I Buried Star Trek

Warning: spoilers.

I must be the only person on Earth who didn't think much of the new Star Trek movie. But, okay, I'll say it – I don't. The more time goes by, the less I like it.

I went in there expecting... well, hoping for... a look back at the characters we've all known and loved since before most of us were born. I anticipated young actors, steeped in the history of the show, working with reverence and love to really nail their parts, to put in performances that were tributes to the older actors who laid the groundwork in the 60s, and beyond. But we didn't get anything like that.

I'd heard through the grapevine that the movie was actually going to be an "alternate history". I was disappointed to hear that, because I knew that was Klingonese for "we're going to disregard anything inconvenient in the timeline you love to free ourselves to do whatever strikes us as cool". But, I had similar feelings when they started ST:TNG and the other spin-offs, and yet I found something to admire in every one of them (yes, even Voyager – now stop interrupting). What I mean is, I tried to go in with an open mind.

But they were throwing interstellar babies out with the galactic bathwater right from blast-off. What's the first thing that happens? Kirk's father dies. Now, I'm not the shrewdest guy in the world at picking upon where a plotline's heading, but even I got the message being telescoped here: Jim Kirk's going to be the Archetypal Troubled Kid (trademark, patent pending). You could smell it coming like a Ferrengi. And Kirk was born in space... not Iowa, as we heard time and time again in the TV spots for Star Trek IV... as well as from anyone you've ever met from Iowa (the rebuttal is, of course, "Yeah, but Bill Shatner was born in Canada!"). And I happen to remember that Jim Kirk had a brother named Sam who died in that episode of ST:TOS with the giant flying brain cells. So in the first three minutes of the movie, they had basically told me, "Oh, that guy you loved watching on TV as a kid? He doesn't exist. We've replaced him with this guy." Yeah, a smug, arrogant asshole. The traditional Jim Kirk was self-confident and kind of a pussy hound, but he was almost never what you'd call insufferable. But the one in the movie was. He was the guy in high school you just wanted to pound in the face with a stop sign so at least he'd get the message, one way or the other. I COULD NOT STAND THIS GUY AND WANTED HIM TO DIE... BADLY. Now is that any way to feel about Jim Kirk?

Scotty was completely someone else. I've liked Simon Pegg in the things I've seen him in... loved him Shaun of the Dead, and in Hot Fuzz (till it completely went off the rails half way through and started thinking it was The Wicker Man). But he just was not the Scotty I cared about. Scotty had his quirks, but he oozed professionalism and even a certain degree of stubborn, bullheaded military decorum. This Scotty was an anarchistic, addle-minded, goofy fuck-up with just enough brilliance to get by. He was almost the anti-Scotty.

Leonard McCoy was at least... well, you could glean where it was coming from. He seemed to have his roots in the original character. They never said much about Bones's past, but I still don't get the feeling it was as wild as they put it out to be. That seemed forced. He also seemed too old. He came across as being about 40, when Kirk was barely into his 20s. If there was a ten-year gap between their ages in ST:TOS, I'd be surprised.

Now Spock, on the other hand... his portrayal was for me the only really redeeming feature of the movie. I thought it was spot-on. The new version looked like Spock, acted like Spock (even the kid version had me nodding, yeah, that's him), sounded like Spock... yeah, he was Spock. That one they got right, and really nicely, too. Even so... Spock and Uhura?? Okay, I won't say "no way", but it feels really out of character for Spock, and gratuitous as well. Spock's had romances with human women, but... why another member of the bridge crew? Like we can't see where this is taking us in one of the inevitable upcoming sequels...

So I was largely disappointed in the (mis)treatment of the characters. But where they really lost me is when they blew up Vulcan. This is like doing a retelling of the American Revolution in which the British nuke Philadelphia and kill off poor Ben Franklin, just to make you FEEL something. And it worked: I felt fucking angry — at them. To be honest, once they did that, they'd crossed the line. This was not Star Trek... this was your hyperactive cousin's version of Star Trek on the living room rug, just before he crowns you with the fire engine that's standing in for a Romulan Bird of Prey. After that, I didn't give a shit what they did in the movie anymore. I'd checked out. I was just sitting there because I'd A) paid twelve bucks for the privilege and B) was there with a friend. Otherwise, I honestly think I would have been inclined to walk out.

To me, the overall sensation I have coming away from it is that it was hollow. Far too much history was packed into far too little movie. Kirk went up the ladder faster than Derek Wildstar in Star Blazers, which was laughable even when I was nine — and that was a cartoon. Forgive me for thinking one or two movies about Ensign Kirk that show him learning his craft instead of being born to it might have been preferable. But people don't have time for that these days. Hatch the Kirk, let it dry its wings, then get it killing people! Yeah!

Puke.

I won't be attending any of the sequels. If I skip the next two, twenty-four bucks buys a bottle of hooch I can use to forget about the first one for a while...

Fusebox magic copier?

I had this weird dream this morning about moving things around in the basement of the house I used to live in a long time ago. There was someone there with me, but I don't know who. I wasn't even quite me, if you know what I mean. Anyway, there was this fuse box sort of in the middle of the floor, and we realized that anything you leaned up against it, you could get it to make copies of for you. We were doing this with small appliances, things like cell phones and laptop computers and that kind of thing. We tried it with a grandfather clock, but the copies we got were half-assed, like only partially varnished, with parts missing from the face, or with some of the gearworkings missing. That's about all I remember. Oddly enough, when I was dwelling on it getting ready for work this morning, I realized that this probably meant there were limits to how big or extensive the object to be copied could be. I know it sounds trivial, but it just seemed so weird to be working out the dream logic while I was awake, rather than in the course of the dream. I think it might make a good basis for some kind of story, if I can work out what the gimmick is.

The things you hear when there's nobody around...

I'm here at work on a Sunday because there are things I need to get out of the way, and I'm listening to an online instrumental jazz station. Every so often, they run an ad. I just heard one for — believe it or not — the CIA. They just ran an ad for the US Central Intelligence Agency. I always thought these guys recruited by watching the universities for signs of brainiacism or something. But radio ads aimed at upright, pipe-smoking, slipper-wearing William F. Buckley types? No wonder the collapse of the Soviet Union came as such a surprise. :)

McKinnon at last

P-Doug and I have been intending to make a trek up a closed road called McKinnon Road since early this spring. It’s a bit west of Barrie and runs alongside the Nottawasaga River. We actually undertook the trip early in April, but the weather was against us. By the time we got there, it was actually snowing! Pretty much every weekend since then that it’s been proposed, the weather’s been cold and wet. Finally, this weekend past, we got decent weather and gave it a shot on Sunday.

P-Doug picked me up a little after 10 in the morning, and we were at the end of the driveable road a bit before noon. That in and of itself is further than we got last time, when the road just beyond the pavement was flooded and closed to cars.

It wasn’t a promising start. Immediately after the closure of the road was a huge, swampy puddle, and visible beyond that was another. Much as I enjoy wet, soft soil underfoot on our explorations, even I thought that a mile or more of that would be slow going and not very enjoyable. Nevertheless, we decided to give it a go. I was on the point of tucking my sandals into the cargo pocket of my shorts, but at the last moment I elected to leave them in the car and undertake the trek without recourse to them, come what may.


The further we went, the more amenable the path became. We emerged from the swampiness after about twenty minutes. We saw some interesting things… a patch of trees standing in water that reminded us of the Louisiana bayou, where P-Doug spotted a raccoon washing some grub and then swimming away… snowmobile paths marked off with tall orange stakes… a couple of guys speaking French as they sat beside the river, possibly fishing (they were the only other people we actually saw that day, though there were plenty of boot prints on the path)...

