Le Trottoir Imbecile

movin' on up

2010-02-03T05:16:00.000-08:00

I've decided to pack my bags and move to ... Word Press.

The decision was made rather suddenly. I was telling someone about my blog (i.e. shamelessly promoting myself), and when this person asked 'What's it called?' it took me 10 minutes to say the name, spell it out, and then try to explain it. I'm no web specialist, but even I realized that giving your blog a completely obscure name is not the best way to attract an audience. I was limiting myself to a few good friends and anyone who happened to include the words "imbecile" and "trottoir" in their google search, ensuring a further level of obscurity because most of these people would be French, and my blog is written in "English."

So onward, ever onward!

You'll find me here.

me and [insert clever blogging idea here]

2010-02-01T01:43:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to think of a "Julie and Julia" gimmick that could win me more readers but it's harder than that Julie chick made it look. She started with a cookbook so I figure I should choose another sort of reference material. Here are some possibilities I've been mulling over:

Atlas: I could try visiting every country in the atlas (Pros: I'd get to see the world; I'd finally figure out where Togo is. Cons: expensive, time-consuming, would require me to visit Poland, unless I based it on my actual atlas, from which I've excised all references to Poland).

The Guinness Book of World Records: I could try to beat all the records. (Pros: would involve a lot of eating. Cons: too many opposing goals -- you'd have to be the fattest AND the skinniest, the tallest AND the shortest, the fastest AND the slowest; could also potentially require me to visit Poland).

Medical Dictionary: I could try contracting every disease in a standard medical dictionary. (Pros: could potentially be done from the comfort of my own home. Cons: wouldn't make for particularly light-hearted reading; could actually kill me).

Phone Book: I could try calling everyone in a given phone book. (Pros: could definitely be done from home; requires no particular skill. Cons: they might start calling back).

FBI's 10 Most Wanted: I could try to capture the FBI's 10 most wanted fugitives. Failing that, I could at least hang out with them. (Pros: would make more interesting reading than an account of making boeuf bourguignon. Cons: I would have to learn Spanish, as five of them are Hispanic; none of them is particularly cute - see for yourself, this is the FBI's actual 10 most wanted list. If they spent as much time looking for fugitives as they did experimenting with fonts, they'd probably whittle it down in no time.)

three days of the condor

2010-01-26T23:49:00.000-08:00

Today, I will review the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.

Available for rental, presumably, for years (in both VHS and later, DVD format I would imagine) it only went on sale at the Palac knih Luxor on Wenceslas Square in Prague recently, and I only bought and watched it yesterday, which explains why this review is 35 years late.

But let's not get bogged down in recriminations.

The movie is about Robert Redford, whose character's name escapes me now, but really, who cares? He's ROBERT REDFORD. He works for the CIA except he doesn't really, because he's not involved in any nasty CIA business, he just reads books - apparently in search of plans the CIA has in the past implemented or could potentially implement in future. He claims to read EVERYTHING, but that seems a little nonsensical to me. For example, would he read, Jane Eyre, in case the CIA has in the past or may in future pose as a plain governess who falls in love with a man who keeps his crazy Creole wife locked in the attic? (Although, that is ringing bells...Chile? the '70s? I must look that up.)

But let's not get bogged down in plot details. (Because frankly, I'm not sure I really followed it.)

This movie made me nostalgic for the '70s. In the '70s, for those of you who weren't there, or don't remember, people used to smoke a lot. INDOORS. I think it says a great deal about how our culture has evolved that 35 years later, I find the site of the receptionist smoking away while typing more shocking than any of the (many) shootings in this film.

Of course, that could be because, in the '70s, when people got shot, they bounced around a bit but they didn't bleed much. They rolled down stairs and fell out of office chairs, but they did it with minimum gore. I have to say, I liked that about the '70s.

But to get to back to the story, everyone in Robert Redford's office gets shot and he's saved only because he's gone out to get them lunch. When he returns and discovers the carnage (or what passed for carnage in the '70s) he realizes he's in danger and goes on the lam.

There follow a number of plot twists and turns during which the alert viewer will no doubt realize who is betraying whom, and the less alert viewer will have no idea who is betraying whom but will be happy, nonetheless, just watching ROBERT REDFORD.

Max Von Syndow plays a pivotal role as a creepy gun-for-hire from Europe (in the '70s, all the villains were European).

The opening credits note that the movie was based on the book "Six Days of the Condor," and I am really curious as to what happened to those other three days.

In short, a film that really must be seen to be properly appreciated (and perhaps seen a couple of times to be properly understood).

troubleshooting

2010-01-14T00:02:00.001-08:00

This morning I've arrived at work only to discover we have a client-facing pivot table issue!

It's like reporting for duty on the deck of the enterprise just in time for a Klingon attack.

I'm psyched. I've been training for years for this moment. Bring on the client-facing pivot tables, I say! AND LET THEM PREPARE TO DIE!

Before beaming down to the planet of pivots, however, I need to find that one key member of my party - the character you've never seen on any previous episode of Star Trek, the one who really should have a big bull's-eye painted on his forehead because he may be beaming down, but the only way he'll be beamed back up is in mason jars. Or the distant-future equivalent of mason jars. I suppose the science of food preservation will have progressed by leaps and bounds by then.

Wish me luck!

(And if you're wondering why I've been left to command the Enterprise, it's because Captain Kirk is busy these days making goo-goo eyes at Gene Simmons.)

windows 2010

2010-01-13T00:11:00.000-08:00

Guys! I would have written sooner, but I've been soooooo busy, what with traveling to the land of my people (Scotland, not Tesco), remaining vigilant (something I've been doing since 9/11, and THOUGHT I could dispense with when Obama got elected but oh no, now I've got to worry about my EasyJet seat mate setting his underwear on fire during the approach to Stansted. One benefit of EasyJet, however, is that there is no in-flight entertainment - you have to make your own - and remaining vigilant, done correctly, can be very entertaining. My latest act of vigilance is to reply, when asked whether I'd prefer a window or an aisle seat, "I'd like to sit next to the Dutch filmmaker, please."), and committing the new office regulations to memory.

Have I mentioned the new office regulations? They arrived in an email with the subject line "Open Windows." Techie that I am, I assumed they were announcing they'd switched to pirated Microsoft software as a cost-cutting measure. Instead, I found a list of rules pertaining to the actual, physical windows in our office. To wit:

1. We will not leave the windows wide open during the winter until the very end of the day because it causes the air temperature to drop too quickly and the room takes too long to reheat.

2. The small windows above J**** will be left open for an hour or two (possibly longer), two or three times a day.

3. The office door will be left open for the circulation of air.

4. I will leave the big windows wide open every day for a few minutes just before I leave, while I'm getting ready to leave.

5. I will turn the radiator off just before I leave and will turn it back on when I arrive in the morning.

As they've recently introduced recycling bins for paper and plastic, I can only assume our office oxygen recirculation rules are part of the same initiative - we will also recycle our air. Our department has been a thought leader in that area - I breathed some air yesterday that I recognized immediately as vintage 2006 (fruity with just a hint of my old boss's hand cream).

I want to do my bit, but I'm afraid these rules are simply not sufficiently DETAILED. What if, for example, he wants to open wide the window and THEN get ready to leave, rather than doing the two simultaneously? Would that be considered a breach of the rules and if so, one subject to what sort of sanctions? And speaking of sanctions, none are mentioned. Can you really expect people to obey rules when no punishment awaits them for disobeying?

I mean, what's to stop me from throwing all the windows wide open the moment I arrive in the morning?

And jumping screaming out them?

taking stock

2009-12-14T04:08:00.001-08:00

This decade and I have never been close (10 years in and I still don't know what to call it) but I'm not going to let that stop me from saying something potentially definitive about it.

I've chosen to concentrate on those features of the '00s (the decade we were all licensed to kill) with which I will no longer put up:

1. Dream Sequences. If the only way you can derive interest from a story line is to abandon it completely in favor of a pointless, plotless, feverish romp with dwarves and dead people and ducks (we're looking at you, Mr. David Chase!) it's probably time for a new story line.

2. User Forums. When I have a problem with my computer hardware or software, what I require is a user-friendly SOLUTION. What I do not require is a page of posts from people who a) have the same problem; b) had the problem but solved it by retying their shoes while facing north; c) had the same problem but solved it by rebuilding their computer from scratch, switching operating systems and re-reading The Art of Computer Programming; d) think my inability to solve my own problem makes me a Nazi.

3. Nasty Reality Show Judges. Enough, already. I don't even watch these shows and I know who Simon Callow is - and I know someone should sit up all night and SLAP him. Do people really get off more on seeing untalented people humiliated than seeing talented people triumph? If they do, then they should be ashamed of themselves, these people.

4. Celebrities. I call for an Age of Obscurity. Let's not talk about anyone who hasn't accomplished something of real worth (as determined by a panel that does not include Simon Callow) for the next 10 years.

5. "Green" Products. You want to save the earth? Stop buying so much shit!

