Holey Words
In that, yeah, they have holes in them. Gaps. You know, the line-spacing is a little relaxed. I don't want anyone to conclude I've taken up Religion, 'cause God (ha ha, anyway,) knows there isn't that kind of order in me right now.
But the questions we say have no answers get asked, and not answering them is an answer.
And since so many of these questions raise themselves through the inconceivable (!) patterns in life, I'm always asking if the answers are written there as prominently, and simply are often ignored? We do all make a lot of the same mistakes, right?
And if I never asked what was the difference, or the sameness, or in whatever ways the mystery, between myself and That Other with the stare and the smiles and something, then I'd have never thought about what is myself. And I never know what that is more strongly than when I know there is a death ensured for me. That death doesn't scare me so much. Dying scares me, I don't cherish the thought of sickness and bodily decay, hell I don't even like feeling nauseous after a long race, and that's candy compared to some things.
But I feel like every passing way in which I live my life in some way right is an indefinable, lasting triumph over that death. I'm not talking about ascending to the heavens on a column of light so much as putting, or at least provoking, something good in the world.
This ain't really my sort of thing to write, you know. But I felt like it, dammit.
So where is this leading me? Is it worth asking? I know I'll have to find an answer somewhere, and, sometimes I hope, soon.
Edit: Kirsten, who incidentally has been arguing with christian wackos who say that oral sex is okay before marriage but condoms mark one for hell, just asked me if I was dying. Let me lapse from laughter to the sternest of eyes: haha, no. Holding off on that one for a while, you wouldn't want me dying without you knowing about it, right?
December 10, 2004
I want . . .
I'm tired.
My exams are done, a big gap in the school year waits for me
To fall in . . .
In winter I probably need the time off. I always hate the little fist my mind has tightened into by this part of the year. I'm work-minded. Winter's bad to me in other ways too: my hands freeze and dry up until little lines of blood appear on my knuckles and the ball of my wrist, making it hurt to type, or play piano, or do dishes. My lips crack. In fact every night I wake up with dust in my mouth and have to climb out of bed to get a drink of water.
And some spirit has carpeted my room in the finest grains of sand, that pack and screech minutely against each other when trod on.
The house seems a lot bigger, there is a taste of salinity in the air. Expansiveness too, as if the walls are backing away from something. A stalking hydrophage.
Outside my window a sucking wind howls through dessicated twigs of trees and soon will blast through huddling dunes of needles of snow, transforming them into hurricanes.
And the edge of my left eye thinks I see a flash of someone watching me from behind a curtain. And at the edge of my right ear, at the threshold of hearing, someone whispers:
"Did you see . . . ?"
I'm tired.
My exams are done, a big gap in the school year waits for me
To fall in . . .
In winter I probably need the time off. I always hate the little fist my mind has tightened into by this part of the year. I'm work-minded. Winter's bad to me in other ways too: my hands freeze and dry up until little lines of blood appear on my knuckles and the ball of my wrist, making it hurt to type, or play piano, or do dishes. My lips crack. In fact every night I wake up with dust in my mouth and have to climb out of bed to get a drink of water.
And some spirit has carpeted my room in the finest grains of sand, that pack and screech minutely against each other when trod on.
The house seems a lot bigger, there is a taste of salinity in the air. Expansiveness too, as if the walls are backing away from something. A stalking hydrophage.
Outside my window a sucking wind howls through dessicated twigs of trees and soon will blast through huddling dunes of needles of snow, transforming them into hurricanes.
And the edge of my left eye thinks I see a flash of someone watching me from behind a curtain. And at the edge of my right ear, at the threshold of hearing, someone whispers:
"Did you see . . . ?"
December 06, 2004
And Then I Read the Poems, And Then I Felt Alright
current mood: feelin' alright
current music: this ain't livejournal
Just did my Big Poetry In-Class Essay Numbah 1, concerning a couple of sonnets by a certain Shakespeare I could name. Wanna know what of its I kicked? I'll give you a hint: it was the ass.
So yeah, if I used the phrase "slam dunk" for anything, and I think I should start,* it would be this.
Just in case it was too good, I entitled the essay Shakespeare: Melon Farmer or Echidna? That oughta keep success from going to my head.
------
* Scene: André is in the kitchen, playing Simon with Ray Charles. Enter Dave.
André: Hey Dave.
Dave: (hoisting bag o' bagels aloft) We have bagels!
André: Nice, how much were they?
Dave: Two dollars off!
André: (somewhat impressed) Slam dunk.
Ray Charles: Hell yeah! (Then he wins at Simon, while I'm not looking)
roll credits.
current mood: feelin' alright
current music: this ain't livejournal
Just did my Big Poetry In-Class Essay Numbah 1, concerning a couple of sonnets by a certain Shakespeare I could name. Wanna know what of its I kicked? I'll give you a hint: it was the ass.
So yeah, if I used the phrase "slam dunk" for anything, and I think I should start,* it would be this.
Just in case it was too good, I entitled the essay Shakespeare: Melon Farmer or Echidna? That oughta keep success from going to my head.
------
* Scene: André is in the kitchen, playing Simon with Ray Charles. Enter Dave.
André: Hey Dave.
Dave: (hoisting bag o' bagels aloft) We have bagels!
André: Nice, how much were they?
Dave: Two dollars off!
André: (somewhat impressed) Slam dunk.
Ray Charles: Hell yeah! (Then he wins at Simon, while I'm not looking)
roll credits.
December 05, 2004
December 03, 2004
Something Something
I want to be brushed by the breeze that can’t help feeling happier than sad.
I want negative entropy.
I want a smile like an open palm,
not unlike rain-soaked earth after a drought.
I want to dance wildly on rain-spattered earth after a drought.
I want dust to mud to earth to life.
I want the moral of the story, that, even when I can’t see it, always is there.
I want matter and antimatter and chaos and the beginning of the world.
And the World.
To feed pearls to black elephants.
Smoke to follow the extinguished candle’s gaze.
Fire.
I want to read that monologue I didn’t do in OAC - my fourth piece.
I want to be weak in the knees,
and to hear my heart.
I want to fly the world backwards, and around itself.
I want someone to call me crazy and mean it.
I want someone to call me out and mean it.
I want the vague suggestion of pairs to resolve itself and become real everywhere in me.
I want to be brushed by the breeze that can’t help feeling happier than sad.
I want negative entropy.
I want a smile like an open palm,
not unlike rain-soaked earth after a drought.
I want to dance wildly on rain-spattered earth after a drought.
I want dust to mud to earth to life.
I want the moral of the story, that, even when I can’t see it, always is there.
I want matter and antimatter and chaos and the beginning of the world.
And the World.
To feed pearls to black elephants.
Smoke to follow the extinguished candle’s gaze.
Fire.
I want to read that monologue I didn’t do in OAC - my fourth piece.
I want to be weak in the knees,
and to hear my heart.
I want to fly the world backwards, and around itself.
I want someone to call me crazy and mean it.
I want someone to call me out and mean it.
I want the vague suggestion of pairs to resolve itself and become real everywhere in me.
November 17, 2004
Noise Nothing
Hands on the piano rock back and forth like leaves falling without a breeze, an ear stirs to the touch of notes. Springling music becomes a warm, wet patter. Demanding to know all the composer knew, the listener strains. Is there a grain of wisdom he can pull from it, yank from it, wrest away and deposit meekly in a meager store his own?
The music ends, the fall of leaves leaving nothing but bare, naked branches, and the musician stares at the piano even after standing up, for a brief arc of ticking seconds. A short counting time, the music is still in his mind, and then the craze of other sounds obliterates it. Later, later it will resound and under one voice rise to a greatness of doing and feeling. Now unknown, a Quiet queen circulates in hollow hallways.
Hands on the piano rock back and forth like leaves falling without a breeze, an ear stirs to the touch of notes. Springling music becomes a warm, wet patter. Demanding to know all the composer knew, the listener strains. Is there a grain of wisdom he can pull from it, yank from it, wrest away and deposit meekly in a meager store his own?
The music ends, the fall of leaves leaving nothing but bare, naked branches, and the musician stares at the piano even after standing up, for a brief arc of ticking seconds. A short counting time, the music is still in his mind, and then the craze of other sounds obliterates it. Later, later it will resound and under one voice rise to a greatness of doing and feeling. Now unknown, a Quiet queen circulates in hollow hallways.
September 18, 2004
Done and Done
Five or six times a year I'll have some brilliant idea and think to myself: "That's a cool idea, someone could do something with that," but I don't feel like that 'someone' is me. Don't take that to mean I feel like I couldn't do it, I just am never interested enough, plus I'm at this stage where I know that though theoretically I could do many, many things, I have a hard time believing that, in practice, I can go off and do something totally without guidance and supervision, and that thing will not only be worthwhile, but will result in something new that no one else ever thought of before. And then a little while later, sometimes a year or so, someone else does it, and I see what they came up with and I think "damn, I could've done that."
Anyway, here's a shatteringly candid and truthful cartoon about why cats are non-fantastic animals.
Five or six times a year I'll have some brilliant idea and think to myself: "That's a cool idea, someone could do something with that," but I don't feel like that 'someone' is me. Don't take that to mean I feel like I couldn't do it, I just am never interested enough, plus I'm at this stage where I know that though theoretically I could do many, many things, I have a hard time believing that, in practice, I can go off and do something totally without guidance and supervision, and that thing will not only be worthwhile, but will result in something new that no one else ever thought of before. And then a little while later, sometimes a year or so, someone else does it, and I see what they came up with and I think "damn, I could've done that."
Anyway, here's a shatteringly candid and truthful cartoon about why cats are non-fantastic animals.
Why I Hate Cats
September 14, 2004
Rumors of my Death
Have been tremendously exaggerated.
Alive, kickin, and fully accounted for not to mention stocked with stories.
Those'll have to wait, but here's a very basic sketch.
And that's only the first half. But I'm tired now. I started writing "rest assured" just now, but I stopped halfway through to look at something over there, and when I looked back it read "rest ass." Regardless, I got plenty to say and more stories a'coming in the coming days and months, but now it's time for sleep, with a bloodshot and ever-watchful eye on the evil red digits of my alarm clock that tick away the minutes between me and my wakeup call for the day.
I'm taking a poetry class; that sentence above consists mainly of trochaic feet, which is why it sounds kind of ugly.
Ug. That finishes me off for now.
Have been tremendously exaggerated.
Alive, kickin, and fully accounted for not to mention stocked with stories.
Those'll have to wait, but here's a very basic sketch.
Wandering in Paris
Lost in Budapest
Dug in Hungary
Driving through Romania
Meeting Andra's Family
Mountain Climbing
Fog, No Fog, and one hell of a View
Mountain People Are Cool
Angry Fucking Hellhound
A Very Old Taxi
The Ice Storm
And that's only the first half. But I'm tired now. I started writing "rest assured" just now, but I stopped halfway through to look at something over there, and when I looked back it read "rest ass." Regardless, I got plenty to say and more stories a'coming in the coming days and months, but now it's time for sleep, with a bloodshot and ever-watchful eye on the evil red digits of my alarm clock that tick away the minutes between me and my wakeup call for the day.
I'm taking a poetry class; that sentence above consists mainly of trochaic feet, which is why it sounds kind of ugly.
Ug. That finishes me off for now.
May 12, 2004
Chuckery
Waking up early leads to opportunity for more adventure for our hero, me. After a morning of biking around waiting for Cyclepath to open, I was heading home empty-handed (having forgotten my gift certificate at home and not wanting to buy a $60 helmet when I could get it free some other time), and who should I run into but ali walking down the street when I turned off Coxwell.
She saw me when I stopped my bike, and breaks into this big alison smile, says "Hey I never run into you!"
and I'm like "yeah, that's crazy," so we stay and talk a couple minutes and I say we gotta do something with people soon, and she says yeah, maybe sunday, she thinks she's supposed to see chloe then and we might do something with that.
so she goes to catch her bus and I'm biking down the street again when a big thing runs across the road and hides under a parked cab. It's like a squirrel, only four times as big. I put my bike down and start walking around the cab looking under it, which probably the cabbie thought was weird, but who cares? The woodchuck was pretty cool about it, it kept walking from one side of the cab to another and I get a good look at it. Then it decides it's gonna be a ninja and it grabs onto the bottom of the cab and pulls itself up. Like Jackie Chan. So that's pretty cool.
Then I left.
But I wrote a nursery rhyme about my experiences that goes like: "how much woodchuck would ali chuck if ali could chuck woodchuck?" And I attempted to answer this question pictorially, in honor of Leora, as you can see above and to the right.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got dogs to walk. I'm so free every day. Hope you all watched Zeeky Boogy Doo thing.
Waking up early leads to opportunity for more adventure for our hero, me. After a morning of biking around waiting for Cyclepath to open, I was heading home empty-handed (having forgotten my gift certificate at home and not wanting to buy a $60 helmet when I could get it free some other time), and who should I run into but ali walking down the street when I turned off Coxwell.
She saw me when I stopped my bike, and breaks into this big alison smile, says "Hey I never run into you!"
and I'm like "yeah, that's crazy," so we stay and talk a couple minutes and I say we gotta do something with people soon, and she says yeah, maybe sunday, she thinks she's supposed to see chloe then and we might do something with that.
so she goes to catch her bus and I'm biking down the street again when a big thing runs across the road and hides under a parked cab. It's like a squirrel, only four times as big. I put my bike down and start walking around the cab looking under it, which probably the cabbie thought was weird, but who cares? The woodchuck was pretty cool about it, it kept walking from one side of the cab to another and I get a good look at it. Then it decides it's gonna be a ninja and it grabs onto the bottom of the cab and pulls itself up. Like Jackie Chan. So that's pretty cool.
Then I left.
But I wrote a nursery rhyme about my experiences that goes like: "how much woodchuck would ali chuck if ali could chuck woodchuck?" And I attempted to answer this question pictorially, in honor of Leora, as you can see above and to the right.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got dogs to walk. I'm so free every day. Hope you all watched Zeeky Boogy Doo thing.
May 10, 2004
My Intense Dislike of the New Blogger, in Point Form
Having logged on to Blogger today to find that they've dropped this updated version on me like the New Coke, right from the beginning I wasn't too enthused with the altered layout that emphasizes things I don't find important, pushes stuff I do find important out of the way, and seems generally to imitate the look of the MSN Messenger and AOL Chat UIs. It's ugly, in my opinion, but more to the point, there have been some changes to Blogger's structure that affect workflow in some annoying ways. Here's what I find wrong with the new deal, in order of biggest problem to least important.
On the Pros side:
Having logged on to Blogger today to find that they've dropped this updated version on me like the New Coke, right from the beginning I wasn't too enthused with the altered layout that emphasizes things I don't find important, pushes stuff I do find important out of the way, and seems generally to imitate the look of the MSN Messenger and AOL Chat UIs. It's ugly, in my opinion, but more to the point, there have been some changes to Blogger's structure that affect workflow in some annoying ways. Here's what I find wrong with the new deal, in order of biggest problem to least important.
- Previous posts and the current post typing window are no longer on the same page and not resizable. If I'm typing a post and want to check something I wrote before, I now have to open a new window to do so.
- Old posts are no longer displayed in the Edit Posts window. Only a gramatically buggy snippet, generally insufficient to jog my memory and not representative of the post's presentation, is shown, and you must click to launch a copy of your blog in order to view that post specifically.
- You can't switch between blogs within the edit page like you used to with that neat pull-down menu in the top bar. Instead you have to go back to the Dashboard and choose a different blog. I really, really hate that part.
- A lot of the options previously included in the interface are now hidden and require an extra click.
