tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40702352024-03-13T00:55:07.903-04:00The Hemming Media BlogA jester's doodlesack, blogging for a bloggier tomorrow - today!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09309440529206374262noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-3106035394623459252015-03-27T13:18:00.001-04:002015-03-27T13:19:17.421-04:00Treefelling in After EffectsHere is a video tutorial from <a href="http://www.verygoodstudios.com">Very Good Studios</a> for users of <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html">Adobe Affect Effects</a>, detailing a procedure for integrating an animatable tree into pre-existing footage with <a href="https://www.videocopilot.net/products/element2/">Video Copilot Element3D</a> and <a href="http://www.redgiant.com/products/trapcode-particular/">Trapcode Particular</a>. Topics covered include creating shadow-catching planes and bounce planes, dynamic deformations, and step-by-step foreground extraction. I play the host.<br />
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<iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KbPumWjAi_o?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09309440529206374262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-45281105891957865362013-07-28T10:36:00.001-04:002013-07-28T10:40:43.070-04:00Daily Battles at TAAFIIf you're at the <a href="http://taafi.com">Toronto Animated Arts Festival International</a> today don't miss our film <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DailyBattles3D">'Daily Battles'</a> showing at noon at the <a href="http://tiff.net/about/tiffbelllightbox">TIFF Bell Lightbox</a> theatre. The short is a stereoscopic 3-D exploration of a complex papercut artwork by <a href="http://www.beatricecoron.com">Béatrice Coron</a>. Directed by James Stewart, edited by Kennedy Zielke, with colour/lighting/animation/stereoscopy by Matthew Hemming.<br />
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Here are a few still frames from the film:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLhA9zrUAKc11U6n6XqfUjgG9uZ1ciLA7v3nXsRwUPZkSE_d-BHUnWWiujNVMb3v7WI7Fd-TeIIb7DLfo9CqxBc6b4q-PDbdVqI4xJLPlFnRqHgDcCud25gZNVKkHPzNflkrmF8g/s1600/Skeleton_Crew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLhA9zrUAKc11U6n6XqfUjgG9uZ1ciLA7v3nXsRwUPZkSE_d-BHUnWWiujNVMb3v7WI7Fd-TeIIb7DLfo9CqxBc6b4q-PDbdVqI4xJLPlFnRqHgDcCud25gZNVKkHPzNflkrmF8g/s400/Skeleton_Crew.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUmGfZiVJ2v8vTexpU4m1Et5WqSUoTyameGWMWLLExxzClvio98EYglkhyVc8Tvchl4VFv3uCRaPbBFIVKCxpP73eXQGyIgvnawYly7zT9cfoK3PGvQk7HVa6PVWxWJNFhr349ZQ/s1600/Dragons_Breath.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUmGfZiVJ2v8vTexpU4m1Et5WqSUoTyameGWMWLLExxzClvio98EYglkhyVc8Tvchl4VFv3uCRaPbBFIVKCxpP73eXQGyIgvnawYly7zT9cfoK3PGvQk7HVa6PVWxWJNFhr349ZQ/s400/Dragons_Breath.jpg" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgedqpygGLU8tQj06EHhKpypCUexTb1MSUAmUD9ZN6bKUt7PRna0o8s1kVq39inMt9OnsmqNWPZyGJTDfcPlNwJJWf-65AmAXiZsu-6H4gDjU0RMxkrauTEqdo6jpeFK0h5XQQriA/s1600/His_Majesty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgedqpygGLU8tQj06EHhKpypCUexTb1MSUAmUD9ZN6bKUt7PRna0o8s1kVq39inMt9OnsmqNWPZyGJTDfcPlNwJJWf-65AmAXiZsu-6H4gDjU0RMxkrauTEqdo6jpeFK0h5XQQriA/s400/His_Majesty.jpg" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09309440529206374262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-28303375075869652672013-07-23T11:46:00.000-04:002013-07-23T11:46:29.011-04:00Public Notice: A Mural LoomsIn anticipation of Phase 2 of the <a href="http://www.facebook.com/gilfordmural">Gilford Old Schoolhouse Mural Project</a> we have posted a public notice in the General Store (thanks, Helen!) inviting comment from villagers after a local handyman was dispatched to tell us there were worries about mural content. Left to unfettered imagining, apparently, some had visions of a collaborative graffiti wall. Here is the notice:<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh2ODcKRbJgUPfg2BtmmC4IPJbuzVPMJ45rOPXMUL4-LhBp2UE1e0XPcDJGrnDWRjGhqFkiVdQ0cw4wa-BpP7Y4jeKrLKOFgcQWJLmIZmOQ12gwdUKVCx2fGi_gSycVhJCPOBVEg/s1600/Mural+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh2ODcKRbJgUPfg2BtmmC4IPJbuzVPMJ45rOPXMUL4-LhBp2UE1e0XPcDJGrnDWRjGhqFkiVdQ0cw4wa-BpP7Y4jeKrLKOFgcQWJLmIZmOQ12gwdUKVCx2fGi_gSycVhJCPOBVEg/s640/Mural+Poster.jpg" /></a></div>The plan for the mural isn't nearly as urban as the worst worries may suggest. All along I've been thinking I'd paint some sort of pleasant rural scene. Here is a quick study:<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMtwoy5gJ25m82n_UOsqBcoNHtI81YT0OvtsNEAyF5Q7FfvFQbNDaR_lG0uvvcf9g9ZV4ZeJz5zPGxUtBMaN1oPsBrGyrCGQ2jkoILTqWPJj6BUwyh43HH-6-ZYohZrHXe3ZqqWg/s1600/Mural_Study_07-09-2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMtwoy5gJ25m82n_UOsqBcoNHtI81YT0OvtsNEAyF5Q7FfvFQbNDaR_lG0uvvcf9g9ZV4ZeJz5zPGxUtBMaN1oPsBrGyrCGQ2jkoILTqWPJj6BUwyh43HH-6-ZYohZrHXe3ZqqWg/s400/Mural_Study_07-09-2013.jpg" /></a></div>Finally, here are three cans of paint generously supplied by American supporter Jon Herrin:<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSUhY53Wa6FREHtMatZ1ihN-Y6eNUIrrERgGWKZVAPx9eqsivJl33fUk4K0rA6LgH5Q4VMZJU5fuoupAir4IEFOrla_7-YoKCMXbzTUvt3mZ1V2E_8k21aWmerx6fYXwZl_4aPdA/s1600/photo+2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSUhY53Wa6FREHtMatZ1ihN-Y6eNUIrrERgGWKZVAPx9eqsivJl33fUk4K0rA6LgH5Q4VMZJU5fuoupAir4IEFOrla_7-YoKCMXbzTUvt3mZ1V2E_8k21aWmerx6fYXwZl_4aPdA/s640/photo+2.JPG" /></a></div>Now we await only the next break in my work schedule to begin building up the actual imagery. I'm excited!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09309440529206374262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-83820693070222096402013-07-19T13:38:00.000-04:002013-07-19T13:38:11.695-04:00Very Good National Magazine AwardsMy creative video production concern <a href="http://www.verygoodstudios.com/">Very Good Studios</a> has the good fortune to partner with <a href="http://www.relayexperience.com/">Relay</a> to produce and execute the <u><b>36th Annual <a href="http://www.magazine-awards.com/">National Magazine Awards</a></b></u> at the Carlu in Toronto. Embedded below is the opening module in which I animated text, photography and illustration assets from every nominee in every category. Enjoy!<br />
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<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UO-X9gG-v5c" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br />
<br />
<i>[Credits: Creative Direction - Xavier Massé; Animation - Matthew Hemming; Artwork Preparation - Joana Ferret; Music - Bustafunk; Remix & Foley - Joshua Hemming]</i>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09309440529206374262noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1156099565407346092006-08-20T14:32:00.000-04:002007-02-02T03:58:07.153-05:00Moving Along<br>
<b>This blog has concluded.</b><br>
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If you like the way I've blogged, follow the blogging over to <a href="http://cheeseburgerbrown.blogspot.com">my fresh blog</a>, which will have somewhat more of a focus on fiction and storytelling, though diary posts won't stop altogether.<br>
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Please update your bookmarks, RSS feeds, memory, <i>et al</i>.<br>
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<a href="http://cheeseburgerbrown.blogspot.com">The new blog</a> will really get going with <a href="http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/stories/Night_Flight_Mike.html"><i>Night Flight Mike</i></a>, a serial novella told in twenty posts. Stay tuned to <a href="http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/blog"><i>http://cheeseburgerbrown.com/blog</i></a> for the imminent launch.<br>
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Thank you for your attention.<br>
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<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1154995098164110982006-08-07T19:57:00.000-04:002006-08-20T08:59:43.956-04:00I Am My Own Stunt Double<br><i>
Holidays in the sun. Smashem-crashem. How </i>not<i> to waterski. Gaytastic thirtysomething moments. Half a moose. My three-toothed Doppelganger. How they pronounce it in France. Cheeseburger 2.0.</i><br>
<br>
<br>
<b>M</b>y holiday will turn out to be a little longer than anticipated, because I tried to waterski. The weather's great.<br>
<br>
I report to you from the back seat of my Volvo, parked by the side of a dirt road in the shade of a copse of something wild overlooking rolling fields where several large robots are rumbling around picking vegetables. The robots have little Mexicans inside of them, and when they come out to smoke they tie their flannel shirts around their waists like grunge rockers.<br>
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A turtle is crossing the road. I'm rooting for him. So far so good.<br>
<br>
It can be challenging to find the space and time to write, and it can also be challenging to find the space and time to be married. This is why I didn't take my laptop away to the cottage: I booked wall to wall wife time. We had dispersed both children to secure facilities for the duration, so it was a unique opportunity to give Littlestar maximum attention.<br>
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Now that we're back in our neck of the woods, however, my fingers itch to knit. I tried cutting myself off mentally from the exterior environment to create a bubble of writing space, but I got in dutch for being too inered so that's why I'm out here. I'm watching the timer tick down on my battery's life expectancy, writing under the lithium ion gun.<br>
<br>
(The turtle is making excellent progress. No sign of traffic.)<br>
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In an ideal world I'd lean forward into the front seats and turn up the radio a bit, but doing so would result in spasms of pain ricocheting up my spine and radiating across the left side of my body. So I'll live with quiet music. And remind me about this next time I try to waterski.<br>
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Tomorrow morning I'm going to physio instead of work. Word on the street is they have a dented garbage can there that can work wonders if you fall over it backward. I'll do whatever they say. Anything is better than spending your days walking like C-3P0.<br>
<br>
(A motorcycle gang just chortled by, but they all deftly steered around the turtle. Bless their little heroin-dealing hearts.)<br>
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Where was I? Oh yes. Cottage holidays. Our drive up north couldn't have been more delightful. Littlestar and I were giddy with the weightlessness of being child-free. We played loud music and took off our shoes. We kissed and teased. We stopped for chips and gravy and watched Ontario go by as a mottled green smear with sunshine on top.<br>
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The cottage wasn't our cottage, so when we got to the landing we were obliged to wait for our hosts. Through the magick of digital cellular telephony we learned that just behind us the highway had been shut down for seven hours by a messy accident. Our hosts were just ten cars behind the accident site itself. They were chatting with the off-duty nurse who had held the hand of the smooshed up girl as she died in the grass. A motorcycle, a Mack truck and an outcropping of jagged rock were also involved, though nobody seemed to know quite how or in what sequence.<br>
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Littlestar and I cracked open some drinks and settled in to wait. We moved the car to a shady place and fooled around.<br>
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Our hosts were the Scotch Museologist and his wife, whom I have previously called <i>Mistress Bengal</i> but whom I shall now call <i>Sunshine Anderson</i> in homage to a particularly creative mangling of her proper name that was left on her voicemail at work. When they managed to arrive after a long and looping detour we motored across the west arm of Lake Nippising and husband-freighted our kipple to the house on quaint and shady Something Island.<br>
<br>
(When the Scotch Museologist's cousin and his cousin's wife-like yin-unit arrived later that same night they told us about how they had waited on the closed highway chatting with folks, watching kids play ball. When the highway opened again they surged through and immediately came up against a second accident: someone overzealous after being set free to drive had struck a moose, restricting the highway to a single lane.<br>
<br>
(When the Scotch Museologist's colleague and friend arrived the next day, she reported that someone had cut the moose in half, and dragged away the rear-quarters for a barbecue.<br>
<br>
(When Littlestar and I drove home the moose was gone, but we did see a dead baby bear.)))<br>
<br>
The Scotch's Museologist's cottage is an acme of conscientious upkeep, standing in some contrast to our own. It's a self-built A-frame with a long tongue of floating dock, decks front and rear, trees all around, benches and sunbrellas galore, a decent stereo and a non-nature raping toilet system. (It isn't winterproofed but neither am I.)<br>
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Like all good cottages there is a refrigerator dedicated to beer, and we worked hard to empty it. The girls had their beers with limes in them and boys had their beers with unpronouncible names. We played bacchi ball and horseshoes and swam and smoked prodigious amounts of marijuana, hashish and tobacco. We barbecued a positively retarded amount of beef, and speculated about <a href="http://www.psychnet-uk.com/dsm_iv/cjd.htm">Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease</a> becoming a new national sport.<br>
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Somebody had left up at the cottage a bushel of trashy celebrity gossip magazines about who was thinner than whom, but these were poor competition for the first-hand celebrity stories from Sunshine Anderson (who, as mentioned previously, works for a Monstrously Large Media Concern). Equally colourful but considerably less ludicrous anecdotes were shared by Lady Showboat (again, an appellation derived from a mangling of her proper name), a sort of real-life Laura Croft character tempered by charm and humility -- born in Africa, growing up in a five hundred year old English mansion, falling victim to bizarre and horrifying parasites while going on archaeological digs around the world...that sort of thing.<br>
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(The best thing about Lady Showboat was that she was the polar opposite of a woman Littlestar and I met several months ago who tried so very hard to make herself sound like a truly sophisticated citizen of the world. She exploited every opportunity to inject into any conversation mention of Madrid or Cape Town or Paris, mad to impress upon anyone and everyone who cool she was. In our subsequent social debrief Littlestar and I wondered whether that particular tit had rubbed us the wrong way because we were jealous of her cosmopolitan lifestyle, but I argued that someone who truly was as cool as the idiot had been pretending to be wouldn't have worked so hard to impress us. Lady Showboat was just that -- grounded, affable, attentive. People who genuinely lead fascinating lives don't feel the need to advertise.)<br>
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We also got to enjoy one of those classically gaytastic thirtysomething moments when a group of diverse friends sits down to table together over fine meat and plentiful wine. These are the moments banks and auto manufacturers and vintners attempt to simulate in their television commercials. Lots of spontaneous laughter, stimulating conversation, a warm glow of unmuddied togetherness...that sort of thing.<br>
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I was introduced to waterskiing, and I introduced waterskiing to my particular concentration of deftlessness. By synergizing our offerings we were able to produce an impressive back injury in fairly short order.<br>
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This was on my second attempt to become upright while being dragged behind a speeding motorboat. <a href="http://mfdh.ca/photography/mfdh/2006/IMG_4731.jpg">I realized things were incorrect in my body even before I splashed down</a>. The most fun part was swimming back to the boat with only my right side responding predictably to locomotive command. I was wearing a life-jacket, however, so I didn't drown.<br>
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Back on land it was established that a dizzying array of different kinds of motion made me feel plenty bad, but that once propped up in place somewhere I could drink and smoke and sass on with only minor assistance.<br>
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(The big upshot, of course, is that I didn't have to help make the beds before we left.)<br>
<br>
My back felt considerably better after Littlestar gave me a massage, and then considerably worse after we had sex. Littlestar felt guilty for not having been more sensible considering my injury, but I had no complaints. Sensible people have blue balls.<br>
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Fifty percent of the women felt too fat. The boys compared beer guts, where applicable. The brown made fun of the white for turning red. We played a game of charades in which we wrote our own person/place/thing/phrase on scraps of paper in two hats, which degenerated over a course of hours into toilet humour and sexual themes. I performed my charades sitting in an easy-chair, making affirmative and negative beeping noises like <a href="http://memory-alpha.org/en/images/thumb/2/20/Pike2.jpg/200px-Pike2.jpg">Captain Christopher Pike</a>.<br>
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"Cunnilingus!"<br>
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"Does this look like cunnilingus to <i>you</i>?"<br>
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"Shush -- you can't talk!"<br>
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"Cheeseburger keeps making grunting noises like Charlie Brown's teacher! I call foul!"<br>
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"Charlie Brown's teacher getting cunnilingus?"<br>
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"<i>Foul!</i>"<br>
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In the mornings I stood on the end of the dock, eating an apple and thinking about stories. I am considering new strategies for deploying my writing output. We stand at the cusp of CheeseburgerBrown 2.0, almost ready to roll. I just need the bank to issue me my new credit card so I can buy a fresh domain.<br>
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I chewed and paced, watching ripples and mist, ruminating over what it is I am <i>for</i>, with respect to writing. I am close to another good guess. I can feel it.<br>
<br>
When we got home Baby Yam had sprouted two additional teeth, now making for a grand total of three. He desperately wanted me to pick him up and I desperately wanted to oblige him, but hefting around a twenty pound sack of squirming baby meat just isn't a legal operation in my current condition. I require our Swiss au pair girl, Mademoiselle J., to hold him up so I can snuggle him.<br>
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"Bah!" says Baby Yam. "Zeeeeee!"<br>
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(Speaking of which, we have recently come to winch out of her how she'd best like her name to be pronounced -- and it's a far cry from the gum-chewed interpretation passed on from Beurre d'Arachide, who met her first. Now we have everybody practicing. By the time she leaves we'll have it just about right.)<br>
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Young Popsicle is still away at a different cottage with Aunt Xena. I very much look forward to and very much dread how she will catapult herself at me when she gets home. "Let's play rough!" she'll cheer, and then ask me to take her to the beach at the end of our street.<br>
