Flower pickers are everywhere

1.     Song that mentions (at least) one city: Route 66. too easy! I was a big Depeche Mode fan in highschool.

2.     Song from your childhood or song that makes you think of your childhood because of the lyrics: The Bee Gees - What A Fool Believes. Largely because as a kid I had no idea what the lyrics were, so I just made some up. At the time I was living in farm country and taking horseback riding lessons, so I decided the song was about an aging horse with worn out teeth.

3.     X-Mas song - The Pogues - Fairytale of New York. also too easy! come to think of it, this one satisfies question #1 as well!

4.     Song that makes you think of a person that means a lot to you: Live - Lightning Crashes. This past year, my grandma had a health scare and spent some time in hospital, and here I was thousands of miles away feeling powerless and very upset. This song just popped into my head out of the blue because of the lyric "The angel closes her eyes ..." and then I remembered the video where the old lady dies ... and then I bawled my eyes out.

5.     Male/female duet: Iggy Pop and Peaches - Kick It. Kind of like a nasty lovers' quarrel, with guitars.

6.     Song you've formerly misunderstood the lyrics to: Safety Dance. For starters, I thought it was called "Safe To Dance" ... and then there's the poetic lyric, "Everybody look at your pants."

7.     Song with 'rock n roll' or 'rock' or 'roll' in the title: The Donnas - You're No Rock N' Roll Fun. A song about overly intellectual musicians who would rather sit around writing songs than party with other bands.

8.     Song that comforts you: Loreena McKennitt - Cymbeline/Fear No More. One of those funereal Celtic ballads about how the dead have passed beyond this world's pain. I like to sing it at memorial ceremonies.

9.     Song with a hidden meaning (like sex, drugs etc): Come On Eileen - Dexy's Midnight Runners. Okay, so maybe the song itself has no hidden meaning, but the band name ... I have it on good authority that dexedrine was the poor man's drug of choice in the British Isles in the 70s & 80s, and musicians used to smuggle it over to Ireland while on tour.

10.   Cover song (that you like more than the original): definitely not Route 66. How about ... Alien Ant Farm's Smooth Criminal. Definitely.

11.   Song you used to hate/not like but grew to love/like: hmm ... this is a tough one ... usually it's the other way around for me, where a song I liked on first listen turned out to be painful after a few more listens. I guess any of the "new" Radiohead ... Kid A, Amnesiac and In Rainbows, were all hard to get into, but I stuck at it because I knew I would love the music once I understood it. and I do!

And for extra credit ...

12. An instrumental song: Fatima Mansions - More Smack, Vicar? It sounds ... like it sounds.

 

Alas, the link for actual listenables will have to come later ... I had to go to a public computer to publish this journal because for some reason they don't always publish from home ... and now I have to go home and make you guys a playlist.

 

The Tyee is a progressive journalism outlet here in beautiful BC, and they currently have an anniversary contest on ... I wanna win!!! but that is for the future. RIGHT NOW, one of my photos is featured on the homepage! today only! check it out!

The Tyee

The photo on Flickr

 

 

I have said more than once that I am abjectly addicted to SF (science fiction, to the layperson). Here is even more proof.

 

Picking up where I left off last time I submitted to this group: I read a novel by Robert J. Sawyer called Rollback, in which there is a new and very expensive treatment that causes people to revert to a much younger age.  An elderly couple receives the treatment ... but for some reason it only works on the man! So here he is, chronologically amost 90 years old but physically 30, living with his 90-year-old wife and trying desperately to find a way for her to "roll back" her age as well. Sadly, it does't work and she dies.

 

I have read Robert Sawyer before and really liked his work - he has some wonderful ideas, for example "What would it be like if we discovered an alternate universe where Neanderthals never died out?" He pulled that one off admirably with a compulsively readable trilogy ... but sometimes I find him a little ... PC maybe? or maybe a little milquetoast. Perhaps it's because Sawyer is from Toronto and a real family man; it's just too close to home to be exciting to me. Reminds me of my dad. And sometimes he seems to belabour his point of how morally upright his heroes are, and how thoroughly pathetic his villains; not enough conflict. So in Rollback, while I liked the story, I often wanted to say "oh yeah, riiiight" to the characters, ironically because they are too true to life!

