per stragem ad gaudium

Canada Hearts Barack Obama

2009-01-05T17:57:00.003-05:00

CBC 2 are canvassing viewers for submissions to "49 Songs from the 49th parallel" a mix tape of Canadian music to send to Barack Obama.

Yes, you heard me right. A mix tape. They're calling it a 'playlist' but I think we all know where this is going. The President-elect will just put it into the car glove-box and forget about it, and when Canada asks 'so what did you think', Barack Obama will mumble a half-hearted 'er, great stuff' and Canada will know that Obama never listened to the tape and its heart will harden.

And in the years to come we will pinpoin that as the moment when Armageddon started.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Unbearable Light

2008-12-17T18:17:00.003-05:00

Disclaimer: I have never read this book.

I'm having the oddest feeling down my back. It's as if mice are running up an down my spine. I think it's from muscles that have been rigidly tense for the last three years unkinking.

Come New Year I think I shall capitalize on this and get some massage done.

Xeno's arrow

2008-12-11T08:32:00.002-05:00

So, the manuscript is due Monday and the corrections to my final chapter are somewhere in the bowels of Canada Post, despite being sent by 'next day' delivery express mail.

And every time I'm nearly done I look at my checklist and see another 20 items.

Despite that, I'm finally happy with the shape and feel of the book. Now I want to use the current manuscript and rewrite it all from the start. That would make it really good.

A friend of mine once said "the better is the enemy of the good". Valuable advice from a don.

But I'm terribly anxious that something untoward will happen, even though contracts are signed and all.

So altogether, I'm a bit tense.

End of term rush

2008-11-16T07:34:00.003-05:00

What with the life-threatening operations of loved ones, work, extra-curricular talks (attendance non-optional), manuscript deadline and whatnot I'm a bit overwhelmed. Normal service, such as it is, will resume soon. In the meantime here's a picture of a woman in a garden.

"All of my friends are dead"

2008-10-19T20:10:00.004-04:00

So says Harold Ross, one evening eight years after the death of his frenemy Alexander Woolcott. It's a poignant moment in a memoir that manages both to celebrate a life and convey the pain of its loss. One wonders how much of Ross' early death (he was barely 59) had to do with the disillusionment he felt with McCarthyist America of the 50s. Would he have fought harder for his life if he had not felt so discouraged? "Also writes for the New Yorker" had become then (as it is once again) a snide denigration of perceived 'unAmerican' values.

James Thurber's The Years with Ross is full of entertaining anecdotes about New York literati but it's also a tale of friendship between two men. Amicitia was the binding force of most emotional relationships in pre-christian Rome, but the fervent declarations of friendship read oddly to my students. It seems to me that one does not get books written about friendship anymore, nor does it appear to be celebrated in other media. Love, passion, egotism, anger - these are the emotions that drive today's publishing. Friendship seems undervalued. I can't think of any major work of art that celebrates non-sexual friendship that postdates the 60s.
I am wrong? Let me know if I'm overlooking something really obvious.

A Date With Lady Kaede

2008-10-02T20:10:00.006-04:00

Autumn is closing in, and with it comes evenings snuggled up with the cat to watch movies. I saw Ran the other night. I saw it years ago in the IFC and thought it was great, but for some reason I'd never gotten it out on DVD, although I love historical epics.

I couldn't remember if it was Ran or Throne of Blood that contained one of my Favourite Scenes Ever, in which a scheming woman falls weeping to the feet of a man in order to get him to do something awful and while he looks away, stricken, she takes the opportunity to crush a moth on the floor in the folds of her kimono. Well, it's Ran, and the woman in Lady Kaede.

Aah, Lady Kaede, how could I forget you? Your absolute stillness and grace, your glacial beauty, your pathological hatred of the Ichimonji clan. She really is a great character, the sibilant whip-wheep sound of her silk robes is nearly as terrifying as Asami's 'ichi ichi ichi' in Audition.

But having watched the film with its audio commentaries (Film Studies professor and a mate of Kurosawa's) I find I object to the characterisation of her as a great schemer. Kaede does work towards the destruction of the Ichimonji but she hardly needs to plot their downfall. It is Hidetora who puts events in motion, all it takes for Kaede is to direct those events just a little, vanity, greed and ambition of Hidetora and his sons do the rest for her. Where Kaede's real skill lies is in her ability to exploit her moment. When Jiro plots the death of his brother with his vassals they laugh at the easy pickings until Jiro says 'His wife, the Lady Kaede, is a different matter' and then they all go silent.

A different matter indeed.

Breakthrough!

2008-09-24T20:13:00.001-04:00

Look at that, I've now broken my personal record for posting. I am now up to 17 posts this year. Breakthrough of a sort. Yay technology!

More on the fuzzy logic rice cooker

2008-09-14T08:20:00.003-04:00

Earlier in the week I thought I'd make myself some dal. As I was getting out the pot I thought "let's try this in the FLRC.' So in went half a pound of mung beans, some garlic, ginger, onions, chili and spices and water to cover. I set the FLRC to 'slow cook' and went back upstairs to work. One hour later, perfectly cooked dal.

Today's experiment was only moderately successful. I set the timer last night to have porridge ready by 8. This worked perfectly but, perhaps because I actually used Red River instead of porridge, or maybe because I had the cooking program set to 'regular', there was a lot of overspill. Took a while to clean up. The Red River was fine thiugh, although I'm always tempted to take the cooked cereal and fry it with eggs and bacon ('Saskatoon Hash'). This would negate the general healthiness of the exercise.

Anyway, next I shall try the FLRC with a Cuban black bean stew.

I know this is dull stuff but I'm just done with the first week of term. Am v. tired.

Quest for Fire: You're doing it ALL wrong

2008-09-06T20:21:00.008-04:00

I forget how I found this, but when I did I immediately thought "This is the film that Ian told me that Gavin told him about." And so I took it home and put it on. The best thing about this movie is that there is no dialogue per se, so basically make your own as you watch it.

So. Fire. We need it, we don't have it. Send Dominant Alpha Male, Tough Beta Male and Sidekick male to get some before we all die of hypothermia. Hijinks with cannibals, naked homines sapientes and saber-toothed tigers ensue.

The most famous scene of the movie involves the scene where the more evolved Ika manoeuvres herself under Alpha to teach him that it's much more fun for both of them when the sex is belly to belly, and not, as some of my older textbooks would say, coitus a tergo (this was on the principle that if you were going to be kinky and indulge anything other than the church-sanctioned missionary position you should be educated, or perverse, enough to read Latin). And it's a great scene, made greater by the fact that they are sheltering under a tiny rock shelf as it's pissing down rain while Beta and sidekick look glumly on. Beta (Ron Perlman in his first role) then pats Sidekick's thigh in an 'any port in a storm' kind of way and is vigorously rebuffed.

It's very entertaining, you should watch it. And after you've done that listen to Ron Perlman and Rae Dawn Chong (Ika) give the commentary: 'I was so cold' 'I thought I was going to die' 'Look at my breasts' 'Man you were gorgeous' 'I wanted to kill Annaud' 'Me too. Me too'.

Money Can't Buy Me Happiness

2008-09-06T19:52:00.004-04:00

But it can buy a very comfortable sofa. And that makes me happy. Makes the cat happy too.

