Bad Little Habits

Wednesday Press - Call for Submissions

It's been a while. I lost my laptop and acquired a new job during the last several weeks, so my access to the internet hasn't been great. This is a good thing generally, but bad for this little blogging project.

Speaking of new projects, my roommate, her very talented friend and I have started up a little press. Here's our call out:

Wednesday Press is a collectively-run micropress dedicated to publishing little books, narrowsides, chapbooks, and other printed matter. Drawn to multi-sensory, high-risk, expired, unhinged, understated, or scavenged work, we collaborate with writers and artists at various stages to publish and distribute new or resuscitated text, image and intermedia works, including experimental fiction, poetry, essays, and artist books. We hope to contribute to an informal and unsettled Prairie infrastructure of illegitimate insight, criticism, and sincerity.

Call for Submissions:

Wednesday Press currently welcomes artists and the aesthetically-inclined to submit frontispieces of unwritten or unwriteable books. As illustrations conventionally facing or immediately preceding the title page of a book, frontispieces may or may not include text, dates, or robust nudes. The black and white renderings will be compiled and published as a small, 5" x 7" book of perpetual frontispieces – the first publication of Wednesday Press.

Deadline: May 22

Please allow two months for us to contact you regarding the status of your submission. Unfortunately we are not yet able to pay contributors, although those selected will receive two copies of the publication. Published works are not exclusive to Wednesday Press. Please send submissions and a short bio with "Frontispiece Submission" in the subject line to wednesdaypress@gmail.com or to the following address along with a self-addressed, correctly-stamped envelope:

Wednesday Press
4A – 1 Roslyn Road
Winnipeg, Manitoba
R3L 0G1 Canada
wednesdaypress@gmail.com

wednesday press on the web

More on Bill C-10

The Senate will resume hearings this week on Bill C-10, which would deny tax breaks to the makers of "offensive" film and television productions. Opponents of the bill, who include most of Canada's film industry and the federal Liberals (but they're not being asked to vote on anything...the bill has already passed in the House), should be pleased that the legislation will be studied in Senate banking and commerce committee hearings.

On that note, I'm off to enjoy the final episode of The Wire. Would Senator Clay Davis give one rat's ass about the Income Tax Act? Sheeeeeeeeee-it no, but that's how he de-ew.

(language alert)

Tidbit

Interesting...

The beguiling Marion Cotillard a conspiracy theorist? C'est vrai!

Screw you, taxpayer!

Big news this week in Canadian cultural policy: the Harper government is was(?) moving through legislation that would empower the federal Heritage Minister to deny tax credits for film and television productions deemed 'offensive' or 'contrary to public policy'. The Globe and Mail caught the provisions, which are obscured deep inside an omnibus Income Tax Act bill, and published a story on Thursday. The arts community immediately picked up the scent of censorship; by week's end, vociferous (and unusually sensitive and well-composed) opposition was all over the Internet and overflowed the inboxes of MPs and Senators. Word on Friday evening was that the bill was been sent back to committee from the Senate. We're staying tuned.

Steven Harper should be taking extra vitamins this week, first feeling heat from the opposition on the Cadman affair and now the wrath of artists.

Some thoughts on arts funding from Kids in the Hall:

RIP Monday

I just saw the second-to-last episode of The Wire. Don't worry: no spoilers here. But spoilers aplenty here, here and, oh yes...here.

David Simon, your genius--almost a fact of critical consensus by now--continues to, for lack of a better term, freak me out. I need to take some Klonopin now, and lie down. You truly are the brooding Babe Ruth of cable television, pointing a chubby finger to the sky where the Franklin Terrance towers (Poot lost his virginity here, of course) stood before their demolition in season three, calling the shot for March 9th's last big episode, 93 minutes of deadly-accurate social commentary and crimino-mythos, a long angry kiss goodbye to Baltimore before you move on to New Orleans, 93 final minutes with the rumpled, haunted hot mess that is Jimmy McNulty.

I pray it ends well, but I know it can't.

***

On March 31 Diamanda Galas will release Guilty Guilty Guilty, a collection of 'tragic and homicidal love songs' on Mute U.K.

Galas always fascinates, whether she's shrieking a death wail in whistle register or, you know, just speaking in tongues.  Her style is great (she's super-hot, strange, political and has dated Henry Rollins) and I am awed by her super/in/human singing abilities, but I admit that soft core as I am, I've always favoured more...accessible Galas. I love her covers, which are usually of gospel and blues classics, best: Malediction & Prayer's cover of Phil Och's 'Iron Lady' and her versions of 'I Put A Spell On You' and 'At The Dark End Of the Street' from La Serpenta Canta have been in my rotation for the past few years.

I'm in luck; the new album promises Galas's take on fresh old tunes like 'Long Black Veil' and the Edith Piaf standard 'Heaven Have Mercy', which, should be amazing:

***

On a side note, it's been a good week for Piaf, or at least her estate, non?

Photo: Reuters

J'aime cette belle fille! 

Finally Friday

Weird. I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about (in part) urban exploration. This week's Uptown weekly has a story on the same topic that features our breaking and entering friend Curious George.

Is something in the air on this?

Too bad white's not my colour

I love this shirt from Busted Tees.

Now if they'd only sell a black tee with McNulty shagging a mudflap girl in silhouette...

Sad Mac

                                                                                           

RIP Black MacBook (August 2006 - February 2008)

My laptop is dead. It fell, like a baby tossed out the window of a burning tenement, onto my bedroom floor on Sunday night. It wouldn't wake up on Monday morning. My blogging will likely be more sporadic while I save up to buy a new computer. This will be an interesting experiment: can I live without Itunes and Skype and Messenger and constant email access? Probably. More reading, less surfing? Probably a good thing.

Oh digital distractions, you keep me from thinking...about...stuff?

(What was I talking about again?)

Lazy Friday

It's that time of the week: curling night! There's only three weeks left in the season (we won't be involved in the playoffs unless six of the other teams succumb to bird flu) and I'm already gearing up for next fall. I have big plans to retire my Asham curling shoes and my 8 Ender and become Rocks Off's only fan, cheering safely and quietly from the other side of the glass.

There is talk of a rock star curling reality show on NBC. Ostensibly, it seems like a cruel joke made at the expense of us terminally uncool Canadians (and perhaps Scots), but I think the idea has legs: Jon Bon Jovi or Bruce Springsteen hosts. Random Americans curl. Olympic dreams are in the balance. So are tight jeans. Cat fights? (likely).

And curlers may not be hip, but Jeff Stoughton definitely rocked some serious hair back in the 90s.

Check out: the Manitoba Curling Blog.

I'm in love

I'm in love with an old school Dutch fox. The Electra Amsterdam is the manifestation of all my fetishistic dreams of European life: cobblestones and tulips, espresso and stone churches, well dressed men and leather-bound books (stereotypes, yes but indulge me). It's exotic and practical (for Winnipeg, at least--the Amsterdam's three gears will do just fine on our flat streets). It's a marvel in aluminum. I haven't had a bike for about four years; I miss the feeling of the city ticking by, especially at night on quiet streets, velomotion cooling the summer humidity from your skin.

Time to start saving...

(And time to find one for purchase in Canada...)