December 24, 2007

"You aren't wrong, Hal, you're just maybe, uh, not that right"--Undeclared

Dreamed of seeing a "director's cut" version of Goodfellas with a non-existent deleted scene where a big gangster starts up a petition to the FBI to leave him alone.

Dinner was pizza.

Saw the DVD of the college sitcom Undeclared, by the same people who made Freaks and Geeks.  It has a lot of the same sharp wit.

Tried again to install OSX Leopard.  Again the installation failed, but this time I managed to restore things by myself.

December 23, 2007

Dreamed of the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas"; one of the earpieces breaking off my glasses.

Went over to Mary's for a pre-Christmas party.  There were about ten people there.

Dinner was McDonald's.  I went out and got it because this time it was Father who wasn't dressed.

I finally got the printer setup fixed.  It turned out that Father had removed the computer-printer connection and forgot to restore it.

December 22, 2007

Will Ferrell (in the company mailroom): This place reminds me of Santa's workshop, except that it smells like mushrooms and everyone looks like they want to hurt me"--Elf

Saw John Favreau's Elf at the Revue.  Will Ferrell was pretty funny in it.

Dinner was pork chops.

Moira went off to Kingston for Christmas.

December 21, 2077

"Do you prefer your liquor more, uh, liquid, Steed?"--The Avengers

"It's not what you don't do, it's what you do do!"--doodoohead Davey

Dreamed of returning to my hometown Sackville, N.B., and finding it built into a huge urban complex, including facilities for cruise ships.

Started doing the puzzles in the Games magazine I bought yesterday.  Some of them are quite clever!

Dinner was Chinese food. (Moira didn't eat with us because she'd spent the whole afternoon eating at her office's Christmas party.)

Saw the DVD episode of the Avengers episode "The Murder Market." Stylish as ever.

Went to Dion Conflict's Hunka Junk Christmas show.  It had a lot of unusual Christmas stuff, including a Davey and Goliath New Year's episode and a film with bouncing-ball Christmas carols. (Several in the audience sang along, including me.)

December 20, 2007

"Being a New Yorker means never having to say you're sorry"--Lily Tomlin

Dreamed of the Von Trapp family being stuck on a steep mountain face; a non-existent Vanity Fair article on an Austrian recruited by the Nazis for a spying mission with a front as an antiquarian specializing in Korean wells.

Baked raisin bread.

Went out to the Sheppard Grande and bought Met opera cinemacast tickets.  Then I went to the World's Biggest Bookstore and bought Watchmen and Dream of the Red Chamber. (It's written by Tsao Hsueh-chin, and they shelved it under H instead of T!)

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to a book club at the Centre for Free Inquiry.  We discussed the Christopher Hitchens book slamming Mother Teresa, which I hadn't read.

December 19, 2007

Father: "Someday you'll understand these things, when you're older."

Son: "But you don't understand it, and you are older."

--Wah-Wah

Dreamed of walking along the highways of central Nova Scotia; "waking up" lying beside the road; coming to an important junction.

An Ebay package I ordered last month still hasn't arrived.  I emailed them and it turned out they hadn't sent it yet! (I'm just glad it wasn't lost in the mail.)

Went shopping. (Our car was stuck in the snow and the owner of Ellington's Cafe helped push it free.)

Dinner was roast chicken.

Finished Deadwood.  Unfortunately, the last season was uneven.

Saw the DVD of Richard E. Grant's excellent Wah-Wah, from his memoir about growing up in a broken home in Swaziland just before independence.  It's painfully funny!

December 18, 2007

"Let me understand cunt, Lord!"--Deadwood

Dreamed of getting an origami flower made from Kleenex from a priest; getting pricked by the flower's pin.

Dinner was scallops.

Went to the first Graphic Novels Meetup at the organizer's home near Jane and Annette.  We're going to read Alan Moore's Watchmen and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

The other day I joined a Chinese Literature Meetup, which I'm really enthusiastic about except that it was on Monday nights, same as my choir practice.  I asked, and the organizer changed it to Tuesdays!

Got a couple more Rusty Riley comics via Ebay, along with some Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comics.

December 17, 2007

The Mocking Bird: "Cover your face, you're scaring the horses!"

--King's Quest VII:  The Princeless Bride

Dreamed of the Bonnie Tyler song "Total Eclipse of the Heart"; thinking wrongly that it came from the musical Jesus Christ, Superstar.

