Congress diary part three

Last day ... and I finally delivered my paper. Presenting on your last day at a conference is only a blessing if you're still writing your paper when the conference begins -- and this year I had mine done well in advance (well, I wrote my conclusion last night, but that was all of two sentences). So it was nice to finally make an end, there.


And it went well, I am pleased to say. It was one of those nice conference happenstances where one of the people on my panel withdrew at the last minute, only leaving two of us to present. Given that my paper was pushing the twenty-minute mark and I was prepared to omit my last page and a half (including my hastily scrawled conclusion) if I was running long, it was nice to not have to worry about that and just take my time -- and to have the freedom to make jokes and extemporize.


So for the curious, I presented a paper on the HBO series Rome .... and as per what I was focusing on, I might as well quote my opening preamble:


To frame this paper, and where it comes from: I have become a massive fan of HBO's programming. Beyond my own mere enjoyment however, I believe that it poses a series of questions for the always ongoing mass culture debate insofar as it represents what not long ago would have seemed an oxymoronic concept: intelligent mainstream television, television whose production values--especially in terms of the writing--is of startling quality, and which challenges (or at the very least complicates) a strictly Adornian conception of the culture industry.


I would suggest that this new wave of intelligent, well-written and well-made television poses interesting and important critical questions for film and media studies, and cultural studies more generally, which can in one way be summed up in the question I have posed students in my popular culture classes: Can television be art? And if so, how does that change our perception of art? My consideration of Rome today emerges from an ongoing engagement with such questions: I am seeking to read in the series a subtle counternarrative to the generic conventions of the "historical epic" and the received history of the Caesarian narrative. And to that end, I will be looking at that apotheosis of low cultural expression--graffiti.



Yup, my paper was all about graffiti -- Roman graffiti that is, some of which in the series is really quite filthy and obscene (to which end, I now have the distinction of having used the phrases "giant ejaculating penis" and "Atia fucks everybody" at the Canadian Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences -- truly, I have arrived).

Anyway ... I'm happy to be done, pleased with the reception my paper received, and relieved that I can now truly relax for the remainder of my time here. I will post pictures when I'm back in St. John's ...

Congress diary, part two

Well, our good weather gave out for about half of the day -- gray and rainy this morning, but the sun's trying to burn through. Not that that's too much of a burden: even rainsoaked, this campus is still quite lovely.

And it has a great gym! I was proud of myself that I managed a workout this morning, making it in at 7:15 to do some weights and a short run on the treadmill ... which unfortunately had left me a bit dehydrated, so that I'm dying of thirst by the end of the sessions I've been sitting in on (though the fairly constant beer intake might also have something to do with that).

It's been wonderful seeing people I haven't seen, in some cases, in a number of years ... and also kind of pleasing to see some former students, now doing graduate degrees, presenting quite accomplished papers here. Andrew deWaard and Aimee Mitchell, both of whom took classes with me at Western, are here presenting at FiSAC (Film Studies Association of Canada) ... and if that's not enough to make me fee old, I recognized a woman whom I had TA'd in my first ever year at Western -- ten years ago! Ack. Still, it makes me feel sort of fatherly. Or at the very least, sort of big-brotherly.

More later ...

Congress diary part one

Greetings from Saskatoon! I flew in yesterday morning and have been reconnecting with many many people I haven't seen in ages. It's sort of Old Home Week. So many academics all concentrated in the same place. At Pearson Airport yesterday morning, waiting for the plane to board, I played "spot the academic" in the departure lounge. Conservatively, I think half the plane were Congress-bound types, at least gauging by the number of people feverishing still working on papers.

Not me this year ... I decided that this time I wanted to have my paper done well in advance, principally so I could enjoy my time and see friends. I still have a few sentences to write in conclusion, but that's always the case. I'll talk more about my paper in my next post.

For now: I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised by Saskatoon, and floored by just how beautiful U of Saskatchewan's campus is (I'll try to post some pictures soon). The weather has been beautiful, and they certainly don't exaggerate about the prairie sky.

