Yuck

I feel like crap today. I'm at work right now, in the sense of physical location, but my brain is so curdled and my eyes are trying so hard to close themselves that I don't feel like stretching the prepositional attitude out into any further senses. Plus, I keep seeing this guy in the corner of my office.


Should I be worried?

- Andrew

Quickie

Pizza's here for dinner and we're about to start watching the season's second episode of The Office, but I want to get a quick post on here as part of my quit-ruminating-about-it-and-just-do-it-scrappy-style philosophy I'm trying out sporadically.

Ali and I just played some tennis in a surprise doubles match with our friends Jenny and Sarah, who happened to be there too. It was super duper fun and we're planning to do it again.

Work's been insanely hectic. I've already logged over 40 billable hours this week, and there's still a day to go. Last night in bed my head was surrounded by a buzzing and vibrating energy field that was radiating into and out of it. Some people pay good money for such experiences, but this one wasn't pleasant.

I sent some people emails asking them to sign a petition for the Chinese government to step in in support of the Burmese protestors. Hope no one was offended. Seems like a fairly important and uncontroversial cause to me. There's demonstrations going on all around the world at noon on Saturday.

OK, pizza's getting cold and Johanna's on her way over (recently back from Europe) to watch TO with us and Krista. Hope it's a good one!

- Andrew

In Which He Pouts a Little

Lately Ali and I are feeling kind of "off" Halifax. ("I've gone off London this week. It doesn't do anything for me," says the pouty and foppish fashion photographer in Blowup.) It makes me feel spoiled to admit it, as I really don't know where else could be any nicer. I guess the students all being back has something to do with it. And the recent upturn in random violence. I suppose mostly we're both just feeling in a bit of a rut. Fall's always a good time for a big change.

Speaking of The Fall and depression and fashionably aloof young Englishmen, last Friday we attended the Atlantic Film Festival screening of Control, the new biopic about Ian Curtis from Joy Division, who committed suicide at the height of the band's power. It's really well done: gorgeous black and white; fine acting, especially by Sam Riley as Curtis and Samantha Morton as his long-suffering wife; based on the book written by the latter (character, not actor). And lots of Joy Division songs are performed in the film, which has been making me feel like listening to nothing but ever since. That insistent bass, those robotic drums, that dark, Wire-like guitar... such a perfect environment for Curtis's brooding baritone to feel its way around in. This one's a particular favourite. I've already started working on a JD-inspired song called No Comment: "No one ever comments / On his wiseass blog / Makes him feel unwanted / Like a pedagogue."

In other film-watching news, we've lately rented the complete series of Sister Wendy's Story of Painting and are really enjoying it. I don't know whether you've ever seen it, but this super-loveable nun with awful glasses, horrible buck teeth, and an Elmer Fudd voice takes you through art history from her own personal perspective. She's so passionate and full of sympathy and joy it's infectious, and one soon finds oneself very emotionally involved. Well, these "ones" do, anyway. Marveling at a Brueghel depiction of peasants sitting in front of a fire, she notices that the lady "warming her underpants" turns her face slightly away from the men, who are "warming their, well, lack of underpants."

Oh, and the softball playoffs were last weekend, as I believe I'd mentioned. We lost every game. No one seemed to mind much, though, I must say. It managed to be a pretty fun day of ball.

And now Alison's considering playing next year. She's a bit of a natural pitcher, like her man. We went out for some batting practice with Meg before dinner tonight. Won't be able to do that for too much longer. I can't believe next weekend is Thanksgiving! Oh well, bring it on, I say. I've had enough of summer's light fun and tomfoolery. Time to get down to some serious contemplation in a cold dark room. Now that's what I call a good time.

- Andrew

My Favourite Comic When I Was Fifteen

Dump

I've been meaning to do a post about how busy I am, but I haven't had time.

Played a show at the Music Room with Erin Costelo last Saturday.

Recorded some more with Al Tuck.

Finished Alan Watts' The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. I'd read it as a teenager, but forgotten how inciteful it is. Probably one of the more influential books in shaping my life. Probably could have just read it over and over instead of a lot of the various metaphysical stuff I've read since.

Lately I'm obsessed with Nancy comics.

Worked myself into a literally nightmarish state over a used car sale print ad that over two weeks became so cluttered with junky visuals and starbursty exclamations there's no communicative architecture whatsoever, let alone hierarchy of meaning. In my dream the ad is the surface of a pond under which I'm drowning as there are no spaces where I might come up for air.

