July 1, 2004

Dreamed of a comic strip involving a powerful dagger (like Philip Pullman's Subtle Knife); wondering about the connection between religion and sports, and noticing that the Mormons promote sports participation;  entering the top half of a double-decker Routemaster bus, with an inadequate numbers of stools instead of regular seats; recalling an actual article in Maclean's magazine on sex expert Sue Johanson in which she cited the myth that "nice girls don't carry condoms";  looking in a mirror and seeing that I had a beard and long hair going gray.

I'm still watching Six Feet Under on rented videocassettes. It looks like we'll be buying a new DVD player.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point at the Cinematheque (for the second time). It's an unintentionally funny movie about 1960s radical youth, top-heavy with "relevance." The highlight was America blowing up at the end.  At least Antonioni's visual compositions are always interesting.

June 30, 2004

Dreamed of acting as one of the Founding Fathers of the US (a minor one); a plan to cover several adjacent Manhattan buildings with an overarching dome.

Got the 1966 Beano annual (a British comic book) and a couple of Classics Illustrated issues about the American West, along with some more Classics Illustrated Junior fairy tale comics. [I was interested in that annual because I remembered reading a bit of it when I was in England at the age of four!]

Went to the Cinematheque box office and got tickets for some Luchino Visconti productions and French crime movies.

Went to the library and borrowed Roald Dahl's The BFG (as in Big Friendly Giant).

Dinner was lasagna.

It looks like we need a new DVD player. (The sound trouble wasn't due to the DVD.) Father had to buy the cheapest machine in the store!

Saw the satirical 1960s B-movie Wild in the Streets at the Cinematheque.  It's about a 24-year-old rock star who puts LSD in the Washington, D.C., drinking water so Congress votes to lower the voting age to 14, then he gets elected President and sends everyone over 30 into "rehabilitation camps" where they take acid and become harmless.  A frantic, uneven curio.

June 29, 2004

"We've had nothing but lies and propaganda and cruelty and deceit for all the thousands of years of human history.  It's time we started again, but properly this time..."--The Subtle Knife

Dreamed of looking at issues of Time and Life magazines from just after the end of World War II; witnessing a neo-Nazi rally in Germany in 1956; seeing a German poster for The King and I (a 1956 release).

Got the National Cartoonists Society Album for 1980.

Started the Six Feet Under DVD but the sound was shot.  I went out and rented the first video. (I couldn't find the DVD and had to settle for the videocassette.)

Dinner was chicken curry.

Saw the first three spisodes of Six Feet Under.  It holds up well on second viewing.

There was hardly anyone at karaoke, and I got to sing six songs!  There were "Ticket to Ride, "Memories Are Made of This," "Wake Me up Before You Go-Go," "Dream a Little Dream of Me," "A Groovy Kind of Love," and "I Want a New Drug."

Finished The Subtle Knife.  I'm definitely going to read the third book.

June 28, 2004

Dreamed of seeing an earlier silent version of Doctor Zhivago(?); reviewing my diary description of this for a high-school project a year later; bicycling from Sackville to Amherst in the middle of a snowstorm(!); the Ray Charles song "Hit the Road, Jack."

Voted in the morning.

Went shopping.

Baked raisin bread.

Read the Classics Illustrated comic book about Abraham Lincoln and the Classics Illustrated Junior of "The Ugly Duckling."

Dinner was fish sticks.

Went to the Geneva Centre party.  I had to leave a bit early because I felt sleepy.

Then I went to the campaign party, but only for a brief appearance.  Two parties on one night was in this case about one and a half too much for me.

June 27, 2004

Dreamed of reading in the movie magazine Premiere a preview of a visually harsh movie about the afterlife by an "auteur" director; B.D., the athlete-soldier in the comic strip Doonesbury, who recently lost a leg.

Read a reprint of Frank Robbin's Johnny Hazard comic strip, in which he encountered a little old lady on a Chinese junk using flying saucers to smuggle gold.

Dropped some NDP campaign literature in the area just south of Cedarvale Ravine.  Only one guy yelled at me and poked my chest.

We ate out at Swiss Chalet.

Baked gingerbread for tomorrow's Geneva Centre party.

Bought a President's Choice green apple drink at Loblaw's, but it was so overcarbonated that when I opened it the stuff fizzed all over the counter!

June 26, 2004

Buz Sawyer's copilot Roscoe Sweeney: "Now this is my idea of how to fight a war.  When I shoot a Jap, by dingies I like to see him jump!"

