K-log (also pronounced "klog")

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/gmail-labs-graduation-and-retirement.html

I don’t even use the features they’re “retiring,” but by all means, keep something pointless like “Back to Beta” around. *shakes head*

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/01/07/bc-u-vic-eviction-gerdson.html

I think this is maybe one of the funniest things ever.

Defying Gravity star sues: I’m not gay, Wikipedia!

Now granted, I know it must suck to have someone keep trying to convince everyone of something about you that’s fundamentally untrue (I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt) but really?  You need to sue someone editing your wikipedia page?  Isn’t that a little overkill?

And you’re just asking for the “doth protest too much” response.  Wouldn’t it be better to just ignore it?

…you thought UBC might be getting a tiny bit more leftist, I get this:

Wow, he don’t know me vewwy well, do he?

I started to see UBC-attending people joining one of two groups a day or two ago: impeach or don’t impeach.  My left-wing and SSA friends were opposed to this impeachment—so my default assumption was that I was likely going to be too.

Basically, from my brief read of the situation, certain members of AMS Council protested to the UN that the ridiculously high tuition fees faced by not only UBC students but post-secondary students EVERYWHERE in Canada were a human rights violation.  Okay, that may be a bit of stretch but it’s certainly a good idea for one of the biggest student unions in the country to be protesting high tuition fees.

Apparently this does not sit well with other members of the council, who are crying foul and saying the two “offenders” didn’t have the right to speak for council.  Of course, that’s total bullshit: the reason for crying foul is that the other members don’t actually want the AMS to be saying bold things about the ridiculous state of post-secondary education costs in BC.  There’s also the likelihood that various AMS council members have different political leanings, too, but beyond that, I think any good student union should be advocating for better access to education.  At the very least, they shouldn’t be wasting time trying to impeach some of their members for having an opinion they disgree with.

But you know, shame on anyone who says anything bad about rampant neoliberalism!  I mean, students ought to be paying the entire, full cost of their educations—what do they expect, a free lunch?  Because only the rich deserve an education, it’s true.  I mean, poor people are stupid anyway, so why help fund something that might help lift them out of poverty?  If there aren’t enough poor people, who will work in our service-based economy for next-to-nothing wages so the capitalists can continue to rob everyone blind?!  The OUTRAGE!  Education: it’s a privilege (of the rich), not a right!

My landlords felt it was prudent to warn me that when I get back from my holiday back home in Vancouver (Dec 16 to Jan 4, so make sure you get in touch so we can hang out!), there probably would be snow and that it was very unusual to have no had any so far this year.

I thought that was quaint, as if I spend my entire life living in their basement and never venturing out, let alone asking other locals if the weather has been typical or not so far.  I am Mole-Kalev!

Anyway, apparently it’s not just somewhat unusual to have no had snow so far—it’s VERY unusual.  162 years worth of unusual.  And while I may regret this, I have to say “nyah nyah nyah” to Beth and other Ontarians (and non-Ontarians) who seem to have been secretly rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of my impending deep-freeze.  They don’t seem to realise that I’m probably going to be able to deal with the cold better than the heat and *ICK* humidity of the summer.  (And the horrible, horrible bugs… I swear Vancouver has a very small bug population, overall.)  But now it’s not simply me cawing over the fact that it’s been pretty, well, ordinary in terms of winter here so far—there’s proof that the fact that Kat, Athena, Maureen, and I have migrated here from Vancouver has had a noticeable and rather remarkable impact on the weather.  That’s right: in 2 more hours, it will have been the first time in 162 years it hasn’t snowed in November in Toronto.  And even if there are a few flakes, it’s highly unlikely to be what they call “measurable” snow fall, which while it might not make this November one for the record books, it’ll definitely make it one for the highly unusual books.

And that, my friends, is what they call the luck of the Vancouverish.

I can’t comment on what I got up to tonight (well, technically last night) because I happen to know that a certain person who I spent time with has read (or at least skimmed) this blog.  However, I believe it did go well.  At least I hope so.  Who really knows?

(Please have gone well?  Please?  I need something to go well in my life.  I really do.)

You know how a lot of book-learned people (as Beth might say) have a bunch of favourite novels and poems and sayings and stuff like that?  And it’s all literary stuff?

Even though I have a minor in English (from the first degree), I’ve never felt very literary.  I don’t know a lot of well-known “classics.”  I mean sure, I can spout off some pretty common high-school Shakespeare quotes from passages I had to memorise way back when (love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, is this a dagger which I see before me, out out, foul spot!, etc.) but otherwise I’m kinda… lacking in terms of any kind of significant immersion.  I own some books of poetry but I have to admit I don’t really ever find myself going through them.

There are some major exceptions, however.

One of which is an ee cummings poem that was set to music in the TV show Beauty and the Beast (not to be confused with the Disney cartoon; this is the show that starred the pre-Terminator 2 Linda Hamilton)

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

That one has always stayed with me.

Recently, there’s been a new Levi’s ad campaign that has had ads in movie theatres (where I spend a significant amount of my time) where there’s this voiceover going on about pioneers and the West (as in, somewhat obviously, the American West).  And I thought it sounded familiar, and on my 2nd hearing of it, I picked up on this section:

O you youths, western youths,
So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,
Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,  Pioneers! O pioneers

And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s homoeroticism the way only Whitman can do it!”  (I was very pleased with myself that I was familiar enough with Whitman that I could recognize his style without ever having heard Pioneers.)

