2/23/2010
What we did
We were warned about the snow. We told you so. We were taken in arms. What could be the harm? We were troubled to see nothing apparent in our destiny. We were asked to sacrifice, were promised hope and given the key to kingdom. We were championed by the press, then forgot to dress. We hid our gifts, and lavished paper money on the problem. We asked for advice when it did not suffice. We drank all Sunday, combed our hair, shaved our beards, we lived in fear.
2/22/2010
1/26/2010
Agh fest 2010
Agh, I am spitting again, we lug loogies to mouth, then shout. I see, agh, a cowboy atop a church organ. It's a Spaghetti Western, Ennio Morricone as the angel of life and death. A fist flashes, light extinguishes itself.
Attempt to reincarnate. Attempt to relate. Mind-reading will be a feature on our next beta release. Don't bother teasing, individuality happily ceases, empathy's well-worn when I know everything you do, we are to each other a bland familiar stew...
Oh my dove, fly away, find land. Was the Odyssey just evolutionary adaptation? I'm on cold charred Galapologan islands, finding fish with finger-hooks, eeking existence from the pages of a book.
Agh - I was drunk this month, I was a pedestrian run over by a Hummer. Winter without snow, lets the homeless lie low, on King Street, where we eat street meat, where beauty meets slush, and anyone well-dressed is probably in a rush.
Tell me a story, write about your travels. To travel is to work. Packing and unpacking like George Clooney, up in the air, we expect customer service, lug lives here through air. We mostly hit eject, sucking in information, like children eating to prepare for the next stage of growth, just a billion little larvae who've grown a second mouth.
We are electric these days, we travel in every direction instantaneously. She said "I don't need your word of mouth when I got the search engines on my side."
1/05/2010
Stephen Harper's Vacation Auto-replies
- "I am out of the office until March 3. If this is about a breach of democracy, please call my press secretary Dimitri, ext. 666."
- "Sorry, I'm out of Ottawa while we renovate the House. Have to tear a few things down. I bet you won't recognize the place when I'm done!"
- "I'm still detained in Afghanistan - man, talk about torture! I'll get that information you requested as soon as I can. Could take a while."
- "For the next little while I'll be trading Parliament Hill's eternal flame for Vancouver's Olympic torch. Please join me in watching the flames of our nation burn!"
- "Democracy is halted until I find enough unelected senators to let it function properly."
- "If your legislation failed to pass before the end of 2009, don't worry, you are not alone. Please contact us again in the springtime, when you can try to pass it through the House yourself."
- "While we are away from the office, there will be no refund of your tax dollars. However, stay tuned for phase two of our economic action plan. Remember, your money supports our tropes."
- "Sorry you noticed that I'm away! Due to Jean Chretien's bad example, we are prorogued. We are working as fast as possible to make sure nobody notices anything again."
- "Any top civil servants requesting re-appointments during this time may contact my finger."
- "I will not be in touch with most Canadians at this time."
1/04/2010
"What is liberty, without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils."
(stern advice c/o Edmund Burke)
The errors and defects of old establishments are visible and palpable. It calls for little ability to point them out, and where absolute power is given, it requires but a word wholly to abolish the vice and establishment altogether...
1/01/2010
Resolutions
- Resuscitate more life forms via electrostatic reverse-cryogenics
- Part hair in accordance with a normal distribution
- Master the truck-to-truck propane transfer
- Relentlessly self-actuate. Failing that, wiltingly self-deprecate
- Cell-divide mitotically on even-numbered days of the month
- Three words: Laser-tag Wednesdays
- Burn down the Museum of Arson
- Punctuate more punctiliously. Alliterate less repetitively. Write more adverbially
- Perform at least one gastric bypass surgery
- Increase sandwich production, decrease sandwich consumption. Invest sandwich-offset credits in emerging shawarma economy
12/14/2009
Today's random insults
- I am witness to a horrific belching trend.
- We are undone by pitiless boinkery.
- Woe to wicked! They have seven extra toes.
- Shall I call you Shasta, or shithead?
- Your brogue is a vulgar shrieking thing.
- I have often considered you a leech-pig. I am proved right.
- Swim in my pool and I will forcefeed you a mutton bazooka.
- You are a man of hardened cheese.
- Your Swedish-princess tickler is now in the mail.
- Oh, Mr. Sludgemuffin - your hair's blown away in the wind!
- I agree the coastal towns should sell more butter! But you've absconded with my churn.
- Vicious meadowlarks defy my every ordinance. I shall torch the mountainside and begin anew.
