The weather channel is saying the gusts of wind outside are hitting 75 km/hr (that's almost 50mph for those metric-illiterate). I suspect out here near the edge of the city, we're feeling it even more than people protected by the buildings.
I thought I was just that tired. But no, those gusts are strong enough that the house actually shakes with a few of them. Even my computer monitor is wobbling on the desk, the wind is blowing so hard.
Last week, I tried to run in this kind of weather - the gusts were only 60kph, but even then, I felt like I was running fully steam uphill when I was going into the wind, even though it looked like I was almost standing still. Made me feel old and out of shape. At one point when I rounded a corner and the wind angle changed, it almost ripped the ear buds of my mp3 player right out of my ears!
Today? Thank god for the treadmill. It's boring, but at least it won't steal my breath away!
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Monday, January 29, 2007
Flying beer cans
Got directed to this cartoonist's site: Pearls before Swine by a friend. I especially like Friday's cartoon - hope you enjoy it too!
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Passport woes
So, the rumours you've been hearing about long wait times at Canadian passport offices? Yep, they're all true.
Stood in line 4 1/2 hours yesterday to try to get new passports for myself and two kids since they expire in a couple of months and we'll be travelling within that time. It's supposed to be easier to get it if you fill out the application form online first, but you can't do that for a children's application, which I had of course. Also, the lineup for the south office is supposed to be shorter, but because the building is smaller, it snakes outside for most of the time, so I went to the downtown office, where although I waited a bit longer, I was inside the whole time. Which was nice because there was a wicked wind blowing that day that would've felt really chilly.
The thing that surprised me the most about the line was not so much it's length (though that was a bit shocking) as the people in it. There were a few expressions of the wow-this-line-is-really-long kind, mostly at the beginning when we first started lining up, but other than that, everyone waited pretty patiently. Sure, the kids were running around, bored out of their minds (and I forgot my mp3 player, so had to listen to ALL of it), but aside from a few conversations here and there, people mostly waited patiently for the line to move forward.
It got me thinking about the last time I was in a government office waiting for a long time. I'm not sure if it was the Social Security office, or the DMV, but either way, the waiting people there were certainly much more boisterous about the whole affair. I know the last time I was at the DMV, there was one gentleman who kept following us around, talking to us, and another who was demanding rather loudly to be served (and who was promptly escorted out by security).
Although there was a sign at the passport office telling people that if they were harassing they wouldn't be served (much like the signs at the DMV) the mood of the crowd was such that I would've been surprised to hear anyone complain. Mostly, people stood quietly, or talked amongst themselves.
Now maybe the comparison of the group at a Social Security office and a passport office isn't fair - there isn't probably much of an overlap between the two groups. But at the same time it makes me wonder if in addition to spelling and pronunciation, we also inherited the British facility for queuing.
Stood in line 4 1/2 hours yesterday to try to get new passports for myself and two kids since they expire in a couple of months and we'll be travelling within that time. It's supposed to be easier to get it if you fill out the application form online first, but you can't do that for a children's application, which I had of course. Also, the lineup for the south office is supposed to be shorter, but because the building is smaller, it snakes outside for most of the time, so I went to the downtown office, where although I waited a bit longer, I was inside the whole time. Which was nice because there was a wicked wind blowing that day that would've felt really chilly.
The thing that surprised me the most about the line was not so much it's length (though that was a bit shocking) as the people in it. There were a few expressions of the wow-this-line-is-really-long kind, mostly at the beginning when we first started lining up, but other than that, everyone waited pretty patiently. Sure, the kids were running around, bored out of their minds (and I forgot my mp3 player, so had to listen to ALL of it), but aside from a few conversations here and there, people mostly waited patiently for the line to move forward.
It got me thinking about the last time I was in a government office waiting for a long time. I'm not sure if it was the Social Security office, or the DMV, but either way, the waiting people there were certainly much more boisterous about the whole affair. I know the last time I was at the DMV, there was one gentleman who kept following us around, talking to us, and another who was demanding rather loudly to be served (and who was promptly escorted out by security).
Although there was a sign at the passport office telling people that if they were harassing they wouldn't be served (much like the signs at the DMV) the mood of the crowd was such that I would've been surprised to hear anyone complain. Mostly, people stood quietly, or talked amongst themselves.
