wildcat

Last night, finally, I got to see Serenity. I actually really enjoyed it, though, so my ability to write a review was castrated immediately. In fact, Michael liked it, having never seen an episode of Firefly, the Joss Whedon show that the movie continues on from. A female character manages to potentially hook up with someone without being killed off. Whedon gets to play with his prodigy slayer girl archetype again. Pretty, pretty actors. Well done CGI. Really inventive use of structural techniques and transitions that continues from what was on the show. There were a few slight plotting errors, and some of the action sequences got a bit out of control, editing-wise, but for the most part it was a really good sci-fi flick. Cowboys in space.

1. Well, it was only a matter of time: Michelle's coming over tomorrow night to show three different people the place and interview them with Danielle and I. We know my feelings on this. We know. We'll see. I know Michelle's been getting a lot of calls about the place, but she plans to screen some of the potentials out.

2.Need to air out my room tomorrow while I'm at working, it stinks of garlic and humous right now.

3. After I finish Nights at the Circus, I'm firing into The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by Gertrude Stein.

4. Originally, there was going to be some point to this post, but it seems to have degenerated into yet another notational checklist of random facets of my life. "What thoughts I have of you, tonight, Walt Whitman..." I need to extract myself from my clothes and climb into bed for the purpose of writing and - well - sleeping. Night has slathered itself over the city like oily moisturizer. Ah: to find the hidden seam along my body and pull like so, my body emerging haloed only by itself, shimmering and blistering with lightning, vulnerable at last under the yellowing light of the bathroom, mirrored, revealed for toilet. My skin sloughed onto the floor, coolling against linoleum after hours piled on hours up against my body, heating up. My body to be scrubbed, soaped, scraped, fine-tuned.

But really. I must remember that people are people too, even when they are rude, pointlessly indignant, and refuse to be responsible for themselves. And my body continues to fall apart, all those little bits dropping off, off, off into uneven piles on the bland grey carpet and my eyelashes get caught at funny angles. For "funny," read "insensitive." O, cruel mechanisms of human body! I ate samosas for lunch but there was nothing flavourful about them, merely too much curry and a flat, dead expanse of flavour - the punishment of a plugged up nose.

Needless to say, Meringue's at work with me today, trying to shake martinis while I'm on desk, ready to spout off a very sharp Honey should the need arise; too bad she can't watch the desk for me when my body drives me on to the bathroom for the latest organic conflict. It has been, as of today, one week since I've had a drink and Meringue very much wants to sit down with a twixer of Bombay betwixt her lengthy legs. She is a getaway queen without a car: no quick exit when things get hairy. She's being, in short, a bitch.

Meanwhile, in a curious case of parallel pathology, I know too many people who have had this horrible cold without having had contact with each other or me. This concerns me, this multiple-strained virus, making itself known. The first cold of the season, someone said this morning.

As usual, I missed spots while shaving.

One of the best photographs I've ever taken, with some photoshop help from the lover.

1. Lotus Pond for breakfast: soy balls, turnip cakes, chow mein. Steamed broccoli and spicy tofu. It is quite difficult to quantify the intrinsic beauty of a turnip cake; it does not, as it stands, sound at all flavourful, sensual, tongue-spastic. This is a necessary flaw.

2. The library has a copy of The Witches, starring Anjelica Huston, on DVD. I borrowed it because Michael has never seen it and I've never been able to find a copy on DVD - I know, I know, the Consumer's Tragedy. One of my favourite kid's books, adapted. Anjelica Huston pulling off her face to reveal the real face underneath.

3. While the story about my dad sits and gestates before I come back and do another round of editing, here's the title for the next one: "The Girl Who Slept Under the Piano." I have only a few snatches (heh, snatch) written as yet, but I'm looking forward to this one.

4. Conversed at length with Danielle and her friend Dan tonight, about all kinds of shit. We have a third roommate coming: his name is Mark, he studied English Honours in New Brunswick and has the requisite accent. He's not in school right now, but plans to do his Masters in English shortly. The interviews are over.

5. The new design is the result of Michael and I playing around on the computer for too long. He is, I'm sorry, a wonder. Nothing less than a miracle. Anyone tries to get their hands on his hot ass, they answer to me.

6. By "Answer to me," I mean: "Fuck off, bitch, and get your own damned sandwich."

7. I'm feeling a lot better. Expect wide spread destruction as Godzilla-style Wildcat consumes everything in his path and boils Englishmen in their own blood with atomic laser eyes.

8. Bwow.

Derived from Michael, who derived it from Joy.

1. Something that is red:
The small treasure-chest where I keep all of my change. Except for the pennies, which go in a jar beside the stairs. Also: Allen Ginsberg: Collected Poems 1947-1980.

2. Something that is shiny:
The Buddha, on my bookshelf. Also: crinkly bubble-pack foil from the cold medication.

3: Something that is ugly:
The pile of laundry left on my bed, waiting to be put away. Also: the pile of student loan repayment papers on my bed, waiting for me to go through them in greater depth. The monthly payments as they stand for the federal loan are ungodly, and I have to deal with that. I'm going to the bank on Friday.

4. Something that is made of wood:
My secrets box, or jewelry box, or whatever it is. I've had it for a very long time. It has hidden things inside.

5. Something that is sharp:
Nail clippers.

Image for the day: Teiresias Jones parachuting into action with a five-thousand-dollar black miniskirt on and a belly full of estrogen pills. Originally going to go with a German industrial song in the background, but now I think Edith Piaf remixed into house music would be more suitable for the event. The decadent spy fetish clicked back on at around three o'clock this afternoon.

In my 2nd year fiction workshop someone idiotic felt that the Spies suffered from "gay characters as shock value" syndrome, but that was his response to everything I wrote, regardless of whether or not gay people were actually in it. Neither Johnny Damocles nor Teiresias Jones are gay - Johnny is, in simplest labels bisexual. Teiresias is transgendered and not necessarily gay - biological and psychological sex versus sexual attraction. it gets more complicated for both. I prefer them both as ultra-sexuals. To engage in copulation with either, regardless of your or their gender (at that particular moment), is to be touched by the divine.

Anyway, I'm reading an Aeon Flux comic that inspires me, and Teiresias Jones is caught in the gravity of falling out of an unmarked plane with no ties to any nationalistic, bordered airspace, her pores opened and screaming with coke up her nostrils and a fine Scotch down her throat. It does not matter what the Spies imbibe: they are always at diamond clarity.

My cold's going away and I'm heading downtown for work shortly - five to nine shift at Central. Crazy people everywhere.

Listening to Tricky's album Vulnerable, including a cover of the Cure's "Love Cats."

