Evil Bat

You know how fall days can be described as 'crisp'? Well, yesterday was very crispy indeed; the air was actually cold though the grass, still wearing its vibrant summer coat, smelled lush and wet and verdantly alive. The maple leaves were just starting to turn their distinctive Canadian red, the sky was that serious, back-to-school blue and I had to stop and check out the rumpus on the playground:



Watching these girls, I had powerful sense memories of trying my own headstands, outside, at school. Of how, despite its sprongy grass cover, the ground is still really really hard on the crown of your head. Of how the downward rushing of blood makes your sinuses ring. Of how that nauseous jar you feel when you overbalance the wrong way and slam onto your back somehow doesn't deter you from trying again because you WILL get up and balance on your head THIS time. Gosh darn it.



Whenever I've walked past this school (which is on the way to Kensington Market) and the main basketball courts are busy, there is always one girl who's either watching a game (hoping to play) or playing (though having to really hustle to get the ball). It's interesting to see the guys' reactions because they (the guys) don't stop these girls from playing (or watching) but they (the girls) aren't part of The Gang. Tolerated isn't the right word because that implies an effort the boys aren't making; it's weird, it's sort of like...okay, you know those pet videos where you see, like, a dog introduced to a deer? And both animals kind of look at each other but there's no animosity or curiosity or even a 'huh, how about that' moment? There's just an 'oh, another mammal' sort of vibe. You know what I mean? It's kind of like that. Also, I really feel for those girls.



I know these pictures aren't great and that is partly because of my amateur skillz but also because I took the pictures while I was trying not to look like I was taking pictures. E.g.: there were some great moments where the three girls were doing handstands at the same time but to get said photos I would've had to quite obviously stare and point the camera at them for a very long time. Which, 1. might make them self-conscious and 2. seemed (and still seems) intrusive and kind of vampirific.

Why is that? I mean, if I took photos of a bunch of adults mucking about I'd still feel like I was being intrusive and kind of vampirific but not as much. Is this because I've been so sensitized to people preying on kids that even turning a curious eye on them feels morally wrong? Like, kids should not be watched except in a protective way? Or is the ubiquity of the personal image (see facebook, twitter et al) making a weird division between personal and private where private means: people don't know what I look like? And if we want to give kids privacy do we keep them out of the camera's gaze?

And what is the difference anyway between me actually stopping to watch these kids with my own eyeballs -- and having the resultant sense memory/reflective states -- and me taking photos of these kids? I'm still having the sense memory/reflective states only the photos let me share more succinctly with another person (you) what was/is in my head and, at the same time, these photos allow me to recall with greater ease this crispy fall day where I stopped to watch kids playing outside. I mean, is the act of watching essentially like taking a picture? Also, also, is this what it's like to be old? Is this what old people do -- watch younger people with a sense of nostalgia for their own lost experiences and/or feelings?

Further on this fuddling moral topic: as I walked up the sidewalk that follows the school's fence, there was an old woman who I initially took for a grandmother telling her grandkid(s) that she loved them but, on further consideration -- i.e., the grimy, overlarge white trainers; black, oversized jacket/pants; large shopping basket covered entirely, but neatly, with black garbage bag; large grey pompadour that currently seems to be the hairstyle of choice amongst street-wandering older ladies -- I realized she was likely homeless and therefore (unfortunately) possibly an addict, and an addict is a person who is more likely than a non-addicted person to engage in morally unacceptable activities in exchange for drugs.

Once I turned off my iPod, I thought her way of yelling, a bit shrilly, across a rather wide expanse of field, was maybe a little strange. I stopped a ways up from her to take some more pictures (but not of her and the kids). I have (as some of you will know) already encountered suspicious characters loitering around playgrounds and so I was ready to expect the worst. Even so. Even so, I could not bring myself to believe that this old woman was actually trying to do something bad to the very little kids who were running, laughing, towards her. And, do you know, when they got to close to the fence I actually looked away, embarrassed, like you do when you see someone crying on the bus (and you don't have the balls to go and ask them if they're okay)? So maybe this woman passed something over the fence to them (i.e., gave them some drugs). Or maybe she just said 'hi' to them because she's a lonely old lady and she was compelled to watch them. Just like I was.

