Kim Bannerman's Blog, page 9

Happy Superb Owl Sunday to You All!

Don’t forget to leave a monocle under your pillow tonight, and Gentleman Owl will leave you bowls of potato chips and��mouse bone pellets!

Coffee Options

Shawn doesn’t drink coffee. As someone who can barely function in the morning without a cup of dark roast, I don’t know quite how my husband lives without it. I’m a mumbling, stumbling, bumbling fool before knocking back the entire contents of my french press, so for someone to exist quite happily without the dreaded delicious bean… well. It’s quite beyond me.

So when he asked me to define the differences between coffee beverages, I thought I’d be helpful and explain the subtle nuances��between the latte, the cappuccino, the americano��– and even I had to admit, the recipes sounded a bit repetitive.

“So they’re all just espresso, with different amounts of milk and foam?”

Surely there must be more to life – and, by extension, that magical elixir of life itself, the divine coffee bean – than these three unremarkable combinations? Let’s go have a look! TO THE WIKI-MOBILE!

Cortado condensada��- espresso poured over condensed milk, created in Cuba. Tooth-achingly sweet, I’m guessing. The mere thought of it makes me smile.

Kopi Gu You - while the fad of drinking coffee with a blob of butter is fairly new in North America, it has been available��in Singapore��for awhile, since��the 1950s.

Caf�� com lim��o – from Brazil comes the combination of espresso with lime, which DOES sound intriguing to me.

Eiskaffee – a sweet,��iced coffee drink with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and topped with whipped cream that was created in Germany.

Caf�� Touba -��a drink made in Senegal from coffee flavoured with grains of selim – aka kimba pepper – and sometimes cloves. This sounds remarkably delicious and I’d love to give it a try, if only I knew where to find selim in my little town.

Do you know where a girl can find a selim dealer in Western Canada? And if not, are cardamom pods close enough in flavour��that one could use them as a substitute? Because I want to try these recipes …. except the butter one. Sorry, Singapore. That one just gives me the shivers.

Cold Water Therapy

This morning, I actually answered a phone call from a telemarketer because I’m sitting, staring at an empty page, feeling like the merciless weight��of writer’s block is crushing me into jelly. I was disappointed that the call was not a live human being, but a recording. Or, a robot, as we say in our household, if only to give the experience more a sense of wonder and futuristic allure than it truly deserves.

The fact of it is, amongst the six projects we’re currently working on, we’re filming��a short piece about end-of-life care, and while it’s a noble, beautiful story that we’re trying to tell, it’s also a mournful one.��So there have been many hugs in the last few days. I don’t feel much like writing about frivolous things.��When I sit down��at a keyboard,��the black dogs��consume me.

As soon as the project is done, later this week, I’m going to fling myself in a freezing lake to wash all the sadness off me. I will delight in the agony of cold water, because nothing is more life-affirming and inspiring than the frantic feeling of escaping the lake’s clutches��before hypothermia hits. If it blasts the writer’s block to pieces, I may have found myself a new cure.

What’s in a Name?

A few days ago, Denise from Cumberland County in Kentucky left a comment on my Ringdocus post, asking about curious creatures in her area. This led to surfing around Bigfoot sites, where I came across the term “Wild Woolly Bullies“.

I love love LOVE this term.

But it started me thinking about naming conventions, and how people categorize the unidentifiable. Does the community choose a name that’s frightening, or funny? Or do they fall back on a butchered anglicized version of an indigenous name��– which in turn was originally a term of endearment, respect, or fear? Are amusing names a way of stripping the fear out of the unknown, or is it away of discrediting the claims of witnesses, or both? It’s my suspicion that people would take a witness more seriously if she claimed to have seen a ‘Fire Demon Wolf’ instead of a ‘Fluffy Sparkle Dog’.

Here’s a few of the terms I’ve come across, most of which are perfectly creative and quite lovely and in my opinion would make awesome band names.

