February 1st, 2009

En-flu’d

So you live in an apartment for ages, get used to all the tricks of the door locks and the shower faucet, keep your shorts available during the winter because you know the heat is unpredictable, realize there is a tiny bloodstain on a floortile here or there and don’t worry about it because it’s probably yours, tape things to every available surface, install splitters on the phone jack and a power bar on the electrical jack and generally just assume that the place is your domain and you know it cold.

And then, one day you get the flu. And you spend that day, and subsequent ones, in a semi-coherent haze on your couch, unable to tolerate food or music or conversation or even text most of the time. Supine on your couch, you simply try to keep as silent and still as possible (sometimes motion-sickness can be triggered by the motion of a footstep, or even rolling over too quickly). And during one of your more lucid, conscious periods, you suddenly realize:

Everything in this apartment makes a tiny tiny noise.

Aside from the resounding *thunk* of the refrigerator switching off, it has a steady, low-tenor hum at all times, it seems. Hours after the DVD has ended and the TV set been turned off, it still makes static-y little clicks. The laptop’s motor whirs at random hours for no reason at all (yes, the laptop is always on, “just in case”), and I can hear the elevator cable down the hall making horrible squeaking noise each time it ascends (this does not increase my desire to ride the elevator). Also, the west-wall neighbour takes a lot of showers and I think their shower is directly behind my stove. The north-wall neighbour is passionate and vocal about hockey. And the ceiling neighbour has a deeply confusing erotic life that I still haven’t figured out.

I know so much now, way too much. I’m pleased to be sitting up today for extended periods (I was doing quite will on a 15-minutes work/45-minutes nap schedule there for a while) and I hope to keep the stereo on throughout. If I owe you an email or a phone call, you’ll get it soon, and if you’ve already received one that read or sounded like a fever dream–well, it probably was. Sorry. I hope I didn’t mention the rattle in the heating ducts.

She runs guns / everyone wants guns
RR

January 30th, 2009

25 Random Things about Me

1. I’ve known this meme was going around for a while and was worried it would come to me.
2. I’m pretty boring and I already talk too much about myself, in person and via blog. There may not be much more I’m willing to tell that most interested parties don’t already know.
3. But a poet, Troy Jollimore,, is the one who tagged me, and I always want to do what the poets are doing (The Tragically Hip were tragically misguided with their insolence towards poet-peer-pressure).
4. I still like the Tragically Hip.
5. Due to confusing circumstances, I once saw the Hip play a stadium show for $7.
6. That and The Concert for Toronto are the only stadium shows I’ve ever seen.
7. I don’t get out much (that’s not news; everyone knows that).
8. Also not news: I hate having eyebrows, and it’s only social conformity that keeps me from shaving them off. Instead, I talk about hating eyebrows all the time–hence the not-news-ness.
9. From ages 7 to 10, I skipped rope on a competitive team. I was nowhere near good enough to keep on with that, but to this day, I’m a better skipper than most adults who have never skipped competitively.
10. I can’t shuffle cards, whistle, ski, ice-skate, snap the fingers on my left hand, rollerblade, dive, or do a cartwheel. Whew. That’s a weight off my shoulders, confessing that.
11. I didn’t drink coffee until I was 23.
12. As a child, I was obsessed with ants (oh my god, I was right; this is so boring).
13. If I really like a song or album, I listen to it dozens of times in a row, until I either hate it or have to go to bed. I think it’s a similar instinct to really liking a piece of cake, so you sort of want to eat the whole cake. It’s an aural binge.
14. I can get my bra off without removing my blouse–a leftover from being a self-conscious kid in high-school gym. I’m now a self-conscious adult at the commerical gym, so it still helps.
15. I have never met a famous person who wasn’t famous for writing.
16. I am related to a spy (now dead, but I probably still shouldn’t elaborate on that).
17. I have small titanium screws in the bones in my jaw, right in front of each ear.
18. I have been hit by cars three times in three cities, never with any damage.
19. I was the one who chose the pull quote (“The alarm bell had been ringing for years”) on the Canadian paperback of Jonathan Franzen’s *The Corrections*. I’ve been dying to tell that for ages!!
20. I’m just too boring to come up with five more, I’m so sorry.

