wildcat

Last night was Michael's birthday dinner, drinks at Bravo, and general merriment. It was good to see a lot of people out and about, even in the face of crushing scholastic pressures and the diamond-producing stresses placed on us. Arguments over poetry, politics, film, sushi, the Gin. Michael liked his present and I got to wake up with him this morning, which was nice because it hasn't happened very much lately - too much going on to sit still an enjoy things lately.

I'm going to babble about art and things now.

The Question #4 came out today. It continues to be a pop bauble, and Tommy Lee Edwards continues to impress me with his art: he's added a new trick, or at least focused one that threads through the series so far, where we are given an inset panel within any given comic panel; these insets are all yellow and reveals the pseudo-mystical vision of a situation as the Question sees it - the equivalent of Superman's X-Ray vision, actually. At times it seems superfluous but there are a few good moments where we, the readers, are allowed to see "beyond the veil" with the Question. The yellow insets are filled with silhouette figures of the main action and Edwards has a wonderful grasp of using dark against light. Some with Veitch's dialogue is a trifle awkward, he seems desperate to remind us of the Subterraneans' tricks for evading Superman's attentions - even though, let's face it, this is not a book most people would pick up if they hadn't started at the beginning. Lois Lane still fights against the idea of Chi and all the general mysticism of the world which is intriguing in a lot of ways - she's the skeptic, and very well-written as the female protagonist of the book. There's a slightly weird encounter between the Question and Superman, who delivers the "Don't do drugs, fight crime with the limits of the law" speech we expect from him (and, wow, comes across as completely square). There's more of a straightforward encounter between the good guys and the bad guys.

The Question continues to talk to the city, babbling Ginsbergian power chants and the like. It struck me because I read this after I read a section of Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 where, you know, I start to actually get interested in Oedipa's character (she's written pretty flat), where her search for the conspiracy takes her through San Franscisco. There's a ridiculous encounter in a gay bar (with "the lavender crowd" in the background), and then she takes to the streets, and interacts with the city in a similar way to the Question, except from a different angle. She talks about how she began the story as a private eye on a quest for answers, but that in any good detective story, eventually the private eye gets beaten up. It is walking through the city that this happens to her in a strictly metaphysical sense; Oedipa encounters again and again the symbol of the conspiracy she's looking for, and the repetition, the all-consuming presence beats upon her and makes her doubt her resolve. She actually also starts to demonstrate some actual feelings with regard to the dead ex-lover whose will started the action off to begin with. Anyway, I thought the violence perpetrated by the city upon Oedipa was interesting, because she was shown to be powerless in the city rather than connected to it - she's a foreigner, she's known to looking to close to something, and the invocation of the noir genre really did it for me.

There are still a few things about Oedipa that bother me - her sexual side is underdeveloped but constantly referenced - at one point she has a random sexual encounter with the lawyer co-executing the will, and then runs off from a potential sexual encounter with a member of what might be the conspiracy, and then complains in the gay bar that the "Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you." It's an interesting concept, but I find overall that Pynchon never seems to know whether or not Oedipa is a sexual object or subject, or a sexual being at all - not neccesarily that she has to be on category specifically, but there's no rhyme or reason to what element manifests, and what's more - Oedipa doesn't seem to consider it, either. I don't mean that she has to sit there and angst away about her role in society with regard to sex, but she seems blank about it. When she refuses the one proposition she doesn't just refuse, but runs off into the night, whereas other times she just seems to blankly not react. Christian was saying that her flatness was intentional, that it references her position as an unliberated housewife at the beginning of the story (this was written in 1966), and I'm not sure how I feel about that idea. People aren't necessarily consistent either, but something about Oedipa's behaviour doesn't work for me on a narrative (there's that word again) level, and I'm not sure I can yet articulate why.

Last night was the first video screening at Lucky Bar, it was the first light-of-day explosion of How to be Popular, a Bowen/Marks/Rawluk production. As happened with many of the groups, the sound was far too loud but overall I'm pleased with the final product. There are a few moments I'd fiddle with. A lot of the films were three-minute flails of inarticulate depression, some suffered from bad sound-editing, and others were really very good. A nice start to the semester's productivity. I drank gin and cranberry juice over and over in a repeating loop, chatted to people and watched Joy get schmoozed. I wore the pinstriped suit. They ran the film first and then ended up playing it again at the end, because quite a few people didn't arrive on time. It was easier to watch the second time.

