Efficiency

So, I'm taking my Bachelor's of Education and at the lecture our prof is talking about efficiency and how it was the biggest thing in the Industrial Revolution. It was so big, in fact, that the concept of efficiency flooded all aspects of life, including how teachers teach their students. Given this comparison, our class was outraged. How can people treat children as if they are machines to be made?

The simple fact is that we don't. The word "efficiency" has been demonized in our heads. We immediately understand "efficient" as being inhumane and wrong. I find it funny/sad how so many degree holding people can be so reactionary. They're probably all Slap Chop owners, too, not to mention the storage rooms full of Oxy Clean (even I felt Billy Mays had more authority than most professors).

O, what a glorious world we now live in now that we are enlightened! No longer are we subjects of the evil system of efficiency, nor must we suffer the anguish of mustard stains!

The problem is that efficiency is not a bad thing. It's a concept. Concepts are never entirely bad.
What about fascism? Hey, I'm all for democracy of sorts, but wouldn't you agree that being a fascist when it comes to something like flushing after you shit that fascism is a good thing? Shouldn't we all be shit-flush fascists? Say that five times fast.

Efficiency is no different. Yes, we should not treat children like brain jars that we need to pour knowledge into as quickly as possible. But that is assuming the formula for educational efficiency is curriculum covered/curriculum available, or even just proportional to the students' final grades (answers correct/total questions asked). No one seems to be capable of imagining the formula {[sum of the change of lifelong knowledge (learning)/number of children]/time}, or, to put another way, how much learning you can evoke in how little time.

Let me give you an example. Most people in my program take the concept of efficiency and disregard it as evil, suggesting instead "quality of quantity." Now, imagine yourself in a class of 30 students. A teacher could certainly take the time to teach each child in the classroom the lesson of the day in a unique style that would cater exactly to that student's learning style. Who can argue that this would not yield a greater quality of education? But, as anyone can plainly see, this strategy of teaching each individual child on their own is ___________.

If you said "stupid" I have to agree with you, but you're not quite there yet. If you said, "tha gr8est idea evar!!!1!!" I have to ask you to politely go fuck yourself (and yes, there are seriously people like that). If you said "inefficient" well then I guess I've made my point.

If you're still unclear about something I've covered in today's blog, please, come see me after class.

People I Hate Part 10

Hipsters.

I hate hipsters so much that it puts World War 2 into a whole new perspective. Just replace "Jew" with "Hipster" and I'm pretty much on board.




The real problem is, it's only going to get worse. We're losing the war here, cool 90's kids. Kids these days just don't understand that no amount of consumer whoring (and yes, when you only buy organic foods and fair trade coffee, you're still a consumer whore since a. those are niche markets that exist because hipsters are willing to pay through the nose for the social stigma and b. you still wear $300 of trendy brand name clothes) is going to make you an awesome person. You've gotta be awesome all on your own. That's what makes a timeless good dude.

My message to the kids today is this: The funkiest disco king is now your orthodontist.

A limited access to the internet

I would blog more if I could blog from anywhere. It seems like 140 characters is too short for a complex thought, but sometimes I have complex thoughts while I'm at work (sometimes). I think it feels weird to write a blog post on a piece of paper and then transcribe it to the internet later. It kind of loses the point of what most blogs are about: venting on the internet.

I don't think I'm alone on this, but I feel like the future isn't coming fast enough. There hasn't been a scientific development where our generation has been able to say "no fucking way!" Maybe we're spoilt, and when something comes up like a touch screen handheld media player that can access an entire world of information from satellites we only think "hey, neat" or "if I don't have that I will be unpopular." Sometimes, I'll admit, we can really sit down and be wowed by the world we live in, but for the most part, where the fuck is my reliable voice-to-text app that will let me remotely update my blog from my lunchtime musings? Or a printer that can withstand more than the movement of it's own printer head without breaking, for that matter.

Right of Way

I don't mind the guy who didn't slow down for my while I was crossing the street. I don't mind the guy who zips just past me as I'm stepping up on the curb. I don't mind the guy who pulls into the intersection while I'm crossing to save his spot. What I do mind is the guy who stopped at the stop sign for me, waited until I was almost across the street, then decided to drive directly towards me anyway. Let me draw you a very shitty diagram.
Seriously. He waited until I was almost finished and then accelerated directly toward me. A half a stride behind and he would have hit me. Some people are just plain motherfuckers.