Now maybe the comparison of the group at a Social Security office and a passport office isn't fair - there isn't probably much of an overlap between the two groups. But at the same time it makes me wonder if in addition to spelling and pronunciation, we also inherited the British facility for queuing.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
The language may be different, but we're really talking about the same thing
I had a meeting for work today that wasn't quite what I expected or was used to. It actually went better than I thought, mostly because the person who I thought would create the most waves seems to have not read the document I sent out at the beginning of the week. I'm not one to get offended if you don't read what I write, so it worked out well.
It was the biggest meeting I've been in to date - 6 of us - which might not seem like much, but most of my meetings have been with 2 or 3 people at the most. I wasn't looking forward to it because I suspected it would drag on - it did - but it consoled me in some ways because it quelled some misgivings I'd been having about this job.
I took the position because I had the experience to pull it off and I thought it was close enough to my career goals that I could actually include it on a cv. (Even at my most creative, I don't think I could make coffee schlepping at Tim Horton's into a line on the cv) But much of the work I began with was mundane or seemed far removed from academia.
But today's meeting made me realize it's really just a question of a different vocabulary. It was a pre-production meeting, where we were hammering out the aesthetics and optics of how we wanted to present the content that I'd developed for our project. We've already done one project with the same host website, so it needs to look similar to the existing project, which gave us a basic framework to start from. But we still needed to think about how this particular project will demand a different approach, and what tone we want to take with it as well as what combination of text, image, video, and audio we wanted. As we talked about it, I began to realize that our talk of users and scripts was really the same thing as audience and voice that we talk about in academia.
I had been afraid that my work for this company might be perceived as lying too far afield from my academic work, so I was pleasantly surprised to realize much of what we were talking about was the same things we talk about when writing within the academy. We just use different words.
True, I've really only talked of audience and voice in the context of teaching writing composition to undergrads, and not really in terms of my own scholarly work, but there's something to be said for paying attention to audience and voice in scholarly work that I don't think we get much instruction in as graduate students. Perhaps that's because we're supposed to know this and I'm the only one who doesn't. But if recent research, like the article in this year's edition of Profession put out by the MLA is any indication, I'm not the only one who isn't taught this stuff. Maybe it would make moving from student to scholar a clearer transition if we did talk more about audience and voice in the context of say, the dissertation. But that might be a post for another day.
It was the biggest meeting I've been in to date - 6 of us - which might not seem like much, but most of my meetings have been with 2 or 3 people at the most. I wasn't looking forward to it because I suspected it would drag on - it did - but it consoled me in some ways because it quelled some misgivings I'd been having about this job.
I took the position because I had the experience to pull it off and I thought it was close enough to my career goals that I could actually include it on a cv. (Even at my most creative, I don't think I could make coffee schlepping at Tim Horton's into a line on the cv) But much of the work I began with was mundane or seemed far removed from academia.
But today's meeting made me realize it's really just a question of a different vocabulary. It was a pre-production meeting, where we were hammering out the aesthetics and optics of how we wanted to present the content that I'd developed for our project. We've already done one project with the same host website, so it needs to look similar to the existing project, which gave us a basic framework to start from. But we still needed to think about how this particular project will demand a different approach, and what tone we want to take with it as well as what combination of text, image, video, and audio we wanted. As we talked about it, I began to realize that our talk of users and scripts was really the same thing as audience and voice that we talk about in academia.
I had been afraid that my work for this company might be perceived as lying too far afield from my academic work, so I was pleasantly surprised to realize much of what we were talking about was the same things we talk about when writing within the academy. We just use different words.
True, I've really only talked of audience and voice in the context of teaching writing composition to undergrads, and not really in terms of my own scholarly work, but there's something to be said for paying attention to audience and voice in scholarly work that I don't think we get much instruction in as graduate students. Perhaps that's because we're supposed to know this and I'm the only one who doesn't. But if recent research, like the article in this year's edition of Profession put out by the MLA is any indication, I'm not the only one who isn't taught this stuff. Maybe it would make moving from student to scholar a clearer transition if we did talk more about audience and voice in the context of say, the dissertation. But that might be a post for another day.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
What's in a name?
Did you know that Dolly the sheep - you know, the one that was cloned - was named after Dolly Parton? Apparently one of the stockmen who helped deliver her came to name her after the chesty country singer because Dolly was cloned from a mammary cell. One of my coworkers found this out recently and couldn't wait to tell someone. My boss's question about how my dissertation on clones and cyborgs was going gave him the perfect opportunity.
