The day the socials died
By Andrea Sadowski
My hand instinctively reaches for my bedside table as soon as my eyes open, and I see two Facebook Messenger notifications and four Instagram messages are patiently waiting for me in my inbox. Yet, Instagram won’t load. I turn the app on and off again. Still nothing. I turn my phone on and off again. Still nothing. I get out of bed to make my coffee and try reloading the app again and again in different parts of the house, thinking it’s my sketchy-basement-suite-wifi. Nothing. I text someone. “Is this happening to you too?” “Yup, there’s a global shortage. Google it, yo.” Dear God. How will I be influenced? How will I message all my friends? How will I update the 175 people who watch my Instagram story every day? How will I scroll through endless mounds of crap on Facebook Marketplace? How will I send funny memes to my group chats? How will I look at memes at all?! I calm myself and look for other ways to fill the void that is my life until I can enter the portal of influence once more.
“Good soup,” says the local senior
By Sydney Marchand
When I’m not slaving away over a pile of textbooks, I work part-time at a local restaurant. And although I interact with a colourful array of people daily, the majority of my customers are seniors. These aren’t your typical grandparents, either — they are the 80+, broke out of the senior facility, forgot their name (bless their hearts), “make sure my vegetables are mushy” type of seniors. Yet, despite all of their quirks and questionable qualities, I will never understand their obsession with pipin’ hot soup.
Personally, my soup preferences hover comfortably around a warm temperature, because anything close to a boil and my mouth gets scorched and I can no longer enjoy it. But let me tell ya, these seniors must have mouths of steel. The number of times I have to heat up their soup to a rolling boil (yes, this is their specific request) baffles me. It doesn’t matter what time of year it is, either! 35-degree summer day? Sounds like a perfect day to slurp down a flaming bowl of thick chowder, right? Well, every geriatric in town seems to think so. Now that the weather is starting to change, this request is more and more frequent, and I’m dreading the anticipation of standing over a microwave every shift. This is my reminder to make sure to heat their soup into a bubbling pot of mouth-boiling, tastebud-destroying, cheek-blistering lava before I bring it to the table.
Cupcakes are my superfood
By Steve Hartwig
I found mid-pandemic that my energy levels started matching my motivation levels. I struggled to get out of bed in the mornings; I felt purposeless. I winded myself putting on my baggy, 1980s workout pants just thinking I might exercise. I was losing colour in my face, except for the blackened bags under my eyes, and my shaggy hair and beard were matted to the point that I gave up trying to brush them. COVID-19 restrictions stole everything: my sanity, my desire, and my six-pack. That is, until the universe provided the cure to my pandemic blues. A new hope, like Star Wars, but with icing. I discovered cupcakes at a local bakery-café I’d never visited before. I often dreamed of fluffy clouds and dense black forests, but to experience their culinary equivalent has been divine. I started getting out of bed with purpose — to discover what fruit or spice was atop that day’s creation. The icing stained colour into my face and beard. I used my own rhetoric of equivalency — for every workout I completed, a cupcake was my reward. My life has been transformed. Cupcakes are my superfood!
Internet security sucks
By Chandy Dancey
I’m sick and tired of internet security. Norton 360 was my computer anti-virus program of choice for years, and it truly was like an overprotective mother — incessantly warning me about visiting websites, blocking downloads, and sometimes even making regular programs not work. I had to disable it to play The Sims, for god’s sake.
But this sort of non-user-friendly security is pervasive nowadays. Trying to log into a Gmail account on a different computer than normal can be a pain when it’s constantly marking it as suspicious activity and asking to text or call you with a security code to allow you access to your own email. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m not exactly emailing the launch codes to nuclear missiles.
And don’t get me started on UFV’s new Outlook system. No matter how many times I ask it (beg it, actually) to remember my login, it refuses, and every day without fail it asks to text/call my cell with a code. UFV Outlook is a cruel god, and I have no choice but to submit to its whims. Internet security is all fine and dandy until it’s regularly blocking users from the interface and being a nuisance. Here’s the security code since you want it so bad, Outlook; you know where to shove it.
Images: Iryna Presley/The Cascade
Andrea Sadowski is working towards her BA in Global Development Studies, with a minor in anthropology and Mennonite studies. When she's not sitting in front of her computer, Andrea enjoys climbing mountains, sleeping outside, cooking delicious plant-based food, talking to animals, and dismantling the patriarchy.
Sydney is a BA English major, creative writing student, who has been a content contributor for The Cascade and is now the Opinion editor. In 7th grade, she won $100 in a writing contest but hasn’t made an earning from writing since. In the meantime, she is hoping that her half-written novels will write themselves, be published, and help pay the bills.
Steve is a third-year BFA creative writing/visual arts student who’s been a contributing writer, staff writer and now an editor at The Cascade. He's always found stories and adventures but now has the joy of capturing and reporting them.
Chandy is a biology major/chemistry minor who's been a staff writer, Arts editor, and Managing Editor at The Cascade. She began writing in elementary school when she produced Tamagotchi fanfiction to show her peers at school -- she now lives in fear that this may have been her creative peak.
