I've recently come up with this test for people I know: I like to present them with a blank piece of paper and see how they respond to it when I give them paint, or crayons or any medium with which to create a piece of art on it. And then I watch. I'll paint along side them no problem, but then I take the picture and I look at it. It's amazing how self concious people become when told to express themselves. I believe I tried this experiment on david puzak first, last summer, but have moved on to test several other people.

The other thing I'm really interested in right now is how people perform high on marijuana. How their memory skills function, as well as their reasoning skills. This is my newest interest and over the last week I have gotten five different people to play the matching game for their memory and soduku to test their rationality skills. The first test, match game, involves laying out all of the cards in a deck on the floor at equal spacing, in a giant square and each person just has to find matching cards. It's a pretty simple game, but I am noticing a marked difference between the person the test subject is playing with, rather then their drug intake. I have noticed that my own memory is a little iffy when Im high as it's harder for me to visualize in my head where the cards that have been flipped over previously, are during my turn. However, I have not noticed that significant of a leap. No one has gotten amazingly smarter when they are drugs. It just seems that those would be good at it normally, are slightly limited by their intake, and thus drop a bit, and the people not so developed in their memory skills, drop about the same, and thus the dichotomy remains the same.

In regards to soduku, well only I and Iain have played it while high. I find that I am much better at it if I am high and in a quiet room, rather than in a noisy room. I find that when I'm not stoned I find the purpose of the game to be ridiculous and I usually feel the need to go do something else. Iain on the other hand does them all the time, and seems to remain the same while both high and not. He just has a ridiculous way of solving the puzzles that is ends with my own, and makes him slower usually because he cant adapt his technique to a more effective one.

Today my friend rob came home. We had out regular chicken noodle soup meeting at tim hortons. soon jocelyne will be leaving. my friend sock graciously offered for me to go to ottawa for my birthday (for all the uninformed, that's on the 26th of april. I swore when I was little that I could never imagine my age being the same as my birthdate, but here I am fast approaching. I at the very least to make it to that year.] I'm still a little on the fence about going because last year my parents and I really didn't get to celebrate my birthday because we found out two days before that my brother had a brain tumour. That's sort of the other reason I'm wary, it's the one year anniversary of that and I sort of feel like I should be kicking around. Amazingly folks, almost one year since and he's still all fucked up. gotta love modern medicine. what they fix causes even more complications.

sock told me the other day if a person is on an antidepressant for six months and they don't find that they have improved, that if they change medicines, they will find more of an improvement. does anyone know if this is true?

ending with a song:

talking shit about a pretty sunset
modest mouse

Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Looking kind of anxious in your cross armed stance
Like a bad tempered prom queen at a homecoming dance
And I claim I’m not excited with my life any more
So I blame this town, this job, these friends
The truth is it’s myself
And I’m trying to understand myself
And pinpoint where I am
By the time I get things figured out
I’ve change the whole damn plan
Oh noose tied myself in, tied myself too tight
Talking shit about a pretty sunset
Blanketing opinions that I’ll probably reget soon
I’ve changed my mind so much I cant even trust it
My mind changed me so much I cant even trust myself