Stay out of my Va-j.

I'll listen to practically anything. Well, anything spoken. I think it's a product of having a very quiet house while growing up. The unfortunate thing about this is that I'm not left alone with my thoughts for as long as I'd like to be. The fortunate thing is that I can get a lot done without feeling that I'm totally wasting my time. Lately I've been listening to 'White Teeth' by Zadie Smith on audiobook. It's been amusing, but not great. In one scene towards the end, one of the central young female characters. Irie, has intercourse with a set of feuding twins, one after the other, in separate places, for her own reasons. I'm not sure how the story ends yet, but It made me uncomfortable that the Vagina was the place where the two originated, and that it was the place in which they were supposed to be reconciled. The book discussed being the elder and younger son, and fighting their way down the birth canal. I feel like the young woman had nothing to do with the exchange...that her vagina was a battleground or a neutral space for the conflict and reunion of two brothers.
I remember reading something that hit me the same way when I was younger. In Stephen King's 'It' the young people all end up having sex with the female of the group when they are hopelessly lost in the sewers. The sex seems practical and even romantic from the young girl's perspective, although I'm not sure that losing your virginity in a sewer gang-bang would be my idea of a great playdate.
Her vagina is used to 'Unite' and 'calm' the group and they are able to safely find their way out of the sewer.
Glad to be of service.
P.S. Stay the hell out of my loins.

Teach me things

In the car on the way home from holiday visits, I learned a bit about my grandmother's life back in Italy, and her experiences as a new Canadian.
She told me about the school in her small town, where her fingernails and the area behind her ears were inspected daily for cleanliness. Where the child that did not complete their homework had to wear paper donkey-ears with the Italian word for Ass written across the back. A school where punishments ranged from a strapping on the hands to having to kneel bare-legged on dry corn kernels. I learned that she was the first person in her family to learn to read.
It will be 51 years ago tomorrow that my grandmother and her two daughters took the 12 day boat trip to Canada, and I was surprised that I had misunderstood the circumstances for so long. I grew up thinking that they came over, huddled together on the lowest level of the boat, trying to stay warm and not to starve, sleeping on their belongings, frightened and dirty.
Instead, I found out that they shared a cabin with another woman and her two children. They were fed meals in the ship's dining hall, and the ladies were able to try many things that they had never before eaten...like bananas and beef steak. My grandmother couldn't fit into her clothes by the end of the journey-she had never experienced so much food and so little physical labour before. She saw her first ever moving picture, a cowboy film. Shortly after disembarking, she cut off her old world braids, got a perm, changed her clothes and got to work on her new life.
Mille Grazie, Nonna.

Excessively Long and Sinfully Decadent.

Last week's snowstorm postponed a twice yearly tradition: Fancy Birthday dinner with Debbie. Our birthdays are about six months apart, which allows us to indulge ourselves twice a year by dressing up, hauling out the pearls and going out to a restaurant that we'd normally never go to. So far, we've been to the Jamie Kennedy restaurant at the Gardiner ceramics museum, C5 in the ROM crystal, and now Kaiseki Sakura.
We had a five-course tasting menu with different sake-based drinks to compliment the food. Some of the highlights included Tongue in red miso broth, mashed Ginkgo nuts, sweet shrimp with yuzu foam, and whole fresh wasabi root with a sharkskin grater.
The waitress complimented my palate, brought free birthday champagne and strawberry-adzuki cheesecake.
I think it's hilarious that Blogger does not recognize most of the ingredients listed above as words. Titillating sights, scents, and flavours, giddy indulgence and good company made this a wonderful birthday. I'll focus on charity and thriftiness, sensibility and restraint the other 364 days of the year

If I had a minute more

I would tell you about how interested I've been lately in long exposure photographs.
I would tell you about the man that I was on the subway with who, with an air sealed pillow of his personal belongings, had angry imaginary chats on his cell phone about how he just got out of jail.


I would kvetch about laundromat etiquette, and rave about Stanley Kubrick's version of Lolita.
But since I only have a minute, I'd like to discuss the tension between creativity and responsibility. Long ago, I crafted without much thought about materials. I scavenged what I could from the ground, the garbage, or my father's basement and tried to make things.
As I got older, I started to think more about all of the garbage that we produce, and all of the essentially useless things we purchase and collect for pleasure, and what I produced started to get smaller and smaller. My last spurt of pure, functionless creativity was taking apart watches and making diorama inside with the pieces.
While these were beautiful and reused broken goods, they still bothered me because they were not useful. I know, I sound like an art-commie. Living in Japan, being surrounded by ads and consumer goods while living in a tiny, empty apartment made me more conscious of what I bought and picked up and made, because of the lack of space and abundance of waste.
All of these things mean that when I want to give a gift or have an idea for a craft I feel now that it comes with more responsibility.
Is it useful? Is it wasteful? What is the pleasure behind making/giving/receiving the thing, and where will it end up? As I accumulate more buttons and string, more velcro and scraps of old clothes, more paper and packaging, I imagine new ways to be a maker.

