Check out archive:
-Two; Apl. 19,1998 to June 6,1998
-Three; Jun. 8,1998 to July 22, 1998
-Four; Aug. 3,1998 to the Oct 12, 1998
-Five; Oct. 19,1998 to December 23, 1998.
-Six; Jan. 1,1999 to August 22, 1999.
- Seven; September 19, 1999 to present.
Feb 15, 1998 Feb 22, 1998 March 9, 1998 March 15, 1998 March 22, 1998 March 30, 1998 April 6, 1998 April 13, 1998
That's my rant for the week of April 13, 1998.
This week I would like to talk to about hope. Its a new beginning time of the year. Its spring and Easter, a time that has always signified hope and rebirth for me.
It is quite common for people to spend a great deal of time worrying about how their future will be. What they will do with their lives and wehether they will amount to anything is something that many people are concerned about. Most often while worrying about this they are usually doubtful about things, focusing on the bad stuff that could happen. Usually they seem to think that bad luck and dispair is a certainty.
Now I've been down every once in a while and from time to time I doubt the that I'll be okay and stress free. Well for one thing no one can live a stress free life...you have to be dead to have no stress. But for the most part I've usually held quite a bit of hope for the future. The main thing that I focus one is that the future is what I make of it and that even if it seems that I've messed it up then I still have the opportunity to fix it.
You know if you fail a class you can always take it again. Sure you might not be able to get the best grade in the world but you can at least bring your average up a little. Not to mention the fact that if you had studied more in the first place, instead of partying and wasting all of your time getting drunk, you might have gotten better grades. So if you get less than a 90 average you can at least move on in your academic career...while accepting your responsibility for screwing up.
Especially when things are ugly its important to realize that there is still beauty in the world. There are always chances for renewal and rebirth. The butterfly has to be a catapillar first. As with the cacoon we don't always see the beautiful things that can lie just under the surface. For me that is part of the wonder of creation, something that my perception of God has left us to discover and take joy in. Now it doesn't have to be a devine intervetion for someone to find the beauty of a rainbow, its still wonderous that an arch of colour can appear in the sky when ray of light hits a down fall of water dropplets.
The fact that we come form a chance past is also good solid evidence that life is naturally full of reasons to have hope. Think about it, if the Earth hadn't been hit by an asteroid 10km across, then we would still be crawling around on our stomachs and covered in fur, trying not to be stepped on by dinosaurs.
I mean think about it, we must be lucky by nature, otherwise we'd all be dead by now. Besides isn't life going to be much more enjoyable, and probably longer, if you don't let yourself get too stressed out about everything.
That's my ranting for the week of April 6th, 1998.
Good morning all you wonderful people out in cyber space.
How's everybody doing? That's good. If you are just tuning in this is the page on my website where I rant on a different topic each week. Hopefully I will be able to find an interesting topic to rant about. Its not that hard, I just pick something from my life or from the news really.
The really unfortunate thing about this page is that I always seem to have something to rant about. You know the world is in a sad state of affairs when you can always find something to complain about.
This week my topic is a sad one. That shooting spree in the States. I really think that its terrible what's been going on.
First some info for anyone that hasn't heard. Two boys, cousins, rang the fire alarm at their elementary school, and climbed onto the roof of the school with (I think) rifles. Once everyone was outside (teachers, librarians, secretaries, parents, and fellow students) the boys began shooting at them. Several students and a young teacher were killed in this attack and many pthers where wounded. Not to mention that almost everyone there was emtionally traumatised.
Now correct me if I missed part of what happened next but as I recall. The two boys were marched into court and tried for the deaths of all those people. The teacher that was shot was dubbed a hero for taking a bullet meant for a student. The town has been over run by media crews. But to my knowledge very few people, in the states at least, have metioned the fact that these two boys had access to guns in the first place.
The idea that young kids should be taught how to use a gun or even how to get ahold of one is insane. I would really like to know when the legal gaurdians of these boys are going to be in court. They're not even teenagers yet and they're being tried for murder. What is that?
The U.S.A. really needs to re-evaluate its gun policies. I mean if an eleven year old can get his hands on a gun and take out 10 percent of his school, we're in major trouble. We're not supposed to be so hell bent on killing eachother that we arm our children.
Where was the education? Where was the love? Who was teaching these boys that if you aren't happy with something you should blow someone away? I don't think the real issues have been covered, especially by the governing bodies involved. Sure the town's people had a coucilors for a night and every journalist from here to Miami is going to get an award for covering this story. But what I want to know is, how are people going to keep this from happeneing again.