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"Mercy, child -- <i>have mercy!</i>"<br>
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Okay, the turtle has now cleared the road and disappeared into the high grass. I should probably take that as a sign. My time is up. Best go home and face the music for taking off.<br>
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Whee!<br>
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<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1153511656493883062006-07-21T15:52:00.000-04:002006-07-26T17:23:58.410-04:00The Hot Sex Solution<br>
Hot sex is the glue that makes marriage both fun and functional, of this I am convinced. While a shallow analysis may conclude that many problems can be dwarfed when one's lust is sated, my angle is on the hot sex more as a symptom and tool rather than an end unto itself.<br>
<br>
Basically my thesis is that if you can talk with one another frankly about intimacy issues and keep the sex hot after years of repeated couplings, you can talk about anything. In order to keep satisfying and exciting one another and to avoid sinking into a rut, you're pretty much obliged to be in touch with one another's feelings, appetites and sources of frustration or alienation.<br>
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Seriously, how hard is it to have a candid conversation about how you treat each other in a daily basis when you've just had a chat about how to make each other come with greater zeal? It can be awkward. It can be embarrassing. It requires a hard look at what you want, what you expect, and what you give. It requires honesty and careful listening.<br>
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In short, the tools you have to bring to the table to iron out wrinkles in the lovemaking are the same tools you're supposed to bring to bear on every aspect of your relationship -- only in the other parts the immediate rewards can be less clear. Wanting to understand your partner's feelings is a prerequisite for success, and finding the motivation is easy when the carrot at the end of the stick is hot, hot porno lovin'.<br>
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While it may be possible on the short term to have a satisfying love life with someone you resent or hate or feel distant from, I don't think such grooves can usually last. Sooner or later something in somebody changes, and what they require shifts. If you're too out of touch to track those shifts, the orgasms stop or become masturbatory. Soon it becomes harder to work up the enthusiasm to begin, or harder to look one another in the eye afterward. Eventually you find yourself on altogether different missions, clinging to dark buoys, unhappy, bitter, or even sailing into foreign ports.<br>
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I know some guys married to <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=milf">MILF</a>s who complain that they never get any. They have no idea where along the way they dropped the ball. At some point things just started to suck a bit, so they watched TV instead of snuggling. As time went by they become habituated to being physically alienated from one another. It wasn't something they talked about, except for the guy to sporadically mumble that he may feel under-serviced or the girl to mutter about how things just didn't feel right. Then they watched <a href="http://www.tvdance.com/william-hung/"><i>American Idol</i></a> and fell asleep.<br>
<br>
And then they're surprised to find that a decade has passed and they don't like each other's friends.<br>
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In the words of one acquaintance of mine, they have become "colleagues in a company" whose product is raising children and balancing the chequebook. Their relationships are amicable and professional, like my relationship with the <a href="http://www.cksafetyvillage.org/1-Tim%20Hortons.jpg">Tim Horton</a>'s girl who sells me tea at the side of the highway.<br>
<br>
That's sweet, in a way. I mean, better for the kids that their parents are friends rather than enemies. But I think the love and listening flows better when the heads of a household are also crazy about each other. Parents are, after all, the foundation blueprint upon which children base their model of what romantic relationships look and sound like.<br>
<br>
"Mommy, is there romance in the world?"<br>
<br>
"Yes dear, just not at our house."<br>
<br>
I have gained more insight into what my wife wants and needs in her life by her descriptions of what she wants and needs in bed than from any other source. It is a subject impossible to discuss without candour. Those who would hint are forced to speak openly or be left unsatisfied. Those who would brood are forced to come to terms with what they'd really like to say, or risk sleeping alone. Those who would act only selfishly find themselves playing second fiddle to a battery-powered marital aid. Those who would act only selflessly in order to avoid conflict or awkward confessions find themselves resentful and bored.<br>
<br>
Okay, I know lust is a sin.<br>
<br>
I never claimed to be a religious man.<br>
<br>
But I am a happily married man who not infrequently enjoys the privilege of making his wife squeal like a getaway car. It hasn't always been easy -- particularly for a spell immediately following the birth of our <a href="http://mfdh.ca/ingrid">first child</a> -- but we've always managed to get back on track with a dose of frank discussion, patience and a dollop of shameless experimentation.<br>
<br>
In conclusion, hot sex is a litmus test that broadcasts the health of the intimacy between you and your partner. Being communicative about sex as a means of keeping it hot is also a way to train one another to be more sensitive to less intimate wants and needs. And hot sex is an excellent motivator for keeping in touch with your partner's feelings, because the reward for your efforts is -- well, hot sex -- and its associated rewards like feeling trusted, feeling desirable, and enjoying the metaphysical connectivity of big time sensuality.<br>
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Yes friends, I heartily and without reservation endorse hot sex and the full panoply of its itinerant benefits. And that's one to grow on.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1152730608955452412006-07-12T14:56:00.000-04:002006-07-19T09:26:52.656-04:00N'Internet Pas<br>
It rains and rains and rains. Yesterday it rained so hard the Internet broke. While it seems to me that a decentralized global network should still work while soggy, the IT dude told us there would be no packets before supper.<br>
<br>
One of the most rapidly apparent effects this had on my colleagues and I was that we suddenly became ignorami -- answers to even the most seemingly basic questions baffled us and left us feeling sad and stupid.<br>
<br>
"Who's that guy who was in that movie, you know, with the fireball -- with that girl?" asks someone.<br>
<br>
Everyone turns confidently to their machines and then, a moment later, swears. Our favourite repositories of off-site cinema knowledge are not accessible.<br>
<br>
Later on a producer asks: "How much would a new two hundred gig FireWire drive cost?"<br>
<br>
And the multimedia guy is forced to offer a surprised and morose reply: "I...don't know."<br>
<br>
We feel like Superman bitch-slapped by Kryptonite. None of our magical Cyber Age powers are working. We can't know the weather report or see through traffic cameras; we cannot settle arguments; we can't buy anything or even compare prices for future purchasing; we cannot retrieve client files uploaded to our off-site FTP server; we cannot drill down through trivia or follow trails of curiosity; we can't read the news or steal photographs, download television programming or albums of pop music; we can't videoconference with our babies or wives; we can't browse stock art or commercial music libraries or step through on-line tutorials; we can't ogle the Page Three girls from Britain.<br>
<br>
Around midday the following sage advice trickles through the various departments: <i>Don't work too hard today or they'll clue into how much more productive we are when the Internet's off.</i><br>
<br>
We're bored between being busy. We wonder if we should photocopy our bums or have stapler fights. Everybody answers every question with, "Dunno -- Internet's down."<br>
<br>
"Is Gothenburg in Sweden?"<br>
<br>
"Dunno -- Internet's down."<br>
<br>
"Did somebody put on a new pot of coffee?"<br>
<br>
"Dunno -- Internet's down."<br>
<br>
We are helpless. Bludgeoned at the yoke of HR to carry out important and/or sensitive conversations via e-mail, we cannot resolve issues. Face to face we are chicken. "Okay, I'll talk to you about this now if you insist, but <i>I</i> insist we CC our conversation to your boss."<br>
<br>
"How?"<br>
<br>
"Maybe we should yell."<br>
<br>
"Is he in his office?"<br>
<br>
"Dunno -- Internet's down."<br>
<br>
Everything is so bloody <i>local</i>. We miss the voices of many. We are Hugh. We might as well be working in an Afghani cave. We might as well be a bazillion miles from Earth. We're cut adrift -- vapid, disempowered, disconnected, alone.<br>
<br>
"The IT dude says something happened to a fibre line in Brampton. Do you think it's true?"<br>
<br>
"Look it up."<br>
<br>
"Yeah, good idea -- hey wait: fuck you. That's not funny."<br>
<br>
"It is, actually."<br>
<br>
"Do I seem amused?"<br>
<br>
"Dunno, Internet's d --"<br>
<br>
"Shut up!"<br>
<br>
People talk more. The telephone rings a lot. We get up from our desks and walk around to other departments to see people. It's weird. It's like an indoor field trip. If foley of clacking typewriters could be added for ambiance we would have a reasonable approximation of what it may have been like to work in an office in the nineteen-seventies or -eighties. A history class come to life!<br>
<br>
Our connection comes back up around tea time. All work stops while we cram to catch up on our e-mail and instant messages, to get up to speed on who's been blown up by terrorists and whether or not any of Hollywood's summer blockbusters are reviewed as worth paying to see. Even deleting spam is a charmed chore when bolstered by a span of deprivation.<br>
<br>
We are used to the Internet. Yesterday's science-fiction is today's hum-drum. I wonder what grand magicks will we take for granted tomorrow.<br>
<br><br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1150747958975793962006-06-19T16:12:00.000-04:002006-07-12T12:27:11.420-04:00The Blame for Bliss<br>
The more life happens to me, the more convinced I become that happiness takes hard work.<br>
<br>
And some miserable bastards just aren't up to the job.<br>
<br>
<i>Warning: chronically miserable people may find this post saddening.</i><br>
<br>
<br>
<b>I</b>t is very easy to relegate the roots of happiness to environmental factors, like whether we are rich or laid or beautiful or lucky. The most satisfying aspect of this theory of causation is that it removes the burden of responsibility for our happiness to elements we have little or no control over. If we are sad it is due to our situation and not, say, due to a critical mismanagement of our internal resources.<br>
<br>
Being sad, runs such logic, is not our fault.<br>
<br>
I suspect otherwise. I have been suspecting otherwise for a long time. I become more certain as the years pass and I see miserable people with wonderful situations, and joyous people living through hard times. It is clear to me that there is something more to the equation than account balances and stress.<br>
<br>
I used to think I was a preternaturally lucky person. This thinking originated primarily from interaction with others and coming up short when it came time to compare hardship. Try as I might, I just couldn't come up with a competitive list of disasters. "I guess I'm just lucky," I'd reason.<br>
<br>
"I guess," they'd agree with varying levels of envy or sardony.<br>
<br>
Eventually I figured out that it was possible to retell many of my life's adventures with a more doleful tone, and they could resemble other peoples' disasters without applying undue literary license. Whether or not a challenging event was logged as a crisis or simply a colourful anecdote seemed to be largely a simple matter of perspective.<br>
<br>
This theory was confirmed when I started blogging. If I related an autobiographical story just the way I felt about it I was accused of sugar-coating the story, of combing it to a high gloss, of omitting the uglier parts of my emotional chafing. I was, in short, guilty of selective memory and allowing an unforgivable bias toward contentment to colour my recollections.<br>
<br>
From the point of view of the mechanics of storytelling this was easy enough to rectify: I had to include a little bit of shit in every load to make the package taste credible to a cynical audience. No problem. Bitch a little to gain some credibility -- fine.<br>
<br>
From the point of view of coming to terms with my life the feedback was harder to parse. Was I rewriting my memories to suit myself? Was it all a lie told to myself to make me happy, or to present an illusion thereof?<br>
<br>
Which brings me to another one of my credos: <i>the human brain is an appliance ill-suited to the detection of truth.</i><br>
<br>
I am equipped with twin photon detectors. I can distinguish a wide range of oscillations in fluids. I am sensitive to motion and pressure both tactile and proprioceptive. I can correct my orientation without outside cues. I am capable of distinguishing dozens or even hundreds of compounds from minute samples, and have the onboard hardware to evaluate whether or not they represent something edible.<br>
<br>
...And that's about it. I possess no direct sense organ for divining factuality from invention.<br>
<br>
Without an objective record of the events my memory records (and my memory of those memories, altered with every act of recall) my version of reality cannot be validated to any degree of accuracy. I can call on external witnesses, and I have. I can sometimes check dates and verify certain facts. Reasoning can reveal degrees of likelihood and unlikelihood. However, I cannot determine what is truly real and what is fanciful. Without engaging in a lot of expensive magnetic brain tomography I'm not sure anyone can.<br>
<br>
Sociologists have established that human memory is replete with fiction. Accounts taken from witnesses mere moments after a crime reveal gross inaccuracies and bizarre mistakes, many of which the respondant is convinced accurately depict what they just saw before their very eyes. With our perceptions fallibility is the rule rather than the exception.<br>
<br>
So I can take it as read that our personal histories are all <i>versions</i> rather than <i>canon</i>. We are all of us imperfect recording devices.<br>
<br>
The meat of the matter comes with interpretation. Given that you and I experienced comparable crises, can either of our imperfect versions of events be said to be superior to the other? I believe so. To be glib: it's all in what you take away from the experience.<br>
<br>
This means that you and I can go through the same shit and you can come out saying, "I'm an unlucky wretch for whom life sucks persistently and with special vehemence," and I can come out saying, "What's for lunch?"<br>
<br>
(The answer: a capicolla and provolone sandwich with a granola bar and butterscotch pudding.)<br>
<br>
This has been rammed home for me by recent events. I live with a mentally ill man and over the past three years I have had the opportunity to see the trainwreck of his life in motion. While his illness means he is obviously not representative of the larger population, it does serve to highlight certain more universal tendencies by their exaggerated relief.<br>
<br>
You see, he is dedicated full-time to making himself miserable.<br>
<br>
<i>Why</i> he does this is rooted in the condition of his damaged brain, but <i>how</i> he does this is a revealing study in the mechanics of self-deception. His principal tools are: <b>1)</b> viewing any interaction as a kind of contest, where somebody always "wins" and somebody always "loses"; <b>2)</b> obsessing over distorted versions of his personal history slanted to stoke his own fury and feelings of righteous indignation; <b>3)</b> an inability to let things go, a protracted frustration that life isn't "right."<br>
<br>
He therefore serves as a living example to me of how to be sad and, through simple inversion, into a living example of how to be happy. For the sake of clarity, let's run through his pet devices in their inside-out form:<br>
<blockquote>
<b>1)</b> While ambition is affirming, competitiveness is destructive.<br>
<br>
<b>2)</b> Self-pity immolates the soul.<br>
<br>
<b>3)</b> "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change those that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
</blockquote>
Is it always simple to distinguish ambition from competition? No. Is it easy to avoid feeling sorry for oneself? It isn't. Is letting things roll off your back as easy for people as it is for ducks? Not usually. In other words, the skills we bring to bear on interpreting the state of our own lives are not applied without effort.<br>
<br>
Nothing is free. The spirit, left to its own, sinks.<br>
<br>
I am a happy man, and I maintain that I would still be a happy man if my situation were worse. As time goes by I find myself increasingly resentful of the attitude that would dismiss my happiness as the product of pure luck and/or naivete. I have no time for those who think they're smart because they're depressed. I have run out of pity for those who would be jealous. I am no longer convinced they are innocent of their pessimism.<br>
<br>
Sometimes I'm sad, too. I'm not advocating a willing blindness to poor turns of events. Feeling things is important, even shitty things. But if your negative feelings own you, you've competed with yourself and lost. You have admitted self-pity into your interior monologue, and given it top billing. You both quail before and bow down to injustice, your mentor, your master, your scriptwright.<br>
<br>
I'm not happy-go-lucky. I'm happy-go-bravely.<br>
<br>
I've been depressed. I've seen the shrink and been prescribed the soma. I've gone through crises of confidence and crises of materials, crises of faith and crises of action. I've been lied to. I've been betrayed. I've been attacked. I've acted wrongly and felt guilty. I've acted rightly and been pressured to feel guilty. I've been accused. I've felt pointless, purposeless, wasted, wasteful, useless, ugly and mean. I've been shocked. I've cried. I've made others cry, too.<br>
<br>
And yet I can be happy. It's mine, and I claim it. I will fight for it.<br>
<br>
I know it isn't cool to examine your own psychology unless you're so deeply troubled that you have no choice, but I recommend it even for non-flaky people. The efforts of investigation are worth it since, obviously, happiness is its own reward.<br>
<br>
The best thing about happiness, from a moral perspective, is that when you're happy it is surprisingly easy to commit good acts. Your take on the cost-benefit analysis changes. It is not a strain to do for and to think of others when you're not railing against yourself. Patience extends. Forgiveness comes quickly. Hostility inspires compassion instead of defensiveness.<br>
<br>
I am proud of my happiness, and I don't think that's wrong.<br>
<br>
The mentally ill man says I am a fool because I don't see things as they <i>really</i> are. Perhaps he is right but, no matter how I try, I cannot bring myself to envy his position squatting on the painful corners of unverifiable truth, full of hate.<br>
<br>
A crisis engulfs us all. "My life is over," he declares.<br>
<br>
"What's for lunch?" I ask.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1149730359074203742006-06-07T21:32:00.000-04:002006-06-13T16:32:19.926-04:00My Daily Apple<br>
This is not a computer metaphor.<br>
<br>