Dreamed of driving with my parents from Sackville to Toronto; waking up when we stopped at Quebec City at night; recalling how bitterly I resented my Grade 7 English teacher telling me (unprovoked by me) in front of the whole class that I should ignore the people who bothered me. (What message did he think they were getting?) [That teacher was the father of CBC reporter Ian Hanomansing.]

Went to the Japanese students' association and talked bilingually.

Dinner was scalloped potatoes and ham.

Read a couple of Roy Crane's Buz Sawyer comics reprints.  He's a World War II naval pilot who crash-lands in the sea, reaches a Japanese-held island and escapes with the help on an American woman in a sarong.  Not politically correct.

The videocassette of The Big Sleep that I bought a couple of months ago finally showed up.

June 25, 2004

Dreamed of our old trailer being loaded for a vacation.

Finished the bits and pieces in the campaign office location book.

Mowed the lawn.

Dinner was MacDonald's.

Some free time.  Instead of ordering comics online, I actually read some of them!  I finished reading that British Dennis the Menace annual, and later read a couple of Rip Kirby mysteries.  In the first one, it turned out that the janitor did it!  The second was a bit too long for a single reprint issue, and ended at a wedding party with the best man collapsing.  It was pretty clear to me that the chemist responsible for it was the bride's actual father, through they didn't have room for explaining that.

June 24, 2004

Dreamed of travelling to Montreal; meeting Prince Charles and his entourage and merrily towing them through the Montreal streets (including the tunnel that goes under the river) with a pedal cab, pulling a box as big as a dumpster, with them having a great time; an animated TV special from ca. 1970 with Charlie Brown, Speedy Gonzales and a character raising awareness of environmental issues; writing these dreams down.

Saw the DVD of a Teatro di San Carlo production of the opera Aida.  Unfortunately, the first two acts didn't have English subtitles.

Dinner was pork steak.

Saw The House in the Snow Drifts at the Cinematheque.  It's a Soviet silent about the privations and black marketeering that accompanied the revolutionary war until the Red Army returned in force and there was a big celebration.

Finished the sheaf of location slips at the campaign office.  Only bits and pieces are left.

Saw a rainbow in the evening.

June 23, 2004

Dreamed of hearing Don Giovanni early in the morning in our Sackville house; looking at old books still in that house (actually, we've moved them all to Toronto); seeing my parents with the house's new owners and telling them the actual William Faulkner quote, "The past isn't dead.  It isn't even past"; reflecting that this was the undead past; driving through Sackville, New Brunswick, in winter and seeing huge walls of ice.

Only a few sign locations are left to enter.

Dinner was spaghetti (which I cooked).

Saw the Russian silent Katka's Rennet Apples at the Cinematheque.  It's about unlicensed hawkers hustling for a living in Leningrad. (There's a group raising money for British miners--this being the time of the General Strike.) In the end, the bad characters get taken away by the police, while the good characters find work in a Soviet factory.

Placed a bid on the Classics Illustrated comic book of Victor Hugo's The Man who Laughs!

June 22, 2004

Dreamed of having performed on Saturday Night Live, but not wanting to see my performance; Pauline Kael's The New Yorker review of Daniel suggesting that the supporting cast must have shuddered when they saw their performances; the Little League movie The Bad News Bears; having mucus stuck in my crotch.

I'm most of the way through the sheaf of sign locations at the campaign office.

Fahter and I went to the Geneva Centre picnic. (Stephanie was glad to meet us.) We both had a hamburger.

Went to the Writers Meetup at the Futures Bakery.  There were four people there.  I read a few of my stories, which they liked.  Another one passed her poems around (mostly slight romantic stuff), and a third read an introduction to a spiritualist book she'd written.

June 21, 2004

Started entering a whole sheaf of sign locations into the contact book.

Went to the open house on the streetcar right of way, which the city just endorsed. (Hurrah!) 

Got a 1975 issue of The Menomonee Falls Gazette and a Classics Illustrated  Junior comic book with the fairy tale "The Japanese Lantern.  I also got a 1951 issue of Chicago Tribune Sunday funnies and a Kenny Rogers record I didn't order! (Actually, it had a Three Stooges comic book inside that I did order.)

Dinner was roast chicken.

Baked multigrain bread. (Then I forgot to put it in the bread machine until I came back from the movie!)

