|
|
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
| |
9:41 pm - Shale
|
This was a stupid conversation. You had to bring it up again, didn't you? And again. What's the problem with falsifying my past? It proves I learned something from the life I didn't want to lead, at least. Can't change it, can't go back and if only'd my way out of it, but still it shaped me. I'm like this at least partially because of some of the choices I made, but if I've learned anything and it was too late but it was the first chance I ever got and how do you apply that to a wholly different situation anyway.
Wish I could do it! Wish I could let my logic go fuzzy whenever I'm faced with a new situation. But there's too many cards in the deck, and sometimes I just don't know how to play. Do you like that, by the way? I've seen card game metaphors used that way before so I know it sounds great on a page. It's hard to think of anything new when you're indirectly flaying me like this.
|
|
|
| Monday, November 16th, 2009
| |
4:16 pm - Lake Louise
|
This is how I've been sleeping lately. I fall into Lake Louise and when I pull myself out again I'm all gangly arms and a flat face, and I'm pretending to be what I guess everyone around me calls normal. I can't really tell, though, so I'm constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering if today's the day I get pulled aside. "We saw the way your teeth glinted when the alloted three minutes of sun shone through the window. We're sorry but we have to gut and mount you on a hook, as a warning against any more of your kind who would try this. Oh, and try not to thrash about too much; we'd like to put someone a little more deserving in the shell."
I'd rather do it on my terms. I'd like to rip off my skin myself, actually. But for some reason, they say I'm not allowed -- I can only stand up with my muscles exposed and bleeding once someone else has made the first cut. I want to be braver than this. Maybe I can cut a deal to at least let someone I know hold the knife. I want out, man, I'm not really satisfied with how things are going and I'd like to accelerate the process. Let this sick bloated body turn around and wither and melt in the sun (which doesn't shine on Lake Louise this time of year.) Climb out looking the way I do when I'm still half-asleep and looking in the mirror.
|
|
|
| Friday, November 13th, 2009
| |
10:11 am - A recent mix CD
|
Inspired by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) mansionmaniac, I'm here to tell you that I make mix CDs all the time. I used to do tapes but they're a lot harder -- lots of tracks cutting off two-thirds of the way through because I hit the limit. A CD burner tells you exactly how much time you've got left, so you can max out the value. Here's one I made recently:
The Weather Channel
Side 1: Studio I
1. Pearl Jam -- Dead Man Walking
2. Pavement -- Stereo
3. Dinosaur Jr. -- Just Like Heaven
4. The Tragically Hip -- The Depression Suite
5. Biz Markie -- Just A Friend
Side 2: Live
6. The Band feat. Joni Mitchell -- Coyote
7. Barenaked Ladies -- Crazy/Fox On The Run
8. Chess -- Nobody's Side
9. Meatloaf -- Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad
10. The Band feat. Neil Young -- Helpless
Side 3: Studio II
11. Alanis Morissette -- Hand In My Pocket
12. Michael Jackson -- Billie Jean
13. Steve Miller Band -- Rock'n Me
14. The Rolling Stones -- Wild Horses
15. Pearl Jam -- Fatal
Now, I'm not super-crazy about the construction of the perfect mix album like John Cusack in High Fidelity, but I do like to hold down a bit of decent organization. As you can see, the album divides nicely into three sides, developing the appearance of symmetry -- but the TTH track is a good nine minutes long, pushing its distance into deeper territory. A lesser example is the bookending of Pearl Jam songs, as well as The Band on the live portion, although I might've chosen a better closing song. It was a risk I had to take, though. Going the easy route ("Footsteps" would've worked, as would "Dirty Frank") invariably leads to blandness.
Most of the choices reflect what I'm listening to at the time: the entire reason I picked up "Sticky Fingers" was to have Wild Horses in my collection, and the inclusion of MJ was a natural choice after his passing. And maybe it's been ten years since Alanis was relevant, but it's ozwalled's fault for bringing her up and getting me all nostalgic up in here. So aside from being a collection of songs that I happen to like, the mix becomes a signpost, an inuksuk built out of vague memories and feelings that I've had. The reason I started making this one was because I heard a song that sounded a little like Dead Man Walking, only it was terribly lame, and I had to get it out of my head. I forget what it was now, so obviously my plan succeeded. And the reason it's called "The Weather Channel" is because I left my Wii pointed at the weather channel while I was working on the tracklist. Have you ever sat down and listened to that channel's music? It's really soothing and nice, just what you need any time of the day. Beats the heck out of the news channel.
current music: The Weather Channel
|
|
|
| Thursday, November 12th, 2009
| |
4:13 pm - Ideal romance
|
I have a problem, y'see. I think the most romantic scene I've ever witnessed in a movie, moreso even than "here's lookin' at you, kid," is when Barry (Adam Sandler) and Lena (Emily Watson) are in bed together in Punch Drunk Love. The quote from imdb says it all:
Barry: I'm lookin' at your face and I just wanna smash it. I just wanna fuckin' smash it with a sledgehammer and squeeze it. You're so pretty.
