I’m back home from my gastroscopy now, which was at 1:00 today. It wasn’t exactly a cake walk, but it was far less worse than I expected. About as bad as a 1 hour dental appointment squeezed into 10 minutes.

No doubt this was partly thanks to the drugs–the bitter, nasty tasting spray to numb my throat and relax my gag reflux, and the fast-acting, short half-life benzodiazapine which caused me to relax, and may have provided a little amnesia as a side effect. I dozed in the recovery room for about half an hour after the procedure, but don’t feel the least bit wobbly now, 4 and 1/2 hours later. Nonetheless, I have promised the good nurses at UBC’s Koerner Pavilion that I will not drive my car until after lunch tomorrow.

The results were inconclusive. I definitely don’t have a hiatal hernia, there’s no indication of tissue damage from acid reflux, and my espophagus is perfectly normal. This is all good news, of course. But a second, similar test is recommended, sometime in September, to test my esophageal motility.

I’m not sure if I’m up for it. Not because I’m avoiding the test, but because whatever is plaguing my insides is working well on the outside–kind of like a mini stomach stapling. New trousers I bought back in March now fall down if I don’t wear a belt, though I’m far from looking frail. So I might put that second test off till after Christmas. New year, new wardrobe?

First, the light, in the form of knoend’s minimalist Lite2go, which is designed so the packaging is part of the shade. Lite2go comes with an energy-efficient bulb, in a range of colours, and can function as either a pendant or table lamp.

As for the scallops, in Japan over 200,000 tons of scallop shells are binned every year as industrial waste. Aimori Corporation has developed a process to convert the shells into zero-VOC wall plaster. Aimori’s Zen Ocean Plaster is formaldehyde free, breathable, and mildew resistant. Aimori is searching for a distributor for Western Canada.

Thoughts of scallop shell plaster reminded me of my recent perusal of Gordon Ramsay’s cookbook, “Passion for Flavour”, in which he writes about scallop coral powder.

Being a bit of a seafood luddite. I assumed coral was just another word for shell, especially as he writes about how brittle the corals get after they are baked, and how noisy they are when they are ground in the food processor. Wrong. They are actually the bright orange bits that we North Americans leave behind when we shuck scallops, mainly because the corals are very perishable. Waste not, want not in Gordon’s kitchen. And no, I will never forgive him for the puffins.

Mr. V. and I were entertaining a couple of pre-teens over the past weekend, and a movie was a necessary part of their entertainment package. We had mulled over the idea of taking them to see The Dark Knight, but in the end we decided it might be a bit too dark for our charges. We opted for WALL-E instead, hoping that it might move as well as entertain them.

No doubt you’ve heard about WALL-E, Pixar’s latest animation offering, a tale that begins on earth, circa 2800 in the Common Era. Earth is a post-apocalyptic garbage dump, inhabited by WALL-E, the last operating Waste Allocation Load Lifter, Earth Class, and his sidekick, a resilient cockroach. WALL-E spends his days compacting trash, occasionally rescuing an artifact to take back to his container home. He is lonely, but diligent, carefully recharging his solar cell whenever the sun peeks through the miasmic atmosphere, and taking refuge whenever the winds whip up a trashdust storm, which is fairly often.

There is no dialogue in the first third of the movie, during which we get to know a fair bit about WALL-E and the way he lives. That changes, though, with the arrival of Eve, an elegant, egg-shaped probe on a mission. WALL-E is enthralled with Eve, and tries to please her with all manner of booty from his cache of artifacts. Eve is unimpressed until WALL-E shows her his most remarkable treasure, a spindly green plant that had recently sprouted and that WALL-E had re-potted in an old boot.

What transpires next is a trip into space, taken by both probe and bot. It is possibly the animation high point of the film, which rolls gently downhill from there, though it picks itself back up into animation heaven a couple more times, and never really hits bottom.

Buy and Large Corporation, whose logos are seen amidst the garbage dump of earth, has removed itself and a remnant of humanity to a monstrous space ship, run by Auto, the mastermind computer reminiscent of Hal 9000. The ship is populated by silly, cartoonish humans, short of limb and wide of girth, who loll about on automated flying lounges, communicate through screens almost permanently in front of their chubby faces, and suck on a variety of liquid snacks. Everything in this passive world is provided by robots, who appear to be there to support and provide for the humans, but have a more nefarious purpose.

