Throb of Tom-Tom Cats!

Here's a wonderful advertisement from Womrath's bookstore, intended to convince us that READING about stuff is more exciting that actually EXPERIENCING it. They make a strong case for the joy of delightful puns and alliteration, at least...

Ankles aweigh! All abored the SS. VAN DINE...sailing to darkest Boop-a-Doop...land of mystery and philovances. Star-drenched daze. Sunkist knights. Drone of dramaturgic dromedaries...drowse of drastic dhuhinkies. Lots of good fellahs. Oil-burning cannibals...ready to take pot-luck with missionaries. Pooh yourself! More fun to stay home...

The advertisement mentions fiction, travel, biography, and history, so I suppose the dense wordplay is meant to evoke all those things: the mystery books of Philo Vance, the "darkest Africa" travel literature, Hollywood biographies, and...whatever "dhuhinkies" are.

(The New Yorker, November 15, 1930)

Gary Jennings: Smut, History, Purity, Coincidence, and Torture

I'm re-reading "Aztec," the Gary Jennings book that I first read many years ago, and I have a few things to add to my previous post about the Jennings formula (at least as it applies this novel and "Raptor").

Yes, Jennings does his research, and combined with a perfect sense of pacing he manages to convey a realistic impression of what it was like to live at the time (in this case, to be an Aztec before, during, and after the Spanish conquest). I'm re-reading this particular book because I want to learn a bit more about Central American civilization, and "Aztec" is telling me a hell of a lot.

But Jennings isn't content to write 750-page books about dry old history, he must also introduce characters who are almost Ayn Rand-ian in their purity: the loyal and innocent servant, the battle-hardened and kind-hearted soldier, the intelligent and noble protagonist, the honest craftsman who pours his entire soul into his work.

These characters would be the first to disappear in an Ayn Rand novel, though, because they are so noble and pure that they can't even be CAPITALISTS (what sort of craftsman would give away his work for free simply because he is proud of what he does?), but they do share the Rand-trait of being such focuses of ideology that reality seems to WARP AROUND them. Thanks to their unswerving characteristics they form impossible alliances, get out of impossible (but clever) traps, and discover impossible things...you know, like Mayan eyeglasses.

During all of this they engage in meticulously-described sexual acrobatics, and they also witness meticulously-described tortures that make even the most hardened reader (me) physically ill. When reading either "Aztec" or "Raptor" you can rest assured that if things are getting a bit bogged down in philosophy or natural beauty, a flaying or an orgy is right around the corner.

As amazed as I am by Gary Jenning's audacity at writing historical novels which are simultaneously accurate and wildly exploitative and impossible, I have to admit that he's an incredible writer. In the pauses between the lesbian couplings and the guys whose guts splash out, his characters meditate on civilization and love, on warfare and writing, on the beauty of the universe and the beauty of the flowers. I have never read any other author who could pull this off so seamlessly that it becomes a genre unto itself...and for 750 pages, no less!

Here's to Gary Jennings. I wish I knew more about the man who wrote these books. In fact, I wish I could read at least one other review that bothered to mention this curious juxtaposition of brilliance and cheap smut.

Dunjonquest: Temple of Apshai

I have so many guilty pleasures that I'm in a permanent state of mortification, and one of my pleasures is a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl. It's not because I love killing monsters and collecting treasures; the actual BULK of a dungeon crawl game is incidental to me. What I REALLY like to do is to EXPLORE.

I've always gotten a thrill out of mazes, tunnels, and imaginary digital worlds. Unfortunately there are few games that are simply about exploring...pissy monsters are always attacking you and you have to solve anachronous "eight queens" puzzles at every second step. I'm of the opinion that the world (the real one) is waiting for a computer simulation of a rich landscape that doesn't necessarily have anybody else in it. The fact that I'd enjoy such a thing is creepy, really.

But anyway, my favourite games as a teenager were the ones where you could wander around a maze and map it, and then stare for hours at the map wondering what sort of cool place it would be to live in. Unfortunately back then I had a very low threshold for frustration, so I rarely succeeded in finishing the games that were so fun to explore: Ultima, The Eidolon, Alternate Reality, and...

...the Dunjonquest series, considered to be the first dungeon crawls for the 8-bit home computers. Originally developed by Jon Freeman (who is most idolized these days as being one of the creators of Archon) for his fledgling Automated Simulations company (likewise most idolized for later becoming Epyx), these games were all about wandering around mazes, killing monsters, raising your stats, collecting treasures, and running from Antmen who apparently used a vanilla-scented body lotion.

The Dunjonquest game that most people remember is "Temple of Apshai" and its two sequels, "Upper Reaches of Apshai" and "Curse of Ra." These three games -- like the "Hellfire Warrior" trilogy that followed them -- presented you with a very basic depiction of your surroundings, requiring you to actually read the room descriptions from the accompanying manual (or "Book of Lore.")

Originally written in BASIC in 1979, the first games required a great deal of patience and imagination, and the subsequent games -- with the exception of "Gateway to Apshai," a very different arcade-style adventure -- used the same engine. Even when the Apshai games were eventually released as a re-written, integrated, machine-language "Temple of Apshai Trilogy" -- the way most people remember them -- you still needed to shuffle your little character along featureless corridors, bumping into walls and slaying barely-animated 4-colour monsters.

So Dunjonquest games don't have a lot of appeal to gamers these days, and they've slowly faded away from the eyes of even the most nostalgic 8-bit fans.

Until now!

I'm happy to say I'm not alone in my love of these games, and I've been collaborating with Robinson Mason -- and scrounging the darkest corners of the internet -- to reclaim the programs. And not just the programs, but also the even more rare "Books of Lore" which are both essential for play and a delight to read.

