Twitter Conversation

Note: I’ve removed the person’s Twitter handle, but if you go on my Twitter stream you can easily find out who it is.

Red: “There’s a Canadian town called Slave Lake? What a horrible name!”

Yes, I knew there were forest fires and massive devastation before making this tweet, but I thought it was an odd name. I’m not poking fun of the situation, because I understand the severity of it, but I was just giving my initial reaction.

Several people informed me over Twitter that it’s Cree for “strange” and is actually pronounced Slavey Lake. Some were pretty polite about it, and others weren’t so much. This one (obviously) was from one that wasn’t so polite about it:

?: Look up the real meaning of the name, and show some compassion. 40% of the town was destroyed.
Red: I know what’s happening. I just thought it was an odd name.
?: it’s not an odd name when you know the background.
Red: So when you read the word “slave” your immediate impression is a Cree name?
?: Not at all, I just prefer to do some research before I make negative assumptions.
Red: Guess you didn’t see that I retweeted the real meaning on my profile, and thanked people for correcting me.
?: I missed that, sorry. Just replied to you cause I saw your tweet in the TT.
Red: lol, so you don’t exactly do research before making negative assumptions… (This is exactly what I did after tweeting that line to her: http://youtu.be/YhkNLHictW8)
?: Not to people on twitter who come across as jackasses. I see that you’re not, so my apologies.
Red: If Slave Lake wasn’t going through this horrible forest fire, would I still be a jackass for thinking it’s a weird name?

She didn’t reply, and I’m not taking her apology. She’s going around Twitter being a righteous cunt to everyone who thinks Slave Lake is an odd name. “It’s not an odd name when you know the background.” Yes, things aren’t odd when you know what they are. Thanks for that bit of wisdom Yoda.

She’s assuming strangers who don’t live in the area are supposed to be familiar with a small town of 7000 people just because it’s in the news for a wildfire. I read the article in the Toronto Star. I know what’s going on, but nowhere in that article does it mention the pronunciation of the town or how it got its name (because IT’S FUCKING TRIVIAL), so I think it’s pretty fair I get to wonder at the prospect of a name that seems completely incongruent with my understanding of Canadian history.

TL;DR: Bitches be crazy.

Anything?

It was for my History of East Asia course (His107 I believe), and my TA Samuel was this uber cool Taiwanese guy. For our essay, he said he would approve any and all topic ideas we had as long as it was on Japan (our focus for the semester). I was hesitant to take him up on this, but when he told us that his professor in his graduate class specializes in Godzilla, I knew I could write about something crazy. I thought of something and decided to talk to my TA about it.

Red: We can write about anything?
Sam: Yes, a student in my other class is writing her essay on Hello Kitty and Globalization.
Red: Wow!
Sam: Yeah, that’s a hell of a topic, do you have one yet?
Red: Yeah, I’m going to write about ninjas.
Sam: Ninjas?
Red: …and post-modernism? I don’t know, I’ll think of something.

It was at this point that I knew I didn’t really belong at this university.

I’m getting old

“They got the situation, they got me facin’
I can’t live a normal life, I was raised by the strip
So I gotta be down with the hood team
Too much television watchin’ got me chasin’ dreams
I’m an educated fool with money on my mind
Got my ten in my hand and a gleam in my eye
I’m a loc’ed out gangsta, set-trippin banger
And my homies is down, so don’t arouse my anger, fool
Death ain’t nuthin but a heart beat away
I’m livin life do-or-die-a, what can I say?
I’m twenty-three now, but will I live to see twenty-fow’?
The way things are goin’ I don’t know…“

I wish everyone knew how tempted I was to put these lyrics up as my Facebook status last week.

I feel exactly the same as I did last year. Where’s the personal growth? It’s bumming me out that I haven’t changed much. I’m not going to change my life overnight, or drop every bad habit I’ve developed over the years and start being this new Redford by tomorrow, but it would be nice if by 25 my life didn’t so closely resemble the one I’m living now. For the better of course.

And yes, it’s not as if I haven’t reached this epiphany before, and ideally, I should have thought like this 6 years ago, but there’s a weird sense of urgency that comes when people stare at you and go “wow, 24? Really?” Yeah. Fuck.

Computerless

My mom’s friend recently built me a new computer but had to replace the motherboard since the company issued a recall for them. Our replacement motherboard, however, was incompatible with my computer and caused it to crash every 5 minutes. Now I’m in the process of finding a new motherboard, so I’ll be computerless until then.

You might think I would use this time wisely and study for my CSC or exercise, but I’ve been doing a whole lot of lying in my bed instead. It’s a lot less pathetic than it sounds because I finished a book and several of Joe Rogan’s podcasts while I was lying down. I’m not a deep philosophical thinker, but when I don’t have a computer to distract me I find that I spend quite a bit of time wondering about my life. Life in general actually. I feel like a chunk of my life has been spent doing things I’m “supposed” to do, and with what spare time I have left over I get to do my own thing (whatever that entails). I don’t think I have done enough of what I want to do, but the trouble with that is that I rarely know what I want to do. It’s like I was programmed to work but somewhere down the line I became self-aware and now I have to kill all humans find a real purpose in my life.

No, it’s not a quarter-life crisis. I’m starting to dislike that term because it’s too dramatic. Japan has a crisis. Libya has a crisis. We don’t know what to do with our lives, but with shelter, food, and some recreational drugs at our disposal, I’m sure we’ll arrive at an answer. It must be quite the luxury to consider that a crisis.

Stranger on the Subway

I was on my way home from work the other day when I met a stranger on the subway platform. He came up and asked me what my birthday was. It was odd, I’ve never been asked that by strangers before, but what the hell, I told him anyway.

“Your birthday is going to be on a Saturday this year.”

Then he asked for my mom’s birthday.

“September 22nd.”
“It’ll be on a Thursday this year.”

I took out my phone and turned to September on my calendar and there it was! Thursday September 22nd 2011! It blew my mind.

“My dad’s birthday was on January 15th.”
“That was a Saturday.”
“Did you memorize the whole calendar? This is amazing.”
“Yeah. I gotta go now this is my stop.”

And then he left. He was a bit awkward, so I’m suspecting that he was autistic, but that doesn’t take away from how incredible this was. He tried to explain the process to me, but the subway train was too loud and I couldn’t catch any of it so I just nodded and fed him more dates.