11/24/2009
11/22/2009
Naples
Naples is filthy, but gorgeous—like a lingerie model at a belching contest.
When the garbage syndicates aren’t striking and medieval cobblestones are visible above the trash, when you’re not run down by twelve year old handbag artists scootering on the sidewalk like truant hyenas; when the mafia’s not putting screws to the teeming underclass with every purchase of fresh fruit or cut flowers—you see the city could be an angel in spite of its demons.
You escape the overcrowded afternoon Intercity train arriving an hour late from Rome. Move quickly or be crushed. Your head swims; the sweat of Stazione Garibaldi in your nostrils. The frenzied Neapolitans are everywhere, and—everyone has assured you—none can be trusted. You’ve arranged your cash, passport and credit cards in six places around your undergarments; the signs on the platform warn of pickpockets in six languages. Instinctively putting hands to your wallet, you ironically inform nearby thieves precisely where to strike. Neapolitan trickery at its most subtle? The city is a conspiracy, and the safest bet is paranoia.
You exit onto piazza Garibaldi, the air fetid in summer heat. Plastic bags and empty paper cups collect at your feet. Yet beautiful architecture, centuries old, towers above the mire. Baroque and older, majestic, a gorgeous tradition of grand public building since the 13th century. The list of visual treasures is endless: cathedrals, museums, the colourful palazzi of the Vomero hill, and shopping malls like the Galleria Umberto, that most beautiful outdoor arcade shaped like a holy cross.
But what a falling off. The population has paid for a past golden age by feeding on itself, since 1944, when the Allies were handed control of the city and enlisted the insidious Camorra to reconstruct after all the bombings. They reconstructed, sure, like mad scientists; they built a Frankenstein that serves them to this day.
Two young men on a scooter buzz past, make a coy grab at your fiancée’s purse. You outmaneuver them. The demons turn, cackle and laugh. All the evildoers from the Old Testament were banished here: Every encounter seems to be with usurer from the Book of Numbers, the vendor of impure meats from Leviticus; the catamite owner of fourteen teenage concubines runs the brothel next to your hotel. Sodom and Gomorrah have a run for their money. Where’s prophet Jeremiah when you need him?
But this city was always out of control. You can’t contain its millions of highly involved actors; every inch is a dramatic scene. Collectively the Neapolitans are frightening, but individually each one a studied gem. Each gypsy panhandler could have been Meryl Streep. What performances! These women are all over you with outstretched hands, like Jesus on a leper, aiming to cure you of your earthly possessions.
Refuel with espresso, walk a few blocks more. Don’t even think of pulling out your camera. Try not to get killed crossing the main streets. The motorists are toying with you, skilled and capricious, they let you live. You learn quickly here: to paraphrase Paul Theroux, The Naples Book of Road Etiquette is a very slim volume. Rome in comparison is seven days of Sunday driving.
There are rewards for the brave wandering souls, however. Pizza at Da Michele is the best in Naples, and by extension, the world.
Full of the Queen Marguerita, you navigate street vendors, young men with toothpicks in mouths and wooden crates on shoulders hawking black market frippery; energetic North African immigrants or underemployed locals all ogling your fiancée. They’re saying with their eyes, ‘she’s got a lot of nerve having blonde hair’. The one honest soul in Naples, the guy who works at your hotel, was right to refuse to let her out of the building wearing her bracelet.
You keep escaping, from the spiderweb labyrinth of Spaccanapoli, down the Corso Umberto I toward the port, the spots south of the city centre that let you breathe. You reach the water, outlet for the condensed mass of Europe’s most densely populated city, writhing between the surrounding hills, waiting to be pushed into the sea by the next volcanic eruption.
Most astonishing is that view from the sea: how the city erupts above the bay of Naples. On one end, toward Pompeii, you see Vesuvius, the ornery beached whale promising to spew ash from his blowhole. And like the murderous Camorra, the fire mountain makes good on that threat every so often. 79 AD was the year immortalized for wiping out 20,000 in Pompeii, but Naples has had its kneecaps smashed by quakes every few decades. In 1693, 93000 dead, in 1980 another 10,000, and those are just the highlights. Still the surrounding suburban hills are jam-packed with illegally-constructed housing. The lava hills are deadly but fertile; people survive, thrive somehow, building up their jammed structures like a colony of vain termites destined for collapse.
Naples has a tragic death wish. This lingerie model is not only beautiful, but bipolar. It’s heartbreakingly obvious why they love her so much: I mean, Sofia Loren's from around here.
