cam

12:24 am: i love it here
aceart currently has an installation on consisting of a gigantic, wooden slope constructed in the gallery. things i have witnessed on the slope in the last five days include:

*a secret film screening

*a concert of accordion-based music with improvisational tuba, slope-as-group-percussion implement, and slide projection, also featuring a significant number of people waltzing

*liz from aceart playing the theme from beverley hills cop on keyboard with amanda from urban providing dance moves

*this, this, and this

there's also plans for a giant pie fight in the next few weeks. winnipeg is basically the best.

05:54 pm: just home from folk fest a couple of hours ago, and subsequently had what always turns out to be the Shower of the Year - four days of camping-related god-knows-what pours down the drain.

amazing weekend: i'm totally burned out and a shade of deep red-brown; saw the great lakes swimmers, neko case, iron & wine, gentleman reg and lots of others; lots of prairie sunsets; campfire dinners prepared by a four star chef; friends galore - it's kind of like my annual tune-up.

coffee and smokes, now.

02:05 am: i just participated in the traditional, Manitoban Juice Newton thirtieth birthday circle dance. life is grand.

also, i invite your comment on the following, whiskey-laden hypothesis: shania twain, wynonna judd, juice newton and anne murray are the prairie fag's equivalent for cher, bette midler, alanis morissette and barbra streisand, respectively.

01:16 am: five
( five authors: )

09:02 pm: it's nine pm and full daylight and i'm half-cut on bad whiskey and probably getting ready to go out, so i suppose it's officially summer, and here's a meme i stole from idance2anything:

( 1. You can ONLY answer Yes or No! )

in other news, i dropped $85 on bedding plants today, and nearly bought some cut-rate mennonites but instead opted for a pair of old $5 ice skates.

11:09 pm: so basically i'm awesome
itunes tells me that i've listened to islands in the stream 34 times since downloading it a couple months ago.

11:49 pm: i died a dozen times tonight
just back from leonard cohen; it couldn't have been any better or more poignant, truly.

11:47 pm: you know how when you click on a hyperlink it turns purple? this sometimes has alarming manifestations - like a couple of seconds ago when i discovered that at some point i had already visited a page on the complete discography of toad the wet sprocket.

it's been a really stressful couple of days.

10:17 am: a mcsweeney's i find particularly hilarious

Actual Examples of Model Conversational Phrases That the Travel Guide
Les Etats-Unis Dans Votre Poche: Edition Bilingue (Haiter, 1980) Felt Were So Central to the Experiences Likely to be Undergone by French Visitors to America That It Included Them on Its Companion Study Cassette Tape.

BY BETH MAYNARD

- - - -

* It's enough to make you sick.
* But these jumbo jets are quite comfortable.
* To put it in a nutshell, you can't escape the fact that you're a product of capitalist culture.
* Well, crash pads are kinds of very cheap hostels, or rather shelters where you can spend the night for 25 or 50 cents, sometimes for no charge at all.
* Yeah! I'll bet if you laid those burgers end-to-end they would reach to the moon. Let's go try one, shall we?
* Are you alluding to the multinational corporations?
* Where's the fine democratic American melting pot?
* Better keep our strength to investigate some of those famous Kentucky bourbons they serve around here.
* Mobile-home living has really come a long way.
* We often wonder what is the true design of that remarkable and monolithic society. Yours is a complex subject.
* I'm never lucky at these kinds of luck things.
* We're becoming homogenized, pasteurized robots.
* Hello! We're visitors in Chicago and we were noticing all these security precautions you take to protect your store. Is all this really necessary?
* If you really want to help us, Jim, let us manage our own affairs.
* All right, wage slave, don't get mad! Get back to your toil before they sack you for goldbricking!
* I found your great optimism, your vision of a rosy future, to be encouraging and, shall I say, "seductively" infectious. But I also expect that you and I have different eyeglasses when we look at the current world economy crisis.
* That's not expensive, honey, that's "Dream Whip."
* It's no secret that the CIA operates in South America mostly to protect American business interests. Witness that ugly disclosure, some time back, that the CIA helped overthrow President Allende in Chile to prevent nationalization of more U.S. firms there.
* Fascination indeed!
* I never dreamed they were so religious here.
* Hey, let's change the channel.

12:14 am: the entirety of my weekend spent outdoors was done so in a hoodie under a thin wool jacket; i'm getting prepped for seed-sowing, and it's light until nearly eight: the will to live has returned. and oh yes - possible thunderstorm tonight (please!)

08:33 pm: well my friends are gone and my hair is grey/i ache in the places where i used to play
*****

QUIZ!

a friday evening that begins with whiskey on the rocks in the bathtub while listening to leonard cohen can only end in:

a) euphoric things
b) horrific things

i'm going on an indefinite sabbatical to europa, the lesser of the galilean moons of jupiter. i'll be sure to write.

08:10 am: this is the best thing

05:07 pm: an ode to my new bff
okay, forgive the repetitious prostheletyzing here, but i would once again like to heartily extol the virtues of the slow cooker for those of you who are uninitiated. i've got what promises to be a delicious lentil sloppy-joe concoction a-cookin' right now, the recipe for which was lifted from an amazing book of vegetarian slow cookery, (which i will reveal the title of only on request, for fear that you will put a hold on the library's copy thereby forcing me to return it).

i noted with some amazement this afternoon that - prompted by a complete and total lack of money, and a thus far fairly steadfast resolve not to sink any further into a quagmire of debt - i haven't eaten a single scrap of restaurant food in over a week. with the exception of stretches of time spent miles away from the nearest restaurant, i can honestly (and ashamedly) say that this is the first time i've achieved this distinction in about 13 or 14 years.

