wildcat

1. Wake up, stumble, ten-thirty, ten-thirty. End up watching bad television with Michael while debating the day. Naturally, nobody's made terribly specific plans. Talk to Christian on the phone, vis-a-vis, brunch.

2. Bus schedule madness! Strange odd men who won't stop talking to us, carrying Canadian flags meant for selling on street corners.

3. Milestones, we go to Milestones from brunch. Usual discussion of wait staff attractiveness, I deplore them all for being cookie cutter. Can you tell them apart? I can't, certainly, I can't. Veggie burger with caesar salad.

4. Go to the Marble Slabbery to get ice cream, decide to not get ice cream, wait around for John to show up after getting his coffee, Michael goes to get a coffee, we buy bottles of sangria (Christian = Carolans, John = *cough* fag pop *cough* coolers), wait around while Christian gets cups from the coffee joint; John & Michael go to look at tripods.

5. Revellry in the stone gardens at Beacon Hill Park.

6. Run into a girl who tried to sleep with me a few years ago. Talk too loudly in the baggage shop. Christian and John break off for home.

7. The Japanese market is closed, so we go to Market on Yates to get dinner food. Seriously, it's too trendier-than-thou. Settle on deli things and melba toast.

8. Interlude downtown, in which Michael & I discuss the nature of objectivity versus subjectivity, biases, and the apologia of pseudo-historical account. Inherent racism, sexism, the need to state one's position on the ethnic/gender spectra. Spectra!

9. Pick up Joy from work and walk to her place, meet up with Matt there, various wandering trips out into Oak Bay, drinking too much gin. Discussions of same-sex marriage, and marriage in general. Spain.

10. Walk Michael home and then head through Fernwood back to my place. Try to keep ahead of the rowdy drunk bastards shouting nonsensical things. Adrenal gland fires up. The law of the jungle. The law of the jungle.

11. Pass out haphazardly, exhaustedly, hotly, by about two-thirty, after trying for hours. Hate the world.

Over an exhaustingly greased dinner of cod and chips, with onion rings on the side - from Haultain Fish & Chips - Michael and I watched The Apartment, what just about amounts to a comedy from 1960 with Jack Lemmon as a poor schmuck in perpetual bondage to the higher-ups of an insurance company (he gets promoted for letting them endlessly use his apartment to "entertain" easy girls from all over the company), and Shirley MacLaine as the seemingly strong-willed elevator operator girl who of course collapses down into a sad attempted suicide case. It's bizarre, but fascinating. Among other things, Lemmon's character can afford to live in an apartment in New York for eighty bucks a month. Unheard of, now. The pacing could have been improved in the middle of the action, and after a while I decided that Baxter (Lemmon) was a kind of sink-hole for bad karma; everybody around him manages to succeed while doing terrible things, and all he gets for his trouble are neighbours assuming he's "some kind of sexpot," no action, and terrible-terrible-terrible colds. I enjoyed the cavalier treatment of suicide - not so much that it was a laughing matter, but that the only way to actually talk about it was through humour - the "fingernails holding onto the cliff" as it were. MacLaine did a good job of a strong woman nevertheless unbalanced by the times, the office environment, and having "bad luck" with men. It's very much a product of its time, but some of the attitudes still manage to ring a bell...

Otherwise, the Pride Parade was today, we showed up early and shared a bit of breakfast at the Banana Belt before the two of us staked a claim outside the Legislature. It was nice just to watch what amounted to a very short parade, Daniel showed up, we met up with the boys, ate some food. Ran into people we don't really like talking to all the time, but I got to meet a really cute two-month-old baby with the little toesies, and Vanessa was there - haven't seen here in six months or so. We're going to get together for a coffee on Tuesday afternoon, I think. Eventually it got to be too hot, and Michael's back has been acting up, so we exited stage left and I came home and have futzed around not accomplishing anything.

In the middle of laundry, going to look into some dinner - probably pasta with vegetable sauce - and then I'll watch Touch of Pink. Might do some writing afterward. You know, to keep up the muscles.