She moved on pretty soon after that and I followed along behind her, away from the school grounds and across the street -- I was going that way anyway -- where she stopped on the corner for a cigarette. And, I thought to myself, what do I do? Ask her what she was doing loitering around school grounds? (Et tu, Brute?) Ask her why she was bothering those kids? Ask her if she worked for a drug dealer? Yeah. Right.

The school corners a park and a community centre that's populated by people who aren't exactly affluent, let's say. Judging by the looks of things, loitering unfortunate types aren't uncommon and maybe (I say hopefully) the kids either don't make judgments on the grown ups around them and/or they just ignore these people who aren't really part of their world. I have to remember, though, that I am not a child, and when faced with unpleasantness I must have the courage to not look away. And what does this say about what is personal and what is private?

So I was totally procrastinating a.k.a. doing some research on the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health site and reading about menstruation in ancient Egypt, as you do, and I thought I'd share some of the highlights (or, rather, low-lights) with you.

But first, here's a picture of ringworm (courtesy the wikipedia):



Anyway, here's a quote from the Museum's page on ancient Egyptian medical papyri:

"Perhaps the text is talking about a vaginal ringworm which may cause an inflammatory skin rash."

Vaginal. Ringworm. Ringworm...of the "vag". I think this proves that fungus is evil (accept when it's good, like on pizza).

Moving on.

According to the "Papyrus Ebers" (written around 1550 BC) if you want to perk up saggy boobs, said boobs "should be covered with menstrual blood and the woman's belly and her thighs covered as well."

Now you know.

My personal favourite, from the Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus (written 1600 BC) goes as follows:

"If you examine a woman suffering in her abdomen, so that the menstrual discharge cannot leave her; and you notice something in the upper part of her vulva: Then you should say: This is a blockage of blood in her womb.

Then you should make for her a laxative for the blood; pine oil, caraway; galena; sweet, aromatic myrrh resin; it should be cooked until a homogeneous consistency is achieved and then her pubic region should be repeatedly rubbed with it. ..."

You would think that 'repeated rubbing of the pubic region' would be just the kind of medicine to make you jump up and say, "Doctor, Doctor, give me the news!"; however:

"...additionally you should administer hyena-ear in oil/fat as follows: After it is rotten you should massage her pelvis region repeatedly with it."

What is the key word in that last sentence? Yes. You are correct. "Rotten." Here is a picture of a dead squirrel:



I just want to point out that you're lucky, photo-wise, because I just couldn't bring myself to get within camera range of the poor road-killed raccoon I saw about a week later. It was really big and I wasn't ready to see so much death because I am a complete wuss like that. So much for my ancient Egyptian medical career.

Speaking of photos, I've been taking snaps of this and that over the past while as I've been out and about. Because most of these photos totally suck I couldn't really figure out what to do with them -- until now...

Voila, the low-light (pun intended) reel of me-wandering-around-with-my-camera-over-the-last-long-while.

Exciting event No. 1: The British Isles Show.

Ms. P. and I went to look at cultured, British-type things like Coronation Street merchandise, Doctor Who merchandise, Benny Hill merchandise, small children in sequined leprechaun outfits performing cabaret-style riverdances with buxom milkmaids, and Prince Harry:


(Sorry for the blurriness, I was afraid to go too close to him.)

We also saw other traditional English things like novelty teapots and mountains of Cadbury's chocolate:



My personal favourite were the inspirational plastic eggs in brass holders. This is a modern take on a tradition that started during the Battle of Hastings when the English King, Harold II, got a rotten egg marked with a hedge-wizard's curse right in the eyeball (and not an arrow, as some historians would claim). He died, the Normans won the day and, as their ultimate prize, England.

