June 24, 2006

That made me wanna cry, (in a good way of course...) that show I was at last night featured a friend of mine Marni of Marni and Melissa and Abigail Lapell. Those are links to their myspace pages, the songs you should listen to are Boston by Abigail and Home by Marni and Melissa. If you're in the mood for a bit of tearful romance, and vocals that will tear your little heart to shreds

the concert was a benefit for Breast Cancer Action Montreal.(BCAM)

Breast Cancer Action Montreal (BCAM) is a non-profit activist/advocacy group directed by women who have been sensitized to the trauma of breast cancer (affecting themselves or someone close to them) and who are committed — long-term — to erasing the disease.

The focus of breast cancer research must move beyond its current emphasis on treatment to also embrace a serious search for the causes of the disease and its prevention. BCAM promotes and supports the adoption of the Precautionary Principle as a guideline for action. The Precautionary Principle is a safety-first premise that states that, when there are reasonable scientific grounds for believing a process or product may not be safe, even when cause-and-effect relationships are not fully understood, preventive action must be taken.

There are several more of these benefiits scheduled to take place over the summer to find out the schedule get in touch with BCAM via the website listed above.

It's some good stuff.

Abigail is a bit like Cat Power, if Cat Power could nourish a bit more anger in her presentation. Marni and Melissa are a bit like, well I don't want to say it, but the lower register- high register harmonies make me think of the Indigo Girls but without the cheese, and with sly Tom Petty references.

Oh god what am I saying Marni'll never speak to me again.

It's good stuff go listen to it, don't listen to me, I am not a music reviewer.

Okay it's with a song, but baby steps here folk..

If I'm weird I want to share By Tender Forever.

Described on the K records website as;

Tender Forever is a girl performing alone with her DIY crafty sounds, a cardboard laptop, a very personal body language, tears, cut-outs, spasms…and more. Tender Forever also means countless people, feelings and emotions living through her music. Tender Forever plays guitar and calls you into play. Tender Forever sings, dances, gets stirred, excited, worn-out, falls on the floor and affects us. Tender Forever is something very, very fragile! And at the same time, it is a great ball of fire dragging along everything in its way, which might wake up intense things that are buried deep in each one of us…

May 30, 2006

Thanks to Wanda the talking fish;

Let me take you a button-hole lower.
-- William Shakespeare, "Love's Labour's Lost"

May 24, 2006

I am sorry for being such a terrible blogger lately. The writings crap, the contents dodgy to say the least (I mean ogre-rock and mens body shaving equipment..really).

I have a lot on my plate. At least that's what I will keep saying until you all go somewhere better and leave me on my solipsistic lonesome.

I just wish I were doing what the dude over at Radio Clash is doing (Actually right now it sounds like he is breaking up with someone, sadly).

Tim, whatever happened to your love life, your debilitating disco soaked pain is quite movingly expressed through "I can't stand the rain".

May 23, 2006

Sometimes I am taken aback by the sheer weirdness of North American culture. Witness Faith the bipedal dog or the strange obsession with Britanny's poor parenting skills (really did anyone expect any better?).

Then I find out that Lordi "The Finnish Ogre Metal Band" won the eurovision music contest and it becomes clear that the dark (weirdo) horse in the running is Finland. It must be a surfeit of healthy food, blonde-wood furntiture and reindeer sweaters. Whatever the case the Finns sure love them some Ogre rock.

If you can stand it, Here's Lordi performing Hard-Rock Halleluhah at the 2006 Eurovision gala. Wait 'til the interview at the end it's hilarious.

The pyrotecnics aside, I'm still waiting for something to beat My Lovely Horse.

March 20, 2006

So I was standing their with Aquafresh Empower-mint toothpaste foam dripping from my mouth when it occurred to me that Henry Miller was a total fuckin' jerk.

So there. So was Dorothy Parker. And Virginia Woolf was crackers.

Noto mention all those indy rockstars I adore who write beautiful songs about heartbreak and mortality and when you finally get to meet them after a show it turns out they are a freaked-out-on-acid lout with a guitar-pick for a heart.

Sure I need some reflection, probably some sturm and drang, love of the human stain that vacuums the blood from my heart and sprays it on each wrenchingly honest page. etc. etc.

But empathy, that's for Ms.Manners and my yoga/consciousness -raising group. Mostly for there, and a bit for my writing, I think. It's not like I need to go and do a full frontal emo-lobotomy on myself or anything.

{{I am learning to be kind to myself flink-style over here, bear with me.}}

Oh, in other news: A hostess twinkie costs $20 dollars in Peawanuck. That's a lot of money for a snack cake.

So I got really sick,

Now I am feeling better but the old will-to-blog just isn't there anymore. There are a couple of reasons for this;

#1/ Just too damn busy, and it's all on the computer worse luck. I can't face the interface after a full day tapping away.

#2/ I want to write (Said as if Iwere saying; "I want to sing" or "I want to act/dance").

