One guy I didn't really know in high school added me as a friend in Facebook way back when it first started. From his Facebook, I learned he was hardcore Catholic. He was the person who started the "end to abortion" wish on CBC's Great Canadian Wishlist. Anyway, I didn't really pay attention to his proselytizing for a long time. One day, I was tired of the way he dominated my news feed and so I de-friended him.
Now I wish I hadn't, in light of Stephen Harper's little Communion problem, because I'd love to know what he thinks about it. I'll actually defend Harper in this instance. It's an awkward position: he certainly didn't want to make a scene by refusing. And it wouldn't have been a scene, but I'd bet he wouldn't have known that considering everyone around is partaking in it.
An argument could be made that Harper's handlers should have explained the etiquette to him beforehand. But then it's really his problem; he's just the face of it.
On the other hand, shouldn't the priest know his Prime Minister isn't a Catholic? Of course, I just assume all the Quebecois PMs are Catholic and the anglophones aren't. Hmm, I'm going to visit Wikipedia to see how accurate I am!
Just for my own personal sanity, I've decided to start getting up around 7:30-8:00. I've always been an early riser, and I feel much better when I get up on time rather than sleeping in too late.
The problem is that my supervisor is busy until July 25th, meaning I have no meeting with him about the reading course until after that. What's further, I've kind of hit a point where playing WoW by myself isn't therapeutic in dealing with the amount of time I spend thinking, but it's actually boring because of how little time I spend thinking.
I have wayyy too much free time, these days.
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boredA funny thing ... I took a week off work, Wednesday to Wednesday, so I could go camping with Kerry and Nick and V. I'll be shitting in a forest, exciting stuff. Apparently this festival, Teknival, is where all the local DJs hang out and just DJ for themselves. Someone has been telling me to go for two years. I wasn't convinced, but she claims there are possible kindred spirits for non-DJing non-outdoorsmen non-physicals like myself.
Due to a comedy of scheduling, I also wound up having today and yesterday off, a straight nine days of leisure. Yesterday I flaniered around Kitchener a bit, bought some low-priority essentials.
Today I thought about doing the same, but I somehow drifted from Oblivion the video-game into Stardust the graphic novel into fits of vivid daydreams. All of these involved walking through forests and skirting around hints of stoney city walls in the distance.
Oblivion began with me being pissed off, but now that I've settled into the mindset that I'm just this guy wandering around doing things while he's there, I start to forget that I'm playing a game. Assassin's Creed may have been like that, but it too was a game you played best by meandering.
Before that you'd have to go back to the old Ultimas and other EGA or worse RPGs. Even VGA (256-colours) games started to hit the uncanny valley rather hard. I think it's kind of like looking into the eyes of a dead thing. When you look into a dog's eyes, she is alive, her life force and intent of definition is staring out back at you, you can reflect upon that she wishes to be and interact with the own force from your own eyes. But when the creature is dead, the vacuum is such that you can be sucked in forever processing what the thing could have been, there are infinite possibilties made even more cruel by their disappearance.
Anyway, I don't think that applies to newish games. They simply look very immersive and they suck you in with their carefully crafted mundanity.
As for Stardust, for a Victorianesque children's tale it's rather erotic. Then again, Neil Gaimon's prose is always sensual.
I rarely remember dreams let alone daydream, so having done so today, for extended periods, is rather nice. I'm usually guilty because I feel so unproductive and removed from reality, but I suppose that's about all the mystical pleasance I'm bound to get so I may as well enjoy the forays while I have them.
But my head hurts so much now. One of the reasons I don't nap is because I don't even wake up this this swirly after being on the sauce.
Podcasts: where the self-importance of talk radio meets the amateurism of the Internet!
I still don't get why podcast is the term for it. I don't own an iPod and I'm not an iTunes user, so perhaps, I'm missing something, but I do listen to the occasional podcast and it seems to me it's just an MP3 file of people talking. Not exactly the most sophisticated technological idea in the world, is it?
I promise to update regularly, and I don't. And, hence, another trimesterly update on my life. This one covers late March to early July.
Parents: My parents visited me for five nights in late May. It was terrific having them over here. I had only been living in Seattle for two months the last time they visited, so this time I was able to take them beyond downtown this time. We went north to the Rick Steves store in Edmonds, the Boeing factory tour (where we saw the new Dreamliners being built), east to a winery in Woodinville, west on the ferry to Bremerton (driving back through Gig Harbor and Tacoma), and to the Space Needle downtown.
I had a great time spending the Memorial Day long weekend with them.
Weddings: Five this year, and counting. Three in Southern Ontario, one in Montreal, and one in Seattle. The second one is happening next weekend.
