Maktaaq

Hey, What Are You Still Doing Here?

2008-01-03T22:45:00.000-08:00

Didn't you know I moved to a new blog six months ago?

Well, erm, it's only been a few days. My new blog is at maktaaq.com and my new RSS feed is here.

Ţiganii noștrii fără bani

2007-10-22T11:51:00.001-07:00

This photo has been making the rounds among the Romanian diaspora for months. I got it from my sister, who got it from a distant cousin on my cousin's side.

It shows some Romanian gypsies on the Black Sea coast. *Alleged* gypsies - I can never completely tell the gypsies apart from the ethnic Romanians, unless it's a gypsy woman shuffling about with her huge, colourful, dirty skirt.

Furthermore, in this picture, it's the gypsies with money. The Romanian title means "Our gypsies without money." I.e. the ones who make their wives and kids beg for money, or squeeze old folks out of wonderful Romanian antiques to sell at German flea markets. Not that ethnic Romanians are any better, it's just that the crappy ethnic Romanians aren't all that exciting to look at, with their tiny cellphones and their hip hop bad ass attitude.

Check out the jewellry on these dudes*. I wouldn't mess with them. I would, however, tell their kids to scram when I am in a cafe trying to drink.

*Click on the photo for a bigger view.

Top 25 Blogging Peeves

2007-10-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

1. Long paragraphs.

2. No spaces between paragraphs: it's different when paragraphs have only a single space between them in books or newspapers, on a computer screen, it's as bad as long paragraphs.

3. Blogger commenting: why should everyone have a Blogger profile? I want to go directly to their blog!

4. Truncated feeds: I don't always have time to go to a blog to check the full version. It gets especially bad when I have to play catch-up with a million posts - I usually never bother reading everything.

5. Long posts: I am guilty of this.

6. Posting more than once a day: though I read a few local and specialized blogs every day, I hardly can keep up with others and I end up skimming for something that interests me. When it's a personal blog, I'd rather be reading everything and really getting a feeling for the author's life. Actually, I really love my once-a-weekers - I can even forgive them if they write long posts.

7. More after the jump: no! I usually read over my morning cereal. I can't put down my spoon, click, then pick up spoon. I ain't no multitasker, stop asking me to work so much.

8. Links without comments: I want to know why you want me to go there.

9. More than two columns: I can't concentrate. I am also additionally fussy in that I prefer my sidebars on the right, but that's just going into crazy territory, I know.

10. Posts without titles: someone told me my posts should all have titles. It's made me think about what exactly I write about and makes me keep to one topic. If I have more than one idea, I can make two blog posts.

11. Good blogs that disappear: I still lament the passing of Baboon Ass. With so many inane dead blogs that cling to the internet like pond scum, at least the good ones could remain un-deleted, like rafts of hazelnut wafers among the pond scum.

12. Tiny (or huge) writing.

13. Exciting blogs that peter out after five posts: local museum blogs are pretty bad about this. I get excited that I'll be learning about the history of, say, Coalmont, BC, then nothing!

14. Exciting blogs that spiral out of control because they don't understand blogging: again, in my profession, organizations make blogs that sound more like marketing tools, with rehashed press releases. I can read those elsewhere; I prefer to go behind the scenes, meet the people and find out about the job.

15. No email: so what happens if I am too shy to write a comment to you?

16. Bloggers who don't answer their comments: sometimes someone has five comments, some of them questions...which seem to hover there, all lonely, for all eternity. I really appreciate reading someone who responds, even to thank their commenters. Hey, we're bloggers, not rock stars.

17. Unfeedable comments: sometimes I want to read the comments but I don't want to have to keep returning to the blog to see the updates. I love getting them in Bloglines. Of course, almost all blogs are guilty of this infraction, but with Haloscan and the Metroblogging Vancouver site, you can get your blog posts and comments too.

18. Comments that turn off after a while: what if I want to comment on your long-ago post on 19th Century gorilla-shaped tschochkes? Huh? What, after November 23, 2004, everything that can be said about gorilla tschochkes has been said? What if ground-breaking research has unearthed new gorilla tschochke revelations?

19. Image-stealing: I don't care that much about Mickey Mouse, but when it's just some kid down the street, please ask her before you use her photo, even if the Creative Commons license says "Exploit me."

20. Serif fonts: these belong on the printed page, not the computer screen.

21. Marketing requests made of bloggers: please don't send me requests to blog about your movie...send me a copy first and I might change my mind. I like horror movies and all, by the way, but I draw the line at Hostel, Saw and their ilk. Seriously though, no one reads this blog except a few people who like naked mole rats. I am flattered that you would think I am popular.

22. Spam/Trolls: delete please.

23. Teen accessories: music, moving pictures, stars that follow your cursor around, abbreviations, etc. The "Next Blog" feature on Blogger is what usually brings you to these sites.

24. Status updates: Happens in blogging for beginners, aka Facebook. Usually appears as "Jimbo is Julie ate my corndog." Or "Madeleine is Up at the crack of dawn." I, and others like me, will judge you on your grammar and capitalization.

25. YouTube: I hate it when I have to click that play thing. Almost as bad as something that starts up as soon as you visit the page.

Yes, I am guilty of many of these. I promise to blog about what I do like next.

Updates:

19. Image-stealing: When I wrote this, I was thinking of the Dallas girl who was made fun of in a Virgin Australia commercial. I don't care if the images are free - surely no one just takes free samples at a supermarket without acknowledging the free sample food giver-outer? I think it's just nice to make a human connection, to thank them for their image, and to let them know where it'll go.

21. Marketing requests made of bloggers: I am not famous. I somehow got into a horror movie niche, over which I am thrilled, but these poor kids making films are trying the blog route of promotion. It kind of died down after Snakes on a Plane failed. Not saying I am not flattered, but I was taken aback.

I had no idea how to even rate these films, and some of them sounded gory, which I actually don't like (unless it's quick, like in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre - I hate scenes that linger on people screaming).

Recently I also got something to promote a local charitable event. But, while I want to be a good citizen, I have no idea how someone who bumbles about like I do, can even seriously write about this. I think those of you who read this blog aren't here because I am saying anything worthwhile or new; you're here because you're my friends and want to humour me. The one or two of you who may not know me, I think I just haven't rambled enough lately on about how much I hate Republicans or how I think vampire fiction sucks. I may do so and then you'll stop reading. You think now that I am all about hamsters and Belgian comics.

24. Status updates: I like status updates, but I like them written properly. Sometimes they're hard to read. This peeve should read "Grammatically weird status updates."

25. YouTube: I just don't like to be told "You gotta see this!" then have to sit through 6 minutes or even 2 minutes of waiting for what I gotta see. Most times it's not worth it.

So, do any of you have pet peeves?

More Tintin, Mostly from Snowy's POV

2007-10-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

Photo used by permission of Annie Rhiannon.

Last week, in a flurry of Tintinology, I gobbled up seven Tintin adventures in my quest to read all the (accessible) Tintin adventures in chronological order.

Following The Blue Lotus, is The Broken Ear.

It was great to see Tintin wearing Chinese-style blue pyjamas, a souvenir from his Blue Lotus days, along with the huge Blue Lotus vase from the cover of the previous book. Then, on the ocean voyage, there's cringeworthy depiction of a black waiter, utterly black with shiny brown patches, exaggerated lips and something of a popcorn hairdo, rather like Balthazar the artist's apartment manager's nighttime hairdo earlier in the book. Then again, one of the Hispanic characters is called Señor Tortilla.

Other interesting tidbits: Tintin is very dashing in his colonel's uniform and Snowy goes through a lot in this story. The poor dog gets shot by a bullet and a poisoned arrow, nearly goes off a waterfall, runs into a predatory South American tribe that wants to kill him and pluck out his heart, and is attacked by piranhas. It'll get worse for Snowy in upcoming stories.

Next in line on my Tintin reading list was The Black Island, a Scottish gorilla tale. Snowy has the following mishaps:

he somehow ends up with a bandaged face on page 6,
he clings to the back of a speeding car,
gets hit on the head with a spike,
is robbed of his bone by some bully dalmatian-doberman cross,
flies out of a runaway trailer when it collides with a tree,
gets hit in the head by a falling apple,
jumps on a moving train,
gets drunk on Loch Lomond Whisky,
his plane crash lands in Scotland,
gets spanked by Tintin the third time he has a run-in with Loch Lomond Whisky,
falls down a cliff while chasing a rabbit,
lands in a patch of thistle,
gets strangled by a gorilla,
is hit on the head with a falling gun,
and has a fright from a menacing spider.

According to Wikipedia, this is the only Tintin book in which the reporter physically punishes Snowy.

Yet Snowy also shows his brilliance: he uses a goat to save Tintin's life, he brings a fireman to the chloroformed Tintin lying helpless in a burning house, steals a whole roast chicken (and gives Tintin a mere drumstick to nibble on), he harasses the gorilla, and retrieves a gun from the criminals, getting rewarded with a bone but not that Loch Lomond Whisky.

This book was also cunningly copied into Tamil by children's author Vaandumaama. To get around copyright restrictions, Tintin becomes Balae Baalu, an Indian boy who, remarkably, goes on the exact same adventure, with the Indian equivalent of Snowy.

King Ottokar's Sceptre finds Tintin in the fictional Balkan state of Syldavia. Tintin still has one of his Chinese vases around, though it is smashed at the beginning of the story. The Thomson Twins, as in the previous story, play a big role in this story, and the awful opera singer Bianca Castafiore appears. Oddly enough, though Tintin presumably loses his luggage when travelling to Syldavia - did they throw his suitcase after him when they ejected him mid flight? Did they put his suitcase in the Klow International Airport lost and found? - his Chinese-style pyjamas turn up again when he sleeps over at King Muskar's place.

This time, Snowy

is burned by a cigarette,
is hit on the rumps with a stone,
is ejected from an airplane,
is forced to eat a secret note,
has the diplodocus bone he stole from a natural history museum in turn stolen by some bully Syldavian mutts,
and gives up another bone because of visions of a thunderbolt-wielding maniac of a Tintin.

However, he gets some fancy digs when his actions save the rule of King Muskar XII, and he gets a smart blue ribbon around his neck while his master receives the Syldavian Order of the Pelican. All in all, Snowy gets off pretty easy in this adventure.

Some other King Ottokar's Sceptre comes again from its Wikipedia entry. In the 90s cartoon version, Professor Alembick's evil twin is the smoker instead of the other way around. The cartoons also downplayed Captain Haddock's drinking problem (and apparently made a mute out of Snowy). Though Tintin in America and The Black Island were banned in Nazi Germany because they were set in enemy countries, this book squeaked by despite its criticism of forced unification and its villain, the would-be usurper Müsstler (his name a melding of Mussolini and Hitler).

The Crab with the Golden Claws finally introduces Captain Haddock. His most amusing insult in this issue, among equally alluring fuzzy-wuzzy, anacoluthon, technocrat, carpet-sellers, ectoplasms, etc., is toffee-noses.

Snowy starts off the story by getting his snout caught in a can of crab meat. Tintin admonishes his "dirty habit of exploring rubbish bins." Poor Snowy must not be fed at home because he robs a homeless man of his bone. With regards to the homeless man's bone, my parents told me that they once ate a roast chicken at a Polish restaurant where a poor woman asked for their bones, which she took away in her bag. So there is something about poor Europeans collecting bones. Anyone know why?

Back to Snowy, he has to play the role of "dog," fetching Tintin's wretched magnifying glass and, when Tintin is absorbed in his mystery, Snowy sneaks off behind the couch to gnaw away. I should mention that Snowy has an angry and devious look on his face at this point.

Snowy then:

almost gets crushed to death by a pallet of cans of crab,
is hit square between the eyes by a champagne cork (but gets to lick the bottle when Tintin isn't looking),
clings fearfully to Tintin's back as he climbs from porthole to porthole on a ship,
barely manages a tongue-full of Haddock's whiskey,
his lifeboat is capsized,
his plane crashes in the Sahara,
beats up both Tintin and Haddock with a camel bone (for once not being the recipient of paint),
is snapped at y Haddock's suspenders,
nearly dies of thirst,
steals some sort of ham from an Islamic merchant,
gets hit with another gun,
has his paw stepped on by a thug,
gets drunk on wine fumes,
and bites a villain on the bum only to have the beaast's crushing weight fall down on him.

Finally, a secret admirer (and concerned animal lover) sends Snowy a parcel of a large beribboned bone.

My favourite Tintin book as a child was The Shooting Star. A little sillier and more sci-fi, this story had cute white mushrooms with red splotches and funny spiders.

But enough about the humans. Let's see what happens to our canine hero. Poor Snowy has the following misfortunes:

he runs into a pole thanks to his owner's stargazing,
a nasty observatory worker slams a door on his pristine white bum,
another spider harasses him,
a horde of rats chases him,
he gets trapped on a road of melted tar,
in a Titanic movie moment, both he and Tintin get splashed with some bracing seawater,
he gets seasick,
he is almost washed overboard,
he gets caught by the tail,
he slips on the frozen deck,
he topples hot spaghetti onto himself,
he has the galley door slammed onto his face,
he falls down a ladder,
he is sat upon,
he is stranded on a plane wing as the contraption takes off,
he is plucked off the plane wing by his leash (and nearly strangling the poor thing),
he is burned in boiling water,
he has an apple core tossed onto his head,
he is attacked by a monster butterfly,
a mammoth apple crashes onto his head,
he has a near-death encounter with a mean-spirited overgrown spider,
he has to bite Tintin on the bum (hopefully he didn't get pink eye),
he falls down a steep slope,
and he is whipped across the snout with a rope.

Yet Snowy displays remarkable brilliance once again as he douses a stick of dynamite with his urine. He also manages to gorge himself on sausages. Most cutely, he dons a bonnet, cape and bootie ensemble (his "best bib and tucker") in the Arctic, proudly proclaiming that he "is going to cause a sensation." Does anybody appreciate our little Snowy? No. They don't even share their whiskey with the poor dear, not even when Captain Haddock, the honourary president of the Society of Sober Sailors, gets an overflowing thimbleful for his tonic. Obviously, Snowy is miffed, alone under the table on page 31.

The Secret of the Unicorn has Nestor and Marlinspike's debuts. This book, along with the other WWII-era books The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Shooting Star and Red Rackham's Treasure, keeps to a less controversial story, centring on a treasure hunt.

From the beginning, we see there is no end to Snowy's suffering. To please his tactless master, he accompanies him to a flea market, picking up some sort of itching parasite as they wander among the bric-a-brac. His sacrifice is hardly noticed and, rather, Tintin blames Snowy for breaking a newly acquired trinket. Only later on will Tintin realize that Snowy's one instance of poor judgment turned out to be a lucky one. Snowy also shows he can answer the phone and bring it to his master.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Tintin adventure without more physical pain for Snowy:

a stack of books tumbles onto Snowy's head,
he is snapped across the nose by the secret note,
a glass of whiskey falls on his face,
he is nearly cut through by a sword-wielding maniacal Captain Haddock,
he gets dizzy drunk on more whiskey,
his tail is stepped on,
a dying man's hat blinds him momentarily,
he jumps out of a second-storey window,
he is twice splashed with mud by careless motorists,
he is nearly run over by a speeding villain,
and he has yet another glass of whiskey thrown in his face.

Red Rackham's Treasure marks the first appearance of the annoying Professor Calculus. However, Snowy gets a little bit of a reprieve while Haddock and the Thomspon Twins take the flack. But his relatively pain-free vacation comes at a price; Hergé cut his dialogue back. Snowy is almost mute, hardly voicing any complaints about being forced to accompany Tintin in a never-tested submersible.

The poor dog does get drunk again (on whiskey), is caught with a human thigh bone in his mouth, nearly suffocates in Calculus' diving shark, falls on his bottom (with a preoccupied Haddock not heeding his mournful crying), gets slapped on the nose with another rope, and is hit with dirt. Though by the end of the story, he gets his bone. Still, I hope that this doesn't mark the end of Snowy as the little complainer.

The criminals' objectives in these seven stories were:

The Broken Ear: a diamond.
The Black Island: counterfeit money.
King Ottokar's Sceptre: a sceptre through which rule of Syldavia was guaranteed.
The Crab with the Golden Claws: opium.
The Shooting Star: fortune and possibly fame.
The Secret of the Unicorn: a treasure map.
Red Rackham's Treasure: the treasure.

Now, to find the next set of books.

Ivan's Birthday

2007-10-16T11:28:00.000-07:00

Ivan recently turned eleven. That's 77 in dog-human years. After 15 years, 50% of cats are senile. So far, Ivan is still with it.

To celebrate his birthday, Ivan got a plate of his favourite food:

A whole can of tuna
Cheese
Olives
Ground coffee

We didn't let him watch The Godfather, his favourite movie, because we needed to save a present for Christmas.

Disgusting & Shameful Secret Vice

2007-10-10T22:03:00.000-07:00

I eat powdered milk with a spoon. Not mixed with water or anything. I just like the sweet, stickiness.

It might have something to do with the fact that I was fed formula as a baby. You see, I was a bit bite-y when I was young - my vampire heritage and all - and my mother's doctor told her to stop breast-feeding me or else it would be curtains for her nipples.

Now, the medical profession would have you believe that breast milk pumps up a baby's IQ and bolsters their immune system. Maybe. Maybe for some babies.

But not me. The lack of breast milk hasn't prevented me from being immune to the common cold and dysentry. I drank faeces-laden soup and lived!

Back to powdered milk, Matt recently discovered my dark secret. He bought a large bag of the stuff and then had to go and get himself allergic to dairy products. Not just dairy, but also soy anything, red meat, crab, squid, all sugars (including my collection of twelve jars of honey), wheat, vinegar, alcohol and even duck, for fuck's sake.

What this means is that I have to drink all the booze and eat all the chocolate before it spoils. I just finished my bowl of powdered milk and am on to my second glass of wine. I'm doing this for you, baby!

The powdered milk thing is ok; I like white powdery things. It's when I finish off the wine and milk, that I have to work through the Campari. Now that's gonna be torture.

Curriculum Meme Updates!

2007-09-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

Three of the curriculum meme taggees have published their curriculums.

David added four courses to the curriculum. The courses I could also use are:

British Columbia Geography 399
Clueless about where all of those places in the Lower Mainland are? Can’t tell Nootka from Bella Coola (or even Bela Lugosi?) This course will get you straightened out, with numerous field trips to various BC geological and cultural landmarks. Students will compare topological maps to actual terrain via helicopter and float-plane fly-overs, and at the end of the semester, the class will pool their newly gained knowledge at a Spa retreat in Tofino.
Prerequisite: None, except for a hefty tuition fee

A course that requires helicopter and float-plane trips? A spa retreat? In Tofino? I like this!

And then there's:

Speed Reading 205
Using a variety of techniques, students will endeavor to double, triple, and eventually quintuple their reading speed while gaining comprehension and retention of material, with the ultimate goal of ingesting Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in 23 minutes.
Prerequisite: Reading Glasses for those who are losing their vision. That means you, Drucker.

I've always wanted to read The Brothers Karamazov and the rest of Dostoevsky's oeuvre. With the teetering pile of books beside my bedside, followed by the floor-to-ceiling shelf, plus a list of hundreds of other books waiting for me, I thought Dostoevsky had to wait until I was 75.

Next, Ryan responded to the meme with five extremely practical courses. The most useful for me was (italics are mine):

Silence 101
Knowing when to shut up
A brief history of silence, techniques for keeping quiet, how to hold one's tongue, tact tactics, and the delicate art of being thought a fool rather than confirming it. No lecture: course is offered by correspondence and an in-person lab component.

Finally, Matt responds with five more courses, including:

LIT1105 – Reading the Books that You Buy
One hour weekly discussion group aimed at encouraging students to manage their priorities in order to read the steadily increasing stack of books which their unquenchable love of fiction drives them to purchase. Each week, students will bring to class a book already in their possession which they have completed reading during that week, convincing any other students who own but haven't read the same book why they should make time for it as well.

See Speed Reading 205 above.

Another course in the Matt curriculum that I would take is:

CINE2313 – Film Name-Dropping for the Cinematically Challenged
Survey course for students who desire to extend their repertoire of film actors, directors, writers and other cast and crew in order to speak intelligently about cinema in mixed company. No films will be viewed during the course, as it is presumed that students have already viewed most of them, but simply cannot recall the individuals who contributed to each work. Upon course completion students will be able to give a convincing diatribe contrasting Hal P. Warren's use of frontier imagery with that of Sergio Leone's, and will be able to connect Toshiro Mifune to Kevin Bacon in only three degrees.

Looking forward to reading other curriculum memes!

Imaginary Curriculum Meme

2007-09-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

I'm just waiting for myself to stop posting here, to let this blog drift off into obscurity. Too many people know me now and I can't bear to shock them or make them not like me by posting how anti-baby or how pro-piranha I really am. I think the best thing to do is switch back to handwritten diaries and turn my back onto the online world.

Then, after many years, I get tagged by a meme! And it's a brilliant one!

It's from Bluewyvern, a smart cookie I met in New York (and I am still honoured that you went hours out of your way to meet me, dear Blue).

The premise of this new meme goes like this:

1. Make up with 5-6 courses you'd like to take in order to fix up something in your life.

2. Use at least one course from the tagger as it's more fun to take a course with a friend.

3. Tag five others.

My courses with Bluewyvern? They are:

Dance 102: Social Dance for Non-Dancers
A primer in basic moves for a number of popular and iconic dance styles. You will also work towards developing your own personal, portable freestyle. Comfortably own the dance floor at any social venue. Prerequisite: Posture, Poise, Personality.

Because I am a hopeless dancer. You would never know I was a hot-blooded Latina if you only saw my hopeless dancing. I have less rhythm than the pastiest of white people.

Small Talk Workshop: Advanced Techniques and Topics for Social Mastery
This practical course focuses primarily on in-class practice sessions guided by the instructor. Learn how to keep a conversation flowing seamlessly, ways to move beyond the weather, dealing with unpleasant people, social conventions, appropriate formulas for a variety of situations (polite refusal, soliciting favors, disengagement, etc.), networking, and more.

Hoo boy, would this ever help me out in situations when I am not public speaking. In a blog post I wrote yesterday but will never publish, I rather like public speaking (sometimes I speak to thousands), but I dread talking around the water cooler. Ask the other person questions about themselves, I mutter to myself. Usually by the time I think of anything, the conversation partner is across the office chatting up about the cookies-and-broccoli centrepiece.

The rest of my curriculum:

Arachnid Wrangling 102
On successful completion of the course you will be able to undergo successful removal of spiders and scorpions from your environment, both with utensils and bare hands. Prerequisite: Insect Squashing 101.

History of the Modern Board Game 200
A survey course of board games from 1995 to the present, with special emphasis on award-winning German games. Students will be graded on the creation of a strategic board game with lots of stuff to buy.

Advanced Hair Tweaking for Tomboys 215
From braids to 8os style side ponytails and pigtails, students will learn the methodology behind complex hairstyles, in this hands-on course. Successful students will be able to plait their hair painlessly and without a hair out of place. Prerequisite: Ponytails 100.

The Graphic Novel as History 301
Learn about modern and contemporary history through Herge's Tintin, Goscinny and Uderzo's Asterix, Barks' Donald Duck, Spiegelman's Maus, Nakazawa's Barefoot Gen, Satrapi's Persepolis, Sacco's Safe Area Goražde, Brown's Louis Riel and more.

Intermediate Cuy Divining 302
This course teaches potential fortune-tellers humane techniques of foretelling the future via guinea pig entrails. By the end of the course, students should predict their own deaths and pick out winning lottery tickets. Extra fee for supplies (portable ultrasounds) $26,000.

Intensive Novel-Writing 400
Why settle for writing a novel in 30 days with the temptation of television, internet and house-cleaning? Let us lock you up in a sparse dungeon from September until April, or whenever you have a novel fit for submission to a publishing house. Novel completion guaranteed with our patented "no food after April 30" technique.

Massage Collection Techniques 450
Ever wish you could effortlessly maneuver your shoulders under someone's fingers after a hard day's work? This course will teach you how to elicit sympathy massages from friends, family, even strangers on your commute. Learn how expert massage-getters groom themselves to invite shiatsu, hot stone, deep tissue and even aromatherapy massages from those who never considered themselves masseuses before. Taught by the Swedish prime minister.

Decorative Flourishes 499
Impress potential lovers and intimidate your minions with a mere pen! This studio course is for anyone who needs a dramatic signature. Using Elizabethan and Medieval European sources, students will learn develop their own exaggerated handwriting through the study of Celtic crosses, curlicues, flourishes and twisty things. Assignments include signing credit cards and spray can tagging. Prerequisite: Scribbling 100.

I pass on the torch to Matt, Maikopunk, David, Rurality, Oana, that Raspberry chick, Miss 604, the Drunken Monk, and Ryan. That's more than five taggees, but I think these people can come up with brilliant stuff.

Lucian's Funeral

2007-09-11T21:15:00.000-07:00

This morning at 10:30 am, after procrastinating for a long time, I buried Lucian in a corner of our neighbourhood park:

With my new trowel, I managed to get only about 5 cm into the ground below a blackberry bush:

The plaid thing is his shroud. A pair of Matt's boxers collapsed recently and this morning Matt asked me where the clothing recycling bag is - after Matt left for work, I cut the butt part off to make the shroud. Don't worry: the boxers were freshly laundered.

I collected dirt from around the park to augment the mound on the grave.

I took one last photograph of Lucian in the sunshine. It was, I realized, the only time he ever had the sun on his face.

A friend reminded me about Lucian a few months ago and then I cried.

Matt wondered if Ivan the cat knew all along that Lucian was sick. In the last month, Ivan would lay in front of the cage and watch Lucian for hours at a time. Why did the cat suddenly take in interest in the hamster?

I worried all day that his grave would not protect him from raccoons or coyotes, so I got a flashlight tonight to examine it. So far, so good.

Tomorrow I will buy some bleach to disinfect his cage and personal effects.

The Waning of Lucian

2007-09-10T18:45:00.000-07:00

I took this photo of Lucian on Friday night:

It was only on Saturday night when I edited it, when I could enlarge his eye, that I saw that there was something wrong with it. Hamsters, for you non-hamster owners out there, are very fidgety. You can never get a really good look at them unless they are asleep, dead or caught on film after many, many blurred shots. This is why it took me twenty-four hours to figure out that something was wrong.

I immediately looked up vets open on Sundays. One was.

When I phoned up the vet the next morning, they warned me that they were full that day and gave me an 11 am appointment for Monday morning. Yesterday Lucian was still his usual run-around self.

This morning, he got up as usual to go for a drink and a morning snack. Then he collapsed on his food dish.

The vet wanted me to wait until my appointment, but I told him this hamster was awfully sick. So in I went with Lucian, an hour earlier than scheduled.

Well, Lucian is a very sick hamster and has been for a while. He has lost far too much weight, though his fluffy fur made him bigger than he really was. He is cold to the touch and incontinent. His once-mighty testicles have shrivelled up and disappeared within his emaciated frame. His teeth have become loose and an abcess is forming below his chin. The vet said he cannot remove the teeth at this point. The verdict is that he has liver or kidney failure.

I bought a round of antibiotics - two drops a day for ten days - but it's probably too late. The vet suggested I use a syringe to give him water and to keep him warm.

Poor little Lucian.

The Hamster Tippler

2007-09-09T13:36:00.000-07:00

Lucian the Hamster is always curious about what we're up to, er, he's interested in what we're eating.

For example, on Friday night we were drinking juice in his vicinity. He has to go check it out.

He struggles a bit.

Once he gets inside, he laps up the remaining juice.

(To the friends that visit us: don't worry. We thoroughly wash everything.)

Why Naked Mole Rats?

2007-08-27T11:05:00.000-07:00

For about a year now, numbers of visitors to this blog have jumped to an unbelievable number.

I went from around 10 daily visitors in early 2004 when I first added a site visit tracker thingie, to about 30 when I was blogging more frequently. Of that 30, almost 30 were readers as opposed to people googling hamster menstruation or slipper spanking (look me up, I am an authority of sorts in those fields).

Oddly enough, now that I only update once a week, my numbers have shot up to almost 400 visitors a day. Out of those 400 visitors, only about ten a day seem to be people actually looking to read this blog, meaning my readership is back to 2004 levels. The other 390 site visits are almost all from image links (like this). I sometimes just link to photos if I don't bother to write to ask for permission to use photos directly or if I never get an affirmative response from the image's copyright holder. Who knows why my links brings in so many visitors to my blog?

