Natalie,I know how you feel about the whole thing. Do you remember that conversation we had a couple of weeks ago? You said that it was easy to keep in touch with people through the phone and e-mail and such, and thought that I was being a bit maudlin for saying otherwise. But you know. It was the same way for you after high school, and I know you didn’t like high school, but that doesn’t change the facts. People drift apart, and you even said it yourself—you never stay attached to someone for very long after you’ve left a place. You seem okay with this.It used to be that way for me, too. I think it was because I’d moved from school to school so much as a kid, that I just got used to leaving friends behind. It always helped that a couple of them came with me wherever I went, so that I never felt like I was alone. It was always me who was leaving, though, and I think that being the one to leave is always easier than being the one who stays behind.Maybe that’s not it at all, though. It could just be that, after all these years of leaving people behind, I’ve finally found someone I wanted to hang on to a little longer. At the same time, though, I don’t think you feel the same way about me, and that’s exactly the way I felt when I left high school. It was an early September morning when I left Toronto, and the sun hadn’t even come up yet. I felt like I was slipping out under the cover of dusk, leaving behind a place that represented not a future, but a past.I know that you don’t want to hear any of this. For as long as I’ve known you, you never seemed to be much for sentimentality. You always had this nonchalant way of dealing with everything that threw me for a loop, and I imagine you’ll handle leaving this place in the same way. If I could find some way to insinuate myself into your life, I’d do it in a second, but I don’t think that’s in the cards.I stay up nights, trying to figure out how to say goodbye before you leave. The last time we had any sort of revelatory conversation I think I scared you off for good, and I don’t want you to think of me as a desperately hopeless romantic. To be honest, if I had actually managed to get a hold of you today, I don’t know what I would have said to you. I’m afraid I would’ve just made a fool out of myself again, except without the benefit of alcohol as an excuse. I can’t even explain why I think I’ll miss you, why you’re so different from all the other friends I’ve parted company with. I haven’t even figured it out myself.Goodbye, Natalie. I’ll miss you more than you’ll ever know.

If I might make a deal with the devil:
Listen. You know that I know that you know that I don’t give two shits about this exam I have to do in four hours. I’ve barely studied for it, and it won’t matter because this course completely lacks anything resembling substance, and how are you supposed to study for a course like that? I have a habit of worrying about not being worried for an exam, but this one exam has taken that syndrome to its logical conclusion.I’m pulling an all-nighter not to study, but to worry that I haven’t studied enough. And then I actually pick up my notes and the assignments and think what the hell is this? Of course I’ll be fine. And then I start to worry that maybe, because I put so little effort into this course, that I’ll get a lower mark despite my inherent ability, and that’ll be completely fine with me. Hey, I could stand to take a couple of mid-70s marks now and then; who am I trying to impress, anyways?It’s just that it feels so dirty. And I’m done with this vague anticipation and worry about nothing. So, please, if you could, mister Lucifer—could you make it 8:30am instead of 4:30am, so that I’d be that much closer to finishing this exam and this entire school year? Much appreciated.Addendum: Never make deals with the devil, lest you sleep through your entire exam.

