Tuesday 28 October 2014

Tea for Tuesday

Oh, the German import store. A large, yet cozy shop where you can even find a little bit of the Netherlands nestled in a bay window. It's the place to be at Christmas, and anytime you want a big helping of red cabbage and schnitzel or an armful of real black licorice and Haribo gummies.

It's also the place to go when you want really unique kitchen gadgets, and as a Canadian, I couldn't resist this adorable moose tea infuser made by Koziol. I almost didn't see it - I saw an orange rabbit and a green frog first! Later I found that "Rudolf" was not a moose, but a reindeer, and comes in a herd of colours.

One of the disappointing things about being a tea lover is that there are only so many accessories that you can buy - which may be a good thing or a bad thing. Then I cheerfully realized that I needed a tea infuser for work!





Product testing began immediately. It fit most of my mugs (no hope for the ugly mug, however). Right away it was apparent that fine teas would not filter very well, so I tried some whole leaf teas, like Idle Tea's Cream of Earl Grey. The only problem with the strainer is that the water stops flowing through it once the leaves expand - but, no problem, just pour hot water into the cup instead at that point. These strainers are the perfect stocking stuffer - and I can't wait to go back to the import store when it's a Christmas wonderland!

Saturday 16 August 2014

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

It is appropriate that today's book features a big giant head, because so much has been going on in my head over the last month and a half, and I still don't know why! Let me say that I'm thankful for antibiotics when my salivary gland became infected. There were times too, when I was sure my ear canal was going to give birth to something gross and alien. Life is weird and so is this book:

Herds






The wife of a powerful figure in California is found brutally murdered in the couples' lonely mountain retreat. Wesley Stoneham made certain that all the evidence concerning the murderer of his wife pointed to a nearby hippie community. He had three goals in mind: to get rid of his wife, to drive out the hippie commune and to enhance his own power in the State. He was at the point of achieving them all when Garnna, from the peaceful planet of Zartic finally made contact with Debby, a hippie from the commune, who had problems of her own. Then Stoneham's troubles began.





Herds is number two in a new series called Laser Books - at first I thought this was a book of short stories. The main focus isn't even on Wesley Stoneham, but Garnna the alien centaur. He and his fellow Zarticku have a strong herd mentality that he comes to doubt and question. As an Explorer, he visits other worlds in a psychic sort of way (actually, in a box). Garnna is traumatized by witnessing Mrs. Stoneham's murder, which would be hard to work into a brief synopsis for the back cover.

The cover artist is a legend and his work is better known than his name. Sadly Frank Kelly Freas passed away in 2005, but his website remains. And although it doesn't have the same snazzy cover, you can buy Herds and other books by Stephen Goldin on his website too.

Friday 8 August 2014

Guardians of the Galaxy Movie Review

We saw Guardians of the Galaxy last Sunday and it was awesome! Maybe it was several months of being plied with trailers and advertising, but the coolness I originally had towards it warmed up to the point where I was practically vibrating. Why, why am I so excited to a movie with a trash talking raccoon and one of my favourite actors as a tree? Maybe it was that being in an air conditioned movie theatre for two hours was way more exciting than lying limp around the house.

Out of all the Marvel movies, this is quite possibly the best one to date. It's free of earthly concerns and has such an interesting and diverse cast, characters and settings. Maybe too, I'm just tired of dark and gritty reboots, movies that are just a little too based on coincidence or forget how to tell a story completely. There's only so many times you can watch Iron Man be a jerk, after all. Come to think of it, it's easier to describe GotG by what it's not. The main characters don't drag each other down, there's no big city destruction scene (well, just a little) and it's not serious at all. Serious characters get their dramatic comic book speeches, but also get upstaged by humour. GotG is incredibly self-aware of having one foot in B-movieland.

