n: vb: the spice of imagination
Sinister Bedfellows: Anthology is now available!
Short short stories based on the critically acclaimed photobased webcomic by mckenzee, including authors David ‘Starchy’ Grant, Shawn Scarber, Rob Callahan, Annastasia Snyder, Peter Venables, Matthew Messenger, Maaret W., Jhayne Holmes, Chris Peloso, Colleen AF Venable, Larry Holderfield, Phil Khan, Jody Johnson, Eric A. Burns, Samantha Kyle, David Milloway, MontiLee Stormer, Amy Frushour Kelly, Sarah Lynch-Walker, and Matthew Wood.
Old music on, the sort of stuff I associate with far away from here, though nowhere in particular. Songs rarely on my playlist and only in the middle of a lot of other things. Canada midwest, this music, feeling nostalgic for a period that was over before I was born. My mother as a young girl, listening to records and wearing lambskin jackets. Older men. It almost goes without saying these days.
Flow, an artistically minimalist, highly addictive flash game, easy to control. mouse determines direction, hold down the button for speed. eat anything smaller than you, pick away at anything bigger until you can that too. blue bugs take you up a level, red takes you down
Perspective shift, we’re writing about different things for similar reasons. Low basement ceiling, low furniture that obviously came with the suite. It’s late. He has a pen and a lined paper book, I have the clacking-engine. I steal glances, theft in the air between us, and study the social interaction. I wonder if he’s aware how someone else would stumble here, silence being unusual in new friends, how they would feel awkward and too assuming, not used to the habits of long cohabitation as tightly woven as silk. I notice because mine have been eroding, evaporating away with my depleting intimacies. I notice and realize how generally unexpected I must be. Mental note: ask before you use the toothbrush or become a secondary mother to someone’s child.
Google Mars, exceedingly pretty, far more detailed that Google Moon. there are marked sites with links to corresponding articles.
Tonight is unknown territory. Korean Movie Night’s been replaced by Don Giovanni at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre this week, leaving me to vacillate between a gift-swap dinner, the Cafe Du Soliex poetry slam or the stitch-&-bitch that sprung out of Navi’s head last night. Though there is a certain temptation involved in going to Don Giovanna with super-feminists, I have to pass. A concrete solid week of theater will take me into the back alley and rough me up. This is my night off, my ducking out the back for a metaphorical quiet cigarette, and though I’m not responsible enough to go home and righteously wrest my bed from the ferret, neither am I entirely stupid.
Wednesday night Here Be Monsters presents Fidel Castro’s Birthday Party opening for Lazy Susan with Michael Green performing The Whaler after. There will be puppets, murder, nudity and water. Everything starts at 8pm and goes to approximately midnight. Tickets are $12.
A drunken devil shaking ass in my face, people made of masks that are taken apart and fed to fish, someone downing a mason jar full of bodily fluids, and Pestilence complaining that his Avian Flu has turned into the Avian Rash. Everything new, self mocking beautiful.
Theater Under the Gun, Theater of Fear. Tuesday a graceful priest shall admit how he used his parish as vessels for empty lust. Wednesday, the actors will be ignored for the coats they carry, the characters they create from their hands. Michael will be there from Calgary. Something to do with nudity and buckets of water. It’s always precious and insane. It’s true. Triumphant. It swallowed me the way I prayed it would, the way I wanted it to. When it spat me out this morning, my bones had been replaced by lead. Today should be recovery, a due time taken out and away, but instead I feel like I’m going to die. I need to sleep, I need to remember to eat, not go swimming with crazy englishmen before breakfast. Too late.
Getting home at six:thirty, falling into bed at seven. Dawn approaching, hours ticking by, and we’re not noticing. We’re stretching out, our feet under the coffee table, playing I Never. Somehow at the after party, the birthday of one of the directors. She reminds me of Karen. She reminds me of sitting on the roof of the Cultch, crawling out the tiny cupola and leaning against the harsh black angle of the shingle. The smile I gave my life, seeing the city like that for the very first time, the karaoke inside that not even actors would sing. BBQ’s and crying backstage. The Felix Culpa Red Cross fundraiser, the show that for the first time called me on stage for a bow.
I should have kissed that man. His tawny coat, his tawny hair. The only time I would have left my life then.
