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Japan Cubed
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1731
I've been sick, tired, blowing my nose every 20 minutes. Too sick and tired to work or clean, the day was spent reading Will Ferguson's "Hitching Rides with Buddha". Which partly explains the dreams.....
All night, a 10 hour sleep, mouth breathing. Sleeping on my left side, my right side, my back, waking up every hour when I felt the cold trickle of snot running down my face to go to the bathroom, wipe it off and blow my nose, then back to bed and sleep some more. And it's the same dream over and over, A giant cube of Japan. That's it. Japan cubed. I'm as baffled as you are. No variation, no recollection past the fact that this was the dream that I just had; it was the same dream all night, "resumed" after every wake up, fall asleep, the same thing over and over....
Garage Sale Finds - Week 6
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2150
It used to be the Calgary Herald, you'd go to the classifieds and plot out your garage sale map, they had the garage sales organized by date and quadrant of the city. But they've changed it, "reorganized" it so that date and area of the city are no longer organizable fields, address is optional, clicking on the "read more..." link in the hopes of finding an address leads to a "Page not found Error". It's been like this for the whole season, entirely not working.
Now the Calgary Herald classifieds are a paid service. You pay them, they advertise your sale, product or event. But this is ridiculous, you can find nothing and certainly nothing in order on their site. So I search around and find other sites - Kijiji, Craigslist, Calgaryarea.com, all sites where you can advertise your garage sale for free. And this, apparently, is where everyone else is advertising their garage sale as well. It's more work, they're organized by date and city only, you have to make your own map to the highlights, but at least the information is there.
This weekend is the first "Big" weekend of sales. By which I mean there are more sales than I can make it to, hope to make it to, in various neighborhoods. There's the Bethany Chapel sale, there's a neighborhood sale in Scarborough, there are others....
And so I make my map and head out on Saturday morning.....
A day full of treasures. Stack of CD's, new, perhaps 30 in the stack, $2.00. $10.00 for miscellaneous Pokemon cards for my daughter (a stack about 6 inches thick). Books - Penguin guide to Shakespeare, Monologues for young actors, Calvin & Hobbes, for the boy, an old rotary phone, bright red ("Mr. President....It's the Kremlin calling.....") as well as a loose red "reset"button...("The Missiles have been launched..."). A small Fireking green jadeite bowl with blue butter dish, a hallmarked solid silver candlestick. And the highlight, a 16 mm movie camera from the 50's with telephoto lense. I need a tripod.
All in all a good day.
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1513
by Umberto Eco
I like Umberto Eco. And I liked this. Good book.
The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 1646
Edited and Introduced by Mark Roskill
Now this is a great book. Here, in 1 volume, are the collected letters of Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo.
That said, it's not perfect. It's a 1963 paperback with black and white plates of his work. Van Gogh is sold short in full color prints, there's no point to black and white prints at all. But it's an old book, so you can't really expect better. It's been edited, which is a bad thing, and there are notes to certain letters advising that certain of Vincent's observations to Theo are left out as being irrelevant. While I appreciate this is probably true, I'd prefer to judge that for myself. There are notes as well that reference other letters Van Gogh wrote to Gauguin on the back of his letters to Theo, but not reproduced. This is a bit of a tease. There are notes as to sketches that Van Gogh sent to Theo along with his letters, or drawings on the page, but these again are not reproduced. And it would be good to see Theo's responses to Van Gogh's letters, to form perhaps a better idea of their correspondence.
So in short, there's no criticizing Van Gogh, but the editing could be better done. Things I'd look for were I to buy this again:
- More notes as to the paintings and what became of them (He describes quite vividly what he's working on in the letters, but only some of them are footnoted. Many of his works went missing as well, and it would be curious to know what's survived and what's missing, as well as where the surviving works are currently.)
- Something that attempted to reproduce the drawings that accompanied his letters
- Letter from Theo, as well as surviving letters from Vincent to Gauguin, etc.
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