 

Okay, so next I read The Margarets, by Sheri S. Tepper. This novel features a young woman named (wait for it) Margaret, who grew up in a place where she was the only child, and so had a lot of imaginary friends. Somehow, over the years as she grows up, her imaginary friends split off from her one by one and become real people who all go to live on different planets. (It's all "explained" in the end.)

 

I really like Sheri Tepper ... but I find her books are like Stephen King's: I like the beginning and setup of her stories, but am often unmoved by the endings.  So in this case we had a really compelling setup where Earth's ecology has broken down so thoroughly (Tepper often writes about the effects of environmental degradation) that all Earth has to trade with other planets is excess population, ie. slaves. This explains how all the poor Margarets end up living all over the known galaxy, each one on a different planet. And in the end, due to some vast astrological alignment, all the Margarets must come together and perform a ritual to save the galaxy from evil. So, er ... yeah.

 

Next I read a book of short stories by Iain M. Banks (WHY do SF writers always have to have that middle initial???) called The State of the Art. A few of the stories are set in the fictional universe of the Culture, an advanced society where the spaceships have hilarious names and most of the people are as sheltered and spoiled as Paris Hilton ... but the people who are not born into the Culture are largely barbarous. There's also a tale called Odd Attachment that points out how very difficult it can be to understand an alien that drops from the sky into your world. Heaps of fun. Banks has a wicked sense of humour. He's one of my new fave SF writers. I've only read one of his novels so far (The Algebraist) but I will be hitting up the library for more ASAP.

 

Then I moved on to a sequel by C.J. Cherryh, Invader. I had read the first book (Foreigner)in this (very long) series last year. At the time I didn't know what I was getting into: there are now nine books in the series, arranged into 3 trilogies, and from the dust jackets it's hard to tell what order to read them in. So one day last month I came home from the library, thrilled because I thought I had found book 2 and book 3 of the first trilogy, but after finishing Invader, discovered I had the wrong book 3. Just when the lead characters were about to get it on!!! So now I am jonesing, and pestering the librarian, waiting for book 3 to become available. Maybe I should just buy it for fuck's sake.

 

Okay, so this series is about a planet where humans have become stranded due to a broken down spaceship. They share the planet with its indigenous race, the Atevi, who are intelligent but less technologically advanced. There has already been a war between the two groups, which the Atevi won, so now there is a treaty requiring humans to share their technology while remaining confined to a single island, all except for one lone human who is allowed to live in the capital city and serve the Atevi government as translator. The books are about his rather stressful work trying to stay afloat in a foreign environment, dealing with unstable politics he doesn't really understand, and having to explain all this to his own government on the island. Oh and the Atevi are kind of like the Klingons or Cardassians on Star Trek - big and nasty and intimidating. You never know when someone's going to get assassinated or strung up by the thumbs. I just love this series, it's a blast!

 

Ad then finally, while I was in Victoria (where the vintage shops are cheaper) I bought this huge coffee table book called Science Fiction: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, by John Clute, which covers the history of SF from Frankenstein (1818) to the mid-90s. Sure, it has pictures, but it has lots of words too - essays on dominant SF themes over the years, articles on it musta been more than 100 authors, reviews of 50 or so classic works, and timelines of pulp magazines, books, movies and comics. Among other things. And this book was hard to read! it's a really huge and unwieldy thing, the pages measuring 12" by 12" easily. And now that I have read it, I have a list of about a dozen novels that I must find and read ASAP. Maybe I'll make it to 25 books this year after all!

A Playlist for Woohoo23/Ventitre

 

From the International Mix Trading Group: "...whatever your favorite songs are from the moment. Whatever you've had in heavy rotation this month you're gonna slap it on a mix & send it your partner's way."

 

Here it is!

 

1. CSS - Let's Make Love And Listen to Death From Above (there isn't much in the world funkier than this)

2. Daddy Yankee - Gasolina

3. Tetsuo - Hot Sex (I don't even remember where I found this song ... I don't know anything about this band ... but check out the guitar in the second half! How awesome is that!!)

