wildcat

My arms are still a bit sore from all the heavy lifting yesterday, but that was to be expected and I got quite a decent workout, even if I was on the verge of a delirium on the way home afterward. I tried to write last night but I couldn't get my hands to operate, much less scribble - instead I listened to Margaret Cho with Christian in the Reading Room.

Otherwise: the sun shines, my allergies boil away, I need to take a shower. I'm going to try and scribble something in a little bit, because stories make me feel better.

1. Somewhere in between my house and the drug store, the Fear makes itself known; this is not unlike a lit match coming into contact with the forehead and igniting my hair.

2. Seventeen bucks on a set of bus tickets.

3. Gobbling up ridiculous metafiction on the web for about an hour, giggling under my breath in a completely non-ironic, sincere fashion. That's right: sincerity. Who knew I still had it in my vocabulary?

4. The Abridged Revenge of the Sith. Yes, there are spoilers.

5. Shock and awe that "spoilers" is practically an actual word.

6. Take the bus downtown with Christian to roam around the streets in the muggy afternoon.

7. Russell's Books: I sell nine books for twenty bucks, but then I end up accidentally spending seven bucks on a book. "Oops, I'm sorry, I've fallen and accidentally spent this money and oh, here's this book in my hand like a long, bloody gash through my elbow." The book in question was Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber, a collection of short stories I've been in searching for.

8. The rest of the twenty bucks goes into a bottle of Boone's Sangria and some cheap Japanese food.

9. Try to look like customers in the mall while we say hi to Joy at work, chat for a few minutes in much the same fashion as spies meeting at a park in trenchcoats, while feeding the ducks.

10. A&B Sound: Christian needs blank CDs. While he pays for them, the manager manages - ha - to belitte the cashier in front of us. Yes, that's right. It's not like it's rude to completely undermine someone's authority in front of other people or anything.

11. Take the bus home, notice a freckled young man with a nice body wearing a WILDCATS T-shirt. We marvel at people who get frustrated and confused when we turn our phones off.

12. Thrifty's: two cartons of juice, one cirtus festival and one raspberry.

There once was a woman who lived in a crumbling shack on the third of three hills. She lived with her daughter, barely thirteen, and the empty grave beside the house, marked with her husband's name. He'd been gone three years and in that time the men of the village and dug a grave for him in hopes that his corpse would stumble back one night and bury itself.

The baker courted the widowed woman; she had round, unfinished hips and string hair balding in places, but she could cook and her voice was known throughout the valley. They said she'd learned to sing from the bees, when she was quite small. The woman never spoke of her missing husband, and quite liked the baker with his apricot cheeks. If pressed, the baker would admit that he liked a woman who could beat him at drinking contests, and neither one had the edge with darts. After a time, they fell in love.

The daughter hated the baker. Really: she spat in his bourbon on cold nights when he's stay at the shack with them. She schemed to poison him, and concocted a soup of ivy, garlic, and nutmeg. She cut her hand and drained the blood into the broth; she whispered curses as it stewed.

The woman found her daughter in the kitchen like this, eyes rolled back in her head and muttering. What was she doing? The woman demanded answers. She saw her sweet little girl lit up with vengeance, aiming to attack the baker with witchcraft. The girl meant to use potions to choke him in his chair. The daughter accused her mother of forgetting the girl's father, the missing husband. Of shaming them. Of carrying on with deplorable men from the village. She cursed her mother and the baker without breathing in between. She snapped her fingers.

The woman crossed her arms and told the girl that her missing father had wanted a boy. Then she made no further action: no words, no gestures, no spilled blood. She simply took a breath and changed her daughter into a fly without effort or remorse. She accepted no disappointments from her kin. For a moment, she was a vision, with a wreath of gold around her head and fire-blown eyes. Then, as her daughter awoke with a fly's body and too many legs, the woman looked as she always had. She pulled a flyswatter off a crooked nail on the wall and smiled.

The baker married the woman six months later and the pair of them moved into a little stone house not ten miles away, near the village's centre; nobody wants to live in an ugly house falling apart, with two open graves outside the back door, marked with other people's names.

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved.

"I'd guess good pulp should be effortless reading, nice and smooth, rather than brainless reading" -- RJ

I've recently begun to cultivate my ideas and feelings on "Pulp" - the style of art rather than the paper product - and more importantly, the idea of "good pulp" versus "bad pulp." Someone a few years ago noted that there shouldn't be a divide between "high art" (say, a Margaret Atwood novel) and "low art" (say, a Stephen King novel), because they're too different styles; there should just be good or bad, in terms of how well the item in question is put together.

