... it will be Canadian Thanksgiving.
This year, most of us here in Canada are thankful that we are not American.
Yet.
This year, we are also thankful we are not Icelandic, although we have started going there on holidays as a nation, because of the special offer flights.
Me, I'm currently thankful I like to cook.
Up until last Thursday, I was going to my out-laws for Thanksgiving, which is what I normally do (unless I am lugging a canoe around a lake, which is what I did last year). Then, Himself's work took a swerve towards winter hours. So for the last three nights and the next seven, Himself is working a twelve hour shift from 7pm - 7am.
So not only do I have to cook Thanksgiving dinner, I have to have it on the table by four pm.
Bah.
I figured I would just not do it.
I told Himself we'd just have pork chops or something, because I don't like turkey and I didn't feel particularly thankful this year anyways.
Oh, he said.
Oh...
Himself, being a youngest child, has said family member's innate ability to pull THE SAH-DED-EST FACE IN DEH WOR-ALD EHV-HER when he needs to.
Oh, he said, with his sad face on.
I held my ground for a bit.
Then I heard him telling Kitty on the phone that he would do a meal for everyone on Sunday .... if he wasn't too tired.
Or sad, I assume.
Or dead from the H2S levels.
I don't actually know if Kitty was on the phone or this was just a ploy of course.
Anyways, it worked.
Christ almighty, I can't be one of those women who sends her bloke off to work a twelve hour shift in a place where the H2S levels are higher than the highest H2S levels ever recorded in the world ever, forcing him to be extremely BRAVE and RESOURCEFUL and CAREFUL and SUCCESSFULL at STAYING ALIVE and then forces him to take a shower as soon as he gets home from the FREEZING COLD and DANGEROUS oil rig bilge barge pumping whatever the fuck it is he's gotten Himself into doing now thingummy.
Just so he can cook a nice supper for her.
Without even asking about the H2S levels that day.
Well, I could be that kind of woman, but I choose not to be.
Actually, I'd quite like to freak out about the H2S levels, but I'm not allowed. Because it's not an issue. Because Himself is TOO CAREFUL TO DIE.
Phew.
Why am I living with a danger junkie?
Oh that's right, everyone else bored me to death eventually.
Maybe Himself will scare me to death eventually.
Or H2S me to death. According to Wiki, a buildup of hydrogen sulfide in the atmosphere could have caused the Permian-Triassic extinction event 252 million years ago.
There you go.
Okay, how did we get here from Thanksgiving?
Get back to the point, please.
Yes, anyways, I'm thankful I can cook. Because that means I don't have to cook a turkey.
I hate turkey.
I worked on a turkey farm once, long long time ago.
Some of my readers will know why.
It wasn't for the glamorous surroundings or the wages I can tell you.
My job was to get the plucked turkeys, cut out all the oozing scabs from the fighting that goes on in a turkey barn, and sew the skin together like new with white thread.
So, I don't like turkey.
So we're having rib of beef instead.
With a Dijon mustard and cumin crust.
And Yorkshire pudding.
With mashed and sweet potatoes, butternut squash (roasted, with brown sugar and butter) and turnip.
Because you can't have too many Fall colours on a plate in our house.
It will be preceded by a nourishing barley and lentil soup.
And followed by pumpkin pie, of course.
With lashings of cream.
A careful blend of Old and New World autumnal cooking.
It's all prepped so I don't have to do anything until 2pm and can spend the morning in the garden.
I texted the dinner menu to Himself at work.
To cheer him up.
And distract him from his H2S monitor.
Which beeps constantly, such is the danger that man puts Himself in in order to put prime rib of beef on the small pine dining table in our apartment.
(I'm not taking the piss out of Himself, by the way, I am dealing with the slight, scratching the back of my brain dread I am feeling about this job by using my lifelong friend and ally, sarcasm.)
He texted me back with the standard text I get when he's getting what he wanted all along.
UR the best babe.
Yes, I know I am.
You're completely spoiled is what it is, I texted him back.
So now we're actually having Thanksgiving, I guess I should be thinking about what I'm thankful for.
I'm so going to make everyone at the table tell each other what they're thankful for this year.
Just to make a point.
About gratitude.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Charlie tells us it's over, so it must be over.
The inimitable Mr. Charlie Brooker, from the Guardian today... the only person who was more scared reading The Road than I was, for which I will love him forever.
Great. I go on holiday, turn my back for a few weeks, come back and what has happened? The banks are on fire and we're at war with Iceland. As I type these words (on a Friday morning, fact fans), Sky News is zooming in on a screen full of red flashing numbers, apparently willing them to fall yet lower. The problem is a lack of confidence, they keep saying, cutting away every so often to show a big plunging downward arrow or a shot of a City trader holding his head in despair.
I'm a bit sick of that whole holding-his-head-in-despair schtick, to be honest. It's about time they tried something more spectacular. Surely it's time for a revival of that great cliche of the 1930s, the ruined City whizzkid hurling himself out of the window? The credit crunch high dive.
Extra points if you manage to pull a backflip on the way down, or crack your jaw on a window cleaner's cradle somewhere around floor 35. The ultimate high score goes to the first one who manages to successfully update his Facebook status using an iPhone seconds before slamming into the pavement. "Danny is plummeting to his doom." Click here to tag him in a photo.
Is this the end of the world? If so, it's a bit more boring than I'd imagined. So far, it's been an invisible apocalypse. Poke your head out the window and there's little evidence of charred debris. Perhaps that's yet to come. Like I say, I'm writing this on Friday morning. By the time you read it, it'll be Monday. Maybe we're already bartering with coloured pebbles or fighting over water or something.
Still, there's no point in worrying. If we're going to be plunged into some kind of barbaric medieval dark age, I might as well be philosophical about it, because there's no way I'll survive more than a month. I'd be hopeless at fighting over basic resources and don't have any essential manual skills, such as the ability to hunt and skin rats. Perhaps I can learn the lute and become a minstrel, or perform bawdy jigs in exchange for pennies. Assuming there are any pennies. Hey, maybe just before all currency is finally declared worthless we'll get to experience the whole wheelbarrows-full-of-worthless-banknotes thing, like they did in Germany just before the war. That'd be a blast.
It all seems particularly bizarre, because just over a week ago I was in Las Vegas, as part of a US road trip I'm writing up for the Travel section. The casino put me up in an outrageous suite the size of a millionaire's bachelor pad. It had a pool table, a butler, and a shower in the lounge with a lapdancing pole in the middle of it. The windows looked out over the Las Vegas strip; specifically over the multimillion-dollar fountain show at the front of Bellagio. I visited a nightclub full of pricks who danced around tossing banknotes in the air, then returned to the suite, which alongside a pool table and a butler, also came equipped with about six gigantic, wall-mounted HD plasma TVs, every single one of which was screaming bad news about the economy. I felt like I was trapped inside a terrifying satirical sci-fi flick.
And it had to happen, obviously. For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real. And now it's gone. Your house is worth less than your shoes, and your shoes are now, in turn, worth less than your mouth and your arse. Yes, your most valuable possessions are now your mouth and your arse, and you're going to have to use both of them in all manner of previously unthinkable ways to make ends meet, to pay for that box, the box you live in, the one you mistook for an enchanted, unstoppable cash engine. I hope you've got a nice kitchen. Maybe that'll take your mind off things. And sell that Alessi smoothie maker while you're about it. You can't afford fruit any more. It's tap water at best from now on. It's good for you! Really, it is.
All of it was a dream. All that crap we bought, all the bottled water and Blu-Ray players and designer shoes and iPod Shuffles and patio heaters; all the jobs we had; all the catchphrases we memorised and the stupid things we thought. Everything we did for the past 10 years - none of it really felt real, did it? Time to snap out of it. Time to grow our own vegetables and learn hand-to-hand combat with staves. And time, perhaps, to really start living
Great. I go on holiday, turn my back for a few weeks, come back and what has happened? The banks are on fire and we're at war with Iceland. As I type these words (on a Friday morning, fact fans), Sky News is zooming in on a screen full of red flashing numbers, apparently willing them to fall yet lower. The problem is a lack of confidence, they keep saying, cutting away every so often to show a big plunging downward arrow or a shot of a City trader holding his head in despair.
I'm a bit sick of that whole holding-his-head-in-despair schtick, to be honest. It's about time they tried something more spectacular. Surely it's time for a revival of that great cliche of the 1930s, the ruined City whizzkid hurling himself out of the window? The credit crunch high dive.
Extra points if you manage to pull a backflip on the way down, or crack your jaw on a window cleaner's cradle somewhere around floor 35. The ultimate high score goes to the first one who manages to successfully update his Facebook status using an iPhone seconds before slamming into the pavement. "Danny is plummeting to his doom." Click here to tag him in a photo.
Is this the end of the world? If so, it's a bit more boring than I'd imagined. So far, it's been an invisible apocalypse. Poke your head out the window and there's little evidence of charred debris. Perhaps that's yet to come. Like I say, I'm writing this on Friday morning. By the time you read it, it'll be Monday. Maybe we're already bartering with coloured pebbles or fighting over water or something.
Still, there's no point in worrying. If we're going to be plunged into some kind of barbaric medieval dark age, I might as well be philosophical about it, because there's no way I'll survive more than a month. I'd be hopeless at fighting over basic resources and don't have any essential manual skills, such as the ability to hunt and skin rats. Perhaps I can learn the lute and become a minstrel, or perform bawdy jigs in exchange for pennies. Assuming there are any pennies. Hey, maybe just before all currency is finally declared worthless we'll get to experience the whole wheelbarrows-full-of-worthless-banknotes thing, like they did in Germany just before the war. That'd be a blast.
It all seems particularly bizarre, because just over a week ago I was in Las Vegas, as part of a US road trip I'm writing up for the Travel section. The casino put me up in an outrageous suite the size of a millionaire's bachelor pad. It had a pool table, a butler, and a shower in the lounge with a lapdancing pole in the middle of it. The windows looked out over the Las Vegas strip; specifically over the multimillion-dollar fountain show at the front of Bellagio. I visited a nightclub full of pricks who danced around tossing banknotes in the air, then returned to the suite, which alongside a pool table and a butler, also came equipped with about six gigantic, wall-mounted HD plasma TVs, every single one of which was screaming bad news about the economy. I felt like I was trapped inside a terrifying satirical sci-fi flick.
And it had to happen, obviously. For years, money was just appearing from nowhere, or so we were told. People bought houses and bragged about how the value kept zooming up, and up, and up. In fact they didn't seem to be houses at all, but magic coin-shitting machines. It was all a dream, a dream in which you bought a box and lived in it, and all the time it generated money like a cow generates farts. Great big stinking clouds of money. And none of it was real. And now it's gone. Your house is worth less than your shoes, and your shoes are now, in turn, worth less than your mouth and your arse. Yes, your most valuable possessions are now your mouth and your arse, and you're going to have to use both of them in all manner of previously unthinkable ways to make ends meet, to pay for that box, the box you live in, the one you mistook for an enchanted, unstoppable cash engine. I hope you've got a nice kitchen. Maybe that'll take your mind off things. And sell that Alessi smoothie maker while you're about it. You can't afford fruit any more. It's tap water at best from now on. It's good for you! Really, it is.
All of it was a dream. All that crap we bought, all the bottled water and Blu-Ray players and designer shoes and iPod Shuffles and patio heaters; all the jobs we had; all the catchphrases we memorised and the stupid things we thought. Everything we did for the past 10 years - none of it really felt real, did it? Time to snap out of it. Time to grow our own vegetables and learn hand-to-hand combat with staves. And time, perhaps, to really start living
Why do we insist on leaving a vaporous vapour trail?
We are truly the generation that won't allow ourselves to get drunk in peace, aren't we.
First of all, there was drunk behaviour.
Which was frowned on, but forgettable mainly due to the fleeting nature of it (unless there was a video camera in evidence). Or photos. But they could be lost in the move, couldn't they.
Then there was drunk telephoning.
Bad.
Then we invented drunk texting.
Pretty bad.
And now there's drunk Facebooking.
Two types.
Actual Facebooking when drunk. Well, not drunk so much as slightly tipsy so that you can't remember what stellar thought was in your head at the time you wrote the thing.
And then there's the really scary Facebooking of the past through image and sound.
Why do we leave this vaporous vapour trail behind us constantly?
We should have one day a year when there's no technology and we all just have a party or a debate or whatever we want, in peace, with no phones or Interweb.
I hereby command that August 8th be that day from now on.
I'll organize the party next year, howzat?!
Sitting here waiting for the breadmaker to finish making the bread.
When you peer inside, the weirdly contorting dough looks like the beginnings of a clone or something equally nasty.
First of all, there was drunk behaviour.
Which was frowned on, but forgettable mainly due to the fleeting nature of it (unless there was a video camera in evidence). Or photos. But they could be lost in the move, couldn't they.
Then there was drunk telephoning.
Bad.
Then we invented drunk texting.
Pretty bad.
And now there's drunk Facebooking.
Two types.
Actual Facebooking when drunk. Well, not drunk so much as slightly tipsy so that you can't remember what stellar thought was in your head at the time you wrote the thing.
And then there's the really scary Facebooking of the past through image and sound.
Why do we leave this vaporous vapour trail behind us constantly?
We should have one day a year when there's no technology and we all just have a party or a debate or whatever we want, in peace, with no phones or Interweb.
I hereby command that August 8th be that day from now on.
I'll organize the party next year, howzat?!
Sitting here waiting for the breadmaker to finish making the bread.
When you peer inside, the weirdly contorting dough looks like the beginnings of a clone or something equally nasty.
So if I didn't do it, and your dad didn't do it, and you didn't do it, then who did it? The fuck-up fairy?
'Utter carnage' is how one trader described events as he caught the train home from Canary Wharf on Friday
Yeah whatever, go on...
More than £600bn has been wiped from the value of shares of companies listed on the FTSE 100 since it climbed to 6,732 on 15 June 2007. Now the index is trading at around 4,000, a 40 per cent slump in 12 months,
By my calculations that is 4.553 to the power of -7. Of course, I don't know what that means. I think it means that every point of the FTSE was worth 4.5 Billion before. So the FTSE used to be worth 30,294 billion. So now the FTSE is worth 18,000 billion.
Yep. They're right.
59.4177.
I thought you rounded it down if it was less than five?
That will have a big impact on the value of pensions
Yes, they told us that at work.
Mark Otswald, an analyst at Monument Securities, describes the last few days as 'sheer, bloody panic. The Western financial system is breaking down.'
They didn't tell us that.
Apocalypse now? 'Let's hope not,' says Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered
Hear hear, Gerard...
they don't know how bad things are going to get, so the temptation is to dump assets, no matter what.'
They always trot out that line, don't they. I always wonder who 'they' are.
The first priority is to free up the money markets where banks lend to each other to ensure there is sufficient credit around to lend to businesses and mortgage borrowers. Ominously, that isn't happening,
I wonder where the money is ending up.
David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, says: Companies are being squeezed and capital expenditure will be cut
Oh well, that's all right then. Capital expenditure is planned for and paid for in advance, by the government sometimes, isn't it.
