November

November creeps by
cold, barren, pictureless blah
mind, screen, both are blank.

Scandinavian craft fair

It's a giant dala horse!

We saw the sign last week so we had to make it down to the craft fair at the Scandinavian Cultural Centre because we'd never heard of it before and certainly had never been. The closest we've come to it is passing some Norwegians rowing a viking ship in False Creek while we were on the ferry.

I was kind of surprised at how many people were there. The place was packed and it seemed to have some interesting things for sale. Part of it was sort of like a swap meet, where they were selling old books in Swedish and other such stuff. Mom picked up a book that she thought was a cookbook, but it had words in it like Langfredag, Paskedag and names like Jurgen, Rebeka and Urban so I think it was probably more like an almanac or a calendar. My sister entered a raffle and she won, like she always does.

There were friendly ladies in bunads serving leverpostei, rice porridge and open-faced sandwiches, though no brown cheese, which is sad.

Overall, pretty entertaining.

After that we went to see the CBC Radio Orchestra play a program of Spanish music. It was the most cultural of days.

Commercials

PBS was advertising a night's worth of shows, but somehow all of them got mixed together for me. What I heard was about a dark drama, full of sex, murder and bizarre, grotesque animals. I was mildly interested until I realized that they were two separate shows.

Then later, on another channel they were advertising for Extreme Makeover: Home Edition with Ty Pennington, and then immediately afterward, a commercial for White Spot's 'Taste of Thai.' Thai food, at least at White Spot, is ruined for me, at least temporarily.

All reasons why I really shouldn't watch tv.

There's also a commercial for Campbell's Soup on right now where they take you out to a carrot farm, you meet the farmers and they talk about how wonderful their carrots are or something. There's a guy in there with a name that sounds kind of like Jackson Pollock, and my sister wants to know if Jackson Pollock the farmer makes Campbell's soup by flicking it all over the place.

The doorcruncher

I had a dream last night that I walked into a nice looking little coffee shop that sold huge muffins with odd flavour names like 'The Doorcruncher.' I went up to the counter, where a man and woman were talking. The man's cheeks were a tad sunken. He leaned over the counter, between two glass cases of massive muffins and looked straight at me and shook my hand.

"You're Erin," he said.

"How do you know my name?" I asked.

"You work here," he replied.

My job happened to be writing poems that were given to customers every time one of the muffins was sold. Who knew?

Laundry

I'm up because I'm waiting for my sheets to dry. I put them in the dryer before I left for school today but they're still damp right now. I use the timer rather than the sensor thing, and obviously fourty minutes wasn't enough.

The last time I used the intelligent dry setting on my dryer, I forgot about my laundry until about four hours later, thinking that it would beep when it was done. When I finally went to check it the dryer was still running and the clothes inside were practically humming with electrical charge. Handling them made my hair stick up and I burned my fingers on the zipper on a pair of jeans. I decided it was too much hassle, so I decided to leave the load inside the dryer for a couple of hours to let it cool down. I forgot about it until a week later.

I'm not all that good at this domestic stuff sometimes. I do the cooking thing reasonably well, but for some of these other things I'm hopeless.

But now my sheets are dry and they smell good so I'm going to bed.

If I was a major television network I'd charge you a dollar to vote via text message to nominate this post for the most mundane thing I've written all year. But alas, I am not, so I'll have to think of a different get rich quick scheme.

Alarms

Someone's car alarm is screeching in the parking lot outside my window. It's one of the fancy ones that goes through every possible permutation of alarm sound twice before turning off. I'm not sure how that makes it more effective.

I can just hear it saying "What? You weren't deterred by the squeal? Well now I'm going to BEEP! And when I'm finished that I'm going to HONK and then SOUND LIKE A SIREN! You don't want to mess with me, asshole!"

Clearly one of the available sounds turns potential car thieves into incoherent, quivering puddles of goo. They're just not sure which one so they cover their bases by playing them all. Persistence is the key. If that's not winning logic, I don't know what is.

I want to make a car alarm that has a human voice that says something like "don't even think about it" or just "piss off." It doesn't have to be mean or yelled. It could be quite polite. We could get some celebrities on board. Wouldn't you want a car alarm that had Sean Connery's voice say "I wouldn't touch that car if I were you"? I certainly would.

I would also like a ringtone for my phone that says "answer the phone" or someone saying "ring ring". And since I have call display, some custom rings would be nice too:

"Your mom's calling."

"Don't pick up. It's only your sister."

On craft fairs and handmade gifts

I wandered down to the Burnaby Craft Fair on Saturday and I'm sad to say that I was a little disappointed. I mean the crafters no disrespect when I say this. They place a great deal of effort into creating their products and and take pride in their work. But the number of people involved, both selling and buying, seems to shrink year after year.