Pulp. For the purposes of clarity, I'll state that I'm looking at adventure pulp, but anything can apply - horror, romance, et cetera. What incurs my wrath with regard to bad pulp:

1. Disrespect for characters. This is the big one. A pulp story is - broadly - a story where the plot is quite often the thing, and it is crucial that things move in a particularly way. Now, by no means should one expect a shockingly new plot or characters which aren't stereotypical or archetypical. Any good art requires some development of character, but one can't expect the world if you're just watching a proto-Indiana Jones flick. Characters in bad pulp, HOWEVER, end up acting stupid or conveniently forgetting information or behaviour out of character just to advance the plot. This is showing no respect for your characters. For example, I ended up watching The Mummy last night and randomly the extremely intelligent Lady Egyptologist seemed to conveniently screw up her knowledge of Egyptian mythology despite years and years of exposure to the culture and the ideas involved; she remembered at a convenient plot point, after a great many bad things had happened. In a good pulp story, things need to be sufficiently out of the hands of the characters (or there needs to be more of a character-driven reason beyond random stupidity), because you can't have an intelligent person who is extremely versed in his or her field making an elementary school mistake. While Tomb Raider is by and large a dumb movie, Lara Croft is never stupid for no reason; she is always working with her full brain, and it is always outside forces which disrupt her. This isn't to say you should never have a stupid character, stupid characters run the world; but if you establish someone is brilliantly incisive and masterfully deductive, they have to be consistent unless there's a very good reason.

2. Expository dialogue. There's no way to get away from it completely, but "show don't tell" is the universal rule by now, and when you're working in film, showing IS better than telling - by spending another minute or two to show something, not only do you free up dialogue time for something more important but can take advantage of cinematography and editing to add another really cool element.

3. Speed. Pacing is precarious, but one problem I had with the latest Star Wars flick was that the "lovely CGI scenery" whizzed by so fast I couldn't be bothered to process it. A good pulp adventure needs to have lots of "cool" moments, especially in film; the old Star Wars movies let you have enough time with a really cool element to want to have it as a toy. When the special effects are used to drown the audience without enough time - well! I think that's why the pod-racing in The Phantom Menace was so effective; we were given time to appreciate the visuals. Similarly, The House of Flying Daggers is a wicked pulp adventure, in part because sequences like the Green Bamboo Forest Battle gives the viewer a full immersion - like the Star Wars movies - but allows us to take it in.

4. Clunky dialogue. No dialogue is ever truly realistic, but if everyone speaks fluent Epigraph, and recites textbook declarations about, say, war? Not effective, and you seriously stunt your actors. An actor should be able to do a good job with a role in a pulp film, but also be able to enjoy themselves doing so - if I'm more intrigued by and rooting for the CGI characters, or if I want the Machines to kill off the city of Zion once and for all? Not doing it's job.

Probably more will be added to this at some point, but there you go.

1. The Lunch Menu: mushroom caps stuffed with imitation crab meat and shrimp, followed by a ripened avocado cut into sections. Chased by a glass of unsweetened raspberry juice, with chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

2. Supposed to go to a barbeque tonight, which makes the questionable weather all the more questionable. Grey skies and drizzling rain. Anyway, Michael and I are making a potato salad and we're bringing veggie burgers tonight.

3. Tom Strong #33, out today. Tom's crude robot companion, Pneuman, begins to display odd behaviours like running for mayor, so Tom and his talking ape buddy, King Solomon, miniaturize themselves and head into the robot's body to find the cause. I quite liked the upshot, with a nod to Superman's old bottle city of Kandor. Tom Strong is one of the comics from Alan Moore's ABC Line, and basically is a postmodern pastiche of the old Doc Savage pulps and the Silver Age Superman stories. It took me a few pages to get used to Ben Oliver's art in this issue, I much prefer Chris Sprouse's pencils, but eventually I quite liked them. Joe Casey's script-work was decent and enjoyable. I liked the sequences of Pneuman's random weirdness, and it certainly recalls an earlier issue, "I, Pneuman" - wherein the robot's internal monologue drives the issue. I also liked the idea that while Pneuman has been around since the end of the Nineteenth Century, he's constantly being upgraded - with old elements remaining as a living history, from ball-bearings leftover from his truly pneumatic days, to empty nuclear reactors from the Fifties.

4. Plans for the afternoon: sit downstairs working on a short story, reading some Borges, comics, and Terry Pratchett's Johnny and the Dead. With the CBC on.

I should probably update my blog.

For the record, the public record, Thursday was a very long day. Michael and I woke up at seven and made our way out to the airport to pick up my parents, who got off their flight at 8:23am. It was early. Unbearably early. We came back into town and ate brunch at Floyd's Diner, which wasn't bad - for once - and I had the flapjacks. Flapjacks. After that, my house, some walking around and preparations. I got dressed up and put on the dress shoes, and we headed up to UVic around 1pm.

