Kyoto: took yo' toy!

The Canadian Government recently released a study of the costs of following through with Canada’s plan to accomodate the Kyoto Protocol. It said that such an act would cause the economy to shrink by 4.2 percent, equal to the recession in the early eighties. Well, this is ridiculous. First of all, the long-term costs of NOT accomodating the Protocol are greater than the inverse because much of Vancouver will be underwater within a few decades if we don’t implement the Protocol. Second, the study did not take the economic growth aspects of rallying around the Kyoto Protocol. My brother-in-law, who works at a fibreglass plant said recently that Fibrelaminations, a company I also used to work for, is starting to quote prices on wind-generator blades.

His company, should the Kyoto Protocol be followed to the letter, stands to gain from a business point of view because the taxes proposed to limit greenhouse emissions will increase the interest in greener forms of energy production such as the wind. Harper, an Albertan, and his government are looking to protect the economic growth promised by the oil sands. Ironically, it was Conservative Brian Mulroney who privatized Petro-Canada, which was previously a Crown corporation. Had Petro-Canada not been privatized, the government of Canada would be able to cut taxes even more than Stephen Harper has done.

Furthermore, the cost of greenhouse emissions on the health care system, largely unknown and unstudied, could undo any economic benefits that failing to live up to the Kyoto Protocol might bring.

Mass Murder and the Modern Age

There's lots of renewed interest in Hitchcock lately, perhaps the best filmmaker to never win an Oscar. You have Disturbia, a scarcely veiled remake of the master's Rear Window; you have Fracture which uses Hitchcock as a touchpoint in its marketing strategy (it is a suspense/thriller "in the tradition of Hitchcock"); and you have Vacancy a new "motel horror," a genre crowned by Psycho. I was thinking of doing work on Hitchcock for my PhD dissertation, but I'm reconsidering; he does have a whole academic industry picking him to pieces. Does this industry really need another gadfly growing up from maggot status in the master's corpse, oops, I mean corpus!

On the other hand, there are those people who were in the Hitchcock discussion group that I exiled myself from. Their analysis seemed so wishy-washy that it instilled me with a will to show them how it's really done. The discussion group was more like a cult; say a word against the moderator or his acolytes, and consider yourself hen-pecked. No thanks. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I want to pursue Hitchcock because he is eminently worthy of a creative and thorough eye and ear, such as mine are. Too many film scholars are epigones of epigones. I could complain, or I could make my own contribution; I think I would prefer to choose the latter.

A Humbling Experience

I submitted a partial manuscript to the legendary Coach House Press yesterday. It is a confusing place. I've passed it a few times, and I seemed to remember there being a door that opened onto bp nichol lane. Well, was I ever wrong. I walked around to the back, and at first found nothing but a tree and a door that didn't look much like a front door to a press. I returned to bp nichol lane, and saw someone working the presses through the window. I motioned to him, and he opened what was kind of like a door, but not really. I asked him about who made the decisions about which manuscripts get published. He didn't know, and he told me to go up front to find out.

No one was in "the front." There was a typeset office, and a crowded little compartment housing books and a computer that could have been an office had anyone occupied it. There was a narrow stairway leading upstairs, but I wasn't sure whether there was anything up there besides a bathroom. I looked around a bit, picked up a business card, and frantically tried to remember what the building looked like from the outside. Was there an extensive second floor? Finally I bit the bullet and ascended the stairs. I was stopped near the top by a fresh, earnest-faced woman named Alannah. I asked her about the protocols for submitting manuscripts, and suddenly I felt like a teenager again, approaching someone I'm crushing on. It wasn't her so much as Coach House Press itself. Their legacy is a little intimidating, I have to admit. I mean, bp nichol, Christian Bok, Darren Werschler-Henry, and Steve McCaffrey. Yikes!

Thankfully, Allanah cut to the chase and asked for the manuscript. I felt a little sheepish because I had only put my snail mail address on my cover letter, and they prefer to reply via email. But that's one of the advantages of going in person: you can compensate for such deficiencies by simply writing your email address on the cover letter.

