i like words. alot. so much so, i have this seemingly hardwired editing device that slows down my spoken communication to the degree that on most first meetings, people treat me like a hatchet head-wound surviver. not that they ever cease to, come to think of it, but i retreat from my point...
you know how some utterance or interjection'll pop up, and you say to yourself "self, that's a powerful/swaggery/fluffy/ballsy/dynamite word. start using it!" i know i have: words or phrases like, "dynamite" or "back asswards".. and then you forget about them, and you never actually get to incorporate them, but catch yourself saying "awesome" or "lovely" a lot instead. well i adopted a word that was a surprise until i used it incessantly this past weekend whilst rapidly atrophying in front of a computer game (with my lady-love!) it is the word "plum". as in, "that would be a plum spot to found a city, as it commands a strategic block to the growth of those fucking Greeks". actually, i don't think i had a point to even retreat from. just pointing out one of those phenomena, like waking up with David Bowie's Labyrinth song inexplicably sticking out of your head like the aforementioned hatchet:
You remind me of the babyWhat baby? baby with the powerWhat power? power of voodooWho do? you doDo what? remind me of the babyI saw my baby, crying hard as babe could cryWhat could I doMy babys love had goneAnd left my baby blueNobody knewWhat kind of magic spell to useSlime and snailsOr puppy dogs tailsThunder or lightningThen baby saidDance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Put that baby spell on meJump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Put that magic jump on meSlap that baby, make him freeI saw my baby, trying hard as babe could tryWhat could I doMy babys fun had goneAnd left my baby blueNobody knewWhat kind of magic spell to useSlime and snailsOr puppy dogs tailsThunder or lightningThen baby saidDance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Put that baby spell on meJump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Put that magic jump on meSlap that baby, make him freeDance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Put that baby spell on me (ooh)You remind me of the babyWhat baby? the baby with the powerWhat power? power of voodooWho do? you doDo what? remind me of the babyDance magic, dance, ooh ooh oohDance magic, dance magic, ooh ooh oohDance magicWhat kind of magic spell to useSlime and snailsOr puppy dog tailsThunder or lightningSomething frighteningDance magic, danceDance magic, dancePut that baby spell on meJump magic, jumpJump magic, jumpPut that magic jump on meSlap that baby make him freeDance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Jump magic, jump (jump magic, jump)Jump magic, jumpPut that magic jump on meSlap that babyDance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magicSlap that slap that baby make him freeDance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)Dance magic, dance (dance magic, dance)
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Thursday, February 22, 2007
I know...
...a young lady who has too much heart. occasionally it tries to compensate for its volume by revving to 200 bpm. she has had three surgeries so far. this has given her a very fatalistic outlook and a wise and surefooted countenance for her age. she has told me some stories that have left me incredulous, but believing.
...a young man who has just found his love. he is quiet and compassionate and a meticulous eye for detail. he is one of the funniest, self-deprecating people i know. he's always there to help and my family is very fond of him. he is a volunteer fire-fighter and full-time cabinet maker. he can be counted on.
...a lady who just hired a private eye to find her husband. she's a fiery person who seems to be tackling with all angles of her life at once. she is sweet and brave and could out-talk a beehive. she's just moving into a new phase of her life, and i will be there to help secure it. she has helped me to want more of and for myself.
...a young man who's leaving to china in a week. he is teaching english there. he is among my closest of friends, and is so humble that i choke on the words when i try to tell him. he is someone who will allow you to do something and be someone marvelous in front of. however, i believe that it is he who most deserves to experience this feeling he evokes in others. he is a stunning conversationalist, and has a knack of helping people feel comfortable that borders on the uncanny. he's always helped me out of my pinches which is something he's never really asked for in return. i fear i will miss him immensely, but am happy he's commited to the adventure.
...a young lady who i can relate to on every level. she is bright and witty and is the only person i know who can find the exact strings to pull, or play, in order to help pick me up. she suffers from severe, and i think, undue bouts of self-doubt, if only because she previews each of her actions before pursuing them. i believe she mistakes this extreme form of honour as a lack of competence. she is deeply considerate and the best gift-giver that i've ever crossed paths with. she might be the first person i'd met who searches for a way for everyone to be 'equal'. i don't really know how to qualify this. by some grace of time, in between the last two times i'd seen her, she became a woman. she is my sister.
...more people than this...
...a young man who has just found his love. he is quiet and compassionate and a meticulous eye for detail. he is one of the funniest, self-deprecating people i know. he's always there to help and my family is very fond of him. he is a volunteer fire-fighter and full-time cabinet maker. he can be counted on.
...a lady who just hired a private eye to find her husband. she's a fiery person who seems to be tackling with all angles of her life at once. she is sweet and brave and could out-talk a beehive. she's just moving into a new phase of her life, and i will be there to help secure it. she has helped me to want more of and for myself.
...a young man who's leaving to china in a week. he is teaching english there. he is among my closest of friends, and is so humble that i choke on the words when i try to tell him. he is someone who will allow you to do something and be someone marvelous in front of. however, i believe that it is he who most deserves to experience this feeling he evokes in others. he is a stunning conversationalist, and has a knack of helping people feel comfortable that borders on the uncanny. he's always helped me out of my pinches which is something he's never really asked for in return. i fear i will miss him immensely, but am happy he's commited to the adventure.
...a young lady who i can relate to on every level. she is bright and witty and is the only person i know who can find the exact strings to pull, or play, in order to help pick me up. she suffers from severe, and i think, undue bouts of self-doubt, if only because she previews each of her actions before pursuing them. i believe she mistakes this extreme form of honour as a lack of competence. she is deeply considerate and the best gift-giver that i've ever crossed paths with. she might be the first person i'd met who searches for a way for everyone to be 'equal'. i don't really know how to qualify this. by some grace of time, in between the last two times i'd seen her, she became a woman. she is my sister.
...more people than this...
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Casting Buoys - Not Pattern Recognition
Hello. I've come here today to acknowledge my self over a period of time - and how obscured it's been by itself. This might be my first truly honest post. Could you spend a moment to bear witness to this please? I'm going to go back to when I left Montreal in an attempt to gain perspective, 3 years ago next month. I was floundering around for a job that I could sustain myself with in the big M. Part time work at The World Beat Cafe here, busboy on Crescent there (fired for being insubordinate), worked at VICE Magazine (left because I was depressed - same reason I left McGill), volunteered as an editor at the Jane Goodall Society... everything seemed so slippery, and I could not fully immerse myself. There was no mentorship to be found anywhere, and I discovered just how shy I was to ask for guidance or assistance. I felt very transparent, and so any advice anyone gave HURT as opposed to HEALED. I wanted to write, and so did so for the odd publication (dos and don'ts and CD reviews for VICE (once), briefs for the Hour (once) and the Mirror (once), Heads Magazine (once) - who asked me to become their music editor, the stoners). But again, nothing doing. No full-time work to be had. My longterm tempestuous relationship with someone I still think is wonderful, shook itself to a ruin in its own foundations. I had to go... My mum offered me sanctuary on Vancouver Island, so I took it. I was 24 when I left.
I lived on my sister's floor in Victoria while I looked for a job and apartment. I found the apartment before the job (though I had bumped into my future employer and friend the 2nd night in Vic down at a local pub). It was in the form of a small boat down at Fisherman's Wharf. It was in mangy condition, so I cleaned it out and then took the prow cabin for a bed. At night, I read by hurricane lantern, listened to a few CDs I'd found at the Salvation Army, and made necklaces out of beads. The seals would come and thump the side of the boat if I was too loud. Because the Victorian summer is near meditteranean in fullness, I'd often just sit outside on the deck, smoke a joint and watch the city lights across the harbour. Beside the wharf was a giant, award-winning set of condominiums called Shoal Point. It looked like a cruise ship run aground. And this made me think of vessels and houses and of how much hidden information was stored into a structure. I basically lived in a watery trailer park for the summer. During the day, I'd get up and cycle to meet Dave and Shaun and lay hardwood floor. I did this until the late fall. I joined a comedy troupe, and we put on a small 5 person skit-based play at Lucky Bar. I moved into an apartment for 2 months, where I got scammed out of my damage deposit (it had been a rolling lease for nearly 15 years) upon leaving. I moved again, this time up to my mother's.
I needed something substantial, so enrolled in a boat-building course up at Schwartz Bay. I was naive about it, and realized tha it was more of an industry prepper for large-scale operations. There was no real opportunity to join any type of firm other than mass-production or maintenance, and I'd been looking for some type of artisanry. Discouraged, I applied at a few mum & pop builders, and then took up with my mum's friend Devon, a kiwi man's-man who went on horseback treks on the weekend. His line of work was also hardwood installation. I lived in a large suite above my mum's small country house, with a sweeping lookout on Cowichan Bay. I was lost for friends, but took up with whoever I could. One old sod was a man called James Brown. He'd been a millionaire 3 times in his life, the last liquidation he'd put into a 1906 fish packing boat called the Shimoget (sp?). It was to be the death of him, as he keeled over his dory one night coming back from the pub. I don't know if anyone ever found the poor soul's body, but by the tide's reckoning, we would've likely been the first beach he'd've washed up on.
After a few barn raves here and music fests there, I tired of life and I staled on the idea of manual labour where I was not given a chance to manage or learn as quickly as I generally need to. After flirting with the idea of starting a treehouse building company, I made up my mind to return to Montreal. I'd found myself lonely and choked by Island life. But the stars.. oh, the stars. On the odd time, they were so vivid, you could see the planet and the solar system as if it were on the rim of the galaxy (funny this, but 'galaxy' literally translates to Milky Way). The spirals would retreat from sight, giving the impression of the Earth being on the edge of a banded torus.
I arrived back in Montreal, enrolled back in McGill, and met up with my old friends. Steve and Amy graciously received me at their house for a few weeks, and I encountered such nervous situations with my ex. She and I still haven't truly met each other since, but I generally feel a level of warmth and companionship laden familiarity whenever we are together that seems to've persisted through the years we hadn't spoken. I met a girl called Isabel, and we courted. Next thing I knew, we were together and spent much time together. Around then, I had a wicked idea for a book (still do...) and started ostensibly to write it. I started, and then stalled it and then wrote a few short stories, and kept updating my blog (which changed from attempts at humourous overlapping narratives I consider to be 'factasy', to this type of entry...) Eventually, I somehow stretched away from my original intentions to move back here. I paled and bailed, and eventually gave up my school. I couldn't maintain a focus in Philosophy, there was no application. No context. I needed innovation. I yearned for something creative.
One day, last spring, I told Isabel I wasn't in love with her. She wanted more from me, and I couldn't find a way to give it without compromising too much. She was convinced that she was going crazy, getting possessive, so I had to tell her it wasn't just her. I mourned us. And tried to stay her friend. This eventually became impossible. She'd said that she wished I was the man she could've been with for her life. This later mutated to her stating that I'd not been the man she thought I was. Maybe both were true, maybe neither, either way, I wasn't quite sure what man she was talking about. I didn't feel I'd yet become one. By trying not to have us forsake the 9 months we'd been together, I hadn't let her vent her dismay. I dearly wish I'd handled that better. I later found out, she'd considered marriage and children all along. I was ashamed that we hadn't spoken about it while together.
On the other footing, I found liberty in my step. I opened up to new people and felt more confident by myself. Everything had freshened, and I got a job renovating a friend's apartments. I later met a girl who worked at Biftek, and we clicked like magnets. She went away to Portugal for August and broke up with me. Like the reactionary I was, I drooped and worried. I forgot about my own adventure. She returned, for me to discover that something horrendous had happened. We got back together, but my social life got gutted. My aspirations fluxed to having no view of the future (I can imagine biomechanically interfaced exoskeletons, but not the foresight to purchase toothpaste). Continue this avenue for the last 5 months, where I've lost the confidence to meet new people, present myself, write with flourish, engage systems without being neurotically shy etc. and you have me now.
The last few weeks I have: Watched the entire 1st season of Rome. This is easily the best mini-series I've ever encountered (the production details actually put you right in the thick of the 1st century, nothing has been overlooked). The politics, the social view of sex and ritual, the fighting, the infrastructure, the corruption, the slavery... it's absolutely incredible. Both brutish and refined.
Read much about landscape architecture. From what I can detail, this is a predominantly WHITE occupation. And by that I mean rich and self-congratulatory. The views seem stuck in ideas of The Picturesque and modernist function, and only a few firms break the dogmatism and present viable and beautiful risks. The discipline overlaps many categories, and feeds from architecture, urban planning, horticulture, sustainable/green innovation, even sculpture and hydrostatics. I like it alot, if only because I have the skills of a dreamer (and a jack-of-all-trades approach). I believe that we as humans influence the way our environment influences us. And by this, we each have a responsibilty to nurture nature. It should not be a pastime of the wealthy, nor that of the wealthy's counterpart, politics. We need to put the mentalism back into our environs. And by 'our', I mean as inclusively as possible.
Er, that's it for now. The statement that I want to resound is that I am up on my feet and ready to make failure and success in equal measure, and thus learn and strive. I need a community, rolemodels and I need to be challenged. I also badly need a job.
I lived on my sister's floor in Victoria while I looked for a job and apartment. I found the apartment before the job (though I had bumped into my future employer and friend the 2nd night in Vic down at a local pub). It was in the form of a small boat down at Fisherman's Wharf. It was in mangy condition, so I cleaned it out and then took the prow cabin for a bed. At night, I read by hurricane lantern, listened to a few CDs I'd found at the Salvation Army, and made necklaces out of beads. The seals would come and thump the side of the boat if I was too loud. Because the Victorian summer is near meditteranean in fullness, I'd often just sit outside on the deck, smoke a joint and watch the city lights across the harbour. Beside the wharf was a giant, award-winning set of condominiums called Shoal Point. It looked like a cruise ship run aground. And this made me think of vessels and houses and of how much hidden information was stored into a structure. I basically lived in a watery trailer park for the summer. During the day, I'd get up and cycle to meet Dave and Shaun and lay hardwood floor. I did this until the late fall. I joined a comedy troupe, and we put on a small 5 person skit-based play at Lucky Bar. I moved into an apartment for 2 months, where I got scammed out of my damage deposit (it had been a rolling lease for nearly 15 years) upon leaving. I moved again, this time up to my mother's.
I needed something substantial, so enrolled in a boat-building course up at Schwartz Bay. I was naive about it, and realized tha it was more of an industry prepper for large-scale operations. There was no real opportunity to join any type of firm other than mass-production or maintenance, and I'd been looking for some type of artisanry. Discouraged, I applied at a few mum & pop builders, and then took up with my mum's friend Devon, a kiwi man's-man who went on horseback treks on the weekend. His line of work was also hardwood installation. I lived in a large suite above my mum's small country house, with a sweeping lookout on Cowichan Bay. I was lost for friends, but took up with whoever I could. One old sod was a man called James Brown. He'd been a millionaire 3 times in his life, the last liquidation he'd put into a 1906 fish packing boat called the Shimoget (sp?). It was to be the death of him, as he keeled over his dory one night coming back from the pub. I don't know if anyone ever found the poor soul's body, but by the tide's reckoning, we would've likely been the first beach he'd've washed up on.
After a few barn raves here and music fests there, I tired of life and I staled on the idea of manual labour where I was not given a chance to manage or learn as quickly as I generally need to. After flirting with the idea of starting a treehouse building company, I made up my mind to return to Montreal. I'd found myself lonely and choked by Island life. But the stars.. oh, the stars. On the odd time, they were so vivid, you could see the planet and the solar system as if it were on the rim of the galaxy (funny this, but 'galaxy' literally translates to Milky Way). The spirals would retreat from sight, giving the impression of the Earth being on the edge of a banded torus.