You said you didn’t give a f*ck about hockey / and I’d never heard someone say that before
RR

January 29th, 2009

The Midcentury Men

Sometimes it seems no book will ever again lodge in my psyche the way the books I read in my teens did. Of those, a disproprotionate number seem to be by white male Americans writing in the middle of the last century. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), John Cheever (1912-1982), J. D. Salinger (b. 1919) and John Updike (1932-2009) were mixed in with plenty of writers who weren’t male, 20th century, American or very good, but I certainly did acquire a lot of my writing-by-imitation lessons from those 4. Even now, I still think about them all the time, despite their differences from each other, and from me.

Of those guys, it’s Updike that I feel most ardently. Maybe because he’s the only one who’s been creatively active in my lifetime (I don’t expect Salinger to publish anything further, other than perhaps a Unibomber-style manifesto, at this point, though when I was 14, I was sure he would). And maybe I’ve so admired Updike’s stories just because he wrote the most like I wanted to write–though I do think most writers come to the page because *no one* writes exactly what we want to read, and we write to fill our own gaps.

What I think Updike had that I want is that penatrating gaze beyond the glaze of the everyday, that ability to full characterize the third person and give a tiny breathing space even in first. Those *voices*, that self-consciousness of characters who, even if they are don’t know they are in a story, know that people are always on view in the world, visible and audible. Updike’s characters can’t stop talking, at least to themselves, especially to themselves. They can’t stop thinking and I can’t stop thinking about them.

All this is by way of saying that I am upset–to a rather surprising extent–that Mr. Updike passed away Monday. I’m sure I’m not old enough to say who my greatest writing influences are–the best idea is likely to not worry about this until I’m dead, and then if anyone’s still interested, they’ll have my collected works to study. Nevertheless, I *feel* like Updike’s with me a lot when I write, although I don’t know that it shows…yet. I can think of specific places in *Once* where there’s that inside-outside doubling voice, but there aren’t very many. Someday, I’m going to finish the book that really does show the influence…not soon, though.

Perhaps Updike is a strange heritage for me to claim, given his somewhat masculine worldview, and his often rarefied settings. Maybe he represented an age, if not a place, that my parents come from, and he felt a paternal figure to me as a writer. I imagine a lot of people felt that way, although maybe not of 30-year-old women who write mainly about people in cities with lousy jobs.

Maybe all I’ll leave all this to whoever still interested after I’m dead, and just concentrate on the many books of Mr. Updike’s I haven’t even read yet. It’s not like I’ll miss hanging out with him, and books are eternal. But I don’t get to scan the table of contents in the New Yorker hoping he’ll be in this week, or hope he’ll somehow get the Nobel eventually, or I dunno, just feel good about all his stories yet to come.

For lack of a better ending, rest in peace.
RR

January 27th, 2009

Nice

So many joys! Tomorrow night, I get to see Kerry read her story “Squash Season” alongside Stuart Ross and James Sandham at Pivot at the Press Club. Yesterday, Ragdoll posted a lovely *Once* review on My Tragic Right Hip. And today my inbox delivered my New Quarterly E-exclusive, as well as news that TNQ 109 For Some Unknown Reason and Anyhow is on its way to me! I’m excited for poetry, fiction, and notes on the long short story (so dear to my heart). I’m in a TNQ-y mood, since I’ve just been editing my essay, “Stuff They Wrote,” for issue #110, so this news comes at a good time indeed!

It’d be weird
RR

Rose-coloured Reviews Baker’s Chocolate Brownie Recipes

Unlike most not-very-good-cooks, I was actually taught to cook, rather thoroughly. Technically, if you asked me to, I could make you a lattice pie-crust, salmon teriaki, a roux, or cabbage rolls. But if that’s really what you want, would you please go into the other room and sit quietly without talking to me. Complex cooking makes me very nervous, because I know my own scoring record is only about .500 with hard things, and there’s really no telling how it will turn out. Really, if you don’t want any sort of stir-fry/curry/egg derivative, maybe we should just go to a restaurant?