When I think about it, I have manuscripts more appropriate for CHP than the one I handed over, but it's the project that has the most momentum for me right now. Yes, it's the collaboration with terminus' own Cecile Carriere.

You should check out Coach House's Websites, because they publish great books.
http://www.chbooks.com/

Portable Brains

One thing I've noticed since I've returned from Korea, is the difference between the favorite doo-dads and gadgets here and there. You walk onto a subway in Korea, and 9 and a half out of 10 people are playing with their cellphones. You are basically a freak if you don't have a cellphone in Korea. They start early too! My seven year old students already had cellphones and were savvy with them. In public, they aren't necessarily talking to anyone or pretending to (like people here do); they play games, listen to music, watch tv, or send text messages on or with their phones. The rate of their text input is astonishing!


Here, cellphones are popular, but not ubiquitous like they are in Korea. Here, MP3 players are the gizmo of choice. I've been noticing that almost everyone who rides the rocket in Toronto has an MP3 player. I wonder how many are listening to music, and how many are listening to E-books. I gave an E-book a try once, but I didn't get into it. I like the book-object; I like turning pages. I wonder what this says about our respective cultures...?

GIMME, GIMME, GIMME!

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Paris meets Toronto

I am currently working on a book project with an artist in Paris named Cecile Carriere (sorry Cecile, I know how to do accents in Word, but not in the blog editor). I am writing poems that interpret or narrate her drawings. Her drawings are amazing; they call to mind the etchings of Goya or the drawings of Edvard Munch and/or Otto Dix. Although the grotesque appears frequently as thematic in her work, I don't think she is as bogged down by the despair or the madness communicated through some of these artists' work. Here is the poem I wrote for the drawing displayed to the left. To see more of her drawings, you can view her online gallery at

http://www.terminus1525.ca/studio/view/3967

Lecture

Some listen; some write; some wear the stripes of a vacant braille, an unrecognized memory; some pucker their lips to taste the words they spoke only moments before the spokes of the mind wheel found their simian wrench. When the book opens, the forearm becomes a birdperch, and words fly off the fingers like harpy eagles, looking for heavy prey. We wear language like a veil, a cloven braille that gallops through our manacled eyes. The hand can hold but matter while the ears can catch the wisdom that flies from the distance and lands on our wrinkled consciousness, parietal.

My Science Project

I did this a few months ago, but I forgot to tell you all about it. I grew a bunch of Urea crystals in a cup. I actually tried to grow them on a piece of paper with a Christmas Tree on it to make them look like snowflakes, but they just grew like wildfire on the cup. Urea, if you don't know, is an ingredient of pee.

You might say EWWWWWWWWWWWW, but wait and consider. What makes pee gross? I would argue that it is the smell that makes pee gross. What is it in pee that makes it smell? It is the ammonia. Urea is just a salt. It doesn't smell. Therefore, urea itself is not yucky.

LOVE LIFE, THIS PAIRING LIFE

I hold this promissary note
next to my heart, and the moment
I stopped expressing my love for you
a string of cursed pearls rolled
around my neck and
throttled.

I forgot your name.
I try to forgive myself, but to give
you have to have.

I have nothing but this empty shell
that used to sound
like the sea.

The cursed moment lies on
it's belly and stretches muscles
beyond their limits.

Please come back and let my love
live, bring into fruition
the mad shattering bliss
that leaves no me left.

Names fall like leaves,
blow into the tunnel of my mind,
echo there for a time, then leave.

Why did your name depart,
so dearly I clung to it, and found
rose blooms rather than brambles?

I look at the promissary note.
It is not in my language.
How do I know it promises
my love?

I will love you with the seeds
of my love for the unspeakable,
and if the cherry tree dies,

I apologize.

Come what brambles may,
hold on.

Hold on.

You are the only thing
worth considering right now.

The South Korean Travel Agent Consortium.

