The Most Canadian Thing Ever?

I arrive on campus this sunny afternoon to witness the spectacle of the first day of school. Undergraduates everywhere, corporations hawking their logos and free food, one sorry frat trying to get people to eat hot dogs. As I walk up the hill toward the Arts Building (which houses my office), I pass the giant Provigo tent, which has set out dozens of tables and chairs where new students can congregate. Everything and everyone smacks of anticipation, energy and well, cool.

And what is the soundtrack that Provigo (a grocery store chain) has chosen for this classic collegiate scene?

Rush — Limelight.

Chat Radioactif

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As the picture suggests, our cat Tetrys(1) is radioactive. He’d been having digestive problems for some time and when we took him to the vet she said all indications were that he had hyperthyroid. Hyperthyroid is a condition that eventually kills cats, and can be treated through a regimen of medicine that will deal with the symptoms but possibly have side effects. The other possibility was to give him an injection of radioactive iodine, which would be absorbed by the thyroid gland. The iodine would thereby “nuke” his thyroid and bring his levels back to normal, effectively curing the condition with no side-effects other than a hefty vet bill.

Having no children and being solvent, we automatically went for the radioactive option. Which meant that with the right scanning equipment, he probably looked something like this:

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Not surprisingly, the Canadian government has very strict controls over the use of radioactive substances, which means that he has been classified as hazardous for the last week and had to stay at the vet’s. Though they apparently did let him out to walk around. Anyway, he’s coming home tomorrow after the all-day faculty meeting (which he will not attend). We have to treat his waste as radioactive for a week or so, which means changing the catbox twice a day, and he is strictly forbidden from sleeping on the necks of children during that time (not usually an issue). Yes, my cat is an environmental hazard. We’ll even get to see them run a Geiger counter over him before we bring him home. I feel like he’s turned into a light show or something. But it’ll be great to have him home. I didn’t realize how much my home space was defined by the interaction of two cats until one went on a week-long trip to the vet. . . .

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1. Pronounced like the game “tetri” but with a “y” because we thought it looked cooler when we named him in 1992. Neither of us liked the game particularly. We just thought the name was fun to say, which is my main criterion in naming a pet.

Canadian Bankruptcy Politics and other news

Weclome to the first of a double-post Tuesday night. I have been busy learning the intricacacies of curriculum revision at McGill and it turns out that well, it’s complex. Kind of reminds me of scientology, like if I get far enough into it, someone’s going to take me aside and tell me that aliens actually created the world. Or maybe just a giant spaghetti monster from space. Anyway, I’m knee-deep in graduate directordom, having showed my poor colleagues with a rain of documents for tomorrow’s all day meeting on curriculum (AM is the grad portion) and having co-run an orientation today. I feel like I’ve been doing this forever. It’s been about a month.

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I read with interest an op-ed this morning on a bill to revise Canadian bankruptcy laws. The story is familiar to Americans — the goal is to make it harder for the average consumer to take the less damaging road when debt overwhelms them and they need to declare some kind of bankruptcy. The law is similarly noxious to the American one, with one important exception, an exception wrung from the liberals by the NDP when they negotiated a deal to keep the Liberal government from falling: businesses that go bankrupt will still protect workers’ owed pay and pensions. It’s a small thing, really, but one of those differences where I’m interested enough to wonder about the multiparty system. Is it a case where a left party got a progressive concession that humanizes the bill, or is it a case where the difference makes no difference, and the bill is still essentially as inhumane as the U.S. version?

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A new publication arrived in the mail today:

“Digital Media and Disciplinarity,” The Information Society 21:4 (2005), pp. 249-256, wherein I argue that there is no point to turning digital media studies into a discipline, but that the field does raise some interesting questions toward the construction of a new set of objects and problematics (which is not to say that it’s there yet). Yes, this is a “state of the field” essay in a “state of the field” journal issue.

Back from Toronto

and this week begins, how shall we put it, the “rude awakening” phase where optimism meets actual fall-semester work.

Toronto was indeed lovely. As predicted, we did nothing touristy* and instead just hung out with friends. Our hosts, Greg Elmer and Paula Gardner, were even kind enough to throw a party Saturday night where we could meet lots of local people, which was an absolute blast. My favorite conversation was a roomful of Ontarians explaining to Carrie and I how the knowledge of Canada we’ve acquired in Quebec might need some correction, no doubt from more objective Ontarians like themselves. I continue to be impressed with this country’s “antifederalism.”

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* Okay, we did stop by this Ukranean festival at lunchtime on Saturday that was pretty cool, but that was a neighborhood thing, really. I got too see Conservative Party propaganda there, which included Greg and Paula discovering that someone had given their unsuspecting child a balloon with a conservative party slogan. When they discovered it, he promised to turn it into a “punching balloon.” They do learn early, don’t they?

Last Trip of the Summer

Tomorrow, we are off to Toronto for a couple days. Wish it could be longer, but we’re going to do ABSOLUTELY NO WORK on the trip so it should be nice. We are bringing the French flash cards Carrie made, though.

My coursepack is in at the copy shop. All is right with the world.