This is my first official all-nighter of the school year, and my first in quite some time otherwise. The final word count on my Death in Venice essay is 4780 words, adding up to just over 14 pages in length. I also have my material ready for a Bibliography presentation I have to give in three hours or so (barring the photocopies I have to make at Robarts first).

The shitty part about this is that I'm not going to be home for another 11 hours.

I spent the day working on the essay in chunks, watching box sets and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin is always drunk and violent). At one point I took a nap because I knew I'd be up late.

Pray that coffee is readily available for me today.

I met with Paul at the Kelly Library cafe and we discussed our presentation, which should be no big whoop. Apparently he had spent last year teaching in Germany and really wants to go back to the hamlet in the north part of the country where he was living. I went to Robarts afterward to grab some material on Visconti when I ran into Jonathan Abresch, a guy I went to Carleton with who migrated to Toronto for the same reason I did. It was only the first time I'd seen him on campus since the very beginning of the semester, so we chatted for a bit.

After picking up Professor Hutcheon book on adaptation at the University bookstore, I went home and fell asleep in front of some Simpsons episodes. After I woke up I watched I Shot Andy Warhol, which was the basis for one of the first essays I wrote at University over five years ago. Lili Taylor and Jared Harris are both really good in it. Hell, so is Stephen Dorff. I get a kick out of all things Warhol anyhow.

I broke down my Death in Venice essay into word counts for each section. I find it helps me write with more consistency at greater lengths when I know exactly where to stop and start arguments. I'm 553 words into a 4225 word paper. It shouldn't be too difficult. The trickiest part is going to be sourcing the opera-related material. I still don't even have a copy of the damned libretto.

But I do have peanut butter cups.

Welcome to post #100. I think I hear trumpets blaring.

Today I watched the Visconti film version of Death in Venice, which looks great and has an interesting take on certain scenes that should work well with arguments in my paper.

After the film I went downtown for my meeting with the man, George Elliott Clarke. We sat in the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel and talked about the course before moving onto all things Ottawa. He spent five years living there and makes a visit at least once a month for various reasons. He said that it's a city that's very closed off from other Canadian cities and operates differently with respect to its arts. I asked him what he thought of the arts in Ottawa, and he told me the following anecdote:

In 1989 a sculpture of two children sitting on a bench was dropped off out front of the Library and Archives Canada building by its artist, Lea Vivot. The bench sculpture stayed in front of the building for a year before someone in the government realized that it hadn't been given official permission to be there. So, Vivot was forced to remove it. In 1994, it was replaced by a casting with inscriptions of various people across Canada (including Clarke) related to the importance of reading.

Now, that's Clarke's version of the story, but Vivot definitely said this in an Ottawa Citizen interview: "The building needed something and I don't feel that artists have the time to go through the bureaucratic approach. In the same amount of time that it would take to go through all this (bureaucracy) I can cast another sculpture and enhance another space."

That word "bureaucracy" is one that Clarke kept using when describing the state of the arts in Ottawa. I don't know much about bureaucracy. I've always had a difficult time figuring out how a dominating political climate can affect a city's artistic output. But the anecdote he used points towards the idea that the art that doesn't receive any kind of direct government support to place it into public consciousness is ignored entirely at a federal level. Artists are left to fend for themselves after the offices and galleries shut down for the day.

Now, perhaps that's not so bad for a community - finding a little wherewithal. But this leads to Clarke's second point. In the artistic sphere, Canada is markedly different from the United States; whereas the States operate as a republic that encourages the growth of populist art, Canada still operates under monarchical influence that encourages a gravity towards classical forms. That's why the country has no Bob Dylan.

Canadian literature resides solely in the academic realm. Clarke's concerns seem to lie in revisiting our own literature (mentioning specifically MacLennan and Raddall) rather than in continuing to develop old themes and structures belonging to European nations. He wishes that our literature could find its way out of the forests and into the cities. He sees Quebec as the only part of the country that's producing art with a unique voice because it holds so fast to French-Canadian identity.

Most significantly, I think, is his observation that Canada is hierarchical in nature and prone to memory loss, and this goes beyond the ideas he brought forward regarding African-Canadians in his class. Clarke is worried that people (as a populous, not as academics) are already starting to forget Mordecai Richler, to forget Irving Layton, all the way back to the relevance of Canada's earliest authors. The Canadian attitude has always been to wipe the slate clean and start over in a search for something new, yet they can never seem to cut this invisible umbilical cord from England. Until the populous decides to build from its own recent history, Canada will remain an idea in a university in search of practical fulfillment.

We talked for an hour and a half. I got him to sign a couple of books before I shook his hand and left. I'm not sure I agree with everything he said, but I know I could have sat there for a lot longer sharing ideas with him. I don't get to share as many ideas as I used to. That part of it felt good.