The movie is pretty tight, zipping along at a fast pace and helped along by the "awesome mix" soundtrack. Right after the opening scene, the audience gets to dive in as Peter Quill steals an artifact, an orb, from an ancient temple (if that scene looks a little familiar...it's just the start of nods to the 70s and 80s that will make a lot of freeze frame fun later). It would take a lifetime of reading Marvel comics to understand all the characters and why Ronan and Thanos are baddies, but after a little planet hopping, the audience has all it needs to know without too much set up. We are here to see a talking raccoon and a sentient tree, after all!

All five main characters are flawed in ways that anyone can relate to, and for a group that doesn't initially get along, they come to treat each other with a lot of respect. Rocket, for example, could have been played solely for laughs and comic relief, but he's not just a cute funny animal. He delivers some devastating lines (which he can, because he's an animal). He might talk tough, but he's a softie inside. Likewise, the other characters stretch their personalities - Peter Quill finds a higher purpose, Gamora wants to redeem her past (and is never treated as a sex object - she rejects Quill's "pelvic sorcery", and Drax learns to love his enemy. Uh, I'm not sure what Groot's flaw is, maybe it's that he can only say three words - but his strength is definitely in his selfless actions. GotG does a great job of showing the characters - we don't have to sit through long and convoluted backstories. I guess that's important to note too - the movie treats the audience with respect as well. Surprisingly, the real lesson of GotG is that friendship is magic :D

It's tempting to see it again this weekend...we were excited for another piece of nostalgia, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it looks more like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turkey, so we'll probably pass.

Saturday 12 July 2014

80s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

I was so bummed about not being able to make yesterday's post, so I backdated this one. I had the most severe pain ever in my face yesterday, and ended up Googling "ear infection or toothache" (Dr. Google says - "Inconclusive! See a real professional."). Maybe the virtual doctor needs another ten years. Anyway, the latest book on top of the reading pile is:

New Dimensions 11

The exciting series that showcased the best of the 70s now launches the 80s with superb science fiction - from the terrifying to the sublime!


It's really surprising that we don't have one of the earlier volumes on our bookshelf, because there were some truly groovy ones. I honestly can't figure out what this cover is about - the flip side has the faint skeleton of a pterodactyl and some sand. Is this the Planet of the Crystal Skulls? A user on GoodReads seems to hint that the contents match the weirdness of cover:
I read this collection of short stories when I was in junior high, much too young to be reading it. It contains a story about a spaceship navigated by sexual fantasies. And another story introduced me to the concept of sentient beings having more than two breasts.

There's only one way to find out!

Thursday 3 July 2014

Escape from The To-Do List

When roughly half your year is spent in wintry cold, it's so easy to take summer for granted. Suddenly everyone is social and there's so much to do. I found myself slipping deeper and deeper into the To-Do List! The joke goes, "There are only two seasons in Canada, winter and construction." It's mostly true, because you can't paint your garage or pour a new sidewalk when it's -40C out. 

Not that long ago I was standing at the dinner table, wrapping several packages and I wondered why I wasn't outside enjoying this particular cool spring day. White and pink blossoms, the rich green grass, the cloudless blue sky - and I was inside, staring wistfully out the windows. It was like an invisible parent was staring down at me and saying, "No playtime until all your chores are done!"

And when life starts looking like a Buzzfeed listicle, you know you need to Escape from the To-Do List. Eventually everything becomes a chore. The To-Do List starts affecting your body and you don't really know why at first:




The To-Do List just becomes one never ending cycle. Inspiration to flee came from a safety ad on the bus:
 Stop          Think          React 


I put my phone away, I took a deep cleansing breath. The heart of my entanglement in the To-Do List was that I could not say no. It was a trap within a trap! I had to climb out of the Yes Pit.

It's not easy to say "no", especially for women. Some people are raised to put others needs before their own. Some people feel that it's incredibly rude to say no. And yet others say yes because it might be a career killer. My time as a temp certainly eroded my ability to say "no" too. It's natural to want to fit in, please people and say "yes" when we mean "no". Maybe the trouble with saying "no" is that we know how to say "yes" easily, but not "no".

