staff to accommodate their relatives or friend's special needs. We simply cant. During Christmas we had to close transactions on a till because we're not allowed to say "no" to a sales related request. If someone wants to listen to 10000 CD's, and they happen to be disabled and are unable, due to their condition, to see that it's busy and a lot of people will be inconvenienced, that's everyones tough luck. During the day in question, because of one person and his caretaker, lineup time was just under an hour. AN HOUR. TO BUY A CD. It just doesn't work. We're kind people at HMV (another lie, with the exclusion of the incredibly cheerful Jordan Hunter), but when the same kid comes in every week causing massive, MASSIVE delays because his sister wont monitor him, you'll understand if we get a bit frustrated with the system. I guess the solution is to have more people working, but that just doesn't seem possible in the job market we're in. So it has to be said. And HMV wont shell out for more people even if there were people to be had. Damn limeys.

Last but not least: scavenger hunters.
This isn't a cute term. Every weekend there are literally dozens of kids whose parents think a nice mall scavenger hunt will keep their kids occupied. We don't babysit. And 1000 kids running in the store and not buying shit throws off our sales figures (conversion: sales/number of customers that day). When our conversion drops our manager gets gangraped by the HMV VP's. If you're so uncreative that you have to send your kids to the mall, the place that every kid spends grade 7-11, then you should have your kids taken away. I guess it all goes back to how shitty playgrounds are now. So fuck you city of Calgary, get rid of these metal playgrounds and put the wooden ones back so smelly dirty children will stay the fuck out of my hair on a busy saturday. Seriously. Go to laser quest you little pussies.

Thank you. I'm sure there will be complaints on this one, please direct them to comments so we can do what we normally do which is not very much.

Plan for a Potential Road Trip to Bring Marc Home to his Rightful City

Day 1

The tentative plan is to leave Victoria on the 23rd. We will head to Vancouver and spend the night in downtown. We might try and watch some hockey games at a pub, or just wander around the streets of Vancouver. There are many great restaurants in Vancouver where you can get cheap meals. 5 or 6 bucks for a plate of dinner. We will get some sleep and be well rested for the next day.

Day 2

We will begin heading East and ascenting into the infamous Rocky Mountains. We will see many large cities such as Kamloops and Kelowna; Chilliwack is a good place to stop for a mid-morning snack. We will survive most of this day on a diet of Tim Hortons Coffee and Tim-Bits. Eventually we will arrive in Salmon Arm with uneasy stomachs, where we will stop for Day 2.

Day 3

We will venture even further East into the vast Wonderland known as the Interior. By this time, Graham will be on my nerves very much and it is likely he will be left at a Gas Station in Kimberley or Fernie (these details are still a little fuzzy). We will stop by the McDonalds in Canmore for our last meal on the road. We will reach the maximum altitude of our trip approximately 20 kilometers past Canmore. Then a rapid descent will be made into the Foothills which signify the beginning of prairie civilizaition. We will drop Graham's articles off at his house, and tell his parents he did not make it. Then i will venture over to Albert's to talk about hockey, Worms Armageddon, the Chuck Kobasew Sweepstakes and good roles for Sean Bean to play in upcoming films.