4. Eagles of Death Metal - I Like To Move In The Night (this makes me want to boogie with my cowboy hat on!)

5. Pavement - Two States

6. Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes

7. Sonic Youth - Becuz

8. Stereolab - Brakhage (no, I don't know how to pronounce the title or what it means ... but cool song eh!)

9. Placebo - Pure Morning (I seem to have a high tolerance for depressing lyrics)

10. Tom Waits - Black Wings

11. Queens of the Stone Age - Someone's In The Wolf

12. Heart - Magic Man (I included this one because I had to learn it for an audition recently - didn't get a callback)

13. Radiohead - All I Need (I love the new Radiohead. I love the old Radiohead too!)

14. Rammstein - Du Riechst So Gut (yeah I know this one doesn't really fit with the rest ... but Rammstein is my guilty pleasure)

 

Link!

 

There's this fun group called "The International Mixtape Trading Group," where we, er, trade mixtapes, digitally. It's fun! You get music! You make friends! If you want to participate (and get free music handpicked for you by fellow buzznetters), say so in a comment here and you'll be matched up with someone to trade with!

 

This month's theme is: Current Picks, ie. whatever you are into at the moment. Your fellow Buzznet music lovers want to know what that is! Come and trade with us!

 

The Bookageddon Challenge reactivated my voracious scifi geek gene. Before long I found myself in the library taking out armloads of the stuff ... the shame!

 

So anyway I have already polished off 3. All entertaining, all very different. The first I read was called Debatable Space by Philip Palmer, a high-energy tale of space pirates (I loves me some space pirates) who kidnap a very important personage, a woman named Lena, and use her as leverage to extort the dictator of the galaxy. Lena turns out to be one messed-up dame, and she makes life pretty crazy for her space pirate captors. Eventually, though, she develops Stockholm syndrome and joins their cause. This novel is very fast-paced, racing from rousing space battles to salty banter to gratuitous sex, with the occasional sidetrip into lurid tragedy. It was lots of fun to read.

 

Next I read Joe Haldeman's Old Twentieth, a more run-of-the-mill SF novel, but a very good one. The setting is maybe 100 years onto the future, and humanity has developed a treatment that seems to prevent aging. The people all happily call themselves "immortals," even though no-one knows how long the treatment will work. Also, they have all survived a catastrophic class war between those who could afford the treatment and those who could not. The title refers to an immersive virtual reality program that is popular among the characters, one that lets them experience the staid and placid twentieth century (a selection of wars, jazz clubs, epidemics and social upheaval). Yes, these people are so messed up, they have fond nostalgia for this stuff! But the twist comes when, for the first time in a century, someone dies! and they seem to have been killed by the virtual reality machine.

There were some really well-written scenes in this book. The autopsy performed by a robot was pretty freaky. Also, chasing ducks in zero-G sounds like a pile of fun. Joe Haldeman is really damn good at writing piles of good, solid SF.

 

Finally, I read J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World. J.G. Ballard is the Hemingway of SF ... he goes beyond mere exploration of new scientific ideas and simply writes amazingly good literature. This one was first published in 1962, but (I love it when this happens) he has created such a believable future world that you forget as you read that the book is almost 50 years old. In this book Ballard writes about an Earth where climate change has caused sea levels to rise several metres and temperatures to go up (Ballard is one of those SF geniuses who are like Nostradamus. He also predicted back in the 60s that Reagan would become president!)

We meet a scientist called Kerans in a drowned city, and he's not even sure which one. His team have come south from Greenland with some military guys to study the rate of climate change in Europe, but the landscape is unrecognizable: buildings stick up out of the water and silt, half submerged; the jungle has encroached; and oversized iguanas roam the earth. In this surreal environment, Kerans and some of his fellow scientists begin to lose their minds, perhaps because they know the temperature is still rising and maybe humanity is doomed. They begin to have dreams of returning to the primordial swamp. Their military friends are oblivious to this; they prepare to return to Greenland when their work is done, but Kerans and a few of his pals go AWOL and stay behind to watch the former human world disappear into a new triassic age.

If you liked Heart of Darkness, you should DEFINITELY read this book.

 

Alrighty! I'm moving on to reading The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper.

test

I got 90%!!!

Voyeurism is defined as "obtaining sexual gratification from looking at others sexual actions or organs" (Oxford). Indulging in voyeurism is usually seen as a cowardly act by mainstream society, because it entails exploiting the sexuality of an unwitting object while the voyeur remains at a safe distance, refusing to participate firsthand and thus take on the risks associated with equal relationships. In common usage, the word voyeurism is also used to explain the human hunger for shocking imagery that is bread and butter to film, television and newspapers. These media, and others, exploit our human biology by presenting us with content we find almost impossible to ignore, be it sexually themed, violent, or, most commonly, a mix of the two. The media serve to take voyeurism to a whole new level in society, not only allowing the voyeur to maintain an even greater distance from the object, but also broadcasting its compelling content to a massive audience. Both Sunset Boulevard and Watchmen comment on the phenomenon of voyeurism by developing characters who indulge in or oppose voyeuristic behaviour, and by showing how media-sponsored voyeurism effects individuals and society as a whole.

