andreus, andrei gratia

2007-03-28T11:44:00.000-07:00

Convergence!

When I first started blogging I thought it was weird to write on a variety of topics on a single blog. So I very early on started four blogs on four topics: arts, politics, language, and personal goings-on.

As it turns out, I was wrong to do this, as I now have four blogs that I update not-very-often, instead of one robust, oft-updated blog.

To remedy this, I'm going to continue my original blog: dixitque andreus:, and abandon these others. Græcum est was the first to go, and now I'm done with andreus, andrei gratia.

All of the old posts from my defunct blogs have been cut and pasted into dixitque andreus:, so you need only look there.

Enjoy.

2007-03-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Everyone,

Don't worry, it's nothing personal, and thanks for the invitation, but I don't really want to have anything to do with facebook.

love,

-Andrew

2007-02-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

Magnetic Poems

I got a magnetic poetry set a while ago, but I really don't use it that often.

Today, though, I took a few moments, and I thought I'd present you with what I came up with.

So here it is:

blued road

after the rain

mean iron knife

run through wet forest

& legs trudging

mad raw meat

While I'm at it, I'll give you the only other poem I've made with this set of magnetic poetry; I wrote this one the day I unpacked the set:

light could leave

but my love would stare still

robbed of its vision it yet dreams

pictures of him who is recalled

though not gone

here I live you & can not take my I's away

The magnetic poetry set does of course cause you to write poems that all sound like these. I still think it's a fun thing to do while you're waiting for the tea to brew, though.

Hope you enjoyed this snapshot of my refrigerator!

2007-01-28T23:37:00.000-08:00

Winterlicious and East-End Karaoke

Last night I went to the Old Mill Restaurant for a dinner that was part of Winterlicious. Unfortunately, Winterlicious wasn't as licious as one would hope.

The Old Mill Restaurant is part of the Old Mill complex that includes a spa, an inn, a restaurant and extensive nuptual facilities. I have been to this complex twice now: once, last fall for a wedding, and then the second time, yesterday for the meal in question.

The ambiance of the Old Mill Restaurant leaves something to be desired. It may have a bit more Charm and History than the Medieval Faire at Canada's Wonderland, but not by much (the Old Mill was done up in 1973, while the theme park opened in 1981). The décor involves dark wood and stone, and mixes rustic antiques and architectural details with polished woods and red upholstery and rugs. A small statue of Sir John A. MacDonald surveyed us as we ate in a room separated from the entranceway by a glassed-in collection of wines that seem to be there for display only. Think Black Creek Pioneer Village meets Ye Olde (faux-) British Pub meets More Money than Taste.

The idea of Winterlicious is this: Toronto's fancy-schmancy restaurants put together some good meals which, for the duration of this festival, are not too expensive. It's an opportunity for the restaurants to expand their special-occasion customer base, and for the customers (like me!) to try an expensive resaturant without investing a full week's pay in the experience. The number of options on the Winterlicious menus varies from restaurant to restaurant, I think, but the Old Mill's set-up was pretty typical: three choices for each of three courses.

If you ask my husband, he will tell you that I have "food things". What does he mean? He means I'm picky. I won't eat meat (except when I will). I won't eat seafood. But I'm not so hot on vegetables, either. Basically, I live on bread and cheese. Thus, a menu with thirty choices often offers only one or two Andrew-choices. My appetizer and entrée for this meal were essentially decided for me, and then I picked a dessert.

Before we got to the meal, though, we got to the wine. Two less-expensive wines were offered to complement the less-expensive menu, and my husband ordered a bottle of one of them, while someone at the other end of the table ordered the other. I was somewhat surprised when the wine came that the Old Mill still has a ladies-first wine policy. Christopher tasted the wine that we'd chosen, and then the server skipped me and went on to serve two others at the table before returning to offer me some of the wine I was buying, because they were girls. Strange? Definitely. Does this make me want to buy wine from them more often? Definitely not.