As in, I don't want to just expell the contents of my head on this surface I want to just a wee bit more than that. It's scary, like I've been a fair turn as a kitten tamer and suddenly I feel like what I want to do is much much harder than that.

Which sucks. I think I'm not even good enough (shut-up anyone everyone shut-up it's my blog this isn't fishing, just can it). I've been reading some really good books lately and I just don't know if I have the talent.

The worst part is that I think what I lack is empathy. It's not a surprise to me, I've been told, and have noticed it myself that when faced with someone else's story I tend to give advice or try to match it with a story of my own. Or even more exasperating I use it as fodder for a witty aside. I mean these are all good conversational devices. Famous people (Woody Allen, Sigmund Freud, Lenny Bruce) have used voices like these to good effect.

But I think,(I can't be sure, but I think) if I want to write good, fiction, I am going to have to learn to listen to people and to listen to what's going on around me a bit more carefully, to a different purpose.

Not something I am used to , not something I do usually.

A friend of mine is working at a company where he is basically the human part of a tele-type device.

Someone who is deaf types in a sentence and he reads it back to the hearing person on the other end of the line, the hearing person says something back and my friend types it back etc etc.

He says he's going crazy, after each 8 hour shift he is an endless grab-bag of other peoples lives. He says he needs to learn to have a better filter but that most people can't do it. That no-one keeps the gig for longer than a year. It makes the workers incredibly sad to know so much about other peoples lives.

Then we talked about a parallel job describing things to blind people. You would be contracted to describe a certain object, say a postcard or a picture of their new nephew. The weird poetic pleasure in sitting next to a blind person explaining one new babies particular smile.

Now it sounds like I am saying that readers are all like blind or deaf people and I have this noble obligation to describe the world. That was certainly not my intention. But I want to do something that feels more like being a conduit for the stories around me, and hard at work describing the world, not just my kind of (a lot) less then interesting life.

Here is quote from 'Self' by Yann Martel it's on a list of ideal paragraphs somewhere. Or if it isn't yet, it should be.

This pain, the pain of unrequited love occurred at such regular intervals during my childhood and adolesence that I don't care to write about it. It was a terrible and continuous pain and there was no deflecting it, only bearing it. When my parents prepared spaghetti, I always noticed the one noodle left behind in the strainer, forsaken, forgotten, while its companions lay intertwined in each others arm, hot and steaming, in a large bowl at the centre of the table. When love was pain, I felt like that noodle. I never ate pasta without beforehand going to the strainer in the sink. I would look upon this bereft noodle, curled upon itself in search of comfort, and I would bring it love by eating it tenderly

February 27, 2006

And we no longer need Dan Brown and his hack job gnosticism to help us get over our addiction to metaphysical word games.

Da Vinci Trial Pits History Against Art, I would re-title that "DaVinci trial pits Total Crap Fiction against Weird New Age Historians.

Brown, whose tale of clerical conspiracy and murder has become the bestselling hardback adult novel of all time, is accused of plundering his plot from a non-fiction work called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail

As if.

January 28, 2006

More Details on What Exactly Is In the 52 Projects Book.

Not that I need a book that will give me *more* ideas - but wow I love the cover art and I love the decription.

52 Projects is an exploration of your creativity -- from the culinary to the literary to the artistic. A way of turning the ordinary into the extraordinary, and finding a flash of inspiration in our everyday lives.

January 9, 2006

until it was much too late.

I just finished Peter Pan. Which has become the first best book of 2006, a difficult position to maintain so early in the game, but nevertheless...

Of course Neverlands vary a great deal. John's for instance, had a lagoon with flamingos flying over it at which John was shooting, while Michael who was very small, had a flamingo with lagoons flying over it. John lived in a small boat turned upside down on the sands, Michael in a wigwam, Wendy ina house of leaves deftly sewn together. John had no friends, Micheal had friends at night, Wendy had a pet wolf forsaken by it's parents; but on the whole the Neverlands have a family resemblance, and if they stood in a row you could say of them that they have each others nose and so forth. On these magic shores children at play are forever beaching their coracles. We too have been there; we can still hear the sound of the surf, though we shall see the land no more.

December 19, 2005

I thought I would find that depressing but after about 200 pages of Adrian Mole and the weapons of mass destruction I began to take comfort in this fact.

For those of your who don't know Adrian Mole is a famous fictional British diarist who is growing up at approximately the same pace as I and my contemporaries. In grade 6 I read the secret diary of Adrian Mole, and have been keeping up with him since.

Adrian is a bit of a ponce and has the maturity of a skateboard. The diaries are social and political satires, so each character performs a certain role in lampooning British society. You can tell that the author Sue Townsend is actually quite in love with everything she mocks because there is nothing very cruel in her descriptions of Adrians provincial town and it's inhabitants,

In the latest installment Adrian is turns 34, buys an overpriced loft on Rat Wharf and goes into massive debt to furnish himself with a lifestyle. He also almost marries a controlling hippy named Marigold and writes letters to his son Glenn who is stationed in Iraq during the second installment of the gulf war.