- The buttons are huge and space is poorly used. The old posting window contained all three of the new posting subwindows in a single interface.
- It just looks stupid. Everything is massive and bubbly. Rounded corners on everything look like the internet four years ago, and this cappuccino color scheme is ugly. I really hate how big the buttons and tabs are, by the way, and I wish you could still resize the windows.
- The whole new window, complete with giant, bubbly-contoured gif, that blinks on while your "publishing is in progress." It's another throwback; the small subtle publish animation from the old blogger looked better, seemed more sophisticated both technically and in terms of style, and didn't necessitate blanking out and reloading the whole damn window.
- That stupid dashboard page deserves a sublist of its own regarding why it's terrible:
- I like to look at blogs in the 'recently published' list if their title catches my eye. Now that list, formerly at the top left side of the page, is at the bottom right, furthest from where my attention would be, and below the lower edge screen. There's no chance of a title accidentally catching my attention, now I have to scroll down to the bottom of the window and deliberately look through the list.
- Speaking of scrolling, formerly just about the only reason to scroll down the blgger front page window was to read old newsposts. All of the options you needed, except links to the FAQ and HELP sections, were at the top of the screen. This was rather elegant. Now you have to scroll down to see the whole navigation menu.
- The look of the body of the page doesn't match up with that dark blue header bar.
- It seems to me they're copying MSN Messenger's, look with this roundness, faded tones, and the shape and layout of the profile section, when they had their own (better?) look already.
- Why does my 'Blogs' window have to be take up such a huge chunk of the screen when it could be tight, small, and readable at one glance, integrated into the nav menu?
- What's with this Blogger Gear crap? Fine, Google wanna have a store. Have you looked at what they're selling? Even if their merchandise were made with the cheapest labor in the world, this still only seems like a good way to lose money.
- This junk about their new look being "geek chic?" You could start by giving the front page a name with some functional significance, instead of "dashboard." Also this crap about "You Power Blogger." Well yay, do I get a cookie? I wish they'd just be honest with us and switch the slogan back. But I'm starting to get picky, really the only issue that matters to me is the brand new mess made of the user interface.
- The bright white background where there used to be gray, as in the template window. Helped underline the separation of content and presentation, something Blogger should appreciate as they brag that their new look is fully css-compliant.
- The Clear Edits button on the template page does what? Seems redundant to me, when you could just leave or reload the template page without saving your changes, thus avoiding the need for yet another giant-sized button.
On the Pros side:
- The Preview feature on the Create a post window is very slick and useful, although it still doesn't display the style of your blog. I also like the post by email.
- It's nice that comments are now hosted by Blog*Spot directly, although I imagine those of you on Haloscan will just stick with them for as long as you can, because you can't import those comments into Blogger (can you)? This doesn't matter to me though, as there will be no comments on this page ever, just the guestbook.
- It is also nice that Blogger wants to conform fully to web standards, though this isn't too surprising now that they're with Google. Although, if they're really so
keen on this, why not offer a better syndication standard than Atom?
Why make the sudden change, anyway? Personally I blame all you people switching to LiveJournal for making 'em think they gotta update the look now and make blogger "hip and easy for the kids." It was way better before. Even so, it still beats the living shit out of LJ.
May 05, 2004
April 27, 2004
Awards Show
And the nothing goes to Leora! And since no one else bothered to write a story, clearly you could benefit from exposure to her special brand of creativity, therefore, at no cost to you, I'm publishing the tale, entitled "Pirate Story," for the world to read here on this global forum.
Pirate Story
By Leora Courtney(-Wolfman)
Personally, I don't think a priate with a nameless
ship is something to LOL about. Oh, no. Pirates are
ridden with a condition not unlike penis envy when it
comes to having the best named ship.
I learned of this in the summer of 1997 when I was
enrolled in a canoe camp. My camp counsellor, who we affectionately called "Walfy" was coincidentally the same pirate you speak about. I always thought he was a bit odd, but never suspected that he was a pirate until I received a postcard from him two years later on the eve of my fiftteenth birthday.
I have since lost the postcard, cause my mom has this
bad habit of recycling everything and anything that
looks like it once was a happy tree branch in rural
British Columbia. I don't know why, but she does.
Alas, the postcard is gone, but the closing statement
of it still haunts me every night of my life.
"Leora, name me boat or I will mail ye a sting ray!"
I was at loss for ideas, but didn't want my 15th
birthday to be a day full of worries, so I sent a wire
across the ocean to him:
"Walfy (stop). I have named the ship Alabaster
(stop). Yours truly (stop). Leora (stop)."
Amazingly, naming the ship "Alabaster" was a turning
point in Dermot McWalfish's career as a pirate. He
left the ship at a warf just off Cambodia so that he
could have nine slaves, none older than eleven,
paint the name onto the ship. Why nine? Because there
are nine letters in the name "Alabaster".
The slaves were neither literate, or fluent in
English, so it took a few days to do this job
properly. During that time, McWalfish wandered the
streets of Kompong Som searching for potential
crew-mates. Late one night at a speakeasy/brothel he
met a young Frenchman named Olivier DesSources who had
been stranded in Cambodia since he was a child when a
cruise ship he was on caught fire and sunk, leaving
him as the only survivor.
McWalfish could not believe what he was hearing! That
same cruise ship was the cruise ship he was searching
for. Legend had it that when the cruise ship sunk,
millions of dollars worth of vintage wine sunk with
it.
Yes, that was the "treasure" he was searching for.
His plan was to sell half the wine and drink the other
half. Then use the money he made by selling the wine
to buy more wine (Maria Cristina though, cause it's
cheap.)
It was a deal. Olivier became McWalfish's personal
bodyguard, both asea and on land.
McWalfish made a good choice. While at sea, they
encountered McWalfish's long lost enemy: Murdoch
McWalSeabass. Murdoch not only had his eye on the
legendary crewship, but he also fancied young
Frenchmen and had a dungeon full of them on his ship.
So what happened? Did McSeaBass kidnap Olivier? Did
anyone find the sunken cruise ship?
I don't know. I haven't heard from McWalfish in a few
years, and I couldn't quite decipher the postcard he
sent me because he was so drunk at the time of writing
it that the postcard was incomprehensible.
A friend just explained his experience watching Kill Bill 2 while dead tired, fighting to stay awake and coming down from a high at half-past midnight. I suggested he do the Passion of the Christ the same way. Nice people. Happy people.
I gotta get my wisdom teeth out. Sucks to that. And to your ass-mar.
This concludes the Awards.
PS: Free Tibet and get out of Iraq.
Stop! Lamatime.
Face it, you really can't touch this.
WOOOOHOOOO!
So I'm going to see the Dalai Lama's ceremonial acceptance of a Doctorate Degree of Laws and the Acharya Sushil Kumar peace prize. Today, at 2:45. Sweet!
The Dalai Lama is the Man, and I'll tell you why:
- Non-absolutism in religion - he ended his speech at the skydome by saying "and if you think what I say is nonsense, then forget about it," and then he laughed.
- Secular Ethics - A concept he articulated, maintaining that basic human goodness exists independently of a religious framework. If I and every other person in the skydome had been holding a glass of champagne, I would have proposed a toast.
- Non-violent protest - Well how much do I really have to say about this? There's websites out there, go read 'em.
- The idea that religious, economic, and social concerns are inseparable - It seems like I wouldn't agree with this, but what I like about it is that it contradicts the dogma of the modularization of modern, technological life
You know what he's done for Tibet, let me tell you what he did for me. Thanks to the schedule overlap between the ceremony and my physics exam, my registrar just informed me that I've been granted an exam deferal, and because I'll be in Europe this August for legitimate reasons, I won't have to write the physics exam until next year! Either December or even April, we're not sure yet. Either way:
WOOHOO!
April 22, 2004
Surprise!
The New Model
Are you surprised? I bet you are. Check out my blog's summer wardrobe. Man, having to study for exams has led to an astronomical increase in my time-wasting productivity. On the bright side, instead of learning about physics or Western lit, I learned all sorts of web standards stuff. You could read this blog on a cellphone now if you wanted. I would've done an RSS syndication deal, but not enough people read this anyway.
I am one step closer to the Dalai Lama, now that I've dropped off my petition to defer my physics exam so I can go see his honorary degree ceremony and speech. I've been given the following requests:
- Ask him if it's true he was Chosen to be the Dalai Lama the way it was in that movie (I don't know), where three days after the previous Dalai Lama died, his head (the dead one) lolled in a certain direction, and his followers went off thataway looking until they found young Tenzin Gyatso. Andra's dad wants to know that.
- Sing the badger song while he's talking. Ben wants me to do that. I said no, but I will think the song briefly while he speaks. Ben said it would be great if the Dalai Lama can read my mind and hears me think-singing it, and sings MUSHROOM MUSHROOM.
and
But that song ain't even funny.
Anyone else? You've got until Tuesday morn.
I just bought six bottles of orange juice (minute maid, oj is oj to me) three pink lemonades and a crangrapeberry juice. Having to use up $400 in dedicated food money from your smart card in 2 weeks can be fun. Last week I bought 40 chocolate bars. A dilemma: on the one hand, I've got so much free money to use up before it gets deleted on May 8th. On the other hand, I it wouldn't do to get all fat and stuff.
A dilly of a pickle if ever there was one. Anyone want free food?
Pay me a visit, I'll hook ya right up.
Oh, and I'm now using Gmail, so, you know, w00t and stuff. Everyone try sending stuff to andre.bb at gmail.com. At the moment i'm not planning on switching for good. For example, I need to know if I can use Outlook with it and all the normal stuff I worry about with email. 'Cause email's bloody damn important these days. Still, 1Gb of free mailage. Sounds good to me.
Now, then, it's normally my practice, ever since the blogodrama, to put ordinary blogging fare second and writing stories and things first, or at least snippets of respectable writing. Today would be an exception, but here's what I want you to do instead:
- There is a pirate in the South Seas named Dermot McWalfish. He has worked other jobs.
- His Ship will need a name
- His title is Dread Sea Dog
- You must give me a brief account of one of his crew members and the treasure they are searching for, as well as an explanation of his arch-nemesis.
Here's one student's example:LOL before dermot was a milkman and his ships name is THE tIPSY BARNICLE and his looker-outer guy is Gilmont, who is a Hungarian Lord in disguise looking for his long lost brother Rakluzs and Capn McWalfish is hunting for Pete Best's right leg and his arch enemy is EVILMAN O'DEDLY, who is a hamster ninja OMG!!!!! XP T_t z0rs
The best entry wins nothing!
April 21, 2004
Car Crashed In The Middle of the Road Outaside a My Window
Who makes waffles? Someone out there makes 'em. I demand a Waffles of Mass Deliciousness party. Canada cannot sit idly by while the ingredients of Waffles of Mass Deliciousness sit unseen, untasted, in the dark cupboards and pantries of innocent-looking kitchens. I will dispatch an international team of Waffle Inspectors.
Did anyone else know Kermit the frog went on the Daily Show? Coolio can do Beat the Geeks as much as he wants, he'll always be second fiddle to that.
Can anyone tell me the semantic difference between <em> and <i>? Looq?
I'm not gonna see Max and Luke before they go to Southeast Asia to get stabbed robbed and raped and experience various other behaviors of Southeast Asian primates. And they're going to Borneo. They're gonna see orangutans. If they go to Borneo and don't see orangs they're what one British fireman called "stupid berks." There's only twenty years left, unless we stop killing them with our stupid crap.
Speaking of killing things with our stupid crap, are you aware that 99% of blogs in the world suck? Of course you are! You read them! Sometimes you even write them! Actually, I should say that all blogs suck at least once in a while. Sure, why not? Just 99% suck consistently.
But the worst of these are the anti-blog blogger types who only write about how much blogs suck and how bloggers are stupid, complain about Moveable Type and bandy about words like "iMac" "latté sipping" and "smug hipster." Dude, you're blogging right now. I'm not really complaining, mind you. Anything I can do instead of studying is obviously good for something.
Some nice trends I like:
I've got a surprise for you.
I think he's president of Ireland
Who makes waffles? Someone out there makes 'em. I demand a Waffles of Mass Deliciousness party. Canada cannot sit idly by while the ingredients of Waffles of Mass Deliciousness sit unseen, untasted, in the dark cupboards and pantries of innocent-looking kitchens. I will dispatch an international team of Waffle Inspectors.
Did anyone else know Kermit the frog went on the Daily Show? Coolio can do Beat the Geeks as much as he wants, he'll always be second fiddle to that.
Can anyone tell me the semantic difference between <em> and <i>? Looq?
I'm not gonna see Max and Luke before they go to Southeast Asia to get stabbed robbed and raped and experience various other behaviors of Southeast Asian primates. And they're going to Borneo. They're gonna see orangutans. If they go to Borneo and don't see orangs they're what one British fireman called "stupid berks." There's only twenty years left, unless we stop killing them with our stupid crap.
Speaking of killing things with our stupid crap, are you aware that 99% of blogs in the world suck? Of course you are! You read them! Sometimes you even write them! Actually, I should say that all blogs suck at least once in a while. Sure, why not? Just 99% suck consistently.
But the worst of these are the anti-blog blogger types who only write about how much blogs suck and how bloggers are stupid, complain about Moveable Type and bandy about words like "iMac" "latté sipping" and "smug hipster." Dude, you're blogging right now. I'm not really complaining, mind you. Anything I can do instead of studying is obviously good for something.
Some nice trends I like:
- Blogs by writers, about writing (check out "Future Grizzly" in the links. Not the best, but with a bunch of other links)
- Blogs by good writers who're used to publishing and are writing on the side in much same the way as movie stars appearing in off-broadway plays. Salam Pax is the opposite, he started out by writing that sort of blog and ended up hired by the BBC. Wesley Crusher isn't. He sucks.
- ridiculously geeky blogs
- and leora's blog, which is not a trend because there aren't a bunch of them.
I've got a surprise for you.
April 19, 2004
Paging Dr. Rosenrosen
Quaquaqua?
I'm giving myself 20 minutes to do this post. So here we go.
Stop putting two spaces after every period. There's no reason for it anymore.
Looq might be glad to know I'm learning about graceful degradation. My own degradation hasn't been nearly so pretty.
Here's a good word though. Senescence, the gradual physiological decline of biological functions leading towards the death of an organism. Reminds me of oak trees somehow.
I keep putting two spaces after a period by force of habit.
A man on the radio wants me to buy the lawn fertilizer with "double-coated nitrogen." Meanwhile my exam tomorrow morning with the crazy professor is drawing ominously nigh, and Robin Williams is trying to sell Cadillacs.
You know what your problem is, Joey? You're a chauvinist, and a pig, and you don't respect women.
I respect the hell outta women. Especially their minds.
What the hell does 29 dimensions of compatibility mean? Dating services should just be honest: "You're a 40 year-old professional failure with a sporadic income and a basement apartment at your parents' house. Don't you think you'll take whatever you can get? Call now."
I keep trying to call John Stewart John Daily, 'cause it's the Daily show, but then he just ignores me, so I better start getting it right. He had a bit called the Sadr House Rules the other day. I laughed.
Tim Robbins is the bad guy in this movie.
Quaquaqua?
I'm giving myself 20 minutes to do this post. So here we go.
Stop putting two spaces after every period. There's no reason for it anymore.
Looq might be glad to know I'm learning about graceful degradation. My own degradation hasn't been nearly so pretty.
Here's a good word though. Senescence, the gradual physiological decline of biological functions leading towards the death of an organism. Reminds me of oak trees somehow.
I keep putting two spaces after a period by force of habit.