We took out time, but after about an hour, we saw one of the things we’d really come to see. It was a bridge we’d seen in the Google Maps shots of the river. In those pictures, it seemed to both of us, we were looking at a crude wooden structure… something so rudimentary it seemed certain to me to be something private and long abandoned. Imagine our amazement when we found, instead, an elaborate and gorgeous steel bridge! Still in fine condition, with an intact concrete roadbed and aluminum paint, it seemed almost hilariously out of place, serving a road that by now is barely discernible even in aerial photos.


When we stood on it, P-Doug noticed that it had a rare feature: in the concrete along the north side was written the name of the bridge, the date of its construction (September, 1927), and the names of the men responsible for its construction. It was a rare, precise, personal connection with the past. Why it was built to serve a road in such a place with such hopeless drainage and unlikely future, we can only guess. But it was, and it seems a real shame it stands there alone, essentially useless.


We walked a little beyond it. We saw what looked like the remnants of the pillars of someone’s driveway gate. We shot the beautiful bend of the river, and then began our way back. Just east of the river, I broke off from P-Doug for a moment to try to reach the sandy banks. Stinging nettles finally defeated me and I came back to my friend on the bridge. We lingered for a bit, and then retraced our course.


I hope we go back. It really was a lovely, variable place, full of interesting sights and possibilities. Furthermore, for me, it was a fantastic hike, three hours and at least as many miles over just about every imaginable surface: swamp, mud, rocky streams, clay, sand, grass, forest floor, ferns, concrete… In Germany and Austria, they have the institution of “barefoot parks”. The idea behind them is related to reflexology, and in practical terms, they give people a chance to explore nature and its textures by walking barefoot over and through it. They seem a bit contrived to me. McKinnon Road, on the other hand, I think would serve that purpose magnificently, and naturally, without any sort of embellishment. If you’re amenable to that sort of hiking, and I know there are others who are, I’d encourage you to give McKinnon Road a try on some warm day.

The province of Turks and Caicos?

This is from the March 2nd, 2009 issue of The Ottawa Citizen. I've been hearing about this proposal since I was in high school. We want it, they seem to want it... why does it never bloody happen? Nova Scotia's legislature even passed a vote, in 2004, to let the Turks and Caicos join that province if they ever join Confederation, sidestepping the unanimity requirement for new provinces in the Constitution (besides, with a population of only 30,000, it's unlikely the Turks and Caicos could actually form a viable province on their own).

Read on...
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The province of Turks and Caicos?

MP champions special ties with Caribbean nation to boost trade, ability to deliver aid

By Donna Jacobs, Citizen Special
March 2, 2009

Suppose Canada built itself a deep-water port in the turquoise waters of the Caribbean.

Suppose that port opened up a new market for Canadian goods -- more than 120 million people live in the Caribbean and nearby Central and South America.

Suppose Canada enhanced the port with a regional free trade zone.

Suppose Canadian ships carried northward duty-free tropical produce and products from the Caribbean and Latin America. In some locations, food rots for lack of shipping and export markets.

Suppose these ships returned with Canadian durable goods -- now scarce on southern shelves.

Suppose the port, unaffordable for Caribbean countries, boosted their standard of living and bolstered hemispheric security.

Suppose the port doubled as a Canadian military operations base for countries wanting help to patrol their waters and to interdict the Caribbean's robust trade in smuggled arms, drugs and people.

Suppose Canada used the port as an aid base when hurricanes strike.

Suppose Canada fills a vacuum of influence where China, Cuba and -- bolstered by Iran -- Venezuela have stepped in with medical aid, cheap petroleum, schools and factory construction.

Suppose Canada did all this with its usual low-key, good-cop approach to world politics and regional strife, drawing on the goodwill that comes from its 100-year trading relationship in the Caribbean. (Canada's direct investment holdings in the Caribbean-Latin American market in 2007 totalled $87.2 billion.)

For years, Edmonton East Conservative MP Peter Goldring has been campaigning for this all-purpose "Canadian platform" on South Caicos Island. The Turks and Caicos lie north of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

In the 1970s, Turks and Caicos knocked on Canada's front door.

The English-speaking nation asked to become Canada's 11th province. It was ultimately turned down. Strange in today's multicultural Canada, says Mr. Goldring, but concerns over racial and cultural integration figured in the decision.

In the late 1980s, with some 90 per cent of their population in favour, Turks and Caicos asked again for a "special relationship" with Canada. In 2003, with 60 per cent in favour, Turks and Caicos renewed its request.

The Turks and Caicos -- comprised of two groups of islands -- are independent, but remain a British overseas territory.

For many Canadians -- and everyone else -- Caribbean life is a beach holiday. But, says Mr. Goldring quietly, "the Caribbean can get away on itself, if you do not give it care and attention."

- - -

Indeed, he's taken a lot of kidding for championing the Turks and Caicos -- similar to Edmonton in distance from Ottawa -- as a Canadian territory.

"I'm concerned that the idea is being taken too lightly," he says. "People find a lot of humour in it."

Skeptics are concerned over the prospect of massive migration from the Caribbean or the risk that winter-weary Canadians would overwhelm the islands. Mr. Goldring says both concerns can be handled -- think of Hawaii and the U.S. or of Quebec's provincially-tailored immigration standards.

And the port proposal is not merely a matter for Turks and Caicos. Ambassadors to Canada from Barbados and Cuba, and politicians in Dominica and St. Lucia, have championed more deep-water trade with Halifax which, he says, after touring the Halifax port, has "lots of capacity."

Historically, he adds, two Canadian ships used to ply between the islands. And though Canada's presence has diminished, it staged its Haiti-bound UN troops in 2004 through Turks and Caicos.

"We could have an aid program, a DART unit, an emergency aid unit. I visited Granada after Hurricane Ivan came through and it was very evident we didn't have the capacity to help."

He's visited some 10 Caribbean countries over the years. In Haiti, he toured the Montreal-based Gildan Activewear plant, which pays about 5,000 people double the minimum wage to produce clothing.

In a post-9/11 world, now contracting with global recession, he says, Canada needs to realign its trading routes and methods.

"Too much attention has been focused on the Asian Giant," he says. "And it's getting harder to get products into the U.S. We should be looking at other alternatives."

Mr. Goldring's focus dovetails with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's policy, reinvigorated with last week's announcement of more Canadian aid, more trade and further political co-operation with the Caribbean and Latin America.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon just returned from Brazil. Peter Kent, minister of state of Foreign Affairs for the Americas, just returned from Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago, host of the Summit of the Americas in April.

Beyond Canada's burgeoning trade in the region, the Caribbean has strategic importance, Mr. Goldring says: "You have to be aware of what potentially could go wrong if places like Venezuela and Cuba were forced to align themselves with Communist China.

"Canada gives aid money to China (CIDA gave $37.2 million to Chinese organizations in 2008) and China turns around and builds the schools and hospitals and sports stadia -- with their name on it -- in the Caribbean," he says. "So we have to shake our head, because that is hugely influential."

In recent years, China built a duty-free zone in St. Lucia. (The island turned to Taiwan for help in 2007, angering China and halting its hospital construction.) And in Guyana, China built the headquarters of CARICOM, the Caribbean common market, along with a convention centre.

Canada's friendship with Cuba also carries strategic benefit. While Canada "walks a line with the U.S.," which has a trade embargo on the island, the U.S. appreciates Canada "as a stabilizing element," says Mr. Goldring

"When I visited Cuba two years ago, the Cuban people said, in no uncertain terms, that they believe they're still at war with the U.S. while Canadians are very, very well-liked."

As for the military, he says the Canadian Forces sends a frigate to the Caribbean for annual military manoeuvres, making a regional base there useful.

Mr. Goldring is right: Canada does need to take the Caribbean more seriously.