Here's an entry from May 6th

Credit card bills were waiting for me when I got home from work; I was too depressed to open them. I put them in the kitchen -gadget drawer. The one I never use.

I thought that my habit of putting overdue bills I can't pay in the junk draw was the highly individual act of a slightly scattered person. Apparently not.

Worse yet, Mole is getting old, and so am I. Last night I took 5 pills before bed. 5!!!! just for preventative reasons and then at 4:00am when I was still reading I took two herbal sleeping supplements. That's seven pills in total. I am going to take out a subscription to Readers Digest today. I think it's inevitable that one morning I am going to want to read short jokes about lawn-mowers and trips to the dentist. Though I neither own a lawnmower or a lawn, nor do I have money to pay for a trip to the dentists.

Also I have this habit of writing like any author I admire, it's annoying I can't seem to help it. I am writing just like Adrian Mole/Sue Townsend today.

PS

I got complaints (okay okay, a complaint) about taking down the jellyfish post so I put it back up. I am thinking of developing a career as a post-modern myth maker. You tell me your life situation I will come up with an animal story that gives the life experience a spiritual/metaphysical meaning.

December 18, 2005

Oh look! another social mapping project

I want to make social map of peoples dog walking routes. I think it would be more interesting. People are boring, dogs are amazing. Today we went over about 9 snowbanks (tall snowbanks!) she was doing her best whitefang meets licorice coloured dolphin impression ever.

Went to see Great Lakes Swimmers last night. It was amazing. Except I cried right in the front row when they played a song that made me think about my mom. Embarassing a little - except that the music was so about the waterworks that I think I was just enacting every other persons deepest wishes. Except that wacky raver with big dreads who was dancing?? Break it down to absolutely soul crushing lyrics about literally dead deer. I can dig it.

I have already received two kick-ass holiday presents, a pair of fingerless gloves in flink colours from Kit and a comic book called la Fugue from Alison.

I had an argument with Lauren about whether I can send Chanukah cards to Christians. She says no - I say the Christians are always sending me Christmas cards, let's give them a taste of their own medicine.

She said I was just being cheap because I wouldn't buy two boxes of cards.

She is probably more right then I care to admit.

Oh yeah and the show last night was at Friendship Cove where I met Jack Dylan and his GF who were selling stuff. Jacks art is really nice, Like the drawings by the brothers Hernandez. You can see it on theirmyspace page.

December 6, 2005

I went to see Dar Williams play tonight.

Thanks jane.

She said this while introducing the song "Teenagers for G-d"

"I remember being a teenager, I was 60% devoted to G-d and 40% terrified of being possessed by the devil, you could say that made up the velocity of my faith."

Here you could just listen to her explain it herself

I can't find links to the "Teens for God" but here's her cover of an old favorite. One that I listened to while alternately attending to the demands of a Jewish youth group and the upsurges of my teen-age soul

Comfortably Numb

Both links require real player, and Ned you're going to hate it so don't even bother.

November 30, 2005

Go listen to Jens Lekman. All the metrosexual boys have started writing twee folk music, the verse is urban vernacular - I am still not sure how I feel about it.

I think it might be Ani Di Franco for boys who wear american apparel tee-shirts and flood pants.

Just finished the Red Tent which is like; "The Biblical Horse Whisperer" except for the part at the end where Dinah dies that made me cry and think of my mother.

Why try to squash a dynasty into 300 pages? Why are poorly written romantic stories so infuriating. All the looks of longing in the world can't disguise poor writing about love it's so annoying.

Okay, I should go addendum my masters application

What to make of song with a viola where the chorus is;

"f word f word pardon my french but that's BS"

Ani would have at least said bullshit.

November 27, 2005

This is pretty neat;

unmediated.org: Tracking the tools that decentralize the media.

I found it while i was looking for an article about this book I am reading, it's called mediated by Thomas de Zengotita. The basic premise of which is that as a culture the west has become so mediated that out basic conception of reality has become one of artifice. We are all method acting our way through the days, and things are slated to become even more mediated, with the arrival of biotech and real virtual space. See I can't even write this without accepting that the failure of language to express new developments in perception is proof of the premise.

I was going to write a long blockquote. But I am feeling a little over-mediated by my week-end and need to go make some soup and walk the dog.

here's a review from site dedicated to reducing some of the intake load.

Book Review: Mediated by Thomas de Zengotita

This mediated (but lazy) post is officially dedicated to ms. bad-pants flink, alive on vhs after all these years.

** last minute addition.. ***

I was just making soup and listening to the radio and this amazing music came on.

Turns out, (and how lucky I am the announcer actually said the name..) that it was ladino music by an Isreali named Yasmin Levi

Ladino music is..

