In Palinode's Palace

well hello there

2011-08-21T10:27:00.000-06:00

Are you here? Unlikely as it may sound, you've arrived here. But I've changed the locks and moved on! Update your bookmarks or feed readers or whatever else to www.thepalinode.com.

See you there.

the goings on

2011-08-18T23:26:00.001-06:00

The goings-on go on and on. I can't stop any of it, even when I sit very, very still and watch Battlestar Galactica. Case in point: fermentation.

MAPLE VINEGAR UPDATE

I've been keeping the maple vinegar in a secret location where the cats can't get at it. The secret location is the cupboard above the dishwasher.

If you come over, that's where the vinegar does its dark work. Just to be clear, the vinegar's inaccessibility to the cats is dependent on the height of the location, not its secrecy. It's not like the cats could benefit from knowing where it is. They don't have much follow through, if you take my meaning.

If you open the cupboard, you will spy the maturing vinegar.

You'll also note the cheesecloth trailing out from under the lid. Cheesecloth is the mark of adulthood. Adults are the kind of people who know to drape a cheesecloth over a bowl of maple syrup, rum and vinegar. If you didn't see the cheesecloth in this photo, you would be within your rights to phone Vinegar Services and have them come to remove the vinegar from my care. But before you do that, check that you don't suffer from cheesecloth blindness. It's a rare condition, but very real and very tragic. Thousands of Americans are unable to see cheesecloth. Usually it results in very frustrating trips to the grocery store.

TANGLED

Today the Humpty's Family Restaurant marquee read "Come Try The Tangler Burger." This is not appetizing. I picture strands of meat tangling themselves in your intestines. And I don't picture your intestines very often.

ELSEWHERE

I wrote something today that has ~~set the internet on fire~~ been greeted with near-total indifference. But nonetheless I am very proud of my work. On the humour site InsertEyeroll.com:

Internet Believes Jessica Alba Would Be Even Hotter with a Can Opener for a Foot

In a recent poll of Internet users around the world, a startling 25 per cent believe that Jessica Alba, well known for her stunning looks, would be even hotter with a can opener for a foot.

“Totally,” said Gerald Rhames, 22, who led a campaign to secure over 5,000 votes for the comely actress. “She’s got these beautiful eyes and primo kissable lips, but that doesn’t open my can of ravioli.”

Mr. Rhames then banged his can of ravioli against the kitchen counter in a gesture that professed his love for Ms. Alba. Or maybe for ravioli from a can.

I think that's all for today. More updates as the situation develops.

UPDATE: Nothing new.

Palinode around the web for this week

2011-08-17T22:15:00.001-06:00

Don't be buggin'. I don't even know what buggin' is, but don't be doing it. I've got bits and pieces for you to read and click on and so forth. And if you stick around to the end of the post, there's a nice photo of bananas in it for you.

On MamaPop.com:

Top 5 Greatest Movie Title Sequences Ever:

Most movies these days are pretty terrible. You know it, I know it, and most importantly, the movie studio knows it. They know that you’ve just thrown down precious moneys for 90-150 minutes of familiar people doing generally predictable stuff that will make you vaguely regret your life choices – or at least, the ones that led you to this darkened room full of flickering light and the sounds of popcorn being chewed by a hundred hungry mouths.

In order to cover for the almost certainly not-so-great experience you’re about to have, movies generally save the best for first: a kick-ass opening followed by a truly inspired title sequence. Often title sequences are done by an entirely separate firm, with their own budget and creative direction and everything. Their mission? Create something eye-popping and pulse-stirring that generates enough goodwill and adrenaline to keep the audience in their seats until they forget they have a choice.

For Just 139 Dollars You Can Feed a Hungry George Lucas:

George grew up in California and gained some renown as a filmmaker back in the 1970s. But now he wanders the grounds of Skywalker Ranch, living like an animal, foraging for nuts and berries where he can find them. The caretakers, no longer able to recognize their filth-covered employer, shoo him away from the house when he comes sniffing around the property. Perhaps he is drawn by a long-lost memory of a comfortable bed and a Barcalounger. But more likely he’s just drawn by the smell of food wafting from the kitchen.

On InsertEyeroll.com:

10 Billion Dollar NASA Study Shows That Space Is Full of Worthless Junk

CAPE CANAVERAL — After 15 years and over $10 billion in taxpayer’s money, Project Extreme Cosmic Discovery, the most extensive probe of the universe ever conducted, has demonstrated conclusively that space is completely full of junk.

“It’s unbelievable, really,” said senior NASA administrator Charles Bollerheim. “We thought for sure that something wonderful lay beyond the fragile envelope of our atmosphere. Something that would reveal the secrets of the universe and maybe answer the questions that humanity has been asking for thousands of years.

“But yeah, it’s just a bunch of rocks and gas and stuff.”

And lastly, from the print world - prairie dog Magazine:

The Hickory: A tale of love, hate and adequacy (Restaurant review)

If you dare, try reading the aggregate of opinions on the Hickory Smokehouse and Grill, where, according to Urban Spoon, you can enjoy 1.) a delightful meal in a tasteful setting, or 2.) the most horrendous experience of your short little life. Some of the missives are sent off in quick-fried bursts from a smartphone, but a few are the outcome of finely chopped, long-simmering resentment. Most dismaying are the semi-professional takedowns: reviews that appear to have been written by someone in the restaurant industry. With their reliance on jargon and a habit of using 'plate' as both noun and verb, they're easy to spot and difficult to read.

Although none of the negative reviews come out and say it, they all hint at the Hickory Smokehouse's greatest weakness: flanked by The Cottage and The Keg - and occupying the same space as the old Keg restaurant - the Hickory does almost nothing to distinguish itself from its neighbours.

Okay, folks, you did it! Here are your bananas. I used natural light from the window to really bring out their banana-ness. Then I processed the RAW file, deepened the contrast and added in a bit of blue to counteract all that banana-ness a bit. Then Schmutzie ate one. Then I lost interest.

I'm a Maple Vinegar Expert and So Can You

2011-08-15T23:48:00.002-06:00

I'm ripping off that title from somewhere. I don't care. You go look somewhere else while I rip things off.

You cannot rightly call yourself a foodie unless you're ~~a pretentious douche~~ an expert on some obscure subdomain of the food kingdom. Someone out there knows how to make a fluffy pancake from pine needles and dried porcini mushrooms. Someone else can whisk a sullen puddle of egg white into a five foot replica of the World Trade Center (hold on, that's going to come back later). But I? I can make maple vinegar.

Because it's really easy if you have the recipe. Actually, if not for the presumed necessity of precision in the mixture, you'd have to be downright touched not to figure out how to do it. A couple of hints and it's off to the races, if you like the idea of racing with vinegar.

Making your own vinegar requires only a few ingredients: something sweet, something alcoholic, and vinegar. That's it. There's some finesse in the storage, and it helps to buy a glass jar big enough to hold your mixture (who would skip such a basic step and end up turning the kitchen inside out in search of a suitable container? Hmm), but that's pretty much it. Put those ingredients together and the fermentation process will grab hold of the sugars and hustle them into an alcohol and then into an acetic acid.

The only weird thing about making vinegar is that you need vinegar. Do not think about this for too long, or the abyss of infinite regress will open up and you will fall screaming its ever-multiplying void, Vertigo-style. How was the first vinegar created? In the same way that the origin of fire is a mystery,* no one knows how the first vinegar was made.** But I hear there's an Indiana Jones movie in the works about the mystic origins of the substance.***

For my maple vinegar, I used the recipe in Kamozawa & Talbot's book Ideas In Food, which is largely devoted to the chemical and physical reactions of ingredients when you mash them together and apply heat. The recipes in their book are more like signposts than destinations, but there's nothing to say you can't rest beneath these signs for a while and enjoy the shade they offer. But don't linger too long - there are bandits on those roads, and while the signposts are metaphorical, the bandits are real. Ever had your metaphorical wallet grabbed by a real bandit? It's confusing.

Here's what I used:

Canada no.1 Medium Organic Maple Syrup (3 cups)
Goslings Black Seal Bermuda Rum (1 1/3 cups)
Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar (2 1/2 cups)
Water (7/8 cup)

I used Goslings because I have fond memories of the stuff from a childhood spent partly in Bermuda (not that I drank rum as a child). You'll notice that the vinegar label proclaims 'with the mother,' which is not poorly translated French or anything (it's poorly translated Hippie). The vinegar 'mother' is what makes it 'live' and spurs the fermentation process. Don't bother using a bottle of plain white vinegar, which is often just acetic acid in solution.

Combine those ingredients in a glass bowl or jar, cover with cheesecloth - which you will also see in the photo above - and then cover with a loose-fitting lid. The idea is to let the mixture breathe, because it's alive and it needs oxygen to do its disgusting biological work.

There's a cat in the picture as well, but you don't need a cat in the recipe. In fact, you want to keep the cat the hell away from your mixing site, but these are headstrong cats and there's nothing I can do about them.

This part of the process is, quite frankly, not much fun. It's expensive, inexplicably more laborious than it should be, and it's over in minutes. Plus there's a cat. It's annoying and not long enough to justify the amount of irritation derived (see: the opening monologue from Annie Hall). I recommend you make some bread at the same time, just to muscle out your anger out on some innocent Globolink of dough.

Once all that is finished, store your proto-vinegar in a cool dark place. Test it out after four weeks. I made my batch today, so that means it should be ready on September 12, 2011, one day after the ten year anniversary of 9/11. Everyone is invited over for some commemorative maple vinegar.

*

*No it isn't.

**Yes they do.

***Not in the least.

bees

2011-08-15T00:13:00.000-06:00

[Sunday afternoon. A bathroom Schmutzie is showering. Palinode is at the sink. Water is splashing. Schmutzie, maybe she's humming a tune to herself, the kind of shower tune that's half memory, half improv. Palinode picks up a six ounce tube of Burts Bees cleanser.]

Palinode: Can I try your cleanser?

Schmutzie: Sure!

Palinode: I want to use half of it.

Schmutzie: What?

Palinode: I'm going to use half the tube.

Schmutzie: Uh, you want to owe me fifteen bucks?

Palinode: No, I want to squeeze half this tube into the palm of my hand and slap it on my face.

Schmutzie: No!

Palinode: Hey, I tried it.

Schmutzie: And?

Palinode: It's nice.

Schmutzie: Isn't it?

Palinode: It's awfully expensive though. You only get, like, two uses out of one tube.

*

This post has been sponsored by my cat. If you read this post, you agree to send money to my cat. By reading this far into the addendum, you also agree to indemnify and hold harmless my cat against any and all liability. Cat comes "as is," with no expressed or implied warranty. My cat may send certain information to third-party sites for the purposes of targeted advertising. None of the information sent by my cat to third-party sites is personally identifiable, with the exception of your name, foot size, dental records and your opinion of Game of Thrones. My cat wants to know what you think of Game of Thrones.

Oh crap, here comes my cat. He wants to know where the money is.

It's Only Leaves

2011-08-03T22:29:00.001-06:00

Hello. I am mucking about with my new camera, a Lumix GF2 which I bought on the eve - the very eve - of BlogHer '11. There is nothing funny below this text. Just pictures of tea leaves. Unless you find tea leaves inherently hilarious (or as Louis CK would say, hi-laaaarrrr-ious), then you won't laugh at what I'm about to show you. You may smile, but if you do it'll be because you're just thinking of something else while your eyes rest on the whorls and gnarls of damp leaves. That's a coincidence, and I won't be held responsible for your life's coincidental events.

See? I told you. Leaves. High Mountain Oolong leaves from David's Tea, steeped at 200 degrees Fahrenheit for six minutes.

Then I drank what the leaves released. They don't even know, they're leaves.

Leaves are so dumb.

OMG.

Katzen

2011-07-28T09:17:00.000-06:00

[Evening. Darkness over the face of the land. Are there clouds? It's too dark to tell. Schmutzie and The Palinode relax on the couch, untroubled by darkness.]

Schmutzie: My family has the strangest saying: 'Nervous as a cat.'

Palinode: It makes sense.

Schmutzie: But I've never heard anyone else say it. Just my family. [Pause] Maybe it's from the German.

Palinode: I doubt it. They don't have cats in Germany.

Schmutzie: [accepting the premise] But they have the word for cat.

Palinode: Yes, but they have no idea what it means.

An open letter to that shot of Jägermeister on Friday night

2011-07-20T13:14:00.003-06:00

Like most terrible decisions, the one I made to shoot back an ounce of you after a couple of beers was made in haste. Already I'd hit that state of drunkenness in which one moment is of no more consequence than the next, as interchangeable as grains of salt on a knuckle, and just as quickly swiped up by a tongue.

It wasn't until I caught sight of my reflection that I realized you were the wrong concoction for the evening. My face had that horrible glazed-ham look. My eyes were sort of swimming around in their sockets with a look of watery perplexity, as if I were trying to think my way out of some infinitely complex trap. I was overheated with alcohol, somewhere past the boiling point, and I knew that even the smallest nudge could set off some awful eruption.

That was it for my first proper Friday night in ages. It wasn't even 9 o' clock.

Damn you, shot of Jägermeister. I thought you were on my side. And your web site is astoundingly bad. It's all done in Flash. Really? Flash?

An open letter to pajamas

2011-07-17T00:21:00.000-06:00

Pajamas, I don't own you. Why? Because I'm not ten years old. Back in the heady days of 1981, when I was young and pajama-clad, superheroes and cartoon characters covered my walls and the clothes in which I slept. They marched up my arms, struck poses on my chest, flew down my legs. But adults shouldn't wear you. We're not so invested in role models that we need to embroider our sleep with them. Anyway, doesn't it seem odd that we have an entire outfit dedicated to sleep? Why are we dressing up to lay in a darkened room and drool for eight hours? It seems like the one occasion where we can get away with nudity.

One thing you're good for, pajamas: night time emergencies. Fires, floods, a knock on the door - that's when you shine. Don't worry, I'm here and I'm all over you, you say, and when you're old and rocking the adult diapers, I'll be on you all day. You'll probably die in me.

You play on our fears, pajamas. Without them we would have no need for you. I'll tell you what: when I retire, I'll give you another shot.

An open letter to muffins

2011-07-15T14:34:00.000-06:00

Muffins. What’s up with you? If you were cupcakes, you’d be fantastic. If you were banana bread, I’d enjoy spending a couple of bucks on you. Instead you sit in that weird in-between space, trying to satisfy all my cravings at once and just not hitting any of them.

I’m not talking to homemade muffins. Don’t ever change, homemade muffins! Stay gold and all that. I’m addressing these remarks to all the grocery store muffins out there, all the Tim Hortons and Dunkin Donuts muffins. Why do you do that thing you do in my mouth, which is dissolve like a sugar cube? And once your innards are exposed with a bite, you have only two states: mush or concrete. It makes no sense that you should be kind of damp – soaked, nearly – with unknown moistures, and then convert into a rock formation within ten minutes. Stop that weird bullshit, muffins. You’re kind of a tease.

A Palinode Around The Web

2011-07-14T22:30:00.000-06:00

Hello, my butter chickens! I'm all over the web today. I should be represented visually by one of those lawn seeding machines that men in madras shorts and old boots push around suburban lawns on summer afternoons. Put on a shirt on, you weirdos.

"Fill me with your seed, suburban retiree."

Okay, let's start with some stuff. On mamapop.com:

What The Hell? Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Corey Monteith Are Out Of ‘Glee’?

Isn’t Glee the story of Rachel, Finn, and Kurt? Sure, there’s Sue Sylvester and the guy with the obnoxious curly hair and the pregnant girl and the bisexual cheerleaders and some kids who sing things—but they’re not the show.

Or maybe they are. After all, Lea Michele’s Rachel is something of a one-note (zing! except not really, because her voice is pretty good) character who never seems to grow with the story. Her character embodies some of the writers’ worst impulses, going this way and that as the plot demands. Finn, meanwhile, is so bland that a comparison escapes me. Oh no, he’s worried about his abs. Look out, there’s a baby or something that’s not his. Hey, listen to him sing, it’s almost as good as David Cook, yay.

And then there's prairie dog magazine, where I write my various things, scribble scribble.

A Tipple Manifesto, or Your Guide To Creating a Cocktail Scene in your Community

How dreadful it is, then, when cocktail culture kicks us so rudely out of its bed the next morning. Regina is full of bars that serve cocktails, but if it's full-blown cocktail culture you're after, with a taste of antebellum torpor or '20s Berlin decadence, then you're going to be disappointed. Sure, you can enjoy a really nice mojito on the roof of the Rooftop Bar or a Havana cocktail at La Bodega - not to mention places like Skara or Habanos - but a place that serves cocktails is only a part of a proper cocktail scene.

Something Different: A New Gastropub Boldly Eschews the Tyranny of Menus

Chain places don't offer great food, but they're so predictable it's like playing a recording of a meal: the same flavours and textures, note for note. Sure, it's lousy food that sort of jabs at your pleasure centers like a mugger on Vicodin, but you know it's going to be lousy. In fact, you're banking on that lousiness to get you through the lousy experience of eating that meal.

When McDonald's hands you a cold Big Mac - as happened to me once on the outskirts of Weyburn - it's not a disappointment or an insult. It's so shocking it's like the world just tilted off its axis.

Food Notes On Food

Nothing ruins a group friendship quicker than a standing weekend brunch date. Everything starts out hunky dory, but fissures eventually begin to show. Someone never pays, someone else spends their time complaining about the choice of venue, and then there’s the person who combines those habits (“Can someone get my brunch this week? This place has the worst eggs. Buffets just suck in general. Do you have a smoke?” I’m pretty much transcribing myself from 1995). And eventually somebody sleeps with somebody else’s boyfriend/girlfriend/stuffie.

Daily Twitter Story: Llamas vs. Monkey vs. Facebook

2011-07-05T00:21:00.001-06:00

You tweet me. I write you. It's a story.

Today's Daily Twitter Story idea comes from @adampknave, who wanted a story on Llamas vs Monkey vs Facebook. Okay Adam. You got your wish.

"Llamas vs Monkey vs Facebook"

It started, as most terrifying and beautiful things do, with a drinking game. The game was called 'Cole Hauser' and the rules were simple

1. Every time you see noted actor Cole Hauser you take a shot.
2. The game ends when the bottle runs out or Cole Hauser dies.

There are ways of maximizing your chances at winning a round of Cole Hauser. For example, you can stake out his home or get a job on a set where Hauser is working (preferably as a PA, because you're on set frequently and it's a good way to get into the industry). You could also kill Cole Hauser, but that stops the entire game in its tracks and then you'd have to make up an entirely new game. Like 'Catherine Tate' or 'Josh Duhamel.'

One day, a monkey got tired of losing rounds of Cole Hauser to a cohort of hard-drinking llamas who happened to be Hollywood's go-to movie llamas. Principal shooting had begun on Mr. Hamma's Llamas, a flick about a Gulf War vet with severe PTSD who's ordered by a judge to operate a llama ranch. Hauser's agent had advised him to take the gig as a way of getting into the lucrative children's market. Predictably, the llamas were getting hammered and winning game after game. Not only did this anger their wrangler, it gave the monkey headaches and further wounded his self-esteem.

Then, in a fit of inspiration, the monkey reasoned that the rules didn't specify whether the participant had to see Cole Hauser himself or simply an image of Cole Hauser. First he tried to rent Tigerland and Pitch Black, but no video store would offer him a membership card. So he signed up on Facebook and selected a picture of Cole Hauser's wife Cynthia Daniel as his avatar. He had a moment of misgiving, but it revolved mostly around Cynthia Daniel's name, which doesn't sound real. Seriously, do you trust someone with a first name for a last name? Or vice versa? That's why you should cross the street when you see Fisher Stevens approaching you.

The monkey spent months as Cynthia Daniel on Facebook, growing his network of friends, posting updates about 'her' fabulous life. Soon, the monkey knew, Cole Hauser would friend him, and then he could win round after round of Cole Hauser by simply logging on to his Facebook account. Genius? Sure, why not.

About six months into his scheme, the monkey logged on and found what he had been waiting for all this time: a friend request from Cole Hauser. With a series of chirps and hoots and some inappropriate genital touching, the monkey clicked the Confirm button.

A message popped up.

Dude, we knoe what you are doing lol we told Cole all about it and he is party with us right now!!! PWND.

- llamas

The message was accompanied by an image of Cole Hauser doing body shots with the llamas. The monkey howled with rage, flung some excrement around and later formed Google+. The llamas were subsequently fired and replaced with excruciatingly bad CGI alpacas.

The moral of the story is: don't rely on social media to forge deep relationships, just like Malcolm Gladwell said.

Daily Twitter Story: The Toblerone

2011-07-01T21:13:00.001-06:00

You tweet it. I write it. Bam! Literature ex tweetio.

Today's Twitter story idea comes from @snakey2010, who wants a story on "The Toblerone." I've done better than a story here - I've written a blockbuster screenplay. Wow! I know.

"The Toblerone"

INT-DAY – The Oval Office

GENERAL CLAIRE

Sir, we’ve developed the ultimate weapon. It will annihilate the Russians, the Chinese and Rhode Island in one crushing deployment.

PRESIDENT

Thank God. Time to shut Rhode Island up once and for all. Tell me about your ultimate weapon.

CLAIRE

When deployed, this weapon will vaporize all life within a 100 mile radius, along with all traces of civilization. Whoever’s left will have to fight back with rocks in socks, sir. They’ll be looking forward to the Stone Age.

PRESIDENT

What’s it called?

CLAIRE

The weapon is code named “The Toblerone.”

PRESIDENT

"The Toblerone"? What for? Is it shaped like a Toblerone bar? Lots of triangles or something?

CLAIRE

No sir. It is a Toblerone bar.

PRESIDENT

No way.

CLAIRE

Apparently the destructive powers of the Toblerone remained unknown and untapped by its inventors.

PRESIDENT

Well I’ll be a sausage-fried son of a bitch.

(pause)

Is it one of the ones that have those little crunchy bits?

CLAIRE

Does a bear shit in the woods, sir?

PRESIDENT

Sorry, what did you say?

CLAIRE

I said, does a bear shit in the woods, sir.

PRESIDENT

That is a good question. A good, solid, down-to-earth question. But I don’t know the answer. Let’s get someone on that right away.

CLAIRE

Sir –

PRESIDENT (on the phone)

Can you get Weigel in here right away? (places the headset back in the cradle) Weigel is my top man. He’ll get you the answer you need. Let’s just say he solves my ‘out there’ problems.

WEIGEL (enters)

What can I do for you, Mr. President?

PRESIDENT

Weigel, I need you to find out whether bears shit in the woods. This is top priority, Weigel. Weigel. It’s a matter of national security.

WEIGEL

You can count on me, sir.

PRESIDENT

Weigel. Weigel. Can I count on you, Weigel?

WEIGEL

Um - you just - never mind. You know it, sir.

EXT – NIGHT – WEIGEL’S APARTMENT BUILDING

INT – NIGHT – WEIGEL’S APARTMENT.

WEIGEL is in bed, but he can’t sleep. A breeze lazily billows out the curtains of his bedroom window. The sound of the PRESIDENT’s voice repeating his name echoes in his head (“…Weigel. Weigel…”). WEIGEL opens his eyes, sighs.

WEIGEL

Shit.

He gets out of bed and wraps himself in a bathrobe. He reaches for a bottle of JD and sits down at the computer. The Wikipedia entry for Bear is already up on the screen.

WEIGEL scrolls up and down the page listlessly. He knows that the information he seeks isn’t there. He sighs again and knocks back a tumbler of whiskey.

WEIGEL

Looks like we’re going on a trip.

INT – DAY – SCIENTIST’S OFFICE

WEIGEL

… It’s a matter of national security. Obviously I can’t tell you more than that, but any information you can give me would be a great help.

SCIENTIST

You’re not the first person to come to me with this question. (SCIENTIST gets up, selects a book from the shelf of volumes behind him) The truth is, Mr… (the SCIENTIST pauses, but WEIGEL says nothing)… my friend, that no one knows whether bears shit in the woods. In fact, they may not shit at all. Bears are not animals in the sense that you or I use the word.

WEIGEL

What – that doesn’t sound right.

SCIENTIST

I know how it sounds. But that does not make it any less true.

WEIGEL

Are you a real scientist?

SCIENTIST

Obviously not.

EXT – DAY – RURAL ROADSIDE

A car driving up a country road. The car pulls up to a farmer leaning on a fence. The driver’s side window rolls down. It’s WEIGEL!

WEIGEL

Hello there.

FARMER

Hello yourself, car man.

WEIGEL

I just need to know if there are any bears in the woods up ahead.

FARMER

Bears? No, the bears all moved out back in 2002. Are you looking for Ritalin?

WEIGEL

What? No.

FARMER

Oh. ‘Cause I’ve got plenty.

WEIGEL

I didn’t know farmers sold drugs.

FARMER

I’m not a farmer.

EXT – DAY – AIRPORT

Establishing shot of airport. WEIGEL pulls up and gets out of his car.

INT – DAY – TICKET COUNTER

ATTENDANT

Good afternoon, sir, how can I help you?

WEIGEL

I need a ticket to the nearest place where bears live.

ATTENDANT

One moment sir. (The attendant types something into her computer, reads the result). It says here that all the bears are in Rhode Island.

WEIGEL

Ticket to Rhode Island, then.

ATTENDANT

Flights to Rhode Island have been suspended, sir. A Toblerone Bar destroyed all traces of civilization there.

WEIGEL

GOD DAMNIT.

END

That's it for today, folks. If you'd like your tweet transformed into classic literature, send me a message! I can be found @palinode.

Daily Twitter Story: Popsicles

2011-07-01T06:09:00.001-06:00

It is time. Time for another Twitter story, even though I haven't slept and it's five in the morning. You don't want to know how I've spent the last twelve hours, but suffice it to say my stomach is an acid churn and my clothes reek of cigarette smoke. Yay for strange nights and god damn.

Today's Twitter story comes from @lauriewrites, who shed several story topics in one tweet. I've picked popsicles, because I have this nutty idea that I can compel and entertain you with the spectre of popsicles (a spectre which is not haunting Europe, by the way).