Apparently the double-damned sulfurous projectile was actually meant for the Norman King, William the Conquerer, and it was William's idea to hand out eggs with more salutary sayings -- such as: "be ful of leonyn corage lyke mee" and "by goddes bones wal yon cese wepyng and waylyng" -- to the dejected leaders of the trounced English army because he was thoughtful like that. And the English, to show they weren't bothered, embraced the tradition and thus we see today:



Exciting event No. 2: Toronto, Open City.

Every year the city does this 'summer, whee!' thing where Josephine Q. Public can poke around in buildings that would typically be off-limits. Last summer there was kind of churchy theme happening so the intrepid Ms. P. and I ventured out yet again. The highlight of our travels, for me, was the Kiever Synagogue in Kensington Market:



The building has been in the process of ongoing restoration over the years and it is quite beautiful.



What that excellent photo, taken by Robert Burley, doesn't show is how the eyes of the guarding lions are full of holy fire!



How TOTALLY awesome is that? Ms. P. found out the burning leonyn eyeballs are LCD displays so they essentially never waver. Word. Or, should I say, The Word.

Anyway, when we came into the synagogue, it was chock full of people listening to a very charismatic rabbi narrating the history of the building, and explaining a little about the Jewish faith, and otherwise orating in very fine form.

It was so busy, in fact, that we didn't get to sit in the creaky polished pews but on some card chairs set in front of double doors through which a very anxious-looking fellow demanded passage because HE HAD TO GO TO THE BATHROOM.

Ms. P. and I, not wanting to block anyone so clearly desperate for THE BATHROOM, naturally parted our chairs to let him by. A few moments later a harried-looking volunteer came over to ask us if we'd seen a homeless guy who was always trying to sneak in to use the bathroom which he wasn't supposed to do. In the house of the Commandments we thought it best not to lie and were told that it was kind-of-not-good we let him through. But, since the injunction "Thou shall not let anxious homeless men use THE BATHROOM" wasn't actually posted in plain sight, the volunteer wasn't really cranky with us.

Go back to the nice photo of the inside of the synagogue, you see how (in the photo I didn't take) there's a brass square hung with lights sort of hovering above the floor? Well, the rabbi welcomed questions and so I asked "What's the significance of the square?"

The rabbi answered, first of all, that it was a good question (and I felt very chuffed with myself indeed) and then he said that when he was a young man, he and a bunch of his friends were invited to this dinner with an old and venerated rabbi. And all the young folk were super excited to meet this wise rabbi-dude (yes, I'm paraphrasing) and so they go to this house where there's a long table set up for dinner and everyone's sitting around and talking and there's this fantastic spread of wonderful-smelling food and someone's pouring out sweet wine and it's all convivial and so on. Then the old rabbi, without a word, picks up his cup and starts making obscure hand gestures over and into his wine as he's muttering to himself so everyone stops what they're doing to watch him.

When he puts his cup down one of the youngsters asks, "Rabbi, what was the significance of what you did with your wine, was it some kind of special blessing?"

And the rabbi answers, "No, there was a fly in my cup."

Exciting event No. 3: The Martial Arts Expo.

Here are some photos of a martial arts demonstration where Mr. Evil Bat was showing this nice young man the finer points of how to kill other people with samurai swords.



Aside from that one little pocket of old skoolery, the rest of the convention hall was more like this:





Which made me think of this:



And, like the British Show, there were many booths at this event too where you could buy! buy! buy! things like fighting pants and fighting pads and fighting energy drinks and fighting lessons and fighting t-shirts like this:



I think EMS drivers should wear these shirts because you know, if I were bleeding all over the road after a nasty accident, I think I would feel much better knowing that blood was only red sweat. "Boy, it's hot out today!", I'd say.