Saw the documentary Tibet:  Cry of the Snow Lion at the Paradise.  Very interesting, though in my case it was preaching to the converted. (At least the example of East Timor seems to offer Tibet some hope.)

June 20, 2004

Dreamed of NDP politician Tommy Douglas.

There was an open house at the NDP campaign office.

Saw the rest of the Hullabaloo DVD.

We had dinner at John's place. (First we walked to High Park.) We ate Thai food.

The Giuseppe Verdi chorus had its end-of-year concert. (We'll meet again to perform at a mass next month.) Father drove me to the place on time, but the rest of the family missed most of the first half because when he drove back to pick up the others he went along Lansdowne Avenue and got stuck in traffic near a park festival.

Moira's added a hole bunch of DVDs to our zip.ca queue, mostly foreign movies and operas.

June 19, 2004

Dreamed of discussing Cary Grant and the scene in His Girl Friday where his ex-wife told him that she was going to remarry and immediately put a flower in his lapel; The Sopranos characters in a bicycle chase; professionals planting raspberry canes behind our Sackville house; Rip Kirby going undercover and getting a hangover.

At the campaign office I updated the sign locations in the contact book.

Dinner was pork chops (which I fried).

Saw a DVD with a couple of 1950s episodes of The Red Skelton Show.  He was a versatile comedian!

The second Hullabaloo DVD just wasn't as good as the first.

June 18, 2004

"And she rejoiced in her blood and flesh, in the rough pine bark she felt next to her skin, in the beat of her heart and the life of all her senses, and in the hunger she was feeling now, and in the presence of her sweet-voiced bluethroat daemon, and in the earth below her and the lives of every creature, plant and animal both; and she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they mourned her"--a witch in The Subtle Knife

Dreamed of a victim of McCarthyism; the actual Dalton Trumbo quote about McCarthyism, "There were no heroes or villains, only victims." (I disagree:  Dashiell Hammett was definitely a hero, and Ronald Reagan was definitely a villain!)

Picked up a 1969 Toronto Telegram TV guide, which I'd bought on Ebay.  I also got a set of 16 Life Science Library books.

Visited the Dragon Lady comics & memorabilia store.

Dinner was spaghetti.

We had the last choir rehearsal before the Saturday concert.

June 17, 2004

Dreamed of hearing of a shipping disaster that happened in New Zealand just before the Titanic sank; acting in a New Zealand movie of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (the scenes in the boarding school), with some Maori girls.

Did some more SCRIPT petitioning at the St. Clair West station.  We have well over 1000 signatures.

Saw a couple of DVD episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. (Kinda dated.) I also saw a DVD episode of Hullaballoo.

Dinner was chicken curry.

Received some comic books reprinting the adventures of Rip Kirby, Buz Sawyer and Johnny Hazard.  I also got a collection of Rip Kirby strips from the early days.

At the Geneva Centre we played Boggle.  In one round only two letters were vowels, and they were both in the corners!

June 16, 2004

"As flies to wanton schoolboys, so are we to the gods:  they kill us for sport"--King Lear

"Murder, my dear Frankie, is just an acceleration of natural processes"--Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Dreamed of a woman suspected of murder and wondering whether she was guilty; driving a toy car on foot all the way along the road from Port Elgin to Sackville, New Brunswick; noticing that the road was in dire need of repair in some places.

Finally got all the volunteer slips entered in the contact book at the campaign office!

Saw the rest of the Agatha Christie mystery Why Didn't They Ask Evans?  It turns out that it was actually about a forged will.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw a 1970 Russian movie of King Lear at the Cinematheque [directed by Grigory Kozintzev, who also filmed a Russian Hamlet, and Iosif Shapiro].  Quite good.

For the first weekday in a while, I received nothing in the mail.

June 15, 2004

"The way you carry on, you'd think no-one had ever been poisoned before"--Why Didn't They Ask Evans?

Dreamed of watching a movie on video about a Chinese woman who ended up stealing (like the Anna May Wong silent Pavement Butterfly, which I saw a few days ago), which got so depressing that I had to sneak out of the room rather than continue watching it; looking at the bow window in our Sackville house and noticing that the central part, (which actually had several little panes) had one big one; looking at statistics describing what life would be like on other planets.

At the NDP campaign office I sorted the contact book into volunteer sheets and sign sheets.

Saw the first half of the DVD of the Agatha Christie TV mystery Why Didn't They Ask Evans? Very complicated.  It has something to do with a morphine clinic.  Francesca Annis is gorgeous!