A man on the radio wants me to buy the lawn fertilizer with "double-coated nitrogen." Meanwhile my exam tomorrow morning with the crazy professor is drawing ominously nigh, and Robin Williams is trying to sell Cadillacs.
You know what your problem is, Joey? You're a chauvinist, and a pig, and you don't respect women.
I respect the hell outta women. Especially their minds.
What the hell does 29 dimensions of compatibility mean? Dating services should just be honest: "You're a 40 year-old professional failure with a sporadic income and a basement apartment at your parents' house. Don't you think you'll take whatever you can get? Call now."
I keep trying to call John Stewart John Daily, 'cause it's the Daily show, but then he just ignores me, so I better start getting it right. He had a bit called the Sadr House Rules the other day. I laughed.
Tim Robbins is the bad guy in this movie.
April 18, 2004
Halcyon Days
Well, in the past 2 weeks I've left 3 blog entries unfinished. The only one I managed to get done was the Mick Jagger one, and that didn't turn out too good. So instead of, you know, thinking about what I'm writing, I'm just gonna jot down a list of things I have seen in the past few whiles.
I was gonna write a whole lot more but now I'm gonna not, so you gotta go find something else to read.
Ciao Fratelli e sorrelle
It cannot survive his secret attack.
Well, in the past 2 weeks I've left 3 blog entries unfinished. The only one I managed to get done was the Mick Jagger one, and that didn't turn out too good. So instead of, you know, thinking about what I'm writing, I'm just gonna jot down a list of things I have seen in the past few whiles.
- two cabs drag racing. back vs black diamond. beck won, w00+?
- the park, at a picnic, with Andra and easter candy. I learned to never underestimate the ability of a female to consume chocolate. I tend to savor them, or at least chew.
- Tafelmusik, randomly, at a free concert, at the ROM, with Opera Atelier performing from an opera written for the Sun King.
- A TTC driver harass every Black person who got on the streetcar from Yonge street to the Beaches. asstoast.
- the word asstoast. also assclown and assy. in the "cheers" section of "cheers and jeers," a feature of my college's terrible newspaper. terribly awesome.
- Ballet Creole! "modern" dance and african drumming so good it can only be called spectastilious
- your mom. erika's a bad influence on me
- a plate of muffins and cake and pie, randomly, when Andra and I got to my home. Mmm, pie
- an email message telling me I have tickets to the Dalai Lama honorary degree ceremony at Convocation Hall, during which he will address the convocation and receive the Acharya Sushil Kumarji Peace Award. :-D
- I can only go if I can convince my physics prof to let me write the exam at a different time :-|
- all sorts of other clever things, which I forgot about pretty much promptly.
I was gonna write a whole lot more but now I'm gonna not, so you gotta go find something else to read.
Ciao Fratelli e sorrelle
April 14, 2004
Sir, I Demand Satisfaction
Just a quick note
School has been too fucking busy
I haven't spent a whole lotta time around "other people," as you call them
I don't use a lotta apostrophes cause the keys all the way over there
But thats ok
I have plans, big plans
And at a time when even Byron is starting to feel burned out
and at a time when I gotta be at school tomorrow
and whens your last exam
and cant, studying
my dog is fucking depressed, she goes round looking at the floor and not biting things
if any a you lameass, button-pushing, boring, anemic, obsessive, mumbling, anxious, jaded geeks with bad hair (which rules out some of you but not many and definitely not me) don't meet for a game of stickball at high noon at bowmore field on the second saturday of May,
Mick Jagger will suck your bones out and crunch them in your ear
or at least send you a mean-hearted email.
Just a quick note
School has been too fucking busy
I haven't spent a whole lotta time around "other people," as you call them
I don't use a lotta apostrophes cause the keys all the way over there
But thats ok
I have plans, big plans
And at a time when even Byron is starting to feel burned out
and at a time when I gotta be at school tomorrow
and whens your last exam
and cant, studying
my dog is fucking depressed, she goes round looking at the floor and not biting things
if any a you lameass, button-pushing, boring, anemic, obsessive, mumbling, anxious, jaded geeks with bad hair (which rules out some of you but not many and definitely not me) don't meet for a game of stickball at high noon at bowmore field on the second saturday of May,
Mick Jagger will suck your bones out and crunch them in your ear
or at least send you a mean-hearted email.
April 06, 2004
At Second Glance -
That essay I linked to at the end of yesterday's post turns out to be a very good essay you should all read. You probably all have. I'll put it here again anyway.
One point of disagreement, Hemingway, Faulkner, and especially Steinbeck are simply awesome writers. Thank god I wasn't forcedfed them in highschool.
Goddammit! Alison's whole damn blog is gone again! There should be a mandatory week-long cool-down period in between deciding to erase the page and being able to.
I'm gonna leave that link up for a while in case it comes back.
That essay I linked to at the end of yesterday's post turns out to be a very good essay you should all read. You probably all have. I'll put it here again anyway.
One point of disagreement, Hemingway, Faulkner, and especially Steinbeck are simply awesome writers. Thank god I wasn't forcedfed them in highschool.
Goddammit! Alison's whole damn blog is gone again! There should be a mandatory week-long cool-down period in between deciding to erase the page and being able to.
I'm gonna leave that link up for a while in case it comes back.
Friends and Well-Wishers
In that they don't wish me any specific harm, of course.
Well I'm torn over 100q's well-founded criticism. As far as I can tell, although each of his entries has its date attached to it in an id element, I can't link directly to a specific entry the way I would with a normal god-fearing blog, so I'm just gonna point you towards him and tell you "March 29, 2004, C.E."*
I'm well aware that the coding of this blog isn't up to nerd spec, and his HTML could beat up my HTML and also is handsomer and has a better car. On the other hand, I'm not about to start using <ACRONYM> tags any time soon. Especially for words like HTML that most people only know as acronyms.
And yet, looking at his blog's code and css, the only thing I can't understand is one crazy hack he uses involving the funny diamond logo. Whereas looking at my blog's code, I pretty much don't understand anything without staring at it for ten minutes and comparing it to the finished, "rendered" blog. And even then I have to preview any changes to the layout I make before posting them to ensure that I didn't accidentally destroy everything.
Luke's extremely simple yet visually effective blog - even the plain HTML, without the stylesheet looq dresses it up in, still looks pretty good, once you wipe off the grafitti - is a model that I don't think I'll actually live up to, but I'll at least keep in mind as one of those things I would aspire to, given the time and a brighter soul.
On the other hand, I am obsessive enough to care about this page's layout. Not terribly competent, mind you, but interested nonetheless. I must've spent three or four hours getting yon links bar off rightwards to work the way I wanted it to. On the other hand, this contents bar onna left is really just in the way, but I wanna keep some semblance of it anyway. I was even thinking of expanding it and putting in a sort of miniblog for brief thoughts I want to highlight, like "go look at style.org." I tried doing that, but couldn't figure it out. Also I notice the dumbjokes button is currently not highlighting. Probably time to either get rid of it or actually write down some of these dumb jokes that people have sent me, anyway.
So in conclusion, don't look for any changes to my gutter-HTML in the coming weeks and months, though if one or two happen to come along, smile but don't point, it's rude. I am, though, gonna learn a bit more about stylesheets and basic layout, since what else am I gonna do around here, study?
* Which reminds me, it's passover. Make with the lamb's blood if you know what's good for you.
Oh, also I noticed none of you felt like talking about the Christopher Walken story. Fine.
In that they don't wish me any specific harm, of course.
Well I'm torn over 100q's well-founded criticism. As far as I can tell, although each of his entries has its date attached to it in an id element, I can't link directly to a specific entry the way I would with a normal god-fearing blog, so I'm just gonna point you towards him and tell you "March 29, 2004, C.E."*
I'm well aware that the coding of this blog isn't up to nerd spec, and his HTML could beat up my HTML and also is handsomer and has a better car. On the other hand, I'm not about to start using <ACRONYM> tags any time soon. Especially for words like HTML that most people only know as acronyms.
And yet, looking at his blog's code and css, the only thing I can't understand is one crazy hack he uses involving the funny diamond logo. Whereas looking at my blog's code, I pretty much don't understand anything without staring at it for ten minutes and comparing it to the finished, "rendered" blog. And even then I have to preview any changes to the layout I make before posting them to ensure that I didn't accidentally destroy everything.
Luke's extremely simple yet visually effective blog - even the plain HTML, without the stylesheet looq dresses it up in, still looks pretty good, once you wipe off the grafitti - is a model that I don't think I'll actually live up to, but I'll at least keep in mind as one of those things I would aspire to, given the time and a brighter soul.
On the other hand, I am obsessive enough to care about this page's layout. Not terribly competent, mind you, but interested nonetheless. I must've spent three or four hours getting yon links bar off rightwards to work the way I wanted it to. On the other hand, this contents bar onna left is really just in the way, but I wanna keep some semblance of it anyway. I was even thinking of expanding it and putting in a sort of miniblog for brief thoughts I want to highlight, like "go look at style.org." I tried doing that, but couldn't figure it out. Also I notice the dumbjokes button is currently not highlighting. Probably time to either get rid of it or actually write down some of these dumb jokes that people have sent me, anyway.
So in conclusion, don't look for any changes to my gutter-HTML in the coming weeks and months, though if one or two happen to come along, smile but don't point, it's rude. I am, though, gonna learn a bit more about stylesheets and basic layout, since what else am I gonna do around here, study?
* Which reminds me, it's passover. Make with the lamb's blood if you know what's good for you.
Oh, also I noticed none of you felt like talking about the Christopher Walken story. Fine.
March 29, 2004
++ blog pimp what i am
that's doubleplus. tony pierce has taught me capitol letters commas ordinary words and not saying shit alot and paragraphs over three sentences are for verbal skankz.
i am no verbal skank.
you out there who are verbal skankz know who you are.
my magic eight ball knows who you are.
the helicopter in my backyard knows who you verbal skankz are, all verballed up and huddled in the corner.
a lady on the street yelled out to me today when i was walkin by. she said "don't you fuck up now! don't let everybody fuck up now, we've come too fucking far to all go to hell now!" lady was lookin at me anyway, wasn't really talking to me.
thought maybe sure she's talkin about war and wmd and other bad three letter words but maybe she's just talking about the school year, or funding the shelters better next winter. maybe she's just talking about keeping all the homeless people from freezing.
i dunno.
but i know where you are.
fortunately, i have a few of my own . . .
that's doubleplus. tony pierce has taught me capitol letters commas ordinary words and not saying shit alot and paragraphs over three sentences are for verbal skankz.
i am no verbal skank.
you out there who are verbal skankz know who you are.
my magic eight ball knows who you are.
the helicopter in my backyard knows who you verbal skankz are, all verballed up and huddled in the corner.
a lady on the street yelled out to me today when i was walkin by. she said "don't you fuck up now! don't let everybody fuck up now, we've come too fucking far to all go to hell now!" lady was lookin at me anyway, wasn't really talking to me.
thought maybe sure she's talkin about war and wmd and other bad three letter words but maybe she's just talking about the school year, or funding the shelters better next winter. maybe she's just talking about keeping all the homeless people from freezing.
i dunno.
but i know where you are.
and i just thought you might like to know, max is back to his old tricks.
fortunately, i have a few of my own . . .
Christopher Walken
He's a nice enough guy. He knocks twice every morning and if I don't answer he goes away. I don't even set my alarm any more, it's nice to be awoken by a couple of dull wooden raps followed by conscientious silence. I can hear his feet scraping the concrete balcony if I don't open up and he walks away. But today I feel like some company, and maybe like getting out of bed before it's too late in the day, so I hoist myself up and throw on a bathrobe.
He's waiting with perfect salesmanlike demeanor when I look through the eyehole. Standing in his smoothed-down brown suit with his hands hanging down, clasped, looking to one side politely, with the sun glaring at his right temple. I open the door and get the same picture life-size.
"Morning, sir, walk your dog?" he asks, regular as a machine.
"Yeah, sure, why don't you come inside for breakfast," I'm feeling sociable enough to offer, and Mr Walken's far too much a gentleman to say no. While he comes in and looks around I go open the bathroom door and out bursts Peluche in a tumbling blur of white fur like an ancient Shaolin monk on the attack. Yipping and pawing, she ambushes Christopher's leg with a flurry of pats and scratches. He crouches down to pet her and tolerates her licking around his nose and ears while he unties his shoes. 'A habit I picked up in Canada,' he told me once, 'wonderful place.'
While he's busy with that I set a few things on the little round table by the window. It came with the room, made with the same ageless look of wood as everything else. A snap to clean, matches everything, small enough to fit in the closet when you don't need it. I've got some cheese and triscuits cut up as a snack and a bottle of orange juice in the fridge, as good a breakfast as anyone can give you.
We pull up our chairs with Peluche sniffing excitedly at our feet. Mr Walken keeps his socks on. He always has a story to start a conversation. "Getting an early start today," he observes, looking around the room. It's filled with toasty light. "That's good. I knew a guy once, second unit director of one of my films, had a hell of a time getting himself up in the morning. He had his bed pushed up against a wall, and he would just lie there half rolled-over staring at the edge the wall made with his cieling," he indicates the walls of my own room with a triscuit in hand as he talks. "Problem was, he'd lie there staring, and he felt like all his best ideas, anything that was really, you know, good and worth repeating, would come to him in bed and fall apart as soon as he got up to do anything about it."
I nod and go to get the cream cheese, and he keeps talking, watching me go between the table and the mini-fridge.
"And I went in there a few mornings just to hear him, not to get him out of bed or anything, 'cause you know I'm not the star or the director, just a supporting actor with an established career so I don't feel like I've got anything on the line. And he's got the producer in there who's just sitting on a chair off to one side not talking, just leaning back and having a drink of water out of a plastic cup, with his cellphone on the dresser next to him, waiting for this second unit director to get his shit together and get out of bed. Because that's what this is a question of, it's a case of him needing to get his shit together and why the producer puts up with it I don't know. But there's a few other people in there, a boom operator, one of the girls from lighting I recognize, and a boy who works with the caterers but I'm pretty sure he writes on the side."
I nod and notice that he hasn't poured himself any orange juice and proffer the opened bottle. A quiet sort of grin spreads across his unnaturally flat face, sinking into his eyes as he removes his cup from the plastic wrapper and pushes it towards me. "Yes thank you, here I am wrapped up in my little story and I forgot all about breakfast," he says and puts the triscuit he's been holding into his mouth. He continues after a sip of orange juice and a grateful smile.
"So I walk into this director's hotel room and here he is, this guy who isn't that high on the food chain of this picture but still he's lying in bed with the producer waiting for him with his cellphone out so he can tell the crew to get started once the guy's up, but the director's lying there talking with a couple of the crew that're hanging around. And he's telling them these fantastic things, these . . . visions of the hearts of the characters and beautiful, tiny stories that start with the movie we're working on and fly away up to somewhere completely different.
Like he'll tell us 'all Jim wants to do is take a cab home,' and suddenly that's how it seems, never mind Desert Storm. What he needs to be happy is that a human cabbie in an ordinary cab will pull up and take him away from dying and hell and having to call his wife from the desert, and charge him a by-the-block fare, and take him home, maybe talk some bullshit on the way. 'Just the ordinary, nothing magical, and not a metaphor,' he tells everybody, 'just the ordinary from the desert home.' And that's how he tells the story and so it seems true. And since it can't happen it's more of a way of saying the Jim won't be happy."
He puts down his cup of orange juice and teases the curtains a little. The light going through the flimsy little cup casts an orange shadow.
