Pillow Blog: Assorted Pieces of Canadian Culture That Almost Make Me Patriotic

In the tradition of the Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book, here's a Pillow Blog: an observational list on some subject or another. 

1. Léolo: This movie is everything Canadian cinema should be, but rarely is: big, bold, a little grotesque. Instead we usually get reel after reel of earnestness. With each year that passes since Jean-Claude Lauzon's untimely death, I worry a little more about Léolo's legacy - give it a viewing and save me from this anxiety.
2. Beautiful Losers: Leonard Cohen, as walking, croaking, bagel-buying myth can rub me the wrong way, probably because the fact of his talent is so evident. It's annoying. Anyway, I read Beautiful Losers decades after it was published, when I was still only 19, and still knew it was cooler than I could ever hope to be.
3. Pas de Deux: Perhaps some of Norman McLaren's other work is more groundbreaking, but Pas de Deux is arresting in its beauty. Somehow through the repetition of ballet dancers and their bodies do you find their form and purity.
4. "Raven and the First Men," Bill Reid: There's something about including a piece of indigenous art on a list that includes both "Canadian" and "patriotic" in the title that makes me stop; it makes those words sound hollow. As they should, I think. Perhaps what I'm listing here are the things, made within the borders that set out a concept called Canada, that make me feel honoured to share that space with them.
5. Canadian Heritage Minutes: Here's a tonal shift from my last entry. And let's talk about earnestness! Still, as commercials for Canadian history, CHMs have taught the subject as well as most middle school teachers can manage, or at least those I encountered at the Upper Grand District School Board. The Sam Steele one is indisputably the best.
6. Joni Mitchell: I listen to "Both Sides Now" and open one can of beer. Then "River" and I'm drinking two. If I make it to "A Case of You," I'll be finished all six that night, so don't disturb me before 11am tomorrow.

Domestic Sunday: Turkey Day Edition

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! I hope your dinner chart looked much like mine: 33% turkey, 33% stuffing, 24% mashed potatoes, 10% carrots, and then all the gravy you want poured all over that. With the gravy, that's more than 100%, but Thanksgiving is about the two G's - gratitude and gluttony - so why not give 110% to your food?

In the ensuing tryptophan haze (urban myth), I nearly forgot that I had planned to bring back Domestic Whateverday to the blog on Sunday. Perhaps barely Monday morning still counts?

Unfortunately, the domestic craft portion of the post is not all that inspiring. In fact, it's a bag of fabric:

The plan is for this to become a new quilt for my new apartment. That was also my plan when I moved into the new apartment. At the end of June.

While that photo may not be that inspiring, I assure you that I've done something over the past three months. Behold:

Why, that's like six finished squares, and a few more than are halfway there! I only need to sew about 75 more, sew those together into the quilt top, get the batting and the backing, quilt all that together, and...

Whoah ho ho, it's beer! Let's move on to the other domestic part of Domestic Sunday, the brew. This is the Country Bumpkin from Niagara Oast House Brewers. It's probably much lighter than it appears in the photo, which was taken inside of a King Street bar that has its dimmer switch perpetually set to "smoky 17th century coffeehouse", ie, dark. This disconcerts me in the same way that a casino's censure of natural light bewilders a gambler, so that I probably spend more money than I should, and then act like a cave salamander when I finally head out into the bright and irritating light of day.

Or so any "working lunch" there usually goes. At least this time I kept to one pint. I picked the Country Bumpkin because October is the time for pumpkin beer. Pumpkin beers seem to be coming under increasing criticism from beer folks, and I resent that, because they're often delicious. I also resent the distinct note of sexism I've started picking up, alongside the notes of clove and cinnamon in the beer. Even supporters will feebly celebrate pumpkin ale as, essentially, gateway craft beer for the ladies.

Yes, some pumpkin beers do taste a little too sweet, going heavily enough on the spice that they start to taste less like a beer, and more like a carbonated Pumpkin Spice Latte. And so people will extend their stereotypes of PSL drinkers to beer. But screw 'em. More beer for me, and even a dudely hophead should have few issues with the Country Bumpkin. It was low on the carbonation, and the expected pie spices were supported by the hint of something vegetal. It's worth checking out, both as a decent beer, and as a fine introduction to the style.

Protagitron: Editorial Assistant, With Kung Fu Changes Tracking Action!

Greetings from... almost a month after my last post! Good Lord. I didn't realize that the soggy post about crying at work would remain front and centre for over a month, or else I would have written about a book cover, or my cat, or anything else to push it down the page.

This September I turned 27, wound up with a different job at work, signed up for two continuing education classes, got some bad news, and bought a new bike. I'm now an editorial assistant, so it should be little surprise that one of the classes is for copyediting. The copyediting class is a humbling experience - I went through school when teaching the fundamentals of grammar was out of fashion. I've read enough that I can fake it sometimes, 'sensing' that things are wrong without being able to explain why. Now I have to face that my understanding of when to hyphenate compound words is quite shaky, best described as 'when it doubt, hyphenate.'

I also find myself quietly resentful of the online message board, which is full of people's well-articulated questions about cases and tenses, that is, well-articulated evidence that they probably aren't working 9-5 EVERY SINGLE DAMNED WEEKDAY.

Yeah, you heard me, "Ruth." Take five minutes away from the keyboard, sometime.

I think I will like copyediting though. Reading every word very slowly and constantly referring to the style guide capitalizes on my all-consuming anxiety. I also yearn for consistency, and have a certain megalomaniacal urge to turn chaos into order, so style guides are right in my wheelhouse. I'll just have to remember that I can't rewrite everything to sound like me: sentence fragments, caps lock, and chock full of puns.