this is not blogging; this is typing
Is it possible for a dictator to believe in democracy?
Can you withhold voting rights from others and deny and the will of the majority and STILL exercise your own democratic rights?
Can you be both democrat and autocrat at the same time?
Go here to find out?
I may have a dishwasher at the dacha, but for the past week I’ve had no mirror.
And this is sort of interesting. With no mirror, you don’t see what your hair looks like. You don’t notice the slow tan (that gets through the 30-block sun screen) building on your face. And make-up? Whassa?
It’s not that vanity has gone away. It’s just that it’s gone on a little holiday.
And this is sort of nice until you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror at the grocery store as I did yesterday. Eek!
My unstyled hair was blown over to one side and sticking up at the top making me look vaguely like Pud from the Bazooka Joe bubblegum comics. I had two untanned ovals around my eyes from the sunglasses. And there was a layer of white salt building up on my face.
I’m glad I have no mirror in the dacha. It’s more fun not knowing. And not caring.
Tell me, can a “cottage” have a dishwasher?
Until recently, my experience of a cottage has always been a wooden salt box with no insulation, a party-line telephone, lumpy bunk beds with mildew-scented sheets, chipped dishes, poor ventilation, no ceilings, cracks in the outside walls big enough to let in the mosquitos, and no - repeat no - dishwasher.
I know that a holiday home can have a dishwasher. And a summer home can have dishwasher too. But a cottage? Can it have a dishwasher and still maintain its status as cottage?
Funny how you have the time to wonder about these things when you find yourself at a cottage with a dishwasher.
A year ago, I wasn’t even sure what a blog was, much less how to go about doing one.
So what better time to launch my own blog with this post. I don’t think it worked because blogs don’t lend themselves to recycled newspaper content or writing styles. But hey. What did I know?
Over the past year there have been many changes at GT as I attempt to figure it all out. I’ve learned a lot about blogs, internet technology, new media, new styles of writing, photography and Google.
I’ve also made bloggy friends, some of whom I’ve met, talked to on the phone and conversed/IMed with, some of whom I’ve never met.
So, to celebrate, let me share a few of those new friends and their blogs. I’ll be adding these and more to my blogroll.
(I’m off-line for a few days but should be back Tuesday)
Reject the Koolaid - Run by a tag team of crackerjacks Jacy and Tearfree. Smart, witty, at times heart wrenching, and very funny. I have since met Jacy and spoken to Tearfree by phone.
Tanya Espanya - My first bloggy to have a baby. I started following Espanya early in her pregnancy and felt joy when she announced the birth of Alexander in June. This mummy is one funny lady with a big heart and smile. We also met in June.
Tagged and Bagged - Photographs and deconstructions of graffiti on the streets of Halifax. Tagbagger appreciates the artistry without sentimentalizing it. Attracts some interesting commentary from graffiti artists.
Passion of the Dale - Quirky, funny, compassionate, great opera reviews. Dale always reminds me that there is humanity in a bumblebee. Sometimes you forget these things.
Meish.org: Life unfolding - Meg Pickard is a new media guru based in London. (She’d probably hate that characterization.) She’s a thinker on the frontiers of new media. She works for The Guardian which has one of the best online newspapers in the world. Don’t know her, but would like to.
I Tri Therefore I am - the blog of a triathlete and one very smart chick pursuing her PhD in Victorian literature. The blog gives intelligent insights into the motivations, rewards, pain and disappointments of an elite athlete. Meg and I are swimming buddies.
Nine Gram Brain - A parody of a mummy blogger known across Canada. If you want to know more go to the blog.
Cup of Coffey - Beth shares her musical passions giving fantastic reviews of concerts and regular Friday mixed tapes. She’s also a grammar grrrrl which makes her a grrrrl after my own heart. I’ve love to have a cup of coffee with Beth sometime.
Bliss and Bile - You gotta love the New-York-City take on life, especially when it comes from the sharp-witted mind of an investment banker who comes from the borough of Queens. Chelene posts every day and every day she makes me smile.
Jane Austen Junior - Miss Austen Junior may very well end up rivaling Miss Austen Senior for her wit and powers of social observations. A new blog with only a few posts, but they are wicked, simply wicked.
World According to Zed - Works in the world of New York publishing. Presently making me LMAO with snapshots of a visit from her 80-something mom from Florida. Her Phrases-to-Kill-by series is not to be missed.
Novel Readings - The reading diary of an English professor who specializes in the Victorian novel. Posts are entertaining, accessible for the non-Victorianist and you always come away feeling you’ve gained something. And it’s not all Victorian high-brow, either. Thornbirds was the subject of a recent post. Would love to take one of her courses, but alas, I’m all essayed out.
You think the action scenes in Bourne Ultimatum and Casino Royale were exciting?
They were nothing compared to the epic battle of good verses evil I witnessed in my kitchen the other night.
It was man versus fruit fly. Go here to see who won.
Last week the Gifted Typist asked if “hey” is the new “hi”.
Today a Toronto newspaper published a piece on the very same subject.
Hmmmmmm.
The words are not the same, but it is curious that the piece should appear so soon after GT’s post. Shall we sue?
Thanks to the etymological work, historical citations and cultural insights of GT’s bevy of bodacious commentators, I believe the hey-hi controversy was more thoroughly explored here than in the Toronto newspaper. It posits that hey is more grunt than greeting and that it’s part of the new casual movement. Holly’s analysis provided exclusively to GT was more interesting.
