my own fucking ten!

1. battlestar galactica in the atrium!
2. ian waddell visisting for tea on saturday!
3. more baseball on sunday!
4. jazz police are working for my mother!
5. waking up at 3 am!
6. the bookstore advisory committee!
7. gin and tonic!
8. traplines by eden robinson!
9. twinings irish breakfast tea!
10. working at a retard circus!

ok, another fucking ten!
1. one west, two myths!
2. they call me 'senator'!
3. first we take manhattan, then we take berlin!
4. leonard cohen eating a banana!
5. beautiful new pavement on 12th avenue!
6. pandamonium!
7. bird flu!
8. richard thompson's front parlour ballads!
9. where have you gone, joe dimaggio/a nation turns its lonely eyes to you!
10. professionalism!

i love writing my own fucking ten.

the gift of a golden voice

i'm just paying my rent everyday in the tower of song.

i heard tower of song first during the cbc's 50 cancon tracks project, and it didn't make any sense at all then, but now i understand. rather, i don't understand the lyric, at least not precisely, but i understand the sex appeal. jazz police i think i understand. it is about fascism and generational divides. jazz police are working for my mother. all my experience of leonard cohen will now be shaded, for the better, i think, by the knowledge that he is broke, and that his manager pilfered most of his retirement savings. it takes the foreboding mystery out of his work, i think. he's just this old guy, worried about retirement. he is not a monolith.

i've got another vote determining issue now: this one is for parks board candidates, and it is ' for or against the preservation of nat bailey stadium'. actually, this is larger than just the parks board. if sam sullivan is pro-nat bailey stadium, and jim green hedges his bets on nat bailey stadium, i will vote for sam sullivan. no, who am i kidding: i'm actually going to vote for mr. peanut.

yesterday, while... pottering about, i guess.
steely dan, everything must go (2003)
the sea and cake, two bedrooms (2002)
michael hedges, aerial boundaries (1984)
damon and naomi, with ghost (2000)
lisa germano, geek the girl (1996)

i catalog this information for my own benefit, because these lists have meaning for me, and probably me alone. but this is about NARCISSISM, writ large, and constant autobiography.

bought, today, at a&b.
leonard cohen, i'm your man (1988)
simon and garfunkel, bookends (1968)
richard thompson, front parlour ballads (2005)

i had no idea that the latter even existed before i saw it on the rack at the store, which hasn't happened to me since i was 14, i think. i've always known what was coming out, especially from my very favourite bands and songwriters. i pay less attention to these things now, and i think that the lack of anticipation is probably healthy.

i'm trying to find the first novel in sharon butala's loose trilogy of gates of the sun, luna, and the fourth archangel. i am reading them in reverse, which doesn't seem to be a problem. it's like a detective series, this way! 'what flaws was she trying to compensate for in the subsequent novel?', i get to discover. i feel very compelled to read her work, although it is not particularily good. the fourth archangel became, at points, hamhanded and didactic, which i enjoyed reading but felt vaguely embarrased about, especially the connie kaldor/lightning bit. the key to analyzing her novels, i feel, is her personal confessional, the perfection of the morning. she is at her best as an author when she doesn't attempt to solve her narrative problems, which is why the real life collection of short stories is so fantastic.

my title tomorrow will be petrokazakhstan, which is the name of a petroleum company that operates exclusively in kazakhstan, but, until today, was owned and headquartered out of calgary. today, it was bought by a larger petroleum company owned and headquartered out of china.

i am the only person who cares about bird flu. people may be worried about catching it, but i may be the only person i know who is worried about the concept. bird flu, people. i love bird flu. maybe bird flu is like big brother. i love you, bird flu.

i'm guided by the beauty of our weapons

today, while reading the globe and mail, and more star trek(the next generation #38 - rogue saucer)
my own homemade 60's sunshine pop collection, again
k.d. lang, hymns of the 49th parallel (2004)
steely dan, gaucho (1981)
phoenix, alphabetical (2004)
damon and naomi, the earth is blue (2005)
low, trust (2002)

what i bought on vinyl at audiopile on friday.
the 5th dimension, stoned soul picnic (1967?)
bruce cockburn, the further adventures of... (1977)
swing out sister, it's better to travel (1987)
swing out sister, kaleidoscope world (1989)

i'm not sure if i can emphasize enough how much i enjoyed the bike tour with amanda this morning. i really appreciated the city, too, not just in a physical sense, but for how decent successive councils have been to prioritize the development of cycling paths across the city.

