Hanging out with Tiger

The oldish apartment block I live in is owned by China Petrol (中国石油). These are some of the guards that work at the front gate. The guy on the left is "Tiger", who's my best friend of the bunch. His name is Wei Dong Hu, and the Hu means tiger, hence the English name. All the guys pictured actually live in the apartment block too, so I see them when they're off work, too. Anytime I come home after midnight I have to pound on the gate and wake up whoever's on duty to let me in. I know these are just bullet points in paragraph form, but I haven't been posting much, so I'm trying to be more pragmatic and less artistic about informing you all of this kind of stuff (those of you who care, needless to say). About a six weeks ago Tiger and his girlfriend (pictured) took me out on his day off to visit some Christian churches in Chengdu. They're atheist, but Tiger had asked me about my religion and suggested that we go look at these places, just for an activity to do together. We visited the Catholic Diocese and a Protestant church, as well as the YMCA on ChunXi road, where Tiger asked the guy if Christians were vegetetarian. He knows I am and it kind of baffles him, so he asked, and the guy told him no, they aren't. I begged to differ. It's difficult to get across the notion of differences in beliefs under the same religious umbrella. Wow, this post was easily under my 300-word limit. Here are some pictures. As always, go to Flickr for the others. Next post will be another home movie. Love love love,
Matthew

My Kitchen, Part 1: Dinner Party Prep

For those of you who want to know what my kitchen setup is like, this is the preparatory process for a dinner party I had in October, at my apartment, in Chengdu. There will be subsequent kitchen-related posts, but don't think for a minute that this is turning into a food blog (my pictures aren't nice and up-close and shallow-focused enough for that).

Yes I Can! (song)

Another in my series of original kids' songs, written mostly out of necessity for a job I have teaching kids ESL on Saturday mornings. But also because I like kids' songs.

Though this video was recorded at about 3:30 am after I had been struggling to finish a translation contract under deadline, it still, you'll notice, is my first ever kids' song video to feature a cut. That CEGEP film training is starting to pay off! Yes!

Trip to Linxia (video)

Here's a video of the trip to Linxia I took during Ramadan. I did a voice-over to help you figure things out. If you're on Facebook, cut that foolishness out. Facebook doesn't import the videos. If you're on my blog for realz, then enjoy.

People in my School (song)

Another original kids' song to use in my Saturday class. Actually, I took some of the words from their textbook, but as you'll see, that's not exactly the greatest literary crime ever perpetrated.
(For the greatest literary crime ever perpetrated, see "The Eyre Affair" by Jasper FForde. Yes, that's a recommendation.

If you're seeing this in Facebook, the video won't appear. So just click on "view original post" or go find it in my Facebook videos (if you have the video application. Geez, the Internet is complicated.)

My Pencil Case (song)

This is another in what can now be considered a string of kids' songs I've been writing to teach to some very young Chinese ESL students. I explain the rest in the video. Rock and roll.

If you're seeing this on Facebook, the video won't appear. Fortunately, you can just go to my Facebook videos and find it there, or click here on the "view original post" link.

The Months of the Year (song)

A new kids' song I wrote just tonight, to be used tomorrow morning. I'm ashamed because I say in the video "In order so that..." I'm sorry, bad English makes me cringe too, but I was in front of the camera and not thinking. Forgive me. Also, I should admit to some plagiarism: most of the words to this song were in fact lifted directly from... the calendar. Just thought I'd get that out in the open before we begin.

A Matthew Original: I Love my Family

This is a song I wrote last night, because I needed a simple family song to teach my class on Saturday. It's a side project to my full-time business English gig - teaching songs to young children at a start up Saturday school every weekend. It's only two hours, and it's a disproportionate amount of work to write a new song every week, but it gets me writing, even if it's not the most moving songcraft you've ever x-perienced. Enjoy, or don't. Also: love your family. I'm kind of getting into filial piety now that I'm living in China (just kidding mom, I still can't come home for Christmas).

