We Saw a Chicken …

Category: goatee-stroking musing, or something

  • mid summer, 1987

    In UK exams, a “No Mention” was basically where you did so badly in an exam that they didn’t bother to mark it, and you weren’t actually listed as ever taking it.

    I got a No Mention for my A-Level Special Maths. I got talked into sitting it by my mate Matthew, who is a maths genius. It was on my 18th birthday, my last day at school, and a gorgeous day.

    When I opened the exam paper to see proofs of things involving frictionless pulleys and light, inextensible strings, something snapped. I wrote my name, then:

    1) I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that it is silly.

    I sat for a few minutes, watching the dust motes groove about in the light from the library windows, then walked out.

    Matthew got a special distinction, by the way.

    I would have liked to add that I went home and listened to “A Can of Bees” by The Soft Boys on my brother’s hi-fi. But I think he’d already left home by then, taking his record collection with him.

  • ottawa pictures

    The lawn chair whale from the National Gallery

    national gallery whale made from lawn chairs

    Some Group of Seven symmetry:

    national gallery canoe symmetry

    Ottawa from (nearly) Hull, Québec:

    ottawa from hull

    The Peace tower, and flame:

    peace tower flame

  • car free in canada

    It’s fairly easy to do without one if you make your housing and
    working arrangements around it. I’ve been car-free since 1996, but
    we’re mostly urbanites, so this may not work for everyone.

    Most of my ideas come from a great UK magazine called AtoB.

    • We live very near a TTC subway station
    • I cycle during the summer, take transit at other times. A TTC
      pass for $90/month for an annual subscription just can’t be
      beat.
    • I have a Brompton folding bike (amongst far too many others, to
      Catherine’s eternal dismay) which rides well, and plays well with
      others on crowded transit.
    • Catherine can use rental cars (I don’t have my Canadian licence
      yet, for various annoying bureaucratic reasons). They’re cheaper
      than running a car if you only need them now and again.
    • Taxis work for getting big stuff from stores. (Unless you’re
      buying an eMac computer, which comes in a box too big to fit in a
      taxi …)
    • All of our furniture was delivered, at less cost per trip than
      even hiring a U-Haul.
    • We get most of our groceries delivered from Grocery Gateway
    • We’ve considered signing up for AutoShare, a car sharing service in Toronto. A few of our friends use it, and find it convenient and
      reasonable.

  • pathologically polite

    It’s 9am, TTC subway southbound at St George. The train is packed (the crowd roared like a lion… no, wait, that was Wesley Willis). It’s the usual crowd — UofT students, Queen’s Park parliament types, downtown suits — not an elderly, infirm or pregnant person in sight. Everyone’s muffled in their winter gear, and there’s no room to move.

    And there are two empty seats. No-one will sit in them, ‘cos they’re too polite, or too passive-aggressive to let anyone sit in them.

    To compound this, they are window seats, and there’s someone in the aisle seats. AAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!

    Am I a really bad person for wanting to sit down?

  • snow, man

    It’s here. We’ve had dustings before, but this looks like it’s here to stay. Hello, winter!

    Wish I could make like a groundhog, and see y’all in April …

  • how the blog got its name

    We showed this film to an audience and asked them what they had seen, and they said they had seen a chicken, a fowl, and we didn’t know that there was a fowl in it! So we carefully scanned the frames one by one for this fowl, and, sure enough, for about a second, a fowl went over the corner of the frame. … The film was about five minutes long. …

    Wilson: We simply asked them: what did you see in the film?
    …
    Question: No one gave you a response other than “We saw the chicken”?

    Wilson: No, this was the first quick response— “We saw a chicken.”

    — from “Film Literacy in Africa”, by John Wilson (Canadian Communications vol.1 no. 4, summer, 1961, pp. 7-14), cited in McLuhan’s “The Gutenberg Galaxy”.

  • The Remarkable Bob Levitt

    Bob Levitt — on a budget of $0 — has built one of the most remarkable and useful websites I’ve ever seen: Toronto Tenants. If you’re a tenant in Toronto (as more than half of the city’s residents are), Bob’s site is a gold mine.

    He’s taken the time to build a comprehensive site, with no concessions to commerciality. He’s even researched Google’s linking algorithm to make sure that his site ranks way up there. His attention to detail — including providing common typos, such as tennant, as search keywords — goes far beyond that of most sites.

    In short, it’s a labour of love. Talking to Bob, it’s clear that he wants tenants in the Megacity (and beyond) to be safely and happily housed, and to know their rights.

    Just as I thought that the web was turning into a global electronic Wal*Mart, Bob restores my faith in humanity. Keep up the good work, Bob!

