2008-12-16T11:54:00.004-05:00

I felt it was time for a bit of a change, but the Wordpress SYSTEM seems much better to me, anyway. At least so far. I think I will keep this when I am feeling lazy and want to do a post like the last one but in all honesty I am planning to update here like once a month (it will probably be much less that that) so feel free to carpet bomb this blog from all link lists. There will eventually be a link or something up at kremvax anyway.

Sorry if some of the photographs (here and there) are bad... many of them are placeholders for when we get a digital camera, you know???

2008-12-12T19:37:00.005-05:00

Tom Mchenry posted about mesmerism just now and he included a fantastic quote from Murakami which I think was in his latest book which was in New Yorker which is where I read it and the book is about running and writing I guess or else it's a book of essays I can't remember, it's all nonfiction, and the quote is about Mesmerising yourself through fiction writing or just writing in general and doing enough of it that you come to a special location and the special location is holy and when you open your mouth while you are there fantastic thoughts come out and they organise themselves very well and life is beautiful while you are in that place and you make a world seem real

Later people want to be you and people talk about you as if you are "currency" and they are making evaluative statements immediately and boiling down your entire canon into numbers even if they make some statements about what they liked, that's all it is a numbers game, and you're a horse boiled down for glue

LUCKILY THAT IS NOT THE EXTENT OF CRITICISM AND EVEN IDLE THOUGHTS BY AN INVESTED READER HOLD MORE WEIGHT and I don't understand how the people of HTML GIANT can read so many blogs and small press books and EZINE LITERARY MAGAZINES it just doesn't make any sense to me, I mean I don't demand dedication and I wouldn't want YOU to be dedicated in the way they suggest they are (THEY HAVE READ EVERYTHING, THEY DEVOUR EVERYTHING, WHEN AN EZINE HITS AND IT HAS A NEW AUTHOR IN IT THEY ARE EATING THEM UP AS IF THEY WERE COYOTES AND THE NEW FLAVOURS/STYLES/VOICES WERE DELICIOUS RABBITS, AND I SUPPOSE WHAT THEY ARE DOING IS FINE IF ONE DAY THEY WISH TO COMPETE WITH ECHELON FOR THE MOST KNOWLEDGE, OF COURSE THAT IS A FOOLISH THING TO DO BUT AT LEAST THEY ARE TRYING!!) !!!!!

*ECHELON is supposed to be an internet robot that belongs to the military and it is indexing EVERYTHING and a lot of people believe that it will be the first artificial intelligence to achieve sentience and I've got to admit, they might be on to something, that could be part of the experiment! I wrote about it once, a character of mine had a vague fear of it, but that whole book was vague, like a whisp of smoke, except it stuck to your clothing and made you feel sad/mad/annoyed.

2008-12-08T14:45:00.007-05:00

Dying Frilled Shark

I've never embedded video in any kind of post before. I'm proud to be able to say that. But I'm breaking with tradition today because this is positively the most disgusting and inspiring thing I've ever seen. When this blog dies (as it undoubtedly will), I want you to imagine it personified in the laboured, shambling, efforts of the frilled shark, above, efforts I first interpreted as being careful mimicry of seaweed in an attempt to attract prey.

Click this WIRED: Science link to read a bit more about it, other living "fossils", and pathetic name-calling erupting (incredibly quickly) in the comment section between "evolutionists", "anti-evolutionists", "morons", and spam-bots. I believe in the spam-bots, at least, for their powers to turn even the most concise, informing, and erudite discussions into nothing more than flotsam on a great sea of intense meaninglessness. In the attached article they are like manna from heaven. Or "Darwin's arse". Wherever.

I have no idea what the audio track is like on the video, but watch it without sound first.

2008-12-08T11:33:00.007-05:00

Attrition

We emptied our old apartment yesterday. Mostly. Everything we're taking, anyway. Pretty much.

A week-long move is enough to take me across that line from sentimental to annoyed, even angry. What happened to our mail? Why isn't our old landlord picking up the phone? Who peed in the toilet while we were gone and didn't flush? Could we have lived further away from the core? That last one is possible, of course, but I don't want to think about what happens to you when you cross the 905-threshold or settle down in the endless sprawl of North York. You get honked at in mall parking lots a lot more, that's one thing I do know.

Mostly I'm tired. Last night I fell asleep on our bed with my clothes on. I wasn't planning on it. I woke up at five and thought I could make up for it by doing some work on the computer, which would be possible as long as I armed myself with a handful of corn pops. Because corn pops are well-known for their rejuvenating properties. Ten minutes of eye-straining, blurry head-wavering and I was back in bed. At least I was comfortable, this time. My dreams were haunting and miserable. Tonight I have to drive the car back to Caledon and I think that has something to do with it.

2008-12-04T10:10:00.002-05:00

Aspect of Teenager

I leave the apartment at midnight. It is colder than I remember and I thrust my hands deep into my pockets. At the corner, the two teenagers still stand waiting in front of the convenience store, stepping and leaning around the shopfront tentatively, like children. Their cheeks are red and the girl's nose drips. She is completely silent, and she scurries to and fro, crossing my path several times and never even making eye contact. Perhaps she is searching for a very specific aspect, perhaps she is only passing the time.

The boy is wearing a thick black parka with a bluish-grey bandanna tied underneath a sideways ballcap in Raiders colours. He isn't short, but he's thick and his features are vaguely Latin. A thin black beard describes his lower jaw. He coughs nervously and speaks out of the side of his mouth. He obviously doesn't remember me from before.

“Hey, uh, do you want to buy us bud?”

I still don't know what he means, but I shake my head no. I'm embarrassed for him. They've been here for hours. “No, sorry,” I say. My tone is polite and, I think, understanding. It's first nature, though it feels awkward for this situation. Should I be aggressive? Condescending? Should I threaten to call the police? And what's he asking for, anyway? Does he want me to buy him some papers, or schlep my way over to his drug dealer? The latter idea seems ridiculous, but what enterprising teenager could be so desperate over papers? Even I know there are other ways to smoke marijuana, and no shopkeeper is going to turn down a purchase of a 600ml pop bottle and a ballpoint pen. The boy looks disappointed. Broken, though because of his clothing I expect him to be belligerent. I have two hundred dollars in cash in my wallet, which feels dangerous. I make a mental note to conceal it while I'm paying, in case the shopkeeper is in league with the teenager, or the teenager is more industrious than he appears.

