1st best picture

Possible captions:
- Where does one end and the other begin?
- "I'll Call it Monica.. heeh heeh."
- When John Stewart's scriptwriters dream:
- The Presidental Hardoning of the Thanksgiving Turkey
- Political Pop Quiz: how many Turkeys?
- Where's Cheney When You Really Need Him?
- Putting the W into a "fowl pecker"

NYC Cabbie Blog (2nd best picture)

This is a picture from an NYC cabby's photo blog. Dude left a comment on Steve's blog. This is the best picture since that Thanksgiving turkey pecked W's parsnip (see above).

The Land of Cokaygne

A dear friend revealed that one of her middle names is "Cockayne". I went 'hmmm' and promptly coopted it as a possible source for my last name. Until that moment, the best I'd heard was that my name (Corcoran) meant 'purple face'. I think I'd much prefer to be known as Tom Utopia than Tom High-Blood-Pressure, but then again, genealogical similitude is a tough bugger to defy.

Al Tum.. The Twins... Tom

You could begin with the crab that scratches in the sand. The name of the animal is the action or sound it makes, or its colour. The name parents other like meanings belonging to other things, leaving the animal behind: grapho (Greek - to scatch, and so, to write), gramma (the scratches), graph, grammar, grab.
As I walk along the shore of the Red Sea at dawn a hundred pale pink crabs scuttle carefully back across and into the white sand. Behind a sharp crust of coral a rock crab, seaweed-green edged with red, pries the back of a sand crab and feeds. It is not so easily frightened and merely watches me. There are tiny porcelain-blue crabs in the mangroves a few mile south, popping out of the dense muddy quicksand like living jewels.
In this harsh environment life itself is a gorgeous miracle, coming out of the barren desert, out of the bitter sea: hals, the sea of salt.
Above the tide line the sand is crusted over with glass, hard-surfaced and brittle like frosting sugar. It snaps into square panes of rock. Rocks flecked electric blue-green with what became copper here wash down in the mountain floods. Walking in these hills I am looking at visual puns. I can see how readily the creatures translate, were translated long ago, into thought and language. What is lost is a sense of their intense beauty, that they are alive.
Words begin as description. They are prismatic, vehicles of hidden, deeper shades of thought. You can hold them up at different angles until the light bursts through in an unexpected colour. The word carries the living thing concealed across millenia.

- Susan Brind Morrow, The Names of Things

Cheers

I use the word 'cheers' a lot, but it's really started to bug me that others do. It didn't happen 5 years ago, so what it is about now? I saw a banking type get smoked meat today, they said 'cheers' and I almost choked on my rye bread. So I decided to get to the bottom of it.. what the hell does cheers mean, and why has it replaced 'thank you'?

etymology online:
cheer
c.1225, from Anglo-Norm. chere "the face," from O.Fr. chiere, from L.L. cara "face," from Gk. kara "head," from PIE base *ker- "head." Already by M.E. meaning had extended metaphorically to "mood, demeanor, mental condition" as reflected in the face. Could be in a good or bad sense ("The feend ... beguiled her with treacherye, and brought her into a dreerye cheere," "Merline," c.1500), but positive sense has predominated since c.1400. Meaning "shout of encouragement" first recorded 1720, perhaps nautical slang (earlier "to encourage by words or deeds," c.1430). Cheer up (intrans.) first attested 1676. Cheers as a salute or toast when taking a drink is British, 1919. Cheerleader first recorded 1903, Amer.Eng. Cheerful is from c.1400.

This is all well and good, highly likely, but a little too indirect (afterall, this is drinking terminology). I heard, that clinking glasses and saying cheers originated from the custom of actually pouring a part of your drink into another's before quaffing it. A gesture of "well met", whether you're afraid of poison, or just a means to share your symbolic wealth with the other etc. I propose then that 'cheers' is more a bastardization or drunken truncation of the possible phrase "to you", which in days of yore'd sound more like "t'youse", which could readily sound like 'cheers'. I get this line of thinking from comparison to other greetings, such as 'goodbye', which is a compound of "God be with you".

Regardless, sober cheersing is rampant, and must be squelched! I don't want to be toasted as if we met and shared special time and bummed smokes off each other and danced to the Beegees and asserted our mutual, undying friendship by someone I only held a door open for once.

These days I say 'ta' a lot. Which generally people don't understand, so I have to follow it up with a quick 'thanks'. Also, Ted Danson is a dildo.

just a quick re: to Rogering Me's debunk from a few weeks ago. RM, it took me a while to recollect what I was aiming for, and then sieving through that, I think I've cut to the quick: thermodynamism is disobeyed by the existence of life in general.. how can you have more than the sum of the parts? the famous phrase, 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny' is a fascinating concept, every stage of development within an organism resembles prior evolutionary stages (even down to 1 1/2 year olds learning to walk, then speaking at 2-ish, kinda still harmonious with epochs in human development, millions of years captured within the space of a few years) but what is the ontology of that ontogeny? and what is the initatiating principle? you can't get energy from nothing, as much as you can't destroy it. but the 'big bang' concept is basically giving creationism a false moustache, in fact, without the mathematical schema in place to describe it, it IS creationism. Therein, how is consciousness initated, each and every single time? Let us say even say consciousness is a metabolic by-product, what then ignited the metabolism? Without recourse to reductionism (eventually, the question must be answered, down to the smallest organelle..), how can consciousness (recognition of itself as life: '"i am", therefore i think') exist according to thermodynamics? there's just no accounting for it.

i had also wondered about entopy as being significant, but i think more as a 'wow, crazy that my body is as attracted to itself as it so as i don't fall apart' kinda way. yay life. thanks for engaging that house of mirrors of a post.

That 100 year-old nun smell

So I work now for a lady who bought a 5-apartment property, and wants to renovate. Instead of installing floors, I now rip them up. There's quite a bit of autonomy, as my employer (she met Steve at the Miami, and bludgeoned him with a blunt) skips out to buy things or to tend to the multifarious other schemes that she's running elsewhere in the city. So I am left alone, hacking away (with a shovel, strangely the best tool for ripping up floor) with the cloying old lady smell of the last tenent: an elderly nun that had lived here for the 28 years prior. The only things she left behind were a cupboard full of moth-balls, a few rosary beads rolling around on the floor and the shadow-stain of the mini chapel that she had lent against one wall. So I smash and hammer and curse all day, wondering what the neighbours must be thinking about that meek old nun, as I tend to unleash angry hollers of "splintery Jesus" and "fuck, goddamn, that fucking hurts". They must think she got into the sacramental wine and watching the world-cup. Either way, it's a good job, and I listen to Korean emo on CKUT as I deliver my wrath onto all chipboard that opposes me. Leaves me tonnes of room to think, which I truly appreciate in a job.

@@@

Always give a standing ovation, it gives you a better angle to check out the cellist's cleavage when she bows.

@@@

I either have an ingrown hair, or an outgrown belly.

@@@

boner.

Water in the Desert

It rained pretty much all Saturday, and after initiating limewire in order to secure the last 4 episodes of LOST, I went for a burrito at La Chilenita. I was so tired, I could barely order, and so munched quietly away, pretending not to notice the staff occasionally glancing at me with pity. A little bolstered, I went to catch my vespers at the park, and lent against a bench in the rain.

I thought about how happy I was, and put it down to a renaissance of sorts. I'd always imagined happiness to be some hidden state of return, to innocence, if you will. I decided amist the watery mist that I was ready for more responsibility and that I'd start by learning Arabic. Little did I know how quickly the chance for this would manifest.

A deeply tanned young man with a cast on his right arm approached me. He was obviously distraught, and seemed to need something. This is not abnormal in the park, so though wary, I obliged. He asked me if I was Canadian, which usually requires a longish answer, though the answer I gave was 'yes'. His relief was palpable. He told me he'd just returned from serving with the 22nd Regiment, the Grenadiers, in Afghanistan, and needed to talk to a Canadian. He said noone else would give him the time, and all his family here had asked him to leave, for an emotional sojourn. He called it a pilgrimage. And then he broke down. I hugged this stranger for a while, silently weeping myself, and said 'welcome home'. He said I had been waiting for him, to give him water in the desert. His name is Eric LeBeouf

As he told it, he'd been captain of a platoon of predominantly Quebecois soldiers, and had lost 4 of his men on a confidential mission as coordinated with MI6. During one event, they'd been pinned down in a shallow colvert for a day, bullets zinging right over their noses (they had to lie on their backs). At one juncture, when the shots seemed to have lulled, he'd instructed a man to look right while he looked left. When he looked back, the soldier's head was cocked towards him, blood seeping from where he'd been shot in the eye. This was LeBeouf's last straw: as captain, he said he was under immense pressure trying to balance his emotions whilst remaining strong for those under his command. He asked for sick leave and was refused. So he found a wall and broke his arm on it. He was sent home in a Goliath, with a temporary cast to help relieve pressure from atmospheric swelling. He brought his wife and kids home with him.