My Chengdu Apartment episode 1: Laundry Night

Yes, it's Friday night and given a lack of VIP invites to fancy clubs coupled with a dearth of clean socks, it's laundry night. Pictured is my bathroom /laundry room. Although the laundry system really just consists of those two buckets, so I suppose could do laundry in bed if I felt like it. Luxurious, I know. For those of you wondering, yes, this is one of those bathrooms that has a squat toilet and a shower head all in the same tiled room. I like it like that. It's easy to clean. And I can splash around when I do laundry. I took this picture myself, by the way. I do have some friends here in Chengdu, but none of them are close enough that they'd be washing laundry with me on a Friday night, so I'm being domestic on my own.

Also, did I say the next post would be about Islam? Well, it got pre-empted by laundry night. Islam comes next.

The Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture

So 6 days in Gansu were fascinating and trying. Communication was difficult with Rehsalati as my "in" to the family we stayed with, since they had a habit of speaking only to her (in Gansu dialect, no less) and she had a habit of not translating. Not that she could be expected to all the time, but I prefer to jump communication hurdles on my own, especially when the only person able to help is feeling disobliging.
My best times were when I was alone with members of the family, since that's when I could actually learn things, speak and be spoken to. The family lived in Linxia (临夏) capital of the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, and a major centre of Islamic culture in China. It's populated primarily by Hui people, although there were also Dongxian, some Tibetans, and of course, the ever-present Han.
We visited the newly-opened Islamic boarding kindergarten, which Reshalati's little friend Abdullah attends. It's a trilingual school, run in Chinese, Arabic and English in that order. I got to sit in a little while on the kids' Arabic conversation and Qu'ran recitation classes. Rather a lot of people in Linxia speak Arabic as a second language, and a lot of the schools focus on it, for obvious reasons. The same day we visited the Linxia Institute of Islamic Studies, in the centre of town. We were brought around by a friend of the family (also Hui) who was staying with them as he was back on holiday from his job as an Arabic-Chinese translator for a Chinese company in Kuwait. I have to imagine that that's really a pretty good gig, espescially if you're from Gansu, which is by all accounts one of the poorest and least developed provinces in the country.

Our host's family (some personal friends of Reshalati's) consisted of a husband and wife in their 50s, their two daughters and their husbands, and one cute grandson, named Nouhar (you'll notice his name is Arabic, not Chinese). There was also a girl of maybe 12, who was some distant and less fortunate relation of the family, who they had taken in and promised to do what they could to marry her off, in exchange for her... well, she was a servant, there's no other way to put it. Even after dinner, when the rest of the family had taken off their shoes and were sitting and lounging up on the carpeted platform that served as dining room, living room and communal bed, she would return after having washed all the dishes and still be confined to stand over by the door, in case anyone wanted her to fetch anything. So, a young Cinderella, seemingly, although, I suspect that all parties concerned consider her lot happy if it ends up getting her "married off" to a respectable Muslim there in town. I was probably the least comfortable of everyone with the seeming inequity of the arrangement, although, as is often the case, maybe I should just get over myself. I don't mind people working hard for their keep, I just didn't like how no one seemed to look at her much. Thoughts? Bleeding heart liberal?

Next post will be specifically about Islam. I have a lot to say about these 6 days, it seems. Today's song, though, is unrelated to the Hui people, Islam, or China. It's another song by current favourite Harry and the Potters. The sound isn't the greatest, but if I worried about that too much, I'd never get any songs up on here at all. So, "Save Ginny Weasly":



Save Ginny Weasley - on ODEO

Quick update from Gansu

Reshalati is pacing angrily as I write this, insisting a little too vehemently that there's nothing wrong and I can take as long as I want. Sooo, since she is my escort, if not technically my host, I'd better just throw some photos at you and give you the full story when I get back to Chengdu on Saturday.

Love,
Matthew

Going to Gansu for the National Holiday

Reports of daily life at home in Chengdu will follow people, I promise, but for now, it's the 0ne-week National holiday, and so I'm leaving for Gansu province for 6 days. I'll send an update from there too, of course.

