It was witty and well written. I even did it on my piece of crap laptop. Then for some reason Opera had a fit and fastwordwarded three pages and I lost it all. This ladies and gentlemen is a perfect example of why you should blog in Word first. I would have, but the idiots who set this computer up at Computer whatever did a horrible job. I had been meaning to reformat, but I got lazy. Oh well. Add it to my list of things to do, along with registering my other computer.
September 2006 Archives
A few minutes ago I realized the one flaw in my Mike & Honey plan to beat back The Sickness was in the way I implemented it. Before the flaw becomes extremely apparent, you need to know the back story.
When I was in Oakville I used to frequent Starbucks a lot. I had the time and the money, not to mention the transportation to get there. It wasn't unusual for me to have three or more grande lattes in my system. This came back to bite me in the ass when I moved downtown. Not only did I not have a Starbucks I really liked, I had to walk to them. I also lacked sufficient time and money to satisfy what used to be an addiction. So Starbucks fell by the wayside when school started.
Suffice to say that after a while that lack of caffeine in my system made it really hard to stay awake for a whole day. I got used to it though, and completely forgot that there was never caffeine in my system. So today in combating The Sickness, the most common way I got Honey into my system was with tea; lots of tea. On top of that I also treated myself to a Vanilla Latte at Starbucks, and fought off a killer headache with some crazy American caffeinated medication Joey gave me.
Then as I was tossing and turning trying to fall asleep this all came back and slapped me in the face. Twice. I expect to be up for at least another hour before I can even think about falling asleep. So if anyone wants to entertain me, I'd love you forever.
Day one of the Mike & Honey vs. Sickness battle is coming to a close. The morning would have to go to The Sickness, the day would have to go to Team Mike and it now looks like the battle is turning in favour of The Sickness.
This is one of the more unpleasant periods of sick that I've gone through. While not as bad as the times where I'm absolutely bedridden, shivering and convulsing in a feverish delirium while Adam ignores my plight, this has the added bonus of placing me through almost bearable amounts of pain while I try and get work done. The worst part was when my body was sore to the point where it felt like my muscles were deteriorating on the spot. Second would be the random flashbacks to DAoC I've been having.
On an unrelated note, I find it really amusing when I read people's blogs and they say things like "steal my stuff and I'll cut you bad" and "everything on this page is copyrighted by me." Of course, these two statements (or similar statements) can usually be found together, on blogs that have photo layouts featuring celebrities in pictures that they obviously don't have permission to duplicate or edit. Does ignorance excuse people from being hypocritical? The answer might be yes, which would be good in the long run because I'm sure I fit in to that category most of the time anyway.
Tomorrow, or rather Today, Monday the 25th marks the beginning of the third week of classes. Guess what! I'm sick. I don't know if this beats Waterloo or not, but I'd say it's pretty close. Isn't that fucking lovely?
There's a bug going around my floor. At first I didn't even think anything of it. I went about my daily business as usual, submitting myself to the regular amount of studying, partying and suffering through other people's stupidity. Then another person got sick, followed by another after that. Saturday morning I woke up with a sore throat, but I assumed it was because my Friday night had been incredibly sketchy and for whatever reason my air condition was on full blast. This morning I woke up with an even sorer throat, but still tried to put it off to the fact that my Saturday night had been even sketchier than my Friday night, and that my air conditioning was still on.
Well it's off now. It's been on and off all day, but for the most part I'm starting to feel that my room is far too cold. Reminiscent of the time Adam and Eric were huge jerks and left me to fend for myself. I'm attempting to beat back the fever with tea, honey and baked lays. Sore muscles will hopefully stop being sore. As a last resort I beg for medication and my biweekly 'Make Sure I'm Not Dead Yet' doctor's appointment. I'm really hoping this won't happen. I spent most of the summer on medication trying to beat strep throat into submission. The time before that I had suffered through even more sickness because the medication decided that instead of helping me, it would make everything worse.
All this as I begin the '3 assignments a week for the rest of the term' period of school. I'm so fucking excited, can't you tell?
I like transit, more than I probably should. I can recite to you, for hours on end, what the problems with the TTC are, and why people who drive SUVs can actually be blamed. I can tell you that the Spadina line is useless, and that the extension to York University (despite lack of funding) is even more useless. I can tell you that for the price of the subway extension we can fix transit problems in most of Etobicoke and Scarborough. But you don't care.
