Oh Great Googly Moogly.

Sorry about the silence, guys. I got back from New York and right into a week plus of old job, new job, and convocation. The good news is that I have one very expensive piece of paper (to be nailed on a wall in its paper envelope) and by association a shiny new undergraduate degree. The bad news is that I've managed to screw up the rest of my life in an unimaginable fashion. But enough about that, because there's tea to soothe the emotional wounds. I'll try to write more soon, when I'm not sleeping in between a half finished book and the pile of folded clothes I've been too lazy to move. Which is better than where I slept last night, which was on a sofa with my head on the armrest. At this rate, I'm going to have to sell off a kidney to hire a chiropractor and a therapist.

Want a Complex?

My thoughts upon seeing this ad on Facebook:
1. Want a Boyfriend? Wait I do? Do I? I'm confused. Maybe I do, or maybe I just wish there was a 1-900 number I could call who would listen to me bitch about customers and annoy me reliably with its own character quirks. Or do I just want flowers? How much of my desire is culturally manufactured anyway? What was the question again?
2. Of course you do. YOU DON'T KNOW ME. DON'T PUT YOUR WORDS IN MY... BRAIN.
3. Why not meet one at Christian Mingle tonight? If it involves watered-down orange drink and a screening of "Left Behind," I'm there. If it's only a screening of "Left Behind," I'm not.
4. The Photo: Is this the usual kind of specimen in evidence at Christian Mingles? Well, good to know shirts are optional. I'll be leaving mine at home tonight then.

Star Trek: The Journey to Photogenic

I'm off to New York City tomorrow, so expect updates to be spotty in the next week, if they happen at all. I'm not bringing my computer, so it will be a shady Internet café or nothing. Before I go become a big-city girl, temporarily shifting my allegiance from smoked meat to pastrami, a few words on the new Star Trek movie:

These are the voyagers of the Starship Enterprise. Their mission: to rescue a moldy franchise. Secondary objective: to provide more attractive fodder for the cover of People magazine than William Shatner. They obviously succeed at the latter, trading up to Chris Pine, a videogenic (if large-headed) alternative for Kirk, who looks just enough like Shatner for the change not to be jarring- but like a Shatner who has gone through the Abercrombie and Fitch finishing school. This sexing up becomes the whole theme of the movie. As an origin story, it hits a faster and more Freudian note from the beginning, with Kirk's dad heroically sacrificing himself just as Kirk's mom gives birth in the black void of space. Even before the movie has a chance to be ground down by the academic mill, I think psychological analysis will be exhausted by popular critics.

Kirk grows up into a cocky teen, as expected, who's really kind of a dick. Concurrently, Spock is a prig over on Planet Vulcan. Fortunately for Spock, priggishness is more valued by the education system than dickishness, so he's well on his way through the Starfleet Academy while Kirk is still scrapping in bars and trying out pick-up lines that would embarrass a forty-year old who's been stewed in Brut. Still, a Commander takes to his scrappy attitude and high aptitude tests, or his gigantic noggin, and he's off to the Academy. There, he has time to make out with the required green-skinned alien girl, before he's introduced to Bones (Keith Urban hamming it up) and Spock. They foster an immediate dislike, since there are no copies of Austen in space, they don't know they're about to embark on a bromance for eternity.

Fortunately, here comes Captain Nero, killer of Kirk's daddy and sporter of tattoos, with the tragic backstory all villains require now, to break things up when something hasn't exploded in a while. He also forces Chekhov, Sulu, Uhura, Spock and Kirk to be on the same ship, while conveniently altering time so that the Trekkies can have their movie cake and eat the original series too: they're both canon, because they're happening on different timelines! None of the characters seem philosophically flabbergasted by this, or at least villainously excited by the possibilities. They take their mission seriously... so very seriously. The Trek movie is fun, when it joyfully uses new imaging technology to do things the old series could not. Seeing a tiny Starfleet Starship face off against a giant Romulan ship, which looks like a mutated crow, is beautiful and exciting. But the sexing up of the story has made it wear a permanent pout, and there are many times when it just takes itself too seriously.