When I got home I watched Die Hard to officially kick off my Christmas season. Tomorrow I should start getting at that Opera paper (though I still have 4 whole days).

The Opera presentation is in the can. The presentation itself went pretty well and got some nice compliments afterwards. I felt that I crashed a bit during the Q&A period when I messed up the chronology of the release of the film adaptation vs. the writing of the opera, doubly embarassing since I'm supposed to be writing on the film for my paper (a dead giveaway that I haven't started researching the damn thing). Still, I was able to interject on some other points. Nice to have it over with.

I took a nap after getting home and woke up at 10 to work on my presentation for the Touch of Evil Project, which I knocked out by 4 AM before hitting the sack.

The snow is really coming down outside. Welcome to December. I picked up Christmas present number one today, for Andrea. My only concern is getting it overseas without damaging it.

The Opera gang and I rehearsed today. The evidence:



I think we're more or less ready for Monday. It should be pretty funny. Unfortunately, I won't really get to SEE it, because I'm in it.

After the rehearsal I caught Before the Devil Knows You're Dead at the Varsity. The flick starts out promising but lost me in its efforts around the halfway point before its unsatisfying conclusion. No one in the film is all that likable, which would be fine if they were at least vile in a compelling way, but they aren't. Besides that, it's really the kind of thriller that's been done before both structurally and thematically, without leaving even a hint of why it should exist in the first place. I've seen a couple of Lumet's Pacino movies, which I liked, but this one felt too dreary, too obvious and too driven by its form.

When I woke up this morning my air mattress had deflated, but I couldn't find any punctures. I tried re-inflating it but it wouldn't work, so I broke out my other air mattress and filled it. Then I figured out what I was doing wrong with the other mattress, so now I have the two mattress piled on top of each other. It's double the bed. I don't know why I didn't think of doing this before.

I ate dinner, watched Dogma and uploaded some pictures. Tomorrow I have to really get a crack at that design for my Touch of Evil presentation.

I met with the Opera folks for the presentation table-read today. The material should go over well on Monday. I'm looking forward to having it done and out of the way. Tomorrow night I'm going to Adam's place to try transferring my Touch of Evil VHS to some kind of digital format that I can use for my presentation. I hope it works. At this point, I'm kind of counting on it to work.

I watched the Republican YouTube debate while throwing some vegetarian chili together. A couple of them seem like all right people but I had to shake my head at certain outlooks they bring to the table. In the audience was a retired gay officer who serve din the army for years, and the candidates actually had the nerve to feed him the lines "Thank you for your service, but," essentially, your lifestyle is immoral and damaging to the notion of America's military unit.

Fuck, America has it so astoundingly backwards sometimes that it cripples common sense. There are segments in The War devoted to how Japanese and African-Americans were treated during the Second World War, condemning America's use of detainment camps and troop segregation, yet people still believe that homosexuals can't serve as if it's a lesser breed of discrimination. They don't fit the profile. What, exactly, isn't completely fascist about that outlook? How is it any different from the principles behind a regime? Thousands of coalition force members have been killed in the last few years, not to mention the untold civilian casualties, and the American military insists on barring a solider based on sexual orientation? That's a pretty messed up rationale. God forbid democracy is brought to Iraq on the backs of homosexuals.

Anyway. Computer's still running slow, and I've downloaded yet ANOTHER virus scanner (which apparently wants me to register for its use. No chance). Guh.

My diary-keeping schedule is a bit bananas. I ended up going to sleep last night before midnight because I was so wiped from staying up until 5 AM the previous night. The last entry was written sometime yesterday afternoon, but backlogged to get me back on schedule, but then... whatever. Today I've got two entries in one.

I met with the Death in Venice folks yesterday, who I'm liking more and more, and we started putting our script together for the presentation. I've never "scripted" a presentation before. Nor have I ever donned costumes, wigs and moustaches to talk about Greek gods and psychology. Next weekend is our "dress rehearsal;" I'll have to bring my camera so that I can get across some idea of what we've been working at all semester.

Yesterday I received Visconti's film version of Death in Venice in the mail from Amazon, which I'm going to analyze for my paper. It was accompanied by a box set of Mission Hill episodes. I hadn't seen that show in a few years. I watched the first four episodes and it really took me back. I'd almost forgotten how wickedly funny it is. It's great to be able to keep parts of your life with you by having a movie or show at your disposal to call up memories.

