Blank Et Blank

I just wrote a poem about a man with Tourette's. The poem is eighty-nine lines long. All the lines rhyme, because every line ends with the word "blanket".

I didn't really write a poem. Not like that. I don't even know anyone who has Tourette's. And, by the way, why is it always the guy that has Tourette's? Where are the girls in the popular picture? I'm thinking of that guy in Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn, the crazy man Nikolai Levin in Anna Karenina, that writer guy André Malraux, heck, even Neve Campbell's brother turns out to be a guy. Inquiries, commence. Aside, be ended.

The Historian is part of the collective Tourette's Syndrome. I'm not saying this bitterly, I'm not saying this with favour, I'm just saying, is all. The facts of the case are simple and easy to blanket. The novel turns out to be yet another cycle through vampire mythology (lore? legend? urban myth? urblore? mythurblore? blanket?). There's garlic, and silver, mist of a mistness, bleeding necks, Transylvania, multiple narrators, death and dragons, and rich rich prose. All the usual blanket. Give me a cameo from Anne Rice (suitably phrased in the "erotic" prose she's awkwardly ripped from Dorian Gray) and every hallmark of Your Modern Vampire Novel will be stamped on the bottom of the blanket. I'm only half-blanket through this blanket blanket but I blanket I know how it blank.

Etblank.

EtblanketblanketblanketblanketblanketblanketBLANKET!!!

Reading: Let's face it, not only is The Historian a repetitive novel in its subject matter, but (forgive me) it's practically TS in phrasing and layout as well. Does that make it a bad novel? Ill-scribed? I'm not so sure. I'm still reading it, after all. But listen, EK, please, next time, a little less on the backstory to the backstory to the backstory. Why play Calvino? He was a cool writer, yeah, but he never tried to moderate action-adventure born of Victorian sensationalism, did he? Anyway, this isn't a criticism proper, more like a wistful awareness of the faults of my own writing. Is all. I am sadly ("sadly" because I'm lazy and use hack emotional description, instead of writerly skill, to make actions seem interesting) only two hundred and a little-bit-more post-modern pages into The Historian + Elizabeth Kostova

Listening: My ears got cut off. KIDDING! But seriously, my ears were cut off. Ha, still kidding! Love it. But, really, I actually can't hear anything, never mind music. What happened was this: I was carelessly fiddling with a jammy new eraser, one of those beige ones you can buy in the art stores, I know you've seen them. The erasers, I mean. Whatev. SO I absent-mindedly scratched my ear while holding the eraser, and wiped off half my earlobe, and nicked the eardrum, too! My eardrum! Because I'm a pencil outline, you see, and I can't hide that anymore. I'm two-dimensional, and my one ear is gone. They're calling me Vincent around here, but I just want to get back to Family Circle.

[Edit (regular font): My eyes are very grey, sometimes they turn blue (but only for you), and, the thing is, they work fine. So I used them to watch the latest Kutcher kick, Guess Who. Who else thought that when his character was getting blackballed ("blackballed"? seriously? no, no, I can't go to the club tonight, Jeeves, I'm blackballed!), who else thought that the murky rumours of bad credit swirling around Ashton's name would naturally and inadvertently have been started by the prospective father-in-law using his job as a loan officer to investigate Ashton? And who else was disappointed to see that path lead NOWHERE! I hate bad writers.

Eric Strange

The Toronto Maple Leafs are illiterate. They cannot read. Somebody else is writing the contracts, and that somebody probably works for the Philadelphia Flyers. Either that, or Leafs management just hired on Bob Goodenow to coach and are getting typical Bob Goodenow results. "Je Suis, Je Suis," you say to me, I hear your soft mutterings. "What are you saying, you hotheaded young man?" I'm saying the Leafs can't spell. Not S-T-A-N-L-E-Y, anyways. Perhaps that noun just isn't in their vocabulary. How many years has it been since the Leafs could legally use "Stanley Cup" and "Toronto Maple Leafs" in the same sentence? No wonder they don't know how to use the word. But stuttering and spitting out "LINDROS!" before this season starts is no way to accustom yourself to saying "STANLEY". Lindros was so five jerseys ago, but I guess the Leafs just figured there weren't enough rings in the tree, yeah? Needed a little more age and experience. Whatev, boys. But you won't be putting any rings on your fingers, that's for sure.

When did I miss this? So, there's going to be a movie, then, yeah? But how is New Line Cinema going to condense a near 800 page novel into 120 minutes, tops? Jonathan Norrell & Mr. Strange was one of my favourite novels of last year. Let's hope the scriptwriter is up to the job.

Reading: Somewhere beside a red-tiled Croatian café (seashore? yes, and autumn, too, or early spring, and the black branches of the trees talk bitter behind the house), a dark-haired girl is pouring strong red wine into my ceramic cup. But I'm not there. I'm a hundred beating pages into The Historian + Elizabeth Kostova

Listening: Whiles past, the singer for pink pop-hearted Hello Saferide was invited to guest-post on Said The Gramaphone. Excellent stuff. I had no idea that The Ricky and Mike Sing-a-Long Group was just a side project of the unwistful boys who put out waltzes to the very real pleasures of the day-in-day-out. Many especially good bits of music are wrapped up in a confetti holiday cracker which is rightly called "Wonderful" + The Galactic Heroes

Harry Potter & The Half-Western Prince

Today's front page relayed from Ottawa claims Harry Potter is the favourite consolation for the martyrs at Guantanamo Bay. Listen, I stayed silent about the Hollywood-football-movie-style-hazing, didn't even speak up about the bad photography, but this is the end of the line. When will the abuse at Guantanamo Bay stop? If pyro-islam didn't think America and Britain were Satan before Harry Potter And The Modified Noun, they'll surely view the West as children of The Beast after reading JKR. What? No, those saints aren't reading Potter for pleasure, you kitten-eating tree-burner! That's impossible.

Reading: Treachery, lust, murder, rape, pride, powerless good, sodomy, theft, and torture—there is too much evil in the world. And there is too much evil in Arabella Edge's The Company. There is no justice in this book. Quotes inside the covers of the paperback liken it to The Lord Of The Flies, and Edge plays no tricks with lines like "I am drawn to the familiar leer of one—my old friend Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies" and, "Instead I stun flies with my fan, capture them in my hand, tear gauzy wings from dry frail hinges". Additionally, I see similarities to The Caine Mutiny, for Captain Queeg (of Mutiny) and Jeronimus Cornelisz have a suspicious and selfish perception of reality which transforms each man into a monster. There's a certain type of boy (generally, I think, it's a boy) who lights grasshoppers on fire, rips the fine-veined wings off the imitation monarch. That boy is this book, and this book is full of those boys. Now, The Lord Of The Flies is told in the third person; so, too, The Caine Mutiny. And it seems to me that this third-person narrative provides a nice moral cage for the main monsters of either novel. But the first-person narrative of The Company obscures morality, imposing the view of it's main character on the prose, and JC (what initials!) renounces good and evil—"I also make them understand that for us there is neither good nor evil". The man does, however, abdicate responsibility for his actions, even blaming his chief tool Wouter for the bloody ends of the Batavia survivors. Yet why, if he truly is above all men and lives in an amoral universe, why does Cornelisz deny responsibility for his actions? Arabella Edge does not, I think, sufficiently explain or explore this paradox, and the reader (myself) feels cheated. Cornelisz is led to his execution firmly believing his own lies, a man, he thinks, betrayed, and therefore cries "Revenge, revenge". How can he be betrayed if there is no heaven or hell? In other words, the man remains unpunished, and for the author to have created such a monster and not to have punished him, is to have inflicted this monster on her readers and punished them—if, that is, we are against Cornelisz and his view of the world.

Now I'm reading a book about the possible immortality of Vlad The Impaler. At least we all know Vlad is a bad man, yes? A good tale is what I expect. There better not be any fine shading of post-modern etiquette here, not in The Historian + Elizabeth Kostovo

Listening: Thanks to Robot Mark over at Music For Robots, I get to listen to a toy piano being grimly and steadily tapped (but wait for the ending!) in "Freshman Thesis" + Thee More Shallows

[Not] Caught Up In The Mechanism

Today, I will finally play an entire game of Jenga. Today, I will pick up the new edition of Heeb. Today, I will meet an old friend from Ontario down on Whyte Ave. Today, I might diagram an imaginary peace tower for the capital of Libya. I might finally finish that last section of Splinter Cell. I might watch Say Anything. Oh, sweet life's ambition! Today, I am OFF WORK.