Stereotypical hipster comment of the month: Memo to White Stripes: I liked you more when you played in Toronto three years ago and I had no clue who you were. Now my housemate is obsessed with you and you’re Conan’s goth house band. Please stop.
I love my Atari 2600 department: Now that the NDA’s been dropped, I can reveal what I’ve been playing for the past three months: Eve, or “EverQuest in Spaaaaace!” My bad ass is flying around in a cruiser, manufacturing ammo, and plastering pirates with plenty of antimatter goodness. It’s the first massively multiplayer game I’ve tried, and as such it’s been an interesting experience.That said, here’s the scoop: it’s not all that addictive. You know those stories of fathers locking up their babies in closets to play EverQuest, only to find a day later that their child is now dead? I have no idea how this happens, if Eve is any indication. The early game can be very boring, because there’s really only one thing to do - mine asteroids for cash. Once you make your first million, it’s easy sailing, but until then you’ll be spending many hours staring at rocks and obsessing about mining lasers.And then you get to the point where you have tons of cash, and then what do you do? Mine some more. Or run trade routes, which are just as entertaining as mining. Or, if you’ve got the ship and guns for it, kill stuff. That’s pretty much it, boys and girls. No missions given to you by other people (yet), no major incentive to manufacture or research equipment, no major incentive to do much of anything in fact.This is where Eve, and perhaps many other massively multiplayer games, ultimately fail. They’re designed to be little societies in which thousands of people lead virtual lives, but at the same time it’s a game. The similarities to real life are somewhat depressing—in forty thousand years, it won’t be cubicles you’re trying to avoid, but hours stuck in a tiny ship mining your heart out—and the differences are striking. One good example is property rights. The governance of air and sea rights in the real world is a fairly complex beast involving international law, licensing, etc., etc. Outer space, on the other hand, abides by the rule of brute force alone. If you’ve got an organized group of like-minded people (corporations, as they’re called in the game) and you want to claim a region of space for yourself, there’s nothing stopping you from doing so—and nothing stopping you from blasting every little peon who sets one foot into your territory. Needless to say, if you’re not keen on joining a corporation run by some power-hungry fourteen year-old, you may be screwed.But. Guns. Ships. Minerals. Stations. Hey, at least it’s not swords and spells, and that means a lot in my book.

2000 word essay, written in five hours start to finish. RAWK. I feel like I’ve perpetrated a colossal joke on the university, much like the one I pulled on Monday when I handed in a computer graphics assignment that only mostly worked after ten hours straight in a computer lab. If I manage to pull off an 80 average this semester, I will consider it a minor miracle.You know what? I might just do it, too. Take that, cold harsh reality! You can’t touch me! You don’t even know where I live!

Broken Social Scene w/ Stars
April 4th @ Merchant MacLiamTwo things stand out about this show. The first was Stars; their set was magnificient, and my only regret is that their recorded material ends up sounding fey and precious compared to the live goods. On top of all that, Amy ended up singing on two of the last three Broken Social Scene songs to amazing effect. I don’t think there was a single person in the room who didn’t think she was some sort of goddess by the end.Well, except for the second thing that stands out about this show, which was the idiot in the baseball cap and soccer jersey who a) pushed to the front at the beginning of Broken Social Scene (the night’s headliners) and then convinced half his friends to come too, b) wouldn’t shut the fuck up while he was up there, and c) wouldn’t stop grabbing his girlfriend’s ass. Thanks, dumbass, for pissing me off enough to nearly leave the show.
Hallelujah, the Drug Money Supports Communism ads have ended after being deemed a waste of money. It’s important, however, that the ONDCP’s sheer stupidity remains in the public eye for all perpetuity. To that end, I’ve downloaded all of their horrendous Nick and Norm commercials in Quicktime format. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here are the four transcripts.Okay. Probably the smartest of the four commercials, although honestly that’s not saying much. Still relies on the fundamentally flawed argument that drug money supports terrorism, but that’s all.Moral Loophole, aka Fear, Uncertainty And Doubt. “Things so awful that we can’t even conceive of them yet” indeed. Like, maybe, a ganja-powered dirty bomb. Remember, folks, drug money supports terror - and their multi-million-dollar research and development facilities.Not That Complicated, aka You’re Either With Us Or Against Us. Hey, ONDCP, try this on for size: no drug laws, no drug dealers. No drug dealers, no drug murders, shootings, bribery, corruption. That’s not complicated, either, so it must be true. Way to simplify the whole issue there, I’m sure it’ll be veru conducive to forming drug control policy in the future.And now my favourite, Ploy, aka Shut The Fuck Up, You’re Just Wrong. You know, this is exactly the sort of logic that you’re supposed to know is wrong once you’re in, oh, grade two. It’s like when some pissy kid in your class tells you that Santa isn’t real, and then you go and ask your unimaginative parents, and they tell you that yes, Santa is real. Then you ask why, and then they tell you “because he is.” You knew the jig was up then, didn’t you? You saw right through your parents, and you were seven. How stupid does the US government think we are, anyways? Ploy is like a big “fuck you” to the American people.

