Kung fu monks outraged over ninja remark.

Giant wasp nests perplex experts.

Giant spider webs baffle experts.

Bush porn picture.

Reptile Posh already caught him though.

Crab.

• Father Dougal McGuire might also be called Ghostbuster as he makes the 'meeaw... meeaw' sound of the stationwagon. That or Peter Venkman.
• My good friend was telling us that his lab coworker grows foreskin in a tub. A foreskin. Just one immense foreskin. The donor might now have the largest foreskin on the planet, albeit decapitated. We tried to come up with possible commercial uses for it. Or any use at all. Coinpurses? Skin-tight yoga pants? Alternatives to plastic shopping bags? Biodegradable/edible murder weapon? Detachable turtleneck? Baby sling? Goes on really... The potential uses are limited only by the size of some guy's foreskin. There should really be a service that helps reunite people with their biological foreskins.
• My sisters house in Victoria recently got raided by a SWAT team. Well, raided is unfair, more like infested: they used it as a sniper platform to contain some unruly neighbours who were waving a BB gun around. Someone in the local area had been shot and the police went bonkers. My poor sister came back from her day-job, which I hear is pretty intense and scarcely rewarding, to full-body armored adrenalin junkies with tactical weapons setting up Field Operations in her kitchen, probably watching Entertainment Tonight and eating the catfood.
• Speaking of police, somebody I know just called the cops on me. They asked if my name was Warren (even though they had my ID that states pretty clearly that my name is Thomas) and checked my arms for hypodermic scabs. They actually paused on a wincy kitten scratch, saying: Dat der, what dat der? I explained the situation, that the lady who called me was just as responsible in the incident as me. After the inquisition, they took a shine to me and were extremely sympathetic to my position. I actually felt protected for once. I hope they come back, as I need 3rd party arbitration from this person's unreasonable accusations.
• Anyone know where I can buy some adult-sized Heely's in Montreal? Oh, nevermind... just found out: http://www.heelyscanada.com/
• Also, this movie really impressed me... Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon ... kinda fell apart at the end, but hey, at least it went meta. Or morelike, started meta and then fell to constraint. A very clever, unbelievable concept.

swearwords... not just for fucking assholes

ok, so what the fuck is up with swear words? i remember hearing my first in-song swearword (Lenny Kravitz's "Mr Cabdriver"... Mr Cabdriver, fuck you, I'm a survivor...) and freaking out. i thought that was the coolest shit ever. i remember the first time i got told off for swearing (such a nipple twist that one, i was watching Aliens at Marc Guillet's house and Sigorney'd just taken the flamethrower to the Queen's eggs and was trying to get out of the terraforming factory before the fusion generator blew with the pubic-lice-to-the-Nth-degree looking Queen on her tail (pretty bileraising scene and totally swear-worthy) and i commented on it: 'that mother looks so pissed off'... Marc Guillet's dad bollocked me: no swearing in my house tiger, and i asked what? what did i say? and he said pissed was a swearword. and i was like no fucking way, you dirty french dick discharge. not really. i said. oh, sorry, because i was actually pleasant in those days. thing is i'd learnt all the plumper, more poignant words from his own son, Marc, who could've gotten a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for his ribald loquaciousness)...

swearing welded my puberty together. it was literally an oath, a ward of protection, a structured and gassily semantic frame for a scream... nicely packaged format for angst... it seemed the most appropriate form to express my pain and hurt this overcooked shit-pie my world seemed to be... when my parents divorced, we took to swearing avidly around the house... my mum was fine with it, actually revelled in it, i believe, colouring it with more creative adjectives than i could muster at that point. finding out she could strip the mussel's from a cargoliner's hull with naught save an oral flourish impressed the everliving shit out of me. i was like 'fucking right'. and started calling her maw instead of mum, like how i imagined a trailor park kid would call his mum when finding the finger he'd blown off his brother's hand the week before behind Uncle Duke's stereotype... "fuck maw! gitouthere... Mullet just barfed up the rest of it..."

and there's wider patterns to swearing...
remember the 'douchebag' fad that stormed through public awareness a few years ago? people were like 'Bono? that guy's a douchebag...' and 'redouche, reuse, recycle' and 'Sup, douchers?'... ad nauseam... it was incredible, perhaps because it held its valency, like the 'retard' wildfire that'd ripped through the planet a few years before that. the phrase 'retarded douchebag' is still pretty funny, even though it don't mean shit and we're all a bit desensitized to them now... maybe that's even why these things are funny? i mean, really, what is a retarded douchebag?

so now i query and prompt for the latest swearwords out there... any new euphemisms you know of? want to just swear in the comments? at me? at some prick you know? go on, let's pretend swearing is cool again, like we're on a grade 8 field trip to Sault Ste. Marie with fuckwits for chaperones again... my maw's cool with it and shit, don't worry...

for inspiration:
THE BIG LEBOWSKI - THE FUCKING SHORT VERSION

The Deluge...

As I see it, the world could be better... here's my list of how:

• Wireless could be routed through yours and other people's laptops, recreating the web instead of relying on the lockable single central server... Strengthened by numbers, it would be free and more easily sustainable... if not, the central tenets of the Internet start to erode... This is my current current...
• Batteries could be way better. And mobile energy sources are now creating the biggest lag-time in technology... invest in that now and you'll retire unwrinkly...
• The personal SONAR helmet... see in the dark, underwater... this could be available now, so why isn't it?
• Developers holding on to vacant plots (levelled buildings, gaps between housing rows, old tenements slated for refurbishment etc.) could be petitioned, with reduced land-tax as incentive/collateral, to allow impermanent homeless shelters to be erected in situ... This would engender some sense of proprietal engagement for the homeless; give them an address (if they want it); obviously allow safety and involvement; be a place to commune and recollect... Unfortunately, due to the degree of mental imbalance amongst the disenfrancised and the leery approach the Authorities take towards street-dwellers, this happy refuge could too easily be warped into a place of unofficial internment... so volunteers and ombudsmen would be needed to orchestrate and manage each site's balance... anonymity be permitted, regional political suffrage be established... etc...

Also, people who read this and care, should attend here or visit there...

dogs, logs, bogs, loose cogs, no frogs and a cat: a blog

So this installment'll be more like the sauce-splattered post-meal placemat than a dish of edible food... I'll try and give it legibility with time-estimate annotation...

Tuesday 14th, 6pm EST... NORDIA Call Center...
Tapping happily away at work, relaying deaf people's conversations when...
-"Thomas Corcoran?" Says a lady dressed in a Trinity-esque pleather suit holding a clipboard...
-"Yes?" Says me, muting the call... Call ends so I hang-up...
-"Come with us..." "Us?" I think, then notice the hulking behemoth with axe-blades for hands guy behind her...
-"Ok... bring my stuff?"
-"Yes"...
That's how my employment was - and they used this word - terminated... I was too tardy for their liking and so got pushed out by the numbers (they also unionized lately, putting the pressure on the peeps in probation... before 3 months, you'll get canned so you can't enter the collective bargaining process that they're so deafly afraid of...)

6.05pm, bike rack outside of NORDIA
-"It turns out I can come to the cottage this week! Best day ever!!!"

9.30-10pm, Bark Lake
-"Ahhh, I'm at the cottage. Thanks Rob Mason, you're my hero..."

Wednesday 15th
Sailing in a Tasar with 2 of my favouritest people ever, in shards of golden sunshine on a summer-simmered lake...

Thursday 16th
Ate a lot. Talked about going to the Spa in Mount Tremblant. Didn't. Bought $500 worth of beer, groceries and beer. Ate more. Pet Maverick the dog. Slept like a Bedouin prince.