"Practice big no's and little no's," I told myself. Yesterday my husband wanted to watch Dr. Who. No thanks! Last week an old co-worker was hopeful that I had some free weekends and evenings to help with her work project. No, my bandwidth has been exceeded lately! Last month I ran into someone from a group I volunteered with in the past - did I want to be webmaster again? Without burning a single bridge, I replied, "No, but I know someone who might be interested!"


The To-Do List shrank as I exercised the power of "no". Maybe it's easier to reframe "no" as "not today" or "not right now" when considering a request. Maybe I'll want to watch Dr. Who tomorrow! Saying "no" is actually saying "yes" to other things - like time with family, myself (remember, I'm an introvert!) and things I really care about. It's not fun giving up weekends for extra work - especially during a short Canadian summer. That's something I really can't say no to at all!

Monday 9 June 2014

Edge of Tomorrow Review

We escaped from Choreville and To-Do Town to watch Edge of Tomorrow in 3D on the weekend. It was awesome, and I'm not even a fan of Tom Cruise (I prefer Matt Damon or Vin Diesel, at minimum). But the peculiarly non-aging Cruise did a fabulous job as a reluctant hero thrown into a battlefield.

We didn't know much about the movie except that it had scored high on Rotten Tomatoes and was described as a science fiction Groundhog Day. The mister has a soft spot for time travel movies, and this was a neat take on the genre. This movie was also totally made for fans of PC or video games. It's easy to relate to the endless grinding or change of plans required to get past a target. And the constant reloading and switching of equipment and ammo. With drop ships, futuristic exo-skeletons and battle ready marines, Edge of Tomrrow crosses from the XBox to the big screen. Once Cruise's character, Major Cage, learns the secret to ending the war, resetting is played for laughs (honestly, this was surprisingly funny once the grimness of it wore off) and he wearily tries new things each day in hopes of defeating the aliens, called mimics.

My husband was reminded of Independence Day; I thought of Starship Troopers. Edge of Tomorrow still finds something new to explore with such a simple humans versus aliens plot. It's never quite revealed why the mimics are here - at one point Cage finds himself in a bar with some speculating seniors, but he shuts them down by saying something like "It doesn't matter, because they're already here". That too, is an apt metaphor for conflict - we don't know why we're supporting something except that it's happening. After a while, I stopped caring about the alien conflict part and cared a lot more about how Cage and fellow soldier Rita Vrataski were going to solve their time trap. The human factor never gets bogged down in technology or CGI.

Emily Blunt, who we loved in Looper, was fabulous as Rita, who has also experienced the same effect and guides the hapless Cage through his new-found power. It is Cage's transformation from coward to hero which is the heart of the story and the movie never waivers from that. Edge of Tomorrow really impressed me by also sticking to "show, don't tell". It makes me cringe when a movie starts out by narration the backstory, because it means something has really gone wrong with the movie! But you won't go wrong at all with Edge of Tomorrow, trust me. We scarcely noticed that two hours had gone by because it was so engrossing.

Now I just have to get a copy of All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, which the movie is based on, and toss it on the to-read pile.

Saturday 10 May 2014

80s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

Everything lost is found again, and whether it's a centuries old manuscript or a pile of old paperbacks behind a VHS collection, there's always a gem like...

Interfaces


Hand-picked by Ursula K. Let Guinea, multiple award winning master of science fiction and fantasy, and Virginia Kidd, one of the field's most knowledgeable agents and discriminating anthologists, this is a wildly eclectic bouquet of the best that speculative fiction has to offer. Hugo and Nebula winners Ed Bryant, Vonda McIntyre, and James Tiptree, Jr. have a free hand within these pages, as do the young writers who will be turning up on next year's award ballots. Every story is appearing here for the first time, and every one is as unique an achievement as you would expect to find in the first anthology ever edited by Ursula Le Guin. This is a collection to be savored, a meeting of minds between fine authors and rare editorial excellence and imagination.

This is INTERFACES


I am smitten with this cover! Some of our paperbacks are too damaged to present (price tags and paperbacks are never a good combination) or just not as exciting as I hoped. But this cover, by Alex Abel, is so exciting! I love how the faces in the crystals fly upwards, freed from a huge chunk of crystal. Thought gains lightness! Each facet is beautifully airbrushed and the whole thing seems inspired by prog rock record covers. It's mysterious and fascinating and should be enlarged to poster size.