I eat one apple every day and I have to tell you that it is a highlight of my afternoon. While I've been known to take a banana to the hilt during the sleepy part of the afternoon in order to keep my motor running, nothing beats the <i>zap-zing-zop!</i> of a nice crispy apple during the evening commute. I laugh out loud and turn up the music. I relax in my chair and watch the farms slide by. I tap on the steering wheel and hum.<br>
<br>
I used to eat my apple at work, which has its uses, but as I've refined my apple eating best practices I have come to the firm conclusion that apples are most productively applied to giving me a lift right before I come home, in order that I may meet the children with smiles and vim rather than aches and dreary.<br>
<br>
Apples are the fruit of love. Bananas, in contrast, are the thinking man's fruit. Bananas should be inserted before creative brainstorming meetings or when trying to work through a particularly sticky compositing problem. Bananas make geniuses out of janitors and rocket scientists out of motion graphics jockeys. Bananas lift us up where we belong. All you need is bananas.<br>
<br>
And apples. Like I said, topping off the day with a juicy green Grannysmith gives me the <i>shazam</i> required for suppertime parenting. As soon as I get into the car the hankering begins. How bad can the drive home be when you've got apples?<br>
<br>
People who doubt the power of apples are probably <i>Irhabi</i> fucknuts or Communists. All good people like apples. Since there is a nearly infinite set of possible apple varieties, people who claim not to like apples simply haven't done enough research. There's an apple out there for everybody.<br>
<br>
Just to name a few there's the Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Rome Beauty, Winesap, Criterion, Gala, Jonagold, Classic Pippin, Newtown Pippin, McIntosh, Gravenstein, Fuji, Braeburn, Elstar, Spartan, Sunrise, Empire, Ginger Gold, Honeycrisp, Jonamac, Red Cort, Ida Red, Cortland, Northern Spy, Paula Red, Almata, Gold Russet, and Maiden's Blush. And of course the Baldwin, Black Oxford, Ben Davis, Blue Pearman, Dudley, Fameuse, Grimes Golden, King, Strawberry, Rhode Island Greening, Winter Red Flesh, Wolf River, and the famous Dolgo Crab. And no one could forget the Arkansas Black, Ashmead's Kernel, Blacktwig, Blenheim Orange, Black Gilliflower, Doctor, Fall Russet, Franklin, Cox's Orange Pippin, Fukunishiki, Davey, Holstein, Hopple's Antique Gold, Ingrid Marie, Jubilee, Kandil Sinap, Lady Sweet, Lamb Abbey Pearmain, Lord's Seedling, McLellan, Pitmaston Pineapple, Mother, Roxbury Russet, Jonathan, Salome, Senator, Snow, Somerset, Swayzie, Tremlett's Bitter, Virginia Gold, or the Westfield Seek-No-Further.<br>
<br>
Bananas, on the other hand, are <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/07/0726_wirebanana.html">a clone army</a> and therefore cannot be fully trusted, no matter how delicious they may be.<br>
<br>
The word for apple in French is <i>pomme</i>.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1149004544373041832006-05-30T11:54:00.000-04:002006-06-12T17:56:17.973-04:00Fambly Sandwich<br>
It's my weekend all alone with the kids. Wish me luck.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Friday</b><br>
<br>
I drive home in the rain and retrieve the children from their grandmother. Three-year-old Popsicle is very excited about having a weekend with her Papa to herself, and informs me of her iterniary which includes playing outside with Papa, playing with her toys with Papa, watching movies with Papa, and making homemade playdough with Papa. "Making playdough?" I interrupt.<br>
<br>
"Yes. Mama said you said we goine a'make playdough for me."<br>
<br>
"Did she now?"<br>
<br>
"Yes, and then I'm goine a'play with it, the playdough, and you can play with me with it also."<br>
<br>
She draws a picture with crayons while I put on dinner (reheated rice and chicken) as I do laps around the livingroom with three-month-old Baby Yam strapped to my chest. We bop to <a href="http://hemsidor.torget.se/users/j/jorge/bst.htm">Blood, Sweat & Tears</a>, amplified beyond my PowerBook's tinny speakers with a sound system purloined from my wife's studio.<br>
<br>
"I want ice cream," says Popsicle.<br>
<br>
"You can't have ice cream for dinner."<br>
<br>
"Mama said you would give me lots of ice cream for dinner."<br>
<br>
"I don't think Mama really said that."<br>
<br>
"Well," she admits sheepishly, "maybe she said it <i>a little</i>."<br>
<br>
Once the baby has fallen asleep and been transfered to the cradle I walk Popsicle upstairs to brush her teeth and have a bedtime story. We're currently reading <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0747532745/026-5129902-3674057"><i>Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone</i></a>, and Popsicle is particularly taken with my rendition of Hagrid's gruff voice and thick accent. She begs for a few extra paragraphs and I oblige her. I snap off her light, which is shaped like an aquarium and has little paper fish turning in it.<br>
<br>
"Now you say <i>the words</i>, Papa," she instructs me.<br>
<br>
These are <i>the words</i>: "Godbless, snuggle-bunny, pleasant dreams, I love you, nighty-night, seeeeeeeee youuuuuu in the moooooorning."<br>
<br>
I come downstairs again, eager to be enjoy being off-duty for a few hours, but when I arrive Baby Yam is gurgling and humming and kicking in his cradle, very far from being asleep. I top him up with formula and then walk him around for another half an hour. When he consents to nod off I carry him upstairs and put him in the creche next to our bed. Then, while in the process of trying to turn on the baby monitor, cause it emit a horrifying squelch of static that instantly wakes Baby Yam back up.<br>
<br>
Another few dozen laps later I replace him in the creche and very carefully set up the baby monitor as if I am diffusing a bomb.<br>
<br>
When I get downstairs again Popsicle is sitting on the livingroom couch. "Hi," she says conversationally. "I'm not even tired. Let's make playdough!"<br>
<br>
I shake my head. "It's time for bed and nothing but. Get moving."<br>
<br>
Once back upstairs we hammer out the details of an accord which will see Popsicle reading books quietly in her room for a little while, and then she's to turn off her fish-light and go to sleep. Half an hour later she's downstairs again. "I'm scared of the dark."<br>
<br>
"But your light is on."<br>
<br>
"Yes, but I'm still scared of things."<br>
<br>
"What kind of things?"<br>
<br>
"Just things that scare me but aren't real like goblins."<br>
<br>
"If they're not real, why are you scared?"<br>
<br>
"Maybe I'm thirsty."<br>
<br>
"You have a cup of water beside your bed."<br>
<br>
"Papa, I think I'm feeling very hungry and starving right now. I think that I should have some ice cream or I can't sleep."<br>
<br>
I give her a carrot and sent her off. The wraith of her waking spirit revisits me twice more before she finally sticks down, somewhere around eleven o'clock. I pour myself a shot of gin and throw it back. I am about to release a sigh of relief when the baby monitor starts to crackle.<br>
<br>
Baby Yam is hungry.<br>
<br>
I trudge upstairs and watch cartoons while he snortles back formula. Normally he would fall asleep at my wife's breast and be replaced, limp, in the creche. Instead, when he finishes the bottle he looks up at me with a puzzled expression as if to say, "Now what happens?"<br>
<br>
"I'm not sure," I tell him.<br>
<br>
He burps. We hang around on the bed and watch cartoons for a while. Yam is impressed by the bright colours on the screen. We cuddle and squish. He does not close his eyes. When I am in danger of losing control over my own closing eyes I hoist him, awake, into the creche and hope for the best, then click off the television.<br>
<br>
"Ya?" he calls.<br>
<br>
"Go to sleep," I advise.<br>
<br>
"Whorl," he says.<br>
<br>
"Don't argue with Papa."<br>
<br>
At half past four in the morning he starts fussing for more. His eyes remain closed but he's doing his food moan. I groggily insert the rubber nipple into his mouth and he groggily assesses it with his tongue. He furrows his brow. He openes his eyes in consternation: he was expecting an organic nipple. He spits the nipple out and whines.<br>
<br>
"Come on, Little Man," I say, doing my best to imitate the inflection and tone of my wife's voice. I stuff the nipple into his mouth again. He twists his head away but I gently but firmly rotate it back. I make significant eye contact with him, which often seems to aid the latch.<br>
<br>
Reluctantly, he feeds.<br>
<br>
The bottle empties as the first rays of premorning light pale the horizon. A ribbon of cloud illuminates with a bronze glow that reflects into the bedroom, catching Yam's eye. He cooes. He looks around. He clasps his hands together and giggles. In his way he is saying, "Goodmorning!"<br>
<br>
His day, and therefore mine, has begun. It's twenty to five.<br>
<br>
We play. I pump his little legs up and down and click at him, and he drools and laughs. I sing him a little song. In the distance a rooster crows. Finally, at six 'clock, he falls back to sleep with a big goofy grin on his face. I lie back and rub my burning eyes.<br>
<br>
I am afforded half an hour of sleep before Popsicle splits the air with her cries of, "Papa! Papa! It's mornine time and I waked up! <i>Papa!</i> I hafta go potty!"<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Saturday</b><br>
<br>
We go downstairs together. I put a pot of water on to heat up a frozen bottle of expressed breast-milk, and then put on the kettle for tea. The I start hunting for tea, but find none. I finally opt to use a questionable product which claims to be especially made for brewing iced-tea, so my cup of morning cha is somewhat sweeter and more fake-lemony than I would ideally prefer. The baby starts to fuss so I turn back to the breast-milk, which has boiled and is therefore ruined.<br>
<br>
"Shit."<br>
<br>
I make toast for Popsicle and the dig a fresh bottle out of the freezer. I set the oven timer to squawk after just a few minutes so I won't lose track of its progress this time. When the timer beeps I unscrew the cap and stick my finger into the bottle -- it's warming nicely.<br>
<br>
I forget to reset the timer. And I fail to screw the top back on tightly enough. When I return to the stove moments later the pot is lost beneath a billowing blanket of milky foam.<br>
<br>
"Fuck it," I say, and mix up another batch of formula.<br>
<br>
"Let's go out and play!" cheers Popsicle.<br>
<br>
This is a good idea. Parking the children in the cheap showiness of nature is almost as useful a distraction as parking them in front of a television but without any of the associated guilt. I feed the dog and out we go: Popsicle to the sandbox and Yam to lie on the grass in the shade. I gulp my tea and work hard not to fall asleep.<br>
<br>
Popsicle makes lunch for her imaginary friend Nada, who is six inches tall and has a pretty green dress and long hair that is red and blue and green, but no shoes because Popsicle hasn't bought her any yet. Nada is enjoying a lunch of mud-pies with sand-sprinkles and washing it down with a cup of grass-clippings and smooshed up dandelions. Popsicle chastizes her invisible friend for wiping her hands on her green dress instead of using a napkin.<br>
<br>
"Nada won't listen!" says Popsicle.<br>
<br>
"Tell her to go stand in the corner," I suggest.<br>
<br>
"Yes, yes I will," she says seriously, nodding. "That's a good answer, Papa."<br>
<br>
We go inside for non-imaginary lunch. I make a frankfurter for Popsicle but she refuses it once she spots a bowl of leftover macaroni in the refrigerator. I explain that it's <a href="http://www.morgoth.org/kraft/kraft.php">Kraft Dinner</a>, not the sort of macaroni <i>she</i> likes, but Popsicle wants "Papa macamaroni" now. So she eats macaroni and the dog gets a frankfurter.<br>
<br>
I finally manage to get some breast-milk into Baby Yam when Popsicle goes down for her afternoon nap. He has tummy cramps afterward so we do some laps.<br>
<br>
When Popsicle wakes up again we attempt to make homemade playdough. There are a variety of recipes on the Web, but only a handful of them will work without mineral oil (which we lack), so we choose a simple one which promises "disposable" playdough good for one session of playing before it dries out. Despite the recipe's simplicity it is not long before I become aware that we have somehow borked the job, and we end up with a giant bowl of extremely sticky glue.<br>
<br>
We use the glue to fashion a "cake" for Mama and I promise that tomorrow we'll find the ingredients we need to make proper playdough. I put the cake on a high shelf to avoid further mess.<br>
<br>
Come dinnertime Popsicle insists that the only thing she will eat is more "Papa macamaroni" so I make another box of Kraft Diner which she eats while watching <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091369"><i>Labyrinth</i></a>. Popsicle is interested by the way the heroine, Sarah, has mixed feelings for her baby brother, Toby. We discuss the concept of not appreciating what we have until it's gone, and how it is possible for love and jealousy to co-exist. Popsicle admits to having mixed feelings about Baby Yam sometimes, and also that she has mixed feelings about ketchup. "Sometimes I want macamaroni with some ketchup but sometimes I don't even like that."<br>
<br>
"Would you rescue Yam if he were captured by goblins?"<br>
<br>
"Yes, I would. But goblins they aren't real."<br>
<br>
"That's true."<br>
<br>
"But we have them in stories like Harry Potter, and in <i>Labyrinth</i> there are goblins, too, and they say 'shut up!'"<br>
<br>
"Saying 'shut up' is rude, isn't it?"<br>
<br>
"Yes, it is. Sometimes you said to Baby Yam 'shut up' when he was crying."<br>
<br>
"I did, didn't I? That wasn't very nice, was it?"<br>
<br>
"No, it wasn't."<br>
<br>
"I shouldn't say 'shut up' to Yam."<br>
<br>
"No."<br>
<br>
Popsicle has a bath while I jiggle Yam on my lap, and then we wind down to read some Harry Potter and snuggle into bed. The temperature outside is rising at an alarming rate so we spend some time repositioning her fans for maximum comfort -- we cannot yet leave her ancient and badly screened window open for the night as the mosquito netting on her bed has yet to be installed for the season. "I want my princess bed," she says.<br>
<br>
"I can't put up your princess bed tonight honey, but we'll put it up tomorrow night."<br>
<br>
"But will mosquitos come in?"<br>
<br>
"No, I'm keeping the window closed tonight."<br>
<br>
"Okay. Make sure it's closed tight."<br>
<br>
"It is."<br>
<br>
"Are you goine a'say <i>the words</i> now?"<br>
<br>
"Godbless, snuggle-bunny, pleasant dreams, I love you, nighty-night, seeee youuuu in the mooooorning."<br>
<br>
"I love you, Papa."<br>
<br>
"Goodnight, cute-sauce."<br>
<br>
By the time I climb down the ladder from her loft Baby Yam has fallen asleep in my arms, so I carefully transfer him into the creche and manage to activate the baby monitor without squelching. So far, so good. Once downstairs I pour a stiff drink and down it in one refreshing, tingling gulp. "Now <i>that's</i> the stuff!"<br>
<br>
I sit down in front of my laptop to continue working on the short story I've been at pains to finish, but my brain is numbed by exhaustion and my efforts bear no fruit. Instead I pick through BitTorrent searches until I find a decent copy of the latest episode of <i>Doctor Who</i>.<br>
<br>
At half past eleven Baby Yam starts to muff for feed so I prepare a bottle and go upstairs to bed. He wakes me again at half past four and, like yesterday, our day begins at sunrise.<br>
<br>
"Whorl," says Baby Yam.<br>
<br>
"I think I'm going to die," I tell him, which he finds hilarious.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Sunday</b><br>
<br>
I make another cup of hot iced-tea and open all the doors and windows in an attempt to cool off the schoolhouse before the sun gets mean again. The dog and the baby spend some significant time together, the former licking the latter while the latter sucks on the former's ear. We listen to <a href="http://www.emmylou.net">Emmylou Harris</a>' <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000002HKI/104-8938413-5790322?v=glance&n=5174"><i>Wrecking Ball</i></a>.<br>
<br>
Popsicle wanders down an hour later and asks to watch cartoons, so we watch <a href="http://pbskids.org/arthur/"><i>Arthur</i></a> and then <a href="http://www.peppapig.com/"><i>Peppa Pig</i></a> while she eats a banana and lolls half-naked on the couch. "Let's get dressed," I suggest.<br>
<br>
"No thank you."<br>
<br>
Baby Yam, meanwhile, has decided to grow today. He rouses only briefly to feed and then resumes napping in the downstairs cradle, once every two or three hours. Popsicle and I go out and play in the sandbox, and when we return Yam is awake and grouchy. Fortunately, I am able to turn his mood by going on a "baby walk", which runs like this (to the tune of <a href="http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/lionhunt.htm"><i>Goin' on a Lion Hunt</i></a>):<br>
<br>
Papa: "We're going on a baby walk..."<br>
<br>
Papa (in a high voice): "We're going on a baby walk!"<br>
<br>
Papa: "Gonna have a good time..."<br>
<br>
Papa (in a high voice): "Gonna have a good time!"<br>
<br>
Papa: "Oh no! Look! <i>A lion!</i>"<br>
<br>
Papa (in a high voice): "RUN!"<br>
<br>
...At which point I pump his legs up and down frantically and "jump" him over various obstacles which inspires him to squeal and giggle, his wide, toothless smiles beginning as soon as I grab his ankles and draw breath to start the song.<br>
<br>
He goes down for a nap. Popsicle eats more "Papa macamaroni" for lunch and then goes down for a brief spell of quiet time before we make our second attempt to make playdough. Ultimately we are forced to pop out to the pharmacy to pick up mineral oil so my wife's mother watches Yam for an hour. Popsicle and I cruise in the <a href="http://mfdh.ca/drawings/2004/1120/mini_to_barrie.jpg">Mini</a> with the windows down, blaring <a href="http://www.matadorrecords.com/pizzicato_five">Pizzicato Five</a>'s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00000JHAS/104-8938413-5790322?v=glance&n=5174"><i>Happy End of the World</i></a> (an album so fluffy and gay it makes Swedish pop sound like a funeral dirge).<br>
<br>
Mineral oil is secured and we manage a playdough triumph: a giant mixing bowl of bright pink vanilla scented stuff that has the exact feel of commercial playdoughs. Popsicle proceeds to make worms, spirals and big blobs with imprints of her fingers squashed through them. "Look at my fingers!" she crows. "I'm making imprints!"<br>
<br>
We find other things to imprint: seashells and combs, the textured back of a plastic crocodile and then the funny patterns of lines on our elbows. We discuss fingerprints, and examine our own.<br>
<br>
At dinner we have an argument about whether she should eat something other than Kraft Dinner, but I lose. She is happily enjoying her bowl of "Papa macamaroni" when we both hear footfalls coming up the front steps. "Know what?" I whisper; "I think Mama is home."<br>
<br>
"<i>Mama!</i>" Popsicle screams, exploding out of her chair and running to the door. "I missed you!"<br>
<br>
Baby Yam wakes up in time to gratefully partake of the organic nipple and grins as he eats, watching his mother's face. Popsicle hangs at her side so I move in and squish her against Mama. "Popsicle sandwich!" cheers Popsicle. "Fambly sandwich with everybody!" she adds, pointing to Baby Yam.<br>
<br>
"Family sandwich!" I echo happily.<br>
<br>
We bring Mama her sticky experimental playdough cake, and then Popsicle shows off the second generation pink playdough. Mama takes her up to bed while Yam and I go for another baby walk. The sun sets and the schoolhouse begins to cool.<br>
<br>
When my wife returns we lounge on the side deck and chat with her parents. They ask me what I've learned. I say, "I learned that as long as my wife is waking up at four thirty in the morning, <i>she can have anything she wants.</i>"<br>
<br>
