Saturday, January 27, 2007

hiatus

sometimes i think i'm just a little too tied up in a kind of narrative self-fashioning. too many years of graduate theory classes have left me enthralled with the idea of self as collage. it's an appealing concept, and one that i firmly believe lies behind the motivation for a lot of what i write here. who do i want to be today? i put some words down on a "page" and boom, i've stitched another patch on my identity. it's fun. it's joyful. but all of a sudden, it's become eerie in a way that leaves me on edge.

no doubt i will return here, to write more at a later date. tracing out the contours of my life, trying to assess the terrain is irresistible for me. i once wrote about addictions -- this kind of map-making is one of them. for the moment, however, i need a break.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

wisdom from uncle ted

recently, i identified confessing mermaid's doppleganger in the television personality of supernanny. this evening, after i had peppered my conversation with one too many memorable aphorisms, cm declared that my doppleganger had to be her imaginary uncle ted. in a brief phone conversation i managed to let drop these three memorable bombs of colloquial charm: "yeah, you're sure stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea"; "oh, hon ... the game is afoot"; and perhaps my favourite, "so he's given up tilting at windmills, huh?" apparently, these are all things cm's uncle ted would say. this is in fact difficult to verify as uncle ted, as cm pointed out several times, is imaginary. because of this, it's quite difficult to locate a picture of him, so to satisfy visual curiosity, i've googled "uncle ted" and come up with the following images of what he might look like. i'm not sure that any of them look like me in an uncanny way. nevertheless, i'm happy he's my doppleganger, if only linguistically.

an early shot of uncle ted

uncle ted and the equally imaginary, and due to her red hat, even more mythic, aunt ellen

uncle ted as i've always imagined him

i have a sneaking suspicion that this is closer to the reality of uncle ted

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

cry me a river

the hockey world is up in arms because at the upcoming NHL all-star game fans will see, for the first time, the new tight-fitting jerseys designed by reebok. many pundits are going on record against the change. david pratt of the province wails:

"Let's be clear about one thing.

This latest wardrobe malfunction is not about image or, as the league has recently suggested, about further reducing obstruction -- this is about money.

The NHL is betting you the fan will shell out millions of dollars to buy the new look.

The fear we all should have is the 350-pound middle-aged wannabe with a gold card who shows up in at the mall wearing one of these tight-fitting hockey leotards. Small children should not have to be subjected to that kind of trauma."

i understand that for many the protest voiced over the new uniforms is fueled by nostalgia for olde tyme hockey (like eddie shore used to play? -- sorry, there had to be one slapshot reference in here), a game that was a sport and not a commodity. however, admittedly, the rower in me gets a little ticked off. we've been putting up with middle-aged, spandex-wearing, olde tyme schoolboy rowers suffering from nostalgia of their own for years. seeing a pudgy hockey fan squeezed into a leafs jersey somehow just isn't as frightening the sight of a middle-aged man sausaged into an animal print uni. oh, and ladies take note of the duct tape to protect against slide bites. rrrrrrrrrrroooooaaaaaarrrrrrrrrr. sexy.

Monday, January 22, 2007

ouch



i just received my training schedule for rowing in my inbox with a note attached from my coach telling us all to "listen to our bodies". i'm listening, and i can tell you that mine is screaming and kicking like a 3 year-old in the midst of a full-on tantrum. "I. DON'T. WANNA!"

this reluctance puzzles me. this time last year i was salivating for an excel spreadsheet with my workouts mapped out for me. i found days of rest to be insulting and preferred to cross-train. where is this sudden bout of sloth and lethargy coming from?

perhaps i'm missing my erging sessions with S (who is off having a grand time with L in NYC), perhaps i'm indulging a little too much in the luxury my new gym offers (not every workout needs to be followed by 15 minutes in the sauna!). perhaps i'm just in a lazy cycle (you know? like the ebb and flow of neatness? it comes and it goes?).

whatever the reason i've got to kick my substantially larger-than-it -was-in-november ass into gear. megarrifc? are you out there? can you give me a kick? hard.

tomorrow's task? 50 minutes @ 2:25/500m. i can do this.


*the pic is of a fellow queen's student "ass up" at the national indoor erging championships. when you finish your piece on the erg like this, you know you've worked hard enough.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

mariners, fish and submarines

there are time when life just plain cracks me up. you all know how much i love boats (of all varieties!). is it no surprise that i'm introducing my lecture on coleridge's "rime of the ancient mariner", in which i deploy stanley fish's idea of interpretive communities, by playing "yellow submarine" by the beatles? get it? mariners, fish, submarine? yuk yuk yuk.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

boxed in

while i was out running errands this afternoon, taking a break from the endless editing and revising of my travel grant proposal (blogland props to G, who was kind enough to help sort out the more practical details of my upcoming research trip, all while waxing rigorous and playful about the future of the academic blog. did you know she has superhuman powers?) i stumbled acro ... okay, okay, i actively sought out, the complete boxed set of the thin man movies starring william powell and myrna loy. based on dashiell hammett's wonderfully satiric 1933 detective novel of the same title, the series, 6 films in all, follows hard-drinking detective nick charles and his socialite wife nora as they lackadaisically solve crimes all while knocking back as many martinis as possible. though the satire of the film adaptations is diluted as the series moves from the first entry, the thin man (1934) through to the last, the song of the thin man (1947), there's something about the blend of detective story and screwball comedy that has intrigued me from the time i first heard nick decree that a martini should always be shaken to waltz time.