K-Punk talks about Batman Begins. [Via]
Nice to see someone else pointing out the absence of motherhood, and he does a pretty good summing up about the beginnings of grim-and-gritty Batman and why I hate Frank Miller's comic books.

After a vacant four hour shift at the library - screaming children make any imaginary man-ovaries collapse further down into microscale until they effectively cease to exist - I took two buses in the heat and humidity, past the noisy expanse of asphalt-laying and construction work across the street from my house, and dropped off the phone bill at the post office. Bought some bread and tuna fish, and now I'm at home with plans in the direction of a tuna melt for lunch.

Otherwise, I'm writing today. I've had a scene sitting in my rantbook for nearly a week now that I haven't touched, even though it expands in my head to be the opening to a story. So I'm going to type it out and make some adjustments - flipping the genders of two characters - and then keep going with the second scene. It's been nearly a month since I finished up "The Inexplicable Face," so I really have no excuse for not being in the middle of another story yet. I don't have some highly-paid Metchosin resident assigning me deadlines for short fiction or - gasp - longer fiction. It's all on me, this is what I want to do with my life, so I'd better stop fucking around and actually write.

I need a name for a jazz-honky tonk band. I don't even know if you can have a jazz-honky tonk band.

Working on the short story in fits and bounds. I'm not sure I have a title yet, but I'm not sure I have enough story to name it yet. It is more foetus than newborn-like. Metaphorical-wise.

Yesterday was Matt and Caroline's birthdays, they've both succeeded in making an entire ellipse around the sun without accidentally collapsing into a black hole or such. Communication is spotty with Caroline at the moment, so I didn't get a chance to wish her a good one, but Michael and I went over to Joy and Matt's for a party, drank some wine, nibbled chips, talked to Semi-Lemmy and Steffo. Saw Morgan and Colin, Michael got some of Sambuca's fur in his eye and we ended up going home before 11, which was nice. Slept and slept and slept--

Scribbled out another paragraph of the story, which seems to be called "The Water-Logged Spectre," but only in the most working of working titles. I think it'll end up being the band name, whatever that is - this one, somewhat crucial detail eludes me. I need to think on this. Tomorrow, the plan is to write for at least four or five hours, with breaks to eat and read. I'm also going to go for at least an hour's walk, and phone my father about the issue of him taking a flight on Sunday and his visit for a few days. I'm thinking I'll get up around nine and be working away by ten. The neo-fascist commandants I've imagined into my closet shall stream forth to slap me with the butts of their guns and make me type away.

I've got four characters, plus the ghost, to deal with. This might end up being a bit longer than usual, but I can handle that. Janey Mildew is rather a compelling character, as is Carolina. Jimmy and Roy are - as yet - cyphers, although Jimmy is supposed to be a hippie Jimmy Olsen for all intents and purposes. In my head, anyway.

There may be musings on Lenore and its immediate surroundings - the county needs a name. Lenore County doesn't quite work. It has to encompass a few different little towns and hamlets. The nature of the land is called into question.

If all goes well, I'll be over on Salt Spring for a night to clear my head of this thing called civilization.

Started reading Ian McEwan's The Daydreamer, which seems at times to be a fairly accurate portrayal of things. I think at times the return from daydream back into reality is a bit too obvious - yes, of course, we get that it's a daydream - but the imagination displayed is amusing and it turned my clockwork a few degrees.

I just finished rereading the first Authority graphic novel, by Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch. Think of the Justice League as bleeding-heart liberals who have decided to actually use their great powers to change the world, rather than maintaining the status quo. And, of course, having to make tough decisions and becoming bastards while they do it. I think, oddly, my favourite moment comes when the Midnighter - who is, essentially, a duplicate Batman, designed to be an impossibly good fighter - gives Apollo (the local equivalent of Superman) a peck on the cheek and cements physically that they're lovers; it's right before Apollo runs off to do something dangerous, and they spend most of the time up until then needling each other ("Shut up. You whine like an old woman."). I mean, sure, they weren't allowed to show the kiss as anything more than a peck, but it was a pretty daring moment (Superman & Batman, sitting in a tree), and this was before they eventually became stupid with later creative teams. But man - a well-done comic that made a decent amount of money, and the only actual relationship in it was a gay one. Pretty much everyone else ended up debauched. And another member was a Tibetan buddhist by the name of Swift, who was dealing with her own pacificism and the question of Doing Violent Things in the Name of Change. With a female leader, and decent power levels for everyone.

