My computer at home is sick. It has a case of Unmountable Boot Volume, and I don't have an XP CD to remedy it. I'll have to bring a blank CD to school tomorrow, then burn the proper files onto it, then bring it home. What a dumb thing to happen. As it stands, the computer I'm using right now is utter poo. It took 5 minutes to boot up, and the keyboard is like wiping my eyeballs with dry leaves.
These days look quiet, though I am going to Kamloops this weekend on a lark to see some family, none of whom live there, just happen to be there. I bought my niece and nephew presents. Spiderman puzzles and a sillypuddy to share. I hope they like it. The reason for the quiet days is my new class, which, though will require effort at some points, still leaves me with a lot of free time. It also ends at 12:30 pm. I need a project. Maybe I should work on my novel. My what? I'm writing a novel?
Saw Farenheit 9/11 last night and was very pleased by it. Made me feel like crap. Uncoincidentally, I had a dream where I was supposed to meet a famous theremin player, but walked past him and climbed on top of a streetcar. I developed a routine where at a specific stop in the industrial part of town, I'd float off and run through a series of tunnels. One time, I got off at the wrong stop, and when I went to go into a tunnel, a junkie type of guy got in my way, and started moving towards me, the gnarling junky face wanting anything on my person. I screamed "HELP!" (which came out in real life, thundering across the neighborhood as we sleep outside) and then these mocking, moaning echoes started seeping out of the shadows in my dream, a sarcastic message meant to say, "this isn't the helping neighborhood."
When I woke up, I felt as though I should've stayed in the dream. It was the perfect time to get lucid, as I screamed for help because I knew I was in a dream. But what was down that corridor, and why would I let a junkie get in my way?
Why did stubbies ever go out of style? One of the premeditated steps in the Coors-Molson venture?
Feeling portrayed of late. There's a focus on empty funnels, cameras set perfectly with no film, and I swear I saw a celebrity walk by my house the other day.
Short Cuts - ***** - Great Movie. A load of freaky Americans getting their rocks off, falling into despair, and killing each other and themselves. There's a lot of people drinking and watching TV, which gave it a self-reflexive feel, as that's what I was doing at the time. Very human. Character driven. Featuring Tom Waits, Tim Robbins ("a cop who appears to be freelancing," Roger Ebert), Julianne Moore, Jennifer Jason Leigh, others.
The Weight of Water - *** - Giving this one three stars is a stretch, but I liked
the movie. Sean Penn, a poet with a moustache, Elizabeth Hurley diving around, Sarah Polly a Norwegian immigrant. The plot is juxtaposed between a modern-day foursome on a sailboat, one of which is writing a magazine piece on murders that happened on an Island one-hundred years ago. The other plot is Norwegian immigrants, one of which (Sarah Polly) is slowly going crazy while everyone's out playing fishermen.
Monster - ***.5 - Great performance by Theron. The movie itself sort of dragged at points, and felt predictable. For instance, the couple on the run, freaking out in hotel room after hotel room. Theron plays a John killing whore, who keeps on bringing her victims cars home. Hah. Ricci plays a dumb brunette with hardly any willpower. She plays it well, and is absolutely adorable, if not slightly annoying.
Quiz Show - *** - Starts of nicely, but very American and as one reviewer put it, "the most boring movie made of the most boring scandal."
The Delicate Art of Parking - **.5 - Could've been great. The first 27 minutes are hillarious, but the movie quickly progresses into mocu-mentary, in the obvious, this isn't real mocu-mentary. My disbelief was not suspended. Features a documentary filmmaker plunging into the world of parking ticket givers and tow truck drivers.
Bread and Tulips - **** - Hated this one at first. Starts off with an Italian mother being clumsy for about 30 minutes. Then she goes to Vienna and things pick up. There's an accordian, a masseuse, general Italian goofyness.
Shaolin Soccer - **** - An unfortunate four stars for this thinly disguised Communist propaganda flick. The effects are awesome, and the cast of characters goofy enough to hold my interest and make me laugh a lot. At least it's a sports movie that gives a twist on the "Mighty Ducks" style of sports movies. Instead playing soccer well, the Shaolin Monk soccer players just use their Shaolin techniques, which tends to invovle a lot of fire and flying around.