She and I were standing on a picnic table on the roof, a pool to our left, a drop of fifteen stories to our right. Starry night, orange lights, the red ember of her cigarette. If I had leapt, I could have cleared the edge. Elegance in casual movement, flicking the flame to burn. She admires my sacrifice she say, my bravery at leaving when I needed to. It’s been so nice to see you again. The same drifting from conversation to conversation, It’s Been So Nice To See You, It’s Been So Long. Are You Working Again? and I’m considering it. I’m not sure how to break back in, except for this, except for here. Barcley street. Picasso scrawl on the palm of my hand. This is where I wanted to be, this is where I’m glad. Changing the conversation from young little admissions about sex to the political shift encapsulated by the internet, by raves, by sex meaning death to the newer generations. Thinking that one of these days, I have to learn how to get drunk. It felt really good not to be recognized by Kevin Conway. Score the only point for my new hair.
I thought I had a long walk ahead, a slender goodbye slipping into a taxi behind me, but instead I stayed up with DK’s scratchy sweater, no way to return it to him except for his address. Apartment 301. Crows, Dali posters, paintings that look familiar. A private rooftop deck. I answered the phone barely lucid enough to cancel my gamelan rehearsal. I dreamed of actors this morning, I woke with lines of dialogue wrapped around my hands and tongue, the image of an upside-down church, my pillows being books and a ferret, a pile of crushed velvet clothes. I almost fell asleep in the hot tub, leaning on Stephen’s shoulder. I almost thought about canceling tonight.
Titus tonight, by the way. Titus Andronicus at the Jericho Arts Center, 1675 Discovery, at 8pm. Admission by donation.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant’s tail,
but if one wanders the circus won’t find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider–
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
– William Stafford
  They were in a white plastic bag, tied at the top, and neat. He handed them to me over the bar, said “Here are your clothes. They’re clean. They’re even folded.” He folded my clothes. A little thing, but important to me. Attention to detail, being sympathetic and kind for the sake of being kind. Something I’d forgotten, it’s been so long since I’ve been in a relationship. His smile. Warmed, I was warmed. Better than oxygen, but then the conversation turned. There was a group of us, a small cluster. The bartender, two regulars, a friend of his from Deep Cove. Turn and unfamiliar water. “With? You’ve obviously got the wrong impression.” Plummet, crack. The sound of an egg fracturing.
  If I were younger, if I still believed in my own self-worth, I would have left. Stood up, folded my shirt over my arm and walked out into the snow to cry. Instead civilization won out, I’m not surprised anymore. Here is the axe. I froze in place, caught my smile as it dropped and hardened it. Only someone paying attention would have seen the fragility that suddenly flashed the bar. No one noticed when I stayed silent, unable to speak without shattering my voice, ruining my dignity and their nice evening with spilled emotion.
  When he said goodbye at the back door, he made sure to hold me and talk to me. I wanted to take him and drag our bodies downward to sit on the gray concrete, but his friend was waiting for him upstairs. It’s the ghost all over. He takes the time apart to talk to me, but never seeks me out. He called me determined, said I freak him out. Too much for him, too different. The part of me that isn’t slipping him a love letter I wrote earlier wants to yell a little, wants to slap words. When I leave, I say, “You don’t know me. I don’t expect you to.” My voice breaks and the door, it slams. Halfway across the parking lot, I hear the deadbolts scraping into place. No one I love has ever come after me.
Wounded, if I am guilty of a dream, it of someone who would slaughter my expectations.
Mamoru Oshii’s next film looks like a cross between Tampopo and City of the Lost Children that was violently shoved though the minds of internet comic-nerds who play too many video games before being handed to Terry Gilliams for Art Direction.
The Mark Ronson bootleg video, a montage of animated London graffiti, for a cover version of Radiohead’s track ‘Just’ is also pretty awesome. The animation’s a nice testament to the creativity of street artists.
Waverly films just did a video for Brendan Benson with a similar concept of animation style, simple forms interacting with real people quite cleverly.
And now it’s hailing.
I left the phone ringing, the receiver precariously jammed between my ear and my shoulder as I wrenched off my shoes, and forgot to pay attention, so when the answering machine said, “Hey, I lost my phone.” I panicked. I had no message ready. Without thinking, I recited an e.e. cummings poem that I’d recently posted. Annoyingly, it’s a bit of a nonsensical one when spoken aloud, so I may have just shot myself in the foot on the matter of getting a call back.
