May 3, 2007
Orwell's Eleven Golden Rules of Tea
Today I was directed toward George Orwell’s essay A Nice Cup of Tea. This is serious business. He begins, “When I look through my own recipe for the perfect cup of tea, I find no fewer than eleven outstanding points. On perhaps two of them there would be pretty general agreement, but at least four others are acutely controversial. Here are my own eleven rules, every one of which I regard as golden.” I was intrigued by his assertion that drinking Indian tea makes one feel “wiser, braver and optimistic.” Interestingly, apparently Chinese tea doesn’t have the same effect.
April 24, 2007
It's hard to find good music
Indeed, I successfully defended my Masters Thesis yesterday, and came home to this beautiful bouquet sent by my family. Lucky I, and luckier still for this Saturday afternoon Stuart and I are going out to celebrate the end of school in the fashion I have chosen, and it is a very special fashion. I can’t wait to tell you all about it.
Linkylink:
-Find an update over at my hobby blog Now Doing! Posted are pictures of the blanket I knit this winter, and my current patchwork project.
-I was thrilled to find out that the marvelous Saffrina Welch has started a blog. Saff is a friend of Stu’s from uni, and when she and her boyfriend Ivan came to stay with us in December, we had a brilliant time. So it will be fun to see what she gets up to online.
-Bookwise, I was happy to see that Karen Connelly’s The Lizard Cage has been nominated for the Orange Award for New Writers. As I expressed when I read it last March, The Lizard Cage is an extraordinary novel, and deserves so much recognition.
-I’ve never read Barbara Pym, but I feel like I ought to after having read this wonderful feature on the Barbara Pym Society Conference.
-And on an unrelated note: Kirsten Dunst is credited with saying: “I was brought up on Guns ‘N Roses, the Les Miserables soundtrack and anything my mother listened to. But it’s much harder to find great music these days.” Bless.
Still reading Happenstance very happily, though copy errors make my eyes bleed. I also picked up the new Hart House Review today and it’s absolutely beautiful. The ever-accomplished Rebecca Rosenblum took a top prize for fiction. Congratulations RR! Some poetry as well by other creative writing comrades. What a bunch.
April 23, 2007
Sassy
Banana Yoshimoto, according to the blurb on my 1994 copy of Kitchen, is “hotter than a steamin’ bowl of yaki soba” sez Sassy. Oh Sassy.
First, isn’t that vaguely offensive? Like saying, “James Joyce is more tuberlier than a potato”. Or “Virginia Woolf is more captivating than an Imperialist”. “Ali Smith is more down to earth than a turnip”. I could go on and on. Would a writer really want to be compared to a bowl of noodles?
I never really got Sassy. I was a bit too young, and way too uncool. References to orl sx and body piercing made me uncomfortable, and I was frightened of drugs and dyed hair (because we all know that one just leads to the other). I was so uncool in Sassy‘s heyday that I found out Kurt Cobain died just before symphonic band practice. We were at Britt’s house, and Jennie delivered the news. She thought his name was Kirk, and we weren’t sure that it wasn’t. I knew the lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” because I’d read an article about it in my mom’s Chatelaine. And this was our youth. The very beginning of it, at least. Luckily I got more in touch, but by the time I did, Sassy was already dead.
April 17, 2007
Have you heard the news?
My feelings for the Hip Hop Wordsworth Squirrel have moved from abject pity to resigned amusement, but now I am totally in love. I love the Hip Hop Wordsworth Squirrel, and I love his beats. Come our trip to England in June, we’re totally going to Cumbria. I truly am rap’s MVP, though if I were publishing this on the Lake District’s website I’d have to call it “rap” as per their style guide, apparently.
April 13, 2007
Hip-hop Wordsworth Squirrel
See, I told you they’d hate the hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel. Of course they do. The most unremarkable thing in the world is that they hate the hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel, and so I can’t imagine why someone has to write a blog entry to that effect. Or, I suppose, why I have to write another blog entry to keep you up to date on who’s predicably hating the hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel today.
The hip-hop Wordsworth squirrel is breaking my heart.
April 13, 2007
Smart books
I don’t know how to calculate the odds that going to my bookshelf and pulling down In the Skin of a Lion to check a reference on page 106 for the paper I am marking, I will open the book right to page 106 without thinking. In fact I don’t really want to know the odds, because I like the idea of some sort of a connection between my head, my hands and the text itself. This happens often at my library job where I go to retrieve a book, I know the general area, and then reading the call number I realize that my intended book is right where my hand already rests, or that it was the first book I looked at on the shelf. Sometimes books do know us better than we know ourselves.
However Rebecca Rosenblum is experiencing the opposite phenomenon today. Much concerned is she that her Jane Eyre has disappeared!
April 12, 2007
Wordsworth Rap
The Lake District has turned “I Wondered Lonely As a Cloud” into a rap delivered by a person dressed up as a squirrel. You can watch the video here. The squirrel is weird and frightening, but I didn’t hate the rap. Though I suspect this is only because it’s the littlest bit pitiful, and I feel terribly sorry for the scorn it will inevitably incur. Poor little rap– you’re trying so hard. (Thank you to PK in Chile for the link).
April 11, 2007
Treasures treasures
Today the best thing ever happened. The postman rang twice! I think maybe he forgot to ring yesterday, but no matter. For a mail-enthusiast such as myself, it was a dream come true. What a haul! The first delivery brought me a cheque, and the phone bill (which had already been paid). The second round was even better: two books and a magazine. And then Stuart came home with strawberries. Treasures treasures, arriving at my door.
April 4, 2007
Blurb Fun
The Quill and Quire blog puts Rebecca Eckler’s blurbs in their proper contexts with illuminating results. Oh, what a mighty weapon is the truth.
March 27, 2007
Signs of Spring
The number of things I do not know stuns me sometimes– particularly the things I do not know but stare at daily. There was an outcry in England a while back because children were unable to identify tree and bird species, and I realized I was that stupid too. And so we got a bird book recently (how positively uncool is that?) so that I could make up for my orinthological deficiencies. Now there isn’t much variety in terms of birds where we live, though there are pigeons living below the kitchen window, and sparrows living just above. Savannah sparrows, to be specific (I think). And I can identify starlings too now. Though we saw a sparrow-like bird with a red head today, and I’m not sure what planet that one’s from. Anyway, the big news is that yesterday I saw a robin. And so spring has officially sprung.
I also didn’t know a few things about snooker, or Stuart for that matter. That Stuart knows anything about snooker at all, or that it’s pronounced “snewker” and not “snuhcker”. I had no idea. In The Post Birthday World (now reading) one character is a famous snooker player. Apparently its a British institution. And so I asked my own resident British institution– is this for real? Are there actually famous snooker players? And after correcting my pronounciation, he proceeded to list off famous snookerees, and tell me all about the game. Revealed is a whole other side to him, one which has lain dormant all these years.
