rochelle.mazar.ca

Found this gorgeous bit of film today. It made me cry. I’ve watched in about 4839024832 times. It’s a 15 meg download, but if you’re anything at all like me it’s worth every meg and every second it takes to download.

Sigur Ros: Viorar Vel Til Oftarasa video

Day 3,286: Still gay.

I am currently in possession of the weirdest looking couch in the universe.

On it’s own it’s not that weird-looking. It’s ugly, but it’s clean and perfectly useable. But it’s orangey and floral and it just doesn’t go with my decor at all. My sister gave me a set of burgundy-red batiked sheets to cover the couch with. Two sheets. But it doesn’t really, er, cover the whole thing. I could get it to cover the back and the seats but not the arms. And then it just looked stupid. So then I took the cushions off, used the sheets to cover the frame and the arms, and then wrapped the seats up in an old quilt. That looked ridiculous and wierd. Then I took the cushions off again and wrapped them in a forest green flannel sheet. That looks slightly better, but still utterly ridiculous. I put a green pillow and a white pillow on it. It still looked weird. I put old quilts, folded, on the arms. It still looks atrocious. But somehow I kind of like it in a sick, sad way. Anyone walking into this apartmen would have to laugh their ass off at my couch.

Well, they don’t have to live here, do they. Hmph.

I really wish I were in my new place. I really do. But hopefully I will be soon. The place will look extremely vacant without the offerings from my sister. She’s got a dining room set and a couch for me. Without that, well, all I have in my living room in a chair, a coffee table, an end table, and a bookshelf. Bit dull, no?

So Ben: yes, you can stay with me, but I’m not sure I have a place to put you. In fact, I really want you to stay with me, so I’m kind of hoping my family manages to move that stuff from my sister’s place to my place before Friday night….

My dad got me the most kick ass chairs for my balcony. Like, truly gorgeous, v. comfortable. Two of them. They’re smaller than my muskoka chairs, which is good because this balcony is only about a quarter the size of my old balcony. That was an outrageously large balcony.

Andrea Higgins, you need a blog. That’s my new thought on that. Melissa needs one too, but she’s too busy and too not into computers to get one. This is why I will keep the Max Coleman blog.

God I hope this settles it self out soon. I’m so cut off over here, really. I can’t send email, you have no idea how frustrating that can be. I’m sending email via weird webmail clients. Very weird to me. GAH.

It’s a medical show. And they’re covering a topic that interests me. Normally I don’t really go for medical shows, I find them boring and gross, normally. But this one…I don’t even know what it is, actually. There’s a very cute girl on it, though. She reminds me of…what’s her name? That girl from Kissed. You know, Molly Parker. With the freckles.

But anyway, that’s not what I’m writing this for. They’re doing this show about a kid who gets some kind of kidney disorder, or something. And they need a transplant, and no one’s coming up a match. And the doctor says, is there anyone else in the family we can call? The mother says yes, the father says no. Turns out there’s another son in the family, an older boy. He’s been in prison for molesting little boys, including his younger brother.

How do you deal with something like that as a parent? I mean, seriously. The mother was trying to patch things up, but the father, oh man. He had a serious hate on for his older son. The brother was out of jail now, and his mother brought him into the hospital secretly. Turns out he’s a match, but when the father walks in and sees the son, he yells and slugs him. Totally, full hate on.

I have said before that incest is anathema to the concept of family. I mean, there’s an agreement there, there’s a line that you can’t even come close to crossing. And I have said that I couldn’t imagine moving on from something like that. The trust is broken, the family is destroyed. But the fact is it doesn’t destroy families. Familes go on with issues like that all the time.

A good friend of mine was molested by her brother and her mother walked in. What exactly are you supposed to do in a situation like that? How does a mother deal with having the perp being…her own child?

So I’m glad to see someone wrestling with this. Not just that incest happens, but that people move on from it. That family is still family and those relationships continue.

Move is very frustrating. I am still not sleeping in my own apartment. I’m staying with my folks. The super is in my apartment 12 hours a day getting it ready. Everywhere he looks there’s something else he wants to fix. The bedroom floor was ripped up when I first picked up my keys; now the floor is glued down but it’s very gluey smelling in there, and the super was fixing the closet and the bathroom while I was there. So I’m still not sleeping there.

Perhaps tomorrow. Somehow I doubt it.