It all works out in the end, more or less, in a bot-meets-probe, cautionary tale sort of way. During the credits, the audience is shown Lascaux-like vignettes of humanity’s possibly hopeful future. Unless the audience is too impatient to stay.

The pre-teens thought the movie was “okay” but the eleven-year-old was itching to take us to a cell phone store in the mall where he could show us the user-interface on the new iPhone 3G.

Oh well. At least neither of them wanted a WALL-E doll.

Facebook has bowed to legal pressure and pulled Scrabulous. Hasbro has announced how pleased it is at this development, especially as Electronic Arts has developed a legitimate version of online scrabble. Legitimate it may be, but it truly licks. I tried it out on EA’s pogo.com site for five minutes and was sidelined by a headache, thanks to the ugly visuals and the intrusive sound effects and no obvious way to click them off.

It is really sad that Hasbro couldn’t recognize the simple elegance of the UI the Scrabulous developers provided, and come to a mutually beneficial resolution.

For the most part I find Facebook a fluffy waste of time. I use its email function to keep in touch with acquaintances and distant friends, but soon grew tired of all its other distractions.

I’m still mulling over this blog, what it is, why I do it. Meanwhile, some members of the committee in my head keep reminding me how far behind I am with posting. Life got a bit too hectic and stressful back in the middle of last October, what with carpal tunnel, home renovations, real estate deals, getting ready to move, a quick trip to San Francisco, and the news, two days after I got back, that I had to have surgery, and the sooner the better. This blog went down for a while, and at the time I didn’t know if I would go back to it, though since April I’ve posting on a more or less regular basis.

I’d decided, back at the beginning of January 2007, to blog about every film, book, concert, and performance I took in, mainly because I have a dodgy memory, and wanted a way to remember. So far I haven’t written about any of the books I’ve read since fall 2007, or the movies I’ve seen since last November. The books are in piles, and a few cursory notes I’ve made about the movies I’ve seen are on scraps of paper, stapled together on my desk. Now that I’ve outed myself, I have no more reason to lollygag.

Regular readers (all four of you) will be aware that post-surgery, I’ve been having difficulty eating…the technical term for which is dysphagia. Next Thursday a camera will go down my throat and right into my duodenum. I’m not looking forward to this, but will be glad to know what the problem is, and what can be done about it.

Almost all the interest I have had about food has gone into abeyance for the past few months. Though I’ve gone out for dinner a few times, I can’t eat much by the time evening comes around, and I just can’t get excited about the prospects of eating or writing about it.

Likewise coffee and chocolate, once almost daily indulgences. They are on the list my doctor gave me of foods to avoid, and I have managed to give them a pass since the middle of April. But I have some notes about chocolate, six or seven artisanal varieties, waiting to be turned into a blog post.

There’s also the software issue. I’ve been using Wordpress 2.1 almost since the beginning. I’ve avoided updating it because so often after Wordpress announced a new version, the security update patches would be announced. I would decide to wait till the version was stable, but before it seemingly was, Wordpress would announce yet another new version. Now they are up to version 2.6. I’m wondering how long it will be till they announce version 2.7 With all these updates, I’ve been telling myself I have to learn to install Wordpress, so I can do the updates myself. So that’s a project on my to-do list.

Since the spammers found a way to exploit earlier versions of Wordpress (up to 2.3 I think) I’ve turned off my blogroll with the best of intentions of turning it back on, once I’ve updated the software.

So there you have it. Over the next couple months I plan to bring all my book and movie posts up-to-date, learn to install a sexier version of WP, and maybe introduce a few surprises. I hope somebody cares.

We don’t yet know how much the budget for the 2010 security costs has increased. The original estimate of $175 million was laughable, considering Salt Lake City’s security costs in 2002 were close to $500 million. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day is being coy, but plans to release the adjusted estimate soon.

Plenty of discussion at the Pacific North West Economic Region’s annual summit, here in Vancouver this week, including the aforementioned Olympic security costs, and the announcement that the road from Vancouver to Whistler will be closed to non-Olympic traffic during peak Olympic times. If you aren’t on a bus going to an event, then you can pretty much forget trying to drive the Sea-to-Sky Highway, or to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry. Does this mean BC Highways Minister Kevin Falcon will finally get that helicopter he’s been coveting?

BC Ferries will be increasing their fares by as much as 17.6%, depending on the route, starting August 1. Considering that gasoline prices have increased by 26.9% over the past year, the ferry increase could be worse.