Reading: Well, I was re-reading The Rule Of Four, but now it's in Winnipeg, so that's not happening anymore. I've started reading this other book, then, a historical psychothriller taking place on a Dutch East India ship called Batavia. Only picked it up in Chapters for the Batavia reference, because—outside of this circle of one—I don't know anybody who even knows about that wreck, nevermind cares enough to base a whole novel on it. Think that famous painting where everybody's cannibal-style on the raft, insert Hitler or Herod as the narrator, and you've started thinking along the lines of the too-much-titled The Company: Portrait Of A Murderer: A Novel + Arabella Edge

[Editor's note: I just CANNOT seem to italicize the title of E's novel without throwing off the coding for the whole page, which results in an ugly white line riding the right hand side of the post box. I can't even italicize this note without screwing things up! Therefore we shall sorrowfully close our MLA guidelines for today.]

Listening: Bit sore in the wallet. Pockets a little sniffly round the edges. Sure enough, I came down with a bad case of poverty leading up to this weekend. Don't you just HATE that? Seems like I always catch a case over the summer, and this has been a bad summer. One of the side-effects? No Folkfest. That's a tough one. Useless! Bad enough to miss Loreena McKennit restarting her singing career after a five-year absence of the most miserable Shelley-and-Byron (insert "esque") tragedy, but Sunday night? Sunday night, I (insert "de") finitely wanted to be there. Let's check the list: Carolyn Mark, Martha Wainwright, Alison Krauss. Dammit, each of these singers is good enough to make the weekend her own, nvr (insert vowels) mind all three in one evening on the hill. Whatever, alright! Whatever. So today I'm listening to Alison Krauss (let's face it, Martha is for late nights and Diana Rigg fans, and so is Carolyn, minus the Avengers bit), because Alison is wonderful and earnest, especially when the car's wheels softly bite an early-morning gravel road, and she makes one realize the wonderful (scratch "wonderful", insert appropriate synonym) seriousness of life. If you don't believe it, hum softly to yourself and listen to "The Scarlet Tide" + Alison Krauss

Sometime Billy Sunday

Too tired. Look at that timestamp, will you? Go read The 16mm Shrine, instead. That's a sidebar alert, boys. The guy is ace. And way funny, if you like the bitter side of ridiculous. Think Wally in Dilbert, but better. Actually, think every Dilbert character, but better. And the mean side of Seinfeld. And that younger brother of yours who wouldn't shut up about how much he hated boarding school.

My cat just fell off the flaming monitor. Regular posting will resume sometime Billy Sunday. Hope to go the Folk Festival over the weekend. We'll see. Good night, Crystal.

Feels Like Sinning

I have no excuses. Certainly, it's been eternity since I last posted—eternity, apparently, beginning around midnight, July 27. What have I been doing? I played a lot of Splinter Cell and my bowstaff skills are coming along nicely. I even watched The Grudge at seven am one morning in a desperate bid to stay awake until it was time to go to work (yes, I'm THAT employee). Let me calmly and high-mindedly say I extremely unrecommend ever watching THAT movie while in a feverish state of sleep deprivation. Small children now terrify me. So does moving to Japan. Dammit, I did nothing with my time. I didn't even write more of my imaginary novel—which reminds me that I wrote a real novel once, and then found out someone else had already written it. Stupid Melville. Hands off my Moby!

But let's get to the serious stuff. Let's get to the blog. Let's get down with Robert Fulford in Tuesday's National Post. The man has a big essay (technically, little, and not an essay at all, but can't anyone be allowed to pleasingly exaggerate any more?) on the power of first words, first lines, first familiar phrases in our favourite novels. Fulford is eloquent, as usual turning not only a fine phrase, but directing appreciation to the fine phrases of others, namely Austen, Tolstoy, Dickens, and other, less famous luminaries. And Fulford makes an observation most of us, I think, have felt on re-reading Frank & Joe Hardy's Billionth Mystery Of The Smuggler's Peninsula Of Staggering Coincidences, Plus Chet Gets A New Haircut, which is, "If a book begins badly, there's little chance it will improve as it grinds on. (I've never put this selection theory to work, however; while possibly foolproof, it feels sinful.)".

First words (obviously) are more important than most any other words in the novel. But first lines, I'd like to add, are not so important that a good novel can't redeem the bad beginning or even mediocre middle. Exhibit A, I'd like to declare, would be my favourite novel in the English language, one of Dickens' best efforts, one of the greatest novels in the English language, which is rasing very high, very Great Expectations. Take a look at the beginning: "My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip". Alright! I get it! The guy's name is Pip! Yes, it's an important first line, establishes context, identity, and a thousand other boring tasks. Get on with it, then. And the novel does, roaring through a great couple of early chapters until bogging down in London and the middle of Pip's young life among the usual Dickensian universe of grim eccentrics and oddsbodies. It's wonderful, readers, but it squelches, it undeniably squelches. Who cares? The last line of the book is as heartfelt a piece ofwriting as has ever been put to paper: "in her face and in her voice, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be". That line was worth waiting for. That line shifts the whole book. That last line realigns the Dickensian universe, and sadness and suffering become so much more worthy of endurance than either could ever have been considered before.

Well, there are other examples, of course. Horror-writing is a rich field of last lines; the dénouement is all, here. Who is Edgar Allan Poe without the last line?—yes, yes, I've read the opening to "The Fall Of The House Of Usher"—have you read the last line of "The Tell-tale Heart"? And what about Koji Suzuki, who opened the modern horror classic Ring with a banal description of apartment buildings, but ended his novel with these memorable blocks of cliché: "Black clouds moved eerily across the skies. They slithered like serpents, hinting at the unleashing of some apocalyptic evil". I think of O. Henry, saving the turn-around-joke for the last line, and realize that humour walks shoulder to shoulder with horror when both wave the flag of the last line. And modern literature has not forgotten the respectable and ancient power of the final phrase, the fitting phrase for the eternal moment (as detailed by Dante, who, summing up the heart and motion of the universe, finished The Divine Comedy with "The love that moves the sun and other stars".Lionel Shriver ends her heartbreaking We Need To Talk About Kevin with pragmatic powerful prose, banal out of context, but speaking movingly of forgiveness and offering and love at the end of chapter after chapter of detailed familial hate and antipathy: "The sheets are clean". Or Connie Willis, who labours to open her books with the interesting sentence, but rarely suceeds in surpassing her first effort in her last line, except once, that line coming at the end of Lincoln's Dreams, when the hero realizes he was never the centre of the story, that he is only a sidekick, a servant, a burden, a loyal pet, and accepts his doom and loneliness, and identifies with General Lee's famous horse Traveller, saying, "I have picked up a nail".After last lines like these, there is no reason to write "Finis" or declare "The End". To have given up on books like these, like the novels listed here, would have been a sin against these novels and books, a sin against their authors, a sin against their fellow-readers, and more, a sin against yourself. Like packing for a journey and then never going, that is what giving up on these books is like; is the end of the journey worth the effort? Only the end of the journey will tell; only the end of the book will show.

Reading and Listening will be posted later. [Editor: Turns out, not so.]

The White Rose Movement

You see them bringing their CDs to the party, thick vinylized cases clutched in determined hands. Turns out you like Cadence Weapon and Outkast, but they like Megadeth. You like Vitalic and White Rose Movement. But they like Aimee Mann. You like Avenge Sevenfold and Blood Brothers. And Aqua! But they don't. So out goes your music, and in goes their stuff. They never ask, do they? You could say, "No, thanks," then, or you could nod politely and say, "Why not?". Or engage them in a lively game of Chinese checkers. Or loudly laugh and punch them in the meaty part of their shoulders. But your party, your car, your stereo, should never be taken for granted. Let them get their own! How is that unreasonable? And by the way, I LOATHE Avenge Sevenfold. But I'm not going to hit up some random goth/metal/glam/hardcore party and slip "My Oh My (Spike, Clyde'n'Eightball Club Mix)" into the CD player. K, well, I might, but I'll bloody well ask first.

Which means I am for the Catholic Church, and I am against the woman-priest movement. "Nine women," the National Post says, "were ordained as Roman Catholic priests and deacons on the St. Lawrence River yesterday." Ordained? Such a term implies offical recognition. Ordained by whom? Not by the Vatican, or by anyone speaking for the Vatican. Therefore, not ordained by the Vatican. Therefore, not Roman Catholic. Listen, I personally am not against female priests, deacons, pastors, reverends, or female anything in religion. But these women are coming to a party to which they've never been invited. They're wedding crashers. To be labelled a Roman Catholic, one must hold certain positions, certain definitions. To hold other positions is to redefine oneself by another label. To believe, for instance, in the divine authority of Allah is to label oneself Muslim. To believe in the divine authority of Jesus Christ, who said "No man cometh to the Father except by me" is, among many things, to exclude oneself from Islam. To believe that women may be appointed as priests is to exclude oneself from the Roman Catholic church. To insist otherwise is to pigheadedly play your unwelcome Meshuggah over someone else's Electrocute.

Reading: No reading! Reading is over. I'm never reading again. Reading is a city in England. A county? Somebody else google that. I'm never going there, tell you that. I'd rather go to Little Storping. Reading is right out.