And now, for the next week: writing poems, catching up on the Art and Technology journals, workshopping poetry, and preparing a presentation on Allen Ginsberg. Shouldn't be too difficult. I'm also going to play pool and purge my system of this illness, this cold, this internal degradation.

Okay, fine, this day is a wasted bone-meal heap on the lawn of the world. Can I do nothing but be gripped by this fatigue that cools in my bones and - gasp - subjects me to cliche? I haven't been able to do anything and I can barely move my limbs or hold my head up. I'm listening to Ginsberg and reading Ginsberg and Veitch's The Question comic books and poems for workshop and I need to write poems. Caroline said the other day that my poetry is the opposite of Casey's, it is free-flow versus poised and constructed. I can't write poetry like I'm supposed to write poetry, I want to just spit it out in venomous volleys or let it leak from between my legs out the tip of my pen. Everybody's serious, Allen Ginsberg, and I'm expected to find criticism about you. I didn't go to class this morning, Allen Ginsberg, and I didn't go to the reading tonight either because I can barely operate these transistor limbs and mechanoid body parts. I wish I could be drawn and quartered and then pickled, thrown in jars. I have to replace the lightbulb in my bedroom because there is nothing here but darkness and I'm trying to function again but I seem to be trapped in a STEEL BOX, which is probably a metaphor for something but I can't seem to stand up. Allen, why don't you spell your name with two A's?

And Hunter S. Thompson, why the fuck are you levelling that fucking shotgun to my fucking brow? I feel like I'm in a fucking movie with Frances McDormand. I'm going to talk to my mother on the phone if I can, but that's miserable. Look, Doc, I don't care if you thought Kerouac was the shit. I don't care. I don't care. Okay, so I care. Fuck you. Look? Look, I'm listening to the Clash because I don't want to hear your voice. You make think of Burroughs and that makes me sad. I don't know.

And talking to my mother. Fuck. Fuck. Do I listen to yet another rant amount female hair loss? Do I need to listen to her drunk again? Rambling? I can't stand that, I can't, I'm about to collapse. I want sleep.

Fresh off the phone with Joy, my anti-virus has detected two viruses and it's still going, going, will it ever stop going? I need to go to bed soon, and I can't dare terminate this endeavour.

Anyway, I've written two poems, and I'm almost done a third. They're being printed off so I can go photocopy them for future workshops. My head's full of devils. My head's full of electric snakes. I am finding inner peace with a remixed jazz compilation.

Hush now? Don't explain.

Thankful, Buddha, Ganesha, the antivirus program has completed. I wonder what language it speaks. Michael tried to show me some examples of the math he was doing and it looked beautiful, but it was like trying to read Urdu or something. How does he do that?

Well, the text for the poem is done, but I have to decide if I want line breaks or prose-poem, and what stanza breaks to make. People will hate it I'm sure. I have no grasp of craft lately, but maybe I do and it's all just ingrained now. I can't bear line breaks and I refuse to enjamb. Somebody - who was it - said that the line is the breath, it must depend on the breath. My lines are long because I've got that psycho Bollywood energy explosion constantly on the verge. Every poem I write is about orgasms, even the ones that are gross or disturbing or familial. It's always about rushing toward that breaking point.

Shit, I'm being pretentious again. I must get out my cattle prod and insert it electricity-first into my arse, pacify myself. And then I'm going to get a glass of white grapefruit juice and complain about the bitter flavours.

This is one of those "rough mechanics" days - I can't minge about. I have to drop off my phone bill, pick up cash to pay Michelle for the hydro, and put together some presentation notes on Allen Ginsberg for Tuesday. This afternoon I'm going over to Michael's place to deliver some goodies and try and make him feel better; he's ill again.

Tonight? Bulford's having a show at Lucky Bar, and I might go to that. However, I might also stay home and slobber over Strictly Ballroom which I borrowed from the library. It was my favourite film in Grade 8 - e'en then, I had what you might call "strange tastes." I wonder if it holds up; expect some crit on here soon.