It is also beautifully in sync with the book - in the introduction, Le Guin and Kidd explain how they did not want to restrict the authors to a theme. Short stories are my favourite - longer works seem needlessly padded - but like the editors, I marvel at how lopsided anthologies can be. They wanted every story to be first rate and the collection carefully curated. It even includes some poetry! And so I add it to the reading pile, which never seems to get any shorter :)

Saturday 19 April 2014

60s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

It's easy to see that a lot of science fiction deals with control, but the why seems so elusive. Who are the mysterious "they" and why are they so prevalent? What happens when the hero goes up against Big Space Mega Corp? It's a topic that science fiction loves to explore over and over again like in...

Sundog


An unthinkably vast, invisible, and absolutely impenetrable screen imprisoned man within the solar system.

Cut off from the stars, men applied their ingenuity to themselves, setting up a world of total control - where even dreams were programmed.


If this sounds a little mystifying, the inside page reveals a little more:

Spacepilot Dod liked his work. It was dull and monotonous, and that was fine for the loyal, unthinking employee of the all-powerful Dog Company - the fourth of the original governing organizations, which had long since swallowed up Able, Baker, and Charlie, the first three.

And then, on his 71st routine trip between Pluto and Moonbase, a glowing light encircled his head. And strange, unnerving things began to enter his mind: curiosity, doubt, and even...ideas!



This 1965 book by Brian N. Ball presents a dystopia where an average Joe turns out to be key to the whole scheme. TV Tropes does a great job defining the Mega Corp, but doesn't quite get to the why. I think I know what it is though - as in so many fantasy and science fiction books, the main characters figure out how to control a situation where they should have none. Maybe toss in some anxiety caused by social upheaval, increased automation and a lack of the promised shiny post-World War 2 future, and the seed of a story sprouts. The cover - where I wish the head was much larger - is by Don Crowley. It really speaks Dod's mental state, perhaps even more so than Ball's writing.

Wednesday 9 April 2014

Time to Bloom

Originally I was working on a post about my failure to bloom. Every day last week the same bleak blue grey canvas greeted me when I left the house. Where was the cloudless blue sky I loved? When there was snow instead of rain, my heart broke. Would I ever feel warmth instead of a persistent chill? Now that I was finally able to sleep, when would I really wake up?

Ray Bradbury had the right idea about mood and weather when wrote his classic story, All Summer in a Day. It's about a little girl whose awful classmates lock her in the closet for the brief time that the sun shines on Venus, which is once every seven years! I couldn't go once every seven days. I live in an unusually sunny place on the prairies, so it's really noticeable when the sun is gone. Living at a higher altitude also means that our sunlight is more intense, making for wildly painted sunrises and sunsets. The kinds of things that makes the soul bloom and the spirit stretch (apparently my inner poet is also stirring). When it snowed about a week ago, part of my soul literally died. Snow? Noooooooo! It wasn't just me, the wildlife were affected too. There were some unhappy robins in my backyard and I spotted a ground squirrel that looked traumatized as he pipped and squeaked at me. Yeah, I would feel cheated too if I just came out of hibernation.

But the weatherman was finally right the past weekend - sun. Glorious, warm, life giving sun! It was so wonderful to be outside, with cool refreshing breezes too. It felt like autumn in reverse. Time to cast off the winter woollies and embrace the freedom of shoes, light jackets and cute hats. Spring is truly an act of faith sometimes!

Some day, this will be green!

Tuesday 25 March 2014

Tea for Tuesday

David's Tea shops are popping up all over town - I think there are four or five now, including one not too far from where I work. It's so easy to get flavoured out with tea, and after going on a peppermint binge, I just wasn't finding inspiration in the cupboard. Orange? Licorice? Lemon? Boring. My yearning for a new taste sensation eventually filed itself away, and I actually walked by a David's Tea, only to backtrack moments later. Oh right!

