Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Tuesday is weird coincidence day.

So it's Monday afternoon and I have the rest of the day off. Rather than do something productive like write or even put away laundry that's been in my tote since mid-October I decide to pick a movie off the shelf to watch. I settle on Babel, mostly because I've been watching nothing but horror movies since Halloween (the day, not the movie).

So the DVD automatically cues up the trailers for some reason and rather than go to the main menu I just let them play. Second up is the movie Perfume, Tom Twyker's film that I'd ignored for a little while before finally watching (and liking) last summer. As the montage unspooled I noticed the red-haired actress that played Laura, one of Grenouille's perspective victims for essence of scent. I tried to remember what her real name was but couldn't.

So tonight I go to IMDB and pull up the movie page and the actor credits are listed in order of appearance or something, but I notice her picture in the links at the top:


So I click on the link and bring up the picture which also has her name:


So, you know, I click on that link to see what she's been in since, or is coming up in:




So (1) I notice that she is much younger than I remembered.  In fact she must have been 15 when she filmed Perfume.  So that kinda creeps me out a little.  And (2) she's been in a couple of brainy sounding British films this year that I'd read about but haven't seen.  Finally (3) she is set to star in what looks to be another sweeping epic next year.

I've been going to this fun film-slash-stock market site called HSX or Hollywood Stock Exchange for a few years now.  It essentially is a play funds site where you can buy stock on upcoming films, stars or predictions of opening box office, betting on how well they will do.  I'd lapsed for a year or more, but recently went back to reconnect.  It's a quick and interactive way to get some insight into films as they progress through development and into production.

So after seeing Rachel Hurd-Wood's building filmography I go over to HSX to log in and see if she has a StarBond stock yet.  I type in the URL and the home page comes up revealing this:




....Aaaannnnnd Synchronicity!!!!

Scene.

Exit.

Lights Down.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

It's a box. It's a set. It's a complete box set.


Those who know me well know that I am not an impulse buyer. I tend to think, overthink and most often rethink purchases with the end result of talking myself out of ponying up the bucks. For example:

My stereo... the amp and speakers were purchased second hand in 1985 and they remain the only ones I've ever bought. I've gone through 3-4 different turntables since then and don't have one now. My CD player(s) have all been portables that I've plugged in to the stereo and I've gone through about 4-5 of those since 1985, only the first of which did I spend more than $100 on (it was a first gen Panasonic bought at Magic Forest around 1989-ish for, I think, about $350) I've never bought a DVD player... the two I have were cast offs from an upgrader. I've never bought new furniture. My television is an obelisk that weighs about 50 kg. My computer is a ten year old Mac I paid $75 for.

You get the point.

Still this past Sunday I was at Future Shop picking up some computer accessories for work and I rounded the corner into the DVD box sets. And there it was. I was already spending around $100 for the other items and it seemed the time to let the knee jerk. So I tucked it under my arm and brought it up to the cash.

I regret nothing.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Monday, September 21, 2009

Monday. Nothing. Video. Day.

Best distorted in-restaurant thing ever.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

...also yesterday was Nothing Video Day

Taxi Cab Confessions



So I switched cab companies over the summer. I had be going with Checker since they started the "VIP" program... that's the one where they initially handed out actual cards you could show when getting in that would get you 50 cents off your fare, then since no one actually kept the cards you could just say the word VIP and get the same discount. This essentially devolved to be the basic fare (was anyone not a VIP?) However you sliced it Checker was the cheapest cab going circa about two years ago.

When the gas prices spiked last year fares rose in sympathy and so the price of a cab from downtown to campus went from $5.50 to $6.50. My assumption was, based on infrequent non-Checker cab interactions, that everyone had put up fares... so I stuck with my VIP-loving buddies.