"Popsicles"

Down Vernon Street we ran and ran, our feet pounding and skipping down the sidewalk, leaping over cracks and landing solidly in the center of the concrete panels. Time and time, our worlds gridded by invisible rules constantly resolving and dissolving according to whim.

"Chan!" called Bo. "We found something! It's here!"

And there it was, as Bo had promised: a three-legged dog, blonde and stinking with nameless carrion. We crowded around it, thrilled at its novelty.

"What's its name?" someone asked.

Bo waved the question away. "Stupid, there's no name. We have to make one." And that's how Bo took us down and built us up, all in one gesture.

"He's Bernie," Steven said. Lila agreed: "He's a Bernie." Bernie seemed to like the name instantly, nosing himself into the little knot of us. We pet him despite the stink off his fur.

"He must be hungry," concluded Bo. "Chan, go get him some food. Your house is right there."

Chan broke away from Bernie, whose eyes were rolling back and forth alarmingly. He crossed the street and entered his house. Once there he noticed the smell on his hands and jacket, the sharp putrid tang of Bernie. He smelled the palms of his hands, daring himself to smell deeper, then rubbed his hands over his face. Now he was more like that stray dog, the one with three legs and the nervous face.

"What is that smell?" Chan's mother asked. She sniffed the air tentatively, testing out the upper strata before dipping her nose down to her child's face. "Oh my god. What the hell is that?"

"It's Bernie," Chan explained. "He's a dog and he doesn't have a leg and Bo found him and I have to get him some food."

"Bernie?" his mother echoed. She went to the window and looked out. "Oh my god."

Chan's mother raced outside. Chan went to the window and watched as his mother raced down the steps, arms flapping like a panicked bird about to take flight. We blanched. Bernie erupted from the pack, zipping through the Ehrenmachers' yard and out of sight. The Ehrenmachers made candy apples for Halloween.

Through the window Chan watched his mother point at the houses on the block. She was sending us all home. We shuffled away, tinged with guilt for a crime we didn't quite understand.

Chan's mother strode back in. "Now I have to phone all their parents," she muttered to herself. "Chan, you get in the bath right now."

"Can I put some food out for Bernie?" Chan asked.

His mother sighed. "Here," she said. "You can eat a popsicle. Then you can have a bath and take food out for Bernie." She drew out a popsicle from the freezer and broke it decisively on the edge of the counter. Chan took the proffered half and started chewing on the end.

"But what about Bernie?" he asked. "What kind of food does he like?"

"We're saving the second half of the popsicle for Bernie," she said. "You finish your half and clean up first."

Chan ate his popsicle as quickly as possible, freezing his mouth several times in the process. After the bath, which took a while, he forgot to ask whether Bernie had had his popsicle. It took him nearly thirty years to remember.

Daily Twitter Story: Bald Animals

2011-06-29T21:41:00.002-06:00

Hello to you! This is the Daily Twitter Story. You tweet it. I make it literature. Glory ensues.

Today's Twitter story comes from @levendis, who wants a story about "bald animals." Levendis, your tweet is my command.

"Bald Animals"

In a world much like our own but set in the far future, democracy reigns supreme. All organisms, from paramecia to the floating gas giants of Deneb IV, are able to vote. Somehow the Conservatives are still in power. Because the Conservatives have been in power for 5,000 years, the Earth is a toxic hellhole, an anoxic wasteland where dirt farmers farm dirt and the naked lady saloons are empty (the naked ladies moved away) (but the Barenaked Ladies still exist, which, holy cow this world sucks).

In the last verdant spot on the planet, the animals gather and decide to form a guitar rock supergroup playing the hits of the '70s, '80s and 22nd century neo-prog. These animals, it should be noted, are bald, because of the radiation and bad food, except for the bald eagle, whose head is crowned with feathers and is extinct. That is to say, it has feathers on its extinct head.

(Sorry, this requires some explanation. In the infinitely compartmentalized far future, body parts of species face extinction as creatures incresingly opt for biomechanical artiforgs and cybernetic heads. So there's a bald eagle there, but it's got a fake head. With feathers on it. Are you with me? It plays a sweet Fender Telecaster.)

FAREWELL CONCERT, read the fliers. COME ROCK THE PLANET'S FACE OFF. AND THEN WE'LL LEAVE AND BLOW THIS GODFORSAKEN PIECE OF CRAP THE HELL UP. Then they practice and practice: K-Forge the Bald Orangutan on drums; Gorlamo the Bald Beaver (I know, I know) on jazz flute (I know, I know) and Moog synth; Jim the Bald Human on rhythm guitar; and Mr. Jennifer the Bald Eagle on lead guitar and vocals. They learn the entire discography of Styx because they mean to rock everyone's faces off, more or less as the flier promised.

On the night of the concert, five farmers and a gas giant alien show up. They seem to enjoy themselves. The gas giant, it turns out, is a big fan of early Yes.

They play and play and drink punch all night long. The next morning, they're too tired to blow up the planet. Earth is saved!

Thanks to all who read today's Twitter story. Tomorrow's entry comes from @lauriewrites, who wants to hear about popsicles.

Daily Twitter Story: Prison Letter

2011-06-28T19:27:00.002-06:00

Good morningfternooning! Welcome to the daily Twitter story. Today's story idea comes from @MacPhail, who tweeted:

There was a strange letter from the state prison delivered to our apt building yesterday addressed to Ms. ?. Who sent it? Why?

Okay, @MacPhail, here you go.

"Prison Letter"

First light, best light. Sally ?, late of the Cabo Verde opera circuit, slid her key into the mailbox and extracted a sheaf of envelopes and flyers. Not for the first time, she experienced a spasm of random jealousy over the mailman, who with one turn of his master key could unhinge the jaw of the mailbox mechanism and deposit a building's worth of mail in a few efficient strokes. Sometimes she considered sneaking up behind the mailman and braining him just as the mailboxes all swung open, then stealing his bag of mail and opening every single letter in a huge heap of torn paper and irrelevant utility bills. This thought never failed to turn her on.

At the kitchen counter she spread the mail out in a satisfying fan. One envelope, scuffed and torn, caught her attention:

New Mexico State Correctional Facility

read the return address. She checked to make sure that the letter was addressed to her. Do I know anyone from a prison? she wondered. Well, people aren't from prisons, they go to prisons. Do I know anyone who went to prison? Sally cast around in her mind a bit more but couldn't think of anyone (all her friends were back in Cabo Verde).

She tore the envelope open with a polished thumbnail and drew it out.

Dear Ms. ?,

We just wanted to tell you how grateful we all are for your music. Your box set of Cabo Verde greats, including your morna version of Carmen, keeps us all pumped in the weight room but left adrift on a sea of melancholy. It's like we're floating gently out from shore in a raft, with the sun warming our bodies and the salt dancing in our nostrils. As opposed to being in the weight room, which smells like sweat.

We would also like to know how to pronounce your last name. Do you say "question mark," or just make a questiony-sounding grunt? Fights are breaking out in the yard.

Many of us are also wondering if you would like to pay us a visit and sing for us. Also if you could smuggle in some cocaine.

Respectfully,

The D Block

Sally turned the paper over and fetched a pen.

Respect! Here's what I'm gonna do. I'll carve a life size sculpture of myself out of pressed cocaine and stick an mp3 player in there with my greatest hits loaded onto it. You and the rest of the boys can enjoy a nice concert, and afterwards you can chop me up into baggies and sell me in the yard. Sound good?

The pronunciation of my name is a mystery to me. I think I was born a typo.

One love,

Sally ?

With that, she planted a careful kiss over her signature and folded the paper in half. Gotta get a stamp now, she thought.

"Why does nothing interesting ever happen to me?" she asked Rodney, her pet Komodo dragon that wrote all her songs. But Rodney was too busy with the accounts to answer.

If you have a daily Twitter story idea and would like to see your glorious notion translated into half-baked prose, tweet it to me @palinode.

Daily Twitter Story: Australia

2011-06-27T19:47:00.000-06:00

The other day I asked for Twitter for story subject matter. And Twitter responded. Today's story idea comes from @edenland, who said:

@palinode Australia.

Okay, edenland. Here's your story.

"Australia"

Once upon a time Australia woke up with a severe case of indigestion. “My Alice Springs!” it groaned, falling out of a really, really big bed. “Gotta get some coffee,” muttered Australia, slipping a pair of warm Tanzanias over its Melbournes and lumbering towards the really, really gigantic kitchen.

“Coffee’s just going to make your stomach worse,” New Zealand called from the bed. “Can you make me a flat white?” “Shut up, New Zealand,” said Australia. “Shut up shut up shut up.” That was the start of Australia’s shitty day.

professional tattooing tips for the first-time customer

2011-06-11T21:52:00.000-06:00

You wake up one morning and find yourself wanting a tattoo. Maybe you think a Celtic armband will revive your sex life and improve your football throw. Or maybe all your friends have butterflies inked on their ankles, and the shame of a naked ankle is slowly corroding your self-esteem. Whatever the reason, one thing is clear: you need a tattoo.

But how often have you gone for a tattoo, only to be laughed at by the tattoo artist and the assistant needler? Or worse, end up leaving with an iron-on transfer on your skin instead of a genuine tattoo? These are the risks you run if you're perceived as a newbie, or as some say, 'tattoobie'.

In order to avoid these and other degrading fates at the tattoo parlour, be sure to remember these tips:

Get the words right. It's not pronounced tah-too. It's 'tah-toe'. The needles used by the tattoist are called 'jammer-jammers'. And the woman who sits in the back room smoking cigarettes and scratching absently at her arm is called Lucy.

Be forceful. Instead of flipping through books of tattoo art or attempting to describe what you want, walk in and demand to see 'your finest tah-toe'. Insist on the good ink. Sometimes it helps to be vaguely racist.

Avoid cliches. There's no quicker way to out yourself as a total novice than to ask for shopworn college-student favourites like the 'full-body narwhal' or 'tiger buttock'. Go for innovative designs like the 'Rothko tongue' or the extremely complicated procedure that will produce the illusion of Willie Nelson's braids descending from your head to the tops of your shoulders - even while showering.

Insurance. Even if you use each one of my tips, you may still end up with a tattoo that does not satisfy your lifestyle needs. It's often a good idea to wear someone else's skin to your appointment. If that proves a bit too complicated, send in someone else to get the tattoo, then remove their freshly inked skin.

Palinode elsewhere: The Riders and the Choddy

2011-06-07T01:05:00.000-06:00

Not only should I post on my blog more often, I should update with my actual writing elsewhere. Paid writing has eventually crowded out the amount of creativity and mental space I'm willing to devote to the blog, but I miss this place. Hello blog.

Anyway. Another post on Saskatchewan advertising, which as everyone knows is just burning up the twitterwebs these days. Click the link to read the entire story.

The Roughriders. The Oath. And the Choddy. The Choddy. The Choddy.

If you have eyes and you’ve been using them to look at televisions or billboards, then you’ve probably seen the new “Rider Oath” ad campaign from the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Featuring a series of people proclaiming their fealty to the Rider Nation, the ads seek to cast a warm light on our fondness for watching oversize men in green satin tights slam into each repeatedly until they’re fired or traded.

Two ads have been produced so far, and I sense more in the pipeline. After all, there’s no reason for Steve Mazurak to stop ordering future installments of people standing in front of a camera with green and white makeup troweled on their faces; the ads are quick and cheap to produce, and participants only need to master a script that consists of two ambiguous sentence fragments and nine independent clauses, three of which are repetitions. What’s not to like about this setup?

There are two things not to like about this setup.

the parks ad

2011-06-03T13:05:00.001-06:00

O world's population, most of you are not in Saskatchewan. And why would you be? It's obnoxiously cold for half of the year and it's run by people who whose chief aspiration, before ending up in power, was selling you a nice pre-owned Honda.

But there are benefits to being a Saskatchewan resident. For example, our parks are pretty awesome. In fact, the only thing better than our parks is this ad for the Save Our Parks campaign. The magic happens at the 12 second mark, when the slightly grizzled grandfatherly figure switches from dewy-eyed nostalgia to blood-curdling rage.

Note the frantic cut away from grandpa's suddenly rage-clouded face, the edge of madness that dogs his narration, and that crooked, close-mouthed smile at the end. Why close-mouthed? To cover up his lupine fangs, of course. A full moon was probably blooming over the studio when they were shooting this thing.

Remember: you can't enjoy this kind of quality homicidal rage in other provinces. Let's get really, really angry about parks policies - the Saskatchewan way.

the best sentences from the 18th Edition of the Canadian Press Caps and Spelling Guide, In Order

2011-05-17T15:54:00.000-06:00

6. But the duke, the primate.

5. We have also changed daycare to one word from two (noun and adjective).

4. They are normally lowercased when standing alone: the church's stand, a league spokesman.

3. Sacred names and the proper names and nicknames of the devil are capitalized: Almighty, Redeemer, Holy Spirit, Allah, Mother of God, Vishnu, Beelzebub, Father of Lies.

2. Thus CP style is archeologist, ecumenical, encyclopedia, esthetic, fetus, gynecologist, hemorrhage, medieval, paleontologist, pedagogy and pediatrician.

1. And on it has gone.

justice

2011-05-09T16:37:00.000-06:00

Good day. If you have received this notice, then you have been identified in the commission of a misdemeanor or pedestrian traffic violation on our CCTV camera network. The image of the perpetrator has been matched to your identity with a very healthy 63% certainty. Considering that you were likely moving and furtive during the commission of your crime, this is pretty good.

Your crime has been identified as JAYWALKING on 08/23/2007 at THE INTERSECTION OF MCINTYRE AND 12TH STREET. If you feel that this identification has been made in error, please visit the Department of Remissions by the end of business hours today. The Department of Remissions is open from 8:33 - 9:40 am and 2:14 - 2:17 pm every third Thursday and second Tuesday. Appointment only. Please bring birth certificate, recent utility bill, a fresh urine sample. A change of clothes is also recommended.

In order to assist in the speedy dispensation of justice, you have been selected for home self-tasing. Your self-tasing device is being delivered to you and should arrive by mail within the next 24 hours. When you receive your Disciplonic Auto-Taser MK III in the mail, please release the yellow tab on the side of the unit. A voice prompt will guide you through the process to ensure that your discplinary tasing is carried out in as comfortable, safe and convenient a manner as possible.

Please make sure that your designated auto-tasing area is free of standing water. DO NOT TASE YOURSELF IN THE BATH OR SHOWER. For your comfort, refrain from eating for one hour before adminstering the device.

In the event that you do not operate your self-tasing unit within 48 hours of receipt of unit, the device will automatically tase any moving object within the range of its sensors. The unit will then self-destruct. You will be billed for the cost of a replacement unit.

Pulling the yellow tab on the unit indicates that you agree with the terms and conditions of use of the Disciplonic AutoTaster MK III. You agree to indemnify and hold harmless the State in the event of seizures, surface burns, cardiac arrest, memory loss hydrocephaly and gout. Use of the unit is equivalent to purchase. You will be billed separately for the cost of the unit and all processing fees related to the prosecution of your offense.

Thank you and don't forget to tip your mail carrier.

Five minute poem?

2011-04-01T15:20:00.000-06:00

Following the example of Schmutzie via a project from Amy Turn Sharp, here's a poem that took five minutes to write. I had no subject or particular place to go with this, but I decided to post the result, no matter what.

“His father in law is Ingmar Bergman,” houseguest says.
Spouse generalizes, pulls a thread out into a balloon,
which is where we go, on a raft that feels like spoons
lashed together from suppositions.
Spoons gathering water, each taking on their tiny share,
and down we go.
Full fathom five my facebook updates,
my networks going on without me
like a horn that pours forth salt into the oceans,
just brining up the place.
What a waste.
I've got places to go, copyrights to infringe,
a beard to brush out before the ants come
on their tiny feet.

Superman vs. The Hot Pocket

2011-03-28T01:02:00.004-06:00

I posted this already over at the prairie dog blog, but I like spreading my intellectual property around. I had this idea that Lois Lane should be played by a microwave oven in the upcoming Superman film, because she accompany Superman around and heat up his snacks.

But then Lex Luthor or Zod would pull a fast one on Supes.

Don't worry, Superman will prevail. Or will he?

some notes for a talk on fluid dynamics

2011-03-26T02:56:00.000-06:00

From time to time, some friends of mine host an evening of drinking and talking called Chicken & Wine at a local Ethiopian restaurant. You could describe the evenings as a lecture series of mandatory informality. There are no rules or strictures, except one; speakers must choose a topic outside their area of expertise. The results are usually funny and thoughtful and sometimes quietly astounding.

Well, I'd like to put Chicken & Wine's run of greatness to an end with a pre-emptive strike. This is a draft of my talk, which I'll deliver if they host any more of them. And if they let me up on stage.

For this talk, I've been asked to discuss something outside my area of expertise.

Which is why I'm going to talk about fluid dynamics.

I know absolutely nothing about fluid dynamics.

I don't even know, in all honesty, whether that's even a thing, or whether I've just arbitrarily plugged two words together and generated a noun phrase willy-nilly.

But little lights spark briefly in my brain when I think of the phrase, as if to signify that yes, in some context, I've heard the term. My brain wants to tell me, even if only hesitantly and with the faintest of impulses, that I know something about fluid dyamics.

But I don't trust my brain.

I don't trust my memory.

Long before studies proved that memory was sufficiently malleable to introduce false experiences into someone's mind by dint of careful suggestions or even throwaway phrases, I had a feeling that my mind was nothing more than a wave constantly riding in to shore, constantly foaming, ever on the verge of breaking.

Someone would ask me what I thought of some ancient compilation of Smiths b-sides. After a prompt or two, my desire would mix with my memories of buying Smiths albums, of flipping through the cardboard sleeves in record stores with that carefully honed paddling of index and middle finger, of deciphering Morrissey's suggestive, sloppy and sometimes filthy lyrics. And then I would somehow remember that album of b-sides, with its wash of colour, its British '60s film icon on the cover, its aesthetic debt to Warhol, and the crooked and experimental songs that Marr and Morrissey had knocked off on a lazy afternoon. Perhaps before the fame, the campiness and the heroin got to them.

You know the album.

Or maybe you don't. Because the album I'm describing doesn't exist. It has no name. And yet it describes every Smiths record. The key lies in its namelessness, its satisfaction of categories, its position in a waveform that dips in and out of actuality.

But I tell you this: that would be the greatest Smiths album ever.

The easiest way to find out something about fluid dynamics is to Google it. Go on and give it a good Google. The internet, with its connected web of servers, is a memory that we believe we can trust. Data can be transposed, erased, replaced or even misinterpreted, but a datum is a datum. Random facts, dates, the names of authors – these can all be found on the internet. How many full fathoms does my father lie? Which wood is coming to Dunsinane? Google that shit. Stat. Hey, why do doctors always say 'stat'? I'm so going to Google that.*

People say that our memories are failing in a google-rich environment, but what it shows us is not that our memories are fake, but that the thing we think of as memory is fake. We have injected a structure into our minds, a house for facts. The memory palace is simply the most rigorous and opulent application of our native conception of memory. But we confuse the structure for its materials, as if we looked at a house and believed it to be a hollow tree.

The new metaphor for computing is no longer the box but the cloud. And it is the newest metaphor and structure for memory – vague, shifting, flowing into and out of other structures. We're packing up and moving that house, room by room, into the sky.*

Fluid dynamics, by the way, is a sub-discipline of fluid mechanics that deals with fluid flow—the natural science of fluids (liquids and gases) in motion. It has several subdisciplines itself, including aerodynamics (the study of air and other gases in motion) and hydrodynamics (the study of liquids in motion).

The more you know.

Stat is a barked abbreviation of the Latin statim, which means “immediately”. Doctors like to say stat because they're so very busy.

*But this can't be right, you say. There's still plenty of stuff running around up there in our heads, and there always will be. And some of it must be true – which is to say, it must be constant. Practical experience bears that out. Red lights always mean stop, green means go, and a flashing red hand means that you shouldn't have been crossing the street in the first place.

I wonder about those everyday details of our life, and to what degree we actually remember them as individuals. Red lights are not an individual phenomenon; they are objects that our entire culture holds in its mind. One day we will find ourselves in a place with strange new lights, and our minds will refuse to hold on to their colours.

The Eyes of Meg Ryan

2011-03-17T18:24:00.000-06:00

A version of this video originally appeared on MamaPop.com.

"Check it, fools." This here's my excuse to edit clips of Meg Ryan and Faye Dunaway with a soundtrack from a Maya Deren film. Oh yes, you can hire me to do this kind of thing. Because Mark Rappaport's dead.

eyes of meg ryan from palinode on Vimeo.

What's Today With A Palinode? for March 16

2011-03-17T00:34:00.000-06:00

Today in Palinode:

Six In The Morning on Prairie Dog Mag:

If you’ve felt that the one thing missing from hockey was Jesus, then I’ve got good news for you. The Youth Ministry Office of the Diocese of Saskatoon is presenting the Saskatoon Blades Faith Night – tonight! You can watch the Blades face off against the Warriors… and then there’s a Christian rock band. I’m kind of curious as to how the Diocese and the Blades came up with this. UPDATE: Commenter Malcolm points out that Faith Night is being put on by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon, not the Anglican Diocese. This is why one of them should change their name from ‘Diocese’ to ‘House of Chillax’.

Guy Uses Chatroulette For Sweetest Musical Marriage Proposal Ever on Moxiebird

Chatroulette may already be consigned to pop culture’s endless attic of Shit We Thought Was Cool For Five Minutes, but there are still moments of genuine pleasure to be squeezed from its husk. Like this video, in which a song to a pretty girl on the internet turns into something unexpectedly sweet.

And that's what I did on the internet today, barring some random tweets, Facebook posts and trolling Atlantic Magazine blogs.

The Twilight Saga Saga: Chapter Five

2011-03-13T14:14:00.002-06:00

Well god's hairy gravy boat, it's been a while since I've looked at Twilight and attempted to come to grips with Meyer's marketing machine in preteen prose, chapter by chapter. I thought it had defeated me in only four chapters, but the curiosity fueled by boredom is more powerful than Stephenie Meyer's prose. Onward!

Chapter 5: Blood Type

In chapter four Bella receives two invitations - one unwanted but unavoidable, the other desired but fraught with danger. Mortal danger. Nookie danger. That's the most dangerous danger of all. "Blood Type" doesn't get to the nookie (spoiler: it takes four whole books to get to the action) but indulges in a kind of literary foreplay. If you're reading along with me, get used to it. This is three books of foreplay and one book of crazy birth horror. Sandwiched in there somewhere is the actual sex, like the thinnest coldcut ever sliced by man or beast. What we're chewing through now is the endless spongy Wonder Bread of Meyer's writing.

Unlike the previous chapters, which tend to jump forward a day or so, "Blood Type" picks up where "Invitations" left off, with Bella so hot and bothered that she shows up late and "in a daze" to English class. The first Learn To Write moment comes depressingly quckly:

I made my way to English in a daze. I didn't even realize when I first walked in that class had already started.
"Good to see you, Miss Swan," said Mr. Mason in a disparaging tone.

Meyer doesn't trust her reading audience, so she pegs adverbs on nearly every line of dialogue, which makes conversations feel overstuffed but vapid at the same time. Here she avoids it by diluting the adverb into an entire phrase ('in a disparaging tone') and the result is even worse.

In fairness, Mason's line is ambiguous - maybe he's so happy to see Bella that he feels the need to announce it in front of the class (After all, everyone in Forks seems to love Bella Swan so much thather teachers are probably carving hearts into their desks and pasting pictures of her into their wedding albums.) Meyer could have avoided this bit of awkwardness by joining a telling piece of action to the dialogue:

"Good to see you, Miss Swan," Mr. Mason said. Laughter rippled through the room.

We don't need to be told that Mason's tone is disparaging in this scenario; the students' laughter gives the readers all the information necessary to determine what kind of a person Mr. Mason is, how the students feel about him, and how the students feel about Bella. The key to making this kind of scene work lies in the action, not in the narrator's judgment.

It's also apparent in "Blood Type" that Stephenie Meyer is not sure what the form and purpose of a chapter should be. Here she treats a chapter like a junk drawer, full of odds and ends related only by virtue of their sequence - a moment in English class, a lunchtime conversation with Edward, a trip to the nurse's office and a scene in a parking lot. It's a bit of a jumble, with individual scenes that feature some flourishes of talent but badly need an edit. You might reasonably object that the chapter's structure is unavoidable because of the sequence of events, but there is no reason for these elements to exist in the configuration that Meyer presents. Let's take a look at the scenes and see how they fit.

1. English class. There is no reason for this scene to exist. It's a transition from the climactic scene in "Invitations" to the main action of the chapter. In other words, it's filler. Which is only worthwhile when a writer stuffs it with good material that would otherwise go to waste.

2. The conversation at lunch. Bella sits with Edward at lunch and have a long, frustrating conversation. To a large extent it covers the same ground that was done much more effectively in "Invitations" (Edward can't stay away from Bella, but it might be a good idea for Bella to stay from Edward). Even though Meyer's adverb-heavy dialogue and constant references to Edward's face and eyes is grating, Bella and Edward's interaction tells us a good deal more about their characters than Bella's constant monologue does - largely because dialogue is a series of holes punched in the surface of a narrator's consciousness. It's one of the only points in the book when we glimpse Bella from someone else's point of view.

Unfortunately, that point of view is Edward's, and Edward isn't really a character. He's a fantasy lover with "ocher eyes" who adores Bella to the point of wishing to consume her. It would be nice for someone to come up to Bella and tell her that she's a self-centered jerk who shields her emotions behind a front of adolescent precocity - but that's never going to happen, because this is Twilight.

3. Biology class. After a standard sexually frustrating lunch with Edward, Bella heads to Biology class and discovers that Mr. Banner is planning on taking everyone's blood and determining their blood type. To no one's surprise, Bella turns out to be hemophobic. This is a glimpse into the symbolic latticework that holds up the Twilight books. Blood, stone, sun and mist (there's no darkness in Twilight - just diffused light). A crude reading would simply equate fear of blood with fear of sex and the body. A more sophisticated reading - wait, there isn't one. The Twilight novels work with a simple substitution cypher: blood for sex, hunger for lust, and so forth.