I remembered a sample that I instantly had to have more of. The Oh Canada blend is a smooth red rooibos with maple syrup, toffee and caramel. It smells a-m-a-z-i-n-g, plus I love the sugar maple leaves that add a bit of colour. I bet it would make a great latte.


Now here's some bonus Canadiana - the featured saucer is one of several pieces that Mom gave me a few years ago, from one china cabinet to another. The saucer is made in Japan and branded with Woodward's on the back. Woodward's was a great Western Canadian department store that is proof that good things don't last forever. After 100 years in operation, the chain was sold in 1993. It's just a bit of nostalgia that makes it precious - and just watch me dash across the kitchen every time my husband tries to put in the dishwasher!

Saturday 15 March 2014

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

As we've seen before, science fiction isn't just all about hardcore technology, new worlds or current events carefully couched as the future. I can only imagine that there was so much change going on in the 1960s that Edmund Cooper may have wistfully sighed and wished for escape to a place where he could see...

A Far Sunset





The year: 2032 A.D. The Gloria Mundi, a starship built and manned by the new United States of Europe, touches down on the planet, Alatair Five. Disaster strikes, leaving only one apparent survivor - Paul Marlow, whose adventures in the lair of a strange primeval race known as the Bayani leads him first to their God, the omnipotent and omniscient Oruri, and eventually to an unlimited power that is so great that is must include a built-in death sentence. The forces that have remained static for centuries overcome both the forces of the future and the quest for unlimited knowledge.





If you don't want to hop on over to Google, Gloria Mundi comes from the saying "Sic transit gloria mundi", which translates to "Thus passes the glory of the world". My literary insides tell me that the 1977 cover of this book by David Bergen (original printing 1967), has little to do with the story inside. Paul Marlow, who is rechristened Poul Mer Lo, is a psychiatrist who finds himself accepted by the "primitive" society as a sort of god. The chapters are short and after six of them I get the impression that it's a pulpy men's adventure book - naturally Paul ends up with an exotic alien female who seems more concerned for him than herself. My gut is also telling me that Paul saves the Bayani, marries Mylai Tui and lives happily ever after. I'll keep reading and update this post later!

If A Far Sunset piques your interest, Edmund Cooper's books are now available as eBooks. He's one of the seemingly rare older authors whose works have made the digital leap, and thank goodness, because some of these old paperbacks get pretty fragile.

Wednesday 5 March 2014

My Somnambulistic Life

2014 has been the weirdest year ever! Instead of riding the horse, I feel like it's dragging me around in circles. I hope March is better, because most of February was sleepless, literally. It started with too much going on in my head:

Then it continued with randomly waking up at 4am every morning. By the time Friday rolled around I looked like the living dead:

And just when I started waking up at 6am again...my father in law started calling between 10 and 10:30pm every night. I guess seniors have no reason to go to bed early, unlike us poor young folk:

Why! Why? Why did my body and my FIL hate sleep so much? And my brain! During the last week of February, my brain had a hankering for belting out Tom Jones for a solid hour and a half:

Let me tell you, What's New Pussycat? is a really, really, really long, long song! Fortunately my before bedtime habits, body clock, father in law and brain have all shaped up, because March is so far, so good in the sleep department. Sweet dreams!

PS, if you like the font, you can download it for free from Blambot.

Saturday 22 February 2014

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

Today's Swiss Army knife post is a book review, a movie preview and a 70s Sci fi scan, because the 70s could only have produced...

Rocket Raccoon


I have been gamely trying to get through this book since I bought it in November and really pushed to try and finish the original comics collected in Rocket Raccoon and Groot. It was one of those titles I had often heard about, but didn't want to spend hours digging for every year the local comic expo rolls around. Marvel has saved me from boxes of dusty newsprint by thoughtfully combining the original Groot comic, Rocket Raccoon comics and part of the new GotG series together in one volume.