The appetizer was a ball of goat's cheese rolled in quinoa, and served with some fruit and a sweet vinaigrette. It was not a bad appetizer at all.

The main, however, disappointed. I had spinach and ricotta tortellone in a roasted tomato sauce. The initial flavour of the sauce was shocking and tasted of cinders - they had stepped past roasted, it seems, and moved on to charred. Throughout the course of the meal the flavour did build on my palate into something more, well, palatable...but I was not impressed.

The dessert involved a brandy snap bowl containing some mango and blueberry ices and about three cubes of melon. The dish was fine, but the perfect, juicy raspberry that garnished the plate was the highlight.

And then we moved on to some crazy karaoke.

It was a friend's birthday, and her boyfriend had stumbled upon a wacky bar in the east end that offers Saturday night karaoke. The bar's called Jimmy's Place, and it's at Gerrard and Woodbine.

The east end of Toronto freaks me out at the best of times. I think it's because there's a whole city on the other side of the Don that is like the Toronto I know, and yet not like the Toronto I know. The east end may be a parallel universe. But that's beside the point.

Jimmy's place is a small terra-cotta coloured space with no décor to speak of. The main room seats about 20 people, plus about 5 at the bar. right up against the front windows is the area in which the karaoke-ers sing, and in a smaller adjoining room there's a pool table.

The song lists at this karaoke place are extensive; that may be its only draw. The women in charge comment on each performance in thick Asian accents, to unwittingly comic effect. And it seems like everyone but us was a regular.

If you want somewhere where the circa-1980-costumed regulars are falling-down-knocking-things-over drunk by 9:30pm, then Jimmy's is the place for you. If you want somewhere where 50-year-olds will dance in the aisles to your rendition of your favourite Radiohead song, then look for Jimmy's. If you want somewhere where it feels like hicksville though it's steps from the subway, Jimmy's is there. If you want somewhere where you might get beat up if you stay too long on account of the fact that you're wearing a tie, run - don't walk - to Jimmy's.

Two places in one evening, each very different from the other. But I don't really want to go back to either.

2007-01-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Trying to Catch Up

1. Today it snowed in Toronto. Snowed for real. There's slush at every corner, and soon my shoes will all be ruined. Hooray for weather (tiddley-pom!). It feels good to have the right weather in the right season.

2. I'm in the middle of a bunch of days-off from work. They were stored-up stat days that I (of course) didn't get the week of Christmas. I feel like things are getting to a certain level of normal now, and this was a little break I really needed.

3. Today, on the internet, I encountered someone's idiot ramblings about fast-food-restaurant employees who didn't speak perfect Californian English. The rambler insisted that they weren't a racist, while at the same time including the following phrase in their rant: "Assimilate into our culture!" I couldn't resist writing a response. Fucking monoglot North Americans!

4. Yesterday I wrote a small something that I'm really happy with. And that's a good thing.

5. I newyearsly resolved to eat 5 servings of fruit a day this year, but the last couple of days I haven't even been close. I'm going to pick it up again when I go back to work on Wednesday, because the work habits are the important ones.... So there.

6. I ordered copies of my marriage certificate online today. There are two kinds of certificate: the normal and the long-form. The Government of Ontario website through which one orders these does not, however, really tell you what the differences between them are. Rather than decide, I ordered one of each. Why not?

...and that's my news.

things you find when you're googling people...

2006-11-08T22:38:00.000-08:00

Who knew that my father's coat-of-arms was on the internet? I googled him and there it was. It's in the Public Register of Arms, Flags and Badges of Canada.

As it turns out, my arms and my brother's are there too (but without the helms and crests). Here's mine:

Here's our badge, and a link to the Canadian Heraldic Authority to round out this post:

PS: Our arms are cited in a wikipedia article (here) because they contain an example of an "exotic line" (exotic by heraldic standards, at least). The repeated blue and white fir-tree lines on the bottom left halves of our shields (they look like rows of pine trees - get it? - wood rows?) are what they're talking about.

