No mobile = today’s ex-communication?

As I’ve mentioned before, I have no cell phone.

My lack of cell phone mystifies a lot of people, and for good reason: 1/4 of under-30s now go cell-only. People I’m setting up interviews with can’t understand that I don’t have a mobile number to be reached at and I think this makes them a little suspicious.

Yesterday I was on a plane from Toronto to Montreal and was seated next to Leo, a Hasidic Jew from New York City. He was curious about my favorite movies as “his people don’t watch movies.” As the conversation progressed it somehow came out that I didn’t have a cell phone. He was absolutely shocked, he asked “How do you have fun?” He proceeded to pull out his new top of the line cell phone and BlackBerry Pearl to show off. This man also knew about craiglist.org, which added to my overall surprise about his tech savvy considering the movie ban. The surprise was compounded by the fact that I had been talking with a director at a teleco earlier that day and he hadn’t heard of craigslist which made me think maybe it was a generational thing. Meanwhile, Leo is giving me looks of “what, you think I’m stupid?” when I asked him if he knew about craigslist.

The “1/4 under-30s cell-only ” story talks about party lines. Does anyone reading this even know what a party line is? Not surprisingly (based on my prior post), my family operated on a party line for many years. The rules we had for talking over the party line – don’t talk about the neighbour’s kids, etc – are probably good rules to extend to today’s cell conversations.

there’s no going back

When people ask if I’m going home after I finish up school I tell them it’s not a possibility. I grew up in a small town in Northern B.C., and my Mom currently lives in an even smaller town even further north.  Below is an email that was waiting in my Mom’s inbox when she arrived at work this morning, just to demonstrate exactly how remote and rural her situation is.

     Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 11:45 AM
     Subject: Wolf spotted

    On the weekend Security personnel spotted a Wolf on the street by the hospital entrance     at the ambulance station.  Please be aware that there are wolves in the vicinity.

     XXXX – Manager Executive & Administrative Services

Some offices send out notices about changes in cleaning personnel or lock-up procedure, others apparently send out wolf warnings. One of my Mom’s co-workers found a wolf on her front porch recently and responded by pelting potatoes at it. In another town near-by, my mom had a neighbor shoot at a bear out the back window of their house.

It’s been over 10 years since I lived in my hometown, not always in large cities, but I now refer to cities with populations of less than a million as small.  Hearing about wolves and bears wondering the streets puts a few things in perspective.

 

It’s not-U, it’s me

Prince William is single after a rumored intervention by the royal family due to Kate’s ‘common-ness.’

A little research into this curious phenomenon of British class snobbery led to Nancy Mitford’s theory on “U” and “non-U”; that is, upper-class and non-upper-class language. According to a Wikipedia citation (very non-u), Mitford provided a glossary of terms used by the upper-classes which unleashed an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness.

I’ve mentioned before, I heart lists:

U	Non-U
Bike or Bicycle	Cycle
Dinner Jacket	Dress Suit
Knave	Jack (cards)
Vegetables	Greens
Ice	Ice Cream
Scent	Perfume
They’ve a very nice house.	They have a lovely home.
Ill (in bed)	Sick (in bed)
I was sick on the boat.	I was ill on the boat.
Looking-Glass	Mirror
Spectacles	Glasses
False Teeth	Dentures
Die	Pass on
Mad	Mental
Jam	Preserve
Napkin	Serviette
Sofa	Settee
Lavatory or Loo	Toilet
Rich	Wealthy
What?	Pardon?

It’s predicted many a girl are dusting off their ballgowns now that Will is back on the market, but personally I’ve been over him for ages now. It’s Hot Harry who’s more attention worthy.

Definition of the day: Shibboleth – any language usage indicative of one’s social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group.

Proper usage: “That’s such a shibboleth use of language.” *Deliver comment in an off-hand manner and with a deadpan expression = Guaranteed conversation killer*

Hollywood powerhouse plays diplomat

Maybe La-la-land isn’t such a souless place.

Steven Spielberg jumped into action after Mia Farrow wrote an open letter to the Wall Street Journal comparing Spielberg’s’s involvement as artistic director of the Beijing games to that of Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Four days later Spielberg wrote a letter to the president of China and shortly thereafter a top Chinese diplomat was dispatched to Darfur to pressure the Sudanese government to accept UN peace keepers. Previously China had abstained from involving themselves in internal affairs in order to keep open access to Sudanese oil.

