Saturday, October 28, 2006
A drowning sorrow floods the deepest grief
How long now
Until a weather change condemns belief
How long now
When the night watchman is in the fleet
What's wrong now?
How long now
Until a weather change condemns belief
How long now
When the night watchman is in the fleet
What's wrong now?
- The Saints are Coming, The Skids
resung by U2 and Green Day
¶ 5:57 PM resung by U2 and Green Day
I was on the subway today, coming home from work, and there was this couple in the same carriage as me, standing and essentially making out. Both were good-looking, and within each others leagues, plus or minus. The odd thing about them (not the making out; if you haven't seen people make out on the TTC, you've never been on the TTC) was the guy; as he's feeling the girl up and she's swallowing his neck, he was looking around, seeing if anyone else was watching them. It's like he wanted desperately to brag "Look at me, I got a hot girlfriend and you don't, so take that, bitches!" and, in absence of doing that, was hoping people were getting jealous. I'm not sure if that was his motivation for getting together with the girl in the first place; to get attention. Sure looked that way. Also looked like it failed miserably. I saw another, similar, couple at Square One, yesterday while comign home from work, a hot asian girl sucking face with a pimply asian geek. When not snogging (and man, were they going at it. You'd think the girl's biological clock was down to its final minutes) the guy was similarly looking around, seeing if anyone is noticing him with this girl who would normally be above his league. I hope he knows the only reason he scored her is cause of asian incest, and not any other reason, otherwise he's in for a world of emotional pain. And because he was hoping people would notice, I'll stand and laugh at him instead of feeling sorry when he does go down that road. Becasue I'm mean like that *pops Vicodin pill*
Another disturbing thing I see on the TTC; every Friday, I take the train south from Finch instead of up from Yonge as I do on Sat and Sun. And at Sheppard-Yonge, I encounter a group of private school kids who load onto the train. It's a funny thing about this group; they're about 80% white and 20% asian. When they get onto the train, all the white kids go to one side of the carriage, where they talk obnoxiously loud about how Jake's like, so embarrassing and Kathy's like, totally different now, while the asian kids go to the other side, where they sit, silently, with this haughty "I'm too good for the likes of you" expression on their faces (If you've never seen this look before, think Blue Steel done by someone in all seriousness. If you don't know Blue Steel, google it up or think Zoolander) What disturbs me about this social arrangement is how, without fail, this segregation occurs. The whites and asians don't even mistakenly acknowledge each others' presence. I would say it's not natural, but this is the way it has been for years and years. But our generation was supposed to change that, yet every friday I see proof that it's not happening. It's not like these kids are willfully racist, as they don't have a problem sitting next to any other person on the bus. They seem to be more subconsciously racist, which is even more dangerous. And the parents of these kids, whites and asians alike? What exactly is their motivation for sending their children to a school like this? I know what it is; this is exactly what they're aiming for. I hope I'm wrong. I really, really hope I'm wrong.
And now onto things I don't see on my commute. First up, Christopher Reeve. It's really sad that Reeve is dead, because now that the stem cell debate has been blown open all over again, his presence is really being missed. Michael J. Fox is good, but Reeve was Reeve. And Reeve and Fox together was the best combo fighting for stem cell research in a while.
I wonder when they'll make a biopic about Christopher Reeve (with the stuff they churn out these days, and with biopics winning big at the Oscars, it's pretty much a guarantee at this point) and who they'd cast in the role. Maybe Ben Affleck again? Who knows.
Speaking of movies, the apartheid drama Catch a Fire opened recently. It's funny, people have almost forgotten about apartheid, yet still remember Nazism. At its core, both followed the same principles. So what makes one so much more atrocious than the other? The number of people? Do you mean to tell me that just because x people are persecuted in one system and x+2 people are persecuted in another, that system 2 becomes more horrendous and system 1 not so much? Why did apartheid exist in the first place; isn't that the kind of thing the UN was set up to stop? Well, the UN has become a running joke now, and will continue to be as long as names like Ban Ki-Moon and Louise Arbour are bandied about as Secretary General instead of names like Nelson Mandela or Romeo Dallaire.And if the private school children on the subway are any indication, that change is still a long way away.
Hell of a long and somewhat depressing blog. Hope this makes up for the months of inactivity.