i'm going to sell my sparklehorse record, because i don't really enjoy it. i only ever listen to it out of a misguided sense of obligation, which is a bad, bad habit. i should listen to what i want to hear, nothing more, nothing less. i plan to sell my dandy warhol records too; talk about a passing fancy.

i'm still trying to articulate my thoughts on the bird flu phenomenon. 'avian influenza', as a term, is unexciting, but 'bird flu' captures my imagination. bird flu. i like the words, the vague threat. bird flu is in russia now, and european nations are mobilizing soldiers in response.

jazzer drop your axe it's jazz police

yesterday, while reading all day.
the mountain goats, the sunset tree (2005)
the lilac time, s/t (1988)
jonatha brooke & the story, plumb (1995)
stina nordenstam, the world is saved (2004)
judee sill, heart food (1973)
lush, gala (1990)
sebastien tellier, politics (2004)
my own homemade 60's sunshine pop collection
mark eitzel, 60 watt silver lining (1996)
fairport convention, unhalfbricking (1969)
his name is alive, someday my blues will cover the earth (2001)

i read two complete novels, after finishing mao II on friday.
star trek: the next generation #16, contamination, by john vornholt
star trek: the next generation #34, blaze of glory, by simon hawke

while i was waking up around this time last sunday, i've already been to point grey and back on my bicycle with amanda this morning. we left at 7 am and returned at 11 am.

the tracklist to my 60's sunshine pop collection.
1. the free design, kites are fun
2. dave grusin, california montage
3. the sandpipers, to put up with you
4. the sandpipers, misty roses
5. mort garson, big sur
6. the left banke, ivy ivy
7. the sandpipers, beyond the valley of the dolls
8. the groop, the jet song
9. love generation, montage from 'how sweet it is' (i knew that you knew)
10. roger nichols and the small circle of friends, love so fine
11. the stouffville grit, 'cause i don't have you
12. the free design, my brother woody
13. dino, desi, and billy, through spray coloured glasses
14. the sundowners, always you
15. the sandpipers, the drifter
16. kenny rankin, peaceful

now've got all of yesterday's globe and mail to read. when i get paid this week, i'll go downtown and buy some leonard cohen albums. it'll start with i'm your man, songs of love and hate, and dear heather.

the coldest night of the year

i finished the alice munro, and went right into don delillo's mao II, which, i learned today from kevin, is considered one of the great post-modern novels of our time. just as i found the first time, the first half is electric, while the second half, where bill goes to london, comes as an initial jolt. there's a delightful pacing to the photography scenes. the future belongs to crowds. the theme is one of mass experience, i guess. bill gray, maybe a cipher for delillo himself, whines about his role as a novelist, in terms of creating public myths and spreading ideas, being ursurped by terrorists. terrorism is a theme of delillo's, i think; it is also a element in the names, which, if pressed, i might name as my favourite delillo novel. next, i want to read libra or one of his early books, maybe great jones street. i'll do what my mother did in university; read novels while in transport, but focus on schoolwork otherwise. i can sympathize with the book-club frenzy, and wonder why it passed so quickly. reading mao II, i'd suggest that it passed because we have news to collectively engage us now, rather than novels. the terrorists and their explosives have taken over our imaginative reins. it's more complex than that though. it's definitely more complex than the passing of a fad, too. are there still book clubs? i don't know.

delillo is often criticized for writing unrealistic dialogue. as i told kevin this afternoon, if i want realistic dialogue, i can go talk to my neighbours. i don't read novels that mirror my existence; i already live it.

in the great gatsby, the title character is revealed at the end to have embarked for some time on a constant regimen of self-improvement. it occured to me on saturday, while wading to my neck in alouette lake, that the best way to ward off my nasty self-destructive streak would be to build up my arsenal of tangible skills, rather than coast on intangibles, as i plan to do until april 30th 2006. i could learn to swim, learn to drive, and set myself a regular sleep pattern. get to work before 8.30 every day. right now, if provoked, i could tell you that i can capably chair a meeting, and am able to speak and write well, using complex sentences, without preparation. i don't edit my essays, and routinely get 'A' grades on papers that i can't bear to even read over, let alone revise. when i attempt to revise, i go into tailspin. so, i simply hand in the bastards as i bang them out. i tend to not put down sentences that are malformed; i edit as i write, constantly prodding, but doing it all in one go. i do well on in-class exams. jan will write her in-class essays out twice, once rough, once good. it's an exercise that i can't even imagine. i bet that i could go from A to A+ if i were to spend more time on my writing, but then i'd have nothing to look forward to. i keep expectations low. i've yet to seriously damage my life by way of self-destruction, but i don't doubt that it is in my future to lose a good job through sheer willpower. i'll note, seriously, that the fact that i still have my current job indicates exactly how much i don't want it anymore. no, i do want it, but rather, how little i value the judgement of those around me. i don't feel that this is a true test of what i can do. one day i will get to that point, and i will be lost.

