News clip about Kevin Smith's film "Dogma"

This is old, but funny. Many fans of Kevin Smith films have heard the story recounting Smith joining the protestors in New Jersey, with the protestors completely oblivious to his presence. According to the story, Smith's sign says "Dogma is dogs**t" (read the slang word for excrement there).

When I met Smith in August of 1999, with my wife (then just my bestest friend), I asked him whether my girlfriend who is a practicing Catholic would be offending by the film. He responded that he felt the film was "pro-faith," and that she shouldn't be offended at all.

Neither of us were offended. It's a comedy film after all. I was more perturbed by the universalist rants within the film, as well as the recitation of the "recession of faith" after announcements. I can only assume that Smith meant "profession of faith," except that an early screenplay states "recession," so it seems this was deliberate.

There is a great article that I just stumbled upon about the theology of the movie here. And, if you haven't seen the movie, you should (note that it is rated as Restricted, and that there is quite a bit of swearing and crude joking in the film).

Back from Gatineau

Buy, these blog postings only get more exciting, don't they?

My wife and I had a nice time at the Association for the Study of Canada conference this past weekend. I had the pleasure of being on the same train with one of the professors that was on my defense committee. We had a great conversation, covering The Smiths, Joy Division (and the new movie directed by Anton Corbjin) and academia and the job market.

I heard a bunch of papers that were quite interesting; Feist's name was mentioned quite a few times. My supervisor was at my presentation and he felt that my paper was good. He mentioned that I was "onto something." I'm happy about that.

Now I have to focus on some rewriting of one of my chapters for possible publication (I AM a broken record!!).

Off to Gatineau tomorrow

I'll be presenting at my first conference post-PhD on Sunday. The conference starts tomorrow in Gatineau (what the locals used to call "Hull," right across the river from Ottawa). So, early tomorrow, I'm off to Ottawa by train and then on to Hull for the first day of the conference of the Association for the Study of Canada, an association I haven't been associated with before (haha).

I'm presenting my paper on Feist's problematic Canadian-ness, although I've cut down a paper that was short of 30 pages down to 8 (I'm speaking for 15 minutes), so I'm not sure how great the paper will be. I suppose that it will be interesting to be among colleagues that I don't really know. Will Straw and Darin Barney, two of the professors who were on my doctoral defense committee (Will was my supervisor), are speaking tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to that.

Here's a picture of me, all happy-like, riding the Tomorrowland Transit Authority, once known as the WEDway Peoplemover, at the Magic Kindom at Walt Disney World. I look happy, no?

We're back

After a nice trip, we're back at home and (almost) back into the swing of things. I'm preparing for a conference this coming weekend and I'm looking at a few more possible jobs. My wife and I were both impressed upon our visit to Celebration, Florida, a planned community established in the mid-1990s by the Disney Company (see picture below).



Look at those ducks crossing the street. If you were wondering, the building with the tower is a bank. There is a university in Celebration, but it is a satellite campus for business administration only (Stetson University - main campus in DeLand, north of Orlando).

We also toyed with the idea of becoming Disney Cast Members (workers at the Walt Disney Company), something we might actually consider doing if nothing works out. We haven't really looked into it seriously, so right now it's just something in the back of our minds.

Anyway, happy to be back home, but not happy to be back facing our real world difficulties.

Really soon now!!

The mail came...

No letter or documents. So, I've emailed my letter writer with instructions about sending a letter straight to the funding agency, and I've called the travel agent about the documents.

I've gone to the post office and I've put the application for funding into the mail.

Upon my return, there were the travel documents in my mailbox.

SO WE HAVE THE DOCUMENTS (which weren't as important as I thought, but at least we have them). And the person writing my reference letter will hopefully come through for me in a pinch.

Wow. This has been a stressfull few days. Now maybe my wife and I can have a well deserved rest.

Oh, and we also got the Studio 60 DVDs in the mail, but the postman misdelivered it to the people upstairs. No reference letter there though.

Today's the day

As per the ticker, 19 hours, 54 minutes, 47 seconds and counting until we board on a plane headed for sunny (with a few clouds in the coming days) Florida.

No mail yet, but it's only 10am. I just hope that, with the rain here, the postman doesn't decide to take the day off. That would not be good.

I'll make sure to update after the mail comes.

Signed!!

I am the proud owner of an Alliance bill used in the movie "Serenity," signed by Mal (Nathan Fillion) himself!

Shiny!!

Ugh

Things are terrible here right now. We're off on a nice vacation in 2 days (actually, 1 day, 16 hours, 48 minutes), but we have yet to receive our travel documents from our travel agent. They were mailed by "Global Priority Mail" last Tuesday. Our travel agent said they would arrive in the next 6 business days. So, discounting Monday, today is DAY 6. Where the heck is that envelope?

