Well, if you wanted to know the differences between a traditional, recurve, and compound bow I could now tell you of them, at length, as well as identify typical accessory tools and expound for at least a good ten minutes on the merits of varying lengths of arrows.
That's right, mes amis. I have returned from an archery tournament. The actual archery was fun and funny. You haven't lived until you've seen an arrow-tip buried in the gonads of a high-density foam boar. I laughed heartily, and would have taken pictures were the camera not a corpse about my neck. I carted that thing around like an albatross, man. It was pleasant to listen to the chatter of archery-afficionados gathered all about, grand to wait with bated breath as door prizes were called. However.
The stupid barn was cloudy with dust and the scent of urine and every time I had to walk through the door I literally gagged a little bit, then threw up in my mouth. Of course it would be the height of impoliteness to actually spit out the puke, so back down it went. Ah. The mores of civil society, where you can't even feel free to vomit in polite company. Give me barbarous times any day. In all honesty, it was a pretty wonderful time, though a little bit annoying that we were boxed in and couldn't leave for hours on end. I was feeling the hunger, man! And their concession sucked.
Afterwards, bestest bud (who was in the archery tournament, and thus my presence there is also explained), who shoots an unsighted recurve bow (which means that she needs to cultivate certain upper body strength as well as an eye for aiming, unlike those dastardly compounds, who get to use stabilizers and sights and don't have to keep the pressure on the string once they've got it drawn), camped out on my apartment's living room floor. Originally she had the couch, but then she flopped over and complained that it was too short for her. I had the on-floor mattress; we simply switched places and went back to watching Dead Like Me and Samurai 7. The couch has never been too short for me; I state because I curl up into a ball to sleep. Bestest bud disagrees and chooses to mock my shorter stature. What a jerk.
Bestest bud soon will leave for sunnier climes; well, Victoria is typically sunnier than Prince George I've been told. I don't know if it's true, having never been in Victoria for longer than a week. I suppose once bestest bud is down there I shall make the pilgrimage to visit, or maybe dig around for a bit and explore. I do love me the lower mainland, plus associated areas, given Victoria's not the mainland at all. But it's kind of sad, watching bestest bud go. I'm happy for her; but it's going to be lonely. She departs 4 days hence. Ahh. So little time.
I've started to hit that place where I go, "What should I do now?" Knowing that I'm just about done school is starting to terrify me. I have this sudden urge to flunk all of my classes and retire, hermit-like, into the life of an intellectual recluse. Only they'd probably take away my intellectual creds once they found out I flunked all my courses. Yikes. Judgmental bastards. But really. I don't know what I want to do. Or where I want to go. Mostly I'm just bored; and scared. Not a very fun combination, let me tell you. Whoever heard of someone being scarily bored? Boredly scared? Let me just say, like Peter Pan, I never want to grow up. Though I'm legally an adult, 'teen' still suffixes my age. Until I hit magical 20 I claim the right to remain a child. Or at least a teenager. I have a good six months left. Ack. That's actually hardly any time at all. (And speaking of Peter Pan, WOW. Barrie wrote orgies right into the text, oh yes he did. After a bit of google-fu, it comes to light that 2 of Barrie's 5 male charges committed suicide, one of whom being his especial favourite. Suspicious? I think mayhap, especially taking into consideration he didn't have much of a hand in raising the last two boys - neither of which killed themselves - and of the older three, the only one who didn't commit suicide was killed in the war. Not good stats, J.M. ol' chap.)
In order to make this post at least a little bit useful in any way, shape, or form, does anyone know of Japanese-Canadian authors/poets? I already have: Kerri Sakamoto, Hiromi Goto, Joy Kogawa, and Roy Miki. I've had to discard Ruth Ozeki and Ruri Pilgrim for being Japanese-American; it made me sad. I really liked Ozeki's "My Year of Meats". It had class. However, I'm trying to gather up possible course material for an independent study, and I want to focus on Japanese-Canadian lit with an emphasis on the clash of language structures, as most of these authors either speak English as a second language or were exposed to English through the linguistic lens of those who spoke English as a second language and thus imposed a certain other-language-structure upon the structural codes of English (I'm not sure if this is making any sense yet...). The reason why it has to be Japanese-Canadian specifically and not Japanese-American as well, or even Japanese-English, is that part of the study is going to examine how Japanese-Canadian lit writes back against traditional Euro-centric Canadian literary values, the Canadian canon, if you will, although of course now at least Kogawa's "Obasan" has been incorporated into said canon. Or has it? Ahhh. I'm being overly verbose tonight. I blame tiredness and existential angst.
