lo_rocker's Journal

11:25pm: Canadian History 4B06
Ok... I just had a test this week for my 4th year Canadian History seminar and we got the results today. Out of 18 of us in the seminar, the mean average was 57%, the median was 58%... OMFG.
Five of us scored below 50% and only two of us managed to grab an 80%
This has to be the worst set of results I have ever seen in my 4 years at McMaster... And the exam was entirely essay form...
I saw results like this back in highschool but those kids did not study and didn't even care about the material or their progress. This seminar is different because it is made up entirely of students who wish to do well and likewise, studied like hell for this thing... Results like this are thus extremely scary and disturbing.
If one claims that this guy is a hard marker, they are definitely putting it mildly.

10:24am: O...M...G...
I can't believe it... I now have all my marks back and I am absolutely speechless... I have not done this well since fucking grade 12.

1 PHILOS 1B03        A+     12 Philosophy, Law and Society
2 PHILOS 1E03        A+     12 Problems of Philosophy
3 PHILOS 3A06        A-      10 From Kant to Hegel
1 PHILOS 3G03        A-     10 Ethics
2 PHILOS 3P03        A       11 Philosophy of War and Peace
1 PHILOS 3Q03        A       11 Philosophy of Law
2 PHILOS 4W03    A+     12 Modern Legal Positivism                 <------------------ OMFG, LOL
3 HISTORY 4W06     A-      10 History of the North American City

I have everything to celebrate about tonight...

4:52pm: ... Fuck me right in the ear
Well, the year is NOW completely underway. From this moment on, I am pretty busy until Christmas. I guess this is really what 3rd year is like.
*collar yank*
I realized last night that I have been moving a bit too slowly on the 400 page book that I need to write my 4th year History book review for. I thought it was due on October 16th but I dropped a lung when I realized it is actually due a week earlier than that, October 9th. So I have to get this damn thing done within the next 2 weeks alongside 2 short papers and an essay proposal. I spent 3 hours today reading non-stop and taking detailed notes as I went (about 1-3 points per page read). In three hours time I was able to speed read and take notes down for 60 pages worth of the book... That is pretty damn good I think, considering how much I wrote. Normally with how fast I read (a novel for example) I can read much faster. There are two things preventing me from reading my fastest. One, this is a history text so there is more stuff to pay attention to. Two, I am stopping every ten seconds or so to jot down something important. I'm pretty proud of my progress today! I still have about 180 pages left of the text though :( Groan. Hopefully I can finish the book and have solid notes within the next week so I have the whole week to reflect and write my review carefully and get as much advice possible from the class preceding the due date. Wish me luck, friends of D'Arcy.
Night class tonight... I say fuck the nights with classes in them. Night is supposed to be chillax time... not "let's learn some ethics" time...
I should be reading my book some more but I dunno if I have the energy to start the next 60 page chapter...
Still have 2 hours to kill though... and it's not like I can sleep... all the comfy places are noisy ass with harsh volumes... yeah. I double talked that shit.
I have to learn to write again, fuck. Summer brainlessness does that. I feeling like fucking fool who can't wrote good...
It's a culture shock though... seeing as though in first year I had "huge" 1500 word papers due in November when nowadays I'm doing them on a weekly basis. Crazy stuff, but I'm glad I have actually been learning and getting good practice here at this fine school. Getting my money's worth I hope.
Forgive my rambling. My brain is overworked, yet I'm restless.
My goal is to get the same amount of reading done that I accomplished today and I should be in good shape for this book review. Gotta make sure I get the damn thing read though, that's definitely priority overall.

For those of you who are still relaxed with your schedules... Enjoy it while it lasts dammit!!!
In the words of Will Smith, "I'm outie."

7:17pm: why did it have to start raining the second I decided I really wanted to bike tonight?

8:53pm: For all of you fellow thinkers and/or Darren Aronofsky fans out there... see The Fountain!!!!

Definitely going down as a favourite in my books. It is one of the saddest, yet most enlightening of spiritual guidance films I have seen in years.

