boathouse row

muzak meme

2008-06-24T18:57:00.004-04:00

The rules are these:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring summer. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

in no special order ...

1. language city from at mount zoomer by wolf parade

2. waterfall from the stone roses by ... well ... the stone roses!

3. she's so lovely from scouting for girls' self-titled debut

4. common people from pulp's different class

5. "connais-tu le pays?" from massenet's mignon -- this clip is of marilyn horne singing, but my recording is of frederica von stade ... it's the combination of the two for me: von stade singing this song about homesickness helps with my current castlesickness

6. you! me! dancing! from los campesinos' hold on now, youngsters ...

7. walcott from vampire weekend's self-titled album

tagging ...

RB?
HC?
MT?

anyone?

my starfucks barrista ...

2008-06-21T10:48:00.004-04:00

jared, is a super-talented guy. here's a song he wrote that i just can't stop listening to. i want to learn to play/sing it!

when i grow up ...

2008-06-19T19:50:00.000-04:00

i want to be china forbes.

'nuff said. just watch the vid:

nerd confessions #387 and #388

2008-06-04T20:05:00.003-04:00

nerd confession #387:

(i think this is actually a bike confession, but nonetheless ...)

i'm still afraid of my clipless pedals. i'm afraid that after 4 months of bikeless existence, i'm going to go out for my first ride of the summer, come to an intersection, forget to clip out, and topple over. and in toppling over, i'm afraid that i'm going to rip open my left knee *again. the scar is almost gone from last summer. i'd like to have just one summer during which i don't have to wear a gauzy bandage on my knee and smear myself with polysporin. just one. i've never had great legs, or particularly fetching knees, so it's not that i'm vain (or maybe i am). i'm just tired of what seems to be perpetual left knee trauma, and i dread hearing quips from people who have been around for *all the left knee incidents, should they see me, yet again, sporting a pulpy scabby mess on my left leg just below the hem of my skirt.

it's a ridiculous reason for not getting out on my bike, isn't it?

nerd confession #388:

paul simon's "american tune" makes me cry. every time. i tear up like a sentimental slob and bawl my eyes out. when i first arrived at the castle in january, there was something about listening to it that helped my homesickness (canadasickness?). now that i'm back in kingstunned and anxiously counting down the days till i return to my turret, a job i adore, friends i cherish, and my lovely english boy, listening to it somehow helps, but i have to do it with a box of tissues nearby. put it on a playlist with "bridge over troubled water" and i turn into a giant, sniffling mess.

dear mexican restaurant next door ...

2008-06-01T18:24:00.003-04:00

i'm sure you have lovely guacamole. i'm sure your wait staff are pleasant and efficient. i'm sure you serve smashing mojitos. i've often thought of bellying up to the bar for a few shots of tequila in those moments, like the other day when i finished writing a dissertation chapter draft, when celebration is the order of the day. all in all, you look like a great restaurant. there's been only one thing holding me back from becoming one of your patrons.

the mariachi music.

i'm sure i'd find it atmospheric as i gleefully worked my way through a plate of cheesy nachos. i know the idea behind it is to make the burrito taste more authentic. but i can't stand it.

i can't stand it because i hear it for 10 hours a day, almost every day of the week. you have a few sets of speakers chained to the awning on your back patio that just happen to be right under my living room window, and even on days when it's raining horizontally, and there's nary a hungry soul in sight, i'm slowly lulled into insanity by the sound of the guitarrón. and at 11 o'clock, as your staff are closing, upending the green plastic patio chairs on to the green plastic tables, you turn up the volume and in a blind rage, i imagine waiters in silver-studded charro outfits wearing very, very broad-brimmed hats with tassels waltzing, busby berkeley style, with mops and brooms.

but enough of that. i'd really like us to be good neighbours. i'm here for the summer, and i think we can both enjoy the season and still remain respectful of the other person's likes and dislikes.

i hope you think so too, because i've got your precious little chihuahua and unless there's some peace and quiet tonight, his days are numbered.

castlecamp

2008-05-15T05:20:00.007-04:00

to quote a friend, who once abandoned her blog for four months as she succumbed to the demands and pressures of a term of university teaching, "it's really hard, competing for 'worst blogger of the year award'".

i don't have a note from my mother, or my family doctor, to explain my absence, and the list of excuses i was drafting in my head seems trite. and while i toyed around with this idea several times as i sat in my drafty turret at herstmonceux, writing lectures, grading essays, and snagging moments for work on my dissertation, the idea of hiring a blogsitter seemed extravagant if not a little "yuppie".

instead of a string of excuses, what i do have to offer is a short photo essay of some of the adventures i had at castlecamp (yes G, castlecamp!) which i'm sure will serve as heady material for blog entries in the future. while at the moment, i'm safely ensconced in a flat in kingstunned for the summer, working away at finishing (off) the dissertross, i will be returning to herstmonceux for the autumn semester. i can hardly wait.

along with romantic adventures in
paris
and
rome
undertaken with my lovely english boy,
i also had a wonderful visit with the lovely one, who had been living in berlin since the start of the new year.
and when not professoring or traveling, i devoted my spare time to musical endeavors, the most famous of which is the herstmonceux ukulele chamber orchestra (HUCO)

more tales from castlecamp and life in kingstunned to follow soon, i promise!

dear ergometer

2008-01-31T04:09:00.000-05:00

this is awkward, isn't it? i had no idea you were going to be at the castle, too.

after what happened between us last summer (the good and the bad), i left thinking that the best thing for both of us would be to spend some time apart. imagine my surprise the first time i walked into the gym to find you sitting there silently, as composed, resolute, and unflinching as you were back in kingston. i will admit that my pride was wounded when i realized that those 8 torrid months we spent together last year seemed to leave no trace on you. it was like i had never happened. me? i still have the scars -- especially from the time i pulled that 2000m piece and fell on to the floor in exhaustion with my feet still pressed against you.

so how are we going to handle this? we both have to be here, and we both have to spend time in the gym. i know we went for a little spin the other night, and it was great (all the good things from last summer, most definitely), but i don't want to fall into the same pattern of loving and hating you with the intensity i have experienced in the past.

what do you propose we do?

s.

p.s. remember this?

done like dinner

2008-01-30T05:58:00.001-05:00

i just sent off those pesky dictionary entries.

*dance dance*

if i never have to tease out the difference between bell's life in london, penny bell's life and sporting news, the sportsman, and the sporting life EVER AGAIN, i will be one very happy periodicals junkie.

with a little help from my friends

2008-01-30T04:10:00.001-05:00

CM, G, KK, J&J, A, P ... what would i do without you?

thanks guys.

thanks, geoffrey!

2008-01-29T09:57:00.000-05:00

Hi Shannon,

We needed you in a show on the weekend at an art gallery so you could show off that dress again and you had to be overseas at the time!!

Too bad, but I hope your time there is fabulous.

cheers
g

nothing boosts a girl's morale more than to know that the fact she had to put her "modeling career" (note the inverted commas, meant to signal an ironic tone!) has left a certain lack in the world of fashion. this afternoon, i received the above e-mail from geoffrey, a friend back in kingston who designed the dress that i wore to the end-of-the-year english department christmas party this past december.

oh the glamour. it's killing me.

style sheets

2008-01-28T17:45:00.000-05:00

wednesday will be a monumental day -- i've actually sked'd a deadline that i'm going to meet. as many of you know, i was contracted this summer to write a few entries for the british library's forthcoming dictionary of nineteenth-century journalism (now rendered more forthcoming due to my, er, timely contribution), and off to the editor those three darlings will go, bright and early wednesday morning. oooooo. it's going to be a good day.

i've been spending time in my turret, spitting and polishing -- you know? buffing up the prose a little? -- in preparation for this monumental occasion. in doing so, i realized that the spitting and polishing is not unlike giving (or getting!) a pedicure before a much-anticipated date. it's the part of writing (and foot care) i really do love.

the part of writing i really do hate, you ask, pedihistory aside? (and i know you're curious ...) aside from shitty first drafts (cf. anne lamott)? style sheets. i really hate formatting stuff to fit with style sheets. i find it mind-numbing.

thanks to my friend jon, this tune has therefore become the most recent addition to the soundtrack of my life.

castle life, a playlist

2008-01-21T16:10:00.000-05:00

should my life at the castle (so far) ever be turned into a rock opera, here is the off-off-off-broadway cast album track listing:

1. never easy/peter murray
2. national anthem of nowhere/the apostle of hustle
3. rock and roll (live)/the velvet underground
4. my british tour diary/of montreal
5. LDN/lily allen
6. parklife/blur
7. if you've got trouble/the beatles
8. a foggy day/dinah washington
9. the aspidistra flies/stars
10. whales sing/the shaky hands

almost makes me want to get back on an erg ...

2008-01-19T05:46:00.000-05:00

almost, but not quite.

there are days when the very liberal feminist in me is horrified at how much i miss the culture of the boathouse.

i can't help but wonder if the dark blues have the same kind of media machine that the queen's boys deploy in their war against mcgill ...

vid props, once again, to andrew rastapkevicius.

any suggestions?

2008-01-19T04:03:00.000-05:00

i'd like to appeal to the collective wisdom of my wonderful friends and ask for help compiling a list of things i *must do while resident on the drizzly isle. i'm trying to devote my weeks to lots of hard work, and my weekends to exploring, and as you well know, nothing makes this type-a happier than making a list.

i've covered some ground on past trips (london galleries, and museums -- tho i'm planning on going to the V&A several times while i'm here ... how could i not? -- oxford, cambridge, and henley are fairly familiar territory, as are the innards of many libraries), and i've got the shoe shopping well, er, underway (please refrain from asking "but how are you going to get them (all) back to canada?!"). what i would love to hear about are places/activities you enjoyed while here, or would like to enjoy one day. historic or particularly charming or beautiful places, good restaurants, intriguing bookshops, wicked music stores, worthwhile hikes, anything at all really.

feel free to answer using the comment function below.

i await your responses with anxious anticipation!

bemused

2008-01-19T03:52:00.001-05:00

why is it that, when talking to friends and family *on skype, we inevitably spend a disproportionate amount of time talking *about skype?

i realize now what the first telephone conversations must have been like:

"can you hear me?" (if you're my mom: "CAN YOU HEAR ME?!!!")

"isn't this cool?"

"yeah. can you say that again? you're voice isn't coming through clearly."

"sorry, the call got dropped."

plus ça change, eh?

my linguistic influences

2008-01-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

we all know about uncle ted, but tonight, while talking to kiki, i found myself reflecting on others who have had a profound influence on my linguistic development.

from CM, who was the initial creator of uncle ted, i've learned to say boy (pronounced "bye") with proper east coast gusto, and between the two of us, we've developed the aural equivalent of a dismissive hand gesture: "pfffbvvt".

from G, i've discovered the liberation that comes with a heartily uttered "goddammit". i've also appropriated her term of endearment for one's workplace: the orifice. we've had lots of wurd fun coming up with possible band names (remember our brief stint as "The MAGIC Markers"?). strangely, during my sojourn across the pond, she has found herself saying "ack" and "narf" a lot.

but i can say wholeheartedly that kiki has been perhaps the most influential in, er, expanding my colourful vocabulary. along with teaching me how to properly savour a well-timed expletive (i think she would have been very pleased with the stream i let loose the other day on the misbehaving photocopier), she has also given me these fantastic gems:

"contraband banana"

"phlegm fatale"

and tonight's treasure,

"Machiavellian sisterhood"

listen and learn, my friends, listen and learn.

more vicky and al: orifice hours

2008-01-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

the second installment in my neo-victorian reappropriation of victoria and albert.

good things

2008-01-15T15:31:00.000-05:00

a list of good Castle-y things (in no specific order), excerpted from an e-mail to G:

-My new friends Eric and Rachel who took me to Eastbourne on the weekend. Rachel and I have been having the most amazing music chats both virtually and in real time. Eric is the first person I've met who is as nuts about old movies as I am. I made a reference at the dinner table to other night to some obscure B&W movie, and Eric had *seen it.

-Running outside. I did my first run to the village yesterday (around 5K, I think), and foolishly timed it so that I had to run the last leg of it in the nearly dark. I was running down a little-used road that comes into the back of the Castle property that's lined with hedgerows and the only light I had was the moon, but it was so bright ... Wow.

-Much Ado Books and the Badger Tea Room in Alfriston, both places I visited on Sunday with Rachel and another new friend, Peter. The Badger has to be experienced first-hand if only for the sponginess of the cake and the gawdyness of the china pattern. Much Ado was where I found a first edition of Nick Bantock's The Venetian's Wife, a book that changed my life. I also had to put back (oh the pain!) a first edition of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair.

-I'm no longer afraid of, or intimidated by, Thomas Carlyle. I suppose teaching someone does that, eh? He used to make me feel horribly inadequate, but no longer! In fact (how's this for ego), I pity him.

-My bass. I'm finding it easier to play here.

-A really considerate e-mail from a student, offering to send me a book I had lent him last term that he'd forgotten to return. He remembered that when I'd lent him this book, I'd told him how I was nervous about lending it because I'd lent it out twice before and didn't get it back, and how I didn't want to have to buy *yet another copy. In the e-mail he apologized for not getting in touch before the holidays and then offered to airmail the book ASAP. Books you lend out actually DO come back. Neat, huh?

more good to come ... i promise.

one last transatlantic dedication

2008-01-15T11:48:00.001-05:00

this one's for you, J&J. wishing we could hang out with annie and the band at ben's. can't beat the décor there ... no pub here comes close!

another transatlantic dedication

2008-01-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

this tune came through my headphones as i was making my way back to the castle on my afternoon run. yo, G. i miss you!

EPs, CM, and a transatlantic dedication

2008-01-14T06:42:00.000-05:00

you should definitely have the EP of this dedicated to you, babe.

she's opening for iron and wine on january 19th in paris ... wanna go?

on the water

2008-01-14T05:32:00.000-05:00

on saturday, two friends took me to eastbourne where i had my first taste of the sea. (sorry, no pics. i stupidly forgot my camera). as we walked out along the pier, i was surprised at how good it felt to be close to the water -- i had been feeling land-locked and didn't even know it.

along with being overcome by a desire to take an english seaside holiday complete with windbreak and anorak, i also realized how much i missed rowing. i truthfully don't miss the early mornings, but i do miss being in a boat with my hands on my blade and my feet in the stretchers, moving smoothly through sweet water. there are ergs in the castle gym, yes, but ... well ... it's just not the same. what i wouldn't give for just one more morning like this in an 8+ (vid props to former student and fellow rower andrew rastapkevicius):

it's a little game we like to play here ...