Ireland Park, Toronto

Matching a set of Rowan Gillespie's statues in Dublin, called "The Departure", this set in Toronto, called "The Arrival", commemorates the 38,000 Irish famine emigrants who arrived here in Toronto in 1847, at the foot of Bathurst Street, at what is now called Eireann Quay. The park was opened by Irish President Mary McAleese in 2007.

She's leaving

For nearly three and a half years now, I've lived in a house with a strong roof. No matter what kind of storm was going on high over my head, the torrent was funneled down a gutter to a rain barrel, where it was organized, useful, and all that chaos made sense. It was a good place to be.

My boss has resigned, effective near the end of the month. I'm losing that roof, the shelter, the way things came down making sense. I'm not looking forward to it.

She's got good reasons to go. Better than the garden variety, 'better opportunity' reasons you get 95% of the time. I can't fault her. I'm just depressed that it has to be this way. But it does.

There was a lot of patience, and a lot of learning. I came in here thinking I pretty much knew all there was to know about my job. I spent the first year messing up – barely even aware I was messing up – and didn't do well on my first review. But she took it upon herself to teach me the skills I needed to be more professional. I don't think I ever got proficient, but I'm better than I was. I check things now, I search deeper, I go back over things. Stuff still slips through the cracks, but a lot doesn't – I know, because I'm the one finding those mistakes. Anyway, I'm more aware now, and she's to thank for that.

I feel like I'm losing a friend. People can stay in touch, I know, but work was really what we had in common, and I'm not sure how to maintain that now. We didn't do much outside work... she was my boss, I was her report; there had to be some kind of distance just to maintain the working relationship. But still, there was more to it. I hadn't realized, quite, how much I looked forward to her coming in in the morning... how I tried to have one or two little things out of the way, just in case she asked. Even if we didn't chat long, she was here. Even if we only really went to lunch a few times a month, the option was there.

Most of what I found to look forward to in this place is going to disappear, and it's going to be what downstairs was... a job, in a sea of familiar-looking strangers. Part of the sense of home I've had here is going to disappear.

There are new opportunities, and maybe I will grow accustomed to them, and even eventually enjoy them. But I'm never going to like how they came about.

Abandoned Ford Drive

Saturday morning, just for the grits and shins, I headed down to Oakville to shoot some more abandoned stretches over Joshua Creek. Many years ago, very early in the 90s, I had a penchant for studying maps of the GTA and I noticed a little gap in one of the roads, where it crossed a stream. When I went there, I found what I hoped I'd find: an old abandoned bridge, probably built in the 50s or 60s and abandoned in the 70s or 80s. I've blogged about it; it's here.

Just a little south of that, on what is actually the same road, there's another abandoned bridge over that same creek, and then another stretch just a few yards further south still. The first is recent enough that I can remember, vaguely, passing down that stretch early in the 90s. The other seems to have been officially out of action for a rather long time.

Named for the car plant it skirts, Ford Drive is more or less a southern extension of Ninth Line. When I got my license at the end of the 80s, it still cut straight south before making a gentle westerly swing to bridge Joshua Creek and then abruptly cross some railroad tracks and dive down Maple Grove Drive. Sometime in the 90s, it was rerouted to the east, completely avoiding the creek (and thus, abandoning the stretch with the bridge), and severing its connection with Maple Grove Drive, which now stops at the tracks and no longer crosses them – according the maps, anyway.

South of that stretch is another I noticed, with another bridge over Joshua Creek. I'm not 100% sure but I'm about 90% convinced that this was actually once the course of Royal Windsor Drive, back when it had a level crossing with those railroad lines. But that must have been a very long time ago. I have access to maps of that part of Oakville going back to 1970, and the huge bridge over the tracks that's there now was also already there back then. So this stretch must have been abandoned no later than when The Beatles were still sending hits up the charts; possibly earlier than that.

I explored the old stretch of (what I believe to be) Royal Windsor Drive first. It's still in surprisingly good shape; arguably, better than old Ford Drive, which hasn't even been off the grid 20 years yet. I think it's being routinely used to service the hydro lines and/or the rail tracks at its eastern end. Passing back, I saw a garter snake; the second snake I've seen in just a few weeks. Years and years go by between snake sightings for me. Maybe it's a good sign for the environment.

To get to old Ford Drive, I had to cross a few yards of marshy ground, but that was accomplished easily enough. I wandered up as far as I could, around the bend, to where Ford now has an upper parking lot that assumes what used to be the road. On my way back, I encountered a couple of dogs. One, a German shepherd, ran just about up to me before turning back. They both had collars and 'kerchiefs on, but I never saw or directly heard the person(s) I assume they must have been with... they turned around and headed back to someone; that's clear. Later I heard a few heavy twigs snap, and that's usually a good indication there's a human around. When I crossed back through the marsh to old Royal Windsor, I expected to see them all, but there was no one. It was weird.

A relatively minor excursion for me as these things go, but one I can now check off my list. :)

Ellesmere Road 1952-2009

Ellesmere Road 1952-2009, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

I was honestly slack-jawed when I saw the upper photo on the Toronto Public Library's website. If you're not familiar with Toronto, you probably won't think much of it... just a photo of a rural scene that's now urban Scarberia. But the thing is, Ellesemere Road is relatively mid-section in Toronto, and the view you see up top is the sort of thing I would have expected to see of the area from the 1920s or 1930s, not in the post-WWII boom. Not the way I imagined this part of town in the days of Leave It to Beaver.

The lower view is one I took this morning, from the same location, give or take a few yards. What was a farm fifty-some years ago is office space today, just off-screen to the left. Frankly, I'm not sure which view I prefer. They both have something to recommend them.

This one's for you, Jim. :)

Falls of water, falls of rain

Quite the storm on Saturday. Had no idea. Even though I was out in it at the time.

I'd made plans to hike with P-Doug up an abandoned road near Georgian Bay. The plans were tentative because his wife has been having some heart trouble and the scheduling of her surgery was kind of up in the air. There was every possibility she'd be discharged on the weekend, so I wasn't sure which day – if either – would be convenient for him to make the trip.

Saturday, as it turned out, was good for him in terms of the timing, but not the weather. Looking at the radar, he determined that a set of thunderstorms passing through to the north would make the trip to where we'd been considering going ill-advised. He suggested instead something down here in the south, where the weather promised to be more even. He told me he'd been interested, for some time now, in having a look at a pair of falls in the Dundas area. So he met me at my place and we set out in my car for Spencer Gorge Conservation Area.

We took our time getting there. I bailed off the 403 at Dundas Street (Highway 5) and we took that across Halton and into Dundas. Just a few minutes past Highway 6 we found our turn, and made our way to the gorge. I was surprised, when we got there, that we had to pay $5 (either to park or to get in; it's not really clear which). It was a nice trail, right at the lip of the gorge. The rustic wooden rail fence that ran along the edge in places struck me as a half-hearted effort determined to provide safety in some places while entirely trusting to the fates in others... I was reminded of the contractor my parents hired many years ago to build our cottage... he had a binge drinking habit, and his efforts varied wildly from consummate professionalism to weeks of couldn't-give-a-damn neglect. Seems to me you build a fence to keep people from falling in, or you don't. The half-measure seems worse than nothing because it seems to suggest you're safe wherever there's no need for the fence, which I don't believe was the case at all... but anyway, not to obsess here...

It was wonderfully sunny when we got there, and probably the first genuinely "summery" spring day we've had this year. The bare trees put the lie to the notion, but the heat was in evidence anyway. The first falls we came to were Tew's Falls. They are very nearly the height of Niagara Falls (not surprising since they go over the same escarpment), but the amount of water falling over them would take half a minute to fill a bathtub. It's clear they've been something much more substantial in the past, though. We didn't linger long since there wasn't much to see, and we didn't have the right angle to see it anyway. We moved along, heading down the trail toward Webster's Falls a half kilometer away.