Wild Woolly Bullies
Skookum*
Zoobie
Goat Man
Splinter Cat
Stone Coats

What sort of mythological monsters haunt your area, and what does your community call them? Leave your monsters in the comments! :)

“Wolpertinger” by Rainer Zenz – Rainer Zenz. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

*why a monster in a Louisiana swamp is named ‘Skookum’, which on the West Coast of BC is a Chinook word used for ‘good, solid’, I just don’t know. Maybe I ought to watch the film before I criticize…

If You Make Music, This Post is for You.

If you’re a musician on Vancouver Island, I’m talking to you. Right now, I’m talking directly to you.

Hi.

There’s a woman in my town named Sunday Dennis who was recently diagnosed with a particularly aggressive form of brain cancer. Her story is here, and I recommend everyone (musical or not, living on the island or elsewhere) to check out the link and give her a hand, as her medical bills are astronomical. ��Go ahead, read her story. She’s a lovely person, a mom, a friend of friends, and only a few thousand dollars short of reaching the amount that they need to pay by tomorrow. Read her story and I’ll wait.

Are you back? Awesome.

So, where does the musician part fit in? Well, my name is Kim, and I’m part of Fox&Bee, and (when I’m not writing novels and screenplays) we create videos. We’ve done promotional work for all sorts of people – video game companies, the Government of Canada, architects, museums and educational facilities, book publishers, non-profits, etc etc etc. We wanted to help Sunday by donating something to a silent auction, so��we decided to donate a music video. If you’re a musician and you need a video, you can bid online to join us and make one that will celebrate your music. Normally, this costs between $1000 and $1200, but the starting bid is only $400, so (fingers crossed) you could be the lucky winner and get a very, very, VERY good deal.

Chat with your bandmates, make a bid, and help Sunday get her health back, so that she can return��to living a joyful life with her family in the community that loves her. ��Thanks a bunch!

PS If��you want to see a few examples of the work that Fox&Bee has done in the past, here you are. Enjoy, share, shout!

Hogmanay 2015

When I was small, my grandmother used to refer to New Year’s Day as ‘Hogmanay’. I figured this was one of the idiosyncrasies of her Scottish roots, but never really questioned what the term meant. It��was just another word for New Year’s, like ‘Yule’ was another word for ‘Christmas’, and ‘shortbread’ was another word for ‘cookie’.

Well, it turns out that none of these are synonyms, and mistaking them as such strips away a lot of rich diversity, history, and meaning. ��A cookie can be mediocre, dry, and any of a variety of flavours, but shortbread is pure ambrosia.

Hogmanay is not quite the same as New Years Day, apparently. While New Years Eve in North America seems to be a fairly standard drink-toast-fireworks-bed combination of events,��Hogmanay is full of traditions and contradictions. Even the name is rife with mystery: it may be Manx, it may be French, it may be Norse, no one’s quite sure. Accepted spelling ranges from Hogmanay (which I’ll use, because that’s the version my grandma used) to Hanginay to��Hogmynae to��Huggeranohni. The H is pretty standard, but from there on it, it’s just a grab-bag of vowels.

There’s a host of traditions that are associated with Hogmanay, including first-footing, in which the first person over the threshold of a house in the new year gives a gift to bring luck to the homeowner. ��Traditional items include bread, salt, coal, coins, or whiskey, and different items bring different kinds of luck. I’ve always been fond of the association between the New Year and Janus, the Roman God of Doorways, plus who doesn’t like random gifts of foodstuff? Apparently, the preferred first-footer is a tall, dark gentleman – welcome, Mr. Darcy*!

There’s also lots of whiskey-drinking,��bagpipes, dancing, steak pie, a multitude of��fire-based hijinks which include��swinging��fireballs of chicken wire or fire twirling or fire juggling or almost anything set on fire… I mean, really, it sounds like a blast.����In the area where my grandma’s family came from, there’s been a revival in saining, which is a rite to protect the house by sprinkling blessed water everywhere. ��The water is to be collected from ‘a dead and living ford’ – a place where both the living and the dead cross – which I think is pretty poetic.