However late this Spring I grabbed a cab from King's Place to uptown and noted that the fare was less than I expected. What I eventually discovered was that after the gas prices slumped back to under a dollar a litre most cab companies had lowered their fares where as Checker hadn't... making them now the most expensive cab ride in town (as far as I know... and I don't know much).

With a new cab company comes new cab drivers with new stories and new mannerisms... and while there have been a few quirky ones my favourite to date was the one I rode with a week ago. Firstly this new cab company (that I won't name in an effort to minimize any embarassment) seems to have some stake in employing, shall we say... LARGE drivers... and I've seen some large cabbies in my time. This particular driver had all of the drive-through gourmands beat by far... to the point where he was obviously unable to buckle the van's seatbelt. This was made glaringly apparent by the warning chime that would go off every... five... seconds. The ten minute ride nearly drove me bonkers making me wonder why a full shift hadn't reduced him to poo flinging... again as far as I know it hadn't, but.... The other factor was, after finding out I was going to campus, how he volunteered without any prompting... "You wouldn't know it to look at me but I had a 3.3 GPA." Aside from the fact no one asked is the other fact that 3.3 isn't exactly a stellar GPA... not at bragworthy levels at least. This opening claim was followed, again unprovoked, by a list of all the politicians that had shaken his hand (Brian Mulroney, Shawn Graham, Steven Harper... again all underwhelming brushes with celebrity). Between all the binging and "bragging" and namedropping I was glad to finally get out of the cab. But what occurred to me a little later, as the echoing of the seatbelt alarm finally subsided, was that he was never actually leading to a point about anything... it was truly pure storytelling. Bravo.

Monday, September 07, 2009

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Some Some Some Some Some Some Summertime.


Even though it's been over a month since that last entry it seems like life's more or less been cascading from mid-May's events.

It set a kind of tone.

The third part of the equation... part one being finding a new part-time employee for the store... part two being having to go to a funeral on the very day that new employee was scheduled to start traing... the third part was coming back to find out firstly that everything had worked out ok at the store, better than ok even. Secondly, while basking in the ok-ness of things getting e-mails from my landlord saying she'd sold the building my apartment is in, and from my aunt saying she was concerned about my mom's health. The second half of that is a complex situation and not really a public-blog matter, so I'll just go on about the first.

I've lived in my apartment for around 15 years. Day/hour wise that means it has just recently inched into first place past even the house I grew up in. Now it's not an exceptionally nice apartment... but it is on a good street, in a convenient area and until recently it was madly affordable given the amount of space I had. My previous landlord had struck a "temporary" deal with me about 6-7 years ago that saw me as the sole occupant of this 3 bedroom for a 1 bedroom apartment rate. This was supposed to be for one year until renovations were completed and she could get three more people in. In actuality 3-4 years went by with no further mention of renovations... then one July evening she drove up while I was having a coffee on the front step and told me we "had to talk" about the rent. I assumed she'd be asking me to vacate so three new folks could move in... or at least have me get a couple roommates and raise the rent back to its previous rate (at bare minimum). Instead she said that she "had to put up my rent by $40/month," which was still equal to or less than what most people were paying for actual one bedrooms. Joy.



The new landlord seems to be pretty flexible... so far anyway... and all the actual one bedrooms I've looked at are pretty gross, so I think I'll be staying put for now. I'll catch you up as things progress.

*note this was sitting around in Drafts for some time.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

All of the below.


So it's about 7:00 am, Friday May 22nd. I got to bed around 2-2:30 am... and I know I have to get up around 8:30... my body knows it. I set the alarm, and if I bother to set the alarm I hardly ever sleep up to the point where the alarm will go off. My body usually provides what I've come to think of as a pre-snooze alarm where I wake up at least half an hour before the beeping and then doze in 5-7 minute increments until just before it starts, and turn it off.