I arrived back in Montreal, enrolled back in McGill, and met up with my old friends. Steve and Amy graciously received me at their house for a few weeks, and I encountered such nervous situations with my ex. She and I still haven't truly met each other since, but I generally feel a level of warmth and companionship laden familiarity whenever we are together that seems to've persisted through the years we hadn't spoken. I met a girl called Isabel, and we courted. Next thing I knew, we were together and spent much time together. Around then, I had a wicked idea for a book (still do...) and started ostensibly to write it. I started, and then stalled it and then wrote a few short stories, and kept updating my blog (which changed from attempts at humourous overlapping narratives I consider to be 'factasy', to this type of entry...) Eventually, I somehow stretched away from my original intentions to move back here. I paled and bailed, and eventually gave up my school. I couldn't maintain a focus in Philosophy, there was no application. No context. I needed innovation. I yearned for something creative.
One day, last spring, I told Isabel I wasn't in love with her. She wanted more from me, and I couldn't find a way to give it without compromising too much. She was convinced that she was going crazy, getting possessive, so I had to tell her it wasn't just her. I mourned us. And tried to stay her friend. This eventually became impossible. She'd said that she wished I was the man she could've been with for her life. This later mutated to her stating that I'd not been the man she thought I was. Maybe both were true, maybe neither, either way, I wasn't quite sure what man she was talking about. I didn't feel I'd yet become one. By trying not to have us forsake the 9 months we'd been together, I hadn't let her vent her dismay. I dearly wish I'd handled that better. I later found out, she'd considered marriage and children all along. I was ashamed that we hadn't spoken about it while together.
On the other footing, I found liberty in my step. I opened up to new people and felt more confident by myself. Everything had freshened, and I got a job renovating a friend's apartments. I later met a girl who worked at Biftek, and we clicked like magnets. She went away to Portugal for August and broke up with me. Like the reactionary I was, I drooped and worried. I forgot about my own adventure. She returned, for me to discover that something horrendous had happened. We got back together, but my social life got gutted. My aspirations fluxed to having no view of the future (I can imagine biomechanically interfaced exoskeletons, but not the foresight to purchase toothpaste). Continue this avenue for the last 5 months, where I've lost the confidence to meet new people, present myself, write with flourish, engage systems without being neurotically shy etc. and you have me now.
The last few weeks I have: Watched the entire 1st season of Rome. This is easily the best mini-series I've ever encountered (the production details actually put you right in the thick of the 1st century, nothing has been overlooked). The politics, the social view of sex and ritual, the fighting, the infrastructure, the corruption, the slavery... it's absolutely incredible. Both brutish and refined.
Read much about landscape architecture. From what I can detail, this is a predominantly WHITE occupation. And by that I mean rich and self-congratulatory. The views seem stuck in ideas of The Picturesque and modernist function, and only a few firms break the dogmatism and present viable and beautiful risks. The discipline overlaps many categories, and feeds from architecture, urban planning, horticulture, sustainable/green innovation, even sculpture and hydrostatics. I like it alot, if only because I have the skills of a dreamer (and a jack-of-all-trades approach). I believe that we as humans influence the way our environment influences us. And by this, we each have a responsibilty to nurture nature. It should not be a pastime of the wealthy, nor that of the wealthy's counterpart, politics. We need to put the mentalism back into our environs. And by 'our', I mean as inclusively as possible.
Er, that's it for now. The statement that I want to resound is that I am up on my feet and ready to make failure and success in equal measure, and thus learn and strive. I need a community, rolemodels and I need to be challenged. I also badly need a job.
wish I'd had a camera on me...
I was put up to this... good thing too, as I needed a blog-phoenix...
01. Bought a round of drinks in a bar (Y)
02. Swam with dolphins in the ocean (N)
03. Climbed a mountain (Y)
04. Drove a Ferrari (N)
05. Visited the Great Pyramids (N)
06. Held a tarantula (Y - they can taste through their feet!)
07. Taken a bath with someone in candlelight ('aw - nice marmot')
08. Said “I love you” and meant it (Y)
09. Hugged a tree (see above)
10. Played elastic (Y)
11. Been to Paris (Y)
12. Watched a storm on the sea (Y)
13. Stayed up all night to watch the sun rise (Y)
14. Seen the aurora borealis (Y - strangely right as I'd said: 'I've never seen the Northern Lights before, I imagine they look something just like that...')
15. Been to a large sporting event (Y)
16. Climbed the steps of the St. Joseph’s Oratory (Y - though as a drunken shortcut)
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables (Y)
18. Touched an iceberg (N)
19. Slept under the stars (Y)
20. Changed a baby’s diaper (Y)
21. Traveled in a hot air balloon (N)
22. Seen shooting stars (Y)
23. Gotten drunk on champagne (Y)
24. Given more than you could to charity (N)
25. Observed the night through a telescope (Y)
26. Participated in a world record event (N)
27. Had a food fight (Y - at camp, we were told that we could eat a chocolate cake on the count of 3, but the instructor decided to count backwards - from 3, instead of to. My initial lunge for the cake ignited the entire dining room, it was one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed)
28. Bet on a winning horse (Y)
29. Asked directions from a stranger (Y)
30. Had a snowball fight (Y)
31. Yelled as loud as you could (Y- though it took several ginger yells)
32. Carried a lamb (N!)
33. Seen a total eclipse (Y - though you still risk your sight looking directly)
34. Climbed a sand dune (Y)
35. Run over an animal with your car (N)
36. Danced like a crazy person with no regard to who might be watching (Y)
37. Adopted an accent for a whole day (HAHAHA)
38. Felt truly happy, even in a short moment (Y)
39. Had two hard disks on your computer (N)
40. Taken care of someone drunk (Y)
41. Danced with a stranger (Y)
42. Whale-watched in the ocean (Y)
43. Stolen a street sign (Y)
44. Back-packed across Canada (N)
45. Taken a road trip (Y)
46. Rock-climbed outdoors (Y)
47. Sung a ballad on the beach at midnight (N)
48. Gone paragliding (N)
49. Been to Ireland (Y- I was 5. Fed a donkey carrots. Pissed on an electric fence. Fun.)
50. Had a broken heart for much longer than you were with someone. (Y)
51. Sat at a table at a restaurant with strangers and eaten with them. (Y)
52. Been to Japan (Y)
53. Milked a cow (Y)
54. Organized your CD’s alphabetically (Y, and also by genre)
55. Pretended to be a superhero/ine (pretended not to be)
56. Sang karaoke (Y)
57. Spent all day in bed (Y)
58. Played football (Y)
59. Scuba-dived (Y- but only ever in a pool)
60. Kissed in the rain (Y)
61. Played in the mud (Y)
62. Played in the rain (Y)
63. Been in an open-air theatre (Y)
64. Been to the Great Wall of China (N)
65. Started your own business (does being part of a shoplifting gang when I was 11 count?)
66. Fallen in love without suffering from a broken heart (Y)
67. Visited ancient monuments (Y)
68. Taken a martial arts class (Y)
69. Played XBox for 6 hours straight (other consoles, Y. XBox, N)
70. Been married (N)
71. Been in a movie (Y)
72. Organized a surprise party (Y)
73. Been divorced (only from reality)
74. Fasted for 5 days (not on purpose, but Y)
75. Made cookies from a package mix (N)
76. Won first prize in a costume contest (N)
77. Driven a gondola in Venice (N)
78. Have been tattooed (N)
79. Canoed or kayaked (Y)
80. Been interviewed on TV (N)
81. Gotten flowers for no particular reason (Y)
82. Been in a play (Y)
83. Been to Las Vegas (N)
84. Recorded music (Y)
85. Eaten shark (N)
86. Kissed on a first date (Y)
87. Been to Thailand (N)
88. Bought a house (N)
89. Buried one of your parents (N)
90. Been on a cruise (N)
91. Spoken more than one language fluently (N)
92. Raised children (N)
93. Followed your favourite singer on tour (N)
94. Cycled in a foreign country (N)
95. Moved to a new city for a new life (Y)
96. Eaten ants (Y)
97. Walked on the Golden Gate Bridge (N)
98. Sang at the top of your lungs in the car without a care as to who might be watching (Y)
99. Had plastic surgery (N)
100. Survived an accident you statistically shouldn’t have (N)
101. Written articles for a large publication (Y)
102. Lost 40 pounds (only in the UK)
103. Helped an unconscious person (Y)
104. Piloted a plane (N)
105. Touched a live (manta) ray (Y)
106. Broken someone’s heart (Y)
107. Helped birth an animal (N)
108. Won money in a TV game show (N)
109. Broken a bone (Y)
110. Pierced another part of your body other than your ears (N)
111. Handled a revolver or firearm (N)
112. Eaten mushrooms you collected yourself (Y)
113. Ridden a horse (N)
114. Undergone a major operation (N)
115. Had a pet snake (iguana and tortoise but never a snake)
116. Slept for more than 30 hours straight (Y - the last 2 days actually)
117. Been to all the continents of the world (N)
118. Been on a canoe trip for more than 2 days (Y)
119. Eaten kangaroo (N)
120. Eaten sushi (almost once a week)
121. Had your picture in the newspaper (Y)
122. Changed the opinion of someone with regards to something you’ve felt strongly about (Y)
123. Gone back to school (too many times)
124. Parachuted (N)
125. Worn a snake (er...)
126. Built your PC from different parts (N)
127. Sold something you created to someone you don’t know (Y)
128. Dyed your hair (Y)
129. Shaved your head (Y)
130. Saved someone’s life (not that I've known about)
01. Bought a round of drinks in a bar (Y)
02. Swam with dolphins in the ocean (N)
03. Climbed a mountain (Y)
04. Drove a Ferrari (N)
05. Visited the Great Pyramids (N)
06. Held a tarantula (Y - they can taste through their feet!)
07. Taken a bath with someone in candlelight ('aw - nice marmot')
08. Said “I love you” and meant it (Y)
09. Hugged a tree (see above)
10. Played elastic (Y)
11. Been to Paris (Y)
12. Watched a storm on the sea (Y)
13. Stayed up all night to watch the sun rise (Y)
14. Seen the aurora borealis (Y - strangely right as I'd said: 'I've never seen the Northern Lights before, I imagine they look something just like that...')
15. Been to a large sporting event (Y)
16. Climbed the steps of the St. Joseph’s Oratory (Y - though as a drunken shortcut)
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables (Y)
18. Touched an iceberg (N)
19. Slept under the stars (Y)
20. Changed a baby’s diaper (Y)
21. Traveled in a hot air balloon (N)
22. Seen shooting stars (Y)
23. Gotten drunk on champagne (Y)
24. Given more than you could to charity (N)
25. Observed the night through a telescope (Y)
26. Participated in a world record event (N)
27. Had a food fight (Y - at camp, we were told that we could eat a chocolate cake on the count of 3, but the instructor decided to count backwards - from 3, instead of to. My initial lunge for the cake ignited the entire dining room, it was one of the greatest things I've ever witnessed)
28. Bet on a winning horse (Y)
29. Asked directions from a stranger (Y)
30. Had a snowball fight (Y)
31. Yelled as loud as you could (Y- though it took several ginger yells)
32. Carried a lamb (N!)
33. Seen a total eclipse (Y - though you still risk your sight looking directly)
34. Climbed a sand dune (Y)
35. Run over an animal with your car (N)
36. Danced like a crazy person with no regard to who might be watching (Y)
37. Adopted an accent for a whole day (HAHAHA)
38. Felt truly happy, even in a short moment (Y)
39. Had two hard disks on your computer (N)
40. Taken care of someone drunk (Y)
41. Danced with a stranger (Y)
42. Whale-watched in the ocean (Y)
43. Stolen a street sign (Y)
44. Back-packed across Canada (N)
45. Taken a road trip (Y)
46. Rock-climbed outdoors (Y)
47. Sung a ballad on the beach at midnight (N)
48. Gone paragliding (N)
49. Been to Ireland (Y- I was 5. Fed a donkey carrots. Pissed on an electric fence. Fun.)
50. Had a broken heart for much longer than you were with someone. (Y)
51. Sat at a table at a restaurant with strangers and eaten with them. (Y)
52. Been to Japan (Y)
53. Milked a cow (Y)
54. Organized your CD’s alphabetically (Y, and also by genre)
55. Pretended to be a superhero/ine (pretended not to be)
56. Sang karaoke (Y)
57. Spent all day in bed (Y)
58. Played football (Y)
59. Scuba-dived (Y- but only ever in a pool)
60. Kissed in the rain (Y)
61. Played in the mud (Y)
62. Played in the rain (Y)
63. Been in an open-air theatre (Y)
64. Been to the Great Wall of China (N)
65. Started your own business (does being part of a shoplifting gang when I was 11 count?)
66. Fallen in love without suffering from a broken heart (Y)
67. Visited ancient monuments (Y)
68. Taken a martial arts class (Y)
69. Played XBox for 6 hours straight (other consoles, Y. XBox, N)
70. Been married (N)
71. Been in a movie (Y)
72. Organized a surprise party (Y)
73. Been divorced (only from reality)
74. Fasted for 5 days (not on purpose, but Y)
75. Made cookies from a package mix (N)
76. Won first prize in a costume contest (N)
77. Driven a gondola in Venice (N)
78. Have been tattooed (N)
79. Canoed or kayaked (Y)
80. Been interviewed on TV (N)
81. Gotten flowers for no particular reason (Y)
82. Been in a play (Y)
83. Been to Las Vegas (N)
84. Recorded music (Y)
85. Eaten shark (N)
86. Kissed on a first date (Y)
87. Been to Thailand (N)
88. Bought a house (N)
89. Buried one of your parents (N)
90. Been on a cruise (N)
91. Spoken more than one language fluently (N)
92. Raised children (N)
93. Followed your favourite singer on tour (N)
94. Cycled in a foreign country (N)
95. Moved to a new city for a new life (Y)
96. Eaten ants (Y)
97. Walked on the Golden Gate Bridge (N)
98. Sang at the top of your lungs in the car without a care as to who might be watching (Y)
99. Had plastic surgery (N)
100. Survived an accident you statistically shouldn’t have (N)
101. Written articles for a large publication (Y)
102. Lost 40 pounds (only in the UK)
103. Helped an unconscious person (Y)
104. Piloted a plane (N)
105. Touched a live (manta) ray (Y)
106. Broken someone’s heart (Y)
107. Helped birth an animal (N)
108. Won money in a TV game show (N)
109. Broken a bone (Y)
110. Pierced another part of your body other than your ears (N)
111. Handled a revolver or firearm (N)
112. Eaten mushrooms you collected yourself (Y)
113. Ridden a horse (N)
114. Undergone a major operation (N)
115. Had a pet snake (iguana and tortoise but never a snake)
116. Slept for more than 30 hours straight (Y - the last 2 days actually)
117. Been to all the continents of the world (N)
118. Been on a canoe trip for more than 2 days (Y)
119. Eaten kangaroo (N)
120. Eaten sushi (almost once a week)
121. Had your picture in the newspaper (Y)
122. Changed the opinion of someone with regards to something you’ve felt strongly about (Y)
123. Gone back to school (too many times)
124. Parachuted (N)
125. Worn a snake (er...)
126. Built your PC from different parts (N)
127. Sold something you created to someone you don’t know (Y)
128. Dyed your hair (Y)
129. Shaved your head (Y)
130. Saved someone’s life (not that I've known about)
Friday, February 09, 2007
The Dependables
The Valentine's heart is nowt but an upsidedown ASS. Which only means that you cannot shit out of it without getting it all over yourself. This is why I will not be talking about that emotional staplegun here...