At first blush, it seems that the most voyeuristic character in Sunset Boulevard is Norma Desmond: her first appearance in the film is as a pair of reflective glasses shining through a shuttered window at the front of her house; she has no concept of privacy and personal space, as evidenced by her treatment of Joe Gillis; and she is certainly a person who prefers not to participate in events going on in the outside world. But on closer viewing, it becomes clear that Max von Mayerling is the real voyeur, and Norma Desmond his object. As Ms. Desmonds servant he has total access to every facet of her life, and he preserves that state of affairs by controlling what information she receives about the outside world, and even about herself. By sending her fake fan letters and assuring her that she is "the greatest star of them all" (Sunset Boulevard), Max keeps a powerful spotlight on Norma, a light that blinds her and exposes her at the same time. The perverse sexuality of the situation is revealed when Max confesses to Joe that he was Ms. Desmonds first husband. A musical crescendo reinforces the creepiness of this revelation.

The titles of Norma's and Max's respective roles in the film industry reflect their roles in life: Norma, the star, literally acting, while Max, the director, stays out of sight behind the cameras, controlling but not joining the action. He goes beyond the use of his own eyes as tools of voyeurism, but lets an entity of greater social power, the film camera, do that for him. As a result, young and spirited Norma Desmond was made into an object to be bought and sold, and watched, by millions of people unconnected to her life in any way. After a number of years as a great star, Norma's identity became so dependent on the approving gaze of strangers that she couldn't live a normal life off-camera. She only feels real when the reels are turning. This was not done to her in ignorance, but by people who were well aware of the danger to Normas selfhood. Another director, Cecil B. DeMille, regretfully spells it out: "A dozen press agents working overtime can do terrible things to the human spirit" (Sunset Boulevard).

Sunset Boulevard compares the dark environment of Norma Desmond's life to another character who possesses none of the qualities of a voyeur: Betty Schaeffer. In almost every way, Betty stands in stark contrast to all the other characters; she is young and unspoiled by the industry she works in; she is ambitious, energetically pursuing her sensible goal of being a writer; and she glows with physical, emotional and sexual health. She always appears either working responsibly at her job at Paramount, or socializing with other young, energetic people like herself. Her relationship with Artie is equal, honest, and headed towards a nice, normal marriage until she falls in love with Joe, and even then the viewer is led to believe that she will cope with his influence on her love life in a healthy, balanced way. In fact, Betty's only flaw was an imperfect nose, identified as such by the film industry and corrected years ago.

Watchmen addresses the human fascination for violent and sexual imagery by presenting us with an apocalyptic society that has gone through trauma after trauma and is in shock from the overload. People in the story have experienced terrifying events firsthand: child abuse, rape, street violence, war and the consequences of runaway technological advancement. Their coping strategies are various, and voyeurism is treated as one of them. The most obviously voyeuristic character, Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias, sits in front of a wall of TVs, secretly monitoring the state of the world and thinking up his plan to save society from itself. Like Max von Mayerling, he controls events according to his own vision but does not participate in the lives of his objects, in this case the whole world. He is kept above the action by his elite position as head of his corporation, and by his reputation as a man of remarkable physical prowess and as "the smartest man in the world" (Moore, chap.1 pp.17). Television is Adrian Veidt's one-way connection to the world, providing "information, information in its most concentrated form" (chap.10 pp.7) to guide him as he makes his plans for humanity. Illustrating how far removed he is from the day-to-day lives of regular people, Veidt makes a decision, based on viewing TV ads, to invest in the porn industry. He spares no thought for that industry's effect on women's safety and virtue, issues which matter so very much to his colleague Rorschach. The payoff for Veidt's voyeurism is not sexual gratification but megalomania: Veidt has set for himself the goal of becoming mankind's saviour.