"This guy had a little fish he kept in this tiny aquarium by the windowsill, and I remember this 'cause I would sit next to this fishbowl while he was talking and watch the little guy swim around. The thing was about the size of my thumb, a little rounder, and silver, and it was shedding. I didn't ever know fish could do that, I never saw a goldfish shed its winter coat. But this thing was losing its little silver scales, every time it moved tiny flocks of them drifted off and they filled up the tank with these miniscule specks of floating light. Underneath them it was growing scales of a different color, but I couldn't tell what 'cause it changed depending on the light. I asked him if the fish was healthy and he told me it was okay, that it had done that before and he'd never bothered to look it up.
So after a while of lying down and talking like this, the second unit director would usually make a face and then pull himself out of bed, and then things would get started. A couple days he never got himself together, and just stayed in bed the whole time, talking and watching that seam between his cieling and his wall. And then the producer would get up after a while and talk about firing him and walk away. And the next day this second unit director would haul his ass out on time and shoot three days' worth of movie by lunch. Now normally the business doesn't tolerate eccentricities like that from anyone but a major player, the stars of course, a hot director, someone who's got a kind of magic with the public that offsets these games he plays on the set. And if this guy had just worked two or three times as hard to make up for his jerking around he still would've been cut off at the ass and thrown out of the production, but to get a whole week of the picture shot in nine solid hours of prime filmmaking, that was a kind of genius the production could live with, just barely. The unit wasn't real happy, and this director wasn't gonna get anything more for his talent than the team's tolerance of his bullshit personal habits, but the business end was happy with a guy who'd effectively get things done twice as fast and save them a lot of money."
Peluche was starting to get antsy by now, tugging at the covers that were sloughing off my bed and yapping at Christopher Walken's knee. I threw her a piece of cheese to distract her and she took it to a far corner to eat.
"I guess I should wrap this up fast to suit your star over there," he said, indicating the dog. I usually liked to have a long, rambling talk with him when we sat down, but today he seemed to have the right impression. Peluche was impatient. "It's alright," he said, "there're actors I've worked with who've been more demanding than her." I don't know whether that qualifies Peluche's prissiness as moderate or just means I've-seen-worse, but she's curled up for the moment attempting to chew the block of cheese with her tiny mouth and Christopher Walken leans back in his chair and lets the sunlight play across his face.
"I guess it's not that bad, really. I knew a guy who was the opposite way. He only had any ideas when he was alone, late at night. And he would wander the streets from dusk 'till it was almost dawn, without a clear thought in his head about where he was going until he got so tired he had to go home and sleep through the day. But he would think up these things in his mind that were sort of like being alive for weeks at a time, and it kept him going when he should've crashed. So he wandered out more and more and hardly ever saw the light of day, and one morning he just wasn't there. I don't know what he did or what happened to him. They sold his house and everything in it after a while, and put the money in escrow in case he came back.
This second unit director, he had his ideas in bed when he laid there waiting out bad days, and after he got up and they came undone for him and everyone who'd been listening, he spent the rest of his waking time trying to put them back together. That's what all his great work came from, even though it was subordinate to the head director's bigger picture. I don't know where the important difference between him and the other guy is, exactly, but it's in there somewhere and it's real as hell, 'cause here we are, both with our lives, careers and property intact. So, Peluche ready to go out?"
She heard her name and perked up, abandoning her corner to come bark at the door with her tail fidgeting. I finished off my orange juice and rose reluctantly and Christopher did likewise, brushing a few crumbs from his suit.
"Right," I said, picking up the plate of tricuits and cheese and taking it to the cabinet I use as a pantry. "You know I get room service here, the kid brings me food from the truck and I talk to him about his scripts," I tell Christopher, "I'm never short of those little sandwich triangles."
"That's when you know you've made it," he says back, and gathers Peluche, shaking with canid anticipation, up into his arms. Before he's one step out the door he leans back in and says "you've got company coming."
"Tell them I'll be out in a second."
As soon as he steps out I can hear Ralph braying. "Is he up? Already? My god, what a privilege! Okay, get that dog and yourself down to makeup, I'll warm everybody up."
He knocks on the door, speaks in a normal voice that sounds like a yell.
"You coming?"
"Yep."
"I'll see you on-set then," and with a scrape he pivots and is gone.
I fold the bathrobe over my bed and throw on a shirt and jeans, stop to feed the fish, and then I'm out.
-
A story I wrote today.
Now I know some people out there, people whose blogs don't have permalinks rather like to bandy about talk of lesbian filmography and pornographic fixations these days, and the List of 100 Movies that Deserve More Love brought this topic to my mind with the following capsule review of Kissing Jessica Stein:
So you can chew on that, if you like. I don't know what writing about this will do to the content-sensitive ad banner, I guess it can chew on that, too.
The list also had some stuff about other fantastic-sounding movies, but I've forgotten all about them after hours of story-writing. Tell me what you think of this one, if you like. That Christopher Walken's the man sometimes. I never got the chance to tell him how great it was to see him cut loose in the Weapon of Choice video. 'Cause that video was mighty fine watchin'.
Oh, and everybody go to www.style.org. Like right now.
He's a nice enough guy. He knocks twice every morning and if I don't answer he goes away. I don't even set my alarm any more, it's nice to be awoken by a couple of dull wooden raps followed by conscientious silence. I can hear his feet scraping the concrete balcony if I don't open up and he walks away. But today I feel like some company, and maybe like getting out of bed before it's too late in the day, so I hoist myself up and throw on a bathrobe.
He's waiting with perfect salesmanlike demeanor when I look through the eyehole. Standing in his smoothed-down brown suit with his hands hanging down, clasped, looking to one side politely, with the sun glaring at his right temple. I open the door and get the same picture life-size.
"Morning, sir, walk your dog?" he asks, regular as a machine.
"Yeah, sure, why don't you come inside for breakfast," I'm feeling sociable enough to offer, and Mr Walken's far too much a gentleman to say no. While he comes in and looks around I go open the bathroom door and out bursts Peluche in a tumbling blur of white fur like an ancient Shaolin monk on the attack. Yipping and pawing, she ambushes Christopher's leg with a flurry of pats and scratches. He crouches down to pet her and tolerates her licking around his nose and ears while he unties his shoes. 'A habit I picked up in Canada,' he told me once, 'wonderful place.'
While he's busy with that I set a few things on the little round table by the window. It came with the room, made with the same ageless look of wood as everything else. A snap to clean, matches everything, small enough to fit in the closet when you don't need it. I've got some cheese and triscuits cut up as a snack and a bottle of orange juice in the fridge, as good a breakfast as anyone can give you.
We pull up our chairs with Peluche sniffing excitedly at our feet. Mr Walken keeps his socks on. He always has a story to start a conversation. "Getting an early start today," he observes, looking around the room. It's filled with toasty light. "That's good. I knew a guy once, second unit director of one of my films, had a hell of a time getting himself up in the morning. He had his bed pushed up against a wall, and he would just lie there half rolled-over staring at the edge the wall made with his cieling," he indicates the walls of my own room with a triscuit in hand as he talks. "Problem was, he'd lie there staring, and he felt like all his best ideas, anything that was really, you know, good and worth repeating, would come to him in bed and fall apart as soon as he got up to do anything about it."
I nod and go to get the cream cheese, and he keeps talking, watching me go between the table and the mini-fridge.
"And I went in there a few mornings just to hear him, not to get him out of bed or anything, 'cause you know I'm not the star or the director, just a supporting actor with an established career so I don't feel like I've got anything on the line. And he's got the producer in there who's just sitting on a chair off to one side not talking, just leaning back and having a drink of water out of a plastic cup, with his cellphone on the dresser next to him, waiting for this second unit director to get his shit together and get out of bed. Because that's what this is a question of, it's a case of him needing to get his shit together and why the producer puts up with it I don't know. But there's a few other people in there, a boom operator, one of the girls from lighting I recognize, and a boy who works with the caterers but I'm pretty sure he writes on the side."
I nod and notice that he hasn't poured himself any orange juice and proffer the opened bottle. A quiet sort of grin spreads across his unnaturally flat face, sinking into his eyes as he removes his cup from the plastic wrapper and pushes it towards me. "Yes thank you, here I am wrapped up in my little story and I forgot all about breakfast," he says and puts the triscuit he's been holding into his mouth. He continues after a sip of orange juice and a grateful smile.
"So I walk into this director's hotel room and here he is, this guy who isn't that high on the food chain of this picture but still he's lying in bed with the producer waiting for him with his cellphone out so he can tell the crew to get started once the guy's up, but the director's lying there talking with a couple of the crew that're hanging around. And he's telling them these fantastic things, these . . . visions of the hearts of the characters and beautiful, tiny stories that start with the movie we're working on and fly away up to somewhere completely different.
Like he'll tell us 'all Jim wants to do is take a cab home,' and suddenly that's how it seems, never mind Desert Storm. What he needs to be happy is that a human cabbie in an ordinary cab will pull up and take him away from dying and hell and having to call his wife from the desert, and charge him a by-the-block fare, and take him home, maybe talk some bullshit on the way. 'Just the ordinary, nothing magical, and not a metaphor,' he tells everybody, 'just the ordinary from the desert home.' And that's how he tells the story and so it seems true. And since it can't happen it's more of a way of saying the Jim won't be happy."
He puts down his cup of orange juice and teases the curtains a little. The light going through the flimsy little cup casts an orange shadow.
"This guy had a little fish he kept in this tiny aquarium by the windowsill, and I remember this 'cause I would sit next to this fishbowl while he was talking and watch the little guy swim around. The thing was about the size of my thumb, a little rounder, and silver, and it was shedding. I didn't ever know fish could do that, I never saw a goldfish shed its winter coat. But this thing was losing its little silver scales, every time it moved tiny flocks of them drifted off and they filled up the tank with these miniscule specks of floating light. Underneath them it was growing scales of a different color, but I couldn't tell what 'cause it changed depending on the light. I asked him if the fish was healthy and he told me it was okay, that it had done that before and he'd never bothered to look it up.
So after a while of lying down and talking like this, the second unit director would usually make a face and then pull himself out of bed, and then things would get started. A couple days he never got himself together, and just stayed in bed the whole time, talking and watching that seam between his cieling and his wall. And then the producer would get up after a while and talk about firing him and walk away. And the next day this second unit director would haul his ass out on time and shoot three days' worth of movie by lunch. Now normally the business doesn't tolerate eccentricities like that from anyone but a major player, the stars of course, a hot director, someone who's got a kind of magic with the public that offsets these games he plays on the set. And if this guy had just worked two or three times as hard to make up for his jerking around he still would've been cut off at the ass and thrown out of the production, but to get a whole week of the picture shot in nine solid hours of prime filmmaking, that was a kind of genius the production could live with, just barely. The unit wasn't real happy, and this director wasn't gonna get anything more for his talent than the team's tolerance of his bullshit personal habits, but the business end was happy with a guy who'd effectively get things done twice as fast and save them a lot of money."
Peluche was starting to get antsy by now, tugging at the covers that were sloughing off my bed and yapping at Christopher Walken's knee. I threw her a piece of cheese to distract her and she took it to a far corner to eat.
"I guess I should wrap this up fast to suit your star over there," he said, indicating the dog. I usually liked to have a long, rambling talk with him when we sat down, but today he seemed to have the right impression. Peluche was impatient. "It's alright," he said, "there're actors I've worked with who've been more demanding than her." I don't know whether that qualifies Peluche's prissiness as moderate or just means I've-seen-worse, but she's curled up for the moment attempting to chew the block of cheese with her tiny mouth and Christopher Walken leans back in his chair and lets the sunlight play across his face.
"I guess it's not that bad, really. I knew a guy who was the opposite way. He only had any ideas when he was alone, late at night. And he would wander the streets from dusk 'till it was almost dawn, without a clear thought in his head about where he was going until he got so tired he had to go home and sleep through the day. But he would think up these things in his mind that were sort of like being alive for weeks at a time, and it kept him going when he should've crashed. So he wandered out more and more and hardly ever saw the light of day, and one morning he just wasn't there. I don't know what he did or what happened to him. They sold his house and everything in it after a while, and put the money in escrow in case he came back.
This second unit director, he had his ideas in bed when he laid there waiting out bad days, and after he got up and they came undone for him and everyone who'd been listening, he spent the rest of his waking time trying to put them back together. That's what all his great work came from, even though it was subordinate to the head director's bigger picture. I don't know where the important difference between him and the other guy is, exactly, but it's in there somewhere and it's real as hell, 'cause here we are, both with our lives, careers and property intact. So, Peluche ready to go out?"
She heard her name and perked up, abandoning her corner to come bark at the door with her tail fidgeting. I finished off my orange juice and rose reluctantly and Christopher did likewise, brushing a few crumbs from his suit.
"Right," I said, picking up the plate of tricuits and cheese and taking it to the cabinet I use as a pantry. "You know I get room service here, the kid brings me food from the truck and I talk to him about his scripts," I tell Christopher, "I'm never short of those little sandwich triangles."
"That's when you know you've made it," he says back, and gathers Peluche, shaking with canid anticipation, up into his arms. Before he's one step out the door he leans back in and says "you've got company coming."
"Tell them I'll be out in a second."
As soon as he steps out I can hear Ralph braying. "Is he up? Already? My god, what a privilege! Okay, get that dog and yourself down to makeup, I'll warm everybody up."
He knocks on the door, speaks in a normal voice that sounds like a yell.
"You coming?"
"Yep."
"I'll see you on-set then," and with a scrape he pivots and is gone.
I fold the bathrobe over my bed and throw on a shirt and jeans, stop to feed the fish, and then I'm out.
-
A story I wrote today.
Now I know some people out there, people whose blogs don't have permalinks rather like to bandy about talk of lesbian filmography and pornographic fixations these days, and the List of 100 Movies that Deserve More Love brought this topic to my mind with the following capsule review of Kissing Jessica Stein:
What’s better than a sexy lesbian tinged comedy written and starring two hot heterosexual ladies? World peace. MAYBE.
So you can chew on that, if you like. I don't know what writing about this will do to the content-sensitive ad banner, I guess it can chew on that, too.
The list also had some stuff about other fantastic-sounding movies, but I've forgotten all about them after hours of story-writing. Tell me what you think of this one, if you like. That Christopher Walken's the man sometimes. I never got the chance to tell him how great it was to see him cut loose in the Weapon of Choice video. 'Cause that video was mighty fine watchin'.
Oh, and everybody go to www.style.org. Like right now.
March 15, 2004
Body Modification
In the spirit of the season I offered the old man my spot but he preferred to stand up with his hand clamped to a steel pole as the bus rocked and shuddered. At first I felt he was being foolish and proud, like when coming up the stairwell I meet someone going down and we both stand for a moment, making muffled gestures and muted exhortations for the other to go ahead. But then I think I understood.
I think he used to sit down on the bus and talk or read the newspaper, which is like talking, and he doesn't want to do that any more because that would be like looking through old photos or acting out an empty play. Maybe he does like to see a certain measure of strength in his old self too, and it gives him pleasure to know he can still withstand the pitching of the vehicle over potholes and veering around curves. I wonder if he thinks I won't be able to hold on so long. Maybe he just has arthritis and doesn't want to bend his knees to sit.
At home one night I took the strereo miniplug-to-quarter inch adapter out of my keyboard and screwed it onto my pinky finger. The threading cut and held to my nail and drew it tighter into the fingertip. I kept going until I could plug myself into my keyboard and pull my finger back out without the plug coming off. It was only after unscrewing it that I found it had sliced a bloodless line across the fleshy top of the digit.
In the spirit of the season I offered the old man my spot but he preferred to stand up with his hand clamped to a steel pole as the bus rocked and shuddered. At first I felt he was being foolish and proud, like when coming up the stairwell I meet someone going down and we both stand for a moment, making muffled gestures and muted exhortations for the other to go ahead. But then I think I understood.