On a practical level, though, this scene is borked. Mr. Banner brings out the lancets and the other instruments of torture and starts pricking fingers. Then he mentions that anyone under eighteen will need parental permission slips, which he has in his desk. So why is he carrying out the exercise? Are most of the students eighteen? This seems unlikely - unless the students of Forks are slow learners. I'd be willing to buy that, but all of the student characters we've met so far (Mike, Jessica etc.) are bright, fashionable, energetic teens who would fit perfectly into an episode of 90210.

I'm guessing that an editor noted the implausibility of a teacher taking blood samples from children, so Meyer inserted a couple of lines to work around the problem. But this raises a host of other problems. In the real world, permission slips would be issued at least a week or two beforehand - which would give Bella plenty of time to refuse or skip class.

Of course, if she skipped the blood test, then the next scene could never happen - which means that the entire Biology class scene is simply a bridge into the real stuff, which is Edward and Bella dancing around their mutual attraction. In effect, the permission slip detail reveals just how instrumental the scene is, and how uninterested Meyer is in the world she's writing about.

4. The nurse's office. Once the blood lancets come out, Bella turns to clammy mush and needs to be escorted to the nurse. This occasions one of the first examples of interesting writing in Twilight:

He continued through the room with his water drops. I put my cheek against the cool black tabletop and tried to hold on to my consciousness. All around me I could hear squeals, complaints and giggles as my classmates skewered their fingers. I breathed slowly in and out through my mouth.
"Bella, are you all right?" Mr. Banner asked. His voice was close to my head, and it sounded alarmed.

Note the details that Meyer captures here when Bella shuts off her visual channel. Squeals. Giggles. Skewering. There's a kind of slaughterhouse atmosphere here, a note of terror amplified by the purely auditory input. Meyer keeps the conceit consistent enough that Bella identifies Banner's position and emotional state by his voice alone. Blood and helplessness goose the text and bring it out of its slumber (if the Twilight Saga were a sleeping person, then I picture Meyer as the person who sneaks into the room and places the sleeper's hand in a glass of warm water).

The nurse's office has some genuinely good moments. Edward (yeah, he's there all of a sudden) places Bella down "on the crackly paper that covered the brown vinyl mattress on the one cot". In one well-selected vivid detail, Meyer summons up the entire experience of visiting a school nurse. That damn crackly paper covering. We also get to see the casual power that Edward commands in the school, even as he remains in the background.

5. The parking lot. All this leads up to the real revelation of the chapter: Edward is a violent asshole. And this doesn't turn Bella off.

We were near the parking lot now. I veered left, toward my truck. Something caught my jacket, yanking me back.
"Where do you think you're going?" he asked, outraged. He was gripping a fistful of my jacket in one hand.
I was confused. "I'm going home."
"Didn't you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I'm going to let you drive in your condition?" His voice was still indignant.
....
"Let go!" I insisted. He ignored me. I staggered along sideways across the wet sidewalk until we reached [Edward's] Volvo. Then he finally freed me - I stumbled against the passenger door.
"You are so pushy," I grumbled.
"It's open," was all he responded. He got in the driver's side.

What? How are we take a scene in which a man physically overpowers a teenage girl and drags her to his car, all under the guise of 'protecting her' and (even more insidiously) keeping a promise? The movie adaptation skips this entire passage altogether, jumping straight from the lunchtime conversation to the beach at La Push. Meyer should have done the same. As it is, we now know that we're reading an insanely popular teen fantasy novel about an abusive jerk and the girl who just can't get enough of it. Slow clap, Meyer. Slow. Clap.

The chapter continues into a long conversation between Bella and Edward about her family, but the parking lot scene damages "Blood Type" so profoundly that there's not much point in examining it.

***

You Suck, Bella score: 5 (she spends part of the time feeling guilty about mistreating Mike, and the rest of the time she's fainting or being pushed around by Edward)
Learn To Write score: too high to count

So I Got Me a Psychic Reading

2011-02-10T01:15:00.001-06:00

A bit of disclosure: this post could be considered advertising of sorts for HollywoodPsychics.com, for which I have received no compensation beyond a free psychic reading.

Like most college-educated folks these days, I have an unseemly and obnoxious interest in poking fun at spiritual matters. We cheer on The Amazing Randi as he debunks frauds, mentally high-five Christopher Hitchens or Twisty Faster as they skewer yet another godbag (for vastly different reasons), and generally feel quite content sleeping in on Sunday mornings à la Homer Simpson.

Nonetheless, we're still curious about the unfalsifiable - all that hazy spiritual stuff that we can't quite ignore because its premises operate beyond truth and falsehood (repugnantly misogynistic/ homophobic/ racist statements and actions proceeding from said premises do not operate in the same epistemic realm, however – those are empirically verifiable and they suck). So when my bloggy friend and peer Cecily offered to set me up with a free reading, I thought, “cool.” And then I thought, “Hell yeah.” Then I wanted a taco, but there's nowhere to go in this city for decent Mexican food.

The reading, I found out, could be done by phone. This sort of thing always amazes me, but humans are capable of figuring each other out in tweets and text messages, so why not a phone call? Their web site even offers a free email reading.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I dialed the menu, but I enjoyed the system they have going. You punch in an account number and then you're taken to a menu of available psychics. You can listen to various psychics introduce themselves and explain their style of reading – it seems there nearly as many ways of divining the truth as there are diviners.

I picked James, who was a) the first person on the menu, b) had a kind and thoughtful voice, and c) used a mix of Tarot and astrology, with a dash of Native American spirituality. It felt a bit like a Unitarian service I attended once. James had fewer questions for me than I imagined – just my first name, my date of birth, and whether I had any particular question in mind. I did! I wanted to know a little bit about my career. Because my career is what the kids like to call “nascent,” which is a fancy way of saying that I'm a broke-ass freelancer.

Based on my sun sign (Leo), James picked a particular deck, whose name I didn't catch. Then he asked me to clear my mind and visualize myself in my ideal career. Because my ideal career is a successful freelance writer (as opposed to the kind I am right now), I pictured myself exactly where I was at that very moment, but with a clean shirt. James told me that he was shuffling the deck as I cleared my mind, but for all I know he could have been rubbing silver paint on Kim Kardashian's nipples. Probably not, though: I hear that Kim's nipples really demand your attention.

He told me he'd be drawing the cards in a Medicine Wheel formation (fun fact: I've been to a Medicine Wheel). For the hub of the wheel he drew The Star, which is one of the major arcana. James told me that this was a really good card to have at the center of my wheel. He filled in with some details that I didn't catch, but the basic message of the star, as it relates to my career, is: Go For It. Nothing To Worry About.

I imagine this is the kind of thing that the Jameses of this world tell people who ask about their career prospects, because it's encouraging and can't really be disproved in any way. Part of me felt like saying “I can't go for it, James! I'm a quadriplegic with an axe through my head! James, this axe really hurts! Can I change my question to something more axe-related?”* But I trusted that a less auspicious card – say, the godawful chaos of The Tower – would have prompted him to give me a more cautionary message.

Crossing my Star card was the Page of Pentacles. This meant that I would be receiving a message soon about job prospects, but it also meant that I should be active in hunting down my job, using the Yellow pages and talking directly to managers at companies where I wanted to work. Not something I needed the Tarot for, but still: good advice.

Following those two cards, James laid out my near future with three cards capturing mind, body and spirit. The first card he drew was the Four of Cups, which he said was “an unusual card” in this configuration. But it was a good card! He then asked if I was married, which was probably the only other point in the conversation where he directly solicited information from me. When I said I was, he launched into an exploration of love and connection. The card indicated that I was happy and in a good relationship, but that it might serve me well to renew my bond with my partner in some way. During the call I thought that the cards had actually thrown him for a loop and sent him on an unexpected path, but it occurred to me afterwards that Valentine's Day is coming up. Ah well.

The physical aspect of the future was represented by the Two of Swords. This, apparently, is not a good card. It's about communication, but it carries the possibility of miscommunication and mistakes. He told me to remain open and available, and not to shut myself off. Again, good advice for the job seeker.

The last card, the spiritual one, was the three of cups. Again with the cups! Either he was too distracted by silvering up Kim Kardashian or the cards really do have a vision of my future. This was another good card, with its image of three women making a toast. It indicated that a spiritual event in the near future, a celebration of some kind, would be connected to my career prospects. Networking at a wedding, maybe?

He went to draw further cards, telling me that my chief motivation was 'moving forward' and not money, reiterating that I should go for it, whatever it is that I may want to do. He threw out a few educated guesses that maybe I had an unfinished novel or album that I was working on, which wasn't too far off the mark. If I were a different kind of person, I might have jumped in at that point and said “Yes! Yes, I have an unfinished novel!” but I kept as quiet as possible.

To finish up, James advised me to wear blue – particularly sky-blue – and something silver to my job interviews. I probably should have followed this advice earlier, since I've been wearing my pink shirt to interviews. Damn you, pink shirt. Damn you and your french cuffs.

I'm not convinced that James contacted some divine truth or jacked his third eye into the quantum-entangled psilocybin matrix that binds our existence together and will one day beam us into eternity to merge with the Star Whale that created us all. On the other hand, he was perceptive, courteous and seemed genuinely engaged in reading and interpreting the cards – no small feat. I enjoyed the session and I wish him well. And I foresee some silver nipples in his future.

*"Like, should I apply for a job as a professional axe remover? My only qualification is my personal experience with this axe in my head."

Income

2011-02-09T21:21:00.001-06:00

[It's evening. Schmutzie and Palinode are relaxing in the comfort of a living room. It's their living room, which really legitimizes the situation.]

Palinode: I've started using Google Chrome as my default browser.

Schmutzie: Me too.

Palinode: I like to use it for online browsing, finding recipes, organizing my calendar - and of course, shopping.

Schmutzie: Um, sure.

Palinode: Chrome takes me where I need to go.

Schmutzie: That's -

Palinode: Every time.

Schmutzie: What are you talking like that for?

Palinode: I figure Google listens to everything we say. So I'm monetizing our conversations.

Schmutzie: So you should be receiving a hundred bucks in three years.

Palinode: Truly we are living in a golden age of riches.

Diligence

2011-01-11T00:03:00.000-06:00

This story first appeared (as in I put it there) on Polite Fictions in slightly less edited form.

The dog entered on the south east end of the Experience just as the evening show was starting overhead. Little knots of people, t-shirts clinging to their shoulders and love handles, gazed up at the LED lights, not noticing the dog as it slipped between them, tacking back and forth up the Strip.

Darryl caught the dog on monitor 05 as it crossed into the camera's field of view. The dog had its eyes on the people, alert for danger, watching the families - for someone it recognized, maybe, or just on the lookout to avoid potential threats. Children, adults, all unpredictable.

Check this out, Darryl said. Aaron swung his chair around and they watched the dog together, a wolfhound from the size of it. Something big and rangy, with a long carbine barrel of a snout and tongues of grey fur streaming from its legs.

You think it's one of those dogs from the news? Aaron wondered. Darryl knew what he meant, had seen the stories about the animal shelters filling up with dogs from foreclosed and abandoned houses. Some people walk away from the mortgage and they just leave the dogs and cats behind. Assholes, thought Darryl, although he also knew that sometimes a person got tossed out by the bailiff and the pets were left to roam the neighborhoods. Sometimes your life broke and your dog is one of its pieces. Nothing to be done about it, but sometimes the animals were a problem. This was the first he'd seen it with his own eyes. Better call the cops, Aaron said.

Darryl nodded, but what he really wanted to say was Let's hold on. Hold on just a second. For what, he wasn't sure. For the dog to score its way through the grid of monitors as it made its way up the block? For a child to reach out and pet some lost animal with crazy marbles for eyes? Maybe just to see where that dog thought he was going.

The dog zagged out of monitor 05. Darryl switched his eyes to monitor 08 just seconds before it trotted into view and halted in front of a woman in a motorized chair. The dog skirted a wide crescent around the woman, who barely acknowledged the animal beyond a glance as she motored on. She thumbed the joystick on the armrest, and the chair picked up speed and moved off, bound for monitor 07.

The cameras implanted along the edges of the Fremont Street Experience captured everything that happened on the street below. All the people who stopped to watch the LED light show with its resolving and dissolving images of guitars and chorus girls, or sat at a bench and gazed at nothing, with the interior gaze of the disastrously broke, or just ignored the show altogether and passed along, scalps and shoulders dimpled with points of light. The camera collected them all. The ones who didn't bother to look up had somewhere to go, except there was nowhere in particular to go in this part of town. A hotel room, a casino, a few bars, a Walgreen's off the strip. Sometimes Darryl caught his father wobbling along the street, clutching a plastic yard of neon-tinted booze, on his way from a bar to a casino or back again, throwing Darryl's mother's money away in smaller and larger chunks, peeling off the whole family's future, one binge at a time.

Darryl hoped that his dad would be walking down the Strip at that very moment. Darryl hoped that he would find the dog and take him home, and maybe the dog would keep him there, keep him from straying back out to the Experience. But no, that wouldn't work, Darryl's dad had been keeping all kinds of places, motel rooms here and there, apartments belonging to various women who worked at Nevada's or the Palace or wherever. He lived in between: jobs, houses, women, families too probably. One day he'd die in between, and his body would be divided between all his lives. But putting that pisser in the ground: that job, Darryl knew, would be handed off to him.

Darryl switched his attention back to the dog. A man was petting the animal, and for an embarrassing instant Darryl thought it really was his father. The cracked red corona of skull with white hair flaring and then dripping down the skull, the reddened shelf of forehead and the belly bulging out against a plain white shirt - it was all dad's. But the man was almost certainly a tourist - just something about the way he was taking in the sights. Just the way he looked at things told Darryl everything he needed to know. Darryl switched to a camera directly overhead and swiveled the joystick clockwise, zooming in on that sunburned bald spot, closer and closer until it seemed that he was almost touching the top of the man's skull.

Sometimes Darryl felt that boring in this close to the surface would let him in, to what was beneath the surface, as if an approach so smooth and invisible could actually penetrate. In those moments he felt - believed, even - that he could see with the eyes of the people he watched: that tourist petting the dog and smiling at it, the dog looking back, ceasing for a moment from darting its gaze back and forth, for a moment relaxing into the man's affections, believing briefly that it might be close to home. Go on then, Darryl thought as he picked up the phone, go on and take that dog home.

So This Is The Last of my Vanity

2011-01-09T21:44:00.002-06:00

My friend and fellow MamaPop writer Anastacia Campbell kindly did a bit of artistry on a self-portrait of mine. I know I said I was bored of my iPhone, but without that little handheld wafer of clever, this could never have happened.

Obviously, it should never happen again.

UPDATE: It happened again anyway.

I'm bored of my iPhone

2011-01-07T16:42:00.001-06:00

It's true. I'm bored to tears with my iPhone. Thoroughly sick of the thing.

I didn't think this would or even could happen. After all, the iPhone – any smartphone – is an unbelievable object. Sure, it has its flaws, but minor irritations should pale next to the fact that I can talk into a tiny colourful computer. Think back to 1983 or thereabouts. Who would have predicted that a rotary phone and a Commodore PET would get together and fit in your pocket?

A prototype.

In January 2009 I picked up an iPhone 3G on impulse from a kiosk in a mall. It was cold out. The phone was slick and iconic, heavy in my hand and responsive to my touch. Two hundred bucks and a three year contract and it was mine.

At first I loved it. I downloaded all the apps I imagined might revolutionize my life and used them as much as I possibly could, no matter where I was. I became one of those people who routinely placed their phones on the table at restaurants and bars, flicking through emails or tweets or facebook updates as I talked and drank, nodding along with conversations while I poked out idle text messages: “I'm here! Where are you? You driving down Dewdney?” etc. It was an accessory and signpost of my life, as much as the fiber of my jacket or the shank of my shoe.

And now it is January of 2011, almost two years to the day since I first signed that contract. The 3G is so far behind the technological curve that it's nearly slipped beneath the ecliptic of support (I give it another year or so before Apple stops supporting it altogether). The hardware struggles to keep the operating system running, the slim profile now feels embarrassingly bulky, and the multitude of apps, once so fascinating, now seem pointless. I don't want to augment my reality or check bar codes in supermarkets. I have less interest than I thought in snapping photographs of whiteboards or allotting leisure time to the destruction of smug pigs.

The only functions of my phone that really matter are the ones that keep me in touch with the outside world: web browser, email, phone, and the combined punch of twitter and facebook when I'm looking for some random entertainment. Once in a while I'll launch Soundhound to find out what music happens to be playing (unfortunately useless in a bar or any place with lots of ambient noise), or I'll take a photo. But these uses occur largely in the context of communicating with other people. The photo gets uploaded, the song gets tweeted. All the rest is cold, lumpy gravy.

I tell myself I'll do something cool and creative with this or that piece of software. But after a few attempts I get frustrated with the finicky touch screen controls or the repeated crashes. My creative work requires a keyboard for writing or a sizeable monitor for editing video, neither of which, clearly, my iPhone offers. Those pursuits also require blocks of solitude and concentration, both of which dissolve like antacid tablets in the endless stream of notifications and mentions pouring from my phone.

Sometimes communicating with people is over rated. Sometimes I prefer to step off the busy street and sit by myself in a quiet place, one where I have nothing to say to others. And here the iPhone is not merely boring but insidious. I can't have a single thought or experience without a small voice telling me that I should snap an image or share a thought. I have a tool for sharing everything that passes behind or before my eyes, and I pay $60 each month for the ability to do so. If I step away from it, then my relevance in the stream begins to erode. The current moves so quickly that all my familiar points get washed downstream.

This is so much a first world problem that it's practically a spaceman problem. This is like people living on the moon complaining about the texture of their baked moon potatoes and the sophistication of their moon soap operas, when they should be perpetually amazed at the fact of their lunar existence. I live in a world where the worst that things can really happen to me, barring accident and disease, are ennui, heartbreak and reduced buying power.

I should not be bored with a feat of engineering that was science fiction only ten years ago. And yet here I am, slightly resentful of something I should be delighted to own. But that's how possessions work in age of regular obsolescence: they turn you into a bit of a jerk. I know that I'll probably pick up a better phone when my contract expires, and that one day my incredible new phone will bore me to tears.

The secret, obviously, is to understand and accept the limitations of your new device, even as the initial endorphin rush screams through your veins. More importantly, I should stop giving a shit about the endless mobile conversation happening 24/7 among my electronic peers and be content to pop in from time to time without anxiety. Or at least be able to manage my involvement in it – say, only at certain times of day – which feels a bit like I'm negotiating the worst part of my adolescence all over again. Maybe I should get my mother to tell me that my twitter followers are a bad influence? I'll text her about that. From my boring, boring iPhone.

The Lovely Carrost

2011-01-04T17:09:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we went a-shoppin at the nearest Safeway. The woman at the till was more cheerful than a substitute kindergarten teacher. Her entire face was built around her smile. Her fluffed-up helmet of hair rested on her cheeks, which were held in place by a constant upturned mouth. I'd never seen someone whose face depended upon a constant supply of cheer.

What's more, she was enthusiastic about the products she was ringing through. Her enthusiasm must have been genuine, because once you reach the till lineup at a grocery store, your purchasing is pretty much done, bar the occasional Archie digest or tube of chapstick. If you're going to buy a silicon grooming glove for the cats or a sealed package of bacon shavings, you've probably made the decision by that point and thrown it in the cart.

She was particularly enthusiastic about the carrots: "Aren't these carrots just lovely?" she said as she rang them through. I can't lie, they're pretty nice carrots, colourful and sweet:


With regulation size kazoo

Having no geologist's pick, I threw in the kazoo for scale.

Anyway, the next thing she ran through was the butternut squash.

And she had absolutely nothing to say about it. I think the smile even faltered for a moment.

2010 Is 38 Questions

2011-01-02T00:46:00.003-06:00

After my blog colleague Avitable, here's a look back at 2010 in 38 handy questions.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?

I started doing freelance writing in earnest. I'm particularly proud of my restaurant and food reviews, which were more challenging than I expected. Seriously, just try and make entertainment out of hot dog toppings. Other than that, I did a few things that I wouldn't call new, but they occur infrequently enough that my life line intersects with their wavelength only every fifteen years or so: grew a beard, lost my job, took a serious stab at fiction.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

I don't make resolutions. Generally I can't remember my plans for more than an hour.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

More than a few people close to me got pregnant. I'm pretty sure that my proximity was unrelated.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

I visited the United States. But is that really a different country? It feels like a louder, bigger, angrier version of Canada. Like a crazy overweight neighbour with a gun who's really fun to hang out with if you catch him in the right mood.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?

A steady job in a career path I want. More freelance work. More published work (which is coming).

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Early August, when we spent time in New York for the BlogHer conference. The end of October for Blissdom Canada, when I tried to pass on my wisdom to a roomful of bloggers and ended up talking about hungry Russian Jews.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Living with less. Living with myself. Doing something new, even when opening my eyes in the morning was difficult.

9. What was your biggest failure?

Being unable to ward off the misery of my last paying job, even after it was over.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

2010 was a refreshingly healthy year. I also drank a lot less when my spouse quit drinking.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

I bought a leather jacket I like. And a nice scarf. I bought some great tea. I bought ridiculous amounts of tea.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Schmutzie, for forging the Canadian Weblog Awards and Ninjamatics out of pure molten will. Catherine Connors, for inviting us to Blissdom Canada.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

By and large everyone not engaged in genocide was on their best behaviour this year. Way to go, humans.

14. Where did most of your money go?

This was not a year of profligacy. I paid rent and bills, bought plane tickets to New York, and I probably spent far too much money on tea (see question 11).

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I got excited about going to BlogHer. The MamaPop authors party was a voice-destroying and liver-damaging evening in New York. When I was invited to speak at Blissdom Canada, that excited me even more than it terrified me. Hanging out all weekend with Schmutzie, Bon Stewart and Kate Inglis was excitement nearly past measure. And after all that, I got to hang out with various family members and introduce Schmutzie to the wonders of Niagara-on-the-Lake in fall. Being offered the dining column at Prairie Dog Magazine. Writing a chapter for a book of essays on Saskatchewan literature.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?

I have no idea. Hmm. New Pornographers “Crash Years” maybe. Or “Rill Rill” from Sleigh Bells. Or “Tightrope”.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

a) happier or sadder? Happier and more freaked out about the future.
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner, I think. When you're working from home you don't eat out nearly as much.
c) richer or poorer? Poorer. Oh so poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

I wish I'd made more of each day. I guess that's what's 2011 is for.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Sit around depressed, blank-souled and dull at heart, fearful of the next few minutes but ardently wishing for its passage, just so I could get through the day and back to sleep. I spent a few too many days like that.

20. How did you spend Christmas?

My parents came to town on Christmas Eve and took us out to supper. The next morning they stopped by for breakfast, dropped off some presents, and left us to our day. Which consisted of movies and pizza. And Doctor Who. He came by for a while.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?

Already in love, thanks.

22. What was your favorite TV program?

Terriers. The Red Riding Trilogy.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Not at all. All the hateable bastards of Jan 2011 were just as hateable 365 days ago.

24. What was the best book you read?

Tom McCarthy's C was a bit uneven but it had some of the greatest passages I've read in years.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Harmony. That stuff makes all the difference. Also melody. And rhythm.

26. What did you want and get?

I wanted blueberry juice, and got it.

27. What did you want and not get?

I wanted ease, unity and grace, and received none of those things.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?

I think True Grit delivered more than any other film this year. Winter's Bone was straight-up fantastic.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Usually I cajole Schmutzie into taking me out to some awful fast food restaurant, like KFC or Taco del Mar. This time we went to the Creek in Cathedral bistro, and I had an excellent meal with friends. 39. A multiple of thirteen, and as such a harbinger of tumult. Not turmeric, tumult.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Incredible unearned success.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

Costly casual.

32. What kept you sane?

My writing. Schmutzie. Friends.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

'Fancy'?

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

I got nice and stirred up about the collapse of the housing crisis into the burgeoning mortgage fraud crisis. I always get stirred up about politics in foreign countries, where I have pretty much nothing at stake.

35. Who did you miss?

I didn't miss anyone. I never do. They're there, living their lives, whether I'm around or not. I'm here if they need me.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

Between BlogHer, Blissdom and my freelance work, I met a heap of excellent people. A great big heap, piled up to the ceiling. To the person at the top of the heap I give a piece of chalk so that she may write 'This is how many great people Aidan met this year' on the ceiling.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.

Keep moving. And don't swallow your gum. That shit stays in your stomach for seven years.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

She said
There just must be more to life than this
He said
Careful 'cause you might just get your wish

Winners of the Ninjamatics 2010 Canadian Weblog Awards announced!

2010-12-31T23:09:00.000-06:00

Over at mine and Schmutzie's professional site Ninjamatics, the Canadian Weblog Award winners have been announced!

You should go and check it out, because the winners are the best of what Canada has to offer in online writing.

Canadian Weblog Awards Winners List

my shakespeare quiz

2010-12-30T02:32:00.002-06:00

1. In Henry V, Henry delivers the stirring St. Crispin's Day speech to his troops on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt. Why doesn't Henry just take the train to Agincourt? It's really affordable.

2. When Hamlet says “To a nunnery! Go!” who is he talking to? Ophelia is dead at that point. He's already strangled her. On top of which he's kneeling with his knee on her throat, so it's unlikely that she'd even get to the nearest water fountain, let alone a convent.

3. In The Tempest, why does Prospero say that “we are such stuff as dreams are made on”? Prospero is a former Duke of Naples. Shouldn't he be speaking a Neopolitan dialect of Italian?

4. Many critics believe that the plays and poems of Shakespeare were written by someone else. Could that 'someone' actually be Shakespeare writing under a pseudonym that was also Shakespeare? He was hiding his true identity from the Templars. And that identity... was H.G. Wells. Or Boba Fett.

5. Hey, do you remember that bit in Inception where the guy is driving the van, and there's an entire dramatic chase scene through pouring rain, and the reason it's raining is because he has to pee and the chase scene is taking place in his dream? So really, he's driving through his own pee? And then the van falls into a river? I'm pretty sure the character wet himself at that point. Do you think the character wears adult diapers? Should Nolan have established that earlier? Maybe there should have been an extra twenty-minute scene about adult diapers? What if a character was eating crackers, and then everyone went into his dream and things were, like, extra crunchy?

