The Dutch Wife

I finished The Dutch Wife by Eric McCormack last night (thanks Boom for the loan of the book!) This book is a delight and appeals on many levels to me. I like the travel, the early thinkers and the local stuff (it’s based in ‘Camberloo’ which is really Waterloo, where I went for my Bachelor’s degree). In fact, the author sat in on a creative writing course I took way back when with then Writer-in-Residence Susan Musgrave.
The lives of Thomas Vanderlinden and his two fathers and the Dutch Wife, his mother, were fascinating! Like the Life of Pi this book makes me believe all that transpired. It seems too strange and wonderful for fiction. If it is fiction then I have to congratulate Eric’s skill and imagination. If it isn’t I want to learn more about Vatua and Rowland Vanderlinden and see Eric’s house.
Recommended very highly. I’d certainly suggest this for our book club.

Pending Breakdown

Freewheel wobbling
my tired bike
urges me on
to a rusty air pump
and then
to home
where we both rest

where my weekend
is so long
i forget
looming Monday

until it’s too late

can i get another
few commutes
out of her?

but I get ahead
of myself
i must rest
still
stay up late
hope for sleeping in
but it is
Sunday night

rest

2007/02/23-25

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

To say that The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants is a chick flick is an understatement. This is a movie that engages empathy, fashion, a pair of jeans that miraculously fit everyone, etc. Lots of tugging on heart strings and girl humour and … it was OK. Guys have different expectations from movies than girls do… we’re different. I would never pay for this movie but my wife and daughter might. I borrowed it from the library for my daughter and it made me just so appreciated and look so caring! In other words, nothing like the real me!
All that being said, I did like the Bailey character and the interaction with Tibby. I can see some of the ennui and adolescent cynicism of Tibby in my own daughter. Thankfully, I don’t think it will take someone like Bailey and her problems to change her; she is already on the road to her own maturity. I did like the quiet and artistry of the Lena character too although I’m not a huge fan of Alexis Bledel (her character on the Gilmore Girls is so unrealistic, it’s Annoying); I think her being told to tone things down in this role helped her. I couldn’t identify with the other characters… guys are just too impatient, perhaps. I kept thinking… ‘Carmen… get on with it!’
I suppose a movie about the Brotherhood of the Traveling Pants would be very different and involve temples of doom, millennium falcons and several rings that rule everything. Sigh! But what a great movie that would be!

Gormenghast

I picked up the miniseries Gormenghast at the library and watched it this weekend with the family. This is a 232 minute BBC series (in 2000) based on the ‘trilogy’ (as it often called) by Mervyn Peake.
I tried to read Titus Groan, the first book. when I was an adolescent because I found the artwork and scope appealing but I couldn’t get into the text then. Seeing this miniseries has certainly made me feel like making the attempt again (I just put a hold on the Overlook Press omnibus edition of the main novels at the library).
This is very well cast cinematic effort and uses a very interesting underwater model technique to give Gormenghast castle a larger-than-life, surreal look. The set design, too, is often bizarre but the whole thing works together. I saw many impressive performances that are likely to stay with me for quite a while (the twin sisters Clarice & Cora Groan, for example, exquisitely played by Zoë Wanamaker & Lynsey Baxter or Flay wonderfully done by Christopher Lee). The great humour in the story is not, at first, obvious but starts to work on you as you learn more about the characters. It certainly could bear a second watching by me.
I recommend it very highly and was delighted to have been so surprised by it!

The Smallest Show on Earth

I rented The Smallest Show on Earth from the library and watched it tonight with the kids. Wow! This 1957 movie had pacing issues but made up for it in sheer heart. I found it sweet and wonderfully funny. Peter Sellers was not over the top, as he was in other of his films. I would recommend it highly! I especially liked one of the final lines about writing a postcard from Samarkand at the end… beautiful. I will definitely watch this one again.

V is for Vendetta; the movie

That’s right. I’ve seen the movie, although it took a long time before my library hold came up. I discussed V is for Vendetta in a comment to my post about the movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a while back. I’ve read the graphic novel by Alan Moore since that comment.
The book was excellent and the movie was … well just not in the same league. They changed the ending in the movie so that it isn’t Finch who kills V… , he’s killed as the result of a shoot out. V simply stands still and let’s Creedy’s Fingermen shoot him up. I found it very unsatisfactory compared to the book. I found that V’s ability to inspire was the real power of the story… the movie plot was too pat. No room for chance or the involvement of others. The movie has many Fawkes-garbed people marching on the houses of parliament in the end… and they don’t do a damn thing. They just stand there. An empty shadow of the insurrection in the book.
Oh the movie is a violent and colourful adventure which is entertaining.  It’s worth getting out of the library, but getting the book out of the library, well that’s a better move.

