Boots!

All I wanted was a pair of snow boots that satisfied the following conditions:

1. Warm
2. Dry
3. Rubber or rubberized sole to avoid slipping
4. With at least a one inch heel
5. Somewhat fashionable

I searched through two malls in Edmonton (including the Big One), wearing, incidentally, the damaged boots that had a hole in the right sole (thus, with a damp right foot). Finally, in another city, in a store where I'd never had much luck, I found:

YAY!

And it only took two weeks, lots of frustration, and many pretty pennies. But at least my feet will be warm and dry this winter.

P.S. Did you know there are thermal in-soles now? Technology is a marvelous thing.

It's a deep freeze—let's make them go outside

Western Canada experiences an unseasonably early cold snap and what happens? News channels send their meteorologists and reporters outside to somehow prove how cold is it. At the least the Saskatoon guy on the right is wearing a hat, but the poor woman in Winnipeg (who moved there from Vancouver last year) is visibly shivering!

As she noted, "minus 39 on exposed skin, like my face? It's numb."

Yes, it would be numb. So why don't you go inside!? Do Canadians not think it gets cold in Winnipeg? Will we doubt reporters unless we can see their breath on air? GAH!

Lament to size five; in which I curse my small feet.

I love footwear. Shoes. Boots. Shoe stores. Wedges. Heels. Pointy toes (do not get me started on rounded toes). I've even come around to the ballet flat (semi-square toe), though you'll never catch me in a pair of Crocs.

I hate my feet. They are a difficult-to-find size five (US). It took me three years to find strappy black dress shoes that fit properly and rather than look for new pair of black knee boots I'm getting mine resoled for the second time. I also hate my calves, which are unproportionally fat for size five feet and therefore are sometimes too big for boots that fit otherwise.

Today I went shopping for snow boots because my current pair, having undergone two long Edmonton winters, are dying (there is a hole in the bottom of the right sole). I tried on many pairs, including some lovely ones from La Canadienne (warm and grippy!), but alas. Only one store had anything smaller than a 6 (a 5 and 1/2), and even when I tried these on in a six with insoles, there was still too much space in the ankle.

I'm contemplating going back to Gravity Pope and getting these (even if they are Uggs), but the heel doesn't really inspire confidence for icy Edmonton sidewalks.

I suppose it's too much to ask for a size 5–5.5 black fashion snow boot with a moderate 2" heel (or wedge) that's warm, waterproof, and has good grip.

Le sigh.

Onion's long form joke?

Is there something going on at The Onion? Ever since Obama was elected, it's run a series of short articles about terrible, painful, violent things that have happened to President Bush, including:

Tumbling down the entire staircase of the Washington Monument
Having his arm bitten off by a crocodile
Passing a three-pound kidney stone
Getting dragged behind the presidential motorcade

It's a dark turn for the satirical website, and I wonder if it's leading up to something, or just a way for writers to take out their frustrations over a long, dubious eight-year rule.

Edited Dec. 10 to add:
.... and another particularly gross one.

List: Parliament meltdown firsts

In times of "crisis", historic firsts on a personal level:

1. Visiting the C-PAC website, delighting in the fact that there is one and that it plays video on demand! (though not on my computer!)

2. Reading the third joke about proroguing in 2 days, two of which involved perogies.

3. Learning something about the current Canadian parliamentary meltdown from a knitting blog. And a darn good one at that. (It was the fact that though the Bloc support the coalition, they are not official members, which is why they don't get any cabinet positions.)

4. Reading a blog post in which the Governor General is referred to as a "local distributed queenship node".

5. Being informed that despite the media silence in the States, the story is getting some attention in Israel.

I support public subsidies for political parties

Okay, in the midst of all the machinations and coalitions and about-faces going on in Parliament Hill right now, I feel that someone needs to stand up for the public subsidies whose proposed (and retracted) elimination seem to have set off the situation.

I like the subsidy because it makes me feel that my vote counts for something.

Whenever I vote federally, I like knowing that my vote translates to $1.95 (of government money, adjusted for inflation) going to the party of the candidate I voted for. The subsidy adds value to a right and responsibility that I already take seriously because it feels like my vote still means something even if my chosen candidate does not win.

This point is especially salient for dissenting voters in regions that tend to favour one party strongly. I am a leftist-centrist voter who votes in the Conservative stronghold of Alberta. It is, to be frank, a thankless, shitty task. Time and time again, I have watched my home province go entirely blue, wondering how 100% of the ridings can be Conservative when only 65% of the voters supported them. It was depressing. I felt like I was throwing my vote into a dark blue ether.

But with the introduction of the public subsidy, my vote could never be discounted. Never again would it amount to nothing; in fact, it would amount to exactly $1.95. The public subsidy suddenly made my vote count in a way that it had not counted before.

I want my vote to count. I want everyone's vote to count. Keep the subsidy.

P.S. It's not a coup if there is a provision for it in the Constitution.

Things that bug me: Internet edition (part one)

Web video. I love web video. When it works.

But.

I hate the stupid geography controls that prevent me from watching video on American websites, notably the Daily Show and Colbert Report websites, and now Saturday Night Live clips on the NBC website (scoff if you will, but for a few weeks Tina Fey made SNL relevant again, okay?).

I can understand that the Canadian broadcasters who air these shows in Canada don't want to lose potential ad revenue from Canadian viewers. Fine. The Comedy Network and Global TV have their own websites which include web video. The problem is that the video archives are not as extensive or well organized as the ones on the American sites. It really really bothers me that I cannot access John Hodgman's "Iraq War Essay Contest" Daily Show segment on the inadequate Comedy Network/CTV websites while it's available to viewers in America (and overseas! I watched The Daily Show online from the UK this summer!).

The bottom line is this: If you are going to cut off my access to a product because you want my advertising dollars, offer me an alternative that is equally as good or even better. Because right now I cannot watched the clips that I want to, meaning that whatever potential ad dollars I represent are being lost to the ether and that I have negative associations with the Comedy Network, CTV, and Global.

Good job, everyone. You should be so proud of yourselves.

P.S. Also, Ticketmaster.ca's search interface and options suck.

