Wheaton is a Geek. Respect.

Now, I assume that most of the people I know read Wil Wheaton's blog from time to time. Of course, then I thought about it for a few more seconds and realized that may not be entirely true...

Well you should.

But in case you don't here's three things I've learned from him recently;

Watchmen is fucking awesome and I have no reason to worry about it being a rape of the graphic novel.

Zoe Keating and Yo Yo Ma should be required to breed and produce a beautiful Cellist Lovechild. Because they are both really really good at what they do.

Wil Wheaton is further behind in Battlestar Galactica than I am.

There is actually more that I gather from his site and store away into my brain like a precious gemstone of knowledge, but I said three so you get three. Just go read his blog. And listen to Keating's music. Then figure out how she does it. Then come back so that you can agree with me that she's awesome.

Unrest in the House of Light - The Protomen

WHEEEEEEE!

So I was supposed to write more often here. I haven't been. Gah. This time it wasn't even a Toronto person who point this out to me so I figured I should probably get back on the ball. This of course is what I thought to myself last Monday night as I got back to my place from a wonderful board-game night in Billerica (where the a fore mentioned person reminded me about my promise to write more lives).

Then of course it was vacation week for the kiddos. And I became very stressed out, and very tired for the majority of it. Friday though... Friday kicked my ass the hardest (I can be stressed out working over 40 hours in 4 days, I'm allowed!) which coupled with the fact that I'd left the computron at my folks house for a few of those days meant I didn't even come close to having the energy to do anything but fall over after getting home nights.

But it's the weekend! Hooray! I'm tired again though, just waiting for myself to settle down a bit before I enter into sleepland for a while, and I remembered to update. Today I spent most of my waking time in Providence (Rhode Island) attending an alumni weekend. Saw improv, talked with people I don't know well, ate at a campus meal hall type place, and even got a tour of the campus while hearing anecdotes of former past lives. I had a lot of fun actually, the improv was a lot of fun especially. The people I was with and met all clearly loved going to school there and were pretty eager to show it off a bit for me. It's a small school though by my head's reasoning, and I could never have imagined attending there.

UofT is ginormous. I know this so I tried to put it all into perspective in that regard, but the place didn't sit right with me. And it's with me, not the school where the problem lies. I don't know, maybe it was the giant crosses above all of the residence dorm buildings names. Maybe it was that the school amounted to the east side of the St. George Campus in size. Maybe it was my general aversion to religious schooling in general that put me off (this might be the largest part of it actually, from what I gathered from the ad hock and continuous tour, the first renovation done to the campus during the current wave of stuff was a new church built in the middle of it all. I think this only because a lot of things were talked about having been done immediately after the people I was with had graduated, but the church was built before they had finished). Yes I know St. Mikes and Trin held mass and services respectively, that used to irk me as well a bit but mostly because of the people who actually WENT to those instead of the damn actual church two blocks away. And yes I know that Vic was affiliated with the United Church of Canada through Emmanuel and such... but it was a very different feel that is hard to explain. Or at the very least I'm having a hard time pinning it down. At Vic, Trin, and to a lesser degree St. Mikes the religious affiliation is very much in the background, well at least to me it was. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that the three schools make up part of a greater whole with Innis, Woodsworth, New, and UC along with all the various faculties and whatnot, and have to coexist with one another as well. But I also feel that it is a much, much bigger deal where I was that it was a Catholic College. When I jokingly pointed out how very white the college was compared to the rest of Providence and the Wendy's we stopped at on the way, the answer was in fact something along the lines of; "Well this is a Catholic College, so that's why."

Now the first thing that popped into my head was 'well what the hell does that have to do with anything?' Then she went on to say 'so it's very Irish and Italian Catholic like the rest of the north east' right about the time it dawned on me that it had a hell of a whole fucking lot to do with the demographics attending the school. My retort to that was by the way something like then where is the Brazilian/Mexican/Latin American contingent and something about a shift in demographics in the area that I'd expect' but I digress a bit.

The school is very small and very private and very catholic. Tuition alone would allow for a certain selection I'm sure, as well as the admission process itself. However, I felt I was a little bit of an outsider, and I'm a six foot christian white guy with blue eyes who got along great with everyone I met. So maybe there's something else maintaining the mix as well. The sports teams are the 'Friars', there are crosses and Jesus' life montages, i.e. religious sculptures and art everywhere (did I mention I'm pretty Christian too, my Episcopalian/Anglican upbringing you'd think would have me prepared for this kind of thing or something) and the Friar's Graveyard smack in the middle of the campus dorms was in my eyes... creepy. Real graveyard now, not a campus bar or student center with a kick ass name, cross headstones in rows. It was nice, but in the middle of where people live! Just saying the student body as a whole is pretty screwed if World War Z breaks out is all. Back on topic, had I come to visit this school and looked at it as a potential place to spend time on undergraduate work, I would not have ever chosen it. St. Mikes was Catholic, had nuns, man-hours in the dorms, and a large cathedral on it's grounds. It also saw a self described red-headed American Jew and a Muslim Pakistani Semi-Prince live on the same floor and become the best of friends who invited each other to meet with parents and to visit during school breaks. There it didn't matter to them any more that they were living in a catholic section of the school, actually it was something of a running joke with them (the red head claiming to not even having known St. Mikes was catholic when he applied... which actually sort of makes the point as to how minor religion could and often did factor into life at UofT I think) that people accepted as just the quirk of that section of buildings, than it did that I was Anglican and NOT registered at the Anglican affiliated school that is Trinity. Also, white people are not exactly the dominant majority downtown in the most multicultural city in the world that is Toronto either, and maybe the same could be said for UofT but I honestly didn't pay that much attention while I was there to how people around me looked.

It was just somewhat unsettling and off putting in such a subtle way that I wasn't even sure why I was feeling a tad uncomfortable until this conversation happened and I clued myself in. I will never begrudge the people who went there for having enjoyed themselves, I respect the hell out of people who can show pride in their school and they are as I said proud of it. But dear God I could never have gone there and been happy.

I'm sure somethings in that rambling will have to be explained in further detail later, maybe even to myself, but it's 1:40 in the morning and I should sleep while I can. So if this late night mumbling is incoherent, let me know and I'll do my best to fill in what I'm sure is cracks akin to the San Andreas to my musings.