Listening: Saturday morning, J phoned me at work. "Are you sitting down?" he said. "Arcade Fire is coming to Edmonton! With Wolf Parade!" I checked the tour dates on Merge and Sub Pop and IT'S TRUE! YAY! I thought I would have to move to Chicago or Belgium before I would ever hear these guys live. And I hear they're amazing live! BUT I will not post any AF links or any signposts to WP. I will keep my excited smile under wraps. Wraps! Today, I am listening to a different side of things, the side of things against other things, the good against the bad. But I am not alone. Many are here with me. Even Morrissey, it turns out, is listening to "Love Is A Number" + White Rose Movement

The Pyramid-sided Cruise-ships Bell

Four more bombings? So what, exactly, does radical Islam think it will accomplish better than radical Catholicism? If the Irish couldn't break'em, what makes the Muslims think they can break up the Brits? St. George ALWAYS slays the dragon. I know (you know it, too) that the murderers think the UK is The Dragon. But I know different. Hey, reptiles eat their young, right? And I don't see the British blowing up their own to get back at Islam. Who's the monster, then? Whose the grendel?

Crystal tells me that every Wednesday the pyramid-sided cruise-ships bell their horns as they come into harbour at Puerta Vallarta. This world holds so many fragile valiants. I'm going to go see some of them now. Good-night.

Reading: The fourth part of Mere Christianity was originally published as a chapbook titled Beyond Personality. The chapbook is a firm foursquare declaration of clear consequences. Who, if he even exists, is God? Can't be put blunter than that. Lewis doesn't rely on himself for the answers. Instead, he centers himself firmly in religious tradition and writes Mere Christianity + Clive Staples Lewis

Listening: How many times has the Adolf Eichmann look-a-like in the corner told you that there's a right way to use failure, and there's a wrong way? As often a your mother? These paper cut-outs know how to use failure. They just found out. Huge and synthy and Franz Ferdinandy, that's what they are. And they're starting to sound very successful with "The Correct Use Of Failure" + CDOASS

Dutch Gothic

Mowed the lawn yesterday. Cleaned house, as well, and vacuumed the cat. Even rearranged this page (well, you might already have noticed). The pretty pictures section has some excellent are-they-bizarre-are-they-genius links, especially Bezembinder's Geïllustreerde, which is INSANE in a very positive and uplifting Dutch Gothic sense. That's right—Dutch Gothic. And in the precious words section—well, first off, The Absorbascon. His other blog is in Latin, and this one's in a bizzare language as well, very facetious, sarcastic, devoted. Comic books aren't my thing, but that's not why you read this blog. You read it cause the author is over-the-top hilarious. No, he's better. Get Beastie Boys on his blog already! And after you're done scanning that, link on over to You Cried For Night, whose bark definitely has some bite. Wait, I don't even know what that means. But it's a great blog, even if the title does sound charmingly like the left hand of darkness. She's Down Under, and very literate. Thank-you, btw, Genevieve, for your kind words.

I'm no Alfie, making and breaking connections, but what's it all about? What is this business of links, then? Me, I don't mind them, found some of my favourite sites through other people's sidebars, but not everyone thinks that way. Michelle over at Syntaxfree had a post ages ago, detailing how she hated the way these blogrolls (Godsake, what an ugly word) were merely in the business of namedropping each other. I get where she's going, and it's true, the blogroll can easily devolve into a clique-ish List me! List me! type of excercise, but there's more, isn't there? What, besides the I'm-cool-look-at-MY-links mentality, you say? Oh, be quiet! Yes, there's that, too. But there's also just enjoying being listed, isn't there? The first blog I ever read was also the first blog to ever list me. The link was unasked for. Unhinted about. Unlooked to. That's a generous gesture, and it made my day (sometimes it still makes my day). Because that's what these blogs can be about. A new community, right? Maybe not the New Jerusalem and twelve pearls for gates, but still, a new city, a new kind of neighbour. There'll always be those people who collect business cards or wedding invitations or blogroll links. Let them. Me, I link for four reasons: 1st, it's only polite to say hello to someone when that someone says hello to you; 2ndly, if you can't be proud of the people you know, who the blazes are you proud of, exactly?; 3dly, it's my library, and I read them nearly every day, or at least check them out (ha!); and 4thly, just like your friends, your clothes, too, the books on your shelves, or lack of books, the movies you watch, what you drink (or not), just like everything you surround yourself with, these links help define you. Define me. Is that the worst thing in the world?

Reading: Back on this horse again, and it's a good ride. The author is a master stylist, with a subtle, almost snide sense of humour. Does that sound like a bad thing? It isn't. You need every bit of entertainment you can get when reading The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire + Edward Gibbons

Listening: Tony Bekker released a sophomore cd recently, and now's he's got a date opening for Final Fantasy on July 22. You know what that means, right? He's practically best friends with Arcade Fire, that's what that means. Man! Anyway, the new stuff got me thinking about the old stuff. There're some beautiful tracks on that first cd, "Moving Pictures, Silent Films" especially, but the unquestionable stand-out is the fragile Lightfooted resignation of "I Will Never See The Sun" + Great Lake Swimmers

Not About [Him]

I refuse to post anything about Harry Potter. I'm an unfan. Yes [forcefully], I went to that Harry Potter Party in St. Albert. But, listen, you. Me posting this is me not-posting this. After a long ride through the dusty mesquite and the high plains, and before striding grimly through those folding doors to face the double-dealing hog-stealer who shot your best girl, could you loop your horse's reins around this post? No? No, then. Because this isn't a post, and not about Harry Potter.

Reading: Not Harry Potter, that's for sure. Late last night, different prose, sturdy prose, kept me awake, Lewis fabling on about the human condition. No, that's glib. Lewis wrote a wonderful book, clear and strong, unequivocal. There's a criminal, her crimes are terrible, her wrong-doing is against herself. You feel pity for the stubborn girl (I feel pity for her). You wish (I wish) she had made easier choices, not nearly-revelled in hardship and jealousy. This a book about barbarian thought, Greek dialogue, Christian culture. This is a book about life. Life is hard. Those who make it harder are sorrowful criminals. The heroine of this story is a wrong-doer. I am a wrong-doer. Everyone who reads this book is a wrong-doer. A brilliant novel, and the author a brilliant author, articulate, examining, honest, a pleasure to know through his novel. Till We Have Faces + Clive Staples Lewis

Listening: This is the saddest song ever written "Napoleon, like anyone can even know that." Don't quote Dynamite dialogue at me! Who gives a care, this song is wonderful and sad, and disheartening, but also very beautiful. "Look at me, girl, and sing me a song/ I'm longing for words, cause mine are all gone/ But we'll be alright, after all, it's just a nightmare." Oh, but the nightmare doesn't end, though, does it? The man's upside-down in illusion. He's hiding from himself, can hide from himself no longer. Does he want the girl, really? He had her once. Or is what he's longing for something differently edged, not the girl but a life in which he truly desires the girl? She's singing in the background for him, but his lonely hating voice gets louder and louder, nearly drowns her out. Sadly, in the video, the bare-footed jagged-toothed singer never even looks at the girl behind him. The last line lingers after the last notes have passed, "Why can't you just wake me up?" Maybe, maybe later, but not now, not with the dark water rising across the mud, not in the cruellest months, not this "April & May" + David Fridlund

It Makes Me Smile And Keeps My Teeth Clean

Annie would be the perfect spokesman. You know how they can make those computer chips out of lasers now, right? Little bit of light and a few refractory molecules? What about installing a song on one of those chips, burying the pressure-activated chip inside a stick of gum, and hey, off you go, blowing pop-pop bubbles to "Hollaback Girl"? That's bananas! Wait, Radiohead would be an even better spokesman (spokesband?). We'd broadcast the sound over a little amped-up speaker in the packaging. Chewers would walk around with a little halo of music glowing around their heads. We're talking, what, a $900.00 dollar stick of gum here? Hey, iPods were a fortune once, too, I know you remember it. You'll all be thinking of me when this blows up big in the future.

J thinks this stuff should be called Soundbites. Crystal didn't act all that impressed. Everybody, sit down.

Reading: I forgot how to read over the week-end. I'm barely beginning to pick up the alphabet thing again. These vowels are killer, why don't people just draw pictures?

Listening: Down the hallway, past that girl wearing the new white high-tops, and duck over to the Audio/Video section. Bit old, and never (I think) got a proper release here in NA, but, come on, anything on the wicked keen 679 label bears repeated attention. Can you imagine what a destroyer DFA79 could hammer out of this? Or out of "Greatest Hit"? Or "Heartbeat"? Yes! Somebody inform the relevant parties! Quick, let's go back and watch "Chewing Gum" + Annie

R Is For Rocket, Mr. Lorenz

I see Ben Kingsley with a soft white cone of this-is-the-future hair. I see Tyrannosaurus rex! I see a floating steel path, a monster made of insects, a vampire bat (eyes as big as nickels!), I see a gathering storm. What do I see?