Friday 17th
Sanded the steps to the dock... Sailed, smoked a spliff and then SAILED, feeling everything: the curling fingers of wind, the swells licking the center-board, the hum of the mast-stays, the resistance of the tiller... became the boat... Made a burn-pile/bonfire a la the Inquisition. Watched stuff happen. Helped make stuff happen (weekend's mission was to straighten the boathouse by repairing its founding beams) Ate lasagne. 3 helpings. Garlic bread. Salad. Chatted amiably with the hosting family.

Saturday 18th 9ish-noonish AM
Watched two 40 plus footer cedars get felled by chainsaw. Carried them back to the cottage via swamp and septic field.. 'Hid' them from the Lake's biggest squealer who was round for a visit. Ate bacon.

noonish - 8pm
Helped raise a boathouse. Cut old wood. Started my first chainsaw. Pet the dog. Carried logs. Nailed stuff. Removed nails from stuff.

OK THIS IS CRAZY, SOUNDS RIDICULOUS IN THIS MANNER. THE ABOVE IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED BUT A LIST OF WHAT HAPPENED...

cutting to the quick here... there was a cat that apparently wandered out of the bushes... kinda gawky spring-born juvenile cat (5-6 months?)... needing a home... so i opted mine for at least the time being... he's a darling... black with a little priest's collar on his neck.... and we're trying to generate a name here... so here's a few... what do you think?

Corona (pronouced, co-ro-NAH... after being transported back from the lake in an empty 24 of corona... also means the ring seen around the sun during an eclipse - perfect for his african canadianess - also related to the CROWN)

Limerick - (word that got stuck in my head this weekend... but James is looking for a name for his bike and i though Limerick'd be more fitting attached to that... so I suggested it there)

Priest/Reverend (I like that one... call him Revvy...)/Dougal (from Father Ted... you should watch Father Ted... it's funny britcom humour)...

So right now, I'm leaning towards either Reverend and Dougal (especially Dougal)... any suggestions for an awkward cat with a big purr and loving tendencies, black coat with a punched-flat looking nose and a white little bowtie on his collar?

blogging pushups...

Rejected Children's Books manuscripts (because sometimes taking advice from them is like taking advice from your highschool guidance counsellor):

"The Ocelot, the Crone and the Hutch with the Everything-Drawer... You know, the one with the broken headphones, lost Risk pieces and your uncle's old speedos in it..." by Perry Sprayberry

"A is for Assault-Rifle" by Magnus Flexor

"Hector the Myopic Groundhog and his Magical High-Fives" by Llelowyn Glanddisorder

"How to draw... blood" by Porty Dubai

"Helen the Anxious Porcupine and the Too-Tight Spacesuit" by Lynn Onwelfare

"How to be Awesome" by Captain Awesome

"The Adventures of Grumbles the 9-Volt Battery" by Tom Corcoran

"The Continuing Adventures of Grumbles and the Carbon Monoxide-Detector of Doom" by Tom de Plume

"Rigor Mortis and You" by GSL

"Hippo Displacement" by Lavender deMentia

"Why Your Parents Have Broken Blood Vessels on their Faces" by Yo Ma Ma

"Barry Blogger and the Philanderer's Kidneystone" by Sue N. Ilecountersue

"Texas Hold'em and Why You Don't Have Any Toys" by Maxim Magazine

"The Forest Bunny Senate's Amendment to Chapter 7, Subsection F, of the 3rd Charter of the Statute of Glee-Rights" by Someone Who Thinks About Bunnies Way Too Much

"Tumescence" by Correspondence


Ok... I really could go all day. I feel ill though, so I will stop.

the small/medium/large is the message

oh packaging and presentation... how you've left our planet discholarated...

i intend this entry to be all about the cats i know.

when youtube initally swept through and caught people's fancies, i remember ____ telling me how she got bored and went looking for videos all about cats. it made me laugh to think of her typing 'funny cats' and 'silly cats' and 'crazy cats' into the search field. but then, one day not too long after, i closed the drapes or angled the screen from the rest of the cafes view, turned off my phone and, likely blushing, commanded youtube to bring me videos of 'funny cats'. i just did it again, but this time just had to type 'fu...' and 'funny cats' automatically appeared in the search field. so i thought i'd share a few personal experiences of 'funny cats' with you...

Marbles, so named for her mottled turtle-shell and big eyes, was a little cat with big dreams. and an even bigger temper. and she'd stalk around our backyard in Oakville, her pride keeping her dismissive of any human activity... a bit of a thug she was, arrogantly patrolling the perimeter with disdain. one day, after a rainfall, she concentrated her prowess on the pool-area, (we once had a freakin pool!) leaping up the ladder of the slide in two bounds... but she overshot her landing at the top, and slipped onto the slope... for some reason it was timed so well that we were all looking at her when she did it. her paws splayed in front of her, trying to stop the inevitable, she made a pathetic mewl and then went very uncat-like into the pool. we fished her out, not too quickly mind you, and she skulked off for a pout somewhere. perhaps the most embarassing part of the story is that i wrote a poem about it for my grade 6 english class (i was in grade 6, ok?).

Cricket chirps when she's happy. and she likes warm spots. and suckling on wool. and sitting in the sink. and sitting on top of things. last winter, ____ and I were in the middle of a 72 hour Civilization 3 binge (we consulted each other about most everything, setting up impromptu war cabinets with each other etc) with Cricket sitting on top of the monitor for days at a time. halfway through, probably at 4 in the morning, she came back from a litter-scrape and made her way over us and prepared to hop back onto the monitor. she misjudged the firmness of the surface she was jumping from and launched herself at the screen itself, barely managing to get her paws over the top edge. she plastered herself to the thing as ungainlily as a pie in the face, waiting for about 20 seconds before letting out the most pathetic little mew i've ever heard. it was likely the first time ____ or i had blinked in about a half hour... that really cracked me up.

Ziggy has a foot fetish. Domino/Sushi/Fidel quacks when she's happy (the chillest cat ever). Steve's friend Chantal's cat has a really small head. Gribbles has an attitude and sleeps in the bathroom. ____'s neighbour's cat gets stuck on the flyscreen. Their downstairs neighbour's cat wears wifebeaters occasionally. A cat broke into my room last year and I caught it chewing on my dirty laundry. Brian's cat Scar needs anger management coaching. Graham's cat once returned with no fur on its tail. Chewy once ate Sammy the Ferret's tail. Sammy the Ferret once dragged Chewy behind the couch.

Ok, I'll stop, but I must close with this picture..

Another typical day at work...

Just to jog your memory, I moonlight as a relay operator wherein I type what I hear and voice what I read... this service is ostensibly for the deaf...

Caller: Operator, I am calling in sick at work. Please dial the USPS...
Operator: One moment... (thank you. dialing number)
Ringing 1...
2...
[Automated Machine]
Operator: Please enter your United States Postal Service Employee Identification Number...
(entering number provided)
For status of vacation hours press 1. To provide a reason for possible absence press 2. To hear a list of...
Caller: Press 2 pls.
(pressing 2)
Operator: For absence due to... Illness, press 1. Emergency, press 2. Community Disaster, press 3.
Caller: Press 1 pls.

The call went on a bit longer, the machine prompting for dates and shift times etc. (wherein it became evident that you could call in sick a week ahead...) But my perplexity stops at the pithy phrase Community Disaster...

First... they imply that you have to call in if you have a community disaster. Assuming that would be in your hastily sketched list of priorities... "Oh fudgeyfingers! The reanimated corpses of the Jehovah's Witnesses have trapped us in the cellar and there's me leaving my cell phone in my other pair of slightly-less-soiled pants. How am I possibly going to inform my work about my impending absence?"
Can you imagine getting called on that by your Team Manager? "Well Todd, we're very sorry about the cyclone and all but we did provide an opportunity to call ahead and let us know. Help us help you Todd."

