Easter Island, Mars

While searching for the British TV series "Life on Mars" on Amazon tonight, I accidentally came across this fantastic example of Photoshop gone awry:



Clearly, the cover art is intended to combine the covers of the two programs included in this special edition, Life on Mars and Peru's Mystery in Stone. The setting is clearly Mars, as signified by its barrenness and the red sky (red planet= red sky. Get it? Get it?). But why—WHY—would the cosmonaunts on Mars be kneeling on the ground collecting samples of Mars dust when they could be marvelling at the gigantic Easter Island head just inches away from them?! (Incidentally, imagine how much Mars dust the head could snort by just inhaling. Just saying.)

But perhaps the cosmonaunts landed on Mars and were greeted by its hostile inhabitants, the giant stone heads, who then subjected them to a life of slavery cleaning the surface of Mars with some kind of cosmic vacuum cleaner and the big giant stone head is the overseer while the flank of six guards in the background ensures that no one makes a break for it. And perhaps that weird Aztec-ish pyramid in the background is the prison where they hold the cosmonauts captive until they have fulfilled their uses and then are executed. And perhaps this could be turned into some made-for-TV movie staring two vaguely attractive but non-threatening actors who went to Hollywood, failed in the movies, and decided go back to their sci-fi roots to placate an ever-dissatisfied fanbase. With the voice of James Earl Jones as the overseer.

Nice going, UFO TV. But next time, check your Wikipedia. The Easter Islands are a part of Chile, not Peru.

Cover this book!

An antidote, perhaps, to the chick-lit covers?

Penguin Books UK has begun selling six of its classic books with blank, art paper covers so readers can draw their own. They're calling it My Penguin, and Jane Austen is present in the form of Emma (though none are evident in the gallery on the website).

I'm not sure what this will do for sales, but I'm glad that Penguin is acknowledging that people do indeed judge a book by its cover. One of my literary/academic pet peeves are all the books about the Chinese-Canadian or Chinese-American experience that use stereotypical images of China or "Chinese-ness" in the cover art. (Yes, Amy Tan's books are repeat offenders.) Another are the covers of the otherwise-excellent Broadview Press editions of Austen's novels, which use photographs that are anachronistically at least 50 years later than the Regency period. When you're teaching these books to first-year students, you hope for as much historical accuracy as possible, and a cover like that is not going to help.

An Open Letter to Sales Clerks

Dear Customer Service Representatives of the world:

Please check credit card signatures.

A few weeks ago I was the victim of credit card fraud. Someone somehow got my credit card information (even though I didn't lose my card) and spent over $1,000 on gas and shoes in Ontario before the card was cancelled (oddly, roughly $100 USD was also spent at what M/C Customer Service tells me was a Hungarian airline).

As a result of this violation, I have been watching sales clerks ever since, noting whether or not you (CSRs of the world) ever compare the signature on a card with the signature on the slip. Guess what?

Not many do.

Credit card companies spend millions on advanced security measures, on holograms and extra security codes—only to be undermined by the human factor, by the salesperson who does not take two seconds to compare signatures. The breakdown in the system happens at the frontline, at the point of transaction. I count on you to make sure no one is taking advantage of me, and you let me down. This makes me angry and frustrated.

And retail companies shouldn't be let off the hook either. They are the ones who ultimately pay for fraudulent transactions; they lose money by not being vigilant, but don't seem to enforce the practice of checking.

If you hate your job and want to undermine the company you work for, fine. Just don't do it at the expense of my time, my stress levels, and my money.

Please, this holiday season, just check the signature.

Sincerely,

Mary

New-look blog...

... same great taste.

Switched to a new-look blog not because I wanted a change, but because trying to adjust the font size in the previous template in Blogger Beta resulted in weird proportions. It just didn't work.

New blog is pretty (Blogger Beta lets you customize colours) but I'm still having trouble with some of the widget functions which, frankly, don't function, specifically moving around the post-components.

Times like these I wish that either a) I knew enough html to build my own blog or b) Adobe made blogging software.

The Durian Post

Blame Anna for this stinky-fruit-themed post, as she's been uploading some old videos to YouTube, including this one of Tait and Daorcey trying durian, a notoriously stinky south-east Asian fruit. Hers is not the only durian-tagged video on YouTube either—it looks like there are just over 100 others, including this really cute one. Go figure.

Durian is a heavy, spiky fruit that smells like high heaven when opened (I've heard it compared to aspirin (by Anna) and to cat pee. Apparently, every year it is also responsible for deaths in Asia due to over-consumption and, um, gravity (according to my friend James F). While he lived in Thailand, poor James' apartment was located next to a durian stand.

And how does durian taste? The only thing I remember from my own, sole taste test was that the fruit was too cold. Apparently, it's quite tasty (it would have to be, to compensate for the smell). Anyone interested in tasting but not trying to open the fruit can buy durian ice cream from Phil's Forbidden Flavours on 17th Ave in Calgary, as well as from T&T Chinese Superstore (Phil supplies them).