Dinner was salmon.

Got three money orders at the bank for Ebay payments.  I also received a shipment of 15 Gold Key/Whitman comic books:  stuff like Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny.

Saw The New Babylon, a Soviet silent about the 1871 Paris Commune, at the Cinematheque.  Heroic workers vs. evil bourgeoisie.  

Then I went to karaoke and sang "Back in the USSR," "Up on the Roof," "Consider Yourself" and "Burning Down the House."

June 14, 2004

Dreamed of coming home on the streetcar and seeing teenage girls out to get laid; a bourgeois Frenchman ca. 1600 checking the Paris street and noticing that an anti-Semitic mob was about to take action; a young man and his roommate (like Pip and Pocket in Great Expectations) trading stories; travelling from Moncton Airport to the city center by subway(!).

Got a straw Panama hat via Ebay.  Mother doesn't like it.

Sold two tickets to the Sunday concert to someone at the NDP campaign office.

Things I ordered online are starting to arrive!  I got two Classics Illustrated comics, a 1960 annual of the British comic strip Dennis the Menace, and David Foster Wallace's Everything and More, a history of the concept of infinity. (The last I bought at amazon.com .)

Dinner was shepherd's pie.

At the chorus rehearsal we did two Donizetti numbers, from Don Pasquale and Mary Stewart.

June 13, 2004

Dreamed of the Phil Collins song "Against All Odds"; acting in an updated O Brother Where Art Thou? and filming a scene on the Niagara River just above the falls.

At the NDP campaign office I sorted out all the sign locations by their poll number and separated all the ones that didn't have one.

Saw Touching the Void at the Paradise.  It's a really gripping documentary about two British mountaineers climbing in the Andes who got separated on the way down.  I want to see it again.

Dinner was takeout Chinese food.

June 12 2004

"But Will knew without the slightest doubt that that patch of grass on the other side was in a different world....  He couldn't possibly have said why.  He knew it at once, as strongly as he knew that fire burned and kindness was good.  He was looking at something profoundly alien"--The Subtle Knife

Dreamed of watching SCTV reruns. (The newly-released SCTV DVDs are on my zip.ca order list.)

At the campaign office, I think I have half the volunteer slips entered in the contact book.

Dinner was roast pork.

Saw the Anna May Wong silent Pavement Butterfly.  Her finest performance.

June 11, 2004

Bought a money order and mailed it to Montreal to pay for a set of five book collections of comic strips.

More entries in the contact sheet at the campaign office.

Went to the library and borrowed the second volume of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.  I've already started reading The Subtle Knife.

Dinner was spaghetti (which I cooked).

Saw Sergei Eisenstein's silent October (for the second time) at the Cinematheque.  It's the official Soviet movie about the Russian Revolution.  Some great montage work, but I still found it kind of boring.

Got two comic books that I'd bought online.  They're from The World Around Us, a series published by the Classics Illustrated people.

June 10, 2004

"The difference between holding up a mail train and an umbrella is just a matter of detail"--Song

"Someday you'll thank me....  But by then I probably won't be taking your calls"--Josie and the Pussycats

"If I could go back in time I'd meet Snoopy"--ibid.

Dreamed of a family sitcom with movie actors like Nicole Kidman; driving a car from Sackvilled to Aulac (I don't drive) and meeting Moira, who took over the driving. (In one scene in Thoroughly Modern Millie, which I saw the other day, Julie Andrews had to drive a car for the first time in an emergency chase.)

At the NDP campaign office, I finished the sign locations and started entering the volunteer slips.

Saw the DVD of Josie and the Pussycats, about a girl band fighting a plot to brainwash our youth, with the cool Alan Cumming as the sinister manager.  It wasn't bad:  the script had some wit.

The 1966 British comic annuals The Dandy Book and The Topper Book, which I bought online last week, arrived in the mail. [I was interested in them because we'd had them when I was little.]

Dinner was chicken curry.

Finished The Blue Castle.  It's L.M. Montgomery at her best.

Saw Anna May Wong in the silent Song. (The title refer's to the heroine's Chinese name, not to singing.) She gets involved with a knife-thrower who's stuck on his old flame and loses his sight.

June 7, 2004

Dreamed of being about to enter the Sackville United church, then changing my mind at the last moment; the preacher (who resembled William Hartnell as the first Dr. Who) suggesting I attend a smaller church; a booth with earphones and a microphone for people to enter an American Idol-type karaoke contest; deciding to sing "Ring of Fire."