That's it for now -- just a quick teaser. I'm off to see a friend's paper, and then to lunch.

What's that, Lassie? Tigger's in jeopardy? Down at the well?

Oh ... Tigger's ON Jeopardy, and presumably she's doing well.

Just a reminder, sports fans, that everyone's favourite stage manager and trivia freak will be asking Alex Trebeck questions tomorrow night -- that's Thursday, May 17. And for those who get their Jeopardy courtesy of CTV, you might have to do some creative channel flipping b/c those idiots are showing a rerun of Lost for some reason. The Jeopardy is out there though ... you just have to look!

And a wee preview that Tigger emailed around:

Mutual of Omaha presents ...

Today, a treat for my gentle readers: the first in our series of English Professors Observed in Their Natural Environments: Burrows.

Yes, the burrows of English professors (or "offices" as they insist on calling them) are as varied and idiosyncratic as the individuals who inhabit them. Consider for instance the burrow of the Nancy Pedri (Comparatus Wordnimaginius), a recent newcomer to the hills and dales of Newfoundland:

Note the spare, even Spartan arrangement of space, the careful placement of discrete objects; the Nancy herself sits poised in imitation of the image on the wall behind her to confuse and intimidate possible antagonists.

Conversely, we consider the burrow of the Andrew Loman (Hawthornica Americanus), also a species only recently introduced into this environment. Note the barricading effect of the books and papers that the Loman surrounds himself with, a labyrinthine defense that only the deftest of predators can negotiate:

Tune in next time as our intrepid wildlife photographer attempts to enter and photgraph some of the more dangerous burrows in this remote wildlife preserve.

Cleaning off my desk

OK, so it's not quite as dramatic on film as it is when you have to sit in the midst of it, but I took a good chunk of this afternoon to clean off my desk and organize my office.

Before:

After:

Sorry about the long blog lag. I've been in a headspace where every time I think about writing a new post, I honestly can't think of anything to say -- at least, nothing I feel like writing down. So in the interests of keeping everyone more or less up to date, here's the highlights of the last two weeks:

• I've bought a barbecue. Of course, I have no space for a barbecue, so I'm keeping it in Andrew Loman's backyard for the time being; and the last two weekends we've had bbq parties -- the first one in the midst of snow and sleet, which is a testament to just how desperate I was for grilled food. I'll post some pics from that one when I get them.
• Facebook is getting weird -- or weirder at any rate, at least insofar as I've reconnected with a host of people going all the way back to elementary school.
• One of the friends from grad school I've reconnected with is Jen Hale, aka Nikki Stafford -- a name known to Buffy fans as the author of the book Bite Me. I've posted Jen's/Nikki's blog to the right here. Anyone who's a fan of Lost or Heroes, or really any TV at all should check it out for her hilarious commentaries.
• Independently of Facebook, I've also reconnected with Robert Hamilton, my best friend through high school, undergrad, and a good chunk of grad school. We lost touch when he moved to Japan to teach and then stayed -- but I recently received an invitation to his wedding in August (!!), fortunately to be held in Richmond Hill and not Tokyo -- which means I can afford to go. His blog / wedding lead-up chronicle is also posted to the right here.
• I'm in the midst of my travel plans to head to Saskatoon for this year's Congress of the Humanities, which also means I'm feverishly trying to write the paper I'll be presenting. I'll be stopping off in Toronto and London for a week beforehand.

That's more or less it, aside from the fact that spring is slowly, slowly showing its face here in St. John's after a few tantalizingly false starts. The temperature today is fifteen degrees and sunny, which after the past week feels positively sauna-ish.

And just for variety, here's a couple of pictures I took while walking home from work the other day. It had been a gorgeous day -- the dark clouds in the distance caught up to me about five minutes from home and managed to dump a significant amount of rain on me.