Too bad the whole thing spawned a fucking series of pretender "Widescreen Action" comics with storylines so decompressed that by issue three So-and-So has almost made it from the kitchen to the bathroom. Almost.

You know, I still want to make comics at some point.

Jeanette Winterson on James Bond:
"Bond's not the helpless male here - he's a girl who's trying to distract his boss with a cup of coffee, while figuring out how to get the lover out of the house. With his floppy blond hair falling in his eyes, and his games with a magnetic teaspoon, all he needs is a pair of kitten heels, and he's Marilyn Monroe."

The story's slow, but I'm on page five so things don't look too tragic. Feeling helplessly trapped in one perspective for two long, I'm switching points of view like a maniac!

Managed to accomplish everything I wanted to before I leave for work this morning, although I still need to find time / energy to go grocery shopping. Wake up and say good morning to the fear, shower (water is good, water is cleansing, water wakes me up), stumble around in underwear finding clothing (brief flash of frustration with wardrobe), socks-socks-socks, tidy up the kitchen and put some laundry on. Need to remember to shuffle that into the dryer after work tonight.

We were supposed to go to Salt Spring tonight, for an evening, and then come back tomorrow in time for my father's flight - but he's apparently flying down today instead, so he's meeting up with me at work and Michael will come shortly thereafter and I have no idea what we're doing tonight.

My father arrived yesterday, while I was at work; it was one of those particularly long, dull Saturday shifts where the heat is pounding and nothing seems to move. His flight got in at 4 o' clock and then he took a airport shuttle to Commonwealth Place, found me and dumped his stuff in the break room.

Michael picked us up and after dropping things off at home, the three of us went for dinner at the Fan Tan Cafe (site of the Great Leverman Floods) and then ice cream at the Marble Slabbery -- I had double chocolate with raspberries blended in, my dad had vanilla with blackberries, Michael had honey-flavoured ice cream with raspberries.

We headed off in search of Folkfest stuff and encountered a bizarre sequence: dozens of people riding Harleys, dirt bikes, Yamahas, et cetera, down Government Street. I felt like I was in that early Marlon Brando movie with the motorcycle gang. They were flashing their headlights and some leather-clad woman was firing a bubble gun into the crowd, while cops on motorcycles buzzed by at about three times the speed of the rest of the group -- presumably to "keep order," but it came across as a bit fascist, not to mention dangerous. After about ten minutes of this a fire engine rolled by with a very hot fireman up top, waving to the crowd. After that, we dispersed.

There was a marumba band playing over by the wax museum, hawking CDs and trying to flirt with the crowd but utterly failing -- too full of themselves, and their bad rendition of "I would walk Five Hundred Miles," which they played over again, and we left to walk back around to where the mainstage of Folkfest was, where things were too busy and costly to bother. We walked back to the car in Chinatown and headed to the store where one size fits all -- Dad and Michael both got beer (Guiness and Herman's, respectively) and I picked up a mickey of Bombay Sapphire for myself. Couple drinks at home and then it was bedtime.

Banana Belt this morning -- I had the smoked salmon omelette with the brie and the fruit, with a croissant -- and I think about four or five people have pointed out in the past day or so that my father and I look alike. Weird, I think we look completely different. Went to London Drugs so Dad could pick up a replacement lens cap for one of his lenses -- it was lost in the shuffle to get off the plane -- and then headed to Ivy's Bookshop on Oak Bay Avenue.

Pops bought me a fresh rantbook, as I'm almost done this current one, and Michael bought a book I pointed out to him about the history of group delusions and quackery.

