Everyday I make my way along the subway into downtown Toronto for work, a commute of nearly an hour and a half. I have never disliked the commute, it gives me a blessedly peaceful opportunity to sit in one place, read a little and think to myself. Sometimes I listen to music, most of the time I watch the people around me. Some of the most interesting conversations and situations that I have witnessed have occurred on the subway cars of this city. Lately though, the commute has become more tedious for me and it's only this week that I started thinking about why that might be.

The first leg of my trip ends on my arrival at Sheppard-Yonge station, a hub through which I transfer onto the Yonge southbound line. The daily stampede of frazzled commuters crossing through Sheppard-Yonge is one I can barely describe, and something that is really understood only after witnessing it for yourself. The doors to the subway, crammed to capacity, inch open and immediately hundreds of commuters run, jog and push their way down the escalators onto the north-south platform. They acknowledge each other only to the extent that they try to go around each other. I'm no stranger to public transportation or to subway hubs, but there is nowhere in Toronto where I have seen anything like this. One day last week, I stepped aside from the platform as the rush was getting under way, and bought a cup of coffee at the Cinnabon. There was another lady next to me and together we watched the throngs descend. The young girl behind the counter shook her head, and the three of us started chatting about the absurdity of this situation. A few minutes later, when calm had more or less been reinstated, the lady and I began walking down to the next platform. Before we left, the girl behind the counter thanked us for stopping by to chat. From what I understood, she doesn't get a lot of business because to the commuters, she is really just a part of the scenery. To acknowledge her would be to recognize an obstacle in their way. How incredibly lonely.

As frustrating as this experience is for me, for one aspect I am grateful: at least in those brief moments when everyone is chasing down a position on the elusive southbound train, there is some passion, however reticent, to their motion. There is also some interaction between them, even if it only comprises trying to take everyone else down. The rest of the time, the commuter society I witness daily is a beige mass of reclusive automatons, head down/eyes closed/ipods in ears. People don't talk to each other or even look at each other for the most part. They channel their personal soundtracks into their ears and surround themselves with their own world, increasingly disengaging from the public society. I won't go so far as to blame this increasing disconnect on the ipod (that bane of interpersonal culture!) but it is an interesting phenomenon for me. As I write this, in a downtown Starbucks over my morning coffee, the barista prepares to take her 10-minute break and quickly puts on her ipod earphones before walking down to the bathroom. She can't even relate to the environment around her in the moments it takes to go the bathroom!

In social anthropology we discussed last year the ascent of individualism and how it gave rise to more personal and romantic relationships since we involve ourselves more now in those relationships that fulfill us emotionally and appeal to our personalities. I wonder though if that individualism, extended, will eventually compromise those same relationships? The ipod is a unique manifestation of that individualism and its potential consequences. I think it's popularity in great part has to do with control - we control what we listen to, and therefore in part our surroundings, in so far as our "surroundings" include that peculiar environment created by what we are listening to at any given time. If sitting on a subway car I listen to the voices and conversations of those around me, I interact with them. The ipod-listeners on the other hand have no such interaction; it is entirely a self-created and self-serving environment, a contained bubble removed from the external society. The more we sink into such a separate existence, the more unexpected interruptions bother us. A couple of weeks ago I was listening to my ipod walking on the street when someone stopped me to ask me for directions. As I pulled the earplugs out to hear what they were trying to say, I remember looking around me at the several ipod-less individuals around me and wondering why she stopped when I clearly had something better to do. The second that thought reached me, I began considering my, for lack of a better word, "ipodacity".

I can just imagine a future where everyone walks around completely oblivious to the unique identities and personalities around them, where fullfilling relationships disappear because we can't lose control enough even to let someone else into our spheres. My commute this morning was entirely ipodless, I didn't even bring it with me. I missed a little bit listening to my music on the way in, but on the other hand I did overhear a 5 year old tell his mother he hoped he would marry someone who would cut his sandwiches like she does... and that I think will add more enrichment and amusement to my day overall.

The Merrium-Webster Online Dictionary has several different definitions listed for the word "value". The very first defines it as a "fair return or equivalent in goods, services, or money for something exchanged"; the following definitions also refer to relative worth of something compared to others. It isn't until the fourth definition that the dictionary defines "value" as something that is assigned by humans, and its arbitrariness is revealed.

A relative recently gave me a sizeable gift certificate to Holt Renfrew. For those who may not know Holt's is a luxury retailer with high-end designer fashion. The gift card I received, which would buy me many nice things in any ordinary store. would not go very far in this store. To that end, my mother and I went to their "last call" outlet store where I succeeded in finding a cute blazer that after 80- 90% discount, fit almost entirely into the budget I had. I won't tell you the original price of the blazer but that if I had that kind of money, I could keep myself in groceries and rent for two months.