Picked up the first two issues of Fell, written by Warren Ellis with art by Ben Templesmith. They were each two bucks and forty cents Canadian: this is a new experiment, cheaper comics (Cheaper? By today's standards, yes). They're each only eighteen pages long rather than than the usual twenty-four, but there aren't any ad pages and each story is generally self-contained beyond the setting and the main character, Richard Fell, as well as some regular supporting cast types. There isn't an over-arching plot. It has the staples of Ellis comics, nasty individuals doing horrible things to each other, weird science elements and odd cultural references that demonstrate obscure research. They're also quite good, with the stories being "clean" and smooth (not nice, but polished). The art takes a bit of getting used to; Templesmith favours hyper-expressionism and caricature with small bursts of realism when you don't expect it. Richard Fell is far less of a "hardboiled" main character than Ellis traditionally writes; he isa detective character who enjoys a drink, but he's presented as being the fish out of water, a normal cop sent into Snowtown, the "feral city" - the proverbial bad part of town over the bridge. Snowtown as a setting is quite provocative, the urban decay angle perked me up a bit. Hard things that are difficult to read about come up - the second issue, in particular, deals with some brutal tendencies of historical Cambodian culture. It's worth a read, and I enjoyed the compressed, self-contained short story aspect of it; the fact that it was in a pulp crime genre rather than typical spandex fare; and that there was a push to make it more affordable while costs for comics rise.

Also picked up Aeon Flux #1, the first issue of a mini-series tied into the new movie coming out, starring Charlize Theron. I wasn't sure what I was expecting: the some total of my Flux experience is the five minutes of the cartoon I saw at two in the morning in the summer heat of my puberty. The story of the comic is semi-interesting, scripted by Mike Kennedy; it sets up what to expect, I suppose, from the flick when it comes out - some basic rules for the world. It isn't much like the cartoon was, from what I've read, but it's not bad. The art is smooth and sexy and suitably surreal - done by Timothy Green II. Not bad, it's a fun comic and it appeases the desire for sexy spies and assassins. Aeon's outfit isn't nearly as weird or ridiculous as it was on the animated cartoon, which is too bad. Normally I wouldn't buy a tie-in like this, but the art was intriguing and I'm curious about the film...

Showed Michael The Witches last night. I think, for the most part, it holds up - the camera work looks out of date, the special effects are low budget, but the story holds up and is proof of how much of a genius Roald Dahl was. You have to understand: I saw this first time when I was young, when I'd never seen Anjelica Huston before. I was entranced by her, her upswept hair and the unique flourish of her cheekbones. That jawline. That faux accent, the body language. I was enraptured, you see, with the Grand High Witch.

It starts off with some really well done voice overs by the main character's grandmother, in a thick German accent, describing what "real witches" are actually like - the folklore tone and straightforward logic works for me, it reminded me a lot of Angela Carter's stories and The Company of Wolves. There's this undercurrent of this is the way things are, and this is how you survive them. The foreshadowing of Luke's transformation is a bit overbuilt, but there is that weird tendency in children's films to beat the audience over the head with things. I don't like the ending in the film as much as in the book; in the book, we see clearly how the witches' plot will have grave and irreversible consequences, but it ends on a note of glorious revolution. Here, the seriousness of matters at hand is undercut.

Derived from Doc Brite's blog...

1. Name someone with the same birthday as you.

Jason something-or-other from junior high. He was, in fact, born exactly seven minutes before I was. He was an extremely squat individual, I remember that - he had a very linebacker body shape, or maybe a small sumo wrestler. He was very blond and moved slowly. He was, also, a bit of a dick.

2. Where was your first kiss?

Ah. I can't quite remember my first kiss, but the first proper kiss - in the sense of, you know, hands and such? Rollerdome in PG.

3. Have you ever seriously vandalised someone else's property?

Well, I have a habit of touching Michael's laptop screen by accident. No, not really vandalized - it's usually completely accidental and there's been drinking involved. I'm not, as such, terribly coordinated.

4. Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex?

No.

5. Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people?

Lake retreat in Grade 11. There was ... karaoke.

6. What's the first thing you notice about the preferred sex?

Eyes, usually, and facial structure. I tend to like rounded faces with very big eyes.

7. What really turns you on?

Decadent, neo-Victorian spies. Female assassins. White, form-fitting underwear. Cute geeks. Soccer players. Football pants. Men in business suits. Pinstripes. Music by Massive Attack, Hawksley Workman, Nine Inch Nails. "Sweet Boy, Gimme Yr Ass," by Allen Ginsberg.

8. What do you order at Starbucks?

Iced chai latte, if I've somehow ended up there.

9. What is your biggest mistake?

Probably haven't made it yet. Lots of little ones, though. Not stopping Krista from doing H, I think.

10. Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose?

Yes. Psychologically and physically.

11. Say something totally random about yourself.

I am very, very prissy.

12. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?

No, people are too busy seeing imperfect duplicates of me, even as far away as Australia.

13. Do you still watch kiddy movies or tv shows?

Teen Titans when I can catch it.

14. Did you have braces?

Seven years of my life.

15. Are you comfortable with your height?

Huh? Yes, I suppose.

16. What is the most romantic thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you?

Naomi used to force me onto a bed so she could straddle my chest and apply eyeliner to me. Amanda once took off her bra and offered to have a threesome with me and some guy.

17. When do you know it's love?

When you can have belching contests in between making out. Or when you fantasize about putting your arms around them and kissing the back of their neck.

18. Do you speak any other languages?

Un peu de francais. Ig-pay atin-lay.

19. Have you ever been to a tanning salon?

Fine, Irish skin. I'm supposed to look half-dead half the time.

20. What magazines do you read?

Esquire, Men's Health, The Walrus, smattering of lit magazines. I enjoy "reading" the covers of most food magazines.

21. Have you ever ridden in a limo?

I think I was twelve; my mum's good friend, the one plagued by Herpes, had a boyfriend who was a limo driver. It was PG, so the drive wasn't terribly exciting.

22. Has anyone you were really close to passed away?

Not in the death sense, no one really close to me, but to quote Ginsberg: "I have seen the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..." I have seen a lot of friends shrivelled away with addiction or self-destruction. They don't die, but they recede, and I don't do enough to help them or stop them or save them. Or something. I never do enough, maybe I never do anything. I haven't had any really close to me die, but peripheral people... my new roommate's apparently known a lot of people who died, so I'm lucky. This is getting a little maudlin, sorry.

23. Do you watch MTV?

Canada, eh? MuchMusic for many years, but that's receded and if I watch anything like music TV, it's usually MuchMoreMusic, because I've become -- an adult.

24. What's something that really annoys you?

I am, oddly enough for a purported Buddhist, annoyed by a vast number of things in the world. Mostly because I'm impatient, which is a failing I try to defeat every chance I get. For the moment: government bureaucracy.

25. What's something you really like?

Lindt dark chocolate with orange.

26. Do you like Michael Jackson?

Not musically or personally.

27. Can you dance?

I hope so, because I've been doing it for so long and so often and nobody's ever said anything.

