a pleasantly surprising winter evening
4 Days Ago
This evening (afternoon really, but at this latitude its dusk at about 2 pm) we adventurously drove across town in the blizzard to visit the Royal Alberta Museum. We hadn't been in a few months so we weren't sure what would be happening.
What a pleasant surprise it was to see a lovely display of Ted Harrison's http://www.tedharrison.ca/ original paintings from 'A Northern Alphabet' http://www.tundrabooks.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780887762338 Absolutely beautiful and delightful canvases. It was also a pleasant surprise to discover that Harrison had given the canvases to the University of Alberta here in town.
What a pleasant surprise it was as we walked out of the Museum at closing time to see that the snowy night sky was a beautiful violet colour, just like the colours of Harrison's paintings.
and
What a pleasant surprise it was to see the hare run away through the parking lot as we drove away. It's so nice to have a vast forest full of wildlife in the middle of the city
the last James Cameron film I saw was True Lies . . .
Last Week
That's right, I have never seen Titanic and I don't feel like I'm missing anything from my life. I also feel my life would be better if I'd given True Lies a miss.
And now, Avatar seems to be everywhere I look. Thankfully, I've found this:
'When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"?' http://io9.com/5422666/when-will-wh...ople-stop-making-movies-like-avatar
I'm sorry, but the stills make the movie look absolutely stupid (Disney meets Apocalypto) and the premise, as the above review points out, is tired and awfully simplistic.
I think I'll use the three hours for something else. Maybe I'll start reading Wacousta A2367560 again.
Dresden Codak
Last Week
There's a new one!
http://dresdencodak.com/2009/12/16/lantern-season/
I think I'm going to go back to the beginning and read them all again.
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I was thinking today . . .
Last Week
I was thinking today about a sort of person, a sort of person who thinks that it's important to protect 'parents' rights' (I'm thinking here, of course, about the Conservative government of Alberta, which has explicitly excluded itself from the Declaration on the Rights of the Child because it wants to preserve the right of parents to whack their children). And I was thinking that the sort of people who argue that the parents' right to whack their kids trumps the kids' rights to be safe from harm are also the people who think that the foetuses' right to be born into a shitty situation and a life of utter crap trump the rights of the women to her own life and health.
So, if they're not born yet, they get their human rights, but as soon as they pop out, they lose their human rights until they become adult males?
How strange.
(Yes, I know an inversion of the above argument is possible. But the inversion really doesn't seem convincing to me.)
I've found it! I've found it!
2 Weeks Ago
Some time ago I mentioned somewhere that in an early draft of my Master's thesis I had conjured up an image of the Poem as a patient etherized on a table under the knife of the Critic. My supervisor, while enjoying the image, felt that it would be better left out of future drafts. I, being young, followed the advice of my elder.
When I mentioned that passage somewhere here a while ago, there seemed to be a certain interest in seeing the passage if it ever came to light.
Well, now after more than a quarter century in a box that has been moved unopened through three basements I offer you, the Dissection of the Poem:
'Of course, a certain degree of dissection is necessary to a study of "The Wanderer": the poem is a description of aspects of the world as the poet views it, and as such, it operates to a large extent as a dissection itself. The critic's task must be to take "The Wanderer" as something of a reassembly of aspects of the poet's world-view, to dissect that reassembly, and to show how the resultant elements fit into the poet's living universe. But it is little help to the student, and even less aesthetically pleasing to leave the poem scattered in its constituent parts across a metaphorical table. A critic must replace the vital organs, and show that the patient continues to live after the operation.
'For such a dissection and reassembly to be effective, we must keep before us an understanding of the poet's world-view, and, most importantly, an understanding of the force which unifies that world-view. The unity of the world-view will have a counterpart in the poem. In the case of "The Wanderer", we have a headstart if we have examined the poem's context within the "Exeter Book" . . .'
I also came across in that box a paper I wrote for a 'Philosophy of Mind' class I took in 1990. Perhaps one day I'll find the time to digitize it, if there's any interest.
as a bit of teasing, I got 96% on the assignment.
as a bigger bit of teasing, the title of the paper is:
'Shiva's Face of Glory Locked in Searle's Chinese Room'
Twenty years stolen . . .
3 Weeks Ago
Geneviève Bergeron 
Hélène Colgan
Nathalie Croteau
Barbara Daigneault
Anne-Marie Edward
Maud Haviernick
Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz
Maryse Laganière
Maryse LeClair
Anne-Marie Lemay
Sonia Pelletier
Michèlle Richard
Annie St-Arneault
Annie Turcotte
A2225639
the diversity of my neighborhood
3 Weeks Ago
my city's poet laureate: http://canadasworld.wordpress.com/2009/05/28/1735/
my MLA: http://www.rachelnotley.ca/RachelNotley/
my former MLA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raj_Pannu
my province's Lieutenant Governor: http://www.lieutenantgovernor.ab.ca/
my MP: http://www.edmontonstrathcona.ca/
my former MP: http://www.rahimjaffer.com/
my country's Governor General: http://www.gg.ca/index.aspx?lan=eng
I'm feeling okay with multiculturalism and inclusivity. It's working quite nicely, thank you very much.
Well, this is an interesting bit of Christology . . .
4 Weeks Ago
Please don't ask how I ended up finding this.
At the link there is a carefully[ ] argued case made by a Muslim person that if Christianity were to be internally consistent, the Crucifixion of Jesus by the Romans would more appropriately [
] be the gang rape of Jessica by a bunch of Jews.
Fortunately, the author is clumsy and wrong on so many points that the whole thing is simply [very uncomfortably] risible.
But it certainly makes one marvel at the contortions capable in a religious mind.
http://www.bismikaallahuma.org/arch...-jesus-or-the-holy-rape-of-jessica/
Yes. It really is titled 'Crucifixion of Jesus or The Holy Rape of Jessica?'
But now that I think of it, it reminds me of the post-Modern, deconstructionist, theory-over-loaded drivel most inaccurately labeled as 'literary criticism' I had to read far too often when I was an undergraduate.
Could it be a joke?
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