stories

Oh my days, there are so many good books in this world. Kobo often has discounts on random lists of books, which is how I found this one. It's by a Nigerian author, attempting to tell the story of a Nigerian email scammer but from their point of view. And I love the cover. I had to buy.

In other book news, I want to share with you some passages from the sheep mystery (Three Bags Full).

This bit made me think what a funny Babe-type movie you could make of this book--there's a perfect movie-type visual humour in this scene. Two women are sitting around talking, and the sheep are eavesdropping, trying to get clues:

As if they heard a sound, they [the two women] both turned their heads to the beautiful sunset sky above the sea. For safety's sake, the sheep looked the same way, but they couldn't see anything special.

In this scene the sheep are eavesdropping on a man and woman in their dead shepherd's caravan. For context--their shepherd used to read sappy romance novels to the sheep, usually with a heroine called Pamela. So the sheep often refer to the Pamela books when trying to understand human behaviour. And they LOVE having stories told to them:

"I could tell you stories. Like Scheherezade in the Thousand and One Nights."
"I wasn't really planning to stay quite that long," said the man. "On the other hand..."
Silence billowed out of the window of the shepherd's caravan, dense and heavy as hot breath. The sheep looked at one another. Perhaps it was getting interesting in there after all. As if at a signal, Maude and Heather started bleating. "Stories!" they bleated. "Stories!"
It was some time before Miss Maple had restored peace and quiet. "Even if they are telling stories in there," she said, "how do you expect to hear them if you're kicking up such a racket?"
But the sheep didn't get to hear any stories. No more was said inside the caravan. The sheep were not surprised: they were familiar with the situation from the Pamela novels. When the mysterious stranger--and without a shadow of a doubt, they had one of those here--was left alone with a woman you could expect the story to trail off into nothing. The man and the woman stopped talking at some point, and that was the end of the chapter. You never found out what happened next. It was a mystery to the sheep, because something had to happen. Human beings didn't simply disappear. Usually they turned up again in the next chapter, alive and well. All the same, there were these gaps in the stories.

still falling

Had four days off. I still don't feel recharged, but I have another long weekend (making up for stat days I haven't taken yet, and some overtime.) I feel like the sign of my unrechargedness is that I again took a Transportation Tumble. Last time it was on the steps of the metro, this time I was getting off the bus and my left ankle twisted. I collapsed to the ground (in the rain) like the finale move of a ballet jazz recital. It was alright during supper with Swiss Girl (presumably due to her excellent company), but now it hurts so much I had to take Tylenol. Meh meh meh.

I mostly read this weekend--finished the sheep mystery, which got really good. And I'm almost done reading Molière's Les Fourberies de Scapin. I remember trying to read Molière in high school and finding it too hard to understand. Maybe it's modernized--I don't know, it's a free version I got somewhere for my kobo.

Alright, off to bed at the ungodly hour of 1 AM cause I have a day shift tomorrow.

Oh wait--while killing some time I dropped in at a dvd store to see if there was anything nice, and found a BBC series I'd never heard of. It's The Age of Kings, from 1960s, and it's a 15 part miniseries going through all the history plays of Shakespeare. Fun! It was "event television" -- the sort of thing everyone stayed home to watch. Looking forward to watching it.

"One of Shaw's! One of Shaw's!"

plays more plays!

It's time to start planning Stratfordganza II! You can't plan too early, because the fall shows don't start until summertime, mostly.

And we we'll need a new, permanent name, because Gilby and I won't always go to Stratford for our mutual birthday celebration.

The Gilbymabelthan?

Le Festival international de Gilby et Mabel?

Monsieur Gilby pointed out that Stratford is a reasonable drive from Toronto, so we can still go there for a day, without the added expense of a hotel. (No, my husband does not mind me staying overnight at Maison Chez Gilb. Or in hotel rooms for that matter.)

I've learned that my favourite Wilde play, An Ideal Husband, is playing at the Shaw Festival, and it's a 90 minute drive from Toronto. Wee! But we need to find a second show, either at that festival, or in Toronto.

the play is the thing

Today we went to see the Stratford production of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar & Cleopatra, with Christopher Plummer, shown in the movie thee-ay-tah. It was so good. Once in awhile you plunge back into the work of a great writer, and--zing! It's so nice to zinged once in awhile. I haven't even read a lot of Shaw (he wrote a ZILLION plays) (about 50) but enjoyed each one.

Party pooping

Some dude from JetBlue is lamenting the lack of seriousness with which the rant-and-deploy-chute story is getting:

“Slides deploy extremely quickly, with enough force to kill a person,” he wrote. “Slides can be as dangerous as a gun, and that’s the reason we have intensive initial and recurrent training. It is an insult to all aviation professionals to have this particular element of the story treated without the seriousness it deserves.”

Oh come on, stop trying to spoil our fun! It's one of the most enjoyable stories I've read this year, even if it turns out to have happened differently than originally reported. The mental image of an employee telling off customers, then making a dramatic exit--it's... I'm gonna say it... it's awesome.

4 day weekend

Spending the day reading the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels. I'm on #4 of 6. It's nice getting into something after the entire series has come out, cause then--no suspense. Get to read it all in one sitting. Then we're gonna go see the movie on the weekend.