8888

I've seen phone numbers with four 8's in them, but never an address. Until now:


I wonder if there's an unusually high number of Chinese students taking English at SFU.

Edmonton Strathcona goes orange!!

Wow, Edmonton Strathcona. Way to be the orange hole in the blue donut that is Alberta.


In other surreal screenshot news, this is Facebook ad is all kinds of wrong. The image makes it even better.

I mean, it doesn't specify whether your baby's actual hands and feet are stuffed and mounted or if it's just a mould or replica. Like, ew?

Canada does not equal U.S.A.

I'm miffed about a rather depressing "clarification" in a Guardian article about how fashionable reusable shopping bags are. At the end of an article, designer Kresse Wesling describes the impetus behind her latest design for a UK supermarket chain and the Guardian helpfully decides that there is no border between Canada and the US.

'I grew up in Canada,' she says, 'so I love the shape of the brown paper bag [used to carry shopping in the United States]. That's what we've made: a brown bag, double-wide, with a really long shoulder strap.'

The square bracketed "explanation" even occurs in the same sentence in which she mentions growing up in Canada. What, did Canada not have brown paper shopping bags? Did Wesling's family go cross-border shopping (for groceries!) where she would longingly gazing at American brown paper bags?

Well done, Guardian, for implying that Canada and the US are virtually the same country. If only it were, so I could vote for Obama.

Not bad Photoshop, but...

This poster for Clint Eastwood's latest movie is awful awful awful awful...

It looks like she's going to eat him.

Don't meet me on the El-Train

Chicago is wonderful. Really, really wonderful (more, plus photos, to come). But O'Hare is really far away from the heart of the city.

Early this morning I left the B&B I'd been staying at and took the elevated-train (subway/LRT) to Chicago O'Hare airport with a friend of mine who was on the same flight. We were leaving from just north of downtown, so took the Red Line down and transferred onto the Blue Line, which is the only line that goes to O'Hare. On the way in, it had taken me an hour to get in on train and I expected something similiar. All was going well until an announcement that due to construction on the tracks, the Blue Line train ended at Belmont Station, we'd have to disembark and take a shuttel to Addison and Irving Park stations. At Irving Park we could board another train to continue on. So we got off, went on a bus, saw more parts of Chicago, and finally got back onto a fuller, lurchier train.

The delay was due to construction to enable the train to go faster than 15mph on the tracks. How slow is 15 mph? On that part of the Blue Line, the tracks are placed in the middle of what looks like the interstate highway—four lines on each side. At one point, I looked outside, and realized that cars were passing us. Easily.

Construction is scheduled to be finished Dec. 2008, at which point all parts of the Blue Line track from O'Hare to downtown should have top speeds of 55 mph. And oh yeah, the trip out took 1.5 hours in all, and that's not counting the 2o minute walk through O'Hare. It felt like I had already gone on a long trip before even getting on the plane.

How Jane Austen movies should really be watched

At the very least, I wouldn't be (as?) angry at Becoming Jane.

Saw these guys, Mostly Water Theatre, at the Edmonton Fringe Fest this year.



Written rules, with a link to a slightly different radio version (with clearer audio) here.

I think it's really quite clever, though it's "drawing-room", not "parlour".

Oh, Google

Does this bode ill for the British monarchy?

Hey, we're over here

Amidst all the ridiculousness about Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin having foreign policy experience because the state she governs, Alaska, is next to Russia, I have to ask:

What about Canada? Alaska shares an actual border with Canada. And Canada's a foreign country, too! But wait—if proximity to Canada qualifies as foreign policy experience, then the governors of Washington State, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine also have foreign policy experience.

And you know, Illinois isn't that far away from Ontario, if you don't mind going through Michigan first. And Chicago is located on one of the Great Lakes, though (alas!) it's the one that's not shared with Canada. Does that still count?

Bohemian Rhapsody: Two Memories

#1

Department holiday party in January, held at a community hall. A grad student as DJ, doing a fantastic job. We're dancing. We've been drinking. I managed to pull a friend who doesn't dance much out on the dance floor after he's had a few beers. We hear the opening strains of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and freak out. No one dances to the song, because, really, it's not a dancesable tune, but we all sing along, some of miming as well. It's an awesome dance floor group sing. And then the bridge, with the guitar solo. And Dave, subdued, former-metal-head Winnipeg "Saddleback" Dave, pulls out air guitar. For the entire solo. And I only wish I had taken a photo, but I was laughing too hard. Awesome.

#2

Edmonton Fringe festival. Final weekend, Saturday night, on the way to an 11:15 show. Pass by a busking station, where a crowd has gathered to hear what turns out to be a ukelele cover band. Lead singer intros by explaining how difficult the song was to learn, joking that they lost a drummer/keyboardist along the way. Jeff wants to know what the song is so we linger (there's time). Opening strains of "Bohemian Rhapsody." Me: "no. way." Thing is, the cover band is good. Really really good. Breezy, cool late August night. Darkness, lights from Fringe site, sound of a band that I can't see through the crowd. Three-part harmonies. Singing along. People become drawn to the buskers. The crowd grows. Applause.

Perfection.

An object of desire is an object nonetheless

So John McCain picked a woman as his vice-presidential nominee.

Two reactions.
1. Savvy, short term choice. Upstages coverage of Obama's convention speech last night. Attracts the "Hillary Harridans". Makes McCain seem more progressive.

2. Dumb choice. She's inexperienced. Media frenzy will eat her up and spit her out. Pander pander pander.

Okay, and a third reaction.

3. Objectified.

The reaction isn't "John McCain chose Sarah Palin!" It's "John McCain chose a woman!" It seems like for the purposes of the McCain campaign it could have been any woman. That he had to reach all the way to politically distant Alaska and pick a woman with less than two years of governing experience underscores how desperate he was for that second X-chromosome. I can't shake the feeling that the only reason he chose a woman was because she was a woman, not because she was qualified.

And that is a form of discrimination as much as sexism is—to judge someone solely on the basis of the gender, whether the judgement is positive or negative, is unfair and wrong. It reduces 51% of the population to a pair of chromosomes and effaces the complex differences within that group.