one day i will hit the wall. i thought it would be grade 12. then i thought it would be university. then i thought it would be the student society. now i imagine it will be upper division history courses. after that, grad school, should the unforseen come to pass. it will definitely be professional politics, one day. i live in fear of the wall, the day that i can no longer coast on intangibles. maybe this is guilt, for not building houses while living in a society that needs new houses more than it needs history papers and reports on meetings with senior administrators. please don't bring class politics into this, because i'd rather not venture down that path of self-reflection.

see, these are exercises in the confessional genre. i learned in january that news writing is genre writing, and i would be a fool to claim that this is anything different.

the eastern question

now that i've got five potential courses picked out, i'll just have to wait for my payment to be recognized by SIMS, and for some kind professors to sign me into courses that are surely full by now. three courses come from my newest favourite part of the world, and two from my base of power.

hist 421 is greece, from 1864 to 1940. this would cover the twilight of the ottoman empire, the reorganization of the balkans, the greece/turkey population transfer, the second world war, and the ensuing civil war. hist 350 is the early-middle ottoman empire. hist 486 is the end of the ottoman empire and the direct origins of the modern turkish state. i think that the end of the ottoman empire may hold much portent for the former soviet republics, particularily those in central asia. what i know about this time period has intrigued me, and, most importantly, reminded me of how capable i am of synthesizing new information. four months ago, i knew nothing, and nopw i know more than most people i know, which is still barely anything. i want to know more.

hist 391 is the history of the north american west, and hist 436 is the history of british columbia. this is my comfort zone. i know this stuff, and am quite interested in further specializing my knowledge. hist 436 would be rote, but enjoyable, and would force me to do a lot of self-reflection, i expect, in terms of my role both at the citizens assembly and, since then, in getting someone elected to the legislature. hist 391 would allow me to continue working on george melnyk and sharon butala, and would also give me an excuse to read unnamed country: the struggle for a canadian prairie fiction(1977) by dick harrison and prairie politics and society: regionalism in decline(1980), by roger gibbins, now head of the canada-west foundation. it would also give me a chance to indulge in my old favourite hobby of comparative politics and regional identity betwen canada and the united states.

i expect that i'll take hist 391 for sure, because it is the only one with space right now, and one of the three 'eastern question' courses. i'll only two courses, but i will try to prioritize them over my job, and try hard to keep my job at work and out of the rest of my life. i like the public service more than the politics.

i believe that if quebec separated from canada, the maritime provinces would become north america's 'eastern question'.

there is a book of essays on the west wing which i would love to read. i hope that someone covers the show's habit of ignoring events in favour of their leadup and fallout. major speeches are dealt with in flashback: we see the post-event reactions, which segue into recollections of the event preparations, but we rarely, if ever, see the actual speech. if we do see a glimpse of the speech, we are led to focus on everything except for the actual substance of the speech. it is how people react to that substance and how that reaction is cultivated in the lead-up that matters.
it's an ongoing lesson on postmoderism and historiograophy: the event is irrelevant; the interpretation is significant.

i'm having trouble with alice munro, and may put the progress of love aside in favour of a helen macinnes tale of international espionage and intrigue. i lose steam at the end of each story. i've developed a pattern, whereby i stop reading four pages into a story, only to pick up again, blast through the story and halfheartedly get througfh the start of the next story before putting it down for a few days. i'd like to go trackdown eden robinson's traplines, but i know that i should go through the unread books on my shelf before adding to the piles that are accumulating on the floor.

by writing foxbase alpha, i fear that i am developing my abilities at writing in the 'confessional' genre at the expense of other, more credible styles.

