November 30th, 2007

Tapping out

What’s really been bothering me lately is the expression “tapped out.” Where does it come from? I always assumed that it came from wrestling: when a man is pinned and gives up unpinning himself, he taps the other wrestler to indicate his surrender. But then, when you come to the end of a long grey day and realize that you haven’t the strength for even one more useful task, shouldn’t you say, “I’ve tapped out,” or “I’m tapping out,” as opposed to what one does say, which is “I’m tapped out.”

That grammar would indicate that the etymology (can you have etymology of a phrase?) is rooted in a beer keg. When you pour beer from a keg you tap it, and when it’s empty it’s tapped out, right? (obviously, I’m way out of my depth here) Then the conjugation makes sense, because when you say “I’m tapped out” you are just substituting yourself for the beer keg, you being empty of energy, not beer.

But three dictionaries neither confirm nor deny this hypothesis (including Canadian Oxford!) and the definition of an expression is distressingly hard to Google. Now I’m worried I’ve made the whole thing up, and in fact no one says “tap out” in any context, ever, except me!

You know, I think I am. Tapped out, I mean. It’s been a really long week. Perhaps I’ll leave this question for better minds than mine, and go do something fun.

Can you bring me back a cardinal from Kentucky?
RR

PS–My orthodonist unexpectedly announced this morning that I don’t have to wear my retainer during the day anymore. Unexpectedly because he’d said before that it would be maybe as much as six months before I’d have this luxury. I think he gave me the worst case scenario because he knows I don’t take disappointment too well, but I take unexpected good news very well. Despite my exhaustion, I am ebullient. I went right to the dep and bought gum, Raspberry Extra, which is repulsive, but which I am chewing right now for the lack of anything else. On my way to the fun, I’ll buy something better.

November 28th, 2007

Milk Subjectivity

My thwarted attempt at laziness last night was to skip the grocery store in favour of picking up expensive milk at the convenience store. Thwarted because I wound up going to *four* convenience stores looking for skim milk. Granted, I was looking for the four-litre size, due to my terror of osteoporosis, but that didn’t seem like *that* unreasonable of a request.

As I stomped about in the wind and snow (but who wears a thin jersey dress in November just because some part of her brain declared Tuesday “cute tights day”), I thought about how much I loathe milk with fat in it. Even diluted by coffee I can still feel the thickness catch in my throat. And, oh my goodness, we are embarking on the season of egg nog. It’s so…viscous. I like the *flavour* of nog–I’ll eat one of those yellow candy canes quite happily. But, ew, no, the “liquid” form is the consistency of…well. Thin milk 4-eva!

I have lived long enough to know that there is no “good” kind of milk–most people just like whatever they drank growing up and find everything else disgusting (which sucks especially for those who grew up on farms drinking unpasteurized milk, which is now illegal to sell in Ontario for reasons that…make no sense). Milk is totally subjective–and unless you drink table cream by the glass, I think it’s all pretty good for you. I think *all* the percentages should be available in stores, naturally, but I don’t really think there’s an argument available to be won.

My point, sorta, is about how I think I’m getting more mature, because I’m able to extend that sort of relativism (such a dirty word, but some things *are* relative) to things I used to be quite strident about. Fiction, for example–more and more I find myself able to recognize quality prose when I actually don’t personally enjoy it. And I’ll also *read* it, which is a big step for me. Not that I think it’s somehow virtuous of me to drag myself through tomes I hate, but there’s lots to be learned outside of the narrow spectrum of the tried and true. I get to the end and say, “Wow, that was an impressive thing to write, I could never write that. I would never want to write that, but I do wish I could do certain things that this author did.” But not out loud of course, because I’m usually reading on the bus.

Of course, there are things that are objectively bad–sour milk, prose by the light of the moon, those sorts of things. Not everything is relative.

November 27th, 2007

An open (love) letter to John K. Samson

It’s a funny thing: I also want to call requests through heating vents. I also sometimes find myself feeling like a float in a summer parade, or a girl in a Miss Somewhere sash. You seem to understand those things you shouldn’t miss. Also days that don’t like us, when all you want to do is drink and watch tv, though the sunlight demands action. You’ve got words for a lot of things I really feel have been needing words, like the 18 North Main and sinks full of bottles and cultery. I really think we could have a good conversation, if we were ever together in an all-night restaurant in a brand-new strip mall, killing time and communicating in questions. I’d like to ask you about the blinking snow in Winnipeg and whether wishing on the pop of a lightbulb actually works. I’d like to tell you that, if I believed in tears, I’d cry at hospital vespers. I think that you write music somebody could use. So, if we ever do meet, let the waitress put the chairs up, and we can talk about the weather, or how the weather used to be.