And then...groceries. A bag of limes to go with that Bombay.

Probably heading out to see African gum boot dancing and Ladysmith Black Mambazo later.

My dad and I went to see Bewitched this evening, after eating ice cream and listening to Selections from the Crazy Homeless Old Man Orchestra. The birds! The birds!

It's not a bad film. I was quite taken with Kidman as Isobel, she did a pretty decent job even if she overuses the "verging on little girl" voice which is supposed to represent naivete (because apparently we're incapable of getting that from the actual characterization and development and such), and I think she carries the film well - the best parts being when she allows herself to splurge on magic and becomes a Vengeance Goddess. But, while I quite enjoyed her and what they did with her character, it was moderately ruined whenever Will Farrell was on camera, being Will Farrell; he wasn't just "goofy," as a Darren character should be, but manic and frustrating to watch. This wasn't all the time, but it certainly dominated his character, Jack, and he in effect became a parody of his own character - Jack is self-centred, and suddenly the movie becomes absorbed in Jack. He did deliver some really funny lines well, when he wasn't trying to overwhelm us.

Shirely Maclaine and Michael Caine both did a strong job - as usual - but weren't given enough to do. Jason Schwartzmann was key as Jack's assistant, and I sat there thinking he should have been the male lead, rather than Farrell; he would have been able to accomplish the part with an air of befuddled anxiety rather than grotesque histronics, and for some reason I think it would have been a funnier movie.

The beginning beats the ending hands down not for any particular plot concern but because by the end they realized they had this plot to adhere to and suddenly had to rush all the characters to the right spots - it wasn't neccessarily out of character, especially because the movie's set in Hollywood, but they had to employ a deus ex machina (which is actually one of the best parts of the film, even though its a deus ex machina). It didn't have any overriding themes of conformity versus individuality (they were there, but in the end sort of irrelevant) so much as it had a post-modern (and cue synchronized projectile vomiting) theme of selecting a narrative for your life (and cue film prof BH delivering a Joseph Campbell lecture for three quarters of an hour). They did some interesting things - like securing Isobel as the maiden of a Maiden-Mother-Crone triptych with her friends Marie (the mother, Mother Mary, cute) and Nina (The Crone, with a Murder/Castration complex), or Uncle Arthur & Aunt Clara who stole they show for me but partially just because they realized the inherent ridiculousness of the situation and were all PoMo and shite.

They dropped a pretty random red herring and it went nowhere, but IN RETROSPECT, I like that they did the proverbial gun in the first scene that didn't go off. At times they didn't seem to understand their own story world rules, but at other times they just threw their hands up and admitted that such rules are utterly contrived anyway (Uncle Arthur: "Do you want the short version or the long version? Just so you know, the long version's in Aramaic."), and honestly, Will Farrell trying to do a romantic scene makes me want to shove a pencil up my nose. Well, actually, his nose.

The soundtrack made a lot of the movie, other than the regrettable decision of pairing Will Farrell being sad with REM's "Everybody Hurts" -- I'm sorry, I can't actually feel sorry for him.

The previews were all geared toward middle-aged heterosexual white women, nothing terribly interesting to me -- although I'm tempted to go see Elizabeth Town to watch Orlando Bloom make out with Kirsten Dunst, but I'd have to bring earplugs to prevent internal hemorrhaging. There's some slightly interesting Jim Carrey/Tea Leoni vehicle about a couple of suburban career criminals, but then I realized it was probably going to be crap.

1. Courtesy of Michael: Fox News bigotry, which just scares the shit out of me. As scary as this.

2. Warren Ellis provides a DVD commentary for Desolation Jones #1, one of the weirder comics I've read lately. Think of The Prisoner, only set in L.A. instead of the Village.

