If anyone has been on the UBC campus recently, you might have noticed a change of scenery. It is now full of kids, instead of the older intellectual types that used to wander around the halls of my mind.

Yea, I know. I’m just getting older and despite my extremely young appearance I suppose I’m just like everyone else who complains that the university is now full of “young’uns”.

For some reason, whenever I think of the campus, in my head it is always full of bearded teachers and students mostly smoking pipes and waxing philosophical about their new tweed jackets. I’m sure this place does not exist, nor ever existed. But these people in my mind were always older than me.

Now the campus seems different. I’m sure others before me felt the same way when they were in their fourth year, but to me it just seems strange. When I was in first year the people who were in second, third, and fourth year seemed lightyears ahead of me in everything. Intellectual ability, ability to grow beards – an ability which I have yet to master – and just absolutely everything. They seemed in a world their own.

Of course, now I’m that person who’s walking along looking at these young kids thinking that they’re going to have one hell of a time carrying a computer to the top of the parkade, only to throw it off the top seconds later. And I’m thinking that these kids are going to regret smoking pot every day and skipping class.

Yet at the same time I think I’m just doing the same clichéd reminiscing that all people do. Those first years of university were great times. And while my cumulative gpa really regrets those days, I certainly don’t. If I had to do it all over, I’d do it all the same.

Although, maybe I would have gone to that morning class a little more…

And to Hunter S. Thompson who recently passed away I tip my hat. If there’s anyone who made me interested in literature, writing, and journalism, it was him. Mahalo Dr Gonzo.

As anyone who has ever had to rent an apartment knows, there are people that are directly related to your life. You may not always know them, but during your time in that particular residence they have a surprising amount of influence over your life.

These are the people that either live upstairs, downstairs, or adjoining to your suite. Or they could be your roommate’s whom you hadn’t met previous to your current living arrangements. Regardless, these people hold a surprising amount of comfort over your living experience.

As I type this response, the people upstairs (of whom I’ve only briefly met once) are making an awful lot of noise. It sounds like they’re playing some sort of extreme jacks on the floor directly above my bedroom. And sometimes, even though I know they don’t have their own children, there sounds to be the thrashing about that can only be made by a newborn. I have no idea what sorts of freaky things go on up there, and nor do I want to.

Sometimes these noises can really piss me off. When I’m hungover at 8:00 in the morning, the last thing I need is a loud repeated hammering right above my head. I believe my roommate, who’s room seems to be directly underneath their living room, would concur.

Yet, this experience hasn’t been my only with weird roommates. In my first year of university I lived off-campus in a house that contained a late 30’s landlord who fancied she could still become a famous actress; a french-canadian construction worker who could and would constantly swear in both french and english; a chinese guy who ran a deli and would play computer games all day long right outside my bedroom; and a woman who was actually relatively nice and normal – a rarity indeed.

While the living arrangements weren’t wholly negative (they smoked pot, allowing me to continue in my ways), they were…well…just plain weird. I remember one distinct night where the landlord came down with her two sisters and they, along with the chinese guy smoked a joint with me. Then the landlord proceeded to change into this new outfit her boyfriend bought her and show it off to her sisters. The outfit was a baby-blue skin-tight leather get up. Pretty strange. As well, once the chinese guy came into my room at night drunk and took a six-pack from my fridge. He was nice about it and left a note with $10 dollars attached. But still, the dude came into my room and that’s just not cool.

And I know I’m not the only one. I’ve heard friends talk about roommate’s having complete freakouts for absolutely no reason, stolen food, and a variety of other offences that probably should have been included in the lease.

I’m amazed at just how many people become completely crazy once they’re put in confined quarters with strangers. Yet what amazes me more is that they could actually have been that crazy before they moved in. I’m sure lots of people get lucky with the random roommates they have and hey, good for them. For the rest of us that are stuck with these people who listen to indian rap at 3:00 in the morning I sympathize. Or maybe I think we need a better screening process.

Feel free to leave your own horror stories in the comments section as I can only assume they are plentiful and many.

When studying, it seems that some people cannot resist the urge to A) Not study and B) Create mindless things to make them think that they are actually being productive. We’ve all seen examples of this. Things like making a sign for the kitchen, a paper clip person, organizing study cards, et cetera. All those sorts of stupid things are just an excuse for a person to not study, while persuading their guilty conscience that they have indeed just done something productive. I think these people are in denial.

Regardless of my own personal views, those same bad study habits seems quite closely related to governmental practice. I suppose I mean a more localized form of government, but the argument could be made that in Canada this happens in all forms of government.

Let me explain what I mean.

If you’ve ever driven in to Vancouver you have likely seen an official looking sign on a lightpost that states: “Vancouver is a Nuclear Weapons free zone”. When I first saw the sign – as you can probably imagine – I was quite curious to its origins, but also why the hell it was posted on the side of the road in the first place. I mean, anyone carrying nuclear weapons isn’t exactly going to say “damn, we better stash them in the bushes before we enter the city”. In my mind, if you have nuclear weapons you can pretty much go wherever the fuck you want and a small metal sign isn’t going to stop you (and if it is you probably shouldn’t have nuclear weapons anyways).

So naturally, my curiosity got the best of me and I had to start asking others as to the deeper meaning of the sign. The first person I asked stated that they were probably in place because some submarines are nuclear powered and therefore are not allowed into the ports. While the theory at first seems logical, it at second seems not because why wouldn’t the signs be at the ports themselves?

With that theory destroyed, I asked my summer session professor and she said that they were put up in the 1970’s by the NDP government. Now, this seemed somewhat fishy to me because I swear that the signs were a somewhat new creation as I don’t remember ever seeing them before. Regardless, assuming this theory is true, doesn’t that seem like the most ridiculous use of money?

I just finished a trip to a ski hill called Big White, which is just outside of Kelowna. While the freeway on the way there during the light of day was fine, it left a little to be desired at night. And what I mean is that I desired that I could see anything…At all. That road is so dark at night that it makes black holes embarrassed. Perhaps if some of the money from any of these idiotic government programs went to putting those little flashy things on to the lines on the roads we’d have less fatal car crashes. Although I suppose then the local news would have trouble finding things to cover. Nothing sells like a bloody car crash.

My point is that it seems like the government has the aforementioned “bad study habits”. They like making small changes that really aren’t important while disregarding things that people could actually use and would be a great help to. In my opinion the government needs to get its nose back in the books and stop painting their fingernails with whiteout, because not only are they denying themselves the chance to do good, but it’s also just creepy. Nobody wants a government who makes paperclip people.

Also: Saw Sideways last night. It was good, my girlfriend described it as a movie that ‘is so depressing that they have to put funny parts in it to lighten it up’ and I would wholeheartedly agree. Funny enough not to depress, depressing enough not to be entirely funny. A good mix with a whisp of strawberries and perhaps a slight flutter of edam.