Other purchases this week include a fuzzy logic rice cooker. This little gem will also do porridge, and is a steamer and pressure cooker. And it has a timer, which means I can set it the night before to cook my breakfast. Which will be a big help in the dark days of winter as I get stumble around trying to get ready for my 8am classes.

Halifax: Fish City

2008-08-27T16:52:00.007-04:00

I'm back from Halifax, where I just spent a great week in the company of Queenie, whose hospitality during a very stressful time was just heroic. The undisputed highlight of the week was the whale watching. Queenie drove us down to Long Island where a friend of hers runs a zodiac tour. I so want to own a zodiac now that I've been in one. It's basically a rubber dinghy with a huge outboard motor so you go flying over the waves: bompa-bompa-bomp. First we went to the seal island, where the seals looked at us and we looked back.

Bompa-bompa-bompa. We came across a pod of 7/8 humpbacked whales, including a mother and calf. Because a zodiac is only about a foot and a half above the water, the whales were unstressed. They rolled around waving their fins in the air, slapped their tails to get rid of barnacles, dived and blew from their spouts. The latter was something of a mixed blessing since it looked impressive, but reeked of sulphur and rotten fish. The calf was extremely curious and swam around us again and again, diving beneath the zodiac and surfacing right next to us so that we found ourselves staring into its melon-sized eye. "It's ugly", whined one of the irritating girls on the tour with us. "Why is it so ugly?"
"It thinks you're ugly too", I said.

After well over 90 minutes of hanging out with the whales we were on our way - bompa-bompa-bompa - while a pod of dolphins, complete with a baby dolphine kept pace beside us. It was just a magical experience. And I would have had spectacular photos except that my camera died on me during the tour which is why you are looking at a photo of a shoe.

But look at these shoes. I got them on my first day in Halifax. Are these not a superlative pair of 'do not fuck with me, buddy' stilettos? It gets better. When I got them back to Queenie's place and look at the box I see that it says 'Carlos by Carlos Santana'. Yes, Santana has gone from guitar hero to shoe designer. I guess you get more babes that way.

These were my wild holiday purchase. Most of the rest of my shopping was confined to long, leisurely trawls through Halifax's secondhand book stores which are well stocked with interesting material (the joys of a town with multiple universities). Combining this with my books, Queenie's own books and a glorious lack of pressing commitments I read my way through:

Madame Chiang Kaishek and her China edited by Samuel C. Chu
A selection of essays, some better than others.

Madame Chiang Kai-Shek: China's Eternal First Lady by Laura Tyson Li
I have not yet finished this, but I recommend it as a gripping tale of power, sex and politics. And all true.

The Secret Life of Lobsters by Trevor Corson
I skipped over the bits that had to do with people. It's the lobsters who are the stars here: aggressive, randy beasts. They communicate by peeing at each others heads.

Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
I first read this in 1989 after The Handmaid's Tale and found it disturbingly remote and somehow incomprehensible. Now that I live near Toronto, I have a clearer understanding of the cultural/gender baggage that Atwood was writing about. I still like The Edible Woman best.

Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
I'd never heard of this one and reading it, I could see why. It's a bit of a mess and lacks an identifiable center. If I had my critical hat on I could talk about Atwood's interest in sparagmos and the dissolution of identity but I didn't like it, so I won't.

The Years with Ross by James Thurber
I *heart* Thurber, whose My Life and Hard Times never fails to cheer me up, reminding me as it does of conversations with my grandmother. Thurber's account of the early days of the New Yorker: the drunks, lech's, neurotics and geniuses who wrote for it are bound together by the promethian figure of Harold "God, how I pity me" Ross. If you haven't read it yet, give it a try. It's a gem.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
For some reason I have never read any of Gaiman's novels. I think I was put off by the difference in quality between his work on Sandman and Good Omens (co-authored with Terry Pratchett). I guess 'co-authored' was the problem since Neverwhere is a highly entertaining romp through Faerie (aka th London Underground).

Bankgok Haunts by James Burdett
More murders for Sonchai Jitpleecheep to solve. If you've read Bangkok 8 and Bangkok Tattoo you'll know what to expect: beautiful prostitutes, crystal meth, state corruption, transexuals, clash between eastern and western mindsets and Buddhism. This one adds hotel porn, a succubus and elephants. Proper holiday reading, and full of black humour.

So there we are. One much needed vacation. Thank you Queenie!

The Nullity

2008-08-13T20:43:00.002-04:00

Things I have not done since my last post:
1) Watched the Olympics
2) Re-read 'Lavinia' for reviewing
3) Bought a new swimsuit

Things I have done:
1) Worked on manuscript
2) Worked on conference abstract
2) Worked on organising conference

My work/life balance is 3-0 really. And with term starting in 2 weeks it's just going to get worse.

Thankfully, I'm going on holiday next Monday. Viva Halifax!

Blood and Fire

2008-08-03T14:47:00.010-04:00

If you haven't read Njal's Saga you really should. For one, it's an excellent yarn, full of fighting, feuding, marrying, piracy, war, witchcraft and courtroom drama. Though it's a long book, the chapters are very short and written in the clear, limpid prose of Grimm's märchen. Don't worry about the cast of hundreds, the numerous genealogies and almost complete absence of plot; most of the characters are bit-parts so there are only about a dozen you have to keep track of, you can skip the genealogies (although for my part some of the best stuff was in those footnotes), and the lack of coherent plot is actually one of its advantages. Basically it's a tale about how one tiny event escalates into the murder of an entire family (Njal and his sons). A man lies to his lover that he doesn't have a bride waiting for him at home. She knows he's lying (does he take her for a fool?). This small moment, like the proverbial butterfly's wing, sets in motion a chain of events that has hideous consequences for a family in no way connected with the original fib.

What makes Njal's Saga so gripping is that events are driven as much by a desire for glory and the redemption of honour, as they are by pettiness, spite, tale-bearing and envy. And yet there are no clear villains, just people getting in each other's way, taking umbrage, sulking and killing for no real defined goals. It's a story of the human condition, eat your heart out Sinclair Lewis.

There are also some interesting historical aspects. If you read between the lines, you get an inkling of the environmental crisis that was gradually looming on the horizon (see Jared Diamond's Collapse for more detail on why Iceland's colonies survived where Greenland's failed). And while you would think that the Vikings' favourite activity was raiding and fighting - and don't get me wrong, there is plenty of that - it turns out that what the Vikings most enjoyed was summoning each other to court. Yes, Vikings were the original bastard lawyers: tripping each other up with proceedural errors, declaring mistrials, transferring cases to courts where they would get a more favourable hearing, the Vikings wrote the book on that (except they didn't because it was all oral tradition, but you get my meaning). In fact, considering the ingrained tendency towards violence in the society, one has the suspicion that the legal code was deliberately geared towards encouraged these kind of proceedural tangles to absorb the murderous impulses of the protagonists. Given that the Viking althing forms the basis of Anglo-Saxon law that explains a lot. It makes me wish my grandfather was still alive; the distinction between Anglo-Saxon and Roman system of constitutional law was one of his pet subjects, I bet he would have something to say about the self-sustaining pattern of suit and counter-suit that makes up the last section of Njal's Saga.