But it's not 8:30 am... and it's not even 8:00 0r 7:30... it's 7:00 am.... and I'm awake. I'm awake because something is biting my ankle. In my sudden fuzzy alertness I grope down to my ankle half-expecting it to be a morning cramp only to finger what I assume is an ant making a snack of my foot joint. I do quick "sweep, sweep, sweep" motion at my ankle and sit up in bed but the little fucker is nowhere to be seen.

And I'm up.

It's been that kind of surreal month since I finished work at the lab for the term (which is why you haven't been enjoying nothing video Mondays... I'll try to post these with some regularity once things normalize a little).

Jumping around through the month this stuff happened:

I got to interview Dave Longstreth from The Dirty Projectors about their new album, Bitte Orca that comes out in June.

I've been working on writing with some success and some frustration that will hopefully lead to even more success.

I was readying myself for a kinda easy-going May with a stripped back work schedule at the store, but as it turned out my plans conflicted with Chris' securing a new job that takes him to NS four days a week... and eventually out of Backstreet completely. On the plus side when mentally narrowing down the candidates to take over for Chris one of the first people I considered approaching actually approached me... taking the guesswork and pressure off.

On the other downside of that same situation is the fact Steph was scheduled to start his Backstreet journey this coming Monday... but this past Friday, not four hours after my little insect interaction, my mom called me at work to tell me that my aunt (actually grand-aunt) Marg had passed away. She had been in the hospital for two months following a fall that had required hip replacement... a surgery no one expected her (she was 89 and had undergone heart surgery and the installation of a pacemaker in the last year) to pull through. She had pulled through and immediately began campaigning to get out of the hospital in time for Easter, but that date passed and her appetite began to fail, and her breathing was becoming troubled... and her body eventually gave up. So Steph's first day at work will unfold while I'm on a bus headed for the North Shore.

In other medical news... a couple of week's back I was working on a little recording experiment involving a glockenspiel, a microphone, a guitar pedal and a Kaoss pad. While the result was impressive... it also unleashed a burst of feedback that daggered my left ear drum. Over the next few days there was ringing, weird crunching, sensitivity etc. Making the mistake of telling a few people their amateur diagnoses (based on experiences and hearsay) had possibilities ranging from ear drum devouring infections and the need for MRIs. Panicked enough to make a doctor's appointment, by the time the intermediary ten days had passed all my symptoms were gone... but I went to my doctor's anyway. At the very least to make sure she was still around, given I hadn't been to her in four years. She looked in my ears and said everything looked fine... except for the massive amount of wax buildup she found. Now in another week I have to pay a return visit for an "ear syringing." I wonder what the world will sound like after?

What else?

I've watched a lot of movies... I bought the first two seasons of Miami Vice with built up points at Rogers... I wrote a lot of reviews for Exclaim!... I watched the season finales of Dollhouse, Life and SouthLAnd... I discovered that my average possible viewing time for any music-related channel before I'm irritated enough to throw a shoe is about 7.3 seconds... I fell in love with Emily Vukovic on the Weather Network (weekend evenings,yo)... I listened a lot to the new Akron/Family, the Iron and Wine b-sides compilation, The Wooden Birds (side project from a member of American Analog Set), Mark Templeton, etc.... I suffered my kitchen sink's leaky ways... had a customer rush in with two six packs as a thank you for running a records store in Fredericton... had another customer give me a can of Stella for staying open an extra ten minutes for him to come in and get his Tapes n Tapes vinyl (I'm liking the trend)... renewed my affection of Dimitri's gyros, microwave popcorn and egg salad sandwiches... renewed my dislike for Joan Rivers and Donald Trump by stupidly watching Celebrity Apprentice... cared about the Boston Bruins for a few minutes there... forgot one of my best friend's birthdays for the second year running (April, not May... April)... got a haircut and new shoes... paid nearly $900 in income tax... took some pictures of unpaired socks.

I'll go into greater detail about some of this stuff in days to come... but for now, I'm going to finish by veggie biryani and call it a night.

'night.

