Blog: Articles from September 2005

If you teach this too … The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

This guy actually wrote a letter to the Kansas School Board, to which he received several responses. Best site ever, in my opinion.

I got my laptop back last Thursday, which was great. It works way better now that they’ve replaced the broken components, and I can run Ubuntu without the computer shutting down on me. I should have blogged about it but I was too lazy.

Hmm … what else. Oh yes, apparently we‘re doing Fifth Business in our English class instead of A Separate Peace. This is good because a) I’ve read Fifth Business and b) it’s a great novel. So it’s a win-win scenario for me.

The title of today’s article is brought to you by: A Bus Ride. We were discussing pie on the way to school. Indeed… .

Oh, and happy birthday, Google.

Yes, I know I‘m a day too late. I was just too lazy to blog yesterday. But yesterday was indeed Talk Like a Pirate Day, and if you weren’t talking all piratical-like, you should have been!

Not much else really to say … oh yeah, it’s my birthday.

Subject: Canadian programming is dead.

Dear CBC:

I am an adolescent who enjoys watching much of the CBC’s programming, including the wonderful show CBC News: The Hour. I know this may come as a surprise to you (I mean, you’re governed by the Department of _Heritage_!) but yes, I quite enjoy CBC programming.

Which is one of the reasons that I was extremely disappointed that instead of CBC News: The Hour, I was invited to watch Political Assassinations. Lo and behold, after an entire summer of anticipation, I am forced to wait yet again! Thus, I am urging the CBC to resolve this labour dispute so that we can get back to what you really should be doing, which is providing quality Canadian programming, rather than attempting to satisfy a fictional system based on arbitrarily decided amounts of numbers.

I am quite frankly tired of everything being about money. We have gone, as Canadians, an entire season without hockey for precisely the same reason that we are now facing the worst shortage of Canadian programming in my lifetime. I would not like to see an entire season pass by without CBC News: The Hour.

I had hoped that somewhere out there, deep within the festering bowls of bureaucratic red tape and indolent political sludge, there was a fortress to defend against the polluting tendency for the world to revolve around money, rather than using money (the economic principle being that money should be a means, not an end, as it seems to inevitably be in this modern age). I had hoped to find a heart gilded in gold that would rise above such petty disputes and find an expedient answer to questions that should never have become quandaries in the first place.

I guess I was wrong.

After my school board lets me down, my Minister of Education lets me down, and my laptop lets me down, I started to wonder what would go wrong next. It turns out that was a bad idea.

The CBC is having some labour difficulties right now. Basically, the permanent staff wants the management to hire more permanent staff and decrease the amount of work they contract out. From the management point of view, it’s cheaper to contract work because if they cancel a show, any permanent staff have to find a new job with another show, whereas contractors can just be let go. From the permanent staff’s point of view, it’s a job security issue.

NHL Lockout, anyone? The stupidity quotients on each side are just about right.

My real gripe is that it interferes with something I consider one of the greatest things since sliced bread: CBC News: The Hour. It’s a new show on CBC Newsworld hosted by former MuchMusic host George Stroumboulopolos (I think I spelt that right). You may remember him, he advocated for Tommy Douglas on CBC’s The Greatest Canadian. The show is blatantly targetted at a younger audience (which, for the CBC, is anyone under 65). Although I am not the stereotypical youth (and I doubt the stereotypical youth even knows what channel is the CBC!) I enjoyed the show immensely and couldn’t wait for its premiere tonight.

Only it never happened. After watching Stargate: Atlantis, I flipped channels to CBC Newsworld and found Political Assassinations on instead. That’s when it hit me. The CBC was messing with my show!

I can see a big angry corporation like Fox or (dare I whisper their hallowed name) UPN disrupting their schedule like this, but the CBC?! It’s a government corporation! I expected to be blogging here about political issues, not about my lack of a great news show to follow political issues!

So now I feel like writing an angry email to the CBC, something along the lines of:

Dear CBC Management:

I am a 15-year-old adolescent who enjoys your program (specifically, CBC News: The Hour) and am angered by your insipid quest to save money. I know this may come as a shock, considering that you probably thought you only had an audience of about 10 65-year-olds and a dog outside a TV store window. Well, you were wrong. So give me back my show.

I may or may not decide to make it more or less coherent. And I‘ve no clue if I’m going to send the email … maybe if I could persuade some friends to bombard them with email too… .

That’s right. I’m asking you now, email the CBC’s Negotations Web Site and have your say!