FYI # 1 before I explain further: I've been fasting for Ramadan. For the religiously challenged, yes, it's currently Ramadan. I'm not Muslim, but I've done Ramadan before and I like it, and it's a good opportunity for me to study the Qur'an and pray and learn about Allah. So there you go. Fasting entails no food or drink between sunup and sundown, for one month. Generally Muslims will have a large meal together (iftar) after sundown, but since I have few Muslim friends here, I've been breaking the fast alone most days, so it's been a pretty lonely Ramadan so far.

Lanzhou (兰州) the capital of Gansu (甘肃) is 22 or 23 hours away by train. I'm going with Reshalati, my Uyghur friend (above) to see her patroness' 5-year old son, who attends the only Islamic elementary boarding school in China. Kind of a complicated story. But we'll be trespassing on the hospitality of all sorts of friends of the aforementioned rich Muslim lady, which may very well be awkward, but will at least be nice in that I'll have people with whom to break the fast. Most people are Muslim up in Gansu. Hui, which is the category made for Chinese Muslims who don't fall into any specific ethnic minority. Reshalati is Uyghur, for instance, which is an ethnic minority group that is almost 100% Muslim, speaks Uyghur, not Chinese, and look very different from "Chinese". This woman and most people in Gansu are Hui, which means they speak Chinese, look Han, they're fairly "normal Chinese" ethnically, they're just Muslim.

What else we'll do up there is actually at this point a mystery to me. I have the feeling we'll be more or less at the mercy of our hosts. It should be interesting, and I'll let you know how it's going.

Back to Chengdu, the City of your Dreams

I went back to China. I did it right after family camp. Just 3 days back in Montreal with Laura, sandwiched between the Maine woods and a road trip 7 hours down to JFK airport in NYC.

And now I'm here. Back in Chengdu, alone again (naturally). And I'm not blogging about it because it's amazing. China's not more amazing than Montreal. Or less. I'm blogging about it because I have more time to write here, and because you jokers (and I do love you) tend to read about what I'm doing with more interest if it's "abroad". So here you are; I'm about as abroad as it gets without lipstick (and that could be arranged).

Chengdu is still spicy and lovely, the way I left it. It's cloudy too, as usual, and it's a testimony to its pleasures that that doesn't really bother me all that much. There are more skyscrapers, more cars and more foreigners than (oh so far back) in 2005. But most importantly, everyone still speaks Chinese, which is overwhelmingly the most important reason I'm here. You'll hear here about what I'm up to, and you'll hear new songs and see new pictures, but you won't get much musing about modern China, Beijing 2008, human rights or the intersection of Confucian and Daoist values with waning levels of political indoctrination, rising numbers of middle class citizens, etc, etc, barf. Barf. Barf. At least, I hope you won't. I'm here to learn about China by learning Chinese, not to pretend I know anything about things about which I know nothing.

That said, I don't want to come off like I think politics aren't (a) interesting or (b) essential to keep abreast of. I'm just not going to talk about them. Sadly, working, eating and sitting on the couch in China doesn't make most people less racist, or more politically or culturally savvy than working, eating and sitting on the couch in Montreal. Me included. So really, wouldn't you rather just hear about what I'm doing this weekend? Well you're in luck! That's what you're getting.

Love, love, blog readers and news needers. I'll try to write a lot. Not a lot, actually, just a little, often.

Here's Nate Frederick, a good friend and a bearded rainbow, riffing about Chengdu down at family camp.

Fast Times at Family Camp

Family Camp in Maine was the bomb. What bomb? The proverbial bomb. My brother Benjamin showed up at my window in Montreal August 10th and he and I hopped a night bus down to Boston. At 6 in the morning we called the camp directors and found out they were driving up from Boston that morning, so they picked us up as we were playing guitar outside South Station.
Laura was there, Cam was there, Evan, Lizzie, Nate and Molly were there. Marinne too, which was nice because she's one of the best people to play Wicked Words with on intellectual late nights in the dining hall. Evan, Lizzie and I also had the pleasure of taking Jordan (from L.A.) on her first canoe ride ever, which was probably more exciting because it was a crowded nighttime stealth canoe ride over to the Owatonna beach to surprise the others and play Essence around a campfire.

