As a first-year I have to introduce myself to many people many times. I have highlighted a certain trend in this ritual. Before I open my mouth, people have already conceived the following perception of me:

- has a boyfriend

- is Spanish or Latin

- too intimidating to talk to

- likes POP music

- likes to part-AY!

- in her own world

Is it my hair, my cute heeled boots or is it my attitude? What about me exudes these characteristics? The funniest or most insulting to me is when after introducing myself I hear phrases like:

- “Really?”

- “I would have never guessed.”

- “Interesting I’m impressed.”

I like to think that I am a very unique person. I am not a compulsive liar (if I was I would mention my secret marriage to Lionel Messi). Then why do people think I’m lying or joking when I tell them: (more…)

Image from Associated Press: Kanye being Kanye. :'( Poor girl.

Dear Kanye West,

Who do you think you are? How dare you WRECK the poor girl’s special moment. Grammy-nominated Taylor Swift is one of our time’s greatest artists who does not need Auto-Tune to make her sound marketable. Even if she sounded like a horse (Miley Cyrus) she was voted by the people to win the award. The people and NOT you have the right to decide. So how dare you take the duty upon yourself to inform the world of what should have been done?

How does it feel Kanye? Not being the bigger person in a battle against a 19 year old girl! Do you feel proud? Do you feel FRESH?

How does it feel having the President of the United States lose respect for you?

What really grinds my gears, is the way you carry yourself like a narcissistic fool. I miss the old Kanye; the modest “College Dropout” whose goal in life was to make good music, not publicity.

I am sick of you, Kanye. You are annoying, untalented and personally I think that you would be NOWHERE without your sampled music! You are a wannabe — a wannabe King of Pop, a wannabe celebrity, a wannabe attention-seeker and a wannabe little boy wanting to be a man.

I am sick of your antics! So why don’t you bury your ugly haircut, your false perception of self and your digitally-enhanced music somewhere in a dark abyss, where it cannot be accessed by your ego.

XOXO

Sarah Munawar

If you haven’t already read it, here’s Kelly Clarkson’s angry blog to Kanye.

Image from petstorebyconny.com

I’m not a dog owner so I have to be honest, I’m being a little judgmental here but seriously, what in the name of heck do we need dog strollers for? Dogs love to walk, run and play. Why put them in a stroller when a leash is cheaper and allows more exercise? Let them smell the poo on the ground and frolic in the puddles. So what if they get dirty? They’re DOGS! I get embarrassed for dogs just seeing them in that thing! I get so angry when I see these strollers on the bus because they take up so much space and I don’t even get to pet the animal because they’re behind their stupid veil of “protection”!

To me it’s just another useless, niche product that people buy to spoil their dogs. The target market for this product is obviously geared towards people who are willing to fork over at least $100 to pamper their small dogs. What is with you people and spoiling your dogs? Dogs are simple, okay? They love to play, eat, snuggle and smell weird things.

I read this article on the benefits of having one: 16 reasons to Use a Dog Stroller, and I’m still not convinced.  To me all the reasons are excuses to be lazy.  Besides, this stroller is really only meant for small dogs (imagine a Great Dane in one of those) which you can easily carry in your purse, which I see a lot of people do, or in a carrier. Or, hey, let them walk! Unlike babies, dogs were born to walk almost from the moment they were born. I have a 10 month year old neice so I know how challenging it can be to take care of someone. Dogs are challenging too, I get it, but let’s be honest here, this stroller business is really just an excessive desire for more ways to perpetuate our laziness and consumer greed.

Image from The Guardian

I am a convert. I used to bleed red but now my blood carries a blue undertone. I am an FC Barcelona fan. I’m more than a fan, I’m an addict. I live for Messi’s tricks and yearn to break the hearts of the Madridistas.  Soccer is my boyfriend. Soccer is my life and FC Barcelona is my heroin.

I am leading a double life. On the weekdays I am the girl reading Perezhilton.com whilst trying to juggle Philosophy and English readings at the same time. I don’t drink, dance or party. I am a conservative.

