“Poor Miss Mary. Struggling was not a thing for her to do. Anna would surely yield if she would struggle, but struggling was too much work and too much worry for peaceful Miss Mary to endure. If Anna would do so she must.  Poor Miss Mary Wadsmith sighed, looked wisfully at Anna and then gave it up. ”

Three Lives. The Good Anna. Gertrude Stein.

Well I have been waiting on this Weds the 16th for the promised temperature plunge and yes, the radar has delivered. It was cold indeed today. Especially this morning then around lunch the temp climbed and the rains fell.

Tonight’s overnight low however is a balmy 6 degrees, considerably higher than what was forecast 14 days ago, which was -2. Still a very vague chance of flurries on Friday (wha?!) and a bit of dip again on Saturday, but we seem trapped between two systems right now and weather cannot quite make up her mind.

This week we had some beautiful days after that storm blew through. Cold yes, but oh so sunny and blue.

Am detecting a whole new antagonism towards the act of camping and am wondering if it needs to be renamed…. suggestions? Tenting, pegging would alas give rise to confusion. What about “titching”? A subtle combination of the T word and hitch? I’m going to titch at the VAG  for example.

Also, for the matter the word camp is in jeopardy. What is to become of it?

Previous Post

“In the history of the VPD we have never done what we are doing today,” police chief Jim Chu said in a written statement.

What Mr Chu is referring to is the issuing of 35,000 posters which contain images of 104 “suspected rioters” which will be blanketed about the place by 150 volunteers. (does the figure 5 have a function here?!)

Referring to an earlier post about a panel discussion on photography and surveillance, we would have to wonder what the implications are now of having an ever-ready citizen surveillance system whereby we film each other incidentally and then convict each other by handing said footage to the authorities.  Is it that close-circuit television has come down off the lamp posts and into our palms? I wonder when built-in cameras will become part of the modified human body, carved into the top of an arm or behind the ear?

And what about the other purpose of this footage which might be to examine what took place in the context of where are living and what may have given rise to it? Is there to be any indictment of the politicians and businesses and multi millionaires who boosted that hockey match to the moon?  What about the role of “corporate” incitement? What would that poster look like? Pictures of logos, shoes, handbags, jerseys with big block letters that insist YOU NEED THIS!

I am not suggesting that smashing the place up is innocent or to be tolerated, I am suggesting we need to also examine the circumstances (i.e. the weeks preceding) that led up to it. How was the appetite created? To that end a team of neuroscientists, brain scans and behaviour experts might be more long-term use than 35,000 posters of the 104 suspected rioters. The creation of (irrational) appetite and what results from it begs interrogation alongside the criminal acts that took place.

Punk reply

Here’s the link to Bloodied But Unbowed where you can, courtesy of the Knowledge Network, watch this documentary on Vancouver’s early punk history.

My curiosity was piqued by the woman sat on the bonnet of her car who described wanton verbal abuse and physical assaults in response to looking like or appearing to be a punk. I’ve been asking friends about this, since it’s hard to reconcile these descriptions with city life at present. It’s often difficult to get anyone to respond to you in some parts of the city. Good morning or hello seems to put the fear of God and instant eye-aversion from people passing…

As one friend put it “There was a time when a haircut meant something…”

That is not to suggest a return to the habit of people getting verbally abused and bashed in for having a particular haircut, music taste and tight black jeans or being sprinkled with safety pins. More to observe a contrast in conduct and examine where or how that has been recorded.

My continued Gertrude Stein reading adventure has me convinced that Gertrude Stein is the best to read when you are ill.  She has this feverish incanting — not unlike Latin benediction — that reminds you that you have never felt as sick before and never will feel as sick again as this sick moment. Or at least you won’t remember such during the next ill moment.

Today I was reading her Good Anna (Three Lives) again, I was not ill and it dawned on me in this reading how concerned her sentences are with measuring time.

On Sunday I took my clogs across the brige to North Vancouver to see Kohei Yoshiyuki’s photo exhibit The Park and attend a panel discussion, which was to concern ethics, power relationships, & surveillance. Unfortunately it turned out to be a dry affair with two especially waffly blokes, who insisted on over announcing themselves.