I asked about them, wanting to divert some of his attention back to what his life holds now. This primed another story: I don't know to what capacity they were there, but his command were running operations in Algeria, and were sent into a town for a recon sweep before a supply convoy went through. They spotted militants, and so fired warning shots to disperse the crowd. The town scattered, but the claps shocked one poor old blighter so much, he feel from a balcony and shattered his femur. Now, Eric is a field medic, and feels a true conflict between being both a warrior and a healer, he invokes the catchphrase 'hippocratic oath' much. So, tending to this unconscious man on the spot, he recognized that the bone had pushed out towards his inner thigh, and was resting against this man's major artery. He took off his rucksack, giving it to his translator, and lifted the old man onto his back. He potato sacked this guy for fifty-two kilometers (!!?) to fall down face first inside a family's threshold. He was awoken by water being dripped onto his face, and saw he was being attended to by a young Muslim woman. He rested at this woman's house with the blessing of her father, as miraculously, the 73 year-old man he'd just saved turned out to be her grandfather. One night she slipped into his bed, and he said he could smell she was ready. 9 months later she gave birth to their first child, Daphne. At this, I burst into tears. It is one of the more beautiful things I've heard in a long time.

After some trepidation, and conferring with Armand, introducing Grae and Ian to him, and struggling with the due suspicions that Steve invoked, I made a bed for him on my couch and went out for a beer. I came back in to see that he had opted to sleep on the floor. Both Eric and I needed each other, I needed to commit to this leap of faith and to just believe (I don't usually pick up men in the park). He needed water in the desert.

He asked me, in case of him ever being shipped back to war, to keep attentive of his wife and children. I said I'd love to meet them and perhaps spend time together, as obviously coming to Canada would be a culture shock. Eric said his wife would teach me Arabic.

My mind is still agog.

@ @ @

I discovered something unpleasant today. Most of the 17 terror suspects that were recently arrested had attended school at Meadowvale Secondary School. I believe this to be the same school that my mum's very good friend is principal. My mum even served there as substitute teacher for a few years. How horribly close to home

Ted: Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.

i need to speak to Rufus, funny things are happening to me. perhaps writing is an act of disbelief, and if i can describe it, it isn't happening. the closest temporal landmark would be the night the smoking ban came into effect. since then, i've been so... happy?

the best i can do right now is point-form.

on my weekly visit to SW Welch's, there it was sitting, the alexandria quartet. it's quite an amazing book, i've been looking for a copy that met my budget for over a year. i discovered that i have a fascinating new super power: i can tell if ladies' have moustaches from any distance (before i could only tell if a stranger had recently shaved his long-term moustache. the phantom 'stache. what a shame.) my heart seems to be racing, as if i'm thrilled by life, and i was today reminded about the time my dad told me that when young, he used to fall in love a lot. there's some kind of MSG that's been added to my music collection, and, like a drunk fatass waking up with half a shish taouk in his lap, i've met a few mornings cuddling my computer. someone told me i had beautiful eyes in accented, awkward english. as a compliment, it really does work. i've been meeting some fantastic people, quite randomly and outside of convention. my foosball game is weak right now. but i think the fact that i don't really care is more telling. i caught a cold from the storm that rattled a couple of the days this week, and i'm enjoying that too.

maybe i'm just sleep deprived, but it's been a wonderous past few days.

Ozymandias

I MET a traveller from an antique land

Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,

The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- P. B Shelley

Slack Dog Bladders

Lindz! Never before had I heard of racism to animals!! You should definitely give it a go.. Here's a few quick tips to get started: 1) Target the white or otherwise deformed ones, that way the people you know will probably excuse it a little quicker. 2) Take subsequent dog by the preferred end (double check to make sure it IS white, and has white owners.) 3) Spray paint the motherfucker black. 4) Spin the shit out of that there black dog. 5) Release. 6) Repeat as necessary. 7) Have another scotch.

The Black Dog_Spanners

When I bought this album, I was 15, and I did not 'get it'. I sat out in our rental car, listening to this on the tape deck. Because we were in England, it was raining.

I didn't touch them much in the next few years, and molested myself through the age with the likes of Prodigy and Daft Punk and the Chemical Brothers. But I had no idea of the power and concepts sequestered away in the subterranean strata of this album. It is no understatement to say that this has been the biggest musical influence on my life. Considering it took me roughly 4 years to understand it (I was a 'natural' electro-head for about the same length of time) and a few big spliffs, it isn't readily relayable to others.

Some call it polyrhythmic, like a choose your own adventure of dance. Some call it IDM (intelligent dance music). It's beyond that, it's more like an exercise in enlightenment. How they successfully ran an axis of mesopotamian sound through the viscera, or found such stutter-step drums still confounds me. My enthusiasm grows every day for these pioneers. When people ask me what my favourite food is, I reply: The Black Dog_Spanners. When the album exhausts itself, I just start it again. This is one of the very few seminal electronic albums and I would wager it would change anyone who listened to it. The name's also a wonderful euphemism for depression.

does anyone really know the difference between a sweet potato and a yam?

In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. Its dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of sea-water licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouth of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches - empty, forever empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds. If there are ever sails here they die before the land swallows them. Wreckage washed up on the pediments of islands, the last crust, eroded by the weather, stuck in the blue maw of water... gone!

Justine - The Alexandria Quartet, Lawrence Durrell

The Black Dog, Shpongle, Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Freeworm, Pink Floyd, Daft Punk, Jane's Addiction, David Bowie, Chemical Brothers, Led Zepplin, Rush, Tool, White Zombie, The Flaming Lips, The Prodigy, Amon Tobin, AC/DC, Pantera, Nine Inch Nails, Donovan, Paradise Frame, Radiohead, The Raincoats, Kissing the Pink, Gomez, Mr Oizo, Kraftwerk, Primal Scream, The Smiths, Of Montreal, Thomas Dolby, Talking Heads, Paul Simon, Goldie, Suns of Arqa, Ishq, Kid Koala, Smashing Pumpkins, Gary Numan, Bluetech, Ozzy Osbourne, A Tribe Called Quest, Boards of Canada, Mix Master Mike, De La Soul, The Cure, Gustav Holst, Philip Glass, Bonobo, Freestylers, Bjork, Blur, Elastica, The Clash, The Police, Sergei Rachmaninov, Suba, The Velvet Underground, Black Grape, DJ Hype, Qbert, B12, Billy Idol, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Decemberists, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Legion of Green Men, Massive Attack, Tricky, Mum, KRS One, RJD2, Les Jardiniers, The Who, Pulp, Art of Noise, Plaid, Aphex Twin, Hive, Blackalicious, Roots Manuva, DJ Shadow, Crystal Method, Fat Boy Slim, Godspeed You Black Emperor, KMFDM, Ultravox, Weezer, Sigur Ros, Alice in Chains, Rage Against the Machine, Chopin, Deltron 3030, Adham Sheikh, Metallica, Veruca Salt, The Doughboys, Enya, The Herbaliser, Two Lone Swordsmen, Neil Young, Super Furry Animals, Brian Eno, James, Kool Keith, Ministry, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Petra Haden, Rammstein, Ennio Morricone, Salif Keita, Minotaur Shock, Prefuse 73, Magnetic Fields, Orange Juice, Hieroglyphics, Sneaker Pimps, Echo & The Bunnymen, cLOUDEAD, Marilyn Manson, Public Enemy, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses, Howie B, Prince, Blondie, Lush, Love and Rockets, Lo-Fidelity Allstars, Raezel, The Fiery Furnaces, Kate Bush, Yes, 2 Unlimited, Talvin Singh, Bill Laswell, Mr. Bungle, Nirvana, A Guy Called Gerald, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Saul Williams, sCISSOR sISTERS, King Tubby, Luciano, Peter Gabriel, Nina Simone, Cat Stevens, ooioo, Luke Vibert, New Order, The Beastie Boys, Nils Petter Molvaer, The Cars. . .

i'm so mad about this head-butt towel usurpation. i bet the people who sell it need use only one part at a time ("which part do i use when i have my head up my ass?"). bloody bastards. of course, the pants you can sit down in while standing up in have also been exploited. argh.