I think he used to sit down on the bus and talk or read the newspaper, which is like talking, and he doesn't want to do that any more because that would be like looking through old photos or acting out an empty play. Maybe he does like to see a certain measure of strength in his old self too, and it gives him pleasure to know he can still withstand the pitching of the vehicle over potholes and veering around curves. I wonder if he thinks I won't be able to hold on so long. Maybe he just has arthritis and doesn't want to bend his knees to sit.
At home one night I took the strereo miniplug-to-quarter inch adapter out of my keyboard and screwed it onto my pinky finger. The threading cut and held to my nail and drew it tighter into the fingertip. I kept going until I could plug myself into my keyboard and pull my finger back out without the plug coming off. It was only after unscrewing it that I found it had sliced a bloodless line across the fleshy top of the digit.
March 02, 2004
2nd Teaser
Within a couple of weeks I was established in a cheap but costly apartment on the residential periphery and working as a grocery bag boy. More ambitous men than me have started lower on the food chain. For the first couple of months I felt continually great. I was in L.A. I'd made it to the starting line of my race to the top of the game. Moreover, I was making connections.
On my third day at work another bag boy introduced himself to me. He leaned over towards my aisle as he bagged items by rote.
"How's it going?" he asked me, with a smug shine on his face like the two of us were sharing a secret.
Within a couple of weeks I was established in a cheap but costly apartment on the residential periphery and working as a grocery bag boy. More ambitous men than me have started lower on the food chain. For the first couple of months I felt continually great. I was in L.A. I'd made it to the starting line of my race to the top of the game. Moreover, I was making connections.
On my third day at work another bag boy introduced himself to me. He leaned over towards my aisle as he bagged items by rote.
"How's it going?" he asked me, with a smug shine on his face like the two of us were sharing a secret.
February 20, 2004
Teaser
Famous people don't get to ride streetcars on mornings when they had to wake up early and are nursing a headache born of a restless night. They can't rest their skulls against the window of the moving vehicle and in the vibrations broadcast by the steel wheels and metal rails discover the thinness of their bones. Nor can they smile for no other reason then that this vibration isn't unpleasant, and that the dirty windows and a cloudy yellow-gray morning turn sharp sunlight into feathers. They have to travel in a kind of seclusion, surrounded by tinted windows and personality. The impulse propelling them through their agenda is always a matter of image, never one of bare-boned necessity. It is sad that they are insulated by this layer of superfluousness. I remember thinking this before I moved to L.A.
Famous people don't get to ride streetcars on mornings when they had to wake up early and are nursing a headache born of a restless night. They can't rest their skulls against the window of the moving vehicle and in the vibrations broadcast by the steel wheels and metal rails discover the thinness of their bones. Nor can they smile for no other reason then that this vibration isn't unpleasant, and that the dirty windows and a cloudy yellow-gray morning turn sharp sunlight into feathers. They have to travel in a kind of seclusion, surrounded by tinted windows and personality. The impulse propelling them through their agenda is always a matter of image, never one of bare-boned necessity. It is sad that they are insulated by this layer of superfluousness. I remember thinking this before I moved to L.A.
February 09, 2004
Down Goes the Shaving Head
Remington electric razor remington electric razor
A weasel chorus rang in Paul's head and he sang along under his breath as he paced the length of the St. George subway platform, eastbound beside the westbound tracks. He'd chosen a crowded time of day.
The moment he picked was perfect, and this was his way. He moved when there was the least resistance, and possibility peaked. The crowd eased up around him as the rush from the tunnel broadened from a whisper to breath. They were far enough away that no one would try to grab him when he moved, that they would have second thoughts and that would be all he needed.
Only the Remington
gives you the comfort grip
When the human perimeter was as wide as it would get with the train at the perfect distance, its headlights just filling the mouth of the tunnel, Paul lept onto the tracks. His body was stiff, and bent, arms at his side, fists tight. The brakes of the train started to wail and Paul heard some people shout, but most hung their mouths open without knowing to scream until the others clued them. Then the platform erupted.
Paul saw the train charging him, saw a black man in the corner of his eye. The man was fat, wore a sweater and a lighter jacket than most. Paul didn't have to look to know his expression was bleak and wide-eyed. He'd been tripped by the same doubts as everyone else: 'is he really doing it?' If he hadn't stopped for that thought, the man would wonder, could he have grabbed Paul? And truth be told, if he'd lunged without thinking, and was lucky, he could have. Now he stood with one foot on the edge of the tracks and one foot not far enough behind, stretching his hand to Paul in a desperate way and yelling.
"Come on, man! Come here!"
Paul raked his arm as if flinging him away, and this was all the dismissal the man needed, terrified as he was and alive with the first thrills that would grow into guilt. Paul could almost hear nothing but the train.
That's how the Remington
gives you a closer shave
And with the train immediately before his eyes the air was sucked from his mouth and blasted across his face, tearing at his hair and clothes, making his shirt slap him madly. One headlight was in front of him, like a baseball. It flew in.
Cleans you, thrills you, may even keep you from getting -
He felt the pressure of the last breath before the fatal push and the one headlight became his world, he leaned forward singing through his teeth, and in an instant was gone in an explosion of drops of light that flew in every direction, whirling, spiralling, through walls, pillars, and people without leaving a mark. They passed through the man who had stood by the tracks, passed through the train, through legs, stomachs and brains and dipped, curved and faded out leaving flash traces in the eyes of bystanders. When the train ground to a dead stop there was nothing there.
The panic that had shaken across the platform was replaced by an unusual calm that no one experiencing it could explain. It made the police interviewing these relaxed witnesses feel as though there were things crawling in their heads. There was no flattened body on the end of the train, nothing under it but tracks. No marks but the broken glass of one lamp that shattered upon impact leaving a blackened collar burned around its housing by electric sparks.
There was nothing to be seen, and no conclusion to be drawn. Everyone went home and left the story to rumor, which could do no harm. But some of them as they went, who had been touched in the right way, in the right place, were singing under their breath.
-- --
I don't know how this blog turned into a many-person diary, and it kind of sickens me to look back on it, since that's exactly what I didn't want when I started it with the goal of writing more. I'm not going to quit blogging, I like most of this page, but I am sure as hell going to remember why I'm here and what has no place here. I shoulda known better.
In the meantime, I'll miss Max's blog but it was probably about time for it to die, and hopefully I'll be starting work on a magazine with him soon, which is a much better use of the internet. The guestbook remains open for signing but don't expect this page to be taken over by . . . rage cookies. Or any other kind of cookies. It's mine and it belongs to what I write, that's all.
Remington electric razor remington electric razor
A weasel chorus rang in Paul's head and he sang along under his breath as he paced the length of the St. George subway platform, eastbound beside the westbound tracks. He'd chosen a crowded time of day.
The moment he picked was perfect, and this was his way. He moved when there was the least resistance, and possibility peaked. The crowd eased up around him as the rush from the tunnel broadened from a whisper to breath. They were far enough away that no one would try to grab him when he moved, that they would have second thoughts and that would be all he needed.
Only the Remington
gives you the comfort grip
When the human perimeter was as wide as it would get with the train at the perfect distance, its headlights just filling the mouth of the tunnel, Paul lept onto the tracks. His body was stiff, and bent, arms at his side, fists tight. The brakes of the train started to wail and Paul heard some people shout, but most hung their mouths open without knowing to scream until the others clued them. Then the platform erupted.
Paul saw the train charging him, saw a black man in the corner of his eye. The man was fat, wore a sweater and a lighter jacket than most. Paul didn't have to look to know his expression was bleak and wide-eyed. He'd been tripped by the same doubts as everyone else: 'is he really doing it?' If he hadn't stopped for that thought, the man would wonder, could he have grabbed Paul? And truth be told, if he'd lunged without thinking, and was lucky, he could have. Now he stood with one foot on the edge of the tracks and one foot not far enough behind, stretching his hand to Paul in a desperate way and yelling.
"Come on, man! Come here!"
Paul raked his arm as if flinging him away, and this was all the dismissal the man needed, terrified as he was and alive with the first thrills that would grow into guilt. Paul could almost hear nothing but the train.
That's how the Remington
gives you a closer shave
And with the train immediately before his eyes the air was sucked from his mouth and blasted across his face, tearing at his hair and clothes, making his shirt slap him madly. One headlight was in front of him, like a baseball. It flew in.
Cleans you, thrills you, may even keep you from getting -
He felt the pressure of the last breath before the fatal push and the one headlight became his world, he leaned forward singing through his teeth, and in an instant was gone in an explosion of drops of light that flew in every direction, whirling, spiralling, through walls, pillars, and people without leaving a mark. They passed through the man who had stood by the tracks, passed through the train, through legs, stomachs and brains and dipped, curved and faded out leaving flash traces in the eyes of bystanders. When the train ground to a dead stop there was nothing there.
The panic that had shaken across the platform was replaced by an unusual calm that no one experiencing it could explain. It made the police interviewing these relaxed witnesses feel as though there were things crawling in their heads. There was no flattened body on the end of the train, nothing under it but tracks. No marks but the broken glass of one lamp that shattered upon impact leaving a blackened collar burned around its housing by electric sparks.
There was nothing to be seen, and no conclusion to be drawn. Everyone went home and left the story to rumor, which could do no harm. But some of them as they went, who had been touched in the right way, in the right place, were singing under their breath.
-- --
I don't know how this blog turned into a many-person diary, and it kind of sickens me to look back on it, since that's exactly what I didn't want when I started it with the goal of writing more. I'm not going to quit blogging, I like most of this page, but I am sure as hell going to remember why I'm here and what has no place here. I shoulda known better.
In the meantime, I'll miss Max's blog but it was probably about time for it to die, and hopefully I'll be starting work on a magazine with him soon, which is a much better use of the internet. The guestbook remains open for signing but don't expect this page to be taken over by . . . rage cookies. Or any other kind of cookies. It's mine and it belongs to what I write, that's all.
February 08, 2004
Battér Up!
I am a tricky trochee
I may have been grasping at straws with the last post, but it sure seemed like something was going around. The point is, none of that is at the top of my list right now, because it'sa my birthday and this blog is just a little thin page so I's'm gonna jot down a bit about that.
Andra's bringing a cake, which must have been interesting for her because she never cooks. I cook. I like cooking. She Paints, and acts on the Improv team, leads the environmental network, can craft any kind of item from a mug to the Taj Mahal with her bare hands and maybe a sewing machine, is pulling an A+ average and does all the chores in her house because her parents work and her brother's a full-time engineering student. So normally she doesn't sweat the cooking. But for today she wanted to make a cake.
It's a surprise for my parents, so I've been making up excuses to them of why I didn't want a cake this year. It was tricky, but I can be one smoove operator. Smoove like silk.
There's chicken cooking upstairs alongside a pork roast and green beans à l'oriéntale, which means yummy. I did my best to iron my new Andratastic t-shirt today, despite not knowing how to work an iron and generally harboring distrust for irons and iron-related things, such as boards. But I think the shirt turned out pretty good. For those of you who don't know, it says "Mr. Bovee-Begun, Expert," which is as fine a title as is to be had. My Magic 8-ball says so, too.
I am a tricky trochee
I may have been grasping at straws with the last post, but it sure seemed like something was going around. The point is, none of that is at the top of my list right now, because it'sa my birthday and this blog is just a little thin page so I's'm gonna jot down a bit about that.
Andra's bringing a cake, which must have been interesting for her because she never cooks. I cook. I like cooking. She Paints, and acts on the Improv team, leads the environmental network, can craft any kind of item from a mug to the Taj Mahal with her bare hands and maybe a sewing machine, is pulling an A+ average and does all the chores in her house because her parents work and her brother's a full-time engineering student. So normally she doesn't sweat the cooking. But for today she wanted to make a cake.
It's a surprise for my parents, so I've been making up excuses to them of why I didn't want a cake this year. It was tricky, but I can be one smoove operator. Smoove like silk.
There's chicken cooking upstairs alongside a pork roast and green beans à l'oriéntale, which means yummy. I did my best to iron my new Andratastic t-shirt today, despite not knowing how to work an iron and generally harboring distrust for irons and iron-related things, such as boards. But I think the shirt turned out pretty good. For those of you who don't know, it says "Mr. Bovee-Begun, Expert," which is as fine a title as is to be had. My Magic 8-ball says so, too.
February 07, 2004
All Right
What the fuck is going on the the shadows? Where is everything coming from? What is this shit? Why do all these good people keep getting buckled by something I can't see? Show me, people, because Chloe is a good person, Ben is a good person, Alison and Dave are good people, Nick is a good person too. None of them perfect or blameless or angels and neither am I, but for fuck's sake that's what makes angels such a nice idea, isn't it? IS there something going on in the shadows?
When I say good people I just mean anyone who acts like they are a human being with emotions and maybe friends. So they're everywhere, but if I can get along with someone, that makes them one of my favorite people in the world, without any strings attached. Not even if you want them.
I don't, for one, want to make anyone feel that their positivity is mandatory, that my world hinges on their presence, or that I'll hate them if they have a fucking bad day, or bad month, and don't want to smile or show up. And I'm not just thinking of one person when I say that. I've had fucking bad months too, and were it not for a couple of people who were willing to be decent about it, I would have been a broken wreck at times. I wish I always knew how to be a good friend. Thanks.
There's a theory, a model I guess, that billions or trillions of angels exist and each one is a separate species, and that's what humans aspire to, that kind of specialness and individuality, but we aren't like that. You aren't. I'm not. Roll over.
We aren't Victorians, either. We don't need to hide everything that hurts us and maintain a veneer. Nor do we need to be ashamed about hiding some injuries without maintaining a veneer. Put it in a cast. Wear a big ugly eyepatch. All I know is that something really fucked up is going on and since no one will show it to me all I can see of it is the fact that it is almost systematically hurting a lot of my favorite people, very badly. Clue me the fuck in. Right now.
What the fuck is going on the the shadows? Where is everything coming from? What is this shit? Why do all these good people keep getting buckled by something I can't see? Show me, people, because Chloe is a good person, Ben is a good person, Alison and Dave are good people, Nick is a good person too. None of them perfect or blameless or angels and neither am I, but for fuck's sake that's what makes angels such a nice idea, isn't it? IS there something going on in the shadows?
When I say good people I just mean anyone who acts like they are a human being with emotions and maybe friends. So they're everywhere, but if I can get along with someone, that makes them one of my favorite people in the world, without any strings attached. Not even if you want them.
I don't, for one, want to make anyone feel that their positivity is mandatory, that my world hinges on their presence, or that I'll hate them if they have a fucking bad day, or bad month, and don't want to smile or show up. And I'm not just thinking of one person when I say that. I've had fucking bad months too, and were it not for a couple of people who were willing to be decent about it, I would have been a broken wreck at times. I wish I always knew how to be a good friend. Thanks.
There's a theory, a model I guess, that billions or trillions of angels exist and each one is a separate species, and that's what humans aspire to, that kind of specialness and individuality, but we aren't like that. You aren't. I'm not. Roll over.
We aren't Victorians, either. We don't need to hide everything that hurts us and maintain a veneer. Nor do we need to be ashamed about hiding some injuries without maintaining a veneer. Put it in a cast. Wear a big ugly eyepatch. All I know is that something really fucked up is going on and since no one will show it to me all I can see of it is the fact that it is almost systematically hurting a lot of my favorite people, very badly. Clue me the fuck in. Right now.