The door to the convenience store is wide open. The proprietor leans on the counter like a griffin, his face long and serious. His eyes are sharp, and he eyes me coldly, then speaks a few words in Chinese to the man behind him, who is shy, acne-riddled, and buried behind a mop haircut and John Lennon glasses. He is standing and arranging stock behind the counter. The proprietor's focus is pulled, briefly, by another entreaty made to a passerbyer.

I wonder who would agree to help the two teenagers. I decide it must be one of two types: some kind of early-twenties stoner who does drugs because it improves his social life; or a mid-thirties, mid-forties bachelor with a paunch and a shit-eating grin, who asks, as he investigates the girl, what he could get in return, or wonders aloud why they don't just go back to his place, where he's got things much more potent than marijuana. In the latter scenario the two teens gather together to discuss their options. The boy mentions that they've been there for hours. He suggests it might be worth going with the man to see what he has. Covertly he pulls a switchblade from his jacket pocket. They'll be alright if the man tries anything, he says. “You'll see, we'll be fine.” The girl is unsure but willing to go along with the plan. In some ways she is almost eager. She goes where men take her: not because she is desperate, but because she allows herself to trust their motives, to believe them in a way that suggests she has little regard for her person.

The man with the shit-eating grin laughs and says “Alright then, let's get going.” He's got a Hustler and few other recently purchased pornographic magazines rolled up underneath his arm. The teenagers follow a couple of steps behind. The man unrolls and presents the boy with the Hustler. “You like that, don't you?” The boy nods. The man laughs and pats the boy on the back several times as the boy flips through the pages idly, out of politeness. The girl lifts her head up and watches the magazine pages turn as if they were very far away and she was only vaguely curious.

2008-12-03T09:26:00.006-05:00

Echoes

The housewares section of Honest Ed’s is dominated by large mirrors which hang at every angle, making the bounds of the discount store infinite. The deals here are so good they violate even the most basic and fundamental laws of the space-time continuum. The building was last renovated twenty or thirty years ago, it is obvious, and I’m reminded powerfully of a past I never lived; or, if I did, one that is at the very least hazy and inconsistent, so that it is lost to me now. Nostalgia hangs in the air like a thick cloud: pungent and choking.

In an unexpected twist, I experience a similar sensation later that night, returning to our abandoned (and nearly empty) former apartment. This nostalgia, however, is more pertinent. Actions are buried deep within my muscle memory, so that, even as I trained the cats, I have the urgent need to be cautious when I am pushing back and unlocking the door, even though I know nothing waits for me. I turn to the right in an effort to hang up my coat, but the wall is stripped and even the plugs are gone. Most depressingly, the kitchen is completely empty except for a bare dresser, an unfolded card table, and the remains of Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner. Our boots on the wood and tile floors are met with hollow echoes.

No matter the circumstances a home is a home, and you can’t leave it mentally as immediately as you can physically. The routines cement themselves in your subconscious, patterning your brain with paths as delicate of those on microchips. Perhaps we still live there until we’re finally settled in our new place.

I don’t want to see our first apartment like this. For all of its problems (and there were many, and they were significant), it was also the first place we lived. We moved there out of need, but we lived there for a year. Many fine things happened. I don’t want to go into too much detail; this post is probably already too sentimental.

2008-12-01T10:26:00.008-05:00

Shaw and Melville

On the way to work a thousand-and-one unworked novels realise themselves. I'm energised by the mild temperatures, the brown brick, the neighbourhoods and landmarks I pass as I go.

Our new home is not the Beaches, which is a ghetto drowning in designer dogs, white professionals, and entitled children. It is not Elm and Bay, which felt as removed and lifeless as Sauroman's tower. It is a place of life, fertile and yielding, and it spills into the streets like the grapevines that populate it in late summer.

It's a return in many ways. My father has roots here, as do my grandparents and the Ukrainian community. The orthodox church is visible across the park from the community centre, tapered domes peeking over distant brownstone tempered by trees. I spent the first three years of my childhood here, and this will be Lisa's third apartment in the area. Her sister lives ten minutes away; her old apartment, roommate, and congregation are closer.

This morning the gas fireplace buzzes softly as I get up to feed the cats. The apartment is dim and calming despite the chaos of moving boxes, homeless artifacts, and packing material. We sip coffee in front of the fireplace on two unfolded chairs, and the cats stretch out before us, purring and slowly opening and closing their eyes.

We've said it, I'm sure, but the thought has roots that are almost implicit, a hum that neither of us has to consciously acknowledge: we could live here for years.

2008-11-28T10:12:00.006-05:00

Synecdoche, New York

“You can’t feel sympathy for someone that’s depressed?”

-Charlie Kaufman

The above words might as well be on the playbill, somewhere before and after the name of Synecdoche, New York’s first-time director, Charlie Kaufman, celebrated screenwriter of Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not only because depression is a theme that we’ve come to expect from Kaufman, but because the movie in question works so hard to establish it as a condition. There are few real characters. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays depression, which is named Caden in this movie. As far as he is allowed, he does a good job. His depression is infectious. It seems that you are meant to feel sorry for him, it’s the only aspect of his character that you can cling to, but there is nothing particularly endearing about symptom.

Caden has many chances to display his: his marriage is failing; he’s diagnosed with a series of mysterious and frightening diseases; he’s lonely. But it’s not really enough for a character to tell you that he is lonely, that must be revealed over the natural course of a plot: in Adaptation, it was during Kaufman’s attempt to turn a book about orchids into a movie; in Eternal Sunshine, it was through memories and responses to a failed relationship. Both movies were not straightforward in their approach, but they approached something and they succeeded, a fact Synecdoche does its best to ignore. The plot is hard to relate sensibly, but I will explain the aspect that is most compelling: Caden is directing a show based exactly on his life, endlessly workshopped in a New York warehouse containing a near-exact replica of New York. His wife and mistress are cast, his neighbours, a man is hired to play his doppelganger, another is hired to play his doppelganger’s doppelganger. The concept would be interesting, if only Caden had a life worth aping.

Lacking any kind of meaningful story, the purpose of Caden’s narcisstic, untitled play is to capture Truth. He states repeatedly that he wants it to be about life, everything that’s in it, though he seems to believe that life is chiefly about misery. It’s a difficult theme for Kaufman's movie, especially when you consider that the story is created in a vacuum. Character and plot are surrendered to concept, and so a movie that declares itself to be about everything turns out to be about nothing.