  • Props

    Thanks to Paul Hart, who pointed me to 1&1 in the first place.

    Massive thanks to official man o’ pairts* Jeff Walker, who helped me set up Movable Type, and who hosts my existing blog.

    If this had been back in Amiga days, I’d definitely write a demo with greets in a scrolly sine-wave message …

    —
    *: Scots for mensch.

  • everyone else is voting, why can’t I?

    It’s municipal election day here in Toronto. I’m a Toronto resident, homeowner, and taxpayer. Yet I can’t vote, because I’m not a Canadian citizen.

    I can understand not being able to vote in federal or provincial elections, but I’m as much of a citizen as anyone else living in Toronto. Toronto has such a vast immigrant population that many people are disenfranchised. Perhaps that’s why the city is failing to provide for its citizens.

  • so long, emusic

    I left emusic — despite me originally saying this — because they changed. Unlimited downloads went away.

    I did download a ton of good music before unsubscribing. But they let me down — they shouldn’t have promised what they couldn’t sustain. Just like Bigfoot For Life, who promised free, unlimited e-mail forwarding for life, only to turn around and start charging.

  • yay, go nettwerk!

    After writing this, I emailed Nettwerk about the essentially broken CDs they were selling. Very quickly, they said they could send me a non-copy-controlled one. And a week later, it arrived. I now have happy CD players, happy MP3 players, and a happy me, ‘cos it’s a good album.

    Someone at Nettwerk hinted to me that they’re dropping copy-controlled CDs because of all the bother. Good.

  • only in canada

    Flash animation: Best management practices for water quality from Agriculture & Food Canada: ROBOCOW

  • found sound

    Hauling my bike up the stairs up the Queen St viaduct over the Don this morning, I found a beat-up discarded demo CD for Estella Fritz. Being an avid fan of the 365 Days Project, I hoped this would be a demented demo for some superannuated wedding singer.

    On hauling it into the office, I was disappointed. It’s generic overly-angsty rock from Windsor, ON. They have a website, alas: estellafritz.com.

    Dang.

  • i think i like emusic …

    Just signed up for emusic.com. US $10 per month for unlimited download of some excellent artists, encoded as decent MP3s.

    Here’s a sampling of what I’ve downloaded so far:

    • The Dickies
    • The Fall
    • Ewan MacColl
    • Jah Wobble
    • Gorp
    • James Taylor Quartet
    • Daniel Johnston
    • Holy Modal Rounders
    • Wesley Willis
    • Boards Of Canada
    • Perez Prado Orchestra
    • Young Fresh Fellows
    • Mayor McCA
    • Yo La Tengo
    • Dressy Bessy
    • The Fugs
    • Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

    Maybe I don’t like them all, but at least I haven’t paid extra to find that out.

  • where’s willy?

    Okay, so I got a $20 the other day in Scarborough inscribed with See Where I’ve Been… Track it online… www.whereswilly.com. Seems I’m the second-last person on the continent to hear about this little diversion for tracking paper currency. Shame about the name, though.

  • it takes a worried chicken

    worried chicken

    To make Nong Shim Spicy Chicken Bowl Noodle Soup.

  • Well, George, I didn’t expect to find you here …

    w

    In a Food Basics supermarket in Scarborough, there’s a kiddie ride that reminds me of a certain world leader …

  • Phew …

    Looks like PAM has been dropped: http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/030729/w072940.html

  • Sick beyond belief

    It’s called Policy Analysis Market, and the blurb sounds fairly innocuous:

    PAM is intended to have a globally distributed population of traders. Individuals interested in the Middle East and in the involvement of the United States with the countries of the Middle East are welcome to register as PAM traders. Individuals who are interested in the use of market processes to manage risk are also welcome to participate in PAM. Whatever a prospective trader’s interest in PAM, involvement in this group prediction process should prove engaging and may prove profitable.

    … until you realise that it’s basically a stock-market system in which traders can bet on the likelihoods of terror attacks and assassinations in the Middle East. Eww!

    I’d heard that money was amoral, but this is straight immoral. How soon will it be before an investor consortium on this market hires hitmen to make their “investments” profitable?

    And all because They say that The Market can predict anything. If that’s the case, I’ve got a nice fish I can sell you, and you can tell the future by looking at its entrails.

  • The return of Mayor McCA

    Back on June 6, I lamented the lack of interest there is in determinedly indie Canadian musician Mayor McCA. How wrong — or premature — I was.

    I just heard from Mark at Sonic Unyon records that not merely does the Mayor have a new CD out, but that they’re sending me a copy! Whee!

    Better yet, the Mayor is playing a free show later in the month at The Horseshoe, Toronto. This is all on his website, mayormcca.com, along with a track from the new album. Great stuff!