Many businesses are already low on cash because of higher costs - such as fuel bills - and weakening consumer demand
Aaah, is that so.
(I saw three Hummers in the carpark at the superstore in Spryfield today... I swear to god I did).
The bank also charged £35,000 in fees. Derek Simpson, general secretary of the Unite union, says: 'The banks are trying to hoard cash and squeezing everyone down the chain
Aha. The banks are hoarding cash are they? There's a surprise.
September, there was a net outflow of $72bn from American mutual funds, and the figure for this month could be even higher.
In Britain, retail investors have held their nerve, although there was a £500m outflow in August
I have no idea what this means. But it sounds important.
But hedge funds are major sellers. That is happening for one of two reasons: either because banks are making margin calls, where they ask for more security as debt becomes dearer to service, or because investors are taking fright and cashing in their chips.
This is where I started to get interested. Why does the journalist not know why this is happening? He's already pointed out that the banks are hoarding cash.
Rich individuals, including Russian oligarchs, are also selling, in particular where loans are secured against equity stakes in companies under their control. As stock prices fall, banks are demanding more security from tycoons, many of whom have tied up their wealth in shares
If I were the banks, and I had totally fucked things up, and broken all the rules, and destroyed the meaning of the word trust, and been cast out in the street, and had to break back in and sit in the corner snivelling and begging, until I got the shrug that meant you had gotten away with it for about fifteen minutes, I would be hoarding too, obviously,
Ukrainian oligarch and iron ore miner Kostyantin Zhevago was forced to sell a 20 per cent stake in metal company Ferrexpo last week because of the steep fall in the price of commodities. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has sold 20 per cent of Canadian car parts maker Magna
To whom have these people had to sell their said to be one time ill-gotten gains?
who bought 20 per cent of Magna?
and why was it not on the news?
Or did I miss it?
When the world's wealthy elites are forced to sell shares, it not only adds to the downward pressure on financial markets, but also takes spending power out of the economy, with spin-off effects for sectors as diverse as luxury goods, property and investment in jobs
Why? Do the people that buy them not have any fun ever? Do they just sit and count their money?
Who could these people be?
Who doesn't like to have fun?
The Depression of 80 years ago was compounded by the fact that wealth was controlled by an even narrower spectrum of society than today; the effect of wealth destruction for a few was felt disproportionately by the rest of the population. Nevertheless, a version of that nexus exists today
What does this mean? It is counter-intuitive to me? Surely if a wider range of people have money the risk is spread? Am I missing something important about percentages here?
I was never any good at gambling.
Oh no!! I get it now. It's the same as I think, it's just too academic for me to understand it.
the insurance companies have escaped relatively unscathed, and fears that they might have to sell shares to increase their solvency ratios to make good a decline in equity prices appear overdone.
In 2001-02, British insurers such as Standard Life were forced to sell equities to meet capital adequacy requirements, but today insurers are less vulnerable.
Ahaaa!!!! This has happened before.
But not to the banks.
That's why it's terrible this time.
Of more concern are the potential liabilities hanging over credit default swaps, a huge unregulated sector that few people know about or understand.
Does anyone know what a credit default swap is?
Over the last 12 years, the value of the CDS market, where these contracts are traded like other derivatives, has grown to $55 trillion. CDSs have been used to insure risky mortgage bonds, as well as the debt of collapsed institutions such as Lehman Brothers. The worry is that insurers and banks that underwrote these instruments will not be able to meet their liabilities.
And they are?
With judgement, and perhaps a little luck, the financial crisis that has enveloped the world can be brought under control via a global rescue plan, but the aftershock will almost certainly be with us for years to come.
Yes, boys and girls, that's the end of the article. I swear to god it is. And there are no comments.
Investopedia says that a credit default swap is
A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.
The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection, whereas the seller of the swap guarantees the credit worthiness of the product. By doing this, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap. For example, the buyer of a credit swap will be entitled to the par value of the bond by the seller of the swap, should the bond default in its coupon payments.
So in the case of Lehman Bros, they sold 'toxic something or others' and then they did a credit swap with someone else. The someone else gets the insurance. And then the insurance company can sue Lehman Bros for the pay out costs when the 'toxic something or other' collapses.
So the government is buying the toxic something or others so that means the government will have to guarantee the creditworthyness of the product.
So how will the government do that? Does it have to guarantee it to itself and just take the hit?
Why on earth would anyone do any of this?
If I am reading this article right, somebody has done this to the tune of $55 trillion.
This is the teenage equivalent of being in so much trouble that it's worse than the time that despite your best efforts at being sorry the cops rang the house in the middle of the night after they'd picked you up when you were puking up on the street purely to wake your parents up straight after they'd finally gone to sleep right after they had had an argument.
You'd think someone would fucking understand the pain they're all in, wouldn't you.
I do.
he he he
What has to happen now is that trust has to be re-established.
How many times have I heard that this month.
And now I finally understand
Who do YOU trust?
With the greatest respect to Richard Wachman and Tim Webb.
Yeah whatever, go on...
More than £600bn has been wiped from the value of shares of companies listed on the FTSE 100 since it climbed to 6,732 on 15 June 2007. Now the index is trading at around 4,000, a 40 per cent slump in 12 months,
By my calculations that is 4.553 to the power of -7. Of course, I don't know what that means. I think it means that every point of the FTSE was worth 4.5 Billion before. So the FTSE used to be worth 30,294 billion. So now the FTSE is worth 18,000 billion.
Yep. They're right.
59.4177.
I thought you rounded it down if it was less than five?
That will have a big impact on the value of pensions
Yes, they told us that at work.
Mark Otswald, an analyst at Monument Securities, describes the last few days as 'sheer, bloody panic. The Western financial system is breaking down.'
They didn't tell us that.
Apocalypse now? 'Let's hope not,' says Gerard Lyons, chief economist at Standard Chartered
Hear hear, Gerard...
they don't know how bad things are going to get, so the temptation is to dump assets, no matter what.'
They always trot out that line, don't they. I always wonder who 'they' are.
The first priority is to free up the money markets where banks lend to each other to ensure there is sufficient credit around to lend to businesses and mortgage borrowers. Ominously, that isn't happening,
I wonder where the money is ending up.
David Frost, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, says: Companies are being squeezed and capital expenditure will be cut
Oh well, that's all right then. Capital expenditure is planned for and paid for in advance, by the government sometimes, isn't it.
Many businesses are already low on cash because of higher costs - such as fuel bills - and weakening consumer demand
Aaah, is that so.
(I saw three Hummers in the carpark at the superstore in Spryfield today... I swear to god I did).
The bank also charged £35,000 in fees. Derek Simpson, general secretary of the Unite union, says: 'The banks are trying to hoard cash and squeezing everyone down the chain
Aha. The banks are hoarding cash are they? There's a surprise.
September, there was a net outflow of $72bn from American mutual funds, and the figure for this month could be even higher.
In Britain, retail investors have held their nerve, although there was a £500m outflow in August
I have no idea what this means. But it sounds important.
But hedge funds are major sellers. That is happening for one of two reasons: either because banks are making margin calls, where they ask for more security as debt becomes dearer to service, or because investors are taking fright and cashing in their chips.
This is where I started to get interested. Why does the journalist not know why this is happening? He's already pointed out that the banks are hoarding cash.
Rich individuals, including Russian oligarchs, are also selling, in particular where loans are secured against equity stakes in companies under their control. As stock prices fall, banks are demanding more security from tycoons, many of whom have tied up their wealth in shares
If I were the banks, and I had totally fucked things up, and broken all the rules, and destroyed the meaning of the word trust, and been cast out in the street, and had to break back in and sit in the corner snivelling and begging, until I got the shrug that meant you had gotten away with it for about fifteen minutes, I would be hoarding too, obviously,
Ukrainian oligarch and iron ore miner Kostyantin Zhevago was forced to sell a 20 per cent stake in metal company Ferrexpo last week because of the steep fall in the price of commodities. Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has sold 20 per cent of Canadian car parts maker Magna
To whom have these people had to sell their said to be one time ill-gotten gains?
who bought 20 per cent of Magna?
and why was it not on the news?
Or did I miss it?
When the world's wealthy elites are forced to sell shares, it not only adds to the downward pressure on financial markets, but also takes spending power out of the economy, with spin-off effects for sectors as diverse as luxury goods, property and investment in jobs
Why? Do the people that buy them not have any fun ever? Do they just sit and count their money?
Who could these people be?
Who doesn't like to have fun?
The Depression of 80 years ago was compounded by the fact that wealth was controlled by an even narrower spectrum of society than today; the effect of wealth destruction for a few was felt disproportionately by the rest of the population. Nevertheless, a version of that nexus exists today
What does this mean? It is counter-intuitive to me? Surely if a wider range of people have money the risk is spread? Am I missing something important about percentages here?
I was never any good at gambling.
Oh no!! I get it now. It's the same as I think, it's just too academic for me to understand it.
the insurance companies have escaped relatively unscathed, and fears that they might have to sell shares to increase their solvency ratios to make good a decline in equity prices appear overdone.
In 2001-02, British insurers such as Standard Life were forced to sell equities to meet capital adequacy requirements, but today insurers are less vulnerable.
Ahaaa!!!! This has happened before.
But not to the banks.
That's why it's terrible this time.
Of more concern are the potential liabilities hanging over credit default swaps, a huge unregulated sector that few people know about or understand.
Does anyone know what a credit default swap is?
Over the last 12 years, the value of the CDS market, where these contracts are traded like other derivatives, has grown to $55 trillion. CDSs have been used to insure risky mortgage bonds, as well as the debt of collapsed institutions such as Lehman Brothers. The worry is that insurers and banks that underwrote these instruments will not be able to meet their liabilities.
And they are?
With judgement, and perhaps a little luck, the financial crisis that has enveloped the world can be brought under control via a global rescue plan, but the aftershock will almost certainly be with us for years to come.
Yes, boys and girls, that's the end of the article. I swear to god it is. And there are no comments.
Investopedia says that a credit default swap is
A swap designed to transfer the credit exposure of fixed income products between parties.
The buyer of a credit swap receives credit protection, whereas the seller of the swap guarantees the credit worthiness of the product. By doing this, the risk of default is transferred from the holder of the fixed income security to the seller of the swap. For example, the buyer of a credit swap will be entitled to the par value of the bond by the seller of the swap, should the bond default in its coupon payments.
So in the case of Lehman Bros, they sold 'toxic something or others' and then they did a credit swap with someone else. The someone else gets the insurance. And then the insurance company can sue Lehman Bros for the pay out costs when the 'toxic something or other' collapses.
So the government is buying the toxic something or others so that means the government will have to guarantee the creditworthyness of the product.
So how will the government do that? Does it have to guarantee it to itself and just take the hit?
Why on earth would anyone do any of this?
If I am reading this article right, somebody has done this to the tune of $55 trillion.
This is the teenage equivalent of being in so much trouble that it's worse than the time that despite your best efforts at being sorry the cops rang the house in the middle of the night after they'd picked you up when you were puking up on the street purely to wake your parents up straight after they'd finally gone to sleep right after they had had an argument.
You'd think someone would fucking understand the pain they're all in, wouldn't you.
I do.
he he he
What has to happen now is that trust has to be re-established.
How many times have I heard that this month.
And now I finally understand
Who do YOU trust?
With the greatest respect to Richard Wachman and Tim Webb.
Cross-posting from the Farm
Farmer Brown found an article in The Washington Monthly that I loved.
Here it is:
There are some great comments on this article, isn't it funny that already, online newspapers have found a way to tap into the great forum that is the human need to hours every day in the schoolrooms of their childhood...
The McCain/Palin ticket is "historical" on several levels.
First POW/First Sow (with lipstick even.)
First pill popping, beer heiress, trophy wife/First Dude.
Oldest ever/Dumbest ever.
Fought for the U.S/Wants to secede from the U.S.
Air jockey dad/Hockey mom.
Joe 12 homes/Joe Six pack.
Maverick/Moose hunter
That's all I can think of, I invite others to come up with more
You suck too.
You do.
If you haven't already realised, this is an article about the McCain/ Palin ticket.
I wonder if they have an article about the banking crisis?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015130.php
I do link, but I'm not going to do it before I explain why.
Here it is:
There are some great comments on this article, isn't it funny that already, online newspapers have found a way to tap into the great forum that is the human need to hours every day in the schoolrooms of their childhood...
The McCain/Palin ticket is "historical" on several levels.
First POW/First Sow (with lipstick even.)
First pill popping, beer heiress, trophy wife/First Dude.
Oldest ever/Dumbest ever.
Fought for the U.S/Wants to secede from the U.S.
Air jockey dad/Hockey mom.
Joe 12 homes/Joe Six pack.
Maverick/Moose hunter
That's all I can think of, I invite others to come up with more
You suck too.
You do.
If you haven't already realised, this is an article about the McCain/ Palin ticket.
I wonder if they have an article about the banking crisis?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2008_10/015130.php
I do link, but I'm not going to do it before I explain why.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Tonight
I was going to stay in and blog tonight.
But I got invited out.
So I have put on a dress.
Yes, I have.
And now I am going to put my make up on prop'ly.
And go out.
HURRAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy 18th Birthday Kitty.
You look so grown up in your new purple killer-sex-kitten boots.
The Queenie Knows about Boots.
Oh yes, she does.
May the next 18 years be what you want them to be.
But I got invited out.
So I have put on a dress.
Yes, I have.
And now I am going to put my make up on prop'ly.
And go out.
HURRAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy 18th Birthday Kitty.
You look so grown up in your new purple killer-sex-kitten boots.
The Queenie Knows about Boots.
Oh yes, she does.
May the next 18 years be what you want them to be.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Everything changes and everything stays the same
This from Miriam Lord's Irish Times' daily political sketch today:
Once there (in Irish Parliament building), they (Fine Gael front bench) will have come across a press release from Sinn Féin's Arthur Morgan, who is his party's spokesman on their latest relationship with the banks.
Sinn Féin has always enjoyed a unique relationship with banks.
"Morgan to set out minimum terms and conditions acceptable to Sinn Féin for deal with Irish banks," said the press release.
The financial institutions must have been agog. In their hour of need, were they going to get some of their money back?
hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
That's cheered me up no end.
That and the fact that Manolo Blahnik has opened a shop in Dublin.
And the fact that we in North America are soon to be joined by Mr. Charlie Bird for a spell.
What's that, Charlie?? I can't hear you!!
La plus ca change, la plus ca c'est la meme chose..... as they say in Paris Fashion Week.
Once there (in Irish Parliament building), they (Fine Gael front bench) will have come across a press release from Sinn Féin's Arthur Morgan, who is his party's spokesman on their latest relationship with the banks.
Sinn Féin has always enjoyed a unique relationship with banks.
"Morgan to set out minimum terms and conditions acceptable to Sinn Féin for deal with Irish banks," said the press release.
The financial institutions must have been agog. In their hour of need, were they going to get some of their money back?
hahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahaahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.
That's cheered me up no end.
That and the fact that Manolo Blahnik has opened a shop in Dublin.
