We are all addicted to Lost! My friend Kevin bought the first season of Lost and we are all hooked, watching the show like zombies, unable to look away.... IT IS SUCH A GOOD SHOW!

So I haven't updated much lately because... I haven't really had much to say or shoot due lately due to super business with school.  I figured that the popularity of punkoryan.com must have been declining since I don't live in Saskatoon anymore and I don't update that much and yet..... today I go to my website and I get a message "Bandwidth Exceeded".... huh? How could my website have run out of bandwidth (maximum data transfer) if no one is going to my site anymore?

So I check my stats for the site and.... there are still 1100+ people a day visiting punkoryan.com !!! I can't believe this, but at the same time am inspired to keep updating and working on this site because.... wow....a lot of people still care!

Thank You!

September 22nd, 2005

September 20th, 2005

If you haven't noticed I haven't updated in a while? Why? I spent last week working at the Pioneer school newspaper as Editor and have been spending more time writing than shooting :(  but don't worry there will be many-o-pictures to come!  Here is my editorial for the paper from last week. Enjoy! 

You must often wonder why the United States government doesn’t watch more television or at least read the paper. It seems that the news and relief organizations had a better handle on what was going on, in the response to Hurricane Katrina than the federal emergency organizations paid by taxpayers. The same taxpayers who are floating dead in the waters of New Orleans right now.

It is sad that if you do a Google search for “Katrina wake up call” or “9/11 wake up call” or “2003 blackout wake up call” you will receive several hits for news articles quoting government officials saying things like “We couldn’t have seen this coming.” Or even Michael Chertoff from the department of Homeland Security saying that Hurricane Katrina “was really one which was breathtaking in its surprise.”

No it wasn’t. Engineers, scientists, and even reporters had been saying for years that New Orleans’s levee system would not withstand a category three or higher hurricane. "Those FEMA officials wouldn't listen to me," said Ivor Van Heerden, a hurricane researcher from Louisiana State University in an NBC interview. “Those Corps of Engineers people giggled in the back of the room when we tried to present information."

Even during the crisis of Katrina, federal officials didn’t know what was going on. The chilling CNN interview with the now former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown admitting that FEMA was not aware that there were people housed up in the New Orleans convention centre without food and water even though the news corporations had been reporting it for hours. Do these people not have televisions? Or perhaps people watching television for them, that can say things like “Hey Michael Brown, you know that if the levees break New Orleans will be under water right?”

While New Orleans residents unable to evacuate the city dehydrated, drowned, and died, images of some 200 New Orleans school busses, enough to transport 13,000 people were shown on television. CNN showed helicopters and millions of dollars in fire fighting equipment sitting dormant for days after Katrina struck while New Orleans residents died unnecessarily in the streets and their own homes from a lack of necessities that should have been delivered before Katrina even hit.

It was not like FEMA did not have time to prepare for Katrina. In a Canadian Press article, Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center said Michael Brown, director of FEMA, and other top officials were briefed as much as 32 hours in advance that Katrina would cause catastrophic flooding to New Orleans. We can only hope that the newly appointed director of FEMA, R. David Paulison, can help pick up the pieces.

While the United States finger-points and scrambles to clean up after its own bungles in the response to Hurricane Katrina we all must shake our heads at a government which proclaims the need to protect itself by invading other countries while not being able to effectively manage a disaster on its own soil.  A strong difference between a hurricane hitting a city and a weapon of mass destruction is that a hurricane gives several days warning. These days could have been used to prepare for the worst, rather than clean up after it.  

 The United States didn’t cause Katrina, but if they can spend so much money “protecting” themselves from terrorists and proclaiming to be a super power, they need to be able to protect themselves from their own incompetence in the federal protection agencies.

As much as the notion of donating money to the Red Cross and other volunteer organizations to aid in the rescue and recovery of New Orleans is a no-brainer, the question must be raised why we as Canadians should give money to help the richest and most powerful nation on Earth when they should be able to look after their own problems.

The sad answer may be that relief organizations like the Red Cross, news organizations which keep tabs on the governments’ actions or lack thereof, and even celebrities seem to be doing a better job of serving the people of New Orleans than the United States government who should have been prepared for Katrina before it even hit.

September 16th, 2005

Pictures are up of k-os when they played at The Shark Tank last night. Enjoy!

September 12th, 2005

September 8th, 2005

Pictures are up of Alexisonfire and Protest the Hero when they played at The Shark Tank on Tuesday night. I got the job as House Photographer for the campus pub here so now I get paid to shoot bands!

I also posted pictures of the XXX Hypnotist Tony Lee from last night. Even if you don't know the people in the pictures it is hilarious!

September 3rd, 2005

Ontario people nice, U-Haul bad! On Monday Ashley and I left by Bus to Ottawa so we could pick up some furniture and appliances that a friend of ours sold us. The 46 hour bus trip *flew* by as I was only awake for literally 7 hours of the 46 which means that I slept 39 hours in two days!  It was sooo sweet! I pretty much closed my eyes in Saskatoon, opened them a few times to eat and pee and then went back to sleep and woke up in Ottawa! As "the plan" had been set out, our friend Cory who was selling us pretty much his entire apartment with a king sized bed, TV, kitchen, bath, and furniture had booked a U-Haul back in July and was supposed to meet us at the bus terminal with all our luggage which we were going to load into the U-Haul and then drive directly to Belleville. *UNFORTUNATELY* U-Haul double booked our truck and so we didn't have any way of moving our stuff....so...  Ashley and I were stuck in Ottawa until U-Haul could find us a truck....something which they weren't too efficient at doing. Along with the inconvenience of missing the truck, Ashley and I had 13 boxes of stuff that we had to store at the bus depot, Cory had to miss two days of work because we

were "on call" with U-Haul, I had a job interview in Belleville the next day which I missed and since we had to have all of Cory's stuff out of his apartment by Aug 31st, we had to store all of our new furniture in a temporary storage place at $50/day!  Everything went wrong!

*BUT* thanks to wonderful Ontario people ie. Cory's awesome friends, we had a house with a guest room to sleep in for 3 days, we got rides around Ottawa to get to U-Haul and the bus depot to work things out, even though it was $50/day we were able to find storage for our stuff easy, we met lots of nice people and even had a dinner party and played this crazy board game called Settlers of Catan which is like Monopoly meets Roulette. U-Haul screwed us around for two days and couldn't get us a truck to transport all our stuff, we were pretty much expecting to not get a truck until Sunday. Then Friday morning Cory called Hertz rentals and we were able to get a moving truck right away for less money than the U-Haul but we couldn't leave it in Belleville so today Ashley and I drove all of our stuff to Belleville and unloaded the truck and then I drove it all the way back to Ottawa and am catching a train back to Belleville.

The Hertz people laughed because they get a lot of disgruntled U-Haul customers that come in and after hearing our story they gave us a 20% discount which was awesome! Hertz involved a lot of extra driving and money (Gas is crazy here!) but at least now we are finally moved into "the castle" and we have a cool story to tell and we love Ottawa people now (or at least Cory's friends and Hertz) because they have been so nice.

I won't have internet hooked up for a few days so unfortunately there won't be many updates for a while but be sure to check back later as I start school in a few days and then there will be many more pictures to come.

Oh yeah, as for the job interview, I made it today and I GOT THE JOB! I am now the "house photographer" for the campus pub at my school and the first band that plays there on the 6th is Alexisonfire!  Pretty cool I get paid to shoot bands now and punk-ontari-O-ryan can still have bands up every week! Also, despite popular belief you can substitute dishwasher detergent with laundry soap but be careful to not put too much in unless you like bubbles!