Second... what in the name of Zeus's foreskin IS a community disaster? A rained-out bake sale? A blackout during American Idol? I can just see a Postman telling the operator:
Caller: Press 3 please operator.
(pressing 3)
Operator: Please state the nature of the community disaster after the tone (beep)
Caller: Say Me, motherfuckaaa!!!

Tickle Monster

So I'm researching a story by entering "Tickle Monster" into search pages, and other than being marginally titillated by the hits that come up (from fetish sites to mommy-blogger posts), I am also stumped.

I KNOW that there's a russian tickle monster myth out there somewhere, but I just can't find it. I get returns on Tickle Me Elmo (which I remember thinking 10 years ago would be funny if there was a Tickle Me John Paul II), the differences between knismesis and gargalesis, why it is impossible to tickle yourself (efferent and afferent nerve synchronicity), tickle-torture, kinship bonding, foreplay and combat. And these are well and good and feed 'the source', but I really need the myth to draw upon...

In the meantime, here's some etymology for both of you...
tickle could've arose from middle english kitillen which could've giggle forth from old norse kitla...
and then there's the clitoris...
Greek verb κλειτοριάζειν kleitoriazein "to touch or titillate lasciviously, to tickle," but that could also be taken from the greek noun for 'little hill'...

now to approach the idea of tickling again takes on a curious dark overtone: there's a fine line of consensus in tickling... people moderately like to be tickled, associated as it is with youth... but people like to tickle more, and they generally like to tickle 'downwards' = older tickle younger... but then what does this say about the gender divide? statistically heterotickling happens more than homotickling... and when polled, guys liked both to tickle and be tickled more than girls... some researchers link it to phylogenic behaviour of learnt combat, but codified by the heavy panting sounds associated with rough-housing that have been ritualized into vociferous laughter... and tickle-mobs readily happen, one person being the bladder-strained victim while the others chant 'tickletickletickle'. and sometimes just the chant is enough to make someone squirm.

ok, i'm way above my head here... i can provide information on the tickle poll later if its needed...

weary repose... pound for pound a hammer is the tool most economical

this summer is a strain. i feel diplomacy dissolved by lactic acid wracked muscle groups resulting in severed social ties. and the bitter sense of betrayal it promotes. the ebb and flow of creative tides, the warp and woof of life beyond the maniacal 'me', with scant time to sacrifice a few gizzards to. a physical landscape harried by staggeringly poor reconstruction. unending pennilessness. a deep hollow of missing friends and lover. a carpet of sharded mirror-glass, razors of future. it goes on.

but there's shoots of loveliness peeping through the entropic fields. snatched moments in transcanadian bbqs and long-distance party-parties. oases of pool dips. herb gardens. meandered strolls down the alleys. the rain. and the glory of others' efforts... loopy's opened a blog which i can't help but whoop over: www.thinkingintype.wordpress.com. baby's got blog!

whoop.

as junk as a drudge - the mortal coil

So I was thinking today. And for some reason it was the phrase 'the lord only knows' and it made me think that really, the lord only knows what the lord only knows; and please note my judicial use of lower-case here, because then I came over with a queasy palpatation, as when I repeated the phrase, the capital L started encroaching a little.

I think that if we each truly had the capacity to judge our self we would have a workable moral system. But we can't, so instead we have to resort to some inherited ethical debate still rooted wholly in loose-jointed theology and revised animal-husbandry (read: religion as reframed pastoral institution). Join in. And since the democratization of the individual has - through all the corollary capitalist schemes riding pilot-fish - reduced us to base units of personality, the most pernicious of philosophical problems (for all our fleshy bits, we're the least corporeal of units).... we are at immediate and consistently imminent conflict with ourselves.

Because the individual is not fit to judge her or himself, almost by definition (how can consciousness see consciousness, cause what then does the seeing?), then each needs a judge (why is a judge needed?), but if noone is fit to judge themself, then who is fit enough to judge others? I'll be damned if I tackle THAT heavy-breathed subject here (perhaps literally), but I do kinda want to use the question to bounce off of radially.

I would like to review 2 posts ago... this guy's the limit... as that's really what all of the above is about, a postamble.

It was warped and reactive. Warped because it was based on a particular perspective, twisted by brooding doubts and the self-righteousness that they yield. Warped because of the emotion that bore the post into postage... a perspective that feels 'right' because of its experiencial power-mass. Warped because, well, there's no way to argue, because after all, that's how I felt.

Reactive as it was because I felt threatened. By others and then by myself. It was an induction of the pointy end of self-preservation. Not physical self-preservation, but worse... self self-preservation. This found readily in the post's tone of victimization. Which I guess makes this post rereactive. Because really, I know I have people in my life who have faith in me. Well they simply have faith and choose to have me in their lives. Who give me love and safe harbour. Who I respect and know respect me. Who sometimes I post for.

The 2 comments to that post I couldn't agree with more: i) that failure is a self-fulfilling prophecy ii) that thoughts are tangible (what in god's name are you blathering about? i'll string this all together right now...) and iii) that agreement is needed. And I totally agree! So much is self-fulfilling, the first-person is all prophecy... but if it weren't for other people would you ever know? Thoughts are tangible and tangibility is thought, but how would you know? How do you know when inspected doubts (life would be a waste without their dutiful inspection) begin forging what you see? And become being evident in your personality?

In lieu of being able to judge oneself, and with the corner-of-consciousness wherewithal of wondering if anyone else is fit to judge, and the sheer common sense not to go to the authorities about it... what do you do? You place yourself with people who will ride the tension of agreement/disagreement with you. Who check you and who ask you to check them. Who will assist you in judging yourself and need the same from you. And you gotta agree to let them... Ok, now I'm just muddying the spokes here.

This is all to say, I'm sorry. In This Guy's the Limit I was at the mercy of my own judgement, and emanated it as if I were origin. Onto others. It was the bluster of a hay-pitching hero. I leave it because it's been helpful, but really I'm quite ashamed. I was weak and I was weak.

To get back at the skirted Absolute, I do believe that if a common vision, perhaps one even quite small (like a meme or CNS viral parasite), were to infect the entire planet, then we'd be able to do it. And that's exactly what we're trying to do. And the lord only knows we've tried before. No, I think I can admit now that I believe its the ethical imperative that we do share vision. I don't think we'll be able to leave this planet before we do, and that would be the saddest thing in the world.

I'll probably retrace this post in a few days too.

wouldn't it suck if every time you started writing an email an animated paper clip popped up and said: i see you're writing an email! and blinked and then wiggled a prong at you? i think it would suck.

this guy's the limit

am i that infuriating? when i know that consciousness is a time-machine that has no idea where time goes to die. there are some occasions that open you, as if you find yourself the cumulating cloud run into the catalyzing pressure system that blows you up or down or adds one speck of dust too much to break the membrane and cause you to unleash the massed group of agitated ions... and the fury persists, each rumbling, sky-churning bolt lashing down one at a time.

when all you are and can be is conceptual, and then you get accused of it... there's nowt of substance, that it feels like lip service to speak of your future, and how you see it... tell me, how does one manifest? really, i need to know. it's very important to me. have i failed me? is failure a curse, a gallowed thief bound to eternal neck-taut resurrection? the moments when you're most vulnerable is when they pounce. never. and never again. i now choose martial arts of the mind to contain and project. to take you fuckers out.

when all you want is someone to write to you. to think of you. to understand. to send a coded message that only you can decipher. and this elaborate place of receptivity, or support and empathy proves to be undone casually and at stride. becoming the most material and superficial and fickle-bound of structures. a house of tarot cards. contain yourself and preject.