At the NDP campaign office we toted hundreds of sign stakes.

Saw the DVD of David Lean's Oliver Twist, a classic adaptation with stunning visuals. [I think I went to see it when I was little, but freaked out during the scene where they're chasing after him and yelling "Stop, thief!"]

Dinner was roast chicken.

Mowed the lawn.

Received my first Ebay purchase:  a 1974 issue of The Menomonee Falls Gazette, a weekly that reprinted many American comic strips for that week, including sets of six daily strips.  Great fun!

At the chorus rehearsal we did Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" and Wagner's "Pilgrim's Chorus." (The latter is tough!) They gave me a couple of tickets to peddle to the June 20 concert.

June 6, 2004

Dreamed of being in Sackville and going with some guy to the Wormwood Dog and Monkey Cinema (actually in Halifax) to see Short Cuts, Robert Altman's movie of Raymond Carver short stories, but deciding to leave before it started. (I haven't seen the movie, though I've read the stories it was based on.)

Saw the first of the DVDs we received from zip.ca : Mary Pickford in the silent Tess of the Storm Country.  It's a rip-roaring melodrama.

Helped put up some NDP signs in my St. Paul's riding.

My chorus performed at the official unveiling of the busts of eight famous Italians at the Columbus Centre. (There was also a band.) They gave us a buffet before.  Afterward they had a big dessert spread, and I pigged out. [The eight Italians were Dante, Boccaccio, Columbus, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Verdi, Puccini and Marconi.]

June 9. 2004

"'I wonder if the Prodigal Son ever felt really at home again,' she thought"--The Blue Castle

"Why are rich women always flat chested?"--one of Millie's asides (shown in silent-movie titles)

Dreamed of having a mesh stuck in my mouth.

At the NDP campaign office I started drawing up contact sheets and did most of the sign locations.

Saw the DVD of George Roy Hill's Thoroughly Modern Millie, a 1967 Julie Andrews musical set in the Roaring Twenties.  It must have looked promising on paper, but the result is long, frantic and inept.

Dinner was fish fillets.

Moira and I watched a crack Royal Opera production of Mozart's The Magic Flute from Covent Garden.  The opera's a mess, but who cares? (It was broadcast on the CBC six months ago, and we finally got around to seeing it on tape.)

June 8, 2004

Dreamed of driving from Halifax to Sackville in a trip that seemed to take forever; a movie based on The Odyssey but set in the 20th century (like O Brother, Where Art Thou?), ending with the establishment of a new factory; entering Sackville and seeing the two surrounded by snow-covered hills despite the spring season.

Went shopping.

Dr. Hassan is really impressed by my detailed dream descriptions!

At the NDP campaign office, I attached metal frames to lawn signs.

We turned on the air conditioning for the first time this year.

Bid on some Ebay collections of Classics Illustrated Junior fairy tale comics.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Saw Ernst Lubitsch's silent comedy The Doll (for the second time) at the Goethe Institute.  Really funny.  I would have seen The Snow Walker afterward, but I went to the wrong cinema. [I eventually saw it on DVD.  The Doll is about a young heir who has to marry on pain of disinheritance, so he buys a life-size wind-up doll to "marry," not realizing that the doll had an arm broken off so the dollmaker's daughter is substituting for her...]

June 5, 2004

"In the eastern sky, amid the fires of sunrise, an old moon was hanging--as slender and lovely as a new moon.  Valancy had never seen an old, old moon before.  She watched it pale and fade until it paled and faded out of sight in the living rose of day.  A little pool in the barrens shone in the sunrise like a great golden lily"--The Blue Castle

Dreamed of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings coming home and bathing; a younger hobbit (not in the books or movies) in a cadet uniform.

Dropped NDP campaign literature at the fancy Georgian  houses just south of Casa Loma.

We ate out at the Mandarin restaurant.

Saw Piccadilly, a British silent with Anna May Wong as a dancer who falls in love with a white nightclub owner.  The subject of interracial romance was daring for the time.

Bought a cheap straw Panama hat on Ebay.  I also bid on several Classics Illustrated comics.

June 4, 2004

Dreamed of a portable radio that also had an internet connection(?); trying to play Macbeth.

Finally got the January diary entries printed.

We did the May accounts for the book business.  Income is predictably off from the peak by now.

Father bought a whole pack of green-ink pens.  I thought they'd stopped making them!

