Master of the Slippery

I want that printed on my tombstone.

Why you ask? Yes, yes you did ask why, so now I am answering you. You didn't say why? Well too bad, I'm answering you anyways! Ahem, because I am, indeed, the master of the slippery. For some reason I am a much better driver in the winter than I am in perfectly clear weather. As most of you know, I enjoy speeding down the road as my life flashes before my eyes with every lane change I make. Honestly, my heart races when I drive. It must be the adrenaline that I love. So yes, I drive very well in the winter. I make sure I keep my distance and have plenty of time to stop. I don't make daring moves, turns, or lane changes that could alter my life drastically if something were to go wrong. Also, our car's front tires are......crappy, so I can't rely on them to get me anywhere. The other night I picked my brother up from his new job (hahahaha I know! He works! It's a miracle. Visit him at No Frills in the produce section a knock over a few banana stands) and I was driving fairly slow down the side streets to my house and he says in a snarly tone, "Why are you driving so slow?" So I reply sweetly, "Because it's slippery dearest brother". He says, "Pffttt it's not slippery. You're just slow!" So, being the wonderfuly loving and bestest sister ever, I slam on my brakes and sharply turn onto our street, and as we head for the lonely little tree on the corner I can see the look of terror in his eyes well up. Of course I start laughing and correct the car and continue on our slow, yet merry little way down the quaint little street and arrive safely to our immaculate estate.

So I exagerrated a bit....sue me! Wait, Joel, is that possible??? Hmmm I must watch what I say on here...it's in writing, might be taken literally. Anyways, today I was stopped at an intersection behind this dude and his chick girlfriend in their crappy little standard and the light turns green and he's not moving. (Keep in mind I had spent 45 minutes driving from King's to Masonville, a drive that takes 5 minutes in nice weather). So I was worried that I wouldn't make the light because it's the shortest ever, so I honked at him because he wasn't moving at all or doing anything. His chick friend gets mad and starts waving her hands at me, meanwhile I'm laughing my head off because his stupid car can't get through the intersection. He finally gets going and I proceed to go, but lo and behold! I get stuck! I'm thinking, "oh crap! They're going to laugh and do one of those 'I told you so' things. I better get out of here!" So I put my foot to the floor and take off like mad around the corner, using the snow to and ice to keep my momentum. It was awesome! It was like a scene you would see in a movie. I couldn't help but smile at my amazing ability to maneouvre around the corner.

Anyways, that's all for now. Goodnight!

Jokes are funny when you're the instigator

hahahaha oh man. In astronomy today, the guy beside me was kind of bored and he had a remote for his laptop. So, being the genius that he is, he was trying to shut off this girl's laptop two rows in front of us but her body/arm was blocking the sensor on her laptop. So after like 10 minutes, she finally leaned back and stretched in her chair and he took the opportunity, pointed, pressed, and zap! There goes her laptop's power! Oh wow, it was hilarious! The look on her face, the expressions of the people around her, it was all too perfect! The four of us (sitting in the back row) were trying so hard not to laugh out loud. It was one of those turn around and smother your face in your arm kind of laughs. The girl beside me though, she didn't find it very funny. Come on! Lighten up.....it's funny! The only reason it was so side-splitting was because the girl wasn't typing out notes or anything. She was just using the internet to look at the professor's notes online. If it had of been someone actually typing out notes, then I would feel really bad. But since it wasn't, it's hilarious! Oh, and as a warning, I was talking to the guy and he said that he walks through the library and shuts off peoples laptops.......so those of you with one, protect your sensors.

I found a telescope in my basement today! That's exciting considering I'm in astronomy. My brother left it behind when he moved out and so now it's miiiiiiine!!! Muahahaha. But, with this snow and all, it makes it quite difficult to see the stars. Speaking of snow.....I love it! It's so fluffy and seasony. Anyways, I believe that is all for today. I left for dinner and now I lost my train of thought, so I shall end this! Good day.