Now, part of the excitement is that Bradley Cooper will be providing the voice for the plucky procyon lotor in Guardians of the Galaxy this summer. My anticipation for it has been been up and down - nothing is worse than a bad comic book movie after all - but then I found out Vin Diesel is voicing Groot. Groot is a tree. Let me rephrase that: One of my favourite actors is playing a CGI tree. 

The new trailer is out and I don't know what to think:



But let's dial back to the mists of time, when Groot first appeared in 1960. There's something dorky about a sentient space tree that terrorizes a town, and he meets a predictable, goofy end. Rocket shows up in 1976 with his furry pals, who are the guardians of the Keystone Quadrant and protectors of the Loonies - mentally ill people who...well, I really don't know what they do except bounce around in straitjackets. They all live on a planet called Halfworld, where competing toy companies start a war. Colourful, weird and punny sum up the original comics. At times they were almost unreadable, but then I went through a box of old Thor issues and realized it was just the style at the time - it was I, the reader who had changed! I can appreciate the editorial and creative freedom that abounded.


Even though the 2008-2010 comic version of Guardians of the Galaxy is slicker and well, more coherent in its narrative, it's hard to beat the sheer gleefulness of the 1970s series. Eye popping colour, dynamic action and a whole lot of weird, is something that comics have lost. The whole "dark and gritty" thing can get pretty old. Just look at this scene - killer clown tanks! Banana bombs! What?! There's creating something to send a message, and then there's creating a work just for the sheer fun of it. In that case, it's mission accomplished for Rocket Raccoon :-)

Click on over to Comixology where you can download the issues for your mobile device or just marvel (heh!) at the previews. I suppose I'll be back in a few more months reviewing the movie - until then, I'm going to try and figure out how they're going to make a cross-over with the Avengers ;-)

Saturday 8 February 2014

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

These days when so many parts of our lives are planned and regulated, it's always nice to be surprised. And today's book thrilled me because just when I thought I had read all of Monica Hughes' science fiction books, but it turned out I hadn't read...

Crisis on Conshelf Ten





When Moon-born, fifteen year old Kepler Masterman visits Earth for the first time, he finds heavy gravity impossible to live in. An underwater atmosphere seems to offer the best solution to his problems and friendly relatives welcome him to their experimental community many fathoms deep in the depths of the ocean. But on Conshelf Ten Kepler discovers a sinister situation linked to the mysterious, water-breathing Gillmen, and realises that not only is he in great personal danger but that the survival of the entire Earth is threatened. 





I don't have any complaints about the cover. This is actually her second book, published in 1975, and thankfully it looks very impressive. I mostly want to tell all y'all how wonderful Hughes' books are - my particular favourites are Devil On My Back and the Isis trilogy. She's another author that started writing later in life, and sadly she passed away in 2003. I assumed that she had stopped writing a long time ago, but she actually put out one book (sometimes two) a year. That's productivity to aspire too, not to mention all the reading I have to do now.

Wednesday 5 February 2014

The Bard's Tale

When I had my big January cold, I thought, at least, oh well, I can read something, but I couldn't. My ability to focus had gone out the door with breathing through both nostrils. Was I fated to spend my days staring at the ceiling? Fortunately, as fate would have it, I stumbled across an oldie but goodie game on the Google Play that has been ported over to mobile devices. And just like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, I was in for some interactive storytelling as I embarked on...

The Bard's Tale 

The first thing I noticed was how dated the game appeared, from a time when grass was a strange, hyperreal colour and 3D animation was still a novelty. How funny that my home PC back in 2004 was too slow to play the game. Ten years is ten lifetimes in computing. And if you like things super retro, it comes bundled with the original Bard's Tale trilogy.

The Bard's Tale is one big, hilarious send up of the fantasy genre as well as computer role playing games. There's lots to laugh at, from the first quest (kill a rat) to breaking barrels and being besotted with being a "chosen one" which forms the main quest. The Bard, who is never named, is voiced by Cary Elwes, who starred in The Princess Bride. Occasionally The Bard breaks the fourth wall and gets sarcastic with the droll narrator, Tony Jay.