what do i want? someone who'll finally take the time to let me learn, and teach not preach. someone to respect and respect me. harmony. love. i want to be able to dream with someone else. to feel like i can become my own twin. i wish to correct this planet. i wish to provide haven for me and my closest. to teach others how to do so too. to live on a boat, a vessel, an accepted place to chart madness and build back from there... to form life. i want to write and to create from there. i want to collate and build a graphic novel, i want to help plan the construction of bio-sustainable environs. to help dredge the harbour so the storm-weary can finally dream and repossess enough of themselves to do so to. to see the importance of such. to say: it is horrific. you have yours. i have mine. horror.

the horror starts in my fridge. in my gut. in my bed. in my arms. i can hold you if you choose to hold me too. i am tired of being undone by those i put my faith in. i am poor. i am ok with it, i can weather it and form from it. i don't choose to be poor, i just am right now. and i won't be in the future because i will learn and gather and work it away. i am a slow crab, i feel deeply and tend to relay by eduction not by direct expression. if you can't handle it, if you don't feel it, it is no fault of either of ours. it just isn't. think away... it's what i'm doing...

The Sky's The Limit / Hyperion

Abstraction: Was gonna post a page of a sci-fi novel thats really striking me.. will, but, first must say thank you to Ann, for much and much more, but this in particular... the bandied phrase The Sky's The Limit... this, in regards to what we were talking about at the time, is too good to let go. This will be the name.



Further into the abstract... first my first real haiku...



be yond the be yond

me the you and you the me

yond be the yond be

Excerpt from Dan Simmons' Hyperion

"

The twentieth century's most honored writer, William Gass, once said in an interview: "Words are the supreme objects. They are minded things."

And so they are. As pure and transcendent as any Idea cast a shadow into Plato's dark caves of our perceptions. But they are also pitfalls of deceit and misperception. Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings. Example: the Chinese pictogram for "honesty" is a two-part symbol of a man literally standing next to his word. So far, so good. But what does the Late English word "integrity" mean? Or "Motherland"? Or "progress"? Or "democracy"? Or "beauty"? But even in our self-deception, we become gods.

A philosopher/mathematician named Bertrand Russell who lived and died in the same century as Gass once wrote: "Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it." Here is the essence of mankind's creative genius: not the edifices of civilization nor the bang-flash weapons which can end it, but the words which fertilize new concepts like spermatoza attacking an ovum. It might be argued the the Simamese-twin infants of word/idea are the only contribution the human species can, will, or should make to the raveling cosmos. (Yes, our DNA is unique, but so is a salamander's. Yes, we construct artifacts but so have species ranging from beavers to the architect ants whose crenellated towers are visible right now off the port bow. Yes, we weave real-fabric things from the dreamstuff of mathematics, but the universe is hardwired with arithmetic. Scratch a circle and (pi) peeps out. Enter a new solar system and Tyvo Brahe's formulae lie waiting under the velvet cloak of space/time. But where has the universe hidden a word under its layer of biology, geometry, or insensate rock?) Even the traces of other intelligent life we have found - the blimps on Jove II, the Labyrinth Builders, the Seneschai empaths of Hebron, the Stick People of Durulis, the architects of the Time Tombs, the Shrike itself - have left us mysteries and obscure artifacts but no language. No words.

The Chinese poet George Wu, who died in the Last Sino-Japanese War about three centuries before the Hegira, understood this when he recorded on his comlog: "Poets are the mad midwifes to reality. They see not what is, nor what can be, but what must become." Later, on his last disk to his lover the week before he died, Wu said: "Words are the only bullets in truth's bandolier. And poets are the snipers."

You see, in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was made flesh in the weave of the human universe. And only the poet can expand this universe, finding shortcuts to new realities the way the Hawking drive tunnels under the barriers of Einsteinian space/time.

To be a poet, I realized, a true poet, was to become the Avatar of humanity incarnate; to accept the mantle of poet is to carry the cross of the Son of Man, to suffer the birth pangs of the Soul-Mother of Humanity.

To be a true poet is to become God.

"

BB Gun

i AM being targeted at work. somebody in our 12-storey building toots in the elevator just before getting off, cunningly trapping the putressence in the elevator for the next unwitting fool. effectively me. the elevator arrives, i get in solo, a button IS pressed, the doors close and... rauncho. then, inevitably, when i get to the lobby, there'S a gaggle of elevator would-bes waiting, most of whom i work with, and they get in unaware just how much they'll be gaggling, and leaving me with the onerous odorous-anus onus. this has happened twice and i've had enough. but i don't know what to do. except this. blog. and perhaps plan my own revenge/problem to escalate (elevate) the situation unecessarily. i'm talking flaming paper bag here. or pointedly dangling an air freshener in the middle. or finally constructing my idea, patent pending, of the fart-tracking goggles and tracking that impenitent squeaker down. i think that would make some secretary's day, having some ghostfartbuster come into the lobby and head straight to her boss' office.

considering it has been a whopping 3 weeks since i've squatted over this page, you'd've thought i'd've come up with something a little worthier of blathering inanely about. and i haven't at all. um, the grammatical liberties the deaf take is about all... actually, you know what i do find very interesting IS that (i might BE wrong here, as this IS hearsay, but i do know this of arabic too... so its not that big a leap of credibility here) ASL has no verb To BE. existence IS taken as a given. i know that doesn't mean that inexistence doesn't exist for them, because i'M sure that that's all they here (ok... that's a weak pun + a mean spirited joke... nice). but the ramifications on languages that DO have words that act to confirm something's existence ARE incredible. ramification IS a funny word. also, would not BE, in all its glorious and morphologically wacky oddity, also BE a preposition? (a wee aside here... i personally believe that prepositions define and even determine mind. i'M not sure how quite to relay that, at least, not now... but that IS something to get back to for a later date) um, where WAS i? ok, i AM a dork. i went back and changed all the BEs i could find while the idea WAS interesting to caps.

perhaps our unconcious overusage of the word BE has over confused a few things, philosophically speaking, or even allowed the hyper-real a litle too much access to us all. perhaps, like all concepts, it WASn't a problem until it WAS. now defend yourself, think about what it is to BE. hamlet out.

Strangers are Truer than Fiction

I work at a call-center that processes operator-assisted calls. In a nutshell, I speak whatever people type to me and type whatever people speak to me. I am a voice and conduit, my head a resonance chamber loaned out for the conversations of others. The company's contract encapsulates the entire United States, so my ghost gets to travel, haunting various terminals, injecting.. I get insulted, praised, ignored, patronized, bullied, beguiled and humored in drawls, brogues, nasally honked whinnies, shuffling consonants and lassoed vowels.. I am a temporary organ donor and sanctioned eavesdropper, a windowlicker and string-wiggled appendage. A vociferous prosaia and choral echo to narcissisms' gall. And all this is housed behind a confidentially agreement I signed to protect the privacy and security of our guests/hosts. However, I can speak anecdotally... provided the IDENTITY of the client is not compromised... So here are some of the more unbelievable snippets I or others have had to say or type, that is, either experiences of mine or my co-workers... and to make it funner, I will fabricate a few examples, see if you can pick them out... Please keep in mind that I've only worked a week so far and that we are obligated to repeat everything verbatim...