Instead, I will return to the ever-topical, er, topic, of deppaneurs. For the uninitiated, the dep is the Queeb version of the corner store. This serves so many more functions that one could ever suppose, so I'll draw up a quick generalization, and then retreat to anecdotal, er, anecdotes. There is nothing more true-Blue than the dep: there's softcore and then there's hardcore and then Quebecor, and this is it! They serve as community centre, immunity centre, bitch-about-your-spouse centre... ok, I just don't have the acumen to properly characterize the dep (especially in the function of Essence, there has yet to be created the quintessential dep)... so here's the sundry forms the dep has taken in my experience of it:
Instead, I will return to the ever-topical, er, topic, of deppaneurs. For the uninitiated, the dep is the Queeb version of the corner store. This serves so many more functions that one could ever suppose, so I'll draw up a quick generalization, and then retreat to anecdotal, er, anecdotes. There is nothing more true-Blue than the dep: there's softcore and then there's hardcore and then Quebecor, and this is it! They serve as community centre, immunity centre, bitch-about-your-spouse centre... ok, I just don't have the acumen to properly characterize the dep (especially in the function of Essence, there has yet to be created the quintessential dep)... so here's the sundry forms the dep has taken in my experience of it:
- The Family Dep: This doesn't necessarily mean that there is a family running it, or even ever frequenting it as patrons. It seems to function most as a "Third Place", a place halfway between the home and the work (only applied loosely here), that maintains a really casual atmosphere (we're talking wifebeaters, boxers and socks [this last depending on the climate] here). Generally, they are run by old men and hung out in by old men (who never seem to pay for anything) and sell candy bars that are melted or reconstituted after spending most of the shelflife as a goo. A few examples follow:
- A dep on Duluth JUST before Parc Lafontaine had a few people milling around outside, one elderly gentleman clutching his eyes. This not being too abnormal, I passed them by and went in. Made it to the juicefridge before having to clutch at my eyes and beat a hasty exit. The old men laughed at me as I fell out of the store, wherein, between dryheaves, I asked: 'Pepper spray?'. 'Yes.' Came the nonchalant reply. 'I was showing P____ how it worked and it sprayed him in the eyes.' 2 years later, the same dep owner(s) kicked me out for having a plastic sword in my hand: 'NO MORE SWORDS ALLOWED'. Only to follow me out and ask if it were real. And then take it back inside and smack each other with it giggling. All other times I've bought things here have been uneventful.
- A dep on Duluth on the corner of St. Andre. A 30 something year old was sitting there once rearranging his massive stack of Magic cards. I don't really know why I thought this was so funny.
- A dep, on Duluth, corner of Clark (?). Sells singles (or 'loosies'). Once got in a frenzied exchange about poonanny juice. They also tried to sell me Goji berry juice for $60. They have a tuna deheading blade built into their cash counter. Everyone tends to hang out outside here. This place gets a big thumbs up from me.
- A dep on the corner of Hotel-de-Ville and Duluth. They'll file your income tax for you.
- A dep on Sherbrooke that proffers microloans. Same owners would call a good friend of a good friend 'The King' whenever he'd enter.
- The Concept Dep: Sushi/Dep, Pornstore/Dep, Shishtaouk/Dep, Headshop/Dep, Computer parts store/Dep, Barber/Dep, Butcher/Dep. And so on...
Miscellaneous:
- Once, back when I used to walk Eve's dog, Coco, I misguidedly brought her into a dep with me. Next thing I knew, there she was, up on the counter and I was stuck headfirst in a popsicle freezer. No way else I can really tell this, as I've absolutely no idea how this happened. The owners barely batted an eye though. In fact, they thought it was hilarious.
- Got kicked out of CoucheTard (a chain, much like a 7/11) once with Steve for being 'altered' and laughing too hard in the mineral water section. That was a rough night. Because it is also accessible from a residential building, it is not uncommon to see people come down mid-shower to buy some Irish Spring.
- Purportedly, there are deps one can frequent with a 'codeword' to receive goods of a more 'illicit' nature. These items range from afterhours booze, to marijuana, to poached meat, to ??? There's a dep on Napoleon that gives me the feeling that you're not supposed to go in there for any other reason (grim looking butcher section at the back).
I KNOW there are more stories than these, but these are the ones that spring to mind... and keep me customering...
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Beer Goggle Formula
As found on the trusty BBC...
An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of 'person of interest' (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from 'person of interest' (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)
An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of 'person of interest' (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from 'person of interest' (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
TRISH
ok, i have something to admit. a few months ago, bored as i was with my own html-lameness and bored as i was with i, i tried to create an alter ego to heckle and generally be an ignorant nuisance. introducing TRISH. man, i'm glad i finally fessed up about that one... perhaps i'll resurrect her one day. if so, watch out, she's bonkers.
Sunday, February 04, 2007
A Phone Message
‘Hey babe, how are you? Its Lucy. Um, I hope you’re having a wonderful day and that uh, you’re out and about and happy and feeling revived and alive etc, etc. I’m waiting for my political theory class to start at 4 but I was reading the Age of the Economist for my economics course, I just read something in it I had to tell you about, about the University of London, so funny… “Bentham's major work had been completed before he reached his 40th birthday but he lived till 84 and he had his great influence over a small bland, er band, of devoted followers. He was never against writing influencing books but spent much of his later life concocting complicated plans for prison reform, for relief education and legislative reform. He found the University of London with an endowment and his will provided that his body be embalmed and once a year seated at the meeting of the universities trustees as a reminder of the principles on which the university was established, this grisly ritual continued to be performed until recently using a wax head instead of the shrunken real one which was kept in storage.” Dude. You Brits man. Fucking crazy. Ok, I just thought you’d like to know that, as, who wouldn’t really? I hope you’re having a great time and I’ll see you later. Ok, bye.’
Saturday, February 03, 2007
A Child Remote
This is a story I sent in for a provincial competition this summer. It took a few days of sketching to get a reasonable balance, which was perhaps made leaden by the ending (my mum, when I asked her to quickly review it, said that she thought it was a bit trite and a brittle way to conclude. I almost agree, but only because there was a purposeful style shift). As per the rules of the comp, it's supposed to be an original piece, and publishing isn't allowable, but I don't consider this publishing (besides, it's mine and they haven't contacted me for the 5 months since writing it, so I can't imagine I placed and so now reclaim it). Hope it confuses you...
A Child Remote
The child could feel the storm coming. He felt the heaviness of it; knew it as if it were mercury in his marrow. Though warmly dressed, the 8 year-old’s body trembled for the treetops molested overhead, their leaves silvering in a darting shoal. The kinesis reminded him of the delight that winter flurries lit in him. That moment where the leading edge of the wind was revealed, snow snarling over itself, like the teeth of some marauding ghostshark. A loose lock of hair licked the child’s forehead as a thought struggled to emerge: ‘Find shelter’.
Andi tried to raise his head to inspect the storm’s purple embankment, but fear slowed the effort. The roiling clouds loomed over the false horizon of the street like battlements of masticated mother of pearl. They forced the atmosphere before them as they toppled forward into Montreal. Again, urgency pushed the child’s intentions toward safety. Laboriously at first, the boy started for the park across the road. The swings whinnied against the wind, eeky and pendulous. A cyclist coasted past, heralding imminence. Under the climbing frame looked safe.
Andi could vaguely remember the bulge that was his unborn brother. He would reach up to the pale crescent moon that split his mother’s blouse from her skirt and press the other fingers to his chest to find the kick of his own heart. His memories had been so heavily gilded by her stories it took some effort to have them run clear. Her curious pain for the elephant he had one day stuffed up his undershirt. Her insistence on turning the shoes in the vestibule so that they all faced into the house. His abject confusion upon hearing of the death. Of the depths of their loneliness; his an empty brother’s, hers an emptied mother’s. It was the old way. Perhaps causality really ran backwards and remembering served only to change the past. Or perhaps there was something he’d missed.
From somewhere wafted the ruddy smell of burnt coffee but the child was under the play-set’s bridge. The rain had begun, tramping up the fiberglass slide, flushing down a finger plaster now wrapped around a rivulet. The sand pocked beneath all the force of a summer storm, the rain soddening the kneescabs of paintflecks, the wind here a stutter, there a lisp. Sycamore seeds joined the fray, tailspins bombarded from the sky. It had become murderously dark. Andi didn’t feel his right hand move toward a stream of water until it struck his palm. It was a complicated sensation, routed as it was through so many membranes. He forced the hand up to the face, and splashed, feeling his skin contract with the chill of it. Abroad, the child smiled and spat into the rain.
Benches glared like glistening, empty eye-sockets, fringing the basin of sand. They glared at Andi. He shivered and turned away. Pine resin caught his olfactory, but Andi knew that this emanated from the scent-vents hidden around the play-set. They hadn’t used pine in a kid-park probably for a good decade. It was for the parents, to recreate the smells of their youth. To push their sensations through their children. Oh, thought Andi, how irony oxidizes. Suddenly, before he could check it, a surge of pity compelled him to a crouch. A pigeon, broken feathers curdling, hunkering into itself beneath a step, puffed up against the intruder. It cocked its head, transfixing the boy with a yellow button. Andi successfully bridled the urge to pick it up mid-motion, the effort seeming to continue through the pigeon as it flinched exhaustedly. Using low, soothing tones, the child took a step back. The bird seemed placated, and closed its eyes. Andi could not suppress the question as to how long it would live. How long before the cats tiptoe out against the heavens to kill it? How long before it were stolen away from itself?
Revulsion welled up, seemingly pressing outward from within his skull. Striking images of rejection, of unwantedness, of an unfamiliar family framing smiles, a stray dog… all jostled for attention. Amidst them, segmented questions peppered Andi like the rain’s tattoo around him: It? Stolen? Who… not companion? Defy you! And with such quick determination it left Andi no power to resist, the child reached up beneath his cap and reset the cerebral implant.
Andi disengaged the Parasight. Once the spasms ceased, sensations of his body began to claw their way back through his nerves. Clumsy, he scrabbled for the pain reliever that he’d propped beside the monitor, thumbed open the IV jutting from his thigh and plunged the fluid through. His body sagged instantly, relaxed enough now to cope with the paring anguish, against which he was only moderately braced. He was reluctant to take the benzodiazepine as then he’d have to withdraw from the Aggregate, and many of his clients enjoyed the come-down as much as the experience itself. He toggled on the thought-dampener.
What the hell had happened during that occasion? He’d never seen anything like it before: The child had somehow rebelled. Booted him right out. Andi’d run across willful hosts before, but the ability to terminate a connection was just plain dangerous. It meant the child had been completely autonomous throughout the entire piloting. He wondered how much of his own distress had been relayed to the Aggregate. Had they seen him? If so, he hoped he hadn’t obscured the child. He was going to have to run a spec test on his gear again. And then find a host with a deeper implant. Tomorrow.
His room seemed a bit too warm. With shaky legs, he got up to turn the coffee percolator off.
A Child Remote
The child could feel the storm coming. He felt the heaviness of it; knew it as if it were mercury in his marrow. Though warmly dressed, the 8 year-old’s body trembled for the treetops molested overhead, their leaves silvering in a darting shoal. The kinesis reminded him of the delight that winter flurries lit in him. That moment where the leading edge of the wind was revealed, snow snarling over itself, like the teeth of some marauding ghostshark. A loose lock of hair licked the child’s forehead as a thought struggled to emerge: ‘Find shelter’.
Andi tried to raise his head to inspect the storm’s purple embankment, but fear slowed the effort. The roiling clouds loomed over the false horizon of the street like battlements of masticated mother of pearl. They forced the atmosphere before them as they toppled forward into Montreal. Again, urgency pushed the child’s intentions toward safety. Laboriously at first, the boy started for the park across the road. The swings whinnied against the wind, eeky and pendulous. A cyclist coasted past, heralding imminence. Under the climbing frame looked safe.
Andi could vaguely remember the bulge that was his unborn brother. He would reach up to the pale crescent moon that split his mother’s blouse from her skirt and press the other fingers to his chest to find the kick of his own heart. His memories had been so heavily gilded by her stories it took some effort to have them run clear. Her curious pain for the elephant he had one day stuffed up his undershirt. Her insistence on turning the shoes in the vestibule so that they all faced into the house. His abject confusion upon hearing of the death. Of the depths of their loneliness; his an empty brother’s, hers an emptied mother’s. It was the old way. Perhaps causality really ran backwards and remembering served only to change the past. Or perhaps there was something he’d missed.
From somewhere wafted the ruddy smell of burnt coffee but the child was under the play-set’s bridge. The rain had begun, tramping up the fiberglass slide, flushing down a finger plaster now wrapped around a rivulet. The sand pocked beneath all the force of a summer storm, the rain soddening the kneescabs of paintflecks, the wind here a stutter, there a lisp. Sycamore seeds joined the fray, tailspins bombarded from the sky. It had become murderously dark. Andi didn’t feel his right hand move toward a stream of water until it struck his palm. It was a complicated sensation, routed as it was through so many membranes. He forced the hand up to the face, and splashed, feeling his skin contract with the chill of it. Abroad, the child smiled and spat into the rain.
Benches glared like glistening, empty eye-sockets, fringing the basin of sand. They glared at Andi. He shivered and turned away. Pine resin caught his olfactory, but Andi knew that this emanated from the scent-vents hidden around the play-set. They hadn’t used pine in a kid-park probably for a good decade. It was for the parents, to recreate the smells of their youth. To push their sensations through their children. Oh, thought Andi, how irony oxidizes. Suddenly, before he could check it, a surge of pity compelled him to a crouch. A pigeon, broken feathers curdling, hunkering into itself beneath a step, puffed up against the intruder. It cocked its head, transfixing the boy with a yellow button. Andi successfully bridled the urge to pick it up mid-motion, the effort seeming to continue through the pigeon as it flinched exhaustedly. Using low, soothing tones, the child took a step back. The bird seemed placated, and closed its eyes. Andi could not suppress the question as to how long it would live. How long before the cats tiptoe out against the heavens to kill it? How long before it were stolen away from itself?
Revulsion welled up, seemingly pressing outward from within his skull. Striking images of rejection, of unwantedness, of an unfamiliar family framing smiles, a stray dog… all jostled for attention. Amidst them, segmented questions peppered Andi like the rain’s tattoo around him: It? Stolen? Who… not companion? Defy you! And with such quick determination it left Andi no power to resist, the child reached up beneath his cap and reset the cerebral implant.
Andi disengaged the Parasight. Once the spasms ceased, sensations of his body began to claw their way back through his nerves. Clumsy, he scrabbled for the pain reliever that he’d propped beside the monitor, thumbed open the IV jutting from his thigh and plunged the fluid through. His body sagged instantly, relaxed enough now to cope with the paring anguish, against which he was only moderately braced. He was reluctant to take the benzodiazepine as then he’d have to withdraw from the Aggregate, and many of his clients enjoyed the come-down as much as the experience itself. He toggled on the thought-dampener.
What the hell had happened during that occasion? He’d never seen anything like it before: The child had somehow rebelled. Booted him right out. Andi’d run across willful hosts before, but the ability to terminate a connection was just plain dangerous. It meant the child had been completely autonomous throughout the entire piloting. He wondered how much of his own distress had been relayed to the Aggregate. Had they seen him? If so, he hoped he hadn’t obscured the child. He was going to have to run a spec test on his gear again. And then find a host with a deeper implant. Tomorrow.
His room seemed a bit too warm. With shaky legs, he got up to turn the coffee percolator off.
- T.C.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
The S nk
too crazy. my story is that i blame the moon. turned away like a skull ignorant. outside, for the sssigarette, i watched a group of eerily similar people approach. it was if they were enconed in a different plane. their gestures, there, could only communicate one thing to me, but everything to each other. they were deaf, touring the city together, animate. but the noise they didn't make was remarkable. no footsteps that the hearing make. no snuffles. as if we made these sounds simply to keep ourselves company. to reply. for me, it felt as if they were a sinkhole for sound. even traffic was muffled. other passersby were visibly staggered. it was blinding to have them pass by. apropo. i have to go. i'll try to write the version i've kept for so long another time. blog entries on shrooms. how dumb.