Mostly I ignore these visits. But sometimes a ridiculous amount of people come to just one post of mine. These days its the naked mole rat post. Last November I wrote about the British TV show QI and, in particular, about my discovery of the naked mole rat, a grotesquely fascinating looker of an animal. I linked to this picture.

A year ago it was hundreds, if not thousands of visitors coming to read the Resurrection post. I wrote that one after visiting Arizona in 2004 and, by writing it, I alienated one American reader who objected to my calling Americans "militaristic." I was then de-linked by this individual. Then no one noticed that post for two years. Suddenly, people from all over the US were entering my site through that one post, making me suspect someone emailed the link to a bunch of their friends. Is it the "militaristic" comment? Is it that the Marines are deciding whether or not to take me up on my request to being recruited? Is it the Arizona tourism board finally deciding to use my idea of Krazy Kat marketing to promote their state?

Now it's visitors from all over the US, Kuwait, Italy, Dubai, Britain, France, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Syria, Turkey, Finland, Indonesia, Korea, Qatar and other countries coming to see pictures of naked mole rats. I'd love to know why that particular post.

In a rather stereotypical deduction, I am guessing that by the number of Islamic countries represented, it must be curious sheltered girls. The European countries also have sizeable Islamic immigrant populations, with yet more curious sheltered girls. These curious girls want to know what penises look like but they do not have access to art history textbooks and they cannot ask their brother's friends to display their goods. Their parents or their government monitors their online visits.

Then I come in. I write: "The naked mole rat is the only animal that resembles human male genitalia." Then I link to a picture of the penis-resembling naked mole rat. Voilà. Girls know what to expect their first time and I am a feminist hero. Well, hopefully the girls are not traumatized by the fangs. Or, if they are, hopefully they will be inspired by their nightmares to write some great horror novels that publishers will have the sense to translate into English.

So, what is it about naked mole rats? Seriously, I want in on the joke. Why so many visitors for this picture?

Asterix is Finally Happening

2007-08-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

It's drawing to the end of the summer, so perhaps the local kids are returning their books back to the library. I finally got my hands on Asterix the Gaul, the very first Asterix comic in the series, which first appeared as a serial comic on October 29, 1959 and were published in book form in 1961. Hopefully, I will have better luck finding the subsequent Asterix books so I can read them chronologically.

Asterix the Gaul sets up the Asterix universe scenario: where do these set of Gauls get their strength? The story revolves around the magic potion, which, for those of you who didn't grow up on Asterix comics, gives this one last unconquered Gaulish village's citizens superhuman strength to take on Julius Caesar's legionaries. Getafix the Druid does explain that the potion gives one strength but not invulnerability. To contain the uncooperating natives, the Roman army has set up four garrisons around the village, resulting in a little-known historical stalemate. With this simple recurring gag, René Goscinny fuelled 24 further books and, after his death, illustrator Albert Uderzo continued the series for, so far, another nine books.

In Asterix the Gaul, we're introduced to many of the major characters, including a last-minute cameo by Julius Caesar to usher in the sequels: ".....this is only a truce, Gaul. We shall meet again." However, many of the favourite Gauls are either missing or undeveloped. Cacofonix, the lousiest bard in all of Gaul, for example, is a respected musician in this book. On page 19, the Gauls are impatient for him to start playing, probably for the last time in the series. But Vitalstatistix appears in a mere two panels, there is no Impedimenta, Fulliautomatix the blacksmith looks nothing like himself, there is no Unhygenix or Geriatrix yet, which means no Mrs. Geriatrix.

However, the names of the male characters are always a fun puzzle to try and figure out. (The female names all end in -a.) The Gaulish male names always end in -ix, the Roman ones in -us. Aside from the regular cast, a Gaulish bit-player in this book was Tenansix (Ten and six). The Romans were:

Crismus Bonus (Christmas Bonus)
Julius Pompus
Marcus Ginantonicus (Gin and Tonic)
Caligula Minus (who becomes Caliguliminix when disguised as a Gaul; Caligula means Little Boots - the nickname of the crazy emperor Caligula - and Minus is also a diminutive as pointed out by Asterix NZ)
Tullius Octopus
Gracchus Sextilius
Claudius Quintilius
Caius Flebitus

I own the next two books, Asterix and the Golden Sickle and Asterix and the Goths, though the latter is in Romanian, a language I am still learning. I will read the Romanian version as well as the English version, and compare the two in an upcoming post.

Tintin's Cigars and Opium

2007-08-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

Reading along smoothly on my Tintin-and-Asterix streak, I recently finished reading the Tintin adventures Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Blue Lotus.

Though Cigars of the Pharaoh is still not a completely cohesive story, Hergé was by now losing interest in disconnected episodes. Notable for having the first appearance of the Thompson Twins, Tintin also proves he is cuter in local costumes than the decidedly uncute Twins.

In The Blue Lotus, Tintin also wears the local outift, spending most of the book in a blue Chinese suit. I forgot how cute Tintin looks with his new friend Chang Chong-chen, inspired by Hergé's real-life friend and Chinese culture advisor Zhang Chongren.

Father Gosset, the University of Leuven Chinese students' chaplain, introduced Zhang to Hergé so that the cartoonist wouldn't mess up the depiction of China as he did in previous books (apparently there is a Fu Manchu torture chamber in Land of the Soviets). Hergé ended up doing so well in depicting the realities of 1930s China, that the Japanese diplomats complained to the Belgian government.

(Hergé and Zhang were eventually reunited in 1981 in France; Zhang received French citizenship in 1985, living in Paris until his death in 1998.)

Hopefully, I can track down the next Tintin adventure, The Broken Ear.

*****

Other Tintin links found while writing this post:

Cover art for the fake Tintin in Iran.
A blog about the Tintin movie.

Pod Person Testament

2007-08-11T21:58:00.000-07:00

I may not have long to live. In case I die mysteriously during the night and found tomorrow morning as a rotting pod person wallowing in a labyrinth of red fungal matter, please use this blog post as a starting point for the investigation into my death.

For weeks, Matt and I have noticed red dust all over Ivan the cat's bathroom. At first I blamed it on plastic. I suspected that our latest package of toilet paper was shedding the red ink printed on it. Once we finished that package of toilet paper and got a different brand, the red dust continued to pollute Ivan's bathroom.

So I next laid the blame on the mushrooms. Below our window, hundreds of mushrooms sprouted during the recent rains. Pretty little things, with jaunty caps, as if you'd expect them to start dancing. Must've been their spores wafting through our open window.

But tonight, I found out. I stuck my finger, unwittingly, into the heart of the matter.

In a frenzy to clean out the pet supplies cabinet to get to my foot bath basin, I found long-forgotten packages of cat and hamster treats. I collected a handful for Lucian, then a handful for Ivan.

Then I opened Ivan's container of Pounce. The Bigger Softer Bite. Beef flavoured. Never even remembered buying it.

The inside was a red dust. Yet, I didn't quite believe it was red dust. I did not believe what I saw. I poked it.

My husband was horrified. "Oh, my god, that's where all the red spores have been coming from!"

*****

If you remember grade twelve biology, you recall the five kingdoms of life forms: bacterial, protist, fungal, plant and animal. You know that antibiotics kill bacteria, that fungicides kill fungi, that neither can kill viruses because viruses do not quite fit into any of the five kingdoms nor are even living organisms.

Yet, after sticking my finger in the motherlode of red spores, my first reaction was to douse my hands with anti-bacterial soap and scrub away. With no bleach around, this was the first thing I saw that spelled salvation.

I even accidentally ripped off the scab over my recent burn, probably in the process infecting myself further with the red spores.

Now I am sitting here, awaiting fate.

The vector for a new and terrifying fungal disease, I will be patient zero of some awful epidemic. While it would be nice if I start a dramatic zombie plague and end up triggering armageddon, I'll probably just fester into an oozing red slime. Not too ladylike, I'm afraid. Please, please, just don't let my pod double be some sort of gelatinous freak with a dog body and Donald Sutherland's head.

Good god, I already feel the mushrooms sprouting in my veins.

It can't be long now.

Where Art Thou, Asterix?

2007-08-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

I've been to three public libraries. All the Tintins and the Asterixes are out. Borrowed by little whippersnappers who should be absorbed in the new Harry Potter.

I cannot find the first Asterix book. That's Asterix the Gaul. The first book I was to read in order to make my 60-book quota before December 31.

Nor can I find Asterix and the Goths.

I can, however, find the later Asterixes: Asterix and the Actress, Asterix and the Black Gold, Asterix and the Magic Carpet. Not the canonical Asterixes.

The Tintins, meanwhile, are not quite as reclusive.

I found and read Tintin in America. The subsequent Tintins also appear accessible through the local libraries.

But the first two Tintins, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, are nowhere to be seen.

I know the former is out there, because the UK's Commission for Racial Equality recently put out a call to bookstores to ban this book for its racist colonial attitude towards Africans (as reported by the BBC). The book already carries a warning just like CDs with "bad" music. The warning alerts potential readers that the book contains "bourgeois, paternalistic stereotypes of the period - an interpretation some readers may find offensive." Since the resulting publicity, sales of the 1931 comic has risen by almost 4000%.

I am prepared to be offended by Tintin in the Congo. But until the library succumbs to popular curiosity and purchases a copy, I skipped ahead to Tintin in America.

Replete with 1930s American stereotypes - Chicago gangsters, rampant development, cowboy lynch mobs, innocents tied across railroad tracks - the book is most offensive when it comes to the representation of the First Nations. We're talking boys and arrows, tomahawks, papooses, references to scalping, and "torture poles." You've also got the usual, mostly hyphenated "Indian" names: Big Chief Keen-Eyed-Mole, Browsing-Bison, Bull's-Eye, and Lame Duck.

Yet, with six more books to go until I get to the expletive-rich Captain Haddock, I do appreciate this gem from the mouth of the Mighty Sachem:

Let us raise the tomahawk against this miserable Paleface with the heart of a prairie dog!

Of Hairy Cats and Dandruff

2007-08-09T20:13:00.000-07:00

Cat ownership is new for me. The cat my family had when I was eight doesn't qualify: it was a working cat. It made itself useful by prowling the exterior of the house looking for varmints.

Ivan, instead, is a house cat and a lavishly hairy one. I found out how hairy he was when I recently tried to comb out all his loose hairs before they could shed themselves on my freshly vacuumed carpet.

(I am allergic to cats. I used to hate vacuuming. My stepcat has made me love vacuuming.)

My methodology was to comb him until A) no more hair filled the cat brush or B) Ivan got bored and ran away.

Half an hour and twenty handfuls of cat hair pulled from the brush later, I started brushing against the grain. I brushed Ivan's head, his back, his tummy, his tail and his legs. He purred the entire time.

After 40 minutes, Ivan was covered in dandruff. I was afraid that I was brushing off living skin cells, but Ivan seemed to love it. He licked my toes.

Finally, when it was all over, 45 minutes after the brushing started, this is how much cat hair I accumulated:

Can't read the measurements? Here's a close-up:

Are all long-haired cat this shed-ful?

Something That Rhymes with "Maktaaq"

2007-07-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

Seven years after first reading it, I finished reading Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow a second time. It took me nine months. However, unlike the first time I read it, this time I understood the ending. I kept a notebook with the characters' names, their distinguishing traits and most important actions. I crisscrossed back and forth in the novel until I finally learned who was who and why they did what they did. I was relieved that there were no aliens in the book.

I originally picked up the book because it was about someone who was half Greenlandic and far preferred the Inuit side of her heritage. I am not Inuit, nor have I ever even been to any polar regions. However, as is obvious with my Inuktitut pseudonym, I am rather more interested in Inuit culture than your average white person. More particularly, I reread Smilla because I wanted, besides getting the ending, to compile a list of the interesting Inuktun words:

Of course there is qanik - "big almost weightless crystals falling in stacks and covering the ground with a layer of pulverised white frost" - from the first paragraph of the book and quoted on the front of my movie cover edition. Once Smilla returns to Greenland, then the ice expert in her takes over:

Agiuppiniq: snow drifts across the ice
Apuhiniq: snow compressed by the wind into hard barricades
Avangnaq: north wind
Hiku: permanent ice
Hikuaq: a type of ice floe
Hikuliaq: new ice
Ivuniq: packs of ice forced upwards by the current and collision of the plates
Killaq: air holes
Maniilaq: ice knolls
Pirhirhuq: snowstorm weather
Puktaaq: another type of ice floe
Sikussaq: ancient black ice formed in protected fjords

Inuktun, the language spoken in Smilla's hometown of Qaanaaq, is the most closely Greenlandic language related to Canada's Inuktitut-speaking people. This must be why the words have all those Qs at the end. Ideally, these words will one day enter the English lexicon and hence be available for Scrabble players. I never find a spare letter I to make a qi. Inuktun words would do wonders for my Scrabble strategy.

Brilliant Idea #1

2007-07-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

My idea is a new skit for Saturday Night Live circa 1989. It's called "Tranny Granny."

Pretty good huh? Any of you comedy scriptwriters can take it away. Go wild with my idea.

I'll be waiting for the royalty cheques.

*****

Matt suggested a bumper sticker for tranny grannies: "Old tranvestites never die, they just disrobe."

It Cries Like a Puppy

2007-07-04T22:08:00.000-07:00

This just in: my friend Ryan sent me an email about the origins of Dramatic Chipmunk. Turns out it's in showbiz in Japan.

In all its glory, here is the pre-fame Dramatic Chipmunk.

Me vs. Kwik-E-Mart

2007-07-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

I think I can speak up about this hurt I've been carrying for a month and a half.

I was very spectacularly dumped by my best friend a few days before my wedding. She was to be my bridesmaid, more because I wanted her nearby to hear her devilish brand of humour than for any traditional reasons. Instead she strung me along that she would show up, until I finally wised up the day before the wedding and told her that I knew I was being bullshitted and that she should go do whatever it was she really wanted to do and not bother coming out to my wedding.

Which she did.

Two and a half years of her living in Chicago, me in Vancouver, and she didn't even care to see me. She couldn't even wait a few hours for me to finish my shift at work before she was off to the Rockies.

Then there is the bridal shower. I didn't really care one way or the other, but once she insisted on one, I thought it would be fun. Three days before, she announces to my family that I am too busy so we should scrap it. For some reason, I was disappointed and my family and one friend decided to forge ahead. Then disappointment #2.

None of my friends came, aside from the one helpful friend. Everyone complained about the location in the suburbs. Probably the price too - I remember being unemployed and carefully parsing out my funds, reserved for life-giving meals - but everyone seemed interested in coming until the address was spoken.

Family is really more important: I was instead surrounded by relatives, who "showered" me with cooking implements. The one friend who helped out and actually showed up - I knew she was great before but now I really know.

The reason I came out with this shameful story, that I am bestfriendless and people now suspect I made up a cool imaginary best friend to be normal and that furthermore I am, almost, friendless, is because of something that's been bothering me for the last day or so.

It's Kwik-E-Mart. More specifically, the one to which I formerly lived next door.

It's out in the suburbs. It's far away.

That doesn't stop people from hopping on a bus and making the trek from downtown. I don't know if any of my invitees went to Kwik-E-Mart. I don't want to know. But I am pretty sure they wouldn't bat an eye and forget that two months ago they balked at going anywhere in the vicinity.

None of them read my blog. It's only conjecture that they may have said "Real Frosted KrustyO's? Let's take the 40-minute bus ride to the frontier and get us some!" But I am pretty sure they did. So I can be bitter.

I guess people are more attracted to a made-up cartoon family and its slick Hollywood marketing than me.

Now I know I am pretty well meaningless to most people. Yet now I know at least which people like me and that I should treat those people better.

Update: Who says I can't help the Hollywood money-making machine along with every one else?

I am proud to be part of the zeitgeist!

(Thank you to Upside-Down Hippopotamus for introducing me to this madness.)

Beyond Anne Bonny and Mary Read

2007-06-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

I recently made the mistake of watching the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. However, this won't be a review of that movie (don't see it). I wanted to explore one of the characters. No, nothing more on that Depp character. We all know about the Keith Richards thing. Smarter people than myself even suspect Depp's reference to Adam Ant (maybe the next historical craze, now that we've gone through Antoinette, Greek fighting boys and half-serious pirate, will be English highwaymen).

What I do want to point out is the female Asian pirate. The Chinese pirate who didn't get censored out of the movie by the Chinese government.

Credited as Mistress Ching and played by an American of Japanese extraction, Takayo Fischer nee Tsubouchi), I immediately suspected that this pirate was influenced by Zheng Yi Sao (or Zheng Shi in Wikipedia). A few years ago, this name appeared in a kid's pirate book, with only a snippet saying that she was active in the first half of the nineteenth century and that she commanded thousands in the South China Sea.

Growing up, like all little girls who want to grow up to pillage coastal towns and keelhaul insubordinate minions, I read up about my predecessors. In those days, the only female pirates who made it into the classical pirate canon were Anne Bonny and Mary Read. All other women in history, the books implied by omission, stayed home and baked strudels.

When I looked up Zheng this time, besides a Wikipedia page (and some cultural influences - she appeared in a Borges story), she was joined by other Chinese pirates with two x-chromosomes. Seven of them according to this list. This other list has three more to add to this roster.

Here's the total combined list, with possible redundancies and no standardization of romanization (I hate Wade-Giles):

Ch'iao K'uo Fü Jën (c. 600 BCE): Chinese legend.
Qi Sao (Seventh Elder Sister-in-law): South China Sea, commanded a fleet of 20 ships.
Li (wife of Chen Acheng) (early 1800s): South China Sea, was involved in at least 10 robberies at sea with her husband before she was captured and made the slave of a military officer.
Shi Xainggu (or Zheng Yi Sao) (1801-1810): South China Sea, commanded either five or six squadrons consisting of 800 large junks, about 1,000 smaller vessels, and between 70,000 and 80,000 men and women.
Cai Quin Ma (Matron Cai Quin) (died 1804): South China Sea.
T'ang Ch'en Ch'iao: alias "Golden Grace".
Lo Hon-cho (Honcho Lo): took over command on husband’s death in 1921, was a supporter of the Chinese revolution.
Wong (1922): united her 50 ship fleet with Lo Hon-cho's 64 junks.
Lai Sho Sz'en (Lai Choi San) (1922-1939): South China Sea, commanded 12 junks.
P'en Ch'ih Ch'iko (1936): commanded 100 pirates.
Ki Ming (this may be another name for P'en Ch'ih Ch'iko).
Huang P'ei-mei (1937-1950s): leader of 50,000 pirates.

Now the little girls of today can have other heroes besides Paris, Lindsay and Nicole.

This Post Is About Books

2007-06-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Early in 2006, I read that That Rabbit Girl was attempting to read 50 books in a year:

I've only started keeping track of my reading habits the past two years, and in 2004 and 2005 my final year-end books counts were 39 and 41, respectively. Fifty books will be a serious challenge.

I decided to try out the 50 book thing too.

I started keeping a list of books I read in 1996 when I completed 14 books. The inspiration came from a women's magazine article. The writer explained how keeping a "read" list gave her a sense of accomplishment. She'd been adding books to the list for three or four years, and each title carried some memory. That novel followed the break-up with boyfriend #34, this one spanned twelve visits to the dentist, while another represented mom's chemotherapy.

My list, rather than a memory aid for past emotions, serves to goad me into reading more and, more importantly, reading better. I look back and cringe that I wasted time with Steven Langhorne Clemens' Tokyo Pink Guide: Everything You Need to Know About Tokyo’s Sexy Pleasure Spots – What, Where, & How Much! in 2000 or that I can't remember a single idea from Pasolini on Pasolini: Interviews with Oswald Stack or Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr.'s Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance, both of which I read in 1997. I still can't belive I made it through Michael Herr's Dispatches in 2001.

But the numbers are a big thing. In 1999, I managed to finish only eight books. In 2003 (an unfortunate year), I muddled through eleven books, a lot of them cheats like graphic and children's novels. I look with pride at 2001 and 2002, both also unfortunate years yet with 31 and 33 respectively to demonstrate that those years weren't a complete waste.

Fifty books in a year seemed like a good goal for 2006. In 2005, I got through 26 books: fifty meant I merely had to read four books a month instead of two.

Luckily, I discovered that books on tape go along splashingly with my overdrawn commute. Thus I slipped into 2007 with a glorious 56 books under my belt.

So. I decided I was close enough in 2006 to reaching 60, that that was where I set the bar for this year.

And here I am, the end of the first half of the year, and I am only at 26. Not even halfway.

Part of the problem is that I have taken to daydreaming during my commutes. I end up at work in the morning, not really sure that it was I who drove all that way. Books on tape disrupt my dream time, so I returned Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana back to the library.

I do have a plan.

It came to me in Rome. Insatiable for knowledge of more ancient Roman atrocities (and rather bored with the Julius Caesar chapter in Suetonius), I vowed to re-read all the Asterix books when I got home. And for good measure, I would re-read all the Tintin comics too.

In 2002, I borrowed and read nearly all the Tintin books. I fought off nine-year-olds at the public library to snag every single last copy. I scoured the floors and under shelves for any misplaced copies and mercilessly put holds on other kids' copies. I braved desiccated kid snot smeared into the creases and ignored unusual stains.

It's been five years and it's that time again.

This time, however, I will read all the Asterixes and Tintins in chronological published order.

More for myself, here's a list of the books in the order I shall attempt to tackle them:

1. Asterix the Gaul (1961)
2. Asterix and the Golden Sickle (1962) (own it, in English)
3. Asterix and the Goths (1963) (own it, in Romanian)
4. Asterix the Gladiator (1964)
5. Asterix and the Banquet (1965)
6. Asterix and Cleopatra (1965)
7. Asterix and the Big Fight (1966) (own it, in Romanian)
8. Asterix in Britain (1966)
9. Asterix and the Normans (1966)
10. Asterix the Legionary (1967)
11. Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield (1968)
12. Asterix at the Olympic Games (1968) (own it, in English)
13. Asterix and the Cauldron (1969)
14. Asterix in Spain (1969)
15. Asterix and the Roman Agent (1970)
16. Asterix in Switzerland (1970)
17. The Mansions of the Gods (1971)
18. Asterix and the Laurel Wreath (1972)
19. Asterix and the Soothsayer (1972)
20. Asterix in Corsica (1973)
21. Asterix and Caesar's Gift (1974)
22. Asterix and the Great Crossing (1975)
23. Obelix and Co. (1976)
24. Asterix in Belgium (1979)

And maybe I'll even go as far as to read the Uderzo-only Asterixes, depending on how much they live up to their bad reputation:

25. Asterix and the Great Divide (1980)
26. Asterix and the Black Gold (1981)
27. Asterix and Son (1983)
28. Asterix and the Magic Carpet (1987)
29. Asterix and the Secret Weapon (1991)
30. Asterix and Obelix All at Sea (1996)
31. Asterix and the Actress (2001)
32. Asterix and the Class Act (2003)
33. Asterix and the Falling Sky (2005)

As for the Tintins, other than first two, I think my local library will have all of them.

1. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929–1930)
2. Tintin in the Congo (1930–1931)
3. Tintin in America (1931–1932)
4. Cigars of the Pharaoh (1932–1934) (own it, in English)
5. The Blue Lotus (1934–1935)
6. The Broken Ear (1935–1937)
7. The Black Island (1937–1938)
8. King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938–1939)
9. The Crab with the Golden Claws (1940–1941) (own it, in English)
10. The Shooting Star (1941–1942)
11. The Secret of the Unicorn (1942–1943) (own it, in English)
12. Red Rackham's Treasure (1943–1944)
13. The Seven Crystal Balls (1943–1948)
14. Prisoners of the Sun (1946–1949)
15. Land of Black Gold (1948–1950) (own it, in English)
16. Destination Moon (1950–1953)
17. Explorers on the Moon (1950–1954)
18. The Calculus Affair (1954–1956)
19. The Red Sea Sharks (1958)
20. Tintin in Tibet (1960)
21. The Castafiore Emerald (1963)
22. Flight 714 (1968)
23. Tintin and the Picaros (1976)
24. Tintin and Alph-Art (1986)

Roman Minefield

2007-06-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

A planned hi-tech driverless underground railway line set to bring desperately needed transport links to the historic heart of Rome has run into a minefield of Roman remains.

(From the May 14 online edition of the Guardian.)

There's a scene in Fellini's Roma where a subway crew finds Roman ruins and calls in the film crew. The delighted visitors crawl through holes to see a fresco with colours as fresh as if they had just been daubed on the walls. Yet, within seconds, the fresco disintegrates into dust and floats off the wall.

Matt didn't care much for this movie, but after riding the Roman Metro, he changed his mind and wants to watch it again.

What we didn't know while we were there, is that we stood above the proposed Largo Torre Argentina stop.

This area, near tourist hot spots like Piazza Navona and the Pantheon, is to be one of the stops on Rome's third subway route, Line C. City planners estimated that 30 metres deep should just about miss the pesky ruins. But they've found amphorae that could be part of an villa's garden and, just as annoying, some imperial era building. The nerve of those ancient Romans!

Instead of pondering all this, we admired the cats:

The ruins are also home to the Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary.

Soon after the ruins were discovered in 1929, the cats moved. Roman cat lovers, derisively called gattare, began feeding leftover pasta to the homeless cats. Though the current batch of felines are (mostly) fixed, irresponsible pet owners still dump cats in the area, resulting in a population of around 250 cats. We counted about 18 from the fences high above the remains of the four temples.

The Cost of Popularity

2007-06-25T21:43:00.000-07:00

When my friend Risa came over from Japan to visit last month, I kept pointing out how Japanicized the rest of the world has become:

Every big bookstore now has a manga section.
White high school girls attempt big socks (though they use slouchy legwarmers instead).
Everyone and their racist meat-and-potatoes great grandmother eats sushi these days.
The people really in the know - i.e. all of Vancouver contained within the traditional snob boundaries (King Edward and Nanaimo) - has moved on to izakaya food.
Most coffee shops now sell green tea lattes, while some very advanced ones even have matcha tea.
You can buy takoyaki in cultural voids like Port Coquitlam.
Supermarkets now carry edamame.
We even have hundred-yen stores.
Our tv shows rip off Japanese ones - whether they're restaurant makeover programs or silly Jackass crap.
Snooty bars in New York have shiso- and yuzu lemon-flavoured cocktails.
There's a cherry blossom festival in Vancouver.

Risa pointed out that the export of Japanese culture has the Japanese rather pissed with us foreigners.

"What?!" I said aghast. "The Japanese love to show off all the cool things in Japanese culture. I mean, there are women who wait all their lives to rip off a foreigner's clothes and dress them in the best kimono. And there are people who can't resist feeding live fish to some naive outsider so that they can taste the freshest meat money can buy."

"But that's the problem," said Risa.

As the rest of the world realizes that sashimi is damn good, there's less tuna to go around. Now that any Russian mafioso can take his girlfriend of the week to sample fresh tuna in Moscow or any Joe Bob in Lubbock, Texas can stab his toro with his chopsticks, the big fish's numbers have dwindled.

Thus the export of one of the hallmarks of Japanese culture, its cuisine, means that the Japanese themselves may soon be pushed out of the market. This is what has many Japanese complaining.

According to the New York Times, some chefs have experimented with venison and horse sushi. Others have studied North American abominations like our mouth-bursting everything-in-the-freezer-plus-tobiko rolls.

Hopefully this insanity for all things Japanese will bring over a few things I miss about Japan: paper stores that have nothing to do with scrapbooking, hanafuda, Ayako Miyawaki exhibits, Gegege no Kitaro, Doraemon comics, real Japanese onsens, Japanese panties (more comfortable and pretty than ours), and good customer service.

Sinister Rodent

2007-06-21T22:24:00.001-07:00

It's the Dramatic Chipmunk.

(Thank you, Moofie.)

Update: Many people have noticed a resemble of the so-called "chipmunk" to Alfred Hitchcock.

Speaking of Death

2007-06-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Before I threw out my alumni magazine, I read the obituaries as I always do. I figure if anyone's gone to the trouble of living, someone may as well acknowledge their efforts.

