2013/12/26

2013/09/04

2013/08/29

  • Since Xanga 1.0 will cease its operations in a few hours (it’s Thursday Aug 29, 22h00 here), I remind that the informations formerly on top of this page and reproduced below (new blog, email) remain valid.

    New blog: yulberto.wordpress.com

    E-mail: banyulss@gmail.com

    .

2013/08/25

  • A Photo
    Rue Ste-Catherine – Village Gai
    Photo © Uncredited – Huffington Post Québec
    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Above

    A rare aerial view of Ste-Catherine St in the stretch that flows through the Gay Village, from St-Hubert to Papineau (here looking westwards) which is also the one covered with those pink balls. The “Village” spans over the whole area seen on this pic, and more, especially on the right where it extends pretty much up to Sherbrooke St. But it is not a ghetto as such. Although there is a much greater concentration of gays in the Village than in other parts of the city, it is also home to many non-gays, including families with children. But that stretch of Ste-Catherine is where most catering-to-gays businesses are located. This area, part of what is called the “Centre-Sud”, used to be quite poor and runned-down, but the arrival of those gays in the eighties changed a lot of this, revitalizing the area.

    Life’s little hassles

    For more than a week, my life has been kind of monopolized by stuff related to my health: infection, short stay at the emergency ward, antibiotics, three scheduled appointments with as many doctors/specialists, plus the usual chores like three mornings per week reserved for bandage replacement and two afternoons for physiotherapy, plus daily separate exercises at home for my left arm and hand. Oh, and a haircut with that (that one was for mental health ). Not to complain, just to explain why I may become scarce on the net at times.

    Bottleneck

    During the same period, there was enough going on on this planet to post five times a day. So where do I start?

    Music updates

    When I attended the OSM concert on the Olympic stadium’s esplanade, as you may recall, I couldn’t see anything of the stage. But it sure wasn’t the case for the area just below the ramp where I was standing. Listening to the music, I indulged into what I like doing, people watching. I mean in almost an anthropological way. The crescent shaped area was covered with lawn and many people had brought folding chairs or some kind of matting with them. There was a gay couple there sitting directly on the grass, twenties with one older than the other, and the older one was regularly gaving sweet loving kisses on his companion’s head.

    To their right, three couples and two babies were installed on three opened sleeping bags which they had joined together to form a round area. There was a mature man who was standing often, taking pics at times, while his female companion was resting on her heels. To her left, a hunky bald guy and his gal were having some good time with their barely able to stand up toddler. Facing these two couples, a young (and quite handsome) guy was lying down on his back with his head resting on his female companion’s lap, who was slowly caressing his hair all the time, as she would have done if he’d been also a toddler. A modern version of La Pietà.

    A little to the upper left of all these people, four young guys in their twenties had installed their folding chairs facing each other so as to form a square. They all had portable phones whose screen was the center of all their attention. I never saw them speaking to each other. Four chairs, four planets. One left before the end and the other three a little after.

    On my and their right (as I saw it), three young guys had aligned their folding chairs contiguously in a single row. Two of them had portable phones and occasionally spoke to each other. The third one had no phone and seemed bored stiff. The three of them stayed until the end. My take is that the two with phones were maybe together (aka lovers), while the other one was boyfriendless, so to speak. I can be wrong about this but not about their being gay. As with the other four, I’ve yet to see hetero young guys in their twenties whose idea of a fun outing together is going to an outdoor classical concert, carrying a folding chair in a shoulder bag.

    Up on the ramp where I was, I had my share of emotions, so to speak. On my left side, there was a couple with a very young girl, about three years old. On my right, an elderly man with an even younger toddler, maybe two. Granddad/grandson I guess. He had put the kid standing on the top of the ramp, which is not that wide (see pic) and about 4 meters above the lawn area below. He was barely holding the kid, who like any kid that age just didn’t stay put. It drove me crazy, always checking with side vision if he wasn’t about to fall. At one point, it came so close that in an automatic and flash gesture I extended my arm to hold him, in case. He didn’t fall. I said nothing, not even looking at the guy. But I think he got the message. Those on the left were not that much better, their little girl sitting instead of standing up, but she was also anything but in a stable position. I know that these days, parents don’t want their kids to be restrained, it’s part of those new ‘raising children’ methods supposedly favoring their blossoming into perfect adults, but seems to me there is a damn limit called ‘responsibility’.

    image photo

    The weekend following the stadium concert, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra organized for a second year a “Virée classique” in four halls of the Place des Arts complex. Thirty 45-minute concerts for everyone, from kids to the elderly. A lot of Mozart, and some others. “Virée” in French (in Québec at least) is often used in the expression “faire la virée des bars” and means hopping from one bar to another during a whole evening, or afternoon if one is so inclined. This is another one of Kent Nagano’s ideas. It’s some kind of Nuit Blanche in the daytime. I read Monday that over 20,000 attended. But not me. On Friday evening I was in a hospital emergency ward, and Saturday I completely forgot about it.

    That Saturday afternoon however, I did go for an errand on boul. St-Laurent in Little Italy. I had forgotten that it was Italy week, so the street was closed to traffic. It was also the pit stop of another of those roaming pianos. This one was white. Or had once been.