in other news, a slow 'plock-plock' water leak mysteriously appeared in my ceiling today, and then just as mysteriously (and mercifully) disappeared. melting frost in the attic, maybe? i have no means of accessing my attic; i think the access panel must, in a moment of brilliance at some point over the last hundred years, have been plastered over. it's no secret that my finances are presently a very unsteady house of cards, and one unexpected repair that would require calling in a professional (or, god forbid, being out of work) would be enough to blow it all over. there's a minor leak behind my shower for example, which i plan to continue ignoring until tax return time comes around. ditto insulating the basement, which i can't afford the materials for (i just barely make too much raw income to qualify for the low-income grant, but WAY too much of said income is allocated for debt repayment to qualify for any kind of useful loan). anyway, whatever - i'm far from starving to death. it would just be nice to not have to panic at the first drip of water from the ceiling, (and to have a fourth pair of pants). oh, pink collar ghetto.

my neighbourhood association conducted one-of-two community consultations yesterday morning, and - not that i purport to know what's best for the neighbourhood - i was yet again thrilled by how excellent and inventive my neighbours are. i sort of half-expected to show up and have to make a very active case for and against certain things, (safety and its cultivation is a fairly key issue in these parts, for example), but everyone was pretty unanimous in their desire for community-based solutions for everything from crime to economic development to affordable housing to community greening to resource accessibility. it was pretty terrific.

also, why did nobody tell me that emmylou harris released a new album months ago?

11:38 pm: as a confirmed culinary incompetent, my singular triumph of 2009 thus far has been demonstrating dominance over the slow cooker. armed with new-found confidence and an arsenal of recipes, i feel as if the world has completely opened up to me. lasagna in 6-8 hours, everybody!

also the februaries - and more specifically the trauma of waking up in the dark 5 out of every 7 days - are only just starting to take their usual toll, and right on time. to compensate i intend to use a lot of my overtime in the near future, starting with this friday: my itinerary thus far consists of sleeping in, nose-picking, not changing out of my pajamas, farting a lot, and drinking with corine.

ps. piece of me by britney spears is a really excellent song.

11:48 am: call in the army!

09:35 am: honest to god, what the hell is wrong with this City? i could list any number of areas of inquiry, but what i'm referring to specifically is the fact that our entire urban planning ethos seems to center around replicating what other cities did in the early '80s, and have since rejected as colossal, community-destroying, ghettoizing failures. at which point, our hideously incompetent and short-sighted City Fathers (yes, fathers - let's be realistic) decide to take up the charge.

anyway, add this one to the forthcoming ikea debacle: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/gut_historic_buildings_hydro_substation_plan_angers_groups_in_exchange38129794.html

http://riseandsprawl.blogspot.com/2009/01/philistines-set-to-sack-city.html

the older i get, the more i just want to disappear people.

04:48 pm: i woke up this morning to shadow (the cat) licking my teeth and purring like an outboard motor in a fit of touching but deeply misguided affection. this was not only a fairly gross way to start my day, but also represented a major setback in my efforts to teach her about what constitutes normal and appropriate amounts of love, (a subject to which we are constantly returning).

after brushing my teeth i immediately stepped squarely into a little pile of barf, stubbed my toe badly when recoiling from it, and then sneezed all over the clean dishes in the drying rack. suffice it to say, my day started off in a somewhat less than ideal manner, and was augmented by kira (the cat) mewling incessantly at me in a manner that might suggest i had threatened to put her in an orphanage for bad cats.

what with this being a day that i took off work, i committed to shaking off the cranky and took myself for a long walk on the river, followed by a long sit in the pleasant and quiet little coffee shop in wolseley where i drank enough coffee to give me the mild shakes. (incidentally, despite it being the middle of january, a significant swath of wolseley still improbably managed to reek of citronella. how is this accomplished?)

the weekend in general was filled with news of the heartening variety, (my friend jen is moving back to town for a job; corine is going to be moving up the street; etc), activities of the fun variety (namely art's birthday), and weather of the maybe-we-won't-collectively-all-kill-ourselves-after-all variety. the weather having been -50C/-58F on more than one occasion last week, and colder than -20C/-4F for 41 of the 45 days preceding friday, the sudden spiral up to 0C/32F seemed heaven-sent.

now with the long, last stretches of winter splayed out before me, i guess i should start thinking about which of my lingering tasks to attend to, (insulating the basement, i guess?), in an effort to stave off the worst of the cabin fever. who's with me?

12:21 am: change is coming!

01:18 pm: though i have all but completely lost track of what day of the week it is (which is, psychologically at least, gratification at its richest), i've officially reached that critical holiday tipping point where i've been slothful and useless long enough that it's starting to get dull, and will shortly have to figure out semi-productive uses for my time. i realized with no insignificant horror, for example, that the last time i walked anywhere more substantial than to-and-from a waiting car was six days ago. yeesh.

my body continues its slide into total atrophy - led by my brain and a scratchy throat, and hastened by a diet of chocolate and alcohol. it's okay though - i feel like 3 days of decrepitude is an appropriate window of recovery time post-festive family bloodbath. today will see me at least as far from the house as the mountain equipment co-op, where i will pick out a new and sexy pair of snowshoes by way of a giftcard from my weirdo, cauldron-coveting boyfriend. i really ought to be researching how to frame in and insulate my basement, or something, but whatever.

the unstructured stretches of time have finally also allowed grandpa cam to familiarise himself with the biggest technological craze of 2003, the podcast, which has supplemented my recently stale music repertoire thanks to the good folks at cbc radio 3. i'm still pretty desperate for more though, so i encourage suggestions, (except from stacey).

03:08 pm: what could say it better than this?



anyways, it's over now and that's what counts.