28. What's the latest you have ever stayed up?

Two days?

29. Have you ever been rushed by an ambulance into the emergency room?

No.

31. Do you actually read these when other people fill them out?

Yes.

Paranoia sloughed off the skin of the streets and into the air as I walked home amongst the ten-hundred-hundred dog-walkers, after three beers with Joy and Matt. After postcard stories which I will shortly put up on the postcard stories blog, after a buffet dinner with them and Michael at Splendid Chinese Restaurant which has congealed into my stomach and demands VENGEANCE, muthafucka, vengeance. We wrote postcard stories and shouted Allen Ginsberg poems from his later years, when he'd grown old and the look of death loomed overtop him like an unpaid credit card bill. Matt and Joy played beer police.

I will be sending them the Squaw Hall story to evaluate. It's a difficult piece for me; I'm trying to reproduce William's Lake in 1974 and I've failed, it's flawed, it needs work. To reproduce a flavour, a acrid racism and climate. I don't know if the "unstuck in time" element has quite worked out. I don't know, I don't know, that's why I'm sending it out for people to give me commentary. It's one of those stories that, whenever I finally hit the right note and it symphonies outward? When I hit that moment it'll be perfect and I'll send it out and it'll be rejected by some "big name" editor that I've never heard of and I'll get the rejection note and then I'll go back to the quiet ploughing away into my writings.

I'm drunk, these are the ramblings of a madman, the mother ship can't save me now--

Never understand,
never hurt you,
never wanted to be anyone else,
never leave you again.
"Never," he says with a beer in his hand.
"Never drinking again."
Never doing this with his head between his legs,
never eating shit again,
never having that whore again,
never calling her a whore again,
never call him a whore,
never calling them whores even with the blood in his dick and desperate,
never-never in his voice. Need is
never, he is
never coming down here again,
never shitting his pants again,
never falling into a pattern of sex after doing the dishes with hands pruning from soap and hot water.

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved

The raspberry, cut ruby of a hundred
bubble colonies strung together,
a tiny shower cap waiting to be pulled over scalp. But wait!
The raspberry explodes on impact.
Our fingers are not delicate enough.
Juice extraction can not be avoided; stains are the only option.
To pop one in your mouth is a violation!
The raspberry bursts between teeth even as tongue probes its cavity.
Dribbles left, messy, marking the cleft of chin.
Fat-lipped, orangutan smile, indulgent, belies
misery of the Eastern Bloc abused and emptied
until seeds wedge themselves into your gums.
Every raspberry is victimized from birth.

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved

"Only the truth," says her ladyship with a plastic bag around her scalp, Egyptian cigar soggy between lips and the stranglehold of a mink stole around her neck. She sits on the toilet while the girls mingle around her, checking their cherry cadillac lipstick for smudged in the framed mirrors hung like French revolutionary portraits. "Only the truth." Her hair buzzes with cheap, acrid dye. Itching. The girls ignore her; Trixie, Nancy, George, Bess. They have better things, they fail to listen to her wrangled requests. "Does this make me look fat?" She pulls at the fishnets and antique garter belt digging into her thigh. "Does this make me look coarse?"

(c) 2005 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved

1. The first vague smatterings of communication with Krista, via comments. Hi, Krista.

2. Thanksgiving: Michael, Michael's family, Daniel, and Beth. It was good. I had pan-fried cod while everyone else had pot roast. Garlic mash potatoes. Two different pies. It went all fairly well, I think. I'm home for the first time in three days and I desperately need to scrape hair off my face and wash clothing. Desperately. We didn't end up photographing anything to do, the weather was shit, but we had an early afternoon breakfast at Floyd's and then ice cream afterward.

3. Might take a crack at the story this evening, possibly maybe. In between phone calls from the parentals. Apparently, my dad's back on night shifts because CN Rail is evil. He's only got another year or something until retirement, though, so hopefully he'll survive.

4. Or I'll work on that epic poem I started the other night. It'll go up here once I've had a chance to finish off the draft and start working with it. After writing those postcard proems, my brain itched to write something more substantial. I don't know, half of it is automatic writing and probably reeks, but it's good to stretch those muscles again. My beard points north tonight.

No, but really, the line-breaks suck so far. They look trite - I think the reason I've always been uneasy about the short line is that it looks trite, it looks like the Poet Voice or indronation is going to be there when you read it out; a long line invites breathless instruction. I might just say fuck it and rewrite the thing as a ghazal, or a pseudo-ghazal - nice long couplets. I enjoy the look of a good couplet with complimentary line lengths.

My fingernails are too long, my facial hair is too long, the hair on the top of my head is too long, I want to explode and fragment my atoms until only what I need is left. There's a Wallace Stevens reference, and I don't think I've quite explored enough with what I've got so far. It might be time to unbuckle the restraints and unloop the poetry-harness and step over top of the Big Dark with no safety-net and no magic keys to save me. I've been listening to Ginsberg poems and Plath poems as if to say, Open Me. Open. Me. Open.

Honestly, health hazards of the "writing life" - you wake up one morning wearing a scarf to bed and then around the house, and then outside, and then to other houses or the mall or school or work and you're always wearing your scarf. Or you sound too much like Stevie Nicks. Or you hold long, drawn-out conversations with your own stories and poems while you empty the dishwasher. You sound Californian, but not valley. Your sense of fashion goes to shit. You might run out of typewriter ribbon. You spend hours scrutinizing the placements of that one line break, the one that makes you poem turn into wanky art fag flakey shit. You realize you've been eating the same thing for a week and a half. Nightmares about internal organ failure later in life.

Anyway, Danielle and I went to Thrifty's and bought two pumpkin pies for ten dollars, and we ate big chunks of them with ice cream. Apparently, this new roommate Mark has already moved in, but he has next to nothing and has barely been here.

After a deplorable day; a split shift, eating only a slice of pumpkin pie for breakfast and a chocolate bar on the bus for lunch, too many unanswered and unconnected phone calls and a sick boyfriend on the phone sounding sad and far away. After the the empty, desperate clutch of my stomach took on a hint of madness: I went and saw Margaret Atwood read from her latest, The Penelopiad, in the Alix Goodlen Hall for ten bucks. Joy and Matt were supposed to meet up with me but they didn't; instead Debbie appeared and mentioned she saw them walking in the opposite direction of the Hall. She took off for the balcony and I sat by myself in the fifth row and there, there, there was Margaret Atwood.

No, Michael, she's not dead. Or British.

The reading was well done; she's a very good speaker and very good audience flirter and a very good writer. The new book sounds suitably enchanting, and a might more interesting than her last few efforts. The highlights including Margaret Atwood, feminist literary icon, muttering in Penelope-speak: "...bare-naked tits..." in relation to Penelope's cousin, Helen of Troy. The only flaw I could garner from the passages she read was that there is a particularly overdone polarity between the pretty girl and the clever girl, how never the twain shall meet, and which one is the better state. Keeping in mind that I reread "In Praise of Stupid Women," from Good Bones the other night. In fact: Thanksgiving evening, reading it out to Michael and Beth. I can appreciate people who don't mind my mad fits.