Realized that some people probably couldn't see the animated GIF I'd put on the last post, and must have wondered what all the fuss was over an admittedly Escherian but quite lifeless cube in a cube drawing. Well you'll just have to trust me that your mind would be verily blown if you could see the way it perpetually turns itself inside out and outside in. Seriously, dude. If Escher were alive today, he'd be working in animation. Or Lego®.

Currently reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, wherein Marco Polo describes the cities he's seen to Kubla Khan, whose domain they ostensibly comprise. Only it becomes apparent that the cities being described are fictitious and all based on Venice. Each description is only a page or two, some banal but poetic, and some quite fantastic. Calvino uses the format as an excuse to spout off about human nature. It's fascinating.

Softball playoffs are this weekend, starting at 8:00 in the morning on Saturday. Ah hope we wee-uhn!

- Andrew

Me & Doug go way back.(He just doesn't know it yet.)

I found this in some random guy's comment on Douglas Hofstadter's MySpace page, and it won't stop freaking my beak. I see it behind my eyelids when I lie down to go to sleep. I finished his book, I Am a Strange Loop, the other day and it was a really fascinating read, as I expected, if a little limited in its scope. He has an interesting and by some standards radical theory on how a physicalist view of the world can be reconciled with the experience of consciousness, but as he's from an academic background, I find he stresses cognition too much, at the expense of the really interesting pre-cognitive environment, which is where I would locate the "soul". I kept nodding along with him, waiting to see what he was going to say about that stuff, but the only real references he made to it were some cheap shots, based on misunderstandings, at the "Tao and Zen people".

I'd really like to see someone who's writing about this kind of stuff from a scientific/American philosophical viewpoint find a way to allow some room for spirituality or even a little mysticism, without tipping over into the totally kooked out camp. I guess there's a general and justified fear of organized religion among academics these days. Still, I'm trying to figure out a way to land Hofstadter as one of my MySpace friends, so I can try out my Motivated Book Exchange (see this blog post) idea on him. Got some borderline New Age literature I think would really open up some new territory for him. Plus it'd be super cool to see what he would think I need to read. I think he'd be a perfect celebrity endorsement to get in on the ground floor of what I still believe will be a huge phenomenon.

- Andrew

Stuff You Need to See

Things have been pretty hectic at work this week, meaning there hasn't been much going on during free time, besides watching movies and sleeping. Alison had a photo shoot to go to in LaHave this morning, assisting with shots of the sunrise. She had to get up at 3:30 in the morning to get there! Ugh.

One of the movies we saw was Year of the Dog, starring Molly Shannon from Saturday Night Live before it got totally terrible. It was a really good character-driven comedy, and quite an admirable stretch for her. We also rented the remastered special edition of Meatballs, Bill Murray's first movie and the one that would win him a place in Alison's heart and wallet. It was of course even cornier than we remembered, but also surprisingly funny every time Mr. Murray was on the screen, and even sort of heart-warming. My favourite line was a random bit of encouragement during the hot dog-eating contest scene: "Every day, I am eating more and more hot dogs."

There's been some tennis going on, too. Our friend Jeff is visiting from Toronto for a week, and he came out to play some mixed doubles last night with us and Meg. Good, sweaty times.

Finally, here's an outrageous site that my coworker tipped me off to today. WARNING: Although there's no visually gross or graphic content, this site represents a very sick concept and will make you very very angry. I'm still not sure whether it's a joke. My friend claims not, but check out the testimonials. I can't read them in a non-sarcastic way. In the FAQ section, they claim to be legally protected under religious freedom laws. If this is in any way serious, it's a pretty good argument against those laws.

- Andrew

Q: What are the effects of a week in isolation on the communication skills of an already verbose individual?

OK, here's all about our week in the woods on the river by the sea. I'll try to keep the narration to a minimum, but I've just had a nap and am now drinking a cup of coffee, so we'll see how it goes...


When our friends Angie and Cliff drove us out to the cottage it was raining, but it cleared up almost as soon as we got there, so we walked around on Risser's Beach, which is just a mile or two away. I found out that they made it home without getting lost, despite my terrible directions, so that's a huge relief.



The cottage was right on the river that is "Petite Riviere," looking across at the marshy side of Risser's. That evening another friend, Jill, came from another cottage in Mahone Bay to spend the night with us. She brought along an old friend of hers from Toronto, Tiina (the one on the left), and we had a really nice time with them wandering around the rocks and beaches the next morning. And they took a picture of Ali and me together before they left, an impossibility for the rest of the week.



It was a super comfortable cottage, and even the beds were not much harder on the back than our one at home. I still say nothing beats a futon. There was a mouse there too (not pictured), but it mostly didn't bother us too much. Well, OK, it did scrabble around in those books quite a bit, and once we saw it climb right up the wall, floor to ceiling, which was fairly horrifying. But there were a couple of days when we didn't see it at all. Of course, it made up for it on the last day by running around all over the place like an attention-starved child.