...I wonder if there's a place for Dolly in my dissertation...
Friday, January 19, 2007
All dried up
Not much blogging. Plenty happening. Just don't know how to blog it.
Instead, some retro-blogging.
Last year today, I was contemplating oldest daughter's plans to leave.
The year before that, I had just heard my grandmother died.
And the year before that, I apparently thought readers might be interested in what I was reading myself.
Instead, some retro-blogging.
Last year today, I was contemplating oldest daughter's plans to leave.
The year before that, I had just heard my grandmother died.
And the year before that, I apparently thought readers might be interested in what I was reading myself.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Time flies
It's hard to believe that this day last year I was preparing to write my exams. It seems both longer than a year ago, and shorter at the same time.
I remember even before my exams being very excited about the possibility of working on my own stuff, and I suppose that's part of why it 'feels like it was so long ago' because I haven't been working on my own stuff - I've been trying to slog through stuff other people want me to do in order to get their approval so that I can finally do my own stuff! At least the end is in sight.
But at the same time, work is starting to really heat up and it's demanding more of my time these days. On the other hand, I think we're finally getting the grad conference planning under control, so I hopefully can spend a bit less time emailing the other committee members about that.
It is true that work expands to fill the time available, isn't it?
I remember even before my exams being very excited about the possibility of working on my own stuff, and I suppose that's part of why it 'feels like it was so long ago' because I haven't been working on my own stuff - I've been trying to slog through stuff other people want me to do in order to get their approval so that I can finally do my own stuff! At least the end is in sight.
But at the same time, work is starting to really heat up and it's demanding more of my time these days. On the other hand, I think we're finally getting the grad conference planning under control, so I hopefully can spend a bit less time emailing the other committee members about that.
It is true that work expands to fill the time available, isn't it?
Spiders On Drugs
The Hinterland Who's Who is one of those childhood memories that anyone my age will remember from Canadian tv, but this one puts a new twist on an old (and tired) educational media spot.
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Strings
A while back I wrote a post about storyworlds, mentioning one of the key features of a fictional storyworld being internal cohesion. In any non-realist narrative, the rules of the world have to be consistent within the story frame. We all know the frustration of watching movies or reading stories where something happens that's difficult to believe because it lies outside the realm of possibility.
When you're making a film with puppets, well, then your storyworld has to not only be consistent from the perspective of its narrative, but you have to respect the nature of the medium - the puppet - in telling the story.
The Ronnie Burkett show we saw a few months ago, while it didn't foreground the puppeteer, kept him in the audience's view, so that as an audience member, you always saw him and could not forget about the presence of the puppeteer. You saw Ronnie at all times, so you were hyper aware of his movements, and at some points in the narrative, I found myself following the puppeteer, watching him create the show, rather than watching the puppets themselves and attending to their storyline.
During that show, when Burkett got some strings tangled, the audience could see his embarassment, but also delighted in his deviation from the script by inserting a comment about the tangled strings into the mouths of the puppets themselves. Had the puppeteer been hidden during those comments, they would've ruined the storyworld created by the narrative by reminding the audience of the puppeteer. As such, they simply reinforced the audience's awareness of his manipulation of the puppets. In some ways, Burkett's show mirrored metafiction's foregrounding of the author as producer of the text e.g. Calvino's If on a Winter's Night.
Strings (2004) is a movie without a terribly original plot line - royalty, betrayal, love, a quest, death - but it uses puppets to tell the story. What is unusual about the movie is that it, like Burkett's show, does not attempt to hide the strings attached to the puppets (though unlike Burkett's show, we do not see the puppeteers).
Instead, the narrative uses the strings as a way of creating the storyworld.
The strings of a puppet are essentially its lifeline. A puppet cannot come to life without strings, and the realism of a puppet's movement depends on the skillful manipulation of those strings by the puppeteer. In this story, the strings are not just metaphorically the puppet's lifeline - they are its lifeline within the world.
When a puppet's head string is cut, it immediately dies, though puppets can also die if enough of their other strings are cut. But being puppets, with interchangeable parts, they also have the advantage over humans when it comes to regeneration. One of the early scenes in the movie shows the prince having his hand string cut off. All he needed to do was call down to the dungeon, have a hand removed from a slave, and attach it to his body in place of the broken one.