Mime Shoe #1
repast in the hallway
eat out of owls, shun wheat
and stuff mime shoe in
your large, underdeveloped navel.
On Tuesday afternoons, when the city
muffles corner strollers, leave it to
mime shoe when we're alone and out with friends.
Mime Shoe #2
Travelling at twenty three hectares
per stone length, at cost furniture
will run home with your fruit
trees. The edges of your lawn will
creep into the gardens. Rico will stop popping
by for nightcaps and mime shoe will slip out,
smushing itself through a road map, and emerging
in Lloydminster.
Mime Shoe #3
Lloydminster: a penny's
owner, not a new one.
Mime Shoe #07
Distilled in the rivers of Nath,
mime shoe leaks itself out of
your navel. To keep it, you need
to push it back in with your thumb.
Mime Shoe #5
mime shoe, keep yourself off the streets
of Pakistan. If given the choice of sticking
yourself in something other than a navel, say
no, no matter how formal it may seem.
formality is the basis of mask, mime shoe, remember
that when you're on the red coast.
Mime Shoe #6
Childish mime shoe, I will not
clean up your vomit, make a pun
out of your tongue, nor will I
grow a moustache (the cost of
my new name) just because
of a business strategy.
Mime Shoe #4
feeling bitter, mime shoe? life in
other countries not as charitable
as the one diane and i gave you?
the only couple to have mime shoe
leak out. you're not family, and on the eve
of his last night with us, jerry said that you
deserved a memorable event, so sta
hummer.
I have the next-to-final mix of the Semi-Louise Album. Sounds great. Very tight, very little wrong with it. It's about a half-hour long, seven songs total, one song a whopping ten minutes. Not sure which one is my favourite. I know which part is the loudest part on the album. On the flipside I'm behind on my piano studies.
Writing thang tonight. Poker too. I'm game.
Strange day. Started out at Jess' place, but I got ill for some reason and needed to go home, so after a while the party moved back to our place and a bunch of beer being spilled onto the patio below us and general rowdiness. Then off to C.'s b-day party, which ended with me not walking Joy home for some unknown reason. . . now I don't know where she is, and I'm at F.'s house, instead in my own bed safe and ready to face the next day. It makes me think of the moment in "Short Cuts" when Mr. Waits asks for a broke yolk in the diner. Don't ask me how. Though a basketball game did unfurl sort of randomly, about seven of people shooting hoops at the elementary school across the street, most of the time missing the net by a lot.
I was looking through an old entry and it came across as dissing the band I'm in. Never intended to do that. Music is all encompassing, and sometimes my standards exceed my ability.
Moving on. . . watched "Short Cuts" and played Jeopardy! last night with J. Daily I'm wanting to move on out of school. The people are great, it's just the redundancy of class that gets to me. It's all credit talk now, as fast and as much as possible.
Feck. I just bombed my piano test. Maybe I shouldn't have gone to hempology 101 minutes before the test. I did well towards the end. I was so nervous. . . playing the piano in front of someone else is horrible. Thing is, there was nothing to worry about, I could play what I needed to play in the practice room, so why worry. Moving on. . . I think I'll skip class tomorrow. There's a rumour blowing about men and women going to the beach.
Writing thing last night. I didn't like what I was pumping out, but that's to be expected sometimes. More and more I want to graduate. If I had registered in poetry earlier, this would be my last year, but I"ll to complete one more course in fall 2005. Meh. Sometimes I feel we're expected to take the degree a little too seriously, so seriously, in fact, that we all forget the real reasons why we went in the first place. I went so I could get a degree and not write essays, though I am doing a minor where I'm writing feature assignments, which bane my existence when I'm writing them. My brain isn't structured enough for what's to be expected out of that. I won't have to write one for awhile though.
Mostly, I want to work in a small motel, free room and board, and a place to shoo away the chickens.
Mr. Burden hated his British accent, bet we all loved it. Or at least I did. I also liked his moustache. Mr. Burden always talked about losing his accent, and this frightened me. I was nine years old.
One day I was over at Mr. Burden's playing with Daniel, his son, and Jon, my younger brother. They were both seven. Younger people have always liked me, and so have the considerably aged. Mr. Burden was a neighbor, about five houses down from where Jon and I lived with our parents, and a couple of older siblings.