Durian, incidentally, is a significant part of Larissa Lai's novel Salt Fish Girl (she's the one who compares the smell to cat pee). The novel also makes great use of the pungent smell of salt fish, which, frankly, I love (the fish, not the smell).

And yes, I am well aware of the irony of a blogger who can't smell writing a scent-centric (scentric?) post.

End of an era?

Back in Calgary for Reading Week and Christine and I go out looking for a 24-hour Tim Horton's at 11:30 p.m. on Sunday. The first one we pass is dark, so we move on. The next one, in Westhills, is lit up, but the door is locked. Then I notice the sign on the door informing customers of a new policy where 24-hour Tim's are now open 24-hours in Drive-Thru terms only. The "dining rooms" (their term) are closed from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Is this a new, country-wide policy (non-AB readers, hollaback!)? Is this a result of not being able to hire enough people? Did all that money that paid for the snazzy in-store TVs leave too little for salaries and paycheques? Where will we now go for late night-sustenance and chatting in a well-lit, clean place where we won't get kicked out?

Hopefully this is only temporary (the sign did not say one way or the other). If not, it's the end of an era. I have fond memories of late-night hanging out in Tim Horton's in Calgary and Hamilton just chatting and destressing. This could be a change worse than switching to frozen-shipped goods and brewed tea.

Grand Theft Mario

This one's for all you Grand Theft Auto fans out there (I remember one autumn where I didn't see much of Nat, or Daorcey, or Jeff...) and to those of us who watched you play and endured your endless jokes about running over prostitutes (Nat). Good times.

Ever wonder what would happen if Super Mario took the wrong turn and ended up in Vice City? Wonder no more.

Technological benefits

Realized tonight that we live in a golden age of information when I tried to get a key snippet of dialogue from a VHS tape of Citizen Kane for my lesson plan (the DVDs were all rented out). Dialogue in the movie is fast, clippy, and often overlaps, meaning that I had to pause and rewind the tape about six times to get the full exchange, which was only about a minute long. With a DVD, however, I could have paused and played more precisely (there's some lag with tape), or (even better) put on the subtitles. Sure, sometimes the subtitles aren't 100% accurate—but they definitely would have helped.

Of course, this is the same technology that won't let me tape two key snippets from episodes of the Simpsons that visually reference Kane ("Rosebud" [aka the Bobo episode] and "Marge Gets a Job" for those who care), which I have already ranted about.

My travels re: Tucson

While a more grammatically-correct title would be "My travels in Tucson", I can't say that I really went anywhere inside the friendly, low-key city that hosted this year's Jane Austen Society of North America conference. However, getting there and back was interesting, as were some of my adventures at the lovely resort hotel. Herewith are the highlights:

Day 1: Getting there
Thurs., Oct. 26
Oversleeping yet again (yet again having set my alarm for p.m. instead of a.m.), I skipped breakfast and called a cab to the airport, where I ended up waiting an hour in line to check in. I flew, for the first time, United Express, which I'm guessing is United Airlines' economy line. Checking in last also meant being seated at the first row of coach/economy, which also meant that I had a front row seat for the gong show that was "first class" (if an economy flight could be said to have first class—they couldn't even afford a curtain to separate the two sections). One of the first-class passengers was on his way to Denver with a couple of friends for a sports weekend. He proceeded to get drunker and drunker as the two-hour flight progressed. While it started innocently enough with a couple of passengers ordering screwdrivers, I knew we were in trouble once they ran out of vodka and the flight attendants broke out the gin. Mr. Drunkard
started flirting with the two flight attendants (who, seriously, should have cut him off), repeatedly inviting them to dinner that night. At one point he also insisted that first class give a cheer for the economy passengers ("you guys are the best"). It was like being at a bar and watching some guy get louder and drunker, only I couldn't leave. The flight was even long enough for him to reach the "I love you guys" phase. I felt especially bad for the man sitting across the aisle from me, who was, I kid you not, a Catholic priest.
Despite a bad snowstorm in Denver (my first view of snow of the season), my connecting flight to Tucson was only marginally late, and I arrived at my very swanky hotel by 8 p.m. I met my roommate, Kathy, a lovely woman who likes to chat and gossip. JASNA conferences, incidentally, are attended by a mixture of academics and non-academics, though demographically delegates are predominantly female, white, and over the age of 40.

Day 2: Registration, Books, Talks, Stars
Fri., Oct. 27
The first official day of the conference began with my purchasing books and a replacement for the Jane Austen keychain I had broken and then lost. Had breakfast with my roommate, where we were joined by a Scottish woman who had relocated to the US post WWII (she was a warbride). As Kathy had warned me the night before, the older one gets, the more pills one takes. Kathy and Ruth both had to take a series of pills at breakfast; at one point Ruth looked over to Kathy and asked, "What pills do you have?"
When I registered in the morning, the man at the table saw my nametag and noticed that I was a speaker. He offered to check how many people had signed up to attend my talk (though we're not held to those choices) and the grand total was... eight. In a conference with at least 400 delegates (if not more). I had had eight people attend my talk at my last JASNA conference, in L.A. I had hoped for a slight improvement, and sullenly tried to resign myself to my unpopularity amongst the JASNA set.
It turns out that one of the members of the Tucson chapter of JASNA is a doctoral candidate in astronomy at Arizona State University. There's a key star-gazing scene in Mansfield Park, so as part of the conference activities, he presented a talk on Friday night about astronomy in the Regency era, showing us incredible photos of nebulas, space-related phenomena, and even the surface of Mars. From there, we repaired to a hotel parking lot, where two telescopes were set up. I got to see Uranus, the Andromeda galaxy, and the Orion nebula. It was very cool, and something I wouldn't normally get the chance to do.

