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On my to-be-read pile

Posted on by Patrick

It just keeps grow­ing like a hydra. Here are the lat­est three books:

New books

Not pic­tured: The last Bar­ti­maeus nov­el; Rain­bows End by Vinge; a graph­ic nov­el about Louis Riel; an epic poem; The Bears’ Famous Inva­sion of Sici­ly; and a bunch I can’t even remem­ber right now.

Happy New Year

Posted on by Patrick

On our way home from the 12/31 -> 1/1 fes­tiv­i­ties last night — K dri­ving, because I’d had more than just a taste of my broth­er-in-law’s brandy slush — we passed a road blan­ket­ed in soft new snow, with just one soli­tary set of tracks down its cen­tre. It struck me as the most per­fect metaphor for a new year: a trail undis­cov­ered, wait­ing. In three hun­dred six­ty-odd days it’ll be deeply rut­ted, heav­i­ly trav­eled, alive only in mem­o­ry. But right now it’s full of untapped potential.

I want­ed to ask K to stop the car so I could take a pic­ture. But it was 2:30 in the morn­ing, so I did­n’t, and now I feel a kind of gen­tle regret. So here’s a hun­dred or so words to try and take the place of a photo.

Hadn’t heard this one in a while

Posted on by Patrick

- 1 -
De bon matin j’ai ren­con­tré le train
De trois grands rois qui allaient en voyage
De bon matin j’ai ren­con­tré le train
De trois grands rois dessus le grand chemin.

Venaient d’abord les gardes du corps
Des gens armés avec trente petits pages
Venaient d’abord les gardes du corps
Des gens armés dessus leur justaucorps

- 2 -
Puis sur un char doré de toutes parts
On voit trois rois mod­estes comme d’anges
Puis sur un char doré de toutes parts
Trois rois debout par­mi les étendards.

L’é­toile luit et les rois conduit
Par longs chemins devant une pau­vre étable
L’é­toile luit et les rois conduit
Par longs chemins devant l’hum­ble réduit.

- 3 -
Au Fils de Dieu qui naquit en ce lieu
Ils vien­nent tous présen­ter leurs hommages
Au Fils de Dieu qui naquit en ce lieu
Ils vien­nent tous présen­ter leurs doux voeux.

De beaux présents: or, myrrhe et encens
Ils vont offrir au Maître tant admirable
De beaux présents: or, myrrhe et encens
Ils vont offrir au bien­heureux Enfant.

On the way home from Christ­mas cel­e­bra­tions, we* were lis­ten­ing to CBC. They played a French Christ­mas con­cert, fea­tur­ing “Le marche des rois” (above), as well as my favourite car­ol in either lan­guage, “Ça berg­ers, assemblons-nous”.

Hope every­one had a mer­ry Christmas.

* Well, one of us was lis­ten­ing, and one of us was sleeping.

Ha ha ha waah

Posted on by Patrick

This is not a polit­i­cal blog, nor will it become one, but:

Stephen Harp­er appoints senators

“Stephen Harp­er keeps telling Cana­di­ans to tight­en their belts,” said NDP demo­c­ra­t­ic reform crit­ic David Christo­pher­son. “But these 18 unelect­ed sen­a­tors will cost the tax­pay­er over $6 mil­lion a year. When will the Con­ser­v­a­tives start prac­tis­ing what they preach?”

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Ha ha ha waah” →

hey genius

Posted on by Patrick

Open let­ter to who­ev­er it was dri­ving a green car head­ed west on Van Horne at about 70 km/h today just after noon:

Slow down.

As you can’t help but know, you almost hit me. Notice how your brakes did­n’t do the slight­est thing to slow your head­long trav­el? That’s because it’s win­ter here, with snow at the inter­sec­tions, and fresh snow every­where. These things impede fric­tion, which cars need in order to stop.

You should be thank­ing God—as I am—that there was no traf­fic in the lane I had to pull into to avoid get­ting smashed by you. Even if you’re an athe­ist you should be thank­ing God. Also you should be thank­ful that you did­n’t hit the mini­van behind me either.

You should be thank­ful that I did­n’t get your license plate num­ber. I was too busy veer­ing out of my lane, and then after that I was in an adren­a­line haze, and then after that I was shaky and just want­ed to get home. If I’d got­ten your plate num­ber, I’d be on the phone to the police right now. I kind of hope the peo­ple in the van got it, but I doubt it.

I hope, too, that you wet your pants, and drove home in a pud­dle of cool­ing piss. Not very Christ­massy, but then nei­ther were the names I called you, either.

If you’re feel­ing remorse­ful about how you near­ly ran me down today, I have the solu­tion: Go to the police sta­tion. Ide­al­ly have some­one else dri­ve you, since evi­dent­ly you have no clear idea what you’re doing. Hand over your dri­ver’s license, and tell them you won’t be need­ing it any­more, at least for a few years. Get a bus pass. Sell your car.

There’s no excuse. Win­ter did­n’t just start today. Even if you’re new to this coun­try, or even this part of this coun­try, you’ve had a few weeks to prac­tice your win­ter dri­ving. The STOP sign was clear­ly marked. The speed lim­it is well below how fast you were going.

Well, I guess I’m done shout­ing into the wind. I hope you learned some­thing from this. If not, I hope I nev­er, in all my life, encounter you again.

Thanks for not killing me, no mat­ter how hard you tried.