And the fact that we in North America are soon to be joined by Mr. Charlie Bird for a spell.
What's that, Charlie?? I can't hear you!!
La plus ca change, la plus ca c'est la meme chose..... as they say in Paris Fashion Week.
Sunday, October 05, 2008
Mellowed in Melwood
So we're home at last. The Great Ontario Moosehunt is over, with nary a moose to be seen, except for the ones on the front of the Moosehead beer bottles.
And we didn't even see very many of them.
Not a bear.
Not a moose.
Not a beaver.
Lots of deer though, and squirrels.
And trees of course.
We went horse riding. Or horseback riding as it's called in Canada.
To distinguish it from horse front riding???
WTF?
We found a horse farm that had a nice lady and her husband who got rid of the kids, sold the suburban detached, bought three hundred acres of the Canadian Shield and 22 horses, and built their own cabin out of their own lumber which they got from their own trees which they cut down and milled themselves.
Pretty impressive.
When I say 'got rid of the kids', I mean completed rearing them, not doing away with them of course.
So we had a nice three hour ride through their land, I was on Sass (of course) and Himself was on Doll, Sass' sister. It was his first time on a horse and he did very well.
Now of course, we have to add horses to the future plans (he doesn't understand the concept of feed bills yet, but he'll learn).
Then we had to go back to the hotel, sorry, resort, because I had to go back to work and attend Ontario's Digital Economy conference.
It was okay.
I am truly shocked at how far Canada is lagging behind countries such as Ireland in the digital economy.
Of course, if you have millions of acres of land with trees, and water, and oil, and potash, and copper, and uranium, etc., you don't really need to be up to speed on the new economy.
We watched the bloodbath that is the global financial meltdown on tv a bit and also the Canadian election debates. Which were fun in a sad political junkie kinda way.
Then we had to get back in the car and drive home.
It was the second time in my life I arrived in Nova Scotia at dawn. It is the best way to do it, even if it is exhausting and I am still so tired from the hours and hours in the car.
Twenty two hours later we pulled into Melwood to see the sun out and the neighbours in the yard.
Thankfully we had brought back wine for everyone so we sat in the yard in the sunshine and then we had a big bonfire when it got colder and everyone caught up with what everyone else has been up to in the last two weeks. Some of the previous occupants arrived too to liven things up, and we called Shelley in Manitoba, so nearly everyone was present in some way.
So, laundry, shopping and clean up today, and back to work tomorrow.
Sigh.
And we didn't even see very many of them.
Not a bear.
Not a moose.
Not a beaver.
Lots of deer though, and squirrels.
And trees of course.
We went horse riding. Or horseback riding as it's called in Canada.
To distinguish it from horse front riding???
WTF?
We found a horse farm that had a nice lady and her husband who got rid of the kids, sold the suburban detached, bought three hundred acres of the Canadian Shield and 22 horses, and built their own cabin out of their own lumber which they got from their own trees which they cut down and milled themselves.
Pretty impressive.
When I say 'got rid of the kids', I mean completed rearing them, not doing away with them of course.
So we had a nice three hour ride through their land, I was on Sass (of course) and Himself was on Doll, Sass' sister. It was his first time on a horse and he did very well.
Now of course, we have to add horses to the future plans (he doesn't understand the concept of feed bills yet, but he'll learn).
Then we had to go back to the hotel, sorry, resort, because I had to go back to work and attend Ontario's Digital Economy conference.
It was okay.
I am truly shocked at how far Canada is lagging behind countries such as Ireland in the digital economy.
Of course, if you have millions of acres of land with trees, and water, and oil, and potash, and copper, and uranium, etc., you don't really need to be up to speed on the new economy.
We watched the bloodbath that is the global financial meltdown on tv a bit and also the Canadian election debates. Which were fun in a sad political junkie kinda way.
Then we had to get back in the car and drive home.
It was the second time in my life I arrived in Nova Scotia at dawn. It is the best way to do it, even if it is exhausting and I am still so tired from the hours and hours in the car.
Twenty two hours later we pulled into Melwood to see the sun out and the neighbours in the yard.
Thankfully we had brought back wine for everyone so we sat in the yard in the sunshine and then we had a big bonfire when it got colder and everyone caught up with what everyone else has been up to in the last two weeks. Some of the previous occupants arrived too to liven things up, and we called Shelley in Manitoba, so nearly everyone was present in some way.
So, laundry, shopping and clean up today, and back to work tomorrow.
Sigh.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
The Great Ontario Moosehunt
So Himself and I have traversed Atlantic Canada and Quebec and are now in Ontario.
We're only in the south-eastern part of Ontario, but I still feel like I'm a long way away from home.
#1. Canada is very big. Very very very big. Particularly if you come from a little island on the west coast of Europe.
#2. There are a lot of trees in Canada. And most of them are varying shades of gold, red and orange right now, which makes for a very pretty drive. New Brunswick is just a big Irving tree farm, with the occasional strip of farmland along the St. John river. Himself's ancestor, Daniel, was one of the Loyalist soldiers that helped settle Loyalist refugees along that river in the mid-seventeen hundreds, so we spent most of the hours driving through New Brunswick imagining what it must have been like to fetch up there with a few hand tools and some supplies for the winter.
Not good.
Personally, if I had to live in interior New Brunswick, I would not be a happy camper. The coastal areas are much more interesting.
Having said that, we are on our Great Ontario Moosehunt (I have never seen a moose) and we saw one in New Brunswick.
A lady moose.
But not up close.
#3. For a country with as many trees and swamps and Danger, Moose Ahead signs as I've seen in the last few months, there aren't the dozens of moose lining the roads to ram the Beast as I expected.
The Danger, Moose Ahead signs are particularly funny.
In New Brunswick, the moose on the signs are just standing there, looking at the oncoming cars (note these are yellow road signs with black outlines of moose).
In Quebec, the moose has charged a car side on and squashed the car. Which is unusual because moose generally just loom out of the darkness and stand there while you hit them with your car. (they then fall off their spindly legs and fall through your window). This is a very aggressive and angry moose - perhaps he has lost his cultural funding and is looking for the Tory tour bus to ram?
Speaking of elections, the Liberals have just accused Stephen Harper of copying his homework from John Howard. Highly amusing pre-election mud-slinging stuff. I pity both the poor Liberal staffer who obviously has no life, other than searching the Net for right wing idealogue fuckups, and who stumbled onto the 2003 plagiarism, and the poor Tory staffer who obviously has no job now, who actually lifted the speech and put it into Harper's set-piece on Iraq.
The Great Game continues in the hearts and minds of the Canadian people.
The Great Ontario Moosehunt continues, unabated, in Ontario.
We made it through Montreal and drove to Ottawa in about two hours through flat farmland. Not so many trees. Many many cows and lots of slurry spreaders. As we headed west on the 60, the land became a little more rocky and the trees reappeared.
# 4. The 60 is a very nice highway. I recommend it as a way through Ontario, if you have time to meander along it.
We fetched up in Arnprior, near Ottawa on Sunday night, as our former neighbours seem to have disappeared.
Generally, there's a lot of Jesus worshipping going on in this part of Ontario. I'm not sure if this is the part of Ontario that Alice Munro wrote about, I have a feeling I'm pretty close to it.
Arnprior boasted thirteen churches, one of which has a big lit up-at-night cross on a hill.
We stayed in the Comfort Inn, which was the only hotel, and ate in the Elgin Restaurant, which handily enough was in the hotel.
The special was ribs.
They were so big that we didn't speak for twenty minutes while we ate them.
(I swear I am getting more like a Canadian/ like my paternal relations in my growing inability to eat and talk at the same time. Talking only slows down the eating, doesn't it, and the enjoyment of the food).
Then we staggered back upstairs and lay on the bed which was really not big enough for two people who are used to a king-sized and not used to eating that many ribs in one go.
Then it was 7am and time to get on the road again.
Thankfully, Monday was only a four hour hop through the Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Park to Huntsville where our hotel, sorry resort, is.
Algonquin Park is Canada's oldest provincial park and has been around for about 110 years. It was originally set aside so that logging barons such as JR Booth could log in peace without worrying about prospectors, settlers and the like either moving in, or just plain old setting fire to the trees they had bought at auction.
JR Booth, who was one of the richest men in North America at the time, owned the rights to most of the park. He built a railway through it which is totally overgrown now. In fact, we walked on a trail along the old railway and it was incomprehensible to us that it used to be a railway line.
Then we found an old sleeper under the moss.
Algonquin was lovely and the weather was great, so the railway track trail was a wonderful trek through maple stands and around lakes and more importantly hills (so the seniors couldn't get around it).
No, I'm not being ageist, it's just that having had to walk at funeral pace on a previous trek that promised black spruce bog and moose and gave us bog and moose tracks only, due to the plethora of seniors trundling along the track, we really needed to just stretch out leg muscles that had been in a car for four days.
However, in the Canadian version of the game Himself and I play when driving around Nova Scotia: Spot the Young Person, it would appear that NB, QUE and Ontario are as chock-a-block with seniors and as devoid of young people - apart from in crappy service jobs - as Nova Scotia seems to be.
Maybe rural depopulation is not a NS thing, maybe it's a Canada thing.
There are some lovely little towns in this part of Ontario though; it would be a real shame if they were to die off and people kept drifting towards the GTA.
Anyways, after about 10kms of walking, we still hadn't seen any moose or bear, so we headed back to the car and drove the rest of the way to Deerhurst Resort, near Huntsville.
Typical resort hotel. Overpriced, lots of airs and graces, vast quantities of add-on costs, and when you really get down to it, cheap towels.
I hate cheap towels.
Having said that, we have a lovely room overlooking the lake and the autumn colours are as vivid and bright as you can get here.
Today it has been raining, so we went into Huntsville for food and found the liquor store, which was much better than any Nova Scotia liquor store I have seen yet. It had a massive wine section, with rows of tetra pack wine (for camping) and a great South American section.
It also has a great International Bottled Beer selection - with beer from England, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Jamaica, US and many many other countries, some of which I've never seen before.
So we added to Himself's beer bottle collection.
I think it's stopped raining, so maybe we should drag ourselves back out to the car and head off on our moose hunt again this afternoon.
We're only in the south-eastern part of Ontario, but I still feel like I'm a long way away from home.
#1. Canada is very big. Very very very big. Particularly if you come from a little island on the west coast of Europe.
#2. There are a lot of trees in Canada. And most of them are varying shades of gold, red and orange right now, which makes for a very pretty drive. New Brunswick is just a big Irving tree farm, with the occasional strip of farmland along the St. John river. Himself's ancestor, Daniel, was one of the Loyalist soldiers that helped settle Loyalist refugees along that river in the mid-seventeen hundreds, so we spent most of the hours driving through New Brunswick imagining what it must have been like to fetch up there with a few hand tools and some supplies for the winter.
Not good.
Personally, if I had to live in interior New Brunswick, I would not be a happy camper. The coastal areas are much more interesting.
Having said that, we are on our Great Ontario Moosehunt (I have never seen a moose) and we saw one in New Brunswick.
A lady moose.
But not up close.
#3. For a country with as many trees and swamps and Danger, Moose Ahead signs as I've seen in the last few months, there aren't the dozens of moose lining the roads to ram the Beast as I expected.
The Danger, Moose Ahead signs are particularly funny.
In New Brunswick, the moose on the signs are just standing there, looking at the oncoming cars (note these are yellow road signs with black outlines of moose).
In Quebec, the moose has charged a car side on and squashed the car. Which is unusual because moose generally just loom out of the darkness and stand there while you hit them with your car. (they then fall off their spindly legs and fall through your window). This is a very aggressive and angry moose - perhaps he has lost his cultural funding and is looking for the Tory tour bus to ram?
Speaking of elections, the Liberals have just accused Stephen Harper of copying his homework from John Howard. Highly amusing pre-election mud-slinging stuff. I pity both the poor Liberal staffer who obviously has no life, other than searching the Net for right wing idealogue fuckups, and who stumbled onto the 2003 plagiarism, and the poor Tory staffer who obviously has no job now, who actually lifted the speech and put it into Harper's set-piece on Iraq.
The Great Game continues in the hearts and minds of the Canadian people.
The Great Ontario Moosehunt continues, unabated, in Ontario.
We made it through Montreal and drove to Ottawa in about two hours through flat farmland. Not so many trees. Many many cows and lots of slurry spreaders. As we headed west on the 60, the land became a little more rocky and the trees reappeared.
# 4. The 60 is a very nice highway. I recommend it as a way through Ontario, if you have time to meander along it.
We fetched up in Arnprior, near Ottawa on Sunday night, as our former neighbours seem to have disappeared.
Generally, there's a lot of Jesus worshipping going on in this part of Ontario. I'm not sure if this is the part of Ontario that Alice Munro wrote about, I have a feeling I'm pretty close to it.
Arnprior boasted thirteen churches, one of which has a big lit up-at-night cross on a hill.
We stayed in the Comfort Inn, which was the only hotel, and ate in the Elgin Restaurant, which handily enough was in the hotel.
The special was ribs.
They were so big that we didn't speak for twenty minutes while we ate them.
(I swear I am getting more like a Canadian/ like my paternal relations in my growing inability to eat and talk at the same time. Talking only slows down the eating, doesn't it, and the enjoyment of the food).
Then we staggered back upstairs and lay on the bed which was really not big enough for two people who are used to a king-sized and not used to eating that many ribs in one go.
Then it was 7am and time to get on the road again.
Thankfully, Monday was only a four hour hop through the Ottawa Valley and Algonquin Park to Huntsville where our hotel, sorry resort, is.
Algonquin Park is Canada's oldest provincial park and has been around for about 110 years. It was originally set aside so that logging barons such as JR Booth could log in peace without worrying about prospectors, settlers and the like either moving in, or just plain old setting fire to the trees they had bought at auction.
JR Booth, who was one of the richest men in North America at the time, owned the rights to most of the park. He built a railway through it which is totally overgrown now. In fact, we walked on a trail along the old railway and it was incomprehensible to us that it used to be a railway line.
Then we found an old sleeper under the moss.
Algonquin was lovely and the weather was great, so the railway track trail was a wonderful trek through maple stands and around lakes and more importantly hills (so the seniors couldn't get around it).
No, I'm not being ageist, it's just that having had to walk at funeral pace on a previous trek that promised black spruce bog and moose and gave us bog and moose tracks only, due to the plethora of seniors trundling along the track, we really needed to just stretch out leg muscles that had been in a car for four days.
However, in the Canadian version of the game Himself and I play when driving around Nova Scotia: Spot the Young Person, it would appear that NB, QUE and Ontario are as chock-a-block with seniors and as devoid of young people - apart from in crappy service jobs - as Nova Scotia seems to be.
Maybe rural depopulation is not a NS thing, maybe it's a Canada thing.
There are some lovely little towns in this part of Ontario though; it would be a real shame if they were to die off and people kept drifting towards the GTA.
Anyways, after about 10kms of walking, we still hadn't seen any moose or bear, so we headed back to the car and drove the rest of the way to Deerhurst Resort, near Huntsville.
