Dusk and Dawn

Dusk is always the saddest time of the day. Why? Simply because you have to face the fact that one more day has passed, and that you probably haven’t lived it to the best of your ability. It is the end of the day, before the beginning of the nightly excitement. It is the end of playing outside, of going for a walk, or swimming. The end of summer is always marked with dusk. One more day over… one more day closer to your death. You have to wonder if your life is just one long strand of dusks, and that you really should be doing more with it, other than just letting it pass.

Dawn, on the other hand, is always so happy. It is the beginning of the new day; a fresh start. No matter how horrible your life was previously to that moment, you can always rebuild and begin with the dawn. It is a time when you feel that you can do anything that you want; life is yours for the taking.

Live every day as if it is the dawn, and not dusk. With dusk, you lose everything, but with dawn the world is yours.

Forged Fives

For the summer and over the past few of years I have been working at a grocery store as a cashier. That is the only reason why I am able to write this, and assure readers that everything in this article is true.

About three shifts ago I noticed a five-dollar bill without the shiny strip on it. When I compared it to the other bills in the register I began to notice some other changes as well. They are the following:

On the Front:

• The number “5” is a solid blue rather than patterned with Canadian flags.



• When held up to the light there is no face seen (of Sir Wilfred Laurier Prime Minister from 1896-1911).



• There is no shiny, silver band down one end of it, and the crest in the bottom left hand corner is different.



• The paragraph above the large number 5 has larger writing in it, but the pargraph itself is smaller.

On the Back:

• Small paragraph moved (the paragraph containing a poem by Roch Carrier printed in both French and English).



• The pattern behind the paragraph is different.



• There is no vertical silver bands down the left side of it.



• There is a missing bold symbol below the area where the paragrah should be.

Other Differences:

• The paper quality is significantly lower than the original and sounds and feels different (after closer examination).

All of these differences are how I could tell that the bill was forged. The main problem with our store is that it is equipped with money checkers that don’t work. Over the past three shifts at work, I have found three forged $5 bills which look exactly the same.

Of course, many people would question the effectiveness of forging $5 bills and circulating them, however the very concept is so unexpected that it is becoming more and more of a problem at our store. Not only do our money checkers fail miserably, the idea of checking every single paper bill that comes through the cash is unreasonable.

In fact, a few months ago we had a major problem with forged bills. It was such a problem that the manager of the cash department decided to make every cashier check bills through the money checkers; most of which were working at the time. This resulted in uproar from customers and many apologetic explanations from cashiers. The customers where right to complain of course. Using cash to pay for groceries may be virtually obsolete, but on the rare occasion where someone is paying with cash, if the cashier has to scan every single bill to ensure that it is real the extra time causes everyone aggravation.

I do not have any mathematical statistics to prove that that there has been an increase in the number of forges bills as the recession worsens. But it would make perfect sense if that was the case. It is difficult to tell whether or not there has actually been an increase in forged bills, or if people are just not saying anything when they come across them. After all, unless you have a lot of time on your hands to actually look at your money, then how would you notice a forged bill?

Not only that, but what kind of reward do you get for handing in a forged bill to the police? Mostly what happens is that once you turn in a forged bill, police will question you about where you got it, and maybe do a little investigating, but that’s about it. Not only that, but you are out of the money! The police will not compensate you for the money you lost by handing in a forged bill. Life’s not fair and no one expects it to be, but if the police were at all interested in catching forgeries then they would offer some kind of reward for members of the public who hand in forged bills. I am not suggesting giving cash, but perhaps something else would be more fitting then nothing at all. Until then, people will just keep circulating them which will make it all the more difficult to find the source of the problem.

D-Day

Today is the anniversary of D-Day. I always forget about D-Day until I start watching a movie about it, or I read a book that mentions it. The only reason why I remembered that it was D-Day today was because when I was watching the Discovery Channel with my sister. (The only channel that my sister watches consistently) I noticed a commercial advertising the showing of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” for June 6, or the anniversary of D-Day. I made a pact with myself that if I wasn’t doing anything on Saturday evening then I would watch it. That is why I remembered that it is the anniversary of D-Day.