While my compatriot tirelessly unearths more of the games and materials, I've been concentrating on reverse-engineering the BASIC code and mapping all the levels. I've discovered some interesting things buried in the convoluted rats-nest of oddly-ported BASIC, but that will come later. Right now, here are maps for the four levels of the first game, "Temple of Apshai."

I decided not to include room numbers, traps, or treasures -- that would not only clutter up my tiny drawings but would also spoil more of the game. And I make no claims to the 100% accuracy of these maps; they are complete and fully-connected, but their proportions may be slightly off. Click on an image to see a larger version.

Temple of Apshai - Level One


Temple of Apshai - Level Two


Temple of Apshai - Level Three


Temple of Apshai - Level Four


The maps for the next game ("Upper Reaches of Apshai") are coming soon (along with playing tips), and I expect there'll be a resource site starting up eventually. Until then, spare a thought to all those digital worlds that are locked up in decaying floppy disks in attics and basements, and consider rescuing them for one last time.

Four Strangers in the Park

On Wednesday I suddenly snapped: I was overtired, confused, and frustrated. I was making too many mistakes. When I asked my manager if I could have the rest of the week off she said "Sure!" and the world suddenly became a better place.

One thing I wanted to accomplish during my long weekend was to get my taxes done, so today I sorted all my papers and started the long walk to Conestoga Mall. I could either take a ridiculous detour along impersonal major streets I already knew...or I could finally explore Hillside Park., whose network of trails goes there almost directly. Thank goodness I decided to do the latter.

Ever since I've moved here I've known the park was on my doorstep, and I'd seen aerial views of it on Google, but I'd never actually been inside until today. Its unspoiled lushness (complete with marshes, branching trails, crumbling 19th century foundations, and -- apparently -- foxes) makes it appear much larger than it is...I assume the illusion of total wilderness will be complete once the summer leaves grow.

It was while walking one of the trails at 11:30 this morning that I spotted a plaque of some sort located about 40 feet down a small secondary path. Wanting to read it, I started down the path when I noticed a woman sitting further down, mostly obscured by the bushes. "Hello!" she shouted to me.

You don't spend long exploring these trails in Kitchener/Waterloo before you discover the makeshift camps of homeless people. I've never had any problems, but I'm understandably wary about stepping into a home where people have been drinking all day, and probably pooping in the corner.

But this woman sounded sober so I shouted "Hello!" back, and walked down the path towards her, thinking I was just going to be briefly trapped by a gregarious person who wanted to chat.

As I got closer she said, "You know that saying, 'I've fallen and I can't get up?' Well, it's just happened to me." She was sitting on the ground next to an electric scooter. She'd driven down the path to pick up a blanket that somebody had left there -- she's a great lover of the trails and doesn't like to see them used as a junkyard -- and her scooter had hit a muddy pothole, throwing her down. She'd been sitting there in the dirt for a long time, without a cel phone, invisible to the people on the main trail, listening to the birds and totally unable to get up.

We tried a few things but I simply wasn't strong enough; she was quite heavy and had almost no lifting power in her legs. After a bit she got exhausted, so we sat back down and chatted and tried to come up with a plan.

Since *I* could look over the bushes I was able to see the main trail, and when an old man walked by I ran after him and asked him to please help. He came back and we both tried to lift her...no chance.

I saw a hiker and brought her back as well. So there we were in the bushes, four people trying to accomplish a heavy-lifting task, and us lifters were hilariously ill-suited to the job: I've got a torn-up right shoulder, the old man was wiry and somewhat frail, and the hiker was small and couldn't even lift half of what I could.

We jostled and pushed and pulled, rested, chatted, and jostled and pulled some more. Eventually the woman got discouraged and said we'd simply have to call the police...but not only were we unable to LIFT anything, none of us even had a PHONE.

Meanwhile I'd been toying with a big log, and I reasoned that the woman's problem was that she couldn't expend the strength necessary to BOTH stand AND position her legs. We couldn't raise her up to a standing position while she was sitting on the ground...but maybe we could divide the job in half by getting her to sit on the log first, THEN -- with her weight already off the ground -- pull her into a position where she could get her legs in gear.

It was worth a try! The old man and I rolled the log over, and with some pushing and pulling we got her onto it, squashing a large number of beetles that I thought it best not to mention. Then we found some broken wooden planks and wedged them under the log to keep it from moving, and the old man pushed from behind while the hiker and I pulled from the front. Amazing! Within minutes she was back in her cart and we were almost as dirty as she was.

What was particularly strange about this is that we had to spend so much time with each other -- twenty minutes, I'd say -- but we were almost a random sample of people. To add to the social barrier we'd been intimately grabbing a perfect stranger, meanwhile trying to figure out exactly what she was capable of in terms of movement and strength. By some fluke the four of us were so darn POLITE: there wasn't a take-charge, natural leader among us, so it was like "Well, I was thinking that maybe this would work--" "Oh, you think? Would that help?" "I'm not sure, here, we can try..." "Oh, excuse me, sorry..."

In terms of social rewards, I think we were all happy in our own ways: the woman was thrilled that she didn't need to call the police, and the rest of us -- none of whom had been in any sort of hurry -- felt awfully good about saving the damsel in distress. I was also happy that I'd seemed nice and genuine enough to convince total strangers to follow me into the bushes.

The old man went his own way, and because the hiker and I were both going in the same direction but had never been in the park before, the suddenly-mobile woman gave us a guided tour of her favourite spots. Gradually we split off until it was just me in a gorgeous forest, under a warm and cloudy sky, in no particular hurry and walking on my own again. So nice!

---

Oh, yeah, my taxes: "It's busy," said the tax people. "Come back on Sunday."