Maybe it's time to calm down a little with a few pictures from the Royal Ontario Museum (a.k.a. Exciting event No. 4 and 5, because I've been there twice).

Here is a bronze statue, from Northern China, of Buddha in the aspect of Vairocana or, the supreme or primordial Buddha. According to the website I just looked at, "he represents the wisdom of shunyata or 'emptiness'", but according to the plaque in the ROM he is the "Buddha of Light or the supreme manifestation of the Buddha principle". At any rate this representation is awesome and, really and truly, all kidding aside, that statue is very calming to be around.



Here are some ladies who've been using their menstrual blood to good effect:



Actually they are 10th century Surasundari, or Celestial Beauties, from Madhya Pradesh, India. (Because I didn't know what Madhya Pradesh, abbreviated as "MP", was -- a state? a province? -- I looked it up for me AND for you: currently, says the wikipedia, MP is one of the largest states in India. Also known as the 'Heart of India', its capital is Bhopal.)

Apparently, according to the ROM, "Surasundari are auspicious beings who signify devotion and veneration of the God. Poets and artists used metaphors drawn from nature to convey the idealized form -- breasts like cups of nectar, slender arms like lotus stalks, thighs like the trunk of an elephant, and long gazelle-like legs. This physical beauty symbolized spiritual purity, reminding viewers of the beauty of the eternal divine."

Speaking of beauty here's a vision from this year's Pride Parade:



to which you can do your own "poetical rhapsodizing" as you see fist. I mean fit. FIT.

And on that vibrating high note, I shall wrap up Part 1 of my low-light reel. Stay tuned part II...

That doesn't make any sense, does it? Stay linked? Stay RSSed? I see I shall have to work on my Internet metaphors...

I'm starting to go a bit feral. My hair is mangy. Various parts of me that shouldn't be furry, um. Are. I'm also back into an 11pm to 4 am working schedule -- and smoking cigars to help me do this -- so not only am I over-tired and jittery, I also smell like the kind of ashtray you'd find in an oak-paneled library with pictures of ships on the walls and pictures of naked ladies in the desk drawers. I don't think I've spent more than an hour in the sunshine in, like, a month.

And still this draft isn't finished!

Whee!

I decided I needed to take a leetle break. The light today made the winter colours look really, um, wintery. So I took my camera out when I went shopping and now I will inflict the results on you. Happy Belated New Year.

( Suffer, doods. )

Okay, so yesterday? When all the eardrum punishing D.I.Y. was happening? Why didn't I return my very overdue library books and do my Kensington Market shopping then? Why?

Answer: Because I am dumb.

But it was raining yesterday and today it was luverly. See?







See the almost full moon in the last one? Purty.

That is all. Berackenridge.

A haiku, by me.

Random hammering
Mightier than my ear plugs--
Fuck you guys, for real.

You guys, if there were ever a better representation of the -- or perhaps I should say, MY -- artistic process, I haven't seen it:


Minus the world-famous, of course.

I think every kid who grew up in Canada during the '70's probably had the same Sunday TV routine: waiting for "The Beachcombers" to end so that we could watch "The Wonderful World of Disney"...

Particularly when you knew that TWWoD was going to feature cartoons as they always did on holidays, like HALLOWE'EN!

You guys, I can still remember watching the "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and the opening shot to its whole 'cut-for-TV' sequence which shows clouds forming the shape of a hand that closes over the moon.



I can remember going to bed that night and not being able to sleep because -- as I said to my mom as I stood, all wigged out, in the kitchen in my pajamas -- I couldn't get that image out of my head.

(Which is a little weird since, really, it's not that scary compared to, say, a headless man swinging a sabre and holding a flaming pumpkin of death!)



(But then that last image of Ichabod's hat and the shattered pumpkin also scared the bejesus out of me. Perhaps this is why I have such a hard time with plot -- it's all about the ambience, baby.)