I am wearing Tabasco eyeliner -- it hurts to blink. My knees begin to fail and I have to sit down. My broadcast day is just about at an end. I hurt everywhere. I am sunburned. "So," says my wife, "how was it, overall?"<br>
<br>
"It was great," I tell her. "It was wonderful."<br>
<br>
And it was. It really, really was. I smile and then pass out.<br>
<br>
(Godbless, snuggle-bunny, pleasant dreams, I love you, nighty-night, seeeee yooouuuu in the mooooorning.)<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1148582887904285212006-05-25T14:47:00.000-04:002006-05-30T23:26:09.473-04:00The Cheeseburger Code<br>
<b>Baby 2.1</b><br>
<br>
<a href="http://mfdh.ca/sebastian">Baby Yam</a> is undergoing a metabolic upgrade, promising various bug fixes including an awareness of hands and a re-write of the digestive system. He is, in short, getting over his <a href="http://www.caringforkids.cps.ca/babies/Colic.htm">colic</a> and proceeding right into <a href="http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/teeth/teething.html">teething</a>.<br>
<br>
In comparison to colic the minor system hiccoughs caused by teething are a very light burden. Rather than needing to be strapped to someone tasked with doing interminable laps around the house while he screams as if tortured, when his teeth are bothering him he just wants something to chew on -- a finger, a blanket, a toy. It's bliss. <i>Bliss</i>, I tell you.<br>
<br>
The colic hasn't evaporated altogether, of course, but it is in retreat. Life feels like the first sunny day after a long time suffering under thick cloud and damp shadow. In my mind there are rainbows everywhere.<br>
<br>
I am especially grateful for the timing of the retreat as <a href="http://thelittlestar.com">my darling wife</a> is going away for the weekend, and I'll be solo-parenting both offspring until Sunday night. She deserves a break. I'm just glad I won't have to live through Hell to give it to her.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>I Am a Time-Lord</b><br>
<br>
I feel obliged to give a few lines over to the latest version of Adobe's <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects">After Effects</a> compositing software because one of the new features makes me positively giddy: <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/newfeatures.html#nf6">TimeWarp</a>. If you are an After Effects based compositor and you haven't upgraded to version 7, it's worth doing just for TimeWarp.<br>
<br>
Previous versions of After Effects offered a suite of decent temporal tools such as Time Remapping and Time Stretch. The problem with these tools was that the user enjoyed the greatest freedom when positively accelerating footage but very little flexibility when it came to negative acceleration. In other words, running footage <i>faster</i> worked like a charm but running footage <i>slower</i> turned it into a staccato mess of semi-freezes and interlace-marred lurches.<br>
<br>
TimeWarp's ability to intelligently interpolate imbetween frames to fill in the gaps means that footage can now be slowed down without an immediate and obvious loss of motion quality, essentially doubling the user's palette of options for screwing around with time while preserving an acceptable level of slickness.<br>
<br>
Naturally, I enjoy mis-using tools for fun and profit so the first thing I did was ask TimeWarp to negatively accelerate footage in which no two frames bore any relationship to one another. The result is awesome: the TimeWarp engine works hard to find a relationship -- <i>any</i> relationship -- between frames and, when it can find none, produces some bizarre and sometimes beautiful results.<br>
<br>
For instance, a stock clip of film scratches was effortlessly transformed by TimeWarp into an erratic, bouncy journey through a tangled spider-web. By intercutting two different sequences of cars driving by and feeding it to TimeWarp I got a psychedelic tango of vehicles in which disparate wheels morph and separate liquidly, windshields draw together and melt, and duotoned fenders twist. When I input a flurry of shots of crowds I get back a dizzying meld of faces and arms, sloshing around the frame like people soup.<br>
<br>
How cool is that? (Answer: fairly!)<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>We Are Not Amused</b><br>
<br>
Speaking of Time-Lords, I have to admit that I'm a little lukewarm on the new star of the BBC's reincarnation of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho"><i>Doctor Who</i></a>. It took me a few episodes to get used to the New Wave cut of his suit, and a few more episodes to accept that <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0855039">Tennant</a> lacks <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001172">Eccleston</a>'s uncanny ability to turn half-baked dialogue on its ear with sharp delivery, but I just can't seem to find a way to like this new giddy overload of irreverence. I like my Time-Lords troubled, I guess.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, <a href="http://www.sophiamyles.org/filmarticles/doctorwho_press.php">the girl</a> who plays <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madame_de_Pompadour">Madame de Pompadour</a> is pretty hot.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>To Be Perfectly Clear</b><br>
<br>
My wife is hotter than Madame de Pompadour. Let there be no misunderstanding. Hooo nelly!<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>An Invasive Biological Force</b><br>
<br>
I have a colleague who is having his first experiences with being a parent. He is somewhat discomfited, and I think it is because having your brain re-wired while you're still in it can be unnerving. I remember it.<br>
<br>
When human beings reproduce a neurological transformation takes place in order to equip them for parenthood. It is an old programme, refined by generations of ape death, a package of anxiety routines and gushes of mammal love on par with the changes that take place in our brains when we hit puberty. The difference is that puberty represents a phase transition from a state of lesser awareness to one of greater awareness -- it feels like waking up. Remember how struck you could be by the beauty and the tragedy of the world when you were twelve?<br>
<br>
Unlike puberty, however, being reprogrammed for parenting does not bring with it a new level of consciousness. Instead you simply find yourself driven by new desires and bamboozled by new instincts. After a couple of decades of relative mental stability this change can be surprising, like an alien force working within to a design all its own.<br>
<br>
It can feel like having God's finger up your ass.<br>
<br>
Obsessed with nurture as our culture is, we usually ascribe these changes to environmental factors -- you <i>know</i> you're a parent, so your priorities change. This is poppycock. If this were the case we would see a dizzying array of responses to parenthood as varied as our personalities and lifestyles. Instead, most of us come around to a common mode of new thinking and a few of us, driven mad by the conflicting feelings welling up, flee.<br>
<br>
It is an uncomfortable reminder of our legacy as gene propagation machines, a limpening of our certainty that our mind steers our destiny alone. We are animals, and our meat is hellbent on a mission. The state of our minds is a secondary consideration to that mission, and feeling the process happen can cause our illusion of clarity to pale.<br>
<br>
I imagine it is not unlike menopause, except with a directed purpose. During menopause many women find themselves deluged with irrational feelings and bizarre drives, their minds no longer servant to their notion of reality. The mind thinks what it thinks without reference to life. It goes a bit haywire. You are a tenant inside yourself with controls that work erratically if at all.<br>
<br>
You didn't think in a more sophisticated way after puberty because of how smart you are, and you don't start to feel like a parent because you're responsible. Both things happen because your brain chemistry has business to attend to, and you're just along for the ride.<br>
<br>
Whee!<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1145415909487865762006-04-18T23:04:00.000-04:002006-05-02T13:46:53.656-04:00Victor's Mom's Car<br>
<i>A completely conventional story in which everyone who misbehaves is punished.</i><br>
<br>
<br>
In Pauly's basement the plan was hatched, and they were titillated.<br>
<br>
The air was blue with smoke -- tobacco, marijuana, incense -- and the three teenagers giggled and sermonized. Pauly said that goodness was dead in the world, and so he would choose between dying with it or defying the stifling order, a hedged bet brokered by dangerous action. "It's about freedom," promised Pauly.<br>
<br>
"Shit yeah," said Victor. He was not as sure as he sounded, but he loved Pauly and would not speak against the plan.<br>
<br>
Victor found it both harder and easier to be more earnest once Dalia chimed in. It was harder because he worried that the way his face flushed and his hands sweated threatened to betray his dignity and secrets, and easier because it was inconceivable to Victor to watch Dalia's lipgloss shiny lips chewing over her stale, smoked gum and disagree. She was too pretty to disagree with.<br>
<br>
If he raised his gaze to hers he would freeze like roadkill, so Victor just nodded at her gum-snapping mouth. "Dalia's right," he said, his voice quavering over her name. Victor released a breath he hadn't remembered he'd been holding and his penis made a brief, involuntary shudder from resting against his right thigh to his left.<br>
<br>
"Shit yeah," nodded Dalia. "I'm always right. Right, Pauly?"<br>
<br>
"Fuckin' A."<br>
<br>
Victor envied their easy banter.<br>
<br>
The weapons had already been secured: Victor's little brother Todd had been playing in the dumpster behind Venetti's Bakery when he found two dented Glock 19s and a 9mm Magnum Baby Eagle with sticky brown specks on the grip. They were wrapped in paper that smelled like old pork.<br>
<br>
"What about ammo?" asked Dalia, twirling one of the Glocks on her finger and bouncing one leg against the opposite knee carelessly.<br>
<br>
Victor was transfixed by the undulating seams of her jeans. "Huh?"<br>
<br>
"We don't need no fuckin' ammo," snorted Pauly. "You don't think Old Chinkers will shit himself just having a gun pointed at his head? You think we'll need to actually fuckin' <i>shoot</i> him?"<br>
<br>
Dalia shrugged. "Just feels kinda half-assed to have unloaded guns, like wearing a stuffed bra."<br>
<br>
Victor adjusted himself and guffawed unconvincingly.<br>
<br>
"Fuck," commented Pauly with a wry smile; "are you saying you stuff, Dalia? Let me see."<br>
<br>
"Fuck you."<br>
<br>
"I'm fuckin' checking you, girl."<br>
<br>
Pauly and Dalia wrestled on the couch. They snorted and snickered. Victor didn't know what to do with himself. Pauly clutched Dalia's bosom through her T-shirt and squished at it clinically, nodding to himself. Dalia kicked him in the chest and Pauly dropped heavily to the floor, spilling a bowl of stale potato chips.<br>
<br>
Everyone laughed. Victor fought to regain his breath. So did the wrestlers.<br>
<br>
The next item of business was to draw a map of Old Chinkers' store in order to plot their positions. The job of drawing the map fell to Victor on account of his wearing glasses, which Pauly had always claimed made Victor smart. Victor was usually pleased to maintain this fiction in order to have something to claim for his own -- it had always been Pauly cornering the market on handsome, on strong, on suave, on funny.<br>
<br>
Victor was content to let people think he was smart just because he looked like a librarian if it made him second fiddle rather than totally irrelevant.<br>
<br>
He hunched over the pad and sketched out the shop based on his notes. Dalia flopped over the low table and hunched over with him. Victor called on a supernatural reserve of will in order to avoid glancing down the front of her hanging shirt. Dalia watched him trying not to look.<br>
<br>
"Damn Vic," drawled Dalia, "I should see if I can drum up an ugly girl to touch your junk. Aren't ugly girls smart?"<br>
<br>
"You're not ugly," squeaked Victor.<br>
<br>
"Yeah, but she's not smart either," commented Pauly.<br>
<br>
"Fuck you, dick-cheese."<br>
<br>
"Put your money where your mouth is, dick-tease." Pauly laughed and clapped Victor on the back. "Besides," he said, "Vic's not ugly. He's just earnest."<br>
<br>
"Same thing," said Dalia. "Honest, ugly, sensitive -- all just different ways of saying too much of a pussy to be an asshole."<br>
<br>
"Not honest, <i>earnest</i>," groaned Pauly.<br>
<br>
"Why would I want to be an asshole?" asked Victor.<br>
<br>
Dalia lit up a cigarette and let the first drag vent languorously from her perfect nostrils. "So I'd fuck you, is why," she replied. She tapped her ash on the corner of Victor's picture and closed her eyes to smoke.<br>
<br>
Pauly snorted. They went over the plan again, with Victor drawing little dotted paths on the map like football plays to support Pauly's overview. When they all heard Pauly's older brother home from school, walking around upstairs, they doused themselves and the furniture in an air freshener that they agreed was best described as smelling like lemon-dipped assberries.<br>
<br>
They were still giggling about this when Pauly's older brother Andrew came downstairs and started waving his hand around in front of his nose. "What the fuck, Paul?" he greeted them. "Are you smoking in our parents' goddamn <i>house</i>?"<br>
<br>
"No," said Pauly.<br>
<br>
"That is so motherfucking disrespectful," said Andrew. Then he punched Pauly in the side, and Pauly folded like a blanket. This was by design: when Andrew was hitting his brother in front of an audience he always made sure to aim for the badly mended secret fracture in Pauly's lowest rib on the left side, where Andrew had cracked him one with a ball-peen hammer when the boys were younger. The skin around this area was perennially discoloured and soft from frequent attention, and it was the first thing Pauly thought about whenever he found himself in a circumstance where he might have to take off his shirt with other people around.<br>
<br>
Andrew called it his "button" because he could work Pauly like a marionette with it.<br>
<br>
Andrew was a football player. He was the apple of his father's eye. When he was twelve years old he had a wet dream in which he was aroused by the sweetly smooth coffee skin of his younger brother's chest. Confused and upset by his feelings, Andrew sought revenge on Pauly by hurting him a lot.<br>
<br>
After Andrew went back upstairs Pauly lit a cigarette and wouldn't look anyone in the eye. Victor tried to comfort him by reviewing the plan, but Pauly said he wasn't interested in the plan anymore. "Fuck it," he said.<br>
<br>
Dalia knew the adventure was losing its juice. With Pauly defeated they would never maintain the energy required for liftoff. Boys were delicate. She needed to act quickly to rescue the momentum and reinflate Pauly, so she went over to have a quiet word with him and then touched his junk.<br>
<br>
Later, the teenagers rode Victor's mom's car out of Witterson and into town. Victor drove. His balls hurt. His hands were greasy. Pauly unpacked and prepared the gear in the passenger seat: guns, masques, gloves, bags. Dalia was in the back, visible to Victor in the rearview, her eyeliner-raccoon eyes swaying in time to the loud, loud music.<br>
<br>
They all smoked cigarettes. Even Victor, even though it made him feel even more like throwing up.<br>
<br>
Pauly was juiced. Pauly was pumped. Pauly felt at the top of his savage game. In a matter of minutes he would shit on the face of civility and make off with a fat sack of free money, whistling like a canary and then laughing until he couldn't breathe. It was obvious to him that Dalia was wrapped around his finger, so he would get laid. And the whole experience was bound to impart Victor with some balls, too.<br>
<br>
He felt like Santa Claus.<br>
<br>
Lost in the drive, they were startled to arrive at Old Chinkers' "LIQ OR STO E." It was almost two o'clock and the shadows were short. There was one other car in the parking lot -- a corroded blue Saab with tined windows. Pauly wordlessly handed out the masques and gloves. They helped themselves to guns, Victor pinioning his arm against the cupholder to hide his trembling. Dalia smiled at him sympathetically and then pushed her face against his.<br>
<br>
"Impress me out there, Vic," she whispered and then kissed him.<br>
<br>
Victor felt her tongue dart through his mouth and he gasped. The kiss broke and she let her fingers linger on his cheek for a second before turning around to kiss Pauly slowly, wanton and wet. Victor looked away.<br>
<br>
Everybody's hearts were beating fast.<br>
<br>
"Go," declared Pauly.<br>
<br>
Victor lost a moment in the first rush of adrenaline -- he had no memory of getting out of the car. He found himself walking across the parking lot, flecks in the asphalt scintillating in the sun, his shadow wheeling around his ankles as he turned. The air was hot and his breath tasted like tobacco and girl-tongue. He was dizzy but felt steadier when he focused on the store's delivery door, which seemed reassuringly distant.<br>
<br>
He blinked and found himself upon it: green paint peeled from rust, letters illegible. He threw the door open with unintentional force and it smacked the side of the cinderblock alcove with a loud bang. Victor knew it would open. Dalia had promised she'd take care of it at the end of her shift, early that morning.<br>
<br>
Peering through the aperture Victor saw Pauly pass through the store's front entrance. It was time.<br>
<br>
He glanced over his shoulder at Dalia. She nodded at him from the driver's seat of Victor's mom's car. The car was the same colour as the asphalt. The air over the hood shimmered.<br>
<br>
In his next breath Victor decided that he truly loved Dalia and that he believed he could save her from herself. It took him several seconds after that to recognize that the car was moving. He was able to briefly posit that she was moving the car closer to the front entrance, but forced to draw a more sober conclusion when his mom's car accelerated hard, sparks flying off the bumper as Dalia jumped it over the curb and hit Midland Boulevard with a screech.<br>
<br>
"Holy shit," wheezed Victor. And then, "Holy <i>shit!</i>"<br>
<br>
He drew his gun and levelled it at the speeding car before he remembered it wasn't loaded. Then he remembered Pauly inside the store. They had to abort the plan. With no getaway they were screwed. Pauly had to be warned. Victor bolted through the delivery door and inside the store.<br>
<br>
Victor stopped short when he saw Old Chinkers pointing a rifle at Pauly. Pauly's hands were in the air. His weapon was on the floor. He had wet his pants. A plump, middle-aged woman was cowering behind the fortified wine stand. She was crying, but she looked up as Victor burst in.<br>
<br>
Old Chinkers, whose actual name was Guillaume Raoul Zhang because he was the bastard of a Frenchman his Mandarin mother had always carried a torch for, swiveled his head neatly and nailed Victor with his eyes. Victor realized he was brandishing a gun and his bowels creaked ominously.<br>
<br>
Guillaume acted quickly, but incompletely.<br>
<br>
Because he was staring at Victor part of his mind was satisfied that the more threatening target was in aim, so he squeezed the trigger on the rifle. The rifle, however, was still fixed on Pauly.<br>
<br>
A small, wet piece of Pauly's throat struck the wall behind him, tarnishing a poster of a smiling pirate holding up a bottle of rum.<br>
<br>
Pauly began to whistle involuntarily. He dropped to his knees and clutched at his bloody neck. He began to choke in a series of staccato spasms that sounded suspiciously like snickering. His eyes were wide and full of animal panic. He kicked over a display advertising pre-mixed cocktails and the middle-aged woman cowering in the next aisle screamed.<br>
<br>
Victor dropped his gun. He ran to Pauly's side. Guillaume seemed stunned and he used the rifle to prop himself up as he stumbled against the counter. He was muttering things in Mandarin.<br>