The place got busier the further we went. We came to an open area where there must have been three dozen people picnicking and chasing around. There were some interesting sights along the way. One family seems to have built a home right at the edge of the gorge... we were essentially hiking through their front yard. There's also a little place where they've gathered four or five headstones of people who died around and just after the time of Confederation, and they've pressed the stones into cement to preserve them. It was a nice little display and I regret now that I didn't photograph it. That's uncharacteristic of me.

Webster's Falls were, for me, the real show. We glimpsed them first through the trees that lined the lip of the gorge, and I remember remarking to P-Doug at the time that it's a real shame the approaches to Niagara Falls weren't left as natural. You could square the majesty of Niagara if only it still looked as it must have when the first French explorers were shown it by Natives in the 1600s. Even then, there've been some changes to the vista. Most notable among them is the arched stone and mortar footbridge over whichever river, creek, or stream it is that engenders the falls. I shot it from a few different angles as we made our way around it. On the far side is an access to the base of the falls that P-Doug was keen to attempt but I wasn't. I was lugging about ten pounds of stuff in my back pack, my sandals don't have much of a grip to them, and it was a long way down and a long way back up. I suggested to him that if he did give it a shot, he should take my camera (having left his behind) and see what he could get down there. Turned out to be a pretty good idea because some of the best shots of the day came from his trip. For myself, I stayed at the top in the shade of a tree, back to the stone bridge, listening to music on my media player.

P-Doug eventually made his way back up but missed me and orbited for a bit before finding me, verging on dozing. He'd taken some fine shots, as I said, and made a little movie of himself announcing his triumph over the "128 stairs" up and down, and his intention never to do so again. The long and the sort of it is I'm glad he went, and glad I didn't. :)

By then we were both pretty hungry. The air being full of the smell of hamburgers being grilled didn't help. I was interested in hiking a woodland trail north of Milton, and we have a favourite pub thereabouts, so we left the park and headed north. One pitcher of beer, one Ruben sandwich, and one chicken curry over bowtie noodles later, we were ready to hit the trail. But by then, the northern sky was darkening – and surprisingly rapidly. I was convinced it was passing through north of us and pressed on. When we reached the trail, there were already dots of rain, but we trotted in. We headed off trail to a patch of trees with some shelter, but by then the rain had really picked up. I'm not one to complain, myself; under the right circumstances, I like being out in the rain in nature. I indulged myself by setting my clothes aside and sitting under a tree. The rain was cool but not cold; it was brisk but not uncomfortable. A mighty wind was stirring the heads of the trees above us but there was barely a breath of it at ground level. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled; it was spectacular. At least, for me it was. I don't think it was quite P-Doug's cup of tea. He stood in the rain alongside, and we commented back and forth on the show. He didn't complain or hustle me along but he was really just biding his time. As the rain eased up we wandered among the trees a bit. He was gracious enough to leave it to me to suggest we head back, and so I did... we were there about half an hour.

When we got back to the car it was his turn, and he put his wet clothes in the back, as did I. I had the impression we were just going to let them dry out a little but it turned out he had every intention of returning to town that way. He's bolder than me; I redonned my clammy shorts for the trip, sitting on the tarp I had in my backpack. He draped half of it across himself and away we went.

The wind and rain were with us all the way back. I thought they'd be north of us, but the storms had made their way right down to the lake. There was a time issue involved in getting P-Doug back to town to visit his missus, so we skipped going back to my place to pick up his car and simply headed back to his place, where he picked up the things he needed and we went to the hospital for a visit of an hour or so. Afterward, we ate in a pub local to my place (another pint, another chicken curry), and we parted after the long, sunny walk and brief, wet wanderings, with P-Doug vowing that Sunday would be BBQed hamburgers day for him. :)

Simply unpack your adjectives

Simply unpack your adjectives, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

Every day is a good day to review Schoolhouse Rock. :)

We wish

We wish, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

I hope it's obvious I've tinkered with the sign a little. I've had four nature hikes in the past year marred by ATV and motorbike shitheads (most recently, yesterday). Morons, if driving like an asshole on the 400-series highways isn't enough for you, if you simply HAVE to "experience nature" by making 120 dB of noise as you bounce around on it and rip it up with rubber, find a nice open space some farmer's not using and will let you tear up for a few bucks. But leave the trails to the hikers. Particularly since it's against the law not to.

It had to be said

I was wondering when someone would finally have the courage to say it.

Twenty-one-year-old Trooper Karine Blais died in Afghanistan Monday, the 117th Canadian soldier to die in that country since we invaded it in October of 2001. Afghanistan just passed a law that makes it legal for a husband to rape his wife. This is what Canadian and other Western soldiers have died, are dying, and will no doubt continue to die for. A land that doesn't want us there and does not share our values.

Blais's godfather, Mario Blais, has said publically, "I think she did this for absolutely nothing." I would tend to agree.

There are, no doubt, voices in this country that will be quick to shout that this is not an atypical opinion, coming from Quebec with its long history of resistance to Canada's involvement in foreign wars. Of course, the flip side of that coin is that English Canada could be characterized as having a history of being all-too-willing to involve this country in foreign wars. In some cases, notably World War Two, it was arguably necessary. But not in this case. We entered this war largely out of sympathy for the US in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, to catch the men responsible – notably, Osama bin Laden. That man remains at large. Meanwhile, we are seven and a half years, and ten dozen soldiers, bogged down in Afghanistan.

And for what? A democratically-arrived-at decision that a man has the right to rape his wife?

It's time our soldiers stop dying for nothing. Well past time. It needed to be said.

Lard Lookers? Obese Observers? Vastness Viewers?...

Years ago, I used to be quite a bit heavier than I am now. I went to a men's weight loss program and over the course of about a year, I lost just over 100 lbs. (this is on top of over 20 more I dropped on my own). I was never svelte, but I'd gotten to "normal" for the first time in my life. My waist size was in the 30s, I could buy off the rack, and I felt alright about myself. In the years since, I've strayed from what I know to be sensible eating habits... not entirely, but enough that I've gained back nearly 60 lbs. of what I'd lost. It hit the tipping point last summer where jeans that had been increasingly tight, just didn't fit anymore. I'd like to go back to the men's group, but two things stop me. First, it was hugely expensive; over a grand for six months. Secondly, it meets on Sunday mornings, and really, I just don't want to bisect my weekends that way anymore. I didn't mind it then but for some reason, now I want to be able to get up and get going on what I want on weekend mornings. The good weather's coming up and there's damn little of that in this country as it is without pissing away the first half of a Sunday.

I joined Weight Watchers last week. I could walk to it from where I live in a little under half an hour, and once the temperature's better, I think I will. They're meeting on Thursday evenings and it's a lot less expensive. Sure, I was the only guy there; I got to hear interesting conversations about "bloating" that I just don't hear when I'm hanging with the guys; but the main thing is, I need the accountability. I need to know I'm facing the scale and other human beings will know, week to week, how I've done. That's how I made it last time.

My mother's been going for some time now and she's lost nearly 50 lbs., and it really shows. I never really thought of her as fat, but in retrospect, the way she looks now highlights the difference (and frankly I was shocked to learned she'd even had that much to lose). I'm hoping to lose something about the same by the end of the summer.

Strange as it may sound, I'm not actually a huge eater at home (though I have a tendency to nibble). I have control of the environment and I really don't have things around I can't handle (like peanut butter, say). I think I can put the weight gain down to three factors...

Firstly, I had a lot of booze around over the last few years. Weekend and evening unwinding. I rarely got 'faced, but getting the quiet mellow up and off the ground a few times a week adds up in terms of money and waist size (it also makes it easier to drown out the voices of the better angels and eat eat eat). I haven't really had much around since last November; it's largely down to social drinking now.