Otherwise: avoided acquaintences, looked too often at the main doors (in case Joy and Matt showed), was given merely the courtesy glance of SH. Dutifully ignored SP.

Now I'm home, eating humous and pita with a glass of pamplemousse pop and I've taken out the recycling for the first time in months. Normally, someone else handles that kind of thing. I'm scraping the crazies off my skin in sloughed layers.

Well, really, I barely got any sleep last night and there appears to be yet another crisis with the downstairs toilet - why do these things happen at one o'clock and no other time? I shut the lid and closed the door and decided to deal with it later, because there was no flooding, at least. I suspect this latest issue derives from some of the underground work they're doing out on Hillside.

Anyway: at work, going downtown afterward to see if Legends got the latest Doom Patrol trade paperback, because of course the comic book shop by my house didn't get it and I've been looking forward to the damnable thing for six months. Six. Months. Which, I know, is completely inconsequential to anyone's lives, but I'm feeling ill at ease and out of energy and the Furies have howled in my ear over and over for the past six hours. I don't know why I swallowed a fly - maybe I'll die.

Michael, meanwhile, is so sick that his ears have swelled up and he can no longer feel them. He worries that he's left them somewhere. After I go on my vengeful mission to find the missing jewels - er, the comic book - I'm going to see about getting some very wasabied nigiri from Hime and taking it to him in bed. He's sick to death of soup, but it's difficult to come up with foods one can eat comfortably while wasting away from illness.

And I'm tired of these solitary, hacking coughs.

Listening to Johnny Cash and drinking ginger tea in the middle hours of the evening. I fixed the toilet: it continued to babble telepathic transmissions into my head and I fiddled with the ball-cock until the something changed and the tank filled back up with water and I could flush the damnable psychic toilet and be done with the whole thing. I'm going to write a short story about this toilet at some point, because I feel like I can't go five minutes (especially at 1 in the morning) without it having a breakdown. My toilet, I'm afraid, is the Woody Allen of toilets. My toilet, I'm even more afraid, might be the Robert Downey Junior of toilets.

Better that, I suppose, than the Pamela Anderson of toilets: all pink and bulbous with bottle blonde toilet sweat.

I went on a mission today and succeeded beyond my dreams. I've also got thirty-four hours of work scheduled for next week and there's nothing in my head but beauty right now, even with the skin broken out and a noticeable absence in this thing called my stomach. I might want to fill that soon.

At its worst, a story can be like a high school crush. You can't stop thinking about it. You want to work on it all the time, you've already got little scenarios planned; most of these will never pan out. You've already thought of all your best lines, and practiced them, but they're never going to come out right.

It's got a few of my old stylistic tics and I'm a little less afraid of the adverb, and I have two titles in mind. It feels like a Raymond Carver story but not. It feels like a lot of things.

But, yeah, stories are like horrible high school crushes. I'm going to go scribble on a bathroom stall now--

Derived from Caroline:

A is for age
24, turning 25 in about two and a half weeks, I think.

B is for booze of choice
Bombay Sapphire Gin, preferably with tonic water. Alternatively: rye and ginger ale, and red wine.

C is for career
A writer of fiction and poetry, the occasional play, some light filmmaking, screenwriting, potentially a Creative writing professor.

D is for your dad's name
Mike.

E is for essential items to bring to a party
The gin, suitable shoes for dancing, something warm. In days past - a slinky, a bag with gear in it.

F is for favourite song at the moment
"Cecelia," by Simon & Garfunkel.
"Striptease," by Hawksley Workman.
"Love Cats," by the Cure.
"Is that all there is," by Peggy Lee.

G is for favourite game
Modern Art, wherein the players are museums bidding on high class works of trash art.

H is for hometown
Born in Vancouver, raised in William's Lake until I was six, raised in Prince George until I was nineteen, feel at home in Victoria.

I is for instruments you play
I once took guitar lessons. They didn't retain. I prefer my language-horn.

J is for jam or jelly you like
By preference, honey.

K is for kids?
Yes, I think it's suitable to give Ketamine to children. Some days yes, some days no. Puppies are okay. Children shit themselves and demand you pay for college. Some kids are all right. I'm terrified I'd be a horrible parent.

L is for living arrangements
Townhouse, an elusive townhouse; two roommates: Danielle and Mark.

M is for mum's name
Patricia.

N is for name of your crush
Ethan Embry.

O is for overnight hospital stays
Week in Grade 8 with viral pneumonia.

P is for phobias
Rats, vermin, small hairy creatures. Enclosed spaces, occasionally...

Q is for quotes
Every single episode of Futurama and Family Guy ever. However, my philosophy: Gandhi, "An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind."

R is for relationship that lasted the longest
Michael, to date; two years, one month, and three days.

S is for sexual preference
Men. Not boys; men. Well, boyish men.

T is for time you wake up
7am to 10am, depending.

U is for underwear
Tight, dark grey trunks.

V is for vegetables you love
Avocados, mushrooms, broccoli.

W is for weekend plans
Spending time with the boyfriend, having some drinks, maybe some dancing, writing, biting sarcasm, the destruction of antiquated ideas about gender and linguistics.

X is for x-rays you've had
Teeth, chest.

Y is for yummy food you make
Real macaroni & cheese casserole, with three types of cheese, green peppers, occasionally tomatos, some shrimp...

Z is for zodiac sign
Scorpio. Apparently, you can see it in my eyes.

It should be noted for reasons of sanity that the City of Victoria will probably be partly shut down tomorrow in favour of the Day of Protest; unionized workers in both the public and private sector will be forgoing work in favour of a protest to show support for the BC Teachers Federation and their strike, which has been deemed illegal by the courts. This means that buses will not be running. Only essential services, police and hospitals, will still operate - but they'll be showing support in other ways. I was supposed to working at a frontier branch tomorrow, but instead I'll be downtown at the protest. Should be a good time.

It's been a busy weekend. I ended up at the Grad Lounge up at UVic following a work shift on Friday, having some drinks with Penny, Steff, and Michael. They all drank beer but I favoured the gin-tonic, a marvel of streamlined engineering and form/function unity. That night I wrote sections for my latest short story, which is called "We've Never Been Alone in a Bathroom Together Before," tentatively - or possibly, "The Attaché" - while Michael worked on the ISE.

