February 18, 2006
Vegetable Love
Some part of me is surprised that I have never, in any book, encountered the sentence, “He was hung like a sweet potato”.
February 16, 2006
I'm thinking about my bookstand
I went shopping today with one mother of a gift certificate that’s been hanging around for a freezing-rainy day/clearance sale. And I finally got a book stand! I find there aren’t nearly enough book accessories out there (and book lights are so passe) so I was happy to indulge here. And so this means now I can read and knit at the same time! All I need is an electronic page turner.
I also got Sweetness in the Belly by Camilla Gibb, The Accidental by Ali Smith, The Photograph by Penelope Lively, Richard Dawkins’ The Ancestor’s Tale for Stuart, the new UTNE and this from the bargain bin. And three dollars change.
In other book news, I am getting through “The Decline of Britain in the World” a chapter a day. And I am also reading Walden. There is a massive stack of non-fic beside my bed as well. Thank goodness it’s reading week is all I can say.
Lisa Moore’s Alligator was certainly “a new kind of fiction” as the tagline promised. I’ve never read anything like it before. Woolf talked of the mulitudinous impressions we take in of life around us, and how a challenge of modern fiction should be “recording the atoms as they fall”. Alligator comes closer to that than anything I’ve read lately. Moore talks about her writing style in this interview. She says, “I want to break the parameters of what the reader expects is coming. So, if we’re talking about any given sentence, I want the sentence to end in a way that the reader is not expecting. I want the paragraph to end and begin and be something the reader is not expecting. But also be inevitable. If there is a golden rule, that’s it. If the reader knows where you’re going, there’s no point in reading that sentence; they’ll just skip it. It’s not for the sake of being avant-garde that I want it to be unexpected. It’s because I think a real engagement with a book means that the reader has to chase after the story. Their imagination has to be working, and it’s the energy that’s expended by the imagination at work that is the pleasure of reading. If they know what’s happening, then there’s no pleasure.” I recommend this book very highly, even just as an example of innovative technique.
February 15, 2006
Let's go to the movies, Annie.
Today, in Weird Craft news, I found out how you can use old books and styrofoam to create your own faux books. I must confess to not getting it. How completely odd.
Also, Warren Clements clears up the “spinster” palaver. It seems it wasn’t taken out of the dictionary at all!
Margaret Atwood on her experience teaching a writing workshop to a group of Inuit women.
More McSweeney’s Pop Song correspondences, this time from somebody in retort to Carly Simon’s accusation of vanity.
And Stuart and I were excited to stumble upon free passes for Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. And so tonight we’re off to the movies!
February 15, 2006
Oh my!
Tonight was exciting because Mike came to visit, and I spent the evening laughing hysterically. Also because MIFFY IS IN THE GUARDIAN!!!!!. It’s an article with Dick Bruna and they cover everything- her Dutch origins, her dissimilarity to Hello Kitty, the philosophy behind her design, why she has entranced people the world over, etc. etc.
Today was also exciting because I received a wonderful homemade Valentine, which proclaimed a love even higher than the CN Tower. Lucky is I.
February 14, 2006
Stuff and such
Oh! They’ve got their gloves off down in CanLit land. Read all about Ryan Bigge vs. Leah McLaren here. Read John Barber’s Globe column here. I found it timely, as lately I have been all awash in 1970s Toronto where it was all building boom all the time. He writes: “Shall we argue about where the next subway line should go? Ha! Postwar Toronto built subway lines continuously. With more than twice the population and an economy several times larger, 21st-century Toronto cannot even afford to plan one. The most reliable gig in transportation planning today is making up the annual list of suggested service cuts.” Something to think on. The digested Jordan memoir lies (and probably puts out) here.
February 14, 2006
The Tom and Jerry Show
I know you’re all wondering why Pickle Me This, the nation’s source for current events coverage, has not published the infamous cartoons. Now we’re firm believers in freedom of the press, but we do not believe in publishing material that is as intentionally distasteful as these cartoons are. The papers that published them originally and sparked the furor should not have published them at all, for the sake of common decency- though they definitely had the right to do so.
We are not publishing the the cartoons, not to placate the rioting masses, but rather because we consider it wrong to desecrate the beliefs of others in this way. This does not guarantee that we will not publish hilarious cartoons of Jesus in the future, because the image of Jesus is not revered in the Christian faith as Mohammed is to Islam. They are not equivalents. Perhaps the Iranians are right, and a good example of what we hold sacred in our culture is the Holocaust. We will not be publishing cartoons about that either.
One cannot think just in terms of polarity in this situation. Publishing an offensive cartoon does not make your press free- it makes you petty and a bit of a bigot.
February 13, 2006
Hobby update
Update! See the latest fruit of my hobbying over at Now Doing. And now after a weekend of dollar sales at the grocery store, towers, hotdogs, erins, movies, cupcakes, pizza, dim sum, carolyns, fathers and family parties, I’ve gotta get me some homework dun.
February 12, 2006
A Picture of Me!
Yesterday my friend Erin took a picture of the CN Tower for me. At 4:00, when I was in it! So here is a photo of the CN Tower with me inside. How exciting.
Lift the city’s lid
to reconstruct the place you know
while clouds sit low like shadows
in evaporating sunlight.