I see a film shot like it's 1969. And Ray Bradbury finds me out all over again.

Certain people say that Bradbury offers little but childish passions, adolescent imagination distilled in hyperbole (distilled?). Some of them think that's a viable reason not to read, not to love, not to out-right ape the man! Their loss, their loss. R Is For Rocket was always one of my favourite Bradbury collections. I loved the cover art of my cheap, childhood editions, grey in Dickensian formals, or distantly Treasure Island alien. The title of this collection is pure and honest, and hungrily points to the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It's a shame the stories don't stand up to the setting. Bradbury, admittedly, is uneven. His masterpieces are indisputable, easy to identify. The rest of his output is not so pretty. Which is not to say it is not worth reading. Bradbury's worst (and how low it can go!) is still worth the tree it was printed on. So this is a good collection, but let's be reasonable. If it wasn't Bradbury, and if he hadn't written these stories on that golden-voiced typewriter of his, there are stories in here which would never again have seen the light of the reader's imagination. "A Sound Of Thunder" is one of those stories. Original concept (le butterfly), brilliant pictures (le t-rex, etc.), and a solidly American Gothic conclusion (oui, Poe would have been proud). But the holes in the plot are bigger monsters than the beast in the story. Will the film version of this text fix these holes? What am I thinking, of course it will! That's what a film always does! Makes it better, makes it new. Whatever. Bradbury is golden wherever you find him.

Reading: There are too many good books. Everybody knows. Because there's no end to the great reads being published out there. And what about all the great reads from the past? For most of them, sadly, I only have sighs. But this one, I'm reading it. It's well worth putting off other good books to read The Egoist + George Meredith

Listening: Not two days after I listened to a random mp3 from Said The Gramaphone and discovered for myself an ABSOLUTELY AMAZING SINGER I LOVE HIS STUFF AT LEAST HIS NEWEST CD I found out that he was coming to town—and I couldn't go! This is life, my friends. These are the little details. But there's still the music, right? Listen to this song, then, because it is good. And by "good" I mean EXCELLENT! Wait for the drum to kick in. And there's a beautiful chiming chorallemme throughout. Should there be more? Wolf Parade has been beaten in the march, Okkervil River has lost the current, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! can't clap louder, speak better, than this song. They're all beautiful, those boys, but more so is "Goodbye/ nickel + dime/ waste of time" + Jon-Rae And The River

Sunday Is For Furniture

Friday was for partying, and I had a great time. What made it even better was some shiny Prozzäk in the player on the way down to 64 Ave. Whatev, it was locked, it was that kind of night. Rearranged the birthday man's furniture while most everyone else was in the kitchen, switched all the New Age inspirational pictures in the room, brought back a fistful of cigars from Whyte with a friend of Crystal's and kept those puffies handy in the mailbox. The life I lead, it's crazy. Talked wildly to people I knew and people I didn't know. Avoided the hot tub (this is a GOOD thing), mauled the cats, starred in a series of jump-sequence-pictures (sorry, too long to explain if you don't understand), and got home pretty early, too, say around three.

Saturday was for working. Well. I was only 15 minutes late, not too bad. Dapo was 45 minutes late, and that WAS bad. He's got the key for the store, you understand. But the whole day was made in the sweet soft shade once the straight shift ended, because I got to ride one of those mini-bikes round and round the enormous parking lots. It was little and gold, and made fifty kms feel like five hundred. I thought I was going to be Stephen Hawking when I hit the first bump (Ryan had already cartwheeled and crashed the beast that morning), and I couldn't stop laughing.

To Crystal's, and furniture, because furniture is good. Furniture is top-notch. Furniture, it turns out, is why God invented Sunday. Lots of peeps think God was boosting rest on Sunday. This, it turns out, may be an error in translation. What the scribes thought was "rest" turns out to have been ancient Hebrew for "awkwardly heavy boards which probably won't fit together, plus they're very scratchable, plus some assembly required (you better believe it), plus THAT STUPID KITTEN IS TEARING APART EVERY FRIGGING ATOM OF STYROFOAM-PACKING IN THE CASE AND IT'S A BIG CASE". Which is a lot of ideas on one little verb, but I tried it out, and they're all there, the blood, the sweat, the tears. It's like a whole seventies rock revival in one little word.

Lastly, London. More people have died, more are likely to die. The bombs have not really finished exploding. For some people, some families, certain girlfriends and boyfriends, particular co-workers, loyal customers, long-time neighbours, hallway nodders, that holder of a secret crush, that classmate, that careerist, that fellow-dreamer, fellow-stranger, fellow-life-to-be-lived, for that future, which was to be and now is forever not—for that person, those bombs will never stop exploding. And to that person, those people, that future, I cannot make a difference, cannot give anything, except these words, very little words, only the smallest words. And what are words against a bomb?

Reading: The Egoist + George Meredith
Listening: "(Angry Kids Of The World) Unite" + Tiger Tunes

"London Is The Place For Me"

Are the cowards who killed innocent tourists and British citizens in London Town today, are these murderers unaware of the city's history?

#1 Spring and summer of 1665, the Great Plague rages over London. Counts are unclear, but estimates say more than 100 000 people died painfully. Over half the city stays at home, Samuel Pepys, among them, refusing to leave. Winter should bring relief.

#2 1666, a bitter cold season. The Great Fire burns for five days, 13 200 houses up in flames, 436 acres in ashes, four fifths of the city razed to the ground. The city rebuilds.

#3 Bonnie Prince Charlie, uncrowned leader of the Jacobite rebellion, leads a Scottish army to within a day's march of London. It's 1745 and the near-defenceless city draws up its gates and waits grimly for the worst. But the Prince listens to discouraging counsel and turns away.

#4 They came just after dark. The bombs fell for fifty-seven days in a row, the worst explosion wrenching 450 souls from their English bodies. So began the Blitz, England's nightmare from the sad autumn of 1940 to the spring of 1941, London the burning focus of the bombing. The Queen would not leave, Winston Churchill would not go, and while the city refused to panic, the country built airforces and armies with a vengeance. "The idea of England folding up," said one man, "that's a joke."

#5 1993, the bombing of London by the IRA begins. Insurance companies refuse to insure property against violence, due to the high cost and liability of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army. London's response? Eat your breakfast, go to work, watch some television. The IRA is now slowly fading away.

#6 Nine o'clock in the morning, July 7, 2005. Four bombs are detonated in the city, 38 people killed, more than 300 wounded. An organization calling itself "The Secret Organization of al-Qaeda Jihad In Europe" takes credit for murdering innocent people, tourists, for Godsake. And London's answer? Looks like London already has an answer. The cowards who killed innocents just to get the gov't's attention are either incredibly ignorant of British culture, or lack the intelligence to correctly anticipate the city's response. In other words, they're murdering fools.

London is not Madrid, England is not Spain. The Spanish may have covered their faces, but these Britons, this city, will not fall down. Pale horsemen have come against London many times, their silver swords swinging high in the air. All have fallen by the highway, their ashy carcasses absorbed by the city. London has many graves, has buried many children in the dark earth. Do the city's enemies think London has no graves for them? This city is not built only of pavement or concrete, the blood of its body is not only the blood of its citizens: London is of all time, every age, history itself. It will be Time, finally, which shall make the graves of the terrorists. These murderers think they are coming violently against England in her finest city, but they are already fallen to footnotes, absorbed by the history which composes her, the people who love her, the nation she leads, and the world she has made. The city is dead? Long live the city! London is a queen and cannot die.

Six-Pack Moz

The VI Books Morissey Most Likely Keeps In His After-Hours Cocktail Cabinet of Solid Reads

James and I started talking, and this list was the result. Kudos to you, J, especially on the first pick. This kid is so raven. Say what?

Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret: There is no way Morissey hasn't regularly night-tabled this little pink paperback of perfect Americana ever since he came across it in that beige-carpeted car-dealership at a squalid Chelsea mall. Why was it sitting on the agent's desk? Morissey gave her a wry smile and pocketed the novel after scanning the blurbs on the back. The agent never acted on the theft, not knowing that Morissey loathed automobiles and would never buy one from her. The pink-shirted man was dallying with her capitalist agenda. Pasting "Morissey" across "Margaret" probably happened no more than three paragraphs into the novel.

Wuthering Heights: Morissey looked up Emily Bronte's novel six months ago, having just watched the MTV film version of the same name. He fell in love with the novel, of course. Everybody does. But why hasn't he returned the DVD? Is stealing from Bandito Video the kind of ironic gesture with which Morissey fills the daily void?

Something Under The Bed Is Drooling: It's a little known fact, but, before he began reading Calvin & Hobbes, Morissey once had an imaginary friend who considered Morissey to be a stuffed tiger. This imaginary friend's parents thought of Morissey as no more than the product of the overexcited, rather macabre imagination of their son. They were right. Morissey waxes sardonic over this paradox in several songs.