I’d hoped to see a few Scottish locations that are��considered to be ‘dead and living fords’, but Google hasn’t been particularly helpful; when I type in ‘dead living ford’, all I get back are pages about Rob Ford. It’s enough to make anyone reach for a restorative whiskey.

Let me take this opportunity to wish you a happy 2015! We���ll tak’ a cup o��� kindness yet,��for auld lang syne.

*Yes, I know Mr. Darcy is English. He can still visit.

The Happy Freedom of General Ignorance

Thanks to my dear friend Tracy, I have become hopelessly addicted to QuizUp!, a trivia game for my iPhone which is as compelling as heroin and only marginally more destructive than Percocet��(if the trials of Gregory House MD are to be believed). After every hundred games or so, I console myself that at least this game is educational and I’m learning all sorts of things, but then I remember��that I’m on level 8,000,000 of the Supernatural subject, and I’m left wondering how knowing that ‘Dean’s eyes are blue’ and ‘Sammy’s birthday is May 2, 1983′ is actually making the world a better place.

Part of the game is unlocking achievements, and these give you new titles that provide other anonymous players with a more-rounded impression of your sparkling personality. Currently, my title is ‘PARTYSAURUS REX’, which was gained by reaching level 15 in two topics: Dinosaurs and Drinks. I was much better at booze-related trivia than I thought I might be��– frighteningly good, in fact.��When the clock is on, I can tell the difference between a Seabreeze and a Harvey Wallbanger and a Singapore Sling with whip-smart accuracy, and I’m left wondering if I ought to be checking myself in to rehab, or at least considering a career in bar tending.

But the title I’m now working towards is ‘LIBRARY COP’, which you can only achieve if you reach level 15 in Literature: General and Seinfeld. Now, books have been my longtime friends, so Literature was a snap. However, the real snafu came when I began with the Seinfeld trivia because I’ve never watched a single episode. Ever.

No, really.

People never believe me when I say I’ve missed��all episodes of Seinfeld, both on prime time and syndication, and while I have a hazy familiarity with��the basic characters and the premise that the show is about nothing, so too is my knowledge base. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Almost every single question looks like this to me:

What did Susie’s second boyfriend drive to Arizona?

a) 1987 Subaru Outback

b) 1989 Subaru Outback

c) John Deere ride mower

d) The Cat Car

So, without knowing who Susie is or who her boyfriend is or why he went to Arizona, I’m left jabbing my finger at random answers and just hoping that, by the law of averages, I’m going to pick the right one.

And sometimes, I do! It’s actually quite freeing, to be honest. I have no expectations whatsoever of winning a round, and yet sometimes, I emerge triumphant, and that’s pretty sweet. I win about 1/5 of the games I play, and every time I win, I wonder how my opponent would feel if they knew that they were just trounced by someone who admittedly has not one single freakin’ clue about the television show.

But if I lose, that’s totally okay too, because why wouldn’t I? Of course I’d lose! That’s a given!

It’s all very zen and relaxing. Who would’ve thought that embracing my ignorance and entering into a trivia contest with, not my regular burning desire to win, but a complete lack of competition, could be so refreshing? Once I finish this achievement, I may even choose another topic in which I have no background knowledge, just to continue this sense of happy freedom. ��Onward to American politics, FIFA history,��and combustion engines!

Hearts of Stone

Have you ever heard of the Manpupuner rock formations? Me, neither! At least, not until today’s session of aimless web wandering, when what to my wondering eyes did appear but a photo of these strange and beautiful rocks.

Also called the Seven Strong Men, these bizarre, gigantic pillars��jut out of a plateau in the Ural Mountains, each one between 30 and 42 meters high. ��They don’t look like they belong – strangely weathered by the elements, the rocks are anthropomorphic in shape, and look like a group of giants clustering together to shelter themselves from exposure.