6. The character of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice has been held up an example of Shakespeare's anti-Semitism. Don't you think that Festus from Twelfth Night should be held up as an example of Shakespeare's hatred of his paying audience? That dude was seriously annoying.

7. Scholars have discovered that the character of Kate in The Taming of the Shrew was actually meant to be played by a trained shrew. This explains why the character attempts to eat her own weight in leaves and insects throughout the play.

8. Pop quiz: Does King Lear a) father or b) contract Goneril in the course of the play? Bear in mind that he goes blind and crazy.

9. You're walking through the woods. Titania, queen of the Faeries, wanders up and declares her love for you. What do you say?

a) “Hey, I got this ass head for a ducat in Elsinore, you like? Yeah, you like”.

b) “I got ninety-nine problems but an ass-head ain't one”.

c) “I'm a rude mechanical and you're a sprite botanical. Let's get together, 'cause Oberon's tyrannical”.

d) “All the other faeries and humans be fearin' us, so let's pretend you're Thisbe and I'm a hot Pyramus”.

Seven Good Reasons to Carry Your Oranges Around in a Pillowcase

2010-12-27T16:48:00.003-06:00

This thing is stuffed full of oranges.

Carrying an orange with you is the generally accepted sign of being an okay fellow and an all around good citizen. After all, how often have you heard of a crime being committed by someone holding an orange? Exactly. Over time it's become a shorthand for announcing your good intentions, especially when traveling.

Once you put your orange in a pillowcase, the situation changes. Now you look like you're going to bludgeon someone with your sleepsack o' citrus. But there are more than a few good reasons to choose a pillowcase over the palm of your hand as an orange storage solution. Find out what those reasons are after the jump!

There's no jump.

1. Volume. I feel ridiculous pointing this out, but even a small pillowcase has a greater capacity than your hand. Even if you have insane Wilt Chamberlain hands, the odds are that you can carry more oranges with the aid of a pillowcase.

2. Redundancy. Any systems analyst knows the importance of redundant elements. If your chosen orange isn't cutting it or gets slapped out of your hand (sometimes it happens at Customs), you've got a half-dozen alternatives. Think ahead!

3. Nutrition. Since you only need one orange for social purposes, consider the extra oranges food. Your stomach will thank you, unless you eat six oranges at once, or one orange whole, or two oranges peeled but eaten with the peeler.

4. Efficiency. On the go? Find yourself strapped for time in the morning? Using a pillowcase to transport your oranges removes the need to go searching for an extra bag. Just get out of bed, remove the case from your pillow and you're good to go.

5. Aesthetics. A pillowcase full of oranges can help you cut an attractive figure, particularly if the bag is affixed stylishly to your belt or duct taped to your back. And at night, drift into dreams on your citrus-scented pillow.

6. Finances. Stop wasting money on orange bags!

7. Entertainment. And finally, when you're bored or stranded at a party full of strangers, cut the ice by beating someone senseless with a pillowcase full of oranges.

Next up: stay clean wherever you go with a bar of soap stuffed into a sock.

I Call It "The Dog"

2010-12-22T00:31:00.013-06:00

Since the dawn of time, mankind has sought to use free online animation tools to amuse himself and feed his depraved appetites. And I am no exception.

I discovered xtranormal.com a little while ago, but was discouraged by the cogent and funny cartoons that people were creating. I wanted nonsense. Then I thought, Aidan, be the nonsense that you want to see. Or, make the nonsense.

So I gave it a shot. Who would have thought that I would create such gripping drama on my first attempt?

Their names are Bill and Kate, by the way. They work at an important publishing house in New York.

BILL: My heart is sorely troubled.

KATE: Was it love? Or mistaken identity? Both are troublesome.

BILL: ...because a dog, black and sinewy, with eyes like glowing coals...

KATE: Came to you in your dreams?

BILL: No. He took my idea for a live sketch comedy show. [arm sweep]

The Right Coffeemaker for your '70s Style Orgy. Trust Me.

2010-12-06T23:44:00.004-06:00

Today, a Tassimo coffeemaker arrived in the mail. I don't know how we ended up with it. Schmutzie knows, and periodically reminds me why we have it, but there's no room in my brain for those kinds of facts. So once again, thirty minutes after finding out the whole back story on this machine, I am befuddled by the Tassimo. Which is serving us delicious coffee and creating its own landfill of waste with every cup.

The Tassimo came in three boxes. First, a featureless cardboard box containing packing materials and another featureless cardboard box, which fit snugly around the proper Tassimo box. Our kitchen is littered with boxes, which now contain alert and curious cats.

Anyway, here's our new Tassimo, with a little plastic soldier in a wine glass for scale.

If you don't know what a Tassimo is, it can best be described as a coffeemaker for people who are insufficiently impressed with their current state of home coffee technology. Filter drips? Auto shut-off timers? Indicator lights? Screw all that. With its barcode scanner, mode dial and 'T Discs' of ground coffee/ tea leaves/ powdered milk/ hot chocolate/ beagle snouts, the Tassimo is a brave new step in the wrong direction for kitchen gadgetry.

The Tassimo is an impressive device that mildly resembles an espresso machine in form and function. Hot water is forced through a portion of coffee grounds, which comes in a dedicated packet called a T Disc. The T Disc has a barcode that provides your machine with instructions to produce the desired cup of coffee. It's a coffeemaker that encoded a barista.*

Tassimo doesn't produce a good, great, or even the best cup of coffee. It makes optimal coffee. Actually, it brews your optimal drink. The entire concept behind the Tassimo is embedded and readable in that one phrase: your optimal drink. Why does it have a built-in water filtration system? Because hard water can interfere with the brewing of your optimal drink. Why does it have a descaling program? So as not to screw with your optimal drink. Why does Tassimo produce more waste than any other coffee brewing device I know of? It's all got to do with that drink of yours and how it should be optimal.

Over the last decade or so, kitchen implements have taken a turn for the artisanal. Sure, there's some fancy tech in your toaster, and maybe your gas range shuts down and calls the police if it detects a hot-knifing in progress, but the thrill in kitchen tools has rested in their Luddite flair, their cast-iron will to simmer, their alchemy of metal and precision curvature. The balance of each implement, the way in which that ice cream scoop just slides right in to that frozen block or that hand held grater is just so damn geared to that block of Parmesan, bespeaks the expertise of its maker. Good kitchen tools provide a pretentious but satisfying experience, a sense of connection to old traditions. Even if you grew up eating casseroles from recipes off the back of a Bisquick box.

Tassimo gives you precision, but the thrill comes from the other end of the field. There's a utopian guilelessness about the machine, a promise that the classy world of cafés and bistros can be yours at the press of a button. It's going for that European classiness (even though it reminds me most of those automatic coffee machines in Australia that spit out flat whites on demand). It's like a Star Trek replicator in a Kitchen of Tomorrow. Except the kitchen is straight out of 1972, and the Bistromatic2000 One-Button Coffee Brewer is right next to the fondue pot and the electric wine muller, and the first guests are just about to arrive for a sophisticated evening of melted cheese and mutual groping. Get Your Orgy Started The Optimal Way, With Tassimo!

I recommend the little Starbucks T Discs. That is one smooth, erotic brew.

*And now that barista is trapped in the electronic landscape of the Tassimo, forced to battle light cycles on an infinite neon grid.

A Week of the Old Palinode

2010-12-03T15:43:00.004-06:00

Good afternoon, everyone. This week in the world of me, I bared my soul on this blog with the ongoing Thirty Days of Truth Project, wrote about single-location movies for MamaPop, and tried out a new Japanese restaurant for Prairie Dog Magazine. Excerpts and links below!

On MamaPop, I weighed in on the back-and-forth rumours that Frank Darabont may have sacked the writing staff on The Walking Dead, and what this might mean for the series as it moves into a second season:

Darabont’s strengths and weaknesses are easy to see in the first two episodes. He’s excellent at horror and general spookiness, and he’s particularly adept at portraying men pushed to their breaking point. If you want to see grown men break down in tears, Darabont is your man. He also has a knack for powerful and simple images. The shot of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) riding a horse along the empty interstate with the skyline of a dead Atlanta in the background is likely to become a classic post-apocalyptic image.

On the other hand, Darabont is such a big fan of “delivering the moment” that he oversells his premise to the point of insult. At one point in the second episode, [main character] Grimes says something like “I’m not a cop anymore, I’m just a man looking for his wife and family,” which is so on-the-nose that I kept flashing back to Thomas Jane’s role on Arrested Development and his repeated mantra of “I just want my family back”. Not surprisingly, Jane plays one of Darabont’s tortured square-jaws as the lead in The Mist.

"The Walking Dead Has Let Go Of Its Writers"

I also looked at movies set in a single location, and performed the usual ludicrous task of ranking the top five contenders. As always, these sorts of lists are completely arbitrary and mostly an excuse to arrange the stuff I like around an easy-to-follow organizing principle.

The most famous of Hitchcock’s one-room films is Rear Window, in which a wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart begins to spy on the building across the street to pass the time. When he witnesses a murder plot unfolding, things get dicey. The genius of Rear Window lies in the way that Hitchcock transforms the set into a kind of viewing room, with all the action happening on a “screen” that happens to be a window. The real drama, Hitchcock implies, occurs in the viewer’s mind.

"Top Five Movies Set In A Single Location "

For Prairie Dog Magazine, I interviewed Judd Palmer of The Old Trouts Puppet Workshop on his costume designs for the Regina Globe Theatre's production of HONK!

HONK! is a musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Ugly Duckling. For those of you who never had the pleasure of reading the original, The Ugly Duckling tells the story of an ungainly young duck, shunned and mocked by his duck-family, who grows up and discovers that he’s a handsome swan. When playwrights Anthony Drewe and George Stiles encountered the story in the early ’90s, they found that the themes of understanding, acceptance and maturity (not to mention lording it over the twerps who picked on you before you became awesome) still resonated powerfully in today’s world.

(It’s also possible to read The Ugly Duckling as an allegory for the genetic superiority of the aristocratic swan over the wretched bourgeois duck society, but this is not a popular interpretation.)

The Costumes of HONK!

Not content with just the cover story, Palinode's Unstoppable Content Machine ground on with a review of Tomoya, the latest Japanese restaurant in the city:

But there’s only one way to eat udon soup, and it is not pretty. You lean as far as possible over the bowl and hoover the noodles into your mouth. Horrible slurping noises ensue — udon broth flies everywhere, little bits of noodle are left over and the end result should look like you’ve won a bare-knuckle fight death-match with Cthulhu.

Eat it alone, or with someone who loves you unconditionally. After your friends have seen you go at a bowl of udon they will never visit a restaurant with you ever again.

But whatever you do, don’t eat those little compressed pink pieces of fish that always come with udon. Apparently that’s gauche.

Tomoya Japanese Restaurant

Enjoy your surplus of Palinode.

Thirty Days of Truth: Day Nine

2010-12-01T00:47:00.001-06:00

Today's post is brought to you by the letter Superhero. Which is P. A capital P is an I with a cape fluttering in the wind.

Day 9: Someone you didn't want to let go, but just drifted.

I don't know. People just run through my life, but eventually everyone recirculates. There's a commodious vicus that keeps things fresh and serves our raccoon tendencies.

In 1989 I left a lot of people behind when I moved from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan. Friends, a girlfriend, a house, a bedroom, a bend in the road, a five minute walk to the ocean. I left behind a place and all the people in it. Goodbye, woman behind the counter at Hilchie's. Goodbye Lido swimming pool. Goodbye Spring Garden Road. Goodbye Little and Big Tancook Island. Goodbye Erica.

But it was not really a past that I left behind. The past is always with me. You don't leave the past; you just dismantle it for easy transport. What you leave behind is a future, one that you will never have. That's what I let go when I left the Maritimes. A lifetime that I can't live, one that I must imagine. But since I believe that imagination and memory are essentially the same thing, separated only by a tissue of certainty, the distinction between the life I remember and the life I imagine seems insignificant. So I suppose I get a life with one past and two diverging futures: think of a wishbone, a dowsing rod, an ever-growing Y.

I hope I'm making better money in that other life.

***

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Thirty Days of Truth: Day Eight

2010-11-30T01:34:00.005-06:00

Thirty Days of Truth. Thirty of them. Today is Day Eight, and it contains a swear.

Day 08: Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.

It's pretty safe to say that no one has literally made my life hell. I can't even picture how any person could summon the alchemical wit to refurnish that random stream of events locked down by my consciousness into a metaphysical region for the punishment of souls. That doesn't make sense.

It's equally nonsensical to talk about someone treating me like shit. No one's ever pushed me out of an anus or flushed me down a toilet. No one's buried in me a pit in a field or run me through a waste treatment plant. No one's ever thrown me bodily into the Halifax Harbour. No one has ever tied me up in a plastic bag and taken me to school, like Dave Gallagher did one day on a bet.

If I interpret the phrase more loosely to mean someone who has treated me poorly or made me miserable, then we find a small but dedicated crowd spread out over the years. Some were bullies who thought, just because I was an undersized know-it-all brat, that I deserved a bit of terror and low-grade humiliation on my walk home from school. Some were friends or girlfriends or roommates whose occasional missions into shitty territories were more than redeemed by moments of laughter or friendship - and in the case of girlfriends, their endearing habit of having sex with me.

Now all my girlfriends are exes and undoubtedly regretting all the moments that they could have had sex with me but chose some unfathomably selfish act instead, like going to sleep or leaving me. Who's laughing now, ex-girlfriends? Jimmy Fallon, that's who. Every time he stares at the camera and laughs at one of his own jokes before he gets 1/3 of the way through the joke I wonder if someone has taken the thread of my life and woven it into a net for evil souls sharking through the ether.

The first person who ever made my life hell was my teacher for the first half of grade three. Her name was Sharon Houghton, and in my memory she is forever caught in the disco amber of 1979, standing at a chalkboard in our high-ceilinged classroom, wearing a light purple polyester pantsuit and pearls, teaching us all the benefits of cursive writing and telling everyone in the most precise of tones that #2 pencils, and #2 pencils only, were to be used in her classroom. She pronounced 'majority' as 'majurity', marked no assignment higher than an 'excellent minus' and despised the entire stinking lot of us.

I think, although I cannot be sure, that she had a particular dislike for me because my parents insisted that I was a gifted student who needed special instruction. Something deep in Mrs. Houghton's core curdled at the presumption of these people who believed that their child was in any way exceptional. So she went out of her way to tell me in front of the class that I was not exceptional, and that in fact I was not nearly as smart as my parents believed. None of this stopped the school from testing me and giving me advanced English language study, which made Mrs. Houghton ever more disgusted. I don't think it made her angry so much as it dug a moat of flaming pitch around the castle of her misanthropy.

She told me that I was slow in front of the class one day, which sent me home in confused tears. The funny thing is that she was right in some ways - I was slow. Not in the sense that I was learning disabled, but it took me forever to do the simplest things, from writing a line in cursive to tying my shoelaces. Mrs. Houghton was only satisfied if we fell into line and performed precisely in accordance with her program. My slowness probably struck her as stupidity or laziness, and my advanced work, which was neither assigned nor graded by her, probably felt like an insult. Which I hope stung her like a spoonful of bees.

I couldn't explain it then, but I lived differently in time from everyone else. What seemed perfectly paced to me was minutely slow to an outside observer. My actions were and are so interleaved with interior moments, with reflection and reimagining and random invention, that it's hard for me stay present. Instead I arrive late for wandering off the path, and it is my hope that in those wanderings I find new paths to take.

***

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

The One About The Tiger

2010-11-25T22:40:00.003-06:00

I'm part of 750words.com, a site where members are encouraged to write 750 words daily. It's a brain-rattling exercise intended to get users in the habit of writing fluidly and freely. I've been doing it for a week or so now, and this one is my favourite. Please be advised that this was written in one sustained burst with absolutely minimal editing and a slight temperature.

Welcome Carl. Let's bring in the Supplicants. Supplicants, say hi to Carl. Carl here is going to tell us his sins and take part in the Rite of Initiation, and in return we're going to do a little dance. Think you can handle that, Carl?

Good. Now first, here's a copy of Waiting For Godot. We'd like you to open to page 42 and read along as we perform. Didn't we tell you that we perform portions of Waiting for Godot every fortnight? Last time we were interrupted by the tiger, so we didn't get as far as we anticipated. Supplicant #5 was going to read Lucky's monologue. "The stone! In Connemara! The stone!" Supplicant #5 can't do it now, though. We're on a strict rotating schedule, and anyway, the tiger ate him. No, we don't know how the tiger got here. Yes, we're aware that this is northern Scotland. Not generally part of a tiger's natural habitat. Maybe habitat loss has shifted the tiger's natural hunting grounds? No, probably not all the way up to Scotland.

I'm aware of how that sounds. But I swear it was a tiger. It roared and ran around and it had all the necessary stripes. Some might say it was a paragon of tigerness, but me, I'm just Supplicant #2, what I know about tigers you could fit inside a tiger's stomach. Like Supplicant #5! Most of him, anyway. Parts didn't seem to fit, or maybe the tiger has a discerning palate. We hosed the place down and gave #5 a proper burial. One day we'll get the tiger and then we can finish the funeral for him. Or her, we don't know. These cloaks and hoods cover quite a lot, but I have to say I enjoyed the sex with #5 more than with the other Supplicants. Probably that vagina thing, hey? I expect it's a vagina thing.

One day we'll find the tiger, kill it and bury it, and that will be the end of #5's rites. We were just up to page 42 of the rites, which is also Waiting for Godot, when the tiger came back and interrupted us again. So now we never start before page 42. I think this play's jinxed. But it's the only book we have, and seriously, it's a play and not that long. Starting off at page 42 makes for an abbreviated read. Can you pass me a light? I need to light the torches, and then we need to spray the whole place with blood. Warm, spicy human blood. Why? You know, I never thought to ask. It's part of the Rite of Initiation, and I think it's in the stage directions for Godot. And if it isn't, I wouldn't know, because we refuse to open the book to any page before 42. Yes, because of the tiger.

Well now, you make a good point, but I don't feel like taking chances. You want to take chances with a tiger? Tigers don't play cards, my friend. Bet your life with a tiger in the mix and it's a good chance the tiger will be going home with the goods. And by goods I mean your dead body. And by home I mean a lair of some kind, possibly a cave or a tree. I know leopards like trees, why wouldn't tigers? They're all cats, after all. Just like we're all human beings. And more specifically, we're Supplicants. I'm in charge here. That's right, me, Supplicant #2. Who is #1? You are #6, ha ha. But actually you are, or will be, after the initiation of Beckett and Blood and Tiger Attack.

Yes, we put the tiger in the ceremony anyway because there's just no knowing, is there? You can't tell. "No man may know the day or hour" when the tiger comes, swinging his pocket watch and asking for a cigarette. Pocket watch, yes. That's how we know it's the tiger. He comes by with the watch and has a smoke, and then he attacks. He's a wily one. A little portly. He also delivers the mail, which is nice, especially in a rural location such as this.

Hold on, Supplicant #24 has just informed me that I'm talking about the postman, not the tiger. The tiger doesn't deliver mail, he swings his heavy paw at our exposed necks and stomachs. There's a difference, let me tell you! "Oh the postman's here, just come to drop off some disembowelment!" That would be funny, wouldn't it? But no, it wouldn't be very funny at all.

This has been a message from the Church of the Tiger.

Palinode Around The Web: Double Downs and Recaps and Vainglory

2010-11-19T11:30:00.000-06:00

On MamaPop.com I recap this week's episode of Modern Family "Manny Get Your Gun". Because it's not enough to watch television when the internet now allows you to read it as well:

Stop! Cameron and Mitchell time. They’re still in that mysterious shopping district, and Mitchell is still hurrying Cameron along. Cameron stops when he sees an old man attempting to call down to a woman on a lower level (not classwise – physically one floor down). Cameron takes it upon himself to rebroadcast the man’s hoarse calls in an earshatteringly loud voice: “Helen, I love you! Give me a chance!” Helen stares up at them with a look of cloudy surprise. Is it me, or does the actress playing Helen appear to have lip implants?

Also, I review KFC's Double Down sandwich for Prairie Dog Mag. I have a byline and author photo and everything for this one.

Back in July I described KFC’s latest product as “the insult comedy of fast food.” After a look at the “Take Down the Double Down” ad campaign, complete with a Wall of Fame on Facebook, I realized that the Double Down is part of a new approach to the way we consume food. It's no longer enough that food be nutritious, or tasty, or even ‘fun’ after the fashion of cheese strings. Lately everything is an interactive challenge, which strikes me as a really tiresome way to eat lunch.

I don’t want to track my waistline or post photos of myself holding a burger with an unorthodox amount of bacon. I don’t want to sign up and share my breakfast experience with the Internet.

More to the point, I’m not sure that these challenges are all that challenging. Is it really a challenge to eat a couple of pieces of chicken, or have yogurt for two weeks, or pour yourself a bowl of bran cereal for a month? As an average member of a developed Western nation, I can think of no conceivable roadblock to eating cereal every day.

Enjoy your day! It's sunny and extraordinarily cold over here. This is the kind of day that lures you outside with its bright surfaces and then punishes you with brutally cold winds. It's the kind of day that mocks your vainglory. That's right, your vainglory will get a thorough punking before this day is through with you.

Thirty Days of Truth: Day Seven

2010-11-14T17:49:00.002-06:00

Day 7: Someone who has made your life worth living for.

Again with the preposition left hanging at the end of a sentence fragment. I'm going to have a serious talk with the internet about its memes.

The answer to this question is so obviously Schmutzie that I'd like to make something up. I'll say that a crow, a crow with one dead eye in a cage suspended in the branches of a tree, a tree of surpassing height on a plain at the edge of the city, a city that someone imagined on a slow afternoon in a traffic jam on the PCH or the M1 or the 401 but dismissed with hardly a thought when the jam, the result of a jacknifed truck a mile up the road, unclogged itself, and a traffic cop waved everyone on, slow and sure and measured with each wave, measuring the traffic out wheel by wheel, a slow inverted paddling through the air, as if the earth had been pinned down in its rotation, as if the crawling traffic were actually still, and the traffic cop were drifting backwards with each wave of his hand. My life is given worth by that crow.

***

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

balls

2010-11-09T22:31:00.000-06:00

Palinode: Hey, this receipt says "balls".

Schmutzie: Where does it say that?

Palinode: Right after "sweet and sour chicken".

Thirty Days of Truth: Day 6

2010-11-07T20:45:00.003-06:00

Day 6: Something you hope you never have to do.

This one will be easy. Or will it?

Folks, there are so many things in this world that I hope I never have to do. Fight a child soldier, for example. That would be such an awkward deadly encounter. What kind of bragging rights would killing a nine year old get me? There's also the intrinsic creepiness of tiny people attacking you and ramming the butt of a Kalashnikov into your crotch. What if the child soldier ran at me and started crawling up my body like a giant insect? A giant insect with two missing legs and an endoskeleton? I'd think I'd lay down and die, just to get the whole thing over with. No sir, I do not want to fight a child soldier.

On the other hand, I stand a reasonable chance of winning - at least, I'd stand a better chance of winning a fight against a member of the Lord's Resistance Army than I would against a Navy Seal. If I found myself in a death match situation, I'd pick the brainwashed nine year old over the guy who could disembowel me with a toothpick and rewire my corpse to walk into an embassy and explode.

The other thing I really don't want to do is eat human flesh. If you're eating people, then there are only so many possible scenarios that can lead up to the act, and none of them are good. Seriously, it is not likely that you'd be about to bite into a chunk of co-pilot or neighbour or whatever and pause to think, "Gee, life is sweet." The best possible scenario is that society has dropped its moral compass to the ground, and now you live in some wackadoo dystopia where ladyfingers from real ladies are all the rage.

Now that I think about it, I bet if you're really rich, you've probably eaten human flesh. If you have money enough to satisfy any desire, sooner or later you'll want to see how far you can push it. That's what I'd do. I'd hire someone to cook me their body parts. He'd be my butler, my cook and my food source all in one. Eventually he'd make a pretty bad butler and an even worse cook (once the legs go, it's tough to reach the controls on the stove). So I guess I do want to eat human flesh, since it's a perverted corollary of my desire for immense wealth. A desire for wealth is really a desire for the access to experience that wealth grants you. So it's likely that I also want to hire an athletic barbershop quartet to function as living stilts that sing in four-part harmony as I stride through the night across my vast estate. My estate on Saturn! I'm pretending to be so rich right now, you have no idea.

The third thing I don't want to do is be the guy who works up the live studio audience before an episode of Two and a Half Men. I just don't see the upside in it. And I'm a guy who can see the upside in killing nine year olds and eating his butler.

***

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Thirty Days of Truth: Day 5

2010-11-07T19:16:00.001-06:00

Day 5: Something you hope to do in your life.

I hope for so many things. My heart swells with hope. My knees bulge with hope. My hair recedes with hope (On a side note, hair observes the rule of conservation of mass: it vanishes from your skull and pops up... elsewhere. Aging is just a terrible thing). Even on the dullest day, the most torpid afternoons, the kind of days when Sherlock Holmes would reach for his violin and a syringe, hope keeps my eyes open.

My hopes haven't changed that much since my teenage years. When I was four years old I wanted to be an ichthyologist, but I guess at some point I decided that I knew all I needed to know about fish. At some point my inchoate desires resolved into writerly ambitions. That's it, my teenage self said, I am going to be a writer. Not just a writer, but A Writer Of Important Books Of Poetry. Everyone will want to read my Important Books Of Poetry. After all, poetry is widely read and enjoyed. And if it isn't, my Important Books Of Poetry will change that shit up. And isn't literary fame its own reward, with a deck chair in Elysium reserved just for me?

Some years later, I've learned that poetry is not nearly as big a hit as my limited experience had led me to believe. And a Great Modernist Novel will likely be bought by only a few and read by even fewer. But none of that has capped my hope, which is that I will write my way into enduring greatness. There a few obstacles in my path - inveterate laziness being only one of them - but the hope persists, and lights the way.