Sorry I haven't been writing much...

2006-11-05T23:34:00.000-08:00

...I was busy getting married.

I'm not going to write a whole lot just right now, but when next I write I'm going to cover Christopher and I getting married (which happened on the 28th of October), and then our honeymoon.

Hooray!

I want them all!

2006-09-25T20:23:00.000-07:00

The Threadless tshirts are amazing. I want them all.

http://www.threadless.com/catalog/

Especially "I love movies, long walks...", the Psychadelic Peacock, Happy When it Rains, "Purple is the New Blue and Red", and - of course - The Communist Party.

Honourable mentions to In a Comic and "Vegetarians Are Eating the Rainforest".

I take a men's extra-large, in case anyone's feeling generous.

Toronto > Binbrook > Ottawa > Wakefield > Toronto

2006-08-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

Christopher and I had a four-day whirlwind getaway last week.

We started last Sunday by driving to my parents' new house in Binbrook (which is in Stoney Creek, which is in Hamilton). We got there pretty late, so that night we watched TV for a little while and then went to bed.

The next day Christopher made us a fabulous breakfast of bacon-and-fried-eggs-and-cheese-on-English-muffins (such a fabulous breakfast, in fact, that I demanded he recapitulate it mere days later...). Then we went to two malls, and I bought a suit (blue pinstripes!).

This was followed by a family birthday gathering at my Aunt's house, at which I watched my first ever episode of Canadian Idol.

Waking up the next day, we drove to Ottawa. We checked into the Bostonian, which was reasonably priced and perfectly located (thanks, expedia.ca!). We went out for Thai (the Green Papaya - on Queen, west of Bank St - the curry I had was very different and not bad...I don't like it when I have to pay for steamed rice to go wth my curry, though...do they think anyone is going to eat the curry without rice?) and then headed to the Market to see what we could see. I had a beavertail and then we went to a mediocre bar for a pitcher of cider.

Before we left Toronto, we had seen on the internet that there was a bar called Swizzles in Ottawa that offered, on Tuesdays, two things that Christopher and I enjoy: gaity and karaoke. We weren't sure after dinner whether it was best to try to track down that bar, or to just wander around and look for the fun.

I don't know how many times it will take us to learn this, but there's not that much fun in Ottawa. Even in the Market, which was at least populated (last time we were in Ottawa, there was a night when we couldn't find one inhabited pub on Elgin or Bank...), things were weird and not too exciting. The highlight may have been when two women insisted we go to a certain [straight] strip club (Mink? Minx? I can't remember...) as they pressed flyers into our hands; apparently my boyfriend and I aren't flaming enough to avoid such advances....

Having, after our pitcher, exhausted the charms of the bar we found by just wandering around, we decided that Swizzles would be the best option. We sought the place blindly for a bit and then decided to actually look up the address; cabbing back to Queen St, we found that it was literally underneath the restaurant at which we'd had dinner.

There's something seedy or not-quite-right about Gay Ottawa; it's very different from here in Toronto. Swizzles is a bar with little signage that you would miss if you didn't have the address (we did). The space looks like a rec room that badly needs a reno, and the crowd was (save us) all regulars. We stayed for two drinks and then called it a night. (The one plus of Swizzles: an adorable boy wearing a visor who sang a country song and was the most enthusiastic and happy person there...he was fun to watch.)

The next morning we made a quick trip to a really good (though stodgy) used book store called the Book Bazaar (on Bank St) - I bought a copy of Isherwood's Christopher and His Kind, which apparently tells the story of the conflict between Isherwood's "[rage] against...the heterosexual dictatorship" and "his support of a majority cause, the Popular Front against Fascism" - and then we drove to Wakefield.

We went to stay at a friend-of-a-friend's cottage, on a lake outside of town. Emerging from the car, the smell of not-in-a-city-nor-near-a-highway was overwhelming. We spent that day drinking beer, snacking, and playing board games.