...and her diamond pituitary

A surf video. Brian Wilson's Smile and The Who Sell Out. Julian Cope's "Upwards at 45 degrees". A wayward, ice-spun candle. Our man Dave, irrespressible and a true 'are you feeling what I'm feeling?' kinda guy. Like kites, Steve, Dave and I (if only my first name was Lysergic, our initials would've rivalled even our 3 mushketeers days with Jordan) left Dave's rusted row boat and strolled speedy-quick to the GreenRoom. The tarmac was wetted by orange stars. A mist shrouded the forest in murk and magic as we passed and the angel was in static trip, pressing montreal close, wings backlit by construction lights. I couldn't care to ground others. To be there for others to push against, there was little to relate, because there was everything available.

we made the green room. merging with it, uncomfortable, damp and supreme. i went out to breathe through something other than others. and i saw the harp strings of the city, a latticework of time and semantic synaesthesia, like the silver chest-goo of determinacy in Donny Darko, except full and humming and backwards. prisms caught in the strands, of streaks of passing cars, in peoples' facial gymnastics, in a form of will that is normally found rarefied, but here was full and aligned, self-supporting and cohesive. i could not share this with anyone, so full of myself was i. sound was liquid, and i could focus on the slightest of attenuated detail. caught, like a plastic bag in a november tree, was the war of artistry. was i the sculptor or the sculpted? my hand hovering a crystal breadth from making the sodden surface of clay. the delicate ones on the dancefloor, too easily punished by truth. the sculpted I could become the master, a golem with a word in its skull. my abstaining hand whipped me around the material. I became the sculptor through the sculpture, by joining with it, with knuckle and nail, every pithy ounce of it I came to know through that width of weave that withheld the world.

lucid and dreaming, the night went on. us, the seekers. until we broke the clouds open the next day by climbing the mountain and upzipping the sky. the sun shone because of us.

Lucy

I've been looking for a new job for some time, so long, I don't know what I'd do if I get one.. I'm not fresh, or eager, and I'll likely just wave away the interview questions with disdain, if they ever even happen. In an attempt to counteract my encroaching apathy, I had a fake interview the otherday, with myself. In this encounter, I ran over every interview I could remember, in my mind, until I answer each with ease. Surprisingly fun. The one most wince-worthy was when I got called in to an interview as the press-release, media guy and kiddy-fun-man for a fledgling toy company a few years ago. At first it went swimmingly, the man and woman were both robotics geeks and we had a good immediate rapport. But then they called me on something I said: 'I have an inventive mind.' I guess they took this quite literally, and so asked me what I had invented. I had very limited examples at hand, so, thinking quickly (and obviously not thoroughly) told them about a towel I'd come up with. I call this the 'head-butt' towel. The concept is rather simple, but clicks with something everyone wonders about: when I last dried myself, which part of the towel did I use to dry my head and which my genitals? The towel would be huge, and split vertically into black and white. The black bit saying 'BUTT', the white 'HEAD'. This confession was met with absolute silence, other than the sound of me sucking on my teeth. The interview became awkward and basically terminated one slender minute later. I didn't get the job. I would have hired me on the spot. Like the release of all good ideas into the ideational stratosphere, someone caught it with their dream-net and made it happen. Even down to the colouration. Bastards.

@ @ @

Meanwhile, I'm at a 'stand and be counted' crux of my life. I have no job. My relationship with Isabel is over as of this past week, and I've been cut from Isabel's blog links. I'm down to my last $8. McGill has a collection agent after me. Telus is threatening me with social castration (not that that'll make much difference these days). My sister's going to Kenya for 2 months, but I haven't yet spoken to her. I haven't eaten since Friday and counting (other than a slice Steve-o boughted me yesterday). I feel like one of those white dried-out turds that noone'll touch, not even a sniff from the mangiest dog. Yet, I have something good to relate. Something that I'll take with me for life.

If Quebec ever does seperate, I think it should change it's name to Quba.

book to the future

i've withheld jotting down lists here for as long as i could: today i fold. here's my last year in book. approxiately (it's probably more like the last 2 years, just to sound more smarter and this is in no particular chronological order.)

*The Englishman's Boy - Guy Vanderhaeghe
The Final Crossing - Guy Vanderhaeghe
*The Crossing - Cormac McCarthy
*Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
*Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
*Foundation - Isaac Asimov
*Bone Doll's Twin - Lynn Flewelling
The Eye of the World - Robert Jordan
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Future of Architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright
*A Fire Upon the Deep (Zones of Thought) - Vernor Vinge
*The Untouchable - John Banville
House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski
The Boat Who Wouldn't Float - Farley Mowat
Embryos, Galaxies and Sentient Beings - Richard Grossinger
*The Poetics of Space - Gaston Bachelard
Harry Potter, 1-6 - J.K. Rulestheworld
Sea Stories (The Nigger of "Narcissus", Lord Jim and Typhoon) - Joseph Conrad
Ender's Game (again), Speaker for the Dead - Orson Scott Card
The Magus - John Fowles
*Justine (Alexandria Quartet) - Lawrence Durrell
*One River - Wade Davis
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
*Neuromancer (yet again) - William Gibson
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

* = I recommend
There's more, but my brain is little more than a tuborous root when it comes to book tracking.

@ @ @

I walk through the alleys a lot, they're great ways to circumnaviagate the commercial streets both quickly, get lost in thought and see some honest buildings... this particular tuesday, i saw some fake poo in the alley. I thought to myself 'that poo looks fake' and went to pick it up. Then I remembered where I was, and on closing on the poo, it now an armspan away, it didn't look as fake anymore. I thought to myself: ah, only in Montreal would they have fake looking real poo, and not real looking fake poo.

The Moron Terror

I saw a heartwarming thing this morning: a hair-stylist on a ciggie break was being given a lesson on how to squeegie windows by a squeegie kid. I stood directly behind them as I waited for the Duluth and St. Denis light to change. It was like one of those odd-couple Disney moments, like the Fox and the Hound catching beetles together. I also wondered if she intended to complete the trade-trade, invite him in, give him scissors and offer him one of her clients' heads. "This is Scab, he'll be your beautician today." Most righteous hair cut Cindy's client will ever get and from a guy who probably cuts his own hair by slamming it in car doors. The moral of this story is that I waited for a traffic light to change.

@ @ @

Of late, in my conversations with people, the topic thread of optimism/pessimism and its relation to fulfillment has been revived. I've always wondered about optimism: if a self-proclaimed optimist generally believes in favourable outcomes, does that inherently mean that they believe the world to be a shitty place? Therefore, would a pessimist know the world to be a happy-fun place, but expect the worst? Because both optimism and pessimism stray from some sort of consensus of reality, the expected consequence of the opto/pesso must also pass comment about their personal reality, no? Or is personal reality only an expression of expectation? In which case an opto is such when compared against the average norm.. DANG, I can never quite say this the way I mean. While I'm confused, I may as well bungle through another thought that pops up often... re: DNA... I'll need a new paragraph here. For the sake of argument, I won't consider animals sentient here (whilst I do consider them so in real life, here it'll just muddy the proposal)

* Humans are sentient beings (with some distribution error)...

* Sentience is determined by us, so therefore it is a soley human trait (necessary and sufficient)...

* Environmental reality determines the conditions for successful micro/macro recombinative recreation...

* Sentience, on some level, is our awareness of and prompts our reaction to, our environment (nothing new here)...

* Sentience is nought more than a focal point of biological processes, which are in turn founded upon (and yet mysteriously disobey) thermodynamic principles (again, those principles being terms we cocreated in forms in which we understand them, we need some remedial metaphysics classes badly)...

* Sentience, or human intelligence, is arguably the cutting edge of evolutionary biology (wherein we are learning to control our details through control of our inner/outer environments)...

* Consciousness is a necessary condition of sentience...

* Consciousness (what is it?) is indivisible, and the thin edge of the evolutionary wedge...

