Archive for January 2002

sat (jan 19): I overslept. I should have gotten up at noon, when I woke, but due to the usual lazy fantasies, ended up catching a couple more hours of winks, and got up around 2. At 4.30, I went to the main branch of the library to borrow Jorge Luis Borges’ “Collected Fictions”, which at first I almost was unable to borrow, since I had 8 bucks in fines from October. I gave them five and they let me borrow it. This was a minor annoyance, but given that they let me take it, I put it out of my mind quickly. So I spent the evening immersed in these stories that I should have read long ago, reflecting on the fact that I hate so much fiction because so much of it is uninteresting, but these Borges stories, full of mysterious books and characters, are right up my alley. Watched Jack Black on SNL, which was also a reminder of how good brilliant things are. The week before, Cat Power’s songs expanded the richness of my world beyond measure, and finally made me understand viscerally the limits of corporate culture. Listening to those songs, I felt there was no longer any need to watch TV again. This is the power of human creativity. Cat Power, Borges, and Jack Black, all seem to be examples of how sad, tired, and limiting homogenous culture is, and how amazing it can be to let people be exceptional.

sun: Dad made a turkey in his big cast iron pot. It was good but a little overcooked. Worked on some of my essays, read Borges stories.

mon: Finally did my laundry.

Found a website (www.lcarscom.net) which reproduces the trek interfaces. Downloaded some animations, and deleted some. I went through the computer and tried to clean it up – deleted all of Michelle’s stuff (with her permission) which freed up 16megs.

The turkey leftovers were turned into a good turkey soup.

tues: Got up around 1.45p / up late watching TV then listening to Cat Power. Did some more laundry. Sent off a Halifax IC announcement in the afternoon. Michelle is gone for two weeks on a cross Canada business trip.

wed: Got up around 1.30. I replied to Steve’s letter, and as well to another letter I got from C in the evening. I also went to the grocery store, where I bought a new toothbrush and my own toothpaste, since I’m sick of Crest.

Had a good supper that consisted of mushrooms, green onions, onions, garlic and spinach heated with olive oil, some poultry seasoning, pepper, and the addition of curry sauce. Let simmer until water boiled off and sauce thickens. Yum. Ate this and triscuits while watching one of the best episodes of Enterprise yet – “Dear Doctor”. Memorable moment – The crew is watching “For Whom the Bell Tolls” (1943) which is interesting enough, that it would be over 200 years old at that point (imagine if we had video from 1794!) Ensign Cutler asks Dr. Phlox, “They don’t have movies where you come from do they?” He replies, “We had something similar a few hundred years ago, but they lost their appeal when people discoverd their real lives were more interesting”. I’ve said similar about the appeal of politics over reality tv shows.

thurs: I woke up at 1.30p, after being up for about an hour and half around 7am, cause Michelle was calling from Calgary to chat with Mom.

I woke up in the afternoon after dreaming of watching a big ass news story on TV, the details of which were hard to follow since I was watching it in the kitchen, and the extended family (including my maternal grandmother) was there chatting and making a lot of noise. (I remember Nanny bending over to sweep something from underneath the kitchen table). The subject of the news was that they thought a nuclear weapon had gone off… images from India and Pakistan were flashing across the screen intercut with the pundits. A menacing looking mushroom cloud ala Hiroshima (but in DV colour) was featured prominently, in addtion to a scene of it being on the front page of the Globe and Mail.

There was video of the event taking place. A dirty cloud fireball shooting up into the sky from the right of the camera frame, reaching a specfic point in the distance, where it became invisible, then a briallant fireball expanding and creating the nasty brown m-cloud. I watched this with my father and said it had to be nuclear, at least a small one, to create that much energy that fast.

The details emerged – an american war plane had bee hit with a missile as it flew over india/pakistan. The war plane carried two small nuclear weapons / and thus, the missile ignited them, and hence this event.

I was all gung ho to go downtown, about to leave the house actually, when I checked my email – good thing, cause Jenny had written to postpone our planned meeting that night. I still wanted to go downtown, so I tried to make plans with Sasha, but alas she wasm’t up to it.

Applied for some jobs online / Peter Gzowski died / Ordred pizza for supper / spent the evening reformating resume and cv.

fri: Aimed to take the 11.55 train – got to the station at 11.50, but was still able to buy a coffee and get my ticket validated (since it was frayed it wouldn’t cancel so I had to go to the booth) and jog up to the platform just as the green go arrived.

Once I got downtown, I walked up to Queen St, browsed in Pages, then went over to Bak Imaging on Spadina to drop off some slides for duplication. Then went back over to Queen to catch a streetcar. Dropped into the magazine store right there at Queen and Sp and saw Rosemary, so we exchanged some friendly whats-new chat.

Arriving at Mercer at 1.45, I met the new intern, Samm, and we began stuffing the enevelopes with the brochures for the next show, opening on Thursday.