- Our chihuahua puppies have had an allergic reaction to the vaccine... they are all swollen... my husband is rushing them to you...
- He just hasn't been the same since the place-crash...
- Sperm monkey!
- Do you ever jump off Jetskis for fun and just float there?
- Dude, you is buggin...
- Have a blessed day...
- I cussed a lot today. [Well, the lord forgives all, but you must repent.] - I'm kneeling right now...
- The car must have tilt steering so it doesn't rub against my belly...
- The operator says that there's the sound of a baby gurgling and laughing in the background... who's making all that noise back there? [Er, that's my father] - HAHAHAHA LOL!!
- I am a two-pump chump...
- All I is is sex to you...
- They charged 28,000 dollars on a gas-card... those identity-theft people ruined our life...
- Pig-humping sperm monkey!
- The reason it was funny was because his head was on fire... you get it, right?
- Hello, I am Mr. Stickrod...
- He is a tool! [A tool?] - A tool! [A tool... a... tool...] - A TOOL A TOOL A TOOL!!!
- Operator, can you leave a message like the axe commercial... you know, biaow chicka wa waaaah!?
- Lv this message: 'najp igoogigoo nyama-nyama-nyam-nyam tittitty booboobeboobubbba!!' Tnx.
- These operators are fucking idiots...

But how can you blame us?

Mind the Business

Its a few weeks until Facebook reminds me of my birthday and it correlates closely with a mean material aquisition streak that I've been enjoying lately... So I innocently post things I want to aquisite here in the near future (whistling adorable innocence)... this is the wishiest wish-list of all time...
houseplants (palms, creepers, fruit-bearers); vibraphone; windchimes; microphone; digital camera; aquarium; a frying pan; a plot of land; career; amplifier; a motorcycle; a haircut; a dog; long bedouin-esque tent material; rooftop access (and license/permit to rebuild); a cruising boat (a small wooden cruising ketch'd be awesome, yawls strike me as ugly); a beefier computer without screen issues (my screen is red right now); a nice scar so i can tattoo it (only way i think i'll get a tat); a toothbrushing tutor who teaches me how not to fleck the mirror; a longbow; climbing harness and shoes; scuba gear; a cerebral implant allowing me to actually learn other languages...
So I'd better start saving... I think I'll start with the houseplants, camera and aquarium... haircut'll have to wait...

The above picture is the cover of a comic I downloaded called Shaolin Cowboy... it's gruesome and hilarious, pointless and fantastically illustrated. I'd recommend it. (I've got a collection now... other recommendation include some of Oni press: Spooked, Borrowed Time, Wasteland... Two called Steampunk: Manitmatron & Steampunk: Drama Obscura... Alan Moore's From Hell... The Filth by Grant Morrison and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Tragicomic...)

The Mighty Post of Boredom

If I were a fictional prepubescant child with a name like Edgar or Reginald, I'd be bored enough right now to qualify for the locating of at least 3 fantastimagical kingdoms in various articles of furniture. "Wow, theres a transdimensional rift into a land of sentient and happy single-serve vanilla puddings hidden here in this recycling box!" (yes, recycling boxes do constitute furniture at my place).

Perhaps its not rightly boredom, but more an escapist reaction to my evil step parent, _______, which makes me be employed. I eat microwave dinners that leech plastic into my soul, swipe cards in doorways, crave stimulants (even Valium would be an upper), get grumpy at inanimate objects, start glowering at people and generating irrational and fairly arbitrary dislikes of various traits of coworkers:

[I dont like him he sounds like a speak 'n' spell][her elbows are ugly i bet theyre sticky i will give her a wide berth in the cafeteria][his eyes are shifty hes the type to fart in an elevator]...

I think I am just really tired... Lucy left on Sunday to summer in Toronto with a job that was so perfect for her it seemed custom tailored to the cut of her psychic disposition, and she's overjoyed to be back in proximity of her sister and best friend Liz... really makes me miss Becky... makes me wonder what I'm doing here and makes me wonder what I'd do anywhere... sometimes I feel like I have the goods, a certain flair for things, enthused and buoyant... at other times I feel like all the angles of this city carve me down and gouge my senses... my truest are scattered across the globe, somehow with the money and inclination to travel, to live, to project...

Someone I met yesterday gave me good, if not stoned (?) advice: "don't work too hard, or else you'll die before you die" ... thats never really been a problem for me before, in all manners of speaking, the biggest problem for me is being able to project past the immediate point of contact. I believe that in "our" culture, there is some pressure now for guys to be dude-like, that is adaptable, and girls to be self-rather-than-other oriented, that is adapting... this is a gender schism, and while I basically agree with self-centering habits -and realize that we all opt and act at the leisure of our own decisions- our silent habits are approbated by those around us (those that influence us the most)... next thing you know, you are caught as the mooring rope between the dock-cleat of 'who I am' and the cruise-ship stanchion of 'who I want to be'.



Everybody is lonely... but how can this be? I type out background noises (I put them in brackets) at work. This apparently helps facilitate the conversation between the typing and speaking parties (I am a relay operator), but I'm seeing it more right now as capturing an obscured and near-poetic glimpse of habit... I write things like (sound of accordian in a hollow place)(door slamming)(windchimes)(a background conversation about mashed potatos)... It is one of the more beautiful aspects of the job, other than knowing that about 1/10th of what I do is actually helpful and chips away at peoples monolithic stores of grasping loneliness. So I am going to buy a little fish and put it in a creched tank and contemplate existences possibly lonelier than ours...

Green Space 1

This page needed some green, as I needed to practice some custodial and archival skills for a minor alley-way project I've endeavored to begin for years... here's one of the first installations...

rue Rivard x Roy/Marie-Anne

picker flicker

recent randoms:
- cucumber plants enjoy accelerated growth with the occasional sprinkling of 2-day old beer

- i have a compulsive and barely restrainable need to tell people about boogers, i actually noticed it when i caught myself REACHING UP TO A STORECLERK'S NOSTRIL, unconsciously it appeared i was compelled to remove it myself.. i should watch out for that (i was disciplined for such behaviour back in kindergarten)

- i changed my 'potential' dj name from Robotommy to Mangleloid... not that it really matters

- would anyone suggest a photo manipulation software suite?

- volunteering is one of the most direct actions in which you can positively involve yourself in yourself (and claim it as self-determination)...

- silk blouses billow the most when you ride a bike the wrong way into traffic

- absence and presence are ambivalent in each other's absence_presence

- some 'comics' suck, others will warp the way you look at reality... and the only way to know (other than by others' commendations) is to read them

- and, sadly, another to the blogbituary: methesequel.wordpress.com... dashes to dashes, dots to dots, RIP... miss you... T

dromedary caravan

upon occasionally realizing i have Writer's Choke (block's not enough'f a word, as there's a soggy bottom to the identity of any 'doer' vs. their formal intent) i wonder what it's got to do with me. all personal challenges aside, according to one of the principles of dialectic process, the unity of opposites, it would follow that The Choke is some sort of antinomy of behaviour...

to practice writing, perhaps i should practice reading, and by that i mean repattern how i engage with i) the written word and ii) the story/narrative of other mediums...

in my life of the past few years, i've noticed that i increasingly veer away from people who seem to have opted out of dialogue (or perhaps opted for prescriptive rhetoric). this is not to say that i am happier or that my approach is better or that i do not engage in rhetoric myself, but eventually, in conversation with such a prescriptivist, we'll drive each other batty... i'll feel solicited and they'll feel mocked... true story. and i think i might be a little lonelier for it. its given rise to a Zeno's paradox of intimacy... distance being relative, but exhaustion not...

the obvious problem, of course, is the fact that writing is a mode of inscribing the ribbon of time, of elegant decay, of quotational parasitism. the written word is governed by rhetoric, even though it's main efforts are to corrode it, or perhaps morph and leave it ampliate. it's a camel's conversation with the sand.

i believe i'll tie up these ungainly ruminations with a few quotes, for unity's sake (harhar)...