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    LGBTA and Putin

    Sunday was the Gay Pride parade, closing Gay Pride week. As previously mentioned on this blog, we have two major gay events here, Divers/Cité usually in late July, and Fierté Gaie (Gay Pride itself) held around the middle of August. The first one is now mainly staged at the Old Port and is the one with all the big outdoor shows (drags etc) and dances. Gay Pride is mostly in the Village (Ste-Catherine st), besides also organizing the annual parade, which runs on boul. René-Lévesque. It was the longest ever I heard in the news. I don’t recall why we have two gay events, just as we have two Symphony orchestras in Montreal (the other is Orchestre Métropolitain). I hadn’t been to the parade in years for all sorts of reasons, so this year I decided to go check things out. Long it was indeed, at least 2,4 km (1,5 miles) between Guy and Sanguinet St. And packed, with continuous music. At some point, there were long standstills, maybe it bottlenecked at arrival. There were not that many floats, instead hundreds of participants of all ages (babies to elderly) representing all sorts of organizations working for the betterment of LGBTA people, and an answer to Putin. A protest against his law was the theme of the parade, and its theme color was red. Overly provocative behaviors or clothings (or absence thereof) was not part of this parade. I mean like men parading with their schlong in open air. At some point in the evolution of gay acceptance in a society, this becomes redundant, if not squarely counter-productive.

    There was a record number of politicians heading the parade, among which the heads of the three opposition parties in Ottawa and, for the first time ever, the Premier of Québec herself. She was elected, for remembrance, on the same day I was first operated upon last September. Also there the mayor of Montreal and a bunch of wannabes (elections this fall). There was strictly no one representing Harper’s federal government but we had a message for him, which this time around he couldn’t have his police stop.

    Banner: “Stephen Harper Hates Us”

    image photo

    Oops… photo mix-up and memory failure: this group represents a monoparental association. The group before them were the ones catering to transgender children. . They also had kids but no infants (not in my pics anyways).

    image photo

    During one of the long stalemates, this pooch who kept itself under the shadow of the large flag decided to frankly sit and rest.

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    The traditional minute of silence, at around 15h00. Everything stopped, music, motors, vehicle ignitions cut off, in a wave starting from the beginning of the parade. Some organisers with walkie-talkies were preceding the wave and advising spectators and marchers 30 seconds in advance. Afterwards, everything came back alive the same way, starting from the beginning. You could hear the giant wave of sound coming our way when people ahead started to jeer, trucks were restarted and the music playing again. Music by the way which was never-ending, no ‘dead’ spots anywhere in the parade. And good music at that.

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    Low level

    Humans this week explored how deep they could go before reaching the bottom of their barrel. First there were those three American youngsters who shot a jogger in the back simply because they were bored. Then there is this woman in Ontario who sent an anonymous letter to a neighbor telling her to either move or have her autistic adolescent kid euthanized. And finally, the unspeakable horror in Syria, hitting mostly children and women. Shock and awe Syrian style. One decade exactly after the Bush one.

    In the same category but on a different register, Lausanne_guy pointed out to me some days ago that someone in Toronto had put up his moronic [my evaluation] version of the already weird American cronut, this time turning it into a bacon cheeseburger sold on the Canadian National Exhibition site in Toronto. Before the beaver tail, this has to be the epitomy of so-called “Canadian cuisine” [1]. No personality of its own, just a bunch of borrowed elements ramdomly patched together, and apparently these days, also intoxicating. Resembles the country comes to think of it.

    [1] ‘Canadian’ here excludes Quebec where for now Beaver Tails are only sold in heavily touristic areas (aka to tourists from Beaver Tail eating countries). Besides, not many people here knew (or remembered) that there was a Canadian National Exhibition yearly in Toronto. ‘National’? Depends to whom one is talking to I guess.

    More to come in the next post…

2013/08/15

  • A Photo
    Stade olympique – 2013.08.14
    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Fête Nationale des Acadiens

    Today August 15 is the Acadians’ Fête Nationale. This celebration dates back to the 1880s. I’ve already posted in the past about this, on or around this date so I’ll just leave it there, especially that my old posts from Xanga are now in my WordPress.

    Symphonic evening

    For many years (dating from the times of Charles Dutoit), the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (MSO) has been giving outdoor concerts in some parks in the summer. Last year, and part of efforts to revitalize the surroundings of the Olymic Stadium, they gave the concert on its esplanade. Eigthteen thousand showed up, I was told. This year, they did it again. And contrary to those park concerts with a reduced orchestra, this time it was with the full orchestra plus ten pianos for the last number, a specially arranged for this occasion rendering of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. There was no place on the stage for ten grand pianos so they used some kind of acoustic/electronic piano which I don’t remember more about (read in some news article).

    Directing, Kent Nagano, whose love affair with Montreal and vice-versa is still very much alive. He is from California, for remembrance, which explains many things. I’ve heard him say once (my words) that one of the things he liked a lot here is the possibility to explore new forms, get out of the beaten paths of traditional classical music concerts.

    For many years, the top of the stadium tower has been lighted. This year, they added lighting in the roof’s niche. That’s where the retractable roof would be stored when retracted. It currently isn’t for a bunch of reasons I don’t want to get into. For now, that lighting is in Québec’s colors, that is blue combined with the white of the top. Except… except this week when alternatively each day the niche will sport the colors of the Gay Flag (it’s Gay Pride week). Hey, this is Montreal, not Moscow. Gays are welcome here. And exception to the exception, last night it was lighted in purple because it is, I learned, the color of the MSO. So was the esplanade where poles of LED lights were projecting a purple lightning on the crowd, except during Rhapsody in Blue when it became, well yes, blue.

