wildcat

1. Friday night, Michael and I ended up on "a date," oddly. We ate at the Garrick's Head, fought over mashed potatoes, and then wandered over to the Capital Six to buy tickets for V for Vendetta. Something like an hour and a half to kill, we wandered over to Lyle's Place and then spent some time killing bad guys at Johnny Zee's. I'm not a big video game person but he had fun playing pinball and there was a stupid super-hero game I was oddly good at.

2. V for Vendetta is, I think, a good movie. It deviated from the source material in a lot of notable ways, but managed to achieve some of the same goals, and managed to achieve some actual emotional impact despite being an "action movie." Natalie Portman proved she has acting chops, still, even if I didn't like the contrived love story that was shoehorned in -- it distracted from V's ambiguity -- and they cut out so many of the rich scenes and characters, but that was mostly an issue of time. They cut out the "Vicious Caberet" musical sequence (yes, there was a musical sequence in a graphic novel), but they added the final unmasking at Parliament. Even the explosions had resonance. The violence was controlled enough that at certain points it actually had a full impact -- Fingermen disembowelled in a subway terminal was actually unsettling -- and I walked away impressed by what they did. I think, though, that Valerie's story and the torture sequence lifted directly from the book were the best parts of the film, other than V's opening alliterative monologue which was divine.

3. Went to the opera last night, "Suor Angelica," not a bad night out. It wasn't too long, even though the actual content was a bit odd (some paperwork and a suicide, with nuns), it was enjoyable. I may have missed some of the musical nuances, though.

One of those full, extravagant days where the tick-tock-tick-tock of daily functioning goes well: as in, groceries bought, floor swept, dishes done, face shaved (despite the brief flirtation with a beard), & a power-walk with Daniel in the evening. I watched several movies and I still have Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to watch with Michael and the Writers. I haven't seen it in far too long and Michael is all virginal with regard to the Gilliam/Depp fiasco.

Anyway, I've been reading about Hindu Sci-Fi Gods and working on an imaginary comic book proposal starring a gaggle of mid-Sixties shapeshifting robots ("Each one is a specific metal! Mercury's liquid at room temperature!") playing with their subtextual queerness and making them polymorphously perverse...I also wrote up the opening paragraph to a new, technicolour, day-go, futurist Teiresias Jones science fiction piece, with neon cigarettes and super-elastic purple pantsuits...

Just a regular old day at the Margaret Atwood Boarding House. She keeps ringing 'round to see if I'm watering her begonias properly, ostensibly, but really she just wants to find out what I thought of The Tent and if Joy's said anything, what Christian thinks, et cetera. Damnable Atwood, always calling at inopportune times ("Ah, Peggy, sorry darling, I'm right in the middle of, ah, baking this loaf of steaming bread, yes, I'm baking bread - what? No, I haven't read Graeme's bird book yet...can you hold on a second? My crumpets are burning.") and demanding "constructive criticism," which really means that she's been drinking and wants me to reassure her that they won't just publish whatever the hell she sends them.

Hilarious thing of the day: finding a letter written by someone I know, from Vancouver, on a comic book's letters page. At 8:20 in the morning, before work.

I want to write comic books. It's sad, but true: I'd love to devote my life to writing hilarious four-colour action comics, only with depth and wit and sex. Perhaps I should actually write some damn scripts, huh? It's not like I don't know the format or how to do it. It's not like I haven't had contact with artistic type people have expressed interest in illustrating something for me. Of course, this means I should actually do something with the Time Flappers ("Travellin' through time since 1929...") idea Johnathan and I came up with one lazy afternoon.

Otherwise, life's been cut up into slivers of time, work is an up-and-down thing, and I'm spending a much needed Thursday evening alone with my boyfriend to watch an animated movies about jungle animals or zoo animals or penguins or something. With dinner.

Debating getting my own cable internet connection in here soon, the sporadic connection I've been leeching of late is getting more sporadic, and I really should make the effort to balance my karma. I can probably afford the added expense, and a more supple connection would be useful.

