A Happy Birthday notice
Not just a birthday notice, but a happy birthday notice for my soon-to-be married sister who turns 24 today. I hope you have a great birthday, Rach!. You can see her webpage here.

Swollen Eyeballs
A little bit of excitement just occured. There was a hornet's nest in one of the bushes in the front lawn. I haven't seen hornets like these one. Huge things with black and white stripes. Really evil looking. Anyways, a guy came to get rid of it. Not, you know, a insect guy, but a guy who does lawn care around the neighbourhood. His idea for getting rid of the nest was to whack it with a rake. This was surprisingly more effective than you would have thought. After about two good baseball type swings, the nest was mostly gone, just a small piece left hanging on a branch. So he got in closer to get a good angle on it, took another swing, and promptly got bitten...in his eyeball. OWWWWW. I think he'll be alright-the hornet didn't really get a good shot at him, but that's certainly something I never want to go through.

Hey, and Andrew, I'm excited for the next installment of your vacation. Bring on the biker lobster bars!

On a Slow Night
Feature playing this weekend was the Toronto appearance of Metric! I totally thought I was going to miss them, as I knew they were playing Hillside in Guelph with Broken Social Scene, which I decided not to go to. But luckily, I found out about their concert (well, there was an article in NOW, it's not like it was actually difficult to find out about) and went to Lula Lounge. Lula lounge is a great place out west in Parkdale, which I've never been to before. It's very slick without being greasy if you know what I mean. Like an upscale sort of Gypsy co-op. I did, however, get there really early when it was almost completely empty and so felt like a huge nerd reading my book in the dim light in the corner. Especially because I happen to be reading a book on Representing in the philosophy of science (an old class book, which I had never read in the laziness of youth and am now really enjoy, but it's a pretty nerdy book, you gotta admit). Anyways, the opener turns out to be Amy Millan of the Stars doing a solo act. It was a real treat and she was joined by a couple of the BSS people for a few songs. Metric were actually even better than I thought they would be. They were really polished and tight and it felt like a performance of an arena band in a small club. They also must have been completely coked up or something as their nervous energy level was over the top. Emily Haines (ex-Stars, of course) didn't look anything like I thought. She was this wisp of a thing, with angular features and had this ability to look like a machine on cue.

Apart from being the first time I've been west to parkdale, it also marked the first time I made it out east to the Beaches. There was some sort of Jazz thing going on and there were tons of people. We walked along the boardwalk to Woodbine and I do now understand the allure of living there. It's one of the few places in Toronto where the waterfront is a complete disaster.

I do envy Matt's and even Andrew's ability to say, take a short train or car ride and end up in Starling or the Gatineau hills.

Right now, I should be working on my thesis. I've been trying to fix up my protocol and make it very clear, but in my usual route to clarity have only suceeded in confusing myself. I've also been playing with the dummy files (exactly like the real survey data I'll be using, but chunchks of it have been randomly switched around to maintain confidentiality) which has been fun, if not distracting. I found out that my data will be even messier than I thought and that it's a pain in the ass dealing with a database that's 17000 rows by 1600 columns. That's a lot of data, boys and girls. I've tried to eliminate as many of the columns as I could, but the way that the data was randomized makes it harder than it should be. I do really like running big programs that take a while for the computer to compute. Calculate this! I say.

Letter from an Occupant
The search is over. I have found my new leaky apartment. Well, I hope it's not leaky. I'm sharing a 3 bedroom flat near Christy and Harbord with nice hardwood floors and lots of windows. You can some pictures of it (with the decorating "style" of the previous tenants) here. It's also got this great patio on the roof--bonus barbeque!

I was a little conflicted about living with roomates, but it makes sense in many ways. I was scared of being stuck in a basement apartment in February all alone in the dark and cold, but this room (on the 2 floor) avoids that problem. Darkness, coldness, and solitude can happen still, but this certainly limits that possiblity.

My roomates themselves seem really cool. Maybe a little too cool for me. One's a graphic designer and artist (she has a website with her work--really neat) and the other is the art director for Exclaim magazine, who gets on the side to interview musicians like Jurassic Five and DJ Shadow.

