Good news to start the week

$1 US=$0.981 CAD

This is pretty great.

If you've been paying attention to the world currency news lately (and why wouldn't you be?)you know that Canada has been celebrating it's unprecedented gain over the US dollar. As of some point last week when I checked (technical term: S.P.L.W.W.I.C.), it was at a disturbing $1 US=$.94 CAD, which is about the opposite of what it was last year. The mere fact of the US dollar being worth more than 90 cents Candian was tough enough for us expatriots, who have become comfortable with our parent's money being worth more in this country, thereby making us between 15% and 5% richer. However, Canadian trade being the complete fucking pointless mess that it is (technical term: C.F.P.M.), this feeling of added wealth was combated by the fact that goods in Canada (books, macaronia and cheese, clothes, soda pop, gold, silver, frozen concentrated orange juice, et cetera) often cost between 20% and 50% more than their US cost; plus an added 7% to 12% sales tax. If we can do simple math (yeah, right, this is an arts blog), that means that under last year's exchange rate, we Damn Yankee Expatriots (DYEPs) were actually paying 12%-57% more for these goods. To this, we would give a heartfelt and postmodernist "bull-shiiiiiiiiiit!".

Therefore, the benefit of the Canadian loonie gaining on the American buck should have been that Canadian companies would lower their prices to something other than the 1970s exchange rate (for proof of this, look on the back cover of any book that you have with you. Go on, look! See? $24.95 US, or $98.35 CAD). Did they? Nope nope. With this new gain on the dollar, Canadian's are still paying 27%-62% more than Americans are, and, as of last week, DYEPs were paying 33%-68% more. Is this fair? Nope. Is it logical? No. Does this post have a point other than ranting? I dunno, you're the one who's actually read this far (unless you were just skimming over the page and landed on this sentence, in which case, no cheating, go back to the top). I suppose that what I'm trying to point out is that our recently lost gain over the loonie wasn't much of a gain anyway, it was more of a slight discount. It's like in Florida when everyone goes crazy about the back to school tax-free week and buys billions of dollars worth of clothes (trust me, I worked Target that week, I've been on the front lines of that mess). Sure, you're saving money, but Florida tax is only 6.5%. If something was discounted 6.5%, no one would call that a steal, let alone line up before the store opens and pack three shopping carts to the brim with petite uniforms, khakis, and jumpers--it's all in the way that you look at it. The same goes for this Canadian gain over the dollar. Sure it's a bit of a boost to save 6% in the States (though one should remeber that, in Vancouver, Canadians do their shopping in Washington, where sales tax is about 8%, so it's only a 4% gain), but it doesn't do anything to help the Canadian dollars that are being spent in stores by the average-joe Canadian or DYEP.

Oh wait, I forgot that this was supposed to be good news. Well, it is. If the buck is coming back up, then the difference in Canadian prices might start to seem a little mnore resonable (meaning that they'll be back to their previous aforementioned unreasonability (unreasonness? Disreason?)) than they are now, as we can go back to bragging about how much richer and cooler we are than Canada, even though when you look at it we're not, and we don't have their health care and social support, blah blah blah, they still pay a ridiculous amount of taxes, so there.

And speaking of taxes: Oregon is voting to levy a tax on cigarettes that will go to benefit education. So we don't want people, especially kids, to smoke, but are more than happy to let them smoke so long as they give money to education in doing so, Hypocritical? Maybe just a little bit.

Random self-bragging: here are my current grades for the semester:

Shakespeare: A
Metaphor: B+
Grammar: A
Postmodernism: B+
Woolf: B+

Not a lot to brag about, unless you consider that two of those B+s are in 400+ level classes, one of which (Postmodernism) is a tough cookie to crack. Egg to crack. Yip yip yip yip yip uh huuuh uh huuh uh huuh.

Photoshop will someday be used to prove people right in cases of "A looks like B!"

