January 30, 2007 >> Belinda Corresponds With Clemens

Chris

Thanks for your support. All the best.

Belinda Stronach

Shirley, that lovable Oriental-vixen-on-sabbatical-in-England, has somehow orchestrated a letter from Belinda Stronach. To me! I am happy in that 'hahaha this is amazingly absurd' way. Shirley is thanky.

Now, unfortunately, the note is somewhat generic. It wishes me "all the best", which is like saying "have a good life, fuckface" for politicians and celebrities. It either assumes that I support the woman (which I do, because she's hilarious... TIE DOMI!?!?) or her politics (which I don't, because she's kinda clueless and her dad is rich). Very generic.

Basically Belinda Stronach is giving me the old autographia runaround. And that's okay. While it would be radder if she had written, "Thanks for the support Chris, I really liked that one time when you poured condensed milk all over my body," or "Chris, I kant speek the English!?!", this note nonetheless proves that Belinda Stronach was thinking about me... at least for several miniseconds while she was writing my name. It's enough to know.

The Girl with the Pac-man Eye once asked why I love Belinda Stronach. I told her that it was rather arbitrary, a non-logical attachment, an affinity without any real meaning. She narrowed her eyes, crushing Pac-man into a lemon, and her mouth sounded sour when it told me that I was being unClemenslike. It's a cop-out, she's right. Usually there'd be a story there, some sort of humorous origin. But I think it's sorta appropriate that my Belinda fandom has a vapid and trite background. It's like, what's that word, a fish thing... those tiny little thumbtacks... oh ya, a metaphor.

Posted by Chris at 12:09 AM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink

January 27, 2007 >> Turtle Tail Template

Rey Chow writes about academic literature and how it turtles in on itself, folding inwards to protect itself from modernist, deconstructionist tendencies to tear everything apart at the seams. Obtuse prose and specialized jargon are really just a way to protect literature's trust in itself as a valid form of expression. You need access to a particular school of thought to unravel the argument and if you have that access, chances are you've already been inundated with a kind of academic acceptance for the terminology contained within the texts.

I like the metaphor of academic literature as a turtle: slow moving, hard shell, soft centre and a little tail out back that doesn't do much of anything. Sometimes the turtle is ponderous, and sometimes it eats flies and slow-moving beetles in a swamp. Usually, though, the turtle just sleeps and dreams about the politics of insect consumption. I want to be the tail of academia, because most girls at the zoo agree that the tail makes the turtle. It's the cutest part, the prettiest pony in an ugly green stable. I will be Academia Lite, Academeasy Peasy™, the beginning of a new breed of talk-show scholarship.

Posted by Chris at 05:05 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink

January 22, 2007 >> Chickens Past and Present

At the pizza place that me and Kyle frequent (3 for 1, bitches!) bones from chicken wings, picked clean, littered the sludge outside. In the snow all around the bones, hundreds of imprinted bird feet showed signs of an avian wake. Had chickens come to pay respect to their fallen brethren in the night? Had they *GASP* cannibalized the remnants of their chicken-y clan?

It was probably just pigeons, but maybe chickens have feelings too. This morning, I had chicken wings for breakfast with medium sauce. Now I have feelings of indigestion.

Posted by Chris at 12:57 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

January 19, 2007 >> Computron Etiquette

I spend more time in this fucking grad lounge than anyone I know, except for maybe this asian lady who has apparently moved in. She has loaded the fridge with three bags of groceries, and I think she has a tiny bed set up behind one of the study cubicals. That said, we have a swipe-card system for getting in the front door and I think I probably hold the record for the most total entries - yet another reason why smoking is beneficial. Winning the Grad Lounge.

You know that whole urinal deal where the object is to pee as far away from other dudes as possible? Well I think there's the same system at place with computers in public places, except with a twist - you always want the computer furthest away from everyone else unless it sucks. Urinals are always the same: you pee in them, they take your pee unconditionally. Pretty straightforward. Computers, on the other hand, are a varied bunch.

The 'urinal system' might dictate that you should take the computer on the far end, opposite the asian lady (who apparently owns the best computer ALL OF THE TIME) but maybe the mouse is sticky on that one. Or you'll try to leave a computer space between you and the people on either side, but that particular machine is loaded with spyware and insists on showing you gay porn montages every fifteen minutes. Some computers don't have Word. Some computers are just hands down pieces of shit.

