Sunday, October 02, 2005

Pillow clouds of poison gas


I'm sure I told someone that I would make October my blogging month. I'm sure I said that I would be sure to post at least one post each day this month, all the way till Halowe'en. It looks like I'm off to a marvelous start.

So, why no post on Saturday? The truth is that I don't know. I wrote three separate things that would have qualified as posts for this blog and I chose not to post them. I'm not sure why. They were neither angsty, nor offensive nor particularly revealing, the regular reasons why stuff doesn't make the cut to be here. Now they sit in bizarrely-titled notepad documents (yes, because that is my program of choice) on my desktop.

So let's talk about my desktop for a little while, shall we? Is it too much to say that it is a fairly accurate depiction of my mind? There is very little empty space there. Instead there is the occasional program and what seems like hundreds of random thoughts scattered across my screen behind little shortcuts. It's rather chaotic, really, because nothing there is organized in any sort of way that makes sense. It's one big mess. But somehow it all works out, just like my mind.

I opened up my school-issue agenda book this week and found this in the fun facts section:

"In 1965, Paul Martin paid $470 in tuition fees per year at the University of Toronto. In 2004-2005, tuition fees at the University of Toronto were $4,107 per year."


I am not sure why exactly it is there. I was puzzled at first as to why they had to mention the prime minister. After all, he's rich and he no doubt got through school just fine thankyouverymuch. What the hell does he care about tuition? Then I flipped the page and found:

"Between 1985 and 2001 the Consumer Price Index, the average annual change in the cost of goods and services, rose 55%. Over the same period the Tuition Fee Annual Index, the yearly average increase in tuition fees, rose 261%."


Once again I was not sure what to think. Why give me this information?

"Money allocated for social programs in the 2000 federal budget: $2.5 billion. Money allocated for personal and corporate tax cuts in the 2000 federal budget: $58.3 billion."

"On July 31, 2005, the total outstanding Canada Student Loan debt reached $11,032,000,000.00."


Yeah, I know we're fucked. I just don't understand we have to be constantly reminded of it. It's cruel.

As for the three posts I wrote yesterday. Maybe I'll post them when you least expect them. Maybe I won't.