Most people live long and full lives. Some recent graduates lived shockingly short lives. Being a university alumni magazine, everyone details the direction in which their degrees took them. The most interesting people are the ones who traveled. The other interesting people are the complainers: i.e., Mary Joe Loukins soon learned that the Toronto theatre world was full of back-stabbing whores. You know there are great stories behind those obituaries.

The latest issue (pdf) had a couple of well-written obituaries, of people whom all of us should regret their passing.

First is Percy Saltzman who died at 91 this January. A Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame inductee, Mr. Saltzman was a 1934 BA.

He was Canada’s first tv weatherman, and with his first broadcast in 1952 was also
the first person to appear live on Canada’s tv screens. His weather show, thought likely too dull by programmers, became a hit that lasted 30 years. Many credit Saltzman for inventing the funny, engaging, rather odd persona weather reporters have been using on tv ever since. In the early days, he used no gadgetry, only a chalk
board. He joked that his shtick was a stick of chalk. To signify the end of each performance, he’d toss the chalk into the air and catch it.

He wasn't just a weatherman:

One of the documentaries he wrote and narrated was a review of Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s first book, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male. “I used all the polysyllabic provocative porno phraseology I could get away with,” he said. It won the Ohio State University Award for a radio documentary.

Then there is John Sieburth who passed away last December, aged 79, from dementia, sadly enough. A marine microbiologist, Mr. Sieburth discovered the algae that destroys shellfish (calling it brown tide) and was something of a class clown:

In a New York Times obituary, Douglas Martin described an incident at UBC illustrative of Sieburth’s humour and independent spirit: “He wrote a thesis on the life forms in a guinea pig’s intestines, and played a practical joke on his entomology professor by gluing together parts of different insects.”

I like how his curiosity led him to discoveries:

[H]is curiosity would lead him to Antarctica to study penguins, having heard that these birds’ intestines contained no bacteria.....He discovered that the penguins ate krill, that krill contains acrylic acid, and that the acid acts as a natural antibiotic.

Even his hobbies were cool:

When he wasn’t researching, he enjoyed building boats, blacksmithing and carving whale teeth.

Midlife Crisis

2007-06-19T11:13:00.000-07:00

Now that I am married, I get asked if I feel any different.

No, there's really no difference except in other people's perceptions. For example, people keep insisting on changing my name, to which I always explain that I kept my name because I am not some patriarchy-loving mercenary wuss who ditches her family and throws away her ethnic background. That usually puts a stop to those conversations.

There's no stopping being called "Mrs." or "Doamna." Yes, there is "Ms." in English (though not in Romanian), which I've always used and I will continue using. However, there is a substrate of women who are virulently oppose anything that might suggest females can actually be their own people. I get letters addressed to Mrs. Maktaaq or Mrs. Maktaaq-Matt or - implying that I have completely disappeared as my own entity - Mrs. Matt. No sign of my name, because my life before marriage doesn't count. Of course, I should be grateful that I have a man and that I won't be a homeless bag lady spinster when I am 70.* Most annoyingly has been my now-former travel agent who, upon hearing why I was booking a trip for two, started cracking boss jokes. As in:

Travel Agent: Does the boss know you're the one booking the honeymoon?

Maktaaq: Fuck you, he doesn't care.

Travel Agent: Maybe you better check with the boss before you decide on the details all by yourself.

Maktaaq: Just sell me the damn tickets.

Travel Agent: I don't know if I can do that without permission from your boss.

Maktaaq: Look, here's my credit card number, bitch.

Travel Agent: Can I just call the boss to make sure you're allowed to spend money when he's not around?

Yeah, she got the last laugh. She put "Mrs." on all the tickets.

Almost as bad as having my life obliterated with the disappearance of my name, "Mrs." makes me feel old.

Even before the marriage, I did the calculations. Thirty-two, an average Canadian female life-span of 75, plus 5 years owing to my two grandmothers, this gives me another 48 years, 47 now that I am 33. The death clock gives me, more exactly, until Wednesday, August 27, 2053. That's less than 46 years.

I once read somewhere that time until about a human's twenties, takes a long time to unfold. After that, as humans age, time seems to speed up. Taking my life up until 25 (when things suddenly sped up), I felt that I lived, say, double my years. So at 25, I felt like I'd lived through 50 years. With time left over, if it goes twice as fast, my 46 years will feel like only 23 years.

My life as I had known it changed drastically at 23. I got my first professional job, I met my first fiance, I stopped drawing, and my traveling days dwindled. Before that, I was something of a jet-setter; to be very cliche, Europe was my playground. I wrote books, drew illustrations for others' books, sketched in gardens, painted, and shocked with bombastic political speeches.

Now? I am lucky if I vacuum the whole house in a day. Ok, I also play more boardgames. But any real accomplishments? I managed to be in Africa twice, though I hardly roughed it. Even when I accidentally drank Ethiopian water, my diarrheal urges kindly waited until I was within 3 feet of a working toilet to strike.

And from here on it looks worse. I have a house, so I am a slave to my mortgage for the next 25 years. That's more than half of my alloted remaining time. That's time I should be working two jobs to ensure that I can pay the bills. Luckily I won't be having kids, so that time is freed up. For the second job. What can I possibly accomplish to make these remaining years count for something?

Travel, that's what. Not just continental, boring North American travel, where New York is not really all that different from Port Coquitlam, British Columbia. Travel to countries where the language barrier leaves you petrified that you just ordered roast guinea pig for breakfast. Travel to countries where their toothpaste is your butt plug.

The problem is traveling to new places. Sure, the Scandinavian countries and a few tidbits in Africa are still on my list. But Russia? Sorry, you got demoted. Better luck next lifetime. I can't waste my precious leftover years on new places. I've got probably fewer than twenty travels left this lifetime.**

Romania is obviously good for another 2 trips at least, before my parents leave it for good and the last of my Romanian friends pass away. That leaves me with eighteen.

I want to see Ethiopia, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, and Italy at least one more time before I die. That's leaving me down to less than ten travels.

But wait, how I can I live knowing that I will only see Venice or Budapest only once more in this lifetime? What if Venice and Rome and Padova are behind me, I've just blown my last chance at seeing these cities, and I will die without ever saying goodbye? Will I lie on my deathbed, aghast that I didn't eschew my life of leisure in Canada for a chance at homelessness in the alleys of Venice? Won't the pigeons of San Marco starve without me?

Unfortunately, the travel agent won't sell me any more tickets.

*Mind you, this blog post might ensure that I will be a homeless bag lady spinster sooner than that. I think, with all my friends changing their names, Matt might feel he's getting short-changed.

**Calculated at about one trip every two years.

$52.75

2007-06-11T21:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my grandmother spilled a pan flaming with an oil fire on her Persian rug. To hide the rug stains, my mother and I had to turn the rug around, so that the couch would cover the dots of grease. To move the rug, we had to pull it out from under her wall unit.

The cabinets weighed something in the vicinity of well-fed bison. When we opened the cabinets, we discovered my grandmother's collection of crystal, porcelain and fine china. We had known she collected ethnic dolls from around the world - this once was the default staple of souvenir shopping while on vacation, allowing us to quickly identify and eliminate the task of buying for grandma. The glass- and chinaware was new to us.

Hours later, I assigned a family friend the task of counting all the coins I found in the wall unit. My grandmother's compulsive tic, I learned, involves emptying out her pockets in whatever glass/china/porcelain knickknack lies nearby. Every container held at least penny.

By the end of the day, we procured $53 in pennies, nickels and dimes.

Proof That Italians Have Good Taste

2007-06-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Europe has improved since the last time I was there. There's hardly any more smoking around and there are recycling bins everywhere.

Likewise, I've whittled down my art history snobbery to a sharp disgust at the High Renaissance. Michelangelo, that fucker, his ceiling doodles suck. Give me Fra Angelico any day.

Unimaginably Awful Hippo Death

2007-04-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

When I was eight, I went to the dentist, submitted to the tortures and then the dentist reaching over to his desk, opened a drawer and allowed me to choose a toy. I chose the orange hippo.

For years, the hippo - an eraser presumably - was my companion. No bigger than one of my finger joints, his soft rubberiness made him fun to chew one. I even almost bit off his right leg. To this day it hangs on with a sliver.

When I grew up, I put away my childish things. The hippo went into a box with an unlikely companion.

Recently, I opened the box. The hippo and his companion, a rather malignant insect-man hybrid with shoulder pads to rival any samurai overlord, have melted into each other. Or rather, the bug man has melted into the hippo.

Staring into the human face below the bug man's insectoid visage, I see pure evil, a diabolic evil.

The hippo hasn't melted into the bug man. It's a one-sided deal with the bug man excreting his digestive ooze, in order to liquefy the hapless mammal. I doubt the bug man even needs the nourishment.

Yet, for years, locked in slimed embrace, the hippo has suffered, emitting unheard screams of horror like the frozen Incan mummies.

Zombie Update

2007-04-02T12:17:00.001-07:00

Ok, ok, I am calming down from the news.

28 Days Later has a sequel. 28 Weeks Later is coming out in the next month. Yay! More zombies! Er, more zombie-like* induced armageddons! Yay!

You can see the trailer here. Ha ha. More humans get it. Features lots of running around by protagonists, with no really secure place to hide.

Just as pleasing is that there are at least four other zombie movies at some stage of production or script work right now:

reader input requested for the second draft of the Autumn script;
a Dawn of the Dead remake sequel called Army of the Dead;
Diary of the Dead, a new George Romero one that goes back to the first, low level zombie outbreak (as seen in Night of the Living Dead), this time following around a group of film students;
Day of the Dead, which is presumably a remake of Romero's 1985 Day of Dead and starring the Dawn of the Dead remake's Ving Rhames;
a scriptwriter is doing a go-over on World War Z, written by Mel Brooks' son Max (who is, of course, the author of the Zombie Survival Guide).

To tide me over for when these movies come out, my DVD player has been regurgitating the original Romero trilogy and I've been revisiting the remake Dawn of the Dead on Youtube. This week my favourites are Tumble-weed Studios remake dubs. The hilarious episodes are here, then here and the latest installation here. Thanks to Proxy Indian.

Over Christmas, I read David Wellington's novels Monster Island and Monster Nation, and Brian Keene's The Rising and City of the Dead. While I'm not a big fan of talking zombies, I appreciate that the zombies at least shambled about. My really big fear is thinking zombies that can run. That's a no-no. Anyhow, I have a review written on these books in one of my journals that I can't locate. I'll probably find it some time in the next six months.

PS I bought a house. It can be zombie-proofed in about half an hour.

*The infected in 28 Days Later are not technical Hollywood zombies (i.e. flesh-eating ghouls). They are not Caribbean zombies (i.e. people enslaved by magic). The 28 Days Later infected are simply crazy homicidal maniacs (boo). But they do run amok and turn everyone they bite into one of them (scary!).

**Zombie movies need to stop recycling zombie movie names.

Badgers? Badgers? We Don't Need No Stinking Badgers!

2007-03-19T21:22:00.000-07:00

Thank you to the two readers who asked for more posts. I am still not married yet - the wedding is in two months. However, there is a lot of planning that goes into these things, even for someone as rabidly opposed to the bride industry as me.

After heated discussions, door-slamming arguments and much chinaware-smashing conflict, I finally got my own way with the wedding. I decided to add a few of the elements I want at the wedding.

The bridal shower will definitely take place in a cemetery, followed by an infiltration of the abandoned Woodlands Hospital. To recreate that Session 9 feeling, I will hand out lobotomy picks and glass eyes at the beginning of the night. And, please, no flashlights.

The bachelorette will take place in the tundra. Ladies, we will all board a tundra buggy and begin the 4-day drive to the Arctic on the Friday night prior to the wedding.

Photo courtesy vmselde

On Wednesday we will feed polar bears with the dead goats (these will be carried on the buggy's roof to maximize room for our luggage). On the way back, free goat blood facials for everyone!

At the rehearsal, taking the whole groom-must-not-see-the-bride thing to the logical conclusion, everyone will wear blindfolds. The rehearsal will function like a Marco Polo game:

Priest: You may now kiss the bride.
Matt: Marco!
Maktaaq: Polo!

At the rehearsal dinner, we can throw toast around when anyone says "toast."

Photo courtesy Ria3

Instead of releasing doves after the ceremony, Matt and I will release badgers. As per a suggestion from our friend L2, "Instead of wedding favors, your ankles have been donated to the Feed a Canadian Badger Fund."

The reception will be on on a barge of lifeboats strung together. I've already rented 3 lifeboats that survived the Titanic, Andrea Doria and Empress of Ireland sinkings.

Instead of the first dance, all the guests will play a game of Crisco Twister.

Throwing bouquets is for wussy brides. I am tossing a dead goat over my shoulder so the single women can play a nice game of buzkashi, the Afghan national sport of horseback goat-grabbing. The single men can play the part of the horses.

In some cultures, on the morning after the wedding, the bedsheet is shown to the guests as proof of the bride's virginity. Since, in our culture, we've got different priorities, we will instead show a bedsheet smeared with five gallons of cum.

Thank you to my best friend, Pugshot, for actually getting me interested in the wedding. Your enthusiasm is making this ordeal much, much more bearable.

Moles Taken From Bush's Face Are Benign

2007-02-23T22:37:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy StarrGazr

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The two moles removed from President Bush's left temple were found to be non-threatening, the White House said Saturday.

The bald mammals were removed Friday during a brief procedure performed at the White House. It took just a day for tests to show the moles were benign, said White House spokesman Alex Conant.

Bush has had several other small animals removed before: a precocious marmot on his left arm in August, a non-odoriferous skunk growth on his neck in July, small lions from his left shoulder and face in 2004, and others from his face in December 2001. None has been carnivorous (the lions are sworn vegans), but the president has regular checkups to guard against any animals evolving to more dangerous stages.

This time, Bush noticed one of the new moles and showed it to his vet, who recommended that it and a second mole be removed.

When the president was asked what has become of the two moles, he shrugged. The moles could not be reached for comment.

Article from here.

Image courtesy Niels van Eijk & Miriam van der Lubbe

Of Book Foisting and Opinionated Persians

2007-02-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

When my boss lent me Honeymoon in Purdah by Allison Wearing, I knew I had to put down all the other books I was reading - books foisted on me by insistent friends, books I have struggled through for months and sometimes years, books I took out from the library with the idea that their presence will fuel the urgency of getting through books faster, of reading as much as I can of the important literature before death.

I pushed aside the book I am supposed to review, our book club book, and the 400-page paintbox travelogue. I will procrastinate on In Cold Blood for another month. Matt's presents of Catch-22 and Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell remain on the shelves. My project of reading The Exploits of Moominpappa simultaneously in English, Chinese and French would likewise have to wait. Honeymoon in Purdah it would have to be.

A travel memoir of Canadian Wearing's visit to Iran, ostensibly on her honeymoon, the book thankfully pays little heed to adjective-dripping descriptions of the tourist sites. It instead concentrates on the conversations with Iranians, most met through chance encounters.

Honeymoon in Purdah was always a book I wanted to read. It remained, however, in the second tier, a book to read once I'd consumed the classic Western Canon. It isn't merely because of brown-nosing that this book has moved to the forefront of my book list.

Though I do have to admit: for the first time in three jobs, I am not at the height of my career powers and I need to improve my prospects.

Luckily, this book was very enjoyable. Thus lessening the guilt associated with snubbing the other books. In fact, I have already bookmarked four conversations from the book that I want to quote on this blog. Thus:

In one of her unnamed towns, Wearing and her husband meet an old man in a mosque. The old man - a mollah - invites them to a free lunch, in what seems to be an everyday occurrence in Iran. After the meal, the conversation begins. The mollah gives his opinions on Western culture.

"....I have lived with these people, these comfortable people, with their houses and cars and televisions and foods from packages. I have seen the eyes of these people, and my friends, I did not feel happiness. Pleasure, yes, pleasure they can buy on every corner. But they are not happy. They eat and eat and eat and are not nourished. They talk of a future time when they will be happy, when they have this, or when that is finished, or when they will be able to afford this, or when they will look different, or when they will have more time to enjoy, or when they are more comfortable. But there is no today. Today is always unsatisfied." (Page 95-96)

He goes on to say:

"In death is the vision of life. I have watched your people die. And they do not die in peace. They do not want to die because they feel they have not lived. They have not done enough to make them satisfied with their lives. They live in regret and hurried efforts to make their lives complete. They do not accept their death, because they did not accept their life. Even in death their souls are not free." (Page 96)

Earlier in the book, Wearing recalls a Pakistani artist wasting away in Montreal, "tired of living in such a violent country." This poor friendless man shows us Canadians how we truly are:

"Canada is full of violent cowards. People believe they are gentle, but they attack in quiet ways. They use their intellect, their knowledge, always trying to prove they are smarter, more important. The man with no ego is the gentle man. Canada is a land of civilized barbarians." (Page 11)

Though many of the women understandably complain about the hejab, the chaador, the morality police, and the mut'a marriages (quickie marriages, early in the revolution arranged to deflower young female prisoners so that their virginity would not exempt them from execution), one complainer points out:

"After revolution, everything is different. Many things are much worse, oh much worse, but some things, some important things are okay, more true. It is a difficult life, but some things are more honest. People are more clear, less artificial." (Page 241)

Now that I finished reading my boss' book, a coworker has been threatening me. "So, have you read The Historian? Ah yes, the vampire novel about Vlad the Impaler that's "a fine Bordeaux to Dan Brown's overcaffeinated Diet Coke [i.e. The Da Vinci Code]."

"You know," he went on, "Everyone in our section has read it. Including the big boss."

Alrighty! The Historian it shall be. One day.

Year of the Pig

2007-02-18T08:50:00.000-08:00

Edmonton - To celebrate the Year of the Pig and to show our porcine compatriots that we care about them, the province of Alberta - the so-called Texas of Canada - moved to protect pigs during their year. A new law has been introduced that requires death certificates for pigs, including butchered pigs.

Alberta Vital Statistics maintains a record (registration) of all deaths that occur in Alberta. While the sex of the animal and the date of death can be easily for the porcine death certificate, other information is harder to obtain. For example, simply finding the full name of the hog may be a problem, especially in the faceless, nameless environment of the factory farm. With the introduction of this new law, farmers are scrambling to name all their pigs.

"I have to carry a damned baby name book with me," says disgruntled farmer James Parkinson of Lethbridge. "And even with the baby book, I am out of choices. I have taken to renting Bollywood films for more name ideas."

Another farmer, Red Deer's Daniel Rooney, explains, "Who wants to say they are anti-pig? But at the same time, when you have ten thousand porkers ready for the cans of beans and weiners, can you really distinguish between Billie Bob and Billie Rae?"

The new law has failed to provide farmers with the answer as how to approach the burial information of the deceased. Alberta Vital Statistics spokesperson Dr. Ben Woczinski explained options in last night's press conference. The law requires that every pig part carry its own death certificate. Whether it's a loin going to the local supermarket, or the various lips and assholes that comprise a hot dog, consumers may receive from one to thousands of death certificates per pork purchase.

"The consumer has ten days to fill out the burial information for the pig and return it to the office of Vital Stats," says Dr. Woczinski. While urban dwellers are scrambling to trace their toilet outputs to their respective sanitation centres, small town and isolated citizens are merely reinstating the outhouse.

Even pre-Chinese New Year pigs aren't exempt. "All finds of unaccounted-for pig parts will be considered homicides," says the Calgary Police Department's Sgt. Jean Lagrande, returning from a police New Year banquet. He adds: "Heck, the Year of the Pig is also good for us."

Also happy with the new law are vegetarians, vegans and the chubby men who want to canoe Alberta's remote rivers. Rats, long banned in the province, are also anticipating a law repealing their segregation in 2008, the Year of the Rat.

Reaching Daisy Mae, a hog on Canmore's Triple Q Farms, for comment, the young mother of 39 had this to say: "Oink."

Impossible Demands

2007-02-09T00:30:00.000-08:00

Image courtesy Krisdemeanor

This wedding business is depressing me. I've been to five wedding gown shops and the frocks especially depress me. Oh, Modern Fashion, why do you punish those of us veering from the bone path? Come on, back cleavage? Sheesh.

Now my sister has a dress that's pici în cur. For those of you who don't know Romanian, this means she'll be looking hot, which always means hotter than me, which in turn means the, by comparison, I'll be very obviously the ugly one, which, taking into account that I'll be the bride, means that my ugliness will be magnified to the most humiliating degree ever.

Basically I've given up on the wedding thing. From a position of hardly caring, I now care even less.

In a previous state of wedding depression, my friend Barb recommended the Indie Bride website. Now that I've plummeted to the Mariana Trench of wedding depression, I've been exploring the forums, trying to find the other tomboys forced to partake in the ceremony of humiliation.

The most uplifting find was a conversation among those who just want to give up on reality and dwell in fantasy. Readers, exasperated with their own realities, added their own lists of impossible demands.

I decided to play this new game. I picked over the other readers' lists and compiled the desires that matched my own into my list. I also added my own desires.

Thus, Reality, here are my demands.

I want:

- to have all my friends and family live within walking distance.
- to not have to drive so much.
- be able to teleport all over the world.
- Ivan the Cat and Lucian the Hamster join Matt and I in our old age - in other words, screw the brief hamster lifespan!
- daily massages.
- to live in Europe. With my new library.
- to effortlessly learn new languages.
- to read faster.
- all misogynists, anti-abortionists, racist losers, torturers, rapists, pedophiles, neocons to simply disappear off the face of the earth.
- to have Toblerone, Cadburies, Godiva chocolates, Raffaello, European-manufactured Nutella (the North American and Australian ones taste different), Manner wafers and the mysterious Belgian spreadable chocolate that comes in a cubic jar whenever I want, but never to gain weight or develop diabetes.
- more Tex Mex, dim sum, Japanese home-cooked, Taiwanese, Malaysian, Indian, Thai, Tunisian and Hungarian meals.
- to come up with the words I need to complete my novel.
- to have more people like my novel than people who hate it.
- to only have to do the interesting, rewarding aspects of my job.
- to think faster so I can write faster.
- for all restaurants to serve only free-range, organic, ethically-killed meat so I can enjoy a damn steak.
- to write letters to all my long lost friends around the world before it's too late or they forget me.
- to be able to watch my Japanese neice grow up (I miss her terribly).
- my parents, Matt's parents and my former Japanese in-law parents to live very long and very healthy lives.
- all my friends from Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Romania, Moldova, Ethiopia, Estonia, Poland, the US, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Italy, France, Norway and Austria to all be in the same place one day for the biggest party of my life.
- my parents to retire.
- my grandmother to make some friends so she can stop being depressed all the time.

What are your impossible demands?

About Slow Movies

2007-02-08T00:08:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching the 2003 Norwegian film Kitchen Stories (or, more correctly, Salmer fra kjøkkenet).

This film about a Swedish study of Norwegian bachelor habits zeroes in on an old hermit called Isak who repeatedly foils quiet researcher Folke's attempts to observe him from his high chair in the kitchen corner. From that premise, the friendship between the two men develops.

The ambiguous ending, however, sent me running for the internet. Never mind the spoilers (because this is a movie you should see if you like movies about unfolding friendships). What shocked me were the comments that this movie was "slow."

Huh?

A friendship developing between two unlikely characters is slow? What, they were expected to hit it off from the first? To automatically become friends?

My best friend told me, years after we met, that when she first met me I was standoffish. I was shocked that anyone would mistake supershy me for some snob.

Our friendship didn't happen from our first meeting - admittedly, the gossip had her to be some crazy slut and I, a poor judge of character, had no idea what to believe. The cautious start to our friendship, begun when she approached me - a stranger! - with a problem she faced. And from that start, I've passed seven joyful years for having such a wonderful person in my life.

Watching a friendship unfold is not like watching creepy losers dealing drugs outside cornerstores or one-night stand who morphs into a bunny killer or whatever else the people criticizing this movie feel is relationship material. Real friendships simmer for a while; one friend helps the other, then the other returns the favour, there's a quiet celebration, and so on.

Then again, I think Emma is one of the greatest novels ever written: a novel about a girl who slowly develops a crush she can't even place until someone threatens to take it away and that crush turns into love. And The Ambassadors was a thrill as American naïveté fails, articulated thoroughly, when confronted with the seductive charms of Europe. As for Moby Dick, swoon! Each chapter, gloriously different from one another, drips with suspense until you finally get to that loveable whale (and that teasing start with Queequeg and Ishmael in bed).

Unlike my own fiction (going badly, by the way), these stories tell their protagonists' stories with enough detail to make them believable. This is advice given to amateur writers. Something along the lines that more detail - relevant detail, I may add - makes a character universal.

Or could it really be that I like slow stories? After all I defied Siskel and Ebert and found The Age of Innocence to move at a swift canter. Recently, too, I have managed to trudge my way through Dracula, another milestone in the literature of boredom.

Maybe now is the time to r-attempt Silas Marner, or to watch Kristin Lavransdatter again and not get drowsy. Or maybe I should re-watch Basic Instinct, the only movie I have ever fallen asleep while watching.

To Do List

2007-01-24T18:55:00.000-08:00

Matt left me a to do list:

Change oil in car
Hug Matt
Inquire about lifetime membership to the Cockroach Museum
Walk the hamsters
Braid pubic hair
Sponsor "Stop Smoking" program for BC Salmon
Become more tolerant of minorities and lactose
Research guinea pig bacon as a small serving alternative to pork bellies
Protest urinary incontinence
Give coconuts a Brazilian wax
Review emergency bowel procedures

Protecting the Dwindling Mummy Population

2007-01-19T19:55:00.000-08:00

In my craze for all things zombie, I've neglected the majestic mummy!

If nothing is done, experts say, the Egyptian mummy will soon go the way of the Bavarian lycanthrope or the Transylvanian vampire, and vanish forever.

.....

"My grandchildren have still never seen a mummy," said [Afterlife Preservation Society president James Amarcas], who vividly recalls his first mummy sighting in 1947, when he was just 3 years old. "These terrible monsters are little more than a legend to them. It's sad to think they might never see the bloodthirsty march of an undead Egyptian prince on a cool, calm night."

.....

In response, a coalition group has proposed the so-called Mummy Conservation Act to the Egyptian Parliament, which aims to create a refuge to protect mummies, relocating them to reserves where they can guard their stone amulets in peace.

"In addition, inhabited tombs would be put on 24-hour surveillance, mummies would be tagged with tracking collars, and many items would be banned from all tombs," Amarcas said. "Especially torches, as mummies are very susceptible to fire."

From here.

Béla Lives!

2007-01-18T23:38:00.001-08:00

I finished reading Arthur Lenning's The Count: The Life and Films of Bela "Dracula" Lugosi about a week ago. Lennig, a child fan of Lugosi's, met his hero and actually became friends with the Hungarian actor in the 1940s.

Lennig's biography of Béla (pronounced "Bay-la") is what you would expect from a friend who wants to salvage something of his hero's reputation. The writer spends little time on the five wives and how the first four became ex Mrs. Lugosis: one returns to Hungary and the reader never hears from her again. When did the divorce happen? Or was Lugosi a bigamist when he remarried a year later?

Then there is Lugosi's drug addiction. The actor, after his fourth divorce and the loss of his wife's help in curbing his drug use, committed himself to Los Angeles General Hospital's mental health and hygiene department on April 21, 1955 (a year before his death).

It's not clear when Lugosi's addiction to morphine blossomed: he himself hinted at the years 1935, 1938, 1944 and 1948. Lennig, though, a true friend, estimates the last year (page 275), to stress that the strain of his failed career was what drove him to drugs.

What really did in the vestiges of Lugosi's career was was the 1943 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Playing Frankenstein's monster with the brain of Ygor implanted in his head, Lugosi performed the part of Shelley's original talking monster. However, Universal ultimately removed his spoken scenes from the film, leaving plot holes that studio heads then blamed on Lugosi. Thus, Lugosi's career with that studio came to an end.

In the same year, Lugosi filmed Columbia's The Return of the Vampire. This film ran afoul of the critics, driving another stake into Lugosi's career.

It was only in 1948 that Lugosi's agent, Don Marlowe, convinced Universal president to hire Lugosi for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Marlowe "barged" into the president's office, explained that Lugosi had saved the studio in 1931, that he only made $3500 off the classic film, while Universal reaped millions, and that the studio owed the old man. The studio laid off Ian Keith from the role and replaced him with Lugosi. This meagre offering would be Lugosi's last major studio role.

One can appreciate Lennig's efforts in tracking down Lugosi's oeuvre and the gusto with which he describes the plot of each film, lovingly detailing how Lugosi would pronounce every cheesy mad scientist cliche with theatrical reverence.