Now to the chase: Everybody coupled up this summer. No joke. From the 16-year-olds to the old camp veterans, you'd have thought it was springtime in Bambi they way everybody got all twitterpated. So a lot of PDA and gossiping. Result: mild scandal and total hilarity. Good times.

The bun run (everybody canoes 2 miles down the lake at 6 am down to eat sticky buns) had a Harry Potter theme this year, which was perfect because I'd been getting into the band Harry and the Potters, and was waiting with bated breath to read the 7th book. Benjamin and I played the Weasly twins. Here are pictures of all of it, the bun run and camp fun, plus a song from the aforementioned wizard rockers. And all you HP haters, incidentally, can eat it. That large, proverbial, it.

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Abitibi - Témiscamingue

Abitibi-Témiscamingue is both the great white north and the wild west of Quebec, immortalized in Raoul Duguay's kicking "La Bitt à Tibi" among other places. It's full of trees and lakes and moose and bears and gold mines, mostly. Used to be part of the Northwest Territories until it was annexed to Quebec.
Laura had been pining for Abitibi since she read about it in "Mon Beau Far-Ouest" and so at the end of July we rented a car and made the trek up.

Highlights:

-Val d'or, mining town extraordinaire. We stayed at a bed and breakfast and saw Debbie Woo from high school, who is now a surgeon and stationed all the way up there.
-Refuge Pageau, where we saw bears, lynx, owls, moose, wolves, foxes, deer and raccoons.
-The cool and clear water of Amos, reputed to be the cleanest in all Quebec. And it comes right out of the tap for free. Our first taste of it was alongside succulent poutine and guédilles at the local Valentine.

We spent two days at the Parc national d'Aiguebelle, east of Amos. The highlight was taking a canoe trip and watching a mink fish off an island for half an hour. This was an intense mink. It caught a fish bigger than its head, I kid you not. Mink swim with their heads out of the water and their butts splash a little when they dive, but they catch fish like gangbusters. They're also the most prized fur-bearing animal in Canada (don't wear fur).
On the way out of Abitibi we had breakfast in Rouyn-Noranda, Canada's national copper capital, and drove around the city a bit. After an 11-hour day of mostly driving, we made it back to sunny Montreal as the sun was setting, with only time enough to be sad that we'd be both leaving it a week later.

Pictures!

Abitibi is great, Montreal is great, Amos is very cool, we saw two bears in the wild. Admit that that's pretty awesome, no? Awesome enough that I went over my 300-word limit. Cut me some slack, I'm out of practice. A Québec song for you all today. Enjoy.

Vraiment Beau (powered by ODEO)

End of the summer

It's almost the end of the summer for me in Montreal. It's only the beginning of August, but I'm spending the 12th to the 26th in Maine, USA, and then flying out of New York back to the promised land of Chengdu, China on August 28th. And, just like Bruce Springsteen, I believe in the promised land. I'll send news.

Fire Number Two

There was another fire on my very tightly-packed block last night, and this time I did get a little worried about losing all my cherished material possessions, since it raged on for several hours despite the large number of fire trucks and fighters working on the problem. Here's a very short blog post about it from one of Montreal's culture blogs. You don't need to read it, but there's a picture if you like that sort of thing, and the title is fun: "The Most Flammable Block in Town". Long story short, my apartment wasn't touched. A bar and a bistro were gutted, and the fire started in , of all places, a natural cosmetics shop. No one was hurt. Actually, that's a much better summary than the other blog, so don't bother going.

