Cool Cherry Cream

So I’m reading this CTV article about changing the lyrics to “O Canada” to be gender-neutral.

“Huh?” thinks me, seeing the title of the article, “What non-neutral word is there in ‘O Canada’?”.

“True patriot love in all thy sons command,” the article says. A-ha, so there it is. Yes, certainly, it’s not gender-neutral, I just never really noticed it before. Or if I did, I didn’t care all that much.

I tend to not care about these little language issues. Words are just words, they don’t mean to offend anybody. Well… unless they do. But “sons” is not offense.

And I wonder, hmm, why they don’t want to change “God keep our land” to be more religion-neutral? Not that I, as a non-God believer, am offended by this line. I “get” what God is, and I think having some nice guy watch over us is a nice sentiment and fine to put in a national anthem. Why not? It’s at least less creepy than the guy who watches us when we’re sleeping, and people all over sing about him.

I do initially want to agree with the people who say “don’t those politicians have better things to do?”, but I feel like this is an IMDB-type argument (”it’s just a movie!”, “let’s see you make a better movie!”, silly little arguments that really mean nothing). And anyway, we know they don’t have anything better to do because they just got back from their damn long vacation because they couldn’t get along! And umm… I don’t think that actually made sense, since I have a problem with that, you see. I’m going to stop talking about this whole issue because I will not be able to continue on without using a little word that starts with F, and I’m trying to stop doing that.

So the whole issue is silly, we’ve agreed, and it’s only come up because public people are obsessed with being politically correct.

But then I see the suggestion for the new lyric (which is actually just an old version of the lyric): “True patriot love thou dost in us command”.

Despite the fact that it sounds sort of Shakespearean, a traditionally hard-to-read form of the English language, it actually makes more sense than the current lyric. While, okay, they both mean basically the same thing, I didn’t understand what the current lyric meant until I read the old one. My limited language skills tell me it means something like “Canada makes us feel patriotic”; the “thou” being “Canada” and “dost in us command” being “makes us feel”. The current lyric is missing the “thou”, so we don’t know who or what is commanding its sons to feel true patriot love. Make sense?

So you know, for this fact alone, I support changing it. Actually, I think that’s a bit too strong. I don’t really “support” it, because I really don’t care. But obviously I do care, because I’m writing about it. But really, either way, I’m not going to get my panties in a bunch. Can guys even use that term? Because I don’t think panties are very manly. Actually, they could say “boxers in a bunch” and then they’ve got the added punch of alliteration. Anyway, this is completely off topic.

Anyway, I think it’d be cool to change it because of the whole “making more sense” thing, and plus, gender-neutrality certainly isn’t a bad thing, even though it’s sometimes taken too far.

And seriously — seriously?! — Weird Al was never Canadian? Still? I swear that was him singing the anthem every morning on our school’s P.A. system.

I’ve deleted the Reddit link on my bookmarks toolbar. I haven’t been on it much lately since I’ve found FarmVille and Mafia Wars to be more entertaining. Or maybe because I subconsciously realized it’s gone to shit.

Don’t remember when I left Digg, but it was around the time I realized everyone on it were woman-haters. I can be a woman-hater too, but after awhile, it’s just not funny anymore.

People have been saying for years that Reddit’s going the way of Digg. I’ve finally seen it for myself. There’s been all these childish spats over what moderators have said and done. There was one awhile ago on the IAmA subreddit, which is actually one of the few that are usually worth reading. Some mod made a stylesheet for the subreddit and then was banned from it and wanted them to take the stylesheet down. Understandable, yes, but they went about it wrong.

Around Valentine’s Day, a user posted that he found out his girlfriend was cheating on him and wanted advice on how to get revenge. Later, he posted an update about what he did. He went way too far. And the whole purpose of it was to “hurt” her. Again, I understand that he was hurt, but he wanted to destroy her. Okay, cheating’s not good, but geez people, it’s not the end of the world.

I don’t recognize many people’s usernames, but there’s one who I previously thought had some rather insightful comment, who’s now involved with this war over them accepting money for submitting stuff to Reddit. I don’t really think there’s anything wrong with that, and it looks to me like this person is still pretty cool. But then people are saying she’s abused her power as a mod and banned other people for making money off their submissions… But I figure, if she’s a mod, and Reddit doesn’t mind her making money off them, then let her be a mod.

Anyway, I’ve always disagreed with some widely-held Reddit views (downloading, marijuana use, pun threads), but now it seems that most people are expressing views I don’t agree with.

