Monthly Archives: April 2002

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Do you read The Brunching Shuttlecocks? If you don’t, you should. I don’t know how I’ve forgotten to add their link to the left for so long. A quote from one of their latest rating articles, the subject being Keyboard Characters:

“Backslash:
I have, at various points in my life, been in the position to use both some form of DOS and some form of UNIX. Those of you who have no duck-strangling idea what I’m talking about, just smile and nod. The only point here is that DOS uses backslashes a lot and UNIX uses forward slashes a lot and the effect of using both is somewhat like having Darth Vader for homeroom and Yoda for first period. Many say that DOS is the dark side, but actually UNIX is more like the dark side: It’s less likely to find the one way to destroy your incredibly powerful machine, and more likely to make upper management choke. C-“

Go. Browse their ratings and reviews of things like Canadian Snack Foods, Power Tools, and Psychic Powers.

Wee Smas

So I’m here at 4:45 AM, tuning up my blog. Can’t sleep. Probably has something to do with having a glass of red wine, watching an hour of TV, and going to bed at 9 PM last night. When I woke up at 3:30 AM I knew it was game over, but I tried to lie in bed for a little while anyway, in case sleep decided to mosey on back. No such luck. So here I am, with a cat on my lap (if you knew I was using my ergonomic kneeling chair you’d understand how creative this positioning of cat can be), listening to the very first Mediaeval Baebes album, Salva Nos, which I picked up yesterday to complete my set. It has the stunning, show-stopping Gaudete on it, which is one of the pieces of music which can seize me no matter what I’m doing, get my blood flowing and lift me spiritually out of whatever mood I’ve been in. A great track to raise energy, if you put it on repeat and sing along. Assuming you can sing Latin and understand what you’re singing. Which I can, in Gaudete. (Insert smirk here.) It also has the phenomenal title track, Salva Nos, which is, like Gaudete, another chant to Mary, whom we all know is the Goddess anyway, right? (Yes, I’m getting the Latin down for that one too, rather rapidly.)

Salva nos, Stella Maris
Et regina celorum
Que pura Deum paris […]
Salva nos, Stella Maris
Et regina celorum
O virgo specialis
Sis nobis salutaris
Imperatrix celorum […]
Lux cecis, dux ignaris
Solamen angelorum!

Oooh… I just get shivers. Which have nothing to do with being barefoot in the middle of the night when the temperature has dropped twenty degrees (honestly, does anyone remember something called a seasonal temperature?).

I know what this means. It means I’ll have to take a nap this afternoon, or risk falling asleep in the middle of the student round-table discussion I’m co-moderating tonight.

Speaking of students, I pulled off another spectacular workshop Tuesday night. I’m beginning to think that I really am good at this, and people aren’t just saying it to be nice.

CURRENTLY READING:

Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age by Vivianne Crowley. There exists an interesting phenomenon in the Wicca division of occult publishing. There are hundreds of 101 texts, and very few advanced texts. Why? Because it’s an experiential religion, meaning once the basics are communicated you have to build on them yourself, creating your own relationship with the Divine. No one, published author or otherwise, can tell you how that’s done. They can give you suggestions, but in essence, you become your own 201 text. Which is very cool, but a bit frustrating as well. Anyway, the upshot of all this is I read a lot of 101 texts, partially to become familar with the variety of crap and fluff that’s being published, but also to zero in on the good stuff, the wheat amongst the chaff that I can recommend to seekers when they interrupt – er, ask my help at work. I enjoy it a lot more than people might think. Sure, the basics are repetative, but the interesting thing is how the authors express those basics, what angle they approach them from. You can learn a lot about the complexities of spiritual and religious philosophy from how the same thing is said a dozen different ways. Vivianne Crowley is a nice, solid, British antidote to a lot of the fluff that’s being sold these days. It’s not new; it was originally published in 1996. This is a revised edition; hence the subtitle.