There is a lot in Synecdoche. Too much. I provide a telling example, which was only discovered reading through one of many reviews: when Caden wakes up at the very beginning of the movie it is September, when he comes down for breakfast it is October, and in the next scene it is November. At first glance this sounds interesting, but it seems to have little bearing on the plot or any of the following scenes. It’s too clever a detail hidden too cleverly, and since it’s so quickly abandoned you wonder why it was included in the first place. Is there a secret story running underneath Synecdoche? Maybe. It’s been suggested, for instance, that Caden has died at some point of the first half of the movie. Okay. Does it matter? No. Do you care? Not really.

The problem with Synecdoche is that it buries you under a barrage of such details, twisting over and clinging to themselves like choking ivy. Things happen so casually and fantastically that they cease to happen, even if the entire movie is a dream. Caden’s four-year-old daughter grows up estranged and becomes a celebrated stripper, and as she is dying of cancer she accuses him of running away and taking a homosexual lover; Caden has a second daughter and forgets her entirely; the house of his one-time mistress (and long-term infatuation) is perpetually on fire; his doppelganger has been following him for years learning his role, well before Caden conceived of the project; at one point Caden steals away from his current wife to moonlight as Ellen, his ex-wife’s housecleaner; his doppelganger commits suicide; the play is workshopped over the course of thirty years, perhaps longer, but is never produced. I could go on, but I worry about the consequences of forcing you to read a comprehensive list.

It’s hard not to relate all of this to an incident from Adaptation: Charlie Kaufman (played by Nicholas Cage) attends a screenwriting seminar, desperate for ideas on how to end his movie. He puts his hand up and asks whether or not it isn’t artificial to rely on plot, since nothing ever happens in life. His host reacts with hostility, something along the lines of “What the hell do you mean, nothing happens? Of course things happen! Are you fucking kidding me?” It seems that Kaufman has moved from one extreme to another. The result is completely unsatisfying.

2008-11-26T10:56:00.007-05:00

Fucking Piece of Pork Chop

Construction at Queen's Park station this morning. They've blocked off an escalator and gutted the bottom platform. Greasy machinery is exposed. Two men are standing in the fenced-off area, wearing work clothes and looking matter-of-factly at the passing commuters. Their aspects are sullen. One of them stands up straight as a nail, with long dirty black hair that sticks out like a lion's mane, his hands on the escalator rails. The other is shorter and stands to his side, leaning heavily on a wall, his arm stretched out for support. He is bald and his eyes are framed by thick glasses.

The second man looks at the first and sticks a finger in his mouth, digging it into his teeth.

"I've got a fucking piece of pork chop stuck in there," he says. "From last night. It won't come out. It's huge. It's... the size of a cow."

The statement strikes me as awkward: I want him to say "the size of the cow it came from," and think of this compulsively the whole way up the stairs. The sound of children filters down from above, an anticipatory rebounding noise which leads me to believe that the whole room is filled with them, spread out on the ground and eating lunches pulled from polystyrene bags. "Children know where pork chops come from," I think. "It's likely that the man does too, but when you're a child you think about origins more than anyone else." I crest the stairwell and am surprised to see that the children only account for a thin single-filed line snaking through the turnstiles and making their way down the opposite staircase to the station below.

2008-11-11T11:30:00.006-05:00

An Alternate Ending to Cervantes’ Don Quixote

Last night I finished reading the recently released Edith Grossman translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which is the greatest book I have ever read. This morning I dreamed an alternate ending, coming (most appropriately) on the very edge of wakefulness, or the last plains of sleep.

The book ends with the repenting of Don Quixote’s madness, his death, and many other assurances and warnings meant to ensure that Quixote’s adventures are never to be continued: an official document recording his death is composed and notarised by the priest; Cide Hamete, the Arabian narrator Cervantes claims to be translating, warns his pen (should others attempt to pick it up): “For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; [...] the two of us alone are one”; Quixote’s last recorded words describe how sorry he is that his existence has prompted the creation of a false history (one published between Cervantes’ first and second parts) filled with “so many and such great absurdities”.

The record is quite clear, especially when considering the increasing frequency the aforementioned false Quixote and its pseudonymous author Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda are mentioned and derided in the chapters following Cervantes’ knowledge of the book. And of all books, Don Quixote is one that deserves the end it chooses, already a rich labyrinth of images, ideas, and symbols: one could start over at the beginning immediately after finishing the last page and continue reading in this manner until the end of his life, and he would be completely satisfied. It is a monument to humanity, standing in rare company with works such as the Bible, the Upanishads, the constant fluctuations of cities, and the sequencing of the genetic code, among others.

My alternate ending, so well-guarded against, persists because it consists of all the adventures the deceased Quixote (Alfonso Quixano, post-repentance) will never have. It could be as small as a paragraph, or never-ending, filling an infinite series of volumes with his varied and entertaining adventures. It is probably not a true alternate ending: the concept is already made implicit by the narrative’s ignorance of it, as in Borges’ story The Garden of Forking Paths the same is true of the concept of “time”, deliberately never mentioned in T’sui Pen’s great labyrinth as novel.

Note that Cide Hamete and Cervantes take precautions against everything but the fantastic in the book’s final paragraph:

[...] the two of us alone are one, despite and regardless of the false Tordesillan writer who dared, or will dare, to write with a coarse and badly designed ostrich feather about the exploits of my valorous knight, for it is not a burden for his shoulders or a subject for his cold creativity; and you will warn him, if you meet him, to let the weary and crumbling bones of Don Quixote rest in the grave, and not attempt, contrary to all the statutes of death, to carry them off to Castilla la Vieja, removing him from the tomb where he really and truly lies, incapable of undertaking a third journery or a new sally [.]

I am working from a translation, but the language is highly specialised: the exploits implies authentic and historical action; a suggestion is made to let the weary and crumbling bones of Don Quixote rest in the grave–in other words, he is firmly dead, and make no attempts to ressurect him; he is incapable of undertaking a third journey or a new sally. The frequent hammerstrokes against an attempt at a new “canonical” addition to the novel are an invitation to speculation. If Quixote’s adventures continued in a totally fantastic mode, as of the lives of the knight errants he emulated, whether or not he was capable would not matter: it is not the exploits of Don Quixote that would be described, but the exploits that were never performed by Don Quixote.

