Mostly, it is...

Okay people, this year, it is indeed fantastic again. ( Brief thoughts: )

Quick post. Today held the evening of Fresh Blood, a program of short modern dance pieces by new choreographers selected by The Chimera Project's Artistic Director Malgorzata Nowacka. I left for it a bit late, so didn't make the trip to the post office I'd hoped to (but likely will do that tomorrow), but was in time for the shows.

I had a great time. Enwave Theatre was practically full, there was a good range of ages, and the atmosphere was open and warm. The acts were picked based on Malgorzata's taste for originality and individuality, so there was quite a diverse range of styles, subjects, approaches and outcomes. So there was media deconstruction, meditation on getting a handle on place, exploration of the human body, camptastic re-imaginings of social rituals, and more.

I especially appreciated one of the perennial things that draws me to dance. Communication - means, media, techniques, conventions, etc... - occupies my thought much of the time. One of the things that I like about certain kinds of modern dance is that it's a bit like, in a piece they're teaching you a new language rooted in human forms in motion, specifically for that work of choreography, that you're only going to use for the next two minutes, or hour, or whatever. It's like an extremely concentrated burst of demand for pattern matching/analysis that, in a sense, happens completely privately and with lots of room for failure without consequence. There is some relief about getting to exercise some mental faculties and being able to enjoy doing so.

On a related note, just a reminder for those in Toronto, that at the Young Centre for the Arts in The Distillery District, the Canwest Cabaret Festival is on until this Sunday. Last year was fantastic. I expect no less this time.

I should look for a dance and theatre icon.

As a design material, I very much like porcelain; the beauty, longevity, variation, flexibility, it's almost fantastic. As a thing that I have to pick just one family out of umpty-zillion to go with for a room, (or a few rooms), and then stick with for, potentially decades, it gives me a feeling somewhat like being thirsty and drinking something thick and viscous through a really long and narrow straw, from a little cup on the other side of the room, over something you don't want to drip anything on. You can see it coming, you know it'll be so good when it gets to you, but you're a little breathless from the effort, and you really want to get it right because if you don't you'll be stuck with the consequences.

Then there's the whole shopping experience where, beyond how well what you actually end up getting fits your application, how you feel about it has so much to do with how good the staff are, how well you can communicate what you're looking for, how much and how useful the information the displays have available is, how much your budget is vs. what you might want to do, what pieces you can get within your timeframe, and it goes on. It's probably not surprising how much more I enjoy the part where I'm on the computer looking at and comparing designs, technical specifications, standards, and prices, than I do the part where I'm walking around the showroom looking at the prospect of haggling.

Here are a few of the things I'm looking at: Networks, Ec(c)lettica, E-motion, Habitat, Glamour, Sense, Ecowood, and because it's a flash site and I can't link to specific lines, Grespania. And here are some of the places: Olympia and Centura.

While I'm on the subject, if anyone's interested in about three wheelbarrows or part thereof of formerly ~ 1' x 2' to 2' x 4' ~ 1" natural finish greenish grey paving stone, they're free for the taking (or claiming for shipping/mailing) until such time as they go to Mississauga get recycled into road-fill or whatever. I don't know natural stone, but they're kind of slate or limestone looking. The pieces vary in size from mostly whole slabs to chips, with most being roughly triangular or trapezoidal in the 1' range. I have heard of freecycle, and a couple of things like them, but I don't really feel like dealing with more strangers at the moment. I do know that people on this list have lots of interests I don't know about, so it is conceivable that for one or more of you, cheap or free rocks, even if some of them have got some mortar on them, would be of some use.

Having decided/accepted that one is going to have contractors coming in, and the attendant effects on scheduling etc... etc..., some of the usual barriers to getting home improvements done go away. So along with getting some tile in, improving drainage, re-grading and waterproofing, painting and shelving, you can get switches replaced with timers, some tuck-pointing, upgrading the ventilation and filtration, switching to a smaller, better insulated hot water tank + instant gas water heater, fixing some light fixtures, upgrading insulation, replacing gate valves with ball valves, replacing cartridges and aerators, installing an exhaust fan, re-locating electrical outlets, etc... etc...