Finished The Crying of Lot 49, which was good but odious in some ways. The ending mostly interested me because there was no real way to understand the title completely - and how it relates to the book - until you get to the end. Before that you play the waiting game, hoping to see the greater context. I got into Oedipa's character later in the book as her men disintegrated around her and she was left all alone and full capable of handling herself - even if she thought otherwise.

Next up? Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy, starting with City of Glass.

What a weekend. Stops and starts, interrupted considerations, lonely old grubbers. Played pool on Friday Night with Michael and Christian, surrounded. I wasn't very good. Then I went home and read some of Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, dragged into fictional dissertations on the true language of the human race and questionable detective work by fictional fictional detectives (do two fictions make a truth?). Then I melanged yesterday morning until I went over to take care of Michael in his sickness. We watched Some Like it Hot.

Good film, as much as when I was young and watched it. Ideologically fucked up, of course, for its time; Jack Lemmon as Jerry ends up in a transgressive relationship even as Tony Curtis invents personas upon personas. Marilyn Monroe plays a more complicated character, but it's noticeable that her character here, Sugar, actually changes - in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, she's a smart blonde pretending to be a dumb blonde, whereas here she's definitely "not very bright" and consequently achieves some vision and transformation. Plot is secondary to chase scenes.

After that I said goodbye and went home to do homework, got fed up, went out with Joy, Matt, and Caroline to see Gay-Matt #2 playing at Lucky. There were hipsters everywhere. The hipster boys made me feel fat, corpulent, and overweight at 140 pounds - they were skeletal and delicate, porceilin and overindulgent in their adolescent bopping. The undead bop their heads and refuse to express emotion in their "dance moves." I left around 9:30 to go back to Michael's house. We watched Strictly Ballroom - which, let's face it, is short on plot but over and above on ridiculous indulgent style.

And then brunch today. I drove Michael's car and it snowed / hailed / rained intermittently, and now I'm at home to heat my heels up and finish my homework.

Rushing, rushing, rushing out the door on my way to work this afternoon. Afterward, seven o'clock at the Serious Coffee on Cook Street for a writing gig with certain irresistables. Everybody's a commodity. Everybody's a comedian. (Waggles eyebrows, flourishes with lit cigar).

Liked Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov better the second time. Meanwhile, Daniel Quinn has been swallowed by the city of glass and remade himself as a homeless man. Homeless Detective? Almost done the first book, onto Ghosts after that. Working on the Valentine's present in fits and starts.

A retired gynecologist donated five boxes of books to the library today; most of the boxes were full of old textbooks from his med school days - in 1931! The majority were volumes of Gynecology and Obstetrics in the British Empire. Other than that: a couple Jeffrey Archer books, and a Patricia Highsmith. As well, there was an anthology of short stories about "Supernatural Lust," erotic horror fiction that sported a positive lewd cover with a horned demon emblazoned with an Egyptian ankh symbol receiving oral sex (presumably) from a vulgar and curvaceous woman. I was enthralled. I snagged a copy of Tom Stetson and the Giant Jungle Ants, this ridiculous juvenile "boy's adventure" book, part of a series I presume, with rampant racism and weirdly homoerotic descriptions - at one point, Tom uses the word "Jeepers," and then comes out with this weird meditation on the sinewed muscles of the native man guiding him and his uncle (uh-huh) through the jungle. I'm planning on doing found poems or making it into weird collages, or just reading the damned thing and doing a running commentary. But underneath the lurid pulp and out of date diagrams of female reproductive organs? An antique, metal speculum, which looked absolutely disturbing and clamp-like. Colette and Nancy snagged it and hid it away from my "delicate eyes," but I demanded to see it and now I want to take pictures of the thing.

Needless to say, the story I started writing today now featured a murdered gynecologist killed by his own speculum. I got quite a bit written with Joy when we went to Serious Coffee on Cook Street, right up until it closed at eight o'clock and we booted it back to Joy's house to hang out and write with Matt. Emily showed up and it was a party, although I fear I was being too boisterous and overbearing again - I am rather a terror when the incomprehensible rush of testosterone courses through my shapely veins. I have the first couple pages of the story - which is called "The Round Man" - scrawled out in my faux-cursive printing, which I'll try to translate onto the computer soon.