It’s true that in a later sentence (the second-to-last) Cide Hamete declares that his only desire for the book is to “have people reject and despise the false and nonsensical histories of the books of chivalry”; perhaps I should admit my declaration as dubious. But in Don Quixote Cervantes seems to accept more aspects of these novels than he rejects, and if Quixote’s adventures present a sort of realistic antithesis they still contain all of the mystery, wonder, raw storytelling and exotica of the chilvaric books he is lampooning, even if his protagonist is insane. And, in nine lines of poetry composed by the very man who ended Don Quixote’s questing once and for all, he seems to even endorse Quixote’s mode of living:

Here lies the mighty Gentleman
who rose to such heights of valor
that death itself did not triumph
over his life with his death.
He did not esteem the world;
he was the frightening threat
to the world, in this respect,
for it was his great good fortune
to live a madman, and die sane.

There are many more examples. The later chapters abound with them, such as this statement made by a noble from Barcelona to the man who defeated Quixote, sent him back to his village, and composed the above poem:

“Oh, Senor,” said Don Antonio, “may God forgive you for the harm you have done to the entire world in wishing to restore the sanity of the most amusing madman in it! Don’t you see, Senor, that the benefit caused by the sanity of Don Quixote cannot be as great as the pleasure produced by his madness?”

The benefits of Quixote’s madness were not only to those who saw it as entertainment: as knight errant, Quixote fought and vanquished whole armies, was actively persued by maidens, experienced a variety of enchantments, both good and bad, and saw more of the world than he ever would have otherwise. If the novel is only against books of chivalry that declare themselves to be true histories, wouldn’t a wholly fantastic third sally fit within its philosophy? It’s acknowledged by the sane Quixano that none of what he believed happened had: that he was, in effect, imagining or dreaming the reality of the vast majority of his adventures. So why not continue the adventure via an infinite dream: by Quixote during his last days, when he slept frequently and experienced many fainting spells, or by Cide Hamete, or even the character of Cervantes, idly imagining what might have happened had Quixote lived?

It does not have to be much to clarify the already limitless possibilities contained within the text. An example of what I dreamed this morning follows:

Last night, in my anxiousness, I imagined an adventure I am certain will never happen: after an entire year of living in heaven, Don Quixote was sent back to his village, by the grace of God, completely restored. For several days there was much rejoicing, and everyone who knew him, especially his close friends, could not believe their luck. Because Don Quixote was well known to be chaste, good, and virtuous, and there was nothing that seemed off about him (besides what usually was), no one wondered whether or not the devil or the occult were involved, and they just considered it fortunate. By the way he talked of enchanters and enchantments, inquired after Dulcinea and of the health of Rocinante, his nag, it was clear that he’d forgotten entirely about his deathbed repentances, or else Alfonso Quixano only existed in those specific instances that accompanied death. He ordered provisions made, and his horse saddled, and these were orders that Sancho Panza very gladly obeyed.

On the day they were set to leave for their third sally, a great multitude of villagers gathered to witness the spectacle that was a man they’d thought dead astride his horse, healthy as ever, and covered head-to-toe in his old armor, which Sancho had polished to shine; if the metal (which was of low quality to begin with) did not gleam, through all of its denting and dullness, it at least announced that it noticed the yellow beams of light that blanketed the entire countryside. Don Quixote addressed the crowd in his confusion, imagining that he was speaking to kings, courtiers, and maidens. In a gesture of farewell he pulled at his reigns, meaning to rear Rocinante handsomely, but a year of rest did not have the same effect on his nag that it had on Don Quixote, and the poor horse could only manage a few steps backwards.

2008-11-10T01:09:00.009-05:00

An Elegy to The Moldy Jar of Capers We Bought From Loblaws

Gone are the days when goods, preserves,
of infinite variety,
yon grocer, or proprieter,
ably commanded, behind cash.

Goons in the present, by contrast,
(oh! the free reign allowed!)
yield to no man, and gaiely rip
and tear, and open all they can.

Green mold forms where once was pristine,
others, blind, suspecting nothing,
(yes, completely fooled) purchase
a lot more than they bargained.

2008-11-04T10:12:00.007-05:00

The Lost Form of The Known World

The Known World by Edward P. Jones is, for the most part, too plodding and serious a book. Maybe that is too harsh criticism: the character’s suffering is worthy and deeply felt, and there is enough life to give the book a spark. But it’s slow in that contemporaneous literary way, and it was released in paperback (one year, two years after its first print?) with a selection of stodgily researched “facts” and tepid questions for the book club set, already hinting that, as a work, it is “major”. Jones is an excellent writer, but the book fails partly because it knows its audience too well; it is too finely marketed.

One and a half years later I can pick out many moments, but I cannot give you an accurate summary of the plot. It is probably impossible to resolve the idea of slavery, and Jones gives a good account of it, but the book feels incomplete. Perhaps it is only that I wish the book Jones had written were another, one that he hints at very briefly, in a single chapter.

A powerful white man loses his family to sickness and his estate to creditors. He is ruined, and sets his manor on fire. It burns to the ground. For a time the property is abandoned.

The crops would escape the fire and would thrive, tended by no one. The fields had not had such bounty in more than seven years. There would be no harvest in the usual sense, as no one came to reap what the slaves had sown. Had someone counted up what the crops the fields had to give, it would have come to more than $325 a slave.

The man is totally humbled:

Counsel left that second day, heavy with all the sorrow he would ever know, and went west and then south, avoiding all human beings as best he could. He did not care, but it occurred to him in South Carolina that what he had done was a crime, since much of what he had belonged to others. He continued on, aimless, saddled with the memories of his loved ones and the end of a plantation that even men in Washington, D.C., knew about.

He continues west. The country becomes rough; the people are rougher. It is wild and unknown. He is threatened and warned off, but he does not waver; he is heading for Texas. He loses his horse in thick vegetation. He cuts a path but the horse will not come (is it afraid of snakes?) and he shoots it. The One Thousand And One Nights is invoked. “How easy it had all been for the man and his carpet.”

A few flies appeared immediately above the horse. “What is it that you want of me?” Counsel asked God. He sat down, and more flies, bigger than any he had known in North Carolina, came to the horse in a black cloud. He took off his hat and tried to wave them away, but more came as if the waving had been a signal for them to come. “What do you want me to do?” he asked God. “Tell me what it is.” He looked up and was surprised that the buzzards were circling so soon. He shot at one but missed and no sooner had the sound of the shot gone away than the buzzards began to land.

Counsel thinks of his dead family, his little girls, the Bible. He asks more questions of God. The buzzards come down and join the flies, feasting on the horse, “and ignoring the man who still had some life in him.”

