Sunday, my stepdaughter's choir gives a concert in a local church. They're going to sing religious music by French composer Francis Poulenc (Litanies à la Vierge noire and Messe en sol majeur). For part timers, they're very good: the choir is composed of a mixture of professional, semi-professional and amateur classical musicians, and the level of musicianship is quite high.
Yesterday, Charlie the cat swallowed a lot of sewing thread. He started vomiting, so we rushed him to the vet. X-rays were taken. Looked like the string wasn't passing and his intestines were compressing. So we had to take him to a second vet on the south shore of Montreal that could perform emergency surgery, just in case. At the second vet, they found that a bit of the string was anchored to the base of his tongue, keeping the thread from moving. They cut it and then kept him under observation. This morning, they told us that his intestines were back in place and that he was eating and behaving normally. They're giving him flavored vaseline to help things moving along and waiting to see if he shits the yarn out. So basically, we're now awaiting breathlessly for word on his bowel movements.
I'm glad he's ok. But this was not how I wanted to spend my Friday night. And the whole ordeal is going to cost us a lot of money.
If I were a business person, I'd seriously think about going into camel farming. I have so many students who love camel milk and camel meat, but it's not locally available. An enterprising person who doesn't mind exploiting and killing beasties could potentially get very rich.
Sooo, have you guys put them xmas trees up already? I haven't yet. I think this year I'm going to call mine the Cthulhu tree, 'cause its huge, green and it drives me insane. I may sacrifice a small furry string-eating mammal to it this winter solstice, to make sure that dead Cthulhu remains dreaming in his house at R'lyeh.
I don't like religious choral music but I do like Poulenc.
I had to suffer through said genre twice this weekend, once at my bestie's daughter's winter concert then A____ sang Handel's Messiah with the CMU choir. I have to admit I fast forwarded through a good portion of the latter.
To be fair, he was not especially jazzed about being there. Choir is a requirement for composition majors.
The first part of the concert was Gregorian chant and Russian liturgic chant, which I find very relaxing and it's the kind of music that puts me in a trance-like state.
Then they followed with the Poulenc. The poor audience had no idea what was in store for them! After what must have seemed like a very long half-hour of sleepy chanting, bang, modernist dissonance and religious angst! They looked confused. I laughed (but not out loud). To tell you the truth, there was a bit of a musical faux-pas involved: in the Litany, the dissonant stabs, which I've usually heard being played by a large string section, were played with a church organ, and it sounded like shit.
The rest of the concert was all idiotic xmas songs, music we all have heard a thousand times. Boring.
The esteemed Canadian cousins are in town with their adorable fat baby in tow. Planning on getting some baby cuddles and overdosing on baby scalp pheromones after I get home.
I've seen it. I think I recommended it. I bought the book. I haven't read it yet but, generally speaking, books > TV series and movies so I'm going to probably like it. Plus, I usually enjoy stuff by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, and they collaborated to write the book. How can it go wrong?
Comments
I'm glad he's ok. But this was not how I wanted to spend my Friday night. And the whole ordeal is going to cost us a lot of money.
What a dumbass!
I had to suffer through said genre twice this weekend, once at my bestie's daughter's winter concert then A____ sang Handel's Messiah with the CMU choir. I have to admit I fast forwarded through a good portion of the latter.
To be fair, he was not especially jazzed about being there. Choir is a requirement for composition majors.
Then they followed with the Poulenc. The poor audience had no idea what was in store for them! After what must have seemed like a very long half-hour of sleepy chanting, bang, modernist dissonance and religious angst! They looked confused. I laughed (but not out loud). To tell you the truth, there was a bit of a musical faux-pas involved: in the Litany, the dissonant stabs, which I've usually heard being played by a large string section, were played with a church organ, and it sounded like shit.
The rest of the concert was all idiotic xmas songs, music we all have heard a thousand times. Boring.