Tag: tesla

me with no breakfast VS them with plates of treats. hmmm.

There is a belly-dance workshop in the Faris theatre today. I poked in about an hour ago to see what it was like, as the sound, strange and incessant, has attacked the foyer since 8 am. What I found was utterly surreal – 200+ women in various hip-scarf heavy interpretations of yoga-wear, (one t-shirt: GOT TECHNIQUE?), bellies dutifully bared, lined up in threes so as to make a large circle, and walking very carefully backwards, arms help stiffly in the air like some strange parody of choreographed children cheating at a game of freeze-tag, while the instructor shouted “Left foot! Right foot! Hands! Hips! Left foot! Right foot!” over blaring electro-clash ethnic music.

A road I want to travel.

I escape in about fifteen minutes. (I do not use the word “escape” lightly, here. That music’s been beyond terrible). After work, I’m going to the Tesla Exhibition. There’s a Tesla Gala planned as well, but as the highlights of the evening are apparently The Lord’s Prayer and folk dancing, it’s likelier that I will be finding somewhere with cheesecake and holing up with whatever kind company is available until it’s time for the Purple Party. Any takers? Chocolate probably loves you more than your last lover did, I promise.

edit: Haven’t escaped yet. I’ve no idea where the evening girl is, as she’s forty minutes late and counting. The belly-dancers have ended thier lunch-break and the 1960’s Warner Bros. Bugs-Bunny-has-dressed-up-as-as-exotic-woman music is back on full force and the instructor is now barking pilates instructions. Save us all.

I’m beginning to consider dancing for money

Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries. -Christopher Morley, writer (1890-1957)

I’ve submitted a story to Life For Change, an on-line writing contest. It’s $100 for the author of the story with the most votes. It’s a newer site, only active since January, but there’s been two winners so far, and I hope to at least be short-listed for the next draw. Course, I need people to vote for me, that’s how all these work. This means you.

Thank you to Adam, Andrew, Angus, Avi, Brian, Bruce, Christopher, Chris, Christaline, David, Dominique, Duncan, Ed, Erin, Gary, Eva, Gord, Heath, Jacques, Jer, Jordan, Keith, Kyle, Liam, Lung, Lee, Luciano, Navi, Nick, Patti, Paula, Michael, Mike, Mike, Sam, Sara, Sarah, Stephen, Steven, Simon, Travis, Robin, Ray, Reine, Ross, Ryan, Roger, Wayne, Vicki, and the other five to ten people who’s names have momentarily escaped me.

Next time you’re all signing a damned guest book.

I’ve made a Flickr Pool for party pictures, fashionably late birthday. Pass it on.

Roger, Jacques brother, was talking with someone about a car for sale. If this is you or you know who it is, could you get in touch with me? Roger was an older fellow with the short sandy hair who came later, the one with the amazingly inconvenient talent of avoiding being in any of the photos I currently have at my disposal.

And again, whoever forgot their keys, if they’d like them back, they should get in touch with me. (Otherwise, I’m just going to start using their nifty light-up key-chain). My Outlook thrashed itself this past weekend, I can’t get at my invitation list to ask around properly, so I’m relying purely on word-of-mouth. The more of you send out feelers and harassment, the less likely someone will be panicking sometime this week.

Andrew, Sarah, Ethan, and Alicia, you still have books here that you put dibs on.

July 10th was Nikola Tesla‘s 150th anniversary. Tesla, the archetypical mad scientist, invented radio and alternating current, set the world record for man-made lightning, and was nemesis to none other than Edison himself, who was entirely a prick to him his entire career. After an intensely accomplished life, he died destitute and alone in a pigeon filled suite in New Yorker Hotel.

Part of the various celebrations, (2006 has been declared The Year of Nikola Tesla by Croatia, Serbia, and UNESCO. Croatia already has him on their money), is going to be a Christopher Nolan film based on The Prestige, a captivating novel by Christopher Priest, starring David Bowie as Tesla. In 1980, Orson Welles produced a Yugoslavian film named Tajna Nikole Tesle, (The Secret of Nikola Tesla), in which Welles himself played the part of Tesla’s patron, J.P. Morgan, but I don’t think it’s going to match up to this. I had such a fierce secret crush on Tesla when I was growing up that it was silly, so this looks like it’s going to be entirely too sexy for words. Seriously, casting David Bowie as Nikola Tesla, you can’t actually craft a hotter idea than that. Not unless you somehow throw Phillip K. Dick in there as played by another David Bowie. Here’s a link to the trailor.