That work, research, decision making and management is about where most of the free time has been going. In case you were wondering.

Friday night msagara and I had a long conversation outside the hotel. It covered a fair bit around the family of topics that we usually talk about: theory of mind, interpretation of behaviour, blind spots, safety, comfortable-ness/awkwardness, sex/gender, sexuality, cultural backgrounds, upbringing, balance, normal behaviour vs. difference, family dynamics, education, family, rule sets, analytical and instinctive approaches to communication, generalizations and specific applications. It was different from the usual in a few ways. It was outside of the usual contexts (bookstore or event) where I'd worry even more about taking up someone's time than I would generally. While as usual there was a great deal that I thought of later that I would have preferred to have thought of at the time, the nature was different in that they mostly took the form of improvements to things relatively poorly or incompletely expressed, rather than things not-expressed at all (a benefit of a mostly uninterrupted three and a half hours as compared to a more normal 20 minutes, and more private conversation as well as a different dynamic). The largest difference was the centering of specific cases of sets of behaviours of mine that required evaluation and critique in discussion, which when there was a smaller shared data set covering more superficial effects was unnecessary or impossible. Being specific, there are actions and considerations regarding particular people which I'm now thinking about. I strongly dislike being oblivious and stupid, but I've been advised by a number of people that thinking more and harder before acting is not likely to be a good or useful response for me given how slow I am already, among other reasons, some directly related, and others not. This is somewhat frustrating since I patently cannot trust my intuitive processes to provide useful behavioural direction either. I'm going to continue to try and figure out how I should act, and improve my ability to communicate accurately, effectively, and in a representative fashion, since going through life without interacting with people is probably not healthy.

So it was a very useful conversation. It is of a sort which I would be interested in having again if the opportunity arises, with Michelle of course, but also almost anyone who has thoughts about behaviour and communication, providing the presence of a sufficiency of time, energy, lack of risk, mutual comfort, and linguistic compatibility. In particular, if anyone has a question or concern about what something I say, write or do, or have done (aliseadea I do intend to get back to you on your message when I get back home), means, I encourage them to raise it with me for clarification. While in the main I expend considerable time, energy and care in the attempt to express myself as appropriately and in the best (including being considerate of others) way I can think of, I am painfully aware that I'm just not good enough to succeed all the time with all people in all circumstances on the first try. Also there isn't always time, energy etc...

Well, I'm off to Montreal for my first Worldcon. I'll be back in about a week. So much for writing about Mill Race beforehand. After I signed off last post, I woke up at lunch time on Tuesday. I thought that I might write in between moving laundry around and packing but I didn't get past the reading up that I had planned. I've got a twitter account now. I thought I'd try it out for the 'where am I' value while I'm travelling. I've got my sister's iPod touch with me to see how an iPhone might work out as opposed to a UMPC.

edited to add: Silly me. On twitter as LJseabream

Phew. That was fantastic. I just got back home a few hours ago after three days away, so I'm in that in between state of elated and exhausted, but I've got pages of notes (albeit, out of a not very large notebook), so, presuming that I write it up before I go to Montréal and my memory buffer overflows beyond the stage of keyword reminder memory triggers, I should be able to give a good supplemental account beyond the sketching out I'm doing here.

The Mill Race Festival in Cambridge Ontario had its 17th year this August long weekend. As one might expect from the name, folk music from British traditions made up the largest part of it, but less than half. Also represented were French Canadian (second), Métis, Cajun (I now have a better idea of what zydeco means), flamenco, French (Kudos to Angus Audio's sound people for knowing how to handle a hurdy-gurdy.), Peruvian, Appalachian, and probably others that I'm forgetting.

A few exclamatory remarks:

The Swamp Ward Orchestra puts a hurdy-gurdy, an accordion and a banjo together on stage. They make it work, even though traditional french folk doesn't properly use the banjo. I think that it was Alfie Smith who said, "Now if you got a bagpipe that would trigger the apocalypse."

Speaking of Alfie, my goodness what a voice. If you like bluegrass, and you can see him live, I highly recommend it.

