explain to me this

here's one thing i don't get: girls who purposely dress badly.  

i don't mean to sound like a snob here.  i completely understand if someone doesn't know how to dress or simply just doesn't care what they look like.  but there's a difference between wearing the same spandex and hoody every day and then wearing sweat pants overflowing out of a pair of uggs, with a matching sweat shirt over a t-shirt from mariah carey's 2001 world tour (on the t-shirt, mariah's bra top is done in rhinestones)--and the thing is, is that this is a true to life example.  and here's another thing: we live in montreal, downtown montreal, one of the most cosmopolitan and fashion-forward cities in the world (or at least in north america).  i acknowledge that this place--especially at mcgill and in my particularly alt-y major--has more than its fair share of purposefully anti-fashion hipsters.  but they are not purposefully dressing badly, they are thinking everything they put on.  even frumpy sweaters make a statement.

so i'm not talking about them, i'm talking about the girls that purposely dress to look like shit (excuse my bluntness).  and you know how i know it's purposeful?  because i've seen these girls going out a night and they definitely know what they're doing with their tiffany's charms and expertly belted dresses.  and then, the next day in class they're wearing a baseball cap and sweat pants with elastic cuffs around the ankle.  i mean, come on!  they know what they're doing...but why not show it?

why make the effort of dressing badly, when you can give the same (or less) of an effort to dress well?  it's not that hard to put on a sweater and jeans and a pair of boots (they can even be uggs if their not paired with too-big pants). 

the city isn't your living room and it deserves, and i think i do too, some acknowledgment that you care about what you put on your backs.  i know do you care, so stop trying to look like you don't.

redman in the gaels' nest

i'm not alone in saying that being a student at mcgill you are entitled to certain bragging rights, such as the fact that your fine institution boasts the highest entrance average (thank you, maclean's university issue and the hours i spent poring over it in grade twelve) and that you live in hands down the greatest city to party in Canada. so, this weekend when i went to tremblant - the same weekend that the queen's campus vacations trip was there - i thought that with my inner sense of redman pride i was able to make a few presumptions that would help me fit right in when hanging with the kingston crowd. i was not alone in these deductions - before departing on my weekend getaway my roommates assured me all i needed to do to fit in was rock sweatpants and be permanently enthusiastic about playing flip cup (side note: i am totally enthusiastic about flip cup, despite the fact that my unbounded excitement towards it usually results in me getting put to bed before 10pm. the thing i love best about going to queens is that i will inevitably and happily play multiple rounds of this beloved beer game, one that is not played nearly enough at mcgill). so, after a weekend of field work, i have decided to address some tales and truths about our closest university neighbours:


TRUTHS

1. queens kids start drinking at 8pm. i was sure to be showered and with my game face on by that hour, and, as predicted, brews were already flowing by the time i hit the first pre-drink at 8:30.
   
2. queens kids are undeniably obsessed with flip cup. sure enough, i could already hear the tell-tale ole ole ole chant before i even crossed the threshold.

TALES

1. sweatpants are the go-to apparel on most occasions. i obviously didn't expect gael girls to don them when going out, but i did take this notion to heart and purposefully dressed down more than i would when going out in montreal. unfortunately, my lumberjack shirt/ugg ensemble was showed up when i discovered most girls were wearing pretty going-out-style tops and suede boots.
   
2. when hanging with the queens crowd, everyone is your new best friend. yes, i was the random mcgiller who crashed the queens weekend, yes i was vulnerable and scared. sadly that did not cause people to welcome me with open arms, maybe because their hands were already full with the telltale opaque red cup. in any case, my social skills and i were forced to fend on our own.
   

if there's anything i learned this weekend it's that despite the fact that many of us like to agree that we go to the best school in the country, maybe we should ditch our enduring stigma and embrace that although mcgill is a great school, it's not the only great school. so, i learned my lesson that the next time i make the trip to k-town, or london-town, or any town, for that matter, i should leave my attitude at the door, grab a red cup, and join everyone else who, like me, are just university kids who want to have a good time.

sex and the single girl

over the past few weeks, my roommates and i have discovered a rather glaring fact about ourselves--that being the inordinate amount of time we spend discussing sex.  each of us is single, and perhaps with the lack of any real relationship we have moved from the topics of love and commitment and onto the more available world of physical attraction and satisfaction.  we have covered almost every base when it comes to this most human of actions--from the act itself, to whether we sleep naked after, to the right way to behave in the morning.  the category that we return to most, however, is the way in which we treat sex within our own peer group; the very, very casual nature with which it is acted upon by university students.  have we become disenchanted by sex?

i know that this is not a question for our male counterparts, for, as far as i know, sex remains the be all and end all of closeness.  i am the last to say that sex isn't enjoyable, but as put by one of my very wise roommates: are we really mature enough for this?  we are 20 years old, smart, funny, pretty (on most days), and we are able to laugh and chat about sex as though we are the characters on sex and the city.  perhaps we are the sex and the city generation: brought up in a society where an openness about our sex lives is not only welcome, but expected, and mistakes in judgement or a got-into-bed-with-him-too-early situation is to be learned from rather than condemned.  whether this means that we are more liberated or just plain irresponsible and careless, remains to be seen.  

as much as we talk about the issues of casualness and maturity when it comes to sex, i don't see any of this changing in the near future.  perhaps this isn't anything new and our parent's generation experienced the same thing as they emerged into adulthood.  in the meantime, i expect we'll continue to sleep with the same people without actually building a real relationship.  maybe i've got this all wrong though.  maybe it isn't the sex or the physical attraction that requires maturity, but the relationship.  but none of really seems ready or willing to move toward one of these rather rare and real connections, even though each of us have had multiple opportunities.  we shall see.  we shall see.

