Un petit compte allégorique

Un sourire, cachant une multitude de pensées.
Un regard, illustrant des milliers de reflexions.
Et une image camouflé dans un visage.

Je ne comprendrais jamais pourquoi tu te cache.
Et si je comprenais, je saurais comment te trouver et peut être nous pourrions vivre simplement, tous les deux.
Mais les nuits allongent et le temps accélère; et malgré mes souhaits bienveillants, je retombe dans ma noirceur.

Un de ces jours, je saurais comment allonger le temps et je te retrouverais.
Et quand cela arrivera, je sourirais à nouveau.

The edge of Sorrow's Blade

Lights sings about being at the edge of Sorrow's Blade. I don't quite know what it means, but for some reason I always find myself contemplating this metaphor inside my head.

I can't say I've been sad (or sorrowful, for that matter) for most of my life, least of all my childhood. I've never been diagnosed with depression, but I have been diagnosed with Bipolar Type 2; supposedly, this "disease" comes with periods of depression. It's just a label. It's just a label.
Maybe I've been wielding the sword for so long now that I'm just used to it, and I just don't see it as depression.

I'm often bursting with creativity - even in my periods of sadness or despair. It's rare that I actually act on the convoluted mass of creativity that swirls around in my head, but I like to think that this blog is an outlet that releases this creativity in a purposeful way. At the very least, I work on my writing skills.

In some of my more creative episodes, I end up endlessly theorizing the world. I come up with wild and often far-fetched theories that explain existence and phenomena; basically, what a scientist would call "pseudo-science". I don't care what you label it as, the truth is I come up with these ideas on a whim and sometimes even feel them. It's really difficult to explain. But I know that most of these ideas are often crazy and make no sense in the contemporary world. So I don't readily share them - even on this blog.

In fact, I feel like a lot of my words on here are merely substitutes for what I really think and feel. I don't know, have you ever met someone who could express themselves with absolute clarity? I haven't. So maybe it's not so crazy after all that I pour myself onto the page, month after month, year after year.

To end this post, I've decided to transcribe a few bullet points I found stashed away in an old journal of mine.

There are many reasons why one could find themselves at the edge of Sorrow's Blade. Here's a list from my own personal experience:

• Heartbreak
• Loneliness
• Broken friendship
• Cruelty in the world
• Environmental destruction
• Disconnection from the natural realm
• Lack of connection with spiritualists
• Blatant abuse of power for personal gain
• Harsh words
• Inability to communicate with others

It's not a very long list, and some are kinda silly (harsh words? dunno what I was thinking when I wrote that), but you get the point.

The Back Campus

What it used to look like.

What it looks like now

Here comes the astroturf.

This is why I want to be an environmentalist.

Cellphones

So I finally got a new cellphone after months of not being connected.
But I shouldn't even call my new cell a phone. I mean, it -is- a smartphone, but it's more of a camera than anything. Of course, it does everything else too, and it does it really, really well.

On that note, I want to share with you a great article I just read that breaks down all the rhetoric bullshit that ROBELLUS (aka the big three) has been spewing at the Canadian people for a couple months now.
Recently, you might have noticed ads that advocated for Canadians to "stand up for what's fair". Essentially, ROBELLUS wants their customers to fight for them to prevent Verizon and other companies from bringing competition to the Canadian wireless industry. They argue that this competition is unfair for Canadian business and that it will actually drive up prices (?!).

It's really quite incredible the amount of straight-up lying and deceit the big three have been spreading around to ensure that their 90%+ monopoly of the wireless market goes unchallenged.

It's a quick read, and I highly recommend you become informed so that in the future, we may actually get decent prices for wireless service in Canada.

Written by the CEO of Wind Mobile (the only independent wireless company operating in Canada). Link

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Wonder and the Gaia Improbability

As I prepare to enter second-year, I find myself wondering - as I often do - "why is the world the way it is?". And in these complex thought patterns, of which the "why" is omnipresent, I sometimes find myself in a state of cognitive dissonance - a state where I believe in one thing but my actions speak differently.

Here's a quick tangent: it seems foolish to abandon the innate childhood sense of wonder. If every child does this, perhaps it means we are hardwired to question reality; and I believe it is only through this questioning that we really gain a sense of who we are in the world. Through social conditioning, however, a good number of us dismiss the "why" and simply accept the "because".