Moreover, McCain's choice undermines Hillary Clinton's hard-fought and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to be the Democratic nominee. Whether you like her or not, whether you agreed with her campaign tactics or not, there is no question that Hillary Clinton worked her ass off trying to get the nomination. On the other hand, Sarah Palin was almost magically selected to be on the ticket for the Republicans. There's something disturbing about the idea of a powerful, patrician old white man plucking a young, attactive political ingenue from obscurity to run alongside him for the White House, as if to say, "well, you can't get here on your own hard work and merits, so let Uncle John give you a hand." How patronizing. How sexist. How... political.

Adjustments

Still jetlagged from returning from the UK vacation, but it's the little things that are throwing me off:

1. The first time I paid for something (a coffee, of course) with Canadian money, it felt weird. I'd also forgotten how much a cup of coffee costs in Canada.

2. The first time I was in my kitchen again after being away for five weeks, I had to pause to remember where I kept my dishes.

3. Still working on getting the temperature of my apartment perfect. My landlady likes to switch off one of the two furnaces when it gets really hot out—which it was in the week leading up to my return, but not any more.

4. I have yet to go to campus. Will do that this afternoon.

5. Some of the people I would see during the year are still away. And I haven't had time to see Edmonton friends because I've had houseguests. This will be remedied tonight.

I'm back, but it doesn't really feel like I'm back yet.

Not funny

A seven hour flight delay (plane late getting in from Calgary, then mechanical issue that required replacing a part) meant that my travel day back from London was much longer than anticipated. Thankfully I was able to call Anna and let her know about the delay. Minutes after stepping off the plane in Calgary (at ten minutes to midnight, on a flight that should have gotten in at 5:15 p.m.), I turn on my cell phone and get a text that reads:

Funny. The website says your flight's been cancelled. Not funny? Where are you?

Um, cancelled? Yeah. Here's the screenshot:



I don't even want to get into waiting at Gatwick or the guy who managed to reach Globespan's head office by phone and talk to a mid-to-high-level manager who a) didn't know that our flight hadn't taken off yet and b) offered no compensation for the inconvenienced families who had been delayed an abnormally long time. Somehow the passenger commendeered the announcement apparatus in our waiting lounge and described the conversation. He also mentioned that Globespan has recently been fined £5,000 for flying with faulty cockpit equipement, which definitely gave me pause.

Yeah, I know it's a budget airline. But the passengers weren't kept informed of what was going on, the boarding time kept changing, and they didn't offer any kind of compensation except multiple apologies (plus the pilot's request that we not take out our frustrations on the flight crew).

On the plus side: despite a preponderence of babies and children on the plane, the flight was very quiet. And, well, I got home.

English/English

British English: voucher
Canadian English: coupon

British: disabled
Canadian: handicapped

British: queue
Canadian: line up

British: boiled rice
Canadian: steamed rice

British: jiffy bag
Canadian: padded envelope

British: Bag
Canadian: Purse (and bag)

British: Purse
Canadian: Wallet

Karine (holding up her little wallet): what do you call this?
Karine's roommate Hannah: "A wallet."
Me (holding up a slightly bigger wallet): What do you call this?
Hannah: "A purse."
Me: "AAARGH!"

Edinburgh Fringe fest

Okay, I'd been saying it about Edinburgh since I walked out of the train station, but it's still true: "Oooh! Pretty!"

Georgian and Victorian houses, a centuries-old castle, and—in August—lots and lots of Festival goers.


In Edmonton, I live mere blocks away from the second large Fringe theatre festival in the world. This year, I decided it was high time that I attended the much-bigger largest Fringe Theatre Festival in the World in Edinburgh. Edmonton wears its "second largest Fringe" designation proudly, but seriously, in every possible category, it's a distant second compared to Edinburgh. The Edinburgh program is larger (as thick as a Sears catalogue), there are over 100 venues spread out over the city (many concentrated in the Old Town area), the festival lasts for over three weeks, some bars stay open as late as 5 a.m., and you can buy booze and bring it into many of the performances.

My Edinburgh set-up was obviously very different than my Edmonton set-up—I was without a proper "home base", without my usual Fringe buddy, and without a plan since the schedule was so daunting. I was also with three other people and we proceeded to drink a lot, eat a lot, and see some shows. If I were to do Edinburgh Fringe again (and I would), I would certainly book accommodations earlier (no fault to Nicole on this, who did her best) and read trusted reviews sooner. I'd also scope out the Scotsman each day for their coupons for shows and take more advantage of the e-ticketing system and the half-price same-day tickets. I realize now that it would have been relatively easy to see some great shows. While a good early review at Edmonton Fringe will sell out a show's entire run, Edinburgh runs for so long and there are just so many competing shows and events that you can still get tickets for a five-star show the morning of. At least, in the beginning days of the festival, which is when I was there.

Some highlights:

• I saw two excellent shows on my last day (when I finally clued into how to do things), an incredibly well-written, well-acted one-man show, Scaramouche Jones, about a clown whose life was a metaphor for the 20th-century British colonial experience (sounds heavy-handed but it really wasn't). I gave it a standing ovation, though not everyone in the crowd did so.
  
• I also saw one half of a pair of related plays, The Bird and the Bee: The Bee, about a fifteen-year-old girl who commits suicide. My only regret was that I missed seeing The Bird, which is about the boy she loves, who commits suicide with her. Depressing? Yes. But also lyrical, intelligent, and really well acted and directed. I should have given this a standing ovation, but I was crying too much.
  
• of course, X-files improv
• my student card got me discounts on lots of tickets! Wo0-hoo!
  

Lowlights:

• One of the shows I had marked out in the program was a "could-be-good, could-be-horrible" puppet show whose program description ended with "Sophisticated wordless puppetry from Poland." Well, it was puppetry and I'll assume that the three puppeteers were Polish, but it was not sophisticated at all. Nicole was right when she called it self-indulgent. The show needed a plot to add cohesion, the movement work wasn't detailed or musical, the themes were superficial, and there was a lot of repetition. I don't mind pretentiousness in my art, but it still has to be good.
• I almost walked out of another show, The Gullibility Factor, a series of supposedly satirical sketches that were just annoying. The last sketch, a critique of the selling of the war in Iraq, was heavy handed without contributing to the debate. And another sketch hinged on the mocking of a character's Canadian accent, specifically the pronounciation of the word "Saskatchewan", but the actress playing the Canadian couldn't actually pronounce "Saskatchewan" correctly. It really really irked. I hated the show so much that when I left I walked up to the box office and bought a ticket for another show nearby just to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.
  
