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It’s that time of year, and I’m not talking Christmas… See the postscript
Over the top kitsch?
Yep, it’s THAT time of the year, my husband’s and my favourite day, the day that we revel in the crap that is handed out on Valentine’s Day.
Crap is the meaningful word in that last sentence, by the way.
Isn’t it enough that the day after Boxing Day we begin to see store aisles crammed with pink and red hearts, plastic roses, helium-inflated balloons and teddy bears? Do we have to be subjected to this nonsense for a month and a half, blinded in every direction by the sensational sights of kitschy and gaudy symbols of commercial love? I really wish there was an ‘S’ in that word because it would turn out to be this: $$$$$
What the hell happened to simplicity? Taste? Decorum? Class?
When my husband came downstairs this morning he wished me a happy valentine’s day, and then I told him I’d bought him a card this year. He looked a bit petrified, then asked not once, twice or thrice, but four times, “Did you really? You didn’t, did you?”
“Yes, a big card, THIS big!” I replied, making a gesture with my hands to indicate huge dimensions.
After seeing the look on his face, I laughed. Then he sighed a sigh of relief.
I love him. He loves me. And we’d rather save the few $$$ foregoing bilious cards, instead buying a couple of coffees later on in the day when we’re out driving around. We’re not pandering to the commercial crap. I refuse – WE refuse! So stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Hallmark!
Thankfully, my husband and I share the same sense of humour about these sorts of things. Sometimes, too much so. We have our own language about these things, our own communications that defy others’ understanding. We’ve been together too long. ;-)
However, I’m sure if I looked in a couple of old (and I mean old) photo albums there are some pressed flowers, kept letters, from long ago, so take some of this with a grain of salt. My point is that teddy bears, gaudy cards and the like are best kept for the same ones who continually fall for this marketing, profit-raking, racket.
My best laugh of the morning came on Facebook when one of my daughter’s friends, all of 18 years of age, wrote, “Valentines day, the day of annoying wall to walls & vomit-worthy status’ (sic) between couples. please just text each other 
♥” To which another friend wrote, “Amen Gurllll!!”
At 18, she already sees the writing on the wall (no pun intended.)
**As a postscript, I should add that one of my cousins posted a photograph on Facebook of a lovely bouquet of flowers her husband bought for her. Her comment? ”What a waste of money! He could have spent the money on wallpaper for the bedroom.”
And that, my friends, suggests that perhaps these sentiments are familial – my cousin Rhian and I seeing eye to eye on this. In fact, my husband and I bought nine boxes of hardwood flooring today. Happy Valentine’s to us!
Must run… while not taken in by the commercial crap, we do still do the dinner thing. Tonight… Joe Feta’s for Greek.
A shopper I’m not.
On Friday, my husband had a meeting at work (on his day off) so he dropped me off at Square One Shopping Centre in Mississauga. Years ago, this used to be our local mall and it was fairly small at the time. I remember shopping there after work occasionally and there would only be a handful of people around. That would have been about 1982. It’s since grown so much that I downloaded the Square One iPhone app while I was there to help me get from one store to the next without getting lost for hours.
Square One’s now a sprawling, congested, maze with the usual collection of mall-type shops attracting the usual shoppers. It was unfortunate that I’d only had about five hours sleep the night before, because I probably would have been into the mall thing more than I normally am, though even at the best of times, it’s torture for me to plod around a mall without a specific reason.
Bass Enfield Gobi/Driftwood Saddle Shoes
In truth, I could care less if I go in the clothing stores when I don’t need to buy a garment and, besides, they pretty much all carry the same clothes – different labels, same manufacturer, I swear. What you see in one shop, you can almost bet you’ll see in the next. Yesterday, I didn’t go in one clothing store, but I must confess that I do like shoe shops and I succumbed to a pair of Bass – are you ready for this… saddle shoes. Yep, two toned saddle shoes. Hold on, I’ll try to find a photo of them on the Internet and post it here. Okay, here you go, straight from the Bass Shoes website…
I’m a sucker for classic styles like these, especially from Bass. They’re the sort of shoes that remind me of Cape Cod in the ’40s, especially over on Scudder Avenue in Hyannisport. They’re also comfy as heck. I haven’t shown my girls these yet, because I know the response I’ll get: complete disbelief that (a) I would actually buy this type of shoe, and (b) That I would actually consider wearing them in public.