Thank god for Simon Pegg as Scotty then. He cleverly punctures the film's self-mythologization, just by looking as if he's confused enough to be there, but along for the ride. I felt an awful lot like him when the movie was over.

Obscure File #132x: Troo Canadian Confessions

I really can't muster up enthusiasm for Canadian politics. I mean, God knows I've tried. And I think I've identified my problem. I was chatting with a friend the other day, when the conversation went from Francophone zombie movies we would make, to Canadian politics (as is the logical progression for shiftless university graduates) and I made this point:
"Harper is a douche, Ignatieff is smug, and Layton has a mustache."
So, how do I fix this, ladies and gentlemen and others? Other then sending Layton a razor and some shaving cream?

Thoughts On A(n Unsturdy) Clothesline

The apartment dryer has died. I would mourn the passing, but really it's just meant my clothes are now full-on wet instead of a little damp, because the damn thing never really worked anyway. Unfortunately, I do need clothes. So, I've been taking advantage of one of the many benefits Point Saint Charles offers, besides an unparalleled collection of abandoned factories: CLOTHESLINES. Look, I know I'm getting a little weird and house-proud, but I love my clothesline. It makes me feel like a competent person to hang up laundry, although I have often forgotten it on the line and lost a few good towels that way. The clothes smell so good when they come off the line. Oh, and it's free and better for the environment.

Which, I feel conflicted about. I know that I should be more ecologically sound, part of a shift that our society should be making. Hell, I even listened to a frightening TVO lecture this morning about global warming, and how to current estimates we're working with are actually grossly optimistic. But it also annoys me that the steps shown and sold to us are so small, and so evasive of the real problems. This was part of the reason why I abandoned my Greening project, because I realized half of the steps involved buying new crap anyway. And the rest somehow led to a life without cheeseburgers, so no. It makes me want to slap every smug person carrying a reusable bag, especially when their bags loudly advertise that fact. Not because of the bag, necessarily, but because they probably didn't need what was in it anyway.

And then, I would have to deal with my own hypocrisy, because if my assault charge comes on a day like today, I would have shuffled over to my dep for overpriced ice cream and canned soup, probably sealed with the tears of Guatemalan orphans. And then carried my shame home in a reusable bag.

Grading the Schools

You might not know who Booker T and the MG's are, but you've probably heard this song on the soundtrack of any movie that needs an aural shortcut to "cool."

That's Green Onions, their first big hit. Even if you don't know that song, you've probably heard them on others; they were essentially the Stax Records house players, a label responsible for Otis Redding, Mavis Staples, and Isaac Hayes. So even when you don't think you're hearing them, you just might be. The Onion AV Club has a really interesting interview with the front man, Booker T. Jones. He has a new album coming out with Neil Young and the Drive-By Truckers, and I think analogheads should read why Jones is embracing new tech so thoroughly. However, what I found most interesting- and upsetting- wasn't anything about the production of the album, but Jones on the sad state of music education in the States:

"Musically, the opportunities for new bands are shrinking somewhat because as far as kids growing up who want to learn music, the opportunities are less than they were for me. I’m gonna donate some of my old instruments to the Tipitina’s Instrument Program in New Orleans, ’cause the schools are not financed well enough nowadays to provide band instruments like they were when I was in school. States are not financing music education like they used to. Opportunities for new bands and new musicians are not as good now."

Jones isn't talking about rich private schools, or even the feeder schools that masquerade as public, because those kids will be kept in horns and bassoons until the end of time. It's just the poor kids who'll get screwed over, and the new music tech won't save them either. With the equally shitty state of school funding in low-income areas for computers, they're equally screwed. Arts funding, or the lack of it, might not seem like much with school violence and outdated textbooks on the grounds. But reading Jones shows how much we're going lose this way, if we lose out on people like him.