Hung out in the bookstore for a while; my dad bought me a copy of Gabriel García Márquez's The Innocent Eréndira and Other Stories, and Manil Suri's The Death of Vishnu. Both look to be good reads, and I'm halfway through the opening novella in the Márquez book.

Anyway, I abandoned Michael and my parents to head over to the Senate Chambers and get fitted with my cap and gown. Which took forever, involved me trying on four different caps, and losing my green sash on the way over to the Clearihue building where everyone was being organized. Once I found it, I met up with the writing kids in the correct room and waited around until we got to go sit up on the big stage. My feet hurt, my head hurt, and it was precarious to walk around in those dress shoes with the panic of the cap falling off. Two and a half hours later, I had an official Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, with distinction, and a headache. We were at the reception for about three minutes before shuttling off to take the parents back to the airport for their seven o'clock flight.

Dinner afterward with Michael and Christian. Moxies. Started with calamari, followed by a grilled wild salmon sandwich, followed by a Mocha Mud Pie. Drinks: A "sexual trance" and an "Ambrosia."

Later, Bravo's, drinks at the bar with Leia serving us. I had roughly six martinis that night, and felt gloriously awful the next day.

Anyway, I feel terrible. I thought it was just a case of the atomic allergies yesterday morning, when I was wandering around the house feeling stuffed up. A bit worse than usual, sure, but allergies depend upon pollen counts, and those are variable. But, then I went over to Michael's for our planned Star Wars original trilogy date and by about two in the afternoon, I was in rough shape. By bedtime last night I was definitely sure this was something else. Christian complained about catching a cold from John, and I suspect this is what this is: with graduation over and done, my body could let down its defenses. And then I had to go have a crazed night of debauchery and now I'm immobile and unable to make my writing date with Joy tonight. Shame! Misery! I also had to bow out on brunch, for freck's sakes, which is virtually unheard of.

Right, right. The original trilogy. A New Hope: I was, I think, quite impressed by Alec Guinness, first of all, because he did brilliant things with what was otherwise a lackluster script. He had a amazing sense of pacing, in a movie where pacing seems to go out the window; the opening sequences with the droids are unbearably slow, the complete opposite of the second/first/other trilogy. Lucas didn't have a solid grasp on editing techniques, and the movie plodded along for quite a while - despite the solid performances by Guinness and Harrison Ford, the script lacked forward thrust until Carrie Fisher showed up as Princess Leia. She had an actual agenda and was a dynamic enough character to push toward it. Luke was just going along for adventure because his family had just been killed and he had apparently been given a "destiny." Solo was doing it for the money, but there wasn't really much of doing anything until they rescue Leia. The dialogue was chunky, not as bad as Episodes 1, 2, and 3, but unmanageable by some of the actors. Vader was menacing at one point, I think, but some of the design principles just come across as goofy.

It's hard to watch A New Hope partly because of the cultural context now; I knew that Leia was going to turn out to be his sister, so the flirtation and adolescent attraction just came off as excessively creepy and Greek Tragedy. And really, honestly, Spaceballs has tainted it all.

Empire Strikes Back? Better, by far. I think that's when Lucas started working with somebody else, because things got smoother and easier to follow. People started to act like people. It's darker, naturally, and of course we get the familial revelations, and the characters develop more of a connection with each other. Lando ends up being a bit of a cypher, he's really just Billy Dee Williams playing Han Solo, but at a different point in his life. Yoda - well - Yoda made the movie for me. Yoda was fucking crazy. I don't remember Yoda being that fucking crazy. Really. Michael and I were watching it, and we sat there saying things like "Yoda has clearly gone insane." He was like this forest gnome squealing and playing with flashlights. He'd split into two people, Yoda and...and...fuck, he was practically Gollum!

Return of the Jedi remains my favourite, and with good reason. Darth Vader actually gets to be something other than an old serial villain out of Flash Gordon, displaying a faceted personality with regard to Luke, and some inner conflict with regard to the Emperor. His actions all make sense within the character and don't come across like a light switch going from Good to Evil every five minutes, unlike Anakin from Revenge of the Sith. The writing is so much smoother, the special effects are cool in places - I think the cool thing about these movies was that they had to invent Special FX tech as they went, rather than just having CGI-a-palooza. Leia continues to be a strong figure in the movies, and does things rather than stand around; she's even in a romance with Han Solo and is still capable. The original trilogy was definitely bumpy, but by and large still strikes me as being Good Pulp.

With regard to the inconsistencies between trilogies and the continuity "shifts," I'm sighting the "first" trilogy as being the rest of Terry Pratchett's "Trousers of Time," with alternate pasts playing a factor.

Really. I just cut up three bulbs of garlic and threw them in the oven to roast them for a while, in hopes the garlic will help my immune system. I've just spent ten minutes eating the raw garlic stumps leftover. I feel oddly brilliant, like my brain mass has somehow successfully tripled in size. I even managed to breathe properly for three minutes.