Pub sings: Okay, so, there's a lot of content which is offensive or nasty towards a wide range of people, but if you can get past that, and you've got a good community of people, it's a powerful thing. This despite a few of the locals likening it to karaoke before television. If you can have a solid core of the crowd be professional touring musicians, or at equivalent skill level, so much the better. ...even if the Scottish accent on the verses is so thick that you can't tell exactly what the jinkies are that you've never seen the likes of "at McGuinty's Beer and Ale with a piggen on the spree".

Bette & Wallet (Marie Beth Carty et Gabriel Ouellette) Recycled music! While they also do traditional east coast/Quebecois jigs and reels, they also write songs about modern issues and put them to traditional-ish tunes. "Aubaines" about the excesses and imbalances of retail culture and "Squeegees" describing sacrifices people make for their cultural identity.

Swamperella and Tanglefoot both live up to their excellent reputations as performers. I think that I've found my new favourite hockey song (Seven on a side).

I have been awake now for going on 28 consecutive hours. That being the case, I'm perhaps a bit less alert than one might expect someone to be at close to 5:00 in the morning. But I have a few things I'm going to get out before sleeping, while I have the excuse that I'm too tired to be too self-critical and over-thinky.

I had a pretty good day today, so happy mrissa's birthday to me as well as, slightly belatedly to her.

I got about six errands done today, some of which have been on the list for quite a while now, none of which I was late for, all of which were successfully completed, and none of them involved a significant waste of time. I bought a pair of shoes that are pretty close to what I've been looking for since around 2004. The salesperson at New Balance was friendly and outgoing enough that we had a wider ranging conversation than I would normally expect when I'm shoe shopping. Particularly odd for me was that I was pretty comfortable. I'm considering giving her a contact method and asking her if she'd like to continue in a similar vein in a different context/venue. Really really odd.

Something recent cries out for me to put up the/series of sexuality and gender essays that I've been working on for long and long, but really, for that kind of subject, I still think that I want to have it go up as a personal, satisfying and joyful expression, over a reactive, externally focused, and tightly controlled piece.

I came across an interesting article in either The Globe and Mail or The Toronto Star, about what was described as the first known positive human autoimmune function. IIRC, the study showed that the immune system produces specialized T cells that target fat cells located in dangerous parts of the body (mostly in and around internal organs). There was some mention of implications for people with Type II diabetes and related insulin/chemical energy management conditions, with studies to follow. (Somewhat related: Sorry about the delay moiread on the e-mail. I was seeing what arrangements I could make around the VIA strike. With it over, something should be coming soonish.)

Definitely related: On CBC Radio 2 this morning, I heard the following song, by Arianne Moffatt, which is fitting since I've finally decided to go to Montréal for The 67th World Science Fiction Convention: Anticipation. I'm really looking forward to the people, conversation, and a better view of francophone SF. Here's Montréal. Enjoy.

So the Toronto Fringe Theatre Festival began on Wednesday (runs until Sunday the 12). At some level I knew this, but somehow I thought that that day would feel longer. Foolish of me, I know, because replenishing my stores of clean clothes, social energy, and get out of the house-ness after a trip very rarely happens that quickly. However, my sister, suffering under different conditions has managed to go, so I have a program guide and some recommendations of things for me to try out.

Among them:

The Silver Stage - Playing at The Bloor Cinema, full length presentations of films and video with live cast on stage shadowing the action and interpreting it in engaging and rewarding ways, audience participation encouraged. Rotating screenings of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Joss Whedon's Buffy Musical, Repo: A Genetic Opera and Jurassic Park (SIC SEMPER TYRANNOSAURUS REX!)

Out of Character - at the Cat's Eye Lounge, from the people who did Shadow Court at the Fringe in 2005, love and drama in a LARP context.

I'm home from about 11 days in Minnesota, during which I attended Fourth Street, and saw friends. Having cooked, eaten, flossed, brushed, and showered (Oh the feeling of the water here, and better controls, and, and, my shower!), I'm going to bed. Yes I know what time it is. That doesn't keep me from being tired. More to come when I've got more brain.

Welcome to new readers mt-champion and xb95.

