Yes. This is a legitimate business. Click on their logo for more hilarity. I'm currently debating how to politely request promotional material without sounding like a frat boy prankster.

You know how normal people's eyes water after something gets in there? Does anyone else have my problem that when the eyes sometimes water up randomly (or when yawning) in a perfectly well-ventilated room with clear air, and it stings and hurts? Instead of salt water, do I have citric acid for tears? Or maybe my tears are too salty. Christ. Ow!

DISCLAIMER: This pseudo-socio-political rant could be offensive to some, so I'll tell you now: Potentially offensive. This, I acknowledge, neither renders my argument infallible nor fends off any counterpoints, but it does make me feel like I've covered my ass in some fashion, and illusion is what seems to count.

The body of Cecilia Zhang, a young local girl, was recently been found in Toronto. She had been missing since October. The discovery caused a fresh outpour of sympathies from residents, who seemed to quickly forget that in the interim, they had returned to furrowing their brows over the usual trials of life ... like whether Friends was going to move to a new timeslot, and whether it was ever going to stop raining, because it made their hair frizz.

Hallmark cards, teddy bears, flowers, letters, drawings, photos -- you name it, it was dedicated to her. Another form of tribute was the Cs or Xs (don't ask me why "X") tagged onto individuals' MSN names. Those comprise the topic of this entry today.

My feeling: Fuck them.

Typing one measly letter onto your online IM name and considering it a huge, magnanimous gesture is one of the most insulting things I have ever heard of -- lower and requiring even less effort and resources than the trinkets aforementioned. I won't even get into what I would think if I was the girl's father (although it would be along the lines of hysterically crying, kicking, and screaming, "You think a fucking twitch of your finger on your keyboard is going to bring back my daughter?").

Worse, an IM conversation is possibly the last place to be sharing gasps of horror and catchphrases of sympathy. It trivializes the entire incident and is basically akin to holding a funeral via net cam. Moreover, I'm sure you're familiar with the usual types of things that are transmitted in IM conversations. Imagine "C - Dynamic Dan" chatting animatedly with his buddies about the girl he just banged behind McDonald's.

Is this where our generation is heading? In the place of actually making a physical effort to show your sympathy (say, writing a meaningful letter of condolence to the family), we'd rather sit on our asses and perform the most superficial actions possible.

How, precisely, is putting up a flimsy homage supposed to prevent the murder of another young girl? Because I assume this is the issue here -- that her death was something tragic and something no one ever wanted to happen to any other person's child.

I've heard the "awareness" argument, but if you live in Toronto and haven't heard of Cecilia Zhang -- after her happy, carefree face was pasted over every local newspaper, television screen, and store window -- unless you were in a coma or out of town since October, you're a fucking moron and you should get off my blog now. 

Moreover, I just don't see how a single letter is supposed to educate the masses. If the thinking is that they will go and find out, those thinkers are not just moronic but grossly naive. People have no initiative -- either you shove it down their throat or they don't care. 

What I find most disgusting is that these people are using the situation essentially to better their own image. "Look at me, I'm compassionate and I care about tragedies ... unless they're old, ugly, alien, and unknown, because God forbid that those who are young, pretty, local, and canonized by mass media should die."

Now that I've ranted about exactly what I think is wrong, you rightly expect that I should be offering resolutions. Otherwise, despite however much I am accurate in my accusations, you'd simply shrug and say "So?"

Instead of hanging up on pointless little gestures to honour a girl that has long gone beyond anyone's help, the people of Toronto should be looking somewhere else. They should identify that there's a problem, and take action. They should see that solving a problem requires a look at its cause, not just its outcome.

Instead of expending a brief sympathetic shake of the head and then after the live coverage of the burial swinging full force back to Family Guy, the people should be actively calling for changes. They should be calling for local politicians to work in closer co-operation with the police, instead of continuing to bicker over administrative and budgetary issues. They should be calling for a new look at the inefficient criminal and judicial system (because serving only five years of your actual twenty-year sentence seems to defeat the whole purpose, doesn't it?). They should be volunteering for and donating to charities and organizations that promote afterschool activities for young people, which keeps them off the streets and hopefully off the criminal circuit. They should be looking to their own children, raising them in an unconditionally nurturing and attentive environment, which encourages the growth of a healthy personality.

The sort of short-term investments people seem to like to contribute are useless and at best have a superficial effect that doesn't last. It's the long-term projects that truly deserve our acknowledgement and support. We've seen it happen before, multiple times in history; the people can make changes in everyone's lives if they would just care in ways that matter, instead of calling a single keystroke "compassion."

It's been raining here in Toronto recently. I don't mean "yesterday for a while before the sun came out to shine and then everyone skipped under the ensuing rainbow." I mean it's been raining almost constantly (well, as long as I seemed to be outdoors). When it wasn't proper rain, a fine mist drizzled persistently. When it wasn't drizzling ... well, it always was. 

Therefore, it seemed only fitting that it warrant at least one entry in my blog, which I now dedicate to my meterological comrades-in-arms: Fallen (who larks in my clashes with the sky and its liquid discharges), Yanka (who recounted a recent misfortunate run-in with rain while I was first composing this), and my mother (who used to tell me lightning was actually a camera flash, and to smile, and I more or less believed her).

There are all kinds of rain. There's the aforementioned, quasi-mist-like drizzle that is light enough so it doesn't warrant the effort of unfurling one's umbrella, but heavy enough to form significant condensation on one's glasses, thus making the wearer look stupid. There's the middling, rain-rain, that falls straight down, and which I consider "proper" rain, also aforementioned. Then there's the bitchy-bastard supa-storm rain, that pours down in fucking buckets and blows all over the place so you can neither walk nor use your umbrella in any effective measure and in fact destroys your umbrella altogether so you have to either drag it home only to throw away or shove it into the nearest 7-11 trash bin.

I like the last one least.

Under the right circumstances, though, I like rain. I like how the stormy clouds make the sky look like a blotchy watercolour. I like how the damp brings out the smell of earth and grass, even if I don't like how it brings out worms (squish) and snails (crunch). I like the sounds it makes falling, on the pavement, on metal pipes, everything.

But rain really tests my patience with the corner near my street. It's an intersection I pass by every day when I go to school, so I hate it all the more when this happens ... you see, the curb there is inclined inwards, and therefore gathers an immense, immense amount of rainwater during a decent storm. This translates to "huge ass puddle," which in turns translates to "driver fun, pedestrian hell."

When cars drive by -- and this is at normal speed -- they create tidal waves two feet high, minimum. No foolin'.

When they're really making an effort and zoom by at a pace that simply demands maniacal laughter and freaky green lighting, they make monsters of up to six feet in height. I'm not kidding you. I was trudging along once towards the trafficlights, when I realized all too late that they had turned green. When I frantically looked up at the line of revving cars, I could swear that the bastard in the front was grinning straight at me.

All I could do was turn my face away. Although my coat was not exactly waterproof, it more or less held, and I was wearing a hood over my head at the time. Otherwise, the scene might've turned extremely ugly, or uglier. Still having to catch a streetcar, I stomped off while an idling Japanese couple stared at me.

I won't even mention the time I spent half an hour battling the most insane storm ever, where the droplets of water were pounding my face like knives of ice and I was an inch away from actually physically screaming out my frustration. 

But suffice it to say that North Africa is looking mighty fine right now.   

Michelangelo's "Victory"