Saturday I got called into work and then met up with Michael for dinner at Le Petit Saigon - which was weird. Very weird. The men who worked there are strange, operating like bald black-clad machine creatures who mistake straws for chopsticks. We had the deep fried banana for dessert, and then went home to watch an episode of Firefly before we headed over to Steff's going away party. We mostly stayed in the kitchen with Joy, Steff, Penny, and Ashton - it was utterly antisocial of us, but we were in a strange mood. Penny theorized that while Joy and I have been siblings in at least one past life, at another point I was Joy's mother. To which, I screamed, "Thirty hours of labour! You could give me some respect! I nearly died!" We also suspect we have had a student-mentor relationship sometime in the 16th century, both painters. One of those relationships where you suspect that you both think of yourself as the mentor. Michael was apparently my bitter rival in Ancient Greece, and we competed with the javelin. Home by midnight to sleep fitfully.

And now: I prepare to write some more. I have those sections to transcribe into digital state and I need to get the story moving again. It's so much faster to type, the words accelerate and the story architecture makes itself known with more depth. There are at present, six characters present in the story, and one absentee. None of them are fleshed out enough. One of them is Joy and Steff blended and merged together and driven mad by an excess of humors, in the Atwood vein. In her Atwood vein.

Broadcasting from the corner of the room, that is to say: straitjacketed from within. I love this bit, when the story (no matter what it is) becomes unmanageable, unworkable, deplorable, the worst thing I've ever written, the most tragic pile of dung to ever be shat from my fingertips onto paper. I love this bit, when it looks trite. When I realize I have too many characters who don't exist, aren't real. When it feels too much like other things I've written, in terms of voice or setting or tired inversions of syntax. The repetition of "porcelain" makes me want to hunch over and pass out in a dizzy orgasm of self-disregard.

I love this little bit because, because, because this is the moment when I keep going, even though it looks dire, textual diarrehea. This bit isn't a precipice or a cliff looking out over the void: this is not Nietzche whispering to me in the middle of the night about the Truth of Nothing. This is me taking a very ginger step down one of many steps. This when it gets to be sentence by sentence, this when I just hunker down, say fuck it, say fuck me, say all right then. Let's get moving. The absinthine frenzy of This-is-No-Good-Oh-Well. How else are you supposed to write a story? By liking every word you use? Half of them are complete tripe. More than half. Most of them. All of them. I don't know why I'm writing this and it's one in the morning and I'm probably only a third done the rough draft. BUT! This is not the point where I madly type everything out and think it's genius, this is the bit after that. This is not the manic ego trip, this is the gritty licking the basement floor part, scrubbing on your hands and knees and trying to make it all go.

Out the window, out the door, out-out-damn-spot, out the in, out-classed and out-moded and out of my head--

So, at around 10:30 yesterday morning, I tromped downtown in the stigmata rain in baggy jeans and a baggy hoody and ended up drowned-rat-like under the eyes of the Library, as seen on by the old Hudson Bay Company building (the empty one across from Chinatown). Apparently, I looked so miserable that three or four people offered me umbrellas - I forgot to bring mine with me - and in the end I took Stacey so that people would stop feeling sorry for me. It was one of those days. I met up with Melissa and Cindy, we all stood around for forty minutes with the rain in sheets and traffic blustering, until we all headed over to Centennial Square - obeying all traffic laws, of course, despite the fact that we were protesting - where we waited around for another hour in the cold and mud. I think there was stuff going on down in the Square, but we were too far away to see much of anything.

Our union didn't really stay together; we ended up in uneven clumps all over the place. I was expecting more of an effort on the part of the executive to keep us organized and maybe have a banner - that we're not just faceless citizens but a coherent union group. I know it was slapped together at the end to some extent, but I thought there'd be a banner in storage or something. Quite a few people were picketting at the different branches, and I think Melissa and I were the only auxillaries at the actual protest. We marched down to the Legislature Building and thousands of people gathered on the lawns, where much speechifying was done. I'm not sure if it was equipment issues or something else, but a lot of actual BC Teachers Federation speakers were muffled and I couldn't make out half of what they said. However, some high school students also spoke and were quite gifted in presentation and spoke with clarity and focus. The cops were on hand and keeping a fairly low profile, mingling and being supportive because they're union as well.

Then eventually we took off and had lunch, I went and bought a new winter coat so I don't die of pneumonia. It was decently priced, is waterproof and is the correct size, as well as being a decent cut. Went and had brilliant sushi with Michael at Hime, saw Gloriee, and then went back to Michael's place to watch Firefly. Good day altogether.

And now it's the North's turn to protest; there's the general union protest today in Prince George, I listened to the radio for a while - hooray, the CBC returns from their strike - and there was coverage of the Northern protests. My mum's picketing at her school today, I suppose. I'll probably call her this evening to discuss. I had realized that Colin Kingsley was still the mayor up there, he has been for quite a long time.

And of course, BC premier Gordon Campbell's response was that you can't choose to ignore some laws, and that teachers have been ordered back to work and I try not to call him personally to respond with the fact that there are laws against drunk-driving. There's talk of the Teachers Federation executives being issued criminal charges for continuing the fight, but I hope that's a scare tactic; there's no realistic way that issuing such charges won't result in a worse situation for the province with a vindictive streak opening up in unions as a result. It would also essentially tie up the courts further and I don't think that's going to help get kids and teachers back in school.

Anyway, my shoes are still muddy and damp and I woke up with the Fear this morning, so I went to Thrifty's and bought food and made a macaroni-cheese casserole with green peppers, onions, and lemon herb prawns.

Anyway, I wrote a paragraph of "The Attaché," more to come shortly.

I might go do some research because I can't for the life of me remember what other high profile mediations Vince Ready has done, he's been asked to deal with the teachers' strike. I remember hearing his name all the time at one point in the past, but most of this shit gets stored away in som esoteric special collections room in my cerebral cortex and WHO KNOWS when I'll get the keys to the room again. Perhaps I'll sit in the Reading Room later with the Phantom Phonograph transmitting CBC off an invisible LP. Or not.

This is all to say: the story goes well. Well, the story goes; it moves forward, or around or sideways. I started a scene that fits in between the two I've already got and we start to get some characterization for the other characters beside Helen and Nick. I want to lace an element of the uncanny into it but only barely, only a hint of some sort of subtext.

This ain't no disco.

I'll be starting from scratch on this story, which has accumulated thirteen pages. I don't feel too bad, I've just moved onto Draft #2. There are six characters present and one in absentia, and they need to be developed. I might look into merging or deleting some of them, but I like the characters I've set up as they stand and if any changes are made it'll be an organic process of transformation and blah-blah. I'm working until six, so when I get home tonight I'll be starting off from the very beginning. I'm tempted to write the entire length of the story six times from each perspective and then blend them together, but that may not make for a smooth story, so I'll experiment.

A clearer ending in mind would be a good thing as well.

1. If one branch calls me at the last minute, almost certain another one does. Other days? Do I even exist? I was down in Esquimalt today but apparently (I find this out after the fact) they needed me in Colwood. Oh well.