3. The coming attractions before the movie last night all emphasized the American Dream (white picket fences, pools in the backyard, money), learning valuable lessons about family (Cameron Diaz as the slutty sister to pseudo-ugly duckling Toni Colette, who looks thinner than Frances McDormand in Laurel Canyon), and the fact that women should really make sure they're in a committed relationship before they hit menopause (presumably so they still have time to crank out some children for the inevitable next war). Sentimental vibe all over the place, absolutely nobody of colour to be seen, and certainly no homosexuals. At one point I would have expected to see movies like The Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Practical Magic previewed with Bewitched, both sporting the witchy/womanly power vibe and the idea of friendship bonds between middle-aged women, but they no longer fit with the ultra-nostalgic 50s Americana vibe perpetuated in these previews, and emphasize non-violent solutions and independance -- Practical Magic notably pulls in the Wiccan rede of threefold karma, which might not do so well when "police actions" are being made on foreign territories. Even the Gay Best Friend stereotype has apparently been eradicated because women are presumably supposed to fear us faggots coming in and seducing their husbands to our filthy ways and then marrying them. I know I'm just espousing bleeding heart liberal lefty ideology and all, but don't republicans ever get fucking bored of their movies? Manipulating a populace worried about war with the modern day equivalent of Meet Me in Saint Louis bores me.

Jimmy gave me a horrible haircut; some telling bit of information was somehow lost between us. I prefer the Korean barber or the young Greek guy, they give superb cuts. Superb. It's short at the sides - great - but too long on top, it hangs wrong. I wanted it short all over. All. Over.

Boys' Night out planned, pool at Peacock's. Assuming Michael ever makes it over here, he seems to have lost his keys again.

Tomorrow is New Comics Day, I'll head over to Curious after work. Looking forward to fresh issues of Desolation Jones and The Manhattan Guardian. Maybe something else exciting will be around, but we'll see.

My, what a tedious entry. If you examined my brainwaves in detail, you'd get one of those "The time will be 10:00am Pacific Standard Time, following beep and five seconds of silence" messages you hear on CBC Radio, or possibly an old multi-coloured test pattern flashed on TV at five in the morning.

You won't want to go into the woods, not really, who does? The woods are dark, but they're not silent; the scuffling of feet, rustling trees, the rush of heavy breath over leaves, the click of joints cracked by the Big Bad Wolf, the dragon, Baba Yaga's chicken-legged house. Don't go into the woods. Don't go into the woods.

It's always the same woods, the same looming vegetation drugged with shadows and settling ground. Stone. Everyone comes here eventually; it's all the same woods, or a piece of it - the piece lodged inside your brain. They say there is a pathway through the woods, a safe road to protect you on your journey - as long as you don't stray from it. People always stray from it, into the dark. Always; there isn't a path at all, just beaten down tracks that afford no protection.

Nothing is sacred, not even beetles scuttling under foot. All of it, everything there, everything wants to eat you. The woods is the Big Bad Wolf. To enter is to step into a waiting mouth, over top of slopping tongue, past curved teeth - how like a scimitar's blade - down into the gullet of the beast. Danger breeds here, in the woods, in the Wolf's stomach.

Don't want to be here, on the border of the woods? Everyone comes, without choice, out of necessity. You can't help but step between those opening stones, the bending trees, because there is something in there you will need one day, something help firm between a witch's toes or within a dragon's treasure clutch.

How many times will you make this path for yourself, imagine it in front of you as a guide, a reassurance as you step into certain death, night, the forgotten language laid out before you? How many times will go seek something in this vastness? How many times will you meet Old Tree Men and their murdering children, dryads bleeding chlorophyll and begging for blood? What draws you there?

Is it your own heart, extracted at birth by fairies, left to seed in a hill and breathe devil roses into life? Bluebeard's egg? A gingerbread house to sate your seething, empty belly? Is it love, or sex, or suicide? Is it the cold, pale smell of sweat on a shoulder, metal hitting metal, that mask you wore once to a Halloween party? Is it an old woman's eye, or a farmer's iron pitchfork?

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved.