The next chapter the book returns to Virginia. Much later, Counsel is re-introduced and works, cuckolded, with his cousin the sheriff. This strikes me as unnecessary. It is with his horse that Counsel’s story should end. I can think of no more satisfying conclusion. The image is more powerful, the aftershocks more poignant; it is the one image from the book my subconscious chose (even wrongly) to keep in rotation. Ten years from now, it is what I will still remember. A book filled with such powerful images, written in Jones’ masterful language, with dead-ends and constant action, would have few equals.

Of course, that book already exists. I can think of a few of its forms off the top of my head: Midnight’s Children, One Thousand and One Nights, Le Morte D’Arthur, Don Quixote.

2008-11-02T10:31:00.010-05:00

Michael Clayton, part 2

Last night I woke to the wild inconsonant babbling of a dwarf camped outside our bedroom door. I rushed out to meet him, advising that he should keep his voice down—Lisa was sleeping. He was suddenly quiet, and began rooting around multifarious layers of his clothing with thick, hairy hands. The pungency of this-or-that layer, as he exposed dirty skin and clothing usually trapped in fungal gardens of sweat, oil, and body heat was literally breathtaking. I covered my nose and mouth in disgust. Finally he extracted a single, creased, sheet of paper, ancient and near rotting. Its contents are printed below, and it seems to be a second part to the discussion of Michael Clayton that I posted Friday. The fact of the dwarf—-who disappeared as I was inspecting the aforementioned document—-seems to lend credence to the fact that yesterday's original was conceived by a genii, or at the very least some other magical or mystical creature (certainly not the dwarf).

Michael Clayton’s moment of clarity comes at the side of the road, after he has been demonstrably covered in his own thin film of excrement, running flack for a pent-up and wealthy little man who has just fled the scene of a hit-and-run. The moment is shared release, for Clayton and the audience, who come quickly and with intensity to this point of the movie (about twenty minutes in) knowing very little about the protagonist and his surroundings.

Clayton finds himself in the country. He stops his car and calmly ascends a hill. At its apex are three unflinching horses standing in a line. Clayton watches them. We breathe. In the background, Clayton’s car explodes. Enter moment of clarity.

We are transported backwards four days in time. The plot unravels. We discover there is something not wrong in Arthur, and a very good reason for his insanity. He has, like many of the characters in the movie, been playing a part counter to his own humanity, harnessed by a law firm eager to make use of his desperate energy. Like Clayton, he is homeless; unlike Clayton, he has a home. He’s come out of the right side of his moment of clarity: it’s understood that he will no longer support or tolerate the injustices he has helped perpetrate. His story, however, is not the story, and it ends, violently and with unfortunate necessity.

The plot builds. Clayton’s path seems clear and fixed. He delays, but only psychologically. He prostrates himself before his law firm and begs for money. He is good at his job, but frustrated, underpaid, and held close to their body. He calms himself with illicit gambling, a habit he thought he’d managed to break. He finds himself at the home of a pent-up man drowning in his own opulence... and the hillside, and the horses.

Immediately prior to the horses there is a car chase. Clayton is pursued by a team of professional killers intent on detonating his car—an interesting sequence, because though we have an idea of what is coming, Clayton has none and we are tense with anticipation. The second explosion, the second clarity.

Time folds in on itself, creating a duel moment. This time we are not allowed breath, natural beauty, but are witness to Clayton’s grief. The horses are watching him, like uncomprehending monuments. The car explodes. The movie crystallises. Clayton escapes. He is reborn. He is dead. He is covered in shit. He is insane.

He is Shiva, god of death. Guided, he is provided explicitly with all of the answers we saw him obtain inexplicitly. He directs his energy properly. The world ends. He watches the world, as it continues, calmly.

The discussion lacks a narrative besides the narrative. This seems like an exercise. I will let the creator know my thoughts (and yours, if you have any) in a detailed essay I will compose and then push through the neck of a bottle, which I will then seal and cast into the sea.

2008-11-01T13:24:00.011-04:00

A Digression on the Virtue of Hermits
by Obidex Curia

The first hermit was Adam, and, for a time, he wanted nothing; this is the natural mode of those in that profession. The last true hermit I know of was television detective Trudeau Trudeau: if you make the allowance (as I have) that the world in which he operated (the small, insignificant town of Lascowe, Manitoba) was an allegorical world of phantasms that didn't, in fact, exist, but served only as a metaphorical representation of his soul. The men and women that he dealt with were not as they appeared (crooked landowners, poachers, murderers, smugglers and loggers) but demons, and his was the most eternal of struggles. To accept payment and bribes from the cast of scoundrels and malcontents who offered them would be as bad as accepting death or destruction from the hands of those who willed it. A compromise would mean nothing less than complete forfeiture, a full transmigration of his soul into the body of just another phantasmal demon.

Far be it from me to suggest that you have undergone your own transmigration, and that the words you are reading now are being probed by twisted, arcane eye-stalks, or being handled with red, veiny fingers that end in long claws. If you are a demon you probably do not know it. But you are very certainly a demon: especially if you do not live the life of a hermit, or at the very least that of a particularly devout monk.

I don't care whether or not you have religion, or if you subscribe to any particular belief system (I have one and it is not Christ, though I find it useful to associate myself with Him), what I care for only is the purity of your desires. If you live in a large cosmopolitan city, with wide boulevards, numerous restaurants and shops, and ample outlets for all of the pleasures of the body (in other words, Chanto), I find it hard to believe that you can be anything else but completely subjugated to all of your wild achings and fantasies. It may not be impossible, but it is very difficult: especially if you are weak-willed (as most of you are) or find yourself in the presence of large amounts of money, for money is nothing more than a contract for the satisfaction of future aimless desire.

For eighteen years (as long as I have existed) I have dedicated myself to the complete eradication of trivial and inconsequential needs. I am a man unchained; if you do not believe me, you might ask my parents, for I still live with them and they see me every day (besides being proof of the worthiness of their testimony, in itself this is a meaningless detail). The only needs they meet are the most essential, and I can confidently assure you that I provide for myself when it comes to anything spiritual.

I have taken my first steps as a hermit already, and there is no doubt that some of you might have heard of me through these actions. It does not dishearten me to hear that I am openly mocked for my single-handed assault on hypocrisy, that I am laughed at for my (as I've heard them described) petty disagreements on semantics, morality, or indulgences, as well as the somewhat more pointed acts of flipping over card-tables and disruption of carts selling worthless, distracting, trinkets at market. What concerns me most is the purification of the phantasmal world that I am part of, even if that world is large and unconquerable, and my quest one of Sisyphean impossibility. It is good training.

