Curing loneliness with even more loneliness

Just over a year ago, I found a plastic card on the street. It was all black except for the words "EB GAMES" in big red type on the front. I put it in my wallet and assumed I would use it later. I had since forgotten about it.

Passing by an EB today, I remembered that the card had been taking up space in my pocket almost every day for the past year and a half, so I stopped in and asked how much money was on this dirty old gift card.

Turns out I've been carrying around a hundred bucks in video games for a year and a half.

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Since returning to the T-Dot from my formerly gregarious lifestyle of Maritime university friends and Quebecois high school friends, I've been able to literally feel the loneliness seep into my life. I recognize this feeling: I lie in bed until just after 12:00, I run the few errands I've set aside for that day, maybe perusing the city's many ludicrous fashion stores and revel in the disgust I can't help but feel when looking at mannequins wearing silly and colourful clothes worth more than my rent.

With any luck I'll start work soon, , but that won't fill the gap created upon leaving my cozy Halifax nook. Maybe I took for granted the ability to call any number of my friends and take the five-minute walk down to the Wardy for a $2.50 Keiths, but the knowledge that I could was what stripped me of the social void I fall into every summer.

That's what kills me: I know this feeling. Every summer, for as long as I can remember, I spend time alone in my basement, replaying old Zelda games, renting four movies a week, spending heinous amounts of time on Facebook. Wishing I could bring myself to read all the books I've been telling myself I ought to read, only to find that my copious lethargy makes me immune to sitting still and concentrating for longer than ten minute intervals. I get so clinically lazy that I can't bring myself to do something that requires any sort of disciplined investment.

I'm not depressed, just aimless.

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I bought six video games today, all used, sort of on a whim--short of buying Rock Band for absolutely no reason, I figured it was the best use of the hundred dollars. I could feel my summer degenerating into arthritis as he told me I had $15 remaining on the card.

This post turned out indulgently long only because I've literally nothing else to do. (I played two of the six games already; I'm just taking a break.)

Granted, I finished university a bit earlier than almost all of my friends; I anticipate the shared two-fours and Banquet Specials that will inevitably precede shouting "BRUUUUCE!" in a car to Manchester, TN. This summer will not be horrendous, and I know I have friends here.

Mostly, I'm just fucking bored.

Trout and about

BBQ BUTTER TROUT with broccoli and mushrooms

an icgyabl original.

ONE 250g fillet of trout. $5 from my grocery store.

ONE broccoli, stalk cut into rough coins and florets quartered. $1.50.

THREE big-ish white mushrooms, halved and sliced as you like 'em. $1.99 for the box.

A BUNCH of oil for frying--maybe two tablespoons.

A FEW DOLLOPS of President's Choice Barbecue sauce or, if you're adventurous, some other tasty thing.

ABOUT TWO TABLESPOONS--MORE THAN YOU THINK--of butter.

1. Pour the oil into a wok or large frying pan and, when quite hot, add broccoli. Flip or stir every 10 seconds at most.

2. While frying the broccoli, put a little butter into another frying pan--large enough for the trout, plus about 20%--and when the butter is hot, saute the mushrooms. (I switched terminology here not because fry and saute mean anything remotely different but because Steven King doesn't like using the same word twice in 15 or something.) When the mushrooms are soft and flavourful, add them to the broccoli and reduce the heat under the wok.

3. Add the barbecue sauce to the vegetables and a little water if they're sticking. Stir well every once in a while. Meanwhile, add the rest of the butter to the other frying pan and when it is hot, the trout. Sear both sides of the fillet and then reduce the heat to about medium. If you like to eat the skin, cook it a little longer so it gets crispy.

4. After about a minute has passed, add the vegetables--which should now be good and soft--to the fish pan and cover it. Don't stir or anything, but add a little water if the fish is sticking.

5. After two or three minutes, break open the fish to see if it's cooked. If it is, transfer to plate. Enjoy with grapefruit juice.

6. Eat before writing DT post documenting recipe, so it doesn't get cold. Damn.

She's Got Blood In Her Eyes For You, Or: Thanks, Stranger!

Kudos to the person who brought the power bar to blackadder so more people could plug in their laptops.

Everyone's in the shits this week, and you made people's lives easier.
People like you are one of the reasons that university is actually pretty cool sometimes.

Just an anonymous internet shout-out, instead of saying something in person.

The old fashioned way

I've been doing a lot of writing lately (not the good/fun kind, just papers and reports), and I'm slowly realizing that I can only produce quality (i.e. "quality") if I write things on paper first. I can't be productive if I'm writing on the computer. It just won't happen.

At first I thought it was a problem with having too many distractions around online and on my computer. Then I moved to my mother's old laptop with essentially no functionally aside from word processing, but it still didn't happen.

I think it has something to do with needing something physical and tactile. A computer doesn't give me a sense of accomplishment. It's much more satisfying writing 15 pages on lined paper with my trusty ink pen than typing the same amount on a computer. Screw ease of editing, I want my draft to look like some sort of surreal apocalypse wasteland. Plus, I find it incredibly stress relieving putting on some music and going through and transcribing my scrawlings onto the computer when it's ready.

If I wrote this post on paper before typing it up, it would probably be 38% more interesting and I probably would have felt like I accomplished something by not writing my formal lab report.