Ladino (Judeo-espaniol)

The Spanish Jews who fled Spain in 1492 after the Edict of Expulsion took with them a rich cultural heritage including the Spanish language. For nearly five centuries Sephardi Jews have kept alive the language of those Spanish exiles. Ladino, as it is popularly known, is an archaic form of Spanish with structures and vocabulary that can be traced back to the fifteenth-century. Over the centuries it has absorbed vocabulary from the countries in which the Iberian Jews had settled . Its Hebrew content mostly consists of religious terms such as haham, a rabbi. Whilst there remain very few native-Ladino speakers today, there has been a recent worldwide revival of interest in this ‘dying’ language.

Likewise enjoying great popularity today are Ladino songs. These can be divided into romansas, ballads (dramatic narrative poems) and kantigas (lyric songs), the most popular of which are love songs. Yasmin Levy’s repertoire includes both these types of song. Most of the ballads she sings and several of the songs can be traced back to medieval Spain.

That's from Levis website.

I know, I know it's world music. It sounds amazing though.

...and about this whole mediation business. If it weren't for the media I would be living in ignorance of heartwrenching (...and actually kind of yodel-ly but in a good way ) spanish jewish romance ballads. So mediate away, just make sure I catch glimpses of the good stuff between episodes of survivor.

Can someone buy this for me for the holidays?

The Gardeners of Eden

kwanzaa, christmas, chanukah, i care.

Ned and I watched these videos we made in highschool last night.

And I probably shouldn't even say this in public but chhhhheeeeerrriiist was I ever a nerd, loser, lame, fugly-ass kid.

Here's what I was wearing no-joke.

- 1 pair of tomato -red adidas style training pants - too large oh yeah, way to large, cold-lamping too large, but though baggy enough at the crotch to hide a small melon, oddly tight at the ankles. Why? Why would I choose to wear such pants. I actually remember thinking they were somehow "ironic spice girls chique" or something.

- 1 pair of green adidias running shoes, to go with the red.

- 1 over-sized mens golf shirt to hide my awesome boobs and effectively make me look like I was either pregnant or seriously cow-chested. Hey I was 18, I believed I *was* cow-chested because all my friends were B's or smaller..Of course wearing over-sized shirts all the time helped turn the erroneous belief into fact. Seen through the eyes of experience this was probably my fundamental error.

- 1 also oversized black hoodie. I always bought everything sized appropriately for my gigantor of a little brother. I also borrowed his clothes, despite the fact that we differed in proportion vertically and horizontally by almost a foot. I ask you, what teen-age girl borrows her little brothers action pants? crazy.

Of course at this time ( approx imately age 18). I hadn't explored all the more exciting facets of my pomo-sexuality, at all. At one point in the video Catto asks;

"Hey mir, do you think you're gay?"

and my video self started saying something like;

"Well you know, I've thought about it alot.. and frankly I don't think I am.."

While present-day mir is bouncing off of neds couch screaming at the television; "It's SO obvious you reprobate dressed-like-a-gym-teacher little shnerd. Go find yourself a nice girl with some taste to dress you for the next 7 years and save me the hassle!"

..until I realized time just doesn't work that way.

Also I interrupted people a lot, and never listened.. sound familiar anyone? I like to think all that's changed but if this blog is any indicator things really haven't.

Oh well, at least my pants fit now.

November 19, 2005

When you spend saturday night plastifying your windows and listening to the new madonna song

Thank you coms490 I would never have thought to listen to this.

Oh my god the best part is that the website has a built in little madonna best of mix...

November 6, 2005

Went to see Controller Controller last night.

Kevin did their website and I gotta say, I am not just impressed, I am so jealous/insecure I almost didn't want to link to it, cuz I figure it's gonna cost me decent business.

For all you total webulators out there. Kevin even adds a table of contents to his CSS. Gad - what a mensch.

For their encore Controller Controller had this girl come on who wailed just like Johnette from Concrete Blonde

It made me wish I'd seen Concrete Blonde back in the day when I was reading all those awful vampire novels by....Anne Rice.

Anyways, nostalgia is a slippery slope so now I am listening to PJ Harveys old stuff and just before that I was listening to (urp) Smashing Pumpkins.

Speaking objectively, a person can only listen to Billy Corgans voice for around 45 minutes before it feels like someone is raising wasps in their forehead.

Later on I am gonna leave the house wearing a pair of fishnets under my army shorts by mistake.

November 3, 2005

I need a separate way to add posts that are just instant snapshots of some song coming on and the realization that the song is actually perfect.

It could be called "what's that - oh just the sound track of my life."

I didn't realize I had this on my HD. The Pixies covering Leonard Cohens "I can't Forget"

If "Everybody Knows" was the song of grade 8, than this has gotta be the song of 28.

I stumbled out of bed
I got ready for the struggle
I smoked a cigarette
And I tightened up my gut
I said this can't be me
Must be my double
And I can't forget, I can't forget
I can't forget but I don't remember what
I'm burning up the road
I'm heading down to Phoenix
I got this old address
Of someone that I knew
It was high and fine and free
Ah, you should have seen us
And I can't forget, I can't forget
I can't forget but I don't remember who

I'll be there today
With a big bouquet of cactus
I got this rig that runs on memories
And I promise, cross my heart,
They'll never catch us
But if they do, just tell them it was me

Of course I am putting the mp3 for y'all.