Tommy, a scientist who is played by Hugh Jackman, is obsessed with trying to cure his wife's brain stem tumour. Trapped within his own grief and fear of loneliness, He labels death as a "disease that needs a cure." He goes through an interpersonal struggle which is symbolized by two other aspects in the film. One is set in 1500 AD where Jackman plays a conquisitor on a quest to save Spain from the bloodshed of the Inquisition. He is desperately searching for Eden's tree of life that was hidden from Humanity by God. The second aspect is set in 2500 AD where Jackman plays a pagan space traveler who is trying to transport a tree (his reincarnated wife) to a supernova with the belief that the death of the star will bring souls back to life. Tommy's wife Izzy is played very well by Rachael Weisz.
It is a movie about the importance of faith and love in living a happy life and the disease that is human obsession for power and greed.

I was very emotional when watching this movie because of how well Tommy's personal suffering was depicted. If any of you are like me (struggling to discover my faith and thinking very deep and hard about my love life), then this movie will definitely move you.

The reviews for this movie are bad, but don't listen to them! Movie reviewers only want to see what is put right in front of them. Watch it for yourself, pay close attention and hopefully you will personally benefit from watching it like I did.

That's all.

7:44pm: Sunday is just one of those days... but it seems to be one of too many

Lately, things have been incredibly weird for me...

School is going fine and my employment situation is all worked out. I have nothing to worry about academically or financially. Why do I still feel messed up?
I don't know if I have developed depression but the symptoms seem to be there. There are just some days where I just lose it and feel terrible for no good reason whatsoever.

1. lack of self-esteem
2. decreased sense of humour and increased sarcasm
3. finding the negative in everything and assuming the worst case scenario for every situation
4. no positive outlook
5. laziness (with regret of the laziness in a vicious cirlce)
6. no motivation

I don't know... I was perfectly fine up until the past 6 months or so
I would like to think it is all my personal shit pounding on my head all at once because that is at least an explanation.
Otherwise, I cannot tell what is making me feel this way.

It HAS to be a combination of things:
- pressure from school, fearing failure
- worrying about my Mom's financial trouble
- worrying about my relationship with my Dad... my friends... my girlfriend
- worrying about the losses in both of my families and the damage that resulted
- worrying about who I am and who I've become
- regretting my abandonment of music
- feeling unskilled and unworthy

I want to stop worrying. I want to like myself.
I want to like my life. I have to find balance.
I don't want to be depressed at 20. I wish everything could make sense.

I think I need to get help. It can't be normal or healthy to be this upset.
Only problem is that it is hard to talk about something you don't understand.

6:51pm: This Thursday...
Volume Water was killer this Saturday. The turn-out was great!
They are performing at Bannister's this thursday night. They will be doing all of their original stuff and the show will be filmed so they can send it to a talent convention in Europe. That means they need enthusiastic people in the crowd making some noise for them. These guys are very talented musicians and if you have heard their stuff or are curious about them, I highly recommend you come check it out!

show starts at 9:30 PM thursday night, Bannister's Bar.

3:38pm: What rocks ass...
What rocks ass is getting a 77% on a paper worth 30% of my mark, yet having done so well in tutorials that I still have a good shot at getting an 11 (an A) in the course!!! Tutorials kick so much ass for those who have a hard time writing those pesky history papers!

2:55am: ugh
ha ha, can't sleep.
Just goin over alot of personal shit in my head, assessing shit and thinking about everything that has happened in the past little while... stuff that has either pissed me off, hurt me, disappointed me, stressed me out or worried me recently always swirls around my head when I'm trying to sleep. too bad it is 3 in the morning, ugh. Tomorrow is gonna reek cuz I'm gonna be so tired.

just gotta put shit away for now and accept that shit happens and there is nothing you can do about it. Gotta get to the task on hand!!!

11:15am: you know school is getting to your head when...
you know school is getting to your head when you start having nightmares of missed assignments or threats from profs, etc.