Today I spent a good ten minutes after breakfast starring up and the ceiling. I was procrastinating doing my homework and, strangely enough, the ceiling was very distracting. The ceiling in our living room is a high cathedral ceiling that is paneled in knotty pine boards. It is very amusing. Do you know how kids used to stare up at clouds pretending that they can see pictures of elephants and shapes in the clouds? That was what I was doing. The difference was that clouds can change shape so fast that before you have the opportunity to share your new discovery with anyone else they have already changed shape. It’s different with the pine boards. First of all, the shapes that you see embedded into the pine boards will be there for a few hundred years until the rot away. Second, you do not get as many diverse shapes with the knots in the pine boards; clouds are much more flexible. Still, I definitely saw a crazed snail from outer space with perfectly oval eyes. That was a little freaky. I also saw countless bird eyes and heads, and even a face of a ghost. It was very enlightening.

So what does this have to do with the fact that it is D-Day right today? Without the sacrifice of so many soldiers in WWII, then I would probably not be able to stare up at a ceiling on a Saturday morning, in a free country, where I have one of the highest standards of living in the world. I realized today that I am damn lucky to be living; even if it is just to stare up at the ceiling looking for monsters, and snails.

Movie Review: The Soloist

I went to see a movie over the weekend. It was called “The Soloist” and was starring Jamie Fox and Robert Downey Jr. I didn’t like it all that much. I was in the mood for a bit of an action movie, and instead I got stuck with an emotional and sentimental one. Don’t get me wrong, I love the tear jerkers, but I also need some action too. All in all it was a good movie. Jamie Fox was incredible! By the time the movie was over I had completely forgotten his performance in “Ray” and could only see him in this movie. Fox has a talent of becoming the character so fully that even the most critical of movie reviewers could not have anything mean to say about him. As for Robert Downey Jr. he played the role average. Then again, he had a fairly average role to play. A boring reporter with no life who finds a man on the street and decides to help him, and ultimately ends up saving his own social life and relationship with his boss. His average performance was complemented with his good looks; although the haircut didn't suit him whatsoever. All in all, it was not a bad movie, the music was great; a Beethoven theme to go along with Fox’s character’s obsession with Beethoven. A good story that made my stepmom cry, but maybe I should have gone to see Angels and Demons instead.

So it looks like only one person commented on my last blog. I want to thank that person, and welcome any more comments or suggestions on how I am doing. Honestly, this is my first time writing a blog and I am open to any suggestions that anyone has. Thanks!

In the beginning...

So today I started up this blog and have almost nothing to write about. I doubt that anyone will be bored enough to read this, let alone be able to find it online. After all, I’m not rich or famous, just an ordinary student with an ordinary life. All I can say is that the only reason why I am writing this is with the slight hope that someone will stumble upon it and be interested in what I have to say… which can be quite a lot some days.
I really don’t know what to write about. When I started up my computer I was thinking about what to write, and, actually, did come up with some pretty good ideas; but now my mind is blank. I got my computer for Christmas this year. It’s really a very good one (not that I could tell the difference). When I told everyone at school that I got a laptop for Christmas they were all very excited. They kept on asking me what kind it was. When I told them they all seemed a lot less excited then when I first told them I had a laptop. They said that the brand was not as good as it could have been. I personally think that that’s stupid; after all it’s not like I’m gaming or anything. The most I use, and will use, my laptop for is word processing and research for school.
I first heard about this blogging idea from my stepbrother. He said that if I was looking to gain just some casual writing experience blogging was a good way to do it. (Just for the record I have heard about blogs before and have even stumbled upon some blog sites, but I never really understood what they were.) To be completely honest I have no idea what people would write about it blogs, so I’m just assuming that they write about random ideas that they have every so often and feel like sharing to the vast population of internet surfers that are reading blogs. No, I’m actually being sarcastic. I can’t really see a lot of people reading random people’s random thoughts as a form of entertainment. Then again, it might be interesting. After all, this is a very diverse world that we live in today so I’m sure that there are many “diverse” thoughts to be read about for entertainment. (When I say ‘diverse’ I’m being polite, what I really mean is ‘strange’).
Well, I guess you’ll see what I come up with for random thoughts. Sometimes I can be very random, and more often than not (as my friends tell me) I am very weird person. (Everything is relative of course; I don’t really think that out of everyone in the world I am that weird, but weird enough).
Anyway, the sky is very beautiful right now. It has just been raining for about 2 days straight and there is still a slight cloud cover that has bits of the setting sun poking though. The slight coloring of the underside of the clouds is such a remarkable blue that gets purple as it gets closer to the sun; I can’t even describe it. I live in the country, so there are so many beautiful sights out here; I just love it.