The Untitled "Hardy Boys" / "Nancy Drew" Crossover Novel, Fragment 1

For GM

"Gosh," said Joe as he applied 'Prim & Proper' red lipstick to his narrow lips. As he was younger, and had a fairer complexion, it was decided that he'd be Nancy, while Frank dressed up as Bess. The girl's challenge had been simple, but terrifying; solve the Mystery of the Stolen First Editions while disguised as each other. Girls as boys, and boys as girls. There was no way the Hardy Boys were too chicken to follow through on a dare! There he sat, in front of his mother's vanity, with his brown hair held down by a cut nylon underneath a long, blonde wig. Like Nancy's hair. He'd spent an hour on his foundation, and he'd had to wipe off the blush once already because he looked drunken. Which wouldn't do. The mascara and eyeliner had been a bit of trouble, but eventually Frank had just straddled his chest on the floor and applied them himself.

He looked - well. He couldn't quite decide how he looked, with a pale green dress on, a bra, and pantyhose. If he'd had the choice, he wouldn't have gone for this shade of green, for the dress; it was too frail, too pastel for his tastes. But he'd never noticed how high his cheekbones were, not unlike the real Nancy's; had they always been so high? Maybe he was hallucinating.

"We'd better go over the details of this case," said Frank, from in front of the full-length mirror. He was still in his normal clothes, but with a curly brown wig on and a set of brown high-heels. He was testing things out, still. "Professor Pert's entire collection of rare first editions have disappeared, and the only clues the thief left behind are a bent nickel and the eraser-half of a broken pencil."

"Frank?" Joe turned his back to his brother, but looked at him over his shoulder. "Zip me up, will you?" He indicated the wide open back of the green dress, with the exposed muscles of his upper back and the strap of his pale pink bra.

Frank swaggered over to his brother. "Sure." There was nothing unusual to his tone, but as he fingered the zipper, he stopped for a moment and took a deep breath, then pulled up until the dress closed. "There you go."

"You'd better get dressed, we're supposed to start the race at Midnight."

"Sure thing, Nancy."

To be Continued? I've been playing around with this idea for nearly three years. Just in fragments, though. Need to do some research.

A certain brilliance.

First of all, joyous news! I went to the cinema last night and witnessed a spectacle - that is to say, a film, which I actually enjoyed. That's right, I actually enjoyed something, didn't get too bogged down with negative opinions even though I can level some definite criticisms against it. It was imperfect, but highly enjoyable and worthwhile viewing. The new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I went in with very low expectations because people had said it was alright, but not wonderful - only I loved so much of it! First of all, Stephen Fry does a wonderful job as the Guide itself, and Sam Rockwell's Zaphod was brilliant; overacting that in any other movie would have been annoying. The script work blended straight-from-the-book stuff which was funny, but would have been funnier if I hadn't read it before, but it worked in a lot of good spins on things and new interpretations, as well as outright new material to bustle my senses. Immediately, I developed a crush on Martin Freeman and Mos Def as Arthur and Ford - Freeman in particular is adorable. Which is, I know, no reason to love a movie, but gyeek! Def was a bit wooden in places, but he genuinely brought a laid back quality to Ford, and that's pretty fundamental to the character; there was a moment where the two of them are trapped in an airlock about to be tossed into space, and Ford offers Arthur this awkward hug, which is refused - it was a delight, because he played Ford as someone with only the barest understanding of how humans function with each other, and especially how the English function with each other. Bill Nighy played a wickedly amusing Slartibartfast, despite his horrorshow performance from Underworld - a movie which needs to be unmade. The CGI and special effects in general were quite convincing, I felt, and were handled with skill and style that allowed us to soak them all in and appreciate them. The highlight was the planet-building yards of Magorathea, which left me breathless. Zooey Deschanel as Trillian could have been given more to do, a lot more to do, and I was a bit annoyed at the standard damsel in distress routine if not for the strength she brings to the character otherwise, a woman from England who learns how to run a space ship in a week despite the fact that it makes no sense. And the yarn scene, which has to be seen to be believed. And they've already built in the sequel possibility.

And otherwise? Sick as a dog. Went out with Joy tonight for cheap-ass sushi followed by writing at the Solstice Cafe, where we penned postcard stories in time to pretentious West Coast "intellectuals" debate the philosophy of romanticism, while sounding like idiots. Really. I drank two bottles of orange juice and came home. It was a really wonderful evening! I've also decided that my recent flurry of theories and ideas about Pulp Fiction & Film are because I want to teach a Pulp Writing course somewhere after I get my Master of Fine Arts and go to work somewhere as a sessional...

Next installment of the Hardy Boys-Nancy Drew crossover will probably be out tomorrow...