Love to my peeps (marshmallow and meat)
Mathieu

Highschool Reunion - CCHS

I graduated from Chambly County High School in 1997. 10 years on, I'm more educated, more confident, less misogynistic and less homophobic... not much taller, though. Or much richer, for that matter. But I'm paying the bills and still eating out, so who could complain? Anyway, it was about time for a 10-year class of 1997 reunion, so we had one just three weeks ago, on June 2nd. It was held at Kapetan's in Saint Lambert, a restaurant many of my classmates have fond memories of because apparently they were pretty lax about the drinking age regulations there back in the day.

High school was a fun, fun, time. Like everyone, I had so much more angst, self-consciousness and emotional drama then than now, I would have liked to be a few steps higher on the coolness pyramid, and I know some people had legitimately terrible times, but still I think your average 20-something is willfully misremembering if they claim it wasn't fun for them.

On the topic of high school drama, here's today's song. (If you're reading this on Facebook, you have to actually go to the blog to hear it.) It's by Billy Bragg, and if it doesn't remind you at least a little of high school, then... well, that's fine. But it says a lot about high school to me.


The Saturday Boy (powered by ODEO)

Nessun Dorma

I'm like a giddy teenybopper over Paul Potts. I just searched the internet for 45 minutes reading everything I could find on him. He's going on to the finals of Britain's Got Talent this Sunday. I'm starstruck, for real. The aria he sang is Nessun Dorma, from Puccini's Turandot. Dig it.

The Prince
Nessun dorma, nessun dorma ... Tu pure, o Principessa, Nella tua fredda stanza, Guardi le stelle Che tremano d'amore E di speranza.	No one sleeps, no one sleeps... Even you, o Princess, In your cold room, Watch the stars, That tremble with love And with hope.
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me, Il nome mio nessun saprà, no, no, Sulla tua bocca lo dirò Quando la luce splenderà, Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio Che ti fa mia.	But my secret is hidden within me; My name no one shall know, no, no, On your mouth I will speak it / kiss you When the light shines, And my kiss will dissolve the silence That makes you mine.
Chorus
Il nome suo nessun saprà E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir.	No one will know his name And we must, alas, die.
The Prince
Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò!	Vanish, o night! Set, stars! At daybreak, I shall conquer!

Memorial Day Camp Weekend

Last weekend was "Memorial Day" in the U.S., which in theory is like Canada's Remembrance Day, except instead of solemn remembrance of the horrors of war and the sacrifice of compatriots... they have a three-day weekend and get drunk around the barbecue. I'm not even kidding. Be that as it may, I wore my poppy last November, so last weekend Laura and I headed down to summer camp in Maine, for Newfound/Owatonna's Memorial day cleanup weekend. (Here's the Flickr album.) We rented a car and made a road trip out of it, complete with stops for milkshakes and onion rings at Colebrook, NH's Wilderness Restaurant, and North Waterford, ME's Tut's a.k.a Melby's. I spent a good part of the weekend feeding brush and logs into a wood chipper with former camper Ricky Stein, John Sparkman, and Owatonna's new director Brandon Frank. It was very very woodsy, I assure you. We also played some Scrabble, rode in Pete's pickup, and put the docks in down at the boathouse, which meant going for more than one dunk in the just-swimmable waters of Long Lake. It wasn't that bad, really, you just wouldn't want to hang out in there all afternoon. And how could I spend a weekend at camp, and not go in at least once? (Unless it was this weekend.) I won't work the regular session at camp this year, although I was very tempted to change my mind this weekend, but I'll be down there again in just 2 1/2 short months for family camp, as always. I'm pretty much counting the days already.
Today's song is Outside of a Small Circle of Friends, by Phil Ochs. Tonight's evening activity is my 10-year high school reunion in Saint Lambert. Party on.
Outside a Small Circle of Friends (powered by ODEO)