The Sink
A thought struck me today. Not a spectacularly clever one really, so perhaps it didn't strike, but rather bonked or doffed. But, what if I were to run a cleansing exercise (for personal reasons... I am finding a possessive crest rising along my spine. I am becoming a reptile. I need to inspect this closely...) at the same time as writing a story LIVE as it were (unedited, unfermented, unmediated by time. Though it is an story that occured to me 3 or so years ago because of a vision abnormality I had. It's since disappeared). So I tied up the odd email, bought a coffee, went outside for a smoke, pinched and ate a half gram of mushrooms (dear roommate: the little beggars were asking for it. i swear its not for [purely] recreational reasons), sat back down feeling as if EVERYBODY knew what I'd been outside for, fired up Amon Tobin... and here we go (see if you can catch their onset):
The Sink
If she hadn't taken the mallet to the sink, she could've bought that dishwasher they'd always talked about. Instead, that money went straight down the drain: plumbing fees (emergency, if only for the dire need to have someone see her wringing her hands), the two-basin steel replacement, the superficial damages from the ensuing flood and inexact method of the actual extraction. Now, there she was, always there but never there, suds deep, cutlery clunking dully like someone climbing up a pool ladder, staring at this tinkered remembrance. A brand new waste receptical. This sink would never be clean. How portentous, an old thought for Judith, but not yet old enough. And how boring! The day the ring had swirled down the drain was the day he'd not returned. That evening, eyes slanted, she'd watched Paul Jr., only 4 then, eating his lasagne, straining at the words with which she'd tell Paul about the sunk ring. Casually, of course, as if pointing out PJ's new haircut or fingerworming a hole in somebody's sock. How too to entwine the statement with the obvious question. Put PJ to bed with a book and a few coos to his questions. And sat longer, head in her forearm crook, staring at the plate. Damned if she was going to clear up after Paul this time. Ran to the phone. Called the cops. No ma'am. One sleepless night later, now knowing, she'd strode, nightgown flowing, past the plate of hideous lasagne into the kitchen with a fucking sledgehammer. First strike glanced off the counter to smash a floortile. But the next folded forward the lip of steel, took the door off the cabinet and felt orderly. Felt right. Boom. Boom. Anvil to her anger. Splinters of a size she'd not imagined fell off the head of the mallet on her upswing. And the downswing! A carribean steel-drum band of singular intent; all the marriage bands in the world in a cosmic bag hitting the face of the sun; the last curseword of a doomed jumbojet; it was a sound that only the clutch she had on that handle could produce. Eventually, her breathing actually becalmed through all that effort, she rolled up her sleeves and bent into that hissing, spluttering wound and plucked up the ring. Turning on one foot and popping open the wastebin with the other, she dangled the delicate morsel over the maw, inspecting the sapphire for only the briefest of moments, and let go.
And here was Judith. At the sink.
MERCY! here's perhaps the moment I need to reflect. the story i had in my head IS SO VERY DIFFERENT. i'll print this and start again. poor Judith and PJ are actually supposed to be in a much worse predicament than this.
The Sink
If she hadn't taken the mallet to the sink, she could've bought that dishwasher they'd always talked about. Instead, that money went straight down the drain: plumbing fees (emergency, if only for the dire need to have someone see her wringing her hands), the two-basin steel replacement, the superficial damages from the ensuing flood and inexact method of the actual extraction. Now, there she was, always there but never there, suds deep, cutlery clunking dully like someone climbing up a pool ladder, staring at this tinkered remembrance. A brand new waste receptical. This sink would never be clean. How portentous, an old thought for Judith, but not yet old enough. And how boring! The day the ring had swirled down the drain was the day he'd not returned. That evening, eyes slanted, she'd watched Paul Jr., only 4 then, eating his lasagne, straining at the words with which she'd tell Paul about the sunk ring. Casually, of course, as if pointing out PJ's new haircut or fingerworming a hole in somebody's sock. How too to entwine the statement with the obvious question. Put PJ to bed with a book and a few coos to his questions. And sat longer, head in her forearm crook, staring at the plate. Damned if she was going to clear up after Paul this time. Ran to the phone. Called the cops. No ma'am. One sleepless night later, now knowing, she'd strode, nightgown flowing, past the plate of hideous lasagne into the kitchen with a fucking sledgehammer. First strike glanced off the counter to smash a floortile. But the next folded forward the lip of steel, took the door off the cabinet and felt orderly. Felt right. Boom. Boom. Anvil to her anger. Splinters of a size she'd not imagined fell off the head of the mallet on her upswing. And the downswing! A carribean steel-drum band of singular intent; all the marriage bands in the world in a cosmic bag hitting the face of the sun; the last curseword of a doomed jumbojet; it was a sound that only the clutch she had on that handle could produce. Eventually, her breathing actually becalmed through all that effort, she rolled up her sleeves and bent into that hissing, spluttering wound and plucked up the ring. Turning on one foot and popping open the wastebin with the other, she dangled the delicate morsel over the maw, inspecting the sapphire for only the briefest of moments, and let go.
And here was Judith. At the sink.
MERCY! here's perhaps the moment I need to reflect. the story i had in my head IS SO VERY DIFFERENT. i'll print this and start again. poor Judith and PJ are actually supposed to be in a much worse predicament than this.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
helplessnesslessness - belonginglonging
I saw the Aronofsky movie 'Pi' again on Wednesday night. It is spastic and delirious, creepy and hypertrophic and most of all subjects the material to little underdressing of intent: the audience has to keep up if they want to undo or resist the disturbance it instills. Problem is, the mainman, Max, is on performance enhancers and already has a preternatural gift for numbers. Try catching that greased-up nerd. The next day, I sat at work, looking down at the drill in my hand, wondering if the opposite effect could be induced. As if reality could be widened with power tools. As if some of the books I've never read, but want to have read, would fit on a shelf I install at the back of my head. Morelike it'd become one of those everything drawers that contain greening pennies, ocular devices, stale loveletters, gunky teenage-sized retainers, broken bracelets and trinkets, tacks, gammy-looking condoms, pebbles, stray cheetos, baggies, defunct lighters, CD covers, capgun ammunition...
Then on Thursday I read the comments on a friend's blog, thought some, added a comment and then thought some more (which may've been less), and decided to try and borrow part of the discussion: What determines personal reality and does it relegate public reality or inform it? Isabel referred to a NYTimes article about predetermination; Steve to determinate causality (in regards to Amy's 1984 quote); Eve to the choices made within that causality; and me to-------
I SAVED THE DRAFT HERE AND DECIDED INSTEAD TO TACK INTO THE HEADWIND...
There's a secret smile we can all wear, and all wear where we can. We all want to belong, to ourselves and to more than that, to something greater than ourselves (and yet something that befits our attitudes and beliefs). If I understand this correctly, both are forms of transcendence. Both rely on manners of transposition. Upon joining a group, we are impregnated with the greater personality, the ideology, the identity, the mission, the communal project and we are outside ourselves. Our own personality, while intact, is temporarily transmutated.. we can exceed our own limits (as we see them). This can be (and always is) done on an everyday, individual basis. We know it as a state of flow, or immersal, or involvement, a state of grace... in mammalian terms, as learning. You become bigger than yourself. It's been my personal belief that laughter is the most obvious form of this (I've suspected laughter as a type of momentary metamorph for some time, but there's a dearth of existential investigations about this.. if anyone knows of any...). And, in my humble opinion, the most important aspect -as the only form of immortality (so closely linked, we can't even separate it from our consciousness) yet created; an instrument so powerful we can't really even realize it- language shows itself as transcendental. Paradoxically, we want to resist our horizonal leaps (in the form of seeking security; hidden behind a palisade of Ps: permanence, persistence, protection, principle, prestige etc) and stay the 'ego' as static. As soon as this happens, a whole slew of abstract problems begin to erupt: intellectual, emotional and spiritual. And this becomes a tiny death that we pass off as bad luck, poor self-esteem, lack of confidence/competence. Lived daily. We are meant to outdo the ego. Be in a constant state of becoming. Project. To conceive of ourselves. For further reading, try Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and friends.
This recollection helped me today while I breathed toxic floor laminate dust. What sayeth you?
Then on Thursday I read the comments on a friend's blog, thought some, added a comment and then thought some more (which may've been less), and decided to try and borrow part of the discussion: What determines personal reality and does it relegate public reality or inform it? Isabel referred to a NYTimes article about predetermination; Steve to determinate causality (in regards to Amy's 1984 quote); Eve to the choices made within that causality; and me to-------
I SAVED THE DRAFT HERE AND DECIDED INSTEAD TO TACK INTO THE HEADWIND...
There's a secret smile we can all wear, and all wear where we can. We all want to belong, to ourselves and to more than that, to something greater than ourselves (and yet something that befits our attitudes and beliefs). If I understand this correctly, both are forms of transcendence. Both rely on manners of transposition. Upon joining a group, we are impregnated with the greater personality, the ideology, the identity, the mission, the communal project and we are outside ourselves. Our own personality, while intact, is temporarily transmutated.. we can exceed our own limits (as we see them). This can be (and always is) done on an everyday, individual basis. We know it as a state of flow, or immersal, or involvement, a state of grace... in mammalian terms, as learning. You become bigger than yourself. It's been my personal belief that laughter is the most obvious form of this (I've suspected laughter as a type of momentary metamorph for some time, but there's a dearth of existential investigations about this.. if anyone knows of any...). And, in my humble opinion, the most important aspect -as the only form of immortality (so closely linked, we can't even separate it from our consciousness) yet created; an instrument so powerful we can't really even realize it- language shows itself as transcendental. Paradoxically, we want to resist our horizonal leaps (in the form of seeking security; hidden behind a palisade of Ps: permanence, persistence, protection, principle, prestige etc) and stay the 'ego' as static. As soon as this happens, a whole slew of abstract problems begin to erupt: intellectual, emotional and spiritual. And this becomes a tiny death that we pass off as bad luck, poor self-esteem, lack of confidence/competence. Lived daily. We are meant to outdo the ego. Be in a constant state of becoming. Project. To conceive of ourselves. For further reading, try Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger and friends.
This recollection helped me today while I breathed toxic floor laminate dust. What sayeth you?
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
abracadabra
in a post far, far away i'd spoke of a headbutt towel that i'd once 'conceived' to help distinguish between the genital-drying spots and the cephalic-drying spots. to help illustrate i did a perfunctory google only to find that someone had made the idea commercially viable. those fuckwits! i thought about it some more, and the idea of idea-stealing became unbearable. sure we hash and rehash, borrow, reclaim, and repeat stories, notions, opinions, facts and fictions (did you know that lying requires more brain activity than telling the truth? proof again that the US president actually believes what he says...) and why shouldn't we? what is language but an acculturated appropriation of other peoples' ideas? so, because i can't get mad about some sort of ethereal property rights (for a while i'd honestly thought i'd made up the conceptual problem of 'the singularity' - calling it things like 'the aggregation', 'homogefier' or 'collapse' [not nearly as snappy or appropriate as 'singularity'..] and horded it like a madman until it was pointed out to me that no, i was just waaay late joining the dialogue. so after i realized that i'd likely soaked up this information from somewhere else, adopted it for my own and then proclaimed my own genius, only to see myself as a buffoon a short while later, i'll relax my grasp of a few other ideas have (because i don't have the resources to make ANY of them happen, they might as well be free, so can save my hubris from later rashes).
- a portable music player that plays mp3s! (ok, i'm kidding, though i did once meet a man at Biftek who'd claimed to've invented snowmobiles, cellphones and $20 bills. he was pissed about not getting any of the royalties. i think he was trying to impress a drink out of me. ultimately, i was intrigued by his stalwart belief that it was true. it's quite mesmorizing to witness someone else holding witness to themself that way.)
- a fanny pack that has two belts you can attach to your ankles and drives the energy spent walking to a battery and inverter so you can recharge your phone and shit while you walk around. then you could have all sort of wicked attachments like personal fans and cooling devices for beer during the summer and heat coils for the winter. etc. etc.
- pants that you can sit down in WHILE STANDING UP! i think that's a great idea. basically, they inflate or lock girders in the seams so that you can sit as if you were in a chair, but weren't! how funny would that be if physics and society permitted it to happen!
- personal hooks to hang off a body-brace for when you go shopping. hands free consumer enjoyment. insert ready-made joke about mallrats looking like hookers here. or elsewhere. whatever...
- an umbrella that DOESN'T break. why haven't those been invented yet?
- the Levity System.. can't tell you about that one, as its got sentimental associations. and I will be instituting it one day.
- street canals, for when it rains. we could use them for transportation AND energy production (put some sluiced turbines at the end, voila, lots of power). they'd be pretty too.
- public urban orchards.
- 24 hour business days (then 2 people could live in the same room at the same time! it'd deal some with overcrowding!! this is an idea one might call STUPID. we'd have too much about human nature to reinvent.)
- a hairmelter for men, shaving is NOT fun and nor is this monstrous beard i'm sporting.
a lot of other inventions don't come ot mind right now. what are yours?
Monday, January 22, 2007
Maskadon
Friday, Lucy and I saw Pan's Labyrinth... a splendidly bleak faerie tale with its share of gore and wonder and fascism. Then we trundled through the powdered streets of the Old Port, craning our heads up to the heights of those magnificant buildings, and waxed over the edificial bulwarks of the past. And then went to Igloofest at one of the piers. We passed quinceys and firedrums and entered a strange openaired dancehall. Overwhelmed, we found some stairs to a catwalk and bopped until the beats eddied us away and we ignited with dance. We later found our mates (Steve and Chris and Jo, and their companions) and danced some more.
Nextday, Lucy worked her shift at Miami, and we set up a maskmaking table. Make masks we did, regretably for me at the expense of Grae's party (which would've been near impossible to've attended for ex-tenuating reasons), among the masks made were a brontosaurus, a potted plant, a polypsychadelicacy, a Greek tragedy Star Wars creature, a sequined volcano, a lick-a-stick bunny o' death, mad glasses rims and a pair of oversized lips... then we took off to go dancing at the Saphir (metal night...) and flogged our neckmuscles senseless. Getting scoffs from all the black leather-heavies... at first... we showed them what gravity was(n't) later, when we stomped like wild things through the strobe-stricken dryice smoke as mean and tough as any evil stepmother's backhand. Like it says in the post below, it was a weekend of abundance. Any in the area next Saturday, maskmaking from 6-10 at Miami Bar!!
Nextday, Lucy worked her shift at Miami, and we set up a maskmaking table. Make masks we did, regretably for me at the expense of Grae's party (which would've been near impossible to've attended for ex-tenuating reasons), among the masks made were a brontosaurus, a potted plant, a polypsychadelicacy, a Greek tragedy Star Wars creature, a sequined volcano, a lick-a-stick bunny o' death, mad glasses rims and a pair of oversized lips... then we took off to go dancing at the Saphir (metal night...) and flogged our neckmuscles senseless. Getting scoffs from all the black leather-heavies... at first... we showed them what gravity was(n't) later, when we stomped like wild things through the strobe-stricken dryice smoke as mean and tough as any evil stepmother's backhand. Like it says in the post below, it was a weekend of abundance. Any in the area next Saturday, maskmaking from 6-10 at Miami Bar!!
Leviathans of Frank Goddio, The judge on war of Cormac McCarthy
Imagine. I tried once earlier today, but must with all haste assure you how much harder it is to do at day. At work. Powersaws buzzing digital vertigo. Feeling a mind, mine?, concussing my esteem. But escape that and imagine the seacrusted megaliths, tributes from a different world, brooding for encapsulated aeons amidst this murk. 4 miles from the current shoreline, concealed from our squabbles, outlasting us, entombed. Have they smiled unseen for this long, godess Isis leaning to Hapi, god of abundance, just like us this weekend, we danced a lot too, to smirk together, concocting whispy plans immortal. Did they have the lived egos to match? These people even defied the sea. How many striations of cultural silt are there on this planet? Priceless, to worthless, to priceless.- - -
"
...All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.
