Into the mist

Paranoiacs take flight

Gradually, my honours is coming together. There's about two weeks left before I hand it in; I've got roughly 20 pages left to write. This wouldn't be a problem, but damn, deconstruction is confusing.

Part of me is hesitant to finish it, too; once it's done, I'm finished my undergrad degree and I have to start living. Gone is my safety net, and Newfoundland's trades-based economy isn't the most welcoming to English majors. My 10-hour-a-week minimum wage job isn't going to cut it either – I don't even think I could pay for health insurance with it, let alone food or transportation. Plus, it's pretty disheartening to have a university degree and work for peanuts at a watch shop.

Most English grads seem to head to Korea, which may be an option. If nothing else, it's produced a lot of interesting filmmakers lately.

In short, my hometown is spooky for an arts grad with nothing but time.

TIFF, motherfucker!

Seven hundred dollars later and I'm heading to the Toronto International Film Festival.

A conversation with a friend who was home from Toronto prompted me to throw down. He has a place in Hogtown and our friend who's returning from China will be there, so I had to venture up at some point over the next few months anyway. Plus, I had no real other use for the money – I'm making too little to plan for the future, with thoughts of cars and apartments and eskimos. Instead, it's just a steady income that lets me head out to dinner or buy books now and then; it keeps me going. Had I not blown it all on a vacation, I would have wasted it on beer, fast food, and trinkets.

The festival should be ridiculously fun, but I'm not too stoked by the lineup yet. Yes, I do want to see Big Bang Love: Juvenile A and Taxidermia and The Wind That Shakes The Barley and Pan's Labyrinth. But, I'm still hoping for something small to explode into something big, like Capote and Whale Rider did. Who knows, maybe I'll be surprised – they haven't released the schedule yet, and they may be saving the craziest stuff for last.

Plans for the 12 days I'm up there include eating bologna sandwiches, drinking a pitcher a day with Steve and Justin, sleeping on a floor, asking out Natalie Portman, watching three flicks a day in theatres and even more back at the ranch. September 7 - 16, the lights go down...

Mysteries of the Ea(s)t

I went to Bamboo Garden again this weekend, after spending the day in bed recovering from a massive hangover. I had sucked down about four large slices of not-so-great pizza before I went, yet managed to have some hot & sour soup and green onion pancake (my dining companion is vegetarian, so there were no pork dumplings this time).

As it was the last time I ate there, the food was fantastic. Unlike most other Chinese restaurants in town, Bamboo Garden does it authentic. I don't even know if there are forks and knives in the place – chopsticks don every table. Generally, you get rice or noodles and maybe some dumplings, plus different dishes unlike anything remotely Western (steamed turnip cake? steamed vegetarian bun?) There is a Westernized menu, but I've never tried it and I don't really feel the need.

It's nice to see a completely unique ethnic restaurant flourish in St. John's, where I've never known people to be the most adventurous with eating. (Granted, the food isn't especially daunting, but it's a far cry from cod and scrunchions.)

Hot and sour soup is pretty standard fare, but the green onion pancake was something new. It wasn't sweet, but was more like a pan-fried flatbread with flecks of green onion. It tasted somewhere between toutons and naan. I only wish I had realized before ordering, because it really seemed to invite dipping sauce.

Regardless, it was all delicious and made me think I should spend more money on dining out and less money on heavy drinking.

Sacrelicious

I recently picked up Volume 2 of Preacher, Garth Ennis's and Steve Dillon's middle-finger to religious hypocrisy. I read Volume 1 a year or two ago, loved it, but has never gotten around to collecting the rest of them. I had been missing out – Gran'ma, Billy-Bob, Jesus de Sade, and the creeped-out paintings by Glenn Fabry all do wonders to take on the problems of unquestioned faith. Volumes 3 through 9 are high on my future purchasing list.

Meanwhile, I kick myself for reading comics instead of, say, endless critical theory. I mean, I do have a 40-odd page paper that's only 1/8 done. But, I had a discussion with a prof yesterday that soothed my supposed guilt. He effectively said that if you read nothing but Jean Baudrillard all day, you'll lose your mind. It makes sense – questioning the nature of existence at every turn makes it hard to get cheerful about pizza night.

So, I dredged myself out and dusted off the comics reading list I'd abandoned a while ago. Also in the queue: 100 Bullets, The Walking Dead, and early X-Men.

Check it

Again, another post I'm using to try to set up the template and really get things going.