1. The Anniversary was good, and understated in a spastic way. Michael's developed a cold and isn't doing too well - I went over to his place after work and he was napping, then he played video games while I read comic books which suggests something about two extroverted introverts being in a relationship together. At around eight we went over to Christie's and met up with a fair brigade of people; there weren't enough chairs and consequently some confusion and then most people were tired or sick or prone to moderate agoraphobia. I got to sit beside Steph and we had a good time, Ian showed up so I got to know him a bit better, and Christian was wiped out from his first couple days as an Uni/College professor pulling two different campuses. I gave Michael a copy of Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and he gave me a book detailing the histories, mythologies, and philosophies connected with the Hindu creator-god Shiva (Ganesha's father), which goes nicely with the Dancing Shiva figure he gave me as a housewarming. Shiva contains the universe, and is both positive and negative. He spent too much money, though, because he also gave a beautiful glass necklace from Galiano Island, which looks like a ribbed phallus run through with yellow. I've decided it's an orgone collector.
2. Cory Doctorow's other book, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town was my solitary friend in the wee hours of Monday morning, while I was locked in Solitary Confinement in the Ambiguous Water Closet of the Margaret Atwood Boarding House, experiencing peculiar fever dreams. It was an odd choice.
3. After work yesterday I made it to the comic book shop before closing and picked up a copy of Doom Patrol Volume Four, wherein, amongst other things, Crazy Jane designs a logo for the Doom Patrol, a capital Phi. In her words: "It's a 'D' and a 'P' put together. It's also a masculine '1' and a feminine '0' and when you combine them in binary notation, you can generate all the numbers of creation." In order to break the horrible tyranny of the People Beneath the Pentagon (led, of course, by Major Honey), heroic Flex Mentallo flexes his muscles until the Pentagon becomes a circle. And, some dialogue:
CLIFF: Larry, where did you come from? Last we saw, you'd turned into a big, glowing ring of light.
REBIS: Yes, I was having sex with myself. I'll tell you all about it later.
JANE: Best kind of sex, I heard.
REBIS: Indeed. The Earth moved. Then again, it usually does...with a rotational speed around one thousand kilometers per hour, as far as I remember.
CLIFF: I pray to God that wasn't supposed to be a joke.
4. I am highly impressed by the recent flourishes Joy's been taking over on Shots for Breakfast, live from Japan. Her prose is all alive and crackling with new vitality and she puts me to shame. As usual.
5. Sylvia Plath says, "Miracles occur./ If you care to call those spasmodic/ Tricks of radiance/ Miracles."