To The Lighthouse, or anything by Virginia Woolf, the most elegantly depressing author to ever write a novel about androgyny and then fill her pockets with stones and sadly drown in a river. Morissey can't swim, though, and won't go near water. Liverpool doesn't count.

Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, A Young Man And Life's Greatest Lesson: This one really choked Moz up. And he never made it past the title! Which was really because the singer threw a petulant rage when he realized "Morrie" was short for someone other than himself.

40 Years of "Coronation Street": Mostly because he stopped watching EastEnders after the cast performed "Thriller" in 2002, Morissey purchased this book as an unhappy birthday present for himself. Oh, Jackson was always too unambiguously sexual for the English singer's stomach. Perversely, Moz has never really been a Corrie fan; the doom and gloom of EastEnders had suited his sociable yet depressed outlook for many years. This book still remains unread, the flyleaf hardly bent. He's thinking of trading it in at the pawn shop for a lunar globe or some of those ceramic animals that used to come with the packets of Red Rose Tea.

Reading: The Rule Of Four + Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

Listening: You've got to wait nearly two minutes for the good stuff to kick out in the last chorus and it's a good idea to look at the video meanwhile. The lizard plays guitar, a catfish rattles some drums, odd mer-things sing "Aah", and what about Ice Cream & Babies? Everybody travel arcade-game style to the magic raft and sing "Do The Whirlwind" + Architecture In Helsinki

26 Strikes For War Of The Worlds

Intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. Amazing hook, a killer line. And Morgan Freeman's resonant voice makes the fantastic as fitting and matter-of-fact as falling down the rabbit hole. War Of The Worlds is a superb film, solid and sensational. The effects are incredible, there's nothing modern films can't delineate. People are comparing this film to Jaws, saying Spielberg ramps up the horror as good as he's ever done. That's true. Then they say the film cops out as soon as we've actually seen the aliens. And the aliens aren't horrible, that's true, too, but then, aliens are never horrible, not anymore. Monsters (true monsters, Grendel-stuff, inescapable man-eating nightmares) can be bad, but no one blinks anymore when Alien breaks out of another body. We've seen that violence all too often. But Spielberg goes clever, I think, and gives his audience something to see that will make this film a rental for years to come.The big reveal isn't the aliens, after all. That's a mistake on the viewer's part. The aliens are just pilots, part of the horrifying machines. The big reveal is The Victims. Soon as we see it's red, we get an idea of what the strange plants around the machines might be. But when we realize what that matter actually is, Godsake! Spielberg moves from horror to the horrific in classic Edgar Allan Poe style. Just like some of Poe's best work turns unseen horror into grotesque parodies, we're shocked to see the actual reality of what's being done to the human victims. The damage and the damaged, not the diabolus ex machina, become the hurting centre of this blood-soaked film. It's Twilight Zone, its Jaws, it's The Pit And The Pendulum. There's a few telling lines of broad social dialogue, of course (this IS a Spielberg film, after all): one of them, Dakota Fanning's flawlessly timed, "Is it terrorists?" brings back everything I felt when my brother shook me awake and convinced me that the USA was being attacked. Spielberg works with pretty obvious strokes here, but that's how he does it, that's his style. And don't blame the director for the weak ending to this film, either. At least the man makes it a quick ending. The homecoming scenes and the you-know-what are straight out of the novel, Morgan Freeman's last quote word for word from the original page. The strengths of this film far outnumber the weaknesses. H.G. Wells' The War Of The Worlds is a shocker, and so is this film. Listen, the riot scene alone was worth the price of admission! And the machines, boss, the machines!

Reading: I don't think you can call what I'm doing with We Need To Talk About Kevin reading, you know? More like I'm letting the story just happen in front of me. This novel is a sponge, I'm getting absorbed and suffocated by it, just excellent, excellent. Thank-you, Crystal. Anyway, Lionel Shriver wrote it.
Listening: They're not exactly subtle but that's not exactly the point. The band's description of the cd previous to the one this song is on goes: "Things get intense. Old Testament violence, the Book of Revelation as read by Roger Corman, true love in Infocom parsing errors and the most brutal Buchla synth composition recorded in these 2000s (it's 52 minutes long). Smash-mastered as hot as we could get it." Most of those old words still apply to this newer release. Plus, young voices quickly clarion "Whoo!" four times across the singer's frantic ravings."Vampire Beats" + Mae Shi

With Puns Like These

"So we were walking down Whyte Ave, totally high on nutmeg—"

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Yeah, high on nutmeg—"

"Nutmeg! Are you sure?"

He stops. "Well, we were high, but, yeah, I'm sure. Anyways, I'm walking, and my legs get all twisted. I sort of stumble over the curb and I say, 'Look, guys, I'm trippin!'"

Trippin? No, that's bad. And nutmeg? I just never knew.

Reading: We Need To Talk About Kevin + Lionel Shriver
Listening: "Always Too Late" + Chocolate Barry

The Game Of The Name (9 Paras)

Occasionally, my job requires that I take names (then, when the clock strikes thirteen, I repeat these names before a squad of albino scythe-carrying monks who begin furiously chanting, "Doom upon these wretched appellations!"). Names, then, I say, I am sometimes required to take.

"H-E-F-F", one customer spelled after I asked his name, and I couldn't keep the wide smile off my face. Ridiculously, I was thinking he was going to spell Heffalump. The customer dodged nervously under my grin. "Heffelfinger," he finished. "That's Heffelfinger." I don't know, that's a name which stacks up pretty well against Heffalump, don't you agree? My favourite customer-name, so far, belongs to a Filipino whose signature reads Josélito De Los Angeles. But my all-time favourite name is a wonderful thing, a Best Ever name, is Florian Cloud de Bounevialle Armstrong. Ten points and a poem to whoever knows that name without googling it.

Names are wonderful, of course. So random, so meaningless, so meaningful and deliberate. Even a name without meaning must aquire meaning across its lifetime, will aquire meaning by association. And what is a name without meaning but the conscious intent of its giver? Which, of course, gives meaning. Examples of such meaningful meaninglessness run like rivers in fiction, where "realism" is often the order of the novel. The meaning neither you nor I understand in our neighbour's name, or the name of our friend, that meaninglessnes is mimicked in the popular novels of Nora Roberts, James Michener, the works of a thousand mystery novel authors, and that modern novel of which you wrote three chapters that still collect digital dust in the back of your hard drive.

But meaninglessness is just a fad, and not even long-lasting, at that. There is no such thing as chaos. Check back through Thackeray, Dickens, Pilgrim's Progress famously, Smollet, the entire Augustan age of English literature and the greater part of the Victorian, and you'll see that most names of most fictional characters were consciously endowed with meaning. And wonderful fabled meaning, at that; who would choose to ignore names like the Giant Despair, and Diffidence his wife? Excellent, excellent names. The fashion in literature has swung back to "meaning", of course, especially in the post-modern novel. Not with more subtlety, I believe, but with less dissonance, with a smoother, more acceptable agreement between the meaningful intent of the author and the perceived meaninglessness of everyday names, office names, mall-walking, grocery-store, know-your-neighbour names. But that's post-modern literature for you. Clique-ish, full of codes for the initiates, less concerned (many say) with meaning than with being meaningful. Beach novels, though, romance novels, literary popcorn, these don't play games; these novels, these authors, can generally be trusted to be a solid read, entertaining without resorting to gamesmanship.

Am I being condescending?

Georgette Heyer is one of my favourite authors. She can be said to have invented and clarified the regency romance genre across fifty-one novels (not all, it should be said of them, historical or even romantic). This is a literary sub-genre, I would like to add, which I mostly loathe. Heyer makes this genre work (for me), because she's a clever author, writes witty dialogue, excels at sarcasm and irony, and writes a good stock character quickly and memorably. She's many things as an author, Heyer is, but subtle is rarely one of them. This is not a flaw. Her genre does not require Heyer to be subtle. She once named a character Satanas, for instance. Meaning, here, becomes fairly clear. My favourite novel among her publications, the first Heyer I ever read, is Cotillion. But recently I reread that novel, and was very surprised. Heyer can be subtle like she just slithered down from the Tree of Knowledge. Don't look at me like that! This is like finding out that Danielle Steel has been educating her readers in the finer points of Renaissance poetry. It just isn't going to happen. Such a revelation would boggle the mind too much, like discovering that Dan Brown was actually an author, when, clearly, "Dan Brown" is a giant publishing collective along the lines of "Carolyn Keene" or "Franklin W. Dixon", except, of course, that the latter collectives wrote credible literary novels if you compare them to "Dan Brown". But Georgette Heyer can be subtle, and she can be knowing, and she can wink at her readers and play games with names just like more-respected and well-known contemporaries such as Virginia Woolf or Katherine Anne Porter.