Now I feel like a milk-carton kid, invincibly printed and lonely. Today feels scripted, like someone wrote all of today down beforehand for me to recite. Even my longing seems kidnapped and two-dimensional. My want to go to the hotel and find him at the bar, to murmur into his ear, “I want to undress you.” will be found beaten and broken, in pieces in a ditch. The newspaper description will be like pornography – The lacerations on the wrists indicate a struggle. – without forgetting to be clinical. Injuries show evidence of penetration. Wrapped up in plastic bags, unable to scream.
Even the snow falling unexpectedly in thick clumps didn’t lift my mood. Usually I gather great pleasure from snow. Though aware that native Canadians aren’t supposed to get a thrill from it, I shed my jaded ennui the same way a native Californian might occasionally appreciate the luxury of a palm tree and frolic. I try to catch flakes on my tongue and see how much I can have land in my hair, where I can examine it minutely. Instead, as I watched it fall at the bus-stop this morning, I carried a heavy stinging feeling behind my ribs. My concentration shot, I tried to shed my impulse to uselessly peer through the front windows of the hotel and failed. The snow was a reminder of time softly passing. Time I’m not treating well, that I’m not feeling with passion.
My week of theater started well, though. Terri accompanied me to the opening cabaret. The most memorable performances were the burlesque dancing gorilla and a blockhead that did slight of hand. When he came out the first time, with the table and cups, I laughed. I used to do that act for childrens parties. When he came out the second time, with a small box of nails and a hammer, I cackled madly, the only one in the audience who knew what was about to happen. Tap, tap, and his hand came down and the nail stayed in. People fell out of chairs. Vancouver’s not used to that kind of level of performance. Me, I want lessons.
If you people are finished gang-banging Warren in my comments, I would like to ask a favor of you.
Who you are, where you came from, why you’re here and how you found me.
Go.
Jimmy Buffet, a musician of some sort according to the blurb on the back, has managed to write novels that blissfully survive every bookshelf razing I’ve had in a decade. Back in 1989, he wrote Tales From Margaritaville, a collection of short stories about cowboy sailors and being in love with the ocean that gave me cravings for fish, which I’m allergic to, and sailing down in Florida. I mention it because I’ve just re-read it for the Nth time and it still carries the same effect. It’s all flying-fish sandwiches and satisfying endings, people in a poisonous paradise doing the best they can and remembering to enjoy when they’re puzzled. He makes me care about football, fishing and golf. It’s a little crazy. I’ve been to Florida.
Though of course, it makes for a great escape from the rain that’s outside, persistently threatening to dissolve the front windows of the store with basic erosion. It’s almost so much rain that it seems unrealistic to try to describe. There’s more rain in the air between me and the opposite side of the street than would be required to fill a backyard pool. It’s like a joke. How much water was there? This much, and then you point to an ocean or a Great Lake and cackle like a demented child. Bloody ridiculous, really.
I’ve been finding solace in the must-see media of the week, Un-Pimp My Ride, a gratifying short series of advertisements from Volkswagon that feature a gang-signing german scientist, (“V-Dub representing Deutchland”), who actually made me laugh out loud. This video was last week, though still wonderful.
And by request: Warren, on his birthday, shamelessly flirting back and forth with Joss Whedon.
Being with a ghost is hard. It’s tricky, navigating the pathways that carry the least number of rattling chains. I confuse him he says, just like the last few. They think they know themselves, then I come along. “Sometimes I want you to just leave me alone, but whenever I’m with you it all goes away and I’m just comfortable, you know? It’s weird. You’re weird.” He’s telling me this on his cell phone, attempting to be locked in some small room, his foot against the door to keep out his friends. I shouldn’t even be on the phone right now. You make me feel safe, I told him another night. He quotes me, “That’s what you do,” he says. Like you said and I said and he has no memory. No memory at all. It drains away daily. He tells me that he’s worried, that he’s scared, but he doesn’t say he loves me. That’s my line, spoken to the dark when he’s asleep, when he’s awake but not quite paying attention. He says I found him at a strange time. I stole him out into monogamy and being crazy just when his life started again, and he likes it, he digs me a whole lot, but he can’t shake the feeling of bad timing. The same you’re awesome but as everyone else. I can’t help it, this terrifying dream. I’m afraid this will end in another You Can’t See Me.
Streaming audio: Magnetic Fields, an hour of live concert.