    As a curtain call, Montreal tenor Marc Hervieux, who sang during the concert all the while also being its master of ceremonies, asked the crowd to join him, the orchestra, and the ten pianists in singing Let It Be. It was a splendid way to end this concert.

    Oh, and did I mention? Maybe because of the weather, 30,000 Montrealers showed up. They were not expecting that much. A large number of them had no view at all of the stage but there were many loudspeakers on the site so hearing the music was no problem. The esplanade is a series of arc shaped areas and at different levels. I was on a ramp and I had a nice view of the flow of people coming out of the metro station, a flow that was never-ending until around 20h00, a full half-hour after the scheduled concert start time.

    On my arrival at 19:25: the stage, and most of the crowd, was on the left, out of the frame (see second pic). During the concert I was on that ramp about where is that wooden frame thing on the left. It’s an ‘urban garden’ experiment that’s why there’s a (temporary?) crowd containing fence. There was a camera crane so I guess the concert was filmed. I didn’t see anything of the stage except its upper top, but there was plenty of action to watch on the grass area below. I’ll say more about this in an update or the next post.

    image photo

    At 19:34, from the ramp I was on. The overflow of the crowd starts to fill up the grass area below me. It was eventually completely full up to the metro.

    image photo

    During the Rhapsody in Blue, I took many shots which turned out as if the site was bathing in purple. Maybe it was, and it’s my eyes that are tired, who knows! But when I had one of those LED lamp posts right in front of me, it squarely turned the stadium into some kind of UFO.

    image photo

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2013/08/10

  • A Photo
    Rue Prince-Arthur – 2013.07.24
    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Above

    Pedestrian and mostly restaurants street Prince-Arthur where it ends in front of Carré St-Louis (St-Louis Square). There are lots of restaurants in Montreal where you can bring your own wine (or beer or digestive). In those cases, no alcohol is sold in the restaurant. But what if you forgot to bring one? Gee, how convenient, there is a dépanneur just across the street. Oh, and the music fairy did pick up the piano that was on the corner of St-Laurent, about four street intersections in the other direction. The pic was taken in mid-afternoon, hence the low population density.

    Wow Wow Wow take II

    After Italy won the fireworks competition, I was hoping that one poster on Youtube would show up. He makes high definition videos of some of the shows (maybe all but posts only a few) and I remembered from last year that he never posts them before the awards ceremony is over. So now that this was done, I went to check and yup, he’s there all right. I think Italy also won the best sound track award. Making a sound track for a pyromusical requires a lot of editing, and talent. Bits and pieces of songs have to be put together and the result must be harmonious and seamless. In this case there was also some voice commenting which blended in perfectly. More often than not, when there’s comments, there’s nothing else going on. Here it’s a perfect voice-over of both the music and the fireworks. As for how the sound track blended in with the fireworks themselves, or the other way around, reserve 34 minutes of your time, click on the embedded link below, put it on full screen if you can and let yourselves be mesmerized! I would not have done this ordinarily, but this show was so exceptional that I bothered translating the woman’s comments, which were in French of course. This is Montréal.


    [Intro & Fifties]
    Ladies and gentlemen, good evening to all of you. I present this evening on this stage, exclusively for you, a story, my story, which could also be the one of each of you: the sounds of an authentic juke-box playing an old vinyl 45 single, transporting me in the past, from the fifties to the eighties. A wonderful voyage populated with moving souvenirs and intense shiverings. Me, pin-up of the fifties, of the fabulous fifties in fact, I remember that era when we danced on frantic rock & rolls, the euphoria and the rampant creativity. Each one of us felt the pressing desire to feel being in the center of the world.

    [Sixties - 8:15]
    The revolutionary sixties, craddle of change and of so many sensational discoveries. To name only one, an ordinary day when I learned through television that someone had walked on the moon. For us, the youth of those times, new values, new aspirations, a new life style, a new music. Do you remember
    twist and rock, or the coming about of the Beatles, absolute protagonists of all our evenings?

    [Seventies -15:15 ]
    I had the chance to breathe that air, the air of the seventies. The strongly tinted mythic years, where we occupied the front line, we the eternal flower childs, the hippies. We who have made out of freedom and transgression a life philosophy. And this time, it is her again who was the indisputable star of the decade: music. Sound tracks of our daily emotions, which are far from all being equal.

    [Eighties - 20:24]
    The last segment of the souvenir trip are the eighties, source of innovations in many sectors, from technology to fashion to music. In a short time, they have
    made me relunctantly abandon my old record player, which had such an incomparable sound, and those juke-boxes qui played endlessly at the corner café.

    [Epilogue - 30:24]
    And this is where concluded a day and age, coinciding with the beginning of a new era. I would surely have more marvels to relate, everything has changed rapidly, the world, us. But I prefer stopping here, savouring what this imaginary voyage in the past has risen. An important part of our history.

