Cape Breton. The Paradox of Emotion. Love to Hate it.

I don't grasp it, but it seems all the fundamentals of deviance and low employment rates are what people often base their low opinion on the island, but ironically aside from the employment issues, those same deviant social factors play in not just the island's communities, but practically almost any town or city.

It's as if we vent to help nullify our feelings, but only for a short period of time before all the negativity manifests again. Did you ever think you are the very cause of the negativity? You are what you eat as they might say and being negative in general about something almost unavoidable seems a tad absurd to me.

The island isn't perfect, but nowhere is. So take a deep breath and think about the rest of the world before you decide to voice your thoughts. (I'm not singling out opinion, but I just feel similar to Plato on this one and that is: "Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance and unfortunately ignorance seems heavily weighted against knowledge).

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"The world is round, my square don't fit at all."

It’s 5:22 am, cold, damp, and insomnia is in the air. It’s just insomnia and my thoughts running rampant on this wild Wednesday. Can you sense the sarcasm? 5 am and I’m writing. You certainly are a wild one George. I’m writing out of this hidden passion I had within me all this time, but it just took a moment to realize it. A moment to understand that without that sense of chaos, lack of responsibility, and arguably good times that were quite mischievous all had their purpose. Experience. Oh how ironic the first thought that comes to mind is Jimi Hendrix’s fantastic album Are you experienced? It seems to me that this has a sudden meaning to me and it was hidden behind plain sight just like my passion for writing.

It’s funny how sleep works. You know you need it, you want it for the most part, but for some of us it’s just out of arms reach. Why is that? Is it because I have lived a life of 3 years into mischievous late night drinking? I don’t know. I feel if that were the case I should have some utter brief moments of what I can only imagine an acid flashback; only driven by the booze. What is it? Is it a phase? Do I come back to grips with the rest of the worlds and awake and write rather than be awake and write. Whatever the case I’m sure like my hidden hobby. It will make sense.

So what was I doing with the past 4-5 hours? Sleeping? If only that were the case, instead I lay down in my bed rolling around awaiting for that sudden blank moment. The moment you escape reality only to be given one of three worries. Do I dream? Is it a nightmare? Or is it just plain natural sleep? Of course we don’t ponder these questions when were about to sleep. Thoughts run rampant in a circle of mixed emotion. Interesting as it may be I found myself watching Almost Famous. I never really was watching it for more than the first 20-25 minutes. The rest of the time I’m rolling around trying to sleep, but just putting dialogue to pictures in my mind. I guess you could say I was day dreaming in an odd way, but it was interesting. I guess it’s why I feel so compelled to write right now. It’s like the character Lester tells Wayne. I would just take speed and write dribble all night, 25 pages, but just to write. I find myself more and more moving my time around to write and I’m not talking about university academic papers. That writing is different; it lacks emotion and is just so primal.

Morale of this post if I even dare indulge that my writing offers such a thing is whatever it is you like to do, do it. Don’t wait for some universal time where the world stops, be spontaneous and do what you want, when you want. It’s coming off too much of that horrendous fad YOLO so for sake of consideration for my own self-respect and dignity; think carpe diem. That is classier and more intellectually appropriate. Another topic for another sleepless night, until then…

Look closer…

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Bioshock Infinite First Impressions

Wow, I can't believe I'm actually taking the time to write up a quick first impression post on the game because I am marvelled at how beautiful and cinematic this game is.

If you love visually stunning games: Bioshock Infinite wants you.

If you love engrossing cinematic experiences alongside your gaming: Bioshock Infinite wants you.

If you love enriching detail, lavishing environments alongside gruesome yet spectacular audio: Bioshock Infinite wants you.

I look forward to doing a much larger post covering numerous aspects about the game and being able to full touch on my impressions on the whole story in the near future

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Mr. Pink and South Korea

Mr. Pink and South Korea? No this is not a Reservoir Dogs reference!

It's 7:30 am and I've had about approximately 2 hours sleep. These past few days have been rancid for me as I have been sick, bed ridden and isolated. I was recently diagnosed with tonsillitis, which is not a surprise, not bad, but not good either. I mean come on! Who really wants to spend their weekend in bed sick or almost half a day at a hospital emergency room? None the less it's fine and over with. I am on a 10 day regiment where I will consume 15 000 mg of the medical miracle drug: Amoxicillin. 

You're probably reading thinking? Wait what is the title referring to? This overtired goon is just speaking about his rotten weekend and his current ailments, but it's actually ironic as the sickness, and free time to think that really led me to what I want to discuss: Teaching English abroad, specifically South Korea. 