Lena: I want to chew your face, and I want to scoop out your eyes and I want to eat them and chew them and suck on them.
[pause]
Barry: OK. This is funny. This is nice. It came out when we were in high school. We went and saw it on one of the postcard-sized screens at the World Exchange. There were maybe three or four other people, sitting on the far side of the aisle. My companions wanted to sit nearer to the back so they could make out. Now, this girl, she turned out to be a psycho (to the point where her other friends, the street kids, watched their backs around her) but if I'd made a move a few days earlier she would've been my girlfriend. Maybe. It's always impossible to say what someone will or won't do. She thought the movie was boring, so it certainly wouldn't have worked out in the long run. This was the same girl who forced us to watch Legally Blonde because we watched five minutes of Mulholland Drive and she thought that was boring, too.
I want to be so in love that I take out a wall with a baseball bat. I want to spiral off to Montreal, four hours round trip on the road, so I can spend 45 minutes with a girl. I want to tell her, honestly and earnestly, that I want to rip her to shreds so that nobody else can do it, and have her tell me back that she wants to be the only other person in my car when we inevitably get crushed by a garbage truck. That's me, that's my idea of the perfect love.
current music: Barenaked Ladies -- The Old Apartment
|
|
|
| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
| |
1:20 pm - Strange Dr. Strang
|
(partial repost from smnet)
My most memorable sickness was a common cold I had when I was about five years old or so. It was my first experience with the sheer amount of fluid that one’s nasal passages can produce, and as such I had a dream that night about a carnival sideshow character named "Strange Doctor Strang" (Strang rhymes with twang) who would suspend fairgoers upside down in a box filled with translucent green slime, for reasons which remain unclear to this day. I described it to my parents when I woke up, and they said it was probably just my brain thinking about how hard it was to breathe while I was sick. But to this day, when I have to blow my nose, I sometimes wonder if Strange Dr. Strang is still out there somewhere, putting up his bizarre experimental show for repulsed, yet intrigued crowds.
(now this part is new)
The way I remember it, Strang wasn't entirely present in the dream. When I went into his tent, it was all done in black with green writing, more "psycho rave" than "Matrix" (this was twenty years ago, remember, although really my brain had no business understanding raves at that time either.) The placard in particular was written in a sprawling, spattered font, reminiscent of Ralph Steadman's illustration for the title of "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas." From the main room, it split off to four different chambers -- two downwards and two upwards, as if I were looking at an overhead map. For some reason I associate it closely with the layout of Gertrude's Secrets. The upper-left chamber was definitely occupied by a girl with pigtails. At the center of the main room was a large cubical block which gradually sunk into a fitted box; I think this was meant to be some sort of timer device.
I've got all this detail stacked up in my head, but when I try to recall Strang himself, there's nothing. I want to say that he had the usual characteristics of the "mad scientist" archetype: the wild shock of white hair, the skinny body clad in a white coat, elbow-length gloves, you know the drill. But something in my memory always nudges me away from that. He may have been Strange, but he wasn't really all that weird. Whatever he may have been doing, he believed it was beneficial to society, and maybe it really was. He really could've looked like just about anyone.
|
|
|
| Friday, October 30th, 2009
| |
12:35 pm - Scheduling is important
|
Around this time every year, Chris Baty sends me (and several thousand other Nano'ers) an email, helpfully outlining what he figures the next month of novel-writing will be like. This is generally a welcome contribution, as it reminds me to do things like send a donation, but as I enter my fifth year of daredevil storytelling, I find that his estimates don't necessarily match up with mine. As such, I present for your consideration the Refurbished Simon Roberts NaNoWriMo Schedule.
Today: send in my donation, get the new desktop version of Write Or Die, fall asleep on the couch while watching football.
Tomorrow: massive scavenger hunt for necessary equipment: USB stick, laptop power cable, bits and pieces of character-study in lieu of an actual outline. Brief panic. Whip up a real outline. Join late-night chatroom for launch party. Get 1,500 words written over the next two and a half hours. Initial pangs of concern that chosen plotline isn't feasible for 50K begin to stir; lie awake in bed staring at the darkness while fears circulate in head.
Nov. 1st: wake up refreshed, knock out another 1,500 words about a completely different character (probably 500 before showering and another 1,000 after.) Fuel creative juices with leftover Halloween candy. First write-in of the month; spend half of time writing terrible ideas on "plot ninja" pages.