2. Leonard Cohen's Stranger Music. I haven't taken a book of poetry out of the library in a while. I've been examining Milosz and Neruda lately, so why not add Cohen? I might stroll through the Beautiful Losers excerpt before I fall asleep tonight.

3. The rewrite hasn't begun yet; well, it has but it hasn't. I got about a page into it and decided that this version is lackluster and pointless. Deleted it. I've still got the original twelve pages, but I need to go through and make notes on the characters and decide where I want to start. I have, as said, seven characters to worry about. I already tried to begin at a point of drama but that didn't work. I have another idea about where to start, but we'll see if that works. I might try to spit up a few words in a minute.

4. The high point of today was running for the bus and tripping. Falling face first onto the pavement with a nasty scrape to the back of my hand. Busy street, maximum embarassment. My knee's a bit banged up, but not nearly as bad as my hand. I got to work and cleaned it up with the stinging and the alcohol wipe and the band-aid.

It will forever surprise me at how many people whisper guilty, self-defacing things when they eat. I do not know which is worse: that we flagellate ourselves all day or that we manage to get mileage from forbidden things are more pleasurable. Guilt is hot, apparently, guilt prevents our carbon dated bodies from coolling quite so quickly. People who can't, for example, appreciate the divine elegance of flavours derived from chocolate purely for their own art, but must lace them with shame, with doing a very bad thing. What? Can we not open our mouthes and pour it down our throats for ambient beauty's sake, rather than reminding ourselves yet again that we've failed to fulfill whichever social rule defines how we are supposed to eat?

It seems sick that we can't enjoy something nearly as much as we would if it was wrong. Do we still live in our parents' house? Are we still so firmly under thumb? Is rebellion against prescribed notions of health worth it for a bite of brownie? We do consume things which are very bad for us, but if you're going to do it why stab yourself in the gut at the same time - why not just do it? Freely, clearly, with a mind to the consequences as payment for a chance to touch something crystalline?

In other words: shut the fuck up, just eat the damn chocolate and do it without complaining about what it's going to do to your belly or your thighs. Why lace a bit of delight in your life with zealous "healthy" doublethink?

The vote amongst the teachers with regard to the proposed agreement happened the week - I'm not sure which way it went.

My mother read "The Inexplicable Face" and sent me a commentary. I'll have to open up the story tonight and go through her comments and see what needs more explanation and what's misreading (and how to rework the story to prevent that).

Last night was too much gin, Five-Dimensional Gin (your vomit goes backwards in time), too many games of pool at Peacock's with horribly objectified straight men in the distance, calamari, sushi, crushed dreams with regard to an article of clothing (it's not worth that much) and the decision to chop off my hair this week.

Notably, I work 35 hours this week and have an interview on Wednesday afternoon before my shift. I might get my haircut that morning downtown at the barber shop.

It's just after ten and I'm going to do some writing: I am going to open my rantbook and copy what I've got so far on the rewrite, and I'm going to go from there. Four more straight days at work and then I can pause, if you will. Well, about as paused as I get.

I'm listening to Ginsberg and I've got a copy of Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger sitting on my desk for me to load up and watch sometime in the next day or so. I'll do it tomorrow night, probably.

Bought cheap books at Munro's the other day; a hardboiled Belgian mystery, a book of Mark Jarman short stories, and a book of classic Indian stories.

Anyway: story writing. I should probably take another shot at the story about my father, but I need a couple more weeks of silence before I can tackle it again, and I've got that other story to work on and I've finally started the second draft effectively. I'm still not convinced I've solved - or, perhaps, will ever solve - the problem of point of view, but I'm another step closer to the solution. Everybody's got a secret list of spectacular failures and who knows - this one might end up on it.

The only solution is this: a very small box, probably cardboard and curbed, with chains wrapped around it, locks carefully crafted and clicked shut with me inside, and the beautiful Remington Envoy typewriter and no food, water, booze, lubricant, telephone, comic books, drugs, antiseptic. Nothing but me, the typewriter, the feel of cardboard on my naked ass, and a very white piece of paper with very black ink applied in what you might conventionally consider alphabetic patterns. The message: Write the story. Write the story. Don't use adverbs. No italics. No ridiculous sex scenes. No meaningful bathroom conversations. Indulgent descriptions of fetishized food does not take the place of characterization.. This has all been crossed out.

Plans start to come together with regard to the birthday situation. Updates regarding such and such shall be made at the appropriate intervals. Needless to say, worlds will shake. And collide. And explode. And suffocate each other.

Today's been relaxed at work, languid; rarely if ever do we run out things to do, but I just spent an hour making work for myself. This won't last, I'm certain.

After a few eye-squelching hours of writing I finally hit the point where the second scene started to work for me. I only had to restart it a few times. I think the flaw has been in finding the tension, the organic growth, and the energy level I need to carry the scene forward. Some more description of could work itself in, but the basics of the scene are coming together nicely and I can work out the rest of it tonight when I get home.

My wounded hand heals apace. It is peculiar, these things our bodies do to protect themselves - growth of strange substances to cover themselves over, the redness of enflamed skin, the engorging of humors.

Regards: watching In The Realms of the Unreal: The Mystery of Henry Darger, a kind of idiot savant Lewis Carroll who created a 1500 page "novel" or, perhaps, hundreds of six-foot-tall pictures. It's very curious, this documentary by Jessica Yu operates on similar properties to Darger's work; the reclusive janitor is split into fragments, vocal reproductions of his ongoing story, people's impressions of Darger, and snatches of interviews with the people in his life. There is an interesting critique of his sexuality or lack thereof, and the perceptions people have about him; as well, the idea of sanity versus insanity; in other words - "rich people are called eccentric, but poor people are called crazy." The documentary is a moving collage, not unlike Darger's work. The use of music is cloying melodramatic at times, but it does suit the subject matter.

There is laundry tumbling, and I have to start clicking through the second scene on this story. I invented, or thought up, or wished for three more ideas for stories following this one. One about my mother, one about my life in Prince George, and another one. I have to go switch over the clothing between machines and then return to this godlike writing desk.

Ah, precious ambergris.

One of my housemates has misinterpreted the late night lamentations of the toilet. Every man and every woman everyone in between must walk into that bathroom alone, unadorned. No aid.

Laundry, followed by Scene 3 in bed with pen and page. I ignite this digital technology and open wings like glass petals selected from the trash heap. I must hang my cheap and prefabricated skins and fish the other, lighter ones from the dryer. I must suspend them with false shoulder blades and a loose, unfortunate skeleton made from gravity. Can't focus my eyes right now.

Stolen from Joy, because I'm a demented hooligan wot steals from pretty girls.

1. Link to your local news source:
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

2. Link to your favorite dessert:
The Sex; that is to say, chocolate torte with raspberry ganache.

3. Link to a band that you despise:
I heard an Arcade Fire song and was bored to tears. Hardly the World's Fattest Racehorse.