And to end on a cute note, because I haven't posted any pictures of Clarence recently, here he is enjoying a recent discovery of his -- the exhaust fan on the back of my computer. Whenever I've worked in my office at home, Clarence keeps me company ... except now I'm more likely to be presented with his butt while he leans down behind my CPU to feel the fan blowing through his whiskers ...

Herding cats

The way the world thinks of English professors:

The way I think of English professors after departmental meetings:

I can read!

The most glorious thing of this encroaching spring, beyond the sun and relative warmth (it's indicative of this past winter that seven degree celcius feels like the height of summer), is the loosening of time ... the freedom now to start reading that stack of books I've had to ignore these past few months. I have this past week been taking an hour or so in the morning with my coffee to simply read ... and between that and the sun streaming in through my living room window, it has felt positively decadent.

I have spent part of this semester using up the last bit of the startup grant MUN gives new professors; we're strongly encouraged to use it all by the end of our second year. And so, finding myself with somewhere in the neighbourhood of $1200 left, I've been putting mileage on my credit card ordering from Chapters.ca.

I love love love subsidized book-buying.

So anyway, I now have a massive stack of books to work through -- many of them pragmatic purchases in history or theory to fill holes in my library, some of them speculative buys toward possible courses I might propose in the future, but also a lot of texts I've either been meaning to read for some time or simply capricious buys that struck my fancy.

One of the courses I'm toying with proposing is a special-topics course tentatively titled "Postmodern Warfare." I've taught some texts and films under this rubric in the past, and last year presented a paper on the subject at our departmental colloquium. To give credit where it's due, at least part of this idea owes its genesis to Tim Blackmore's excellent book War X (which will certainly find its way onto the reading list), as well as his legendary course "Killer Culture" at Western.

At any rate, one of the books I've read this past week is Tim O'Brien's fiction/non-fiction collection of stories based on his tour of duty in Viet Nam, The Things They Carried. It's a haunting series of interlaced narratives following the members of his squad, their friendship and the inarticulatable experience of warfare. The title is also the title of the first story and refers to the massive amount of weight in terms of gear, weapons, and personal items the soldiers had to shoulder on their missions into the oppressively hot jungle; it also of course refers to the weight of the experience itself that the soldiers continue to stagger under after their tours.

(Also on the list to read is Tim O'Brien's novel In the Lake of the Woods, Anthony Swofford's Jarhead, Michael Herr's Dispatches and Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down ... all of which, should the course ever happen, will explore the blurry boudaries between memoir, fiction, journalism and myth in the representations of contemporary warfare).

I've also recently finished Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men ... and if you've never read McCarthy, you're denying yourself a rare pleasure. He's one of William Faulkner's heirs apparent, with spare impressionistic narratives set in the American South, most frequently along the Texas-Mexican border. No Country seems at first glance a typical potboiler in which a man stumbles across a drug deal gone sour in the desert, where everyone is dead and a case with two million dollars is there for the taking. And while it unfolds predictably in some ways, in McCarthy's hands what would otherwise be a formulaic narco-drama becomes something infinitely more terrifying and profound.

Incidentally, a film version directed by the Coen brothers is set for release in August. Holy crap. If the collaboration of Cormac McCarthy and the Coen brothers isn't a recipe for something brilliant, then I'm quitting show business.

I'm also almost done Black Dogs by Ian McEwan. It's the story, presented as a memoir, of a long and difficult marriage, recounted by the estranged couple's son-in-law. McEwan is always astonishing, and this book is no different. I hate him for the understated elegance of his prose.

Anyway ... I'm ready to move on, and can't decide what to start next. The choices are:

• Julian Barnes, Arthur & George
• Anthony Swofford, Jarhead
• Norman Mailer, The Gospel According to the Son

Cast your votes! Polls close tomorrow at midnight ...

Transitioning

While back home in Toronto last weekend, I was speaking to a family friend who asked me about where I was at in terms of the school year. I responded that classes were over and than I had grading to do, but after that I was done. "Oh, and what are you doing this summer?" Well, I answered, I'll be catching up on research that had to be put on the back burner in the winter term, as well as finally turning back to rewrite my thesis.