Funnily enough, those sidelong looks you get in the washroom when you break urinal etiquette still apply in the computer lab. Like, why the hell are you sitting next to me? Well bitch, it's because this is the only available computer without pretzel pieces and salt embedded in the keyboard! I think I'm going to eat all her groceries the next time she leaves.

Posted by Chris at 10:28 AM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink

January 17, 2007 >> Honour in Anything

The word honorarium is funny to me, mostly because it seems like a fancy way of saying bribe. Right now, we're trying to get a prominent academic to give a keynote talk at our grad conference. We found somebody, but the dude said that he will "require an honorarium." Like, if you want me to come lecture you losers, you'll have to slip a fat envelope across the table first.

Honorarium can also mean "due payment". If there's a shitty job at school that noone wants, like Secretary for the Council of Meeting about Meeting Times and Acceptable Flavours of Donuts, they'll offer an honorarium as incentive for someone to fill the position. Sometimes people do, just to get the HONORARIUM.

Honorarium. It's just such a silly, falooting word. It's so academic, in that it tries to imply honour in doing just about anything. Leave it to higher education to adopt its own terminology for a standard transaction, let alone one that sounds like you should get a medal alongside your cash. VERY CLEVER, ACADEMIA.

I wonder if the cafeteria workers at Ryerson get honorariums too?

Posted by Chris at 03:40 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink

January 15, 2007 >> Learning in Transit

Last semester, I made a cardboard box with my dreams inside. Then I developed a narrative methodology for generating stories and characters out of controlled randomization. I got an A. If I had drawn a picture of an elephant wearing an elephant hat, I probably could've got an A as well. It's a dream within a dream!

Lately I have spent a lot of time on the bus and the subway... hyper-navigating public transportation. By which I mean that these vehicles take me places, and I come up with stupid terminology to make my ride seem more important than anyone else's. Whilst aboard said vehicles, I have been doing a lot of reading. Reading is kind of a necessity these days, because reading is an important part of learning things and that's how you get A's when you're not making 'art' out of cardboard boxes.

Since I spend so much time ferrying myself between home and Ryerson, my Learning Station has become the plush stained seat between a passed-out Chinese businessman and two kids making out. I used to find this difficult, as questions more interesting than those in my book often arose: Will I unwillingly get pulled into this orgy of hormones beside me? Can I borrow this dude's cell phone while he's sleeping? I bet it's got Tetris.

Lately, however, I find that the subway works for learning because I can assign each major concept in my reading to someone on the subway. Foucault's logic for how Victorian society represses sexuality becomes the make-out kids. The unconscious man beside me is Gramsci's hegemony, because he represents an unflagging dedication to work despite its apparently adverse affect on his sleep schedule - the man has been effectively negotiated into consumerism! It's a bit tenuous, a little flimsy, and yet I find these people from public transportation keep showing up in my mind whenever I try to remember concepts and ideas in class. They're my signifiers, whether they like it or not.

I am still looking for someone with a metallic robot torso to embody Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, however. Given the madcap diversity of the TTC, I probably won't have to wait long.

Posted by Chris at 05:24 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink

January 10, 2007 >> A Little Sass and Class

This is my saucy excursion away from Outlining a Work of great Academic Importance. Admittedly, the endeavor could only last so long (2 hours) before I became bored even in the face of certain death (20 pages in 2 days). As part of my suicidal pact, I added a crumpet-load of new links to my long-dormant and resentful Others page. It's all part of keeping up the pretense that there's more to this site than just the blog (hah!). Anyway, fuck this noise.

I am at Ryerson every single day of the week this semester, between teaching three tutorials and actually having a full course load. LE GASP! The Silver God is heavy, it is not really a portable laptop. It is an oxymoron. Already the Foucault and the Walter Benjamin readings are piling up, and I am most certain that extended deadlines on projects - deadlines that extend beyond the probabilities of time into the following year - are truly Satanic in nature. They present a pleasant enough visage at the time, promising many more hours of idle fiddling and tweaking, but ultimately this kind of procrastination will hang you like a half-chopped umbilical cord.