Having watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas again, Terry Gilliam's adaptation of the seminal Hunter S. Thompson work (The American Bad Dream? Or, maybe, the end result of an America that has deprived itself of dreams through constant chemical & spiritual manipulation?), I delighted in a fresh crop of things to pick up on. The bit of character work that I clicked with the most occurs early in the film, when Thompson (as played by Johnny Depp) and his attorney (Benicio Del Toro) are on the road to Vegas - they've just picked up the hitchhiker and Depp begins to mouth along with his own voice-over (distorted by the cigarette holder which is his omnipresent prop) and he stumbles over whether or not he's actually speaking outloud or merely narrating. For a moment, the drugs pull at the layers of the film until they mingle, stretched and snagged upon each other. Naturally, Thompson (or his alias, Raoul Duke) hits a breakdown.

Cinematography-wise there's a lot of wonderful head-on shots of Depp where you only see his head and the sky above - he's shot from the cliff of his neck up, a spastic, disembodied presence while Depp's eyes work like gears behind those shades. Depp and Del Toro both display Plastic Man-like body control, their movements at once realistic, in character and distressingly animated, cartoon-like - in one scene, as they walk through a Vegas circus that is described by Thompson/Duke/Depp as "what the world would be like if the Nazis had won," Del Toro bends so far back while he walks that is almost horizontal - and then falls over. That moment before the fall is beautiful, and mirrors the smooth, tilting camera work that permeates the film, and they seem to inhabit two seperate planes - right up until, Wile E. Coyote-like, gravity reasserts control over Del Toro and down he goes.

There is also a scene with the real Hunter S. Thompson, wherein Thompson/Duke/Depp recalls a party in Nineteen Sixty-Five with Jefferson Airplane playing and, well, he sees himself - and comments on the event. "Is that me?" I hadn't noticed that the first time - or, I think, the second time - I saw the film.

Worth watching more. I might dive through the secondary material later in the week, if I have time.

1. I spent the past couple days watching the fourth season of Alias in between other things (like work); I love my tawdry spies. As was typical, Michael Vartan did a good job as painfully-brooding, slightly-unshaven, emotionally vacant cardboard spy, who theoretically has romantic chemistry with Jennifer Garner but we've never actually seen evidence of this, even when they're (a) kissing, (b) having sex on screen, or (c) discussing marriage. Really. Garner, while republican, can actually act decently despite the cardboard she is required to emote to. R from work actually asked if Vartan's character - Vaughn - was going to turn out to be gay, or something, because there was absolutely nothing there. Tragically, on a show where every significant mother figure is (a) secretly and then openly evil, or (b) killed off, it's very unlikely that they would make the romantic male lead anything but heteronormative. I also told R that I hoped Vaughn didn't ever turn out to gay, because he looks to be about as interesting in bed as a cheese grater, only more grating.

I still rather enjoy the show for its pulp spy action, the myriad aliases and slinky outfits that Garner is required to wear for her wonderfully ambiguous missions (do we even remember what you're at that party to do? Probably not, but you look awesome doing it, and I wish I could strut like that). Alias is, in a lot of ways, one of my prototypes for Johnny Damocles and Teiresias Jones, because you can't keep track of the plot half the time, while the outfits & tech are the most important consideration. The show can be an absolute delight to watch, half because of how bizarre it is and how confusingly incestual and self-destructive the fictional spy community are. There is an episode set up as an allusion to The Prisoner, half the characters discover that they're related at different points, and nobody seems to have any life or interests outside of beating up terrorists and stealing million dollar technology that kills people more and more unconvincing ways.

2. In other words, I'm writing some spies, some very queer spies, tonight, and the plot will be non-existent, the adjectives will be exceedingly sexual, and the white space will be provocative.

Saliva & wine bottles;
he tries to build a woman
out of saliva & wine bottles.

This is one of those failed experiments
that ends up like a half-heard line of dialogue -
no, not like dialogue, like conversation on the street.

He tries to build a woman out of saliva and wine bottles but they don't hold together very well and he's never really going to reproduce her, is he?

Or create a woman, period,
not even considering the issue of reproduction, honey.

Instead, he sits out on the fire escape -
he's never lived in a building with a fire escape before,
the novelty hasn't worn off for him -
he sits out there and he drinks another bottle
of some shit Merlot that he won't remember the taste of,
five minutes hence.