The storyworld rules with the strings going high up into the heavens, beyond sight, mean that a puppet can never go underneath something. So their gates are like reverse portcullises, rising up out of the ground to a height that no puppet could jump, and no puppet can traverse past because the bar prevents their strings from moving forward.
Consequently, all of their buildings are roofless, and with the rain, you can tell who are the oldest puppets because the wood of their bodies shows their long exposure to the elements. Also, in the dungeon, puppets are locked up by dropping them through a grid, so that they can't move outside the lines of the grid.
When a puppet is born, its mother develops a second set of strings that are intertwined with her own. Meanwhile, a baby is carved in preparation to receiving those strings - in the movie, it is the father who is carving the baby, but since it's the only birth we witness during the story, the narrative doesn't indicate whether other people might also be charged with carving the baby. When it comes time, the mother can tell, and she needs the assistance of someone else. The strings that are intertwined with her own life strings start to loosen and that other person - the midwife - grabs the strings before they break (they're fragile at this point) and inserts them into the carved baby. The strings then change color and thickness, as they carry life to the child. When all the strings are attached, the child is alive.
The film is an excellent of example of a storyworld axiom: puppet strings are really its lifeline and extend high into the heavens, that is then carried to its logical conclusion in every aspect of that world. It's like imagining if everyone could change their gender whenever they want to, or that dragons can fly - the axiom is adhered to in every aspect of the character's lives. It's a very involved storyworld, and even though the plot is particularly clever, it's worth watching just to see how the plot unfolds within the confines of the storyworld's rules.
When you're making a film with puppets, well, then your storyworld has to not only be consistent from the perspective of its narrative, but you have to respect the nature of the medium - the puppet - in telling the story.
The Ronnie Burkett show we saw a few months ago, while it didn't foreground the puppeteer, kept him in the audience's view, so that as an audience member, you always saw him and could not forget about the presence of the puppeteer. You saw Ronnie at all times, so you were hyper aware of his movements, and at some points in the narrative, I found myself following the puppeteer, watching him create the show, rather than watching the puppets themselves and attending to their storyline.
During that show, when Burkett got some strings tangled, the audience could see his embarassment, but also delighted in his deviation from the script by inserting a comment about the tangled strings into the mouths of the puppets themselves. Had the puppeteer been hidden during those comments, they would've ruined the storyworld created by the narrative by reminding the audience of the puppeteer. As such, they simply reinforced the audience's awareness of his manipulation of the puppets. In some ways, Burkett's show mirrored metafiction's foregrounding of the author as producer of the text e.g. Calvino's If on a Winter's Night.
Strings (2004) is a movie without a terribly original plot line - royalty, betrayal, love, a quest, death - but it uses puppets to tell the story. What is unusual about the movie is that it, like Burkett's show, does not attempt to hide the strings attached to the puppets (though unlike Burkett's show, we do not see the puppeteers). Instead, the narrative uses the strings as a way of creating the storyworld.
The strings of a puppet are essentially its lifeline. A puppet cannot come to life without strings, and the realism of a puppet's movement depends on the skillful manipulation of those strings by the puppeteer. In this story, the strings are not just metaphorically the puppet's lifeline - they are its lifeline within the world.
When a puppet's head string is cut, it immediately dies, though puppets can also die if enough of their other strings are cut. But being puppets, with interchangeable parts, they also have the advantage over humans when it comes to regeneration. One of the early scenes in the movie shows the prince having his hand string cut off. All he needed to do was call down to the dungeon, have a hand removed from a slave, and attach it to his body in place of the broken one.
The storyworld rules with the strings going high up into the heavens, beyond sight, mean that a puppet can never go underneath something. So their gates are like reverse portcullises, rising up out of the ground to a height that no puppet could jump, and no puppet can traverse past because the bar prevents their strings from moving forward.
Consequently, all of their buildings are roofless, and with the rain, you can tell who are the oldest puppets because the wood of their bodies shows their long exposure to the elements. Also, in the dungeon, puppets are locked up by dropping them through a grid, so that they can't move outside the lines of the grid.
