Strangers on buses

I ride the bus almost every day. In my city, students of the university pay a little extra with their tuition fees and can ride the bus as much as they want during their sessions. On the one hand, it's pretty nice since during the winter months I'm not drenching myself in slush riding to classes. It's a welcome excuse to be a little lazy and get driven around. The one thing that I always feel awkward about on buses is the other people. Bus politics work like this: we clamber on one by one, struggle for a seat that doesn't require us to sit directly next to a stranger, and then stare off into space until our destination is imminent. The most actual contact that we have is when the bus veers wildly and we accidentally bump into each other, forcing mumbled apologies and studied regret. That we live within little bubbles of comfort is not exactly news. Everyone has their own distances that they are comfortable dealing with people, and buses squeeze those bubbles unpleasantly.

Maybe my problem is that I hate these bubbles. I love to connect with people. A connection doesn't take time or effort, no matter what people say. You just need to get into the world around you. I try to talk to someone I don't know every day. Sometimes it turns out badly and I'm forced to swallow my pride and look for a graceful exit. However, every now and again I have one of those five minute experiences that has been engraved in the smiling scar tissue of my mind.

I was on a bus with a friend of mine and we were discussing how people quote things without really knowing the context of the original comment. The example I brought up was the famous "God is dead" by Nietzsche. I reasoned that without knowing the context of that quote, it was just another declarative statement. After I say this, the guy who was sitting in front of me turns around and says, "Maybe, but here's something to think about. Nowadays atheism is pretty common. You say you don't believe in God and people shrug. If you said that thirty years ago, there would have been a stronger reaction, but still it was just that you didn't believe in the concept of God. But if we go back far enough, we'd find that people didn't believe in God as a simple concept. God was a thing, a entity, something that the large majority thought acted directly in their lives. God was living because people believed that he was alive. Slowly, however, God became a figure in the bible. God became a part of a story. God went from an entity to a thing. People no longer believed in God's vitality and so God died."

I mulled that over for a few seconds and as the guy got up to leave I asked, "So is that what Nietzsche meant with his statement?"

The guy smiled back at me and replied, "I don't know. I never read the original quote in context. But it's interesting to think about isn't it? You have a good day now." And he got off at his stop.

Maybe I had been talking loudly on the bus, (a sin I believe that I have gotten over) but that guy chose to add something to our conversation and his comments have stuck in my head for over eight years. Because he decided to step into my bubble and talk to a stranger, I'm telling a story about him today. Maybe that's why I like to talk to complete strangers today. 

On Christmas and writing my website

On Christmas

I went Christmas shopping last night. That was an experience. I haven't done that in ages, and man it feels so hypocritical. I don't like it when people buy me stuff. It's awesome when my friends drop by or call me up to do stuff. I even enjoy it when a friend treats me to a burger on the rare occasion. But when it comes to possessions, if I want it, I'll buy it. I wouldn't want any of my friends wandering around a shopping center like some sort of adventure explorer, vainly searching for that one reasonably priced object that I might actually like. Perhaps that's why I'm not a terribly big fan of doing the shopping myself.

And who are you supposed to get gifts for? Everyone? That's a lot of money and time that I don't have. Nobody? Tempting . . . . but I'm trying to adapt to social conventions. I already spit on too many of them. Some people? Who do I pick? Is this like being picked for a sports team in elementary school? I always got picked last. I guess that means no presents for me. No random object gifts to fill the overflowing corners of my apartment. I win?

Of course, if you have already gotten me a present, I'm very grateful. As long as it's cool. And lasers are always cool. Hint. Hint.

Seriously, though. Next year, I'm going for the simple solution: bread or dinner, you choose. Choose bread and I'll make you a Christmas loaf. It's a variation of the Christmas bread that my grandmother made, and its damn tasty. If you don't want the bread, you're invited to dinner. Everyone makes the dinner and a good time is had by all. That's what Christmas will be next year, bread or dinner.

On website writing

For those of you who are considering making your own website, learn from my mistakes. If you don't know how already, don't just jump into it. Use one of the millions of services to make your website for you. Find that friend who can do the work and butter them up. Import some monkey servants and get them to learn this crap. It's a lot of work and Murphy's law kicks into overdrive.

Yesterday was a pretty prime example. I had to restart the project for the third time which was exactly as motivating as it sounds. It's a short sprint forward and a rapid bungee ride back. The only thing that can be done is to pick yourself up and ask what you have learned from this experience. So far, I've learned that anyone involved in writing computer code and script must be AWESOME at "Where's Waldo". Seriously, you have to go through this stuff with a fine tooth comb. After a couple of hours of staring at lines of HTML, they start melting together in a manner that Dali would envy.

Hopefully, I'll have this thing completed by this evening. Otherwise I'm reverting to my more primal instincts and setting fire to something.

Writing a website

What started as a simple school project has become an all-consuming problem. The original assignment was to make a website. The teacher assumed that we would use something like Dreamweaver or Frontpage to do the bulk of the work. That would be the easy way. That would be the way of the rational person. That would not be my way.