And now, some of my favourite bits:

1) Hallgerd
Beautiful, seductive, proud, maddening, spiteful and lethal, Hallgerd ranks among the great femme fatales of literature. Like the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, Hallgerd has the same solution for all her problems: the death of the perpetrator. Watching Hallgerd despatch yet another thrall to do some killing, her mother-in-law exclaims in exasperation "Housewives around here have managed well enough without resorting to manslaughter". Hallgerd responds as generations of women have to their MIL's criticism by ignoring her.

Here's another classic Hallgerd moment with her husband Gunnar:

"Gunnar rode to the Althing. Before he left home, he said to Hallgerd, 'Behave yourself while I am away, and don't try any mischief on my friends.'
'The trolls take your friends', she replied."

I believe I have heard my mother say much the same words to my father.

2) Sam the Dog
In the Platonic perfection of forms, the concept 'Dog' must be represented by the Irish wolfhound Sam. Intelligent, noble, courageous, the death of Sam is a tragic moment, heralding the even more tragic death of his master...

3) The death of Gunnar
The peerless hero of the Saga, Gunnar's siege and death is a terrific fight, marked with the laconic humour that characterises much of the Saga's dialogue, such as this exchange between two of the beseigers:

"Gizur looked up at Thorgrim and asked 'Is Gunnar at home?'
'That's for you to find out,' replied Thorgrim. 'But I know that his halberd certainly is.'
And with that he fell dead."

Gunnar is eventually overcome by his enemies when his bow-string breaks and Hallgerd refuses to give him her hair to restring the bow because she is in a mood. Have I mentioned that Hallgerd is seriously bad news to all her husbands?

4) Thangbrand converts Iceland to Christianity: Viking-Stylee
By all accounts Iceland converted to Christianity with alacrity, possibly encouraged by the thought that Christianity's dim view of murder might break the cycle of vengeance-killings (it didn't, at least not immediately). Nevertheless there was some opposition, but nothing could withstand the missionary zeal of Bishop Thangbrand. Thangbrand's most impressive public relations coup involved beating up a beserker with his crucifix.

5) The Battle of Clontarf
Super battle, but actually what struck me most about this is that I'm sure the Valkyrie hymn was quoted in an issue of 2000 AD's Slaine. This got me to thinking about the glory days when Pat Mills was actually a good writer.

So there we are. Next: Lavinia.

Oh Canada!

2008-07-28T19:29:00.002-04:00

Keen eyed readers will notice a new link to Kate Beaton's site. It was Lisa who first alerted me to her home-grown cartoony goodness, diverting me from at least two hours of work (thanks Lisa!). Kate is Canadian, so I might conceivably meet her someday. Which would be good because she is clearly someone you want to go out and have a pint or five with. In the meantime I'm going to rely on Kate for all my knowledge of Canadian history, like this gem.

A Very Long Day On The Train

2008-07-25T20:02:00.006-04:00

I love to travel by train. Not only is it environmentally friendly, it's quiet, comfortable and I can spend the time reading, writing and catching up with administration. Driving is fun, but time-consuming. Flying is faster, but rarely as productive and never as restful.

One of the great advantages of St Catharines is that there is 10 am train to New York Penn Station every day. It's a long journey -- I've never arrived before 10 pm -- but if you plan it well you can have a very fulfilling day.

Of course, lately it's been hard booking a seat at short notice. I asked a conductor in the cafe car how the gas prices were affecting Amtrak and he said it was crazy, every train was booked solid. Which is good for Amtrak, I just hope it has a corollary effect on the way the system is being run. Because it needs work, especially where a border crossing is concerned.

Take my latest trip back from NY. Torrential rains hit the city the night before and there was chaos at Penn Station as thousands of commuters were stranded by electricity outages on the tracks. Flash flood warnings were out. By the time my 7 am train was up to Yonkers, the Hudson was very high, brown and turbulent, but the worst was over and everything was running smoothly.

And then there was a CRKGRNCH noise. "Uh Oh, that's not good", I thought. Seconds later there was the most almighty wallop and a noise like KGRUDKCRRNCHRRGRUCKRRNNNCHK as pieces of kindling flew past my window and the smell of the brakes grew hotter and hotter.

We had hit a tree.

The train had been passing through a steep cutting and there must have been a sudden landslide. The first crunch must have been a sapling or branch. The second must have been a much larger tree. Nobody was hurt and no windows were broken, but the engine had taken damage and there was wood pulp stuffed into the rubber seals of the windows, pulling them apart.

So we limped into Albany, where we were taken off our car and waited on the platform for replacement stock. After an hour a car was found, the engine was recoupled and we were loaded back on. Unfortunately, because of the delay we had lost our time slot. This meant that whenever another train approached we had to stop and allow it to pass because there's not enough track for two trains going in the same direction, so our one hour delay stretched into two.

Then just outside Niagara Falls, Canada we were delayed another hour because there was already a train in the station. Yep, only one train allowed in the station.

Then there was the usual hour while the customs guys went to each person and quizzed them on why they were entering the country, where were they staying etc. One guy asked all the questions, the other just stood there silently. I think they did the whole train. Two guys.

So I finally got into St C. three and a half hours late. It had been a long, long day and while the rail people were great, I was glad to finally get off the train.
All afternoon people had bitched and moaned. Many were travelling by train for the first time and swore never again, which is a shame because when it works it's a superb way to get from A to B. There will always be unexpected setbacks, but there needs to be more investment in tracks and rolling stock if Amtrak want to capitalize on their sudden windfall in customers.

Oh, and maybe someone can look into streamlining the customs process. Having more than two customs officers per train might be a good place to start.

Some good news, some not so good news

2008-07-14T20:58:00.006-04:00

Good news: My brother is arriving tomorrow and will spend my birthday with me.
Bad news: My sister has to have a spinal tap.

The latter item has me pretty upset, even though I was expecting it.

I had put this evening aside to do some blogging, but I can't really think of anything else, so I'll call it a night.

Homo Sapiens is just so Old Hat

2008-07-07T20:26:00.003-04:00

Humanity is very restrictive, don't you think? All that bipedalism, opposable thumbs and only two genders to choose feels kind of restrictive. So if you could be a non-human sentient being what would you be? Me, I'd be a Tine (from Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon the Deep). Group minds appeal to me and the Tines have the advantage of being one of a non-insect/biomechanoid group mind. They don't have opposable thumbs, they manipulate tools with teeth and stumpy paws. They can have 360 degree panoramic view. Their personality can change over generations as new members join a pack and old ones die. This process can be voluntary and heterogenous ('loose'-souled people) or controlled like a scientific experiment. I like the idea of having an evolving soul.

What would you be?

One of these things is not like the others

2008-07-03T21:46:00.007-04:00

So as I'm waking up yesterday morning, there's a hockey report on the radio.
Hockey news this week has been quite interesting, not that I know anything about it, but as far as I can tell money is being thrown about like confetti. This report is about one of the latest hot signings. Don't ask me to remember his name, we'll call him 'Bob'. In any case this post isn't about him really, it's about the journalist who did a feature on him.

"Before Bob joined the NHL he did something that he doesn't really talk about with his teamates, but he credits it with making him a man."

Blimey, I think, it's a bit early for this sort of thing isn't it?

But it turns out that Bob, who sounds like a nice young man, worked for two years in Las Vegas as a Mormon missionary. The interviewer was terribly excited at all the crime and hardship that nice young Bob had witnessed, police shootouts, dead soldiers crunching underfoot as he went from boarded up door to boarded up door, all the while wearing a suit in 98 degree heat.

