A Not Unbiased Contemplation Of AF

They were great, it was a spectacle, this is not an unbiased review. I started listening to Arcade Fire via the net way back when. Then, one day, they put out Funeral. I went down to Megatunes and bought that cd the same day. I was bean-headedly fortunate that the cd was released in September. Arcade Fire is for autumn, after all, and darkening nights. I couldn't believe my luck, hearing the band was finally coming to Edmonton. Tickets were bought the morning they went on sale. I love Arcade Fire. This is not an unbiased review.

Wanting to beat the line, I arrived two hours ahead of the people I was supposed to meet, dressed in my best poor-man's-Prada. Most of the hipsters were already there, corduroy blazers sported like uniforms. The blazers fought viciously with the diamond-patterned sweaters, until the dark-haired girls draped in scarves started crying. Well, the guys all looked a little embarrassed after that, and everyone settled down. Then Crystal phoned and said her car had broken down, because God hated her, and so did I, when I answered, "So where are we meeting?" instead of the better boyfriend-like, "Are you okay?". I am a lout. And J didn't arrive until nearly eight o'clock (doors opened at seven), but there were compensations. After all, he was wearing an RCMP parade jacket and looked like a marching band leader in a Norman Rockwell painting. I am not lying. And A couldn't make it, but I met another A and subbed him in for the first one. That worked out okay.

Belle Orchestre was up first. "What's their name?" said the native guy behind the English guy behind me. "I'm James," the English guy said. "No, buddy, the band, the band. I don't care what you're called." The English guy stayed polite and said he didn't know, so I spoke up, and then had to tell the native that Wolf Parade was coming on afterward, and Arcade Fire wasn't till last. What did he expect? The crowd was squeezed fresh off the tree, tight like you wouldn't believe. The native would just have to wait it out like the rest of us if he wanted a half-decent spot from which to see Arcade. Anyways, Belle Orchestre (I refuse to acronymize that name) was strong and kept the crowd silent, which is pretty hard to do when your songs have no words and basically sound like a parade square version of classical, which is not a knock on the Beautiful Orchestra's playing, by the way, because it WAS good. Also, Sarah Neufeld, the violinist, must have arms of brass. The word here is solid. The band was like a thick loaf of music, but, like that loaf, basically plain. Where's the butter, son? Wolf Parade was something else. Brutal feedback on a couple of the songs, and a quick rip through "Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts" started turning smiles into frowns, but then Spencer Krug got angry, just about ripped his guitar in half and abandoned even that to practically scream the end chorus of "This Heart's On Fire", basically cutting off the audience's collective skull. I loved it. Maybe you were there. And I bet you loved it, too.

Arcade Fire, right? Is there anything left to say? Just read somewhere that Arcade is going to be opening for the next U2 tour. Shutup, Bono, they'll steal the show from you and you can scream bloody Sunday all you want. Arcade Fire was a spectacle, plain and simple. Always on the edge of control, music like chaos but a secret and golden order behind the chords; the drummmer, the percussionist barely keeping their hands inside the car, Richard Perry going simply nuts and through it all that Cajun Gothic couple, Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, singing strongly and with force. The whole audience sang along to "Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)". Later, we all shouted "Lies! Lies!". Oh, it was a good show. It was a bad venue, but it was a good show, a great show, and I'll remember it for a long time, for the way the band paraded through the crowd, for the way they talked to their fans, for the way ordinary people on and off the stage became beautiful, attractive, extraordinary. A lot of other things happened that night, little things, not unimportant. But Arcade Fire sang "Crown Of Love" for the encore. I'll always remember that.

The Dream-Concert Of Unknown Arcade

There's a pair of tickets in the inside pocket of my brown velvet blazer. Look at those crisp rectangles, those little friends of mine. Printed in 10cpi Courier on that shiny paper, little black letters spell, "Gen Admission All Ages / Doors 7:00 PM Show 8:00 PM". And the line above those ones? Arcade Fire is playing tonight, dear sons and daughters, and so is Wolf Parade. I'm trying to persuade a friend of mine to buy a unitard from AA and go to the show in that and a headscarf. We'd get invited to the afterparty for sure, I know it. At the very least, I could borrow the uni and sing to The Darkness on karaoke night. Can Arcade Fire top that?

Reading: Kuranes looks for Celephais, Iranon sings of Aira, Randolph Carter takes ship for unknown Kadath. What does all this searching for the city mean? There is also another thing. In a different story, the author writes, "We shall see that at which dogs howl in the night, and that at which cats prick up their ears after midnight". And Randolph Carter, now, voyager, is saved from the moon-beasts by a combination of the cats of Ulthar and the canine-faced ghouls. What does this feline and canine salvation mean? By the way, I write "salvation", but the ghouls are referred to as soulless, soullessness being a part of their doglike state. So what salvation? Am I asking the wrong questions? I think there is no meaning in this book. The stories are a puzzle, and so is the author, Howard Phillips Lovecraft. The key to the whole book of stories, I believe, the silver key to Lovecraft, is a throwaway comment in a little story called "The Hound":

I remember how we delved in the ghoul's grave with our spades, and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves, the grave, the pale watching moon, the horrible shadows, the grotesque trees, the titanic bats, the antique church, the dancing death-fires, the sickening odors, the gently moaning night-wind, and the strange, half-heard directionless baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure.

Lovecraft is sensation, of course, but that is all he is. I'm curious how that new movie of Lovecraft's most famous work will turn out. My guess is that the film will be a series of beautiful pictures, a gothic wet-dream, Tim Burton's mission statement. But it will not be a movie, not after the first twenty minutes of film chew through the script. The action of that story, after all, is not very lengthy, and the plot is spare. And while we're on the topic, did anyone else think how strange it was that AVP had nigh on the same exact plot as At The Mountains Of Madness? I felt like I was taking crazy pills, watching that movie. Right, so it's called a digression, folks, nothing to see here, keep moving. Back to Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Randolph Carter. Lovecraft, I was saying, is sensation. There is no meaning in him. His stories are circles, images on a merry-go-round. Those dog-faced ghouls which saved Carter, for instance, were, earlier in Lovecraft's opus (I'm thinking "Pickman's Model", here), one of the deadliest possible monsters to be encountered. But there is always something worse out there in the night. Earth's gods are terrible to men, but worse than these gods are the Other Gods, and worse than the Other Gods is the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep, but there is an evil over which Nyarlathotep has no power, the faceless night-gaunts, which, however, give authority to an ancient entity called Nodens, who is not yet the most powerful, for there are still the coloured sentient gases from other spheres of existence. You get the idea. Repetition is plot. It's not that the ghouls really save anyone; they've just become part of the pattern, another turn of the engine that moves the story. You recall the first Trek series? Klingons were all evil. Trek Next Generation? Klingons good, Borg and Ferengi bad. Trek Nine? Ferengi good, and in Trek Voyager, Borg good, too. You see where I'm going with this. The threat becomes the stepping stone to the next threat, and thus suspense is maintained even as a universe is created. Behind that veil in Oz, there's a magician who controls the city. Lovecraft's universe, however, is an unending series of veils. There is always a mysterious city. That city is always the creation of the dreamer. And that dreamer is in mortal peril within his dream. There is no authority, no stable point of view, in Lovecraft's tales. There is only the story, a headless And Then which never ends. There is no city, you see. That is, there is no definite solid concrete city which will satisfy the searcher. If that was the case, the story would end. But there are always more stories, more tales, more continuation, another amazing episode. The story cannot end, and that is why Lovecraft's soulless creations provide salvation, rescuing the Randolph Carter, saving him from death. If the story is to continue, Carter must live. Because to die is to stop the story.