Nov. 3rd: get a really great idea, curse self for not bringing USB stick to work. Jot down notes, send home via email. Get home four hours later, open email, wonder who this crazy person is and why they thought that would ever be a good idea. Head to write-in, use bad idea to lay down another two thousand or so anyway. Resolve to bring stick to work tomorrow to take advantage of random inspirations.
Nov. 4th: absolutely no good ideas. Plug in stick anyway sometime after lunch, stare at story for five minutes before closing the document again.
Nov. 7th: sister's wedding. Spend half of reception telling relatives about writing career. Deflect any questions of profitability.
Nov. 8th: second, bigger reception at the house. Slyly observe social interactions and overheard quips for writerly poaching later. Get tipsy in the evening, write about five hundred words before getting bored and playing video games instead. Novel at 14K.
Nov. 9th: goggle at terrible plot twists added while drunk the previous night. Work out how to replace the primary and secondary antagonists now that they're both dead. Suddenly realize online wordcount hasn't been updated since last Wednesday. Traditional first "holy crap my bar graph just took a giant leap" moment.
Nov. 13th: read tarot cards for inspiration. Cards suggest changing careers, maybe going back to college. Put cards in drawer. Seal drawer with duct tape. Novel at 20K.
Nov. 14th: Marathon Write-In Of Doom. Get 12,000 words written in one day. Plot begins to unravel due to heightened use of word wars, bizarre suggestions, intravenous ingestion of coffee, and midday trek to Subway. Traditional second Bar Graph Giant Leap moment.
Nov. 17th: give official blessing to week of lowered expectations by going out drinkin' with the guys. Whatever, after the marathon it's not like the wordcount is gonna go backwards.
Nov. 19th: writer's block symptoms beginning to emerge.
Nov. 21st: Stay up all night fervently jotting down crazy good large scale action sequence. Fall asleep at next day's write-in.
Nov. 26th: cuss twice, once at Americans bragging about Thanksgiving, and again at stupid bloody plot which has stalled at just over 40K.
Nov. 29th: Grey Cup Sunday. Novel at 45K. Approaching dénouement -- that's French for "when we beat up the supervillain." Writer's block fully emergent. Plotline becoming unrecognizable. Untape drawer for desperate tarot reading.
Nov. 30th: Work out exactly how to end the damn thing perfectly while in the shower. Type out thrilling ending. Novel at 49K. Cuss. Leaf through story looking for places to pad out with extra description or dialogue. Novel at 49.557K. Cuss again. Type six hundred words about an irrelevant minor character. Novel at 50K. Cheer. Attempt to submit novel to automated web checker. Web checker disagrees with personal wordcount. Remember that you have to remove hyphens to get hyphenated words counted as two. Print out victory certificate. Bask in glorious rays of awesomeness.
Dec. 1st: fall asleep at work.
Dec. 2nd: go to after-party. Brag. Listen to others bragging.
I don't know, I guess his is more straightforward, but this is how it went for me last year and I'm not about to discount a working process.
current music: Toto -- Africa
|
|
|
| Thursday, October 29th, 2009
| |
9:19 am - Writer's Block: Mysterious benefactor
|
If I tell you, it's not a secret any more! Sheesh! Website fulla writers, you'd think they know definitions.
current music: Led Zeppelin -- Livin' Lovin' Maid
|
|
|
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009
| |
10:43 am - Don't shoot the Facebook poster, he's doing his best
|
One of my acquaintances on Facebook posed a simple question as a status update: "who or what would you describe as overrated?" There were about thirty responses, some of which I took issue with for various reasons. I reproduce my original reply in its entirety here (except formatted better because LJ does what Facebook don't.)
Winter.
Also, most of these replies. There's nothing like a good "rank things without context" thread to bring out a healthy variety of underconsidered opinions and recent pop-culture fads. For example:- >implying the Red Wings are 'overrated' because they're in a 3-3-2 slump, even though they've been the most consistently good team for the last decade
- bringing up "Twilight" when we all know the vampiriffic trend will buckle the same way Harry Potter did
- going all the way through There Will Be Blood to the bowling scene before declaring it ridiculous, instead of picking any number of prior sequences of equal or greater ridiculosity value which could've clued in an unimpressed viewer (I mean come on, it starts with a guy breaking his leg in a mineshaft, if you're not going to like this movie it's going to start right there)
- invoking The Beatles in any context (this in and of itself is an overrated phenomenon, when there are so many other British invaders like the Rolling Stones or the Animals to choose from)
- and of course, putting in any sort of meta-response, like "Facebook" or "sharing your opinion" or "nitpicking everyone else, either because you disagree with them, or because you feel -- rather unfairly -- that their remarks aren't up to your personal standard of discussion on the series of tubes, just because you've been a basement-dwelling screen-watcher for the better part of your life and not everyone has the same level of commitment to online expression as you do."