I listened to SModcast and hit the sack early, as I said. This morning I woke up and headed to the Thomas Fisher Rare Book library, hellbent on finishing a bibliographical description assignment for tomorrow. I called up a 2nd edition copy of The Monk by Matthew Lewis dated from 1796 and spent four hours writing about its physical makeup. I found the process insanely interesting, even though I hate reading about it on my own time - it was different to actually have the book in front of me, trying to unlock its mysteries. The hands-on aspect to the assignment really appealed to me. After I finished, I logged on to a computer at Robarts and started typing up my research, when I read an email indicating that the assignment due date has been moved to NEXT Friday, so I'll be able to take a second look at the text before I finish it once and for all. Aces.

After the library I went over to the Varsity to meet Ren, and we chatted for a bit before seeing No Country For Old Men, the new Coen brothers movie. I may not be going to the movies as much as I'd like, but the last few films I've seen in Toronto have all been amazing, including this one. If you're a fan of Fargo, it will impress the hell out of you. I actually thought it was BETTER than Fargo. Javier Bardem plays the most chilling killer I've seen in a movie in years. And Josh Brolin is going to be a full-fledged movie star very, very soon. It's enjoyable as an action flick but also has a more subtle narrative level playing around with ideas of fate, expectations, war, border politics and issues of identity. I wanted to see it again right away after it was over to pay more attention to the subtext.

Now I'm home. My computer's chugging a little, so I'd better back up my files just in case it bites the dust. My next computer is going to be a Mac, as sacrilegious as that sounds.

It snowed today.

I hit the library right after film class to work on my Death in Venice research and finally found a great location to work. There's a desk against a corner window on the 13th floor that essentially makes a nook out of the area by the windowsill. The desk wall blocks out traffic noise, and there's a great view to clear my head. I sat for awhile studying Nietzsche and Freud and taking notes before heading downstairs to start typing, and knocked out a page before heading to African-Canadian Lit.

My presentation on Oni went fine, and was the last of the year. Ama Ede was a guest in the class. I've met Ama a handful of times. He used to be the writer-in-residence at Carleton, and before class started we sat around gossiping about Ottawa, which I will take any opportunity to do. He's a good guy and gave a reading of his material after class.

I still had about five pages of Death in Venice research to write, but I was feeling tired so I went home and napped for an hour and a half. I've been having a prolonged series of late nights over the last while, and I figured that as long as I'm inevitably going to stay up until at least 3 AM, I might as well work while I'm doing it. After the nap I ended up picking away at talking points until around 5 before finally hitting the sack.

I went to the seminar on the Synergies project, which is basically a government funded organization that is striving to publish Canadian journals and conferences via its different online systems (it has not yet received its funding). The idea is that it works in coordination with a bunch of Universities across the country in order to keep the systems updated. One fellow was quite adamant about stressing the point that the systems should be bilingual. He honestly wouldn't stop talking about it. In any event, the project is run out of the University's libraries, and I may ask them if I can be of any help in digitizing older documents for web presentation.

I met with the Opera kids and we talked about our presentation, which is shaping up to be something quite neat. When you boil it down, we'll each be talking for about 15 minutes, and that will require about 6 or 7 pages of written material (double-spaced). A piece of cake given how much there is to talk about. I'm to have the research done for next Wednesday.

I walked home from Keele station and ate while watching Scrubs (I'm becoming addicted). I was also in the mood for some 90's caliber, pre-9/11 action movie goodness, so I popped in Arlington Road, a movie my sister gave me a few years ago but that I hadn't seen since theatres. It was about as good as I recall, which is, to say, not very. It proceeds at a decent dramatic clip until about the last 30-45 minutes, when the movie dips further and further into the implausible. It was as if the filmmakers' only concern was to build to a chase scene in which they could bury the fact that they had no idea how to wrap up the narrative. Still, it was kind of interesting watching a movie about terrorism in America only a couple of years prior to the hijackings.

I ordered a copy of Visconti's Death in Venice for my essay. Tomorrow I'm hitting up Future Shop and hopefully starting work on my Oni presentation.

I boarded the bus for class this morning but traffic on Keele Street was completely gridlocked. We sat for nearly an hour and had only moved a couple of blocks. I know there was construction work going on, and that must have been coupled with an accident or fire (a fire truck did speed by, sirens blaring). At one point the driver of a Go bus behind us approached the driver of our bus about his mirror, prompting our driver to put the bus in park and GET OUT to check it out. That's when I decided to hike it home.

I took a nap during which FedEx showed up with what I'm assuming is my Eurail pass. What are the chances they'll come back tomorrow before 11 AM? I have a feeling I'll be asking Jay for a lift to their offices. The remainder of my university bursary appeared in the mail a bit later.