"It's nice that the university lets you work on your own stuff!" the family friend enthused.

I refrained from correcting her by saying that "lets you" is perhaps better phrased as "compels you" ... because really, on the balance, right now I feel like I've got the best job in the world. Never mind that I just came off a winter term that had me feeling buried alive, or the the work the university is "letting" me do this summer will be crucial come my formal interim tenure review in September ... nevertheless there is a deep satisfaction right now in looking at a summer term free of teaching --a feeling I didn't quite have time to savour this time last year, as I was busy preparing to drive back to Ontario for three months.

I spent today in my office thinking ... just thinking. I organized some books and files, made a few notes and made a library trip, but really today was just about being lost in thought and slowly working through the substance of my summer projects. I've been chomping at the bit to get started these past few weeks, but I resisted the temptation to jump in and run off madly in all directions, having learned from experience that, while productive in the short term, it would ultimately just muddy the waters.

A day of thinking -- I highly recommend it. It's very calming ... and odd, too, that as someone who is more or less a professional thinker, I so rarely have the opportunity.

On not living in fear

I was eating lunch at the student center here on Tuesday, when I was approached by a reporter and a cameraman (from NTV, I later discovered), who, upon ascertaining that I was a professor, asked if he could ask me some questions. I said sure, and he led with "What do you think of the events at Virginia Tech?"

Can I first comment on how stupid and clumsy a question that is? I answered, "Well, other than abject horror, there really isn't much more of a response." Which is true -- what else can you say? I continued, "But I suspect what you're getting at is how those events impact my own feelings of security as a professor here at MUN." He nodded. "I don't think we can live in fear, nor do I think it is wise to barricade ourselves in with heightened security and metal detectors -- not that I think anything like that, in the end, will prevent a determined lunatic from acting like the one in Virginia."

OK, I'm embroidering my answer a bit in hindsight, but that's the gist of what I said. Predictably, in the aftermath of the shootings the second item on the news -- after updates on what we knew about Virginia Tech -- was the question "Are our campuses safe?" replete with man-on-the-street interviews with students. And I'm happy to say that, with only a few exceptions, most responses tended to echo my own. University campuses are no safer or more dangerous than, really, anywhere else, and the prospect of turning them into an armed camp in the hopes of deterring a random psychotic with a gun fills me with dismay.

If it weren't for fear, I think the news media might just whimper and die. Or possibly return to just reporting the news. I see the "are our campuses safe" angle as incredible cynical and indeed irresponsible ... especially considering that civilian deaths in, say, Iraq, in numbers comparable to Virginia Tech, are not tragic bolts from the blue but the daily norm. What are we afraid of?

If ever a lunatic walks armed into my classroom I promise you I will shit myself in terror. But not until then. And were it to happen, I hope I have the courage that one professor had who died trying to protect those in his classroom.

Reason #23 why no one takes Hollywood seriously when they speak of environmental responsibility, conservation or, well, anything ...

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are buying a $268 million yacht which will be 280 feet long, complete with a swimming pool, a helipad and a submarine.

The helipad and submarine are egregious enough, but what really gets me is the swimming pool ... because apparently there won't be enough water for them in, you know, the ocean.

On the other hand, there will be enough space on this leviathan for them to adopt another dozen third world kids. Two dozen, if they don't want to spoil them ...

The top ten reasons I know I'm in essay-grading avoidance

10. I'm thinking seriously about doing my taxes, even though I've still got twenty days, fourteen hours and thirty minutes until midnight, April 30.

9. I keep looking at my bulletin board, thinking that it's time I rearranged everything on it.

8. I'm writing a blog post.

7. It seems to me to be the height of disorganization that ALL my books aren't alphabetized.

6. I'm somewhat disappointed that the coffee kiosk downstairs in my building is staying open for exams, because that means a trip to get coffee only takes a few minutes.

