Moving to Toronto, Part III

The next douchebag who- after hearing that I'll be living in Toronto and commuting to Guelph- looks deeply thoughtful for about ten seconds and then blurts out "At least you don't have to commute the OTHER way!" as if it's some gigantic revelation that I'm driving against the flow of traffic- is going to get my fist in their mouth.

Moving to Toronto, part two

Well, we got a place in the city. For anyone who wants to send me a last minute Christmas gift, my new address is 1 Brookdale Ave., Toronto, ON. I don't know the postal code yet. For anyone who cares, here are some pictures of our new place (with someone else's crap in it):

http://www.viewit.ca/vwExpandView.aspx?ViT=15562

The commute is 45-55min and I'm not looking forward to it.

Christmas Toys and the Third Reich

So I'm at... well, for the sake of the retailer, let's just call it a "Large Canadian Retailer," looking for outdoor Christmas decorations for my apartment, when I come across this Christmas treasure:

It looks innocuous enough. All three of these characters sing: Santa and, thanks to Robin Williams, penguins. However, when I made the penguins sing, something seemed a little... off. Because I have no pictures of this, I'll explain. Look at the penguin on the right (your right, not Santa's). See his left arm (his left, not yours)? Okay, picture that raised a la the standard Nazi salute... for the entire song. It does not move, it does not bounce in tempo with the song. It stays fixed, in undeniable homage to the Fatherland.

...

But wait, there's more. What does little Dieter the penguin do with his right hand?

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Masturbate.

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That's right, he masturbates. As if there's no tomorrow. In tempo with the song.

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And people wonder why kids today are so eff'd up.

It's like they say the things we all think...

I found this on www.marriedtothesea.com... which hopefully means I won't get sued when I post it here. In light of recent events- i.e. the fact that I have a blog- I thought I'd post this little gem.

Moving to Toronto

For those of you who don't already know- presuming the only people seeing this blog are friends and family- Kathryn and I are moving to Toronto as early as January 1st. She got a sweet job with the national office for the Nature Conservancy, and I, as usual, got a fat one straight in the old behind.

What I'm referring to is the two hours a day I will be spending behind the wheel as I commute to and from Guelph. If you'll please refer to my previous post, I am a grad student at the U of G, and will be so for at least the next 18 months. Good times.

We went to Toronto this weekend to look for apartments. Seventeen down, not a single keeper. How naive we were, Saturday morning, two country bumpkins heading to the big city looking for reasonable accomodation at a fair price. We were looking for a two-bedroom apartment, preferably not a basement, close enough to the Allen or the Gardiner for me to get out of the city ahead of the morning rush. Our list of critera has evolved. It now includes items such as: 1) Landlord must not be completely batshit insane; 2) Landlord must speak English (if not the Queen's, then at least a reasonable approximation); 3) "Living with the landlord's mother" must not be part of the rental agreement (this actually happened... no wonder this guy was letting a $2000 apartment go for $1000 inclusive)... the list goes on.

Anyway, we returned to Guelph empty-handed. Soon, though, I will no longer be a residnet of Guelph, but of Toronto. This will mean a couple of mandatory changes in my appearance and behaviour. For example, I'll be required to snub my nose at everyone who lives east of the 427. I'll also be required to dress more stylishly, act more cultured, and get into more obscure music and books. On that note, if anyone is looking for any last-minute Christmas gifts for me, I'm thinking about something from Nietzsche, but nothing too 'big-name,' something before he totally sold out.

One-sixth of grad school coming to an end...

...well, not really. It's just that the class I took this semester has come to an end. Unfortunatly, the research continues. This is contrary to what I find most of the "older" generation believe grad school consists of (older is in quotes there to emphasize that these people are really old). I can't count the number of times I've been asked where I'll be going for summer vacation. I don't know, probably... the lab? Maybe if I was a liberal arts grad I'd be able to sneak off a few weeks here and there. You don't really have to be anywhere particular to be doing nothing at all (then again, it's not like the latte-loving public gets to go on vacation whenever they feel like it, so I have a feeling liberal arts students are pretty bogged down, too, only for them it's more like frappaccinos and stuff). But seriously, grad school is a job. It's a pretty cool job sometimes, because generally I find scientists to be pretty laid-back in and out of the lab. Well, not in my department, which has crap-all for social life, since they think that knocking off at 5pm on Friday is an 'early day,' but in other departments. Example: I went to this guy's birthday party last year. He was a post-doc in the lab I worked in, and he disappeared about halfway through the night. "Where's Jim?" everyone was asking. Turns out Jim was laying outside on the steps to the bar, which is where he passed out, which is what happened after he smoked (apparently) quite a bit of, um, marijuana (I have no idea what that is) in the bar bathroom. Note: I changed the name of this guy, to protect him, just in case anyone he knows winds up reading this post. His name isn't really Jim, it's actually Brad.

But I digress. Grad school is a job. I'm up and in for eight in the morning, and rarely leave school before five or five thirty, and I don't frequently get a lunch. On top of this is the pressure to graduate in two years (note to potential grad students: When your supervisor tells you your program length is two years, he's full of shit. He's hoping he only has to pay your paltry stipend for two years, but he's well aware that the last student he supervised took a sick day to vote for Regan). Did I mention the pay sucks? Oh, and experiments rarely work- except when they do (for reasons you can't explain), and when they do, no one is impressed (you're a scientist, you idiot: Of course your experiment worked). I'm not complaining, by the way- I sincerely enjoy what I'm doing. I'm just clarifying. I don't get a summer vacation, I don't get a report card, and if I screw up, it will end up on my permanent record (by which I mean, I may as well have gone to school for English). This is not grade school, and they don't schedule a nap-time.

Just so we're clear.

And while I'm ranting, a quick note on the state of education in university today (at least, at this university): Memorizing word for word everything that comes out of your professor's mouth is a gigantic waste of time. You're here to learn to think, asshole, not to regurgitate. This is a rather large problem I have after spending the semester teaching undergraduates. It may be okay, for a while, to spit back verbatim everything you heard in class, but it's not going to fly in the real world.

Example: "Doctor Whoever, I think I have a bad case of ergophobia." "What the hell is ergophobia? I don't remember ever seeing that word before and since I didn't pay attention in school I have no idea how to find out what it is on my own." "But don't they teach you how to think for yourself in medical school?" "Not in the Carribean! Hey!"

Ergophobia, incidently, is the fear of work, which I'm pretty sure most of these idiots have.

Apparently homophobic and homosexual tendencies are not so far apart

Just thought I'd post this for my friend Bob, whose brother Brian would join the KKK if only they didn't have to wear those gay white dresses.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=cache:OuUWXezMbF8J:www.oogachaga.com/downloads/homophobia_and_homosexual_arousal.pdf+