Excuse me, I burbed.

Ok...so I’m home now, away from the surrealism of London Ontario and the beloved university safety net. Which is cool because officially now I have no more deadlines, no more essays, a lack of consistent boozing and mind melting, which I'm not sure is a good thing or not yet: I may need an intervention.

I love being home, don't get me wrong, family/great, friends/super, msn/life source. But, let me tell you the thing that bothers me most with coming home to the megapolis of Whitby Ontario (oxymoron what?) is after spending the last four years educating myself on North American cultural habits the new Whitby, in my eyes, is a case study for the citizens subjected to routine and boredom. No offense to anyone who reads this from Whitby, but suburb life is tough, its an amazing city to raise young kids, or retire to because it is nice, the people are pleasant, and you are close enough to the city to branch out if need be. But as a 20 something with no real commitments to any career, love, or systematic routine, living in the burbs is like watching a whale stranded on a beach. You are mesmerized by simple breaths, as the life slowly is sucked out of everything around you.

Now I know that sounds harsh, but there are little things that I notice about human life in burbia that really take away from the creative and outgoing freedom of people who live in this town.

First and foremost: CARS. I hate em, why, cause you NEED them to live in the burbs. Mcluhan wrote "there is a growing uneasiness about the degree to which cars have become the real population of our cities, with a resulting loss of human scale, both in power and in distance" (Understanding Media, 218). To Mcluhan, I say, "NO SHIT".

So I came home to no available car...my parents need theirs, and well I'm a broke ass grad. So I've been walking everywhere. Within two struts to the corner store (10 mins away) I've become some sort of burbcultural weirdo. The looks I get from passing motorists for being the only guy walking around anywhere are ridiculous. Heckles, gasps, open mouthed who are you’s. But, I also realized that I cannot blame them.

I was driving around with my peeriodical lifesource, Nicole, the other day, and I found myself falling into the trap. Ive discovered that the reason walkers are gockily shunned by the majority of motorists, is because in Whitby if something is moving out of the ordinary its big news. Everything is familiar when you live in the burbs, and when something disrupts the regularity of the everyday its cause for social unease and awe.

Dependency on cars for your everyday, fixes our species in the societal "real" life that we are all supposed to reduce ourselves to. To the point where, your every move is reduced to familiar boots between the things you have to do that day.

So to the world of commuters, I ask you to take a walk, as often as you can, get out of your car and breath about something differently than the stresses of work, your commute, and what’s for dinner that night.

For a community that gets an amazing view of the stars, it’s a shame that the whole world has to shut down at 10pm so that you can beat the traffic the next morning.

posted by mr. tomas ubik @ Friday, May 06, 2005