Dinner was pork chops.

December 16, 2007

 Dreamed of a crime show where a substance got sprayed on a car windshield causing it to fog up then disintegrate just before a terrorist attack; someone getting locked in a train lavatory with a deadly monster; the Cheech & Chong skit with the exchange

"It's me, Dave!  Open up!"

"Dave--ain't--here!"

The snow is coming down fiercer than ever.  Today's Coro Verdi concert was cancelled, not to my surprise.

Baked multigrain bread.

Dinner was lasagna.

December 15, 2007

"Have you thrown the bones [dice] before, Ma'am?"

"I've caught a few!"

--Deadwood

Dreamed of pushing a shopping cart across a suspension bridge and getting exhausted; going with a girlfriend to join a crowd in a big celebration; seeing some Washington, D.C. buildings in the distance and yelling "Stop global warming, you idiots!"

I was going to go to a crepe lunch with the new Art Lovers Meetup, but cancelled because of my cold, which was just as well since I didn't get out of bed till 13:30!  Moira was going to dinner with Puitak and Gordon, and I cancelled on joining them too.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Big snowstorm!

Started playing the computer game King's Quest VII:  The Princeless Bride again for the first time in a long while.

December 14, 2007

Calamity Jane's first-draft account of being General Custer's scout: "Custer--was--a--cunt.  The end"--Deadwood

Dreamed of arriving at the Goodenough College in London (where I stayed in 1995) and meeting Mrs. Vickers (whom I knew there); computer games like King's Quest; a Sunday comics section ad promoting a TV show set in Macon County, Georgia, in colonial times; reflecting on the comic potential in the word "cunt."

The St. Clair West subway station has finally reopened!  But only the buses are coming in, not yet the streetcars.

On the Saturday Night Live DVD they had a spoof public service ad with Chevy Chase denouncing prejudice against people who drool, and starting to drool himself.  I have to admit that sort of thing makes me laugh.

Dinner was roast chicken

Rented the DVD of the first episodes of the last season of Deadwood.  It's as complicated as ever.

December 13, 2007

Dinner was roast beef.

Went to the bank and deposited the $1500 cheque Father wrote for me.  Then I went to Forest Hill library and borrowed Carl Honore's In Praise of Slow. (I also got Mondo Canuck and The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste.)

Sang in the Coro Verdi concert at Villa Colombo.  I'm trying to go easy on my voice because of my cold, so I won't go to the dress rehearsal tomorrow night.

December 12, 2007

"What do dogs do on their day off?  They can't lie around--that's their job!"--George Carlin

Went shopping.  We bought apples for the first time in months.

Donald, John and company came over and we dined at the nearby Thai restaurant.  The food was nice and spicy, at a suitable time for me since I've picked up a bit of a cold (psychosomatic?)

Afterward Donald stayed and installed the external hard drive Father brought this morning, which has a 100 gig capacity!  We now have the system back where it was ten days ago. (During the long waits when the machine was downloading, we watched the DVD of the first episode of Saturday Night Live, in which George Carlin has some brilliant moments.)

Removed Karen from my Facebook friends list.

December 11, 2007

Dreamed of spading the garden at our old house in Sackville, N.B. while the new owners were away; hearing that the neighbours next door were suing, and thinking that it wasn't our problem now; the Whittier poem "Barbara Frietchie"; the Tennyson poem "The Eagle."

Started reading Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet.  The first chapter is already exciting!

Dinner was spaghetti.

Went to the Book Club Meetup.  I had words with Karen, and now I'm quitting. (I didn't stay to talk about The Amber Spyglass.) The bottom line is that in addition to her main event, she also has to have her series book event every single month, and is too rigid to share it with a non-fiction event of mine even once.  Hard feelings. (I hate losing friends!)

Saw the DVD of the first episodes of the Jungle Jim serial, which is pretty weak. (Hardly any Shanghai Lil!)

December 10, 2007

We went to CPUsed to see if they had the Firewire machine, but they're sold out till later this week. (We did get some moldy cheese exchanged.)

Dinner was pork chops.

At choir practice we had the dress rehearsal for Thursday's concert. (We also went over several of the Christmas concert songs.)

Finished The Amber Spyglass.

December 9, 2007

"You had four men."

"Two of them tried to turn back."