Typical resort hotel. Overpriced, lots of airs and graces, vast quantities of add-on costs, and when you really get down to it, cheap towels.
I hate cheap towels.
Having said that, we have a lovely room overlooking the lake and the autumn colours are as vivid and bright as you can get here.
Today it has been raining, so we went into Huntsville for food and found the liquor store, which was much better than any Nova Scotia liquor store I have seen yet. It had a massive wine section, with rows of tetra pack wine (for camping) and a great South American section.
It also has a great International Bottled Beer selection - with beer from England, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, Jamaica, US and many many other countries, some of which I've never seen before.
So we added to Himself's beer bottle collection.
I think it's stopped raining, so maybe we should drag ourselves back out to the car and head off on our moose hunt again this afternoon.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
New Brunswick and Quebec
We left Halifax about three pm on Friday and drove to Woodstock. Woodstock, New Brunswick.
Not the cool one.
We drove around a bit and found a Best Western and checked in and then we went to the PUB, the name of which I can't remember.... Himself thinks it may have been the Hometown Pub or something... just let's call it the Good Ole Boys pub... we were the only people in the pub not wearing a baseball cap.
But we had a nice steak each. And they had wine. Hurrah. And beer. The beer was on a special two for one, but the wine was not, no matter how hard I tried with the server who had a very sophisticated two way radio device in his ear, despite the fact that the pub was about the size of a normal pub with about twenty customers in it.
It had four enormous tv screens with the pre-season hockey on it.
I broke the news to Himself that I had decided to be a Canadien fan for the foreseeable.
Himself is a Maple Leaf fan.
He tried to explain that being a Habs fan was not allowed for people who intend to marry him, but I decided that that was stupid.
Like I said in a previous post, we are working our way through the major issues before we wed.
After the enormous steak, our tummies were too stretched to do more than have another couple of two for one beers and then trundle back to the BestWestern for telly and bed.
Up early next morning and onto Quebec city.
We liked Quebec City.
It's like a legoland Prague.
Or Paris, I suppose.
After seven pm, it pretty much shut down of course, being Canadian, but it was our single vacation night where we could let rip so we found a pub and then a restaurant, and then nicely full of (steak again) and beer and wine, we staggered down the Rue St Jean and found Les Yeux Bleues, which was recommended in the Lonely Planet.
It was a small, seedy bar a la Baggot Inn in the eighties, with a few live acts that consisted of French singer/ songwriters that sang two English songs to prove they understood the concept of rock music and then reverted to Quebec pop.
I'm sorry.
The French are great at movies.
They are great at art.
They are great at sculpture.
They are great at all forms of culture.
But put a guitar in their hands and all they can come up with is the effin' theme tune to the Teletubbies.
Everyone sang along raucously.
We met a pair of Boston gals who had driven out of the States for the first time in their lives that day.
We drank a pitcher of beer and staggered home through the drizzle to our dreadful little French hotel room that cost a fortune.
C'est Quebec.
Today, we drove to Montreal, then Ottawa, and now we are just three hours from our destination.
I'm too full of ribs and chocolate to say anything meaningful, so I'll just go to bed now.
1,454 kms and counting
So, we're in our room in our motel in Arnprior, Ontario.
We are lying on the bed groaning in agony because we just ate the best ribs ever followed by the best chocolate cake dessert ever in a little diner in a little town in Nowhere, ONT.
Well, Queenie has managed to drag herself off the bed to put photos up on Facebook and write in the blog.
Himself is still lying on the bed groaning and watching Hurricane Kyle destroy what's left of his house on the island.
Here's a photo from Quebec City, from the Salon de Chasse.
That's the closest to a bear I ever want to get.
WE SAW A MOOSE YESTERDAY.
It was a bit sad, really, we drove the entire length of the interior of New Brunswick, and saw one moose. Well, whizzed past it as I screamed MOOSE, MOOSE, MOOSE.
Hopefully we will see some more tomorrow.
In Algonquin Park.
Which I have wanted to go to since I was about 10 and I saw a documentary on it on the television.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Road Trip time of year
In a big 'screw you' to the forces of recession and oil panic, Queenie and Himself are going on a 4,000 km road trip today.
From Halifax to Quebec, then to Ottawa, hopefully, and down Route 60 through Algonquin Park to Huntsville, Ontario. Queenie has to go to a conference on the digital economy and Himself is going to lay around the posh hotel and go riding on the horses and canoeing in the lake and all sorts of exciting stuff.
He is very excited about being Queenie's 'conference spouse attendee'.
Then we're going to drive home.
The leaves will be turning and there's two ridges of high pressure meeting for a chat right about where we're headed so hopefully we'll have some nice views and some good photos when we're back.
I'm assuming the digital economy conference will be in a wifi hotspot, so maybe there'll even be a blog or two.
Road trip across (approximately one third of) Canada.
Happy happy squirming ensues.
As I said to the Queen Mother last night, we may not even turn the Beast around when the time comes - we may end up in BC - and go shrimp fishing with Justin for the winter.
Farmer Brown, you have been warned. If you see a dirty red car lurking around your street, it'll be us!!
Anyways, stay happy till we're back.
From Halifax to Quebec, then to Ottawa, hopefully, and down Route 60 through Algonquin Park to Huntsville, Ontario. Queenie has to go to a conference on the digital economy and Himself is going to lay around the posh hotel and go riding on the horses and canoeing in the lake and all sorts of exciting stuff.
He is very excited about being Queenie's 'conference spouse attendee'.
Then we're going to drive home.
The leaves will be turning and there's two ridges of high pressure meeting for a chat right about where we're headed so hopefully we'll have some nice views and some good photos when we're back.
I'm assuming the digital economy conference will be in a wifi hotspot, so maybe there'll even be a blog or two.
Road trip across (approximately one third of) Canada.
Happy happy squirming ensues.
As I said to the Queen Mother last night, we may not even turn the Beast around when the time comes - we may end up in BC - and go shrimp fishing with Justin for the winter.
Farmer Brown, you have been warned. If you see a dirty red car lurking around your street, it'll be us!!
Anyways, stay happy till we're back.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
This has to be my favourite jargon phrase ever.
What the hell does it mean?
I mean, I know what it means. It means something bad yet salvageable has happened, but the likkelihood of an escalation is immense, so everyone is just hanging around not making any decisions about anything...
... because they are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Before I research this, I am going to bet that it has something to do with hanging.
Time passes, while Queenie does the Google thing...
NOPE!! Queenie is wrong. People who are hanged don't have to endure their shoes falling off one by one, which is the visual image she had in her head for this phrase. It apparently has its roots in a vaudeville sketch. From Worldwide Words:
Its source would seem to be the following story. A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”. This may come from music hall or vaudeville, though it would seem that nobody has been able to tie it down more precisely.
Anyways, that's what we're doing in our house, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fact that we live under the top flat means that that happens at least twice a day, but that's not the shoe I'm talking about.
You learn something every time you log on here, don't you.
What the hell does it mean?
I mean, I know what it means. It means something bad yet salvageable has happened, but the likkelihood of an escalation is immense, so everyone is just hanging around not making any decisions about anything...
... because they are waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Before I research this, I am going to bet that it has something to do with hanging.
Time passes, while Queenie does the Google thing...
NOPE!! Queenie is wrong. People who are hanged don't have to endure their shoes falling off one by one, which is the visual image she had in her head for this phrase. It apparently has its roots in a vaudeville sketch. From Worldwide Words:
Its source would seem to be the following story. A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”. This may come from music hall or vaudeville, though it would seem that nobody has been able to tie it down more precisely.
Anyways, that's what we're doing in our house, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The fact that we live under the top flat means that that happens at least twice a day, but that's not the shoe I'm talking about.
You learn something every time you log on here, don't you.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hump Day, in more ways than one
Today is Wednesday, which means it's hump day of course.
Here's the urban dictionary definition of hump day:
Wednesday, or the hump of the week.
The absolute BEST day of the week, the day of maximum hope that maybe, you might make it out of this week alive. A particularly good hump day can last you the rest of the week, and by Doomday morning (Monday) you survive by anticipating hump day.
Nothing goes wrong on hump day.
Most other days can be defined by hump day.
Tuesday is the day before hump day. Thursday is one day after hump day. Except Friday is WOOOH!!! FREEDOM!!! Day, Saturday is Mostly Hungover day, and Sunday is PreDoom day.
'Xactly.
Today is also 16th September, which means it's hump day of the month too.
And today is the day the moon starts to decline again, which is another hump day.
I like the first one - Wednesday.
The other two, not so much.
I hate months going by. They make me feel old. Not that I feel old, particularly, I have hated months going by since I was a small little princess, not even a Queenie.
It's just one of my little pet hates. Like Sundays at teatime, and Good Friday, and the day after Hallowe'en.
And I'm always sad when the moon starts to die. It must be the primitive in me, afraid that it won't come back.
This month's moon was a wonderful, super-sized, pumpkin-shaped reddish-brown globe in the sky, which was clear for the three days or so it was full.
The harvest moon.
Unfortunately, it was mid-week so we were stuck in the city and didn't get a chance to enjoy it properly.
The one disadvantage of the Melwood garden is that the house blocks the moon. So you have to sit on the front doorstep to look at it.
This week, Dexter Construction is digging up our road, so it' s not very pleasant sitting out there, surrounded by mounds of gravel, and silent machinery, and dirty cars with the taste of dust in our mouths.
So we just waved at the moon as we went in and out of the house.
Hopefully next month's will be just as good.
It usually is.
And then she gets all skinny for the winter.
Here's the urban dictionary definition of hump day:
Wednesday, or the hump of the week.
The absolute BEST day of the week, the day of maximum hope that maybe, you might make it out of this week alive. A particularly good hump day can last you the rest of the week, and by Doomday morning (Monday) you survive by anticipating hump day.
Nothing goes wrong on hump day.
Most other days can be defined by hump day.
Tuesday is the day before hump day. Thursday is one day after hump day. Except Friday is WOOOH!!! FREEDOM!!! Day, Saturday is Mostly Hungover day, and Sunday is PreDoom day.
'Xactly.
Today is also 16th September, which means it's hump day of the month too.
And today is the day the moon starts to decline again, which is another hump day.
I like the first one - Wednesday.
The other two, not so much.
I hate months going by. They make me feel old. Not that I feel old, particularly, I have hated months going by since I was a small little princess, not even a Queenie.
It's just one of my little pet hates. Like Sundays at teatime, and Good Friday, and the day after Hallowe'en.
And I'm always sad when the moon starts to die. It must be the primitive in me, afraid that it won't come back.
This month's moon was a wonderful, super-sized, pumpkin-shaped reddish-brown globe in the sky, which was clear for the three days or so it was full.
The harvest moon.
Unfortunately, it was mid-week so we were stuck in the city and didn't get a chance to enjoy it properly.
The one disadvantage of the Melwood garden is that the house blocks the moon. So you have to sit on the front doorstep to look at it.
This week, Dexter Construction is digging up our road, so it' s not very pleasant sitting out there, surrounded by mounds of gravel, and silent machinery, and dirty cars with the taste of dust in our mouths.
So we just waved at the moon as we went in and out of the house.
Hopefully next month's will be just as good.
It usually is.
And then she gets all skinny for the winter.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Bloc Party had a very nice time in Halifax apparently
... and so did we.At their concert.
Which was held in the Marquee Club, which was good, because it meant old arse Queenie and her old arse Himself could sit down and still see everything.
Himself pointed out that yet again, we were the oldest giggers in town. And the band look like they're twelve.
But he agreed they rocked.
And Queenie was most impressed at how tight the set was, and how like their albums they sounded. Which must have been tricky considering all the layering that goes on them.
Another one struck off the list.
Now, if only Radiohead would come here instead of Boston the next time.
Or even after Boston.
After a dry spell over the last couple of years, SonicBoom, whoever they are, and Live Nation are really stepping up to the mark with a series of great gigs in the city recently.
Last night, BP, Kathleen Edwards and Chris Isaak all played the city at the same time.
Hopefully Kathleen will come back soon so we can catch her too.
About time we had some good tunes.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
The Curse of the Cubbyhole
Yes, well, that was a bit of a spell away from the Court, wasn't it. I didn't spend it all eating bacon, I assure you.
What happened was I ate my bacon and eggs and then went to put a load of laundry on. And when I got back, my spot at the computer had been taken by Himself, who was looking at jobs in British Columbia.
"Wages have gone up in BC", he announced.
"You are not going anywhere without me", I reminded him.
"Well, it would be a bit of a hoof home to see Little 'Un anyways."
"Yes, it would."
So I guess we're not going to BC this weekend.
Thank goodness for that.
We're going to Ontario in a couple of weeks and that looks far enough right now.
My world is getting a tad small right now. What with the price of gas and all the airlines in the world going bust. But I'm sure it will change at some point. Although I keep telling myself that inhabiting a small world is not a bad thing. Inhabiting the world you want is the thing, isn't it?
Anyhows, back to In Bruges.
As Farmer Brown said on Facebook, In Bruges is a fuckin' fuckin' fuckin' brilliant film.
It is.
We settled into the couch and put it on and it opened with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson arriving in Bruges and muttering at each other, the way Irish people do, about whether or not it was nice.
Colin Farrell thought it was crap.
Brendan Gleeson thought it was nice.
They sniped at each other throughout most of the movie, but in that loving way that Irish people do.
I could feel a lump that filled everything from my belly to my heart.
People just don't do that here.
People try to outdo each other with enthusiasm here.
People spend a lot of time and energy being polite and apologetic to each other here about the STOOPIDEST things, and then wonder why they die of stress-related cancers.
I'm going to definitely get a stress-related something or other if I have to do it much longer.
I swear to God, I can't do it anymore.
But at least, after watching In Bruges, I have been reminded that it's okay that I can't do it anymore. I am not crazy. I am not a bad person. I am not stupid. I am not wrong.
I am just a grumpy fuckin' Irish woman, with a penchant for sarcasm when I am in a situation I don't like.
Which is most of the time here.
Unfortunately, that's not going to bode very well for my future integration and the successful duplication at some point in the next few years of my wide Irish social circle.
Life is a tad dull here most of the time. Unless Himself and I have a party. Or Ms Maggie Beach. Everyone turns up to them. But either they don't have parties or they just don't invite us to them.
It's very strange here. I am surrounded by people who never invite us anywhere because we don't know the people who will be there (I know all my Irish readers will totally see the logic in this) and who actually say things like 'why would I want anymore friends? I have my elementary school friends' without a hint of sarcasm.
As I said to a colleague the other day, why would you do that?
I mean, c'mon on, the potential to reinvent yourself is severely limited if your social circle all knew you when you were seven.
I mean, that's why siblings often don't get on, isn't it?
Because one or other of them can't get past that time of life.
I have two good friends who have known me since I was four or younger.
I have another three or four who have known me since I was thirteen.
Everyone else I am proud to call a friend is from the time when I was actually capable of working on my personality to improve it.
Or beyond.
It's not that we don't have friends here in Halifax.
We do.
Good friends.
