Finding interesting people for intellectual intercourse and alcoholic enjoyment. Nerdy types encouraged to apply.
I'd like to meet:
Movers and Shakers. Intellects, creators, dreamers, builders, adventurers and hockey fans. My intent is to help faciliate a sustainable network of knowledge-based, creative, grounded individuals, developing a working forum of ideas and movement. A village of alternatives, of new contacts and personalities, each unique, but which we would not normally encounter within our daily sphere of influence. People with something to say. People who have walked a mile in other people's shoes. Winston Churchill put it best: "You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life."
Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau ::: FLQ Crisis 1970
"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
- Sir Winston Churchill
"Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification."
- Martin Henry Fischer
"Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism."
- Hunter S. Thompson
"...the poor, once economically empowered, are the most determined fighters in the battle to solve the population problem; end illiteracy; and live healthier, better lives. When policy makers finally realize that the poor are their partners, rather than bystanders or enemies, we will progress much faster that we do today."
- Prof. Mohammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize
"I don't mind being a symbol, but I don't want to become a monument. There are monuments all over the Parliament Buildings, and I've seen what the pigeons do to them."
- Tommy Douglas
Music:
"In America we like to have fun. Because we are an advanced culture... we live in a very advanced society and have a futuristic way of taking care of our population problem... we give each other guns and kill each other."
- Eddie Vedder
"I want to conquer the world. Give all the idiots a brand new religion. Put an end to poverty, uncleanliness and toil. Promote equality in all of my decisions. With a quick wink of the eye, and a "God, you must be joking."
- I Want To Conquer the World, BAD RELIGION"Though it starts with your fist, it must end with your mind."
- Boys On The Dock, DROPKICK MURPHYS
"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space."
- Johnny Cash
"I’m not sorry, I met you. I’m not sorry, it's over. I’m not sorry, there’s nothing to say."
- Your Ex-Lover is Dead, STARS
"Downie has a casually attentive way with words; each one does its work without mystification or excess. At a time when poetry has mostly turned away from large-scale social realities, he bridges deftly and persistently between personal and national narratives."
- Robert Everett-Green, The Globe and MailAll mediums, but if I had to classify one genre that had the most impact it would be Punk music.
Current Top Ten:
(1) "Complete Discography", Minor Threat (Dischord Records : 1989)
(2) "All Ages", Bad Religion (Epitaph : 1995)
(3) "Plans", Death Cab for Cutie (Barsuk Records : 2005)
(4) "Turn on the Bright Lights", Interpol (Matador : 2002)
(5) "Live It Out", Metric (Last Gang Records : 2005)
(6) "Luxury Problem", Lunachicks (Go Kart : 1999)
(7) "Sound Bombing II" Feat. Enimen / Beat Junkies / Mos Def / Dilated Peoples / J-Live / Pharoahe Monch / Mad Skillz (Rawkus : 1999)
(8) "Set Yourself on Fire", Stars (2004)
(9) "Grab That Gun", The Organ (604 / Mint Records : 2004)
(10) "Give Up", The Postal Service (SubPop : 2004)
Movies:
Current Top Ten:
(i) Dr. Strangelove (1964) Dir. Stanley Kubrick
(ii) Yojimbo (1961) Dir. Akira Kurosawa (Remade as "A Fist Full of Dollars)
(iii) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) Dir. Michel Gondry
(iv) Band of Brothers (2001) HBO Mini-series, Prod. Tom Hanks & Steven Speilberg
(v) Thank You For Smoking (2005) Dir. Jason Reitman
(vi) Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974) Dir. Terry Gilliam
(vii) Fight Club (1999) Dir. David Fincher
(viii) Psycho Beach Party (2000) Dir. Robert Lee King
(ix) Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) Dir. Peter Jackson
(x) Beautiful Girls (1996) Dir. Ted Demme
"What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? We are the strongest nation in the world today. I do not believe that we should ever apply that economic, political, and military power unilaterally. If we had followed that rule in Vietnam, we wouldn't have been there. None of our allies supported us. Not Japan, not Germany, not Britain or France. If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."
- Former US Secretary of State Robert S. McNamara , "The Fog of War" (2003) Dir. Errol Morris
"When people are very original, sometimes they are original as a way to resist the mainstream."
- Michel Gondry, director
Television:
"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere."
- Carl Sagan
"We have it. The smoking gun. The evidence. The potential weapon of mass destruction we have been looking for as our pretext of invading Iraq. There's just one problem - it's in North Korea."
- Jon Stewart "The Daily Show" (Comedy Central)
"I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers, and rubble, and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message that no matter what happens to America she will always rebound with the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world."
- Stephen Colbert "The Colbert Report" (Comedy Central)
"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."
- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Books:
NON FICTION
(i) "Why I Hate Canadians" by Wil Ferguson
(ii) "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu
(iii) "On Liberty" by John Stuart Mills
(iv) "Rogue State" by William Blum
(v) "Race Against Time" by Stephen Lewis
(vi) "Citizen Soldiers" by Stephen Ambrose
(vii) "Necessary Illusions" by Noam Chomsky
(viii) "Just and Unjust Wars" by Michael Waltzer
(ix) "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" by Mary Wollstonecraft
(x) "The Corporation" by Joel Bakan.
FICTION
(i) "1984" by George Orwell
(ii) "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland
(iii) "The Colony of Unrequitted Dreams" by Wayne Johnston
(iv) "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky
(v) "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" by Tom Stoppard
(vi) "Straight Man" by Richard Russo
(vii) "The Illiad" by Homer
(viii) "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje
(ix) Norton's Anthology of English Literature, Vol. I & II
(x) William Shakespeare's Collected Works (Oxford Edition)
Heroes:
"The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants, and for peace like retarded pygmies."
- Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson (1963 - 1968); Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (1957), "Father of Peacekeeping"
"What I have come to realize as the root of it all, however, is the fundamental indifference of the world community to the plight of seven to eight million black Africans in a tiny country that had no strategic or resource value to any world power. An overpopulated little country that turned in on itself and destroyed its own people, as the world watched and yet could not manage to find the political will to intervene. Engraved still in my brain is the judgment of a small group of bureaucrats who came to “assess†the situation in the first weeks of the genocide: “We will recommend to our governments not to intervene as the risks are high and all that is here are humans."
- Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire (UNAMIR Force Commander; Liberal Senator)
- Stephen Lewis
"I am a huge believer in giving back, and helping out in the community, and the world. Think globally, act locally I suppose. I believe that the measure of a person's life is the affect they have on others."
- Steve Nash, NBA MVP 2005, 2006
"Ever since I was a child I have had this instinctive urge for expansion and growth. To me, the function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one's potential."
- Bruce Lee
