We are so Sex in the City...on paper.

Chapter 27: Violet and her Foray into Online Dating

"No. You're the wrong kind of weird."

Cashmere Gathering

When I was seven, it was Cinderella...

Nowadays, it's more Lady Windermere's Fan...

Getting crafty

Find your inner craft.
www.etsy.com

Drunken museum, smart Russian

Russia has opened a vodka museum.

I think Russia just discovered the best and cheapest way to draw a hip, young crowd to museums: drinking. If you promise them vodka, I'm pretty sure they will come to your exhibition.

Shelfari, the virtual bookshelf

Wow. Shelfari is a rather wikked online organizing tool that let's you show off your shelf, connect with your bookish friends, and talk about what your are passionate about: books.

And yet, I'm worried. All this organizing and sharing cuts in to my precious and scant reading time. As always, online life is ironical.

I love fall

It is fall; my favorite time of year.

It is cold and wet and when I get home from work I say...

Hello fireplace.
Hello sweatpants.
Hello glass of wine.
Hello couch.
Hello BBC Canada.

and all with out a smidgen of guilt.


I love Fall.

French finance minister got game

The French government has taken a gaming approach to try and find a solution to the country's financial challenges. Budget Minister Jean-Francois Cope has launched an online Cyberbudget game that allows people to balance the books. The challenge is to ensure the €300 billion budget is spent wisely and that if tax cuts are made then services do not fall into deficit. There are a range of tests to face, including having to present the budget to a virtual parliament. [via Social Impact Games]

I envy the "so fucking French" French. They're hip, cool and vanguard, right down to their finance minister who commissioned a video game that allows chaque personne française simple à posit ones own solutions to common budget problems.

See the pictures below?
Can you guess which one is the French finance minister?
And which one is the Canadian finance minister?

I thought so.

Second Life is the new D+D

Have you heard of Second Life? It's a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. (Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 1,049,837 people from around the globe.)

Strange times.

Apparently you can actually buy, sell and set up real estate in this cyberworld, which you exchange via Second Life dollars, AKA "Linden Dollars".

I've signed on as Violet Cydrome (you have to select from a range of last names). My avatar is some cyberpunk babe – shock and awe.

I'm excited about the concept, but a tad suspicious of the economic mandate (you have to pay to play). I'm worried it's a place without the political mores and balance of a "Buy Nothing Day" movement. But I haven't investigated this world. If it hasn't already, I'm looking forward to a time when the political urest rears its monstrous and beautiful head (a predictable future predicated on the past). Avatar heads will roll.

Like I have enough time in the day to frequent another world. This world is really too much with us...cyberoaches.

Reflecting birthday wishes

You know what I really hate? Sentimental birthday cards with blurry photos of flowers, kitties and/or puppies on the cover, ones that sheath an epic poem of saccharine proporations celebrating all things mushy — like the one pictured above.

You know what I really love? This particular card's inherent irony. Read the text.

The well-wisher might as well have said: "Hey, friend, even though it's your special day, you should thank me for being me — because I'm such a wicked-awesome and unique person... You know what? Screw wishing you a happy birthday. I'm going to celebrate me with this card. And remind you of the fact that you're really lucky that someone as great as me is your friend."

It's Mata Hari's birthday on Friday and Figure8's on Saturday...I'm pretty sure they know how lucky they are to know me, so I'm not going to send them a card reminding them.

Random

The word random is used to express lack of purpose, cause, order, or predictability in non-scientific parlance.

I wonder if online linking will re-define the term?

Random links, and their transmittal, seem to be predictable these days. You definitely know when some link you received in a random email is going to be a big hit.

Why do you know this?

How do you know that a video of a man bashing a disco record over his head will tickle a global funnybone?

And chaos ?— the primal emptiness of space? Well, the Greeks hadn't encountered our space or myspace when they coined the term chaos.

Certainly there are other words to describe our space. Certainly their are patterns and organization here, in this empty space.

But our interaction with it?

Isn't it rather random and chaotic?

We're viral. And viral always signifies, but does not necessarily mean, social chaos, something we can't control.

I seek random and chaos, but my room is rather clean; my flight or fight of fancy is too highly attuned to negotiate this here rote world.

I really do think I was born a warrior princess who is bored with a world stacked up with too many matresses — too numbed to the peas of life.

Meh. A glass of wine and my world unravels.

p.s. Click on the random link a few times. This wikipedia link will shunt you to random pages. Gawd I love Wikipedia. It's the best random around. So full of it.

Original borat

My tall 1.84 cm (6.2 feet) My weight 78 kg.

My eyes green .. I live alone !!!!!!!!!

I have home - car ...

Hey, look everybody. It's your boyfriend.

As well as the inspiration for Sasha Baron Cohen's character Borat... I wonder who inspired Bruno?

Family bonding

My parents visit Vancouver once a year. Or less if they can help it. They don't like 'the city'. My Dad occasionally refers to people here as P.R.C.Ks (yep, sans "i")and gets flustered if there is more than 12 people on the sidewalk. Regardless, I'd say this was certainly our most successful visit. I can't take credit for the lovely time they had, however. To that I must credit the Vancouver Police Department.

The first time they visited I put a lot of time and energy into planning our outings. A trip to the museum of Anthropology, a historical tour of Chinatown, a play. Dad fell asleep in the play and started snoring. I mentioned the walking tour of historic Chinatown and he let out a dark & heavy sigh, "Awwh, do we have to...?"

