felis_ultharus

So I got back to Montreal a few days ago. I was half-expecting to have to spend a night at the Toronto airport, which has been happening to people all week, but luckily we got out between snowstorms.

I wound up last night at Sky for their New Year's Madonna-themed drag show. I was happy, though not at all surprised to see link2lando there. The dancers were professional-caliber -- they really knew what they were doing, and they were the best I've seen on any local stage.

But y'know, you really know you're Scottish if the dancers are gorgeous men of astonishing talent, dressed only in thin undershirts and kilts slit up the side, and you're thinking, "What clan is that kilt?"

Otherwise, it's been very quiet. I've been working on my writing, reading, and cleaning house. I'm not back at work until Monday because the office is closed this week, so it's still a little like vacation for me.

( 2008 meme )

Travel

I just wanted to note that I'm back from BC. It was a very quiet trip -- I spent most of my days there hanging out with node357, which was nice. He composed some new music while I was there, and showed me Psychonauts, which really does deserve its reputation ^_^

I also saw a couple of friends I hadn't seen in about fifteen years -- all thanks to the miracle of Facebook. I never did get to Vancouver this time, though, so that'll have to wait for Yule.

The best pleasure though -- aside from seeing node357 -- was that of seeing the place itself. Montreal is toxic and grey and cemented compared to that greenery and clean air that is BC. I like Montreal because most of my friends are here, but except for the Old Port, and some of the older stone houses and parks, I have to admit I consider this a very ugly and polluted city. Too much concrete, and too few growing things.

Airports continue to get more and more surreal -- they've always bothered me because the waiting areas between flights are really non-places that drift detached from anything in a bland emptiness where things get sold. In other words, they're Postmodernism incarnate.

The Pearson airport in Toronto has a particularly weird waiting area. There's a stall there that sells jewellery trees for little girls, in the shapes of princesses whose heads and arms have been replaced by necklace-and-ring-holding tentacles. My first thought was Jenova from FFVII, or something out of Lovecraft.

Not much else to report -- I did not defeat any ninja armies this time around. I wanted a good start on the major edit of my novel, but only got about one-quarter in. It's almost a third finished now.

Meme

"If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal."

(I'm lucky in that this applies to probably most if not all of the people I've friended.)

And The Naked Civil Servant is one of the funniest books I've ever read -- it really lives up to its reputation.

For those of you who've never come across it, it's the autobiography of a man who was very, very, very openly gay decades before homosexuality was legal in Britain. He describes the community in the 1920s and 1930s -- his run-ins with the police -- his experiences as a male prostitute.

And he does it all with a sense of humour that would've given Oscar Wilde a run for his money ^_^

Okay, so I've been tagged for a meme, and I'm bad about answering these things, so I'll do it right away.

List 6 random things about yourself then tag 6 people to do the same in their journal. No tag backs.

1. rougemacabre's predicament reminded me how when I was a very small child, the family got severely food-poisoned by a fast-food joint called Mr. Mike's. From that time on, whenever we went camping, my sister and I would burn all the paper plates and called the decaying black mass of charcoal "dinner at Mr. Mike's."
   
   
2. I wrote my first novel when I was 5 -- it had 12 pages, and was in the fantasy genre. I didn't seriously try to write another one until after age 25.
   
   
3. I arrived in Montreal on Christmas Day, 1995, without an apartment lined up, without knowing anyone here, without even a place to stay -- just money for two months rent/bills/groceries. I apartment-hunted and found one sublet in my range, but someone else wanted it, too. I think I got it because I correctly identified the flag of Trinidad on the wall of the guy I was subletting from.
   
   
4. I read Middle English fluently and like the sound much better than modern English.
   
   
5. I have an interest in astrology and can even cast a chart, though I rarely talk about this except with close friends because it tends to make me a magnet for the kind of people who live in a van and believe they were Egyptian aliens in a past life.
   
   
6. I've kept every (paper) letter ever sent to me, and every journal I've ever written. I'm keeping a great many emails, too, that will probably never leave my inbox.

I like this quiz. It came out very accurate for me. What it calls "cultural creative" is what I think of as "humanism," which definitely isn't a new philosophy but an old one that's evolved gradually over the centuries:

You scored as Cultural Creative. Cultural Creatives are probably the newest group to enter this realm. You are a modern thinker who tends to shy away from organized religion but still feels as if there is something greater than ourselves. You are very spiritual, even if you are not religious. Life has a meaning outside of the rational. </td> Cultural Creative 94% Idealist 69% Romanticist 63% Existentialist 56% Fundamentalist 38% Postmodernist 38% Modernist 19% Materialist 13% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Meme

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	5.7
Mind:	7
Body:	4.7
Spirit:	9.6
Friends/Family:	3.8
Love:	0
Finance:	7.1
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Yep. That looks about accurate. Too bad every category is weighted the same for the overall total, though. I think "mind" and "spirit" compensate for a lot.

Writing

Is going very well, and I've made good progress -- though the massive revision is going to slow me down yet more.

Still, I'm way ahead of my November deadline for getting this publishable.

Politics

( Harper gets chummy with the Cat-killer -- plus, the dead have risen and they're voting Canadian Alliance! )

I've been too busy to update for awhile. Both time spent with West-Coast friends and working around the clock on my novel has meant I've had little time for it, though I did get caught up reading the friends-list.

Spent two Tuesday hanging out with Sam and his girlfriend from Thailand. Sam spends most of his time in southeast Asia these days -- he saves up a little money here, and then lives cheaply adventuring out there.

Also hung out with Aaron, whose life changes so rarely it's terrifying.

For writing, I've been taking advantage of internet access whenever I want to write the historical scenes of my novel -- fact-checking with reliable sources (such as primary documents on government websites) every single sentence. Trying to reconstruct the 40s and 50s when you weren't there is difficult.

I've stumbled across across a lot of neat pieces of information, like the adventures of Jack Nissenthall at Dieppe, or the extperiences of queer Canadian servicemen in World War II.

Saw Chronicles of Narnia last night. It was bad -- gorgeous to look at, but badly acted and badly scripted. Weta Studios could not save it for all their special effects. Seeing a beaver in chainmail was the most amusing part of the whole film.

The World War II allegory finally clicked in for me -- I hadn't known, when I read the book, that lions were tradional British symbols for England, foxes for France, and wolves for Germany. I guess that makes the beavers Canada.

Also amusing that, according to the IMDB, the kid who played Edmund is a direct descendent of Charles Darwin. Considering the role Edmund plays in the Christian allegory of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and considering how the evangelicals feel about Darwin, the fundamentalists would probably wet themselves if they knew.

Finally according to this meme, I belong in the Seventh Circle of hell:

( cut because this post is already too long )

For those of you not up on your Dante's Inferno, the 7th Circle is for those guilty of violence against others (who become wolves in the Circle's woods), violence against selves (suicides -- who become the trees of the wood), or "violence against God."

"Violence against God" is the miscellaneous category -- stuff that doesn't really hurt anyone. It includes blasphemy, moneylending, and homosexuality. Sinners are condemned to a desert where it rains fire -- homosexuals/bisexuals can run around, but the blasphemers are fixed to the ground, and the moneylenders held down by their money.

A quiet day. Been trying to reach node357, to no avail. I'll try again tonight. Wondering if he just wants to be alone right, now. I sometimes go into my shell and avoid phone calls. 'Tis better, sometimes, than trying to interact with people, in certain moods.

Anyway, on another subject, here's an meme I've been working on:

( meme -- cut for length )

Wrote 12 pages today. Haven't left the house. Beginning to worry this trip will be like the last.