That's your notion.
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all...
...Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test. A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man's vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgements ultimately he must submit to them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of light and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of those magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed, moral, spiritual, natural...
"
- Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Friday, January 12, 2007
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before - Dwight Eisenhower
I like generating axioms or heuristic phrases, some are pretentious and others pithy. I don't live up to them, or even really aspire to, but they have a certain soothing quality.. and I like to leave them behind in places (like scrawled quickly on the underside of a floorboard I'm installing, for example). 4 or so years ago, one hit me with some force: Time is not a measure of distance, but of consequence. The whole point of it was to convey the primacy of evolutionary progression to -and through- consciousness, now today, I read about something called The Law of Accelerating Returns in The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil (I've wanted to cut out some portions to place here for some time now). Here's the thought provoker (or relativity resetter..):
"What determines whether time speeds up or slows down? The consistent answer is that time moves in relation to the amount of chaos. We can state the Law of Time and Chaos as follows:
THE LAW OF TIME AND CHAOS: In a process, the time interval between salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands or contracts along with the amount of chaos.
When there is a lot of chaos in a process, it takes more time for significant events to occur. Conversely, as order increases, the time periods between salient events decrease. We have to be careful here in our definition of chaos. It refers to the quantity of disordered (that is, random) events that are revelant to the process. If we're dealing with the random movement of atoms and molecules in a gas or liquid, then heat is an appropriate measure. If we're dealing with the process of evolution of life-forms, then chaos represents the unpredictable events encouraged by organisms, and the random mutations that are introduced in the genetic code.
Let's see how the Law of Time and Chaos applies to our example. If chaos is increasing, the Law of Time and Chaos implies the following sublaw:
THE LAW OF INCREASING CHAOS: As chaos exponentially increases, time exponentially slows down (that is, the time interval between salient events grows longer as time passes).
This fits the Universe rather well. When the entire Universe was just a "naked" singularity -a perfectly orderly single point in space and time- there was no chaos and conspicuous events took almost no time at all. As the Universe grew in size, chaos increased exponentially, and so did the timescale for epochal changes. Now, with billions of galaxies sprawled out over trillions of light-years of space, the Universe contains vast reaches of chaos, and indeed requires billions of years to get everything organized for a paradigm shift to take place. We see a similar phenomenon in the progression of an organism's life. We start out as a single fertilized cell, so there's only rather limited chaos there. Ending up with trillions of cells, chaos greatly expands. Finally, at the end of our lives, our designs deteriorate, engendering even greater randomness. So the time period between salient biological events grows longer as we grow older. And that is indeed what we experience."
THE LAW OF ACCELERATING RETURNS IS THE CONVERSE OF THE ABOVE (it'd be kinda redundant to actually present). MORE CAN BE FOUND HERE.
Pretty sweet, eh? I've got a few problems with it being called a 'law', as there's at least one cosmoverse of unknowns among us arrogantelope. Also, found this and it could be mildly construed as related but DEFINITELY worth the buffer time to load. It's awedropping! http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inthewombanimals/video_preview_1.html
"What determines whether time speeds up or slows down? The consistent answer is that time moves in relation to the amount of chaos. We can state the Law of Time and Chaos as follows:
THE LAW OF TIME AND CHAOS: In a process, the time interval between salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands or contracts along with the amount of chaos.
When there is a lot of chaos in a process, it takes more time for significant events to occur. Conversely, as order increases, the time periods between salient events decrease. We have to be careful here in our definition of chaos. It refers to the quantity of disordered (that is, random) events that are revelant to the process. If we're dealing with the random movement of atoms and molecules in a gas or liquid, then heat is an appropriate measure. If we're dealing with the process of evolution of life-forms, then chaos represents the unpredictable events encouraged by organisms, and the random mutations that are introduced in the genetic code.
Let's see how the Law of Time and Chaos applies to our example. If chaos is increasing, the Law of Time and Chaos implies the following sublaw:
THE LAW OF INCREASING CHAOS: As chaos exponentially increases, time exponentially slows down (that is, the time interval between salient events grows longer as time passes).
This fits the Universe rather well. When the entire Universe was just a "naked" singularity -a perfectly orderly single point in space and time- there was no chaos and conspicuous events took almost no time at all. As the Universe grew in size, chaos increased exponentially, and so did the timescale for epochal changes. Now, with billions of galaxies sprawled out over trillions of light-years of space, the Universe contains vast reaches of chaos, and indeed requires billions of years to get everything organized for a paradigm shift to take place. We see a similar phenomenon in the progression of an organism's life. We start out as a single fertilized cell, so there's only rather limited chaos there. Ending up with trillions of cells, chaos greatly expands. Finally, at the end of our lives, our designs deteriorate, engendering even greater randomness. So the time period between salient biological events grows longer as we grow older. And that is indeed what we experience."
THE LAW OF ACCELERATING RETURNS IS THE CONVERSE OF THE ABOVE (it'd be kinda redundant to actually present). MORE CAN BE FOUND HERE.
Pretty sweet, eh? I've got a few problems with it being called a 'law', as there's at least one cosmoverse of unknowns among us arrogantelope. Also, found this and it could be mildly construed as related but DEFINITELY worth the buffer time to load. It's awedropping! http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inthewombanimals/video_preview_1.html
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Who once got so hammered he had the most notorious hang-over of all time?
The question came up a few nights ago.. what would Jesus do-do? Tried to make a twist of the 'b' in gobshite, and failed. Thought everso briefly of the last supper, but it was boring and probably involved fish and bread and stuff, and so decided that instead of properly informing myself, I might as well embellish upon my ignorance with absolute impenitent irreverence. So it comes down to whether or not Jesus pooed in the first place. I'm thinking that'd be a big yes, because why else'd he bother eating? So he didn't seem too modest? God must take dumps (cause we do, and we were created in his image etc. Unless we're His equivalent to a quick glance into the cosmic toilet before the post-wipe flush [All this makes me want to say: Intelligent Design, my ass. Why is my ass, which poos, so close to (and greatly comprising) my erogenous zone. That really is tantamount to having built a novelty playground over a regularly occuring geyser of feculence, or, in otherwords, STUPID (not intelligent). That's my addition to the debate over the proposed inclusion of ID to scientific syllabi.]) so Jesus definitely must have. Ok, extending that mortal inclemency onto Jesus, it must be reasonable to suggest that He had other bodily functions, such as the urges orgasmic. We had a decent chuckle over this one the other night too, as the obvious question this prompts is, what can the son of God safely yell during climax? "MEEEEEEEEE!"? "DAAAAAAAD!"? Dude was a carpenter, and every carpenter I know can swear the hair right off a dog.. so what was in His roster of expletives? Did He even one day unwittingly anticipate his death? Which lands me right in the middle of my next point, one that bothers me a lot... poor Jesus received his surname from his mode of demise!? CHRIST!!! How horrible is that? Opens up a lot of post-humous appellations though... Jesus Does-This-Lump-Look-Normal-To-You?; Jesus Ran With Scissors; Jesus Aww-Nice-Doggy; Jesus All-You-Can-Eat Chinese Buffet; Jesus Smoked In Bed; Jesus Peanut Allergy and so on. Now, I DO know that the major design of this type of commemoration is to underline the persecution he suffered, but that's really all just marketing, no? If He was such a humble guy, would He have wanted us all to know about it in this fashion? Make an idol of Him? I doubt it. And if He could truly heal the unhealable, then why not just patch Himself up? Too many inconsistencies for my liking. I'm not saying that He's bogus, by any means, just that we've made a real meal of His memory.
OK. And to show that there might be some things worth venerating, I caught on the front page of the Gazette today that 'The Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" May Have Met Their Demise' but we've got to hold our breath for a good millenium before the fireworks reach us...
OK. And to show that there might be some things worth venerating, I caught on the front page of the Gazette today that 'The Eagle Nebula's "Pillars of Creation" May Have Met Their Demise' but we've got to hold our breath for a good millenium before the fireworks reach us...
Monday, January 08, 2007
Subvert Normality
an excerpt from an excerpt (this citation needs not ethical practice...) after this last indulgence, the post's'll all return to the rambling prattle herd you're used to.
"Perhaps the greatest impediment to peace is a failure of nerve, a lack of imagination. What if we could hear the echo in the human heart of a vision which haunts and lures us - a vision which is the true source of life and its goal - a vision of deeper communion... The Australian poet, Kevin Hart, has written a little Haiku poem:
Each day forces us
to totter on planks we hope
will become bridges
Those planks don't seem much; for some they won't be enough. Of course this little poem lacks the rhetoric of the quick fix, the easy answer. But the "planks we hope will become bridges" are real, and small, and within our grasp, and this image exposes an inner stubbornness, a resolute willingness to be captured by something more. Our future is beckoning, and it shapes us even more than our past.
Is it possible to let go of the self-defeating parables we too often tell ourselves, and to live out of and into the vision of a deeper communion?"
"Perhaps the greatest impediment to peace is a failure of nerve, a lack of imagination. What if we could hear the echo in the human heart of a vision which haunts and lures us - a vision which is the true source of life and its goal - a vision of deeper communion... The Australian poet, Kevin Hart, has written a little Haiku poem:
Each day forces us
to totter on planks we hope
will become bridges
Those planks don't seem much; for some they won't be enough. Of course this little poem lacks the rhetoric of the quick fix, the easy answer. But the "planks we hope will become bridges" are real, and small, and within our grasp, and this image exposes an inner stubbornness, a resolute willingness to be captured by something more. Our future is beckoning, and it shapes us even more than our past.
Is it possible to let go of the self-defeating parables we too often tell ourselves, and to live out of and into the vision of a deeper communion?"
- Philip Carter
So I've taken personal solace in this, despite its call for a deeper unification of collective desire.. sight to see the now, vision to see the future and the will to see their seams.
Saturday, January 06, 2007
selfish
When I lose purpose, I have a tendency toward paranoid speculation. Peoples' presence unnerves me, in all forms, I have difficulty even just meeting a passerby's eyes or the jocular banter of a simple muffin transaction. I feel washed away by the interaction, as if the weight of the other ploughs right through me: I become invisible and feel highly impressionable by anothers' judgement. So I avoid the planet. It's a knee-jerk reaction, to reduce all my relationships, the ones I should by rights be depending on and using to inform my good health and sense of self. I just shut them down and mope. It's sheer selfishness to do so, and severs myself from people I really respect and love. I just don't feel 'up to it'. This also manifests in my avoidance of taking practical steps to right my listing ship: I try and go back to some kind of first principle, I don't write, answer the phone, but read and mither to myself in my room. It's completely backwards and solely a learned emotional response. For one who's closely inspected the minutae of depressive thoughts, mapped and charted every lonely inlet of the desert island, I'm always so surprised to find how protracted the effort to get out of the isolation chamber is. Instead of creating or reasserting meaning, I ask it to prove itself. It's pretty stupid, and antithetical to my eventual aims, but I maroon myself there.
Here's a brief list of the steps I usually take if I'm left there for any length of time:
1) write with the other hand, at least the sensation of something new'll wake the sleeper (youcan actually feel your brain itch after a period of some time). variations include, using a different hand for the mouse, switching knife/fork sides, brushing your teeth with the other hand, petting the dog etc.
2) force laughter. this is a curious catch, as while it helps project the voice and presence, its basically absurd. I'd usually do this in the shower, not only because naked is funny, but also because it's something to do. it is surprising how quickly forced laughter becomes genuine. laughter is like immersive yoga.
3) read out loud to myself. studies've shown that the pedestrian act of talking also massages and increases bloodflow to parts of the frontal lobe commonly associated with depression.
4) guided visualization: if you look at what you want from life, you're obviously more likely to direct yourself toward it.
5) we are unequipped to really appraise ourselves (let's assume we don't like our life, then how can we truly trust ourselves to say we don't like it? even positive appraisal is regressive.) so leave that up to other people.
6) impact your life more fully, not less. i am a meaning miser, paring down connections rather than expanding. we need constant expansion. we need to confront. we need to crash against others. we need to string necklaces of meaning. that's all life is! craters left behind by people and events. that's not to say it doesn't vary, but we become stagnant always before we notice it, because we all seek stasis, involuntarily or not. that's why i believe we put such a priority upon achieving happiness and marriage and other contemporary abstractions... because we view it as a static platform where all'll be ok.
Here's a brief list of the steps I usually take if I'm left there for any length of time:
1) write with the other hand, at least the sensation of something new'll wake the sleeper (youcan actually feel your brain itch after a period of some time). variations include, using a different hand for the mouse, switching knife/fork sides, brushing your teeth with the other hand, petting the dog etc.
2) force laughter. this is a curious catch, as while it helps project the voice and presence, its basically absurd. I'd usually do this in the shower, not only because naked is funny, but also because it's something to do. it is surprising how quickly forced laughter becomes genuine. laughter is like immersive yoga.
3) read out loud to myself. studies've shown that the pedestrian act of talking also massages and increases bloodflow to parts of the frontal lobe commonly associated with depression.
4) guided visualization: if you look at what you want from life, you're obviously more likely to direct yourself toward it.
5) we are unequipped to really appraise ourselves (let's assume we don't like our life, then how can we truly trust ourselves to say we don't like it? even positive appraisal is regressive.) so leave that up to other people.
6) impact your life more fully, not less. i am a meaning miser, paring down connections rather than expanding. we need constant expansion. we need to confront. we need to crash against others. we need to string necklaces of meaning. that's all life is! craters left behind by people and events. that's not to say it doesn't vary, but we become stagnant always before we notice it, because we all seek stasis, involuntarily or not. that's why i believe we put such a priority upon achieving happiness and marriage and other contemporary abstractions... because we view it as a static platform where all'll be ok.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Meaningful Meaning, Fool
I have yet to organize my thoughts and feelings for the last few weeks. That process will all be in my next post which'll be up in only a couple of days time (the one advance I can give is that I bunkered down, self-obsessed and munched on many many sci-fi books, realizing of myself the paradox of just how terrified I've been of creating a future Me whilst salivating over speculative concepts like transdimensional data-transfer, Dyson Spheres and post-singularity ethical dilemmas.) Instead of expounding on anxious and self-negating logosighs, I'll transcribe some notes I took when I adminstered myself a sizable dose of Ketamin a few years ago:
1 of 2
Ok. so perhaps I entered into this but a little naive. all I know-know now is pear shaped, as it were. the weekend that of the Friday 24th. Bex spoke of 2 dimensions opening up into a field of relativity. I rolled the lotto ticket, propelled K -------> and ever so suddenly didn't move anywhere. at all. locked in the bathroom glad I wore the shirt I did, it set the sepia tone. Mother came home from eating pies, I'd forgot, mayve peed a flourescent lasso in the direction of here. so, K experiment:
choose your washroom/locus of security well. it is only a folded surface. my exits were blocked and that was the excuse I gave to stay in here.
generally I see myself in a mirror perhaps once or twice a week, but there've been few mirrors I can't approach. like my mum. so approach her I wont. it's fine if she comes to me. though high, it all makes frothy, delerious sense. ninjas, who are existentially anchored by mind and body, they could link in.
though already 2 beers in, the rest is washed away by baking soda. I must now practice the slow.
call me the impulse. words untethered smash through syntax and all reign is ceded to the executioner. physical precision becomes an ever depreciating counter-balance and plays at the sniffled whim of the idealists. many actions have become available for use. LORD? ----> the design of word crawling lines creating aural shadows in the reader's ______. what is delivered is the how. all 'over-sensory' appetite retreats, and in the mirror I see a dwarf. lamenting our cobwebbed differences but heralding them exposed. perhaps I am open to suggestion. got any good ones? can the constant edit the editor? editee. edited.
draw the life... finely tuned strings snap most easily
2 of 2
ok. so I've seen this look in others before. listening to B12 amazed that someone can podulize/release and compel (am I stuck. I'm tired of always returning to myself. perhaps I've blanked and let my environment converge on me and through me. why all things fell like cheese and I'm slipping. people want this written this way. I would. if I could only create music like this. invite it in, is it you or are you it? all today I knew this was happening. tiny doors. ask more what time do you have? not what is the time? what biological putrescence will I spew? how did we fool ourselves this way? people in a mode. i've seen this look in their eyes...
transmission appears to end. this is likely the point at which my mother asked why I'd been in the bathroom for so long and if I needed a suppository or not. I mayve said no and remember subsequently astounding myself by doing a handstand in front of the toilet for the entire second half of the B12 album. the only sensation I truly remember is feeling like I'd shrunk into a little gnome given to doing a vast amount of gymnastic feats.