Protagitron/Protagitronne

Day 2 of Operation: Enjoy Life got off to a semi-successful start. On the plus column, my hair is shorter and makes me look like Shirley Temple cross-bred with Valerie Solanas. In a bad-ass way. Unfortunately, there was a run-in with an abrasive French customer, which has sent me on a melancholy spin. I was going to write a long post about my reflections on language and cultural identity, anxiety and belonging, but then I realized that I did not know enough to do it. I certainly don't know enough about the French experience in Quebec or in Canada. Which becomes clear enough whenever I speak it. But I don't even know enough about the English identity in Quebec either. Even when I'm in Montreal, and even after four years, I feel like a tourist. I think part of me has always known that I'm a little unmoored here; that whatever pass I'm on will expire soon. So, I'll leave it to the true natives and lovers of Montreal (wherever they may have come from, however they got there) to sort it all out. Until then I should try listening to a french TV station or two.

Secret Life Agent

By the end of last week, I wanted out. The copy writing job had fallen through, JET had fallen through, I had the ticket to contend with, then I lost the ticket to contend with, and then when I phoned up the people I had to contend with, they said the information from the ticket would not be entered for another two weeks. Oh, and I lost my book outside and work was kind of sucking, between douchebaggy lawyers and stressed-out co-workers. I was considering just stealing a Big Wheel from a kid and biking any where else. Even Laval.

Instead, I decided I would move back to Toronto. Now I'm not so sure, but I feel duty-bound to follow through on my word. To that end, I'm trying to shove as much artery-clogging Montreal goodness down my throat as possible in the next two months. And I'm not just talking about poutine this time. First on the list: spontaneous concert-rama, because I really don't go out to enough live music. So I went to the Sadies/John Doe show last night, because it was the only thing on the list I recognized and could still possibly get tickets.

Operation: Enjoy Life got off to a rocky start however, when I misinterpreted the 8:30 door time as an 8:30 start time. But I feel that nothing fills the awkward emptiness of a just-opened venue like cheap beer, which I could of used more of when I missed the encore to catch a metro that had already left. The Sadies are a ridiculously tight band, so go see them if you can. Especially if you check the start time first.

This is the end of Operation: Enjoy Life: The Band Who Loved Me. But Protagitron will return in The Girl With the Shorter Haircut.

Montreal: The Cruelest Lover

So, today I got ticket in the mail. For leaving my recycling out. To the tune of $169.
And before all of you shun me for being a recycling deadbeat, or composes slightly bitchy letters about how cleanliness is my business too, which seems to be the Montreal way, let me say one thing:

I was cited for a place I haven't lived in for about 8 months.

Yes, my old apartment has come back to bite me on the ass, like a particularly feisty ghost. The only explanation I can come up with is that the new tenants, or whomever, got some junk mail addressed to me, and threw it out with the recycling, and when the eager city employees dug through the muck, they saw my name and wrote me a ticket. Charmingly, the official citation arrived with my change of address pasted over it, thanks to the post office which probably missed my mail in the first place. Thanks, institutions. Stay classy.

So, until I resolve the issue (which might even involve a hearing!! Yay.) I'll probably be most negatively deposed towards Montreal. I won't sing the city's praises during the summer, or enjoy its festivals, and I'll eat my poutine in a car parked underneath an overpass, so no one can see my shame. Sorry.

The Random Bits

Well, I think I waited too long to get back to the porn guys after they liked my write-up. D'oh.

In other mildly annoying news, I have cookies that need to be squirreled away for two whole days, TWO DAYS people, before I can eat them. This is after I had to brown butter, mix dough, chill everything for a few hours, shape dough in teaspoons, bake, heat preserves, strain preserves, and then assemble sandwich cookies. I have spent less time studying for some of my exams than I have making these cookies. When they've finished maturing, I'm going to post a picture. Not only as a monument to my blinkered dedication, but for educational purposes. To illustrate how graceful little sandwiches of wit and elegance on the recipe site can become lumpen oozing messes in the right hands. Not that I would care, as long as they come out delicious.

(Oh, and I wrote my last undergraduate exam on Friday. I hope. I do not want to be too noisy in my celebrations just yet, lest ye Administration gods smite me.)