Monday, April 20, 2009

With one breath, with one flow


It may be overstating the case, but I think I owe a debt to Sting for introducing big brained concepts into his music. Specifically I'm referring to the album Synchronicity that he and The Police released (as their last) in 1983. Besides providing them their biggest hit single, "Every Breath You Take," a creepy stalker ballad misused as both crush tape and wedding song fodder by folks who don't pay much attention to things, it had a pair of songs that weirdly tried to shoehorn a Jungian philosophical principle into a pop music format.

Here is its Description, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined as the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships that are not causal in nature. These relationships can manifest themselves as simultaneous occurences that are meaningfully related—the cause and the effect occur together.

Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity. The suggestion of a larger framework is essential in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as originally developed by Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung.[citation needed]

Jung coined the word to describe what he called "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung variously described synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle", "meaningful coincidence" and "acausal parallelism". Jung introduced the concept as early as the 1920s but only gave a full statement of it in 1951 in an Eranos lecture and in 1952, published a paper, Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle, in a volume with a related study by the physicist (and Nobel laureate) Wolfgang Pauli.[1]

It was a principle that Jung felt gave conclusive evidence for his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious,[2] in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlies the whole of human experience and history—social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. Events that happen which appear at first to be coincidence but are later found to be causally related are termed as "incoincident".

Jung believed that many experiences that are coincidences due to chance in terms of causality suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances in terms of meaning, reflecting this governing dynamic.[3]

One of Jung's favourite quotes on synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards".[4]

Despite the complexity of the ideas what it broke down to for pre-University Eric is that there were freaky coincidences that signalled an unidentified universal force at work. The kind of weirdness socially awkward teens love, right?

All of that preamble to say that I've been experiencing some fairly freaky coincidences over the last week or so. This example is a multi-faceted little gem of a co-inki-dink.

I've been rolling around the kernel of an idea about teaching a course on the films of David Lynch for a little while. Initally I thought it could fit under a creative writing heading focussing on the creative uses of the unconscious/subconscious for inspiration in poetry. Lynch often strings along his narrative with symbols and imagery that are connected very tenuously by tone and other poetic devices. So there's that. On a trip down to and back from Saint John Marc B. suggested that I talk to Allan Reid about adding it to UNB's expanding Cultural Studies program which is folding in the Film Studies minor in the not-too-distant future. So, yeah... that made sense. That was back in January or February (I think). I let time pass.

In the meantime I'd been reading a book I'd gotten for Xmas called New Kings of Nonfiction, an anthology edited by Ira Glass of This American Life. One of the standout pieces was "Host" by David Foster Wallace that took an in depth look at the Talk Radio format. When I finished the book I decided to see what else Wallace had in print, only to discover that he had committed suicide last September. So there's that. Nonetheless I decided I'd order in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, a collection of essays at Westminister Books.

In the meantime the weather was getting warmer, the snow was receding. A feeling of possibility seem to be escaping from the unfreezing earth. So I went ahead and finally e-mailed Prof. Reid about my idea for a David Lynch course. The next day the book came in at the store and I picked it up and flipped through it at work. Now I have to clarify... I did not research the book's contents before ordering it, beyond knowing it was a collection of essays... ok? So halfway into it the book has an essay entitled "David Lynch Keeps His Head," a lengthy piece originally written for Premiere magazine dealing with Lynch's Lost Highway. So there's that. That evening I checked my e-mail to see that Prof. Reid had quickly responded with a fairly affirmative tone. He suggested we set up a meeting. It was just before Easter weekend, so I sent him the list of days the following week I could meet.

Returning from Easter there was an e-mail that said the upcoming Friday would work well for both of us. So... cool. I thought of bringing up the coicidence about the Wallace essay... at least as an icebreaker. That Thursday (the day preceding Friday on the calendar) before work I drop into Read's to see the new magazines, and who's face do I see on the current Stop Smiling?



I know?!!!?

