April 3, 2005
Books etc.
Okay then, I’ve accepted the fact it will be too expensive to get to and be admitted to EXPO so it seems that nothing will happen on the way to the World’s Fair. I’ve been reading the papers and I cannot claim understanding of the people who are “shocked” at the Pope’s death. In other news, the fascinating life of Amber Reeves, HG Wells’ mistress and feminist author in her own right. This article of interest primarily because it’s written by my beloved Margaret Drabble. This profile taught me about Laura Nyro and I think I’m in love. Women crime writers are bustin out all over in Moscow. This new book on Virginia Woolf sounds excellent. Tom Bissell’s amazing article about visiting Vietnam with his father, which I read previously in UTNE is in The Observer today. A survey of Canadian book habits here, with the truth that “Bookish people tend to be active people”.
April 2, 2005
An awfully skewed perspective
The Pope is dying. Politics aside, he is an eighty-four year old man. Terri Schiavo died. Politics aside, she was living in a vegetative state for a decade and a half. As far as I am concerned, the things that send people out weeping in the streets versus all of that which no one is too worked up about, show an awfully skewed human perspective.
April 2, 2005
A little out of touch
I saw Spiderman 2 and Fahrenheit 9/11 in the theatres this summer, though long after they were playing in the rest of the world. Did you know that apart from these movies, I haven’t watched a new movie in over a year? And then our video store closed, so I didn’t even get them as DVD releases. I am an avid magazine reader so I know new movies exist, but I couldn’t tell you much about them. What is a Napoleon dynamite? And that Spotless Mind movie with Kate Winslet where she has pink hair and sleeps on a bed on a beach? Not to mention, Sideways, which sounds sort of sexual to me. And what’s with Jude Law’s ubiquity? I am also sort of glad I didn’t see The Aviator. Anyway, the same goes for television- what’s this The OC business all the kids are talking about, and the blathering going on about Desperate Housewives? I can’t say I miss the television so much, though this is probably because I follow the Eastenders online synopses religiously. But I miss movies, and can’t wait to spend a week or three just watching at least one a day. The list of movies I’ve got to see is absolutely massive.
However out of touch I am however, there is a List of Things I Now Know about Japan.
1) People breakdance every night in the covered arcades wearing crash helmets while they spin on their heads
2) The badasses drive either souped up mini-vans or 1970s Cadillacs
3) Loose kneesocks are the ultimate in rebel schoolgirl wear
4) Tokyo Disneyland has a park called “Disney Sea” beside it but no one can tell me what one does there
5) The number one children’s clothing company is called Miki House, the name donning socks, shoes, sweaters, pants and underpants (as I learn daily when young girls in dresses do somersaults in my class)
6) If something is “service”, it’s free. If you live in a “mansion”, it’s an apartment. And when you invite someone to your “room”, you’re really just inviting them to your “mansion”. A sundae is a “parfait”. Allergies are “allurgee”- and everybody is currently suffering.
7) Relating to the latter, blowing your nose is rude, but snorting it back is ok. (I fear social problems when I return to the real world).
8) Crews of volunteers clean up local public areas every Saturday morning wearing identical jump suits. In fact, any group of people doing anything wear identical jump suits.
9) Black vans with big red suns drive around regularly with loud speakers blaring, “Foreigners, get out…
10) The people who are employed to unnecessarily guide cars out of parking lots carry light sabres.
April 2, 2005
Literature is not a verb
Polly Toynbee on consumerist voting and the danger of eating politicians for dinner. This lot manage to make the politicians look noble. Regarding books, the golden age of kid lit. Some interesting ideas about storytelling- from Rana Dasgupta Tokyo Cancelled; this collection of stranded travellers sharing stories presents literature “as something that normal people do. If it seems fantastical that a collection of travellers might tell such stories then this raises the question of why it is so much easier to stomach the idea that Chaucerian illiterates might do so.” And then Ian McEwan’s Saturday– neurosurgeon-lit. Indeed, literature about a man to whom literature means nothing. New April poetry exercise here at The Guardian Books. Today we bought Paper Tigers by the Caesars. It’s an excellent album. And I continue to be quite overwhelmed/underwhelmed by recent events.
April 1, 2005
They are pleased to inform us
My mother called at 2:00 this morning, interrupting sleep and our plans for a day trip today to Kurashiki, to inform me that I have been accepted to the graduate program I’ve been dreaming of for about two years now. So that is the good good news, and I’m quite blown over by it.