<br>
Victor cradled Pauly's head in his lap, his pants quickly soaking through with Pauly's unfortunate leakage. Pauly stiffened and his eyes rolled back into his head. He farted, then relaxed. Victor suspected that his friend was dead. His heart rolled. For reasons he did not fully understand he kissed Pauly on the lips.<br>
<br>
Pauly's breath smelled like Dalia.<br>
<br>
Victor scooped up his gun and stood. It was his vague intention to make Dalia pay for Pauly. He wiped the blood off his lips with the back of his gloved hand. He swiveled neatly and leveled his unloaded Glock at Old Chinkers. "Give me your car keys," he demanded.<br>
<br>
Instead of handing over car keys Guillaume grabbed his left arm as a puzzled expression cascaded across his features. He pinched his mouth and cocked one eyebrow. He slumped against the counter and oozed down onto the floor beside the mop and bucket. He mentally chastised Dalia for forgetting to put the mop away at the end of her shift, and then thought about how much he had loved his mother as his heart stopped.<br>
<br>
He had been taking blood pressure medication sold to him at a steep discount by the protection racket that controlled the neighbourhood, a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who called themselves The Brigade. The medication was stolen from hospitals and Indian Reserves by people on the inside indebted in one way or another to The Brigade.<br>
<br>
Guillaume did not know that for months Dalia had been swapping his black market blood pressure medication for mints of roughly the same shape and colour. Guillaume did not notice the change in flavour as he was such a heavy smoker that he could not by means of taste discern shit from shinola, a fact verified experimentally by his wife. Dalia sold Guillaume's actual medication as dance party drugs to grade school kids as for ten bucks a pop. She had repeat customers. They always assured her they had gotten very high, and were interested in more of the same.<br>
<br>
Guillaume died on the floor of his store, clutching at his front shirt pocket, fishing for a tin of Altoids.<br>
<br>
"Shit," said Victor. And then, "<i>Shit!</i>"<br>
<br>
Police sirens moaned in the distance. The hairs on the back of Victor's neck stood on end. He looked at the middle-aged woman crouching next to the fallen cocktail mix display, "Is that your Saab?" he asked.<br>
<br>
The woman simultaneously voided her bladder and handed over the keys.<br>
<br>
Her name was Sarah and she was in the midst of slowly murdering her eldest sister, Myrna, whom she tended. Myrna had lost her legs in a childhood sled tragedy, which meant she was considered brave. Her husband had been tremendously wealthy, and Myrna contributed regularly to his most cherished charities after his death, which meant she was considered generous. She was beyond reproach. Everyone in the family and the community thought that Myrna was wonderful. Only Sarah knew what a terrifying bitch she really was.<br>
<br>
For twelve years Sarah had been watching for opportunities to help her sister meet her end without implicating herself. Every coughing fit was a lottery, a rollercoaster of emotion for Sarah. She only ever engaged the wheelchair's brakes halfway, and usually stopped it where it was likely to be nudged by passersby. She greased the sides of the bathtub. She moved familiar objects out of place in order to encourage Myrna to lean and possibly totter.<br>
<br>
Sarah was fighting for her life. She knew Myrna was the only one who could possibly have put broken glass in Sarah's toothpaste or peed in her shampoo bottles. Myrna whispered terrible things to Sarah through the wall at night while Sarah pretended to be asleep. On these occasions Myrna used a deep, masculine voice and described unspeakable things to Sarah involving genital torture and the decorative branding of infants.<br>
<br>
Lately, Sarah had been parking Myrna in the Saab with all the windows up during the hottest part of the day. She had read in The Sun that dogs died this way. Sarah would go shopping, and buy herself ice cream. She lolligagged. She felt giddy as she walked back to the car, always hoping today could be the day.<br>
<br>
She often stopped at the cheap Chinese liquor store between chores in order to pick up a little sherry, which she hid inside the toilet tank so that Myrna wouldn't find it and use it to set Sarah's bed on fire.<br>
<br>
Sarah was not sure how to feel as she watched the teenager with the black ski masque run across the parking lot to her Saab. She bit her lip. The lottery was on! "Mr. Zhang?" she called.<br>
<br>
The Saab chirped as Victor approached. He swung into the driver's seat and jammed in the key, twisting. He put it in gear and accelerated hard, bumping up over the edge of the lot and tearing up a swath of yellow grass on the boulevard. Victor twirled the wheel and sent the car speeding the wrong way up a one way street.<br>
<br>
Victor believed that Dalia was going to Edmonton. She had talked about it before. There was only one highway out of town. He knew he could beat her there. Justice would come to Dalia, he swore. His hands were no longer shaking. He was resolute, and in control of at least this splinter of the day.<br>
<br>
His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror where be beheld the startling apparition of a white-haired woman with no legs clutching her skeletal hands over her own mouth as her eyes bulged and twitched.<br>
<br>
Victor screamed and involuntarily dragged the Saab along the side of a Murano van in which the children were watching a movie about a high speed car chase. Their mother dropped her muffin and steered the van into a small park, scattering picnickers and knocking over a pile of feather-weight boxes that were in the process of being unloaded from a logoless truck.<br>
<br>
The boxes contained kite kits for kids, part of a community event in the park sponsored by Myrna in the name of her late husband, Anthony. Anthony had adored kites, and had been killed while hang-gliding. Myrna had never fully forgiven him that folly, which is why when she masturbated in the bath she never imagined Anthony but rather their old gardener, Felix, instead. Felix himself had died in the arms of a beloved prostitute, an idea which repelled and titillated Myrna in equal measure.<br>
<br>
Victor decided he was hallucinating. He risked a glance over his shoulder to confirm this appraisal only to come face to face with Myrna again. She released her hands from her face and offered up a stream of milky vomit. Victor ducked. He caught most of it on his hair.<br>
<br>
He swung back around to face the windshield in time to manoeuvre around a streetlamp and fly through an intersection, somehow finding the narrow and shifting way through the melee of opposing traffic. Horns bleated, Dopplering away behind.<br>
<br>
"Who are you?" gasped Myrna. "What do you think you're doing?"<br>
<br>
"Fuck you, lady," said Victor.<br>
<br>
"How dare you?"<br>
<br>
"Sit back and shut up or I'll shoot you in the face."<br>
<br>
Myrna was not used to being addressed in such a fashion. She simply did not tolerate it. Her ineffectual fusspot of a sister Sarah had once tried to aggrandize herself by criticizing Myrna's hat at a wedding, and what had that earned her? Broken glass in her toothpaste, that's what. Nobody messed with Myrna.<br>
<br>
She attacked Victor from behind, using her long, exquisitely cared for nails to claw away his glasses and stab at his eyes and trachea. Her unusually strong arms wedged her against the back of his seat, the doilied stumps of her thighs flailing free. She howled like a banshee into his ear, and then bit off the lobe.<br>
<br>
The blue Saab weaved across the lanes.<br>
<br>
Victor was smacking over his shoulder with the Glock. He made a solid connection and heard the crone whimper. He grinned to himself and then peeled across another intersection at high speed, colliding with a brown F1 pickup in such a way that both vehicles were thrown upward into the air. They crashed down as a unified form and then shattered into dozens of pieces which bounced and slid away to cause secondary accidents.<br>
<br>
Neither Victor nor Myrna had been wearing seatbelts. Their corpses were desecrated by inertia.<br>
<br>
The man driving the F1 pickup had been wearing his seatbelt, but he was mashed into a space too unfortunately small for his body to retain its coherence when the Saab's engine block entered the cab at high velocity. The pulverized man's name was Cecil Traag, and he was a science teacher at Witterson Elementary. His last thought was, "I forgot to buy butter."<br>
<br>
Cecil was a passionate teacher who gave of his own time to impart the excitement of science to his students. Students he took an especial shine to were invited to come out for wee hour astronomy sessions, looking through Mr. Traag's formidable lens. "That's Ursa Major," he would say.<br>
<br>
Sometimes it could be very chilly, so Cecil encouraged the boys to bring hot chocolate in a thermos. When the hot chocolate ran out he sometimes mentioned that the body loses a considerable proportion of heat through the genital area, and would go on to suggest he put his hands down the boy's pants and cup their junk.<br>
<br>
Later, if Cecil himself felt chilled, he might ask the boy to cup his junk in turn.<br>
<br>
Some thirty percent of Cecil Traag was reduced to a fine red mist within the first second of the collision. His brain was ultimately found roped in his intestines, themselves packed into a neat gelatin-mould the inverse shape of the F1's transmission shifter. Some of the flying splinters of Cecil's bones were sufficiently accelerated as to penetrate the accordioned dashboard and end up in the glove compartment. One fragment pushed through half of the driver's manual, its journey taking it as deep as page 268, "Emergency Braking Procedures."<br>
<br>
The first boy whose junk Cecil Traag had ever cupped on a chilly star-spangled morning was Andrew, Pauly's older brother. At Cecil's funeral Andrew would take the podium and call the deceased a "brainsick childfucking faggot monster." It would ultimately take all six of the mortuary's security staff to get Andrew under control. Three of them were sent home with minor injuries. No criminal charges were laid, but Andrew and Pauly's parents were asked to chip in for the salad bar Andrew destroyed during his rampage.<br>
<br>
The salad bar had been set up by the Alberta's Finest Catering Equipment Company out on the highway, which at that moment Dalia was passing on her way out of town. She pushed Victor's mom's car hard and the steering wheel began to wobble. She slowed down for Hornsby's regular speed-trap and then floored it again on the other side.<br>
<br>
"I'm fucking <i>free</i>," she breathed with relief, letting herself smile.<br>
<br>
She lit a cigarette and cranked up the squelchy radio.<br>
<br>
Dalia fought frequently with her mother. They fought about anything, but a notable favourite topic was how much they resembled one another, how much they were hypocrites, and how much they could or couldn't read each other's minds. They fought about money and rules. They fought about grades and necklines.<br>
<br>
Two days earlier while they had been fighting Dalia clocked her mother with the charging base for a portable telephone, knocking out three of her teeth and bursting open a slit on her tongue. The telephone was undamaged, however, and Dalia's mother used it to call the police. "I'm pein annack!" she blubbered through her swollen mouth before Dalia smashed the handset.<br>
<br>
"Die!" Dalia urged her mother, and then broke down sobbing.<br>
<br>
Dalia's mother held Dalia to her tightly, humming and rocking back and forth. She cried, too. "Whad habben noo us, papy?" she cooed. "We use a pe pest friens."<br>
<br>
When the police arrived Dalia's mother denied that it had been Dalia who hit her, which made Dalia feel a way she couldn't describe. The police thought it possible that Dalia's mother's boyfriend, Peck, had hit her. Peck had had trouble with the law before, and had twice been jailed for being drunk and disorderly. "Peg never dutch me," Dalia's mother insisted.<br>
<br>
Never the less, the police decided to swing by Peck's garage to ask him a few questions. Peck was drunk when they got there, and by all reports he reacted in a fairly disorderly manner. "Those lying bitches!" was his refrain according to one of the greasemonkeys. "I'll kill them both."<br>
<br>
That was Monday. Dalia knew she had best be scarce by Wednesday. She had crossed Peck before and regretted it. She was interested in any ticket out of town. She had friends in Edmonton. One of them said he would set her up to deal lysergic acid and ecstasy. She could squat, or sleep on the street until winter. All she needed was a ride.<br>
<br>
Now she rode.<br>
<br>
She had intended to fulfill her part in the plan faithfully. She thought having some start up money would be good. But once she found herself sitting in Victor's mom's car it seemed pointless to expose herself to the risk of whatever was going on inside Old Chinkers' store. "Fuck it," she said to herself. "Choosing is life."<br>
<br>
Surely Victor and Pauly would chicken out once they'd seen she had ditched them. She gave neither of them another thought.<br>
<br>
The radio played a righteous tune and Dalia experienced the best moment of her life. The sun was burning low and turning orange, the sky a cloudless vault of graduating colour. She breathed deeply and laughed without reserve.<br>
<br>
When the moment faded she lit another cigarette and drove faster. The next song sucked.<br>
<br>
Dalia was inexperienced with the reading of gauges and thus was surprised and confused when Victor's mom's car ran out of gas. She coasted it to the side of the road and then swore for a while. She punched the passenger seat, which was made of leather. It squeaked. "Fucktruck," she said.<br>
<br>
It was dark out. The aurora was a vague green blur in the north, Edmonton a vague orange blur to the south. Dalia shivered and walked, pissed off.<br>
<br>
The Keeler Trail Motel wasn't far away. A group of four men were sitting outside in the parking lot, drinking rye as they discussed their motorcycles. "Oh, please give me a hit of <i>that</i>," said Dalia. She played cute. She explained her situation, and her new friends agreed to give her a ride back to the car and lend her some gas. After a few more belts from the bottle she warmed to the idea of waiting until morning to deal with it.<br>
<br>
"This is my motel," said her new friend Benny. "I'll comp you a room tonight. A sort of damsel in distress discount. You know?"<br>
<br>
"You're so sweet, Benny. I love you," said Dalia.<br>
<br>
"Have another drink, honey. Everything's going to be fine."<br>
<br>
It wasn't, though.<br>
<br>
Dalia eventually came to live at a private halfway house called Sarah's Farm. Sarah had been deeply involved in the rehabilitation of wayward young people ever since her dear sister Myrna had been killed in a car-crash after being taken hostage by a teenage robber nearly two years earlier. The house was an old Calgary colonial with white gables and shutters around the dormers. There were three gardens -- two vegetable, one exclusively floral -- and a peach tree in the front yard. The tranquility of the house was only seldom broken by angry shouts from inside or by neighbourhood protesters waving placards and chanting by the curb. "Not in my backyard!" they cried.<br>
<br>
Sarah seemed to have a source of infinite patience when it came to the young people. She did not rage or deflate whenever they stole from her or kicked holes in the walls. She did not lose hope when one of her charges disappeared in the night and turned up dead in Vancouver months later. She could absorb even the most vitriolic abuse without awakening her ire. She had heard it all.<br>
<br>
"You're an evil cunt," Dalia told her. "Fuck your house."<br>
<br>
"I've made you some toast, dear," said Sarah, carrying a plastic tray. "Do you like jam?"<br>
<br>
"Eat shit."<br>
<br>
It took Sarah a long time to bring Dalia around, but Sarah was patient. In time, Dalia began to help out with the other girls at the house. After taking a shift on suicide watch over a cutter named Lillian Dalia told Sarah she was ready to talk about her experiences. Over a cup of hot tea she wove a fractured and nonlinear tale about being introduced to a new and previously inconceived level of subjugation at the hands of Benny and his pals from The Brigade, by whom she was towed around as chattel for a long year: tattooed, used, traded, berated. After she escaped she worked as a prostitute in Vancouver which was relative bliss, though nothing compared to the paradise that was prison. "Three squares a day and no cocks," explained Dalia. "Like Eden never ended."<br>
<br>
Feeling that a bridge had finally been forged between them, Sarah for her part unburdened herself to Dalia: she had cancer, and there was no one she trusted to understand the plight of her girls well enough to take over the management of Sarah's Farm. "I keep a little plastic bag in my purse for throwing up into," said Sarah.<br>
<br>
Friendship bloomed, and then a kind of love.<br>
<br>
"You're the only person I ever met who isn't out for nobody but themself," said Dalia. "And you're not even into Jesus."<br>
<br>
As time went by Sarah was less and less involved in the day to day operations of the halfway house. She was always tired. Dalia became more and more involved, and cradled the head of a burn-scarred Ethiopian illegal alien as she died from a heroin overdose on the front porch one night. Somebody had told her she could find hope at Sarah's Farm. "Maybe she thought they fugging said <i>dope</i>," joked a hard-faced girl named Margarita.<br>
<br>
Dalia pierced her with a withering look, and Margarita softened. "I'm fugging sorry," she mumbled. "Shit."<br>
<br>
Dalia and Margarita eventually became lovers. They took the master bedroom once Sarah was moved to the first floor because she couldn't handle the trip up the stairs. They talked about adopting a little Ethiopian girl and naming her Hope.<br>
<br>
Margarita procrastinated about moving the adoption forward, because she was HIV positive and didn't want the child to see a parent die. She would not tell Dalia about her condition for several years -- not until just six months before she was struck down by double pneumonia. Dalia's own bloodwork would come back positive, at which point she would forge a relationship with Christ.<br>
<br>
Sarah, once plump and meek and now thin and determined, had to be moved to the hospital before her own end came. Once there she faded quickly, her spirits turning to dust. Her last lease on life had been calculating her daily puzzle of how to steal a few sips of her precious sherry without tipping off any of her charges. Her quiet alcoholism was her most closely guarded secret. Before she left the house she would sometimes insist on helping to empty the trash-cans or carry the laundry, but this was almost always a ruse -- a cover to allow Sarah to ferry empty bottles away and move in fresh ones from her stash in the cellar.<br>
<br>
Sarah enjoyed being sneaky more than she enjoyed the sherry. "And why not?" she thought. "Am I not entitled to a little fun?"<br>
<br>
Despite a life of sacrifice and giving, Sarah became consumed by guilt for her deceit as she lay withering in palliative care. Even as Dalia and Margarita held her hand while she slipped away, Sarah thought only of sherry.<br>
<br>
At midnight's stroke Sarah's head sank back into the starched hospital pillow, her ears ringing with the roar of Hell's flame.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1145040970772725432006-04-14T14:55:00.000-04:002006-04-18T16:48:17.880-04:00Commuter Koans<br>
<b>Videogame Epiphany</b><br>
<br>
I don't play videogames, but I have discovered for myself the meatspace equivalent: driving in commuter traffic.<br>
<br>
