Letters

Dear Uncle: thanks for randomly bringing me a home-cooked meal from across the city; this is why I love my family.

Dear Sister: Just because you are in a bad mood doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to me when I call; I miss you all so much, and sometimes I just need to hear your voices so I can go on with my day.

Dear Landlord: if i slip and fall in that treacherous tundra of a backyard, you better hope I die, else you'll be minding me for the rest of your life. Also, a basic DSL internet connection for 3 university students to share simply isn't good enough. Pull up your socks, else I see the Tenants' Board in your future.

Dear Falz: thanks for being honest with me, and for having the guts to come tell me what you did. That is a kind of friendship you rarely see these days; I am most grateful to have you as a friend. 

Dear Bob and Tron: thanks for the good memories, and here's to many more to come. I'll really miss you kids when I leave.

Dear Schneider's: your "special jumbo hotdogs" taste like soecial jumbo lumps of turd; just sayin'.

Dear Dr. Dre/ Eminem haters: suck on this!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA770wpLX-Q

Dear Heart: why must you be so difficult? Brain really has the best intentions for us, so you should listen to him once in a while, and learn from your past mistakes.

Dear James Franco: I see you were in Pineapple Express mode for the Oscars; good stuff :P

Dear Gaddaffi: no, your people do not love you. No, the protesters weren't only outsiders. Time for you to take a queue, dude. Oppressive regimes in the Middle East are on the way out.

Dear Shakira: quit playing games; you know you want me, and I you. Let's get Loca!

Dear West Indies cricket team management: on behalf of all fans, let me just say, we hate you.

Dear "Ex-whatever": I know you're busy, but a little politeness wouldn't kill you; I'm not a dog

Dear GGRC45: This is a C-level university course at UTSC; I think I'd like a little more intellectual edification than varying definitions of  'globalization' which I can get off Wikipedia.

Dear Winter: enough, already. It's March. Seriously.

Dear Sleep: baby, I know these days we haven't seen much of each other. These damn profs just have no mind for us; but don't worry, I know we will overcome, we'll be spending some quality time real soon!!

With Lots of Love/Hate/Disdain/Longing/*insert emotional extreme here*

Professor M.

On The Regrettably Fatalistic Misuse of Ideology

"You have your ideology, and I have mine"- Khalil Gibran

whereas
the souls of
martyrs
slain in
the name of
ideas
cry out to
the masses to
take heed,
so to
do the
vicious denizens
of moral dearth
continue to
hack away
at the
legacies
of our parents
and our children
for their own
justifications

Shit Happens -part 1

 No matter who you are or where you're from, we all know...shit happens !!

Canada: Shit happens EH
 Trini: buh wah shit is dis?
Egypt:  Enough of this shit!
USA: We're the shit
China: our shit is cheaper!
Haiti: shit always happens to us
Zen: what is the sound of shit happening?
Jedi: beware of the Shith: may the Flush be with you
Star trek: to boldly shit where no man has shit before
Tourette's: this fucking shitpiss always happens motherfucker!
Politically Correct: internally processed, nutritionally drained, biological output happens
Math: 2x + 3y -12 = SHIT
History: this shit happened before
Einstein: shit is relative
Shakspeare: To Shit or not to Shit, that IS the question...
Descartes: I shit, therefore I am...
Keynes: governments should intervene in this shit
Friedman: keynes is shit
Kanye: Imma let you finish that shit.....

Look out for part 2 :) 

Resolutions You Can (and should) Actually Keep


Sorry I've been away for so long, and happy new year to all.

Let’s cut to the chase; we all have New Year’s resolutions that contain at least some of the usual suspects: to lose weight, quit smoking, blabbady blah. Frankly speaking, this is quite pathetic. Not to be overly judgmental, as resolution-making does indeed entail a fair degree of judging, but chances are your weight is fine, and let’s face it, you’re not going to quit smoking.

