Question no.2: What are my three objects?

In alphabetic order are listed my three chosen objects:

Alarm Clock

- plastic hemisphere, 91 mm in diameter;
- single AA power source;
- can be mounted on magnetic surface;
- can be propped on a stand (provided);
- can be taken anywhere with you;
- alarm must be manually set with a dial;
- 12 hour revolution: alarm rings twice daily;
- clock ticks deep & quiet
- alarm emits vulgar, piercing noise;
- football is the sport of the world.







Moka Express

- 155 mm tall and 140 mm wide stove top espresso maker;
- aluminum body with plastic handle and "fez";
- 3 sections: a) well b) filter c) bath tub;
- conjures delicious warm aromas;
- transforms treasure from the East into Western obsession;
- this particular model makes three short espresso or one 'americano forte'.







Mystery Keys and Keyring Accessories / lost & found object

- found and appropriated late evening Tuesday, September 11, on a postbox, Spence and Balmoral;
- 2 key rings
- 5 keys ranging metals and in length from 63 mm to 36 mm long;
- one black Fox Forty whistle
- one "Ambassador" tag, with inscription on reverse;
- one plastic key suction tag;
- one black nylon bag with pull string;
- inside bag: a section of a green plastic straw, 5 mm diameter, 66 mm long.

- keys were lost by whom?
- can the keys "tell" me where they live?
- how were they lost?
- what has been lost?

- who, what, where, why, how do the five keys unlock?
- what is the purpose of a key without its lock?
- could their locks be recreated?
- what new secrets would they hod?

Question no.1: What are my Obsessions?

Some obsessions of mine include world peace, saving the Amazon, stopping malaria from killing needlessly. There is a perfectly good vaccination for malaria and the issue – like ending world hunger, another obsession of mine – is simply a matter of distribution. Other obsessions of mine include: veganism, zero-carbon living and the micro-banking projects currently undertaken by the 2006 Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus.

Oh yeah, I’m some kind of freak.

Or I’m not. And my real obsession actually boils down to that one thing that every person my age should rightfully claim as his or her sole obsession – as well as all the superficial things that go along with it. In the end, we can only be obsessed with shallow things. Everything else we malapropistic-ally refer to as our ‘obsessions’ are, at most, passions, or, more frequently, passing fads. I’m not Craig Kielburger. I’m glad he’s out there. I think about him – and all he represents – every so often. But I’m not obsessed.

Moving on.

I cannot say, either, that I am obsessed with architecture, but I am passionate about it. I wrote my application to University of Manitoba solely about walls. I don’t know that it was particularly coherent but there it was: walls. Deep passion. Care deeply about cladding, in its various forms. Sometimes call it an obsession – what could be more, in a sense, superficial than cladding, which would thereby qualify it as a possible obsession? – but lying to myself when I do.

Also not obsessed but passionate about order. Like to make my bed – maybe even slightly pathological about making my bed. Mother! Also obsessed with my mother – though not actually. Only one person out there was obsessed with his mother – really obsessed, in the way we only really obsess over that one thing – and I still have my eyes.

Order is good – good for a certain kind of architect. Order is, one might say, an architectural passion. We bring celestial order to the changing world – unless we call ourselves Daniel Libeskind. Then we bring the ‘horrible scary disorder of 20th century existence, with all its strobe light nightmares’ to the changing world.

The closest I might come to an actual obsession is food, or, more properly, haute cuisine. Evidence for this was the time I became ‘obsessed with’ (passionate about) a restaurant in New York called WD50. There I ate anus-flavoured venison tartar sausages and drank the contents of 400-year-old sac of fermented sugar, which the waiter described as ‘wine’. Having eaten previously at Jean-Georges, Pastis, Moulin de Mougins, Gordon Ramsay’s, Tom Aikens, Susur, and so on, what I may perhaps glean from my repulsive experience at WD50 is that my passion for eating haute-cuisine had finally been surpassed by my passion for eating at famous restaurants. Superficiality wins again.

In some ways I long for the old days, when my two great abovementioned passions met in the form of a gingerbread Chrysler Tower, 3 and a half feet high. Back then, before the BIG OBSESSION took hold, I bordered on enjoying actual, not superficial, obsession, just as I am sure that one day, when I am too old for the BIG OBSESSION, I will once again enjoy the purity of being truly obsessed with something, if even for a short time.

In the meantime, however, I cannot be other than I am. Time to go condition my hair...







gingerbread chrysler 1999/g. rubin