Because he needs building materials,
not because he's a drunk.

It's not even like he's dropped
into an abysmal depression or something equally tedious.

He's just lonely, and prone to drinking too much wine
and naming his apartment building after famous writers
who will never look at him
should he ask them to sign his copy of their latest book.

They will look the other way
and he'll walk away afterward
and they'll have misspelled his name or,
perhaps,
written the wrong one down
because they were only half-listening.

(c) 2006 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved.

(Written mostly because I'm missing the poetry and the last time I tried to write a poem it was a two-liner about how all my poetry was like broken something-or-other [not a terribly memorable metaphor] left in a cellar somewhere. Anyway, the poetry; poem a day, at least. I've pulled the Octavio Paz and the Pablo Neruda off the shelves for the purposes of initial inspiration, or creative drive, or whatever. And the dictionary, because I'm a sap who reads the dictionaries and once spent a very memorable Christmas Day doing just that. I looked up "dromedary" a short while ago, sort of an arabian camel that Neruda is convinced keeps moonlight in its hump.)

Messy! Trollopy old bandit, eyes like buckshot radishes,
prancing hither-and-thither with a bandana 'cross his face:
streaming scarves and perfumed sparrow feathers behind

like breadcrumbs. Don't bother trying to follow his flight,
only he knows which is the front and which is the back;
only he knows the exact middle spot and he'll hop there,

three times over the course of this expedition, to steal! To rob,
collapsing the universe behind him as he selects with rare
delicacy, his requirements; his booty, his bounty, his targets

plopped into that sack and thrown over shoulder like a bag of oil
for his internal engines. Yes: this man, drunk on playing cards,
molests this space and you watch, a little sick in the stomach

from the rapid reinvention and ransacking before you. Rather!
This bandit with his creamed-corn cheeks and egg yolk hair
invites only the casual appreciation of his finest qualities,

of his careful intent, the swooping backwash out behind him:
feathers and fabric, lost and drifting, cherry blossoms settling
in the creases of your coats, the music of a quick-fire violation

with empty shelves, missing knick-knacks, an ottomon pushed
askew, to leave you standing well and truly befuddled in this new
living room, even the lampshade missing in action, even the rug

gone, sacked, as he goes out that very high window with trumpets
flaring and you press fingers to throat, trying to breathe without
all the Christmas cards you collected over a long, strange decade.

(c) 2006 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved.

Which is to say: I hate that sensation of being on the bus with someone you know but (a) not well enough and (b) you don't actually like them, so you've avoided making conversation, chit-chat, or even eye contact only they are in fact boxing you into your particular corner and to get off the bus you have to break very specific social-urban barriers you've carefully constructed around yourself because they (a) creep you out and (b) irritate you.

I've got four fresh pens full of ink and a fresh, crisp rantbook to open up today and write in. Lovely. New pages, empty, devoid of anything until I attack them. It is unnamed as of yet, but you know how that goes. Something will make itself known to me.

Went to see Thank You for Smoking on Friday, Good Friday: an odd film about a tobacco lobbyist in the States. Intriguing because a lot of the conflict was over whether or not they should incorporate "ugly" warning pictures - skull and crossbones - on cigarette packages, which I thought was funny because how long has Canada been doing that? And ours are far more disgusting than the proposed ones in the film. Aaron Eckhart played an irritating yet lovable yet contemptible lobbyist, and the whole thing cast negative lights on everyone in the story, regardless of their left/right leanings or their tendencies toward pro-health or pro-smoking. I liked it quite a lot, although I will not that the smoker main character is never actually shown smoking, which may have been a meta thing.

No hats: the wearing of hats (sub-classification; see headwear for further specifications) is prohibited in all locations, with particular emphasis on those open for public consumption. Individuals who fail to adhere to this regulation will be detained by sanctioned officials and subjected to various lines of inquiry regarding their use of hats and hat-related items (see hat pins). Private residences may be searched in the event of detainment to locate further contraband, and guilty parties will be taken into custody at one of the debriefing centres located throughout the city with preference given to home branch of the detaining official before proximity to detainee's home address. There will be no second chances and individuals found wearing hats will, following interrogation, be sent out of the city for permanent correction.