5. I'm surprised that the roulette wheel has never caught on as a means of assigning grades.

4. The overwhelming compulsion to go home and do laundry.

3. The obsessive hour and a half I spent last night making up possible reading lists for my courses next year -- which I don't yet know for certain if I'll be teaching.

2. I really want to go to the gym RIGHT NOW.

... and the #1 reason I know I'm in essay-grading avoidance?

1. I brought a copy of my thesis into the office today to begin rewriting it as a book!

The shallow end of the alphabet

My principal task this morning has been to write a 500-word abstract for a conference, and damn if it doesn't make me want to jump off a bridge. When did writing something so short become so painful?

Anyways ... as is my wont as I sit in front of the computer agonizing over writer's block, I turn my head and stare blankly off in space. As it happens, this has me looking at the bookcase right beside my door, the bookcase I think of as the "Shelves of Theory" ... five shelves of critics, theorists, philosophers and literary historians arranged alphabetically -- the only shelf I have arranged alphabetically, as it happens.

So as I sit here not writing my abstract, staring at the Shelves of Theory, I notice the odd phenomenon that the vast majority of the authors there fall into the first half of the alphabet. Given that A-M is the first half, and N-Z is the second, we don't have that M-N transition (When Alan Nadel picks up the baton from Elaine Tyler May) until almost at the end of shelf #4. Which means that -- taking into consideration that the first half of shelf #1 is taken up with anthologies and essay collections -- the A-M crowd account for three and a half shelves, while the N-Zers have just slightly more than one.

So I'm wondering if this bespeaks a broader trend in surnames to fall into the first half of the alphabet? Or whether something more insidious is at work: that on a deep genetic level, the first thirteen letters make you more inclined to engage in the exercise of literary criticism? Or perhaps there is a secret conspiracy on the part of academic presses giving precedence to the A-M fraternity (in which case, dudes -- I'm an "L"! just barely in the first half, perhaps, but there nonetheless). Mysterious.

Upon reading back over this post, I'm a little leery of offering this insight into the inner workings of my mind while in the throes of composition. Little wonder my writing process is glacial.

I do want to point out however that I'm very pleased with the title of my post, and I think someone should use it as the title of a novel.

Monday cuteness -- an overdue Morgan update

My brother Matt sent me these photos about a week ago. How unreal is his little girl?

A few things:

(1) She's talking more now, with an ever-expanding vocabulary.
(2) I have a name now -- she recognizes me in photos (though not, I'm sure, making the connection to who I am in relation to her), and calls me "Dis." Uncle Dis.
(3) She LOVES the Toronto Science Center. Matt and Michelle take her there every sunday, and apparently she is so excited when they pull into the parking lot that she's practically vibrating.

Hibernation, bad blogging, and the weirdness that is Facebook

Hm. Five entries for all of March—that’s some pretty lazy blogging on may part, if I do say so. Possibly my worst month yet. I don’t entirely know why; I suppose I’ve been busy, but I also really haven’t had much to report. I have only recently felt as though I’ve started emerging from winter hibernation, only recently started feeling energized again as the season slowly (so painfully painfully slowly) sloughs off its skin.

It’s odd: even as I feel utterly spent as far as the teaching and administrative parts of work go, my recent glimmerings of energy are all to do with my own research and writing—stuff long since relegated to the back burner this semester. Actually, saying that my own research has been on the back burner suggests that it has still be cooking away all this time, when in reality I think I’m dangerously close to having removed it, cooled it, repackaged it and returned it to the store.

Can I beat a metaphor to death or what?

So anyway, hopefully this newfound energy translates into more and better blogging.

Though to come to my third subject here, it’s a sign `o the times that I have begun to feel as though blogging has become quaintly antiquated, a charming affectation like parchment paper and fountain pens; Facebook is the new blogging, as well as the new email and the new … well, everything. I wondered a while back why so many of my former students from UWO whose blogs I link to had become so lackadaisical in their posting. I was assuming it was symptomatic of spiritual ennui and moral bankruptcy, until it was pointed out that everyone had simply migrated to Facebook—from whence they carried on all of the activities previously inefficiently separated into different forums like email, conversation, social gatherings and the like. Now we’ve arrived at this spectacularly efficient means of wasting time. We truly live in marvelous times.

