Mind The Net

Organ Grinder

mindthenet — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 12:37:47 +0000

I am at St. Michael’s hospital in downtown Toronto, for the second night in a row. Last night, I had the worst of 6 gall bladder attacks I’ve had this year. Five hours of sheer agony and writhing about. The first two at home alone with my cats, trying to wait it out. Finally, it was the third shot of morphine by the nurse that calmed everything down. I was drowsy from the first one, but the pain persisted.
I didn’t go to set today where we were supposed to shoot ‘The Continuing Adventures of Carlos and Papo’ this afternoon. Very disappointed I couldn’t go and then as I was sitting relaxing at home, I realized my temperature was rising. This, for gb patients is dangerous because it means the infection Is probably around the gb and this could get very complicated and one could even die.
So now I wait for a bed beside the crack head who burned his arm w/gasoline while freebasing and the young drunk girl in handcuffs and under police guard yelling at her father (?) that she would never trust him again, and ‘how could [he] do that to her?’. There are endless paramedics and ppl in gurney’s streaming in. It’s calmed down now closer to 11pm, I imagine there will be another rush of crazies in a bit.
I just heard an announcement for someone to come and clean 2 empty beds in ‘intermediate’ that’s where I’m going. Better sign off. I only told a few people about this, haven’t tweeted and no one reads this, because no one knows it exists!
My temperature has dropped, so that’s a good sign. I will probably not leave here with my gallbladder. I wonder if they’ll let me keep it in a jar. I could make a mint selling it on ebay as an alien life form I captured. :p
More later. I’ll try to blog under morphine, that should be fun.

Writing Time

mindthenet — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 22:21:39 +0000

Had two weeks of no time for writing. Is that really possible? Well the inspiration strikes rarely still, but the more u hit it, the greater ur chances of scoring some inspiration. ihaven’t used that spare time well. It’s going to come down 2 2nite and 2moro. i’ll need groceries and plenty of tea & water. amonds maybe some digestive cookies. and absolutely no cntact w/the outside world. Reward is a movie by myself. More & more i’m loathe 2 communicate or socialize. Is that supposed to be a sign of smething? I’m not depressed, i just find that i need to ‘lockdown’ to get ANYTHING done. K, this has become a journal entry rather than a blog post of the kind i like 2 do. i want an android phone.

Carlos is Carlos

mindthenet — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 02:37:21 +0000

Starting a new show tomorrow. Always a bit nerve wrackin/exciting. Am i ready? What didn’t I think of? What if I can’t turn it on? All that shit. Only a few scenes, but these will establish the character for the audience. Wish I had thot about what 2 put on his desk….like a lucky Chinese cat or somethin’, maybe a bonzai tree. That’s just me talkin. Would it be illegal 2 have a tiny Green Lantern on my desk? he works in insurance, this ‘Carlos’. That’s why the title to this post.
Well I’ll think of something. A sticker, a particular pen…ooh! I have a pen w/my name on it somewhere. Was a gift. Have to dig it up. Well, gotta be up at 4:45, to get to pick up location for 6:am. Night all.

Outside of Time

mindthenet — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 05:27:35 +0000

Not sure where I got the expression, if i just came up with it or what. It doesn’t sound incredibly original, but i like it all the same. ‘existing outside of time’.
what’s that like, exactly? To lose awareness of time as we’ve created/designed it. There’s that poor word, ‘designed’ again. It’s much maligned of late. To lose awareness…to be unconscious of time passing, is to be in another state of awareness altogether. When u stop all things and breathe and look up at the sun and remember your own compact hugeness in the universe, then u stop time. There is no flow. Here is a beautiful zen moment of being at one.

Phones are for talkin’

mindthenet — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:37:40 +0000

Iphone 3gs, blackberry, samsung instinct and a bajillion others and in August, the Android HTC Hero. I have a Samsung Jack.
Had it about a year. It’s hard to hear me when I talk sometimes, I was drunk and dropped it in a snowbank while trying to walk home. Yah, so you can’t hear me so well on it.
Everyone and their uncle has or is getting an iphone 3G or 3GS. I still am not sold on the virtual keyboard. I’m a big advocate of new interfaces, something to finally replace the clunky keyboard, which I suspect was never meant to be permanent. I may be excited about new interfaces, like Minority Report style screens etc, but I am really attached to my tactile thumb jammin’ keyboard. The iphone seems clumsy not elegant to me, in this respect. People talk of how easy it is to learn, but do any of them send as many text messages as I do? 2,188 last month. No joke. Not all important, but it’s a habit and a standard mode of communication for me.

So why give it up? Why don’t I just cash in my fido dollars and get a Motorola Q? Cuz it’s ugly and then I’m not fancy. They all have interesting things, HTC has flash, iphone has point shoot edit and upload video. BB has instant communication with people I need to communicate with. So is it time to forget the toys and focus on work? Quite possibly. I really didn’t anticipate this blog post being a way for me to talk myself out of a touch screen phone. If I wanted that, I still have my Motorola A 1200. She’s a beaut, and linux based! How cool is that? I still haven’ t explored all the potential uses of it or my samsung. Maybe I’ll just tinker with them all summer and not fix anything that ain’t broke, then check out the other big guns and do up a ‘what do i really need/use in a phone’ list and go from there.