I had a nightmare last night that I took an intro to logic course for this semester. It was an online course but because it was a "screwed over at every turn" dream, it had class sessions and tutorials as well. Out of ignorance, I didn't go to any classes or tutorials because I didn't know they were going on. Come March, I was ready to do the work for it, only to horribly find out that I already missed over 50% of the workload that was due back in January and February. I begged with he prof to let me hand all the shit in and catch up but he was very non-responsive... (he resembled Horn....Interesting)
I finally told him out of desperation that I would hand in everything for the whole semester to him next week and he only agreed to it for partial marks. So as I left wodering how the hell I was going to do all the shit in a week, I woke up realizing that my real work for real school is all due within the week.

Weird how your worries and thoughts are all brought up to haunt you while you are sleeping...

6:04pm: wow, I am so not against tuition increases anymore.

I did my taxes the other day and realized that Mac only really gets like one thousand out of the five grand. The rest is sent to the government who just gives it back to you as a tax relief.

For the 8 months of school in 2006, I actually received about 7 thousand from the province of Ontario and the federal government to get a tax break. I sent that shit over to my mom and now she doesn't have to pay income tax this year. She was so happy she gave me a hug and thanked me a million times.
I said, "Don't thank me, thank Canada!"
This rules... tuition fees rising a couple hundred dollars won't kill you people. Come tax time, students are wearing gold plated diapers.

Although I made like $11,000 excluding my scholarships last year, I got almost nothing taken away... I'm getting a $605 return this year because financial aid is not taxable... woot! I had a good tax season and because of that, so did my mom.

They can raise tuition another thousand for all I care. That's right, that came out of a student's mouth.

8:27pm: just thought I would give everyone a little info about St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick was an anti-pagan that deidicated his life to setting up monasteries and succeeded in converting many pagans to christianity...

for all you pagans out there, keep in mind what you are celebrating tonight...

11:51am: wow,

I am so glad that I am ridding myself of my procrastination habit because I am definitely seeing it in my grades. My history marks especially are improving dramatically. My average for history last year was 9.5. Now, with the exception of my crap ass 3rd year class, my average is like 10.5. This makes me way more confident for when I do my seminars. I just hope I can keep shit up through my assignments and exams. If I do, I will be one happy ass camper!!!

if I manage to do that AND get fulltime work this summer, I will be so happy and complete as well as feeling totally successful. I love that feeling... it beats depression for sure. No chill pills for D'Arcy!!!!

I still wish Horn hadn't fucked with my head so much... I don't know what I was so worried about

9:35pm: ha ha... shit
Does anyone ever get those times where they KNOW they have self-esteem problems?

The person I am is wrong... I wish I was a better person.


This is very emo of me, I know.
Sometimes you just gotta vent

12:19am: woot
It's pretty cool when the oscars go your way!
The Departed cleaned up 4 out of their 5 nominations including best adaptation, editing, director and picture!!!

Cool results for the (IMO) greatest movie of 2006!!!

2:36pm: Hey, hey, hey. What's in your head, In your head, zombie?
Please consider the following dialogue:

Person #1 - "So what are you?"

Person #2 - "Me? Hmm, well I guess I am a Canadian."

Person #1 - "Ha ha, no really I'm serious, what are you?"


Anyone care to reflect on this??? Is being "Canadian" an acceptable response when people ask your nationality? I expect my comment section to be filled to the brim on this topic...

9:27pm: SWEET
You know what is incredible? Applying for a bursary, forgetting about it, and then receiving it out of the blue for one thousand fucking dollars. It's like winning the sweepstakes!!!
I gotta fuck a donkey to celebrate... Screw waiting till exam time.

10:22pm: Why does my Dad have to suffer?
Why can't things just get better for him?
Why does such a good person have to endure such misery?

I wish I could help him enjoy life

10:25pm: you know who's girlfriend is amazing and bought her boyfriend Hip tickets? D'Arcy's girlfriend, that's who!!! THANK YOU SWEETIE!!!

1:11pm: How come whenever I work very hard on something, it always comes back with a bad result? It seems as though lately, the work that I have been giving my all on having been doing so poor, yet the work that I have procrastinated on and winged have been doing well. This was an important paper, so I worked hard on it, yet I still fucked it up...


I need a hug.

3:56pm: Ha Ha, that was fun! I noticed that I'm a pretty bland person... Meh, oh well.