• With the number of people in Edinburgh for the various festivals (book, comedy, music, and the military tattoo), you'd think there'd be relatively good audience numbers. Not so. I saw a show where I was one of three (!) people in the audience. The venue was small (essentially, a large reception room in a house) but it could certainly seat more than three people. It was a one-man play that was only okay, but the poor actor deserved more than the £17 he made that night.
• I missed out on getting a ticket for what promised to be an amazing show, How It Ended, a physical theatre/dance performance. I was on the stand-by list, but there were no stand-by tickets to be had. I picked the show based on the description, not knowing that it had received amazing reviews, and had I gotten a ticket it would have been my Fringe "discovery", that show that you have no expectations of and that completely blows you away. Alas.
  

My five days (more like 4.5, really) were not spent solely on the Fringe. A conscientious researcher, I also went to the National Archives of Scotland (the building in the middle of the photo below) and looked up some of Robert Adam's letters. They were, for the most part, useless, but being in the lovely archives and getting to read and touch letters written in 1755 was pretty fucking cool. Last summer I'd e-mailed the archives asking for a quote on photocopying and mailing the letters I was interested in to Canada. The quote came to £115. Having now seen the letters, I'm very very relieved that I didn't get them.


Also, I ate haggis for the first time (the stuffing looking food underneath the chicken). It had the consistency of dried stuffing but tasted good.


And then, after five days of on-and-off rain, hit-and-miss theatre, disappointing research, and confusing navigation through the windy streets of Edinburgh, I was on a train to Sheffield.


I miss the Canadian summer.

Edinburgh: Story 1 (in two parts)

Part I:
The story behind this photo:

On the left we have Dean Haglund, whose main claim to fame is that he played one of the Lone Gunmen on the X-files. We went to Mr. Haglund's improv show at the Fringe (because Nicole found a flyer at a venue) and Nicole snagged a photo afterwards.

The story behind this photo is more interesting:


The show was essentially an improvised episode of the X-files in which an audience member went up on stage and helped with traditional improv games, like providing sound effects or random words when prompted or reading out lines previously written out by the audience. Because I'd had a pint and a half and because I'm kind of a jack-ass at improv shows (I once suggested "magic realism" as a genre) I gladly yelled out suggestions. Thanks to my suggested profession of "theoretical physicist", I got pulled up to the stage and got to play Dean Haglund's arms.

(photo courtesy Nicole's Facebook)

The set-up was that Dean Haglund was playing a government scientist at a press conference. For the final part of the section, he took questions from the audience. One of the questions was "Can you still touch your toes?"

As you can tell from the photo, Mr. Haglund is quite a bit taller than me. So it was clearly physically impossible and the audience member was clearly just being a jack-ass. So in response, I gave him the finger.

[no photo due to Nicole's laughing too hard]

Afterwards, though, it did lead to the multi-middle finger photo above, which I will treasure always.

London: in pictures

I am blogging from a National Express East Coast train travelling from London to Edinburgh. Is it a sign of crappy Canadian wireless that I'm shocked to discover free wireless anywhere (Edmonton airport, for example), much less on a mode of travel? I'm totally plugged in to my seat: power cable, charging cell phone (through USB port) and earphones to block out the two groups of chatty people in front of me. (In honor of this train's ultimate destination, I'm listening to the Glaswegian band Travis). My total isolation from the world would be an affront to Nicole if she wasn't in another train car altogether.

I am heading to the Edinburgh Fringe after a lovely few days in London which I spent wandering around. Nicole and I saw and giggled at this tavern:

I stumbled around Picadilly and found 10 Henrietta Street, the house where Jane Austen's brother lived and where she would stay when visiting London.

We went to a beer festival where Nicole's friends won a cute little stuffed ram. And where we sampled beer from many different places (alas, no Canadian beers were present).

I saw a Banksy:

And, in a nod to the second chapter of my dissertation, I wandered around Portman Square. It's only 2-3 blocks from Oxford Street (a major shopping drag) and the exteriors have been mostly redone or demolished. On one side it looks like a Metropolitan police office, on another it's a hotel (the Churchill), on the third it's businesses and the fourth converted flats and a private club. The private club is at No. 20 and is historically relevant to my work, being designed by Robert Adam. Alas, I couldn't get up the nerve to knock and see if I could walk around.

Yesterday I took the bus to Greenwich (technically still in London) where I saw the gorgeous buildings of the Royal Naval College

and the Maritime Museum


and the Queen's House, which features an absolutely beautiful spiral staircase designed by Inigo Jones in the early 1600s.




A short walk up the hill behind the Queen's house led to the Royal Observatory, a place of major astronomical import and, for better known purposes, the home of Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian.

That silver line that I'm standing on? Zero degrees longitude, baby.

Next up, the Edinbrugh Fringe, for which I have done no planning except to have Nicole secure accommodations. The Fringe program is as dauntingly thick as a Sears catalogue and I've barely gone through 1/4 of it.

the article

Fuck it!

We'll do it live.

I mean, I'm putting it on hold and moving on to chapter three.

Haunted

Was only mildly behind on my summer list of "Things to do" until this week, when I subjected myself to an epic, multi-day case of procrastination. The current task to to revise my first chapter into academic article to submit to a major journal. I am not working on it (and don't want to work on it) for the following reasons:

1. Form/Structure: I am focusing on only one part of the chapter (the section I extracted and revised for a couple of conference papers) so I am currently working from a 10-page conference paper rather than a 40 page-chapter. The goal is a 20-25 page article. In terms of revision, cutting, not expanding, is my forte.