Opening Day at LaRonde

Right, so last autumn Benjamin, Laura, Denyse, Gabriel and I went to LaRonde, Montreal's amusement park on an island. That visit reminded me of something I had forgotten about 10 years earlier: roller coasters are totally awesome. And so I made a vow that come spring, I would go all out and buy the season's pass. Spring has come, and so last week (May 19th) I went all out and bought the season's pass. So did Laura. We took it easy on opening day, did a new apple-shaped spinny tower in the kid's land, the obligatory Monster run, and the swing carousel "Tour de Ville" pictured above, which is Laura's new favourite ride. then we had to wait in line for an hour to actually get our photos taken for the season's pass cards. I'm so happy with our decision, though. When you think about it, one ticket to Montreal's Cirque du Soleil is about 100$. One ticket. Lame. An entire season at LaRonde is 90. Really, there's no competition. Plus, the Cirque has become the establishment now, with all their Las Vegas shows and stuff. They've lost track of their Baie Saint-Paul roots. The new cool in circuses is the Tohu, all the way.

In closure, today's song is a quiet one, but it has the word "ride" in it, which is the closest it's going to get to being à propos. Morningtown Ride, by the incomparable Malvina Reynolds.

Morningtown Ride (powered by ODEO)
中国人, click 这里。

3 Exciting Things + Ben plays Daniel Johnston

Exciting things happening tonight. Not necessarily good, but exciting. In ascending order:

• André Boisclair resigned as the leader of the Parti Québécois
• They've (probably) found King Herod's tomb in the West Bank
• It's warm enough to wear a T-shirt at night!

I just can't get over that last one. No matter how many times spring happens, it never stops making me feel ebullient. As for King Herod's tomb, that's really cool, although granted, they discovered it in a place called Herodium. So, uh, not exactly the last place you'd think to look. As for Boisclair.. meh, politics. But it's still big news.
I sat out in Parc Lafontaine tonight and played songs on the little skylark guitar that Benjamin left me when he was down in Montreal this weekend. We saw Daniel Johnston together (May 5, Sala Rossa) and Ben got to go backstage and give him his The Fox and the Hound CD, which has two Daniel Johnston covers on it. Thanks go to Brian Seeger for that connection, since he was the opening act and also happens to be a fraquaintance of mine from Indigo (tha bookstore). (I'd call him a friend, but I don't think I've really yet logged the conversation time required to justify that.) So Brian got Ben backstage, and for any of you wondering how it went, you can ask him. For any of you wondering how a Ben Vaughan cover of Daniel Johnston sounds, you can go here and listen to Walking the Cow. For any of you who don't yet know what a me cover of DJ sounds like, check the audio player in the sidebar (but be advised, Ben's versions sound nicer).

The Guns of Brixton

I totally just kicked in a door. I'm not kidding. It was my own, actually. The bolt was caught and so I couldn't open it with my key. I jiggled it around for 15-20 minutes and finally got to door-stomping. The third kick did it, for you stats fanatics out there. Not one of my neighbors peeked out to see what the noise was all about, which is a little worrisome, really.

In other news, I'm cooking Kraft dinner and adding plum sauce and hot pickled vegetables to it.

Marie, Reine du Monde

My guitars (the big one and the little bitty one) are going through some hard times. Fortunately my brother Benjamin might be coming in to Montreal from Ottawa this weekend, so I'll try to get him to give me his expert advice on how to make them sound nicer. For the time being though, they can still play, so I recorded a new song tonight. It's by Townes Van Zandt, a country singer of some considerable street cred, I understand. Douglas in Chengdu got me into him. The song is Pancho and Lefty, and it's a cinematic western about a bandit who "wore his guns outside his pants, for all the honest world to feel". Woah.

Pancho and Lefty (powered by ODEO)
Last weekend Laura's (twin) sister Sabrina came to town from Brooklyn, we ate at Juliette et Chocolat, my favourite place in Montreal for melted chocolate in a mug. Also last week I was exploring a lot, and took a lot of pictures of Carré Saint Louis and the Basilique Cathédrale Marie Reine du Monde, among other places. Mary being queen of the world isn't something I knew about Catholic theology until I went to Mexico and learned about that sort of thing. It's interesting. Spring is coming to Montreal and it looks like so is Katie, a friend of my brother's I've never met, but who might be tapping on my window sometime this weekend. Must clear the floor and get out the air mattress. Love to you peoples,
Matthew

Snow, Circus, Company

Last week 3 important things happened.
Laura's parents came up from D.C. to visit her
It snowed. A LOT.
I went to the circus.