The interview was good, though fairly unrevelatory (Lynch seldom talks about his films), but in the introduction it mentioned two external references... the David Foster Wallace piece from Premiere and a book about Lost Highway written by Slavoj Žižek, a respected Lacanian Marxist who also is apparently somewhat of a film buff too (I'd bumped into him in the extras to the DVD for Children of Men). Mental note.

So the meeting went well... despite the usual and somewhat expected University jump-a-hoopiness that will stand in the way... optimism is still warranted. The weekend was a pleasant one. This morning I had some errands to run downtown and when they were done I stopped in at Read's again to get a Lemon/Blueberry tea, a copy of WIRE and to do a quick Google search on my iTouch for the title of the Žižek book. Sitting next to me, laptop open and on her cell phone is a student complaining to her friend how she had screwed up a question on a final exam she'd just taken. So just as the Amazon page with the book title comes up... at that moment... she says indignantly, "I know!!! It's just so ridiculous!!!" Swear to God.

Monday. Video. Nothing?

This one is probably something... but I have no idea what that something is. So, it qualifies.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Monday, April 06, 2009

Monday is nothing video day.



If this wasn't a test there'd be more Godzilla.

Monday, March 30, 2009

The sun always shines on...



Sadly I could not find a nothing video for today. There were a few nearly nothings, but nothing truly nothing-like that would truly waste your time for having watched it.

Instead I will thrill you with tales of my television watching.

Now that Battlestar Galactica is wrapped up and we are only getting a little taste of Caprica with a DVD kickoff later in April (the series is starting sometime in 2010 from what I gather) the great hope for something new to fill the cathode dream machine was Dollhouse. For those not entirely in the know Dollhouse is the new series from Joss Whedon, producer and creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.

It stars Eliza Dushku as Echo, a young woman whose identity and personality has been "wiped," creating of her a blank slate that can be imprinted with any combination of attributes desired by a client who hires her. She is referred to as a "Doll," one of many offered up by the "Dollhouse." This company is a bit of a grey ghost, and their "actives" are rented out to the very wealthy for tasks that range from hostage negotiation to being straight-up playthings. So there's that. Because it's a Whedon show there are several backstories slowly simmering behind the action.

There is, for instance, the wildcard FBI agent (played by Battlestar alum Tahmoh Penikett) who is the only one outside who seems to believe the Dollhouse exists, and an ex-Doll called Alpha who malfunctioned and is at large, seemingly with his sights set on Echo and with some super-ninja programming in place.

I admit to being overly onboard to Whedon projects (I have all the seasons of Buffy, Angel and Firefly on DVD, for example), but after seven episodes I'm getting a little worried. He seems to be aiming closer to the center... and the unfortunate whiff of Alias hangs fragrantly in the air. The trademark irony and sardonic wit is dialed way down on this one... as is the team dynamic that informed all of his previous work. And the backstory is parceled out very sparingly, leaving unfortunately ho-hum lead stories to fill the time.

Dushku is doing ok, but the character is a little problematic. What might seem like a dream job, being able to play a new role every week, is undercut by the fact that, at the root she has no character at all. That element is well played, but hard to get behind as an audience straining to build a relationship with her. Whedon seems to be building on some grander statement about identity and will, but that has only been made rather obliquely so far.

The other characters have the job of advancing the arc, and that has it's high and low points. Harry Lennix plays Echo's "handler" Langton. His job is to oversee and return her at the end of her assigned task. He plays the outsider... our viewpoint into the situation... and someone not entirely invested in the company, which works fairly well. The aforementioned FBI agent, Ballard, is a little stereotypically misunderstood and lone wolf-y. Though he is starting to flesh out a little. Whereas the head of security character Laurence Dominic is barely two-dimensional... he is a company man, and not much else at this point. Olivia Williams plays the oh-so-properly British Miss Dewitt... sort of the Giles to the Dolls I suppose, but she too remains underdeveloped. Finally there is Fran Kranz as Topher, who is the youthful wisecracking genius brain chemist and computer nerd who programs the Dolls. He is the "zany" character, a Xander/Andrew (from the Buffyverse) composite here to provide "magic" solutions and comic relief to the precedings... and he's very very very annoying. What made Xander and Andrew work was their outsider status and struggles to gain a place in the world. Topher is already "in" so his quirks are more like an overextended SNL Tech Support sketch.