6. Dick Cheney. Traditionally, the only way a former vice president of the US could continue to command media attention was to become president (this explains why George Bush Sr is occasionally in the limelight and could even be said to explain Al Gore's continued prominence - he did, after all, become president; he was just rudely deprived of the opportunity to serve). Why does Dick Cheney continue to appear, Jacob Marley-like, in our lives? I submit that if the media are to continue giving air time and column inches to Cheney, they should devote equal attention to Dan Quayle and Walter Mondale.

I know that for this to be a proper end-of-decade list it should have 10 items, but you know what? Life just isn't that tidy and rather than add four, half-hearted final items to make the quota, I will end here. Abruptly.

(Pictured above right: Walter Mondale. I'm doing my part to redress the imbalance.)

learning english?

2009-12-11T00:32:00.001-08:00

I happened to hear Radio Ceska's English lesson this morning and I may never be the same.

I stopped what I was doing to write it down, dictation-style, and I present it here to see if you find it equally disturbing.

It's a conversation between an unidentified man and woman (the point, apparently, is to teach the phrase "to look at"). You hear the sound of babies cooing throughout:

Man: Look at the twins.

Woman: I can’t tell them apart.

M: Which one do you like better?

W: The one on the left.

M: Why do you like her better?

W: She seems more friendly.

M: What makes her seem that way?

W: I’m not sure.

M: Look at her eyes.

W: Oh yes, her pupils are bigger!

M: Now watch as I shine a bright light in her eyes.

W: Her pupils just got smaller!

M: Yes, and she seems less friendly. Next time you meet somebody, look at their eyes and see if the size of their pupils changes.

Is it just me, or does this sound like "Learning English with Dr. Mengele" to you too?

I don't know which is creepier - the fact that the man asks "WHICH ONE DO YOU LIKE BETTER?" or that the woman HAS AN ANSWER.

They finished up by illustrating the difference between "to look" and "to watch." An admirable goal, but why do it this way:

M: Stop talking and look at this photograph.

M: Stop talking and watch the action in this film.

I was half expecting the whole thing to be punctuated by slaps. The funny thing is that I had been considering suggesting these English lessons to an analyst at my place of work, who actually does need to brush up on his understanding of "to look at" (I asked him to "have a look at" a report I'd edited and he responded by email that he would "take a vision on it.") I've reconsidered, however. Lessons like these would have him telling me to "stop talking" and gauging my dislike of him in the size of my pupils. And we CAN'T have that.

who's who: part I

2009-09-03T03:03:00.000-07:00

It's been brought to my attention that some of you have a tendency to confuse famous people with other famous people. This is dangerous, particularly if you sign royalty checks for a living, but my real fear is that, if allowed to progress unchecked, this tendency could lead to non-famous people being mistaken for famous people, and that would bring the entire, elaborate, sequin-studded structure that is North American culture crashing down around us.

So I'm here to check it. What follows is hardly an exhaustive list, but covers some of the most common cases of mistaken celebrity identity:

1. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German philosopher who developed a comprehensive philosophical framework, or "system", to account in an integrated and developmental way for the relation of mind and nature, the subject and object of knowledge, and psychology, the state, history, art, religion, and philosophy) and Katherine Marie Heigl (American actress best known for her role on Grey's Anatomy and her starring role in the movie Knocked Up).

I blame Movie Entertainment for the confusion - they were clearly conflating the two when they described Heigl as "an actress known for her dramatic roles who really wants to do comedy and explore the ontological implications of such Kantian topics as freedom and morality."

2. Kate Bush (English singer, song writer and record producer) and Jeb Bush (former governor of Florida).

Their uncanny resemblance caused the former governor considerable embarrassment on numerous occasions, as his attempts to deliver speeches were interrupted by cries of 'Sing Wuthering Heights!'. On at least one occasion, I'm told, he gave in and sang, acquitting himself quite well.

3. Benjamin Franklin (Founding Father of the United States) and Bonnie Franklin (star of the popular American sitcom One Day at a Time). The confusion here, I believe, stems from the original title for One Day at a Time which was Fish and Visitors Stink in Three Days, the famous Benjamin Franklin quote. (In passing, One Day at a Time was produced by Norman Lear, an American television writer and producer, who should not be confused with King Lear, fictional monarch and central character of a play of the same name by William Shakespeare.)

the perils of a canadian summer

2009-08-24T02:52:00.000-07:00

My sister found an article in a Canadian Living magazine (tucked between a pemmican recipe and a feature on resoling skidoo boots) offering health and safety tips for the Canadian summer.

In addition to advice on coping with bee stings, food poisoning, and poison ivy, the editors included some helpful words on what to do if you CUT YOUR FOOT OFF WITH THE LAWN MOWER (emphasis mine, the editors gave it no more play than the bee stings or the rusty nail punctures).

Curious to know how common summer lawn mower-induced foot loss is, I consulted Stats Canada, and discovered their lighthearted "Summer by the Numbers" section. While they don't keep track of power lawn mower-related injuries, they do track deaths, and in 2004 (the most recent year for which numbers were available) these totaled 1. (Making lawn mowers as big a threat as lightning strikes).

Canada did, however, have 58,945 acres of sod in need of mowing in 2006, so it's not hard to imagine some portion of that acreage littered with severed feet.

I took the precaution of ensuring I never mowed the lawn and, as a result, have returned from vacation with both my feet.

Thank you, Canadian Living!

and we're back!

2009-08-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

I waited months for season three of Mad Men - long, lonely months without Don or Peggy or Roger or their early '60s fashions or their rampant smoking and marital infidelity (fortunately, I live in a country where smoking and marital infidelity remain rampant, which eased the separation anxiety).

I've read that the man behind the show, the former Sopranos writer whose actual name I cannot be bothered to google right now - especially for people who clearly have both internet connections and time to burn - is obsessed with getting even the tiniest period details correct (as in, looking up actual train timetables from 1962 and ensuring the fruit in the bowls on the dining room tables is appropriately small and bruised).

I'm not sure that this is why it took them so long to get season three underway, but it seems to me it couldn't have helped. And I was willing to wait. Which got me to thinking...maybe I could claim to have been busy all these months getting the period detail correct.

What period, you ask? Well, I'm not exactly sure. But as I write, I'm wearing a dress I bought 13 years ago for an office Christmas party [See photo above] so maybe it's 1996. (I'm trying to pretend it's some sort of triumph that it still fits, but I think the truth is that it still doesn't fit - just in a different way. I find it hard to put a triumphant spin on that).

But if I were to get the period detail absolutely correct, I would have to find a Portuguese hairdresser. And she would have to squeeze me in on a day when she was also doing an entire Portuguese wedding party. And I would have to have spent all my money on my party dress, leaving me nothing for stockings. And I would have to have arranged to meet my friend Kevin in Toronto's gay village to borrow money for stockings and I would have to go directly from the hairdresser's, giving him the opportunity to boom across a gay coffee shop in his "That boy really should be a radio announcer" voice, "MY GOD! YOU LOOK LIKE AN IMMIGRANT BRIDE!"

(Which, of course, I did, at the time, having been mixed in with the actual immigrant bride and her attendants; and which I would have to do again, were I to get the period detail absolutely correct.)

That seems like an awful lot of effort to go to to avoid admitting something my three readers already know - namely, that I'm lazy.

So how about I just leave it at - "Good to be back"?

great ideas

2009-05-07T06:21:00.000-07:00

I've been having so many great ideas lately, I feel it's time to get a few down on paper so that, in about 10 minutes, when someone else has the same idea and actually finds a way to make money from it, I will be able to look smug and say, "I could have done that."

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 1

Make companies and sports teams that use animals as their symbols pay endorsement fees to the World Wildlife Fund. Penguins alone would bring in a fortune, once the Pittsburgh Penguins, Linux, and countless ice- and ice cream- vending companies were forced to pay up. Of course, the animals would have to be provided with adequate financial guidance to ensure they didn't immediately blow their earnings on bling and Cadillacs for their mamas.

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 2

Rather than clubbing baby seals to save fish stocks that are already, to the best of my knowledge, past saving, I propose a brief period each spring during which anyone with the proper license can club factory trawler captains.

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 3

Someone (don't look at me) should design a "smart fridge" that determines when food is past its best-before date and pelts you with it when you open the door saying (in a computerized yet vaguely hip-hop voice that may also have to be invented - let's call this great idea 3a) "Bish, don' tell ME you plan to eat no three-month-old ricotta!"

GREAT IDEA NUMBER 4

Women's magazines featuring stories about "new" products that "really work" should be forced to list (and apologize for) all the products they've endorsed in the past that apparently don't.

how's that again?

2009-04-01T03:31:00.002-07:00

A BBC announcer discussing a film just now said it was "what the Americans call a 'tough watch.'"

"Do they?" I found myself thinking. "Do the Americans call dark films 'tough watches?'" I ask because I know a number of Americans (I say this not by way of boast) and I read a considerable amount of American news coverage, and I am not familiar with the phrase.

So I googled it, and got more than I bargained for. While most Americans (judging by the returned results) use "tough watch" to describe wrist-borne timepieces able to withstand the vicissitudes of wind and weather, at least one American - Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, to be exact - used the phrase "tough watch" to describe "an impending game between two inept teams."

Apparently, this remark was an alleged case of nonsentential assertion (as opposed to nonessential assertion, which describes my blog).