2. Haunting. Let me explain.

The life of a neurotic grad student (no, not necessarily a redundant term) is one pervaded by a sense of anticipated failure. Since we all made it to grad school, actual academic/professional failure is rare and occasional (ahem, SSHRC) but for the most part it is the spectre of imminent failure that haunts me/us, that leads to qualifying claims with parenthetical asides (like this one!), that either drives or paralyzes us (often one leads to the other, and vice versa). One of my profs once mentioned that he thought he would stop feeling like a fraud once he actually got a job as a professor, but he was wrong. We are all haunted; the haunting will never stop.

In terms of this particular project, I am haunted by the feedback (constructive but not glowing) that I have recieved on it, including that from my supervior, one of my committee members, and two anonymous conference paper vettors. Frankly, I can't take criticism (to be fair, I also don't take praise well. I never know how to react). It took me days to work up the courage to re-read the more critical of the two vettors' reports, and even then I had to start by merely skimming. The skimming is representative of my roundabout approach to this article. This week I've read a couple of marginally relevant articles, started trying to read McKeon's Secret History of Domesticity again, and even writing about my writing difficulties in this blog entry. I have also watched my hours of Hell's Kitchen UK on Youtube and learned to make Greek salad (two unrelated items).

I am also haunted by my experience of writing the chapter, a torturous, dragged-out process that I was undergoing this time last year. My mistake with chapter one was to start writing the draft before having fully developed my argument—I'm not a process writer in that I don't think as I write. I do "write to think", as the saying goes, but by hand and on looseleaf pages. Last summer I went against my usual process and the result was a chapter that had potential but lacked overall cohension. Some writers need to think of their chapters as "just a draft" in order to get over the hump and start writing. I don't think I'm that kind of writer.

So the mist of failure hovers over me as I look with dread at my cut-up chapter. My procrastination has also seeped into other aspects of my life—some research trip loose ends I need to tie up during my upcoming trip, gathering reading materials for my chapter three prep, figuring out when I'm heading back to Calgary. Everything is at a standstill.

This is ridiculous.

Happy belated Canada Day

Hope yours was a good one.

when 2 out of 4 does not mean halfway

Being finished two out of four chapters does not mean that I am half finished the dissertation. The to-do list still includes:

• chapter three
• chapter four
• introduction
• conclusion
• massive revisions

And there is the distinct possibility that chapters three and four will have longer word counts than the first two chapters (esp. four, my Austen chapter). According to my supervisor, dissertation chapters do tend to get longer the further into the process it gets. I've already embarked on that trend, with chapter two being about four pages longer than chapter one, even though the novel for chapter two was half as long as the novel for chapter one.

I have decided that trying to finish a dissertation is like chasing the horizon—it keeps receding no matter how hard you try.

Chapter Two finished

Revised yesterday and wrote the conclusion late this afternoon. Sent to my supervisor this evening.

Next: the syllabus. Because it never ends.

Pages written today: 1 (yes, a one-page conclusion)
Total pages: 47.5 (increase due to yesterday's revisions)

Mediocre writer, good editor

Original sentence:

What is most notable about the three kinds of spaces evident in the pawnshop room is how much flow is impeded in these spaces.

Revised sentence:

In each of the pawnshop room's three incarnations, flow is greatly impeded.

Original word count: 24
Revised word count: 12

I don't know whether to bemoan my writing skills or celebrate my editing skills.

this close

I am at 45 pages and missing a conclusion. I still need to go through it and make some revisions before sending it to my supervisor. I am meeting my supervisor this Thursday, which essentially gives me two days to whip this chaper into shape. We will not be discussing the chapter on Thursday since I have been so slow, but it would be nice to at least have the first draft finished.

I feel like I have been thisclose to finishing the chapter for a week, but each time I sit down to write, the analysis just keeps getting longer. I noticed something new about the novel's ending tonight so that had to be incorporated (yes, it was relevant). The end of a chapter is like the ever-receding horizon. It just gets further and further away the more you chase after it.

What I absolutely must do before submitting it is going through and revising. In its current state, I'm pretty sure that it's stronger than the first draft of chapter one, but frankly I haven't read the whole thing through in its entirety yet, so I could just be deluding myself.

Tomorrow's plan: print out all 45 pages, do a read-through and edit, and write a fucking conclusion.

Pages written today: 3
Running page count: 45 (!)
Pages written at conference, here and there: not sure

Vancouver

If the annual Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (a massive umbrella conference consisting of lots of conferences of Canadian academic organizations) is indeed like summer camp but for academics, as I once heard it described, then the Congress at UBC this week was at the most beautiful campsite ever.

This is the library:


And the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, across the quad:


A rose garden (with mountains in the background):

And pretty flowers:


Oh, yeah, and I presented a paper at the ACCUTE conference. It was fine. Vancouver was awesome.

Birth by transporter

An old friend of mine recently gave birth, and my sister and I had the following MSN conversation as a result:

A: Alina has squeezed a human being out of her.

A: I don't think I ever want to do that.

M: Yeah, like I've said before, Star Trek transporter...

M: Which makes me wonder why the babies on Star Trek are never born that way...

A: Uh, yeah...

A: me, too?

M: "Beam it out, Doctor! BEAM! IT! OUT!"

A: Or, Give me the drugs!!!
Good, now beam it out.

M: But that would take longer...

M: Honestly, why would they even let it get as far as contractions? Once the water breaks, you know it's ready to come out.

A: uh...

A: so, we're really going to have this super hypothetical conversation?

M: No.

M: But I do think that of all the medical miracles the show espoused, they could have clued in to making birth less painful for the women.

A: this is true...

M: And I think that some of that has to do with either a) lack of women on writing staff or b) lack of attention paid to women's issues in a notoriously male-centric genre.

M: Or c) a need to retain some concept of the "natural" in a representation of an advanced technological time and falling back on the cliché of "motherhood" as the most natural thing women are capable of.

M: And THAT makes this MSN conversation more analytical than anything I've written in my actual dissertation today.

A: change your topic?


I have since written a couple of pages, so there shall be no topic change in the future. Boo. (not really)

Running page count: 38
Days left before leaving for a conference in Vancouver: 0

The Long s

This is what happens when a computer e-text program scans an "f" as an "s" and vice versa:

And again he flew out of the house, leaving Dr. Lyster unassectedly concerned for him, and too kind-hearted and too wife to be offended at the injustice of immoderate sorrow.

