As I still mourn the loss of my glasses, some things continually cheer me up like:

1) THE FIERCENESS OF BRITNEY: especially in If U Seek Amy, where she not only gets a shot at Megyn Kelly of Fox News, but does her sweetest housewife persona complete with a pink Lacoste polo and humble American pie. Wait you say, isn't she a filthy BDSM whore in the beginning? WHAT AN AMAZING TWIST IN PLOT. Her performance for this at the concert was beyond bizarre, as well.



2) THE CUTENESS OF JAY BRANNAN: I am in LOVE with him so so much. Not only is he basically my personal hero -- I mean, he has some huge cojones doing this all by himself (he's the CEO of his own record label -- he's also talented and sweet and self-deprecating and UGH I want him now. Anyways he has a small skit in his new video and after watching it, you'll totally want to eat him and his cuteness up too.



Show me your favourite videos please. My exams don't start till April 16th, meaning basically I am free to fuck around the interwebz for two weeks. Sweeet.

When you rob students blind, mark up textbooks and readers over 30 dollars and have crap re-sell policies, this is what you get. Students are poor, or if they aren't, it's still galling to know that mandatory textbooks are selling for 8-10 dollars less than average at a retail store than a university-run bookstore. With three textbooks per course in a school year, that's around 300 dollars more out of our pockets than it should be. That's just for political science. For engineering and medical science students, textbooks can add up to a thousand dollars, on top of their actual tuition.

I've never actually photocopied textbooks, not out of principle, but out of laziness. I'd rather buy used textbooks on student-run exchanges than at the U of T bookstore. I don't recommend doing what is illegal -- I believe it's always best to be on the right side of the law -- but when such blatant highway robbery is being committed, it's hard for students to patronize the bookstore without this nagging feeling (in the wallet, particularly), especially when it means the difference between skipping meals, doing well in a class, or crawling back to the financial aid officer to up OSAP payments.

I personally don't know what can be done, and I've been fortunate so far that I can either afford the books or have a friend who I can borrow from. But more pressure needs to be put on these university-run bookstores; although we understand it's a business, they are also a business for poor, starving students and when even professors refuse to sell their course packs because they deem it to pricey, like how my English prof sold it out of his office instead, it's time for the student body to propose solutions or put pressure on the bookstore or the university administration to reconsider royalty fees, or subsidize the bookstore and such.

I don't think illegally photocopying textbooks is the answer though, even if in reality it saves money and symbolically it's a huge middle finger to the publishers/bookstores: it only drives textbook prices further up and the cycle of exploitation continues.

Now brb while I procrastinate from reading my textbook and instead, read my friends page.


( Some comments left on the Toronto Star article that fuels my STUDENT!ACTIVIST!UNION! rage: )