Béla Lugosi not only defined the role of Dracula, starred in the first zombie movie, and perfected the mad scientist, he was also the first Ygor, in 1939's Son of Frankenstein.

In the end, Lugosi's contributions to American culture have created a career for Gary Larson; spawned movies, songs, books, toys, postage stamps; gave Transylvania's tourism board a raison d'être; and permanently removed Dracula's moustache.

Some highlights from the biography and the quirky scripts:

Premiering on December 19, 1926, was The Devil in the Cheese, in which Lugosi appeared a Greek bandit masquerading as a priest. Worth noting is the synopsis of the play that Arthur Lennig describes: "The father, to find out what makes his daughter tick, eats a bit of mummified Egyptian cheese and so frees the little god Min, who subsequently takes Quigley into his daughter Goldina's head." If only her head contained anything of interest: "She dreams of adventure with her young hero on the South Seas, on a desert island, and finally in New York; she also envisions cooking, having babies, nursing, and some politicking from which her husband becomes president."

In the 1937 S.O.S. Coast Guard, Bela Lugosi played the mad inventor Bornoff who's involved in the disintegration gas weapons trade with Morovania (page 208). Who cares about the show. It's Morovania I want to fixate upon. Morovania is obviously a combination of Moldova and Romania, in the spirit of Molvanîa and Syldavia (Transylvania + Moldova - though more Balkanized than the real Romanian countries). In 1943, he finally played a real Romanian in The Return of the Vampire.

Another script to drool over is 1941's The Devil Bat: "Bristling with passionate resentment as only Lugosi can, he seeks revenge by breeding giant bats and giving his enemies a shaving lotion that attracts the creatures."

Oh the possibilities! Lennig recalls, on page 241, the old adage that "No one would ever go broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

(P.S. Dear Béla, though some people claim you have some sort of double-chinned-ness happening, I have to disagree. You were one sexy bastard and you stole the show in Dracula. Love, FG Maktaaq.)

Games that Hamsters Refuse to Play

2007-01-09T22:21:00.001-08:00

Matt and I thought we came up with the cleverest game ever to play with a hamster.

We thought the hamsters would play along.

Hamsters really like to make nests out of tissue paper; my hamsters get a wad of toilet paper a week to build their nest; thus, we concluded, a whole roll of toilet paper would be a dream come true to a hamster.

We thought we would document the daily unraveling of the toilet paper roll and that the hamster would fill up the cage with scrunched up bits of toilet paper.

It would have been so cute.

Last January, when Crenguța still lived, we awarded her with a whole roll:

She tore off a bit of toilet paper. Then she stopped.

You can see the nest in the top left corner. (All the black oblong shapes are hamster poops.)

This is as big as her nest ever got:

This January, we decided to replicate the experiment with Lucian.

After a week, here's what his cage looks like:

The little guy only took what he needed. In fact, less than he needed. He built up the rest of his nest with the newspaper that lines his cage.

The hamsters' lack of a sense of fun leaves me disappointed in their kind. It may be a generalization, but I suspect the entire species of being no fun.

Where's the wanton greed? Where's the unfettered extravagance?

Hamsters have a lot to learn from humans.

Here's something to keep in mind, hamsters of the world:

Each American [human] will consume 700,000 kilograms (1.5 million lbs.) of minerals (mostly sand and gravel), and 24 billion BTUs of energy — equivalent to 4000 barrels of oil (40% in petroleum products, 25% each in natural gas and coal). In a lifetime, an average American [human] will eat 25,000 kilograms (55,000 lbs.) of plant foods (20% each in vegetables, sweeteners, fruits & juices, grains, and other plant products) and 28,000 kilograms (60,000 lbs.) of animal products (70% milk, 7% each beef, chicken and pork), provided in part by slaughtering 2000 animals (>90% poultry).*

Hamsters, you only have, on average, a two-year lifespan vs. a human's 70-80 years. I highly doubt you're even close to a two-year-old human's consumption levels.

Yeah, sure, you are eating your way to that 25,000 kg of plant foods, but have you stopped to think about how close you are to slaughtering your allotted 2000 animals? I haven't seen any hamsters lately sinking their teeth into any fat juicy steaks.

And how about those forests? Sheesh, you're making us humans do all the work in destroying them. Can't you at least do your part? A whole roll of toilet paper and you're like, what, saving it for something?

Waste already! It's so much fun! That's why we live in a free country! We can do whatever we ---

Hey! Punk! I'm talking to you! Are you even listening?

Aww, screw it!

He went to sleep.

*From "The Environmental Consequences of Having a Baby in the United States", via Dave Pollard, himself via Darren Barefoot.

I'm Sticking to Veggie Dogs

2007-01-08T15:08:00.001-08:00

After years of curiosity, I finally watched the 1931 film M.

The Criterion copy reads: "Behind every great suspense thriller lurks the shadow of M. In this, Fritz Lang's first sound film, Peter Lorre delivers a haunting performance as the cinema's first serial killer, a whistling pedophile hunted by the police and brought to trial by the forces of the Berlin underworld."

I've ony known Peter Lorre in Arsenic and Old Lace, Casablanca and the dreadful 1939 Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (where he plays a Japanese man), and thus saw him more as a creepy gagster. Now I know how far creepy goes in describing him.

But what I didn't know is that he was Jewish and fled Germany soon after the film's release, supposedly warned by Josef Goebbels himself.

Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in Rózsahegy, in 1904 a part of the Hungarian part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, now Ruzomberok in Slovakia. By 22, he was a bank clerk by day and an actor by night (from The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre by Stephen Youngkin).

The actor fled first to Paris in February 1933, then to London to play in Hitchcock's 1934 The Man Who Knew Too Much, and, in July of that same year, he made his way across the Atlantic to the US.

The 1933 Nazi propaganda film, The Eternal Jew, used his image in M as the stereotypical Jew, and the film was finally banned in July 1934.

He also played the first Bond villain, Le Chiffre, in the 1954 Casino Royale. He inspired numerous cartoon versions of himself, in Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck episodes, in Porky Pig's portrayal of Mr. Motto, a fish in Dr. Seuss's Horton Hatches an Egg, the Booberry cereal mascot, Ren in The Ren & Stimpy Show, a character in Corpse Bride, and others.

Much like Bela Lugosi, he never managed to avoid typecasting as a villain and later as a parody of himself. As one critic put it, Youngkin, the author of the exhaustive biography, wonders if Lorre thought "he should have stayed in Europe and faced Hitler."

Fritz Lang, the director, left in 1933, soon after Goebbels offered him (and he refused) the role of the director of the German Cinema Institute. The position eventually went to Leni Riefenstahl.

M was based on a number of Weimar murderers:

Peter Kürten (1883-1932) - The Düsseldorf Vampire attacked men, women and especially little girls, starting with a burglary in 1913 and sometimes stabbing as many as three people in a day. On his way to the guillotine, he asked, "Will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck?"

Fritz Haarmann (1879-1925) The Butcher of Hannover, had a Hitler moustache like Kürten, but got away with more murders because he killed vagrants and male prostitutes. He killed his victims in true vampire fashion, nipping them at the neck, and later sold their clothes and their flesh as "pork." Once, a merchant took the "meat" to the police to air his suspicion that it was human flesh; the police said it was definitely pork.

Karl Denke (1870-1924) This organ player killed and ate at least thirty people, sometimes selling the meat on the loca market. The Mass Murderer of Munstberg hanged himself in his cell the night of his arrest. He had a full beard.

Carl Grossmann (1863-1921?) The Berlin Butcher also committed suicide in his cell; police found the remains and blood of at least four victims in his apartment; he may have killed up to fifty young women. He sold the flesh on the market, and, like Haarman, throwing away the "non-edible" bits into a river. Now, are you ready for this? He also had a hot dog stand. The extent of his facial hair is unknown.

Peter Kürten is most often recalled as the single inspiration, though someone pointed out that the children's rhyme at the beginning used Schwarzer Mann ("Black Man") which originally was "Haarmann" for Fritz Haarman.

One of the early sound films, M uses sound to heighten the foreboding, as detailed in a Criterion essay - in the opening shot, the children sing of the murderer and how he chops his victims; the mother's frantic calls for her daughter over a shot of an empty attic; the murderer's whistling before we even see him. Visually, I was delighted with the idea of the M and of the would-be victim politely and unwittingly handing Lorre his dropped knife.

On to the Merry-Go-Rounds!

2007-01-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

Maktaaq: I've made real progress with my novel. Listen to this: instead of November - minor character description - main character introduction - visitors - horrors! I altered the order of the first few chapters to tier two character quirk description - November - visitors - second tier two character quirk description - horrors!

Matt: That sounds good.

Maktaaq: Yes, I am excited! The new order seems more dynamic. I've been researching bearded women, Guevedoche - those Latin American girls who at puberty sprout penises, the auroch - the national animal of Moldova, and merry-go-rounds.

Matt: So, um, why you are you reading about cesarians?

Maktaaq: Oh. They're horrific. Listen to this:

You press a No. 10 blade down through the flesh, along a side-to-side line low on the bulging abdomen. You divide the skin and golden fat with clean, broad strokes. Using a white gauze pad, you stanch the bleeding points, which appear like red blossoms. You slice through the fascia covering the abdominal muscle, a husk-like fibrous sheath, and lift it to reveal the beefy red muscle underneath. The rectus abdominis muscle lies in two vertical belts that you part in the middle like a curtain, metal retractors pulling left and right. You cut through the peritoneum, a thin, almost translucent membrane. Now the uterus — plum-colored, thick, and muscular — gapes into view. You make a small initial opening in the uterus with the scalpel, and then you switch to bandage scissors to open it more swiftly and easily. It’s as if you were cutting open a tough, leathery fruit.

Ha! A plum-coloured uterus! A tough, leathery fruit! It's such an old metaphor for the female reproduction system!

Matt: Huh? Your novel?

Maktaaq: Ok, yes. I've been having very severe writer's block. Here's my research on merry-go-rounds:

The earliest merry-go-round, with baskets hanging from a pole, appears in a Byzantine bas-relief from around 500 A.D.

The word comes from the Italian garosello and Spanish carosella ("little war").

The crusaders first saw Turkish and Arabian horsemen use the contraption as they practiced "attacking" enemies. The object was to successfully catch perfume-filled clay balls: good horsemen would not let the balls burst.

In Europe, the carousel was first kept secret within castle walls as a martial training device.

The first carousels used by civilians were made for royalty (i.e. Le Place du Carrousel in Paris, between the Tuileries and the Louvre).

Louis XIV gave (or inaugurated? received??) the first one in 1662.

The first carousels were moved by people, horses or mules.

George Alexander Stevens, a poet and all-round theatre dude, first used, in a 1729 poem, the word merry-go-round. He also performed his Lecture on Heads, "a satirical 'lecture' on heads and fashion, which parodied the popularity of physiognomy," in 1764, travelling throughout Britain, Ireland, and to Boston and Philadelphia with the show. Read the lecture here.

Carousels flourished in the early nineteenth century.

Early merry-go-rounds had no platforms; "the animals would hang on poles or chains and fly out from the centrifugal force of the spinning mechanism, these are called 'flying horses' carousels."

The flying horse carousels operated with animals walking in a circle, or someone cranking or pulling ropes.

It was only in the mid-1800s that the platform appeared: "sitting on a suspended circular floor which was hanging from the centerpole; these machines were then steam powered."

Nineteenth century ads touted the merry-go-round as good for blood circulation.

The Columbia double-decker carousel was built in 1976.

The most lavish side of the horses is the Romance side and this faces the outside.

The outside horse behind the chariot is the Lead (King) Horse.

The benches (the chariots or gondolas) are the Lover's Seats.

From Wikipedia, History of Carousels, and the Merry-Go-Round Museum.

Hamsters that Mean Business

2007-01-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

Above: My former, very much feral hamster, Crenguţă.

Matt found this passage in David Foster Wallace's 1996 novel Infinite Jest (page 93):

It's a herd of feral hamsters, a major herd, thundering across the yellow plains of the southern reachs of the Great Concavity in what used to be Vermont, raising dust that forms a uremic-hued cloud with somatic shapes interpretable from as far away as Boston and Montreal. The herd is descended from two domestic hamsters set free by a Waterton NY boy at the beginning of the Experialist migration in the subsidized Year of the Whopper. The boy now attends college at Champaign IL and has forgotten that his hamsters were named Ward and June.

The noise of the herd is tornadic, locomotival. The expression on the hamsters' whiskered faces is businesslike and implacable - it's that implacable-herd expression. They thunder eastward across pedalferrous terrain that today is fallow, denuded. To the eat, dimmed by the fulvous cloud the hamsters send up, is the vivid verdant ragged outline of the annularly overfertilized forests of what used to be central Maine.

All these territories are now property of Canada.

With respect to a herd of this size, please exercise the sort of common sense that come to think of it would keep your thinking man out of the southwest Concavity anyway. Feral hamsters are not pets. They mean business. Wide berth advised. Carry nothing even remotely vegetablish if in the path of a feral herd. If in the path of such a herd, move quickly and calmly in a direction perpendicular to their own. If American, north is not advisable. Move south, calmly and in all haste, toward some border metropolis - Rome NNY or Glen Falls NNY or Beverly MA, say, or those bordered points between them at which the giant protective ATHSCME fans atop the hugely convex protective walls of anodized Lucite hold off the drooling and piss-colored [sic] bank of teratogenic Concavity clouds and move the bank well back, north, away, jaggedly, over your protected head.

Matt is already on page 103 and says tha hamsters have not returned.

Meanwhile, here's Lucian trying to look feral:

Burnt Rum Punch and Dracula

2007-01-05T01:26:00.000-08:00

Three months late, our little book club finally met tonight. The book for October had been Dracula. To celebrate the book, MaikoPunk, MaikoPunk's Husband, Matt and I held six commemorative activities:

1. We made a batch of mămăligă, which Jonathan Harker ate in Klausenburgh (or Cluj in northwestern Romania) a day before he met the count. Mămăligă is cornmeal (grits to southerners and polenta to Italians), which I served with sour cream and goaty feta cheese. If any had been left over, I could have eaten the rest with cold milk in the morning.

2. We made Bat Bites, a rum-and-cranberry concoction.

3. We made burnt rum punch. When Renfield meets Arthur Holmwood in chapter XVIII, he blurts out, of Arthur's father, "He was a man loved and honoured by all who knew him; and in his youth was, I have heard, the inventor of a burnt rum punch, much patronised on Derby night."

The Annotated Dracula provided a burnt rum punch recipe from The Art of British Cooking by Theodora FitzGibbon:

5 lemons
1/2 pound lump sugar
1 piece cinnamon stick
2 cups water
1 bottle rum

Rub lemons with the lumps of sugar until you have removed all the yellow zest. Put the lemony sugar into a saucepan with the lemon juice and the cinnamon stick; pour over the water and bring just to a boil. See that the lumps of sugar dissolve. Then add the rum, heat up, but do not boil, for fear of destroying the strength of the rum. Remove the cinnamon stick and serve hot.

I thought that, unlike paprika hendl (or paprika chicken) or impletata ("eggplant stuffed with forcemeat," or patlagele impulute, according to the Annotated Dracula), mentioned, with mămăligă, early in the novel, burnt rum punch sounded like something worth attempting.

No, it isn't. Burnt rum punch tastes like Vicks Cough Syrup.

4. We watched Nosferatu, the third-known film treatment of the novel. A 1920 Russian version and a 1921 Hungarian version by Karoly Lafthay called Drakula preceded the 1922 F. W. Murnau film. Most of us had seen this best of Dracula adapations numerous times; however, how can one not watch the classic again?

5. We watched Bela Lugosi's film White Zombie, which he filmed two years after he made Dracula. Tonight's crowd had all watched the 1931 film last October, so it was too soon for a re-viewing. White Zombie, however, was new to almost everybody except myself.

With Bela starring as zombie overlord 'Murder' Legendre, the Bela Lugosi school of acting is very much in evidence in this 1932 film. Lost until the 1960s, it is also currently the first known zombie film, albeit the zombies are of the voodoo variety and not the revenant ghouls.

6. We watched Freaks, directed by Tod Browning, the man who also did Dracula with Bela Lugosi. Of the treachery of trapeze artist Cleopatra, Matt said, "Seems like there's a special level of hell reserved for stealing a midget woman's man."

As for the real sideshow cast, in Cleopatra's words, "Great jumping Christmas!" Conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton learned self-hypnosis from Harry Houdini so they could spend time alone; Mexican pinhead Schlitze (or Simon Metz) dressed as a girl for most of his career; despite having no arms or legs, Prince Randian could really roll and light his cigarettes as seen in the film (he could also shave and paint). We all marvelled at the Half-Boy's grace (played by Johnny Eck). Browning himself was once a circus contortionist. He made only four more movies after Freaks.

*****

I was not able to find any of Bela Lugosi's other landmark films, Murders in the Rue Morgue or The Raven. I even went through Matt's WC Fields DVDs to try and find the 1933 International House in which, as General Nicholas Petronovich, Bela finally had the chance to break out of stereotype and act in a comedic role. No luck.

I do regret not borrowing the Spanish Drácula from the library. In 1930, while Bela and Browning were shooting the familiar Dracula during the day, a Spanish-language version with Spanish actors used the same set by night. Starring Carlos Villarías (who looks like Bela himself or Nicholas Cage, depending on the source) in the title role, the film's director George Melford knew no Spanish whatsoever.

Oddly enough, tonight we never got to doing the usual book club thing. We ran out of time to discuss What elements of the gothic genre are found in Dracula?, What is the significance of blood in Dracula? and What are the ways Dracula remains an icon in today's popular culture?

Oh well.

Our next book is Peter Høeg's Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow. On with the crotch-grabbing!

*****

Our previous bookclub meetings and books:

June: Margaret Atwood's The Edible Woman (and here)
July: Evelyne Lever's Marie Antoinette (not documented) with an initial foray into the attractiveness of Madame du Barry, some Zamor bashing, the deaths of Princesse de Lamballe and the Duc de Brissac, and the current vogue for Marie Antoinette.
August: Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down
September: Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (not documented)
October: Bram Stoker's Dracula with literary surprises and a Halloween diatribe.

Top Ten Food-Related Celebrity Vaginal Descriptions

2007-01-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

With all the recent flap about the combined crotches of Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, I am reminded of the words of Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali:

If you take uncovered meat and put it on the street, on the pavement, in a garden, in a park or in the backyard, without a cover and the cats eat it, is it the fault of the cat or the uncovered meat? The uncovered meat is the problem.

If the meat was covered, the cats wouldn't roam around it. If the meat is inside the fridge, they won't get it.

If the meat was in the fridge and it [the cat] smelled it, it can bang its head as much as it wants, but it's no use.

As if proving the truth of the Australian cleric's words, pervy types roam around seeking out celebrity upskirt photos.* They also tend to use similarly colourful and oddly hunger-inducing descriptions to explain the pink taco.

Thus -

The Top Ten Food-Related Celebrity Vaginal Descriptions

Weathered pastrami flaps
Beef curtains
Pork chops
Vagigantic mufflepie
Taffy crotch
Saggy bat wings (possibly a food source in some cultures)
Bacon lips
Ham wallet
Oyster ditch
My neighbour's mastiff (also a food source if your city is under siege)

Who knew a bunch of white middle-class kids with an internet connection have so much in common with an old Egyptian imam? Hurrah for globalization!

Collected from comments here, here, here, here and here.

*Myself included.

Dealing with a Weird New Tic

2006-12-06T23:46:00.000-08:00

I am developing a weird nervous tic. It's getting serious. I'm sure it's multiple sclerosis. For three days my left eyelid has been twitching.

After another day of screwing up at work, (very deservedly) getting scolded, taking no lunch, taking no breaks, working insane overtime, making no dent in the paper tower from my desk to Kuiper Belt, punching 9 for out on my home phone, discovering more funds mis-appropriated from my budget due to poor typing skills (the latter being the fault of others, but the responsibility of cleaning the mess being mine) - after such a day, I teeter between pure escapism or suicidal thoughts.

Tonight I am not really sure whether I should fantasize about the day my novel is published and I am handed a life-altering advance that enables me to quit working, or whether I should wallow in the thought that global warming and its attendant disasters will put me out of my misery before retirement.

Yes, fantasies are nice. Millions of people go through rough patches at work, and they hold up the Seychelles as the carrot that entices them to keep going through the motions. I do suspect that dwelling on escapist fantasies, instead of the dull nightmare of a Sisyphean existence, might make life worthwhile, yet I don't have the energy to think about the nice things or even of anything outside work. Work has all my focus.

Usually, when I can't concentrate, I make lists.

It's like a dream I once had. I must have been eight or nine. In my dream, someone handed me a Hot Wheels car and somehow I knew I had some obligation to eat it. I stuffed the car into my mouth and swallowed it. It got stuck in my throat, but I gulped it down. Then I was handed a larger toy car and I had to eat it. I managed to get this one down and I was given another, bigger car. Finally, I was given a real car, a Lambourghini. I woke up and threw up.

If I had taken the car apart, cut into small pieces, I could have eaten that Lambourghini too. It's that way with lists. You take something big and break it down into the smalled parts possible. I need to break down escapist thoughts into manageable chunks so I can start gobbling them up.

The novel fantasy:

My $100,000 advance puts me in league with other big-time writers. Money begats money, and soon I hire an architect to design my dream home, just like Susan Orlean.

For "research" on my next novel, I spend every second year in Romania.

Every third year, I treat myself out to a vacation in Ethiopia, though sometimes I experiment with Tunisia or Finland.

I get all huffy that the film version of my zombie novel puts that Paltrow girl in the lead role. My character is so not a bubbly blonde. I bitch about this on national tv and fans boycott the film.

However, I use the royalties from the film to buy a second home in Bologna and a third home in Tahiti.

I get a job at McDonalds for a month so I can get in touch with my proletarian roots. Then I quit when the Rushdies and the Beckhams invite me over to London for a joint weekend party.

I write another six sequels to my novel, then kill off the main character. Then I never write again.

Then there's the gloom-and-doom scenario:

Thanks to global warming, I develop a weird heat rash which requires me to spend all my waking hours soaking in a tub, much like Marat. This means I lose my job.

Higher temperatures lead to a surge in Canadian cockroach populations. My long dormant roach phobia plays havoc with my grip on reality as I hallucinate bugs.

The rising water levels means my mountain-top abode is now a waterfront property. Then a tsunami strikes. I make it to higher ground in time, but my house is gone. Unfortunately, I neglected to insure against tidal waves.

Now homeless, I decide to try my luck fruit-picking. By this time, the Okanagan valleys are a dust bowl and I wander from town to town looking for work, carrying my cardboard box everywhere. Like a cast on a broken limb, other hoboes autograph my box with their illiterate crawlings. It's my last foray into the literary world.

As a result of my deforming skin rash, prostitution is out for me. However, a kindly travelling circus hires me on as "The Aligator." Before I get my first pay cheque, a Hummer runs over the manager, and, without the leadership, the circus disbands.

My cardboard box, discarded at the first sign of employment, has disintegrated in the freak flash floods that now plague Saskatchewan.

With the skies obscured by carbon dioxide clouds, I cannot navigate by the sun's position, and I inadvertently make my way into the Arctic. Outside Inuvik city limits, I am caught in a blizzard and freeze to death. In a thousand years, archaeologists discover my mummified corpse and attribute my death to druidic iron age sacrifices.

My friend MaikoPunk summed up the reasons why people blog: "We all have our own motivations for pressing on with this blogging thing, whether it's to write, keep up with friends, get popular, or make money."

Tonight it's something I am doing to stop thinking about work and this post-apocalyptic mindset is helping. The eyelid hasn't twitched in twenty minutes.

Damn, reached the end of my thoughts tonight. Time to dwell on my professional hopelessness again. Oh, look, it's four hours since I left work and I am still wearing my nametag. At least the cat and the hamster will always remember my name.

Just a Little Guy Retrospective

2006-11-29T01:01:00.000-08:00

Like everyone else with an internet connection, I spend a lot of time on Cute Overload.

Then there are those days when a kitten just won't hack it.

Were you one of those nerdy kids who knew every animal in the Funk and Wagnalls Animal Encyclopedia? Did your parents order you those as-seen-on-tv Safari Cards in the Eighties? Can you tell a tarsier from a douroucouli? Did you ever describe the takir as your favourite animal at show-and-tell? If you answered Fuck, Yeah! then Just a Little Guy, the blog of cute cussing animal babies, is the blog for you.

Written and compiled by a 28-year-old dude from Brooklyn, Just a Little Guy is the nerd's Cute Overload, or the Cute Overload with Vice overtones, though, um, Just a Little Guy came first. It's just past its first birthday. Which means that Cute Overload is derivative; Cute Overload is the Just a Little Guy of the trailer park. Or something. Anyhow, the guy took his GRE and the Cute Overload girl didn't.

In the call to war against the cute animal upstart, JALG writes, "Domesticated animals. They're BRED to be cute. It's like genetically modified athletes." Whereas Cute Overload sticks to puppies and kittens, with the occasional foray into kookaburra territory, Just a Little Guy throws open a cornucopia of cuteness most of us didn't know exists. Hence the discovery of the momonga, the hamster of the Japanese woodlands. Other, deserving cute animals finally get their fifteen minutes and we all benefit.

Let's cut the editorial and get to the good stuff. At this, the first ever Just a Little Guy retrospective, the cutest, meanest Just a Little Guy blogposts are in the spotlight:

Penguin pooping: I bet you anything March of the Penguins and Happy Feet have nothing like this. Like one commenter put it, I'll never use toothpaste again. Furthermore, we learn that "the velocity of a penguin's shit is high enough to chip a human's front tooth."

The pacarana, an animal even I have never heard of, shows that other good things come from Colombia besides cocaine and paramilitary torture. The best is the third image down, scanned from the National Geographic. It's the pacarana, in his guinea pigginess, leaping straight up. And then it crashes a car. My kind of rodent!

A wombat, nothing more, nothing less.

Wombat + red panda. But the words win: "This mother giraffe actually suctions her baby's head and then catapults him into enemy territory where the lanky limby little guy goes whirling dirvish on his enemy. His little head on his long 'ol neck acts like a mace. Suckers get played when they mess with the giraffe."

A wombat of Ivan proportions. Great smile, buddy!

On Aussies groping wombats, there's fourth from the top: "Man, this wombat looks fucking laaaaaaazy, and believe me I know lazy. Some wombats are like: hold me. This one is like: cradle. I'm just going to lie here like a sack 'o' taters." Then check out the last wombat: "There is something about the bug eyed look of surprise combined with the clean hands and stethescope that has a really genuinely horrific sci-fi alien-probing unwilling-patient thing."

A wombat Casanova? "I don't know what his secret is but he alread managed to get her fucking jacket off and now he's working on the pants. Starting at the knee? Fuck it, dude. Whatever works."

The toe-spreading tapir.

The first momonga sighting: "I think he ganked those eyes off of some cartoon character and come to think of it, this is what it would look like if animation worked backwards and cartoons could be made real."

The momonga motherload: "They can fucking fly." and "Look at his big 'ol eyes and his smug little fucking grin. He knows he's cute. He knows he doesn't even have to try. Some people have it so fucking easy." The best is the swarm of momongas at the very end: "The one on the left. He looks like fucking Wolverine ready to pounce. Feel me? And his gaze is so intent. I'm creeped out. For real."

Beaver kittens: Canada's mascot.

Velcro bears: If Chief Ten Bears hasn't blogged about this, hell.

More velcro bears: check out the little back legs on the little dudes. Squeal! It's like they're those bathroom door icons. For Matt, a bonobo fact: "the females have evolved specially rotated pelvises so they can engage in better female-female missionary-style sex,"

You know that cute Edvard Munch screaming otter that Vancouverites paste on their personals ads? Here's what he's saying: "I think he's screaming about how cute he is or maybe, he's yawning cuz he's so tired from being so fucking cute all day." This makes JALG the greatest real phone sex athlete in the world.

Fourth down, a cute evil possum. I've only ever seen these guys dead on the centre line, probably because rednecks swerve to hit them. Yeah, you curse the world with your little Dracula hands, Mr. Possum! Then fifth down and I am sold on possums.

Panda Dog

Canada, Land of the Pika. This is why US neocons shit their beds at night when they dream of invading. Hands off. They're ours.