Someone out there is, in fact many people out there are walking around paying my rent and grocery money's worth for one single article of clothing, some fragments of cloth stitched together, when that money could be put to so much better use. People are good, and I have no doubt that they do, and would continue to do good things with the resources they have. But, here at least, we are constantly surrounded by voices telling us what we need to be ourselves, make ourselves, and aspire to improve ourselves. That, in fact, is the additional importance of "value": it is not just about the items to which you assign it. Value tends to be attached to something that fulfills you, and has a positive affect on your life. Where are you, who are you, what are you made of when all it takes to complete you is empty luxury? I hope there is no one who is genuinely fulfilled by such things; I sincerely hope it is just another disguise behind which we hide. It makes me sad that any society could have so many different players all aiming to assign significance to such meaningless things, and so many more people ready to accept it.

My breakup this year with my Canadian ex-boyfriend left me in an emotional upheaval of sorts, understandably. I was upset and frustrated, and the timing could not have been worse. I had just returned (hours earlier, in fact) from a moderate in length trip to Iran, my first back home in nearly 12 years. This trip highlighted a very important fact about my relationship with my ex, that eventually it seems he could not deal with: I had other priorities. Everyone has their priorities in a sense of course - work, school, different friends, etc. I also had the weight of Iranian cultural expectations on my shoulders and the pressure started taking it's toll, however imperceptibly at first.

I grew up in quite a liberal family, a veritable contrast to what is stereotypically seen as an Iranian tradition of conservative values and stifling lifestyle expectations. That doesn't mean however that some sort of cultural expectation wasn't present, and one thing I was always made to understand implicitly was the importance of marrying an Iranian, preferably one whose family was known to mine. Of course, my parents never went so far as to forbid me to marry outside my culture; their influence only extended to subtle reminders as to how much certain things (like culture, background, family, etc.) help a relationship, and to the extent that I understood how comparatively successful endogamous marriages are, I agree with them. It helps of course that I'm certain I would never have to explain my anger at certain political events, the importance of attending Iranian community functions, my interest in the continuing improvement of Iranian-Canadian relations, or my need on occasion to spontaneously erupt into singing "Ey Iran", to a Persian boyfriend (but that could be because my ex was rather oblivious to things that were't about, well... him). However, I'm also quite prodigiously proud of my Iranian heritage and love the idea, for myself and my future children, of continuing in that tradition.

It's funny - I don't really know why I am thinking about this so much these days. It could be any number of things. I recently turned 22 and all around me, marginally older cousins and friends are getting engaged and I feel my relatives subliminal questions as to the occasion of my own future marriage (or not so subliminal really: leaving a family gathering last night, my uncle expressed his wish that we would next meet at my wedding); having recently come out of a long relationship I am thinking hard about the kind of relationship I want to get into next. I picked up the book "Marriage: A History" this week by Stephanie Coontz, and she talks a lot about the changing face of marriage, one in which cultural background doesn't mean as much. I remember thinking "it does to me". So, on that note, I suppose all that's left to say is if there are any eligible Iranian men in Toronto...

n.b. That last bit was a joke. Thanks.

"...a strong version of anxiety of influence"... can be detected in her work, says the Harvard English professor, discussing the plagiarism accusations levelled at "How Opal Mehta..." author Kaavya Viswanathan. He seems to be discussing a young girl allowing herself to be unintentionally influenced by another work in her desperate attempt not to be left behind. The psychoanalytic take on plain, fat, cheating.

I say that, but I have still not fully decided where I come down on this. There are many passages that are strikingly similar and also similar enough in context to be strong indications of plagiarism from a book called "Sloppy Firsts". There are others though, which are somewhat more ambiguous:

Opal Mehta, p14
The other thing about Marcus is that crackheaded girls who don't know any better think he's sexy. I don't see it. He's got dusty reddish dreads that a girl could never run her hands through. His eyes are always half-shut. His lips are usually curled into a semi-smile, like he's in on a big joke that's being played on you but you don't know it yet.

Sloppy Firsts, p23
Just about every girl, from the A list HBz to the stoner hoochies, thought he was sexy. The weird thing was, I didn't see it. He had too-long shaggy brown hair that fell into his eyes, which were always half-shut. His mouth was always curled into a half smile, like he knew about some big joke that was about to be played on you.

True they are undeniably similar. But consider for a second the fact that every chicklit teen book from here to eternity has the character "Hot Cocky Boy who you don't like yet, but will". Every one of these characters is described in the same way - list their physical traits, the fact that you don't see it (yet, but probably will, because all your friends do), and the fact that they are arrogant and smirky. Because in the teen world, that is actually a turn-on in itself. This is the archetypical introduction to this character, and many will find similarities. There's only so many ways to write this, when the entire idea and genre is unoriginal and repeating. Think about all the teen OC-like melodramas on TV - how many of them have a character almost exactly like Dylan from Beverly Hills, down to dialogue and storyline examples?