You know what this whole thing is like?It’s like those last few seconds that you experience trying to land a plane. Only you’re not the pilot, and most certainly not qualified to even read the warning panels on a 747, let alone be allowed within twenty-five feet of the control stick, and what the fuck are rudder pedals anyways? But here you are, about to land what must be a couple of hundred tons of steel and wire and people, my god, people! and they’re all in your hands now, your hands and the guy in the control tower trying to talk you down to the sweet sweet tarmac.Maybe you’re thinking, why did the pilot have to have that heart attack four hours ago? But then you remember, oh right, he had the heart attack because of the Russian terrorist brandishing a gun in the cockpit, which would also explain the dead co-pilot who did not have the fortune of dying of more natural causes. So really, landing a plane isn’t the most fucked-up thing you’ve ever done, but right now that doesn’t matter because all of that is in the past and this is happening now now now.Maybe you’re thinking, why is this all happening to me? That woman over there, the one who snored through half the flight and made insulting comments about the inflight movie—Picture Perfect, which I honestly don’t like either but could you please shut up for two seconds so I can at least sleep through the movie?—well, I’m about as qualified to fly this plane as she is, so why isn’t her ass in this chair and my ass somewhere else, like trying to find a parachute or getting some last-minute action or maybe not on this plane at all? And why the hell did the wife want to go to Fiji, anyways? What’s there besides forests and natives and now a whole lot of death and destruction because there’s no way in hell I’m landing this plane?But what would Harrison Ford do, dammit? He’d land this sucker, just like in the movies. Except the last movie he made, Air Force One crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. Shit, bad example, bad example! Okay, but it’s gotta be something like the movies, right? Or at least easy? It’s not like these things don’t practically fly themselves, right?So you’re sitting there, those last few seconds, with the ground rising to meet you at what seems like a ludicrous speed, like how fast does gravity work anyways, and I think my brain’s all fucked up because I know for a fact that objects can’t possibly drop this fast. You’re holding the control stick for dear life, knowing that there isn’t much you can do anymore to help matters, but there’s a hell (stick left, wing hits the ground and *poof*!) of (stick down, nose into the ground, at least it’s a quick death for you but what about granny in the twenty-second row?) a lot (stick up, stall, what’s that beeping no*poof*) you can do (rudder left, hey where’s the runway, and where’d that building come fro*poof*) to screw it all up, and then what is that air traffic controller going to think?”Christ, another passenger on a hijacked plane forced to land it because there’s no pilot screwed up the landing again. Do they even realize how long it’s going to take to scrape their burning flesh off the tarmac, let along clear off the wreckage so that we can land more birds? Larry, better chalk up another one on the board. If this rate keeps up, Sarah might win the office pool after all… she bet on seventeen airplane crashes, didn’t she?”And what are you thinking in those last seconds? You’ve dealt with what happens if you fail, what happens if you succeed. You’re even past the point of “did I tell my kids I loved them enough?” or “maybe I should’ve told the wife about my affair,” or “maybe I should have told my mistress about my wife.” Now all you’re thinking about is “gee, the stick sure does vibrate a lot,” and “I really should’ve gone to the washroom before all of this, it’ll look bad when they find my dead body and it turned out that I’d soiled myself.”You’re about to die, or maybe live through the greatest ordeal of your life, and it’ll all happen in the next few seconds. What are you thinking about? “Always bring a pair of clean underwear with you, because you never know what’ll happen.”Yeah. That’s what this week’s been like.