About thirty pages to go on Auster's New York Trilogy, and then I'm cracking open Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman.

Well, they trashed our video in the video production class, on the grounds that the visuals presented weren't strong enough. I am - annoyed. Myla and Steff took it a bit worse than I did, I think, but I've also had time to develop a thick skin with workshop situations. The class practically creamed its pants about some rather dubious videos to begin with, so other than making a clear mandate for KICK-ASS visuals in the music video, I'm going to file this under the giant "FUCK YOU" and break on, as Jimmy says, to the other side.

I bought another Shaun Tan book today from Legends, called The Lost Thing. I love it, and I haven't even had time to delve into it fully. I'm thinking of recommending that we adapt it, perhaps, for the final film project - I don't know. I'm brimming over with ideas, no matter what the hell other people think.

Miserable night last night, couldn't sleep -- the usual brand of anxieties, monetary flirting with the latest spat of creative issues. I was also alone in bed. After interminable hours I drifted off, to be woken up in the middle of something, some dream, some errant brain stem failure, at six-thirty. Then I slept in by accident and had to hurry my ass to sit through a class that was, for once, moderately interesting. Stopped in to SUBText to commiserate with Steff. Bought some pens. I enjoy new pens -- they stave off some lingering doubts, it's like telepathic scurvy and the pen is a fresh lime.

What?

Dipped into the sauce, emptied the dishwasher, ate samosas, and then I edited my short story, "The Mushroom Cloud Called Sadie Valentino." I sent it in as a submission to Existere. They say that it only takes them four weeks to respond to a submission, so maybe I'll hear back about my inevitable rejection before I even forget that I submitted. I'm going to submit a story to Fiddlehead and subTerrain next.

Homework ho!

But, I mean, really. Six double gin and tonics after a bottle of wine? At Groovefest, which is meant to be transgressive or somesuch but actually looks like one of those raves I went to when I was nineteen? Is it now transgressive for girls to wear skirts? Anyway, I was dead drunk with Michael, Joanna, Casey, and others last night, which was ridiculous, and now I'm paying for it. I couldn't sleep past eight this morning while a war raged in my stomach, and the only sustenance around was Paris when it sizzles, a flick on Channel 25 with Audrey Hepburn as a girl with "big magic eyes," helping a screenwriter produce a script in 48 hours after he's binged and gambled away his advance for nineteen weeks. The film flickers between the "real world" and the script being written, which randomly rewinds, transforms, and mutates according to whatever the two characters consider having happen - Tony Curtis is a bit player in the imaginary film, and randomly Native Americans show up on the plains (?) of Paris after the romantic male lead is revealed to be a vampire (!). But of course, all those plot twists get deleted. Weird meta-film. Anyway.

I got spend two nights and a day with Michael, after we've been so busy. That was wonderful, we had a date on Friday night and saw a wicked zombie romantic comedy that wasn't Shaun of the Dead - it was called Graveyard Alive: A Zombie Nurse in Love, more hilarious than a lot of things I've seen recently.

About to start transcribing what I've got so far from "The Round Man" from my rantbooks to the computer. I'm trying to write a mystery, so it'll probably end up being a historical farce or something. Feel compelled to work on the screenplay for the next video if possible tonight, at least generate a few basic ideas for a narrative strand. What? What? I don't want to just make a video of randomly strung together images? I don't want to do some meandering picto-diatribe about online chatting or some other asinine bollocks? Ridiculous, I'm sure.

Anyway, the hours count down to Valentine's Day, which always makes me consider either the many V-Days I was a lonely sod or those cardboard mailboxes we used to make in elementary school so we could exchange cards. Did boys give cards to boys? Girls to girls? I can't rightly remember. We were all such fucking subversive polyamorous polymorphously perverse ultra-sluts in elementary school, giving cards to everybody. And cats lay down with dogs, I kid you not!

No, sorry, completely boggled by the notion of the International Bog Snorkelling Championship, am half-convinced that the story's crap but you know how that goes and I need to write a script. But, serious, bog snorkelling. Snorkelling in a bog. Dirty, sloppy, and I need to write something about that. Suggests some kind of sexual fetishism as well, but sex is a gimmick and the whole idea is just so - captivating. What mad swampy things do they discover down there in the bogs? What inappropriate crawling tingle works its way through their slogged limbs while they're under?