Stuffed envelopes at the NDP campaign HQ.  Then I did another leaflet drop.

Bought a couple of British comic annuals over the web.  I also bought In a Narrow Grave, a book of Larry McMurtry essays on Texas, for quite a low price.

Dinner was spaghetti.

Saw two movies starring Anna May Wong at the Cinematheque.  Toll of the Sea was a silent, and one of the first color movies. (They could only show reds and greens.) The story was a thin Madama Butterfly retread. 

Daughter of Shanghai was an uproarious 1930s B-movie about catching gangsters smuggling aliens into the USA.

Stayed to see Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past, one of the greatest film noirs ever.  It was the fourth time I've seen it, but I still haven't figured it all out.

June 3, 2004

Dreamed of being in an elevator in a Moncton building that went from subway level to street level, then higher without stopping; visiting the observation platform of the Empire State Building; seeing reds and greens in intense hues; the Mary Poppins song "It's a Jolly Holiday With Mary."

Dropped NDP leaflets.  Some I dropped along Davenport Road, which meant climbing a lot of steps.  People seemed pretty receptive.

Dinner was shepherd's pie.

The Geneva Centre group went to the Bull and Firkin, but I wasn't interested in the nachos and wings.  It turns out that Stephanie is a close friend of NDP leader Jack Layton's daughter.

Won an Ebay auction for a set of nine Life Science Library books.  But I lost out on a Rip Kirby collection from the early 1970s.

Printed out my January diary entries.  At least, I started to but it turned out that the printer needed more ink.

June 2, 2004

"Haven't you heard of the latest triumph of science--the doorbell?"--Laura

Dreamed of seeing a western on TV with John Wayne in Clint Eastwood's "stranger with no name" role; being in high school and wanting to quit.

Got my hair cut.  I bought some used LPs from a nearby shop afterward.

Went shopping.

The NDP campaign finally had the new poll key and I did some sorting.

Dinner was salmon.

Saw two Otto Preminger film noirs at the Cinematheque: Laura (for the second time) and Angel Face.  Laura is a sleazy classic with some great lines.  Angel Face was a hoot, especially Dmitri Tiomkin's melodramatic music.  It's star, Robert Mitchum, belongs in the Cool Hall of Fame.

I won an Ebay auction!  I'm paying $23 for a 1974 magazine including comic strips like Rip Kirby.  But I've lost in seven others. [I think this was the start of my Menomonee Falls Gazette collection!]

June 1, 2004

Dreamed of bringing out window frames from a basement; getting into a quarrel with a female choir member sitting next to me who kept telling me how to sing; seeing a gymnast injured in the middle of a show and brought to an interview before he'd recovered; trying to paint a window frame and finding it was full of holes; a community of magical people invisible to the regular world, watching a play from the other side of the stage.

Dinner was steak (whic I fried).

Went to the Goethe Institute and saw two Ernst Lubitsch silents (both for the second time):  The Eyes of Mummy Ma and The Oyster Princess.  The Oyster Princess is really funny!

I've bid on twelve Ebay items so far, and of the four that have been decided, I got outbid every time. (People seem to bid at the last minute.)

May 31, 2004

Dreamed of arriving at a swimming lesson late with my clothes over my bathing suit; being about to strip down and realizing that I didn't have my bathing suit on and I'd have to go change, making me even more late; the showers in the changing area undergoing maintenance, so I couldn't use them just then; hearing someone talk about learning Italian in a class taught by someone called Giuseppe, and wondering if that was Giuseppe Macina, the actual leader of my choral group; a new release of the "director's cut" of Roland Joffe's The Mission, adding an extra hour.

Nothing much doing at the NDP campaign office just now.

Placed my first Ebay bids, mostly for old comic strips. (My user name is Blaqjaqshellaq.) I also bid for a collection of Life Science Library coffee-table books.

Baked white bread.

Dinner was roast beef.

The choral group was preparing for a Sunday concert.  We did a new number for Cherubini's Medea, along with one from La Forza del Destino.

Got my Celexa prescription refilled.

May 30, 2004

"'May I go upstairs and lie down?' said Valancy faintly. 'I--I have a headache.'... 'What has given you a headache?' asked Cousin Stickles, since Mrs. Frederick would not.  The question had to be asked.  Valancy could not be allowed to have headaches without interference"--The Blue Castle

Dreamed of Robert Mitchum.

Went to an Open Doors tour of the Wychwood Barns.

