Chapter 251

I woke up at 6 as always and slowly started my day. I read the news, one story was making the rounds, about a school board in Canada burning a bunch of old comic books that depict Native Americans in what they see as a negative light. Burning books. Is it the precedent they want to set?! It’s easy to make fallacious nazi parallels nowadays but this one isn’t that far-fetched. Those Lucky Luke, Asterix and Tintin comics were a huge part of my life as a child and yeah, while they might use exaggerated stereotypes as a form of humor, you’d have to have a seriously skewed sense of perspective to see outright racism in there. Some of the early Tintin albums have undeniably aged not very well, but Hergé went on record a few times about how he regrets penning them that way and rather than censoring them outright (especially in such a way) we should use them to foster a discussion about colonialism and ignorance of other cultures.

Plus, the real question is, what do those chucklefucks really think they’re accomplishing?! How is literally burning a book that has stereotypical redskin warriors dancing around a fire and fighting cowboys helping in any way a kid from the Tuknuguknatituktukmuk reservation in northern Ontario, living in abject almost-third-world conditions? And can we address how it’s massively hypocritical for those cunts to virtue-signal about the plight of minorities while they censor and destroy monuments of French culture in a province where the French-speaking minority is already having a hard time resisting assimilation?

Anyway. I rode to school and went through my grade-12 classes, talking about electrophilic substitution on benzene rings, and the effects of electron-donating and electron-withdrawing groups on regioselectivity and kinetics. Piece of cake. Nobody pissed me off. I like my grade-12 classes.

In the afternoon, it didn’t go quite as well. One of the grade-11 classes is quite weak, and teaching them feels like tending a field of cucumbers. I’d ask questions, and get only the blankest of stares in return. I ask myself what the hell I’m doing when I’m in front of a group of low energy students who are not very academically gifted, have weak-sauce English and are still half-asleep from their lunchtime nap, but at least none of them are disruptive shitheads. I’ve been teaching fairly strong and/or energetic groups for the past year, so I’ll have to adapt my approach and expectations.

That got me thinking about my whole vocation as an educator. I am in here to teach fairly advanced chemistry to capable and motivated students, not to drag people who frankly are only there because they have to. I admire those who teach students in underprivileged environments, that’s a noble endeavor for sure, but not one I want to do. And I feel like the kids on third-worldy Native American reservations or inner city dangerous ghettos need basic literacy more than science.

In the afternoon we had some kind of fair with all the extracurricular clubs. I’m going to run the skateboarding club again this year, and so many students signed up, my sheet was full. We’ll see if they all show up. Anyway it’s not meant to be a structured activity, just going outside for a bit and ride around the lot.

I relistened to the grindcore bomb by Eastwood, and an equally awesome slab of fast, angry, catchy music by a Portuguese band named Bas Rotten. They expertly mix thrash, punk and grindcore, and will also enter my rotation.

Then I went home, ate a protein slurry, and avoided taking a nap to not fuck up my sleep schedule later. Then I went to train BJJ. The Italian blue belt got us to move to a new gym, some little bland fitness center with treadmills and machines, and they put puzzle mats in a side room where they usually hold yoga classes. If it was just me, we’d stay at the grimy kickboxing gym because it’s much cheaper and has more space, but the other guys want to train in this new place instead. What’s a boy to do? I’ll do what I need to do.

We drilled a few moves from half-guard, top and bottom, then rolled some rounds. I scored a pretty cool belly-down armbar, and got out of a bad position where I would have been stuck only a few weeks ago. I’m learning, and enjoying myself.

Then I rode to the park to meet the girlfriend and the dog, and went home. She went to Burger King for dinner and brought me back a burger, how nice of her. I supplemented it with steamed broccoli and the leftover jalapeño poppers from yesterday to make it a full meal. I watched an episode from Hip-Hop Evolution about New Orleans, and though the documentary was good and there’s nothing bad to say about that, all the music in it was shit to my ears. It’s weird how some rap music is in the top tier of music I like, but I don’t give a shit about some other subgenres. But then again the same can be said about metal, I love death metal and thrash metal but don’t care much for power metal or metalcore.

I had a limoncello and a glass of rum and read some Beigbeder in bed before crashing.