* How is consciousness experienced fluidly (in terms of temporal procession, what joins one moment to the next)? and is it? would it still be consciousness if it could be served episodically, like in Slaughterhouse 5?...

* Could consciousness be the thinnest of contemporary enviromental connections, made confluent by memory and co., but otherwise a connection of gossamer proportions?...

* So then, is consciousness just a playground structure for DNA in function, the proto-lab of all that determines successive reproduction? To exact the premise: consciousness both determines and is determined by DNA. All our sentient and executive biological functions serve ourselves MORE and GREATER than our Selfs (if that makes sense). Genetic memory, then, is responsible for everything and is determined in a spatial/temporal 'moment' of infinitely small porportions (right NOW... etc.). Therefore, is your consciousness a 'hologram' or 'impression' (for lack of better words) of your culminative biology as it exists momentarily? You are both more and less than you thought you were. Where this gets really interesting is how singular conscious beings interact: Reality, here, is a weapons-development and testing arena for micro-organic transcendence. Crazy. This may sound trite and obvious to some, but I think, if you wallow in the questions a bit, they get more fascinating than the potential answers. It's kinda nice to be able to think of consciousness as function for a change.

followup thoughts, again, hardly new stuff, but hey...

-is our concept of Time sufficient, or is it a biological trap?

-say we're 10% thought, 90% swampy, briny, tendon strung, walking ponds. don't all we want to be able to do is push that to 11% thought, to 12%+?

-this guy's got a lot to say: Embryos, Galaxies and Sentient Beings

-as we enslaved/coopted organelles to work cellularly and thereon to create multi-celled creatures (greater than the sum..), i believe humans have the desire to recapitulate the same on a macroscopic degree: the city as body, for example (body politic?). i also believe that this (dare I say evolutionary) desire is where we got all scrambled up about God. we are trying to create God, he is destination. in that regards, historical religion has made significant contributions towards approaching God: unifying and standardizing languages, code of law, commonality, allusions to personal transcendence etc., but all through allegory (so dangerous) rather than actual professed intent. if only we could unstick ourselves in mortal time, and see it all with different scope. like how a geologist or astrophysicist must be attempting to understand it all.

-what authority can we trust to shape our future?

-with such pressure to optimize ourselves, to get ever quicker (existential impatience), we miss out on slow processes. when was the last time you performed a pedestrian task trying to go as slowly and thoroughly as you could (brushing your teeth, a walk to the dep)? i've tried this a few times, and it's a surprisingly interesting device in reawakening experiential levels that may've been occluded or sent into exile (ie. great trick for coping with depression or burnout or desensitization). it is more than just smelling the roses though: The Art of Slow, like any art, is a practice, not an accomplishment. Your body becomes vessel again, and not constraint. I want to write a lot more about this.

FUNNY! as i was lummoxing through the above vagueries, a trio of aged Germans came up to ask me where DNA Records was! That works on so many levels... The only thing funnier than German sterotypes is Germans.

Isabel told me last week that I've been very arrogant as of late. I wish I'd replied with something like, "I'll tell you when I'm being arrogant." Instead I said "oh."

if i had a head made of wood (i estimate only a few more dedicated nights at the biftek), i'd carve out a bat-box. you'd have to speak quietly to me, or else i'd be forced to shoosh you, or spit an angry bat at you. "you remember what happened last time you yelled at me, Blinky got the runs and i oozed guano out of my nose for a half hour afterwards." i think i'd also have matching doorknobs for ears. that'd be nice.

this is just stupid, what am i saying? no-one respects people with doorknobs for ears. i have really little ears right now, so if i get any kind of ear-augmentation at all, i'd go for a pair of boobs. that'd be nicer. i'd probably get to about 7 or even 6 on the 'best Montreal weirdo' in next year's BOM. #7 Wood-headed, bat-filled, B-cups for ears guy.

my laptop takes a while to fire up its beefy innards, wheezing on the billows (generating enough heat to set up a popcorn maker, or hair-curler. i'm looking into the hardware). each time, my desktop'll display a picture of a bubble-base on a moon. it looks like a primary school science fair contribution, but it's actually from the NASA archives ("Billy, get those crayons out of your mouth"). you'd think they were beyond the 'artist's impression' stage of conjecture, but... regardless, every day the machine comes on, and i have a long 4 minutes of blinking shortcuts. during this, i count how many moonmen i can find. assuming there's two in the launched shuttle, how many moonmen can you see?

hangover, hangover, I call ____ over

some sentences, pause
words, like gaps in a smile
silences pop
the tiniest spaces are the tinnitus
in meaning's ear nest

language is sometimes a cowled coward
the inner battle of a lonely cod

silver and silver

does our hero suture
action to intent
seemlessly?
what tongue licks salt from the rocks,
but replaces apples to the crisping trees

too bad your brain
is grey
and decay
a glyptic hermit who'll never touch
daynight
only receive whispered report
from his friends, the crickets

we, the pond
enrapt in hushed bondage
shuffling gapward
do words taste?
do sentences really?

SHURIKEN-DO

steve, graham, julian and justine, their mates pete and suzie, and i all took a few metal petals to the head on saturday night. it was NINJA TUNE's 10th anniversary in Montreal held at metropolis, the principle venue hall for strolling minstrels and pop-royalty. we met with isabel and her roommate of yore, hillary, at the foufs, seeing them off to their The Stills show. as a group, we resonated with collective quivers of anticipation. the line-up: Blockhead (a hip-hoppier Bonobo. only comparison i can really make there) with DJ signify, KID KOALA, and Coldcut. now, some might scoff, but this represents a significant tour de force, in both market power and musical innovation, and maybe one of the most mentionable labels of the last baker's decade. and the ticket price reflected that (a veritable skinning), but it was well worth it. the place was about as packed as it could get, without being an Our Lady Piece of Fecal Vomit concert (die already, OLP) and excitement ran very high. Blockhead played a few of his tunes from Downtown Science and Music by Cavelight, with Signify scratching atop. it was a good set, and engaging. the incredible happened though when Kid Koala was released onto the stage: a wee man, he humbly adjusted his dj dais in the dark (he needed a bit of a vertical boost) and touched each of his four (!!!) turntables ritualistically. he said hello and then morphed into a blur of virtuoso. i think i blacked out, but i'll recount what i remember. alternating between cheeky tongue-on-teeth grins, licked fingers and the occasional giggle as picked up by his mic, he switched between collector's esoterica and notable pop songs of the last few years, playing THROUGH each one, layering rhythms to the point that each song was perverted into a massive, and weighty, merging pudding.. the sound fidelity was astonishing. he closed by attributing a song to his mum (mother's day and all), where he played Moonriver against itself (he may have even had 3 copies playing at one time, inserting a percussive kicker towards the end). the only other prop he had on stage was a towel (if he'd only bottle his sweat, i'd definitely make lemonade with it). best set i've ever seen, bar none. 'super-scratchuated' as graham aptly put it.
Coldcut came on, as only they could, they are the mainstream sound of ninja tune, basically maintaining status quo without straying too far from fomula. as steve said, how can you hope to follow the kid? it was flashy stuff. big ol' beats and a video formula that kept your eyes wide. highlights: whilst there was scratching galore, one trick i'd never seen live (though it sounds obvious enough) was the juggling of the image to each sound clip. for example, an angus young VS. jimmy hendrix guitar-battle (who HASN'T wondered about that one?), or Prince Charles popping and locking. Fun.
Then we went to the afterparty, courtesy of pete, who interns at the ninja. it was a funny little affair, astoundingly pretty girls, and a few of the bigwigs wondering around. i could only really manage an obsequious goggle at some of them, which is silly, as, to our credit, we don't usually get THAT overwhelmed by someone's notoriety. the music at the afterparty was a bit of a ninja preschool (like watching the bluebelts spar) and not that amazing (obviously, there wasn't 20,000 watts of sound anymore, more like 500). but we'd been wiped clean by the kid, who we spent most of our time scouting for. i found out yesterday that he didn't even make it in, the bouncers told him to go away (i think we took his armband), which if i was ninja chief, i'd have the bouncer's job for. even amon tobin had to hustle to get in. we definitely did not belong there, no matter how much at one point in our lives we wanted to. and now i can't frigging get Coldcut and Mr. Manuva's 'True Skool' out of my head (you know that spot where the likes of REM and Joan Osborne have mind-raped you for hours at a time, right in there). it'll be one of those ubiquitous summer songs, you can just tell.