2008-01-10T09:07:00.000-05:00

called find the academic.

it turns out that my turret office is somewhat difficult to locate, and thus i've decided to remedy the situation with this little sign, placed at a crucial turning point on the route from the dining hall to my office door. hopefully victoria and albert will prove helpful to those engaged in the never-ending pursuit of knowledge.

homesick ... blech

2008-01-09T07:04:00.000-05:00

yup. it's official. i'm fucking homesick. i woke up this morning and all i wanted, not necessarily in any order whatsoever, was a cup of cooke's coffee (i'm rather partial to the chez piggy ii blend, but kingston's fav would do -- gawd knows i need the extra caffeine!), a windmills brunch with J&J and CM -- no trips to the LCBO to return any boxes, i promise -- a good ol' fashioned air guitar session/band chat with G, the relative (dis)comfort of my old orifice, a CSI night with Shani, a coffee & gossip date with Shelley, yoga with Kiki and Andrea, and the list goes on. and on and on.

imagine my surprise and delight when i discovered that two of my favourite bands are playing a joint show in brighton at the beginning of february. stars and the apostle of hustle are coming to the concord ii on february 4th, and hell yes, of course i'm going to be there ... wearing my ernie ball shirt! i've found a couple of like-minded music fans here at the castle, and we're setting about procuring tickets, so i'm hoping the anticipation of singing along to "take me to the riot" will get me through those moments in the next couple of weeks when home just seems too far away.

miss you!

the orifice (uk version)

2008-01-04T09:09:00.001-05:00

imagine my surprise when i was handed my key to my office here at herstmonceux castle and discovered it was in a turret! a turret complete with leaded glass windows, a slightly dank odour and no heat. the view from the window above my desk is fantastic -- i can see the "folly" located farther out on the castle grounds. the other two windows overlook the moat (yup, there's a moat -- and residents are cautioned against swimming in it in the "welcome book" with the words: "lastly, the water in the moat is not suitable for swimming as ingestion of this water is likely to result in an overnight stay in hospital"), and the west entrance (sorry, no drawbridge).

while i'm looking forward to the course i'm teaching this term, i'm a little sad that there are no gothic novels on the syllabus ('twouldn't work, i'm afraid, with the course focus). all of a sudden i feel very like a beleaguered gothic heroine, what with readings to wrangle, a syllabus to finalize, and oh yeah, ye ol' dissertross to tame, and some how, reading about those innocent young maidens and enjoying the ingenious ways in which the plots always work out in their favour (unless you're stuck in a novel by matthew lewis) would be somewhat reassuring right now.

success!

2008-01-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

who is the packing queen?

what's that?

i can't hear you!

finally, after countless hours arranging, rearranging, purging, rescuing, squishing, and holding my breath (as if that would actually help), my bags are packed and ready to go. *and they weigh in at *exactly the maximum weight posted by the airline.

now i realize that at some point i'm going to have to pack again for my return trip with far more stuff than i originally packed in the first place, but allow me my small moment of victory.

shooz

2007-12-30T20:25:00.001-05:00

thankfully, travel prep is starting to wind down a little here. i've booked my transport to the airport, picked up some pounds at the currency exchange, and in a moment of last-minute shopping madness, purchased two long-desired items of clothing that i quickly justified as part of my "teaching wardrobe": a black sweater vest and a new jean skirt, both drastically on sale, of course.

now i'm not the only one preparing for an overseas teaching adventure. bardiac made a list of travel to dos today, the reading of which made me reflect on my own preparations. while she is checking off practical things, like doing her taxes and cleaning out her office pre-depart, i've been squandering my time, attempting to come to some sort of final, executive-ish decision about the shoes i plan on taking with me. as many of you know, i am a woman footwear obsessed.

here are the finalists ... i think:

1. my trusty "new york" boots -- those bitchin' boots by the designer chocolat blu that i picked up on sixth avenue during my visit with L & S this spring

2. the mythic red franco sarto boots -- i mean seriously, how could i not?

3. these sweet skecher flats i picked up the other day in a moment of shoe panic ("wait! i don't have any comfortable black flats! how will i survive?!")

4. and last, but by no means least, my much-loved running shoes (nike air perseus -- i've run in this shoe for three years now, and no more achilles tendon probs ... knock wood)

i know, i know. 4 pairs of shooz. might this excessive array of shoo choice be contributing to the agony i'm experiencing concerning the weight of my luggage? nah.

something tells me ...

2007-12-28T16:11:00.000-05:00

that wonder woman never had to worry about whether or not her suitcases were going to exceed the maximum baggage allowance weight posted by the airline when she flew around in her crystal jet, saving the world.

have i expressed exactly how much i *hate packing?

xmas reads

2007-12-26T12:34:00.000-05:00

xmas day and boxing day are two days that i completely indulge. i eat xmas cookies for breakfast, drink hot chocolate by the gallon, lay around in my pjs until i begin to suspect i've gone a bit smelly, and i devour books that have nothing whatsoever to do with my dissertation. when the 27th hits, i'm back to 'work'; those two days of biblio-indulgence usually get me through till reading week.

here's what i've managed this year:

1. lawrence scanlan's the horse that god built: the untold story of secretariat the world's greatest racehorse

what can i say, i'm on a racehorse kick (see #6 below). ever since i've thought seriously about writing on 19th-century Turf culture (cf. a proposal i sent off last week for a month-long fellowship in california), i've been reading books about racing history, and lots of dick francis mysteries. not too impressed with this one though. it reads more like a bunch of articles (badly) written for sports illustrated, a publication that scanlan obviously holds in high journalistic regard. ick.

2. franklin w. dixon's (aka the stratemeyer syndicate's) the hardy boys: hunting for hidden gold

nostalgia much? in this one, frank and joe escape from chicago gangsters, survive a plunge from a steep cliff into an icy river, disarm a masked gunman on the roof of an abandoned saloon, and narrowly escape being shot while climbing into a booby-trapped helicopter. oh yeah, and they fend off a pack of hungry wolves in a cave using only flashlights. and they manage to put away a big time crime boss named, wait for it ... big al. not bad for a xmas day's work, huh?

3. scott mccloud's understanding comics: the invisible art

mccloud offers a theory of the form, written as a comic book, of course. if you're interested at all in graphic novels, i can't recommend this one enough.

4. nick hornby's high fidelity

this one and #5 kind of go together. #4 reminds me of a friend that i miss horribly, who, incidentally, gave me #5 as an xmas present this year (along with a few other appropriately rock 'n roll accessories. lovin' the ernie ball shirt, babe!).

5. the rough guide book of playlists: 5000 songs you MUST download

didn't read this one from cover to cover, but browsed through it for a few hours, making notes about stuff i want to download as soon as i'm on a decent connection. the list includes the recommended playlists for 10 000 maniacs, and the jesus and mary chain. i have to vociferously disagree with the recommended chet baker playlist, however. how could they leave out "the thrill is gone" from on green dolphin street? and chet's "but not for me" from the album of the same title is a much better cut, in my opinion, than the one listed from chet baker sings.

oh gawd. i sound like i should be working at championship vinyl. and fronting a band called barrytown/sonic death monkey/the futuristics/backbeat.

it's only 12:45 here in bookland. i think i have enough hours left in the day to make my way through most of #6: dorothy ours's man o'war: a legend like lightning. yeah, another horsey book. might need to go for a run first, though. just so i can pull my own secretariat move: "she's moving like a treMENdous MACHINE".

in transit

2007-12-21T07:09:00.000-05:00

i'm in the middle of packing up my life here in preparation for my january 1st departure for the ol' drizzly isle where i will reside during a four month visiting fellowship in an edifice i have taken to affectionately referring to as "ye ol' damp, mouldy pile of brick" (not sure what's going on with all of the "ol'"s), also known as herstmonceux castle. the landscape of east sussex awaits, and i'm excited. i'm also sad to be leaving behind my life here where i have been truly happy, even if it's just for four months.

this has been a week of goodbyes (as i'm heading to my mom's for xmas today before flying out of pearson on january 1st), and those that know me in real time know that i absolutely suck at goodbyes. i blubber like the giant sentimental slob that i am. as i try to cram in as much time as humanly possible with those i love, i've been listening a lot to this band, the handsome furs, and their first album, plague park, has become the music of my farewell. i was fortunate enough to catch them on wednesday night at one of my favourite live music venues here in town, the grad club.

"heaven help us if the library caught on fire ..."

2007-12-10T19:24:00.000-05:00

i just returned from the library where the librarian checked my books out *by hand. no, no. not by scanning them with a little barcode scanner thing, as the library catalog is shut down for upgrades, but rather by writing down my card number and the barcodes and call numbers of the books by hand ... with a pen ... on a really long list of paper. while waiting, i noticed the name of an illustrious colleague as the first, er, customer on the list for today.

i wanted him to stamp my books vigorously with one of those old school stamper things and slide them across the counter like marian the librarian in the 1962 warner bros. production of the music man. come to think of it the librarian did look a little like robert preston.

a musical dance number in the main floor common area with all those jenns from soc shuffling around in their uggs would have been fab too.

i'm a whole new woman

2007-12-09T07:59:00.001-05:00

there are some days that i wish i could just channel my inner cj ...

damn it, do i ever miss the west wing

the west wing

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negotiations

2007-11-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

last weekend, my body went on strike. and rightly so. it started late on friday afternoon with a tummy ache and rapidly developed into acute gastrointestinal distress friday evening. for most of saturday and sunday, i could barely choke down the blandest of foods and the thought of anything with even a smidgen of fat made me want to toss my cookies.

all weekend, while taking a brief respite at a friend's cottage, i guzzled ginger ale like nobody's business. i easily slept 9+ hours each night (unusual for me) but still awoke exhausted.

for most of the following week, i was still a little shaky, and i was more tired than i've been in a long time (i mean we're bordering on post-comps exhaustion here). resolutions to get in even the shortest workout fizzled and i spent my down time curled up either on the living room sofa or in bed with an elizabeth gaskell novel that has absolutely nothing to do with my dissertation. in passing, just let me say: how much do i love mr gibson? at least i'll love him until he goes and marries that ridiculous clare.

obviously i haven't been listening all that well to my body the past couple of months. i think it's trying to tell me something. something along the lines of "hey, you! you can't feed me crap and call it dinner. you can't just stop working out and expect me to sleep soundly and not tie myself into a giant knot o'stress. you can't party it up and not give me time to recover!" (yes, i realize that trying to go in to the office for 8:45 am the morning after a rather crazy hallowe'en party was not the best move on my part).

my body and i have entered negotiations.

these are the terms we have agreed to:

1. my body will get a minimum of three workouts a week (shhhh. quiet. it doesn't know about that 2k erg test it's pulling tomorrow night at 7:15 pm down at the boathouse. i'm working up the courage to tell it). in return, i will get lower stress levels and the pleasure of not waking up at 4 am, worrying about things i can't fix.

2. my body will get relatively decent, healthy food on a daily basis. and none of it will come from the convenience store across the street or the local fast food emporium around the corner. none of it will be made by häagen dazs or ben and jerry. in return, i will be free of gastrointestinal distress, and hell, i may even lose some of the 10lbs i've put on since the rowing season ended!

3. my body will be allowed to go out and have fun, most definitely. but i will respect its limits. it has never been a 5-martini kinda body. in return, i will have, at the very least, manageable hangovers.

4. my body will receive only limited amounts of caffeine. downing 4 or 5 cups of coffee in one day because i'm tired because i haven't worked out and therefore am not sleeping well is not fair. if it has never been a 5-martini kinda body, it has never been a 5-giant cups of starfucks crackcoffee kinda body either.

my body has agreed. let's see how well this contract thing works ...

new graduate student game show?

2007-11-15T10:43:00.001-05:00

i think some of my fellow grad students and i could make a go of this schtick -- the clip is from a japanese game show called Silent Library -- in our campus humanities library. though where we would find a Slapping Machine and an Old Man (Who) Bites Tenderly, i dunno.

anticlimactic

2007-11-10T19:33:00.000-05:00

on friday i submitted a draft of what, up to this point, has been one of the more difficult chapters of my dissertation to write, not only in terms of my relationship to the material, but also in terms of my relationship to what i often affectionately refer to as my bag of neuroses.

it's done. it's not exactly pretty -- those parts where i bled onto the page really need to be cleaned up -- but, as i've been saying to those who inquire about the product: that's what revisions errrr ferrrrr, right?

what has surprised me is that following the initial rush of dissertation submission euphoria (which included a rather embarrassing "i've just finished my chapter" victory dance, which along with the chapter also needs to be revised) a sort of writer's adrenaline rush, if you will, it hasn't taken much time for me to arrive at the point where i'm shrugging my shoulders and dismissing it all with a cynical "meh, but i've still got so much more to write ... and revise."

maybe the the 58 undergrad assignments that i'm spending the weekend grading are a contributing factor, but still, my blasé attitude necessitates my deploying one of my much used, and therefore terribly hackneyed, interrogatory colloquialisms (helloooo uncle ted!): what the flying fuck is wrong with me?

please limit your answers to the situation at hand.

my rainy day song

2007-10-23T12:21:00.000-04:00

of montreal's "a sentence of sorts in kongsvinger" from their album hissing fauna, are you the destroyer?

tell me something i don't know ...

2007-10-14T23:15:00.000-04:00

What Kind of Reader Are You? Your Result: Obsessive-Compulsive Bookworm You're probably in the final stages of a Ph.D. or otherwise finding a way to make your living out of reading. You are one of the literati. Other people's grammatical mistakes make you insane.
Dedicated Reader
Book Snob
Literate Good Citizen
Non-Reader
Fad Reader
What Kind of Reader Are You? Create Your Own Quiz

another life-altering shoe purchase

2007-10-10T07:52:00.000-04:00

remember these?

yesterday afternoon, upon benefiting from information G gathered on a successful shoe recon mission downtown, i snuck out of my office between my two sets of tuesday office hours, treated myself to the first hot chocolate of the season from a fav local café and *finally procured the footware i think just might possibly change my life.

if you've been around here for a while (or if you've known me for a while in real time) you know all about me and these boots. you know that i have a friend, L, who owns the original pair, and you know that i've had some serious boot envy for well on two years. you also know that in times of personal trouble in the past, i've tried to buy these boots as a sort of talisman, only to face "we're not making them this season" frustration. now i'm not sure if the shoe gods over at franco sarto got wind of just how, er, challenging tuesdays around the ranch have become for me, or if the appearance of the Marvelous Boots is part of some larger scheme of shoe beneficence being bestowed on the world, but i'm not asking too many questions.

as i said to a colleague yesterday afternoon, while gushing about my acquisition, i know they're "just" boots, but to me they're a pretty weighty signifier. of what? at the moment, it's a little difficult to put into words, but here it goes. they're unapologetically intense and intensity, no wait ... *exhibiting intensity is something i tend to shy away from. i'm always afraid it's going to backfire; i'm scared that if i put it all on the line, it's really going to hurt (after years of racing at regattas, you'd think i would have learned that while it does hurt, the pain passes ... but no). as i've written here before, fear (of failure, of being foolish, of so many things) often holds me back. i'm at a place in my life right now, however, where it doesn't pay to be fearful, in fact, it might hurt me more to hold back. if something as frivolous as a pair of red boots is going to remind me that from time to time i should take a blinding (atmospheric?) leap, then i shouldn't be ashamed of listening to my inner shoe whore, who i think, thanks to the lyrics of the song by the band franz ferdinand, just might be named eleanor.

overheard/read on the wall in the stall at the goat

2007-09-28T12:38:00.000-04:00

"it must have been so hard, growing up in the 80s"

* * * * * * *

"fighting for peace is like f*cking for virginity"

* * * * * * *

"i was hoping someone would give me an epidural during my defense"

* * * * * * *

"you're SO gay ... and not in that good, homosexual kinda way"

two things i need to remember right now

2007-09-25T14:19:00.000-04:00

1. "shred a" by le tigre:

You, by my side get no reply
To clarify you
You just know, you're wasting my time
You're wasting my time
There goes a good gone bye,
Right on time
I'm ready
Come and try
And clip this fire, now
Baby I won't show you nothing
Dont want to
I just know that you are a waste of my time
A waste of my time, a waste of my time
You wastin' my time

It's all so precious and you throw it away
It's all so precious and you throw it all away
throw it away

You're not good enough for me
To even despise
You wasted my
You wasted my
You wasted my time
Said behead
Said say correct
Shred project
Say "A" confine

Lay on pain I laid on your pain
Lay on pain
You got a thing for wastin' my time
Wastin' my time
Wastin' my time

2. katharine hepburn in adam's rib (1949)

repechage ~ a rowing update

2007-09-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

in less than a week, my good friend (and hero!) isolda, will be leaving with her family in tow (wonderful husband, and three adorable children) to begin training with the national team in london, ontario, in preparation for the 2008 olympics in beijing. as was inscribed in the card we fellow krc rowers gave her at her going-away barbecue, isolda has only two things on her agenda once she gets to london. she needs to: 1) kick ass, 2) take names.

