I've always been somewhat ambivalent about my official nationality; Joe Canada beer commercials aside, being Canadian does seem to be kind of beige and bland most of the time. Thank the National Film Board, then, for Canadian-funded anti-American American films. I'll be the first to admit that Bowling for Columbine suffers from some very bad handling of statistics (someone neglected to mention that Canada has 10 times fewer people than the States when comparing shooting deaths, eh?), but the movie probably gave me the biggest boost of nationalistic vitriol since Adrienne Clarkson became Governor-General. Between being the Queen's Chinese-Canadian representative and a potential consumer of K-Mart bullets who supposedly won't shoot my neighbour, being a Canadian doesn't seem like such a bad thing at the moment. This is an annoying revelation, because my homegirl instincts are being amped up even more, so much so that at this point it's looking likely that I will never leave this country, province, or city. I will live my life in this town and someday even convince myself I don't regret it, and that New York is a hole anyway. I worry about the power of self-delusion...
The end of the school year always bothers me, because it's never a real end; I dread that annoying space after the last exam, when you're staring into space and realise that there's nothing more you can do. All the chances are gone, the die has been cast, and a long, gaping summer of unemployment awaits. Not to worry, I'm not quite this insane in actuality -- it's just what I tell myself when I start asking who made me research the history of Canadian penal reform, and realise it was me. The brain begins to shrivel after eating out too much.
The end of the school year always bothers me, because it's never a real end; I dread that annoying space after the last exam, when you're staring into space and realise that there's nothing more you can do. All the chances are gone, the die has been cast, and a long, gaping summer of unemployment awaits. Not to worry, I'm not quite this insane in actuality -- it's just what I tell myself when I start asking who made me research the history of Canadian penal reform, and realise it was me. The brain begins to shrivel after eating out too much.