“Every reader finds himself. The writer's work is merely a kind of optical instrument that makes it possible for the reader to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have seen in himself." - Marcel Proust

"Laughter is the closest distance between two people." - Victor Borge

"Symbols are the seams of the redressed gestures of dreams." - Me

"Hypocrite reader - my fellow - my brother." - Charles Baudelaire

where were you when your friend told you that Professor Dumbledore bought the farm?

1. 'Right here, you inconsiderate dolt!'
2. 'Just before I ended the "friendship".'
3. 'I was that friend!'
4. 'At a dep, buying owl-treats.'
5. 'Practising magic incantations underneath my bed-covers.'
6. 'Googling Hermione's birth-date.'
7. 'Taking a wicked wizard shit.'
8. 'On a coach tour in Dallas.'
9. 'Playing Go Fish with Severus Snape.'
10. 'He's not dead - it's a ploy to throw off the Death-eaters, you Hufflepuff.'

exciting information about ants

as architects
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/467203.stm
army ants
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6692853.stm
'bullet' ants
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5272094.stm
ants on stilts
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5128604.stm
unpleas-ants
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4472521.stm
anti-establishment (why i love them too)http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4319739.stm
and finally - this is just crazy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1932509.stm

The D/L

Like: The sound of someone walking a bike.
Dislike: People who hold their partner's neck as they stroll.
L: That my friend Joel has one of the most impressive standing vertical jumps.
D: Flipping the pillow to only find that its warm.
L: Waterworld - The Director's Cut.
D: Cars that slow down to a lurking crawl when you're on a bike.
L: People who clutch their bag too emphatically when you walk by.
D: People who treat their pets too preciously.
L: The squeak of your own sinuses clearing.
D: Unyielding umbrella wielders.
L: Conspiratorial whispers.
D: Shitty sci-fi movies (very different constitutional appraisal methods than those which determine 'shitty movies' in general)
L: The idea of dancing vegetables. Or fruit in rollerskates. Happy!
D: Setting off anti-theft alarms and having to sheepishly explain it away.
L: Dreaming something that happens the next day.
D: Boredom.
L: Aggregate smiles.
D: That its easier to come up with Dislikes than Likes.

The Sickness

The sickness is upon me... it plays across and tautens my cello-string nerves, and tricks my spine into forming unaligned maggots of ache. Makes me dream heavy-handedly of the infiniverse; a reversed spy-glass with a lens spidering over my vitreous humors. As I try to lend my fevers quixotry, I summed it up as a helix of bubbles, drawn causally backwards, from the surface of gangrenous water that sucks on me, foetal at the bottom of a brine barrel.

I have the flu. It is enormously uncomfortable, a reckless house-guest who uses all the toilet paper in lighting my mossy mattress on fire... and like all the painful things that've ever happened to me, I'm trying to keep it welcome... divine some sort of temporary truth out of its feverish twilight shroud. Thinks me of birds and how they fly even when they sing - fly how they sing; how the enflamed heart casts ever-greater shadows that pull a luminary low-pressure system behind them; how the human pace has gorged on the colourful rays of its limen, subtracting either vowel from 'feast' at its fickle convenience; how we are each a knot longing for a weave, each a salt-stained architect of dreams stuffing cotton balls into the punctures of our carapace of Will... our mis-takes lengthening the tension cords of our mistakes; with honour, our ablative sense of originality denies our sense of character: honesty is attained only through repetition - only through the rhetoric of peripherally glimpsed errors do we attain our character, that by using and reusing the same jokes, we find our self. We've achieved and killed and wall-mounted psychology and we call it 'post' to impress and enenvy the bounty-hunter friend ... that we mock urgency in pantomime with our democracy (a substanceless itch of insects humming above our temporal tar-pit), hiding our constant violence with everything beneath concepts of creation: I feel that it is our imperative to kill before we can create... in essence, we can only re-create when the dogs are dragging the carcass into the dust.

I dreamt about my illness before it happened, a small plaque of green rot creeping up my throat, seen Henry Sugar-style in a mirror. It relieved me to know that it made it up to my jelly-fish last night, shared with me the show of unshowable unsharables. Now I feel justified to feel so ear-blocked and throat-bloated. I am going to sit upon the shed roof under the sycamore in the back.

"Gozer the Traveler. He will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the rectification of the Vuldrini, the traveler came as a large and moving Torg! Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the McKetrick supplicants, they chose a new form for him: that of a giant Slor! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you!"

without license

Man of The Year Finalists, 2006

An email sent to me a few months ago listed the Top 3 contenders for the coveted spot of Man Of The Year...

The Vulgarian

I had a relatively untended broth of stewed thoughts I'd wanted to ladle out, but it's not chunky enough (Sloth Love Chunk)... In the pot bobbed such indigestibles as Metro (Montreal's own limping subterrain) mishaps (the "Why I got fired from the petstore" story; the diarrhetic nature of the air-quality which borders on spontaneous --- if you're ever 'stuck'...; how I run (no contiguous pun involved) for trains that aren't mine, and make them! etc.); blogbituaries (close second: how to gain power of attorney for deceased Facebookers) and other general ephemera...

Instead I wish to mention a new and ill-timed passion of mine: GRAPHIC NOVELS. I first came across the medium through Asterix and Obelix (brilliant if read with a saucier sense of humour than the typical 7 year-old possesses) and Tin-Tin (hangover cure par excellence). From there, I left it alone, and other than having the instinctive and near-carnal knowledge of all Marvel superhero characters --- like knowing all the Beatles' tunes without ever remembering actually listening to them --- did not come near them (apart from a brief forray into Ghostrider, which may've been a hidden urge for my desires to get a bit darker and hairier). And then I found Spawn. The grit, the angst, the neo-gothic gore and lush stylizations/production efforts of Image comics fascinated me. I went bananas and collected the first 20, thinking that I was a genius for doing so. It was hard-boiled with a trapped mythology of hell-powers of existential torture... or so I thought. Eventually, I put them aside as I realized that the story was SPARSE. Sure, there were layers of the fraternal camaraderie of outcasts, shame, unfulfillable yearnings (great word: fulfill!) and plenty of gore. But the stories were as robust as the pages they were on: there seemed to be that Lost-like we've-no-idea-where-this-is-going-so-nor-should-you feeling. And I needed closure. Beyond a sense of simmering revenge, the dialogue was not enough. The characters designed to be stuck. That pissed me off. Besides, superpowers were stupid without the dilemmas they brought. Like what Stan Lee once said about Spidey: "If you didn't have Spiderman clinging to a wall or inverted from a thread while he reflected upon things, you were wasting his dormant powers --- and the imagination of the reader." (paraphrase) So, because Al Simmons seemed to have only limited amount of hell-power he could expend, I laminated everything and plonked it in storage. It's a decent enough story, I guess, but I got bored.

But then I met Ben, who LOVES comics. And he showed me some beautiful ones:
Transmetropolitan,
Ex-Machina,
The Walking Dead,
The Invisibles,
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
Sandman...
The ideas were just crazy, unconventional and provided enough moral-ambiguity for the reader to add that much more by putting the book on their lap and gazing off for a few moments before returning. So I got hooked again. And this time by the writing and paced delivery of the stories, as opposed to the art. Considering it's so very hard to get a decent and originally fleshy take of sci-fi in movies these days, this hit, and then stroked, the nerves that'd been begging me all along.

So I started with Ocean, a Warren Ellis solar-system buster. It was pretty good. Some of his ideas feeling a bit "this'll be cool.." and shoe-horned in. But entrancing nonetheless. It was about a research station discovering a cryogenically sustained race of protohumans floating beneath the ice of Jupiter's moon Europa (doesn't that just sound awesome?) Then I bought Stuart Moore's Para. Which I liked less than Ocean, but got consistently impressed reviews (partly, I think, because he dedicated it to his father). I just thought that LOVE was confused for OBSESSION and that the characters were either soggy or wooden. And that the artistry denied the story, as opposed to assisted (chirpy colours, too well-lit etc).

