I was able to salvage some more archives (April, May, June 2003) from the waybackmachine. I don’t think there’s too much of a continuity gap (except what’s missing between February and April) as I wasn’t posting too much after June (at least, I don’t think I was). But there is some particularly interesting stuff missing from the February part, including my confrontation with a federal MP. Ah well.
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Many years ago I read in (yet another) one of those “positive thinking” books the following:
Negative thinking yields negative results.
Positive thinking yields … negative results.
I think that is true.
I’ve realized that thinking negative but performing as if you’re thinking positive is the best way to go about doing something. You’re productive, and at the same time don’t have high goals for yourself. As such, if you get negative results, you’re not surprised and you don’t feel particularly let down. At the same time, if you get positive results, you’re delighted because you’ve certainly exceeded your expectations.
On the other hand, if you think positive and perform positively, then you’ve simply met your expectations. However, if you perform negatively then you’ve disappointed yourself and will feel negative the next time around.
Moral of the story?
Think negative. You’re going to fail. You’re going to become a miserable failure with no direction in life, no friends, and no hope. Your life will be worthless and you might as well end it now to save yourself the trouble then.
Believe me, that’s not harsh. You’ll thank me for it later — as you hand me the spare change from your pocket outside a local Tim Hortons.
With the help of Yaser, I recovered most of my archives from when I started blogging in February 2002 up until now. There is a gap in “the blog record” between February 2003 and September 2003, but I wasn’t actively blogging for most of the summer of 2003 anyway.
Unfortunately a lot of that stuff is probably lost for good.
Most of it is crap. Some of it is decent. Mostly, it’s crap. You can, if you’re interested, find the archives underneath my “Recently Read…” list. (For information’s sake, this incarnation of the blog started in September of 2003 — when I began university.)
It’s interesting to note how much I’ve changed in three years. I used to blog a lot, several posts a day; now I sometimes don’t post for months. I used to sit by the sidelines and criticize things, but starting from May 2003 (and I’m disappointed that period of time isn’t retrievable) I actually turned to activism rather than simple criticism. There’s a lot more to notice, subtle differences in style and whatnot.
Now, I’m going to try out typing in full sentences with proper punctuation. I may revert to my usual style later, maybe not.
At any rate, I’ve got exams to study for (that much hasn’t changed in three years).
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i do not want to be kept alive artificially in case of a severely debilitating injury
i also want my organs to be donated to where ever they’ll be necessary
(does this constitute a living will? wtf, mate)
sometime on march 8, the huge poster of malcolm x in my room fell
it’s right beside the poster of che guevara and above my bed
it fell behind the headrest of my bed
i haven’t had the time to put it back up
sometime on march 8, aslan maskhadov was killed by russian security services
he was the last elected president of chechnya, chechens have been embroiled in a bitter war for their independence from russian hegemony for the past ten years
sometime on march 8, i started wondering why so few people care
there are so many people, yet so many are apathetic, happy with the disinformation they receive and satisfied with the status quo that they can — one way or another — make better but simply refuse to
people who’ve lost their hope in positive action
and i’m honestly wondering why i care
i’m probably more cynical and angrier than most people i know, i don’t naively force myself to believe that waving a placard is going to change anything
but i do know that the less people that wave the placards and refuse to acquiesce to the status quo, the more we will lose our rights and rights to criticize the status quo
i can go through university, accumulate a huge student debt, but i can repay my debt after i graduate and move on with my life
so why do i give a shit about rising tuition fees?
why should i care if some poor guy looks at tuition fees as a barrier to education?
why should i care that someone who doesn’t get a decent job will have a harder time to repay the debt?
why should i care that someone who gets a low-paying job will effectively be saddled with a debt with gigantic interest rates that he’ll spend the rest of his life paying off?
i’m not going to be that fucker — so why should i care?
once i get a job, i’m sure my employer will provide me with decent health, and maybe even dental, coverage
so why do i give a fuck if healthcare is being privatized? let them do whatever they want to do as long as it doesn’t affect me
why should i care if some poor sap has to take out a loan from a bank to get his kid a life-saving operation?
so what?
why do i care?
why should i care?
can somebody, anybody, tell me why i should remain on the arts and science students’ union at the university of toronto and continue to insist that the administration treat students with respect and fairness?
why should i make plans to make the quality of education better for students? to get them involved? to provide better services for them? to make a tangible difference, regardless of how small it is?
why should i care?
why do i care about the fact that aslan maskhadov died? the people of chechnya have no relation to me, i don’t even know anyone from eastern europe, nevermind the caucasus
the chechens are dying and russian recruits are being suckered into a war?
so what? why do i care?
why do i even care about malcolm x?
he died forty years ago as a direct result of fighting for people, who, now, for all intents and purposes are in pretty much the same positions and don’t even give a fuck about themselves
why do i care?
why should i care?
why shouldn’t i just focus on maximizing any and all things i can do for myself? why shouldn’t i view life as a zero-sum game? why shouldn’t i not give a fuck?