Which should read:
And again he flew out of the house, leaving Dr. Lyster unaffectedly concerned for him, and too kind-hearted and too wise to be offended at the injustice of immoderate sorrow.

And there's also this:

"My name, fir?"

This humorous example is a result of old typeface where the lowercase letter 's' (ſ) resembled the letter 'f'. The letter is specifically known as the Long s.

I can't really fault anyone at the Chadwyck Nineteenth-Century Fiction database for not wanting to proofread Cecilia. It is, after all, over 950 pages long. That said, you can spell an e-text.

On a roll?

Finally had a good writing night for the first time in the entire dissertation. Trying very hard to finish by Tuesday.

Pages written tonight: 5
Running page count: 34
Page goal: 40, but it might take more than that to finish the argument

Words added to spellcheck: Panopticon

Writing aids/crutches of the week: Radiohead and Rice Krispie treats

Breaking the heroine

I realized tonight that my Cecilia chapter is about plot, that is, the heroine and the narrative move in similar ways and that the novel ends because the novel breaks the heroine (really—she goes mad). This good, because this will all go into the chapter posthaste.

Words added to MS Word dictionary today: misconstruction, spectre

Pages written today: 2
Running page count: 23

Off tomorrow for some Calgary stuff, so won't be back to work until Sunday.

Dissertation metaphors

Being in English, I like using metaphors to describe things. Right now, I've been thinking about my dissertation, specifically my chapter, in metaphorical terms. Ironically, even though my dissertation is about architectural, domestic spaces, I have not yet thought about the dissertation itself as any kind of structure. That is, until today, when I wrote a couple of important "set up" paragraphs that frame my argument and realized that I was essentially adding scaffolding to my chapter. And the chapter has been structurally very difficult, so hopefully I've laid the foundation enough that I can build on what I've written and complete the project without going too overtime or overbudget. At the very least, I doubt I'll have to call in a structural engineer, though that it what revisions are for.

Okay, okay. I'll stop now.

Running page count: 21

Another dissertation metaphor

Earlier this week, one of my professors suggested that the process of writing a dissertation is like having a jar of paperclips on your desk, and there's one paperclip that you can pull out so that all the other paperclips come out in one chain. Unfortunately, writing a dissertation (or any big, long project) is a trial-and-error process, meaning that you'll end up pulling out many wrong paper clips before you hit on the correct one.

The opposite view: Why can't a dissertation be more like a beer? You pour it out and even if it's a bad pour, you just wait a few minutes for everything settle and then it's fine. Plus, it's beer.

Pages written today: 3
Running page count: 18.5
(Yes, I know it doesn't quite add up from my previous post. I was too tired to update last night.)

P.S. My counting half pages is not an attempt to aggrandize the page count. Unless I actually write a full page, I refuse to count it (no cheating by rounding up), but as a compromise I allow myself to include half pages.

Blocked

and multitasking—am also working on a major project due in June.

Pages written today: 2.5
Running page count: 14.5

Goals for tomorrow: leave the apartment, write at least two pages

Laying down the needles

There are advantages to having a knitting project on the needles while writing. I find knitting, especially a relatively repetitive pattern, therapeutic. It helps me clear my mind and is a good way to unwind at the end of a long day.

On the other hand, I also find it kind of addictive. I'll get going on a project one afternoon and want to keep knitting well into the evening. This is not good for my productivity in all other aspects of my life. It is also not good for my wrists.

I'm starting to think that I need to lay down the needles for at least the next four weeks and focus on my academic work instead. Thankfully, I've recently just finished one knitting project and almost completed a second, meaning that there is currently no backlog of Christmas presents or new babies to knit for. So as long as a certain married couple are too busy playing GTA IV to procreate, I think I'll be fine.

Dissertation as jig-saw puzzle

I finished writing the first section of chapter two today, a section that sets up the circularity and flow theme of the rest of the argument. There might be some moving around of sections later and I'm not sure about the last two or three sentences, but I'll leave it for now and come back to it later when my head has cleared.

One reason writing a 40- to 50-page chapter is difficult is the sheer complexity of the argument and the impossibility of keeping it all straight in my mind. It's also difficult because my argument for this chapter can be best described as a jig-saw puzzle, with each concept or idea relating to at least two or three other ideas. However, writing is a linear exercise where I have to take each part of my carefully constructed puzzle and lay them out in a straight line. The theme of this chapter is circularity and flow, so I have been literally thinking in circles. The adjustment to building a linear argument has been tough.

Pages written today: 3
Running page count: 12

Chapter Two update

Running page count: 9
Total time spent looking through novel, notes, e-texts or Google books for specific quotations: at least 30 minutes
Total pages in Cecilia: 941

It's not quite double digits, which was my goal, but the quality of the last paragraph that I wrote tonight told me that I should stop writing and go to sleep.

Escalation

Or, why I can't do anything by half.

Me on the phone with my sister, thinking about knitting a little hat for an imminent newborn baby:
"If I make it little enough, it shouldn't take that much time. And I can just use whatever yarn I have in my stash."

Sister: "Make sure it's long enough to cover the baby's ears."

Me: "Or... [thinking]... I could add earflaps! Wouldn't that be cute?! A little baby hat with little earflaps?! Oh! If I do that, I could put a heart on each earflap! Wouldn't that be cute? [Pause] Oh my god, that would be more work."

So I knit a baby hat. And added
1. Earflaps
2. A heart on each earflap
3. A pom-pom. (This was a somewhat controversial decision because asking the opinion of knitting and non-knitting friends yielded a 50/50 split on whether the pom-pom was necessary. I compromised by trimming the pom pom to make it smaller. But I think the touch of teal at the top balances out the teal hearts on the earflaps.)

And so...


Ta-da! Baby hat of my own design, knit with Cascade 220 white and leftover Patons Classic Merino Peacock. (The hat is for a girl, incidentally.)


Yeah, I stand by the pom-pom.

