Pure Smut

It's been quite the busy week for me at University, for a change, and I think I'm still at the point where I'm actively enjoying it. Not only have I decided to take a gamble with such foreign concepts as "attending class" and "studying," but the rest of my free time has been consumed with International Week seminars.

In the past two days I've managed to sit in on the following sessions:

01 - The Wall In Palestine
02 - When Victims Become Perpetrators: Children of War in the Process of Peace
03 - Issues and Perspectives of Peacebuilding in West Africa
04 - Human Security: War in the 21st Century
05 - FILM - Musicians in the War Zone: A Look at the Effects of War on Children
06 - The National Missile Defense Plan: Consequences for Canadian Independence
07 - Building Sustainable Peace
08 - Edzimkulu: Rebuilding AIDS Communities in South Africa
09 - Breathing Peace (an actual seminar on rediscovering the secrets of natural breathing)
10 - Feeding off Empty Bellies: Structural Violence and the Global Economy
11 - Ending Conflict on the Roof of the World: Potential Solutions fo the Tibet Problem
12 - The Arar Case: A Public Forum
13 - Perspectives on Peace: Pride, Promises, Problems - Canada's Role in the World

That's 1010 minutes of lecture time, or just shy of 17 hours in a mere 2 days...and I've still got 3 days left!

Going to bed last night, though, would have made today run much more smoothly. I reached the sleep-deprived, nerve-rattled boiling point fairly early in my day, as a man sitting in front of me was eating walnuts very slowly, and very crunchily. At the time it felt like I was seconds away from going insane, but I withheld the urge to murder the poor soul, and slowly counted back from ten (not purposely slowly, but 'cause I was super tired) while he continued on enjoying his precious nuts.

Between seminars I stopped in the bathroom, and I really must have looked like hell to all those people around me. My eyes were bloodshot, a vacant stare glazed-over my eyes, and I was wearing army cargos, an "American Psycho" President Bush t-shirt, a ginormous wool-knit touque, and my German army parka. Either I looked like a very tired Faculty of Arts senior student, or a cracked-out junkie trying catch a nap indoors. The line between the two is often very blurred and indistinct.

What did snap me back to harsh reality, though, were the ungodly temperatures enveloping the City of Champions. On campus the mercury read -42C, and that's before the "where'd my testicles go!?" windchill effect, which made it feel closer to -50C! But really, once things dip below -30C it's so mind-numbingly cold that you begin to question just why our Forefathers thought this particular chunk of dirt would make a great place for a sovereign nation anyways?

Currently listening to: Hell freezing over - it's really that cold, dammit!