    The only thing missing, of course, is being there, part of that big crowd, of which only a happy (and paying) few have access to the launch site itself, the Lac des Dauphins (a pond) at La Ronde on Ste-Hèlène Island. Personally, I prefer where I go which is in the opposite direction of the video’s view, on the north shore of the St-Laurent, in Montreal itself, a little east of the first large bridge pillar. It is about twice the distance from the pad and that’s better. Less, if any, up and down head movements. Only drawback, can’t see those fireworks directly on the ground or floating on the water. These can be viewed well from the bridge but I don’t like, when you’re up there, to view some of the high-firing ones almost at eye level at times. Scraps some of the awe.

    Twenty-eight years of this and I’m not tired yet. Mind you, it’s like the rest. Every year brings its novelty. They are evolving and I’m sure that the first shows that threw me off my chair, I think of a certain Spain show in the late eighties, probably would seem to me much less flamboyant now that time has passed. They are getting better and better, if that may be, and that’s probably also why year after year, this competition still attracts thousands and thousands. However, I’m glad for having this particular video made available. When I’m there and the show is exceptionally good, I wish I could share with some in other planetary locations what I had witnessed, in lieu of them being able to be here. Thanks to some posters on Youtube, it is now possible at times.

    Much needed rest

    After having had our breath nearly taken away, how about a little rest to recuperate? Some people in the city have thought about it and have installed on boul. St-Laurent, midway between the Sherbrooke and Mont-Royal metro stations, and in the street, a rest area for pedestrians. It’s made out of used containers. It has nice wooden seats and some vegetation, and also much appreciated when it’s scorching sun outside, a closed top. And if your eyes are bagged from all that video watching, they also had the clever idea to install it near the corner with Bagg street. BTW, I don’t know why St-Laurent is called a boulevard. It isn’t one, technically. There’s surely an historic explanation. It exists since the beginning of European (French) settlement here in the early 1600s, and splits the island in two, spanning from the Old Port to the Rivière-des-Prairies river separating the island of Montreal (eden) from the (yech-yech) surburbian island of Laval.

    image photo

    image photo

2013/08/07

  • A Photo
    Hôtel de ville – City Hall – 2013.07.23
    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Nest color

    I first used, as the temporary setting for the background of my WordPress site, the basic yellow offered in the short list in Appearance. I now changed it to the exact same one I use(d) in Xanga and I’m very pleased with the result. It’s much lighter, less agressive. As per the blog area itself, I’m starting to like that white background a lot. The pics, and my orange, come out more nicely, especially that the orange itself already had a white background. Now it blends in seamlessly. Friend asked me the other day why I always (still) use that orange, I just said Why not? «I like oranges» and «I’m silly at times» were supplementary answers.

    Traveling notes

    Coming back from my physio treatments last Monday, I decided to walk up St-Denis St for a while. It lines the metro line I would have taken so I could hop in at any station along the way. That morning, I had read in my paper about a musician who had played ten hours straight last Saturday on one of those street pianos. He was improvising, “going from jazz to classical without losing inspiration”. It happened on Marie-Anne St at the corner with St-Denis. However, three or four corners before, and smack on the sidewalk on St-Denis, there was also a piano. It had the color mentioned in the article I had read and also that red flower seen in the accompanying pic, so I figured it was the same piano. A couple of girls were around the piano (one playing), so I could not take a pic of it. I wasn’t in the mood to bother asking them permission. When I got to Marie-Anne there was no piano anymore. So I guess there’s a music fairy out there who moves thoses pianos around once in a while. This is a pic of the self-marathonian, who is an accomplished musician apparently. I wonder if they also moved that other one I have posted about, on Prince-Arthur St.

    image photo
    photo © François Pesant, Le Devoir

    Boris à Montréal

    While on St-Denis, I stumbled also on this installation, based on the poem “Je voudrais pas crever” by Boris Vian. Vian was a famous and iconic figure of the St-Germain-des-prés scene. He was a “writer, poet, musician, singer, translator, critic, actor, inventor and engineer” says Wikipedia (English) which shows the scope of the man. This poem of which one can find the translation in English here starts with «Je voudrais pas crever avant d’avoir… » followed by an eclectic list of what he wants to do before dying. They translated “crever” by “to die” but it has a more kind of “absurdity of death” tone to it. I’d have chosen something like “kick the bucket” or “to clap out”. Anyways, the poem is reproduced, in the original French needless to say, atop two of the blocks sides. On all four sides, passersby can add their own “before dying wish”. Some are kinky. One wrote «…having lived in the United States» and another «…having gone to the toilet, damn!».

    There are wheels under the box so I suppose that it also has a poem fairy displacing it here and there in the borough (Plateau Mont-Royal).

    image photo

    Snakes and ladders

    My hometown made top of the news, and for bad reasons, when two young boys were choked or crushed to death by a 45 Kg (about 100 pounds) python having escaped from its glass cage through a ceiling ventilation hole. It most likely fell from the ceiling by its own weight. The children were staying for the night in a second-floor apartment located above a reptile store, and occupied by the store owner who has a kid the same age of the deceased. The cage of the snake, which was not for sale, was also located on the second floor.

    I know that building very well. It used to be a hardware/construction material store which was a big customer of our family business. It was relocated years ago in a much larger new store elsewhere in town. I went to college with the son of the then owner. The reptile store’s owner has the same family name but his name doesn’t ring a bell to me. However, with so young children, I’d be surprised that it would be my former classmate. I’ll ask my mother who’s got a much better memory than me when it comes to remembering people’s names.

