TubaOrNotTuba

A new year, where I will be a captive audience for a year-long festival of navel-gazing. The city is four hundred years old; renovations are welcome. Seriously though, we’re off on a spending spree that will be one for the history books. Unlike the rest of the known world, where people have managed to keep house for thousands of years, the New World has an abbreviated memory. Only those who sailed in with canvas sails can claim to have done anything memorable, and this city holds the record for constant settlement by people from a neighbouring continent (deliberate poke at the revisionists of a place near Jamesville, or James City or James Town, or something similar… Wiki left me confused as to the real story).

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I’ve never been big on birthdays. Except my 18th, but that came at an important moment in my social life. My own interpretation is that we only have one “birth day”, so get on with things. Here in Quebec, the translation is perhaps more appropriate: anniversaire, as in “the anniversary of”. This city is on its way to a big one, the 400th, and finally we’re starting to see some signs of an impending party. An expensive one, but what else is tax money for?

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I’ve attached (for a long time) importance to who makes the music I like. Songs shouldn’t be reduced to a title; the artist did get involved along the way. From back when music was who we saw on Ed Sullivan, through the Teen Beat magazines that my sisters left around the house, across the covers of the LPs which showed up in the radio station; all of these led to there being somebody behind the whole thing. Maybe that’s why I never fell in love with anonymous piano concertos from long dead men played by faceless hands.

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Our world is turning upside down. Proof. Lots. Let’s see: yesterday we had three byelections at the federal level in Quebec and no candidates from the “Natural Leading Party” won the toss. However, veils may be to blame. The loonie has grown chubby from all the cheap job food we’ve been serving, and may close at par with the neighbour’s currency real soon now. The thermometer is down to within a degree of freezing at night, and we’re still technically in summer. Global warming except for us. And on and on.

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When someone finds a really polite word for a situation, I’m left tongue-tied. I mean, we all do it, unless we’ve missed the chapter on living with others in society, but once in a while, the skill of locution “jumps the shark”. This afternoon, while listening to Rex (solving the problems of the world), a pedagogue took the stage. In one word, he summed up the whole of any undergraduate class. The word: disengaged.

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The end of the trip blues have hit, even though the road to home is still hours long. The motel in Rivere-Madeleine was a quick packup. Coffee in Ste-Anne-des-Monts was even quicker, and then we started the last leg of the Gaspé.

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I’m on the road again, and it’s an easy job. Since I don’t get to drive, I have two available options: stare out the window or sleep in a semi-seated position until I awake to stare out the window again. I’m not even responsible for the music choices. Bring on Iggy Pop and The Passenger.

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This evening, I’ve had several trivial food items come across my plate, so to speak. Since nothing of note happened in the world today (if you can’t trust Fox, who can you trust?), I’m going to offer them up. Tasty morsels, so to speak, although, like cheap Chinese, you may be hungry in half an hour. Not my fault; I was forced to remove all of the trans fats.

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The polls on the Island closed about three hours ago, and I’ve been an indulgent media junkie ever since. Two, sometimes three web browser windows open, the TV tuned first to Newsworld and then to the streamed feed out of Charlottetown, even a quick look at the Guardian and the definitive PEI blogroll, just to make sure of the details. The people have spoken, and the tide has changed. A new government for the Island, for the next four years and a bit.

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This evening, the humour community of (the province of) Quebec is holding its award program on TV, and frankly I feel like someone on the outside looking in. Admitting that I am not apt to “go to a show” or watch anything but Juste Pour Rire reruns doesn’t give me much background for such a program, but I don’t know who half these performers are. I could as well be watching something via satellite from another country.

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