Towards the end there, I realized that if I really felt the way I did about my own response, I shouldn't be subjecting people to it on Facebook. So I deleted all that junk and left it at "winter." I know you guys will enjoy it, though, because the only people left on LJ are the diehard Internet oldschoolers who get what I'm saying about staring down the ol' entertainment rectangle day in and day out.
current music: some damn Sousa march or other
|
|
|
| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
| |
10:39 pm - Better than
|
Watching the ALCS, the announcer just asked, "is there anything better than October baseball?"
And I'm like "is this a trick question...?"
I mean, sportswise alone, there's June hockey, November Canadian football, the Tour de France in the summer... and then, how about hot slippers on a cool morning, or sittin' on the porch havin' a moment with your lady friend, or just taking the biggest drag on a good costa rican cigar and then sippin' on a scotch. While watching November Canadian football. Paying with the money you just won on a slot machine (that actually happened once.)
Look, I'm no fool. October baseball is good stuff. Any time it's all on the line, odds are it's gonna be epic -- I'll even watch lacrosse if it's the playoffs. But before Sportsnet switched over to this sucker, I saw a tremendous hockey game: Sens and Preds, seven goals in the third period, finished 6-5 Nashville in overtime. See, with hockey, it can always be exciting, whereas if you asked me what was happening with baseball in August, I would've shrugged and maybe known where Toronto was in the standings if I'd read the newspaper that morning.
What's got me most curious about this sentiment is what the life of the man who said it must be like. Where do these announcers go after the game? Do they tuck themselves away into coffins, waiting for the lights to turn on again for the next play-by-play? Do they have homes with wives who are almost, but not quite as satisfying as the Fall Classic?
Of course, even as I type this, the Angels have just driven out two base hits in a row and retaken the lead against the Yankees. Okay, alright. At this exact moment there is nothing better than October baseball, I will grant you that. Talk to me again around Christmas and I'll probably have a new opinion.
current music: "a pair of key two-out hits" man I could do this job
|
|
|
| Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
| |
9:28 am - 50 ways
|
You pressed the wrong switch, Mitch.
Your hair isn't blond, Bond.
The accent should be German, Herman.
There must be fifty ways to blow your cover.
Just wind up and beat 'er, Peter.
Roll her up in a rug, Doug.
Run her through with a pike, Mike.
There must be fifty ways to kill your mother.
current music: just give it your all, Paul
|
|
|
| Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
| |
10:05 am - complains too much and can't look in a mirror
|
Phobic.
Anxious.
Fidgety.
Worrying.
Irritable.
Dependent.
Depressed.
Defensive.
Obsessive.
Suspicious.
Unadventurous.
Prone to regret.
Dislikes change.
Low self esteem.
Somewhat fragile.
Craves attention.
Not a risk taker.
Low self control.
Paranoid tendencies.
Second guesses self.
Emotionally sensitive.
Very sensitive to criticism.
Does not make friends easily.
Prefers organized to unpredictable.
Way to go, bro, I thought I was a fairly well-adjusted dude but you've shown me that I'm secretly a bitter paranoid friendless piece of crap.
|
|
|
| Thursday, October 15th, 2009
| |
9:44 am - Got it figured
|
Take a look out your window. See where the sun is? Wouldn't it be nice if it had been in that position an hour ago? That's the problem: the fucking daylight savings bullshit nutjob conspiracy. (Or FDSBNC for short.) It was put into place to somehow save energy, which is all well and good if you live down south and the sun is actually up the whole time, but here in Canada it forces us to wake up while it's still dark outside. That's hell of depressing. I'm not sure why I'm surprised, because this happens every year. Plus it was amplified last year when my grandfather passed away.
This stupid fucking country. When the US arbitrarily decided to push the weeks for FDSBNC out another week in each direction, we should've put our feet down. "Yknow what? You know what? We're just gonna have two weeks where it's a different time in each country, and you're gonna deal with it! Unlike you well-tanned people, we don't get a whole lot of sunshine, and we're not gonna waste it on extending the afternoon!"
So, yeah. Grumble grumble. I'm not really all that depressed, I'd just really like to move somewhere where the sun is shining longer than my workday eleven months out of the year.
|
|
|
| Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
| |
11:22 pm - Together people
|
None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.
David Foster Wallace said that in 2005. Three years later, he hung himself at the age of 46. Made it to thirty. Fifty was a "maybe not."