When the garbage syndicates aren’t striking and medieval cobblestones are visible above the trash, when you’re not run down by twelve year old handbag artists scootering on the sidewalk like truant hyenas; when the mafia’s not putting screws to the teeming underclass with every purchase of fresh fruit or cut flowers—you see the city could be an angel in spite of its demons.
You escape the overcrowded afternoon Intercity train arriving an hour late from Rome. Move quickly or be crushed. Your head swims; the sweat of Stazione Garibaldi in your nostrils. The frenzied Neapolitans are everywhere, and—everyone has assured you—none can be trusted. You’ve arranged your cash, passport and credit cards in six places around your undergarments; the signs on the platform warn of pickpockets in six languages. Instinctively putting hands to your wallet, you ironically inform nearby thieves precisely where to strike. Neapolitan trickery at its most subtle? The city is a conspiracy, and the safest bet is paranoia.
You exit onto piazza Garibaldi, the air fetid in summer heat. Plastic bags and empty paper cups collect at your feet. Yet beautiful architecture, centuries old, towers above the mire. Baroque and older, majestic, a gorgeous tradition of grand public building since the 13th century. The list of visual treasures is endless: cathedrals, museums, the colourful palazzi of the Vomero hill, and shopping malls like the Galleria Umberto, that most beautiful outdoor arcade shaped like a holy cross.
But what a falling off. The population has paid for a past golden age by feeding on itself, since 1944, when the Allies were handed control of the city and enlisted the insidious Camorra to reconstruct after all the bombings. They reconstructed, sure, like mad scientists; they built a Frankenstein that serves them to this day.
Two young men on a scooter buzz past, make a coy grab at your fiancée’s purse. You outmaneuver them. The demons turn, cackle and laugh. All the evildoers from the Old Testament were banished here: Every encounter seems to be with usurer from the Book of Numbers, the vendor of impure meats from Leviticus; the catamite owner of fourteen teenage concubines runs the brothel next to your hotel. Sodom and Gomorrah have a run for their money. Where’s prophet Jeremiah when you need him?
But this city was always out of control. You can’t contain its millions of highly involved actors; every inch is a dramatic scene. Collectively the Neapolitans are frightening, but individually each one a studied gem. Each gypsy panhandler could have been Meryl Streep. What performances! These women are all over you with outstretched hands, like Jesus on a leper, aiming to cure you of your earthly possessions.
Refuel with espresso, walk a few blocks more. Don’t even think of pulling out your camera. Try not to get killed crossing the main streets. The motorists are toying with you, skilled and capricious, they let you live. You learn quickly here: to paraphrase Paul Theroux, The Naples Book of Road Etiquette is a very slim volume. Rome in comparison is seven days of Sunday driving.
There are rewards for the brave wandering souls, however. Pizza at Da Michele is the best in Naples, and by extension, the world.
Full of the Queen Marguerita, you navigate street vendors, young men with toothpicks in mouths and wooden crates on shoulders hawking black market frippery; energetic North African immigrants or underemployed locals all ogling your fiancée. They’re saying with their eyes, ‘she’s got a lot of nerve having blonde hair’. The one honest soul in Naples, the guy who works at your hotel, was right to refuse to let her out of the building wearing her bracelet.
You keep escaping, from the spiderweb labyrinth of Spaccanapoli, down the Corso Umberto I toward the port, the spots south of the city centre that let you breathe. You reach the water, outlet for the condensed mass of Europe’s most densely populated city, writhing between the surrounding hills, waiting to be pushed into the sea by the next volcanic eruption.
Most astonishing is that view from the sea: how the city erupts above the bay of Naples. On one end, toward Pompeii, you see Vesuvius, the ornery beached whale promising to spew ash from his blowhole. And like the murderous Camorra, the fire mountain makes good on that threat every so often. 79 AD was the year immortalized for wiping out 20,000 in Pompeii, but Naples has had its kneecaps smashed by quakes every few decades. In 1693, 93000 dead, in 1980 another 10,000, and those are just the highlights. Still the surrounding suburban hills are jam-packed with illegally-constructed housing. The lava hills are deadly but fertile; people survive, thrive somehow, building up their jammed structures like a colony of vain termites destined for collapse.
Naples has a tragic death wish. This lingerie model is not only beautiful, but bipolar. It’s heartbreakingly obvious why they love her so much: I mean, Sofia Loren's from around here.
11/18/2009
Every time I stare at this screen
...I feel 1 frickin inch tall. Like Pac-Man in the maze, but I can't see any blinking edible pellets, and the blue ghosts are after me.
Mostly there is the waiting, and the empty space, and the strangers in the coffee shop if I'm out on the road looking for inspiration, and the guilt at not writing. The writing happens in about 2.5 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted, or maybe praying is what they would have called it 150 years ago.
Do you know what ultramontanism is? It's the sort of crap I look up on the Wik instead of facing this job: write a crapass FIAC blog post that don't make no sense. Which is we both expect. Ex pectin. Like the man who gave up strawberry jam was ex pectin. Argh.
I have almost deleted this blog entirely about 57,000 times. But the other 2,454,000 times I didn't so who cares right?
Last night I met this huge tall Asian dude who wants to open up a bake shop in Nashville, Tennessee--a Christian bakery in Nashville that serves discount baked goods to starving country music artists and pays them decent wages to perform, because there's so many GD musicians in Nashville that they don't get paid. Ha. Just like the blogosphere. Such is the landscape when 99.9% of your colleagues are barely 1% distinguishable from you. Ability to discern is victimized by Hick's law, whereby increased infomation prolongs decisionmaking time, and by corollary, apathy. Low barrier to entry. High cost of breaking through the dip. Know what I thought about the Asian baker? I thought this guy has it figured out. Good for him. There are still saints out there.
Mostly there is the waiting, and the empty space, and the strangers in the coffee shop if I'm out on the road looking for inspiration, and the guilt at not writing. The writing happens in about 2.5 minutes. The rest of the time is wasted, or maybe praying is what they would have called it 150 years ago.
Do you know what ultramontanism is? It's the sort of crap I look up on the Wik instead of facing this job: write a crapass FIAC blog post that don't make no sense. Which is we both expect. Ex pectin. Like the man who gave up strawberry jam was ex pectin. Argh.
I have almost deleted this blog entirely about 57,000 times. But the other 2,454,000 times I didn't so who cares right?
Last night I met this huge tall Asian dude who wants to open up a bake shop in Nashville, Tennessee--a Christian bakery in Nashville that serves discount baked goods to starving country music artists and pays them decent wages to perform, because there's so many GD musicians in Nashville that they don't get paid. Ha. Just like the blogosphere. Such is the landscape when 99.9% of your colleagues are barely 1% distinguishable from you. Ability to discern is victimized by Hick's law, whereby increased infomation prolongs decisionmaking time, and by corollary, apathy. Low barrier to entry. High cost of breaking through the dip. Know what I thought about the Asian baker? I thought this guy has it figured out. Good for him. There are still saints out there.
11/06/2009
Digit Wails
The walls here are beige brown. The people are painted figures. We stare, silent.
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
We don't learn by doing but by staring, and we don't learn very well.
We weren't meant to stare all day. We need a treadmill or we'll wither away.
We cry with our fingers. Loud fingers are angry spirits. We tickle the scroll bar in search of love.
The man with shortcuts is an angry man, his keystrokes more ambitious, he wants to use less so he can do more. The shortcut man scares the scrolling, clicking man. Those who master shortcuts become king.
Outside they breath oxygen. It makes us afraid, desperate for electricity again. We need to be on and off and on and again, because we are digits ourselves, processing signals to serve the end user. Our job is to be the current. The process is always being written, for the end user. We wish we could ask him if he likes it. If he doesn't like it we are aborted.
We no longer talk. Our fingers become smaller, hands like pin pricks, we apprehend it by staring. We see everything but feel nothing.
10/30/2009
Exacting
The marathon pace amounted to what? I can't retrace the lines on my face. You who were wise--all ruined by bankers? Why lie to yourself, to live today by spiting forever? We were meant to be dirty, meant to argue, meant to pick up the cheque after World War III, but then why dream of victory? All our hopes are cruel, but believing less makes us fools.
Read to channel something, to make to think, to believe in potential. I couldn't persuade a dog to come out of the rain with a raw leg of lamb. I don't know how to debate. I have no point to prove, I am editing everything the best I can, deciding what to keep and what to lose.
Read to channel something, to make to think, to believe in potential. I couldn't persuade a dog to come out of the rain with a raw leg of lamb. I don't know how to debate. I have no point to prove, I am editing everything the best I can, deciding what to keep and what to lose.
10/23/2009
10/15/2009
Hotel Supramonte
If ever I was kidnapped thirty years ago, like Fabrizio De Andre, and forced to spend my nights inside a cave, put for ransom by desperate Sardinian mountain men from the bloody village of Orgosolo, long before the tourists came, I would have asked these men to drag me away to one of those other-worldly open air caves that are hollowed from the cliffs north of the northern tip of the empty Cala Luna-the lonesome 'moon beach' lapped by the similarly crescent-shaped Golfo di Orosei. A hideout found only by boat or by hours-long hike along inland mountain trails, down to a silent river mouth that enjoys an unlikely refuge beneath the Supramonte's grey limestone mass: a strip of sand and driftwood just fifteen paces wide which separates the still freshwater reeds from the searching sea. There I'd wait for rescue in a cave beside the bay, as the sun sets hours early behind cliffs that plunge like a guillotine into dark blue-green waters.
My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.
And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.
My captors might not be cruel while they awaited their pay, driven by hunger more than malice and aware that the beauty that clung them to this barren land would captivate me too, and they would let me wade in the river in the morning, where hundreds of minnows would chase my feet, so that my footfalls would overturn enough dirt to feed them too. I would maybe try to carve a flute from the driftwood to play a sorry tune, and make a joke about scaling the sheer rock face of the cliffs when they looked away, how I would spirit away to Tiscali, the 6000-year-old hideout in the high part of the mountains where ancient peoples hid from bandits too.
And when we finally parted ways I would forgive my kidnappers too, the way De Andre did in 1980, not begrudging the price you pay living at the Hotel Supramonte.
10/07/2009
That one song over and over
[always skipping over half the words]
I met this lady, I love her, lovely, fair. I'd go for days about her hair if you'd let me. I promised I'd write her but have been swaddled in sacred feelings for a couple years. I made provision only for burps or farts, no knowhow to explain those dimples that bring me tears.
***
There're only seven songs in the universe, and I've gotten used to one
I do like variations on a theme, but
if there's only one way to flatten out into a runway, carry all your friends
so we land with dignity
if there's still a reason to blog
if someone on this passive intelligent planet hasn't learned to read then
I'll gladly stay stodgy if it means I can pay an entrance fee to see
a lone lost tourist find a reason to fall on his knees
and I'll wait to hear minds click, my
mouse is making me sick;
you there,
too entertained to realize your boredom
too sustained by routine to fall down running
on empty
you there, I need lost little lambs like you! we need a lost little land like ours. we live lost lives, learning to get big, know ye not that ye are gods? and
the kingdom's within you
there's that ancient wisdom burning through, I thought technology'd let me forget where I came from? the definition of a fool
I met this lady, I love her, lovely, fair. I'd go for days about her hair if you'd let me. I promised I'd write her but have been swaddled in sacred feelings for a couple years. I made provision only for burps or farts, no knowhow to explain those dimples that bring me tears.
***
There're only seven songs in the universe, and I've gotten used to one
I do like variations on a theme, but
if there's only one way to flatten out into a runway, carry all your friends
so we land with dignity
if there's still a reason to blog
if someone on this passive intelligent planet hasn't learned to read then
I'll gladly stay stodgy if it means I can pay an entrance fee to see
a lone lost tourist find a reason to fall on his knees
and I'll wait to hear minds click, my
mouse is making me sick;
you there,
too entertained to realize your boredom
too sustained by routine to fall down running
on empty
you there, I need lost little lambs like you! we need a lost little land like ours. we live lost lives, learning to get big, know ye not that ye are gods? and
the kingdom's within you
there's that ancient wisdom burning through, I thought technology'd let me forget where I came from? the definition of a fool
10/06/2009
15 minutes of focus
Too long I put this off, it seems, I use happiness as an excuse not to bust my own knees. It is not allowed to slink silently into bliss, while my charges sit in a barn underground amid the cobras' hiss. If I could take you where I've gone it would not do, for I do as I must, and you are you--and what use will I be to all of us if I don't do write by you?
I've been admiring the bricks of my finished mansion, afraid to meet the press, I've been poring over pictures on Facebook, obsessed with how I'm dressed. I always wait until the last minute to squeeze this bottle through the tube, but it seems I'll be up till midnight glued to what I'd already conclusively proved to be "what is '1 + 1 equals 2'?".
I can't wish better things for my reflection, the universe I saw last night happened 4 billion years ago, we can't let that be our life story, we have to build another universe to grow, we can be so much better than our demographic peer group analysis would predict was the way we vertigo.
So I'd like to promise never to think so much before putting finger to key, that's been my problem with this blog for oh for about a year; a problem with everybody. Everything created is a miracle, and we've been in awe of all the miracles, until the miracles made us small. I've got to make friends with giant aliens, massive creatures, influential blue whales or something, somebody with a blowhole big enough to toss all the self-consciousness into, somebody with the garbanzos to toasterize every little worry and kerblontz all thin-haired pale quiggling into salty smithereens.
I am a weirdo overdone by words, I have polished many dancing turds, they make me giggle and I overindulge, but undone if by nothing else but the bulge. At 31 I'm in my prime, yet all these words aren't worth a dime if we aren't tumbling headlong into truth - that we can't mind striking out so much, as the Bambino would often do. No use sitting in a germ-free oxygen booth, and hey did you know cancer of the mouth is probably what killed Babe Ruth?
I've been admiring the bricks of my finished mansion, afraid to meet the press, I've been poring over pictures on Facebook, obsessed with how I'm dressed. I always wait until the last minute to squeeze this bottle through the tube, but it seems I'll be up till midnight glued to what I'd already conclusively proved to be "what is '1 + 1 equals 2'?".
I can't wish better things for my reflection, the universe I saw last night happened 4 billion years ago, we can't let that be our life story, we have to build another universe to grow, we can be so much better than our demographic peer group analysis would predict was the way we vertigo.
So I'd like to promise never to think so much before putting finger to key, that's been my problem with this blog for oh for about a year; a problem with everybody. Everything created is a miracle, and we've been in awe of all the miracles, until the miracles made us small. I've got to make friends with giant aliens, massive creatures, influential blue whales or something, somebody with a blowhole big enough to toss all the self-consciousness into, somebody with the garbanzos to toasterize every little worry and kerblontz all thin-haired pale quiggling into salty smithereens.
I am a weirdo overdone by words, I have polished many dancing turds, they make me giggle and I overindulge, but undone if by nothing else but the bulge. At 31 I'm in my prime, yet all these words aren't worth a dime if we aren't tumbling headlong into truth - that we can't mind striking out so much, as the Bambino would often do. No use sitting in a germ-free oxygen booth, and hey did you know cancer of the mouth is probably what killed Babe Ruth?
8/24/2009
Woohoo
Fartleks and frodo intimating bloating. This note I wrote was sour and lumpy and long past expiry. I was giving up my final run at the friary in favour of full lunged admiration, and August light, tongue tricks refracting reverberation.
We are swollen shrimp in the catch-drain of the sink, thank god for a dripping faucet, an Econo-lodge amid the forest, middle class dreams with an unvarnished support beam, factor in hidden expenses and, it seems, we are better off with Mr. Clean.
If I ever tried to paint I would make your children faint. I don't breathe when about to burst; in fact I'll pay the limo driver personally, so get your hands off my purse.
Instead I'll write ten thousand terse two-word rejection letters to all my creditors, ask my debtors to hand me an Ontario peach: in fact I'd trade everything they owe me for a 30-second speech!
We are swollen shrimp in the catch-drain of the sink, thank god for a dripping faucet, an Econo-lodge amid the forest, middle class dreams with an unvarnished support beam, factor in hidden expenses and, it seems, we are better off with Mr. Clean.
If I ever tried to paint I would make your children faint. I don't breathe when about to burst; in fact I'll pay the limo driver personally, so get your hands off my purse.
Instead I'll write ten thousand terse two-word rejection letters to all my creditors, ask my debtors to hand me an Ontario peach: in fact I'd trade everything they owe me for a 30-second speech!
7/27/2009
Mass Email for New Years 2001
[When it was still an art form]
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:36:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ##### <####@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: ##########
Subject: Mass email for New Year's
Dear People On This List,
I swore I'd never do it again, but newly ingrained habits die hard, harder than old habits die hard. Yes, this habit of making everyone feel depersonalized via the odious mass email is dying hard with a vengeance.
I blame the cold weather. You might say it has frozen all the human feeling that is left in me. Some of you might also say that I was a soulless monster anyway, what with already having sent three other de-individualizing mass emails out in the past eight months anyways (I reluctantly recall a May 6 mass email and September 8 mass email, and a short, some would say nasty and brutish Dec 13 mass email). If you have already dialed up your OPP bureau, asking for my head on a plate, and demanding that my email-writing fingers be cut off and preserved in a jar as a symbolic act of retribution, then I understand.
Yes, I understand if you would do that. Just know that I am wilier than any of you.
Yes, I am both foxy and wily, and if you think I will lie down and let you cut my fingers off without some evil payback of my own somewhere down the line, then think again, peasants! I will reveal nothing more. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With a side order of humiliation. Go ahead, enjoy my severed fingers preserved in a jar! I still have my very capable and evil reptile brain to plot and hatch future machinations (indeed, the brain is the root of all email, 'mass'ive and otherwise, and even a stumpy-fisted evil mastermind can have tricks up his sleeve, though there be no mittens on his on hands). Maybe you should be thinking long term with your acts of retributive justice, instead of scheming these near-sighted and downright petty digit-severing childish acts of vengeance. You ought to think these things out before you start brandishing a saw willy-nilly and demand my fingers in a jar. I just admitted (my facade of wiliness breached in a moment of openness andtruthfulness, probably sparked subconsciously by the one remainingcompassionate sector of my brain, the one part not yet wholly consumed by reptilian evil, the one part of me fighting to break free from the rest and proclaim itself human, and good), that my brain is reptile. If my brain is evil and reptile, why wouldn't my fingers be reptile as well?
Like the wily salamander who's had its tail cut off in a life-or-death 'imbroglio', why couldn't I simply regrow my fingers in time and recommence writing mass emails, continuing the evil all the more, adding to it like a small child adds Lego bricks to a castle, until the castle (and, in my case, the evil) reaches the heavens and thereupon only God Himself can stop me! Oh, the wickedness of it all!
If the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything (and they rarely teach me much--indeed, the sub zero extremities of the season usually slow down the blood flow in my brain to a Saharan trickle, resulting in an evil mastermind who, though wily, is at his most relatively dull-witted in winter-time, hence the possibility of having his fingers cut off and preserved in a jar becomes a veritable concern, whereas in other climates an evil mastermind of comparable scale would never have fear of getting part of him amputated, because the warmer weather would allow blood flow in the brain to be at maximum, and such finger-chopping conspiracies would be nipped in the bud, perhaps by an evilly-masterminded pre-emptive counter-offensive, plotted and hatched by a smoothly functioning reptile evil brain. For example, before you had the opportunity of dialing up your local police bureau and calling for my head on a plate and my fingers separated from my hands and displayed, label and all, in this now-clichéd finger jar, a warm-weather, brain-well-lubed evil genius would have done something evil to prevent you from accomplishing your goal of retributive mass-email penance, before you even picked up the phone. Say, for example, that I fire-bombed your house. Good luck amputating my fingers then! I would think that rescuing your cat and your loved ones from the charred inferno would be higher up on your 'to do' list than making examples out of workaday evil masterminds! But I am completely abusing this parenthesis. Remember, I was trying to make a point before all this talk of how a warm weather evil mastermind would fend off a finger-chomping conspiracy much better than I would be able to, in my frigid 'lukewarm if I'm lucky, blood flow at a trickle' state...here goes what's on the other side of this bracket. Props to my friend ####...'if the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything..') it's how to die hard with a vengeance.
Wow, I have now been writing this email for an hour and a half. That's how much this topic concerns me.
To sum up my introduction to this email: All of you can kiss my ass!
ON TO THE REST OF THE EMAIL:
I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everybody on this list, and Happy New Year to everyone else too. I hope you still love me. Forgive my hair-trigger tangents. Let this be my belated XMAS
present to you. I know mass emails aren't a unique gift, but at least you don't have to fight off crowds in the GAP to exchange it. Small consolation...
Lata
####
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:36:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ##### <####@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: ##########
Subject: Mass email for New Year's
Dear People On This List,
I swore I'd never do it again, but newly ingrained habits die hard, harder than old habits die hard. Yes, this habit of making everyone feel depersonalized via the odious mass email is dying hard with a vengeance.
I blame the cold weather. You might say it has frozen all the human feeling that is left in me. Some of you might also say that I was a soulless monster anyway, what with already having sent three other de-individualizing mass emails out in the past eight months anyways (I reluctantly recall a May 6 mass email and September 8 mass email, and a short, some would say nasty and brutish Dec 13 mass email). If you have already dialed up your OPP bureau, asking for my head on a plate, and demanding that my email-writing fingers be cut off and preserved in a jar as a symbolic act of retribution, then I understand.
Yes, I understand if you would do that. Just know that I am wilier than any of you.
Yes, I am both foxy and wily, and if you think I will lie down and let you cut my fingers off without some evil payback of my own somewhere down the line, then think again, peasants! I will reveal nothing more. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With a side order of humiliation. Go ahead, enjoy my severed fingers preserved in a jar! I still have my very capable and evil reptile brain to plot and hatch future machinations (indeed, the brain is the root of all email, 'mass'ive and otherwise, and even a stumpy-fisted evil mastermind can have tricks up his sleeve, though there be no mittens on his on hands). Maybe you should be thinking long term with your acts of retributive justice, instead of scheming these near-sighted and downright petty digit-severing childish acts of vengeance. You ought to think these things out before you start brandishing a saw willy-nilly and demand my fingers in a jar. I just admitted (my facade of wiliness breached in a moment of openness andtruthfulness, probably sparked subconsciously by the one remainingcompassionate sector of my brain, the one part not yet wholly consumed by reptilian evil, the one part of me fighting to break free from the rest and proclaim itself human, and good), that my brain is reptile. If my brain is evil and reptile, why wouldn't my fingers be reptile as well?
Like the wily salamander who's had its tail cut off in a life-or-death 'imbroglio', why couldn't I simply regrow my fingers in time and recommence writing mass emails, continuing the evil all the more, adding to it like a small child adds Lego bricks to a castle, until the castle (and, in my case, the evil) reaches the heavens and thereupon only God Himself can stop me! Oh, the wickedness of it all!
If the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything (and they rarely teach me much--indeed, the sub zero extremities of the season usually slow down the blood flow in my brain to a Saharan trickle, resulting in an evil mastermind who, though wily, is at his most relatively dull-witted in winter-time, hence the possibility of having his fingers cut off and preserved in a jar becomes a veritable concern, whereas in other climates an evil mastermind of comparable scale would never have fear of getting part of him amputated, because the warmer weather would allow blood flow in the brain to be at maximum, and such finger-chopping conspiracies would be nipped in the bud, perhaps by an evilly-masterminded pre-emptive counter-offensive, plotted and hatched by a smoothly functioning reptile evil brain. For example, before you had the opportunity of dialing up your local police bureau and calling for my head on a plate and my fingers separated from my hands and displayed, label and all, in this now-clichéd finger jar, a warm-weather, brain-well-lubed evil genius would have done something evil to prevent you from accomplishing your goal of retributive mass-email penance, before you even picked up the phone. Say, for example, that I fire-bombed your house. Good luck amputating my fingers then! I would think that rescuing your cat and your loved ones from the charred inferno would be higher up on your 'to do' list than making examples out of workaday evil masterminds! But I am completely abusing this parenthesis. Remember, I was trying to make a point before all this talk of how a warm weather evil mastermind would fend off a finger-chomping conspiracy much better than I would be able to, in my frigid 'lukewarm if I'm lucky, blood flow at a trickle' state...here goes what's on the other side of this bracket. Props to my friend ####...'if the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything..') it's how to die hard with a vengeance.
Wow, I have now been writing this email for an hour and a half. That's how much this topic concerns me.
To sum up my introduction to this email: All of you can kiss my ass!
ON TO THE REST OF THE EMAIL:
I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everybody on this list, and Happy New Year to everyone else too. I hope you still love me. Forgive my hair-trigger tangents. Let this be my belated XMAS
present to you. I know mass emails aren't a unique gift, but at least you don't have to fight off crowds in the GAP to exchange it. Small consolation...
Lata
####
7/15/2009
11 Tantalizing Headlines (for future posts)
- 1 Year Plan for World Domination (including mid-plan sabbatical because it's really easy)
- I'm Actually Not As Crazy As I Was Five Minutes Ago (and other discouraging trends)
- Words I Will Now Refuse to Read
- What Mild Rejection Has Taught Me (aka 1 year plan to settle for a boring desk job)
- If Only I Could Hear at Canine Frequencies ...
- Beyonce Is My Cousin?? Eww, That's Travolting!
- I Never Wash My Hands (But I Do Wash My Fists... With The Blood of Aliens!)
- How I Greened My Nightmares
- Facebook, The Movie? Meet Cupcake Man, The Smiling!
- Ear Wax: Why Those Who Have It Just Don't Care, And Those Who Don't Are Jealous
- Please...Talk To Me When I'm Listening
7/07/2009
This blog
is a detailed survey of invisible cracks.
To find invisible cracks, you have to listen.
You listen for echoes.
To make an echo, you have to speak.
Speak what?
Anything.
As long as it's out loud.
But, if there is too much noise, you don't hear anything.
To find invisible cracks, you have to listen.
You listen for echoes.
To make an echo, you have to speak.
Speak what?
Anything.
As long as it's out loud.
But, if there is too much noise, you don't hear anything.
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