***

These entries are part of the Thirty Days of Truth Project, which I agreed to do with several friends, because apparently we're shy about our masochism.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Thirty Days of Truth: Day 4

2010-11-07T12:45:00.000-06:00

Day 4: Something I have to forgive someone for.

The first person I need to forgive is whoever originally drummed up this list. Anonymous person, mad geneticist of this blog meme, I forgive you for ending that sentence fragment with a preposition.

The second person I need to forgive is myself, for agreeing to take on this project of truth. It becomes increasingly clear, as I read over the list below and compose sketches of future posts in my mind, that this is not about truth; it's about confession. Therapeutic truth, not philosophical or literary or even actual truth. Just ripping into your big mushy pile of memory and digging out something shameful or profound in the service of a writing prompt for your blog. Or more accurately, your Facebook notes page.

One of the hoariest cliches about truth (even hoarier than the term 'hoary cliche') is that it is universal. This list demonstrates that truth is provisional and prescriptive. Write a letter to your hero? Dear Mom... Dear Firefighter... Dear Homeless Guy Dressed Like Santa Claus in July... I just don't think of truth in the way that this list demands.

So how do I think of truth? I've discovered that truth doesn't like to be thought of. Thought is concentrated heat, and truth buzzes away into steam as soon as thought's beam is swung down. There was a time when I thought it meant fact, or confession, but now that I'm a bit older I've realized that the facts of my life are nobody's business. What I write has nothing to do with fact. I tweak and repurpose the facts all the time. I probably don't even remember those few facts I play with. That kind of truth is a constant error. The other truth, the one that grows over all surfaces and sends its invisible roots into the substance of all things, is just the spoor of our consciousness landing on objects.

I also need to forgive Mark Bittman for that scrambled egg recipe. Forty minutes of stirring eggs around a pan for "a mass of soft curds". Do you know what a mass of soft curds looks like, or the hideous process of transformation that occurs when a pale liquid disc of egg slowly retracts into a dark mass of something that looks indisputably like snot? It is not pretty. It tastes good, especially with tarragon and fleur de sel, but ah god is it ever ugly. Remember Slimer from Ghostbusters? Imagine if Slimer decided to commit suicide by non-stick frying pan. That's Bittman's idea of good eggs. And that's the truth.

***

These entries are part of the Thirty Days of Truth Project, which I agreed to do with several friends, because apparently we're shy about our masochism.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

thirty days of truth: day 3

2010-10-25T01:40:00.002-06:00

Day 3: Something you must be forgiven for.

Blog project, you think you're clever. You think you can prod some names out of me, get me between the lockers and the showers and kick a confession from my lungs. But I have nothing I need to be forgiven for, aside from the casual scraping up of the Earth's resources that we've all perfected over the last two hundred years or so. The time I was a child and made my mother cry? I can't even remember what I said, but I vaguely recall that I felt like shouting for the pure absurdity of it, the strange joy of putting on a different face for a moment. I'm probably the only person who remembers it now.

There's the period of my life between fifteen and twenty-five when I was basically a self-absorbed twit with poor impulse control - but that hardly sets me apart from the rest of my developmentally delayed generation. I picture asking for forgiveness from the usual roster of people I wronged - family, friends, girlfriends, etc. - or apologizing, but that seems awkward now. It's all just mulch and trash, the compacted and fertile ground out of which my adult self has grown.

There was the time in the Bay cafeteria in downtown Calgary, when I slid by an elderly woman and grabbed the last available table. I took it because I was younger and faster, and I'd be damned if I was going to eat my lunch standing up. That was 1993? I sat down and started eating, and I could see - from the corner of my eye - how incredibly angry the woman was. She summoned a security employee, but no one approached me as I sat and ate some whole wheat something for my lunch. I threw aside my customary courtesy and took what I wanted. But I think this is what people do all the time.

Another woman used to visit that cafeteria, a homeless person who piloted a shopping cart piled with trash bags. I had no doubt that those lumpy green bags held her every last possession. The woman had even dressed herself in trash: garbage bags were wrapped around her stained winter clothing and stuffed with newspapers, giving her the appearance of animated dumpster overflow. Every so often she would shuffle through the cafeteria line, buy a plate of food and make her way to a table where she could eat in peace and keep an eye on her shopping cart.

I think of that woman and wonder what kind of person I would have to be scoot in front of her to grab a table. Would I want to be forgiven for that? Chances are that if I could take a lunch table from a homeless woman then I wouldn't give a rat's ass about forgiveness.

And then there's the matter of moral calculus. I would never have scooted ahead of that woman to grab a table. But then, I never spoke to her, never offered her a place to stay or handed over my paycheque so that she might have a little extra warmth or cash. I was making minimum wage in an expensive city at the time, but I was young and had connections that basically meant I never had to spend any time without the protection of a home. The question of whether I should be forgiven for ignoring her would be ridiculous to the other customers in the cafeteria - after all, I was doing exactly what everyone else was doing. But that could be said of nearly everything I do. Or you do. So to sum up, I forgive you for ignoring a homeless woman dressed in garbage.

And lastly, I should be forgiven for posting Paul Young's 1978 Top 20 hit with Streetband, "Toast".

***

These entries are part of the Thirty Days of Truth Project, which I agreed to do with several friends, because apparently we're shy about our masochism.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Thirty Days of Truth: Day 2

2010-10-17T17:36:00.001-06:00

I've signed up (figuratively) to participate the Thirty Days of Truth project. Today's truth stuff: Something I Love About Myself.

Ah hell. Ah well. Talking myself up goes completely against my nature. There are a host of things I like about myself or from which I take some satisfaction, but precious few that I love. Loving seems like an act better devoted to other people, or Pavement albums, or hot sauce. But I'll turn my Searchlight O' Love inward to find something worth the illumination.

Yes, here it is. I love my writing. I get all twitterpated and clammy handed when I read over a paragraph that works. And most of my paragraphs work, at least to some degree. They're like these little self-contained rhetorical machines that, on occasion, seem to hum from an invisible source. That's when my heart rate accelerates and I feel the sudden need to steal around the corner for a post-graph smoke.

Some fairly obvious dangers lurk around corners when your chief skill is bolting sentences together. Sometimes I'll write charming and ornamental prose that ends up remarkably free of content. I always think of Martin Amis when I contemplate the danger of having a surplus of prose skill and a dearth of material. Shitty houses of prose, that's what you get. This is fine for record reviews but bad for government briefing notes, as I found out at my last performance review. Then they laid me off, so screw them.

My writing skills, such as they are, derive from a book-filled childhood and a habit of mind that looks for connections between odd and incongruous things. For example, yesterday I was alone in the apartment and watching one of the cats poke at a curled-up piece of cardboard on the floor. From where I sat he appeared to be daubing, so I asked the cat: "Cat, are you daubing? Is it in your nature to daub?" The cat didn't answer, obviously, because it's no more in a cat's nature to speak English than it is to daub. After all, daubing is an application of a substance on a surface, and requires a certain practical or aesthetic intent that no cat can possess. We're the daubers of the planet. I considered, then, what is in our nature, and as far as I can know, whatever the limits of our nature may be, it is our nature to get around those limits and muck around in areas where we have no real business. I decided that our nature is promiscuous.

And that, I realized, is a perfect description of my mind. It roams around and bothers all kinds of ideas that it has no business bothering, inviting all sorts of notions to hang out for a while, just to see if we all hit it off. My brain is a roving slut in the realm of pure forms. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm intelligent - I would describe my intelligence as a narrow stream cutting through a gorge, with ideas running into it - but that my mind is usually rolling over several things at once, turning and turning them until the unexpected connection locks into place. The job of my writing is to select among those connected pieces and pick the best of the bunch. And that's how my writing is a slutty river rock tumbler interior decorator.

Thirty Days of Truth: Day 1

2010-10-11T18:53:00.001-06:00

Oh yes. I've signed on with various pals to blog out thirty days of truth. We're tackling truth on Mondays and Wednesdays, so the thirty days are going to be spread out over fifteen weeks (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays will still be given over to mendacity). Which means that we will be well into the hard ground of February before we've tilled all the expectant truths from this project. Some of these will be great fun. Others will not. Day 1 is an example of what will not be fun. But it's best to try the bitter before the sweet, and see how it goes:

Day 1: Something I Hate About Myself

Well, what day is it? Because there are days when every atom I cart around is brimming with a nauseating acid, a thin ugly mixture of my disgust. But there are more tempered and temperate days when I enjoy a few things about myself - the texture and shade of my skin, the silver hairs that have gradually sprouted in place of the red in my beard, or maybe my taste in clothes. But it's not a physical trait or habit of character that I dislike about myself so much as it is the entire web of my consciousness. It goes everywhere and yet seems blunted or burnt off at the same time, as if I'm just intelligent enough to understand my limits and not nearly wise enough to derive satisfaction from my talents.

It's important to distinguish my generalized unhappiness right now, which springs from being in a transitional period at a point in my life when I'm about take a seat in the antechamber of middle age, from my dislike of my limits. That dislike corrodes my ease, pits me and leaves me shot through with holes. People can see it, that corrosion, or I imagine they can, and it makes me feel inauthentic and ridiculous.

Now that I reread this, I'm not sure how truthful it is. I think I've managed to erase what I'm saying as I say it, cover it up with the very words intended to unearth a truth. I do not like that I feel stupid or unable to measure up sometimes. It seems completely out of place with everything I know about myself. I can not possibly be true. And yet I believe it. And maybe that's the thing I hate.

That's really all that I can say. Day 1.

***

Following are the writing prompts for 30 Days of Truth, should you be interested in doing so yourself.

Day 01 → Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 → Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 → Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 → Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 → Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 → Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 → Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 → Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 → Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 → Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 → Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 → A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 → A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 → Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 → Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 → A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 → Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 → What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 → Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 → (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 → Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 → Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 → Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 → The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 → Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 → What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 → What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 → Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 → A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

Thursday afternoon

2010-10-09T22:53:00.001-06:00

On late Thursday afternoon I walked downtown to meet a friend. As I crossed from the jumble of flat-roofed apartment blocks and prewar two-story houses into the downtown core, I couldn't shake the feeling that the city seemed displaced somehow. I felt as if I were walking in a larger city, a place with taller buildings and darker, deeper streets, with a greater density of people walking through them.

Part of the displacement came from the sheer fact that I have been working out of my house for about a month, and the downtown core, which used to be a part of my daily routine, with its network of lunch places and stores, had become slightly foreign. I was aware for the first time – the first time in twenty years of intermittent living in this city – just how wide the sidewalk on the east side of Hamilton is once you hit the main banking and shopping area, and the expansiveness of the plaza by the Toronto Dominion building.

The people who crowded the sidewalks seemed reduced by the dimensions of the streets. Men and women sat and smoked and consulted their cell phones on isolated benches, eddied by parking meters and wandered, as if they were trying to remember something important. They felt the oddity of the moment as well.

After a few minutes, I realized that the conjunction of light and temperature was making everything strange. It was five o' clock, and the streets were crowded with people leaving their offices and heading home. But the weather was so unseasonably warm that everyone was dressed in light clothes, as if it were midday in, say, early September. At this time of year the sun dips below the buildings by five and leaves everything in a pale, undifferentiated shadow, but the shadowed streets had a noon heat.

The effect made downtown Regina look briefly like the urban canyons of Chicago or Toronto or some equivalent city. Thursday at five on Hamilton Street in Regina was, for a space of about fifteen to twenty minutes, utterly specific in its strangeness. That time of year and that heat maybe occur once a decade – if that. Unless global warming permanently turns up the thermostat on autumn, I may never experience that street again in that same way. And I probably won't. That was it: a few minutes on a single day in the last autumn of my thirties.

I don't yet know what to do with that bit of information. It is mine, and it immensely valuable, but on its own it is worthless. It is like ore, sought after for what can be made from it.

You know

2010-10-07T10:00:00.002-06:00

I always thought it would be more grammatically correct for Horton to hear a Whom.

How to Tell when your Neighbours Are Cannibals Who Want to Eat your Children

2010-10-06T17:13:00.001-06:00

Increasingly these days, people are cannibals who want to eat your children. Tough times in the economy and disillusionment with mass farming practices (thanks, Michael Pollan! thanks a bunch) have lead ever-larger numbers of people to choose cannibalism over just going to the grocery store. After all, why go shopping when your food source lives right next door, visible from the small holes you've bored in the fence to better observe your prey?

Today's cannibals invariably target children – not because they are presumed to have more flavourful or tender flesh, but because the habit of cannibalism disposes them to see people purely in terms of muscle and bone mass (the bones make a nice stock). Therefore the typical cannibal believes that children, being smaller, will not be missed as quickly.

It only takes a few cannibal families to deplete a neighbourhood of its children and drive down property values. Here are a few ways to tell if your new neighbours have a taste for long piglet.

They run an affordable daycare. Daycares are like candy stores for cannibals. Except children are made of meat, not candy. So daycares are like bacon stores for cannibals. Sure, some daycares are not run or staffed by cannibals, but even the few non-cannibal places out there still charge way too much. Beware of affordable daycare. Telltale signs include:, empty bottles of barbecue sauce in the parking lot, missing extremities on your child, 'self-grilling' games and activities, swimming pools full of marinade.

They have frequent outdoor barbecues. Cannibals hide their habits in plain sight. See a barbecue chained to the deck? Find that you're never invited over for one of their weekly backyard get-togethers? Think about it.

Coded language and slips of the tongue. If your neighbour refers to your kids as “fall-off-the-bone cute,” there may be a problem. And that problem involves your child getting eaten.

Plenty of other signs are discernible to the vigilant parent. Do your neighbours stay in all the time? Or go out too much? Are delicious smells wafting from their kitchen windows? Or even more suspiciously, no smells at all? Do they react with defensiveness or hostility when you call them out on their cannbalism? Do they refuse a reasonable request for regular searches of their home? How about when you put up signs warning everyone that the Bilsons next door are suspected child-eaters? Observe their body language carefully when they discover the signs and the burning effigies on their front lawn. Each little detail adds up.

You know what? Your neighbours are cannibals, and the only thing a cannibal respects is cannibalism. Eat one of their children, just to show you mean business. They may be angry at first, but they'll have a newfound respect for you. And you'll pleasantly surprised at the size of your next grocery bill.

the meaning of TV

2010-10-02T13:26:00.000-06:00

Schmutzie: What's on TV tonight?

Palinode: I don't think you realize what 'TV' stands for.

Schmutzie: Television.

Palinode: Nope. It stands for 'toilet vomit'.

Schmutzie: What?

Palinode: Yup.

Schmutzie: Did you say toilet velmet?

Palinode: Velmet? What the hell is velmet? No. Vomit.

Schmutzie: What are you talking about?

Palinode: All these years you've been talking about TV like it means television. And it means something really gross.

Schmutzie: ...

Palinode: Seriously, it's kind of embarrassing.

Schmutzie: I think there's a case to be made for TV standing for television.

Palinode: In your crazy fantasy world where people throw up televisions, maybe.

Affectionate nicknames for my wife in the spirit of calling parents "the 'rents"

2010-10-01T21:11:00.000-06:00

The 'pouse
The s'other
The 'tner
The 'ife

Palinode on Prairie Dog: Tangerine Food Bar Review

2010-09-25T21:32:00.002-06:00

Not many of you know that, in addition to appearing at the top of this web page, I'm the restaurant critic for Prairie Dog Mag, the local alternative paper. Why do I do this (besides the money)? Because if I didn't, no one in this city would eat anything. I know, it's weird.

Of all the dishes I tried, the North Star of Tangerine’s rotating firmament of foods was the chorizo, mushroom and chicken stew. The dish seems expensive — $6 for a small bowl, $10 for the large — but the price is more than justified. This tomato-based stew is as crowded as a New York subway platform at rush hour but considerably more tasty. Too often, dishes like this will dole out a few chunks of the main attraction as if a particular ingredient aspired to celebrity status and could not be bothered to put in a full appearance at your table (check out some Greek salads in this city where the appearance of an olive is newsworthy).

Check out my full review of Tangerine at the Prairie Dog website. You may also, because you care, want to view my review of 2b Theatre's play Invisible Atom - because the only thing better than live theatre is people writing about live theatre. Amirite? No? Okay then, I'll sit here on my luxury yacht purchased from the proceeds of my writing career. It's got a lid, a sink, a couple of busted halogen lamps and everything. Wait, did I say yacht? I meant dumpster, but whatever. Semantics.

Dr. Manhattan Reviews Christopher Nolan

2010-09-19T15:37:00.001-06:00

When not passively allowing massive disasters to devastate New York City, Dr. Manhattan enjoys sharing his thoughts on contemporary film

Inception

“It's the end of the movie. The top is spinning. Twenty seconds from now the audience is groaning. Now it's the middle of the film. The van is falling. They want to wake up. Too late. It's always too late”.

The Prestige

“The film hinges on Christian Bale playing two characters pretending to be one person. But already they are the same. They are Christian Bale. The atoms of each character are identical because they reside in the same body. The only atoms I liked in this film were the ones in Scarlett Johanson. I'm thinking of asking her out, or maybe creating a Scarlett Johanson to live with me on Alpha Centauri. Did you know that David Bowie is in this film? Sometimes I think he's the only person who really gets me”.

Following

“I haven't watched this one yet, which means that I will never watch it. Wait, I'm seeing a few minutes of it at a friend's house. Why did he invite me over if he's just going to sit there getting high and watching cable? Now I am at his funeral and he still won't talk to me. I need to find cooler friends”.

The Dark Knight

“I am waiting in line to see The Dark Knight. It is an hour later and I am still in line. It's 2008. Will I ever get in to see this film? Now I am at the ticket counter but the movie is sold out. It's okay, it's Tuesday now and I'm back. The movie is sold out again and I am being arrested for indecent exposure. It's 2010 and I am watching it on Blu-ray. The resolution is outstanding. The franchise is restored. I won't tell anybody that Joel Schumacher is about to start making sequels again”.

Memento

“Well, that was disappointingly straightforward”.

the lost supper

2010-09-18T13:33:00.000-06:00

[Afternoon. Summer leaching out of the sunlit sky. Palinode and Schmutzie are hungry.]

Schmutzie: We should go for lunch.

Palinode: Agreed. We should lunch.

Schmutzie: People don't use meals for verbs much these days. Breakfast, supper.

Palinode: Sure they do. For example, "Yo, 'sup" means "Hi there. Eat supper".

Schmutzie: No it does not.

Palinode: It's a timely reminder for an evening meal baked right into a greeting. Very efficient discourse.

Schmutzie: Not even close:

Palinode: ...

Palinode: It's Spanish.

Schmutzie: SHUT UP.

Palinode on MamaPop: Roundtable Video

2010-09-13T21:57:00.000-06:00

Over at Mamapop.com I've posted the MamaPop Roundtable Video. This week we all read out the lyrics to a Miley Cyrus tune, and in the process perhaps we learn a little something about ourselves. But probably not.

The ubiquity of pop music – its ability to leap through the air and materialize in the back seat of a taxi or the balconies of a club – is the subject of the song, but the ubiquity of Cyrus herself is the subtext. In essence, the story of the song is homiletic; Cyrus wants you to respond to Party In The USA in the same way that the singer responds to the Britney song. MILEY CYRUS IS ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL YOUR CHILDREN’S MINDS. But you probably knew that already. Like yeah.

MamaPop Video Roundtable: Like Yeah Edition

the ingredient

2010-09-12T22:38:00.001-06:00

[Deep, ridiculous night. Electricity all over the place, just trying to keep the night outside. Schmutzie and Palinode ignore humanity's triumph over the night and watch TV.]

Schmutzie: I don't like this commercial.

Palinode: This is a commercial?

Schmutzie: They tell you that this product has an ingredient that stops heartburn, but they don't tell you what the ingredient is.

Palinode: Don't need to know. As a viewer, I'm too busy and important for details.

Schmutzie: Maybe they figure we're too dumb to trouble ourselves over the name of the ingredient.

Palinode: It doesn't matter if I know what the ingredient is. I just need to know that the ingredient will stop heartburn.

Schmutzie: But what if the ingredient is dog poop? Dog poop to stop the heartburn?

Palinode: Dog poop doesn't work that way.

Schmutzie: Oh, you know how dog poop works.

Palinode: I know enough to know that it doesn't stop heartburn.

gluten free

2010-09-08T18:04:00.001-06:00

[Supper time. Schmutzie and The Palinode are hungry. Who can blame them?]

Schmutzie: Is it supper time?

Palinode: It is.

[See? Just like I said.]

Schmutzie: Is there food in the house?

Palinode: Maybe. But there's better food outside the house.

Schmutzie: I should phone Panago and see if they have gluten free pahp - pizza.

Palinode: Were you about to say gluten-free pap smears?

Schmutzie: I think I was.

Palinode: Because you shouldn't fall for the ads. All pap smears are gluten free.

[Sadly this conversation happened.]

Five Days in New York

2010-08-16T22:25:00.003-06:00

Our plane arrives five hours late at the nearly empty Newark Airport. We arrange for a shuttle into Manhattan with an elderly couple and a young man in a baseball cap who never stops placing calls on his cell phone. The shuttle driver arrives with a clipboard. – Hey, you came here on a hot day in New York, the driver calls out, gesturing for us to follow. – Not where we're from, the elderly man announces, brushing his navy blazer and walking ahead of his wife. No one asks him where they're from.

***
Some cities sprawl outward, but New York grows inward. Everything is wedged in or tucked under its neighbour, sharing bits of space in an entryway, grabbing a hallway or a crawl space there. Every single thing demands a longer look, until a slight shift of perspective makes it fan out into two, then three.

***

At an Italian restaurant with Schmutzie, Maggie and Kate, we talk about grief, obligation, Minnesota accents and the remarkable innovation of green lentils in olive oil as a bread dip. – I'm so happy, Kate declares, interrupting herself with a smile.

Kate also tells me that my eyeballs are juicy. It's the light, she says, and rapidly snaps five pictures of me with my eyes closed.

***

In the MoMA courtyard a man in lavender jeans and a smoothly contoured muscle shirt walks ahead of us. His butt is so small that it seems somehow tucked in between his legs. – When I see that I think of missed opportunities, I say. – Opportunities for what? Schmutzie asks. – Clothing. We sit on wire chairs and watch the birds. A sparrow with a crooked leg hunts for crumbs among the tiled stones. – Look! says Schmutzie. It's like he's posing.

***

At the BlogHer book signing, a man in charcoal trousers and an unblinking gaze like a forearm grip is fixed on Jon. – You're my hero, he says. – Yeah? The man holds his eyes open a fraction too wide, as if he were in the presence of a terrible angel. – Is there is a place to buy your book? he asks Kate, who points to the sales table. The man runs off to buy a copy as if he's been given a mission. We see him again at two a.m. outside the Hilton lounge, attempting to bully a woman into a having a drink. Come on, it's New York! Come on! Perhaps unkindly, we refer to him Mr. Date-rapey for the rest of the conference.

***

The endless jokes about the smell of urine on the city streets are true, but urine is only the most easily identifiable smell. Manhattan streets in midsummer emit a constant baking fug: hot rubber, discarded oil from halal food carts, split garbage bags on restaurant curbsides leaking into the drains. Faces contort as they walk over grates. After the fifth day I can only smell urine.

***

At the humour bloggers panel I heckle Jessica Bern, which brands me in conference goers' memory as "the cute and then not-so-cute almost bald guy," which reduces itself to "the bald guy" over the course of an afternoon. Women in cocktail dresses point me out in elevators: Hey, it's the bald guy! After a while I realize that heckling Jessica Bern was the best thing I ever did in my life.

***

I promise to take Schmutzie to see the site where the World Trade Centre buildings once stood, even though I'm not entirely clear where that is. We start off in the general direction of the towers, up Fulton Street to Broadway. We stop in the graveyard behind St. Paul's cathedral, wandering down concrete paths between the 18th century gravestones. The humid afternoon haze dissolves the gravestones and greys out the buildings in the distance, as if we we are walking through an inverted night. We reach the end of the cemetery. –There it is. I point. – Where? says Schmutzie. – Right across the street.

***

The stage behind the DJ is overtaken by women. Someone brings up a giant BlogHer sign and a dozen dancers hold the sign aloft. The DJ puts on Erasure and suddenly everyone who isn't dancing is suddenly on the floor. We follow Andy Bell's punchy, plaintive voice down the valley of thatyagimmeno thatyagimmenos and burst out when he sings soul. Jason and Jon stand on the edge of the dance floor, pointing and laughing. Probably at me.

***

I order another gin and tonic at Arthur's Tavern, vaguely aware that it's probably going to cost another ten dollars, but not caring. Schmutzie and I are sitting in the corner by the front door with Adam and James. A jazz group, made up of old guys who appear to have wandered in with instruments and spontaneously decided to get up on stage, play Gershwin. The bartender, a girl in a skimpy tank top and iPod earbuds planted firmly in her ears, looks visibly, violently angry when someone asks for a drink. – What do they have on tap here? I ask Adam. – You see that plate on the bar? I nod. That's where the taps used to be. Before they collapsed.

– What a great bar.

***

The cab drops us off in the financial district on Sunday afternoon. Water Street is a dead zone of closed restaurants and shuttered bodegas. The sky is a bright bronze but the streets are crepuscular. A group of kids launch themselves from railings and sail down the street, fanning out across the pavement and around the corner towards Battery Park. A crowd erupts from the Staten Island Ferry terminal and dissipates in moments.

Inside the terminal, pigeons fly from beam to beam. A little girl threads through the crowd, calling Mommy, pigeons! A man in yellow shirtsleeves and an impossible jumble of teeth protuding past his lips studies her as she runs past. – Fix your hair! he shouts.

***

A man leans against a wall on William Street, sorting coins in his palm. Several fall and hit the sidewalk. – Shit! he screams, but makes no move to collect them. A quarter and a dime drop from his hand and disappear down a grate. Shit! Again! He continues to count up his coins as we walk past.

