A Film Ravager's Lyrics

Rapscallion cod illegally poach Sasquatch.

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 06:05:55 GMT

Quite so.

Reviews II

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:59:28 GMT

ERGON/LOGOS

Is an experimental video game. Is an animated choose-your-own adventure concrete poem with a franticly minimalist soundtrack. It's interesting. I like art games; they're a fantastic medium for addressing ideas of choice, time, and change, because they're essentially diachronic and interactive; they're also often much more engaging than lookin' at something on a wall.

But: the animation's just rough enough that it disorients me and makes my eyes feel weird if I go for more than a couple minutes at a time, and it's not as fun as frisbee.

Prose: Disjointed and abstract.
Cons: Currently wearing my olive high-tops.
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Having a stock pot

Stock pots are good for making lots and lots of soup and chili and stuff. I pretty much can't get enough soup and stew, so this is good.

Pros: So long as I don't get sick of chowder, I won't have to buy lunch for the next two weeks.
Cons: Extra soup takes lots of room in the freezer, so I may need to find somewhere else to keep bodies.
Rating: ★★★★★

Reviews

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:16:22 GMT

Ham and gruyere croissants

Okay, so these have ham and cheese on the inside, and more cheese baked onto the outside, all upons buttery flaky pastry. Seriously. My life span is probably shorter after eating that but much better.

Pros: Delicious. Exemplifies all the best violations of kashrut. Except for shellfish. Shellfish is also very tasty. Good heated or cold.
Cons: Sticks to your arteries. Have to wipe pastry flakes off your jeans. Unless you eat really tidylike, but what fun is that?
Rating: ★★★☆☆

Mutant blue lobsters

Okay, so lobster shells actually contain red, yellow, and blue pigments, with the red pigment classically dominating. But some of them are born with a mutation that makes them develop the different pigments in different amounts. About 1 in 2,000,000 are bright freakin' blue.

Pros: It's blue! It's a lobster!
Cons: Too rare to go dippin' it in butter.
Rating: ★★★★☆

Stash Chai Green Tea

I like having tea around at work for when I'm too tired to remember to get coffee. So I got a box of this. And have been filled with regret ever since.. The spices aren't strong enough to be delicious themselves, they cover up the subtle flavour of the green tea. Also, it makes my mouth feel dehydrated.

Pros: I just used the last teabag in the box I had so I don't have to drink it any more.
Cons: Well, I still have to finish this cup here. And it's cold.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

I read a book

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 05:11:11 GMT

1. Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone! (The romantic movement, rock & roll, and the end of civilisation as we know it) - Craig Schuftan

I was feeling left out.

Bad music videos

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 05:34:45 GMT

On a list of hilariously lame things that have been posted on YouTube in the last 5 minutes, my entry in CFUV’s Leonard Cohen cover contest would almost certainly place.

Seabird

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:30:56 GMT

Checklist

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:39:38 GMT

NEED EXTRA CASH?

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:04:54 GMT

Unmaker

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 07:25:37 GMT

“I’m better than this,” he says. ”I’m better than the mud.” His feet squelch with each step as the earth reaches up to his ankles to pull him down. He has been forcing his legs to move through pain and exhaustion because he sees sunlight ahead. They are cracked and misshapen from strain.

“You can’t deny what you’re made of,” she replies, “even if you don’t like it.” Her bronze feet sink even deeper in the dirt than his do. She walks with unflagging, forceful steps but her glistening eyes looked weary. “I know it’s not fucking fair, but we have to accept it to live.”

He just shakes his head and keeps walking. “I won’t.”

She tries to grab him and hold him back, but her fingers sink through his dry, crackling skin. She feels moisture around her fingertips. When he pulls away, most of his shoulder comes away with her hand. Dirty water flows from his heart, pours down his naked arm into the dirt below. He winces.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She tries to fit the lump in her hand back to his body, but he walks away. “It’s not a part of me any more than the dirt under your feet is.”

