tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58097322011-04-21T20:01:13.757-04:00ConceptionsThoughts about the universeMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comBlogger281100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1147450609648943442006-05-12T11:53:00.000-04:002006-05-12T12:16:49.713-04:00There is a saying that was popular back in the sixties, "You are what you eat." Today we might also add, "You are what you think." Or, more specifically, "You are what you habitually think." For example, we habitually have a bad reaction to the word "taxes". Gouging, a piece out of one's hide, a rip-off. Associations with "attacks", "taxing", those little sharp things that are quite painful to Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1144780463794088182006-04-11T14:19:00.000-04:002006-04-11T14:34:23.840-04:00In Homer's epic tale of male aggression, "The Iliad", the ancient Greeks gave expression, on behalf of all future humanity, to one of the great transitions in our evolution --- the shift from the bloody, mortal manglings of the battlefield to the somewhat safer competitions of the playing field. From war to sport. Now we have a similar shift from the active, outer world of skateboards and Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1143393830845835472006-03-26T11:06:00.000-05:002006-03-26T12:23:50.886-05:00Recovering from a winter of depression, biochemical in nature, three months of day-to-day struggle with a severe and frightening lack of energy. Desires, affections, pleasures all wilt away. Every test that life has given you -- seems like you've failed. Every relationship, ruined. For any of you, past present and future, who have suffered through a nervous system imbalance like this, my respect Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1084045655561618252004-05-08T15:47:00.000-04:002004-05-08T16:07:37.653-04:00Something goes terribly wrong when we revisit scenes of our cultural past, and try to recast myths and legends into visions of modern urban and moral decay. A case in point is the much-anticipated production of 'Die Walkure' at the Canadian Opera Company. It was a valiant effort, but it remained just that, an effort. Putting aside the singing, though, the visualization created by director Atom Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1080066728428794292004-03-23T13:32:00.000-05:002004-03-23T13:34:37.483-05:00Lyrics:
For this first one, think Billie Holiday
"Love Me Baby"
Love me baby, or leave me alone
Give me the shove, baby, or make me your own
Can't stand the suspense
Sitting on the fence
I'm feeling so tense
You're out in the city
With someone else pretty
And feeling no pity on me
If you don't want me, baby,
Throw me back in the sea.
Love me, sugar, or leave me alone
You know I can Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1078521535218128892004-03-05T16:18:00.000-05:002004-03-23T13:42:24.280-05:00Here's a short story I wrote for Sean and Jake, the sons of a tennis buddy of mine named Alan.
The Super-Heavy Pebble
The box was all wrong. Sam knew exactly what he'd rather have, one like his Dad's, made of steel with a good, tough lock and a key that had notches along both edges. The key had a zigzag in the middle so it fit perfectly into the same zigzag opening in the lock-face. Nobody Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1077217065601858572004-02-19T13:57:00.000-05:002004-02-19T13:59:41.233-05:00As furors go it may not be much, but the music industry can't seem to stop flapping about the ripping (off) of music from CDs and other sources, and the zapping of it in all directions through the 'Net. Copyright infringement! Lost royalties! Artists, taken in bulk, have starved so diligently and for so long that it's easy to see their point, but I have a feeling they are swimming against a newlyMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1076346768049780052004-02-09T12:12:00.000-05:002004-02-09T12:14:34.123-05:00Okay, I'm back from the Rockies, in one piece, and still feeling the buzz. I spent three days at Sunshine Ski Area, near Banff, Alberta, a vast bowl way up high in a circle of mountain peaks, accessible only by a gondola lift that takes you up from the parking lot to the base of the area. Or that is the idea. On Saturday morning at 8:15 the gondola decided to break down for 55 minutes. The first Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1075165955615616972004-01-26T20:12:00.000-05:002004-01-26T20:14:08.060-05:00This past Friday I finally got out skiing at one of the local knobs that call themselves ski hills. It was eighteen below zero Celsius in the morning, but the sky was blue and the sun bright, and there were something like seventeen bus-loads of school kids on the slopes. I was riding up the lift with one youngster and he was huddled over the safety bar, visibly shivering. What was he wearing? A Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1074821301957529952004-01-22T20:28:00.000-05:002004-01-22T20:29:50.170-05:00Did you know that lamb shanks are quite delicious? They are. You don't have to trust me. All you need to do is try them. The shank, by the way, is what we would call the shin on a human being. It's the osso (i.e., bone) in "Osso Bucco". And it's pretty easy to prepare. Here goes:
Three or four lamb shanks (I got mine frozen from New Zealand) will do for two people.