this isn't the only boxed set of a mysterious variety that has entered my life lately. for xmas, the ever-thoughtful j&j gave me the complete new annotated sherlock holmes, an offering from w.w. norton that compiles all of ac doyle's writings on the detective in three fully-annotated volumes, complete with the original illustrations from not only the strand magazine, but also the german and american periodicals that holmes made appearances in. i had to be careful not to salivate all over the two boxes that contain the three volumes when i first opened the wrapping.

these fortuitous boxed set events mark, surprise surprise, my embarking on the beginnings of the next chapter of my dissertation on sport in Victorian detective fiction. i'm not sure what to make of the fact that so far, so many of my sources (both directly connected to the chapter and less directly connected to the chapter) have come in boxes. even another, early edition of a conan doyle source that i've taken out from the library arrived in a box! the battered and worn volume, tucked away in the expanding shelving on the fourth floor of the library had been inserted in a cardboard sleeve with a velcro fastener to ensure its longevity. i *know the detective genre is all about societal control in moments of more general cultural upheaval, a narrative of enforcing normalcy if you will, but this is a little ridiculous.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

i need to whine


in a forum where my mother won't appear and say "i told you so".

i changed my nose ring today. it hurts. without getting too graphic, i've changed my stud for one with a larger post, and thus the limits of my piercing are being, uhm, stretched.

ouch.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

double digit library fines are for amateurs

until this afternoon, i used to feel horrible pangs of guilt about my history of library fines. i once *deep breath* let them sneak up to a grand total of $50. i would rationalize them away by writing them off as the cost of doing (graduate student) business. i would pay them off using the ingenious "food for fines" campaign run by the library during the winter that allows one to reduce fines by a dollar for every canned good/non-perishable food item one donates to the local food bank. i donated oodles of chicken noodle soup. at the start of each term i'd resolve to never, ever, ever allow them to get as high as they had the term previous.

this afternoon, confessing mermaid made me realize the limitations of my fine-accumulating prowess. i can now say whole-heartedly that double digit library fines are for amateurs, and oh! am i ever an amateur. i not only tip my hat to cm, but i also, while tipping said hat, bow in acknowledgment of her superior abilities. find out the nitty-gritty details of how she managed to accumulate $749 in library fines here.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

aren't you curious?

i was.

meg posted a link to an on-line quiz which asks you a few questions about your personality and then determines your secret superhero identity. i was really hoping to be a girl with fantastic red boots (as a sort of homage to L), but alas ...

i'm spiderman!



"You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility."

"a bit geeky" ha.

who are you?

Friday, January 05, 2007

holiday anyone?


i think i've found the movie i could happily live in for the rest of my life: george cukor's holiday (1938) was finally released on dvd at the close of 2006 and yesterday, i saw it for the first time. to live in a world where kate turns somersaults from the heights of cary's shoulders ... what could be more fun?

blogs in review 2006

i'm caving in. i'm making a new year's list. it's not right that i'm not making a list to mark the arrival of 2007. my list-making finger is itchy. i can't take it anymore.

notice, please, i'm not making any resolutions. rather, below is a rundown of some of the blogs i (re)discovered in 2006 (in no particular order) -- my first year in the blogsphere.

kip mcdaniel is my canadian rowing crush. i used to be madly in love with barney williams (the canadian contribution to oxford's blue boat for the annual oxford cambridge race) but then he went and married buffy -- another st. catharines girl -- and it was over. kip is one sexy comback kid. check out his blog at rowing news.

confessing mermaid started her blog shortly before i started mine. it's as wonderful and colourful as the lovely mermaid herself. beware of the potential procrastination factor; cm is always able to locate those intriguing and revealing on-line quizzes! my favourite post is the recounting of the cubbyhole man legend (found in the may archives). read it and weep with laughter.

beckie's in the arctic and writing about life on the dark side of an ice flow. the wit of point incipient is as refreshing as a sharp, wintry wind. beckless and i also participate in a newly-christened online book club, spinoff stories. if our reading list looks appealing, send beckless an e-mail.

she doesn't wear a cape and tights, but she has amazing red boots that would make both wonder woman and super girl jealous. she also fights the forces of evil by advocating for change in canadian copyright law. yes, that's right. it's L, and this is her blog. check out her post about spam as pastiche art from dec. 5, 2006, and the lowdown on the british library's manifesto on copyright from sept. 26, 2006.

many don't know this, but i have a twin. meg, my fellow PhD candidate in victorian literature (@ dalhousie in halifax), like me, has a nasty little secret -- she's an international level triathlete. you need some motivation to get to the gym this year, you say? check out megarific's training diary in which she waxes eloquent on the beauties of a long run and discloses the rigors of the PhD with honesty.

get down and dirty with G's blog the next time you want an enthralling and engaging discussion of matters academic and not. the chronicle of her reaction to finding out she has an online fan club and her thinking woman's guide to the world cup are two of my favs.

so that's it folks -- the blogs i visited regularly in 2006. i hope you enjoy them in 2007.