The day I was playing at Mr. Burden's house, I used a word I had never used before, did not know it even existed, though I used it wrongly.
We were playing, Jon, Daniel and I. It was noisy outside as Mr. Burden was building a carport. I had never heard of a carport, so I kept on calling it a garage, to which Daniel would correct me. Carport always sounds British to me, in the way that lift and breather do. It was warm outside. We were all in shorts and in the driveway. Daniel had good toys. Toys with batteries that and wheels. He also had action figures. Jon and I were fighting over a battery toy, simply I wanted to play with it. However, the juices in the double as were almost used. I was old enough to understand something that that Jon couldn't. We decided to share the toy. We were in the front yard, near the three concrete steps that led up to a small platform where the front door to their house stood.
I turned the toy on, and watched it climb the stairs, the wheels slowly heaving it up towards the top stair. The toy was about a foot long, was divided into three sections, and each section had three tires on each side. There was a hinge between each section, which gave the toy its ability. Near the top stair, the toy would begin to die out, so I'd give it Jon. He'd try to use it, but it wouldn't work. This upset him. Jon has always been a person who likes to have what he wants. When he can't have it, he's frustrated until he has it. Once, he cut apart an accessory to a toy of mine. He had the same toy without the accessory. Five minutes after Jon had abandoned the toy, I would turn it on, and watch it go up the stairs again, slowly, the batteries revived somehow. We'd talk over the clamour from the carport.
After I got bored with the toys, the three of us went to the driveway to watch Mr. Burden build. He was a sweaty , six foot tall man, well muscled, a kind of nice jerk-face. The carport was nearly done, or at least its skeleton. The carport took up about a third of the driveway. We were at the front end of the carport, and Mr. Burden was at the back, drilling something into the frame, yelling at us to be careful, to watch for nails. Jon, Daniel and I yelled at each other. We were right up alongside a support beam that was held fast in cement and reached as high as the other garages I had seen. My house didn't have a garage, but did have a driveway. It was paved.
We were yelling at each other, saying nothing new. I reached out and touched the beam with the flat of my palm. The wood was coarse with slivers poking out all over it. I could feel the beam shake. I looked at the skeleton of the carport (yes I believe now that it was the skeleton), how each beam connected to each other, until my eyes fell on Mr. Burden at the other end with his drill. I understood what this was. The other two placed their hands on the beam, and understood as well. "What is it?" they asked.
I remembered class, from a few weeks before. I was shaking my leg, in need to go the washroom, but too afraid to ask. The boy in front of my asked me to stop, that I made the ground shake and that he was bothered. He said this in French, as we were in French Immersion. "Arretez, s'il vous plais. . ."
I took my hand off the beam and said, "Viprations." How I said, this I do not know. I had never used the word before.
By the time Mr. Burden finished the carport (it was a very nice carport) he decided to build a deck. Another thing we didn't have at my place.
Should be the in more, I feel. "Maybe I'm not so romantic after all," Bobby said. "I'm just boning all your moms."
The three of them sat on the rocks in the sun, the harbour out in front of them. Some ships sailed past, and boats holding squads of tourists puttered about. Behind the three of them, in the small park, pools of junkies and First Nations sat around, talking, though they couldn't hear the words. The first one, Jenny, held a cup a sangria, and so did Brent and Mike. Jenny lit a cigarette and blew smoke into the salty breeze.
“Now you listen here,” Brent said. “I don’t want you getting on my case again. I’ve decided, and that’s what important.”
“But you don’t need a cane,” Mike said, putting his hand on Brent’s shoulder.
“Don’t condescend to me,” Brent said, and shook off the hand.
“Yeah Mike, don’t condescend,” Jenny said, and sipped her sangria.
“Then what, Jenny. Let him have a cane?”
“I don’t see what difference it makes.”
“What does he need a cane for? You guys are nuts.”
“Weed?” The noise came from behind them. Brent turned around and saw a tall, thin man without a shirt on. Even though he was skinny, his flesh hung off him, which made his muscles look out of place. Brent shook his head, and the man went away.
“I could teach him something about using a cane. . .” Brent mumbled. “Okay,” he said and turned to Mike, sipping his sangria. “I’ll tell you something, Mike. You better shut your face about this cane thing.”