This trip, however, I let nature have 'er way with us. Screw the road trips up to Shannon falls and the Lynn Canyon. Screw Fisherman's wharf and Go Fish's seething line up. All they really wanted was blood.

Thanksgiving Sunday morning. I've just come back from a run (read slow painful jog). Dad and Mom are at the window exclaiming with glee that there is a policeman with a dog on the street below our apartment. Ha! Yokles, Ha! Ultramaroons. Ha! Hayseeds.

I go to the window and see a policeman and his dog sniffing our street like a pig scenting truffles. The dog forcefully jumps into some low lying bush on the street, squats and begins to back out with all its might. He has a guy by the ankle. An actual guy! By the ankle! The dog-police-trainer-guy starts screaming at the top of his lungs to cease and desist (and the last thing that dog wants to do is let go of the guy) but he finally does. The cops jump on the guy and with a knee between the shoulder blades they cuff him and the coppers begin to compare notes in a jocular way. At this point Mom and Dad are having the time of their lives. It's the best of all possible realities. It's like we are watching TV, but we're not. It's like we're interacting with each other, but we're not. It's like something happen to bring us together, but it didn't. Cool.

Anyway. The result is there is still blood on the sidewalk from where the guy bled all over the place. Who knew dog-teeth wounds bled so much? Why don't they clean that up? Maybe I should call the cop-shop and inquire. I just might do that.

A successful trip all around. I bet my Dad has told this story to his dentist by now.

Me and you and you and me

So, Heidi Lament can send out group emails, but she can't post on GBS. Shame on her. In extreme retaliation I'm going to post her latest group email game...

Here's what she sent, responses redacted. It's up to you to respond, and/or lie, in the comments section kids... and make up some weird pseudonym that hints at who you are, what you're like, and how I may or may not know you.

Why would you bother doing this? Just to take the piss out of me. By posting one simple little nickname, you will set me ruminating on your being for days — fun for you, hell for me.

A: FOUR JOBS I HAVE HAD IN MY LIFE
B: FOUR MOVIES I WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER
C: FOUR PLACES I HAVE LIVED
D: FOUR TV SHOWS I LOVE TO WATCH
F. FOUR PLACES I HAVE BEEN ON HOLIDAY (vacation)

Woolf-child Howls

"Those elderly ladies, who sit on the edge of ballrooms sampling the stuff of humanity between finger and thumb and breathing so evenly that the necklaces, which rise and fall upon their breast, seem to represent some elemental force, concluded, a little smilingly, that she would do."

- Night and Day (1919)

*sigh*
That is why I love Virginia Woolf.

Sucky connections

Cable Internet connections suck. Just thought I'd take the time (out) to let you know.

Do the capgras for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving means surviving family gatherings... with only a few minor bruises.

Oh, I know you love each and every one of your family members. I do too... really. I also happen to know that alcohol helps keep these situations loving -- and television too.

But for those of you out there whose gala keg of familial love has run dry and whose sanity is reaching the breaking point, I recommend the following diversionary tactic:

1. Pick a family member, any family member will do.
2. Start quietly insisting that the chosen member has been replaced by an identical looking imposter.
3. At dinner, say things like, "you've never said anything like that before" and "Oh really... how would YOU know that?"
4. When you talk to your chosen member, really look at them -- hard. Squint your eyes, raise one eyebrow.
5. Continue alternating steps 3 and 4 until the tryptophan sends the whole lot of them them into coma-land.
   

The Capgras delusion or Capgras' syndrome is a rare disorder in which a person holds a delusional belief that an acquaintance, usually a close family member or spouse, has been replaced by an identical looking imposter.

Egg full of cartons

I'm currently sussing out the "center of the world". That's right: I'm currently hanging out in Toronto. And let me tell you, this impromptu trip, which I accidently started a day early, is already shaping up to be just the thing for my "all work and no play" head ache. A little scrambling of the egg carton gets the brain sparking again, I now realize. A rather gemini strategy, I know, but then I am one. So there you have it. I'm at the center of the world.

Delicious nothing sandwich

What did I do last weekend? So kind of you to ask.

I did nothing. Glorious nothing.

My weekend was one tasty "nothing sandwich".

Let me give you the recipe:

Bread: On Friday I got myself a cheap bottle of wine and a slice of pizza and dragged my processed food items and computer into my room, shut the door and proceeded to watch three hours of MI5. It's just good and bad enough to watch when you are dead beat tired.

Meat: Saturday night I checked out the Junior Boys' early show. (You can listen to some of their songs here.) They're smart, gang-of-four boys who play solid electronic beats for flocks of seagulls. What a trip hearing a contemporary band mashing and recombing sounds from your youth. A heady brew indeed.

Mayo: After the show and some greasy food and strong martinis, Heidi Lament and I trucked off to Commercial drive to demolish a house with the lord of the dance. Thanks Golden Ears for helping me cut a good rug.

Bread: Um. I watched the remaining MI5 episode and finished reading Guy Gavriel Kay's recent historical fantasy, The Last Light of the Sun. Screw being a warrior princess. I want to be Cyngael warrior who calls vikings and wolf dogs friends.

I know it sounds lame, but I feel totally refreshed for having savoured my nothing sandwich all weekend long. Now that I've got the recipe down, I'm thinking about adding veggies... nah.