aka: Stating the obvious.
aka: Getting real.
In a nutshell, I'm far too busy to do a long-form blog. Work, union shenanigans, life and my need to wallow in unproductive not-blog related crapulence means that there's no way I can keep this up.
That said, I like Blogger & its format, I just don't have the time for it.
So I'm giving Tumblr a shot (Cue ominous music, eye rolls and hysterical mocking laughter). The way I see it, I can chuck out a few micro-blogs every once in a while and keep people updated about my whatever in a more timely format.
I'm well aware of Tumblr's limitations and I don't like them either.
So until I return to Blogger, Your Shenanigans is temporarily relocated.
Showing posts with label housekeeping. Show all posts
Showing posts with label housekeeping. Show all posts
21.7.12
8.1.12
2012
Having a toddler and blogging is hard work. Especially when there are other considerations like job, house, family and whatever to take into account. And then there's the actual interest and drive that one requires to actually write a blog. I have the interest but not the drive. By the time I get home from work, have dinner, spend time with Henry, put him to bed, do the dishes and/or tidy up enough so that Elisabeth will feel that I'm pulling my weight in a somewhat passable way, all I'm really thinking about is TV, internet, wine, video games, beer or some combination of the above.
Blogging just doesn't feel like the kind of fun escapism that I'm looking for largely because all by entries work in the following way: I get an idea; start tapping away fueled by hate; attempt (generally unsuccessfully) to transfer that hate into humour and then get bogged down in the specifics of grammar or a particular word which I don't feel conveys the exact emotional meaning I'm trying to express. Then I get distracted and by the time I get back to the entry in question (At which point 48-72 hours have passed), I realize that what I was writing was a parade of tirade which doesn't befit my demographic as I am neither a spotty teenager or a cantankerous old bastard.
Feel free to disagree with the latter.
With that in mind, I've set a series of New Years resolutions for myself, all of which are practical, boring and a secret so that come April, I'll be the only person out there who knows what an abject failure I am. Suffice to say, a little blogging is on the menu. With luck I'll be able to fart something out weekly. At least that's the goal. Come April, I'm sure the blog have collected a nice layer of dust..
16.6.11
Stats
I love checking this blog's stats. More specifically the search keywords that bring people here. The following, for gratuitous blogging purposes only, are some of my most interesting ones:
- magical carrot Henry (?)
- hobo with a shotgun arm stump (???)
- Falcor dies (?!?!)
- Godzilla ejaculated (!!!)
- Ezzo estrangement - 4 hits
- Ezzo estranged daughters why - 3 hits
- and a series of permutations of the above on a nearly weekly basis
Who'da known?
13.6.11
In Summary
I'm coming off a fairly successful weekend where I was able to take Henry to his first petting zoo and where we all went on a long trip to the beach yesterday which for the first time, he seems to have really engaged with, playing on swings and waving at pretty much anybody, so I figure that I should re-engage with the blog a little bit. It also helps that the work on my office is finally finished and the most expensive room in the house is devoted to video games and aurally offensive music.
My analysis of the works or Beatrix Potter is still on hold. Reading her books to him as he falls asleep continues to be a challenge due to a combination of the sparseness of her writing as well as a lack of rhythm while reading out loud. Henry has had several colds and flus so I decided that since he was spending so much time in bed, I should start reading him something with a little more substance which lead me to The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.
I got this book during my Stephen King/ Clive Barker phase and remember being disappointed that it was a book for children. I'd been hoping for the standard scary/ freaky/ violent fare I was gobbling up at the time. I also devoured the book very quickly and loved it.
Reading this with new eyes, I was surprised to find so much going on in it. The entire first act serves as a warning to children about how easy it is to fall into the hand of a stranger and be seduced my false promises away from your parents.
The second act traces the shift from the fantasy of how life would be without rules to the horror of discovering you've been kidnapped and cannot escape to return to your old life. It ends quite darkly where the young protagonist gets to experience the horror his family has has to go through in losing a child.
Of course, this is a kids book so it is in the third act that the young man decides to regain control of his life and make amends, you get the sense that things are going to turn out alright however, as Mr. Barker has already gone down a rather dark route earlier, there is the niggling question as to just how happy the ending is going to be.