Do I sound like I'm criticizing Lovecraft? Well, there is much to criticize, but that doesn't mean these stories don't succeed. Not all of them are successful, sure, but that is due to the fragmentary nature of many of the smaller stories. One of the more successful of Lovecraft's stories, indeed, a very well-written story, tying many of his amazing tales together, is the bizarre novella "The Dream-Quest Of Unknown Kadath" + H. P. Lovecraft

Listening: Look, the reason I check in with all these music blogs is because of a song like this. What a song. What a brilliant song. So flamingly simple, mere seconds long, and beautiful beautiful beautiful. This is one of the reasons New York will never leave the music scene. Ever. This song has messed my vocabulary up. Thanks to Alan Williamson at *Sixeyes for this one, for "Paddy's Gone" + Antony And The Johnsons

Only Connect

What I like is to walk through those revolving doors into that bookstore and find exactly what I'm looking for and then skip onto the bus as it rolls to a stop on Whyte Ave, and then trek down those stairs and escalators underneath HUB in time to catch the LRT, which rolls to a bing-bing stop as I step off the last step of that moving stair, and then climb more steps to find the 202 bus pulling into the lane on its way to Grant Macewan, which is where I went today. Same feeling as flagging every green light on the main drag through St. Albert. Same feeling as putting the ball through the net three times in a row (for me, that's huge). As usual, Browning calls the case, and all's right with the world. Sometimes, I get so happy, I need a little misery just to realize how happy I am.

Reading and Listening in three or four hours. Right, so the only available computer was down for about twelve hours there. Seems a little awkward to post Reading and Listening in this old post, now, specially when I've got newer stuff happening. Who puts new wine in old bottles? I'm just going to move on.

The Good Times, They're Always Coming Back

Congratulations to her, because she succeeded, of course, just like I said she would, even though she thought she wouldn't. Congratulations, because she's kept her head through some terrible times, very sad days. Because when other people would have folded, she remained standing. Because when other people crashed and could not help crashing, she kept flying. She never thinks highly of herself, never gives herself an even break, or an uneven, or a break at all. Never realizes how personal and funny and warm-around-the-edges she can make anyone feel. Because she's stylish. Because she's tall. Because she's a fighter, and funny, and loses her temper, likes Lemony Snicket and speaks pretty good French. Because she owns that Will Smith album. Because she's dragged that unopened Monopoly game through two apartments and more. Because she basically blew off the bassist from controller.controller. Because she loves her cat. And loves me. And lets me love her. Congratulations, girl. You know why.

I Agree With R.E.M., But Feeling Fine?

The world came to a banal and bitter end yesterday. I had always pictured something different, you know? Jesus with a face like lightning appears in the eastern sky, twelve million angels in glittering clouds of doom on either side. All vehicles spin into ditches or trashcans, the refrigerators in the 7-Eleven stop humming, every lock falls away from its door. If the world wasn't going to bite it like that, I figured Islam would nuke the globe in an ultimate reaction against pig-headedly oppressive Western ideas like free trade, rights of the individual and Doctors Without Borders. I'd probably be watching reruns of Friends in the latter scenario, so the end of the world might not look like such a bad idea, then. Except I wouldn't get to see the next episode of Gilmore Girls, would I? Dernit. Hang in there, Rory!

You know what I'm talking about, I can see it in your saddened eyes, too. Hello, there. You must be a Canadian, right? I know. I, too, am a stranger in a strange land. I look around and realize, "These are not my people". My people, you see, DO NOT VOTE FOR THE DA VINCI CODE AS BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME. Godsake, have you seen the list? I read Confessions Of A Shopaholic some time ago. I've read the whole series, and it's hilarious. Kudos to Kinsella for writing it. But Shopaholic is rated two spots ahead of the Bible, folks. THE BIBLE! Because, you know, the zany lifestyle of Rebecca Bloomwood has created entire cultures, spawned world religions, shaped the bleeding fabric of ever loving history itself, right? RIGHT? Steinbeck rated below Mists Of Avalon? The Notebook ahead of Tolstoy? People, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here! Can Canadians no longer distinguish what they like from what is best? The only thing missing off the list, far as I can tell, is The Bridges Of Madison County. You know what? Kick both the Brontës off the list. We need to make room for Jonathan Livingston Seagull, too. Kids, is this why I watched my buddies die face-down in the muck in Vietnam? To watch you give the Medal of Honour to Dan Brown?

Empowered by my new knowledge of the mechanics of the popular mind, I'm going to make a bunch of confident assertions here. These are pearls, kids. Pearls.

Barbra Streisand will make a "comeback" record with Barry Gibb. Wait, that's already happening?

David Spade will win the 2010 Oscar for Actor In A Leading Role.

Muddy teal will be the new black

Cancer will be cured. Tomorrow. At 6PM EST.

Tim Horton's will go bankrupt. Tomorrow. At 6PM EST.

Every single person in the world will be required to use "Microsoft" for their middle name in less than four years. Resistance is futile. Trespassers will be shot.

The internet is good for you. So are Doritos.

Reading: You're kidding me, right? Reading? Yeah, and I goose-step on Veteran's Day, too. Have some respect, please.

Listening: Wintersleep is just another Clap Your Wolf Parade, Say Arcade Fire! Don't pay attention to any of them. They're good, I know, but that's boring. I want terrible. Destructive, even. Yeah, but that gets boring, too. What's a hipster to do, then? Hang on, hang on. What about these guys? They're crooking their pinkies at everyone, they say so in the lyrics. Let's take refuge from cynicism and bejadedness in mockery. Let's. You like the newer Of Montreal? You'll like these guys. This band is Hamlet, and good clear guitar, and lazy aggression, at least on "The Vice And Virtue Ministry" + The Happy Bullets

I Get The Irony And You Will, Too

I like being Jewish. I'm not saying I am Jewish, but I'm not saying I'm not, either. But I really enjoy the whole Hebrew thing. The dreidel song, Chrismukkah, Heeb Magazine, the sweet sweet Pentateuch and a shicksa girlfriend. What's not to love? I leave my degree of Jewishness for others to decide.