Well Shit, I'm Old

It just hit me the other day that I am old. I don't need a wheelchair or a colostomy bag, I don't need to watch my diet and get plenty of walks, but I am officially old.

To put it in another way, the world is progressing past me. It's the beginning of being left behind before the inevitable end where you are nothing but a memory. It occurred to me when I was looking for music on the radio. I don't want "Today's #1 Hits" or "Calgary's Hottest New Music" because all that shit is terrible! I look for 80's rock, or usually some sort of grab-bag like Jack has music from the 90s as well. A few days ago at work I switched it to classical because I didn't want to listen to Chad Kruger doing a remix with Nelly featuring R. Kelly and Lil' Wayne about growing up in a small town a missing girls who fuck like panthers but had emotional problems that he overlooked because he has financial wealth. That, ladies and gentlemen, pretty much sums up what new music is and why I hate it.

So, that's it. My days of being a youth are numbered. No more will my generation be defined as a culture of the current music. We are those who stand fast at the edge of the millennium and look out at the musical wasteland. Beneath the shrill cries of underaged girls we breathe;

"Kids these days..."

The Internet: TV of Our Times

Our children will be defined unlike ourselves. Where we define ourselves from the decade that influenced us the most at the youngest age, our children will be defined by the state of the Internet. Children may one day be recognized by association to a meme. In their teenage years they will regale the wonders of yesteryear that were the events almost self propagated by the Internet; because when you think about it, our children will be the Internet. They will be the creators, moderators, lovers, innovators, and, God willing, destructors of the Internet.

Mankind: A Million Years of Luck and Survival by Fisher Price

So, my younger brother is having a baby. We've been doing renovations and decking out the house with stuff and places for the baby. While I was at the grocery store my mom pointed out how gigantic the baby stuff section is. It covers 80% of the wall, two aisles thick.

My first thought here was, "how the fuck did mankind ever survive without all this crap?" What did we do before $30 baby pillows and $40 baby outfits and $60 baby toys and $300 baby boxes?

$300?! For a baby box?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what I'm talking about, break it down a minute.

It's a box. A box that you put your baby in. You slept in one, I slept in one. I think they call them cribs, but I'm pretty sure that's what gangstas call houses. And they seem to cost just as much. It's like a scale version of a house with equally scaled cost, only you don't get a yard or bathrooms or outlets because your baby isn't an equally scaled version of a person.

My point is that for $300 I'm going to make my own fucking baby crate! I don't remember the one I grew up in and neither do you. And if you do, you certainly didn't care that it was $300.

I think a lot of people scoff at the cheapness of that plan, as if it were unthinkable that someone would put a baby in a non-professionally handcrafted wooden cage. Perhaps the precision engineering yields to the child superior growth and mental ability. Perhaps its finely tuned aesthetic design that has been passed down for generations soothes the child into a more restful state. Perhaps they imbue the very materials with ancient magicks in the factory which can never be replicated. Or perhaps it's just an overpriced box that you keep your kid in until you have to throw it out because your kid needs a bed in a few years.

The Oracle at Wendy's

So, I went to Wendy's for dinner tonight. The girl at the till was cute, efficient, and very friendly. That in and of itself made the visit memorable.

I sat down in one of the lonesome corners of the restaurant to eat. From across the restaurant I heard a voice say, "I know him. I know him."

I was amused and wondered if perhaps I was known by someone in the dining area. I didn't know anyone, but maybe someone knew me. Perhaps, I thought, someone knew me without ever meeting me before. Perhaps someone was telepathic.

I always liked the idea of someone being telepathic. The idea that someone can know you inside and out and you have no control over it is both scary and refreshing. Secrets are like life in that sense. Sure, you should protect them, but you can't stop a telepath any more than you can stop the Grim Reaper. So why not think your thoughts? Why not communicate via your brain. It's not like it's embarrassing, because either no one is telepathic and you're just thinking, or someone is telepathic and you're communicating with them.

So I thought to myself,'What if he knew my name? Maybe he could be telepathic. Maybe that's how he knows me. Give me a signal if you know me. Give me a message that you understand. Give me some sort of sign.'

Nothing. We all continued to eat.