For some reason, there was a portrait on one of the walls of Lou Reed as a young child.


We did a lot of this.

And a lot of this. Together, we ploughed through five books, which is really good considering the weather was hot and sunny every day except the first and last. Ali read Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, which I'd eaten up at the cottage last year, and then a book about cat behaviour by Desmond Morris, of The Naked Ape fame. She's been putting her new expertise to the test on Buster, with amazing results. Except for the solos, his electric guitar work is almost road-ready.

I, meanwhile, finished my first Haruki Murakami novel, Norwegian Wood, which was a little disappointing. I guess it was a sort of sweet, semi-autobiographical coming of age tale, but the fact that every female character wanted to go to bed with the protagonist was kind of offputting. Plus everyone was always committing suicide. Weird.

Then it was Life of Pi. Johanna had given it to me for my birthday, and it started out very compelling but then became religious and preachy, and I'd put it down for quite awhile. Another friend of mine, however, urged me to continue with it, so I did and boy, was I glad. Once the pontificating was over, the story was a wild ride of adventure, humour, and horror. Not for the squeamish, this book, and I'm not sure a cottage in the middle of nature with a mouse running around was the best place to read it, given all the nightmarish zoological details it contains, but I still really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, the author gets briefly preachy again at the end, presenting [SPOILER ALERT] what I would call the literary argument for belief in God. It goes something like: since God's existence or non-existence makes no factual difference to the way the world is, and since we can't prove it either way, shouldn't we just believe the explanation of the universe that is the best story (i.e. the one where God made everything and continues to express His will through the natural world)? I believe Kierkegaard subscribed to an argument similar to this one, though it was much more subtle and entwined with other ideas. There are many problems with it, but the chief ones are the highly questionable judgment that The Bible is a better story than the one which scientists and atheistic philosophers have come up with, and more importantly the fact that BELIEF in God's existence actually does make a hell of a lot of difference in the world, thank you very much! In that sense, this novel makes a pretty good lead-in to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, or probably any of those other God-bashing books which are so popular right now, in that it gives you a personal sense of what the atheists are up against, in case you thought they were just setting up straw men in order to knock them down.

[SPOILER (and bore) ALERT OVER] Anyway, the END end, after the little sermon is over, is quite cute and clever and generally satisfying. If it weren't for the nightmares it gave me, I'd recommend the book without reservation.

And then the other book I read was Brave New World. Everyone's forced to read that in high school, me included, so I won't go on about it, except to say that I don't know what compelled me to read it again, but I'm glad I did, as it's much funnier and more expectation-frustrating than I'd remembered. Also, Aldous Huxley seems, in 1932, to have coined the phrase "bell-bottomed trousers"!

We biked to this funny little museum on one of the LaHave Islands one day. We always visit it when in Green Bay. It's housed in an old church, and it makes me think of the poem "Church Going" by Philip Larkin. Probably just because we always arrive by bicycle.


There are plenty of spectacular sights in the area.

One day we went for a long hike southward along the coast, all the way to Broad Cove. It's a hefty hike anyway, and there were plenty of stops for nature appreciation and photo ops.

This is what I was taking a picture of. There were bees all over those thistles!

And this is what I looked like after I got the picture I wanted.

In Broad Cove, we'd hoped to get a cup of coffee before turning back, but didn't see anywhere to do that. In fact, the whole town seemed to be about six houses and a little beach. There was one other couple on the beach when we sat down to eat the remainder of the lunch we'd brought and dip our feet in the water. We were pretty exhausted and were trying to figure out whether the highway would present a shorter return trip. The only problem with that idea was that we'd ridden the bikes part of the way and left them in the woods, so going back via the highway would mean walking the extra few miles to the bikes after returning. It was a really hot day and the whole decision was just making us more pooped.

Then the other couple got up to leave and we asked them what time it was. A conversation ensued, and in the end they offered us a ride back to the cottage, as they were headed in that very direction! Lucky. It was their fifteenth wedding anniversary and they apparently liked Frank Sinatra a lot because that's what was blaring in the car the whole ride back. They were very nice, though [Why 'though'? Are Sinatra fans known serial rapists or something? - ed.], and it was a bit of a treat to have a conversation with someone other than ourselves.