It’s been fun. I managed to get there before most of the other Digg users did and managed to enjoy some slightly higher intelligenced discussions. But now, the Facebook people who believe they can get free stuff by inviting all their friends to some group are looking slightly less annoying.

It’s been such a long time…

It’s been a long time since I rock ‘n’ rooolled…

Got a feelin’ twenty ten is gonna be a good year…

So Reading Week is over, but I’m still just as chipper as I was two Fridays ago when it started. Despite my horrible Tuesday/Wednesday, I had a great week. In fact, I haven’t had a bad week for quite awhile. Before I left for home for the week, I cleaned my oft-neglected room inside out. It pumped me up and set the tone for the rest of the week. Sure, cleaning’s not fun (unless you’re Danny Tanner), but to have my room — my room — look this nice was, well, nice! It hasn’t looked this good since before I moved in, mostly due to the fact that depression makes you (well, me, at least) not care much about cleanliness. Though that doesn’t change the fact that I still follow the logic “throw on the floor, I’ll vacuum it later”. (Of course, this only applies to my room(s). I went to a movie not long ago and my mom asked me why I took my garbage out of the theatre with me — “this isn’t my house” I told her. And too bad for that old teacher-logic, “do you throw things on the floor at home?” — why yes I do, thank you very much.)

Anyway, I started off my week off playing Beatles Rock Band. Finally, I decided I had enough strength to drum. It took me quite awhile to get back to even singing, which takes a lot out of you itself. And not only did I drum — which I had been wanting to do since getting the game and realizing Ringo is actually a kinda fun drummer — I sang too! I tried out drumming on hard, since I figured Ringo’s not Keith you know, and got by. My brother convinced me to try on expert (while still singing lead!) and I managed to get through about fifteen songs… and then I failed on “With A Little Help From My Friends”. But still, I was feeling awesome.

I got my room at home clean, even though it involved making it even messier than it already was first and then organizing things hidden away in tubs and drawers. This was quite a feat, because there were still things on the floor from moving out of my room at school last year. And I don’t mean last year like before Christmas break, I mean last school year, like before summer break. And then there was all the stuff thrown on the floor from the hospital, and all the stuff thrown on the floor from just regular living in my room. So getting that room clean was also awesome.

I even started getting our baby pictures scanned into my mom’s computer. I got all of 1991 scanned, cropped, and tagged in Picasa. Oh, how I love Photoshop’s “Crop and Straighten” feature! And learning how to do Actions — priceless! I didn’t even have to save each picture and close it; Photoshop did it all for me!

I could’ve gotten a lot more scanning done (and homework, which I should be doing now…), but I’ve been addicted to FarmVille and now Mafia Wars (which I only started playing to get the tractor in FarmVille… but now am playing just because I enjoy it). Considering all the time I’ve been putting into them, I’ve been doing pretty good. I don’t know how I’ll be able to last in my three hour classes without checking them every five minutes.

And besides all this stuff I’ve gotten accomplished, I’ve just been feeling good physically and emotionally. I haven’t thrown up, my poos are regular (which they haven’t been for about a year (well, actually, that’s a lie; they were pretty regular; I went about every two hours, night and day)), my stomach doesn’t hurt… there’s been quite a few milestones; I’ve ran up the stairs (even walking up them without being hunched over was quite an accomplishment), I can walk at a normal speed, and I have finally, finally stepped on the scale and seen a number in the triple digits (100.8, oh yeah! At first, I only saw the “00.8″ and wondered how the heck I weighed that little).

I know from experience and Charles in Charge that I should not be happy out loud. I’m a logical person generally and don’t believe in things without good reason and hard evidence, but I dunno, for some reason, I believe in some things being more than coincidence. I knew last year that as 2009 was drawing to a close, there was going to be one more bad thing happening in my life, something major. Honestly, I was expecting another death — a family member or a celebrity I admire, I’m not sure which — but luckily, that wasn’t to be.

Being in the hospital turned out to be a good thing, though. Since having the surgery, I’ve just felt different. I obviously am different, as people can tell from my appearance and health. But something in my mind just clicked, something that didn’t happen with the depression drugs. Sure, the drugs helped me feel better, but I still wasn’t 100% me. Like I said, I don’t want to “jinx” it, but I am feeling incredibly great now. I really hope it continues, but I know I probably shouldn’t count on it. But hey, after last year, don’t I deserve it?