@ @ @

To reiterate a question from a few months ago, what is it about girls and Sublime songs?

@ @ @

Something quite sad is happening, that I'm not really ready to talk about, but my roommates and their friends are all packing up to go back to their respective countries. I miss Miss Amy Baty so much already. I'll set up a shrine for them all when I get the piccies in.

@ @ @

I haven't forgotten about you thinkbeforedoing@hotmail.com, I'm just staggeringly stubborn when it comes to riddles like yours. A shared memory like Marc Guillet deserves as much deductive credence as possible. Though I must admit, I ALMOST give up.

@ @ @

If you do happen to read this, thank you very much Lynn (one of my favourite reads of the genre ever) for writing back. Very informative resources those, answering questions I didn't even know I had. Ta for that. If only Christopher Walken had been as considerate.

more diverse than your mother

I've always wanted to go up to a member of the clergy and ask to speak to his supervisor. I have no idea who I'd be introduced to.. Jesus, their founding CEO, took waaay early retirement; their current Press Secretary is a creepy German who looks like his kidneys migrated up to his eyelids; all the other guys in middle management seem to be caught up in some kinda pyramid scheme.. actually, the only reason I'd ask would be to see the guy's reaction. It's probably the best scam ever created: a life-long investment for a product that happens only when you're dead.. (I think the quarrel I'd present the super is that I'd want to sign on terms that allow the transmigration of soul BEFORE I died). I really do wonder who'd come from out back: "Hello, my son, I am ___" the A&W bear? Tom Cruise? George Lucas' neck fat?

@ @ @

For some time, I've been reminiscing over Diversity Fest, a 3-day island party Kim, Meghan and I went to last summer. No words really exist to capture it. It was on Texada Island, a tiny spit of land a 15 minute ferry from Powell River, just off the coast of mainland BC. Hippies and ravers and contortionists and all people tribal were there, and traipsed between 4 stages of continual music. My favourite label was represented by Adham Shaikh, a psy-tribal deej who made my feet bleed. Suns set to Fire Hurlers (particularly fire Marshal, a guy who lives in Cowichan Bay, and delivers great barn afterparties there, where he'll twirl fire atop a decommisioned missile launcher. Awesome.) Mornings were met by crashing waves and naked hippies swimming. Sleep was best had during the morning. AND THERE WAS A PIEROGI BAR!! The beats were fat, the jam-bands were hot, there were didjeridoo workshops, there were Jewish gypsy youths that played some mean folk, stoneds extras from Mad Max movies (walking up a path, I saw some guy wearing welding goggles standing abreast of my route. He wasn't paying any attention to me, only to what he was holding. He put a pipe up to his mouth, and then placed a magnifying glass in a device attached to the pipe, twiddled with a tuning bolt, and lit his pipe with the power of the sun. What a fucking hippie.), Meghan bartered for everything, food, clothes, beads etc., as she carried a particular commodity that proved very popular amongst the peddlars. Overall, it was an AMAZING time, and Kim and I have made a pact of sorts to attend again this summer. I implore anyone who is interested to look into going. You'll be so much cooler when it's over. Oh, and itchier.

Willy Power

This picture's been floating around the web for years, and I'm sure it's on every second blogsite. For the more impressionable amongst you, just remember, it's poor form to doubledip.

I am back in Montreal... met fresh off the plane by sweet Isabel. What a nice surprise. Now I retreat into a minor Island diatribe.

Every time I visit, I get the feeling that the Island is one large social experiment. Vancouver Island has the highest concentration of women I’ve ever seen. The ratio is something close to 2:1, w:m. The vainglorious would say this is a wonderful thing, as generally more women = more women. But the actuality is several degrees more complicated. Ladies’ associations are social forges, and admittance to them demands comportment to the rules. These rules are unwritten, of course, but they decree that you toe the line. It is crucial for this account to recognize that the vast majority is composed of white women, and they’ll drop the political correctness curtain on anyone who holds an unsavorary stage. This results in a social phenomenon of literal symbology: if you say X, you must mean X. This only helps protect ignorance, as issues are tactfully avoided, rather than mined for solutions or causality. Racial problems are rarely experienced and discussion of them is taboo. I believe this misdirected largess could be due to west coasters’ sensitivity towards the First Nations. Meanwhile, half the men there have been subjugated to living the life of social relic. For this reason, guys opt for the more recreational lifestyle: dirt biking, kite surfing, spitting, model car racing… the list is inexhaustible. This causes a mild sensation of social stagnancy and somehow contributes to an ambience of arrested maturity. Vancouver Island, as my sister and I recognize it, is a veritable Never-Never Land, though that has much to do with many other factors. Meanwhile I have a few examples of fauxmenism: 2 springs ago, an ex-friend of my sister shut me up on a day-trip to Saltspring Island with the risible statement that “guys do not get as much out of traveling as girls”. For some reason, she was blind to the realization that they might get something completely different out of it, something she couldn’t relate to (therefore, it was negligible). She spent the rest of the day nit-picking over any action I did: peeing outside, inspecting a newt, cross-examining me every time I spoke. Eventually I had to tell her off for superimposing her idiocy on me. Another story that made the editorials in the Victoria paper The Times Colonist was of a rally group called Take Back the Night. The idea was to have a march of solidarity for victims of rape and mugging. This candlelit procession was sent through the dodgier neighbourhoods and Beacon Hill Park (perhaps the most beautiful urban park I’ve ever witnessed) in a show of chanted support. However, when a man arrived to march alongside his wife and children he was booed away. They actually told him to leave! I could see how some victims would be sensitive to his presence, but their emotional response undermined the point of the whole gathering. That’s not feminism, that’s sexism.

My point is that while feminism has a very real purpose of design, it fails exactly where all other ideologies fail: when it stiffens into dogmatism. Then it is used without adherence to the greater goal, and mutates into self-interested promotion. Most instances of professed feminism that I witnessed were actually methods of controlling other women. Unless social equity is not the objective here, it is positive action that is needed: acts of tempered inclusion, promoted awareness, open discussion, acceptance, and self-inspection. A negative focus will only twist the point and belie any progress that may’ve otherwise been made. Doesn’t hating men give them a certain power over you? Are you going to hate them for that as well?

There is also many great things to having a greater proportion of girls: the annual homicide rate in Victoria is whopping great 1. There is a vast wealth of pretty girls. Gardens are wonderfully maintained. Fruit drips off the trees. Newspaper editorials are pretty superfickle and don't go plumb depths much deeper than heated debates over the rights of dogwalkers and the softwood lumber debacle. The food, though really expensive, is healthy and fresh. Even one of the streets is called Menzies.

Alright, I’m off to take a Midol. I’ll try and write more about my mum’s house and actual visit of Bex, Kim, Ben, Dave, Nicole and Jordan later, as they're all really deserving of a meaty description. Hopefully I’ll have some pictures of them to pace it.

Dung-can, V.I., B.C.

I saw a sign on a lamppost today: Emus for sale. This prompted the instantaneous revery of riding an emu to tam-tams. Of course, it wouldn't quite be that simple.. There'd be the obligatory cross-country roadtrip, where I'd have to rent a big enough car to seat the emu (though I have a feeling they fold up nicely), constant efforts to prevent the emu from fulfilling it's instinctual need to kick the shit out of people along the way. I say prevent, but I really mean curb. And then there'd be the absurdist rigamarole of fitting it for a saddle and harnesses. But just imagine the glory! Especially if I found the right coloured cape to wear. I wouldn't want to become one of those 'emu-people' though, they freak me out: how they think everything emu is cute, fridgemagnets and greeting cards of emus dressed as ballerinas and pirates. They just stay at home in their bathrobe, cooing to each one of their multiple emus about how everyone else is crazy. Tam-tams really would be the best place for an emu though. Emus and capes.

A Decade Ago... Time Capsule Time

HOLY FUCKKNOBS! While trying to sift through my mum's old computer for clippings to attach to a coverletter, I came across a pair of stories I wrote when I was 16. So much easier than typing up the new ones! Thank you, little me, but I wish you'd written a whole shwack of cover letters instead...