Well, it doesn't seem to be raining disposable diapers or eels at the moment, just clear blue, but this is Valentine's Day. Or something. I'm going to write a series of weird poems or something today and go to work. With some boyfriend time tonight.

The Three Faces of Eve was an odd movie, and I think it was in part because it was framed as a "true event," with Alistaire Cooke opening the film with an introduction and then providing sparks of narration at appropriate intervals. They were trying to get across a docudrama feel, I suppose, but of course the movie was actually just an adapted novel, which in turn was based loosely on an actual woman's life. Loosely. I did a bit of research and at some point I'd like to track down a copy of Chris Sizemore's I'm Eve, the autobiography she wrote which actually tells her side of the story and points out a few things like the fact that she had more than three personalities. The movie itself is notable for Joanne Woodward's acting chops, no grease there, and the slapdash approach to things. Very flat cinematography, but apparently that was just an effect of the time - there is a lovely telescoping shot into Joanne Woodward's forehead at one point, to suggest we're ENTERING HER THOUGHTS.

Yes! Michael's coming over to pick me up so we can have a Valentine's Day non-date. And we're going to watch Mulholland Drive so he knows what I'm talking about, and it's going to hopefully scare the pants off him because I like it when he's not wearing pants, and we're going to give each other presents. I already know what he made me, but he doesn't know what I made him. I refuse to admit to any squealing like an indian rubber piggy. No, no.

But, you know, OFFICIALLY, I think love is trite and superficial, a source of infinite clichés, and this sentence is fraught with dangerous and corrosive commas.

I've decided to ignore the train wreck aspects of the short story I'm writing and just barrel on through as it were, because every first draft is shit. Unless you're damnable Joy and every damnable sentence is damnable champagne--

I actually went to Moka House today, with Michael, to hypothetically do some homework. I located two of the journal questions from Art and Technology and grouped them together, and read a bit more of O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Michael tried to read some kind of "higher brain function" mathematics that made his head spin which terrifies me about what it'd do to my grey matter. Anyway, the veggie samosa was decent with some different chutney then my usual mango variety, and I couldn't be bothered to finish the lemonade because it somehow bored me. But Michael giggled at cute little kids and I seethed about my startling writer's block about the music video, and then we took off to go for a romantic swaggering drive through Victoria and natter about thoughts regarding moving in together.

Later, we had dinner with his family for his grandmother's birthday. We all ordered chinese food, but from some truly horrible place that they always order from where the deep-fried prawns are nigh-fluid and congealed out of some kind of extradimensional proto-matter. And I had the most heinous spring rolls ever. Spring rolls aren't supposed to make you feel dirty and unclean, especially not from the inside out.

The NHL officially announced that there would be no hockey season whatsoever. Weird. It used to sit around with my dad watching hockey when I was little, bored out of my mind and hoping he'd switch to something else. Only the games always had to go into overtime.

It is in the long-winded diatribes, tantalizing rolls of newsprint attacked with ink and pen, quill, quire, the needlest nose in the world pointed direct at those scratches, which are not unlike diagrams of where to find Charles Bukowski, you know, brother and sister. The Mad Typewriter Gang (that's us, can you dig the banners?) keep getting drunk and pissing on their own piles of poetry, or burn them or roam the streets with no recollection of where they pay rent anymore, drawn out into fine wires of people, fingers stretched and disgruntled at the knuckles, our foreheads wider than angel wings or the feet of masochists. To love is to watch them - the Mad Typewriter Gang (the decoder rings) scrabble down wooden ricket steps and fall off into the icy still water, inpenetrable as bulletproof glass, frozen all around them - it's like falling into gelatin wax. Wobble.

I'm not sure how exactly it was that Descant - one of the Canadian literary journals - managed to find my mailing address and send me a subscription plea. Really. I don't think I've ever sent them anything. I think it's terrifically funny that their little pamphlet includes Roger Ebert-type blurbs from the likes of Northrop Frye of all people. Maybe they've tagged all copies of their magazine electronically, and they know I'm possession of some back issues. The bastards! They're probably reading my mind right now. Who would fuck you?