Phil and Laura's wedding: Phil and Laura got married at the end of June. I was the best man, so I flew in a few days early to help set up and get things prepared. We spent Thursday afternoon setting up the church; apart from adjusting the mounted lights on the ceiling (which we worked on for three hours), it was super-easy to get ready. We spent most of Friday setting up the reception hall at the nearby community centre.
Friday evening was the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. The dinner was held outdoors at a quaint bed-and-breakfast. There was a trampoline not too far from the tables where we were eating, so one of Phil's older brothers asked the owners if he could bounce on the trampoline. He jumped up and down a few times, and then we heard a large THUMP. We all walked over to see what had happened - and he had ripped the trampoline cloth in half right down the middle. The replacement cost notwithstanding, it was hilarious to see.
Saturday morning, the guys went to Grand Bend to play beach volleyball. The wedding was in the afternoon, and it went off with a hitch. After the ceremony, the family and the wedding party drove to the house where Laura had grown up (and lived in, until a few years ago) to take photos. It was a beautiful day outside, and the scenery was perfect for some great shots.
The reception was great. There was tons of food (appetizers, main course, desserts, cake, and a "midnight snack"). I spent quite a bit of time hanging out with the SPUC crowd (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jstew, niceerin, stangerous, Cris, and Dave C) and the WCF crowd (Jacob and Caroline). I delivered the best man speech, which was very well-received by everyone.
On Sunday afternoon, I got to meet up for lunch with victory_is_me; she also gave me a tour of her new house, which was exciting. On Monday morning, I met up with my camp friend, Ryan, for breakfast at Cora's. The eggs benedict with mushrooms and brie? Amazing.
MacBook: The new MacBook Pro is so pretty and inexpensive. I'm finding it hard to resist. (But I will resist at least a few months longer.)
Travelling: Given how much I'll be travelling over the next few months for weddings and such, I joined Air Canada's Maple Leaf Club. It gives access to Air Canada and United's airport lounges, and I can use the executive line to check in for my flights. Since I'm increasingly coming to dislike the rigmarole of flying, it makes the experience a bit more tolerable.
That's it for this update. I'm trying to get back into the habit of posting more than once a month, but I find that when I come home from work at night, the last thing I want to do is spend another half-hour typing. I'll try, though.
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apatheticThis week, possibly due to this damned chest cough and the visit of thatt rat, has been epistemologically brutal. I hit a regression bug, in a sense. I panicked.
( Read more... )
Perhaps the concise answer is actually just this: Philip K. Dick went crazy and honest-to-god wrote his way out of it. So I'll try too!
Aaaaaaaargh I have Tiger Balm in my EAR.
IT BURNS.
NOT HAPPY.
Nrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....
I shall attempt to distract myself by making my spreadsheet as brightly coloured as humanly possible.
Apart from that, having a much better day.
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awake"The joy of literary interpretation is not to evaluate what the book is intentionally saying, it is mostly rare to find real controversy on first reading.
Instead, the joy of interpretation is, while carrying such schools as feminism or socialism or deconstructionism or even just a desire to be ornery, to take a book and show how given an arbitrary shoehorned foundation one can demonstrate new messages and moralities from the source material. By shifting the frameworks under which the book is understood (from the creators' time or belief structure or even intention) and by shifting the frameworks on which the book is to be recieved (the ever-assumed universality of the present over all previous history) we can produce an infinitude of new messages and moral essays.
In essence, the art of literary criticism is akin to the art of remixing a book. One has to both perform a completely divorced undertaking while still holding enough of the source's consistency that we find joy in the original's remaining degree of integrity."
Went to One Eyed Jacks in Kitchener.
Man it's been a while since I've listened to good DJ music. One of them was doing mostly drum and bass but threw in all these little Squarepusher quirks that drove me wild. Magda appreciated it, I invited her along, but she found it hard to dance to.
It was the sound of sound layers having sex. There was rhythm, but it waxed and waned. The song was left to simmer and breathe and boil. It shifted, restless, endlessly formative. It opened sometimes to Goldie-soul, it would then clam up.into walls of Ragga. But never too tightly.
There were some complaints, but I think they are mostly addressed by the DJs just playing around at this point, I think they were more interested in having fun than having a tight set. Seeing how tight they could be, I figure they knew what they were doing.
I had forgotten how much I seriously was not that into Happy Hardcore, thanks to the company I keep I've stopped minding it due to exposure. But yeah, D&B when done well is still my preferred my thing.
Actually Squarepusher and Kid606 and Autechre are that which come on my selector. But whatever, hearing that DJ work it I started to see the links between D&B and IDM and Glitch and how they could have grown from each other.