Second, there's "portion creep". I'm still eating, for the most part, the things I learned I'm supposed to... just bigger amounts of them. I need to measure and weigh portions again. It's distressing to see just how little a ½ cup of pasta actually is; I'd forgotten. Still, the idea is to eat to live, not the reverse.

Third, there's all the social eating I do. I live by myself so occasions where I can break out for a little while with friends are big deal to me and I really look forward to them. Where I used to work, I really didn't make any long term close friends, so I almost never had lunch out, and that, it turns out, was a big help. Where I work now, though, I tend to be out about once a week, and it's generally to a buffet I really like. I know better, but it's hard to say no and besides, I like the chance to socialize.

Relatedly, there are the quiet weekend afternoons in the pub with P-Doug. High point of the week, most of the time, when they happen. Intelligent and amusing conversation, backgammon, the sweet kiss of beer, and food of such quality and proportions as to convince you the whole universe exists just to give you an ass-rub. It's such a gentle hobby, as King Arthur might say, and it really shouldn't have any down side. But it does.

This is not to say that these social occasions have to cease. I don't intend to starve myself of companionship along with fatty food. The trick, however, is going to be in making better choices. I know the more sensible things to have, and in what proportions, at the buffet. I know I'm going to drink beer when I'm out on the weekend, but that there are things on the menu, not all that exciting, I admit, that will have to be my choices in conjunction with that. I'm not helpless and I'm not unarmed. I know how many points there are in a pint, how many I have for the day, and how to plan accordingly. I'm going to adapt these situations to fit with my realities, like I did before. I'm not going to give up the good things in my life. I'm going to change them so they don't negate other good things in my life.

Hopefully this week will bear that out. Back in the saddle again...

P.S. Of course, the first weekend Old Monk is back on the shelves, that square bottle and me are goin' dancing. That's all there is to it. :)

Return of the Monk

Well over a year ago, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario took Old Monk rum off the shelves, apparently because they found glass particles in some of the bottles. I understand the logic in that, but you would think that the bottler would straighten that out in short order, and that the LCBO would be reviewing it and getting it back on sale as quickly as possible. As a government-mandated monopoly in a democratic province and country, I submit this is, in fact, their duty and responsibility (otherwise, let the people decide for themselves).

I would never have believed it would take this long to straighten this out. I finally decided to contact the LCBO about it and express my dissatisfaction and demand the product be reviewed. As it turns out, they must have finally gotten around to it, because they wrote back and said the first shipment is due at the end of April, and will be on the shelves of their outlets in early May.

I've missed Old Monk. It's one of the few alcoholic libations stronger than beer that I can enjoy neat. It has a smooth mellowness about it, and an agreeable mingling of essenses that, whatever they might actually be, remind me of vanilla, raisins, and subtle spices. I'm really looking forward to being able to enjoy it again.

Embedded slideshow

I'm just curious to see if this actually works. If it does, enjoy. It's a Flickr set about an abandoned residential road in west-central Toronto called Blondin Avenue. :)

Happy birthday, Darwin

Imagine it’s a birthday party, and Mom comes out with a great big, frosted birthday cake. She says, “Go on, cut the cake!

But the birthday boy says, “There’s no such thing as cake.

And Mom says, “Why, certainly there is, I’ve just put one in front of you!”

And our birthday boy says, “No, this is only icing. It’s not cake.”

“But the icing is part of the cake,” says Mom.

“How can icing be part of a cake? I thought cake was baked in an oven. How could icing have come from an oven?”

“It didn’t come from the oven – I never said it did. But it’s part of the cake.”

“No, Mom. The icing you’ve brought me proves there can be no cake.”

This is the kind of thing I see in Creationist literature. It never fails to amaze me. Utterly amaze me. These people are entirely happy to co-op the evidence only science could have presented to them to deny the conclusions that same discipline arrives at as a result. The same people who’d still be sitting around fires, explaining away everything as “God did it, God did it, God did it,” watch television, take trips on airplanes, gloried in moon landings, and have been saved by inoculations and CAT scans and transplants... at the bottom of it all, are really no different from people a thousand years ago. They’re medieval people who get to drive cars. Those who tremble at the lightning.

The same lies get published over, and over, and over, and over... you never see the rebuttals. They never stop stating the lie just because it’s been exposed as such. For instance, how many times do we have to hear about irreducible complexity? How many times does it have to be explained that yes, “half” an eye – in fact, anything even a little light-sensitive – is in and of itself a survival advantage, and one that can be built on, over time, generation after generation after increasingly-successful generation? How many times does the flagellum of a bacteria – supposedly “useless” if any one part is absent – have to be shown to actually be constructed of parts that do, in fact, have other uses in isolation (one part at the base, for instance, is used by other bacteria as a sort of syringe to inject toxins into target bacteria)?

How many times does the supposed violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, with regard to the Earth, have to be revealed to be an inappropriate argument, since the Earth is not a closed system (it’s powered by the sun, in an open system not subject to the Second Law)?

How many times do we have to hear that the oxygen on the early Earth would have destroyed amino acids? Of course there was oxygen on the early Earth; it’s the third most abundant element in the universe after hydrogen and helium. But it also has a notorious affinity for bonding with other atoms – so there was no free oxygen on the early Earth – it was all bound to other atoms... hydrogen, carbon, and silicon. Life itself creates molecular oxygen – the free oxygen Creationists say would have destroyed early amino acids – through the process of photosynthesis, combining water and carbon dioxide, both of which contain bonded oxygen. And it was an environmental poison till some of the microbes learned to use it... and their descendants, we, took over the world.

Most interesting is the claim about DNA itself. Four amino acids. Too complex to appear on its own (sure, if you believe in a world that was 6,000 years old as of last Tuesday, yeah). Had to be created. Apparently, over, and over, and over, and over for every form of life on Earth. Not just the same language, but the same words, same paragraphs – in fact, entire volumes in common creature to creature to supposedly-unrelated creature. Bring this up and it’s, “oh, it all works the same, so why shouldn’t it use the same information?” Which begs the question then, why aren’t all the copies identical? Why are there intriguing little differences – a genetic letter here, a genetic word there – that seem to suggest small but indicative copying errors over time?

The biggest joke of all is that all these “proofs” of Creationism – a doctrine that begs people to stop asking questions and simply believe – were furnished by a discipline in which men and women who had the courage not to just accept pat answers but to investigate the nature of things, and over hundreds and even thousands of years, to build up the knowledge necessary for people with a 12th century mindset to go on television, talk on the internet, and jet between continents to ridicule its conclusions. It would be hilarious if it didn’t make me despair for our future. Maybe the raccoons will do better.

I don't know whether there's a God (or gods) or not. I've never seen anything that really convinces me. The very proliferation of mutually-exclusive faiths around the world tends to make me suspect it's all made up to suit someone's purposes, and gets passed on generation to generation like language, music, and building styles. But this much I know: science has nothing to say on the existence of God. I think it's time faith paid science the same courtesy. If there's a God, He loves you whether you came from "a monkey" or the dirt that made Adam. But if you're going to drive a car and use electricity and watch probes land on Mars — if you're going to eat the cake — then please stop lying about the icing.

Feline intellect

Had kind of an interesting moment on Sunday night. Bonnie was sleeping in the chair next to me and I just casually reached over to pat her. Mistake. She must have been having a bad dream or something because she woke with a start and drove her claws into the middle finger of my left hand, bracketing me on both sides of the nail. Not surprisingly, I yelled out with pain and surprise. But what surprised me almost as much was that she didn't take off like a shot (as I think I would if I'd just injured someone twenty times my size, inadvertently or not). She just turned to me and blinked at me, as if to try to let me know she didn't mean it. Cats wink and blink at one another, and us, to communicate their peaceful intentions and feelings of affection. I suppose it was a form of apology.