As with most things, my theoretical knowledge of cuisine far outstrips my practical ability. This does, however, enable me to read a recipe with fair insight. I can recognize wonky proportions, overlong cooking times, and bad ideas in general.

And then there’s one of the few things I am actually pretty good at in theory *and* in practice: copyediting. I was trained to copyedit recipes according to the very thorough and exacting Canadian Living house style (can’t find it online, sorry), which makes me hyper-aware of improper metric/imperial measurement conversions, incomplete instructions and all the various ways recipes can leave a cook lamentably at sea.

Because I am too incompetent a cook to easily correct an error in a tricky recipe, and too competent an editor to overlook them even in an easy recipe, I general steer clear of internet recipes. Home cooks too often approximate, leave out steps, get bored after typing out the ingredients list and leave the instructions at “Mix ingredients, put in pan, cook until done.” Cook until done, you see that one all over. Terrifying.

When I wanted to make cheesecake brownies last night and didn’t have a recipe, for reasons too stupid to get into, I wound up Googling with good results for once. I have learned that websites from sources that would be embarrassed at errors are your best bet. By that I mean, those associated with either printed cookbooks or notable chefs or a brand-name products. Only a far better cook than I can deal with recipe sites where people post annonymously.

The Kraft foods websites are very very commerical, but also their recipes are thoroughtly tested, and they very rarely lead you astray (they do suggest you put Jell-o powder in your lemon chicken, but they are quite upfront about that).
The Baker’s chocolate brand is a good one, and their recipes are solidly doable, though some of the ones on the website are pretty inane. It seems like a giant waste to make heart-shaped brownies–all the non-heartshaped scraps!! But this recipe will actually make you a perfectly good pan of brownies, just don’t bother cutting them out! It’s a very nice simple recipe, one bowl and the microwave. I always forget that the reason I don’t often make brownies is not that they are hard, it’s that the ingredients to make the really good ones are expensive. Still, it matters: buy the real dark chocolate squares, and get the pecans instead of walnuts; in my opinion so much better. Actually, my personal preference is for raisins in brownies but, yeah, everybody hates that. Pecans are a good second choice.

I wanted to make a cheesecake topping, but I could only find recipes for a) pan sizes I don’t own or b) to go with packaged brownie mix or c) to go with ingredients I didn’t have (this lack of purchasing enthusiasm might explain some of my culinary failures). Anyway, I wound up making the topping from recipe, although if I’d read to the end I would’ve noticed the comment about it not really being enough cheesecake to cover 13×9 inches, at least for some people.

As it turned out, it was sufficient if you spread it carefully and don’t demand too thick a topping. I liked that neither the brownies nor the topping were terribly sweet, although the brownies are very chocolatey/fudgey and both were quite rich (I used light cream cheese, but I don’t really think that mitigates much). I used the baking time for the plain brownies, 30-35 minutes, but at 32 minutes they were already starting to singe slightly at the corners. The problem could’ve been that I baked them in a weird silicon pan, or it could’ve been that my coolling rack has fallen under the stove and I had to cool them on oven mitts. Well, I have a lot of problems, anyway.

Once they were pretty well coolled, though, it was easy to cut them up into solid discrete squares without a lot of crumbs. And once I’d trimmed off those tiny burnt bits (which I then ate, they weren’t even bad) it was a pretty good gooey-looking set of brownies. The swirls on top, which looked smudgy and odd when raw, are very pretty in the final version. I think these are a good kid/adult food, as cheesecake is sufficently mature, and brownies sufficiently kiddish, and they look pretty enough to appeal to both categories.

The revews from eaters are quite favourable thus far, if not terribly articulate. “Yummy” has come up twice, though, which is really all I ask for.

Oh the boys on the radio
RR

Perils of Stupidity

J: (describes briefly a bit of dishonest business that someone offered her, that she immediately saw through) He obviously thought I was pretty stupid.
Me: Yeah, what a jerk.
J: Yeah.
Me: (thinks for a while, ostensibly doing something else) It’s a good thing you’re *not* stupid.
J: (laughing) Yeah, that usually works out pretty well for me.
Me: No, I mean, I mean, some people are though…
J: Yeah?
Me: Stupid, I mean. And you know, I hope they don’t just get lied to all the time. Because, well, it’s not *their* fault.
J: Well, yeah.
Me: You know what I mean?