But besides some goofy songs and a compelling story, there's lots of hacking and slashing. Wolves, boars, trees, evil goblins, zombies - oops - all provide a challenge for The Bard and his companions. Yup, such a sad soul The Bard is - he has to conjure up friends like the Mercenary, Electric Spider and the Crone. If there's one thing I can complain about the game is that some levels were pretty dark and hard to see even with the brightness turned all the way up on my 7" tablet. It was distracting.


Here's the best part about The Bard's Tale though - your actions determine the story and the ending. Being the nice person I am, I chose all the "nice" dialog options. On my second go round, I chose the snarky answers. Being snarky had a price though, literally, in some areas, so use with caution!

It's great to see older games can find new life. They're perfect for playing a little bit at a time, and unlike a lot of mobile games, there is so much to them than just collecting coins, launching birds or crushing candy :-D

Saturday 1 February 2014

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

I was getting worried that I was running out of 70s paperbacks - and it turns out that if I do, this column can be renamed 60s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans, because we have lots of those too! While digging through the cache I found another Arthur C. Clarke book. I suppose dreaming of going to the moon is like dreaming of going to Mars for folks today, but back in 1955, Clarke dreamed of...

Earthlight




Like many works published in the 50s and 60s, one could still dream of a fantastic future in the 80s and 90s from the 70s. Today we take the acceleration of technology for granted, wondering why our mobile devices are so slow when 30 years ago teletypes were still chunking away and 20 years ago you had to have a second phone line if you wanted to make calls and use the Internet. Just 10 years ago most cellphones didn't even have a colour display.

I grew up on the tail end of the fantasy that this cover so fondly predicts. Colonies on the moon! Domed compounds! Monorails!! No wonder Futurama wasted little time with Fry visiting the moon in the second episode of the first season (it probably would have been an amusement park by now anyway). There's also something a little weird about this cover. That, uh, moon tree looks a little suggestive. Nothing quite says "We conquered the moon" by imposing a big ol' fertility symbol on it :-D

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Tea for Tuesday

I don't know if it's the weather, but I have been so lacking in energy lately. Living in a Northern country, one does get a lack of Vitamin D. But I'm not also getting the quiet time I need to recharge as an introvert, and I broke open one of these babies!

Tea Puzzle

Tea Puzzle


Specifically, the tea pot one. I had bought a puzzle back at the beginning of December featuring balls of yarn. I'm not a big puzzle person, but for some reason, I really enjoyed putting together that first puzzle. Let me remind you that 1000 pieces is a lot of pieces though, especially when they are all black, red, purple, green and blue!. The teapots and teacups should be more straightforward.

I went back to the store during their Boxing Day sale and just couldn't decide which one to buy, so I bought both! By the time spring comes around, I should have both of them done :-)

Tuesday 21 January 2014

Tea for Tuesday

So when I went back to school, I took a class on material culture without really knowing what it was about - I just needed to fill three credits somewhere. In a nutshell, it's the relationships between people and objects. There's some objects that are universal...such as cups, and I added yet another one to my collection. I had no willpower when it came to purchasing a Keep Cup from the indie coffee kiosk at the farmers market. I had been wanting one for some time, but the colours were just horrible, mostly grey, peach, blue and green. Nothing bright and vibrant that shouted to the world "This is Jill's cup, hands off!" (see, material culture, right there!).

As it happened, the coffee kiosk had just gotten a new shipment of cups and I went nuts digging through a box that the supplier left. "He said that all these colours sold well in Australia, but Australians have terrible taste, because none of these are selling," the clerk said as she helped me.

I nodded as I mixed and matched the cups and lids. I loved a dark purple and green combo, but realized it looked a little too much like it belonged to kid. Ahem! Navy blue definitely had a more grown up flair. And speaking of kids, the Keep Cup was inspired by the sippy cup the inventor gave to her daughter. You can be forgiven for thinking that it does indeed look like an adult sippy cup.

The best part is the well designed lid and the plug for the sippy hole. Many a reusable mug has left me splashed and disappointed. It's not rocket science - maybe it's just that most cups are not designed and tested by actual coffee lovers. Oh, and if drinking out of a plastic cup leaves you aghast, your drink will not taste like plastic in this cup at all either.