It does lead one to wonder whether cost increases like this will discourage tourism, which is experiencing zero growth, according to Candice Gibson, manager of consumer marketing at Tourism Vancouver.

The cure for flat tourism numbers is lesbians, according to Gibson and Vision Vancouver councillor Tim Stevenson, who has been mysteriously quiet for the last year. Lesbians, says Stevenson, have plenty of money and no children, and would spend more time in Vancouver if Vancouver bought a $33,000 advertising contract with Curve magazine.

Meanwhile, it’s also been revealed by Candice Gibson, that Vancouver is already a top spot for gay and lesbian tourism, based on a survey done by San Francisco-based Community Marketing. It’s hard to fathom how $33,000 and four print placements in Curve mag would make a discernible difference in our travel destination cachet.

If you’re too poor to travel this summer, you can always take in the Victory Square block party this Labour Day weekend.

Or check out the new Cactus Club at Bentall 5, which along with food concept architect Rob Feenie’s new menu items, Veuve Clicquot by the glass, and three Basquiats, a Warhol, and a Brent Comber hanging on the walls, still offers many reasonably priced “pre-Feenie deep-fried pub standards.” All that and a minimum 1 hour wait. Globe and Mail food critic Alexandra Gill’s review is here.

While we moan about declining tourism numbers and decide where we’re going out for dinner tonight, Monsanto et al are having their way with South African farmers. Over the past decade, South Africa has entered trade agreements with large, multi-national agricultural biotechnology corporations, such as Monsanto, which promote the subsidisation of patented GM seeds. Through an incentive system supporting monocultures, small-scale farmers are systematically integrated into commercial agriculture. Small-scale farmers who sign up for GM deals quickly lose control over seed management, production, and eventually their land.

The balcony may be permanently closed as critics Roger Ebert and Richard Roeper have both elected to leave the Disney-syndicated TV program “At the Movies.”

Disney has reportedly decided to take the program in a new direction.  Ebert said that direction sounds “more like a pilot for a new entertainment show, not a continuation of the traditional format” that Ebert pioneered with the late Gene Siskel on Chicago PBS back in 1975.

Ebert takes with him the copyrighted “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” verdict. Disney cannot use the thumbs in future programming. The thumbs had been noticeably absent during the most recent weeks of “At the Movies” while Michael Phillips has been sitting in for Ebert, who is still unable to speak after cancer surgery two years ago.

Roeper has hinted that he may”proceed elsewhere with my ninth year as the co-host of a movie review show that honors the standards established by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert more than 30 years ago.”

This is hopefully not-so-sad news. Mr. V. and I have been enjoying Siskel, Ebert, Roeper, and the recent guest hosts including Phillips, A. O. Scott, and Aisha Tyler for many years.  Roeper’s contract with Disney does not end till after the taping of the final show on August 16 and 17. For now, he is not providing any information about his plans.

Ebert has stated that the thumbs will return. Long live the thumbs!

Dump the New Garbage Plans, from the Tyee.

Save Vancouver’s Heatley Block, from Viaduct.

Olympic Drug Lab Largesse from David Eby.

So it was off to the the gastroenterologist this morning at 8 a.m. Not my favourite time of day.

He asked me a few questions, the last one being “Do you want me to take a look?”

I thought he was suggesting a bit of prodding and palpating right then and there, so I said okay. He was out of the office like a shot, saying “I’ll get the book.”

Book? Short story is I’m “booked” for a gastroscopy on July 31 at 1 p.m. Nothing to eat or drink after midnight the night before. Food I can do without, but by the time they stick that camera down my throat I will be one thirsty camper.

Sigh. I tried to reason with him, saying things had improved a bit during the six weeks I’d waited for my appointment, but he wasn’t listening.

Of course, with the all the sedation I’ve been promised, I may not even notice the camera. Plus my throat will be frozen. Apparently this reduces the gag reflex.

As he browsed through my file I couldn’t help but notice that the good doctor had a full colour set of images of my business end, taken during a colonoscopy a couple of years ago. By the end of next week, he’ll have pictures of my entire digestive tract.

It crossed my mind, for the briefest second, to mention in jest how touched I was that he’d kept my pictures. But he’s kind of a lugubrious sort, and even if he thought what I said was funny, I knew he wouldn’t have laughed.

Mystified by how ’sub-prime’ debt engulfed Wall Street’s smartest and now threatens the wider global economy? This comic strip at the Telegraph explains how it all started.