For Roy, or anyone else who is into sci-fi, computers, math, demons from other dimensions, and James Bond movies:
So fun it made me wish I'd worked hard enough in differential equations and algebraic systems that I could be a secret agent.
Speaking of Sci-Fi: Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Libarian
For librarians and people like me who love librarians, I found this on Connie Crosby's blog, more details on the creator's blog:
I've been trying to avoid being political on Facebook. Instead, I've been just using it to see what friends are up to (example: "S.E. is totally relaxed") and let them know what I am up to (example "David is in from shovelling snow.") When people invited me to join the group for the weird voting method, I didn't join even though I agreed we should try it. But today one of my Facebook friends, who clearly doesn't know me well, asked me to join the group called Do NOT support "The Golden Compass".
I clicked "ignore". Then I did a search on support Golden Compass and found a group called Support The Golden Compass. I clicked join, then I sent an invitation to the guy who invited me and where it lets me leave a message I wrote: "I loved this book".
I did. The sequels got too dark for my taste, but I still found it refreshing to be reading a serious fantasy series that wasn't disguised religious theology. Didn't it bug you when you found out that the Narnia books were designed to make you believe in Christianity? Shouldn't Christianity be able to stand up for itself without a fantasy series having to prop it up?
Since I was getting all political, I joined the Fair Copyright group too.
But that's going to be it for politics. I'm too busy with Astronaut Love Triangle, Propeller Dance and the Maple Leaf Brass Band to do any more.
I am happy to report that Kathy Cook's new book Stolen Angels: The Kidnapped Girls of Uganda will soon be in bookstores. I have two selfish reasons to be happy about this. The first is that Kathy may now have more time for hanging out with her friends. (Although I suppose there is an equally likely chance that her newfound fame will give her even less time for us.) The second is that a long, long time ago, Kathy let me read the draft of a chapter. My hair stands up on end when I think about what it described.
After the girls were kidnapped from their boarding school by soldiers of the Lords Resistance Army, a nun and one of the school workers followed the trail into the bush in order to confront the soldiers and bring the girls back.
The soldiers of the LRA are not known for their compliance with the Geneva conventions. I cannot imagine what sort of nerve following them must have taken. I really want to know what else happened.
There will be a formal book launch at the Writer's Festival on Sunday, October 21 at 4pm. I've put details on Google Calendar.
Links:
It is Wednesday night. I stopped working before 7pm tonight and I did not stop at the Manx on my way home. No, I cycled right here. I put some clothes in the washer. I ate some leftovers. I checked my emails. I looked at the TV listings and determined that nothing is on that I need to watch. I played Mumu (a disappointing 435). And now I am creating a Blog Posting.
Yesterday, the organizing book review had the lead in the poll with 5 votes, but since then there have been two votes for "An explanation of why Dave hasn't posted in so long".
This is fine with me because I haven't had time to give the book the attention it deserves.
I haven't posted in so long because:
There is a new computer game in my life. It would be too embarrassing for me to reveal anything else about it. 
I discovered Carl Schroeder. He is a terrific sci-fi writer who has written one book with bona fide space pirates (Sun of Suns), and two others that are close enough to count (Permanence and Vesta). 
Ms Matilda Manners and Ms Edwina Etiquette presented an excellent workshop on Saturday evening. In starched white shirts and with excellent posture, they read us the entire contents of their Mannerly Guide to the Wooing and Winning of the Object of Your Affection.
Following the reading, they enlisted two audience members, "Chris" and "Chris", to enact dramatizations. In the first scene, an impolite wooer failed to secure a date with the object of his affection and in the second scene, the wooer who followed the advice in the guide succeeded in gaining an email address.
In a brilliant stroke, the workshop ended with a Question and Answer session. This allowed the participants to clarify matters that either needed elaboration or were not addressed in the guide.
The first question related to having an Object of Affection who was allergic to ones cat and afraid of ones dog. I believe it was Ms Matilda who informed us that "the polite dater always has allergy medication at home."
I was able to ask a question I have long wondered about - the number of times one should ask for a date when the Object of Affection always has previous engagements (such as tending their llama farm). While I have friends who won't ask more than once, others say you should give a prospect three strikes. The correct number? No more than two, says Ms Edwina.
