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swoon
"We're taught in school to be so precious and meticulous and archival and to make every little decision last. I wanted to make things that were valueless, because they couldn't belong to any one person, and in that way they would belong to everyone. I liked the idea of things that weren't going to stick around and that were like an event more than an object."
no matter which way you turn, you get it in the eye
I have been forgetting my camera at home recently and have been unable to (visually) document all the exciting things I have witnessed: Phil's excellent graduation recital; the way the leaves in the Townships are just beginning to turn and so the landscape is this gorgeous mixture of bright green and bright orange and dark red and yellow that just makes you want to look at it forever because you have never seen anything so beautiful; the crazy Centraide march of 1 000 umbrellas (more like 10 000) that I walked through on my way to work today. I could have taken a great picture from my office window on the 8th floor. Alas, you will have to imagine it: umbrellas, all the way from future shop down to place-des-arts. Luckily for you though, you will not have to imagine the conversation that happens when you get a bunch of young and bored linguists in a room together at lunch time, because I have documented that one for you: [We enter the conversation already in progress] "No, wait. Soy cheese. Yeah. Imagine if you were in a room made out of soy cheese and you had to eat your way out." "That is the most barftastic thing you have ever said." "Hey, nice cranberry morpheme!" "Nice portmanteau!" [Sadly, the conversation continued passed this point, and much longer than it should have, and included some discussion of the lingusitic composition of the word 'barftastic' that I have kindly omitted for your sake. Feel free to stop reading right here.] "Soy cheese, no. Sharp cheddar, though, yum. A whole room made of sharp cheddar. That I could do. Or jelly beans." "There's no way you could eat that many jelly beans. Well. I guess it would depend on the thickness of the walls." "Imagine if you were in a room made out of bacon." "I think the worst part would be the smell. Bacon is pretty overpowering. The smell gets into everything." "But it's not as bad as the taste of soy cheese. I would pick bacon over soy cheese, and I'm a vegetarian. And I think bacon is disgusting. But soy cheese is just much, much worse." "You could probably eat your way out, but you would have to take breaks, in between the eating." "Yeah, I ate two pounds of bacon last night. Afterwards, I, uh, didn't feel so good." "Ugh, imagine being surrounded by the texture of bacon. That would be uncomfortable." "Couldn't you just dig your way out of the room? Why do you have to eat it all?" "No. It's a special property of the room that you have to eat it in order to get out. I don't know why I never thought of this before, a room that you had to eat your way out of. But it's good." "It's horrifying." "It's horrifyingly good."
DON'T PANIC
The best news I have heard in days: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy returns to BBC Radio 4 in a brand new series! And you can listen online! And there is a 20th anniversary game! To which I am addicted!
machiavelli on crack
David: These guys at work feel that re-electing him will make things so bad that the world will have to get better. That's their rationale. Gary: That's Machiavelli on crack. That doesn't make sense. Squid: You know, the Bush regime was supposed to be the catalyst for music not to suck again. And that hasn't happened. At all. Instead, we have Pink. Scott: I like Pink. Jacob: So do I. She's Missundaztood. Katherine: So what happened to the future of punk rock? Gary: Electroclash. Jacob: Blogging.
GOD vs BUSH
Hurricanes: proof of God's political affiliation?
he has tried, in his way, to be free
Happy Leonard Cohen's 70th Birthday! Summer-Haiku by Leonard Cohen Silence and a deeper silence when the crickets hesitate
in which there is talk of sisters, high school, general mischief, and bad behaviour
I talked to my middle sister today, and she is disappointed that Ivan skipped New Orleans, because she wanted to take pictures of damage. This makes her a much bigger asshole than me, which makes me feel better. I was also a little worried about my mom (her emails are funny, but in that way that people on the verge of a nervous breakdown are funny), so I emailed my other little sister, the one who still lives at home and is in her last year of high school. Incidentally, she tells me they just took the class picture for the yearbook, the one of them standing on the hill by the football field in the shape of 05. They made the numbers look all square, like a calculator, she complains to me. But I all could think was, God! Class of 05?! Can you fucking imagine?! I am SO OLD. I still remember standing in the top part of the 7 in 97 like it was, well. Not yesterday, but. You know. Less than 8 years ago. (Also, I think I am having my quarter-life crisis.) Also, my sister tells me that she is spending all her free time -- when she is not playing soccer --making plaster cast masks of her face. She has about 5 so far and she is planning to hold one in her third grad photo, which will be taken next week. No one held anything but flowers in their third grad photos back in the olden days when I was in high school, but apparently it is all the rage now. Most of her friends