Les Bonnes Choses

I've heard it said that the London Free Press "is a rag". Now, I've read it, and I can't really complain about the level of literacy of the writers. Really, the biggest complaint I'd have is that there's very little to it - a large part of it is taken up by full-page car ads, or else classifieds and obituaries. Now, I don't know how much the freeps are to be blamed for this. After all, this is London, Ontario. It's a regional center for a sleepy region. Of course, this is a chicken-and-egg situation: small-c conservative Londoners have a reputation for not being especially interested in anything. Aside from small pockets (most of which I seem to have my hands in, indirectly at least through Rebecca and her network of musician friends), we don't have a thriving arts scene - as evidenced by the lack of performing arts center, and the fact that Orchestra London and the Grand Theatre always seem to be teetering on the edge of oblivion. But when the only time these organizations come to mind is when they're in the news because they're broke, it's not hard to imagine how they came to be that way, and how the situation is likely to continue. The only thriving arts venue seems to be the JLC, which seems to be getting by quite nicely on the back of mainstream entertainers - of the sort that one might expect to read about in the paper. Which brings me back (or rather, awkwardly segued back) to my original point about the Free Press: aside from the Banditos trial, the only other newsworthy content to be found usually concerns the most recent performance at the John Labatt Center. So when I get a phone call from a telemarketer on behalf of the Freeps, I feel uncomfortable with telling them, "look, your publication is crap. The only thing I would be interested in is the Sudoku puzzle, which I can get online for free anyways." Instead, I tell them (truthfully) that I'm moving out of the city. I will add that this excuse works quite well for many phone pitches, especially when you're moving out of the country.

I know that newspapers everywhere are folding - pun originally not intended, but then deemed clever enough to be claimed as deliberate. There are many reasons: alternative internet news sources from all over the world, decline in ad revenue because advertisers are also going to the internet where the eyeballs are. And in the case of the Freeps, they also have to deal with the fact that their publication really doesn't provide much that can't be provided by a larger, better staffed paper like the Globe and Mail that also circulates in this area.

150 years ago, there were thriving shipyards all over Canada, and the Canadian shipbuilding industry, with access to our vast supply of cheap lumber was thriving. By 1870, however, steel-hulled ships had come to dominate. If you were a manufacturer of wood-hulled ships, you had a couple of options. You could drag your heels, and keep cranking out the same product that nobody wants. Or, you could find something innovative to do with your workers and suppliers, possibly even creating a new industry. The first person to figure that out is going to come out all right.

Rebecca knits. So do a number of friends who have come to form a tricoterie. I don't knit, myself, on account of being a dude and all*, but I glean vicarious enjoyment out of sporadic knitting nights (now long overdue). I also gain direct enjoyment out of teasing Rebecca about just how extreme knitters can be. Take, for example, the fact that celebrities exist within the knitting subculture -- and I'm no anthropologist, but I'm sure that they qualify as a legitimate subculture; they even have their own cant.

So there's plenty of fodder for my amusement. Or, at least, there was until this week, when the knitting scene became just a little more edgy. As the world literally collapsed around 98 year old Maria D'Antuono, living at or near the epicenter of the earthquake that struck Italy earlier this week, she whipped out a pair of crochet needles and worked on a smart easter shawl.

Okay, knitters. You win. You're hardcore.

I like news headlines because their lack of critical parts of speech, such as prepositions, makes them prone to comical misinterpretation, and general hilarity. For example, today The Ceeb had the following:

Stunning 82-year-old hospital patient with Taser was justified.

Now, you might click on the link with eager excitement at the prospect of reading about an elderly invalid in a fabulous black evening gown who's got a good excuse to be carrying around a non-lethal sidearm -- but you'd be disappointed. Instead, you'd read about how Canadian law enforcement means business. Forget that polite stereotype. Around here, laying on a gurney (or wielding a stapler) is a good way to get yourself zapped, my friend.

Of course, we could also be defined by what we don't do. For example: fund research. My thin envelope from NSERC arrived in the mail today. I didn't have to be Johnny Carson to know what it said. One thing I did forget about was that it had a brochure about applying for the Industrial R&D Fellowships program.