I’ve decided that I’ll not say a word. Next time I go out with either one of them and when this snow has all melted and the roads are dried out again, I’ll wear them, along with my retro Ray-Ban Clubmaster shades I bought last weekend. That’ll mortify the two of them.
But back to the mall. As a writer, I spend more time foregoing the clothes shopping, preferring to be drawn to the habits of everyday people. Sometimes I’ll sit down on one of the benches, or in the food court, or a restaurant, and mentally make notes of characteristics I can use in future writing pieces. There’s always the female teenaged set usually walking in threes or fours, their small group walking as if one unit; the young mothers with strollers; the stylish young businessman or woman; the twenty-somethings; the middle-aged mothers – like me – looking altogether impassive; the seniors who meet at the food court for their morning or afternoon coffee and chat; and the young toughs with their oversized trousers hanging down, their ballcaps turned backwards. Shivering outside the mall doors are store clerks out for a smoke break, standing with one arm tight to their body checking their cell phones, and one hand tentatively holding a cigarette to their lips.
The mall has become a living entity; a barrage of walkers carrying expensive looking bags letting everyone know where they’ve been. My friend, Carol, had said earlier on Facebook that she wished she was coming with me, to which I assured her that she’d only be bored. Carol’s a great shopper. I’m not.
So, as I walked around for almost two hours, buying one pair of shoes, and eating the worst quiche I’ve ever had at Open Kitchens, but loving the pecan butterscotch cookie at some other place, I made endless mental notes of what I saw. A couple of stores had great flooring, some had fabulous colours and fonts in their advertising, the tobacco shop had intriguing cigars and pipes, the Apple Store had some cool iPhone covers that were far too expensive, Banana Republic had beautiful clothes in their window displays, and there was a lovely, helpful clerk in Town Shoes.
It’ll be a while before I get back to the mall, but sooner, of course, if I need ideas for some fictional characters.
Genius
As I read through Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, I can only reflect on my first days in the computer industry and remember the Macintosh for how intelligent it was for the early ’80s. While I had the occasional pleasure of using a Mac then, there would be far more years ahead of me teaching courses on the first IBM PCs, the PC XT, the PC AT, and onwards.
Looking back at this ad, and after reading this era of the Macintosh in Isaacson’s book, I can fully appreciate now how important it was to Jobs, despite all his “this is shit” comments toward things that just did not measure up. To see this Mac in the early ’80s was – compared to a black screen with the boring DOS prompt C:\> flashing in green or, later, amber – remarkable, to say the least. I think one had to have lived through that era and remembered those machines to fully appreciate the depth and breadth of the impact of the Macintosh.
If you haven’t read Isaacson’s bio, I can highly recommend it.
Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
This morning I downloaded from Apple’s iBookstore the eBook version of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, which was just released today. I am reading it on my (Jobs’) iPad and thoroughly enjoying it so far. Isaacson is an excellent writer.
I love having the option of downloading a book and reading it instantly. Will report back when I’ve had a chance to read more.
The thing about books
There are a ton of crummy books out there, but if you say you’ve read a book, even one of those crummy ones, you must, surely, have some smattering of intelligence. Books, somehow, give you credentials that you’re not a complete moron. Doesn’t matter what the book’s about; hell, it could be about any kind of idiotic crap, but the mere fact that you opened a book, read each page, then closed the book, somehow makes you just that much brighter to the outside world.
See, I just don’t get it.
When we were teenagers we read Shakespeare, because we had to. (Really, how many teenagers do you know who willingly choose to read Shakespeare over Kim Kardashian’s make-up tips in this month’s issue of Seventeen?) I don’t recall enjoying Shakespeare’s books, but I was pretty good in English and I could churn out the symbolism with the best of them. I don’t recall much of his work, but the one thing my brain refuses to discard, for whatever inane reason, is a few lines I read back in the early ’70s when I was Metellus Cimber in some acting-out of the scenes of Julius Caesar at the front of the class:
Is there no voice more worthy than my own to sound more sweetly in great Caesar’s ear for the repealing of my banished brother?
