It snowed HARD in the city yesterday. Canada.com said there were so many car accidents as a result that police had to stop responding to the sites and advised people to get a tow and head to special drop-in centres. I spent a good portion of the day tromping around campus, trying to make sense of the white blur everywhere.

I finished Salih's book, which I read in the short term loan section of Robarts, listening to the winds howl against the building. It was quiet and nice. I went to L'Espresso for a bit and chilled out reading City of Glass. They didn't have any coffee brewed, so I had an Americano. I had to ask what it was because I'm pretty coffee-illiterate. It's essentially espresso and hot water and it tastes like coffee if you stir it like mad.

I also bought my plane ticket to Vancouver, so I suppose this means I'm officially going. Today I'm going to finish Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness. I also have to return a cell phone I found to a guy on campus. It's amazing I found it considering it was a white phone dropped into an infinite landscape of snow.

Yesterday I met someone who shares all of my musical interests. She doesn't look like much, but she's knowledgeable, organized, and easy to turn on.

Meet Lacie:


"Lacie" is the name of the company that makes the drive as well as the friendly name that pops up whenever her USB cable is connected. That's right - she's completely plug and play. And one day she'll hold my entire music collection. That is, if my CD burner can take it. I doubt it's looking forward to ripping all of that material. I tried to go entirely digital about three years ago and all of that music is currently sitting on the hard drive of a desktop PC that, last time I checked, is suffering severe problems. The process took me a long time. But I miss not having all of my music at my immediate disposal, so I'm starting the trek all over again.

I wrote the scene analysis for The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which is an excellent film. I had a lot of fun picking it apart. It's been awhile since I've done a scene analysis and it really opens up a whole new way of watching the film. I imagine I could sit down and analyze a film shot-by-shot and come up with literally hundreds of pages of material. That's the beauty of the moving visual image and its relationship with the senses.

I had a much better Wednesday yesterday than what has proven usual lately. Class was stimulating. It snowed really hard, which gave being on campus one of those "last of the population left alive" qualities. Lots of work to do this weekend.

The weather in Toronto exploded today. There is snow everywhere with plenty of wind spreading it around. I left the house once to pick up some groceries and that was more than enough.

I did walk home from Matt's place last night, which wasn't that bad, and even nice at some points - stepping into newly fallen snow at 3 o'clock in the morning. It was a fun night in celebration of Adam's 30th birthday spent at a bar called Raq n' Waq on Queen Street for some pool, then over to the Laugh Resort for some stand-up comedy. One of the guys in the group I was hanging with was a comedian and called ahead to do the first set of the night. The headliner was Tim Steeves, a former writer on This Hour Has 22 Minutes and one of the current writers for the Rick Mercer Report. There was a group in the crowd that was part of a guy's bachelor party, and one loud scarf-wearing arse in particular who the comedians ripped on all night. Really funny stuff with four acts in all. After that, a bunch of us headed back to Matt and Kim's apartment for beers and food where we sat around shooting the shit. I'd hung out with most of the people before and they're all older and funny, especially after sipping a little weed. I've learned my lesson about weed and booze, however, and chose not to partake. At the end of the night, Adam, Matt and I faced off with some Mario Party on the Wii until Matt abruptly passed on the couch. I beat the guy senseless with a pillow but he wouldn't wake up. After enough prodding, though, he sent us on our way.

Not being much of a drinker these days, I woke up with a hangover, aggravated in part due to one of the two idiots on this floor who blare techno at full volume at 1 PM when I assume most people are still in bed. Jay ended up sticking around this weekend, so I spent most of the day in my room doing nothing. I downloaded the original Legend of Zelda and played around with it for a bit. And watched the new Dark Knight trailer, which looks AWESOME.

Tomorrow I'll finish my last Bibliography assignment and get over to Future Shop to pick up some more gifts. On Tuesday I'll head to campus to collect some research materials for my African-Canadian essay. I've resolved that I'm heading back to Peterborough on Wednesday at all costs. I needed a deadline in place, if not for my own sake then for everyone who keeps asking for one.

The chief design for my Touch of Evil final project is done, with the first two video clips in place. It actually looks pretty much like I'd envisioned. Tomorrow night I'll come up with some stuff to say about it for the presentation on Tuesday. You can literally, if you time it correctly, play both versions of the opening sequence at the same time, side by side with each other.

There is snow everywhere. I found out that my brother was ALSO in a car accident the other night when a truck hit the cab he was in. He's okay but kind of banged up. My family shouldn't leave the house for the rest of the winter. I'm looking forward to getting home for Christmas. It's just about time to break out some Christmas movies. It's a Wonderful Life, Scrooge, Die Hard...

God, I should be more careful about visiting old journals to double check on information. I always get pulled in and end up reading for an hour. I really used to be a pretty emotionally distraught guy, it would seem. I'm glad I've kept this blog up. Even at only a little over three months and almost 100 entries, it's been the diary I've been the most consistent at keeping, and the tone is certainly worlds different.

Looking back, it seems clear that I was deeply upset that I wasn't in love. I've had a bunch of relationships over the past ten years or so, but no matter how frequently I was with someone I would always eventually fall under the impression that I was going to be alone. This coincided with my creative side kicking at me, and all I wanted to do was write out the insecurities that kept me awake at night. I wrote more than anyone else I knew, and sometimes that made the isolation even harder to deal with. I wanted my words to stab at people's hearts and minds. I wanted them to break apart formalities and structures that I felt kept me at a distance from other people. What I perceived as bare honesty was my only weapon against being ignored and forgotten by everyone. And if my words didn't provoke a response, I felt that I was unsuccessful at being alive.

Dramatic, I know, but that's the way it was. I can be hot-headed and rash. Sometimes I think back to the period when Andrea and I started dating, and I mark it as one of the early stages in which I experienced great, positive changes in my personality. It was around the time I moved to Centretown. I had a group of friends I enjoyed hanging out with, going to the bars to drink and dance. I was able to live and not really worry too much about the future, because I knew I'd get around to it eventually. Towards the end it felt as if things were starting to fall apart. I'm hoping that when I get back, I'll be able to rediscover all of those things that made me fall for the city, in whatever new contexts they might present themselves.

More to say on that point, but I'm tired. Tomorrow the long-gestating Opera presentation finally sees delivery. I'm nervous, but I'll be glad to see it go.

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.