Super Bon!

Courtesy the Church Sign Generator. Apparently, they are getting a lot of complaints about offensive church signs. Shocking, really.

Now, I’m off to have some fun.

That was quite a week with my parents here. We didn’t really do internet stuff until the last couple days. I set up a blog for Phil on blogspot and showed him how to use it (lesson 2 will be blockquotes, links, and italics) and spent some time with my mom explaining how to browse (as opposed to searching through google), why she should use Firefox, and how to bookmark her favorite sites. So no time for a guest entry for her.

Mostly, though, we hung out and talked, which is what makes their visits so nice. Both of them were quite interested in the sovereignty question so we talked about that a lot (Phil, being from the south, immediately wanted to compare the local feeling with that of the confederacy), but we talked about all manner of things. Some other events of interest:

–We went to the Pointe-a-Calliere (sorry, still don’t know how to do accents on my Mac while in WordPress), which they loved. At one point, my mom sat down to rest on a bench next to the tour guide. They began chatting and he asked where they were staying. When she said on Frontenac, his got a serious look on his face and said something to the effect of “don’t worry, it’s not dangerous over there anymore.” And then proceeded to talk about how it used to be the worst neighborhood in Montreal, sex workers walking the streets, etc. Later, my mom said that any woman who was willing to walk our hill for the trade deserved whatever she could earn.

–We got to see our apartment in a different light as well, since my mom has had both knees replaced but still has trouble with one. Turns out that those steps in the bathroom make it not all that accessible. On the other hand, if you have joint pain, apparently our futons are great to sleep on. I think I’ll try it next time I throw out my back. Actually, many parts of the city aren’t very accessible. I was very glad that we didn’t rent a place with an outdoor staircase, for instance.

–On the same subject, my mom uses a cane and we jaywalked on St. Denis at one point. Drivers actually slowed down. I told her when I do that by myself, I could swear that the drivers speed up.

–Carrie got her Christmas dinner with a crowd (I think there is a guest post coming on the subject — we had a small ground of people over) and even got to go shopping on boxing day. I’d never been in the Bay before (Phil, my stepdad, was just interested in the fact that the Hudson’s Bay Company still existed) and, well, yes. It’s a big department store.

–On the museum front, we were both underwhelmed by the McCord, though again my parents liked it. There were some nice displays, but I was just looking for. . .well. . .more.

–Over the course of the visit, we watched three Quebec movies. Barbarian Invasions was, as everyone says, outstanding. Though after all that people have said about how it critiques the Quebec health system, I expected it to be a lot worse than it actually was. Decline of the American Empire seems like a warmup for Barbarian Invasions, but seeing them on consecutive nights and in reverse order takes the wind out a bit. All the conversation seemed like more of the same. Memoirs Affectivs was just lame. It tried to be all mystical and confusing, but it just wound up being mystical and cofusing, instead of cool and profound.

–I was reminded that I come by my love of dessert honestly.

–Last night, after dropping my parents off at the airport, we went to a Chanukah dinner, where in addition to learning all sorts of other wonderful local lore, I learned that the majority of synogogues in Montreal are Orthodox (apparently, this is fairly normal in Canada, whereas in Minneapolis where I grew up it was all Conservative and Reformed congregations, with just a few Orthodox) and that much of their membership is made up of nonpracticing Jews. No wonder the Jewish estabilshment is so politically conservative. All the money’s going to the right-wing elements of the religion. But that’s for another post sometime.

Guest Entry from My Stepdad

Hello, Canada,

As of 12/27 I finally see the sun shining in Montreal. But then, we can go for weeks in Minneapolis under clouds.

My only previous trips to Canada were to Thunder Bay, and that’s not Montreal. Now, this is Canada. For the first time I wish I had grown up in a bi-lingual culture. I see here what good and not-so-good differences that can make.