* * * * * * * * * *

this past weekend, as i was training with the rest of my 4+ crew for our sunday race in ottawa at head of the rideau, i was shot at. yes, you read that correctly. shot. as in SHOT shot. by a duck hunter. by a man i think is probably dick cheney's distant canadian cousin. as our 4+ made its way up the course back to the krc boathouse we were startled by the sound of gun shots overhead and even more surprised when we looked out over the starboard side of the boat to see a duck fall from the sky and land with a splash in the water not 500 ft. from our boat. though we hauled ass back to the boathouse, i'd like to think that we were too fast to really be a suitable moving target.

* * * * * * * * * *

on sunday, my lovely housemate and i competed at the annual head of the rideau regatta in ottawa and brought home our first gold medal in the 2x. we rowed "long and strong", and even in the face of a recurring library injury (stop laughing! a month ago i strained a muscle in my left shoulder lifting a bag of library books in an awkward way -- there are downsides to this scholar-athlete gig!), we managed to hold off the competition on our way down the course. i'm proud to say that i pulled a 3-banana race (read: it took my eating three bananas to fully recover in time for my next race in the 4+) and we're hoping to repeat if not the result then definitely the effort in our next race this coming saturday in peterborough at the head of the trent.

nerd confessions #254 and #255

2007-09-20T19:48:00.000-04:00

#254:

i've always wanted to be able to tap dance like eleanor powell:

#255:

and sing like jeanette macdonald:

the office gourmet

2007-09-18T20:18:00.001-04:00

the resourcefulness of my colleagues continually astounds me, especially when it comes to solving that pressing problem of where to eat on campus (peanut M&Ms aside). who would have thought that the nearby hospital cafeteria would be the best place to find nourishing, nutritious and wholesome food? who would have thought that the best way to keep a small carton of milk (appropriate for making a cuppa in one's office) chilled would be to stick it in between the closed and locked hinged window and outside screen? i even once had an officemate who was able to make quite a tasty Kraft Dinner feast using only a coffee maker (ah, my MA year).

today, however, G surpassed them all, concocting, from fresh local ingredients, a pine nut and prosciutto mesclun salad with quality parm, garlic and olive oil on her desktop. i'm not talking writing up a recipe on her virtual desktop. oh no. i mean putting together a delicious salad on her actual desktop, cluttered as it is (and as is mine) with a laptop, telephone, file folders, letters and decorative lamps without spilling a drop of gourmet olive oil. it helped, of course, that she picked up the ingredients on her way into the office from a local italian specialty shop, but the moment of true brilliance came when she produced two tupperware containers and a knife and proceeded to serve the salad and grate the parm before my very hungry eyes. seriously, how often does your colleague agree to an on the fly lunch date and proceed to work culinary magic?

the salad was SO yummy that i began teasing her about her future career as the next jamie oliver. think about it: a book of recipes for academics, all of which can be prepared in the comfort of one's office. a stellar review in the new york times book review is, in my mind, inevitable.

as a thank you i crafted my own culinary dish of sorts in the form of a mock press release, akin to the ones that our university press office sends out from time to time (before my stint in grad school, i worked briefly as a PR jockey). the office gourmet, i'm telling you folks ... if it ever gets written it will revolutionize food as we know it.

Media Alert

The Astute Gourmet

September 18, 2007

Dr. Gwynn Dujardin, a professor in the Queen's English department and a chef with dead wicked skills in the kitchen, is available to discuss the upcoming release of her much-anticipated cookbook, The Office Gourmet: Desktop Dining for the Harried Academic (Hyperion, 2007).

The idea for a collection of recipes that emphasizes fresh, local ingredients and ease of preparation with minimal equipment -- The "Pine Nut and Prosciutto Salad" requires only a Tupperware container and a knife -- came to Dr. Dujardin one afternoon, while feeding a hapless, starving colleague. "She was hungry, and unbelievably frustrated with the appalling food choices on campus," Dr. Dujardin quips. "The look of complete and utter gastronomical bliss on her face as she savored her prosciutto was both heart-warming and inspiring. I knew in that moment that I could help legions of scholars satiate their hunger and fuel their research and teaching pursuits by revealing the secrets of sustenance that I had gathered on my many fact-finding missions in Tuscany."

Colleagues rave about Dr. Dujardin's culinary prowess, and many are regulars at her chic but unassuming office bistro on the fourth floor of John Watson Hall in the heart of the Queen's campus. Though she is fully booked, at the moment, for the 2007-8 academic year, Dr. Dujardin hopes that with the publication of The Office Gourmet many more scholars will discover that academic eating can be a truly satisfying experience.

To arrange an interview, please contact Communications Assistants at Queen's News & Media Services.

i think i'm on the right, er, track ...

2007-09-11T07:52:00.000-04:00

extreme makeover MY edition

2007-09-07T14:54:00.000-04:00

all facets of my life are under renovation at the moment. if it's not the good folks from andre contracting reconfiguring the campus landscape, it's my dear, sweet housemate, who is deep in the throes of house gentrification (the kitchen is going to look fab, luv!). i recently received a *new training schedule from my rowing coach, things are starting to buzz on the romance front (yeah, you read that right ...) and at the library this aft, while munching contentedly on some peanut M&Ms procured from G -- they still haven't done anything about that vending machine! -- i had one of those rare flashes of dissertation insight that, while it leads to some substantial reconstruction and reconfiguring, will ultimately, i hope, lead also to a significantly stronger dissertation.

G recently passed on a four volume mythology playlist (i reciprocated with my own a few days later) and on it i discovered a track, the vid of which is below, that i think i will take as my theme music for the next week or so. certainly, following the Rare Flash of Dissertation Insight (RFDI) i was desperately trying NOT to break out into the mambo in the library stacks, overcome as i was with joy and relief.

hmmm, the only thing that has remained constant is my dire need of a haircut.

i'm dialing as i type.

yes, giorgio 1935-2007

2007-09-06T07:02:00.000-04:00

i have the most amazing recording of luciano pavarotti singing schubert's "ave maria" -- i don't know where it was recorded or how i procured it, but it sits on the bookshelf at my mom's house and is played every holiday season. the acoustics are puzzling. it sounds as though the great tenor is letting loose at someone's holiday house party. the closeness of the space gives his voice a quality that i haven't been able to detect in any other performances that i've heard -- it's intimate and warm and in his careful phrasing you can hear a palpable joy in singing that i don't always hear in the big hall, stadium concert pavarotti.

i was shocked when my browser window opened to its homepage today. in my impatience to check my e-mail i almost stopped it before it loaded (it's not that my computer or my wifi is *that slow; it's more that i'm *that impatient). for some reason i didn't and there was the headline staring me in the face: "luciano pavarotti dies aged 71".

i've never been quiet about stating my preference for the spanish tenor placido domingo, especially in the thick of those heated family debates during the holiday season in which my mother and my grandmother would go head to head and thrash out, once again for the neighbours' listening pleasure, the merits and demerits of "[i]PLAH[/i]-cido", as my mother never tires of saying, and my grandmother's fav, pavarotti. because of this annual holiday tradition (only one in a long line of strange doings that my family considers an essential part of the holidays -- following my grandmother's death in 2000, my aunt has seen fit to uphold custom) the italian tenor is inextricably linked in my mind with some of my fondest memories of my grandmother.

in the popular imagination pavarotti is perhaps most famous for his rendition of puccini's "nessun dorma", a tune that for many is associated with world cup soccer. i'm sure that it's going to get a lot of air time in the next few days on radio stations classical and not. the link below, however, is to a 1990s performance of ave maria, and while it's not the mythic recording i opened this post discussing, it does capture so much of what the song and the singer evoke for me.

lost and found

2007-09-02T22:24:00.000-04:00

i'm in the thick of a week-long visit to my mom's house, during which i made two, er, surprising discoveries: the first, my inaugural dissertation wrinkle; the second, an old love note i had written to a particularly nasty old boyfriend tucked inside the liner notes of a CD i haven't listened to for years. now the boyfriend wasn't revealed to be nasty until well after i'd written this note, and thus reading it in the cold light of day, completely free of all delusions, gave it a certain poignancy. i don't think i've seen my face (really *seen my face) in the cold light of day for awhile either -- mostly due to the ridiculously flattering lighting in my bathroom -- and thus the wrinkle hurt more than i expected it to.

fortified by some strong tea & an evening spent watching preston sturges movies with mom (all while slathered in the best anti-wrinkle treatment my student budget can afford) i'm feeling a little less shaky. i can't help thinking, though, that sometimes, for me, it takes finding something to fully realize how much i've lost.

road biking confessions #467 and #468

2007-08-19T14:04:00.000-04:00

#467

i'm still afraid of my clipless pedals. every time i come to a stop, my heart catches in my throat and for a split second, i think i'm going to topple over. i have to mutter to myself "unclip, unclip, unclip". and i favour my left foot. i think if i tried to unclip with my right (and i know i should ... please don't scold), i'd lose both my mental and physical balance and over i would go. the scar on my knee from my last tumble has finally healed and is beginning to fade. i seriously do not want to experience another "knee incident" and thus have turned into some highly superstitious, obsessive compulsive, muttering crazy woman every time i come up on a red light.

#468

my biking form leaves a lot to be desired. whenever i'm working hard, climbing a hill or trying to open up a bit on the flat stretches, i instinctively lean to the right ever so slightly, as if i'm in a boat. my right shoulder drops a little, and i bend my right elbow further. sweep rowers (those folks with one oar -- scullers use two) are often instructed to lean into their rigger. in a sweep boat, i row on port and thus lean to the right just a little -- not the best rowing form either, but what can i say? from years of doing this, my left shoulder is a little higher than my right, though incidentally, my right bicep is noticeably larger than my left. yeah, i'm quite the sight in a strapless dress. as i realized this morning, just before i caught myself and kept myself from tumbling into a grassy ditch, there aren't any riggers on bikes.

dear vending machine in the library ...

2007-08-09T21:19:00.000-04:00

long have i turned to you in my hour of intellectual need. remember that time that i desperately needed a blue hi-lighter? you were there, ready to dispense the magic marker for only $1.25. and remember the time that my last working pen gave out in the middle of scribbling down yet another fantastic opening line for that troublesome dissertation chapter? i literally ran down the central spiral staircase to the main floor, plunked my loonie in the slot, and found myself properly equipped to record my scholarly musings. the supervisor(s) loved that opening line, by the way! to recount the number of times that you have been there with the lifeline of my academic practice, the pad of sticky notes, would require another post entirely.

i've noticed of late that you have moved a little up market and are now able to bestow upon hapless undergrads such marvels of technology as the data key. 1 GB for only $35, payable by VISA, Mastercard or AmEx? brilliant, i say. i can't help but wonder, however, if, in an attempt to corner your share of the burgeoning market of those ill-prepared for library work, you have made made a most grievous error concerning the stocking of your emporium of library wonders.

what happened to the peanut m&ms?!

no, that's not a note of panic that you hear in my voice, it's merely concern. concern not just for the progress of my dissertation, a project, the writing of which requires regular consumption of just the exact ratio of protein to chocolate those beautiful, multi-coloured orbs of candied goodness provide, but more importantly, concern for *you, dear library vending machine. having frustrated scholars pounding on your display glass as they face an afternoon of writing, bereft of their candy of choice, can't be at all beneficial to your health. it would provide me with untold pleasure were i to hear from you that you had taken the necessary steps to prevent this from happening again.

with the most sincere wishes for your continued health and well-being,

me.

off day

2007-08-03T15:09:00.000-04:00

it has been one of those days. i feel like i'm one step behind the rest of the world and every time i try to run ahead a little, i trip. come to think of it, most of my week has been like this -- if the world around me is a marching band, i'm that sousaphone player whose hat keeps slipping down over her eyes as she meanders around the parade route, taking out spectators with her oversized tuba. i don't exactly know what's wrong. conversationally, i'm a flop; there's a good 5 second delay before i can get it together enough to answer. physically, i'm an accident waiting to happen (my partner and i flipped our boat *again this week ... and that's only the beginning). emotionally, i'm just missing the beat; usually i "get" people, especially those close to me, but lately, even my dearest of friends have proven inscrutable. the one thing that has been clunking along reasonably well is my work, and this, while it does fill me with a certain degree of satisfaction, also worries me. perhaps i've been reading a little too much about degeneration and hereditary taints lately (thank you sir arty c. doyle!) but i'm beginning to think that the closer i get to finishing my dissapoint ... er, dissertation, the further i will regress until i'm nothing but some kind of weird, drooling ball of human flesh.

in a quiet moment this morning, inspired by the mythology pile in G's closet, i made up this playlist. the other night she and i were talking about personal mythologies and i realized that while i have many a concrete talisman stashed away in various corners of my life, i also have musical markers that somehow manage to get at who i am. this cluster of tunes is nothing if not eclectic.

Mythology (Radio Edit)

Holland 1945/Neutral Milk Hotel
Terrien D'Eau Dounce/Paris Combo
Where Do You Go/Peter Murray
The Jackal/Ronny Jordan
Lodestar/Sarah Harmer
Je Ne Veux Pas Travailler/Pink Martini
Giving Up the Fight/Eleni Mandell
Shred A/Le Tigre
(Antichrist Television Blues)/Arcade Fire
My Funny Valentine/Chet Baker
Après un rêve/Renée Fleming
Cities in Dust (Extended Version)/Siouxsie & the Banshees
We're Not Gonna Take It/Bif Naked

punny

2007-07-24T10:38:00.001-04:00

rowing lingo is full of bad puns and groan-worthy plays on words -- if i see one more on-line rower with the screen name "goargeous" i think i might cry. i'm not sure what it is about the sport that produces so many punsters; my current theory places lack of sleep and countless hours in spandex at the head of the list of possible causes. regardless of what fueled them, however, the folks across the pond at the twickenham rowing club have done themselves pun proud by rewriting the lyrics to some class pop tunes so that they have a rowing bent. my fav at the moment is the twrc's rewording of gloria gaynor's "i will survive":

I WILL SURVIVE
(With apologies to Gloria Gaynor)

At first I was afraid I was petrified
Kept thinkin' I could never match your timing on the slide
But then I did some heavy weights
Thinkin' how you did me wrong
And I grew strong
And I learned how to scull along

And so you're back from Jurgen's squad
I just walked in to find you here, wanting an outing the quad
I should have changed the boathouse lock
I would have pushed you off the quay
If I'd have known for just one second you'd still want to row with me

Go on ergo, walk out the door
Just put those blades down
'cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to take the rating high
You thought I'd crumble
You thought I'd blow up and die
Oh no, not I. I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to scull I know I'll stay alive;
I've got all my life to live,
I've got lots of length to give and I'll survive,
I will survive. Hey hey.