Which of course brings me to the poem of all poems, for me, which is Whitman’s Vigil Strange I Kept on the Field One Night:

Vigil strange I kept on the field one night:

When you, my son and my comrade, dropt at my side that day,

One look I but gave, which your dear eyes return’d, with a look I shall never forget;

One touch of your hand to mine, O boy, reach’d up as you lay on the ground;

Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle;

Till late in the night reliev’d, to the place at last again I made my way;

Found you in death so cold, dear comrade—found your body, son of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)

Bared your face in the starlight—curious the scene—cool blew the moderate night-wind;

Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battlefield spreading;

Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet, there in the fragrant silent night;

But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh—Long, long I gazed;

Then on the earth partially reclining, sat by your side, leaning my chin in my hands;

Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you, dearest comrade—Not a tear, not a word;

Vigil of silence, love and death—vigil for you my son and my soldier,

As onward silently stars aloft, eastward new ones upward stole;

Vigil final for you, brave boy, (I could not save you, swift was your death,

I faithfully loved you and cared for you living—I think we shall surely meet again;)

Till at latest lingering of the night, indeed just as the dawn appear’d,

My comrade I wrapt in his blanket, envelop’d well his form,

Folded the blanket well, tucking it carefully over head, and carefully under feet;

And there and then, and bathed by the rising sun, my son in his grave, in his rude-dug grave I deposited;

Ending my vigil strange with that—vigil of night and battlefield dim;

Vigil for boy of responding kisses, (never again on earth responding;)

Vigil for comrade swiftly slain—vigil I never forget, how as day brighten’d,

I rose from the chill ground, and folded my soldier well in his blanket,

And buried him where he fell.

I don’t remember when I first encountered this poem, whether it was after I was out or before, and I don’t fully understand its effect on me, but it has always, always stuck with me.

It always makes me feel the same way I do when I see any part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt—it fills me with a sorrow that is much deeper than I should by all rights feel, since until relatively recently I had never experienced that depth of loss.  A timeless, endless sorrow that is somehow still so personal.  And such helpless, helpless yearning.

Thanks to the miracles of blog time travel, this is actually my final NaBloPoMo posting.  And even though I’m writing to you from, technically, the very early morning of December 1st, as is my usual practice, November 30th does not end until I go to sleep, so (Kalev-)technically I will have actually written one post per day in November!  Hooray!  Rejoice, for it is moted!

I suppose it’s at least somewhat appropriate for a final post of this type to review some of the highlights from this month’s worth of daily postings:

• possibly the most superficial yet fun entry is my new haircut
• the completion of something I’ve been planning to do for over 3 years must rate as a highlight
• and of course, nothing more needs to be said about New Moon¹
• a really great example of Kalev being overly Kalev-ish
• I couldn’t go without mentioning my precioussssss
• a good example of what happens if you cross me²
• see Kalev rant about transit³
• Kalev actually talks (a bit) about academia

And through the miracles of BTT (blog time travel), from the future we have:

• the very rare literary Kalev; and
• the very less rare hoping-against-hope fear-of-rejection passive-aggressive Kalev

And that’s more than enough Kalev for one entry… or one month.

1. I really don’t understand why there’s so much hatred for the whole Twilight thing [↩]
2. aka the universe is the only entity that gets to dump on Kalev [↩]
3. a favourite Kalev pastime [↩]

So, the time has come to pseudo-end¹ my little Toronto experiment.  A few months before I moved to Toronto, I decided to wipe out any obvious public info about how old I am that was available on the web.  So I took down my old website which mentioned my year of birth (which needed taking down anyway, since it was about 10 years out of date—which right there might give some indication that I am not, it turns out, as old as I appear to most people).  I deleted high school information from my Facebook profile and took down info about my first baccalaureate degree², a B.Sc. in Computer Science³.  I turned off the display of my birth year on Facebook, too.  I’m sure there might be other info on the web that you could use to figure out I’m older than I look (or seem, I’ve also been told multiple times) but I took down the obvious stuff.

What’s interesting is that one of the new people in my life, a grad student at U of T, actually noticed from my post about applying for British citizenship that if I was applying under the “Adult Children of a British Mother” category, I must have been born before the 1980s⁴.  Grad students: they’re a wily bunch.  She said, “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”  I was like, “Yes, that’s the general consensus.”

So yeah, here’s the deal: I look, depending on who you ask, 5 to 10 years younger than I am.  What I am is 35, born in 1974.  Graduated high school in 1992, finished university⁵ in 1997⁶. Worked for a number of years doing computer stuff, mainly at the university I graduated from (UBC aka the University of British Columbia aka <censored>).  I went back to school part-time in 2005 (at the age of 31) and ended up deciding to do a second degree, a BA in Sociology.  So I finished that this year, in May 2009.  And now I’m a 35yo MA student.  The weirdness is that I think I could tell people I graduated this year from my degree and they’d assume I was a typical new grad student, i.e., 22/23 years old.

Now you may be asking yourself (well, okay, most of the people reading this are probably not asking themselves this because they’ve heard me go on and on about it ad nauseum) what 35yo wouldn’t want to be mistaken for being a 25yo (or younger, sometimes)?  And the answer is, well, me.  And trust me, I know youth (perceived or real) is power in our society, especially in gay male society, which of course has specific implications for me.  But here’s the thing: I always feel like I’m either a cheat or that I’m lying, even though I don’t do anything to mislead people.  In fact, it’s silly because it’s other people’s assumptions that underlie any awkwardness, not anything I do or don’t do (other than, in some way, not “act” like most people would expect a 35yo to act).

1. I say “pseudo-end” because I don’t really think that many of the new people in my life read this charming little non-blog. [↩]
2. I know, I could just say “bachelor’s degree” but I love the word “baccalaureate.”  So sue me! [↩]
3. which probably would have weirded out most of the newly-minted sociology grad students anyway *grin* [↩]
4. well, technically before 1981 [↩]
5. the first time, it turns out [↩]
6. took an extra year because I did a co-op program [↩]