dogslife

You're not going to write me a book report on The Cave? At the rate I'm going, you will have finished it, plus penned your first novel, before I'm in sight of the end.

I think I found my copy for ~$3 USD, at a bizarre bookstore in a bazaar in a small beach town that only sold heavily discounted books published 1-3 years ago. How do these stores exist?

My father doesn't fear or hate, but he does say really really really stupid stuff racically in an attempt to be funny. TO PEOPLE'S FACES. It's all really really retarded and not meant to be hurtful. Seriously, think Curb your Enthuasiam and you have an idea.

...anyway the main reason I'm leaving a comment is I never clicked on your profile before. I swear I thought your profile pic was Jesus until just now! Now that I've seen it enlarged and realize that's a t-shirt and not white robes, nor does it look anything like Jesus, I feel like an idiot.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear your making sure your youngest brother is being raised right!

I think I already knew your name, through some other avenue, before Obuibo. However, I get no hints from Obuibo, so maybe I'm missing something. If it's a literary reference, it's likely in my blind spot, which is quite wide. I tell myself, hey, I'm a linguist- we don't 'do' literature.

If you ever do unleash Obuibo, he should submit some things to the Words section. I'm sure it would be much better than a significant portion of what's already there.

Saramago- The Cave. I never read Blindness, but picked up a copy at some point and either gave it to someone as a gift or misplaced it among the boxes of books. Either way, it's taking me forever. The style of prose reminds me of Fuentes' style in The Death of Artemio Cruz, which makes me worry that it's an artifact of reading Spanish in translation.

My sister and I went through a situation that was similar to yours with your brother. She's a bit younger than me, but grew up with me around the house. Your approach worked for me. If you can give a reasoned explanation, I think it wins kids over. Too bad the same doesn't work for adults, who usually have some cretinous explanation for their prejudices (cf. the HerrHakenkreuz debate on the CE board last week, for example).

Sunday, March 7th, at Lee's Palace in Toronto: Mike Doughty. Formerly of Soul Coughing. All around snazzy cat. I've described Soul Coughing as "hyper-literate stream-of-consciousness-white-boy-jazz-hop". His solo stuff is just like that, only acoustic. I have no idea if you're close enough to TO to make the trip out feasible (I've just been operating on the assumption that you're in/near Mississauga), but I intend to be there, with a few bucks reserved to buy you a beer if you make it out.

Just thought I'd throw it out there. What could be more fun than a night of great music and my unfettered fanboyism?

You know, I think the only significant cosmetic difference between the Mazda3 and the Protg5 is the front grille. And I do still prefer the 5, but it looks like the 3 may have it trumped in every other category.

I gotta test drive one of those space-car bad boys.


[Edited on Feb 23, 2004 1:57PM]

Wow.

I once had to do live sound for a Church service at which the nice guest speaker who travelled all the way from the US of A to share his message of God's eternal love explained that if people were capable of dealing with sex responsibly, we simply wouldn't have homosexuality. Don't get me wrong - it was as candycoated a way as I can imagine of conveying that God loves everybody -- except fags, of course. But the chilling thing was looking over the faces of the assembled faithful - smiling as they felt the divine justification of their bigotry fall over them. I was pissed.

I had to make a call between professionalism and personal justification - I wanted to throw the entire board wide open and let the bastard's head explode from the feedback, and just walk out. Unfortunately, the guy that ran the studio at which I was working at the time was a member of that church, and it would have cost me my job. Alas.

But I have a lot of gay and bisexual friends. Anybody who uses "that's so gay", or its equivalent, gets a polite but firm warning from me. Itent counts for a lot - I'll very often use certain words for ironic purposes - ie lampooning the mentality of those who use them normally. But I'll only do that in certain circles - people who appreciate the irony, and who know what I'm about.

I remember there was a gaming news site that I used to read fairly regularly. It is populated, as most gaming sites of any notability are, by a handful of guys who actually understand the industry and are capable of providing a bit of actual insight into games and gaming, and about a million teenage dipshits who haven't left their mom's basement in months who value that most vital of internet freedoms: to use words that your parents won't let you use in the house, and to hide behind total anonymity while you do it.

The average comment thread on the site would probably garner about 10 posts from users. Usually, something being "teh ghey" will be one of those comments. On one occasion, somebody took issue with it. This thread quickly grew to an unprecedented 90+ posts. There were maybe a half dozen of us recommending a little respect, courtesy, and sensitivity. And about fifty dipshiats who wanted to trumpet the unassailable logic that it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, and other useless bullshit. It was heartbreaking to realize there were that many assholes lurking at the site, and that it would take such a pointless (as pertaining to a gaming news site) topic to drag the trolls out of the woodwork. And boy, did they have a lot to say on the matter.

I wish there was a way to physically smack somebody upside the head through the internet. I'd have worn out the button that day, but it would have been worth it. I merely stopped going to the site. I'm still horrified to think that mentality can even exist. Sigh.

My father, I'm happy to say, is my hero. We have a great relationship. He was always strict, and I've inherited his temper, which I don't necessarily like in myself any more than I liked it in him, but for the most part he's an extremely loving, kind, and generous person. He has more friends than anybody I've ever met.

Retired now, he spent the largest part of his career as a teacher (before which, I'm pretty sure he held every conceivable job on the planet, from miner to folk singer) - and it was through that vocation that I came to really understand and respect him. He was always going the extra mile for his students to see that they got every opportunity (attention he lavished on my brother and I in equal measure, forming a support base along with my mother that I attribute as the chief factor in every success my brother and I have had), and he was especially good with kids who a lot of other teachers - and people in general - might have written off. He didn't care about race, creed, or circumstance. He treated everyone well, and with respect.

There was one awkward moment I can recall - he had travelled to Toronto to visit my brother and I, and after a lovely dinner out (at Seniors, near St. Clair station, and if you've never had the pleasure but enjoy a good steak and taramosalata, i can't recommend it highly enough), we were standing at a subway platform. The assembled crowd was the typical cultural mosaic that you'd expect on any TTC platform. My brother and I were long since accustomed to the city's diversity, but you could spend days patrolling our hometown and scarcely see a face that wasn't white. (I want to emphasize this, at the risk of giving away the end of the story: there is a very important difference between a surprised observation and any kind of prejudice.)

So, while we ticked off the minutes for the next train to arrive, my father looked around and said "Wow, it looks like we're the only..."

My brother and I froze. I forget who had the presence of mind to cut him off first.

A firm "Dad..."

He paused, a bit confused. But he wanted to finish his point.

We were quickly reduced to pleading, hoping that our conversation hadn't yet reached a volume sufficient to draw any attention outside of ours. "We know Dad. Please. Let it go."

Unwilling (did I mention he's stubborn?) to leave his sentence unfinished, he compromises with "...people from Northern Ontario here."

Sigh.

Occasional awkward moments aside, he's a great guy and has been a wonderful father. I couldn't ask for a better one.

My dad is a paraniod schizophrenic and a recovering alcoholic. Unfortunately, he didn't start "recovering" early enough to play a major role in my childhood. Sometimes he would miss our softball games, or picking us up for the weekend because he was at the bar. While we were spending the weeekend with him, he'd go for a long "walk" and come home reeking of booze and cigs. He's a bigot, and still refers to African-Americans as "coloreds." One day he told me he was proud of his kids, and I'm thinking "oh, that's nice." Then he goes on to say he's so proud of us because his girls like boys and his boy likes girls . He'll pacify you to your face, and then turn around and do the exact opposite when you're not around. Last week, he hit a dog while driving, and refused to check on the dog, even though my brother begged him to.

So, yeah, that's my dad. And I love him, I guess.

I realize that buying state of the art electronics is a losing proposition from the outset, but I do so love gizmos. However, a 50" widescreen DLP for around five grand is pretty sweet, given what decent large-format TVs were going for even just a year or two ago. Plasmas and LCDs are prohibitively expensive, I haven't seen a quality CRT in a widescreen, and projection models risk burn-in (a problem for any gamer), so DLP seemed like the answer, except for the fact that it has this one latency issue which makes it unacceptable for the rhythm-gamer set. Apparantly it also throws off his Street Fighter, and we can't have that. Otherwise I might beat him once in a while.

Nonetheless, I think the car is ultimately the way to go. (Besides, if you and God are on the same page, I'd be a fool to resist.) Besides, in our tiny apartment, the TV is about three feet from the couch, so even my meagre 19" RCA that I bought in University for three hundred bucks is effectively seventy-five feet wide from that distance.

I may have to start perusing the dealerships to decide between the Acura and the Mazda. I'm giving a closer look to the Mazda3 now, but I think my heart will always belong to the Protege5. Is it wrong of me to like the yellow one? Back when I was still living with my parents, my mom drove a yellow jeep that I wound up using a great deal of the time, and my friends had no end of fun with the colour. I affectionately referred to it as "the Tonka". But I see the yellow P5s on the road now and they always catch my eye.

I never claimed to have any sense of style. I just know what I hate. And I don't hate those.

If my gf and I were to ever part ways, I think the material possessions would be pretty easy to sort through. We have pretty distinct tastes, and the only major purchase we've done jointly was a big Ikea run last summer, and just about everything in that transaction was bought in pairs. Still, I don't think the fact that sorting the property would be easy would make the rest of it any easier. We could have had a car for the two of us ages ago, but we're keeping the big things seperate for now, just until we're sure that we're sure. We's in no rush.

[Edited on Feb 21, 2004 8:47AM]

NO TAG BACKS

Ho. Re:HOOK UP, I meant no harm, I was interested in a picture of a jacket that was posted by flux a while ago, and then it all went pear shaped. I'm sorry if I offended anyone, especially said jacket wearer, which I've allready appologized to. Why am I saying this, as if you should care about my appologies... I guess I want to lead a life of reconciliation.

<--

[Edited on Feb 20, 2004 6:27AM]

The world's literary gravity seems to be every writer's enemy. [here is where I disgrace your journal by continuing to write about people whose work is profoundly un-literary] I went to a reading by William Gibson earlier tonight [ack! sci-fi alert! run!], who basically talked about doing the same thing for everything he's published, including Neuromancer and his most recent book. On the other side, of course, is the idea that when you have a good idea, but nowhere else to go with it, setting it aside for more work in the future is the best and possibly most difficult act of self-preservation imaginable.

[To salvage my reputation, I'm currently reading something by Jose Saramago]

And as for the question from your last entry, I think you should only switch to Obuibo if you can promise us the same lack of propriety you attribute to that character. I'd pay to see a dogslife doppelganger wreak havoc.

I totally agree with you. I'm probably coming off on the Boards like a huge industry thug right now, but I think that copyright law has to become a lot more clear, and that fair use has to be expanded to realistically encompass the genuine needs of the end-user.

New ventures are most definitely needed, and the current model isn't sustainable.

But why does it have to change because people are killing it, and not simply because the technology is there to redefine it?

At the end of the day, why isn't "you shouldn't do it because it's wrong" a good enough argument?

Yes, we finally convinced the navy to stop testing their damned nukes out at the base.

I want to point out that I did read your earlier entry about the importance of form (ie a book is deliberately a book, whereas a film is deliberately a film, and a small furry creature from alpha centauri is deliberately a small furry creature from alpha centauri), but I was curious if I could get you to think about your own art outside the box, just for a bit of fun.

I hate going to the dentist.

Okay, less cooking, more journals!!!

I'm chairbound and bored! (Which would make a particularly nasty double entendre subtitle for a scene from Pulp Fiction, now that I think of it.)

I have a whole pile of Talking Heads stuff, starting with the Sand in the Vaseline compilation and then moving on into purchasing the individual albums. I don't know if they're remasters or not, but it's positively eerie how much quality output those guys had. I've even got the book ("This Must Be The Place") sitting unread on my shelves after years of hitting every Chapters and Indigo I came across in desperate hope of seeing it. I should tear into that. I've got a few weeks to kill.