I’m borderline bored today. Read some of Sources of the Self but there’s too much talk of God. Read about how he thinks we may be in a watershed time (written though in the late 1980s) and spoke of how we have a hard time imagining old ideas like the divine right of kings. I’m [...]
Yearly Archives: 2005
Where is Santa Claus?
8 December 2005 – 8:39 am
From my journal at the time, where I’d copied and translated it. From my Grade 10 French Class fifteen years ago, dated December 8 1990: Where is Santa Claus?Where is Santa Claus? To discover the answer to this question, I set about asking children. I asked nearly fifteen children when one told me where he [...]
Not Special
5 December 2005 – 11:06 pm
The cultivation of the mind rather than cultivating the body
Yet there are many who do not cultivate either
So they are the ones who are told that so and so was gay, left handed, autistic, dyslexic – had whatever other condition
To make them ’special’ so that you and I remain not special, when in reality, [...]
Some pigs are more equal than others
9 October 2005 – 11:11 pm
There’s an interview with Slavoj Zizek from the Guardian which pretty much confirms my suspicions as to why I shouldn’t take him seriously – I first heard of him a couple of years ago through a friend who was briefly infatuated with his writing; then looking into it I found it unintelligible, and then further [...]
Pourquois les arts?
6 October 2005 – 9:01 pm
Northrop Frye, from The Educated Imagination (1962):
So you may ask, what is the use of studying a world of imagination where anything is possible and anything can be assumed, where there are no rights or wrongs and all arguments are equally good? One of the most obvious uses, I think, is its encouragement of tolerance. [...]
White Bread
5 October 2005 – 10:43 pm
Earlier this year I had the misfortune of attending an abysmal presentation by a visiting academic at one of Toronto’s universities. Afterward, over drinks with my companion, we talked about my dislike for what we had experienced. I wasn’t too fond of the theorizing, having come to see psychoanalysts and their spawn (Lacan and his [...]
Bourgeoisie 1955 = Right Wing 2005
2 October 2005 – 1:57 pm
In his book on Northrop Frye1, Jonathan Hart describes Roland Barthes as attacking the myths of ‘the bourgeoisie’ and stating that for Barthes, the problem with what is often translated as ‘middle class’ was its inability to imagine the other. Thus, I go through artschool being informed and taught these Marxist ideas, and for a [...]
Suicide is news too
7 September 2005 – 7:21 pm
Suicide is news too
Posted by in City
So, according to my sister’s boyfriend, who witnessed it, there was a nude jumper this morning on the DVP. He jumped off one of the overpasses near the BMW facility (either Queen St or Eastern Ave). Of course, they didn’t bother to tell us that on the evening [...]
Seven thousand dollar shoes
3 September 2005 – 11:23 pm
From this:
“The criticism is all the sharper because the President did nothing to alter his holiday schedule for 48 hours. Vice-President Dick Cheney remains on holiday in Wyoming. Condoleezza Rice, the Secretary of State, returned to Washington after being seen shopping for $7,000 shoes in Manhattan as New Orleans went under.”
Reminds me of another callous [...]
Signs of the Times: the lockout and the future
31 August 2005 – 7:19 pm
Signs of the Times: the lockout and the future
Posted by in City
I spent a week in Maine at the end of July, mostly reading fat books but every now and then giving my mind a rest with some channel surfing. The impression I got from my sampling of pure American television was that their [...]