rochelle.mazar.ca

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

My adviser and the assistant chair of the history department stopped in to ask me if I was needing a little extra cash. I asked him what he had in mind. (You never know with these assistant chairs, after all.) Turns out he wants someone to work on the department pages…he wants a series of information about a dozen or so different classes to go online. All text, he says. Apparently someone somewhere is working on a template for these, and that almost made me cringe, since you know there’s nothing I like better than making a template for a webpage. But he wanted to know if I could do it, and aside from the fact that I’m not sure how the department server works, and how I would ftp stuff to them, I jumped at the chance. I think that’s outrageously great. I can html any ole thing you like. 🙂 So, my little dalliance with the world of the web pays off all over the place…

God, I feel great today. I mean, I can’t even explain it. I just do. I work up feeling great, and I think I went to bed at close to 4am. But I woke up at 8am absolutely overflowing with joy. And then I let myself sleep in a bit, figuring I’d need to after all that, but I would wake up every fifteen minutes feeling like I’d just had another wonderful night’s sleep.

I did manage to steal a coat from home while I was in Guelph this weekend; a blue LL Bean coat that my sister probably picked up at Value Village. (Do you mind, Melissa?) It’s really nice, and I’m liking it more as I wear it around. I also picked up a pink scarf to go with it. Thank God, because no doubt it will get colder shortly…

Ah, what a love in…it’s been a crazy busy couple of weeks, and I’m still busy, but now I’m joyous and busy.

I asked them to make me look a LITTLE less morose, and they took me really seriously. I’m just a TOUCH less morose than the original. Perhaps they’re just catching me as I look up. Maybe. Am I cute? I look like a geekazoid.

For the record:

1) Catsy finds holes in achieve for a living. A minor living, but a living. The fact that she is so good at this has helped us to make Achieve stronger, better, and safer. I personally have lots of important stuff on Achieve, and a malicious hack would be disasterous for me.

2) Catsy has long been capable of hacking my wiz bit. One day, while trying to work out some of these ins and outs, I told her to hack my char and she did it in 15 seconds. But not one second before I asked her to. She won’t try anything without explicit permission, and I feel absolutely sure about this point.

3) She did NOT hack someone else’s MOO. She hacked ours. First she tried to get my wiz char to churn out a wiz bit for her, and then she tried it on Rhonna. Both of us were online at the time, and both of us gave our permission. The hack worked. Catsy’s first act as a wiz was to unset her own wizbit.

4) We realize this hack program compromises ALL the encore MOOs. that’s why we gave a heads up, and that’s why we’re working on patching it. It’s not the only hole, those all of them are fairly complex. Catsy will no doubt find them, and as this happens, we will continue to give heads up about them. And we’re commited to helping to fix them all.

5) I’m utterly saddened that Catspaw is being painted as a cracker, when in reality she is going to help all of us create better MOOs. MOOs do best when lots of eyes are looking at them and lots of hands writing code. The EnCore group is an interesting and dynamic bunch. We can continue to be so. I hope we do.

I’m looking at a page of a Huron-French dictonary, evidence that the French, unlike the Spanish, tried to get to know the people they were trying to convert. Marie de l’Incarnation tried to learn it (I think it was Huron) but she said it was like stones rattling around in her brain.

Harris, Cole. Vol. 1. Historical atlas of Canada.
Ray, A. Indians and the fur trade.
Nash, G. Red, White, and Black
Salisbury, N. Mantiou and Providence
Cronon, Changes in the land
Lafitau, The customs of the Indians of North America
Sayer, Gordon. Les sauvages Americains.
De Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies
Seed, V. Ceremonies of Possession.
Eisenbichler, Konrad, Jacqueline Murray. Desire and Discipline
Riddle, John M. Eve’s Herbs: A history of contraception in the West
Wood, Diana M. The Church and Childhood

Quote of the moment
It’s certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat

Well, we got our first picture from Mars, and here it is:

Are you disappointed? I am. This looks like photoshop to me. Dammit. Nice to know that Mars has the same pretty colours that we have. Feh. Boring.