This is definitely a book for ten year olds (This point is reenforced several times throughout the story as well as on the flap) and can be quite scary if you're so inclined. The illustrations by Clive Barker add to the overall creepiness (e.g., fat naked lady melting with her eyeballs dangling from their stalks obscuring her breasts). But with the books theme of illusions and the constant reminder that much of what is happening is not real, it should be a good kind of scary. The final act is also dedicated to the concept of overcoming you fears so there is a nice little catharsis there as well.
Hollywood has been dithering about making this a movie for years and I find it a pity this has not come to pass. It's also made me curious about Clive Barker's Abarat series of children's books and, should Henry have any interest in The Thief of Always when he's older, will certainly consider picking these up for him as well.
Next up, I read Henry The Little Prince. To this day I'm still frustrated that the book really has nothing to do with this:
Which is a shame because then I would like the it. This was my first time reading it to the end, nt in spite of doing at least two book reports on it in my school days. Both times I reached the same point and never finished reading the book (Granted, i was reading it in French) and wrote the book report based on my knowledge of the first thirty or so pages and the cartoon. It's an interesting reflection of the school system that on both reports I got a fairly good grade, considering that I was a million miles off with regard to what happens in the rest of the book. Namely that at the end, The little Prince does not go off into space and have further adventures; he gets bitten by a snake and dies.
I suppose a case could be made using the Life of Pi Defence that the book is open ended and you can decide that The Little Prince flies through space through the power of death but I find this is a stretch of the imagination even for a book that gets away with the idea that there is a 20' diameter plant upon which lives a drunk with a never-ending supply of alcohol. Really, M. de Saint-Exupery, you paint such a wonderful picture of Heaven.
Any cynicism I have for the book is primarily due to an awareness that there is something going on, some kind of message in all The Little Princes adventures, that is entirely lost on me. Other that the religious ones. Those hit you over the head like you're in a whack-a-mole.
With that done, I have now moved on to reading Henry Treasure Island. We're only three chapters in and I doubt we'll get much farther. He's reached a stage where we need to retrain him to fall asleep on his own and if we're not doing that, he's so zonked out by the time we put him to bed that there's no point reading to him. Which is unfortunate because I was pleasantly surprised by the first three chapters. It was not the dry, dated kind of story I was expecting and trucked along nicely with lots of pirate-speak. I'll keep at it for now for my own entertainment and should Henry go through a pirate phase, I imagine this will sate his interest nicely.
As for me, I've just wrapped up ShadowMarch by Tad Williams. I don't want to turn this into a Game of Thrones rant but in relation to my thoughts on this book, but it feels inevitable.
This is the third novel of a four part series originally conceived to be a television series. It was, however, never picked up. This is unfortunate because George R. R. Martin wrote A Song of Fire and Ice after reading tad William's first fantasy series, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and realizing that you can write epic fantasy while exploring adult themes in mature ways.
It frustrates me that HBO has picked up a still unfinished fantasy series in which the author take five-plus years to finish a novel, while Tad Williams is a known quantity who, at the very least, has established that he can finish an epic and tie together all the lose ends.
As it stands, the Shadowmarch series is on track to better Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. This being the third book in what is essentially one very long novel, he continues to pick up immediately where the last one ended and entirely lack an ending or resolution of any single plot point. It's infuriating yet I love that the book just stops and you have to wait for the next one but, if you're going to write a single massive story, i think this is the way to do it, rather than to shoehorn in needless plot developments which do not serve the plot just to give your readers some satisfaction. I can think of no greater cliffhanger that to have the story simply stop and have to wait a year to pick up where you left off.
Next time: A gratuitous attempt to post more than one entry in the month of June.
My analysis of the works or Beatrix Potter is still on hold. Reading her books to him as he falls asleep continues to be a challenge due to a combination of the sparseness of her writing as well as a lack of rhythm while reading out loud. Henry has had several colds and flus so I decided that since he was spending so much time in bed, I should start reading him something with a little more substance which lead me to The Thief of Always by Clive Barker.
Reading this with new eyes, I was surprised to find so much going on in it. The entire first act serves as a warning to children about how easy it is to fall into the hand of a stranger and be seduced my false promises away from your parents.