The character of Rorschach is almost a mirror image of Adrian Veidt, but while Veidt is elevated on a pedestal of his own making, Rorschach is abased. His true identity is hidden as thoroughly as Veidt hides his master plan. His purpose in life is to attack injustice, and to this end he patrols the city nightly, alone, tracking down all its most horrible secrets. He is the only vigilante who refused to give up his vocation and go mainstream when the Keene Act was passed outlawing masked adventuring. Voyeurism featured largely in his traumatic childhood, from his accidentally seeing his mother having sex with a client, to the voyeuristic fascination of neighbourhood bullies with his mother's sleazy occupation.

Headlines of the major New York newspapers are often used to mark the turning points in the alternate history of the world of Watchmen, usually underscoring the major characters' reactions to these changes. When Rorschach explains to his psychologist his reasons for becoming a masked vigilante, in fact the very origin of his masked identity, the front page of the New York Gazette declares, "Woman Killed While Neighbors Look On" (chap.6 pp.10). The real-life story of Kitty Genovese's murder, which awakened so many to the problem of apathy and passive voyeurism in society, reflects Rorschach's rage at injustice against virtuous women and girls, even as he holds prostitutes in contempt. He remarks, "I knew then what people were, then, behind all the evasions, all the self-deception" (10). Later, he elaborates on his motivations while talking about the Comedian's philosophy on life, saying "Once a man has seen, he can never turn his back on it no matter who orders him to look the other way." (15). Rorschach's (and the Comedian's) reactions to witnessing injustice are the opposite of voyeuristic: he acts in the situation, at considerable risk to himself.

The definition of corporation is "a group of people authorised to act as an individual" (Oxford) and the corporations making up the various New York media in Watchmen can be looked at as individual characters, all with definite voyeuristic tendencies. They routinely invade the privacy of other characters in the same way that Norma Desmond and Max von Mayerling invaded Joe Gillis's privacy in Sunset Boulevard. The newspaper Nova Express, using information provided by a bitter ex-lover, humiliates Dr. Manhattan on national television, setting off enormous political consequences; later, television crews swoop down on Rorschach's apartment after his arrest, salaciously interviewing his sleazy landlady and photographing his squalid room filled with copies of another newspaper, the right-wing New Frontiersman. The film industry behaves similarly in Sunset Boulevard, sending a newsreel crew from Norma Desmond's beloved Paramount Studios to capture her final disintegration on film. Although these media claim to serve the public by exposing hidden bits of necessary information, the reader knows that the media really are driven by the need to raise ratings and make advertising dollars. They attract viewers and readers by appealing to the public's passive voyeurism.

Sunset Boulevard gives us the history of large scale voyeurism by telling the history of films. The novelty of moving pictures, and the public demand for more, is what has made all of the characters what they are. Regardless of what shameful personal habits the characters may indulge, it is the audiences hunger for more pictures that makes the consequences of those habits so very destructive. Then, once the novelty of mere moving pictures had worn off, the studios came up with sound, followed by Technicolor, and the audience began ravenously to consume movies featuring those new enticements. We learn almost immediately from Norma Desmond that these were the changes that took away her audience and thus her stardom, and thus her reality as a person. "We didnt need words, we had faces," Norma declares, referencing a time when she had been more whole (Sunset Boulevard).

In the end, Sunset Boulevard and Watchmen deliver the message that voyeurism is a social phenomenon that reflects back on itself. It is television, the inciter of so much violence, that delivers the news to Adrian Veidt that he has succeeded in his radical plan to save humanity. It is the film industry which both elevates and debases, creates and destroys Norma Desmond, then goes on to make and distribute Sunset Boulevard, a film showcasing its own destructive nature, for the entertainment of the paying customers. Those customers, and by extension everybody, become complicit in their turn in terrible events when they succumb to the temptation to watch without acting.

WORKS CITED

Moore, Alan. Watchmen. New York: DC Comics, 1986.

R.E. Allen, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Current English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Sunset Boulevard. Billy Wilder, dir. With William Holden and Gloria Swanson. Paramount Pictures, 1950.

Related Groups: Mourn The Squid

The Bookageddon Challenge has activated my speed-reading gene. I have just finished reading Nino Ricci's The Book of Saints and am now plowing through a compulsively readable new SF novel.

So, Book of Saints. This is a slim novel, very quick and easy to read, but heavy in other ways. After I finished it I had to take a day or two to process it.