My mind moved on. I was texting around and having some laughs. And in the middle of a text, I hear a child nearby say 'goodbye.' It was the voice who knew me. Right there at the edge of my table was this 6-year old child who walked across the restaurant away from his family to say goodbye to me and no one else. I smiled and said goodbye to him too. He said to me, "My friend is in black car," in the way that children tell you the important things in their life, like "I'm real good at soccer," or "I have a Batman;" they have the calmest enthusiasm ever. I didn't understand, so I asked him where his friend was again.

"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"He's in black car."

That's when his slightly older sister came to collect him. The boy refused to leave, his tiny hands locked onto the edge of the table. He just looked at me. As brief as the moment had been the moment ended when his mother called from the aisle that it was time to stop bothering the nice man.

"Bye."

I know it sounds ominoius and eerie, but it didn't sound like that at the time. He was just talking in the wonderfully happy, matter-of-fact kind of way that young children do. But why me? Why from all the way across the room? I never even acknowledged him when he said he knew me.

I don't know who is in the black car, but that's the sign.

They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To -or- Kids These Days

So, I was watching a bit of this movie, Born Free, with my mom while I was eating dinner and we were at this part where they are trying to introduce a captive lion back into the wilderness. The wild male lion roars. The captive female lion roars. The male lion roars again. The lioness roars back. The male lion roars some more. The female lion- well, you get the point.

Now, this is where my mother and I disagree. I said that they have learned a lot about making movies since 1958. My mother says that it's just because we kids have no attention span. I think it has nothing to do with attention spans, but rather the conduction of information. If you want to convey that the lions roar at each other for quite some time, you have a shot of each of the lions roaring followed by a wide shot of both lions roaring with the sun in the background. Dissolve to later where the sun is lower on the horizon. Cut back to the couple in the jeep and start the dialogue of them giving up. Seriously, a 5 minute scene from 1958 consisting of at least a dozen straight back-and-forth cuts would today be replaced with 30 seconds, 3 cuts and a dissolve.

And it's not that I'm uninterested in what is happening, but rather that the marvel of on-location cinema is no longer wonderous on its own. It is much the same way a portrait is neat, but no longer compelling in this day and age. Art has progressed past the marvel of simple replication.

Though I wonder if perhaps one day children will scoff at the backwardness of the films of my day. They almost certainly will, and I will almost certainly defend my time.

Life's Too Long or Do Venetians Dream Of Idaho?

A lot of people claim that life is too short to not do things. Ten Places You Have To See Before You Die. Fifteen Things You Have To Do Before You Die. Thirty-Seven Flavours To Taste Before You Die. Eight Types Of Yoga To Eternal Peace (That You Have To Do Before You Die).
Okay, I understand that the modern world has a lot to offer. But what I don't understand is why you have to do it all. Is your life worth less by not doing all these things? Were 18th century Europeans at a loss for never seeing the tremendous flatness of Saskatchewan? Were 15th century Chinese not living life to their maximum potential by not visiting Tokyo? Were 20th century citizens of the world not living their lives to the maximum potential because they had not circumnavigated the globe? Will people of the 21st century be scoffed at while telling their tales of not going to the moon? Where does it end? Why can't we live where we live and be happy with that?

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for exploring, but why do you need to see the things that you think you need to see because people tell you that you need to see the things that they've seen? That's not exploring. That's following orders. That's being obligated to "not waste you short life." It's bullshit.

What doubles this bullshit is the idea that a family will restrict your ability to experience this "exploration" which people claim is synonymous to life. Since when did watching the transformation of the cultures and topographies through the window of a tour bus become a greater marvel than nurturing a child of your own blood from infant to self reliant human being? Since when did studying the details in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel become more spectacular than watching your own child laugh and live and learn and love. Since when is seeing the Colosseum from a different perspective than the postcards more spectacular than seeing a child's development from the perspective of a mother or father?

My traditional argument is that not having children is selfish. You were a child once. Your parents spent uncountable hours and sums of money raising you. They poured themselves, their hearts and their minds, their very souls into you, and you refuse to pay it forward? How can you refuse to love a child the way that you were loved as a child? But that's not what I'm arguing here.

What I'm arguing is that having children is self-fulfilling and people don't seem to get that. People seem to think that when they're 50, they can still be the spirit of the twenty-something they used to be. They believe that the adventures can never die as long as you don't move beyond your "ideal" age. This Peter Pan notion that we can exist in one state forever is absurd. We change. That is a fact that has been proved by the dozens of photo albums of your past. Go ahead and look. Remember how you used to do your hair? Remember what you used to think was fashionable? Remember your ex? Remember how that seemed like such a good idea?