So I've started learning how HTML, and CSS, and Javascript work. These are the scripting languages that make webpages so shiny today. I remember back in the days of yore when webpages were basically just a bunch of text and links that were jumbled together. None of this fancy-pantsy graphics stuff. It was brute information and long loading times. Now it's all about design, layout, menu tabs, pretty pictures, and advertisements that you can't shut up.

Such is the price of progress I suppose.

Learning this stuff is a pain. I content myself with the hope that I'm learning something that I'll be able to apply in the future. The internet is not going away, so the more comfortable I become with the parts of it, the better. It is, however, a headache and far less tempting that going out and playing in the snow.

Right, back to work.
Progress will be posted when it is achieved!

A new start!

I greatly enjoy writing. As long as I can remember, I've enjoyed telling stories and am blessed with an imagination that is much more colourful than the world around me. I've always had a desire to put my ideas down on paper and to develop them more fully. Unfortunately, my desire to write has always been two steps behind my ability to procrastinate and be utterly unproductive. Generally, my university papers are written in a flurry of last minute activity that starts 11 o'clock in the evening before my paper is due and ends five minutes after I need to hand in my work. I know this is not the recommended way of completing a university paper (though it seems to be the most popular way), and I've tried to change my ways but with little success as of yet. I've examined the problem a number of times and have concluded that one needs three things to write.

1)Time to write.

2)An clear idea of what you are going to write about.

3)A lack of distractions that would prevent productivity.

In general, I have no shortage of the first thing and I generally fake the second. The problem tends to be the third criteria, as have the attention span of a gnat on a sugar rush. I can't count the number of times I've said to myself, “alright, you will work from now until dinner time on such and such a project” and ended up reading page after page of material that has less than no relevance to the work at hand. Personally, I blame the internet. It's such a diverse source of utterly random information! And stupid internet games! To hell with solitaire, people publish all sorts of games for free that keep me amused and productivity free for hours! Unfortunately, I generally need the internet for general research and all the useful bits of the internet are just two clicks away from the utterly useless. I feel like a magpie rooting through a junkyard, there is plenty of usable material but so many shiny objects to peck at!

And here I am, throwing yet another thing out onto the internet and possibly helping other people procrastinate. The circle is complete.

All that rambling to introduce my newest project. I am starting this blog as my writing blog, though it's not actually about writing. It will be a practice space where I can work on developing my writing skills; this will be my studio. I will practice and hopefully master the art of writing in a way that entertains and informs. It's a good excuse to spend a little more time looking at what goes on in the world around me. Which means looking things up on the internet. Well, I suppose I can forward to wasting many a happy moment being sidetracked.

. . .

Sorry about that. I wanted to look up something about penguins.

Anyway, this is going to be my pet writing project. I realize that normally people spend a great deal of time and effort to make sure that only their best work becomes available to the public. In fact, many authors hide behind a pen name when they are writing something that they feel is below their usual standard. Not everything an artist creates successfully fulfils its creators hopes, but this doesn't worry me. I actually feel that I'm writing something quite private since, well, this is just one more blog on the internet. Like Poe's purloined letter, my writing will be hidden in plain sight, and hopefully, those who do read it will be to some extent entertained, informed, and only minimally offended.

My plan is to write daily, in both English and French. I will be putting it through all the steps, planning, revising, etc. Hopefully with practice this will become quality writing. My goal is to write a minimum of 500 words in English and then translate it into French the next day. If I miss a day, I have to do both parts on the next. If everything works out, I'll be writing over 3000 words a week, in my spare time. I understand that this ambitious but I like to set high goals, fail, lower them a touch, succeed and jump right back up crush my original goals. It's a loft ideal, but if I want to become writer, I shall have to write.

Translating all of this into French will be the largest challenge. I've never actually translated into written French and this will hopefully help me improve my French composition skills. In general, it takes me twice as long to compose something in French from scratch, so my hopes are that this will help me speed things up. The advantage in this is that since I'm the original author of the English text, I don't have to worry about not understanding some point of the work to be translated. While the works will remain analogous, I'm hoping that eventually I'll be able to taking more liberties in the French versions. My final goal will be to be able to become as comfortable in written French as I am in spoken French.

I will also be posting my short works of fiction. This is fairly important since this is the form and style that I like best and dream of eventually mastering. As poor Vero can attest, I have many collections of short fiction and love to read them to both study the style and enjoy the work. With time, I hope to be able to put more and more stories out so that they are no longer just cobbled together constructions hiding in the recesses of my laptop's hard-drive. I will take these stories, cut out the bits I don't like, polish the bits that work, and add anything that is missing until they become striking examples of the genre.

What more can be said about this? Nothing! This is only the introduction after all, so there is no point in dragging it out needlessly. Which may or may not be what I have already done.

Onwards!

Late again

It may simply become more efficient for me to write in the morning, but I don't really want to worry about that at the moment.

Yesterday, was kind of typical for me. I started out with the best intentions and then ended up dicking around for entirely too long. Finally, I ended up rushing off to class, arriving with five minutes to spare, and nothing really accomplished. Unless I can get a job playing flash games. Or setting up tower defences. Man, why don't these flash games teach me anything that I can apply?