The emotional well-being of virtual connectedness
I've been thinking about the quote in the previous post. Although this (and Andrew's and Matt's) sites aren't technically livejournals, they certainly fufill many of the "prescribed format." Personal expression in a public forum: check. Hit counters to keep track of the lurkers: check (well, not Matt's, but if he continues I'll bet he will want one). List of online friends: check.

Connecting with other people is deeply ingrained in us. There is a specific set of neural connectors that mediate and stimulate desire for connection. It gives us a sort of a high comparable to that of eating chocolate or falling in love. Much of the evolutionary study of the development of language suggests that the desire for social connections predated and may have enabled language itself. We use language primarily to faciliate our social interactions rather than as a tool for getting things done. This may be why primates spend most of their time grooming each other, or why we spend most of our speech for gossiping, rather than spending our time in pure "utilitarian" pursuits.

With the development of email, cellphones, IM and other devices that expand our opportunites to gossip, to form connections, it seems that we have made the most of them. These devices create virtual types of communities that are, in so many ways, less fulfilling than picking the parasites out of each others hair. But they have their purpose, their uses, and of course, their misuses. And they still act on us in these deeply ingrained ways. I think everyone reading this blog will understand my difficulties with communication, namely prompt response to emails, phone calls, what have you. Take at look at this quote about the etiquette of email, as a way of explanation:

. There's something about e-mail that demands a reply, demands a response. But when you're getting thousands of these things, it becomes an impossibility to respond to everything. So we've got to shift the etiquette, and maybe make e-mail more like publishing: that is, you send something out and you might get one percent response.

Maybe this is why blogging is so appealing (even if I don't myself blog all the time). It's a form of communication which doesn't demand a response. The reader is not "responsible" to the author. Matt found that he found it ever harder to keep writing emails one by one. The phone is perhaps the worst example of the responsibleness to the caller. As they say in "Phone Booth," a ringing phone demands you to pick it up. The phone rings and you must answer it. You say "hello" into the void, agreeing to a type of contract of reciprocity to the unknown other at the end of the line. The demand of a email or a phone call is on the receiver. By accepting the email or the phone call, we are pressed with the obligation to return it, to enter into the dynamic of the communication. And when the responsibility is not fulfilled, the phone not answered, the email left unreplied, we feel guilty for having failed to met its expectation.

There is still "responsibility" in reading or writing a blog, but it is a contract of an entirely different nature. It is closer to that contract between a book (well, the writer) and its reader. The first known written story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is about the search for immortality. Gilgamesh goes on great adventures to find it, but finds success when his tale is written down and remembered. The responsibility of the reader is merely to read, to recognize. And that, for the writer, is enough to gain a measure of immortality, a sense that the writer has connected to, in an indelible way, to the greater human world. Is this why the "personal expression in a public forum" comes with a list of links and a hit counter? A reassurance that the expression has fulfilled its duty and was read.

Furthermore, blogging allows us to move away from the more initimate responsibilities of email or phone calls. In the class that I'm TA'ing this year, there used to be an email listserv, but now we're moving to a bulletin board discussion forum to accomplish the same purpose. People felt that sending an email to the group, was, in a way, offensive and intrusive. It forced their thoughts into other people's mailbox, demanding their attention whether they wanted it or not. Posting to a bulletin board or a blog, on the other hand, lacked many of those negative emotional connotations. I'm interested to see how it works. Will people simply not feel as obligated to respond or will there be a greater flow of discussion? We'll see. I think the story of blogging has yet to play out.

Does this describe you?

From the stranger, a cutting analysis of the livejournal/blog thing:

...These questions first occurred to me last year when I found out about LiveJournal.com, a site where thousands of people, mainly young, publish personal diaries that are updated often and read compulsively by fellow journal keepers and lurkers alike.