Reasons to make all arrangements yourself.

Also, I'm almost ready to submit my postdoctoral fellowship application for the Quebec funding body, but I'm waiting for one last reference letter, which was apparently mailed from Ottawa last week. Four business days is the standard, so if the letter was mailed on Friday, tomorrow is DAY 4.

So, I suppose I need to expect both packages tomorrow. For my own information, the mail came in today at around 1pm.

Plus, I'm not feeling good. If I was stressed during my doctoral defense, or during the summer with the employment waiting game, this week tops them all.

Why should I have to be stressed before a vacation?!

Now, to those who say, "Why be stressed about something you can't control?", I say, WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON??!!

If things are not going smoothly, I'm not going to just be calm and say, "Well, I have no control over it so I'm fine."

That's just not the case. It is not a "fine" situation.

Thankfully, we're going on vacation (and hopefully, if we don't get those documents, the people at Orlando accept our reservation number).

Soon!!

Shredded

Bit of a crazy time last night, due mainly to my stupidity.

Actually, due totally to my stupidity. Remember that I mentioned that I was planning on reinstalling the system software for my computer (see yesterday's post if you don't know what I'm talking about). I came back from sending my SSHRC application in the mail and dropping something off at McGill, and checked a few things and went about reinstalling the OS on my computer.

After all of that was done, I thought I would restore what I had backed up. So I copied my music over from the external hard drive where the data was. I then moved the pictures over. Then I moved my most important stuff over - my documents.

Or, actually I didn't move them over. Because I hadn't backed them up. No backup of my program of work (a.k.a. proposal) for FQRSC applications, no paper for Association for Canadian Studies conference at the end of October, no paper on Feist for possible publication, no recently completed and Ph.D.-earning dissertation.

Now, my dear readers, before yelling at me for being stupid or irresponsible (both of which I felt), I did have a backup somewhere - online, and ... um ... 38 days old.

And I had a paper backup of the most important stuff, that is, the program of work. But that was in the recycle bin. Shredded.

So my wife and I spent a while putting strips of paper back together with scotch tape. It's probably one of the first times that I was happy to have a cheap and ineffective strip shredder rather than a cross-cut shredder. If I was more worried about identity theft and privacy, I would not have been able to reconstruct this stuff from the confetti.

Anyway, as of now, I've found some other older documents that I lost, but I'm not sure if I have everything. I'm disappointed because (as my wife reminded me last night) I should know better. I lost a nice calendar for our trip to Disney that she worked hard trying to put together, and for that I am very sorry.

So I'm working on getting a proper backup system up and running. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. The new mac OS that comes out next month will have automatic backups as part of the operating system. I WILL be using that.

I thank God - it could have been worse. And, I suppose, I thank God for the prosperity and provision that we have to be able to experience trouble like losing computer files that are products of higher education, instead of trying to find something to eat and safety for ourselves and our family.

The SSHRC application goes in today

So my first postdoctoral application for this year will be mailed out today by Canada Post Expresspost, and should arrive in Ottawa tomorrow. I hope this is the one. As for other exciting events in my life, there are none. I'm rushing to get a bunch of applications out before we leave the country for our little vacation south of the border.

There is a new Douglas Coupland book that I'm looking forward to. I've ordered a "deluxe" version on Amazon - not sure when I'll receive it.

A couple of days ago, I received a second collection of Firefly/Serenity essays called Serenity Found: More Unauthorized Essays from Joss Whedon's Firefly Universe. I have yet to take a serious look at it. I enjoyed the earlier collection (called Finding Serenity) and I suspect I will enjoy this collection as well. There is nothing like a sci-fi western television series (and movie) with asian elements to bring out intelligent analysis and writing. I'm serious.

It's raining today. I can't think of any more mundane things to say.

I mentioned to a friend yesterday that I should post scans of various political autographs that I have (all from the Canadian Liberal Party - as if I'm really overly political!). Maybe I'll do that. It's almost like a gallery of shame in the present context of Canadian politics.

Lots to do today, so I'm off to the post office.

P.S. I might have to reinstall the system software on my iMac. I installed Logic Studio yesterday (the new Apple Pro Audio Suite) and I deleted it because it looks very complicated (in other words, powerful, but I don't have the time to learn the ins and outs now). I might have made a bit of a mess with files in my system.

Guess who I met yesterday?