Reading: By the time I was fourteen, I had read pretty much the entire Golden Age of mystery fiction (we were too poor to afford Monopoly), including Allingham, Marsh, Chesterton, Simenon, Van Dine, Stout, Rohmer and the great trifecta, The Christie, The Carr, and The Sayers. Once a novel was done, I moved on to the next one, rarely returning to the stories I'd already read—with one exception. I have never stopped reading the detective novels of Dorothy Leigh Sayers. As detective novels go, her books are solid and solvable, a lot like a healthy crossword on Sunday morning. There might be some bizarrely phrased clues, but focus on the details, and you'll quickly fill out the spaces. Well, one can do that with any good detective novel, can't one? The reason I keep returning to Sayers is simple; her books are uniformly excellent novels which happen to contain a mystery. And because her novels contain a mystery which will inevitably be solved, which must be solved if her hero is to be vindicated in his choices and lifestyle, the novel always concerns itself not only with crime and justice, but the effect which these two abstracts have upon the public and private individual. Unfailingly, the private individual achieves personal satisfaction by upholding his or her personal code, a code which is harmonious with the public good. Good character creates good citizenship. Sayers' principal creation is Lord Peter Wimsey, a sort of early Bruce Wayne. Like the aristocratic Wayne, Wimsey acts the boffin, spending his huge fortune on this or that opera girl, this or that swift super-car, this or that family servant. And also, like Wayne, Wimsey has a secret identity. Wimsey's soul was severely damaged in WWI, and he suffers from what we today would call shell-shock. Sayers, not content with giving Wimsey the literal authority of the peerage, gives him the authority of his actions: as one of the fighters in the front-lines, Wimsey has achieved a sort of moral authority over his fellow Britons. Naturally, Wimsey becomes an amateur detective. But Sayers, still not content with giving her hero only a hidden character, gives him a literal superhero identity in my favourite of her novels, Murder Must Advertise. But let's face it, the transition between daytime gormless Wimsey and nightime deadly Harlequin is awkwardly done, and if it wasn't for her extremely literary writing style, one would dismiss Sayers as the worst of Chesterton or Stout. But Sayers' skill would come to full flower in later novels like Unnatural Death, which confidently bridges the tricky gap between serious and silly in just a few phrases, and without switching costumes.

[Lord Peter] stretched his hand, and the hand's shadow flew with it, hovering over the gilded titles of the books and blotting them out one by one.

What a beautiful line. The smallest paragraph, and Sayers has successfully transformed the prince of non-sequiturs into a stern and Gothic ghost in the machine. Unnatural Death revolves around the untimely but unremarkable death of Agatha Dawson. The novel, however, is not about Agatha Dawson, but about death without conscience, crime without justice. The novel is about the successful crime, the murder which never made the papers, the theft which nobody missed. Lord Peter Wimsey does not know what he does not know, but he fears it. And he finds blissful ignorance out, and he drags it to the light of the law, and the guilty are punished for the death of the innocent. The last image in this novel is of Wimsey and a policeman making their way through an unnaturally dark June day, cold and raining. "What is wrong with the day?" Lord Peter asks, "Is the world coming to an end?". The policeman replies, "No. It's the eclipse". The world does not neccessarily becomes a better place merely because the wrong-doer is caught and punished. But with the wreckage cleared away like so many briars and thorns, the world now has a chance to become its ideal, to realize the personal code of honour and integrity which every individual owes society and which society, most of all, owes its citizens. The sun will come out again. Unnatural Death is an unnaturally good novel. It also happens to contain a mystery. Unnatural Death + Dorothy L. Sayers

Listening: "And the bears and bees and banana trees / Will play kazoos and tambourines / And Jesus will dance as we drink his wine / With soldiers and thieves and a sword in his side." I can't do better than to quote Sean's words on STG about the easy inevitable nature of the lyrics in this Page France song, especially as I never would have heard this song without his excellent website.

Okay, imagine you have a twig, a good brown twig the breadth of your thumb. And you snap it in half. And you throw the two pieces of twig to either side of a forest. And then a lonely person comes along and picks up one of the pieces of twig. He thinks life's meaningless and lame. He wanders. At the other side of the wood he idly picks up the other piece of twig. And look! Lo! They fit together! Just. Like. That. And for a long moment he's in awe of the way the world can just make things come together in the rightest way

Like everybody else, I first ran into Page France on Fluxblog, and I've been listening to "Chariot" ever since, but this song is better. Why don't you decide for yourself, though? Listen to "Chariot" and then listen to "Jesus" + Page France

Hot Apple Cider, A Glass Of Feist Tea

Walking along the small yellow-leaved streets between University and Whyte Ave, cold air, blue sky, paper cup of instant apple-cider in my hand and the tall trees by that hotel like red lights against light-red brick, I think, I wish to live forever, and foolishly wish a moment to last eternally. Which is a fool's desire, of course. One thing, I love this season. One thing, this season and bright air quickly fade. One thing, things fall apart, and that's what makes them lasting in the always-vanishing heart. Did I rhyme? Let it go. Today, everything is well-shaped and fitting.

Reading: What I loved most about Ghost Dog: Way Of The Samurai was how the film so strongly differed from my expectations toward it. I don't recall what I expected from that movie, since I knew zip all about it aside from the poster. And, let's face it, posters are the pressed-fibre enemies of the audience, always devious, always betraying, paper quislings on the theatre wall. I offer no evidence of this two-facedness, by the way, except the evidence, the disappointments endured, which you store in your own hearts. That, and the poster for any Dennis Leary movie ever. Cripes! How can Leary's television be SO GREAT, and his movies so everlastingly blowing? Cripes! I'm digressing. What I really love about some books is how different from my expectations their contents can develop. This can be bad, sure (any Salman Rushdie novel, if that's the word, after Satanic Verses, anyone?) but it can be so unmeasurably positive, too. Folks, for instance, who've grown up on Disney's Winnie The Pooh have a beautiful surprise in store if they open Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. The original outmatches the modern interpretations of it on every front. I was cleaning out my closet the other day—"One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries": Milne—and came across a book I'd read within the past twelve months, but which I immediately reread again. Anything to avoid cleaning. It's a solid book, a strong book, a book which Jim Jarmusch may one day make a movie out of, as he made a movie out of Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. But this book is much more than an instruction manual; actually, this book contains no instruction whatsoever, unless it is practical directions for climbing mountains. What this book offers is what Thoreau offered in Walden—a persuasive glimpse at another world. These authors fool you (they fool me) with eloquent phrasing and better description of this world, their world, the rock and trees and trains and stations of life. But their words for this world are actually descriptions of the worlds within themselves, their hearts, their minds, the step-by-step construction of careful thought. What these men teach is appreciation, a supreme virtue, surely. A supreme book, too. Starlight And Storm + Gaston Rebuffat

Listening: I know you're probably tired of hearing about her, but look at the weather outside. What a day to listen to Feist. I was going to go back to this spring (last spring?) and post a link to just about anything off of Sunlandic by Of Montreal, and I would have, too, if Feist didn't exist, but she does, and that's so good. So what if the last words I wrote about her are still on this page? I'll write about someone new next time. For now, it's Feist. For now, the weather is crisp and all fitting-black-sweatery. Let's all wear dark jeans and quote Wordsworth and Rainer Maria Rilke. Let's listen to my favourite song of the past six months (the one at the bottom of the page), "It's Cool to Love Your Family" + Feist

Dad, The Moon Is Alphane Again!

Novel + blog + girlfriend (Happy Birthday, Crystal! Happy Birthday Month!) + 50 000 novel + school + essays/assignments + job + damn emails keep piling up + Arcade Fire/Corb Lund/Metric?/Feist + that cd I owe Kyle + wouldn't it be nice to get that Myspace thing running? + untogetherness of self = AAAGGGHHH!!! Godsake, imagine if I had a real life, with real problems. K, time for some Doritos.