On Thursday evening I met Laura and her parents at Shambala, a Tibetan restaurant on Saint Denis. I had been up all night the night before, and so I had just woken up from a nap when I got there, which made it hard to be witty and urbane, but I tried to pull it together. Then Friday they took Laura out for fancy-pants ($) food, so I went to the circus with Francie, from Indigo, which was, all in all, incredible. This coincided with a few feet of snow being dumped on the city, so I was already jumping and rolling all over the place in powdery white, and the ants in my pants only multiplied after the circus, which was a Belgian acrobat troupe. Highly inspirational. I want to be a Belgian acrobat. Riding the metro home, Francie and I got out at Mont Royal, and were amazed to find a mountain of plowed snow in the middle of the plaza, and next to it, a huge, fallen, plastic election poster, which we then used for a toboggan and went sledding on the snow pile. Sledding on top of a Liberal Party election poster on a snowy Friday night, after going to the circus. Honestly, it doesn't get much more inspirational than that. We topped it off with noodles at Parfums d'asie on Saint Laurent (3475 St-Laurent), and called it a night. A snowy, fun night.
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Music today is from Bob Dylan, played by me, as always. It's "You're gonna make me lonesome when you go".

New Music. Beaver Lake. Giddyup.

Winter has been good so far. Quick weather recap: January - ominously warm, February - freakin cold. Today I went out to Beaver Lake with Laura, which is just on the north side of Mount Royal in Montreal. Skiers were skiing, skaters skating, and sledders sledding. We didn't have sleds and didn't want to shell out 8$ for a tube, so we're going to pick up some crazy carpets at the dollar store tomorrow and go tobogganing on a Monday afternoon when no one's around.



In music news, two new songs today! Your own Worst Enemy is a favourite by They Might be Giants, and Casper the Friendly Ghost is a kicker by Daniel Johnston. I'm out of my blogging funk because I've ditched the frozen site Caspost.com and switched to Odeo.com, where I've put up all the songs that ever were on dumb ol' Castpost, plus 3 new ones, plus (and pay attention to this part) they're all downloadable! So head on over there and check it out, because the player on my sidebar is really cute, but it only shows the last 20 songs, and there are already 30 available on Odeo. More to come, I'll let you know. (Yabba-dabba do.)

Fire on Duluth

Manifestation Montréal 2007

On New Year's eve I got together out in Saint Hubert with Julie, a friend who's been living in Belgium for going on 2 years now. She was back for the holidays and so I taxied over to her place at the last minute. The taxi driver didn't know the south shore of Montreal very well, though, so he and I had to stop on the side of the highway at 10 minutes to midnight and get out the road map to try to find our way. Finally, I got there at 12 exactly, just in time to pour myself some punch and clink glasses all around. The party wound down around 3am, and I was put up on the floor for the night, along with a few others who were stranded without the metro. The next morning, we were treated to a feast of waffles and fruit, and played some Cranium (Quebec edition) before heading home. As I left, Julie and her friend Laurence invited me to join them the next day for some shenanigans downtown. The idea was to stage a protest with no real specific raison d'être. It was more hilarious than that sounds, I promise. January second found the three of us on rue Sainte-Catherine with picket signs of various ambiguous sentiments, such as
-Pas contents! (Unhappy!)
-Ça pas de bon sens! (It's crazy/unreasonable!)
-On est contre! (We're against it!)
-C'est faux! (Lies!)
and, just for fun -Vive l'ambiguïté!!?
We spent a few hours walkind the streets yelling and picketing, nobody understood what was going on, we made some friends on the street, it was a pretty silly and fun activity to start off the new year. And on that note, here's the video and a happy new year to all y'all. PHOTOS