I have spent the past 2 hours reading blogs and gaining insight to the world of teaching on the other side of the globe and it fascinates me. The opportunity to teach students my language while taking in a whole new culture, seeing a new world and experiencing basically a new life in my eyes. I think it's best as I come from a very clouded past. I am currently a full-time student enrolled in university just finishing up my first year of my English major undergrad and the path I intend to take is professional studies to pursue an education degree down the road. I gave thought into the idea of just doing the undergrad and even as I'm finishing in that year of April to jump right back into school for the education degree the following month, but I realize there are certain things in life that remain important and unanswered. Experiencing life in another perspective to better understand myself and others in regards to culture, tradition in addition to building teaching experience. It's overall a win-win for me in my eyes, but I can see how it's not for everyone and for the sake of an extremely broad discussion I'll leave that to the imagination and comments section below.

Currently I am enrolled in an sociology course with an even more lovely professor who engages my train of thought in everyday life in our current society. It's as if I have been opened into a whole new realm of how to look at life, culture, tradition, functions and just a large assortment of things we deal with in our everyday life that we manifest and might not give a moment to critically analyse. I think alongside this study of English and a larger portion of my electives being from the disciplines of sociology and folklore has brought new eyes to my daily life. Having said all of this what I am really getting at is that this plan of mine to teach abroad in the near future is going to be rewarding to me in not just terms of travelling, but also keeping in mind these fundamental ideas and thoughts I have learned from both disciplines. I think it's giving me a more broad range of what to expect in this idea cultural shock and be able to turn something that some might think is a negative(ethnocentrism, and I'm not saying anyone is guilty of this, just stating it's not harsh to assume some think our way of life is the only way of life), into something very rich and meaningful. 

As I sit writing in my early morning chills and robe I honestly am just envisioning the actual prospective future of mine and where I've come from these past years. It's astonishing what we are capable of and how we take things for granted each and everyday and how through life experiences one slowly can start seeing themselves building into where they belong. That difficult sense of clarity we all strive for in our daily lives. It's out there, just look closer...

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Ideology.

I think of ideology and almost immediately fear and government is flashed within my head. I think there comes a point when the way that we are brought up through and within the education system, church, being morale and an upright citizen is all part of a long process of the government to formalize for a consumption based life. Ironically we are consumers in sense of nature, but there comes a point when consuming for survival meets consuming by means of no purpose, but to fulfil society’s means. I’m not saying we are brainwashed, but it’s so evident and clear in my mind that politics, supply and demand and consumption is so important for the government.

How do they achieve this? It’s simple, the governments greatest tool, fear. Fear comes in many forms in this sense. One example being a personal example I experienced in a school in Ontario as a young grade 6 elementary student. A police officer came within the school and did a presentation for the grade 6 students speaking of drugs, alcohol and sexual activity. I remember him literally speaking very harshly about these, and in terms of if you use drugs or exploit alcohol you will amount to nothing and go down this rotten path. There is another example that seems to be a norm of society is if you don’t get the A’s in school or pass this course you’re going to fail and go down a similar road of failure and amount to nothing. This does not relate to the consumption aspect of my ideology, but the fear aspect. It’s a example that we are hard wired that if we don’t do this, we will become something negative, these threats that are abstract and absurd. I didn’t excel in 90’s within high school, but I sure as hell am not going onto some foul path that it would seem I was destined for according to these statements.

The fear and consumption aspect comes into play when we are talking about Y2K for example. This big scare because of someone’s lack of entering a few numbers into the computer is going to cause the whole world to go in a catastrophic chaos. What did we as a whole for the majority do? We consumed and what happened on 12:00am, January 1st 2000? Nothing, what a coincidence? Did they just effectively imposed fear to employ consumption. There’s also the idea that the media is just a mass tool to reach out to the world to impose this fear. The media has such a massive influence on what we do or think. This is taken directly and quoted from Marilyn Manson in the Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine:

“Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to fuck you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that’s what I think it’s all based on, the whole idea of ‘keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.’” (Bowling for Columbine)

I think this is completely true, but in terms how I thought before when I would have felt indoctrinated by the media was I would simply agree with the media. It had to be correct right? It’s how we were culturally brought up to believe in certain aspects of life. It’s thanks to my love of film for opening my mind to research this amongst myself and my friends thought’s on how it pertained to them.

Works Cited:

Michael Moore. Dir. Michael Moore. Per. Marilyn Manson, Alliance Atlantis Films, 2002, Film. DVD.

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