Reading: Cinderella's ugly step-sisters cleavered off their heels trying to cram those size twelve horse-hoofed digits into the crystal size five slipper. Blood everywhere, you can't even imagine, and the painfulness, too. What a mess. But a very entertaining mess, I'll give the uglies that, bloody but entertaining. See, every day I go to the fifth floor of Rutherford and read, for twenty-five minutes, a little red hardcover called Clans Of The Alphane Moon. Now, you've probably seen those skeleton shirts, right, the ones that have white ribcages printed on the black cloth? The kind which become popular around Halloween? Kate Winslett wore one in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, a film which, the discerning reader will already have noted, I referenced in my last post, because it's the only movie I've ever seen. I have no knowledge of film outside that movie. Back to the discerning reader, Clans Of The Alphane Moon is not for him. COTAM is for me, the guy who, sure, likes his soft-cover Thomas Pynchon, but will probably finish the lusciously tacky (there's that first-year Fine Arts vocabulary) Frazetti-covered Tarzan At The Earth's Core a lot faster than The Crying Of Lot 49. What I'm saying is, COTAM isn't a book, it's bare plot, a shiningly skeletal what-comes-next teetering in delicate slippers of conceptual prose. And the thing about those shirts, if you'll let me return to a digression, is that you haven't really got the whole skeleton there, have you? The rib cage, a flash of collarbone, maybe, perhaps even a small green lizard furled cartoonishly around one of the ribs, but that's quality, and you don't see too much of that, now do you? The point is, Mr. Bones isn't all there. And neither is this novel. The author has had to slice off too many elements of the novel in order to concentrate on his main concept, which is this: the inmates are running the asylum. Years ago, Earth outright defeated the Alphans. Then, cleverly exploiting their victory, the human race banished all their mentally unstable bits to the Alphan moon. These bits have formed new societies along heavily biased and paranoid lines. Earth wants the moon back, now, and complications ensue. Look, this novel sucks. The concept isn't enough. But I'm still reading it. The characters are all wading around in the shallow end, there's intricate convoluted labyrinthine plot-beasts chewing up the pages, and I swear half the novel is padding (and not just in the holding cells), but I'm still reading it. Because this novel is by Philip K. Dick, and let's face it, his junk should be most people's treasure. You should look for some buried treasure yourself. Try on some new shoes. Maybe look, with me, in Clans Of The Alphane Moon + Philip K. Dick

Listening: Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! Arcade Fire! I love this here interwebbery. I love bootlegged videos. I love David Bowie singing with Arcade Fire. I LOVE DAVID BOWIE SINGING WITH ARCADE FIRE! I also love Arcade Fire on Letterman, but the video is terrible, and the sound blows. But look at the guy (William Butler, I think) beating that drum, going AC/DC on the floor!

A Day At The Racist

"But God does love racists," he said.

"God loves everyone," the other guy replied.

"Yeah," he said, "but he loves white people more. Look at us palefaces. Always outnumbered, always outgunned. But it's been over a thousand years now, and we still don't have to make our beds in the morning."

The other guy rolled his eyes, and vaguely waved his hand at the burgundy bus seats. "Yeah, and we get to ride in style."

"Really?" I chimed in. "The bus is the place to be? The cool kids are tired of the Mercedes?"

"Mercedes!" said the other guy."I'm rolling on twenty-four inch rims here, man."

Reading: I realize the title of my post is, at best, ungrammatical. That's not because I don't know grammar. It's because I hate language. You know what language does, aside from letting itself be awkwardly personified (and it only allows that because it's bored of twirling those swizzle sticks they put in cheap martinis, as if a three-coloured straw in any way made up for watered-down alcohol and fractured conversation with the opposite sex)? Language lets itself get seen in the company of bad books, like you with those tacky friends of yours I won't stop loudly disliking on sight. God, your friends are snobs! With all the bad books junking up the libraries, it's no wonder English is losing ground faster than my Great Dane-owning neighbour. His lawn could look so much better if he got rid of the god spelled backwards, you know? And English isn't losing ground? Well, I'm not about to let English lose a half-assed metaphor either, so I'm going to pretend that it IS losing, ok? If you ever read what I read, you would be convinced, as I was convinced, that we should burn the English language at the stake. Did you read the one about Isaac Newton and the Murders In The Rue Mint? One of the SIPs (Statistically Improbable Phrases) listed for this book is "cunny parts". Right. What? One Fanny Hill per language is enough, author guy. Two is plagiarism. Nobody likes used porn. Also, our ancestors never had sex. The author does not seem to realize this, and insists on sticking sex in even where it won't go. Also, having Isaac Newton lard his speeches with every quotation filed under "Newton, Isaac" in Bartlett's is the lamest cheapest substitute for actual research or original thought ever dreamed up since I first thought of it. And even I rejected doing that (but only after I found out other people read Bartlett's, too, and not just Kirsten Dunst in Eternal Sunshine). This book is a poor man's Sherlock Holmes, without Sherlock Holmes. It's a poor man's Fanny Hill, but mostly without the fanny. Whatever you do, do not read Dark Matter: The Private Life Of Sir Isaac Newton: A Novel + Philip Kerr

Listening: I notice that three out of my last four posts have listed somebody from the whole endless paper-man-chain that is Broken Social Scene. So when I came across a new BSS song on Said The Gramaphone, I bit the bullet, pulled out the glue-gun and pasted the link. Here it is. It's good. I'm fighting it, but yeah, it's good. Come on, people! What happened to Canrock? Where's The Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, Moist, The Crash Test Dummies, The Tragically Hip, Sam Roberts? Where's the generic roar of mid-line bass and mid-tempo drums and middling lyrics sung by the talentless hacks of yesterday (Crash Test Dummies excepted). Nickelback can't do it alone, people. I feel like we're losing control of our culture, here. I'm going to go watch a Canadian Heritage Moment, maybe the one about the female student learning surgery with the men, ok? Not that she's hot or anything. Really, she's not. You go listen to "Ibi Dreams Of Pavement (A Better Half)" + Broken Social Scene

Imperial Beginnings, Metric Final

I said, "Is it better to open with a sensational line, like a Dick Francis novel—'I looked at my friend and saw a man who had robbed me', or, 'They both wore thin rubber masks'—or is it better to open with something mildly interesting, like Jane Eyre's 'There was no possibility of taking a walk that day'? Which is better, the brash or the subtle?"

"Better?" he said. "The best is entirely different from these. Go to Jane Austen: 'It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife'. It's surprising, because it's an amusing opening line. And when does that ever happen? Brilliant. It's subtle because it approaches a major latterly-explained theme of the novel indirectly, through satire. Set-up, set-up, set-up. It's engaging, because it's a supremely well-written well-weighted sentence. It's better, because, without sacrificing the what-comes-next of all good opening lines, it's far more self-explanatory, say, than Orwell's 'It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen'. Sensational, that. Instant get-up-and-go. Orwell's opening is so arresting, it should be charged for illegally impersonating an officer of the law. What a burner of a line—but Austen's is better, son, it's just so much better."

I signed up, months ago, to write a 50 000 word novel in 30 days. Because that's how I roll, suckers. And even though none of us flagellants who signed up are allowed to write one word of le actual plot before midnight on the day, I'm obsessing over opening lines. And I just can't decide.