--The Far Country

Dreamed of Buster Keaton's grave.

Donald came over with some Diskwarrior software to prepare the restoration of our computer.

He used a memory stick that Canada Post gifted us with, to save a lot of files on Moira's laptop.

Saw the DVD of The Far Country, the last of Anthony Mann's westerns with Jimmy Stewart.  Story-wise, this one was on the conventional side.

December 8, 2007

Priest Trevor Howard: "Doing nothing is a dangerous occupation!"--Ryan's Daughter

Dreamed of reading that John Lennon's parents came from the American South (I'm pretty sure they didn't); entering Hampstead in London to see a movie [the Everyman Cinema used to be there] and seeing the streets empty to allow a stately procession to pass through.

Baked rye bread (with a bit of multigrain).

We ate out at the Swiss Chalet for their Festive Special.

Saw the DVD of David Lean's Irish epic Ryan's Daughter.  I'd heard it was overblown and pedestrian, and it was.

We've now set up Moira's laptop for surfing the web.  It has a new kind of mouse where you rub your finger on a pad.

December 7, 2007

Went shopping.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Went to another games night at Mary's.  First we played Urban Myth, which was much too slow.  Then we turned to Scattergories.  After a couple of rounds, while the others continued I took to playing Jenga.  I'm reconsidering my strategy:  it's better to remove the outer pieces every seventh row instead of every fifth.  There were ten people there!

December 6, 2007

"Lord Asriel's great enterprise will fail in the end for the same reason:  we have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere"--The Amber Spyglass

"I can't choose my nature, but I can choose what I do.  And I will choose, because now I'm free"--ibid.

 Finally got my hair cut.

Dinner was the rest of the churrasco chicken.

Went to the Architecture for Humanity Meetup.

December 5, 2007

"The shadow particles knew what was happening and were sorrowful"--The Amber Spyglass

Dinner was churrasco chicken.  There was a spat about showing my last name in my Meetup file, and I got annoyed.  I'm actually not sure if I do that, but it's my business.  At least we didn't quite have a scene.

We had an extra choir rehearsal.  Frank showed up, and I mentioned that I agreed with him that we should get rid of public funding of Catholic schools.

Got an Ebay package, with another Rusty Riley comic book along with some Donald Ducks and Uncle Scrooges

December 4, 2007

Moira is letting us use her computer while we sort things out with mine.  But I'd been thinking I should take a break from the internet.

Dinner was sausages and mash.

Brought up from the basement the last of the apples we picked in October.

Went to a new Non-Fiction Book Club Meetup at the Reference Library.  We discussed A Short History of Progress, and next month we're doing In Praise of Slow.

Brought up the heating element to warm my room in the winter.

The chapter is The Amber Spyglass where they enter the land of the dead is really powerful!

December 3, 2007

Dreamed of the song "Blow the Man Down."

Dinner was lobster rolls.

Being without the computer makes me appreciate how central it is in my life, like a TTC strike.

Donald came over in the evening to check out the computer and see if he has any ideas on what to do about it.

At choir practice our music was put in a whole new order and we had to rearrange it, which caused some delays.

Father suggested I hook up my laptop, so I set it up for the first time in several years. (We're lucky it still works at all!) But when I closed the lid at one point it started demanding a power-on password which we'd never programmed. (Only a service centre can remove it.)

December 2, 2007

Dreamed of being in school, returned to a regular classroom, and repeatedly hitting an annoying classmate (who responded smugly); trying to explain it to my singing teacher Giuseppe.

I was torn between going to a western at the Cinematheque or to a giant book sale in Markham.  But the movie was at 13:00 and I didn't get up till almost 13:30; and there was too much snow to go to the book sale.

Baked whole wheat bread.

My garden club meeting got postponed because of the snowy weather!

John and Kathrine brought vegan dinner. (I sneaked out to KFC afterward.) John also installed the RAM.

Then I tried again to install the OSX upgrade.  Again it failed, for reasons I can't figure out.  And we can't figure out how to get back to the old system either!

December 1, 2007

"If I worry, will that change the future?"--Kung Fu

Dreamed of being about to go out and see the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty on the big screen; stopping to read the first chapter of the novel V becauseI was impatient to get started on it; finishing the chapter and noticing that I was already a few minutes late for the movie.

Father went to Staples and found some even cheaper RAM.  Installing it in the computer is another matter, of course.