Equally surprising was that Max showed up out of nowhere, and half climbed onto me, leaning on my knee in concern. He didn't take off either. Just the opposite... he showed up and seemed to be exhibiting some sort of empathy, mingled with curiosity.

It really hurt for a couple of minutes, and I cradled my bleeding finger and waited for the pain to subside. Bonnie either felt guilty, or maybe offended by the display, and for a few minutes, she turned away and resolutely refused to look at me. She did so until I finally stood up. Then everything was back to normal, as least as far as she was concerned.

All told, it was an interesting four or five minutes... a look into the workings of different minds that I hadn't anticipated or quite credited before.

Death or Canada

Death or Canada. That's what they called it. P-Doug invited me to come with him to see it, and I remarked to him at the time, half in jest, that had the destination been the US, they probably would have come up with a less gloomy title; one that made the choice sound more palatable, even flattering. Death... or Canada. Well...

Of course, that's being flippant. The documentary, and the book that accompanies it, are actually about the arrival of about 38,000 Famine Irish in Toronto in the summer of 1847. Toronto, at the time, had a population of about 20,000. The documentary makes the point that an equivalent emergency in our own times would imply the introduction of nine or ten million people to this city in one season. And that of those, about a quarter of a million would die of typhus, or the like, in our midst.

It was showing last night at the Bloor Cinema around 7 p.m. There were brief presentations, before and afterward, by some of the people responsible for the film or getting the word about it out. The film itself was the story of the people who chose to flee Ireland for North America, and in particular, the tragic story of the Willis family, who departed as a family of seven, and whose story ended with only the mother surviving. Suddenly the title "Death or Canada" didn't seem like such a strange one to me anymore. Thousands died on the way over, and thousands more in isolation once they arrived. Conditions on the ships were such that one of the presenters said it's less surprising that so many died, as it is that so many actually survived.

It's also the story of colonial reactions to the influx. Some people fled the city for the safety of lodging with rural relatives. But others, doctors, nurses, public officials, and even Toronto's first Catholic bishop, an Irish Nova Scotian named Michael Power, died in the service of the sick and dying, while scores of others risked their lives.

Today, at the foot of Bathurst Street, is Ireland Park, where statues by the Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie greet the new city with the emotions of the long-ago people they represent. Here, in stone quarried in County Kerry, Ireland, they are engraving the (known) names of the 1,100 or so Irish who died on the shores of Lake Ontario... currently about 675, but growing as research brings them to light.

On the way out, I bought the book, and we were all given a free copy of the inaugural issue of Irish Connections Canada (a re-inauguration of The Toronto Irish News, now going nation-wide). The documentary, in all its power and sobering impact, will be shown on The History Network on March 16th, on the eve of St. Patrick's Day.

The presenters included Eamonn O'Loghlin, the editor of Irish Connections Canada; Professor Mark McCowan, who wrote the book the started the project; Robert G. Kearns, Chairman of the Ireland Park Foundation; and two others whose names for the moment escape me, but who I will fill in as soon as I'm able.

N.B. (March 9) Much to my embarrassment, the producer himself has reminded me of the names of the two others on stage that evening. They were Dr. Donald Low of Mt. Sinai Hospital and the film's executive producer, Craig Thompson. I searched for the Doctor's name but most of my searches brought up the name of a SARS doctor here in Toronto who died in the effort to defeat the disease, rightly garnering him much mention (that unfortunately obscured the search for Dr. Low's name). I'd like to thank Mr. Thompson for reminding me of the names I overlooked, and doing so with good grace. :)

Red, white, and natural blue

Red, white, and natural blue, originally uploaded by Lone Primate.

I was at the mall the other day to buy a picture frame, and as I came out, I was greeted by the sight of the wind catching the 18' flag flying over the parking lot, trailing out into an absolutely clear blue sky. On a whim, I pulled out the G9, put it on continuous shooting, and shot about three dozen stills of the flag as it did its thing. I think this was the best of the lot. It took nearly no work in Photoshop to get it looking like this; this is nearly how it looked right out of the camera. I added the artsy border in PhotoScape, and posted it.

Best of all, I printed the shot, as treated here, with my new Canon inkjet printer, and the print I got was so beautiful it gave me pause. I couldn't believe I'd gotten such beautiful work out of an off-the-cuff shot and a $99 printer. Though I say it myself, I was struck by just how professional the final effect was.

I've always liked seeing our flag with strong blue. Originally, the flag was supposed to feature blue bars at either end, rather than red, as well as a sprig of three maple leaves (as in the bottom of the shield of the coat of arms)... the design was ridiculed by Red Ensign-favouring traditionalists as "the Pearson Penant", but it led directly to the design that was adopted at the end of 1964, that first flew officially on Feb. 15, 1965... which you see at the top of this post. That said, it wouldn't be my flag now if they changed it (and there are such proposals). It is what it is; I grew up with it the way it is and I wouldn't change a thing. But I wouldn't mind much, either, if we had adopted a flag with blue on one bar, or both, I guess.

Things change

Impressive changes, and weird ones...

Yesterday, I bought a one tetrabyte external hard drive. It cost $129. A little over ten years ago, I remember buying my first gigabyte drive. It was a 1.3G, and it cost me over $300, but it was three times the capacity of my first hard drive from late 1994. This new one has has a volume somewhere between 2000-2500 times that of my first hard drive, and I have a $16 USB pen memory in my wallet with a 1G capacity. It really is astounding to reflect on all that.

That's the impressive change.

I have disks of the Britcom Are You Being Served?, and I like to let them roll sometimes while I'm doing things. Last Friday I had one running while I got ready for work. When I got to work, the paper announced the passing of Wendy Richard, who played Miss Brahms on the show, the young junior working under Mrs. Slocombe. She was 65, and died of breast cancer. Surprisingly, Mollie Sudgen, who played Mrs. Slocombe, survived her, and quite touchingly referred to her as "the daughter I never had" and expressed how much she would miss her.

But what gets me is to have seen her, just that morning, as a woman of about 30, to find her gone a few hours later in her mid-60s. When I was a kid, you knew something was old because it looked old. Photos and TV shows from a few years before my birth on back were all black and white. "Modern" things were in colour. That's what was so weird about it. If you watch Are You Being Served?, the suits people wear don't look different from what's appropriate now. The hair styles go in and out but they're not that different either. They talk about the European Common Market, joke about the Germans, talk about jetting to vacations... the clearest token of the march of time is how many of them talk about World War II in the first person. But otherwise, it does not have a strong air of anachronism. It still feels contemporary, if the cell phones and desktop computers are somehow absent. So it was unsettling to realize that a life had been largely lived in the years since I was a kid till now. I suppose every generation goes through this, but it's an unpleasant realization for each, I expect.

Toothless ideas

I had a car accident once, many years ago, where I ended up upside down in a ditch. The roof of the car was dented in about six inches, and the rear axle was broken. A guy in a utility vehicle came along and stopped to make sure I was alright. Looking the car over, he told me it wasn't so bad; a run through a car wash and no one would know the difference. For years, I held those two ideas in my head side by side. Rear axle broken... ah, but if I could only have rolled it back onto the road and washed the mud off... It was years, literally, before those ideas met in my head, and the illogic of holding them both finally dawned on me. Strange, but true.

The front page of today's Globe and Mail quotes Mishelle Brown, wife of a Canadian warrant officer slain in Afghanistan:

“We may not be able to beat the Taliban. There's lots of things in our life we can't beat. … But do you give up? Do you stop? Absolutely not. One person can't make a difference. But if we band together, we can.”

I feel for her, having lost her husband. But statements like this make no sense. It's like saying "Maybe I can't chew through a brick wall, but will I give up? Heck, no, they're only teeth! If I use all 32, well..." Admitting something's impossible and then turning around and suggesting it's possible anyway is the same kind of thinking I maintained all those years after the car accident. "If we all band together"? What does she think the CAF and the allies have been doing for the past seven and a half years?

