You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2007.
I was watching The Hour tonight.
(I love George Stroumboulopoulos, he reminds me of my brother- something about his looks and his humor, he’s hilarious)
On the show he had a segment about Face Blindness- a condition that makes it hard for some people to recognize faces. These two universities studying this have got a web site where you can go and take two tests to see how you score.
And for the record, I rock at face recognition- despite having the memory of a goldfish! I mean, perfect scores.
Here’s the web site. Try it for yourself.
Now if only I could remember people’s names as easily!!!
It finally happened. Tonight we were driving down Glenmore Trail heading to church and my grade one son reads a sign that very clearly stands out along the way. He reads “Fr e n ch _ m ai d,”
“Mom- what’s the French Maid…. I wish I could go there. It looks tall. Can people go up to the top?…”
It’s a kind of bar, I answer. He keeps on and on asking if I go there, to which I respond to him that I don’t because it’s a “naughty” place.
Then he and my kindergartner try to decipher what I mean by that. My kindergartner thinks that they must charge too much money for bad food. That would be naughty. My grade oner’s wheels are turning and I’m nervous they’ll turn a tick too far.
So I explain that it’s a place where people go to watch girls dance around in their bathing suits. They laugh in their hands and agree that that sounds silly. We chat a bit about what they think about that…
Great.
I like Row Houses.
As I’m using this hour to procrastinate I was just thinking about this in reference to what we’d like to see in a co-housing community.
I wrote about this earlier in a post called Welcome to Our Commune.
But the idea is to live in a community of about 12-32 families on a property and have a large multi-purpose common house in the center with guest suites and library and office space… so that your own personal dwelling can be more minimalist. And I’ve been dreaming about what style I like for it all. It’s all just dreaming. But I love to dream.
I like the idea of a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired design for the common house. In particular his Usonian stuff.
And for the personal residences I’m toying with different styles but I’ve always loved how New Orleans and Paris have these Row Houses along a street with little alleys leading into inner courtyards. My first ever memory of noticing buildings around me was wondering around in these places when I was little. (Another one was wondering around the graveyards and wishing I could live in a mausoleum- like my own little playhouse.)
Anyway- I’m going to love day-dreaming on this for a while.
My hope is for a design that is both eclectic and simple. Something that marries the best of what has worked well in the past with the classic simplicity that will modernize the look while keeping costs low.
I’m currently reading Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale by Frederick Buechner.
It’s heady stuff but HIGHLY recommended.
Well, it’s not that it’s heady, really. But it’s a high-maintenance read. He writes like a cinematographer who runs together this imagery one after another. After a while I forget what he’s describing. It’s great though. It’s almost poetry. You just have to read it with your brain on.
I’ll give you an example. I had to go back and reread to realize that here he’s describing truth as being more present in silence than in words. Because truth just IS:
Picture that then, the video without the audio, the news with, for the moment, no words to explain it or explain it away, no words to cushion or sharpen the shock of it, no definition given to dispose of it such as a fire, a battle, a strike, a treaty, a beauty, an accident. Just the thing itself, life itself, or as much of it as the screen can hold, flickering away in the dark of the room. A man is making a speech outside on a flight of stone steps with one fist going up and down, his lips moving, a single wisp of hair lifted up by the breeze like a feather, and there is a crowd watching him or not watching him as the spirit moves them or fails to move them. They are black and white, men and women, and even some of the ones who are watching him seem to have their eyes turned inward as though they are watching something else inside, listening to some other voice. Somewhere else jerry-built houses lie in run, and a fat woman in a Mother Hubbard stands in what was once a doorway with a cat in her arms, behind her a man in a T-shirt with a caved-in mouth. A beautiful young woman in a long dress sits down at a piano and a pair of blacks carrying a body on a stretcher between them hotfoot it down a city street in a running crouch while from high windows snipers’ bullets fly out silent as a dream. A great ship cuts through the water with many flags. A whole mountainside is awash with flame. A girl in a picture hat raises a pair of binoculars to her eyes.
And as neat all the imagery sounds and is… sometimes they run one into the other and I need to stop and ask myself what the heck he’s talking about now?
But I’m still just starting the book. I think I’ll come to really love and appreciate his style once I’m more used to it.
And that’s the Truth!
Have you discovered www.derrickcomedy.com yet??
Just a warning, it’s a little dark and twisty (ie. cursing and socially inappropriate). What does that say about me that I find the BRO RAPE/Jerry/Progression of a Mad Hatter/Girls are not to be trusted/Keyboard Kid videos so funny??
I sent my brother the BRO RAPE video (spoofing investigative TV journalism). He’s such a bro. I bet he’s still laughing and emailing it around to his Pocker Night bros.
Anyway, great acting.
I just read an amazing article. I feel like this kind of talk within the mainstream North-American Christian circles is SO LONG OVERDUE. So much so that I’m embarrassed by most people who associate themselves with the same Christ that I do.
It’s about the church’s acceptance of homosexuals.
Please read it for yourself. I back up Peg Campolo on this with a loud AMEN SISTER!!! and 5 Hallelujahs out of 5.
Good information.
Uh oh. I’m almost down to posting once a month now!
Sometimes I’m an excellent multi-tasker. But other times I just wish that life would stop so I could narrow down on just one or two things for a while. I just want to like nest for a bit- get my house in order- and then jump back into life.
Also I’ve got some serious paperwork coming up that I’m dreading already and just want to escape from it.
And then all the grown-ups in my household got a stomach flu. Based on the fact that the kids didn’t get it and other things gleened from the internet I’m thinking it’s the Norowalk virus. So that’s been fun.
On the brighter side. We had a great New Year’s Eve with just a handful of friends over playing games and drinking a bit of champagne.
And the kids think that holidays are awesome because they’ve gotten to play so much Legend of Zelda on the Wii. Except when I make them take a break to jog around the yard or to read a book to me. But they are taking a fasting day off of Zelda today and we had a great time at the park.
So far, a fair start of a new year!
Bring it on.