My New NEW Digs

I moved here in September when it was a little bit chilly and everybody was retreating indoors. Over the winter I've barely seen anything of my neighbours.

Now, with the obscenely beautiful weather, I'm learning a bit more about them than I'd like to. We all have little patios so we're sort of in each other's faces. Plus I'm living next door to the Brady Bunch, a family whose uncountable children simply cannot be held within in the confines of a two-bedroom house, so they spill out in all directions and are pretty much below every window and inescapable.

I'm a much more relaxed person now than I used to be, so I am better able to view their activities as "healthy play" as opposed to "intrusively noisy." And I can (so far) drown them out when I really need to concentrate by turning on the furnace fan, which provides the added benefit of air circulation and which the previous owners had on pretty much constantly.

Fortunately this community does not seem to host partiers, at least not the type for whom partying is a lifestyle instead of just a diversion. I much prefer the sound of children playing than the sound of thumping music. And even more fortunately, my other neighbours -- the ones I share a wall with -- are so quiet that I occasionally worry about them. This is a far cry from the days of yore: the barking daschund, the wrestling pre-teens on the stairway, the pot-fueled 2:00am guitar parties on a chilly Tuesday morning.

I think this will be good. I don't know how much any of these people will like me...some of them say hello when I'm watering my terminally thirsty shrubbery, while others just walk past.

Other good things: this place is so nice and tidy that it's a pleasure to clean...well, as pleasurable as cleaning can be. Zsa Zsa adores her extended patio time and her tense exchanges with the Stray Badass Cat, who I surreptitiously spray with water when it looks like things are going poorly.

A VERY good thing: just across the expressway from where I live is the beautiful, unspoiled wilderness of Bechtel Park, but to get there I have to take a huge detour around all the fences and across the overpass. I've noticed a little stream that travels UNDER the expressway and into the park, and I've been wondering if I couldn't splash my way over there that way.

So on Friday I started exploring, and holy cow! The stream does indeed travel through a tunnel, and right beside it there is a SECOND tunnel...FOR PEDESTRIANS! It's long and spooky and black -- the kind of thing that city planners don't build anymore for safety reasons -- but thanks to some skillfully-demolished fences it provides convenient access to the park. Not a place to go at night, but a pleasant and adventuresome trip for the noon hour wanderer in search of some peace.

I think I'll need to use it a few times during the warm patio weather.

The Unsolved Mysteries of Williamson and Voynich

As annoying as Penn and Teller's "Bullshit!" program can be, one of their comments has really stuck with me. During a program about cryptozoology, Penn said that there are enough real and established unsolved mysteries in the world that we shouldn't become obsessed with ones that are merely tenuous.

The obvious examples involve both the huge and the tiny things that science is actively probing: cosmology, subatomic particles, and genetic material. But I'm equally (if not more) fascinated by the little, somewhat mundane oddities that pop up now and then.

Just in case you are too, here's an example: Williamson's tunnels. In the early 1800s, a rich and somewhat eccentric Liverpudlian named Joseph Williamson started constructing huge, elaborate tunnels under his property.


Instead of being objects of curiosity after his death, they were mostly viewed with annoyance; they'd get in the way of new building projects, and housing developers would simply fill them up with rubble -- usually without telling anybody -- so that their new apartment buildings wouldn't fall into them.

Now a small group of volunteers is slowly and methodically uncovering the tunnels, and they're discovering that they're much deeper -- and they travel much farther -- than credible sources would have indicated. It's incredibly difficult for an underfunded handful of people to clear out uncounted tonnes of compressed rubble, but they're slowly making their way through the tunnel network, finding new things all the time.

The mystery isn't just the EXTENT of the tunnels, it's also "Why were they built in the first place?" Nobody really knows yet, but maybe if they travel far enough they'll eventually get some clue. Until then: unsolved and really cool.

A second mystery is one I just learned about tonight, thanks to a brief article in the January 25, 1930 issue of The New Yorker. In 1912, book-dealer Wilfrid M. Voynich publicized the existence of a book that has become known as the Voynich Manuscript.


People have been trying to decipher the manuscript for almost 100 years, but they still can't crack its bizarre cypher. If the book isn't simply an elaborate hoax -- which it doesn't seem to be -- then it was written in the 15th or 16th century. It appears to be a biological, astrological, and alchemical treatise and is full of bizarre illustrations, including chimerical plants and naked women bathing in funnels and tubes.

Want to read it? Think you can solve the mystery? Check it out here. And I don't know about you, but I find this sort of thing FAR more fascinating than bigfoot or The Ghost of Henry VIII.

My New Neighbourhood

Up a hill! Down a hill! I never realized there was such a big hill on the edge of Uptown Waterloo. All sides of it are fantastically steep, and there's even a bit of a valley nestled right in the middle, so I get lots of exercise to and from work.

While coming down the hill towards Weber street there's a BEAUTIFUL view to the north, overlooking Moses Springer park and then -- far off -- the student slums of University and Columbia. I'm intrigued by a huge microwave tower out there.

There is always a lone dove sitting on a powerline near Lincoln and Weber, which is also where the few pedestrians diverge to various buses. Even though there is a bus which goes very close to my house, its route is circuitous and seems to almost willfully avoid the main line. Transfers and waiting at University and King is the only way.

The most beautiful homes are up on the hill. Affluence, in this area, means being set so far away from the road that you are completely surrounded by forest. One house appears only accessible up a long, winding wooden staircase with a mailbox at the bottom. I want to live in that house!

All the homes were built in the '60s and look distinctly "Brady Bunch": A-Frame angles, tall narrow windows, ridiculously high ceilings. The people who live in those houses walk their children to work every day; one father piggybacks his daughter all the way down the hill.