My sister has a couch and a dining set for me…I would love to have those, because without it I have, like, no furniture in my living room.

Well, at least I HAVE a living room, isn’t that right. I want my dsl, man. I want my dsl!!!

War
So we’re going to be going to war, eh? Well well well. We all need to kiss Bush’s bushy ass, that’s what. I’m not sure who’s more comparable to Hitler here…Bush or Saddam Hussein. I love all the talk. Oh, should we or shouldn’t we? What will the UN say? Oh please. Like we won’t do whatever the US asks us to do. Hello, economy dependent on the US. Like we’d tell the US to fuck off in a meaningful way.

Pshaw. So we’re going to war. Because Bush wants to. It sickens me. It really does.

What makes a person so poisonous righteous
that they’d think less of anyone who just disagreed?
She’s just pacifist, he’s just a patriot
If I said you were crazy would you have to fight me?

Another day, another blog. Yes, here we are at my ‘new’ blog. Well, it’s the same as it always was, really, except that now a) there are no fruit, b) there are no vegetables, c) it’s no longer at blogspot, and d) well, it’s just all different-looking. I have long believed that blogs should be text first and not fancy-ass pictures and crap like that, but this blog is NOT text first. Look at this sucker. It’s full of all kinds of crap.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

Last night when I tried to do this I couldn’t for the life of me get it to publish properly, but of course when I tried it this morning I tweaked one little thing in the ftp information and BANG there it was. Whadaya know.

So I’m packing today. Can’t you tell?

Yes, this new blog signals a few new things in my life. I’m moving back to Guelph, which thrills me to no end. If you had asked me 6 months ago if I would ever be happy to move back to Guelph I would have laughed my ass off at you. but now I can’t think of anything I’d like more. Why?

Max might have something to do with it. Max is four months old and he is a purebred Coleman-Mazar. He has green eyes (at the moment) and very little hair, which, when I am home, I often have the honour of shampooing. I was his first babysitter last week and was honoured to be so. I am going to move in down the block and around the corner from him next week so I can be close to my favouritest little nephew and read him stories when he’s a little older.

Yes, I love being an auntie.

I would also like to be around more to hang out with my sister. I have always been fairly close to my sister, but some years we are more or less so. We had been less so for a while, going our own routes, but these days we’re as close as two peas in a pod and I love it. My sister is my best friend in the world and I want to be around more so I can help her own and talk to her and watch survivor with her and all that good stuff.

And yes, my folks are in Guelph too. Hi mom! Hi dad! Look at me! Blogging with no hands! (hmmm…perhaps not.)

And there is a job of sorts for me there too. Yeah, long story. But a big thank you to Ben.

The world’s biggest apartment awaits me in Guelph…but there is still a move to accomplish. (Looks around apartment.) Guess I should, say pack, or something. Dad arrives at 10:30am tomorrow. Hmmm. Well, the dresser and the closet are empty. (Mostly.) The bookshelves are empty. I have done something. It’s just not really much.

Oh, the other big news I haven’t blogged about here yet: I am in the process of writing a novel. It’s a crappy ass genre thing, fantasy fiction, but it’s going very well and my audience is relatively pleased. Draft one will probably be finished before Christmas (if I have my way, well before Christmas), and if you’re really truly interested in it let me know and I’ll show it to you. Honestly I don’t even read fantasy fiction myself, but apparently there’s a market for it and I can’t say I don’t like writing it. I’m having a blast. Especially right now.

For a while there I was puttering along kind of hopelessly with this novel…well, no, not hopelessly, but it was a bit more of a struggle. I mean, I’m creating a whole universe here, it’s hard to do in a pinch. Everything has to work, it all has to jive and make sense. There need to be consistent rules and all that. So I spent the first six chapters really just slipping on the edge of a knife there trying to make sure all my details made sense and everthing was well illustrated. And deciding on those details too was no small feat. And then suddenly I finished chapter six and I felt very…free. Suddenly I could see through to the end of this thing, I could see roughly what I wanted to happen and how it could happen. Things started falling into place. Characters were springing up. Joy had arrived.

This probably is in no small part related to the fact that I just (finally) introduced my favourite character in chapter six, and can now write him with (semi) wild abandon. Yay!

So that’s the general update. I am planning on *ahem* keeping track of this blog again. But it might be boring. I could be just me going on and on and on about my writing and my characters and bull like that.