Lock-down, terms and conditions of

Writing the chapter means going into a lock-down of sorts—withdrawing socially and being more disciplined and focus. The last few days have not been particularly productive. A reminder of the terms and conditions of dissertation-writing lock down are in order:

Rule 1: No minor socializing
Broken by: attending group meeting*; going to another workshop group meeting where no-one else showed up*

Rule 2: Attend no more than one (1) major social event per week.
Broken by: planning and attending good-bye festivities for a good friend; two days later, attending the department year-end party and then hosting the after-party and then attending the after after-party

Rule 3: Do not allow the previous night's festivities to interfere with ability to be productive the following day
Broken by: Forgetting that red wine+beer=three-advil hangover

Rule 4: Prepare for a seige
Broken by: running out of coffee and fresh fruit; refusing to walk to grocery store in -20C windchill and blowing snow to replenish

Rule 5: Limit length of blog posts
Broken by: you're reading it

Caveats to applying lock-down rules too stringently
a. Leave the house/apartment briefly at least once a day to avoid cabin fever. Coffee runs are an excellent excuse for venturing outside.
b. Have a conversation with a real human being, no matter how short (the conversation, not the human), once a day to remind self of what own voice sounds like. Ordering a coffee and making small talk with barista counts. Talking to self does not.
c. Negative impact of breaking above rules somewhat mitigated if coffee is consumed at some point.

*both meetings occurred in coffee shops. See caveat c.

Running page count: a meagre 5

Private Member, Fencer, Poet

One of the major pillars of my argument in chapter two is the location of one of the houses in Cecilia, Portman Square in London. Much to my delight (well, more like excitement), the major architect whose work is most relevant to my dissertation designed and built a house in Portman Square between 1775-77, making all the historical background on the "circuit" arrangment of rooms incredibly relevant to my argument.

The house in quesiton, No. 20 (aka "Home House"), is, alas, not open to the public, being the current location of a private member's club. The photos on the website (which you can see if you click on the headings on the top menu) indicate that many of the original eighteenth-century architectural features still exist, though I'm currently more interested in the arrangement of the rooms and what it would be like to just walk through the house.

What's post-worthy is the list of activities that members this private club can partake of, a list that reminds me just how much the rich are not like you and I:


What is petanque? How does one play Wine Bingo? Does "Style" refer to oratorial, written, or sartorial style? And what kinds of poems and creative writing do you think comes out of these workshops?

In other news:
Running page count: 3
Number of long block quotes used to pad page count: 1 (10 lines!)
Final Exams marked this weekend: 36

Youtube + Pride and Prejudice

Yes, I should be working. But instead, proof that sometimes it is all in the editing:



And for something even more different...

Eponymous: Or, Eighteenth-century novelists liked using names as titles

Talking to someone at the birthday party this weekend, I was asked which novels I'm writing my dissertation on. The list made me realize just how many eighteenth-century novels are titled after their heroine's names (and how protagonists in eighteenth-century fiction are routinely referred to as "heroes" and "heroines" in the scholarship).

From my dissertation, four out of five:
Clarissa, by Samuel Richardson
Cecilia, Or Memoirs of an Heiress, by Frances Burney
Belinda, by Maria Edgeworth
Emma, by Jane Austen (along with Mansfield Park)

And then...
Moll Flanders and Roxana, by Daniel Defoe
Evelina and Camilla, by Frances Burney
Shamela and Amelia, by Henry Fielding (who is more famous for the likewise eponymous Tom Jones and Joesph Andrews)
The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, by Eliza Haywood
Adeline Mowbray, by Amelia Opie
Pamela, by Samuel Richardson
Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, by Frances Sheridan
The History of Miss Emily Montagu, by Frances Brooke

The above list was compiled from my bookshelf alone. There are plenty more, but I think I've made my point.

There are also many novels named after their heroes, such as Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and Sterne's wonderfully titled The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. But it turns out that a dissertation about domestic interiors leads me to write about novels about women. I wonder why that is.

Speaking of writing and eponymous novels, I have started chapter two, which is on Frances Burney's Cecilia. However, I'm experiencing a weird brain fart where, as I type, I think "Clarissa" (the topic of my first chapter), but then I type "Cecilia". It's like my brain is eight months behind my fingers.

Chapter Two:
Pages written: 1
Pages written and then deleted and then rewritten: 1

Taking stock: the yarn stash

I have finally organized my yarn stash into a handy plastic drawer unit:

Click to embiggen the following:


To be honest, I thought there would be more yarn than this, so I guess I'm doing okay. Frankly, organizing the stash reminded me of how little I've been knitting recently, what with trying to work on the chapter and finishing up the teaching. (And knitting three R2D-toques in a month kind of necessitated a bit of a break.) If it wasn't for our semi-regular Stitch and Bitches, I don't think I would ever pick up the needles.

Or, in other words...

I can stop any time I want to. No, really.

Floaty thoughts

Lack of sleep leads to inability to form coherent paragraphs, so herewith my point-form blog entry:

1. With all the questions about whether Earth Hour actually reduces a significant amount of carbon dioxide, perhaps we should just be thankful that it encouraged people to think about consuming less, in general.
2. I spent Earth Hour at the (lit) dwelling of a friend of mine, who hosted a clothing swap where everyone came with unwanted clothing and left with other people's unwanted clothing (that fit. and looked good. For the most part). Leftovers went to charity and photos are here. We rationalized the need for electric lighting (candlelight is inaccurately flattering and impractical for our purposes) by noting that while one apartment was lit, the homes of all the guests were dark. Also, the clothing swap enabled us to reuse goods (clothing) and reduce our consumption of new clothing (in others, I don't need to go shopping for a while).
   
3. It has been a week of material lightening; in addition to raiding my closet for the clothing swap, I also culled books for a charity book sale. Good bye, third copy of Bridget Jones's Diary.
   
4. The workload, ironically, gets heavier as the end of term means essays and more marking.
5. I'm trying to figure out why this story about an abstinence club at Harvard annoys me so much that I currently can't get past the third page. Is it the sensationalist spin taken by the article writer? The puritanical leanings of some of the club's predessors at other universities? The article's attitude towards the club's female leader or her attitude about what she's doing? Is it the headline's use of the more value-loaded word "chastity" vs. my (to my mind) more neutral "abstinence"? I might get back to you on that one.
6. I bought a bottle of "reward wine" for when I finish writing chapter two. As of today, I have... 100% of it left to write. I'll get back to you on that one, too.
   