The next day we went into Wakefield (after round two of the bacon-egg-cheese muffins), which is a charming looking town. It's very, very small, and has several bars, some cute shops, a grocery store stocked with good Québécois beer (which I'm drinking as I write this), and a really good bakery. Wakefield also seems to be a bilingual town, which kind of surprised me. Sure, it's only 20 minutes outside Ottawa, but I thought that actual bilingualism was something that was an attribute of larger cities, not small hamlets. I figured, I guess, the smaller the town, the more homogenous the culture. I think I'm wrong.

On the way back from town, we stopped at a little station that has been built around a natural spring, where we filled up our bottles of water. I'm trying to think of how to express why this was delightful, but I'm having trouble.... Anyway, I liked it.

After our trip to Wakefield, we went back to the cottage and took the pontoon boat out onto the lake, wherein we swam.

And thence back to Toronto.

It was a lot for four days, and I didn't get any of the reading or writing done that I'd thought I might, but it was a good time all the same. Going to a new place each day certainly made the time seem longer. And it's good to get out of the City every once in a while.

PS Wakefield has a covered bridge, which we drove through. Hooray!

but Manhattan's Amazinger!

2006-07-14T09:21:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, I took my first trip to the United States in more than a decade. I went to New York City.

I went with my ebullient fiancé, who was there to attend a big comics thingummy. This gave me about three days during which to wander around.

And wander around I did! Manhattan is a wonderful place (who knew?).

Here are some things I did:

1. went to bookstores and bought books

2. stumbled upon three different festivals

3. went to two fantastic shows (Sweeney Todd (with Patti LuPone) and the Threepenny Opera (with Alan Cumming and Cyndi Lauper)).

Here are some things I learned:

1. pizza is better in New York

2. buildings are taller in New York

3. there aren't many bank machines in Manhattan.

I really enjoyed the city, and found it to be very festive. Usually, when I go away, I return with a greater appreciation of Toronto. This time, I returned kinda angry at Toronto. Why are our buildings so short and so new? Why do we eat PizzaPizza?

I think I'd like to go to Manhattan again.

Kensington Market's Amazing!

2006-05-28T22:05:00.000-07:00

I love Kensington.

Today I wandered down there and was delighted to find that the Market was closed to cars for the day. This happens on Sundays in the Summer, it seems, but the effect was so festive that one hopes it'll be extended to every day all the time. And then maybe to some more streets.

The Market was full of people having fun. There was a giant, street-sized Scrabble game going on, and bands playing on every block.

I had been hoping to pick up some Summer shirts (and maybe shorts, too) for me and my boyfriend, but this was not to be. I did, however, find a lovely sailor's hat for only $10.

It was the Season's first legitimately hot day. I was happy to catch just a bit of Sun. I really need to spend more of my days-off in this kind of happy neighbourhood browsing.

Perhaps because it was the first truly hot day (and thus not a day for too much clothing), and perhaps because I don't go to the Market that often (and thus am not used to the crowd), there seemed to be a surprising abundance of very attractive men. (Or maybe I was just horny....) This, of course, contributed greatly to the experience of wandering around Kensington.

The only problem with the festive crowd was that they overfilled the good cheese store, and I couldn't be bothered to wade through everyone.... But there'll be other days for cheese.

Back to the bitchy blog comments....

2006-05-28T00:16:00.000-07:00

Remember this little internet tiff?

I am giving up. Giving up. I cannot spend my time combatting every internet-based bigot that I find. Better that I should spend my time actively not being one of them....

But I still kinda want to have the last word.

What I wanted to write:

You shouldn't confuse being demure, polite, or just nice with an unwillingness to draw some lines. Not-being-a-Gratuitous-Jerk doesn't equal "indifference", "guilt", or "appeasement".

So, since you like to characterize those who disagree with you as those who are softies unwilling to draw lines, I thought I'd let you know where my lines are.

You throw around the following idea as if there are people who'd run shrieking from the suggestion:

"...some cultures are inherently inferior or dangerous compared with Judeo-Christian culture."

