A plane crashes on a mysterious island. Mysterious things happen. Time travel?
Now that you're up to speed on the plot, I'd like to bring your attention to a group of people on the island called "The Others".
The Others are people who were already on the island when the plane crashed on it. No one knows who they are or why they're there. They're portrayed as villians who want to steal your baby reeeeeealy bad. They have many tricks up their many sleeves, or so the castaways think. They infiltrate the camp of the crash victims to gather information about them. They wear neutral-coloured clothes. Some are nice, some are not, some are crazy. They love, laugh and grieve, just like everyone else...but they're bad. Or are they?
Above is another picture of The Others. Not so drab this time in their natural habitat. Taking a stroll to an awkward book club meeting, having a strange medical experiment forced upon them while the sun is shining, having a creepy, ultra-conservative leader who manipulates the minds of people and the time-space continuum alike. Sound familiar, Canada? In the end, The Others are a lot like the castaways who so rudely crashed their tranquil, Utopian party.
Classifying people that you don't make an immediate connection with as "Others" is a natural tendency of our human brains. We have to make some snap judgments and classify people (rightly or wrongly) upon meeting them, or else we wouldn't be able to get any errands done on a Sunday. We'd be too busy administering one of those "tell me about yourself" chain mail surveys that haunt the internet to every cashier, fellow transit-taker and passer-by we encounter. The snap judgments we make are rooted in our struggle to live long enough to reproduce. These judgments can be a matter of life and death and one poorly-timed lapse in coding someone or something as "Similar" or "Other" could mean the difference between being friends and getting stabbed in the neck. If we as proto-humans in our cavewomyn days classified saber-tooth tigers as "Similars", we would have promptly gotten eaten, so making wise judgments regarding people is coded into our jeans. Ok, maybe not these chicks (they're not wearing any jeans), but those are fantasy art characters (BTW...my physique is based off those characters and they should have to pay me royalties for using my likeness).
This chick definitely made a judgment error in placing Eaglehead Birdman in her "Similars" category. I love the "whatever" expression on her face. "Sure - I guess I could lay some eggs for you. I didn't have plans tonight".
According to my research, which is based on the Darwin Awards, the inability to distinguish between "Others" and "Similars" are what caused the extinction of the Neanderthals. Somehow this guy slipped through the cracks. Tiger hugs. I bet he has one hell of a brow ridge under that hat.
Believe it or not, this ramble has a point. I was out and about in T-Bay today and I certainly felt like an "Other". In each place I visited, I looked around and I saw very few people that I could call "a Similar". There were people my age, but many of them had kids or other characteristics that distinguished them from me like kids or buying drink'n boxes. There were people who dressed like me, but they were probably about 10 years younger (Note to self: start wearing age appropriate clothing before Stacey and Clinton knock on your door). There were lots of women, but they were more diverse than a Dove commercial.
What's the point of all this? Well, I, in all seriousness, am feeling out of place. The lack of "Similars" is a very visible impact of the Exodus that has taken place out of Thunder Bay over the past 20 years. It seems like the "Similars" tend to go elsewhere (Southern/Eastern Ontario or out West) and the "Others" tend to stay. Now, I have to qualify all of this by saying that I have met a number of "Similars". It's not that they're not out there...you just need to know where to look for them. They were under the couch cushions all this time!!
Speaking of "Others", Sean and I were forced to hang out with his cousin Kissangelo from Brussels and my half sister Feorra from Ibitha last weekend (I didn't even know someone could be from Ibitha). They got really drunk and Sean and I had to take care of them all night. It was horrifying.
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