July 23, 2005

Stop it, you're killing me

If I get one more of these hits, I'm going to put a special category in the sidebar. Apparently this site will Google with: do rats have underlids.

posted by Charlotte at 11:29 AM | permalink | email it |0 comments

July 20, 2005

Green cheese stuck with a small American flag

I'm told by people over fifty that the "maiden voyage" to the moon transformed--overnight, literally--the way the people looked up at the night sky. From a glowing orb dangling mythically among the stars to an actual place, like a nation, or maybe not quite a nation but a protectorate, like Puerto Rico. For the benefit of public dreams, I'm all for a take-back by the collective unconscious.

posted by Charlotte at 11:51 AM | permalink | email it |0 comments

July 17, 2005

Gallery is up and running

Photos from this spring at Bivouac West are here. While many of these shots will make no sense to people who don't plant trees for a living, if I caption them all I'll die of procrastination. Trust me, if anyone could die of such a thing, it would be me. Zap me if you're truly curious about the sea lions or the giant yacht.

Smooches to the Biv people featured. Especial smooches to Sacha, Rose and Anthea, whose digital donations these are.

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July 16, 2005

Adult frustration at not being able to fly

My sister climbs on top of a car to witness English crop circles.

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July 15, 2005

Old standbys

Rainy days are good for soup and nostalgia. Today I blew the dust off (the late) Jeff Buckley and also some Richard Ford. They're both, in their own ways, capable of making the hair stand up on the back of my neck. They went together like bread and butta.

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July 12, 2005

Googled to get here

My two personal all-time favorite Google search terms since this site's inception, complaints laurentian pencils and escorts yasmin, which today escorted a Googler into my short story, Hush, home of Yasmin the naturopath. Not exactly the desired search target, I'm sure.

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July 11, 2005

Where reality programming won't go

My friend and fellow bibliophile Tom K. B. Savage maintains two things: chocolate is a well known substitute for affection. And: people will tell you ANYTHING you want to know, basically, with very little prompting. I got this link to PostSecret from Jennica. I saw the link in three other places last week, which goes to show how much we love the good dirt, even if it's from strangers.

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July 7, 2005

Friendly fire

This is my family's idea of a Christmas celebration: everyone sitting in separate corners of the living room with their noses in books, the silence punctuated by the occasional, "Will you ever be done with that one?" or "What shall we drink next?" We love each other, and we love even more to express it with ridicule. Especial favorites include two-way gang-ups on our mother, who seems to enjoy a good-natured slagging so much she'll set herself up days in advance when we're still long distance.

It appears my Patrick O'Brian comments of yesterday didn't go over so well. Email reply from sister:

You keep harping on this thing about Patrick O'Brian being nautically inept, as though that detracted from rather than adding to his genius. Does that make Charlotte Bronte a fraud for never having tempestuous relations with a brooding foundling, or Nabokov less of a master for being totally innocent of pedophilia? Anyway, my crush is on Stephen Maturin, not Jack Aubrey, and there's nothing at all secret about it.

Email reply from mother:

Sure, Patrick O'Brian couldn't sail, and didn't know the sharp end of a boat from the blunt end, nor was he a particularly charming person; but he sure could write (OK, not your genre). So long as nobody tries to make him Pope, who cares? He was good at what he did. The trouble with celebrity these days is that everything about one's personal life is potentially discoverable; we hold the famous to a much higher standard of conduct than our own, and are constantly disappointed to discover their clay feet. So hard to type with one hand, the other holding the cat's feet out of the way so I can see the keyboard.

Then a voicemail message from my brother, who is entirely uninvolved in the O'Brian debacle: "Char, you suck. I'm going to Columbia."

posted by Charlotte at 10:23 AM | permalink | email it |0 comments

July 6, 2005

Master and not-so-much Commander

My recently emigrated, hottie/fashionista sister is blogging from the British Isles these days. So far she compares Canadian men to English ones (unfavourably, alas) and describes her exploits at the International Festival of the Sea where she found herself immersed in crowds of like-minded nautical geeks. "It was comparable to being in H&M on a Saturday, except they were much much older, grumpier and more badly dressed." All of this spawned by a secret crush, I suspect, on the fictional Captain Jack Aubrey. As much as she loves picking on my reading habits, I adore poking holes in her fetish for Patrick O'Brian, who apparently couldn't hang a rag to save his life:

Mr Perkins, a venture capitalist behind some of the world's biggest internet companies, was such a fan of the books that he invited Patrick O'Brian, then aged 80, and his wife to spend two weeks on his 154ft superyacht "Andromeda" on a cruise of the Mediterranean in the summer of 1995.

One of O'Brian's books spawned the movie Master and Commander. In his article, Mr Perkins describes a dinner where he and Mr O'Brian discussed the trip. He claims that the author's "knowledge of the practical aspects of sailing seemed, amazingly, almost nil . . .

Underway to Menorca beneath a sunny sky with a 20-knot following wind, the sailing was marvellous and O'Brian was delighted," Mr Perkins writes. "I introduced him to the helm but he seemed to have no feeling for the wind and the course and frequently I had to intervene to prevent a full standing gybe [a sudden change of direction involving the boom swinging violently from one side of the boat to another]. (Via Maud)

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July 3, 2005

Beer, Buñuel-style

I was delighted to come across this very kooky Stella Artois commercial. The lawn chairs, the seedy tragedy of shortage--it's kind of like a logging camp, three weeks in, once everyone's run out of Lucky. (Via Waxy).

posted by Charlotte at 11:04 AM | permalink | email it |0 comments