a message from another time

i intend to bring the following CDs over to fort awesome tomorrow for amanda, if she'd still like to find some new records.
electric light orchestra, ELO's greatest hits (1979)
the geraldine fibbers, what part of get thee gone don't you understand? (1996)
low, i could live in hope (1994)
lucinda williams, essence (2001)

this weekend, i bought the following, in alphabetical order.
on LP:
the 5th dimension, age of aquarius (1968?), featuring not only aquarius and wedding bell blues, which i know and love, but also covers of cream's sunshine of our love and mary hopkins' those were the days. i love the 5th dimension. brynn once commented on how odd it was that, as serious, dour, and analytical as i can be, i listen to a lot of music that is simply, sheerly happy.

the beegees, greatest hits, vol. 2 (1970something), which is sadly very unremarkable. i was hoping to be pleasantly surprised, but no.

glen campbell, galveston (1960something), which is much worse shape than i'd first thought. the title track is amazing, but i haven't listened to anything else yet.

judy collins, colors of the day: the best of... (1972), which i haven't put on yet. i know that i love someday soon, and there are also covers of leonard cohen's suzanne, sandy denny's who knows where the time goes, and donovan's sunny googe street. it came with a great big poster of judy collins on a beach with seagulls.

electric light orchestra, eldorado (1972), my least favourite of the three ELO albums. i can't get it out of my head is poised, stately, almost regal. nothing else is standing out initially, though.

electric light orchestra, discovery (1979), disco! how lovely! as ever, over-produced and very stiff, but nonetheless enjoyable. i'm initially taken with the chorus of don't bring me down (grrrossss!) and shine a little love.

electric light orchestra, time (1981), which is a space-opera about life in 2095. it makes me think about harlan ellison stories, with a lot less dementia. twilight features nods to queen, the beach boys, and the who's baba o'reilly. the whole album is a bit of a bizzare pastiche, actually. i like the lights go down for the chorus, which has a really surprising and reassuring chord change.

emmylou harris, pieces of the sky (1975), another album that my father liked a lot, and that i'm curious enough to spend $1.49 on. i've only listened to the cover of for no one, so far, which is happily not a mangling of a gorgeous song.

gordon lightfoot, did she mention my name? (1968), one of the crucial first four lightfoot records, and in wonderfully good condition. i'm happy just to have this on my shelf.

gordon lightfoot, summer side of life (1971), suprisingly very good, making, as it does, the start of his so-called 'singles phase'. while 1976's summertime dream fits that description, i'm going to continue picking up his early 1970's albums in the hopes that they're all as solid as this one.

gordon lightfoot, don quioxte (1972), which may be the beginning of the decline. good, but less consistent, and starting to all blend together.

rockpile, seconds of pleasure (1981). i have no idea what this is, but the crazy old man next to me at the value village record shelf said that it was fantastic. i'd skipped past it, looking for more ELO, and he started to tell me off. 'that's a great album! absolutely great! you're lucky i'm here, or you'd have passed that right over like it was garbage!' sure, right. for $1.49, i was willing to buy a quite-likely-awful album just to make a crazy old man happy. i'm really curious now.

suzanne vega, solitude standing (1987), which i already have twice, but in terrible shape both on LP and CD. this was in great shape. one of my formative records, and one that i'm too close to for evaluation.

on CD:
bowery electric, beat (1996), which i may not want to listen to very often, but will be perfect when i do put it on.

christine collister, the dark gift of time (1998). on first listen, i don't like this. her voice is almost entirely gone by this point, and a lot of the material blends together. i'll keep trying, for old times sake. i'm still hoping to find mischief, which she put out with clive gregson in 1986, or the covers album they did in 1994.

mahogany, memory column (2005). more on this another day, when i've had more time to spend with it. this is a collection of all of mahogany's extra-dream of a modern day singles and compilation tracks, sequenced chronologically into 'michigan' and 'new york' sides.

dauphin-swan river

all that keeps me from being more strident about electoral reform is the massive nostalgia that comes up when i consider the practical implications of changing the system. we'd have to rename all the ridings, and there would be a lot fewer. canada has some very gorgeous riding names. i'd like to change the few provincial names that are still dull and make them a little more descriptive. from delta north to delta-anniedale. from cariboo north to cariboo-quesnel. from delta south to delta-tsawwassen. from north coast to prince rupert-haida gwaii. from prince george north to prince george-williston lake. from cariboo south to cariboo-chilcotin. from east kootenay to kootenay-cranbrook.