She holds on to the chunk of flesh until he demands that she drop it. It clings to her hand; she has to shake it free, and it leaves her palm and fingers looking dark and tarnished, blemishes on her perfect metal skin.

When they reach the sunlight, his arm has gone dry and grey and he can no longer move it. She feels hot; she goes to splash water on her skin. It shines in the light but hardly cools her core. She rests in the shade until nightfall. He lies on his back and stares at the sky.

When she comes back, the laugh lines around his eyes and the worry wrinkles on his forehead have split into deep cracks. She points out that his arm has fallen off. He hadn’t noticed.

“I don’t need it,” he says. “No more mud. I’m going to find out what I really am.”

He strains every muscle that he can still control as he tries to stand up. His flesh cracks and chips as it moves. Hairline ripples on his skin burst into deep fissures and dry, chalky dirt pours out.

”Please…” she says, but he doesn’t hear her over the roar of the dust pouring out of his ears. He cocks his head at her quizzically. He strains to rise and reaches to touch her with his remaining hand.

His body bursts apart as she throws her arms around him.

Intentions

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:22:09 GMT

“My intention,” he announces, clasping her delicate, slender hand tenderly between his own, “is foremost to allow us to mutually assess each other‘s suitability as mates (whether for a short-term or longer engagement). My secondary purposes include:

* gathering information about your interests, history, and connections;
* examining more closely some of my favourite works at this photography exhibition; and
* satisfying my craving for greek food later on.”

He smiles warmly.

She scowls. “Smooth,” she replies, dryly.

The moral of the story is, the communication skills learned through an academic program in professional writing are not the ones that really matter.

the Murderers

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:33:27 GMT

In Mexico City, he hanged two men to save eight. In Berlin, he killed five men to save one. When his lover asked him what the difference was, he said there was none.

She asked him what law or principle he could have been upholding. He answered that he upheld no laws or principles.

She asked him how, if he upheld no principles, could he ever claim to treat other people fairly? He answered that it would be fair of him to treat all women as he treated her, but would she have that?

She answered that if he did so, she would kill him.

“Then I believe you understand,” he said.

“That anger makes murderers of us?”

“That principles make hypocrites.”

Fondue Fork

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 18:49:39 GMT

Also to be a t-shirt design by Anarchists: A Peril!, a division of On The Moon With Steve Artistic Collective or something.

Edit: Shit, I’d forgotten how fun cartooning was. I haven’t really done any of that since a 2003–2004 comic with far too clichéed a concept to publish. I still LOL when I read some of the stripts I bothered to save. For example.

Paper Aeroplanes

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 21:08:53 GMT

The first serious question she ever asks him is, “What do you want? I mean, what drives you to do these things?”

He answers her, “I want to be wealthy. I want a couple houses, a statue of myself in the square—looking triumphant, like so—, a fleet of private aeroplanes, a rocket, a castle, and my own island. Then I will be a great man.”

She rolls her eyes. “You think small, but we can work on it.”

She next morning, she shows him how to make houses from cards, a statue from stones, aeroplanes from paper, and rockets from bottles; that afternoon, she shows him how to make castles from sand, and islands in puddles from handfuls of dirt. He grins and laughs and shouts that he has become a great man.

But that evening, they all come apart, and he says and he looks at the wreckage, “I lost everything.”

She shrugs. “That’s the way of things made from from stone, plastic, and dirt,” she says. “But do you feel so different now that they’re gone?”

He shakes his head. “Not much. Building castles and airplanes with you was better than having them was.”

“That is the way of things made from flesh and spirit," she says. "To lose and endure and become wiser.”

Moths

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 06:17:30 GMT

They each come alone to watch the fireworks from the top of an eight-story parkade. He sees that she is alone, and cuts through the crowd towards her, and as they introduce themselves—as the idiom goes—there are sparks.

