November 2004

November 25, 2004

...and then one day you reach a frightening threshold; all the planning and plotting starts to feel like micromanaging and it seems like the only way to breath more life into it is to start writing. Can I really start writing yet? Have I planned enough? Are there any holes? If I don't start writing now, will I overplan it, or am I just getting anxious?

Today is that day. Okay, so some of the characters don't have names, but neither does the book, really. Should that stop me? Why don't I just call them Bill and Jim-bob for now and do a "Find and Replace" later on? But good God, what if a Jim-bob somehow eluded the editing ("Jim-bob narrowed his eyes and grinned maliciously as he unsheathed his sword, its grating release sending a shiver down [Mr. What's-his-face]'s spine.")??

It's funny, after spending so much time planning it's a little scary to actually start doing the inevitable. Every little detail I've plotted out so far has seemed so necessary that it begins to feel like you have to plan everything...but then actually having some written pages would be nice, too!

Time to give 'er.

November 21, 2004

I woke up this morning not entirely sure what I should do with the day. My question, however, was quickly answered by the giant Elf's workshop looming outside my window. After rubbing my sleepy eyes, I saw that the surreal interloper on my street was flanked by a herd of reindeer on one side and a two-storey-tall polar bear on a snowmobile on the other. That's right; this year, I didn't go to the Santa Claus parade...it came to me.

At least that's the story I'm sticking with. For some reason I was filled with giddy childish glee as I dragged Laura out to watch upside-down clowns and beavers in golf carts parade through downtown Toronto. I mean, it's not every day that you get to see a squadron of police on horseback ride through the city, complete with men in clown suits following behind with shovels to collect all the poo.

The funny thing was the contrast between a Canadian festival of these proportions and one in Japan: here the police were in the parade, in Japan the police are there to make sure that people remain sandwiched between crowd control barriers. I was amazed to see that even without a bunch of men waving flashing batons at the crowd, there was no pandemonium.

As far as my favourite 'Kodak' moment, I would have to say it was when the giant chicken float passed in front of the KFC, like an enormous 'before, after' shot.

November 12, 2004

It's the end of my second week writing, and I can't be happier with how things are going so far. Finally getting the chance to sit down and consolidate all of the ideas on my project that have had to simmer on the back burner for the past seven months is simply fantastic. The first draft of the plot outline is all sewn up, and the character sketches are coming along swimmingly...isn't life peachy? Note the new 'themed' banner at the top; this is the little slice of Greece in which my novel is set. I'm indebted to my friend Lavrentia in Thessaloniki who has just popped a large-scale map of the country in the mail for me...thanks!

Tommorrow is Laura's birthday. To mark the occasion I'm going to be making a foray into the world of cake-baking, which will hopefully not be too disastrous. We all know it's the thought that counts...right?

November 9, 2004

Alright, I know I need a life, but this issue is eating me a little. Evidently this 'vote counting' issue is gathering some momentum, if only a little. An interesting news piece came up on - of all places - MSNBC yesterday. The video is presently online, though MSN's crappy website won't let you link to it and you have to use InternetExplorer to see it (you are using Firefox by now, aren't you?). But all the same, go to MSNBC and look for the "Ohio Voting Controversy" link. There's a video there with Keith Olbermann asking some very interesting questions, and bringing up some very fishy numbers. For example: in one county in Ohio, there were 98,000 more votes than there were voters. Got that? Yeah, you read that right. There were also a string of bizarre results in Florida where something like 24 counties that were strongly Democratic decided to vote for Bush...but such spontaneous, mass changes of heart only happened in counties using optical scan vote counting machines made by Diebold. Hmmm....remember what I said about that Diebold guy?

November 8, 2004

And so the steady wheels of justice grind on...when will I get my day in court to face off with the City of Toronto for a September 16th traffic violation? May 18th, 2005. Whoa...are they hoping that if they schedule it far enough in advance that I'll either a.) forget about the whole thing and just pay the fine when the collection agency comes, or b.) I will, by the time my court date comes around, be too old to muster the energy to make my appearance. Time, as they say, can take the heat out of any fire! I strongly urge anyone who gets a traffic ticket to tick the little box that says you want to contest the charges...lots of wacky shenanigans are guarranteed to ensue! Like my 'first appearance' last week, where after waiting a month and a half to contest the charges, I went down to the courthouse for a meeting with a prosecutor to "see if we could come to some sort of resolution." It was a funny step in the process, as the only agreement she was empowered to consent to was me pleading guilty...didn't I already say that I didn't want to do that? Is her job just to make sure that I meant it? And all this for a ticket clocking me at a whopping 70 in a 60 zone. I really must be kept off the streets!

