It's that time of year again...

No, not spring. It's getting messy but there's still a month of the cold stuff left.

Tim Horton's Rrroll Up the Rim to Win promotion (yes, the officially spelling is with three 'R's) is back. Last year at this time, I worked in an office. It was bit like the TV show The Office, although with less excitement, a more competent boss (she was Scottish), and less romance. But, like Pam in season 2, we had our own girl who spent a lot of time talking about and planning her wedding.

My cubicle (or whatever you call a half-wall/desk combo that is actually a triangle) was pretty spartan, but when this promotion Rrrolled along (sorry!) I added one feature: a simple post-it note tallying my rate of success (you know, 0 wins out of 15 cups, or whatever). Think of it as a low-tech RSS feed. Going to the Tims at MTS Centre on my lunch break and then coming back and updating the tally was one of the highlights of my day, along with watching people working out in the hotel gym across the courtyard from our office, and completing Sudokus that I interspersed with my work. The co-workers in my area would always ask about it, and remind me if I forgot to make my update. Only later when, during the World Cup, our boss wheeled in a TV to show the games, did I find something else quite as entertaining.

Even though I hadn't won anything after my first 15 or 20 coffees, I ended up winning somewhere in the realm of 4/35 or 5/40 times, right in line with the advertised odds.

Now, since I don't have any cubicle, I've replaced the low-tech post-it RSS feed with an actual RSS feed (see the entire log here). So you can subscribe and follow my success. This is really just an excuse for me to play around with RSS and XML, but if you are actually interested in such pointless trivialities of life, then go ahead and follow along.

I don't like to admit that I'm influenced by advertising, but when it comes to Rrrolling and Burger King coupons, I'm a sucker.

Songs of the day

Here are a few songs I am enjoying these days:

"Adagio of Spartacus and Phrygia", Aram Khachaturian [iTunes store]: I'm playing in a concert with the Mennonite Community Orchestra this Sunday and this is one of the pieces on the program. When it comes to classical music, I usually enjoy the pieces from the late romantic period, by composers like Tchaikovsky and Dvorak, with lush sweeping themes and interesting harmonies. This is a later work, but a good one nonetheless.

Khachaturian is a 20th-century Armenian composer who worked and lived in the Soviet Union, so his story is particularly interesting. Musically he follows in the footsteps of the likes of Tchaikovsky (the harmonies are just that much braver), but because of the era in which he lived, his works include titles such as Ode in Memory of Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1948) and Poem about Stalin (1938) (not surprisingly, I couldn't find either of these on iTunes).

A Time Magazine article from 1947 shows the extent to which the arts were influenced and restricted by the Communist leadership [all emphasis mine]:

All in all, the Union of Soviet Composers proudly reported, 1,000 compositions had been specially written for the anniversary [of the revolution].

None was awaited with more interest than the new overture by brilliant young Aram Khachaturian, 43, which will have its premiere in Leningrad during the celebrations. He had scored it for 110 pieces, including a pipe organ and 18 trumpets. Said he: "It has no literary program—it is pure music." Then he hastily added: "But it has ideas . . . the legitimate feeling of pride and rejoicing for our nation's victory over the German invaders and the social significance of the 30th anniversary of the revolution. . . ."

Khachaturian has served his state well, and has been well served by it. Among his compositions is a Poem on Stalin. . . . He made a big hit with the Russian public during the war by returning one of his 50,000-ruble Stalin prizes ($10,000) and asking that a tank be built with the money.

A year later, Khachaturian and two other composers (Prokofiev and Shostakovich) were denounced for "formalism": that is art for art's sake, individuality, and lack of "socialist realism". The "Adagio" was written in the 10 years between his denouncement and re-instatement with the Composers' Union.

The reason I linked to this particular recording via the iTunes store is that I was shocked to hear such glaring tuning issues on a recording from a professional orchestra (in this case, the St. Petersburg State Orchestra, who I felt would be able to lend the most Russian feeling to the piece). If you do bother to drop the $0.99 to download the song (not a bad price for 10 minutes of music), listen especially to the oboe solo around 1:05 which is particularly cringe-worthy, if you have any kind of ear. I'll admit to being overly sensitive about tuning sometimes (for instance, the next song I'll talk about is recorded just slightly off of "real" pitch based on A-440), but in places in this recording, it is painfully obvious.