When a puppet is born, its mother develops a second set of strings that are intertwined with her own. Meanwhile, a baby is carved in preparation to receiving those strings - in the movie, it is the father who is carving the baby, but since it's the only birth we witness during the story, the narrative doesn't indicate whether other people might also be charged with carving the baby. When it comes time, the mother can tell, and she needs the assistance of someone else. The strings that are intertwined with her own life strings start to loosen and that other person - the midwife - grabs the strings before they break (they're fragile at this point) and inserts them into the carved baby. The strings then change color and thickness, as they carry life to the child. When all the strings are attached, the child is alive.The film is an excellent of example of a storyworld axiom: puppet strings are really its lifeline and extend high into the heavens, that is then carried to its logical conclusion in every aspect of that world. It's like imagining if everyone could change their gender whenever they want to, or that dragons can fly - the axiom is adhered to in every aspect of the character's lives. It's a very involved storyworld, and even though the plot is particularly clever, it's worth watching just to see how the plot unfolds within the confines of the storyworld's rules.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
Unintended effect
In a strange kind of Eisensteinian montage moment, I found myself making connections between two back-to-back commercials that I doubt the advertisers had intended.
First, a commercial from Fidelity Investments about rolling all your old 401ks into a single IRA to maximize your retirement savings. This was immediately followed by a commercial from Osteo-BiFlex featuring a 77 year old woman who still works as a waitress. She says, "I’m 77 years old and I work as a waitress. I work 10, 12, 14 hours a day… I just couldn’t do it without Osteo-BiFlex."
Maybe she wouldn't have to do it if she'd listened to Fidelity...
First, a commercial from Fidelity Investments about rolling all your old 401ks into a single IRA to maximize your retirement savings. This was immediately followed by a commercial from Osteo-BiFlex featuring a 77 year old woman who still works as a waitress. She says, "I’m 77 years old and I work as a waitress. I work 10, 12, 14 hours a day… I just couldn’t do it without Osteo-BiFlex."
Maybe she wouldn't have to do it if she'd listened to Fidelity...
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Dissertation fix
I've been jonesing for my dissertation lately, and the Christmas break finally gave me a chance to work on it.
Yep, I'd say it was a bit of a compulsion, and having the chance to put other projects aside (and work) for a week and spend some time reading the stuff I really want to read was such a relief, the only thing I can compare it to would be how it would feel to have a cigarette again. Getting back to the stuff I want to read might not quite be that lightheaded, relaxed feeling I would get from a puff, but it sure did feel good.
Not that I haven't been doing work on the dissertation, but for the last two months, I've been responding to a reviewer's request to add material that holds little interest for me, and it's been tough going.
It's also taken me a long time to adjust to my new line of work. It's not that I'm working a lot, but that I'm unsure of what I'm doing, so I spend a lot of time thinking about it when I'm not actually working, which eats into time I could be spending reading things I really want to read!
So I finally got to read some criticism on cyberspace, and a book about Star Wars (only marginally relevant, but on my to do list) and I felt reinvigorated about the dissertation. Now I even feel like I can slog through the rest of the material my one reviewer told me to read 'cause I'm remembering what I'm in this for.
So one of my new years resolutions? Not to quit this compulsion, but to encourage it. Unconventional for a resolution, but if it works, who am I to worry about protocol?
Yep, I'd say it was a bit of a compulsion, and having the chance to put other projects aside (and work) for a week and spend some time reading the stuff I really want to read was such a relief, the only thing I can compare it to would be how it would feel to have a cigarette again. Getting back to the stuff I want to read might not quite be that lightheaded, relaxed feeling I would get from a puff, but it sure did feel good.
Not that I haven't been doing work on the dissertation, but for the last two months, I've been responding to a reviewer's request to add material that holds little interest for me, and it's been tough going.
It's also taken me a long time to adjust to my new line of work. It's not that I'm working a lot, but that I'm unsure of what I'm doing, so I spend a lot of time thinking about it when I'm not actually working, which eats into time I could be spending reading things I really want to read!
So I finally got to read some criticism on cyberspace, and a book about Star Wars (only marginally relevant, but on my to do list) and I felt reinvigorated about the dissertation. Now I even feel like I can slog through the rest of the material my one reviewer told me to read 'cause I'm remembering what I'm in this for.
So one of my new years resolutions? Not to quit this compulsion, but to encourage it. Unconventional for a resolution, but if it works, who am I to worry about protocol?
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