But you’re welcome to read it if you like.

Elegant Zucchini Leek soup

• 1 large or 2 small leeks
• 3 zucchini
• 7 cups of light vegetable or chicken broth
• 3 cloves of garlic, or to taste
• handful of fresh dill
• 1 cup of milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil

In a large sauce pan, sautee leeks, zucchini and garlic in olive oil until soft. Add dill and sautee until limp. Add broth, bring to a noil, and simmer for15-20 minutes.

Let soup cool. Run though a blender until smooth but not textureless.

Serve hot or cold.

Timothy Findley, 1930-2002

Sweet Potato and Coconut Cream Soup
This may or may not be the recipe for the Sweet Potato, spinach, and coconut cream soup I love so much at the Carden St. Café in Guelph. I shall have to test it and find out.

Ingredients
15ml/1tbsp groundnut oil
1 onion, peeled and chopped finely
1 garlic clove, crushed
1.25cm piece fresh ginger, peeled
675g/1lb sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
15ml/1tbsp lemon grass, chopped
600ml/1pt vegetable stock
600ml/1pt coconut cream
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 limes, zest and juice

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onion, garlic and ginger for about 5 minutes until tender. Add the sweet potatoes and lemongrass and cook for a further 3 minutes.
2. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer, covered, for 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
3. Cool the soup slightly, then liquidise with half of the coconut cream and process until smooth.
4. Return the soup to the saucepan, add the remaining coconut cream. Season with salt and pepper. Heat through without allowing the soup to boil, and add the lime juice.
5. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with the lime zest.

Welcome to the world, little guy. In the words of his mother:

“Don’t have kids. It hurts.”

Well, still no baby. But. They are planning to induce my sister tomorrow, and I’m going to go over there and look after Lucy, their lovely little liquid cat. And, like, give out information, I assume, cause, I would be calling a lot if I heard that my sis was in the hospital.

She sounds scared. Well, it’s scary, isn’t it? But my nephew seems to be just fine. They did an ultrasound and he was sucking his thumb, they did a stress test and they say he’s happy.

He’s already a happy baby!

There are so many worries with a late birth, and inducing, but I’m quite sure everything is fine. They just keep warning. I think needlessly, really. Little guy is just having a bit of a lie down before proceeding forth.

One more day.

J. gave me a sleeping pill last night. No idea why I took it, but I did. And I had the strangest dream. I was in Toronto, doing something or other, and I looked out the window and saw that one row, lengthwise, of balconies had just fallen off one of the apartment buildings in St. James town. Now, you have to understand taht St. James town is an urban experiment that failed; there are fourteen or fifteen apartment buildings in there, which spans only one square block, and each of these is about twenty-five to thirty storeys high. It used to be the hip place to live if you were young and hip, but now it’s just the first stop off for people who just got off th boat from wherever. The landlords are rude and don’t bother being helpful, either. It’s really just an exercise in immigrant abuse if you ask me, not that anyone actually does.

So. In the dream, the rickety metal balconies careen to the ground. For a second I wonder if I should get out of my building. I am, after all, just across the street. I decide not to. I’m in the middle of something (a conversation? I don’t remember). The next time I look, the entire building has been demolished, just like that. There’s dust everywhere. Now I’m still wondering. Should I go downstairs now? (Keep in mind that I live on the 26th floor.) I still don’t.

And then, while I’m watching, the building directly in front of me leans toward me, the corner touches the building and I feel it rumble. Now I’m running into the hallway but I can still see that building leaning over and collapsing. Soon, all of St. James Town is just a mess of rubble and dust. I’m appalled, and scared about what’s going to happen when I get downstairs.

I’m home and I’m almost famous. I survived this bombing, or whatever it was. I drive with my dad down Wellseley, which leads up to St. James Town, and he doesn’t really believe me. “It’s gone, I’m telling you,” I say, pointing at the sky line, where there is this tremendous break. “Yes, yes, so it is!” he says.

When I did finally leave my apartment, I took only two things; my favourite blanket (which my grandmother brought back from West Germany, when there was such a thing), and my plush Snoopy. I didn’t bring my computer, or anything else. I felt good about this. Why, I would get a beautiful new computer, I am insured, after all. I would get new furniture, new clothes, new everything. I am strangely pleased.

