iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026

Imagine the state of our public discourse today if we still loaded all software off of cassette tapes… Truly the glory days!

Commodore Vic 20 cassette tape drive. I remember loading games that required flipping the tape to the other side halfway through!

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 29/08/2026

I want to see something more here, something that transcends. But all I see is Yakov Smirnov, and I can't escape the sense that this failure in myself articulates an aporia that the absence of the Zizek of the 1990s would somehow be able to articulate. Also […] [Original post on mas.to]

Yakov Smirnov circa 1989 telling a joke about cars that cleverly gets Americans to buy tickets to his show…

Ron Perlman getting ready to give a public lecture on the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Jacques Lacan (specifically in relation to Seminar X)

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 26/08/2026

It’s good advice… Feels like a Duchamp installation.

A men’s urinal with the sign “NON-POTABLE. NOT SAFE FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION”

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 13/07/2026

Ice cream shop. Not a unicorn. Not a unicow. A unicown.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 31/05/2026

New statement from the BC Conservative Party… #bcpoli #canpoli

GIF of Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones saying “I choose violence”

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/05/2026

“Author” is the wrong word here…

Are Technica headline that reads “Al put ‘synthetic quotes’ in his book. But this author wants to keep using it.”

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 03/05/2026

"Turn to the open window and look down To drink past all deceiving Your last dark rapture from the mystical throng And say farewell, farewell to Yukon leaving" #YXY

A photo from the plane flying out of Whitehorse, YK

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 22/04/2026

Must be one of those Paw Patrol pup… Chase, right? I hope it's Chase, presumably inside.

The text reads: "Adorable Shepherd Pup: Polyresin Figurine in Black and Brown." For whatever reason, the image is of something like a booze still or some kind of stainless steel stove-top pressure blaster… Maybe the puppy is inside the pressure cooker chamber?

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 21/02/2026

Beautiful, long walk in the sunlight from rhe université along the Canal du Midi today. #toulouse

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 16/02/2026

Walked past an interesting home in Albi today… Feels Roman. #ironwork #design

Phalloi iron railing with sperm and ovum. The testicles may be the most troubling part of the whole design.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 16/02/2026

My first visit to Albi, and the cathedral is stunning. The scale of it is amazing, then the colour, then the Last Judgment…

Cathedral of Sainte Cecilia from across the river

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 14/01/2026

If you’re going to make a typo in the headline, go big and make sure it’s a Freudian slip… #associatedpress #korea

News headline: “Prosecutor says former South Korean leader should face death sentence over MARITAL decree”

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 03/01/2026

“Turn to the open window and look down To drink past all deceiving Your last dark rapture from the mystical throng And say farewell, farewell to Edmonton leaving" #yeg

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 01/01/2026

As a child of the 80s, this is not top of my list for appliance names…

Smeg coffee pot, Smeg toaster, and Smeg kettle

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 23/12/2025

Friends, if I didn't mail you the chapbook for #Christmas, you can have the #blog! A braided story on #fantasy, #classics, & entangling commercial & creative #writing: "Tying Three Loops: A Spell for the Modrybedd" […] [Original post on mas.to]

Photo of a page from the chapbook commenting on "loops" in commercial writing, such as on TV, and the "rings" structure from Homeric epics in Mendelsohn's memoir. Three fleurons in the centre of the image.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 09/12/2025

Well, it looks like I'm firing up the ol' coal-powered web log… Before a new piece this month, here's some CNF first published in The Quarantine Review. It's about #adoption, academic travels in northern #BC, and discovering a beloved childhood author was an abuser […] [Original post on mas.to]

Photograph from the plane flying into Terrace, BC, over the Skeena River.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/10/2025

“Hi, I’m Clippy. Looks like you’re reading about how to avoid damaging your own brain. Would you like me to order you a self-trepanning kit off Amazon? A companion volume is available of AI-generated guides to local edible mushrooms.”

Photo of a computer screen showing a book about critical reading for academic purposes with the library service’s AI auto-generating a substitute text to avoid critical reading.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/09/2025

Giving this conference paper for #VICFA in less than an hour, and I feel like it’s going to be a lot of fun while working out something challenging… “Pamela Dean, Allusion, and the Word Incarnate The Mythic Method in Modern Fantasy and Its Modernist Frame”

"Pamela Dean, Allusion, and the Word Incarnate: The Mythic Method in Modern Fantasy and Its Modernist Frame" James Gifford Fairleigh Dickinson University

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 28/08/2025

I’m watching a fab documentary on poets of Vernon, and my very first thought was “Jason’s involved because of this type.” Now I’m waiting to see…

The words don’t matter. It’s the same typeface he used in my books.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 06/08/2025

I can’t believe this place isn’t using the Coldplay concert meme… #coldplay #donair

Donaur Affair restaurant Grand Opening. “Our 20th Location.” Sorry, not very funny with the Alt Text… But they probably have really good donairs? Since I robbed you of that joke, guess what? Chicken butt. It makes my son laugh, so maybe…

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 24/07/2025

Friends, I've decided to post a year of content from my edition of Edward Taylor Fletcher's works. The hashtag #EdTaFl seems shiny and unused, so I'm taking it… This project came out during a tricky period and never really caught eyes, so I'm going to do that now! […] [Original post on mas.to]

Book cover for Of Sunken Islands and Pestilence: Restoring the Voice of Edward Taylor Fletcher to Nineteenth Century Canadian Literature

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 07/05/2025

{Facepalm} Now I feel old for thinking “actually, that’s after the Cold War…”

"Back in 2000, I was going through every object in the NORAD space object catalogue, trying to figure out what each object was, all 25,000 of them as there were at the time. And I came across this one and went, 'OK, this is something unusual.''' It wasn't widely known what the object was at the time because the U.S. and the Soviet Union were in the midst of the Cold War, and many things were kept secret.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 08/03/2025

New poetry focused on form from above/ground press! (a consolation for missing @robmclennan read last week…)

Two chapbooks of poetry. TERMINALS by Nathanael O’Reilly and the suitcase poem by many hands with Amanda Earl.

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 21/02/2025

Gave a talk today for the #Louisville conference #LCLC52. Huge fun and a bit crazy to have done… “From Easter Eggs to Clinamen: A Theory of Allusion in Lawrence Durrell, Samuel R. Delany, and David Eddings” #academia #literature #modernism #SFF

From Easter Eggs to Clinamen: A Theory of Allusion in Lawrence Durrell, Samuel Delany, and David Eddings James Gifford @GiffordJames@mas.to

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 17/02/2025

And there it is. The most Canadian spectacle I have ever seen… #Canada

Many people walking around in a frozen lake behind a sign “DANGER THIN ICE KEEP OFF”

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 11/02/2025

I’m not used to television showing my neighbourhood as if it were New York. I could get used to it… #Allegiance #CBC

Patullo Bridge from Surrey, BC in the show Allegiance

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 02/01/2025

Turn to the open window and look down To drink past all deceiving … farewell, farewell to Edmonton leaving.

Edmonton from 104th looking toward the river valley

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 19/11/2024

Wonderful book launch for *Sheets of Scattered Sand: Cantonese Protestants and the Secular Dream of the Pacific Rim* by Justin Tse

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James Gifford @giffordjames.mas.to.ap.brid.gy · 18/11/2024

Just received the new Beagle book by @timothysmiller.bsky.social for review in #YWES! And I'll be teaching The Last Unicorn this spring, so pretty sure I'll get an early start on this one… link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-…

Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn: A Critical Companion by Timothy S. Miller in the Palgrave Science Fiction and Fantasy: A New Canon series

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