most good riding names will allude to an area's history, without being brutal about it. vancouver-quadra, for example. it would be honest to rename vancouver east to vancouver-commercial drive, or vancouver-grandview. we should rename the federal vancouver-kingsway kensington-collingwood, or collingwood-cedar cottage.

i like the concept of geosynchronous earth orbit. in space, but tied to a specific piece of land. floating, but not adrift.

while i've never been interested in narcotics, i'm having a hard time not taking benadryl as a recreational drug. it is a serious sedative. not to the extent of putting me to sleep, but detaching me, making my muscles very still. i feel that i'd rather not move, as though severe inertia is keeping me in place. my reaction time and initiative are restricted. while i'll take things in, and have responses at hand, it just seems easier to stay still and quiet. so long as i pop a pill when i know that the next four-five hours will require no significant effort on my part, my effectiveness is uncompromised. i've made the mistake of doing this before meetings, which puts me effectively out of commission. there are some meetings before which i wouldn't mind a sedative, though.

i picked up this alice munro collection from the laundry room downstairs, where people leave books that they no longer want around. not paying for it meant that i had no investment ot expectation, which could explain how much enjoyment i'm getting out of it. tomorrow i'll be sleeping in, which means that i can read all night.

my itunes meltdown has forced me to listen to a lot of vinyl. now, paul simon, still crazy after all these years, which i will appreciate more when i'm older. my little town is still one of my favorite songs.

if i put songs on here to download via yousendit(the file stays up for 25 downloads or 7 days, whichever comes first), would you listen to them?

shaky town

i'm glad i voted for, and got to work with amanda, and i'm especially glad that we're past politics now. not to say that there's no more politics, but we discuss politics merely because it's what we do, so it comes up, amongst other things. it's not why we talk, though. we talk because we are friends.

i'm all done with the habsburgs and ottomans for now, which will allow me to stop feeling guilty about reading books other than dominic lieven's empire. this course has been a good reintroduction to macrohistory for me. we did 500 years of the ottoman empire in two weeks. after so many case studies of sointula and wallhachin, i thought i'd lost my taste for the overarching narrative, but after a natural adjustment period i found it quite exciting. the desnity of the texts was difficult, but i synthesize points and arguments well, and had little trouble. i'd be happy to take another course, perhaps a 300-level russian history, with ilya again; with a smaller class, i imagine he'd be quite a joy to learn from. this fits well with my continuing interest in the central asian republics. in the news: uzbekistan has evicted the united states from a key air base. it's not unlike nanoose bay, but there's a lot more at stake, and islam karimov is no glen clark. dominic lieven makes the important point that the soviet union collapsed a mere 14 years ago. 14 years from the fall of the habsburg dynasty, the world was still six years away from understanding the consequences of an eatern european power vacuum. it took until the 1990s for the very worst nation-building impulses of the post-ottoman balkan states to manifest themselves. in other words, it is far too soon to tell what patterns will play out following the soviet union's collapse.

while reading empire on monday, i listened to
joe jackson, big world (1986)
morrissey, viva hate (1988)
pat metheny and lyle mays, as falls wichita, so falls wichita falls (1981)
stina nordenstam, and she closed her eyes (1994)
steely dan, countdown to ecstasy (1973)
damon and naomi, playback singers (1998)
tanya donelly, beautysleep (2002)

i pulled out my vinyl last night, and have listened to
martha and the muffins, this is the ice age (1983)
john barry, the great movie sounds of... (1960something)
neil young, everybody knows this is nowhere (1967)
jackson browne, running on empty (1977)
suzanne vega, days of open hand (1990)

if you know and/or care about any of these records, it's always good to let me know.

listening to the suzanne vega is quite a trip; it was one of my very favourite albums from 1997-1999 or so. checking her website now, though, it seems that she continues to tour europe every summer, with the occasional american festival date, with not a new song to be found. maybe the luka royalties finally hit a critical mass, and she can get along on investments for the rest of her days. otherwise, i'd be very happy to have a new album.

i'll be reading alice munro's the progress of love now, and will have to decide soon whether to go for novels or political autobiographies until september begins. last august i read don delillo's underworld, and it made my summer. the first section, pafko at the wall, made me so ecstatic that i was afraid to read the rest for several weeks, for fear that it wouldn't measure up to such a grand stage-setting. it didn't measure up, but then nothing could have. i'm fighting the impulse to read it again. i'll probably reread white noise instead, because they'll be filming it soon, and i read it a long time ago, before i had made my peace with pop culture. i bet my perspective will change.