How come the people who seem to know what's up, the ones who explain so well how to live, are the ones who can never keep it together? It's like how child psychologists can't raise their own kids, or hockey players can't translate their skills into coaching. The whole time I read that article, I kept thinking, "this guy is dead. If he knew so much about thoughtfulness and self-awareness, why did he commit suicide? What else did he figure out that he never told us to make him change his mind?"
Truth is, I had a little awareness moment of my own this morning. I have them all the time; it comes with the territory as a fiction writer. I was driving, and there was construction, so I had to stop and let two other cars pass before I could merge into my lane. It seemed lousy, but it occurred to me that in the long term, the construction would widen out the intersection and resurface the asphalt and generally make it more pleasant to drive through there. A little insignificant inconvenience was worth it.
As I said, these little moments, these extrapolations of events into their future consequences, are a regular feature in my life. I routinely ponder where the person in the next car over is headed, or what must go through someone's mind during a bank robbery, or when the next time I'll chance upon a really good movie will be and how I'll feel and who else will be in the theatre. Once in a while, some of these thoughts will come together and I'll write them down. Then it's back out into the breach to gather more of them and make the connections and come up with new stories. In a sense, my thoughtfulness -- the very act which DFW said would keep us from becoming self contained dead on the inside nine to fivers -- is also my livelihood. My unselfishness is extraordinarily selfish. Maybe that's what he figured out: in a world where everyone has these writer-like extrapolative thoughts in their minds, nobody will need writers any more. Not writers as we know them, anyway. We'll still need people to report the news, give us the facts, sell us ad copy. Non-fiction. But the place for the storyteller will be gone, because the stories in our heads will be just as compelling.
'Course, if you believe it can't happen, then you're implicitly claiming that some people just can't adjust away from their natural thinking. Which is also depressing.
Death doesn't usually scare me, but it does today for some reason. I feel like I'm not keeping it together. It's especially eerie because lately I've felt like things were actually going great, but I keep looking closer and seeing the little cracks, anticipating what's going to fall apart first. I start thinking, hey, maybe I've got cancer, and what a story that would be: chemotherapy, family support, the rollercoaster of emotions, the fight to live. Or maybe I'll live to old age and then die. That's how every human story ends. One way or another, we're dead. Maybe that's why writers keep getting down on themselves. Life is an inexorable march forward, and we have trouble with any situation out of which we can't write ourselves. Might just be me. I feel selfish again. Too many maybes and I don't know enough about philosophy to answer them all. I'm gonna forget about it and laugh it off. Somebody needs to sell me something that erases my mind so I can clear my head.
|
|
|
| Friday, October 9th, 2009
| |
1:18 pm - Curse you, Ryan Pequin!
|
| My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul |
|---|
| SimonBob goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as a 1971 Cadillac Eldorado. | | beatonna gives you 9 purple spearmint-flavoured gumdrops. | | ctoner gives you 2 light yellow spearmint-flavoured pieces of taffy. | | fwugradiation gives you 18 light green banana-flavoured jawbreakers. | | heypais gives you 8 white coconut-flavoured pieces of chewing gum. | | lucylou gives you 19 dark blue blueberry-flavoured jawbreakers. | | mashiankrekku gives you 1 purple passionfruit-flavoured nuggets. | | raspberrysorbet gives you 12 light yellow peach-flavoured pieces of taffy. | | ryanpeq tricks you! You lose 26 pieces of candy! | | skulryk gives you 2 mottled green cola-flavoured wafers. | | stereotypist tricks you! You get a toothbrush. | | SimonBob ends up with 45 pieces of candy, and a toothbrush. | | Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. |
Man! I loaded up on artists this year, figurin' they'd be good people, knowin' such as they usually do that times can be tough and we all gots to stick together. But it looks like old man Pequin is too high 'n mighty to let the likes of us have any good candy! Even the cat was nicer to me than he was. And I was kind of expecting the guy who writes PFSC to be a dick, but in some respects a toothbrush is an okay thing to have. But you, Ryan Pequin, you are uninvited from my birthday party until you redeem yourself.
Other than that, p.good haul this year.
|
|
|
| Thursday, October 8th, 2009
| |
10:12 am - More from my terrible brains
|
"Eat your children."
"Okay, now you're just making shit up."
Yesterday my butt started to hurt. Seriously! I think I pulled a muscle or something. I took some Advil this morning and it's helping a little, but I'm still kinda butthurt. It's funny, we use that term all the time to describe whiney gits ("oh, your team lost in the playoffs? well boo-frickin-hoo") but this really is quite annoying and I wouldn't begrudge anyone the need to complain about it. Maybe we need a new word for the crybabies of the world. Like, "dropped waffles."