And thank christ for the island and all the wonderful folks who live there and stick with us through thick and thin.
It's just that we have one friend in this city who is actually from this city.
And he was introduced to us by a neighbour who is a 'come from away'.
And he spent ten years in Alberta.
And he's never invited us to his house.
Ever.
....anyways, enough of that.... enough of feeling sorry for myself and Himself.
I think I am going to buy a copy of In Bruges for every member of my work team and say, I am the Brendan Gleeson character, so just deal with it, okay.
Actually, I think I'll wait until I leave and then do it. So they can remember me fondly.
Which is so important.
In blogpost title-related news, Himself and I decided tonight that the Cubbyhole, which is the small apartment upstairs, has a curse on it.
According to Kitty, the newest occupants have split up.
One of them was doing the nasty on the other, according to the shouting and throwing of things.
And now there's only one inhabitant of the Cubbyhole.
What we know for sure is that our wonderful landlord has been to-ing and fro-ing like a headless chicken all week, banging on the door and leaving notes and stuff like that, so something's up.
There must be rent money involved.
Well, our friends and former neighbours who left to buy a house up the road didn't suffer from the curse.....
.... so maybe they laid it.....
Fess up now, Rescue Guys!!
What happened was I ate my bacon and eggs and then went to put a load of laundry on. And when I got back, my spot at the computer had been taken by Himself, who was looking at jobs in British Columbia.
"Wages have gone up in BC", he announced.
"You are not going anywhere without me", I reminded him.
"Well, it would be a bit of a hoof home to see Little 'Un anyways."
"Yes, it would."
So I guess we're not going to BC this weekend.
Thank goodness for that.
We're going to Ontario in a couple of weeks and that looks far enough right now.
My world is getting a tad small right now. What with the price of gas and all the airlines in the world going bust. But I'm sure it will change at some point. Although I keep telling myself that inhabiting a small world is not a bad thing. Inhabiting the world you want is the thing, isn't it?
Anyhows, back to In Bruges.
As Farmer Brown said on Facebook, In Bruges is a fuckin' fuckin' fuckin' brilliant film.
It is.
We settled into the couch and put it on and it opened with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson arriving in Bruges and muttering at each other, the way Irish people do, about whether or not it was nice.
Colin Farrell thought it was crap.
Brendan Gleeson thought it was nice.
They sniped at each other throughout most of the movie, but in that loving way that Irish people do.
I could feel a lump that filled everything from my belly to my heart.
People just don't do that here.
People try to outdo each other with enthusiasm here.
People spend a lot of time and energy being polite and apologetic to each other here about the STOOPIDEST things, and then wonder why they die of stress-related cancers.
I'm going to definitely get a stress-related something or other if I have to do it much longer.
I swear to God, I can't do it anymore.
But at least, after watching In Bruges, I have been reminded that it's okay that I can't do it anymore. I am not crazy. I am not a bad person. I am not stupid. I am not wrong.
I am just a grumpy fuckin' Irish woman, with a penchant for sarcasm when I am in a situation I don't like.
Which is most of the time here.
Unfortunately, that's not going to bode very well for my future integration and the successful duplication at some point in the next few years of my wide Irish social circle.
Life is a tad dull here most of the time. Unless Himself and I have a party. Or Ms Maggie Beach. Everyone turns up to them. But either they don't have parties or they just don't invite us to them.
It's very strange here. I am surrounded by people who never invite us anywhere because we don't know the people who will be there (I know all my Irish readers will totally see the logic in this) and who actually say things like 'why would I want anymore friends? I have my elementary school friends' without a hint of sarcasm.
As I said to a colleague the other day, why would you do that?
I mean, c'mon on, the potential to reinvent yourself is severely limited if your social circle all knew you when you were seven.
I mean, that's why siblings often don't get on, isn't it?
Because one or other of them can't get past that time of life.
I have two good friends who have known me since I was four or younger.
I have another three or four who have known me since I was thirteen.
Everyone else I am proud to call a friend is from the time when I was actually capable of working on my personality to improve it.
Or beyond.
It's not that we don't have friends here in Halifax.
We do.
Good friends.
And thank christ for the island and all the wonderful folks who live there and stick with us through thick and thin.
It's just that we have one friend in this city who is actually from this city.
And he was introduced to us by a neighbour who is a 'come from away'.
And he spent ten years in Alberta.
And he's never invited us to his house.
Ever.
....anyways, enough of that.... enough of feeling sorry for myself and Himself.
I think I am going to buy a copy of In Bruges for every member of my work team and say, I am the Brendan Gleeson character, so just deal with it, okay.
Actually, I think I'll wait until I leave and then do it. So they can remember me fondly.
Which is so important.
In blogpost title-related news, Himself and I decided tonight that the Cubbyhole, which is the small apartment upstairs, has a curse on it.
According to Kitty, the newest occupants have split up.
One of them was doing the nasty on the other, according to the shouting and throwing of things.
And now there's only one inhabitant of the Cubbyhole.
What we know for sure is that our wonderful landlord has been to-ing and fro-ing like a headless chicken all week, banging on the door and leaving notes and stuff like that, so something's up.
There must be rent money involved.
Well, our friends and former neighbours who left to buy a house up the road didn't suffer from the curse.....
.... so maybe they laid it.....
Fess up now, Rescue Guys!!
Watching In Bruges in Halifax
Happy, empty, stretching out in front of us morning.
Kitty is gone to work. Little Un is not around this weekend. It's too wet to drive four hours to the island to go mackerel fishing as we had planned.
We are alone at home with nothing to do except stuff we want to do.
Just a matter of remembering what that is then.
First of all, we both slept in until almost ten. Which is unheard of in our house unless you are a teenager.
Second of all, we called the island and extracted ourselves from the fishing expedition.
Then I got myself a nice pot of coffee and read the papers online and tried to make sense of the maze that is the new Facebook interface.
Currently, Himself is bi-locating between the kitchen, where the unhealthy fried breakfast is underway and the living room, where Stephen Harper is standing in the corner rambling on about how a carbon tax would destroy the Ontarian economy. Himself is shouting at his Prime Minister with all the power in his lungs, but it's not working - possibly because Harper is not actually standing in our living room, but on the television which is situated in the corner of our living room.
We were driving home from Blockbusters last night, with In Bruges, of which more anon, when we realised that all the gas stations were wall to wall with queues of cars waiting for gas (with their engines running - what is that about?).
'Shit', said Himself, 'has that hurricane taken out Texas?'
We decided we'd better get gas in case something had gone terribly wrong.
This morning, the front page of the Chronicle Herald announced that the government regulator had used its 'interrupter clause' to increase petrol prices by 13 cents a litre overnight.
I wish someone would explain to me how linking the rise and rise (I mean fall) of pump prices to speculatory activity on the NYSE is the most sensible way to regulate gas prices to reduce rate shock.
Anyhows, we have one car with a full tank of gas and we don't live in Galveston so I suppose we're doing as well as we can expect under the circumstances.
As an Irishwoman, I am used to being gouged for petrol anyways, so I have often felt guilty in the past number of years about how little I pay for it over here in Nova Scotia.
Speaking of being Irish, several times in the last few weeks, a Nova Scotian has sidled up to me at some point during my day and said, 'I watched this great film recently, with Colin Farrell in it. It's called In Bruges. It's about two Irish hitmen in Bruges. Have you seen it? No? You should watch it.'
So we did last night.
Gotta take a short break for brekkie - back in a bit.
Friday, September 12, 2008
In the land of the blind, Julianne Moore is queen.
Himself and I went to the opening night of the Atlantic Film Festival last night.
I was never ever ever going to go to an AFF film again after last year, but someone gave us free tickets to Blindness, which is an adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel of the same name, which I loved.
Then when we got to the Oxford St venue, we realised that AFF seem to have electronically geared themselves up, so perhaps there won't be the same bullshit about seats and queues and tickets that there was last time.
Of course, since it was opening night, we had to sit through more speeches than a GAA annual dinner. However, I particularly liked the Lt. Governor's speech, which was written of course by my friend Lori, who is now her communications advisor and speech writer. And the Chair of the Festival board made a fiery speech in defense of the arts (the federal government cut $60 million in arts funding the week before the election, which is a bit aggressive) in which she used her native Ireland as a shining example of how the arts can be nurtured even in times of chaos and war and recession.
Having spent quite a lot of the Queen Parents money studying Arts Administration and then never actually having a job in the field, that assertion of Ireland's specialness re the arts gave Queenie an opportunity for a long, quiet chuckle.
Maybe she was from the North......
Or maybe she was talking about the tax break for artist income....
Or maybe she just believed everything she read in the New York Times culture section...
I don't know.
Anyway, eventually the speeches ended and Blindness began and it was really great and all the bad reviews on IMDB were wrong.
WRONG, I say.
The producers were there and were obviously very nervous as the film bombed at the TFF.
I think it was re-edited, because they kept going on about how it was a world premiere.
Anyways, whatever they did to it, it worked.
- weird plague sweeps city/ world and everyone goes blind. Early victims are locked into a hospital/ prison type place and have to fend for themselves. Julianne Moore plays the only person who can see - the wife of an opthalmologist who has been incarcerated - she pretends she's blind to accompany him.
The result is a very powerful meditation on how a sudden crisis or change in the conditions under which humanity lives can bring out man's inherent cruelty and desire to dominate a little too quickly for most people's liking.
As Himself said on the way home, a cautionary tale.
Himself is hilarious when we watch apocalyptic movies/ read books like The Road. I get all freaked out and hope it never happens to us/ hope Himself figures out how to survive and tells me what to do. Himself always leans over at some point in the movie and whispers 'they really should get some guns right about now, eh!"
I do hope he knows where to get the afore-mentioned weapons when the end times come.
If that's the plan.
I must say, a lot of the complaints about the movie to date are stoopid, Yankee, 'moral' issues.
Yes, there's lots of random nudity.
Everyone thinks everyone else is blind. So why would one wear clothes if they're lice-infested and filthy?
There's a lot of cruelty, domination and some violence in the movie, but it's brilliantly done, nuanced rather than the bambambambambam of the latest Rambo.
The production design is fantastic. The cinematography is very intimate for most of the film, but it handles 'big city chaos' shots very well.
Julianne Moore acts her little socks off. She should get an Oscar for this role. Mark Ruffalo is pretty good as her husband too.
Fernando Mereilles makes a very good attempt at tackling Saramago's bigger themes of totalitarianism and control, particularly at the beginning of the movie, but it kind of falls off towards the end, whereas my vague memories of the book is that that claustrophobic feeling stays throughout the whole novel.
But that's Saramago for you. I read somewhere that he likes the film.
So did we.
Highly recommended.
Hilariously, after the speechifying about cultural policy, Queenie had her recurring dream again last night, after a long interval. The one where I make the speech on cultural politics to an audience of artists and they all boo.
Some day I will forgive myself for allowing myself to be scared by that day.
I was making a lot of sense.
I was never ever ever going to go to an AFF film again after last year, but someone gave us free tickets to Blindness, which is an adaptation of Jose Saramago's novel of the same name, which I loved.
Then when we got to the Oxford St venue, we realised that AFF seem to have electronically geared themselves up, so perhaps there won't be the same bullshit about seats and queues and tickets that there was last time.
Of course, since it was opening night, we had to sit through more speeches than a GAA annual dinner. However, I particularly liked the Lt. Governor's speech, which was written of course by my friend Lori, who is now her communications advisor and speech writer. And the Chair of the Festival board made a fiery speech in defense of the arts (the federal government cut $60 million in arts funding the week before the election, which is a bit aggressive) in which she used her native Ireland as a shining example of how the arts can be nurtured even in times of chaos and war and recession.
Having spent quite a lot of the Queen Parents money studying Arts Administration and then never actually having a job in the field, that assertion of Ireland's specialness re the arts gave Queenie an opportunity for a long, quiet chuckle.
Maybe she was from the North......
Or maybe she was talking about the tax break for artist income....
Or maybe she just believed everything she read in the New York Times culture section...
I don't know.
Anyway, eventually the speeches ended and Blindness began and it was really great and all the bad reviews on IMDB were wrong.
WRONG, I say.
The producers were there and were obviously very nervous as the film bombed at the TFF.
I think it was re-edited, because they kept going on about how it was a world premiere.
Anyways, whatever they did to it, it worked.
- weird plague sweeps city/ world and everyone goes blind. Early victims are locked into a hospital/ prison type place and have to fend for themselves. Julianne Moore plays the only person who can see - the wife of an opthalmologist who has been incarcerated - she pretends she's blind to accompany him.
The result is a very powerful meditation on how a sudden crisis or change in the conditions under which humanity lives can bring out man's inherent cruelty and desire to dominate a little too quickly for most people's liking.
As Himself said on the way home, a cautionary tale.
Himself is hilarious when we watch apocalyptic movies/ read books like The Road. I get all freaked out and hope it never happens to us/ hope Himself figures out how to survive and tells me what to do. Himself always leans over at some point in the movie and whispers 'they really should get some guns right about now, eh!"
I do hope he knows where to get the afore-mentioned weapons when the end times come.
If that's the plan.
I must say, a lot of the complaints about the movie to date are stoopid, Yankee, 'moral' issues.
Yes, there's lots of random nudity.
Everyone thinks everyone else is blind. So why would one wear clothes if they're lice-infested and filthy?
There's a lot of cruelty, domination and some violence in the movie, but it's brilliantly done, nuanced rather than the bambambambambam of the latest Rambo.
The production design is fantastic. The cinematography is very intimate for most of the film, but it handles 'big city chaos' shots very well.
Julianne Moore acts her little socks off. She should get an Oscar for this role. Mark Ruffalo is pretty good as her husband too.
Fernando Mereilles makes a very good attempt at tackling Saramago's bigger themes of totalitarianism and control, particularly at the beginning of the movie, but it kind of falls off towards the end, whereas my vague memories of the book is that that claustrophobic feeling stays throughout the whole novel.
But that's Saramago for you. I read somewhere that he likes the film.
So did we.
Highly recommended.
Hilariously, after the speechifying about cultural policy, Queenie had her recurring dream again last night, after a long interval. The one where I make the speech on cultural politics to an audience of artists and they all boo.
Some day I will forgive myself for allowing myself to be scared by that day.
I was making a lot of sense.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Of bread, beets, potatoes and other organic delights
We've hit a new plateau in the attempt to grow/ make/ control what we eat, so Himself and I are feeling a little smug right now.
Firstly, though, we had to get our basic tools organized. After weeks and months of searching, we managed to get a nearly new breadmaker and a nearly new fridge in the same week.
It never rains but it pours nearly new appliances.
The nearly new breadmaker came from Himself's boss, who had bought it for his wife for Christmas. So it was never used. Which is almost new. I arrived home from work one day and there it was on the dining room table, complete with recipe book.
The fridge came from a neighbour up the road and was a little trickier. We had to find a dolly, wheel it up the road, strap the enormous fridge to it, wheel it back down the road (which is being dug up by Dexter Construction right now) and then haul it up two flights of stairs to our apartment.
Gnugh....!
Suffice it to say Himself was on the heavy end and I was on the balance it so it won't fall on my head end.