Reading: Nevermind the politics of it. The king insults the dead, and the families of the dead, by ordering the fallen carcasses of his enemies to lie unburied on the highway. The sister of the unburied man refuses to let her brother's body publicly rot. She breaks the king's rule and is killed. Her lover, the king's son, attacks his father, but then kills himself. His mother, the king's wife, hears that her son is dead and also kills herself. The king is ruined and can barely speak. You thought Lear did it first, or Saul before him, but no, it was Creon, who, speaking loudly and angering divinity, first brought destruction upon himself through his own damn careless words. That's what hung him. Leave him alone, you say? Have you read the play? It's hard to pity the fool, you know, when he's such a proud blistering ass. Don't believe me? Your heart's harder than the king's in Antigone + Sophocles

Listening: She's good, ok, and I love her voice singing "For the love of God" after she sings "But the war won't stop". And, one day, she might leave her band, I can see it, and find her stride hitting singles out of the park in a home-run contest with Gwen Stefani. "No doubt", you say, and nod your head. This is, what, the fourth time she's hit Edmonton in the last twelve months? I like her, I keep saying, and you like her, too, that's obvious, but she likes us just as much as we like her. Which is why she'll be here for the fresh new CD on the 27th. Well, but forget us for a moment, what about Down South? She's doing one thing to the Americans I never thought anybody could. She's selling them on the Metric system, isn't she? But then, why not? I don't think this band has put out one single bad song. She's part of the whole Broken Social Scene, too, like just about every friggin indie-darling in Canada outside of the two loners in DFA79. Listen, when it comes down to it, the music is solid, her voice is wonderful and confident, and the band takes away all excuses to dance and hands out little cards with "Permision To Strike Poses" printed on them in a quasi-miltary font. Cadence Weapon likes them, Fluxblog has new stuff. Go, Emily! Hit up the "Media" option on their website for some stellar "Dead Disco" + Metric

Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?

One of that brightly-haloed generation which put an end to the Dark Ages, Sanctorius Sanctorius wrote a book titled Methods For Avoiding Errors, which called for analyzing particulars only after diagnosing the possible generalities which spawned them. In other words, context is everything. Is this lesson so hard to remember?

Reading: What is best in life? Back in Grade 9 or 10 or whenever it was, I loved reading this poem, mostly, I think, because of all the similar Conan the Barbarian imagery rattling around my head. "To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women". Lines like that, ridiculous even in the Conan movie, are not at all out of place in the grim world of Grendel. Halt! And read it not for the torturous imagery, the interminable consonance, the (to my modern ears) awkward phrasing—for in this poem, all those flaws become virtues, contributing strongly to the over-all effect of a grey broken world on the edge of doom and ruin—but read it because the hero wins, and the monsters are defeated. That's why they call it fiction. Read Beowulf + trans Seamus Heaney

Listening: The name is a bit long, and what's with the caps? Oh well, the music is solid. Ths isn't usually my scene, but the melodies are clear and the sound is loud, and really, can one ask for more than that? A friend turned me on to them Friday, and now I'm turning you on. To them. That is. Whatever. Their other tracks are good, but I like this one best, if only cause it's somewhat creepily called "Nature Of The Ghost " + BEDlight For BlueEYES

A Feisty Return

You know them, of course. God help you, maybe you're one of them, with the sadness in the back of their brown eyes, or that reckless way of turning a corner. They were there when the levee broke, or they couldn't stop the brakes failing on that car, or the cancer came and there was nothing they could do. I knew a missionary once, a wily old lady in northern India, and anytime anything bad, sad, negative or just right-out miserable happened, and she couldn't carry any of it, she said, "Adjust and carry on." She was very tough old lady.

I am not one of the tough people. I create my own problems. These problems are not at the levels of mayhem and misery that other people have experienced, but my world is pretty small, and they take up a lot of room. I do not recall ever having suffered at the hands of someone or something else. On July 27, I received a letter from the University. The letter was all bad. I was not to think of taking any more classes. My GPA was simply too low. The letter did not mention how I love University. It didn't mention that the study ("study", ha!) of English literature is one of my favourite things in the entire world. It didn't mention how much I use attending University to balance a multitude of failings in my life. It didn't, in short, end with the words, "Here's to being permanently kicked in the teeth, and congratulations, because you did it yourself."

Last autumn, you see, I was up against it. Because of a situation of my own making, money was a little less scarce than hen's teeth. And I hadn't found any hen's teeth since I was six years old, lost in a September wood near a reservoir in southern Ontario. Last autumn, then, I signed up for only two courses ("two" as in non-tax deductible, by the way, which I later and regretfully found out). But I didn't take both of those courses. That's not my style, you see. Instead, I took one and merely didn't attend the other. By the last class drop date, I'd forgotten I ever signed up for that course, even though I'd paid for the damn thing. Are there less intelligent people than myself? Sadly, I still retain enough sentience enough to understand just how unintelligent I am. Result? Unhappiness, oh my brothers, and piles of bleeding stress. Still, the skies remained unsilver and unlined, and I decided to take the winter semester "off" and work. Which I did. Which resulted in my taken class' "A" fighting against my unattended class' "F". Across an entire school year. Thus, the University's use of the Canadian postal system.

Well, I appealed of course. And the appeal stalled. And stalled. And wouldn't start. And the whole summer, day after day, the sun rose like it always did, and there were warm nights on Whyte Ave, and my girlfriend and I fought mildly and made up better, and I listened to good music, and buried myself in mediocre books, and I pretended that returning to University for fall semester was nothing extraordinary, a given, and not a gift, not something along the lines of miraculous. I still hadn't recieved an answer from the appeal board on September 7, the first day of classes. I got up around five-thirty am, that day. Got on the bus, and stared at the floor of that crowded vehicle for forty minutes. Made my way to the appeals office, but the advisor wasn't there, again. Left a message on the advisor's machine. Maybe she would be there at ten? Tried to take a short nap in the lobby, ended up flipping my cell open and shut for fifty-minutes. That's a personal tic that annoys just about everyone I know. Couldn't take it. Wandered off toward Rutherford. And the cell vibrated as I was walking through the near-deserted halls of Engineering. The advisor. Wanting to know why I was calling.

"Well, hadn't heard from you guys since last week."

She was shocked. "We sent you a registered letter on September 1."

"I haven't gotten anything, though."

So she read me the letter over the phone, while I leaned into a recessed window, and the warm sun, and the leaves outside, passing students, a crowd of talk and future and careers. And she said I was succesfully readmitted! I tell you, I turned around and hugged the broad white wall. Sure, the two freshmen behind me were not so impressed. But I'm back, people! And this year will be the best year of my life.

Reading: There are books which take a lifetime to read. I'm not talking the KJV or Huckleberry Finn which, let's face it, would take a lifetime to learn, nevermind read, I'm talking flat-out-time-spent-in-a-chair-turning-pages. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell just about had me in traction, but it's got nothing on what I'm reading now. But there's something strangely hypnotic about reading such a large work. I remember seeing my brother first opening War & Peace and the look of bland satisfaction on his face. That's what you get out of these big books, I think, or I do, anyways. Reading as accomplishment, right? Sort of like watching Gone With The Wind—never again—or reading the Globe & Mail. Yeah! I got through it! And I'm still alive. Which is good news. And on the plus side, I've become a walking encyclopedia on early-century gossip. I always liked Juvenal. He was a cut-mouth wise-ass, and this is the kind of stuff he would have snickered at. Want to know what Caligula really whispered to his horse? Did Maximus ever cheat at sports? Just where did Galba get his dark skin? This book has the answers, son. Check out The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire Vol II + Edward Gibbon