8:17pm: I BOUGHT A NEW SKATEBOARD!!!

A brand spankin' new Andrew Reynolds Baker!

1:57pm: grr. I never post. I should do one now.
Things have been going pretty well so far. Midterms are coming up and I find I am enjoying all of my classes much much better than last year. Year 2 DOES rock!
Right now I am busy writing a 12 page paper for my history class due next wednesday. I'm almost finished the outline for it and I have already begun writing my draft, so I'm not doing too badly for trying to escape procrastination. I am also studying for my other History midterm next tuesday, so my time slot is gonna be packed full of writing and reading over the next week.
But anyhow, last night was fun. I went and played for the Crazy Clover's pool league. For those of you who don't know the Crazy Clover it is the one on Centennial before Futureshop. It's a good bar to just go, hang out and listen to music. but yeah, I played for the pool league last night and we played a pretty good team from Squire's bar. Squire's is I think up on the mountain somewhere. How league pool works is you have a team of 7 and you play another team of 7 for 3 sets. One set is 7 games played by all 7 players of each team. So we all got to play 3 games. Our team didn't do very well last night cuz we were one man short (any non-attendants have to forfeit their position) and we were all kinda playing like crap the first set.
I managed to break our losing streak in the second set to make it 11 games to 1!!!! Pretty sad, but meh, I was glad I managed to win a game against those pool sharks! But we ended up losing overall like 14-7 which sucks ass, but I think we may do better next week.
Yeah, that's right, if I can get monday's off, I'm gonna join a pool league!!!! I'm kinda stoked for that. My mom is a bit worried for me tho, cuz these guys are apparently really competitive, and if I do any stupid shots at the wrong time, they tend to get nasty. But I think this little edge might be good for me during school. Oh well, I'll see how things go. Also, this will give me the opportunity since we will be competing at bars all over the city to check out some of the Hamilton bars that I never usually go to.
For all you other pool players, Mondays at the Clover is open pool up until 6:30 then it is our table for the league night, so come one and come all!!!

9:49pm: Ye Olde Saturday Night
Weekend was fairly killer. Had a good social time with Jenn and met/re-met some of her Grimsby crew. After the day had come to pass I decided to retire and head back to Hamilton.

Begun hanging with Court and James around 9ish, had a couple beers and trotted on down to the Derby for some beer and pool. I had never actually sat and drank in the Derby before, and I was skeptical because that bar kind of symbolizes the break up of my family, but meh, I went anyhow.

We got in, got bounced, then took a seat. The waitress came right away and we ordered our first pitcher. They only had Coors Light and Ex on tap and since I had a bad experience before with Ex, I insisted that we choose Coors Light. James was hesitant because of the word "light" but never kicked any fuss.

We weren't able to get the pool table until we were into our 2nd pitcher, so any chance of us using our "top notch cue skills" was pretty much slim to nil by that time.

Court and I both lost to a pretty good lookin 30ish year old Jennifer Aniston look-a-like named Kelly... Was that her name? <- (3rd pitcher by that time so I may have messed it up.) Court and James were going on about how they wanted to "nail the cougar so bad" but I had to sternly point out to them that Kelly was far from a cougar. I grabbed James by the head and pointed him toward the bar where these disgusting, 40-something, heavy makeup, extraneously tanned, no bra, lone women were sitting. I yelled in his ear, "That, my friend is a fucking cougar! Good luck and have fun!"

Bumped into Benjamin Stein while we were there which was pretty cool. I hadn't seen that guy in a while. He's getting married next year which was shocking to hear since the guy is my age and all, but still pretty rockin news. His fiancee was there but was very shy, so I didn't bother trying to break any ice.

The live band that was playing was obviously a country band cuz it is a country bar. But at one point in their set they started rockin out with BTO - Takin care of business, and Court and I randomly started to dance around at the pool table. Around the middle of the song, because it was in the same key, they all of a sudden started ripping out the Sweet Child o' Mine Intro from GNR!!! Court and I lost it and ran up to the dance floor in a pathetic drunken rampage. We started dancing around doing air guitar around these middle aged country fans! T'was wicked shit. Stayed back at the table the rest of the night. Drunken dance floor action had finished for Court and I.

