Musical taste

I thought it would be ever so illuminating if I showed you my top 25 most played on my iTunes. I regret nothing!

Disclaimer: This selection is not representative of my actual music tastes. I sure do like those songs though.

Yeah, I really do like Paramore.

Feel free to comment/link to yours, I'd be happy to compare.

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Fierceness

Sometimes you just have to stop thinking of the perfect title and settle with a word that randomly pops into your head.
Alternatively, you also might have to just stop thinking about what to write in the post and simply continue on from your title.

What is fierceness? Well, according to my quick Google dictionary search, fierceness is: "ferocity; the property of being wild or turbulent".

Hmm, at first I was thinking of writing about why I am fierce, but I don't quite think I match the definition.
However, a secondary definition for the word fierce brings up this: "(of a feeling, emotion, or action) Showing a heartfelt and powerful intensity".

Ah, now this I can write about. I cannot write about love, nor can I write about heartbreak. But I can certainly write about being fierce!

Now, where in my life would I have been fierce? Perhaps in my younger days, as a karate student? Not really. I mean, I acted fierce because I had to, but really, the bigger and older kids kind of intimidated me when I had to practice with them.

No, instead I would say that I am fierce when it comes to the most life changing event of my life, which is undoubtedly my Katimavik experience.
Let's put this into context.

I am fiercely opposed to the Harper government's decision to shut down the program, because I've seen first hand what amazing things the program does for people like me and the communities in which we've worked. Politicians don't really see any of that; they only see the money and popularity contest it might bring.

I also fiercely defend the friendships I formed during my travels in the program. Of course, it's impossible to maintain friendships with the dozens and dozens of people I met during Katimavik, but the very closest people I knew, the ones I lived with for nine months, hold a special place in my heart. And I even miss the two guys who broke away at the end, after the program was done. A & A, man, we had some good times, despite the drama.

And in my experience, I think friendships are worth being very fierce over.

Love will have to wait to be written about; maybe on here. Someday.
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And so my little challenge of making a positive blog post is complete. I honestly wanted to write another negative one, another one in which I lament my predicament as a young adult. Because I feel pretty down. But I think this helped.

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10,000 pageviews

Woop woop! I've reached 10,000 lifetime pageviews on my blog just now. Cool! Granted, the vast majority of those pageviews are quite likely to just be spam bots. But it's still a milestone, right?

I didn't start my blog almost six years ago to amass a huge audience; that was not my goal. And it still isn't. And it hasn't happened. But it feels neat to have people read what I write and maybe it gets them thinking, or maybe it gets them to do some of their own blogging too. That'd be nice.

Well, I'm going to cut this short; I'm not really in the mood to write about such trivial matters right now.

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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.

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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)