Aplace

Minding my own business walking down Montreal Rd. the other day when a mentally ill person yanks the coffee I am drinking out of my hands and chucks it into the middle of the street. Luckily there were no cars coming at that exact moment, but it was unpleasant. I booted it out of there so fast. Not the first time this has happened to me (last time it was a paper). I also had a woman throw some cans she had collected at me at the bus stop on Beechwood. Not to mention the quasi-weekly encounters with the myriad dudes who have confused OC Transpo buses for masturbation parlours. This is why I need to leave the pedestrian/public transit game. In the words of Det. Murtaugh, "I'm too old for this sh**"

Scarf lady

I should talk about the Art Matters: A Passion For Reading session ce soir and seeing the Governor General and her husband and especially the wonderful Kerry Clare, whom Christie Blatchford said was awesome (I was eavesdropping on her conversation but whatever) but I'm so tired. So, instead, I will insert a photo of yours truly rocking a scarf she knit herself! and promise you a full debrief re: Ottawa Literary Happenings demain :)

I was told there'd be cake

I am in the midst of reading this book by a woman named Sloane Crosley.  Seriously... seriously !!! I mean is this a real name or a supporting character in a touching coming of age story set in a New England boarding school? I always thought names like that were a joke, an easy way of making fun of upper class types, but apparently they are real and they have lucrative publishing contracts.

The book is basically a series of essays about this Sloane Crosley's woman's life. But not profound examinations of her life through the prism of the ultimate futility of the human condition. Just funny stories about summer camp and collecting ponies and living in a half a million dollar house!!! I was going to write more about how irritating it was but instead I just put in on a high shelf and stopped thinking about it. Why stress over a book?

Also, I think Nicholas Sarkozy should have married me.

Reading

Zadie Smith recently had this to say about reading on KCRW's show Bookworm. I should add that KCRW (which is like the CBC radio of Los Angeles) is awesome and that any and all of their radio shows should be downloaded as podcasts of iTunes. Highly entertaining, good for long bus/car rides when you don't want to *just* listen to music.

Anywho, I'm often guilty of the lazy reading she calls out here:

Smith: I think of reading as a skill and an art. And if you read badly –- I always think a good example -- I’ve been trying to write this essay on [David] Foster Wallace and when you first read Foster Wallace, or when critics read him, they give him back the thing that they think they see, which is some smart aleck with smart language, but [they have] no idea of what this --

Silverblatt: Yes, that he’s trying to determine what truth is. What can be said truly.

Smith: Exactly. An incredible ethicist and serious moral writer. But there’s a kind of superficial layer of him, which if you can’t be bothered to think any deeper, it just seems, 'Here’s some wise guy, with his wiseass stories.' And that’s not true. But the problem with readers, the idea we’ve been given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principal is, 'I should sit here and be entertained.' And the more classical model is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and the artist gives you. That’s an incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.

ecch!

I can't even enjoy Oprah properly because from some angles she looks like my mom and it shocks me out of tv-induced stupor. And I loooove my tv-induced stupor. Also, I just found out that I mooted against the World Debating Chamption in Sherbrooke. Good thing I didn't know that at the time because I would have had an uber-cow if I'd found out before we went in. Also, I've come up with a brilliant plan and I need to know if there are some obvious deficiencies that I'm missing. Here it is:

Fact #1: Over the years I've lost touch with so many people.
Fact #2: People love to Google themselves.

Ergo...

I will put up a post of the names of all the people I'm looking for and then when they Google themselves they'll click on my website and I will include a link to email me. Is this not genius? Yes, yes it is. Can you think of something that I haven't thought of?

The Time Traveler's wife

That's the title of the book I'm reading now. It's eating me up. I can't get rid of this book. It's very metaphysical which is not something I'm really interested in usually. The premise is supposed to be sort of whimsical, I guess. It's about this guy who time travels to all these different moments is his life, past and future. He has no control over where he goes but it's usually someplace familiar like his house or his workplace or the house his wife lived in as a child. Sometimes, it's good and sometimes it's really bad, like when he goes to a bad time in the future.The book is really quite good but very creepy. I always thought time travelling would be cool but this has made me rethink.

I have three workdays left. I am counting the minutes. One year from now, it starts all over again. I don't what the rest of my life will be after this job. I'm glad I don't know, though. It's easier to take this way.