are holding soccer balls. She says last year this one girl held a teddy bear, which even she thought was kind of weird. How's mom, she seems kind of stressed, I ask my sister. She *shrugs* and says she doesn't know, it's probably to do with school. How are classes, I ask my sister. She writes: we've got a project in media which is fun, but economics is torture! i dunno if it just took him this long, or if i did something specific, but today in class mr. Twofirstnames* made the connection between me and you. Have you ruined my reputation?? So, I call my sister up and tell her that yes, yes I did ruin her reputation. What I did was, I skipped Mr. Twofirstnames's class and got caught and got reported and got detention and complained to the principal that the reason I had skipped class was that we weren't doing anything in class since Mr. Twofirstnames had apparently finished everything he had to teach us for the year -- it was Moral Ed. so he made up his own curriculum -- and was making us come to class and sit at our desks and do nothing. As I told the principal, this was clearly bullshit and I when I was caught skipping class I was doing homework, which would have been impossible in Mr. Twofirstnames's class, since it was utter pandemonium and I got to permission to go to the library instead of to his class for the rest of the year. But since I knew all the library staff because I had done my community service in the library, I mostly just went to the yearbook room and slept on Heather's beanbag chair instead. And thus Mr. Twofirstnames and I became nemeses and would stare each other down and have arguments whenever we passed each other in the hallway because he was pissed at me for complaining to the principal about what a shit teacher he was and I was pissed at him because he was The Man, Trying To Keep Me Down, claiming I should follow the rules just because he made them and he was an authority figure, even if the rules were bullshit, and I recognized this as the work of the conformist society trying to mold me into a non-thinking zombie. Anyway, I was mad (but also secretly thrilled) that I had to go to detention for two whole lunch hours; Mr. Twofirstnames was mad that I got out of going to his class for the rest of the year, and we had some Words. And to this day I am still absolutely convinced that I was in the right and that he is a huge asshole. I told my sister all of this and she laughed and laughed and then said I could have warned her, which was a good point, since it would really suck if he held a grudge, but I said just to make sure to stay on his good side and she would probably be fine but she said it was already too late for that since she had called him on his bullshit assumption that clothes are necessary for survival in western society -- she could, as she pointed out to the class, happily go live on a nudist farm and get along perfectly fine -- on the first day of class. Which was surely when his brain starting ticking along, making the connection to his former smart, sassy student with the same last name. It was only 4 classes later, however, when he sidled up to her while taking attendance and asked quietly if she was related to someone named Laura. Cousin, possibly? "Sister," said my sister. "Oh," said he, and walked away. I would love to know what his memory is of me. The sad part about this whole story is that I was a huge nerd in high school and that was the only time I ever skipped a class, in my entire 5 years there (also the only time I ever had detention). My middle little sister, on the other hand, the one who is now in New Orleans studying neuropsychology and will probably become a doctor, was much smarter than me in high school and used to skip whole days of school all the time to do drugs in Optimist Park. The one time she got caught was when she skipped the day before she was supposed to mediate the debate portion of the Intellectual Olympics and Mrs. King called home to make sure she was alright and would be coming in the next day and our parents were like, "Wh-huh? Isn't she at school?" When she came home from "school" the parents were waiting for her and really angry, but they didn't punish her, probably because they didn't know how (they weren't really big on discipline), but they said, threateningly, that they hoped the school punished her but good. So, when she got to school the next day she was a little scared when Mrs. King came up to her, but all Mrs. King said was, "I hope I didn't get you in trouble with your parents!" Then she went home and lied to our parents that she had been given detention and they felt satisfied that the matter was being dealt with and left her alone and that was that. So, the easy solution is clearly lying. I was never very good at figuring out the easy solution. Oh, high school. How I do not miss you at all.
oh, and you forgot SAFER
"'Once they start banning some guns, they'll keep on banning and banning them until nothing will be allowed,' said Mr. Thalen, a 56-year helicopter mechanic for the Wisconsin National Guard. 'It will become like England and Canada.'"
dream job (minus criminal record)
Students in rural Quebec are recruited to work harvesting marijuana plants: The high pay (25$/hr) is creating a local labour shortage in traditional student jobs like washing dishes. Ironically, if pot were legal they would surely get minimum wage like any other job. I told Phil about this and he said, "Sweet, let's go!" Too bad we are too old; those are really good wages.
