...problems of access...

The problem with giving away your best stuff in interviews or public access sessions can be shown in the following example.

Anyone who listens to This American Life already heard about this headline on February 12, when they went behind-the-scenes at The Onion. I laughed at it thoroughly then, but experienced unsettling deja vu when I saw it on The Onion feed today. Once that passed, I started laughing again, only slightly less strenuously.

...my own brand of special...

i) Before the in-store speaking/signing event with Phillipa Gregory (author of The Other Boleyn Girl, launching her 5-city North American book tour at our store) I am chatting with the ladies first in line. This leads to my going on and on about how I love this series of novels, and am so psyched to meet her tonight, and I wish I could be in line with them but I have to work, and she has such a great fun style, and gush gush gush. From behind me, a British voice says "Excuse me, would you be able to let us into the back office, there doesn't seem to be anyone around there". Three guesses who.

ii) The glass was full of water and perched precariously on the end of the ottoman. I could have moved it to the desk. I could have found a coaster, a counter, anywhere more appropriate than unbalanced on the edge of a soft piece of furniture. Every now and then I glanced at it wearily as I stumbled through this essay, but really couldn't be bothered to move it. I had a feeling though, that I should. The phone rang and I moved abruptly to answer it, knocking the glass over. Worth the $21.99 for the set, my sturdy Ikea glass didn't break when it hit the carpet, but the water fell onto my new purse, textbook, and presentation notes, soaking them thoroughly. I swore, then shrugged. It was nothing more than what I deserved.

...when love is first in flower...

From Patricia Marx's "Him, Her, Him Again, the End of Him": "You know what I think it really was? He was a narcissist. I love narcissists - even more than they love themselves. You don't have to buoy them up. They are their own razzle-dazzle show and you are the blessed, favored with a front-row seat"

Hah.

She is so me. Look a little into my romantic history (include flings, married men, taken men, and Lee's Palace dance-floor one-shot make-outs) and what do you find? Narcissists. Even the current *crush* - though, lately, I hate that word - is one, I think. When I finish the book, I will tell you if the protagonist has a happy ending.

...more things to herald the end of the world...

I almost feel like I could start a new blog devoted to broadcasting the grammatical errors of the writers of The Toronto Star...

From an article in today's online edition: "The Crown's star witness was a drug dealer who said that Devgan and her cooked up a scheme to write prescriptions for patients that she would enlist".

...in spite of its magnificence, I wouldn't stop there...

This past weekend I discovered podcasting - for someone who claims fascination with new media culture, I'm a little slow on the uptake sometimes. So, I discovered podcasting, and then I discovered through the iTunes store the Great Speeches in History podcast, to which I promptly subscribed.

Then, Tuesday morning I found myself a corner in the back of the subway car, closed my eyes and began listening to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream". Though I have the written speech tacked up on the wall beside my desk, I hadn't ever heard the entire speech in one go, only excerpts and soundbites. By the time the last words were through, I was in tears and pulling into Rosedale station. That gave me scant minutes to recover before arriving at Bloor station on my way to work.

I thought about including some lines in this post, but without context and the passion of his voice, the words can lie flat alone. So instead, I recommend everyone take 15 minutes from their day to listen to it for themselves, courtesy of the American Rhetoric website.

...the apocalypse is nigh...

The fact that Ann Coulter is endorsing Hilary Clinton is just one more reason not to support Clinton's winning the Democratic nomination. When the lunatic ice-queen of the uber-right thinks Hilary Clinton would better represent GOP values than Republican front-runner John McCain (arguably more middle-of-the-road than what we are used to seeing from the Republican Party), you know there is something to be concerned about.



Granted, Ann Coulter is crazy. She throws around anti-Semitic remarks, and hopes for the assassination by terrorists of candidates (like John Edwards) who she doesn't support. However, she still seems to see something of a kindred spirit in Hilary, and that's never good.

Don't you love the look in her eye when she talks about Hilary tearing up?

...so who will now candle me home...

I think I'm growing up (slowly, surely), making better decisions for better reasons. That first time, going to the movies was a mistake. It let me sit in darkness while a story unfolded in front of my eyes - not the one on the screen, but the one *right* in front of my eyes, in that unseen space where my thoughts leave the relative safety of my head and are too visible to ignore.

Some time from now, it said, we might be together-forever. We might be closed to new things. Or we could be open to new things. We might be happy, but maybe we won't be. We might be just about to leave a play I dragged you out to when you wanted to watch football instead - we just might be a breath away from walking past an ex-lover who knew me better than you do, who knows I can't sit still. Maybe it won't be like that at all, and I will be calm with you and around you, and we really will be happy, maybe...

We should have just skipped the movie, that first time, and talked over coffee instead. Talked so I would focus on your words and not on my imagination, which leaps so fast from me. We got it right this second time, three months later. Hopefully right. Maybe right. At least, at the very least, this time we can try for right. At the very, very least.

...happy tax-rebate to me...

What do you think? Is the new love of my life too "Elle Woods"? Or can I pull it off... even when I go to law school?

Because I am buying it. Either way.

...my eyes pass over...

At the bottom of this article on Robert Deluce's Porter Airlines, the last little bit about congestion caught my eye. Because I am flying to Boston soon, and I can imagine that is a popular flight destination; and in all my time of twice-, thrice-yearly flying I have never given a thought to the fact that the sky, and popular flight destinations, can have traffic congestion. And jams? Can the sky have traffic jams?

In the city you can be literally bumper to bumper, and not fear too much, even if you lightly tap the person in front of you. You can't have that in the air, because if you lightly tap into another plane up there, it basically means instant death. So what if one of the 15 some-odd flights daily from Toronto to Boston is coming in around the same time as one of the 20 some-odd flights from New York to Boston? Not to mention the flights that come in from Chicago, Atlanta, Orlando, San Francisco, and Tuscon? And the flights from all of the other COUNTRIES?! Why are there not more airplane accidents? Shouldn't we have a plan in place for this kind of situation?