I was reminded today of my love for a certain gemstone. The Tigers Eye. For quite a while when I was in grade 3 or around there, I was determined to become a geologist. Therefore, I began collecting rocks. Those little stands that have boxes of gems in a souvenir store were a favourite of mine. One such gem was the Tigers eye. As you can see from the image to the right, it's a very pretty gem, with a gold/bronze colour (although it can be found in many colours). I can still remember bringing in a piece of tigers eye to school, and my well informed teacher telling me that tigers eye is said to bring luck when you squeeze it. That just totally got me going. Of all the gems in my collection, the tigers eye was the prize of it. Over time, I realized that geology wasn't really my passion, so I kind of just let the rocks fall. I still have my tigers eye though. And now it's come back to me. And I'm thinking, well, tiger's eye is such a descriptive name. Tiger's eye productions? Looked it up, and it's taken. But what about a twist? Tygers eye productions? So now I have to decide whether to give up Canadian Scouter productions for Tyger's eye productions, or to stick with what I've got. That's the dilemma I'm in. Please let me know what you think of the name.

Question time:

If a new medicine were developed that would cure arthritis, but cause a fatal reaction in 1 percent of those who took it, would you want it to be released to the public?

That's certainly a question of morals. I am going to take the standpoint that if it causes a reaction, there must be a reason, so I say find that reason, and then only let people who won't be affected take it - make it a prescribed medication. For example, if one percent of people with arthritis had a natural deficiency of a chemical in their blood, to the point that it would kill them to take the medication, then require a blood test before prescribing the medication to anyone.

Life, as usual, is stupidly busy. When do we get some time to ourselves? I can't wait for the weekend, so I can have a bit of time to myself (then again, I'll be at band camp, and there's not a lot of free time booked.

If you could spend one year in perfect happiness, but afterward would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why not?

Well, as questions usually do, this question leads to another question. What is perfect happiness? And how could we achieve this? I'm sure that everyone has their own definition of happiness, but may not exactly know what that is. I for one, really don't know what perfect happiness is. I guess it could be life without problems or obstacles, but then life becomes dull. Truly, how enjoyable would life be if we didn't encounter a stumbling block here and there?

Back to the question, I think I would take up that experience, because the idea of happiness is appealing to me (as I'm sure it would be to anyone). But to not remember any of it would be a bit of a let down, especially if you knew that you would forget all of it at the end.

And now for a little philosophical thought. When you own a piece of land, do you own it all the way down to the centre of the earth? If so, that would mean that everyone is neighbours with everyone else in the world, and that we all have oceanside lots!

Well I guess it's about time I wrote something new. Not that there's anything new happening for me right now.

Do you believe in ghosts or evil spirits? Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a remote house that is supposedly haunted?

Well, my gut feeling is that I don't want to believe in spirits, but I know that if I let my imagination run loose, I'll be tempted to think that there are. If I had the choice, I wouldn't spend the night in a remote house, especially if I were asked to spend it alone.

Ok, I've answered the question, and now I've got something to talk about. I was attempting to set up a movie for my sister, and after waiting for a minute, I realized that the disk wouldn't read. Looking at it, I found it to be deeply scratched all over it's face. What drives a person to vandalize? I spend enough time on Wikipedia to see that there are millions of people who would just love to ruin something for another person. I suppose it's the anonymity of it all - you can vandalize, and the chances of you getting caught are really slim. But think about it - the DVD rental place will have a record of who had the video out last, and can go and check to see who scratched it up. I'm not talking about little hairline things here either. These look like sand paper or steel wool. I mean, if people feel driven to do stupid things like this, then how can we defend our race as being intellectually superior? At least the gorillas don't feel the urge to make a mess of their lives.
We, being Homo Sapiens are pretty dumb at times. Ok, maybe not all of us, but when you average it out, I don't think it's very high. Would an intelligent race develop weapons of mass destruction simply to hurt some of it's fellow beings? Then again, we do so as a fight for supremacy and land, and the grizzly bear will fight to death for the same reason. Are we equal, if not lesser than a grizzly?

I recently came across a book entitled "The book of questions", by Gregory Stock. In it, there are 217 questions about all kinds of things (mostly about life). So instead of fishing for topics everyday, I'm going to start answering these questions. Feel free to think about your answers (or even send them to me, because I would like that very much). So, here goes...

For a person you loved deeply, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing there would be little chance of seeing your friends or family again?

Well, I've got to say, it would have to be someone pretty wonderful. I'm really quite happy here in Canada, but for love, I think I would move anywhere, within reason. If I were asked to move to a country in the middle of a civil war, or plagued by famine or something horrible, then I would really have to think hard about it. If I were asked to move to a more 'civilized' country, then I would not be as concerned. In this day of incredible technology, I'm sure I'd still be able to keep in contact with them via phone or internet. Therefore, I would have to say that I would move to another country for someone I am deeply in love with. This is obviously conditional.