I'm sure that when the Constitution of the United States was written, that the right to bare arms didn't referr to this. I doubt it meant that any member of John Q. Public should have a gun in every room of their house.
The American Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fire Arms (ATFA) has started a "Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative." It sounds like they felt under some pressure and decided to start something to look like they were keeping on top of things. To see their stats on youth fire arm murder rates click here
What really terrifies me is that these crimes against others are not just with hunting guns. No little Tommy, Billy or Sally isn't always carrying around Dad's rifle. Often the weapons used to reliev someone of their life are semi-automatic asault waepons. In fact the ATFA found that out of the 6,392 gun crimes committed by youth in the USA 61.23% were with semi-automatic weapons- that's 3,914 if you aren't that good with numbers. Out of the 2,587 juvenile gun crimes in the States 1,493 (57.71%) are with the aid of a semi-automatic weapon. Click here to see the full ATFA chart. In fact youth and juveniles make up a whopping 45% of all gun related crimes in the Unites Sates. Pie Chart
In an email to President Clinton last year, which I'm sure he never read, I expressed my outrage and contempt for his country's lax gun control. I had recently seen a story on the news about the shooting death of a young university student on her way to class. She had accidentally hit a man on a bicyle with her car. When she pulled over to see if he was alright, and try to help him if he needed it, she was shot, by him, at point blank range in the face. She was killed instantly. It was very disturbing to hear about.
The fact that these boys shot a lot of people is not the most disturbing part of last week's tragedy. The fact that the government of the United States and most of its population support the ideals that made it so easy for the boys to do it is the truely scary part of this story. I doubt that the boys will ever recieve the proper psychological treatment that they need to become fully functioning and non-threatening parts of their society. I also doubt severely that this will be the last time that someone in the U.S. does this. Since I haven't heard anything about the States amending their constitution so that Tommy, Billy, and Sally's Mom and Dad can't have a gun rack in every room.
This is another reason why I won't visit the States, and Ryan's Ranting for the week of March 30, 1998.
The introductory wave file: Discharged for Being Gay
Yesterday (Saturday March 21, 1998) I attended this year's Doug Wilson Award. An award that GLUS gives out every year for outstanding life time achievement in the field of advancing the Gay and Lesbian movement...so to speak. This year's winner was Mr. Neil Richards a man who has spent the majority of his time here at the U of S developing one of the most detailed and well stocked Gay and Lesbian archives, probably in the world. In addition to this he has taken on several projects to spread awareness and education on the plight if Gay and Lesbian people.
During the awards ceremony there was, who I thought to be, an excellent speaker and example of someone who is working to better the lives of all Gays and Lesbians...possibly everyone in Canada. Delwin Vriend.
Mr. Vreind, was dismissed from a job at King's University in 1991 for being a gay man. Not because he was pushing his life style or because he was hitting on the Dean, no. Because he didn't happen to be a heterosexual. This dismissal, lead to a legal battle that is still going on.
I was initially made aware of this messy situation during a trip to Edmonton in 1994. I was outraged then to hear that the Government of Alberta itself had refused to acknowledge that he was wrongfully dismissed and was having to be taken to court over it. I myself became especially angry after hearing this. The body that, supposedly, represents the people of Alberta was refusing to admit that firing someone from their job based on sexual orientation was wrong, or even a violation of human rights!
The case is currently in front of the Supreme Court of Canada; which (according to the talk that Delwin gave) could go three ways:
1) The case could be decided in favor of the Government of Alberta. Something that I both doubt and fear, extremely.
2) The court could decide to make the province write in into their charter. Which would basically mean that all court decisions about human rights would take sexual orientation into consideration... without Alberta having to rewrite their charter. It would just happen whether they like it or not.
3) The third would be that the court could tell Alberta to change its charter, leaving Alberta with the choice of changing their charter to include sexual orientation or drop human rights protection for everyone all together.
Right now the national definition of protecting rights is that when a province decides to protect human rights that they do it all the way. If you decide to stick up for people you do it all the time without fail, in human rights cases that is. In contrast Alberta seems to interpret human rights as if you choose to protect on type of human right you protect that all the way. For example if you decide to protect the human rights of those discriminated against based on gender, you do it all the way. Always protecting people in that particular unfortunate situation. They also believe that if you do not choose to cover one thing in your charter you don't have to do anything about this type of discrimination.