I'm sorry, but when facing a wall we can't chew through, or an enemy our own prime minister has admitted we can't defeat, I can think of better uses for our teeth and our country's soldiers than continuing to grind them down till there's blood. Frankly, I thought we were evolving beyond this sort of thinking. How many Vietnams does it take?

Lost ears

Kind of a sad moment of passing. Last Friday, the cleaning crew at work ruined my Koss TD/65 headphones. Somehow, they managed to yank the wire to the left side nearly out, breaking the connection to the speaker inside. I guess it's no big deal, but as I recall, I paid about $90 for them when I bought them, and that was back in the mid-90s. I guess that's the real issue here. I've had them since I was in my 20s, and now they're done. I've brought them with me from job to job to job over the years; the left side had no more retainer and could fall right off the headset; the soft black material that covered the foam has been flaking off and sticking to the sides of my face for years now. But they always worked... till now. So, yesterday when I found that out, I went down to Factory Direct and picked up a couple of pairs of $17 headphones (home and away), and they seem alright. Still, these were good headphones, and I'm going to miss them and the parts of my life they represent.

Canon Pixma MP510

Yesterday, kind of on a whim, I picked up a nice little piece of equipment for not too much money. Business Depot was selling off, at clearance, a nice Canon printer, the Pixma MP510. There are better ones, fancier ones, but this one does most of what I'm after. Two years ago they were selling for around $250 hereabouts, but they were unloading this one for a hundred.

My main motivation was to be able to print photos, since photography's one of my main hobbies. It's never been a big deal to me to be able to print my own shots, and when I wanted to I'd just trot off to Shopper's Drugmart, but something about being able to do it myself really appealed to me. I had to line up there last weekend just to print seven shots, and then stand around for 15 minutes to wait for them... what is this, 1975? So I decided to look around, see what was available.

I have an HP laser printer from about five years ago. It's utterly out of toner, and hard to find the refill for, and when I do (online), it's about a hundred bucks. Couldn't use it to print my photos anyway, but sometimes it's nice to be able to print out things like directions and emails and things, and I've missed that. So it's nice to have the option again.

The printer is also a scanner, which enabled me to retire my old scanner. Combined with that, it came bundled with OCR software that's better than what I had, which is just the ticket.

It's an inkjet printer, not surprisingly since its main job is printing photos. Before I bought it I checked the price of the ink cartridges, and they were reasonably priced at about $22 for the colour ones and about $35 for the black (which is rather larger). Also, it's that more sensible system where you replace the inks separately as they run out, instead of having to replace a whole cartridge because you're out of magenta, while you still have lots of cyan and yellow.

I've printed four photos (one twice, because I printed it on the flat side of the paper rather than the glossy), and I'm pleased with the results. I'd say they're as good as the stuff I was getting out of the machines at Shopper's. All things consided, I don't know if I'm saving money, but I'm not having to go out and stand around and I can work with the photos on the fly to get what I want.

I'll be interested to see how long the inks last, but for now, I think it's a pretty solid score for a c-note.

Blooper reel

Blooper reel
Originally uploaded by Lone Primate

A string of extremely short videos that resulted from me trying to take still pictures while forgetting that the camera was on the video record setting. Enjoy. :)

My new masthead

Do you like it? I made it myself. :) I put it together yesterday out of three other photographs. Two of them were taken at a bend in the East Don River a couple of summers ago and Autostitched together. The other was a carving, on someone's lawn in Orangeville, of a shack built out of a tree stump. I composited them in Photoshop, did some work to blend the saturation and soft focus, faked reflections in the water, etc., etc., and posted it on Flickr. Today it struck me that it's exactly suited to the name of the blog, so I came home and adapted the image for use here.

Well, I think it's cool, anyway. :)

Caesar and Cleopatra

A couple of weeks ago, P-Doug asked me if I'd care to join him in taking in Caesar and Cleopatra at one of the Cineplex theatres in town. Cineplex was showing the play on select screens across Canada on Jan. 31st. I'd never seen a play by George Bernard Shaw, and I'm a fan of most things Roman, so I told him to count me in.

The performance was recorded, before a live audience, at the Stratford Festival last fall (a bit ironic because there's also a Shaw Festival here in Ontario as well). In the central roles were famed thespian Christopher Plummer, and newcomer Nikki M. James. She was playing Juliet in Romeo and Juliet at the same time, sometimes on the same day, which blows my mind.

The theatre we sat in was packed. There couldn't have been an empty seat. It was only the performance's due, of course. I tend to be kind of cynical about our society but I felt proud while I sat there and took in what's really fine and enduring about Western civilization. We should be remembered for works like this, not for things like Vietnam and Iraq and Afghanistan. Ah, there I go again... :)

It was thoroughly enjoyable. It took about two and a half hours to show, including a 20-minute intermission, but it didn't feel anything like that long. It was wonderful to see Plummer as Caesar. I'm used to seeing him portrayed as haughty, aristocratic, and asking for what happened to him on the Ides. Shaw's Caesar is more a good-natured man who has come to accept he has this strange, great destiny, and sort of goes with the flow. It's a new way of seeing the man, though I imagine it's overly generous to the true nature of the man. A guy's friends don't tend to inflict two dozen-plus stab wounds to him on the floor of the Senate if he's a regular chuckle-buckets. :) But it was a Caesar I liked.

It was a Caesar Cleopatra liked, too, though historically she apparently liked the real fellow pretty much as well (they had a son together, a fact overlooked in the play — along with the nature of a relationship as gives rise to progeny). But in this telling, Caesar is an old man, and Cleopatra little more than a girl, and a rather foolish and credulous one at that; initially fearful of being eaten by Romans whom she pictures as something akin to one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple people eaters. After some initial teasing, Caesar takes her under his wing and prepares her to be a queen indeed. Cleopatra takes to Caesar, but she makes no bones about her real love: the Roman called Mark Antony. The rest is history.

I was impressed with the production, and especially the performances. P-Doug remarked that it's rare for someone as young as James to be able to share a stage with someone like Plummer, but she really was an apt choice to play opposite him. In fact, all the principals were striking and engaging. I'm looking forward to seeing it again when BRAVO! shows it this spring on television... though seeing it on TV won't hold a candle to the larger-than-life aspect of the silver screen.

I think I'll go out by saying the thing I got the biggest kick out of was the figure of Britannus, a Romanized Celt from Britain who serves as one of Caesar's aides-de-camp. For much of the play, his part consists of finding fault with, or taking offense at, the ways of other nations. Caesar repeatedly teases him for it, or apologizes to others for Britannus's remarks. He is frequently referred to as being "from the Islands", the end of the world, and being subject to the conceit that his ways are the only proper and civilized ways. This was clearly Shaw, who was an Irishman by birth, poking gentle fun at the mores and opinions of the British at the end of the Victorian Age. Today one might be tempted to script a similar stuffed tunic and style him Americus... ;)

The original desktop interface

Something I read about at Down the Road today made me think of something I haven't thought about in a long time... years, really.

When I was seventeen, I'd just changed cities and schools. I didn't have any friends handy, and I've never been the outgoing sort who rounds up new ones by the score or something.

It was just the daily drudge of getting up and getting out there. It’s funny how it feels. I’m an adult now and I have to work just to live. Back then I didn’t, but oddly enough, I felt more trapped. Today, I can at least conceivably resign and find another job. But back then, that was the school I was mandated to go to. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t just stay with my friends in another town.