I think the highlight of the meeting with the prosecutor was when she said
"So this is for...oh...it says you were only 10km over? That's only, like, a $40 fine. Are you sure you don't want to just pay it?"
I smiled. "I'm a writer," I said, "I don't have $40."

But on a slightly different topic...

Now I don't want to be inflammatory, or spread any kind of rumours or anything...but apparently the U.S. election was rigged. Yup, it's true. Chalk up another one for Darth Vader!

If we just connect a few dots here...like this article in The Hill, only we don't draw precisely the same conclusions as him but instead look at this video...it starts to make one wonder. Could the exit polls have been that wrong? As the guy in The Hill points out, exit polls are generally so accurate that they're used in Third World countries as a reliable measure of the integrity of the vote count. And here the votes were often counted by computers...hmmm. I especially like the bit where the President of Diebold (the company that makes the voting machines) promises (in writing!) to get George Bush all the votes he needs in Ohio. Are these people for real?

But hey, that would be rigging an election, and George Dubya wouldn't do that, ahem...again, would he? There is mounting evidence that some of the numbers from Florida are, let's say, a tad suspicious.

Okay, maybe not all true, and really we'll never know...but makes you think. I for one would never like to see electronic voting in this country.

November 4, 2004

Alright, I have to admit, I am absolutely scandalized by what I've been reading lately. Completely shocked. Over the last little while I've been trying to piece together a bit more of a balanced perspective of what's happening over in Iraq, and my first impressions were that what I was reading must have been false. First was a Washington Post article that detailed such a scandalous string of events that at first I thought it must be satire...but sadly it wasn't. If anyone wonders why the insurgency continues, maybe this example will help: a doctor, whose home had already been searched twice by soldiers, had his door kicked in for a third search while he was sleeping one night. When he and his children woke up to see a soldier standing over them, he put up his hands and said "I'm a doctor!" to which the soldier replied "Fuck you."

How would you like to wake up like that? Isn't that why America still has the right to bear arms, so nothing like that will ever happen there?

My wanderings in search of different news sources took me, of all places, to Al-Jazeera's website. There I found reference to a study that I was sure they had made up, so crazy were the claims. A little investigation revealed that, again, it was grim reality.

Now the U.S. General Tommy Franks has been widely quoted as saying "We don't do body counts", which unfortunately is rather in violation of Geneva Convention IV, section 27 which says something silly about occupying powers having to provide safety to civilians. A small group of researchers that went into Iraq, however, did do a body count, and came up with a sickening number: One hundred thousand deaths. That's not counting people in the Iraqi military, or 'insurgents'. Those are civilian deaths. Oh yeah, and not during the war, but only during the occupation. And did I forget to mention that more than half of that number were women and children? Mostly caused by "helicopter gunships, rockets, or other forms of aerial weaponry."

What study was this? Some crack-pot Al-Jazeera propaganda piece? Nope. It was a peer-reviewed study published by The Lancet. Read it yourself.

I can't help but think that Iraqis must be more than a little upset by all this.

Then today as I was doing research for my book, I came across a passage in the Republic that seemed to fit disturbingly well. As I read it, I couldn't help thinking of the pipelines that went under construction before the fighting had even stopped over there, and of George Bush's quotes about him "praying for peace". This quote, by the way, is at the part in the Republic where someone is making the case for a state based on 'perfect injustice':

"If the poets speak truly, why then we had better be unjust, and offer of the fruits of injustice; for if we are just, although we may escape the vengeance of heaven, we shall lose the gains of injustice; but if we are unjust, we shall keep the gains, and by our sinning and praying, and praying and sinning, the gods will be propitiated, and we shall not be punished." -- Plato, The Republic

Four more years, four more years.

November 3, 2004

A beautiful day here in Toronto as I find myself in mid-week of my first week working on my novel full-time. The research and planning is coming along very well, especially as it starts to set in that I am finally able to devote all of my energies to work on the project. Needless to say, I'm stoked. More than anything, I'm shocked at how quickly a full day can go by when you're working on something that you love.

Well, today the big news came in; Kerry's throwing in the towel and Bush has won. I have to say, I'm shocked. But hey, the people have spoken, and in record numbers, no less. It should be interesting to see what happens next, given the fact that the American people have now given a hearty endorsement of all that has gone on during Bush's first term.