I have visions of me as a babbling old woman, reciting these words that I can’t seem to purge, while nurses tending to me are convinced I’m mad.
After all the English classes I’ve sat through studying Shakespearean symbolism, that’s the sum, bloody total of all those classes. A quote that, no matter how many years fly by, seems to stick in my head like Elmer’s school glue. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can remember whispering in great Caesar’s ear. And I’ll tell you another thing, being Metellus really didn’t add to my life a whole heck of a lot.
Don’t you ever wonder if William Shakespeare really sat at his desk and pondered every possible symbolic meaning for future teachers of English to wring out to uninspired pupils? I don’t think he did. I really don’t.
Holden Caulfield added to my life. If there were ever a character that is deserving of adding to my life, it’s Salinger’s Caulfield. Whereas Shakespeare’s works are allegedly full of symbolism, Holden was just right up there saying it like it was. No strange bending of the English language, just plain, straight talk. If Holden was a real person, I think he would have thought J.D. Salinger a genius.
Ya got that Ackley?
That’s the thing about books, if you ask me; they’re not always all they’re cracked up to be, but there are those special ones that truly make a dent in the brain matter and still make you think years after you’ve read them.
And I don’t know if that’s Caulfield speaking, or if it’s me.
It’s not that I’m against reading, I’m against people who read far too much into famous writers’ works. Honestly, I could read one paragraph of any book you hand me and turn every word, every nuance, every comma into deeper meaning. I could BS you ’til the cows come home and if I spoke in even the slightest affected tone, there are those who would buy it all.
Maybe some of Caulfield rubbed off on me. But then, I think – I hope – there’s a bit of Holden in all of us.
The only thing worse than the deep-meaning sorts are the sorts that insist on telling you how many books they’ve read lately, as if it’s a Green Stamp in the ration book of intelligence. I guess I don’t give a rat’s a$$ about how many books you’ve read, but I’d be very interested if you’d read just a few that gave you plenty to think about, and that you’ve kept thinking about. Those are the books that count.
In grade one, our daughter won an award for reading the most books that school year. When your child is beginning her school years, you’re overjoyed by any number of things – the traced hand, cut out, coloured, and stuck with feathers to look like a Thanksgiving turkey, too many finger paintings held on the fridge by kiddie magnets, or pages stapled together to make a real ‘journal’ where they practice their primitive version of printing. One feels a vicarious sense of accomplishment even through a six-year-old because they’ve read a ton of “chapter” books. As I look back on it now, was it a race to the finish? Was it something she loved? Or, was it that my husband and I continually read with her?
The best book I’ve read recently isn’t even a book. It’s still in manuscript form, but finished, and written by a friend of mine, and I couldn’t put it down. Those are the books that count. I can’t, for the life of me, read a book simply because it’s on the Top Ten list du jour. Many books in those top tens rarely appeal to me. Heather Reisman’s picks, Oprah’s picks, for instance, I hardly ever fancy, because I find they have a certain leaning towards books I do not, in the least, find remotely appealing.
Hannelore Headley
You can, however, plonk me down in Hannelore Headley’s Old & Fine Books in St. Catharines and I will be in my element for hours. Mrs. Headley may very well be the last of the true, authentic booksellers left out there. No air of condescension, no accompanying chi-chi coffees for eight bucks a pop, no overpriced gifts set out for unsuspecting customers – just a real, old-fashioned, charming book shop in an old house that has a bell attached to the door so that the aging Mrs. Headley can greet you in her German-tinged English and with her impeccable manners. She is one class act, this woman, let me tell you, and she actually – genuinely – thanks you for your custom as you leave her shop. None of this “have a nice day” drivel that you find in the big-box stores. Yes, if it comes to lining the coffers of Reisman or Headley, I’ll choose Mrs. Headley every time.
