An embarrassment

I was doing some research for an article I'm currently working on. It's about how playgrounds are changing, becoming less structured and essentially more natural.

I took out some books from the Ryerson library. The books are looked pretty good from the outside, nothing obviously wrong with them, which is what I expect from a university library.

Usually, they're in pretty good condition, but of course there is the odd ass-hole who will write all over pages, highlight text and circle things they want to look at a later. It's annoying, but at least the text is there and legible.

So, imagine my surprise when I opened up one of these books, started scanning some pages and came across this!











A giant hole cut out of the middle of a page!
That's a lot of information missing. Was it text? Was it a photo? I will never know if it was something that I needed. What if it was life-altering information that I will now forever be missing?

Plus, this says a lot about the respect that students at Ryerson have (or rather don't have) for the library material. Frankly, when I found that giant hole, I was embarrassed to be a young student attending Ryerson University.

New fashion is old fashion (Re-posted from school blog)

This is a post I actually wrote for my online class back in April- we had to write on fashion or sports. Needless to say I chose fashion...

Spring is a new season, and with it comes new fashions, but recently the new fashions are old fashions: vintage, second-hand and thrift-store finds are the way to go this season.

Cassie Cowie, 19, created and runs her own online consignment store, MYEXCLOSET, in three different cities: Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
"Fashion is always coming and going, and what better way to bring trends and styles back with vintage and second-hand. It is a very authentic way of doing it, instead of buying a new version of the trend re-vamped," Cowie wrote in an email.

Luckily, Toronto has a great collection of thrift stores. Plus, there is the Toronto section of Preloved, a company that creates new high-end fashion pieces out of old clothes.

Tess Roby is a 16-year old student at Rosedale Heights School of the Arts. She mostly shops at Value Village because it's cheap, but she likes to buy new clothes every season from stores like H&M, which she says is very good.
But Roby thinks that a lot of stores, like Urban Outfitters for example, "pull their ideas from vintage shoppers" and use them to create more expensive fashions.

"I definitely like that [thrift] one-of-a-kind," Roby says. "Sometimes there can be stories behind clothes." A friend of hers once bought a dress from 69 Vintage that was a traditional hand-made Dutch dress.

Isabel B. Slone also has a lot of thrift clothing. She writes Hipster Musings, which gets 5,000 to 6,000 visitors a week. She picks thrift clothes from the 80s and 90s that are "cheap, outrageous and tacky, which kind of suits my personality," she says.
"Designers are always looking through their archives for present inspiration from the past," Slone says about thrift fashions effecting new fashions. "Everything in fashion seems to get recycled eventually."

*Photo Credits: Alexandra Auger and Isabel B. Slone

not4me

If you've taken the subway any time in the last three months, you probably will have noticed ads put out by the Canadian government that are encouraging youths to say no to drugs and instead spend their time roaming about a new website: not4me.ca

Recently, there was an article (which I am still desperately searching for but can't seem to find- I swear it exists) that I read online that pointed out that many alcohol ads warning against binge drinking only made the viewers want to binge drink.

I think that these recent advertisements about not4me.ca have been having a similar effect.
I really want to know if these advertisements are doing their job or if they are causing the opposite of what they intend. Are they intriguing or deterring?

They show photos of drugs- a marijuana is shown in one ad and a few tablets of colourful pills (presumably E or some other kind of upper) are shown in another.

Personally, the advertisements make me want to know more about the drugs.
The photos are intriguing.
They don't make me want to say no. They make me want to find out more.
This reaction is the complete opposite of the advertisements' intended reaction.

Solely looking at the website, it's a pretty hilarious website. The advice is so... well, it would not work.
They whole site just reeks of staunchy old people who are trying their best to be politically correct and seem as if they're doing something to make a difference.
Not to mention the testimonies in the "Share Your Story" section seem completely fake. I would go so far as to say that they are fake. I really don't think any kid who has gone through school system could be that naive and ignorant. Kids talk. Kids know. And by the time you're in grade 10, you can't pretend not to know.

Although, the site does have some really great picture-puzzles you can re-create if you'd like. I always love to spend my time putting together puzzles that feature a giant pile of weed. Fun!

But, again, this is just my opinion.