Himself's arms are still sore from hauling a fridge up the stairs (almost) by himself.
But ah, bliss, lovely newish clean fridge.
Secondly, we started harvesting the garden.
This year is UN Year of the Potato. As an Irishwoman, potatoes are incredibly important to me. Potatoes are what you eat with your dinner. Some days I do rice, but really, if there's no potatoes in my dinner, then I haven't really eaten.
But the potatoes you get in the supermarket are crap. Soapy, soggy, too small, wrong species. It offends me to have to buy them, like a heroin junkie forced to rob for crappy junk (well maybe not that life-destroying, but you get my drift).
So I planted my own this year.
They grew. The stalks died. I waited. Himself adopted his doom and gloom tone and said they'd never work. It rained. It was hot. Flashbacks of my famine folk memories started to assert themselves, but I forced myself. I waited some more.
Monday I dug them up.
Lovely, purple, large piles of potatoes.
WHAT I GREW BY MYSELF.
Words cannot express how smug I felt on Monday evening, arriving back from my tiny urban garden patch with a bucket of potatoes.
And that was just three plants.
Also, the beets are getting big and are really good.
The beans are being harvested (but I have to figure out what to do with them as I don't do beans normally).
The carrots are still growing, but they're looking good.
The garlic has started to grow, finally, so that will be ready for next year.
And our tomatos are finally putting out like healthy well-fed tomato plants should.
The other night, we had a tomato and mozzarella salad, with our own basil in the vinaigrette, stir-fried beef with vegetables from our garden, Lyse' garden and Ms. Maggie Beach's garden, and a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from a friend in Cape Breton.
And potatoes of course.
A big shout out to all the potato people in the world in this, their SPECIAL year.
May you finally figure out how to end the blight in your lives!!
Last night, I remembered to buy yeast and made my own bread for the first time in my life.
The Queen Mum used to make bread.
(She used to grow vegetables as well, and recycle everything. In the seventies and eighties, when you did that kind of stuff because there was a RECESSION. Not because it is a lifestyle branding choice.)
Anyhow, I started with the basic white loaf, and put the breadmaker on 'nice smell wafting into the bedroom at six am this morning).
At six am this morning I woke up and sniffed.
OHMYGOD!!
Nice smell wafting into the bedroom.
After Himself got up and put on the organic (caressed gently by a yak somewhere in the mountains before being lovingly cradled into a bag by an upwardly mobile coffee farmer co-operative member with happy, educated, clothed kids who don't know what it was like when mama and pappa were young) coffee beans, the smell coming from the kitchen was better than the best French boulangerie.
It made me remember my first ever (not for Queen Dad) job, back in 1984, when I managed the till in Griffin's Bakery, Main St, Birr.
There's nothing like sitting in bed feeling smug about your ability to produce your own food while drinking coffee and eating warm bread and jam.
Nothing.
Now, how do I go about opening my own coffee plantation??
Firstly, though, we had to get our basic tools organized. After weeks and months of searching, we managed to get a nearly new breadmaker and a nearly new fridge in the same week.
It never rains but it pours nearly new appliances.
The nearly new breadmaker came from Himself's boss, who had bought it for his wife for Christmas. So it was never used. Which is almost new. I arrived home from work one day and there it was on the dining room table, complete with recipe book.
The fridge came from a neighbour up the road and was a little trickier. We had to find a dolly, wheel it up the road, strap the enormous fridge to it, wheel it back down the road (which is being dug up by Dexter Construction right now) and then haul it up two flights of stairs to our apartment.
Gnugh....!
Suffice it to say Himself was on the heavy end and I was on the balance it so it won't fall on my head end.
Himself's arms are still sore from hauling a fridge up the stairs (almost) by himself.
But ah, bliss, lovely newish clean fridge.
Secondly, we started harvesting the garden.
This year is UN Year of the Potato. As an Irishwoman, potatoes are incredibly important to me. Potatoes are what you eat with your dinner. Some days I do rice, but really, if there's no potatoes in my dinner, then I haven't really eaten.
But the potatoes you get in the supermarket are crap. Soapy, soggy, too small, wrong species. It offends me to have to buy them, like a heroin junkie forced to rob for crappy junk (well maybe not that life-destroying, but you get my drift).
So I planted my own this year.
They grew. The stalks died. I waited. Himself adopted his doom and gloom tone and said they'd never work. It rained. It was hot. Flashbacks of my famine folk memories started to assert themselves, but I forced myself. I waited some more.
Monday I dug them up.
Lovely, purple, large piles of potatoes.
WHAT I GREW BY MYSELF.
Words cannot express how smug I felt on Monday evening, arriving back from my tiny urban garden patch with a bucket of potatoes.
And that was just three plants.
Also, the beets are getting big and are really good.
The beans are being harvested (but I have to figure out what to do with them as I don't do beans normally).
The carrots are still growing, but they're looking good.
The garlic has started to grow, finally, so that will be ready for next year.
And our tomatos are finally putting out like healthy well-fed tomato plants should.
The other night, we had a tomato and mozzarella salad, with our own basil in the vinaigrette, stir-fried beef with vegetables from our garden, Lyse' garden and Ms. Maggie Beach's garden, and a rhubarb crumble made with rhubarb from a friend in Cape Breton.
And potatoes of course.
A big shout out to all the potato people in the world in this, their SPECIAL year.
May you finally figure out how to end the blight in your lives!!
Last night, I remembered to buy yeast and made my own bread for the first time in my life.
The Queen Mum used to make bread.
(She used to grow vegetables as well, and recycle everything. In the seventies and eighties, when you did that kind of stuff because there was a RECESSION. Not because it is a lifestyle branding choice.)
Anyhow, I started with the basic white loaf, and put the breadmaker on 'nice smell wafting into the bedroom at six am this morning).
At six am this morning I woke up and sniffed.
OHMYGOD!!
Nice smell wafting into the bedroom.
After Himself got up and put on the organic (caressed gently by a yak somewhere in the mountains before being lovingly cradled into a bag by an upwardly mobile coffee farmer co-operative member with happy, educated, clothed kids who don't know what it was like when mama and pappa were young) coffee beans, the smell coming from the kitchen was better than the best French boulangerie.
It made me remember my first ever (not for Queen Dad) job, back in 1984, when I managed the till in Griffin's Bakery, Main St, Birr.
There's nothing like sitting in bed feeling smug about your ability to produce your own food while drinking coffee and eating warm bread and jam.
Nothing.
Now, how do I go about opening my own coffee plantation??
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Hannah has arrived
As usual, after doing all the stuff the EMO told us to including getting water, Hurricane Hannah turns out to be as fearsome as the prevailing westerlies that affect the score on Ballina rugby pitch on a wet Sunday in February.
Oi!
People in charge of disasters and weather and such!
Get it right, or stop telling me to count my candles.
Oi!
People in charge of disasters and weather and such!
Get it right, or stop telling me to count my candles.
Saturday, September 06, 2008
Hurricane Summer makes way for hurricane season
So, Himself and the Little 'Un have gone mackerel fishing. Kitty has been dispatched to the mall to buy some clothes for the autumn. Low is blaring out of the speakers. Hurricane Hanna has announced her imminent arrival with some rain.
Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.
That's what she said anyway.
PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They fell for it.
Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.
It takes forever but.
"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."
"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."
"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"
No.
No.
No.
Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.
Housework, schmousework.
Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.
The old Queenie.
She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.
This is the new Queenie.
All growed up.
About time, I hear some people say.
Probably.
Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!
One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.
So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?
Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.
Let me see.
Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.
Then we drove back.
We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.
------------------------------------
Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.
That was fun.
Not.
Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.
I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I nearly did.
I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.
Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.
So I had to stay.
Until Sunday.
Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.
-----------------------------------
I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.
My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.
But they're all fixed now.
It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.
And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.
I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.
But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.
And the hygienist started to cry.
Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.
She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.
Good.
--------------------------------------
Himself got divorced in the middle of July.
And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.
And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.
As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.
So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.
So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.
But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.
Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.
But we are getting there, piece by piece.
Himself is better at this stuff than me.
Of course, he's had more practice.
Haha.
Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.
And the kids too.
-------------------------------
Speaking of.
Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.
At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.
---------------------------------
We went camping to Bear Cove.
We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.
And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.
Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.
Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.
-----------------------------------
We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.
Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.
They work on a building crew together.
Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.
----------------------------------------
I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.
I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.
That's about 5,000 kilometres.
Man, that tired me out.
---------------------------------------
Then Ammonite arrived for a week.
Shopping ensued.
And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.
She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.
"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."
I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.
Funny.
Not often he's dumbstruck.
We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.
A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.
There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.
----------------------------------------
My big mouth got me in trouble at work.
No change there.
Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.
Really.
-------------------------------------------
We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.
That's when I found my centre again.
Just us and the loons.
And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.
What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?
Anyways, it's all over for another year.
Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.
As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.
But she changed her mind.
Queenie made everyone go out for the day in the rain, goddammit, because she needed to do some housework in peace.
That's what she said anyway.
PUNY MORTALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They fell for it.
Well, there's the fear factor too. Queenie's in that kind of mood lately that when she says I need you all to leave the house so I can do some housework in peace, they do.
It takes forever but.
"I'll clean the bathroom later. You don't gotta do it, Queenie."
"I'll sit here and keep you company for the afternoon."
"Don't you want to come fishin', sweetheart?"
No.
No.
No.
Eventually I convinced them all that housework was what I wanted to do. And by myself. So they all headed off to do their own thing.
Housework, schmousework.
Queenie just wanted them all out of the apartment so she could spend a few hours faffing around pretending like she's the old Queenie still.
The old Queenie.
She disappeared this summer. Caught up in a hurricane and deposited in the Land of Oz, she was.
This is the new Queenie.
All growed up.
About time, I hear some people say.
Probably.
Where are my goddamned ruby slippers, that's what I want to know!
One minute you're cruising along, doing just as you please, and the next you're starring in your very own movie with the Wicked Witch of the West (and East) and the Lion and the Tin Man and Scarecrow and some poxy wizard somewhere in the corner pulling levers and making everything go to hell in a handbasket.
So, Queenie, whatcha do all summer?
Damned if I can remember, the whole thing is a blur.
Let me see.
Well, Colombo opened the summer with a two week visit. We drove to the top of New Brunswick and looked at the mountains of Quebec and slept in a tent.
Then we drove back.
We did other stuff as well, of course, but that's the bit I remember most vividly. We had our first Melwood bonfire of the season too.
------------------------------------
Then Nancy left cos her work was done and Kitty had been hauled into Grade 12, so we took the girls camping to Hubbards.
That was fun.
Not.
Imagine a long narrow field with 147 campsites on it and RVs, camper vans, tents and trucks parked everywhere. Everyone playing their music at top volume. All day.
I thought I was going to lose my mind.
I nearly did.
I yelled at Himself and packed my rucksack and threw it in the car and went to drive home.
Only the battery was dead because the girls had been playing hip hop on the stereo all day.
So I had to stay.
Until Sunday.
Thankfully, when I yell at Himself he pays no heed to me until I calm down.
-----------------------------------
I spent most of June and July going to the dentist.
My teeth are a mess after three years of no medical insurance.
But they're all fixed now.
It took four and a half hours to clean thirty eight years of tartar off my teeth, including up inside my gums.
And none of the four anaesthetic injections they gave me for that part worked.
I tried to meditate and I got through most of it okay.
But eventually, I had to ask them to stop because I couldn't take the pain anymore.
And the hygienist started to cry.
Because her wrist was so sore from digging the tartar off my teeth.
She tells me I'll never have to go through that again.
Good.
--------------------------------------
Himself got divorced in the middle of July.
And we booked our wedding venue for 8th August 2009.
And I woke up one morning shortly after that and thought, I am getting married.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!
Almost everyone I know started telling me how to organize my wedding.
As you can imagine, that went down well with the Queenie.
So I responded by refusing to think/ talk about/ organize my wedding.
So the aaagggghhh factor has subsided slightly.
But we are getting ready together, in our heads and hearts, to be married.
Which feels very grown up and makes me want to run like the wind down the yellow brick road some days.
But we are getting there, piece by piece.
Himself is better at this stuff than me.
Of course, he's had more practice.
Haha.
Both families seem to be genuinely happy about it, though, so that's a big help.
And the kids too.
-------------------------------
Speaking of.
Rearing kids is like having to watch someone play a never-ending game of hockey, using your sanity for a puck and your heart for a net.
At least it's not football. If it were football, there'd be no sin bin, and no sponsor break every 11 minutes.
---------------------------------
We went camping to Bear Cove.
We had a most excellent weekend. All of Himself's brothers and sister, and his sister-in-law turned up, as well as Ms Maggie Beach and some other friends from Halifax. And all our island friends. So we had a massive lobster and crab boil, and a roaring fire and the whales came in and blew at us and the seals.
And Himself went winkle-picking, and boiled a whole pot full, which nobody ate of course. Because nobody had a pin.
Himself and Little 'Un and Robbie have just arrived home, wet, with NO FISH.
Ah well, I got half an hour to myself.
-----------------------------------
We got new neighbours upstairs. Our nutty neighbour and Peter the Lover left at the end of July, and now we have Danny and Venus, who are nice and quiet and friendly and don't have any rows or tantrums or loud showers at three am.
Venus has a Harley and a pink helmet, as well as a cream VW Jetta with pink accessories.
They work on a building crew together.
Which is good because I noticed this morning that their shower is leaking into our hallway.
----------------------------------------
I drove all over Nova Scotia this summer for work.
I went to Queens, Shelburne, Yarmouth (twice), Digby, Cape Breton (twice), Amherst, Kentville, Windsor, Lunenburg and some other places I can't remember.
That's about 5,000 kilometres.
Man, that tired me out.
---------------------------------------
Then Ammonite arrived for a week.
Shopping ensued.
And Ammonite got all the killer killer heels.
She was showing them to Himself one night and he asked whether she wore them when lecturing.
"Yes", said Ammonite, "and a bullet bra."
I thought Himself was going to implode, so completely dumbstruck was he by her response.
Funny.
Not often he's dumbstruck.
We went whale-watching which was probably the one of the high points of the summer for me.
A whole pod of humpbacks hung out with our zodiac for an hour or more, including a frisky calf who kept nudging up to us.
There's something really awe-inspiring, yet peaceful about watching a whale roll to surface one dark eye and take a long, slow look at you.
----------------------------------------
My big mouth got me in trouble at work.
No change there.
Someday, I'll be growed up and that won't happen.
Really.
-------------------------------------------
We spent Labor Day weekend at Long Tusket Lake, deep in the woods.
That's when I found my centre again.
Just us and the loons.
And some nutty French camper van campers that insisted on starting a generator at 6am every morning.
What kind of nutter hauls a camper van deep into the woods and then uses electricity all weekend to shower and shit?
Anyways, it's all over for another year.
Time to tie the canoe down in case Hannah or Ike or Josephine blow it away.
As for Queenie, she almost untied herself in the eye of the storm, and let the hurricane blow her away again.
But she changed her mind.