Yeah, but I'm older now. It's different.

It's not fucking different. You will grow older. You will change. You will never ever be the same. This is the rule of growth. You grow up, you grow old, you grow out. And life is simply too long to have your game plan be "stay 27 forever." You will see the world and you will perform Dhalsimian yoga. You will have a million stories that fall upon deaf ears because your middle aged friends are more concerned about their child's first end-of-year dance and your middle aged friends that pretend they'll be 27 forever are off experiencing the unique flavours of Turkmenistan. Maybe that's the life for you. I'll never understand how someone could be so excited about seeing new things, but never venture into experiencing a crucial aspect of life that is entirely foreign until you commit to it. I think people that feel they need to see the world are as much afraid to take the step from life to death as they are to take the step from child to parent.

It's time to come to terms with life.

Hats

I wanted to get a picture for you, but I took a picture of the girl by the ghost stairs instead. Then the guys actually accused me of taking a picture of them. Them, whom this post is about, were sterling examples of how and how not to wear a hat.

The man closest to me chose to wear the hat on his head in the traditional manner. The man to his right chose to wear the hat 4 inches above his head in what may be an 'I don't care what you think' fashion which, in my opinion, conveys strong the message of 'I'm a twat.'

Once I figure out how to send myself pictures (and if it is covered in my contract*) I will upload the ghost stairs picture.


*When attempting to send picture my phone asks me to register. The message is as follows:

If your account is unused for 30 days, Bell Mobility may delete images stored using this service. By sending this message you agree to the

• Accept
• Decline

Agree to the.... agree to the.... Maybe I'll hold off on sending pictures.

Fatherhood, The New Cycle, and Unbalanced Skills

I'm not going to make a very good dad.

Sure, I'll be great when my kids are growing up, but as soon as girls enter their heads, I'm hosed. You see, I have fallen out of the old cycle and into the new cycle of gender relationships. In the old cycle, the women wanted to get married and have children and men wanted to rich and successful. The man that every girl wanted was the one that shared the girls' interests which, at the time, involved family. The rule still applies today, only girls want different things. Maybe they caught on that men were being raised to be loving, caring, and sensitive and didn't want to let things be easy for them. So, as a collective, women decided that the important things in their lives would be having a career (nothing wrong with that) and not having a family (something wrong with that).

I'll explain that last pointed remark. You're you, yeah? You like you, don't you? You wouldn't be you if you didn't exist. You wouldn't exist without being born. You wouldn't be born if you didn't have parents. Your parents wouldn't have been born without their parents. In fact, 100% of the human population that has ever lived is a result of a very long tradition of having a family. Everything in the world exists as a direct result of having a family (for without family, there would be no you or me, and without us, who would there be to enjoy the world? Not to mention there would be a severe deficiency of electric guitars). In short, my argument is that you're awesome and I want to keep the awesome train rolling.

But back to the point. Women want different things. I, however, have been equipped for the old cycle. My skills and interests include cooking, doing dishes, sewing, fixing things, appreciating loved ones, building sand castles, having children and a family that I will love the way my family has loved me. These are things I like because these are the things my dad likes/does. The things I do not like and do not want to do: dancing, going to clubs, "seeing the world before I'm 25", being the right balance of asshole to keep a girl interested, living only for myself... I'll explain all of these:

1. Dancing. I rarely fall down. I run down steep rocky terrain for fun. I can navigate the iciest streets without losing my cool. If I had to choose between being able to command my feet to move in an attractive fashion to the sound of music or be able to trust my feet never to let me down (ba-dum tish), I would choose, and have chosen, the latter. I like listening to music, but it doesn't make me want to wave my arms in the air like I just don't care. I do care. I reserve grace for preventing personal injury, not for wooing girls (though, if I had known it would be such a big thing, I probably would have traded. Somehow girls can adore a klutz that can shake it on the dancefloor, but a man that you can trust will never let you fall in the icy streets isn't worth a second glance.)
2. Going to clubs. It's like drill camp for beginner dancers. Here's a beat. Dance. Do it. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again. I don't know where the line is between doing the same move over and over again and acting like you're having a seizure is. Yeah, I know, no one cares how you look. But if you were to, say, trip up the stairs at school, no one would care. You'd still be embarrassed. Club logic fails. Also, you can't get to know someone at a club further than the observation of how she acts at a club.
3. Seeing the world before I'm 25. I'm 22. I have $600 to my name. So, first of all, I can't afford it, and would rather save for a house or a car than say, "I saw Thailand, too!" Not to mention the fact that there is so much to experience at home. What about love and making a place you call home? What happened to finding your place in the world? Why do we feel the need to travel to places with big spiders when you could vacation in Europe occasionally when you're 40? 40, when you can afford a nice meal, a decent hotel, maybe rent a car and see the world on your terms. Sure, you have to come back to your job and the real world, but look at it this way: you come back to a job and the real world. That's called security. I've never understood peoples' fear of security.
4. Asshole. I'll never get it. Sometimes I hate clichés, but when it comes to nice guys and women, they are all so very true.
5. Living for myself. I've never been good at this. Living for me is what I call surviving. Getting by. What's the point of being happy alone? You will die and your happiness will die with you. Your existence on Earth is a moot point unless you do something that benefits all of mankind. If you don't make it into a grade school history textbook, your contribution to society could have been made by any one else. This is sounding very bleak, but that's what I imagine life alone to be. Where's your mark? If you love, you leave your impression on the world with the person you love. If you have children, you live forever through your lineage. Your importance to the world grows exponentially as your children love and your children's children love. So it's not me that is important. It is the person I love that is important. She is worth going to work each day for. She is worth eating properly. She is worth exercise and everything else I "should do for me." If my life doesn't affect anyone, why should I take care of myself? I'm going to end up in the same place.

Where was I? Oh yes, skills. I have husband skills (not to be confused with husbandry, of which I know little). I don't have... uh, attract the ladies skills. It's like being a fully licensed scuba diving deep sea treasure hunter without knowing how to swim. Once I'm down there scubaing I'm okay. It's just getting there that's the problem.

And with absolutely no knowledge or advice in the "be a dick, learn to dance, see the world, don't have a family" department, I'm really not going to be able to equip my kids with the tools to attract girls. I really hope girls change in their 30s.

Maybe if all my children were girls I wouldn't have to worry about it.

Kids These Goddamn Days.

Normally when I use the phrase, "Kids these days," I'm talking about rap music, weeaboos, lack of respect, and the new demographic of Hollywood. But today I saw something just plain unacceptable.

I was on the Facebooks keeping tabs on a fictional person (I'm not sure whether he/she creeps me out, or intrigues me) and I come across one of his/her "friends." Her profile picture looked suspect, so I creeped around- er, I followed an investigatory lead.

This girl's a mom. She's barely 18 and is married with a kid. Married to a kid, in my opinion, too. This puts me ill at ease, but it's really not that bad. Thirty years ago this sort of thing was commonplace. A hundred years ago and her parents might have been saying, "Finally!" And it's not that I think they're too young to be having kids. If God didn't want kids to be having sex, he wouldn't fire up the baby-makin' factories when you're thirteen.

Obviously I don't endorse kids to be having sex. They were less capable of raising a child ten thousand years ago. In modern society, kids are completely incapable of raising children of their own. There's too much to know and prepare for. You'll always have to spend approximately 25% of your life expectancy learning how to survive the last 75% of your life. And, maybe not so obviously (I only came to this conclusion earlier this year), if you're not done growing up, who are you to coach someone else in growing up?

Okay, a few tangents there, but I felt they were helpful groundwork for what I find appalling. Are you ready? This girl's latest profile picture is her at what I hope is a party with a pill on her tongue flipping off the camera.

She has a nine month old child*!

It's worse that she is married. If it was a single 18 year old mom who was so strung out that she had to go out and party and do drugs and the baby wound up starved in a crib, drowned in a sink, or eaten by stray dogs, it would be horrible! But I think we could all file that away in the "Disdain" folders in our brains. But the fact that she had something going. Yeah, she got pregnant, but she also got married. And he stuck around. And they sound like the kind of couple that could make it work. It sounds like the setup for meeting these people seventeen years from now when their kid is graduating with yours and they're almost ten years younger than you, but their kid is on the honour roll because they knew a thing or two about working hard even when times are tough. But instead, she's at parties taking chemically manufactured drugs and acting like a lady-douchebag (is douchebag a unisex term in this context? Most female specific derogatory names are too aggressive. Douche is a much more passive term. Anyway...).

So, I say again, "Kids these days..."


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