Anyways! Since today is Hallowe'en I, on a whim, sent my brother this in an email:

'when ghosts and goblins by the score
ring the bell at your front door
you'd better not be stingy or
your nightmares will come true!'

Because I knew he would TOTALLY get the reference to that particular Hallowe'en WWoD cartoon.

In response, he (being the house expert on animation) sent me links to all the Hallowe'en-y type Disney cartoons we used to watch as kids, both on TV and on VHS collections of Silly Symphonies which, I swear to God, we rented, like, every month for years.

As I was watching them today I decided that you guys REALLY NEED TO SEE THESE because they're such great examples of Disney at it's best: fantastic art (just look at those Sleepy Hollow stills again) and great characters. I mean, "The Mad Doctor" has an image like this:



I seriously don't think you'd see that in a Disney cartoon today and just imagine the kind of Mickey Mouse who would need to save his dog from such nefarious dealings! I bet you can't so just watch them, you guys. I mean, I know, I don't always watch youtube links when I get them either 'cause I'm all 'ah, I'll watch it later' but YOU MUST MAKE THE EFFORT TODAY.

For Hallowe'en!

Massive props to my brother (who does, for the record, a superb impression of the interchange between the "Ma'am" and Mickey in "Haunted House") for the linkage. If you have to be a loser because you, like, have a life then I'd watch "Trick or Treat", "The Mad Doctor" and, obviously, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" because maybe you've never seen it in its entirety?

"Trick or Treat"
"Donald Duck and the Gorilla"
"Duck Pimples"
"Haunted House"
"The Mad Doctor"
"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I know it's been a while since I posted so here's an update before I slip back under the surface:

1. This morning I was looking out of our living room window at the view of the park (soon to be blocked by $2 million lofts) and I couldn't help noticing how the intense blue gaze of the summer sky has gone cooly distant, like it's bored now and isn't even pretending to be interested in our conversation anymore. Jerk.



2. My chicken stock looks milky. In all the times I've made chicken stock it's never been milky-looking. Naturally, I read this opacity as a jolly roger heralding liquid doom of the most toxic nature and was going to give the stock the old heave-ho.

Fortunately -- after a brief half hour consultation -- the interwebs assured me that milky chicken stock is the result of not rinsing the chicken carcass before putting it in the pot. Since I've only used a raw carcass once before -- usually it's the left-over roast chicken bones for us -- I suppose I got lucky the first time. (And I wonder how many ladies can say that?) (Ah, reverse sexism, how hilarious you are.)

While the interwebs didn't actually SAY the stock was fine, flickr (of all places) showed me enough people who make (and take pictures of) their cloudy chicken stock to reassure me that cloudy chicken stock is quite normal.

Yes, you did read that correctly -- people take photos of their stock (but probably not as often as they take stock of their photos).

I suspect people take pictures of all sorts of things you typically don't expect, cloudy chicken stock being one of the more banal -- rather like this post. For the record, I can't yet make myself type in 'booger' as a search term on flicker but I need to have something to look forward to now that summer's moved on.

For those of you still reading, I actually unearthed an unexpected treasure on the chicken stock page, this being a visual "how-to" guide for chicken and sausage gumbo! Yum!

( I forgot to put a cut tag in here with the initial post. Sorry guys! Read more! )

I am trying to get the current draft of my book finished before my Mom arrives on Saturday. For the past week, my most productive time has been from 11pm to 4am so I'm in a very strange state of being just now. (Just now, Evil Bat, you say?)

So I have nothing much to say at the moment (at the moment, Evil Bat, you say?) but this article by Matthew Syed was delightfully salacious -- and topical -- and I thought you guys would get off on it too:

"I am often asked if the Olympic village - the vast restaurant and housing conglomeration that hosts the world's top athletes for the duration of the Games - is the sex-fest it is cracked up to be. My answer is always the same: too right it is."

Read the rest of his Times Online piece "Sex and the Olympic City"...