The second act traces the shift from the fantasy of how life would be without rules to the horror of discovering you've been kidnapped and cannot escape to return to your old life. It ends quite darkly where the young protagonist gets to experience the horror his family has has to go through in losing a child.
Of course, this is a kids book so it is in the third act that the young man decides to regain control of his life and make amends, you get the sense that things are going to turn out alright however, as Mr. Barker has already gone down a rather dark route earlier, there is the niggling question as to just how happy the ending is going to be.
This is definitely a book for ten year olds (This point is reenforced several times throughout the story as well as on the flap) and can be quite scary if you're so inclined. The illustrations by Clive Barker add to the overall creepiness (e.g., fat naked lady melting with her eyeballs dangling from their stalks obscuring her breasts). But with the books theme of illusions and the constant reminder that much of what is happening is not real, it should be a good kind of scary. The final act is also dedicated to the concept of overcoming you fears so there is a nice little catharsis there as well.
Hollywood has been dithering about making this a movie for years and I find it a pity this has not come to pass. It's also made me curious about Clive Barker's Abarat series of children's books and, should Henry have any interest in The Thief of Always when he's older, will certainly consider picking these up for him as well.
Next up, I read Henry The Little Prince. To this day I'm still frustrated that the book really has nothing to do with this:
I suppose a case could be made using the Life of Pi Defence that the book is open ended and you can decide that The Little Prince flies through space through the power of death but I find this is a stretch of the imagination even for a book that gets away with the idea that there is a 20' diameter plant upon which lives a drunk with a never-ending supply of alcohol. Really, M. de Saint-Exupery, you paint such a wonderful picture of Heaven.
Any cynicism I have for the book is primarily due to an awareness that there is something going on, some kind of message in all The Little Princes adventures, that is entirely lost on me. Other that the religious ones. Those hit you over the head like you're in a whack-a-mole.
With that done, I have now moved on to reading Henry Treasure Island. We're only three chapters in and I doubt we'll get much farther. He's reached a stage where we need to retrain him to fall asleep on his own and if we're not doing that, he's so zonked out by the time we put him to bed that there's no point reading to him. Which is unfortunate because I was pleasantly surprised by the first three chapters. It was not the dry, dated kind of story I was expecting and trucked along nicely with lots of pirate-speak. I'll keep at it for now for my own entertainment and should Henry go through a pirate phase, I imagine this will sate his interest nicely.
This is the third novel of a four part series originally conceived to be a television series. It was, however, never picked up. This is unfortunate because George R. R. Martin wrote A Song of Fire and Ice after reading tad William's first fantasy series, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn and realizing that you can write epic fantasy while exploring adult themes in mature ways.
It frustrates me that HBO has picked up a still unfinished fantasy series in which the author take five-plus years to finish a novel, while Tad Williams is a known quantity who, at the very least, has established that he can finish an epic and tie together all the lose ends.
As it stands, the Shadowmarch series is on track to better Memory, Sorrow and Thorn. This being the third book in what is essentially one very long novel, he continues to pick up immediately where the last one ended and entirely lack an ending or resolution of any single plot point. It's infuriating yet I love that the book just stops and you have to wait for the next one but, if you're going to write a single massive story, i think this is the way to do it, rather than to shoehorn in needless plot developments which do not serve the plot just to give your readers some satisfaction. I can think of no greater cliffhanger that to have the story simply stop and have to wait a year to pick up where you left off.
Next time: A gratuitous attempt to post more than one entry in the month of June.
19.2.11
Book Review
Elisabeth picked up the complete hard cover collection of Beatrix Potter (minus two books) from our local charity shop for a grand total of thirteen bucks. The missing volumes are winging their way over to us via Amazon. What follows is part 1 of a 23 part series in which I review in order (And, I imagine, become increasingly dismissive of) her works.
I don't know if I've even read any of the books in their entirety before. Mom says that I didn't like them but concedes that she was the one who didn't like them and most likely never bothered reading them to me.