I’m so glad that you exist
RR

PS—John K. Samson is the lead singer and, more importantly, the lyricist for the wonderful Winnipeg band, The Weakerthans. Almost any song you could think of by that band, or Samson solo, will be an almost perfect poem or short story set to music. The above is a blender of some of my favourite lines—none of it’s mine except the pronouns and verb conjugations, in case there was any doubt.
PPS—It’s a purely *professional* love letter, of a striving writer to an admired one. John K. Samson is married to Christine Fellows who is actually a similarly brilliant lyricist, of lines like “A photo essay on a family in mourning / slightly perforated to better let the light in” “what’s good enough for chickens is plenty good enough for you and I”. Can you think of a better harmony?

November 25th, 2007

Famous

Rose-coloured excitement: My manuscript Once won the Metcalf/Rooke award at Biblioasis. I shall commence living up to this honour very very shortly–no, really. So far, I mainly dance in front of my bathroom mirror.

The announcement came as a grace note at the end of evening of stellar and thoughtful readings in celebration of Biblioasis’s translation series. The launch book is Ryszard Kapuscinski’s selected poems, I Wrote Stone. The translators are Diana Kuprel and Marek Kusiba: she a resonant alto anglophone, and he a mellow murmuring native-speaker of Polish. They gave double readings of each poem, in both languages, and the effect was almost musical. I don’t mean to over-aestheticize, the poems were disturbing and hopeful and thought-provoking, but it was something to just sit and listen. There were also readings in translation by Goran Simic and A. F. Moritz, and one about translation from Stephen Henighan. It was such an inspiring evening, but a girl does wind up feeling that she’s woefully under-read and needs to retire to the library immediately.

In case you thought some sort of delusion of grandeur caused me to apply subject line to myself, let me assure you I meant the readers mentioned above. I am quite easily star-struck, and have only recently realized that in Toronto it is quite acceptable to go and congratulate a reader after an admirable performance. I was told this ages ago, but I didn’t believe it–I mainly watch readings like movies, and scurry out as soon as they are over. When I first moved here, I met wonderfully talented and kind writer Michel Basilieres. He encouraged me to try to talk to other writers (at that point in my life, he was being pretty generous with that “other”) and learn from them. I said I wasn’t up to much. He assured me that Toronto writers don’t really live up to the stereotypes–most are collegial and friendly and eager to encourage a newcomer. I wasn’t buying it.

For the nervous among us, it’s pretty hard to absorb such information (witness the incident, around the same period, when I hid behind a pole when someone tried to introduce me to Douglas Coupland). But it’s really true that most writers I’ve ever chatted with has been more than forthcoming but I am usually too nervous to approach anyone. Anyway, after the formal part of the evening on Friday, I wandered a bit and talked to a number of people, including the readers, who seemed genuinely happy for my work and interested in it. It was lovely, but a little startling, like a character in a film turning to talk to you. Well, not really, but you get the idea.

It’s a heady thought, that someday I’ll be in the score of Canadian literature, perhaps as a grace note.

Look around around around
RR

November 22nd, 2007

Correct Writing Demands Respect

I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. It’s a list of quotations from the materials that I used this past summer to teach basic writing skills. My students were elementary-school kids who had recently immigrated from South Korea, so it’s super-simple stuff. Shockingly relevant. It’s funny how these basic facts of words-on-pages, things I should scoff to be reminded of, are not actually how I think of my writing, at least not very often.

–What is a paragraph? A paragraph is a collection of sentences connected to a single idea.
–No matter how well you write, you are not likely to create a perfect paper the first time you sit down to write.
–Ask yourself whether all of your sentences and paragraphs make sense.
–Adjectives that tell what kind, how many, or which one can be used to add information to sentences.
–Adverbs that tell how, when, or where can be used to add information to sentences.
–Vivid verbs help your readers form a clear picture of the action.
–Some stories seem so real that we believe they could actually happen.
–Writing is about making decisions. As the writer, you decide what to include and what not include.

I could stand to approach English as a new and difficult language more often, I think.

C’mon/belly up /to this brand new language
RR

Rose-coloured Police Blotter

Item #1 — Next-door neighbour bitten (on ass) by vicious dog in Mac’s Milk. Dog was supervised only by small child, who cried at the sight of blood. Neighbour gave up on recrimination, went to get tetanus shot.