Oh, I almost forgot! My parking attendant is leaving!! :( Man, no more free parking for me. This sucks. He would always give me free parking, but now he's moving to another parking lot, and alas, I am left to pay the fees. You will be missed. (hehehehe)

Fire is Fun

So I went away this weekend up to Brockville to visit my boyfriend. You'll get a kick out of this one.......his name is Nathan :P Funny, eh? Anyhoo, yes, he lives in Brockville and for those of you who don't know where that is, it's 6 hours away. I must say, distance sucks and is extremely difficult, but neither of us are willing to give up at all, and I think that makes it all the better. Do you want the story? Ahhh I'm reluctant to share, but here goes:

I met Nathan back during the Christmas holidays when Michelle (my bestest friend in the whole wide world) invited me out with some people from her Bible college (Summit). We talked for awhile and then I went home and that was it for 6 months. Then back in June, he came down to hang out with Michelle and Stark (a guy also from Summit) and so the four of us went out for the night and did random things. At the very end he asked for my e-mail address (actually Stark did because he was too shy.....awwww) and we've talked everyday since. Then back at the end of September, I went up to his house for his brother's wedding ('cause he invited me) and that weekend, we decided to "date" for lack of a better word. So there you go, there's the story with very little detail and such.

Anyways, this past weekend (Thursday-Sunday) I went up to visit him 'cause he came down here the last couple times. So yes, it was a great weekend, despite the fact that I got sick and ended up taking some gravol and sleeping for 3.5 hours on Saturday.....so that sucked. But we did lots of random things....like drive to Kingston for no apparent reason, which was fun. Man, people are dangerous on the 401! I was doing close to 140km/h and this girl was right on my butt. I was surpised because you shouldn't even ride that close in the city. If I had of slammed on the brakes, or even stopped a little bit for that matter, she would have been through my trunk and it was a rental car, too. So on to why my blog is titled as it is. We're both kind of pyros, so we had this great idea to do random things with fire. So we went down to a campsite and used the firepit there. Since it's fall though, we had to clear away all the leaves around the area, just to be safe. He had 1000 matches and so grounded up the heads of them into a powder and filled a film canister with them, then took a rag and soaked it in paraphine oil and lit it as a fuse. It made this pretty sweet fireball! Then we chucked a lighter in the fire and it exploded. Don't worry, we stood back far enough not to die! We poured some paraphine oil on the fire and that created some heat! It was cool because the fire would swirl around the inside of the pit and looked like the actual pit was on fire. It was really neat. Then we also took a lighter and unscrewed the top of it, then took another lighter and lit the first one on fire and once it burned far enough down, it would create this massive stream of fire and you could throw it and then it would look like a streak of fire through the air. I think that's all we did. At any rate, fire is fun!

So, my train left at 11:48am on Sunday and I almost missed it! Literally, I jumped on and then they shut the door and left. It was a close one at that. So our goodbye was extremely short. It's always difficult to come back to reality and hate that. I had a 2.5 hour lay over in Toronto, so that sucked because I was feeling like crap. I walked around the underground city a bit and that quickly ended since I was carrying all my stuff. Everyone thinks that Union Station is overwhelming and intimidating. I don't find that though. I don't know why. I don't think it's too big or anything. It's entertaining because it gives you something to do while waiting, whereas in London all you can do is sit and watch that little TV screen of Touched by an Angel, or good ol' David Suzuki. Anyways, I must be off.

The Gray Zone

For Social Justice and Peace Studies (SJP) we had to read an article called The Gray Zone by Primo Levi. He states that in Nazi Germany during WWII in the concentration camps, there is no clear defining line between persecutors and victims. Here's a little history for you:

While the Jews and others who were hearded into these concentration camps had to endure the horrendous conditions and many ultimately faced starvation, some were also forced to kill their fellow Jews, gypsies, etc. Within, they had these Special Squads (SS) who were the ones doing the mass killings. At first, they mainly consisted of the Nazis, but soon, they were comprised of Jews with the supervision of the Nazis. What the Nazis did was they carefully examined the prisoners and then picked the most vulnerable and the ones they thought were likely to collaborate and do what the Nazis told them. So essentially, the idea behind this was to dehumanize the Jewish people even further to the point where they were willing to kill themselves. Now members of the SS were segregated from the rest of the prisoners and were kept away from the ouside world as well. The purpose for being in such a position was A) it bought a little more time, allowing a glimpse of hope for survival, and B) there were certain privileges such as getting a little bit more to eat than other prisoners (emphasis on little because it would only amount to maybe a ladel more soup, if that, and if you can call it soup).