It is primarily a game of subtle optimization, measured along two distinct vectors -- the honing of navigational heuristics and the conservation of fuel. The first is an exercise in observation, in which zones of known traffic compression are memorized and preemptively avoided. The second is an exercise in efficient use of the engine, scored numerically by the real-time mileage readout in my dash display.<br>
<br>
High scores are likewise determined by a dual metric. Navigational heuristics are scored in terms of the total minutes of travel from point to point, and fuel conservation is scored in terms of affecting the number for the overall fuel efficiency reported by the car's computer.<br>
<br>
Since actively playing I have managed to shave an average of ten minutes from my journey, and saved an average of 0.1 litres of gas per 100 kilometres driven (equivalent to about 14 cents per day).<br>
<br>
So, I have a first person perspective into a world of impossible speed, little numbers at the bottom of my view that reflect my performance, and if I screw up I die.<br>
<br>
"Ah-ha!" I said to myself, "so <i>this</i> is why people play videogames."<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Coruscant on Earth</b><br>
<br>
It is clear to me that <a href="http://www.filmsound.org/starwars/burtt-interview.htm">Ben Burtt</a> drives the California highways on his way to Pixar and Lucasfilm, because the sounds generated by the streams of flying traffic on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coruscant">Coruscant</a> are such obvious cousins to the Dopplered moans, swooshes and chortles of actual freeway travel.<br>
<br>
I drive with the window open, even when it's brisk outside. I would rather wear a scarf than stay cooped up. I like the sounds and the fresh wind. Now I have a sunroof so I open that, too.<br>
<br>
Three quarters of the way through my journey the countryside becomes fractures and falls away, replaced by warehouses and outlet stores and cheap office space for startups with stupid names with "tek" or "dyna" or "e-" in them. After that the highway splits into several fatter ropes, and we swoop beneath bridges and over coverleafs.<br>
<br>
The horizon turns ochre, then grey.<br>
<br>
And we are swept into the city, the gateway flanked by billowing white clouds of industrial effluvia, the sky criss-crossed by jetplanes, their high-pitched whines rising over traffic's din as their soft shadows lick across the lanes.<br>
<br>
Coruscant is one of the few images that created an impression on me from George Lucas' oft maligned <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars">fantasy prequels</a>, and I think it spoke to me through the same channels that would speak to anyone with an intimate relationship with one of the world's megalopolises. When I feel <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_City-Windsor_Corridor">the city</a> wash up around me and over me as it does when I enter in the currents of a commuter morning, I know Coruscant's relevance. The city-as-everything is a welcomed nostalgic terror because it gives us some ownership through artistic appreciation over the vast proportions and frenetic energy megalopolises exude.<br>
<br>
Sunrise through the smog is beautiful.<br>
<br>
A cargo jet drops out of the sky at such a rate that it is hard to believe it is under control. Its silver belly flashes orange morning sunlight through my windshield, winking on the glass. Tons of steel and plastic and goods touch down with a bark of smoke and coast down the runway. In the sky intersecting con-trails fade as a backdrop to the slow, throaty rise of a blue and white 747.<br>
<br>
At this stage, navigation is a matter of following the current. There are enough of lanes going in each direction that contests for position occur internally to each vector. Those on their way further south jockey in their lanes as my lanes draw away west. Everyone knows where they are going. We hug the corners like speeding ballbearings.<br>
<br>
Busy, busy, busy.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>An Unfortunate Phenomenon</b><br>
<br>
While I drive I tend to think up inspired stories that I tend to forget when the driving is done.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1143986745988483682006-04-02T10:02:00.000-04:002006-04-28T14:10:32.120-04:00My Wife's Rack<br>
<center>
<img src="http://mfdh.ca/blog/art/astra_cleavage.jpg" alt="My Wife's Current Double-D Cleavage" height="314" width="320" border="2" /></center><br>
<br>
<strong>M</strong>y wife's boobs have become jugs.<br>
<br>
She's always had a sweet rack, but her bosom has become especially scrumptious now that it's in the dairy bar business. It's like a temporary breast augmentation without silicone, and I admit that the change speaks to me on a basic level.<br>
<br>
Naturally, there are those who might suggest that my appreciation taints the holy relationship at the heart of the change -- the purpose of her inflated tits being to serve as an alimentary lifeline for our month-old <a href="http://mfdh.ca/sebastian">son</a>, of course. Nevertheless my wife and I have never been ones to deny the earthier aspects of the reproductive process, so neither of us feel that my knocker-inspired lust is an element of pollution. Rather, it demonstrates the great interconnectedness of things for it is conceivable that her mammary swelling may be designed to a dual purpose: to feed the child and to retain my fascination.<br>
<br>
I have always had a weakness for feminine curves. It can't be denied.<br>
<br>
I remember a swarthy Turkish girl in <a href="http://www.figuredrawings.com/lifedrawings.html">life-drawing</a> class whose ample assets were sufficient to keep my eyes glued to her throughout our sketching sessions rather than on the naked model posing in the centre of the room. I was willing to overlook various deficits for the love of her hips and lamps, including but not limited to her overall hairiness and the fact that she was too shy to speak to me. I awaited with relish the moments in which she would lean over her artboard to scrub out unwanted lines, the brisk motion of the erasure transmitted in undulating waves through her swaying melons.<br>
<br>
I wonder what her name was.<br>
<br>
The first time I dated a girl with C-sized orbs I honestly felt like their first unclad presentation should've been heralded by trumpets and drums. I was very impressed at first, but ultimately dissappointed because she wasn't a "breast girl" -- in other words, while I derived great satisfaction from playing with those wondrously gravity-defying teenage skin pillows she derived little or none. She sported a freckled bust with nipples of such a pale pink that they almost matched the rest of her skin. I enjoyed watching her shower.<br>
<br>
I've nibbled on A; I've squished B; I've cavorted with C; but my favourite remains D.<br>
<br>
I married <a href="http://www.cafepress.com/mfdh.49825468">a girl with D cups</a> -- a girl titillated when I play with her D cups -- and I think it's a wonderful bonus that for a while after expelling children she goes Double-D. She may be too tired to mambo with me as often as either of us would ideally like, but at least when she does it's pornotastic.<br>
<br>
(The less squeamish of you may wonder whether or not there's a lot of milk involved. There isn't. In order for my wife to serve dairy she needs to be in the appropriate mood. To express milk for later consumption she must close her eyes and pretend she's feeding the baby instead of a noisy little battery-powered suckbot. When we're feeling frisky, in contrast, the milk stays put.<br>
<br>
(For the purposes of scientific investigation I did taste my wife's milk shortly after the birth of our <a href="http://mfdh.ca/ingrid">daughter</a>. It was sweeter than I had expected, like tea mixed by a kid. Not bad at all.))<br>
<br>
The infant screams with <a href="http://hcd2.bupa.co.uk/fact_sheets/Mosby_factsheets/infant_colic.html">colic</a> and the house is a mess; our daughter throws tantrums for want of attention and I'm exhausted from my new job; creditors loom and my paycheques come in too slowly to appease them -- and yet it is hard to be chagrined when I can bury my face in my wife's expanded cleavage, lost somewhere between hard nipple and milk-taut swell. As in so many other situations, it is important to stop and smell the roses.<br>
<br>
Hurrah for hooters, I say. Hurrah!<br>
<br>
So say we all.<br><br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1143835518817887232006-03-31T15:03:00.000-05:002006-04-06T04:44:04.416-04:00Robots Bury the Dead<br>
<i>A science-fiction short story about wilful bewilderment.</i><br>
<br>
<br>
<strong>T</strong>here should have been rain, but rain isn't something they do here.<br />
<br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I was the only man in the cemetery -- besides my brother, of course, whose presence was mitigated by death. The other mourners attended only by proxy, translucent holographs projected over the bodies of the robots whose senses they commandeered.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The silver carapace of one robot winked in the sun as its head drooped in an attitude of misery, the overlaid features of my sister grimacing, ghostly tears vanishing into the air as they dripped from her jaw.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"...And so we commend his body to the ants, so that his vessel might give new life and new glory to this cold world."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The last words were spoken. The pastor's projection faded. Six robots with somber grey armour assembled around the coffin and took hold, their metal fingers clicking against the wood. They heaved in perfect concert without so much as a nod for ready, and the coffin was gracefully propelled toward the waiting hole.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Goodbye, Vim," I tried to whisper, but didn't.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">And then it was done. The coffin sank from sight and bumped quietly on the bottom of the grave. The robots in grey took spades to the waiting pile of rich, black soil and began to industriously move it into the hole in a neat six-part clockstep. The others, now denuded of their puppeteers' shadows, regained themselves and walked away across the grass between the tombstones.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I hate funerals.<br />
</font>
<p align="center"><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><strong>* * *</strong> </font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I tried not to look up as I crossed the crowded plaza outside the cemetery gates. Everyone else seemed indifferent to the cloudless black void hanging over our heads, punctuated by the unholy striped eye of Jove.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">My head was pounding. When I waved to hail a ride my tie kept bobbing up in my face. I blew at it in frustration. "Taxi!"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">A car pulled up and the hatch yawned open. As soon as I was inside we were aloft. The driver found my accent hilarious. Despite this, an understanding was reached and I was gratefully released from conversation with him.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes, trying to find solace in the lulling motion of the ride. I had almost succeeded when I was jostled roughly against the glass. "Fornicator!" bellowed the driver angrily.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Warning chimes sounded. I opened my eyes in time to see another car whip by overhead, the thrum of its alarmingly close engines shuddering through the cabin. "Are you trying to kill me?" I asked.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Listen Martian," he replied brusquely, "you want to get there today or you want to get there tomorrow?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I smiled tightly. "You might not know: it isn't polite to use that name."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The driver snorted and turned back to the controls. "Oh, I know alright."<br />
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><strong>* * *</strong> </font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">My brother's estate was in another dome -- smaller, older, opaque. The apparent sky overhead was even tinted blue, because the pioneers of this moon thought they would miss the real thing more than they did. I was relieved to be free of Jupiter's stare.<br />
<br />
Whether it was in fact night or day on Callisto's surface or even how such things were reckoned in the Joviat was unknown to me. It had been less than a season since I had graduated from business school, and my first official errand for the family's interests was to attend to the affairs of my eldest brother's passing so very far from home. I was alone, and I had never felt so alien.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I was determined to demonstrate my efficacy, however, and thereby once and for all earn the family's trust. I would show them I was no longer the baby -- I was a man of business.<br />
<br />
At the estate gates I was greeted by a tarnished bronze robot whose identification code was illegible beneath the grime on his shoulder. When he bowed clods of dirt dropped off his flexing shins. "Fiscalite Sander Yi, welcome to Sanderfield's Wild," he said in a tinny voice.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"I'm here to look after the closing of the estate," I told him.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"The staff is aware, sir. Pre-liquidation cataloguing has already commenced. If you will follow me, sir, I will show you to the study."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The dirty robot bowed again and then set off between the gates. I wondered how badly things had gone awry for the staff to be in such a state of disrepair. I was further concerned by the unruly tangle of plants that seemed to have taken over the grounds. I had been told for years that Vim ran some sort of fancy gardens at Jupiter. I'm not quite sure what I had imagined but it was surely something more grand that the artless miasma of green I saw on either side of the drive.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">We entered the house. Various low-grade robots were industriously ferrying boxes into neat stacks, or rolling tapestries, or checking knick-knacks against glowing manifests. None of them spoke. Like the robots at the funeral their duties were somber and many, a wake for a house heralded by the organized removal of its contents.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I was escorted by my bronze guide through the busy main halls and into a spacious, sunny study with walls that undulated gently in the breeze. There were two desks in the middle of the room -- one messy, one clean. Arrayed around them were shelves and shelves of informatic plates, spines arranged by format and density.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">On a sofa by the window sat an expensive but worn robot with a blanket over his legs. He wore a faded green tie whose end was weighted down with decorative beads. I batted my own tie down from my face as it bounced up in low-gravity slow-motion, inspired by the inertia transmitted from my body as I came to a surprised halt.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Oh!" I said. And then, "Hello?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The leather on the old robot's face and neck was wizened by long use, and it creaked as he turned toward me. His inscrutable black eyes fixed on me after a strange moment of wandering. "?Vim?" he asked in a quiet voice.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"My name is Yi," I told him. "I'm from the family."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"You've come to close down."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Yes. I?wasn't aware --"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"I am Ready Farmer. I am caretaker of the wild."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I frowned. "I was led to believe Mr. Farmer was a human being."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Your brother frequently did me the courtesy of misrepresenting my status, in order that I might act more freely."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I blinked. "Why?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready Farmer seemed to sigh as he looked down for a moment and adjusted the fold of the blanket in his lap. "Because he was my friend, and he loved me," he said at last.<br />
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><strong>* * *</strong> </font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">An ancient model with rusty curlicues engraved on its torso wheeled in a silver tea service and invited me to partake. As I made use of each utensil to prepare my cup it was taken up by the robot, wrapped in a plastic envelope, and passed to another robot who packed the envelopes into a box labeled TEA SERVICE, SILVER, ARESIAN, ANTIQUE.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready Farmer regarded me sedately. Behind him was a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over a knot of twisted vines and choked bush. "Unbelievable!" I couldn't help but exclaim, shocked at the estate's squalor.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready nodded. "Indeed, sir. This is the largest wild in the Joviat, covering over ten square kilometers, sir."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"This -- is part of it?" I squinted at the clots of green. "It looks like a mess?like he's just let everything grow all willy-nilly."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Indeed, sir. It is a wild."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"It looks utterly unmappable."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Indeed, sir. Mapping is forbidden."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I raised my brow. "How curious. Whatever is the point of such a garden?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Sir, it is a wild. The point is to create a space in which people can get lost."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Get lost?" I sniffed. "What do you mean?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"The state of being lost occurs when a human being becomes sufficiently confused as to facilitate a complete break from navigational orientation."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Like being drunk?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready shrugged, tarnished shoulders clanking against his collar. "I am sorry sir, but I cannot validate that analogy."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Why should anyone <em>wish</em> to be disoriented?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"It is a rare luxury on an engineered world, sir. I am told it allows one to feel?natural."<br />
Two sepia robots stepped between us carrying a large holographic portrait. "My great-grandmother!" I cried. "My goodness it's been a long time. I'd nearly forgotten her face."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready cocked his head. "Shall I hold the robots, sir?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Hold them?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Perhaps you should like to retain the portrait for the family." He raised his hand and flexed it significantly. The sepia robots froze in their tracks, hovering beside the tea service box.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"I?" I trailed off, looking into my great-grandmother's eyes. "I was not instructed to bring anything back with me to Ares."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Very well," replied Ready, flexing his hand again. The sepia robots marched the portrait out of the study and out of sight. I felt a quivering pang of loss, and coughed to break the moment and regain myself. "Pity," said Ready. "It was once a treasure of Mars."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Please," I interrupted gently, "let's leave the old names behind -- Imperial Mars is over, and Mother Ares has risen. There's a new spirit downwell and a new peace for every world that wants it."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"The Joviat's memory is long," said Ready.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I smiled tightly. "Yes. Of course."<br />