Whilst living on the island, back in the fall of 2004, I'd sometimes lever myself from where I slept (sister's floor, a couch, my rented boat) and try to assemble (resemble) my life down at the local cafe. On the back of brown paper to-go bags, I'd jot down brief descriptions, an exercise in dressed up honesty, trying to evoke laughter in me somewhere, or of chasing that rare consolidation of world-view where all notions and concepts come together to inform each other and impregnate your perspective with fresh modes of evaluating your life... So I found a few while digging through a box of old notebooks. Here's the transcribable of them (most are simply illegible, and others just plain embarassing)
1 of 2
Ok. so perhaps I entered into this but a little naive. all I know-know now is pear shaped, as it were. the weekend that of the Friday 24th. Bex spoke of 2 dimensions opening up into a field of relativity. I rolled the lotto ticket, propelled K -------> and ever so suddenly didn't move anywhere. at all. locked in the bathroom glad I wore the shirt I did, it set the sepia tone. Mother came home from eating pies, I'd forgot, mayve peed a flourescent lasso in the direction of here. so, K experiment:
choose your washroom/locus of security well. it is only a folded surface. my exits were blocked and that was the excuse I gave to stay in here.
generally I see myself in a mirror perhaps once or twice a week, but there've been few mirrors I can't approach. like my mum. so approach her I wont. it's fine if she comes to me. though high, it all makes frothy, delerious sense. ninjas, who are existentially anchored by mind and body, they could link in.
though already 2 beers in, the rest is washed away by baking soda. I must now practice the slow.
call me the impulse. words untethered smash through syntax and all reign is ceded to the executioner. physical precision becomes an ever depreciating counter-balance and plays at the sniffled whim of the idealists. many actions have become available for use. LORD? ----> the design of word crawling lines creating aural shadows in the reader's ______. what is delivered is the how. all 'over-sensory' appetite retreats, and in the mirror I see a dwarf. lamenting our cobwebbed differences but heralding them exposed. perhaps I am open to suggestion. got any good ones? can the constant edit the editor? editee. edited.
draw the life... finely tuned strings snap most easily
2 of 2
ok. so I've seen this look in others before. listening to B12 amazed that someone can podulize/release and compel (am I stuck. I'm tired of always returning to myself. perhaps I've blanked and let my environment converge on me and through me. why all things fell like cheese and I'm slipping. people want this written this way. I would. if I could only create music like this. invite it in, is it you or are you it? all today I knew this was happening. tiny doors. ask more what time do you have? not what is the time? what biological putrescence will I spew? how did we fool ourselves this way? people in a mode. i've seen this look in their eyes...
transmission appears to end. this is likely the point at which my mother asked why I'd been in the bathroom for so long and if I needed a suppository or not. I mayve said no and remember subsequently astounding myself by doing a handstand in front of the toilet for the entire second half of the B12 album. the only sensation I truly remember is feeling like I'd shrunk into a little gnome given to doing a vast amount of gymnastic feats.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- 3 dog turds looked like coffee beans having a potato sack race. The dark roast was winning.
- Passageways made from eyes' sidelong glances. Invisible threads of sense escorting fresh stimuli. Meaning beads up, breaking tension and falling into place through association... but what of the heart? Stand up all and be counted. Emotions and their garlands of behaviour. The Joker is left least funny of all.
- Crow - a lilting read, topo and graphic. Raw and refined. A contradiction of a first novel: indulgent, but for the reader. (This was the loosest and foremost characterisation of a long story I'd wanted to write, prenatally and immodestly called The Murk and Sky. It was going to be a classic 'underachievers making good again' story, but this time with a floating pirate radio station as the 'magic carpet'. The station was either to be called FMRL or DSMN8. It would've taken place around the Gulf Islands.)
- Death by bacon.
- If I could use my mouse icon to pick my teeth, then technology'll've truly helped me smile.
- Chestnuts dropped the sound of cracked knuckles.
- Her teeth were like chiclets. Chiclets chewed with a mouthful of corn.
- Her chin was an inordinate distance from her hands, which were nervous and clutched at each other for company.
- eyes adjusting to the dark... the moon's influence and the strain to generate colour.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Johnson?
The sun here is a crystal skull. It only ever raises a hand-breadth from the horizon, blowing out long shadows behind the blinkers. The surf breaks and mends, then rakes and rends, turning pebbles over in its mouths like words of seaweed wadded sibilance. My dog likes to fight as I walk him, so we berth wide to get to the beach. My mum's story of how her old neighbour used to stare out his yard window with nightvision goggles, to watch his dog foul our grass and watch Louis bark his territorial anxiety, keeps me away from those who'd delight in Louis' spasms. Louis convinces me that its the rest of the planet that's a bad dog; not him. But still I must cuss him and push his belly to the ground. How can I find space between his snarls to tell other walkers just how mean he isn't? We both come home with saltscurfed feet.
This book I'm reading is monumental. It's all bleached bone and gray. Pared, barren prose leaves such space for the reader to complete the picture, to put their own eddies in the dust, images often repeated with a slight change in their ordering. The word 'blood' is on every page, somehow making it lean and honest. And it makes me think of the book review below, and how a stern, unforgiving frontier novel like this really is much like the hyperbole drenched sci-fi genre. Both stipulate the most incredible of conditions, inducing the most remarkable of responses, exposing all extremities of character. Men fight gods here. The narrator, the tekhnos, the nature, the atavistic logos, and always always the reader. In this one, the prose allows little compassion, I can feel these people pushing against me, my observation, my presence, as if I am the only reason they reckon under such misfortune. The problem now is that I should have to read this quick if it's to become the Christmas gift I bought it for.
Victoria always makes me think of castration somehow. I'll cut this short for now, but I'll try and come back with a fairer idea of why it strikes me so.
This book I'm reading is monumental. It's all bleached bone and gray. Pared, barren prose leaves such space for the reader to complete the picture, to put their own eddies in the dust, images often repeated with a slight change in their ordering. The word 'blood' is on every page, somehow making it lean and honest. And it makes me think of the book review below, and how a stern, unforgiving frontier novel like this really is much like the hyperbole drenched sci-fi genre. Both stipulate the most incredible of conditions, inducing the most remarkable of responses, exposing all extremities of character. Men fight gods here. The narrator, the tekhnos, the nature, the atavistic logos, and always always the reader. In this one, the prose allows little compassion, I can feel these people pushing against me, my observation, my presence, as if I am the only reason they reckon under such misfortune. The problem now is that I should have to read this quick if it's to become the Christmas gift I bought it for.
Victoria always makes me think of castration somehow. I'll cut this short for now, but I'll try and come back with a fairer idea of why it strikes me so.
Friday, December 15, 2006
scrapbook DEC 15th
k. new format. friday (if i post) ll be the quick-writ thought-scrapbook. i'll try and keep it pretty loose and casj, and hopefully it'll endure longer than the word-of-the-day feature i eventually yawned at... (though if you have any particularly pertinent or strident words, please post... i collect them)
- Madonna is a youth vampire.
- a dawn to cauterize the rent night
- blogbituaries? RIP Mac, Onechildleftbehind etc.
- moisturizers? dermatological ballast for the overclean?
- wine rings on the computer
- lost/found note to my mum: '...mostly because immediacy is more of a removal of self than its delivery: its too late to make any decision in the present.'
- Wedding Crashers sequel: Christmas Crashers?
- spitting into the rain, does anyone else feel compelled?
BROKEN TELEPHONE OF THE WEEK (I have little ears): Foaming Bath Groins (grains)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "He went to get spastic down by the waves" - my mother
Thursday, December 14, 2006
A Book Review by In One Ear and Out Your Mother*
Which contemporary novels are we compelled to venerate above all others? Which books give us hope for the future of the form, exhibit most forcefully the backbreaking labor of ambitious authors to shatter the mold of aesthetic ennui and knee-jerk postmodernism which makes a mockery of "literary fiction," novels whose fervency and zest give back threefold what the reader puts in? In periods of readerly crisis and exhaustion, I can always turn to Ballard's *Crash*(1973) and *The Drowned World*(1962), DeLillo's *Libra*(1988), Clive Barker's *Imajica*(1991), Gene Wolfe's *Book of the New Sun*(1980-83), selected passages from *Gravity's Rainbow*(1973), Gibson's *Virtual Light* trilogy(1993-99), and perhaps with the greatest pleasure of all, *Blood Meridian*(1985) by Cormac McCarthy. These are all books that remit huge returns on their investments, becoming a vicarious collaborator in our sufferings, harvesting the anguish of the 20th century.
*Blood Meridian* clocks in at 337 pages, yet seems much longer, each chapter crammed with so much force and baroque ambition as to overwhelm the uninitiated reader, pummeling our sensibilities with its bloody license, its terror-networks of human splatter, its lines of lit glycerin, its miles of pain. Initially, Captain Glanton's regiment of scalp-hunters seem little more than bloodthirsty pilgrims of hate, an ignorance-cult borne of excess and syphilitic mind-rot. But more vitally, they are the war ensemble of Judge Holden's theology of martial gamesmanship, itself reducible to a few happy bylaws:
1. Men are born for games, and war is the game that swallows up stakes, rules, players, all.
2. There is no mystery to war, for war is god.
3. War is thus the truest form of divination.
Most brutal case of Hobbesian one-upmanship you will ever read....
I'll try and resist the obvious and reflexive comparisons of Judge Holden to Ahab and Iago and MacBeth and the Miltonic Satan. The word McCarthy himself uses in Chap. XXII (pg. 309) is "mutant," hypothesizing a creature specially adapted to the primeval wastelands of the American Southwest, a nomadic barrister of martial law incarnate, a pure demigod risen from some antediluvian vomit-bowl, one whose Mars-haunted spirit has internalized the whiteness of the whale, and is prepared to externalize this principle by whitening the West into a boneyard calcified by Judgement.
Clive Barker once remarked that he took it personally when something died, but the Judge takes this precept even further, convinced that nothing on this earth shall be permitted to die without his permission, without his blood-stamped ratification. His knowledge and his works are listed in the insanity provision of the criminal code, his running shadow itself half-way toward becoming an occult artifact. By the end of the novel, ageless and sleepless, he becomes less a mutant or demihuman than a pure principle or Intelligence, a roving nexus of judgement beyond origins or ends, Ares Unbound.
In my own experiences as a reader, the Judge is one of the few authentic father-figures I'd be willing to follow into the desert, a posthuman prodigy whose martial consciousness is lodged in the atavistic as much as in the epistemological, a true avatar of post-millennial ethics that must be reckoned with by all 21st-century readers. As Harold Bloom noted, *Blood Meridian* is far more important to us today than it was in 1985 (or even the 19th-century where it is set), helping us to calculate the number of the beast in, for example, the ruins of war-torn Kosovo, as in any future site of genocidal bombast....
The Kid is a recurring figure in McCarthy's fiction, an orphan and drifter fallen into bad company, yet vouchsafing some blurred trace of empathy in the bloodthirsty maw of Glanton's paramilitaries. It is this shred of "humanity" which the Judge condemns as a betrayal to the regiment, a heroic disloyalty to the Hobbesian principle of universal conflict, in the end providing an apologia for the Kid's penultimate, er, shall we say liquidation?
*Blood Meridian* is also a linguistic odyssey whose shadowy vocabulary recalls the work of certain SF fabulists who construct an alien language to reconnoiter their imagined worlds. (It is not surprising that McCarthy is such a revered figure in the vanguard of contemporary science-fiction; the novels of Jack Womack and William Gibson in particular simply wouldn't exist in their current form without his influence.) The difference is that most of McCarthy's "jargon" can be found in Merriam-Webster's, and the ambitious reader may want to prepare a glossary before embarking on this great novel; my own list includes: acacia, acequia, alcalde, almagre, aloe, anchorite, archimandrite, arroyo, artemisia, azotea, bagnio, baldric, bodega, boleta, bungstarter, bursar, cabildo, caisson, cartouche, chaparral, chattel, cholla, corbel, cordillera, coulee, crinoline, dorys, dragoon, egrets, enfilade, esker, fandango, farrier, felloes, filibuster, fulgurite, fusil, galena, guidon, gypsum, hackamore, holothurian, ilex, isomer, jacal, jakes, javelina, jornada, kiva, lazarous, lemniscate, littoral, malabarista, malpais, matraca, Monroe Doctrine, mortice, nopal, ocotillo, palmilla, paloverde, pannier, playa, plover, porphyry, presidio, pulque, pumice, purlieu, quirt, rebozo, remuda, revetment, sacristy, saguaro, sally-gate, scantling, scapular, scow, scree, scrog, selvage, slurry, solpuga, sotol, spall, specie, sutler, suttee, swale, switchback, tamales, tern, thrapple, tumbril, tyrolean, vedette, viga, vinegarroon, weskit, whang, wickiup, withers, yucca, and if you've read this far, it should be clear that I have no life to speak of...(!)
*lifted from Amazon without consent
*Blood Meridian* clocks in at 337 pages, yet seems much longer, each chapter crammed with so much force and baroque ambition as to overwhelm the uninitiated reader, pummeling our sensibilities with its bloody license, its terror-networks of human splatter, its lines of lit glycerin, its miles of pain. Initially, Captain Glanton's regiment of scalp-hunters seem little more than bloodthirsty pilgrims of hate, an ignorance-cult borne of excess and syphilitic mind-rot. But more vitally, they are the war ensemble of Judge Holden's theology of martial gamesmanship, itself reducible to a few happy bylaws:
1. Men are born for games, and war is the game that swallows up stakes, rules, players, all.
2. There is no mystery to war, for war is god.
3. War is thus the truest form of divination.
Most brutal case of Hobbesian one-upmanship you will ever read....
I'll try and resist the obvious and reflexive comparisons of Judge Holden to Ahab and Iago and MacBeth and the Miltonic Satan. The word McCarthy himself uses in Chap. XXII (pg. 309) is "mutant," hypothesizing a creature specially adapted to the primeval wastelands of the American Southwest, a nomadic barrister of martial law incarnate, a pure demigod risen from some antediluvian vomit-bowl, one whose Mars-haunted spirit has internalized the whiteness of the whale, and is prepared to externalize this principle by whitening the West into a boneyard calcified by Judgement.
Clive Barker once remarked that he took it personally when something died, but the Judge takes this precept even further, convinced that nothing on this earth shall be permitted to die without his permission, without his blood-stamped ratification. His knowledge and his works are listed in the insanity provision of the criminal code, his running shadow itself half-way toward becoming an occult artifact. By the end of the novel, ageless and sleepless, he becomes less a mutant or demihuman than a pure principle or Intelligence, a roving nexus of judgement beyond origins or ends, Ares Unbound.
In my own experiences as a reader, the Judge is one of the few authentic father-figures I'd be willing to follow into the desert, a posthuman prodigy whose martial consciousness is lodged in the atavistic as much as in the epistemological, a true avatar of post-millennial ethics that must be reckoned with by all 21st-century readers. As Harold Bloom noted, *Blood Meridian* is far more important to us today than it was in 1985 (or even the 19th-century where it is set), helping us to calculate the number of the beast in, for example, the ruins of war-torn Kosovo, as in any future site of genocidal bombast....