Anyway … down the CBC Management!

A bell rings, buzzing in your ear so that all you can hear are the people around you and its incessant tone. It stops, but already the pulsating mass of flesh around you is moving, struggling against itself as the herd becomes one and two and three—no, four! directions at once. The dynamics are on an impossible scale, yet you manage to cope anyway.

Welcome to life in the madhouse. In some places, also known as high school.

After one day, I‘ve already decided I don’t like big schools. Apparently Westgate now has a population of over 1300. That’s nice, except that the building really can’t support that many. Take the cafeteria, for example: it’s smaller than the one at FWCI, and as such, they cannot fit every student into it at lunch. So some students have to eat elsewhere. I didn’t even try to get into the cafeteria to buy milk, I made straight for the courtyard rather than enter the maddest part of the sanitarium.

Class sizes are larger than I‘m used to, but overall the classes themselves are as usual. I’ve already received the “we expect you to be more mature because you’re seniors now” maxim from my English teacher (and she’s right, but they do say it every year). After two years of English, I’m ready for whatever they throw at me. We’re doing The Taming of the Shrew as our play, which I have not read but have seen, and A Separate Peace as our novel study. Ironically, we were supposed to do Lord of the Flies, but students such as myself who came from FWCI already did that in Grade 10. So we’ll do a different novel even though the rest of the course thematically fits with Lord of the Flies.

Anyway, I digress. Classes are fine, between them is not. The hallways are way more crowded than I ever expected. There are so many people! It’s times like that when I realise I really am not a person who enjoys crowds. It’s not just the physical feeling (although that is unsettling) but the noise that accompanies it.

To end the day, my bus was late. It was supposedly arriving at 4 PM, but lo and behold it was past 4:15 before it arrived. Considering that I can get out at 3:30 and that I‘ve timed the walk home at about half an hour, this means that I can theoretically walk home on the nice days. And I could use the exercise (it’s not needed, but it’s nice to get some anyway).

I arrived home tired and burnt out again, I’m glad I don’t have homework (although that will be marginally better once I get my laptop back). Hopefully this entire week, maybe month, is just my physical adjustment back to school, and it will all become commonplace. If not, I will have to bend reality until it suits my will. MUWAHAHAHAHA.

So, it has finally arrived. I think it can be summed up like so: I love school; I hate going back to school. School as itself is a tolerable entity, it’s the process of reacquainting myself with school that’s difficult. And the bureaucratic hegemony doesn’t make it easier.

That said, I found my homeroom easily enough (stairs, not so much) and waited the half hour left until school started today (they change the schedule, but not the buses!). Westgate isn’t as different from FWCI as it seems on the outside, it has smaller hallways in my opinion and perhaps even smaller classrooms, just more of them.

School was over before it even began. The buses were going to pick us up at 3. My mom was coming at 1. I was done at slightly after 11. So what did I do? I walked home. It isn’t that far a walk, just down one street for several long blocks. It took about 25 minutes, and I worked up quite a sweat. So for those of you out there who want to stalk me, beware that walking home from my school is possible, but not advisable.

My classes are as follows:

• English
• Biology
• Drama
• Physics

I don’t know any of my teachers for this semester, but next semester I have two teachers from FWCI: Mr. Dubyk for Math and a computer course of some sort, and Mlle. Kukko, who shall teach me French for the third year in a row.

Even with only about an hour of school, I’m still quite burned out. I went to the bank to set up a separate account for university savings (this assumes I’ll find a job). Well, being absent minded and culturally sheltered, it’s not surprising that I forgot to bring ID. This resulted in about fifteen minutes of driving back home to get ID and returning to the bank. Fun fun. But I eventually got the account set up (even if their slow computers use Windows 2000!). Now I need to find a job.

My computer … is problematic. Unfortunately, it seems that the fan isn’t pulling its weight and is neglecting to properly cool the rest of the computer. As a result, I’ve had to send it in for repairs (maybe they can fix my speaker problem while they‘re at it). I’m typing this from the family computer, which reminds me how small 800x600 resolution really is, and makes me grateful that my website is designed to fit in it.

I don’t see this as a setback, however, but an opportunity. The only drawback is that I’m without my nice, shiny, portable, addictive laptop for a week. Other than that, it means many good things: my computer will work better, I can use it without it getting too hot, my battery will last longer, and I may even be able to run Ubuntu! So cross your fingers and smile.