wildcat

A relatively comprehensive list of the podcasts put out by the good old Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that generally make it onto the iPod over the course of any given week:

- (The Best of) Definitely Not the Opera has evolved quite a bit since I first started listening to it, way back in the day when I bothered to use a radio to intercept radio signals. It was the Saturday afternoon show, and it still is, though Sook-Yin Lee is now the host. It tends to have interesting commentary, comedy, very fragmentary but always surrounding a theme; at times I find it a little awkward to listen to an audio podcast where they're talking about YouTube and videos found there.
- Spark is Nora Young's new baby. I'm an old school fanboy of Young, having followed her back when she was hosting DNTO -- I think she actually started the show, to be honest -- and now she's got a "Next Best Thing" guide, a program that depends heavily on the blog attached to it.
- Writers & Company, of course, our old stand-by. Hosted by Eleanor Wachtel and making up for the crime of having Evan Solomon interviewing writers poorly on CBC Newsworld. One day, Christian will run the CBC and I'll end up hosting a lot of the shows, the others being done by Wachtel.
- The Vinyl Cafe, hosted by Stuart McLean. Usually only includes the monologue portions of the show, which is more what I'm listening for. I skip the slightly tiresome rants and focus on the stories about Dave and Morley.
- Search Engine, hosted by Jesse Brown. This is a new addition to my rotation, a show focusing on how the presence and evolution of the internet influences politics, culture, et cetera. Uses its blog as a focal point for collaborative journalism. The emminently crushable sci-fi writer and celeblogger Cory Doctorow often provides commentary.

I'm excited because I have some fresh episodes of Spark and Seatch Engine to fire into my ears while I walk over to Dan's tonight for the dinner club evening. I'm also excited because the comics that a friend of mine posted to me from the U.K. showed up today, and he included a weird package of powdered British candy called Double Dip.

1. I did not turn my phone on yesterday. I did not check my Facebook. I did not check my email. I didn't log on to Barbelith, browse anything in wikipedia (though Michael did while I was in the room, checking for cooking instructions for Yorkshire pudding), or anything else like that. I didn't even use my iPod. Those are all things I do on a more-than-daily basis and it's strange to think I went twenty-four hours without dipping into that kind of information. I read Matt Fraction and Andy Kuhn's pleasantly infantile Annotated Mantooth graphic novel, collecting the adventures of a billionaire super-spy gorilla.

2. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer was a big, dumb movie. There are spoilers here, but I can't imagine their terribly significant and frankly have very little to do with the plot mechanics. It didn't really do its job with regard to the tension between the family dynamics of the Four and the big cosmic adventuring; Jessica Alba's Sue spends the first half of the movie as an unrealistic shrew who seems to prioritize her wedding over the fate of the planet; it isn't until the end when we finally see the family -- particularly Sue -- acting in a more adventurous fashion, speeding through the sixth and final attempt at a wedding (this time in Japan) so they can go stop Venice from dropping into the Adriatic; they're a family unit and the cosmic stuff is important, they know it is, even as they start to treat it with a certain banal disregard. The first movie placed Ben Grimm, the Thing, into his Long Dark Teatime of the Soul; in the second movie, Johnny Storm gets to walk the deep black corridors. Well, as deep as a character like Johnny is capable of, anyway.

There does seem to be a creepy subtext running through the Marvel movies; Spider-Man's Norman Osborne, X3's Jean Grey, and FF2's Sue all die or nearly die after torso-splitting metal penetration. And only Sue is really saved from this fate, thanks to a silver-slick metal porn-star atop a surfboard from the stars -- touching her forehead. They didn't even bother with any spiff Special Effects visuals for that resurrection scene, even after we've established that, of course, the alien super-porn Surfer's power all comes from his phallic board of beyond. At least she didn't suffer from psychic nosebleed this time 'round.

It's been dreary all day, there's not enough light out, I barely slept last night -- but I'm a few pages into a story now. I'm reading Haruki Murakami's "The Second Bakery Attack," from The Elephant Vanishes; Christian's discussing it in one of his classes so I picked it up. Murakami's men always seem to be lawyers, praticising or not.

Apparently the libraries went out for a good chunk of today, stormed downtown, were present for the library board meeting. I heard about this on a voicemail from Melissa, as I had today off and was at the market at the time. Picking up a few things for lunch. They were going to be in again at three this afternoon. If I'd bothered looking at my phone sooner, I could have probably gone down and joined up with them, but it was probably better for my overall sanity that I didn't.

Otherwise I've just been typing or making stir-fry. Quiet day. Talked to Michael on the phone for a little while as he has the week off.

