I am going to school Sherman Hamilton

We had some good times, Humber. 

I'm not going to say it was all sunshine and rainbows, but I will certainly shed a tear before i step out the door this one last time. 

I will not divulge however whether it is a single tear of joy or sadness. 

Here's a hint though: it won't be sadness. 

See you in New York.

Kangaroo's with bicycle helmets

I feel a rant coming...

Postgraduate experiences can be dissected many different ways, but one of the most obvious and common is the distinction between staying at home for university or moving away.

Many people who stay at home for their undergrad years lament their decision post-graduation. Even greater are the number of individuals who moved away, and often feel superior as a result to their stay-at-home friends in terms of life experience.

These individuals can be identified by their dismissive hand gestures, and posited theories of "they're just making up for not moving away for university" as a universal explanation for any sort of behaviour related to post-graduate identity crises -- particularly if that behaviour involves drinking a lot and generally not being a boring adult.

Obviously these are not absolute archetypes. There are certainly stay-at-home university students who see the world with moved-away eyes and vice versa.

My thought is not so much that these delineations exist (because most of us would concede that they do), but moreso the haughtiness of moved-away eyes on their poorer and more wordly brethren.

I suppose in simplified terms, I'm talking about the existing paradigms and social constructs of "adult", "responsibility" and even "maturity". I realize this all seems terribly post-modernistic, but that really isn't what I'm getting at here. Bear with me.

My point isn't that "adulthood is whatever you make it" or any sort of frivolity. Rather I wonder more if our ideals of adulthood are not sadly, sadly misguided?

I was thinking about why I want to do what I want to do, and it occurred to me through various discussions about my chosen vocation and some political chats that the reason I feel what I am doing is important is because, well, it is important. Very very important.

All I want to do with my life is inform people. Through stories, through insight, through commentary, I want people to be educated and thoroughly understanding of the world around them from every possible angle in order to make decisions about life and their role in our global society. I feel currently we make so many of our decisions with little to no regard of the consequences of our actions.

I see blood being shed for democracy in Pakistan and Kenya, genocide being committed over the right to a fair election, and yet here in Canada we can barely get people to leave their houses to vote. Worse yet, those who do vote are often woefully ignorant of what and who they are voting for, often relegating our most sacred of civil rights to nothing more than a glorified popularity contest.

I see kids growing up (and hell, peers) who will view a youtube video 10 times before they ever watch the news, or read US magazine until it is dog-eared before they ever pick up an article in Mother Jones.

Accusations of snobbishness or not, that isn't the point. My point is that if knowledge is power, we as a generation are keeping ourselves powerless, then complaining about why our world is crumbling around us.

Why global warming? Why war? Why recession?

Why ask questions why when all you need to do is ask how?

Our definition of a mature adult is just someone who has a 9-5, raises 2.5 kid and owns a white picket fence.

But the world is bigger than your backyard, and I feel like in order to really grow up, we're going to need to realize that sooner rather than later.

Now go read a newspaper. Please.

I don't like to stereotype, but...

I came home today to discover a box of Chunky soup sitting by our front door, roughly 20 cans worth of mixed variety.

Note: nobody in my household eats/drinks Chunky soup. I make soup maybe once every six months in an act of desperation should there be no other food options available; my parents probably even less. 20 cans may not sound like a lot to people who actually eat this stuff, but in my house it's about on par with discovering a flock of parrots in your living room.

My dad literally came running down the hall when he heard me come in.

"You hungry? Want some soup?" he asked with strange enthusiasm.
"Not really..." although at this point, the obvious question had to be asked. "Where did all this soup come from?"
"It was a such a good deal. One dollar a can."
"Who's going to eat all this soup?"
"I don't know. But look, there are different types"
"OK... you know, I don't think we're ever going to eat all this"
"What does [insert mangled English pronunciation of minestrone] mean?"

As an added bonus, last week he came home with a family-sized pack of life-savers candy. Who eats life-savers anymore? We were literally giving them away to various house visitors, and we mostly forced them onto people against their consent.

Our pantry is a veritable treasure trove of bargain-bin foods that will never see the light of day.

I was going to write a post with more gravitas, but now it seems dour of me. Perhaps tomorrow.

status update

... is thinking about perming her hair...any suggestions? ... is staying awake until this thing is finished!! ... doesn't believe in fairy tales.. but Barack Obama is pretty damn close... knows that he has to trust Him... and everything will be alright... Fear and Loathing in Port Hope... is in MIS... is thankful that God does answer prayers!... is pop bottles on three... knows that a watched pot never boils.

if you know me, you know i am not a huge facebook fan. 

i find it pointless outside of stalking, although i will admit to indulging in it every once and a while in order to see what other people are up to. i can do this because many of my acquaintances lay their lives pretty much bare on facebook, if not literally than with little updates or additions or subtractions that are subtle gestures of how they are currently feeling with life.

in a relationship? just broken up? got engaged? got a job? accepted to a school? moved to a new networ... i mean, city?

i'm a sucker enough for post-modernist fluff in that i can sometimes see through my social networking puritanical streak and actually find something kind of artistic within the jumbled mass of graffiti walls and scrabulous games. 