As a child I realised very quickly the necessities of my situation, and set myself firm and unstraying from that path: I have read and digested numerous books on survival in cold climates; my english is very good, and I believe that (in some quarters) I am known for it; every day I prepare myself with a sermon (an episode of Trudeau Trudeau!-- no doubt you've missed its rich metaphysics) and its active study. In short, I am very near to realising my desire. What I could I accomplished on my own, what little else I needed (and could not be avoided, such as my plane ticket) I received from the charity and support of my parents.

This letter I consider a gift, to all the citizens of Chanto and the surrounding country. It is an alarm. It is notification of my departure. Very shortly I will be leaving for the very edge of the world, the northern frontier. I have picked out a point of arrival: the small and remote township of Anvelle, Ontario. Its size is deliberate: the phantasmal world of demons will be manageable, perhaps even conquerable. This is my final goal, which I recognise may take years; my entire life, perhaps. Whatever suffering I undergo as a result, whatever hardships, will be penance for the final cleansing of my soul.

I say that this is an alarm for two reasons: one is it is never to late for you to pass back to the plane of reality, and through long struggle, purge your world of its demons. With my departure, your warnings will become obtuse and very few; you will not have my help to decipher them. The second alarm is for the whole of Chanto: as a city you have become impossible. Much work needs to be done. Commerce will have to be muted. Inharmonious and easy leisure will have to come to an end. Your spirit cannot be bought by pleasure. It must be worked at and tempered by suffering and noble action. For Chanto to become a city worthy of habitation, all of these things must be considered and put into action. For my part, I leave you.

2008-10-31T16:51:00.018-04:00

Michael Clayton

I begin this entry like second-grade Zoe E., hand delivering love letters to all the boys she liked in class-- love letters covered in lipstick, sparkles, perfumes and spelling mistakes. Their author was obvious but left anonymous, and as she handed me mine (she's since told me I was her first crush, a sentiment made meaningless by the fat stack of letters she had yet to deliver, in this memory) she said, in a voice trying its best to be casual: "I found these in the hall." Well, in a half-truth in the same vein, I found these abandoned notes in the hall, too. They must have been left by a genii, or some layman technician styling himself as erudite.

As Jorge Luis Borges seemed fond of saying, it is disingenuous to break a narrative into symbols. So excuse me for a few moments while I briefly discuss the symbolism in last year's best picture, Michael Clayton.

The movie begins with an address to the title character (played by George Clooney) who is (presumably) somewhere among the pitch black of the opening frame, or floating and disembodied, haunting the desolate remains of a law office in late evening in the shot that follows. The effect is startling and womb-like, as we listen in voiceover to the deranged Arthur (Tom Wilkinson) elaborate on the movie's four-pronged metaphorical tautology, realised during a brief moment of clarity: Arthur is being reborn; Arthur is about to die; Arthur is covered in excrement; Arthur is insane.

Michael Clayton is all four of those things, but only passively. He has yet to experience his own moment of clarity. This does not mean that he is not an active character-- quite the opposite, he has to be. Clayton is both literally and figuratively homeless. We are not privy to his home life and bland routines, because as far as we can tell he doesn't have any. If Clayton has a home it is in the car, where he conducts all business, including personal: Clayton drives his son to school, waiting for him in the street; Clayton has a heart-to-heart with his son about the alcoholic brother they've just left in a driveway; Clayton's brief and unsentimental reunion with the same brother at the end of the movie.

I'm sure there was more, but the rest of the manuscript exists only in irreconcilable shards: I assume it was pecked apart by the pack of tame crows kept in the hospital atrium, or perhaps torn to shreds by some kind of nesting rodent: a mouse, or, perhaps, a lost rabbit.

2008-10-29T15:01:00.009-04:00

Tentative, ah, Rumblings

Just update every day. On a topic. I guess. I want to write an essay every week, that's productive and in a way safe. I mean that I can refine my craft, but a little bit removed so that you don't have to see the results immediately and think things like "huh" "what" or "this is really terrible, André". Of course this assumes a "you", there really isn't a "you" for the blog and maybe I should work on that as well but how does a person do that in a way that's not conniving, petty, or mean? Promotion just seems ugly to me at this point, I guess. This isn't really worth promoting, you know? It's just a thing. I shouldn't even think in those terms, ever really.

BESIDES THE FACT IT IS ON THE BACK OF THAT LAST LITTLE BOOK I MADE HI IF YOU CAME HERE FROM THAT, SORRY IF EVERYTHING IS CONFUSING.

This past election Chester Brown ran for the Libertarian party and defended his government grants with "Well, if I don't take them someone else well, and it's better that they go to me." And in that sentiment were two ideas, wrapped up:

That he deserves the grant, because he is good and works hard.
That he deserves the grant because it could potentially go to someone who doesn't work hard, or is not good.

Should I think in similar terms? Or start to? To me it just seems so mercenary.

But it does remind me of something one of my uncles (and I have many) said about my mom's artwork and how he always thought she should be doing a better job of promotion. And maybe she still should, but I think she has improved in that regard. Related is the fact that her work has settled in a style that is "good" and that I think is "accurate", does that mean I just don't feel "settled" in that aspect? But her situation at 22 was much different than my situation now. But why would I even bring it up if I felt "complete" or "whole" artistically?

This post and the post below come from an interview with James Kochalka where he says that American Elf is a great way to structure his day, and to always remain thinking creatively. How he feels bad if he hasn't made anything, because creating is a huge part of his self-worth. That's also true for me. I do write usually. I need to get back to writing every day. Even if I don't necessarily feel like working on what I am working on, I need to write a minimum amount of words. I need to stop worrying about things like what certain people will say. Maybe I need to update this every day too, so I can see what I've done and am doing. With at least one entry of substance, or that I am proud of, or that I like, per day.

I'm suddenly reminded of an essay Haruki Murakami wrote about writing for the New Yorker. I could find it for you but you could find it for yourself just as easily. Search "Haruki Murakami" "running" and "New Yorker".