Now I'm being condescending, right? Or just thick?

Cotillion includes the usual Heyeresque host of types and eccentrics. Freddy Standen is a likable dim bulb about to make good as the hero of the story. Kitty Charing is a helpless young orphan possessing, sadly, only charm and good-looks. Jack Westruther, as the story opens, is the worthless rogue and object of the heroine's affection, and a cousin of the self-serving Hugh Rattray. Lord Dolphinton is the mentally-deficient impoverished Irish aristocrat. And Matthew Penicuik plays a cheapskate Lear to the whole bunch. The plot is ridiculous. Matthew Penicuik, wanting to provide for his ward, Kitty (he loved her mother, you see), will give his fortune to whoever marries her. But whoever marries Kitty must be one of Penicuik's extended family, which means it is up to either Jack, Hugh, Lord Dolphinton or Freddy (who has no idea what's going on) to marry the ward. Penicuik made that money (last name? see? see!) and he'll be damned if it's going to leave his bloodlines. Of course, Kitty objects to being made an object of charity, despite her name (see? see!). And the love of her life, Jack Westruther, won't put in an appearance because, frankly, he would rather gamble his fortune west than have his hand forced (and his surname? see? see!). Lord Dolphinton, also called Foster, acts like a fish out of water, probably because he wishes he was back across the sea in Ireland (surname significant? see? see!), Hugh makes the worst marriage proposal ever ("Even though I'm not attracted to you, let's be Platonic partners and study together"), and Kitty convinces Freddy to make a false engagement with her until she can see Jack in London. Freddy is a stand-in for Jack, see? See! There is a regal domineering aunt called Augusta, nearly Wodehousian in the fear she spreads, who treats her son (Lord Dolphinton) like a foster-child; there is a flowery French dandy called Camille; there's a lady named Buckhaven, who nearly brings her name and home into disrepute; there's an oafish elder brother called Claude; and there's more, more unremarkable realistic names, more added meaning and plot substantiation, more lightly-worn learning and clever post-modern humour. Should I have been surprised? At one point, a character called Olivia is referred to as "Most radiant, exquisite and unmatchable beauty". When did Shakespeare become decoration in a popular novel? Heyer ground, it turns out, covers a lot more territory than I ever expected.

Cotillion is an excellent novel, full of charm and cleverness, well-balanced and well-balancing. I'm going to keep my eyes open, from now on. I'm going to expect more, enjoy more. I'm going to stop sneering at games. I'm going to stop smiling without reason at other people's names. Go read Cotillion and enjoy it for yourself.

Reading: The Well Wrought Urn + Cleanth Brooks
Listening: "River Of Jordan" + Drexel

The Shape Of Happiness Is the Stones Of Venice

I know a man who finds the shape of happiness in a warm baguette and a bottle of red Chilean wine. I am not that man. But I do believe happiness comes in many shapes; that happiness is different things on different days.Tonight, for me, happiness was picking up a complete set of the works of Ruskin at around 25¢ an inch. Happiness was finding myself, say nine o'clock in the evening, crouched on the floor of an abandoned friary in east Edmonton, running my fingers down the penny-coloured spines of World's Great Events, The Gospel of St. Mary, The Prisoner of Zenda, Sartre, Simone de Beauvior, C.S. Lewis, wonderful books, wonderful authors. Rooms and hallways and entrances, old planks and half-torn-down walls, the friary's hallways were wide and dark, opening into large chambers well-windowed with the summer evening and silent traffic. My brother picked up a beautifully bound set of Charles Reade, I found an excellent paperback of The Well Wrought Urn, and more, and more! All kinds of thanks to my girlfriend's friend's mom, who let us in the door.

But I promised puns in my last post, three hot-cross puns (truly, I'm sorry, you shouldn't have to suffer, that's the first and last I'll do to you). Here they are, then, ranked in a strictly subjective order of worst first to best last, serious for-real puns, manly and upstanding (or womanly, too, whatev):

#1 Love Won Another
#2 No Fun Intended

I'll send a watercolour of John Ruskin to whoever can deduce the #3 pun listed on this post. See you later, Da Vinci Coders.

Reading: Moby-Dick + Herman Melville
Listening: "Can You Do That Dance?" + The Pink Mountaintops

Your Momsicles

All you raging hotheads, look no further, you've found a friend in Je Suis Saves. You've also, apparently, found one of those annoying characters who like to refer to themselves not only a lot but in the third person, too. I join Queen Elizabeth, Charles Barkley, and Bill Gates' third under-secretary with that select trait (third-person referencing, that is, as opposed to power-mongering in the post-colonial world—Barkley, I'm looking at you on this one). But I'm farther off track than Boss Hogg off the Hazzard boys. Hey, I just threw that reference in for some ironic hick appeal—Cowboy Troy gets me. Gitchoosome!

Whatever! I was saying that the hotheads didn't have to look any further for cool-down pals since I just whipped up some cold icy refreshing did-I-say-your-momsicles! No! Popsicles! Why has this idea, this act, never struck me ere now? I was never a popsicle-thoughted boy, never popsicle inclined before. But I've randomed up some coconut milk, puréed myself some cherries, schooled down some bananas and lime juice and you know what? Life isn't going to be as sucky as it could have been before now. My days shall be refreshed. Life is going to be popsicled.

Tomorrow evening, three puns. And after that, a NEW BOOK-REVIEW! Yay!

Reading: Moby-Dick + Herman Melville
Listening: "I Guess You Already Married A Japanese Banker, Though" + Anders Lövgren
Anders says "Sweden is a country full of pretentious quasi-poets with too much free time." Who knew?

DFA79 Says, "Checkmate!"

The counter for the three cash registers is in the shape of a large U, and the bottom of that letter faces the door. The floor is linoleum, large square tiles. What to do on a slow day, and nothing lined up? 32 empty one-gallon cans turned upside down on the floor, symbols scrawled on the upturned bottoms. The white side went traditional. Spiky crown for king, splintery crown for queen, armless footless little boys in dresses representing pawns. The black side drew skulls for pawns, a 666 for the queen, and a pentangled hand for the necromantic king (hey, Riddick!). Oh, there was a LOT of detailing. Yeah, it was a bit awkward walking from till to till when there were customers in the store. Best part was when one burly customer started giving me chess tips. Maybe it was due to him, but someone won both games, and it wasn't the bad guys. Does this make me the biggest nerd ever? Napoleon, like anyone can even know that! I am now the Only All Time World Champion in the store-floor chess league!

Elsewhere, us men should put our face-knives away, because the moustache is back! Maybe these boys'll become superstars over here, too. Death from Above 1979 finally gets a little official recognition with two video awards from the MMVAs. Let's not get carried away—DFA79's videos are (so far) bland chunks of footage, their video for "Romantic Rights", for instance, not half the goodness that is The Killer's version of that bright-lights concept. But the pictures are getting the muzak out there, right? Me, I fell for DFA79, hadn't even heard the music, after I heard they'd played in some living-room in the UK, dropping a huge show for a bunch of 13-year old kids who happened to win a contest. Because DFA79 are sincere like you don't know. Read on some site somewhere that our boys are huge in Britain, but barely known outside of indie circles here in Canada! Check that, ra! What the writer forgot was that indie IS mainstream now. We've got Nickelback, yeah, and Beyoncé, and hip-hop banging around huge, but the buzz is gone, friends, the buzz is gone. What will all the cliques do now? Pity the poor hipsters.

And you know, I still love Great Big Sea.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

Reading: the second last paragraph, the second-last line of it—"For it is the End of the dominion of IMPOSTURE (which is Darkness and opaque Firedamp); and the burning up, with unquenchable fire, of all the Gigs that are in the Earth." Read The French Revolution + Thomas Carlyle (see previous post for links)

Listening: "Blood On Our Hands" + Death from Above 1979

The Big Pixel

Nevermind last night, I've got other things to talk about. You understand, my job is shift-work. You work eight hours, you get paid hours—you work four, four. The last two weeks I worked a total of eighty hours, and was paid for sixty-eight of them. WHAT? WHAT!! Hey, my manager has shown us a fantabulillion times that he doesn't give a rap. He's a bit of a sociopath, alright? I'm not going to say that he has bits of his grandmother stuffed in his closet, but he's probably got bits of his grandmother stuffed in his closet. And that's his business, okay? But I mean, come ON! I discuss my shifts near daily with this man. I stare, horrified, at a twelve year old's moustache on this thirty-five year old caucasian male's upper lip. I recite, in a piercing monotone, using simple sentences (proper verbs, proper nouns, the odd conjuction and nothing more, I swear) my weekly limit of hours. I rarely break eye contact. And yet, I habitually get stiffed on my check. Result? Complaining, bitterness, and protracted disgust are forming the backbone and construction of my days. Don't get bogged down, you say? Take a look at the bigger picture, you say? Zounds!