My own neighbourhood is not affluent, it would probably be classified as lower-middle class. They're mostly new families and first-time homebuyers. Most of them seem capable of proper recycling and garbage disposal, but a few think that a bin marked "cardboard" is the place where you throw your old Javex bottles.

The supermarket nearby is exceptionally good. The Blockbuster store is badly in need of cleaning and renovation. The Canadian Pizza place makes great pizza, and it's cheap.

I live near a water treatment plant and I am surrounded on three sides by enormous parks. I have done very little exploring but I'm amazed to discover that I live at the very end of Margaret Street, a long city-spanning thoroughfare which runs through every type of possible neighbourhood. This week I walked from the one end -- near my house -- all the way to the other end, which terminates conveniently at the Registry Theatre. It took about 45 minutes.

On my way to work I pass the cheerful, elderly school crossing guard. On the way home I used to greet the cheerful, elderly golden retriever who ran loosely up and down the immaculately-manicured lawns. But a few weeks ago his owners tied him up in the driveway, put down a blue tarp for him, and left his food and water out. I don't believe he is abused but he's certainly sad, sitting there, unable to greet people on the sidewalk. It makes me sad too.

Two days ago I finally realized that I really do live here. It hasn't sunk in yet that I OWN the place, but it's a start at least.

Voyageur!

Season seven of "The Daily Muffy" begins on Monday, July 7th with "Voyageur," a trip down Guelph's Speed River in search of fur and frolic! The adventure will commence here on Flickr.



These things are always a strange mix of anxiety and fun. Fortunately, when I did this on June 21st, I was gorgeously photographed by Shay and punted around by canoe-heroine Natasha. How could I NOT enjoy myself, especially on such a gorgeous day?

There are a few things to note about the shooting of this trip. The first is that I'm wearing the outfit which helped destroy my shoulder back in February...an outfit so terrifying that I call it "The Impossible Costume." Its odd back-centric doohickeys -- which I specifically remember having trouble with on that night -- left me in so much pain the next day that I can only assume it made my problem worse. By wearing it again for this photo shoot, I wanted to prove to myself that I CAN wear just about anything these days as long as I'm careful. I was, and it worked!

The second thing to note is that Natasha did not come with the intention to be photographed, so all the pictures feature only half of a canoe: the half with me in it. Rest assured that we WERE actually afloat, though I can't pretend that the Speed River is a particularly dangerous place to be.

There was, however, the danger of the canoe flipping over every time I hobbled into it. But Natasha is a pro and she kept me high and dry.

The third thing to note is that this was part of my "Shall I continue to do drag?" experiment. I needed to see how these pictures turned out, and to improve the experiment I even bought new eyelashes (the old ones were clunky, quirky, and more dry glue than lash). I'm thrilled that I can still burn up a dress and handle the harsh rays of the sun. Drag, we're still buddies, you and I.

Anyway, be sure to check out Flickr on Monday when the journey commences!

Summer! Summer! Summer!

Today I had planned to take a canoe trip down Guelph's Speed River, as part of the triumphant (possible) return of the Daily Muffy. Unfortunately the forecast rather sketchily called for afternoon thundershowers, and my trip organizer -- who is a professional canoe coach -- said "Lightning + Canoe = Death." And she didn't want to die just for a bunch of goofy photographs. We had to cancel.

So on a beautiful day, with the Co-op car booked and a totally free itinerary ahead of me, I decided to drive to New Hamburg and take my mom out for a surprise lunch.

And it worked! She hadn't eaten! We sat on the empty E.J.'s patio and ate pulled-pork sandwiches and talked about her trip to England. Then we took a long stroll around Baden -- which neither of us have ever walked around -- and chatted with children and played with a small dog. Then we went on the "Castle Kilbride" tour, which was quite beautiful, though I was disappointed we didn't get to REALLY see the basement. And I think that when I accidentally touched the tour guide's hand she thought I was groping her.

A side benefit of this wonderful day -- besides the joyful sponteneity of just making it up as we went along -- was the driving practice I got in. I'm becoming more comfortable with the car and am no longer white-knuckled when I drive it, and with each trip I become more thankful to the Grand River Car Share: they are professional, sensible, and they suit my lifestyle perfectly.

Sigh! Here's to a wonderful summer day! I don't have a "Daily Muffy" to show for it, but I think I ultimately got something better.

The Little House in the Wilderness

I love the little house in the wilderness, the one tiny house which has withstood all efforts of the Big Insurance Company to buy it. The B.I.C. owns everything else on that block, with the hopes of someday building another tower or a parking lot there...but that plucky little house has stood its ground and -- if Ian has anything to do with it -- it will be there for a long time.

Ian owns the house. Today he caught me snooping around and we started talking. I'd assumed that the house was deserted -- most of its windows are painted over and its wall of two-storey bushes form an impenetrable shell around it -- but no, Ian still lives there. He's an imposing middle-aged guy in green mechanic's coveralls, his face is huge, he is enthusiastically anti-establishment. I found him yanking out the four-foot high thistles, part of the foliage that he correctly calls his "naturalization." It would seem, however, that the B.I.C. doesn't like those thistles.

The 1861 farmhouse has been in Ian's family for a long time, and he says that if anything happens to him it will be inherited by his equally imposing cousin. Ian is friendly and gregarious, a brilliant talker. He calls the B.I.C. tower "Big Brother" and the rising loft tower on the other side is "Big Sister." He shares my amusement that a newly-constructed apartment complex can be called a "loft." As a child in that house he remembers seeing the factory which used to be there belch huge clots of fabric out of its smokestacks.

Ian says, referring to the B.I.C., "They hate my entire G.I. tract."

We talked until the big storm came down and hammered us, when Ian gathered up his electric clippers and disappeared back into his tiny patch of wilderness. It thrills me that he lives in there, happily isolated, a pain in the ass.