Yesterday, I was at McGill to pick up a reference letter for my post-doc applications. In one of the green spaces, there was a Young Liberals event with Justin Trudeau. There were a small number of people there, and I thought I would listen in. I then went in and picked up my letter, and returned to the event where even less people were now gathered (I suppose it was drawing to a close). Justin was talking to a few of the people standing around, answering questions and letting girls take his picture (no joke - they were all starry-eyed). Anyway, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, so I asked for his autograph.



When I told my mother about this chance meeting, her response was, "He's a good looking boy." My further comment to her was that he certainly has the complete package: good looks; obvious intellect; a mastery of the official languages; and a pedigree of being the son of Canada's most prolific prime minister.

I was glad to meet him, and to hear him speak in such an intimate venue - on a lawn with a group of 20 of us or so.

Wanting a new desk

I wonder if the desire for a new desk stems from the fact that I bought a new computer, or that I think a new desk will make me work. It's funny that buying things makes one think that perhaps productivity will ensue. It's partially true, though. A new purchase seems to make the potential of work much more promising. And I think that I approach the computer in a different way than I did before. In one way, the new computer is a real workhorse, a prosumer machine for a person who likes to experiment with video work and would love to learn music production on a computer. I've read in multiple places problems with this computer's screen, and, although I recognize those symptoms in my computer, I don't feel justified in returning the product (unless, of course, the company recalls them). So, will this computer make me work harder? Not sure, but there's certainly a potential for it.

In some very recent discussions with someone very close to me, it came up that there is a possibility (though remote) that I might not be working in September of 2008. If that were to be the case, I suppose that a career change would have to be a distinct possibility. While I need not worry about such things right now, I worry if I will be needing to worry about them in the future.

This internet connection keeps going down on me (wrong choice of words, I know). I will have to correct this, I think. I've been waiting until I purchased a new computer to get a new wireless router, but I was hoping it could wait a bit. I suppose not. Now I have to cycle the power on the thing just to be able to post this message.

You know you've made it when ...

You know you're in the big leagues when a company like Apple uses your song and video in an iPod commercial, especially when the company is marketing its brand new iPod Nano (see the video above). Feist must be feeling that right about now. She's featured in the new iPod advertisement! If I say so myself, I think the marketing folks at Apple have made a fine choice (not sure about the colours, but I think I thought the same of the old ones, so we'll see).

We're back from a nice time in Hamilton to a new couch, a bit of a rearrangement of working and living areas in our apartment, and a trip to WDW in October. Might as well.

Back to the same old ...

I can't believe that I'm writing another fellowship application. It's as if the process is unending; I'm writing another proposal for postdoctoral work for September 2008, a full year from now. In some ways, it's still exciting, to think that I might be able to explore how one discusses the singing voice, what it communicates, and why one might choose to listen to a voice in popular music. In other ways, writing these proposals is very discouraging. Although I understand that the grant application continues when employed, the lack of success makes me sad.

Nevertheless, I'm writing my proposal from (almost) scratch, trying to make it a bit simpler, and fixing some of the problems that the FQRSC committee identified. I should have something properly written before going away next week to see my wife's family.

By the way, for all you Brown Coats who might not know, the new Serenity Collector's Edition DVD comes out today. If you know not of that of which I speak, go out to your local DVD retailer and pick up a copy (in Canada, I can pick it up today for $20 minus a penny, plus applicable taxes). Shiny!

100th post!!

Congratulations to me for making it to 100 posts. I started this blog on 25 September 2004, so it'll be 3 years in a month and a half or so (and maybe 101 posts at the rate I'm going).

My Canadian music paper is due tomorrow and will be done. I'm just finishing multiple proof reading and some tightening up of the text. It's not a bad paper (maybe it's a few pages short, but I don't need to ramble on - I'm sure there will be other papers that will be longer).

We're looking to go on vacation in October, if no jobs present themselves for me (which, right now, seems to be the case). It might be Disney, but we'll see. More updates soon.

"I'm sorry, two words I always think..."

Again I've been ignoring posts to this blog, and I apologize. I've been working on the paper I've mentioned many times on Feist and Canadian-ness, and that's due in a week and a half. I also wrote up a review of a book by Nick Stevenson on David Bowie, and that also has to go out very soon. So, I've been keeping busy (or trying to, anyway). Plus, I've been checking out some minor health things - I hadn't been feeing well, and I'm in the midst of checking that, although I'm feeling fine now.

That's a bit of an update. I'll try to post more interesting things more often.

Another thing. Check out this google ad that showed up on this very blog. Not sure what that's all about, but it made me chuckle.



That's not really the Feist news I was looking for (by the way, if you are tempted, don't click the ad here as the above is only a lowly screenshot).

Merlin Mann at Google

I haven't watched this, but it's Merlin Mann, a "productivity expert" who is involved with the TWiT netcast network, talking about taking care of email.