"I am so mad that there's no Starfox game for the Wii!"
"Okay, man, don't drop your waffles."
Yeah, I think that'll do. For the last week or so I've been going out of my way to call people racist but that hasn't panned out, so we'll try "waffledropper" for a bit.
|
|
|
| Sunday, October 4th, 2009
| |
4:57 pm - Bad end?
|
From time to time, I give myself a tarot reading. It usually helps me get my thoughts in order, bolstering whatever plan I've already made, much as one can generally find a biblical passage or advice from a celebrity which concurs with a premade decision. But once in a while I surprise myself.
I use a traditional "celtic cross" pattern for my readings. One of the aspects of this layout is that the last four cards are placed in a column, each respectively representing the self, environmental factors, internal influences, and finally an all-encompassing summary of the whole reading. I flip over each card in turn and then check the reference for its meaning, so I've taken to calling that last card "the kicker," as it usually has an effect which knocks everything head over heels. Today was a particularly good example.
The first three cards were these particularly appropriate offerings:
The Seven of Rods represents my self, and as you can see, it's an accurate depiction of my joyous countenance as I meet the challenges against me. Hoo! Hah! Take that, you rod-bearing knaves! The Eight of Swords represents the environment I'm in: a difficult crisis, everything at risk, a hard boundary of pain holding everything back. And Justice, the eleventh Major Arcana, represents my inside motivations. Seems fairly self-explanatory. I dig on fairness and stuff.
Taken as a trio, the cards seem to say I'm here to wage the battle against a terrible situation and come out of it as the lawful hero, right? I can effectively become my own deus ex machina, a righteous force to bring peace and unity to all which troubles me. This agrees nicely with the rest of the layout so far, rent as it is with inverted meanings. Obviously I'll be wounded, but as long as I keep working, there'll be reconciliation in the future. I know better than to get chuffed before I flip over the kicker, though.
Oh dear.
The Ten of Swords is one of a handful of cards (The Tower is another) which almost universally represents bad news. Played straight as it was on this layout, it brings desolation and sorrow; even inverted, it only stands for a temporary advantage, a passing moment of favourability (although that could be taken to represent a singular opportunity to change things, but not likely.) In one fell swoop, my heroism is transformed from just to tragic. I am as Hamlet, trying in vain to avenge the wrongs against me, driving forward even as everything collapses, falling at the end among both foe and friend -- if indeed I ever had friends to begin with.
Ah, well. Never mind tarot, it's just a bunch of magic tricks and superstition. I'm sure that if I press on, reality will prove itself to be more forgiving than the brutal turns of the cards.
|
|
|
| Friday, October 2nd, 2009
| |
9:39 am - Eat your friends
|
Coyote's bent over something on the ground, gnawing on it. As I get closer I can tell it's part of a human head. Too many tooth marks in the face to tell who it is. "Eat your friends," Coyote says as He tears another chunk out of the torso. Hmm, eat my friends? It's not bad advice, necessarily. If you're hungry enough and your friends are good enough, they should be happy to help you out. Ordinary cannibal guilt goes right out the window.
There's a sort of pearl-like object at the base of the mountain. The ground underneath it pushes up in a column like an erupting cyst. If the column gets high enough and pushes the pearl over the edge of the crater and into the red pool, it solidifies in place, a huge spire spiking above like the pincers in front of a spider's mouth. The more ancient the mountain, the more spires surrounding the summit; this one must be thousands of years old, because there are seven of them. Coyote observes that the liquid can't be magma, since we're not being baked by the convection. "It's something else," He says, "something alive, something that dreams beneath the surface." We turn around: the world is stretched before us, from the quiet forest with the holy clearing in it to the tundra leading up to the slopes of the other, colder mountain, and the desert stretching off beyond the curve of the planet. (These are places I have seen in meditation before.) "When it wakes up, all of this transforms." I see a vision of the red liquid washing down the mountain's slopes and over the land. The forest shivers and melts into a graveyard of tumbleweeds and strange bones. The mountain crumbles as the permafrost at its base cracks open, sucking itself into the depths beneath it and settling as a pile of rubble. Oddly enough, the desert begins to irrigate itself so that life can flourish there again, but there's nowhere for the water to go, and it stagnates and turns into a murky swamp. What was once a vibrant and explorable landscape is now a tired, withering realm.
"It's symbolic?" I'm guessing, rather than interpreting. "This is what happens to me when I drink too much?"
"Ah, no." Coyote looks almost embarrassed, as though He'd forgotten that there can be times when I'm not ready to comprehend His lessons, or even that there are some things I'll never understand properly. But He goes ahead and gives me the wisdom He brought me up here to convey anyway. "This is what happens to your brain when you take antidepressants." Hm.