Corn was on cheap this morning, so I bought a couple ears and I guess that's food for the day. Managed to put together quite the supplies for under fifteen bucks, which is splendid. Tiger prawns - ten for $2.50! Wild. I also ducked my head into the Curious Comics across from the grocery store and did a very good job of just browsing, not buying anything. Several of the usual suspects look pretty underachieving this month anyway, so it was probably as good a time as any to impose a drought on myself. I'm being frugal or something. I shall have to get drunk and watch the Frugal Gourmet, if he's anywhere on television anymore.

demands ice cream. Yes, ice cream, demands the Nightmare of Taffeta. Bring me ice cream, it whispers through its folds, or you shall be made bridesmaid and wrapped in orange, purple, vermillion--

So, anyway, I'm going to get ice cream.

There's a lot of pasta in my house. I seem to be eating almost exclusively pasta right now, when I'm at home; I broke out and had some corn for dinner tonight, boiled and made strictly unhealthy with the aid of salt and butter. I probably should have kept it more "pure" -- but that's how you eat corn, at least how I eat corn. Brought up on cobs with salt, butter, little corn-shaped skewers. Not that I could eat it very well for YEARS because of the various episodes of braces, retainers, headgear, fake front tooth; it almost feels a bit scandalous to hunker down and suckle at the maize teat.

It's an enjoyable experience to actually have a concept nailed to the ground as far as the music video is concerned. Really. Steff and I met up with Myla at the Yates Street Serious Coffee -- which has to be the worst atmosphere for a coffee shop ever. We talked about our desire to avoid linear narrative and riffed on our shot list ideas and Myla came up with a brilliant idea to tie them all together and actually produce a progression. The jury's still out on the issue of which song we're going to use, but the initial burst of inspiration is there. I get to do a ridiculous riff on 2001: A Space Odyssey which makes me happy - we each get to have an area of focus.

Otherwise, my day was: waking up hungover as shit after a party at Joy's house with two magnums of wine, beside an even more hungover Michael. We actually got up and going pretty quickly, although we both would have preferred to languish in our stews and snuggle like blobby things. Brunch with Joy, Matt, Steff and Caroline at Floyd's Diner for some irrational reason. Why have we gone there five weekends in a row? Overpriced food usually served boulder cold by incompetent waiters who -- gasp -- completely forgot Steff's order. Really. Eventually we got out of there and Michael went home and I pouted, Matt dissolved to go home and then go rehearse for the Battle of the Bands. Joy, Caroline and Steff accompanied me downtown. I was the Hag Fag. Mall time, ugh, the perfumed hypno-air pumped from ventilation ducts laced with Size Zero Mall-Crawling Girls. Cigar store with ridiculous employees, including a Stepford Wife. Joy and Caroline took off for home and we went to Value Village. Bought a shirt and jacket for five bucks and went home after the meeting.

I'm not allowed to work in advertizing. Ever. I'd likely come up with that kind of copy. Really.

No word as yet on the damnable cheque for the copy work I did for Elitia. On the one hand I'm not surprised, but on the other? Up against the wall.

AFTER FORCING MYSELF awake at noon, drunk on wicked dreams where people were broadsided in highway accidents and everything was shot in this blurred double-time? I sputtered up, showered, ate some pasta, and then Michael picked me up to go photographing. Beacon Hill Park was full of people, chilly, and the crows wouldn't stop cawing. The beauty of nature wasn't doing it for me, so after Michael got some beautiful shots, we took off for other parts: back to Green Street, and then out of town, to Sidney. We couldn't find anything suitable for dinner, everything was closed, and ended up downtown at Perikles for dinner. Mmn. Greek food. Unfortunately, my stomach's been upset ever since.

Tomorrow for class, children.

Hunter S. Thompson died.

Wow.

He was a weird, fucked up, old man.

"Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist," Thompson told the AP in 2003. "You have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it."

Don't know what else to say. Going to write poems now, and listen to his Ode to Jack Kerouac.

Link Courtesy of Warren Ellis.

Exploring the Life and Work of Man Ray. The paper's due on Monday, one week from now. I need to talk to Brian about whether or not reproducing images for the purposes of academic discussion has an problems in it. I'm not too worried about it, but I want to be able to show a picture or two with my paper. It's all personal and creative rather than serious and academic, such is the nature of Brian's classes. Anyway, delving rather headily into the world of the Surrealists again.