"His neighbours were prostitutes, strippers, and crack dealers," intoned the journalist.

Hang on, I thought. That's just not right. Prostitution and dealing crack = illegal. Stripping = perfectly legal. It's Niagara's second biggest industry after tourism. It's not a career choice for everyone, but there's nothing wrong with it per se. At the end of the day it's a way to pay the bills, like everythings else. How dare the interviewer lump them all together like that? Lazy journalism, it ticks me off.

And today's commentators on Quebec's 400th anniversary kept saying that the Irish ambassador was speaking 'Gaelic'. No she wasn't, she was speaking Irish. Gaelic refers to football or what they spoke in Scotland.

Vor really does mean 'Thief'

2008-06-28T14:19:00.005-04:00

I watched Eastern Promises on DVD last night. Here are some of my thoughts:
a) Damn, Viggo Mortensen.
b) How much vodka do I have left in the freezer? Better get some more.
c) Cronenberg got the leather jackets spot on.
d) I wonder if compass star tattoos will become the new Maori sleeve as a result of this film?
e) This is the greatest male nude wrestling scene EVAH!
f) Has anyone else noticed that Cronenberg and Mortensen look like father and son? They are the spit of each other.
g) The make up girl in the corner is totally checking out Viggo as he gets his tats applied for a scene. Proper order.
h) Damn, Viggo Mortensen.

Gynoid, not Android

2008-06-22T18:51:00.009-04:00

"My name is Divine Endurance. I am feminine. I am twenty-five small units high at the shoulder, and sixty-two small units long from nose to tail tip. I am independent and it is therefore the more flattering when I respond to affection. I am graceful, agile, and especially good at killing things prettily."

I bought Divine Endurance by Gwyneth Jones in my very early teens, essentially because the protagonist was a talking cat. I lucked out, DE is one of sleeper classics of 80s fantasy, one of the first to really get to grips with changing sexual politics of the late 20th century. It confused the hell out of me by having Cho, the young girl travelling with Divine Endurance, initiate a sexual relationship with a bandit/revolutionary leader Anakmati who is also the Royal Lady Derveet. 'How can you have sex with a woman?' I wondered, in all innocence. [True Story from my schooldays from around the same period. On my way to the lunch hall I'm cornered by the Mean Kids. Them: "Are you a Lesbian? Do you know what a lesbian is?" Me: "Yes, they're people from the island of Lesbos, in Greece. Sappho was one." In the hindsight it's no wonder I had no friends].

Divine Endurance is set in that favorite dystopia of the 80s, the post-apocalyptic world. But it looks east instead of west, most of the action takes place in Thailand. It's hard now to understand just how strange that was, most fantasy one way or another still referenced Tolkein, with occidental, nordic perspective. The dominant ethics are Buddhist, the symbolism is Hindu. Fertile women are in purdah, but the politics are gynocentric. At its heart the book is about the power of Eros, both in a sexual sense and in its original Greek sense as the generative force of the universe, simultaneously destroying and creating. There's no happy ending, but it's an absolutely superb story.

Music!

2008-06-17T17:23:00.006-04:00

I'm having a great time listening to Ian's 'Best of 2007' CD and a collection of Luke Haines that he sent in the mail. Toptastic.

If you were a small dog Ian, I'd leave you all my money.

The cartoon above is by Tomi Ungerer, who illustrated Jeff Brown's 'Flat Stanley'. It amuses me that TU's personal work is so twisted. I will read 'Flat Stanley' with new eyes.

The Incomparable Mme CKS or What I Will be Doing on my Summer Holidays

2008-06-15T20:28:00.003-04:00

One of the irritating things about being an academic is that when summer rolls around you find a lot of people say things like "So, you've got the summer off then?".

And the answer is "No, I will be working bloody hard earning my tenure."

But if I learnt one thing last year it was that you have to make some proper holiday time for yourself where you can leave your home and work offices, not check your email, and avoid your family.

So I'm going to Halifax to visit Queenie in August. People keep telling me that Halifax is a great town, the Dublin of Canada. I'm looking forward to a week of cafe's, vintage clothes stores, gossip, drink, music and maybe even dancing.

I'm so excited I've already got my holiday reading sorted out. I will be bringing Mmm. Chiang Kai-shek's biography and a pulp novel about the Soongs. I'm fascinated by Mme. and her sisters. I'm beginning to consider her something of a role model: intelligent, beautiful, rapacious, and she wears great shoes. Look at the photo. There she is at the Cairo summit in 1943, wearing peep-toes with huge bows. That's style. Shame about the husband, though.

The Secret (Sexy?) History of the Mullet

2008-06-10T19:30:00.004-04:00

Ah, the mullet, that famous object of derision. Subject of many a joke and a special issue of Grand Royal (#2 if you must know). Long despised haircut of footballers. Known as the VORKUHILA in Germany. Quintessentially a late 70's style that has refused, despite the ridicule, to die.

Or is it? It turns out that the mullet has a long pedigree. In ancient Rome senators wore purple-bordered togas, married women wore a stola, and catamites wore mullets. Or at least that is the conclusion drawn by J. Pollini, in his article ‘Slave boys for sexual and religious service: images of pleasure and devotion’, in Boyle, A. J. and Dominik, W. J. (2003) (eds) Flavian Rome. Culture, Image, Text. Leiden, Boston. Pollini analysed the distinctive 'business in front, pleasure in back' style and concluded that it invariably appears in the context of 1) homosexual scenes between freeborn and slave men/youths
2) the ancient equivalent of altar boys (who may also have been pressed into service in category 1).
So the next time you see someone wearing a mullet you might want to point this out. Or you may want to keep your internal organs in a non-leaky condition, in which case it's probably better to just walk on by.

Struggles

2008-06-08T14:41:00.002-04:00

It's been very tough. I've been going through a lot and with work and all I just couldn't blog. I'm really, really sorry.

Stuff!

2007-07-29T16:09:00.000-04:00

I'm currently awaiting the arrival of my stuff. My latest source tells me it's sitting in Montreal. Sometime next week a container of STUFF will be delivered to me. Reading the shipping manifest is hilarious. Just about every item on it is scratched, marked or worn. But I want it anyway.

In preparation for my life to be taken over by a Giza-like pyramid of cardboard boxes, I've been tidying away all non-essential items. As I was packing up books this morning I thought this would probably be a good time to post some random reviews of STUFF I've read (note the emerging pattern?)

So today: Sherri S. Tepper, Grass

Let's see: Oppressive theocracy? Check. Ludicrously oversimplified sexual politics? Check? Female protagonist? Check. Deus ex Machina? Check. If you've read one SST, you've read them all.

Despite this Grass is a thoroughly satisfying read. Convincingly creepy mormon-esque future dystopia, humanity about to be wiped out by a disgusting plague, the mysterious extinction of an alien race, atavistic 'foxhunting' nobility, and miles and miles of lovingly described pampas, all come together very nicely.

So if you like your sci-fi intermingled with musings on the nature of God and humanity's role in creation, and if you've ever fancied getting it on with aliens this might be one to check out.

Like the Interweb needs more pictures of cats...

2007-06-08T14:49:00.000-04:00

But they've settled down enough to take the odd photo.

Enda is Shy.

Iarla is Friendly.

Iarla is VERY friendly.

Enda and Iarla are friends.