Everybody Wants Something But I Don't Know What That Is

2010-08-12T22:04:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago, in service of a joke, I looked up the lyrics to the Degrassi Junior High theme song ("Wake up in the morning/feeling kinda lonely/Gee, I gotta go to school"). The memory of that song, shared by pretty much any Canadian or Kevin Smith around my age, has a liturgical feel to it, a point of shared consciousness captured in the song's stacatto dada-dada-dada phrases. The lyrics start off in an anxious frame of mind, but the breathless pace doesn't give you time to dwell. And of course, by the time you get to that aspirational chorus (Everybody can succeed, all you gotta do is believe/Let's be honest with yourself, forget your fears and doubts), the anxiety dissolves away and you're left with a pleasure that is like an empty school hallway, a kind of mentholated pep-rally aftertaste of the soul.

During my search, I also dug up the lyrics to the Zit Remedy's only song, "Everybody Wants Something". The Zit Remedy (originally just The Zits) were a fictional band comprising Joey, Snake and Wheels (no drummer? Why not just go for keyboard bass?). "Everybody Wants Something" was the only song they ever wrote, sang or performed. There was something kind of brilliant about the tune; it was clunky but catchy, awkward but charming, silly but earnest - in other words, precisely the song that a group of mildly talented 15 year olds would come up with.

But when I read the lyrics, I realized that I had misheard them - that I had spent the last twenty and some years with a false idea about The Zit Remedy, Degrassi, and life itself. You think I joke, but half-remembered lyrics are little bits of linguistic RNA, binding with our memory and our ideas until they're indistinguishable from the way we think about things. They twist our minds, and we twist them in turn, exchanging and rechanging. So you can imagine (obviously) the tidal shift in my brain when I discovered that The Zit Remedy were not singing:

Everybody wants something that'll never give up
Everybody wants something that'll take your money, and never give up

But instead were singing:

Everybody wants something, they'll never give up
Everybody wants something, they'll take your money, and never give up

I'll come out and say it: my version is superior in every way. In the first place, my version does not commit a comma splice - the ugliest of all grammatical errors. Furthermore, it is not clear in the original version to whom the "they" in the second and fourth clauses refer, since "everybody" is singular. If you don't believe me, just fill in the pronouns with genuine nouns. You get results like:

Every rabbit wants a banana, forceps'll never give up
Every hairstyle wants a raven, cheeses'll take your money, and never give up

See? It's a terrible chorus after all. Even if you pick sensible nouns like person and people, there's still no rationale for the relentlessness and avarice depicted.

In my version, however, the song acquires a terrible and compelling logic that has haunted me for the last two decades. The Zit Remedy hints at a story of unquenchable desire for an elusive but powerful object, an inexhaustible, sacred thing that will certainly impoverish you - but it will never, ever give up. You will die attempting to possess it, but you never will. Instead, it will possess you.

The rest of the song is about believing in yourself and doing the best you can, darnit.

Emergency Euphemism Resupply Depot

2010-07-30T15:50:00.002-06:00

The world needs euphemisms. Every day we find new perversions, and the demand for delicate phrases to cover them up continues to keep pace. As long as civilization demands a base level of hypocrisy, we will need suggestive phrases that throw an antimacassar over the ugly headrest of truth.

The problem is, we are running out of euphemisms. No one is inventing whole new languages, and the economic downturn is affecting the steady production of metaphors that serve as base ingredients in the development process. Fortunately, I have a home euphemism distillery in my basement, and I'm giving away a few free samples.

Sex

"Firing the Electron Gun" - watching porn
"Gerrymandering your Districts" - adultery
"Raising the Hoof" - bestiality or driving across state lines for sex
"Reading the Buffy Comics" - generally taking things beyond the point when it stops being fun

Drugs

"Coors-Lighting It" - smoking crack with an old Coors Light bottle
"Heinekening It" - Heineken? Fuck that shit! Smoke your crack through an old Pabst Blue Ribbon bottle.
"Genuine Miller Chill Lime Beering It" - deliberately drinking Miller Chill Lime Beer

Other Vices

"Ol' Two Toes" - sloth or accident victim or ninjas
"Ol' Three Toes"- again, sloth, but used to refer to people primarily in the rainforests of Central and South America, an area which stretches from Nicaragua down into Bolivia and Brazil, and extends as far as Peru. Also, they are surprisingly agile swimmers.
"Tea Taster" - not really a euphemism but the actual name for those who indulge too heavily in the 'brew', a vice leading to neurasthenia, phthisis and In Search of Lost Time.

Miscellaneous

"Sergeant-at-arms" - In Israel this euphemism is called the "katzin ha-Knesset". This is a rare euphemism that has undergone almost no exposure to metaphor, and so has no pejorative meaning. Prized by connoisseurs and very expensive. Supplies are limited, so contact me for more.

marks

2010-07-30T01:21:00.000-06:00

This is the story of how I agreed to get a tattoo of Hall and Oates fighting a Balrog. It is the kind of story that should not really happen to someone once they've passed the age of twenty three, but here I am at thirty nine making rash promises on social networks. I will never do that again, until the next time I do it.

It started when I wrote this:

Which prompted this:

Having no good answer at hand, I closed my eyes and wrote down the first thing that appeared in my mind:

Then the irrational entered. When I have pressing tasks at hand (I had a restaurant review to write, but since I'd only eaten two dishes there, and on both occasions I had to physically walk up to a server with my menu in hand and order food by basically getting in their faces until they agreed to bring me my bebimbap, I didn't want to write it, because it was making me angry and depressed about the state of restaurant service in this town), I turn to Twitter and I start making up sentences that could not practically exist anywhere else, just to stir up some attention:

And then:

Because I thought it would be one of those ludicrous pop culture mashups that could never have existed before they invented irony. But irony is like a Penrose staircase that keeps plodding upward, riser by riser. Even when you think you've reached the summit, another section unfolds itself:

I was all full of brio:

Anyway, an actual artist read the exchange:

And like a fool with a deadline I said to the actual artist:

And the upshot is this:

This will be my first tattoo.

Two-Minute Inception

2010-07-19T14:29:00.001-06:00

Spoilers. Don't be reading unless you like spoilers.

[Scene: Wherever. Maybe it's a dream, maybe it isn't. Let's say it's some anonymous warehouse space or an office building lobby. If it's not a ridiculously expensive rotating hallway, then it's just some random spot with as much character as a Soviet apartment block.]

SAITO: Cobb, I need you to plant an idea in someone's mind - what you call 'inception'. I need you to convince this man named Fischer to break up his father's business empire.

COBB: I can do it. I'll need a new team, special sedatives, a dream within a dream within a dream...

SAITO: I have to go to the bathroom really badly. Can you hurry it up?

COBB: Okay, hold on. Hey Fischer!

FISCHER: Yup?

COBB: Break up your father's empire.

FISCHER: No.

COBB: I'm kidnapping you. Break up your father's empire.

FISCHER: No.

COBB: I'm the head of your security team now. Break up your father's empire.

FISCHER: No!

COBB: We're in some kind of snow fortress and we're doing stuff? Break up your -

FISCHER: Alright. Shut up already.

MAL: Cobb. I love you. Stay with me.

COBB: I killed you. Sort of. Sorry.

MAL: I'm dead? That's sad.

COBB: I feel better now.

ELLEN PAGE: I'm glad I could help you come to terms with your emotions.

COBB: You're still here?

ELLEN PAGE: I guess. I don't even remember my character's name.

COBB: Everything is better now.

COBB: Where am I anyway?

the future of film

2010-07-19T02:01:00.001-06:00

People now agree, with the success of Avatar and Toy Story 3, that 3D movies are here to stay. But the truth is that humanity is hungry for novelty, and that once home 3D televisions become commonplace, we will look for greater entertainment value from our theatres. I predict that within 10 years we will start watching four-dimensional and perhaps even five-dimensional films.

But what will a 4D film look like? Actually, the film won't look very different, but you will experience the film across time, so that you will have already watched the first half of the film by the time you sit down in the theatre. This has the great advantage of allowing you to leave halfway through and still have seen the whole film, which is great for avoiding the post-movie bar rush.

Unfortunately, if the film is total crap, then you'll be aware of how terrible it is before you even get in the car to drive to the theatre (not to mention the difficulties involved in driving and watching a film at the same time). Nor is it possible to change your mind at that point and stay home; if you're seeing the film prior to screening time, logic dictates that you will arrive at the 4D cineplex, buy your ticket and make your way into the theatre, even though you've spent the last hour miserably aware that you're about to waste your money on some tasteless piece of schlock. Good luck trying to buy a ticket and get a refund at the same time. I predict great increases in surliness and angry tweets in our entertainment future.

Not only will you be watching the movie about an hour before it begins, the temporal extension effect of 4D film means that you will continue to watch it even after the film is over. This sounds like an unbelievable annoyance, but it's actually the handiest feature of the new technology. 4D technology enhances post-movie discussion and argument because the details of the film remain fresh in your memory. It's more fun to debate the ending of Mulholland Drive when you're still watching it at the bar with your friends.

It's important to distinguish between movies that are filmed in 4D and those that are converted to 4D in post-production. Often a post-conversion simply means that the temporal editors tranpose three copies of the film with different start times. The result, as you can imagine, is an incomprehensible mess.

There is also the matter of the special 4D helmets that permit the viewer to enjoy the film without glimpsing the 'void between' and going hopelessly insane.

When 5D eventually comes out it will blow 4D out of the water. 5D movies not only extend into the past and the future, but forwards and backwards as well. The movie screen will become a reference point for a spatial and temporal hypercube field.

A schematic for the multiplex of the future

Some cinemas may have to reconfigure the placement of screens, since a screen placed near the back wall will result in a movie easily viewed by teenagers congregating behind the theatre in bootleg 5D movie viewing envirosuits, smoking futuristic cigarettes and drinking futuristic wine coolers.

Damn editors

2010-07-13T00:30:00.001-06:00

I wrote a review of Wolf Parade's new album Expo 86 for an esteemed publication. The editor in chief liked the review but deemed my line about Bryan Adams too mean. Here it is:

Here's a depressing-ass fact for you: Bryan Adams was nominated as Artist of the Year in 1986 and 2009.* Someone should send manned vessels to his face and mine its craters for their deposits of magic fame-extending oils.

I think my editor felt that acne-pitted readers might object, and that his paper strives for an elevated discourse whose parabola projects it miles above ad hominem slights and body mockery. However, I feel that Bryan Adams should be attacked at all available altitudes. I met him once and it was more unpleasant than the time I went to some party in some basement suite and some guy named Ricky with a fade and a coke habit decided to strip down and wave a knife around.

*At the Juno Awards, Canada's version of the Grammys. Also, this statement plays a little fast and loose with the record, and exemplifies the sloppy approach that I try to take with everything in life (I regard it as a self-imposed hurdle on my race course to success). Adams was up for Male Vocalist of the Year in 1986, but the Artist of the Year category did not exist then. Also, he was not only nominated for the '86 award, he also won it. The more I explain it the worse I sound.

The Facts In The Case of S. Chmutzie

2010-06-23T20:31:00.001-06:00

[A sunlit street in late afternoon. The sound of jackhammers echoing off buildings, the strum of a bored busker's guitar receding as Palinode and Schmutzie walk home from work. Schmutzie is trying to tell Palinode something relevant and interesting, which is always the necessary condition for this kind of nonsense].

Palinode: Tell me. Do you like scrubs?

Schmutzie: Medical scrubs?

Palinode: No. I'm referring to the kind of guy who can't get no love from you.

Schmutzie: Like - a scrubby guy?

Palinode: Hanging out the passenger's side of his best friend's ride, trying to holler at you.

Schmutzie: No, that person sounds like a douche.

Palinode: I knew you would say that. It is my latest piece of evidence that you are, in fact, TLC.

Schmutzie: Your latest piece?

Palinode: Yes. For example, what is your position on chasing waterfalls? Do you recommend it?

Schmutzie: Waterfalls don't actually go anywhere. There's lots of motion but no movement.

Palinode: So you would say not to chase waterfalls?

Schmutzie: No. There's really no point. You can just walk up to them.

Palinode: I am now nearly convinced that you are TLC. Here is the third and final question. Do you hang out with Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes anymore?

Schmutzie: No. She's dead.

Palinode: So you no longer hang out with her.

Schmutzie: I never -

Palinode: Aaahahahha talktalktalk. You are TLC and you have all but admitted it.

Schmutzie: [silence]

Palinode: As a bonus question, would you be interested in giving me the red light special all night long?

Schmutzie: Ew.

Palinode: You're still TLC to me.

the difficulty with friends

2010-06-13T10:47:00.001-06:00

In the course of my web travels today I found this poem, by Author Unknown, that explains why god gave us friends.

GOD knew that everyone needs
Companionship and cheer,
He knew that people need someone
Whose thoughts are always near.

He knew they need someone kind
To lend a helping hand.
Someone to gladly take the time
To care and understand.

GOD knew that we all need someone
To share each happy day,
To be a source of courage
When troubles come our way.

Someone to be true to us,
Whether near or far apart.
Someone whose love we'll always
Hold and treasure in our hearts.

That's Why GOD Gave Us Friends!

It's not very instructive from a metrical point of view, or even a religious one, but it leaves me with a few questions. For instance, did god give us friends because they fulfill all the qualifications outlined in the first four stanzas? Note that the author never explicitly states that friends will do any of the excellent things outlined - just that the absence of these things prompted god to make us friends. Maybe he created friends in order to outline in even sharper and crueler detail the degree of our solitude. It's like giving a kid a picture of an ice cream cone.

Second, are these "friends" human beings? Or do we form friendships with automatons designed in heaven's smoking factories to give us "companionship and cheer"? I imagine the god of this poem dispatching a friend for me at a moment of need - just peeling off a companion from the rind of his labours and flicking it to Earth (presumably in a convenient location, like a bar). What about Graham, a good friend of mine for twenty years, currently living in Australia? I'd hate to think he'd been slapped together for my sake, especially with his string of difficult relationships and the arguments he'd get into with his father. Or take Craig, who, if his purpose in life to be "a source of courage/ When troubles come [my] way," should at least be getting a few extra lecture sessions from the university. Come on, god: give my automatons a break. They're my friends, after all.

Nor does the poem say that I have to be anybody's friend. Which makes sense, since I'm a fully autonomous human being and not one of god's companionship machines. When someone "gladly take[s] the time/ To care and understand," do my recripocal gestures constitute friendship? Am I under any obligation to be a friend in return, or should I just "hold and treasure" their love "in [my] heart," as the poem instructs? If friends are just clockwork mechanisms designed to gratify my needs, I should be able to stub out my cigars on their foreheads when they buy me a beer or confess their deep devotion to me. Somehow that doesn't seem right.

In order to clear up these questions we need to add an extra stanza or two:

At least one-third of friends are real
And not hallucinations
Or Yahweh's cyborgs sent to Earth
For sex and conversations.

So don't forget to tip them well
Or send a thank-you present
Hedge your bets and don't forget
Reciprocity is pleasant.

That's better now.

Again, Palinode on MamaPop: Video Roundtable Time

2010-06-04T16:35:00.000-06:00

Let me tell you once more about something that's happening elsewhere! This is good fun.

Over on MamaPop, the fortnightly MamaPop Video Roundtable is up. This time the topic is video games:

Our generation (the ones who sat around in the '80s thinking Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark was a cool name band) was probably the first to grow up with video games. Cradle to grave, pixels and polygons will blip after us, demanding our dollars and keeping us from hitting that next level. Which we will totally get to. And then we'll take out the garbage, honest.

Palinode on MamaPop: Ashton Kutcher To Pirate His Own Movie

2010-06-02T13:07:00.000-06:00

I have a post up today on MamaPop, "Ashton Kutcher Is A Pirate (Rhythm Still Not a Dancer, Though)":

It must be tough being a ridiculously good-looking take-no-prisoners rogue like Ashton Kutcher. Aside from the privilege of being married to a cyborg and keeping a steady movie career going while hawking digital cameras, he's really living on the edge of something or other.

Because now Ashton Kutcher is taking his place alongside digital freedom fighters everywhere.

While you're here, don't forget to check out my substantially updated post on avocados, which features a majestic American flag. "Come for the avocados, stay for the majestic flag".

My official entry in the unannounced contest with ExLibris to produce the best possible blog entry on avocados

2010-06-01T16:46:00.004-06:00

Eat them.

And now that I have demonstrated the power of the internet as an unlimited storage space for all the products of mind, I'm going to make some supper.

UPDATE: ExLibris has posted her entry on avocados, which she calls Ideas for Avocados. Let's break down the reasons why my two-word entry beats Carrie Anne's informative post full of recipes, beautiful photography and even storage tips.

THE TITLE. Carrie Anne hooked my interest with the title "Ideas for Avocados," but she fails to introduce a single philosophical notion or aspect of intellectual history to any avocados in her post. Given the natural intelligence and curiosity of the avocado, this omission is baffling. The avocado on the right in the picture above, for example, has an excellent grasp of the notion of dualism, and the one on the left can give you a concise explanation of some of Kant's thornier ideas. The one in the middle is obviously dead.

RECIPES. Carrie Anne provides four easy-to-prepare and quick recipes for avocados. I have one, and here it is:

1. Possess the avocado.
2. Eat it.

I offer my recipe for comparison because it is clearly more efficient. I have one ingredient, a preparation time of no minutes, and the washup involves licking your hands greedily when you're done.

PHOTOGRAPHY. The recipes are accompanied by beautiful photographs of food, but do they really give you the essential information? Observe the image above and you will be able to glean all that there is of consequence about the avocado:

1. There's some hard green stuff on the outside (use as earmuffs).
2. There's some soft green stuff on the inside (eat).
3. There's a round brown thing in the middle (huck at people).

STORAGE TIPS. You do not store avocados. You discuss Bertrand Russell with them until they're ripe and then you eat them. If you're storing avocados then you have forgotten their purpose.

I hope this has been helpful. In conclusion, I believe in God and the free market. Does ExLibris? I don't know, but she doesn't mention it in her avocado entry. Maybe this flag will help you decide?

Flag provided by 3dflags.com

The Spicy, Delicious Taste of Being

2010-05-28T14:53:00.001-06:00

[Afternoon. Schmutzie plucks away at web design. Palinode rolls like a pig in the obscene joys of joblessness.]

Palinode: I just added a spicy, delicious taste.

Schmutzie: What?

Palinode: I just. Added. A spicy, delicious taste.

Schmutzie: To what?

Palinode: Sardines on toast?

Schmutzie: No, you did not add a delicious taste to sardines on toast.

Palinode: My bottle of rooster sauce says that it adds a spicy, delicious taste to anything.

Schmutzie: There are limits to what can be made delicious. Sardines exceed those limits.

Palinode: I even added some to Heidegger's notion of Being. It really gave the concept a spicy, delicious taste.

Schmutzie: Rooster sauce only works with physical objects.

Palinode: The bottle says anything.

Schmutzie: Those are just words on a bottle.

Palinode: Hey, you should incorporate rooster sauce into your web design.

Schmutzie: Um. No.

Palinode: It would give your banners a spicy, delicious taste.

Palinode on MamaPop: Scott and Renee Baio vs The Lesbians

2010-04-20T20:32:00.002-06:00

Over on MamaPop.com I've written about Scott and Renee Baio's weird and entirely offensive fight with Jezebel.com, Twitter users and decent people in general:

This is exciting. Scott Baio is in the news again. No, not because of his talent or sharp-toothed good looks. Because his wife Renee has a problem with "lesbian shitasses". Hey Renee! Who doesn't? They ruin web sites, proms, the sacred institution of marriage - everything. If they existed outside of Renee Baio's mind, they'd pose a real problem.

"Scott Baio Needs To Watch Out For Those Lesbian Shitasses" (language is NSFW, but it's nearly all from the Baios.)

Why I Can't Tell You All About The Sandwich of Horror

2010-04-12T22:22:00.001-06:00

I thought the new KFC Double Down sandwich was the solution to all my problems.

I'm not talking about the problem of living for another day, although I'm pretty sure the Double Down, a fanciful bread-free extension on the very concept of sandwiches, will destroy all livers and infarct any tissues unlucky enough to encounter its giant lab-engineered polysaturates. I'm talking about my blocked-up blog, which is getting less action these days than Mozart (because he's dead, you see). In a finely-honed turn of irony, I figured that the act of ordering and eating one of these monsters would inspire me to write once more.

It turns out that it's harder to get a shitty sandwich in my town than I had anticipated.

First off, know that KFC's Double Down Sandwich is not really a sandwich at all. The Double Down is a stack of meat, salt and dairy: two chicken breasts guarding several slices of bacon and melted cheese. The fat and calorie counts are lower than you'd expect, but I believe that KFC employs CERN to fold additional crap into higher dimensions. I don't think it's even intended as a legitimate product. It's there to grab people's attention with the sheer salty chutzpah of its breadlessness. It is meant to provoke, to anger, to inspire debate, to spike the blogosphere's coffee. The Double Down Sandwich is basically the insult comedy of fast food.

The problem is, there are no KFC's in the downtown area, which is where I live. They surround the city's perimeter like a fairy ring, springing up wherever pimply masses of people need a triglyceride fix to make the trek from Walmart to Best Buy. But anywhere close by? Anywhere I could stop on my way home from work? No.

So I decided to call the nearest outlet and order a sandwich for delivery. I felt like I was ordering a cement mixer to pull up to my window and upend a liquid ton of gravy into my mouth. But when I looked up the delivery number online, I realized that KFC was advertising everything but the Double Down. The Big Fresh Sandwich, sure. The Wrapstar (A Taste Explosion!). The Boneless Original Recipe. But no Double Down.

Canada, I thought, first no Hulu. Now no Double Down. It was clear that KFC Canada had a whole different sales strategy. Fresh? Wraps? But I thought I'd call anyway.

The woman on the other end of the phone had a hesitant tone in her voice, like she wasn't that familiar with phone technology.

- Hello, K, um, KFC, can I, help? You?

-Hi, do you carry the Double Down Sandwich?

-The Double wuh?

Two things: One, she actually said "wuh". Two, in 2006, 87% of Canadian households subscribed to cable or satellite television. With the market saturation of flat-screen TVs and the preponderance of digital cable services, that percentage has probably increased to something like 92-95%. Everyone watches cable, is what I'm saying. And basic Canadian cable is American television. That's an oversimplification, but if you watch cable in Canada, you watch American television. So by that logic, everyone has seen approximately 5 billion ads for the KFC Double Down.

This person, who worked at a KFC, who operated with KFC imprinted on the screen of her perceptions, who had a 95% chance of having seen an ad for this stupid wackadoo sandwich, had somehow failed to pick up on it.

-The Double Down Sandwich? It's got two chicken breasts instead of a bun? I was now explaining a KFC product to one of their employees, and acutely aware of how ridiculous I was sounding. It's available in the States.

- Oh, we can't sell you things from the States. And then she started laughing. She was laughing at me because she thought I was asking her to ship a sandwich up from the States.

One of the worst things about dealing with phenomenally stupid people is that they are always one step ahead of you in the stupid domain. You can't out-stupid a stupid person. You can't think around their brainlessness. They're too smart for that. But they only thing they're smart at is being really fucking stupid.

- Yes, I know, I said, hoping there was somewhere I could go that wouldn't pull my entire night into the tiger trap of stupid I'd stepped on. I was just saying it's available in the United States. That's how I know about it.

- But we can't get things from the States, sir. She started giggling again.

At that point the only way to salvage the call was to switch gears and start ordering. But then the entire kitchen would be making a bucket of chicken for the idiot who wanted them to order something from the States. And the driver would be grinning as he handed my food over to the total douche who thought KFC delivered sandwiches to other countries. So I just yelped out "Okay bye!" and got off the phone.

And then Schmutzie made some chicken wings from the freezer. And they were damn tasty.

The Twilight Saga Saga: Chapter 4

2010-03-06T23:25:00.002-06:00

Ah geez, lookit this nonsense. Apparently there are more than three chapters in Twilight. What, I have to go through the rest of them? Okay then.

PREFACE

A week or so ago I found a blog post through the magic of Google Alerts (involution alert: Google Alerts probably has a Google Alert for the phrase "Google Alert") that asked the question: Why is it a bad thing to like Twilight? The writer had read my last post and assumed that I was criticizing Twilight fans for their audacious enjoyment of a clunky adolescent fantasy written in one-sentence paragraphs.

The truth is that I'm not interested in what's wrong with liking the Twilight novels, because the answer is obvious. The answer is: nothing. There is nothing wrong with liking this book or anything else in the world. There's nothing wrong with liking hot dogs or dog fighting either, but eating hot dogs won't turn you into an athlete, and participating in dog fights is a morally reprehensible (and criminal) act. Similarly, it's cool to see Khandi Alexander pull a human head from a pot of boiling water on CSI, but there's no way I want to spend my days with human heads and tongs.

Pleasure is an impulse that comes from parts of ourselves over which we have little control. You might view education and socialization as an attempt to access and write over those areas. Despite society's best efforts, though, we continue to like all manner of things. The moral issue comes not from the pleasure, but the exercise of that pleasure and the production of materials to gratify it. Calling Twilight a moral issue is a stretch, but if you regard the production of art as part of a culture's inheritance, then Stephenie Meyer is stealing from us.

So nothing is wrong with liking Twilight. Nor is there anything particularly wrong with reading Twilight, although there are better ways to spend your time. But there's plenty wrong with writing Twilight. And that's what this series is about.

CHAPTER 4: INVITATIONS

Chapter 3 was called "Phenomenon," and it was all about Bella's insistence on verifying the truth of what she witnessed. This one is called "Invitations," so maybe it's about Bella's hatred of being a part of something larger than herself - a school, a community, a family, what have you. Maybe the purpose of the multiple invitations in this chapter is to further define Bella's boundaries - which is another way of defining the gaps in her boundaries. An invitation is a promise, after all, and a promise is a deferral with an indefinitely building erotic charge.

The last line of Chapter 3 is "That was the first night I dreamed of Edward Cullen," so chapter 4 obediently begins with a description of the dream. In it, Edward is a source of light but impossible to make out or apprehend. He is forever distant from her, despite Bella's efforts to to catch up with him. Bella appears to be dreaming about the sun, which may be one of the first indications that Meyer's vampires are the conceptual opposite of the traditional vampire - instead of being creatures of the underworld, they appear to belong to some heavenly schema. Let's keep that thought it mind and see if it doesn't come to fruition around Chapter 13.