Diary of a Daily Muffy

During the blizzardy winter of 2008 Jenn Wilson and I made a plan: we would go to Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort and take pictures of me wearing my Ann Miller "bumblebee" outfit. Since it takes almost two hours to get there we decided we must go during the summer. To avoid traffic we would have to decide on a weekday, preferably around noon hour.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 7:20 am: We are aiming to make a head-start on the day so I have already done my ironing and planning and worrying the day before. I have cereal for breakfast and begin to get into drag.

I had tried to be blase about this adventure, but perhaps I was a bit TOO blase when it came to choosing my drag timetable; due to a simple miscalculation I have lost twenty minutes of prep time. There is a lot you can do -- or, in this case, CAN'T do -- in twenty minutes. My hair and makeup is done in record time. I forget my gloves.

9:10 am: We're off! Almost immediately we are surrounded by cars; it would seem that everybody is going to Niagara Falls on the same day as we. They want to see us succeed in our crazy endeavour. They are slowing us down and getting in our way.

10:00 am: Somewhere around Lincoln I begin to feel uncomfortable and anxious and I need to go to the bathroom.

I generally try to avoid bathrooms while I'm doing a Daily Muffy. Drag bathroom-etiquette is difficult at the best of times, and THIS time I'm wearing an outfit that takes time and subtlety to get in and out of. We pull into a Tim Horton's because I'm hoping that the bathrooms have a single stall.

On my way through the door a man asks me if I have a gas can. Then he notices that I am wearing a bright yellow '50s tap-dancing dress that is cut up to my crotch. He recoils.

By the time I'm finished in the bathroom I realize that I was suffering a form of anxiety due to the way the morning has gone: I got out of bed, jumped into drag, and then rushed into Jenn's car...then we drove non-stop through an alien landscape toward a place I'd never been before. I had felt a bit like a fish, yanked out of the ocean, dropped into a fishbowl, and then rocketed off without yet having a chance to get a grip on the environment.

Now that I have stared down the clientele of a roadside Tim Horton's, I have finally "decompressed." Damn it, Niagara Falls, I'm ready for you!

10:30 am: We park at a pay lot and walk toward the casino. We'd been worried about the weather, but the black storm clouds have all cleared away. We are proud that we remembered to bring umbrellas, but of course we leave them in the back seat of the car. We will regret this.

We are well aware that we cannot take pictures near the resort casino, but we plan to run totally amok within the mall and its surroundings. We befriend the man who appears to be head of security and with his blessing we duck into nooks and crannies that we'd otherwise be too scared to explore.

The mall is mostly full of middle-aged tourists and "casino types." They avoid us and are polite when we block their access to brutally expensive posh-stores. One older man walks up to me and shouts "What happened to your skirt? THE FRONT IS GONE!" but before we can be friendly we are interrupted by yet another security guard, who is feeling us out.

We go outside and begin to walk around the mall. It's beautiful! From a distance I get my picture taken with both the American and Canadian falls (another goal achieved!) The Canadian side is WAY prettier. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the war of 1812 was fought entirely due to falls-jealousy.

Then, thunder. We have become very accustomed to thunder this summer...but I'm standing outside in a fragile dress and Jenn is carting around a ton of very expensive camera gear. Terrified, we rush back to the mall.

12:30 am: It is POURING. We sit in the food court and watch the rain. As I said previously, we'd left our umbrellas in the car, which is a five-minute walk away.

We hatch a devious plan. We walk through the resort's parking garage until we find the exit which we assume is closest to our parking lot, and then Jenn darts out the door to get her car while I huddle in the stairwell and guard her stuff. I realize that the door is identical to all the other doors on that side of the building, and also that I don't remember what Jenn's car looks like, and I don't have her phone number, and that this was a really silly idea.

Then Jenn pulls up and we drive away; she is soaked, I am not.

1:00 pm: Sensing how much I want to take the restrictive "bumblebee" outfit off, Jenn pulls into a covered parking garage behind a hotel and I jump out to get changed. The rain is pouring down. I strip to my underwear just in time for a bunch of tourists to wander into the parking lot with me. Then a car pulls in. The tourists and the car shuffle back and forth as I crouch, virtually naked, waiting for them to sort their crap out and go away.

Finally we are back on the Queen Elizabeth Way and we are heading home.

1:30 pm: The black clouds descend and the traffic slows to a crawl.


Due to an evil brew of construction, weather, car accidents, and the other people's desire to interfere with our shit, our next ninety minutes on the QEW are spent in impenetrable gridlocked traffic, inching forward mile after mile. Then a truly fearsome hailstorm reduces visibility to nil, which is particularly terrifying when you're stuck on the Garden City Skyway. Jenn pushes us through one jam and into the next; we struggle, we fight.

3:00 pm: When the weather clears we are still creeping along the QEW...but we no longer recognize the landmarks. We wonder why the hell we're driving through Oakville. When we start to see "Airport" and "Mississauga" signs our worst suspicions are confirmed: during the storms we missed a crucial turn-off into Hamilton, and spent an hour DRIVING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION.

My mind snaps. I am being driven through a strange area, very far from home, and I am in drag. That alone would be fine except that my face is steadily disintegrating and I have no "boy clothes." I cannot (or rather will not) exit the car in this stage of degeneration, and we've ALREADY spent hours driving in the car...it will take at least another hour to get us back, and we are getting perilously close to rush hour (which would add an ADDITIONAL hour to our journey).

In the face of my emotional-mental meltdown, Jenn is the rational one. We stop and get directions, which are: follow Winston-Churchill Boulevard until we hit the 401. It's a long way home from there but at least we KNOW that area.