It took all the strength I had not to drop the rate
Kept trying' hard to mend the pieces of my broken gate
And I spent oh so many nights
Just feeling sorry for myself. I used to sky
But now I hold my hands up high

And you see me somebody new
I'm not that chained up little novice never in your crew,
And so you feel like droppin' in
And just expect a seat is free,
Now I'm savin' all my rowin' for someone who'll follow' me

Go on ergo, walk out the door
Just put those blades down
'cause you're not welcome anymore
Weren't you the one who tried to take the rating high
You thought I'd crumble
You thought I'd blow up and die
Oh no, not I. I will survive
Oh as long as I know how to scull I know I'll stay alive,
I've got all my life to live,
I've got lots of length to give and I'll survive,
I will survive. Hey hey.

check out the rest of twrc's top of the pots here.

*that's the twrc's "unofficial" club logo, a play on the well-known london underground sign, at the opening of the post.

i've found the source of the ticking ...

2007-07-14T08:36:00.000-04:00

as i type, my university campus is undergoing *massive renovations. one of the main roads that cuts through the heart of campus has been closed to traffic since the early spring, with backhoes, jackhammers, and folks in yellow hard hats running around tearing up concrete, digging giant holes, erecting safety fencing, moving safety fencing around and kicking up a whole lotta dust.

working in the campus library has become a test of patience. during the fall and winter terms, crowded as it is with undergraduate students, it's often difficult to find a desk at which to work if one is looking for a brief respite from one's office. the summer, however, is different. or at least it's supposed to be. this year it's *anything but peaceful. i was down in the basement the other day, where the microfiche lives, doing some research, when all of a sudden the stillness was broken by a massive, rumbling bang and the screen in front of me began to vibrate in a very alarming fashion. i literally white-knuckled the desk and looked around the room. the librarian sitting behind the information desk was cool and collected. she saw the wild look of terror on my face and smiled,

"oh, that's only the blasting they're doing across the road. we can't hear the warning sirens they set off, so when the dynamite blows, it's a little bit of a surprise."

dynamite?

DYNAMITE?

call me old fashioned, or even just plain spoiled (my last three weeks have been spent doing in research in places that academics dream about when they go to sleep at night: the radcliffe camera, the old bodleian ...) but somehow, libraries and explosives just don't seem to go together.

my earth shattering experience the other day did remind me of this video, however. library? not quite. explosively funny, most definitely.

diva next door

2007-07-03T08:37:00.000-04:00

as many folks know, i'm a big time fan of reneé fleming and i've talked at great length here about how much her persona appeals to me. in fact, i listed her as one of the models i might look to during my time in the classroom as i try to make plain to my students such mysteries as the vagaries of virginia woolf's claim that the sentence is a "thing made by men". fleming's openness, an almost sort of "girl next door" appeal, has won opera legions of new fans and her voice, with its lush colour and warm texture -- it reminds me at times of a favourite cashmere sweater, light but still able to keep off a chill -- has satisfied critics of classical singing who are quick to note when a diva is in decline.

before reneé fleming, however, there was beverly sills. sills was to opera in the 60s & 70s what fleming is to opera now. along with giving the seemingly impenetrable world of coloraturas & counter-tenors a human face, she worked tirelessly as a fund-raiser and artistic director for various organizations following her retirement in the 1980s. i was still a fairly green soprano when i discovered beverly sills, but there was something about both the quality of her voice and the sense of character that she brought to interpretations of such roles as bellini's norma that fascinated me. it would be nice to able to say that my technical progress shot forward rapidly after becoming a sills devotee -- that somehow, her voice unlocked the door to a blinding upper register. not the case (and that's all to do with my own shortcomings and nothing whatsoever to do with beverly). i *did however, pick up a lot about how to *perform a song from listening to her, and i became doubly aware of the way in which textual interpretation was at the heart of this. i can honestly say that listening to beverly sills has made me a better critical reader and literary scholar.

this morning, when the new york times popped up on my browser's homepage, a lump grew in my throat when i read that sills had passed away, at the age of 78, from inoperable lung cancer in her manhattan home. the article on sills in the times describes her as singing with "a vivid sense of text". i wholeheartedly agree.

a tick for the flattering tally? uk version.

2007-06-28T11:25:00.000-04:00

as i made my way to the modern papers room at the new bodleian this morning, i was fairly confident that i was "passing" successfully. i was banking on the after-effects of an evening spent with G at her inlaws' house off of cowley road (i was tickled to find out that the bassist from radiohead lived just around the corner) -- somehow i *must have absorbed some of that excess authentic englishness that was randomly floating about! this spongy absorption, coupled with the fact that i was tricked out in flash duds procured during a brief shopping break in the high street, made me me feel not exceptional, but rather like just another reader, off to spend just another day at the library.

i contemplatively made my way toward the new bod, my stride bouncing along in time to the scissor sisters' "i don't feel like dancin'", when all of a sudden i was accosted by a guy, waving what looked like a guide book. "ooooooh," i thought, "here's proof of my successful passing. he's gonna ask me for directions." i smiled and pulled the headphones out of my ears.

guy: excuse me, miss.

me [smiling like an idiot]: yes? [internal dialogue: "he's gonna ask for directions ... just like that time in new york city, visiting L, when that guy stopped me by washington square park and asked the way to the financial district!"]

guy: you're here for open days oxford, right? here's a guide with a map and a brochure about undergraduate admissions.

me [shocked]: i'm not an applicant.

guy: oh. sorry. bye then.

even with the absorbed englishness, the new duds (they're seriously bitchin' jeans, if i do say so myself) & the freckles that have been fading due to lack of sun and balmy weather, i still can't pass for older than 18. i know, i know -- i can hear the echoes of the voices of several friends -- i should be flattered. on a certain level i am, i will freely admit, but on another level the fact that this seemingly endless youthfulness is valid worldwide is a little frustrating.

songs of my childhood

2007-06-21T14:24:00.000-04:00

sadly, i won't have time this trip to make a weekend jaunt to paris. the necessity of hitting the british library and dickens' world (shut up! it's all for an article on post-victorianisms ... really!) means that i'll have to save my frenchventures till i return in january. to solace mon pauvre coeur, i plan on attending the opening of la vie en rose when i get to london tomorrow evening as there's no telling when it will hit kingstunned.

here are vids of two of my favourite songs from la môme.

mecca(s)

2007-06-19T00:48:00.000-04:00

every subculture has both its jargon and its mecca. i've mostly been about the jargons because jargons i can easily do. given what i will soon "profess" to do for a living, i suppose it only makes sense that entering into a strange, somewhat closed cultural space seems easiest to me via language. as i've confessed in other posts, i managed my initial discomfort in the hypermale rowing world by learning very quickly the necessary lexicon. it's difficult to disparage a woman's skill on the water when she's telling you that no, she's measured and set her outboards herself, thankyouverymuch, and then asking you to please pass the adjustable over here, 'cause the top nut on her oarlock needs tightening. the language of rowing, though the most familiar, is not my only jargon. as i embark on my next great musical adventure in the world of rock 'n roll, language has again proven the most comfortable entry point. i think G somehow sensed this (in one of those special wifi conversations ...) and thus helped mark my initiation into rock snob culture with my very own copy of the rock snob*s dictionary: an essential lexicon of rockiological knowledge (2005).

subculture meccas, at least for me, have been another story entirely. it's only recently that i've become somewhat obsessed with place and its relation to the various arcane little worlds that i inhabit. i chalk this up in part to being born and raised in the one of the few hotbeds of north american rowing. i passed the canadian henley course on my way to school almost every morning, and therefore it never seemed that special ... it was just there. even when i returned to that space with a more substantial knowledge of everything it stands for, it never really felt like a pilgrimage, but rather just another trip home. this sort of pilgrim's malaise extended to other areas of my life.

strangely enough, my first (recent) conscious pilgrimage was not to a rowing mecca, but rather to a place of primary import to a fledgling rock snob. during my recent visit to NYC i spent what seemed like hours wandering around central park, looking for strawberry fields. i had been toying with the idea, prior to my visit, of taking up a new, uhm, less classical instrument over the summer, and while much of nyc's rock scene was frighteningly impenetrable (hunting out the venue of the yeah yeah yeah's flashmob-type concert was just too intimidating for a newbie!), starting it all with a moment of contemplation at a flower-strewn memorial was both manageable and cliché in a way that i love.

i'm not sure if standing there, gazing down at the "imagine" pinwheel on a sunny may day was the singular cure for my jaded place perspective, but yesterday, when i stepped off the train in henley on thames (the first leg of my three-week uk research trip) and was quickly greeted by the sight of a lightening-fast 8+ tearing up the water, i wouldn't have been surprised one bit to hear a corny choir of angelic hosts belting out a chord or two. after establishing contacts at the archives of the museum i'm here to visit, i spent a couple of hours wandering around down by the course, snapping pictures, my mouth appropriately agape, behaving in every way like a pilgrim newly arrived at her destination. returning from a long run beside the river last night, i experienced not only that lovely feeling one has after an extended bout of cardio, but also something else. i'm not sure i can quite put it into words, however i think a couple of snapshots might do it justice.

scary age

2007-06-11T12:06:00.000-04:00

i think i have a new scary age. for those unfamiliar with the concept of a scary age, allow me to explain. it's that age at which you hope to have everything significant in your life if not accomplished, then at least humming along smoothly. for most of my teen years and into my twenties, 27 was my scary age. with the passing of my 27th birthday, i paused, took stock, and readjusted my scary age to 34. it seemed a sensible scary age -- not close enough to leave me with a feeling of unabated dread, but not far enough away that i could blissfully put off doing all of those things that i said i would do "one day" -- in fact, i recently confided to G, with full sincerity, that i was more than okay with my new scary age ...

until this morning.

as many of you know, today is my 29th birthday, and while i have postponed festivities until i return from my research trip to england, i was looking forward to some quiet celebrations today, beginning with a beautiful morning out on the water. i was going out sculling in a double with jane -- the water was calm, the clouds in the sky were a lush pink from the rays of the rising sun, and i felt myself slowly falling into the rhythm of the sculling stroke, something i've been struggling with the past few weeks. how great would it be, i thought to myself, if this was the morning when it all came together -- when my leading left arm buried the blade at just the right height, when the pressure on both sculls was equal enough to keep us from turning in giant circles, when our four oars fell into the water at the catch in perfect unison, making that satisfying swirling splash sound that meant we were now ready to take the next stroke. what a fantastic birthday present.

i suppose if i hadn't had my head quite so far up my own a**, i would have had a better sense of just how quickly things were coming apart at the seams. with a speed and smoothness i don't think i'll ever get used to, our shell flipped and jane and i found our selves struggling first to detach our feet from our tie in shoes, and thus not get pulled under, and then to hoist ourselves over the hull of the flipped shell, belly down, like a couple of beached whales (her simile, not mine). as i lay there on my belly waiting for leslie to zoom over in her coachboat and tow us back to the rowing club dock and the impending humiliation that would follow, jane valiantly dove into the cataraqui river in an attempt to retrieve her rowing jacket, in the pocket of which were her rapidly sinking car keys. i pushed my sunglasses up on my nose and tried to bravely keep myself from crying. i didn't succeed. after climbing into leslie's coachboat (and whacking my left shin against the still blades of the propeller -- that's going to be one attractive bruise!) and helping jane to hoist the flipped shell perpendicular over the bow of the coachboat, i sulked down in a wet, miserable ball and sniffled my way through the return trip. though i am fully aware of the way in which i often invest such events with far too much symbolic significance, i couldn't help but hear that ominous voice of doom laugh a little too much like orson wells while saying "your scary age is here".

an angry drive through the countryside beyond the rowing club, a long, hot, antibacterial soap-filled shower, and a birthday breakfast with good friends have all worked to somewhat quell my inner orson, however i still couldn't resist googling "rowing flip" on youtube in order to find this video.

back in the saddle ... sort of

2007-06-09T21:49:00.000-04:00

you'll have to forgive the title of this post. i'm hunkered down for a sam peckinpah-fest on the provincial public television station as i type. yeah, i know. a rockin' saturday night.

while a discussion of my love-hate relationship with what i consider the quintessential genre film (the western) could provide some fascinating reading (topics might include my somewhat dysfunctional television upbringing -- due to my mother's crazed affection for a "good duster", by the time i was 10 i had seen the complete john wayne oeuvre, some parts of it multiple times -- or the way in which i thoroughly embarrassed myself in my first undergrad film seminar when i horrified my classmates by reciting verbatim snippets of dialogue from stagecoach) watching ride the high country (joel mcrae *swoon*) made real some of what has been tripping through my subconscious over the past week in such a startling way that it somehow seems worth writing about.

westerns, especially westerns from the 1960s, are often about returning -- think the man who shot liberty valance -- and lately, i've been returning more often than a tennis ball in the french open.

this week marked both my return to the boathouse as a rower and my return to the full-on writing of my dissertation, and while i'm thrilled to have my hands on my blade(s), and my fingers on my keyboard (and to have both enterprises clunking along surprisingly well!), i'm finding the return unsettling in much the same way that the ex-sheriff is unsettled when he returns to the town he "cleaned up" a decade ago to confront a double-dealing partner.

i've done everything i can to make my coming back easier. i've dug out my lucky unisuit, the one with "power" embroidered on the right thigh, and i've hooked up my housemate's new dvd player in anticipation of needing to break out the adam's rib at some point in my writing process, however none of this prep has settled the unsettled parts of me.

i think this is a product of the fact that i'm just not the same person i was, even a year ago. as i've discussed in previous posts (perhaps a little too much, with a little too much evangelical zeal), the start of the rowing season marked a long process of gathering up bits and pieces of myself that had been scattered in a very painful break up, including those parts of me that make up who i am as a scholar. thus, while the environs are familiar, the perspective from which i'm seeing them is not, and at the moment, things look a little topsy turvy. yes, rowing is still rowing, and my dissertation is still a central focus of my day's thoughts -- my feet still drive down against the foot stretchers as i come out of the catch, and i still do my best writing on scrap pieces of paper with a favourite pen -- but i'm seeing it all with different eyes, and thus, along with rediscovering the joy that motivated me to do all this in the first place, i'm finding new pitfalls and blemishes.

like a wary alan ladd cautiously throwing off the comforts of a pastoral domestic life with jean arthur in order to return to his life as a gunslinger in shane, i'm just a little twitchy right now as i confront familiar experiences with altered vision. somehow, i think the only thing that would help is a great opening credits sequence like the one from the magnificent seven. yeah, okay. and having yul brynner as a co-star wouldn't hurt either.

moving props

2007-06-04T15:35:00.001-04:00

last week, i moved house, a traumatic experience if there ever was one. though the process of packing up all my stuff revealed a multitude of sins (i seriously had no idea i owned that many shoes!), it also proved an occasion where the generosity and kindness of my friends shone blindingly through.

so they are, folks, my 2007 moving props ...

props to:

J&J, for box-gathering, moving muscle, much-needed chocolate, and the stern warning to *never pack alone -- remember what happened to agatha christie! (more on that in a future post!)

andrea, the fun one, for moving muscle extraordinary, for playing a giant game of catch with me on colborne street using my yoga ball, and for not thinking me a cheapskate when we showed up at harvey's for a celebratory hamburger on free hamburger day! i swear i had no idea! oh, one final note ... she's fun, but i'm funner ;oP.