Then, in an example of remarkably inept pacing, a month passes in a single line. Wait, no, it jumps back in the line after that to the week after the dream. Whatever. Bella is being plagued by people wishing her well and treating her decently, including the guy who nearly ran her over and is now "obsessed with making amends". I can only conclude that Bella prefers to be treated like a jerk, maybe by some inaccessible pretty boy who comes to her rescue at one moment and completely ignores her the next. I'm just guessing. Let's keep that thought in mind and see if it doesn't come to fruition throughout the rest of the book.

Bella is also being plagued by love. Even though Edward continues to ignore her, all the other males at the school are lining up to ask her out. It's possible to accept Twilight as adolescent fantasy, but this stretches the boundaries a bit. Bella is sullen, sharp, rude, inattentive and vaguely insolent towards every single thing in the novel, with the exception of her truck. Lining up to ask Bella Swan to the spring dance sounds about as fun as a Friday afternoon at the Post Office, if the guy ahead of you in line is crazy and naked and trying to take a dump in your pocket. And even that scenario presents a better possibility of at least getting laid.

We also discover that Bella may not much enjoy the presence of other human beings and find their goodwill disgusting, but she's perfectly happy to manipulate them in order to get them off her back:

It was Jessica [on the phone], and she was jubilant. Mike had caught her after school to accept her invitation.... She had to go, she wanted to call Angela and Lauren to tell them. I suggested - with casual innocence - that maybe Angela, the shy girl who had Biology with me, could ask Eric. And Lauren, a standoffish girl who had always ignored me at the lunch table could ask Tyler; I'd heard he was still available. Jess though that this was a great idea.

Let no one be surprised in Chapter 5, when Jessica bounces around Bella like a frisky puppy to announce how happy everyone is now that their love lives are running like a finely tuned engine.

Of course, Bella isn't going to the spring dance. Why would an antisocial loner who hates you go to a dance? Instead she gins up an excuse about going to Seattle. But what she doesn't count on is a last-minute about face from Edward, who suddenly offers to drive her to the city, even as he lays on repeated warnings about staying away from him. And does she accept the invitation, despite his warning?

"It would be more... prudent for you not to be my friend," he explained. "But I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella".

His eyes were gloriously intense as he uttered that last sentence, his voice smoldering. I couldn't remember how to breathe.

"Will you go with me to Seattle?" he asked, still intense.

I couldn't speak yet, so I just nodded.

Boy howdy, does she ever.

***

Bella Sucks score: 26 (average per page 1.5)
Learn To Write score: 37 (average per page 2.47)

The Twilight Saga Saga: Chapter 3

2010-01-26T19:34:00.014-06:00

You know, today in the mall a little girl came up to me, her eyes squeezing out tears, and said "Mister? Why are you ruining Twilight and saying bad things about Miss Bella and her immortal man? Why can't you let kids enjoy their kids' stuff? Why do you hate our freedoms to read this crap?"

Because, I told the little girl, today on the bus I saw a grown woman, a woman in her mid-fifties, a woman with a family of her very own, reading a hardcover copy of Breaking Dawn with a gold-tasseled bookmark at the ready, flipping pages and scanning the text as if it were a real book. And that's why I'm doing this.

***

One of the hardest-won lessons of maturity is the realization that the world exists outside your perceptions and despite your desires. The universe does not fold up when you close your eyes and smooth itself out hurriedly as soon as you open them up. When people leave the room, they don't magically disincorporate until, for your pleasure or annoyance, they snap themselves back into place to pass in front of your eyes.

People come to this realization in their own way and in their own time. For me it happened in a Pizza Hut around the age of nineteen or so, when I was told that my uncle's rare cancer might be a genetic condition. For the character of Bella Swan, it hasn't happened at all, and you can tell from the opening paragraph:

When I opened my eyes in the morning, something was different.

Once again, a chapter opens with the opening of Bella's eyes (as I've said, we're not readers - we're prisoners in her head). I have to hand it to Stephenie Meyer here; in just a few words she manages to convey the depths of Bella's paranoia: something was different. Bella apprehends, despite her solipsism, the presence of that external reality, vast, mechanical and malevolent, meshing its gears into patterns aligned against her. It is the feeling of anxiety that is produced, like

The difference turns out to be a change in the quality of the morning light produced by the dissipation of fog and a light snowfall. This doesn't seem so bad to me, but it seems bad for Bella:

I jumped up to look outside, and groaned with horror.

Really. Hey, let's play a game. I call it Being Bella. Try groaning with horror. Go to the window, pretend you're looking at some snow, and then groan with horror. Could you film yourself doing that? I kind of want to see a good horror-groan, because I don't think anyone has actually ever done that in real life.

Anyway, the snow and ice, "coating the needles on the trees in fantastic, gorgeous patterns, and making the driveway a deadly ice slick," have a purpose, which is to arrange a life-threatening accident for Bella in the proximity of Edward, who saves her as only a vampire can do. The accident is the first thing approaching an action sequence, so it's worth quoting at some length to see how Meyer deals with the problem of writing good action, which is incidentally a problem of time, which is the problem and preoccupation of the novel.

I was standing by the back corner of the truck, struggling to fight back the sudden wave of emotion the snow chains had brought on [Bella is easily moved, apparently], when I heard an odd sound.

It was a high-pitched screech, and it was fast becoming painfully loud. I looked up, startled.

I saw several things simultaneously. Nothing was moving in slow motion, the way it does in the movies. Instead, the adrenaline rush seemed to make my brain work much faster, and I was able to absorb in clear detail several things at once.

Let's stop for a moment, because this passage makes no sense at all. One of the most fundamental and mechanically convenient tools for expressing states of consciousness in film is the manipulation of time by the speed of the film. Film moves slow, time speeds up. Film moves fast, time slows down. The entire point of slow motion in film is to highlight and isolate detail in order to let the viewer, I dunno, absorb in clear detail several things at once. It's almost like your brain is working much faster.

Although Bella's description isn't very clear, she may be talking about the other weapon in film's homely arsenal: editing. In this case, a rapid succession of individual shots that establishes a rhythm and performs the dual effect of compressing time while dilating consciousness. But I can't say for sure, because as usual, the text refuses to follow through on its promises. Here's the next paragraph:

Edward Cullen was standing four cars down from me, staring at me in horror. His face stood out from a sea of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot. It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them. I didn't even have time to close my eyes.

Hold on. Didn't Bella say in the previous paragraph that she was able to absorb "in clear detail"? Then why are clear details not forthcoming? With the exception of Edward's face and the colour of the van, this entire passage is coy and attenuated, weakened by Bella's inability to deliver a simple and direct narrative.

It is safe to assume that Bella will survive the blue van skidding towards her, since she's narrating from some future point. The van nonetheless presents an immediate danger; even if Bella survives to tell the tale, maybe she's about to suffer an accident that will leave her paralyzed and wrapped in bandages. Maybe her grand romance with Edward will be played out with her breathing through a straw for twenty years. Who knows?

As a reader, I have no cues to go by except for Bella's words. And Bella's words tell me that this van is going to be no big deal. Edward stands out from the crowd because he's there to save her. The phrase "But of more immediate importance" is like a big dull needle haphazardly puncturing the scene and letting the tension out in one long squeaky rubbery fart. I don't need to read the rest of the page to know that Edward is going to zoom over with inhuman speed and save Bella from dark blue death.

Part of the pleasure of seeing heroes in danger is the knowledge that they'll survive, even though they may lose something valuable in the process (a trusted friend, a piece of treasure, childlike innocence, Kate Capshaw etc.). But the pleasure depends on the writer allowing you to forget the hero's basic invulnerability, often by deflecting that danger onto something the hero loves (Kate Capshaw etc.). There is no sense here that Bella is about to lose anything, because she describes danger in the same lazy, rambling way that she describes everything else: like it's beneath her.

So I read farther down the page, even though I didn't need to, and guess what? Edward saves her. I guess he just couldn't help himself, what with Bella being such an awesome human being and all. Wait, maybe I spoke too soon, because she resents the crowd of concerned townspeople, her concerned schoolmates, and the EMTs who take her to the hospital. She even finds time to throw some scorn on the guy who nearly ran her down, who suffered much more severe injuries than she and apologizes to her out of a healthy sense of guilt. I'm not even going to quote any of it, because - and this just floors me - I feel bad for Bella.

Horrified pity is probably the best response to Bella Swan by this point. She's such a spoiled brat that finally, maybe after the third time she sneers at the guy in the bloody bandages, I suddenly felt protective of her. It's like dealing with drunk friends who make incredibly bad decisions - you put aside your impatience and call them a cab, because otherwise their night is going to end up in a dumpster on the other side of town. And so it is with Bella: surely someone so snotty is eventually bound for a bare knuckle blindfold fight with Bob the Comeuppance Boxer.

Don't make me draw a stick figure of Bob the Comeuppance Boxer. Because a stick arm won't show his bulging Bella-pummeling biceps.

Anyway, she meets Edward's father Dr. Cullen, who, like the rest of the Cullens, is ridiculously hot and probably wears a fancy white hospital coat that subtly hints at designer origins. And when she goes home she finds herself "consumed by the mystery Edward presented". I will read the rest of the book as if she and Edward are playing the world's creepiest, LARPiest edition of Clue ever dreamed up by the money-soaked bastards at Hasbro.

The Twilight Saga saga: chapter 2

2010-01-10T14:18:00.012-06:00

This installment of The Twilight Saga saga is dedicated to Jill, who gave me jello shooters to help me through this thing.

Chapter Two starts with the start of the next day. Those are the words that Meyer wrote: "The next day". Normally I would roll up this kind of writing and beat the author over the head with it, but in this case, it's too late; Meyer is published now and free of all the people who could have stopped this kind of thing from happening.

At any rate, this next day is "better... and worse". How is it better?

"It was better because it wasn't raining yet, although the clouds were dense and opaque".

Would it kill Meyer to pull off a sentence that wasn't tripping over itself? Have you ever seen a dense cloud that wasn't opaque? The day is also better because boys are still following her around and behaving like rival lapdogs.

Faithful boys aside, the day is worse for an entire paragraph's worth of reasons - Bella is never at a loss for things that make her miserable and angry. But the biggest reason for her unhappiness is the absence of the guy who clearly acts as if he wants to harm her. She even feels the desire to confront him and call him on his behaviour, but then she makes what I think might be the only pop culture reference in the entire book:

"But I knew myself too well to think I would really have the guts to do it. I made the Cowardly Lion look like the terminator".

For a book narrated by and aimed at a teen audience, it's curious that there should be so few pop culture references. I don't read young adult fiction, so maybe this is the norm. Also, I can understand Meyer's desire to avoid throwing in names that won't make sense in five years (imagine if a whole chapter were dedicated to James Blunt or The Bloodhound Gang) but both the cowardly lion and the terminator predate Bella's seventeen years. Couldn't Meyer come up with something from the nineties or the 2000s?

This goes some way to confirming what I suspect - that the line between Bella and Meyer is vanishingly thin, and that Bella has no up-to-date teen pop references because Meyer doesn't. Bella is Meyer's half-remembered teenage consciousness, a dying voice hopelessly compromised by the writer's adult perspective. That's why Bella manages to combine a world-weariness with a helpless, paranoid naivete.

Once Bella's day is done, and she's dealt with the indignities of having a fellow student following her around and "taking on the qualities of a golden retriever", she spots the Cullen family (minus Edward) in the parking lot. And here Bella's greatest obsession is revealed: clothes. Or maybe it's not clothes. Maybe it's canned descriptions of clothes.

"I saw the two Cullens and the Hale twins getting into their car... I hadn't noticed their clothes before - I'd been too mesmerized by their faces. Now that I looked, it was obvious that they were all dressed exceptionally well; simply, but in clothes that subtly hinted at designer origins".

That line pretty much drop kicked me out of the story. My head filled up with images of vampires at an outlet store, holding up a pair of khakis and saying 'Hey, does this subtly hint at designer origins?' What the hell does that phrase mean, anyway? Like so much of the rest of this book, it sounds meaningful until you turn a light on it, and then the meaning gets spooked, scurries under the dishwasher and won't come out again. Is it the good fit, the texture of the fabric, the stitching, an unusual but distinctive feature that points to its pedigree? Bella doesn't say, and since we're looking through her eyes, we have no other way of approaching this book. It's like we're being held prisoner in a room in her head, and we're allowed no more than a few glances through a little window to see what's going on outside.

From this point onward I'm going to start using two measures for these reviews. Every time Bella says or thinks something that comes off as pouty, miserable, insensitive or excruciatingly condescending, this book gets one Bella Sucks point. Every time a sentence strikes me as particularly inept, this book gets one Learn To Write point. Then I average the scores out over the number of pages in the chapter. That way we can all keep track and I won't feel as if I'm shortchanging anyone. Skip ahead if you want to cut out my cogent maundering in favour of the tally.

The highlight of the chapter, aside from an email exchange between Bella and her mother that basically ranks Bella as the least respectful daughter since Lizzie Borden, is the first actual conversation between her and Edward... in Biology class. Get it? Biology? Because Bella is having biological urges? Think if they'd met in Sociology class.

Stephenie Meyer has clearly given some thought to the Meet Cute scenario between high school girl and vampire. The giant rock in the stream, I suppose, is Buffy's violent dark alley beatdown of Angel from the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Whedon took the standard victimization cliché in every monster movie and pulled it inside-out, into the beginnings of a romance. Meyer has a similar inversion in mind, but instead of granting the girl unearthly powers, she domesticates the monster by pulling it into a classroom.

And that's where the great lovers of Twilight get their class assignment on.

Yup, a class assignment: Bella and Edward get to know each other over a microscope and a set of slides with the phases of mitosis frozen and dyed for their identification. There's a nice light irony here, as Meyer punctuates their conversation with the scientific language of cell division (see: Bella's biological urges). A high school English teacher would take a moment to point out that we are seeing an example of dramatic irony as well, because we know something that Bella doesn't know. What doesn't she know? That the entire city of Phoenix is glad she left.

What else do we know that Bella and Edward don't know? Well, we know exactly what they mean when they speak. We know this because Meyer rarely resorts to "he said" or "she said" when Bella and Edward talk. Instead, she throws every conversational verb in her pocket Webster's at us:

"Did you get contacts?" I blurted out unthinkingly.
He seemed puzzled by my unexpected outburst. "No".
"Oh," I mumbled.

*

"Forks must be a difficult place for you to live," he mused.
"You have no idea," I muttered darkly.

*

"I think I can keep up," he pressed.

*

"That doesn't sound so complex," he disagreed, but he was suddenly sympathetic.

*

"And you don't like him," Edward surmised, his tone still kind.

*

His eyebrows knit together. "I don't understand," he admitted, and he seemed unnecessarily frustrated by that fact.

*

"But now you're unhappy," he pointed out.

*

"I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly.

Elsewhere in the scene, Edward murmurs smugly, Bella smiles sheepishly, and twice she grimaces.

Official scores for Chapter 2, "Open Book"

Bella Sucks: 25 in 22 pages (1.08)
Learn To Write: 44 in 22 pages (2)

the twilight saga saga: chapter 1

2010-01-05T21:46:00.012-06:00

Yesterday I pulled the insanely stupid move of publicly committing to reading the whole fershlugginer Twilight Saga (which, unless it's an epic Icelandic poem or a lame '80s metal band, is not a saga) and talking about it on my weblog. I have buyer's remorse. But I'm the kind who will gamely try to live with an impulse buy, so never mind the regret. We forge on.

Chapter 1: First Sight

Not a bad chapter title. You think she's going to fall in love at first sight, don't you? Not so fast. Stephenie Meyer is going to piss around and waste our time for a while. Maybe she would call it irony. I would not.

"My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down. It was seventy-five degrees in Phoenix, the sky a perfect, cloudless blue... my carry-on item was a parka."

I like this opening. She's just about to make a change, and to all appearances it's a radical one. She's leaving the heat and unblemished perfection of a desert city for somewhere cold. As in the prologue, Meyer is putting her character in a moment of transition.

Where she's headed is a cloud-covered town in the Pacific northwest called Forks. Christ, Meyer, why not send your heroine to a town called Choices? Or the District Of Growing Up Is Tough And You Have To Make Difficult Decisions? But the word is nicely loaded; there's something cruel about it, calling to mind images of teeth and metal edges. It even reminds me of the inspiration for Burrough's Naked Lunch - "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork". But given the fogginess of Forks, I'm not sure this book is about ecstatic and apocalyptic visions. I think it's about sublimated adolescent horniness.

"It was to Forks that I now exiled myself - an action that I took with great horror. I detested Forks.

"I loved Phoenix. I loved the sun and the blistering heat. I loved the vigorous, sprawling city".

I quote these twinned paragraphs because they kind of stopped me in my tracks. How old is Bella Swan? Presumably she's a minor. I'm already running into a problem, and I'm not sure if the problem lies with me or with with the book. After all, this is a fantasy work aimed at a youth audience, a book with glittering vampires - so why should I find it difficult to accept that a teenage girl is allowed to leave her mother and go live with her father after years apart? I should be ready to accept her exceptional mobility without blinking.

I think the problem may lie with Meyer's vocabulary, and the particular voice she's constructed for Bella Swan. Even in the first chapter, Bella doesn't sound like a teenage girl. She doesn't even sound like a precocious teenage girl, except to the degree that she's often lost in the hormonal paranoia of adolescence. Bella sounds like an adult reading from a series of guide books and trade journals. Who, for example, would describe her hometown as "the vigorous, sprawling city"?

(And who the hell loves Phoenix? It's a dust-caked wasteland of swimming pools and fast food huts and foreclosed properties turning up their cracked dying bellies to the sun. That's not vigor. Sprawl, sure.)

"My mom looks like me, except with short hair and laugh lines. I felt a spasm of panic as I stared at her wide, childlike eyes."

It's at page four when I feel my first twinge of dislike for Bella Swan. Describing your mother's eyes as "wide, childlike" kind of verges on disrespect. It's also a vague description that says less than it seems to. Her eyes are wide? How exactly? Are they wide apart? Wide open? Does her mother go around holding her eyes really wide? What for? That's kind of weird.

I also wonder why Bella says that her mother looks like her. I think it's the other way around, since her mother precedes her. This is a small point, but it's indicative of the way Bella looks at the world. I would usually call this 'character,' but I don't think the author is in control of the voice. I think there's Meyer all over this thing, and it won't wash out.

But never mind about her mother. She's already gone by page five, having passed the Torch of Blossoming Womanhood to her daughter. The trip to Forks takes a paragraph, which is pleasingly quick. But the drive from the airport to the house? That takes pages. And pages. While she's stuck in a car with her father, whom she calls Charlie.

"But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless".

I've picked this sample paragraph to demonstrate why and how this book could profitably be reduced to the size of a hotel brochure. Instead of saying that "it was sure to be awkward with Charlie," why not show the awkwardness with sparse dialogue and awkward, affectionate gestures? Since Meyer does that throughout the scene, we can get rid of that sentence altogether.

Next up. For "Neither of us" subsitute "we". For "was what anyone would call verbose" substitute "were not verbose". Actually, verbose is a clunky, overripe word. Let's try "talkative" in place of "verbose". Wait a second. That's still a bit weak, with a flat copular verb and an adjective just sprawling there like a couple of dead possums on a highway shoulder. I'll turn the adjective into the verb, so "We were not talkative" becomes "We didn't talk much".

How about "I didn't know what there was to say regardless"? It's funny how when you take this phrase out of context it makes no sense. Chop the "regardless" off and let the poor thing regain some dignity. So now Bella "didn't know what there was to say," which means that she "didn't know what to say". Why doesn't she know what to say? Because she and her father haven't seen each other in a long time and she rejected him a few years back. Plus the subject of Bella's mother is emotionally difficult territory. But we know this already because Bella says so. So it's obvious that they don't know what to say to each other. Why have this at all?

So with a few small edits, "But it was sure to be awkward with Charlie. Neither of us was what anyone would call verbose, and I didn't know what there was to say regardless" becomes "We didn't talk much". And you don't even need to say that.

The next few pages is devoted to Charlie and Bella talking about a secondhand truck, which is not what I expected from a teen vampire novel. This better be a haunted truck, Meyer. But it gives us time to explore the relationship between Charlie and Bella, which is mostly him trying to reach out and her shutting him down. Then there's this:

"Do you remember Billy Black down at La Push?" La Push is the tiny Indian reservation on the coast.

"No".

"He used to go fishing with us during the summer," Charlie prompted.

That would explain why I didn't remember him. I do a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things from my memory.

There are two possibilities here. One is that some trauma occurred on one of those fishing trips, and part of the Twilight series will deal with this trauma. The other possibility is that Bella is kind of a bitch.

Actually, the truck turns out be important, because Bella likes it. In fact, it's the first thing we encounter that Bella actually likes, and since this novel could be called What Bella Is Thinking About Everything She Sees, we should examine her reaction:

"It was a faded red color, with big rounded fenders and a bulbous cab. To my intense surprise, I loved it. I didn't know if it would run, but I could see myself in it. Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged - the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed".

So now we know a bit of what Bella likes: old handsome things that are destructive by their very nature. Let's remember that. But I get stuck on the phrase "I could see myself in it". That is straight sales language, literally part of a car salesman's patter, a piece of psyops designed to weaken customers' defenses by prompting them to imagine themselves inside the car - 'picture yourself behind the wheel of this baby'. Why is a teenage girl talking like this, as she does when she describes Phoenix as a "sprawling, vigorous city"?

And the truck is not "a faded red color". It is a faded red. A TRUCK IS NOT A COLOR. LEARN TO WRITE.

She's still looking at the truck. Let's skip forward to the part where Bella's looking at herself. Because when she looks at herself in the mirror, it gives her an opportunity to talk about her looks and reflect on her character. Why Meyer is adopting such a literal strategy, I don't know. But if I had to guess, it's because the soil in which the language of Twilight grows is a mulch of soap operas and teen drama. The language of Twilight is images, not words, which explains why so many of Bella's expressions and sentences seem like they've been stored in freezer bags for too long. I think this book was microwaved, not written.

Anyway, as Bella is "facing her pallid reflection in the mirror," which is strange because in the previous paragraph she says her face has turned sallow, she lets us in on the heart of her character. I think this is intended to generate some sympathy for her:

"I didn't relate well to people my age. Maybe the truth was that I didn't relate well to people, period. Even my mother, who I was closer to than anyone on the planet, was never in harmony with me, never on exactly the same page. Sometimes I wondered if I was seeing the same things through my eyes that other people were seeing through theirs. Maybe there was a glitch in my brain".

Now there's a possibility. Maybe Bella's upcoming star-crossed love is just the product of a glitch in her brain, and some handsome dude is freaked out because the new girl at school insists he's a glitter-covered vampire and that they're in love forever.

By the way, here's what Bella has to say about her dad's house. The one she has chosen to live in.

"There was only small bathroom at the top of the stairs, which I would have to share with Charlie. I was trying not to dwell on that fact too much".

You suck.

And here's a snip from her first day at Forks High School.

"When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, [Bells are not sounds. Bells make sounds] a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

'You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?' He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

'Bella,' I corrected.

Oh, you corrected the guy who was friendly enough to talk to you. You suck.

She talks a bit about her new teachers:

"My Trigonometry teacher, Mr. Varner, who I would have hated anyway just because of the subject he taught..."

God, you suck so much.

"After two classes, I started recognizing several of the faces in each class. There was always someone braver than the others who would introduce themselves and ask me questions about how I was liking Forks. I tried to be diplomatic, but mostly I just lied a lot. At least I never needed the map".

In just three sentences, Bella congratulates herself, subtly compares her classmates to animals, lies to them and finishes off with a snide insult about their town. It's clear why she doesn't relate to other people; she holds them in contempt and has difficulty investing them with the same degree of humanity that she sees in herself. She has more regard for her truck than she does for anyone else in this novel. Why are we caring about her? Why has Stephenie Meyer chosen to make the reader look through the eyes of a glum psychopath? I'm hoping that there will be an answer to this question at some point.

Finally, while she's sitting at lunch with a group of genuinely nice people whom she despises for their friendliness, she spots Teen Vamp Squad. And she likes them, because they are beautiful.

Beauty is hard to describe. You can say that people are beautiful, that their mouths are perfect or their chin is well-defined or their eyes are "liquid topaz," but the truth is that language is always in danger of exhausting itself or falling short of the mark when it attempts to stick a pin through beauty. It's easy to describe what makes someone ugly, because ugliness thrives on detail.

Dante solved the problem by blinding his narrator with God's light at the moment he reaches the summit of Heaven. The nature of beauty in literature is to erase itself even as it is displayed (Satan, by contrast, is described in incredible detail: three heads chewing on humanity's worst betrayers, body locked in ice, and so on.)

The point is, if Dante had trouble encasing beauty in physical form, it's not going to be easy for Stephenie Meyer. After a page of cataloguing the Cullen Clan's body parts and hairstyles, Bella concludes:

"I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel".

That's it. They are images, torn out of some transcendent book and stapled to our lousy, boring reality. Like celebrities, they move on top of our world, somehow exempt from it, and as a consequence make everything else seem flat and unreal. Meyer manages to sell us on the Cullen's beauty by the way it penetrates Bella's contempt and unbalances her.

Of course, Bella also likes her men hostile and potentially threatening - hence the next scene: Biology class, when she sits next to Edward Cullen and is treated to a display that would have anyone else filing a restraining order on the guy:

"I peeked up at him one more time, and regretted it. He was glaring down at me again, his black eyes full of revulsion. As I flinched away from him, shrinking against my chair, the phrase if looks could kill suddenly ran through my mind".

Here's an idle question: if Bella's internal voice speaks almost entirely in clichés, why is she suddenly thinking about what she's thinking? Why comment on the phrase 'if looks could kill' instead of just thinking it? I don't have an answer for that, but it's odd. Or how about this, from a couple of pages on:

"But Edward Cullen's back stiffened, and he turned slowly to glare at me - his face was absurdly handsome - with piercing, hate-filled eyes. For an instant, I felt a thrill of genuine fear, raising the hair on my arms".