One thing that I am working on is making writing simpler so that it flows easier from point to point. I have a tendency to hold certain crucial details in my head, which works well for prose poetry but not very well when you are working on a long novel and what is in your head at specific points during the writing changes from day-to-day. I really think that for something short (a comic, a poem, a short story) you can keep the art inside and do a good job, but for longer things you have to focus on telling your story simply and making sure that it is a story, and that it is coherent, and the rest will fall into place. It's interesting because I think four or five years ago I was good for plot, but I really had to work on style and technique, and now that I'm at plot again it is coming back to me, but slowly, because I spent a long time in the ghetto.

2008-10-29T14:58:00.001-04:00

WORKING ON WAY TO ADD STRUCTURE TO THE BLOG AND CERTAIN ASPECTS OF MY LIFE, TO MAKE SURE THAT I AM ALWAYS CREATING OR IN THE READY MOOD OF PROCESS.

2008-10-21T17:06:00.002-04:00

Some days you have to walk slowly. Consciously. Metering down, existing in a moment that is not quick-movement from point to point, an entire hummingbird-eye day. Some days you have to make little noise. Contain constant, enduring, rhythm. Listen to the pattern of life. Watch flurries of motion adjust their shoulder straps and clack in-and-out of your field of view. Be a happy inconvenience.

Calm down and arrange your thoughts in a pattern removed from "buckshot". You are not the wide mouth of a shotgun. You are not a clicked and constantly fluctuating image. You are not an image. You are a reactive creature describing the world through its sensory input. Through interpretations of raw data, as well as implications and interpretations of raw data obtained from other sources. As well as implications of implications; hronir which constantly ascend to and descend from the apex of the eleventh degree.

Your thoughts are made of other thoughts. Your thoughts move to the tune of your body. Your ideas scale up or down based upon the status or "being" of your self. Slow down, at moments, to increase the scope and quality of your ideas. You cannot rely solely on "genius", which is a highly malleable, unreliable, and reactive force. You must have some grounding in your intellectual self. You must fight to maintain that grounding, whatever the circumstances of your life.

2008-10-17T09:12:00.002-04:00

My left hand is stuffed into my front jacket pocket, like Napoleon suffering from some kind of cold-active gout. For some reason the action causes me to sit up straight, and I feel as if I am riding a horse. My jacket is nine years old, a relic; worn because it is convenient (my most convenient) for bicycling.

I fiddle with the right pocket zipper at stoplights, but it's stuck fast. Aside from the stuck zipper, there's really nothing else wrong with the jacket. I've owned it since grade eight, and my thirteen-year-old self would be glad to know that Ripzone is such a good brand. It's the last piece of clothing from that company I own, the second-last being an old t-shirt frayed everywhere but the collar, which is what I wore it for. It's a look that's in, but not when the rest of the shirt is in rags. At least, that's what Lisa might have told me before she threw it out, though I'm positive she never qualified such a statement with a remark about how it could have at all, ever, been considered fashionable.

2008-10-16T10:16:00.006-04:00

Ellleeeecccctttttiiioooonnnnn!

On the morning radio, a university student with a cocky edge to his voice reminds me too much of a frat boy: he's intelligent but pretends that he isn't to impress his friends, who are also being interviewed.

Why didn't you vote?

"The election SUCKS, all of the candidates SUCK, their platforms SUCK. Why should I vote if the whole thing SUCKS?"

Are you ashamed that you didn't vote?

"YEAH, I mean, my parents wanted me to vote but. Fuck, I don't care. I guess it just didn't mean that much to me."

Later, an opinion voiced by a political student activist who hasn't voted in the past two elections and says there are more important ways to make yourself heard... more important than the most symbolic and direct?

"I just... don't see what the point is. I've voted before, it didn't really... do anything for me. I think there are, ah, other ways you can be involved in the political process... I didn't feel anything when I voted."

What did you expect, a warm tingling? A clarion call? Why does voting have to do anything directly for you? When was it written that all action necessarily has to provoke some kind of stimulation? And why is the concept of stimulation so often mixed up with "mental sedation"?

High school André, why don't you die? And why are you such a common archetype? This generation is disappointing, so far.

2008-10-14T17:26:00.004-04:00

Canzine

October 26th I will be at Canzine. It is my hope that I will have two short "zine-like objects" to sell. One will be 16 pages long. One will be 32 pages long (if it exists). I am mostly typing this post to bump the last from the top. Also, because it is exciting. I am excited, because I think it will be fun to have items printed and arranged on a table. I have never done anything like this before!

A detailed entry on the Canadian election.

A humourous, satirical take on family politics and our first "Thanksgiving weekend" as husband and wife.

An update on the writing of my novel. Which is being written in a more conventional style than I would have first employed.

2008-10-10T15:54:00.014-04:00

"Data is secondary at the moment, unfortunately."

So interesting that wild fluctuations of abstract concepts are being followed as if they are real things! I don't mean to say this to be smarmy, or to provoke reaction... but in a world whose outlines seem to be made of "fact" and where men and women drink and eat "fact", that a metaphysical system, tracing its movements in peaks and valleys on an exterior, two-dimensional plain, could captivate to the extent that it has, as well as inform our mode of living, and stir the hearts of otherwise cold and unthinking men to fevers of blind and all-encompassing emotion... it's startling.

2008-10-08T12:12:00.003-04:00

stop it everyone just stop it

I am an avant-garde

I woke up in the morning and told my friend Robert that I am an avant-garde

He asked what an "avant-garde" is

So I pushed him down a well

I am the dictator of a red planet

The red planet is avant-garde

Everyone on the red planet rides a white bicycle

They do that because it makes me laugh

When I see someone riding a white bicycle

On a red planet that is avant-garde

It feels like I am eating cherries

I ask Sue, my assistant, to fetch me some in a bowl

She replies that it is impossible to do so

I ask her "why"

In addition to that I am angry

Perhaps my fist clenches and I smash it on the table

She says that because the whole planet is avant-garde

It has no momentum or reality beyond my plain narration

And the concept "a bowl of cherries" does not exist

Because it was not already explicitly described

I lean back in my chair and cry

My tears taste like grapefruit

2008-10-06T22:06:00.002-04:00

[All] those who value reason, liberty, and justice... are captivated by Russell’s vision of “the world that we must seek,”

a world in which the creative spirit is alive, in which life is an adventure full of joy and hope, based rather upon the impulse to construct rather than the desire to retain what we possess or to seize what is possessed by others. It must be a world in which affection has free play, in which love is purged of the instinct for domination, in which cruelty and envy have been dispelled by happiness and the unfettered development of all the instincts that build up life and fill it with mental delights.
-Noam Chomsky quoting Bertrand Russell’s Proposed Roads to Freedom

As if to illustrate the tentative, half-sketched nature of my last post, as I left the hospital I informed a woman that she’d dropped her spreading knife on the way to the elevator, and the woman, who seemed to be thirty-some years old, frowned at me as if I was deliberately interrupting or declaring her uncool in front of her friends. Being non-judgmental is probably the easiest part, and you have to maintain that under attack from differing philosophies and withering scorn. Who knows what Byzantine social relationships and backwards personalities flower amidst the tandem bureaucratic and professional classes of the hospital? I’ve seen my fair share of bizarre.