Ryan interprets it this way. since the federal government is there to oversee the functioning of the whole country, doing this in the spirit of representing the entire citizenship, and they make the rules about the rights of these citizens, then they're right. Sorry Alberta but you're wrong. I'm no legal expert but I think that since the Feds say to protect all human rights or no human rights you'd better pick one or the other. My guess is that if you pick the one where no one has any rights then its unconstitutional and you're bound to get sued or impeached.
And if you do get into any trouble for robbing people of their basic human right to live a peaceful and normal life as the person they were born to be then dagnamitt you were asking for it!!!
You can't go around picking which human rights to uphold and which not to. We're humans and as elected representatives governments have an obligation to protect our human rights, even from other humans. Its not a human right to make people suffer, or call them names or rob them of their livelihood over something as sacred and pure as who they happen to love.
You wanna talk sick and perverse? I've never seen such an act as blatantly and powerfully against the wishes of my God, or any other God for that matter, than someone being punished for who they happen to love. I believe that the movie Jeoffrey said it best when the little old lady in the church said "there is no greater blasfamy than the denial of joy..." Love people that's what this is all about.
Lets do a test: Is there anything wrong with two people who love each other? Is there anything wrong with two people who love each other and happen to be the same gender? And is it wrong for one or both of those people to have jobs? To fulfill a useful and satisfying niche in our society? To give of themselves to the world around them and contribute? I hope you're saying "No, of course there's nothing wrong with it!" Unless of course you're thinking that at least one of them should stay home with the kids...although good parenting doesn't need to mean no job. Just good time management.
If you'd like to get involved and speak out here are some people you can email...
The Premier of Alberta has invited ideas on re-investing in Alberta. Maybe you could tell him about re-investing in its people: AltaTalk@gov.ab.ca, its listed as Ralph Klein's email address. Or call them at 1-800-883-5551 or in Edmonton 427-7711.
Fill out a survey on the perfomance of Alberta's government: Let them know how they're doing.
Contact your member of the House of Commons and let them know what you'd like done about human rights.
That's my ranting for the week of March 22, 1998.
This week was very draining. I was terribly busy and for some reason it was the week that everyone tried to get ahold of me. Doesn't that always happen. You'd think there was some sort of consperasy or something.
Of course I'm not into conspiracies so I figure it must be something else. Some kind of strange cosmic force is always cycling and every once in awhile it builds up so much velocity that everything becomes quickened and fast paced. Have you ever had it happen to you? You know, right when you could use distractions the least, there's a great guy just waiting to sweep you off your feet. Possibly all of your friends take a keenly focused interest in the fact that they haven't seen you in a while, at the same time, when you have two papers to write or and exam to study for. Or maybe you have an interview to get into medical school in a week and you realize you've spent entirely too much time sweeping your boyfriend off his feet and too little time studying for the exam you have on Tuesday.
Of course being a social people, we're going to want to spend time with our friends and boyfriends (or girlfriends if you're into women). Perhaps we won't even have any trouble at getting our work, studying and socializing done all at once. Of course you never know I could grow wings and fly away. Well I wouldn't fly far if I couldn't take Cam with me. (I know gag, gag, puke...Oh shut up..you're just like that when you're in love... the lot of you).
Well I should go, I just finished one paper on the neurological perspective of bipolar disorder and now I have to write one on the disorder from an Abnormal Psych perspective...No you shouldn't call me right now to see if I want to go for coffee for a study break...you should wait a half an hour, so I can get some work done. It was sweet of you to think of me though.
That was my rant for the week of March 15th, 1998. Happy Birthday Mom!
This rant is from the week of March 9th, 1998.
You know what, I'm tired. I don't really want to think of anything to rant about...so I won't
And why should I have to? I mean there's no one telling me that I need to and no one's putting a gun to my head. Besides don't those people always have to keep busy and never take a break annoy you too. They sure do get on my back. If I could spend my entire day working non-stop and survive I'm sure that I would be mighty annoying too.
I have to admit that there seem to be time when I have so much energy that there isn't a force on earth that can stop me. I guess sometimes I just get the right amount of sleep and eat just enough to have that bit of extra energy to spend my entire day running around getting work done. The rest of my time I spend skulking around trying to stay awake during class and meetings, and praying for enough strength to walk around getting stuff done.
My problem is that I have my clock all screwed up I guess. If I were to go to bed at a reasonable hour and get up in the morning all fresh and awake then I could work all day...chipper and bouncy. Although I usually feel that way lately anyway. (I'll tell you later). Anyway I should go to bed, its almost 2am and I have school in the morning.
Gee I guess I did have something to rant about.