Genuine fear. Just as she distanced herself from the clichéd thought in biology class, she now emphasizes the authenticity of the experience and matches it with a specific physical detail. It seems that terror and the body are the way to the truth for Bella, the only fork to take in Forks (see what I did there? Yeah, you saw that)

She drives home, trying not to cry. You know what? I think I like Edward just for that.

Next up, if I can stomach more of this: Chapter Two.

the twilight saga saga

2010-01-04T19:27:00.010-06:00

So. That Twilight book and its sequels. Everyone has read them now. Elderly people have read the Twilight Saga. Russian men drowning their insensate livers with vodka have read the Twilight Saga. Even babies, who can't read, have read The Twilight Saga.

Up until noon today, I had not read a single word of Stephenie Meyer's wacky vampire opus. Then I opened a mass-market copy of Twilight and looked at a word (I think it was "the"?) and now I am sitting here with a copy of the book, reading all the other words, in order. Daring sorts like to read novels in completely random fashion, jumping from page 22 to 505 to the dust jacket to a road sign. But me, I'm kind of shy when it comes to reading. I take it one word at a time. That's how I'm taking Twilight.

Say, come join me on my epic saga (?) of reading the Twilight Saga.

To guide us on our shared journey of discovery about a miserable pale girl and the freakish monster who expresses his love by hiding in her bedroom, I've gathered the following materials together:

1) The 1926 two-volume Oxford English Dictionary, which comes with a slipcase and a magnifying glass to read the crazy reduced print. The text is nearly 100 years old, but you know what? They talked English better then.

2) The mass-market movie tie-in edition of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, the New York Times bestseller that is now a major motion picture (you can learn a lot from a book cover).

3) The internet, which has Twilight fans, whom I fear.

4) Iron-clad will, because I suspect this is going to get rough before it's over.

The Preface

'Preface' is the first word of the entire Twilight Saga. Before you get to any of the other words, before you can bathe yourself in the grandeur of Edward and Bella's love, you need to get past the word Preface.

What is a preface, exactly? The OED (see, we're using it already) defines a preface as 'the introduction to a literary work, usually containing some explanation of its subject, purpose and scope'. The preface is not part of the literary work, but stands outside it and provides commentary on it. So how does Stephenie Meyer start her commentary on Twilight?

"I'd never given much thought to how I would die - though I'd had reason enough in the last few months - but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this".

Hold on a moment. Prefaces usually don't start at the moment of the author's death. I'm beginning to think that the words don't belong to Meyer, but to someone else. If I had to guess, I'd say that these are the words of the narrator. What Stephenie Meyer meant to say, instead of 'preface', was 'prologue'.

It is not a good sign when the first word of your novel is wrong.

There is another possibility, but it's even worse than just getting it wrong. A preface is a part of the Christian liturgy, an exhortation of thanks and praise to God just before the Eucharist gets served up. Is that what Meyer is up to? Writing a Christian book disguised as a teen horror novel? And if so, why disguise it? Why hide the structure of the work and leave some exposed pipes and joints for only a chosen few to see? If you're going to be religious, be religious. Own your supernatural belief system. Don't be clever about it or I'll throw your book across the room.

Anwyay, let's take a look at that first sentence again. The narrator is at the cusp of death. She (I admit to cheating here - at this point the narrator could be anyone at all) is caught on a point between life and death. It's an in-between state. It's like standing on a shoreline, or the moment when day blends into night - you know, twilight. Which is the title of the novel. High five on recapitulating your themes, Meyer! Academic types would call this a liminal state, where categories and identities bleed into each other.

But really, if I were about to die, I probably wouldn't think in such careful and cute phrases. I would not reflect in the most tortured way possible that the circumstances of my death were unexpected. I'd be scared. Or ready to fight. Or something. But Meyer is setting up a situation where death is going to be met with - fortitude? Calm? Or maybe numbed passivity.

"I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me".

Okay. First off, I did not know that staring and breathing were so closely related, but whatever. The directness of the phrase negates the strange passivity of the first sentence. Her breathlessness, and the muscular tension that accompanies it, is not exactly fear. So what is it? What else makes you breathless?

Then there's that hunter who looks pleasantly at the narrator. It's hard not to hear the phrase "looked pleasantly" echoing as "pleasant-looking". It's also hard not to conclude that the hunter is in some way intimately connected with the narrator's impending death. Put it together, and there seems to be a deliberate conflation of sexual desire and death.

I know this entry is getting long, but can we have fewer books and songs and movies that like to jam sex and death together into one necro-schtuppy ball? Get a little older and you see that death is about collapse and decrepitude, and sex is a way to keep the lights on in the house even as the power fails throughout the city. But I'm old and grumpy, and this is what I get for reading a book for the young folks.

"Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved".

Okay, enough with the fucking adverbs already. Three adverbs in three clunky, clause-heavy sentences? In a work of fiction, adverbs are what you use when you don't know the right verb. For example: instead of 'eating quickly', you can gobble your food. Instead of 'moving down really quickly,' you can fall. And 'surely' is probably the worst adverb out there. The only one worse than surely is sheepishly. I hate it when people smile, look, or do anything sheepishly.

"Noble, even. That ought to count for something".

I don't know how noble it is, considering her breathless staring into the dark eyes of some pleasantly looking hunter who's about to kill her. How about we substitute 'hott' for 'noble' and call it a day?

"I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now".

But a few pages later, the narrator says that she spent her earliest years in Forks when her parents lived there. So if her death is conditional on any appearance she makes in Forks, then her death is predetermined and entirely out of control. Which, as we've already clarified, makes her kind of horny.

It's more likely that she means to say "I knew that if I hadn't gone back to Forks this last time, and not all the other times that I went there, I wouldn't be facing death now", but that's not as catchy. But she could always say "I wouldn't be facing death now if I hadn't moved to Forks". That would have been a clearer, more direct sentence with greater expository density. Meyer didn't write it this way because clumsy phrasing is part of the way the narrator thinks. Her narrator can't think or speak properly. The flame of my ardor is cooling.

"But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision".

At this point I have to point my finger at Stephenie Meyer and say "Write better now please". First: if you were in Forks as an infant, this moment has nothing to do with your decision, because the conditions of your premise preclude your ability to make a decision. Second: who, on the brink of death, brings him- or herself to thing or feel anything? This kind of circumlocution is coy. I want to empathise with this speaker about to die, but instead I feel as if she's trying to be clever with me. And since the narrator is futzing the logic of her statements, I don't think she's being clever at all.

"When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end".

At this point it's as if Meyer is standing next to a giant boiler, and the boiler has a plaque with the words "ANY DRAMATIC TENSION AT ALL" engraved on it, and Meyer is just opening the valves and letting all that tension bleed away. It suggests to me that Meyer is either inept, or her narrator is not a character with the kinds of motivations that human beings can relate to. Combined with the words 'noble' and 'sacrifice' and 'count for something', it seems that the narrator is not so much a character as religious archetype: the martyr, who balances cosmic accounts with her willing death.

So which is it? Bad writing or a religious tract?

Can't it be both?

Finally, the last sentence of the ~~prologue~~ preface.

"The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me".

Saunter. That's a good word. A very specific but conversational verb that expresses the ease and confidence of the hunter character. He's sauntering because he knows he's in complete control, and he wants the narrator to see that he knows it. I'd saunter too if I were that hunter.

I like that word so much it's almost enough to make me forget the phrase "smiled in a friendly way". Holy crap, Meyer. What is wrong with you? You know what's more effective than saying 'smiled in a friendly way'? SMILED. Smiles are already friendly - but they're also implicitly hostile. You're greeting somebody by showing them what is essentially part of your skeleton. Let language do some of your work for you. You don't need that adverbial phrase to tart up your prose.

Meyer: trust your verbs. Write about people, not horny martyrs.

That's the preface.

Next up: Chapter 1. In less detail than this.

Palinode at MamaPop: Something Something Bachelor Sex Scandal

2009-12-29T14:49:00.006-06:00

Just like every other Tuesday, I post at Mamapop.com. This week's entry is all about the shocking and scandalous sex scandal shocker that The Bachelor's PR people are making sure you know all about in advance: Contestant on The Bachelor Caught Fooling Around with a Crew Member, Which I Guess Is Wrong.

How Would You Solve A Problem Like Maria if Maria Were a Gigantic Blue Cat-Person? and other thoughts about Avatar

2009-12-21T23:03:00.007-06:00

I watched Avatar on Saturday afternoon, and I can confirm that it suffers from all the weaknesses that its detractors point to. The plot is a crude rendition of Dances With Wolves made by a guy who clearly spent his teenage years getting high and listening to Yes. The characters are paper-thin, the dialogue is not awe-inspiring, and the whole amounts to a half-baked fantasy stemming from white guilt.

If any of those criticisms were relevant, I would agree that Avatar, for all its technological accomplishment, is a lousy film. But the plot is just a rough bridge laid down for the world of Pandora to cross from Cameron's imagination to the screen. Once the bridge has been crossed, how cares how sturdy it is? No one's using it again.

The plot of Avatar is nearly as old as dirt – or more precisely, it's as old the first time one tribe decided to take another tribe's dirt. Paraplegic ex-Marine Jake Sully ships off to Pandora, a far-off moon where a well-financed corporation (Weyland-Yutani, maybe?) is attempting to negotiate with a group of indigenous aliens (the Na'vi) to gain access to a whopping deposit of precious minerals. Jake arrives at the point when years of diplomacy and cross-cultural relations are breaking down, and the use of force is rapidly becoming the preferred option.

Although Jake is a grunt, a piece of happenstance selects him for the Avatar program, in which he gets to occupy the body of a vat-grown alien and interact with the locals in a form that they will accept (a 10 foot tall Thundercat, apparently). Once in the avatar body, Jake gets into trouble and is saved by the daughter of the local clan leaders. Jake is tentatively accepted into the tribe, falls in love, and turns against the invaders. Even better, he gets to lead the Na'vi in battle and send the chastened humans back home.

So much for plot. Avatar finds James Cameron exploring the same obsessions as always: entombment, displacement and the search for home. In Avatar the hero is entombed and displaced into another body. In the Terminator films, the heroes are sent backwards in time. In Aliens, the heroine emerges from sleep to find that nearly sixty years has passed. In all cases, the characters are outcast and lost, and their story is a quest for home. Cameron appears to be showing us Dances With Wolves, but underneath all that fancy dressing, he's offering us another version of The Odyssey. Once looked in that light, the movie turns on its axis and offers up something wholly different and a great deal more satisfying, in part because Cameron's homes are never where you expect them to be.

But why call the movie Avatar? It seems like a pretty flabby title. In the context of the film, an avatar is a substitute body, and that doesn't seem like a promising name for a blockbuster. The film is full of substitutions and prosthetics - the Space Marines walk around in gigantic mech suits, descendents of the loader exoskeletons from Aliens; Jake gets around on a wheelchair; and every interaction with the environment of Pandora must be done behind a mask or a wall, since the environment is toxic.

The ultimate prosthesis in the film is the big blue avatar (I'm glad they didn't call the film Prosthesis) that Jake uses. The Na'vi find the avatars repulsive, calling them 'false bodies'. But how can a body be false? What they mean is that the body does not properly belong to the mind that occasionally inhabits it. When not filled up by the consciousness of the human, the body is limp and unresponsive, utterly comatose, a corpse that will not die. Like vampires and zombies, the avatar exists in an unresolved state, and the story of the movie is about the resolution of the avatar. Will Jake keep his body, move exclusively to the new one, or continue to live in both bodies at once, never truly sleeping or waking?

The problem with inhabiting the avatar, as Jake begins to realize, is that you begin to relinquish your claim on your original body (In a nice twist, Jake himself is a substitute for his dead twin brother, so he is already a kind of avatar). He confesses at one point, his hair unwashed and his stubble verging on beardhood, that he longer knows who he is.

What he means, entirely aside from the ideological and cultural divide that he constantly crosses, is that he has begun to understand his own body as an avatar as well. Once he begins to occupy two bodies, one a gift of biology and the other of technology, then the real story becomes clear: how will he resolve his divided self? How will he behead the zombie or stake the vampire? How do you solve a problem like Jake Sully?

The great battle at the end of the film, in which alien-Jake leads the Na'vi clans into battle against a well-armed military (themselves in mecha suits that are a type of avatar), is a version of Odysseus killing Penelope's suitors. In this case, Pandora is the bride, and the humanity his rival. The twist that makes Avatar enjoyable is that Sully arrives on Pandora as a suitor, unaware that he is really the long-lost husband. Watching him reclaim something that was not his in the first place is the movie's chief pleasure. That and watching people get hit with five-foot long arrows.

I Guest-Posted Over at Mr. Teacher Man

2009-12-09T20:00:00.005-06:00

Once upon a time, I had a best friend. We did everything together and never took prisoners. And that friend's name... was C.J. Koster.

Nah, I've never met the guy. But we've exchanged emails, and I can say with confidence that if he ever left Korea and came back to the relative sanity of Canada, I would mail him a beer.* Especially now that he kindly asked me to post over at his blog, which is an always-enjoyable ~~howl of despair~~ read.

My new boots remind me of how my dreaming has changed with the approach of middle age. As I grow older my remembered dreams grow fewer. I not only mean that the frequency of memorable dreams has diminished, but that some of the ones I pinned to the corkboard on the inside of my skull have grown brittle and fallen off.

And those are just the opening sentences! But I warn you, the rest of it is just some text I copied off an adult video site.

concepts of toast

2009-12-06T23:17:00.003-06:00

[Night. Too late for food. Too late for baked potatoes. Schmutzie and Palinode, protected by darkness, are having baked potatoes.]

Schmutzie: I'm craving toasted marshmallows.

Palinode: I'm craving marshmallow toast.

Schmutzie: What is that?

Palinode: That is the exact opposite of what you're craving.

Schmutzie: But what exactly is it?

Palinode: It's toast made of marshmallows.

Schmutzie: So we want the same thing.

Palinode: Not at all.

Schmutzie: Completely at all.

Palinode: Nuh-uh. You want to take a marshmallow and toast it. I want a piece of toast that's made of marshmallow.

Schmutzie: The final product would be the same. And it would taste awesome.

Palinode: Would you put cheese and pastrami on your toasted marshmallow?

Schmutzie: Um... no.

Palinode: But I'd put cheese and pastrami on mine because it's toast.

Schmutzie: You're changing the food. You can't win the argument by talking about cheese and deli meat.

Palinode: I'm just providing an example of the uses of my marshmallow toast. I'd put pastrami on mine.

Schmutzie: No you WOULDN'T, because marshmallow toast doesn't EXIST.

Palinode: I introduced pastrami as a substantive addition to my assumed marshmallow toast. QED.

Schmutzie: I'm holding a sharp knife.

a musical education #4: odds

2009-12-06T13:30:00.005-06:00

7 Hot Tips For Amateur Astronomers

2009-11-16T15:50:00.007-06:00

On November 17th, the Leonid Meteor Shower will streak through the Earth's atmosphere, creating small, greenish, unaccountably exciting streaks of light in the night sky. Plenty of amateur astronomers are gearing up for the event, but what of the newbie? What of the ones who crouch in the bathtub with their eyes clenched tight and then feel disappointed that they didn't see any meteors?

In honour of the ones crouched in bathtubs - and in memory of all those who have lost their lives in the brave quest to stand around in a frozen field and watch little streaks of light - I've compiled the best tips out there to make sure you get the most out of your meteor viewing experience.

Telescopes are expensive. Get a free bionic eye when you sabotage your moon rocket and submit to gruelling high-tech reconstruction by NASA scientists. Do not let them tape a piece of paper over the socket saying 'IOU 1 bionic I dood! Sorryz'.

When it comes time to look at ‘heavenly bodies,’ do not jokingly look yourself up and down first and then wink at your companion. This is excruciatingly douchey. But that move where you touch your shoulder and make a sizzling sound? Yeah, that's fresh material.

Ambient light and ceilings can interfere with the night sky. Be outside, or knock a hole in your ceiling. DO NOT START ON THE GROUND FLOOR. If you live in an apartment building, please provide appropriate notice to the other tenants by shouting, “Hey, I just knocked out a hole in your floor and now you need to move your bathtub”.

Streetlights make it hard to see the stars. Find a way to take out the electrical grid. If possible, blow up Cyberdyne and kill Skynet in its cradle. It’s nice to combine saving the world with your other hobbies.

If you’re Superman, take advantage of your powers to amass great amounts of wealth and hire someone to look at the sky for you. Your hired stargazer can also double as a footstool.

Natural geological features such as The Hills afford spectacular viewing opportunities of fish-eyed SoCal dimwits with fake boobs mouthing last year’s platitudes about life and love at any one of a number of bars that look the inside of a bombed-out Hurricane Katrina shelter.

Join your local stargazing club. Enjoy looting their houses while they’re all thirty minutes out of town watching God’s Little Dribbles o' Light.

a musical education #02: freedom

2009-11-11T11:18:00.008-06:00

Every weekday I suffer through a snippet of easy listening '70s music in the bathroom at work (read the overly elaborate setup here). Why not turn a mild annoyance into an opportunity to educate myself, and yourself, by the transitive property, about the easy listening music of an earlier generation?

In the summer of 1986 I befriended a man named Brian who lived above my uncle's apartment just off the Danforth in Toronto. Brian seemed to spend all of his time hanging around on his balcony in track shorts, drinking Molson Export and smoking John Players Special Blend cigarettes. Brian was a man in gravity's merciless grip: Bags under his eyes, the product of way too many late nights, seemed to weigh his face down, his moustache crept over the corners of his mouth, and his tanned belly drooped over his waistband in a way that was somehow disarming. When evening came he would throw on a bathrobe with a Japanese print and continue to drink and smoke into the darkness.

After a couple of evenings of waving hello, he invited me up for a party, which mostly consisted of other men who sat around shotgunning beers, smoking hash and having long gossipy conversations laden with extravagant sexual innuendo and suggestive laughter. Brian spent the night getting high, trying very hard to get me high as well, and generally wandering around with a distracted look on his face, as if he couldn't remember where he left his lighter. Mostly he was preoccupied with trying to take advantage of a teenage boy with a mohawk, but not especially bummed out that it wasn't going to happen.

At some point during the party I was flipping through his record collection (all vinyl - this was 1986, after all) and I pulled out the following:

Brian lit a fresh cigarette off the one he was smoking. "Oh yeah," he said. "That's great faggot music". He offered to put the record on for me.

I was vaguely surprised, if only because I had no idea that there was such a thing as faggot music. I couldn't imagine what it would sound like, but I knew I didn't want to make night more awkward by listening to a record by some manic-looking guy with a giant afro and suspenders.

Of course, what Brian meant by "faggot music" was disco, and what Leo Sayer sounded like was this:

[Facebook readers: please visit my weblog In Palinode's Palace to view the video]

In the mid '80s disco was probably the dirtiest word in pop culture. Never mind that most pop music at the time was produced by people who had pioneered the explosion of disco music in the '70s. Never mind that the music being pushed out of studios at that point was just as insipid as anything disco had ever come up with (with the possible exception of Disco Duck). It was just part of a greater backlash against the pan-urban gay and non-white cultures of places like San Fransisco and New York, whose ebullient tumble into hedonism made it a flashpoint for conservative anger. I didn't know any of this when I was fifteen. I just knew that I didn't like disco, and to have taken disco music seriously would have made me a pariah anyway.

Instead I listened to serious music. Angry music. I liked Joy Division, and Black Flag, and The Smiths, all the depressed bastards screaming or barking or whining their way through the broken world. My music was like shoving broken glass in my ears and sleeping under sandpaper blankets. No moment of joy came without its nihilist brother sneaking up to shake your hand. I don't recall a single song from my teenage years as uninhibitedly happy and goofy as Sayer's little slice of ass-shake. Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" comes close, which I didn't learn to enjoy until I was well out of adolescence.

a musical education #01: need

2009-10-28T22:57:00.015-06:00

Every weekday I suffer through a snippet of easy listening '70s music in the bathroom at work (read the overly elaborate setup here). Why not turn a mild annoyance into an opportunity to educate myself, and yourself, by the transitive property, about the easy listening music of an earlier generation?

I'm not sure quite how well known Anne Murray is in the United States, but given that the 'Snowbirds' nickname for Canadian tourists is derived from the Anne Murray song, I imagine she's something of a lost household name down there. Although she hasn't released much music in the last decade, her hold on the Canadian imagination is still strong - some might even say relentless. But it's a Canadian relentlessness, a death grip that feels more like a friendly hand steadying itself on your shoulder. That's Anne Murray to me.

I also have a claim to fame regarding Murray: at the age of one or thereabouts, I sat on her knee. You might even say she dandled me upon that knee.

When I was young and unable to appreciate my great fortune at being able to wear diapers, my parents went to their fair share of parties. Their friends were the Halifax bohemian set: musicians, artists, liberal arts grad students and a guy named Bob who was pretty funny. Back in 1971-72, just when Anne Murray was becoming a celebrity by singing barefoot in Vegas with her unremarkable but smooth and controlled voice, she and my parents shared enough of an orbit that occasionally I would land on her knee for a good dandling.

The bathroom at work occasionally serenades me with me an Anne Murray tune or two. Most often it is her biggest hit: 1978's "You Needed Me".

By 1978 the sweetness that Murray brought to her performances had been shellacked over with a hard professionalized shell. "You Needed Me" is not only her most popular tune, it is emblematic of the very notion behind easy listening music: unchallenging, anodyne, utterly average. What else can you say about a song so literal-minded that the highest note of the chorus lands on the word "high?" Or a song whose climax occurs with the singer so "high" that she can "almost see eternity?" This is an implicitly Christian song, after all - why wouldn't the singer want to see eternity in all its splendor? Why go so close to the summit and turn back?

Part of this is grounded in an approach to the divine that can be found in Dante - the narrator of the Divine Comedy ascends the mountain of Heaven but is blinded by light at the moment that God appears. Presumably eternity and its God-shaped landscape is reserved for the dead, or at least the Elect of the dead. But I suspect the answer is a good deal more prosaic. Murray is a choir for that brand of worship whose apotheosis rests in the cozy feeling of being needed and reassured.

For those of you reading this on my Facebook feed, please visit my website at The Palinode to view the Anne Murray video.

a musical education

2009-10-26T17:20:00.007-06:00

Modern technology has done plenty for my work environment – advances in the microprocessor, for example, have helped me use the computer I am now typing on, and the replacement of small open fires with the heated electric plate has really brought the coffee break into the twenty-first century. In ancient times, coffee breaks used to take weeks, from the gathering of brush to the selection of a good rock for grinding the beans, and most of the employees would be dead of rickets by the time the water boiled.

One thing modern technology has not done for my workplace is put a bathroom in it. That’s right: lousy design trumps the best minds of the last thirty centuries. I’m certain that if I brought Socrates around on a tour of my offices, the first thing he would have said is, “Who’s the Einstein that forgot to put a bathroom in here?” That’s a Socratic question, by the way. So don’t answer it unless you enjoy the smugness of dead philosophers.

Actually, the first words out of his mouth would have been in ancient Greek, and they’d have been less words and more an unhinged scream at the sight of a photocopier in action. But that’s a story for another day. When one of us civilized twenty-first century types wants to go the bathroom – let’s use me as an example – I need to leave my office and enter the adjoining hotel lobby, where I can use the spacious men’s washroom on the mezzanine, which is well-lit, crawling with swine flu and populated by guys who clearly have nowhere better to hang out than a public toilet.

There’s the guy with the goatee and the little leather jacket who stands in front of the sinks like a washroom attendant in an old William Friedkin film. There’s the guy in the Tilly hat and navy knee socks who appears to have turned the end stall into an office. And then there are all the guests and conventioneers, the nametags resting on beer bellies, the occasional Shriner fez or rented tux passing through, the ones who wash their hands compulsively or don’t wash at all, the ones who grunt like wounded animals in the stalls, the ones who can’t work the hand towel dispenser, and worst of all, the ones who inexplicably choose the urinal right next to yours.

And then there’s me, the guy standing very still in the middle of it all holding up his cell phone. I must creep everyone the hell out.

Why am I doing it? I’m trying to catch the name of the song they’re piping in. The same music is unreeling in the lobby, but in that airy space it thins out to a kind of sonic puff of freshener. In the bathroom, the muzak is concentrated. You can feel the force of its intent: to force you into a state of mind where you just want to take it easy. And of course, ~~Dan Fogelberg’s~~ Jackson Browne's breeziest of breezy tunes, Take It Easy, is always in the rotation.

The songs I hear two or three times fit roughly into the subgenre of 1970s folk-rock, the kingdom that John Denver rules. They are songs that exist just to the left of my childhood, familiar but slightly distant (I grew up on bands like The Beatles until I jumped straight to Duran Duran and their ilk in the early eighties). I recognize the tunes but rarely know the lyrics, and the names of the artists call up vague recollections at best.

So: I figured I would acquaint myself with the easy listening gods and goddesses of the '70s, with the invaluable help of my iPhone and the Midomi app, which is capable of listening to a snippet of song and returning reams of information.

Next post then: I will tell you about the music of the hotel bathroom, which plays for everyone, whether it's me with my phone or the guy with the Tilly hat in the stall at the end of the row.

schmutzie quits smoking

2009-10-25T22:06:00.005-06:00

About a month and a half ago, Schmutzie quit smoking. Since we're married, I get to see all the crazy technicolour effects in person: confusion, irritability, hopelessness, irrational bursts of joy and time dilation. I went through the experience eight years ago, when I decided one day that I no longer needed tobacco. I think the P@xil helped.

Anyway, it occurred to me the other day that I had a) an inquiring mind, and b) a cheap camcorder. Our conversation revolved around two subjects: her overweening ambition to rule the world and her fear of death. Usually this makes for a Genghis Khan-like tyrant mowing down a subcontinent, but in Schmutzie's case it's rather inspiring.

Here she is talking about quitting smoking:

And here's a longer disquisition on creativity and blogging:

Extra footage courtesy of archive.org.

*Facebook readers: to view the videos, please visit my weblog In Palinode's Palace.