    Inspirations

    I watched an interesting interview with industrial designer Michel Dallaire recently. As he says, he is not an inventor. He rather creates objects using them, of which many have become famous worldwide. He was explaining how and where he got his inspirations. First and foremost, the object’s design must have a meaning for him. For example, when he was asked to design the BIXI, the continuous go-and-return of the bike share system made him think of a boomerang. Hence the shape of the bike. Furthermore, it is why the original BIXI (Montreal’s) is painted black while the main frame itself, the boomerang, is aluminum colored. I knew nothing about this but now when I see a BIXI, the boomerang shape just hits me in the eyes.

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    He also talked about the furniture for the Grande Bibliothèque, of which I posted about on Xanga back in 2005. Contrary to classic libraries, the reading or whatever tables are not flat but angled. You can see them by clicking on the 15th frame of the list shown on the homepage of Dallaire’s site here. He said in the program that when he was commissioned for this project, he had a flashback of a painting of St-Jerome which he had seen years before in a London museum, when he was studying there. It featured St Jerome sitting in front of such a slanted table. Jokingly he added that design was nothing new. Here is that painting, from Wikimedia Commons.

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    Another design of his which I didn’t know about but of which they sold a few million, is the Angelcare. Someone invented a sensing system to detect a baby’s movement through the mattress, and send a signal to a nearby terminal. The detecting pad itself, under the mattress and therefore not visible, is not a primary design concern. But the external stuff, like the receiving terminal, yes. He was asked many times by a friend of his who was also responsible for the marketing of the product, to accept to make its design. Dallaire repeatedly refused, saying that the product rang no bell to him at all. And that was a sine qua non condition for him to consider looking at it. It is to mention that this product is primarily used to prevent (detect) the dreaded “sudden death syndrome” in small infants. I had a cousin who lost a chld that way, long before this detector was available. Needless to say, for the parents, it’s a tragedy. Anyhow, in last resort, and months later, his friend called him again one day and invited him to the restaurant. Dallaire didn’t want to go but the other insisted so he went. His friend ordered the finest wine they had, something quite expensive. Finally they went through all the bottle and had not ordered any food yet. Instead, they ordered another bottle. Soon after, Dallaire got a flash, maybe the bottle’s label (?), and saw a small angel and its wings slowly leaving the dead child’s body. That was it. A little cone became an angel/terminal, its aureole became the antenna, and on both sides, the controls became its wings. A portable parental unit is shaped like a little cloud, home of angels as everyone knows . Finally, they never got to eat. The Angelcare (seen in the second frame to the left of the library tables on the same Dallaire site) won the Grand Prize at the 27th International Exhibition of Inventions held in Geneva in 2000, and a first for a Canadian.

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    Edited screenshot from © www.dallairedesign.com

    It’s fun to see how creative minds work.

    Da Food Section

    The other day, I made myself my Greek salad. I say ‘my’ because I am not sure if there’s something of me in there or not. Maybe the olives, I use pitted infornate. They are not Greek at all but deliciously salted. The recipe itself I got from my younger sister, years ago. I gather it’s the standard recipe. It contains cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, olives and Greek feta of course. I say Greek feta because that one (the original) is made with sheep or goat’s milk or a mix of both. They also sell here a feta made with cow’s milk, which is cheaper, much less tasteful, and has the compact texture of tofu. To avoid in a Greek salad, imho. The marinade is olive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper and lots of dried oregano. Yesterday I made myself another one. It’s easy to make and perfect for summer. I’m having problems lately with either my glasses or my eyes. Is this image slightly blurred or is it me??

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    Last week, coming back from my physiotherapy (again), I walked along boul. St-Laurent, namely to buy natas (pastéis de nata – I posted about those before). There’s a Portuguese pastry shop/noon sandwichry in the Portuguese part of St-Laurent which sells the best natas in town. Says me and a bunch of other people. The secret of those little tarts is not the filling, a kind of crème pâtissière slightly burnt on top, but their flaked crust. It must remain dry and flaky, which is not an easy task. Speaking of angels, I’m just reminded that this pastry shop is called Les Anges Gourmets. In this case, it’s more wormanship than design, however. Since it’s not really on my way, when I go there I buy six. It’s cheaper for one thing, and I can freeze some for future delectations. This time around however, I did a Biggles of myself and in three days they were history. Anyhow, all this is only context. When I was there, I also bought one of their delicious frozen “morue à la crème” (salted cod ‘à la crème’). It’s a mix of salted cod (generous), potatoes (less generous as it should be) and onions, filliing the container to about 90%. That is topped with a heavy béchamel sauce and finally coarsely grated cheese. It sells for around 5$ which cosidering the amount of cod there is in there, is a real bargain. More so that for someone like me, half of it is plenty enough for one meal. I usually indulge myself to eat a little more, then keep the rest for a second meal later on.

    This will only interest French-speaking Europeans, but on this side of the Atlantic we have only one word for cod, which is morue. When it’s salted, we call it ‘morue salée’ and when it’s fresh we simply call it ‘morue’. Over there they have two words: morue for salted cod, and cabillaud for fresh cod. No one uses the word cabillaud here, and not many more even know the word. In fact, the first time I heard it was in the eighties when I was listening on TV5 to a French cooking show hosted by Maïté.