A week or two ago I came into the hospital under the dying power of an electronic door. I did not push the button, though I have many times in the past. Likewise I’ve had many opportunities to hold the door open myself, physically, for those who might have had to use the electronic door otherwise. So I probably should have felt more secure when I was attacked on my way in, slipping through the receding crack, panting and clothed in my bicycle gear. The attack came from a middle-aged, angry man: tall, taut, and bundled up into premature wrinkles, carrying a lunchbox in his left hand. I do not know if he was a parent to a patient, or a doctor.

“Handicap use only,” he scowled, as if I had pushed someone out of the way, as if I was gloating about it. As if I smiled and high-fived an intern on the way in. He was moving fast, escaping retaliation, possibly escaping his own vehemence, and the only answer I had time to give him was a perturbed and sarcastic “Thanks”.

Though very quickly I was told by several sources not to worry about it, that the man was probably just having a terrible day that had nothing to do with me, I still felt disturbed. It knawed and chewed at my neurosis. Briefly, and several times throughout the day, I re-enacted the episode in my head and chased the man down, confronting him as if that was any kind of solution. As if it would do anything but add another mean or lonely chapter to the tale. Realistically, what more could I have done? I let the man know that what he’d said was insulting, was there really room for anything else?

The reality of the situation is that I was feeling a little under-the-weather myself, dragged down by various things: a bland, repetitive job; unpromising responses from the writing program; an apartment in desperate need of at least a weekend of cleaning. Those situations have all since improved, and it’s probably no surprise that I feel markedly better.

I don’t know exactly what I’m proposing. It might be an attempt at a kind of insurance for frustration. Maybe it’s just a tool for climbing out of a pit or a rut and deciding: this is how I feel, this is why I feel, this is what I have to do. I am not in pits often, or as often, as I have in the past. I am extremely fortunate to have found Lisa, and one of the things I am most grateful for is our open communication... and maybe this alone is more important than some of the things I am “proposing”. I am not really proposing anything. I’m exploring methods of reacting more causally to life.

2008-10-06T17:37:00.004-04:00

Don't ask Lisa to corroborate this: I've been making the effort to be calm and nonjudgmental in most things. I don't mean to lose all sense of standards and decency. Only to try and "accept" the world in unselfish ways. That doesn't mean that I don't wish things might change. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't be willing to do some changing. I just mean that there should be nothing angry about "being", and nothing necessarily "angry" in reactions to being.

Anger is a vent sometimes. In that way it's probably healthy, if it doesn't cross certain lines... and it can also be used to fuel creative activity. But maybe you can train yourself to the point where anger becomes less and less of an emotional need. Even in the face of irrational behaviour and thinking. I guess that's kind of my experiment. I'm sure it's been done before many, many times.

That's nonsense in reaction to some words by Noam Chomsky, quoting Bertrand Russell. I have to go to the source and come up with a complete post. But that's where it comes from, anyway. It is (their words) something that should be believed, and when the effort is made it is calming.

Something unrelated I would also like to quote but lack: Borges and his terse, tangential, reaction to the statement "a poet must be a poem". I provide you with an original paraphrase. A poet must be a poem in the same way that an architect must be a building, a politician a law, a pilot a flight?

I'm concerned about art and its presentation, and its association with people or ideas that can be marketed successfully. A poem does not need a poet to be a poem, but does a poet need to be a poem?

Maybe only when the level of fame and competency of the poet are both "low", maybe not. This is something I've been considering. I'll get back to you, maybe.

2008-10-03T16:11:00.002-04:00

if you are celebrated for the creation of something essentially mindless, but celebrated for reasons beyond it being mindless (ie: you are hailed as a kind of genius) you have to begin to destroy the things that you've made

2008-10-01T12:05:00.009-04:00

My Next Novel

"The Da Vinci Code meets The Tale of Croesus' Ancestor Gyges and the Naked Queen, meets Scrambling Desperation, meets One Thousand Nights and a Night, meets My Desire to Tell Lies About the World."

I imagine that the Da Vinci Code leads, in any successful pitch.

2008-10-01T11:01:00.006-04:00

Technological Solution

This entry has been written well after the fact, without the aid of a transcript.

On CBC radio this morning, a man who was the former CEO of Shell Canada talks about the Alberta tar sands. He is an important man in one of the major companies mining the sands for oil (SUNCOR or SYNCRUDE). I can't find his name or a more specific description of who he is.

The interviewer asks a variety of questions. One of the questions is "Your industry is criticised for its dependence on Natural Gas for the extraction of oil, how do you respond to that?" They're looking for energy alternatives. Another thing she wants to know about is the fact that five barrels of water are used to extract one barrel of oil. He says that is not as bad as it sounds, and that they only use one to five percent of the constant flow of the mighty Athabasca river, which I believe is a misleading statistic.

The woman asks the man about the environmental damage of oil sands production, something that it is known for specifically, even within the larger oil-extraction community. She talks about toxic bitumen pools that kill birds as they land, as well as deformed river fish and frogs, and the potential for contaminating groundwater. These are all legitimate problems. She asks what (SUNCOR or SYNCRUDE) is doing to address these concerns.

They are putting a lot of money into technological solutions, says the man. They are putting a lot of money into technological solutions, and they hope to have some positive results within a few years.

That is the same as saying that I am terrible man, but I am not currently working on fixing my behaviour, because I have been funding research for a technological fix. I hope I will be solved by throwing money on scientific applications, but am doing nothing really to curb my poor behaviour, which includes the shooting of ducks in public locations, as well as doing donuts with my ATV in the middle of school playgrounds.

Money does not necessitate a solution. Throwing money at a problem does not necessitate a solution.

2008-10-01T01:41:00.000-04:00

Somehow, after Pierrot Le Fou

It smells like the comforting mold of a cottage planked in golden wood.