But why should I eat my friends, anyway? Why would I want to? Aren't I supposed to be an evolved creature, greater than the instincts that brought me to this sentience? It seems to me that friendship needs to be more than a mechanism we use to ensnare others, so that they'll keep on smiling as we tie them down and drain the blood from their necks. I imagine Coyote conceding the point to me: I guess you should find something else for lunch, I guess this could be about the recent problems you've had with alcohol as well as your overarching concerns about mental stability and the side effects of medication. I know He wouldn't, though. He's had more time to think about this than I have, and He told me exactly what He wanted me to hear.
current music: Joni Mitchell -- Coyote
|
|
|
| Thursday, October 1st, 2009
| |
9:46 am - My Equally Valid Opinion: TWENTY-TEN EDITION
|
In 2006, Cam Cole wrote an article describing the NHL's immunity to logic. Every year, I set out to prove him wrong. This is...
My Equally Valid Opinion.
It's been a weird summer, kids. This is the first year where I wished I was living somewhere other than Ottawa; watching the Heatley mess go down from the outside must've been fascinating. I hear the seats are cheap in Glendale these days. Good night, Sakic; good morning, Tavares. The /sp/artans have been helping me learn to work ">implying" into my online vocabulary. If you're anything like me, you didn't bother to pay much attention to the preseason, so here's what we missed: Crosby skipped a bunch of games with a "groin injury" (sore pussy) and people still like hockey in Saskatchewan. Right, everybody get off the bus, it's time to drop the puck and play like ya mean it.
Eastern Conference
1. Washington Capitals
2. Pittsburgh Penguins
3. Boston Bruins
4. Florida Panthers
5. New York Rangers
6. Carolina Hurricanes
7. Montreal Canadiens
8. New Jersey Devils
"What, no Senators? No Leafs? No Tavares?" Sorry, John, you're a great kid but you don't have the supporting cast. As for the massacre of Ontario, the truth is, the whole Northwest is in disarray right now -- I was hesitant to even spot Montreal in seventh. Doubtless, the Buds will play their asses off for Burke and the Sens will perform well under Clouston, but unless all these touted snipers come off their crappy seasons with vicious resurgences, they'll get bogged down faster than an elephant in a gum factory. Elsewhere, Philadelphia will be this year's "fun to watch but won't go anywhere" team, while Tampa Bay will go winless for 17 games before anyone realizes Viktor Hedman fell through a hole in the ice on opening night in Atlanta. From the "obvious junk I shouldn't even have to say" department, Marty Brodeur continues to steal games that the Devils have no business winning in front of all 3,000 of their fans. And yes, the Panthers finish second in the Southeast, right behind Washington and narrowly ahead of Carolina (who dwindle in the second half,) led by David Booth's astounding 45-goal season. Really.
Western Conference
1. San Jose Sharks (wins President's Trophy)
2. Vancouver Canucks
3. Detroit Red Wings
4. Minnesota Wild
5. Chicago Blackhawks
6. Edmonton Oilers
7. Anaheim Ducks
8. Columbus Blue Jackets
15. Hamilton Coyotes
All you really need to know here is "Thornton to Heatley, SCORES!" And maybe "another shutout for Luongo!" Hey, let's do one more: "the Red Wings just can't seem to get it going this season." (But they will, and then suddenly 20 wins in a row including a 12-1 pounding of the Predators.) Meanwhile, there's some interesting things happening further down the standings: the Wild experience a "wild" change, a real rollercoaster of a season as their new offensive stylings see them winning and losing almost at random; likewise, the Oilers anoint Dustin Penner with Wayne Gretzky's tears (collected from an Arizona courtroom) and sweep the season series against Calgary, where Jarome Iginla gets the first five-minute major in league history for instigating a fight with himself. The Jackets squeak in on the tips of Rick Nash's skates, the Ducks troll the league like always, the Stars suck and you suck for calling them underrated, and Gary Bettman quietly moves the Coyotes up north during the Olympics and then acts like they were always here. "Hockey? In Phoenix? I have no idea what you're talking about!"
Conference Quarter-Finals
Washington (1) def. New Jersey (8) in five
Ovechkin doesn't just solve Brodeur, he posts a detailed schematic on the Internet which reveals what most of us have known for some time: Marty is actually part beaver.
Pittsburgh (2) def. Montreal (7) in six
Towards the end of the deciding game, it'll actually look like the Habs will extend the series, but Carey Price will be unexpectedly teleported to Colorado with five minutes to go (although Gonchar will still miss the empty net.)
Boston (3) def. Carolina (6) in seven
Revenge for last season as Zdeno Chara opens up scoring opportunities by sitting on Cam Ward and making him hit himself with his stick.