But, back to the muse--

"Things went downhill for Mister Antonio after the floating winery fiasco," said Judith, across the folding table on the back patio, as Mary poured lemon margaritas from a sweating jug into a pair of ceramic mugs. "Selling homebrew wine out of the back of a dingy to underage boys on sailboats? Even in international waters? Terrible idea. On the whole of it." Mister Antonio was Judith's fourth husband and, following the divorce, she refused to call him by his first name. Mary often speculated that Judith had at some point forgotten the name entirely; Mister Antonio himself had been reduced to the occasional anecdote and rumours of his involvement in a South American coup. Judith absently fingered the ruffles of the pale orange scarf tied around her neck, then tipped the margarita into her mouth. She wiped her lips with the back of her spotted hand. "He was, I suppose, rather fond of bad ideas."

but the problem, yes, the problem, is starting all your sentences with conjunctions because it'll be like everybody's come in half-way through the movie, or a half-empty box of donuts sitting on a concrete hump beside an overflowing garbage bin in the rain while people picket, picket, picket for pay equity, and the rain can't really decide what it wants to do. Mist, gently, while sunlight pours through (living in a liquid world is a strain on one's stains) or clatter resoundingly against pavements, divets of rain clumping out of the sky? But really there are too many questions. Like, if one is playing a "game" of chess on a moist bench covered over by rumpled plastic, and one is reduced to four pawns spread out across the board and of course one's king, is it worth having said king hot-foot between the same two squares over and over? Can pawns move backwards or not? What about rules imported from checkers? And one lone librarian walking back and forth as a soldier while people linger, eating apples? There are too many questions, of course,

1. I've spent most of today being on the verge of pulling on a rubber mask, picking a random leitmotif (possibly, I don't know, lamps) and then planning completely insane crimes based on that leitmotif (possibly, I don't know, engineering the theft of all lamp-posts in Victoria). I worry that a career as a Batman theme villain would get me more job satisfaction than the current work situation is managing to do, what with the rotating strike action taking place. We went out for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday as part of the action.

2. This morning, as I strolled out the front door of the Margaret Atwood Boarding House with intent to (a) deposit a bag of garbage in the bin and (b) head downtown for my day-off purposes, I came face to face with an elegant-looking stag. After I took a moment to do that mental self-analysis (I did drink raspberry tea with breakfast, right? Not mushroom tea? Right!), I took a step forward, the stag darted over to the front gate, looked confused, looked back at me, and remained motionless. I went back inside and got my landlord to show him. He maintains that it was a doe (a deer! A female deer!), "because it looks like it has tits at the front," (maybe I was looking at it from the wrong angle), which probably the last thing I expected my sixty-something homosexual landlord to say today. Then the stag / doe took off over the fence.

3. As if to quell some of my thinly-threaded madness, the tenth issue of Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon's CASANOVA came out today with references to Fellini, the Rolling Stones, and the atrocities of the rich. You know, things you might commit while wearing Vera Wang.

4. The world is better when you tell the universe to suck a fuck (Yes, potty-mouth today) and go for a bowl of white rice with sesame sauce on it. With plans to write.

Last night I met up with Christian at Dolce Vita and wrote a five page short story, beginning to end. First draft, at least-- I ended up going to bed at about 12:30, later than I should have to work early this morning, because I was transcribing it into a second draft. I'm about halfway through that draft now, and I'll have it finished by the end of the day. I wanted a sharp little thing, but as usual it's more about voice and narrative persona than it is about plot or anything. After I finish this one I'm going to write another.

I think it's important to document my feelings upon my discovery that, yes, Angelina Jolie is playing Grendel's Mother. Now, keep in mind that I'm not sure why they needed to follow up Beowulf & Grendel (the greatest love story never told?) with, um, another movie about Beowulf, but they cast Angelina Jolie as Grendel's Mother. Do I actually have to see this movie now? I mean, do I? Because I wasn't going to before, but now I'm modestly curious and will probably be forced to see this while very, very fucking drunk at the Roxy Cinegog (Where films are a religion yadda yadda) and it may usurp Troy (starring Brad Pitt's Thighs) from the coveted position of "Most Amusingly Disturbing Subtext & Please Stop the Eye Bleeding." Still:

1. I'm telling you. Baz Luhrmann's Beowulf and Grendel. With music, dancing, and jump cuts. Just watch out for Hrothgar's showstopping solo in the second act. Possibly Wes Anderson could guest-direct the end sequence with Beowulf's funeral pyre.

2. Why does this somehow confirm every snarky joke we made while reading Beowulf in high school? And why I can't I think of Angelina Jolie without imagine Andrew Smart performing his breakout role as Lady Capulet?

3. Now, this has absolutely nothing to do with Christian making me watch Oedipus Rex as performed by vegetables (and just wait for the scene of a potato performing graphic and incestuous cunnilingus on a tomato to be burnt into what little sanity might remain with you), but really -- Jolie has to do Jocasta next, right? Alexander the Great's mother, Grendel's mother, Oedipus's mother? Right?