The sparks start an explosion at an ESSO which is stoked by a flurry of delicate but frenzied kisses and emptied kerosene bottles into a raging block-wide fire in Chinatown. As they watch from the roof of a ten-story parkade, he holds her hand and asks her to promise him that they’ll never let the flame die.

She tells him that the flame is not theirs to keep, lose or control. “Every flame,” she says, “eventually turns to embers. All we can do is enjoy the heat; when it goes cold and still, to remember the warmth it gave us; and then, to go right back out and start another.”

Clock

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:40:31 GMT

I wake up to the sound of my childhood best friend’s voice. She says, “Wake up! It’s Saturday! No school today! C’mon, cartoons are on!”

It’s a lie, of course, but I’m awake before I remember that it's Monday, I’m 34, haven’t been to school in ten years and haven’t talked to Laura in eighteen.

Last Monday I woke up to the voice of a wise guy I used to know in Detroit telling me that he’d castrate me if I didn’t have all the money in cash in an unmarked bag by the side of Exit 21 by eight in the morning.

The week before that, I was woken up by air raid sirens. Not as they were, exactly, because I’ve never heard an air raid siren, but as I imagined them when my grandfather told me stories about being a kid during the war, shivering in the corner of a concrete shelter with his uncle and his sister and a transistor radio that buzzed and crackled as it listed, one by one, ground zero for each of the Russian bombers.

When a BEEP-BEEP-BEEP that’d drown out God doesn’t phase you any more, you need to change your alarm up. I don’t know what I’ll switch to when this doesn’t affect me, either. But for now, it works.

I design t-shirts.

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:55:01 GMT

My prototype prints from Printfection came in this week. I am pleased.

Edit: Oh hey like four strangers complimented me on my awkward turtle prototype today which means given a sample of one day it's scientifically speaking perceived more awesomely than even my awesome threadless shirts.

Rapscallion the pervert

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:47:40 GMT

(Short game.)

Unready

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 07:45:12 GMT

If you gaze into a black and tan long enough, I hear, the black and tan will gaze also into you. For a moment we are locked in a terrible mutual understanding, and in the shame we share we quickly look away.

My head snaps up, and I start to feel dizzy. I wince from the light that spills in from the door. But my pupils contract; I catch her eye as she turns her head and her slender hand and the dull, tarnished doorknob. For a moment we—

The moment passes, and I’m left grinning slyly past the infernal glow of an exit sign.

I only just knew her. I wasn’t ready to watch her walk away.

the Early Works

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 09:09:21 GMT

These are various writey things from September 2006 or earlier, before I made a habit of publishing such things to anyone except the dust bunnies in my hard drive. One or more individuals have inquired as to my history of authorship prior to the bits of gunk I’ve posted in the last few months; well, this is pretty much all of it.

The Spiritualist
“I pray for each and every one of them, but from a safe distance, without personal contact; for them, I pray much as a sniper would kill.”

The Rock Star
She had wanted to be a rock star. Eventually, she realized that she didn’t have the talent for it, and never would, but she resolved never to stop drinking, smoking, dressing, or fucking like one. She’s fooled quite a few people, but never herself.

Gone to Hell (An excerpt from a larger work that I never bothered to write because it would be more than 76 words and apparently I can’t do that)

“You don’t have to keep calling me ‘kid,’” he says.

“You don’t like that?"”

“No. My uncle called me that. Some other grownups. Like they didn’t care that I had a name just ’cuz I wasn’t as old as them.”

Satan nods. He’s probably a lot older than the kid’s uncle. “So, you got a name?”

The kid doesn’t say anything, just stares at his beer, like he’s thinking real hard. Satan gestures a couple of tables over. A man wearing a wrinkled suit is talking in tongues, trying to strike up conversations with people who walk past. “He doesn’t, either. Lots of them don’t. I suppose they did, at some point, but they’ve forgotten them now. Some people remember their names for ages; others don’t take it with them, even for a minute.”

“Do they ever remember?”