For GM

Nancy Drew had a photograph. She had a lot of photographs, tacked up to the mirror's frame, because Nancy Drew considered herself a professional, and the art of disguise was a difficult and at times precarious business. Did the photographs match her own face, reflected, closely enough? Joe Hardy was certainly handsome, but Nancy had always been more pretty than anything, and Joe had a broader chin than she did. Nancy started from scratch: no makeup whatsoever, because boys didn't wear makeup. Well, the Hardy Boys didn't, anyway. She'd been cutting away at her hair for half an hour, removing the long rivulets of gold that were almost as famous as her cool deductive reasoning. Daddy wouldn't be pleased, she was sure of that, but honestly! As if Nancy was going to lose this competition! She snipped her hair off until she had just enough to part to the side, as Joe did, with no side burns. Short on the sides and a little longer on top. Short hair was rather refreshing.

But could she pull it off? The problem was really her eyes, her long lashes and delicate fluttering. She would have to moderate her blinking, make it shorter and more manly. Masculine. She rather liked the word. The other issue was her smile, developed over the years by applying it to her father, the lawyer Carson Drew. It was a method of getting her way, coy and slightly off-balance; she'd grown up knowing that she had to be a dizzy blonde half the time to get what she needed. Usually clues. She wasn't quite sure how Joe would do it, but he'd have to learn to be dizzy if he was going to get anywhere as Nancy Drew! She was, of course, a genius, but half of that was knowing when to act like it.

"What did you tell Ned?" Bess flounced on the edge of the bed, dark hair cut short and straightened to look like Joe's brother Frank. Beautiful, brooding Frank. She'd already strapped down her bosom with a girdle and put on clothing stolen from Nancy's father, suit pants and a dress shirt, a tie - that had only taken a minute to tie, her father had never learned so Nancy had picked up that skill with no mother to do it for her. Bess spooned pieces of steaming bunt cake into her mouth and chewed, thoughtfully, no longer imprisoned by the delicacy of makeup - her lips were free of lipstick, there was no chance of smudging. She was clearly enjoying all this!

Nancy applied eyeliner to the edge of her chin, to add flecks of imaginary stubble missed by Joe in his daily shaving regimen. The illusion had to be utterly complete. "I...well. I didn't tell him anything."

"Nancy! That's not fair! He won't have any idea what's going on?"

"I know. It's probably a bad idea, but he'll be a bit of a secret weapon against the boys, bit of an obstacle if all goes well. And I'm not sure what he'd say if I told him."

"But what about Joe? What if something goes wrong?"

"Oh, Bess dear! Don't worry. Ned knows by now that nothing is quite what it looks like, especially in a case being solved by Nancy Drew!"

To be continued. Honestly. Probably something from Bess's point of view, next time.

The beginning of something - can I vague it up for you, any? - erupted inside my brain earlier, while I listened for three hours to the Harpsichord, on CBC. Don't know what, if anything, this something will be, but it spun rather haphazardly from something Joy once said to me - well, more like violently raged at me about - while she was drunk. Well, while we were drunk. We were - disturbingly - being philosophical again, which as usual tends to have consequences. I'm going to write this beginning to something down in a minute, after I finish writing this, and maybe something will come of it. Should be noted that I'm on the fourth Hitchhiker's Guide book, which is getting interesting again after the somewhat dismal second and third books, and I may continue on to the fifth book afterward. For completion's sake. Reading these will be interspersed with writing, and I have two other books, one by Angela Carter and one by Robin Skelton, for afters.

I've also been doing laundry again; this might figure into things in some way.

Despite the cold - which has, as usual, reduced me to a pile of walking, talking, deplorable bodily fluids - Michael and I went to a party last night, a graduation keg party thrown by a friend of ours. It was odd, and Michael was exhausted after a gruelling Shakespeare conference (I momentarily forgot how to spell "gruelling") and work, so we only stayed for approximately half an hour before dumping out our bad beer in the sink and going home. I'm not better yet, obviously, and sitting in the smoke pit for a few minutes when we first got there wasn't a good idea to begin with, for various reasons. We didn't really know many people there, everybody else was fucked up on various things, and so we went home and curled up in bed with Futurama and sundry. This was all after a splendid dinner with Joy at SPLENDID CHINESE RESTAURANT, which was splendid and played odd music and seemed immortalized in the Nineteen Seventies. I think, on average, a great number of North American Chinese restaurants end up petrified in the Seventies, but I'm not sure why. There was a picture of the Queen up.

Our menu: Six spring rolls, which were very hot. A plate of very good prawn chow mein. A plate of fish fillet in black bean sauce, also excellent. A very spicy dish of scallops in hot garlic sauce, delivered to us atop broccoli. The broccoli was, oddly, technicolour green. It was Kryptonite broccoli. Naturally, my Kryptonian super-powers haven't been working every since. I try Super-Ventriloquism, and whoop! Nothing. I can barely see through glass right now.