The honeybadger website link evaporated, but there's the keep on truckin' sifaka third from the bottom. "Where the sweet fuck is he going in such a funky rush. Groove on by dude!"

Baby squid, last photo.

Sloth in a box: "For god's sake. The desperation and neediness is oozing out of the corrugated sides. Does he want out or does he want YOU to come in? I don't know but what ever it is I'll do it."

And finally today's post, baby otters. Kind of reminds me of Tarepanda, the Japanese melting panda. As for the Xinjiang bear cub, it's Jeremy! Let's cuddle sometime, Xinjiang bear cub.

Survival in the Andes

2006-11-27T22:39:00.000-08:00

As a big fan of the novel Alive by Piers Paul Read, about the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes, I immediately snapped up survivor Nando Parrado's new book Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home.

For those of you who haven't read the book or seen the 1993 movie or simply didn't read the headlines in 1972, Nando's skull was smashed when the small plane crashed, waking up three days later to find his mother dead and his sister suffering from internal injuries. When the search for the team was called off after eight days, the passengers realized they would have to walk out of the Andes. From the moment he regained consciousness, Nando insisted on leaving the wreckage and finding help.

This new book, written with Vince Rause, offers more of the internal dialogues that led Nando to risk his life. When Nando reaches the summit of the mountain after four days of climbing, he expects, misled by the dying pilot, to see the green fields of Chile at the edge of the mountains. Instead he realizes that he is trapped in the middle of the cordillera (page 200):

In that moment all my dreams, assumptions, and expectations of life evaporated into the thin Andean air. I had always thought that life was the actual thing, the natural thing, and that death was simply the end of living. Now, in this lifeless place, I saw with a terrible clarity that death was the constant, death was the base, and life was only a short, fragile dream. I was dead already. I had been born dead, and what I thought was my life was just a game death let me play as it waited to take me.

I especially enjoyed his sensitivity in addressing the depictions of some of the survivors, who came across less heroically in the first book. But most fascinating was to see what happened to the survivors after their rescue. All the men, except one, went on to have children. Out of the fifteen men who had children, all but two had three or more children. I wonder if Uruguayan women simply have more children or if the survivors decided to have more children as a reaction to their experience.

Having last read Alive some ten years ago, I picked it off my bookshelf to reread it for the sixth time. I also looked the story up online and found much that wasn't in either book. Most facts, unless otherwise linked, come from the survivors' website or from a long article on the subject. I am writing for here for myself and for others who have read both books, so I will not explain all the details unless requested. As we are here talking about a true event, there's no need for a spoiler wanring.

Two other deaths at time of crash were the team physician, Dr. Nicola and his wife, Esther.

Some, including Coche Inciarte, and the Methols refused to eat human flesh, so they were given the rest of the dwindling chocolate; it wasn't long before this ran out and these few who had refused reluctantly ate as well.

There were ten bodies in the cemetery, three of whom were agreed not to be used unless there was no other option (Parrado's mother and sister and Methol's nephew) . The meat was rationed as the chocolate had been.

After the avalanche, mechanic Roque was still alive. However, the other survivors failed to resucitate him.

Various members among the survivors went on a total of about ten expeditions, most were in the quest to find the missing tail. This was for two reasons, one was they thought there was a possibility that their friends who fell out over the mountain could be living in the wreckage, and two, they wanted to get to the batteries.

Canessa, Parrado and Vizintín returned to the fuselage, having found the tail on November 17, and brought the radio and Roy Harley to the Fairchild's tail to hook it up on the 24th, but it did not work, it turned out that the transmitter required 115 volts AC, normally supplied by an inverter, the batteries were 24 volts DC.

Five days (October 17) after they crashed, Canessa, Páez, Fito Strauch and Turcatti went to find the tail, climbing up the mountain to the southeast. They didn't find anything.

On October 24, Maspons, Turcatti and Zerbino set out again to the southeast in search of the tail. They found the wreckage of the wings, engines, and other pieces of the Fairchild, along with 6 bodies. They could not see the tail.

Bobby François and Inciarte attempt a trial expedition. They climbed 300 feet up the mountain to the southeast and returned.

Algorta and Turcatti on a trial expedition again use the southeast route, reaching the wing before they returned.

On November 5, Harley, Páez and Vizintín attempt a trial expedition, this time down the valley to the east. They find pieces of the tail and the galley.

It was December 11 that Canessa, Parrado and Vizintín climb the mountains to the west into Chile. Canessa and Parrado send back Vizintín on the 15th, who uses his seat cushion snowshoes as a sled to slide down the mountain, returning to the Fairchild in two hours. (It took three days to climb that far.)

While the expeditionaries were away, on the 13th, Fito Strauch and Zerbino set off up the mountain to find bodies for food. They found only one body, which turned out to be Daniel Shaw, Fito's cousin. They bring down Daniel's body but agreed not to use it.

On December 14, Algorta and Páez leave to find another body up the mountain. They find one, but, as it was late in the day, they returned to the plane and went back up the next day with Fito and took some meat back to the plane. They returned to this body - which they had covered with snow to prevent the sun from rotting it - one last time the morning after and took what was left of the meat down to the plane.

On December 17, the survivors who stayed in the plane hear on the radio that the cross found by the C-47 was made by a group of Argentinean meteorologists.

Also on the 17th, Parrado and Canessa find moss and reeds - the first vegetation they had seen since the crash. Canessa eats some herbs.

On December 18, Canessa loses his sunglasses; he retraces his path to find them (otherwise he would have gone blind). This night is the most restful night since they crashed.

On the morning of December 22, Fernandez and Eduardo listened to a Montevideo radio news station, when they heard that Nando and Canessa had been found. Thinking it was a mistake, they tuned it to different stations and heard the same. The boys tried to tidy up the plane and themselves; the thought of burying the remains of their friends crossed their minds, but the surface of the snow was ice hard. They began to put on the best and cleanest clothes they could find, combed their hair, brushed their teeth, and tried to wash up.

The survivors left on the mountain after the first helicopters came drank tea and lemon juice that their rescuers gave them. The Andinists set up a tent outside the plane; they were invited to sleep in the hulk of the Fairchild, but the smell was too strong. Rescuer Diaz, however, did join them. The next morning, December 23, they were treated to a good breakfast and then prepared for the next helicopters. Around 10:00 am, three helicopters appeared above the mountains. The first lowered and took three survivors. It lifted and a second came down to take three more survivors; the third came down and took the last two, including Zerbino and his suitcase filled with the personal property of those who had died on the mountain. The first helicopter returned to pick up the four Andinists.

On December 26, El Mercurio, a Santiago newspaper, publishes a photograph in the front page mentioning the cannibalism. The survivors hold a press conference in Montevideo.

While there were fourteen intact bodies, only scant, unidentifiable pieces remained of the other fifteen.

On January 18, 1973, a ten-man team from the Andean Rescue Corps, along with representatives of the SAR and Uruguayan Air Force, and a catholic priest went to the crash site in the mountains by helicopter. Over two days, the bodies and remains from around the fuselage and up the mountain were gathered, placed in plastic body bags, and moved to a shallow grave almost half a mile from the spot where the fuselage came to rest. The grave was covered over with rocks and an iron cross was erected. The wreckage of the fuselage was set afire, fueled by gasoline that had been doused throughout it. The team was air lifted from the site on January 20.

On March 21, the site was visited by two fathers who had lost their sons on the mountain - Ricardo Echavarren and Gustavo Nicolich. The two men, accompanied by two climbing guides and two reporters, had climbed up to the burned-out wreck from the eastern side of the mountains, passing by the tail section in the process. Echavarren had come with an agenda, to retrieve the body of his son. Ricardo Echavarren had been told by survivors of his son's desire to be buried in Uruguay and not abandoned in the Andes and he was going to see that his son's dying wish was granted. The men continued on to the mass grave and carefully removed the rocks that covered it. The bag containing Rafael's body was quickly found and after rebuilding the grave the men started back out of the mountains; Nicolich did not attempt to find his son. As the party reached the foothills they were met by Argentine police officers and the fathers were arrested for grave robbing. Rafael's body was confiscated and transferred to a holding niche at San Rafael Cemetery. Through the intervention of reporters and the Mayor of San Rafael, the charges against Nicolich and Echavarren were dropped, but the body remained in San Rafael until Echavarren obtained legal orders allowing him to export his son back to Uruguay.

Alfredo Delgado still limps on the leg that he broke in the crash.

Roberto (Bobby) François is rather unwilling to discuss his time on the mountain.

Roy Harley takes care of all the business that involves the sixteen survivors.

In 1994, Jose Inciarte won a share of a $2.5 Million New Years Lottery, which he split up with eleven family members who helped to buy the lottery tickets.

In October 2002, thirty years after their scheduled match in the Copa Amistad tournament, the Old Christians beat the Old Boys 28-11 in the Chilean capital, Santiago. It was a symbolic match between the 14 surviving Old Christian members (two survivors were not part of the team) and the Chilean squad they had been scheduled to face 30 years ago.

The National Geographic April 2006 cover feature was "Alive! Then & Now." Contributing Editor James Vlahos, Boulder-based guide Ricardo Peña and guide Mario Perez retraced for the first time the route used by Roberto Canessa, Nando Parrado, and Antonio Vizintín, starting their trek on the same day of the year and camping in the same spots. See the photos here and the map here.

From Alive's IMDB forums: The pretty-eyed actor who played Pancho Delgado in the film is the same one the third smokestack collapsed on top of in Titanic. That guy needs a better travel agent!

They're Still Staying in Canada

2006-11-27T20:46:00.000-08:00

My friend David recently published an op-ed piece for the LA Times:

It seems that the LA Times Editorial Dept. was kicking around the idea early last week that an American who had left the country for Canada due in some part to the reelection of Bush in 2004 might have some potentially humorous commentary on the fact that that they now live in a country with a Conservative Prime Minister while the US has since elected a Democratic majority in Congress.

David and his wife Pam moved to Vancouver in July 2005 from Boston. They were the first set of Bush-detesting US immigrants I've met and the ones whose adoration of this city put the rest of us locals to shame. Well-educated, cultured and kind, the Druckers have proven to be formidable Scrabble opponents.

David has, not unexpectedly, gotten some flack from the usual suspects, including one nutjob who seemed sane until he typed this sentence: "I believe we need to be confrontational with the Islamicists, and then after we’ve whipped them, help them into the 21st century through access to all kinds of education and technology."*

David's article has even been the most emailed on the LA Times website!

David posted the whole article here.

Great job, David!

*I do believe I am one of a very small number of laypersons who reads psychology textbooks for fun; the art of persuasion recommends a very different tactic for bringing people around. Besides, hasn't this whipping method proven to be a troublesome hydra so far?

Ivan Eschews the Great Outdoors

2006-11-27T00:51:00.000-08:00

With the Great Vancouver Blizzard of 2006 here, Ivan the Cat has forsaken his lust for outdoor jaunts. In a rare interview with this feline who zealously guards his privacy, Ivan explains what led him to turn his back on friends for a warm place on a woolly blanket.

Maktaaq: Mr. Ivan, first off I want to thank you very much for honouring us with your time.

Ivan: Gratitude accepted.

Maktaaq: Your newfound love of the indoors is making headlines. Witnesses claim that you no longer pace by the door meowing annoyingly - what has led to your sudden interest in the indoors?

Ivan: It all started yesterday. I meowed at my servants frequently and with increasing urgency at higher and higher amplitude. Finally they turned that bulbous projection on the portal to the Great Outdoors (your so-called "door") and let me out. I had a good time as usual. Beating up the Tuxedo Cat. Traipsing on roofs. Exploring the woods. Playing with my life on the road. After ten minutes, I realized I was hungry. So I returned to the portal. No one heard my scratches on the portal. Mildly worried, I went to the front of my domicile. Still no answer at that portal. It was then that I saw the thunder carriage disappeared. I must have ordered the servants to bring me more Friskies Tuna & Salmon Treats. They usually took the thunder carriage on their missions. I sat down to await their return. I waited for hours, as the morning ebbed into afternoon and then into evening. Evening brought with it the snow.

Maktaaq: What were you thinking during all this?

Ivan: Those hairless ape bastards have forsaken me for a new cat. I vowed to smite them.

Maktaaq: It must have been very traumatic.

Ivan: It was. But the worst was yet to come. Weakened with hypothermia and frostbite, I was about to throw a brick through the clear brittle walls (these appear at intervals along the outside of my domicile), when my servants returned. The next morning, I meowed at the servants for the turning of the bulbous portal projection. They complied; imagine my shock when they opened the portal to reveal a white void.

Maktaaq: What was it?

Ivan: A practical joke, that's what. The primate imbeciles had blanched the landscape. I was not, needless to add, amused. I pouted pointedly at the servants. Certain that they felt the sting of my displeasure, I decided to give them time to put everything right again by taking my early morning nap.

Maktaaq: And this is what led you to take interest in the indoors?

Ivan: No. My ordeal was not yet over.

Maktaaq: What happened?

Ivan: The servants - insolent monsters! - called me with smiles to the portal. False Judases! Suddenly I found myself raised in the air - for a moment of exultation I thought they were holding me up for the admiring crowds outside. They opened the portal and I found myself airborne with nothing but the abyss below me.

Maktaaq: Yet you survived.

Ivan: The impact nearly extinguished life from this soul. I felt as though I had been plunged into a fire. The cold burned. The delicate pads of my feet cracked like porcelain on concrete.

Maktaaq: It is understandable that you no longer go outdoors.

Ivan: I have since grown to love the fresh scent of newly laundered linens. Whereas once my greatest pleasure was fertilizing the earth with my life-giving turds, I now spread my message of life through missives on white cashmere cardigans.

Maktaaq: Thank you for your time and for reliving your harrowing struggle for survival.

Ivan: Worship me, mortal.

Lucian vs. Calamari

2006-11-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

This is Lucian:

He's usually very fussy about food. His mouth is gaping open. What has he noticed here?

It's cuttlefish!

This shit's good!

Hands off, punk!

Come back here!

You're not getting away!

[Lift-off photo too blurry.]

The fall:

Finger-lickin' good!

Obscure Childhood Crush #1

2006-11-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

It was Joe Holland. Never heard of him?

IMDB lists him being in only two movies.

Answers.com is a little more generous in parceling out the Joe Holland tidbits:

Actor and screeenwriter Joe Holland launched his onscreen acting career in Back to the Beach (1987). The son of actress Joanna Carson, his student film Delirious earned him a Frank Capra Award. Holland occasionally dabbled in television, making guest appearances on shows such as the drama 21 Jump Street and Cheers.

I developed my own crush on Joe because of his role as Zed in the 1987 movie Back to the Beach. He was the good-natured cute thug guy who rode his motorcycle on the beach, was très punk, and (fodder for my childhood fantasies) he stormed a girls-only slumber party! Swoon! Slumber parties were never the same after 1987. I wished I could have hit him with my pillow!

So, um, it turns out that Joe died. Pulmonary embolism at 33, got him May 4, 1994.

Only one picture exists of Joe and it's blurry, plus he's pursing his lips. It's like a yeti sighting.

On a Phallic Note

2006-11-18T20:13:00.000-08:00

Dora the Explorer gone wild from Wild Planet Toys.

"What marketing department missed this?!!" exclaimed Matt.

The Return of My Little Pony

2006-11-18T00:02:00.000-08:00

"We boys don't know what's up with those My Little Ponies. What's their secret? Do you hit a button under their genitalia and then they talk? What sex are My Little Ponies? Are they all girls?"

Unfortunately, like I can never understand knob sausage stir-fry, men will never understand the mystique of the My Little Pony.

With the advent of the Generation Three Ponies, however, there is much I myself, a once avid collector of the Generation One Ponies don't understand.

The Ponies of my youth, the Generation Ones, came out from 1982 to 1991, though I hated the Beddy-Bye Eyes, Flutter Ponies and So Soft Ponies, all which appeared in 1985. I stopped collecting soon thereafter. Also, in a fit of pre-teen stupidity, I gave away my "kid" toys to my sister, who promptly sold my pristine collection for $25 to some guy at a garage sale.

The Ponies disappeared for many years, then in 2003 they reappeared with vigour. I kind of kept away, then I got Summer Berry for Christmas last year.

Summer Berry grows so many kinds of berries in her garden, she can’t even count them all! She uses them to bake lots of yummy muffins, and then surprises her friends by bringing a basketful to eat at the beach!

This Dream Design pony is sure to catch your eye! She’s got a three-dimensional CUTIE MARK design that really stands out!

Pony figure comes with brush.

Pony's foot contains magnet.

A magnet? What the fuck? Nobody told me this before I massaged my credit cards with Summer Berry!

So many kinds of berries, she can't even count them all? Geez, what's she growing in there? Let me in - I was such an obsessive kid, I made lists of all the different kinds of berries, I was a real connoisseur of really unusual berry names: did you know that there's a thimbleberry and a nannyberry? Summer Berry, I could've catalogued your garden.

The other day, I stumbled upon the My Little Pony section in the supermarket. At only $4.97, how was I supposed to resist Twirlerina? A blue pegasus with pink shimmering wings, a pink tail and a pink mane streaked with mauve, Hasbro has this to say about her:

A royal celebration is in order, because the ponies have discovered that they are all real princesses! The fairy tale has come true for everyone!

Twirlerina was born in October and her favorite [sic] color is crimson. Her favorite [sic] gems are opals and you can usually find her taking ballet lessons!

This adorable Pegasus is perfect for adventures to your own ballet lessons and is always ready for lots of pony fun!

Now if everyone is a real princess, then aren't they all commoners?

More to the point, why would you want a pegasus around during ballet lessons? These things fly! There you are, your feet bleeding, and this flying horse-thing pretends to be en pointe, when it's cheating by hovering. Yeah, Twirlerina, the only reason I bought you is because of your pretty wings.

The biggest suckie thing about these new ponies is that there are almost no unicorns. The Generation Ones had plenty of unicorns represented along with the land ponies, the sea ponies, the baby ponies and the pegasuses. What happened to the Generation Three unicorns?

Does it have something to do with the unicorns' traditional purity? Once only virgins could attract unicorns - are all the virgins gone?

Also gone are the 2005 ponies. I only discovered the so-called Sunny Scent Ponies today when I reviewed Summer Berry's accompanying booklet. I have never seen cute little Citrus Sweetheart (white with orange hair and a yellow streak) or Apple Spice yellow with red hair and a purple streak (looks like Generation One favourite Apple Jack).

But it could be just Canada. The 2006 Generation Three Pony checklist has limited edition ponies from Taco Bueno, Target and, what Matt tells me is a white trash hangout, Family Dollar. These are all stores we don't have in Canada. I guess I missed Pumpkin Tart from Target this Halloween.

Yesterday I found myself in a supermarket, strangely alone in the My Little Pony aisle. I rummaged through the Ponies to check them out.

An early favourite was Summer Bloom, a yellow pony with pink shimmer crawling saucily up her legs.

The ponies all love pretending to be a princess. But they’re in for a surprise when they discover that, for one special pony, this fairy tale might really come true!

Summer Bloom was born in August and her favorite color is gold. Her favorite flowers are daisies and you can usually find her doing cartwheels and somersaults!

Pretty summer-colored pony has an all-over flower design! Pony figure comes with brush and bonus jewel.

Wait! I thought they were all princesses? Elitist liars.

Then I saw Silver Glow, a blue pegasus with turquoise shimmering wings and white hair streaked with blue, in a kind of reverse Bride of Frankenstein way.

The ponies all love pretending to be a princess. But they’re in for a surprise when they discover that, for one special pony, this fairy tale might really come true!

Silver Glow was born in November and her favorite color is blue. Her favorite flowers are petunias and at night you can usually find her gliding across the moonlit sky!

Dazzling pony is pretty in shades of blue! Pony figure comes with her own brush.

Huh?

Wasn't Summer Bloom quite possibly the real princess among all the pretenders? Now it might be Silver Glow?

I think they're just playing with the Ponies' minds. Leading the girls astray.

At least Silver Glow likes her colour, not like Twirlerina who probably wishes she were crimson instead of her own blue. This is a good message to send out to impressionable little girls: like the body you're in and don't go having bulimia or whatever.

At last I found Royal Twist, a white land pony with pink shimmer slipping going up her legs. The spiel about her possibly being the real pony again. Darling, even if your name is Royal Twist, don't count on being the real princess.

Royal Twist was born in November and her favorite color is royal purple. Her favorite gems are sapphires and she can usually be found collecting tiaras!

Okay, okay, you pretend your favourite colour is royal purple and you can collect all the tiaras you want, girlie, but you ain't never gonna be a princess. 'Sides, princesses always marry ugly jerks. You don't want to end up with some jackass, do you?

All three ponies were just so darned cute, royal aspirations notwithstanding, that I could not resist to rearrange the shelves with the pretty trio in the front. Then I left the store.

Naked Mole Rat

2006-11-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

The British, I have heard, are into a TV quiz show called QI, or Quite Interesting. Hosted by Stephen Fry, yes, he of Blackadder fame, the show asks questions like:

Why don't pigeons go to the movies?
Why are there no Alsatians in the Spanish army?
What flavour is the oldest known soup?
How do otters kill crocodiles?
And what is the name of the 23rd tallest tree in the world?

The show is so good, Brits in North America beg their friends to send them the DVDs of the show so they can enjoy their culture on those multi-regional DVD players.

That good, huh?

I went to the QI website to find out about this wonder show. Turned out to be the usual British stuff, not much that I understood. Might take, as Blackadder did, years to understand, or, as Red Dwarf, ongoing confusion.

Sauntering over to the site's Canada thread - it turns out that, before it was renamed Regina in 1882, this Saskatchewan city was called Pile O Bones. So this is the kind of knowledge imparted on the show!

I, for one, was almost sold on the show. I do want to know what the flavour of the earliest known soup was, to serve it at my next Neanderthal-themed soiree. I do want to arm myself against crocs with otters. And I really want my pigeon dates to have a good time when we go out.

Searching through the forum, I found the naked mole rat.

Ah ha! said my perverted little self. Mole rats. Naked mole rats.

Oh, the facts were good:

The naked mole rat is the only cold blooded mammal.
The naked mole rat doesn't feel pain because it lacks the neurotransmitter Substance P.
The naked mole rat is the only animal that resembles human male genitalia.

But wait! The accompanying picture of the human male genitalia-like naked mole rat...

...has fangs.

(More naked mole rats here.)

Of Chinese Buns & Rice Pudding

2006-11-12T18:30:00.000-08:00

Reading about Gorgonzola and pear ice cream, I was a little downcast because I like non-traditional flavours but I hate ice cream. Vancouver has plenty of gelato places catering to those who like non-chocolate-vanilla-strawberry ice cream, but nothing for the likes of me.

What I'd like is a store that serves up the usual stuff then has five hundred flavours of mixing and matching that's the real backbone.

I'm thinking a takoyaki shop that has mentaiko-stuffed takoyaki (octopus balls with spicy roe). Or a croquette cafe that lists on brie korokke on their menu. Or a Transylvanian creperie with dill pancakes. Or a door-to-door peddler of shiokara-umeboshi-shiso-sea urchin yumminess (in other words, a dish of something mixing the mushy goodness of sea urchin innards with squid viscera, pickled plums and perilla leaves).

Nothing of that level of fusion weirdness, sadly, exists in Vancouver. Unless it comes in ice cream form.

Japan and Taiwan fulfilled many of my food fantasies. From Japan, the love of the shiso leaf was the perfect accompaniment to all dishes. In Taiwan, having bought a mystery sandwich in the dark, I realized that tuna and peanut butter are excellent sandwich buddies - we're talking Taiwanese peanut butter, stuff that is to American peanut butter as mimolette is to pimiento cheese.

Trapped on the continent, there are two stops to whet an appetite for the daring.

The first is Wow Bao in Chicago's Water Tower Place. Run by white people, with an Asian frontline staff, every time I am in Chicago I sneak up the Magnificent Mile every day to sample the buns. Sometimes I remember my lovely Chicago hosts and pick up a box of the frozen bao for them.

Photo Courtesy: Gino888

The scrumptious flavours include the ever-present Kung Pao Cashew Chicken bun (I suspect the "cashew" part of its name wasn't there before), the Thai Curry Chicken bun, the more authentic BBQ Pork bun, the Spicy Mongolian Beef bun, and the Green Vegetable bun, more delightful than its name would otherwise suggest. The online menu also lists the Teriyaki Chicken bun, which must be new since my last trip to Chicago.

Photo Courtesy: Stacey Cookie

With no franchise information on their parent site, I am more than a little disheartened that I must continue paying the airfare to Chicago if I want to sample my dastardly Kung Pao Chicken bun.

Then there is New York's Rice to Riches. Screw raisins, this rice pudding store takes the already-perfect dessert to beyond any heaven with 72 virgins!

As a rice pudding chef (I taught rice pudding class when I was a high school teacher), I drool over the flavours on today's menu:

Secret Life of Pumpkin
Coconut Coma
Forbidden Apple
"Category 5" Caramel
Hzelnut Chocolate Bear Hug
Gingerbread Joy Ride
The Corner of Cookies and Cream
and the greater-then-great Man-Made Mascarpone with Cherries

Annoyingly enough, there are no plans yet for franchising. Investing, yes, they want your money, but a load of good it'll do me if I have to fly across three time zones to indulge. Rice to Riches does, however, ship their puddings overnight to anywhere in the US. At $49 USD, this expensive rice pudding does beat the frequent trip to New York.

Photos Courtesy: Mussels

Update: This post inspired Matt to present me tonight with a half-litre each of Gorgonzola-pear gelato and basil-Pernod gelato.

Reading Dracula

2006-10-31T22:51:00.000-08:00

As a Transylvanian, it's about time I read Dracula, watch the movie(s), and understand this business. You all know Transylvania is a real place; it's time I learned what the fantasy Transylvania is all about.

I am 100 pages from finishing the novel, first published in 1897, watched both the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula, as well as Werner Herzog's 1979 Nosferatu remake (the 1922 Nosferatu has long been one of my favourite movies). I also took out four books of Dracula literary criticism out from the library, to nail this bugger in the heart, for once and for all. And here I thought that I was forever converted to zombies.

So while the extraordinary shock that armadillos live in Transylvania subsides, I picked up the Annotated Dracula (edited by Leonard Wold and dedicated to Bela Lugosi) to backtrack through the footnotes. The discoveries, hitherto obscured by a century's linguistic and societal changes, stretch beyond the minor surprises at Dracula's mustachioed face and Lucy's brunette-ness.

Those of you who've yet to read the novel know the drill: spoilers ahead.

My first surprise was to finally be interested in Jonathan Harker's journal. Not in the narrative, but in the mechanics. The last time I picked up Dracula, in high school, I only liked the journal; when the action switched from Transylvania to Lucy and her beaus, I trudged on hoping that the story would return to Harker. After Lucy's Bloofer Lady suffered execution, I gave up waiting for the return to the fast-paced terror at the beginning and gave up on the novel. This time around, I've been intrigued that Jonathan Harker writes in shorthand, thus foiling Dracula, who most certainly rifled through the Englishman's papers. Leonard Wolf, in the Annotated Dracula, guesses that Harker uses the Pitman method. Of course, I've looked up this method and, should I ever have time to spare for shorthand, this will be the method I'll learn.

I also am curious as to the gaps in the diary: Jonathan Harker was in Dracula's castle for two months. There is a two-week gap when the imprisoned Harker writes nothing. Is this because there was truly nothing to tell? Or is it because the vampire hunters, later in the novel, omitted the irrelevant when typing up the various accounts about Dracula? What did Jonathan do during those lost two weeks?

Klausenburgh, which Jonathan Harker visited on May 2, is my very favourite Cluj! Cluj, overlooked by too many tourists, is a perfect gem of elegant architecture, in full colour as opposed to Bucureşti's blanched houses. Harker eats in Cluj some paprika hendl, which sounds like it might be our own tocăniţă.

Quoting Emily Gerard and the 1900 Baedeker for Austria, the population of Transylvania contemporary with Dracula is 1,200,000 Romanians according to the former and 1,395,000 for the latter, to the 652,221 and 765,000 Hungarians respectively. At two Romanians for every Hungarian and the numbers provided by foreigners, I wonder who took the census. Nevermind why I wonder - hey, look, both sources say there were 8,400 Armenians in Transylvania at the time! How'd they get to Romania?