RR

January 26th, 2009

“Please wait a moment” in Japanese

Chotto matte kudasai!

“Choe-toe maa-tay kuda-sigh”

Stop / collaborate and listen
RR

January 25th, 2009

An Homage / Rebecca is 2009

Last summer, I heard poet/graphic novelist/playwright/performer Mariko Tamaki read a couple times. Everything she put to the microphone was amazing, especially segments from her collaborative (with Jillian Tamaki) graphic novel Skim (not everyone can read aloud from a graphic novel and make it vivid). At the Scream in High Park another wonderful piece she read was a poem of her collected Facebook status lines (I have looked *all over* for a link; I think it’s not online; please correct me if I’m wrong). Like most “found” poetry, I’m sure the artist put a lot of energy into making this piece work rhythmically and tonally, not to mention how poetic you have to be just have high-quality Facebook status lines most of the time when it’s so easy to just write “…is glad it’s the weekend.”

So I make no claim to artistry nor high-quality status, but I find Ms. Tamaki’s idea too irresistible not to try my own version. Perhaps it’s the lure of seeing my name over and over like that, or reliving happy memories of the past few weeks, or how it provides a tidy summary of my state of mind immediately before and since the change of year. But anyway, I give you

Derivative Facebook Poem: Rebecca is 2009

Rebecca wants to put up the new calendars now!
Rebecca listens to the Fleet Foxes.
Rebecca has changed her mind, is no longer ready for 2009.
Rebecca faces facts: 2009 is coming. Rebecca wishes you all kinds of joy with it!
Rebecca is experiencing the future.
Rebecca is experiencing contact-lens issues that make her seem a tragic tearful figure. Don’t believe the rumours!
Rebecca is nostalgic for the good old days, when this apartment had heat.
Rebecca has heat–hooray!
Rebecca mopes for no reason
Rebecca appreciates being indoors.
Rebecca is despondent after failing to locate Germany on a map.
Rebecca is fairly efficient, for a Saturday.
Rebecca is warm now, but anticipating cold
Rebecca is headache grey.
Rebecca is liscious.
Rebecca gets a lot of phone calls before 9am these days.
Rebecca thought this morning’s sunrise was especially nice.
Rebecca is CEO of herself.
Rebecca will soon have eaten all available candy.
Rebecca is flexible.
Rebecca thinks back on high school and wonders, was *anybody* cool then?

RR

January 24th, 2009

All Over the Place

Some of my favourite bloggers have been sneaking off to other places and being brilliant all over again, and I’ve gotten a bit behind.

Kerry usually writes about books at Pickle Me This but this month she also wrote about books that are a little or a lot ripped from the headlines in This Magazine.

Julie usually writes about readers on Seen Reading, but last weekend she wrote about readers experiencing the miracle of text in transit in the Globe and Mail.

And Dani usually photographs animal effigies around town for Animal Effigy, but today her office banana chicken is on Cute with Chris.

Anything else I’ve missed?

Oliver James / washed in the rain / no longer
RR

January 23rd, 2009

Recs

Yes Man is a B-minus movie, but for some reason the music in the film is A++. The actual soundtrack album of the music that plays in the background of the film includes *nine* Eels songs, (including very annoyingly, *one* I don’t have). In addition, there’s tonnes of diagetic music that is way more fun to watch/listen to than the rest of the film. Go fig. But PS–are we offended that there is a band out there called Munchausen By Proxy? I think I am. If a band was named “Child Abuse,” that wouldn’t go over too well, and how is this any different? Their songs are so darn neat, though.

Desk Space is always awesome, but as a literary voyeur herself, Julie Wilson, gives particularly good desk-details.

You wouldn’t think I’d like a blog called Brazen Careerist. In fact, I almost never care about the actual advice being offered, but the woman who writes it, Penelope Trunk, is a very good writer, very funny and generous and *fascinating* on the topic of her own life history, and also quite possibly the woman least like me on the planet. I *love* reading her blog.

I’m going to stop pretending I didn’t break your heart
RR