Nancy Drew is apparently not enough of a lesbian, but we'll get into that in the next installment of The Nancy Boys, from the point of view of Bess.

Wes Anderson's films are like a series of still photographs, from the early days of the Twentieth Century; those elaborate family portraits, tableaus of frozen affectation rendered on the verge of sepia. Julie Taymor's films are more like expressionistic paintings, expansive and overwhelming with the richness of their colour; last night, we watched Taymor's Frida, and it was an immensely gorgeous film. Sumptuous and surreal - a hand releasing a blue hummingbird during a horrific trolley car accident. Gold dust everywhere. Frida's liasion with Josephine Baker in Paris, overwhelming as the jazz vocals play. Trotsky shot through his own spectacles, sitting on a table beside the bed. I gather this wasn't one of Taymor's "babies" - she was called in to direct at the last minute - but she delivers such beautiful energy to the film! The only issue that stuck out for me was the passage of time, which wasn't handled well; randomly months would pass, and the only indication would be that half-way through the scene, someone's pregnancy would be mentioned. Drunk artist bar fight scenes to music, the most elegantly vicious haircut in history...

Otherwise, I'm reading Angela Carter's Black Venus. Between this book and the movie last night, I am lit up with the literary urge, the desire to write, to dib my pen - as it were - in the collective ink. Unfortunately, both film and book demonstrate to me the vast, unbreachable mountain between me and making genius art - so far in the distance, I can't quite make it out.

I've put myself out onto an Island for the day - five hours ahead of me, all of it spent writing. That's the mission statement for Wednesday. I'm trying to reclaim all that wayward creative spirit and focus it into an iron-clad will.

Midnight picnic to celebrate the Full Moon and Summer Solstice was moved inside to accomodate the rain. Christian made sour cherry clafouti and biscotti. We had brie and croissants and gin-tonics.

Finally, Mike Mignola put out another Hellboy comic book, after two years of other people writing the supporting characters. The Island #1 came out today at the comic shop and I snapped it up, with a weird ghost story following Hellboy's two years spent trapped at the bottom of the sea. Good pulp fun. I'm going to give it a further reading today while I eat lunch and prepare to write, write, write...

Once there was a young man in hill country, who took a lover despite his grandmother's wishes. The old woman was rumoured to have eyes made of lapus lazuli, purchased from a wandering magician in her youth, but kept her wrinkled head hidden beneath a hood and layers of crushed cherry blossom perfume. She warned her grandson, but he brought up a fresh lover from the village anyway, and the family exploded. The arguing lasted all evening.

He took his lover to bed, regardless, and they made love under modest burlap sheets. A fitful, sputtering exchange. The young man was no expert and his lover was impatient, but agonizingly beautiful. The moon bulged; eventually, the man slept.

He awoke, cock's first crow, sunlight everywhere. His beloved was gone; he tasted arbutus, couldn't smell anything, and something sticky and soft ran down his chest. He probed it with his fingers and brought them up to his face - blood. Clotted and dark. Blood around a wide hole dug into his chest, where the heart should have been - there was nothing in its place but the hole with its uneven, wet sides. Organs pushed out of the way. The man wailed.

The lover ran through the village, keeping off the pathways and hiding behind houses. This went on for some hours, until it seemed clear and the pub was in sight. Just beyond the pub was a grove of trees, where the thieving lover met a very tall man with thin black hair that ran in wisps down his neck. Two magpies settled on his shoulders. A travelling alchemist, he claimed, and offered the lover a bottle of potion as payment for the young man's heart, which was locked inside a wooden box. The lover drank the potion and transformed into a wolf, snorting while grey fur blossomed. The wolf took off into the woods to live as beasts do, while the alchemist smiled at the wooden box and cooed at his birds.

That night, the alchemist prepared the heart with exotic herbs and fluids. He ate it at last, with a silver fork and a silver knife he'd traded some magic coins to the Baron's coachman for; he ate in silence, and then whistled until the magpies took off into the clouds.

In the morning, the family found their young man in his bed, his unfinished body changed wholly into a tree, a thick-trunked arbutus that broke through the ceiling and lay roots into the floor. The grandmother let out a small, startled cry. The two magpies flew in through the window, snatching the lapus eyes out of her sockets and disappearing.

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved

It would seem that the construction across the street is done for the day, as far as earth-shattering noises are concerned. Why they have to do all that in the morning is beyond me--

Hitting a bit of a wall with the writing the last day or so, which frustrates me but is merely an obstacle. I'm pretty solidly in favour of writing through a block, even if it seems like all I'm putting out there is meaningless crap. I don't know. I might try to write some poems, or something. Going to hang out with Matt and Joy tonight, that might stir some bones.

