The Seated View

The other day Michele and I had a lengthy discussion about cannibalism. As you do. (what? Don’t you??) It all started when one of us made a joke regarding the difference between cats and dogs – when their owner dies, dogs will sit howling next to the body, pining and wasting away. Cats will eat your face. And that’s one of the many things I love about the members of the feline race, I said – how wonderfully unsentimental they are. I am 8 or 9 in my first memory of being told about cannibals. Sitting in the gym at my school, along with all the other students, I am watching a slideshow, overwhelmed by the exotic images on the screen, so lost in the stories of far away places that the sounds and smells of the gym disappear and I am thisclose to actually being there. An explorer/anthropologist/author (I'm pretty sure that this is him and this may be the book I later bought) had come to my school to tell us about his time spent with the cannibals of New Guinea. I rememb...

I'm a little busy. Hardly any time for blogging. Or anything else, come to think of it. It all started sometime around last weekend when I decided that I needed a bit of a break. Less running around and much more time spent in the park, reading. Given that The Book was released this Saturday and there was a better than average chance that I’d have it in my grubby little hands sometime this week, it started to seem like kismet and I was as excited as a... I was going to say 11-year-old, but given how many adults of my acquaintance have been jumping up and down about it, perhaps that analogy is not entirely accurate. You know what I mean when I say The Book, don't you? Yes indeed, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is finally out and thanks to divine intervention by the Tech God , it has been on my iPod since Tuesday evening. It's been an interesting experience so far. Normally, it takes a while to get the feel of an audio book - well, that applies to a ...

I used to go to a lot of concerts when I was younger and thanks to several years of being a chaperone/companion for my sister during her early adolescence and later heavy metal phase, I’ve been the (sometimes) lucky recipient of a varied musical exposure. Sinead O'Connor, Juluka, John Mellencamp (my choices) have been mixed with Depeche Mode, Skid Row - Loudest. Band. Ever - and Guns N’ Roses (her choices and the last one, by the way? Put on one of the best shows I've ever seen, much to my surprise, as before I went to concert, I really didn’t like them. Another lesson for me to do my research before I open my big mouth and opine). There were several years where I went to every Sting concert that came through Toronto. I figured it was the least I could do, given that he’s my pretend boyfriend. Or one of them. That's the great thing about imaginary relationship - it's OK to diversify! Which I do, including Sean Connery, Peter Dinklage, Colin Firth on the li...

So there I was the other night, whingeing. Muttering about the busy, the endless lists and errands and to-ing and fro-ing and how I run around madly all day, collapse and sleep like the dead for an hour or so for my Mandatory Rest Period and then most days, up and at ‘em again until about 10pm, which is the main time I have for talking to friends, except by then I’m so fried I don’t want to talk to anyone and the other days, I make dinner and then sit and drool in front of the idiot box, incapable of intelligent thought. And I said to myself “just look at the list, will you! Look at it! 15 things to be done today!! Yesterday was the same and tomorrow won’t be any different!” ( I said this mostly to myself, as besides the part about no time for the phone, there’s the awareness that bellyaching is boring for other people to listen to and being conscious of the fact that my mother is stuck in a nursinghome and thus have more reasons to bitch than I do). Anyway, I was feeling s...

We all have an ultimate treat. Something beyond bad for you, with absolutely no redeeming values, something that is so heinous (and yet, so delicious) that you only imbibe rarely. I limit consumption of my guilty pleasure to once a year, but luckily, it's a three-month orgy of badness - if you're only going to wallow around in the filth once every 365 days, it's a good idea to choose something that lasts. My crack for the soul? Big Brother , naturally! I watched this season's first episode and questioned whether I'd continue. It wasn’t the "making a show of questioning while I clear my schedule 3 days a week for the forseeable future", no, I legitimately wondered how I would possibly become addicted to such a lame bunch of house guests. They are skewing seriously young this year, as well as frighteningly dimwitted. In previous seasons, about half of them would be of the bimbo/himbo persuasion, the rest of the cast people you could imagine h...

Quite some time ago, after having used a certain expletive in the post, a friend of mine told me that my chances of ever being deemed "family-friendly" had now gone the way of the dodo. So when I found a website where you can rate your blog, I was naturally all over that and yes, indeed - there is no G rating to be had. It seems to be based on the main page and can therefore fluctuate a bit. A couple weeks ago, The Seated View was rated R, earlier this week, it was PG (earned by one mention of the word “crap”). Under the category of "compare and contrast". Willowtree illustrates an interesting dichotomy and in the New York Times, David Leonhardt puts together a shopping list of sorts. I've just discovered Rare Bird Finds (which I found on a blog somewhere, although I can’t for the life of me remember where) – you subscribe by email and once a day, they send you a tip of where you can find funny and funky little doodads. Not always as useful a...

I find infectious disease fascinating. Not having it, mind you (thought I should clarify that), but transmission, history, properties, effects, the investigation process to determine origin and develop strategies to fight it - essentially, working for the CDC is on the short list of 'Occupations I Wish I'd Had'. This fascination expresses itself in what is probably an unseemly interest in biological disaster movies (I've seen Outbreak more than once – ‘nuff said), documentaries about same and lucky for me, there is a plethora of books on the topic. Thanks to having consumed The Hot Zone and Virus Hunter , in addition to numerous articles and television programs several years ago, I know an alarming amount about Ebola, even being able to discuss the determining characteristics of the filovirus , as well as the details of the outbreaks specific to Ebola Marburg, Reston and Zaire. A fter spending months in a haze of undemanding entertainment B.H. (Before Humira), I...

Just flyin’ by in between running errands, running my life, running my mother’s life (good god, I never realized how busy that woman is) and in general running around in circles like a puppy after its tail. My Inbox overfloweth - if I owe you an email, I’m working on a response that can be created while hurtling down the street (telepathy, maybe?) – if I owe you money, I’m planning to sell myself for medical experiments as soon as humanly possible and if I owe you a phonecall… well, I’ve had laryngitis for several days now and please hold until I get my voice back. Ditto if I owe you anything else in written form, as using a voice-recognition program is a smidge challenging if one’s voice is nothing but a croak (which explains why it’s taken me three days to write this post). Stage II of the Road to Recovery commenced last Friday, when my mother moved to a convalescent area of a local nursinghome. Before she left the hospital, she was fitted with a new and much less intense pair...

Imagine you're a jockey. Imagine you work at the country's leading racetrack. Imagine that for the past two years, you have been the leading jockey at that racetrack. Imagine that the most prestigious, most important race of the year is coming up. Would it be reasonable to expect that as the leading jockey of the last two years, you might be picked to ride one of the favourites? Apparently, if you're Emma-Jayne Wilson and the race is the Queen's Plate at Woodbine racetrack, this expectation is so unreasonable it elicits soothing statements from other people in the business about "it's a matter of when, not if" and in the meantime, just be patient while they put the leading jockey of the last two years (or did I mention that already?) on a longshot while vaguely talking about politics, but in such a way that it looks like anybody else would have been in the same position. Shall we briefly imagined this happening to say, a male jockey who isn...