Listening: Whatever you do, do NOT look at the picture of Feist on the front of her site. Whoever that is, that is not Feist. How do I know? I own the CD and I've listened to her music. Feist is gorgeous. Feist is not that woman with the bad Ramones hair (like there's good Ramones hair?) and the "Kiss me, I'm drugged" eyes, looking like she's part of a shoplifting gang in central France. That's not my Feist. Feist is what you listen to on your way to an evening swim (I'm going downtown to the Grant Mac pool tonight). Feist is what you listen to as you order Belgian waffles. Feist knows words like "Mushaboom" and says, "It's cool to love your family". Feist is way better looking than the Feist in that picture. Forget Broken Social Scene. Remember that voice behind The Kings Of Convenience? Godsake, she sings with Jane Birkin. Go listen to the good-looking Feist, okay? The one who dances with that Buck 65 lookalike. Go to the video section and listen (it's only a sample) to the smoothest song outside of 1970. "One Evening" + Feist

On Blueberry Hill

The well-barbered man could have done better. He could have been on the flooded ground within hours. He could have been right there at the damn levee. But blaming George Bush for the looters? I can see where you're coming from, but look at the other side of the coin, that's all. There is always the other side, always. Are the American people so inherently lawless that they would quickly (three days, anyone?) yield to the pressure and opportunity to loot, pillage, even rape? Well, of course they are, dammit. They're humans. But that doesn't make the looters and the gangs any less responsible for their own actions. And it doesn't make GB any more or less responsible for them than he was the day before the hurricane pinwheeled New Orleans. The point I think is most disgusting is that many notable politicians, entertainers, bloggers, even (Daily Kos, I'm looking watchfully at you), are taking what should be an opportunity to help their neighbour and turning it into an opportunity to attack. Hopefully, this trend will decrease over the coming days and weeks, and people will use their anger and energy for positive ends, and not negative. Running George Bush down does nothing for New Orleans. It did nothing for the three thousand who died in the Twin Towers, it did nothing for the London deaths and deaths in Madrid, it's doing nothing for the millions of oppressed Sunnis, and it will do nothing for the thousands of people trapped in various superdomes across the USA. Luckily, I'm Canadian, and live so far and safely away from most everybody that I can afford to criticize the critics. Enough of them. Ignore Bush, too. What about the man standing in deep flood-water, the woman sleeping on an overpass, the nearly-dying elderly, the little children murdered? Forget about Bush. Forget about policy. Who cares about Republicans or Democrats? I hope Fats Domino is still alive. The old New Orleans saint said he was going to weather the storm in his house. And no more news. That part of the city is flooded, of course. It's only temporary. Blueberry Hill is going to outlast the Whitehouse, and it's going to wear out the haters and partisans, too. I hope Fats Domino is alright. I hope he's got some food, and a dry place, and a piano, maybe. And if he doesn't, and if everything is too late, the man died where he made his home, in the city where he made his music, a music that made the world, despite all manner of hurricanes, terrorists, tragedy and difficult change, a smoother and easier place to know. Because that's New Orleans, and that's Fats Domino. Leave the President be. We're apart, I see it, and hard times have come, hunger, and violence. But the world is still here, and one day you'll be easy and smooth again, and, if you aren't and it isn't, well, I know some good music to while away the day with, and you do, too. Let's say a prayer for Biloxi.

[Edit: Fats is alive!]

Listening: They've got the usual Broken Social Scene connections and they were just in town (that "just" happens to be two weeks ago in Edmonton, by the way), crafting some tunes down at The Starlite and opening for Pretty Girls Make Graves. I didn't go because that's what I do. Not going, that is. Sort of become my identity lately, if you know what I mean. If you don't, sorry, you must have a life. Lose it, hipster, if you want to be cool. Anyways, Robots posted them just a while ago (that "just" happens to be a week ago in Minneapolis), so I thought I would lay out a link or two of my own. The music is good, heavy on the indie, heavy on the pop, and I can't think of a single reason not to buy this CD. They've got the twee-est website ever, and they've "all realized just how big Canada is". Come on, you've gotta love it. "Where Cedar Nouns And Adverbs Walk" + The Most Serene Republic

Every Word Is Like An Execution

I apologize to thee. Five days between proper posts, when I had said in the morning that I'd be back that same evening. Technical difficulties interfered, you see, by which I do not mean that a large man reached through the window and stole the computer, nor do I mean that someone poured gasoline in the hard-drive, nor even that I locked the computer into a vault with fifty thousand other computers and then forgot what it looked like, thus, sadly, losing it among the other stale technologies. What I'm saying is that the fuzzy headache developing Wednesday night/Thursday morning became a fifty-clawed bone-shredder by Thursday afternoon, and there were no survivors. But Sunday morning, le mal finally broke, and a shiny feeling of unsickness moved in on the new digs. Which is me, feeling better. So last night, a friend back in town, we went to see The Forty-Year Old Virgin, which is excellent, and has dancing ("Age Of Aquarius"!), and a perfectly-ended montage, and subtleness about popular culture, and lots of unsubtleness, too, and is entirely what Wedding Crashers (according to this review) lacks. I'm not alone here, people. The entire theatre was laughing, too. I haven't heard this much audience participation since Snobbbier-Than-Thou-Thursdays at the local Indie Theatre had to be cancelled due to management inadvertently buying old mainstream films and trying to palm them off as ironically cool cultural references. I mean, Hayley Mills? There will never be anything cool about The Parent Trap, and that's just one of the reasons I love it, so hands off, indie-hoppers!

A lot's happened, you know? I won $13,000 in this one contest to find the buried treasure. The treasure was all these loonies crammed in clear plastic egg-cartons. My elderly Mexican friend and I went back through the old folks' home and tried to pick up the bonus prize, because it was worth a million dollars, but then I couldn't find enough information about the bonus, and we got antsy about leaving the $13,000 so we went back to the woods and waited for nightfall to smuggle it away. Then I woke up. Listen, I NEVER have dreams. And since I never have dreams, I was like, "Thirteen thousand dollars? My share will put my car back on the road and pay off the last of university! Yeah!" Tricks like this are why reality and I haven't been on speaking terms in forever.

Reading: The backs of various bottles of aspirin, mostly. Also, Sudafed, Tylenol, etcetera. This is a very limited genre, folks. Character arc is flatter than a Disney cartoon. Plot development, ditto. I get it, this is a non-fiction genre, but come on! Shaping a narrative, anyone? Creating more than a captive audience? I haven't read any reviews for the latest bottle of Maalox, yet, but I imagine it would be more of the same. It's the publishing houses who I hold responsible. "Fast acting," some hack writes, and the editor lets it slip. "Pain relief", another amatuer burbles, and the publisher nods encouragingly. Listen, overextended flame-metaphors, shoddy anatomical diagramming, I'll put up with so much. But not this, not sloppy lies like these, outright misinformation. Like I said, I know it's not supposed to be a fictional genre. Has anyone told the authors?

Listening: About a year ago I began listening to The French Kicks. They were a good band. Why did I stop listening to them? Lack of peer pressure, really. That, and the only CD of theirs I can lay my hands on (which, btw, is a VERY good CD and very hands-on-able) costs twenty-five freakin dollars at the local store, and I'm tired of all that, okay? Poverty blows, but even more extreme versions of poverty blow even more extremely, especially when that extreme poverty is due to the EXTREMELY HIGH PRICE of a CD. I thought, when nobody wanted it, that the thing became cheaper. And that CD has been there for a very long time now, and I think it's actually getting more expensive. That's why I'm listening to the very cheap online blog 3Hive

"After Eight" Is Right Out

The lilac-scented invitation read "After 6", but there was no post meridian mark. So Briscoe and Ethel-Lucy Cranston showed up at the manor dressed in their cocktail best, looking for coloured martinis before breakfast. The cook made oatmeal, and Ethel-Lucy, though she would never admit it, bit her lip and swore. Briscoe felt quite awkward.