So in my efforts to make the New Year’s resolution into something worthwhile, here are a few friendly suggestions:

1. Don’t go to class with a hangover: Party animals, get real. Sitting in class with a brain-splitting headache, all zombie-like from your three hours of inebriated sleep, is utterly pointless. You’re not going to learn anything, let alone write coherent notes; and you’re likely to screw up your day without proper rest. You’re better served to stay inside and sleep it off, and then bum the notes off your friends. And if you need to go in to register those coveted attendance marks, you best plan your beer guzzling better so you’ll be fresh as a Timmie’s bagel for your morning classes.

2. Quit the stereotypes: If we as Torontonians want to boast to the world about our multiculturalism, then we all need to learn a bit about the people around us. Like the fact that all Caribbean accents and slangs are not the same, or that all Asians aren’t math whizzes, and those sorts of things. We chalk these up to anything from racism, to ethnocentrism, to downright ignorance. How about we, as university students in Canada’s finest place of study, set an example by knowing more about the ingredients in our veritable tossed salad.

3. Make some memories: It’s sad how often I hear stories of people “missing out” on chances to experience something epic. Newsflash homies, university is the place where those timeless stories you plan to tell to your grandkids are born. Sure, as Sesame Street taught us, it’s hip to be a square, but not all the time. Live a little, you just might enjoy it!

4. Watch “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”: Intellectuals who can make you laugh hysterically are hard to come by; we’re lucky that two of the very best, John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, live in the same era, and air their shows back-to-back on weeknights. Trust me, current events will never be more entertaining.

5. Don’t post useless photos to your Facebook profile: Photo memories are nice, but the world doesn’t need to see every last little detail of your trip to Cuba, including the blurry photos of random trees and buildings that we can barely make out. Resolve to cut down your forty to twelve million photos and albums by discarding those that do not contain people, interesting places, or pretty much anything we don’t care about (this includes narcissistic self-photos taken by a cell phone, camera or webcam).

6. Stop Making New Year’s Resolutions: I understand the appeal of the new year as a motivational metaphor. It is the tabula rasa on which you resolve to scribe the files of your new and improved life. I also think it is an overdone, overhyped, overused cliché. This does not do justice to those who genuinely want to make concrete changes in their lives. Instead, let self-reflection be an ongoing endeavor, and strive to make changes whenever they are needed, even if it’s the middle of the year

Our Love was a Quiet Love

Our love was the budding of a morning glory;
Sudden, temporary, almost in vain,
Yet with all the splendor and mystery
Of a world we barely understood.

Our love was a story almost told by wandering tongues,
Traversing hills and culverts of imperfect bodies,
Peeking flesh that only wagged when met with quivering flesh,
And bitten when love, removed, lingered in our thoughts.

Our love was a quiet love,
The kind which listens longingly
To lonely highway songs,
And stammers awkward goodbyes;
A love not felt, but lived;
Not spoken, but understood.

A Life Lived is Not Necessarily A Life Imagined

I once went to a pundit to read my patra (for those not savvy with the Hindu ritual, its pretty much a reading/ prediction of one's fortune/ future, more or less). He told me that I had an enormous potential to be great and do great things, to have a happy life, because my "life-rays" were plentiful. He, however, (correctly) posited that my current state of being was far less than what it should have been. For some reason I was not having as fantastic a life as I should have been having.

He meditated on this for a while, as I sat there, in his shrine high atop a hill at dusk on that day. I was intrigued and thoroughly creeped out by the whole eerie aura of the moment. After an eternity of ten minutes of deep meditation, he revealed to me the reason for my misfortunes; indeed, it was something I already knew, but for some reason, had just not fully come to terms with.

He said that, in the walk of my life, while staring at the destination, in the distance, I was unable to overcome the obstacles in front of me, simply because, I was not looking at them. I had dreams of what I wanted to achieve, of how I wanted my life to be, which was good; however, my focus was fixated on them, and I hardly gave thought about what I needed to do to achieve them. To return to the traveling analogy, I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the destination, daydreaming about it my life on end, without ever keeping my eyes on the road right in front of me.