That's my ranting for the week of March 9th, 1998.
Ryan's rant for the week of Feb. 22nd, 1998:
This week I'm ranting about life in general. I'm becoming a bit sinicle as time goes by. I rarely admit this and won't be doing it again on line but I am usually too optomistic about the way that life could turn out. This is extremely odd seeing as how often my life has shown that it can suck.
I for one have never thought that it should be such a complicated thing to have a friend. Friends is easy... or is it. I myself preferr to be upfront and honest. If you're my friend and I don't like what you're wearing, for example, I'll tell you. (Friends don't let friends wear crap). But if you know that what you're wearing clashes and you like it I have the option of not going out with you for the coffee we've planned or supporting your choice and moving on with the day's plans. Personally I do just that, go on with what was planned since what others wear really doesn't effect me one bit.
In fact the next time that one of my friends tells me that they don't want to be seen with me in public while I'm wearing sweat pants I'll just have to make sure that they aren't seen with me and drop them as a friend. And why the hell not? If our friendship is so fickle that the way I dress should effect it then its not worth having.
Another thing that bothers me is the strange games that people play. Even in friendships. Little agendas that they seem to have (no I am not paranoid, but someone could be following me), where they do one thing claiming that its for one reason but have another in mind. I think that this is why I get misunderstood so often. Because when I do something its for very simple reasons. If I help someone pick up the groceries that they just dropped or tell someone that their baby is cute, its not because I'm planning on running for city council [now there's a scary thought]. If I give someone a gift its because I want to make them happy, even just for a moment, not because I want something in return. Otherwise I would say so.
And do I care if anyone believes that I'm as honest or straight forward as I say I am? No. Because I already know that I am and I don't need anyone's validation to feel justified. Not that it doesn't help. However I do need to vent some frustration around how very difficult it is to be the person that I am surrounded by people (the world is full of them) who never seem to quite say what they mean, and expect that I'm doing the same.
I suppose that this is where the phrase "So I assume by that you mean...?" came from. You know what, I can hardly even use sarcasm, and when I try no one gets it. But people usually think I'm being sarcastic when I'm not.
So that's my ranting for this week of Feb. 22, 1998.
I'm not too bitter this week, just really annoyed with some people. Like humanity.
This week's topic is very close to my heart and my house...school.
I am, as you already know, a University student. I love the U of S too. Its great university and a great place to be. For now. The main problem is that eventually it won't be any place at all. So far the original part of the Administrations building that was being used for convocation has been condemned and the Phys. Ed. building has actually colloapsed in on itself after years of neglect. The Thorvaldson or chemistry building is expected to go next being one of the oldest buildings on campus.
If the government of Saskatchewan and Canada keep it up pretty soon I won't have anywhere to study at all. As it is I'm thankful to myself for enroling through STM. Its a federated college and therefore takes care of the majority of its own expenses. No collapsing cielings in our students lounge or, to my knowledge any of the class rooms either. I think that the only builds that are going to be standing in the next ten years are probably going to agriculture, arts and science, engineering, and STM. Oh yeah and Education, not that their going to be offering the full range of courses you need to be a teacher. If you wants to teach elementary you'll have to move to Regina. Not that Regina was supposed to have a University in the first place. (But I'm not bitter...or am I?).
So if I see it correctly as it is the physed. students are taking classes in physics and some in this building down the road. So in ten years It'll still be the same but on top of that physics students will be taking classes in engineering, physed. students will be sharing space with the education students, chemistry will be holding classes in arts and engineering and agriculture. Biology will have collapsed taking out geology so their faculties will be holding classes in arts nad STM and anyone wanting to convocate will have to wait until summer when they can plug in the speakers in the Nobel Loriet Plaza that was just built to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the U of S and irronically to mark the TWO Nobel Loriet winners that we've had for chemistry.
My hope is that the U of S gets some funding for buildings from the government and fast. We shouldn't have to sell our souls to a pop company, which shall remain nameless, in order to be able to maintain our grounds adn buildings. Tha Canadian government is being neglectful in its duties to provide education for its populous. This should be retefied before we're all studying in The Bowl (a grassy, bowl shape, clearing in the center of campus), sure its a popular place to read during the afternoon in June but classes outdoors in January, in Saskatchewan, woudl most likely cause severe drop in enrolement.
Support your future. Email the Premier of Saskatchewan or Prime Minister Of Canada and tell them that you want students at the U of S to be able to leave their mark without the builds leaving a mark on them.
That's Ryan's Rantings for the Week of February 15th, 1998.
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