So, you'll have to excuse my lack of consideration of social norms and indulge me whilst I recount to you a dilemma that I wish to explore.

This dilemma is none other than the biggest problem the Earth ("Gaia", from here on in) is facing right now; that is, ecological destruction effected by Homo sapiens.

Let me dive right into it. There has been a great amount of effort by "moral entrepreneurs" to get people to "go green". You see car manufacturers selling "eco-friendly" cars (an oxymoron, in my opinion), you see vegans giving you dirty looks when you walk around with meat (how rude!), and you see packaging companies advertising that their box is 27% more "environmentally friendly" than before (whatever that means).

But see, I have beef with all this. Don't get me wrong; I have nothing against the idea of people trying to save Gaia in whatever way they can manage. It is a noble cause, after all. No; I have something against the manner in which moral entrepreneurs go about trying to rescue the world. The current trend is to recycle (okay), reduce (good), and re-use (good). But this trend is being ingrained in people; not businesses.

Corporations, governments or otherwise organized entities are the ones that got us into this mess by making us want to buy things. By convincing us that we need to get a good job, that we need a new car, that we need to invest in the economy - all for the sake of living a comfortable, if not luxurious life - we are forced to sacrifice great expanses of pristine land and, by extension, biodiversity.

And yet the burden of trying to fix things - because we have to, otherwise the aforementioned things don't even exist - is on the individual. Still more, businesses manage to profit from that burden by selling us things that we think are "green".

So here's my impractical solution. Instead of spending money on trying to convince people to go green, why not get businesses to be as environmentally responsible as the next? Every business ends up being on the same level playing field, being limited by the potential environmental impact instead of being driven by competition. 

Let me explain.

If we prevent resources from being consumed at the rate that they are being used right now, then we can slow down the degradation of Gaia and, ideally, restore a symbiotic relationship with Her.

How do we accomplish that? Well, I've identified the problem as being greed - businesses wanting to make lots of money.

What's the most common way for a business (i.e. one that has a relative environmental impact) to make money? By exploiting resources, and then selling manufactured goods at a premium. 

Our governments enact policies that put us in a perpetual battle, pitting the environment versus the "economy", where the losing side is more often than not mother nature. But the war cannot be won by us. In the end, we are only destroying ourselves (relevant!)[Update: This is a dead link as of 2019!]. The result is that while most of us in the first world live in luxurious comfort, a great number of Homo sapiens alive today live either in sickness and/or poverty.

But what if we could stop stop the "profit above all else" mentality dead in its tracks? We'd stop the deluge of unbridled consumerism that is ravaging Gaia every day and be left with an economy that is entirely sustainable and that co-exists peacefully with the environment. The shopping frenzy instilled in each and every individual to some degree would dwindle, and we would return to peaceful harmony with the natural world around us.

I could go into greater detail, using such works as Aldo Leopold's Land Ethic, and Thomas Berry's The Dream of the Earth as foundations, but I will reserve this discourse until I at the very least start my environmental ethics courses at UofT. :)

Take care.

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Paramore AND Lights!

Okay. I'm super super excited right now!
If you've been reading my blog for some time now, you might be aware that I love Paramore.
And if you've been reading my blog for some longer time, you might -also- be aware that I love Lights.

My two favourite bands (and in fact, the only two artists from whom I've ever bought CDs) are touring together! They're coming to the ACC on the 20th of November! AHHHH. I've NEVER been this excited to see a concert in my ENTIRE life!

I might just have to dish out the big bucks to get some really good seats. Usually, I don't care too much as long as I can see the band... but considering that these are absolutely my two favourite musical groups, the situation warrants me getting prime seats!

It's kinda eerie, actually. I've always wished they would tour together... And my wish is coming true! It's unbelievable. I had to do a double-take when I saw the announcement on a Paramore forum just now.

Even though they're somewhat different styles (Paramore is pop rock, Lights is synth/electro pop), I think they're going to mesh really well together. Hayley (lead singer of Paramore) and Lights (that's her legal name! :D) are incredible performers, and I've had the amazing opportunity to see them live before.

Siiiiiick.

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