When Firefly met its premature demise one of the story threads Whedon confessed to have been running in the background was the "Blue Sunshine" corporation, ostensibly a company concerned with the manufacture of junk food and soft drinks. Here he is developing the notion of a corporation that may or may not be evil running another service which may or may not be immoral with someone on the inside trying to undermine things to an end that also remains unrevealed. It's a whole lot of opaque to deal with.

So... I'm going to stay with it and hope for the best. If it goes balls up I'll go back to Life (which I've gotten behind on watching and so have been putting off catching up until the season is over). Otherwise there's always reading, right?

In related news this was linked on IMDB, sadly.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Spring Horrors. Recommendations.

I've been watching a lot of movies lately... and still pretty stuck in the horror genre... hoping to find some hidden gems. Here are three recommendations for things either just released or soon to be.

Splinter
Released April 14, 2009.

A couple on a less than idyllic camping trip are carjacked by another couple trying to get out of the country. They come into contact with a bizarre plantlike virus that culminates in a standoff at an isolated gas station. A little derivative, but the characters are not nearly as predictable as the majority of horror film clones.

Trailer:



Dorothy Mills
Released February 10, 2009.

The promo posters make this seem like it's another possessed girl movie, but that's a little misleading... not entirely... but... anyway. A psychiatrist from Dublin is travels to a small island where a teenage girl had assaulted a baby left in her care to babysit. She's given the task to determine how prosecution of the girl should be handled. There are definite echoes of Wicker Man and Straw Dogs as the outsider is not exactly welcome with open arms. And the girl, Dorothy Mills, well there's something a little more complicated going on than just bad behaviour. Great performances, especially by the spooky Jenn Murray in the title role. The "revealing all" moment near the end of the movie stretches belief's suspension a little, but overall solid and creepy.

Trailer:


There doesn't appear to be an English language trailer online anywhere.

The Burrowers

Released April 21

A horror western. Why aren't there more of these? When two families sharing a patch of land are attacked leaving some dead and others abducted a search/rescue party sets off with the assumption that Indians are the culprits. The party is under the command of a narrow minded Army Seargent who's mind is made up despite conflicting evidence. Eventually a smaller party including Coffey, an Irish settler engaged to one of the abductees, Walnut, an emancipated slave and army cook fed up with the Sgt and a couple of roughneck frontiersmen splits off to follow a trail that hints something other than Natives might be behind the kidnapping. This works well because the filmmakers are careful to get the Western part right before introducing the horror elements. They also manage the difficult feat of creating tension in the unlikely wide open prairie.

Trailer:

Today's Nothing Video. It may be angry. I'm Not Sure.

Monday, March 09, 2009

Nothing and Everything... or Something.

Hey kids look: It's nothing video day!!!



To offset the nothing videos here is a something video from someone cool I stumbled across last week. I think I may have a new favourite nerd. Sorry Anthony Edwards :(

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

The Day after Monday is not officially Nothing Video day... but, so what?

Sorry. I forgot this yesterday.



In anyone wants to take a crack at translation.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

And in case you needed to witness our winter.


The view from my front door.


A view of my front door


The smaller of the two banks in front of the apartment.


The larger of the two banks.


The "sidewalk."

Please note that this is fully 24 hours after the storm was done.

Today's Nothing Video

There are times when you are somewhere. This obviously was one of those times.