If I were really BS’ing you, of course, I’d tell you I’m concerned about the environment and prefer to buy used books for that reason, but if it’s the truth you’re after, the reason I prefer antiquated books is that, like most things old and worn, they have indisputable character. And I love character. Old books have a slightly musty scent to them, the years filing down the paper and inks, the fading colour of the pages and illustrations. You’ll never find that in brand new books. I like the creased edges, the fact that others before me have read those same pages. I like reading print that looks old, pages that have actually gone through an honest-to-goodness printing-press. As much as I love technology, there is something about the smudging of a bit of ink here and there that sits better with me than a stark page of “on-demand” print that doesn’t show the slightest quiver of the manufacturing process.
Well, listen, I could go on and on about the aspects of books and reading, but I’ve bent your ear for long enough.
At least for now.
Former Attorney General Michael Bryant to publish 28 Seconds | Afterword | National Post
Well, it took such a short amount of time. Former Ontario A-G, Michael Bryant, crusader against pit bulls and all dogs resembling them, is now penning a book about HIS “descent into a kind of hell.”
This man makes my blood boil. He really does.
Anything to make a buck, even if it’s at the expense of dragging the family of the late Mr. Sheppard through Bryant’s filthy muck again. And you have to love the publisher’s (Diane Turbide of Penguin Canada) spin on things. You’ll have to read the nauseating remarks yourself at the National Post’s site, or any of the main Ontario sites that are carrying this story.
You see, “…everything changed for the Harvard-educated lawyer, politician, and CEO that night when his car dragged Darcy Sheppard, resulting in Mr. Sheppard’s death.”
So through 28 Seconds (the name of the book) Bryant will explain the justice system to us, as he says so eloquently, perhaps hoping that some of us may feel some pittance of sympathy for him.
As if.
It’s important to pass along lessons learned regarding our justice system. I’m ready to speak to these very personal issues.
I find it unbelievably ironic now, as I did at the time, that our former A-G was the one who brought about legislation against pit bulls in this province – and any dogs resembling pit bulls – because – are you ready for this? They were dangerous! He brought about legislation, despite being unable to identify the very breed of dog he was banning.
Diane Turbide and Penguin Canada ought to be ashamed to be associated with a book that will profit from the death of Mr. Sheppard. To offset profits, however, a “portion” of the profits will go towards the Pine River Foundation. What “portion” is not revealed. If it were to be a hefty portion, I’m sure they’d make that known immediately.
Michael Bryant, quite simply, disgusts me.
Former Attorney General Michael Bryant to publish 28 Seconds | Afterword | National Post.
Queen Mary 2 meets Artemis
I love this video of Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 meeting the Artemis vessel in the Atlantic Ocean. Such lovely, dank and misty weather that captures memories of ocean liners plying the seas in the past.
Customer Service at its best…
Coleman NightSight Watch
Two days ago I wrote to Coleman saying that I’d bought one of their NightSight watches (model 40-818) that had died. I assumed it needed a new battery, but since the back-light worked brilliantly, I wondered whether it was indeed the battery.
This watch is a rugged creature, not the sort you’d wear to a dance! It has an analog face that’s easy to read and is ideal for the outdoors. The back-light alone is incredible.
The clerk at the store changed the battery but it still didn’t work – the hands still refused to tick along. She informed me that it was the second hand that was broken, which, therefore, stopped the minute and hour hands from working. The watch, she proclaimed, was dead.
I couldn’t imagine this was the case, as the hands of the watch looked to be in perfect condition, as did the rest of the watch.
Well, it turns out the watch has two batteries, which the clerk from the store I purchased it from was obviously not aware.
The worst thing was that I had long lost my proof of purchase, but wrote the Coleman (outdoor) company an email explaining what had happened. By the next morning I’d received an email, as well as a phone call later in the day from its customer service department. To say I was (almost) speechless (that could never happen…) is an understatement. If only all companies could be this accommodating. The Coleman rep was understanding, her only concern was that I be 100% happy with my watch and she would see to it that my watch would be in perfect working order as soon as possible at no expense to me, the customer.
After dealing with some pretty horrific customer service departments over the years, to deal with a company like Coleman, which stands behind its products 100%, my situation was rectified immediately. I have no hesitation in recommending Coleman and I will buy from them again after this incident.
We have also had excellent customer service from Clarke’s Shoes, ACME Made computer products, Ebook-Pub.com, and another company whose name, unfortunately, escapes me at the moment.