I have this excuse now, and people feel sorry for me. “Oh, my. You survived that?”

I try to get a job based on that. I feel confident that it will work.

Curried Honey Chicken (via my friend J.)
Ingredients:
1/4-1/3 cup butter
2-3 tbsp honey
3-4 tbsp mustard
1 tsp curry powder
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (I’ve been getting the thai cut, and I recommend that at this point)

Preheat oven to 350 F. Melt butter. Add honey, mustard, and curry powder and blend well. Put chicken in a shallow pan. I’ve been getting the disposable biscuit pans, because the mustard/curry thing does a number on your pans. That and biscuit pans are nice and small. Pour mixture over chicken so that it’s well covered. Put in oven. Walk away.

After about 40 minutes, come back and make some rice. (Hildegarde method: 1 cup of basmati, 1 1/2 cups of water in a corning ware dish. Pop it in the microwave. Set time to 12 minutes, power level 6. Go away until it beeps.) When your rice is done, pull out chicken.

Put rice on a plate. Put chicken on top of it. Yum.

I had a dream that my sister went into labour. We were at a party, and everyone was doing other things, so I took my sister to the hospital. I don’t drive, so we walked. We walked along a kind of nineteenth century dusty road in the deep south. And I swear, you could SEE the baby moving in there, turning around and such. Her water hadn’t broken though, and when we got to the hospital they said she wasn’t really in labour at all.

But when I woke up, I thought that I should write a few words to my soon-to-be-forthcoming nephew/niece:

1) You are much anticipated.
2) We are expecting you to be a boy, but I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we will be most surprised, pleased, and wildly amused if you turn out to be a girl. Because everyone has agonized for so long over your name, assuming you’ll be a boy.
3) Last I heard, they were settled on Max.
4) I would have gone with ‘Elijah’, so be glad I’m not your mom.
5) I already love you. This must be a biological thing, even for aunties like me.
6) If you ever need anything, really, like, a place to stay, or some random adult to talk to, or a little cash (if I have any!), help with your homework, advice, someone to bitch at, a book to read, a movie to zone out in front of, a meal, a place to hang out, a gift for your mother, tickets to a hockey game, a stiff drink, you know, anything, you know where to find me.
7) Do you have any idea what an insane family you’re coming into? What an insane world you’re coming into?
8) Looking forward to getting to know you. I bet you’re going to be cool. I wonder if you’ll be artistic like your mom. It’s okay if you’re not, cause, like, I’m not either.
9) I wonder if you’ll turn out like you’re auntie. Hehehhee. If so, you know I have your back.
10) I’m glad you’re growing up in Guelph. Guelph’s a great place, and I guess you’ll be a Waverly kid. Nothing wrong with that. Foursquares is a fun game.

See you soon!

Apple decides to fight for a market

Yes, here is the new mac for schools, the emac. They want schools to put these into the libraries and such. They are rather ugly, but at least they’re prettier than the beige boxes that sit in schools at present.

The kicker.

It weighs 50 pounds.

“At the beginning I thought I had an idea, but it turned out to be a false alarm.”
— Libertine

My sister’s book! Yes, she illustrated this cover. Isn’t it nice? She hates that skateboard boy, but likes the skirt on the girl. I have an autographed copy, of course. 🙂

My sister rocks the universe.

I’d like to thank Jason for letting me come in and ramble on to his class. It was a great time. I spend some time gathering up my notes on the topic (the medieval and early modern garden), and when I did a little minor run through myself it was awful. But once I got there it all made so much more sense. I looked at my notes a couple of times, but mostly it just followed one from another, the topics. I hope it all made sense. The class was great, they asked really interesting questions, and laughed at my silly jokes. It was great fun all around and I’m sorry I won’t get a chance to do it again, since the class is no more. Sad.

Miso Soup for One
Ingredients:
-two green onions, or three or four thin slices of white or red onion
-two or three mushrooms, sliced into strips (bite size!)
-olive oil
-one or two slices of bacon, precooked (you can buy it that way, thank god)
-two to three cups of water
-snowpeas, chopped (again with the bite sized)
-spinach (get a bag, you’ll want to do this again.)
-miso (So far I’ve tried yellow and white, both are good.)