I'm not a strong believer in religion personally, but I was awed by the accuracy of his perception. Here's the thing about me; I know I have the potential to be amazing, to do things far greater than I have done thus far, to live a life far better than the one I currently live. I was blessed with a sharp academic mind, good memory, and wonderful creativity. I am quick-witted, down to earth, and have a great sense of humor, and I am great with people. I don't think I am bad looking either, facially that is. I have tremendous leadership ability, and I am innovative, inventive, well spoken, thoughtful, loving, caring, understanding and compassionate.

I am also a real underachiever. My one moment of academic greatness (winning the President's Medal in 2006) was the exception to an otherwise mediocre list of accomplishments, academically, socially and otherwise. I've been overweight since I was a child; this has hindered my natural sporting talent, which I have a lot of. It also really fucked my social life, as not many girls want to date a fatty, and it's all too easy for us endomorphs to bear the brunt of the jokes. Now, even though I know fully well what it takes for me to slim down, I just can't seem to make the first steps, and my physicality is not only hindering my self-confidence, it is hindering my health.

Socially, I'm neither here nor there. Despite being sort of popular and having a plethora of friends, I am still socially awkward and painfully shy. I usually have the best advice to give my friends about girls, but I don't ever seem to seem to know the right thing to say when I myself am in the midst of someone I fancy. To that end, I've never had a girlfriend; I've liked many girls, been in love with one or two, had a few crushes, flings, one-night stands. I've been close to some of the most desirable females one could imagine, physically, intellectually, personality-wise...and yet still, I haven't managed anything close to a meaningful relationship (there's one quasi-exception, but that was doomed to go nowhere anyway, and wasn't all that morally righteous, so I'm not counting it). I HAVE managed to lose many good friends, to have consistently let people down, to have needlessly tarnished my image, reputation and character by stupid actions and lack of actions.

My grades are decent but not special, even though I am capable of maintaining a 4.0 with ease; I have not saved any money, despite having been well taken care of by the Trinidad government, in addition to having several well paying jobs...not only is my bank account dry, but I am even in debt (how I do not know) when I should not be...I haven't done so many of the things I wanted, and had ample opportunity to do...in short, while my life isn't horrible, it's something that it has absolutely no right to be: MEDIOCRE

The reason? Elementary, my dear (*insert substitute for 'WATSON' here*):
I live too much in my head. I dream out exactly how I want things to go, situations, circumstances, outcomes...the perfect life, like a perfect movie, always playing in the cinema of my mind. I think that's why I'm good at writing; I relive my fantasies as I write, and my fingers somehow rap the keys rhythmically to the beat of the song that is blasting in my head. But I groove in my dreams too much, and don't give myself time to make music in real life. Like the pundit said, I don't pay attention to what I need to do to achieve my goals. Thus, I can never have this awesome life, because I don't work towards it. I don't exercise or eat right, don't study enough, don't sit down and budget myself or plan, don't work on my friendships, don't take the time to really get to know girls well enough, and be patient with them, to let them learn to like me...

I'm trying to correct this. I leave myself reminders, motivational messages; I send myself emails and tag myself in videos that remind me of the fact that potential is nothing if not realized; the battle is long and hard, because the life in my dreams is addicting and hard to stay away from. But I'm trying furiously to make my real life just as good, or even better, so I won't miss my fantasies.

So to those of you reading this, who are in, or might find yourselves in, a situation such as as this one, I hope you can learn from my life. One of my friend's personal mottoes is to "Dream out Loud"; remember, a life lived is, in the end, more important than a life imagined; the real trick is to try to make them both indistinguishable from one another........

The Return: Professor Matti's Un-Dictionary

Insurection: arousal of an "innie"

exasturbate: to make worse by playing with oneself

vagitarian: a heterosexual man, or a homosexual woman

megahertz: an evil, robotic unit of frequency; leader of the deceptahertz

doppelbanger: someone who looks just like you and sleeps with you

abandick: to leave a man mid sexual intercourse, leaving him frustrated

abstinate: the act of not giving oneself to anyone, no matter how much they beg

ambisextrous: hermaphroditic

pervertisement: a freaky way to get a potential customer's attention

jabbawookee: the sacrilegious offspring of a Hutt and Chewbacca


MORE SOON :)