Aside from the inversion of the classic nature of a diary (i.e., private), the site didn't seem so unusual at first. What made LiveJournal feel unique was its institutional character, discernable in a wide cross section of journals, whereby the diarists felt a responsibility to their audience--to be honest, sure, but to keep 'em coming back. There's an element of performance in online-journal-keeping that rubs harshly against the whole idea of chronicling one's inner life. Then again, the world is full of people eager to broadcast their personal drama, and even fuller of people eager to receive it. This wasn't standard-issue narcissism. It wasn't just that these kids were airing their business to the world; it was that they were doing it in a prescribed format, alongside countless others who had either been invited to join free or paid the 10 bucks. This "forum for personal expression" has an eerily standardized quality about it, which inevitably spills over into the expression itself, and again manifests in the quest for quantity. Several LiveJournalists display hit counters to show how many people to date have peeked into their lives. Every user profile contains a list of the user's friends, and the friends of their friends, and so on and so on and so on. A few cross-indexed clicks and you've crossed the country, peering into the private turmoil of dozens of pre- to post-adolescents, all of whom are keeping track of one another, though they will very likely never meet. It can be compelling and compulsive reading, but it can also make you feel a bit uneasy. Is there such a thing as overconnected?

My top ten songs
Lindsay recently participated in a Mix-tape club. An idea, although a little too 'High Fidelity,' sounded like a kick-ass fun idea. I haven't made a mix-tape in years, partly because I don't own a stereo of any sort, partly because the advent of CD burning has made the rigours of mix-tape making (choosing what songs on what sides, getting the timing right to fill the tape, sitting there for hours physically pressing play and switching tapes) obselete. However, when I found this UK based site which seems like it's offering a sort of chain letter mix CD club, I couldn't resist signing up. You sign up. You make 2 mix CDs. They send you addresses to which you send the CDs. Hopefully, you recieve 2 mix CDs in the mail. We'll see how it works, should be fun either way.

Super Tuesday Arts Review! (STAR!)
Well, it's Tuesday, and it's time to put something on top of the previous post, one of my more incoherent offerings. In his most recent post Matt describes his fine weekend full of cheap beer and good music at the world-famous T in the park (Including however a rave review for Har mar superstar, a performer who I have heard previously describes as all of the looks of Ron Jeremy, without the class...I shall have to find out about him myself). In honour of Matt's weekend end (with a shout out to those squeaky and now leakly floor of his apartment), and because I have been seeing too many movies lately, I respectfully submit my recent movie reviews:
[Movie Section]:
Whale Rider: Yeah, sure it may be sentimental. It may be more "archetypal" than original, but damn if it isn't the best movie this year so far. There are some breath-taking scenes of the actual whale riding and some powerful performances and weaving of the modern and the mythical. Oh, it's just wonderful and pushes all my "happy" buttons.

Phone Booth: I finally got around to seeing this one. It was alright. A good concept that died a slow and agonizing death during the course of the movie, which was much longer than I thought it would hold up. Ending was stupid, but what can you expect.

28 days later: Wicked feast of a movie. Less jump out of my seat scary than I was expecting (I'm a big sucker for things jumping out of dark places) but more interesting too. I liked the vomiting blood and the zombies themselves were just so horrifyingly terrible (and sympathetic in an odd way).

Animatrix: Although certainly enjoyable and very well done, I think that these short backstory fillers spoiled a little of the matrix universe for me. Specifically, the short about the teenager who feels "alienated" like there's something "wrong with the world" and he thinks that his "dreams are more real than reality." True, not breaking the Matrix rules, per se, but it makes it seem like the adolescent solipstic fantasy that it is. I've been thinking about solipsism a lot recently as I am temporary missing my glasses which forces me to have breakfast in almost complete blindness until my eyes will accept the wearing of contacts. There's nothing quite so much like not being able to see the world as an aid in believing that there's nothing else to the world.

How to make Shelley Long funny
I'd just like to echo Matt's statement of the joys of British TV. Graham Norton I thought was the funniest thing since sliced bread. Especially compared to that other guy, whose name I completely forget, but who reminded me far too closely to the BBC interviewers as portrayed by Monty Python. Jim Carrey was on that one and saved it from disaster by taking over and doing a little impromtu musical bit. Graham Norton, on the other hand, had Shelley Long, who has got to be the worst guest in the world and it was hysterical, mostly because he only talked to her to ask her to comment on things he was doing: like randomly selecting member of the audience to find a building that he had on a webcam and make people inside the building wave.

You know you're a good band, when you can do a spontaneous version of "Barracuda"

Last night was the long awaited New Pornographers concert. And despite months of myself self-hyping this event, it lived up to my expectations. I think I like them even more now. The highlight of the show was the second encore when one of the guitarists had a little equipment failure, so they started fooling around and ended up playing all these snippets of Heart songs, most of the time, not knowing the words or the music, but with such a sense of fun, and just pure enjoyment of playing music. It was wonderful. The other musical highlight moment for me was when they went into the "Bells go no no no" part of Testament to youth in verse which was just spine tingling. I'm now got a constant stream of NP songs going through my head. At least the songs can handle the mental repetition.