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    This evening I’m having a can of beans with molasses, to which I will add pan-fried slices of a left-over wiener I had in the fridge. This one you can send me to Abu Graib to sniff underwear, or Guantanamo to be reprogrammed, or to Syria to be tortured, there is no way I will post a pic of that here (or anywhere). If there is a heavy demand, I may however post a pic of the accompanying bun.

2013/08/04

  • A Photo
    Vieux-Montréal – 2013.07.23
    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Above

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    Crying wolf?

    With all we have come to learn in recent months, it’s hard to tell these days what is true information and what is political damage control.

    We hear numbers, like 300, in a same sentence with “captured terrorists”. Where? When? Who? Have they been charged? If no, why? If yes, of what and where are they now? We could go on and on with similar unanswered questions that have not been asked about those 300. Like this one for instance: if those captures have been made possible using the XKeystore program, which is an American thingie, are those ‘captureds’ Americans? And have they been captured in the United States? If not, how can the U.S. capture non-Americans outside the U.S.? If the U.S. didn’t capture them, who did? And since most of those other countries expressed (or faked) their surprise after the Snowden revelations, what link with XKeystore do I miss? It would be nice to know these things, and especially how they work and who is involved.

    I don’t say that what they are saying is not true. I’m just saying that we have been bullshitted so many times in the past that we are plenty justified to ask to see the ingredients list before guzzling it right off the counter.

    So when we were told by Mommy Ahmerica that there was an international alert this weekend, just when the Snowden kid was granted ayslum in Russia and that the NSA was under fire at home, it crossed our mind that it would be a nice diversion to give a good scare to those non-believers and show them how essential the NSA truly is.

    And that old story about Cry Wolf also popped up. The problem of course being that unless there really is an attack somewhere (which nobody wants), it will be impossble to know if this time around the wolf was really there or not. I guess that with time, we’ll have to rely on empirical deductions. Or in other words, just how many times can they cry wolf before someone replies «Yeah? So?».

    It was simpler back then

    Texas reportedly is on the verge of being out of stock of pentobarbital, as early as September some say, therefore hindering their State murder program.

    I have a low cost solution for them. Simply return to the good old times and hang them from a nearby tree. First, unless being a consumate hypocrit, everyone knows that State executions are the exact same thing as the previous lynchings, except that for respectability purposes, the State has taken over the procedure. So lynching for lynching, why bother with fancy chemicals when a good rope can do the job, and on top of that, one that can even be reused. You’re green or you’re not. Second, most of those who were lynched back then by mobs wearing white school-dunce pointed hats were Black people, and those nowadays being tended to by fake medical technicians wearing white smocks and sharp needles, are still again mostly Black people. Hardly anyone (in Texas) would notice.

    Note for surveillance squads, sniffing outfits, out-of-contexters and intellectually-challenged monothinkers: the above is sarcasm. Look it up in the dictionary if required.

    Helicopter on a balcony

    The other day a dragonfly was buzzing around on my rear balcony. I was sitting at the kitchen table and saw it through my back door. It was something quite unusual, where I live I mean. We can see them at night, but in much less densely populated areas. I wanted to take a pic of it but I was on a long distance call on the phone and my camera was in another room so all that remains of this encounter is a souvenir in my mind which I share with you. As with certain other informations, you dispose if it as you wish: take it or shove it.

    BTW I had seen the word dragonfly before but had no clue it meant a “libellule”, something I found out by looking for the English word for it. And they say these blogs serve no purpose!

    Desertification

    When your almost confidential blog starts to pop up in the Top Blogs page, something it never did before, you just know that there is much, much less traffic on that highway.

    Here’s 2U, Italia!

    U2 and me will remain estranged. I didn’t go to the closing fireworks on Saturday evening (see previous post). It was rather fresh outside and there was an impending menace of rain. Because of this, I also did not feel like lingering around after the show as I usually do since the metro is assaulted by all those thousands of people having come to see the show and returning home and I prefer waiting an hour for things to calm down. I could have opened the radio to listen to the music score, but on CBC they were airing the award-winning film Incendies, subtitled in English, and that took control of my priority one. I had already seen it, and that alone was a good reason to watch it again.

    Later on, I learned that Italy had won the Gold Jupiter. Croatia won the Silver and the Spanish entry I linked in the previous post won the Bronze. When Italy’s performance ended on Wednesday, they were saying on the radio that the spectators at La Ronde were giving a standing ovation, and that it was something seldom seen. So I guess I was (for once) right on target about what I thought of it.

    WordPressing

    I’m starting to get more used to WordPress. An extra difficulty for me is that I use it with the French editing interface, but all the help pages found on the net including the WordPress site are only in English. So I have to figure out the French equivalent for the English menu items they mention, etc. I also have to figure out which is the best button or click to use in my situation (using the HTML edit section). At times there can be on a same page three different ways to get somewhere and not necessarily using the same means. For now, I haven’t used the Reader mode but from what I could see, it shouldn’t be more difficult than in Xanga. What seems complicated is the use of all those “social networking” thingies. I am not interested at all in those. Nor in entering pissing contests about who has the most readers. I come here to blog, basically. That means saying something of my own, I gather. I could do like some and report a one-line event and go fishing by asking something like “Would you kill your mother?”. I’d always end up on top of Top Blogs, someone did it with success, but that’s not my cup of tea.