I say I'm a math student, but I don't think that's accurate. I like math a lot. I also like computer science equally as much. I wouldn't have gone to UW for math and computers if I didn't. I just hated it there, so now I'm stuck at UofT in limbo. Like a bad analogy for my whole life right now. If I'm lucky, I'll eventually study commerce and not hate it. But you don't care.
The list could go on. It could go on forever. The most important thing though, is that I'm a person. As a person, I'm subject to the same crap caused by emotions as everyone else. And guess what. Feelings fucking suck – but you already know that. In fact, you know a lot of things. It's ridiculous when you think about it. Because in the end, you just don't care. You knew, and it doesn't mean anything. I'm just a piece of meat; another notch. So I’m left hoping that it will work out anyway. Well, thanks for not caring. Not caring about me at least.
Anyone offended by the following contents can focus their blame directly on Jon from Slapdash, because I found the source of my annoyance on a link from a site he linked to, and I can blame the person who run's the intermediate site because that's not as amusing. In fact, I personally plan on blaming him for the fact that I had to stop my CS reading because I was so bothered by this. Oh ya, and people are probably going to think I'm a huge racist by the end of this. Sweet deal, eh?
Reappropriate (reappropriate.com) (yes, I'm linking because I’m not a douche bag and I have no problem standing behind my argument until obvious flaws are pointed out), had an article about the question 'What are you?' I stumbled across it from another site, but before I read it I saw that at the very top there was a post titled "Apl Song vs. London Bridge" (link). As much as someone's apparently very clever thoughts on the question 'What are you?' interests me, I'm more interested in reading about the Apl Song vs. London Bridge, because I had just seen BEP in concert and they performed both of the songs.
Well it wasn't the flattering or informative piece that I had tricked myself into expecting. Instead it was four paragraphs on how Asian Americans should stop letting themselves be stereotyped against. The source of this argument comes from a line in Fergie's new song, London Bridge, which I'd like to say was misquoted. Ignoring that "love me long time" is not the same "let me love you long time." This apparently shows that they're insensitive, and should be chastised, etc., etc. As much as I'm sure it was inspired by "me love you long time" I hardly doubt that any hip-hop group, never mind the BEP, should be chastised as racist because of a line like that. I mean, let's take away lyrical creativity from hip-hop and leave it as a bunch of people singing about their bitches and bling. That's a great thing to do for a dying style. But I digress; my beef was with the 'What are you?' post, not this one.
The 'What are you?' (link) post is about the evils of the "innocent question" 'what are you?' in reference to people of colour. Leave it up to The White Man to want to point out everyone's differences and "Other-ize" people. You know, because it's not AT ALL possible that someone who's been raised in one of the most boring cultures in the world could be curious about someone else's culture or heritage.
I'm not going to parade around the fact that I'm not white like everyone else (despite the disgusting amount of racist remarks I get from trashy white people in my comments), and no I'm not going to play the gay card to claim that everything I say here could not be offensive. But what I am going to do is point out that it is so incredibly typical of every single minority out there to automatically assume that everyone is out to get them. Trust me, I deal with it everyday, and I admittedly feel that way more and more often. That's stupid though, and I'm working to stop using it as an excuse unless it's blatantly obvious that it is in fact someone being a douche.
I'm just particularly bothered because 'What are you?' is one of my favourite questions. I don't randomly going around dropping the WAY-bomb to everyone I meet. On the other hand, I'll more often than not bring it up with people that I have had decent conversation with. Everyone has a story, and 'What are you?' is just one piece of that story. Sure, -ism's are out there, but at the same time reverse-ism's aren't going to make the world any better off. At the very least it's not going to let me finish my CS work.
Last Friday when Miguel told me that 5ive was closing, I totally didn't believe him. I mean, it's Miguel. I take what he says at face value, and then try and verify it. Now if he was to say "I'm so drunk," I would reply with "It's 10:02 a.m." but I would believe him. He was convinced, having heard it from every fag on his msn list. So I decided I would prove him wrong. I went out with some of the people from my floor to get wild because getting wild is what we do best. By getting wild I mean we predrank way too much, went to Seven West to drink more before walking over to 5ive.
Only, 5ive wasn't open. There was a big poster on the door saying that the closing party would be September 20th at 9:00p.m., and that cover was $10. That's what I get for doubting Miguel on something in the wonderful world of faggery. So we went to Fly, I got really drunk and that was that.
At that point we had made plans as a group to go get as wild as we could at the closing party. It's what I'd been looking forward to all week, as pathetic as that sounds. It's actually more like what I'd been looking forward to since Tuesday night because I got really cranky. Not the point. The point is I went, and it was awesome.