Another disturbing thing I see on the TTC; every Friday, I take the train south from Finch instead of up from Yonge as I do on Sat and Sun. And at Sheppard-Yonge, I encounter a group of private school kids who load onto the train. It's a funny thing about this group; they're about 80% white and 20% asian. When they get onto the train, all the white kids go to one side of the carriage, where they talk obnoxiously loud about how Jake's like, so embarrassing and Kathy's like, totally different now, while the asian kids go to the other side, where they sit, silently, with this haughty "I'm too good for the likes of you" expression on their faces (If you've never seen this look before, think Blue Steel done by someone in all seriousness. If you don't know Blue Steel, google it up or think Zoolander) What disturbs me about this social arrangement is how, without fail, this segregation occurs. The whites and asians don't even mistakenly acknowledge each others' presence. I would say it's not natural, but this is the way it has been for years and years. But our generation was supposed to change that, yet every friday I see proof that it's not happening. It's not like these kids are willfully racist, as they don't have a problem sitting next to any other person on the bus. They seem to be more subconsciously racist, which is even more dangerous. And the parents of these kids, whites and asians alike? What exactly is their motivation for sending their children to a school like this? I know what it is; this is exactly what they're aiming for. I hope I'm wrong. I really, really hope I'm wrong.
And now onto things I don't see on my commute. First up, Christopher Reeve. It's really sad that Reeve is dead, because now that the stem cell debate has been blown open all over again, his presence is really being missed. Michael J. Fox is good, but Reeve was Reeve. And Reeve and Fox together was the best combo fighting for stem cell research in a while.
I wonder when they'll make a biopic about Christopher Reeve (with the stuff they churn out these days, and with biopics winning big at the Oscars, it's pretty much a guarantee at this point) and who they'd cast in the role. Maybe Ben Affleck again? Who knows.
Speaking of movies, the apartheid drama Catch a Fire opened recently. It's funny, people have almost forgotten about apartheid, yet still remember Nazism. At its core, both followed the same principles. So what makes one so much more atrocious than the other? The number of people? Do you mean to tell me that just because x people are persecuted in one system and x+2 people are persecuted in another, that system 2 becomes more horrendous and system 1 not so much? Why did apartheid exist in the first place; isn't that the kind of thing the UN was set up to stop? Well, the UN has become a running joke now, and will continue to be as long as names like Ban Ki-Moon and Louise Arbour are bandied about as Secretary General instead of names like Nelson Mandela or Romeo Dallaire.And if the private school children on the subway are any indication, that change is still a long way away.
Hell of a long and somewhat depressing blog. Hope this makes up for the months of inactivity.
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Ya, it made up for the month of inactivity. I found your blog to be very insightful and well written. You really hit the nail on the head with this one.
The thing I liked most about it was your comments on "Asian incest", and the general way that various cultural groups stick together. I have recently come to the opinion that Toronto's cultural diversity does not really mean what most people would believe it to mean. (I'm going to draw on the "melting pot" vs. "cultural mosaic" concepts here, so bear with me.) In America you have a culture formed by the mixing of disparate groups (mostly European) into one large and rather uniform society. In Canada (specifically in Toronto where diversity is more noticeable than in other regions) you have neighbourhoods, which tend to stick to themselves, and do not really interact with one another. Places like Chinatown, Little Italy, Little India, that place with all the Jewish people (Thornhill), etc.
While it may be fair to say that all cities tend to have their own cultural areas, in Toronto I think things are more pronounced. Maybe it is because there are so many people of each cultural group in the city?
Today I had a conversation with some people I knew about past crushes, and I mentioned two people that I had a crush on in highschool.
Both of the people whom I had named were Asian.
[Keep in mind that I had only named two people. And the highschool I had gone to had a large proportion of students that were Asian, particularly in my class, and those that weren't Asian were not (in my opinion) very attractive (in looks or personality).]
After mentioning their names someone commented: "You should have been Asian."
It took me a few seconds to realise what the person meant by that.
For me, the race of a person has nothing to do with whether or not I am their friend. There was a time in middleschool when I would only hang around with other Jewish kids, but this was about the age when I would only hang around with other boys. I quickly learnt that there was nothing about a person's culture that determined how good of a person they really were, how loyal they were as a friend, and how interesting they were to talk to.
I think a lot of the kids that do stick around with others of the same "race" do it because they are new to the country, and so haven't yet gotten the idea that other people are pretty much just like them except with different lanugages. Their parents (who are most likely also new to the country), would also have a kind of ingrained racism.
But my case may be a bit special. I don't really identify myself as "Jewish" in any meaningful way. I know I am Jewish, I can tell when I go to the washroom, but there is an entire Jewish community in Toronto that I have nothing to do with. I just don't like the idea of having an organisation that caters to one particular group, it just turns me off. So maybe I just don't view race as an important issue, when compared to others.
