Spacetime Tales
TED Talks
24/02/07 20:05
Have I beaten all of
you over the head about TED yet? Have I harangued and ordered you
to go to the
website, to subscribe to
the RSS
feed? Well here's a video
to watch at slugass Youtube speeds, just for a taste.
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Blue Monday, One Week Late, Waiting for you, Grandma Jo
31/01/07 00:07
Turns out that the
worst day of the year got delayed in the mail, coming a week behind
schedule to coincide with me breaking up with my girlfriend and the
death of my great grandma Jo. I cancelled my private class and told
the school I wasn't coming in, losing out on the same $240 I was
touting last monday. Moments like those really emphasize the
distance, the unmitigable distance that separates me from those who
matter most, the distance that, in moments of crisis, becomes
impenetrable to the best of our telecommunication devices.
I knew little of my Great Grandma. She was stubborn and liked to be difficult. I recall her not understanding my sloppy Canadian English, remember her sitting to watch fox news down in a Californian trailer park of sorts, remember her kindness when I was 17 and saw her last, despite my blindness of grief at being away from my first real girlfriend. I remember her phone calls wherein she always asked, "is this Dylan?" getting me and my brother mixed up, phone calls which stopped coming without me noticing.
So here I am, an ocean away, my most ancient living ancestor now dead. I didn't know the extent of her senility, that she scarcely remembered her son when he saw her last, didn't know her or what she did with the last 20 years of life, what she thought or felt, where she came from. I can conjure all sorts of sociological theory about broken genealogies with trans-Atlantic migration, all of the reasons as to why the average Canadian's sense of self is cobbled together from pop-culture and a malformed sense of being from 'over there' historically. Ultimately, I just feel like a shit grandson, the terminus of an ancient chain spanning back into the past whose opposite end just lost another link into the gaping maw of vacuum, the gears of that most terrible machine.
Perhaps I mourned myself in advance, that 3 short generations hence my great grandchildren will just as soon veg out in front of that era's opiate of choice as learn a little of their ancient patriarch, who toiled to create a world for them, who knew just as little of his own ancestors. For the indignity of hollow memory, that final fading resting place for us all, I ask for forgiveness, Josephine.
I knew little of my Great Grandma. She was stubborn and liked to be difficult. I recall her not understanding my sloppy Canadian English, remember her sitting to watch fox news down in a Californian trailer park of sorts, remember her kindness when I was 17 and saw her last, despite my blindness of grief at being away from my first real girlfriend. I remember her phone calls wherein she always asked, "is this Dylan?" getting me and my brother mixed up, phone calls which stopped coming without me noticing.
So here I am, an ocean away, my most ancient living ancestor now dead. I didn't know the extent of her senility, that she scarcely remembered her son when he saw her last, didn't know her or what she did with the last 20 years of life, what she thought or felt, where she came from. I can conjure all sorts of sociological theory about broken genealogies with trans-Atlantic migration, all of the reasons as to why the average Canadian's sense of self is cobbled together from pop-culture and a malformed sense of being from 'over there' historically. Ultimately, I just feel like a shit grandson, the terminus of an ancient chain spanning back into the past whose opposite end just lost another link into the gaping maw of vacuum, the gears of that most terrible machine.
Perhaps I mourned myself in advance, that 3 short generations hence my great grandchildren will just as soon veg out in front of that era's opiate of choice as learn a little of their ancient patriarch, who toiled to create a world for them, who knew just as little of his own ancestors. For the indignity of hollow memory, that final fading resting place for us all, I ask for forgiveness, Josephine.
Bend Sinister
24/01/07 09:38
Time to give a little
love. My friend Naben's band,
Bend
Sinister, has put out
their first music video and it is pretty cool.
If you are around Vancouver you can see them play fairly frequently
- as for another Canadian tour, I don't think one is in the works
for the moment, but their site has all upcoming show
details.
Blue Monday - How was yours?
23/01/07 22:43
Some blogger am I,
forgetting to post about something relevant and then doing it in
retrospect. If you hadn't heard, monday was calculated to be the
worst day of the year. The main reasons are: the parties are all
over, the visa bill from xmas shopping has just arrived, and most
initial steam from a resolution has been lost by this point.
Mine was pretty great! I taught a couple hours in the morning and then headed to work until 9. The total daily (7.5hrs) wage, about $230CAD, is more than I have ever earned in a day, so that felt good. Then I dropped off some teaching materials at the home of a truly inspirational duo - Tad and Anthony. I met Anthony this summer and he is the guy that has hooked me up with some classes and given me a lot of kickass advice. He's also the guy that inspired me to ditch my job situation, because he, doing private lessons exclusively, works 3 months, then takes 3 months off to travel, year round. Tad is his tagteam partner, and he stays at Anthony's place when they switch. It isn't often that I meet someone with whom I have a lot in common, but this was epic. We talked hiking gear, travel, teaching, English lit (same degree), Macs, Mac software, personal productivity, the same sites we both have RSS feeds to -- it was shocking. Normally I would tenuously venture, "Have you heard of Getting Things Done?" But not only had he heard of it, he was implementing it with damn near the same software, freeware, pda and pda sync set up as me! He was reading the same geeky sites about Getting Things Done and similarly waiting anxiously for that stopgap program destined to come out soon.
I dropped by at 9:30 and ended up staying until nearly midnight -- not a bad Blue Monday at all!
Mine was pretty great! I taught a couple hours in the morning and then headed to work until 9. The total daily (7.5hrs) wage, about $230CAD, is more than I have ever earned in a day, so that felt good. Then I dropped off some teaching materials at the home of a truly inspirational duo - Tad and Anthony. I met Anthony this summer and he is the guy that has hooked me up with some classes and given me a lot of kickass advice. He's also the guy that inspired me to ditch my job situation, because he, doing private lessons exclusively, works 3 months, then takes 3 months off to travel, year round. Tad is his tagteam partner, and he stays at Anthony's place when they switch. It isn't often that I meet someone with whom I have a lot in common, but this was epic. We talked hiking gear, travel, teaching, English lit (same degree), Macs, Mac software, personal productivity, the same sites we both have RSS feeds to -- it was shocking. Normally I would tenuously venture, "Have you heard of Getting Things Done?" But not only had he heard of it, he was implementing it with damn near the same software, freeware, pda and pda sync set up as me! He was reading the same geeky sites about Getting Things Done and similarly waiting anxiously for that stopgap program destined to come out soon.
I dropped by at 9:30 and ended up staying until nearly midnight -- not a bad Blue Monday at all!
Kyoto
08/01/07 11:03