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.
February 10, 2006
On Towers
I am reading “The Eiffel Tower” by Barthes, and it makes me remember when I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Our train sped out of a tunnel and then there it was before me, and I have never before been so awestruck by a sight. It was like something I had been imagining my whole life had just been constructed right before my eyes. Which I guess, in a way, it had been.
~the tower is there; incorporated into daily life until you can no longer grant it any specific attribute, determined merely to persist, like a rock or a river~
February 10, 2006
Holding hands while the worlds come tumbling down
Happy days. The weekend is shaping up well, not least of all because we are going up the CN Tower tomorrow! The price is ridiculous (why? I don’t know. I have recently become a CN Tower expert and they made back all their costs in 14 years. Perhaps the price is ridiculous because it can be) but my mom sent us a monetary gift for Valentines and it cut the cost in half. I am so excited. Because this will be research for an integral scene in my story and also because my obsession with the CN Tower is ooc. I am currently buried in guidebooks and urban plans for 1970s Toronto and I feel like I’ve gone back in time a bit. Which is good really, if I want to create anything believable. Anyway the Tower plan is weather-permitting. But we’ve got a knit/movie date with E. Smith the brilliant tomorrow night, and we’ve got a lunch date with C. Brown on Sunday, so even if it rains we will get to smile. Another good thing is a compliment I received last evening that set me a bit aglow.
I’ve decided to read 200 books this year. I am already finished 17 so I think it’s possible. My Summer Re-Reading Project will make the overall selection a bit weird, but alas. I have read one chapter of Lisa Moore’s “Alligator” and it’s wonderful.
I’ve got laundry in my immediate future. Bollocks.
February 8, 2006
Relics
For the past few years, my reading has consisted primarily of British women writers. The writers who do not focus on urban themes (and even some who do) share such a preoccupation with history and archeology. Relics are dug up in nearly every book, and characters are obsessed with the thousand years of history that came before them. Rarely do books not contain references to buried civilizations (Esther Freud’s The Sea House is no exception). I am fascinated by this, what the implications must be for all British people (not just the fictional ones) living on top of ancient worlds, and how this manifests itself. This is why I was particularly excited with my postcard from Margaret Drabble, which came from a museum in France and had a photo of some ancient pottery unearthed. Anyway, it’s such a vastly different thematic concern from Canadian literature, which still seems to be making sense of our physical geography. It’s an interesting contrast.
I got up early this morning to finish my seminar, which I am presenting tomorrow. I worked hard on it but don’t know how cohesive my vision is. It is on literary acknowledgments, and upon completion I learned that I have been spelling acknowledgments incorrectly my whole life. No “e”. I am quite busy with school work at the mo, and writing stuff stuff stuff.
The new Vanity Fair cover is creepy. Zadie Smith wins the regional Commonwealth Prize, and will now go to battle with Canadian Lisa Moore’s Alligator, which is the next book on my bedside waiting list (thank heaven for libraries). On how booklearning leaves us with questionable pronunciation skills. Jeanette Winterson says that not all books need to be books. And hilariously, from McSweeneys, The Elements of Spam Style.