The opening band, the Organ, put on the best-girl-group-from-Vancouver-channeling-the-Smiths-aggressively-blase performance I'd ever seen. I tried to get Matt a copy of their EP, because it's totally up his alley musically, but they had all sold out. Look out for them, Matt, coming to a stereo near you.

I am a fuzzy little duckling
Neko Case said so. Report tomorrow!

Cold dark basement of the soul
Today was my first serious attempt at apartment hunting in Toronto and all in all I'm pretty satisfied with how it's going so far. One of the landlords I saw said that it seems like the insanity of the last couple of years in the rental market has subsided somewhat. This is good, because my previous rental experiences of the last couple of years has been somewhat sheltered. A brief history of the arduous searching over the last little while:

2002: "Hi Grandma! Can I stay with you?"

2001: [Newspaper Ad]: 2 bdr bungalow, garden, pool, fully furnished, maid service (cleaning and laundry). [Price]: equivalent of $350 Canadian a month. [Phone conversation]: "That seems a bit expensive. Is satellite included?"

2000: "Hi Mom! I'm home!"

Of course, I was also sheltered in university, living in the student paradise that is halifax. There are tons of beautiful, old houses available for students living close to school for under $400 a month. Unfortunately, my ability to select living quarters is remarkably poor, most notably my third year university flat, which was notable for a) receiving a visit from the fire department who were suprised that people were living there because "We condemned the place last year" b) receiving another visit from the fire department because one of the many people who stayed there without paying rent set the curtains on fire c)having the radiator in my apartment bursting the first week I was there, flooding my room, forcing me to pull up the shag carpet so that it wouldn't rot because the 90-year-old deaf and arthritic landlord tried to do the repairs himself, thereby leaving me with a plywood floor half-heartedly covered by old blankets for the year d) at one point having two (2!) piles of pizza boxes reaching from the floor to the ceiling, waiting to be thrown out and e) finding an article in the newspaper article with a picture of our house without a back wall, which was useful in explaining that the odd angle of the house was due to the wall not being put back on properly. (Well, one could argue that (b) and (d) were not so much the fault of the apartment, but I would say that the horrendous living conditions incited the horrendous way we treated the place).

Anyways, I have all faith that I'll be able to find much better spot, somewhere in Toronto, potentially by the end of the week. Or so the plan goes. My only absolute requirement at this point is that the ceiling be higher than 7 feet, which is much harder to find than you would expect.

The wonders of sunscreen

Since returning from Scotland, it feels that summer has hit full force. It feels like that fanastic summer I spent in Halifax after I graduated where my responsibilities were few, the fun was ongoing, and the weather was always perfect.

I've been kept busy by the coming and goings of friends expected and surprising. Ruchi, Francis (my roomate from 3rd year), and Andrew and Stacey all came into the city last week, causing an outbreak of much welcome socializing. Ruchi was only here for a few hours on her way to India for a month. I miss her very much, but it was good to see her, even for only a little while. Lindsay and I, I think, also gave Francis a very good argument for moving to T.O. after he completes his "Return to Canada tour 2003."

And now I have just returned from Lindsay's weekend long birthday celebration at her "cottage" (more like estate) near Caledon. Lindsay and her friends are so awesome and I wore myself silly playing insane amount of tennis and swimming. I also feel very fortunate to have avoided any sunburns this weekend, which is probably the first time in years where I spent significant time in the sun without getting burnt.

In web news, Matt has decided to join the evil legions of the blogosphere with an excellent first post. I think that a blog about the adventures of a Canadian in Scotland could make for some excellent reading, (maybe in the style of Bill Bryson ;) even beyond the reaches of this little corner of the web. Maybe somebody like the SWAP program would be interested in it. Just a thought.

Coming up this week is July 8th, notable for being my little sister's birthday (Happy 21st Hilary) and for the day of the New Pornographers concert, which I've been looking forward to for months. A continuation of this slightly intense summer extravaganza seems to be in the cards.