Oh, and on the differences between WWII and South African Apartheid, well, there are a lot. And I don't think in this case it is fair to draw associations between the two. While both the Nazis regime and the white South African government had institutionalized racism, which is of course bad, the methods that were used by the two groups to enforce that racism were drastically different. The Nazis actively tried to exterminate those that they were repressing, and were very successful in doing so. Genocide is far more than simple persecution. You can dislike a peoples, and try to hold them down, but to actively wipe them off the face of the Earth is different.
It would be a far better analogy to compare the situation that formerly existed in South Africa with that of the Palestinians. Where institutionalized racism exists, but it isn't coupled with genocide. But even if you were to make the connection, you would be missing out on a LOT of fine distinctions (majority/minority, terrorism/peaceful political movements, world opinion, etc). And WWII can be compared to the situation in central Africa, with Rwanda and Darfur.
Oh and I disagree that the UN is a running joke. The UN isn't capable of running to/from anything, and that aint no joke.
-Dan
The thing I liked most about it was your comments on "Asian incest", and the general way that various cultural groups stick together. I have recently come to the opinion that Toronto's cultural diversity does not really mean what most people would believe it to mean. (I'm going to draw on the "melting pot" vs. "cultural mosaic" concepts here, so bear with me.) In America you have a culture formed by the mixing of disparate groups (mostly European) into one large and rather uniform society. In Canada (specifically in Toronto where diversity is more noticeable than in other regions) you have neighbourhoods, which tend to stick to themselves, and do not really interact with one another. Places like Chinatown, Little Italy, Little India, that place with all the Jewish people (Thornhill), etc.
While it may be fair to say that all cities tend to have their own cultural areas, in Toronto I think things are more pronounced. Maybe it is because there are so many people of each cultural group in the city?
Today I had a conversation with some people I knew about past crushes, and I mentioned two people that I had a crush on in highschool.
Both of the people whom I had named were Asian.
[Keep in mind that I had only named two people. And the highschool I had gone to had a large proportion of students that were Asian, particularly in my class, and those that weren't Asian were not (in my opinion) very attractive (in looks or personality).]
After mentioning their names someone commented: "You should have been Asian."
It took me a few seconds to realise what the person meant by that.
For me, the race of a person has nothing to do with whether or not I am their friend. There was a time in middleschool when I would only hang around with other Jewish kids, but this was about the age when I would only hang around with other boys. I quickly learnt that there was nothing about a person's culture that determined how good of a person they really were, how loyal they were as a friend, and how interesting they were to talk to.
I think a lot of the kids that do stick around with others of the same "race" do it because they are new to the country, and so haven't yet gotten the idea that other people are pretty much just like them except with different lanugages. Their parents (who are most likely also new to the country), would also have a kind of ingrained racism.
But my case may be a bit special. I don't really identify myself as "Jewish" in any meaningful way. I know I am Jewish, I can tell when I go to the washroom, but there is an entire Jewish community in Toronto that I have nothing to do with. I just don't like the idea of having an organisation that caters to one particular group, it just turns me off. So maybe I just don't view race as an important issue, when compared to others.
Oh, and on the differences between WWII and South African Apartheid, well, there are a lot. And I don't think in this case it is fair to draw associations between the two. While both the Nazis regime and the white South African government had institutionalized racism, which is of course bad, the methods that were used by the two groups to enforce that racism were drastically different. The Nazis actively tried to exterminate those that they were repressing, and were very successful in doing so. Genocide is far more than simple persecution. You can dislike a peoples, and try to hold them down, but to actively wipe them off the face of the Earth is different.
It would be a far better analogy to compare the situation that formerly existed in South Africa with that of the Palestinians. Where institutionalized racism exists, but it isn't coupled with genocide. But even if you were to make the connection, you would be missing out on a LOT of fine distinctions (majority/minority, terrorism/peaceful political movements, world opinion, etc). And WWII can be compared to the situation in central Africa, with Rwanda and Darfur.
Oh and I disagree that the UN is a running joke. The UN isn't capable of running to/from anything, and that aint no joke.
-Dan
Hey Deep,
Your blogs are always so insightful *bowdown*!
Hmm... what I find interesting is WHAT people enjoy "showing off" about their partners. I mean for the most part... males with female partners tend to like to flaunt the fact that their gf's are physically attractive. I mean you don't hear guys going around saying stuff like, "Yea, my gf is so great! She's got a PhD in Mechanical Engineering!" I guess what I'm trying to get at is when guys are trying to show off to other guys about how spectacular their girlfriends are, it's usually about how they look, and how good they are in bed. Ladies, I'm sure they do that too, but quite often they tend to like to show off how "smart", "sweet", "romantic" and "successful" their bf's are.