Fresh in my mind, his rambling nervous phone-call, scratchy over the line. I don’t think I could take that. I can feel he’s convincing himself of something, but not a decision I can quite access. The story hasn’t enough pieces for me to draw into words, there are gaps, milk-teeth spaces that I need to fill in. I told him I’d call at one. An hour and half, I’d said, to give him time to figure out where he’ll be. “Do you want to come over?” and Yes, in a small voice. A tiny admittal voice, one that’s scared of seeing where it’s been leading. Then, No, wait, I didn’t say that like that, though I did, and you know I did, and you know what that means. I just don’t want you barking up the wrong tree. When I called, he didn’t pick up.
One MP3 a day for one year. Archived bi-weekly. Produced in 2003.
Part of it is that he can’t figure out why I like him, not the way I do. I should be more upset or less patient, less accepting. He goes on about it. Not that liking him is all that strange, I’m sure he has the same sort of line-up as I do, ghost or no. I’d be surprised if he didn’t. No, he thinks his life is unusual, that his insides are crazy and strange. Well they might be, but I’m not in any position to see. I’ve learned over time that I’ve got blinders to socially abnormal behaviour that makes sense. Apparently most girls, they fade away, maybe in a musty cloud of arguements and perfume, when he’s not around as much as they want him to be. Me, it’s more than I have and almost as much as I need.
Top 65 Songs of 2005: 65-26, as picked by the clever Good Weather For An Airstrike.
The biggest news of the day: South Dakota has passed a law that outlaws abortion in almost all cases and does not protect a woman in cases of rape or incest or even when her health is in danger. Doctors who violate the ban could face up to five years in prison.
Frankly, I was appalled when the bill was signed on Monday by the Governor and now that the U.S. Supreme Court announced it will hear Gonzales v. Carhart, I’m slightly ill. Challenging the federal abortion ban that has been struck down previously by every court that has examined it because, among other things, the ban does not protect women’s health, is not something that should happen.
“The supporters of the South Dakota law say they want to trigger a battle over the 1973 Roe-versus-Wade ruling, in which the US Supreme Court established that governments lacked the power to prohibit abortions.”
Part of why this is scary is how the American legislation is set up. The Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, (currently six out of the nine are heavily right-wing), and because what they deal with is built on precedence, case by case, any other state that decides to challenge Wade VS Roe has just had their way made easier. Anti-choice lawmakers all through the South are waiting with baited breath to shove their own versions through as soon as a decision is made.
This isn’t a one-time thing, this is a nation-wide attack on the basic rights of half the American population by the pro-life community. “The national group said 10 states are considering similar bills.” Religion once again leading the nose of those in power and stomping all over the poor fools who voted them in. Keep in mind that those same pro-lifers are the people who fight so vehemently against any kind of social support system and make horrible remarks about welfare mothers. They’re the same people who preach abstinence-only sex-ed and don’t want to teach people how to use condoms. Nor do they tell the mothers that their child is a sweet and important gift, instead they tell them that they are filthy for even having sex in the first place, as if it was something perverse.
“According to Governor Rounds, who was just in Washington, DC for a national governors’ meeting, he is getting support from his peers: “A lot of governors [are] expressing support and wishing us good luck and saying they may have similar proposals that may be favorably looked upon across the United States.” [Keloland TV, 2/26/06]”
If you can spare a dime, there has never been a better time to support Planned Parenthood.
Here in Canada, the worst we girls might encounter is the rare idiot doctor who illegally brings their politics into the office or some loudly under-educated fundies with shameful signs outside a clinic. People who don’t seem to understand that if these girls thought they had the right space for a child, they’d keep it. Here, the idea is that if you’re going to have children, you should be able to raise them and raise them well. If you can’t, if it’s going to be a problem, then we’ll do our best to ease the pain, not vehemently attack you for being less of a person that some fine young christian bride.
I know that when it was my turn, my friends were supportive, the doctor was kind, my partner helped me with the pills. I was that .o1% that keeps birth control from being 100% effective. When my friends had their surprises, (and really, it’s been almost all of us), because of interfering medications, because of broken condoms, whatever, the ones who decided to terminate, I helped bring them to the hospital or the clinic and I brought them flowers. I let them cry. We didn’t try to hide that what we had destroyed had the potential to be a beautiful creature, but nor did we allow that potential life destroy the factual one in front of us. I agree with Burrow, let’s send these people coat hangers, as many of them as we can. Let’s remind them what they’re planning for their daughters.
edit: Rowan brought up a good point – that I haven’t mentioned the intelligent, well-educated people who are pro-life. I know these people exist and am glad for them. In this case, I mentioned the under-educated because that’s all that I, personally, have met in front of clinics.