Reinaldo Elugardo and Robert Stainton took up the question of Mad Dog's remark in their paper, "Ellipsis and Nonsentential Speech" which is, let me be the first to say it, a tough read (and would probably be a tough watch too, if anyone ever took a notion to adapt it for the cinema).

Tough watch is a "post-deletion fragment of what linguists call a 'tough construction,' a canonical example of which would be, 'Chuck is tough to talk to.'"

"Chuck is tough to talk to" is in turn derived from a structure like, "It is tough to talk to Chuck," often called a "tough movement." (I refuse to consider what the Americans I know use the phrase "tough movement" to describe, call me a coward, I don't care.)

The authors then trace a four-step path from "It will be tough to watch that game" to "tough watch."

Which leaves me feeling both more informed and strangely ignorant, a state the Brits call a "soggy crumpet."

Or not.

daniel

2009-03-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

I've had the song Daniel stuck in my head today (no idea why, I don't think I actually heard it anywhere).

I've never understood this song, but I've also never attempted to analyze it -- until today. And folks, I'm here to tell you, analyzing the lyrics of an Elton John song is not something anybody should do as long as there are more potentially rewarding occupations open to them, like brushing their teeth again. Or lying face down in a ditch.

But since I've done the legwork, I feel I might as well share the results: the song makes no sense.

Consider:

Daniel is traveling tonight on the plane/I can see the red tail lights/heading for sp-ai-ai-ain/Oh and/I can see Daniel waving goodbye [1]/God it looks like Daniel/Must be the clouds in my eyes [2]

OH-OH-OH/Daniel my brother/You are/Older than me/Do you still feel the pain/Of a scar that won't heal?/Your eyes have died but you see more than mine[3]/Daniel you're a star/In the face of the sky.

They say Spain is pretty/though I've never been/Daniel says it's the best place/he's eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-ver seen [4]/Oh and/ he should know/he's been there enough [5]/Oh I miss Daniel/Oh I miss him so much [6]

[1] I can see Daniel waving goodbye, although I've just told you I can see the tail lights, which suggests I'm BEHIND the plane, and more importantly, I can see them 'heading for Spain,' which suggests that the plane is OFF THE GROUND, so how exactly I'm seeing Daniel waving goodbye is puzzling but I don't really think it's [2] the clouds in my eyes because I've also told you Daniel is traveling TONIGHT, a time of day during which clouds are not usually an obstacle to vision -- PITCH BLACKNESS is. If, on the other hand, the clouds are truly in my eyes, then it sounds like cataracts, which means (as will become clear in the chorus) that this song is about ocular health.

[3] Daniel has, apparently, been the victim of an accident that's robbed him of his sight, but how the scars from that accident could have failed to heal is puzzling, and why Daniel and his unhealed scars would be permitted to board an airplane perplexing. Moreover, the image suggested is grotesque. 'Your eyes have died but you see more than mine' is, of course, just bad English, unless Daniel's eyes have died but he sees more than my eyes -- i.e. he sees the stewardess coming to ask him if he'd like a hot towel for his scars that won't heal.

[4] Although he's blind, so that's not really a rousing endorsement. And you're going to say, 'What if he saw it BEFORE he went blind?' in that whiny tone you adopt when you think you've trumped me and I'm going to respond, 'Then he still is hardly in a position to discuss it in reference to other places because presumably, he no longer sees the places he travels. Plus, I just get the idea Daniel is young. Don't ask me why.'

[5] I don't think multiple visits would have made a difference. Did I mention he's blind?

[6] Although he left approximately three minutes ago and I apparently pursued his plane right out onto the runway.

Well, there you have it, Elton John's Daniel deconstructed. Next week, who is Delta Dawn and just what is that flower she has on?

[Above right: Look closely, you can see Daniel. No, really. He's waving goodbye.]

cheaper by the dozen

2009-02-22T10:09:00.000-08:00

My mother loves a sale. Her most recent purchase was a new furnace and I know that if she was given the option of buying one and getting one free, ours is now the only house on the block with surround heating.

Her inability to resist a good deal meant that one year, when she had to replace some broken figurines in our Christmas nativity scene (broken, most likely, by my little sister who used them like barbies in a way that would probably have gotten us excommunicated had anyone notified the papal authorities) we ended up with five kings, no Joseph and two Baby Jesuses (Babies-Jesus?). I've milked this particular story in print before, but my mother has to forgive me - my siblings and I provided much of the fodder for a newspaper column she wrote during our formative years. She's known payback was a possibility since we learned to read. (Which is probably, come to think of it, why she delayed that so long, telling us reading was "un-Canadian.")

Besides, my point today (and I do have one, don't be fooled by the cleverness with which I've so far hidden it) is that I have inherited my mother's love of a deal. I can no longer pay full price for anything without cringing - often visibly. But my mania also makes it hard for me NOT to buy things that have been marked down.

Today, for instance, it caused me to buy an exacto knife (with extra blades), a set of precision screwdrivers, and two bungee cords although I have no immediate plans to hijack a commercial airliner, customize my home electronics, or leap off the Sydney Harbor Bridge. (To be strictly truthful, the bungee cords are the mini variety, and would not support my leaping off anything, although they might support one of the cats. I'll let you know how that turns out.)

I bought them because each item, although of little to no use to me at present, cost only 30kc.

THIRTY CROWNS PEOPLE! How could I afford NOT to buy them? And why didn't I also buy the mini flashlight (complete with AAA battery) and the duct tape and the sanding block? Won't I feel the fool if tomorrow some tragedy, easily avoided with a little timely sanding, befalls me? What CAN'T be improved by duct tape? And I could be using that flashlight right now to see what's under my fridge!

I swear, I'm almost ready to pull on my boots and go back to the store right now. It's not like I'll be able to sleep tonight, knowing all those BARGAINS are happening just meters away from my front door.

And as my cousin T.C. once said (I've decided to start referring to members of my family by their initials, like they're characters in an 18th century roman a clef - or United Nations programs):

"There's a fine line between being cheap and being wise with your money.

And I'm cheap."

2009-02-11T01:01:00.000-08:00

There's a great book by Muriel Spark called "A Far Cry From Kensington" about a woman who works in a publishing house.

I read it a number of years ago, and two things (a stupendous number, by my standards) have stuck with me.

One is the phrase "pisseur de copie" which the main character hisses at one of the company's hack writers as she passes him in a park. It's presented as one of those moments of liberating revolt we all experience from time to time (most recently a friend of mine who, faced with yet another stonewalling Czech bureaucratic type refusing to do anything to assist her said - in fluent Czech - 'I understand about your regulations. But you're a cow.' ) The sort of moment that leaves you both pleased and appalled at your own sheer gall.

The other thing I remember is the advice the main character gives a would-be author (a retired British admiral, if I recall correctly) who is having trouble making himself write. She tells him to get a cat. A cat, she says, will curl up on his desk and sleep, providing the tranquil atmosphere necessary to composition.

I've been thinking about this advice this morning, as I sit at my desk attempting to 'compose' while my cats re-enact the Battle of Guadalcanal around me.

I think my mistake was in assuming twice the cat would mean twice the tranquility. This, for all of you would-be writers out there, is not so.

the ghost of employment past

2009-01-23T01:02:00.000-08:00

The company that employed me when I first came to Prague has long been a source of comedic gold for those of us (and we were legion) who worked there.

I left many years ago, after I'd been rudely deprived of the opportunity to quit, but my understanding is that subsequently, wearied by the demands of dealing with adult employees, they switched first to part-time students, then later to one of the less-uppity breeds of monkey to staff their enterprise.

I've always been vaguely aware they were still out there, doing that thang they do, but today I found them listed as a sponsor of a seemingly presitigious world alternative energy summit, and their company "bio" is worth reproducing.

[NAME EXCISED TO BE ON THE SAFE SIDE, THESE PEOPLE ARE LITIGIOUS] is a digital news provider and media monitoring service scanning more than 50,000 news sections from over 5,000 newspapers and online publications and indexing nearly 80,000 new articles every 24 hours. [NAME EXCISED] is hand edited providing the most comprehensive and up-to-the-minute information available in various delivery formats regarding world affairs including the latest developments in every country's economy, business, industries, politics, international relations as well as human rights, religion, terrorism, and much more.

Hand edited. Did you catch that? None of that funky foot editing we were all up to in the early years, or that brief, glorious period when Stepan introduced his 'editing machine' (bulky and coal-fired, but surprisingly accurate nonetheless).

And I have been searching high and low for a source monitoring the "latest developments" in terrorism! Bravo, old company of mine! Most news sources refuse to acknowledge terrorism as a sector with a future.

I also like how emphatic they are about covering every aspect of "every country." The evil ex-employee in me wants to write and ask why they don't have any coverage of Freedonia, or Aftakislamastan, or Shangriladida Valley because, I can assure you, if they didn't immediately launch such a service, they would certainly consider it.

oh what a night

2009-01-23T00:43:00.001-08:00

Oh sure, Michelle Obama looked like she was having fun on the night of the inauguration but did she wake up with gum in her hair?

I ask because I did, and as I'm trying to spin it as a sign I had a really good time that night, it would help immensely to know the First Lady had had a similar experience.