Part 1: The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
It probably does the book a disservice by reading it at 4:30 in the morning after only three hours of sleep to a five month old whom you desperately want to go back to sleep but has the Let's Play look in his eyes after you've spent ten minutes changing his diaper because you're half asleep and somehow the diaper keeps getting put on backwards no matter how you turn it around. As such, the book felt quite long.
This is a vague memory I have of Beatrix Potter's books and I'm interested to see how this stacks up to reality.
What I liked the most about this book was how Peter Rabbit's arc is from anthropomorphized young boy/ rabbit to, literally, a real rabbit. As he loses his shoes, he goes from biped to quadruped and once he has lost his coat, he is no longer a little boy looking for adventure but a nervous rabbit facing the very real and deadly dangers of the world (As exemplified by Peter's father being caught, killed and baked into a pie earlier in the story).
So I suppose then, The Tale of Peter Rabbit is about the loss of innocence. While his siblings are good kids and do as their told, they keep their clothes and humanity while Peter ends up sick, scared and a grown up rabbit scared of the world, aware of its dangers and to possibility of being turned into someone else's dinner.
It's also interesting to note that, according to this story, having camomile tea before bed is a bad thing yet I do this several night a week and find it quite pleasant. Oh dear, it looks like I've lost my innocence.
13.2.11
Blogging Thoughts:
- The prior entry took over 24 hours to finish and by the end was rushed otherwise I'd never have finished it. Thus is why few entries get posted. I've started a few, saved them to drafts & deleted them 2 weeks later when I couldn't remember the point of them.
- I really don't want this to be a blog about babies/ kids/ parenting but since I won't post anything regarding my work, there's not much else to say since my life is pretty much that. I'm currently considering another theme but can't think of anything I'm obsessive enough about that I'd want to write about it.
2.1.11
2011: The year we make blog
Whoops. It looks like I fell off the blogger bandwagon after Henry got born. This years resolution will be to blog more. Like -blog-a-day blog more. And since it's already the second and I didn't post anything yesterday and I've already broken my resolution, I feel confident this this endeavour will be a really big success.
I suppose I've also got to fess us a little and admit that a contributing factor to the ol' bandwagon fall off was that I tempted fate a little too much with my flippancy with regard to Henry's birth and the complications that ensued. This soured me a bit to the whole project as online flippancy suits me and with the sudden and unexpected onset of seriousness, I decided to avoid things. And then I got lazy. And now I'm just sort of feeling like I should but I don't want to so maybe I should try.
(Writing like a teenage girl also suits me.)
So that's what I'm going to do.
Of course, I've got nothing to say today (Always a good start) other than abstract moaning about going back to work tomorrow and how tedious it's going to be to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock and work out for the first time in 3 weeks. Except that's not so much abstract moaning as it is bloody specific moaning.
It's also the kind of bloggy navel gazing that I intend to avoid.
Next Time: What I think about baby books.
I suppose I've also got to fess us a little and admit that a contributing factor to the ol' bandwagon fall off was that I tempted fate a little too much with my flippancy with regard to Henry's birth and the complications that ensued. This soured me a bit to the whole project as online flippancy suits me and with the sudden and unexpected onset of seriousness, I decided to avoid things. And then I got lazy. And now I'm just sort of feeling like I should but I don't want to so maybe I should try.
(Writing like a teenage girl also suits me.)
So that's what I'm going to do.
Of course, I've got nothing to say today (Always a good start) other than abstract moaning about going back to work tomorrow and how tedious it's going to be to wake up to the sound of my alarm clock and work out for the first time in 3 weeks. Except that's not so much abstract moaning as it is bloody specific moaning.
It's also the kind of bloggy navel gazing that I intend to avoid.
Next Time: What I think about baby books.
5.9.10
Oh yeah, the blog
I guess life got in the way a little. Mind you, for the last month, things have been fairly quiet as we wrap up our pre-Henchel lives so I've got no excuse whatsoever.
As for the prenatal classes, things only got worse. The 200$ they cost would have been better spent on tacks and bubblegum.
We went to one more class; the 'fun' one where we did massage and partner-supported poses for the labouring woman. Things went to hell early on when pretty much every suggested massage involved applying tremendous direct pressure to the woman's lower back. On top of the general idiocy involved in doing such a thing, E also has lower back pain with made doing such doctor recommended activities even more dangerous.