@ @ @

What I Did On My Holidays
"Pass the peas please, brother," Uncle Fred asked me above the noise of Christmas dinner. With one hand outstretched, and the other preventing his robe from dipping into the stuffing he looked at me and gave me a conspiratorial wink.
"O.K. Uncle Fred," I said, fulfilling the request while wondering to myself why my bald uncle both called me brother and winked at me every time we spoke.
"Please brother, I do not go by that name any more. My new name is One-Hand-Clapping."
"O.K. Uncle Fred," I repeated. Dismissing his kookiness, I turned my attention to my mother who was trying to feed Grandpa. This looked a little difficult because one was full of wine and laughing while the other was asleep and drooling.
"Grandpa Fred!" My mother giggled as she leaned over to shake him, tipping his prune juice over.
"Whut?" He wheezed as his crusty eyes opened and his wrinkled skin tried to form a face.
"Mum, can I trade you seats, Uncle Fred is really…"
"Freddy! Don’t interrupt, it’s rude!" My dad scolded, tossing a pea at my head. Smash, my little brother with hair still wet from his bath, copied him and whipped a potato at Uncle Fred. "Trevor," my dad called my brother by his given name, "don’t throw food."
Grandpa turned his milky gaze towards me, which was a feat in itself because he had cataracts on top of cataracts. Maybe he could smell me somehow. The only thing I thought of when I looked at Grandpa Fred, was that his head resembled a peanut.
"How old are you now Trevor? Nineteen is it?" He croaked to me.
"No, Grandpa. I’m eleven and a half and my name is Freddy." I answered.
"Whut?" He slobbered.
"Fre-ddy." I said slowly, putting both thumbs to my chest.
"…" He said, now asleep.
I changed my mind. A peanut would make better conversation.
Christmas this year had lost all its romance. It had started the evening before, on Christmas Eve. For some reason, Santa had neglected the milk and cookies laid out for him on the coffee table beside the hearth and made his way to the liquor cabinet instead. After lingering with his friend, Mr. Daniels, he stumbled to the tray of cookies, wrote a note saying "Meri Crismas, Love Satan" and fell over. There he slept on the rug, using the coffee table as a blanket, until Smash and I found him Christmas morning still clutching at our stockings. We played with our new toys on my father’s face for almost half an hour before my mother saw him and dragged him from his drunken slumber.
Now my father sat at the table staring at the peas with his party hat askew, nursing a nice little hangover. The table was arranged beautifully, the paper napkins were folded neatly and everything looked pristine. Everything except Smash’s corner. My four year old brother, having already tried putting a fork into his ear, was in the process of dismantling his napkin and scattering the confetti-like proceeds onto the dog who was lying beneath his seat. Flash, our seemingly-comatose dog, didn’t seem too concerned with the paper, as he was used to collecting dust for sometimes days straight.
Meanwhile, across from Smash, Uncle Fred was engaged in making paper cranes out of his cracker wrapper. Uncle Fred noticed my interest in his activities and gave me a wink. Without warning, Uncle Fred stood and cleared his throat.
"And now I’d like to recite some Haiku," he said and began.
"Whut?"
It was evident by everyone’s state of restlessness that dinner was over. Unanimously, we left the table and Uncle Fred’s poetry recital and assumed our positions around the Christmas tree. When my monk uncle sulkily joined us, the gifts were distributed, and soon there was a symphony of rips and tears. This was a climactic affair for my brother and I. When the wrapping paper settled and our pulses leveled off, we sat back and inspected our gifts.
Generally, I was not disappointed with my presents, although confused may be a good adjective concerning a few of them. I had received a construction set from my dad, a box of Havana cigars from Grandpa, sandals from my uncle, a sweater from my mum and wrapping paper from Smash. Smash, on the other hand, got everything he had asked for Christmas. Action figures and a snorkel mask, but what appealed to him most was the hammer he had received from Grandpa. He promptly took to hitting the book, "Buddhism For Beginners" that Uncle Fred had got him.
It was at the point when my uncle began meditating that my parents got into the fight.
"I don’t understand you George, I really don’t!" my mother said, holding up the lingerie my father had bought her. It looked more like a boot lace than anything that could worn for a practical reason.
"Ohmmmmmmmm."
"Whut?"
Thump. Thump. Thump.
My father didn’t answer, instead he was sheepishly inspecting a tie that I had bought him. Smash hadn’t given him anything, so I said it was from the both of us.
"Well what do you have to say? Even a salad shooter or pressure cooker would have been better than this!"
"Please brothers, be tranquil. Do not forget this is a religious festival."
"Does anyone hear that dripping sound?" My grandpa gargled.
"Well, what is it George? We have sex twice a week, is that not enough for you?" My mother said, ignoring my grandpa.
"Please brothers, not in front of the children!" Uncle Fred pleaded. It seemed that fighting was a little too much for his peaceful nature.
"No, never in front of the children. What kind of parents do you take us for you bald little yoga flier!" She yelled.
Thump.
"Now Marsha, you don’t have to drag my brother into this," my dad said, confiscating the hammer from Smash who was eyeing the Christmas tree lights.
Suddenly and without warning, Flash the dog, got up. He walked stiffly from the dining room up the steps into the living room. He stood there looking back at the dining table intently.
"I still hear it dripping," Grandpa said as urgently as one would take a stroll in the park.
Everyone had stopped and was watching the dining room. Slowly, the dining room ceiling started to bulge and the chandelier began to shake. Quicker than one can say "I can see my toilet from here," the ceiling fell in. A big cloud of plaster billowed out and water poured in from the bathroom above.
A strange sound, like somebody strangling an armful of guinea pigs to death, could be heard. Everyone looked around for the source of the odd noise. It was coming from Grandpa. He was laughing.
"Merry Christmas." He chuckled.
Through the haze of plaster and under a chaotic pile of damp timber, a cast iron bathtub could be seen now sitting on the dining room table. The dining room was ankle deep in water, which had been reduced to a trickle from the hole where the ceiling once was.
"Smash," my father growled dangerously, "did you happen to leave the bath running again?"
Smash gulped audibly, and ran and hid behind my shaking Grandpa.
My parents were in a state of open mouthed astonishment, Uncle Fred had fainted, and Grandpa was laughing hysterically. Taking a quivering Smash in one hand and Flash, who was drinking the bath water, in the other, I dragged them out of harm’s way. We watched TV and ate chocolates in the basement for the rest of the night, although at one point, Smash wanted to try out his snorkel mask in the dining room. In the end, Smash gave my father a nervous breakdown for Christmas.
I can’t wait till Easter.

@ @ @

Chastity

Rolling thunder rises into the clear salmon sky, but it is not a storm. The tepid breeze cannot sweep away this sound. The sound is of a countless number of drums beating in union, producing a low thrum that gently ascends above the still grass of the lilting plains. At the source of the drum beat, ebony figures whirl, stamping their feet into the warm, tanned earth. Crimson light from a fire paints each face. Each face shocked by flashing whites, glazed, entranced. This is the summoning of something indigenous in all of us, a primeval emotion native to the soul.
In a breath, like the swell of wind in the trees, voices raise their exhalations into the darkening skies. Choruses undulate to the throbbing drums. Beaded hair whips in turmoil as muscles pump, swaying beneath hidden southern constellations. This is the primitive voice of civilization’s cradle. This is human instinct immortalized.
The chant increases in intensity, as dancing silhouettes spin and weave flawlessly. An occasional white man, obviously a tourist or traveler, can be seen amongst the dashing forms, synergistic phantoms in synchrony. It is a passage to a higher state of awareness, a vessel to naturalization. Coursing like blood, the beat leaves none untouched. This is not a religion. It bears no prejudice.
The drums cease. The chants cease. The silence is deafening but the dancing forms flit unheeding, oblivious to the peace. Slowly, a solitary voice rises above the throng. A second voice, slightly lower in pitch, joins in to orchestrate a harmonized melody. This soulful wail fills the spicy air for a brief moment… and then expires. Silence again, this time to be punctured by the drums. As if feeding the dancers, the rhythm sends them into a frenzy. Eyes roll as feet rise and fall. The drums stop, and the singing once again can be heard furling in waves. Waves that bring the gathering towards the quietly encroaching shores of dawn.
As the golden light expands and the fingers of heat grip the land, the singing wavers and the dancers begin to drift from the popping embers of the fire. Relaxed smiles grace the features of all as the congregation begins to dissipate. The odd individual can be seen drinking from a glass bottle. Obviously refreshed by this elixir, the dancers hold the bottles at arms length, giving the impression that they carry something of religious magnitude. The drugged atmosphere, that briefly possessed and elevated the spirits of all, corrodes as reality once again regains tenure of the plains.
The next commercial glorifies the driving of a new Japanese car.

people occasionally accuse me of being a little non sequitur. well, to them i say 'chicken and mushroom pie'.

life after Soduku/the anguish of a dull pencil nib

I just walked past a small, moderately unattended child trying to unscrew the side-cap of a fire hydrant, and I had to imagine him succeeding. It was a comic thought a good ten seconds before becoming not-comic. I'm glad it didn't happen, but it's still early in the day and he looked commited. I also can't pretend I haven't wanted to do the same.