Like I said, I'm not sure whether I want to draw and quarter the poor girl yet. Because I do think of her as a "poor girl", and I'll tell you why. This book is another in a line of Alloy projects, and I knew even last year that there would be problems with it. Alloy, let's not forget, is the consumer-driven marketing genius which owns just about any youth-related venture you can think of, even to social networking sites like Sconex (a facebook or myspace like server, for high school students). They also own 17th Street, the book-packager behind Gossip Girl, A-List and a host of other ditto projects. These companies live and die for product placement opportunities, and when an aspiring teenage author happened to stumble into their laps, they snatched her up and began grooming her to be their next megaphone into the teen life. Alex Beam of the Globe actually hit this on the head, and noticed that the copyright is shared with Alloy, who helped "flesh out" the concept of the book. Someone connected with the publisher has already said that Viswanathan's work was not edited prior to Alloy buying the rights to the work - looks like there is a good chance Alloy might come out being blamed for the lifts.

On a forum discussing the Opal Mehta controversy - "Huh. But what's going on here? What makes a book like this come to "life"? What do packagers actually do? More to come."

What do book packagers actually do? There's many things - one of them being pitching ideas for books to publishers designed to reach an agenda. Take Gossip Girl for example. The idea was to find a new way to get into the teen market, and the suggestion was to combine "gossip" plus "blogs" plus "sex and drugs" to create a new literary craze. Where did they find Cecily Van Zeigesar, the author? Well she worked for them in the marketing field, as did Lisi Harrison, who writes "The Clique". "Zoey Dean", the author of "The A-List" is actually a pseudonym for a writing team whose identities are still being disputed, although I suspect, as do many, that the team is composed of Cherie Bennet and her husband. Ann Brashares, writer of the Pants series (and I am loathe to bring her into this, because I secretly love those books) was until quite recently the Co-President of 17th Street. Too many threads. Now, after the merger with Allow, the two comphanies together have a finger in just about every pot, with the idea of making money off teenagers. An excellent business strategy, since this demographic, with their constant preoccupation with fitting in, are always ready to drop dimes on the next it thing.

And in her own way, I think Viswanathan's embroilment in this fiasco is another example of the lengths people will go to fit in and become known for something special. Big bad wolf Alloy comes along with its half a million dollars and promise to be famous... well the rest is history.

The topic was religion, or something to that effect, and came about in the car, on our way home from a family dinner. My dad brought up the movie "Bruce Almighty" and how surprised he was that no one protested a film in which a pretentious comic played God, when just months earlier thousands protested a cartoon which presented an image of a religious prophet. I had to think about that for a minute - on some level I suppose it isn't improbable for people to have protested Jim Carrey's performance as blasphemous, but that would never have occured to me. Yet I was as offended as many by the Danish cartoons that made headlines awhile back. Well first of all, there were some protests to this movie. It was banned in Egypt and Malaysia for portraying God as a human being. There were some other mumblings from other small groups as well, but nothing to the extent that occurred recently. Why?

The first thing that came to mind was intent. Clearly, there was nothing in Bruce Almighty that was intended to offend people on any essential level. They stayed away from heavy theological questions, or even any concrete elements that might make it overtly denominational. It was interesting premise with some cute ideas, and was in it for a bit of a laugh. Contrast that to the cartoons that were not only meant to offend, and gravely, but were clearly targeted to Islam. Two significant differences. The non-denominational aspect of the movie struck a chord for my father. He said that it didn't matter what denomination was represented as there is only one God, and everyone knows that. I find that difficult to accept. Perhaps the religious teachings tells us that there is only one God, but do we really believe that? Who among us doesn't secretly think their God is best? Why else would people be so careful to differentiate between "God" or "Allah", and find other ways of making sure people know which religion's being one is talking about? Perhaps that can also explain the lack of emotional outpouring to Bruce Almighty - no one felt there was a finger of disdain pointed at them, at their beliefs, and their religious identity.

My father also made the point that the people who protested the cartoons were doing so from the stance of idolization, representing God or his prophets in human form. While that may be the case to some extent, it is not sufficient to explain the anger that arose which was almost personal in nature. To me it seems that they were protesting the content, the political nature of the drawing that suggested an Islam-terrorist link that many Muslims have had to contend with over the course of the past several years.

It is really difficult for me to take my father's arguments seriously on this matter. Truly, I don't even know what he was arguing. He was surprised there was no protest to Bruce Almighty because it was clearly idolatory, despite the fact it was a relatively neutral piece of art. He was surprised at the protests to the cartoons, and found them ridiculous, because it was a piece of art arising from "the imagination of the cartoonist". Yet, last year he and I got into a very heated debate about the assasination of Theo van Gogh, who was killed for putting in one of his movies a scene where script from the Koran wrapped around the naked body of a woman. My father nearly justified it, saying he should have known what he was up against before making that movie, which was inherently offensive to Islam, and not excusable by it's artistic status. Someone drawing a cartoon is depicting something from his imagination to express a meaning. Someone putting the real script of the religious writing on the body of a naked woman (!), that is sacrilege and intolerable; there is no interpretation there, no meaning. His implication after all this was that van Gogh essentially asked for it. I can't accept that, and I don't really understand the three different reactions to what I feel is essentially the same argument.