Dear Canadian Funding Agency Purseholders,
If I wanted to work for a large multinational conglomerate, I would have spared myself the last 6 years of graduate work and tens of thousands of dollars of tuition and applied to work at a bank directly out of my undergraduate career. Then I could have been doing something that the business community finds useful for the last several years. Like help run the world's economies into the ground, for example.

A few years ago, when I held an NSERC Doctoral scholarship, it was appropriate to put a little NSERC logo on the posters when I presented my research. Because, you know, they supported me so I could do the research. I regret that, for the time being, I will have to put an unacknowledgement on my conference posters: the Canadian government had nothing to do with this discovery or innovation. Is embarrassment effective at influencing policy?

New day, new graphical elements. I'm the type who can never leave well enough alone, so when I stumbled across a website with free blogger templates, I couldn't resist trying one out. Unfortunately, it bunged stuff up, causing my wish lists to be discarded, and also took out the important links at the top of the page, so I ended up just finding another blogger layout that I liked. I'm not sure why I did it, other than I have been in a gitterdun frame of mind since this morning, when I rode in on my hog*. I had to change my action plan somewhat because someone from the university maintenance crew was in to fix a water valve that had leaked in the ceiling right above our fancy computer. Nothing was damaged, thankfully, but it's hard to work at a computer in a closet-sized room with plumber-butt just inches away from your face. Instead, I stayed in my office all day (when I wasn't helping Kaz rearrange office furniture) and resumed editing my manuscript for resubmission. When I got home, I set about making meatloaf and cleaning out the dryer vent, which had accumulated enough dryer lint to make a small felt coat. This should not be taken as an indication that we don't know how to properly use a dryer; rather as an indication that the fencing company that built our deck doesn't know how to properly follow a building plan, and instead of building a step-down sitting area as I had asked, instead built the deck so that it blocks off the dryer vent.

*Note: I use the word 'hog' ironically. My motorcycle would never, under any circumstances, be referred to as a hog by a knowledgeable person. I use the term ironically because I don't identify in any way with the motorcycle culture.

A month ago yesterday, I received a phone call from BMO: my abysmally low-interest RRSP GIC was up for renewal (the anniversary was easy to remember: Heather's birthday) and they wanted to know if I wanted to do something fun and exciting with it. I'm young(ish) so I opted to invest in some investment product linked to the [stock] market's performance. If you've been following the stock market (or even if you haven't) you probably know that things haven't been going very well for investors lately. But I figured, hey, it's got to bottom out some time, and by five year's time, things will probably have picked up quite a bit - I'm wagering significantly more than the pitiful return I was getting on my existing investment. The thing was, for some reason on which I am not entirely clear, I had to wait until March 11th before my funds could be invested in this new market-linked GIC. As it turned out, March 11th marked the first day of the current run of positive gain days on the stock market. Is this more than an uncanny coincidence? Absolutely not. But it's happy news for me nontheless. Of course, my fortunes are just as likely as not to go the opposite direction, so this could just be the same sort of experience a lottery player must feel when the powerball pops up 6 numbers that they picked followed by 3 numbers that they didn't.

Still, the Canadian dollar is going back up along with the price of oil. I hope that trend continues. I need to maximize the value of my savings in $US for the move. Once I'm down there, the loonie is free to tank. Unless I get NSERC, in which case, I'll be torn. And oil? I like expensive oil as a disincentive to driving and for innovation of more efficient and cleverly designed automobiles.

On the morning of February 15th, 1983, one of my classmates died in a house fire. His wheelchair-bound mother also died in that fire. Word on the playground was that he had gotten up after his dad left for work and had set the curtains on fire while playing with matches. Whether this is an embellishment I don't know, but the story I remember was that, after setting the fire, Eric had run to his mother's side, though her disability left her unable to get out of the house. Eric was a red-haired boy that I remember as being not very popular. I don't know why, though this was the third grade -- kids in third grade don't need a good reason.

I remember walking home from school that day, and taking an alternate route that would pass by Eric's house. I could see his orange-lined green winter jacket hanging in the entryway, and remember thinking how nobody would wear it ever again.

It seems like traces of most people can be found on the internet. When I did a quick google search, for his name, I didn't find anything. But I still think of him every February 15, and how he barely had a chance to count the valentines that his classmates grudgingly gave him the day before.