Item #2 — Car spun out on the street in front of my building, crashed into the front door of the house next to us. Fire engines blocked traffic, police traffic director unsympathetic to pedestrians.

Item #3 — Colleague’s expensive high-heeled shoe (1) lost/stolen at gym. Colleague angry, sad.

Item #4 — The meeting I came in early for has been cancelled.

What a world in which we live.

Now I know I had plenty of time
RR

November 20th, 2007

Charity Begins in the Head

As the season of goodwill towards mankind begins, there are of course more charitable appeals in the air, the mail, email, street. While in general I’m pretty sloppy about donations–I always *mean* to give more than I do–I can usually get it together in December, at least a little. My whole rationelle for being a Jew who loves Christmas is probably another blog post, but I think it should suffice to say that people *do* try to be extra nice around this time of year, and remember what they have in common with others, less fortunate or not.

I’ve been thinking about giving along a couple of lines, and the suggestions I’ve gotten have shown me that it’s not just cellphones and video games that are moving ahead by leaps and bounds unbeknowst to me. One possibility suggested as a gift to people who are anti-gift, and the Gifts of Hope. It’s a website where you can donate $$ for a specific purpose in a specific purpose–literacy in Ghana, farm animals in Ethiopa—they’ve got it priced right down to the goat, so you know that your money does not go into a pool where it is diluted by other people’s donations, you bucks go purely to one family that is the recipient of *your* goat. This is a new and, to me, somewhat humourous invention, but it’s cool and makes a cute card, and will certainly drum up investment in what is it bottom a deeply humane program to try to help people help themselves.

What’s funny about it though is that everyone wants to be *involved* it seems. Just a cheque, to assign decision-making and responsibility to the administrators of the charity is becoming passe. The Christmas drive that I’m involved in this year, as many years in the past, is not a cash one, or even just a big box of canned goods and unwrapped toys. We have been assigned families in the nearby community who are in dire straights (I’m sorry, I would normally post a link here for your interest, but it’s a corporate giving program and there isn’t one of the public) and our donations are to be specific items on their wish-list, specific to their unique needs, purchased by the donators ourselves.

The profiles we receive are incredibly detailed. We get names and ages, clothing and shoe sizes, personal preferences, and a hierarchy of needs from toys and games to sweatpants and sanitary napkins. To me, it seems dreadfully invasive and undignified. The kidstuff is fun to shop for, but I feel like it’s not fair to the parents to take away the joy in picking out the pretty toys for the kids. And the grownup stuff–knowing that mom Sandy takes three sizes different between top and bottom, knowing what basic household items are missing, is really too much for me.

I made these complaints to a colleague–it all seemed to be a bit of bourgeois mistrust, an update on “You can’t give a panhandler loose change because he’ll just spend it on booze. Better to give money to an agency, that’ll make sure it goes towards food, clothes and a sensible job-training program.” Only now, tales of misappropriation and scandal lurking in our heads (“I can’t remember when, or which one, but one of them there charities was spending like *ninety* percent of the revenue on ‘administration’, and we know what that is!”)–if you want to make sure your donation doesn’t evapourate directly into ethanol, better make sure it’s in concrete form of something practical (“Blue jeans, a teddy bear and four cans of baked beans!”) with a name and address gift card attached.

My colleague pointed out the system isn’t really all that cynical–many of these are single parent homes, and shopping with the kids, or finding time to do it at all for a working parent, might be an issue. Plus they’d signed up for the program, so they clearly either lacked my qualms or found their need to be greater them.

Fair enough. She made good points, and vehemently, clearly concerned that she not let my potential aid to these families disappear due to some semi-imagined PCness. It was good of her, and I shut up and returned to reading my list.

And quickly got sucked in. There are several toys on the list that I loved as a wee one, and I’d like to go see the updates. And there were a couple requests for “teen novels,” a category that I have very strong opinions on, and then of course there’s the vegetarian baked beans. So I made my own shopping list and that’s when I realized the genius of the thing. If I buy everything that twigged my interest, and I probably will, I’ll wind up spending sizeably more than what would strike me as a “decent donation” in cash. That’s what all these details are really about–it’s easier to give more to people you relate to as in some way just like you. And in reading the list, I found that connexion, as I suspect most people did. Everybody needs sweatpants, warm socks and novels. We’re all human, after all.