...and yes, la - blogging means I am singing along as I write.

October 30, 2005

I bought an amazing book yesterday: Yentle the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer, illustrated by Antonio Frasconi.

Great inspiration for my own project.

The story forms the basis for the movie of the same title, it's short and tightly written and excitingly queer-centric.

I am not sure what the movie is like, but in the book Yentl, a Jewish girl who feels transgender due to her love of Torah study, never really resolves the issues that prevent her from accessing mainstream gender roles. I think the fact that there is no resolution of the central characters dilemma makes the story truthful and also pretty revolutionary considering that Singer was writing in 1962 about a community with strict laws governing gender norms.

Can you tell the last time I wrote literary criticism was in my grade 9 book report on The Day of the Triffids?

" Yentl knew she wasn't cut out for a woman's life. She couldn't sew, she couldn't knit. She let the food burn and the milk boil over; her Sabbath pudding never turned out right, and her hallah dough didn't rise. Yentl much preferred men's activities to women's. Her father, Reb Todros, may he rest in peace, during many bedridden years had studied Torah with his daughter as if she were a son. He told Yentl to lock the doors and drape the windows, then together they pored over the Pentatteuch, the Mishnah, the Gemarrah and the Commentaries.

She had proved so apt a pupil that her father used to say;

"Yentl - you have the soul of a man."

"So why was I born a woman?"

"Even heaven makes mistakes." "

The famous scene from the movie, is one in which Yentl/Anshel the yeshiva boy has to share a bed with his best friend and also love object Avigdor. Yentl ends up revealing his identity to Avigdor and the two talk about how to fix the situation, since Yentl/Anshel has married a local girl to keep up the illusion that he is a man, and now must break his vows.

Gradually the two went back to their Talmudic conversation. It seemed strange at first to Avigdor to be disputing holy writ with a woman, yet before long the Torah had reunited them. Though their bodies were different, their souls were of one kind. Anshel spoke with a singsong, gesticulated with her thumb, clutched at her sidelocks, plucked at her beardles chin, made all the customary gestures of a yeshiva student. In the heat of the argument, she even seized Avigdor by the lapel and called him stupid. A great love for Anshel took hold of Avigdor, mixed with shame, remorse, anxiety. If only he had known this before, he said to himself. In his thoughts he likened Anshel(or Yentl) to Bruria, the wife of Reb Meir, and to Yalta, the wife of Reb Nachman. For the first time he saw clearly that this was what he had always wanted: A wife whose mind was not taken up with material things.. His desire for Hadass was gone now, and he knew he would long for Yentl, but he dared not say so. He felt hot and knew that his face was burning. He could no longer meet Anshels eyes. he began to enumerate Anshel's sins and saw that he too was implicated, for he had sat next to Yentl and touched her during her unclean days. Nu,and what could be said to her marriage to Hadass? What a multitude of transgressions there! Willful deception, false vows, misrepresentation - Heaven knows what else.

He asked suddenly: " Tell the truth, are you a heretic?"

"God forbid!"

"Then how could you bring yourself to do such a thing?"

The longer Anshel talked, the less Avigdor understood. All Anshels explanations seemed to point to one thing: She had the soul of a man and the body of a woman. Anshel said she had married Hadass only to be near to Avigdor.

"You could have married me," Avigdor said.

"I wanted to study the Gemara and Commentaries with you, not darn your socks!"

Good stuff. Especially smart is the switching between the pronouns and the use of the names to indicate Avigdors own state of mind regarding Anshel/Yentls gender and his relationship to that gender.

Speaking of gender, Lauren gave me a *sweet* black leather motercycle jacket. So I no longer have to wear the one which is primarily holes surrounded by chunky zippers anymore.

The reason she gave it to me is that on her it looks oddly ugly and innapropriately masculine, and on me, (not to brag..) it looks incredibly good and kind of butchy, wider sholders tight around the waist with these awesome tapered sleeves that flare out at the wrist.

Lauren and I are both short-ish with short -ish hair and glasses. We have evolved efficiently enough over the past 6 years to have similiar bodies and share jeans shirts hoodies etc.. But there are some areas where we just can't overlap. And it's mostly because somehow even if we are both wearing jeans, hoodies, tee-shirts and running shoes as we were last night, Lauren is a femme and I am not...

It's weird I don't really understand it. Yet I know that if I took some of Laurens good "going out " clothes and tried on her (soon to be purchased) white ankle boots, everyone would say oh look it's dyke in drag and if Lauren put on my (awesome) leather jacket and her motercycle boots people would say look at that girl trying to get up all tough..

Sorry that's a bit of a ramble.

October 17, 2005

I am at Jens working and she is being a super-friend and making dinner. which is way more than one could ask, and I am trying to fix box model errors in IE and come up with some idea of how to return the dinner favor...

Jens I-tunes is playing all sorts of jazz, a genre I had written off ages ago. Around the time Starbucks came to Canada and started selling pre-packaged heavy on the Diane Krall mix cds along with their icky lukewarm coffees.