Hollywood accomplishes in a week what diplomats have been working on for years.

For the full story click here.

Late night reading

 

It’s 2am… the reality of my deadlines is finally hitting me (two weeks late). In my deluded state I’m considering the possibility my thesis topic is divinely inspired.

From Marita Sturken’s Technological Visions:

“Spinning technology through the Fall of Man narrative casts us as the ignorant architects of our own undoing. In this narrative, we make our artifacts but they in turn cast us out into world in which we are not suited. The narrative of the Fall reduces the dynamic relations of people and technology to a story in which technology is the cruel, decisive actor. It was a God with ultimate power who expelled humans from the Garden of Eden. The new narratives of the Fall put technology into that position. They rationalize human passivity in the face of anxiety about technology. They give a sense of inevitability to people’s feelings of impotence in the face of our creations” (Struken et al. 2004: 23-24).

“Spin is distracting. Overheated debates about computer addiction and Internet depression keep us from confronting issues raised by contemporary technology that are resistant to the oversimplification of spin…Technology does things for use but also to us, to our ways of perceiving the world, to our relationships and sense of ourselves” (Struken et al. 2004: 23).

“The world-view of most of the industrialized world remains relentlessly modern in its valuing of science, technology, growth, and progress. Yet these modern sensibilities are integrated with an increasingly postmodern sensibility – a sense of cynicism and fatigue with modernity’s hurtling forward into the future, a world increasingly defined by the digital, the computer, and the virtual… Yet this feeling of life speeding out of control is a deeply modern one, one that prevailed throughout the twentieth century. This moment in history is thus defined specifically by the tensions of living with both the heightened qualities of modernity and the shifting worldview of postmodernism” (Struken et al. 2004: 72).

Too late to comment on these strings of writing, but I think I’ve found a conclusion.

— Speaking of ’spin’… Kurt Vonnegut passed away yesterday at 84, amazed at his old age after a life-long smoking habit. After joining the army and working for the Chicago City News Bureau, he did PR for General Electric, “a job he loathed.” He published four books before be able to give up selling Saabs to support himself.

I suppose it’s stories like Dana Vachon’s that keep the hope alive for all those bloggers out there. A 28 yr. old prep-kid-turned-investment-banker-turned-blogger got a $650,000 advance to write about his insights into NYC society. The book has already been optioned to the company who produced Babel. It’s possible he provides an illuminating perspective, but not likely of the slaughterhouse 5 variety. See above for ’shifting worldview of postmodernism.’

 

 

 

 

Only in Montreal, #2

The mere suggestion of a defrost – a sunny Saturday and temps rising slightly above zero – brings droves of people to the Plateau to take a leisurely stroll while licking away on ice cream cones! St. Denis is overrun by families of ice cream eaters mixing with shirtless Tam-Tam players practicing up for their summer gig in the park. Funnily enough, the season-inappropriate snackers are balanced out by handfuls of people who stopped into the Caban a Sucre at the Mt. Royal metro stn to get frozen strips of maple syrup wrapped on a stick.

There are always so many decisions when it comes to snacking, but I think the two groups of weekend snackers can be broken down thusly: the maple syrup contingent are the type who embrace winter and the lactose lickers are of the reckless optimist variety. Normally I’d vote for reckless optimism and something chocolate but there’s something oddly appealing about making a mess with maple syrup.

It’s snowing today, AGAIN.

weekend fun

Chpts 1-4 in at the end of the month = reading fun.

This list would have been so useful at the beginning of last year. I heart lists.