As shitty was the music was for large parts of it, I had more than enough to drink to compensate. I also had enough people around me so that I didn't have to interact with a lot of the people I didn't want to interact with. For the record, if I've just told you how much of a jerk I think you are because you have no respect for other people's feelings, inviting me back to your place because your boyfriend is somewhere else isn't a recommended course of action. Just in case you were wondering.
More importantly than that, or the fact that I was bombarded with Vibe songs, or the fact that the security guard is so incredibly frustrated with me, is what happened right at the beginning of the night. Knowing that the line would be huge, I made sure we got there early. I have no problem predrinking, and then drinking more at the club while people filter in. It has the added bonus of being able to watch people as they arrive.
It's exactly why I saw Steve when he came with a friend of his. As I was collecting myself to go say hi, the (cute) boy he was with came over to say hi to Adam. My thoughts at the time: "Figures". So I went to harass Steve because it seemed like the cool thing to do. I also made him do sing one of the songs from Vibe because it had been stuck in my head since classes started. Conversation ended abruptly when his very angry looking exboyfriend arrived, so I went to talk to boy who knew Adam. Now, being intoxicated I'm sure I made an absolutely lovely first impression.
Conversation when something like this: "So how do you know Adam?" – "We worked together at Dairy Queen." Insert standard Oakville conversation about things like high school, and a really rude comment made about IR. That's when this little gem popped up in the conversation. (Warning: I'm using quotes, but I was hammered. So I could totally be misquoting, it just seems to make more sense as he was speaking) "I actually didn't even recognize Adam when I came in, I recognized you first." Confused Mike says "what?" and get the best answer in the whole entire universe. "Ya, I recognized you from your website." !!! Attention The Internet: I might actually pass as e-famous now. Score.
I'd like to welcome you all to the second (real) week of classes. I say the second real week because apparently engineers started half a week before everyone else. Lucky for us, engineers aren't real students so we don't need to count them. Before I start droning on about my classes like everyone else I want to clarify a few things. First, when I mentioned that my cherry was popped at frosh I wasn't talking about that kind of cherry. As much as there was full on sexually innuendo, I didn't actually think that people would freak out and contact me about it. Like I would admit to the sex I may or may not be having on the interweb.
Classes are classes. Math profs here are supes under par, and the CS courses move slower than the people who walk along the streets here. When I came to school here I brought what I call my 'Waterloo Walking Pace' with me. Anyone who goes to Waterloo knows what the 'Waterloo Walking Pace' would be like. Just sit by MC and watch the Mathies and Engineers freak the fuck out because they cant possibly move any faster without breaking into a run; that's what I call a real walking pace. Well 'Waterloo Walking Pace' clashes with the people of Toronto, especially the students at U of T. Sure the pretty per capita is much higher here, but that doesn't mean I want to walk like an old woman whenever I go anywhere. Get out of my way, or I'll find that old woman and take her cane so I can smack you with it.
I've noticed that there's a serious problem with the population at Chestnut. It takes the gay out of people. Now let me explain this thought. There will be people that I see around campus, or on the streets. Say that boy from my CS lectures or the cute boy from frosh in my linear algebra class. You'll see them walking on the street, or sitting not taking notes and flags will be going off like crazy in your mind. I mean, these people scream homo. Then you'll see them in the elevator or the caf, and all your hopes and dreams will be crushed. I'm going to have to start doing something about this or there aren't going to be any left. And that Interweb, would be a travesty.
P.S. I'm going to start a petition to tell my mother to deliver my GO Transit and TTC Subway maps to me. She's afraid that she's going to get arrested for having the materials on her person.
Hello dearest Internet. It's been a while hasn’t it? I wish I hadn't held off so long before coming back. I don't know how I expect to properly portray the experience that was my second frosh. So let's start from the top.
I know I didn't mention it to many people but I'm not living in my own apartment. After suffering through a lot of craziness looking for a place with Slopes, I decided to be a douche and pulled out. I don't know what he's doing now for living arrangements, but I have this slightly strong feeling he might be a little mad at me for being such a douche. So where am I living? Wait for this one because it's a shocker. Are you ready? 89 Chestnut.
I'm going to assume that if you've made it to this paragraph you've either stopped laughing at me, or you don't really know what 89 Chestnut is. 89 Chestnut Residence is the hotel that the University of Toronto bought and turned into a residence four years ago. It also makes me year four in a long chain of Chestnut Homos that I may or may not be on speaking terms with. Ya, laugh it up fuckers. (No, it's not the one you're going to assume it is. I'd love to be on speaking terms with him).