I Have Cats

2007-06-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

Their names are Iarla and Enda (although they might just as well go by their OTHER names: Shredder and Stinky). To date, they won't stay still long enough to be photographed, so here is a picture of a wapiti. I always wanted to know what a wapiti was. Mislead by the Ogden Nash poem "There goes the Wapiti/Hippety-hoppety" my mental image was a cross between a possum and a rabbit. Turns out it's a kind of elk. Isn't the natural world amazing?

Your Ovaries Are Senescing!!!

2007-05-27T18:13:00.001-04:00

This week I've had Irish Election Fever. It's similar to the Boogie Woogie Flu in that it sounds entertaining but is ultimately embarrassing. Irish Election fever required listening to 'Morning Ireland', RTE Radio One's current Affairs program. This has brought into high relief the dire quality of CBC radio's morning programs. Little National news, barely any International news and a lot of self-satisfied waffle.

A couple of weeks ago this situation reached its nadir with a week long 'investigative series' on the IVF industry. For a whole week my impressionable, just-waking brain was subjected to a program that was the aural equivalent of a perfect stranger coming up to in the street, grabbing you by the shoulders and shouting 'Your ovaries are senescing! Your ovaries are senescing'. It was that subtle. By Friday I was practically brainwashed into thinking "Hmm, maybe I should try and have a child. Oh no, it's too late." I felt very angry about the whole program, which did nothing except point out the obvious: women have decreased fertility after they are 30, IVF is not a magic bullet. Er, yes, I knew that thank you.

I was even more irritated by how the 'investigative' aspect was utterly neglected. One morning the reporter purred "The first thing women see when they come to the office of Dr B is a wall of baby pictures and thank you notes from the grateful women he has helped to become mothers". I was SHOCKED to hear this, having already listened to many tales of woe from couples who had spent many tens of thousands of dollars on cycle after cycle of unsuccessful IVF, getting into debt, selling their home, sometimes even divorcing from the stress of it all. My first thought would have been to ask the doctor was this ethical, to prime the hopes of women who have only a slim chance of success? But no, the reporter blithely moved on to another zombie-voiced woman saying "freedom in my 20s...didn't think of it...career...I'm 36...doom...dooooom". The whole thing was a textbook case of lazy, derivative journalism. When my pirate ship with eight sails and fifty cannons comes into view I am so going to enforce journalistic standards (also, the penalty for littering will be crucifiction, you have been warned).

New Game

2007-05-25T08:39:00.000-04:00

I call it Blogger Scrabble (Scroggle?), although really it's Call My Bluff. I've been playing it for a while now. Every time I've left a comment on Blogger I've amused myself by thinking up definitions for the jaw-breaking passwords of vowels and consonants. So I've decided to share the results in my comments. Lucky you.

Mmm...chocolate

2007-05-21T22:04:00.000-04:00

I have made a marvellous and serendipitous discovery. If you get a bar of Green and Black's Mayan Gold chocolate and leave it in your dashboard for months while it freezes, thaws, melts, solidifies, melts, and soldifies again you will get a chocolate bar that resembles Aero, but much, much nicer.

Uglies

2007-05-08T18:13:00.001-04:00

This caught my eye the other day, as I was checking out some other stuff on Amazon (for Queenie's Kitty in fact). I'm mentally wiped out after a year of teaching so a teen trilogy sounded just the ticket.

And Scott Westerfield's Uglies series is not bad. It's not a shivers-up-your-arms classic, but it has enough solid interest to make it worth recommending to someone with young teens who might need a little self-image persepctive in their lives.

Briefly, the series (Uglies, Pretties, and Specials) follows the coming of age of Tally Youngblood, a girl who lives in a future environment where our civilization (the Rusties) imploded centuries ago from our dependance on petroleum. Humanity now lives in environmentally harmonious communities with a sophisticated bioscience industry. Most adults live and work in small suburbs. Children leave their parents to be educated up to the age of sixteen in Dorms. In their late teens early twenties they live in the City, eventually meet a partner, and settle down to the suburbs to produce the next generation, all in a sustainable, green kind of way.

The twist in the tale is all about appearance and conformity. At the age of sixteen, every citizen undergoes major cosmetic surgery. The idea is that if everybody is equally good-looking the desire and envy that subconsciously drive human relationships is eradicated. Disagreements, prejudice, discrimination, favouritism - all are done away with. Pre-Operative children are called Uglies and encouraged to disparage themselves, secure in the knowledge that on their sixteenth birthday they will become Pretty. In Pretty City they party all night and sleep all day. Not surprisingly, you can't wait to grow up.

Tally is scheduled to follow the same path as her parents and her peers, until a problem brings her to the attention of the barely-rumoured to exist Special Circumstances. Told by the Specials that she will not be allowed to turn Pretty until she finds and betrays a community of City runaways who refuse to have the operation, she is exiled into the Wild. There she discovers - surprise, surprise - that the transformation from Ugly to Pretty is a not entirely beneficial tradeoff between security and freedom.

To my jaded old eyes many of the bells and whistles features that other teens have raved about - bungee jackets, hoverboards - are the least interesting elements (but work as handy deus ex machina). Far more engaging is Tally's not always successful struggle against her conditioning and her determination to find her own way.

"I ain't no whoremonger"

2007-05-08T18:12:00.001-04:00

"so come and see me whenever you want. I ain't coming on to you, I just feel we have a connection."

As opening lines go it takes some beating.

He's a good ol' dude, and clearly has lost many years to rock & roll. Saturday night he tells me about his experiences with astral projection and the signficance of numbers.

"Did ya ever wake up in the middle of the night and it was 4.44? Did ya? I have, several times and it makes you wonder, it really does. Or the other day, it was the fifth hour of the fifth day of the fifth month. Something special there."

People want to make meaning of their lives, it's both sad and wonderful to see them reaching out for such small building blocks.

He's writing his memoires, or rather rambing them. He needs someone to write them down for him. I regretfully tell him that I'm fully booked this summer, but my husband might have some time free. He is disgusted to hear I have a husband. "Now you've broken my heart, ain't no fool like an old fool."

amen to that, brother.

Emotional Rescue

2007-05-07T19:24:00.000-04:00

Can't get that song out of my head.

I took the last four days off from work 'cos I was feeling very close to burnout. A combination of end of term blues, exam marking that went on forever, and meeting after meeting as people try to get items cleared before everybody disappears for the summer. Woke up Friday morning and realised everything I had scheduled for the weekend would just have to go and do something carnal to itself (now that I am among so many fresh faced kids I have to watch the SWEARING, which is a shame becuase I do love a bit of imaginative and filthy cursing). This feeling carried over to today, so no school for me.

Instead, I gardened. All weekend I was going to garden centers and clearing up bag after bag of dead winter plant. And feeling so much better. I cannot recommend gardening highly enough as a stress beater.

So now I write this on my porch (see above for lovely view) while drinking a Ricard. All I need now is some quality chat.

Hat Trick!

2007-04-27T19:59:00.000-04:00

Thanks to the glory of iPod I've recently experienced visceral flashbacks to the 90s, courtesy of Pulp's 'Different Class'. An onlist offhand comment mentioned the possibility of 'seeing Jarvis' at an upcoming summer festival. 'Hmm,' I wonder, 'do they mean Jarvis Cocker?' And so I google and lo and behold the man has emerged from his millenial funk and produced a solo album. And quite good it seems too, from the couple of tracks I've heard.

