We figured out how to use the radio this morning. The alarm went off at 9:30, showering us with waves of philosophy courtesy an interview with John Ralston Saul. It was one of those really good interviews that diminishes your ability to leave the bed (unlike, say, a rousing chorus of ZZ Top's "Tush.") But we had to get up, and so we left off the philosophy discussion and staggered into the kitchen to poke sustenance into our food holes. It was then that the Boy made the very elementary discovery that sticking a wire into a slot in the back of the stereo would magically fix all of our problems with CBC reception. So after 17 ½ months of living in the boonies, and 3 days after deciding to move back to the Golden Horseshoe area, we can finally pick up decent radio.
It reminds me of the moment last year when we figured out how to work the Brita. Nikola Teslas, we aren't.
* * *
Wayne Gretzky looks extremely sad these days. Every time I see him in and around Team Canada, I can't help wondering if we're going to hear about suicide some day. There's no joy to what he does, no spark, no passion. This morning John Ralston Saul reminisced about Gretzky's ability in his prime to imagine and intuit the entire hockey game, so that he could hang on the boards until he saw an opening for the puck. The Boy says that Gretzky's sadness comes from the gap between what he can imagine and what he can do with his body, which is really depressing when you think about it. (Then again, people with physical impairments go through the same thing their whole lives; is it only a tragedy when it is a Gretzky who feels the lack?)
* * *
We went to a party at Jerry & Kerry's last Friday night. It was one of the most satisfying social experiences of the year for me; not riotously fun but definitely not soul-suckingly awful either. (I really have no idea why I feel the need to relentlessly qualify all of my experiences here. Onward.)
The usual people were in attendance, and the inevitable drum jam occurred later rather than sooner but was all the better for it. I was half asleep on the couch by the time the djembes got going; at first I was determined to sleep through it as a sort of tribute to the melodiousness of it all, but soon I got the urge and began to lay down fat cowbell beats overtop the pounding. Other girls on the couch laughed joyously at my sleepy rhythms which of course just made me play wilder. It was very cool.
Big Sur & Flower were there, and they made a moderate fuss over me and my interpretive dance achievement. I have to say that I enjoy getting positive feedback from my group, and even drunken kudos are still kudos. I hardly ever get multiple hugs for putting on an education-themed presentation.
We spent quite a bit of time talking to another married couple from Southern Ontario (or as they call it in the punk scene, SoOnt - okay, they don't really). He's a filmmaker who concentrates on music (videos, documentaries & the like) and she's an Elementary crewmate on the Good Ship Education; at first we had many things to say about the transition from there to here, then we just started talking about bands and music and whatever. In a way I feel like it's cheating to like them so much because they're so much like us ("Woman who says she loves Brazil has only seen 4 square miles of it"), but at the same time it's nice to find someone who had a similar reaction to Keith's beer (i.e. we all liked drinking it when we lived in Ontario, but once we moved into a mandatory Keith's Zone the attraction waned.) I mean, I don't want to be a hothouse flower, only able to function in gritty alternative urban environments, but there's no sense in denying who I am: a kooky smart suburban girl under the spell of Toronto.
(This is an extremely elliptical narrative today.)
* * *
By the way, our one-day late Valentine's Day celebration was very nice. Besides the party in the evening, we had lunch together (bunches and bunches of decadent fruit!) and a trip to the local curry house for dinner. Every once in awhile the Boy needs a fresh infusion of curry to keep him running smoothly; I just go for moral support. I'll gamely choke down a dozen forkfuls of the stuff of course, if only to prove that I'm not a complete and utter philistine, but on the whole I'd rather not. On the up side, it means that a trip to the curry house is all that much more altruistic...and on the down side, some days it's just this side of martyrdom.
Other than that, it was kind of a weird day. I had 2 classes to keep me hopping up & down the hill; one on STD's and teen pregnancy and the other on the effect of word processing on English Language Arts. (By the way, all of these topics got a resounding thumbs-down. Boo STD's & teen pregnancy, boo word processing crutches! Boo I say!) Right after the first class I took off for the bathroom and on the way I ran into a number of classmates who wanted to chat. I hopped up & down during small talk, unable to tear myself away for a crucial five minutes alone...and this is probably why I winged a piece of food at the Anti-Stephen's head, come to think of it.
On second thought, no, he was just being annoying. He came out of his multiculturalism class with a piece of stringy brownish food, which he offered to me. I had already accepted it when he started talking about how awful it was, and how it had brought tears to his eyes.
"So you gave it to me?" I bellowed, outraged. "Fuck you! [This was when I threw it at his head. He ducked and it sailed on over.] What are you, a three year old? Do I get the food you've taken one bite out of?"
I think I neglected to mention that we were all laughing our heads off.
When I finally got everything settled & started my trudge up the hill, a voice called out with those magical words: "do you want a ride?" I looked up to see a boy that I had dismissed as an insufferable jackass not an hour ago. (No, not the Anti-Stephen. I hold negative feelings about more than one boy.) So I accepted of course. I'm still surprised that he offered me a ride - maybe we don't have the antagonistic relationship I thought we did. Weird.
* * *
The Boy has a new crusade to keep him occupied. It's one of his more brilliant ideas, really: to unite the free distribution of Linux to the computer recycling efforts of groups like the Sally Ann. It's an ecumenical idea inasmuch as the distribution of computers helps to heal the divide between those who are upwardly mobile and those who don't have those resources to move up in the world. That's where the computer distribution comes in; the Linux slides into the picture because Linux can be freely distributed and (from what I can understand) it's so powerful that kids can make their own web servers after a while.
Unfortunately for him, he's discovered that this isn't an original idea; there's a group in Cabbagetown that did this very thing 2 years ago. But I don't think that diminishes the brilliance of the concept. Sometimes it's railroading time, and a bunch of people will come up with the train concept. The very fact that he was able to independently marry these ideas tells me that this is a project that's time has come.
More importantly, there's a curious paradox to consider: People with money are able to buy their children a system which comes with software which will enable them to learn how to type letters for minimum wage. The poor instead are forced to give their children a free system which comes with software which lets them learn the skills to:
- from the geeks into the streets manifesto
* * *
this is the first time i have ever written an entry on february 18. read and enjoy.