Making the best of it, we turn around and resume our journey.

4:20 pm: Home at last. I greet the cat, wash my decaying face, and happily look forward to seeing the pictures we took (you'll see them as part of the next Daily Muffy, if you're interested). I am suddenly cold and I huddle up under the covers, reading Morley Callaghan short stories and enjoying my return to stability.

I realize that the horrific drive home has almost completely wiped out my memory of what we did in Niagara Falls. Thank goodness we'll have pictures to remind us!

The Ambitious Kitchener/Waterloo Buswalk Tour: Route Eleven

There is a right way and a wrong way to do a Buswalk Tour.

The right way is to plan for a weekend of calm weather. Stock up on supplies and sunscreen and make sure your camera battery is charged. Find a schedule and a map for the route you want to take and ensure that you can get there on time. In short: look ahead.

Unfortunately, the right way is also the least interesting way, and it simply discourages me. If I can actually ANTICIPATE the potential tedium, anxiety, and sunburn involved in the tour...well, I just won't go. I have learned this from experience.

A few Sundays ago I suddenly decided -- on my way home from breakfast -- that it was time to take a tour. I had twenty minutes to gather supplies and catch my bus to route three -- Ottawa South -- and of course I missed it.

So, at the central terminal, I waited for whichever bus would arrive next, which turned out to be route eleven, "Country Hills." Throwing all caution to the wind I climbed aboard the bus expecting to find a map, but as we chugged off I realized that all the maps were gone; I was riding into nowhere with a small, stinky boy and two wheezing alcoholics. The day was exceptionally hot and cloudless. I had no idea where I was going.

That was, officially, "the wrong way."

(For ALL the pictures go here...this blog entry will only show a few of them and give you an overall sense of what happened).



Here's the place where I got off. Having no map to guide me, I simply waited until I was suitably lost and until the drunk people left. Not a bad-looking neighbourhood, but a disconcertingly large number of robins bobbing around.

Every time I do a Buswalk tour I immediately come across a park which leads into a forest, and this time it was "Alpine Park," a depressing wedge of unsheltered grassland. The forest on the edge, however, was a magical tangle of paths and undergrowth and shade, with the occasional cryptically-vandalized tree.



On the other side of the forest, in a sprawling schoolyard, two men were playing with model planes while their children kicked a deflated volleyball around. Whenever you find two men playing with gadgetry you will be engulfed by giddiness and a degree of welcome that you wouldn't find if they were -- for instance -- fixing their cars. I stood with them and watched the planes fight the strong breeze which did nothing to cool any of us off. The children sulked with their neglected volleyball, kicking, bitching.

The second rule of a Buswalk tour is that I will eventually find a power corridor. This one cut between the enormous, low housing complexes that make up a large part of Country Hills. It lead me to the first of the many fences that would thwart my journey, forcing me to detour back and walk through the slightly crappy residential area for the third time.

Why do I say it was "slightly crappy?" Maybe it was the balconies covered in junk and bristling with satellite dishes. Maybe it was the huge parking lot, berefit of trees or benches. Maybe I thought the broken planters were a little sad, or perhaps I was most disturbed by the used maxi pad which lay a-droop on the newspaper box.



Mapless and feeling a little down, I decided it would be best to work my way back into the city. Since this required finding a way across the expressway, I followed Ottawa Street: my nemesis, choking traffic, exhaust fumes, the sun at its highest and hottest. Two chihuahuas in a beat-up pickup truck barked hysterically at me as I crossed the street, trying to leap out of the window and bite my shoetips; it was a strangely personal and sweet moment for all of us.

(Two days later the Kitchener/Waterloo Record printed a front-page picture almost identical to the one I took below, to highlight that this intersection really really sucks.)



I walked back along Ottawa street past aging bikers with beers nestled in their chubby crotches, staring at me, staring at the ugly neighbourhood. Warehouses, impromptu sidewalks, rusted metal, cars on blocks, great hot sky.

Near the intersection of Ottawa and Mill I found a set of railroad tracks. I am unable to resist railroad tracks; they are secret, forbidden places which show you the underbelly of the city. Walking on railroad tracks is like looking at the world's hidden bumhole. It is also generally without any shelter from the sun, and it can potentially be a trap.

I didn't see any good bumholes but I DID realize that I was walking into a trap: crossing BACK under the expressway -- going in the wrong direction, then -- and wedged between factories and the Rockway Golf Course. You do NOT want to tresspass on a golf course. Their security guards have little tolerance for shaggy, sunstruck vagabonds.



A brief moment to catch my breath under the underpass and view some not-so-bad graffiti, then I decided upon the Next Big Risk in my journey: I took advantage of an open gate to enter the forbidden and highly illegal expressway boundary.

So picture this: I was walking through the waist-high grass and brambles of the boundary. The highway itself was up a high slope to my right, and to my left -- across an eight-foot chain link fence -- was the golf course. Behind me were the railway tracks and ahead of me...who knows? I just knew it was the direction I needed to go.

It was a long walk. I was baking in the direct sunlight and beginning to feel light-headed. Across the fence, golf games stopped to watch my ridiculous trek through the grass. The fence turned inwards and I had no choice but to climb it, leaving me still sandwiched between two places I could not go, and then...

The stream. A cheery water feature which ran through the golf course and under the expressway, twenty feet wide, about a foot deep. Cutting right across my route, across which lay Courtland Avenue: the only street which could take me home.

While scouting under the overpass I found what appeared to be a loose line of rocks crossing the stream. I either had to go back -- over the fence and along an hour's worth of shadeless route -- or try to walk across the rocks.



The rocks it was.

