Buy Handmade.

Found this on My M Bags blog... When I went, there were 37 640 pledges to buy handmade !

Cool bags at M Bags

Cool stuff... Check it out : My M Bags.
It's in French but, handbag language is universal ! Young designer based in Montreal. All hand made. Some are made of recycled material. Each one is unique.

Waves smashing the coastline

When asked where I'd rather be, I think of a beach... but unlike most people, I'm not thinking about a hot beach under under the sun and a soft breeze. I'm thinking grey skies, whipping wind and huge waves smashing the coastline. I completely lose myself under such conditions. The sound of the wind fills your mind, the salty air sticks to your skin and hair, and the perpetual movement of the forceful yet graceful water is very soothing to me. I seem to be coming down with a little case of Winter blues. I'm bored. I'm tired... so yeah... I'd rather be there, sitting on that big rock on the left.

Palimpsests and Bailiwicks

That day after I wrote my last post, I was reading an article by Edward Hoagland in Harper's Magazine. I don't know this writer but throughout his article, I was stumbling on words for which I had no idea of the meaning and in most cases couldn't even deduce an approximate understanding through the context. And even after looking in the dictionnary, I sometimes still did not understand what the word was doing in that sentence. Palimpsests. Parochial. Discombobulated. Beseeching. Hoodwinks. Bailiwicks. Welts. Dotage. Just to name a few that sent me to the pages of my Webster. Funny how life works. You write something about (against) dumbing down the vocabulary in a text and the next day you come across an article sprinkled with new vocabulary! It was lots of fun though I did begin to think, after a few pages, that he was pushing it a little bit. Palimpsests? Bailiwicks? I don't think I can work those into an ordinary conversation over lunch!

Lowest common denominator

I have a rather good vocabulary in my every day language (French). I express myself well when writing professionnal documents. But my boss, very often revises them and changes words and sentence structure. She says that the words I use are too professionnal and wouldn't be understood by everyone. Hum. I'm not talking about a general public article here. These are internal documents for presentation to the board. And the words I use are still very basic vocabulary for an educated and cultivated person - nothing technical or obscure understood only by the initiated. I think that if everybody is always reducing everything to the lowest common denominator - to make sure that even the least educated person around the table will effortlessly understand every single word used - we'll all just turn stupid in the long run. Nobody will learn anything anymore.

When you encounter a new word, most of the time you can «guess» its meaning simply through the contexte where it is used. Once in a while you'll have to ask or fetch a dictionnary. I usually fetch the dictionnary even if I've deduced the meaning, just to get the whole picture of the word... and then I try very hard to use it in a conversation within the next 24 hours to help it stick in my brain !

That habit she has bothers me very much. Sometimes my text is modified so much that I remove my name from the bottom. I am proud of the quality of my writing. I worked hard the get it there and to keep it there. If the text doesn't reflect the quality of my work, I refuse to have my name associated with it.

RMR : Canada Explained !

Rick Mercer... Brilliant again ! Tuesday night he did a piece titled «Everything you wanted to know about Canada but were afraid to ask». Absolutely fascinating. Very educational. Bull's Eye ! How Canada works - simplified. He got me right from the start when he said that 75% of canadians could not answer the question «who is Canada's head of state?»... Of course, I said to myself - well, I know that ! - how horrible to think that 75% of canadians do not... BUT, it turns out I HAD IT WRONG TOO ! But, as Rick said, that's OK because the answer is ridiculous ! I was totally captivated and I listened with fascination and LEARNED a lot and laughed a lot too ! Just brilliant. As usual !

Desquiet, by Julia Leigh

Just finished reading Disquiet. Wonderfully written by Australian writer, Julia Leigh. I love this type of writing where «nothing seems to be happening», action wise but at the same time, you always having that uneasy feeling of the world shifting powerfully. Mingarelli's prose is like that. And this little book absolutely did that. It's the kind of story that stays with you for days after you've finished it. You have trouble starting a new book because this one is still lingering inside. The mood, the feeling is like a tinted fog that just hangs there. This review expresses well what fascinated me throughout the book. One particularity is that the main charactors are referred to as «the woman», «the boy» and «the girl»... except when someone was talking them (so we do know their names). This was disconcerting and very strange. It created, combined with many other little details, a certain disembodiement. A very good read indeed... I must now find her other books !!!

Old 404 - new dance

Cool. Much better than the drabby 404's we usually. I nice way to bring the visitor back in.
Click on the image to go to the article.
Source : colleague reference to SmashingMagazine.

Kinda puts things into perspective

Life's little hurdles are dwarfed when you see this. Majestic.
Source : Astronomy Picture of the day.