after my daily swim at trinity bellwoods in toronto, i met some men and from one of them heard an amazing tale. this fellow has a friend, you see. and the friend moved to germany. the friend is some kind of an engineer and likes to put in long hours. he was stymied in his desires. when he arrived at the german company he was given a ten page book of work rules. highlights include. no eating lunch at your desk. a fireable offense. obligatory half hour of socializing in the lounge with co-workers after lunch. not a fireable offense…
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fionnuala suggested i see le divorce – not because it is a good movie – but because of the subject matter. english language film set in paris. dropped by rottentomatoes.com to have a look at the synopsis. a priceless quotation from the lovely kate hudson. She was particularly intrigued by the French willingness to say almost anything, no matter how seemingly outrageous or controversial, and to utterly disregard any notions of political correctness. “However they feel, whatever they want to express, they just say it,” she notes. “They’re quite a passionate people.” it turns out in europe one can actually…
Leave a Commentin this weekend’s globe and mail, there is more debunking of the american dream. apparently, for the less advantaged if you really want your children to live the american dream, you’d be better first stepping across the border to canada. You know how it goes: The kid born in the log cabin becomes the president of United Steel. The prairie girl takes the bus to Hollywood and Vine and gets her name in lights. The ghetto kid makes it in the NBA. It may be called the American dream, but it is far more likely to happen in Canada. We…
Leave a Commentvisited the AGO today for the last day of the degas bronze scuplture exhibition. loathesome work. the degression of scuplture since the greeks is astonishing. of course, i love rodin’s work. the power of his bronzes. the scale of the work. but degas’ work in scuplture is largely an afterthought. he only created one bronze for exhibit in his lifetime, la danseuse à quatorze ans. all the rest are fabrications. another sculptor went in and working on the basis of wax and plasticine models of dancers created by degas for his paintings. why would degas create these things if not…
Leave a Commentsocial opportunity is on the run too. in early december, businessweek noted that significant social mobility had dropped by two thirds from 1978. the nation poses the question if you wanted to create a caste society how would you go about it… One thing you would definitely do is get rid of the estate tax, so that large fortunes can be passed on to the next generation. More broadly, you would seek to reduce tax rates both on corporate profits and on unearned income such as dividends and capital gains, so that those with large accumulated or inherited wealth could…
Leave a Commenttoday i needed to find some moving boxes and a car to rent. first i tried to find uhaul for the boxes. impossible to find a company website. the top thirty google listings for uhaul toronto have almost all been spammed by a single company. what’s worse that company has a talking doll as its spokesperson. i have written google to let them know about the spammer. next i decided to rent a car, preferably from national as i had some good experience with them in the past and they were not expensive. no luck there either. no company website…
Leave a Commentsince i’ve been back in toronto, i’ve received two newspapers each day. the globe & mail which is known as a national paper (although it is based in toronto) and the toronto star which is proudly a city paper. the star has its role on the national stage as well as it is sole major liberal voice in canadian newspapers. all the other major canadian papers are part of canwest or southham. canwest’s major contribution to canadian culture has been the rebroadcast of american hit tv shows with canadian ads. they no longer allow independent editorial in their dozens of…
Leave a Commentrussell smith talks about virtual beauty – a new beauty contest of virtual models. more interesting is the point he makes about the body image of women. it certainly is no longer men who are at fault for women’s compulsion towards self-starvation. Contrary to popular belief, it is not men, on the whole, who determine the beauty ideal in fashion magazines. The readership of fashion magazines, like the editorship of fashion magazines, like the audience for fashion shows themselves, is female. Fashion models tend to be much skinnier in women’s magazines than they are in men’s magazines. Compare the curviness…
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