The normal post will appear shortly after 6. That is, in the evening. You are all cordially invited.

Please bring your own martinis.

Unblogging

Sometimes it comes to this: you've got to pick sides. Not that heads is better, or tails is best. You've just got to call it. I'll post something pretty tomorrow, daisies, maybe, or that Roman piazza, or (more probably) what I think about The Time Traveller's Wife, but today I'm writing for real, and that means words, and that means paper. The Blog is beautiful, but today I'm picking The Novel.

AK, I'll respond later (much later) this evening. There's still something to be said. Crystal, I'll see you later, too. J, are you there? That tattoo-fest is happening pretty soon. Later, you savvy alligators.

Reading: 12% 13% 14% still reading 28% 29% still reading 63% 64% 65% 66% still—Godsake, this book is taking forever to load! The Time Traveler's Wife + Audrey Niffenegger

Listening: I like them. I thought you might, too. Don't be shy. Introduce yourself. They're new, too. Sorry, what's your name? This is "They Are Always Into That" + Rademacher

Oh, Karen

I know this guy, he's a dark-haired graduate from the U of A. Haven't seen him since June. Never met a guy who made sad sound so funny. He said he would head for California after graduation. Had ambitions to be a television writer. There was a Saturday morning, one summer, I asked him, "What did you do last night, Mattie?" He quirked his mouth and took another bite from his bagel. "Oh, the usual. Cleaned my rifle and prayed for an accident." Then he laughed. The bagel went everywhere.

Here's to you, Matt, for keeping your eye firmly on the bottom of the barrel. Hope you make it to your own [adult swim], or whatever version of Family Guy will have you. You'll be brilliant. And I'll get to say I knew you when.

Reading: Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston bought the rights to this debut novel. IMDB says the movie is in production, but wouldn't that production be part of the Plan B studio stuff that got cancelled when BP and JA split up? But this novel would make a burner of a movie. Yeah, I'm reading one of last year "hot" books, and that makes me a Mennonite by blogger standards, but whatever, whatever. The Time Traveler's Wife is the perfect antidote to that boredom-fest half the blogosphere has lauded in The Historian. Yeah, this is a concept novel, Time Travel For Dummies, but I get the idea it would work great told linearly as well. You see, Henry and Claire love each other. Henry is being biologically yanked through time. Claire isn't. Complications ensue. Violent complications, even. This novel is the kind of genre-obliteration which makes Motherless Brooklyn or Adam Fawer's Improbable such succesful stand-outs on the shelf. The author does a great job of ratcheting up the tension, too, and I'm neck-deep in empathy, hoping for a good end to things, because things are getting bad and I care about the characters. Aaagh! Sometimes I HATE that. But if you don't, and if you don't mind being a Mennonite, travel back to last summer and be cool with me, reading The Time Traveler's Wife + Audrey Niffenegger

Listening: The music is weak, but the video is disturbing enough to get my attention. Plus, the short was directed by Karen O, who is the ultimate sexy sexy indie singer (that's how I wrote it in my My Big Secrets book) and I'll pay attention to anything she's involved in, cause I'm biased like that. Thirlwell references Montreal, cause that's not where he's from, but he's so indie it hurts and maybe he's liking the current trend out of that city. Despite the name, the band isn't death-metal or satan spawn (but what do I know, they might be satan spawn after all, I'm just saying, okay?) and you can sort of hear NIN keyboarding in the back. The video is all The Fly and cheap zombies and Andy Warhol-ish face-shots, not neccessarily bad ingredients. You know what? I'm going to watch it again. Come with me and see "Blessed Evening" + Foetus

Arabia Will Have Had Its Day, Or, Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants (Sunday Night Edit)

Long ago coralled to the white bones of the whale, the captain's skeleton hardly does more than shiver in the cold darkness off Asia. There is no finding the light in these deep waters. Soft-shelled crayfishes, larger than men know, blindly trawl the mud with other sightless beasts, none as blind as the eyeless skeleton in the arches of darkness. Captain, for your voyage never closed, for no faces eagerly turning, for these and other unfinished braveries, I regret your end. But your damn pride would never let you rest, and it was always pace pace pace up and down the deck with you, waiting for the cry, and, "For hate," you replied, "I spit!"

Some years back, Galileo was imprisoned for denying the commonly accepted idea of the structure of the universe. Merely by saying that the earth revolved around the sun, the man not only realigned the planets, but erased the word distance (which defined, among other things, the physical path to the First Mover) and replaced it with eternity. Physical God was forever defined as outside the natural physical world. Galileo's new universe was cold, filled with eternal distances, and correct. Well, not quite. Sir Isaac Newton, filled with bold ideas, picked a few pebbles from the shore and studied them closely. Which resulted in the definition of gravity, the distance between planets, the movement of the stars, the different parts of light, and calculus. The universe became stable and Newtonian, though not as fast as Alexander Pope would have it. Which lasted until Charles Darwin synthesized what many had been thinking, and found proof in his pudding, too, and hard questions. So the universe became Darwinian, a product of unknown forces rather than an unknown Force.

Now, perhaps Galileo was not entirely correct, but he was certainly more correct than his peers. Perhaps Newton did not see far enough ahead, but he saw farther ahead than the rest of Europe. And who knows what drove Charles Darwin? But whatever drove him also drove him to at least formulate something that could explain the state of the universe. The common thread in all these stories is the same: each man arrived at a theory which, for better or worse, forever affected the current established dogma of science and religion; each man explained the basis for his thinking; and each man, if not widely proven correct, at least proved the established mindset of his era to be proud, stubborn, and lacking in the knowledg of the times and what men ought to do. In other words, wrong.

What is the established dogma of science and religion in this modern Darwinian world? Understand, I do not argue for a divine six-day creation of this universe. To argue is to express logic, proof, and demonstrable truth and untruth. I find no such ingredients in the story of creation. On the other hand, I find no such ingredients in evolutionary dogma. As an explanation of a process, there is nothing offensive to reason in evolution. But as the origin of that process? Evolution contends that it is, literally, the answer to the question. Life, evolution explains, is a series of reactions. Reaction to what? Rephrase, then: a series of adaptations. Adaptations to what? If evolution is the inward drive to prolong life outwardly expressed, does this mean that one day humans will achieve immortality? But every fuel source in the universe must one day darken. Even Arabia will have had its day. Even as Darwinism has had its day.

The Church could not let her universe go, and became ridiculous for not acknowledging truth when Galileo spoke. Those few who opposed Sir Isaac Newton (Liebniz, Hooke, James II) stand forever in his shadow. The many who raged against Darwin became ridiculed in the man who wrote that God planted dinosaur bones to test His people. Age changes to age, who can resist it? The old moon must fade before the new moon can be seen.

Ahab would not let his passion pass. Revenge on the animal which had marred his world was all the captain desired. His emotions became his reasons. He tied himself to a single object, that object unachievable. And he died. And the sea swallowed him up. And only one man of all the captain's crew survived.

