Going to the movies.

When you go to a movie you are subjected to, literally, a half hour of commercials and previews. I know. I timed it. By the time the movie starts, you don't necessarily feel like watching a movie anymore. Either that or you've forgotten which movie it was you actually paid to see.

The Meaning of Life.

It's funny how a bad movie can turn out to be really good. You just need a few days to think about it.

I watched the movie Elizabethtown last week. I didn't think it was that great.

It was kind of boring. There was too much talking. I was expecting some light quick-paced romantic comedy. It wasn't.

Upon thinking about it, it was a lot more. It's about how we get so tunnel visioned in life.

In this case, up and coming shoe designer, Drew Baylor, spends eight years working on a shoe design that bombs once it hits the market.

"A shoe is not just a shoe. It connects us to the Earth." It's my favourite line in the movie, because we always find away to overrate what we do.

Of course, while Baylor was working on the perfect shoe, he missed spending time with his father, who dies right around the time his shoe design fails.

Baylor plans to kill himself, since his whole life, which was wrapped around a shoe, is over. Baylor is fired from his job and dropped by all his so-called-friends, who only cared about him when he was a success.

Baylor has to postpone his suicide plans to take care of his father's funeral arrangements. Along the way, he discovers there is a whole world out there that he's neglected because he was so focused on one goal.

I think the movie is true to life, although a little exaggerated. We do create our own little bubble of self-importance. We focus on one or two goals. And we can tend to shut others out while we work towards these goals.

So the question becomes, what are we missing in our lives? What should we let in to bring us more balance? You need to be balanced when the bubble pops. Otherwise, you'll fall, like Baylor almost did.

The Christmas Spirit

I've just been to hell and back, braving the big box stores during the Christmas rush.

I normally avoid the big box area. Not only is it always crowded, but it's poorly designed. Whoever laid out the streets likely took his cat with him. Wherever his cat walked, that's where he laid down some pavement. There is no rhyme or reason to the crisscross of streets.

Anyhow, I went because I was desperate. I knew exactly what I wanted to get my brother, the last person on my list. I just couldn't find it, so I risked near collisions with bad drivers and rude shoppers in store after store after store.

The Christmas shopping is done now. My hard-earned money went straight from my bank account into the pockets of Best Buy and Winners. I'm just doing my part to make sure the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer.

While most of us are in financial debt in one way or another, we had no problem handing over $36.8 billion to stores during the month of December in 2005, according to Statistics Canada. This year our spending is supposed to increase six to seven per cent.

I think the left-leaning magazine Adbusters has it right. We should have a "Buy Nothing Christmas" and stick it to The Man. Of course, the economy might then collapse . . .

Ghost of holidays past...

It's funny how some people can leave an imprint on your soul. Occasionally, the memory of them sneaks up on you, like an old ghost.

It doesn't matter that they hurt you years ago. And it's probably a good thing they live miles away. You haven't thought of them in a caring way in years, but suddenly you find yourself missing them deeply, even needing them.

You pick up the phone and put it down again. It's better to keep those feelings under lock and key.

It's a gamble.

You occasionaly hear of someone who steals hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years from their work to support a gambling habbit.

This doesn't make sense to me. I don't know what the maximum pot is at a casino, but if you are able to score $200,000 from your work without it going missing, I say, don't gamble it. Quit your job, take your newly claimed cash and move to another province, perhaps under a different name.

It will be like you won, but without all the hours in a casino.

Living Skies

I am reading a collection of short stories by Angie Abdou called Anything Boys Can Do.

In the story "Shady Valley," Abdou has a nice description of Saskatchewan, a very underrated Canadian province.

"The sky is huge, enveloping them whole in a turquoise blue more brilliant than any tropical ocean. You can see and see and see and see - no trees or mountains blocking the view. The land rolls in a lullaby covered with bright yellow canola . . ."

People can easily admire the ocean or the mountains, but it takes a special eye to appreciate the vastness of the sky or of a field.

Blink of an Eye

December and January aren't real months to me. They just whip by in the blink of an eye.

I'm still not in Christmas mode yet, even though I've been to one Christmas concert, and one of the local radio stations switched to playing all Christmas music, all the time, for the month of December.

Technically, according to Wal-Mart, it's been Christmas since the day after Halloween. It amazes me how quickly they can reshelf their seasonal aisle.

Yes, I'm certainly not in Christmas mode, even though the media is already propelling towards the New Year. I saw my first "top stories of 2006" story.

Christmas is already old news before it happens now.