Still, you have to wonder where they get their ideas….
Thanks to Tagbagger for tipping me off on this one.
As someone close to me always says: “Food is life.”
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157601594439670].
I get Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and even Paris Hilton. I don’t particularly admire these celebrities or their antics but I get it.
They are 21st-century post-modern celebs feeding off media attention. Like plants in the jungle, they opportunistically exploit their environments to enhance their survival. It could be argued that LiLo and BriSpo possess more talent that ParHo, but lately their staged life-dramas and not their talent have been the mainstay of their currency.
I get that. Begrudgingly
But Posh Spice, aka Victoria Beckham I don’t get. Yes, she is married to a beautiful and talented footballer who has successfully leveraged his image to sell brands. Yes, she was once in a girlie pop group that had a hit or two. Yes, she’s a British working-class girl done good. Yes, she feeds off the teat of the celebrity-adoring cow.
But I don’t get the appeal. Why do people go for PoSpo with her crushed-in cheeks and the over-sized head on the stick-insect body? Does the word “mutant” come to mind?
She hasn’t said or done anything particularly interesting or outrageous since her Spice Girl days. Spice sista Ginger Spice became a representative for the UN Population fund and travelled the world advocating women’s rights.
And the image of her on that book squatting in the sky-scraper high heels and flashing the gusset of her black underpants. Ugh! Where was her agent when that abomination was created?
I appreciate female beauty and I understand the bad-girl antics of pop stars. But no matter how hard I try, I just don’t get Victoria Beckham.
Please explain. Someone.
I truly do appreciate living a civil society that keeps its streets clean.
I also appreciate the effort of city workers who operate street cleaning machines.
I particularly appreciate the fact that they operate these big hulking machines in the middle of the night so as not to disrupt the movement of traffic and people through our clean city streets.
I furthermore appreciate the fact that our civil laws require these big hulking machines to sound high-pitched beeps to alert everyone when they are moving in reverse.
So why is it that when I wake up at 2:45 on a Monday morning to the sound of the big hulking street cleaner with its backwards beeping, I don’t appreciate it?
And why is that an hour and a half later when I am still awake, I am cursing these big hulking machines that keep our streets clean.
Why is it that at dawn, I am cursing the morning chorus of birds, wishing they’d go to hell, wishing my street cleaner would go to hell, wishing that civil society would go there too?
Why?
The one war in which everyone changes sides.
Cyril Connolly, British essayist (GT’s favourite mid-20th male British essayist)
Under the darkening skies of approaching storms and with the radio shrieking “severe thunderstorms,” we arrived at our trailer for our holiday.
That’s when the Cheddar-the-cat bolted out of her cat taxi. She zigzagged around the property and then darted into the woods.
Being a city cat, Cheddar isn’t familiar with raccoons, skunks and other creatures of the wild. And she wasn’t familiar with the area.
As the air thickened with the coming storms and the light dwindled, we trudged through the woods calling her name, willing the silly beast to show its face. But no face appeared. Birds swooped for cover and things rustled in the bush. Everything boded badly for Cheddar. Our hearts were heavy.
Go here to learn the rest of the story. Spoiler: it has a happy ending.
Here is Cheddar in various stages of repose.
[flickr 7156526@N06 72157601348254725].
Thirty years ago today, Elvis was found dead in the bathroom of Graceland.
And thirty years ago today, my beloved cat Tiger was found strangled to death in my backyard.
The culprit was a spurned suitor, a boy in the ‘hood who asked me to go out with him.
I said no. He strangled my cat. This is the sort of thing spurned suitors did in the ‘hood where I grew up - they strangled your cat.
The spurned suitor had scratches on his neck but denied doing the deed when I confronted him. He bragged about the strangling to others, but to this day he would deny it if I asked him.
So while the world buried Elvis in Graceland, we buried Tiger in the backyard.
Tiger was never resurrected by tribute artists and her grave never visited by Tiger pilgrims.
Just as well, I suppose. I wouldn’t want Tiger’s memory warped like Elvis’.
RIP Tiger.
It turns out that we might have been fooling ourselves with the “hi” to “hey” controversy.
We were discussing when the word “hey” became the new “hi” and wondering if this was a Friendsism creeping into the language.
It was at this point that the intrepid Holly entered the discussion with a very productive search of the on-line dictionaries. She made a fascinating discovery. Here is her conclusion:
So “hi” was originally derived from “hey” and both were a call for attention; in North America, “hi” became a friendly greeting in the 19th century; and in the 20th “hey” became “hi,” even though the OED doesn’t acknowledge that yet.
For more on this etymological discovery, go here.
The last few weeks I’ve been noticing “hey” or “hey there” being used to open certain CBC programs - as in “Hey there, welcome to Q.”
This leads a typist to wonder if “hey” isn’t replacing “hi” as a casual greeting.
I first noticed the Hey-for-Hi transposition on the TV program Friends, as in: Ross to Rachel: “Hey Rachel, how’s it goin’.”
That, I assumed it was a Friendsism a bit like: “Do I LOOK like I’m enjoying myself?” or “Oh. My. God.”
But when you hear a Friendsism being bandied around on a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio program, well, you have to think the whole thing’s moved beyond Ross and Rachel.
So, what’s up? Is “hey” the new “hi”?
My wife screams when she is having sex. Especially when I walk in on her.
Roy “Chubby” Brown, British comedian