We skipped out on the baby bath class, assuming that the half dozen or so parenting books we own, combined with the power of the Internets at our finger-tips would provide us with guidance enough. Besides, the way things were going at the TEGH, they would likely have recommended bathing your newborn in turpentine and drying them with 80-grit sandpaper.
In other blog-related news, I read Jonathan Coe's The House of Sleep. If I was doing a review I'd probably write something trite like "Jonathan Coe is the best author you've never read." But I'm not writing a review. I am, however going to write that it is really, really good. Funny, dark, witty, serious, sad, all the things you want. It also avoids getting into his politics (Which all the other novels of his that I've read seem to do.) for good or ill. Since I agree with his politics, I kind of missed them. The most clever thing about the book is how at once it is your irritating well-plotted X connects to Y which in turn is why Z did this with the kind of poetic justice that does not exist in the real world but also has numerous (Generally hilarious) asides which do nothing to move the plot forward (Pointing out the randomness of life) which balances out the Look-at-me-I'm-so-cleverness of the novel.
I haven't watched any new movies because Blockbuster is about to go bankrupt and gouging its customers. I'm too uppity to rent movies from the library. This will change once Henchel is born and E & I are poor (again).
As this is likely to be my last week as a not-father, I will endeavour to post one entry a day until Henchel flops out. Unlikely, I know but it'll be good practise.
For something.
I guess.
As for the prenatal classes, things only got worse. The 200$ they cost would have been better spent on tacks and bubblegum.
We went to one more class; the 'fun' one where we did massage and partner-supported poses for the labouring woman. Things went to hell early on when pretty much every suggested massage involved applying tremendous direct pressure to the woman's lower back. On top of the general idiocy involved in doing such a thing, E also has lower back pain with made doing such doctor recommended activities even more dangerous.
We skipped out on the baby bath class, assuming that the half dozen or so parenting books we own, combined with the power of the Internets at our finger-tips would provide us with guidance enough. Besides, the way things were going at the TEGH, they would likely have recommended bathing your newborn in turpentine and drying them with 80-grit sandpaper.
In other blog-related news, I read Jonathan Coe's The House of Sleep. If I was doing a review I'd probably write something trite like "Jonathan Coe is the best author you've never read." But I'm not writing a review. I am, however going to write that it is really, really good. Funny, dark, witty, serious, sad, all the things you want. It also avoids getting into his politics (Which all the other novels of his that I've read seem to do.) for good or ill. Since I agree with his politics, I kind of missed them. The most clever thing about the book is how at once it is your irritating well-plotted X connects to Y which in turn is why Z did this with the kind of poetic justice that does not exist in the real world but also has numerous (Generally hilarious) asides which do nothing to move the plot forward (Pointing out the randomness of life) which balances out the Look-at-me-I'm-so-cleverness of the novel.I haven't watched any new movies because Blockbuster is about to go bankrupt and gouging its customers. I'm too uppity to rent movies from the library. This will change once Henchel is born and E & I are poor (again).
As this is likely to be my last week as a not-father, I will endeavour to post one entry a day until Henchel flops out. Unlikely, I know but it'll be good practise.
For something.
I guess.
4.7.10
An Experiment
I've been going back and forth about starting a new blog for a while. The reason why the England one worked was because it had a theme and the reason why the Toronto one didn't was because all I did was go on about Crank 2: High Voltage.
Considering that I'm entering a new phase in life I figure that a theme will develop pretty quickly and naturally so stalkers won't be subjected to endless ejaculatory posts about crap films I want to see (Hausu at Bloor Cinema July 23-29; anyone interested?!).
Who knows.
If anything this will save my Facebook page from becoming my Babybook page and there will be a degree of separation between myself and my child.
Perhaps, maybe.
Not likely.
Considering that I'm entering a new phase in life I figure that a theme will develop pretty quickly and naturally so stalkers won't be subjected to endless ejaculatory posts about crap films I want to see (Hausu at Bloor Cinema July 23-29; anyone interested?!).
Who knows.
If anything this will save my Facebook page from becoming my Babybook page and there will be a degree of separation between myself and my child.
Perhaps, maybe.
Not likely.
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