What a day! Or, shall I say, what a week!
As you probably know from previous blog posts, I had three midterms this week. Requirements (SOEN342) on wednesday, Statistics (ENGR371) on thursday, and Design (SOEN343) on friday. Needless to say, it has been a hard week. One exam to prepare after another, nonstop. It was a tradeoff: do I get my required sleep so I don’t get brain dead by the time the exam comes, or do I stay up late, cramming.
Though I think today went well. Although it might have been the hardest exam, I knew precisely what material to study, and what was expected from us. You see, our professor has this approach to teaching, where in order to stimulate participation, he asks questions to students and once in awhile distributes excercise sheets, and let me tell you it works. It’s the only class I would really mind skipping, because I know I am going to learn. Reviewing the lecture notes and doing the exercise sets was really all it took, within 24 hours, including sleep!
Next in line was the tutorial, where we had to form teams for class projects. I am happy to say, this was also a success! I think we got ourselves a great team, with awesome people, eager to kick some serious ass, while those guys are getting drunk at the campus dive.
Comming home, my brother wanted to go see DOOM. Being in deep study mode, and so out of touch with the entertainment industry, I had absolutely no clue whatsoever as to the existence of such a movie. Hell, I even missed a couple of days of slashdot. So I hand $20 to my brother to buy the tickets for him, his friend and I. He gets carded, and I for the first time ever, get carded, too. I am 22. I have been to bars. I have bought ahcohol. Never, ever been carded. But I get carded to go see a movie that contains moderate violence (nothing compared to some web sites), intense swearing (which is really a subset of my daily language) because it is rated 16 years or older. I mean, what the hell is wrong with this world for dumb soccer moms (or security moms-whatever the heck the call them nowadays) to get their way like this with movies, when you can be exposed to much worse just by turning on the nightly news. You see, many (shallow) people like to blame video games for all evils people do, because it’s easy. Perhaps the way they reason it, well the liberal way of looking at things, is that the gaming industry is doing well, an industry that is doing well is evil, thus, the gaming industry is evil. Sure, many corporations are not exactly good citizens, but you can’t blame corporations for all evil. I like to see it the other way around. The arts are a reflection of the times, the people, etc. Games, movies, cartoons are violent because the people are. I think Michael Moore showed that pretty well in Bowling for Culumbine. But then again, I have a backwards-revolutionary mentality, as my brother suggested. Yep, I just don’t get it.
So anyway, I take out the first card on hand in my wallet. It was my gym ID card. It didn’t have by date of birth on it, so she refused it. OK, so, I dig in for my driver’s liscence, which is refused, because it supposedly doesn’t have my date of birth on it, which is actually embedded in the liscence number (and everybody knows that), and in Quebec, you have to be 16 to drive, not to mention that you have to be at least 18 to get a full, non-probationnary liscence. Then I lose it, I am visibly frusrtated.
OK, so I throw in my Medicare card. Finally. Two pieces of ID just to go see a movie rated 16 and over. I bet a 15-year-old could get into Club Super Sexe without such an exhaustive inquiry on his age. Sure, the girl at the tichet office was blonde, maybe she didn’t know better, I forgive, but, being Greek involves two very simple rules: (1) you are always right, and (2) when rule 1 does not apply, rule 1 applies.
Into the theater we go, while trailers have started playing. No little safety lights on the steps. And the movie was out of focus, my eyes were hurting. I have been going to this theater for awhile (well it’s the only decent aptly named movie theater in the south shore of Montreal) and the focus is usually excellent. I guess they decided to hire some amateurs for the busy Friday night shift. But still, you pay 10$ to go see a movie on friday night, after a long week, and this is the crap you get?
unhandledexception.net 