Back at the cottage, we changed into our bathing costumes and walked to where the bikes were, grabbing a couple of coffees at the canteen on the way. Then we biked back past the cottage to Risser's Beach, where we immediately plunged our exhausted bodies into the heart-attack-inducing Atlantic Ocean. It felt great. I lay on the beach reading for awhile while Ali continued to body surf. Or at least her head did; that's all I could see in the foam, eyes closed and teeth grinning. When we finally rode back and checked out the map in the cottage, we figured out that the day's adventures had comprised about 20 km of walking and cycling. Slept well that night.

Then, the next day, we explored a trail in behind the big hills on the opposite side of Green Bay Road from the river. It was a little wild and unused (a porcupine guarded the entrance), but it generally ran alongside the property edge of the pastures the hills serve as in the daytime. At one place, the path went right up to the edge of the farm's fence, and we saw that cows were eating very nearby. They heard and saw us and started running in the opposite direction. But we called to them and told them it was OK, and they actually turned around and decided to check us out. There was one cow who was the bravest, and the rest just kind of followed her. It was sort of scary when the whole herd started walking right up to us, but also very cool. They were completely gentle, and let Alison take some glamour shots of them.





There's one other thing we did a lot of at the cottage, of which it's impossible to get a photo, and that's listen to the radio. At first we could only get the Bridgewater pop station, CKBW. They play an interesting assortment of contemporary music with a few unexpected wild cards, but it's generally the same songs every day and it soon became monotonous. Then we found CBC 2 and that was the end of CKBW. Classical music around a hot woodstove is pretty nice, but even more of a treat was our discovery of the late night show "The Signal". It's hosted by Laurie Brown, whom I remember fondly from her "New Music Magazine" days in the eighties, and they play just the greatest mix of mostly downtempo, contemporary, hipster/weirdo music, with a tonne of Cancon. Very enjoyable. We started listening to it every night.

One night the show's theme was musical inspiration, and Laurie was talking about Björk. I'm a huge Björk fan, so I began listening intently. As an aside, I'm also a huge Joni Mitchell fan, and though I'm familiar with most of her work, she has a huge catalogue, so there are some albums I've never gotten around to. The Hissing of Summer Lawns was one of those albums until very recently, when I decided on a friend's advice to pick it up and check it out. I'd always liked the cover art, and the music on it turned out to live up to it, in some surprising ways.

Specifically, much of the album is very contemporary-sounding. I always knew Joni was ahead of her time, but on this record she's got some weird keyboards and rhythms going on that I never would have expected from her. The song "The Jungle Line" seems especially prescient, and every time I heard it I kept thinking, "This could be on Björk's latest album. It reminds me a lot of her single, 'Earth Intruders' [see video below]."



Was it just the primitivism of the Burundi beat (ahead of its time in the Joni Mitchell song; alluding to the beat's popularity as part of the now-popular-again sound of eighties post-punk in Björk's) and the visual similarities between the new video and the old album cover? I felt there was also some correspondence going on with the interesting low keyboard sounds and the almost amelodic melodies. But I had no proof.

However, and now my aside/soliloquy is finally over, I was informed this night by Ms. Brown that Björk was also, in fact, a huge Joni Mitchell fan, and had had an almost mystical relationship with the album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter as a young teenager. She could sing the entire album when she was in her first punk rock band. This was VERRRRRY interesting to me! But the kicker came when Laurie went on to introduce a recent recording, by Björk, of a Joni Mitchell song for a Joni Mitchell tribute album that just came out, and it turned out to be "The Boho Dance" from Summer Lawns!

So now I have a mystical relationship with "The Signal" and we've been listening to it in bed every night ever since. Too bad it's on so late — I have to turn it off after 40 minutes or so or the missus hits me over the head with a rolling pin.

Anyways, that's our trip. I guess I didn't do very well with the minimal narration thing, but I kind of thought that was how it would go. Sorry. Next time I'll try to be less manically opinionated, and I won't use any adverbs.

Seriously.

- Andrew

This Just In

I'm in the process of collecting and fixing photos from our week at the cottage to post on here. It's kind of taking a long time. In the meantime, here's a very funny "news" piece you can watch. I just stumbled upon it today. It's from The Onion.

- Andrew

And It's Not Even Labour Day Yet.

The cottage was just perfect, as expected.



Our friends Cliff and Angie very generously drove us out to Green Bay, even though they couldn't hang around for very long once we got there. We did get to spend some time in the sun on the nearby beaches with them, which was really nice and also unexpected as it had been raining all day up until then.

As they left that evening (possibly in the wrong direction, possibly due to my poor navigational skills — I'm afraid to find out), another friend of ours, Jill, showed up with her friend Tiina (sic) and we had a nice dinner together and checked out the musty old books filling two walls of the place. Pretty good selection, I must say. And a good hiding spot for the mouse that was living there. At least, we chose to think of it as one mouse.