4. Link us to a good book:
Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino. Greatest book I've ever read.

5. Link to your favorite Muppet frog:
Frog? Frog? FROG? Well, I love frogs, but I've always favoured the Swedish Chef. Em bork-bork!

1. What kind of lighting is around you?

Bright room lights, two naked bulbs without soothing frosted-glass cover. Am I saying that the testicle is the source of all light? Don't be a dickhead. My eyes do not glow, I'm not bioluminescent, and I fail to have a spotlight available for spontaneous outburts of song and dance.

2. What do you think of your singing voice?

I think? Well - miraculous, really, incandescent, smoldering. It's really none of these things what so ever, but rather the sound of a dying calf being bludgeoned to death with a hammer. A trifle horrifying? What do you think? I'm not even allowed to sing in the shower. I'm not allowed to think about singing. The Thought Police have already been alerted as to my location. Music and I have an uneasy seperation and are not speaking. Michael's the one with the voice of an angel in this relationship, although he doesn't use it over much at all.

3. Who do you try to please?

Everyone, muthafucka. Specifically me (I am a multitude): unrealistic expectations on myself with unnatural fears of rejection. I expect to do everything at once. I expect to be able to balance perfectly without falling. Tragically, I'm a spastic prone to gruesome statements, with a fondness of invective and expletive. I judge others but fall short of my own judgements. I am a failure.

4. Describe your last dream:

Waking? Transformation into a shimmering ubermensch capable of crushing solid steel with the barest application of fingertips. Sleeping? I can't quite recall. Something about scissors, a frozen lake, the imperative tense ("Do this. Do this now."), scrambling for cover, an open mouth.

5. When is the last time you bought flowers?

I bought Michael a bouquet of red roses and two bars of Lindt chocolate from Safeway while he was in the liquor store being distracted by Joy. Girls, as usual, paid an unfortunate amount of attention to me and fawned over my choice of confectionary. Show even the barest hint of romantic tendency and people become sopping puddles of ooze, which goes to show how rare "true romance" is, these days. Being cruised by women while they hold their boyfriends' hands says something right there.

Almost there - almost. Two o'clock this afternoon rolls around and I'll have a day and a half off to settle my head. I'm going to watch Deadwood, which is a show I've never seen before, a cowboy show with Calamity Jane in it. I'm going to sit down and work on the story some more, because I had a brain wave yesterday about one of the characters while I was waiting in the vast line-up at the barber shop, watching some guy have his hair cut. I'm going to get to work on Scene #3 and then I'll work with the character revelation a bit. I might call some people about doing something.

Circ test went well, I got 91% on it, and the interview was a breeze. We should find out by tomorrow afternoon who's been offered the positions, but I'm not expecting too much.

1. Good Thing: The latest issue of DC's anthology comic Solo came out this week; every issue with a different artist/writer writing a bunch of stories - whatever they want. This time it was Mike Allred, and the book was a mod pop art masterpiece with the original Doom Patrol versus the 60s Mod Teen Titans (back when middle-aged men tried to write hip dialogue for teenagers and thus the words "jive" and "chick" were abused), as well as an Adam West-derived Batman story.

2. Pissy Thing: I didn't get any of the permanent positions. I did very well in the interview, but apparently everyone was pretty close so it came down to seniority. No major feedback was given, as I interviewed well. I really hope another position at Esquimalt comes up soon, though.

3. Good Thing: My Halloween costume is sorted. A trifle cop-out, but I don't care.

4 Pissy Thing: The National Student Loan people called. I have to get both student loan forms done tomorrow and sent off. I found out some information about the possibility of reducing my payments, but my options still suck ass. Really. I regret getting an education as a result of this experience. The financial physics involved in paying off this loan are seven-dimensional, and I am now chained to this hideous beast.

1. Deadwood didn't do much of anything for me. I got bored halfway through the first episode and stopped it. Oh well; I've got The Life Aquatic waiting for me to pick up from work on Sunday and Michael's got The Triplets of Belleville on his computer.

2. Getting bored of the music. In the mood for PJ Harvey.

3. On rewrites; about to spend an hour working on scene #3. A good rewrite reveals so much to the writer that he or she might not have seen the first time around - and the switch of POV should inspire. This character's was a cypher in Draft #1, but now she has - developed. Noteworthy that the phrases Marc was tragically beige and Puritan dyke feature in the story. Scene #4 will focus some attention on the barber shop idea. I'm concerned that the overall thrust of the story pushes into the territory of the novella, but will it prove interesting enough? There aren't enough fags and jazz in this story.

4. By which I mean: there are probably too much faggotry and jazz in this story.

5. The pivot of scene #2 is still off in this rewrite, but I have a better idea of exactly why: I don't let it progress naturally, the character beats are all off. I need to rework to emphasize the pivot that I previously disrupted; or rather, the characters disrupt it but something outside them should. Otherwise, the sexual chemistry is shot to hell.

6. Sexual chemistry? Some days, writing is like matchmaking.

The Interstitial Library, Circulating Collection
Frankfurt, Germany



Name of Acquistions Librarian: Ben Rawluk.

Title of New Acquisition: The Forgotten Finger-Snatcher.

Author: Azalea Blank.

Subject: Short stories about misremembered serial killers, antiquarian stand-up comedians, and half-heard conversations about unmemorable sexual encounters.

Other descriptive information (Smell, taste, stains, marginalia, inserts, etc.): Yellowed pages that have known insect mandibles; a curious recurrence of page 16 three times over, each time with different content; inscription on the front inside cover - "To Sylvia, many happy returns. Love with all my earwax, Ted xoxoxox" - and three 614 area code phone numbers. Table of contents references a story, "The Old Duck Woman," which is not actually present in this collection.

Is this a unique instance of this book? Yes.

Categories under which you would class this book: Serial killers, ahistorical; Stand-up comedy; Swamps; Desire ; Newspaper clippings as Burroughs parody; Printing errors; Incomplete questions; Disregard for common decency; Intentional anachronism.

Last known location: Iceland.

Store name or other identifying information: Translates as "Emily Post Scandal," utterly meaningless. Icelandic Dadaist properieters.

Approximate street address: Unclear. Somewhere in Reykjavik.

Is this book available to the public? Easily imagined.

If this book is in your own possession, would you be willing to lend it out? Not applicable.

Why should this book be entered into the collection? Because it was lost in the gutter before it was written, pages left sticky for a time until they had the chance to dry, cockroaches all over them. Because it does not contain a missing short story by Azalea Blank, but leaves an intriguing gap in her canon - the only possible clue to the story's true location. Because the copyright information at the front is joined by a Library of Sexual Congress classification.