I honestly can't explain the gum: I remember noticing a piece of paper with writing on it in an ashtray, I remember being intrigued enough to try and open it and read it (found correspondence and all that), and I remember realizing it did not contain a piece of someone's life but rather, a piece of someone's gum. I do not, however, remember transferring that gum to my hair.

My companions that evening claim not to remember either, but I'm not sure I believe them.

I will endeavor to rise above this unfortunate beginning to what was supposed to be a brave new era. After all, Obama began it by retaking his oath of office, what's a little gum by comparison? (Although I have to say, it would be way better if I could blame it on the Chief Justice of the American Supreme Court, but try as I might, I just can't seem to do that).

what to wear to a financial crisis

2009-01-11T05:57:00.000-08:00

Finally, the antidote to all the "gloom and doomers" who will go on about credit crunches and bad loans and looming financial ruin when all I really want to know is, WHAT SHOULD I WEAR?

Stepan, who clearly shares my concerns, was kind enough to send me this clip, in which New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham takes to the streets of New York to find out how women in that fashionable city are coping with the current financial crisis. As Stepan put it, "It's like if Jimminy Glick got on his bike and started stalking women, snapping photos of them around NY and rambling about what they're wearing."

What New York women are doing, it seems, is wearing old clothes - and so can you! Dust off that classic Balenciaga coat from the '60s - you remember it, the one with the spiral seam? The masterpiece you loaned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art? It's still there? Well, get it back, sister! Break the glass if you have to - this is an emergency!

Reach into the family trunk and pull out a Schiaparelli from 1938! Preferably one with a large sea urchin embroidered on the shoulder (I believe 'schiaparelli' is Italian for sea urchin).

I don't have access to the "family trunk" at the moment (my own fault, of course, for having opted to live abroad, my sisters are no doubt sashaying around covered head to toe in decorative crustaceans even as I write), but I reached into my closet (actually a wardrobe thingy from IKEA but passons, passons!) and found clothing so old it should have been given to the Smithsonian, never mind the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Much of it, mind you, is ragged, or moth-eaten, or too small, but I'm sure if I wear it with the proper devil-may-care attitude, I'll be able to carry it off.

On the other hand, the ragged, moth-eaten, too small look was big during the last major financial crisis, and could very well come back. Fashion is cyclical, after all - just like something else I could mention but won't. No "gloom and doomer" I!

[Pictured, above right: Another woman who managed to dress well during trying times - Scarlett O'Hara, who found the answer hanging not in her closet, but in her window.]

and another thing

2009-01-08T08:18:00.000-08:00

I have to say one last thing about my new apartment and then I promise I'll find something else to talk about (just a heads up, though, that "something else" might be Joan of Arcadia, a TV show I've become addicted to this holiday season about a teenage American girl who talks to God).

As I type, somebody up there (as in my upstairs neighbor, not God) is learning to play "Killing Me Softly" on a saxophone. This is so wonderful words almost fail me. "Strumming my pain with his fingers/Singing my life with his words." It doesn't work on any level - you can't strum a saxophone (and yes, that is the voice of sad experience talking) nor can you sing and play one simultaneously. This may be the most inappropriate song for saxophone ever, second only to "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or "Piano Man."

And just when I thought things were as good as they could possibly get, his DOG started HOWLING along! Clearly, that puppy has been the victim of a love gone wrong.

This is all greatly preferable to the ambient noise in my old apartment, which consisted of all the other people in the building getting along smashingly because they were all RELATED. The hallways echoed their happy family chatter, the footsteps of children running upstairs to visit Grandpa (whose old Hustler magazines were stacked merrily in the hallway outside his door, awaiting some lucky recycler), the clink of glasses as they picnicked in the verdant backyard, the buzz of the circular saw from their in-house sawmill - it was like an entire village crammed into one building.

They were killing me softly with their sheer propinquity.

And yes, that's a word you'll be seeing more of in 2009.

snow

2009-01-06T03:19:00.001-08:00

I started reading Orhan Pamuk's "Snow," and lo and behold - it started snowing. Coincidence, or is 2009 to be my year to control the weather? I'm leaning toward coincidence, personally, but will put off reading "The Perfect Storm" until 2010, just to be safe.

other voices, other rooms

2008-12-31T04:51:00.000-08:00

I'm really liking my new apartment, even as its less attractive aspects become apparent - the neighbors across the hall, for example, whose stereo sounds like it's in my bedroom and whose musical taste runs, sadly, to Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera.

And the neighbors upstairs who, as far as I can tell, play recorders and clog - slowly. I don't even know if slow clogging exists, but it's the only activity I can conceive of that would correspond to the sounds I'm hearing from upstairs. Perhaps they're just learning to clog. Or perhaps you have to clog slowly if you're trying to play the recorder at the same time. Both seem plausible explanations to me.

I'm not worried about it - for one thing, it may be seasonal, something they indulge in only once a year (which would explain the lack of expertise). For another, it's only happened after 11 in the morning, and most days at this time, I will be at work, leaving them free to slow-clog their brains out.

Mostly, though, I find I like the mental image of them - I've decided they're some sort of recorder-based, slow-clogging, Czech version of the von Trapp family, and that, somehow, makes it all okay.

[Pictured, above right: My upstairs neighbors.]

the corkscrew chronicles

2008-12-29T11:20:00.000-08:00

My recent adventures in corkscrews reminded me this is not the first time they've caused me grief.

Some years ago (it's not for me to say how many), I was studying French in a town I'll call Pate a Papier (Pulp and Paper), Quebec. My roommate was a schoolteacher from Newfoundland, and through her I met another Newfoundlander - a very tall, very brash, very blond girl who called me "Brainchild" because, having absolutely nothing else to do in Pate a Papier, I did my homework. Through her, I met the Quebecois guy with whom she did a weekly language exchange. He was about a foot shorter than she was and as dark as she was blond, and I came to think of them as Hall and Oates.

When my roommate returned to Newfoundland at Christmas, she advised me to "be very cold" to Hall. She didn't elaborate, but the unspoken message was, "or pay the price." Moments after she'd left (or so it seems, in retrospect), Hall called to invite me to attend the school Christmas party with her and Oates. Throwing my ex-roommate's warnings to the four winds, I agreed.

The night of the party, they arrived to pick me up in Oates' car. Hall announced she had a bottle of wine to drink at the party but no corkscrew. I realized I had none either. Oates, however, announced that he had one, and that we'd simply have to return to his house and get it.

What he meant, I realized 15 minutes later, was that his MOTHER had one and we could return to the house he shared with her (and his father) and borrow it - but only after I'd been introduced to his parents and looked at photos of their cat swimming in the toilet.

Wait, it gets worse.

We arrived at the party, opened the wine, I poured a glass and detached myself from Hall and Oates as quickly as possible. Until, that is, Oates approached me in a panic, asking if I'd seen his mother's corkscrew. I told him I hadn't, and he looked like he was about to burst into tears. If he didn't find it, he said, his mother would kill him. Or maybe make him swim in the toilet. I can't remember, but whatever the threat, it scared him. He told me I had to help him search, and I, being a nicer person in those days, did - wandering around the hall, peering surreptitiously over people's shoulders, trying to find the corkscrew.

I had no luck, and told Oates as much, but he had a new plan: he'd talked to the DJ, who had agreed to give me the microphone after the next song so that I could announce, in English, that we were missing a corkscrew and could we please have it back.

Now, to this point, I'd kept a very low profile in our program, and the idea of being known as the girl who lost her corkscrew at the Christmas party did not appeal to me at all, but I couldn't see anyway out -- Oates was so upset (and Hall was SO gone). Oates was by now standing next to the DJ, holding out a microphone toward me, and so I began the long, horrible walk to the DJ booth, thinking that I could always transfer to another university after Christmas. Just as I was reaching for the microphone, a guy ran up and handed Oates his corkscrew.

An 11th hour reprieve.

Joyfully, I returned to the party, and after Christmas I returned to the university. But I never again returned a call from Hall or Oates. I was very cold. I'd learned.

[Pictured above right: A girl from Newfoundland and her Quebecois language exchange partner, or Hall and Oates. Your call. And while we're on the subject, if you haven't watched Yacht Rock, you should.]

seasons' greetings

2008-12-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

Recent accusations of racism (see previous post) have left me bloodied but unbowed. I've been accused of worse, you'll remember - of homophobia, of clubbing seals (for fun, not fur), of stealing the movie Wimbledon from the Planet DVD on Spalena.

Perhaps I will become more culturally sensitive as a result. Perhaps not. It's a crap shoot, really.

I've been enjoying a very relaxing holiday season during which I've mixed long stretches of reading with short bouts of energetic unpacking and picture hanging. My apartment now has a decidedly split personality - the living room is settled, the bedroom looks like a squat. It's the sort of contrast that occurs frequently along the Czech/German border.

Relaxing as the holidays have been, they haven't been the source of great posting inspiration, so rather than treating you to a condensed version of the plot of The Constant Gardener, I think I'll just wish you all happy holidays!

moving target

2008-12-19T12:34:00.000-08:00

I've been moving since the beginning of the month. The idea of having an entire month in which to complete the process sounded great at the outset, but has actually just prolonged the agony. Like watching all of "Runaway Bride" instead of just puking during the trailer ("In a world where brides run away...").