'What next?' I hear my hipster muso friends think. 'Will she discover the wheel?'

Well, almost. I discovered Jarvcast, a podcast that has managed to score a hat trick with me through:
1) The seductively flat Sheffield tones of Jarvis Cocker
2) reading me stories
3) by Richard Brautingan!

Yes! I'm lying in bed and Jarvis Cocker in reading from The Tokyo Montana Express, one of my favoutite books of all time. Truly, the man can do no wrong.

Ask me about my poor self-image....Part 2

2007-04-22T15:54:00.000-04:00

Ummm…Where was I?

Oh yeah, tattoos. One of the first things that struck me about St. Kit’s was the disproportionate number of Tattoo studios (6 in the city centre). Of course, now that I know about the city’s crystal meth cottage industry it starts to make more sense. I’m not saying that meth and tattoos are an inevitable pairing, it’s just that for me they tend to fall into the same category of ‘poor lifestyle decisions’.

And the odd think is, I used to really like tattoos. I was fascinated by them back in the day when I had a biker boyfriend (and yes he did have ‘Live to Ride, Ride to Live’ on his bicep). Every chance I got, my fingers traced the raised ink lines with childish wonder. Painted skin. Cool.

And yet, and yet…I’ve never seen a genuinely good-looking tattoo. In the websites and magazines dedicated to ‘the art’, the content tends to be distinctly underwhelming despite. Dragons, Skulls, Roses, Crosses, Hot Babes. So I was quite exited to find myself watching a docu-dram about top tattooists and the stories behind their creations. As someone whose thought for may years about getting a tattoo, and knowing many in the same frame of mind, I was intrigued to learn what other people’s thought processes are when they go to get inked. Proper thought processes, not drunken clarts on holiday stumbling past the resort tattoo parlor at 2am (hello Hersonissos!).

So I was sorely disappointed to find that people going to Miami Ink basically commissioned the same core iconography of Dragons, Skulls, Roses, Crosses, and Hot Babes for basically two reasons: 1) commemoration of a dead person, 2) finding God (and this often involved reason 1 as well). Executed with wonderful skill but in response to sore lack of imagination. Which really does force me to conclude that there is something essentially mimetic about most tattoos. For all that the customers are claiming their design as a mark of individuality the effect is homogenous branding. I think I will leave my tattoos on the inside.

CODA: Walking into one the Second-Hand bookstores a few weeks ago I overheard this snippet of conversation between the owner and a customer ‘…and he tells me he’s off the meth. And he’s given up the daytime hookers.” Note, nothing said about night whores.

Ils en ont parle

2007-02-20T19:22:00.000-05:00

In other news, I've been reading Barbara Tuchman's 'The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the world before the War: 1890-1914'. Finally, I understand the Dreyfus affair!

And as a bonus, Wikipedia have answered one of the idle questions that have from time to time drifted across my consciousness: "Did the cartoonist Caran d'Ache take his nom de plume from the pencil brand, or vice versa?"

The answer is: the company was named after the cartoonist.

Ask me about my poor self-image....Part 1

2007-02-19T15:12:00.001-05:00

I've been sick, really sick. Truth be told I'm still sick, but after 6 straight days in bed I've hauled myself down to my Ikea Poang armchair for a change of scene. I'm telling you the name of the chair because I like the sound of it: Poang! It doesn't have any further role in this narrative. Forget about it.

The worst fucking part of living alone is being sick on your own. Such a drag. And of course, I've managed to lose my mobile, just to add to the felling of isolation. I tell you if it weren't for broadband, iChat and Skype....thank god for the internet. I was remembering my first year in Dublin when I knew no-one and lived in Rathfarnham next to the mountains (back in 1989 this was like living in Wales). And my landlords were an insanely houseproud newly married couple whose spare room I rented. They put a lock on the phone and were always away. And even if I could drag myself from bed the number 16 could keep you waiting an hour in the cold on Grange Road - I really was trapped there. At least with Femputer I can check out Britney's bald head. Yes, my finger is on the pulse of the zeitgeist, though the rest of me can barely sit up.

But I'm not here to talk about my phlegm- and fever-tastic journeys in self pity. I'm here to talk about tattoos.

I know, wierd segue. But there's a logical connection of sorts. This time last year I was interviewing for the job I now have. Around the time of my first interview I began to feel a bit wrong in the stomach, not nerves but something far more fearful: the winter stomach bug. I held it together for the interview and then spent the next 2 days shivering and sweating in my hotel room. And during that time I had the tv on and I watched episode after episode of Miami Ink.

Miami Ink: 5 guys and a token woman set up a tattoo business in Miami. The episodes are built around people coming in for tattoos, what they get, why they want to get it. With and ad break every 15 minutes it was perfectly geared for someone with no concentration who had to shoot to the bathroom.

And then this past week I found clips of those episodes on YouTube. And they got me to thinking about tattoos.

Sudden Thought

2007-02-08T20:53:00.000-05:00

Late last night, sudden thought: I've heard of guys who have three nipples (that assassin in one of the Bond movies, Chandler, Damon Albarn [actually I'm not sure about that last one, night have been a dream]). Never girls. Is it a male only mutation? I'd google but I'm scared of what I might find.

SPLAT

2007-01-30T11:01:00.000-05:00

That sound you hear is a pile of work landing on me the minute I touched down in Canadia.

So after all my promises that, yes, I’ll get back to blogging, it hasn’t happened.

Anyway, things are easing off a bit (I’m not preparing classes until midnight anymore).

And I’ve been bookgaming, since it only takes a minute or two out of my day, and only every 2-3 days at that. It makes me feel as if I’m still close to my friends, just in the next room over, as it were.

What else? I went through a bad patch when I got back. After 2 solid weeks of Family and Friends coming back to an empty house felt very odd. I began to obsessively look at pictures of cats. I even went to a shelter, but came back empty-handed.

And I finally got tired of waiting for my furniture to arrive, which will be a while because I’ve not had the time to arrange a loan with the bank for the money to ship things over (note to self, must also see accountant and sort out if I can write this off against tax). So I went to IKEA. I’ve never been. IKEA is brilliant! And thanks to IKEA I now have a comfy chair and table to write this on. Working from the floor got very tiring.

Anyway, duty calls.

Get thee to a Carvery! (Niagara part 2)

2006-09-30T20:47:00.001-04:00

Casinos are designed to get you lost. You go in for a bite to eat and maybe a quick game of Blackjack and all you find is aisle after aisle of slot machines. Disorientated by the the bleeping and whirring and ringing you wander deeper into what could well be the circles of hell (everything is red: lights, carpets, faces).

So when we turned a corner and found the serious hush of the baccarat tables we were as relieved as desert wanderers reaching an oasis. Relief turned to joy as we saw, a little beyond the tables, a noodle bar. Seating ourselves in a corner with a splendid view of the falls in sunset our mouths watered as we saw the treats waiters brought to the tables of the casino's Asian patrons. Golden sesame tofu, dark beef with greens, and a beautiful fish scored fragrant with ginger all passed us by. There was no menu, and no one brought us one. Perhaps we order at the bar?

Politely, we asked the chef for a menu. He gestured brusquely to a small sheet of paper listing 4 dishes of the fried rice and sweet and sour chicken variety. No tofu, no beef, no fish with ginger and, most tellingly, no prices.