Went upstairs and had a smoke
RR

November 17th, 2007

What’s Up Today

Today is the only day of the year when I buy a daily newspaper (unless of course someone I know publishes something in one, or gets married or dies and it is annoucned in one): it’s Milk Calendar day! Lots of places publish pretty recipe calendars, but the Dairy Farmers’ organization were first (I have no proof) and best (I have no proof of this either, but am sure, having tried to cook things from others). I could not figure out from the website exactly what newspapers have it today, but in Toronto it’s The Star and I know a number of other TorStar owned papers carry it too. I hope you get one, it’s groovy (no, it isn’t, it’s the polar opposite of groovy, but still wonderful).

Lalalala!
RR

November 16th, 2007

Hey Day

I keep forgetting about it, because I’m not actually going to be there, but today is my graduation day. Huzzah! I may have said it before, perhaps when I completed my thesis, when I submitted my thesis, and/or when I defended my thesis, but this time, absolutely for sure, I am a Mistress of the Arts…as of slightly after 2pm, I suppose.

Raise your heavy eyes
RR

Blindsided by Celebrity Gossip

So last week I was all abuzz about how good the film Michael Clayton was, and how very talented (ok, ok, and dreamy) George Clooney is. I thought I would like to see some other films with him in them, and happily the internet obliged with the above-linked filmography…which I found staggeringly bereft of any film I particularly wanted to see. I’m sure lots of those are quite good, he won an Oscar after all, and maybe I’ll get round to seeing something eventually, but not as exciting as I hoped.

*Anyway*, my Googling led me not only to lists of professional accomplishments but to crazed fan sites (man, a lot of people loved ER a lot) and to news stories concerning the Googlage subject. As a matter of fact, just moments before my search (I love how they rank recently posted stories, usually pointless given what I’m searching for, but I imagine useful if you read the actual news), there was an real, seemingly true news story that Clooney got into a fight with Fabio in a restaurant over, conservative estimate, nothing, but it was so funny I kept searching.

I think I need to be banned from the internet, because I now know a *lot* about George Clooney, and none of it is information that I need…or, I’ve discovered , information that anybody wants to be told (cue you to close the page!) But wait, because George seems to be sort of a decent guy, with a good sense of humour (but not about Fabio) and lots of right-headed political opinions. Also, and this is the point in the search when I got upset, he has a lot of problems that you can feel really bad about: he did a torture scene for a movie and fell and hit his head, tore the envelope thingy of his spinal cord and wound up with spinal fluid *dripping out his nose*. Is that not the worst thing you ever heard? He said the pain was so bad he considered killing himself–even if it wasn’t, gosh, it would still seem possible. Poor guy.

So I was horrorstruck and fascinated, and on I foraged, hoping to find the “George Clooney Regains Will to Live, Control of Nostrils” *Us Weekly* story or something. Such a story is not to be found, but eventually as the years pass (this was in 2005) you find the focus in interview shifts away from brain damage and on towards swearing off marriage, Oscar speeches, Darfur, etc. Which is nice to see.

I thought I had it licked. George Clooney is all right, I don’t need to see any of his movies, I’m moving on. Only there I was in the grocery store lineup, and I turned my head to be confronted my Owen Wilson and *his* woes. Outside the store, I demanded of my friend P–“Why is Jessica Simpson trying to help Owen Wilson get over his woes?”

“I don’t know, Becky.”

“Are they friends? I didn’t know they were friends.”

“Um, I don’t know, Becky.”

“Because if she’s just some chick, I don’t think that will help much. Do you think she knows him?”

“Um, I have a job.”

I might very well get into this, possibly after I finish this post. I have never before known the joys of famous people and what they might be doing, thinking and feeling. I have never thought it might be fun to know, and now I do. Why? I’ve been theorizing, trying to feel less like salon lady with lips full of Botox and a fist full of tabloids. Here’s what I’ve got: I love a good story, and I really don’t like endings. If I like anything–a book, a movie, a relationship, a sandwich–I don’t see why it can’t go on forever. I hate having to give up on characters i’ve grown attached to, having to admit that once the credits role they aren’t my friends anymore. That they were never my friends in the first place doesn’t enter the picture–I related, we got involved.

Michael Clayton, the fictional character, is not coming back–the movie is over, my DVD player is broken, and there’s unlikely to be a sequel (although–I could sorta see it). George Clooney, on the other hand, is likely to be back next week, making fun of Bush, doing something complicated with a motorcycle and that girl who ate a scorpion on tv. And thank goodness, because narrative arc be damned, I just like the story to keep going. Maybe this is why people get so histrionic when famous people die…?

My love she throws me like a rubber ball