End of the summer Victory Garden
Well, my little Victory Garden is nearing the end of its production season. Despite an ankle that is swollen after a fall yesterday, I just couldn’t tolerate looking at all the weeds in amongst the vegetables, so I pulled out the heavy gloves, clippers, organics bag, and jumped in, so to speak. I vowed to keep going until either the bag was full or my back gave out and oddly enough, both occurred at the same time.
The good news is that I found cucumber after cucumber, squash after squash, which I think will keep us going for the next few months. The bad news is that there were weeds in there that I’d never before encountered. There was one specimen – a beautiful tall frond-like grass – which I considered leaving it was that pretty, but it got bagged. My husband isn’t the sort to appreciate such things and most greenery at the end of summer is considered a weed, therefore, it’s garbage. I’ve lost many a plant over the years, let me tell you.
I found the red onions, but they didn’t fare well. They were either too small or not deep enough in the soil to be of any worth, so they remain. Perhaps they’ll look better in a month. ;-)
The cherry tomatoes are still going strong and just last night for dinner I picked another bowl to put on the table in front of my husband, me, two girls and their two guys. They were devoured in no time, along with huge steaks, pesto (that I had froze a few weeks ago) and other vegetables. There are hundreds of tomatoes that are still not ripe yet, and I wonder if they ever will be now that the weather is turning cooler and the humidity has reduced considerably.
I am happy to report my varieties of lavender have done well and are thick and lush. The rosemary, which I placed in a pot this season, will be planted in the garden next year. This was the first time I’d used a pot, but the rosemary is stringy and certainly not as prolific as it is planted in a garden. Next year it gets dug in so that I can dry it at the end of the summer. The sage might be picked tomorrow to be dried and ground.
vintage Pyrex ad
As I pulled out about three squash that had gone bad I couldn’t help but think of what housewives of the war years would have done had they weeded the same garden. Back then nothing went to waste. It makes one pause to consider all the waste of the 21st century. We are spoiled, there is no question about that.
Without mentioning my love of vintage Pyrex and Jadeite yet again, I’ll remind you that mid-century glass is SO much more convenient, sanitary, and well, pretty, than any plastic containers from Tupperware, Rubbermaid and all the other companies producing plastic. Up-cycling is fun, and re-using glass and vintage kitchen utensils helps the environment and the pocket-book.
And by the way, if you see vintage Pyrex in the pink gooseberry, pink daisy, or turquoise patterns, I WANT them!!
Boeing rolls out 787 Dreamliner after years of delay – CNN.com
As I read this article at CNN’s website, I couldn’t help but think that so much thought and hard work goes into the development of any one aircraft, only to have it handed over to an airline that treats it like a cattle car.
So it was on a routine flight from Montreal to Toronto this week with a large Canadian airline. A full jet had to return to the gate with “mechanical problems.” To add to the delay, a new crew had to be brought onboard as the aircraft sat on the tarmac in the Montreal heat. This 40-minute-odd flight was to arrive in Toronto at 11:15 a.m., only it was delayed for three hours, finally touching down at Pearson at 2:05 p.m. Compensation for this three hour delay? Cookies. The airline carried no food for such quick flights.
This fiasco was exacerbated by the fact that its luggage did not appear on the carousel until exactly 3:10. Even the baggage personnel thought the flight’s luggage was lost.
The first time I flew with this particular airline was July 1969 and since that time, despite too many flights, I have only had a thin spattering of good experiences with this company. Because of that, I will usually go out of my way to avoid flying with them. Unfortunately, this early jaunt from Montreal was the one that fit in with our plans. What could go wrong on a short 40 minute flight?
The company just doesn’t seem to ‘get it.’ In my opinion, customer service is near rock bottom, and although they try to keep up with the friendlier and more efficient service on, say, a company like Westjet, their actions are so forced they appear false.
You just can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Boeing rolls out 787 Dreamliner after years of delay – CNN.com.
Ya Gotta Love Technology
As I write this, we are driving on Hwy 69 South, just south of Sudbury, Ontario and I have my MacBook Air on my lap and connected to the Internet. This is one of those occasions when my iPhone’s Personal Hotspot Technoloy is a dream to use.