Particularly offensive contraband includes: pirate hats, basbeball caps, the fedora, derby, and pillbox. Paper birthday hats and top hats are only minor offenses as of this announcement, but may be re-evaluated if civilian unrest continues to climb.

(c) 2006 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved

Internet music meme. I don't care, I still (mis)pronounce it to rhyme with "chem." And apparently I have really touchy-feely earth-goddess gay taste in music, despite a few randomly masculine, ah, flourishes:

It's only a (goddam) cross-section, and I'm tired besides. I'm going to go to bed now, which means lying there with pen and rantbook, writing up something. I have the first inklings of a Teiresias Jones sex scene which must be dashed off lest it go the way of all my other really great ideas: down to the Daedalus Vaults, where everything is ingenious but doomed to fail from the outset. Teiresias Jones and Johnny Damocles are wonderful for prodding me to invent weirder and wilder fashions, hairstyles, and sexual positions. Also, coming up with horrendous drugs for them to consume without apparent effect is a bit draining.

Joan of Arc...Jeanne D'Arc crops up a lot in pop culture.

Leonard Cohen wrote a poem, "Joan of Arc," which is probably my favourite of his canon; it focuses on a dialogue between Joan and pyre she's being burned in, and her acceptance of the fire as her new lover. It was performed as a song as well, although I prefer the duet he does with Jennifer Warnes to the straight-up Cohen version (sacrilege, I know); Warnes plays the Joan lines, and Cohen recites the fire's response. I always liked the implication that the fire is another form of God, and Joan remains in contact with hir as she burns - and their connection becomes more intimate than it was before.

Kate Bush, of all people, also had a song, called "Joanni." It's quite sleek, and I'd say "haunting" if that wasn't a word over-used with reference to art; sensual. I don't know. Richard bopped it over to me on messenger the other day and I've been listening to it.

There is an Israeli band called "Jeanneofarc," and a Chicago band called "Joan of Arc."

Several films have been made about her; the second one, The Passion of Joan of Arc, was a silent film in 1928. It cast Renée Jeanne Falconetti in the title role, and also featured Anais Nin's contemporary and friend, Antonin Artraud. The film is later used in Godard's Vivre sa Vie in 1962.

The first film was in 1868, by Melies. It is one of the earliest examples of cinematography using the close-up.

Later films include the much more famous Ingrid Bergman portrayal in 1948, directed by Victor Fleming, based on the stage play Joan of Lorraine, as well as a TV movie in 1999. There was also a Milla Jovovich vehicle called The Messenger, of which I've only heard bad things.

There was a TV show called Joan of Arcadia, which actually wasn't bad for a young adult pseudo-fantasy Buffy-non-Buffy derivative with a young girl who is constantly visited by God in various forms (apparently, God is occasionally a really hot Goth boy, take of that what you will).

There is a statue of Jeanne D'Arc in Paris during the Nineteen Twenties in Beware the Creeper, a brief comic book miniseries a couple years ago that recast an old DC Comics character, the Creeper, as a provocative, promiscuous heroine with multiple personalities - she hung around with Andre Breton's Surrealists, tried to seduce Ernest Hemingway (more out of sport than desire; his wife was with him at the party) and tried to bring down the upper crusts of Parisian culture. The statue shows up on the cover with the Creeper wrapped around it's based, and themes of laughing martyrdom permeate the book. In that fashion Jeanne is recast as a freedom fighter in a different way, but I though it contributed quite well.

Our Man Bertolt Brecht, who fathered Mother Courage and her Children, also wrote three plays about Joan. Bernard Shaw wrote about her.

There's also a more direct reference to Joan of Arc in Alan Moore and Gene Ha's graphic novel The Forty-Niners, a prequel to their Top Ten comic book about a police precinct in a city where everybody is a superhuman. Joanna Dark is shown as some sort of reincarnation of Joan of Arc called "The Maid," just after World War II - she is a founding member of the Neopolis Police Force, and is presented in full armour, flying around in a magical growing/shrinking spherical Ark. She was quite instrumental in the story, preventing an uprising by the vampire mafia living in the city's "Little Budapest" district - Joanna blesses the city's water supply.

I'm not sure where this is going. More research later.