By the way Monday was a snow day... that's why "Nothing Video Day" is being held on Tuesday this week.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Monday is Nothing Video Day

I've become curious about YouTube videos that have no purpose, are completely nonsensical, or just plain misguided. I will post one every Monday. The only stipulation is that it must be under 30 seconds long... and preferably under 10 seconds long and posted on the day I put them up:


Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Is your bread flat or are you unhappy to see me?

By request my Tuesday Morning Off.

Mostly I loafed around and picked away at reviews for Exclaim! But first...

This is what I started at 8:30 am

The flat bread I made last week has gone stale.


The process begins again.


Also Kenyan Ground Beef Curry.


The beef and onions.


The tomatoes.


My ginger is a little soft... but it'll have to do.


Frying.


Frying.


Then comes the Little Bear.


Roll it out...


...nice and thin...


..and into the frying pan it goes.


Meanwhile.


The bread is becoming flat bread...


...and it goes in here to stay warm.

Monday, February 02, 2009

City of Stately Elms? No, City of Feckless Dickweeds.



Here's where it started for me on Tuesday last week:

http://dailygleaner.canadaeast.com/search/article/553681&p=2

I went to the Postal Outlet at King's Place to cash one money order and get another done up for a CD order I'd done... only to discover that the Postal part of the corner store had been removed. As the article makes clear the owner was found to be conducting her business in a haphazard manner counter to Canada Post training. I would not argue with that... though most of the counter people who'd worked there for some time were nothing but helpful and pleasant to deal with... the woman herself seemed slow and confused, so to find out she was the owner... well, it actually makes some sort of sense.

The comments on the story are the usual brand of inane that online articles seem to attract. There are a few that seem to hint that bringing hapless East Indian work habits to N. America is wholly unacceptable and that we [Canadians? New Brunswickers? Frederictonians? Whites?] would never go to India and fuck up their mail system.

I propose that bad service knows no racial boundaries. What's more it's really what we [Frederictonians especially] deserve. Sure we wait in long lines at Tim Horton's and don't get what we ordered... but why did we have to be carrying on a cell phone conversation taking down orders for two dozen people at our office in the Centennial Building? Sure we're pissed off when we find out the interac is down at the restaurant after we finished our meal, but why don't we have $20 on us... it might come in handy (or at least $2 for a coffee at MacDonald's you Visa-carrying moron).

Friday afternoon I was at the laundromat and bracing for the blank stare I usually get when I describe the change I want back after buying detergent. However this time there was a woman just ahead of me at the counter who smelled of lavender and hard candy bringing back a jacket for an alteration of something for what was obviously the second time. This is how the coversation went:

Counter Person: Sorry about that. Here is your tag to claim it next week. If you could sign here it'll show that it's been paid for.

Dried Up Lady: I'm not paying for this a second time.

Counter Person: No, you're signing it to show that you'd already paid for it... that way you won't have to pay a second time.

Dried Up Lady: I'm not... signing... anything.

Counter Person: Well I hope I'm the one who's working when you come back in, otherwise it'll be confusing.

Dried Up Lady: Hmmmph.

So, was the DUL justified in being upset with the job she'd had done? Probably. You pay for a service to be rendered and you expect it to be done fully and properly. Does it give her license to be a shithead? Why should it? It's not like someone left a surgical sponge in her lung. Lighten up.

Back to the post office thing.... What bugs me most about it is that it's one more service that downtown loses... like a phone payment centre, and a power bill payment centre, bottle recycling centre and a liquour store. Why not push people into their cars to run every errand? Why not send everyone up to the mall or to the outskirts of town? What does the term city centre mean?

Aside from that the weekend was pretty cool. Went down to Saint John with 3/4 Piper Perabo for a Backstreet SJ instore. Had a great meal at Taco Pico. The show was great (though the crowd was small), acoustic Piper is a different beast, but a relaxed and fun one.