I've been living in the old apartment while I "clean" it - i.e. lie on the couch and watch "Friends" and wish cats could vacuum - but I actually moved most of my worldly possessions to the new apartment on December 2.

That night, having once again had to do a ridiculous amount of the lifting and carrying although I'd hired two movers this time (side note: you know you've been rattling around a town too long when your Albanian mover takes a good look at you and says, "I'm sure we've met somewhere before.") I bought a bottle of wine to have a glass and relax at the old place, forgetting I'd moved all my corkscrews to the new place.

Exhaustion battled desire for drink and desire for drink won, so I went in search of a corkscrew. I returned to the store where I'd bought the wine, realizing as I approached the clerk that I did not know the Czech word for corkscrew (I chalk this up to being a beer drinker rather than stinking at Czech, although I also stink at Czech). I successfully mimed opening a bottle, however, and the clerk got it but told me she couldn't help me. She suggested I try the Chinese store up the street. "They have," she said, then paused, as though mentally cataloging all the things they had, "Everything?" I suggested. "Everything," she agreed. And that's true, because I'd hit the them up up earlier in the day for packing tape, and they'd had that.

So I returned to the Chinese everything store and used my miming abilities to ask the extremely uninterested girl behind the counter for a corkscrew. Rather than answering me, she yelled to a guy in the back room in Chinese, and judging but what followed, I'm guessing what she said was:

"Hey, Hung Li, whitey here want to drink wine out of ice cream scoop, you got one?"

To which Hung Li apparently replied, "Now I hear all! Send her back I fix her up."

So, nodding and smiling the way I do when I'm not sure what Chinese people are saying but I want them to realize I respect them and their ancient culture, I went into the back room where Hung Li handed me an ice cream scoop.

"No," I said, in my halting Czech, "Have wine. In bottle. Need to open. Need..." (and here I did my bottle-opening mime, being careful to avoid any hint of a scooping motion).

"HA!" said Hung Li, then rooted around through a shelf containing every kitchen implement known to man and produced a corkscrew. I thanked him, and, trying desperately to ingratiate myself, asked him the word for corkscrew in Czech. He immediately yelled to the girl at the cash desk:

"Now she want CZECH LESSON! Stupid melon! Don't she know two day ago I in Shanghai stick KNIFE in white people???"

Girl at the cash desk (to guy in back) "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Corkscrew! Corkscrew!" (then to me) "29 crown" (then to guy in back) "Corkscrew! HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"Thank you, goodbye," I said, still gamely smiling and nodding.

"Goodbye! Goodbye!"

[Pictured above right: Something I probably could drink wine out of, if I had to.]

putting the 'rogue' in 'prorogue'

2008-12-05T01:49:00.000-08:00

I have been remiss and I apologize. I have left you wandering unattended in the thickets of Canadian politics while I watched "You Are What You Eat" and redecorated my blog.

To address the most pressing issues:

Yes, everyone in Ottawa gets a "snow day" as a result of parliament being prorogued. In fact, they get a snow month and a half (or more). It will be nothing but snow angels and snowball fights on Parliament Hill until January 29th.
To "prorogue" is not a euphemism for something nastier. Although, in this case, it could be.
The governor general of Canada is the head of state and the representative of our actual head of state - the Queen of England.
Yes, that is sad.
The role of the governor general is largely ceremonial, except for those rare occasions, like this one, when the fate of the government rests in her (or his) hands. It's like, at the bottom of the ninth with the bases loaded, sending the mascot up to bat.
In recent years, it has become fashionable to appoint minorities and women (or minority women) to the post of governor general - so we've had Ukrainian, French Canadian, Chinese, and Haitian governors general. It's a way of appearing open and tolerant as a society without giving these people any actual power (well, it usually is). It also draws attention away from the reality which is that, with the exception of the 10 minutes during the early '90s in which Kim Campbell was prime minister, Canada has always been ruled by white men.
I, personally, am torn between my hatred of Harper (and my desire to see my erstwhile debating club buddy turfed from office without time for rebuttal) and my fear that a coalition supported by the separatists/sovereigntists would be doomed to perdition from the outset.
I believe it's time to ask ourselves, "What would Sir Guy Carleton do?" (WWSGCD). Sir Guy (pictured above, right) was governor general not once but THREE times between 1768 and 1796. Surely during his long tenure he did or said something that could be applied to today's situation. I really hope somebody has the time to do a little research and find out what that something was.

extreme makeover

2008-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

It seemed like a change was in order, so we're shaking things up here on the Imbecile Sidewalk - a nip here, a tuck there, a slash of lipstick, a more liberal use of the first person plural and voila! a whole new blog. (This is a work in progress, by the way, we realize that you can't actually read the title of the blog as it now stands, and we understand that can severely limited your traffic.)

The inspiration? A Czech TV show called "You Are What You Eat." I watch it regularly with horrified fascination. The premise is simple: each week, an overweight or underweight person is watched as he or she attempts not just to lose or gain weight, but to adopt a more healthy lifestyle.

I've only ever seen the overweight people, so I'm not sure what is done for the skinny ones but I'll happily speculate for you - I sometimes feel that's my purpose here on earth.

With the overweight people, at some point early on, they are blindfolded and led to a table that holds everything they ate the week before - for one guy, this included 15 non-alcoholic beers and 12 liters of normal beer (presented, appetizingly, in those big white industrial-size buckets restaurants buy mayonnaise in, although I don't believe he actually drank it out of these).

They are then shown a table filled with all the healthy things they will now be allowed to eat in a given week.

Speculation alert: I assume for the skinny people they first show them an empty table, then show them the 'before' table of a fat person and invite them to dig in.

There follows (in no particular order) a trip to the doctor; a trip to the grocery store (to buy healthy ingredients for a healthy meal the healthy-meal specialist shows them how to cook); a meeting with a personal trainer; and a trip to the beauty salon where (if you're a woman) your hair is cut, then dyed some unnatural color that doesn't necessarily become you but would certainly draw attention away from the rest of you.

My favorite part of every show is when the host - an actual doctor (pictured below, right, with a featured dieter and one of those tables full of food I was talking about) - sneaks up on the person to find out if he/she is breaking his/her diet. This always takes place when the person is at a party with his/her friends, presumably to up the potential humiliation quotient.

At the end, the weight losing/gaining person is presented with a special oven (I think it works like a normal oven and a convection oven, but remember, I'm watching this in Czech - it may actually be a TV set) and sometimes a more elaborate reward for his/her weight loss (one contestant received the wedding of her dreams - assuming she always dreamed of being married on television after appearing in her underwear in front of the entire nation).

If you're interested, it's on TV Prima every Thursday at 21:10. And if any of you watch it and realize that I have it all wrong, please, keep it to yourselves.

something fishy...

2008-11-15T11:41:00.001-08:00

Guess who got a digital camera with a fisheye lens? This is just a hint of the fun that's in store for all of us!

what wine goes best with crow?

2008-11-14T12:16:00.000-08:00

For the eight years of the Bush presidency (those dark days before Obama won the election and appointed a unicorn secretary of state and a leprechaun secretary of defense and everyone in Washington started pooping rainbows) I've wondered HOW people could believe the lies spread by the right-wing media.

Today, I have my answer:

Because they wanted to.

And do you know how I know this? Because, faithful readers, I have been HAD, but I was complicit in my own...hadding (remember I said that, it's going to seem really funny about five paragraphs from now).

I believed the Fox news report that Sarah Palin did not know Africa was a continent. I read it on the Huffpo, was intrigued enough to watch a related clip on YouTube, then happily referenced this "fact" several hundred times during the next week.

Until a friend pointed out to me that a) it was really unlikely Palin thought Africa was a country (my argument had been it made sense, because what she can't see from her front porch, she can't know) and b) it was odd that I was believing Fox News now, after eight years of dismissing the entire network as an affirmative action program for congenital liars.

And the answer, of course, is that I believed it BECAUSE I WANTED TO. And I still want to. Oh how I want to. But I do not think, in all honesty, that I can.

It turns out it was an elaborate hoax

Now, on a seemingly unrelated note, I, for reasons I actually cannot explain, I also recently watched a clip from an Oprah interview with Jennifer Aniston (so much for that little dinner party trick where I pretend I've never heard of either of them and ask people to 'hum the theme to Friends to see if it jogs my memory,' or explain why anyone would want to announce the results of a paternity test on national television).

Having laughed and laughed and laughed at Sarah Palin for her inability to complete a coherent sentence, I watched these two high-profile Obama supporters with some embarassment. This (my god, what won't I do for you people?) is a (reasonably) accurate transcript of about 2 minutes of the Oprah (O)/Aniston (A) interview:

O.…that I thought, this time last week everyone was talking about the election, now it’s WHAT JENNIFER SAID

A. Yeah

O.…on the on the cover of Vogue.

A. Well…

O. And what you said was what Angelina did was very uncool

A. I didn’t say that exactly…But you know what? That was, unfortunately, so not en vogue in my opinion, but…you know, the the the cover line does not even come i…the contents does not reflect the cover.