The Kid is a recurring figure in McCarthy's fiction, an orphan and drifter fallen into bad company, yet vouchsafing some blurred trace of empathy in the bloodthirsty maw of Glanton's paramilitaries. It is this shred of "humanity" which the Judge condemns as a betrayal to the regiment, a heroic disloyalty to the Hobbesian principle of universal conflict, in the end providing an apologia for the Kid's penultimate, er, shall we say liquidation?
*Blood Meridian* is also a linguistic odyssey whose shadowy vocabulary recalls the work of certain SF fabulists who construct an alien language to reconnoiter their imagined worlds. (It is not surprising that McCarthy is such a revered figure in the vanguard of contemporary science-fiction; the novels of Jack Womack and William Gibson in particular simply wouldn't exist in their current form without his influence.) The difference is that most of McCarthy's "jargon" can be found in Merriam-Webster's, and the ambitious reader may want to prepare a glossary before embarking on this great novel; my own list includes: acacia, acequia, alcalde, almagre, aloe, anchorite, archimandrite, arroyo, artemisia, azotea, bagnio, baldric, bodega, boleta, bungstarter, bursar, cabildo, caisson, cartouche, chaparral, chattel, cholla, corbel, cordillera, coulee, crinoline, dorys, dragoon, egrets, enfilade, esker, fandango, farrier, felloes, filibuster, fulgurite, fusil, galena, guidon, gypsum, hackamore, holothurian, ilex, isomer, jacal, jakes, javelina, jornada, kiva, lazarous, lemniscate, littoral, malabarista, malpais, matraca, Monroe Doctrine, mortice, nopal, ocotillo, palmilla, paloverde, pannier, playa, plover, porphyry, presidio, pulque, pumice, purlieu, quirt, rebozo, remuda, revetment, sacristy, saguaro, sally-gate, scantling, scapular, scow, scree, scrog, selvage, slurry, solpuga, sotol, spall, specie, sutler, suttee, swale, switchback, tamales, tern, thrapple, tumbril, tyrolean, vedette, viga, vinegarroon, weskit, whang, wickiup, withers, yucca, and if you've read this far, it should be clear that I have no life to speak of...(!)
*lifted from Amazon without consent
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
STORM!
the strangest thing, here in victoria, plane rattled out of the black sky to strike the family at the airport. i, zombie, go to bed with fine dog hair on my palms, hearing the plops of renegade raindrops against the window. the yellow house buffeted by the wind, mithering crows huddling under the eaves on a whistling phone wire. the gusts, not cold, but salt-wracked and with a resinous edge sharpening against the tousled pines and our belfry's cornices. get up to a thrown bucket of golden sunlight, and boot up for a walk, trees still ruffling. approach the beach, sepia flushed clouds obscuring the low-watt sun. a rainbow astride the city. the wind shorn thorn trees huddling the bluffs like cold-hassled pigeons. pockets full of fresh crushed rosemary, i lean over the cliff, into the wind, tears streaming, teeth dry from smiling. a daredevil wind-surfs over the laboradite waves -a plastic knife dorsal fin- tacks and follies over the lathering green ponies. william burroughs' rifles in my head, repeating: Who is the Greek youth smiling at? He is smiling at his own archaic smile. For this is the smile that happens when the smiler becomes the smile.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Things are more like they are now than they ever were before - Dwight Eisenhower
I like generating axioms or heuristic phrases, some are pretentious and others pithy. I don't live up to them, or even really aspire to, but they have a certain soothing quality.. and I like to leave them behind in places (like scrawled quickly on the underside of a floorboard I'm installing, for example). 4 or so years ago, one hit me with some force: Time is not a measure of distance, but of consequence. The whole point of it was to convey the primacy of evolutionary progression to -and through- consciousness, now today, I read about something called The Law of Accelerating Returns in The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurzweil (I've wanted to cut out some portions to place here for some time now). Here's the thought provoker (or relativity resetter..):
"What determines whether time speeds up or slows down? The consistent answer is that time moves in relation to the amount of chaos. We can state the Law of Time and Chaos as follows:
THE LAW OF TIME AND CHAOS: In a process, the time interval between salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands or contracts along with the amount of chaos.
When there is a lot of chaos in a process, it takes more time for significant events to occur. Conversely, as order increases, the time periods between salient events decrease.
We have to be careful here in our definition of chaos. It refers to the quantity of disordered (that is, random) events that are revelant to the process. If we're dealing with the random movement of atoms and molecules in a gas or liquid, then heat is an appropriate measure. If we're dealing with the process of evolution of life-forms, then chaos represents the unpredictable events encouraged by organisms, and the random mutations that are introduced in the genetic code.
Let's see how the Law of Time and Chaos applies to our example. If chaos is increasing, the Law of Time and Chaos implies the following sublaw:
THE LAW OF INCREASING CHAOS: As chaos exponentially increases, time exponentially slows down (that is, the time interval between salient events grows longer as time passes).
This fits the Universe rather well. When the entire Universe was just a "naked" singularity -a perfectly orderly single point in space and time- there was no chaos and conspicuous events took almost no time at all. As the Universe grew in size, chaos increased exponentially, and so did the timescale for epochal changes. Now, with billions of galaxies sprawled out over trillions of light-years of space, the Universe contains vast reaches of chaos, and indeed requires billions of years to get everything organized for a paradigm shift to take place.
We see a similar phenomenon in the progression of an organism's life. We start out as a single fertilized cell, so there's only rather limited chaos there. Ending up with trillions of cells, chaos greatly expands. Finally, at the end of our lives, our designs deteriorate, engendering even greater randomness. So the time period between salient biological events grows longer as we grow older. And that is indeed what we experience."
THE LAW OF ACCELERATING RETURNS IS THE CONVERSE OF THE ABOVE (it'd be kinda redundant to actually present). MORE CAN BE FOUND HERE.
Pretty sweet, eh? I've got a few problems with it being called a 'law', as there's at least one cosmoverse of unknowns among us arrogantelope.
Also, found this and it could be mildly construed as related but DEFINITELY worth the buffer time to load. It's awedropping!
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inthewombanimals/video_preview_1.html
"What determines whether time speeds up or slows down? The consistent answer is that time moves in relation to the amount of chaos. We can state the Law of Time and Chaos as follows:
THE LAW OF TIME AND CHAOS: In a process, the time interval between salient events (that is, events that change the nature of the process, or significantly affect the future of the process) expands or contracts along with the amount of chaos.
When there is a lot of chaos in a process, it takes more time for significant events to occur. Conversely, as order increases, the time periods between salient events decrease.
We have to be careful here in our definition of chaos. It refers to the quantity of disordered (that is, random) events that are revelant to the process. If we're dealing with the random movement of atoms and molecules in a gas or liquid, then heat is an appropriate measure. If we're dealing with the process of evolution of life-forms, then chaos represents the unpredictable events encouraged by organisms, and the random mutations that are introduced in the genetic code.
Let's see how the Law of Time and Chaos applies to our example. If chaos is increasing, the Law of Time and Chaos implies the following sublaw:
THE LAW OF INCREASING CHAOS: As chaos exponentially increases, time exponentially slows down (that is, the time interval between salient events grows longer as time passes).
This fits the Universe rather well. When the entire Universe was just a "naked" singularity -a perfectly orderly single point in space and time- there was no chaos and conspicuous events took almost no time at all. As the Universe grew in size, chaos increased exponentially, and so did the timescale for epochal changes. Now, with billions of galaxies sprawled out over trillions of light-years of space, the Universe contains vast reaches of chaos, and indeed requires billions of years to get everything organized for a paradigm shift to take place.
We see a similar phenomenon in the progression of an organism's life. We start out as a single fertilized cell, so there's only rather limited chaos there. Ending up with trillions of cells, chaos greatly expands. Finally, at the end of our lives, our designs deteriorate, engendering even greater randomness. So the time period between salient biological events grows longer as we grow older. And that is indeed what we experience."
THE LAW OF ACCELERATING RETURNS IS THE CONVERSE OF THE ABOVE (it'd be kinda redundant to actually present). MORE CAN BE FOUND HERE.
Pretty sweet, eh? I've got a few problems with it being called a 'law', as there's at least one cosmoverse of unknowns among us arrogantelope.
Also, found this and it could be mildly construed as related but DEFINITELY worth the buffer time to load. It's awedropping!
http://www9.nationalgeographic.com/channel/inthewombanimals/video_preview_1.html
Friday, December 08, 2006
Goldstream
Nostrils awing and fetching the air, an air of a sweated humus deep-sweet and ruddy, Nadia breathed it through the gapped window. The headrest in front smouldered lavender as gusts worried hooks of the old lady’s hair. The last petrol station now just a retinal splodge of crouched oil; spattered guard-rails tonsils to the retreating city’s constant feed of traffic; the murk-draped greenscape suddenly billowed in as view, bidden by the cedar-scrubbed aroma. The trees shuffled closer to the narrowing road, beginning to loom. She watched them smear the pane for a measure, her dad’s hearty phrases colliding with the maggoty echoes of the hospital left behind. Soon a note of affected satisfaction in his voice told her they’d arrived, the car’s tires agreeing in gravel.
“We’re here mum,” John repeated. “Goldstream Park. Sit tight while Nadia sets the chair up for you.”
Nadia locked with the woman’s watery eyes, bright but submerged, nickels flashing from a staid millpond. “The salmon, grandma,” as if answering the unasked. She wondered at her father’s ability to speak to this hidden woman, his voice a reply only to itself. She bit her lip back, a ward of criticism: how else to speak to a ruined foundry? Jocularity emboldens the seekers, not the trapped. “Perhaps we’ll even see some other wildlife. It’s been a while since you’ve been here…” She stooped to shift the slight body to the chromium-alloy chair. It was no harder than lifting a frown to a smile. Her father returned from the parking validation, the rental car wept its doors firm and they made for the footprint-pitted path.
John walked a marked pace ahead, his height stiffened by his long coat. His was a parade ground, inspecting those straight-backed Douglas firs, attending majestic. A vast hall of heroes. Their mossy festoons could not soften his eye. From crooks of boughs, sword ferns dripped like verdant, shade-laden lanterns. Connecting the earthbound to the ethereal, he thought. Their columnar support vaulting the doming sky. How ageless the arborous responsibility! How their efforts belied all strain. He paused, and from his chin through to his fists he stretched his bowed spine, a motion of habit, not supraliminal form.
Nadia’s gaze swept low the ground, negotiating the gnarled snags and mudded depressions. Grandma’s weight rattled through the wheelchair, resonating something in her hands that remembered bird bones in a shoebox lined with tissue. A musty trunk of sensation opened, its yawned lid revealing… some cave of sluggish, groping motility, bestial and blind. The ancient woods seemed to recoil, its pride retreating to expose dank spaces between the trees, spaces where things fed. A salmon carcass, innards outer scale as if combed through by its own delicate ribs, leered from a brittle shrub. Grubs writhed indecipherable from its cuttled flesh. Such proximity to the touring human passage kept the higher-order predators at bay, she thought, furthering this vermian glut. And there we were, feinting revulsion but meaning jealousy. Everywhere, the autumn blanket rustled a pocket above an undercurrent of mycologic mucus, sinking into loam. Tendrils beetled through fallen debris, sucking on a rot inherited. Those sweetening aromas just a byproduct rising from the openings of those feeding. One end eating the other eaten. Torsos of the mighty lay in charnel digestion, saplings springing from them like sprigs of mint.
A woman who looked as if she was wearing too much perfume picked along the riverside path, binoculars swinging from her turtled neck. Her calls to children too old to require them mingled with the croaks of gulls. She gassed a smile past the trio with a distracted glance, and hurried on. Blanched chum salmon cluttered the stream like languishing tea-bags. Fowl slashed at the attainable amongst them, the ones who’d furrowed their redds and spent their roe. Dippers rimmed the rippling runnels, fervently poking about for egg caches. Further upstream the rutting continued. From somewhere behind came the cry of “Eagle!” While Nadia and her father plumbed the tannin waters, the old lady’s scarf-fastened head turned tropically.
The light was light, Francine thought. The balds caught it in their stirrups as it bore them high. These days, gravity seemed to miss her body as it fell. Nadia, tall like her father, regal features cowled by black hair, her presence here lustrous, and what a life ahead. Francine went back, back to matter, to steam from a kettle and mouse slurps around a kitchen table. Light conversation as weigh-scale to life’s vexations. Back to when John was Nadia’s age, a young man, homecomings rarified by schools and girlfriends, terse words and church bells. He was apparent now -just in front of where she sat- hands on his hips and jigging for a laughing Nadia. A joke! He was grey himself, grey but robust. And here, in this wooded place, quiescent despite the roiling waters and hording nature-gaggers, life could again be lauded. Lifted up as a chalice. Up, up into the canopy. Up into that blue, blue air.
“We’re here mum,” John repeated. “Goldstream Park. Sit tight while Nadia sets the chair up for you.”
Nadia locked with the woman’s watery eyes, bright but submerged, nickels flashing from a staid millpond. “The salmon, grandma,” as if answering the unasked. She wondered at her father’s ability to speak to this hidden woman, his voice a reply only to itself. She bit her lip back, a ward of criticism: how else to speak to a ruined foundry? Jocularity emboldens the seekers, not the trapped. “Perhaps we’ll even see some other wildlife. It’s been a while since you’ve been here…” She stooped to shift the slight body to the chromium-alloy chair. It was no harder than lifting a frown to a smile. Her father returned from the parking validation, the rental car wept its doors firm and they made for the footprint-pitted path.
John walked a marked pace ahead, his height stiffened by his long coat. His was a parade ground, inspecting those straight-backed Douglas firs, attending majestic. A vast hall of heroes. Their mossy festoons could not soften his eye. From crooks of boughs, sword ferns dripped like verdant, shade-laden lanterns. Connecting the earthbound to the ethereal, he thought. Their columnar support vaulting the doming sky. How ageless the arborous responsibility! How their efforts belied all strain. He paused, and from his chin through to his fists he stretched his bowed spine, a motion of habit, not supraliminal form.
Nadia’s gaze swept low the ground, negotiating the gnarled snags and mudded depressions. Grandma’s weight rattled through the wheelchair, resonating something in her hands that remembered bird bones in a shoebox lined with tissue. A musty trunk of sensation opened, its yawned lid revealing… some cave of sluggish, groping motility, bestial and blind. The ancient woods seemed to recoil, its pride retreating to expose dank spaces between the trees, spaces where things fed. A salmon carcass, innards outer scale as if combed through by its own delicate ribs, leered from a brittle shrub. Grubs writhed indecipherable from its cuttled flesh. Such proximity to the touring human passage kept the higher-order predators at bay, she thought, furthering this vermian glut. And there we were, feinting revulsion but meaning jealousy. Everywhere, the autumn blanket rustled a pocket above an undercurrent of mycologic mucus, sinking into loam. Tendrils beetled through fallen debris, sucking on a rot inherited. Those sweetening aromas just a byproduct rising from the openings of those feeding. One end eating the other eaten. Torsos of the mighty lay in charnel digestion, saplings springing from them like sprigs of mint.
A woman who looked as if she was wearing too much perfume picked along the riverside path, binoculars swinging from her turtled neck. Her calls to children too old to require them mingled with the croaks of gulls. She gassed a smile past the trio with a distracted glance, and hurried on. Blanched chum salmon cluttered the stream like languishing tea-bags. Fowl slashed at the attainable amongst them, the ones who’d furrowed their redds and spent their roe. Dippers rimmed the rippling runnels, fervently poking about for egg caches. Further upstream the rutting continued. From somewhere behind came the cry of “Eagle!” While Nadia and her father plumbed the tannin waters, the old lady’s scarf-fastened head turned tropically.
