Checked in. At the gate. Pre-boarding called. On y vas!
[tags]paris[/tags]
Category: Trips
À bientôt!
We’re off to the airport. We land tomorrow morning around 4 ET. I’ll try to blog, and upload the occasional picture, if/when we have the chance. Be good, everybody.
Ah, who’m I kidding? I’ll be blogging from the check-in line. I can’t help myself.
[tags]paris, france[/tags]
What a waste of a monkey army
Nellie shot this last week while I was away. Not sure what she was doing up that early…
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We just bought a new zoom lens for the camera, and a bigger bag to carry all the stuff in. New camera gear and a new bag…she could hardly be giddier. She’s off to the spa now, while I start packing. I have to keep reminding myself that I should be in bed around 8:30.
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It’s stuff like this that makes me laugh at religion, even as I fear it:
Hindu devotees believe the area between India and Sri Lanka – now known as Adam’s Bridge – was built millions of years ago by Lord Ram, supported by an army of monkeys.
But scientists and archaeologists say Adam’s Bridge, or Ram Setu, is a natural formation of sand and stones.
On Wednesday the Archaeological Survey of India told the Supreme Court that the religious texts were not evidence that Lord Ram ever existed.
Hardline Hindu opponents of the government accused the administration of blasphemy and protesters carried out demonstrations in the area and in Delhi, Bhopal, and on a number of key highways. The next day the report was withdrawn.
Great message to send, Indian government. Way to stand up for reason and common sense.
[tags]toronto sunrise, zoom lens, canon s3 is, ambika soni[/tags]
The things we do for Louvre
Nothing sucks quite like getting up at 5:30 on a Saturday. Of course, I’ll probably revise that statement tomorrow morning when I get up at 3:30.
It’ll be worth it, though, when I’m functional in Paris.
[tags]sunrise, paris[/tags]
I am constant as the northern star
Fatblogging, ho:
- Original weight: 233
- Weight last week: 224.5
- Weight this week: 223.5
Another week, another pound. At this rate I should be 67.5 pounds in just three years.
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Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was messy, intricate and very funny. It’s a film about a film about an essentially unfilmable novel, and I think I may have missed one or more “a film about…”s. Michael Winterbottom is quickly becoming one of my favourite directors.
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There’s an excellent piece in Esquire this month entitled “God’s Not Watching Baghdad” that you should read if you have 15 minutes.
I was back in Iraq to see the president’s surge, to see if pushing more troops into Baghdad had made a difference. I had last been in Iraq two years before as a sergeant in an infantry company, patrolling its farm fields and city streets. On a good day, the country looks the same as it did during my deployments. Usually it looks much worse. Being back in Iraq, I hoped, would be a brief sojourn to reality, a break from America’s version of the war, where the battle lines had been drawn by fearless sloganeers: “Cut ‘n’ Run” or “Bring ‘Em Home,” depending. Where the debate no longer has much to do with Iraq and its people — other than the shitty smorgasbord of daily violence touted as evidence of either the mission’s futility or the dangers of quitting. Mostly, I wanted to make sense of why this had gone on so long with so little progress and see how the war looked to those tasked with the salvage operation.
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An article popped up in my feeds this week that resonated on a couple of levels. The Coast, the Halifax alternative weekly paper I used to read all the time in university, recently ripped off Passive-Aggressive Notes, a blog I quite enjoy. P.A.N. reposted the article, including this picture, which made me laugh my ass off. Ha ha ha ha. Soyfucker.
It also reminded me of an east-coast delicacy: donair pizza. I never liked donairs themselves (that sauce always made me sick) and I couldn’t eat the pizzas, but I used to loooooove eating the donair meat. I don’t even know what kind of meat it was (ostensibly I think it was meant to be lamb) but I still crave it every time I’m in Halifax.
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Finally, after my brain being rendered mush by work and school for many months, it has sunk in: I’m going on vacation in two weeks. My thought priorities now seem to be as follows:
- Vacation
- The film festival, even though I’m missing it this year
- Work
- Scarlett Johansson
- Rehabbing my wrist
- Losing weight
- Keeping my fingernails tidy and well-clipped
- School
[tags]fatblogging, tristram shandy, the coast, passive aggressive notes, donair, france, scarlett johansson[/tags]
Everything be broken
The recent radio silence is due to a couple of things:
- Our den (aka, the BlogCave*) is being painted and my computer is piled in the middle of the room under a tarp. Because of my broken wrist I’m trying to avoid shlepping my laptop home at night, which means I’m forced to use Nellie’s laptop now, and I’m trying not to hog it too much.