That's right, mes amis. I have returned from an archery tournament. The actual archery was fun and funny. You haven't lived until you've seen an arrow-tip buried in the gonads of a high-density foam boar. I laughed heartily, and would have taken pictures were the camera not a corpse about my neck. I carted that thing around like an albatross, man. It was pleasant to listen to the chatter of archery-afficionados gathered all about, grand to wait with bated breath as door prizes were called. However.
The stupid barn was cloudy with dust and the scent of urine and every time I had to walk through the door I literally gagged a little bit, then threw up in my mouth. Of course it would be the height of impoliteness to actually spit out the puke, so back down it went. Ah. The mores of civil society, where you can't even feel free to vomit in polite company. Give me barbarous times any day. In all honesty, it was a pretty wonderful time, though a little bit annoying that we were boxed in and couldn't leave for hours on end. I was feeling the hunger, man! And their concession sucked.
Afterwards, bestest bud (who was in the archery tournament, and thus my presence there is also explained), who shoots an unsighted recurve bow (which means that she needs to cultivate certain upper body strength as well as an eye for aiming, unlike those dastardly compounds, who get to use stabilizers and sights and don't have to keep the pressure on the string once they've got it drawn), camped out on my apartment's living room floor. Originally she had the couch, but then she flopped over and complained that it was too short for her. I had the on-floor mattress; we simply switched places and went back to watching Dead Like Me and Samurai 7. The couch has never been too short for me; I state because I curl up into a ball to sleep. Bestest bud disagrees and chooses to mock my shorter stature. What a jerk.
Bestest bud soon will leave for sunnier climes; well, Victoria is typically sunnier than Prince George I've been told. I don't know if it's true, having never been in Victoria for longer than a week. I suppose once bestest bud is down there I shall make the pilgrimage to visit, or maybe dig around for a bit and explore. I do love me the lower mainland, plus associated areas, given Victoria's not the mainland at all. But it's kind of sad, watching bestest bud go. I'm happy for her; but it's going to be lonely. She departs 4 days hence. Ahh. So little time.
I've started to hit that place where I go, "What should I do now?" Knowing that I'm just about done school is starting to terrify me. I have this sudden urge to flunk all of my classes and retire, hermit-like, into the life of an intellectual recluse. Only they'd probably take away my intellectual creds once they found out I flunked all my courses. Yikes. Judgmental bastards. But really. I don't know what I want to do. Or where I want to go. Mostly I'm just bored; and scared. Not a very fun combination, let me tell you. Whoever heard of someone being scarily bored? Boredly scared? Let me just say, like Peter Pan, I never want to grow up. Though I'm legally an adult, 'teen' still suffixes my age. Until I hit magical 20 I claim the right to remain a child. Or at least a teenager. I have a good six months left. Ack. That's actually hardly any time at all. (And speaking of Peter Pan, WOW. Barrie wrote orgies right into the text, oh yes he did. After a bit of google-fu, it comes to light that 2 of Barrie's 5 male charges committed suicide, one of whom being his especial favourite. Suspicious? I think mayhap, especially taking into consideration he didn't have much of a hand in raising the last two boys - neither of which killed themselves - and of the older three, the only one who didn't commit suicide was killed in the war. Not good stats, J.M. ol' chap.)
In order to make this post at least a little bit useful in any way, shape, or form, does anyone know of Japanese-Canadian authors/poets? I already have: Kerri Sakamoto, Hiromi Goto, Joy Kogawa, and Roy Miki. I've had to discard Ruth Ozeki and Ruri Pilgrim for being Japanese-American; it made me sad. I really liked Ozeki's "My Year of Meats". It had class. However, I'm trying to gather up possible course material for an independent study, and I want to focus on Japanese-Canadian lit with an emphasis on the clash of language structures, as most of these authors either speak English as a second language or were exposed to English through the linguistic lens of those who spoke English as a second language and thus imposed a certain other-language-structure upon the structural codes of English (I'm not sure if this is making any sense yet...). The reason why it has to be Japanese-Canadian specifically and not Japanese-American as well, or even Japanese-English, is that part of the study is going to examine how Japanese-Canadian lit writes back against traditional Euro-centric Canadian literary values, the Canadian canon, if you will, although of course now at least Kogawa's "Obasan" has been incorporated into said canon. Or has it? Ahhh. I'm being overly verbose tonight. I blame tiredness and existential angst.
2 comments:
Joy Kogawa riveted me to my in-car seat in the Save-On parking lot for 20 minutes last week. She was radio-talking profoundly about the problems of victim-identity and I couldn't leave until it was over.
I like Joy Kogawa as well. I had to read Obasan for an English course. Pretty good.
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