I think either the allergies have decided to kick in, or I'm fighting a cold. Either way, I feel half-miserable and have to keep my head up at work. Possibly there needs to be a more...permanent solution to the Allergy Question. Someone the other day said something about tincture of thistle being good at combating the Allergy Question, so I might give that a go; anything to get out from under these monstrous things. Possibly I should just consider moving to a city that doesn't burst into incandescent springtime with clouds of ambient and possibly intelligent pollen.

Too bad it's not beige-alert military-grade sex pollen.

1. I'm a little unimpressed with Tower of Song: the songs of Leonard Cohen, a compilation of various musicians' covers of dear Old Lenny's lyrics. Aaron Neville's cover of "Ain't No Cure for Love" is, ah, deplorable. It's not across-the-board-bad; Tori Amos does a beautiful cover of "Famous Blue Raincoat," but most of the other tracks (Elton John? Gah) aren't worth a wooden nickel. I also picked up A New Skin for the Old Ceremony, one of Lenny's early albums - you can tell, because his voice hasn't changed yet. He still sounds like a boy, all young and waiting to be defiled, the cigarettes and whisky haven't delivered unto him the tenor and resonance that you expect from Leonard Cohen. I think, by and large, I have to prefer Cohen's mid-career, because his early stuff is brilliant of word but lacking that depth of his later voice while his later stuff has the voice but has been castrated of verbal excellence (I'm looking at you, Ten New Songs).

2. Marvel Comics actually paid attention to the market. They've been releasing the collections of their fresh "teen hero" comic book, Runaways, as a series of manga-sized digests for about thirteen bucks a pop, with cheaper paper. Manga digests are doing really well in North America right now, and making collections even cheaper than they already are (honestly, despite my addiction, it doesn't actually make much sense to buy single issues anymore, if you can be patient and wait) will certainly boost sales, although I'm not sure what the current numbers are on the series. The comic itself is well-written "Whedon Lite" that mixes enough old continuity with fresh characters and strong characterization. There's a diverse cast, including a shockingly non-stereotypical lesbian, although the pop culture references get to be a little tedious and seem to come at a ratio of one-per-page. The art, which is North American Manga-style, is pretty pop-tastic and fun, crisp and clean with decent colour work as well. Recommended.

3. Further bits and bobs for the Jeanne D'Arc thing - I don't know, the cannibalization of previous decades, history as pop tarts, and the phrase "sexy zombies." My brain is often a blender, I need to top up a few more stray thoughts and it might all materialize into something or crash and burn like all my other projects recently--

...what would happen if I calculated out (okay, probably asked Michael to calculate out) the amount of time I spend arriving early to work? All those empty half-hours doing whatever until I need to go on desk and such? How much would that work out to?

In other words, I'm early, it's Monday, and I'm trapped inside on an otherwise beautiful day. Trapped. Rat-like. For seven hours, plus the hour lunch break (when I will probably leave to pick up lunch for the patisserie around the corner, a few scant moments of sunlight/fresh air).

I want to go to the Beach, bitches.

1. While I walked from the bus stop on Pandora Avenue over to the Margaret Atwood Boarding House, I ended up imagining the fiction workshop I'd one day like to teach at some Canadian university (once I've got my master's degree and possibly made a name for myself, but we'll see), and what I'd include in the syllabus with regard to subject matter, which in my experience is a potential tar pit for academic workshops. I think I'd end up saying something along the lines of:

You are free to write about whatever you feel like, whatever you're inspired to write about, but I have to remind you that whatever you write will be subjected to criticism by peer editors. I encourage you to write unsafe fiction, certainly, because sometimes it can be very good if the story provokes discomfort, but there is a difference between "provocative" and "shock value." At the same time, editors need to remember that these are (ideally) second drafts, in some cases first drafts, and the ideas in them will be a little unformed; something which seems overly offensive now can be injected with meaning and significance. It's important to respect your audience, and it's important to respect your writer.