The members of the SS were utlimately killed every so often. Meaning they would have one SS, and then a week later (that's just my number...it's not specified in the article) a second SS was formed who would go in and kill the first SS in order to keep confidentiality and to prevent witnesses from later telling of the events that took place.

So, where does the gray zone come in? Well the gray zone is neither the victims nor the persectors. The gray zone consists of those who began as the victims, but turned into the persecutors (so basically the Jews who were members of the SS). Levi says that we cannot judge them because no one knows what they would do in that situation. Well, I'm going to go ahead and say that I really don't think I could knowingly kill hundreds of people just to survive. Not with this kind of knowledge at least. Death would seem much sweeter than the mere chance of survival, and if in fact I did escape death, the emotional, psychological, mental, etc. distress that I would have to live with afterwards. It just does not seem worth it. Granted, yes, this is speaking from the comfort of my bedroom and my secure little world.

Looking at this from an apodictic moral standpoint, one would conclude that it does not matter, they killed another human being, and not by accident either; it was purely for personal gain. But, I think that this whole situation should be looked at more casuistically. Desperation pretty much erodes any sense of moral judgement. Who can say what they would do in that situation? Man, just thinking about the inhumane things these people witnessed on a daily basis while being subjected to the murder of their fellow beings, it's inconceivable. Not to mention being forced out of your home for things that were pretty much inherent. "I was born Jewish, or I have brown hair, or darker skin, therefore I must die". Gee, that doesn't seem very uplifting. Being Jewish, I'm sure they were wondering where God was in all of this. Therefore their whole basis for morality was probably thrown right out the window and survival was the main focus of the collectives in the Lagers (as Levi calls them).

I'm still not sure where I stand on this whole issue. Whether they can be catagorized as victims, or persecutors, or if Levi is on to something with this gray zone, I'm not sure. I'm leaning towards agreeing with Levi, but it is still difficult to ignore that they did have a choice. But then on the other hand, their whole construction of the world had been severed and then reconstructed to form this sick and twisted reality that was created for them. I don't know. The whole thing is rather disturbing and it is hard to conceive that human beings, people that share 99.9% of the same genes as us, were brutalized in this way, including every other mass genocide, ethnic cleansing or whatever other label is put on human destruction.

It's November?

This is just a quick one today. The weather is simply awesome and it makes me so happy I just had to say something about it!! That's right, so if you're inside right now reading this, go outside! For those of you who are more fortunate with your laptops, I suggest sitting outside, as long as you have wireless that is. You're probably wondering why I am inside and not enjoying it right now as well. I have waaaaay too much work to catch up on, and I am wasting time at this very moment. Oh well! Man, if my dad didn't take our camera on his trip, I'd post a picture of it. The trees around my house are all yellow and it looks awesome against the back drop of a perfectly blue sky. Usually we have at least one day where it's snowed, but not this year! I wish that it would snow for all of December just to get into the whole feeling of Christmas (yes, I know it has nothing to do with the true meaning of Christmas, but I still like the seasony feeling of it all) and then once that's over, it would all melt and be nice again! But alas, taking astronomy, I know how the seasons work, and it's definitely not that way. Anyways, I need to go write an essay for Religious Studies since I won't have time 'cause I'm away this weekend!! Whoohoo!! :) Goodbye!

P.S. My dad called yesterday and he said he woke up to pouring snow in Colorado! Ha ha sucker! :P (I'm such a loving daughter!!)