How on earth you manage to make pictures of people shagging publicly into such a dry, dull affair was kinda remarkable.

I observed one man in the audience fall asleep during the discussion, which is a good indicator of the temperature of the talk.

There were a couple of interesting references to other artists work at least in some of the panelists contributions, but I can’t quite fathom why you organize a panel discussion and have people reading papers AT an audience. That’s less a panel discussion than a public address. A public address x 5 people. That’s verging on a conference. Also, when you tell people to read for 10 mins you can guarantee (if they’re academics and writers especially) they’ll bang on for 20 mins. Thus tell them 2 and a half mins and you’ll get 10.

Another thing that confused me is why the academy and its language has to sedate and saturate everything in such a discussion?  The artist on the panel had the more interesting perspective and at one point was rather patronized by a very waffling dude on the end, who really should put a cork in it and give up the word rhetoric for Lent. She was trying to address the dilemmas & reactions an early piece of her work provoked. In practical terms! Not theory! When Captain Rhetoric beside her rather smugly inferred she was caving in to her public (not a precise quote).

At that point I nor my kidney could take no more of it and departed for the toilet. Beside which was the most delightful museum exhibit of forestry, logging tools and basically old stuff including a couple of elegant looking teapots.

Later that evening I looked for writing about that series of photos hoping to find something that informed or reflected further on a discussion I’d shared with a friend afterwards: the utilitarian in the photos, the role of garments and how the garments indicated time and what had taken place, anything that raised the ackwardness of the physical act in those circumstances, or the proximity of the bodies within them, the octopus arrangement of mysterious arms within them and how they might be received or what they communicated, heck what about the squinting required to make out what was what, if anything at all.  Pah! Nothing to be found only talk of peeping and dull calculations of what the photos weren’t.

*

Curiously I’ve attended a number events organized by the SFU Institute for the Humanities and they manage to remain accessible engaging and invigorating. They often reference visual art movements and so on. Perhaps they’re a little more relaxed about themselves.  I must try to pay close attention to what or why this is. A good talk/discussion is a remarkably difficult thing to pull off. My patience seems to be shortening with age, I don’t doubt that technology may be part of it. On youtube I can click x if it’s not engaging me.

I thought we were living in concise, sound-byte, times.

Yesterday I responded to a phone company with the complaint that the email they’d sent me was one of the most waffling correspondences I’d ever received and contained no information that was pertinent to the question I’d asked.

Today by reply I receive an ever more waffling correspondence swollen with paragraphs that again tell me very little.

I am not sure I want to engage in a third round, lest the next reply contain so much data it sink my server provider.

The company clearly write to their customers using form emails.  Here are some of my favourite wombling lines from today’s reply:

“I can also provide more info on why certain matters are handled by our Member Care team. I know your time is valuable so I cannot thank you enough for trying to hang in there with me on this, even though you must be looking forward to having everything addressed.”

“As for the division of labour we have, our email team strives to find ways to help our Members with common questions and concerns. With that being said, we are not the same team you get when you call in. Our primary focus is receiving documentation on behalf of other departments and answering general questions (such as pre-sales questions). Checking into upgrade eligibility is one of the things we can do that does not require access to the specifics of your service with us.”

“I would never dream of asking you to call in about something unless it really was how your concerns can be addressed. I assure you this is done only with the intention of getting you the help you are looking forward to”

Note this is only from one of the multiple emails! But their composition maintains this endless paragraph that tells you, well nothing. Except it reasserts continually how much you must be looking forward to information you are unlikely to receive.

Good Grief! Brevity what happened to you?!

The wind is out there behaving like we are on a ferry boat in the middle of the sea this morning.

It’s quite wonderful to have this off shore weather come in to the urban and roost with us.

It only lifts momentarily so this again is a reminder of where we are, versus where the weather puts us when she takes off!

A Joseph Conrad weather day?

Martha Rosler’s Secrets of the Street: No Disclosure (1980)