Yesterday was a busy day. We finished our wedding invitations and posted most of them (so watch your mailboxes. You just could be an invitee!) We went to pick up the porcelain Hello Kitty in a kimono that I’ve been lusting after for months, and ran other errands. It was a beautiful day, and I was outdoors with just a hoodie for warmth. We went to Himeji castle where sakura (cherry blossom) season is just about upon us. The cherry blossoms are only buds at the moment, but lanterns deck the castle grounds, and it’s lousy with tourists. Next week it will be madness, acres jammed with drunken Japanese people under the blossoms with portable karaoke machines and copious sake. Hanami (cherry blossom viewing parties) is one of the most remarkable experiences I have had here and it’s wonderful to be here and experience it again. I haven’t been following the daily Sakura report (absolutely a weather report with flowers on the map rather than sunshine and rainclouds) on the Japanese news (it takes a mighty constitution to stomach the Japanese news), but apparently they’re due in a matter of days. And yesterday I lay down on the grass, and watched the blue sky turn above me, and after any long winter that’s quite a formidable experience. Anyway, we went to the gym after that. I am getting better at the gym, since the first day where I couldn’t read the changeroom signs and didn’t know which one to go into and cried. And went out to the izakaya last night with friends from work. I didn’t drink as my tuberculosis is acting up, but we ate so much and had a wonderful time. Always the double mark of a good evening.
March 31, 2005
A portrait by Haruka
Haruka, age 7, is my favourite student and had her last lesson at my school yesterday. She gave me this treasure as a parting gift. I’ve got a bit of the Sailor Moons going on!
March 31, 2005
Favourite Quote of the Week
from “Life of Pi” by Yan Martel, via UTNE,
~It is on the inside that God must be defended, not on the outside… The main battleground for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart~
March 29, 2005
And you're not moving anywhere
It’s election time in Britain and The Guardian reports that Tony Blair and co. have selected U2’s “A Beautiful Day” as their theme song. Campaign theme songs fascinate me- remember the “Still The One” debacle last year in America? And the “Don’t Stop” Clintons. How Ronald Reagan wanted to use “Little Pink Houses” by John Cougar Mellencamp (as he was then known) but John Cougar wouldn’t let him. This is the richness of Baby Boomer history. I enjoy the fact that a pop song is now a campaign requirement, but mainly because it’s amusingly horrifying and it never really works (as the article makes clear, though 1908’s “Get on a Raft With Taft” had potential).
Pop music and politics don’t mix either way. Politically charged pop songs make me uncomfortable. You shouldn’t be able to bop your head along to a profound message. There was a song out in Britain last year that was unbelievably catchy and about domestic violence, called “Thank You” by someone called Jamelia . The chorus went “For every last bruise you gave me…” and onwards. I once witnessed a group of absconding school girls singing it together in the Nottingham City Centre, and the effect was disturbing. You shouldn’t be able to sing along to songs about domestic violence. I recognise what poor Jamelia was trying to say, but it’s a bit trivialising. Similarly, The Manic Street Preachers and the hummable “If You Tolerate This, Then Your Children Will Be Next”. There are way too many capital letters in that plea. Also, choruses of pop singers singing to end world hunger. And featuring Justin Timberlake is really no excuse around it. The intentions are noble but it’s so lame. Pop songs should be about it being your party and you crying if you want to, or your boyfriend being back.
Some people do manage it successfully- U2 actually, or John Lennon’s Imagine. But for every Imagine, we have to do with a bit of Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder singing Ebony and Ivory. Just keep that in mind.
For more about politcs and pop songs, this interview with the famous non-terrorist Yusaf Islam, aka Cat Stevens. (I like the way the article begins with the ubiquitous “(Name here) doesn’t look like a threat to national security.” Who looks like a threat to national security? Richard Reid I guess, but beyond that I don’t really know.)
March 28, 2005
My polar bear can destroy your walrus
This is about Can-Lit, Peterborough and the University of Toronto. I received a copy of The Vic Report in the post today and it made me nostalgic. Sheila Heti has a new book out. An interesting story here on the role of faith in African affairs.
It must also be noted that I had a friend over for dinner last night and she was up most the night after vomiting. She claims it’s just a coincidence but I think she’s just being polite. Though you probably don’t have to be polite to people who have poisoned you.
March 26, 2005
Good news
I am pleased to announce that I am proud bearer of a UK Entry Clearance for a Marriage Visitor, after the remarkably efficient British embassy processed my application in a week. It’s so nice to have something less to worry about.
I’ve got a hobby update at Now Doing. A great article on “domestic fiction” here, referring to my all-time favourite book Unless by Carol Shields and Alice Munro with her “deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum.” A gorgeously written article here by Maggie O’Farrell on those who do not, in fact, toddle. On tsunami stories here. Is it bad that I found the headline “Diabetics losing legs unnecessarily” amusing?
