We were fascinated (and overwhelmed) by the enormous halls of antiquities on display at the Louvre – but got a giggle out of this chunk of an Egyptian frieze showing a man doing I’m-not-sure-what to a cow, and the cow exclaiming “THRONE SNAKE BIRD SUN FLAIL!”. I’d probably say the same thing, given the circumstances.

Press button – receive bacon?

Rather than let our herbs hibernate this year, Natasha and I cleverly brought a bunch of our herbs in from the garden before the weather got cold. Not only does it come in handy for cooking and add a nice bit of green to the living room, but the smell of fresh oregano and rosemary wafting around the house when the furnace blows are fantastic.

Among the very many cool things happening in Paris this week (seriously, what gives?) is an art show by Tom Sachs titled “White”, where he meticulously papercrafts science-fictiony sculptures. His best work, though, is science fact – an enormous Saturn V, Lunar Module and Orbiter. WOW! This blew me away! So much amazing detail!

I’m not sure what the deal is with this song, but I watched the entire video and felt my brain melting. The Japanese have an amazing affinity for abstract, overwhelming visuals – I find when I watch stuff like this I start questioning whether I’ve accidentally fallen asleep and started dreaming.

Psychedelia starts now!

I’ve been on a crazy baking kick the past few days. I think with the cold weather setting in on us, I’m craving carbs to stay warm. These are some organic raisin oatmeal cookies about to go into the oven – organic to avoid the sulphite preservatives on raisins that Natasha can’t eat. That means they won’t last and we’ve got to eat them fast! OM NOM NOM!

I went out with the guys to watch “Immortals” for  John’s birthday, and I have to admit that I was really blown away!

I was already a huge fan of director Tarsem from some of his previous arty-fantasy films, so I knew what to expect: Eiko Ishioka’s absurdly overwrought costumes, hyper-stylistic filmwork and brain-melting settings. What blew my mind were the unexpectedly hyperviolent action scenes. There are a few showpiece action sequences scattered throughout the film, but the latter half throws open the violence floodgates. The gods show up to hand out their slow-mo head-smashing kung-fu while Theseus demonstrates that the not-pointy end of a spear is equally capable of performing a brain-ectomy when appropriate force is applied.

Storywise – it’s actually pretty decent, if you can get through the gore! Mickey Rourke plays a decent sadistic King Hyperion if just by being himself – a creepy, off-kilter muscleman. Theseus was mostly believable, and the rest of the supporting cast, including not-particularly-well-used sidekick Stephen Dorff, seem to be having fun with the characters and move things along to the next action sequence smoothly. I was excited to hear John Hurt’s voice narrating from the opening – I’ve been a big fan of his too, since his Muppet production “The Storyteller” captivated me as a kid.

Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea – but I shouted “OOHHHH!!!!” a lot while I was watching, and came out of the theatre feeling pretty psyched. Take that how you will!

I am fairly well read – I’m open-minded and have covered a notably broad range of work from Dante to Harry Potter, Giller Prize winners to terrible, terrible self-published e-books. I read literary reviews. I try to keep on top of other people’s suggestions, jotting down mentions of interesting titles overheard on the radio or through twitter. So how is it I’ve never heard of Joan Didion until last week? And why am I being deluged with references to her this morning?

Here’s a clear-cut case of Baader-Meinhof effect: I encountered her name for the first time last week, twice in the same place. Michelle Dean mentions Didion frequently on her blog – so frequently that she felt she needed to start a seperate devotional blog “F*ckyeahJoanDidion“, and she evokes her name again (unsurprisingly) in her magazine article dissing Toronto (Which, for the record, I disagree with vehemently).

So okay, one devoted fan of an obscure author I can brush off as “quirky” – until this morning when it started en masse.

• Coudal linked to an innocuous article about an upsetting twitter comment, and there, name-dropped in an offhand manner, is Joan. “We refer to authors we admire by their first names like they are friends. Our talks circle others: Joan Didion, Virginia Woolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, Junot Diaz.“
• Carla Gillis, who writes music reviews for NOW that I enjoy reading, covered Didion’s celebrated arrival at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto.
• Didion showed up in three twitter feeds I follow – NPR, an blog article by a writer from Time, Slate, and a poster featuring her work showed up in a design blog.

Bear in mind that I saw all of these things before breakfast on the same morning : what is going on here? She’s got a new book out, obviously, so her marketing team must be working overtime. But if she’s been writing for 50 years, how come I’ve never heard of her? Reading her Wikipedia page was enlightening: She’s written a ton of biographical work on yet more people I’ve never heard of – Katharine Graham, Jessica Savich – connected by bylines in New York newspapers and magazines. Famous among freelance journalists?

Oh man – I’m almost embarrassed. It took me about three seconds to realize where the sparkles were coming from when I left work this evening.

It was my BREATH. It’s not below 0 degrees yet outside, but it was cold enough that my warm breath was barely visible. When I held the camera up by my head to take a picture, the warm air swirled around it and condensed into tiny droplets that were caught just centimeters from the flash when it went off.

So I guess my lungs are kindof sparkly. With water! I almost had it figured out like three times in that last post : for all my talk about ice fog and lungs you’d have thought I would put two and two together.

When I left the office last night I thought I’d grab an image or two of the empty parking lot for a little experiment I wanted to do (it’s easy to match lighting when there’s not much lighting around!) but left the flash on for the first shot, lighting up these mysterious sparkles in the air.

Normally I’d associate this kind of thing with snowflakes or raindrops or air frost crystals caught in a camera flash, but it was dry last night – and not particularly cool. I checked the pollen forecast and we’re way out of season, and our citywide air pollution index is negligible, ruling out forest fires and dust storms – so I suspect this is local dust stirred up by the construction around the mall, or debris from the Queensway.  Totally invisible without the strobing light, though! I imagine we’re breathing this stuff in all the time. Maybe I have sparkly lungs? *shudder*

A five-minute discussion with Louis ended up generating a page full of notes for how to extend my Electraces program in interesting ways. This looks pretty similar to the last post about these things, but in fact I’ve completely re-written my random walk engine – it’s more like a “suggested walk” algorithm now. Shouldn’t be much longer and I’ll have a pretty sweet screening tool, among other things. Here’s fifty traces trying to find a target. Neato!