But when the weekend rolls around, my dress transforms into a red and blue striped jersey; my eyes become thirsty for the blood of the Madridistas and my heart beats to “Tot El Camp”. I forget about school, family and friends. The only thing on my mind is strategy, luck and hope. For two hours of the weekend, I am free to holler, chant and just BE in the moment.

If only others can feel the way how I feel when Iniesta concocts a last minute sheer of brilliance to win the game, or when Captain Puyol weathers the storm and sets up a brilliant counter-attack. Am I one of a kind or just in the wrong country speaking the wrong tongue?

Leading a double-life is hard especially when your’re a first year student! What infuriates me is the fact that it’s a Saturday and instead of watching Messi and Ibra OWN Getafe, I am reading Plato at a steady comprehension rate of five words per minute.

My question of the day is: Can one be an obsessive compulsive soccer fan and a university student at the same time?

Were you part of the “ROSI incident”? Yesterday at 6:00 am, the gates opened for everyone trying to get into courses with an enrolment indicator of “P.” Then hundreds of U of T students everywhere spent almost 12 hours unsuccessfully trying to enrol for courses.

The night before I planned to wake up at 5:45 am to prepare for battle. Unfortunately, I ended up sleeping in until 6:30 and spent two hours doing this (repeatedly logging in and clicking on “Course Enrolment”): (more…)

Posted on behalf of a reader, Peter Tran:

It’s an expression we all use, particularly when we run into people we haven’t seen for a while. But the thing is, there is a reason you haven’t seen them in a while.

We all know that through the different stages of our lives (e.g. elementary, high school and post secondary), friends come and go. The friends we keep are the ones that weren’t just convenient, they were people we naturally gravitated towards. These are the people you can spend time with sitting on a swing set, going for walks or even cleaning your room while the other watches. We all have these friends with whom we can spend time with doing practically anything. I call these people close friends. I could be cleaning toilets with them and I’d still enjoy their company.

Then there are the friends who you drift from but every once in a while you can easily call up and be like “Hey! Its been a while, come over tonight.” You don’t need a regular dose of them, nor do they need a regular dose of you. It’s so easy to pick up right where you left off even if its been weeks months or years since you’ve seen them. I call these people old friends. These are the people who are going to fly all the way up from Australia to see you get married or take a day off work to help you move into your new apartment.

However there are those friends we don’t keep. The friends that… in reality, were convenient. These are the people who you had class with, who you worked with, who you saw on a regular basis out of circumstance. (more…)

Image from http://www.capitolpride.org/pridehistory.shtml

Since this week is Pride Week, I feel that it is appropriate to write about this one pet peeve of mine: that is, the use of the word ‘gay’ as a derogatory adjective. You might think, ‘We’re a diverse community at U of T, and we obviously don’t do discriminatory things like that.’ Well, I wouldn’t be writing this article if this were true, for just this year, while I was walking across campus to get food, I heard two girls in passing (I also truly hope that at least one of them is reading this article…) and although I didn’t hear the rest of the conversation, I did hear, “Yeah, the desks in that class are so gay.” I’m sorry, but those desks in that classroom do not have a sexual orientation, and even if they were homosexual, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

If you were to argue that this has become a popular expression and therefore neutralized or a development of the English language (which I have heard) I would care to disagree. Forgive the language, but the word “nigger” has become a racial slur for people of African descent. However, its etymology shows that it was originally a pretty harmless word, for the word ‘niger’ (with its feminine and neuter counterparts nigra and nigrum) simply means black in Latin. I’m pretty sure that no one of African descent would be ashamed of the colour of their skin and nor should they be. The only reason the word has become offensive is because people have used it in an offensive context. In that sense, the word ‘gay’ has become the same thing.

Therefore, I propose this: stop yourself from using the word if you’re using ‘gay’ offensively and make sure to let other people know that it is disrespectful to use the word in an offensive manner. No matter your faith, culture, age, sexual orientation, social class and what not, everyone deserves respect, so let’s be respectful to others in order to expect the same in return.