Are there not other universes beside the Ptolemaic, the Newtonian, the Darwinian? Why should an age of new understanding not come to pass?

[Sunday night edit—

Reading: You've probably seen a few previews, and know the movie is coming out this December. Think of it as LOTR in watercolours (like how there's colour Tim Burton and dark Tim Burton—this is colour TB), a gothless Tolkien, except it totally isn't. Tolkien, or gothless. This is what I love about the Narnia series. Someone had the guts to make a fantasy series where the good guys are unequivocally good and use only goodness to make the world good. Is my vocabulary suffering? Well, these books are intended for children after all. Maybe that has something to do with it. The second in the series (but the first written) is famously titled The Lion, The Witch, And The Wardrobe + Clive Staples Lewis

Listening: I wanted to link to that new Corb Lund song (you know what it's called) the song titled "Truck Got Stuck", but I can't find a legit link anywhere. Corby just keeps getting better, you know? Let's face it, the man is spearheading an entirely new country scene. I think of The Uncas here in Edmonton, or, say, Tim Aylesworth out east, neither of whom really resemble The Corb Lund Band, but, somehow, each seems to echo the CL sound (ound ound ound). Then I got to thinking of other alt country stylings (which aren't really alt so much as old time and retro, less hot and more country), like the incomparable Peter Bruntnell or, better than most, Robbie Fulks. RF got in on that one Johnny Cash tribute, dealing out "Cry Cry Cry" like it was personally his, but enough of that. "Sleepin" isn't all that typical of Robbie Fulks' sound, unlike his newest release, the quintessential and amazing Georgia Hard, but it's still solid, very piano. "Cocktail" is also available for download on this same page, and what strikes the ear about both of these songs is the old-fashioned sound of them, but a genuine old fashion. These could be uptempo George Jones songs. And when would that ever be a bad thing? "Sleepin" + Robbie Fulks]

Popular Media For A $1000, Alex

A few years after her primetime television career fizzled, Marsha Brady stepped up to a successful seventh-inning stretch in le film biz merely by changing her name to Jared Leto.

Reading: There's a lot of good reasons to read the eleventh installment in the children's series pastiche by the elusive Lemony Snicket. The Grim Grotto was published sometime last autumn, I do believe, but I reread it again after coming across The Reluctant Champion's link to the Name-The-New-Lemony Snicket-Novel Contest. So, Reason Number One To Read Or Reread The Grim Grotto: The good guys' uniform is a wetsuit with a large picture of Herman Melville across the chest. R#2: The bad guys are dressed in wetsuits featuring the face of that once-household-name-but-now-extremely-obscure poet Edgar Guest. Is this a pun on the whole sea of literature thingy? Whatever. Threadless should get on the whole Herman Melville thing, though. R#3: Where else are you going to have the opportunity to read lines like, "Look at yourselves, orphans, snacking and reading poetry while the powerful and good-looking people of the world cackle in triumph". R#4: The Submarine Q and its Crew of Two actually has a crew (by my count) of three to six. R#5: Carmelita Spats will not stop calling people "Cakesniffer", and it's very satisfying to read what other characters think of her. Are these enough reasons? If they are, go stand in your local bookstore and browse through The Grim Grotto + Lemony Snicket

Listening: Rachel Stevens. It was a big question, I know. Existential questions like this haunt me. Why does jello taste so good, but jello powder taste like the bottom of the saltiest barrel? Why does my girlfriend believe I'm Jewish (k, she doesn't, but why not? what's wrong with her believing that?). Why do the masses buy tickets to movies they know Julia Stiles will be in? I have no answers for you. These are the X-Files, you understand? But that first question! I remembered. What is S Club 7, Alex? Back in the day, Rachel Stevens was just another bubble in the pop machine. She's still just a bubble, but she's a lot bigger of a bubble. The pop machine is a lot shinier, too, and sells more adult-themed beverages, like Red Bull and sexy-ness. Yes, sexy is a beverage. I thought "So Good" was the best of the bunch, but Fluxblog put his cash in the machine, and he's letting us have a taste of "I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)" + Rachel Stevens

Tennyson Would Have Liked It

There was a time, not more than this-or-that day past, a person said to me, "What a stupid name." He was referring to the title of my blog. Fair enough. Opinion is just opinion, even if it is presented as fact. But when did an eccentric title ever take away from the contents of the work? And if the title be eccentric enough, interesting enough in its own right, surely, obviously, such a title becomes a positive. It is to this kind of title that the name of my blog climbs on its little blog feet, to the titles which intrigue one simply because they do not reveal instant or explicable meaning. I'm thinking here of novels like Cry, The Beloved Country or the wonderful To Kill A Mockingbird or anything written by Philip K. Dick. My philosophy here is a condensation of the Dave Eggers school, which seems to buy interest by itemizing possibilities instead of quantifying them, the contents of the page instead of the headline, if you will. My philosophy here is that of Umberto Eco, who sought a title that would achieve obscurity by meaning too many things at once, a title that would ride madly in all directions, a title that was exotically ordinary, or the reverse. This, of course, is the heart of Romance. I like to think that my blog's title is Romantic. I do not like to think that it is stupid. Why did this person regard the title of my blog so unfavourably? Perhaps he thought it had no relevance to the contents of this site. Right, then, he was wrong, my critic was.

Within each craft, there was a massive library. The Terror carried 1,200 volumes, while the Erebus had 1,700. The assortment of books included narratives of early Arctic explorations, as well as the Dickens classic, Nicholas Nickleby.

John Franklin believed there was a Northwest Passage through the Arctic. He thought he could reach the cold seas of Japan if he only persevered long enough. Well, John Franklin was a foolhardy ass and a bad leader. He was forced to abandon the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror in the deep winter ice, and take the bare chance he might reach the far distant Canadian shore. He never made it. His men turned cannibals, he himself froze to death, and his ships, that summer, sank to the bottom of the sea.

It may be that Franklin's lost ships will one day be recovered. And the 2900 books that sanks in those ships, together with the new inventions of the time, will also be recovered. But until that day comes, those books are forever missing from this world, and we must make do without them. This blog, then, is part of that making-do. In variety, in content, this site is plainly lacking what the Erebus and Terror contained. No matter. Sir John Franklin's library will not be forgotten, not by me. I like to think of those black wooden ships, lying in the utterly cold darkness a mile below the ice and surface of the sea. Nothing of those wrecks will ever fade, nothing will ever come to those books until the last fire heats the deep, and the great monsters, rising, bring all the sunken world with them.

Reading: Humour is so hard to find in writing. This site, for instance, is nearly devoid of it. But there's a lot of humour out there in newer genres, specifically online. And although not everone can be a funny man, or a clever writer, right now I'm reading a writer who is both, and you should, too. His latest piece, "The AntiChrist Is Among Us, And He Has A Moustache", a review of the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie film, is bitterly ridiculous, and nearly had me in tears. I recommended him before, I'm recommending him again. Check out The 16mm Shrine + Ash Karreau, or, possibly, Ash Carreau

Listening: I like her, but that's no reason for you not to. She's got her own mention on the frontpage of Myspace and a retooled album. She's everywhere, of course (well, for the next 15 nanoseconds on the net), and she should be. Don't check her out because she's everybody's darling, check her out because she's good. And she has the cutest name ever, too, don't you think? Come on! You like it! Tennyson would have liked it, too. "O'Sailor" + Fiona Apple

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.]