This post was mostly written Thursday afternoon, but I wanted to finish it before posting. Given reading patterns, I'm just posting it as is rather than posting it using "date out of order".

( Inside Out begins + Daniel MacIvor in the city )

1) While pausing to turn on the light at the bathroom, I exhaled. Upon stepping forward, an unconscious associative process whose purpose seems to be providing life with a soundtrack kicked up for my conscious mind's consideration the melody of Cutting Crew's "(I just) Died in your arms" with the phrase "Something died in your mouth tonight". Another unconscious process, the sort of pedantic one that checks accuracy, sent up the note that this statement is highly likely to be true insofar as at least a single bacterium probably did, and in this context the accuracy is not very important; The combination of these two being sufficient for it not to object to the use without verification. A second note followed some minutes later with the observation that the statement would likely be true regardless of detectible odour, but it's less funny if not present.

1.5) Oh brain. This sort of thing is one of the reasons why I like spending my time with you. It also presents a good opportunity to link to Squishy the Neurotransmitter and the related Squishy Climbs The Neuron, mostly to show to kattas that yes, I did not hallucinate that someone (ursulav in this instance) did actually make art of this description.

2) In other news, last week appears to have been a good one for seeing geeky musical comedy in my area, with Flight of the Conchords at Massey Hall on Tuesday and Wednesday and Jonathan Coulton at Lula Lounge on Thursday and Friday. I was at none of these events. From what I've seen of Flight of the Conchords, I don't know that I would find a continuous set the best way to appreciate them. I would have been interested in trying for Jonathan Coulton's had I known about them before they sold out. I'm glad they did though. Had I found out about the shows afterwards and he hadn't I might have felt some guilt.

2.5) I'd been thinking about Flight of the Conchords due to a recommendation by my sister of their song Robots. She called it a song to listen to when finding humanity irritating. I would also say that it suits circumstances when one is finding computers no less irritating in ways that remind you of humanity.

3) My sister is now in "Special Projects" at her office. Which is a fun thing to have on a business card isn't it.

4) Plans to go group tree planting on Saturday were foiled by variously: a family birthday party, a distant afternoon engagement, and cowhunting. So I went to lunch with my Mum and an Aunt. (For whatever reason, in my family, the "ie" falls off the end of "Auntie" unless it's used like Mrs. As in, if pointing her out in a photo, I could say "That's my Aunt S." or "That's Auntie S." but not combine them.) What with the cowhunt, I did wonder whether the guy we saw walking down the street wearing a Monty Python shirt with image of an airborne cow under the words "Fetchez la vâche!" was purely coincidental. Actually I'm not sure whether it was "vâche" or "vache".

5) Happy Birthday Brackett! May you find the growth you are searching for.

Thanks to sunhawk's having a spare ticket, I was able to go to Neko Case's sold out Saturday performance at Trinity-St. Paul's United Church. Seeing her perform live, the image of her standing on a car holding an upraised sword makes vivid sense.


I'm saddened by the news that Librairie Champlain will be closing at the end of the month. It is the only place in the city of its kind that I know of. Other stores sell french language books, but they'd have so few that they'd be all in one section rather than by genre. At Champlain, they carry a full range of books, from beginner books for toddlers, children's books and YA, to general fiction, art criticism, history, classics, reference and more. In addition to books, you can find music, puzzles, even games. The staff is fully bi-lingual, friendly and knowledgeable.

In the country's largest city, where we have stores for Greek works, Tibetan works, Polish works, I think I even remember one for Romanian works, it is a great pity that we cannot sustain even one to represent our second official language. My understanding is that since the 1970's, Canada's francophone communities and families, historically more distributed and stronger in Central Canada and Eastern Canada than at present, have been under greater pressure to move to Quebec, or let go of the language. C'est dommage.

kattas has been accepted to teachers college, so a he invited a bunch of people out to celebrate this evening. I got something less than two hours of sleep last night, after a long day and not enough sleep the night before either. It could have gone either way, me going or not. I'm glad I did.