There. That wasn't too hard. I think I'll keep this up. Until next time...

I'm not going to write much, but I just want to put in a link to a movie I watched a few minutes ago. It's called "The four thirty". Take a look here. After watching it, I wrote this:

In a IM with a friend: (Only what I wrote here)

Yes, and it's my favourite of them all

And a powerful message that I can't put words to

Except for one word - love. Unselfish love

I say unselfish because she is offering her life up, when it's a guy we assume she has never met. It's not love like we see every day, with people holding hands and kissing in the halls, but a deeper love (yes, I'm in cliche mode...) that doesn't really need to have a definite reason. When she said that she had to lay down beside him, it was only because she felt compelled to give her love to a fellow human being by showing that someone actually cared about him. If she had given up on him, then he would have gone on and killed himself, thinking about how the entire world hated him.

And that's all I feel like writing for now. Feel free to take a look at some of the other films.

Well, it was too good to last. At least I'm posting. I read a few days ago that the vast majority of people who start a blog give it up within a few weeks, never to be posted on again. My guess is that there just isn't enough audience for a blog. As I've said before, I highly doubt that anyone will ever read these entries (though I appreciate that you are). It's just that blogs are basically just short little letters of musings to no one in particular, with no thought as to who might actually read it, not to mention spelling and grammar, which are at a near extinction level in our online world. Unless I write something totally profound, or do something that makes the world wanting to know more about Canadian Scouter, and who he is, then this blog will be a ghost town with a population of 2 - Me, the writer, and you, the reader. I like to always keep my audience in mind. Without them, it would never be read. So if I say something to you directly, then you'll feel more involved in the reading, right? Blogs bug me for this reason, and that's why I was so reluctant to start one. I have read a few blogs, but the randomosity of entry times throws you off. You might end up finding a blog that really interests you, then you find that the person who writes it has given up, bringing the population down to 1 - the disengaged reader. You may think I'm crazy, but I can promise you, there are way more than enough dead blogs out there. That's why I'm working on making this blog a little different. Notice the simple look of the whole page - it's not entirely white, it's got a small, but dignified splash of colour at the top, everything conforms to the same colour scheme, I don't bother you with crazy advertisments or bizzare pictures that have nothing to do with the subject at hand. I think that a blog is about writing, not about showing off. Sure I can tell you about all the things I've done, or post a funny picture I found, but I'll do it in a way that's relevant to you, so as to keep you intersted in coming back. If I can give you reason to come back to this page, then I feel that I have succeeded. If you're looking for something that I have said I won't do above, go find yourself another blog. I'm not going to put in daily polls or anything because I know that no one would ever take them. My blog is different from the rest, and it's going to stay that way. If you see a spelling error, I want you to e-mail me right away so that I can correct it. If you've got something you think I should talk about, tell me and I'll consider it. Otherwise you're just going to have to sit and listen to me rant about nothing. That is all. Aulf Veidesaine or whatever.

3rd day in a row! And the 3rd day of snow. I just wish it would all melt so I can go outside for longer than 5 minutes. I have my newest cache ready for placing, I've got the exact location ready, but now I need to wait for the weather to be ready. I've been told that it should be gone by Thursday - and I leave on Friday. Speaking of which, I really should be working on the sub, because we're getting really close to the deadline. We have yet to even test the camera (but I think I'm going to do that now). Other than that, we just have to build the entire sub. And it has to be done by Thursday night. So I'm going to stop writing for now, and go test that camera.

This is certainly a first - two entries in a row! Not that they're all that interesting, but that's what you get when you read my blog. Well, if you're reading this in Calgary, then you'll be feeling the same way I am about this weather. My little weather bar at the bottom of my browser says Light Snow, -9 C. Doesn't seem like much, and it actually looks quite nice from the window, but I'm really not liking the fact that we can't easily go outside, especially in April.

Snow again. The drifting white precipitatious flakes swirl in the wind. And I can't get out to get a single cache. I guess there's some good reasons not to live in Calgary. On the other hand, it's nice and big, so I don't have to worry about running out of caches anytime soon. I'll just have to wait for summer, then I'll get to do more caching. So far today I've spent 3 hours playing French Horn for CSC in All_I_Know. And I get to go back again to play for 6:00. Don't think that I'm not enjoying it - because I am, it's just that I get really tired after playing for so long. Not to mention the fact that my face gets plastered on screen all the time (I don't really mind that :P ). Thank goodness it's spring break. If it wasn't, I'd be quite upset about being booked the whole weekend. At least I get to spend the rest of the week doing whatever I feel like. Stuff like Geocaching. Figured I'd get to that eh? I'm really feeling tired from performing, so I don't really feel like writing much. That's all.