The light was light, Francine thought. The balds caught it in their stirrups as it bore them high. These days, gravity seemed to miss her body as it fell. Nadia, tall like her father, regal features cowled by black hair, her presence here lustrous, and what a life ahead. Francine went back, back to matter, to steam from a kettle and mouse slurps around a kitchen table. Light conversation as weigh-scale to life’s vexations. Back to when John was Nadia’s age, a young man, homecomings rarified by schools and girlfriends, terse words and church bells. He was apparent now -just in front of where she sat- hands on his hips and jigging for a laughing Nadia. A joke! He was grey himself, grey but robust. And here, in this wooded place, quiescent despite the roiling waters and hording nature-gaggers, life could again be lauded. Lifted up as a chalice. Up, up into the canopy. Up into that blue, blue air.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
I have a habit of putting things in my pockets. Since the smoking ban here, I've taken to squeezing out the last of the tabacco of each smoke and pocketing the filter for later refuse. This is my environmental stand. It only really makes my pants smell (as I readily forget about them, they tend to build up) and probably contributes to global warming more than it helps curtail littering (people start avoiding me, creating additional greenhouse gases in their efforts etc., therefore avoidance = global warming). The problem is, each pocket has become a not-very-nice environment in and of itself.. on any given day you might find (which would lead me to say 'I can feel that, why are you looking in my pocket?'): half open sachet of pepper (just in case I need to use the other half later... what?), bottle caps, another cigarette filter (please, these aren't butts, important distinction I feel), coffee stir sticks, a hell-phone bill, a fork, pen & paper, not my wallet, someone else's lighter, wire, a necklace, and these days cold fingers.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
A variety of names spoofing Snakes on a Plane were told to me the other night, and now I can't stop trying to conjour up new ones... The two told me were Shark on a Rollercoaster and Ferrets in a Stationwagon (which, if it were a 'Jeep' instead, I'd have a few stories for you).
So, this is probably a web-wide phenomenon, but how about:
- Polar Bear in an Elevator
- Squids in a Lingerie Store
- Mexicans at Biftek (based on a true story)
- Fruit Bats at an AA Meeting
- Eggplant in a Bubble Bath
- 8 Year-olds at a Carpet Emporium
- Stingrays in a Fromagerie
- Couscous on the Metro
Also, I've been worrying over this question for a while: if on a raft with 5 or 6 people, floating aimlessly and without hope of being saved, would you eat the vegetarians first or last?
also, please welcome my oldest known friend James to the blogging world!!
@ @ @
Oops, sorry James, fixed the link (but left the syntax bizarre).
Can't... stop... thinking... of this flogged-to-death issue (these ones are a little scarier):
- Unicorn in an Accordian
- Porcupine on a Tricycle
- Pureed Carrots in a Prom Dress
- Hypodermic Needle in your Porridge
- Nicole Richie in your Shower
- Crayon all over the Fiscal Quarter Budget Review Presentation
- Tabasco sauce on the Toilet Paper
- Peanut Butter in a Hair Piece
- Vengaboys on the Morning Car-Pool Stereo
- Dripping AC Unit Above Where you are Eating Your Ice Cream
Ok, I lost the plot a bit there, maybe I'll have more once I calm down a bit.. Hope today's great for everyone.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Ouch..
I made it all of 6 days (and a half), and life did not really improve all that much. I missed my blog! And I really missed being able to legitimately visit other people, it felt spectral not to leave little 'hellos' on peoples' blogs.
I'm going to cut my teeth gently though, and not be too ambitious in this installment. I'm just here to pick up my spirits some today. Free the bonds, like. I would have waited longer, but ARRRGH!!!
I used to rise to Isabel's posts, because they seemed so horribly inaccurate a portrayal of what had been. They'd feel so unfair. I'd reason eventually, after reacting angrily, that to protect your pattern of belief and behaviour, you'll turn instead to the heroic task of flipping the world on its head until the sense you need with which to maintain your worldview eventually loses its grip and falls into the seat you'd reserved for it ('hypothesis' lit. "under one's seat"). The end-game of that task reduces yourself to victim though, and if both parties play that game it becomes a game of 'who hurt who more'. I dearly wish Isabel and I had been able to speak to each other during the past 3 months, as before that we had actually been able to glimpse into the reasons as to how we'd fallen apart without the feeling of recrimination. Briefly. We'd seen each other as people, not villainously fragmented anti-personalities. In the end, she cut me out after a fight we'd had over $20. I gave and asked apology. We did not talk further. In the last 1/4 year, I still manage to hurt her, this time through absence. I'd held onto her link because I counted her among the closest of my friends, and I guess I was wincing for reconciliation, or at least some attempt at it. Now that just looks fruitless. I can say 2 things assuredly: It was my fault, but also hers. And, at least we can say we tried. Maybe that's even the problem?
Anyway. She keeps a tidy and thought-provoking blog, and despite occasionally coming across as abrupt, she proves to be the most stalwart and considerate of allies.. but add her to your links accordingly, as by my next post you won't be able to find her here anymore.
I'm going to cut my teeth gently though, and not be too ambitious in this installment. I'm just here to pick up my spirits some today. Free the bonds, like. I would have waited longer, but ARRRGH!!!
I used to rise to Isabel's posts, because they seemed so horribly inaccurate a portrayal of what had been. They'd feel so unfair. I'd reason eventually, after reacting angrily, that to protect your pattern of belief and behaviour, you'll turn instead to the heroic task of flipping the world on its head until the sense you need with which to maintain your worldview eventually loses its grip and falls into the seat you'd reserved for it ('hypothesis' lit. "under one's seat"). The end-game of that task reduces yourself to victim though, and if both parties play that game it becomes a game of 'who hurt who more'. I dearly wish Isabel and I had been able to speak to each other during the past 3 months, as before that we had actually been able to glimpse into the reasons as to how we'd fallen apart without the feeling of recrimination. Briefly. We'd seen each other as people, not villainously fragmented anti-personalities. In the end, she cut me out after a fight we'd had over $20. I gave and asked apology. We did not talk further. In the last 1/4 year, I still manage to hurt her, this time through absence. I'd held onto her link because I counted her among the closest of my friends, and I guess I was wincing for reconciliation, or at least some attempt at it. Now that just looks fruitless. I can say 2 things assuredly: It was my fault, but also hers. And, at least we can say we tried. Maybe that's even the problem?
Anyway. She keeps a tidy and thought-provoking blog, and despite occasionally coming across as abrupt, she proves to be the most stalwart and considerate of allies.. but add her to your links accordingly, as by my next post you won't be able to find her here anymore.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Guess which book this is from and get absolutely fuck-all for doing so..
I wanted to give an excerpt from a book today, as one of my favourite things on this planet is people reading to each other. Last night's events have led me to want to go on a blog-vacation. I don't know for how long. It's a shame, as I've really started to depend on this wee fellow, as much as it's fucked up my lovelife (read: I HAVE FUCKED UP MY LIFE THROUGH THIS BLOG) for all things: ruminations, bloodlettings, tirades, emotional quiverings, storylines, wordplay.. I'll miss everyone, as I've almost come to rely on you as friends. I'll be back, but I'm off to crawl into a hole. Overdramatic? Yes. It is. But it is worth it.
Laters.
Tom: skullrhythm@yahoo.co.uk
Laters.
Tom: skullrhythm@yahoo.co.uk
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
"Something in Misky Bay. Apparently a grudge between twin brothers, Boyle and Doyle Cats."
"I know them," said Billy Pretty. "One of them drives a taxi."
"Right. Boyle drives the taxi. There'd been some trouble the night before. Something to do with a drug deal, they think. On Wednesday afternoon Boyle picks up a passenger at the fish plant, makes a U-turn, and is ambushed by a masked man on a late-model blue Yamaha snowmobile with the word PSYCHOPATH painted on the cowling. His brother Doyle is alleged to own such a snowmobile. The snowmobile rider fires a shotgun at the taxi and speeds away, the taxi's windshield is blown out, the vehicle swerves and ends up on the loading ramp of the fish plant. Minor cuts and lacerations. The snowmobile got away."
"Is there snow down there?"
"No."
Thursday, November 23, 2006
and then i almost passed out...
I could not finish donating blood this morning, as I nearly face-planted. I'd guffawed and p'shawed over the idea of doing so, but on the 8th vial, something in my bum twitched and wriggled up my spine in a wave of heart-racing panic. The voices attending me turned into angry wasps in a jar* and I started craving Swiss Chalet ribs. For some reason, I felt like Adam Sandler must've felt the first time his 'DOOBIE-DOOBY-DOOBIE' joke fell flat. Like The World started to fish-lens and retreat with frightening, deflating rapidity. It was awesome, and not in the biblical sense. The only real drawback was the registered concern on the faces of my friend and her lab technician. I didn't have too much time to worry about their worry though, as apparently the last cogent thought I could possibly have while teetering on the precipice of what basically felt like my assured and gloryless demise, was not an impromptu death-poem comparing cherry-flesh to our cerulean hive, but about an interesting blog idea. So watch out my fellow blogheads, it could happen to you... your death rattle might not be the whispered safety deposit box number to your grandchild, but a blogger.com password. I don't really have too much more to say about the experience other than that the next time I give blood, I'm going to tape that bum-twitch down beforehand.
(* - a phrase I liked from a book I'm reading. I won't say which one, as that's the subject of tomorrow's post... I was feeling faint for quite some time.)
Please keep in mind that the following blog idea was induced by shortage of blood to the head. Thank you.
(* - a phrase I liked from a book I'm reading. I won't say which one, as that's the subject of tomorrow's post... I was feeling faint for quite some time.)
Please keep in mind that the following blog idea was induced by shortage of blood to the head. Thank you.
More than a blind-date: it's full-on senseless
I am so very happy being with the person I know. I'd wade further into that thought, but I'm a little reluctant to share any of my privileges here. All I will do is repeat myself: she is my apples and sunshine, her smile her greatest wound. Now, while I see its virtues, I do not want to date anyone else.. but I am curious about the process. I read dating stories avidly ('date' is such a dry fig-ure of speech. Sorry, I'll prune my puns down and only use the plum ones), believe dating is crucial and laugh in the face of monogamy. Well, morelike behind its back. Actually, no, I have much respect for it and she won't let me say otherwise. Er, where was I... compound misery... monogamy... dried fruit... oh yes, the idea! I'm going to have a blind-date right here, right now.
In Italics!!
GO!
S'Mat: Hello. Are you Deborah?
Deborah: Yes. And you must be S'Mat!
S'Mat: Affirmative.
Deborah: And who might that be?
S'Mat: My attorney. Please be advised this operation in socio-amourous intercourse is being recorded.
Deborah: Are you sure? Because it looks like a dog.
S'Mat: Mr. Spazazoid says I do not have to answer that question.
Deborah: Ha! Is there a camera hidden somewhere around here?
S'Mat: HA HA. No, of course not. Why? Can you see it from there? Now, would you like to join me in my enjoyment of a scotch. You have some catching up to do. Please select a cheap one. Blended malt only.
Deborah: No thank you, I'm driving.
S'Mat: Me too. Check out my wheels across the street there.
Deborah: The Buick?
S'Mat: Shit, this really is blind-date. NO! Not the Buick, next to it.. the Segway..
Deborah: Ahem. Oh yes, very nice.
S'Mat: If you and I make it, a guy I know in Wisconsin could make us a sidecar..
Deborah: Ahhh. I see.. well, Segways make me nauseous.
S'Mat: We'll paint it puce. Now I hope you don't mind, but I prepared some questions.
Deborah: Oh good, me too. They're pretty silly, you know, to lighten the mood. These things can be so awkward.. My friend once set me up with this backwoods firefighter. We met at 'Friscos, the karaoke bar down on...
S'Mat: Cottage cheese or chocolate?
Deborah: Er, what?
S'Mat: Hmm. 'Er, what' sounds like someone answering 'chocolate' with a mouthful of cottage cheese. Could you possibly refine your answer?
Deborah: Do you know where the exi.., I mean, washroom is?
S'Mat: Is that your ques.. oh wait.. I see.. er, I'm sorry, I must be being rude.. I should've told you, I have Aspergers..
Deborah: Oh? Oh.. I'm sorry to hear this. Um, ok, well.. er, chocolate. My turn! What superpower would you have, if you could, and why?
S'Mat: Good question! Either a limitless collagen-injection system built into my index finger so I can help the hungry be fat OR the ability for others to see what I say with subtitles, you know, in case I'm snorkeling.
Deborah: Out of all the potential superpowers?
S'Mat: Oh. Wow. Ok, I thought they necessarily had to be powers that weren't already taken, for litigation purposes. Because Mr. Spazazoid says Spiderman's got a real bitch of a legal firm behind him.
Deborah: No. This is imaginary though, so..
S'Mat: Ah.. Well, in that case, I'd choose to either be able to talk to animals OR be Superman, because what's better than Super?
Deborah: But you can already talk to animals, do you mean understand them when they talk back? Also, Ultra's better.. and there's also Supremo, or Turbo or even Superlative?
S'Mat: Super IS Superlative, just with a silent -lative. You do however have a point about being able to understand the animals as well, that'd have its uses.
Deborah: Er. You're only allowed one answer.
S'Mat: Ok, then Ghostrider, as he's licensed. How about you?
Deborah: I'd like to move objects with my mind.
S'Mat: Good for you. Ok. MY TURN! If a pair of pants were to become alive and self-aware and stuff, do you think that he, or she, would wear pants?
Deborah: Yes.
S'Mat: Correct.
Deborah: Do your dreams, you know, as in your real-life aspirations, correspond with your dreams when asleep?
S'Mat: Yes. Except in real-life her publicist always tells me that she says 'No'. 'Barbara's simply too busy,' she claims.
Deborah: Hmm. Barbara, as in, Streisand?
S'Mat: As in Bush. I personally think it's a load of bologny, but no, apparently the Betty Ford clinic won't..
Deborah: Yes, yes.. Ok then. My dreams are simple.. a world governing body dedicated explicitly towards bio-medical ethical regulation.
S'Mat: Yes. I'm cool with bionic people. They've had a pretty rough time, you know, maligned by people who just don't *get* them. I get them because I listen to Euro-trance.
Deborah: Well, the idea behind this would is a little different.. it'd be LIKE the UN but..
S'Mat: That's been done already. MY TURN! Cowboy or a pirate?
Deborah: A genteel pirate?
S'Mat: Or Jewish, whatever..
Deborah: Er, I meant as in civil, courteous, well-mannered, gracious, gallant.. you know.. friendly!
S'Mat: Ah yes. Because friendly people ransack ships laden with treasure all the time.. You can't possibly be a NICE pirate, that's just stupid. HAHA 'Would you mind awfully if I set fire to you now?' HAHAHA
Deborah: You are an asshole.
S'Mat: So you're saying that if you were a cowboy, you'd like me?
Deborah: I think we should end this so-called date right here, right now.
S'Mat: Me too. We do share a few things in common, such as the compulsive need to use the interjection 'you know' and we both like wearing shoes. I'll tally up the scores, though it's strikingly apparent that I won, and then get back to you shall I?
Deborah: Don't. I'm going home to blog now. In it I will be reappraising my friendship with Rachel for setting this whole thing up, that snake.
S'Mat: Oh yes, I remember Rachel. Did she ever find the right glue solvent?
Deborah: Get a life, lose bag. And get your attorney flea-dipped. [Storms out]
S'Mat: AND I DON'T REALLY HAVE ASPERGERS! Hmm. That's right Mr. Spazazoid, I smell libel case too!
Ok. I am no longer curious about the dating life. However, come to think of it, if the A&S ever reads this, I might have a new, slightly more-true installment for you...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)