Step by step I tested each stone. Some of them were unstable and a few were just clumps of submerged algae. I was carrying two heavy bags full of supplies and wearing the eyeglasses which distort my vision. There was simply no way I could get across without falling in.

At the other side, perfectly dry, I looked back in amazement. I was still a long way from home but least I hadn't toppled, gotten covered in goose feces, and ruined my camera. A testament to my ability to walk zombie-like through adversity; I would have been perfect machine-gun fodder during the first world war.

Up Courtland, past beautiful factories that I was too tired to take pictures of, I finally made it to King Street and sat down in the shade. The number seven bus would eventually come and take me far, far away from Country Hills.

Ooh-La-La: Paris in the Spring!

The aforementioned all-new Daily Muffy is online now!



Just in case you're new to this concept, the idea is to present a new picture every day, meanwhile telling a more-or-less coherent story. This one is the story of how Tim and I went to Paris...and you can view it here. The pictures will be unlocked every weekday morning and you can view them at different sizes, comment on them, see them on a map, check out the growing archives...it's all so gosh-darned interactive!

Special thanks to Jenn Wilson for suggesting a way of doing this using Flickr. Hopefully it all works! Please let me know if you have any problems or suggestions.

A Vehicle: Edging into Adulthood

I've done without a car for thirteen years. I live in a city with lots of cabs, good bus service, and plenty of sidewalks to walk on. I have friends and family which will transport heavy goods in a pinch, and if I need to get out of the city there is always the Greyhound.

But jeez, I think it's time to get a car. I hate sponging off of friends. I hate being unable to visit people in other cities. When I'm invited to do a show in Guelph, I hate forcing them to pick me up and drive me home. I hate taking the bus to Toronto.

Most importantly -- and positively -- I would love to be able to drive during the summer. I want to drive to little towns and explore without worrying that other people will be bored. I want to visit the Bruce Penninsula again. I want to see Lake Huron.

To do all of these things I need a car.

So I've started the ball rolling. My father works at a car dealership and he knows his cars, so he's scouting out a practical used vehicle. I've called an insurance company to find out how much I'll need to pay for the privilege of driving...I'll get the bad news tomorrow. I've decided that -- for the first time in my life -- I need to go into temporary debt to achieve a useful and substantial goal: geographic independence.

Hopefully this will all happen.

I need to balance this with two other desires. First off, I want to go to the 2008 Pennsylvania STC Summit in June, and though I'll be reimbursed for everything it always involves my paying upfront, out of my own pocket.

Also, while editing a new "Domestic Drag Show" in iMovie, I finally decided it would be worth it to get better (that is, ADEQUATE) video editing software. But that would require upgrading my operating system, which would ultimately require just getting a new computer. As nice as it would be to enjoy all the perks of a spiffy new iMac (not to mention the ability to make better videos, and to make them faster), I have to admit that this is hardly essential.

So the car wins.

ZAngband, My Guilty Pleasure

Every few years I dust off the old Roguelike and spend some time obsessively playing it. For the last eight years my personal favourite has been ZAngband, and I've spent a week joyfully hacking away at it.

What's so nice about a Roguelike? You can play it on any platform. The vibrant development base makes for frequent updates and tweaks. With no attention paid to spiffy graphics -- as you can see above -- all the code can go toward providing balance, interest, and surprise. At the best of times it's like playing randomized chess. At its worst it's an endless tapping out of the same command codes ("m4b*t, m4b*t, m4b*t...").

The BEST thing about playing a Roguelike, though, is that it provides a good opportunity to just sit and listen to a CD at the same time. Each time I sit down to play the game, I put in a CD I haven't properly listened to and then play along with the CD. When the CD's over I force myself to quit the game, because nothing kills your character like general game fatigue.

Another nice thing about it is the "code of game ethics" which states that when your character dies...that's it. Game over. You don't do anything tricky -- like back up your save file -- to resurrect it. This leads to a lot of reflection during the game and a reduction of potentially suicidal choices. It also leads to intense frustration when eight hours of your life go down the toiled due to "Yet Another Stupid Death."

What's so nice about ZAngband? It's the only Roguelike with a huge randomized wilderness full of towns, ruins, and themed dungeons. Its magic system is unparalleled. It also has a good sense of humour, having strayed from the traditional Tolkein influences to bring us Robin Hood and -- jeez -- Barney the chaos-spewing dinosaur.

ZAngband has so many character options -- race, class, magic types -- that it can be a bit daunting to the beginner. So I have only one (nerdy) thing to say: Mindflayer ranger with Death magic. You'll spend the first hour or so running away from everything, but once you hit your stride...

Klondike

I have just finished Pierre Berton's book "Klondike," and I've actually had -- yes -- some epiphanies!

Once you pass the age of 25 epiphanies become more and more rare. Eventually you know enough about the world that very few "connections" remain to be made in your mind. Sure, you can still LEARN new things, but rarely do you get those "aha!" moments when pieces of the world puzzle suddenly fit together.

I guess I'm lucky because I learned very little history when I was in school, so the historical timeline is still full of these little puzzles that need to be resolved. I've pretty much filled in the geopolitical gaps from 1920 on, but the turn of the century has remained a mystery.

Thankfully, Pierre Berton's wonderful sense of scope and organization has brought me the perfect overview of that period, and explained to me some questions that I didn't realize were vexing until I really thought about them: why did so many people rush off to the Klondike, even though the chances of staking a gold claim were next to impossible? How did so many of them become rich anyway? Why did those people notoriously just "throw their gold around" like it was worth nothing? And why was it so HARD to get to the Yukon, anyway?