The subtext was clear. The noodle bar was provided by the Casino for the high-rolling Chinese prepared to lose fortunes at baccarat, not timid tourists. Suitably chastened, we slunk away into the bowels of the casino, to Lucky's Steakhouse, where our unrefined gaijin palattes were satisfied by meatloaf and a burger.

Isn't it Romantic? (Niagara part 1)

2006-09-28T21:15:00.001-04:00

Despite it's cheap and tacky side (part Picadilly Circus, part Funderland) you can see why Niagara Falls is such a honeymoon hotspot. When the moon came up over the falls it was just breathtaking. For future reference the Horseshoe Falls (Canadian Falls) are the more spectacular falls to see by daylight but the American Falls look better by moonlight. You can have dinner in one of the nearby Casino's while you wait for dusk to fall (more on that anon).

It's easy to be cool when someone's watching you

2006-09-20T21:27:00.001-04:00

I have a raft ‘must blog about this’ items in my mental ‘to-do list’ but what with preparing classes and getting my life in Canadia together (not to mention a number of marathon sleeping sessions) it’s becoming quite the guilt-burden.

But today I jettisoned the blog-list because today something genuinely blog-worthy happened. We had an anthrax scare.

And it was genuinely scary. There were policemen, firemen and paramedics in droves. People were decontaminated and carried away in ambulances. They closed off two floors of the building I work in, but oddly enough didn’t close the library that occupies the floors directly beneath the contaminated offices. The elevators share the same shaft system and while they closed off the ‘public’ one they didn’t close the library elevators.

Guess who spent most of her day in the library?

At first I was pretty blasé about it; bomb scares were regular enough back in my early college days. It was only on the drive home that I found myself getting a little freaked out. I think it’s because I’m really focused at work, and there’s lots of people around me. Then I drive for an hour and come back to a dark, silent, empty house.

Anyway, I just got the latest update and the ‘mysterious substance’ has been identified as whey powder. So it was just the work of deranged looper rather than a sociopathic looper.

Still, I would have been happier if they had just evacuated the entire damn building.

Fear and Loathing at Saranac Lake

2006-08-20T18:19:00.001-04:00

Majestic mountains, heartbreakingly romatic lakes, a remote and mysterious wilderness, are these the memories we take with us as we leave Adirondack National Park?

Is it buggery.

Welcome to the worst meal I have ever eaten in my life. So bad that even JB felt complaints were justified. “This is as bad as Warsaw in 1990, and actually that was better.”

It started innocuously enough. We arrived at the famously picturesque Lake Saranac after a long day of driving. Although it was a holiday resort, it had less in way of eateries than one would expect. I guess people mostly rent houses and barbecue, with the occasional pizza night thrown in. We didn’t fancy pizza and the retaurant at Hotel Saranc had an empty and sad feeling. But just across the road Il Corvo looked cheery and had people in it.

The first bad sign was the filthy carpet. But being down at heel doesn’t necessarily mean terrible food. After all, we were in a national park. Buisiness is seasonal and small restaurants can’t always renovate when they want to.

I’ll pass over indifferent bread and watery salad. Problems started, appropriately anough, with the starters. Mine was a portobello mushroom sodden with Balsamic vinegar. I had one bite and then gave it to JB and asked him what he thought. ‘Hmm…Vinegary’.
‘How’s your soup?’
‘Insipid.’
‘Shall we cut our losses and send just go?’
‘No. We’re tired and want to eat now. Send the mushroom back and move on. They can’t do much to eggplant and pasta.’

Little did we know. The proscuitto billed in my eggplant rollini was, when excavated from the thick layer of Ragu covering the entire plate, thick slices of leathery, surgical pink ham. After one bite I pulled the rest out and pushed it to the side of my plate. Some pork products are not worth taking the risk on. I contemplated the slimy mess that was left with distaste. Across the table, JB’s was dubiosly cutting into some evil-smelling meatballs that turned out to be cold in the middle. That’s it, we thought, we’re out of here. We sent back our plates, from which only one bite had been taken and asked for the bill. ‘We’ll pay for the beers and the soup,’ I told the supremely uninvolved waiter. ‘But nothing else has been edible.’ We waited and waited. When the bill finally arrived it was 28 dollars. I took it to the bar to sort it out. Our waiter ignored us and finally a subdued waitress took the bill and disappeared with it.

Out from the kitchen came a short, mean-faced, East-European woman with straw-coloured hair. She immediately launched into an attack:
“12 years I run restaurant and you first that ever complain! What’s wrong with meal?”
We explained that the meal was inedible.
“Eat whole meal and then say not edible!”
No, we had one bite and sent 3 of four dishes back to the kitchen. We will pay for the 2 beers and the soup but nothing else. At that point, she began to shout at us, accusing us of trying to cheat her and demanding payment of the bill.
“You eat meal and cannot pay! I phone the police.”
Go right ahead, phone the police.
“I’m phoning the police now, but first leave restaurant! You’re distubing my customers!”
No, we’re waiting right here. You’re the one screaming and making and scene.
At this point, she made a great palaver of asking all her waitpeople to gather around her and asking for the number of the police station. Realising we weren’t about to meekly leave the premises she changed her tactics.
“You’re so mean and petty you cannot pay $20 bill? You fight over tiny bill?
Weren’t you going to phone the police?
“You so poor, you’ve never eaten at a fancy restaurant! You don’t know what good food is! Get out of my place now!”
This is not a fancy restaurant, it is not good food, we did not eat the food, and we are not going to pay for it. Call the police if you want.
What then followed was a farrago of threats and insults screamed at the top of her lungs. We were poor, we were Canadians, we were cons and finally, to JB: “I feel sorry for you, you spend all your life with her!”
And then to me: “I have good looking husband! You want, he will sleep with you!”

Then she crumpled up the bill and we left. The original plan had been to make our leisurely way through the Adirondack Park but after that experience I drove through as fast as I could. The next night we left stayed in a motel off the highway and went to a truckstop place. The food was excellent.

Sometimes, All I Need is the Air that I Breath, 2d6, and to Love You

2006-07-03T16:01:00.001-04:00

T-19 now and I’m thinking more and more about what I’ll miss about my old life. This week brought one issue starkly to the fore: who will I game with? This was a great week for gaming, with not only a session of San Juan (motto: Gringoes, Exploit the Natural Resources of Puerto Rico!) and High Society with Ian, but also a blasting session of SingStar Popworld with William. Finally, I see the point of Sony Playstation. You select a song from a playlist of about 30 options. You sing competitive karaoke against an opponent with a microphone. You start off strong and then fall to pieces during the rap-o-meter section of Outkast’s ‘Roses’. Good clean fun. My only quibble with the scoring mechanics would be that fact that there’s no accommodation made for originality of performance. The complete unsingability of some songs on the playlist required some fancy footwork and JB’s inspired ‘Dirty Grunting’ version of Joss Stone’s eminently forgettable piece of pseudo-funk ‘Yeah’ was the highlight of the evening.

Which really begs the question, how can I go about building a new game-playing peer circle? It’s very much something you keep separate from PFW. Role playing games are immediately out, I don’t see myself easily settling into another group of like-minded individuals with whom I can pretend to be a talking prawn. There’s a certain level of intimacy at work when playing Call of Cthulu, you know. Will I find myself submitting personal ads that read ’30-something girl-nerd, seeks m/f gsoh for Settlers of Catan?’ Actually, that’s not a bad idea.