Florida (4) def. NY Rangers (5) in five
Yes, really. Watch for a great highlight reel moment when Sean Avery pranks John Tortorella by strapping dynamite under the bench and blowing up Marian Gaborik.
San Jose (1) def. Columbus (8) in four
I'm gonna go one step further here and predict that the BJs will have a 0-20 playoff record after the 2013 season, by which time we'll be derisively referring to them as the "Broom Jackets."
Vancouver (2) def. Anaheim (7) in six
The Ducks will arrive at the party ready to pester their way to a win, but the Canucks will scoff -- they'll have already weathered that Olympic-sized dent in their season, and what else can you do to them after that? It'll be a long, tired series, but Vancouver prevails when Jonas Hiller realizes he just doesn't care any more.
Edmonton (6) def. Detroit (3) in seven
Alright, I was wrong about this call last season when I said Columbus would pull it out against the Red Wings. But one of these years, time will finally catch up to Detroit, and their Methuselan roster will collapse at the hands of a collective of young upstarts. Could be Chicago, too, or maybe even LA. Doesn't help that most of these guys have had back-to-back full-length seasons after their trips to the final. That bubble's gonna burst.
Chicago (5) def. Minnesota (4) in five
The first game ends 27-16 after both teams pull their defense in favour of five-attacker setups. The scores go up from there.
Conference Semi-Finals
Washington (1) def. Florida (4) in four
Mike Green gets a Gordie Howe hat trick. In the first five minutes. David Booth experiences an Icarus moment and only gets one assist in the series.
Pittsburgh (2) def. Boston (3) in seven
A highly suspicious game seven sees the defending champs monopolize on a series of five-on-threes, earned by penalties such as "failing wipe face with napkin after drinking Gatorade" and "touching the puck without first buying it dinner." It's almost as though the NHL thinks a Crosby-Ovechkin rematch in the conference final would be good for business...
San Jose (1) def. Edmonton (6) in five
Not content to simply boo him whenever he touches the puck, a cadre of Oilers fans show up at the airport to disapprove of Heatley's luggage. It doesn't help.
Vancouver (2) def. Chicago (5) in seven
Patrick Kane is conspicuously absent for game 3 after a punch-up with the team bus driver (although in his defense, the driver was all out of Juicy Fruit.) Vancouver gets an offensive boost when it's discovered that the Sedins are actually triplets, the third brother having been separated at birth and raised on a ranch in Texas under the name "Jim Troughers."
Conference Finals
Washington (1) def. Pittsburgh (2) in seven
Remember last season, when this series saw six amazing games followed by a blowout in the rubber match? Same thing except the other way around this year. Crosby starts to insist that the Penguins should get an extra five minutes to make up the four-goal deficit, but gets cut off when Malkin accidentally runs him down while chasing a plastic beach ball that someone threw on the ice.
Vancouver (2) def. San Jose (1) in five
Joe Thornton makes a ruinous decision when, during game 2, he actually tries to shoot the puck himself instead of passing it to Heater. Luongo makes a save so good it actually causes Joe's throat to seal up. Later, the Sharks will choke the series away, too.
Stanley Cup Final
Vancouver (2) def. Washington (1) in six
Flashback to January: Roberto Luongo wins a gold medal with Team Canada. "Oh," he thinks to himself, "so this is what it feels like when you don't screw up in the big game." While weighing his options in June, he reflects back on that victory, and decides he'll try winning again instead of just being satisfied with his multi-million contract. The Canucks get another boost when Ovechkin jumps so high after opening the scoring, he escapes the Earth's atmosphere and becomes the first Russian to walk on the moon. Authorities are torn between funding a rescue mission or teaching the other Capitals players how to score goals, and Vancouver takes advantage of the confusion to give Ryan Kesler some traffic in front of the net.
And that's it. I take no responsibility if Buffalo suddenly storms out of nowhere with their team of unknowns and screws everything up.
|
|
|
| Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
| |
10:08 am - off
|
I fell off the wagon again last night. When we came back from Penetanguishene, we brought a bunch of cola and ginger ale with us -- leftovers from grandpa Jack's funeral that grandma didn't want to keep around. So I figured, coke goes well with rum, and likewise rye and ginger. Woke up with black flakes of food on my face, unsure of what was going on, barely able to wobble downstairs to the shower.
I think I need to apologize, but I'm not sure to whom or why. And I'm a little scared, because this hangover is different: I can't remember anything. Normally I at least have some idea of what terrible things I've done. This time it's all a blur. I'm stupid.
|
|
|
| Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
| |
11:07 am - Saskatoon provides today's best headline
|
|
|
|
|
|