Also need to invent some ideas for the music video; we're meeting tomorrow. I'd like us to maybe start acquiring footage in the next two days, but we have to see when people (i.e. actors) are available.

STRUGGLING WITH THE LAST line of a poem right now, the one we workshopped yesterday, I'm unsure about the noun, an adjective, and the wording of the entire line. Is "through" better than "inside?" "Postman" was briefly "policeman," but now it's back and I think it needs an adjective. To say nothing of the title, "Express Delivery," which needs to be dumped at the side of a dirt road and lit on fire before it spreads any further like a flu. Minimalist erotic poems are hard to do. I also wrote a poem about Gertrude Stein of all people, you know what the words are - "pretentious poet wank." But I still rather like it. I wake up at night horrified by the prospect of being a hack writer, but there's something alluring about the pulps.

Checked out the Battle of the Bands at Felicita's on Monday night to hear Matt's latest band, a country-blues group called "Together at Last." Before they went on we all had to sit through a deplorably dull metal band, but TAL made up for it: they were three kinds of brilliant, even mired as they were in a nest of sound problems (Matt's epigraph from Hunter S. was swallowed by an uncooperative mike), and demonstrated striking skill.

Have to storyboard my sections of the music video today, we aim to start shooting at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning. It's going to be rather brutal, but our ideas are finally gelling and look beautiful to my mind: foreboding with the right amount of "Theatre of the Absurd" thrown in. Aim to be chained to a computer in the lab by next Wednesday. That's right, one week.

Pancakes! That's my meal.

LIST OF ADJECTIVES reduced from hundreds: unshaven, scandalous, skinny, tantric, secret, provocative, redheaded, sturdy, bent, recursive, ragged, enveloped, anxious, drooling, frantic, frenetic, eloquent.

For some reason, eloquent and ragged stand out to me. Enveloped is too much of a pun when paired with postman, so it's off the list. There's got to be a hint of sex in the adjective without it being domineering or submissive; it can't be outright, but has to be more like a flavour of sex, a hint of something. I'd almost like to forgo the adjective, but something definitely feels off its not modified by something. Ragged has the right ring / associations with it, dishevelled perhaps by the act or foreplay, but could also suggest exhaustion or poor quality.

There's the other matter of the title. Poor show, the original, and I need something that suits a minimalist poem. Perhaps I should consult my workshop notes. Someone wondered what was at stake but - duh - it's a seduction poem. Mostly people just said they didn't like the title - that it was hokey - or that they didn't care. No real suggestions with that.

OH, BROCCOLI! THE dream from this morning, mere nanoseconds before waking. An assassin character, played by David Anders, wore Eternity by Calvin Klein. And this was a major "plot" point. Tinfoil hat time, but I seem to getting product placement in my dreams -- how traumatic! Media seems to be influencing my dreams again, and they've aimed their microwave transmitters directly at my brain--

Spent nine bucks on a couple comics this morning after I dropped off my job application at the library. The shop-kid working at Curious was - well - classic West Coast hipster, the asymmetric hair on purpose, the wrist bands (because being hip is about being straight but resurrecting ridiculous gay retro fashions), the tight-ass jeans, the lobe-stretcher piercings, and the black indie band T-shirt ("The Weakerthans," just like that, and not even an interesting design). And anorexic! I'm prissy and weak at times - but my god, I could have snapped him in two. But, you know, officially I love all mankind and nobody ever gets on my nerves. Oh, and "them kids these days, they gots no sense of style!" I wish I had a cane to shake at people, I seem to have gotten crotchety. No, wait, I've always enjoyed judging people.

The rest of the day has been essay-writing madness. I believe the title shall be "On Man Ray's Le Violin d'Ingres: Symphony in B Minor for Lower Back and Pectoral." I've stalled at about 830 words, and I have another 800 to go. There is something like a thread, but mostly I go off on tangents and have parenthetical commentary, a couple footnotes. I talk about blogging. If anybody's interested, I might froozle up some bits on here.

