Am I a Yuppie Yet?

I guess it's been a couple of weeks, hasn't it? Let's see... there must be SOMETHING of interest going on around here.

Well, one major theme is that Ali and I have been watching these "webinars" (yuck) on the Oprah Winfrey (!?!) website every Monday night where she has our favourite spiritual self-help non-denominational enlightened dude, Eckhart Tolle, talking about his most recent book, A New Earth — Awakening to Your Life's Purpose chapter by chapter. I know, I know, it's Oprah. Yes, she is way too powerful. Yes, she does interrupt him a lot. And, yes, she does take almost every opportunity to talk about herself. However, it's pretty cool that such an insightful and potentially very helpful guy is being given a platform to reach so many people. One of the main theses of his book is that no one's going to change the world in any meaningful way unless he radically changes his attitudes toward life and himself first, and this is a way that such a change could actually happen on a large scale. The first chapter's broadcast had technical problems and crapped out on almost everyone, it seems. But it was viewable later, and the second one went off last week without a hitch. It makes a big difference seeing and hearing him talk about his ideas instead of just reading them. Highly recommended.

We're in the middle of a big snowstorm here. That's fine with me, because a) it looks really nice in a peaceful but mysterious way, and b) I'm going skiing tomorrow! Downhill skiing! I'll be picked up at 8:30 in the morning and taken to Martock with a couple of my coworkers. It's not a big hill or anything, but I'm still a little anxious about it. I've only skied probably three times in my life, the last time being over twenty years ago. When I first mentioned the idea to Alison, I was surprised at her concern about it. "You're not a young man anymore, you know," she said. "Your bones are more brittle and would take longer to heal than they used to." I got somewhat indignant, accusing her of being both a baby and a mother hen. (That's a mixed metaphor I hope never to see in a petting zoo.) Then the next day we ran into a woman I know who's maybe ten years older than me, and she was on crutches with a giant cast on her leg. "Skiing," was the one-word cause given. Then she said, "It's taking a lot longer than I would have thought to heal. I guess that's what happens when we get older." So now I'm biting my nails as I watch the snowflakes out the window. But I'm excited too.

I promised to keep this short so I'd have time to hammer together a couple of disassembled tables before getting a haircut and watching a movie, and it's already getting out of hand. So, in brief:

Johanna taught us a version of Scrabble called "Speed Scrabble," where you don't use a board and just work on your own crossword with your own letters, trying to get as many of them in both an across and a down word as possible. It's quite addictive.

Lowlands has its first two shows coming up in April. So far no other name has achieved a better consensus.

We lost two designers at work recently and are hiring two more to replace them. Plus, we're taking over another suite on our floor and doing major renovations, so things are in an interesting state of flux.

The Whales of August, even though it stars Bette Davis and Lillian Gish as a pair of ideologically opposed sisters, was directed by the formidable Lindsay Anderson, and is set on the spectacular coast of Maine at the end of summer, is one of the most boring movies you can possibly rent. You're better off with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.

I have a very good idea for the content of a comic. I just have to figure out how to draw the characters. That, and how to draw in general. And then draw it.

Bowling on a Sunday afternoon with four friends is a lot of fun and not nearly as depressing as you might imagine.

This morning while listening to Joy Division, I figured out the long-sought-after secret of their incredible songwriting: have the guitarist and bassist each write a section to a song, and then have them play their compositions simultaneously, even if they are not in the same key. Add some atonal singing that refuses to validate either part, and you've got an instant classic.

Stop. Hammer time.

- Andrew