I'm sure there are people who'd run shrieking, but I'm not attached to one side of the question or the other (I'm constantly torn between the poles of moral-relativism-is-evil and moral-relativism-is-necessary). I have no problem with both ideas: that everyone is entitled to their ways, and that some practices and beliefs are bad and/or wrong. To be honest, I can see both sides and I'm undecided. I'm attracted intellectually to the laissez-faire, relativist ideal, but at the same time find it competely indefensible (as do - it seems - you).

But I feel that you're perverting Christianity if you're unwilling to take Jesus's example as a template for your own life. (Hello! - Martyrdom - it's a Christian institution for a reason. There's a whole stop-fighting-and-worrying-and-consider-the-lilies thing that runs through the Gospels.) We have vastly different readings of the Bible, it seems. And that's ok by me, and not-ok by me.

Here are my poles of relativism:

NORTH: it's ok if you want to be a "Christian" who is uncharitable and works against his muslim neighbours, but,

SOUTH: that makes your practices and beliefs bad and/or wrong.

And so, I would say that no, I don't have a problem admitting that some foreign practices are inferior to those of the West, and I agree that the West owes a lot to Christian belief and tradition. Heck - you could probably convince me the the West is synonymous with Christian belief and tradition if you tried hard enough (or, rather, well enough).

But the unfriendly, unneighbourly, xenophobic beliefs you've articulated here have nothing to do with the Christendom-that-is-Better-than-Other-Societies.

You're the pot calling the kettle black.

I can see how this might be difficult to swallow, as the self-identified Christians you generally meet are likely to either be a) just as bigoted and crotchety as you, or b) tolerant and welcoming enough that they would rather you feel good about yourself than point out how wrong you are.

Sorry.

Pax vobiscum nobisque.

Please remember that my approach with this guy had been to try to find some sort of level, such that, rather than dismissing 99% of what he writes, I only argue about about 75%. That's why the above has lots more christianity than I'm interested in or practice.

Whew.

I'm glad I got that out.

Start Spreadin' the News....

2006-05-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

So, I haven't been to the United States of America for about a decade because that nation scares me.

But, I'm going to New York City in a couple of weeks.

No turning back now; I've bought theatre tickets....

What changed my mind? I can't ignore the call of New York. I know that eventually I'm going to go there. And going there to see Patti LuPone and Cyndi Lauper in the same weekend made this year ideal.

So I spent all day today on the internet finding out about Manhattan - especially its bookstores. And I'm all excited.

I'm gonna be a part of it....

the next step....

2006-05-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

Does anyone else think that we need a non-gendered title?

I mean, we've got Ms now, which doesn't reveal sexual status like Miss and Mrs did. But shouldn't we have something that doesn't reveal gender at all?

I think that M would be a great option (except that it would be confused with Monsieur). And I don't know how we would pronounce it. Any ideas?

Bitchy Blog Comments

2006-05-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

So, every once in a while I head over to A. Carlton Sallet's blog: Upper Canada Catholic.

The blog is infuriating, and I sometimes find it fun to comment as a contrarian. Like today.

Why do I mention this? Because sometimes having to type out an argument is clarifying. And today I was arguing that it is un-Christian (as if anybody cares what's un-Christian) to stand up for yourself.

A. Carlton Sallet basically argued that the fact that recently in Montréal some Muslim girls got to have swimming lessons on their own (they were uncomfortable with co-ed lessons) points to a coming deluge of "foreign" values overtaking North American culture.

I responded to his comments thus (the first (quoted) paragraph is Sallet's):

"Would you seriously expect to be able to emmigrate to Saudi Arabia or Iran and immediately demand the right to have all those Crescents removed from schools? That the Qu'uran be removed from schools or public prayers by government officials be done away with? That government services be made availabe in your language? Please. Yet - you seek to hold yourselves to a much different standard. Why?"