Toured an Islamic centre in Scarborough, with both a mosque and a school. (They even have a mortuary!)

John and Rae came over for dinner, which was spaghetti.

After eight months or so, I finally finished my Chinese translation of the Classics Illustrated comic book about Benjamin Franklin.

May 29, 2004

Gregory Peck: "This is how you detect invisible ink.  Weren't you ever a Boy Scout?" Sophia Loren: "I flunked the physical"--Arabesque

Dreamed of looking out of our Sackville house at suburban sprawl(?) and telling the parents, "We left Sackville at the right time"; seeing snow on the ground even though it was June.

Visited the Ogden Funeral Home and Second City for the Open Doors tour.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Went to the Cinematheque and saw Cenere ("ashes"), a silent Italian movie starring the famous Italian actress Eleonora Duse.  Too bad the titles had no translation.  

They introduced Canadian actors Nick Mancuso and Jennifer Dale:  he's directing her in a one-woman show about Duse at the Tarragon Theatre next month. (Afterward I went up to Mancuso and told him I'd liked him in Ticket to Heaven.)

Saw Stanley Donen's Arabesque, a romantic thriller in the style of his Charade.  Corny, complicated fun, with Gregory Peck showing an unusual comic flair.

We've subscribed to the DVD rental service at zip.ca. [We stayed with it for eight years!]

May 28, 2004

"On the first day Claude Bertram had seen her in the store she had heard him whisper to Joe, 'Who is that?' And Joe had said, 'Valancy Stirling--one of the Deerwood old maids.' 'Curable or incurable?' Claude had asked with a snicker, evidently thinking the question very clever"--The Blue Castle

Dreamed of buying a big pile of snacks before entering a cinema to watch Star Wars.

Went to the Cinematheque office and bought 15 tickets through June.

We planted the potatoes and later the onions.  There isn't much left.

Dinner was fettucine with pesto sauce (which I cooked).

Found the NDP campaign headquarters near St. Clair & Bathurst.  The main thing we did for now was carry hundreds of Norman Tobias posters into basement storage. (I learned of the address by sending them an email through their webpage.)

Started typing up my January diary entries.

May 27, 2004

Dreamed of a tape measure that added several inches to my height; waiting for a British Routemaster bus; a floor crawling with snakes.

We did some more petitioning for SCRIPT at the subway station at noontime.  I got almost 40 signatures!  Several people had already signed.

We planted the peas, beans and lettuce.  All that's left is potatoes, tomatoes and onions.

Dinner was halibut.

Started reading L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle.

May 26, 2004

"Would you ask Picasso to sell his guitars?"--School of Rock

Dreamed of visiting our old Sackville home (when the new owners were away) after sleeping overnight in a neighbour's yard; an essay about picaresque comedies in Spanish culture.

Went shopping.

We got the root crops planted.

Dinner was more turkey pie.

Went to a Geneva Centre movie screening for their members at the Regent.  They showed Richard Linklater's The School of Rock, which was pretty good.  Jack Black is really funny, at least in this role.

Finished Variable Winds at Jalna.

May 25, 2004

Dreamed of a resort where you had "virtual reality" tours in any time or place; a lakeside resort in the U.S.A. frequented by religious groups; having the ability to move instantly from one place to another; being about to take the Newfoundland ferry at Sydney in Cape Breton.

Posted my resume at monster.ca .

Saw the video of D.W. Griffiths' silent epic Orphans of the Storm (for the second time), with Lillian and Dorothy Gish as girls who get swept up in the French Revolution.  Tons of melodrama.

Dinner was turkey pie.

Went to a Writers Meetup at Futures Bakery.  Unfortunately, there was only one other person there.  Better luck next month...

Baked multigrain bread overnight.

May 24, 2004

Dreamed of canvassing an apartment building in Charlottetown, P.E.I.; hearing of Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould's foray into politics(?); the song of the William Butler Yeats poem "Down by the Sally Gardens"; a Sackville neighbour's house with the adjacent soil dug away, exposing the foundation; a new magazine full of crossword puzzles.

We were going to start planting the garden but rainy weather has delayed it.

Had dinner with Pui and Gordon.  They made spaghetti.

Pui and I saw The King of Masks, one of the videos I bought.  It's a Chinese movie about an old face-transformer who purchases a boy so he can hand down the secrets of his trade, but the boy turns out to be a girl.  Pretty heartwarming.  Pui loves movies about poor people who make good.