O. It’s really a wonderful story. Okay, well I will say, Jonathan Van Meter …ah…he…he’s

A. He's great.

O. He’s a great interviewer…I love the story… but you…is this out of context? You did say what Angelina did was very uncool? You did say that, you just didn’t expect it to be on the cover.

A. Well, no …ah…you don’t expect…He asked me a question and I basically just answered it as honestly as I could. You know I don’t … I don’t go there. You know what I mean?

O. Yeah, yeah.

A. Cause it’s a hundred years old, for chrissake.

(Audience hoots, cheers, claps)

A. It’s true.

O. But okay, since it’s…you know…

A. And a hundred, to be exact.

O. And a hundred an’…but since it’s what all the pundints (sic) or newspeople were talking about this morning

A. Yeah

O. What you’re saying was uncool was a statement that Angelina had made earlier, saying that ..uhhhh… it would be nice, later on, to have their children look at the film of them falling in love. That’s what you were referring to, right?

A. Su…Somethin’ like that.

O. Yeah, the that…that it was very uncool.

A. You know…d’I don’t know…by it’s that’s just me

O. Okay, so…ahhh…

A. What else did they say? What else they talkin’ about?

O. They actually didn’t go into cause you know, what you go into in this article with Jonathan Van Meter in Vogue I thought it’s so good

A. Yeah

O. This whole oh oh poor Jen

A. Yeah

O. Sh-she’s dating. Is she dating? Is she not?

A. Yeah

O. How’s she doing?

A. Yeah

O. You seem to be doing pretty good, to me. Pretty well.

A. I know, but you know what? I got (hoots, cheers, applause)

O. And even

A. I think that that

O. Okay

A. The the you know the the the unfortunate reality is that good news just isn’t as interesting and I think that, you know, especially at a time when there’s such positivity in in the collective of what’s going on, negativity is still what sells.

Okay, I'll make it stop. (The real interview went on considerably longer and they may both have become more eloquent... but I doubt it.)

Now, Aniston is an actress, so can be forgiven if, when without a script, she wanders away from the rules of standard English like a steer that's just found a hole in the fence. But Oprah runs a MEDIA EMPIRE. She talks for a living. AND she prefaced this interview by saying it was going to be about what Jennifer SAID, implying that the things Jennifer says are of some import. Yet, if you boil down what Jennifer says in this interview, it basically amounts to, "Yeah."

And suddenly, I have to at least give Palin credit for trying to talk about serious issues even though the results were very, very sad.

Then again, had Katie Couric used her time with Palin to discuss the Aniston/Pitt breakup, I'd probably still be laughing.

Instead of doing what I'm doing now.

Pass the crow, please...

[Pictured, above left: Jonathan Van Meter. You didn't really think I'd post a picture of Oprah or Jennifer Aniston, did you?]

i have seen the future baby, and it's murder

2008-11-10T08:06:00.000-08:00

Man sits down in front of a computer and types a question: "When will you be able to do everything I can do?"

Computer whirrs and clicks (it's MY computer) and types: "That reminds me of a story..."

All by way of introducing my musings on artificial intelligence. When computers can do everything humans can, it's going to be a nightmare. Mark my words.

Say you get a parking ticket (I don't have a car, so the chances of my getting a parking ticket are slim; in fact, my getting a parking ticket would probably be the start of a low-rent, modern-day version of 'The Trial,' but that's why I said "YOU" get a parking ticket, to keep this in the realm of the possible).

Anyway, you get a parking ticket, and when you go to pay it, the clerk at the DMV (you were doing your funky freestyle parking in Canada, did I mention that?) calls up your file, which the computer obligingly presents but, because it now thinks like a human, it realizes it has access to all kinds of other information about you and it can't resist taking a peek, and having peeked, it can't resist the urge to share, so it adds an aside about the state of your liver or your credit rating or the Ann Rice boxed set you bought from Amazon last month. All prefaced, of course, with "I hate to say it, but..." or "I'm not judging, but...," or "You know what they say - today parking tickets, tomorrow unpremeditated homicide..."

And that's assuming computers are sharing the FACTS about you. A computer that truly thought like a human being would eventually get too lazy to bother checking its actual files, and just take a stab at it - or better still, MAKE SOMETHING UP. (I will admit right now, I am imagining a computer that thinks like ME, and I just went to the optician for new glasses and took a stab at my dioptics, got them wrong, and must now choose between calling the store and confessing my stupidity or getting a pair of glasses that would have given my 13-year-old self the gift of 20/20 vision).

WHY would I want my computer to think like ME? Instead of being arranged alphabetically in neat folders and subfolders on my hard drive, my files would suddenly be strewn willy-nilly all over my desktop, where there would (somehow) also be dirty coffee cups and remotes for DVD players that no longer function.

No, I like my computers the way I like my presidents - black.

And smarter than me.

my right honourable former schoolmate

2008-10-30T09:20:00.000-07:00

I went to high school with Canada's new Minister of Natural Resources!

Can you believe it?

We were in the debating club together! We honed the same rhetorical and oratorical skills. She used hers to get elected to parliament and appointed to Cabinet. I use mine to try and convince Americans that Thomas Jefferson was born in New Brunswick. She left her job as CEO of the Toronto Port Authority to run for office. I recently discovered I actually like port. The similarities are almost eerie. I could have been the new Minister of Natural Resources -- EXCEPT THAT I'M NOT A BATSHIT, RIGHT-WING, FEAR-MONGERING HATER OF DEMOCRACY!

Gentle readers, she ran for the CONSERVATIVES. She's part of STEPHEN "I think there are probably some gains to be made in the stock market" HARPER'S government. He HAND-PICKED her to run in her Ontario riding because he didn't trust the riding association to come up with someone who basically owes him her first-born child (or perhaps her second, she has two -- another similarity, I have two cats) and will have to support him in all he does.

Well, I just want you to know, I had nothing to do with this. As president of the debating club (did I mention, I was PRESIDENT of the debating club? I'm not entirely a stranger to high office myself) I always tried to set a good example by NOT being a PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE.

Sadly, my efforts seem to have been in vain. Although actually, it would be worse to have her cite you as an "inspiration," as she did poor Alexa McDonough, one of the highest profile women in Canadian politics (stop yawning!) and the former leader of the New Democrats (those are our "socialists," the zanies who want to "spread the wealth").

I heard the now Minister of Natural Resources interviewed about the dearth of women running in the last Canadian elections (11% of the PC candidates, 19% of the Liberals) and she pointed out that she was from Nova Scotia and had been inspired by Alexa McDonough -- so inspired, she accepted a Cabinet nomination from a man of whom McDonough once said:

"We have a Prime Minister who alone in the world still considers George Bush his political hero."

Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case...

i can't believe i haven't posted this before

2008-10-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

This is a "friend's" interpretation of my home life. In case you can't read the dialog, my cat Seamus and I (that's me with the Canadian flag where my head should be) are having the following discussion:

Flaghead: What would you like for dinner, Seamus?
Seamus: Scotch!
Flaghead: But that's my scotch, you little devil, and I don't think that's very healthy for cats.
Seamus: Scotch!
Flaghead: (thinking) I wonder if Seamus has a drinking problem?
Seamus: (thinking) When did Mary become such a moralizing bitch?

he is charlotte simmons

2008-10-12T11:06:00.000-07:00

I've spent by far the greater part of my adult life with "my nose in a book," as my father once put it (probably while trying to get my nose out of the book and into one of his duct tape-based home renovation projects) , so it occurs to me that the occasional entry reviewing something I've just read could be a valid form of blogging, provided it doesn't become a habit, and I don't turn into some low-rent - albeit kinder - Michiko Kakutani.*

The book I just read is I am Charlotte Simmons, by Tom (Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) Wolfe. I've avoided reading it until now (it was published in 2004) because I read a bunch of bad reviews when it came out including, if I remember correctly, one by Kakutani.

Mostly, though, I avoided it because I couldn't bear the mental picture of Tom Wolfe, in all his peculiar, personal, sartorial glory (i.e., wearing a blindingly white three-piece suit, with a pastel-colored, high-colored shirt and SPATS) hanging out on North American university campuses taking the pulse of modern collegiate life.

I decided to give it a chance, however, when it was recommended to me by my cousin, whose taste in books has always been excellent (read: very similar to my own).

It's 672-pages long and I read it in three days. I don't know if he truly captured the feel of a modern American university campus, but he captured a few feelings I remember from my first year at university, although my university was to the "Dupont" university of this novel as Pee Wee Herman's Playhouse is to Versailles.

I really can't be bothered to summarize the plot and I'm not going to recommend you read it because the LAST thing I want is somebody saying, "You said that book was good and it SUCKED and I want my money back." (Which, in passing, is probably one of the reasons Michiko Kakutani is so negative - she doesn't want to deal with that nonsense either).

So, I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe - read or don't, I really don't care.

Man, this book reviewing gig is a breeze.

[Pictured above: Tom Wolfe on his way to a pre-game tailgate party.]

*The New York Times' cranky book reviewer - I'm tossing in a mention to establish myself as sufficiently literary to review books, and yes, I had to look up the spelling.

you've come a long way, baby...