Cellular Distopia

Listened to a podcast yesterday about GMail Mobile and how many things you could do with your cellular… you can even open your attachments! This made me realize once again just how glad I am that I have never owned one. Aside from the health concerns (that’s back in the news again and stirring up a predictable controversy I see) I just don’t understand why people need to be so connected. Don’t they enjoy quiet time?
And, of course, you could argue that you need it for emergencies. But shouldn’t we rely on our own wits? It’s not as if we live in an isolated area (and if you do, the cellular probably doesn’t work there anyway).
Maybe it’s just me. I like that quiet space in my own head and don’t mind if I do spend time there, thank you very much. I had to carry a cell phone on several temporary occasions, years ago, when I was on call since I was working as an IT guy for a bank. And I had to wear a pager always. I hated every minute of it and was very happy when I moved on to a different employer. That feeling of freedom when I walked out of that office without that pager attached to my hip!
Hey. Don’t get me wrong. I like technology as much as the next guy and would never consider myself a Luddite… but there’s a limit. And paying for my own cellu-leash is way across that particular boundary.
PS: I wonder if my brother will lend me his cellular, to phone home, this year when we go on our annual guy’s weekend away. I love you bro!

The BNL zero footprint tour

I’m a huge fan of The Barenaked Ladies and the podcast I heard today reaffirms my thoughts about how cool they are. The BNL tour this year is supposed to have a zero footprint for Carbon emissions by partnering with a Toronto not-for-profit company called Zerofootprint (they also have a Carbon footprint calculator if you’re interested).
The way this works is that they have calculated the carbon footprint of their tour (C emitted) by their use of transport (they’re on their way from Ottawa to NYC –for the Letterman show tomorrow night– right now according to their blog which isn’t working very well I might add… hey Steven… your java calendar tool on the blog isn’t working right).  So they’ve calculated it all out and then Zerofootprint are going to assure that a sufficient number of trees will be grown (indefinitely… I wonder how they can be sure of that! Remind you of anything… much closer and in Guelph?) in BC to compensate.  I think it’s a great initiative and applaud it!

Meaningless Lyrics and Drifters

I often tell my teenage daughter “a song isn’t worth the MP3 file it’s recorded in if it doesn’t have great lyrics”. And then I’ll say “I’m a words kind of guy”. Of course by then I’m talking to myself since I made the mistake of saying something to my teenage daughter.
But… I got to thinking today as I was listening to some great rock ‘n roll I’ve ripped onto my computer from my CD collection. Terry, I says. Or actually, since talking to myself out load at work isn’t a good idea, ‘Terry’, I thinks, ‘you’re full of shit, man. Some of this music you’re listening to now has terrible lyrics.’
So there it was. I was being hypocritical. There are so many songs I love that are sadly lacking in the lyrics department but they have that driving beat, that unique rhythm, that great cowbell part. A lot of those songs are from my youth when they were probably burned into my psyche from those days I had that realistic radio by my bed in my basement room as a kid. It was on whenever I was in my room doing nothing. It was on a lot! That was before computer games, before personal computers, before we had a colour television, before video. So let me get out of that closet and admit it: I was listening to pop. And liking it.
So if my kids tell me they really like something… I will have to make a little more of an effort to be less uppity and close-minded and try to hear what it is that they like. I might just like it too. Even if it doesn’t have that early-Genesis-clever-poetry I love: it still may be able to touch me and make me want to move like Boston’s More Than a Feeling or Marianne Faithfull’s Why’d you do it? or even Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Well… let’s not get carried away there…
It’s like that guy in James Michener’s The Drifters, you know, the sixty-one-year-old man who is forced by circumstances to listen to the rock ‘n roll music of some ‘drifters’ in Europe in the 60’s. He begins to see what it is all about and comes to an epiphany about how he needs to be open to understand what’s going on around him. Good book; good idea!

Uninstalling in Theory

Uninstalling software is rarely 100% effective in ridding your PC of the software in question. Reasons for this are various but the main thing is that computers are personal, changeable things, that’s why PC stands for “Personal Computer”. You change things. You may install an add-in that makes your software work better for you. So most uninstallers simply leave those ‘extra’ bits alone and delete all the stuff that was installed. That’s all cool.
Of course it’s only cool as long as special install software (like Wyse) was used by developers who knew what they were doing to create the installs in the first place. There are so many places that the developer could fall down on the job. Especially so, in this day and age, when customer requested features create demand for new releases all the time (to be worth the higher and higher support levies being charged). This leads to shorter development cycles. And this vicious circle often leaves uninstall testing to the end.
But that is only if the software company really wants you to uninstall the software. I was helping a friend uninstall McAfee software tonight and it was a royal pain. The new software, Norton, kept complaining about McAfee shredder still being installed. Even though the uninstall process in the Control Panel had run its course, there were still many places in the registry where McAfee keys cotinued to happily exist like fossilized gum under a bus station table. I had to go through the registry and manually scrape those keys away while trying not to remove any paint. Anti-virus software, in particular, is often terrible at the uninstall job. I am not sure I know why but it certainly seems to be the case.
So my little rant has run its course. I understand the reason uninstalling can be such a pain, in theory, but that doesn’t help me to be happy about it.  Developers need to be more responsible for the customer and not simply hope the uninstall will never be used.