Watched Quarantine when I got back, which was kind of a kitchen sink blend of handi-cam stuff like Blair Witch or Cloverfield, zombie (sorta) craziness ala 28 Days Later and haunted house survival in the Alien mold. It's a remake of a Spanish film called [Rec] done by the original's film director. If the original is even better than the remake that'll be something.

On Saturday I bought myself a small ceramic heater for my bedroom and a copy of Bruce MacDonald's first film Roadkill. Need I say more?

Then this morning I dove into my Extending the Table cookbook and made some flat bread... so easy, why haven't I been doing this all along? And also something called Groundnut Stew, a Kenyan recipe. It's essentially a beef stew prepped with onion, garlic, ginger and pepper but with a second stage where you add peanut butter. It's pretty tasty, but I think it could use another solid beside the beef to chunk it up a little. Maybe a sweet potato?

So in conclusion, Fredericton... don't take your bad mood out on others. If someone pees in your soup you'll be partly to blame.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Braille Tazers.


Note to self: when the dog is too tired to play anymore and there's no beer left with your brand label... end the evening.

Otherwise Sunday starts much later in the day.

In the meantime I've been accruing some pretty swell ambient music this January through a variety of means. Three standouts:


Manual - Confluence (Darla)




Tomasz Bednarczyk - Painting Sky Together (Room40)


Elm - Woven into Light (Blackest Rainbow)


My other time waster lately has been watching YouTube clips from Chelsea Lately... a late night talk show on the awful E! network. I can see how some would quickly grow tired of the host, Chelsea Handler's, somewhat grating voice and overly inappropriate approach to humour... but I am not one of those people. At least not yet. Enjoy the sample below:

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Plowed under.


Even though winter is a couple of months from loosening its grip some of us need a few moments where we can shed our burden...


...and just recline in the gathering blue of late afternoon.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Tube of Ydiot.


Scissors.


Rock breaks scissors.



Paper covers rock.


California forest fire burns paper down.


A golden flow from the heavens above not only extinguishes the California forest fires, but revitalizes the region, stirring new beauty from the charred remains of what was once only desert and tinder, and now is home to some of the most wondrous creatures to so far walk the blue orb we call Planet Earth.

As on ABC's blockbuster True Beauty.

Co-created by the golden brain powers of Ashton Kutcher and Tyra Banks.


Tuesday, January 06, 2009

...and we just can't find the sound...



For your enjoyment a recipe I've made twice. First for the usual reason of happening to have these particular ingredients already in the house, and the second time to see if the first time was an accident.

*Pork Stew/Soup

1 tray of stewing pork
1 large white onion
1 container of **chicken broth
1 can of chopped tomatoes w/ garlic
1/2 bag of shredded carrot
1 cup of dried split peas
1/4 cup flour
salt
savory
basil
hot sauce
canola oil


Take the pork cubes and cut them in half or thirds. Chop the onion into smallish chunks. In a medium sized sauce pan heat up the oil over medium/high and add the onion, stirring until it's a little translucent. Add the pork and mix together. Mix in the can of tomatoes. Add hot sauce of your choice to taste. Mix in the savory, basil and salt also to taste. When the pork is nice and white (you don't want to overcook or sear it) add the broth (**I used chicken, but I'm sure beef or vegetable would be fine too). Take the split peas and wash them under cold water in a colander and drain, then toss them in too. Finally the shredded carrot goes in (I had bought shredded carrot to use in salads and found I preferred it in soup recipes because it cooks more quickly and still retains a little crunch of texture). Bring the mess to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer. I add the flour, mixing quickly so it doesn't clump, to give the whole thing a more "stew-like" countenance. You can also coat the pork with it at the beginning if you prefer, or omit it completely if you prefer a more "soup-like" experience. Simmer for a couple of hours and there y'are.

The reason I like it is the balance of textures and flavours. The hot sauce seems to be the key to give it zing, and the split peas make it kinda old timey. I have some in tupperware just beggin' to be nuked right now.

Zing.