For example:
This afternoon, while resting from a hard day's presenting on Mrs Dalloway and eating sushi, my roommates and I were discussing one of our favorite subjects: the approaching trip to England. At some point in the conversation, I mentioned that I thought the United Kingdom looked like a Little Old Man. Apparently, I'm on crack, because no one else sees that. Well, for the visually impaired, I offer this irrefutable evidence:

HA! Take that, non-believers! The United Kingdom is a little old man, a dwarvish or leprachaunish old man, and Scotland is the head, England is the body, and Wales is the hand. I guess Ireland is either his pot o'gold or a rock. It's so cute! But how can you deny that? YOU CAN'T. I feel incredibly smart. Now I have to go to class.

I just wanted some coffee....gosh, what were YOU thinking?

Yeah, I made it myself, after Amanda and I almost died of the giggles in Metaphor class.

Name's Meg, Purveyor Of Short Films

Here's the latest installment of Arts Deux Films's expanding repetoire: "The Blank Paper". From this, and from "Teddy Bear", I'm starting to outline a project of sorts: to make thirteen short stop-motion films, in black and white, each one corresponding to a movement from Schumann's Kinderszenen. Already, I've used numbers one and five for these last two films. Eleven to go! Each piece is between thirty seconds and three minutes, so it's not too much to have to do. We'll see how that goes.

To get away from that, here are some selectedly wonderful poems by my favorite poet (guess who):

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

*

o by the by
has anybody seen
little you-i
who stood on a green
hill and threw
his wish at blue

with a swoop and a dart
out flew his wish
(it dived like a fish
but it climbed like a dream)
throbbing like a heart
singing like a flame

blue took it my
far beyond far
and high beyond high
bluer took it your
but bluest took it our
away beyond where

what wonderful thing
is the end of a string
(murmers little you-i
as the hill becomes nil)
and will somebody tell
me why people let go

*

"o purple finch
please tell me why
this summer world (and you who i who
love to live)
must die"

"if i
should tell you anything"
(that eagerly sweet carolling
self answers me)
"i could not sing"

*

if everything happens that can't be done
(and anything's righter
than books
could plan)
the stupidest teacher will almost guess
(with a run
skip
around we go yes)
there's nothing as something as one

one hasn't a why or because or although
(and buds know better
than books
don't grow)
one's anything old being everything new
(with a what
which
around we come who)
one's everyanything so

so world is a leaf so a tree is a bough
(and birds sing sweeter
than books
tell how)
so here is away and so your is a my
(with a down
up
around again fly)
forever was never till now

now i love you and you love me
(and books are shuter
than books
can be)
and deep in the high that does nothing but fall
(with a shout
each
around we go all)
there's somebody calling who's we

we're anything brighter than even the sun
(we're everything greater
than books
might mean)
we're everyanything more than believe
(with a spin
leap
alive we're alive)
we're wonderful one times one

*

I'm in Aletheia's room while she's painting a sky on a clock and we're listening to Joanna Newsom and it's really quite lovely.

Film experiment number two!

Honestly, I should be working on my presentation that's due Monday (Blade Runner and Metropolis: Postmodernism vs. German Expressionism/Modernism (note: German Expressionism always wins)), but since I'm in Portland for the weekend, I really can't help myself. The film took about four or five hours to get together (that means photograph, edit, re-edit, score, add titles, et cetera), which is pretty nifty. Though I did learn something disturbing: iMovie '08 is not as great as it claims to be. Unlike the '06 version, it has absolutely no video editing effects (except for being able to change the color/saturation of the film). That means no speeding up, no grainy effects, no cool little gimmicky things. So I had to re-download iMovie '06, film and compile all the pictures in '08, export that as a .mpeg, re-open it in '06, speed up the animated part of the film, export it as a second .mpeg, open that in '08, and add the titles. Still, though, I shouldn't complain, the result is pretty good, and better than if I tried to use any other non-professional editing software. Even so, my neck hurts like a bitch (I never understood that expression completely) from hunkering over the keyboard.

In completely unrelated news, today my Disney World maps came in the mail and I got to play with a kitten named Kiwi. Yes and double yes.

Un Petit Film

I put together a video in about two hours today, using experimental techniques and such. Stop-motion, two minutes. Here it is:



I think it's fun, though my technique is still a bit sloppy (what can I say, though? I did it completely by myself!)