The final question was about what to do if one is the Object of Affection and the wooer doesn't get the polite hints about llama farming. Both of the authors recommended a direct approach in that case. Ms Edwina modelled a response that politely concluded with "I'm keeping a record of your calls and if you persist, I will be informing the police."
Marcie, Jim and I went to the Rockcliffe Book Fair on Saturday afternoon. We bought enormous quantities of books. It was really lucky that the very kind Kathy A loaned me her car the night before.
Of course, they don't just sell books at the book fair. In the gym, they had a wide selection of food and everywhere you went the Rockcliffe Public students were selling stickers to raise money for Guardian Angel School in Pitseng, Lesotho, their twin school.
I bought my first sticker from a boy who might have been in grade two or three. He let me look through his whole supply and I chose one with bright blocks of colour.
Later in the gym, two grade sixers, Olivia and Danielle, approached us. I showed them the sticker I'd already bought. "You could buy more," said Danielle.
"Okay," I said. "Let me see." Olivia handed me her stickers and I looked through them. They were mostly rectangles with a capital "L" in black marker and scribbled lines in coloured pencil. "Are these all you've got?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said.
Now I know these kids were doing something for a good cause, but they wanted something from me, namely my hard-earned cash. "Are you really bringing your best game to this," I asked. "These kids in Lesotho, do they send you letters? With pictures? Are they just a few scribbles?"
Here's a video that Marcie shot during this exchange:
Unfortunately, Marcie didn't get the end of this conversation. When Olivia said, "most people just give us the money."
And Danielle practically yelled, "we're not asking you to marry the stickers!"
Jim and Marcie laughed so hard that I broke down and gave them all the change in my pocket and took their best sticker.
You might think that we'd already had more fun than you could expect with charity stickers, but ten minutes later, the girls came back.
Olivia: "We thought about what you said..."
Danielle: "and it moved us."
They'd gone off and made a whole new set. Each one different, colourful and with nice pictures. I had to break a twenty.
I just hope that when these two finish school and go into the work force they continue to use their powers for good and not for evil.
Links:
I finally made it out to a Perpetual Motion Roadshow. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. I'd have been happy to hear more from each of the people who performed, read, spoke or sang.
Luna Allison from Montreal gave us thoroughly engaging poems. I especially liked her love gone wrong pieces. Excerpts I jotted down:
Love is a project, and I'm a workaholic.
... as long as you're here, you're taking the place of someone who could actually love me.
Dave Fried from Chicago: punk, gay and funny. He brought the house down with his comparison of the naturalness of being gay compared to the artificial, not-what-God-intended, nature of flying in airplanes.
Ocho and his songs made a nice break. I also enjoyed his sound check. Instead of saying "check one two", he sang Bryan Adams Summer of '69.
[2025 edit: A detailed interview from Voyage Minnesota: Meet Ocho]
Elliot Harmon does his research. I'd forgotten all about Joust, the arcade game from the early '80s. I wound up dreaming about playing Joust later that night (or early the next morning.)
[2025 edit: It seems that Elliot went on to have a powerful career with the fantastic Electronic Frontier Federation but sadly passed away in 2022.
As an added bonus, I got to sit behind Megan, who was sitting with excellent, erect posture, and not leaning back against the backrest. [Because of this apparently.]
And I also had an excellent angle for drawing a profile of the famous Jenn Whiteford
Here's my news:
I've been told that the Roman Catholic Church has decided that purgatory does not exist. Catholics who had been looking forward to spending time there might want to go to law school so that they are eligible for the Law Society of Upper Canada's 5-week mandatory "Skills and Professional Responsibility Program".
Why am I telling you this when the title of this post would make you think this is about Michael Dennis?
It is because way back before I entered this energy-sapping program, I had a 1-week vacation and the high point of that vacation was an afternoon I spent at Michael Dennis' house.
He made me a sandwich. We talked. He read me a bunch of terrific new poems. We talked some more. I felt like I had won the big prize at a celebrity auction.