I signed up for Facebook largely to see what the fuss was about, and for the first little while was a little creeped out—creeped out by me, that is, because as more and more people (students, generally, both current and former) started linking to me I realized that they were all at least a dozen years younger. I felt as though I had blundered into a social scene dominated by people in their early twenties who collectively wondered who the old guy was wandering blindly around.

Fortunately, I have discovered that the ranks of those on Facebook are not limited to twentysomethings (though they do tend to dominate) and undergrads; a few professor friends, and a lot of grad students now link to me. And what’s even better is that in some cases I’ve reconnected with old friends that I haven’t spoken to in a while. So that’s all right then. And really, I’m relieved, because I’d been running out of strategies for wasting time ….

I'm all about the 1930s crime fighting

I have written several times of my friend Gregg's radio-show exploits -- the two serials he writes, directs, produces and posts online -- the tales of Canada's geatest crime-fighting superhero, The Red Panda, and the hard-boiled adventures of Black Jack Justice.

I can't recommend these wonderful sagas enough. But now you have an even better reason to tune in -- the most recent Red Panda episode features none other than yours truly.

That's right -- unsatisfied with being interviewed about potholes in The Telegram, doing public lectures, and being interviewed about Nick Hornby novels on TV, I've sold out and whored myself out to that most commercial of media: web-based homages to 1930s radio serials.

That's right. I hear you condemning me for selling out. But wait: don't judge me until you've heard the show. You might think it's all about the money and the glamour, but I truly think I've managed, in that Gemorrah of voice-work, to do something truly avant-garde. Playing the part of the gentle but determined Father Michael, I satirize the legions of American actors with crappy Irish accents by doing just that -- you think Leonardo DiCaprio was abysmal in his Irishness in Gangs of New York? Just listen to my cutting critique of his wanna-be accent in my first few moments in The Red Panda. And it doesn't stop there -- though my part in this episode was recorded last May, see how I presciently affect a Danny Williams impersonation after I get going, so very very timely to our sputtering premier's criticisms of the federal budget.

It may be that my genius is only appreciated years and years from now. But you, gentle readers, can appreciate it now ... listen, and understand, and tell your friends. And take note, when others scoff at my embracing of such a crass, commecialized medium, that in the end I go uncredited. Because for me, it's all about the art.

George Orwell: Republican schill?

OK, so normally I generally try to ignore everything that comes out of Anne Coulter's mouth, but this one is too mind-bendingly idiotic to let go. While discussing an anonymously-created anti-Hilary attack ad parodying Apple's infamous 1984 homage to Orwell (the "think different" ad in which the woman throws the sledgehammer into the screen displaying Big Brother's face), Coulter stated "That is an amazingly powerful ad. I don't know how anyone can vote for a Democrat again after that." The problem with this evaluation is that it's a pro-Obama ad. I'm not entirely sure why it necessarily follows that a "powerful" ad promoting Barack Obama makes one more inclined to vote republican, but that's just the palate-cleanser -- the massive "Huh?!" comes a few seconds later when Coulter says "I don't know how anyone can vote for a Democrat after reading Orwell's 1984."

Let's all just think about this a moment. Savour the absurdity, if you will.

Who was it again who introduced the Patriot Act? Suspended habeas corpus? Consigned hundreds of people to the purgatory of Guantanamo Bay, or the hell of Abu Gharib, without recourse to representation? Introduced secret wiretaps to keep tabs on the domestic population? Has rolled civil liberties back to pre-1930s levels? Invoked executive privilege more than the last dozen administrations combined?

I don't know about you, but when I reread 1984, it ain't the Dems I think about. But then, I guess as Anne would maintain, we've always been at war with Oceania.