2008-09-10T10:19:00.000-07:00

...in which, your intrepid, if Canadian, political analyst, compares and contrasts the bios of the only two female vice-presidential candidates to represent major political parties in the United States.

Geraldine Ferraro (GF):

Born in 1935, attended Marymount Academy on full scholarship and graduated at 16, having skipped two grades. Honor society member, active in clubs and sports, voted most likely to succeed.

Sarah Palin (SP):

Born in 1964, attended Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska. Headed Fellowship of Christian Athletes, was point guard and captain of basketball team, helped team win Alaska small-school basketball championship in 1982, hitting critical free throw despite ankle stress fracture. Would sometimes go moose-hunting with father before school.

GF:

Attended Marymount Manhattan College with scholarship, sometimes holding down two or three jobs. Served as editor of school newspaper. Also attended education classes at Hunter College. Received BA in 1956.

SP:

Attended Hawaii Pacific College, North Idaho College, University of Idaho, and Matanuska-Susitna College, before returning to University of Idaho where she received BSC in communications-journalism in 1987.

GF:

Taught English in New York City public school system while attending Fordham University Law School at night. Received law degree in 1960.

SP:

Worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage Alaska while helping in husband's commercial fishing business.

GF:

Practiced law and worked in husband's real estate office from 1961 to 1974. Appointed Assistant District Attorney for Queen's County in 1974. Created Special Victims Bureau and Confidential Unit while in this post. As chief of these units, specialized in cases involving sex crimes, crimes against elderly, family violence, and child abuse.

SP:

Biography does not actually say what she did between 1988 and 1995.

GF:

Elected to Congress in 1978, representing New York's 9th Congressional District. Re-elected in 1980 and 1982. Focused much of her efforts on equal wages, pensions, and pension plans for women.

SP:

Elected Mayor of Wasilla Alaska in 1996 and served two terms. Tried to fire town librarian. Built multifunctional arena. Appointed to Alaska Oil and Gas Commission in 2003. Resigned in 2004. From 2003 to June 2005, served as one of three directors of Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc. In 2006, elected first female governor of Alaska.

GF:

In 1984, was chosen by Democratic presidential nominee Walter F. Mondale as his running mate.

SP:

In 2008, was chosen by Republican presidential nominee John McCain as his running mate.

GF:

Quote: "... no matter how concerned I am about spending, I have seen first hand what poverty can do to people's lives and I just can't, in good conscience, not do something about it."

SP:

Quote: "I am pro-life and I believe that marriage should only be between a man and a woman."

Shall I say it again?

We sure have come a long way, baby.

(Above: The Virginia Slims lady - not only has she come a long way, she did it in that skirt.)

feed a fever?

2008-08-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

I just read about a movie called "House Bunny." It's about a Playboy Bunny who runs away from Hef's mansion and takes shelter in a ... sorority.

It started me thinking up ideas for surefire Hollywood Blockbusters. (You will note it did NOT start me thinking I could get into Hef's mansion OR join a sorority. It's true, I'm suffering from a mild case of cat scratch fever - thanks to a house cat who shall remain nameless except that his name SOUNDS like "nameless" and it wasn't Francois - but it hasn't made me completely batshit.)

So, how about a movie about...a sorority sister who runs away from her sorority (Phi Kappa Boob) and takes shelter in a...BROTHEL? We could call it...BROTHEL SISTER!

Or no, wait, I've got it. How about a HOOKER who runs away from a brothel and takes shelter in the PLAYBOY MANSION? We could call it...MANSION HOOKER.

Or how about a movie about PLAYBOY BUNNY who runs away from the brothel where she took shelter in Part I, and takes shelter in a HOT TUB?! TUB BUNNY.

Wait, maybe I AM batshit...

And another thing: can you really use the same word - "movie" - to describe "The Sorrow and the Pity," "Citizen Kane," "Anything with Meryl Streep in it Except 'Mamma Mia''" and "House Bunny?" Should people (and by people, I mean other people) be required to make a distinction between "movies" and "films?" It seems that perhaps they should be, just out of respect for real cinema, but how can I MAKE them?

How about a movie where a CAT scratches a PLAYBOY BUNNY and gives her cat scratch fever so bad that when she runs away to look for shelter she ends up with the AMISH and she LIKES IT? We could call it "AMISH BUNNY," or "WITNESS."

Are the Amish even allowed to watch movies? I mean, regularly, not during their "batshit year" where they can do anything and probably wouldn't waste it just watching a movie unless they were mainlining heroin and sporting a coat with 18 zippers at the same time. (Somehow, I've always been fascinated with the idea that they're not allowed to use zippers - it's all toggle, all the time with those people. Imagine.)

I think it's time to reapply my topical antibiotic cream.

It's been nice talking to you all.

[Pictured Above: A scene from the Hollywood Blockbuster "AMISH BUNNY," coming soon to a theater near you, unless you actually are Amish.]

go canada

2008-08-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it's not easy being Canadian.

It's not easy being Canadian when you hear Terry Jacks singing, "Seasons in the Sun," for example.

I know it couldn't have been easy being Canadian when beaver hats fell out of fashion and our only national industry died.

And it sure must have been hard to be Canadian before there actually was a Canada, and the best you could be was "British North American" which must have sounded gay even then.

But the hardest time to be Canadian has got to be during the Summer Olympics.

I went to the paper today, hoping SOMEONE had won a medal of SOME color (yes, I know, "colour" in Canadian, but WIN A FRICKIN' MEDAL CANADA, AND THEN WE'LL TALK). What I discovered, under the headline, "What Canada did Tuesday," was that Christine Girard who finished "four kgs out of the bronze medal" in the Women's 63 kg was a STAR.

She'll be able to go back to the village and lord it all over the FIFTH-place men's slalom kayak dude, the SEVENTH-placed synchronized diving duo from Montreal, and the NINTH-placed 'eventing' team. I don't even know what 'eventing' is and I'm pissed.

But even these guys can feel superior to the one-person dinghy man, who is currently sitting pretty at 16th overall after the second of 10 races; the one-person dinghy woman, who is currently 24th, and the two-person dinghy team who have had four races and are now - be still my proud Canadian heart - TWENTY-EIGHTH.

I would like to go and give the whole team a pep talk. "DUDES!" I'd begin, "The ITALIANS have NINE MEDALS."

And that's where I'd end.

I did a little research (I googled "Canada Olympics Suck") and it seems Canada has a Summer Olympics STRATEGY. It's called the "Road to Excellence" campaign and it's the summer equivalent of the winter "Own the Podium" program (my prediction? the only way Canada is going to OWN a podium is if it buys one at IKEA).

The catch, however, is that the "Road to Excellence" heads directly to London, 2012, bypassing Beijing 2008 completely.

gay paree

2008-08-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

I read articles about home renovations. They've sort of replaced the "Vows" section of the New York Times as my guilty pleasure. I sit in all my renter's glory and read about people who think nothing of buying two Manhattan apartments and converting them into one (the NYT doesn't tend to profile the people who buy one Manhattan apartment and convert it into two then rent one out to a Korean family looking to open a sawmill but I'd read that article if it existed - I'm no snob).

Anyway, yesterday, having been directed to the Toronto Globe and Mail by at least FOUR people who were kind enough to send me links to the story of the Greyhound bus beheading, I got to scanning the rest of the front page and found a home renovation story. This is the home:

It was built in 1842 for Charles Whitelaw, the first mayor of Paris, Ontario (just like the original Paris, except that it's totally not). Alexander Graham Bell used to visit. I like to imagine his reaction, were he to return to visit his dear friend Charles today, and get a gander at the front hallway:

I mean, it's possible that IS Alexander Graham Bell in the ladder painting although I seem to recall him having a beard, and I doubt the man with him his Paris' first mayor, but I can't swear to that either.

It turns out the present owner of the house is a gay icon in Toronto. Perhaps had there been some mention of this SOMEWHERE in the accompanying article, the photos would have been less jarring. But even knowing this, as I now do, the decor still gets me:

I mean, does he have to remind himself he's gay? I picture him wandering into the "lounge" thinking, "Man, I got me a six-pack of Molson and the game's on tonight and... DAMN! That's right! I'm GAY."

The same might happen at dinner (that's the dining room above). Maybe he gets a little too wrapped up in talk of small engine repair or boobs (or whatever straight guys talk about at dinner), then he looks to his left and sees the white guy getting it on with the purple guy while the weird, bearded man-monkey holds an umbrella over them and he thinks, "RIGHT! I'm GAY! Gay gay gay gay gay. God. You'd think I'd know that by now." Then he chuckles self-deprecatingly and changes the subject to waxing or Mamma Mia! or whatever gay people talk about at dinner.

I can only tell you for certain what I'll be talking about at dinner for the next few weeks - the Greyhound bus beheading. Be warned.

movin' on up

2008-07-23T12:16:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen me around much lately, it's because I've been moving in different circles. Rather swell circles, if you must know - filled with people for whom single malt whiskies, original art, and indoor plumbing are not luxuries, they're givens.

I think, when you do see me next, you'll notice a distinct improvement. I've acquired a bit of polish. I no longer wipe my nose on my sleeve - better still, I no longer wipe my nose on anybody else's sleeve, a trick that may have seemed oh so amusant during all those dear nights on the docks, but which I've been brought to see is perhaps not quite the thing.