First, rub them with garlic, Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1074538311600801862004-01-19T13:51:00.000-05:002004-01-19T13:53:16.233-05:00In some movie or other a character expressed the opinion that he had no time for Christianity, as a religion whose cult figure played a starring role at a public execution. That gets a laugh, of course, but misses the point in a huge way. It is just that image, of a man in agony, his body nailed up for public display, that has such a gut-level impact on us. The spirit is strong. The flesh is weakMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1072709252874565732003-12-29T09:47:00.000-05:002003-12-29T09:48:36.623-05:00First, the sad news. Bowie cancelled. At the very last minute. Bummer. The show is rescheduled for April 1st. C'est la bummer vie.
We stayed here in Toronto for the holidays this year, and actually got around to having a dinner party. There were eight guests, and something like eight courses, but the main dish was a French casserole called "Casserole Bercy" which I rather adapted than followed. Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1071023182133383412003-12-09T21:26:00.000-05:002003-12-29T09:49:09.043-05:00Big week for this particular rock fan. David Bowie is in town this Friday, and the last time I saw him was the "Glass Spider" tour back in the 80's. OK, I went to high school and university during the 60's, so I have earned the right to rock, but it still amazes me how off I get at the right kind of rock. I do have my likes and dislikes. Number one best, all time, hard-wired into my medulla Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1070041504093445232003-11-28T12:45:00.000-05:002003-11-28T12:45:37.420-05:00A tennis buddy of mine has a thirteen year old son, named Sean, who loves to write and has been working with me in that area of endeavor. He recently sent me a very short story which I would like to post here for your enjoyment. The title, by the way, is an anagram of his name.
Nesa Avloc
Normally, an author would start a story by someone saying something, or a noise occurring, or somebody Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1067185828474221862003-10-26T11:30:00.000-05:002003-11-02T22:06:26.323-05:00Poetry has been so "out" for so long that it is perhaps now ready to become, by way of being "retro", "in" again. So far in my life I have only four poems that have not self-destructed. Two are in my first short story, "In the Quiet of the Night". (See library section in my home website.) Here are the two others:
"Blue, So Blue"
Blue so blue
As blue as cornflowers
Whose spiky petals prance in Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1065502280294695302003-10-07T00:51:00.000-04:002003-10-07T00:51:19.770-04:00For three years, from 1993 to 1996, I acted as a workshop leader for an improvisational theatre group at Jarvis Collegiate, a local highschool here in Toronto. We used a lot of ideas from Theatre Sports. One of them was a basic structure for any and all improvs, called "Who Where Who What?" It went like this --- the first player would choose the kind of character that the other player would play,Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1065022010960056672003-10-01T11:26:00.000-04:002003-10-01T11:29:25.890-04:00Starting when my son Oliver was about four or so, he would occasionally strike me as being so mischievous and cute, as he chased me around in some park or other, that I would go into hysterics. As soon as he saw this, he would get a gleeful gleam in his eye, knowing full well that he now had a pretty good chance of catching me. Hysterics are no help at all when one is trying to avoid capture by aMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064945030125719012003-09-30T14:03:00.000-04:002003-09-30T14:03:50.193-04:00I was on the Queen streetcar a few days ago, here in Toronto, and saw something that set me laughing. It was about 4:00 pm, and three 10-yr-old boys got on the car together. They were wearing what looked to me like soccer uniforms, and found an empty double seat near the front. Two of them, both white, sat down, and the third, the nutty brown of the Indian subcontinent, stood beside them, Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064865695307488062003-09-29T16:01:00.000-04:002003-09-29T16:01:35.446-04:00The "media" is pretty well a singular noun these days, referring to the (primarily) electronic means of communication to (primarily) mass audiences. In an earlier incarnation, the word is the plural form of "medium", and that is a word with some intriguing meanings. The wildest is perhaps the psychic who acts as a channel or guide to the spirits of dead human beings, but the one I am most curiousMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064600093955611412003-09-26T14:14:00.000-04:002003-09-26T14:14:53.916-04:00The great "tipping point" in the move from inorganic matter and energy to organic life comes with replication. A molecule comes together in the primordial soup, perhaps by chance, that can copy itself exactly. Other molecules assemble themselves like "bumper-cars". But here is one with site-specific selection from the supply of amino acids, a virus with a built-in photocopier, and one added Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064518786445517562003-09-25T15:39:00.000-04:002003-09-25T15:39:45.990-04:00Television produces one great benefit for which all its sins will be forgiven. TV allows us to see what we are doing. It allows us to explore our one and only home, get to know the other creatures, both plants and animals, that share our planet, and meet our neighbours. In fact, we get to recognize as neighbours people whom we would ordinarily not know at all. Furthermore, the big disasters of Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064423005490718082003-09-24T13:03:00.000-04:002003-09-24T13:03:25.576-04:00Are we biological computers? Are we pieces of organic hardware, generated from our genes, with some inherited, pre-set programmes and some that we learn through experience? Are we living machines? That's the picture we paint of ourselves. We are already cyborgs, inextricably wed to our technologies, high and low. When the plug is pulled, the system crashes. Death.
I don't buy it. Something is Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064339396656760852003-09-23T13:49:00.000-04:002003-09-23T13:53:10.246-04:00In our daily lives we pretty well have to take our perceptions for granted. We cannot study, while driving a car, the hidden infrastructure in the brain that allows us to see. Not safely, at least. But it is there, or we would not be able to distinguish colours, shapes, edges, light and dark, depth of focus, pattern, movement, etc. We have an external world that sprays photons in all directions, Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064254397819857862003-09-22T14:13:00.000-04:002003-09-22T14:13:17.760-04:00People often use the word "feeling" as a synonym for "emotion". A literal feeling is an impression made upon our sense of touch. We use the word by association to describe an impact upon awareness. A feeling, or perception, acts as an emotional trigger, although it is not an emotion in itself (as the sound of car tires screeching right behind us is not, by itself, an experience of fright). The Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064197389186435982003-09-21T22:23:00.000-04:002003-09-26T13:37:50.116-04:00Ever since Plato, that ancient Puritan, ruefully ousted theatre from his ideal Republic, and even cast his specious logical aspersions upon the dramatic poetry of Homer (!), all artists have been struggling hard to defend themselves. Maybe Plato shared the Spartan ethic of "no frills". "Trim the fat!" "Got that plowing to do!" "Mere foppery!" Ah, but Curly, from the musical "Oklahoma", raises theMichaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064088153200805652003-09-20T16:02:00.000-04:002003-09-23T13:58:36.210-04:00On the back cover of a paperback edition of Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain", some blurbist wrote that the book was "a microcosm for Europe, which in the years before 1914 was already exhibiting the first symptoms of its own terminal irrationality." Isn't hindsight a wonderful thing?
The novel was actually written in 1925, in between Act I and Act II of the ongoing tragedy of the 20th century.Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1064026007963496472003-09-19T22:46:00.000-04:002003-09-19T22:46:47.423-04:00On a lovely Thursday in the middle of August, I went with a friend up to the York University campus here in Toronto to the National Tennis Centre. The Women's Canadian Open Tournament had advanced to the round of 16, and we were scheduled to see Kim Clijsters and Amelie Mauresmo in two separate matches. That was the day of the blackout. Some electricity was still available from the University's Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5809732.post-1063499742000403492003-09-13T20:35:00.000-04:002003-09-13T20:35:42.073-04:00It has been two years and two days since the attack on America. All this time I have resisted the temptation to write anything on the subject. Who am I to say things, when others had to experience them? I do have a perspective. I am distant enough, here in Toronto, to see the general outline. Would it help you? Would it help New Yorkers to know how our hearts were wrenched, even here in cool, Michaelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684550733493847446noreply@blogger.com