Modern Postmodern

• National/international…………………………………………………..global
• Hierarchical social structure………………………………………….network society
• Mechanical…………………………………………………………………….electronic
• Industrial………………………………………………………………………postindustrial
• Urban city…………………………………………….suburban sprawl, megalopolis
• Geographical space replaced by social space………………….nonplace
• Cartesian space……………………………………………………………..virtual space
• Standing in a crowd……………………………………………………….social isolation
• Surrounded by strangers………………………………………………mobile privatization
• Circulation of traffic in city…………………………………………….internet ‘traffic’
• City strolling, the flaneur……………………………………………….web surfing
• Time as measurable………………………………………………………time as global
• Time as linear…………………………………………………………………time shifting
• Analog clock/watch………………………………………………….digital clock/watch
• Railroad………………………………………………………………….rapid speed trains
• Telegraph………………………………………………………………………internet
• Subway…………………………………………………………………………..freeway
• Airplane………………………………………………………………………….space shuttle
• Automobile as transportation…………………………………..automobile as style
• Radio………………………………………………………………………………walkman
• Photograph……………………………………………………………………..digital image
• Typewriter……………………………………………………………………..computer
• Typewriter keyboard………………………………………………..computer mouse
• Television…………………………………………………………………..multimedia/DVD/TiVo
• Cinema……………………………………………………………………………virtual reality
• Telephone……………………………………………………………………….cell phone
• Space travel………………………………….travel inside body through fiberoptics
• The body as circulatory system……………………….the body as a genetic map
• Tuberculosis and antibiotics……………………………………..AIDS and retroviruses
• Representations………………………………………………………………simulacrum
• Autonomous subject……………multiple and fragmented subjectivities
• Wars of guns, bombs, machines…………………………………………virtual/cyberwar
• Wars as conflicts between nations……………………………………terrorism
  

Only in Montreal

1. Poutine pizza

For the uninitiated, poutine is a Quebecois specialty featuring fries, cheese curds and gravy.

Imagine what this mess looks like at 1am after it has been put on a pizza crust and has been sweating under under a heat lamp for an indeterminable period.

2. Hockey skates and sticks on the Metro.

This guy (minus the stripes, add plaid)…
In this venue…

3. A politician admits to snorting coke while in office and is elected leader of a provincial political party.

This coke business is came out a while ago, but in more current news there’s an election March 26. The PQ has solidly defeated the Liberals in the Mt. Royal riding the past two elections, although La Presse is suggesting it’s currently a three-way race.

dancing in the night

                         

This weekend I saw Alvin Ailey’s American Dance Theater at Place des Arts. It was an amazing show and if you’re ever able see one of their shows I recommend it highly. Alvin Ailey was born in Texas in 1931 and when he began creating dance he drew on the ‘blood memories’ of Texas, the blues, spirituals and gospels as inspiration.

There were three acts. The first set was a collaboration with Ailey and Duke Ellington from 1970 and was series of dances reflecting nature scenes where the dancers moved like birds and rivers, and somehow it was all very romantic. The second set was created by the current artistic director Judith Jamison and was a lighter, jazzier set that had a sense of humor and made us laugh out loud. The final set was created by Ailey in the 1960s and has a heavy political weight to it given its historical context. The spiritual and gospel songs were amazing and there was a lot of strong color and fabrics used, elements that had been absent from the first set where neutral leotards and single color backdrops were the order of the day.

Watching the dancers made me acutely aware of my own physical inadequacies, right down the poor posture I was holding while watching the show. Too bad I’m not in NYC or I could stop in for a pilates or beginner dance lessons.

After the show we stopped into a lounge with some sort of experimental jazz to meet up with a birthday crew. After finishing up at the lounge (and a certain someone inspired by the show/the music? performing twirls in the snowflakes at the top of the stairs) we were all hungry and the only open spot we could find at that time was a chain poutine joint. It was a strong close to such a cultured evening. HA

It’s a sign

I recently returned from two weeks down south in the sun and the delightful tropical humidity that my skin and hair loves so much (as an aside: I once spent the summer in a place where Ottawa was referred to as ‘down south’. When I busted my co-worker for whistling Christmas carols in July he said it was 11 months of winter and 1 month of hard sledding). It turns out that it’s not just my hair and skin and general well-being that prefers warmer climates, but also my trusty hairdryer. I’ve had this hair dryer for almost nine years! I bought it the summer after I finished high-school and was working at a beauty salon until the fall. Recently Ol’ Blue has been making some nasty screeching noises, but those all disappeared while we were luxuriating in the humid heat. Unfortunately those noises are back with a return to the Deep Freeze. The hangover from my sunburn continues to drag on as my body readjusts to the cold, cold winter. Woman and machine are both rejecting the temps.

The first day back I decided to humidify the apt by boiling a pot of water for 6 hours. I added some cinnamon to the pot to make it smell pretty while it boiled and toiled. Some how though the smell didn’t make its contents obvious to my roommate at at the end of the day he asks if I had been cooking shoe polish.