Satan stares past the kid, past the bar, maybe past Hell. “Not really.”

“So I just forget who I am? Just like that?”

Now, Satan glares at the kid. “Look, kid, it’s not that bad. It’s just a name. There’s a lot more to you than that.” The kid looks uncertain. “It’s just a hunch, but I’ve learned to trust my hunches.”

And the entire collected self-indulgent poetic works, excluding that which was written under the coercion of high school English teachers:

A Posthumous Existentialist Suicide Note

This tiny light of hope is insufficient
It is no more than a tiny match
In the midst of a great storm
The winds and rain
Must be ignited
Set fire to the sky
Kindle it with the earth
For these are the only fuels that remain
When all life has fled or perished
It is only these and the tiny self
Bewildered in the eye of the storm
A laughing, screaming tinderbox
My funeral pyre will be my greatest masterpiece
And to you I dedicate my work

Objectivity

Rest in peace
The subjective self
No longer the agent
Of my own device
Who am I?
The second person
I must resort to the mystical
The teleological
The object of
The experiences of
The other
My dream has ended
I am the dream now
And she the dreamer
Waking in the warm sunlight
And I shall be forgotten
In the morning haze

Angel

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:45:09 GMT

I help myself to another mocha. The barista is dead, cut down with a flaming sword. It’s bringing out the do-it-yourself attitude in me. I misjudge the amount of chocolate to put in; it’s rich and syrupy and much too sweet; the foam has no body. I sprawl in an overstuffed chair next to the news stand.

I feel her coming from behind me. She covers my eyes with her silver wings. “Guess who,” she says.

I smile, because I think I know this one; I’ve only met one woman with a voice that beautiful. Or wings. She’s an angel. She’s my lover.

I kiss her. She’s soft like the clouds and warm like the sun. She tastes the mocha on my lips and makes a face. ”Maybe you should work on making a decent americano before you try the fancy stuff.” She puts her sword away.

“I never got my training shift for this,” I say. I hesitate. “You don’t have to do all this, you know,” I say. “I’ll never love anyone but you.”

She nods. “I know you won’t. But can you say the same of me?”

“I trust you completely,” I say. I do. I shrug. “I’m not such a jealous guy anyway.”

“Not now,“ she says. “But you will be.” I want to object, but she won’t hear it. “I’ve been loved before, over the last few millennia.”

“I’d imagine so. Probably by every man who’s ever seen you.”

She smiles coyly. “Just the men, you think?”

“Every living creature, perhaps.”

“You’re either abnormally sweet or have done a background check on me.” She sighs. “I can tell you that in all that time, I never loved anyone except you, and you may believe me now, but centuries from now, when I’m with the greatest poets, thinkers, leaders, and lovers who have ever lived, decade after decade, you will doubt me, and it will break us. If I could tell you that I loved you because you were strong, beautiful, brilliant—maybe it wouldn’t matter, but I can’t.”

I know that I’m not. “Why do you love me?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “I just do. I don’t think we’re supposed to understand.”

I wish I could understand. I ask her to stay with me until morning, but she slips out while I’m sleeping, sword in hand.

Making a relationship last, I hear, always takes compromises, sacrifices, and hard work. I suppose this is what it takes to make one last forever.

---

In response to this here song challenge, inspired (quite loosely) by Marcy Playground’s Sex and Candy.

No regrets

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:19:44 GMT

So, this guy I know. As a kid, people ask him what he wants to be when he grows up. “A robot,’ he says. His dad—his dad’s a Marxist—is all “you don’t want to be a robot, son. Long hours, lousy benefits, no union, discriminatory property law. Whatever you do, you don’t want to be a robot.” His mom—an artist—is all “look, you don’t want to be a robot. A robot never feels joy; can never fall in love.” But he says he wants to be a robot more than he wants to fall in love or have dental.