Another idea I had would be to give each student a genre assignment for their third (or, in the case of a year-long case, their last) story - based on what they've been writing so far, assigning each person a genre to explore which they don't normally express interest in. It'd be easier to do in a year-long class because such stories might not neccesarily work out right, and I'd want to work out the specifics to try and ease the process, prevent them from getting frustrated with the genre in question or the style I've asked them to look at. Obviously, they'd be able to opt out of the assignment but I want to figure out ways of encouraging them to explore the different genres that they might not normally write about, without cramping their individual styles or override their narrative voices.

2. Seriously, gross: listening to someone brush his teeth in the break room for five minutes, without water, behind a magazine, sitting on the couch. While I was eating. It sounded like creepy mouth masturbation.

3. The beach last night was a lot of fun. For various reasons, it was only Michael, Daniel and I; Matt was apparently stricken with a bad flu and Joy was taking care of them, I'm hoping he's recovered and feeling better because it sounded awful. Steff had her parents to hang out with. Some people were working, and Tara had a maybe-kind-of-date. But we ate junk food, including "crack" mini-donuts, and sat on the rocks. Michael complained about dogs not being good photographic subjects (ha), and we watched the sun go down.

4. I found a copy of "The History of the Umbrella." I believe I shall write a story about a mad umbrella-man.

He delivers himself, like a lump of soiled sweaters, to the laundromat.
He knows he must beware: there are laundry pirates asock.

Roll round, the playing-card shuffling dryers rumple
and vibrate, round, round, he washes his clothes
while ugly smoking men with blister farm lips watch.

Everything costs coins, and without them
action ends prematurely. He counts out carefully
but does not slip them all at once into the slot
otherwise there will be a jam, a jangle,
a failure of function.

He watches his machines (colours & lights) else
the laundry pirates come to plunder
the wardrobe in motion--
Stinky Bob with one malicious eye.
Stainbeard the Cruel and Unsightly.
Jim, who dines on roasted carcass of underwear.

Else they make off with his clothes
and he has to walk home naked,
clenched and cold,
the box of soap between his knees.

(c) 2006 Ben Rawluk, all rights reserved.

1. I hate fucking up at work, especially when (a) it's at the beginning of the shift, (b) there are a bunch of smaller issues that crop up around the same time, and (c) when you should know better by now, but it was the beginning of a shift on Day 9 or 9 straight days at work and you aren't paying enough attention. I hate that I internalize that shit to the point where it throws me off for the next six hours of my life. Honestly, I just hate making mistakes, especially ones that result from me not remembering a policy.

2. I do not hate mojitos, especially when consumed threefold after shift with a good buddy of a girl, until I'm wobbly and a bit overly emotional on the cellular with the Michael on the walk home, which was mostly about the DESPERATE NEED to piss when I got home. DESPERATE NEED, DESPERATE NEED.

3. I should not overuse capitals.

4. Esthero's new album, Wikked [sic] Little Girls is the motherfuckin' shit, bitches. Certainly, though, I've been drinking, and prone to PROCLAMATIONS OF INTENT.

5. And capitals.

6. I'm having trouble balancing my life and dealing with all aspects therein right now. I think I'm messing things up.

Needless to say: I woke this morning with a hangover. I woke up at about 6:30 am and lay there until my alarm went off at 7:00 am, stumbled into vertical-type movement, and turned it off because OW. The resonating screams of trillions of very. Nasty. Molecules. After that I passed out for about two hours and woke up 9:00 am. Well, quarter after, got up and turned on the phone. I fired off a quick email to my supervisor so she has all the information in my possession about the mistake last night. There's nothing else I can do, really, and as several people have tried to get through my extremely thick brain-case, everybody has made mistakes at some point and it's not horrible, end-of-the-world stuff. I just don't like making a mistake and then not being able to correct it myself.

Otherwise, I'm feeling more centered and focused this afternoon, having taken a time-out and even turned down a shift for the evening. Instead, I'm going to take Michael out to Felicita's for Tara's benefit concert thing - she's going to be off on a Habit for Humanity cross-country bike ride shortly - and possibly for dinner before hand with Tara and Samara. I'd really like to go out for some Vietnamese at Le Petit Saigon, but I'm not sure if we'll have time to do so.

A full week off vacation might not be possible at the moment but I can certainly take some time off next weekend to go to Salt Spring, where I've never been. Some natural setting might help me de-stress myself and feel less crazy.