Zogby's Walmart voters
Colombo tracked down this blog post about the US elections recently. Pretty good stuff.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html
Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.
Conservatives for one thing.
http://sweatingthroughfog.blogspot.com/2008/09/some-on-left-understand-palin.html
Although, having burrowed further into his blog, he's a little Christian for me. However, Christians aren't all bad, now are they. There are worse people in the world.
Conservatives for one thing.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Listen, everybody!
Nobody has to move out, you know!
We could all just live here together, you know!
Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.
Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.
That's fine.
I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.
I am dependent on you for family.
Because you're my family I share my money with you.
There's a give and take to sharing.
We all give.
And we all take.
But we all have to do both.
It's in the bible.
At least I've been told it is.
I never actually saw it there.
But I digress.
Sharing is good.
I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.
We could all just live here together, you know!
Perhaps you are not able to compromise enough.
Well, you know, if neither of you feel you can move out on your own.
That's fine.
I would hate to think that either of you were dependent on me for money.
I am dependent on you for family.
Because you're my family I share my money with you.
There's a give and take to sharing.
We all give.
And we all take.
But we all have to do both.
It's in the bible.
At least I've been told it is.
I never actually saw it there.
But I digress.
Sharing is good.
I remember telling Gypsy that once or a hundred times.
Electric City Picnic
While everyone in Ireland was busying recycling 30 per cent of the waste they had brought to Electric Picnic, we were all busy recycling our waste (by putting it in the car to bring home) down at our favourite secret camping spot near New France, Electric City.
Not so other people.
Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.
Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).
People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.
Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.
Some people should be taken out and shot.
And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.
Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.
Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.
Not so other people.
Other people arrived in trucks with camper units attached, set up camp, started generators at 6 am in THE FRIGGIN' MORNING and then left all their rubbish piled in their fire pit.
Other people burned pressure treated wood doused in two stroke oil (IN THE FRIGGIN' WOODS).
People who are from the same place as other people left a campsite on the far side of the lake full of rubbish - including ripped tarpaulins, Mr Noodle packets, and other plastic deitrus scattered around an area that is home to some of the most beautiful and rare toadstools in Nova Scotia.
Some people drove around with no helmets and no respect on 4 wheelers all weekend, frightening the children and ripping up fragile bog roads.
Some people should be taken out and shot.
And if that doesn't work, they should be forced to camp at the Shore Club in Hubbards for the rest of their lives.
Queenie hates it when she travels deep into the woods to camp au natural, to live off grid, to wash in the lake, to chill out and mostly to get away from other people and their noise and mess, and due to the inconsiderate bastard nature of most other people, ends up cleaning up after them.
Having said that, once all that was done, and the weird people in the campers had gone home, and the loons had come back to the lake to hang out near the kids, we had a wonderful weekend.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Yes, I know I'm a bad Queenie
I do have all kinds of excuses though.
I am kinda busy.
First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.
Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.
And thirdly, I have company.
Well I do this week.
So that's my excuse for this week.
Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.
In a good way of course.
Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.
But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.
Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!
I am kinda busy.
First of all I have the incredibly morphing into a behemoth job that involves lots of travel.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly asleep at their desk.
Secondly, I have a busy domestic situation right now, that involves lots of hands on action.
Yes, even in August, when everyone's supposedly on vacation and relaxing.
And thirdly, I have company.
Well I do this week.
So that's my excuse for this week.
Right now, I have to get dressed so I can do some work, then drive to Yarmouth, go to a meeting, then drive to Digby to get lobster, then drive back to Halifax, then cook the lobster, then do evening stuff, then collapse.
In a good way of course.
Also, it rained for two weeks in August, so there was a lot of 'damn it's too damp to do anything' action going on.
But I'll try to haul my sorry ass into the blogging saddle again soon.
Ammonite is here for a week. Maybe I can get her to guest blog?!
Sunday, July 27, 2008
'Tis almost August
I have gone through a period of intense learning.
And now I have woken up and it is almost August.
That invokes a learning from a previous year.
When it is almost August, it is time to prioritise.
The first summer I was here, nobody called.
The second summer I was here, I called everybody.
And it worked.
This summer, they call me.
But it is only for a specific item.
That's this year's learning.
This year's learning for them is....
... the only package is the whole package.
Thanks to my soul mate for the day off.
Thanks babe.
And now I have woken up and it is almost August.
That invokes a learning from a previous year.
When it is almost August, it is time to prioritise.
The first summer I was here, nobody called.
The second summer I was here, I called everybody.
And it worked.
This summer, they call me.
But it is only for a specific item.
That's this year's learning.
This year's learning for them is....
... the only package is the whole package.
Thanks to my soul mate for the day off.
Thanks babe.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Humae Vitae - differing perspectives
From today's Irish Times:
FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.
I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.
The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest explained the rhythm method to them.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.
NOT the same deal in Ireland.
In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.
In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.
Not to not conceive.
There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.
No sirreebob.
If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.
Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...
A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.
No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.
Medicine that is.
Not the rhythm method.
FORTY YEARS ago today, Pope Paul VI issued probably the most controversial encyclical letter in the history of the Catholic Church. In Humanae Vitae, he reaffirmed the Church's official ban on artificial contraception, stunning the Catholic world at a time when there were strong expectations of some easing in the traditional teaching.
I was talking about this subject with some friends last night. Telling them about the Contraceptive Train events that took place in Ireland in the late sixties/ seventies (can't remember the exact date), and one of them told me a story about a couple getting married in Nova Scotia in the sixties.
The woman was Catholic, so they had to go to the priest for the talk.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest explained the rhythm method to them.
Same deal in Ireland.
The priest then told them that the rhythm method was pretty unreliable, so what they needed to do was go to the doctor and get a pill (which you could get back then) that 'regulated' the rhythm.
NOT the same deal in Ireland.
In Ireland, the priest was too busy telling you that the rhythm method was to be used only for the mystery of procreation.
In other words, you could only use the rhythm method to conceive.
Not to not conceive.
There was no talk of the miracle pill that you could get to regulate your rhythm.
No sirreebob.
If you wanted talk of that, you had to go see that communist-anarchist-sinner, Dr. Paddy Leahy.
Canada... deep in its soul there is an innate decency and respect for the intelligence of its citizens that we didn't have for a long long time in Ireland ...
A country that gives Dr. Henry Morgentaler the Order of Canada for his contribution to society, knowing that a large chunk of citizens will be annoyed about it is a good country.
No wonder half the Irish medical graduates from the sixties moved here to practice.
Medicine that is.
Not the rhythm method.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
The first day of the rest of our lives
So Himself got divorced yesterday.
For those of you who don't know, or who can't keep track (easy enough), Himself got separated in 2004 and met Queenie in mid-2005. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite what certain shes-who-would-be-married-forever say, that Queenie did not wreck anyone's marriage.
No need to get into all that anymore. IT IS OVER.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER.
Well, not quite.
The judge granted a divorce and an interim custody order for Little 'Un, and the ridiculous squabbling over the matrimonial assets and liabilities has been delayed for another few months.
Himself got what he wanted.
Queenie is very happy for him.
Queenie is very happy for the other people involved too, because they too get to wake up this morning and enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves to be left in peace to get on with life.
Maybe that will happen now.
Queenie is happy for the kids, because maybe now the ridiculous chess game in which they have been unhappy pawns for four years is coming to an end.
But mostly, Queenie is happy for herself.
Happy that she stuck it out.
Happy that she didn't give in to the occasional urge to run away from the madness.
Happy that those decisions resulted in a long drive home with her soulmate yesterday watching the load being lifted off his (not inconsiderable) shoulders, and the colour come back into his face, and the lines around his eyes reshape themselves into crinkles as he smiled for the first time in a long time.
Tired today. Soooo tired.
But happy.
For those of you who don't know, or who can't keep track (easy enough), Himself got separated in 2004 and met Queenie in mid-2005. Which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, despite what certain shes-who-would-be-married-forever say, that Queenie did not wreck anyone's marriage.
No need to get into all that anymore. IT IS OVER.
OVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVEROVER.
Well, not quite.
The judge granted a divorce and an interim custody order for Little 'Un, and the ridiculous squabbling over the matrimonial assets and liabilities has been delayed for another few months.
Himself got what he wanted.
Queenie is very happy for him.
Queenie is very happy for the other people involved too, because they too get to wake up this morning and enjoy the first day of the rest of their lives.
Everyone deserves to be happy.
Everyone deserves to be left in peace to get on with life.
Maybe that will happen now.
Queenie is happy for the kids, because maybe now the ridiculous chess game in which they have been unhappy pawns for four years is coming to an end.
But mostly, Queenie is happy for herself.
Happy that she stuck it out.
Happy that she didn't give in to the occasional urge to run away from the madness.
Happy that those decisions resulted in a long drive home with her soulmate yesterday watching the load being lifted off his (not inconsiderable) shoulders, and the colour come back into his face, and the lines around his eyes reshape themselves into crinkles as he smiled for the first time in a long time.
Tired today. Soooo tired.
But happy.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
You know it's your fourth birthday in a place
when you are listening to the morning radio news show and you know the presenter and then you check your birthday greetings online and you have a message from him saying happy birthday, you old boot.
I'm assuming you mistranslated that from the French for happy birthday you ever-young Queenie.
I am.
Bring it on, world!
I'm assuming you mistranslated that from the French for happy birthday you ever-young Queenie.
I am.
Bring it on, world!
Friday, July 04, 2008
Le Weekend est ici, aujourd'hui, etc.
OHMYGOD, I know there's a recession on in Ireland and all that...
...and I know the weather's crappy and we're having a glorious Canada Day/ Quebec 400 week here in Nova Scotia (but not in Quebec apparently) and all...
... but did you have to punish us by sending Minister Dick Roche over to be your representative at the Quebec celebrations????
Could you not have sent one of the Mary's????
Fragrant, sexy, smart, funny women the pair of them (Coughlan and McAleese I'm talking about).
No, no, no.... we got Dick the Roche.
I was standing in the kitchen last night stirring the lovely salmon in a mushroom, pesto and cream sauce that I was making for dinner, thinking about the lovely week I'd had and the nice long weekend to look forward to, with CBC on in the background blabbering on about how Quebec was the beginning of Canada (thinking there was me thinking it was Annapolis Royal, but how wrong am I, OF COURSE it was Quebec and not Nova Scotia), and how terrible that the $90 million celebrations were washed out (you could hear the rest of Canada sniggering in the blazing sunshine) when, suddenly, I hear THAT VOICE.
At least the Queen Dad got a break from him for a while, I suppose that's the silver lining.
And as Ammonite said on her blog, we don't speak Gaelic in Ireland, we speak English mostly, and a bit of IRISH, seeing as we're from IRELAND.
Anyways, enough of the bitching.
The sun came out on Canada Day and I sat in the yard with Ms Maggie Beach for a while, and then Orc, and then our visitors came round and we had a BBQ and salad made with greens FROM THE GARDEN ALREADY and watched the fireworks round the lake.
Mr. Sun has been blazing down ever since with a good forecast for the weekend and I have today off. Hooray. And so has Himself. More Hooray.
So the canoe will be finished for Queenie's birthday. So I shall get my paddle around the lake.
We painted the canoe white and when it is upside down on its stand it looks like a whale, so we are calling it Moby.
Well, I am calling it Moby and Himself is calling it Moby's Dick.
And everyone has to paint something on it before the end of the summer, so it will be a truly communal canoe.
This week I had to go to Baddeck for two days for work.
Boo hiss.
Imagine having to go to Baddeck for two days, two glorious, hot, still, steamy days in July.
Imagine having to spend a day in a workshop with a crowd of funny, smart Cape Breton women.
Imagine doing that and getting loads of development work done in four hours flat and still having a good time.
And then having to sit on a deck overlooking the Bras d'Or lake eating dinner with said women.
Discussing the nature of love and its little quirks.
One of those great female conversations.
Terrible.
Just terrible.
It was such a pain in the ass.
Really.
I hate my job.
Never mind, I have a three day weekend to recover.
Today is yard day, lots of whipper-snipping and weeding to be done. And then tomorrow is Craig's birthday barbeque, up the hill past Red Chair Man's yard, so that should be fun.
I love the weekends. I love the early morning of the first day of a three day weekend, when Himself and Kitty are still fast asleep and I can potter around on my blog and wait for the day to heat up and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Bliss.
...and I know the weather's crappy and we're having a glorious Canada Day/ Quebec 400 week here in Nova Scotia (but not in Quebec apparently) and all...
... but did you have to punish us by sending Minister Dick Roche over to be your representative at the Quebec celebrations????
Could you not have sent one of the Mary's????
Fragrant, sexy, smart, funny women the pair of them (Coughlan and McAleese I'm talking about).
No, no, no.... we got Dick the Roche.
I was standing in the kitchen last night stirring the lovely salmon in a mushroom, pesto and cream sauce that I was making for dinner, thinking about the lovely week I'd had and the nice long weekend to look forward to, with CBC on in the background blabbering on about how Quebec was the beginning of Canada (thinking there was me thinking it was Annapolis Royal, but how wrong am I, OF COURSE it was Quebec and not Nova Scotia), and how terrible that the $90 million celebrations were washed out (you could hear the rest of Canada sniggering in the blazing sunshine) when, suddenly, I hear THAT VOICE.
At least the Queen Dad got a break from him for a while, I suppose that's the silver lining.
And as Ammonite said on her blog, we don't speak Gaelic in Ireland, we speak English mostly, and a bit of IRISH, seeing as we're from IRELAND.
Anyways, enough of the bitching.
The sun came out on Canada Day and I sat in the yard with Ms Maggie Beach for a while, and then Orc, and then our visitors came round and we had a BBQ and salad made with greens FROM THE GARDEN ALREADY and watched the fireworks round the lake.
Mr. Sun has been blazing down ever since with a good forecast for the weekend and I have today off. Hooray. And so has Himself. More Hooray.
So the canoe will be finished for Queenie's birthday. So I shall get my paddle around the lake.
We painted the canoe white and when it is upside down on its stand it looks like a whale, so we are calling it Moby.
Well, I am calling it Moby and Himself is calling it Moby's Dick.
And everyone has to paint something on it before the end of the summer, so it will be a truly communal canoe.
This week I had to go to Baddeck for two days for work.
Boo hiss.
Imagine having to go to Baddeck for two days, two glorious, hot, still, steamy days in July.
Imagine having to spend a day in a workshop with a crowd of funny, smart Cape Breton women.
Imagine doing that and getting loads of development work done in four hours flat and still having a good time.
And then having to sit on a deck overlooking the Bras d'Or lake eating dinner with said women.
Discussing the nature of love and its little quirks.
One of those great female conversations.
Terrible.
Just terrible.
It was such a pain in the ass.
Really.
I hate my job.
Never mind, I have a three day weekend to recover.
Today is yard day, lots of whipper-snipping and weeding to be done. And then tomorrow is Craig's birthday barbeque, up the hill past Red Chair Man's yard, so that should be fun.
I love the weekends. I love the early morning of the first day of a three day weekend, when Himself and Kitty are still fast asleep and I can potter around on my blog and wait for the day to heat up and not have to worry about anything for a while.