Dead babies dead babies dead babies alive

Posted by Chris at 05:16 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink

January 08, 2007 >> 25

I'm almost 25. Having a birthday that falls mid-week (mid school week, still finishing projects from last semester, blah blah blah) means that celebration must either be shuffled forwards or shuffled back. It's one of those marginal things that convinces me that I still have a modicum of professional responsibility, and I cling to it amidst the loafing and treacherous procrastination.

So.
Yeah.

25 and some things remain the same. Constants prevail. Immediately at the forefront of my mind is the hardwired fact that I will always throw up on my birthday, be it from heinous illness (childhood) or vigorous alcohol intake (not childhood). Either I'm a pussy and can't drink, or my friends are awesomely awful and actively have a hand in my yearly destruction. Either way shit happens.

Friday night we went to Barrie, mostly for Czech Republic Jen's birthday. We share, isn't that cute? The Pac-Man Eyed Girl inadvertently destroyed a fish bowl, we went to the detritus that is the Queen's Sports Bar, and some friend of Kyle's called me a gangster and pretended to shoot me with his finger-gun. Alicia was pissed that I said I hated my friends, which is untrue (although apparently a wondrous source of provocation), and then we danced to shitty music.

Saturday night we were back in Toronto, the most Torontoist of cities. I had a whacking headache from Kyle's house being renovated with a hammer at 9 am, and so I naturally played Gears of War all afternoon and screamed incoherently at asshole kids from Texas who sawed me in half with their stupid fucking cheating chainsaw guns. Then we went to the Phoenix, an event promoted and executed by the lovable duo of Kyle and Pac-Man Eye. EDGE 102 LIVE TO AIR with that insatiable homosexual, Martin Streek!

It occurs to me that birthdays are a lot more simple when you're in university - everyone lives close, feels the booze and has similar interests (what's your major, getting raped by financial aid, etc). In these uncertain 20-something years, the lines of division are inked across the bar floor. Some people are consummate professionals while others have a lot of growing up to do. Maybe you'll talk about grassroots social movements, or maybe someone will surruptitiously buy you a Prairie Fire shot just to be a good-natured asshole. Happy it wasn't another godforsaken Jaeger, you'll fire it back, only to be surprised by a generous dose of unexpected Tabasco and fire it, in turn, in a fine mist onto the girl beside you at the bar. Through your nose. Through my nose.

Responsibility struck. The bar was left behind.

I was okay, actually, surviving, until Pac-Man Eye and her evil companion Oriental Lollipop Kid got me high as a kite. I then felt sick as shit, and the pair of 'em gleefully mocked me and called me "Casper the Transparent Ghost." They are tarts and I hate them. Then I lay down and threw up and then threw up a whole lot more and then became impotent. Somewhere in the midst of all this throwing up I realized that 25 is really quite the same as 24... and 23... and 22. You throw up and begin the new year - your year - with a fervent desire for God to prove His mercifulness and find a way to kill you with a toilet brush. At what point does this cease to become meaningful? When do you get too old for this kind of horrible insight?

It hurts, but maybe it wouldn't be my birthday if I didn't begin the next year with a customary humbling, reaffirming my mortality in the swirling drain of a toilet. And, of course, if all you people hadn't made it happen yet again.

Posted by Chris at 08:44 PM >> Commentations (8) | Permalink

January 04, 2007 >> 2007

I spent the first moments of 2007 in a doghouse, smoking a cigar. It occurred to me that never again in my life will I be able to claim that I rang in a new year in a doghouse... but also I really don't think I'll ever be in a doghouse at midnight again, period. If I am I will seriously have to reevaluate my life decisions. Maybe make some kind of resolution to better the future, like not smoking cigars or perhaps finding a real house. With blankets and a bed and a widescreen TV. Not a doghouse.

It also strikes me that the new year never really feels very new anymore, not these days. Long before the calendars change over, we've got 2007 model cars and EA Sports 2007 video games. We've got special 2007 commemorative bondage gear that was manufactured in China loooooong before 2006 was put to bed, before it even found its pajamas in the laundry hamper. Commercialism jumps the gun, and it just makes the midnight ball drop into a kind of strange deju vu afterthought.

Still, congrats to all for surviving one more year in Bizarro World.

Posted by Chris at 11:41 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink