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gung hay fat choy (or how NOT to write a post)
The Chinese as a rule are an extraordinarily smart people. Take astrology - while western counterparts like the ever-popular Rob Brezsny (catering to the whole general ironic-hipster populous with his 'free will astrology horoscopes') spout some [sometimes loftily cryptic] words-to-live-by, the Chinese get extremely specific with astrology. I was born the year of the cock. My Asian sources (um, yesterday's paper) say that means I'll be lonely this year; the year of the red dog. Lonely, ha! On Saturday the sun peaked before noon and I trotted up the street in a pair of red heels. I bought a piece of red suede for a dollar and tied it around my neck, flung my dark hair back off my face and peeled my jacket from my shoulders looking up into the light. There was a crack like thunder. I froze. Boom!! Again. Boom!!! Two slight beautiful red-lipsticked Asian girls standing like footballers in a huddle over two enormous drums pitched my stomach forward into my throat with every building clash - I couldn't tell for a second whether they were real or in my imagination. I stood unmoving transfixed by the girls and the percussion until I felt something behind me like you can sense someone in the dark. I turned around and there he was close as breath - the dog, a dragon dog - silver and red with burning gold and green flecks across his back, four legs and eyelashes as long as my forearm batting at me, some mechanical animal, some boy's finger on the wire flicking it up and down. The dragon-dog dipped his head towards my red boots shaking and twisting as he bent down, then leaned back bowed and licked his own forefeet gently, eloquently as the drum rumbled steady like it was underneath us both, like it was inside us, calling for beauty and promise and something new and utterly deliriously wondrous. And I thought for a moment that it was backwards, that I must be looking at a reflection of myself caught in the magic of a perfect moment that could theoretically stretch on for an eternity. My red boots and those surreal blinking eyes and the drum and the sun forever. A dragonfly caught in amber. Then I woke up. And a few people laughed at the girl in the red boots caught by the two boys pretending to be a silver fire dragon-of-a-dog as she blushed and backed to the beat of the drum into the crowd. The dragon-dog's head flew upwards to the tips of the boy's fingers spiraling and floating and I saw a bead of sweat on the boy's face. My dragon-dog: two sweaty boys. I lost step with the drum as I walked away, seeking out the sunny side of the street like a cat. Except I'm like the cat that's been pet one too many times from the tail up instead of the head down. I'm ruffled and withdrawn enough lately that it's bereft me of words, from loving words - nearly to the point of ignoring the deliciousness of my dragon-dog. Lonely eh? Brezsny mentioned this week in my [western] horoscope, "'At the innermost core of all loneliness is a deep and powerful yearning for union with one's lost self,' wrote Irish playwright Brendan Francis Behan... be brave enough to confront the feelings of isolation that fester in your depths." Funny enough, I guess we're all on the same track; lost and found. You, the Chinese, the two boys, the red-lipsticked Asian girls, the spirit of my dragon-dog and me. Me and my red boots in the sun.
dear anonymous
Blogging works simply: I write about small aspects and observations of life. Sometimes my online-savvy friends feel closer to me because they read my sentiments or stories and understand... 'neat'! they say, 'it's cool that you wrote about me', or 'it's nice to see this other side of you'. Other times I get this guy coming around named 'anonymous'. He reads my blog and fancies himself a great giver of advice and admonishment. He's always got something twatty or stupid or trite to add... like he's some kind of faceless keyboard-wielding critic. From this point forward, any comment anonymous posts will be deleted instantly without hope for reprieve. No more smarmy sanctimonious bullshit, anonymous. I'm afraid we don't quite know each other well enough.
tra la la
One post at a time... that's what it's going to take to get me through this limbo of a winter. Trying to fight back didn't work, so I'm covered in bruises from a few sloppy nights where I tried to drown winter in gin. My head hurts now and the bitterness of January keeps creeping down my throat each morning before I wake up, so I spit frost and cough icicles before I thaw. I really don't mean to sound miserly and down. *dances jig*
marlene dietrich and claudette colbert
well shit on me
My laptop monitor's backlight has unceremoniously faded out. I can't see anything. What does this mean for me, but more importantly, for you dear indefinite article reader? I have to use surrogate computers, and I guess you'll have to do without as much of me for a little while. No more once-a-day posting (it was too much anyway). I'll update when I can. Get-well cards for my laptop can be sent via my e-mail.
weekend at a cottage in the kawarthas
"Sometimes the story is all in the details," I laughed with a clenched mouthful of hilarity, "like this little detail." I swung my leg over the oak stair railing, reached out to the cascade of icicles on the cliff rocks, popped off a thin sharp shard and dropped it in through the mouth of my beer bottle. Plop. "There," I smiled, "there's an icicle in my beer, that's a great detail." And then I pounced on her and we tumbled out onto the frozen lake, thumbing down snowmobiles and high on the low sun sweeping shadows moving like cold giants past ice-fishing huts and sparkling snow clouds.
"Go baby, GO!" He's urging me to run in my hems-too-long pants to the street corner to see if I can catch it. The 'it' is the streetcar. It descended on our conversation like a vacuum under the couch - the dirty moth-eaten underside of a couch that remains while you choose to ignore it - suddenly and vehemently. We talked for hours about starting a band, we looked at each other for hours in that way seeming both forlorn and escapist... then suddenly he said 'run' so I ran. I ran, and didn't (still don't) need closure. All of you listen: I don't need closure. I like me the way I am without anyone mucking it up. I like touching your face and then wandering away from you. If I'd needed to know who and what and whether I even was after you... I would've turned into some thing, some one you never would have been attracted to in the first place. ~Oh, I forgot. We're starting a band. I think we decided we're called 'Top Off''. We still need a black drummer, an Asian bassist, a strawberry blonde keyboard-player and a few occasional special guests who'll play trumpet and slide guitar. First songs include: PJ Harvey: 'Who the Fuck?' some Fiona Apple and punk-ified Nora Jones covers Sonic Youth: too many to name and some originals including 'Don't Touch my Face' and 'Running for the Streetcar' Anyone interesting in joining our little euro-trash stuck up 'no need of closure' band can e-mail me. My guitarist thinks the best idea we've ever had is changing my name to 'Riley Riley'. Thoughts?
You know sometimes I swear I could happily drown myself in hot sauce I love it so much.
ode to oates
I finish our book for a third time. The old plastic dust cover crinkling at the spine as I turn the last aged page over between my fingers. " Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning? -- even if there's a time it goes out?" The last line digging me. I close the book and look into the dark corner. You're there looking back at me, standing that way you stand, your hips pushed out toward me, your stomach almost concave it's so flat - leaner than a knife-edge - looking at me with not just your eyes, but your whole body, every sinew and muscle of you attuned. We were sixteen when you took me beyond the logging roads outside the city's property - past power lines clear-cut as wide as five bungalows stretched in line and covered in brush. No one's property. We closed the gate behind us with a forgotten steel chain and turned our endeavors to the sheltered trail through shallow trees crouching in the afternoon sun. 'You know, I think a long time ago, people used to walk out here 'cause they had to? 'Cause there were no roads?' We laughed giddy creeping through the underbrush looking for our secret - the place that was ours - a moose hide fifteen metres up in an old fir teetering on it's last limbs and hollow like the sounds of the woods around it. We spent hours there. I thought we'd never leave. I've almost forgotten it but from time to time it's still there in my mind -- the hide -- higher-up, older and more dangerous than it's ever been, waiting for someone else to claim it. The branches subtly different, the smallest molecules in the wood buttressing up against one another in new ways so what could take the weight five years ago might now give way. I'm reminded of the hot devotion that took me when we stepped out into the dust and bush with no soul for miles, your hair whipping towards me as we ran, the sound of our feet never touching the dirt and stones the puddles and summer-dried bogs. I could, I did run and run and run forever. Oh Heart, I don't know I've aged, except now I can hardly be possessed to leave the house as enthusiastically. But I still have the book, the one you gave me, giggling-shy as you handed it to me on my seventeenth birthday with that mouth of yours in a half-smirk where it seemed it felt perpetually at ease. You and I. " Whoever's reading this, if anyone is reading it: does it matter that our old selves are lost to us as surely as the past is lost, or is it enough to know yes we lived then, and we're living now, and the connection must be there? -- like a river hundreds of miles long exists both at its source and at its mouth, simultaneously?"
witness
If I were a painterly writer, I'd use these hands like a brush and stroke the keys until the penetrating colours of you lived vibrant in the words on this page. I'm not a painterly writer, but you, you are a writerly painter. I watched your hands move in the webam - up close, just incoherent pixels layered in reality and time - knuckles hovering the scope of your keyboard, playing it like a piano; a lover's hands on skin. I don't know what the meticulous movements meant in real time, but the images that came after adorned with layers of speckles, dust and light are beautiful gifts. Conducting and contrasting our talents across the wireless. I'll write the dialogue, you draw the picture.
[something] tag
Hey Darlin', You have the best e-mail address ever by the way, and though this began as an e-mail to you, I wrote it and thought of something (I think you'll understand why) that could keep us in stories, and maybe pay them forward. Think of Swordfight's T.P. tag as inspiration -- except this is 'fiction tag', or please, something more clever [help] 'cause it's really too early in the morning (I'm thinking of words - anecdotal, brainchild - what goes with 'tag'?). You asked for ideas, characters, snippets that you could use monthly as the seed for something you would write and self-publish... what if you only developed one part that grain of an idea and then passed it to another blogger? We know enough writers don't we? On second thought, we don't have to know them, they just have to want to participate. I'm not thinking huge - stories a paragraph long are even fine if that's as far as someone wants to take it - but I imagine we'll want to go further. I'm going first. Elise, tag, you're it: I remembered it and thought I'd give it to you... It would probably take someone else's fictional stylings to deal with it, since I'm confined to a time/place in my mind -- we were driving the four-lane toll way turnpike in Dallas, TX -- the tolls are frequent (like every-5-minutes frequent). Down there, everyone's got pre-loaded toll cards stuck to their windshields. If you had to stop every time... 'run, stand, run, stand' (now if you're out of money and you don't have a card, you can fly though the pre-paid section - it is inviting without the usual tollgates - but a little camera high up on an arc-way will snap your license and the city will send you bills+fines at the end of the year for every instance you shirked the three-quarter cost). Well, the matter is, we were driving the other car - the one without the toll card - and had to go, stop, go, stop for an annoyingly long time. The toll way is a contradiction - at once fast and slow moving, sad and ridiculous, nightmarish and lullingly, repetitively dream-like. Pay... pay again... pay again, and on and on... frustrating? How would you react? Would you care? Do you drive? That's the setting (any toll works, but I thought I'd mention where this came from). Here's the character: what drove [oops, pun] a crazy-smiling man to stand at one of the many nondescript 'exact change' booths with a tremendous bucket of quarters and pay each person's toll as they rolled through? How many quarters did he haul out there? What were peoples' reactions? Busy toll way, bucket of quarters - how long was he standing there? Did anyone stop him? I wonder, could he be/did he get arrested? What was it about, 'paying it forward?' Or is he just mad? Texas is a scary place. I don't know if he's a character in a story, or just a character in the imagination of a character in a story. Maybe he's like a movie character that never gets explained and the car just leaves him shrinking in the rear view. Maybe he's everything. Maybe he's nothing. He's anything you want him to be - he's the bell-ringer for something else entirely... I like him anyway, and I never forgot him. He's a good place to start, don't you think? So now it's your turn, write something, but not everything, and tag someone else. Here's a permanent link to this post (the timecode below is also a permalink) so we can spread it around. If anyone actually likes the idea, we can spread the net wider; artists can do illos, digicam-aholics can take photos. Fabulous whatever. Creativity goes.
Tis' the time of year for soup. I even eat it for breakfast. Runny, tomato-y, salty canned-soup with limp chunks of unrecognizable flora and fauna. "Hearty Vegetable Beef," I mumble, turning the solid can questionably over in one hand as I sort through the top drawer for the opener with the other. I like to say it aloud before I eat it. I say 'vegetable' with a put-on mouthful of faux Linda-Richmond-esque Yiddish accent, ' ve-GET-able,' so it sounds like 'forgettable.' Forgettable soup.
not in the habit of caring about celebrities, but...
I'm some perspicacious genius - I've been saying these two are destined to reproduce since Interview with the Vampire and Hackers. Can anyone say ' most beautiful baby ever born?'
liverpool kissing 101
When my father was in what we'd call 'his prime,' he was the oldest of a band of seven brothers. The lot of them were born before the general populous had rung in the fifties... my Dad idolized Elvis, wore his hair in a pompadour, and followed James Bond and John Wayne's examples. Prisoners of war in Saint John passed him little lugers and kodachi swords through the fence-gaps in exchange for cigarettes. Some day, I promise you, I'll write the Angela's Ashes rip-off bestseller based on their lives (but for now, theirs is another story). 'The Riley boys' -- seven in the gang (and their two cousins next door - thanks anonymous!) -- they had a complete baseball team. Dad had his share of fighting in and out. He said sometimes he had to beat up his [drunk] old man just to keep him from beating on their mother ("I hated him so much, I thought I'd kill him," my father was the first person to bald-facedly describe love-and-hate to me). In the poor Irish-Catholic gospel according to him, here's how to give someone a 'liverpool kiss' (aka: headbutt): - square up to face your opponent and make sure you take a breath, hold it hard and look him in the eye - imagine the tip of your forehead, where your hairline meets bare skin, is the point of a battering ram - wind-up by gaining a little space on your opponent - muscle your neck up and backward to cache some distance and speed - aim the point of your 'battering ram' perfectly at the square patch in between and above your opponents eyebrows, and send the tip of your face crashing down hard on it. This is crucial. You need to hit low and fast - you want to break his nose. The fastest moving head wins. Now remember this: even if you win the argument - hitting with a wilder fury than your opponent and probably even knocking the fucker out in the process - you're going to end up bloody, messy and punch-drunk from the hit. The frontal lobes in your brain are going to smash against the interior of your skull so hard, you won't remember your mama's name for a few seconds. But congratulations, you won. It's his experience, not mine, but I have good reason to suspect that Dad's a little off on this one -- I think you should actually try to crack someone with the side of your head. You can't get the same leverage and you probably won't knock your opponent out as effectively, but you'll do some decent damage without ending up with blood in your eyes, or worse, knocked-out yourself. Cinephiles will admit the liverpool kiss is a cinematic classic. The crack of skull against skull is the most thrilling fake-sound in a movie fight. In real life, you're bound to get hurt, but you'll go down in a blaze of retro-machismo glory. So go enjoy, and think of my Irish Da' when you feel your skull split slightly at the hairline.
I can't believe I'm writing this, but...
The new Streisand album is really good. What the hell is going on?
fairer sex: twice as fast, twice as hard
I don't see why I have to grow up. My brother's pushing forty and he still hasn't.
that umbrella is right sexy
"That is one big umbrella, girl." Yes, I am aware. It's a golf-type umbrella. I bought it for $4.99 around the corner from my place. I'm looking at my shadow in the dirt of the median - I notice puddles forming in dog-paw prints - my shadow looks like an erotic-spectacle mirror of the resonant women who sing reverent Spanish tunes in Disney's The Three Caballeros (I promise that one's worth looking up). I have this nightdream: Daniel MacIvor walks suddenly into an ellipsoidal reflector spot on a dark stage, turning his face up to the light. "Was I good?" I ask him from a second-row chair in the audience, "was I any good at all? I mean, as an actor?" "Well," MacIvor grins foreseeably, "what do you think?" "I think I hated myself enough," I muse. ~"Is that real??" this short little thing with attitude to there and too much vodka in her is grabbing my arm. My gay boyfriend makes a scissor motion with his hand as we dance; 'I'm cutting you loose, baby,' his eyes smart me as his hands follow the waistline of the boy in white. " Is it REAL??" I don't understand. "Is what real?" She's stroking my arm now. I forgot. My gay boyfriend and I gave each other tattoos before we left his place. Mine is a scrawling hungry-sexy panther climbing down my bicep to my elbow. "Yeah," I say, "I just got it and it really hurts." "And is this a real tie?" She's moved on. She's touching my tie. Is there such a thing as a fake tie? Clip-on? For what it's worth, it's real. "God, can I try it?" She's stroking my collarbones now. I lift it off my neck and drape it around hers without a word. The little attitude-ridden thing is wearing my tie. "What sign are you?" she coos. "Um, scorpio." The little attitude-ridden thing hits the floor with a thud. "What, is the tie cutting off the circulation to your brain, babe?" I laugh. I'm laughing at everything. "I'm an aquarius! We don't get along with scorpios!" There goes our future. "Don't leave me," she says. Her eyes are glowing in the ultraviolet. Her voice is incessant in my ear. She grabs my shoulder, fussing my drawn-on tattoo, pulling me into her, running her hand the length of my body, "don't leave me." "I never will. I'll never leave. I'm right there," I point to the tie, "I'm around your neck." But I lied, I walked out without her and without the tie. I walked out and left myself there hanging around her neck. If there had been a salon open, I would have cut off all my hair. If there had been a tattoo shop open, I would have eked out some emblem on my bones. If I had known her name, I might have asked after her. At least she wore crazy around her neck too -- obvious and unyielding... there's something in that worth admiring. There's something in me that wonders if I've worn 'crazy' enough.
notes on my lovers' ghosts
If my heart really is what I imagine - a twisted heavy sodden piece of serrated metal - and it were in my hand, I could think of a few people I'd biff with it.
shock me shock me shock me with that deviant behavior
I struggle all the time with the idea that I'm walking around suppressing urges. Sitting behind the turbaned man on the bus I smelt mangos and mold, and I all I wanted in the world was to reach out and tug on the little hanging bit of fabric tapping against his sixth cervical vertebrae - the bump in his smooth neck-bone set pushing out against his brown-green skin I'd been intently studying. I wanted to grab it and rip it towards me, and pull and pull and unfurl it until the long strips of turban resembled gray strings of smoke billowing to the floor. I didn't want to see his hair or piss him off, that's not it; it was just that little hanging piece of fabric taunting my id - teasing my most inward compulsions. How can I put it? It's wanting to do something simply because (theoretically) you could. It's also dark. Sometimes it's the darkest thing you'll ever want to do. You'd be ashamed to admit it. You'd be a monster. It's in destructive little boys who get a flash of popping their tiny kitten's head off, because of their inexplicable need to squeeze tight-as-they-dare around the dainty thing's neck. It's in a group of women wanting to rip the most beautiful one to shreds because she's too perfect - unsheathe their claws, pounce on her like she's bubble wrap and tear down the image of her. It's in wanting to put a knife through your hand because the fear of pain is also a draw - desirous self-destruction - at once being afraid and not being afraid of feeling. And of course, making yourself your own victim means you never really have to live at all and what a relief that is. Everyone who's pretty much normal only flirts with the awful thoughts that surface inside them and usually avoids cashing in altogether. I put my finger on the trigger but never pull. Sometimes I like to cock the gun though, so I can hear the sound of something a little dangerous, something a little impulsive... (whispers) something a little shocking. This is why we get, say, tattoos - no? Design really doesn't matter.. it's just the emblem of conquering an urge. 
Jimmy did this. He's a talented CG animator/artist in Sydney, Australia.
I like the schedule we're on. The rooms down the hall from mine are empty when I wake up, the early sounds of their occupants' departures muffled by my pillow and the low fog of sleep blanketing my bed. For now, I'm up late and down late, and the simple pleasure of it is in being able to safely saunter around the apartment in nothing but underwear and fuzzy socks. I can put my arms up in the hallway and let the morning light fall across them. Wait, 'morning light' is obscure metonymy - I mean the tawdry bluish reflection of the sky bounced through the bathroom window. And I say 'safely', meaning I wish I'd get caught.
live in the world
I just want to draw some attention to something someone I'm proud to say I know wrote that makes a sort of acquiescent-elated fire light up underneath my eyeballs: | "Lots of interesting animals crawl up and down this road. Pickup trucks fly past crammed with people and livestock held in place by steel bars. Rolling rebukes of any sort of height restriction haul piles of hay higher than the length of the vehicle, often with a person or two riding on top of the heap. Trucks in the unholy shape of a beetle crossed with a tank giving birth to a giant lizard haul gasoline and dirt, with no taillights (for stealth)." |
Mike is a killer writer, and his Kerouac-esque farang adventures in Thailand are really ripe for the tasting.
and your little dog too
There's this great little café/deli on Richmond East in between Church and Jarvis called the Mystic Muffin. It reminds me of Halifax's signature north-end diners; cheap plentiful eclectic food and the same guy always at the cash instantly recognizing you whether you've been there just once or every day of your life. I made a trek there today since I was in the neighbourhood, but almost never made it when a taxi nearly squashed me crossing Scott and Wellington. "There's a fucking crosswalk here!" I shouted at the oncoming cabbie who probably couldn't hear (or understand for that matter). The yellow Crown Vic bleeped an aggravated gnat-like horn at me as the driver swiped the bumper so conceivably close to my calves, I swore I had a new residual-chrome tattoo courtesy of Ford. I yelped and jumped and grumbled and swallowed the heart in my throat and walked on. Doesn't it happen everyday anyway? I never thought of it as serious. I never got hurt. I got home tonight and read the feeds. A little girl at Islington and Golfdown in Etobicoke was more trusting and tragically unlucky last night when a northbound driver smashed into her and her pet collie as she crossed at a similarly sub-par crosswalk. They died. Pulse24 made sure to make mention that she was thought of as a 'sweet little girl' (I honestly have no doubt)... but a more proactive approach to the story would probably have been to pursue the crosswalk's inadequacy. How about calling to charge the officials who decided the city's budget couldn't squeeze out a penny for a set of traffic lights in that [clearly needful] spot? Or how about talking to whatever department it was that wouldn't set aside cash for an iota of signage at the crosswalk that nearly cost me my shins this afternoon? Well anyway, attacking city officials is probably like curing the cold by cutting off the stuffy nose, because everyone knows the real problem is bad driving. Now don't get me wrong, every city has it's share of problematic drivers (in Moncton for instance, Frenchmen can't merge so they predictably brake). Pulse24 claims the little girl paid the 'high price of living in a city obsessed with speed.' I'll conceed Toronto has problematic drivers too, but I don't buy the cold description -- 'obsession' -- rather I think if you want to generalize, they're just naturally jerks. edit 01/10/2006: Apparently the street lights at the crosswalk where the little girl and the dog were struck weren't lit, and hadn't been since December despite complaints from residents in the area. The Toronto Star did a really great job clearing up loose ends, and they did it all without resorting to any huffy statements like '[Toronto is] a city obsessed with speed.' I'm still going to stick by the 'jerks' thing that I wrote though mmm kay?
Blog mongers. If we're personally acquainted, I hope I've pointed out to you that, 'you know, if you want to know what's going on with me, you could just call -- you've got my phone number.' And if I haven't, consider yourself told. You guys are the only ones reading my tripe anyway, but it was hasty. I'm clearing the air. I've got my window open - this online time-waster is just retroactive right now and I'm in the process of making big plans. Yeah, BIG plans (I'm not being ironical, I fucking really mean it ok?). Plus, January is really depressing. I mean twice as depressing as Christmas, hell, three times as depressing. Garbs and I went to see Munich. I told her I wanted to start being more 'ideologically promiscuous.' "Yeah 'cause right now you're just promiscuous," she replied in that matter-of-fact yet unflappably-superior tone she's really got down. She pretty much summed my shit up with that. I've got this thing in February and then there's the whole matter of money and work hopefully going hand in hand, plus I want to read more maybe, and write less. I'm rambling. It's January and I'm such a cliché that I don't know whether to laugh or cry or abandon myself altogether. In the meantime, no one really needed to read about it - however, I felt the urge to mention that this bitch is running in my riding up here in good ol' Highpark -- Parkdale, Toronto (oh and I really needed my links, since I was flailing around the internet unable to find anybody): Close race between Peggy Nash and Sarmite Sam Bulte. Ms. Bulte is a close friend of the incumbent foreign intermediaries, and possibility to become the next Heritage Minister if the Liberals form the government. She is seen by our community as one of the greatest threats to Canadian creativity, especially independents and creators using alternative methods of production, distribution and funding. Anyone with ties to this riding should do what they can to support Ms. Nash and ensure that Ms. Bulte does not win her seat.
via Digital Copyright Canada - (a scandal roundup!) |
What a cunt (um, I'm sure if there's not an equivalent law like this in Canada, Sam Bulte might be up for one). Read about her here, here and here.
here's a little tip
If you're a chef *, it's probably not a good idea to shove your big-ass butcher knife in your pocket then ride the subway drunk and stoned. Now I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out on this one: if you do, the knife will probably slip out onto the floor of the train as you try to keep from passing out (it did). Someone will probably spot your big knife and phone the cops (they did). You'll probably wake up to a handful of police officers shouting things like 'get down!' as they handcuff and arrest you (did that too). And then you'll have to explain the knife as well as that little cache of shrooms and weed you had in the other pocket (good luck), while you're pinned to the floor (cold huh?). That's just my thoughts on it... and it's a little piece of advise you can take or leave or ignore anyway I guess, because (and this is the best part - where you find out Toronto rocks or sucks depending on your point of view) you could wind up in jail, but the cops are just going to call your boss to confirm your 'chef' story and then let you go anyway 'cause they're funny guys too. ( *note: I am not a chef. I do however have a friend who is a chef and also, busted.)
Just want to mention that I've become the posterchild for wench.com and I couldn't be fucking happier. Deal with it.
what shoes to fill!
I cannot live up to these expectations... Garby here.Riles is getting ready for a night on the town. I am dressed more whorish than she is in the cleavage department, and that is freaking me out. Riley is the new owner of a Snap! Crackle! Pop! Kellogg's Rice Krispies camera. Ask her about it. You guys don't even know how much she means to me. Guess how much, and you'll be way off.
you debutante knows what you need, but I know what you want
The time for secret confessions is upon us. I've always wanted to be the front-girl for a cover band. There. Not so secret anymore. It takes five minutes to pencil on a smoky eye; I'd canvass the crowd with it and croon hard standards inside the wooden battlements of old draft bars, and polish off brown bottles while we rehearse new tunes. First songs I'd want to learn -- Joni Mitchell ~ ' A Case of You,' Tilt ~ ' Berkeley Pier,' Loretta Lynn ~ ' Mrs. Leroy Brown' and anything by Siouxsie and the Banshees or Emmylou Harris. Your turn.
take two
I want to write things down on paper again. I want to stuff scraps in drawers and behind furniture, and underneath the socks where no one ever looks. I want to send letters. But that's a problem because my handwriting has gone downhill, it looks like a team of monkeys authored it the way it scrawls and climbs haltingly across blank pages. My middle finger hurts and my wrist cramps after just a few seconds of feeble pen-wielding dexterity (and I use the term loosely, because my dexterity wouldn't even rival that of a cat with opposable thumbs). I found a postcard for twenty-five cents. It cost more to mail. I was pretty happy about that until I spied the roly-poly mail girl licking and sticking what I think was a Winnie-the-Pooh Christmas stamp to the back of it. Fuck you mail girl. My cheap postcard was almost sexy until your chubby fingers blasphemed all over it. I thought about asking for it back so I could draw a sort of self-aware arrow to the stamp and write (illegibly) 'I didn't pick the stamp.' (my postcard disappears into the dark slot) I walked out the glass door, swooped open my umbrella and delved into the mist hanging low on the sidewalk - past the Bovine Sex Club (my postcard is in a bag), past Bellwoods (my postcard is on a truck), past the Drake (my postcard is sprouting wings). Thumbing the pen still in my pocket, I peered out from under cover at all the blank walls, blank faces - blanks stretching sideways all the way home.
I'm convinced that some men will watch TV shows as retarded as Dark Angel entirely because they have some secret guilty alone-time whack-off thing for Jessica Alba. I know this because I'm familiar with the concept, having just wasted another two hours on my second sit-through of the movie 'Hitch', simply because it was on and I have a bit of an unholy crush on Eva Mendes. Yes, beauty like this (fortunately/unfortunately for the rest of us - however you want to look at it) exists.
for annabel
"I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing. I went to some posh person's house and they had this tiny fucking little ashtray, it was about two inches by one inch. And they had a beautiful house. It's like they're trying to reduce that horror to such a point. You could only fit about three cigarette butts in it, then they'd empty it. It's almost like that dot on the TV, it never fucking disappears. If you have a party then you've got to have an ashtray, but you get it so small ... to isolate the horror. In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death. It's like a graveyard, if you want to get metaphorical about it... There's a great book I read called Cigarettes Are Sublime. You realise how smoking's never talked about. It's probably the most powerful thing of the 20th century. There's no country in the world where smoking is allowed where they don't smoke. Even where it isn't allowed they still find a way to smoke. People are killing themselves. I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life. The whole thing is you don't know when you're going to die. It makes everything not make sense, there's this unknown factor. Whereas if you suddenly go, OK, I choose to die now, you take the matter into your own hands. So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple. So people can't come up to me and say, oh it's bad for you, don't do it. I mean, I don't trust people who don't smoke, because I think the way the world works, I can't imagine not. If I don't smoke, I feel like a poof." ~ Damien Hirst (as told to The Idler)  | | Damien Hirst - Home Sweet Home (via artnet) |
take one
Sometimes you have to write things because they happen and are so immediate and important that the blaze of them in your life deserves a requiting of sorts. Sometimes you have to wait and reflect. Or sometimes, you forget about something entirely until it rediscovers you. (Oh and there are those times you have to write something because you're getting paid for it.) I found the only 'return to sender' mail I've ever gotten in the drawer of my old nightstand over the holidays. It came back to me from England where I'd spent a semester abroad. We lived next to a lush twelfth century castle, taking our long classes inside its medieval walls, and none of my classmates suspected that I was fucking the gardener. Arden the Gardener. I'd mention his last name but for the sake of his own privacy, since pairing his first and last names sounds even more absurd than Arden rhyming with Garden. I used to daze-off, watching him through the old wood casings - a massive weed whacker in tow - he'd go shirtless under the harness and a lacquer of sweat would gleam off him in the afternoon. Arden returned my mail. Or, he was already gone and there was just no 'Arden' there to deliver it to. I think he moved to Canada and lives in the Maritimes now. He probably does landscaping - somewhat of a common affliction in the world of Maritime jobs and far less romantic than watching him delicately trim the broom-plant in the Shakespearian garden. Anyway, I wasn't sad when the envelope came back unopened. I had this momentary non-committal perplexity and I stowed it away in its stamped unopened state instead of tossing it, but not because I was upset. I'm sure I knew I'd forget, then discover it again and wonder at it. So what did I send him? A Corona beer opener and one of those free 'Halifax music' CD's that used to come in a Keith's 24. Not a single scrap of writing, or note of any kind. I believed words and letters were dangerous. I kept a safe distance between me and the mingling of pens, paper and passion. Now I write this blog and freely tell strangers things I would have been scared to send in a simple letter, and I think, 'fuck, Google's probably got me cached.' I don't know what's worse: the little package Arden never opened gathering dust amid old journals and forgotten scraps of paper I wrote on and let no one read, or backwardly doing the thing I used to fear -- disclosing the allusions of my heart here and letting you carry it all away without being able to touch or see it in you, or even know whether you cared or how much. When I want you, but all I have is this little frame with little words instead - this return-to-sender life online. This blog hurts me sometimes..
pretty much sums it up
I'm not in the habit of posting other people's stuff, but reading shit like this makes me both so fucking excited and disappointed that I want to give up writing altogether.
Dear Vice,
Just when I was beginning to fear this month's dose of the emotional torture I so enjoy bestowing upon my parents would go unjustified, I was reminded of how I'm 24 and can barely afford to wipe my own ass because of those capitalist pigs and all their lame hipper-than-thou friends.
Even better, if I do fart out a kid before my ovaries shit the bed when I'm 35 it'll probably look like the Elephant Man because the boomers spent more time talking about environmentally sound practices than actually practicing them. Mommy won't be able to afford to stay home with poor little Quasi either so he'll end up more fucked-up than I was.
The idea that I have to try and dig a future out of this heaping pile of shit makes me want to throw in the towel and do a fucking jack-knife off the roof of some McMansion in suburbia hell. My only comfort is found in thinking of the majority of those zeroes from my parents' generation rotting in nursing homes where they'll be lucky if they plummet to their death when Nurse Ratched kicks them down the stairs.
Thanks! |
No, thank you. Check the [sic] original here
blog redux
Re-blogging this poorly articulated wreck I salvaged from the car crash that was my old LiveJournal, because I want to: ~And so it is... I climb out of the shower and drape an olive-green colored towel around my hips as I head across the hardwood to my unmentionables drawer. It's a short, two-tier rectangular-shaped bit of furniture where I keep everything that sits close against my skin: slips, camis, fishnets, thongs - all there, all anticipating my choice.
I imagine if this stuff had a voice, a little collective gasp would ensue as I pull the white handle and shed light on the contents. "She's back! Who's going next? Pick me - please, ME!" Or maybe they don't like spending the day up my crotch in the nether-regions of my denim jeans. Maybe the response is "Oh God, here we go again..."