Day 3: Academic heroes, conference highs
Sat., Oct. 28
The day started with a keynote address from my academic hero, Claudia L. Johnson. It was a fascinating talk that covered the objects displayed in the Chawton House Museum (Austen lived there for eight years) and then segued into a discussion of the objects found in the protagonist's room in Mansfield Park, the novel that was the conference theme. I had a chance to quickly say hello afterwards (after four others), where I noticed that Prof. Johnson is a little shorter than me. Who knew?
Meeting scholars you admire is a little odd, putting the face to a name that has taken on such great significance. It was also a little odd to notice that another prominent scholar in the field is a really terrible dresser, even by academic standards (and yes, that's saying a lot). Let's just say that powder-blue strappy heels were in play, and leave it at that. (Though, while I'm on this sartorial strain, I should add that I also saw a tall, thin, striking brunette wearing a tomato-red pantsuit, and pulling it off by virtue of her Southern accent. However, I then noticed that she was wearing brown socks with black loafers, and gave myself over to despair.)
I was scheduled to give my paper in the afternoon, the last set of talks of the conference. About twelve people showed up, which was a pleasant surprise. The talk itself concerned informal education and moral development in the novel, particularly how the themes of improvement (renovations), illness, and habits worked through questions of change and fundamental moral character. I knew it was going well when the audience would murmur after I read particularly telling quotations, and I had one collective chuckle when I claimed that Fanny Price, the heroine, was a science experiment of sorts. Afterwards, the talk elicited a lively Q&A session, with three people staying behind to chat further.
That night we had a reception before the banquet (and the dancing!). At the reception, I was called over by one of the organizers of the 2008 JASNA conference in Chicago. She had attended my talk and liked it so much that she insisted I submit a proposal for their conference. Fortunately for me, the 2008 conference theme is "Jane Austen's Legacy", which encompasses the film adaptations, collateral publications, sequels, biographies, etc. that I've been dying to work on. In short, I'm going to Chicago in two years and I'm going with a talk that will definitely get me an audience larger than eight people. Being head-hunted feels great.
The highlight of the banquet is, for me, always the dancing, which is done just like in the movies (English country dance workshops are held for those interested). Not everyone dances, but there are always enough couples for a good-sized ball, and though gentlemen are scarce, women just end up dancing with each other (echoes of gym class). Oh, yeah, and some people dress up in Regency-era costumes for the banquet, which was also a masquerade this year.

Miscellany:
• The hotel was a beautiful resort that delivered a free copy of the New York Times every morning. In addition to the TV in the main room, there was also a little, wall-mounted TV in the bathroom, beside the sink. As my roommate put it, "Americans really like their TV."
• What do Arizona and Saskatchewan have in common? Neither follows Daylight Savings Time.

Photos of the lovely Arizona scenery and party-goers are here.

At first I thought they meant Naomi...

If I were to tell you that Mount Royal College was about to establish the Klein Chair in Media Studies, which Klein would you think I was referring to?

From cbc.ca:

Calgary's Mount Royal College has received $2.5 million in anonymous donations to create a position in the name of the outgoing premier.

Next fall, the Centre for Communications Studies will have a Ralph Klein Chair in Media Studies, which will bring in experts in the field to teach and research.

And the first occupant of said position? Let's let the Acting Dean of the Centre for Communication Studies explain for himself:

"Who better to offer our students special insights, based on years of front-line experience in broadcasting, broadcast journalism, media relations and communications, than Ralph Klein himself," said Chikinda.

So let me get this straight: the premier who slashed funding to post-secondary education, who did nothing to restore it once Alberta was financially sound, and whose cuts are still affecting morale and the bottom line at PSE institutions will soon take up a position at a post-secondary institution. Not only that, but it will be in a field that he has not worked in for over a quarter of a century, and in a field that he was incredibly skilled at manipulating since he stopped working in it. Not only THAT, but the position was endowed by who knows which individuals in what smacks of an attempt to establish a legacy. Not only that, but in addition to having the position named after him, he gets to occupy it (and get paid for it!) as well, which is not the usual case with endowed chairs.

Endowed chairs are a highly desirable addition to any post-secondary institution because funding is completely external and therefore does not cut into the institution's bottom line. The irony is that the most-Honourable Mr. Klein's budget cuts created a situation where universities and colleges had to scramble for creative ways to work around low core funding, including competing for more endowed chairs. But how desperate are institutions that they would accept a position that sounds more like a joke than an actual line on a CV?

This makes me angry on so many levels I cannot even articulate it.