Naturally, I went into The Fantastic Four expecting it to be utterly crap, sub-average boogers, and such. I was...hesitant. I was actually pleasantly surprised, and walked away from the movie feeling quite happy that some things were done well, even if a lot of the movie didn't quite live up to its potential. I think there is a problem among the Marvel Comics movies, that they're writing for the sequel - because at this point it's a given. The first movie is more like the set-up, and hopefully the sequel proves to actually follow through on some things. It's similar to a problem held by actual comic books - writing for the trade paperback collection, so that the monthly books end up as pages after pages of slow-moving decompressed sequences, wherein you might end up with half the actual content is, say, Batman walking down the stairs to the Batcave. Gawd.

I think in the end that I prefer the Spider-Man movies more, and the X-Men movies have the advantage of some really solid performances (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, obviously) mixed in with some bad ones (James Marsden, yawn, Halle Berry -- please kill me). Fantastic Four suffered a similar fate, in that I walked away absolutely in love with two of the characters/actors, and wishing a painful stabby death to the three other principals. Why?

1. Chris Evans as Johnny Storm, the Human Torch. Okay, so part of it - an infinitesemal fragment - of it was that Evans is utterly hot, but that's part of it, because Johnny's got to be a heartthrob. However, he practically revelled in the role, and they wrote Johnny as if he actually really enjoyed having super-powers and flying and catching on fire. He was funny, horny, enjoyed what he was doing, hyperactive and impulsive, and worked well as a prankster with a developing friendship with Ben Grimm - he's insensitive but loveable. Evans delivered a solid performance, and went all out for it, going so far as the spend fifteen minutes of the film wearing nothing but a pink ski-bunny jacket around his waist after an accident with his powers while skiing.

2. Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm, the Thing. The Thing is really the only member of the Four that should be a whiny bitch. Really, he's the one that turns into a giant lump of clay, stony-faced and weighing too much to actually make it onto a barstool. He is isolated from humanity, his ex-girlfriend, his family -- and Chiklis pulls all of this off, as well as the essential paradox of the character, that he's a grumpy sarcastic bastard rather than a depressive. He and Johnny develop a strong interaction that propels most of the film, the "sitcom sequences" when the team is actually just a dysfunctional family with super-powers. The make-up designs for the Thing were good, in that they veered away from the comic book but worked with Chiklis's body and facial structure to create an interesting visual.

And the bad?

3. Ioan Gruffud as Reed Richards, Mister Fantastic. He looked uncomfortable in his role, had very little chemistry with his love interest, Susan, and came across as snivelling all the time. He's supposed to be the smartest guy in any room, ever. The CGI for his shape-shifting powers looked awkward, although they did manage to demonstrate the slightly disgusting nature of reshaping one's organs and body. Boring city. They could have replaced him with a robot.

4. Jessica Alba as Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman. Weak actress. Yes, emphatically, the Invisible Woman must be a hottie. Yes. She and her brother Johnny are supposed to be incredibly hot. But you know what? There are plenty of actresses out there with looks and acting chops, you know? And I didn't really like how they made her so ineffectual as a character, when the comic's Susan has developed into a real strong character; I would have preferred they make her more clearly the corporate businesswoman that she's supposed to be, concerned with putting a positive spin on their transformations and coining their codenames -- Johnny does that -- to make them celebrities in order to prevent them from being called freaks. Particularly Ben. In the comics, Susan is essentially the head of the "business" side of the Four, the FF Inc. side; while Reed patents gadget and technology after gadget and technology, she actually handles the accounts and keeps them in the black. Alba was wooden on the screen. The romantic scenes with Reed were laughable, and not in a pleasant belly-laugh way. She and Reed whine about being sick, having symptoms rather than powers, and what? No fun? Bitching and complaining about the fact that you can turn invisible whenever you want and generate forcefields? Bah! I will give Alba props for doing some fairly amusing semi-naked scenes to rival Evans's, and I can say that neither men nor women are unequally objectified.