I've got a few hours to hack about before Air Canada scares me shitless once again, and I find I only think in fragments on travel days.. so here's an addendum to a January post.

You know you're in Quebec when...

• you keep loose bricks in your living room. bricks are really handy implements, they are also extremely 'guy': looking after bricks is a true man-skill. but having construction material at hand in the living room is pretty Queeb in general. Examples: 1) tables. you can use bricks to make a table, but you can't use tables to make a brick (unless those tables are made of really small bricks). 2) bookmarks 3) art... the list is exhausted only by the imagination and whether or not the brick is within armsreach.
• there are cigarette burns on the roof of your car. this would be disconcerting if it were truly your car.
• a chain-gang of 4-year-olds will sometimes amble by led by the most patient/stoned guardian ever. this is gratuitously adorable and never loses its charm.
• you eventually DO meet a person called Guilhomme in Carre St Louis.
• someone tells you a dog is about to piss on your bag as the dog is sauntering away. you shrug.
• the tightest store security is found in the dollar store.
• ladies all dye their hair run-lola-red on their 60th birthday. they're hip, because they chain-smoke and drink more heavily than the sterotypical stepdad, but they still find time to make being their neighbour hellish.
• foufounes electrique. um, yeah...
• once in a while, you see someone riding your bike. it's never the same person twice.
• after years of pondering, you still can't see how HydroQuebec can justify a rate-hike and yet burn money in mid-winter outdoor festivals.
• if your name is Tony K, you will change your stage-name to Tony Pepsi for broader cultural appeal.
• someone breaks down the gate to your backyard to salvage beer bottles.
• you've pretended not to watch the principle members of Arcade Fire polish off a poutine.
• you've subletted your apartment to the gram-o-gram dude.
• you either have a pony-tail, or are growing it back.

ok then.

is there an opposite of a zephyr?

i hope there is, or else i'm gonna be tacking into the wind. tomorrow i'm blowing westerly for a fortnight spent with my mum and bex. i figure i won't know how much i've missed them until i see them again. also, it's louis the dog time!! last time i went back, the mutt sniffed around me pretty suspiciously, and we didn't click proper until he remembered i was the loose-leasher. so, i'm going to get on the horn and see if i can see you linz, lori and j&n, if you guys are reading this.. let's spend a bender!! in cow bay, if you're up for it?!! (there probably won't be too many days for me to go astray).for those who've never visited, i'll try and convey some over-worded codswallop to capture the cow at tides both high and low. also, i'll try and coopt my sister's digicam and set up something really exciting, such as pictures only a select few'll ever really care about..

Bounty Hunt

It's been quite some time since I've had a worst enemy. Now I think I have two at the same time, and they fit snugly within this extended woman-bashing vacation I'm on: Carrie Bradshaw and that accursed Miranda. Bring me their scalps! Yes, I've watched quite a few Sex & The City episodes, mostly out of the hope of seeing the one where Miranda gets her head caught in a rusty bear-trap. Due to an HBO leak, I actually know the entire plot of this episode: Carrie finds this very selfish of Miranda, as she believes that this affects her relationship with men (the twist is, she doesn't know that having a hemorrhaging red-headed friend is a GOOD thing, as it means having red-hair is a little more normal). While Carrie is pouting and trying to come up with a plot motif, Charlotte tries everything she can think of to help release Miranda. This involves taking off her shirt and energetically shooing away the dogs that are chewing on Miranda's ugly. It doesn't help much, so she joins a convent and becomes a naughty nun. There's also some sort of sidestory here about how Samantha is a raging whore: she finds out she is riddled with an air-borne STD called gonodiarrhea. She gets all smug about it, and thinks about trying to help Miranda, but takes her shoes instead. Mr. Big comes along to save the day by skinning chubby Miranda and commissioning a tailor to make a dress out of her. He gives the dress to Carrie, who wears it to a high-school prom and wins prom-queen. BUT IT'S A PRANK!! When she goes up to accept the tiara, instead she gets pigs-blood dumped on her! Carrie loses it and uses her nose to slay every last kid there. Season Finale.

I hereby hold the cast and crew of Sex & the City accountable for every social ill there is: if you look close enough, the themes are only holding women down. They preach conformity, dependence on men (while holding them in objective disdain) and rampant self-obsession. The name for this is Fauxmenism. I would know, as I'm a feminist (I dreamt about marrying Bjork last night, how feminist is that!?)

I'll give my Skeletor action figure to anyone who brings me their scalps. Or earlobes or something. I'm not picky.

Existential Aspirin

Nothing like a voice from the wilderness to jolt you back. Ta, Mr. Rogering Me.. I feel my return service would be to show just how right you are (extrapolating, if you will). Spit or swallow..

Assuming I don't know you, you've got a quick finger on a slow pulse. I've tried to keep this thing apersonal, and by that I mean less a personal op-ed experience and more a medium for others' interpretation; something a reader'll relate to without having to feel they're indulging me. But, considering words are just burps of metabolized experience, gassy thoughts, maybe it follows that I'm just covering my mouth at some attempt at passing them politely. You're right, I am not frank. It's a perennial worry that this thoroughly overlaps my private life, my interaction with people I care about, and those I'd like to care about me. I'd like to rejoinder a big ol' "But who is?", but that's beside the point.. I often do feel like I'm glancing off the meat of the matter, and never driving through to the bone. It might be coz I'm lazy, or coz I'm trying to stay comfortable, or it may simply be something I don't want to do.. I'm actually not sure the reason, a little from each column methinks.

Anyway, Mr Rogering Me, thanks for your considerate posts. I agree with you on most of them: Isabel IS freaking hot, I have a lot of loog rattling around etc.. However, I think you did misinterpret what was a sloppy or less than eloquent post: discrimination. In my understanding, 'discrimination' has come to be an indicator of gross social injustice. Though I feel, in etymological terms, it is a misnomer. I feel the original meaning has been perverted to indicate almost the opposite: if there was a sliding scale of discrimination, firing a black-guy for being black is actually not as 'full' an act of discrimination as noticing that he doesn't meet his deadlines (for example). In which case, discrimination IS needed, and successfully used, when his sloppy work ethic isn't up to office standards. We discriminate between traffic signals and come-ons at bars, of trends and hygiene habits.. arguably, the greater we discriminate, the greater our well-being. Meanwhile, ethnic slurs (best example I can find) are actually an act of 'poor' discrimination.. or indiscrimination. Of course, this is some kind of revival of ancient Greek thought, a society that quite happily prospered from slave labour.. Tell me if I've reiterated myself uselessly here for missing the thrust of your point..

@ @ @

PENETRATION, THE STATE OF EMERGENCY and CSL as a state of MIND

steve and i, after a swell sunday afternoon with his grandparents, went to an empty carre st louis. drank a drink, and tried to get our party bearings. they recently opened ballroom, at $15 (on a sunday? because of dj unknown??) was a no-go.. if they need ballroom, they can keep it. i wasn't there to dance around people's egos like they were a tiki-god. we trod up to blizzarts, that place was another easter ego hunt, full of queen shebas and the guys trying to outlame each other in front of them. so we tried ballroom again (it was 11.30, and we had some dance we needed to slap down) as there must've been a mistake. no, still $15. so we went into the so-called Easter of Doom at Saphyr. perfect!!!! it was goth-metal techno night. we joined the vampires with beers and red bull. so much red bull, in fact, that we opted to leave by unordinary means: over the rooftops. the following 2 hours, we hopped on various roofs, exploring and climbing (my light is low from a cold, so most of it was steve pulling spidey-stunts). i've been needing to get on the proverbial roof for a while, so this is our mutual mission: it's an act of reclamation. our city.

