........................ mira burt-wintonick

just a heads up that jer is busy spiffying up my blog so there may be some discordant design for the next little while.

So a radio documentary I made last year on memory loss is part of edition III of SoundLab Channel brought to you by Le Musee di-visioniste. It is secretly the only radio doc I’ve ever made so it’s a little rough, but hopefully no one will notice.

Gosh, isn’t Simone de Beauvoir so saucy? Listen to how she jaunts this fellow Claude Mauriac in The Second Sex:

Claude Mauriac – whose great originality is admired by all – could (or at least thought he could) write regarding woman: “We listen on a tone of polite indifference…to the most brilliant among them, well knowing that her wit reflects more or less luminously ideas that come from us.” Evidently the speaker referred to is not reflecting the ideas of Mauriac himself, for no one knows of his having any. [...] What is really remarkable is that by using the questionable we he identifies himself with St. Paul, Hegel, Lenin, and Nietzche, and from the lofty eminence of their grandeur looks down disdainfully upon the bevy of women who make bold to converse with him on a footing of equality. In truth, I know of more than one woman who would refuse to suffer with patience Mauriac’s “tone of polite indifference.”

And that’s only the introduction! There are 700 or so more pages of sass to go, not to mention all the groundbreaking analysis on the conditions of “becoming woman”.

Also, here she and Sartre are having a staring contest to see who hemorrhages first under the objectifying look of the Other. Sartre just seems like he’s cheating because of his somewhat lazy eye.

That pretty much sums it all up for Liz and Scott from Evil Twin Booking and the Lost Film Fest, recently in town with their do-it-yourself-punk-scene take on film distribution as part of Pop Montreal.

This year their lineup is made up of all kinds of fun videos from things like ‘The Horribly Stupid Stunt Which Has Resulted In His Untimely Death’ and ‘Smokey the Log’ with the Yes Men, all the way to Richard Pell’s less silly documentary‘Don’t Call Me Crazy on the Fourth of July’, starring Robert Lansberry. Sometimes it’s a fine line between insanity and mind control, and it’s hard to remember which side you started on.

lately, the thing that makes me smile the most during the day, the thing that makes my off center labret jab the most viciously into the soft spots of my gums as my mouth stretches open without warning, is dinosaur comics. I could go on and on about what makes it so great and how, if you’re not reading it, you are missing out on ALL THE GOOD TIMES, but t-rex and utahraptor sum it all up so well on their own.

1. Elitism

Wrestled the dust off my critical reading abilities this weekend. It was stubborn and irascible, mingled with cat hair and dander and probably more than enough dead skin. Apparently the summer of lesbian romance novels did more harm than good. I only noticed because it took me more than half way through a Walter Lippmann article on ‘Public Opinion’ to realize that he was calling me and everyone I know idiots (you may know him as the guy who coined the term ‘manufacture of consent’). What’s even more sad, though, is that I often agree with him. I have so little faith in the masses sometimes and yet I want so badly to hand over my autocratic rule.

2. Seduction

I started my internship at CBC last thursday. We cut voice tracks on french kissing and posted silence where music will go and recorded an interview with the pun lady and swallowed in-studio giggles while Howard swallowed plums on the other line. Each week, the most recent episode of Wiretap airs Sundays at 1pm, but you can catch it again Tuesday nights at 7:30pm. It’s part of the Montreal branch of CBC so it isn’t locked out or in repeats or anything.

3. Displacement

I have a new roomate. He was supposed to be starting his first year of university in New Orleans about now but his school there may or may not be completely flooded. He doesn’t know for sure since he evacuated the day before the hurricane. In any case, he is here now at McGill and I can lend him some mittens in case he has to stay all winter.

4. Dot dot dot dot dash

_ ._ _._ . _ _ . _.. ._ _. _._. .. _. _ _. !

(That was just me telling you to take me out dancing in makeshift morse code.)

5. The Plaza

Are you a second soprano? Would you like to sing in the Concordia choir on Tuesday, October 18th so that I can skip and go see Wolf Parade? I think this would be a good idea for everybody.

* have you ever looked up numerals in wikipedia? it’s fascinating.

So I was all set to write this post about how I would bet you almost everything I own that these little mountain goats would be better at interviews than me and that they would sound more articulate even when they were nervous and that with horns like that, they would feel confident walking into any room of the English Radio department at CBC, butting heads in style and impressing cultural programmers left and right.

But then, instead, I just heard back from Sarah who produces Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein and she says that despite my sketchy and nervous interview this morning they would still like me to be their new intern! That is the coolest thing ever.

Along these lines, ever wondered what Jonathan Goldstein would sound like performing rather insulting spoken word over Sam Shalabi and his lute-like instrument? Well, he would sound something like this.

-or- mira and jer get even hotter!

* edit: by smile, I also mean talk, eat spicy food, try to whistle, spit out toothpaste, bite into a bagel and especially when I laugh. laughing is the worst.