love you anyway
So, New Orleans got through Ivan basically unharmed and I now feel extremely guilty, as though my wishing for New Orleans to be spared is directly responsible for Mobile getting hit instead. Who am I to say that New Orleans is any more worthy than Mobile, or for that matter, Florida or Granada? And, god, how awful is it that I only care about the devastation when it affects me personally (by causing a potential hitch in my travel plans) and hardly even get worked up when an entire island is completely destroyed and people are starving to death? The answer is really goddamn awful. I am pretty sure there is no good way to change the subject now that is not really awkward, so I will just transition by saying that my sister is apparently safe in Houston, TX, and is scheduled to return to school on Monday. So, I am grateful for that. Now that we are gracefully onto the subject of my family, let me tell you how my mother is doing: she is really stressed out. She is teaching more classes this year. When I talk to her, she sounds really harried and when I email her to ask why she is not using her new email account that I lovingly set up for her, well, I get this in response: I can't remember how to do it! What was my password? What was my e-mail address? Did I write it down anywhere? I have too much in my brain right now. I am going to look at dishwashers. So, I email back to tell her that I set it all up to be maximum easy and she doesn't need to remember anything, etc. Just like I told her when I set it all up. And, I ask, what is up with the dishwasher?! Her response: The dishwasher stopped working last week. New ones are expensive but ours is over 21 years old which means it's not worth having a repairperson fix it. So my first paycheck will probably go towards a dishwasher which has become a necessity for me. Hmmm, I wasn't too good at training my daughters to do housework, but I'm not good at it myself either. God, I love my mom. She is so funny when she is stressed out. Also, I am a horrible person.
where do you buy tofu jerky? they don't sell it around here
My two favourite revelations in the commentary on the DVD of The Station Agent are 1) that Peter Dinklage is vegetarian, so the beef jerky they eat is really tofu jerky, and 2) that the guy who played Chris, Michelle Williams's boyfriend, grew his hair trashy-long like that for a year because he wanted to play only trashy characters.
running from ivan
My sister just got an evacuation notice. School is cancelled until Friday. My mother says the waves that hit Jamaica were two storeys tall. Did you know New Orleans is below sea level? Just. I mean. Doesn't that seem like a bad idea? My sister is excited. She had two exams scheduled for Thursday. And now she gets to go to Texas instead. UPDATE: Holy shit! Have you read the news lately? I am freaking out a little bit. I just bought tickets to N.O. 4 days ago, and I really don't want it to get all ruined before I get a chance to visit! UNO, where my sister goes, is right on the edge of Lake Ponchartrain. I don't know what level she lives on, but I hope it's high, because I predict flooding.
my balanced diet
grocery list: tequila thyme shell pasta green onions cheese soy milk I can't believe I have lived here for over a year and never went to the local SAQ until today (and then only because I put tequila on my fucking grocery list). It's located in the old train station and it's HUGE. And just breathtaking. It sells stuff I had never even heard of. I think I have fallen back in love with alcohol. The colours! The bottles! The flavours! I'd forgotten how beautiful and sensuous it all is. I've always had a thing about glass bottles of coloured yet transparent liquid. My friend Kim and I were once going to make a short film. Maybe I still will. But I digress. Next time you visit, we will have to go to this SAQ. You have to see it. (Also, we will have to drink some tequila. I have lots now.) (You know, only if you want to. No pressure or anything.) And while we are sort-of on the subject of food, I was on the fence for a while about the new lime and black pepper flavoured Miss Vickie's chips, but I have now come down firmly on the negative side. They are not good. But I can't figure out why.
One of the hardest things about returning from vacation is realizing that life did not stop while you were away and that you have to work double time to catch back up. Working is hard. Especially when I need to be spending all my time catching up on the good stuff that happened on the internet while I was away instead. There was a new letter from Gary Benchley, Rock Star, in which he tells Para he loves her and she says thank you. This is my favourite part: ""Maybe the parks could have a battle," I said, starting to ramble. "Central Park would be like, 'my fountain is bigger, motherfucker,' and Prospect Park would be like, 'hey, I am so much better for bicyclists,' and Central Park would say, 'how many movies have you been in?' and Prospect Park's all like, 'maybe I could come over and jog around your reservoir, Central Park, except for the part where I get raped and beheaded.'" There was a new issue of The Plug, in which Jay and Patti compete the Dishwashing-lympics. Estella finally posted The Chicken Dragons of Doom Complete With Eggs of Doom. Erin posted a list of names of 7th grade students in her sister's class, including Antroyd, X'Shaerelle, Traikel, Shaequae and Lennon Pickle. And that's just a few.
Two Words: Red. Dirt.
This picture was taken at the beach at Stanhope in the National Park in PEI on the morning of our last full day there. It was crazy windy and we could hear the roar of the waves all the way across the street in our tent. It was LOUD. And cold. But so beautiful. We got up first thing and walked across in our pyjamas to just stand and look at the ocean. I could look at the ocean forever. 
Sigh. But right now I have to go. Never fear, I have a lot more dirt to share with you. As soon as I catch up on everything else. I am kind of behind since I spent most of yesterday watching episodes of 24 (12:00 to 9:00 am -- and they still haven't slept!) and doing laundry and did not go to my office at all and I haven't unpacked yet and my apartment is a mizess. But, oh man, PEI WAS LE AWESOME. 
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"The mind of the thoroughly well informed [person] is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, and everything priced above its proper value."
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