It's not so bad you know, the jazz, especially this song - which I am sad to hear has already been used in the Forrest Gump soundtrack (Do you see whyI hate jazz?)

Frigging IE and its stupid padding issues.... stupid waste of 1/0s that is IE... someone put that browser out of its misery old yeller the nasty crapper... I am soooooo annoyed why do I listen to ned when he says intelligent things about box models...

Okay listen to this.. Forget I ever said anything about forrest gump first though.

What a Wonderful World

October 13, 2005

New favorite song for the next three weeks, to make up for the past three weeks that sucked a rats ass.

Black Flag - Duchess Says

I keep using really "ahem" poor language on the blog lately...

...and my first instinct is to respond to any would-be critics by telling them to suck it.

So obviously it isn't going to change any time soon.

I am still at school monitoring in the printmaking computer room, killing time.

Lauren is sitting next to me grabbing my arms tight enough to leave bruises and whining about the new printmaking studios and how they suck and she keeps saying that it's not cool;

"where are my plants...miriam there is no sennefelders grey there is only magenta - miriam I don't like magenta - miriam they don't scrape the rollers here every week, i miss the old building - they don't care about litho here - all they want is offset - there isn't even any panes grey - the ink cupboard is unlocked - they don't have any varnish #5 - Miriam I just know what this semester is going to shape up like - I can feel it."

she's really whining now..... "...miriam... I don't know where anything is... there are no stones left.. miriam the graining sink is weird... I wanna go back to the old building I am serious I am having a little panic attack - everything is so shiny and clean.. there's no window in the tech room."

"the ventilation hoods don't work.."

me; "what do you mean they don't work - they're individual."

"there's no suck!"

Question for the audience: how do you keep your best friend from whining when you have no candy in your pockets?

"...Miriam I don't like this.. my plants are all gone - and I'm cold, and I don't like it here... I am ten years older than everybody else.. baaaaahhhhhhhhhh... don't read it out loud they're going to hear - they have spies SPIES!"

Lauren just pointed out that she puts up with me when I am hypoglycemic so I should stop making fun of her..

September 27, 2005

The Mother Tongue Between Two Slices of Rye.

You should really read the above essay.

It's really really good. I think the version I read was longer, and therefore more satisfying but this truncated on-line copy is still better than nothing.

I read it in my Genius of Language book. I have to go find the guys book. his name is Gary Shteyngart and his website is called Russian Deb. His book is called the Russian Debutantes Handbook.

Speaking of Debs, I was at the IGA today, and there was this kind of fly- yeh looking guy buying eggs. You know anywhere between 35 and 50 years old with big bags under his eyes and longish stringy hair under a baldspot the size of a pancake, and his shoes were scuffed dirty generic things, and though I didn't check I am sure his fly was broken and held up with a safety pin. He was doubtless buying white bread, sliced cheese, and pepsi. Not to mock the locals but that's what people in my neighbourhood with broken flys buy.

Anyway (donc). he was wearing a black tee-shirt which read on the front in big white letters " I partied like CRAZY at..." And of course not being one who likes a mystery i hustled aroudn t read the back, which said; "Jared Bernsteins Bar Mitzvah 1996 - MAZEL TOV!" followed by a large illustration of a martini glass and a yarmulke.

And my first thought was; no way Rejean, you didn't go PARTY with the Bernsteins and my second thought was, how can I start a collection of souvenir bar mitzvah sweat-wear that shit's the bomb.

Oh yeah and then my third thought/observation was that Rejean had a tumour the size of a robins egg coming out of the pancake sized bald spot. So I felt like a total shit for even thinking his tee-shirt/unintended social commentary was hilarious.

September 4, 2005

Nancy White is doing the best job ever of posting info about the on-line response to Katrina.

Certainly more effective than my belly-aching of two days ago.

I am almost finished Cryptonomicon. It's such a DUDE book, all about weapons, erections girls and secret languages. It reminds me of elementary school when all the boys would draw elaborate tanks and fighter planes, then start secret clubs with yes, secret languages and then not let any of us girls in on the game.

Okay, not that many of the girls wanted in, too much My Little Pony excitement in the chicks corner of the playground. (Let's disregard that other post and try not to draw too many Freudian conclusions about kids and their games and the effects of said games on apparently matured libidos.)

Cryptonimicon was a golden opportunity to take part in one such verboten game for about 900 pages, and I think I am too much the wiser for it. For example, should I really be privy of the drawings of sine-wave patterns illustrating the relationship between the male libido and rational thought? I can just hear Ned right now saying I am taking the whole book too seriously, " it's a *caper* Mir."

What I loved about the book, were descriptive passages that were used to explain how apparently random human interactions (ie; intercinine familial warfare over heirloom furniture) can be broken down into mathatical functions. Now, normally if I see an italicized x or y on paper I start to glaze over and the reading becomes more like a process of mimetic symbol recognition while I think about whether I need to make a tuna sandwich.

