Working and going to school in a densely-populated region like downtown Toronto inevitably means seeing people from all walks of life from lots of different places.  All walks of life including smokers.  Now don't get me wrong, people who smoke could be really nice people (I don't know a lot of smokers).  But it's the things some do that really annoy me.  Especially at Union Station.

The first of these is smoking just outside the door.  It's now socially unacceptable and illegal to smoke inside a public building, places of work, and most private buildings in the downtown core.  Pretty soon, it might become illegal to smoke inside cars carrying kids under 16 years of age.  Where does that leave people to have a smoke?  Outside buildings.  But where outside?  Just outside the door.  Maybe it's cold, maybe it's windy, maybe the people I've seen are just lazy - I don't know.  But people who smoke just outside buildings annoy me because the smoke lingers because of the covered enclosure just outside most doors, and people decide to exhale just as I'm passing by.  At Union Station, people smoke in the area between the subway station and the concourse area - after all, it is outside.  But again, they are just outside the doors that say "no smoking within 9 feet of door".  This sign is visible on both doors leading to the subway and to the concourse.  This leads me to the next point, which is...

Smoking under a "no smoking sign".  Smoking on GO Transit property is prohibited, but people seem to forget at the bus terminal downtown.  There are bright yellow signs saying "no smoking on platforms" with a really big cigarette that's crossed out.  But on more than one occasion, I've seen people smoking in lines waiting to board buses.  Once I even saw a person smoking right under the sign!  It's not like there aren't designated areas for smoking at the terminal, but the total disregard of those signs is unacceptable to me.

The last point that really annoys me is smokers' apparent right to litter.  On countless occasions I've witnessed people just chucking their cigarette butts on the ground when they've finished.  Sometimes just outside buildings, or waiting in line at the bus terminal, or out the window of their cars.  This makes the entrances to buildings, sidewalks and roads really dirty - so dirty that it's become commonplace.  I fail to see how these people think they can do this, while littering is an offence under provincial by-laws.

So what can be done to reduce these occurrences?  Without appearing like your grade 1 teacher telling you to clean up, not much I suppose.  There could be more enforcement by police officers, but there, admittedly, are more serious crimes to address in this city.  Perhaps these individuals simply need to be educated about the consequences of their actions.

What do you think should be done?

Part 5 of this 7-part series is about animals.

//edit - Wow, never expected to be featured.  This is pretty cool.

For those of you unfamiliar with the bus terminal at Union Station (which is pretty much most of you, I would imagine), it's a strip of land one block long with 6 bus boarding platforms.  There are two designated smoking areas on each side of the terminal building (which isn't very big), complete with a sign (that allows smoking), benches, and a specialized disposal bin for cigarettes.

If this wasn't clear before, the sight of multiple cigarette butts on the ground doesn't make the surrounding environment very attractive.  I would think that people who live, work, play, and go to school in a city would take pride in its appearance, seeing as they go through that area on a consistent basis.

And lastly, I'm not on a mad rant here.  I just thought this merits a little bit of discussion, seeing as no one talks about it here.  To quote someone,

"I think judging someone on the Internet when you haven't met face-to-face is unfair, especially since when I write, it's just text.  So people just make up in their head the tone in which I speak.  Or my body language.  So these people probably imagine me typing stuff with furrowed brows, angrily pounding my fists on the keyboard, and then going outside and beating people up and stealing cars because they picture me as being such a jerk, but I'm actually quite pleasant in person."

--Jon Graham, "It's a Wonderful Live: Episode 1"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyto3AubZFw

Oh, and one more thing: this isn't meant to be a blanket statement on all individuals who make a choice to smoke.  I just wanted to highlight some things that people in general may not give a second thought.

So after reading the title, you're probably thinking one of three things:

1. Richard's finally gone off the deep end because of the 2W term
2. Richard's been playing too much Halo and has become a hardcore gamer
3. ?!?!?!!?!?!??!?!?!?!

Well I'm happy to tell you that it's a combination of all three... somewhat.  You see, there's this guy.  His name is Jon.  And he's 19.  And he makes the funniest Halo machinimas ever.

For the uninitiated, machinima is:

A collection of associated production techniques whereby computer-generated imagery (CGI) is rendered using real-time, interactive 3-D engines, such as those of games, instead of professional 3D animation software

Specifically, Jon makes use of the theater mode (which captures everything that happens during a game and saves it to the XBox hard drive for later viewing) to make his videos.  In addition to a few action figures from the game.  One of his series is titled "Arby 'n' the Chief", namesakes from the primary protagonists of Halo 3.  In this series, two action figures of these characters are used to act out the storyline that he writes.  Master Chief is portrayed as a stupid, inconsiderate, and foul-mouthed (not to mention horrible spelling and grammar) 12-year-old kid - in essence, a "noob", whereas The Arbiter is portrayed as a reasonable person who likes to talk a lot, but uses coherent sentence structure and all that good stuff we learned in English class.  The series thrives on the interactions between these two characters regarding commentary about various video games on the market (primarily Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4), the Halo 3 community, and just society in general - and this makes for some great comedy - crude, but effective.

The series started January 7 (coincidentally, the start of term), and now, the 11th episode is in production.  The series is actually a sequel to an original series (by the same guy) called "Master Chief Sucks at Halo", which establishes the character of Chief.  The videos have given me a really good reason to have a good laugh over the course of the term, mostly because of the dichotomy of the Arbiter and the Chief.  The Chief can really be quite stupid at times.  Also, the background music that's used in these videos is often to my liking.  You may have noticed on MSN or GTalk that I've started to listen to "Love Underground" by Robbers on High Street, or the "Super Smash Bros Brawl Main Theme".  You can thank Jon and ANTC episodes 3 and 6, respectively.

My personal favourite episode of the 10 produced so far is #6: "Brawl".  Here's the video for your viewing pleasure.  Note that this video contains "strong language" and "adult themes", and is not intended for younger audiences.

If you liked that, here are links to the other episodes:

Episode 1: Pilot
Episode 2: Recon
Episode 3: Attitude
Episode 4: Melee
Episode 5: Martyrdom
Episode 6: Brawl
Episode 7: Girls
Episode 8: Legendary
Episode 9: Newcomers
Episode 10: Cortana

I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I did.

The next part of this 6-part series is dedicated to the epic course that is AER201H1S - Engineering Design.