Bliss.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, Issue 2
I picked up a copy of this in a coffee shop in Antigonish months ago, stuck it in the front pocket of my laptop bag, and forgot about it until I was rummaging for something to read on the bus the other day.
It's Issue 2 of a creative writing collective endeavour, which is always a good thing to pick up and read.
Inside the front cover, it states 'our title is derived from The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace. Please don't tell and get us into trouble. Instead, read it.'
DFW is all about the importance of ignoring the telly and its malign influence on literature and focusing on earnest self-expression, if I remember The Infinite Jest correctly. I haven't read The Broom of the System, maybe I'll try to find it.
Right so.... earnest self-expression. No telly. Just philosophical thought and literature.
From a group of English students in SFX, by the way.
Switch off your irony button, Queenie, and read on.
I thought some of the stuff was pretty good, actually.
There was a pretty good short story by someone called M Johnston, about a kid in a supermarket who gets one over on the nasty manager. It was funny and well written, which is something Queenie has never managed to pull off.
And there was a poem called The Tibetan Monk which I really liked - interesting theme, really interesting structure, great rhythm. It reminded me of the early poetry of one Gavin Kostick, a heady mix of classical themes and political thought.
Then there was another short story that had its roots in the old Oisin and the land of Tir na nOg myth that I didn't really get, and a transcript of MSN sex talk that we'll just skip over and some very nice photos, particularly one by Philippe Mineau that I really liked, and then I got to Pride of an iPod Generation.
Which I read.
Then I read again.
Then I read again.
And I'm thinking to myself.... if this is David Foster Wallace-inspired then this is not ironic.
And if that is the case, then some gentle teasing of the author is definitely in order.
I hope he doesn't mind.
Yes, of course he was a boy.
But I will start by saying I accept that we were all that young, arrogant in an 'ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek kind of way' soldier at one time.
I'm sure you'll all remember those days boys and girls, fellow passengers on the tail end of GenX....?
Circa 1988 - 94.
Round about the time we saw Public Enemy perform on Trinity College cricket pitch.
Anyways, I thought I'd share iPod man's wisdom with you.
"I come from the generation that, like every other generation, has a vivid history full of grand achievements and terrible horrors. I saw the rise of reality tv. I watched slow but sure acceptance of rap music. I was taken aback by horrid terrorist acts. I was even lucky enough to watch the progression of razor blades from one to the oh-so-necessary six bladed razors that are available today."
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Public Enemy playing on the cricket pitch of a four hundred year old university would be defined as 'acceptance'. And I think it happened the year you started Grade Primary, sweetie.
I'm assuming the author was born in or around 1988, if he's iPod Gen.
I think what you might have witnessed was the commercialisation of rap music, dear.
I will grant you reality tv. You are entitled to that terrible horror. I don't remember reality tv when I was growing up. They just had shows called drama, and documentaries, and current affairs programs, and movies, when I was growing up.
I do remember watching an angry mob of Republicans drag two British soldiers out of a car, beat them to a pulp and then shoot them in the head when they drove their car into a funeral procession live on the news one time. But that doesn't really count as reality tv, as nobody had to audition to be in the car.
Also, to be petty about it, I'm pretty sure that guy from Gillette had four blades in his razor when I was growing up.
But I can't be definite. I'd have to ask a guy. Anyways, I think you were probably being ironic.
I thought you weren't supposed to be ironic...
Am I being too mean? I'm not meaning to be. I'm just feeling old and grouchy these days, trapped as I am between baby boomers and GenY, stuck with a dirty planet, rising air travel costs and no friggin' pension to look forward to when the end times come.
Anyways, back to the text...
"Every generation has their moments, we have plenty of history books to remind us of that, but I feel that we, the media-dubbed iPod generation, have done more than what historians will write down. What do you notice when you compare the people your age to those say, ten years your senior? Twenty years? Thirty years?"
According to an article I found on The Times online, the iPod generation is comprised of people under 26 (today). iPod stands for 'insecure, pressured, overtaxed and debt-ridden'.
That's just about everyone I know, when you think about it.
Perhaps the iPods are the generation that are annoyed about it.
Or more accurately, the iPods are the generation that weren't expecting it to be so.
Bless'em.
Nothing like a decade of recession in your teens to give you that edge on expectations.
Thanks, Mr. Haughey*, you served me well in retrospect.
* Mr. Haughey was an Irish PM who lorded it over us all during a recession in the eighties. Subsequently, we found out that he was using other people's money to live like a king. Irish people got very mad when they found out, but then realised that that was the way to go, and so a good chunk of them got on that bandwagon. Consequently, Ireland is facing another recession right now, but it's okay, the economy is structurally sound, so it won't be like the eighties again.
Anyways, I'm sure you're dying to know what our young author sees when he compares himself to us thirty-somethings and forty-somethings...and fifty-somethings. (anyone older is not worth a comparison, I think, or maybe he was straitened by the word count).
"You may not agree with me, but what I see is nothing short of amazing. I see a generation who almost never looks first at race or gender, who (almost unbeknownst to them) have environmentally friendly routines in their everyday lives, and who are extremely accepting of gay and bisexual communities. There are exceptions and there always will be, but when I compare us to a decade prior (that would be me - Queenie), I feel that we are vastly superior in these areas. Now I cannot speak for our generation globally, this is merely a tiny spot on the planetary spectrum, but does that make it any less significant?
And there you were, wondering why Queenie was picking on some poor, inarticulate little X-er.
Queenie don't pick on no one unless they're askin' for it.
And this kid is ASKIN' FORIT!
Only the fact that I still remember once telling the Queen Dad that my generation was very unlucky because all we had was Thatcher and emigration and war, and his generation got to do the sixties, and him laughing his ass off and saying, I did the sixties in rural Ireland, Queenie, and before that I had to do the fifties there, and me then realising that all generations ARE THE SAME in many ways, is keeping the gloves on.
Soon to be global spokesman for the iPod generation-man should not have used the word superior.
What the word 'superior' says to me is that iPod man may not see colour or gender or sexual orientation when he looks at people, but that's because he's too busy counting the wrinkles on people's faces and judging them thus.
Mr. iPod forgets to mention the Queen Parents generation when he was comparing. I remember the Queen Mum making compost, recycling paper, separating waste, making her own bread, growing vegetables and doing all kinds of other 'green' things way back before there was any mention of green, because it saved money and reduced what went into the bin and was healthy and useful, etc.
How would the iPods compare to that, eh?
Take a pass on the gap year round the globe travel and maybe it'll be a 1-1 draw.
Anyways, back to the text...
"I am an optimist, and like Delta Goodrem* says 'I don't see the point in being anything else'. I firmly believe that we are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen. We have the previous generations (and fantastic programs like Degrassi and Captain Planet of course) to thank for that, but we also have ourselves. I hope that you agree with me and I pray that the next generation will be able to say the same."
*Star of Neighbours, for those of you that don't recognise the name, but today's Neighbours, not the Neighbours we watched in the eighties. A sort of modern-day Kylie if you like. Slight bending of the DFW no-telly rule, too, if you ask me.
Yes well, thanks for the nod to us oldarses for our minor role in the production of the superior generation of which you are a proud member, Mr. iPod. I'm not sure it bolsters your earlier points regarding our malign influence on the world, but that's okay. We take our manna where we can get it.
I truly hope you are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen, cos God knows, you're going to have to be...
I also truly hope that you are an inspired fifth columnist within the community of The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, and that the point of your piece is to undermine the David Foster Wallacian theory behind the publication.
Otherwise, I'm a heading 'er for the compound right now. Before you tackle me to the ground and put me on an icefloe with all the other old people.
It's Issue 2 of a creative writing collective endeavour, which is always a good thing to pick up and read.
Inside the front cover, it states 'our title is derived from The Broom of the System, by David Foster Wallace. Please don't tell and get us into trouble. Instead, read it.'
DFW is all about the importance of ignoring the telly and its malign influence on literature and focusing on earnest self-expression, if I remember The Infinite Jest correctly. I haven't read The Broom of the System, maybe I'll try to find it.
Right so.... earnest self-expression. No telly. Just philosophical thought and literature.
From a group of English students in SFX, by the way.
Switch off your irony button, Queenie, and read on.
I thought some of the stuff was pretty good, actually.
There was a pretty good short story by someone called M Johnston, about a kid in a supermarket who gets one over on the nasty manager. It was funny and well written, which is something Queenie has never managed to pull off.
And there was a poem called The Tibetan Monk which I really liked - interesting theme, really interesting structure, great rhythm. It reminded me of the early poetry of one Gavin Kostick, a heady mix of classical themes and political thought.
Then there was another short story that had its roots in the old Oisin and the land of Tir na nOg myth that I didn't really get, and a transcript of MSN sex talk that we'll just skip over and some very nice photos, particularly one by Philippe Mineau that I really liked, and then I got to Pride of an iPod Generation.
Which I read.
Then I read again.
Then I read again.
And I'm thinking to myself.... if this is David Foster Wallace-inspired then this is not ironic.
And if that is the case, then some gentle teasing of the author is definitely in order.
I hope he doesn't mind.
Yes, of course he was a boy.
But I will start by saying I accept that we were all that young, arrogant in an 'ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek kind of way' soldier at one time.
I'm sure you'll all remember those days boys and girls, fellow passengers on the tail end of GenX....?
Circa 1988 - 94.
Round about the time we saw Public Enemy perform on Trinity College cricket pitch.
Anyways, I thought I'd share iPod man's wisdom with you.
"I come from the generation that, like every other generation, has a vivid history full of grand achievements and terrible horrors. I saw the rise of reality tv. I watched slow but sure acceptance of rap music. I was taken aback by horrid terrorist acts. I was even lucky enough to watch the progression of razor blades from one to the oh-so-necessary six bladed razors that are available today."
Well, correct me if I'm wrong but I think Public Enemy playing on the cricket pitch of a four hundred year old university would be defined as 'acceptance'. And I think it happened the year you started Grade Primary, sweetie.
I'm assuming the author was born in or around 1988, if he's iPod Gen.
I think what you might have witnessed was the commercialisation of rap music, dear.
I will grant you reality tv. You are entitled to that terrible horror. I don't remember reality tv when I was growing up. They just had shows called drama, and documentaries, and current affairs programs, and movies, when I was growing up.
I do remember watching an angry mob of Republicans drag two British soldiers out of a car, beat them to a pulp and then shoot them in the head when they drove their car into a funeral procession live on the news one time. But that doesn't really count as reality tv, as nobody had to audition to be in the car.
Also, to be petty about it, I'm pretty sure that guy from Gillette had four blades in his razor when I was growing up.
But I can't be definite. I'd have to ask a guy. Anyways, I think you were probably being ironic.
I thought you weren't supposed to be ironic...
Am I being too mean? I'm not meaning to be. I'm just feeling old and grouchy these days, trapped as I am between baby boomers and GenY, stuck with a dirty planet, rising air travel costs and no friggin' pension to look forward to when the end times come.
Anyways, back to the text...
"Every generation has their moments, we have plenty of history books to remind us of that, but I feel that we, the media-dubbed iPod generation, have done more than what historians will write down. What do you notice when you compare the people your age to those say, ten years your senior? Twenty years? Thirty years?"
According to an article I found on The Times online, the iPod generation is comprised of people under 26 (today). iPod stands for 'insecure, pressured, overtaxed and debt-ridden'.
That's just about everyone I know, when you think about it.
Perhaps the iPods are the generation that are annoyed about it.
Or more accurately, the iPods are the generation that weren't expecting it to be so.
Bless'em.
Nothing like a decade of recession in your teens to give you that edge on expectations.
Thanks, Mr. Haughey*, you served me well in retrospect.
* Mr. Haughey was an Irish PM who lorded it over us all during a recession in the eighties. Subsequently, we found out that he was using other people's money to live like a king. Irish people got very mad when they found out, but then realised that that was the way to go, and so a good chunk of them got on that bandwagon. Consequently, Ireland is facing another recession right now, but it's okay, the economy is structurally sound, so it won't be like the eighties again.
Anyways, I'm sure you're dying to know what our young author sees when he compares himself to us thirty-somethings and forty-somethings...and fifty-somethings. (anyone older is not worth a comparison, I think, or maybe he was straitened by the word count).
"You may not agree with me, but what I see is nothing short of amazing. I see a generation who almost never looks first at race or gender, who (almost unbeknownst to them) have environmentally friendly routines in their everyday lives, and who are extremely accepting of gay and bisexual communities. There are exceptions and there always will be, but when I compare us to a decade prior (that would be me - Queenie), I feel that we are vastly superior in these areas. Now I cannot speak for our generation globally, this is merely a tiny spot on the planetary spectrum, but does that make it any less significant?
And there you were, wondering why Queenie was picking on some poor, inarticulate little X-er.
Queenie don't pick on no one unless they're askin' for it.
And this kid is ASKIN' FORIT!
Only the fact that I still remember once telling the Queen Dad that my generation was very unlucky because all we had was Thatcher and emigration and war, and his generation got to do the sixties, and him laughing his ass off and saying, I did the sixties in rural Ireland, Queenie, and before that I had to do the fifties there, and me then realising that all generations ARE THE SAME in many ways, is keeping the gloves on.
Soon to be global spokesman for the iPod generation-man should not have used the word superior.
What the word 'superior' says to me is that iPod man may not see colour or gender or sexual orientation when he looks at people, but that's because he's too busy counting the wrinkles on people's faces and judging them thus.
Mr. iPod forgets to mention the Queen Parents generation when he was comparing. I remember the Queen Mum making compost, recycling paper, separating waste, making her own bread, growing vegetables and doing all kinds of other 'green' things way back before there was any mention of green, because it saved money and reduced what went into the bin and was healthy and useful, etc.
How would the iPods compare to that, eh?
Take a pass on the gap year round the globe travel and maybe it'll be a 1-1 draw.
Anyways, back to the text...
"I am an optimist, and like Delta Goodrem* says 'I don't see the point in being anything else'. I firmly believe that we are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen. We have the previous generations (and fantastic programs like Degrassi and Captain Planet of course) to thank for that, but we also have ourselves. I hope that you agree with me and I pray that the next generation will be able to say the same."
*Star of Neighbours, for those of you that don't recognise the name, but today's Neighbours, not the Neighbours we watched in the eighties. A sort of modern-day Kylie if you like. Slight bending of the DFW no-telly rule, too, if you ask me.
Yes well, thanks for the nod to us oldarses for our minor role in the production of the superior generation of which you are a proud member, Mr. iPod. I'm not sure it bolsters your earlier points regarding our malign influence on the world, but that's okay. We take our manna where we can get it.
I truly hope you are the most accepting, equal and green generation that the world has ever seen, cos God knows, you're going to have to be...
I also truly hope that you are an inspired fifth columnist within the community of The Frequent and Vigorous Quarterly, and that the point of your piece is to undermine the David Foster Wallacian theory behind the publication.
Otherwise, I'm a heading 'er for the compound right now. Before you tackle me to the ground and put me on an icefloe with all the other old people.
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