Our orchestra will be performing a simplified arrangement of the piece, due to the rather wide range of ability in our group (I think that is a nice way of putting it). But there appears to be little difference between the recorded version and the one we'll be performing. The only thing I could notice was that a violin solo in the original edition is played instead by the whole section in our arrangement, near the end of the piece. And our oboist plays in tune. [Concert Sunday, 4 March 2007, 3pm, Canadian Mennonite University chapel]

"My Body is a Cage", The Arcade Fire: This is a song from the new album, Neon Bible, which is due out next week. I'll reserve judgement on the whole package for the time being (or abstain altogether, since this Pitchfork review more or less covers it). But this song, the album's closer, is excellent. I think I've mentioned before in this space my love of organ music, whatever form it takes. This song, which features a pipe organ, is no exception.

Those of you who are at all internet-savvy can surely find somewhere to download this song (or the whole album) and if you get a chance to listen to it, I guarantee you won't be disappointed. If you're underwhelmed by quantity of organ in the first part of the song, wait until the 2:14 mark for it to punch you in the face. Sure, it's a bit melodramatic, but you don't listen to an Arcade Fire album looking for subtlety.

Incidentally, Arcade Fire was on SNL on Saturday and while I thought their performance of "Intervention" (youtube) was nothing special, "Keep the Car Running" was one of the tightest musical performances I've seen on that show.

FYI: I thought of giving this post the title "Khach me if you can" but thought better of it. And if you're wondering how this post managed to get so long, it's because I've been watching some of TSN's NHL trade deadline coverage (they are broadcasting 8 hours of live coverage today featuring 10 guys in suits) where they have mastered the art of saying a lot when little in fact is actually happening.

You win some, you lose some

I made a trip to the library today to get a book, which seems as good a reason as any to go there. Having found the volume and returned downstairs to the checkout area, I chose, as I always do, to use the automated checkout machine. To my surprise, it allowed me to proceed, even though I owed $5.60 for books that I had previously returned overdue. It used to be that the machine wouldn't let you take out any books when you had an outstanding balance. Take that, public library, I've won!

[The previous section was typed entirely left-handed because I was engaged in some pretty serious patella mobilization, which I'll explain shortly]

Unfortunately, this financial windfall was more than offset by my adventures of yesterday afternoon. I had my first physiotherapy appointment, where I received good news that 3 weeks after surgery, my recovery was 2-3 weeks ahead of schedule. Then after 10 minutes of explanation, I spent an hour doing exercises by myself, requiring no special equipment, or anything really besides a floor, a chair and a wall. Besides the ice-down afterwards, why did that cost $50 (this week, and every week for the near future)? The guy didn't even let me ride the bike.

This isn't a rip-off to the same degree as chiropractors or other forms of witch doctor quackery, but I've got all the information now, so if it weren't for diagnosing progress, I could do it all myself.

Oh yeah. "Patella mobilization" is basically playing with my kneecap, which I am supposed to do for 5 minutes a day.

I almost forgot the pictures. There are more, and I could probably do better quality with a scanner instead of a picture of prints, but those are some interior photos of the surgery that I was too chicken to watch.

Update (23.02.2007): I added the rest of the pictures - here and here.

Ferrets

Sometimes a class will fail to hold my attention. Such was the case with one of my classes this morning. As I contemplated taking one of my left-over prescription painkillers to make the time pass more gently, I happened to notice what the girl was doing beside me. Having finished the assignment for another class that she had been working on, she pulled out a magazine to read. It was a magazine about ferrets. Just ferrets. Nothing else. Called, unsurprisingly, Ferrets Magazine.
In the masthead, it Ferrets Magazine bills itself as "THE ultimate guide for today's ferret owner". What an embarassment it must be to be "THE second-most definitive guide for ferret owners" or some such. Talk about a niche market. I think I've seen perhaps one ferret in my life, not counting TV.

Edit: Maybe I've underestimated the size or the rodent-like tenacity of the ferret-loving public. 33 of the last 100 hits on this blog (and a higher percentage of unique visitors) are from Google image searches for pictures of ferrets.