Directions:
-throw your onions and mushrooms into a saucepan with a drop or two of olive oil. You know, just to make sure nothing burns. Sautee them over medium to lowish heat.
-when that smells sort of doneish (What? You wanted precise language? Phsaw.), throw in the pre-cooked bacon. It’s already cooked, after all. But let it get it’s groove on in there for a while. Stir a lot.
-Add water. Turn the heat up toward high, we’re aiming for a boil here. Throw in the snowpeas, and rip up your spinach. Try to keep as many stems out of there as possible. Fill up the rest of the pot with spinach until you think the lid might not fit on anymore. Press the spinach down a bit. See? The lid will still fit on. Put the lid on. Go watch tv for a bit, maybe 10 minutes tops.
-take off the lid. Wow! Look how little spinach that actually was. Cool. Now, turn the heat off. Stir it around a bit. Take out your miso. Put a tablespoon of miso in there, and maybe another half a tablespoon, another whole tablespoon if you’re like me and really like your miso. It might stick to the spoon, but swoosh it around in the water to get it off. Stir. Put the lid on again.
-pop a bagel in the toaster. When it pops up, put a little ‘I can’t believe it’s not butter’ on it. Slice the bagel slices. Put them on a pretty plate. Have another look at your soup. Stir it again. Doesn’t it smell nice? Pour it into a bowl, and grab a spoon.
-remember to thank me.

I’ve been dreaming again. Not that this is necessarily new. I’m always dreaming, right? But not these dreams. These are familiar dreams, but taking new forms. I’m not a victim in them anymore, and the outcome isn’t clear. When you get past the point of knowing exactly what you want (since, that is a bit of a phase, isn’t it?), the dream has no real goal anymore, not in the same way. Now the dream is a bunch of stopping and starting, random miscue conversation, big skies. For some reason the sky is always particularly arched in these dreams, as if the whole world is condensed into them. The world is less round, and taller, I’m hemmed in by mountains, I can only decend into this world in an airplane. So I’m standing there, head filled with the space I have to grow into, mountains curving toward me, angled precariously by the edge of my lenses, and the conversation continues. It goes it circles. I’m bitter and annoyed but mostly it’s a front, because I’m not really used to feeling anything else toward you at the moment. And you are just human. Nothing else. You don’t even have the power to be mean or frightening or even kind in the dreams anymore. You’re a lump of meatspace, like every other lump of meatspace, and I’m not sure how acknowledge my understanding of that. Is it that I’m prepared to forgive you? Is it that I want to? (Do I?) I don’t know.

I’ve run out of shampoo. Can you believe that? I used to have 1500 bottles of shampoo lying around because I get so bored of the smell of whatever I’m using. Now I’m down to the dregs of two different shampoos, and it’s highly unsatisfactory. Yesterday I accidentally tried to wash my hair with conditioner. (When will these people understand that the blind need differently shaped bottles in order to avoid that mistake?)

High School memories
you’re dangerous cause your honest
you’re dangerous, you don’t know what you want
you left my heart empty as a vacant lot for any spirit to haunt
you’re an accident waiting to happen
you’re a piece of glass left on the beach
you tell me things I know you’re not supposed to
then you leave me just out of reach

I remember the day this album came out. U2, Achtung Baby. I remember because I had just made a new friend, and she bought the CD the day it came out. We were making a movie for a grade 12 English project; her house was right across from the school, so we used it as a set. There were about 10 of us, one camera. We couldn’t all make the movie. So most of us just hung around. I didn’t know anything about U2 when this album came out. But my new friend (I can’t remember her name, but I remember her face, and her hair…she had red hair) was so excited about it, so I pretended I understood. But I really did like the album eventually…I listened to it sometimes on the way to the library, or walking around on the canal in Ottawa when I was at Carleton. Why don’t have listen to this anymore? I just downloaded a couple of songs off it because something somewhere reminded me of the song ‘One’, reminding me of how much I like that song. Ah, the memories…

The one I just transcribed of course is ‘Who’s gonna ride your wild horses’, a song I totally didn’t understand in high school, but I completely get now.

Most of us like to think we are consistent, intact and solid wholes. We’re comfortable seeing ourselves as either simple or complex, but not as being in conflict with ourselves. Perhaps that makes us like the world around us full of uncertainty, confusion, and conflict in a society where certainty, decisiveness, and resolution are valued terms and anything less is perceived as weakness.

from NetAuthor’s E2K