(i had a brief epiphany in Saphyr! it's been bothering me for years: why are there always shells in a girl's bathroom? i think i know. considering they spend a lot of time in there, perhaps it's because girls see it as one of the few places they can let down their defenses? it's the statement: 'you can take your shell off here'. maybe the shells are among the few to hold witness to the raw, tender beneath?

or maybe it's just another lame bullshit nicecessity that girls are full of...)

VITRIOL

So I'm now among the nameless? I'm not to be considered? What catch nets are there for a guy when he flaps past the trapeze? Girls can curl up in a ball of selfish, hit you in the spots they know are tender and receive all the support they need. They believe your silence a cruelty, a sign of contentedness, a hummed satisfaction. They never consider it to be the only answer that can be given. In fact, to me, any other response seems cruel and basted in irony. Of course, it may just be further avoidance of consequence.

Silence. April is a cruel, cruel month. This post marks a pause, and I wouldn't have written at all save for the fear that the post below would ring on. In silence. Funny how newly sprung life can be so heedless to pain. Mean innocence, tactless and unassuming, a decorous segment of the abstract circle where the flowers need your bone marrow to spring from, root tendrils worm through the ossiferous cavities, sucking on salt water and clotted nutrient. Their coloured scent is your new breath, and your sweet panic'll only attract a stingier bee.

Sometimes I wish I had an office that an underling/untermensch'd walk into whenever I buzzed his collar. One day, I'd buzz him in and declare 'I'm going to be abroad for a month'. Next day, when the gimp came in to raid my office for stationary, I'd be wearing pumps and a dress.

Though I suppose I'd have to take a wage-cut.

Snowy/Clarence

Fear it

I'm going to go that one step further into the delusional, staggeringly self-obsessive room of blog and talk about a dream I had last night. Skip this if you can't help imagining yourself karate-chopping yourself into unconsciousness everytime someone starts talking about the AMAZING dream they had, but pretty much make up on the spot for you:
They say carrots help with your nightvision, and it took a few bumps for me to realize it may've been a bit misleading (I read somewhere it was propaganda during WW2 to prevent the Axis from knowing the Enigma code had been cracked..). But what if they mean Visions at Night. Like, seeing your totem spirit and shit. I ate a half-bucket of carrot four or so hours before going to sleep, and then everything went all Jim Morrison on me.

It started off waking up in a run-down pool changing room. The room turned out to be part of this whole, Goonies-like warren of pools and bathing complex. There was an ancient, near Mesopotamian feel about it all. In my lonely, ceramic-gazing wanderings, I finally came across a small group of people in the biggest room yet, who claimed to've woke up in the same place and came to this biodomey room. Tropical plants grew towards a small slant of sunlight that crept through the impossibly high, vaulted ceiling. The rays were visible, and dusty. The people figured they'd been kidnapped and were on some kind of reality show, as there were named envelopes with stipulated errands inside. So the four of us split up and ran our errands, sometimes in a team, sometimes vying, and nothing seemed to make overall sense. There was treasure and diving competitions, uncovering tunnels and shipwrecks, near-drowning and near-saving, joy and scare. But each time we came back to the dome, there were more envelopes waiting. It turned out one of the people were in on the whole thing, but more as a lifeguard than as an oppressor. Somehow, the guy, though a pleasant chap on the whole, knocked me out. And I woke up outside with something licking my face. It was a weird ferret-cat. I called it Snowy (though it's real name was Clarence) and quickly discovered it was a magic ferret. It considerately caught me lizards to eat and attacked things I found threatening. Next thing I knew, I was riding a ferret ('impossible!' you cry? Remember, this was an exceptionally strong, magical ferret-cat) around the country side, like some kinda wacked out Don Quixote. We foiled all sorts of dep robberies and evil warlock dudes, and everytime we met a doubter or hot babe, I could call Snowy/Clarence, and he would hop onto my shoulder and act cute and normal. And so on, and so forth until my EPIC dream ended. So, it seems my totem spirit is a mighty ferret-cat. I don't know if I'm disappointed or not. But I'm gonna do more carrots soon to get a second opinion.

This guy's one funny elitist wacko. The post about the last Star Wars film is great, and the '8 year-olds, dude' is from the one about comic book innuendos.

ps. i was thinking about shaving my head. care to comment or talk some sense into/out of me?

da bell! DA BELLS!!

Just point-form today:
- my socks came out of the dryer this morning already in pairs!!?!
- our upstairs neighbour stomped all over her apartment last night like a 5-year-old throwing a tantrum/pretending to be a majorette. we don't know why. for some reason, it gave me an adrenalin rush. and it wasn't solely because i ran upstairs, rang the doorbell and kicked her in the groin when she opened the door, in my mind. i remembered a Daily Planet show i'd seen 8 months ago about infrasonic sound and standing, naturally occuring waves prompting a fight/flight reflex in humans. it's something i'd like to mimic in electronic music. though, because the limen for human hearing is 20 - 20,000 Hz, these sounds fall outside of our perceptive range. i'm guessing they resonate in our chest and sinus cavities, influencing our naked resonance: eyeballs at 18 cycles a second, for example. but you can mimic this by generating two audible tones that only differ by 1 - 19 cycles (?), the cpm will hit you: voila, binaural tone. dropping back a few sentences here, on the DP show i saw, Natasha Stillwell cruised around to notoriously spooky spots in the UK with an infrasonic gun, and saw that most places, a standing wave, either created by draft or traffic disturbances or even an echoing heatbeat (which i thought was slightly different, but still interesting), could be found. so, next time you're either freakin' or freaking, think of the sound you can't hear. the long and short of this pointer is, my neighbour is a disturbed, spooky, weird, emaciated, scaly, vinegary, infected, afflicted, imbalanced, bullying, cantankerous, anal-polyp popping nuisance, and i'll be glad to be rid of her superimposing all her problems on cool people like us.
p.s. this site popped up when scouring for add'l info. funny. e.g.: http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Anti-Karate_20_22Custard_22_20Armor#1144121389
- i'm on day 3 of a mean, mean headache. i wish there was a hatchet in my head i could point at and say 'oh that's why'. but no. only pain. limped along Mont-Royal last night like a hunchback, groaning and clutching my forehead, wincing at headlight and pharmaprix glows alike.

The Courtiers of King Louis

It turns out Guilhomme's real name is Jaques. Apparently he's the King. He came over and yelled at us for a bit on Thursday. We were 'saved' by a regular, who requested a cigarette. Steve said he knew the man.. and asked him the whereabouts of his guitar. Here's a recollected transcription:
CSL dude: 'My axe is in the shop. I'm not normally a man to ask for cigarettes..'
Us: 'The shop? It's getting fixed?'
CSL dude: 'No, the pawn shop. I almost lost it last week as I didn't pay the man.'
Us: 'Do you need a light? What's your name?'
CSL dude: 'Yeah. People around here call me 'the Wolf'. There's too many Marks, you see. Like 5. Some of them also play guitar. It's to avoid confusion, like, 'Mark, heard you been tapping my blonde' 'No man, not me. You ask Mark about it?''
Us: 'Ok. So you're the Wolf?'
The Wolf: 'This guy's a Mark too.'
Mark 2: 'I'm actually Mark 3. Hey, what goes "Mark! Mark, Mark! Mark!"?'
Us: 'Er..'
Mark 2: 'A dog with a hare-lip!!' HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The Wolf: 'He plays the axe too.'
Us: 'The disfigured dog?'
The Wolf: 'Huh?'

@ @ @

LINDZ! AHOY!! I think Jaques is your Billy Ray Cyrus guy. The fountain isn't yet flowing, so no-one's bathing, but I'm sure Jaques'll be among the first. He did point at it and wink at me once or twice, so I'm sure he has designs. Also, the triker is out, we saw him the first time in a year on Thursday. He looks the same. He didn't have the squirrel-feeder on the trike's back, so I wonder if he's given up on that particular hobby. Last August, there was a new guy, who we haven't seen for a while. We nicknamed him Bum-Fu, as he sometimes weilded numchucks and loved to work out, doing chin-ups on trees. He's probably the least stable of anyone, so I hope he makes it to the park this year. If I remember correctly, he has the tattoo '151' on his forehead, which is a graffiti code dotted around that park. Perhaps he's the rightful claimant to the throne? Hope there's no titular Battle-Royale..