The group who made it to the first while was mostly from his LARP group, only one of whom I'd recalled meeting before, and him I'd last seen years ago. I arrived about 30 minutes after things started, or six hours into the conversation, depending on where you started counting from. I've done some tabletop and computer role playing gaming, but much of this conversation involved specifics to their shared experiences, so I had a good excuse to eat my food and gauge people's conversational styles and signals and settle in a bit before doing much active participation beyond referencing related anecdotal material.

After going to one of the party's apartments, conversation opened up with more topics and more simultaneous conversations. People were good about offering hooks and being inclusive in geeky ways. Later on, witchnyn and her housemate joined us, and more fun conversation was had. I left early because we're doing some family stuff tomorrow, but I left with a feeling that there were several people with whom investigation of opportunities for future conversation might be interesting.

It was so nice to finally get back into a sort of fast, free flowing conversation again. Thanks for the invitation kattas.

Dreamwidth is a fork of LiveJournal that I've mentioned to a few of you before. There are a number of things about it I like better than LiveJournal. Open Beta just got announced as starting on the 30th April 2009. ( More after the cut and miscellaneous stuff. )

I'm curious about a word usage pattern. I've seen the phrase "the week after" used as:
A) the week after the week that had been under consideration i.e: the next week
as well as
B) being short for "the week after the next week".

To restate for clarity, say Week One runs from the 4th to the 11th, Week Two from the 12th to the 18th and Week Three from the 19th to the 25. If one is offered an appointment on the 8th, but would rather have it in Week Two, in case A, one could inquire as to the availability of a time either by asking about "the next week" or "the week after". If in case B, only "next" would be correct because "the week after" would refer to Week Three.

From two non-authoritative sources, Case B is the generally taught and understood form in England and some of its current and former colonial territories. In my experience in Toronto, A applies more often than not, but B is sufficiently common that the usage is ambiguous unless you are familiar with the person using it. Based on this, I suspect that somewhere, A is what is generally taught and understood, but I don't know where. If it is similar to the bigendian vs. mixed endian state that we see in the case of dates, (i.e.: British - d/m/y, U.S.A. - m/d/y, Canadian - depends, trending American), then that would be the U.S.A.

Something else I'm curious about is whether that usage of after is also used with other units denoting a period.

So poll for those who use and are familiar with Case B.

Poll #1371986 After
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 1

I would (or have seen) use(d) 'after' as short for "the [x] after the next [x]" where [x]= check all that apply.

Current theatre - Rebecca Northan

I'm feeling interested in seeing this play. It's showing at The Brigantine Room at Harbourfront. It's collaborative improv, one of my favourite theatre styles, by Rebecca Northan.

Reviewed here by Richard Ouzounion

Further background: She was the director of Tracey Erin Smith's Fringe hit The Burning Bush, which IIRC at least one of you has seen and liked. She also directed, co-wrote and co-starred in "This is Cancer", which played the Fringe circuit in 2007.

Hmm. After some clicking around, I find The Spiegeltent 'n Tavern, from summer 2007. How did I miss this?! Cathy Gordon, Patricia O'Callaghan, The Rumoli Brothers, Rex Harrington, and yes, Rebecca Northan. Gah!

Anyway. Anyone feeling similarly inclined? Performances at 7:00 P.M. until Saturday.

Also upcoming at Harbourfront is Arabesque's latest: Egypt. March 5-8.

I'm just now getting to bed. If things had gone as planned this night, I might have had something to say about Coraline at this point. For once, the most likely path to this result - missing it for leaving too late - is not the one that I traveled this time. Though I left late enough that I needed to drive there, I did actually arrive in good time to buy a ticket and stand waiting for friends. Unfortunately, when kattas arrived, it was to tell me that witchnyn had fallen skating and was on her way to the hospital to wait for three hours to be seen. Seeing as I had a car, and knowing that Emergency room waits can be pretty long when the injury is not highly time sensitive, and that it was only about three and a half hours until the subway stopped running, I went along to offer a ride if one should be useful. By the time the two of us arrived at the hospital, the other members of the movie watching group were just leaving, so I ended up having a fairly extended conversation with kattas, who stayed until the end despite having to work Saturday. As it turned out, witchnyn got released with a cast for her fracture around 2:00. Since Fran's Diner was just across the road, none of us had eaten dinner, and cooking didn't seem like a fun thing, we ate before I dropped them home.

witchnyn has proposed making another attempt to see Coraline tomorrow, so perhaps I will have some thoughts then.