Reading: Can I say enough about this book? Carlyle is a lion. He writes sentences like other men make movies. Fire, action, character, drama, rifles blazing, tragedy, near death and disease. "Figures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamplight; utter from this Tribune, only one word: Death." Read The French Revolution + Thomas Carlyle.

Listening: Music For Robots (or music.for-robots, old skool kool) has been james bond gold lately, as in the-man-with-the-golden-gun type of gold, all kinds of laughably deadly. And now the Finnish parts of me are all proud, having watched this Scandinavian music video culled from the Robots' site. Pixelated Tom Cruise (Top Gun, Cocktail) or pixelated Patrick Swayze (Dirty Dancing, of course), runs madly on the sidewalk in the rain. There is a parting. There is a coming together. There is true love. The end. Comments on Robots say this video is old. I say it just made best video I've seen all year. If a pixel's worth a thousand words—nevermind. Go watch "The Name Of The Game" + Ural 13 Diktators

Good Will Mathlete

Good God, you should have seen my first draft for this post. Ended with the grey general ruin of all things good and not good. See, I work at 7am today. 7 to 11 in St Albert, then the #205 to West Edmonton for the 12 to 6 shift. And, you know, sometimes I try not to hate my life. Sometimes I clip along and accomplish many futile tasks. Too easy to let casual plans be swallowed up by past mistakes, right? Come on! That was last night, not this morning! Today, there is a casual brightness to all things. There is a glowing, and the clouds are very white in the sky, like video-game clouds in Super Mario Allstars when I worked out my fascination with Princess Peach by making her my marionette and drowning her in the waterfalls everytime. K, now I'm using anti-social tendencies (read: quite disturbing behaviour) to mask my wretched skills at that game, when, in fact, I just plain sucked. K, I sucked at every game (except Tic-Tac-Toe! Yeah! And Duck Hunt! Yeah!).

If I'd been better with numbers I could have been the biggest mathlete of them all.

Pompeii Under Vesuvius

Blonde-haired girls hold up SLOW signs, unshaven men in orange vests prod each other with spades, dusty trucks full of mysterious equipment steampunk slowly around the city. It's road-repair season again, and the summer construction crews are out in full force, not all of them in the city. Notice some of the changes on this page? I've been tweaking around for a bit, nervously adjusting the ul-lists of links in the sidebar. So exasperating. I want those link lists to look like the sidebars on Stilts or Wannabe Hipster, and I'm cheating all over the page to make it happen, but it's not. Happening, that is. Look at that junk in the archives! I don't know what's going on, my page has more ancient artifacts buried in it than Pompeii under Vesuvius. I so wish I actually knew html. Que sera, though, right? Enough already.

Elsewhere, there's two extremely checkable blogs, one of which has kindly linked me. I therefore love her. Plus, her page has a green background! Very soothing. So go to Lemon Life in the links for some excellent words on office life, state politics, and Katie Holmes. And careful, cause if you don't love her, I'll beat you with this soggy blog.

The other site just started up, and it's a hungry link, apparently Starving In The Belly Of A Whale. I've known this kid for years, and it still surprises me that his middle name is Xavier. So exotic! So give DX a call on the links to the right. Lookout, though, he's a biter, a bitter man if there ever was one. Too many years in the cave, DX, too many years in the cave.

Reading: The French Revolution + Thomas Carlyle (yeah, I'm back on the horse)
Listening: Trådlös Sewingmachine + 50hertz

It's Cruel Up North (Minus The Roalds)

Found in the bargain bin, $5.99, a New York Times Notable.

Yesterday's grass fresh-cut in the field, the bright sun blazing in the bluest sky ever seen, and it's 1624 AD, a warm Sunday morning across Chipping Camden. Miles Smith, Bishop of Gloucester, first and final editor of the fifty-four Translators of the King James Bible, is so face-down bored by the sermon he's hearing that he walks out of church and gets a drink at the pub down the road. That's on page 215 of Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries: The Making Of The King James Bible, published in the UK under a slightly different title.

You know that friend of yours, does a million different things a year, gets excited about museums and vinyl and black velvet paintings, new movies and Martha Stewart recipes? (This bit added later: yeah, that's what I said, Martha Stewart recipes—can you believe it? but I'm leaving it in because tasty food is the bits.) The guy showed you the difference between an aggie and a regular marble and keeps pictures of Roald Amundsen and Roald Dahl in his cage-filled livingroom. Your friend could get you interested in paint on a wall providing he was interested in it. That's his gift. He transmits so much genuine enthusiasm for his interests that he stirs up the interest of whoever is around to witness his current fascination. I know your friend's name, don't I? He's Adam Nicolson. Minus, perhaps, the Roalds.

Nicolson's book has been on the big READ THIS! list on the yellowed paper tacked to the fridge for a few years now. The book has been worth the wait, for sure. Nicolson reveals/creates a labyrinthine soap opera around the Jacobean translation of the Bible. The author speaks of a pantheon of dark and selfish motives, pure and unclean characters, a web of politics, prudery and paranoia (and a textbook on alliteration, repetition, parenthesis, and the heights of Elizabethan accomplishment in prose). The book is strong and beautiful. If it was but a single piece of paper, instead of 281 pieces between covers, quotes and index, it would be origami, a silver-starred foil crane flapping sturdily on the mahogany table in the living room. It's exotic, it's simple, it's new appreciation for a foundational fold in the construction of English literature, Elizabethan politics, and Western thinking and culture. I love this book.

Reading: fairly obvious (and on a break from The French Revolution)
Listening: "It's Cruel Up North" + Radio LXMBRG (godsake, this song is an ice-gold apple!)

XX vs XY

You're a guy, and it's easy. Maybe some cool jeans and a few blonde streaks in your hair (are the girls attracted to the "young" look or the "needy"—hey, either way it's covered, right?) and you're Peter Pan. Those Wendies won't be able to stay away. You're a girl, though, things are different, it's all changing so fast. You take the pills, you jazzercise, you burn the arm-fat with those strap-on wristbags of sand you once laughed out loud at when they called them "weights" on late night shop-o-vision, and you even paint on some designer jeans made from shredded diamonds and some blue gasoline they bled off of Jupiter, after which said jeans were assembled by the just-washed hands of the Archbishop of Canturbury, the entire al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade AND Tim Curry himself (hey, check the price tag and make your OWN assumptions about these garments, k?)—and then they come up with ROBOTS!

Which means I'm glad I'm a guy. Hey, wait up! Where's my bleach?

Reading: The French Revolution + Thomas Carlyle = going to take awhile
Listening: "Rent a wreck" + Suburban Kids With Biblical Names

God Gave Bethany Cancer

I've been guilty, I've been Pitchforkian in my speech, I've aped Said The Gramaphone (I did not say imitate, I have never achieved that success, not in my prose) and I think you have, too. But we'll throw away the rules today, you. We'll talk about music. Me writing + you reading = the new talking. Comments, if you need them, can come later. The talk we will talk will be SENSIBLE. There is still time to claim purity for appreciation. There is still time to sway slightly, unselfconsciously, while wearing headphones or hearing good music at the coffee stand. There is still time to feel in your gut, "YES! I really LIKED that song". But there is no more time to justify your like to your ideals, my likes to my aspiration. That's useless. Enough with these outlandish barely-there comparisons and reviews. Out, damned spot!

I like Olaf Bronström. The music, not the man. I don't know the man. Specifically, I really really really like his song called "God Gave Bethany Cancer". I like it for the same reasons and in the same way I liked Wolf Parade's "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts". It's such a sad strong song. It's misery and unendingness. It mentions gas stations and the impossibilty of saving someone, not because one is unable to save, but because real life splits the would-be-rescuer from the would-be-rescued. "I know that you drink, oh, yeah, and I know your manners. I know that you need saving, but I need to work. It's time for you to choose up or down or around or around." I like the two voices (Olaf, I think, recorded over Olaf), light and dark to each other, dark and darker overall. I struggle to hear their nearly-sobbing voices through the thick static and distorted beats, a single key on the synth lifting up and down with the song. It's the emotion in the lyrics, not the words, it's the hurt which makes it work. There is hard life here. "And ask me why I just don't die, because I cry all night." I liked this song so much I went to Olaf's website and listened to everything I could. Some of his stuff is really strong, some of it not so much. All of it is worth hearing. I like it. A lot. But I really like "God Gave Bethany Cancer".

Reading: The French Revolution + Thomas Carlyle
Listening: "Dear Sons And Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" + Wolf Parade

Moxie + Doxy

Then there was the time I said, "Are you kidding me?" Moxy Früvous was on the radio, you see. Which is strange, because you never hear the Moxy anymore (well, they're just too raging ridiculous, aren't they?), and, very importantly, highwaystyle or partydown, my girlfriend's car is country country country all the way. Sure, but Crystal thought I'd said something else. The conversation ended unexpectedly:

JSS: I am too using my words correctly! I don't make up words! OK, well, sometimes I make up words.