Writer’s Almanac

mindthenet — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 01:04:13 +0000

A birthday. A short historical fascinating tidbit. A poem. <— that’s the breakdown of a typical 5 minute and 2 second podcast from Writer’s Almanac ‘s Garrison Keller.
He’s got the kind of voice you would hear narrating a bedtime story or if you live in Toronto and listen to the CBC, the kind of voice that wakes you up in the mornings, like Andy Barrie ‘s.
I subscribe to it and download all the podcasts, put them on my ipod and away I go. Usually I update it once a week, that way I have five podcasts to listen to while I ride the streetcar.
They’re informative, they’re inspiring and they take you away from the smelly, grouchy, awful commute. They also work well here at home, on breaks from writing.

The Birthday of The World

mindthenet — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:41:15 +0000

I’m embarrassed to say this is the first time I’ve read Ursula K. Le Guin. An exquisitely creative and stimulating writer, she makes you think and enjoy and learn long after you’ve turned the last page. One particular story from this collection (The Birthday of The World) has me all wrapped up in it’s world right now, ‘Paradises Lost‘ (scroll to very bottom of above link for write up on this!). Which you might call ‘BSG without a military’, but you’d be simplifying and insulting the immense effort and attention to detail that has gone into this world, and the direction it takes.

I want to talk about it, but I don’t want to spoil it. Read it if you can. I had to order my copy from the bookstore. The book contains several stories and I’ve only read the one but have been in discussion about it all day as we’re reherasing to put on ‘Paradises Lost‘ with a libretto by Marcia Johnson at Canstage as part of the Festival of New Ideas.

I’m excited by it, by talking sci fi all day and then performing it. With music it will really take off and bring the audience along on our long trek to ‘Shindychew’.

MIT Open CourseWare

mindthenet — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:00:41 +0000

Ever tried this? I remember being fanatically excited at the possibility of getting an MIT education online when they first started talking about it. Now it’s been live for years and I’ve never tried it.

Starting today and will update progress. Tougher to choose a subject than I thought. Can’t seem to find A.I. and robotics. Actually that will come in handy for my current script. Again, more later.

Weekend Round up

mindthenet — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:52:06 +0000

Friday Night – Raoul and the Big Time

Dundas Square: Literally thousands were hoppin to the tunes of a mega Balkans star, whose name I don’t even remember. I had a flyer most of the night but I’ve lost it now. Crazy moment standing outside the Hard Rock Cafe, a skinny dude bolted out the front door, seemed like he was coming from the gift shop. He easily dodged people in that densely packed crowd. What I found most telling, was the way the cops chasing him just barrelled through the crowd, just missing a baby whom her daddy was wearing on his chest, in one of those ‘baby backpacks’ , but tagging mommy pretty good in the arm and shoulder. A 200 pound cop, slamming into a 120 pound woman, no returning to see if they hurt anyone, just on with their business and successfully stickin the guy in the back of their car, laughing about it afterward.

Raoul and his. . .orchestra, is the only way to put it (so many guys up on stage). Were fantastic. I haven’t seen him in a year or more and I sorely regret having missed so many gigs. My friend, Kate loved it too and we stayed til the end.

Saturday – Grandmother’s 97th birthday.

A few visitors, but mostly just hanging with my grandmother, whose meds keep her kinda lost unfortunately and birthday wasn’t a good day for her mind, she loved having us there. Knew we were there, but didn’t really come to life til my aunt called from South America with all of grandma’s friends and sang to her. Everyone on this side of the phone call was crying, when my grandmother started singing along.

Hard to see her like this, I keep having flashes of the woman who cared for me when I was a punk. Cooked for me, made me halloween costumes when I had none, would chase me around the house when I did something bad. Slaved for us oblivious kids who knew only that we were cared for and loved. Wish I could do more for her, but what? She just wants us around to talk to and to sit with. I brought her some music that she sang along with, old songs my grampa used to sing her when he was alive.

A few really happy moments and this beautiful, powerful woman’s life was celebrated. The guests left, the table was cleared, the gifts were put away upstairs and the multitude of flowers that arrived in their vases. We carried her to bed and I sat with her til she fell asleep. Then home, alone, to write.

Sunday – Cirque de le rain.

End of the luminato, I hit the Cirque de Soleil show at Harbourfront again with friend Kate from the Raoul and Big Time show. It rained at first, hundreds left when they announced it would take 40 minutes to dry the stage for performer safety reasons. Then we started to leave too and ran into old friends, so hung around a bit longer. The show was hard to watch through trees and bobbing heads, but I’m sure it was probably spectacular. :p Sounded good and there were lots of pretty colours and fantastical costumes, I was still pretty ‘meh’ about it, though.

This is a late posting, referring to the weekend of 12th to the 14th of June. More to come.

Illuminato’d

mindthenet — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:14:30 +0000

It’s the Luminato festival in Toronto this week, the city is hoppin’, people are dressed for summer, then fall, then summer again, all in the same day! Yonge and Dundas square … is really really loud. Not just because people have to scream into their cell phones to be heard over the music, but the music!
I haven’t been really paying attention to the world at large, because my personal life has been so stressful of late, but I only just realized or remembered actually, that Neil Gaiman was going to be here at Luminato! Go out and enjoy the city, and if you’re not in this city, then watch blogs all over for pics and stories there are sure to be a whack of them!