The story is told through the eyes of Vitto, a seven year old boy living in an isolated little village in Italy.  He lives with his mother and grandfather; his father has gone to America for work. Because the story is told by a seven year old, none of the adults' life stories are told in full detail; you just get what the boy sees, and what he imagines is going on, and you have to put it together from there.

This is a very traditional village, totally out of touch with the modern world (the 60s), without phone service, electricity or even decent roads to the next town.  Vitto's family enjoys a certain privilege, because his grandfather is the "mayor" of the village - in other words, the long-time head of the boys' club that makes decisions for the town. His status declines, however, due to the behaviour of his daughter, Vitto's mother.

Of course, Vitto can't really spell out for us what his mother is up to, but it's pretty easy to figure out, even before she turns up pregnant. You never really get the mother's point of view either, because of the very restrictive environment she lives in.  She never gets to express herself or explain her circumstances; you just see her getting angrier and angrier at the way the villagers are treating her, and you hope that she will find a way to escape ... then, finally, she does, and just as you're thinking, "Great! Now we will learn a bit more about this character!" Guess what? She dies. Surprise surprise.

This novel is the first in a trilogy, but I have to say I am not all that eager to move on to the next one in the series, largely because at the end of The Book of Saints, Vitto arrives in Canada as an immigrant, and it's a case of "been there, read that" in highschool and a hundred times since then. And also, to me the centre of the novel was not Vitto but his mother, and the rest of the series will of course be all about him and his epic struggles ... meh. Some other time.

Don't get me wrong, this was a very well written book. It's about a bunch of people in tragic circumstances, and Ricci makes you really feel the tragedy and the helplessness. The child as narrator bit is done beautifully - Vitto is not cloying or overwrought at all, but quite believable. The suspense is killer. (Of course, I've just ruined it for you all).

Happy reading!

OK, so in this book we have two parallel plots: one following a nice, charismatic group of humans as they set out to colonise another planet; and one of what they would call on Star Trek, "a being of pure energy," who is as old as the universe and lives inside a star.  Neither one knows of the others' existence.

A bit of suspense starts to build right away as we meet the lead human character, Viktor, a child whose family has just been woken up out of cold sleep in a colony ship on their way to their new home. Some of the stars near where they are headed have just blown up with no explanation, and his father's expertise is needed to study this. So right away, you feel the helplessness of vulnerable people up against powers they cannot comprehend. They never do manage to explain the exploding stars.

So the people arrive on a lovely planet and begin building a colony, working hard and surviving the odd disaster and amusing themselves by having lots and lots of kids to build up their numbers.  Several good years go by ... then, Viktor's father, the astrophysicist, discovers that their own star system is actually moving away from the rest of the galaxy at an increasing rate of speed. This boggles everyone's minds, because of course stars aren't supposed to behave that way. The colony makes use of some of its scarce resources to send a few people (including Viktor) back up the old starship to investigate matters up in space, but as soon as they get close to the source of the strangeness, something attacks them and nearly destroys the ship.  Viktor barely manages to survive by sticking himself back in the freezer.

Meanwhile, we learn that Wan-To, the energy being, is in the middle of a bitch-fest with his relatives; that in fact one of his children has been blowing up stars trying to get to him. He blows up a few in retaliation, and also decides to detach a group of stars (including Viktor's new home) from the galaxy and send it flying off as a decoy. Here, we learn a few things about quantum mechanical particles like tachyons, gravitons etc; Wan-To uses these to communicate with others at great distances, to travel, and of course, to blow up stars. Wan-To and his ilk have no interest in the world of matter; living things are at best a curiosity and at worst an irritant to them. They tend to habitually destroy civilizations of lowly matter beings on sight. One of them decides to destroy Earth at one point ... so the colony humans are the last surviving ones in the universe.

Four hundred years later, Viktor wakes up and finds himself in a very different environment.  The sun is still hurtling through space at close to light speed, and the planet has completely frozen over. There are some humans left, and they eke out a miserable existence in underground caves, working their butts off to keep themselves fed on plants grown in artificial light and fertilized with guess-what. Understandibly, the people have turned to religion in various ways and continually fight among themselves. And because of the overpopulation danger, they make liberal use of the freezers by forcing lawbreakers back into cold sleep (because they are morally opposed to executions!) Predictably, Viktor gets himself refrozen before too long, because he's not really all that much of a conformist.