Thinking of writing up a review of that Hellboy comic, haven't been able to find anyone's thoughts on it yet, and there's no reason not to put some of my own down on electric-paper.

1. Harvey at Filing Cabinet of the Damned has a look at the Ten Most Harmful Books List published by the conservative journal Human Events. Mostly, they're scared of communism and sexuality. Big surprise. However, Harvey also offers his own list of harmful books. The dangers of unabridged dictionaries...

2. Lying around in your underwear because it's too hot out is wonderful.

3. The plan for the evening: O Brother Where Art Thou?. Expect comments sometime this weekend, along with some on Batman Begins, which I'm seeing tomorrow night.

4. Bottles upon bottles of wine on the patio at Joy and Matt's new place, last night. Excessive drunkness; I worry that I was exclaiming too much again. I worry that I shout things out too often. Three couples hanging out, which was weird, pair-bonding is strange. Raspberries, pineapple, Tom Petty, the hangover sitting on my brain in the morning. But plans for a double feature night of Fear and Loathing with Party Monster loom in the inpenetrable distance...

5. Happiness is singing "Baby got Back" in the shower.

6. Happiness is also text messages from Michael.

7. I think we're going to some kind of faggy dog walk on Sunday? Gay people? Walking dogs? What is this, Springfield? Michael just wants to look at puppies and then bug me to let him have a puppy, which isn't really feasible right now, but he gets so very happy when he sees them.

CALAMITY! Well, all right, minor inconvenience, as the flusher-handle to the upstairs toilet randomly decided to break a little while ago. So I had a minor panic attack while I took off the lid and look inside - the connecting piece that runs from the handle to the actual flushing mechanism has snapped right off. It's floating somewhere down at the bottom right now. Anyway, I sullied my pearl-ensconced poet's hands with the task of manually flushing the toilet, which involved figuring out the basic mechanics of the thing and fiddling around with it. That worked - eventually - and after the initial Science Fair glee wore off, I decided to solve the other all problem somehow. Now, I could call a plumber but that's expensive, so I'm just going to go to the hardware store tomorrow and try to find the appropriate piece, then fix the damned thing myself. What can go wrong? Well, presumably a lot, but I'm going to go for it right up until the toilet explodes!

Batman Begins. Well, I didn't hate it and enjoyed it at the time, certainly. So here's a back down of what I thought of it, good and bad (SPOILERS):

1. Good: Gary Oldman as James Gordon, back when he was just a cop, and not the head of police. Actually he stole the show for me, because managed to completely roll with the mental punch of some guy in a batsuit making contact to take down the big Mafia force in the city, and demonstrated moral strength and awareness in a city otherwise overrun with crime. Oldman got to play an understated but brave character and brought some charm and amusement to him. It makes me long to see him more such roles, and not always as the ridiculous villains of movies like The Fifth Element.

2. Bad: Katie Holmes as Rachel, the loveable perky Assistant District Attorney who's supposed to serve as Bruce Wayne's conscience. Acting? So bad! I found her amusing in Wonder Boys, but here? The character is clearly meant to be intelligent, but still manages to ride the skytrain in the middle of the night through the grim, evil city - by herself - when she's shown with a car earlier and enough sense to be aware of how dangerous the city is. She naturally falls into a trap and any spark of bravery she shows here is deflated by having to be saved by Batman. She bobbles. She doesn't look old enough to have made assistant D.A. She's given horrible dialogue.

3. Good: Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow! He did a really excellent job of being utterly creepy and morally lax as a health care professional. He pulled off being a classic Bat-villain by having a screw loose and a proclivity for dress-up. He's given a solid villainous gimmick - the old stand-by of a fear-toxin - and manages to elude the old standby of the "poisoining the water supply" routine by adding a twist.

4. Bad: Christian Bale as Batman. First off, no humour whatsoever. I think he may have managed a whole two facial expressions. And his Batman is just so-- utterly-- blah. I mean, you don't have to go all the way with the weird, silly shit, but make some effort to have your super-cool superhero character display some emotion other than borderline psychotic constipation. And the cowl looked dumb. Honestly, he's a guy who runs around in a rubber pervert suit with bat-nipples and bat-ears. Certainly, go with the grim, go with the darkness, but you need to put in some colour to stop us from going crazy with it. He's a weird maniac, have a little fun with that.

5. Good: Gotham City as diseased, bulging mass overwrought and weighed down by its own misery. Good use of psychogeography and the cinematography was used effectively; the sets were designed to maximize the dour misery, and they made some effort to explain why the city was so rotten.