(ps; Be honest. Am I writing just a little like Stephenson today, I think I am .. how embarrassing.)

This time though, I actually read what the hell was going on in the math parts of the book, and more or less understood, although the pattern-matching equations were tougher than the graphing functions. So despite the fact that I am still maths biggest failure, etc etc.. Something did get through and you know, all I want from the math part of my brain is to read alpha male geek fiction and not feel like I got stuck back somewhere braiding my princess pony's mane and missing out on some crucial information.

I swear, you couldn't find a more"guy" oriented book than this one. and I made it through, which is some sort of commentary on a) Stephensons ability to weave an excellent narrative out of topics thet generally put me to sleep. and, b) that the hormone imbalance which places my habits, hobbies and desires squarely in the grey zone of he and she has ramped up and now makes it possible for me to read about the design of heavy artillery from the second world war, and actually find it kind of um, "interesting?!"

Anyways, last night, right before passing out I was having all sorts of fantasies about becoming an amphibious code-breaking ninja-hacker. So whatever, I guess the next step is to sign up for judo and get a PGP key.

***
Upon further reflection, the one part of Stpehensons Ouevre taht I find really odd is that there are no bad girls. They are all incredibly sexy and feminine, or incredibly sexy but maybe lesbians or maternal. No wait, I forgot about Charlene, the protaganists ex-girlfriend, an emasculating academic who writes long annoying papers on male facial hair as evidence of the roots of the patriarchy. BUT she never really gets to talk in the book she is only ever presented through things she's written so doesn't count so much as a character all of NS's female characters are desperately superioir to all the men in the book.

Which is one of those weird hallmarks of geek culture, the tendency to glorify or denigrate the female of the species in the extreme. As Lauren pointed out its because generally speaking nerds don't do so hot in the melting pot of intergender socialization that is secondary school.

Anyways lest you all think I am making some sort of mars /venus specious assertions about boys and girls. I would suggets that stephenson does the same thing to his male characters. They are all either alpha-males (marines) or total wimps (coders) so I guess it's not any purposeful male/female thing perhaps he just like writing about stereotypes?

August 29, 2005

So I found the glasses. They were doing an impression of a stick insect hidden on a pile of similiar-toned objects in plain view.

I had already emptied two bags of office garbage thinking perhaps they had fallen off my head and landed in the bag unnoticed while I was in a cleaning frenzy. Lovely, two hours looking at my old marketing notes again.

So I am listening to NIN (Nine- inch - nails) album Broken

Cool... I was just looking for a way to post a sample mp3 from Broken (none to be had - sorry) and discovered instead that Reznor released his last two singles as garageband files to his fans so they could remix them as they wished.

As he says;

Well, the experiment of releasing the hand that feeds in garageband format was a resounding success. for those of you unaware, i essentially gave away the master multitrack sessions for that song for you to remix / reinterpret / ruin. last I checked, there were hundreds of remixes and info posted here alone.

That's pretty nifty.. I would spend more time taking a peek at what happened, but since I meant to start this entry as a paean to my age-old love for the 1993 ep and not for any present fan-dom I don't think I should waste anymore precious work time.... ah it's so tempting.

I really really loved NIN back in the day (...of plaid shirts and purple doc martens don'tcha know). Although, and I am going to sound like a fogey for saying this, I doubt his new stuff is going tobe as enjoyable as what I am currently listening to, it certainly won't have any nostalgia value.

Ohhhhh........This is such a good album, I should just put a couple of songs up

Gave Up
Physical (you're so)

Okay make sure you have head phones on if you are in a public place, and realize that this is very good pop *industrial* so don't hate me if you actually hate it.

August 14, 2005

Beatallica

Lyrics to Hey Dude;

Hey Dude... don't be afraid/
You were made it to be a shredder/
Hey Dude, never turn it down/
Remember that metal lives in your heart/
and you can start with DIAMOND LETTERS....

Your hands will fold into the rock salute, it will be beyond your control.

Also listended to a special on Led Zeppelin while preparing dinner. Bizarrely, had an out of body experience when Stairway came on. Felt like my 12-year-old self just took over. Boobs seemd strange and unreal, couldn't figure out what to do with open can of coconut milk, having never tried curry before, just wanted to go hang out by the bleachers and stare at skateboarders..Niki came over and slow danced with me, but kept her eyes pinned to the ceiling, arms stuck out at right angles to her body, we shuffled like a pair of geriatrics at ballroom dancing class, just like old times.

Do you remember the "advanced" kids who would make out for the entireity of the song? Woah, so many hickeys.

June 29, 2005

I have been doing a lot of thinking about writing lately. About whether I could actually write something longer, more meaningful, not about myself, and not destined to grace a screen but actually a printed page.

Even the mode would transform the act I think.

Last night I read a story that Maya has taped to her bedroom wall, it was written by Mayas sister and was incredibly moving, carefully written and shockingly great. It was taped to the wall in peices. Each peice formed a discreet scene so I could read the pages in whatever order I chose, the story just sort of came together from those vignettes it wasn't nailed down to the reader/author pact of page order = times passage.