i usually do that by reading status updates. i find it fascinating sometimes to just scroll through a page or two of people's status updates. in essence it is a persons desire to connect and share with those around them. it's what's engaging your time and thoughts at the moment, whether expressed literally or obtusely, without pretensions because if that were the case you probably aren't bothering to update your status at all. 

it's an exercise often participated in with so much familiarity and comfort that people really let their internet guards down and honestly update a thin slice of their lives into it. i just find it amazing how accurate status updates seem to be, in many cases more real than people are when you see them in person.

reading status updates is kind of like being able to close your eyes and hear the thoughts of all your friends in your head. 

it's also probably why i refuse to do it myself, haha

glass bottles and sandwiches sliced diagonally

i think i'm just about ready for winter to end.

my mood has mellowed dramatically since it has been all snow/rain/cold/grey. 

if this pattern continues at its current rate, i fully expect to be massively suffering from seasonal affective disorder by the time i finally have a real job. 

this is disconcerting to me, because frankly i don't fully believe this is a real issue.

i mean, wah wah, it's dark outside. really? 

besides, who's to say winter is making you sad? maybe you're naturally sad, but summer is making you happy. that way we can use the phrase in a more positive light. 

"Thankfully, you have seasonal affective disorder. It's the only thing getting you through the year. Here's a pair of sunglasses and two passes to a tanning salon; come see me again next month." 

also, on the bright side (har har) you could tell people with SAD (i just realized that acronym as i typed that out...) that they aren't depressed, they're just kryptonian and their happiness is dependent on their alien DNA being powered by earth's yellow sun. 

actually, just thinking that makes the bitter cold all the more easy to bear. 

the valentines post

recent survey says 55 per cent of people believe in love at first sight.

this is either a painful reminder that we watch way too many movies, or a pitiful reflection on our societies definition of love.

i don't think it's possible to love somebody without knowing them well. then again, maybe i'm just a cynical bastard.

randoms

old people just shouldn't drive

really. there needs to be some sort of legislation about this. i've trudged through the wind and snow to brush off my car. i'm cold, soaked to the bone, and driving conditions are atrocious as it is. the last thing i need to do is fear some crazy old person who shouldn't be on the road is going to do something stupid and either cost me money or get me killed. 

at the very least they should be forced to pass a driving test every year once they pass a certain age. i mean, they aren't working anymore, they certainly have the time to take a few driving tests. yeesh.

and now, an example of how cold it currently is inside my bedroom.

cue it up

i am becoming a shower-tendency discriminator.

people have their tendencies, but there is one particular species of humanity that has always left me scratching my head: the morning showerer. 

now, don't get me wrong, i have nothing against showering in the morning when it is the only logical course of action (for example, you get home late and are exhausted). what i'm talking about is patterns, and for me personally, i prefer to shower every night before i go to bed.

much like every super hero has a super villain counterpart however, there exists in this world a subset of (possibly evil) individuals who choose to regularly shower every morning instead. 

this makes no sense to me. 

the one instance that always blows my mind is that once, after some mild sporting activity, i told a morning-showering-friend i was with that i was going to shower before we headed out for evening activities. her response to my asking if she would like to shower as well (separately, not WITH me. get your head out of the gutter) was "no, it's ok. i showered already in the morning." 

now, call me a stickler for semantics, but showering once a day is not the same thing as showering once a day BEFORE you get dirty. the whole reason i prefer to shower before bed is so that i can feel clean and comfortable in my bed, and that my sheets remain relatively pristine compared to the mess-that-is-my-room. 

why would anyone want to go to bed with a day's accumulation of dirt on them, then clean themselves off in the morning? isn't that the equivalent of laying in your own filth (literally)?

somebody explain this phenomenon to me. i think it's absurd and have spent much of my life trying to patiently understand the rationale behind what should just be another way of doing things, but now i have reach my curiosity's breaking point. i require a reasonable explanation for this behavior, or else i am just going to paint all morning showerers with the same broad and judgmental stroke of uncleanliness.

manatee destiny

it's funny that winter is considered the darker season of the year. it's true that night falls earlier during the colder months, but the truth is that when it's overcast and there's a sheen of white snow on the ground, there's enough light pollution bouncing around everywhere that even without the moon anywhere to be seen, 3am can seem just as well lit as 3pm. that's the case tonight. 

with the lights off, my room is still lit up from the light outside, as if the black itself had been sucked out of the sky and replaced with a dull orange-grey hue that leaves one unsatisfied with the current presentation of "night time", or whatever you want to call this non-black night. 

it's a weird light though, because outside isn't what i would really call lit up, or bright. its more night time defined not by darkness but merely by an absence of lightness, if that makes any sense. i find it very curious, and for some reason a little unsettling, as if i'm sleeping under the amber glow of some giant highway street light circa mid nineteen nineties, before white lights became all the rage, and orange light was the cool way to tint our after hours worlds. 

it's just not dark out, i don't know why i've been so obsessed over this the past few nights, but i find that it really bugs me. i wish the dark would just return. then maybe i could sleep again.