Émile Nelligan, "Winter Evening"

Ah! how the snow falls free!
My pane is a frosty garden now.
Ah! how the snow falls free!
What is life's spasm anyhow
To the sorrow in me, in me!

All the pools around lie icy.
My heart is dark. Where go? Where stay?
All the hopes around lie icy.
Now I am a new Norway,
Its fair skies are gone from me.

Cry, birds in February,
For the dire chill that fate disposes,
Cry, birds in February,
Cry for my ruins, cry for my roses,
In the boughs of a Juniper tree.

Ah! how the snow falls free!
My pane is a frosty garden now.
Ah! how the snow falls free!
What is life's spasm anyhow
To all the anxiousness in me! . . .

- from The Complete Poems of Émile Nelligan, edited and translated by Fred Cogswell, (Montréal: Harvest House, 1983), p 20-21.

Roleplaying Games

I just picked up Transhuman Space: Personnel Files at The Comic Hunter, and I've also become a paid subscriber to Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid and the Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society. And I've got more Transhuman Space and GURPS Traveller books coming.

I really should begin playing RPGs sooner, rather than later.

I thought I'd be more anti-clerical

>I am Nothing!



Which Enemy of the Christian Church Are You?

Take More of Robert & Tim's Quizzes
Watch Robert & Tim's Cartoons

William Thorsell

There's an interesting article in the February 2003 issue of Toronto Life, an interview/biography of William Thorsell.

For those of you who aren't Canadians, Thorsell is the current director of the Royal Ontario Museum, and past editor-in-chief of the The Globe and Mail. He has been, to say the least, a controversial man, known for his rather abrasive manner (the most important reason behind his departure from The Globe and Mail) and his advocacy of policies of fiscal responsibility et al. avant la lettre. Oh, yes, he's also gay--I found that out in 1997, when I read a transcript of a brief speech he made to The Fraternity in which he said that gays and presumably other non-heterosexuals should keep from being overly assimilated, though Frank Magazine had been revealing his male dates at official functinos to the public long before that. (At least one friend of mine finds Thorsell's stance funny, since his sexuality is the only thing that distinguishes him in the context of Canada's patronage system, which is at least as much a meritocracy as anything else in Canada.)
It was an interesting interview, particularly when he (and others) mentioned how he was so alienated from his sexuality that he found it difficult to establish relationships. (He even claimed that failing was his biggest personal regret about his life to date.) Interesting.

People's Sovereign and Democratic Republic of Antarctica?

No, but something more sensible, as seen at Jonathan Edelstein's blog.