Memos: Culturanza Edition

• There was a pretty fun Culturama night at the Basilica Rec. Centre tonight. (Note to self, 'Basilica' is hard to type without stopping to think about how it's spelled.) It was nice, there was food from all over the world and performances and music and dancing and stuff, and lots of interesting people. I had a nice conversation with a couple of artists, one of whom who was good enough to finally explain the practical differences in the various styles and schools of abstract art. My only complaint was that they didn't tell you beforehand that the cost of the food was extra on top of the $10 admission. The student society nights at UNB always had a flat cost, usually $7 - $10, and the food was free. They always used volunteers to cook everything. At this thing it looked like the people at each little table selling food were making pretty good money at it. ($3 for a bowl of lentil soup, while it was good soup, is still a lot of money for one Styrofoam bowl scooped fro ma huge pot.) If it was for a fundraiser and that's where the money went then let my face be red, but it wasn't clear on the website that you should plan on bringing extra money with you.
• Tonight for the first time I watched a complete episode of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. It was never that I consciously avoided it, I just never really watched much TV since I started university and wasn't into it in high school so I never got the chance. Tonight's might not have been the best episode to start with, because it had a lot of characters in the middle of tiffs or conflicts that might have felt meaningful if I had already known the story arcs up to that point and what caused it all, but for me tonight (seeing a 3rd season episode on DVD at Sabrina's sister's place) it just didn't make for compelling TV. I'll likely give it another chance, but so far I'm not quite converted to a total fanboy yet.
• Pearl of wisdom from a recent “Six Feet Under” episode I just watched: Men don't know what they want, that's why it's [women's] job to tell them. Who knows, it might very well be true.
• I've had a craving for seafood chowder ever since Sabrina complained that she couldn't stand the smell of it being cooked. So all the while she was telling me how unbearable the smell in her apartment was while her roommate was cooking it, I just wanted to go over there and have some :)
• I really should get out to the farmer's market more often. Not having a car still sucks in this awfully-laid out city. While it's not quite as nice as Fredericton's, it's still excellent. It seems to be brimming every time I go there. There's talk of them wanting to expand it, but they might be having a problem with the people they're leasing the area from. I hope they'll be able to because it's about the only place the people who sell things like food and crafts can make some money with low start-up costs. If I had my way, of course, I'd find a way to get them closer to down-town, but I can't think of a really good place off-hand that would have enough parking.
• Speaking of parking downtown: Memo to the city of Charlottetown: either you actually do want people to come downtown to shop, and you will realize that raising the parking ticket fees is a bad idea and drop it, or you can admit that you could care less if people come downtown or not and will simply fleece the poor suckers who do for all you can. But you're not fooling anyone by saying one thing and doing another. This extends to things like those Byzantine electronic parking meters and the lack of parking in general. I once was walking around downtown at 7:30am and saw people arriving to work at the ATC and getting in that early to grab a parking spot. That's idiotic. (both on the part of the people who would do that rather than find a better way in to work and on the part of the city for putting it there, and running to put a federal government building right next to it. When I heard that Charlottetown's entire city planning staff up and quit one day and they never bothered to hire any replacements, just one poor bastard who was sent to Coventry after working for the province, who doesn't seem to be doing anything at all, I was not surprised in the least.