Wan-To, meanwhile, has forgotten all about this little group of stars that he sent flying out of the galaxy. He is preoccupied with getting old. Here we learn about the phenomenon of time dilation, where time goes by more slowly for a body moving at the speed of light than it does for one staying put. So while Viktor and the other humans have been coping with living in a moving star system, Wan-To has aged, lost much of his strength and been reduced to living in a cooling star in a dying universe. Finally, the meaning of the title, The World At The End of Time, becomes clear, because there is only one world left.

Fully four thousand years later, Viktor is thawed out again, this time by a genetic scientist living in a quite advanced society based on orbiting space stations. The sun has stopped flying through space and things have warmed up, and the surviving humans are living the hedonistic high-tech high life. They thaw out the odd frozen "primitive" to use him for fresh genetic material (wink wink), but there are thousands still frozen on the planet. Viktor becomes a bit of a celebrity, because he was actually born on Earth in the olden days, and he convinces some of the younger space folk to take an interest in the planet again. Eventually, they begin to thaw out all the corpsicles and rebuild the colony.

This book is what is called "hard SF", that is that all the plot devices and settings described are backed up by real scientific theory. None of it is just made up out of whole cloth. The existence of Wan-To is, of course, a big leap, but his character is based on real knowledge of quantum mechanics and guesswork about what that knowledge implies. In other words, with what we know of science right now, we can't say for sure that Wan-To CAN'T exist. Just think ... back in the 30s and 40s, you could have stories about landing on Venus or Mars and finding advanced civilizations there ... after all, who could say there weren't? Nobody, that's who.

That's my book report! Please give me at least an A-.

I am very proud of my answer to that age-old question-of-the-day ... so I am reposting it here.

QOTD: Cats or Dogs?

Oh dear oh dear, who to vote for, who to vote for ... Now that we Canadians have won the right to vote on So You Think You Can Dance, my big dilemma is, who is my favourite?

The adorable ballerina?  The popper who looks like my favourite cousin? The total hottie with the fauxhawk, tats and piercings?  or the latin ballroom barbie doll?  ok, maybe not the barbie doll, but she is extremely talented all the same ...

ooh theyre back on gotta go!

1. Still angry at the dumbass from the gallery who turned people away from my party last week at 9:45 on a rainy night, even though I had paid the DJ til 1am and had been assured the place would stay open as late as I wanted.

2. Pissed as always at the little diva brat (actually a grown woman older than me) who threw a hissy fit in the middle of a vocal training workshop yesterday and cost the group a half-hour of time we paid for goddammit.

3. Mad at myself for completely gapping on the co-op meeting I was supposed to be at this eve, and also mad at my co-directors for getting on their high horse and chewing me out about it hours after the fact instead of calling me up at the time and saying get your ass to the office.

4. Freaking because I just realized today that the guy I've dated a few times in recent weeks has a negative history with another one of my neighbours but I can't get any more info because of job-related confidentiality agreements.

5. Stressed because I have to sit on an interview panel all day tomorrow and I haven't reviewed any of the resumes.

6. Today I saw a toothless woman asleep in a chair and she looked like a corpse.

7. Yesterday, I saw some yuppie asshole videoing a young woman tweaking on crack or meth and laughing with his friend about it.  She didn't even know he was there.

soundtrack: Day For Night, The Tragically Hip

This aft I was at a seminar on arts-related matters, which was quite interesting, but that's not the best part.  At one point, one of the panel looked at his laptop, then looked up and said, "It's official - Barack Obama has conceded the election to John McCain.  JUST KIDDING!!!"  and the whole room groaned and said hardy har har and all that.  But I confess that for a half second there, my blood ran cold with fear.

Congrats to all my American friends for making the smart choice!

Yeah it's election madness all over at the moment.  Here in Vancouver we have a federal election in one week (yes, Canada is electing a new el supremo, bet you hadn't heard); a municipal vote in a month; and a provincial government preening for a planned election in the spring.  It's a little overwhelming.  And on top of all that ...

I CAN NOW VOTE FOR DANCERS ON SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE!!!  Canadian edition.



I totally voted for these hotties ...



and these ... mostly for the adorable ballerina and her pink panties ...



and these two ... because they were awesome ...



and these two, because of the fabulousness.

And the rest of these folks I didn't vote for (yet) but they take a nice picture, don't they?