KB, for übermoving muscle, for blithely agreeing to take on nemeses in the octagon, and for a fantastic journey to the O to fetch new ikea furniture.

CM & dan the man from newfoundland, for moving company (again, never pack alone!) and hi jinx and for haulin' ass and my stuff ;oP.

G (and W, B & O), for sane and witty conversation on moving day, for the offer of lunch, for heart-warming e-mails, & for the van (oh, the van!)

shani, for her patience, as i clomped all over the house in my shoes, upending furniture in my whirlwind of moving in -- you've already proved yourself an awesome housemate!

(shani's) john, for helping an almost complete stranger move into your girlfriend's house, and for arranging the boxes in my bedroom in perfect engineer order!

a flattering tally?

2007-06-01T12:41:00.000-04:00

number of previous CSSRA regattas attended as a coach: 0

number of high school girls i'm in charge of: 6

getting mistaken for a high school rower not once, but twice: priceless.

the conversation goes something like this:

the first time:

lady at the admission gate: i'm sorry, but we can't let you through the gate without a wristband

me: i'm with the kingston rowing club/holy cross secondary school. (said while carrying all necessary coaching paraphernalia including a cox box and a binder full of official looking paper, including race plans).

lady: it doesn't matter. you don't have a wristband. look sweetheart, why don't i call your coach and she can come and identify you. do you have your school ID?

me: (angry, but somewhat amused): i'm not a competitor ... I'M A COACH.

the second time:

lady at the cash at regatta sport, pointing to the weight stamp (64kg) on emily's arm: so why don't you have a stamp on your arm?

me: because i'm the coach.

seriously, folks. i put on make up this morning and everything.

heading home

2007-05-31T08:44:00.000-04:00

for the next four days, i will be here (props to anyone who can find me in the picture) -- henley island, in old port dalhousie, st. catharines, ontario, for the CSSRAs (canadian secondary school rowing association), the biggest high school regatta in north america affectionately known to all rowers as "the schoolboys". the girls i coach here in kingston are heading to the henley course to compete and in my capacity as assistant coach, i'll be there to cheer them on, duct tape, extra speed washers, and trusty wrench in hand.

as i've confessed in another post, heading home to attend a regatta is a strange sort of home coming. i always manage to fit in a visit with mom and time with my best friend, jenn, but the me i have to be while on the island is both foreign and familiar to the me i am in other st. catharines contexts. it's a blurring of two worlds that always sends me into a bit of a tailspin. throw in my recently sustained psychic wounding due to moving house, and all i know is that i better pack my running stuff -- the only cure for what ails me will be long runs on the trail that follows the curving path of 12 mile creek.

i'm back on sunday.

words of wisdom

2007-05-22T10:17:00.000-04:00

there are times in my life when i receive words of wisdom from wise folks i admire and esteem. today, as i embark on the first day of the last stretch of my phd (yes, yes ... i'm settling in for 6 long, uninterrupted months of work on my dissertation), i am taking to heart the advice given to me by the beloved head of the english department here at queen's (and i quote): "you gotta bust some ass on your dissertation, girlfriend".

while the cold is still hanging on, i'm now sufficiently medicated -- picture me popping cold and sinus tablets and swigging cough syrup in the stacks of stauffer library (!!) -- and ready to give it a go. let the ass busting begin.

recipe for a sick day

2007-05-21T08:58:00.000-04:00

on this most sacred of holidays for victorianists world-wide, i am taking a sick day. not sure that vicky would approve (definitely not an action of the stiff upper lip variety) but i'm afraid it's necessary.

recipe for a sick day

1 nagging, horsey cough
1 pair of jersey pajamas
4 packets of neo citran
120ml bottle of cherry cough syrup
2 chicken breasts
4 stalks of celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
5 carrots, very chopped
5 cubes of chicken bouillon
5 cups of water
1 can of condensed chicken broth
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 fluffy cats
1 copy of the new yorker
1 book tangentially related to one's dissertation
1 trashy movie
1 chocolate bar
1 blankie
1 favourite pillow

take 1 nagging, horsey cough and add 1 pair of jersey pajamas. after combining chicken breasts, celery, onion, carrots, chicken bouillon cubes, 5 cups of water, can of condensed chicken broth, and garlic in giant pot on stove in kitchen, let simmer, over low heat for 2-3 hours. while soup is simmering, position favourite pillow and fluffy cats on living room futon and mix with nagging, horsey cough, jersey pajamas, blankie and 1 mug of neo citran. nap.

upon awakening, add to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture 1 book tangentially related to one's dissertation, and 1 copy of the new yorker. check on soup. begin to read 1 book tangetially related to one's dissertation. nap. ensure that copy of the new yorker some how becomes crumpled up and sufficiently wrinkled through entanglement with 1 pair of jersey pajamas, blankie and 2 fluffy cats.

upon awakening add to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture 2 teaspoons of cherry cough syrup. check on soup. dish out 1 serving and add to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture. also stir in 1 trashy movie. consume soup. consume chocolate bar. hide 1 book tangentially related to one's dissertation under futon. nap.

upon awakening, continue adding chicken soup, neo-citran and cherry cough syrup to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture until cough subsides.

rainy day blues

2007-05-16T12:23:00.000-04:00

i suppose it's inevitable that after the exciting week and a half i've had i would feel a little blue about returning to the world of the normal and every day. admittedly, the weather isn't helping. as i sat out on the bay this morning in a coach boat with shani in the pouring rain, inwardly cursing my leaky integrity suit and waiting to time 4.5K trials that ultimately ended up being cancelled, i mumbled something about how days like today just work to confirm my belief that a lot of the time life sucks. i know, i know ... dour, dark thoughts on life! but you just try and be cheerful when you have rain cascading off the brim of your baseball cap, shoes filled with water and a leaky all-weather suit that leaks primarily in one place: your crotch. following practice, as i clomped and squished my way around the boathouse, complaining that the integrity of my integrity suit had been compromised, i dreaded coming home and sitting down to work. there was nothing in me that wanted to either a) prepare my course description for the course i'm teaching next winter in england, or b) work on my dissertation. i momentarily thought about having scotch for breakfast.

days like today make me insufferably nostalgic for a time when books weren't "texts", underwear was dry, and mom kept the cupboard stocked full of lucky charms. thankfully, some of what i'm working on right now helps me to feed that nostalgia a little. rather than drown my sorrows in single malt, after enjoying a long, hot shower, and putting on some dry underwear (you'd be surprised how much dry, cotton knickers can suddenly make the world a much friendlier place!), i've spent the morning devouring tales from the hardy boys children's series, some of which will appear on the syllabus for my upcoming course. on one level, i'm excited by the possibilities these texts present for my course due to the way in which they appropriate Victorian discourses of detection, policing and masculinity, and on another level, i've just been laughing myself silly over some of the advice fenton hardy dispenses to his sons frank and joe:

"The trouble is, so often when a young man joins a group of hoodlums or racketeers, he's blackmailed for the rest of his life, even though he tries to go straight." The detective smiled. "The best way to avoid such a situation is never to get into it!" (Fenton to Frank and Joe in The House on the Cliff)

a timely warning, fenton, as just this morning, i was considering a career in hoodlumming and racketeering, to be taken up after my potent liquid breakfast!

the rain has stopped (at least for the moment), frank and joe are about to rescue fenton from the clutches of the evil, thin-lipped and cruel bayport smuggler, felix snattman, and i have a lovely, thick grilled cheese sandwich browning on the stove. the barometer in shannon-land is slowly starting to rise. as long as i can avoid another soaking, i think i'll be a happy girl.

my body is a cage?

2007-05-14T20:50:00.000-04:00

last night, G and i made for montreal to hear the arcade fire play their sold out hometown gig at the maurice richard arena. we were psyched in that i'm a seventeen-year old groupie going to hear her favourite band kind of way. the whole enterprise involved (for me) a hipster t-shirt, (for G) some bitchin' black boots and (for both of us) copious amounts of black eyeliner a la napanee native avril lavigne. we both dug out our black leather jackets, fortified ourselves at the pub st-paul in vieux montréal and hopped on the métro with other devoted fans, intending to dance the night crazy and rock out to our favourite tunes -- you can read G's version of our plan here.

were we ever in for a surprise.

from years as a sort of working musician, i know that it can be tough to warm up a crowd. sometimes folks come and have other things on their minds and can't exist in the moment with the music in that way that makes for an amazing experience for all, both performers and audience, involved. what we experienced on sunday night wasn't quite that. the arcade fire were outstanding. it was a big space, larger than their usual venue, but they worked it, and though the acoustics left something to be desired, their energy was infectious. one song into the first set and G and i were on our feet, grooving and dancing like silly people. in the midst of our full body contact with the music, we both glanced around and were greeted by a strange sight: an auditorium of rock lovers dead still. i'm not speaking in my usual hyperbole when i say that these folks put some classical music audiences to shame with their decorum. neither G nor i understood what was going on, and after exchanging a few snide remarks about the stuffiness of our seatmates, who barely bopped their heads in time with the afire's complex rhythms, we went back to rocking out. this strange dichotomy of energy and chill characterized the atmosphere for the rest of the evening.

i'm still genuinely puzzled. how does one listen to a live performance of songs like "(antichrist television blues)" and "neighbourhood #2 (laika)" and not experience the music with one's body? or put another way, how does one listen to/make music, and keep one's body out of it? one of the first things i learned as a classically trained singer is that your body is your instrument. these questions were only intensified for me this evening when i holed myself up with my flute and beavered away at the swirling, swarthy melody of brahms's sixth hungarian dance transcribed for solo flute. i can't play that piece and not move my body as part of my musical expression any more than i could listen to win and his bandmates race through "keep the car running" and not be jumping and moving in time to the giant wall of lush sound.

needless to say, as the second set wound down with "my body is a cage", the final song of the afire's new album, neon bible, the lyrics hung heavy in the air with irony. "my body is a cage/that keeps me from dancing with the one i love/but my mind holds the key", indeed.

brooklyn

2007-05-10T20:41:00.000-04:00

i honestly thought that upon my arrival in new york, i'd find my identity as a manhattan girl confirmed -- the heaven of shoes and other kinds of shopping, my fascination with the west village and washington square, and the nostalgia i have for 42nd street, gleaned from spending my formative years in the fantastical paradise of busby berkeley. imagine my surprise when, upon crossing the brooklyn bridge on an exploratory run early on tuesday morning, i felt the unheimlich slap me upside the head. i wouldn't go so far as to say i'd felt as though i'd come home ... but i did feel at ease in a way that i hadn't monday afternoon as i wandered up and down bleecker street.

in part, i think this has to do with my obsession with the brooklyn bridge as both an architectural wonder and a cultural signifier. i couldn't take enough shots as i was making my way across. the smog was wonderfully atmospheric.

if this feeling of the uncanny had a soundtrack, it would in large part feature the brooklyn-based band, slavic soul party that L and i ventured out to see on tuesday night. they make their regular home at a club called barbès that has a performance space the size of a new york closet, ironically named the "hotel d'orsay". as we sat and listened to their two sets, i had to make a concentrated effort not to spill beer all over the pants of one of the trumpet players who stood less than a foot away from my rickety wooden chair. the bell of the sousaphone (yes, there was a sousaphone) was constantly straining against the tin ceiling. and there was an accordion. need i say more?

i'm sad that i'm going to miss the 3rd annual tour de brooklyn. i really like the idea of guiding my (still shiny and new) bike through the "the best of all the boroughs".

i promise i'll post some more pics from my trip to new york soon!

it's not easy being green

2007-05-02T19:13:00.000-04:00

as i was confessing to G this afternoon, lately, i've been feeling very green -- a neophyte if you will -- i'd even go so far as to say virginal.

this past weekend, as i tricked out my new bike and talked cleats and pedals with the guy at the store, i was reminded of how it feels to be thrown into the territory of unfamiliar jargon. i'm very at home talking boats. i can debate the merits of an empacher vs. a vespoli; i can argue about the benefits of spaghetti rigging your 4+; i have my own theories about the strategy one should take when racing in the outside lane at the canadian henley; my coach boat driving skills may leave something to be desired *cough cough*, but throw me in a coxie seat (yeah, i know ... i actually fit!) and i'll 'sweet talk' your boat across the line in record time. years of having my bum on the seat, my feet in the stops and my hands on the blade have made me comfortable dropping terms like "speed washer", "hatchet", "rigger", "stay", and "footstop" into everyday conversation; i have also become acutely aware of the power such jargon bestows upon the user. when you talk the talk, navigating your way through the gendered pitfalls of a male-dominated sport becomes a lot easier. i was reminded of this fact as i stood facing the sales clerk at the bike shop, greenly asking naive questions about the pedal system i was about to purchase. as i wrinkled my forehead in confusion, i suddenly felt very much "the girl". had i not driven quite a distance to pick up the pedals and shoes, i would have daintily flipped him a well-manicured bird, spun around on my kitten heel, and tripped blythely out of the store. instead, not wanting to waste a 2 hour drive, i swallowed the lump in my throat, gathered up my shoes and pedals and headed for the register.

this morning i took my bike, with its newly installed clipless pedals, out for a spin on the two-lane highway that heads east out of town. pedaling hard on the flat stretches, slowly climbing up and quickly bombing down the many hills on my route, i began to feel more at home. very briefly i had that feeling that i often have in a boat -- that mystical sense of the machine becoming an extension of your body. clipless pedals, no big deal, i thought to myself, as i mentally tallied the number of successful stops and starts i had negotiated. i think i sat up a little straighter as i braked at the final stop light on the way back home, mid-way up a steep climb -- guy at the bike shop be damned. i wasn't just "a girl".

then it happened. i fell over.

it was one of those slow motion moments, much like flipping a rowing shell. you know you're going down (or under), and yet it seems to be taking oh such a long time. you exhale as you sink down, muttering "shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit" under your breath. hitting the pavement wasn't actually that painful, but the road rash on my left knee (the knee that has survived being banged up in a car accident and bruised by a face-first fall off a porch) hurt like the dickens. i looked down at the bits of gravel, asphalt and skin all bloodily mixed up together and wanted to cry. it had only been in the past month or two that the scar tissue from my last "left knee incident" had begun fade. now, i angrily thought to myself, i have a new throbbing pink mess to deal with.

this new sport gig is tough. i'm reminded every time i look at my sweet new ride, that i've embarked on a relationship that is going to require time and effort on my part, and more than anything, a willingness to let myself be vulnerable. time and effort i have (okay, more of the latter than the former during this busy time of the academic year ...), but vulnerability ... well ... let's just say it's been awhile.

new arrival

2007-04-28T19:16:00.000-04:00

too giddy for words (and if you remember this post, you'll know why!)-- so i'll just post a couple of pictures.

update (sunday): props to

megalicious -- for fielding my v. excited phone call when i returned home from the bike shop and for assuring me that i will fall over on my clip-less pedals at least once.

confessing mermaid -- for tolerating my need to look at and talk about 'bike porn' for the past few weeks and for so selflessly sharing in my joy on saturday!

drs m&a -- 'bike advisors' and downstairs neighbours extrodinare. tonight marked my initiation into road bike culture -- the details of said initiation are topic secret, but i can reveal that the ceremony involves champagne, chocolate cake, a multi tool and a squeezy tube of grease.