So it is interesting to me, that the couples you've seen making out in public places often feature the male glancing about, hoping for applause, or jealousy or something *Hahaha*.
It's also funny how when people look at couples they automatically judge by their physical appearance whether or not they "fit" together as if "ugly" people can't be with "beautiful" people. Is that any different from the way those private school kids segregate themselves?
I have a relative who went to private school, and it's funny to me cause she's always telling me how stupid the "white" kids are. Her best friends include a chinese girl, an indian girl and a russian(?) boy. So there you go, it isn't necessarily true that minorities clump with individuals of their own ethnicity all the time. You would think that in this day and age, what colour your skin is doesn't matter. Maybe I'm naive. I honestly believe that the reason those kids naturally group in different parts of the train because they can't find common ground.
I would say I have a pretty diverse pool of friends but interestingly enough, I don't have any friends who are "black". Does that make me a subconscious racist? I certainly hope not! *hahaha* In highschool we had lots of italians, greeks, indians, orientals, whites, blacks, blues and greens =P *hahaha* To my knowledge, there weren't many "blacks" in my classes. I remember having some in elementary school but they moved away when I was too young to think of exchanging phone#s, and WAY before I even knew what email was. So maybe sometimes, it's a proximity thing, and your personality as well. Depending on how you are, your feet takes you to different places in life, and thus different people. Now that I think about it... at work, and at volunteer where I could potentially get to know a diverse group of people better... even there I don't get a chance to interact with many people who are "black". There's a mix of many other ethnicities, Armenians (sp?), Indonesians, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Europeans, Anglo's, etc. etc. but very few if no "blacks".
and damnit! -_-" i forgot what else i was gonna say. i think i've blabbed enough.
write more when you have time! always good to read your thoughts! I feel like i'm learning *hahaha*
take care!
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Your blogs are always so insightful *bowdown*!
Hmm... what I find interesting is WHAT people enjoy "showing off" about their partners. I mean for the most part... males with female partners tend to like to flaunt the fact that their gf's are physically attractive. I mean you don't hear guys going around saying stuff like, "Yea, my gf is so great! She's got a PhD in Mechanical Engineering!" I guess what I'm trying to get at is when guys are trying to show off to other guys about how spectacular their girlfriends are, it's usually about how they look, and how good they are in bed. Ladies, I'm sure they do that too, but quite often they tend to like to show off how "smart", "sweet", "romantic" and "successful" their bf's are.
So it is interesting to me, that the couples you've seen making out in public places often feature the male glancing about, hoping for applause, or jealousy or something *Hahaha*.
It's also funny how when people look at couples they automatically judge by their physical appearance whether or not they "fit" together as if "ugly" people can't be with "beautiful" people. Is that any different from the way those private school kids segregate themselves?
I have a relative who went to private school, and it's funny to me cause she's always telling me how stupid the "white" kids are. Her best friends include a chinese girl, an indian girl and a russian(?) boy. So there you go, it isn't necessarily true that minorities clump with individuals of their own ethnicity all the time. You would think that in this day and age, what colour your skin is doesn't matter. Maybe I'm naive. I honestly believe that the reason those kids naturally group in different parts of the train because they can't find common ground.
I would say I have a pretty diverse pool of friends but interestingly enough, I don't have any friends who are "black". Does that make me a subconscious racist? I certainly hope not! *hahaha* In highschool we had lots of italians, greeks, indians, orientals, whites, blacks, blues and greens =P *hahaha* To my knowledge, there weren't many "blacks" in my classes. I remember having some in elementary school but they moved away when I was too young to think of exchanging phone#s, and WAY before I even knew what email was. So maybe sometimes, it's a proximity thing, and your personality as well. Depending on how you are, your feet takes you to different places in life, and thus different people. Now that I think about it... at work, and at volunteer where I could potentially get to know a diverse group of people better... even there I don't get a chance to interact with many people who are "black". There's a mix of many other ethnicities, Armenians (sp?), Indonesians, Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Italians, Greeks, Europeans, Anglo's, etc. etc. but very few if no "blacks".
and damnit! -_-" i forgot what else i was gonna say. i think i've blabbed enough.
write more when you have time! always good to read your thoughts! I feel like i'm learning *hahaha*
take care!
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