- The TIFF bible came out yesterday, so I spent most of the night going through to see which films catch my eye, even though I can’t go to any this year. This essentially becomes half of my wishlist for the upcoming few years. After two hours I was only halfway through the book so I have another night’s work ahead of me yet. There’s no rush, really; I’d just much rather read about movies than study.
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It occurred to me this morning that I am not at all prepared for my trip in a couple of weeks. I’m not talking prepared-but-not-up-to-my-usual-clinical-standards. I mean I’m not ready at all. I should get on that.
* note: I don’t really call it that. But I might, starting right now.
[tags]painting, tiff07, trip planning[/tags]
Can one glamp in Central Park?
This is my favourite time of night. Not day, but not night yet either. That’s St. James Cathedral, by the way. It’s the structure that inspired my building.
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Apparently I’m even further behind the time than JR, ’cause I’d never heard of glamping either. But I like the sound of it. Someone needs to make a canoe with a Bang & Olufsen stereo in it. I’m also in the market for an inflatable 5-star bathroom.
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Porter is now cleared to fly to New York. Well, Newark airport, but close enough.
Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, and now New York; I may never fly from Pearson again. Uh, until September when I got to Europe.
[tags]st james cathedral, glamping, porter air[/tags]
Richard Thompson = White Bear
A few days ago I talked about how certain songs have particular — and often irrational — connections to certain places in my mind. Another one just came to me as my Zen is on random: “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” by Richard Thompson, for some reason, makes me think of an English pub called The White Bear. My brother, his girlfriend, Nellie and I stopped there as we drove north to Scotland, and they had amazing food, a stunning view, great ambience and charm…none of which have anything to do with Richard Thompson or vintage motorcycles.
I have no idea why my brain makes that connection, but hearing the song just puts me back in that seat, eating a huge feast of duck in black cherry sauce, sipping whisky, ducking low ceiling beams, laughing with my family, surrounded by misty English hills as we started our European adventure two years ago.
I am a puzzle wrapped in a mystery inside a music-and-food-associating enigma.
[tags]richard thompson, vincent black lightning, white bear pub[/tags]
I've been flyin' alll night, my hands wet on the Blackberry
That was a long day. I got up at 5:30 to catch a flight to Montreal, and I’m just now in a cab on the Gardiner. Next time I’m flying Porter off of the island. Anyway, it was a good day. Got to meet some new people and experience some new things. Right now, though, I mainly just want to go to sleep.
[tags]montreal, porter air[/tags]
"To do less would have added moral shame to humiliation."
Colin sent me a link to this New Yorker article today about Iraqis who joined up with the invading American forces to become translators and civil servants. It’s long, but very interesting.
The Arabic for “collaborator” is aameel—literally, “agent.” Early in the occupation, the Baathists in Ali’s neighborhood, who at first had been cowed by the Americans’ arrival, began a shrewd whispering campaign. They told their neighbors that the Iraqi interpreters who went along on raids were feeding the Americans false information, urging the abuse of Iraqis, stealing houses, and raping women. In the market, a Baathist would point at an Iraqi riding in the back of a Humvee and say, “He’s a traitor, a thug.” Such rumors were repeated often enough that people began to believe them, especially as the promised benefits of the American occupation failed to materialize. Before long, Ali told me, the Baathists “made the reputation of the interpreter very, very low—worse than the Americans’.”
The article laments the American administration’s treatment of these Iraqis, and rightly so, but I thought it ignored the historical parallel of how such people have been viewed by the occupied citizenry in past conflicts. For example, while officials in the Vichy French government may have felt they were doing the best thing for their country by siding with the Nazis, that didn’t stop the French resistance from hating them. Obviously American foreign policy in Iraq is markedly different than Germany’s in 1940, though the average Iraqi might not appreciate the nuance. I just think the article should have gotten some reaction directly from Iraqis opposed to the occupation, to get a balance.
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Ever since Flickr’s map view of images was launched I’ve had fun playing around with it, but it comes in really handy when you’re looking at travel options. Is that town pretty? Let’s see…yup. Very. I think I’ll go there.
[tags]iraqi translators, vichy, flickr[/tags]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 