So eventually he moves out and does his own thing. His parents live, I suppose, as people do; his mom has a torrid affair with a much younger man, writes a book about it, appears on daytime TV shows. His dad’s radical political ideology sweeps the cities; he kills a number of capitalist icons in flash riots and creates the groundwork for a successional socialist state. They each confess to me, at times, that though they love each other and their work very much, they also hurt each other very deeply, and that some days, they struggle with regrets. But the kid doesn’t see them again, I don’t think; he doesn’t come back until their funeral.

It’s like a somber, morbid riot. Everyone’s reading passages from her books; his speeches. Everyone cries, except for their kid. He doesn’t cry, because he pulled it off, y’know; he’s a robot now.

I ask him how it is.

“It’s like they said,” he replies. “Long hours, lousy benefits, and I’ve never felt joy or love.”

“Sounds rough,” I say.

He shrugs non-commitally.

“Do you regret it?”

“No.”

I nod—sadly enough, someone later says, for the both of us. “I don’t suppose you do.”

the OED pilot excerpt

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 04:30:56 GMT

I've been saying I need to write a screenplay for an occupational drama about lexicographers.

EDMUND: Every year, people coin literally thousands
        of new words; mostly blends, just like your
        blogosphere—and mostly American—
        and most are considered dead or absurd within
        two years. We can't go adding them all
        willy-nilly. This is not some Über-wired
        HXTML-script enabled glossary. We need to
        know that these are words, not fads.

CHRIS:  You know what I think? I think this isn't
        even about the word. This has nothing to do
        with blogosphere. And I know what it is
        about.

EDMUND: And what, pray tell, is this about?

CHRIS:  Furby.

EDMUND: No, it's not—

CHRIS:  Noun.

        (exaggerating American pronounciation)

        Furby. The etmology, a blend of fur plus
        bee? How very—American!

EDMUND: Do not bring the Furby into—

CHRIS:  A small furry electronic toy animal, which is
        capable of responding to external stimuli by
        moving and 'speaking'

EDMUND: The Furby has nothing to do with this!

CHRIS:  (simultaneously) a vocabulary composed of
        English and an invented language! A fine
        lasting addition to the English language!

EDMUND: This is in no way relevant—

CHRIS:  And who was on the editorial board for that
        fine 1998 addition? One of 48 words to be
        added to the OED in the last 10 years!

EDMUND: Yes, I was on the editorial board in Doctor
        Burrsbury's absence. I had every reason
        to believe that it would be a durable addition
        to the English language. I made the best
        decision I could with the data I had available.

CHRIS:  Well, turned out to be a real bunk-up, dinnit?

EDMUND: I was younger then, and all bring youthful
        vitality and dynamism to the dictionary; to take
        it back from the doddering old conservatives who
        grounded it in the 1950s.

CHRIS:  And now you&'re one of them. 48 words in the
        last 10 years you've let in.

EDMUND: Perhaps I am. But as a doddering old conservative,
        I haven't added any more Furbys, and I won't let
        you go onand do it, either.

	(fade to commercial break)

Next week on the OED: The fad is over, all those bloggers decide that what they're doing is really pretty silly after all, and the word blogosphere is never uttered again! Edmund deliberately and noticeably doesn't say anything, and Chris feels rather foolish!

The good old days

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 09:50:08 GMT

We used to sit on stairs with brown-bag lunches, dirty secrets and fear.

We have so many more stairs now. Cold, smooth ones; crackled ancient ones; stairs you can look down on the clouds from half-way up. We still have lunches. We've discovered honey-dijon sauce and hot pepper and forgot about processed chicken loaf and white bread, and never looked back. We guarded our dirty secrets, and kept our secrets dirty; we made new ones up along the way.

So it must be the fear that we're missing.

S.I.

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 17:32:21 GMT

They say no Canadian is more than -13.88888888888889 degrees from Kevin Bacon.

Walk

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 05:01:00 GMT

tittup, swagger, ruffle, prance, strut, sashay, cock

(Found Poetry from Princeton University's WordNet)