I'll be at the Ottawa SF Society meeting as one of the speakers instead of part of the audience.

Theme is "science fiction and the arts". I'll revise this post with the rest of the speaker list ASAP.

Same time and place as per usual: 2 PM, Dalhousie Community Centre on Somerset and Empress.


Further details here at Facebook for anyone who's got or getting an account!

I'm watching Helvetica, the typography documentary movie, at the moment.

It's a learning experience. Recommended.

Please take a look at this community blog entry, and share your thoughts here.

Seeing as I have several oxen - at however many removes here - at risk of being gored here...I have to wonder what the Hell is going on?

Details at this CBC article: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/11/10/ot-cuts-081110.html

I've read reports of similar horrifying recommendations for the transit system at octranspo within the last week or so, and I don't doubt that the rest of the civic infrastructure may be in no small peril here...

Advise that you all check this out before it goes behind the Globe and Mail paywall:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080919.wbudget20/BNStory/Entertainment/home

Live music is sometimes a "peril" of travelling downtown, and the quotes are there for a reason.

This bunch was just outside the Bay in the Byward Market yesterday, and while I can't speak competently to the dancers' abilities, I thought the pipers had a solid grasp of their particular artform.

Anyone know who they are?

One of my friendly acquaintances in local arts, Rob McLennan, recently posted something almost - but not quite - a rant on the state of arts funding here in Ottawa(the city, not the federal institution).

As you'll note in the comments following Rob's essay, I found a lot of what he wrote made sense to some extent. Not my choice of language, but there's cause for some shared concern there.

If you check my flist here regularly, you'll have also noticed announcements from the organizers of C-ACE at cace_discuss. C-ACE is a local comics convention that has been building up steam over the last half-decade. That steam may be about to run out. Most distressing. And as far as I know, they've not done much in the way of asking for governmental help with their show. They want to be as self-reliant as they can. Admirable, if impractical in the context of Canada's history with the arts in general. But we can debate that later.

Yes, I'm thinking that the two events are to some extent linked. So's this one from Ottawa City Hall, courtesy of CBC News' Ottawa Bureau. I'm not entirely certain how to connect these particular dots, save in a thematic sense.

And today, I read a letter to the editor of the Ottawa Citizen from one of our more notable artists, Jennifer Dickson. She not only went after several generations of city councils, but we who've elected them as well. I'll post a link to that LOC as soon as I can find it, because I think she's kicked up the argument a notch. Whether it's a useful kick or not, I don't know.

I've been working on some page-inking the last little while. I'm listening to Bruce Mau being interviewed by Shelagh Rogers on Sounds Like Canada right now. Mau is arguing that cynicism is a luxury that he cannot afford personally as a designer, and also, that as a society, we cannot afford it either. He's following up here on themes he's established in an article for The Walrus that was published within the last month.

I am inclined to believe him, and that puts me in a bit of a bind as someone who's trying to make a full-time living in the Cultural Industries. Or so it appears at the moment.

In a sense, in my work at the moment, I'm playing off of some of these pro-cynicism vibes. But, by choosing to draw comics for even a part of my living, I've committed myself to the optimistic side of the fence.

Am I wrong? And if so, in what sense?