Anyway, those two stayed over as there was plenty of extra room, and we spent the next morning wandering around the beaches along Green Bay Road with them. After they left, Ali and I felt briefly at a loss for what to do. But the weather was fantastic all week long, and we soon got more seriously down to the business of relaxing. Together we got through five books, had lots of fires, ate whenever and whatever we felt like, played cards, did yoga, went for long hikes and bike rides along previously unexplored trails, swam in the ocean, napped, took lots of pictures (many more to be posted soon), chatted with animals both wild and domestic, played frisbee and badminton, listened to a lot of crappy radio, and generally appreciated life. I think I already said this, but it bears repeating that it was perfect. I'll fill you in on more details when I post more pictures.


But in the meantime, and more importantly, my sister Erika and her husband Mike just took delivery of what is from all available evidence a beautiful baby girl. She's named Charlotte Mary and she arrived via express stork Friday morning. Congratulations, guys! First daughter, second child for them, second niece and fifth in the niece/nephew category for us. Why is there no metacategory for nieces and nephews? I'd like to be able to say, "I have five nerfs" (or whatever). Seems odd. Think I'll write a letter to my local newspaper editor.

- Andrew

More Vacation

Believe it or not, we're hitting the cottages once again, this time at our favourite spot on the South Shore, Green Bay. We'll be there for a week, living rustic with no phone, TV, or computer. Nothing to do but read, eat, and yoga it up. Our friends Angie and Cliff are driving us up and spending the first day with us, and after that we'll be stranded. This has been one great summer for "getting away from it all". If only Buster could join us...

So, and not that this is anything out of the ordinary, but there'll be no blog posts for the next week. My hope is that while we're away the culture won't change so drastically that we can no longer communicate with others on our return. That would be terrible. Do you understand this concern, dear reader, or have my words already become just a borderline-conscious-looking set of pixels on your monitor? If it's not too late, here is my advice: don't let them delete this image from the collective memory, and everything else will follow.

- Rip

R & Art & R

I did sleep on the shuttle a little, using my own chest as a pillow. Not very comfortable. But we made it over to the island and had just about the most pleasant time you can imagine with regular Our Blogloo reader Jennifer and her awesome family. Their cottage is beautiful, the island is beautiful, the sand and waves and seaweed and caves, kites and fun and books and sun, mussels and cherries, ice cream and berries, outdoor showers and thunder showers and meteor showers and unfilled hours all added up to the backdrop for a dream from which we never wanted to wake up. Plus they're the nicest people you'd ever want to meet.

Unfortunately, Alison took all the pictures, so she's not in any of them. But I swear she was there too.












Then there was a short week of work in there (boring), and then on Friday evening we went out to Mahone Bay to see a gallery show of Johanna's most recent paintings. It was a great show. Impressive work and I believe she sold four pieces. Again, you'll have to take my word for it that Mister Snuffaluppagus, I mean Alison, was also there.





Afterwards we went to a restaurant and chatted over some food and beers with Johanna's friend Ian and his friend Jen (a different one). Even though the conversation unfortunately got onto The God Delusion and I stubbornly wouldn't let it go, it was still a really nice evening.

And on Sunday my softball team played an exciting game — under a blazing and relentless sun — whose score remained tied right up to the end. Going into extra innings, we confidently shut down the other team, thanks in part to my patented end-of-the-game-rhythm-changeup pitching style, which never fails to confuse. Then we proceeded to hit as well as we had all day. I got on base with a short bloop straight toward the other team's infuriatingly infallible centre fielder, who, I'd noticed, had not turned around yet when the pitcher began his windup. It was one of the most satisfying moments of the day for me when he almost but didn't quite make it to the ball. A few more equally impressive at-bats from my teammates, and I easily scored the winning run. Great ending to a nice weekend. And Alison was there too.

- Andrew

Quick Update

I went with Johanna and her brother Jochim to see Sloan at the Marquee last night. It was the first bar show they'd played in Halifax in about twelve years, and it was a doozy. Got right up at the front, pumped my fist, sang along, and had my eardrums blown out. Then I saw tons of people I hadn't seen in a really long time and hung out backstage until all hours of the morning. A perfect night.

And speaking of all hours and faces from the past, it's quarter to six AM now, and we're about to board a shuttle to PEI, where we'll spend the long weekend with our friend Jennifer and her family. They have a cottage over there, where they're spending the entire summer. We haven't seen Jenny in I don't know how many years, as she lives in Toronto, and we're really looking forward to spending time with her, Tom, and little MacKenzie. I hope I can sleep on the shuttle, because right now I'm running on two hours' sleep.

See you when we get back!

- Andrew