I took French all through high school, right up to grade thirteen. I’m no good at it now but I was stumblingly conversational back then. Anyway, my French class was in one of the portables behind the school. At some point that fall, I noticed someone had scrawled something funny on my desk... someone from another class. I don’t remember what it was now, but it was intriguing enough that I scribbled some comment in reply. Later, there was a reply to mine. And a conversation was struck up.

Now this was in the 80s... a long time before the internet or even BBSes, cellphones and texting. People communicated face-to-face, or at home on dedicated phone lines, or through letters, and that was pretty much it. So this kind of thing, a two-way blind conversation, was rare. Nearly impossible. But this other person and I, united by geography (a common desk) but separated by time (different days sitting in it) managed the kind of thing that’s now so very common in email and chat rooms and forum boards. We forged a conversation, and a kind of friendship, without ever meeting.

After a couple of weeks I wanted to say more than just five or ten words written in pencil on the top of the desk. So I wrote out some stuff on a piece of lined paper, hid it in some of the joinery of the desk, and left instructions on where to find it. The other person did, and did the same. Suddenly we had actual artifacts of one another’s: letters.

Her name was Cheryl. She was a foster child, living in a home with people she didn’t like much (my guess is, she was probably afraid to get close to anyone for fear of the sense of loss when she would inevitably move on). She slowly revealed to me that she was troubled, but I never really did find out about what. We would tell each other of our friends (in my case, the ones I'd left behind) and interests, our hopes for our eventual careers, make fun of the teachers we had in common, and things like that. I can remember how excited I’d be, heading into that class, and what a crushing disappointment it was whenever there wasn’t a reply from her, and how fantastic it was whenever there was. I guess it went on for a couple of months, into the winter. I started talking about meeting up, and then the notes from her kind of tapered off. I got the impression she figured out I was one of the chubby nerds most girls wouldn’t be caught dead with, and that was that. For myself, I held onto those letters for years. I had them till four or five years ago, I think. They were just so magical. Not in what they said; they were kind of boring and shallow (I imagine my own were no better). But for what they represented. An impossible friendship, a happy secret, just a whiff of romance. Eventually, I just got tired of moving them from drawer to drawer... I knew I’d always have the memory of them inside me, so I really didn’t need the plain, sophomoric scribbling themselves anymore, and out they went.

I remember looking her up at the end of the year when the yearbook came out. That, I still have. She was a pretty girl, even tiny in black and white, and easily out of my “league”, as they say. She must have moved on that summer because I don’t remember seeing her in person or in the yearbooks subsequently. God knows where, or who, she is now. I wonder if she thinks back to her own excitement sitting in that desk, reaching under the ordinary wood for those impossible pieces of paper...

Everything old is new again

I had to look it up, but here’s what I know. I bought a second-hand PowerShot G9 early in January last year. Shortly afterwards, in fact, just a week short of a year ago, I sold my PowerShot S80, which I’d carried around for 20 months, to my friend P-Doug for, if memory serves me, $200. That spring, I threw in a spare battery, since he only had the one.

Ever since then, I’ve taken just shy of 10,000 still and moving images with the G9. I’ve dropped it at a basketball game, lost it at a dusky roadside (where it was apparently hit by a passing car) and then found it again after driving half way across the city, and taken it tubing down the Grand River, where its companion, an infrared-reconfigured PowerShot S70, was drenched and cost over $300 to repair. And for all that, I’ve found that I’ve missed the lightness, compactness, and ease of access and control the S80 furnished. And so every so often, I’d look around… eBay, Craigslist…

A couple of weeks ago, I found one being sold on eBay with a starting bid of $35 on it. It was broken – the lens had come open in the guy’s pocket and jammed, leading to the dreaded E18 error that plagues PowerShot cameras. I read up on it to find out what it would cost to repair it, and learned that in such cases, it’s often possible to gently work the lens assembly such that the gears pop back into alignment. So, I bid on it; $51, which raised the bid to $36. The day before the auction ended, someone bid $45, which boosted mine to $46. I decided to hedge my bets and raised my bid to $66. The day the auction ended, a Saturday around noon, I was sitting in the Bishop and the Belcher with P-Doug, keeping an eye on the auction using a wi-fi connection and my little Eee laptop (which I got free from my bank... remember when they used to give you toasters?), refreshing the page every few seconds. With seconds to go, some troll out there bid $52 – which ironically enough would have won it for him if I hadn’t previously raised my limit. In the last six seconds, he gambled I’d bid sixty bucks, and bid $61.05. That raised my bid to $62.05, and he didn’t have time to respond. Screw you, asshole. >:)P

So, for sixty-two bucks US, plus postage, I wrangled… a broken S80. It was a gamble. I hoped I’d be able to overcome the E18 error myself, but if not, I knew a place where I could get the work done. The question was, would it be worth doing? I’d already blown $300 on a camera in the summer I would never have bothered to fix if it weren’t reconditioned to shoot infrared. But, the fellow at the camera shop reckoned it could be fixed for “about $92”… weird number, but that’s what he said. So I felt like one way or the other, it would pay off.

Well, the S80 arrived today, and I started to gently work on the lens assembly. Within a couple of minutes, I heard the “click” while working on the innermost element. I put the battery from my G9 into it, and the S80 sucked the lens assembly back in and then extended it again, and I had a working S80 again. Oh, it sounds rough opening and closing, and I might want to see if there’s something cost-effective they can do about that, but the point is, I got a real bargain. So, after a year, I’m back in the saddle again with an S80.

I’m undecided, just yet, how to handle the issue of the cameras. I don’t hate the G9. It shoots RAW, it does voice recordings, it does better videos than the S80 without the high-pitched whine… but it’s big. Half again as big as the S80. The controls aren’t all gathered to be worked easily with your right thumb. So I’m not sure. I suggested to P-Doug, once I’d won the auction, that I thought maybe the G9 would be my “winter” camera – since I’m not carrying the S70 to shoot infrared much in the winter – and the S80 would be paired with the S70 (as it was in the summer of 2007) to be my “summer” camera(s). I guess we’ll see. Right now, I’m just jazzed to have an S80 again. I honestly don’t know why Canon axed them so quickly; they were only out about eight or nine months – or why they killed off the S line with the S80. An S90, that could shoot RAW (which the S70 can but S80 can’t) and maybe had a bigger, Digimarc III sensor, would have been a big hit, I think.

Imaginary friends, squared

I’m kind of a fan of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, and I’m rewarding myself for a big clean-up this afternoon by indulging in a few episodes. Something’s just occurred to me for the first time as I watch the opening credits. Will we always need writers and animators? With the kind of computing power we have now, and are likely to have as it exponentiates into the future, will it be possible, sometime in a decade or two, to simply set up an artificial word and just watch it? If you can create anything at all, why not a world that behaves by certain set rules, seeded with a few central characters who behave in certain general ways, create a “camera” or first person character though which events are observed, and watch it go? The creators themselves would be as much in the dark as any of the other viewers. These could be cartoons, or quasi-realistic shows, things set in the past, or future, or worlds that never existed. No actors, writers, or directors to pay... pure product, and worlds full of beings who might, in their own way, be as real as you or me... What could be possible?

Kind of like Finnegans Wake

Here’s how it went. I was just coming up to work and I crossed into a snowier lane, and I thought, is this a mistake? It will take me longer to stop. Something in my mind brought up foot-pounds per second per second, which made me think of that scene in The Shining where Jack is raging about hurting Danny. My mind switched gears to metric, and I started thinking, what’s the equivalent? Newton-metres per second per second? And then I remembered Mars Polar Orbiter, which crashed on Mars because some of its instructions were in imperial instead of metric. Then I thought it was disappointing to find out that some people in NASA were still using imperial… it would be almost as startling as seeing someone wandering the halls of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, lighting kerosene lamps. Then I looked it up and discovered that it was Lockheed-Martin who sent the instructions in imperial, not the JPL. What a relief. NASA’s rep is saved.