Of course, I know I'm making a mistake in paying any attention to this at all. For her, saying "I don't know how anyone can vote for a Democrat after reading Orwell's 1984" is approximately on the same level as saying "I don't know how anyone can vote for a Democrat after drinking a glass of milk" or "I don't know how anyone can vote for a Democrat after doing the dishes."

Springtime, for St. John's, and New-ew-foundland!

I may be speaking too soon on that front, given that it was -2 when I got in the car this morning, but at least the feel of spring is in the air. It is perhaps inevitable that there will be more snow before all is said and done; however, winter's back has been broken, I think, and any more blizzards will just be the petulant expression of a season that has overstayed its welcome.

Hear that winter? Get out! Get your lazy ass off our collective couch and go home.

Loving the early Daylight Savings Time. Best idea George W. Bush ever had. Well, the only good idea he's ever had. Quite the epitaph for his legacy.

Anyway, sorry for the long blog hiatus. I'm back and am in fact wearing black. The end is in sight: the last day of exams is less than a month away, and I have that date circled on my calendar. There is much to get through between now and then, of course, but at least I feel more energized than I have since, oh, september. Amazing what a little sun can do.

Doodling

In the first year of my PhD, after one of my classes, a classmate of mine who was an exchange student from Wales came up to me

"I'm on to you, Christopher," she said

"What do you mean?" I asked, taken a little aback.

"Next week I'll be doing my first seminar presentation in this course. And I've realized that if I look down at you and you're intently drawing precise, geometric doodles in the margins of your page, it means you're listening very closely to what I'm saying. But if I look down and you're madly writing away, you're not paying any attention at all, and what you're writing has nothing to with anything going on in the class."

Well, she certainly had me figured out. I've never been much of a note taker -- not much of a multitasker, I guess. I find I miss stuff when I'm writing, especially in a seminar class. But it's a nervous habit -- I like to keep my pen moving. And so in any situation when I'm sitting listening but without the particular need to take detailed notes, these abstract geometrical compositions creep up and down my margins, like fractals.

I'm thinking of this because in the last ten minutes of tidying up my office I happened across about a half a dozen half-filled pages on odd pads of paper ... the remnants of various meetings, I'm suspecting. Anyway, a gallery of doodles:

Snow clearing

Sorry for the post lapse. I've been burning the candle at both ends for the last two weeks or so, and, frankly, haven't had much to talk about or report. Just the same-old, same-old ... and a lot of snow.

One of the hardest things to communicate about St. John's in the winter is the sheer magnitude of the snow accumulation. Because of the nature of the city, with its fairly narrow streets, sidewalks basically disappear after the first big snowfall. So do cars parked at the roadside. The ploughs do a very good job of clearing the streets in pretty short order (most of them), but because there's not a lot of space for the snow to go, it gets heaped up in massive berms and inevitably encroaches on the road to the point where some streets are effectively reduced to a single lane. It's a good thing people are generally polite and courteous: driving along any residential street at this time of year involves taking turns with the oncoming traffic through the bottlenecks.

And then comes the snow removal: a slow, systematic process of closing off streets and reclaiming the streets and sidewalks from the snow. A caterpillar digger scoops the snow out and piles it into a dump truck. The results are rather dramatic: whereonce were unruly mountains of snow are now seemingly precisely machined cliffs ending at the sidewalk, perfectly perpendicular to the ground.

My question is: where does the snow go? Where is it carted off to? Is there a snow landfill outside the city? A snow dump? Or is it tossed in the ocean?

Here's my idea: we should find a cliff on the sea north of St. John's and manufacture our own glacier there ... a small but compact glacier formed by the sheer weight of the snow dumped there. Then, in mid-May, when tourists begin showing up looking for icebergs, we shove this glacier off the cliff, thus guaranteeing at least one iceberg per season. Also, I'll finally get to see an iceberg ... it's a source of some bitterness to me that global warming really seems to have kicked in just in time for me to move to Newfoundland, and the only icebergs I get to see are in postwards.