Dinner was steak.

Finally got my Cipralex prescription replenished. (I also got some more toothpaste.)

Went to the Karaoke Meetup.  I sang "Eat It" and "Jump," also jumping several times. (Before I started someone yelled "Don't fuck up Van Halen!") I would have sung "If I Were a Rich Man" too, but I didn't feel like staying for a third song.  For some reason, my ears felt sensitive.

November 30, 2007

Chinatown quotes:

"You can't eat the Venetian blinds.  I just had them installed Wednesday."

"Are you alone?" "Who isn't?"

"You may think you understand these things, but you have no idea."

"Does it [Jack Nicholson's sliced nose] smart?" "Only when I breathe."

"Let the police handle this." "He owns the police!"

Dreamed of baking a round, black loaf of bread.

I was going to get my hair cut in the afternoon, but Father wated to go out and buy more RAM for the computer so we can install the OSX update.  So we drove out to the place in Riverdale where they were selling it cheap.  At least, Father thought the store was around there--but it's moved, and we didn't check the address before we left.  By the time we got home, it was too late to go back out.  I had two things to do that afternoon, and managed to do neither.

Dinner was quiche.

Saw the DVD of Roman Polanski's neo-noir Classic Chinatown (for maybe the fourth time). Robert Towne is one of the great Hollywood screenwriters.  I couldn't help noticing that John Huston's affably sentimental, amoral villain resembled Ronald Reagan. (Speaking of evil triumphant...) I hope the bullet Faye Dunaway put into his should caused painful, terminal gangrene!

November 29, 2007

"At the end of the day, it's a twelve-year-old boy"--The Winslow Boy

Saw the DVD of David Mamet's movie of Terence Rattigan's The Winslow Boy (for the third time, I think). It gets even better with repeated viewings!  Nigel Hawthorne and Jeremy Northam at their best.

Last night I clipped my toenails too short and they still smart!

The parents bought me a cozy new bedspread to match my new curtains.

Dinner was spaghetti.

The right-wing blog Atlas Shrugs had a post with the incredible line, "Israel has never committed terrorist acts." (I see these blog precis at salon.com in Blog Reports.) I went to the trouble of posting a comment citing Deir Yassin and Mordechai Vanunu.

November 28, 2007

"It was due to the Gang of Four and the Cultural Revolution."

"Isn't everything?"

--Farewell, My Concubine

Gunfighter (watching Caine in the lotus position): "Keep that up and you might just end up with ingrown ankle bones!"--Kung Fu

Dreamed of reading a non-existent novella by W. Somerset Maugham about missionaries in China (though he did write The Painted Veil and several missionary-themed stories); wanting to read more of them; the sitcom Get Smart; remembering when I was 18 and Donald said to me "Jamie, that's a bit rude" (which still bugs me); walking all the way across Mississauga from west to east; getting a new Latin reader and reading the hardest part at the end first.

Saw all of Farewell, My Concubine in glorious colour.  It ranks with Lawrence of Arabia as one of the great gay epics.

Dinner was pork chops.

November 27, 2007

I had an interesting dream but forgot to write it down again!

Went shopping.  We also went to Toys R Us and bought that VCR-DVD player for just $50.  Afterward I installed that machine on the attic TV and moved the superior HDD recorder-DVD player to the parents' room to replace the one that stopped showing colour.  Unfortunately, something happened to the upstairs cable connection.

Dinner was halibut.

Father gave me a cheque a week ago and I finally got around to depositing it in the evening.  I went to the ATM in the bank's vestibule and there was a homeless man there sheltering from the snow.

I now recall that my dream was about the Brady Bunch. (Maybe I had the right idea the first time...)

November 26, 2007

"Maybe sometimes we don't do the right thing because the wrong thing looks more dangerous, and we don't want to look scared, so we go and do the wrong thing because it's dangerous"--The Amber Spyglass

"'Just a popularity contest'?  What's more important than popularity?"--Homer Simpson

Dreamed of seeing that a niece of mine had taken up smoking (none of them have); going out in a cowboy hat; sharing space with some difficult children; a trivia quiz of identifying magazine mottos.

Dinner was lasagna.

Went to a lecture by David Moses about eco-friendly building at the Gardiner Ceramics Museum, presented by Architecture for Humanity.

Because of the lecture, I was late for choir practice, which I rarely am.