Goodnight all.

I'm trying for really quick (For me. Which means first order (factual regurgitation, little commentary, no analysis or synthesis) stuff. Which turns out to be just a bit under two hours. Sigh. Must get better.) as a sort of exposure. If this doesn't appeal to you skip this post. I have no idea when or if I'll get a properly done set of accompanying text on the subjects though, so you may miss them entirely if you do.

( The aforementioned subject header )

This looks beyond my ability to fix short of uninstall/reinstall. Sigh.



Fujitsu Menu


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Well, inspired by all the baking that people have been doing, and the arrival of our new oven, I decided to try a few things. Those being a banana loaf, and acarrot cake. These are the first cakes I've ever baked. More on how they turned out later - my father being the bargain hunter he is, and conscious of the reduction in net worth as a result of the financial stuff going on, is taking my sister shopping for the various articles of office clothing that she's short of. Not something I want to miss.

Merry Christmas to all who will be celebrating.

Congratulations for this week go to aedifica, her Mum and N, who moved over the weekend, alamoa and M who got married on Saturday.

In a minor way, also to me for not missing the second of this year's fantastic Sarah Slean holiday concerts at Harbourfront. There was delicious fudge (courtesy elizalavelle), the Passioneer card presentation, and musical guests NQ Arbuckle (also "Life is too short to listen to shitty music"), Miranda Mulholland (of The Roaring Girl Cabaret), Gentleman Reg (whose voice Sarah described as fluffy. A first for him I think.) Royal Wood, the Blue Spruce Quartet (The Shaw Festival's resident string quartet: Karen Graves: violin, Kathryn Sugden: violin, Anna Redekop: viola and Alex Grant: cello), and a bassist and drummer whose names I can't remember, but had mad style. Guests I missed but my sister got to see on Friday were Emm Gryner, Andrew Burashko and lenni jabour (whose surname could be described as "spelled the way it sounds" without really narrowing it down very much). A pleasant surprise was seeing strophie, antheiasilva and Ava (? sorry.) friends and old schoolmates of my sister's who I haven't seen in months/years.

And that's all I have to say about that right now because I'm supposed to leave the house in about three and a half hours [note to self, bring a radio]. This entry is partly so that I remember when this was. Hopefully Harper will be out on Monday.

Sigh (or Argh., depending). I was dreaming as I was waking up, so for the moment, I can remember enough of the dream for... I don't want to forget it, because I liked it. Remembering it would probably require writing it down, with attendant writerly problems of not adequately representing thoughts and various other things that influence me in the previously stated directions of not wanting to be a writer. Unlike a lot of dreams, it even hangs together as a short story plot, theme, character shorthand, "message". Darn.

Now off to get the car serviced.

I've discovered that reading Robin McKinley's Sunshine, or Nina Kiriki Hoffman's A Fistful of Sky, helps when I have a deficiency in motivation to eat. That said, the hungers developed by those particular books aren't necessarily the most healthy for me since both lean heavily towards the buttery pastry side of things. Also, the foods may not be the easiest to come by. Which leads me to the question of cinnamon rolls (not as big as my head). While Hollywood Gelato's cinnamon roll gelato is really nice, it isn't a substitute. Even had tanac's recipe turned out well for her, well, if I were astrology inclined, I might say that I was not born under a baking star. As it is, I note that I am untrained, and have a kitchen that is made incomplete by the absence of a working oven (though we're taking steps). I'm not fond of Cinnabon's variety. That thing where the insides leak out and have the consistency of a cross between raw egg and mucous is not my thing in this instance (there are some savoury fried fungus, fish and vegetable dishes where this is the desired texture). A useful example might be Saint Cinnamon's raisin cinnamon rolls circa early 90's. You could taste the butter, the rolls were hot, really soft and heavy and the icing was plentiful, creamy and not too sweet. Torontonians have any favourite sources that I might try?

And while I'm at it, would anyone have any suggestions for healthier appetite whetting fiction?