Cluck, Grunt, and Low

I really wanted to hate this restaurant.
It sprung up on a cursed corner in my neighborhood, home to 3 or 4 failed restaurants in the past two years. It appeared several months ago - a meat restaurant on a strip that is dominated by vegetarian, Asian and Middle Eastern restaurants.
I didn't know what to make of the name, or the sign. At first I found it cute, then mildly distasteful, and then puzzling:

I believe that these characters are called 'Cluckstein Gruntberg and Lowenthal', which starts a whole other line of questioning.
I can't decide whether or not it's a good thing that the restaurant has animals dressed like humans-lawyers, I think-on its sign. Also that it is named after the sounds that these animals made.
Before they were slaughtered, dismembered, smoked, shipped, seasoned, smothered with barbecue sauce and served.
I really don't care what you eat. Mood is hard to convey in type, but mine is jocular...honestly. I usually don't eat meat, but I've never tried to stop someone else from eating it. My opinions can be strong on this subject, but I won't shove tofu down your throat. Unless, for some reason, you ask me to.
Cluck, Grunt, and Low, with its noisy, mooing website and barn-like decor, made me think about whether its name and theme bring people closer to the facts of who/where their food comes from, or if it's just another case of making things cute and entertaining in order to remove them from reality. One time I walked by and there was a cartoon pig drawn on the sandwich board out front, with a speech bubble in which he invited you to come inside and feast on various parts of him.
Wonder...

My first animated gif.

Making a list and checking it twice.

Ideas

I have an art book from Japan with a picture of a piece by Makoto Aida. The piece is a video where he stands in front of a wall on which are written the Japanese syllables I de a with his back to the audience and masturbates. This man in Shanghaii had a similar idea. He's his own kind of artist.

I was listening to one of my favourite podcasts this weekend, and stumbled upon one by Leonore Tieffer. In it she discussed the hypersexualization of our lives, the desire to compare and compete with others that this is resulting in, the destructive trends encouraged by the introduction of viagra, and the narrowing of our sexual imagination.
She believed that many of the problems in sexual relationships were things that could be solved through discussion and increasing connection and intimacy between people, and that the modern approach of medicating and focusing on the erection as the most important aspect of sexual function/dysfunction was a reflection of our society's phallocentrism. Except, when she said it the first time, she accidentally said fellowcentrism. Or perhaps it was fallowcentrism.
I guess they all work just as well, and I like them all.
The podcast has been taken down as of this morning,(Good work as usual, cbc.ca!)otherwise I would link to it here

Everything is Bork Bork Borked.

Bork is the name of my friend Debbie's adorable cat.
Bork is the sound in the song that the Swedish Chef sings. Borked the state of every computer at the Archive right now because of repeated hackings in the past week.
My boss first introduced me to the term, which we now all use when some piece of technology is not working properly.
The submissions at Urban Dictionary generally agree with this definition, although one user claims that Borked means:


Being molested anally, as in raped up the ass.

"Jimmy got borked when he dropped the soap in the prison shower."

I am not overly fond of this definition.

So nothing is working properly, most of the employees can barely do their jobs, and some goon somewhere is having a big wank over using the computers at a Nonprofit to play warcraft or whatever the hell he's doing.
Lucky for me, since I learned both of the other meanings first, when things start to go terribly wrong at work I usually end up thinking of a cat while whistling a jolly 'Swedish' tune.