Meeting of the Waters by Caiseal M�r. It says it’s book one of The Watchers. We’ll see if it makes the trilogy potential or not. Alternate Celtic fantasy, set around the Fir Bolg/Danaan clash. It’s got ravens, standing stones, harps, druids, cover art by Yvonne Gilbert that I fall for every time, damn it. Eh. It’s bus-reading material, which in my world means a book that fits in my bag (Trollope has been relegated to at-home reading), a story that isn’t too complex (a book that gets picked up and put down frequently can’t be too deep or intricate otherwise you spend too much time trying to remember what happened), a story that isn’t so meaningful that I’ll become too involved and miss my stop.

Are You Not Over That Yet?

Ah. It all becomes clear.

The reason that the US is bombing our soldiers, raising import duties on our softwood, and dishonouring our flag by not only letting it touch the ground but spreading it out on the floor of hockey dressing rooms, is all because they’re still smarting from that little manoeuver we did in 1814. You know, the one where we managed to penetrate all the way to Washington and burn down the White House.

Yeah, that would rankle. Thanks to the Grand Poohbah for clarifying.

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I was stunned when I tripped across a newswire report on-line last night announcing the deaths of the four Canadian soliders in Afghanistan.

We haven’t lost people in action in over fifty years, and four of our people are killed by a stray bomb? A stray US bomb, at that, in an area where there shouldn’t have been one, and the pilot was told not to drop it, only to mark the spot.

Gee, with friends like that, who needs enemies?

Apparently the pilot thought he was under attack and taking fire, having seen live fire on the ground where the Canadians were doing field exercises. Last I understood, “taking fire” meant taking fire. I’m fairly certain nothing was flying in the sky around the plane that was dangerous.

The pilot will have to live with this for a long time, I hope. A very, very long time. I hope he feels soul-twisting anguish daily for his leapt-to conclusion resulting in the deaths of Sgt. Marc Leger, Cpl. Ainsworth Dyer, Pte. Richard Green, and Pte. Nathan Smith, who will never again see their sweethearts, hand their mothers bouquets of flowers on Mothers’ Day, flip burgers with their dads at family barbecues, catch a football, or sing our national anthem.

War sucks. People leave knowing they might not come back. We watch our friends and loved ones go, knowing that it might be the last time we see them, that enemy action might mean they’ll be lost to us. To lose someone in a stupid, stupid accident – to an ally, no less – is a shocking, cold-water sort of ending to our struggle to cope with the awareness that any day we might hear that our loved one is dead. Such an ending mocks their willingness to lay their lives on the line, as well as our strength and courage to support them in that decision.

Live with that, US pilot. Live with the shame, and the guilt, and the embarrassment.

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Your Canada Reads! update: Wednesday, they voted Margaret Laurence’s Stone Angel (which I read when I was sixteen and didn’t enjoy; it disturbed me, although I have enjoyed other Margaret Laurence works) off the list in Wednesday. Yesterday, they voted off Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance (which I have not read, and intend to very soon). What they end up with for the first ever national book club will be very, very interesting…

Ceri reports that Coca-Cola will be releasing a new flavour in May. You guessed it: Vanilla Coke! Woo-hoo! It’s coming out mid-May in the USA, and up here in the True North Strong And Free sometime later. I foresee a strike force crossing the border to grab some, because heck, I certainly don’t want to wait…

My only problem is, whatever will I do with that bottle of vanilla schnaaps in the cupboard?

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Well, I did it – my applications for English and Humanities teaching positions for the Dawson Cont. Ed. summer session have been handed in. The girl who took my envelopes even said “good luck”. I have a good feeling about this. If you could all cross your fingers (or your toes or your eyes or whatever you do) to help me along in this, I’d appreciate it. (At this point, the scene near the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone where Ron bellows, “ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?” at Hermione comes to mind, for some strange reason…)

Heck, I’m just impressed that I went ahead and did it. I’m quite good at rationalising the status quo in my life. I like being safe. So this action of actually going out and asking for reference letters, doing the C.V. and taking it in to Human Resources (in person too!) is a huge step for me. I think it’s because I’m looking at this as being an investment in making a better kind of safe status quo. If I have to be in retail, the shop where I work is the best place to be, but there’s a whole other world of career out there.

Plus, I took the 104 bus into town, so I got to see what the route looked like in reverse. I even said to myself, “Self, this is the bus you’ll be taking into work once you get the job and have, say, a ten o’clock class.” (Accentuate the positive!)

Whew!

Now, I wait…