adam once called me the “champion of lost causes” — fuck, if they’re all lost, why the hell should i give a shit?
why should i care?
today marks the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of malcolm x
forty years ago, malcolm was shot several times as he began delivering a speech
if malcolm were alive today he would be 79, about to turn 80 soon (in may)
there’s a lot i want to say but i don’t think i’ll be able to make a coherent statement anytime soon
malcolm x, el-hajj malik el-shabazz (may 19, 1925 – feb. 21, 1965)
rest in peace
here’s this great speech that spider-man made in amazing spider-man #135, published in august 1974 (written by gerry conway, illustrated by ross andru) — while and after he was fighting the tarantula, essentially a political assassin/terrorist/mercenary
one of my favourite quotations (it’s the last line) of all time comes up in this comic
Tarantula: Mockery? You dare mock me? Don’t you realize who — what — I am?
Spider-Man: Sure I do, buster — you’re a first class creep — a traitor to your own friends, men who were trying to free their people from a dictatorship — heroes whose boots you aren’t fit to shine!
You know something, “amigo” — it’s bums like you who give revolution a bad name.
Sick little criminals — who don’t give a hang about the cause they’re fighting for — who only care about themselves — and their own twisted egos.
Sure, I know who you are … and punk … so do you.
Punisher: That was quite a speech, my friend.
Spider-Man: Punisher…? When did you sneak up?
Punisher: Right after “heroes whose boots he isn’t fit to shine“. Do you believe all that, Wall-crawler? Are you truly that idealistic?
Spider-Man: Yeah, I’m idealistic — and I’ll stay idealistic until something better comes along.
(while he was making the “speech” he was wiping the floor with tarantula’s face)
daily dose of sanjeyan, as quoted by saqib:
ksnite says:
you know something … if you really pay attention, you can kind of notice that noaman is into spider-man — just kind of though…
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i got to the e.j.pratt library at about 10:00 am, as stated earlier it is probably the most aesthetic library on campus (next to gerstein) — for one thing, you actually get natural light coming in, as opposed to sitting in a fluorescent atmosphere that resembles a fort more than it does a library (although pratt looks like a pillbox from the outside)
i ended up catching up on homework (and i’m still not anywhere near done) till 10:00 pm, leaving the library twice — first to get that water english toffee and crappy boston cream then later to grab a sandwich from subway
so sometime later (after 10:00 pm) i enter the subway and i’m going eastbound — at yonge these rowdy black kids come in to the car (four rowdy girls and one laid-back guy)
from yonge to victoria park (when they sat down) the girls were jumping around and disrupting people, being ostentatious, singing songs (ashanti) and dancing … one girl went to the front of the car and did her beyonce impression as she walked forward
people got up and moved away from them, some people smiled and were kind of enjoying it
finally at warden station i got up and went up to them and told them that (apologizing to the crowd for the upcoming profanity), when i asked them a question they ought to say “they schools don’t teach us shit”
then i asked them “why haven’t you learned anything?”
and they more-or-less replied “they schools don’t teach us shit”
(that’s from a dead prez song)
i then asked them if they knew who malcolm x is and they responded loudly in the affirmative
i then asked them if they knew that forty years ago malcolm x was shot dead
that quieted them down, and i said, that’s right — they schools don’t teach you shit
that’s when a man came up to me and shook my hand and so did one of the girls
i asked if they knew who the dead prez are, and two of the girls said no — but the guy and a girl said yes so i gave them props for that
i then told them to listen to mc nomes, captain nomes, to me:
you put down virtue and you promote vice
then you turn around and say you’re for the passion of the christ
i don’t give a **** about the qur’an or the bible
as far as i’m concerned it’s the fittest who see survival
but drinking, smoking pot and shooting shit in your veins
that ain’t survival of any kind you’re just ****ing your brains
but the corporations love it ’cause they’re making big profit
and your mind is so gone it’s easier keeping you down in shit
and all the while you light up thinking you’re so revolutionary
but you’re just a dumb **** and you’re slowing the evolutionary process….
i ended off telling them to stay away from drugs, to stay in school and get an education because brother malcolm said “without education, you’re not going anywhere in this world” and that’s about when the train got to kennedy
i did all that without being patronizing or condescending, and at the end i got respect from the guy and the girls, and all those people who were at first put off by the rowdiness of the girls seemed to have gained some kind of awe for/wonderment about me (i was quiet the whole time until the train got to warden)
that’s what i would mark as the return of the ttc mc, and i think i’m going to look forward to doing more of it…
(the above entry is disjointed and lacking lucidity because i’m tired from over twelve hours of studying on little sleep)
and speaking of the subway, here’s today’s daily dose of sanjeyan:
ksnite says:
today, i was in the subway
nomes says:
how was it
ksnite says:
kinda tubey
with a (small) cup of (watery) english toffee and a boston cream donut (with barely any cream) in the basement of the (second?) most aesthetic library on campus (alone) in the (eternal) winter (of perpetual discontent) wondering why the hell don’t these chairs have lumbar support?