5. Julian McMahon as Victor Von Doom, or theoretically Doctor Doom. They never actually call him that. Which is really too bad, because this movie had the potential to be the Anti-Batman Begins; Johnny & Ben antics, sidled with the goofy villain name Doctor Doom and being ridiculously funny. I like that he's basically an arrogant bastard who's always wanted to show Reed up, that worked fine, but they had to tie him into their origin because - hey - that's the formula for superhero movies now. He's like Lex Luthor's obnoxious cousin. Some fairly generic transformation sequences and powers (oo, electrical blasts and magnetic thingees, like Magneto does, only shittier), a tacked on pseudo-romantic rivalry with Reed over Susan, and they telegraph the transformation with all the metal statues, masks, and such. His name is fucking Von Doom. Have a little fun with it. Geez!

We see the FF start to become celebrities, check. Ben meets the future love of his life, check. I could have done with some reference to Spider-Man, since they all operate out of the same city and the cool thing about Marvel was that they always met up with each other, but whatever. CGI was decent for the most part and by the end of the film the four were working in unison and doing fun things like funnelling water through Reed at Doom. Susan got a nose-bleed from containing a nova-blast with her force-field, a good detail in my mind.

Now, maybe, the sequel might actually be really, really good!

Invigorating phone-to-phone with Matthew in Vancouver, followed by a paragraph of my novella. Rather creatively orgasmic at the moment, with expectations high for personal success. Expected inspirational sources for my novella? Bollywood, Lovecraft, transgendered culture, transhumanist culture, the 1917 Russian Revolution, petticoat punishment, Emma Peel & John Steed, acomoclitics, veil fetishism, Nick & Nora Charles, Charlie's Angels, Tibet, Kenyan big game hunting. For a short list. The plot, as usual, will be incidental.

Plans for the August/July Long Weekend: Work on Saturday, followed by a late ferry to Vancouver for the Pride Parade the next day, with the real plan for attack being a pronged assault on the art galleries of Vancouver, and more specifically, the new museum exhibit on Rodin. Also, probably, drinks with Matthew to provide the expected mind-altering substance. I'm really looking forward to the museum trip to expand my mind again. I'm aching to be gallery-bound.

Otherwise, hope to write with the Mad Typewriter Gang on Tuesday, going to see Willy Wonka next weekend. I'm intending to reinstate the hour-a-day writing rule for the next week or two to get myself organized again after a couple days of frustrated non-writing.

So, maybe Lost Highway was a bad choice for late on a Monday night when I really needed to be able to sleep afterward. It's a really, really great movie, but DEAR GOD am I never showing that to Michael. I do believe I clutched a pillow and whimpered whenever the Man in Black was on screen. WHIMPERED. As usual, Lynch's musical choices make his movies work. I think I prefer the the Balthazar Getty sequences to the Bill Pullman ones, but there's really no question that Lynch is very, very good at making creepy dark sequences where you just want to scream at the characters to turn on the lights. The prison scenes dragged for a bit, so I was quite happy to be embroiled in the noir plot. Patricia Arquette was the tops.

Last night was pretty groovy - dinner with Michael and Christian at Koto, followed by ice cream, followed by a trip through the inner harbour, followed by drinks at Swans with Jay, Steph, Matt and Joy. The waitress was a bit brusque, but what are you going to do?

Steven at Peiratikos talks about Mulholland Drive, which is fairly timely as we watched Lost Highway a couple days ago. Thoughts and digressions, behind the cut. Expect spoilers, of course.

Bam! Andrew S. is visiting from Vancouver, an ice cream log has been purchased and now sits like an undiscovered thought in the deep-freeze. Everything operates at least halfway up to the speed of light, so THOUGHTS POUR STREAMINGLY GOLDEN FROM THIS BRAIN ORIFICE:

1. Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton iteration, on Friday. Really, really enjoyed it other than the boring panoramic Danny Elfman mood music that is in every since Burton film. Johnny Depp worked very well, the imagination was top knotch, and the adjustments made to the adaptation succeeded in adding some depth to Wonka's character. Afterwards, dessert and drinks at Moxie's with Steff, Jay, Christian, John, and Michael - served by some dull surfer "stud" with one of those weird rubber/elastic wrist bands everybody's wearing, and about two pounds of collagen in place of his brain. I had a Sexual Trance.