Publish
Travel Agent: To reserve a flight for March 7th, you need to pay three days beforehand.
Me: I can't I get paid on the 5th, and the earliest I can come to your office in Seoul is on the 6th.
Travel Agent: Fax me a statement that you will pay us, and send us a photocopy or photograph your credit card.
Me: OK. (I faxed them the statement and credit card photos, and heard nothing back, so I thought everything was full steam ahead)

I emailed them on March 3 or 4 and asked for directions to their office so I could come pay them. They emailed me back saying they had cancelled my reservation.
I called them on March 5 to protest. They offered to make another reservation for a much more expensive price. I complained vigorously that they were being totally unprofessional. No where in their written communication with me did they reiterate the 3-day rule. I'm human; I don't remember every thing every one tells me. They never contacted me after I said when I could pay them via fax, saying that it wouldn't work out because of the "3-day rule." Then, when they offer me a new reservation, they say I can pay 2 days before! I was getting the feeling Iwas being screwed, so I just refused to deal with them anymore after asking to speak to their supervisor, and she responded that she was the supervisor.

I call another travel agency and make a reservation for a better price. They give me directions to their agency. They told me it was in the Korean Exchange Bank Building in Itaewon, where I wrote this blog from. There are four travel agencies in the building, none of which I have ever contacted before! Unfortunately, I had written their phone number down wrong, and I couldn't call them in time to pay for this reservation. Yet another one cancelled. The next day I called them, and they said they were in a different area. They said I must have been confused. I asked them if they recorded their phone conversations, because if they did, then they would know that an agent I spoke to from their agency gave me directions to the wrong place!!!!! She promised to help me if I called back in half an hour. When I did, she said I must have spoken to the other travel agency (I don't think I did). Why would the other travel agency give me directions to a third travel agency I'd never contacted?!!! She said I must have been confused. I WAS. I'm sick of being lied to by travel agents!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I ended up getting a reservation for 3 days later than I originally wanted to leave, and I had to pay $250 more than originally planned. At least I got some good pics from the plane!

Kim Jong-Il: Lovable Troll?

Kim Jong-Il recently endeavored to make his successor a collective leadership rather than the hereditary passing on of the reins of North Korea.

Japan has recently launched a 4th spy satellite to keep an eye on North Korea.

North Korea has agreed to suspend its operations to develop nuclear arms, and South Korea has undertook to offer them aid.

South Korea is due to take over wartime operations control of its armed forces by March 15, 2012. Since the 1950's this control was under the United States Armed Forces' jurisdiction.

Documentaries have reported the stringent restrictions on interactions with foreigners in North Korea: that it is actually illegal to speak with foreigners. Such documentaries show hordes of people in the subway of Pyongyang passing the camera without looking up. How is this different from any other city in the world though? They then show people scrounging around in a field and comment on the widespread starvation in the country to spread the image of communism as impoverished. Yet these shots might just be of people gardening. Apparently, North Korea has a specially trained "elect few" who communicate with the outside world. If outsiders are only allowed to speak to the "elect few" who only speak in propaganda (of course), how does the rest of the world know about the quality of life for the average North Korean? It is also illegal in certain states in America to have oral sex, and in South Korea it is illegal to have an affair. Laws and their enforcement do not occupy a map with a scale of 1:1. How genuine is this portrayal of the country as a hermetically sealed dictatorship?

Is Korean unification on the horizon? Despite the suspicion with which the North is regarded, reports and surveys have revealed the general level of happiness in that country as higher than that in America. And while the cult of personality might mandate the idolization of Kim Jong Il, I have no doubt that many, many Koreans genuinely love and admire him. Can the Americans say the same of George Bush? I've never met an American who loved George Bush. This certainly does not mean they are not out there. But what does the difference between how these two leaders are regarded by their people say about the world? Perhaps hatred is cool. Perhaps loving your leaders is unfashionable. Perhaps the hegemony the United States wields derives its power more from hatred than Christian love. Many critics of Kim Jong Il say little of his actual actions and dwell more on his "troll"-like appearance. Who cares about what people do anymore, as long as they look cool, powerful, and strong doing it, right? HMMMMMMMMM!