Growing up in the South makes me glad to see that Canada never had racial slavery. Much of what is wrong with the USA to be seen in the culture of the Confederacy. It was a fearful, greedy and violent world. The slaves did not make that culture: the plantation owners did. To our great sorrow, the culture of Confderacy, with its darkened religion, fear of the outside world and lust for dominance is rising again. We need Canada and other successful secular democracies to hold an example of moral authority to challenge out backward plunge into neoconservatist triumphalism. We need to be reminded that power without wisdom is self-destructive.

Your wonderful anthem says it well, “Stand on guard for Thee..” The guns are obsolete. Values, ideas and courage are the security of the future. So, stand by your genuine human values. The world needs you.

An American patriot,

Phillip Griffin, Sr.

Boxing Day: what the hell is it?

Since this time last year, I’ve had a really difficult time answering this question. And since Christmas is over, the guests are gone, and now my parents want to know too, I naturally jumped up and did a websearch for the definition of Boxing Day, only to discover that nobody else really knows what the hell it is either. Here’s my favo(u)rite part of the Wikipedia definition:

In Canada, Boxing Day is also observed as a public holiday, and is a day when stores sell their excess Christmas inventory at significantly reduced prices. Boxing Day has become so important for retailers that they often extend it into a “Boxing Week”. This occurs similarly in Australia and New Zealand.

Ergo, Boxing Day is the holiday with no external referent. Boxing Day is the day you celebrate Boxing Day. It’s as simple as that.

Thank you and good night.

Well, the parents arrive later this evening. I was hoping to pontificate on a wide range of matters, but that may now have to wait through a bit of a dry spell over the next week or so. I am totally going to try and get guest entries out of my parents, but no promises. In the meantime, here are the short shots:

–new text has appeared:

“Urban Media and the Politics of Sound Space,” in “Sound in Art and Culture,” a special issue of Open: Cahier on Art and the Public Domain #9 (Fall 2005): 6-15.

This is the first print iteration of my work on the use of Muzak to chase people away from public spaces — really, the closest thing I’ll ever have to a sequel to that Mall of America article from 1997. Another iteration will appear in an edited book called Ubiquitous Musics but that may be awhile. I’ve been presenting on it for years, so it’s about time. It was simultaenously published in Dutch, but I didn’t get that copy, alas.

–Surprise: George Bush is evil. Like they’d even know which phone to tap for that all-important Al-Quaeda phone call.

–WebCT Vista: in what world do web designers actually think popups are a good idea for courseware? Usability, people. Usability.

–The other day, we were forced by a police detour into a lovely little neighborhood south and east of here, which led us to drive around some more and explore a bit. We found some pockets of stand-alone houses near metro stops. We have a fantasy of buying a stand-alone house (like they have in the midwest, where we’re from), though there’s also the fantasy of buying something in the Plateau or another hip neighborhood. Can’t have both. . . . On the way back, we did a quick tour of the Olympic Village apartments, mostly out of curiosity, since i can’t imagine us moving except to buy. Looks like it’s largely a retirement community, or at least the majority of the population living there is older. Which is no wonder, since it’s basically a self-enclosed city. A 5 1/2 with 1300 sqaure foot balcony is $1800-$2100 a month. Ouch.

–Harvey’s: the best, but also saltiest, of the fast-food veggieburger world.

—King Kong. It’s so weird that the movie’s now a bit of a nostalgia flick. The original was all about being ultra-modern. Now it’s about recreating a past moment as vividly as possible. Weird. But I guess I can add it to my list of movies where I enjoyed the mise-en-scene in particular.

This site comes courtesy of slashdot.

I often tell my students that the best way to understand early radio is to think of it as ham radio. Which gets a lot of blank looks because nobody knows what that is anymore.

—

There’s so much more to tell — about other things. More soon.

The view out our back. Peaking out from under the snow is our grill, and believe me, the cats make think they want to go outside, but if we opened the door, it would be another matter.

The first real snow of the season arrived, and like everywhere else, it’s a doozie. We spent a good 20 minutes or so digging out our car yesterday, which we’re now unwilling to move for fear of losing the parking spot. The snow is still quite pretty since it’s not covered in crap yet, and everyone is pleased with how quiet the city’s become.

But check back in March.