You may not know Michael well enough to get him to make you lunch and give you a private reading, but you can go to his public reading on Friday, May 26th, 8PM at Invisible Cinema. He will have fifty copies of his new book of poetry there. The poems will be wonderful. The books will sell out.
Michael's work will not be for you if you like flowery writing or clever phrases that don't make sense.
Michael's probably will be for you if you often don't like poetry, but sometimes do.
Here's the PR copy:
OTTAWA - May 26, 2006. An isolated coast village on Quebec’s north shore provides the setting for the latest collection of work by Ottawa poet Michael Dennis. In the harsh and rugged environment of Magpie, Quebec, a coastal village 200 km from the end of the road, Dennis intersperses his reflections on Canada’s French/English relations, and the war in Iraq with thoughts on loneliness, middle age and lovers who keep us grounded.
Written at a friend’s cottage in the summer of 2005, the poems are a surprising blend of self deprecating humour as Dennis reflects on an urban dweller’s efforts to enjoy the outdoors and the unexpected joy of whale watching out the front window.
Dennis is a journeyman poet who has published 15 books of poetry, practicing his craft in Ottawa for the past 25 years. This collection has an economy and sparse elegance, and delivers its punches with precision and grace.
Dennis reads from the new poetry collection at 8 pm on Friday, May 26 at Invisible Cinema (Bank and Lisgar).
For further information call (613) 741-5001.
[I am 100% positive that Michael didn't write that press release. It uses way more adjectives than he would use. Plus, Michael is a master poet, not a journeyman. Michael wouldn't say he's a "master" in a press release, because of modesty or something, but he also wouldn't use the wrong term.]
Another Poetry Reading was at another poetry reading where the audience was mostly poetic made up of poets, poet-want-to-be’s poet tasters, poet haters it was the same old shit everyone wanting to be famous then the poetry started it was a kind of non poetry not by intention but by talent there wasn’t any afterwards there was the usual back slapping to be followed by back stabbing there was drinking of course the social lubricant that wine provides being the only saving grace poor cheap red wine from a twist top bottle its slightly subtle flavour the only subtlety of the night
I'm trying to come up with an introductory sentence that will help link together a series of interactions I had yesterday, but I can't.
4:00PM Email to Favourite Writer: Procrastinating on my Evidence summary, I went to the Ottawa Public Library Website and began reserving science fiction novels for my upcoming week off. First, I reserved titles I knew about. Then I searched on favourite author's names. A few of them have books out since last summer when I last did this.
I looked up my favourite author. He had a setback a few years ago. Poor sales on the second novel in a trilogy and the publisher decided not to go with the third book. I decided to send him an email telling him how much I've enjoyed his work, and no pressure, but if he writes more sci-fi, I'll buy.
5:17PM Reply: I received an email with an attachment. My favourite science fiction writer thanked me for my kind words. The attachment is his latest unpublished 381-page novel. Still with his agent. He says, "You may not like it; it's a historical. Tell me any thoughts you have about it if you get a chance to read it."
If I read it? It's a historical -- it might have pirates! Of course I'll read it!
5:30PM Meet a Novelist: Met a gang at the Paradiso, among them is a woman I've never met. The subject of writing comes up. The woman I've never met is Uttara Chauhan, published novelist. [Check it out!] Fact you won't learn from her bio: she watches 4 movies a week.
7:00PM Colin Vincent and Jennifer Whiteford Reading at Octopus Books
I knew I'd like Colin when his first poem started with an admission that he tried to study information theory but couldn't understand the formulas. Just like me. He did something I've never seen a poet do before. He read his first and second drafts along with the final version of the poem he performed in the recent CBC Poetry Slam. Very cool to see how it evolved.
Jennifer Whiteford read a delightful series of entries from her diary-style novel Grrrl and then an entire story, Typical Girls, she had published in Razorcake. About two high school girls who switch from being death metal headbangers to being punk rockers. I jotted down two lines that got hearty laughs:
"We're not gay, we just dress funny."
"Punk girls don't go around giving blow jobs... It really is the more feminist option."
If you get a chance to see Jennifer read, take it. [The next such chance will be the launch for Grrrl at the Manx on June 3, probably at 5pm.]