I Just Can't Get Enough x2
Stick around long enough and it's bound to happen. I turn twenty in a scant twelve hours. Excuse me, what I meant to say was:
I turn twenty in a scant twelve hours!
What a weird idea. Of course I don't get any wiser or more mature on a regular schedule, but I sure as chips get older. I'm not sure if there's any such thing as hell, but I am quite sure that I'm eating chips right now. Sun Chips, mmm. I went through a similar thing when I turned sixteen, only I didn't have the chips back then. I certainly don't feel like some twenty year-old type. What are twenty year-olds like? They're all sort of casual and think they know shit, plus they've got their bacheloresque squalor living, and probably some kind of hair thing going, maybe they go out to the movies but they don't watch as much tv as they used to . . .
Oh shit. Oh shit piss fucking obscenities. Obviously by the time I was halfway through that sentence (the last sentence of the previous paragraph, lest you get confused), I knew it was me. But I didn't know it when I started it.
Luke used to say: "I'm seventeen years old, but I'm fucking thirty." He called it the effect of the gifted program. Makes you old beyond your years, less prone to getting roaring drunk and breaking shit and jumping off things. I guess he proved himself wrong.
Way back in the day of Freeman's class, approximately grade seven, me and the homeboys, which I guess means me, Max, Matt, Nick, and Avi 'cause we shared a table in class, were perplexed by the notion that we could - nay, would - turn into teenagers. Avi was the first to key into the absurdity of anticipating it like that. He imagined a twelve year-old, not unlike ourselves, only with sunglasses and hairgel, and maybe some kinda teenager-type jacket, walking along snapping his fingers and singing a little song that went:
"One more month, one more month, and then I'm a teenager . . . "
Nobody sings shitty songs like Avi does. Such timbre.
Twelve more hours, Twelve more hours . . .
Because you see to us, teenage was the third phase in life. You had your little tiny preschool phase, and then the cool phase we'd been in for a while, when you appreciate the ninja turtles without a trace of irony or nostalgia, grungy rock don't impress you, and you wake up early on saturday mornings for the cartoons! Not to mention going over to your friends' houses and probably acting out crazy games loosely based on those same tv shows, but guided by minds too loosely anchored to society to appreciate the clichéd or important parts of the plots, so really you're just making it up as you go along. And, if you're like me, you probably end up hitting each other with sticks. Me and Sam called that Sacred Space Fighting. And it kicked ass for miles. We used broomsticks whenever we could.
Byron was here last night, slowly turning twenty too, but I'll beat him to it. Remember back when Byron and Leora and me were in the same class, and small? I remember. The same house on Wayland Avenue was where they lived, and every once in a while when I went over there we'd drink juice, probably apple juice, out of these red orange yellow and green plastic cups that flared out on top, and eat food that was delicious because it wasn't at my house. That's another thing, food was always good when it was at someone else's house. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches appealed to the palate of the conoisseur, instead of just sticking to it unpleasantly like they did when your own parents made them, and you couldn't believe - or at least I couldn't - how plump the spaghetti was, and how squishy the meatballs, when you had dinner at a friend's house.
It was cool, because we would eat quickly and make jokes and talk like little morons with no manners and maybe we would wash our hands afterwards. The kitchen was sort of bright and the table was a slab of wood and Byron and Leora both had these huge lisps so that L's were W's and there were cats. I didn't have any cats, and I also didn't have Crystal Quest, but they did, oh did they ever. so after lunch we would go downstairs and boot up the Mac and play some real old school video games. Later on there was Power Rangers Scrabble, the premise being that Power Rangers were stupid so the idea was to fill up the board with bad words. I think Leora invented that.
Awesome.
Stick around long enough and it's bound to happen. I turn twenty in a scant twelve hours. Excuse me, what I meant to say was:
I turn twenty in a scant twelve hours!
What a weird idea. Of course I don't get any wiser or more mature on a regular schedule, but I sure as chips get older. I'm not sure if there's any such thing as hell, but I am quite sure that I'm eating chips right now. Sun Chips, mmm. I went through a similar thing when I turned sixteen, only I didn't have the chips back then. I certainly don't feel like some twenty year-old type. What are twenty year-olds like? They're all sort of casual and think they know shit, plus they've got their bacheloresque squalor living, and probably some kind of hair thing going, maybe they go out to the movies but they don't watch as much tv as they used to . . .
Oh shit. Oh shit piss fucking obscenities. Obviously by the time I was halfway through that sentence (the last sentence of the previous paragraph, lest you get confused), I knew it was me. But I didn't know it when I started it.
Luke used to say: "I'm seventeen years old, but I'm fucking thirty." He called it the effect of the gifted program. Makes you old beyond your years, less prone to getting roaring drunk and breaking shit and jumping off things. I guess he proved himself wrong.
Way back in the day of Freeman's class, approximately grade seven, me and the homeboys, which I guess means me, Max, Matt, Nick, and Avi 'cause we shared a table in class, were perplexed by the notion that we could - nay, would - turn into teenagers. Avi was the first to key into the absurdity of anticipating it like that. He imagined a twelve year-old, not unlike ourselves, only with sunglasses and hairgel, and maybe some kinda teenager-type jacket, walking along snapping his fingers and singing a little song that went:
"One more month, one more month, and then I'm a teenager . . . "
Nobody sings shitty songs like Avi does. Such timbre.
Twelve more hours, Twelve more hours . . .
Because you see to us, teenage was the third phase in life. You had your little tiny preschool phase, and then the cool phase we'd been in for a while, when you appreciate the ninja turtles without a trace of irony or nostalgia, grungy rock don't impress you, and you wake up early on saturday mornings for the cartoons! Not to mention going over to your friends' houses and probably acting out crazy games loosely based on those same tv shows, but guided by minds too loosely anchored to society to appreciate the clichéd or important parts of the plots, so really you're just making it up as you go along. And, if you're like me, you probably end up hitting each other with sticks. Me and Sam called that Sacred Space Fighting. And it kicked ass for miles. We used broomsticks whenever we could.
Byron was here last night, slowly turning twenty too, but I'll beat him to it. Remember back when Byron and Leora and me were in the same class, and small? I remember. The same house on Wayland Avenue was where they lived, and every once in a while when I went over there we'd drink juice, probably apple juice, out of these red orange yellow and green plastic cups that flared out on top, and eat food that was delicious because it wasn't at my house. That's another thing, food was always good when it was at someone else's house. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches appealed to the palate of the conoisseur, instead of just sticking to it unpleasantly like they did when your own parents made them, and you couldn't believe - or at least I couldn't - how plump the spaghetti was, and how squishy the meatballs, when you had dinner at a friend's house.
It was cool, because we would eat quickly and make jokes and talk like little morons with no manners and maybe we would wash our hands afterwards. The kitchen was sort of bright and the table was a slab of wood and Byron and Leora both had these huge lisps so that L's were W's and there were cats. I didn't have any cats, and I also didn't have Crystal Quest, but they did, oh did they ever. so after lunch we would go downstairs and boot up the Mac and play some real old school video games. Later on there was Power Rangers Scrabble, the premise being that Power Rangers were stupid so the idea was to fill up the board with bad words. I think Leora invented that.
Awesome.
February 04, 2004
Paradise Restaurant, Part Two
For some reason I favor the notion that the girl is Doug’s sister, the man some boyfriend. The scene, gawkishly posed, is unplaceable. Under perfect lighting, soft and beaming, their clothes looking like they just happen to match, with hair meticulously combed into line with some apparently universal gender standard, they stand in front of a robin’s-egg sky of a backdrop. Clasping two stalky red flowers in her hands and showing an expression of dutiful joy, the girl looks like someone sending her brother news of a romantic addition to her life, who for his part doesn’t seem that interested in the photo.
I assume Doug was already living abroad when it was taken, and decide to ask him about it, but he doesn’t come. Instead, his wife, whose name I never knew, patrols up to the table and asks with the same unsmiling face as Doug if I’m ready to order. Realizing I’m holding the menu I put it down and order the same thing I always do. She takes the laminated menu card and walks away faster than she came.
The food comes quickly from the kitchen, a positive result of the belief that anything can be fried. In the meantime I’m thinking about my own sister, which I haven’t given myself much time for lately. I first heard about her engagement through Mom.
I remember: a special dinner I’d come home for, on Mom’s insistence. Just the three of us, because Janice couldn’t possibly travel back to break the news.
They made me sit through the whole dinner before revealing the occasion. First came the greasy smoked oyster spaghetti Dad loved to cook, then a salad of crisp tomato wedges and lettuce stung my mouth with sour vinaigrette. Rum-soaked pears on vanilla ice cream were dessert. When I realized we had eaten the same meal for Janice’s last birthday at home, they could barely keep their mouths shut.
When Dad brought out the champagne he finally made the announcement, and we drank a toast to Janice and Chris before calling them to send our congratulations. The wine teased my tongue where it had been stung by vinegar.
Now, Mrs. Doug Yee brings my food, a plate of glossy brown noodles with threads of egg and vegetables, a springroll on a separate plate. She sets a steel teapot in front of me that I let steep while I eat.
Later in the meal and with the tea poured, Doug appears by the table. “Your meal all right?” he verbally scribbles.
I nod, “It’s good,” and he takes the teapot to refill, even though it doesn’t need more.
When he comes back I point to the photo, leaning after my finger, into the question. His frown turns curious.
“Who’s that?” I ask, flicking my eyes between him and the photo. He traces my stare, searching the artificial jungle for the object of my questioning. He sees the hanging door bells and newspapers piled between the superfluous plastic pots. Then he points.
“That photo?” His eyebrows arch, the apogee of his expressiveness, and he shrugs. “Just a picture.”
Then he leaves me with tea and the tasteless noodles. I finish quickly, suddenly conscious of a bulbous goldfish watching from the cheap watercolor hung beside me. Strangely unwilling to talk to Doug at the counter, I leave money on the table and go, with the idea of not coming back.
The bells slap and tinkle as I leave, and a boy and a girl keep smiling into the restaurant, exactly as before.
For some reason I favor the notion that the girl is Doug’s sister, the man some boyfriend. The scene, gawkishly posed, is unplaceable. Under perfect lighting, soft and beaming, their clothes looking like they just happen to match, with hair meticulously combed into line with some apparently universal gender standard, they stand in front of a robin’s-egg sky of a backdrop. Clasping two stalky red flowers in her hands and showing an expression of dutiful joy, the girl looks like someone sending her brother news of a romantic addition to her life, who for his part doesn’t seem that interested in the photo.
I assume Doug was already living abroad when it was taken, and decide to ask him about it, but he doesn’t come. Instead, his wife, whose name I never knew, patrols up to the table and asks with the same unsmiling face as Doug if I’m ready to order. Realizing I’m holding the menu I put it down and order the same thing I always do. She takes the laminated menu card and walks away faster than she came.
The food comes quickly from the kitchen, a positive result of the belief that anything can be fried. In the meantime I’m thinking about my own sister, which I haven’t given myself much time for lately. I first heard about her engagement through Mom.
I remember: a special dinner I’d come home for, on Mom’s insistence. Just the three of us, because Janice couldn’t possibly travel back to break the news.
They made me sit through the whole dinner before revealing the occasion. First came the greasy smoked oyster spaghetti Dad loved to cook, then a salad of crisp tomato wedges and lettuce stung my mouth with sour vinaigrette. Rum-soaked pears on vanilla ice cream were dessert. When I realized we had eaten the same meal for Janice’s last birthday at home, they could barely keep their mouths shut.
When Dad brought out the champagne he finally made the announcement, and we drank a toast to Janice and Chris before calling them to send our congratulations. The wine teased my tongue where it had been stung by vinegar.
Now, Mrs. Doug Yee brings my food, a plate of glossy brown noodles with threads of egg and vegetables, a springroll on a separate plate. She sets a steel teapot in front of me that I let steep while I eat.
Later in the meal and with the tea poured, Doug appears by the table. “Your meal all right?” he verbally scribbles.
I nod, “It’s good,” and he takes the teapot to refill, even though it doesn’t need more.
When he comes back I point to the photo, leaning after my finger, into the question. His frown turns curious.
“Who’s that?” I ask, flicking my eyes between him and the photo. He traces my stare, searching the artificial jungle for the object of my questioning. He sees the hanging door bells and newspapers piled between the superfluous plastic pots. Then he points.
“That photo?” His eyebrows arch, the apogee of his expressiveness, and he shrugs. “Just a picture.”
Then he leaves me with tea and the tasteless noodles. I finish quickly, suddenly conscious of a bulbous goldfish watching from the cheap watercolor hung beside me. Strangely unwilling to talk to Doug at the counter, I leave money on the table and go, with the idea of not coming back.
The bells slap and tinkle as I leave, and a boy and a girl keep smiling into the restaurant, exactly as before.
January 29, 2004
Pay it no mind
Words. random words. shaped words. Words giving rise to a shape. Words without the proper shape. Grammar that offends, missed capitalization. Insuffereble spellings. Words here for no reason but their shape. Testing the limits of a blan spave. A blank space. A keyvoard. The typing doesn't matter.
Everybody gotta get help. Everybody need help. No? I don't know what to make of that no. I'm pretty much only happy when either I'm making someone else feel good or when life is just ridiculously, stupidly, grandly and obscenely wonderful on its own. Either of those. And now it's winter when I feel like a big part of myself is sleeping all the time, deep in a great big cave on a mountain, which obviously puts it pretty far away. And just because of the nature of that part that's in hibernation, this tends to preclude the second path to happiness.
For a long time nothing happened.
Then it all got laid out, like the order was something that got careful attention, like it was that way just for me, though of course it was that way for everyone, just for everyone. Why do we make stuff about us? I have no compelling reason to think the cross-sectional perimeter of my chest and back is 40.16", and in fact I think it probably isn't. But so what, I wear t-shirts. It's only personal information if it tells other people something about me. Here's a tidbit: they're size S t-shirts to display both my self-diminishing tendencies and the tightness with which I wear my personality, not to mention the self-aggrandizing tendencies showcased by my appearing only in clothes that fit me perfectly and set me apart as one who knows himself and doesn't worry about fashion.
Funny how you realize it's been said and that the empty white space that flattens the rest of the page is filled up in all of our minds. My way of believing is that it's filled up the same in all of us. My way of seeing tells me different, but I need glasses anyway so hey.
Sometimes you are and sometimes you ain't, and when you aren't in the middle of things the wind is blowing but there isn't any sky, and when you are you know where the weather comes from, at least roughly.
Some to my left, some to my right, some way up ahead who are afraid I'm gone, and some lots behind. And in the middle of that is where I can can, in other words where can is an option, where timshel, if John Steinbeck will allow.
Words. random words. shaped words. Words giving rise to a shape. Words without the proper shape. Grammar that offends, missed capitalization. Insuffereble spellings. Words here for no reason but their shape. Testing the limits of a blan spave. A blank space. A keyvoard. The typing doesn't matter.
Everybody gotta get help. Everybody need help. No? I don't know what to make of that no. I'm pretty much only happy when either I'm making someone else feel good or when life is just ridiculously, stupidly, grandly and obscenely wonderful on its own. Either of those. And now it's winter when I feel like a big part of myself is sleeping all the time, deep in a great big cave on a mountain, which obviously puts it pretty far away. And just because of the nature of that part that's in hibernation, this tends to preclude the second path to happiness.
For a long time nothing happened.