The Beer Station/Japanese Catfight

Where do you go for a drink on a Friday night in the Annex, when all of the bars with a remotely tolerable atmosphere are filled up with students?
The Beer Station. The cheapest dive bar in the neighborhood. It looks as though it has been transplanted from 1990's Brampton right onto Bloor street. The interior is painted light blue, and makes you feel as though you're stuck in an empty swimming pool. All of the signs are poorly handwritten, and there are at least ten television screens showing different sports.
We were sitting next to a group of men who were talking about STI's. One of them claimed that gonorrhea was no big deal, and told the others that it could be treated with VINEGAR. Then he got up and mimicked riding a horse for a moment, telling his friends how much he loved 'bare-backing'
The televisions above our seats were tuned to FightTV, and after midnight it plays fight entertainment. First there was women's boxing, with misty images of sexy ladies wearing pink and blue gloves, shot through a vaselined camera lens. We were still able to keep up our own conversation until the show changed into something called 'Real Catfight' from Japan.
On a mat on the floor, in a small room full of what looked like homeless men and blue collar workers, two women fought bare-handed in the silliest way.
One of the contenders was named Ichigo (Strawberry) Milk, and wore a kimono style dress with strawberries on it.
The women writhed, slapped each other, and rolled around on the floor tangled together. There were moves that looked like positions from the Kama Sutra, and there were plenty of crotch and cleavage shots.
After the first two matches (during which we were so mesmerized that we barely said a word) the ice match began. A plastic tarp was laid down with several buckets of ice on it, and a fox-masked ref started the match. The women filled their mouths with ice and spat them at each other, they stuffed ice down each other's tiny panties and by the end of it one of them had lost her shirt.
Here's a promo:

It was ridiculous, but entertaining. I ended the evening in typical creepy style by trying to encourage my friends to go home and do a photo shoot in costume in wrestling poses, inspired by the show. I did it because I was alone, and they were together (one person does not an amusing wrestling photo shoot make)and I thought it would be fun and hilarious. Then I walked home, feeling a bit dirty.

Somebody died just outside

I just found out that someone died just outside my apartment in a construction accident. It must have happened shortly after I left for work.
I can't help but think of strange things because of this. My roommate told me that there was police tape outside when she went home at 4. What if I had been working the late shift? I'd likely have been in the kitchen cooking something at the time. I might have seen the man outside and waved. I might have heard a noise and gone out to see what was going on.
After having a lovely morning walk through my neighborhood, hearing this news is shocking to me. I wonder how many other people have died in my vicinity since I've been living here...I wonder if the accident could have been prevented.
I sat in my kitchen the other day, looking at the ancient drawers and cupboards and gigantic door frame and wished that I could meet everyone who's ever lived there. The place is probably at least a hundred years old and has had seven different people living in it during only the last 3 or 4 years.
I'd love it if I could get all of the renters and owners from the past and present together for a potluck.

Life, Death and Mourning

This week, maybe because it's autumn, death seems to be coming up with more than the usual frequency. Cbc's 'The Sunday Edition' dedicated the whole three hour program to discussing dying, death traditions and mediums. This week's episode of 'This American Life' is called Rest In Peace. I finally learned what happened in Jonestown. I've watched two films this week dealing with death, revenge and grief, especially the grief of parents for their dead children.
One of the films, The Host was almost entirely driven by the main characters' family's blind grief and anger at the abduction of their beloved schoolgirl-child. From the tenderness of a father lifting his daughter's backpack to ease her burden, to the rawness of a father wrenching his daughter's lifeless body from the belly of a beast, the film was most interesting to me because of its depiction of the intensity of the familial bond.
This morning I learned about mourning rings. Sir George Simpson wore a mourning ring for a child of his that died several months after it was born. The ring was a diamond, and it was covered with black enamel so that it wouldn't sparkle. Here is an example of a mourning ring belonging to Jeremy Bentham. Not quite as dramatic.

The boy at the edge of the frame/A Night at the Opera

I've noticed that when I go to concerts or plays I tend to really notice the people in the background. What's the guy doing that I can see just beyond the curtain? What kind of expression is on the drummer's face, and what's he thinking? See the soundtrack musician? He keeps looking from the piano to the screen and back, trying to keep up with the action in the film. And I keep looking at him.
This is the page-turner:

I lucked into a free front row ticket to see Anna Bolena performed as a part of 'Opera in Concert'. Baby's first Opera.
I spent a good portion of the first half watching the page-turner. He wore black and was very still, and blended into the choir until he followed the music to the end of the page. At a nod from the pianist, already ready, he would reach up and quickly turn the page so that she could continue playing. She was the only musical accompaniment for the performance, and they worked as one to keep things moving.













I really enjoyed the performance. It was the story of Anne Boleyn sung in Italian with English subtitles. How did I get these pictures, at 2pm in a dark theatre surrounded by old people? Pure stealth.

Undead Undead Undead

We were still putting the finishing touches on our costumes when the 2007 Toronto Zombie Walk left Trinity Bellwoods park. I'd think I read too many online zombie makeup tutorials with advice like 'bury your clothes for a week to get an authentic earthy look and smell'.
We decided to catch up with the group along the route and tried to grab a taxi-me wearing a clerk's robe with a mouth full of blood and Tom with a dripping baby's head dangling from a coat hanger just out of his reach.