Oh and French House, and dirty techno, and microhouse, and a bunch of other dance musics really.
—
Dogg I'm always so afraid to play a Mars Volta album in case I actually notice that it's a bunch of esothetic crap but then I wind up really grooving and paying their entire discography until I puke. They just such a band to lie relaxed back and be cradled between their rhythms, to fall asleep along their tidal patterns and feel the wind gently rustle through their asymmetric turns.
Previously, I was on the nauseated/nauseous are different words bandwagon. However, I was looking up the word today in my trusty Oxford English Dictionary and came across the following note in the nauseous entry:
"1. affected with nausea, sick [felt nauseous all day). Objections to the use of nauseous in this sense on the grounds that nauseated should be used instead are ill-founded. This is in fact by far the most common sense of nauseous."
First, I was appalled by the use of a demonstrative pronoun. I never like them.
Second, I thought, "Hey! OECD, are you against me, too?" Rather than take pre-emptive action against the dictionary's potential acts of word terrorism, I decided to do some research instead. Apparently, I'm wrong. At least, if we decide to accept that over centuries, the definitions of words in English may change.
Thanks to Motivated Grammar, a blog, I learned that nauseous has meant "feeling queasy" for... well, a long time. To sum it up, as the blogger does: "My point is this: no one reading this blog, or reading anything you’ve ever written, was alive when nauseous took on the 'sickened' meaning. The 'sickened' meaning has been in use for generations! Sure, it wasn’t the original meaning, but then 'sickening' wasn’t the original meaning either. Given that there have been a good deal of changes in the definitions of these words over time, why not just accept that nauseous changed back in the 1850s to have multiple meanings?"
I guess I've found one less hill to die on, which is good, because all that hill climbing might make me nauseous.
I don't believe in God but sometimes I like to pretend he's testing my faith all Job-like when I'm excited or angling for something. I don't know, it keeps my eye on the ball, it keeps me focused on whatever I want to do. I'm willing to fake whatever hardships I need to pretend I've overcome in order to motivate me to do whatever I'm trying to do.
Slept for four hours, went to a priority meeting, was able to swallow and hear out of both ears around 2/3pm, escorted people to Popeye's, read at the cafe and failed a cookie tin delivery, walked home, realized I lost my keys along the way and eliminated some options via phone, walked to Huether and back again. I feel exhausted.
But firstly I must say this.
It begins again, I've started reading Walter Benjamin's "Illuminations" compilation. I got maybe 20% through the introductory "this is what he's about" chapter and my head exploded. Waaaaay easier than Adorno, though.
In any case, I'm kind of in love with the guy. While I respected Adorno, and I lust for Baudrillard (I want to fuck Baudrillard in the signifier _so hard_), Benjamin is kind of the guy I thought I was but now reading that same self-appraisal about a dude who's dead and famous suggests that perhaps I've got some ways to go:
"Benjamin had a similar gift for applying abstractions to pleasures. And to his explanatory fervor he added a fervor for observation: he saw more, in books and in places, than other people did, and he saw differently. The strangeness that you encounter upon reading Benjamin for the first time is almost a cognitive strangeness: he makes evertying no longer familiar. His incompetence at ordinary living allowed him to see it more sharply. Like mmany of the insurgent children of the German Jewish bourgeoisie, he believed that banality wa the enemy of life; but his anti-banalizing energy, the ferocity with which he mined the most commonplace objects and events for explosive meanings, was almost diabolical. ("The everyday as impenetrable, the impenetrable as everyday.") In his memoirs as in his essays, he seemed to require of every perception that it be a revolution. It was his premise ta nothing is what it appears to be, and this made him into a scholar of appearances. He had an unappesable appetite for the marginal and the idiosyncratic, because deviance looked to him like an epistemological advantage. Nothing that was not neglected could be true. All this led Benjamin into the underground of esoteric interpretation
God, two years ago, maybe even one year ago, I was on the road to having people say that about me after I was dead. Hubris, true, but I believe it so. I'm somewhat disappointed that I've calmed down, but I'd very much like to not commit suicide so maybe I can plan some kind of esoteric compromise.
I want to say I should apply to school, but part of me wants to point out that given my leisure activities I'm doing quite well for my brutish self.
—
titi_grominet threw away the rodent. She did not read my sign until afterward. It now proudly states that she is the man of the house. She took a photo of the sign for posterity.
Met someone I know crossing the other side of the street. Her wave was big, my wave was small. I should work on that. Perhaps after my cold dissipates.
Some tennis commentators make me want to bash them with a racquet. Darren Cahill complained today that if Serena won Wimbledon today, she would be the champion of three out of the last four Grand Slams and still not be ranked number one.