“You and your cane can fly away,” Mike said. “I don’t want a friend with a cane. I’m too young.”
“You’re getting older,” Jenny said, and rubbed Mike’s leg, the nub of her smoke making small wakes in his leg hair.
“What if I got a scooter, then?” Mike said.
“You did drive one,” Brent said.
“Not that kind of scooter. A three-wheeler. What if every time you wanted to go somewhere, I’d be in one of those, taking up the side-walk. Driving down the streets, getting held up going down the wrong way down one way streets.”
“You can’t afford a scooter, Mike,” Jenny said as she flicked her smoke in the water. A sea plane landed, making noise.
Brent said, “I’ll tell you why I need a cane.” Brent said, “About two years ago, when I was living in Panama, working the door for the men’s brothel. This one day, oddly cold, business was slow. I had to stand all day with nothing to lean on. When it started getting light out, a man, middle-aged, brown, came up to me. He was on a cane. He said, ‘betcha you could use one of these.’” Brent took a sip of sangria, remembering the glory days. “Anyways, I told the old man if he wanted in or not. 'Twenty bucks up front,' I said. The man mumbled something through his white teeth. He upturned his cane and unscrewed the rubber nub at the bottom and pulled out a small knife. So I signal for help. Brenna, an ex-mechanic, comes out of the brothel. She’s huge, and asks if there’s anything the matter. I point at the man with the cane, and he’s holding out twenty bucks, the knife gone, the cane at his side, where it should be.” Brent poured more sangria into his cup and took a long fizzy gulp.
“Cool,” Jenny said.
“Yeah. A cane. It’s a good place to keep money,” Brent said.
A man on a bike drove past them slowly and said, “Bike for a dollar?”
“No,” Jenny said, and lit another smoke.
“Listen here, Brent,” Mike said, putting his cup on the ground. “I swear, if you get a cane.” But he couldn’t think of what to say. Jenny took a long drag off her smoke and said, “That’s it. I quit.” She got up and tossed her pack of smokes to a First Nations couple, who nodded sagely. She walked back to the other two, sipping heavily on her sangria.
Pushing 'should' and 'must' from each other
the third friend in the trio stepping
in the middle. Though it's not inbetween word-dogs, nothing
physical. The journalist, ought, biased
but protected on two fronts. Must
and should relaying rules, buying interest from ought, in the middle of the slight overlap
of two circles just past the moment of intersection, or penetration. Ought
the lucid, the weasel fending. Bruise of binary, ought the third, music
in the bones, hollowed out, a bag of wind being somewhere, already full.
My password is bosco. Hah. That episode made me laugh.
My parents are coming down tomorrow. If all else fails, light a candle for the doves flying into the wall of fire. Me, I'm caught between the wall of brambles and the wall of fire. I hope the wind comes so it can pick me up, and send me off.
herm. in the previous post, maybe things came off as racist. But believe me, there is no greater satisfaction than communicating and understanding someone from a different language. In our modern times, these kinds of connections should be the ones we cherish,
Reading over diaries from 2000. A lot has changed since then. And regrettably so, I didn't write that much about the time when Joy and I started up. I think men are weird that way. They'd rather write about time out with the boys than the person they're falling in love with. Meh. I've grown, so has the tree. Big deal.
Canada Day today. I plan on seeing my brother, who lives a block away, but who I never see. He's Japanese, I'm English. Tough call. I'm also not single and in no need of the pretty fishies that he's involved with. As if I'd be their "friend." I prefer my friends to speak English. The novelty of foreign people wore off long ago, and now I just see them as travellers, slipping by, people who ask me how to get to Government Street. Also, I like discussion. English is the only language I can speak. So I may get inter-cred for speaking to a foreigner, but I'm bored, trying to sift through their bad grammar, on issues they have no clue about.
So today, on Canada day, I'll celebrate by getting drunk with my girl, then meeting the yellow horde down on the docks for an evening of explosions and a wild, tame crowd.
In September, when the student loan rolls in, I'll hopefully buy a digital camera and turn this place into a non-fiction blog. Writing about myself feels too indulgent, as if the people reading really care what I think. It's good for posterity though, and for fixing grammar errors in my poetry.