While I don’t at all mind using my iPhone for surfing the Internet, accessing e-mail, Facebook or Twitter, it really is rather nice to have the ability to use my MacBook Air and its full features on the road. And I mean ‘on the road.’
I think of this after reading this morning of RIM’s cutting of 2000 jobs, one journalist calling the BlackBerry Playbook its most recent failure. Ouch.
It comes as no surprise to me that RIM is suffering these days. For years it was the phone/device to have in the corporate world and it handled its mission with aplomb. Sadly, while keeping the corporate accounts happy, it seemed to ignore the consumer market for too long, allowing Apple and Google to rip the proverbial rug out from under it.
Two years ago I bought the first generation BlackBerry Storm, which did not come equipped with WiFi. As it turned out, the Storm I had suffered numerous bouts of wireless (‘less’ being the operative part of that word) woes. I considered myself lucky to have two to three bars up on the display and that was on a good day. It went into Bell – my carrier – to be fixed, but long story short, Bell lost it somewhere in transit. (You could add the word, ‘translation,’ too.) RIM, on the other hand, implied Bell had lost it. All I knew was that the damn thing was AWOL for months and I was stuck using a cheaper BlackBerry in the meantime.
It was only after heated telephone calls and letters and threats of exposing the whole bloody fiasco on this blog that I got anywhere with either company. In fact, I didn’t find out ’til the eleventh hour that they’d even lost the phone. They gave me a refurb in its place – Bell, that is, and BlackBerry coughed up a new Bold for me. By this time I didn’t want either.
It wasn’t long after that debacle that I cut the ties to BlackBerry and went in search of the new Apple iPhone 3GS to complement my other Apple products. It retrospect, it was the smartest move I made.
Now RIM is cutting its workforce by 2000, losing a few of its big corporate players to competitors, and seeing other companies running with the ball that was once firmly glued to its global hand. A shame, really, but hardly surprising if you’ve watched the last few months of its upheaval.
Meanwhile, as we near Parry Sound, surrounded on both sides by northern Ontario rock, birch trees and lakes, Personal Hotspot is working as advertised.
A Classic
The Royal Opera Houses artwork for Alices Adventures in Wonderland.
We saw the Royal Opera House’s advertisement posters for its production, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderlandwhile in London in February. Sadly, it played in March, so we missed it, but here is the very cool promo trailer for it. Click the link below…
Royal Opera House Video for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
A BlackBerry Tablet, but Where Are the Apps?- David Pogue – NYTimes.com
A review by David Pogue of the almost-here (in more ways than one) BlackBerry Playbook.
I agree with Pogue that this tablet was perhaps released far ahead of its time. And what’s with the no-email feature without a BlackBerry phone??
What were they thinking over at RIM?
A BlackBerry Tablet, but Where Are the Apps?- David Pogue – NYTimes.com.
The Tragic Death of the Flip – NYTimes.com
An excellent – better than excellent – piece by David Pogue of the New York Times on Cisco’s idiotic decision to kill the Flip.
Could Flip have been saved?
Flip videocam, with 'Love me, by Madison' (Domek) design applied.
I read last evening that Cisco was discontinuing the iconic Flip video camera. I was going to write a post about it this morning, but instead, I’ll re-direct you to gdgt.com where there is an excellent write-up on the Flip’s demise.
I own one of the second generation Flips and, while I don’t use it much at all anymore, it still sits ready to go. Last year, I wanted to buy an updated Flip, but after looking at Kodak’s Zi8 (another pocket videocam) I ultimately decided on the Kodak. I can’t now recall the exact reasons for this decision, but it might have had something to do with Kodak’s software capability to reduce camera shake. If memory serves, I think this was indeed the deciding factor.
It’s very disappointing to see that Cisco is shutting down its Flip division, having only bought out Linksys and Pure Digital as recently as 2009.
In any event, the article (linked below) over at gdgt.com is an excellent wrap-up of the Flip story.
Could Flip have been saved? [This appeared in the gdgt weekly newsletter. Subscribe to… – gdgt.