The impletata, the "eggplant stuffed with forcemeat," may be patlagele impulute. Whatever that is. I'll have to ask my mother if I've ever eaten any.

Leonard Wolf points out that midnight marks the witching hour. But, again I'll have to consult with my parents, because I recall that either 2 am or 3 am was the really devilish time of the day in Transylvania.

The Stoker Dracula really said, "Listen to them - the children of the night. What music they make!" I had always thought it was a movie cliche, non-existent in the book. Indeed, its companion phrase, "I never drink wine," does not exist except on film.

That's enough for tonight. Halloween is almost over. My bat wings are off and soon my bat ears will come off. Good night!

Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?

2006-10-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

Though my French Revolution phase has abated somewhat, the new Marie Antoinette movie still inspires plenty of venom in me. Perhaps it's the fact that stupid little girls who watched the movie have vandalized Wikipedia with anti-Madame du Barry vitriol that has no basis in historical fact:

The young dauphine also faced the spite of the Louis XV's mistress, Madame du Barry. Du Barry was born Jeanne Bécu, a commoner who gained the notice of nobility as a courtesan. As Marie Antoinette felt it was beneath herself to associate with such a woman, Du Barry set out to make her life as miserable as possible, beginning by turning the king against his granddaughter-in-law.

The spite of Madame du Barry? Du Barry actually went to the effort of making Marie Antoinette's life miserable? She turned Louis XV against Marie Antoinette?

Fuck that. Madame du Barry, as all historians note - including Antoinia Fraser who wrote the biography on which this movie is based - was too nice to ever hold a grudge. Madame du Barry may have been a bimbo but she was not mean.

The mean little bitch was Marie Antoinette. I'm sorry, girls, but read some history. Sofia Coppola can blame du Barry (in the film, she depicts the courtesan rolling around in bed with the king then plotting to have the Austrian princess humiliated), but Marie Antoinette's problems were of her own making.

Perhaps it's because the movie stars Kirsten Dunst, a bimbo who can't muster much more on the screen than parting her legs.

Or perhaps it's the annoying soundtrack.

Hell, I don't care if the roles all went to American and British actors. I couldn't care less that they do not speak with a French accent. But hip hop? And they dance to it?

My disgust decreased somewhat when I read another review: "Some say the biggest offender was the application of '80s pop songs—the soundtrack to her own upbringing—to an otherwise detailed period piece."

Eighties pop songs might not be so bad. Not period music, but as least bad as you can manage if you were to mix up such disparate periods.

Besides, Sofia Coppola probably couldn't resist the apocryphal story of five-year-old Mozart proposing to little Marie Antoinette. For years afterward, Marie Antoinette, an undersexed wife in France, would masturbate with Rock Me, Amadeus blaring over her squeals of joy. So many eyebrows would have been raised in Versailles. Cut to Louis XVI out hunting, frustrated, as if he could hear his wife over the soundtrack as she joins in with "Baby baby do it to me rock me".

And then, during all those times when Axel Fersen was cheating on her, poor little rich girl Marie Antoinette writes homesick letters to Schönbrunn, it's Vienna Calling:

Ohoho, operator (so alone am I)
Ohoho, operator (I need you here tonight)
Hello, oho, Vienna calling, na na na na
Hello, oho, Vienna calling, na na na na

It's too bad that Sofia Coppola ended her movie before the French Revolution because that leaves out Der Kommissar for when Marie Antoinette finally ends her life of dissipation on the scaffold.

Frankenstein with a Gift Shop

2006-10-16T14:53:00.000-07:00

More on Body Worlds:

Science World devoted some four galleries to the display, along with a Body Worlds gift shop. The full-body displays have no glass covers, allowing for close-up viewing, with a descriptive panel that labelled body parts and perhaps a short blurb on the plastination techniques used. The body parts lay in flat display cases and featured more information about bodily functions than the full-body displays. The much-discussed fetus display came at the end, with an alternate exit for those who can't handle dead babies.

While the audience was mostly adult, some parents brought their elementary school age, adorable little kids who were not squeamish about what they saw. "Mommy, why does that man have three penises?" asked one little girl, who was answered that the two penis-y things flanking the penis were testicles. Other groups of children sat down in front of the bodies to discuss what they were seeing. Near the end, some kids were begging their parents to hurry to the fetus section: "Let's go see the babies, daddy!"

As I walked through, I was too caught up in examining the bodies to think much about the museum practices behind the displays.

First of all, I am not entirely convinced of the educational aspects of the show. Then again, I have had friends in medical studies, so I've had the benefit of poring through autopsy books and fiddled with bones from UBC's bone library. The visitors yesterday were a mixture of those pointing out their ailments on the corpses - one middle aged man used his umbrella tip to give his two friends a description of his achilles heel problems; others claiming they will stop or avoid taking up smoking as attested by the guestbook at the very end of the exhibit.

While the display of organs in the flat display cases carried actual information, the full-body displays made much of the fact that they contained a certain amount of artistic flare, with very little biological information aside from the labelling of body parts. The flayed man has a Renaissance pedigree; the kneeling man in prayer harks back to the Medieval era.

Indeed, the exhibit gives prominent place to a copy of Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp, with a line that Dr. Tulp alone wears a hat, defying contemporary manners. The Body Worlds website has a photograph of von Hagens himself wearing a hat during a dissection and he devotes a page on his website to that hat, bringing up German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys' name.

Von Hagens has exhibited many times in art galleries, instead of scientific museums. In the UK, he performed the first public autopsy for a paying audience at a London art gallery. The 72-year-old German alcoholic whose organs were removed is now in the Body Worlds 2 exhibit.

Part of the motivation to display the bodies artistically comes from copyright issues. With at least nine rival shows - some have counted eleven shows - von Hagens has gone to court to stop two of the shows, arguing that his poses have copyright protection as intellectual property (the plastination technique is patented).

In my opinion, with both a background in art history and in museum studies, I question the educational quality of the exhibit, as I see the full-body displays in stark contrast with the more "educational" isolated body parts. The full-body displays serve only a marketing value. Their short names ("The Skateboarder," "The Archer," etc.) sometimes carry puzzling names more suitable to super heroes ("The Star Man"), clearly meant to be memorable and generate talk that outlasts the visit for word-of-mouth promotion.

Though he claims to be a scientist and not an entertainer, von Hagens is no stranger to sideshow-era gimmicks: in 1995, his plastinate of a pregnant woman cut up to reveal a fetus travelled around Berlin on a bus to promote the first Body Worlds. Another time, Von Hagens took part in Berlin's Love Parade dressed as a plastinate. Von Hagens has been called a 21st century Dr. Frankenstein with a gift shop: to exit the gallery, one must walk through a gift shop selling cadaver fridge magnets, keychains, postcards, posters and books.

In addition, some controversy surrounds Body Worlds with regards to the displays of the female donors' plastinates. Some have said that the female poses are in traditional feminine poses, though my companion and I disagreed on this aspect. While I did find the poses were athletic for the most part, I have to agree that the females did fall into the more feminine camp: a trapeze artist, a gymnast, a dancer, and an archer (remember the Amazons?).

I was also annoyed that the females had nipples intact. None of the male bodies had nipples. My companion argued that female nipples are harder to remove and that their remains did not turn the female bodies into sex objects.

In the case of the gymnast, a full head of blonde hair remained attached to the scalp. Its presence, if from the original body, serves to make the donor's identity less anonymous, going against the exhibit's profession that the donors' identities or personal information be revealed. I found the hair also a sexualizing feature: it "humanized" the corpse, making it resemble a living woman and thus palatable to sexual tastes. Interestingly, in another case, a male body has had the remains of an dark upper lip dyed red; my suspicion is that the donor may have been black, though none of the "white" skinned donors have had the remainders of their light skin dyed.

Von Hagens has issued a questionnaire to current donors to ask if they would object to their bodies being used in sexual poses. Most men were delighted, the women were aghast. Though he has yet to create a tableau of the sexual union, near the end of the Science World exhibit was a pairing of a man and a woman in an embrace. I presumed they were dancers or figure skaters, though from a distance the action is hard to distinguish. This display's proximity to the reproductive organ display allows the viewer to come to the wrong conclusion.

An interesting observation regarding the female bodies comes from my male companion. After the exhibit, he told me that when he viewed the female reproductive organs, he was the only male at that display case. Later, when he came by the female table again to talk to me, he was again the only male in that area. The table with the male reproductive organs had both female and male audience members surrounding it.

In speculating about the lack of male viewers at the female table, I am guessing that either the men were too embarrassed to look at these body parts, too wary of being deemed lecherous, or simply not interested in female functions. If it is the latter, my question to male readers is why?

Finally, I am unconvinced by the claims within the show that all the bodies come from donors.

Until recently von Hagens used unclaimed bodies from abroad, certainly not the consenting donors purported by the show's copy. Furthermore two of his plastination factories are in China's harbour city Dalian and in the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan, where laws concerning the dead are not as stringent or, as in the well-documented case of China, unconsenting prisoners have had their organs removed.

According to former Kyrgyz member of parliament Akbokon Tashtanbekov, von Hagen's institution "obtained more than 800 dead bodies from prisons, psychiatric wards and hospitals, which hadn't always notified the families." Bodies from prisons sold for $13 to $15 each; the youngest body came from a 14-hour-old child.

One of the saddest stories was of Kishinbek Mamakiev, a 71-year-old from Bishkek, who died from a brain hemorrhage in 2000. He went out for a walk, collapsed on the street and was taken to a hospital. The family had no idea what happened, and spent three years looking for the man in hospitals and morgues. They put ads on tv asking for information. Three years ago Tashtanbekov found Mamakiev's name in the plastination center.

Though in 2001 van Hagens broke off with Valery Gabitov, head of the medical academy's pathology department and supplier of bodies, he continues to reap Kyrgyz corpses through another body donor program in the country. German prosecutors have found that all the bodies are accounted for, linking death certificates to consent forms. Still, how did Kishinbek Mamakiev's disappear for three years and why did his name end up in the paper work at von Hagens' centre?

The danger is, with an uninformed public, is that vast monetary support will go to Body Worlds knock-offs, who might not be as scrupulous as von Hagens or, not as documented.

For example, according to NPR, BODIES... The Exhibition (currently in Seattle), created by Atlanta-based Premier Exhibitions Inc., does not hide the fact that they use unclaimed Chinese bodies. Spokesman Roy Glover says, "We don't hide from it, we address it right up front." Created by Dr. Sui Hongjin, a one-time student of von Hagens', I went to the BODIES... The Exhbition website to see how up front they were about the bodies' provenence. The faces were instantly recognizable as East Asian. The FAQ, however, did hide the questions about where the bodies came from. FAQ questions 7-10, which answer this very question, are linked to from the bottom of FAQ questions 1-6. The site warns that "It is important to note that the law prohibits he disclosure of any information regarding the specimen's identity and/or cause of death."

While some 30 Canadians have signed up to donate their bodies to von Hagens, I suspect the majority of viewers would be loathe to imagine their own dead bodies on a pedestal, twisted and sliced into artistic renderings. That some of the bodies are there without the consent of the donors ring a little too much of Burke and Hare, the nineteenth century murderers who sold 17 victims to the Edinburgh Medical College for dissection. That the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London to this day still dishonours poor Charles Byrne's - "The Irish Giant" - explicit deathbed wishes should be warning to those who wish to lay down rules for the fate of their bodies.

The attitude I hope you won't have is the following, from one of the comments left on the naysayer campaigners's site:

My friends and I went to the exhibit last week (thinking it was a movie) and I was having a great time at the beginning criticizing all the models until my friend read a sign saying that some of them were real!!!!
Sarah, Denver, CO

A Meaty Day

2006-10-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

For the last month and a half, I have become mostly vegetarian. Partly for health reasons, mostly for animal rights, I occasionally slip and declare a meat holiday. For example, in a schnitzel restaurant, how can my Austro-Hungarianess resist?

I planned for brunch at the Elbow Room, the bad service satirists who serve the best multiplex eggs in town. Vegetarian choices include the Thelma (poached eggs, sauteed spinach, tomatoes, mushrooms and avocado on a sour dough muffin topped with camembert and feta cheese) and the pesco-vegetarian Ted McLaren (poached eggs, baby shrimp, imitation crab, diced tomato and green onion with avocado, served on a croissant topped with hollandaise). I closed my menu and clasped my hands in front of me, waiting for my breakfast companion to decide.

Matt looked up at me from his menu. "Would you be upset if I order the Brett Cullen?"

The Brett Cullen. Poached eggs, sauteed spinach, bacon, avocado and blue cheese on a sour dough muffin. Topped with hollandaise sauce. The stuff of my daydreams during work meetings, during long commutes, while washing dishes, when I brush my teeth at night. The Brett Cullen.

"Well, if you're having a meat holiday," I said, "Then I can have a meat holiday too."

Confident that I could simply reach over to my breakfast companion's plate and sample the Brett Cullen, I decided to order something novel. The Bryan with two poached eggs on a Bavarian smokie, topped with BBQ sauce, sauteed mushrooms, onions, tomato and melted cheddar cheese on top of a sour dough muffin would round out my familiarity of the hidden corners of the Elbow Room menu.

Forty-five minutes later, as I waddled out of the Elbow Room, I contentedly proclaimed Meat Holiday a success and was ready to go back to ordinary vegetarian living until next year.

Forty-five minutes after that, my soggy self made it to Science World.

For those of you not from Vancouver, Science World is a children's science museum, well, science education centre. Science World is in a shiny metallic sphere full of hands-on exhibits about optical illusions, physics, human functions, animals and the like. Science World, though a non-profit, is one of the few, if not the only, Vancouver-area cultural institution to turn a profit. With Body Worlds, they've clearly met their 2006 budget many times over.

Operating under the aegis of education and health advocacy, Body Worlds 3, the exhibit Vancouver got, has some 200 body parts, sliced cross-section and entire corpses. Surely something someone of my morbid tendencies would revel in the sheer grotesquerie.

Having touched human bones before, the femur at the entrance was nothing. I stared hard at the red veiny things seeping on the femur's extremities. Then my first full corpse.

Well, I am more a fan of goriness in the fictional form, in particular on celluloid, in the guise of a good zombie flick. I've spent a night in Transylvania with a dead body in front of a graveyard, and that got acquainted with the superstition terrors of the night. Anything too nonfictional, however, and I get queasy.

So it was at Body Worlds. I felt weak, as if I couldn't lift my arms. Still I walked around each body, sometimes standing on my tiptoes to peer into cranial cavities and vacated abdomens. I began dissecting my reaction.

It wasn't the gross-out feeling one would get from, say, a burn victim. It was more of, this is meat.

The muscles reminded me so much of food. I kept thinking, I could never eat that. (I am a fan of emergency cannibal nonfiction; Uruguayan rugby players wrecked in the Andes, the Franklin expeditions, besieged Muscovites eating one another, Donner Party horrors, Chinese rumours of WWII-era kidnappings.) I mean, I've helped out at pig and chicken slaughters, and at the time I couldn't wait to eat my favourite parts. Looking at real human bodies reduced to mere meat, I was happy I've become vegetarian.

Then I further dissected my queasiness.

My stint in a law firm, looking at photos of liability claims, instilled in me an understanding that humans are fragile and anything - an escalator, a wedding ring - can become a weapon that tears the body asunder. I'd seen the pictures of a girl's face ripped off by an escalator and a woman's finger separated from her hand by a two-metre-long thread of tendon. I respect the dangers inherent in life, yet intend to live to 85 and pass away peacefully in my sleep.

Body Worlds reminded me that, though I may avoid sipping cyanide or signing up for mercenary service in Iraq, death might come riding as that extra doughnut or that third martini. Hell, I can limit myself to bran and lettuce; birth condemns all of us to death. Part of my fear of Body Worlds was that I began half-expecting that the ceiling would begin raining anvils to pulverize us the audience into snitzel pulp.

Halfway through the exhibit, there was a hands-on table, mimicking the children's displays elsewhere in Science World, only this time with a plastinated kidney, liver and two arm cross-sections. I flapped liver slivers, poked my finger into a gouged-out hole in the arm, and held up the kidney to my nose to smell it.

Beside the touchy-feelies was a book, How Do I Become a Plastinate? I skimmed over the table of contents, then turned to the chapter on reasons for wanting to become a plastinate. Selflessness was the main reason, to educate the lay public and to continue being of some use to society after one's demise. But also immortality. I want to be like the Egyptian Pharoahs, one said. Another, I worked hard to get my body into prime physical shape, I want others to learn from me.

Here's something I have never admitted until now: I have a deep-seated fear that, if I were to become an organ donor, my consent would give a modern-day Burke and Hare a pre-mortem carte blanche. Immortality would not be Pharaonic but meaty.

Other visitors felt the human body reverberated with the trappings of a meal. "The intestines look like sausages," said a young woman in her early twenties.

On the way out were cross-sections of the length of an obese man's body, a warning about the dangers of eating lest any viewers mull the meatiness of the human body too much.

Two hours after Body Worlds, I sat in a movie theatre waiting to see Jan Svankmajer's latest, Lunacy, a horror film about the two opposing methods of running an insane asylum.

The film is live action interspersed with stop-motion animation interruptions of ambulatory meat, the latter scenes accompanied by saccharine carnival music (photos here). The meat parallels the real actors, with tongues, slabs of meat, brains and eyeballs dancing out the travails of the humans. In the end, a hunk of meat in a supermarket pulsates against the confines of plastic wrap, mirroring the nightmare come true for the human protagonist.

"Repugnant palate cleansers," says one of Lunacy's critics of the parading meat. "A counter-melody reminding us that all is decay."

Tonight I ate bread with vinegar.

Panda Opens Eyes to Injustice

2006-10-12T20:38:00.000-07:00

36-year-old panda at Zoo Atlanta opens her eyes for first time

13:49:40 EDT Oct 12, 2006
Canadian Press

ATLANTA (AP) - Zoo Atlanta's panda opened her eyes to the world's injustices for the first time on Thursday.

Zoo officials made the discovery during a physical examination of the 36-year-old female when the panda was given a newspaper for a toilet visit to produce a stool sample.

"She's probably able to see the shitty state of the world at last," said zoo veterinarian Dr. Maria Crane, adding that no pun was intended. "We noticed she's paying more attention to the news now."

Crane said it is hard to know how much Lunch Lunch actually understands of world affairs. The panda appeared slightly startled at one point when she read the headline that 655,000 Iraqis have died since 2003.

Seemingly reassured by Iraq war supporter US President George W. Bush, the panda freaked out again when she read about North Korea's recent nuclear test claims. The panda reputedly fears for her family still in the People's Republic of China.

An intervention by the park's zoologists (complete with chick flicks and a truck of cupcakes) calmed down the beloved panda.

Parents once again are bringing children to see the panda. Visitor numbers had dropped in the wake of the panda's grief, as the public did not want to be reminded.

"I want to protect my children from the news," said Sandy Johnson, mother of four-year-old twins. "Seeing Lunch Lunch so sad just kept reminding us that other people in the world were dying because of our government's policies. Who cares? Our zoos need to remain family-friendly."

Now that North Korea no longer merits front page headlines, the panda has settled back into merely completing the day's sudoku puzzle. She seems to be ignoring the erosion of women's rights in Nicaragua, and a zoo official even reported that Lunch Lunch said "Armenia who?" when she overhead talk of new French laws regarding the Armenian Genocide.

"She's a very solid panda," Crane said. "Her mind is nice and placid, and that's really a testament to how well Lunch Lunch is keeping her pretty little head out of international matters. And just in case this happens again, we gave her a gift certificate to the Gap."

© The Canadian Press, 2006

Rose Flower and Red Lotus

2006-09-19T16:24:00.000-07:00

Tottering on the verge to becoming one of my favourite films ever, is the 2003 Korean horror film Janghwa, Hongryeon, or A Tale of Two Sisters in English.

Matt first noticed the great cinematography; I loved the eerie story based on a Korean folktale. The original story has a stepmother, a skinned rat, abortion, drownings, and dismemberments. Can't really go wrong in my book.

The story goes something like this (from the DVD cover):

Something strange is happening when Su-mi and her younger sister, Su-yeon, come home to their fathers large but dark and somewhat foreboding house after a stay in the hospital. Their dad is taciturn and burdened, and their stepmother, Eun-joo, greets them with forced enthusiasm and more than a little sense of irritation. But that's nothing compared to what happens when bedtime rolls around.

I intend to delight my friends with personal screenings once I get my copy of the deluxe edition DVD, so I can't give away too much here.

However, I can't hold back from showing off some delightful tidbits from the film.

Let's start with the trail of blood and bare feet walking over it - this is why one should always wear slippers indoors:

A bloody sack in the much-dreaded wardrobe - take that CS Lewis and your honking wardrobe filled with bare-chested fauns and biblical allegories:

The very atmospheric kitchen, simmering with enough menstrual imagery to sell a hundred thousand tampons:

The film's set is also full of dark wallpaper with floral patterns that, instead of giving off a hint of harmless spring, overwhelm with ominous feminity, reminding us of the original tale's two girls, called Rose Flower and Red Lotus, and hammering home the father's passivity in this house of women.

The creepy house where it all takes place:

Writer and director Ji-woon Kim says in the commentary that the house was merely a set but that, after shooting ended, the local government requested that it not be torn down. A monument to Korean horror cinema and, if I could find out where the house is, an addition to the top ten list of Asian horror sightseeing.

The DVD cover also has some commenting value. The edition we rented, had the non-bloody version of this poster:

Everyone in the non-bloody version was in the same position but the girls were clean. When we took our DVD to the counter, the video store clerk flipped open the box to show us the bloody version inside.

Then there is this version of the poster, with Soo-yeon's arm rigidly at her side, making the sisters symmetrical:

Finally, a publicity shot of the sisters with their stepmother, Eun-joo, clutching the two girls:

The movie twists the original story around into a brilliant psychological thriller, with enough blood and ghosts that Matt and I had to take frequent breaks to recuperate from our fear. The film's many interpretations - not your typical Korean supernatural revenge psychological horror flick - also had us staying up late reading other viewers' theories.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is planning a remake, probably with some vapid blonde again. My recommendation is to see the original before the remake obliterates its freshness.

Rock Snot

2006-09-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

Catching up with all the blogs I missed in the last month, I descended upon the Invasive Species Weblog tonight.

Always good for a botanical chuckle or two, I nearly spat out my cherry-flavoured honey toast* when I read that rock snot (Didymosphenia geminate) is now on the Oregon Department of Agriculture's top 100 dangerous invasive species.

How delightfully obscene - a plant called rock snot! The grade two boy in me wanted to know more.

Rock snot, also called didymo, is a diatom. Millions of these single-celled organisms turn fresh-water streams into vats of brown slime by latching on to rocks. Hailing from northern Europe, rock snot starts out as bubble-shaped warts on rocks that feel "like wet cotton wool." In later stages, "streamers turn white at their ends and fragments float downstream similar to clumps of tissue paper". Rock snot is highly invasive; to stop its spread, fishermen must sterilize their clothing and wet pets must be thoroughly dried off for 48 hours before plunging them into new waters.

Also on the list for those of us who like the bizarre are the following:

Hazelnut bacteria canker (Pseudomonas avellanae): responsible for the decline of Nutella ingredients in Europe.

Potato wart (Synchytrium endobioticum): with a lifespan of about 40 years, spuds become "unmarketable" for the "disease is comparative to a condition resembling elephantiasis, the human deformity suffered by John Merrick and chronicled in the movie The Elephant Man."

Dead man's fingers (Codium fragile tomentosoides): also known as green fleece, green sea fingers, oyster thief and Sputnik weed, this algae smothers oysters, mussels and scallops, and makes waterfronts stinky.

Yellow floating heart (Nymphoides peltata): a rather pretty type of east Asian waterlily sold in plant stores, this aggressive species chokes out other plants and sometimes stagnates water.

Mile-a-minute weed (Polygonum perfoliatum): also known as Devil's tail, tearthumb, tearthumb weed, Asiatic tearthumb, Devil shield, mile-a-minute vine and Chinese tearthumb, this plant grows around six inches a day.

And bonus point to the Inavasive Species Weblog's Dr. Jennifer Forman Orth for more new vocabulary: myrmecologist (a person who studies the life cycles, behavior, ecology, or diversity of ants - which led me to hymenopterist, or a person who studies the life cycles, behavior, ecology, or diversity of wasps and bees) and piscicide (a chemical substance for destroying fish pests).

*I prefer my toast rare. If you should ever need to win favour with me by offering me toast, keep this in mind.

The Swastika in Canadian Hockey

2006-09-13T00:32:00.000-07:00

While looking up the Latvian Thunder Cross mittens, I came across the Wikipedia swastika entry. It turns out that one of the small towns in the Rockies, Fernie had a women's hockey team in the twenties called the Swastikas.

This is significant because I lived in Fernie for a very brief part of my childhood. And one of my oldest extent sculptures - a construction of Fernie found objects - is still in my kitchen, in front of me, in fact, as I type this.

The Swastikas was obviously quite a common name for hockey teams in the early twentieth century as Windsor, Nova Scotia also claimed the Swastikas (from 1905 to 1916) for its high-scoring men's team and Edmonton used the name for its own women's hockey team around 1916.

The Fernie and District Historical Society Museum has more to say about the team: "In 1923, 1924 and 1926, the Swastikas advanced to compete in Banff for the Alpine Cup, then the highest award given to any such team in Alberta and British Columbia. In 1923, they defeated the Calgary Regents to win the coveted award."

According to the History of Hockey in British Columbia, the Fernie Swastikas "also defeated the the Vancouver Amazons who had won the Rocky Mountain Park Trophy the year before."

(Cross-posted from Metroblogging Vancouver)

Latvian Swastika Mittens

2006-09-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

From Scotsman.com:

[300 Latvian craftspeople] knitting 4500 pairs of woollen mittens as gifts for November's NATO summit have been told not to incorporate the lucky Latvian Thunder Cross symbol into their designs, as it looks like a swastika.

An interesting site with other Latvian symbols says of the Thunder Cross: "this sign was popular to cut into the beds of children and to interweave into belts for newborn children to wrap them."

Unfortunately the Thunder Cross, despite its traditional use for hundreds of years and its use by Latvian Air Force (from 1918 to 1934), in insignias of other military units and other non-political groups, was tainted by its relationship with Perkonkrusts, a Latvian fascist group in the thirties.

NATO dignitaries will instead get mittens with other designs and "a jar of honey, a CD of local folk music, Latvian tea and a bottle of the national spirit – a 45% abv concoction of at least 25 different ingredients, known as Black Balzam."

A+

2006-09-12T13:46:00.000-07:00

A mystery has been solved!

In my nerdsome youth, I collected a number of penpals from around the world. One penpal that I had for purely aesthetic reasons was a beauty from South Africa who, originally from Zaïre (now the Congo), wrote in a mixture of French and English. Her theory was that the French would improve my Canadian school system French*.

Thus my penpal always signed off her letters with bisous and A+.

A few trips to France later and I got my bisous down. Little kisses. According to BellaOnline's French Culture Editor, Melissa Demiguel, "it is quite versatile as it can be used to finish conversations, sign letters and demand kisses." There's also plein de bisous and plein de petits bisous.

A+ is weirder and has remained a mystery despite my penpal's explanation.

Now Le Meg of Le Blagueur à Paris has solved my mystery.

In her conversation with Le Mec - ha! I remembered that one! The colloquial for guy! - the revelation that A+ = à plus, or à plus tard, struck me with the force of finally getting it after fifteen + years of wondering. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

It was a good joke.

*For the bilingualism naysayers, I contribute my poor French not to the inadequacies of the Canadian school system but to bilingualism naysayers themselves and to my own debilitating shyness.

The Death of the Duc de Brissac

2006-09-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

The poor Duc de Brissac. Louis Hercule Timolon de Cossé seemed like a nice enough guy.

As related in the Joan Haslip Madame du Barry biography, this last patron of the last royal favourite and one of Louis XVI's most loyal courtiers suffered a gruesome death during the September Massacres on September 9, 1792:

...Hostile crowds had gathered along the route before they had reached [Versailles]...The convoy was brought to a halt at the corner of the rue de l'Orangerie, opposite the house which the Comte de Provence had brought from Madame du Barry, where in the days of her splendour she had given the most fabulous of balls...Then suddenly there was a mad rush - the horses were unharnessed and the mob fell on the prisoners attacking them with sabres, scythes and knives. The guards made no attempts to defend them...Sezing a stick from one of his assailants, Brissac put up a heroic defence till, blinded and mutilated, he was thrown to the ground. Three young boys fought with one another over his mangled remains, cutting off his head in triumph and transfixing it on a pike.