queen's-mcgill 2007

2007-04-26T09:07:00.000-04:00

april 29th, starting at 8 am, the queen's crew (both men's and women's boats) will once again go head to head with archrivals, mcgill, in the annual boat race. oxford and cambridge have over 150 years of animosity between them, and harvard and yale have been settling the score since 1852. comparatively speaking, the queen's-mcgill challenge is a young race (the first race was in 1997), however it is no less exciting. i invite you to come down to the boathouse (1 cataraqui st., across from the whig-standard building) and put yer money on, er ... i mean cheer on the queen's crew.

andrew rastapkevicius, a former student, and fellow KRC rower, spliced the following together for motivation and inspiration:

interpellation

2007-04-25T08:09:00.000-04:00

"I shall then suggest that ideology 'acts' or 'functions' in such a way that it 'recruits' subjects among the individuals (it recruits them all), or 'transforms' the individuals into subjects (it transforms them all) by that very precise operation which I have called interpellation or hailing, and which can be imagined along the lines of the most commonplace everyday police (or other) hailing: 'Hey, you there!'" (Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses)

due to our unique relationship with many of the more abstruse theorists of our time, academics in the humanities have very creative and colourful ways of expressing dismay and discontent. one friend, when she feels folks have crossed over those personal boundaries one is always trying to protect in order to preserve a sense of self, demands that no one "breech her hermeneutic circle". "don't do it", she'll warn. "don't breech the hermeneutic circle!" another friend, when confronted with the prosaic foibles and follies of her students, speaks of being "pedagogically disturbed". lately, as the term winds down and i feel stretched in a million directions at once, the only way i can express my experience of these many demands is to claim that i'm "overinterpellated".

as i've clumsily made my way through the world, front line reps for those institutions that keep our current ideological climate buzzing have been hailing me up the wazoo. if it isn't my beloved grad chair, silently signaling with a sharp wave of her spread index and middle fingers that "she's watching me", it's the policeman who stopped me in the drive thru of tim horton's, following my accidental running of a red light the other morning. as he approached my car, with its window rolled down in preparation for ordering my morning 'coaching coffee' on the way to the boathouse, he wielded his police-ly authority by referring to his attire:

"excuse me, but as you can see by my pants, i'm a police officer, and i saw you run that red light back there. i'm off-duty, but i think you need to know that i think what you did was ignorant. you are arrogant and disrespectful for thinking you can drive like that, and you should be careful, because you'll never know who is watching in the lane beside you."

i was both too stunned and too scared to say much. for the rest of the day, i tried, unsuccessfully, to shake off my ignorant, arrogant and disrespectful subjectivity.

this morning, while out on the water, timing boats for the wednesday morning time trials down at the rowing club, it happened again.

as shani and i sat in the coach boat, waiting for the singles, 4+s and 8+s to come down the course and cross over the 4.5 km mark, we had tied the boat to the dock of the ministry of defense building next to the causeway bridge. shortly after our docking, a man in a smart green uniform approached us and told us, in no uncertain terms, that we were not allowed to dock on ministry property, implying by his arched eyebrow that our fishing boat, with its 9.9 hp motor, presented some sort of security threat. both shani and i had to keep from laughing. dressed as we were in giant orange floater suits that made us each look like the michelin man hepped up on too much vitamin a, the only threat we presented was an aesthetic one. we were hardly outfitted for espionage, what with our stop watch, fox 40 whistle, clipboard and crayons -- yes, crayons. as we motored back to the boathouse we shook our heads, and though i found it easy to locate the humour in the situation, i must admit to shrinking a little inside my giant orange cocoon.

i'm not sure how much more of this hailing i can take. i'm fighting the urge to don a baseball cap and dark glasses. i find myself rounding corners with caution and peering under cushions with suspicion, tensing at the thought of the long arm of authority fingering me yet again. if you pass me on the street, whatever you do, don't call out "hey you, there!". i'll probably duck and run.

start spreading the news

2007-04-20T18:54:00.000-04:00

lately, i've been overwhelmed by the idea of running away. i haven't been doing much actual running at all lately (my once semi-respectable 8 minute mile has crept up into the double digits -- the horror, the horror!) and thus, my desire to flee doesn't in any way surprise me. it has been a rough and tumble semester and when i'm feeling the weight of it all the thought of jumping in the car, filling up the tank and taking off so as to put some physical distance between myself and my giant ball of stress trips through my brain like a cheerfully tap-dancing fred astaire.

i became aware at a very young age that i would never really be successful at running away. one spring day, i made it as far as the end of my mother's long, gravel drive, and as i clutched my bundle of prized possessions, i was overcome with a fear of what would happen to me when i crossed over the sidewalk on to the road proper. suddenly, what moments before had been a fantasy of freedom became a possibility far more frightening than whatever it was that had made me gather up my pink stuffed bunny, my prized tiny pony and my collection of scented markers in a blue blanket embroidered with colourful farm scenes, the underside of which was red, white and blue checked. i sheepishly made my way back up the drive to the back door that my mother had suggestively (and wisely) propped open.

in the years following that spring afternoon, i have discovered the freedom that comes from traveling: spending a few days "anywhere but here" gives me that fresh perspective, that sense of a new start that i used to think was only found in leaving behind the familiar forever. in three weeks, after i've submitted my students' final grades, handed in the woefully-delayed draft of my current dissertation chapter, and drafted the outline of my next, i'm making like a crazy woman and hopping on a train to visit L&S in new york city. as i sit amid the piles of paper that are currently, metaphorically, blocking out the newly-arrived sun, i'm listening repeatedly to sinead o'connor's recording of "i guess the lord must be in new york city". the lyrics have a resonance that i find comforting, like that warm, cozy feeling one experiences sitting in an idling car.

I say goodbye to all my sorrows
And by tomorrow I'll be on my way
I guess the Lord must be in New York City

I'm so tired of getting nowhere
Seeing my prayers going unanswered
I guess the Lord must be in New York City

Well here I am, Lord
Knocking on your back door
Ain't it wonderful to be
Where I've always wanted to be
For the first time I'll be free in New York City

I say goodbye to all my sorrows
And by tomorrow I'll be on my way
I guess the Lord must in New York City

I'm so tired of getting nowhere
Seeing my prayers going unanswered
I guess the Lord must be in New York City

Well here I am, Lord
Knocking on your back door
Ain't it wonderful to be
Where I've always wanted to be
For the first time I'll be free in New York City

stop this boat ride, i wanna get off

2007-04-17T11:15:00.000-04:00

may of 2007 will see the opening of the dickens theme park currently being built in london. as you can imagine, as a victorianist, i'm all over this one. to quote a colleague: "this is so much more than charlotte brontë dishtowels and jane austen tea cozies" -- it's the commercialization of the victorian period for mass consumption on a mammoth scale. it's neo-victoriana for those who can't wait for the next masterpiece theatre adaptation, sarah waters book, or league of extraordinary gentlemen comic (all of which i confess i heartily enjoy!), complete with a boat ride down an artificially muddy river, based on magwitch's escape in great expectations.

while the kitschy part of me was gleefully rubbing my hands a la uriah heep and scheming to find a way over the pond for the may opening, i was kindly reminded by fellow victorianist judith flanders (check out her most recent book consuming passions) of the socio-political implications of watering down dickens's messages of social reform for commerical consumption. today, in the guardian unlimited arts blog she writes:

It is the trivialising of the social issues Dickens cared so passionately about that is the most disturbing. A representative of the Dickens Fellowship, which has been acting in an advisory capacity to the project, defends its integrity by saying, "A lot of the social concerns are still a problem for us today, with these young people going around shooting each other". But how are these "social concerns" being addressed? With Magwitch's boat-ride, do we learn about the Bloody Code and penal reform? In Ebeneezer Scrooge's Haunted House, is the oppression of workers and lack of employment rights a feature? Or the desperate poverty that caused the (probable) rickets that lamed Tiny Tim? Are there going to be crossing-sweepers always being "moved on" until they die of exhaustion? Dust heaps? Parish orphans?

Somehow I don't think that will happen. I know, I'm a killjoy. But it is the domestication, the taming of the wildness and fierceness of Dickens that I object to. Yes, there were the benevolent Cheeryble brothers; Scrooge is reformed; even Magwitch turns out to be a fairy convict godfather. But that doesn't stop the realism of Dickens: Magwitch doesn't get to enjoy his good deeds: he still dies a hunted man, and that is what I'm willing to bet Dickens World will not show.

It will be Disney-on-Sea instead, a nice, safe, cosy world where nothing bad occurs. It is hardly as though this has never happened before. Peter Pan was originally one of the weirdest, spookiest stories - the only children who never grow up, after all, are dead children. By the time Disney got its hands on it, it was all "Clap your hands and Tinkerbell won't die". It's a long way to Tinkerbell from Miss Flite's birds in Bleak House - "Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach."

(you can read the full blog entry here).

no judith, you're not a killjoy. rather, you are just pointing out, as dickens does in our mutual friend via the veneerings, the dangers of skimming along the artificially muddy surface.

daffodils ... WORD ... sworth

2007-04-14T11:34:00.000-04:00

because there are some chilly spring saturday mornings that are made just that much better by a giant squirrel throwing down wordsworth's "i wandered lonely" ...

practice

2007-04-10T11:36:00.000-04:00

this morning, at the unholy hour of 6 am, i met up with shani and headed down to the boathouse to erg. i was shocked by the sight that greeted my not-quite-opened eyes: there were crews out on the water. the digital thermometer on the dash of shani's car fluorescently proclaimed that it was a balmy -2˚C. i felt it this morning in a way i haven't been feeling it up until now: the rowing season has started.

soon, i'll be tumbling out of bed at 5 am, blindly tugging on my unisuit (unless i've decided to go to bed in it the night before to save myself the hassle of dressing in the dark! ... yes, i know it's gross), stumbling down the stairs, hopping on my bike and only fully coming awake as i round the corner at bay and bagot. the mornings will be dark, and the sun will only just be settling into the sky as we dock our boat at around 7 am. many mornings, i'll have not layered sufficiently, and the bike ride home will be excruciatingly cold and my only thoughts will be of a hot shower and eggs and toast.

soon, my body will begin that weird metamorphosis, as the weight i inevitably put on in the off season (a testament to my on-again off-again romance with the erg, and this year to the rigors of teaching) disappears and i become, to quote a friend, "all muscle-y". the backs of my calves will bruise from the slides, my hands will become adorned with callouses across the top of my palms (more so on my right hand than my left, as i feather my oar with my right hand) and my appetite will go through the roof. weekend brunches with confessing mermaid will begin to require orders of extra toast. i will once again become a prime consumer of the superbreakfast at morrison's diner. i will start complaining about how single serving containers of yogurt are a joke -- how can that little yogurt be satisfying?!

this year, the start of the season hit me the way it did because this off season has been different from others. with the possibility of not being here in k-town next summer, this final 6 months of rowing bliss is incredibly poignant (note the palpable nostalgia present in the previous two paragraphs!). because of this reason, i wasn't as diligent with my erging over the winter, and thus i'm starved for time with my hands on my blade and my feet pressing against the stretchers. what has kept me sane during my absence from the erg is the way in which i've managed to adapt some of the training techniques i've gleaned from my sessions in a boat and apply them to my dissertation.

a few friends will groan and possibly begin to bang their heads against their keyboards when i say that writing is a lot like rowing. i first breathed life into this simile by comparing the inevitable pain associated with each undertaking. rowing hurts, i'm not going to lie, and for me, often times, writing hurts just as much, if not more -- lactate build up ain't got nothin' on the stomach churning fear i have often fought down as i'm faced with a blank computer screen. this winter, i expanded my understanding of this simile in a variety of ways. after writing an article that theorizes the practice of rowing as a woman using hélène cixous idea of l'écriture feminine, i saw other possibilities. what if i was to take some of the structure provided by my experience as an athlete and apply that to my unruly (and if you're my dissertation committee, my choice of adjectives will seem like a massive understatement!) life as a writer? the result was a sense of writing practice -- and i like the overtones of michel de certeau in that moniker. every day, i spend a certain amount of time building up my writing muscle. i've set myself a training schedule of sorts that requires me to put in so many pages worth of time at my keyboard. i have a training plan, a training diary, and believe it or not, as corny as it sounds, it's working. i'm just under half way through the first draft of my current chapter which up until a couple of weeks ago was woefully behind schedule.

this morning, with the sight of singles and 8+s out on the water, i had a fine sense of the season beginning. life at the boathouse has picked up -- shani and are no longer the only early morning denizens, and now that teaching is winding down, i face eight months solely devoted to work on my dissertation. it's okay, i keep reminding myself, i've been practicing.

in praise of "doing stuff"

2007-04-06T06:49:00.000-04:00

being a grad student is tough. being a "real" academic, so my friends a few years ahead in the game tell me, is no walk in the park either. that's not to say it's horrible -- indeed, no. many of us are here because we love what we do -- but it *is a lot of hard work (my recent love affair with the microfiche reader in the basement of the campus humanities library only confirmed this for me!), and as such, requires a certain degree of down time in which one can find renewal.

given the number of hours we devote as a community to innovative thought, i find it surprising that there are so few modes of release that are validated by fellow community members. pontificating over a pint (or several) -- not a problem; "doing stuff" that falls outside status-quo scholarly behaviour -- that's a different story. at the same time that reports of colleagues "doing stuff" evoke curiosity, coupled with that curiosity is often a simultaneous questioning of that activity's validity. two friends have recently been involved in discussions of varying intensity about the legitimacy of blogging; another friend often finds herself staring into puzzled faces when she explains that the activity that keeps her sane while in the thick of studying for her comprehensive exams is training to compete internationally in triathlons. i've had both veiled and direct questions about my love of rowing. "doesn't that take away from writing time?" "don't you find your energies and attention divided?" all fancy ways of saying, i think, "how can you be a nerd and a jock at the same time?"

i won't deny that there is a danger in allowing "doing stuff" to become a retreat from the academy. at one point last summer, after being in a car accident and dealing with the serious illness of a family member, the only thing i felt i had the strength to do was row (ironic, yes). my dissertation was the furthest thing from my mind, and i wanted to keep it there; the anxiety that writing provokes in me was the last thing i felt capable of dealing with effectively. the rhythm of a rowing day was calming -- down at the boathouse at 5 am, home from practice by 7:30 am, back at the boathouse at 5 pm, home by 7:30 pm, shower, dinner, bed -- and in a couple of weeks, it effected the healing that i so needed. a retreat? yes. but a necessary one. in the end, the love of what i do brought me back to my keyboard and i learned that i could adapt that rhythmic day to fit my writing schedule. the hours between daily practices soon became filled by trips to the library, writing, revising and researching. my productivity shot up in surprising ways.

i write/think/speak better when i row (or run, or bike). i know this. during my comprehensive exam year, i decided to forgo all exercise and focus solely on studying. i reasoned that i didn't want to look back at the smoldering wreck of my academic career brought about by failing my comps and think "oh! if i'd only spent the hours i did in the gym reading more robert browning in the library!" -- it was one of the stupidest decisions i have ever made. i came out of that second year quite literally a nervous wreck and it took me several months to fully recover.