P.S. i think a bit of an apology is in order for our extended hiatus.  we have all been a bit busy with exams, and then holidays, and then enjoying the first few drunken weeks of semester.  but we are back now. hola

9021oh-no-you-didn't

when i found out a torontonian was going to star in greedy TV producers' latest attempt at re-creating a teen-targeted TV show that would rival the O.C. (a feat that can never be reached), for the first time, in a long time, i beamed a little with torontonian pride. who knew that one of the kids from degrassi: the next generation would actually get their big break and not end up working at the neighborhood blockbuster? (note: this is a fact. ryan cooley, aka j.t. yorke, offers his opinion to anyone who will listen about whether or not vince vaughan was funnier in anchorman or old school at the st. clair and yonge location.) upon watching the series premiere, however, my pride was soon diminished to nothing short of shame. it seemed like she was trying to overcompensate for the fact that she had little to no acting skills by adopting some sort of like, fake, like, valley girl accent and using silly, overly-dramatic facial expressions every time she discoverd something like, gasp ethan is totally cheating on naomi, and double gasp adrianna is totally addicted to coke!
what's worse, though, is that shenae apparently missed the memo that one cannot make up for lack of body weight in volume of hair. the media was quick to target shenae and her female 90210 costars for being too skinny. opting not to maintain an air of cool passivity, however, shenae didn't hesitate to give her two cents in the latest issue of people magazine. i was perfectly prepared to hear her out because maybe, as she claimed, she did indeed have a fast metabolism, and was emotionally distressed over the media claiming that her 5"3 100 pound frame warranted reason for her to have an eating disorder. that is, until i read: "they said my average weight when i'm healthy is apparently 120. i'm sorry, but 120 on my frame? i'd be a little chunky monkey walking around!"
...excuse me? all i can say is i hope her publicist gave her a swift slap on the face upon reading this ditty. luckily, i'm mature enough to ignore the fact that although a mere two inches taller than her, i do indeed weigh, gasp, 120 pounds, and take this comment with a grain of salt. however, the majority of 90210 viewers are most likely younger than i am, and as i would have done had i been in grade nine and read an article about mischa barton, shenae's words would most likely have hit way closer to home among younger audiences. there are already enough rail-thin bodies featured on every page of any given fashion magazine, and i'm sure shenae's words of anything-but-wisdom only worsened the situation.

the article concludes with none other than ms. grimes declaring: "my attitude is: this is what god gave you. rock it, dude!"
well, shenae, my attitude is this: go eat some ben and jerry's, dude.

to brighten your monday

you're welcome.

for lack of a more original title,...let it snow

almost a year ago today, i experienced my first montreal snow fall. of course, in true university fuck-work-anything-is-cause-for-celebration fashion, my friends and i proceeded to down bottles of 8 dollar white wine, dance to cheesy music, and those of us with the highest sense of adventure (coincidentally it was the same people who had consumed the most wine) risked hypothermia and went outside to build snowmen. six months later, my SAD in full swing, i couldn't have hated montreal winters more - i was tired of having a permanently bruised tailbone from one too many wipeouts on the way to class (followed every time by a silent cursing to the gods for the fact that there were no montreal by-laws enforcing sidewalk shoveling), staticky hair, and wearing winter coats that somehow make anyone look ridiculous. that being said, i never thought i'd see the day when i was actually WAITING for it to snow, but...here i am. if we're going to have sub-zero weather, mother nature may as well give us some snow sooner or later, no? i think i have this picture to blame for the fact that i have begun romanticizing my least favourite season of the year, but it's so darned PRETTY, how could you not get excited for snow?
until then, i'm going to keep up my winter habits that i've only recently begun: drinking copious amounts of hot chocolate, reveling in the tacky-yet-endearing christmas decorations at department stores, and listening to "ice skating" from the charlie brown soundtrack on OCD repeat. i mean...it couldn't hurt, right?

uh, hello?!?

i came across this photo and couldn't help but think how ridiculous it was.  it is a part of this very informative article from the new york times.  in the article the writer talks about about how there is a build up of foreign cars in the ports of southern california because demand for the vehicles have lessened so much.  it's the economy, they say.  

now, i am as aware as the next person that the economy is in trouble.  and i'm sure that this is why there is an excess of cars simply sitting, not even in an attempt to be sold, in acres of parking lot in the ports of SoCal.  it is the economy, after all, that is causing us all to take a look at out pocketbooks and think about whether or not we can afford one more vehicle that, even after we have paid for the lease and the insurance, we must then feed with ever-expensive gas.  but then again, lets think about what else we're paying for with these oh-so-necessary vehicles of transportation--oh right, global warming; oh right, the environment.

as bad as it sounds, maybe this crash in the economy is what we need.  here's what the auto industry should take from this photo: people can't afford brand new cars.  GM's struggle to stay afloat should tell the government not that they need a bail out, but that the industry needs to start focusing their attention on something that doesn't take gallons of oil to run and doesn't spew tons of carbon dioxide.

i will now step down from my environmentalist soap box.