Okay, back to solemn socio/political/economic discourse.  Fun time over ... til next time!

Which songs start off with these lyrics?

I must warn you I have some obscure stuff on here!  Have fun!

1. You're no rock n' roll fun, like a party that's over before it's begun.
2. I'm out in my walking shoes, I'm walking to my promised land.
3. You feel good, you feel right, so good.
4. You wanna know if I know why? I can't say that I do.
5. The most tender place in my heart is for strangers.
6. Watch out, you might get what you're after.
7. Jane says, I'm done with Sergio, he treats me like a ragdoll.
8. Yeah, I said it's alright, I won't forget all the times I've waited patiently for you.
9. Phone me and I'll hang up, sick and tired of being bubble gum chewed up.
10. Armoured cars sail the sky, they're pink at dawn.
11. There's a new sensation, a fabulous creation, a danceable solution to teenage revolution.
12. Make a hole with the gun perpendicular to the name of this town in a desktop globe.
13. All the stars may shine bright; all the clouds may be white.
14. Time has gone out, if you pick up the weekend precisely, do you see?
15. Az der rebbe Elimelekh iz gevorn zeyer freylekh ...
16. If you're tired of the big so-so, get yourself into some self control.
17. I'm ready to roll, you know I'm getting ready to do it.
18. Bewartet einander vor Herzeleid denn kurtz ist die Zeit die ihr beisammen seit.
19. I don't come around, never call or let her know.
20. Please please tell me now.

(I made it out by the skin of my teeth).




Well, I am being overdramatic ... this slide was probably shaken loose by tectonic activity ... that's not a scientific opinion, but there was that quake in California the other day ... so there was probably no chance of this happening two weekends ago when I was driving this road.  Probably.

I have held onto my page title ("Unlock Picturehoard") for so long, I thought I should finally let you guys in on its origin.  It's from one of my favourite poems ... a notoriously cryptic poem written in a parody of ye olde English & epic nordic sagas, by Canadian poet Earle Birney, a straight up genius.  I was lucky enough to have a hard-drinking, history-loving Brit-o-phile literarature snob friend who helpfully cleared up the meaning of this poem to me ... turns out, it's about the boring uptight type of folks who mainly lived in Toronto before the whole world started emigrating there and making it an interesting city.  In other words, it's about my family.

See if it makes any sense to you ...

Oh, and sorry for the rude words.  Artistic license, you understand.

Anglosaxon Street

by Earle Birney

Dawndrizzle ended   dampness steams from
blotching brick and   blank plasterwaste
Faded housepatterns   hoary and finicky
unfold stuttering   stick like a phonograph

Here is a ghetto   gotten for goyim
O with care denuded   of nigger and kike
No coonsmell rankles   reeks only cellarrot
attar of carexhaust   catacorpse and cookinggrease

Imperial hearts   heave in this haven
Cracks across windows   are welded with slogans
There’ll Always Be An England   enhances geraniums
and V’s for Victory   vanquish the housefly

Ho! with climbing sun   march the bleached beldames
festooned with shopping bags   farded flatarched
bigthewed Saxonwives   stepping over buttrivers
waddling back wienerladen   to suckle smallfry

Hoy! with sunslope   shrieking over hydrants
flood from learninghall   the lean fingerlings
Nordic nobblecheeked   not all clean of nose
leaping Commandowise   into leprous lanes

What! after whistleblow   spewed from wheelboat
after daylong doughtiness   dire handplay
in sewertrench or sandpit   come Saxonthegns
Junebrown Jutekings   jawslack for meat

Sit after supper   on smeared doorsteps
not humbly swearing   hatedeeds on Huns
profiteers politicians   pacifists Jews

Then by twobit magic   to muse in movie
unlock picturehoard   or lope to alehall
soaking bleakly   in beer skittleless

Home again to hotbox   and humid husbandhood
in slumbertrough adding   sleepily to Anglekin
Alongside in lanenooks   carling and leman
caterwaul and clip   careless of Saxonry
with moonglow and haste   and a higher heartbeat

Slumbers now slumtrack   unstinks cooling
waiting brief for milkhind   mornstar and worldrise

Toronto 1942

My latest video (of last night's party) still hasn't appeared in the sidebar ... and my last one (at Xmas) never did, so I am taking matters into my own hands.  Because I really want you all to see (hear) the PIRATES!!!

View here.

Yarrrrr!