6. Bad: Ra's Al Ghul as the main villain. First off, they establish that he's the Batman's primary mentor figure before he becomes Batman, which is just so uninteresting; a cool aspect of Bat-mythology for was always that he went all over the world and studied with the very best in so many fields to achieve what he wanted. Including Lady Shiva, one of the five deadliest people on the planet, who of course had to be cut because GASP - a woman who can fight so well? No, no, no. Ra's has interesting aspects which weren't made use of, like the fact that his name means "Head of the Demon" - which would have helped with the film's themes, and make him more symbolic in his role with the League of Shadows. Plus, he had a talented assassin daughter who, in the comics, had an affair with Batman - something they could have adapted into the movie to make for an interesting romantic subplot rather than the shitty one they came up with for him and Generic Good Girl.

Whew, went off there.

7. Good: Michael Caine's Alfred, period. Hilarious, and meaningful.

8. Bad: "Your father was killed..." et cetera. I seem to remember his mother being there, even if she was given a total of two lines in the entire film. She also died, she was part of his reason for becoming Batman, she must have had some kind of meaningful exchange with her son. She could have been more in charge of Wayne Enterprises kick, perhaps, working with the humanitarian causes more - something. She was, as the movie portrayed her, a trophy wife who produced a child and therefore had no further reason to exist. Did Bruce even remember he had a mother? She was always in the picture with his father, but geez!

9. Good: The bat connection and how it came to be - as well as the idea of Fear - worked well, and was employed without having to resort to cheezy "Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot" lines. Worked well with the overall themes of Fear in relation to the Scarecrow, strengthening that whole plotline. Pity he couldn't have been a more primary villain.

10. Bad: His weird thing about not killing people, except for all those people he killed. He refuses to execute a man, fine, good for him - I'm all about compassion - but he then blows up the building, presumably killing the man in question and a couple hundred Random Ninja? And then goes back to Gotham and kills a lot of police officers in ridiculous car chases?

The movie wasn't altogether horrible, it was decent and fun enough for the most part, but I felt like I was laughing too much at "serious" things. A lot of the time the humour was only in "precious bits" - references to the original set of movies, or the comics - and that doesn't work if you haven't seen that other material. Michael Caine did a good job of bringing humour to the film, but he was marginalized so much. Morgan Freeman was quite strong as Lucius Fox, and was in no way a parody of himself. I often found my biggest complaint as a comic book geek wasn't "that wasn't in the comics," but rather that they ignored a lot of potentially interesting plot bits like Talia Al Ghul in favour of watered down weak plot bits like Rachel, bits which couldn't be explored. They have access to a lot of comic book plots and stories from whole decades that they could adapt and reimagine - making them wholly new, certainly, but not crap. At times they improved upon the myths - exploring why Gotham was the way it was, and why wasn't anybody doing anything - but at the same time they ignored stuff that would have made for a more nuanced movie. I like that the costume wasn't so ridiculous as the post-Burton films, no seething nipples and no codpieces, but the design was a bit off.

11 Questions Ripped from the Headlines (I mean, simultaneously stolen from Jason and Joy)...

1. Name your two worst habits. Which would you rather give up first?

My habit of harshing judging works of art - primarily movies, books, comic books - and ranting on and on about them without respect to other people liking them. My habit of procrastination. I think I'd probably rather give up the procrastination, because I admit to having high standards in art, but would like to get things done once in a while.

2. What is your birthstone? What would you change it to?

Topaz. Wouldn't change it for anything.

3. You have one phone call – use it wisely. Who is it?

Michael, probably to complain that I'm only getting one phone call, and can he please bail me out of jail.

4. Would you rather be richer than anyone, better than everyone, or less encumbered by responsibility?

Less encumbered by responsibility, I think, so I'd have more time to write.

5. Can you play a music instrument? What is your favorite song/melody to play?

I took guitar lessons for a while, but I never wanted to pratice and let's face it - stone tone deaf.

6. What is your blood type? Do you donate blood?

I can't actually remember, but I seem to recall my mother saying it was one of the rarer ones. She said she felt it was very important I donate, but unfortunately I keep having sex with other men - which eliminates me from doing so.

7. If you got stranded on a deserted island, and had only your overnight bag with you…

A block of chocolate chip cookie dough, plenty of blank notebooks and pens, the entire run of James Robinson's "Starman" comic book, my favourite hoodie, clean socks, a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

8. What one CD survived the wreckage (or whatever stranded you)?

Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Airplane over the Sea," or a Nina Simone compilation.

9. What book will you be reading over and over again?

Allen Ginsberg's collected poetry, the big fat red book which can also be used to kill predators. Jeanette Winterson's "Art Objects," a collection of essays.

10. What tee shirt will you be wearing until you’re rescued?

The olive green lightweight clingy one I got for less than a buck.

11. Would you rather find a million dollars or find true love?

The money, I've already got a true love, and that way I could buy him a new camera.