The choice isn't always clear. The panties range from fresh beautiful slinky items (stars and hearts, pink or light blue), wispy thongs that look like they wouldn't cover a lick of ass (shoe-string style) and lace shorties that cut off inches above the crease where your thigh turns into the curve of your butt. The saddened and fading I keep in the back, the ones reserved for dismal days or cold nights or relatively dirty situations (take that however you like), the gorgeous black see through with the red roses, misguided gifts from mom and from boyfriends long-gone, the ones that don't quite fit the same now, the forgotten, the rediscovered, the good-looking and the shabby, the splendidly sexy and the medium thoroughfare... waiting.
And each time a pair is pulled out, the thought that they are a major player in the intricate fabric of my day's destiny crosses my mind. Who will see them? Will no one see them? What if someone were to see them, and I have chosen incorrectly for the occasion? Say, I'm crossing the intersection at the corner of Robie and Coburg, when a crazed Fed Ex delivery boy on an emergency route with a suicide mission slams the breaks on just in time to see the wide-eyed look of disappointment and resignation in my face before his van rumbles over me.
And the gorgeous emergency-room intern (the one with the strong intelligent jaw line, cherub eyes and golden hair), what would he say when he peeled back the pretty DOA's road-torn jeans only to discover the shabby pink hearted full-assed panties with seams come loose, tiny splayed-out threads and the little elastic pieces from the edges sticking out willy nilly?
'I can't take my eyes off of you'?
Actually I'm pretty sure he'd think "what a shame, what's for lunch?" and then a body bag would finally put the old shabby things to rest.
OK, I'm really only partially joking here - truth is I think 'who will see them?' and 'you never know' is really code for 'will I have sex?' Because no one wants to be caught in stall of a basement washroom of a club with her skirt over her head thinking, 'damn, I really wish I had chosen the pink thong, and not the sporty-whiteys.' At this point, perhaps it doesn't really matter.
With a steamy scene playing in my head (whereby the beautiful intern is running his hands surgically along my inner thigh and across my collarbone up into my hair in the afore mentioned washroom stall), I choose a barely-there hot pink thong that sits neatly lower than most. I stand on tip-toe in the mirror, sideways, wet hair, cupping my breasts in my hands.
A droplet of water rolls down my calf.
I'm late. |
lost again
"How is it I do this every fucking time?" My knees hurt, scraping against uneven floorboards as I scrounge around through packed and unpacked and re-packed bags. My life in bags. I can't find my car keys again. It's clear I've been clever enough to hide them in [what will later become] an obvious spot. "You left them in the car." "I never leave them in the car," I say with half a don't-you-tell-me-where-my-keys-are kind of attitude and half a please-don't-tell-me-where-my-keys-are-so-I-can-stay-forever sort of tone. "I guess you have to stay then." I don't know what tone she's using, but the fact that she gleans my thoughts so surreptitiously silences me, and a cool saddness pours from the hot bed we'd finally managed to pull ourselves out of, washes down the stairs to us and rises all around me. I turn and look up at her. I shake the magic 8 ball in my brain and wait for the right words to surface bright and perfect from the liquidy haze I think I'm about to go under. I want to say, "if you'll come to Toronto, I'll pay for half your ticket." I want to say, "if you'll come to Toronto, I'll buy ten pillows for my bed. I want to say, "if you come to Toronto, I'll spend all that time devoting every moment to you." But I say nothing, because what I want to say she'd have no answer for. My keys are wedged between my toothbrush and my moisturizer. I lay my head against her and smile. ~When I get back to Toronto, my ornamental pepper plant - the red one in the black pot I picked up one day strolling down Queen West - is finally and truly dead. How is it I do this every fucking time. I can't hold anything close to me.
The flight attendant grins into the PA, "we here aboard WestJet would like to welcome you to Toronto. Please remember to stay in your seats with your seat-belts fastened, your seat-backs fully upright and your tray-tables locked and stowed until the plane has come to a complete stop at the terminal. If Toronto is home, then lucky you and welcome back, if you're just visiting, then we'd like to wish you a safe and pleasant stay." Ugh. What if I'm undecided?
2006 rhymes with hot bitch
We rocked the last few minutes of 2005 with a rousing game of foozball. Most blog posts and e-mails I've been skimming since yak some platitudes about the importance of new beginnings and milestones and all that. As our little party counted the last few seconds that shut down the year, I will admit I did get a tingly feeling like something big was about to happen... but I was more or less thinking 'bomb?' When nothing exploded I was like 'well, this party's pretty much over,' so I gathered up, said my loving goodbyes and made an escape to downtown Hali to blow it up myself. My New Year message is for the line-up of randy sexy beings who politely waited (like the beautiful [Maritime] people they are) for our trio to finish a bit of debauch at about a quarter of 4 in the third stall over, women's washroom, Reflections: I'm sorry. Forgive me in 2007?
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