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><strong>* * *</strong> </font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready Farmer looked over his dented shoulder and out the window, the diffuse fakelight casting soft shadows across his crinkled features. "The forfeiture of this wild is a tragedy. I despair that I lack your brother's eloquence to defend it to you."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I sighed and spread my arms helplessly. "It would make no difference. I have no authority. But I'm sure my brother's legacy will not be quickly forgotten if these ?wilds' are as important to the Jovians as you suggest, Mr. Farmer."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The robot shook his head. "It takes a special vision to divorce a project like this from architecture -- to free it from design and intent. It is no mere maze, not a vegetable manifestation of a game, not a labyrinth for promenades. Its plan is organic and wily, its paths dangerous. Only your brother's charisma and influence won the loopholes in legislation and fought back those who would try to shape it into a park. This wild is your brother, Mr. Sander. He understood the need for Jovians to have respite from order and sensibility."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"It sounds mad."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"It is arguable that some degree of madness is beneficial to a society as a prophylactic against stagnance, demophobia and <em>horror urbana</em>."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I flushed, not sure whether that was a reference to the riots at Huo Hsing. I let it go. No use letting a robot get my goat. "How long has?the wild been closed to the public?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"A week, sir."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"It's empty, then."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Possibly, sir. There may yet be visitors out there."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Lost, you mean?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Ready nodded. "Yes. Some people die for the experience, sir. Me, for example. I was due for an upgrade, but it seems now it will not come."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"What will happen to you?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"I shall die."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. I drained my teacup and put it down. A robot picked it up, wrapped it in a plastic envelope and arranged it in the box on the floor. The lid was closed and the box carried away.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I stood up, slapping my tie flat as it drifted up to tickle my chin. "I will take a moment," I announced, and left the study.<br />
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><strong>* * *</strong> </font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">On a balcony overhanging a shallow valley of splintered trees felled by rushing muck I smelled the damp, random air and wondered whether Vim had been the sanest member of the family or, as more usually characterized, the least so. I wondered about his wild and his devoted artificial protégé, and caught myself violating the spirit of the place by trying to find landmarks in the dome's imperfections by which I might retain my orientation were I to wander below.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I rested my elbows on the ledge and leaned out over the green. What if something great was in my hands, and I was even now acting as a party to squandering it? Could the idea of being lost truly be a treasure to these Galilean upwellians, an artifact of a more primeval existence forgotten in the paradises of the inner worlds?<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Was it rational to stand up for something I did not understand?<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I started to go back inside the house but stopped. I turned in small, pointless circle and fiddled with my tie. I coughed. And then I slipped my telephone out of my pocket and found a node in the downwell tissue. I patched in and listened to the interplanetary static hiss between the clicks. The recording agent connected and said, <em>"Approximate transit delay twenty-eight minutes."</em> I cleared my throat.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"This is Yi. We're making a mistake on Callisto. And -- I'm putting a stop to it. There is something here, mother. There is something to Vim's gardens. Something important. And I'm not sure I can live with the decision to end it all without understanding what it is we're meddling with. Please don't be angry. I feel?I feel that I must do this. Vim is owed that much. By all of us."<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I folded away the telephone. I took a deep breath, and then pulled off my tie, stuffing it into my pocket carelessly. Laugh if you will but for the first time in my life I felt fully a man.<br />
<br />
Standing tall, I strode back inside to announce the stay of execution for Sanderfield's Wild.<br />
</font></p>
<p align="center"><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular"><strong>* * *</strong> </font></p>
<p><font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">There should have been tears, but tears aren't something robots do.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">A metallic quartet was ranged around Ready Farmer's chair, his blanket folded in a neat square on the floor. They worked without comment or expression, industriously detaching lifeless limbs from his still torso and packing them in a box labeled simply SCRAP.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">They broke down each component: digits from hands, palms from wrists, arms folded at the elbow and wrapped in plastic. At last the dumb head itself was carefully separated from the neck and packed snugly between two leather-padded feet and a scratched section of pelvis.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Stop," I tried to whisper, but didn't.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">The box was lidded, sealed, and freighted away. I tracked it sadly, my arms hanging limply at my sides, my left hand tickled by a bloom of abandoned tie sticking out of my pocket.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">Too late, too late!<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I sagged. I shrank. And then I wept for Vim, and then for myself.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">A robot touched my elbow. "Sir, may I be of assistance?"<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"No," I said brusquely, stepping away from the reach. I cast my gaze out the tall windows over the wild once more. A moment of numb cloudiness passed through my mind and when it cleared I found myself making a brisk pace for the main hall. I heard robotic footfalls trailing me. I veered around a stack of boxes and began descending the front steps into the courtyard two at a time. Ahead: a wall of mad green.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"Sir, where are you going?" called the last steward from the porch.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">I licked my lips and drew my jacket tight.<br />
</font><br>
<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, Swiss, SunSans-Regular">"To get lost," I said.<br />
</font> <br /><br />Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1142977534609779612006-03-21T16:45:00.000-05:002006-04-28T12:52:10.143-04:00The Importance of Being Lost<br>
The maze is a response to domesticity. As soon as civilization rose and people came to know ordered life, the maze was born.<br>
<br>
A <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden">garden</a> is a swath of wilderness beaten flat, contoured and caged. It denies the metal and brick of the city but at the same time embraces its order, for a garden is at its heart a town built of natural materials. It has promenades and islands of colour, symmetries and symbols. Even in bloom gardens are static things, where one sits or does not sit, crosses or circumnavigates.<br>
<br>
The earliest <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth">labyrinths</a>, in contrast, attempted to engineer a garden with a temporal flow -- a walking narrative from the input to the output, a simulation of wandering. These early labyrinths featured just one path, however, reflecting the difficulty of stripping the garden of its architectural underpinnings.<br>
<br>
The true <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze">maze</a>, however, is a designed space in which one might recapture one of the most primeval experiences of wilderness -- that of being <i>lost</i>.<br>
<br>
When the hand of design is too firm the maze becomes boring, a map of a man's cleverness made manifest. Nature, however, is much more sly. Where a city's order becomes buried beneath layers of new, uncoordinated building wildernesses appear in the crannies, organic spaces made of the urban medium in which all sense of civilization's governance is nearly banished. These mazes grow most fruitfully in ghettoes and slums, in neighbourhoods where the hand of order has been stayed by the competing virulences of street-level human needs. When you are lost in one of these mazes you might feel the untainted fear of your ancestor in the wilderness, direction ambiguous and predators everywhere.<br>
<br>
There is value in feeling lost. It is a brand of freedom.<br>
<br>
Freedom, too, is the opposite of domesticity through it is domesticity that grants us so many freedoms. Under the burden of these freedoms it can become easy to lose touch with what it is like to actually <i>feel</i> free, so inered in our familiar liberties that they take on the flavour of walls.<br>
<br>
I have previously written about the <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/scoop_diary_archive/05-0710.html">willing</a> <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/diary/06-0206.html">suspension</a> of <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/scoop_diary_archive/05-0619.html">disbelief</a>. Today I ask you to lend your consideration to the notion of willingly losing sight of your navigational anchors, and letting yourself be physically unbounded by your knowledge.<br>
<br>
Take my advice: get lost. It's great.<br>
<br>
Civilization invented mazes because we <i>need</i> them.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1142532099006873792006-03-16T12:58:00.000-05:002006-03-17T18:23:28.003-05:00Three Pearls<br>
<b>"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it." -Ferris Beuller</b><br>
<br>
Ferris was right on the money. Case in point:<br>
<br>
My mother, Popcorn, and my step-father, Beurre d'Arachide, are sailing in the Caribbean aboard Beurre's pride, the <i>Prairie Fox</i>. It's a few days after the close of the <a href="http://www.heinekenregatta.com/">Heineken Regatta</a> and they've headed out for a little pleasure sailing.<br>
<br>
The wind is strong the waves are choppy. Popcorn, who suffers in the inner-ear from <a href="http://www.menieres.org">Meniere's Disease</a>, begins to feel the quease of sea-sickness descending upon her despite her medication. She suggests they head back to port and Beurre agrees, but he cannot resist the urge to trawl for fish behind the boat as they sail.<br>
<br>
When he hooks his first large sea mackerel he pushes the helm at Popcorn and tells her to steer through the waves while he deals with the fish. Nauseated and dizzy, she nevertheless complies, spinning the wheel back and forth in a desperate bid to keep the vessel on a relatively even keel.<br>
<br>
The mackarel, however, will not give up the ghost.<br>
<br>
"Are you almost done?" she cries over the wind.<br>
<br>
"Almost," grunts Beurre. He unlatches the metal handle from one of the winches and proceeds to attempt to beat the fish to death with it. "Damn!" he notes in reference to the mackerel's tenacious hold on life. It thrashes out of his grip and begins flopping around the cockpit.<br>
<br>
"Criminy!" yells Popcorn as the boat is tossed violently over the crest of one wave and into the deep trough of another. Salt-spray rains over them, stinging Beurre's eyes as he tries to manhandle the fish back into bludgeoning range.<br>
<br>
He lands a solid blow and the fish finally expires, releasing a slurry of blood and seawater as it does so. Popcorn begins to vomit. "Take the wheel!" she says.<br>
<br>
"Hold on," he replies, holding up a hand; "I've got another one!"<br>
<br>
Popcorn controls the wheel with her elbows while she barfs into a plastic bag, trying to keep her feet out of the way of the liquid debris now sloshing back and forth through the cockpit. When the second mackerel has been sent to a better place Beurre takes the wheel and Popcorn collapses against the companionway to finish retching.<br>
<br>
Beurre stands tall at the wheel, proud of his catch. The sun breaks out from behind the clouds and causes the sea to dazzle aquamarine. A pod of dolphins surrounds <i>Prairie Fox</i> and leaps along beside the hull, chittering and screwing around carelessly.<br>
<br>
"Jesus Popcorn, are you seeing this?"<br>
<br>
Popcorn shakes her head forlornly from her curled up pose in the companionway, eyes pinched shut and vomit bag held at the ready.<br>
<br>
Beurre d'Arachide looks up again just in time to see a massive whale break the surface, execute a mid-air flip, and then plunge back into the sparkling sea, flukes slapping the surface and casting off a tall blossom of spume. It is a moment out of a retirement commercial and Popcorn is missing it all.<br>
<br>
"Wow!" says Beurre.<br>
<br>
"What else did I miss?" whimpers Popcorn sadly.<br>
<br>
"Er, nothing."<br>
<br>
There may also have been a rainbow. I'm not sure. Probably, though.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>"No one can have peace longer than his neighbor pleases." -Dutch Proverb</b><br>
<br>
When we first moved into our <a href="http://mfdh.ca">old schoolhouse</a> we noticed that our neighbour, a frowning, moustached Dutchman with a dumpy, shrewish wife, was venting his waste water onto our property through a pipe he had fitted through our fence.<br>
<br>
We live in the lowlands so it is not uncommon to households to be equipped with a pump to push excess water either into the drainage ditch that runs along the highway or out into the back bush. Our house does not have such a pump since it was constructed on a small artificial hill, the only solution available a century ago when electrical pump technology was aught but the fantasy of very progressive engineering geeks.<br>
<br>
My father-in-law, Old Oak, went over to have a chat with the Dutch about their waste water. They did not react well to having their way of doing things questioned. They seemed to consider inquiring into the matter at all to be the height of unneighbourliness.<br>
<br>
Littlestar called the local by-law officer to come over and have a look. "Well, it's not right," he assured us, "but I'm not sure you want to make this an official matter, small community as it is and what with you being new and all. Maybe you can try to settle things privately."<br>
<br>
So we did. The Dutchman stuck a length of plastic tubing on the end of his pump's outflow to direct the water out into the bush behind our houses, which was perfectly satisfactory to us. However, he did a pretty ham-fisted job of it and when winter came his outflow tube froze and his pump backed up.<br>
<br>
Rather than negotiate further with us he simply cut the tube and surreptitiously buried the outflow under our fence again.<br>
<br>
Bowing to the Dutchman's obvious stubbornness, Old Oak worked out a way to incorporate the neighbour's waste water into our own water channeling system, directing the outflow through our own system of buried pipes which feed Popsicle's fish-pond and then go on to vent into the bush. Old Oak figured everyone would be happy with this arrangement.<br>
<br>
The Dutchman, however, didn't care for people "touching his stuff." So, he sawed off the connecting pipe and resumed letting his water gush in an uncontrolled fashion into our yard, which promptly became a small lake.<br>
<br>
Old Oak discovered this and went over to have another chat with the Dutchman, but it turned out he'd gone off on vacation for the Spring Break. Not content to let the flooding continue, Old Oak picked up the end of the pump's outflow and dragged it a few metres into the Dutchman's yard so that it wouldn't all run downhill to us anymore.<br>
<br>
He asked me what I thought. I said, "I think you should put it back where it was, so our new negotiations can start off on a good footing when they get back from holiday."<br>
<br>
Old Oak agreed. But the Dutch returned home sooner than expected and the outflow had not yet been moved back.<br>
<br>
For four days it had been gushing into the shrew's flower beds and, unbeknownst to us, draining directly into the Dutchman's basement. Four days worth of waste water was enough to fill the basement up to an impressive depth. The Dutchman came home to find he was the unwilling owner of an ill-smelling indoor swimming pool. I imagine he lost a fortune in decades-old National Geographic magazines and abandoned exercise equipment. You know -- basement stuff.<br>
<br>
The Dutch called the police. The police came to call on Old Oak.<br>
<br>
Old Oak explained the history of the situation, and that he had moved the outflow in order to avoid further destruction to our property (including the shed containing my brother-in-law, Slozo's, worldly belongings -- a shed now drooping alarmingly into the Dutch muck). The police thought this sounded fairly reasonable. "It's a civil matter," the constable explained. "Good luck."<br>
<br>
Yesterday Old Oak went over to talk with the Dutchman's shrew, but he went unprepared for her level of shrewishness he would meet. The shrew was not interested in dialogue of any kind. She declared that they had been venting the waste water into the schoolhouse yard for seventeen years, which therefore gave them the right to continue despite whatever damage it may be causing. She further warned that her family and their insurance company would be suing us for damages. Then she started calling him names, so Old Oak went home.<br>
<br>
Last night a big truck backed into their drive. It had a big machine in the back for pumping all of the water out of their basement, and it was louder than the Gulf War.<br>
<br>
"Know what we should do?" I said, giggling.<br>
<br>
"What?" asked Littlestar suspiciously.<br>
<br>
"We should go over and complain about the noise."<br>
<br>
The by-law officers have been called and should be dropping by today to disabuse the Dutch of the erroneous notion that their seventeen years of breaking the law have won them the right to continue breaking it. I wonder whether or not this enlightenment will affect their desire to sue us.<br>
<br>
I am curious but unconcerned. They don't have a legal leg to stand on, and, if they do decide to pursue that course, they have no idea what kind of thermonuclear legal representation we have at our behest.<br>
<br>
"I'd rather pay Prosciutto a grand to make them lose than pay them a grand in damages," I told Littlestar.<br>
<br>
"Damn straight," she agreed.<br>
<br>
I'll let you know how it all turns out.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>"The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." -Allan K. Chalmers</b><br>
<br>
I'm covered.<br>
<br>
I'm painting a Hip Hop album cover (which is fun), missing my wife and my two precious wee ones (which reminds me of our connection), and I have great hope that the new novel I'm knitting will be everything I dream it can be (ambition is an amusing hobby). Who could ask for anything more?<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1142387285255289442006-03-14T20:47:00.000-05:002006-03-31T00:41:38.323-05:00Carnage Lottery<br>