Then it all got laid out, like the order was something that got careful attention, like it was that way just for me, though of course it was that way for everyone, just for everyone. Why do we make stuff about us? I have no compelling reason to think the cross-sectional perimeter of my chest and back is 40.16", and in fact I think it probably isn't. But so what, I wear t-shirts. It's only personal information if it tells other people something about me. Here's a tidbit: they're size S t-shirts to display both my self-diminishing tendencies and the tightness with which I wear my personality, not to mention the self-aggrandizing tendencies showcased by my appearing only in clothes that fit me perfectly and set me apart as one who knows himself and doesn't worry about fashion.
Funny how you realize it's been said and that the empty white space that flattens the rest of the page is filled up in all of our minds. My way of believing is that it's filled up the same in all of us. My way of seeing tells me different, but I need glasses anyway so hey.
Sometimes you are and sometimes you ain't, and when you aren't in the middle of things the wind is blowing but there isn't any sky, and when you are you know where the weather comes from, at least roughly.
Some to my left, some to my right, some way up ahead who are afraid I'm gone, and some lots behind. And in the middle of that is where I can can, in other words where can is an option, where timshel, if John Steinbeck will allow.
January 26, 2004
Dammit, Get a Hold of Yourself, Man! Part One
I found Court in the bathroom standing in front of the hand dryer this morning with his forehead against the wall and his hands resting on the little shelf on the bottom of the unit. It's a light-activated one that senses when your hands are inside, and for some reason there's a little ledge on the bottom that's just big enough for your hands to rest. Court's eyes were closed and his mouth was open with his teeth showing. With his neck jutting out towards the wall like that, he looked like a mannequin trying to take a bite of the wall.
I've never seen a man sleeping standing up before. I wanted to take a picture, but I never had any film, so I woke him up. He must have somehow found a mysterious balance against the hand dryer that was disturbed the moment he started to move. Used to waking up lying down, he almost toppled over, but the door to one of the shower stalls was there to catch him and he just whacked his elbow against the corner.
"Ow!" was the first thing he said. Actually, it was much more of a noise than that, like a coma victim waking up screaming at an impact that landed three weeks ago. I think he must've been embarrased at how loud it was, but he was tired and mad enough to ignore that.
"Was I here all night?"
His real name isn't anything even like Court, it's Logan. What the hell?
He shook his arm and flexed his hands, once, fast, again, very slowly. He made another noise because this hurt him a lot. His hands were like he'd spent a night out in the cold. The skin between his fingers and down his hand broke up into rough scales, and when he closed his fist I could see red between the cracks on his knuckles.
If Court weren't so lazy he could probably be a jackass.
"Fuck, I think I killed my hand. Fuck. Do you have any like cream for this?" This seemed to represent his awareness of my presence, and like everything else so far, was a stupid thing to say. I'm lucky I even have toothpaste, the way I take care of myself.
Josephine walked in then, passed by us and made for the other wall of sinks. She had a basketful of squeeze tubes and a washcloth in one hand and some sort of feeling showing on her face that I guess was supposed to mean 'good morning, don't talk to me.' She's nice in the afternoon. Court pulled himself away from the stall door to saunter towards her.
"Hey, do you have any hand cream I can use?" he asked, blinking at his reflection in the long mirror.
"Shut up, Court," she said in a voice like she was singing mezzo. Court sounded the way his hand looked. He also seemed to think himself a victim of circumstance.
"What the hell? Come on, I fell asleep at the hand dryer. I think I burned off a whole layer of skin." For emphasis, he thrust his dry and bleeding hands underneath her face, which she had just moistened and was rubbing her creamy stuff onto.
"Ew, fuck off! Alright, just wait a second." The rest of what she said was spoken through the washcloth scrubbing her face. "How do you fall asleep at the dryer, anyway?"
"I was working on a stupid essay and I just came in here to take a piss, and I dunno."
"You're an idiot."
"Yeah, thanks." He managed. Then his whole body suddenly tensed up and his eyes widened, and he seemed more awake than he'd been in weeks. "Oh fuck, I bet I left my door open."
Then he ran out of the room. Josephine dunked her head in the sink, which surprised me. I don't think they cleaned the sink bowls.
From in the hallway, Court yelled "shit!" loud enough to wake the floor, which made me laugh and then yawn. I dried my hands off and left, happy.
- - - - -
Bloggin': My group sucks but my movie's awesome. I'll try to post a web version of it so's youse can have a look. Byron and me spent 4 solid days editing and burning that bastard. Actually, it was more like 3 hours editing it on his sweet li''le computer, during which we loved Macs with all the sunny goodness of our hearts, and then 3 3/4 days trying to get the fucking G4 to burn the goddam disc, during which we hated Mac and all things Apple Computers witht he abiding passion of a thousand white giant suns.
When the G4 works, it's like sweet lovely. When it suddenly doesn't, you're in a whole other world. A world of hurt.
Now, this is an aside, but while I was living in Byron's basement, Leora remarked that I was starting to look like Byron, wif my long nappy hair.
In honor and recognition of this, she suggested we form a band with Caedmon and call ourselves the Three Jesuses. The coincidence is that only moments before, Byron and me had decided on a different, perhaps equally genius name for our band (which I don't recall Caedmon ever having been interested in joining): The Ascending Wowtones.
Later, though, Byron started to seriously warm up to The Three Jesuses. And by seriously, I mean the idea of us forming a band is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. His idea was for us to be some kinda metal band, and the three Jesuses are the Dead one (Caedmon), and the Living and Resurrected ones, which me and Byron would alternate being, 'cause both of them have their own advantages. But it Jesuses grammatically correct? Should it be the three Jesi?
About that band, my idea is that no one in it except Byron will be any damn good with their instrument, and Byron's on bass. No one else with any ability to play in a band, except maybe Dave, will be allowed in. So basically, if you're reading, you can probably join our band. Why not Sign Up in the "Guestbook," also known as the autumn graveyard of broken dreams.
Bloggin2, the Legend Continues: This time a' year it seems everyone's lonely and sucks. What the hell is wrong with you? Oh wait, I'm lonely and I suck too. Fuck.
Know what we need? Disco bowling at the bowlerama across from the Peek Freans cookie factory. Yeeah boooy.
Or something, anyway. I live in a freaking box. And there's snow outside. I demand you come to me. Or have me over at your house. Or come sledding.
I found Court in the bathroom standing in front of the hand dryer this morning with his forehead against the wall and his hands resting on the little shelf on the bottom of the unit. It's a light-activated one that senses when your hands are inside, and for some reason there's a little ledge on the bottom that's just big enough for your hands to rest. Court's eyes were closed and his mouth was open with his teeth showing. With his neck jutting out towards the wall like that, he looked like a mannequin trying to take a bite of the wall.
I've never seen a man sleeping standing up before. I wanted to take a picture, but I never had any film, so I woke him up. He must have somehow found a mysterious balance against the hand dryer that was disturbed the moment he started to move. Used to waking up lying down, he almost toppled over, but the door to one of the shower stalls was there to catch him and he just whacked his elbow against the corner.
"Ow!" was the first thing he said. Actually, it was much more of a noise than that, like a coma victim waking up screaming at an impact that landed three weeks ago. I think he must've been embarrased at how loud it was, but he was tired and mad enough to ignore that.
"Was I here all night?"
His real name isn't anything even like Court, it's Logan. What the hell?
He shook his arm and flexed his hands, once, fast, again, very slowly. He made another noise because this hurt him a lot. His hands were like he'd spent a night out in the cold. The skin between his fingers and down his hand broke up into rough scales, and when he closed his fist I could see red between the cracks on his knuckles.
If Court weren't so lazy he could probably be a jackass.
"Fuck, I think I killed my hand. Fuck. Do you have any like cream for this?" This seemed to represent his awareness of my presence, and like everything else so far, was a stupid thing to say. I'm lucky I even have toothpaste, the way I take care of myself.
Josephine walked in then, passed by us and made for the other wall of sinks. She had a basketful of squeeze tubes and a washcloth in one hand and some sort of feeling showing on her face that I guess was supposed to mean 'good morning, don't talk to me.' She's nice in the afternoon. Court pulled himself away from the stall door to saunter towards her.
"Hey, do you have any hand cream I can use?" he asked, blinking at his reflection in the long mirror.
"Shut up, Court," she said in a voice like she was singing mezzo. Court sounded the way his hand looked. He also seemed to think himself a victim of circumstance.
"What the hell? Come on, I fell asleep at the hand dryer. I think I burned off a whole layer of skin." For emphasis, he thrust his dry and bleeding hands underneath her face, which she had just moistened and was rubbing her creamy stuff onto.
"Ew, fuck off! Alright, just wait a second." The rest of what she said was spoken through the washcloth scrubbing her face. "How do you fall asleep at the dryer, anyway?"
"I was working on a stupid essay and I just came in here to take a piss, and I dunno."
"You're an idiot."
"Yeah, thanks." He managed. Then his whole body suddenly tensed up and his eyes widened, and he seemed more awake than he'd been in weeks. "Oh fuck, I bet I left my door open."
Then he ran out of the room. Josephine dunked her head in the sink, which surprised me. I don't think they cleaned the sink bowls.
From in the hallway, Court yelled "shit!" loud enough to wake the floor, which made me laugh and then yawn. I dried my hands off and left, happy.
- - - - -
Bloggin': My group sucks but my movie's awesome. I'll try to post a web version of it so's youse can have a look. Byron and me spent 4 solid days editing and burning that bastard. Actually, it was more like 3 hours editing it on his sweet li''le computer, during which we loved Macs with all the sunny goodness of our hearts, and then 3 3/4 days trying to get the fucking G4 to burn the goddam disc, during which we hated Mac and all things Apple Computers witht he abiding passion of a thousand white giant suns.
When the G4 works, it's like sweet lovely. When it suddenly doesn't, you're in a whole other world. A world of hurt.
Now, this is an aside, but while I was living in Byron's basement, Leora remarked that I was starting to look like Byron, wif my long nappy hair.
In honor and recognition of this, she suggested we form a band with Caedmon and call ourselves the Three Jesuses. The coincidence is that only moments before, Byron and me had decided on a different, perhaps equally genius name for our band (which I don't recall Caedmon ever having been interested in joining): The Ascending Wowtones.
Later, though, Byron started to seriously warm up to The Three Jesuses. And by seriously, I mean the idea of us forming a band is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. His idea was for us to be some kinda metal band, and the three Jesuses are the Dead one (Caedmon), and the Living and Resurrected ones, which me and Byron would alternate being, 'cause both of them have their own advantages. But it Jesuses grammatically correct? Should it be the three Jesi?
About that band, my idea is that no one in it except Byron will be any damn good with their instrument, and Byron's on bass. No one else with any ability to play in a band, except maybe Dave, will be allowed in. So basically, if you're reading, you can probably join our band. Why not Sign Up in the "Guestbook," also known as the autumn graveyard of broken dreams.
Bloggin2, the Legend Continues: This time a' year it seems everyone's lonely and sucks. What the hell is wrong with you? Oh wait, I'm lonely and I suck too. Fuck.
Know what we need? Disco bowling at the bowlerama across from the Peek Freans cookie factory. Yeeah boooy.
Or something, anyway. I live in a freaking box. And there's snow outside. I demand you come to me. Or have me over at your house. Or come sledding.
January 22, 2004
2 1/2 Thoughts
Your average sympathetic person only really feels anything for people they get along with and thinks that everyone would like, if they got to know them. As for the people smart enough and fringe enough to think, quite reasonably, that no one particularly cares and it's a bit more awkward for people to feel sorry for them than to politely ignore them, they're pretty much left to stew in their own (if they're lucky) blog.
Wanna case in point? Go feel sad for a bum. Tell them so. Fill up their life with the transcendental light of your humanism. Cheer them the fuck up.
This is just an example, of course, and not really what I'm basing my opinion on.
And mind you I'm talking averages.
The end
Got time? Here's the script of The Matrix. I think someone likes William Gibson a little too much. I dare you to read the whole thing.
A tantalizing taste: the Wachowski Bros.' favorite word is 'electric.'
What a piece of ass. I didn't realize how much the studio made that movie. They're pretty much solely responsible for anything good. Really.
The end
This is Andra's favorite love song.
Your average sympathetic person only really feels anything for people they get along with and thinks that everyone would like, if they got to know them. As for the people smart enough and fringe enough to think, quite reasonably, that no one particularly cares and it's a bit more awkward for people to feel sorry for them than to politely ignore them, they're pretty much left to stew in their own (if they're lucky) blog.
Wanna case in point? Go feel sad for a bum. Tell them so. Fill up their life with the transcendental light of your humanism. Cheer them the fuck up.
This is just an example, of course, and not really what I'm basing my opinion on.
And mind you I'm talking averages.
The end
Got time? Here's the script of The Matrix. I think someone likes William Gibson a little too much. I dare you to read the whole thing.
A tantalizing taste: the Wachowski Bros.' favorite word is 'electric.'
What a piece of ass. I didn't realize how much the studio made that movie. They're pretty much solely responsible for anything good. Really.
The end
This is Andra's favorite love song.
January 21, 2004
The Tiger
Once upon a time a
little boy stood next
to a pink frog in the
land of Ompf. The
frog was a princess.
Her name was
Toadabeth.
"Clean my room," she
told the little boy,
"you are bothering
me." He did not
clean her room.
Then the Tiger came.
He was strong and
hungry.
"Give me some food!"
he told Toadabeth.
"You always tell me
to give you food,"
she said to him, "why
don't you go
shopping?" So he
did.
He came back just
when the little boy
was starting to get
tired from standing
still all day. He
stood staring at the
horizon that never
lived, with eyes of
the same color, that
soaked in it. He
thought the wind was
just a shiver he felt
on his skin. The sky
went in forever.
Then the Tiger came
back with chicken.
"Don't eat me don't
cut me open and pull
me out, I am
chicken," she said,
but the Tiger was too
hunggry.
He cut her open and
pulled her out and
squished her squishy
parts in his teeth and
picked her stringy
parts from between his
teeth before he
swallowed them.
The little boy stood
there but the food
smelled so good he
had to have some.
Toadabeth jumped into
the river and paddled
away underwater. The
little boy chased
her.
I wrote that story for a teleprompter. It was a little application, you downloaded it, it turned your computer into a teleprompter. So how could I resist? And I had to test it out by writing it some lines to prompt telematically. Only now that it's a teleprompter, it's not as much fun. I miss the days when it was a computer, before the metamorphosis. I have to write all my work by hand now, and I can't play games or chat. I just sit here, getting teleprompted. Which is still pretty sweet, but it lacks something. Right now I'm blogging the old fashioned way, without the electric thrill of digital technologie. I wonder how long it takes to update by mail.
In response to Leora's INCESSANT HARRANGUING (I'll probably change that when I realize it's not nice, but you should get used to the fact that this page is bloated with lies), I got a Livejournal. I'm not gonna use it. Originally, the intent was to create it just so my's Livejournal buddies can link to this page through their Friends page, but my journal turned out so bad that I think I'll be forced to euthanize it shortly. I'll keep it up for a little while for your viewing pleasure, here.
In the meantime, I gotta learn to just go to bed like normal people, instead of doing all this crap.
Once upon a time a
little boy stood next
to a pink frog in the
land of Ompf. The
frog was a princess.
Her name was
Toadabeth.
"Clean my room," she
told the little boy,
"you are bothering
me." He did not
clean her room.
Then the Tiger came.
He was strong and
hungry.
"Give me some food!"
he told Toadabeth.
"You always tell me
to give you food,"
she said to him, "why
don't you go
shopping?" So he
did.
He came back just
when the little boy
was starting to get
tired from standing
still all day. He
stood staring at the
horizon that never
lived, with eyes of
the same color, that
soaked in it. He
thought the wind was
just a shiver he felt
on his skin. The sky
went in forever.
Then the Tiger came
back with chicken.