Darren, I'd like to introduce you to Serena's matches won on clay before the French Open. Oh wait, there aren't any! If you think Dinara Safina is an unfitting number one, she'll have made the semis or finals of all four Slams, so pumping up the points in the slams will only increase her points, too.
Everyone knows Serena is the most dangerous player in the world, except 1) on clay and 2) on grass against her sister. There's no need to mess with everything to allow tennis commentators to have more accolades to announce before the match.
I have a lingering malady, one that began with being unable to swallow easily on Friday to popped ears on Tuesday. Much of Canada Day was spent at home in a bad mood though not a chronic one.
Dakota hangs out in my room when owner is away. It's nice, wish my room wasn't so cluttered though. Not sure whether fur is aggravating my illness or not, too easy a scapegoat. Should dust my room.
I did some coding, though. I pored over the VIM editor and Z-Shell manuals, learning a keyword or two and getting a better scope of all the options I'm still too overwhelemed to absorb.
Also, I reengineered the Last.fm plugin for my current music player to support its latest features. If I wasn't so fearful of my code not being completely robust I would have submitted it already. It works for the cases trivial enough to test. It has one user at the moment, anyway.
—
But I did go out. Made cupcakes and brought them to a friends'. Almost-100% sure I'm living at her place next term. The room I'd be in is cozy, in the basement, it reminds me of Attichouse. People I'd be living with seem like good housemate people. Commonalities enough but distinctly different in style.
Moving will be a pain in the ass, though. Might have to paint my room, definitely will have to buy furniture. But the Peppler location is ideal and the price is right.
Went with those same people to a party. Most of us were friends of friends, I think. We sat around and eventually someone would crack a lame film joke or I would crack a bad Baudrillard joke and then we'd notice that everyone who wasn't part of our circle had gone off to do something, play guitar or go nightclubbing, and we felt bad, like we were driving everyone away with our nerdiness.
Backyard Fireworks, perpetually-playing Rolling Stones concert on the television. Never really got into the Rolling Stones. Like Neil Young for unknown reasons, though. Watched the dude get killed by the Hell's Angels at Altamont. Expected to be disturbed. Wasn't. The Stones seemed different then. I didn't get to see the effect it had on them, had to leave for home.
I almost stole a userpic a couple of days ago. It was a screen grab from Clue of Tim Curry with the added text of "She had friends who were socialists".
I haven't used a userpic in ages, mainly because I feel the content of this journal has moved away from day-to-day business. Instead, I seem to be commenting on things others do, whether it be on television, the newspaper, or the Internet. I think it's slightly less self-indulgent: it's still pretty narcissistic to assume anyone wants to read about my opinions instead of my activities.
Anyway, my point is that maybe I should start getting some userpics. In my LJ heyday, everyone - in the sense of the wider LJ community, not just me and my friends - used pictures of themselves. But these days, the standard is put a celebrity and some sort of witticism together. Oh, maybe I could even use one of those newfangled animated GIFs...
Now that I've worked up the courage to ask a girl out, I need to work up the courage to throw away a drowned rat when it appears in the sink after I've drained it.
Enjoy, housemates! Enjoy dealing with that which my cowardly ass can only will itself to abstract away and approximate via purple sign.
Alternatively, I need to rat-proof my residence and always ensure that I'm living with people for whom the physical world is not terrifyingly alien at the best of times.
Stop!
Can you answer the following questions about Canada?
1. How many territories does Canada have?
2. How old is Canada?
3. What is the name of the previous prime minister?
4. What year did Newfoundland join Canada?
5. What is the name of Canada's only female prime minister?
6. Who was the first Canadian to win an Academy Award?
7. Name any Canadian Idol winner.
8. What was the last Canadian hockey team to win the Stanley Cup?
9. What is Canada's longest river?
10. In winter, what is Ottawa's Rideau Canal used as?
These questions are adapted from a Canadian Press article revealing that Canadians know little about their history:
( More to read... )
I am fed up of this cooking bizness. I hate cooking. I hate it so much.
See, baking is good. Nobody bakes because they are hungry any more than one knits a sock because their feet are cold. Baking is a joy because it is a challenge on my terms. It is not I who is waiting most impatiently for the final project.
But I cannot sustain myself. It is impossible. I do not want to spend my evenings deciding what to eat and the following morning/evening acquiring the reagents. On days in which I do not go straight home, which is ideally every day for I shall be at the cafe to write, all hope for a fresh dinner is lost.
Perhaps I am resigned to a schedule. I will spend my sunday prepping enough food for a few days, and I shall have decided and purchased in advance what I need and what I shall eat. But even this does not account for the will to cook.