The Emperor ordered that a group of children be collected, and instructed the foster mothers and the wetnurses who reared them to nurse them, bathe them, and treate them well, but not to talk to them or make the sounds which it was customary to make to infants. He was curious to know in what language these children would begin to speak: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, or possibly the language of their natural parents. The experiment failed, and the children not only failed to speak but died. They could not live without handclapping, friendly and joyful facial expressions, praise, and lullabies.
–Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages

if you were a painting youd be a preraphealite joan darc
on the verge of a swoon but with a sharp blade, unsheathed
glinting in sunlight, yellow shoes on 🙂

I am no different from anyone else who writes: idiosyncratic voice does not come easily. One must contend with academese, for instance, its kafkaesque apparatus of critical theory. But when I become frustrated with my grammar, with my obligation to jargon, with the anxiety of influence, I hand myself a chocolate and a reminder: It could be worse. I could be writing this in Polish, in Poland. I could be having to entrust my whimsy to a language that clatters like a knight burdened by yet another crusade. Instead, I can turn to my computer screen to face the cursor cueing words in a language I play most and lie less in and I think,

I don’t ever want to go back.

blue says, “two four six eight who do we defenestrate”

I know I’ve posted this pic of my dream tattoo before. But I’m posting it again in reference to last night. So let’s start from the beginning…

I went over and got apple care finally. It cost me a million dollars (well, $250!!) to be covered for the next two years. But the rest of this story my convince you of why it might be worth it. So I bring in my computer to the UofT computer store. I’ve done this before, their tech folk are great and really nice. But it seems they just hired two new people who don’t have a CLUE.

I came in and said, “Hi, I’m here to buy apple care.”

And they said, “Apple huh?” And they said I needed a receipt (even though I have a sticker on the back of my computer with their barcode on it), and they don’t know if I can buy more coverage, and how much was my computer, because that makes a difference, and blah blah blah…

And finally they brought my computer back to the tech guys. Who know just what to do. And while I’m at it I show them my puck, whose cord has been steadily turning green. The tech guys give me a new one. Anyway, so tech guy comes out and flips my computer over and does some paper work, and flips it back over and….ACK! The little leaf from my apple symbol has popped out! It’s gone! He’s horrified, and searches around desperately.

I said, “OH NO! Without that little thing, my DSL won’t work!” He looks at me, terrified.

I said, “Oh, I’m just kidding!”

He said, “Don’t do that, you SCARED me!!” He took my number and told me that he’d keep looking for the piece, and order me a new one if he couldn’t find it. I asked for a pink one. (My ibook is graphite. I always wished it was pink.)

So then I went to buy apple care, from these people who still don’t think I bought that computer there. And they don’t know that they sell apple care. The tech guy comes back out with his coat on.

He said, “Really, you can just buy it, go ahead.”

I said, “I’m trying.” I probably made a these people don’t know what they’re talking about face, so he hopped over the counter and showed them where the apple care packages were. I think based on his ease about the whole thing, they let me plunk down my $250. But, you know, this way I can get a puck every 6 months for the next two years, and I can get my little leaf back. Oh yeah. That’s the good stuff.

So then I trundle down to the Duke of York, where the folks from the CRRS gather on fridays after work, and there was all of ONE person there. Shocking. I was late, too, and it was just me and Jim Carscallen (retired UofT prof). We chatted about ESP and ghosts and stuff. And then a very sweet French woman arrived and told us that she had just arrived from Paris for the Renaissance in the 19th century conference, which I completely forgot about. After that a few others shuffled in, included my buddy Crane. (aka, Mark.) It was roughly then that, having my computer with me, I showed him my possible tattoo:

Crane thought this was a good tattoo to get. He thinks it would lend itself well to tattooing. And he thinks it’s beautiful, and I agree.

So then we went out to Gabby’s on Bloor for eats and drink, mostly because it was pouring rain and I didn’t want to walk any farther. It’s always a good time with Crane, let me tell you. We determined that we will go shopping in the market together, because he’s a much better cook than I am. Fun!

Needless to say, I had a brutual headache this morning. Bah.