According to both local legend and Wikipedia, the stones were a group��of Samoyids��giants advancing upon the Mansi people, intent on destroying them, but when the giants saw the distant sacred mountains, they froze in place.

photo credit: http://www.amusingplanet.com

Half a world away (but much closer to my house), is another transformed rock: Vancouver’s Siwash Rock. Also called��Slhx��i7lsh in Squamish, the rock is a basalt sea stack and sits at the shoreline of Stanley Park.

Legend says that, while swimming in the ocean to purify himself before the birth of his first child, a Squamish man named Skalsh crossed the path of a canoe filled with four deities. He refused to cease swimming and get out of their way, because it was only through swimming that he could maintain��the purity and innocence of his unborn child. These supernatural beings had never been defied before; they were impressed that he would place��himself in danger for the sake of his family. As they debated what to do with this impudent��mortal, they heard the cry of a newborn babe on the shore – his wife had given birth. ��So, for being such an exemplary father, the quartet decided to reward the little family with��freedom from death. They transformed the man into the pillar of basalt on the shore, and a short distance away, transformed the woman and child into two smaller boulders.

photo credit: http://moa.ubc.ca

I love how, in both stories, the mortals have been transformed into stone through their strength of character and emotion. In the case of the giants, they were so overwhelmed by the beauty of the holy mountains that they ceased their rampage; with Skalsh, he was so committed to protecting his child’s future that he was willing to defy��the gods. ��Both tales celebrate the eternal virtues of dedication, honour, and beauty, symbolized by the everlasting, unchanging face of stone.

I must say, I do love rocks. I especially love rocks that once were��mortals. Hmmm…. I sense a short story coming on….

The Height of Fashion

Hic Dragones is taking all the werewolfy goodness to the Alternative & Burlesque Fair in Manchester this weekend, and how I wish I could be there to sign books and browse the wares. It looks like a spectacular, corset-and-heels sort of affair, where the modern, urban��lycanthrope��would feel quite at home. But alas, I have other plans this weekend, here on the other side of the world, where there are very few steampunks or goths, but quite a few unintentional lumbersexuals.

The lumbersexual��style/movement/fad fills me with nostalgia, because it’s pretty much a cleaner version of the men who lived in the woods around our house��when I was growing up, here on the coast of British Columbia. Cowichan sweaters, bushy beards, brown bottles of beer, chainsaws, axes, checkered flannel? These are the hallmarks of life in the Canadian bush, circa 1978. To see them primped, tidied, and repackaged makes me smile. I found a list of 31 Things to Buy a Lumbersexual for Christmas, and most of them were perfectly functional gifts. New ax? Sure. The one that I keep in the trunk of my car is getting a little worn. Cast iron skillet? We can always use a second – one for the house, and one for the campfire.

All things seem to have their time as high fashion, but I never dreamed that ‘logger’ would be a look to which hip urban twenty-somethings would aspire. And yet, here we are. ��Apparently, there’s no need for the boys in my small BC town to climb to the heights of fashion; we’re already here, standing on the top of the mountain, flask of whiskey in hand and beard fluttering seductively in the wind.

This image is from a great article at GearJunkie: http://gearjunkie.com/the-rise-of-the-lumbersexual

Cyber Monday For Book Wolves…. I mean, Worms.

Because��nothing says ‘Happy Cyber Monday’ like an impulse purchase of new books (at least in my household, anyway), Hic Dragones is��extending Lycanthrovember to this Saturday, 6th December, when they’ll be sharing all things wolfy at the Alternative��& Burlesque Fair at New Wakefield Street in Manchester. So until then, no matter where you are in the world, you can still get��two werewolves for the price of one: my book The Tattooed Wolf, and the anthology Wolf-Girls.

(1) Follow this link to get yourself your copies.

(2) On the basis of its name alone, I��really wish I was closer to Manchester so that I could��visit the fair. It sounds amazing!!!!