Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
A protester pretending to be police officer in riot gear ran into the intersection at Charles St. & Yonge. He was carrying a shield with the word “Polite” on it and wore a visor low over his face to mimic the visors the police wore last week while protecting Toronto’s fair citizens from the G20 Summit.
I celebrated Canada Day by engaging in the highest form of patriotism which, according to Howard Zinn, is dissent.
On Friday June 25, 2010, the day before the G20 Summit, I accompanied my wife to her place of work on the northern limit of the secured zone in Downtown Toronto. I went partly out of concern for her and partly out of curiosity.
We (my wife and I) went down to the planned protests at Queen’s Park. It was moving to witness all the different concerns/causes/stories/sufferings people brought into this public space.
Since my post on Monday, the mood in downtown Toronto has changed. For one thing, it’s empty. The people there are either police officers and security personnel, or they are people like me who have come to gawk. It’s a show. A spectacle. It even has its own posters hung from the street light poles — like Miss Saigon or Legally Blonde.
Culture is not an industry. It is not a sector of the economy. Culture is a condition. It is the social trailings of my solitary consciousness.
Me and my camera spent yesterday wandering around downtown Toronto to see what we could see of preparations for the G20 summit which will be blessing this fair city on the weekend.
When Vince woke up on Saturday morning, he didn’t think much of the fact that the space beside him in the bed was empty. With eyes still shut, he stretched out his left arm and found the pillow cold and the sheets thrown back. Emily was probably up and running errands or digging in the garden or chatting with the neighbours.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. — Arthur C. Clarke I don’t know how things work.Take lava lamps for example:the rise and fall of globuleslike red corpuscles squeezedin a mysterious rhythm.I’m amazed the lava doesn’t meltthrough the glass. The blobsare real lava, aren’t they? Take the financial markets:the rise and fall of shares,the lifeblood…
In yesterday’s post on Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, I asked a question which I never answered: “And can we make anything more of it [the Tropic of Cancer] 75 years after its publication?” That’s a question about Miller’s legacy.
The expat Yank living in Paris in the late 20’s and early 30’s. The oblique references to an American wife named Mona who has sent him off to Paris without a care for his sexual proclivities. The plotless meandering. The indiscriminate drinking and fucking. The largely useless attempts to write a novel.
Graham Swift’s The Light of Day opens with all the promise of a standard detective potboiler. We meet an ex-cop private investigator named George Webb and Rita, his trusted assistant.
Sometimes Jeb takes a notion. Been that way all his life. Don’t matter how hare-brained or loonie-goonie, it’s his notion ‘n’ there ain’t no changing his mind. Well this time he went too far ‘n’ it durned near kilt him.
With Apple’s refusal to approve apps which display even a smidgen of nudity, I got to thinking about what kinds of images would get your app excluded from the sanitized and Disneyfied world of Apple.
After reading Making An Elephant, I’m of the opinion that Graham Swift isn’t really interested in writing; he’s interested in people and writing is the pretext he uses to satisfy that interest.