There is no single answer for any of those questions, which is why the period has never seemed real to me; it was like a cartoon where people just did crazy things for no reason I could possibly relate to. But Berton's "Klondike" spends so much time answering all of those questions from every possible angle that...well, I had epiphanies. Lots of them. It's almost INDECENT, to suffer so many revelations in one's own armchair.*

Regarding the last question -- why was it so hard to get there -- I suffer an inability to judge the impossibility of physical tasks, and without actually undertaking the task myself I'm bound to be deluded for life. Last year's books about the Arctic impressed on me the horrible ordeal of walking on a glacier, Anton Money's "This Was the North" gave me a good sense of what solitary survival up north was really like...and now Pierre Berton has taught me about muskeg, swamps, mosquitos, and the impossibility of getting horses through such places.

Here's a simple equation: no horses, no supplies. No supplies, sickness. Sickness, slow movement. Slow movement through the sub-Arctic, forced to "winter in" repeatedly, in which case only the Indians were able to keep you from total starvation. Demoralization, disorientation, you finally make it to Dawson City only to discover that everybody's up and left.

I'm so thrilled with my revelations that I plan to follow up this book with three others. The first, "Good Time Girls of the Alaskan Gold Rush" by Lael Morgan is one I've read before. It elaborates on the histories of the dance-hall girls and prostitutes, who were very odd characters indeed. Berton covers this topic as well, but in a somewhat scattered way. Plus Morgan's book is beautifully illustrated, showing not just the women themselves but also their houses, streets, and men.

Then I'm moving on to another one I read but couldn't contextualize: "American Vaudeville" by Douglas Gilbert. It covers 1880-1930 and I hope will give me a sense of what entertainment was REALLY like during the period.

Finally, to solidify my grasp of the Yukon, I'll come full-circle with "I Married the Klondike." Written by Laura Beatrice Burton -- Pierre's mother -- it looks to be the sort of pioneer story that I love to read.

* I admit that I still don't really understand WHY gold is so precious. How did that all come about anyway?

Armchair Caving

I'd like to say "put me in a cave and I bravely explore the smallest crevasse," but the truth is more like "put me in a cave and I scream 'help, I'm stuck, there are bugs, get me out!'"

No matter my reluctance to actually squeeze through the dark, buggy confines of a real-life cave, I love to read about OTHER people going into them, which is why Roger Brucker's book "The Longest Cave" is such a treat.

It's the story of the Mammoth/Flint cave system, and in particular the attempts of the authors (and many others) to survey and connect them. I've always thought that the grueling nature of caving was just about "squeezing through that tight spot" or "ducking under that stalactite," but Roger Brucker brings the truth home. Have you ever spent five hours crawling on your belly through a dusty passage only slightly bigger than your horizontal body, trying to find the end of a mysterious, extended tunnel, occasionally sleeping, rarely given the opportunity to turn around?

No? Well you're not alone, because apparently nobody's ever gotten to the end of that passage (called "Left of the Trap"). And therein lies some of the beauty of "The Longest Cave." It describes in a matter-of-fact way the places that humans JUST CANNOT GO, because even the most acclimatized of us simply do not have enough stamina. And that's incredible.

Although Brucker's style tends to be of the "We walked through the passage, Clive kept on singing, we told him to be quiet" variety, he really does maintain the tension until the very end: the connection of the Flint and Mammoth systems to create the world's longest cave. He's not a great author but his passion and his first-hand experience more than make up for his stylistic stumblings.

As an aside I've discovered that it's almost impossible to actually see a MAP of these caves; the maps in Brucker's book are not very detailed, and there don't appear to be online sources for ANY Flint/Mammoth cave maps. I wonder why? I bet they're kept pseudo-secret to prevent people from wandering into them and getting lost.

Daily Muffy: "Drag Your Ass Out Two"

We'll be doing some repeats over at The Daily Muffy for a bit, so if you want to see some historical shots from ye olde Muffye archives, go over and have a look. The current episode is a brief "behind the scenes" look at shenanigans after 2004's "Drag Your Ass Out" event.

Gukanjima, Another Place You're Not Allowed to Visit

One of the seven wonders of forbidden exploration is the island of Gukanjima, which was abandoned suddenly in 1974 and has remained virtually untouched since, except by the elements. Wind, rain, and rot have given the place an apocalyptic beauty, most famously captured by photographer Saiga Yuji here.

I Am Here in Oolite

No, I haven't mysteriously vanished. I'm afraid that my mind has been grabbed by the iron fist of Oolite, and for the moment I can't escape.

I've always been fascinated by space travel in its most mundane sense: getting from here to there. I just can't grasp the distances between planets, let alone solar systems, let alone GALAXIES. It amazes me that it's all unexplored, in the way that people must have been amazed by (and attracted to) "darkest Africa" and the poles, before we found out it was all pretty much normal, just harder to get to.

So give me a game where I can explore a "universe," and I'm happy. Make it a game where the travel is mind-numbingly dull -- watching your destination approach over half an hour while your fellow ships travel around you -- and I'm THRILLED. Give me the ability to ADD to the universe with custom MODs, and I widow my blog (and my cat) so I can study the modding language and create mysterious ghost ships and space-age Voyageurs.

As if this wasn't enough, Oolite's universe is also procedurally generated, a process that has obsessed my slightly-autistic mind since I was a child, watching computer-landscapes blossom from the union of a number seed and an algorithm. You needed to think about these things when you had only 64K to play with.

Once I've explored its boundaries and gotten frustrated by the scripting languages, I'll probably put aside Oolite and never play it again. I already can't believe that I'm willing to sit for ages watching a planet get slightly bigger, while my cat cries "love me!" from the floor. But sometimes I get hooked on these things, and since this weekend was a scheduled "no-bar" interval this is the perfect time to indulge myself.

So I'm sorry that the blog hasn't been updated. I'll make it up to you soon with ANOTHER new obsession, which is a surprise and infinitely more social.