LAST NIGHT! AFTER I finished the draft for my Man Ray paper, which I'll fidget with and edit this weekend, I went down through Fernwood and had beer at the Thin Edge of the Wedge with Joy while we vented and wrote. I started a story inspired by the mug shot on the cafe wall, of Frank Sinatra as a young man (Joy thinks he stole a car), and then we had to chug the rest of our beer because - for some reason - the place decided to close at nine rather than ten. We feel oppressed by how early everything closes around here. After that we flailed at her place, roamed the internet for the works of Angela Carter, and talked about owning bookstores and the beauty of our boyfriends. Then Matt came home from jamming and we listened to some Hunter S.

Tonight I have a triple date, but not in the orgiastic sense.

FOR THE RECORD, for the record, for the record, this weekend was artistically brilliant. Woke up at five in the morning on Saturday to shoot the music video for Semi-Louise's "Boom or Bust." Met up with Steff and Myla, gathered our actors, and went to work. Exhausted, broken, and emotionally retarded we finished up our first day of filming, I went out for gelatto with Caroline and Xavier, then went to Michael's house and proceeded to bicker with him over POINTLESS things, like how much he was or was not pouting. We went to Daniel's house for a small dinner ensemble, very good, and then we tumbled home to "watch our stories" (Family Guy and Futurama). Passed out in the middle of Futurama, snuggled up to my man, and we slept in today.

EXCEPT that today was horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE with the shooting of the rest of the video. While some of the footage already looks awesome on the view finder, scheduling conflicts, irrational car problems, and ill-conceived fuckwits led to jangled nerves and a craving for our own sweet mistress - booze. Steff and I took off afterward to drink wine at Joy's house with the girls. For a short while, anyway - I rushed home to drop everything and chill out. Filming makes me crave donuts. Tomorrow will begin the serene, Zen-like task of editing footage together to make a "movie."

Need to edit that Man Ray paper and get it organized to hand in, but I might do that tomorrow and INSTEAD just go to bed and scrawl poems all over my rantbook with the intent to drive men mad! Poetry, burnt like umber and merlot and scandalous underwear torn in all the right places, seams undone and threatening to fall away like snakeskin--

CAPTURING FOOTAGE OFF the camera today made up for the despicable and corrosive afternoon and evening we had yesterday with the filming; it was a breeze. Only two minor quibbles occurred; the labtech solved one for us and I figured out the other one. We got all our footage logged and captured in about an hour, and on Wednesday evening we'll start editing the video together. Some of the footage isn't as provocative or well put together as it could have been, and I want us to be ruthless about cutting out what isn't visually interesting or furthering the narrative of the video. Other side of the equation, some of the sequences are absolutely gorgeous. I'm pretty overjoyed with Jess and Joy as monkeys on the beach, and Steff put together a really good opening flurry of footage, among other bits and pieces.

Maybe halfway through David Lynch's Blue Velvet, expect some commentary when I finish watching it in the morning. It has what I would characterize as one of the most disturbing sex scenes I've ever seen; I'm not sure if that's a positive or a negative, and I have no idea as it stands now whether or not I even like the movie. The cinematography is uninspired for the most part and ranges into bad television series rather than film. You know? There's just a "television" quality to the camera work; this isn't across the board, there are some absolutely beautiful shots, but I haven't been as blown away by this as I was by Mulholland Drive.

I maintain that this cover for Michael Moorcock's A Cure for Cancer is one of my favourite book covers ever, by Patrick Woodroffe. Is it any wonder I want to blow my entire life writing potboilers? The man of the horror is Mister Jerry Cornelius, who was supposed to be the New Messiah of the Age of Aquarius or the Psychedelic Christ. The books are bizarre, but definitely fail due to how dated they've become. Definitely a forefather of Johnny Damocles and Teiresias Jones - who I'm writing a short story about right now. Tentatively entitled "A Vow of Promiscuity." I've chosen to write with a clear storyline in mind that I can hang wild and outrageous behaviours off of, and as I'm deep into some Hunter S. at the moment, I would imagine the drug-addled content will only continue to be addled. One of the things that was remarked in my fiction workshop about the original story, "Beautiful -- but Deadly!" was that no matter how many drugs were consumed, the characters never seemed actually affected by them. I aim to continue that pathway of characterization.