When I do have to wipe my nose, I've learned (assuming there's no 2,000kc note handy), to ask myself, "What would Brooke Astor do?" and then wipe it discretely - in the drapes.

My conversation is much better too. I'd always heard that great minds talked about people and small minds talked about ideas, but it turns out I'd heard that from a moron and it's TOTALLY the other way around. So I've dropped all references to the Menendez Brothers and the Fatty Arbuckle scandal from my repertoire, and instead I talk about life after death, and are movies art? and what is the capital of Sweden? Ideas.

I've also learned to take more care about my dress. Where once I would have dashed off for an evening's entertainment without so much as running a fork through my hair, I now take a moment to straighten my hat, button my gloves, and remove the cat hair from my jodhpurs. And it pays let me tell you. People really seem to notice when you make that extra effort, "Nice jodhpurs," they'll say, or "I didn't even know you HAD a horse." It's enough to turn a girl's head.

So, I can't promise I'll be seeing much of you in future, because me and my new high society friends (pictured below) will probably be spending a lot of time discussing ideas, and wearing jodhpurs,and avoiding the docks, and bedazzling our matching gowns, but I promise to keep you posted. Consider this blog a window on my new life and feel free to press your dirty little noses against it!

[Note: all the pictures in this post turned up in a google image search for "high society."]

twas brillig...

2008-07-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

If you know how crazy I am about celebrities - the older and deader the better - then you can imagine my joy at discovering LEWIS CARROLL lives in my hood!

Yes, THE Lewis Carroll. Anglican non-minister. Mathematician. Author of Alice in Wonderland. Possible pedophile. And the only way I discovered it is that he found someone's missing cat (SO like him) and put up a poster on the gate to Havlickovy Sady.

The cat, it said, "Was brindl, with white on its wether and neb."

I'm sure it was found gyring and gimbling in the wabe, but there was no room to include it on the poster. Lewis had to nip his poetic tendencies in the bud and give a phone number and address at which the kitty could be collected. And what a frabjous day that will be for its owner!

In celebrity-sighting terms, this is right up there with the time I met the prime minister of Canada and the morning I had brunch at a table near Selma Blair (who shares a last name with the former prime minister of Britain, which used to be the boss of Canada - eerie!)

Watch this space for more dead celebrity sightings!

REALLY easy rider

2008-06-30T22:48:00.000-07:00

I recently (read: five minutes ago) ran across this reference to the movie Easy Rider (which, I feel compelled to add, I've seen twice and still don't get, except for the scene where Jack Nicholson is perched on the back of one of the bikes in a suit, wearing his old football helmet, which I not only get, I love). It was in an article about the new Mercedes GLK-Class, and why I was reading it is neither here nor there. The point is, well, I'll tell you the point in a minute, first, read this:

"In the 40 or so years since Wyatt and Billy’s great escape, first impressions suggest little has changed in this no-man’s land between L. A. and Las Vegas. With the Steppenwolf classic “Born to be Wild” pumping from the stereo, we gun the engine and set off in the tracks of our road movie heroes. “Get your motor running/looking for adventure...” Although the scenery may not have changed much, it takes only a matter of seconds at the wheel of the new GLK to realize that 2008-style independence comes with much greater comfort than that enjoyed by Hopper and Fonda, and that Mercedes-style freedom comes with leather upholstery, air conditioning, at least seven airbags, Brake Assist (BAS) and power steering as standard. Yet despite such modern creature comforts, it is impossible to lose that “easy-rider” feeling."

Do I even have to tell you the point? Oh, what the hell, I will.

Would Easy Rider have become the cult classic we know today had our heroes escaped in an air-conditioned, luxury automobile with SEVEN airbags?

Would the sight of their Mercedes pulling up to the gas pumps have raised the hackles of the yokel behind the counter? Even if the GLK is "15 feet of antiestablishment attitude?"

An antiestablishment Mercedes?

I now declare the counterculture dream of the '60s officially DEAD.

adult education

2008-06-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about going back to school.

It all started last week when my boss, out of the blue, and "just out of curiosity," asked me if I could tell him how a laser printer worked. (For those who are wondering, I do not work for Dell or HP or even a local Central European firm assembling printers under the "Iffy" or "Ersatz" brand.)

I thought about it and realized that I could not -- I could not tell him how a laser printer worked! And oh, how this has haunted me. It's why I'm thinking of going back to school -- vocational school.

It's not the first time I've considered a change of career, or pondered the acquisition of some portable skills -- small-engine repair once called my name, but that was back in Canada where EVERYONE has a lawn mower or a chainsaw or a snowmobile and many have all three and use them interchangeably.

I once did a report on the workings of a two-stroke carbureted engine and I remember it in detail. I asked my cousin, who was studying mechanical engineering, to explain it to me, telling him I would be expected to incorporate "colorful and apt similes and analogies" into my account -- my cousin did one better and incorporated them into his own account -- "The piston moves up and down in the cylinder like dog food in a can" -- being the one that leaps immediately to mind.

In fact, I remember the workings of the two-stroke engine so clearly, I may just describe them to my boss, substituting "laser printer" for "engine."

"And then the letters appear on the paper like dried dog food pellets on a plate."

Needs work, I think I'll call my cousin...

[Pictured above: a laser printer at work!]

what's happening in canada

2008-06-16T01:59:00.001-07:00

Sometimes one writes out of inspiration, sometimes as a matter of discipline, and sometimes as a way of avoiding cleaning the cat litter box (apparently this last was behind much of both "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Great Gatsby").

I'm not saying what is behind today's post, but my cats are holding their noses as I write, and it's not a reaction to my prose.

I realize I've fallen down on the job of keeping you all informed about what's happening in Canada. The main obstacle is that I don't actually know what's happening in Canada. This morning, though, in my never-ending efforts to serve my public (both of you) I've skimmed the Globe and Mail (Toronto's NATIONAL newspaper) and and here's what I found:

"Within spitting distance of the Calgary International Airport, at an anonymous conference hall, Oscar-winner Ben Affleck moved listeners to tears as he talked about his experiences in Africa."

Raises more questions than it answers, doesn't it? Who's spitting at the Calgary airport? And who gave Ben Affleck an Oscar?

"He held back no painful detail about the people he encountered, juxtaposing their stories with what he called 'vain consumption' in the West, in a room oozing with oil money, where 325 guests paid $25,000 per table of 10. The tables alone raised $800,000."

More questions: can you think of a better example of 'vain consumption' than spending $25,000 to have dinner with Ben Affleck?

Oh wait, maybe this:

"Affleck's celebrity status helped raise more than a quarter of a million dollars during the live auction on Saturday night, including $150,000 donated by five couples...to take in two upcoming movie premieres, Affleck's comedy He's Just Not That Into You and Damon's war drama Green Zone."

(He's Just Not That Into You is apparently the story of a Calgary oil man's relationship to the African continent.)

And that's what's happening in Canada!

Sex ve městě

2008-06-09T11:07:00.000-07:00

I went to the Czech premiere of Sex and the City last week and let me tell you, it was FABULOUS. The good people at Palace Cinemas pulled out all the stops to ensure the evening was every bit as glam as the film.

Before entering the theater, we were offered a "welcome" shot of "vodka." Half the glasses contained a brown liquid and half contained a cloudy white liquid and both tasted like air freshener mixed with club soda, but maybe that's what passes for vodka in New York these days, what do I know?

So many buckets of ink have been spilled discussing the film I feel no need to say anything about it other than that it was like watching five episodes of the show one after the other, which I may actually have done on occasion, although never flying high on "vodka."

Some women dressed for the premiere, but it was wall-to-wall Charlottes -- tasteful summer dresses -- no floppy, flower lapel pins or over-sized tam o'shanters or tutus (for those, apparently, I should have hit the Indiana Jones premiere).

After the film, there were subway sandwiches and beer. And then I asked myself, "Are 'Subway' and 'Pilsner Urquell' the labels everyone kept going on about in the movie?" But before I could answer myself, they ran out of beer and it was time to throw away the plastic glass, dust the bread crumbs off my shirt, and return to the workaday world.

...and we're back

2008-06-08T01:34:00.001-07:00

Many years ago, in journalism school, my sister's class was asked to come up with a name for the weekly radio show they'd be broadcasting on the campus station. She suggested "Le Trottoir Imbecile" -- "The Imbecile Sidewalk" -- based on the title of an Edward Gorey story about a writer who finds himself at a very boring dinner at a restaurant by that name.

Her radio professor was much taken with it, but cooler heads prevailed, and the show was eventually called, "Newshour," or "Current Events," or "Stuff We Have to Do to Graduate."

But I always felt "Le Trottoir Imbecile" was a title worthy of use, and now that my old blog name is no longer appropriate (because I no longer live at Rasinovo Nabrezi 76, and the Czech pensioners who do would probably would not appreciate my musings on the perfidy of the Adidas corporation or the wisdom of dating a war criminal going out attached to their address) I've decided to use it.

I'm excited about the blog relaunch and I hope you are too, and if not, that you have the grace to fake it because I promise, I'll buy it.

More to follow...