riding the crest of a wave in a space that’s about to explode…
Adrienne has gone to visit Rebecca in Ottawa today, until Sunday. We haven’t been apart for more than two days for over two years. It’s going to be weird. Luckily, I have a square yard of delicious lasagne to keep me alive in the interim.
I love you, baby.
So, maybe we SHOULD fear the squirrels? (see comments for previous post) Neil claims that the squirrels along the road in Hyde Park stare at you while clenching their trembling little fists (crivens!), while Rebecca (no website, amazingly. not even a blog. weird, huh?) claims that Vancouver squirrels are predatory, salivate wildly and practise mind control (eftstoons!). And I thought the Brixton Crack Squirrels were bad.
Can anyone claim scarier squirrels than Rebecca? Any actual attacks? I’ve heard mother squirrels are quite prone to attack you if they think their young are in danger. Or if they just catch you, like, looking at them.
If only someone had done a website entirely about scary squirrels. Oh.
Another week, another new name for the blog. I quite like this one, though, so I’m going to try to stick with it for at least a month.
Having been here for three months now, and weathered a rather difficult and emotionally draining transitional period, I find myself emerging from a self-imposed shell of homesickness and a hermit-like existence, and starting to actually notice some details of the city in which we find ourselves living. As a result, henceforth I will try to post rather more frequent Toronto-centric observations, not least for my dear friends back in Blighty who are doubtless desperate to know what it is like here, and what wacky hi-jinks we are getting up to. I’m going to try my hand at a bit of urban cultural anthropology, as well as attempting to explore some of the more obscure, hidden corners of the city, both geographical and cultural. Mostly, though, I’m going to write about squirrels (skwerls for our North American readers).
Yes, the squirrels. Since moving here they have been one of the most obvious features of the town. Toronto is completely infested with squirrels. In a good way, at least I think so. I find that I am rather partial to squirrels, despite the fact that many folks who are of otherwise sound mind refer to them as ‘rats with better outfits’. I mean, what’s not to like? They run in a sine-wave, they’ve got big bushy tails, weirdly human little hands and right now the few that have yet to go into hibernation are grossly fat and great fun to chase. You can see them catching their breath after hauling their immense bulk up the nearest tree. Bless ‘em.
Not long ago, when I was working at the U of T Bookstore (hi guys!) I walked across Queens Park each morning and evening and I have NEVER seen more squirrels per square foot. I decided to count them one morning and in ten minutes I was up to 80. God forbid that they should ever get organised. I, for one, welcome our tree-dwelling rodent overlords. They can get quite feisty if riled, believe me. See, for example, ChandraSutra’s photo of two wrassling Toronto squirrels on Flickr. (Aside: there are two main types of squirrel in Toronto, black ones, and browny grey ones, and I like to imagine that, rather than living in harmony, they are actually at ideological loggerheads and are deeply untrustful of the ‘other’, ridiculing each others nut-burying techniques, frequently waging turf wars, &c. However, it turns out that they are all in fact Eastern Grey Squirrels, which fascinating tidbit I gleaned from the extremely comprehensive and excellent official City of Toronto website. So maybe they are all just friends and merely wrastle for fun?
Whatever, I don’t think they would be any match for the fearsome Brixton Crack Squirrel, which feeds entirely on discarded rocks of crack cocaine and is generally rather bolshy for such a small creature. They used to hang out in the little park in front of the Ritzy Cinema, twitching spastically, dancing to music only they could hear and generally creating a malevolent ambience. The squirrels here are much friendlier and less intimidating. How archetypically Canadian. But I digress…
Anyway, all this is by way of saying that I think that squirrels are really rather lovely, and I want to thank them for helping - in a small way - to ease my transition to a new place. Thanks guys! I’ll give you some nuts when y’all wake up in the spring.
Last night I celebrated the successful completion of my second week at my new job, by heading along to the Bit Rock evening organised by my new friend Jeff, who played a storming set in his Minisystem guise - I felt that it was a great hybrid of Ulrich Schnauss-like prettiness and melody and the harder end of the Kompakt roster, like the stuff on Speicher.
I met Jeff a few weeks back at an Open Source evening, where we quickly recognised one another as kindred music geeks. Mind you, given that the premise of Open Source is that folks turn up and play their selection of three songs, usually from their iPod, then by default almost everyone there is going to be a sad music geek. I knew I was among my fellows when the organiser (Alan, a very nice guy who is part of the wabi design collective) approached me after my ’set’ to tell me that Dexter by Ricardo Villalobos (from the wonderful album Alcachofa) was his very favourite Ricardo Villalobos track! Imagine that! Major geek karma points scored. I think I will apply a custom flame paintjob to my iPod before the next event. Hm, there’s a business idea. But I digress…
Anyway, it was a very enjoyable evening, and it was inspirational to me to meet people who are actually getting off their arses and doing stuff. I may, finally, get round to trying to make some music of my own. Particularly since Live 4 looks like A LOT of fun.
I met another very nice guy called Josch (Canadians are so easy to meet and talk to, it still freaks me out a bit) who, naturally, is another music producer and is into the same sort of music as yours truly. There probably aren’t that many people in Toronto with the same tastes as me, but I think I met quite a few of them last night. Yes, I have found my tribe! I will have to establish a blog for the ’scene’. Is there no situation in which a blog can’t improve matters? I don’t think so.
Due to enormous public demand (and my constant nagging) Adrienne is blogging again. Hurrah! Unlike my own blog, she often actually has something intelligent and/or insightful to say about the wider world. Me, I like to keep it delightfully unrefined…
Perplex City is a new massively multiplayer immersive alternate reality game. Anyone who enjoyed/enjoys Cryptonomicon, Pattern Recognition, ilovebees, CloudMakers, Kit William’s Masquerade, easter egg hunts, The Da Vinci Code, The Adventure Game, apophenia/pareidolia and puzzles should probably check it out. There is a prize…
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I really, really like Simon Extreme for Mac OS X. A lot. Particularly with the Heavy Metal sounds.
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