Instead, now I have two hours to get it done and I'm feeling a little bit like Jake when he morphed into a rabbit and got trapped in a box but had to morph back before his time ran out or else he would get stuck as a rabbit forever.

There's Something Absolutely Ridiculous About Watching Face/Off In the Library

"It's for school, I swear! I'm writing a paper on the evolution of transnational cinema and face/off is a really good example of...

Oh, Fuck it."

It's been three days - what the fuck?

I don't even have anything interesting to say.

So here's a photo of a duck.

Niles is Sure to Weave Another Laugh-Net

oh hell yes.

Some Lit, Some Fraiser, and a whole lotta funny.


... BUT WHERE'S WIGLAF?!?!

QOTD

Question of the day: Who would win in a thumb-war, Batman or The Green Lantern?
And why?
Discuss.

DOES THIS LOOK LIKE ANYBODY WE KNOW?!?!?

His Name is Chase Budinger, and he just declared for the NBA draft.

Here's Another.
And what the hell, One more.

Talkin' Bruce with George Elliott Clarke

And he's won the Order of Canada.

He came to King's to read from his newest and ninth book of poems, I & I, and partook in a little reception at the campus bar afterward. I discovered an old issue of The Watch (our university paper--of which I am now the Editor-in-Chief, by the by) in the office archives featuring an interview with him from 2001.

The Watch office now features the March 2001 issue hanging on the wall, sporting the phrase, "This is really bizzare! - George Elliott Clarke (2009)". Of which I am pretty proud.

If you ever get a chance to read his poems, I recommend it. He cited poetic inspirations such as Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, the latter of which we discussed for about five minutes at the reception while the few people behind me stood impatiently in line.

Turns out we're both big fans of "The River". Who knew?

Obama Urges EU to Accept Turkey as Member

U.S. President Barack Obama ruffled some feathers among EU higher-ups at the G20 meeting this week when he suggested that the superstate admit a turkey into its organization in order to foster international cooperation. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," he warbled; besides, "birds of a feather ought to flock together, particularly in these trying times."

But it sounds as though the featherbrained proposal will never get off the ground: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept turkeys like me as a member," the turkey said.

Hey, listen old man!

If we're talking about goats on the internet, the buck stops here.

Well, This Kicks Ass (Or Goat?).

Can we cook this?

Anybody?

Anon, and on and on

This isn't journalism, it's not polished; it's not even a coherent thought. It's my expectation that these posts (of mine, anyway) ought to be those things that's kept me from writing for too long. But I hope you'll enjoy it. I've included lots of links.


AS YOU ALL KNOW, the DT Twitter feed (link here, or to the right of the Blogger page) went live a month ago, on February 22nd. Because it's too much of a pain to log into Twitter with the account--username desserttickets, password bernice--and perhaps because we don't have much to say, anonymously or otherwise, it hasn't been as prolific as I'd expected; but it has made me think about online anonymity and, yes, WB, I'll say it: Web 2.0.

We weren't the first to come up with anonymous twittering--the splendid fake Christopher Walken is my favourite example, but they took the idea from SecretTweet, and this dude appears to be in on it too--but it doesn't look like anyone has realized, or at least written about, its significance yet.

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Anonymity on the web is neither new nor trivial. Since the beginning, anonymous, open "proxies" have allowed people to mask their IP address from the host resource they're accessing, so that they can surf freely. This has obvious value for a whole host of people, from cybercriminals to political dissidents: anyone who wants to protect his identity online can, in principle, do so without much difficulty. DT 1.0, that is, in its Blogger incarnation, is configured to allow anonymous posting (hence the spree of mild pseudonymous antisemitism in the past few weeks) for precisely that reason: because we believe in free expression, which means expression with impunity.

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It has occured to me that in addition to granting significant technological freedom (people are easily impersonated, for example), Web 2.0--the internet generally--also links people's activities online to their real-life personas in a much more significant and pervasive way than it ever has. We have false names on DT, but our real names tell a lot about us, instantly and for free, if you know where to look.

**

Researchers connected with the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto caused a stir when, working with a think-tank and the Tibetan Government in Exile (Munks and monks, yes, har har), they discovered a trojan cyberespionage network apparently based in mainland China, which they've named GhostNet. The Munk people are working hard at CitizenLab with the developers of a software called Psiphon (how cool is this?!) that offers uncensored access to the web--though not totally anonymous access, since information can still be monitored in transmission--from anywhere in the world. It is not my intention to get into the geopolitics of this story here--though I think, as usual, China Matters is not wide of the mark--but this is a fascinating and quietly developing example of the importance of anonymity online.

It's That Time Of Year Again, Or: April Showers Bring May Flowers

Well, here we are.
April.
It's back. That time when exuberance for life and confidence in one's abilities and education gives way to crippling fear and regret.
Remember Ticketers, you're not alone.
Please use this space as an escape, a place go when you've really had enough Kafka, enough Economics, enough Biochemistry, what have you.
Use it to procrastinate. I already have.
Oh, and please send in your procrastination stories, more are sure to be written in the coming weeks. We're going to be doing that again.

Soon! End! Summer! Sun! Weather! Possibility! Bonnaroo!
All of these things, and DT summer happenings, await. Whether its three or four weeks we have left, it is never soon enough.
I think you've reached a strange place when windowless basement rooms and old couches become the place you choose to go. Thank you, Arts Lounge.

B Out!