I did return to campus later on for African-Canadian Lit. We watched a film called Rude, which had an involving story and was great in that Canadian production kind of way. Afterwards I tried doing some research on Death in Venice at Robarts, but I couldn't concentrate, so I headed home after about 45 minutes. I used to be able to get a lot of work done at the library at Carleton, but I find Robarts a kind of tricky place to study. The desks are always too open to traffic, and the cleaning staff often decides to buffer the floor with this loud machine right in the middle of the day. I need to find a better study hole.

I walked home from Keele station, poked a bit at some more stuff on Thomas Mann and watched a few episodes of Scrubs (I really dig Zach Braff). Tomorrow I'm meeting with the Death in Venice group for a bit. Before that I'm attending a seminar on making Canadian journals available for online research. More on that after I find out exactly what it entails.

Most of my group met today to watch a video of a Death in Venice performance, and we tossed around some ideas about the material we're going to present. After talking with them I'm starting to look forward to it. I have some ideas about looking at writer psychology, tying it in to Thomas Mann's work and the character Aschenbach. Looks positive so far.

I watched Faust and it's incredible. I LOVE Murnau's work. Nosferatu is probably the one he's most known for, but he also directed the amazing Sunrise: A Tale of Two Lovers that choked me up when I saw it. He's probably the greatest of the silent film directors (I say this on the eve before watching Griffith's most well-known work). Murnau's effects are overall great even by today's standards. I posted some stills over at the film_stills LiveJournal community.

Andrea and I had a conversation about outer space, prompted by the news that astronomers discovered methane rain on Titan. We started talking about other worlds and how little humanity still knows about them. Andrea sent me a documentary on supermassive black holes that I watched in amazement. But then that prompted investigation into how scientists think the world is going to end. One thing seems to be certain: regardless of anything we do, the Earth will not exist in 6 billion years (based on solar evolution, the sun will have become a "red giant" by that time). Humanity will have disappeared even sooner than that, because the oceans will have evaporated 5 billion years earlier, followed by the atmosphere. Venus will have melted entirely.

It's kind of humbling to know that despite our best efforts to cling to life, we're not going to be here forever. 6 billion years from now, if humanity still exists in this or another galaxy (not Andromeda, which will more than likely have melded with our galaxy creating a supermassive black hole that will either slingshot Earth out into space or evaporate it completely), it will probably be a lot different from what it's like today. How far are we going to evolve? Where will we end up? When will we end, if at all?

I picked up some graham wafers at the grocery store. They're sweet and taste like honey. I like to eat a few before I wash them down with cold water.

200 more words today.

It's felt as though my head has been on backwards for the better part of today. I couldn't take care of passport issues because I forgot to have Jay sign my photo, so it kind of threw things out of whack. Tomorrow I have to give it another shot while also attending class and making a trip to the bookstore. At the very least, Jay offered me a ride to Peterborough for the weekend, so I don't have to think about bus schedules.

I discovered that I'm not going to be able to apply for one of the grants I had my eye on, but then I found another to take its place. It would be easier to ask for money if I were applying as an incorporated non-profit organization. But I know hardly anything about owning a business. I'd need a board of directors, a lawyer, an accountant. How would I put all of that together without a budget? I don't have that kind of money. And besides, even if I did get a non-profit organization off the ground, how would I be able to make a living at running it?

That seems to be the biggest and baddest thought running through my head these days: how I'm going to make a living once I'm through with school. I want a steady income at a higher-profile job. The money isn't even all that important to me - I just want to be in a position where I feel as though I'm doing something more meaningful than selling a product I don't personally care about. I don't want to keep waking up early every weekday morning with eight hours of a ridiculous bottom line over my head. That's more or less what I've been doing job-wise since I started working. I'm going to have a ton of education under my belt when I'm through at U of T. It has to qualify me for SOMETHING worthwhile. I shouldn't worry about it, I suppose. I've never had a lot of trouble finding work, and I haven't done any research into what's available yet. I used to freak out about a career all the time, always under the idea that it was a FUTURE problem. One step at a time.

Sometimes I get the feeling I'd be a tragic character in some author's work on ambition. That's what happens when you read as much Can Lit as I do. It wouldn't sell very well, as I probably haven't had enough success yet.

I fantasize about what life is going to be like when I move back to Ottawa. My own place, new furniture, my movies and books neatly displayed on a shelf, a filing cabinet for my personal papers, the ability to sit down and write and design without even the slightest thought that someone is around invading my headspace. Erecting a home office setup where I can tackle event organization more effectively. Just me and a cat (and Andrea once in awhile). An adult paradise.

I'm reading Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, which is a pretty intense story about uncomfortable subject matter, equating artistic drive with taboo obsessions (it's about a writer who goes on vacation and becomes transfixed by a ten year old boy). It's short, so I'll probably finish it before going to bed. One more step towards what will happen next.