Sweet Valley High (on a diet)

There's been a lot of comment online about the rerelease of the ghostwritten-by-committee young adult novel series Sweet Valley High that was immensely popular in the 1980s and 1990s, specifically the modern updating of the twins from size 6 to size 4. I agree that it's stupid (why provide their sizes at all?) and unnecessary.

But why hasn't anyone really pointed out...

That the books aren't that good to begin with? Predictable, soapy, formulaic, they suffered due to the episodic nature of the series (Jessica, forget all the lessons you learned in the previous book!) and the writing was straightforward without being at all interesting. I wasn't obsessed with SVH like some of my classmates were in junior high; I just couldn't get on board with a series where you could see the ending by chapter three.

Does someone want to explain to me...

why toilet paper commercials must prominently feature cute animals?

Cases in point:

TP#1, which, if the Youtube description is to be trusted, has been using (secretly demonic?) fluffly white kittens in its TV ads since 1969.



TP#2, which demonstrates animated proof that indeed, bears do shit in the woods.



And finally, TP#3, which features a puppy sniffing human butts (apparently other puppies were not cheekily available). Your tolerance of this commercial will depend on your feelings on Zach Braff, who gives voice to the pup's interior monologue. (Shakespeare it's not.)



I suppose toilet paper is difficult to advertise, associated as it is with perfectly natural but impolite bodily functions. I'm just not sure if cute animals are really the best approach.

50 greatest books (available in English, by dead white men whom you've all heard of)

I have been following with increasing dread the Globe and Mail's Book section series of the 50 Greatest Books ever written. Not because I don't think people should read (of course I do!) or that lists like this seem rather arbitrary (they will at least spur discussion). But frankly, the list has been kind of... predictable.

Let's see: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, James Joyce's Ulysses, The Confessions of St. Augustine, Marx's Das Capital, Proust's In Search of Lost Time, Dante's Divine Comedy. Bonus points for Origin of Species, but points taken away for another famous dead white guy (Charles Darwin).

Okay, fine, yes. I'm going to rehash the "dead white guy" argument. Look, I know that one reason a disproportionate number of books are written by dead white men is because the number of educated white men has historically been high compared to educated women and/or minorities. (I also know that there are currently more dead authors than live authors.) But my issue with the list isn't that the books so far have been written by dead white guys, but what the preponderonce of dead white male authors suggests—that the list will tell us nothing new or encourage us to re-think what it means to be a "great" book. Many of the chosen books are of great historical import, but any undergraduate student currently making his/her way through a liberal arts degree will encounter many of them in time. In fact, an undergrad student of 40 years ago would have encountered many of these books in time. At the rate the exercise is going, the list is beginning to look like the "great hits of the Western canon."

Every week, I have greeted the announcement of the next "great book" with a deflated resignation and a touch of resentment. Oh, Machievelli's The Prince! How original! How exciting! How daring to select a book by an author whose name has entered everyday vocabulary, becoming synonymous with ruthless dictatorial actions, on the basis of this book.

There are any number of "great books" lists in the world, fiction and nonfiction, all easily found on Google. There is even a list of great books lists! Considering all of this, the Globe and Mail list seems redundant at best and frankly, a little wanky at worst.

And to test my precognitive abilities, herewith are my guesses for books that will appear on the Globe's list of the 50 Greatest Books E-VAH:

Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Paradise Lost, by John Milton (unles Dante's Divine Comedy cancelled it out in the balloting?)
The Republic, by some guy named Plato
The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes
The Cantebury Tales, by Chaucer
something by Nietzsche
War and Peace

Some off-the-wall guesses:
Johnson's Dictionary (or possibly the Oxford English Dictionary, but Johnson's came first)
Strunk and White's The Elements of Style
Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

And if an Austen novel does make the list, I hope it's the superior Emma, rather than the go-to Pride and Prejudice.

What constitutes plagiarism?

A Ryerson student is facing academic misconduct charges because his professor found out that he's the administrator of a study group on Facebook.

The student compares the study group to peer tutoring or study groups that meet in person, making it a part of his argument that what he's doing isn't cheating. The university alleges... well, frankly, it's unclear what the university alleges, except that students can't get away with things that they do online.... A university representative also noted generally that students must do their own work.

The story prompts more questions than it answers, specifically:

1. Exactly what was going on in the study group? Were students merely getting help from each other on general concepts or were they specifically asking about questions on assignments? If so, did students actually provide other students with the answers on assignments? If yes, that would be cheating since students wouldn't have done their own work. But...
2. How can the university prove this? Does it have printouts of the group's discussion boards and wall posts?
3. How would this differ from a library study group or peer tutoring? And if it doesn't, does that also mean that library study groups and peer tutoring constitute cheating?
4. What about the possibility that students can help other students learn since they can explain things differently than the prof did in class? That sometimes hearing an explanation the second time or being able to ask questions about it makes a difference? Should students only learn from profs and text books?
   
5. How many first-year Engineering students even know exactly what constitutes cheating? High school students help each other with homework all the time (I remember many phone calls about math homework in my day, and a few years later I'm sure it would have been all MSN instant messaging). Students aren't going to know that practices established earlier might be unacceptable in university. While "not knowing" does not mitigate the offence, the institution still has an obligation to make its students aware of proper and improper academic conduct.
6. Why on earth is Ryerson charging the student with 147 counts of academic misconduct (one for him, one for each member of the group)? The excessiveness smacks of bullying and heavy handed "let's make an example of this one".
7. Don't you think that the study group members have now started a new Facebook group with more stringent privacy settings?

I hate to break it to Ryerson, but students have been "helping" each other with their homework since the dawn of homework. This particular student got "caught" because there must have been a Facebook record.

Incidentally, I don't know why people are all up in arms about a Facebook study group when 100% improper and unethical essay mills get to advertise in the guise of a Facebook group.