Repayment forms for both the BC Student Loan and the Canada Student Loan are filled out, signed, and sealed. Phone bill filled out, cheque written, envelope sealed. I'm going to put on some clothes, walk over to the mall and drop the three things in the mail. Then I'm going to buy a November bus pass, dump some money onto my credit card, and go downtown. I'm thinking a little light lunch followed by an hour or two of writing, followed by a drink with Michael and Penny. Probably have an iced tea, as I seem to be weary of booze right now. I'm Michael's date for some Internet Shakespeare launch party thing, but I'm hoping it doesn't go too late because I have to bus out to Royal Oak in the morning for a seven hour shift.

Had nightmares about the student loans this morning, then got woken up by L. calling to see if I could work today, had to say no because I'm clearly insane from nine days without a break already, and union rules forbid me from working any more this week. After I stumbled back into bed, I felt the Fear wake up and murmur sour nothings into my ear and run a jagged claw down the back of my throat, so I got up and had a shower to clean out my brain for a bit. Right up until I did paperwork, which makes me hate paperwork even more and automated phone systems are evil. I don't understand why such widespread hatred of phone systems doesn't clue companies into the fact that by employing more operators they would probably make themselves more money, because people would be more willing to call in to them.

The sun is out, a rare thing. I have to put some clothes on now.

Convulsively working, resisting the deep-seated urge to purge the system of fools.

Actually: thinking about black hair dye after work, par la costume; unsure if it's viable, and what I'd look like with black hair. Darling!

Otherwise, working on the story tonight and eating pasta and reading-reading-reading, because I've got a ton of books out right now and a DVD to watch. Wes Anderson.

1. What's the last item you mailed?
This month's phone bill, and student loan repayment papers.

2. Who has made you smile recently?
Michael, specifically his reaction of disgust toward Grease being on TV.

3. What's the weather like outside?
Dark and wet. Not unlike my heart, actually. Cold.

4. Do you consider youself a good judge of character?
Too blinded by my own capacity for judgement. I love and hate indiscriminately.

5. What's your favorite photograph?
Man Ray's Le Violen d'Ingres, the woman as cello.

Just sat down for my second viewing of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou; the first time, I saw it in a theatre, but this time I borrowed it from work. Private screening. It holds up quite well, I think, and I was again fairly wowed by the use of tableau - I think that is the hint of Anderson's style that I most identify with. Every shot must come across as a slightly antiquarian novelty postcard. The use of absence and almost still shots knocks me over, especially the opening sequence at the film screening - it works so well with the understated acting and cutting dialogue.

I maintain that the moment when we see the Jaguar Shark with the crew of the Belafonte - that's Steve seeing God, or achieving perfect serenity or whatever. It is this slow build up to that moment but it doesn't smack too much of epiphany as it does of release. I'm not sure I'd characterize it as a climax so much as an anticlimax, because the emotions unbundle right afterward. On the one hand, I know I'm being manipulated by it - but that moment of opening beauty across the characters' faces...

Some deleted scenes on the DVD, including "Eleanor's writing shed," which reveals some depth between her and Ned. Anjelica Huston makes the movie for me, and I think that her body language is so perfectly mastered that it sets the tableaus up and pushes them a bit further.

New Acquisitions Form #2

The Interstitial Library, Circulation Collection
Frankfurt, Germany

Name of Acquistions Librarian: Ben Rawluk.

Title of New Acquisition: Broken Space Dreams of the Lower Placental Islands.

Author: Sir Lawrence Hercule Andromache.

Subject: Details Andromache's expedition to the Lower Placental Islands, with particular attention paid to his interactions with the natives therein, and the stories they told of a longstanding feud with exiles sent to live on the Upper Placental Islands; long passages describing their war of explicit gestures, and the plague of alternating claustrophobia and agoraphobia perpetuated on the natives by the exiles. Fairly detailed listing of local ceremonial magic.

Other descriptive information (Smell, taste, stains, marginalia, inserts, etc.): Small, sharp lettering in the margins by unknown hand, critiquing the colonial attitude of Andromache's prose and questioning certain aspects of what Andromache recorded - some suggestion made that the Lower Placental Islanders may have fed him the wrong information out of spite for the threat to their way of life. Certain maps have been corrected in ballpoint pen, the ink leaking through the page and blighting sections of the text. Smells faintly of lemon cake.

Is this a unique instance of this book? There is some difficulty in locating Andromache's birth certificate. Subsequent copies of this volume have been difficult to come by, if at all. Nearly unique.

Categories under which you would class this book: Questionable geography; colonialism; historical accounts of psychological warfare; fictional accounts of psychological warfare; customs of indigenous peoples; falsified customs of indigenous peoples; revenge; madmen; books that smell of baking; corrected books; incomplete maps; reports of undiscovered islands; ceremonial magic; English imperialism; sexual habits of colonial Englishmen abroad.

Last known location: Kenya, possibly.

Store name or other identifying information: The gun cabinet of Her Ladyship, Missus Alexandra Heatherington-Damocles.

Approximate street address: Difficult to ascertain due to potential gunshot wound.

Is this book available to the public? No.

If this book is in your own possession, would you be willing to lend it out? Not applicable, for obvious reasons.

Why should this book be entered into the collection? Questionable research, intent, narrative persona and location. Also, questionable reality. The paper is particularly brittle and may be used for lighting fires.

I sit at work, a Superman without a cause, a mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper with no phone-booth to duck into with the purpose of quick-changing into my underpants of steel. According to one man, "there's a phone booth down the block." Whatever, man. Whatever.

Bathed in Kryptonite radiation (read: too much candy) I caught the bus after work and Tara got on downtown, and invited me to come to Samara's house to give out candy to trick-or-treaters. As I'm a lamer, I had no plans, so I said yes and got to hear all the latest on Tara's love life during the trip. Once we got there we started eating candy and waiting for the door-knocker to announce some rugrats. Only. Only. Only there was something going on downstairs. Someone was shouting that he didn't want to die, that he was dying. He was arguing with someone, and once we figured out that it wasn't actually a Halloween thing, we were going to call the cops -- only then four cop cars showed up. Downstairs neighbour was freaking out for various reasons that are too tragic to go into now, nearly at a danger point with his own mother - she called the cops. After about an hour of listening to him scream and flail against the cops, they got him loaded into an ambulance - strapped down to a gurney, looking in danger of breaking his own bones - and took him away. The mother came up and apologized to Samara, but the whole thing was weird and gut-wrenching and stupid. The guy was very, very tweaked out. And the whole time fireworks were going off everywhere and kids kept coming to the door, even with the police cars flashing and piled up all over the street. Gawkers on the sidewalk. Us in the upstairs living room paralyzed with that uncomfortable inability to look away, but disconnected enough from the scene for confusion and concern to filter in.

Things settled down after the police took off, we ate more candy, and Samara drove us home. I'm a little out of sorts from the sugar but I don't feel too bad.