And so I bitch, and I'm bitching about being lazy.

Public speaking was interesting. We saw the first half of the presentations. I noted alot of stuff, but what struck me the most was a) get some cue cards, b) use powerpoint, c) use humour. It's the last that is probably the most important, since there was just one that really had both humour and content. Christian did an excellent one on laughing, but it's not really something that we need to be convinced to do. So, my topic, we are not nearly as informed as we imagine, which I need to figure out how I can make it engaging, informative, and entertaining.

I talked with my cousin Sam yesterday, it was funny. It felt like I connected more with him in that moment more than, well, a long time. Maybe I've always had difficulty with this sort of thing. Dunno, I guess I'll see when I get to BC.

I'm going to sign off and get on with my day. I'm kind of procrastinating at the moment. Tomorrow I try to make a Vblog!

Missed a wednesday

And so thurday will be a double header.

Not that I did anything particular last night, but I'll get to that.

My psycho-pedagogy course is winding up. I've managed to struggle my way through it without really reading the required material. In all honesty, I'm kind of ashamed of my performance as a student. Ah well, I'm going to have to pay for it now. I'm setting up my final study sessions for the upcoming END OF ALL TIME! Or end of session if you don't feel like being so terribly dramatic. Anyway, psycho-pedagogy. For the final exam, they allow you one page of notes, double sided, written however you want. For the mid-term it was single sided and I filled a double columned page with 6 point text with virtually everything that I could think might possibly show up on the test. And then . . . I barely used it in the test.

This time, I've learned! This time, I'm going to review the material multiple times, to make sure I have a firm understanding of the principles! This time . . . I'm probably going to use a magnifying glass because 4 point text is REALLY hard to read.

Then there was discussions after class, reflections on the upcoming Canadian Prose test, and I helped Janie work on her presentation. I've still got to do mine, though I've had a breakthrough in what I'm going to do. I'm staying with convincing people that they know less than they think they do. The salent point is that people don't use analytical/critical thinking. They just take other people's opinions and adopt them. Natural? Yes, but not particularly advantaging in the long run. This is an example of how as a society we have grown beyond the simple survivalistic life style and need work towards creating ways that a social equilibrium can be reached. 

In other news, I was reminded how rich Canada is. I think as Canadians we have a bit of an inferiority complex living next to the Vespugians (United Statesians). I was recently flipping through some world facts (comparing our national produce and whatnot to other countries; sort of a way of checking the national pissing contests) and it became quite evident that Canada is actually doing pretty well for itself. As a friend of mine (Shannon) recently remarked, "Of course we're rich, I'm working on becoming a career counciler. They don't have that in poor countries, people are happy to be able to just get food on the table." In a way, I have grown up surrounded by affluence, but been unaware of it. Huh. 

Did anything else happen worth noting? I'm terribly behind on my speaq quest, but an idea is starting to blossom. I don't want to talk about it now for fear of crushing the poor thing. I'm still addicted to flash games and really need to study this a bit more. I'm still more or less lost in linguistics and so have to read a couple chapters on it per day for the next week. Herm. Alright, let's get rolling.

On this Tuesday

Back in the saddle! I'd like to say that I was bursting at my creative seams and seems and finally caved in and decided to write here once again. In reality, it's part of a larger plan. See, I spent the morning watching Loading Ready Run videos, (specifically phailhaus, Graham is dreamy . . .) and became inspired to create a VBlog. Video Blog. Video Web Log. Right.

So the point of this is that I need to set my ideas down somewhere, and where better than some backwards blog that nobody looks at. Ah, anonymity, you make my life so easy, and quiet. So I shall segue (pronounced seg-way . . . weird) into what happened today.

The short version: wasted morning watching LRR (or invested?), got up and headed off to Canadian Prose, found I was accepted in my new program, found the site writing world, and afterwards linguistics where I dicked around and then told jokes to the teacher after class.

In greater detail:
Canadian Prose was a bout Hope something something by David Richard Adams. Grr, now I have to look that up. "Hope in the Desperate Hour". I'm looking forward to reading it. I know I was supposed to read it before I went to class, but alot of things were supposed to happen that never finally did, like Y2K. So I'll be organized and ontime when society collapses because of some piddly computer error.

The class was pretty much about the book. It's fiction, mostly realist, though I'd be willing to argue that it has post-modern elements . . . but I'm obstreperous. Anyway I shouldn't talk too much about the book since I haven't read it, and I'm due for bed.

During class (when the teacher was telling us something important, like where we can pick up our marked essays) I found out that I have been unconditionally accepted in the English Cultural Studies program. YAY! ME! YAY ME! Who knows where this will take me, but I'm betting I'll enjoy the ride.

Other important notes? Not so much. I discovered a wealth of resources on the writing-world website, so I'll have something to latch onto when I finish my entirely uninspired SPEAQ quest. Sigh, and I was so looking forward to that course. Ah well, I might pass it anyway.

But I should be off to bed. I have much PSP tomorrow morning to contend with.