Wait, it gets better:

Yelling with a fearful joy, they paraded [the head] through the streets of Versailles, forcing an unfortunate woman who later died of the shock to kiss the bleeding mouth.

Blinded? I am picturing something along the lines of Gloucester in King Lear, only a thousand times better with the detail about the poor woman being made to kiss the head and dying from it.

At that point, the Duc's head was a dishevelled version of the one painted below:

It was not unheard of to force friends or relatives of the decapitated to kiss the head during the French Revolution, or at least in its earlier days. On my sixth French Revolution book this summer and at least four heads got some post-mortem romance, if not lip action. The Duc de Brissac's anonymous kisser is one of two women who died after encountering a head; however, the other woman, three years earlier, at the very beginning of the Revolution, may or may not have been forced to kiss the head.

Though the Madame du Barry fainted before she could see her lover's head, she may have seen it later. Rumour has it that she buried the head in her garden. A skull was indeed found there many years later.

90 Minutes Well Spent

2006-07-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Litblitz's zombie movie recommendations, I spent about ten minutes perusing the IMDB entries on Dead & Breakfast and Zombie Honeymoon.

There, as commonly seen in other horror commentaries, is the oft-repeated phrase: "I wasted 90 minutes of my time, time that I will never get back."

Wow, I thought, these people sure have exciting lives. I mean, hell, if they lament 90 lost minutes, can you imagine what they do with the rest of their time? Negotiating peace in obscure Central Asian would-be breakaway republics, tweaking their latest opera before rehearsals start, carving their scrimshaw version of the Uffizi's greatest paintings, concocting vaccines to fight off the hantaviruses - shit, makes my current 18th century French aristocrat gossip obsession seem like I am flitting away my life.

Their productive lives mean that even one and a half hours spent watching this film bile - nay! longer! - the drive to the video store, the decision-making process once inside the video store, reading the backs of all the horror DVD cases, asking the store staff for recommendations, the drive home, the interminable minutes waiting for the popcorn maker to do its job, the bathroom breaks, the fridge runs, the interrupting telephone rings - are precious hours away from their lives' work.

For all the time these schlock horror fans spend away from their real work, we commoners suffer. No cures, no art, no peace. Someone, somewhere, for the good of all mankind, please make a worthy zombie movie!

Disclaimer: this post took 31 minutes to write, find links, verify spellings, re-read, edit and post.

About a Song Called Chilman Uthegi Nahin

2006-07-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Steve has been been preparing for a trip to India for years and his blog, Proxy Indian, started in February, is an extension of his research. I don't know what will happen to the blog after October, when he returns home; hopefully he'll still be around and he'll be then dissecting his trip.

My best friend - Pugshot on this medium - introduced me to the wonderful Steve a couple Christmases ago*, during my last visit to Chicago. Steve, like me, is a connoisseur of old graveyards and fine chocolate, though my chocolate tastes are considerably more plebian than his noble ones. Most usefully, however, Steve is doing the research for me for a hobby I meant to take up: Bollywood movies.

One of his recent posts, about the song Chilman Uthegi Nahin, is a fun look at what makes the song and clip of its performance in the film Kisna so wonderful. Steve gives the background on what's happening at that point in the movie (interracial romance, Kisna's smuggling of Brit girl Katherine and her mom winds them all up in a courtesan's performance with a back-up dance group, where they go unrecognized for six minutes); the best choreography (minutes 2:20, 4:35 and 5:12); what the instrumental cameo was (a sarangi two minutes into the clip); the lyrics with the time approximation within the clip - along with the clip itself.

If only all Indian movies were so neatly prepared for my consumption.

Hint, hint, Steve.

*Matt always jokes that I remember everything by year. That's not true. I remember everything around my travels.

Overheard in the Supermarket

2006-07-28T08:47:00.000-07:00

Cashier Girl: You're buying the book?

Redneck Woman: Yeah, I always like to read the book before I watch the movie.

Cashier Girl: But the movie just came out. Why don't you just watch the movie?

Redneck Woman: I like to read the book and compare.

Cashier Girl: That always ruins the movie for me.

Redneck Woman: The book is usually better than the movie.

Cashier Girl: Exactly. It ruins the movie for me.

Marie Antoinette Rises from the Dead

2006-07-27T00:41:00.000-07:00

This book club thing has turned me into the bookworm I've always wanted to be: I've read four books already - only two as part of the collective reading choices - and I've got more waiting in line.

The book club has had other consequences.

As a result of Evelyne Lever's Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France, I became curious about the Madame du Barry and, after reading her biography, Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty by Joan Haslip, I was won over to her camp, becoming someone that in her day would have been called a barryste.

Then, sad and confused over Marie Antoinette's death in the Lever biography, I picked up Antonia Fraser's Marie Antoinette: The Journey. What a difference! Whereas Lever's Antoinette was repeatedly a "charming featherbrain," Fraser's Antoinette was a poor little rich girl. I should have known from the covers: Lever's book features a close-up of Antoinette's face at the height of her glamour before her children domesticated her, Fraser's the group portrait of the mature Antoinette with her children. I suspect the difference is that Lever, a Frenchwoman, is a child of the French Revolution, who grew up with textbooks condemning the ancien regime and Fraser is a British aristocrat who learned to appreciate the benefits of a monarchy.

Alas, this second Marie Antoinette biography ends the same way. No matter how much Antonia Fraser explained away the queen's deficiencies, she still died at the end of the book.

So next I picked up Olivier Blanc's Last Letters: Prisons and Prisoners of the French Revolution. Afterwards I have Madame du Pompadour's biography - also by Evelyne Lever- and the sole Louis XVI biography, which promises to show that the poor Louis was actually the most conscientious, most sensitive and most christian of the French kings. Once I get through those, I hope I have enough energy to throw in biographies of five other Louis (XIV, XV, XVII, XVIII and Philippe), as well as Charles X and, if I am really ambitious, Napoleon. Plus I have the Vigée-Lebrun and Madame Tussaud biographies and a book on the festivals of the French Revolution.

The final consequence of this Marie Antoinette craze is that I've remembered how much I love Paris. This is the tenth year anniversary since my last trip there. To celebrate, I dug out the memorabilia from my first trip to Paris. Perusing the maps and ticket stubs, I began making lists of places I would visit on my next trip, with itineraries for a revolutionary prison tour, a Eugène Delacroix tour and a tour of the palaces of Marie Antoinette. In a sudden fit, my Marie Antoinette inebriation made me subscribe to a bunch of Parisian blogs, as if that would cure me.

Luckily, it's a good time for this particular obsession:

The Louvre Museum is promoting the sale of dozens of Marie-Antoinette- related items at its museum store, including a $160 children's costume modeled on a portrait of Marie-Antoinette at the age of seven.

The Paris confectioner Ladurée, whose towers of colorful macaroons grace the film, is paying "homage" to the queen with a Marie-Antoinette "collection," including a white- and milk- chocolate cake imprinted with her carriage.

The perfumer Francis Kurkdjian consulted 18th-century accounts of Marie-Antoinette's taste in concentrated scents in creating a perfume in her honor. Baccarat has produced it as a limited edition of 10 ($10,000 each) as well as a $450 version in a less expensive crystal.

The fashion designer John Galliano made Marie-Antoinette his muse in his haute couture show in Paris early this year. Lalique has made crystal earrings and a pendant inspired by one of her portraits.

The Raynaud porcelain house is selling copies of her royal dishes, the knife maker Couteaux de Sauveterre a $280 limited edition jackknife engraved with the initials "MA."

Marie-Antoinette was said to be a picky eater, but at the one-star Les Trois Marches restaurant in Versailles, chef Gérard Vié has created a $127, five- course "Marie-Antoinette menu" featuring adaptations of favorite 18th-century royal dishes: stuffed sweetbreads with mushrooms, slowly boiled beef and Saint-Pierre fish with spinach and herb sauce.

(From the International Herald Tribune, via Shortcut)

Way more universal than my zombie obsession.

Ivan's Hamsterification Halted

2006-07-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

This is my stepcat:

While Matt is away, Ivan stays with me.

In the past, Ivan's stay has produced some weird behaviour.

It must have been the hamsters.

Hamsters, in their domesticated environment, use tissue for their bedding. Each hamster had her style; Anişoara had a thing for for tissue curtains on her house, Crenguţă for a neatly lined nest, Valentina merely had a free-for-all disaster area going*.

After a couple of weeks with me, Ivan returned home. Then Matt discovered this:

As you can see, Ivan lined his own cat bed with paper towels. Just like the hamsters.

But the hamsterification of the cat is not over.

Ivan discovered the hamster treat bucket.

Whenever I go to the pet store, I always throw in a few hamster extras for the little ones. I've accumulated a bucket's worth of little packets of "hamster ravioli" and "hamster yoghurt drops" and the like. I left the bucket out by the hamster cage and Ivan explored.

He took out one bag, chewed it open, took out one hamster treat, licked it and was horrified. He tried another one from the same bag. He spat it out. Then he picked up another bag, chewed it open and same reaction. You could almost see the despair on his face: "What the hell are these hamsters eating?"

During the night he opened one more bag and spat out the one nibblet.

At least Lucian had no problem with the regurgitated treats.

*Even Sylvia from Small Animal Rescue commented that she was one messy hamster.

Update on the Worm

2006-07-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Turns out Rurality's garden was visited by the worms as well. Sure, she claims it's just the hot weather splitting open the tomatoes. The poor woman is deluding herself. And most people do when they get such a forceful message from the slimy ones.

Unlike the lowercase worms in Phyllis Smith's Arkansas, Rurality's Alabama ones have left the caps lock on. The "HI" looks aggressive. It's as if they are a bunch of worm thugs out for trouble. "HI" they grunt, right before they trip you and run off with your wallet. Rurality, don't fall for it. Just walk away.

Love, The Worm in Phyllis Smith's Garden

2006-07-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

After years of combat - the worms eating Phyllis Smith prize peonies, Phyllis Smith firebombing the worms, the worms counter-attacking Phyllis Smith's award-winning eggplants, Phyllis Smith dropping the worms in a blender full of gazpacho, the worms retaliating on Phyllis Smith's county-wide famed chives, Phyllis Smith pouring arsenic down the throats of hapless POWs - a never-ending story of carnage and despair on both sides, wiser voices in the worm community finally sought to put an end to the bloodshed.

"Let's reach out to Phyllis Smith," they said amongst each other, "in a gesture of friendship with a conciliatory message of peace."

An idealist perhaps, Maximilien volunteered his penmanship. He, like many others, believed that Phyllis Smith would respond to his amicable "hi" with her own missive of armistice.

The shock came when Phyllis Smith retorted that she would "do whatever it takes to get rid of the message's author."

Maximilien knew he was a marked worm. Friends suddenly shut their doors on him, even family avoided him at breakfast. Every time Phyllis Smith came into the garden, he cowered under a pile of dirt, half expecting death to pounce on him. He prayed that his would be a quicker one than that of the wretched Gazpacho Five.

The agony of those terrible moments slowly gave way to a new feeling in the fugitive worm's breast. As he passed the days alone, his fear turned to rage, and with the brewing rage came courage. Maximilien figured he had nothing to lose and so began his campaign against this destroyer of worms.

One morning, Phyllis Smith got down on her knees to pull up the carrots. The nearby scarecrow, an eviscerated rabbit buzzing with flies, had done its job in horrifying the neighbourhood lagomorphs. Phyllis herself was thinking only of the carrot garnish for her weekly ham roast.

She yanked out a carrot and brushed off the dirt. She shuddered.

There, along the length of the carrot, were the words, Your time draws nigh, Tyrant!

Phyllis Smith froze, then threw the vegetable over her fence in a panicked motion. Taking in a deep breath, she told herself that she had not really seen what she thought she'd seen.

Get a hold of yourself, she demanded.

Then she reached for another carrot. Snatched from the ground, the carrot bore the words, Beware the cauliflower! She stifled a scream and looked around her. She saw no one. Collecting her senses, she suspected the moles. The little trench diggers would get it.

The following day, while Phyllis Smith flooded the mole holes with Moletox, Maximilien, with the help of Phyllis Smith's treacherous zebra finch, infiltrated the her household.

After he completed his work, he scaled the tropical beach wallpaper to watch from the brass chandelier.

The hours seemed to stretch into oblivion, as Phyllis Smith plopped onto her black vinyl couch, The Meat Cook Book on her lap, flipping through the pages, disappeared, then returned with a plate of Jiffy Cheesefurters. The Cheesefurters were coupled with a Cotto Tree, a tower of the previous day's ham curled in rosettes around stuffed green olives and cauliflower "foliage."

The zebra finch had not lied. Maximilien's plan was working.

Phyllis Smith raised a forkful of frankfurters to her mouth, the grease glossing her lips. Maximilien watched, not daring to breath. Then Phyllis Smith plucked a cauliflower off the Cotto Tree. She brought to her mouth and - for a moment, Maximilien lost hope - she paused. Then she read.

I am watching you.

Her screams were heard all over the neighbourhood.

Lucian's Provenance

2006-07-20T09:15:00.000-07:00

Valentina was to be my last hamster for a few years. As Crenguţă lay dying, I vowed to spoil Valentina into the little furry princess of my heart. After her death I would delve into the world of guinea pigs and possibly chinchillas.

The discovery of Valentina's corpse thwarted my maternal instincts. I was not ready yet to explore the other offerings of domesticated rodentia. I needed another hamster upon which to lavish adoration. Besides, I had stockpiled too many hamster luxuries to throw away.

I remembered that Sylvia of Small Animal Rescue had a sister and a brother of Valentina's. I planned, in my forlorn state, to take in one of the siblings and make it up to Valentina's memory by providing this family member with the care intended for Valentina.

Sylvia, however, had already sent her family to Vancouver Island. "Do you want me to ask for them back?" she asked. Sadly I declined. Valentina's brother and sister had already found a good home.

Instead, Matt and I examined six other hamsters. The peachies, as Sylvia called them, were removed from a little girl's bedroom on Knight Street. For six months the child had been breeding hamsters until her mother found the original two multiplied into twenty hamsters. Suddenly a dynasty of peachies were homeless.

Aside from my growing anger at parents who stupidly allow their kids to have pets and at petshops that sell animals, I am thankful at least that I can rescue one poor hamster.

Matt chose Lucian based on his appearance and his acrobatics.

Having only ever been a short-hair hamster owner, Lucian straddles both aspects of hamster fur: some of his fur is short, while in other places he sports a certain punk look. And the morning hair is cute beyond all similes.

Then there is his boxer's nose. A squished up snout makes him look like he's seen one matches too many, though his amicable personality puts him far off the pugilist spectrum. More likely the nose is a result of his monkey bar antics. For example, unlike other hamsters, he does not use the front door to get into his house - he paratroops into it, dangling from cage bar to cage bar and dropping into his bedding.

So much like royalty, the inauguration of his reign needs official portraits. Matt kindly complied to my requests, above and below.

This Involves Wax

2006-07-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Me, I find moustaches creepy. Nevermind that my most long-lived high school crush, a French painter dead for over a hundred years, sported one. I looked at pictures of him with my finger covering up his one fault.

No longer is Canada a wilderness of furry faces as were our forefathers. Men who don't shave are beyond forty and the weirdos with goatees are safely in the rural Fraser Valley or at hockey games, places I avoid at all costs.

My other friend Matt recently grew a moustache, in a way commemmorating his move back to Texas:

one of the great things was how quickly the ’stache could morph into something else. it could be ironic and fun, but with the addition of a hat of some kind (baseball, cowboy) suddenly the irony was gone, and i was an honest to goodness redneck. awesome.

Seriously though, I had no idea moustaches were so difficult to maintain:

’stache wax is not so easy to find these days, i will tell you. it’s not at rite aid. it’s not at ralph’s. there was online searching. there was an old-timey beauty shop in the jew-y old hollywood part of town. where it came with its own ’stache comb for only $3.99.

It gets even more complicated. Just go and read the rest. Hell, add Matt's blog to your RSS feed, he's one of the really good writers on the 'net.

Lucian

2006-07-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

Distraught after the death of Valentina, I phoned up Sylvia at Small Animal Rescue, told her about the death of my foster hamster and asked if, provided she still trusted me with hamsters, I could take in another foster hamster.

This is Lucian:

For those of you who don't speak Romanian, his name is pronounced "Lou-chee-an." Named after my sole maternal first cousin, Lucian the Hamster resembles Lucian the Man in girth. Male hamsters, like many male mammals, are larger than the female both in bulk and length - their length increased by disproportionate testicles.

At first, I was reluctant to get an aesthetically troubling animal into my household. With the female hamster's genitals safely tucked from view, I never feared the possibility of unintentional incest as I picked up the critters. The male hamster thus requires extreme decorum.

To my hamster-saddened heart, I am thrilled that male hamsters, on the other hand, have less of a propensity to die from cancer than female hamsters (for example, both Crenguţă and Anişoara) and furthermore, male hamsters are the gentler of the two hamster sexes.

Lucian's amazing physique is enhanced by his enormous bat-like ears:

Of course, my Transylvanian ancestry (with an actual bastard countess relative, no less) delights at this almost noctilionine rodent.

*Both photos courtesy Matt.

Litblitz is Back!

2006-07-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite blogs has returned from the dead: Washnignton DC's wonderful and super polite struggling writer Litblitz returned with a post on Library Thing. While it doesn't seem likely that the Lady is back for a regular stint, we at least know she's alive and well.

For those of us who dream of being (professional) writers, her archives are great background reading.

What Happens to One's Education?

2006-07-17T10:16:00.000-07:00

As I face the combination of my vast household with that of Matt's, my entire life, books, photos, art, clothing, music, kitchenware, must now fit into a Tokyo-sized apartment. Since most of my expansion occurred during 2000-2002 - when I was living in an on-location Tokyo-sized apartment - I am painfully aware that my stuff can fit in said apartment but that Matt also has enough stuff to fit into said apartment. Surely we can't buy two of said apartments.

My rules are I am keeping everything. Anything from my travels or in a foreign language will be protected as if I were a lioness wielding a red hot poker. Thus my non-English language books, the majority of my books, are safe, as is my humble collection of folkart: Romanian glass icons, Ethiopian religious symbols, Peruvian clayworks, Chinese basketware and so on. No art books can leave my possession either (or indeed, be lent out). Photos, impossible, as is my correspondence. As for clothes - ha!

My concession are a few books that I will recycle via secondhand bookshops and friends. Truly I will never reread that book about the Dutch torturing the English in 17th century Indonesia nor that horrid history of bananas.

Then there is the bigger issue at hand.

What does one do with their university class notes?

This, as Cheryl the Red and I discussed, is all we have of our education. Thousands of dollars, years of work, what do you do with it a decade or more after you've graduated?

Art history, for example, represents one of my very deepest interests. Spanish, French and German hark back to a time I could say I was multilingual. Chinese, why those eight years of fervent studying, almost a third of my life, would turn to tragedy if they were lost. And Classical Chinese, there's the only class for which I ever got a C and the only test I ever failed - the Museum of Me needs my failures as well as my triumphs.

As I explained to Cheryl, my goal is to put aside one hour each week and re-write my notes into a notebook, condensing the lessons. I will clip out the drawings and glue them into a scrapbook, then recycle the paper.

Zugzwang

2006-07-14T08:59:00.000-07:00

Among the detritus my sister left behind was the metal tin of Adult Late Night Games. I fell upon on the box and took out the cards, when one card caught my eye.

It was a vocabulary card, with a trio of rarely heard words, the rules of the game being you come up with two alternate definitions, presenting all three to your opponents. If they guess one of the made-up definitions to be the meaning of the word, they must remove an item of clothing. Balderdash, in other words.

But what I liked were the words. Adjectives, verbs and nouns I missed my whole life:

Zugzwang: an obligation to move in chess, even if disadvantageous (dibs on this word in Scrabble).
Clitellum: the raised band encircling the body of an earthworm.
Gammomania: A form of insanity characterised by strong and extravagant proposals of marriage.
Levigate: to reduce to a fine powder.
Briarean: having one hundred hands.
Bathycolpous: someone with a particularly large chest.
Callipygian: having particularly beautiful buttocks.
Kakopyge: someone with ugly buttocks.
Daspygal: having hairy buttocks.
Hermipygic: possessing only one buttock.

Update: Matt adds steatopygic, having an extreme accumulation of fat on the buttocks, and David adds epipastic, medical dusting powder.

The Death of Princesse de Lamballe

2006-07-05T00:29:00.000-07:00

One of the gruesome horrors of the French Revolution was the death of the Princesse de Lamballe on September 3, 1792. Even the Marquis de Sade, having "wept tears of blood" over his lost paedophiliac-coprophiliac masterpiece The 120 Days of Sodom, shuddered when he heard that the princesse, upon decapitation, had her mons pubis sliced off and worn as a moustache.

The Princesse's fate is explained thus:

...the head of the Princesse de Lamballe could be seen at the end of a pike, her face twisted into a grimace and her long blond hair flowing in the wind, caked with blood. Her naked, mutilated body had been dragged through the streets by her assassins; it lay on the ground among a group of madmen; they had torn out her heart and brandished it at the end of a sword like a trophy.

(Evelyne Lever: Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France, translated by Catherine Temerson, page 284)

Antonia Fraser goes into even more detail in her Marie Antoinette: The Journey. In point form, the full script of her death and subsequent indignities go as follows:

Hit by hammers on the head. Goes unconscious.
Violated either before or after.
Breasts and privates cut off.
Or, her heart cut out, cooked and eaten.
Possible disembowellment.
Head mounted on a pike.
Innards mounted on a pike.
Comte de Beaujolais sees his aunt's head and body pass by the Palais-Royal.
Apprentice wax modeller Marie Grosholz forced to make a cast of the head and trembles too much to work - she had known the princesse in life.
Stop at a barber shop so the princesse's hair can be restyled.
The head taken to the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, so that Marie Antoinette could kiss her friend's lips.
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were playing backgammon when the head arrives at the Tower.
Officials close the shutters and keep the family away from the windows.
Marie Antoinette fainted.
Another pike reported to have a blood- and mud-stained chemise.
Commissioner Daujon allows the mob to parade the head around the Tower but not to come inside.
Daujon prevents entry "by the use of the tricolour ribbon on the door."
Rioting continues until 5 pm.
A Jacques Pointel rescues the head.
The princesse's father-in-law, the Duc de Penthièvre, retrieves body and head.
The princesse interred in the Penthièvre crypt.

This princesse, born in Torino on September 8, 1749, married Louis Alexandre Stanislaus de Bourbon, prince of Lamballe, in 1767. The prince died the following year and the princesse never remarried. In 1785 Marie Anoinette withdrew from her friendship with the comtesse de Polignac and returned to the princesse. The princesse's loyalty was such that, during her interrogation she refused to denounce her friend; this in turn led to her immediate death.

Yet, perhaps Marie Thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan did not die as rumour has it. Floating about on the internet is the idea that she was delivered to the Duc de Penthièvre fully clothed - surely her murderers wouldn't have bothered to re-dress her? What about the eyewitnesses? Were the stories concocted by the royalists to win over Europe to their cause?

Hamster Farewells

2006-06-27T12:18:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks have brought me anguish.

Crenguţă's diseased body took a turn for the worse on my birthday and she died sometime in the night. Before she succumbed, I took a photo of her lovely little toes:

Then, as I was recovering from one hamster death, poor Valentina escaped never to be seen again alive. I set up four hamster traps around the house, looked in every nook and cranny, and finally decided I'd found her hiding place. Alas, she was in a different part of the house.

The thing that gets to me is that she died a mere two metres from one of the easily accessible traps, filled with seeds. Probably disoriented, dehydrated and starved, she could not make it this far.

You can see above that the blood had already started pooling in her extremities. Rigor mortis had set in as well. She had been alive until recently and I failed her.

A mother whose son went down in an airplane in the Andes was struck with the feeling that her son was dead even before anyone else had known the plane crashed. Another family friend here in Vancouver had a dream of her father appearing out of the woods in her backyard at the same time he was dying in Romania. I believe very strongly in telepathy, especially in times of stress.

Yesterday morning I woke at 3:30 am, overwhelmed with depression and fear. It must have been at the time Valentina realized she would die and began her frenzied search for nourishment.

Valentina is laying on her funerary shroud within a perfume box, as she has been for the last few hours. I want to keep her with me for a few more hours. She only lived six months and all I will have of her now is this photo:

Du Barry's Backstabber

2006-06-26T20:36:00.000-07:00

Remember this picture by Gautier Dagoty?

Notice the little dude in the lefthand corner?

That's Zamor.

Zamor was a Bengal servant in Madame du Barry's service, received from the king. Joan Haslip's Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty describes his life at Barry's home of Louveciennes (pages 90-91):

The countess adored him, stuffing him with sweetmeats, dressing him in the most extravagant of costumes in velvet and in satin with plumed caps and jewelled earrings. She even went to the lengths of having him christened, with her as godmother and a Prince of the Blood, the Comte de la Marche, standing in as godfather. People spoke of the orgies at Louveciennes, of little blonde peasant girls brought in to frolic and make love to Zamor for the pleasure of the old King, who to amuse his mistress gave her blackamoor a pension and appointed him as governor of Louveciennes, calling in the solemn-faced chancellor to affix his seal on the documents.

By the time Madame du Barry returned from exile at the Pont aux Dames convent (sent there by orders of the dying Louis XV), Zamor had grown into an annoying brat. Despite advice from her steward and lawyers to fire him, du Barry was too soft-hearted.

Zamor filled the next few years by hanging out in Paris' Palais Royal cafes and later the Republican Club in Louveciennes itself, making friends with spies and bad sorts. When du Barry's famous jewellry was stolen on the night of January 11, 1791, historian Haslip suspects Zamor as the insider on the job with his new friends. Sadly, too, it was at the Republican Club was Zamor met Englishman George Grieve, who was later to rape du Barry while arresting her.

Grieve had taken an interest in Zamor, encouraged him to read Rousseau and received from Zamor purloined letters from du Barry's desk. By the time du Barry finally fired Zamor during the Reign of Terror - talk about bad timing - he was completely on Grieve's side, supplying him with proof of du Barry's guilt for having 'aristocratic leanings.'

In Haslip's book, Zamor appears one more time, on December 6, 1793, at the trial in the Great Hall of Liberty, formerly the Paris parlement, to provide damning proof that du Barry hosted aristocrats. He added that he tried to warn her but, bull-headed, she wouldn't change her evil ways.

Du Barry was guillotined the next day, after she won a few hours reprieve by giving away the locations of her buried treasures to the Committee of Public Safety in a bid to win her life.

We pick up his story again online. Zamor himself was not immune from suspicion and faced prison time. After his release, he disappeared until 1815 when he was a bitter old man living in Paris. The site on which we find this information ridiculously exonerates Zamor of all wrong-doing.

Personally, I think Zamor was a bastard.

Compendium of Google Searches

2006-06-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to blog for a while, but I've just dug up my lists of weird searches that have led readers here. Going back to 2004 when I finally added Sitemeter, these searches make writing Maktaaq worthwhile:

1. hamster emails
2. indiebride poem
3. "japan men" photo "long hair"
4. woman eaten poo
5. krazy kat skirt
6. dr and mrs vandertramp song lyrics
7. hamster ladders
8. contact with deceased ladybug
9. spook the parrot
10. drugstore and biscuit beetles
11. bride porn
12. dream analysis guinea pig
13. squash, plural
14. big brown nipples
15. topless hula girl toy
16. what type of yoghurt can hamsters eat
17. guinea pig clothes
18. tooth extractions fetish
19. zombie fortress [this one was used twice this week!]
20. my hamster is throwing her babies across the cage why
21. what is written on the godmother's business card
22. wet butts sex
23. pink hamster
24. strawberry shortcake adult comic dominatrix
25. wood sliver infection of the finger
26. what noise does a wookie make?
27. dream dictionary fingernails fall off
28. origami freddie kruger fingers
29. lewis and clark encountering werewolf
30. "how to survive a robot uprising" -"with more interest"
31. tweety bird birthday party for thirteen year old
32. grapefruits vs flatulence
33. The touching, massage, closeness guinea pig plan
34. insect squish fetish stories
35. pitt bull method of killing
36. chinese zodiac sign toxic rabbit
37. radioactive cutlery 2004 Bush
38. preserved babies in formaldehyde
39. queer eye bourgeoisie:
40. fresh pork of my thoughts [note: this was my second post as a blogger way back in 2002]
41. guinea pigs music notes tone (-"as guinea pigs") ( -'""guinea pigs"")
42. possum rat nutella
43. praying mantis tattoos
44. origami krueger claws

The searches have shifted from hamster menstruation (it can happen!), the one search I was once guaranteed to be #1. I still get a lot of slipper spanking, Marissa Imrie and Mohammed Bijeh, but not enough to make me really certain of what my identity really is. Am I a morbid ghoul or am I fraught with a latent sexuality borne of a convent upbringing?