Court had the pool table by the time we were getting pretty wasted. He lost it instantly to a middle aged dude who wrote himself down as "BS". He owned Court 6 balls to nothing. He was pretty sober though, but he was a real nice guy nonetheless and bought us a 4th pitcher! God bless the people of the Derby! We were too smashed to finish it, so I stumbled my way around the tables offering it to people... I wonder if whoever took it actually drank it.... Who could trust a dude with tousled hair, cowboy boots and tight pants clunking around yelling, "Ay! Yooo Want dis?? It's COORS!!!"

We then staggered out the door with a good 5 pitchers of beer in our bellies and got some Pizza Pizza. We then went to my house where Court and I drank a couple cocktails and I crashed around 3:00 to enjoy a wholesome tomorrow full of headaches and nausea and a 5 hour shift.

I hate how stupid I can get when I drink beer...

4:31pm: Hopefully the person I wrote this for gets my message.
The day is hot and humid... Why do I wear black everyday?

I board the bus and sit down, lowering my head in fatigue and swigging my water like a once-hard whiskey had lost its kick.
The bus starts to move... It passes Dundurn and later, Queen.
Wow, deja vu strikes again. I could've sworn I did this yesterday.

A chinese girl boards and sits beside me.
I notice that she is reading a book... I glance over with inexplicable interest.
Hmm, the book has a large, spatial print. It looks like it was written for a grade two to three reading level.
Perhaps she is learning English; perhaps she has a learning problem; perhaps she just enjoys kid's books.
Maybe I can help her learn English quicker; maybe I can help her on her journey through the path to knowledge.

The bus stops and she stands up... she looks as if she is ready to depart the shuttle and join society again.
Instead, she moves toward the back. What the hell is she moving for?
Oh ok, nevermind, there are people coming on the bus. She must have been acting out what she thought was right.
Why didn't I move like she did?
Perhaps I have no courtesy for others; perhaps I lack the common sense of causality; perhaps I have no morals.

No matter... The people boarding look tired. Endless sweatbeads pour down their faces and drip off the chin. Their eyes are exhausted and cry out for release, however, their movements and their determination tell me that they are trying to get home and score the last cold one out of the fridge, kick up their feet and wait for tomorrow.

A scruffy, pudgy, bearded guy passes by... Wait, I have seen this man before. He was once a schoolmate. Now, he is the Yorick to my Hamlet. Why the hell am I seeing him now?
I look at his arm and see a heart with a "J.E. N.S." inside of it, tattooed to his right forearm. The strange thing is, he tattooed an "X" over top of the whole thing.
Perhaps it was a nasty break-up and he needed to update his ink; perhaps the whole thing was done at once on purpose.
Maybe I should try and help him find true love; maybe I should show him positive things that he can tattoo on his arm.

The bus looks like it has passed downtown now. All of the hustle and bustle is now over. A young, attractive, twenty-something now boards the bus. The lack of open seating forced her beside me and an obese fellow two seats to my left. The next stop comes, and she moves to the now open-spaced seat available. Why was she so uncomfortable?
Perhaps she is claustrophobic; perhaps the heat was too much to bear; perhaps she finds me unattractive... possibly scary.
Maybe I can help her feel comfortable in public spaces; maybe I can help her so she need not rely on open-spaced seating.

Oh my! Here we are at Gage already. Time sure has flown by.

A pregnant woman now boards the bus... She is very young... Possibly my age.
Her eyes are hidden behind large sunglasses, her lips are bare and show no evidence of makeup.
Aside from the pot belly, she could have any man she desired.
Unfortunately, given the pot belly, the desire had been too great.
Being so young, how is she going to get by?
Perhaps her parents will help her raise the child; perhaps her and her parnter love each other too much to never quit.
Maybe I can give her some money; maybe I can look into government assistance for the newborn so it has food, clothing and all that whatnot.

Maybe I can help them all!.....

Wait, what am I saying?
Why would they want my help?
I'm just some strange fucker on a bus.

Oh shit, that's my stop!
Sorry my friends,
I really have to go...