As we approached Dundas and Bathurst, we ran into a few spectators with cameras who started to photograph us. It was uncomfortable being the only Zombies on Dundas, and the focus of at least four photographers, and we left to try to find the mob.
They approached us along Bathurst, and we tucked into a doorway to look at some of the costumes before joining the walk. The costumes were incredible. We saw famous zombies, just married zombies, hippies, accident victims, and a group of zombies on wheels (one of whom managed to skate slowly, mimicking the Zombie shuffle).

There was moaning, screaming, people banging on windows and delighting streetcar riders with their antics and chants of 'What do we want?" to which we, of course responded "BRAINS!!"
What I wasn't prepared for was being constantly photographed. It made me uncomfortable, and I felt like it prevented me from enjoying myself as much as I could have. Sometimes I felt the pressure to perform, and other times I tried to hide in the group as soon as I saw a group of photographers. The entire route was lined with professional and amateur photographers taking pictures constantly, as well as zombies pausing to get their own record of the experience.

My favourite part of the day was after the group reached Bloor street, when the Zombies started to break off into groups to get falafel or espresso or Burger King.

I made a cheese

I conquered the dairy beast this evening, and made my own paneer. It wasn't very hard, just a little gross looking and slightly messy. I wouldn't recommend it if you have a problem with whhhey. I found a great link here
Good night, sweet cheese. Until tomorrow.

Cry, ugly, cry.

Saw this on craigslist today:
"We had coffee today, you were upset. We meet when you asked for a smoke. I still stand by what i said. Cant stand to see a beautiful woman cry.
Just wanted to know if you got home safely. Hope you see this. I was the guy in white"
This post is even more interesting than than the one that I saw earlier this week with the heading 'We f*cked in the fitting room at the Bay'.
Seeing a beautiful woman cry breaks his heart. What would seeing an average woman cry do to him? Or a frumpy, older woman? Is his compassion tied up in his attraction to her?
The man in white comes to the rescue, attempting to comfort the distraught woman with nicotine, caffeine and flattery.
Alternately, the man finds himself able to connect with the woman in a genuine way after coming upon her in a vulnerable state. They skip some steps in the normal progress of relationships and go directly to a place where an intense closeness is suddenly possible. Is he attracted to her appearance, the intensity of her emotion or her openness?
He feels something. I hope this moment helped them both in some way.

I'm supposed to.

Be getting a call from San Francisco.
I'm supposed to be on webcam with people at the Open Content Alliance meeting, where I'm supposed to be showing them how easy it is to get a book scanned on demand.
That's what I'm supposed to be doing. Not sitting at my desk at 9:30 playing online scrabble with a robot who's a poor sport.
If no one calls in five minutes I'm going to the grocery store.

A Mountain I have made

A mighty mound of delicousness so moving that I had to stop two bites in to take this photo. There was no way I was going to let this meal go undocumented. Not because of anything special that I did, but because of how happy I was to be eating something wonderful that I had made. All of the elements involved in the meal-the warm kitchen, the flavours, the time of day, the voices on the radio and my hunger came together and created a moment lovely enough to notice.
It's your turn to do the dishes.

Wyrd Visions

I snuck into the room as quietly as I could. I walked in after Wyrd Visions had begun his set in the Tiki Room at the Tranzac. I was pleased with myself. On a bill of three artists, he was the only one that I was interested in seeing, and I had the feeling that he would perform second-the meat substitute in the middle of the fringe-indie musical sandwich.
The gas fireplace was blazing, candles were lit, and the lights were out. Everyone was already seated in mismatched couches or on the floor. There was a dead space of about three feet between Colin Bergh and the nearest spectator. Was it left out of respect or shyness?
He gave me exactly what I wanted last night-a long set, with no pauses, which seemed to cover his entire album. I was looking for a mood...to feel like my ears were taking a long swim in a dark pond with mysterious, leafy depths. Mr. Bergh, at one point stifling a yawn, delivered.
(does he have a day job? I'm going to take a moment to enjoy imagining what else he might do.)
The lights went up and I looked around me.
I started to think about how I've been interested in many different types of artistic expression and group activity. I like making and listening to music, but I don't feel comfortable with many of the people who make or appreciate it. I enjoy looking at art, and crafting, but am uncomfortable with the art scene. I love reading, but feel like the world of writing and publishing is not one that I would fit into. I thought back to the shows I've been to where there is a wonderful moment when the music seems to be the only thing in the room, and fashion, age, style, location, weather and all nagging thought about anything other than that feeling melts away. I need to find a way to be present at more of these moments, and to make them happen more often myself.
I hung out with a kitten on my way home, and went to bed happy.
Wyrd Visions. 5 bucks, Tranzac, Monday October 15th