Makes me want to write more about shepherding guinea pigs through Gobi Desert sandstorms. Or something.

Blame the Mother

2006-06-13T15:07:00.000-07:00

JJ1 has been described as bloodthirsty, clever, and fast. Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber referred to him as a "problem bear." Farmers claimed the bear "enjoyed killing," because he had killed sheep without eating them. As of June 7, 2006, his kills included 30 sheep and 2 domestic rabbits.

Bruno, or JJ1, has alternately disputed the alleged charges and blamed his mother - a welfare crack whore - in the ongoing case. According to BBC News, "Bruno's mother - who is blamed for his savage behaviour - has another three cubs."

His lawyers are seeking a reduced sentence as their client is himself a victim of a tragic childhood marred by violence and a poor mother figure.

In a statement to the press, his law team spoke of lack of motherly affection, at a time when bears in Europe are almost extinct and a young bear needs parental attention. "Without a proper habitat, young bears turn to their parents for support - yet Bruno's cries for help were ignored," remarked a spokeswoman at the emotionally-charged press conference.

No word was given on the whereabouts of Bruno's father.

Germany's Spiegel Online describes JJ1's descent into crime: "he began his rampage killing sheep, chickens and rabbits and stealing honey in the Alpine border region of Germany, Austria and Italy."

The French and the Spanish, in response, greeted four Slovenian bears with "pots of honey laced with broken glass." Other Slovenian bears reported racial slurs and being told to "stop stealing jobs from the natives."

The suspect's twin brother, JJ2, is still on the lam in the Italian alps.

Rococo Gossip

2006-06-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

As our little book club is now reading Evelyne Lever's Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France, I have faithfully delved into it, already reading one-sixth of it. Hurrah.

However, already I have a few questions that need answers. What was so scandalous about Louis XV? What hanky-panky was the Sun King up to? Was Madame du Barry really practically from the gutter?

To answer a few of my questions, I picked up a few books at the library and began to research.

We'll leave the Sun King aside for now - but Louis XV, yes, I would agree with Evelyne Lever and Joan Haslip (the writer of Madame du Barry: The Wages of Beauty), that this Louis was still hot shit in his old age. Not my type, but still, check him out below.

Louis XV was famously unfaithful. His most famous lovers were:

Madame de Mailly

Madame de Vintimille (younger sister of Madame de Mailly)

Madame de Châteauroux (another younger sister of Madame de Mailly)

Two other de Mailly sisters

Marquise de Pompadour - with whom he later became merely friends, as she didn't like sex

Marie-Louise O'Murphy - a saucy Irish lass who was famously painted by François Boucher at fifteen (below) as the Reclining Girl, now in Munich's Alte Pinakothek

Madame du Barry, the last mistress

The king also frequented his Parc aux Cerfs, the Deer Park, where a changing smorgasbord of misguided girls were provided for the king's vast appetite.

As for Madame du Barry, was she riffraff?

Pretty much.

Mother Anne Bécu was a gorgeous seamstress who, while sewing sheets at the Picpus monastery, hit it off with the handsome Brother Angel, or Jean-Baptiste Gomard de Vaubernier. Oops.

But it gets worse. The future Madame du Barry, four-year-old Jeanne Bécu, went off to Paris to live with mom, mom's new boyfriend Monsieur Billard-Dumonceaux, the paymaster of the city of Paris and inspector of the army commissariats, and his courtesan-mistress, the Italian Francesca or Madame Frédérique.

Life in a courtesan's household left its mark on the little child and not even nine years in a convent culled her love of luxury. A few lovers here and there, then a stint at Monsieur Labille's fashion house, followed by falling in with the pimp Jean du Barry, le roué ("the rake"). Not quite a streetwalker, yet hardly off the mark.

Seen above in her favourite portrait, by the darling of women's art history, painter Marie Louise Élisabeth Vigeé-Lebrun, du Barry is certainly lovely.

All her portraits, though, show a wide space between her eyebrows and eyelids,

a long face,

a small mouth,

and a high forehead,

all contributing to a langurous look. Not quite beauty by my standards, but then, I've never been into vacuous blondes.

I still find Madame du Barry intriguing, despite her looks and lack of decent personality, more so because I couldn't help but peek 200 pages into her future and saw that she ascended to the guillotine in hysterics. Too bad for the poor girl.

Her friendship with an illuminary of eighteenth century art is just as fascinating. Young Jeanne Bécu, as a grisette ("working woman") at Monsieur Labille's, made friends with Labille's daughter, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard.

Another favourite in the pantheon of women's art history, this portrait painter is quite famous in feminist art circles for her self-portrait (below, with students Marie Capet and Carreaux de Rosemond).

Celebrated for its depiction of a professional, at a time when an impermeable ceiling prevented women from having any sort of career beyond opening her legs (in matrimony or otherwise), the portrait has two gushing groupies and a pompously luxurious hat that serves to highlight the fact that, yes, she has made enough of a living at her art to be able to afford an expensive example of millinery.

Eating the Edible Woman

2006-06-12T22:30:00.000-07:00

Having read Margaret Atwood's first novel, The Edible Woman, I have a few thoughts left to dissolve:

"A cicada was singing in a tree nearby, its monotonous vibration like a hot needle of sunlight between the ear." (chapter 4) I always thought cicadas sounded like robot drones, but I'll accept this.
Ainsley has a poster of silent film sex symbol Theda Bara (chapter 5). The actress, whose name, others have pointed out ominously, is an anagram for Arab Death, ended her career when her husband disapproved of his wife continuing her job after marriage.
Of a foreign film that Marian considers seeing (chapter 14): "In her present state she did not feel like writhing through intensities and pauses and long artistic closeups of expressively twitched skin pores." As a foreign film buff, I say Ha!
From chapter 15: "He's beautifully toilet-trained now, he uses his plastic potty almost every time, but he's become a hoarder. He rolls the shit into little pellets and hides them places, like cupboards and bottom drawers. You have to watch him like a hawk. Once I found some in the refrigerator, and Joe tells me he just discovered a whole row of them hardening on the bathroom windowsill behind the curtain. He gets very upset when we throw them out. I can't imagine why he does it; maybe he'll grow up to be a banker."
In chapter 20, Marian's family breathes a sigh of relief: "...Their fears about the effects of her university education, never stated but always apparent, had been calmed at last. They had probably been worried she would turn into a high school teacher or a maiden aunt or a dope addict or a female executive, or that she would undergo some shocking physical transformation, like developing muscles and a deep voice or growing moss." Which reminds me, Taiwanese girls are freaked out about developing muscles. "No, I don't dare walk up that hill - what if I build muscles?" Oh, if only it were so easy to buff up. The growing moss part - I am intrigued, Margaret.
"There was a fizzling sound, and Trevor appeared dramatically in the doorway, holding a flaming blue sword in either hand." This snippet from chapter 22 deserves its addendum, uttered by Trevor himself: "I just love things flambé."

Our first book club meeting concluded with cake-making, in keeping with chapter 30's defining moment:

Unlike the fully dressed version that Marian made, we opted for a bikini'ed edible woman:

As you can see, the hair is the same "masses of intricate baroque scrolls and swirls, piled high on the head and spilling down over the shoulders."

We also used the only three colours available to Marian, red, green and yellow, as well as "globular silver decorations" for her eyes. We added some globular silver decorations to her belly button.

Voilà!

MaikoPunk poses with the finished product before we all dug in and destroyed her.

It took us a while to decide on our next book, as MaikoPunk begged for a nonfiction work. We finally agreed on Evelyne Lever's translated Marie Antoinette biography when we realized we could host the next book club meeting on Bastille Day!

No decisions yet on how to commemmorate this book.

Not Dead the Way You Know It

2006-06-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

Matt, a native Texan, says that many movies are about Texas but few are filmed in Texas. After having seen Texas in person twice, I needed to see Texas on celluloid and I was up for the challenge of finding a film about Texas set in Texas.

"Manos" The Hands of Fate was filmed in El Paso in 1966 and so I settled Matt down in front of the TV to prove to him that there are indeed movies about Texas made in Texas.

Known as one of the best films of all time, the 1966 "Manos" The Hands of Fate was the work of El Paso fertilizer salesman Hal Warren and features his trademark editting style of thirty-two-second scenes - thanks to the technology of the hand-wound 16mm Bell & Howell camera.

Starring Hal himself as hapless father Michael, Diane Mahree as his wife and little Jackey Neyman as his daughter, with an uncredited cameo by a poodle as the tragic family dog, the story unfolds with the family losing their way and finding themselves at Torgo's doorstep.

Torgo hides a terrible secret in his pants - he is half man, half satyr. Actor John Reynolds, with help of Tom Neyman (Jackey's father and the actor in the role of the Master), designed the prosthetics from wire coat hangers and foam. Rumour has it that Reynolds wore the contraption the wrong way, causing pain and leading to a pain killer addiction. Reynolds' dedication to film is apparent with each painful step his randy yet well-meaning everyman takes across the screen.

The Master sleeps surrounded by his six wives, all models from El Paso agency Mannequin Manor, and with real-life family dog Shanka, who, in this charming family drama*, got a starring role as the Devil Dog.

When the Master awakes all hell breaks loose, with a madcap race between the Master and servant Torgo to win the affection of Michael's wife, amid a ten-minute brawl between the Master's six wives. It is at this point, when the now-famous line is uttered, "The woman is all we want. The others must die. They all must die. We do not even want the woman!"

The thrilling ending brings us back to where we started, though, instead of Torgo, we find Michael in the role of the servant. The film's denouement leaves the audience gasping, for the Master is now surrounded not by six wives, nor even by seven but by eight - little Debbie is among the brides! - the words, "She will grow up to be a woman" echoing in the viewers' ears. This horrific climax is splashed with the words:

The End
?

So beloved is this film that, in 1998, fans of Torgo tried to get the actor a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The star committed suicide six months after filming wrapped up - no doubt missing the camaraderie and the halcyon highs of the two-and-a-half month shoot.

*Tom Neyman's wife and Jackey's mom made the famous Manos cape, along with the billowing diaphanous robes of the Master's wives. Tom Neyman painted the haunting oil of the Master and his Devil Dog. He also sculpted the metal hands visible throughout the film. Crew affectionately called the film Mangos: The Cans of Fruit. Incidentally, only little Jackey and Shanka accepted renumeration for their roles - a bicycle for the former and fifty pounds of the dog food for the latter - the rest of the cast accepted shares in the film in lieu of salaries, so great was their fate in this classic.

City of Glass Drawbacks

2006-06-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

Ever since watching the fast zombies of the Dawn of the Dead remake, I've been on the lookout for possible fortresses during a zombie siege.

Yet, Douglas Coupland didn't call Vancouver the City of Glass for nothing. This city is a deathtrap when it comes to zombie evasion.

All our malls; goldfish bowls with a "Zombie Buffet Open 24 Hours" sign on the front. One of our biggest malls and funnest consumer experiences, Metrotown Mall, has a permeable parking lot with flimsy gates.

The other malls are hardly conducive to a Dawn-of-the-Dead-like materialist calm before the storm. You may as well wander down Robson during zombie armageddon with a target painted on your face.

Office buildings, houses and even warehouses all have copious amounts of windows at ground level.

My guess is that if the zombies do take over, I would break into a tall apartment block with fire escape that's locked on the ground floor - one of those stairwells, you could go into from any floor and then go out of on the ground floor, but that you can't re-enter from the ground floor.

I'd shut down the elevators, make a clean sweep of the building, throwing out zombies that have inadvertently made it in before I locked off the building, and take inventory of all the food. I'd move non-perishables to the top floor (and my personal command centre), eating refrigerated food before the zombies shut down electricity to the city.

Today I discovered that Canadian Tire - for non-Canadians, this is, at its core, a hardware store - carries guns. I thought there were no gun stores in Canada. One zombie defense problem solved.

I have no idea what Malnurtured Snay's "Benelli shotgun with a pistol grip and stock" is exactly - I still can't run into Canadian Tire and grab the first Benelli I see. I am working on this.

I figure, I can also grab a few vegetable seed packets while I detour to the Canadian Tire for zombie weapons.

Know-It-All

2006-06-04T17:22:00.000-07:00

Working yesterday at a festival, I supervised the native plant table for about ten minutes. A woman, in her mid-forties, and her obnoxious son of about nine or ten began looking through the album of invasive plant species.

Woman: Is a bulrush the same thing as a cattail?
Maktaaq: I don't know. Maybe it is.
Woman: You're standing right in front of the cattail sign.

I looked down and - lo! - there was the cattail poster. I quickly scanned the poster for an answer to the woman's question. The rhizomes are nutritious, the pollen can be made into flour and the down can fill life vests.

Then I turned to a coworker and asked him. Yes, the answer was that cattails are bulrushes. British English has the bulrush being the cattail, whereas American English has the cattail as the cattail, the latter term more familiar to me - yet Canadians, when faced with British and American counterparts, should, by default, utilize the British one. The woman seemed triumphant.

Woman: So, if English ivy is invasive, then why do respectable nurseries sell the stuff?
Maktaaq: Most people don't know yet that ivy is crowding out native species.
Woman: But isn't ivy as bad as Himalayan blackberry? And why do plant stores sell blackberry plants when they're so bad.
Maktaaq: Well, some seed companies sell dandelions, for gourmet salads.
Woman: I know, I've planted dandelions, but they're non-flowering so they won't spread. And they taste terrible. So why do nurseries sell ivy? Isn't that unethical?
Maktaaq: I assume a lot of people still don't know that ivy is so bad, like kudzu in the early days.
Woman: Also, isn't ivy bad for houses? Why do people plant it? Isn't it bad of nurseries not to tell people about the dangers of ivy?
Son: Mom, enough with the talking! Look at the book with me! STOP TALKING!

I quickly moved to the puppet section. The wombat, bunny, aligator and other animal puppets seemed easier to handle. Then some guy came up to me. He was pushing a stroller; in his early thirties, he seemed toked one too many joints in his youth.

Stoner Dad: Where is the bat house tent?
Maktaaq: I don't believe there is a bat house tent at the festival this year. Let me look in the programme. Nope, no bat houses this year.
Stoner Dad: Is a bat house hard to make?
Maktaaq: I think you just have to make them pretty high.
Stoner Dad: But could you just use a birdhouse?
Maktaaq: Maybe, but you've got to remember that bats don't move like birds.
Stoner Dad: Are bat houses really hard to make?
Maktaaq: I don't believe so, there are lots of programs given by local naturalist groups on making bat houses - you might check the continuing education catalogues or community centres. Better yet, keep your eyes on newspapers because some groups only get exposure through there and their courses fill up fast.
Stoner Dad: What if I want to build my own bat house and I don't get into a course?
Maktaaq: There's lot of information online; that'd be the first place I'd look.
Stoner Dad: But aren't bat houses hard to make?
Maktaaq: They shouldn't be too hard to make.
Stoner Dad: Where do you think I could buy a bat house?
Maktaaq: Um, phone up the *local* Naturalist Club.
Stoner Dad: Gee thanks for the advice.

My bullshit quota was running low. I edged away from the puppet table and back to the kids' balloon craft table. Secretly, though, as a Transylvanian, I was pleased to be the bat house expert.

Zombie Knitting

2006-06-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the zombie armageddon imagination exercise in the Dawn of the Dead remake, I put three books with zombie stories on hold at the library. Each week I read one of the stories.

Next week, it'll be James Herbert's The Fog. Last week it was Neil Gaiman's Bitter Grounds, from The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Volume Fifteen. Unfortunately, the story was about traditional zombies. Good writing but I am looking for the ghoulish zombie, not the voodoo one. Eating the living and the eaten formerly living rising up to join their brethern. That sort of thing.

Last night it was Stephen King's Home Delivery in his Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Ghoulish zombies, yes, but not enough of them. Only mentions of the living being cannibalized - more gore, please.

The one highlight in the story lies in the pleasure this prodigal daughter of knitting got from the following two paragraphs:

The cold cobwebs of bone, which were all that remained of his fingers touched her throat before the baby kicked in her stomach - for the first time - and her shocked horror, which she had believed to be calmness, fled, and she drove one of the knitting needles into the thing's eye.

Making horrid thick choking noises that sounded like the suck of a swill pump, he staggered backward, clawing at the needle, while the half-made pink bootie swung in front of the cavity where his nose had been. She watched as a sea slug squirmed from that nasal cavity and onto the bootie, leaving a trail of slime behind it.

Maple Leaf Meme

2006-06-04T10:59:00.001-07:00

The above is an American's attempt at a Canadian maple leaf, the kind so beautifully realized on our lovely and unique flag - stars are so 1777.

Then Travis picked it up and started a flag meme. That's right, Canadians. Draw a Canadian maple leaf right now, without looking at a flag and post it on your blog.

Jen of World Wide Watercooler took up the challenge. So far, no other Canadians have engaged in this patriotic exercise.

Just for the record, here's my contribution, before all the madness started:

Those years of lost Canada Days, face-painting Canada flags on preschoolers' faces at festivals, were not lost after all.

Update: Saskatchewan maple leaf here.

Ghetto Chorizo Sausage

2006-06-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

Originally uploaded by Chief Ten Bears.

As I made dinner last night, I swear to god these sausages fried into curly shapes on their own and tumbled out of the skillet, more or less, to spell one of the most belaboured words in the english language.

Some people read heavily into random occurrences, like seeing Jesus in a tortilla or whatever. I'm gonna completely ignore this message.

Chief Ten Bears' sausages are conveying a message from the beyond. The Babylonians were famous for hepatoscopy, divination by way of entrails, but it was Shakespeare that made it famous via the Romans. Remember Julius Caesar.

These sausages, however, belong in a more obscure branch of hepatoscopy, called extispicy, or divination by anomolies in entrails, and then in an even more obscure branch of extiscpicy, called botulomancy, or divination by sausage.

Botulomancy predicts the future by sausage, hot dog, tube steak, smokies, bangers, haggis, head cheese, meatloaf, pâté, foie gras and even spam. Veggie dogs are exempt, however.

In this instance, the word fuck refers not to the English term for having sexual intercourse but to the Romanian, transliterated for the English-speaking household that Chief Ten Bears undoubtably represents. Fuck is the Romanian fac ("I do"), drawn from the infinitive a face, or to do. It is often misinterpreted by the English majority as a fuck you! when a member of the Romanian diaspora utters a polite fac eu! (I'll do it!).

In other words, this case of botulomancy exhorts action. Do something.

Chief, have your chorizo sausage since spelled out any other messages? Do your taxes? Move your house from the flood plains? Change your hairstyle?

Edible Women

2006-06-01T18:32:00.000-07:00

For the inaugural meeting of my newly-formed bookclub, MaikoPunk, Matt and I will be eating cake to celebrate Margaret Atwood's first published novel and our first club pick, The Edible Woman. The cake, of course, will be shaped like a woman.

"That could be tough to follow up for future books," says Matt. "If most book titles were interpreted literally, it would be tragic at best."

"Have you killed the salesman yet?"
"No, he's still struggling, but I'll have it done before the meeting."

Dawn of the Dead Remake

2006-05-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

*Beware: spoilers.*

The zombie genre consists of true Caribbean zombies and the Night of the Living Dead zombies, historically called ghouls. While the fear of your dead mommy rising from the dead to eat you is ancient, zombie films (and books) consistently redefine the zombie and the details of the zombie armageddon.

If you do wake up in this movie's zombie-infested world, here are ten things to keep in mind:

Sleep with your contacts/glasses on, your car keys beside you and have a full tank of gas. Forget not being a morning person.
Forget also zombies that react only to sight stimuli. These zombies detect humans in other ways. The Remake's first zombie attacker was a neighbour who broke in. I suspect this little girl zombie either sniffed her way in or else retained some recollection that the neighbour's house contained prey (along with the memory of opening doors - no broken window sounds alerted the sleeping prey).
The delay between human death and corpse reanimation is seconds.
These are fast zombies, currently in vogue. The ambling dead with which we are familiar suffer from rigor mortis, an impermanent state which covers only a 72-hour window. Fast zombies, who don't appear to enter this state, retain and often exceed human flexibility.
The Remake zombies do decompose, albeit slowly. Presumably, as bacterial and fungal agents mutate into specialized zombie predators, rates of decomposition will accelerate.
Unbitten human foetuses can be infected in the womb through the bitten mother's bloodstream.
Zombies have exclusive taste for human flesh. Dogs and presumably other animals will survive the zombie armageddon.
Zombies, in desperation, will cannibalize each other. Witness the mall sports store zombie janitor eating the entrails of a still-moving victim. The attack must have occurred long before this scene. Thus the human victim would have died minutes earlier and, given the seconds between death and reanimation, the victim would have already transformed. Yet the zombie janitor continued to eat his new compatriot.
In extreme cases, a hungry zombie will eat off its own lips. Witness once more, the little girl zombie at the beginning of the film. She has bitten off her top and bottom lips.
Once you are in your impregnable zombie fortress, do not leave it for the unverified safety of another sanctuary. It might turn out to be a zombie island.

If you managed to survive all the way to a mall with shatterproof doors, here's what to do:

Store water in all containers in anticipation of an eventual water shutdown. Then use the mall rooftop to collect rainwater.
Dump out tropical plants, use the soil to grow fruits. All malls have smoothie shops and all smoothie shops have real fruits. Pick out the seeds and plant them in anticipation of depleted food stocks. Supermarket lemons, for example, are almost all sterile, however, not exclusively so. Small-scale agriculture is a viable option.
Use the remaining hours of electricity to research weapons.
Create your own bows and arrows or better yet, your own crossbows. Then practice, practice, practice. From the mall rooftop, you can safely upgrade your aim while annihilating the zombies.

Does anyone else have zombie survival techniques not listed here?

*****

After I wrote that I thought, wait, someone will tell me to read the Zombie Survival Guide. I have. But that book doesn't specifically address mall survival tactics.

Midnight Ice Cream

2006-05-03T01:28:00.000-07:00

By the time I figured out how to hook up the ice cream maker, put together the ingredients for a basic vanilla recipe, and scrounged enough ice, it was midnight.

After ten minutes of turning clockwise the mechanism self-adjusted and the inner canister began churning.

Twenty minutes, I thought, that's what I'm in for.

Buster Keaton's shorts are about twenty minutes, I remembered. That'll keep me busy while I churn away at the ice cream. In popped Keaton's 1921 creation, the story of a family who takes his family out to sea on the homemade Damfino. Storm strikes, disaster ensues.

Every few minutes, I would take the crank off the inner canister and poke a finger into my ice cream.

The film is not one of Keaton's best, it nevertheless kept me company while I churned.

The ice cream is for the museum on Friday. I spent two days mulling over the ice cream maker directions, trying to learn how to theoretically use the thing. This afternoon at work, I gave up and decided to learn to use it the practical way. Become an old hand at it by Friday.

I hate ice cream. Not as much as weddings but definitely more than garden slugs. Ice cream is cold and icky sweet. It lacks the pleasure you get from biting into something and chewing it. Give me a nice medium rare steak any day.

However, when I pulled off the lid from the canister the last time, my heart melted a little to make room for ice cream.

You see, there's something about making something that had hitherto been a mystery - I had never given thought to the making of ice cream - that makes it dear to one. One of life's mysteries solved - by me! - and ice cream is suddenly my best friend.

So much so that, despite the growing pain in my stomach (uh oh, lactose intolerance here I come), I want to buy my own ice cream churner.

Yuck.

2006-05-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

My confession is this: I hate weddings. Always have.

I hate the one-time dresses, I hate the fattening tendencies of the colour white, I hate dancing alone in front of gawking half-strangers, I hate the fact that some of my good friends have yet to even call me three months after the engagement - goes to show you that the whole marriage thing is a stupid sham.

Furthermore, I hate housewives, SUV moms, soccer moms, Stepford wives and stay-at-home moms. I don't buy into the mommy myth and I think earth is overpopulated, making motherhood a crime. I hate the fact that I'll soon trade in questions about my diminishing prospects for questions about my ticking biological clock. Weddings and irresponsible fertility are linked.

My mom suggested a Catholic wedding.

No one in my family or Matt's family is Catholic.

After a few phonecalls, no one is serious about converting and - what the hell? - I hate Catholicism! Catholics and I live on a precarious truce, but make me become Catholic and I become a rabid cauldron of anti-anti-abortionist and anti-homophobe venom.

Romanian Orthodooxy, the way my parents practice it, is a secular dream of easygoing practical solutions to the age-old problems: don't steal, kill or cheat on your significant other, contraceptives and abortions are necessary and not evil. Rather in complete contrast to the misogynism of Catholicism.

My mom, in all due fairness, came up with the Catholic idea because Catholics seem more urbane in Romania. I am guessing that, since most Hungarian-Romanians practice Catholicism and since most Hungarian-Romanians are more prosperous than the average Romanian, that Catholics seem to be more elegant.

Then there are the bridal magazines. I bought two of them recently, in an effort to get myself into the wedding planning mood. I had to spend thirty minutes with Ms. magazine just to psych myself into buying these magazines first.

Yeah, gag me with all your to-do lists. I have better things to do with my time than become fixated on flowers and bonbonnieres - whatever those bonbonnieres are.

As the price of the wedding has now escalated to over $16,000, I am ready to pack a suitcase and run off to do volunteer work in Rwanda. $16,000 on one fucking day is not me!!! $16 a day in Rwanda could definitely be me!

My parents say that when I started talking, I asked for trucks and planes. I took apart cassette players and stuffed forks into electrical sockets during my infancy. Oh, I did get a Barbie for one birthday, but I gave her up after two days and a garish makeup job.

I dabbled in dumpster-diving, break-and-enters, fantasy noveling and backpack travelling. I am quite happy with who I am. I really want to continue being this person.

However, I am afraid the forces of normality are working their magic to erode me. I came across my two-year plan from 2004 and saw that I missed out on my April 2006 goal: a month in Bologna.

Where was I during April 2006? Putting in extra unpaid hours at work and suffering anxiety attacks all month. Not improving my Italian nor basking in socialist greatness. If it weren't for Matt, I'd be mulling bridge-jumping.

Hopscotch

2006-05-01T09:22:00.000-07:00

Hopscotch, this strange religious experience.....It's a secret, religious, weird, ceremonial rite of passage for girls that women know. Hopscotch was bizarre for boys because boys never played.
Eddie Izzard

For the first time in almost twenty years I played hopscotch.

I woke up yesterday with the burning desire to show a guy how to play, to divulge the secrets of femininity. Leaping out of bed yesterday, I was as ready to go as a malamute with rabies at a daycare.

But first, chalk.

We must have chalk somewhere in the domicile - surely we did not use it all up twenty years ago? Everyone has chalk lying around. No chalk.

Hours later, a 25-cent chunk of blue chalk in my hand, I am as ready as the malamute with rabies again. Grr! Up with hopscotch already!

Then, Jesus! What does a hopscotch game look like? I find a picture of a girl playing in New York - close enough - it's on the continent.

Hopscotch is played all over the world, from here to Nepal, Ghana, Russia and China; no one knows where the game started, though the oldest known hopscotch diagram is etched into the floor of Rome's Forum. Despite the overwhelming similarities, hopscotch has had many tweakings: in San Francisco, one researcher found twenty varieties.

So what version was I playing? I hopped onto the square with the stone, picked it up and hopped back. I remember something about jumping over the space occupied by the stone. Then there is the version where you pick up the stone and toss it back to home instead of carrying it back as you hop your way through the squares. Or do you first hop your way through each stone to the end, turn around, hop back to the stoned square, pick up the stone and finish?

No wonder boys had no idea how to play.