A family friend who was selling her weaving there echoed the same sentiment. Fairs are just not getting the same amount of traffic as they used to, and it's getting to the point, she says, where it's just not worth it anymore. As someone who was quite active in that community for many years, I find it a little upsetting.

Stepping out to the car, I heard an advertisement for Circle Craft, which is one of the few places that seems to be able to attract crowds anymore. The last time I was there, someone told me that nearly half of all the people selling that year were new, which according to them, was a good thing. But what the high turnover says instead to me is that people don't come back because they don't sell enough to make it financially worthwhile.

I find that the problem with Circle Craft though is that the cost of admission is high, the table fees are high and the commission percentage is also high, so consequently the prices once you get in are all way higher than they would normally have been. I realize that the higher fees cover the cost of advertising and the rental fees for the convention centre, but still, they can make the cost of things a little prohibitive, especially for kids like me who have tight budgets.

One good thing to be said about Circle Craft is that their jury process is very good. They obviously take great care to ensure that everything is hand crafted and of good quality, which is more than can be said about a lot of other local craft fairs.

The last year we sold at the Mission Craft Fair there were two new vendors who also sold silver jewelry. One man was quite open about the fact that his goods were handmade, not by him, but by people in Mexico. The other was selling plain chains, bracelets and lockets that were ordered straight from the Rousseau Chain catalogue. For years there had been friendly competition among a group of jewelers there who were all playing by the same rules, then all of a sudden we were all at a disadvantage because we couldn't compete with mass production.

I can't help thinking that this is just another facet of the erosion of the public sphere by corporations. Maybe I should be writing my Frankfurt School critical theory paper on this instead. If only I had more time.

In spite of my disillusionment I still have faith in buying handmade because supporting real people instead of Wal-Mart makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Not to mention, handmade things are unique. As long as the option still exists I'll take the time to visit local craft fairs and galleries, and when I finally get my shop together on Etsy you'll be sure to know.

I have a mystery to solve.

Collapsing a kleenex box for recycling at my parents' house, I found a key rattling inside the bottom. It's small, silver and looks like it's either from a cashbox or a cabinet and it has a smiley face sticker stuck to one side. Figures I forgot to take my camera out with me so you're just going to have to imagine it.

I am wondering why a key would be hiding in the bottom of a kleenex box, and who would have put it there in the first place. My parents seem to think it has nothing to do with them.

Looks like I'm going to have to do some investigative work like Oskar Schell from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I can visit people I looked up in the phone book and hear what they have to say and maybe I'll find the answer. It's hard to say. Not everyone's in the phone book anymore.

I'll think up some likely scenarios and let you know what I come up with later.

Bryter Layter

Stormy. There are a lot of power surges right now, so I'm unplugged and sans internet. I'm listening to Nick Drake's Bryter Layter - an excellent album.

When Du and I went to see Matt Good at the Centre in September, we arrived really, really early, and this was the music playing in the theatre while we waited.

At one point in time, some of the DJ's from the Fox came out to introduce the show and they seemed majorly out of touch with everything. They were talking about how he's "kicked ass" for years and that he was going to "kick ass" tonight, ignoring the fact that he shed the asshole rocker persona years ago and he's now the sensitive, wounded, bipolar, acoustic guitar playing human rights activist.

In addition to that they said that the rockin kickass music we were listening to was coming from Mr. Good's own ipod. And while I love Nick Drake, kickass? How can a sensitive, wounded, possibly suicidal acoustic guitar and flute player be kickass?

the power is now out

Not to mention, CFOX is far more likely to play something like Puddle of Mudd or Nickelback than anything remotely like Nick Drake.

The same thing happened when he had an interview with them on the air. They were completely out of touch with what he's been doing lately. But what do I know? I'm sitting here, at my computer, typing to the light of an oil lamp. At the lowest setting, my screen is too bright and it's burning my eyes so I'll be signing out now. Good night.

Hole

I woke up this morning to the sudden realization that after spring is over, I have two courses left to finish my degree, two evening courses that I could be doing while working. In spite of that, I don't have quite enough credits completed right now to apply for grad school, which means I'm going to have to wait a year to apply. That means I've got a year of absolutely nothing to do.

Curled up in a fetal position in bed, I began to sing (to the tune of Hole in the Bottom of the Sea*):

there's a hole in the middle of my plans
there's a hole in the middle of my plans
there's a hole
there's a hole
there's a hole in the middle of my plans

there's a year in the hole in the middle of my plans...

there's an abyss of nothingness in the year in the hole in the middle of my plans...

I have no idea what I'm going to do. I don't have student loans and my financial situation is actually pretty good, so it's not like I'm going to be really pressed for money the moment I'm out. But I still need to do something. I wish it could be school.

Other than that, my day has been so uneventful it's not worth talking about.

* It was either Barney or Veggie Tales. I picked the lesser of two evils. Sorry.