10:00PM the Rapper and the Border Guard: I'm hanging at Patty Boland's, listening to Cherry Suede, two guys who make a lot of music with just two voices and two guitars and cover songs I know and like in a way that makes me smile. I'm writing anything that crosses my mind into my notebook while holding a table for four.
Example 1: "We can talk about physical disability as a social construct - no stairs, ramps everywhere, wide doorways - wheelchairs would rule; But how do you make a schizophrenic-friendly world."
Example 2: "I just got distracted by a very short skirt."
Example 3: "I should make a headboard this weekend... I can put lights on it. How else can I trick out a headboard?"
A young woman came along and asked if I'd mind sharing my table for four with a few of her friends. I said okay and slid over. The next thing I knew, I was at a table with a growing crowd of exuberant 20-somethings excited to have written their last exams.
I kept writing until the band took a break and the lights went out. The young woman next to me asked about my writing and I deflected by asking about her. Christy from Thunder Bay, just finished teacher's college and liked it okay, but has decided to take a permanent position as a Customs Officer. She's been working the Minnesota border for a while. I asked her about gun confiscations. "Oh yeah, we get a lot," she said. "Especially from Texas. Those Texans like their guns. A car with Texas plates, ninety per cent guns."
Then a friendly fellow in Boston Red Sox gear sat down across from me and asked about my writing. I deflected him in the same way. He told me he does rap music. One of his friends jumped in. "He won an East Coast Music Award!"
It's true: ECMA Urban Recording of the Year, 2005. I was sitting across from the artist formerly known as Pimp Tea, now known as Brockway Biggs, or Troy to his friends.
I didn't know whether to be more impressed that he's got a couple of albums, won that East Coast Music Award (which you have to admit is more hip than a Juno), or that he's partied with Ricky and Julian from the Trailer Park Boys. Okay, I'll admit it, I'm most impressed by the Trailer Park Boys claim to fame (even though he didn't meet Bubbles).
I introduced Troy to Christy and suggested they'd make a great couple. A customs officer and a rapper! What a great TV series! I think Troy was ready to go for it, but Christy seems to already have a love interest.
Did you ever read Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey? It's the story of a family with twelve children that focuses on the flamboyant father, Frank Gilbreth, Sr. During my childhood, I must have read the book a dozen times. I liked it mostly because it was charming and funny and told the story of a family that looked like it would have been fun to belong to. Another big draw was learning about efficiency. The parents were two of the world's first efficiency experts and advised big companies on how to increase their productivity.
I especially loved that when Frank Senior went into a factory he'd ask to see the laziest worker because that worker always did things the easiest and fastest way. {Aside: While this has given me a certain pride in my laziness, it hasn't been enough that I mention laziness as my main weakness in job interviews. Since I can't honestly say that my main weakness is compulsive, perfectionist workaholism, I say, "Je ne suis pas vraiment bilingue," with my best accent of course, not the accent I use in Gatinueau to get people to switch to English.}
I am lazy . This means that when I give you a recipe, it is from someone who thinks about the easiest way to do things or who strives for the lowest effort-to-product ratio.
My Easy Meal Oven Thing is tasty, nutritious and satisfying. Perhaps not as tasty as my fried rice or jambalaya, but hands down, the Easy Oven Meal Thing has the lowest effort-to-product ratio of anything eaten at the ScrimChateau short of Ricardo's Pizza.
Instructions for Dave's Easy Meal Oven Thing
In a 9"x13"x2" oven pan put:
Cover the pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1.5 to 2 hours.
Before reading this book, I'd come across the case of Jane Doe v Board of Commissioners of Police for the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto in four different law classes: Torts, Criminal Law, Civil Procedure and Remedies.
In 1986, Jane Doe became the fifth woman to report being raped by a man who had become known as the Balcony Rapist. During the investigation and trial of the rapist, she saw that systemic sexism in the police department led to shocking treatment of rape victims, shoddy investigations, and in her case, no suitable warning being given to likely targets.
She sued them for negligence and violating her equality rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I would never have read this book if it wasn't on the reading list for one of my classes. People getting hurt just isn't my kind of thing, but I found myself very happy to happy to be reading it. Here are some of the reasons:
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