And then I read another Morrison comic: The Filth. It confounded and amazed me. It is the one I most highly recommend. This is all I will say, but it's crude and sophisticated and one for those who know a lot more about the medium than I (I was relying moreso on my insatiable existential puzzlement to interpret the crazy story). I think it actually morphed me. I started chopping reality into strips for contemplation.

Later I read WE3. Another Morrison I'd recommend. About cybernetically augmented pets trying to escape the military. Gorgeous art and moving story. Violent though, gorgeously.

Then I bought Wastelands v.1. This is set in a dystopian desert world. Think Waterworld, but inside-out. B&W, but only in a manner that enhances. I can't wait for more.

Shit, I'm dribbling here. All this to say that I believe ANYBODY can find something that'll inspire them in the funny books. The people behind them are empowered and empowering. Get brave and try one. Ask the comic-guy, he'll tell you more than you need to know.

Some relatively sure bets: Alan Moore (the movie versions are weak, the graphic novels're the best in the biz I hear) "From Hell" and "V for Vendetta". Grant Morrison. Warren Ellis. Mark Oakley. And I'd like know more...

Eroding Upwards

I have the uneviable category of shorts-weather legs that evoke winces in those that witness them: they are knobbly, sporadically haired, highly-splayable and porcelain white. They more resemble the legs of an albino infant giraffe born near an undersea geothermal vent than those belonging to the suave champion iconoclast you've all come to know - AND LOVE. People gawk and gasp when they see them, they reach for sunglasses/garlic-rubbed wooden stakes, lean down to children and point while muttering under their breath, immediately feel the urge to call loved ones or inexplicably crave cheese curds. I'm fairly fond of how awkward these sticks can be, especially when paired with leisure summer clothes.

Other anaTOMical stragenesses involve:

• smaller than average ears; one is a bit lower than the other, meaning that when I wear aviators it looks like one leg is about 3 inches shorter than the other. i'm thinking about augmentation
• startlingly fast-growing fingernails, about 4mm of growth a week. if i don't clip them biweekly, i wake up looking like a racoon attacked me in my sleep. they're quite strong though
• very good vision. though, i'm thinking because they're blue, they're supersensitive to light
• false teeth. i have inch-long screws going into my skull to attach two ceramic incisors at the front. i used to have them mounted on a retainer when i was an adolescent obviously needing yet another thing to feel self-conscious about. strangely, people would step on my retainer a lot, so i'd go weeks at a time with two gaps where my smile should've been
• oddly bulbous biceps. they'll pop out at you like fermented yoghurt when you least expect it. FUN!
• prehensile toes. i can write with them, use chopsticks (but nowhere near my mouth), play tetris (for a few levels). they really impress goths
• facial hair that flows down to the ol' choda. how wicked is that!? not very
• a demeanor that most people readily recognize as at least bi-curious, but i'm actually really pretty straight. i often wish i weren't

how about you lot? got any bodily weirdnesses you'd like to share? go on... GO ON!!!

ps. sorry about the choda comment...

Which bulge are you looking at?

I'm starting to feel that blogspot is hurting. Likely it's my perceived and unshruggable sense of creative sterility throbbing forth, but still I find myself admiring the 'wordpress' crowd's crisper format and self-respect. The 'spot just seems so rudimentary and half-baked now...

I would've tried to assemble a post about recent personal comments made about my emotional candidness, or lack thereof, but I've been a secretkeeper for years and there doesn't seem to be any starkly visible eggshell to crack, just a quiet, near-unnoticable rhythm that holds fast - especially under inspection. Others can readily spot it, and it seems to bring out neuroses in their reaction to me. What's hard for them to 'get' is that it is my M.O., not a verdict on their character, and so potential times for open discussion and my own blooming sense of contemporal trust are usually occluded by frustration, pressure and then emotional kneejerk repellence. I am a deer, don't stalk me, I'll run. Stay still, and I'll nuzzle the moss you hold in your hand. Though I like cookies and Spiderman comics and charbroiled fish as well. Come to think about it, I don't like moss that much (except to put barefeet on).

Oh, this is reasonably funny. A pretty grim glance at gender relations and gross.. (but funny...)

He emerges from Facebook like Boba Fett didn't from the Sarlacc pit (except for in a short-story I read when 15, but it seemed unlikely)

I'd like to comment on the state of the world, but my mouth is still dangling open in shock. I'm just gonna ease back into this whole confluent-thoughts-forming-sentences-and-then-paragraphs exercise slowly here. Phew, tiring. I'll write again soon.

An E-mail from "Ge la mu"

Knowledge of the word "why" is necessary if you are to find this funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlG2f9TAbEk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fholywardanceparty%2Ecom%2Findex%2Ehtml

I just love the dudes they picked as dancers.

Elsewhere in the world of political activism, a certain blog captained by the author S'mat has recently been banned in the notoriously repressive peoples republic of china. Not a word of a lie! I used to be able to read it, now I cannot.
Well actually I more recently realized that its the entire blogspot site thats been banned but for a while I thought that for sure my personal activity was being monitored and my frequent visitations to a site that makes many references to depaneurs and the singularity was deemed too subversive. So Tom can you please email me your entries. Thanks duder. And you to steve, if you're still keeping yours going.

(I guess y'all wound not be satisfied if I sent out a group-ish email with nothing more than a link to a retarded and only mildly humorous youtube clip?...so now Im trying scrambling to beef this up.)

While I was getting a 2 dollar foot massage yesterday, I saw a story on the news about a woman who refused to sell her house to developers that were planning a large project on hers and her neighbors land. (This story followed the story of a chef that was once so poor and depressed that he spent his last few yuan on shrimps which he braised in a decadent sauce and laid on top of fresh rice wine infused noodles and topped it off with enough sleeping pills to kill an elephant or even John Merrick...he narrowly survived and now is rolling in a BMW and has one of the top kitchens in Peking.) She refused all offers while everyone else accepted so the development company went ahead and dug out all around her house, about 3 stories deep and about 50 yards or so on all sides, leaving her potty old house surrounded by steep cliffs and a huge empty moat. I read today that all media coverage of this story has now been outlawed. Here are some pictures... but please: shhhh!

I recorded a radio interview on tuesday for the campus radio station. The campus airs an hour and a half of programming every weekday and the sound is boomed all over campus through sidewalk speakers disguised as landscaped boulders.The two hosts that interviewed me were so comically amateur about the whole thing. They came equipped with only 3 questions, one of which I incidentally answered in my 40 second intro. The goal that they had in mind was to do a compare and contrast of campus life in China vs. in the West. I am not the person to ask about this. They wanted me to speak about all the clubs that I had taken part in and all of the events that the student union organized (at this university they organize a speed text messaging competion!) and I could think of nary. Architecture, leisure time and summer jobs were also asked about. I was about as thrilling as the natural rocks that were used as models for the mock-rocks that will soon be broadcasting my rapid-fire pipsqueak english that will be heard by many but, thankfully, understood by few. The one plus is that I brought in some Can-Con music tracks--so for about a total of about 11 minutes next friday there will be relief from the god forsaken pop music that they love over here.