Anyway, to round off this post here is a list of games that have provided me with some of my most memorable evenings:

Backgammon – A sublime combination of strategy and chance, backgammon is the ultimate grownups’ game. Sexy and sophisticated, it’s a game you play with a glass of smoky Lagavulin. It’s also the one game I’m pretty sure I can keep playing on a regular basis, if for no reason other than my father and I are locked in mega tournement that started when I was about nine years old.
Pit – shouty! shouty! shouty! If you like grabbing, screaming and slamming things down on the table, this is the game for you. I’m surprised there isn’t a toddlers’ version available.
The Sherlock Holmes Card Playing Game –The Game is Afoot, Watson! Players race from City to Country and back to the City again while traying to hide their villanous secret identity. Thick Fog!
Family Business – All together now, ‘Take it on the Lam’. Who would have thought the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre could provide so much entertainment?
Mah-Jong – Pung! Kong! Chow! Poker with clattering. The only problem is you need a regular gang of four [people] to learn the subleties of an ‘all orphans’ hand.
TransAmerica – I love games where you build things, in this case, Railroads. Because it’s over pretty quickly it makes a good nightcap to a long evening of gaming.
Settlers of Catan – I’ve never had much of an interest in video games where you shoot things, preferring the set up the social infrastructure in Civilisation and Alpha Centuri. So it’s no surprise to find this on my list. Quite addictive.
Jenga/Bausack – A variation of buiding things: stacking things!
The Cooking Game – In essence this is a fairly dull collect-a-set game. But it involved food and introduced me to the most beautiful phrase in the English language, Sussex Pond Pudding
Buccaneer – Oh, the little pieces! This was the first game I remember playing. Again, the mechanics were pretty dull but the little gems, pearls and treasure chests were highly coveted. Of course, I lost the pieces by burying them for real in the garden.
Once Upon a Time – A good exercise in ingenuity as you try and work a plausable reason for a Fairy Godmother giving a Dragon a Magic Barrel of Fish. The story will eventually go south.
Tell Me! – My favourite game of all time. So simple, and so addictive. Cards give a subject such as ‘An animal/Something that scares you/a movie star’. You spin a wheel and have shout out an answer that corresponds to the letter of the alphabet indicated on the disc. Then you have to convince people that you are genuinely frightened of cheese. For full value you have to get one of the original sets from the 1950s with subjects like ‘A wireless star’.

Little Sparta

2006-06-11T17:16:00.000-04:00

'Some gardens are retreats, but they can also be attacks' ~ Ian Hamilton Finlay

Actually, I'm paraphrasing. I could give you the exact statement but I shipped my work books on Wednesday. I feel strangely unbalanced without them, it's like I'm missing some vital part of myself. I'm consumed with anxiety. What if the boxes burst? What if they get dumped in the sea? Hey, freight guy! That's eight years of my life you have there. Be gentle with it.

Back to IHF. I visited his garden this week. I had a conference in Glasgow and realised that I could combine the two. The garden is only open to the public three months a year, Friday and Sunday afternooons from 2.30 to 5. I've been wanting to get there for years but never got round to it and, as with other parts of my life, I realised that if was ever going to do it, now was the moment.

And it was everything I hoped it would be. Little Sparts, the garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay, has been described as the most important garden of the 20th century. It's a masterpiece of poetry, sculpture, and landscape, combining gardening, philosophy and history to provoke and tantalise your imagination as you walk its coiling paths. IHF was (he died earlier this year) a poet and artist deeply interested in how we have engaged with the environment over the last two millenia. Little Sparta explores themes of territorial expansion and personal liberty, control and freedom through it sculpture and decoration; it alludes to Ovid, Virgil, the Roman Empire, Scottish land clearances, the French Revolution, the Industrial revolution, and WWII. I realise this makes it sound rather earnest and didactic but it's not; it's actually a very playful garden, eveything is on a small and personal scale, and it's great fun to visit. And, since the garden represents a work in progress, not everything is a success, which makes me like it all the more. Every artist produces some duds, and some of the conceits in Little Sparta work better than others. I like that unfinished, patchy quality. You find yourself having mental conversations with IHF as to why you think some things work and some don't.

Anyway, I strongly recommend that if you get the chance, you should visit Little Sparta. You need a car, but the caretaker told me that they were about to start a regular minibus from Edinburgh

I love the fact that walking through a garden on a beautiful summer's day counts as research for me. And it's tax deductable!

Mmm...Liver.

2006-05-29T15:49:00.000-04:00

Is there anything tastier? I used to hate the stuff, but now I can't get enough of it. I love its deep, rich colour when raw, its velvety texture when perfectly cooked.

Anyway, by popular demand here is my recipe for liver cooked in the Syrian style:

1lb (500g) Lamb's liver
1 large lemon
Olive oil
2 heaped teaspoons cumin
Chopped Parsley/coriander
Sliced shallots/spring onion/radish

Slice liver into strips approx. 1-1.5cm thick
Marinade in the juice of 1/2 a lemon and 3-4 tblsp olive oil for 10-40 minutes
Heat frying pan with a little more oil. get it good and hot.
Lift the lamb out of the marinade with a slotted spoon and place in the hot pan. This will give a dry dish. if you like sauce, add the marinade (but be careful, it will spit).
Fry for 2-3 of minutes until just about done, then turn off heat. The liver will finish cooking as it sits in the pan.
Sprinkle with cumin, garnish with herbs, onions, radishes.

Serve warm or cold with wedges of lemon

Dark(ish) Secrets

2006-05-21T12:56:00.000-04:00

Am I a bad wife? I'm occasionally haunted by this thought. Not because I'm demanding, conflict averse and contradict everything my husband says. This is par for the course with all married couples (I think). No, its because I feel worse about leaving our cat than my husband. Joe Black (JB) is not thrilled at my leaving to set up a new life abroad, and it's going to be a huge wrench for him, but he can at least understand why I have to do it. Pancho on the other hand...

How can you explain to a cat that you're leaving him? 'Ah', I hear you say, 'as long as he's fed he doesn't care.' This is partly true, what cats hate most is to have their routine disrupted, and that includes regular feedings. But the thing is, Pancho is one of the few cats who does care about people. No, really, he does. I have the evidence of a year's absence to back me up. Apparantly he wandered about, miaowing peevishly. And he was delighted when I came back. Who else knows to make the bed just so for him every morning? Who else does he trust to hold his paw when he's snooozing? Who else knows when he's feeling frazzled by the presence of kittens in the garden and needs to be picked up a reassured? Who else suddenly pushes the bedroom door open, putting and end to any potential kitten-producing activities of which he strrrongly disapproves. Who else-actually, it's probably a good thing I'm going.

2006-05-17T15:30:00.000-04:00

Beginnings and endings

2006-05-17T14:47:00.000-04:00

I'll be leaving Dublin in 8 weeks. I came here in 1989 and was never so happy. It has been one of my greatest loves.

But now it's time to go. This blog is to help me keep in touch with all my friends, and perhaps make new ones (this is unlikely, I was prickly 15 years ago and time has not mellowed me).

So, over the next 3-5-indefinite years, keep an eye on this blog.