Moving in is something I don't think I'm ever going to enjoy. There's something that is so not pleasant about seeing your whole life crammed into plastic containers, two suitcases and some cardboard boxes. I unloaded it all into my room and unpacked what I needed to in a grand total of 20 minutes. Then Frosh Week v2.0 began.
I enjoy frosh events a lot because there's nothing more amusing than being grouped together with 30 random people and trying to define yourself in 30 minutes. I encourage anyone who has the chance next year to volunteer as a frosh leader or at the very least to sit and watch as people arrive for frosh week. I made the decision to stand silently while I was registering so I could watch everyone else. Unlike the girls behind me, I wasn't worried about clinging to the two other people I met in rez for dear life so that I could look popular in front of everyone else. Please. I'd already been hand picked for the Red Team; I knew all the leaders and I had Eug. Looking cool in front of everyone else in line who would forget about me in 20 minutes wasn't a priority. Besides, everyone knows that it's when you pick your team names that you start doing things people remember you for.
So I took advantage of that little tidbit and waited until we congregated as a team and decided to come up with a team name and cheer. The one thing we were given was our benchmark: last year, the red teams name was Team Firecrotch. We had to beat that. Good thing Eug can be skeezy, because within two minutes The Cherry Poppers were working on a killer cheer that would eventually rock all the other groups and start the ball rolling for us to win frosh week.
After that point I made sure that everyone on our team knew that to truly be cool you had to have "Pop My Cherry" written on the back of your tshirt, preferably with a popped cherry drawn nearby. So it should be no surprise that by the end of the week we had won all the frosh events. I'd like to claim that I gone some sort of fame from it, but by Friday I was already skipping out on events because I was froshed out. A guy can only take so many cheer offs because losing interest. Especially since near the end of the week the focus changes from being loud, to being rude. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for rude. Just not when it's about what people are studying, or where they're doing that studying. Even as a Mathie, or rivalry with the Engineers wasn't about being rude. It was about protecting the tie and stealing the tool.
Back on the topic of residence, I'd like to say that I enjoy my floor here much more than I enjoyed my floor at UW. Now if anyone from UW is reading this and doubting whether or not I liked you, I'd like to think it's obvious at this point. I was intoxicated for most of frosh week, and I already have enough stories to fill a whole book if I ever write memoirs. But that ladies and gentlemen, will have to wait for another day.
It's the middle of the night and I'm cracked out on non-drowsy allergy medication. At this point anyone who knows what I'm doing in life is asking two questions. 1. Why are you bothering to take that shit when your sleep schedule is iffy as is, and 2. I forget what 2 is because it's 4:30 am and I'm cracked out on allergy medication.
Since the last major thing that I bothered to mention was the fact that I was in Michigan at a wedding and visiting Elissa, since the pictures from that wedding are still on my camera, and since Elissa has since returned the beautiful Toronto, I know that I have a story for the world. I'm slightly dealthy allergic to cats. If I'm around them enough without the right amounts of Benadryl, I tend to stop breathing and wake up really cranky. Now I want you to remember this internet, because it's very important in relation to the next fact. Four weeks ago, my family got a kitten.
By got a kitten, my sister got a stray and then two days later when I showed up at home it was roaming around my house. Sweet. Suffice to say I've spent the last little bit extremely anxious to move out. Don't get me wrong, I think the kitten is adorable. It's just interfered with the last few weeks of my life, up to and including now, the point in time where I'm trying to be coherent enough to pack.
This explains why I have piles of dirty and clean clothes, instead of boxes and suitcases of clothes ready to go. It also explains why my computers are still up and functioning, instead of placed ready for transport. It explains why the closest that I've come to REAL packing is the shopping bags from h2o+ and clip in my car, and the one from Shoppers hanging in my bathroom.
I attempted to pack up my video games only to find that SNES has gone absent without leave, and that I hooked up GC again to played "slightly-intoxicated Mario Party 6". That ladies and gentlemen, is as far as I've gotten. When I regain coherency later in this day I'll probably make a mad dash to locate the chargers for things like my phone, my camera, and my laptop. I'll probably find a suitcase to stick clothes in, and try to cram videos and games away in a box too small for its contents. And if not, expect some phone calls telling you I'm commandeering your day so that you can help me pack. Actually, just expect the calls.