    I’m taking notes, for myself. Maybe it could become something I could pass on to others, eventually. But don’t hold your breath. For now, there’s more meat on Twiggy than in those notes.

2013/08/02

  • A Photo
    Rue Prince-Arthur – 2013.07.24
    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Updates Aug. 2

    Update 1 – Above: They have installed a few of those upright pianos in the Plateau Mont-Royal district. Anyone can sit and start to play. There’s a tarpaulin behind it which I gather any passerby can put on it when it rains.

    Update 2 – I forgot to mention, but starting yesterday, all my future posts will be in my new blog whose address is mentioned above. Since the WordPress code I use is basically compatible with the current Xanga, and will be even more so when (if) it moves to WordPress, I will post a copy of them here, as long as Xanga permits me to do it.

    Update 3 – Today August 2, 1971, my father died alone in Hôpital St-Luc, 9th floor (hepatology) at around 19h00. My mother had gone to lunch at a friend’s place. I don’t think it was a coincidence. As far as I am concerned, I was a patient on that same floor for a few weeks last fall. Just goes to say.

    Bed bugs

    When you sleep in your neighbor’s bed and it has bed bugs, there’s a chance you’ll bring some back home with you. Same goes with governments.

    A couple of weeks ago, it was learned (Jim Bronskill, Canadian Press) that « the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) helped to elaborate a directive permitting governmental agencies to use and share information which was obtained most likely through torture. [..] Located in Ottawa, the CSEC monitors electronic communications – from emails to telephone calls passing by faxes and satellite informations – from all origins and detects the informations of interest to Canada. It has 2000 employees, of which experts in decrypting, rare languages and information analysis. [..] With a budget of 400 million $, it is a key element in the Group of Five, an international information sharing network which also includes the United States, New-Zealand, Australia, and the U.K. Its American equivalent, the National Security Agency (NSA) has been the object of numerous leaks from the former external contractor Edward Snowden. » The CSEC was created in 2001, in the footsteps of you know what. Theoretically, the CSEC is not authorized to target Canadians. Until proof of otherwise becomes known, of course.

    Have you noticed that when it comes to concerted undercover sniffings or invading countries, like Irak say, there is a cartel out there of countries having the common characteristic of being anglo-saxon. You tell me that Canada is also anglo-saxon, I tell you that if it weren’t for the massive opposition of the Québec people and that the then Prime Minister was a Quebecer, we would have been in Irak too because in the anglo-saxon part of this grand country of ours, they already had unholstered their guns.

    Then, on July 31, I read an article (from the CP still) revealing that « an internal note of the RCMP [our federal police] says that the United States want their police officers to be exempted from Canadian laws in the case they would accept to participate in cross-border police operations. This revelation was contained in an information note prepared for the RCMP commisioner, Bob Paulson. [..] Traditionally, cooperation initiatives in matters of cross-border repression and the management of borders have been based on the idea that the laws of the receiving country applied. Questioned about this, RCMP sergeant Julie Gagnon said that the police corps had no comment to formulate about that note. »

    Neither do I. It’s self-explanatory. My question is: if Canada asks for the same, what will the answer be? Pretend it’s a question that someone would bother asking.

    Finally, Verizon has shown interest in barging into the Canadian cell phone market, with the benevolent accord of our federal government. It is already stupendously larger than all existing Canadian cell phone companies put together. Of course, some have questions for Verizon, like will they give the NSA informations about their Canadian customers. From an article in La Presse: « Verizon refused to answer queries by La Presse, quoting an internal note sent to its employees last June 6. According to this note, Verizon cannot comment the situation in reason of orders by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), the judicial body having forced Verizon to communicate the data to the NSA. »

    Now I know why I was itching lately. .

    Articles (in French) where I took the above info:
    1- Torture
    2- American police
    3- Verizon

    Buffoonic justice

    I just heard that the Castro abductor was sentenced to Life + 1000 years. There is that old saying which will always remain true: Anything exaggerated becomes ridiculous. Maybe it’s another manifestaion of that oversizing syndrome some Americans are famous for.

    Yearly twinkle fix

    Mostly because I still lack energy, and also unfavorable weather, I missed all of this year’s 29th edition of the International Fireworks competion. All except one. Yesterday was the last fireworks in competition and it was Italy. The weather was gorgeous and I decided that I just had to kick my ass and show up, at least this once. There’s another one on Saturday but that one is the closing fireworks, not in competition, so it’s not the same. Although…. Besides, it could rain Saturday for all I care!

    I left late, as usual. I can’t redo myself at my age. . ‘Late’ here means around 21h20. After getting to the Berri-UQAM metro station, I did the rest on foot, an about 20 minute walk though the Gay Village on Ste-Catherine St and finally got to my preferred spot on Notre-Dame St, under the Jacques-Cartier bridge, a few minutes before launch time at 22h00.