I can't really do the story justice in summary. It was of trees and of a leaf, and of Sam. As I read it, the leaf launches itself from its tree and gets trapped in sams car windshield, prompting sam to ask andrea to marry him. of course those are the physical entities only, again bound to a narrative thread. The leaf is certainly not just a leaf and the metaphors float very delicately over the surface of the images which are all of time and greenery and safety.

The entire 10 minute interlude reading Mayas wall was intimidating and beautiful. I went home and thought. Can I actually write or do I just over-use a large vocabulary.

Anyways, than I read these two passsages by Margaret Drabble;

Some of them do die. Nostalgia can be lethal. A new medical condition is discovered and named. It is called Sudden Death Syndrome. For no reason, for the sake of a smell, a perfume, a memory, a dream, the heart panics, fibrillates, then stops.

Perhaps for this subject matter, one should seek the most disjunctive, the most disruptive, the most uneasy and incompetent of forms, a form that offers not a grain of comfort or repose. Too easily we take refuge with the known. Particular anguish, particular pain, is in its way, comfortable.Unless of course it happens to be our own."

She is writing in both these cases about the Cambodian Genocide. And about the relocation of the Boat people. I am interested especially in the second quote where she descibes the comprehension of tragedy as being akin to the picaresque. We can't deal unless we bring it down to something of our own human stature. ie one inidvidual or one family, one experience that is singular. because to comprehend things on a universal scale is simply not appealing to human beings, on the whole.

Of course, this is also an intimidating thing, To a wannabe writer. Drabble has apparently made a pact with herself to avoid the simply nostalgic or emotional and to try and present a tragic stroy outside of the common emotional techniques of a narrative construct. Maya's sister too, is letting a leaf carry all the meaning in her story.

It is amazing stuff, I just don't know how I am going to learn to do it. I think my first step is to try to get rid of the need to explain things and just write..

June 7, 2005

I am going through my Leonard Cohen books to see if I can find anything the family could agree to put on my mothers monument.

No matter how many times I read them I always find new favorites in works I had previously thought weren't so exciting.

I think it's part of aging to develop different appreciations. 12 years ago I would have written his poetry in a paper journal and then I would have tried my hand at writing my own, now I'd rather just think about what he says, and how it makes me feel.

Here's a good one.

from: My teacher is dying

Martha talk to me
Toss out the fake Jap silence
Scream in my kitchen
logarithms laundry lists anything
Talk to me
My radio is falling to pieces
My betrayals are so fresh
they still come with explanations

Insomnia is resulting in some late-night blogging.

Musical Baton :

Total volume of music on my computer -

14.4 gb on desktop 1652 songs 4.5 days*? not sure what's on the laptop probably only a gig or two.

(*the song in my heart goes on forever though.... hee hee)

The last CDs I bought (or was given)

Final Fantasy - Has a good home

Veda Hille - Return of the Kildeer

Duplex - Ablum

Song playing right now -

Ooh snap, nothing. It's too late for music.

I spent the day listening too.. veda hille cat stevens luna kim barlow U2 - Joshua tree (okay, don't shoot me) the wedding present jean grae

...while working

and then went on my bike for a while and listened to;

crooked fingers blu cantrell feat. sean paul (funny up to now I thought it was the other way around) frank black fiona apple destroyer janis joplin

On my way home I listened to:

gwen stefani and lamb

Whewf now I am getting tired. Message to famous musicians, why do you insist on making silly pop up windows with "Arty" little flash sites - dah. yuck.

I admit to feeling a low level shame about my days music selection. I wish I had spent the day listening to some cutting edge or "serious" music, oh well.

Five songs I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me -

Music means a lot to me. I can't really make a five song list. If I were truly maganeyed (that's because movable can't reproduce accents and the way to pronounce that is maga-neighed and it means all messed up) dans la tete I would make another giant paragraph of links to dozens of mp3's but that's like - impossible at 1:00am. so I won't.

I will lower the bar to one album that means the world to me and it is simon and garfunkels greatest hits because it is the first pop album I remember falling crazy in love with.

It was grade 5 and my family was vacationing in Holland and we spent about 5 weeks driving around the country in my uncles old audi and the only english tape we had was simon and garfunkle and I remember adoring the album to pieces, I still do. The lai lai's from the boxer drive me to tears and when I am drunk I very much enjoy singing America except I can never remember the line that starts the song. (probably because I am drunk).

Okay so that was my baton. thanks to MK for the pass.

Weird that I can rarely remember a) what I spend my money on or b) what I have done all day, but music apparently isn't a problem.

May 17, 2005

So Niki just sent me Comfortably Numb done by the Scissor Sisters.... A remake of yes, the Pink Floyd song from the Wall. As she said "imagine Pink Floyd and the Bee Gees together at last." Once you get over your shock and horror, it's so awesome. especially the electro-claps over "it's just a little pinprick..."