Wednesday 8 January 2014

Happy New Year! Have A Cold!

I didn't plan on spending the first seven days of the new year with a cold, but it was pretty bad. I bailed on Mom's birthday party, stared at the ceiling, chugged Emergen C and nipped at Nyquil. But this was a doozy of a cold. The sad thing is, if I had just listened to my Dad, I might have gotten over it sooner. When you come from an immigrant family, it's a constant struggle between old ways and new ways, and when repeated doses of Nyquil left my mouth more arid than the Sahara, I finally gave in. Time to pull out of big guns.

Garlic.

Lots of garlic.

Now, the way a cold works is that one doesn't get better until it passes on to someone else. As I roamed the shopping centre, the virus awakened and I searched for healthy young bodies to sneeze and cough on. People avoided me, especially after my left eye spontaneously teared up and couldn't stay open. The bags under my eyes were brutal, and I looked every bit of a virus vampire as I felt. I came to my senses, paid 63 cents for a bulb and hurried on out.


Image courtesy of Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Once home, I found my little used garlic press and crushed a fresh clove on a slice of toast. Here goes nothing! I like garlic, but usually it's cooked and accompanied by other flavours. It's an accent, not the main course. Each bite was intense and took a lot of willpower to choke down.

A few hours later, another slice of garlic toast. My sinuses felt better, but soon I smelled worse. I was already banished to the spare bedroom anyway, so it couldn't hurt to have more garlic. That night, I could literally feel my whole body fight the cold. I was flush from head to toe and needed no covers at all. The strange, warm glowy feeling lasted the next day, and topped up with one final slice of toast. Four cloves and I couldn't take any more. By the end of the second day, I was breathing through both nostrils again. Ah! Talk about fast relief! It sure beat waking up with my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth, thanks to Nyquil.

Huh, it is true then, all this stuff about garlic being a wonder food with anti-microbial and anti-fungal properties. It even, ahem, has a laxative effect, which so many websites fail to mention (but no doubt falls under "and many more benefits"). The moment I realized that I was morphing from a virus vampire to a pungent poltergeist was when I knew I had to stop right there and have a shower instead of more toast. Now I'm back to my normal self...until the next cold!

Saturday 4 January 2014

70s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans

As one year ends and a new one begins, people struggle to define the past within the present and the future. Ten years from now, 2013 will seem like a faraway place. Thirty years from now, the teens will seem weird (heh, I guess teens always will be) but time is actually a continuum, which may surprise children of the 80s that one of their favourite series had roots in the 70s. Maybe it's more appropriate that the first book was called...

The Cave of Time



You are the hero of your own adventure

This is a book you'll love reading. You will read it differently from any other book you have read before, because in this book you will decide how the story comes out. You'll get to choose exactly where you - the hero - will go along the way. Like this:

What happens next in the story? It all depends on the choices you make. How does the story end? Only you can find out! And the best part is you can keep reading and rereading until you've had not one, but many incredibly daring experiences!






It's so quaint that they had to try so hard to explain the concept in 1979. We play Choose Your Own Adventure every time we play a game or surf the Web (especially Wikipedia), but, for legions of kids, this was the closest they would get to hypertext or the burgeoning interactive fiction genre. My brother and I read them as fast as the library could get them, and the original series spawned dozens of titles. We used a deck of cards to mark our places should we need to retrace our steps. And even though the covers and illustrations mostly featured boys, the text was gender neutral enough to appeal to girls. My brother was always a reluctant reader, and since comics were a no-no in our house, these were perfect for him. My favourites ended up being Be An Interplanetary Spy and Which Way books, which had more of a science fiction/weird horror bent.

It was fun to pick up The Cave of Time and remember why the series was so successful - kids often don't have much choice in their lives (or, at least, I didn't) and the books were literally all about you - just about every sentence starts with the word. You are the hero! You are the genius! You are anything you can be in the CYA universe!