    And Wow! Wow! Wow! Italy didn’t steal this one! Themed on JUKE-BOX HITS, it was a continuous unraveling of oldies from mostly the sixties, seventies and eighties, starting with rock & roll the likes of Rock Around the Clock and Great Balls of Fire (indeed) and ending with a flabbergasting finale on Europe’s The Final Countdown. But that’s only the music. The show itself was fantastic, with lots of originality and synchronicity. I don’t know how it will fare as per awards go, but it was surely as good as the one from last year for Italy (bronze winner), by another firm however. I wanted to embed it but neither the video nor the audio were very good. For now the videos on Youtube for yesterday’s show are also unwatchable (no music, bad viewpoints, etc). So instead I’ll embed Spain’s entry a few weeks ago since they also produced a darn good show. I guess there is a reason why anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 Greater Montrealers line boths shores of the St-Laurent river, and the Jacques-Cartier bridge above, ten evenings every summer, for 29 years now. Don’t mess about pyromusicals with Montrealers. They have become experts, much more foie gras than Big Macs, if you know what I mean.

    Spain’s 2013 performance:

    In a different register, the U.S. put up this year a show based on The Swan Lake. Not easy considering it was the only music score of the show. Nice visually but pretty conventional, imho.

    Now that I am in it, I may go to the closing fireworks on Saturday. The theme will be a tribute to U2. That would be a good opportunity for me to associate songs and group. If you’d ask me to name a U2 song, I’d be unable to do so. But I’m sure I have heard many of them here and there so, like they say, it’s never too late to make things up. I could of course stay home and listen to the music score on the radio, and even hear the bangs and the ooh! and the aah! from those at La Ronde, but adding a little visual never hurt anyone. As every year, the closinjg show is produced by Panzera S.A.S., an Italian firm also based in Canada and which is more or less the ‘house’ firm of the Fireworks competition. The late Giovanni Panzera was the Competition’s artistic director since 1987 and is greatly responsible for turning this event into the most important pyrotechnical art contest in the world. His was well known here, where he came often. He also developped a fine-tuned version of the ‘roman candle’, used by his firm. He died in 2000, at 70.

2013/07/30

  • A Photo
    Station de métro Mont-Royal – 2013.07.29

    Scènes de Montréal – Montreal Scenes

    Regrets, No regrets

    So they haven’t reached their fund-raising goal (as of today). We know it not by Xanga but through posts of other Xangans who are seemingly privy to this information. For weeks, I’ve been wondering what date exactly that two-week extension had been extended to. I’ve looked and looked every time I accessed the Xanga site but unfortunately, no communications on this existential subject by Xanga whatsoever. Again, some others seemed to know, displaying countdowns on their site.

    Then yesterday, I accidentally learned that there was a Xanga Facebook site and after getting there noticed that it was loaded with a bunch of the informations that I wanted to know.

    Stupid, stupid me. How out of synch can I be. For almost 9 years, and during this period having been a quite prolific poster on Xanga, I had in my mind that I had a membership account in a blog outfit, and that if that outfit was facing possible mortality, I would find all pertinent details about it inside said outfit, especially if said members were called, financially, to come to its rescue.

    I am not in Facebook and I don’t want to be in Facebook, and I’m not the only one, that’s the least I can say. I think it stinks and prefer to stay away from it. Others have an account there but haven’t set foot in it for ages, mostly also because of that big-brotherish smell. Whatever the reason, one must still be a Facebook member to access more than what is displayed on the front page. This is totally unacceptable in this case. But this put aside, if I really, I mean really, have to go there for some reason, like finding out, say, what goes on with my blogging site, it seems to me that the minimum courtesy should have been to at least let me and others know about it.

    Over the years, I have read numerous complaints from other members about the lack of communications between Xanga and its members, from the first to the second I mean, like no responses to queries, that sort of thing. Or that person who sent over 400$ standing unaccounted for and who was reduced to ask another blogger what to do about this situation. There are even some of these same complaints on that Facebook page, for crying out loud. From what I can see, and from my own recent experience, I come to the very unfortunate conclusion that these complaints were and remain justified.

    I of course am thankful to Xanga for having given me a space to post my garglings over all these years. I’ll also find it very regretful if I have to leave, which even that is not clear since there’s a cloud over the notions of Premium and Life members and what will become of them. Maybe the pre-2.0 posts will remain…

    Many years ago, the brother of a friend of mine whom I stumbled upon arriving at the Nice airport, to both our surprise since we were on the same plane, immediately told me: «Life is a long corridor !».

    So I keep on walking. I ain’t dead yet, as they say down there in Texas. Other rooms line that corridor. One of them has a door labeled http://yulberto.wordpress.com [1] where, push comes to shove, I will probably set up my tent for a while.

    As mentioned at the top, I’ll also remain reachable by email at banyulss@gmail.com.

    Thanks to all those who followed me over the years, and especially those whose support and good wishes helped me go through the difficult times I went through in the last year. Please consider these thanks as personal. And if our ways part here for some reason or another, be also assured that you will remain forever in that special corner in my heart reserved for fond souvenirs.

    Gilbert[o]

    Note [1]: I have set up my WordPress account so as to make it possible to comment even if not logged in. The only drawback, if drawback it is, is that I have to approve anonymous comments before they appear in the comments box. I’m informed by email when such a comment is pending, so the delay is directly related to when I do access my emails. Also, WordPress members comments have to be approved once in a similar fashion. Afterwards, it’s business as usual for them.