"Don't eat me don't
cut me open and pull
me out, I am
chicken," she said,
but the Tiger was too
hunggry.
He cut her open and
pulled her out and
squished her squishy
parts in his teeth and
picked her stringy
parts from between his
teeth before he
swallowed them.
The little boy stood
there but the food
smelled so good he
had to have some.
Toadabeth jumped into
the river and paddled
away underwater. The
little boy chased
her.
I wrote that story for a teleprompter. It was a little application, you downloaded it, it turned your computer into a teleprompter. So how could I resist? And I had to test it out by writing it some lines to prompt telematically. Only now that it's a teleprompter, it's not as much fun. I miss the days when it was a computer, before the metamorphosis. I have to write all my work by hand now, and I can't play games or chat. I just sit here, getting teleprompted. Which is still pretty sweet, but it lacks something. Right now I'm blogging the old fashioned way, without the electric thrill of digital technologie. I wonder how long it takes to update by mail.
In response to Leora's INCESSANT HARRANGUING (I'll probably change that when I realize it's not nice, but you should get used to the fact that this page is bloated with lies), I got a Livejournal. I'm not gonna use it. Originally, the intent was to create it just so my's Livejournal buddies can link to this page through their Friends page, but my journal turned out so bad that I think I'll be forced to euthanize it shortly. I'll keep it up for a little while for your viewing pleasure, here.
In the meantime, I gotta learn to just go to bed like normal people, instead of doing all this crap.
January 18, 2004
January 17, 2004
It's Like You've Known Me My Whole Life!
Does it say when you have to rotate their tires?
It is as though the entirety of Andreiety is all right here, an open book for you to judge. Here is my life, my big messy life all here, what a mess. For there is only one of me, and the contents of my heart are all right here. It is like I have posted my heart on the internet. It is not my blog you are reading. No no no. It is my heart. Kathump kathump. That was my heart beating, pulsing with the life that is my soul. Pulse, little soulful heart, for you are on the internet. Indeed.
Well I don't know what that was a reaction against, let's chalk it up to, er, suppressed rage. Cause Michael Jackson just makes me so darn angry.
So I've been trying for a couple of days now to ask Byron for a favor, but it just ain't happening. May surprise those of you in whose experience I'll say just about fuckin anything, but I hate asking for favors. Canna do it. Not things that actually really are favors, as opposed to tiny little services like bringing an extra something or buying me a slice of pizza.*
So, Byron, favor number one, could you teach me how to ask for favors?
*And if ANYone gripes that I don't appreciate pizza-slice-buying, shame on you. I accidentally wrote shane on you. So Shane on you too. Big n hairy greasy Shane.
**** This Is Where Your Comments Have Been, You Strange Little People ****
LOOK HERE!
And at www.haloscan.com
> Latest News
> Blogspeak users...
> If you are a (former) Blogspeak user: we have imported all 5,474 of your accounts from Blogspeak into the HaloScan system. Please read this message to find out how to use the imported comments from your Blogspeak account here. - 1/16/2004
> Server Moved
----
> Your HaloScan username is your old Blogspeak ID with your the letters "bs" in front:
> http://www.haloscan.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2298
----
Sheesh.
Does it say when you have to rotate their tires?
It is as though the entirety of Andreiety is all right here, an open book for you to judge. Here is my life, my big messy life all here, what a mess. For there is only one of me, and the contents of my heart are all right here. It is like I have posted my heart on the internet. It is not my blog you are reading. No no no. It is my heart. Kathump kathump. That was my heart beating, pulsing with the life that is my soul. Pulse, little soulful heart, for you are on the internet. Indeed.
Well I don't know what that was a reaction against, let's chalk it up to, er, suppressed rage. Cause Michael Jackson just makes me so darn angry.
So I've been trying for a couple of days now to ask Byron for a favor, but it just ain't happening. May surprise those of you in whose experience I'll say just about fuckin anything, but I hate asking for favors. Canna do it. Not things that actually really are favors, as opposed to tiny little services like bringing an extra something or buying me a slice of pizza.*
So, Byron, favor number one, could you teach me how to ask for favors?
*And if ANYone gripes that I don't appreciate pizza-slice-buying, shame on you. I accidentally wrote shane on you. So Shane on you too. Big n hairy greasy Shane.
**** This Is Where Your Comments Have Been, You Strange Little People ****
LOOK HERE!
And at www.haloscan.com
> Latest News
> Blogspeak users...
> If you are a (former) Blogspeak user: we have imported all 5,474 of your accounts from Blogspeak into the HaloScan system. Please read this message to find out how to use the imported comments from your Blogspeak account here. - 1/16/2004
> Server Moved
----
> Your HaloScan username is your old Blogspeak ID with your the letters "bs" in front:
> http://www.haloscan.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2298
----
Sheesh.
January 15, 2004
Under Pressure
Four cups of beige coffe, cut in half with milk and then blended with enough instant cocoa to kill a four year-old child. Or four one year-old children. That's what kept me awake for the first half of last night's essaystravaganza. After that I relied on froot loops. I went through many a froot loop. After I got tired of that I just kept telling myself I hate myself, so staying up all night writing an essay on some poems was fun. But I didn't believe me.
At one point early on I did a word count, and I was up to 667. Know what the last word was, the one that pushed it over? God.
Okay.
Last night didn't just suck for me though, last night Toronto was colder than Pluto. I heard at least five ambulances drive past. It was very distracting. They should turn off their sirens when they go by my window.
I've been up all night though, with a two-hour nap this morning, so I'm gonna keep this short because I no doubt cannot write anything worth reading in my current state. Except this: Well Max, I forgot to say it on tuesday, and then yesterday an essay tried to kill me (it pulled a knife on me when I thought I had it pinned), but now I'm gonna say what's gotta get said.
Postmaster? I'm the Postmaster GENERAL!
- the end
. . . But for how long?
Four cups of beige coffe, cut in half with milk and then blended with enough instant cocoa to kill a four year-old child. Or four one year-old children. That's what kept me awake for the first half of last night's essaystravaganza. After that I relied on froot loops. I went through many a froot loop. After I got tired of that I just kept telling myself I hate myself, so staying up all night writing an essay on some poems was fun. But I didn't believe me.
At one point early on I did a word count, and I was up to 667. Know what the last word was, the one that pushed it over? God.
Okay.
Last night didn't just suck for me though, last night Toronto was colder than Pluto. I heard at least five ambulances drive past. It was very distracting. They should turn off their sirens when they go by my window.
I've been up all night though, with a two-hour nap this morning, so I'm gonna keep this short because I no doubt cannot write anything worth reading in my current state. Except this: Well Max, I forgot to say it on tuesday, and then yesterday an essay tried to kill me (it pulled a knife on me when I thought I had it pinned), but now I'm gonna say what's gotta get said.
Postmaster? I'm the Postmaster GENERAL!
- the end
. . . But for how long?
January 14, 2004
Sledding 101
Alright, the first thing everyone should know about "Sledding" is that that's just the vulgar common name for the activity. As of last Sunday its new scientific name is "pain beyond reckoning." And there's an interesting story behind that name.
Sledding is like normal pain, but much, much faster. I was out with Andra and her brother Victor at a big hill that forms part of the western slope of the Don Valley. Victor is in Engineering Science at U of T, which means two main things. First of all, for the purposes of any activity involving numbers, he is smarter than you. Mind you, this doesn't rule out the possibility of him jaywalking in front of a speeding bus and being squished to a Prego-like goo. That activity does not involve any numbers.
The second thing is that, paradoxically, even though as I've said, I wouldn't necessarily trust him to operate a traffic light, he's good at eyeballing things. They teach whole courses on making educated guesses, because engineers often need to do that when they're building bridges and airplane wings and whatnot, and it's a very bad thing to guess wrong in those circumstances.
Well, Victor looked at the distance Andra travelled and the time it took, and after doing a couple metric conversions in his head he concluded she was going at an average speed of sixty kilometers per hour. And that's the average speed, keeping in mind that she starts from zero, so her final speed is actually a fair bit higher than that. Well I hope you can see where this is going. The hint is, I'm the one complaining about pain.
So Andra and Victor, both of whom were skeptical at the sight of my 1950s era Flexible Flyer wooden sled, really came around to it once they realized that its bare stainless steel runners, worn smooth by half a century of proper use, made it go faster than you can legally drive a car on residential streets. And bear in mind that this slope was crowded with dumb little kids trotting around all over the place in their snowsuits which, albeit puffy, were hardly sufficient protection against a mass of wood, steel, and flesh barrelling down the hill with unstoppable momentum.
We also had some crazy carpets, and me and Andra were having fun with those when Vic announced he wanted to trade the sled for something slower. I should have understood from his bone-white face and uncontrollable trembling that something was not quite right, but I guess I figured it was just the cold.
Once on the sled, I was down the hill in a flash. Well, more of a blur. I barely had time to think "hey, this is faster than I thought . . . " before I hit the mother of all bumps. Actually, I don't know if "bump" gives you as clear an idea as "rock-hard ice outcropping the size of a small bear" might.
The actual collision occured at such high speed that I could not capture any detail. All I knew was that suddenly there was no sled beneath me, I was in midair, and my ass really really hurt. Hurled by the impact, I was in midair long enough to organize my thoughts and conclude that I'd hit the giant bump square-on with my tailbone. Or in other words, Owwwwwwwwch, Fuck! The sled kept going without me - I still don't know how I got thrown off of it but it managed to keep sliding. It travelled about 20m further than I did. The impact with the bump was hard enough to bend one of the steel runners, which is now sort of s-shaped. But it still goes just as fast. It just doesn't steer as well.
So basically, sledding is fun. Basically is my word. I invented basically.
I also found this when I was looking for sled pictures. Basically, I think it's pretty hilarious.
Alright, the first thing everyone should know about "Sledding" is that that's just the vulgar common name for the activity. As of last Sunday its new scientific name is "pain beyond reckoning." And there's an interesting story behind that name.
Sledding is like normal pain, but much, much faster. I was out with Andra and her brother Victor at a big hill that forms part of the western slope of the Don Valley. Victor is in Engineering Science at U of T, which means two main things. First of all, for the purposes of any activity involving numbers, he is smarter than you. Mind you, this doesn't rule out the possibility of him jaywalking in front of a speeding bus and being squished to a Prego-like goo. That activity does not involve any numbers.
The second thing is that, paradoxically, even though as I've said, I wouldn't necessarily trust him to operate a traffic light, he's good at eyeballing things. They teach whole courses on making educated guesses, because engineers often need to do that when they're building bridges and airplane wings and whatnot, and it's a very bad thing to guess wrong in those circumstances.
Well, Victor looked at the distance Andra travelled and the time it took, and after doing a couple metric conversions in his head he concluded she was going at an average speed of sixty kilometers per hour. And that's the average speed, keeping in mind that she starts from zero, so her final speed is actually a fair bit higher than that. Well I hope you can see where this is going. The hint is, I'm the one complaining about pain.
So Andra and Victor, both of whom were skeptical at the sight of my 1950s era Flexible Flyer wooden sled, really came around to it once they realized that its bare stainless steel runners, worn smooth by half a century of proper use, made it go faster than you can legally drive a car on residential streets. And bear in mind that this slope was crowded with dumb little kids trotting around all over the place in their snowsuits which, albeit puffy, were hardly sufficient protection against a mass of wood, steel, and flesh barrelling down the hill with unstoppable momentum.
We also had some crazy carpets, and me and Andra were having fun with those when Vic announced he wanted to trade the sled for something slower. I should have understood from his bone-white face and uncontrollable trembling that something was not quite right, but I guess I figured it was just the cold.
Once on the sled, I was down the hill in a flash. Well, more of a blur. I barely had time to think "hey, this is faster than I thought . . . " before I hit the mother of all bumps. Actually, I don't know if "bump" gives you as clear an idea as "rock-hard ice outcropping the size of a small bear" might.
The actual collision occured at such high speed that I could not capture any detail. All I knew was that suddenly there was no sled beneath me, I was in midair, and my ass really really hurt. Hurled by the impact, I was in midair long enough to organize my thoughts and conclude that I'd hit the giant bump square-on with my tailbone. Or in other words, Owwwwwwwwch, Fuck! The sled kept going without me - I still don't know how I got thrown off of it but it managed to keep sliding. It travelled about 20m further than I did. The impact with the bump was hard enough to bend one of the steel runners, which is now sort of s-shaped. But it still goes just as fast. It just doesn't steer as well.
So basically, sledding is fun. Basically is my word. I invented basically.
I also found this when I was looking for sled pictures. Basically, I think it's pretty hilarious.
January 13, 2004
Aargh.
I'm fucking tired. I was just treated to a blog soap opera between two people I know, meanwhile someone else is pissed in my general direction, and all the while I'm just sort of in between and off to one side.
Stupid internet. Go away, internet.
I have to seriously consider doing either more, or much, much less with my time.
I'm fucking tired. I was just treated to a blog soap opera between two people I know, meanwhile someone else is pissed in my general direction, and all the while I'm just sort of in between and off to one side.
Stupid internet. Go away, internet.
I have to seriously consider doing either more, or much, much less with my time.
Shoot Up, It's Good for the Flu
The first sample's free . . .
Byron is cool. Finbar is cool.
Finbar is a lobster who plays drums. Byron is not. He plays keyboards. He's still not a lobster, though. He wrote this, and if that baseline doesn't qualify him for a bad ass name like Papa Groove Skank, I don't know what does.
Update: Yeah I know he only wrote the baseline. Now you know too. Now quit complaining and admit it's good.
Meanways, a sketchy, quasi-reliable source informs me that the word "heroin" was originally a trademark of the Bayer corporation, the people who make aspirin. And it turns out the drug they were calling heroin was - heroin. Though you probably know it by the "street" name diacetylmorphine, or the completely self-explanatory C21H23NO5. Seems that from 1898 to 1910 it was an over-the-counter medicine marketted as "non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children."
And speaking of bullshit, my essay's comin along fine. It's about poems.
If it hadn't been for the Heroin Act of 1924, the pharmaceutical version might still be around. Extra-strength Heroin. Heroin for Kids. Non-Drowsy Heroin.
Maybe it would be the itchy sneezing scratchy coughing swollen bloated bleeding spasm shock and headache so you can shut up and go to sleep medicine, instead of that other stuff.
Speaking of which, good night.
Yes, the address on that ad is on Stone St.
The first sample's free . . .
Byron is cool. Finbar is cool.
Finbar is a lobster who plays drums. Byron is not. He plays keyboards. He's still not a lobster, though. He wrote this, and if that baseline doesn't qualify him for a bad ass name like Papa Groove Skank, I don't know what does.
Update: Yeah I know he only wrote the baseline. Now you know too. Now quit complaining and admit it's good.
Meanways, a sketchy, quasi-reliable source informs me that the word "heroin" was originally a trademark of the Bayer corporation, the people who make aspirin. And it turns out the drug they were calling heroin was - heroin. Though you probably know it by the "street" name diacetylmorphine, or the completely self-explanatory C21H23NO5. Seems that from 1898 to 1910 it was an over-the-counter medicine marketted as "non-addictive morphine substitute and cough medicine for children."
And speaking of bullshit, my essay's comin along fine. It's about poems.
If it hadn't been for the Heroin Act of 1924, the pharmaceutical version might still be around. Extra-strength Heroin. Heroin for Kids. Non-Drowsy Heroin.
Maybe it would be the itchy sneezing scratchy coughing swollen bloated bleeding spasm shock and headache so you can shut up and go to sleep medicine, instead of that other stuff.
Speaking of which, good night.
Yes, the address on that ad is on Stone St.
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