Isn't Christianity about holding oneself to the highest standard, despite the standards of the community? Didn't Jesus live precisely to show us that, if the standard of the community is to not be accomodating, we should be better, and turn cheeks, and judge not, and cast not the first stones?

Aren't we here to make things better and easier for our neighbours, not harder and worse? Aren't three modest Muslim girls people? Does closing a pool violate Christian doctrines or morality? Or is it just inconvenient?

Even if North America were to be overrun by Islamic culture and religion, isn't the lesson of the Gospels that it is worth being overrun by something as long as you are living the best Christian life you can. Don't you think that Jesus could have riled people up such that they would have rebelled against the Romans? Couldn't he have purged Jerusalem of its ills and set things completely aright?

Why didn't he? Because his message is specifically not about "standing up for" your beliefs - in which case might would make right. It's about living your beliefs. And if might overtakes you, even if might martyrs you, your reward is that you lived a good life - not "the good life", but a Good life.

The Christian values of tolerance and acceptance, as expounded in the Gospels, are worth more than the preservation of an earthly cultural situation. Non?

Can't you show kindness to three souls who ask for it? And then, why not three million, or three billion souls?

So there.

Honestly, I think that everyone needs to get over their gender hangups. It's embarrassing that we still have gendered washrooms, never mind gendered swimming lessons.

But arguing that from the point-of-view of preserving our culture is anger-making.

Finally a Reason to Go

2006-05-08T00:30:00.000-07:00

On my way to catch the GO bus to Hamilton yesterday, Union Station was filled with sports fans. Baseball? Hockey? How would I know. But something that, I'm sure, has been obvious to everyone else all along only just dawned on me as I moved amongst them, clutching my flavoured coffee and my modernist fiction.

Excited, beer-drinking, sports-spectating straight men can be attractive. The station was filled with enthusiastic, festively chubby, goateed and frankly hebetated guys, all heading to the same place.

For the first time, I felt like going to the skydome. The game seemed like something I could get into.

Beer and Chin

2006-03-22T15:16:00.000-08:00

I know it's a bit much when it's big like this, but I really enjoy this photo as my little profile picture thingy.... Chris took this photo at a rather labyrinthine bar in Halifax.

Halifax

2006-03-22T14:37:00.000-08:00

Chris and I went to Halifax this weekend. And had a pretty good time.

The trip seemed to last a long time (in a good way). I feel as though I haven't been to work for a month.

We spent most of our time hanging around doing not much - in the sense that we didn't really do tourist attractions. We overindulged a fair bit: rich food, much booze, too many books. Which is a good kind of vacation.

Some things of note that happened:

1. We went to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, which currently has an exhibit of ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman things. The old stuff was pretty affecting, and I was freaking out a bit over it (Chris asked me about 5 times whether or not I was ok as we wandered through the exhibit).

2. I started work on a poem that I think will be alright. I was interested in writing about Halifax, but I ended up writing about Toronto. I did use a formal, game-like thing to get me started: I wrote out all the words I could think of that contained/were made of the sounds TO, OR, RO, ON, ONT and went from there. At a certain point I set it aside because it was getting long and I was writing in a rather small notebook, so I couldn't really lay the whole thing out in front of me. Hopefully back home with a computer I'll get further.

3. We went to the top of the Citadel walls and got yelled at by a security guard.

4. We had dinner with my brother, who was in Halifax with the Navy.

I enjoy Halifax a lot and am looking forward to going again.

quality of the wallpaper

2006-01-31T23:44:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking a lot about the anecdote that involves Ronald Firbank's wallpaper during his final days. Not sure why.

That and the need to write more. To write some.

And then (and thus) the possibility of writing about Firbank's wallpaper. Which is an object/anecdote that may haunt me just as Wagner's parrot does.

So there.

a personal blog...

2005-11-18T00:10:00.000-08:00

Yes, yet another blog.

I focused my other blogs fairly narrowly, and now I want somewhere that I can write general day-to-day things.

So here we are.