Today I saw a good, thought provoking, funny*, unusual, modern dance performance. I'm doing my usual for theatre dance and seeing it twice - once from back and high (tonight), once from close and low (tomorrow). There are definitely things about it I would like to discuss with someone. This led me to the realization that I know none of my friends well enough to know which, if any, would have strong reactions, let alone what direction and on which axes those would be, to this particular piece. Asking someone and recommending that they spend most of an evening and $30 on a performance without some better knowledge is uncomfortable, especially when most of them aren't long on either resource. Buying them a ticket is more so because it feels like paying someone to have a conversation (not that people don't do that in lots of socially acceptable ways - a lot of schooling, therapy, counselling - but doing it as socializing has negative connotations) and it does nothing about the time factor. About the point where I feel least bad is to point out its existence and ask that if any of them do see it and feel like talking about it, to consider letting me know. If any of you were actually there tonight and I didn't notice you, I'm sorry. I did see someone who I'm pretty sure was Louis Laberge-Côté (looks like him, the person next to him addressed him as Louis, and he is a dancer), who unfortunately won't be performing with the Chimera Project (performing in Toronto in April - I intend to see them) for awhile since he severely dislocated his finger backwards in a fashion difficult to recover from.

In Toronto, La Pornographie des âmes (Bare Naked Souls), the 2004 piece by choreographer Dave St-Pierre of Montreal is showing until the 15th at Harbourfront Centre's Fleck Dance Theatre (formerly the Premiere Dance Theatre), and there are still what I would call good seats available for all three remaining nights. Evidently it is touring in other locales, but I don't know where or when.

http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/worldstage/nakedsouls.cfm
http://walrusmagazine.com/articles/2008.12-dance-barenaked-soul-dave-st-pierre/

While I'm not comfortable saying 'I don't know if you'll like this, but here's a ticket if you discuss it with me afterwards', if any of you decide for yourselves that you think that you would like to see it and would go but for the price, I would be happy to provide you with a ticket as a gift.

*er, for values of funny that are not incompatible with, for example, an impression of a theatrical death of a zombie squirrel

Yesterday was Violette Malan's book signing at Bakka-Phoenix Books. I haven't read her books yet, though they are on the list of books to check out at the library to see if I should buy them. Half a Crown finally arrived at the store, so I decided to drop in anyway.

( friends, conversation, language, commerce )

That, warm spiced apple juice, and the fact that a second date for the Sarah Slean Holiday concerts have been announced make my day.

In other news, judging by the cold sweats, the difficulty in staying warm, the intermittent head throbbing, and the stomach discomfort, I appear to be coming down with something.

Oh nostalgia. When I was young there was a show that I saw about four episodes of. It was my introduction to giant transforming mechs, space westerns, and though I didn't know it at the time, the practice of licensing the video of a japanese anime, rewriting, revoicing and recutting it with different characters, a different plot and new music to make it a completely different thing (transformative much anyone?). It had one of the most memorable theme songs of any show I've encountered. By the standards of an adult, I would guess it to be really clumsy and clunky. In English it was called Saber Rider and The Star Sherrifs. I understand that it was Bismarck in Germany. It is coming out on DVD on November 18, and yes, I'm buying it and the soundtrack discs. :P

In Cantonese there is an expression, customarily used in reference to a person whose relationships tend to follow a given pattern, or more seldom, to refer to romances of that description. Roughly translated, it means "single-layer copper cookware" for being quick to warm and quick to cool. I was wondering what english equivalents there might be because I couldn't think of any. For that matter, I'm curious as to how the concept appears in other cultures and languages as well, though here I'm not surprised at my lack of knowledge since outside of english, my depth of familiarity with specific idiomatic expressions drops off precipitously.

In case I don't end up posting tomorrow, happy birthday wishes going to gryphynshadow, whose day it is tomorrow.

I'm glad to see that a number of my friends have had happy Thanksgiving weekends. We don't really have much in the way of extended family around here, so we don't make it a big thing, but we did go up a bit north of Aurora to take in some of the high colour saturation, sharp edged, clear autumn scenery and enjoy a filling country-ish dinner.