Aggravating this is that, now having learned to cook, I have found local groceries to be far from satisfactory. There are certain materials, chipotle peppers or cocoa powder or nuts and beans, which are simply untenable from the grocery store. But the necessary stores are not made for men of white collars.
It is somewhat worse now that I am attempting to learn vegan cuisine. Part of this is due to my current desire to eat some dinners with a vegan, but a significant consideration is that I am fat and would do well to never eat meat ever again. Or carbohydrates, which despite their fillingness are also somewhat tempered by the vegan cuisine. I suspect this is because it is easer for vegans to die of bad nutrition planning since it is a new and restrictive phenomenon. In any case, I am fat and this is an engrossing way or remedying some of it.
Once again, baking vegan is a delight. There is nothing more delicious than knowing that you did not use milk where there was once milk. It is nothing spectacular, simply the joys of appropriation. What tastes more chocolatey than chocolate? Why, not-chocolate of course. Vegan cuisine is not real, it is realer than the real, it is hyperreal.
But it may turn me into a bigger-breasted man. That is what the literature says, something about estrogen and soy. This is mostly lies sung from those scientists of computers, but it is in any case good to remember that I would do well to live a good long life by sleeping upon my shirt at the beaches without breathing from a bag with three holes in it and hearing them the starfish vomit in their Milanesque body prejudices.
Yesterday I took Dakota for my first walking of the dog. I now know what it feels to be lightly examined by beautiful women for nothing more than holding a leash. It is a good feeling, though I feel self-conscious for it. It does not solve the important things.
When we came home from the walk I was tired, so I read a book before lightly dozing upon my bed. At some point Dakota had jumped onto the bed, but in some corner as to not be disturbed by my shifting.
A man, a contracter hired by our neighbour, was fixing some structure in the adjacent basement. He was shirtless, and crossed my open window many times in his hard hat. At some point in my sleepiness, Dakota stood up and stood beside me, for my head was beside the open window. I was unsure what to think of her expression, it was not the dopey panting drool of her normal behaviour.
As I reached my right hand up to pet her, she pushed my arm away and down with her foot and gave me a look of exasperated disdain. Her face shifted without moving from one of cheer to one whose teeth easily filled with blood. For the first time I was afraid. She leaned forward until her mouth was directly over my neck. Her eyes bulged in the dusk.
Careful to avoid her touch, I slipped out of bed and closed the window and drew the blinds. I then played a few hours of Oblivion and she sat on my blanket, grinning and lap-tongued, pantishly watching me spear rats and rescue princes.
Yesterday I walked a dog for the first time. Out new housemate moved in with a big dopey chocolate lab cum something. She's perhaps too-attached to her owner as she gets antsy and depressed when she isn't around. The first time, after a week of residence, where her owner left the house for an extended period of time, Dakota bounded through the front door and knocked over the houseguests who were climbing up the stairs while the door was open.
She had previously gone out three times to pee, unleashed, without incident. Our houseguests and a number of the neighbourhood's dogowner community helped comb the neighbourhood, but we did not find her. We called our housemate who was having lunch, who called the humane society instead of breaking into panic. She was found atop the Erbsville landfill, an hour's trot or two.
I walked with Dakota down Avondale and Belmont, down across the tracks and into Victoria park. While there was a direction of intent, we would detour into neighbourhoods that smelled particularly interesting. I have learned how well dogs mange their urine. Feces is a far less mundane thing when you are caring for the animal it came from. I could not look at dogs who shit before, it felt unclean. But to wait and even handle it, it was not of interest. But then, the world is not my bed.
It is interesting to watch a dog pathfind. If she is typical of her ethnicity, her kind of dog is a natural kind of tabbed browser. Walking down the paths she would gingerly lean a certain way. If I was not inclined to allow her, she would shrug it off or squat a little to note it for later. Only once did she resist, straining against my will, before giving up. But that was when we were beside the bus terminal, and perhaps she knew who had been there in the morning.
During long stretches of uninteresting paths, she would make a point of stopping immediately in front of me and staring, pointedly questioning my knowledge of where I was going. The first time was as we backtracked through Victoria Park. The second time was as we returned home through the Iron Horse trail, one street east or how we came down. She would constantly lean leftwards and thought I was an idiot, or maliciously leading her impossibly far from home, before the paths converged and she happily led me back to where we started.
After yesterday she has made her place in the bed, and has no compunctions about watching me work on the computer before falling asleep on my blanket. She has not yet learned that I will not feed her dinner, and runs underneath my desk when she knows she has been naughty. I suspect that she will, again, leap over me when I return home from the cafe.
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