ultimately i suppose the question is one of integration -- of finding a way to organically join the love of what you pursue academically (my research focuses on 19th-century sport culture and sport journalism and the relationship these two cultural fields have with popular Victorian literature) and the joy you find in "doing stuff". my fellow academic bloggers have varying uses for their on-line space: one of my blogging friends uses her blog to flex her writing muscle in a variety of genres so as to liven up her academic prose -- it keeps her fresh, if you will. another friend has used her blog to open up a discussion of the place of such on-line activity in the scholarly community -- can blogs do something heretofore not done in the universe of scholarship? i'm with her in thinking yes, they can, but we have yet to fully realize the possibilities (and the limitations).

along with on-line scholars and scholar-athletes, i'm lucky to count among my friends who "do stuff" those who find joy in making music. this week, a friend and her band *finally put up a profile on myspace. when not researching/teaching courses in/writing books about topics as diverse as 19th-century performance practices, theoretical conceptions of authorship, and canadian copyright law, L is playing gigs and laying down tracks with the swamp ward orchestra, who are due to release their first CD very soon. is marking out a place for your band on the folk festival circuit tough? yes. but there's a way in which the music she plays and her practices of musicianship are intricately linked to, and actively fuel, her research interests -- a sort of organic whole.

i don't know if the climate of the academy will ever change concerning those who "do stuff", and admittedly, there's a part of me that likes my position on the fringe of things. i do know, however, that if i'm going to make it through to the end of my dissertation, i'm going to row a hell of a lot to get there.

a page from the training diary

2007-03-29T12:34:00.000-04:00

while meg's on comps hiatus (remember sweetcheeks, it's all about that last "250m" -- you are so gonna kick some comprehensive exam ass!) i feel the need to fill the void with some kind of official training update. i'm well aware that there are far more accomplished athletes out there doing far more frightening things than my current rowing schedule. however, how many of those athletes are also doing their phds in victorian literature? meg and i form a very interesting community of two (if there are other vic lit scholars/competitive athletes out there, give us a shout!), and in support of that community, i feel the need to keep the sport part of the scholar/athlete dichotomy kickin'.

monday: ko'd by an old it band injury. spent the day limping around, popping advil, and rolling around on a tennis ball ... yes, that last part is as icky as it sounds.

tuesday: 6k piece, 30 mins of cross training (running), another 6k piece. average split 2:15/500m -- to quote my coach, "you're being too conservative ... you've got more bitch in you than that".

wednesday: 6k piece x2 (apparently still not "bitchy" enough @ 2:12/500m); 10 mins of interval training (1 min @ sub 1:58/500m, 2 mins @ 2:25/500m)

thursday: 45 min run

friday: rest

saturday: 75 min erg test (the big question here is not "will i finish?" but "can i erg for that long with out a pee break?")

sunday: rest or perhaps cross training (spinning?)

i guess wizards experience grad school angst too ...

2007-03-28T12:32:00.000-04:00

oh harry, i feel your pain.

don't you ever just wanna ask ...

2007-03-25T20:27:00.000-04:00

thank goodness for late 90s dance/pop!

will(fully) in the world

2007-03-23T22:24:00.000-04:00

i know there are some of you out there that are thinking that my infatuation with stephen greenblatt is getting to be just this side of ridiculous ... perhaps even just the other side of scary. it seems trite and even cliché to wail once more about just how transformative that "resonance and wonder" moment was the afternoon i heard him speak -- but it was and i just can't get away from that.

it seems, however, that i've done a right good job lately of getting away from myself. tonight, i had a solid heart to heart with confessing mermaid about an overwhelming situation i'm dealing with and for the first time since this situation bubbled to the surface, i was able to articulate exactly how it makes me feel.

i'm going to be frank, and perhaps this may get me in some trouble, but i honestly don't care. there is a person who was at one time in my life, and who remains on the periphery, who has made me feel as though i have somehow lost (dropped? misplaced? discarded?) that kernel of me-ness that i trick myself into believing defines who i am. the good little post-structuralist in me is having a difficult time with this whole kernel idea, but i'm telling her to be quiet, because it works.

sara hall, in her rowing memoir drawn to the rhythm, discusses how she faced a similar circumstance and was able to locate in the sport i love a way out of a situation where a person left her "hurt and confused". Her description of that situation, prior to her entry into the rowing world, has a resonance and wonder all its own: "It was as if my own experience of [any] situation, my reality, was suddenly slippery and elusive [. . . .] With each little remark I felt smaller and less solid, and [the other person] seemed to get bigger -- somehow harder and immovable [. . . .] I learned to walk on eggs, to phrase and time my comments and requests to avoid the accusations, the little stabbing blade of sarcasm; learned to avoid the requests I knew were hopeless anyway" (174-75). i remember the first time i read that passage -- i was sitting all solitary in the campus library, working on an article (for which i was reading hall's memoir) and i had to put the book down and walk away for awhile. what i had just read hit too close to home.

the past couple of weeks, in dealing with this situation, i've allowed the memories and the ripples of this person's existence on the periphery of my life to absorb the energy and passion i normally devote to other things: my writing, my reading, my friendships/relationships, my sport, my music -- all of the things that nurture me as an individual and give me a sense of self that i believe is worth protecting and standing up for in the face of challenges such as those this person brings into my life. as i said to confessing mermaid tonight, i know that the best way for me to deal right now is to take the energy i've been devoting to nurturing this problem and invest it in those things that give me a sense of self. what i realized tonight, however, as i finally articulated that thought, was that i was feeling emotionally bankrupt. to put it in the language of rowing (because really, when is the jargon of that crazy subculture more appropriate than in moments such as this!) i'd completely drained the tank. in the last 250 m of this race, i had pulled two 7-ups and i had nothing left to give.

okay, i know you're wondering when i'm going to break out the g-man. here it comes.

kismet has a strange way of delivering what i need when i most need it. today, as i was making my way from the coffee bar in the bookstore i frequent to the exit, i passed table of biographies that some sales clerk had selected that represented folks most prominent in our cultural imagination at this moment. sitting on the corner of the table, as though it had been set down by an indecisive shopper, was the store's only copy of the g-man's will in the world. since i'm currently waiting impatiently for my recall of the g-man's practicing new historicism to come in at stauffer, i saw this book as something to tide me over. i snatched it up, along with julia cameron's the right to write, and dashed for the register.

pop culture critic james twitchell is probably the only person alive that would joyously and un-judgmentally celebrate the way in which i deploy practices of consumerism to construct my identity (okay, jimmy t and cm!). to all those who might not at this very moment agree with jim and me (and cm): fuck off. in the thick of my conversation with cm, i glanced down at my desktop and saw the two covers starring back at me, as if to say "duh, you know what you need to do!" i need to reach somewhere inside of me, down into that place where i store that nameless thing i pull out in moments of great difficulty both in rowing and in life, and begin to go about being, pardon the horrible pun, "will(fully) in the world". the one way i know how to do that is through writing, both about literature and my life. i consider this post my first step away from this troubling situation and toward that sense of self that, for the past few weeks, i was so afraid might be lost for good.

musical thursdays and the masculine logic of the sentence

2007-03-22T15:47:00.000-04:00

this morning in my lecture i went off on a tangent about the masculine logic of the sentence and the way in which our grammar is gendered male. as i waved my arms around and ranted about the way in which the politics of the sentence are weighted in favour of the subject -- that infamous component that determines the form of everything that follows it -- and function with an inherently masculine, even penetratory logic (is "penetratory" a word?), my students, i think, found me a little ridiculous. the whole performance was motivated by a comment virginia woolf makes in her essay "women and fiction". women, according to woolf, need to find a new way of writing, because the sentence is a thing made by men.

it's fitting that i should tackle such a topic on a thursday, for thursdays are both days of performance, and also days of my escape from the world of logos. thursday afternoons i play duets with a colleague in my department, and thursday nights, i get together with some good friends, play some music and eat wonderful, fresh pasta from a local italian specialty shop (pasta genova, i salute you!). i find that slipping into a world, the primary language of which is so different (and yet, so similar) from that which i wrestle with every day, is a wonderful way to mark the end of my teaching week. now please don't think i would be silly enough not to recognize that the language of music has its own gendered logic and structure -- of that i am fully aware -- but there is something about the experience of making music that i truly find transformative. there is also a quality of the pieces that i most enjoy playing that subverts this logic, often parodying it, and turning it on its head (claude bolling's suite for flute and jazz piano trio anyone?). it is for this reason that i have become completely fascinated with this man, greg pattillo, a busker in NYC who mixes beatboxing and flute riffs of tunes from pop culture. as i said to a friend in an e-mail this afternoon: "i want to be this guy when i (musically) grow up!"

confession

2007-03-20T12:53:00.000-04:00

i just had a giant bowl of ice cream for lunch.

dear annoying person ...

2007-03-18T17:53:00.000-04:00

who keeps recalling books i need for my dissertation,

would you please stop it?

no one cared about these books when i first took them out, and since i've been the only one who has cared for them in the intervening years, your "come late to the party, aren't i a star" attitude is really starting to piss me off.

this has been going on for almost three months, and this last recall is the last straw.

consider yourself lucky in that the library refuses to disclose your identity to me -- i think the librarians are picking up on my latent rage.

just write your fucking term paper (it's probably going to suck anyway) and give me my books back and no one gets hurt.

sincerely,

me

output, gossip, the greenblott and other disreputable fun

2007-03-17T20:52:00.000-04:00

i'm reading something for my dissertation right now that discusses the different discourses of production that surround capital-L "Literature" and the less-revered realm of popular literature (think: john grisham). "Literature", this scholar argues, still privileges discourses of creativity, spontaneity and originality (even if a few theory folk have gone out of their way to declare the author dead!). popular literature, on the other hand, values industry, production, output and the meeting of deadlines. the irony, for me personally, is overwhelming. i work in a field concerned with the study of "Literature", and yet my position is defined by the discourse of production that is antithetical in many ways to what it is i've chosen to devote my life to writing about. all of those books that one is bound to receive from one's supervisor, given in an attempt to spur befuddled grad students on to new heights of production (my supervisor's most recent gift was william zinsser's on writing well), are books that discuss the practice of writing as a craft, not an art -- something that you devote endless hours of hard work to, not something that springs forth from your forehead naturally in moments of "powerful feeling". i don't know why this irony is so frustrating for me ... i can't quite make out why it angers me so.

******

today i was in a coffee bar, downing yet another chai latte, when i was distracted by the conversation of a man and a woman seated at a table beside me. the woman's voice sounded familiar and i couldn't place it. i'd heard it somewhere before. after a few moments of concentration during which i tried my darndest not to look like i was eavesdropping, i was finally able to place it. it was the voice of one of the news anchors on our local TV station. she was sitting there, dishing the dirt with her co-anchor about the poor sod who reports on local sports for the station. it was a surreal experience to hear the voice i've so come to associate with mundane local news using rather colourful language to describe the man who gets way too excited about local hockey games. yes, i thought to myself ... all workplaces have their politics.

******

the beginning of this week was marked by a transformative experience. i had the opportunity to attend a seminar headlined by the daddy of new historicism himself, stephen jay greenblatt. move over walter benjamin, i've got a new academic crush.as i sat there, listening to the g-man wax poetic about the experience of literature he wants students to derive from reading the norton anthology of english literature, for which he serves as the general editor, he began talking about "resonance and wonder", and i must admit it moved me almost to tears. existing as i do in a culture of critique that can too often devolve into a culture of complaint, to hear a scholar of his stature speak of what i love so dearly with such genuine, sincere affection was life-altering. i was buoyant for days afterward and am eagerly looking forward to discussing greenblatt's raison d'être with my students next week. blogland props to G (yet again) for her brilliant eventing -- and also for the "greenblott", a stunning foray into the world of academic event fashion.

******

i've really got to watch what i say. over the past two weeks, i've given people the mistaken impression that not only am i gambling away my graduate funding at the race track, but i am also nurturing a rather destructive drug habit. i recently needed to have the world of horse racing demystified for me due to material i'm working on for my current dissertation chapter (there's a sherlock holmes story that takes place at a race track, and i'm out of the loop when it comes to making sense of odds -- on, off or even -- the role of bookies, etc.). eager to understand, i raced around to see a couple of colleagues -- both of whom i was sure were privy to the workings of the horse world -- and didn't take the moment necessary to phrase my inquiry in academic terms. rather than preface my statement with something along the lines of "i'm working on this chapter about X and i need to know Y", i simply blurted out "i need to know everything about betting at the track". after a few stern and concerned glances, i was able to clarify, but those 10-15 seconds of disreputable-ness were quite jarring.

the same thing happened when i answered an inquiry by a colleague regarding what i had been up to lately. having just returned from the boathouse, where i'd spent a gruelling hour on the erg, slogging through a workout designed to bump up my lactate threshold, i responded with a sigh and a confession: i'd been mainlining. rowers refer to this hour-long workout as both "the hour of power" and "mainlining". having courted an image of squeaky clean athleticism in the years that i've been in this department, you can only imagine the look on my colleague's face during those few seconds when he mistakenly thought i was tying off and shooting up in the confines of my fifth-floor office.

******

yesterday, i spent an hour exploring the world of sherlock holmes parody and made the startling discovery that none other than john lennon (yes, that john lennon) wrote a short pastiche, titled "the singularge experience of miss anne duffield", that chronicles the investigation of one "shamrock womlbs" and his sidekick dr. whopper. below is my favourite passage, and if you find yourself clutching your tummy and laughing so hard you're crying, you might want to read the whole thing here.

'The thing the: puddles me Womlbs,' I said when we were alone, 'is what happened to Oxo Whitney,' Womlbs logged at me intently, I could see that great mind was thinking as his tufed eyepencil knit toboggen, his strong jew jutted out, his nosepack flared, and the limes on his fourheads wrinkled.

nothing more than feelings? not quite.

