You got TMBG in my Homestar!
New from Reeses. Apparently They Might Be Giants were walking around an corner and bumped into Homestar Runner. Or vice-versa. We’re both huge fans of both, but who was to know that the brothers that do Homestar would do a video for the single Experimental Film from the new TMBG album The Spine? Well, here it is. Faux abstract film, very funny-weird. And, as with almost every song from the brain of John Linnell, incredibly catchy.
His best songs actually alter my reality, in a Philip K Dick kinda way. One moment they don’t exist, the next they were always there, complete and unchangeable.
Back from the Cottage
Just returned from a week at the cottage. This year we had a lot of guests joining us for portions of our stay, and that made it a lot more fun.
The weather was varied…early on it was windy and warm for Ian, Mireille, Vivienne and Charlotte’s stay.
Ian and Vivienne
It later settled into a hazy, humid doldrum. That coincided with the visit of Daniel, Ross, Tom and Michelle though, so we that simply meant setting up a badminton net on the beach (something you can’t do the bulk of the time due to constant northerlies off of Georgian Bay).
Reid, Luisa, Mike and Ronnie dropped by for the afternoon and Tom, Michelle, Daniel and Ross stayed awhile
The only really gray day was Thursday, but a sudden heavy wind meant great kayaking for Jon and I. We didn’t miss a day, but Thursday was the big wave day. Laura went out with the video camera and caught some wonderful images of us, and confirmed for me that Jon was indeed having a good time (well, given my relative position, I’ve never actually seen him smile while I’ve been paddling, have I?)
Check out how the bow dips under in this sequence from the video:
Memories that will stick:
Walking into the cottage to find Jon and Vivienne in a silent, but determined tug-of-war for the satellite remote. Both looked at me, desperately pleading. I kept walking.
Daniel skipping his first stones.
Daniel and Ross badminton skills improving radically, as though to put Tom and I on notice that in a very few short years we will be steamrolled in doubles.
Ross’s thoughts on ice cream sandwiches.
Daniel directing us in the destruction of his sandcastle, which had survived a light thunderstorm the night before and over a day of constant threat of bombardment or impact, since it was on a badminton court. It didn’t even quite succumb to the 50 of so kilos of water we dumped on it.
Jon building his first sandcastles, with patience and intent, ordering me around to get more water for his special sand/mud recipe. He intended to make one and spent well over half an hour building and crushing and building again.
Kayaking in the waves.
Birthday: The Day After
Wow. What can I say guys–I’m speechless–you all did fab stuff! Peter today (a day late) finally showed me the birthday DVD he’d been slaving over for the past umpty-ump weeks; the one everyone’s been sneakily collaborating over–he wanted to present it to me yesterday, all finished with working chapters, etc., but ran into nasty technical difficulties where it wouldn’t render a section properly (a few bugs to be worked out in iMovie and iDVD, I think). And gotta hand it to everyone: I didn’t guess a friggin’ thing! Mostly to Peter’s wily stratagems and superior paranoia (the “Operation Obelisk” emails were sorted into a folder called “bulk”, two folders deep, just in case), but also to my total and habitual obliviousness.
I don’t want to name individuals since I won’t remember everyone (I feel like an Oscar winner)–thank you everyone for a wonderful gift! Y’all got to see it sometime!!
More Politics (this time ours)
I don’t know how Americans can stand their year-long federal elections–ours has only been going on for a few weeks (though I guess in reality it’s been several months now) and I’m already tired of it. I thought at first that it’s because I’ve already made up my mind who I’m voting for, but I suspect that even undecideds are sick of the whole process.
At least I can vote for the guy I want in; my Mom is considering holding her nose and voting strategically to try to prevent a Conservative candidate from getting in (more of a problem in BC than downtown T.O. I expect she’s more determined after the Conservatives’ bilge yesterday about the Liberals and NDP “supporting child pornography”). Yuk. I’m not sure how they’d ever get proportional representation to work, but anything‘s got to be better than this “first past the post” silliness.
Whatta bunch of zeros!
A story in The Guardian talks about an upcoming book published by an anonymous senior intelligence official that condemns the Bush administration’s anti-terrorism policy. What makes this book different from the (many) ones that have preceded it is that the author is still a serving official working in intelligence. Dare we hope that this sort of criticism will keep growing and eventually lead to Bush getting turfed? Personally, I’m not holding my breath–my cynicism about American politics is pretty entrenched–but I’ll be more than happy to eat crow if I’m proven wrong in November!
Here’s another US fun fact, article courtesy of The Nation: During the height of the Cold War (and until the mid 70s) the lock codes for setting off the Minutemen nuclear missles were set to “00000000”–the top military guys didn’t want any sissy, waste-of-time security features to slow things down!) Ai yi yi.
The Visitor from North Vancouver
Sounds like a bad movie title…actually it’s our 11-year old niece Midori, from BC. She was interested in coming out to visit this summer; we said “Sure! A week would be great!” Seems that due to the way the AirMiles worked out, she’s coming for — gulp — 12 days, which is fine, but it’s a lot longer than a week!! (Time to rack the ol’ brains for ways to entertain a preteen…)
She says she’s looking forward to visiting Canada’s Wonderland, which initially puzzled me–she knows about Canada’s Wonderland?–but apparently Wonderland advertises nationwide and so it’s considered a Big Thing for kids across the country (okay, maybe everyone else knows this, but as someone who doesn’t have a kid ride-junkie, I plead ignorance!)