Vice & Carrot Juice

Is there anyone free of vice in this world? Is it possible to live free of all vice? Or do we eventually succumb to our own addictions, however large or small they may be, and hope we don't get carried away too far. Is there such a thing as a perfect person? Was the Buddha perfect?
Was Mother Teresa free of vice? Or was she just buying herself a ticket to heaven? Is there such a thing as true altruism?

Questions questions spin around, with answers nowhere to be found. It's easy for me to justify my vice(s) when the world around me is sick; far from perfect.
Why do I do it? What lures me to it? Is this a self-fulfilling prophecy in action, a consequence of reading all those Ellen Hopkins books?

Loneliness drives me to it, that's for sure. Loneliness is rarely bliss, occasionally needed, and almost always desired undesirable. At least by me.

---
One time, she came over with some other great friends, and she sang to me:

And I've always lived like this 

Keeping a comfortable, distance

And up until now I had sworn to myself that I'm content

With loneliness

And though I was too far gone in my own world to really know what was going on at the time, her singing it still brings back memories to me now. And I appreciate her for doing it. And it makes me wonder when I'll see her again, because she's a great friend and a really trustworthy gal.

And so as I sip at my desk, sipping carrot juice, I wonder where I will be tomorrow, but more importantly, I ask myself who will I be. And how can I change my life, escape for this circle of vice to be simply happy and free?

You were no cure for loneliness; reckless abandon of sanity.

Kazoo Anticipation Lipsync Enigma Dormant Overture United Graphite Hare Synchronicity Crank Opal Partridge Everlast

Train No. 56

I'm on a train to Montreal right now. It's quite a smooth trip. It was raining when I left Toronto, but now the rain has turned to snow. Some Phil Collins is playing through my iPod, and the train is bellowing out the standard long-long-short-long horn as it approaches road crossings. There's two college-age girls sitting across from me who are also, it seems, taking a vacation during reading week.

I welcome this break from the monotonous routine back at home. Wake up. Vitamins, water. Eat. Computer. School. Badminton. Eat. Vitamins. Sleep. Repeat. Truth is, I haven't been out of Toronto for almost a year. And living in Toronto for that long a time can make anyone weary. And it's great that I just heard a train attendant announce over the speakerphone that we'll be arriving in Cornwall in 5 minutes. I now feel sufficiently far away from Toronto and the school stresses that I could just take a great deep sigh.

Last bit of news: I had to drop my Anthropology course that I found really interesting because of a big essay that was just too much work to finish. I was doing somewhat well up to this point, but that essay would have taken too big a hit on my mark, and I want to keep a sufficiently high GPA.

That's all, take care.

Planispheric Mind Meld

I bet you're thinking: "Whoa! What is Gabe gonna write about now? That's a wacky blog title!".
And I'm going to be writing about a wacky subject.
But first, a prelude.

I get a lot of ideas of what to write about when I'm walking around - either wandering around town, or going to school or something. And I often think to myself "Gee, this or that would make for a pretty interesting blog post". Usually though, I either forget about my blog idea when I get home or I'm just not in the mood to write while I still remember it.

Well for once, this time's different.

As I was coming back from school, I was listening to a song called "Planisphère (Part One)" by Justice. I'll embed it below for your listening pleasure, if you're so inclined. It's an electro-house kind of track.

Anyway, as I was particularly enjoying the mid-end section of the song, I thought to myself "man, I wish everyone right now was listening to this. This is awesome!". So that got me deeper into thinking and I started to wonder what it would be like if I had the power to make everyone on the planet listen to music of my choosing. As if I was a sort of global telepathic DJ, if you will. If you're into Dragonball (or have been), you might remember King Kai's power of being able to telepathically "talk" to every human on the planet using his strange antennae. So something like that.

That'd be a hell of a super power. And in the wrong hands, it could quite literally turn the earth into a living hell for all humans. Imagine a Paramore fanatic wanting to share B.'s "music" with the world. You'd be going about your business, gardening or whatever, and suddenly you'd hear some auto tuned trash coming out of nowhere. It'd drive you mad in a short matter of time, I'd imagine.

Come to think of it, it would be a pretty terrifying super power if you played any kind of music. Not everyone likes to listen to music, all the time. Sometimes you're just not in the mood for it. And thus I'd imagine that this super power could easily turn into a form of mind control, or at the very least, mind influence.

So there you have it. I finally remembered something to write about.

A final reflection: Aren't we all plugged into iPods anyway? What if Apple's plan all along was to institute a Planispheric Mind Meld?

2019-07-04 revision: Removed J.B., added Paramore instead (because I know them far more)

Knowledge

So with my incredibly expensive university tuition, I get access to a tonne of scholarly journals, publications, books, articles etc. I should probably take advantage of the fact that I can pretty much research anything I want, whenever I want.
And if I can't find something online, well, I can still visit the massive Robarts Library and sift through old dusty tomes neatly sorted in fourteen floors' worth of books.

It turns out I have a small research essay due in a couple weeks about the collapse of Easter Island. This is for my Anthropology 101 class, and I really should get ahead on that. I have a tendency to leave things like this to the last minute - but don't all university students? Well, anyway, I have to find some good scholarly information about the collapse of this society and argue against environmental factors as the primary reason for collapse.
If you don't know, Easter Island is that place where they have giant stone heads (called Moai), supposedly created by the old inhabitants a few centuries ago.

Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent.
I wish to speak more about knowledge, or more specifically, my seemingly unlimited access to it as a UofT student.
It's a little bit exciting! Knowledge is power, right?
The problem I have is that I'm short-sighted. I should clarify: I mean to say that I tend to strive for short-term goals, not long-term ones. It's a flaw of mine.
Arguably, one of the only long-term goals I've managed to keep is writing this very blog.

Anyway, I don't want to make this too long (as I should be keeping a good sleep schedule and going to bed very, very soon), but I just wanted to give an example of how I've used my unlimited access to scholarly works for personal gain.

It turns out that the city of Windsor has decided to end the fluoridation of drinking water.
And I found out about this by stumbling upon a reddit debate on r/canada.
I'm no expert on the pros and cons of fluoridation of water (personally, I'm against it), but what's striking to me is the sheer amount of people there who are outraged that the city decided to stop fluoridation.
If you don't know, fluoridation is mainly advocated as a way to stop dental cavities from developing.
And so many users there have said "there are literally hundreds of scientific studies that prove that fluoridation is safe" - without ever really providing proof that they exist.

Well, I have the ability to look up said studies, and there are indeed quite a few (about 5000 total with "water fluoridation" as a topic, according to my search).
And while many of them supposedly prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that fluoridation is beneficial (i.e. not harmful), there are others that mention such things as increased lead accumulation in children, as well as infertility in populations with high fluoridation levels in drinking water.

I have a lot to say about the subject of drinking water fluoridation (including some ethical concerns), but for the purposes of this post, I just wanted to give you an example of what I, as a humble undergrad, have the ability to do when it comes to researching any given topic.

And on that note, goodnight.