2. The fuck is up with those wrist bands, anyway? Is this the new candy bracelet?

3. Interview on Tuesday at the main branch of the library for an auxiliary clerical job. The job will be a double-edged sword - more pay but basically "on call" hours until I secure an actual position somewhere, assuming they hire me for it. I plan on wearing the Pin-Striped Suit.

4. My boyfriend is beautiful.

5. The Victoria Art Gallery today with Michael, Christian and Andrew; exhibit on Meiji Japan and General Idea's works - Esque sex-fest to be forthcoming, as the General Idea stuff fired off a lot of my brain. I'm inspired for the Johnny & Teiresisas novella. There was a whole room devoted to the an artist's running for mayor of Vancouver as "Mister Peanut" - with the paper mache costume - in 1974. Delightful postmodern travelling collection as well; Marcel Dzama and Jermaine Koh.

6. Six dollar Cindy Sherman photography book. Prepare to be sexed.

After a nerve wracking four-hour shift this morning and a very hot bus ride downtown, I've been and gone through the clerical interview I had this afternoon. I think it went relatively smoothly, but I won't hear back from them until the end of the week or until the beginning of next week. As soon as I got home, I stripped off the Pinstripes and went back to shorts. I'd murder for a cold beer right now. Murder.

Aside: snide comments don't help anybody get out from underneath the nebulous and backwards idea of a single people / couple divide. Really, tack it on with the War of the Sexes in the "Us Versus Them" category.

Tonight: dinner with Joy, some light Value Pillaging, followed by drinks with the writers and possibly Michael if he's finished helping Daniel move the last few bits over to Cook Street.

Meringue sends her love, darlings!

On Sunday night, put together a fairly impromptu modelling session with Andrew and Christian; while there were quite a few in the end, I was savage in my cutting away excess. The biggest frustration with the shoot was the finnicky light that led to a lot of blurred shots. Gave me a chance to flex my photography muscles again, which I haven't done for a little while. Get me ready to take shots while over in Vancouver for the parade and Rodin next weekend.

Seem to have fallen into a nappy black hole with Michael, on my living room couch. Had several weird dreams that involved cooking or something.

Anyway. We're going to shuffle over to his place for pizza and maybe we'll rent a movie or something.

New comics this week: Superman and Batman continue to sound disturbingly like a gay couple in Superman/Batman #21, Hellboy: The Island #2 continues to be some kind of mish-mashed Book of Revelations, and Fantastic Four #529 was good, but failed to have very much of the Thing or the Human Torch in it, or Invisible Woman.

Need to remember to phone people back promptly. I'm such a dick.

Enjoying the Romeo & Juliet soundtrack I picked up for four bucks at Value Village the other night. It's this weird time-trip backward into high school. Shirley Manson sexes me like that ex-girlfriend you haven't seen since prom, who drags you behind the curtains for a spot of rumpy-pumpy, which maybe isn't as good as you remember it being, but certainly scratches an itch.

BUT THIS, MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL THINGS: I got the clerical job at the library. This is a step up for me, jumping from about nine bucks an hour to fifteen, and I'll no longer be limited to one branch but instead drift like winds to all branches. My schedule will be gone in favour of on-call status, and it will depend on people taking sick time or vacation or having need of extra hands. It will be scary, it will be like stepping off the cliff edge when you can't remember if you've brought your parachute pack or heli-pack. Anyway, I'll do that for a few months until some permanent positions open up and if I'm confident enough I can start applying to be stationed somewhere. A few clerks at BH already booked me for a shift or two in October, so the future may be hazy but not darkened Sauron-like. Plus, I'm made the agreement with myself - I'm always bargaining with myself, I'm practically split in twain - to write hardcore whenever I'm not working. The Fear is less likely to molest me in that situation.

But on the whole, I'm positive and uplifted.

Next up, we're going to start planning out what is needed for grad school.

Two days in Vancouver, back on Monday night...