Gawd knows what "pjotro" means, but it's plenty fun. A new flash-based musical game. I'm pretty sure this qualifies as experimental music; perhaps I can get a Canada Council grant to play with it? One hesitates to mention the Canada Council, as the last time one did one was practically backed up against the wall at knifepoint by a neurasthenic sci-fi-writing schoolmarm type, inquiring in a quivering and Mark David Chapman-esque way as to how one went about getting that money. I referred her to such esoteric pursuits as filling out the paperwork etc, and she seemed satisfied with that.
Category Archives: Canada
Talking to Americans…
although why bother? Here is a clip from the infamous series on This Hour has 22 Minutes, by Rick Mercer who is also in our blogroll but really needs to hire me to feed and walk his blog while he’s away.
What’s really funny is that the person who posted it on YouTube doesn’t know any more than the rest of these clueless and corn-fed specimens of Amerawkana.
DID YOU KNOW that the capital of Canada recently relocated from Ottawa to Toronto? Former Vice-President Al Gore did!
In fairness to Gore, he knows better and probably did the quick “I don’t have time to correct this dude” math in his head before coming out with the stock answer.
The Ice Storm: Quebec, 1998
From tigressemimi:
I made this video with Windows movie maker. This video is a presentation of photos pulled by the album of the ice storm of quebec in 1998. This storm was terrible. We must be evacuated because it was too much cold and too dangerous. We did not have electricity anymore and all the shops were closed. The food became rare. I remember that we had to put our food to the garbage because the fridge and the freezer did not work any more. It was the hell. it fell 100 mm of ice there. To show you the extent of damages, here is some figures:
700 municipalities affected
up to 7,000 cords of wood distributed each day (firewood)
more than 60,000 meals a day served in shelters
more than 16,000 wooden poles damaged
approximately 3,312,600 litres of milk discarded
more than 3,000 pylons downed or irreparably damaged
telephone service cut off to more than 158,500 customers
approximately 1.7 million hectares of forest damaged
so you understand now what i say… but one thing was very nice… SCHOOL WAS CLOSED lol please leave your comment i'll be very happy ^^
Shebeen Club: Thundering Fundraiser June 20
cross-posted from The Shebeen Club Blog
Because braindead Spamcop has put every single Gmail address on their spam list. Of course they did this the very day before my email announcing this month’s meeting went out. May I just say that (pauses dramatically and runs off to look up something truly evisceratory in The Book of Insults)
With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent spamkilling service, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise so entirely as I despise Spamcop when I measure my mind against theirs. The intensity of my impatience with them occasionally reaches such a pitch, that it would positively be a relief to me to fly down to Bakersfield or whatever godforsaken strip mall they are located in and throw stones at them, knowing as I do how incapable they and their clients are of understanding any less obvious form of indignity.
Bernard Shaw, on Shakespeare, and ever-so-slightly paraphrased.
In any case, here’s the announcement. I’m going to hold it here for several days, just to make sure word gets out. Please pass the info along as best you can; obviously, I’m stuck not doing that. Very annoying.
For immediate release: post/forward at will!
Who: The Shebeen Club presents Vancouver Spoken Word Performers tk (if you want to be a performer, email me!)
What: Thundering Fundraiser for T Paul Ste. Marie!
When: 7-10 pm Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 (3rd Tuesday of each month)
Meet & Mingle 7-7:30
Listen & Learn 7:30-8
Poetry Slam Dancing and other Tipsy Cultural Mashups 8-10
Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 217 Carrall
Why: Because Vancouver’s proudly homegrown talent regularly beats the best in the world. Because that talent grew in an environment pioneered by T Paul, founder of Thundering Word Heard. And because T Paul recently suffered a brain aneurysm and needs a helping hand rent-wise, there being little in the way of pensions and sick leave for Entrepreneurs of the Word, Spoken or Otherwise.
How (much)? $15 before June 16th, $20 thereafter, includes dinner
All profits for the evening will be donated to the T Paul fund.
Instead of our usual door prizes, we will do a T Paul 50/50 draw.
Reservations and media inquiries: lorrainedotmurphyatgmaildotcom
New Format: Our new, lower admission price includes your choice of bangers and mash or vegetarian pasta, plus a glass of beer or wine.
Shebeen Club Full Background Disclosure: here
Bio: Our Spoken Word presenters are TBA and TK, but I guarantee you they will kick posterior to a TKO. As for our honoree, let’s go to the interview with Pandora’s Collective here
T Paul says he started Thundering Word Heard with the idea that he wanted to create a place where both music and spoken word could come together and be given a place that was their own. And he has done just that. After three years the room is still full every Sunday night even on a long weekend. It takes a lot of time, commitment and a big heart to keep putting on something like this every single week. But it has paid off. Thundering Word continues to be a great success and T Paul’s reputation as a host and organizer continues to grow as well.
“ I have my hands in a million and one things that all seem to have the center in that hub Thundering Word Heard.”
The Irish Heather: The Eavesdropping, Part Two
from the archives
Part One
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
and he comes back a moment later with something small in a baggie. It is a tomato. It is not just any tomato. It is the tomato she presented to Sean Heather some considerable time ago. It is glossy orange except where it has gone bad, where it is sort of white and slimy-looking. It was a fine vegetable in its day, you can just tell by looking, but now it is slimy. The scene is reminiscent of that moment on the cop show where the parents have to identify the body.
Well, let us just say that in this case Mom takes it hard. "Why didn't you use it? It was a great tomato!" We brace ourselves to hear all about its fine future as a concert pianist, but are thankfully spared.
Sean makes small, excuse-sounding noises that don't go very far, at least not with her because she isn't having any of it. She lets him have it, though, and concludes with a lecture about how she does not want to come back-
"Good," says Sean, getting just one word in edgewise.
-and find the same thing has happened to this turnip. Ah yes, we are back to the turnip. This, she informs everyone within a couple of miles, is not just any turnip.
"No?"
"NO! This is a watermelon turnip. An ORGANIC watermelon turnip."
"Oh. Really?"
"Really."
Well, that seems to settle it. Sean reverently takes the 
turnip, holding it not like a regular turnip, no, not in a regular turnip-hold at all, but on the flat of his hand like he is suddenly a spokesmodel from the Price Is Right, slowly turns and paces in that bridesmaid walk back into the kitchen.
While he is gone a waitress asks the woman what that egg is for. Ah yes, the egg. I had forgotten about the egg. Throughout the minuet with the barkeep there has been a small egg sitting on the bar beside her.
"It's a nonsmoking egg," she says, as if half the eggs you meet were regulars at the back door of the supermarket, puffing Export A's. I have never encountered an egg that smoked, but then I don't live back east.
But she's talking again. "I've been smoking for longer than my boyfriend has been alive, so I thought I'd better quit."
"So you got an egg," says the host with a positively Buddhist lack of expression, now returned from the turnip presentation.
"Yeah," she says. "This egg."
"Well I thought it would be that egg."
"Yes," she says, "this one right here. Every time I want to smoke I pick it up and squeeze it."
At this point she picks up the egg and gives it a good, hard squeeze. I am prepared for real drama, but nonsmoking eggs are apparently not real and instead are made of something that does not resent a good squeeze the way a real egg might. It just squooshes a bit; no cascading fountains of egg entrails, alas.
"Does it work?" asks the waitress, intrigued.
"It's the best nonsmoking egg I've ever used."