Criddle: You can't just make up a word! What if I called those lights over there twittles? That's a really bright twittle over there, isn't it?

JSS: That's a BRILLIANT word!

Reading: The Trail of Fü Manchu + Sax Rohmer
Listening: "Taxidriver" + My Darling You

Ordaining / Local / Raveonettes

#1 This is bananas. Nine women are going to be ordained as Catholic priests on July 25th, according to today's National Post, Edmonton Journal and Ottawa-Citizen. These women are following the examples of seven other women in Europe, a group called The Danube Seven. What kicks me is that some of these nine women are apparently married or divorced. Alright, grant it, grant that the attitude of Invisible Rome concerning female deacons and priests is unfair to both sexes—what about the Church's attitude toward male married priests? Zonk! There isn't any attitude. The married state is never allowed. What about the Church's attitude toward divorce? Zing! There isn't any attitude. The divorced state is disavowed (whoa! don't bring your puns to town!). These women aren't seeking equal treatment at all. If these nine aren't rabble-rousers, scofflaws, quarrellers, false Catholics, remnants from the Army of Mary, religiously-debauched social-engineers, will someone tell me who they are? And getting ordained on the St. Lawrence River near Ganonoque so as not to be under the direct authority of the adjacent archdioceses of Kingston or Ogdensburg means these nine are acting outside of the Catholic Church and are cowardly. And what are the reasons these nine consider themselves worthy of being ordained? "We bring the wisdom of life experience," says the only Canadian in the group. Yes, surely you are the only wise! What about the life experiences of some old patriarchal Buddhist in Calcutta or Nepal? Certainly, he, too, is now worthy of being ordained in the Catholic Church. Invite him, you hypocritical nine! These women also state that celibacy and sexual orientation are not an issue within the womenpriest movement. Really? I told an old professor once that certain properties had nothing to do with each other, being completely opposite to each other. He replied that, on the contrary, such a state between those properties meant they had everything to do with each other. I had nothing to say. He was right.

#2 The next solid local isn't until the end of June (unless it's 5 O'Clock Charlie kicking along with some Storyboard spaceout on the 17th) when the All Purpose Voltage Heroes sock-hop around The Starlite on the 30th. C'mon, hipsters, scenesters, homestyles all. I mean, one of the APVH's songs is titled "Bombs In Reverse Build Cities"! And look at this shiny present—Cadence Weapon will be there, too, showing the cowboys how to spin some rope tricks. I'll be standing in line for this one, son, decked out with long hair and a gentlemanly attitude. What will you be sporting?

#3 The Raveonettes! The Raveonettes! The Raveonettes!

Reading: Hippolyte's Island + Barbara Hodgson
Listening: "That Great Love Sound" + The Raveonettes

Do I, Too, Despise It?

Hopkins, Morris, Tennyson, John Berryman, you guys can play. You, too, Yeats. All the rest of you kids, fold it! Betjeman—Morrisey makes you, Heaney you're a squid, Atwood, Adrienne Rich—blargh, Hughes, late Ezra Pound, Benedikt, Alice Fulton, Hudgins, Haskins, Hugo, Jeffers, Eigner, Bukowski and everybody else, go make paper cranes in the corner. What? I get to pick the teams cause I'm good, that's why. Sure I can prove it.

[The soul of my brother if my brother were dead]

The soul of my brother if my brother were dead
Would ascend in a burning tree.
His flames-for-eyes and shining hands
Would climb eternity.

And before he rose on a branch of fire
My brother would lift his eyes.
And from heaven and all would shine such light
As would double my heart the size.

I should raise both hands and grasp the branches
Of time and climb to heaven.
Fall away, black earth, die down, stiff stones,
Let the blessing give and be given.

For my brother will bring the blessing down
And lend me the strength to suffer
In the painful boughs to eternity—
Ah, what if I have no brother?

Reading: Flowers In The Attic + VC Andrews
Listening: "Cannot Sleep Cannot Eat" + the prayers and tears of arthur digby sellers

He Knows Not What The Curse May Be

There had been sound and now there was silence. The wet and heavy fields of snow gleamed dull to the edge of the tangle, where a horse stood silent under the star-budded branches of winter's night. There, where the hunched spruce cached its shadow, lay a dark five-pointed figure, face upward in the snow. Footprints made a winding line from the sleeping horse to the still body, and a cold wind turned the top branches of the trees toward the west.

"There will be rain," he had said, "And the road will be muddy." He rode on, his horse chuffing in the light wind. "And there is no road," he said, "Only a wet field of grass." And he chirruped the horse, and they followed the road into a tangled brown forest. "It is too dark to turn back," he muttered, and repeated it quietly. The moon rose then, stark red, but white and gleaming later. Then he turned back, in the night, the rain, and the wet grass, and crossed many fields and stone bridges until he saw the old house. The house was tall and smooth, ruining in the red and yellow moon. He rode up to the house, to the narrow door in the flat wall, and dismounted. The slick weedy gravel crunched under his boots. He lifted the horned knocker and sent it knelling through the spaces behind the brown wall. "She is not here," he said, but his horse wasn't listening. The man walked around the house in the rain, brushing away the clinging tangle with his hands. The wet grasses clung to his waist, and ringed his legs. He had to draw a knife to break their overgrown grip. He walked around the dark house; he counted every high window, five hundred windows, every window dark, first to last. "She is gone," he told his horse. "Not one candle burning." He looked upwards, and saw the yellow moon, the black night. "Not a star in the sky."

He mounted his horse and crossed many fields until he came to a great highway. Long fields of wintry farm lay equal wide on either side the narrow highway and its ditches. The man rode a long way in the night and in his heart he said, "Not a single star. I should have stopped when I heard her singing."

An archer stood in the ditch far down the road, five black arrows in that quiver. The archer watched the horse and rider pass under a pale moon. From the reeds, with careful aim, the archer loosed an arrow. The sky blossomed into stars. The horseman looked up and shuddered in his saddle. His horse neighed loudly and slipped into the ditch, but climbed out and cantered across a snowy field to a thicket. The horseman dropped out of his saddle there and staggered across the frozen ground until he fell. His body starred the snow.

The archer rode back to her house and lit a candle.

Reading: Confessions of a Teen Sleuth + Chelsea Cain
Listening: "Giant Spiders" + Devin Davis

The Cement Garden

[Note: Very sorry about the small font size. Something screwy about the posting option. Perhaps some supercooled air is being funneled down from the troposphere? And notice that annoying white bar on the right edge of the posts? Aargh! Will work on it later.]

[Note: This post was originally posted June 02. Due to finicky and annoying technical HTML stuff, it's being reposted here. New goods will arrive Saturday. In the meantime, stick to the pack ice and stay away from open water.]

[Addendum: That is, Saturday evening.]

The tape dispenser fell apart at work yesterday. The shiny black plastic wedge separated in my hand. Are they really that heavy, those dispensers? Look, inside, it was filled with dusty concrete! What I'm wondering is, how much cement is hidden in daily objects? I'm thinking I've probably got whole sidewalks buried around me and I didn't even know it.

Elsewhere, a Québécois adman by the name of Paul Coffin pulled a few nails out of his own by declaring himself guilty on fifteen counts of fraud. He's the first person being charged in the cloud of corruption called the federal sponsorship scandal. Coffin's lawyer says

Mr. Coffin wishes to bring his financial house in order so that the government of Canada can be reimbursed for whatever losses the government of Canada incurred.

Well, I suppose I'll have to wait and see (the presiding judge has the right mind in this case—"After we see how these promises come to reality, I will reassess my position"), but wouldn't it be amazing if the stolen money was honestly, openly, out-of-hand completely refunded? Who knew such a virtuous act was in the man? The Liberal gov't has so far earmarked only a paltry $750 000 for reimbursement. $750 000 out of who-knows-how-many missing millions! But Paul Coffin is ready to return every cent he's ever stolen. The charges have broken the man open, that's for sure, and I'm not saying he isn't frantically backpedalling, trying to soften up the courts. But, still, who expected this kind of behaviour from any of the hard souls involved in these scandals? Who knew this kind of right action could still exist? I mean, upstanding behaviour from the corrupt! If Paul Martin is ever really concerned about losing Quebec, he could do worse than pay attention to one of the province's natives, a man willing to do right. But Martin isn't, of course. Interested, that is. The fear of separation from Quebec merely provides the Liberals with a solid above-board reason to perpetuate the status quo and support/bribe their brother federals and the Quebec politicos. Cronyism in the name of patriotism. "Patriotism," Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, "is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Martin is helping strangle a very important part of Canada, the Québécois soul; a soul, apparently, which recognizes right behaviour, concrete principles, and wishes to act accordingly.

Reading: "The Story of Zaccheus" + Saint Luke
Listening: "Brother" + The Organ