2007-03-10T22:07:00.000-05:00

(un)timely, awkward declaration:

being a good person does not mean denying one's feelings.

i think aretha says it best.

flights of fancy

2007-03-10T19:22:00.000-05:00

i just found out that i will be undertaking a little journey this summer, both literally and intellectually.

my first stop,cambridge university.

my second stop,the bodleian, oxford.

my third stop,henley-on-the-thames, for the river and rowing museum, as well as the regatta.

there will also be a weekend jaunt,during which i will *finally get to indulge my parisian fantasies.

i'm very excited.

dissertation, she wrote

2007-03-08T06:59:00.000-05:00

throughout the writing of my dissertation i've been able to rationalize many very ridiculous purchases. when i had an inkling that a chapter of my dissertation might discuss representations of mountaineering in victorian fiction, i ran out an bought a climbing harness. how was i to write about mountaineering with any authority if i hadn't at least scaled the walls at my local climbing gym? when i was writing a piece about the place of roger bannister in the british popular imagination, i bought a pair of track spikes, thinking that i might one day become the first graduate student to run a mile in under four minutes (between you and me, i would have settled for any time under eight minutes, but my good friend rahul, a former indian distance running legend, and one time "track coach" wasn't having any of it!). as i'm getting to know myself as a writer, i'm realizing more and more the necessity for total immersion in whatever it is i'm writing, and it seems that practice of immersion has become strangely and inextricably linked to consumerism. perhaps one day when i'm not hounded by draconian deadlines i'll find a less, uhm, materialist way to go about investing my voice with the needed authority, but at the moment, i'm not going to question what's working, even if the whole process might make some of my more virtuous friends shudder and avert their eyes in disgust.

knee-deep as i am in my current chapter on sport in victorian detective fiction, i was surprised that up until recently, i hadn't gone in search of any kind of talisman. i attributed my security to my long-lasting love affair with mysteries that started when i picked up my first yellow-covered copy of a nancy drew novel at the age of six and has lasted through various threads of fascination including, but not limited to, sherlock holmes, agatha christie, murder, she wrote, dashiell hammett, columbo, inspector morse, the midsomer murders, the inspector linley mysteries, and last but not least, helen mirren's turn as jane tennison in the long-running prime suspect series. this is dissertation writing, however, and one is bound to feel a complete dunderhead at some point, even if the conventions of the genre about which one is writing are pretty much woven into the threads of one's psyche. last weekend, i hit upon exactly what it was i needed to bolster my confidence, pull up my socks, keep up my chin and keep me swinging (thanks, uncle ted!): a trench coat.

really, when you take into account the similarities between the practice of scholarship and the practice of detection, it's quite brilliant. in choosing to adorn myself in such garb, i'd be following in the footprints -- yes, footprints; we're talking mysteries, here -- of not only one of LAPD's finest, lieutenant columbo, but also in those of the (in)famous deconstructionist, jacques derrida. visions of myself as a titian-haired girl sleuth were too irresistible. i found myself jumping into, alas, not my blue convertible, but a car that bears more of a resemblance to columbo's sketchy 1959 peugot, and zipping off, hot on the trail of my latest identity salve. confessing mermaid tagged along, playing the george/bess to my trench coat-less nancy.

after a short period of sleuthing, i had discovered the perfect coat. as cm and i made our way back to the car, i had visions of ingrid bergman, lauren bacall, veronica lake, and of course, bonita granville (who played nancy drew in a series of 30s films) dancing through my head. audrey hepburn, in charade also came to mind. imagine my surprise when i was confronted by my newly-minted detecting self in cm's bathroom mirror. i suppose it could have been worse; i could have looked like peter falk. the reality of my appearance, complete with vintage silk scarf, loaned to me by an excited confessing mermaid, was still difficult to stomach. lauren bacall? no.

more like jessica fletcher.

at least i get some bitchin' theme music.

"the machine starts to think it is somebody"

2007-02-20T17:57:00.000-05:00

fellow krc summer denizen will crothers, currently rowing for the u of washington, caught on film what ergs get up to when left alone. i now can't see an erg without hearing in my head bobby darin singing "beyond the sea".

rowing friends: you know you always had a sneaking suspicion ... (and don't worry, no ergs were hurt in the making of this film)

non-rowing friends: i will simply quote buddy hackett, who played tennessee steinmetz in the original herbie movie, the love bug:

"It's happening right under our noses and we can't see it. We take machines and we stuff 'em with information until they're smarter than we are. Take a car. Most guys spread more love and time and money on their car in a week than they do on their wife and kids in a year. Pretty soon, you know what? The machine starts to think it is somebody."

cultural capital

2007-02-15T11:58:00.000-05:00

friends have often heard me go off on rants about cultural capital in the academy. as the daughter of a working-class single mother i've often felt acutely my supposed lack of that caché of knowledge and experience which, as pierre bourdieu so famously pointed out, is the property of those in a normative class position in society. i'm incredibly sensitive to issues of class -- some would say 'oversensitive', and they wouldn't be wrong; i have a hair-sensitive trigger, and i don't like the way in which our current cultural climate likes to pretend issues of class don't exist.

don't get me wrong -- i'm in no way at odds with the palimpsest with which my habitus marks me. unlike some i know who work very hard to hide their origins, affecting behaviours they believe obscure what to them are embarrassing tell-tale signs, i see no problem with where i come from. however, i also think that acknowledging origins, at least in my case, doesn't necessitate aping "the folk". for me it's a strange balance -- i'm always already outside and inside at the same time. for example, i am often candid and colloquial (remember uncle ted?) but in a context that is in many ways the furthest thing from my mother's life experience.

now i would be guilty of oversimplification if i was to not discuss a facet of this whole situation that complicates things even further -- i was raised not only as the daughter of a working-class materialist feminist with conflicting conservative religious beliefs (wow -- that's another post all on its own!), but also as the daughter of a first-generation immigrant. my mother, with her german birth and french childhood, brought to our single-parent, low-income household a longing and nostalgia for her origins that inflected my class-proscribed experience of the world. at the same time that my mother butted heads with hegemony on many fronts, she also longed for the culture of her childhood that has in many ways been fetishized by the north american middle class as "european". mom's homestyle lunches of lipton chicken noodle soup and white bread, in many ways markers of class status, took on an intriguing hybridity with the addition of maggi seasoning and liverwurst. this hybridity has often helped me to "pass". other times, it serves as a glaring contradiction to all the things people assume i should be. i once remember having dinner at a friend's house when i was in high school. this friend's mother knew a little bit about my family background and had presumed to make assumptions about what kind of 'culture' i had therefore been exposed to. imagine her surprise when i manifested not only what she dubbed "european table manners" but also enough know-how to eat an artichoke uninstructed and unassisted.

this morning, when my browser opened to its home page, i noticed an article about the new biopic about edith piaf being released in france. the article discusses the nation-wide wave of nostalgia for the socio-cultural values connected to piaf. i confess to being overwhelmed by a nostalgia of my own, a nostalgia for a time when i wasn't so aware of the complexities of my identity -- when 'being' seemed much more simple. when my mother would get incredibly homesick, she would dig around in the stereo cabinet in the living room and come out brandishing an edith piaf recording. she had almost every recording piaf ever made. (sadly, in one of our many moves, the box containing all of these vinyl treasures was inexplicably lost). playing those records, and thus instilling in me an almost absurd knowledge of the french singer (absurd in that at the age of 6 i would ride my bike around the neighbourhood belting out the words to "non, je ne regrette rien"), she was momentarily back in the south of france with my grandfather patiently helping her guide her bicycle over the cobblestones.

there are times when i revel in my inbetween-ness and my awareness of it. i'll be the first to admit that the power of that knowledge has helped me negotiate the (at times) bewildering world of the academy. there are also times, like today, when i just want to be me: to eat my maggi infused lipton soup and sing along with la môme.

salt truck valentines

2007-02-14T08:13:00.000-05:00

i've received such lovely valentines this week (sadly, nothing from george clooney ... but maybe it's still on it's way ...), but my v-day was made special by that great canadian institution -- the CBC. yes. you read that correctly. this morning, as i was nursing my morning cup of coffee and puttering around in my flannel pjs, inwardly shrinking as i looked out my window at the blowing snow, the ceeb's music segment on ontario morning, "heard deeply", played a track from eleni's new album, miracle of five. i'm convinced they were playing it just for me. please let me enjoy my delusion.

happy valentine's day all!

Salt Truck

Salt truck, salt truck
Clear my path
All my dreams have frozen fast
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a love I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck
It's a shame
Driving in the freezing rain
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a man I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck

Salt truck, salt truck
After hours
Spinning in the snowflake showers
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a friend I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck
Mean black ice
Swerving isn't very nice
I want roads that I can drive on
I want a love I can rely on

Salt truck, salt truck

territorial much?

2007-02-13T21:39:00.000-05:00

it's funny, really, the way one's identity becomes linked to place. the minute someone else sets foot on your hallowed ground, out come the flying fists. intrusion into one's space is a threat to the fiction of the coherent, whole identity that one so carefully crafts. fortune cookie gods forbid that self and other ("Other"?) should ever mix, that someone else ("Someone Else"?) should set foot on one's territory. due to recent events about which i must, for a variety of reasons, be reticent, i've been giving a lot of thought to place, identity, and, perhaps more important in this equation, territory.

no where is place more important than in a boat. each seat in a crew comes with its own number and its own set of responsibilities. 1 & 2, in the bow of the boat, have a much different job from 3, 4, 5, & 6. 7 & 8 share a unique bond as well. if the person wielding the oar in seat 5 is thinking mostly about driving down hard with her legs, the body occupying seat 7 is thinking mainly about relaying back to the rest of the crew the small nuances in technique and rhythm that 8 seat is spinning out in response to the coxie's instructions. this summer and fall i found myself thrown into 8 seat after a shakeup in the hierarchy of our crew (nothing scandalous ... just that our usual 8 seat had work obligations that kept her out of rowing for the latter half of the season). i found the mental and technical requirements of sitting in stroke both refreshing and challenging. i also faced a difficult-to-negotiate identity crisis. for my entire rowing career, i've always been 4 seat! my not-so-skinny thighs make me helpful in the "engine room" of the boat. in switching it up to stroke, for the first while, i didn't respond to the coxie calls addressed to me because i didn't think of myself as "stroke seat". there i would sit, blissfully unaware, as the coxie screamed in my face "stern pair! take us in!". usually, after a head-smack from 7 seat, i'd awaken to my new identity and start rowing. it took me weeks to fully adjust.

at the end of the season, i found myself surprisingly attached to my new identity, and the territory associated with it. when i had to move back to 4 seat for one practice, to give a much more experienced spare the seat she rightly deserved in the stern, i felt put out. someone was sitting on my seat with her feet in my shoes. what did she know about the trick to the oar lock, or the secret calls the coxie and i had devised to get the boat moving faster? she didn't, however, have my oar. that, with its "8" clearly marked just above the collar, i had insisted on taking with me. i had the strangest feeling of not knowing who i was. i was also a complete mess when attempting to answer commands from our coxie or coach. who was i? stroke seat? stern pair? bow four? a very postmodern moment, if i do say so myself.

at the end of the row, awed by our visitor's precision and power, i realized that i could share stroke seat and not compromise my identity. stomping around the boathouse, crabby and resentful about my supposed displacement, i didn't show the leadership that my coach had expected of me when she put me in stroke. through learning and displaying a little bit of decorum, graciousness, and deference, i did.

in my current situation, i'm trying my best to recall the lesson i learned this summer, even though i'm more in the position of being a visitor than a member of the regular crew. for all of the earth-shattering impact of what my friend jane, a grade school teacher, would call my "teachable moment", i'm having a very difficult time not behaving like one of jane's grade twos. i'm currently considering either barbed wire, or peeing around the parameter of the contested ground. as i wait for the mature, sensible shannon to appear, i keep reminding myself that wars waged over disputed territory are never a good thing.

*for those patiently waiting for the second half of the victorianists' superbowl play-by-play, i promise to report back very soon.

superbowl for victorianists

2007-02-04T22:45:00.000-05:00

tonight, my local pbs station is screening the new bbc/masterpiece theatre adaptation of jane eyre -- all 4 hours back to back. we're approaching half time and so far, as filmic interpretations go, there's only been one nasty play.

in the novel, there's a fantastic scene where rochester disguises himself as a fortune teller in order to not only expose the shallow character of miss blanche ingram, but also to probe the depths of his beloved jane. there's so much at play in this moment -- lots of wonderful ambiguity flying about concerning rochester's manliness and his presumed whiteness/britishness. in this film adaptation, rochester hires a gypsy woman and hides behind a curtain so as to better overhear jane's unguarded conversation with the woman. i suppose there's a "gossip/eavesdropping" angle that could be worked if one wanted to discuss the effect this scene has on eddie f's virility, but it just isn't the same.

post-half time, the game will be riding on how the film handles two things: 1) the explanation and exposure of bertha and 2) the portrayal of saint john (yes, yes, "sinjun") rivers.

momentary break from misanthropy or i luuuurrrrve eleni

2007-02-02T11:06:00.000-05:00

i'll be the first to admit that, in part, my blog hiatus has been motivated by the seasonal misanthropy that descends upon me in february. february, the month of love, has been consistently disastrous for me when it comes to love (and like, and lust). all the way back to my first boyfriend (when i was, metaphorically, knee-high to a grasshopper, unschooled in the ways of love -- thanks uncle ted!), right through to the penultimate C---- (the evil, nasty one), ending most recently with the mangling of my heart in february of 2006, februaries have been months of horror. the relationship pundits claim that more break ups happen in january than any other month due to the post-holiday reality check that many experience. i can thus explain my february romantic disasters in only one way. i was born a month late ... literally. my poor mother was close on 4 weeks past her/my due date when i finally decided to arrive. i often use this little factoid to explain many things: my procrastinatory ways, my late blooming nature, and, it hit me today, my experience of februaries.

i've been clomping around lately with a giant black cloud of misanthropy hanging over my head. i felt the best course of action was to take a little break from spinning myself as an on-line commodity, because, well ... i just haven't been myself. today, however, kismet intervened and brought a little of myself back to me. after a work session at a coffee shop downtown, i was browsing through the CD section of indigo, and came across eleni mandell's new album miracle of five; some poor store clerk, not privy to the wonder that is eleni accidentally stocked the shelves full of her new release 4 DAYS EARLY! if G is nuts about the beatles, i have a similar relationship, perhaps on not so grand a scale, with eleni mandell. i was introduced to her by the penultimate C----, who gave me her first album, wishbone.it very quickly became the soundtrack of my life. when we broke up, i made the ridiculous mistake of returning the CD to him with the rest of the crap that one returns in fits of romantic pique. i've regretted it ever since, along with many other facets of that relationship.

ever since that fateful day, i've made a small career of collecting eleni mandell CDs, introducing friends to her music with an almost evangelical zeal, and i'm proud to say, corresponding with the wonderful eleni herself. her fan base is still small enough that she returns e-mails from fans. based in LA, she makes occasional forays into canada for concerts in montreal and TO. i kid you not, she lets me know when she's coming!

if disasters are associated with februaries, eleni is often the medicinal salve that helps mitigate the fallout.following the loss of wishbone, i stumbled across thrill in a CD store in ottawa one fateful february day. snakebite was released the week i was a victim of the federal government downsizing due to a round of budget cuts. country for true lovers came out the fall i started my PhD and experienced the shock and trauma of returning to grad school for another round of self-doubt.i found afternoon in a TO record store while there for a victorian lit and cult conference where a (one-time) good friend openly snubbed me and sent me to my hotel room in tears.

finding miracle of five today reminded me that my misanthropy usually lifts with a change in my personal barometer. the lyrics of "moonglow, lamp low" only brought that home to me once again.

Moonglow, lamp low
All I need is a rainbow
And true love just like sugar in my coffee

Moonbeam, sleeping
All I need is a sweet dream
And true love just like honey in my tea

The sky says goodbye with the wink of an eye
Bright blue yawning to the west
Windows are shining as the sun goes down fighting
And the houses on the hill are getting undressed

Moonshine, dream time
All I need is a goldmine
And true love just like sugar in my coffee

The sky says goodbye with the wink of an eye
Bright blue yawning to the west
Windows are shining as the sun goes down fighting
And the houses on the hill are getting undressed

Moonglow, lamp low
All I need is a rainbow
And true love just like sugar
True love just like honey
True love just like sugar in my coffee

Coffee
Coffee

hiatus

2007-01-27T16:42:00.000-05:00

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.

wisdom from uncle ted

2007-01-24T21:08:00.000-05:00

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

cry me a river

2007-01-23T12:22:00.000-05:00

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.

ouch

2007-01-22T18:40:00.000-05:00

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.

mariners, fish and submarines

2007-01-14T16:34:00.000-05:00

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.

boxed in

2007-01-13T18:42:00.000-05:00

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.

i need to whine

2007-01-11T21:36:00.000-05:00

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.

double digit library fines are for amateurs

2007-01-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

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.