Ive been to shanghai and scaled some inner-city peaks here in Wuxi. Eaten meat on a stick and been called a chop-stick by a 70 pound Chinese girl who thought I was too skinny. Going on a trip organized by some of my students to the historic town of Suzhou next weekend to go to amusement park (what else?). Went to a club last night and watched creepy white men with pot bellies and balding patterns go fishing for epiglottises (epigloti?) in the mouths of girls so good-looking they could be Vin Diesel's girlfriends. Beat a Chinese guy at ping-pong. Beat my way through 100 Chinese guys to get on the bus. Beat my way through 1000 Chinese guys to exit a market. Will be beating my way through 10,000 Chinese guys when I attempt to purchase a train ticket to Beijing for the May 1st holiday (am going to meet up with my old pal Tom McCabe).

I dont know what else. I'm having a great time but the work has been very time consuming and so haven't had a lot of opportunity to really explore a whole lot.

Yours,

Ge la mu

By the by, my mandarin is probably worse now than it was when I left montreal but a change is gonna come. At the radio station I met this really cool person that bizarrely speaks this near-immaculate and nuanced french (learnt in Shanghai over 2 years) and wants a chance to use it, so we're going to do some language exchange thing and maybe play some ping-pong. Go habs!

2 Memories

1) When I lived in London, our school chartered a coach as a schoolbus (cheesewagons don't exist there). We always had the same driver, a hindu, and I liked him so much that I'd sit at the front and chat to him in the mornings (also, the view was better out the giant bubble windshield than the side windows). He cracked me up, so funny was he, making heavily accented fart jokes and other slapstick attempts to provoke furrows of ire from the chaperoning teacher. One of his fingers was half-way around, as if it had become loose at one of the digit knuckles and begun to unscrew. Being young, I'd no problem asking him about it and each time his answer was different. From: it got chopped off by a lawnmower and then resewn, to a waste disposal unit and then resewn, to bitten off by his wife and then it grew back. I loved the trips to and from school, it was either him, the Top Trumps that I OWNED or the kissing games at the back.

2) Once, while installing hardwood floor in Victoria, I had to inform the 80 year-old lady we were working for that we were almost out of the product (only half-way done) and would have to order more. So she kicked me in the ass. I hadn't liked her until then.

what the blog do i know?

not a lot.
do i care?
yes and know.
was thinking about how action adverse I am these days. and why. perhaps because i feel that confronting something legitimizes it?

i'm not lazy, just a.a.
sometimes thinking is best done without thinking about it.

Up Syndrome

I have a blog nemesis. It's revivifying. Just as spring burps a few splutters and false starts, I get an enemy!! Yay!!! As I divined from the oracular MSN, I'm not alone in this feeling. The best part is, this enemy does not even know it. I believe that until Father Ted is fully downloaded, I will glibly write posts pertaining to this person's eminent idiocy. Idiocy just radiates from this overconfident redouche like tapeworms from a puppy. I'd love to get in a verbal exchange with this bloated ball-bag, but that would be instigative. I just have to stew. It shouldn't matter, and that's why it does.

a timed post...

busy day today (at least, by supposition), the time is now 12:55, and i give myself till 1 to blitz this post: woke up fuzzy and maladjusted (yes!) to an irritable cosmos. sought the sound of phantasmic honking and caught a V-wing of perhaps 200 geese like one more of winter's scars. been seeing scars on people since, especially headwounds and children. one such situation arose in the form of a brigade of mothers pushing child-carriages... the carriages actually had brand names of Jeep and Humvee on them. Thought the cast-iron dinosaurs that roam on St. L might claim a few of the little goslings, but apparantly they're only asphaltivores, and don't eat of these creamy skinned little pop-rocks. I have the complexion of homemade yoghurt, and think it would suit me if I weren't so expired. ok dandies, 12:59. gotta pull the chute. laters!

The sixth sense is a-non____...

St. Splatty's and the Self...

I got disasterated this weekend. It was fun to do, but when you vow never ever to drink ever again WHILE you are doing it, it hurts that much more. I met champions and chums, and due to a prolonged period of confidence-incontinence, kept pretty unrowdy and instead served more as a drunkard facilitator (back-patter, oopsy-daisy-picker-back-upper, wallet retriever, 'anyone-know-this-unconscious-guy?' yeller etc.). Er, yah, it was fun to do. The spectator became the spectacle.

Which leads me to the next question.. The concept of the Self is under attack!! Or maybe I've only just noticed it. Either way, I think that's a good thing, considering it is largely a fabrication of the market. I've read various works pertaining to the destruction/realization of the Self, but never from the vantage of an industry (more from an ontological angle) and am salivating at the thought of watching this recently downloaded doc. YAY SELF-SACRIFICE!!

Whomunculus asks: What do you think of the Self?

Just over a year ago...

...Justine and Amy, Julian and I, had posted our vacant, windowless room for rent. These rooms are illegal in Montreal, due to some its-just-a-matter-of-time-till-the-place-catches-fire-and-the-landlord-has-preemtively-sworn-that-they-didn't-do-it permit clause, in which case every room requires an alternate exit (or alternate form of doom). But considering fires need oxygen to burn nobody'd seemed too concerned about the status of this room, and so put up some dry wall to suggest privacy. Of course, as anyone who's familiar with drywall will know, that's like putting up a taut drumskin between two enclosed spaces and then trying to sleep with a pillow over your head while the deafening sound of someone blinking or inconsiderately vacillating their pores permeates your thoughts. So we tried to put a positive spin on it, perhaps called it cozy or womblike or not-claustrophobia-inducing or somesuch. Then we sat back to see who it would bring.

Well, it brought a hungarian girl who reminded me of one of Jabba's guards (sorry, but it's true) half eaten by the Rangor. It brought Armand (an initially shy Frenchman who we loved and eventually raised above our heads in collective triumph). And a few others. But most interestingly it brought Eugene.

Eugene did not come alone. He was a recent emigre/escapee? from Russia and he had a very sobering support system. He had one man on the phone, securing apartment viewing dates for him. He had a PA/translator/field-agent, who escorted him through each viewing. He was the spitting image of Vin Diesel (which, if you know not he, then i'll just say that this is not an image you'll readily spit at) which is like having a few bodyguards. He came in like a bad guy, just nodding and pointing. His translator was very pleasant, but spoke pointedly: "Eugene would like to see your basement" (how the hell did he know that? Eugene had not spoken a word) at which he spent longer looking than his potential bedroom. "The basement is unfinished and, er, not absolutely soundproof. Ha.." we may've stammered back. Again the PA spoke: "How is pressure of water?" Enough to rinse the blood off... Eventually Eugene DID say something, and the translator said: "Eugene will let you know if he will takes it" to which, we being kind of silent and cross-armed, we looked at each other questioning whether they meant the ENTIRE apartment or what and then one of us replied... "Ok, we'll have a little think about it too"... Then: "Eugene must go now, driver is waiting..." Then Eugene smiled. And I breathed.

Armand, I'm so glad you moved in mate!
Some potential other conversations we may've had:
"Screaming is fun, no?"
"You like Mercedes?"
"Price of cage high in Canada."
"The P in RPG means 'propelled'? Huh, Eugene thought it mean Plutonium."
"Eugene say he can tell you cry a a lot. You make good money for Eugene."
"You heard him. Kidney. Now."
"Leather lasts longer than love."

S'Mat! make S'Mat! Smash!

Tricky little devils
Complacency Swiftens
Trailing Lilliputians
Like a sticky-nosed 4 year old
Trails shoelaces
Mouth grasping like a fist
Hero we go again
Kinder to hate
Kindling to relate
And there go the chimes
Lancing the ears
With her dazzling tines
And all becomes reflection:
No armistice for loved ones
The boundaries fucking fart
Humour falls, a pall
I, Sade
Ribs from dangled pirates
And there's a fingernail in the sky
You picked me clean
And shat on my carcass
Your arrogance asked me to
Thank you
Stare a little harder at those waters, my dear
They become stiller yet