I play the carnage lottery.<br>
<br>
At least a couple of somebodies lost the lottery today, bits of their journey sprinkled south along the highway an impressive distance downwind from the where the automotive carcass had skidded to a halt -- a slurry of glass, plastic and metal kipple impelled by inertia to bounce and skitter on in blissful ignorance of the fact that their collective mission of travel has been cancelled.<br>
<br>
Two trucks, the locomotives of the road, were twisted around each other like tangled kites. It is like seeing dead lions. Predators rent open like prey.<br>
<br>
Smaller cars, dented or bent, crouched at the side of the road or at odd angles across the lanes. The way behind them was a fairground of ambulances and police, with lots of red lights and yellow tape. Beyond that was a solid river of stopped cars undulating away to the twilight horizon, a southbound pudding of caravans and speeders and freighters whose voyage had been subverted by gore.<br>
<br>
It was twilight. In pockets, people had started to get out of their cars to stretch or smoke cigarettes or shoot the shit with one another. Some people were lucky or smart enough to have brought books, so they turned on the cabin lights in their cars and sat back to read. Children in SUVs watched Pixar on DVD.<br>
<br>
And me? I was northbound.<br>
<br>
I flew by at a hundred and twenty and watched the scene dwindle in my mirrors, chewing raspberry flavoured gum.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1140791239476456992006-02-24T09:25:00.000-05:002006-03-04T02:04:24.096-05:00Here Comes the Son<b>Sebastian Abraham Davis Hemming</b> was born after five hours of labour via a drug-free water-birth at 4:48 AM on February 23rd 2006, weighing in at 10 lbs., 7 oz. Both <a href="http://thelittlestar.com">mother</a> and <a href="http://mfdh.ca/sebastian">baby</a> are doing fine.<br>
<br>
<center><img src="http://mfdh.ca/sebastian/art/photos_temporary/DCP_8567-300.jpg"><br></center><br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com22tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1140537328677329472006-02-21T10:54:00.000-05:002006-02-24T02:23:15.093-05:00Secret Police<br>
<b>I</b>n the building where my accountant's office is there is a floor the elevator does not go to.<br>
<br>
Canadian taxation is not a field for amateurs, unless you're a very charitable person. To be taxed bare-back by the government is not a viable option. This is why <a href="http://thelittlestar.com">Littlestar</a> and <a href="http://mfdh.ca">I</a> hand all of that crap over to our over-priced accountants, who work hard to justify their fees by sheltering our income in various brilliantly creative (and certainly <i>wholly legal</i>) ways. They're good people, the accountants. We shoot the shit and they offer us espresso.<br>
<br>
The thing is:<br>
<br>
I am befuddled fool. The reason Littlestar prepares our papers for the accountants is because I have a solid reputation of borking the job. I have a lot of trouble keeping track of my wallet, let alone tracking our revenue and spending.<br>
<br>
It's my little job to remember where the accountant's office is. And, truth be told, I usually bork that, too. I'm pretty good about remembering where the actual building is (it's been two years since I last accidentally directed Littlestar to their old location), but for the life of me I can't ever keep straight which suite they're in.<br>
<br>
Which is why we often find ourselves looking at the directory in the lobby, under the especially watchful gaze of an especially vigilant security concierge. I say he's especially this and especially that because if one loiters at the directory too long he comes over to ask pointed questions. This has happened to us on several occasions.<br>
<br>
He wants to know what our business in the building is, and he prefers prompt answers.<br>
<br>
The directory lists an unremarkable fleet of hosted businesses: chartered accountants, law offices, the administrative wing of a credit union. There is nothing to explain the vigilance of the security beyond the fact that there are always police officers going to and fro through the lobby.<br>
<br>
There is no law enforcement related agency listed on the directory.<br>
<br>
"It's suite four hundred," reports Littlestar. "Why can I never remember that?"<br>
<br>
It's a curious recurring amnesia. We proceed to the elevator and ride up to the fourth floor with two armed men in bullet-proof vests. They make no small-talk.<br>
<br>
At the fourth floor they get off with us and, while we turn the corner through the glass doors into the accountant's, they head straight into the stairwell and start climbing the stairs.<br>
<br>
"We're here to see Hank," we tell the receptionist. We sit down and flip through old copies of <i>Fortune</i>.<br>
<br>
Through the glass doors we watch more police officers exit the elevator and proceed up the stairs. Other come out of the stairwell and call for an elevator to take them to the lobby. No one speaks. This is how it always is -- a constant parade of cops.<br>
<br>
I once asked the accountant why there were so many police in the building and he shrugged. "I've never noticed that."<br>
<br>
An early lesson at the accountant's office is to know when things aren't supposed to be said -- like things the accountant doesn't want to have the burden of knowing about. That was his tone. Thus I took my cue to ask no follow-up questions.<br>
<br>
When Littlestar and I leave we are briefly tempted to visit a higher floor, but are dissuaded when we are joined in the elevator car by a gruff-looking older constable. We ride down in silence.<br>
<br>
In the parking lot we note the total absence of marked police cars or unmarked police-style cars. We drive away.<br>
<br>
I reckon it's none of our business.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1140453008470931372006-02-20T11:28:00.000-05:002006-02-24T23:29:43.610-05:00Some Things That Bother Me<br>
Follows is a brief overview of some of the things that are bothering <a href="http://mfdh.ca">me</a> this week.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Scrabble Whiners</b><br>
<br>
I seldom play <a href="http://www.hasbro.com/scrabble/home.cfm">Scrabble</a> anymore and it's all the fault of Scrabble Whiners. Anyone might be a Scrabble Whiner. There's no reliable way to know in advance. I have ceased to be surprised when people I considered honourable, stalwart and true sit down in front of a Scrabble board and start whining like hungry <a href="http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2003/02/17-sea-lions-inside.jpg">sea-lions</a>.<br>
<br>
What do they whine about? Here's the top three:<br>
<blockquote>
<b>#1.</b> "My letters are terrible."<br>
<br>
<b>#2.</b> "I know it's a stupid word but I have no choice."<br>
<br>
<b>#3.</b> "I'm sorry I'm taking so long to make my turn."<br>
</blockquote>
And here are the corresponding awful truths these players are trying not to face:
<blockquote>
<b>#1.</b> "Your letters are fine, stupid. Think harder!"<br>
<br>
<b>#2.</b> "It <i>is</i> a stupid word. You probably should've spent more time on your turn."<br>
<br>
<b>#3.</b> "You're making us all wait because you're stupid."<br>
</blockquote>
The rub, of course, is that these awful truths are voiced not by the other players but by the whiner themselves, a running interior monologue of intellectual shame whose bleating tends to surface in inverse proportion to score.<br>
<br>
The whiner labours under the false impression that speaking some of their excuses aloud will absolve them from judgement in the event that other players make the cardinal mistake of evaluating another human being's cerebral worth and linguistic acumen on the basis of their Scrabble placings. This is a surprisingly common phobia.<br>
<br>
I just want the whiners of the world to understand that they've ruined the game of Scrabble for me. I have no interest in sitting down at a table to hear people complain about their letter lot, bemoan the lack of opportunities on the board, lament their own cursed brains which only appear clever when nobody else is looking. I get tired of saying, "It's okay -- don't worry about it. Let's just play the game."<br>
<br>
A piece of advice for nervous players? Just shut up. Nobody cares how low your self-esteem is.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>The Olympics</b><br>
<br>
I don't understand the small-talk obsession with the Olympics. Suddenly the weather isn't interesting enough for you? Jesus Murphy Brown!<br>
<br>
Sometimes I run into people and they ask, "Are you following the Olympics?" and when I say, "No," they start to tell me all about the games, apparently labouring under the misapprehension that I am somehow not following the Olympics <i>involuntarily</i> and that I am therefore <i>positively thirsty</i> for whatever details I can get. Maybe they think my television is on the fritz (along with my borked radio, my misdelivered newspaper subscription and the fact that every computer I touch displays characters only in Sanskrit, leaving me piteously deprived of sporting news of any kind).<br>
<br>
<b>Newsflash:</b> the Olympics are <i>everywhere</i>. If somebody tells you they're not following the games, it's <i>on purpose</i>.<br>
<br>
Some Einsteins like to respond to this by asking why. They want to know whether it's the performance-enhancing drugs or the judging scandals or the endless commercialism or the devastating effect the games can have on certain sectors of the host country's economy that's turned me off.<br>
<br>
My answer: "You misunderstand me. I said I <i>don't</i> care."<br>
<br>
If I <i>did</i> care I'd have an opinion about those things, but since I <i>don't</i> care...well, I don't care. I'm not interested. My apathy is ripe and fulsome. It isn't feigned as a cover for my disgust with some element of the event -- it's a genuine lack of fascination on every level. As far as the Olympics are concerned I cannot fathom the strength to give even a single flying fuck.<br>
<br>
<b>My wife:</b> "You <i>do</i> care, because when I put the Olympics on television you ask me to change the channel."<br>
<br>
<b>Me:</b> "I would also ask you to change the channel if you tuned into static."<br>
<br>
<b>Old Oak:</b> "Vhat did you think of the Svedish hockey last night, ja?"<br>
<br>
<b>Me:</b> "I hear the price of tea in China is up a third of a cent."<br>
<br>
<b>Old Oak:</b> "Really? Did Slozos write to you about that, ja?"<br>
<br>
<b>Me:</b> "No."<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Birth Inquiries</b><br>
<br>
We should've lied about <a href="http://mfdh.ca/baby">Baby Two</a>'s due date. The telephone rings forty times a day as people who we swore we would contact when labour began in earnest call to ask whether or not labour has begun in earnest. Those with particularly low self-esteem often supply us with their own excuses about why we might not have bothered to call <i>them</i> the way we'd promised, for such-and-such fanciful or unlikely or just plain retarded reason.<br>
<br>
"No baby yet," I report.<br>
<br>
"How are you guys doing?"<br>
<br>
"Fine."<br>
<br>
"Yeah, but how are you <i>doing</i>?"<br>
<br>
"We're okay."<br>
<br>
"How's Littlestar?"<br>
<br>
"She's very pregnant and she wants the baby to come out."<br>
<br>
"But how's she feeling?"<br>
<br>
"Fine."<br>
<br>
"But how is she <i>really feeling</i>?"<br>
<br>
"Like she's very pregnant and she wants the baby to come out."<br>
<br>
"Have you tried [$COMMON_LABOUR-INITIATION_REMEDY]?"<br>
<br>
"Yes."<br>
<br>
"That worked for us."<br>
<br>
"I'm glad."<br>
<br>
"You should try it."<br>
<br>
"Thank you."<br>
<br>
"I'm sure the baby will come any day now."<br>
<br>
"Me too."<br>
<br>
"You'll call me when anything happens, right?"<br>
<br>
"Right."<br>
<br>
"Even if it's in the middle of the night, okay?"<br>
<br>
"Okay."<br>
<br>
"Are you guys doing okay?"<br>
<br>
"We're super."<br>
<br>
"Try not to worry too much."<br>
<br>
"Gotcha."<br>
<br>
"Maybe the baby will come tomorrow."<br>
<br>
"Yeah, maybe. Well, it's been nice chatting..."<br>
<br>
"I should probably talk to Littlestar personally. Can you put her on? Is she well enough to come to the phone? How's she <i>doing?</i>"<br>
<br>
Between the two of us <a href="http://thelittlestar.com">Littlestar</a> and I have spent a ridiculous amount of hours over the last week having that exact conversation or variations thereon dozens of times a day, often within minutes of each other. And that's not even counting the e-mails and instant messages.<br>
<br>
If we express irritation we're told it's "only because people care" which, I submit, is a stupid thing to say since we seldom accuse our friends of expressing interest in our well-being out of a sense of spite. We're not confused about their motivations.<br>
<br>
For the record we're at Due Date +4. That means we've still got 10 days left before the midwives will considering induction. There's no reason to panic. Littlestar's cervix is thinning and dilating slowly but surely -- the kid'll pop any day now.<br>
<br>
We'll call you.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Self-Fulfilling Prophecies</b><br>
<br>
So a fan writes to me a few weeks ago with a lot of enthusiastic things to say about something or other I'd typed. His missive was punctuated by statements about how he expected no response from me since it was likely that I am constantly deluged by similar letters. No less than three times he explained his anterior sense of understanding at the fact that I will not write back to him.<br>
<br>
Now, the truth is that there have been occasions when I've had too much mail to deal with (notably during the height of <a href="http://mfdh.ca/starwars/darth-vader"><i>The Darth Side</i></a>'s popularity and the concluding weeks of <a href="http://mfdh.ca/simon_of_space"><i>Simon of Space</i></a>), but most of the time I <i>do</i> respond to the trickle of fan-mail that accumulates in my in-box. But this particular fellow chose to write to me when I was very, very busy with work and so I decided to follow his multiply-reinforced suggestion and <i>not</i> take the time to respond.<br>
<br>
Today he writes back to tell me I'm a jackass. He didn't actually say "jackass" -- he said I was "inconsiderate" of the time and effort he had put into his letter. He said that when people put that kind of devotion into a message it's only appropriate to reply, even if it's only a few lines of acknowledgement.<br>
<br>
Maybe he's right. Maybe the writer of these letters <i>is</i> owed something from me beyond the hundreds of thousands of words of stories he's already consumed for free.<br>
<br>
...But, personally, I don't think so.<br>
<br>
I think he's just a fuck head. He lacks even the modicum of class demonstrated by the insane neo-Christian missionary who contacted me in order to ask that I help him craft sermons that tied together George Lucas' "Force" with Yahweh's "Christ", who thanked me for my time even after I didn't write back. He wrote, "Working road-crew on the path of other people's salvation is not for everybody."<br>
<br>
Too true.<br>
<br>
Thus, here is my belated acknowledgement for Mark from Iowa, who took the time to write two long and heartfelt letters to me, one lavishing me with praise and the other lavishing me with vitriol: <i>Up yours, buddy!</i><br>
<br>
Lesson to the wise: if you want somebody to respond to your message don't belabour the point of how you know and understand that they won't. It has the potential to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Internet Explorer</b><br>
<br>
What is wrong with the people who make Microsoft Internet Explorer? Do they suffer from some terrible neuronal wasting disease which causes them to fail to grasp the idea of <i>standards compliance</i>?<br>
<br>
I've been tweaking my new XHTML pages for better display under various Windows operating systems and the process is frustrating in the extreme. (Like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_King">Rodney King</a> asked, "Why can't we all just be more like Firefox?") If I had a million dollars I would pay to have all of the developers on the Explorer team flown to a big conference where somebody would explain the Web to them. We'd serve cookies.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Racism</b><br>
<br>
It's been explained to me that all Muslim people are "idiots." The upshot of this pronouncement is that it <i>really</i> makes complex socio-geopolitical issues <i>much</i> easier to boil down to something comprehensively binary.<br>
<br>
Thank goodness we keep old people in the cellar to share these insights with us.<br>
<br>
I was lost in shades of grey but now I know what's what. I have been a fool to ignore the American religion. I have been needlessly over-complicating what is really a straight-forward situation: all Muslims are idiots. That's why they behave so badly. It's so obvious now!<br>
<br>
The best part of this theory is how it can be effortless substantiated by making allusions to the inherently different ways of thinking that people brought up under tyranny have, and how this irretrievably dwarfs their ability to hold correct opinions or feel civilized emotions. Now, you might figure you're a crafty one -- you might say, "Yes, but what about all the Muslims living in Canada -- scholars, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists?"<br>
<br>
Simple answer: They're not <i>real</i> Muslims. They've taken on <i>our</i> culture, and thereby spared themselves from congenital idiocy.<br>
<br>
Amazing!<br>
<br>
I keep meaning to ask what the fuck is the problem with black people. I mean, if nationally-sponsored terrorism, theocracy and covert nuclear weapons programmes can all be explained as simple idiocy, there must be a sweet and comprehensible reason why black people persist in being poor and shooting one another or chopping each other up with machetes even when they're not Muslims. Maybe it's a diet thing.<br>
<br>
I have so much yet to learn.<br>
<br>
<br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1139676912030111232006-02-11T11:51:00.000-05:002006-02-12T09:12:20.070-05:00An Invitation to Baby<br>
<strong>A</strong>ttention Uterine Infidel: we've prepared a nice place for you to sleep, and arranged for milk. Would you please consider coming out of my wife?<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>This is Only a Test</b><br />
<br>
In the event of an actual birth we wouldn't have come home again so quickly, and when we did come home we'd have come home with a pulmonary-enabled infant swaddled in a plastic bassinet instead of bringing home take-out freedom fries.<br>
<br>
The infant remains within <a href="http://mfdh.ca/photography/astra">my wife</a>. The knocking about her uterus had been doing was merely a part of the preshow stretch. She had suspected as much, but since the radio said a blizzard was imminent we thought we'd best get in the vicinity of the birthing pool just in case.<br>
<br>
The birthing pool is at my mother's house in Leaside, because our <a href="http://mfdh.ca/schoolhouse">old schoolhouse</a> is too far away for the midwives to get to within their guaranteed time for hot pizza delivery or whatever.<br>
<br>
We slept in the guest bedroom. The bed was too small and I fell out.<br>
<br>
The blizzard was nothing to write home about. Meteorologists are wimps.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Inviting Baby to Earth</b><br>
<br>
<a href="http://thelittlestar.com">Littlestar</a> is not yet overdue, but being pregnant loses its charm in the <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/trimester_reports/third_trimester_report.html">third trimester</a>. Having somebody grinding their shoulders into your pelvis in the middle of the night becomes irritating rather than cute, for instance. Having your lungs squished into something the size of a kid's packed lunch makes mountains out of molehills. She's leaky and tired and <a href="http://mfdh.ca/pets/persephone.html">the dog</a> gets jumpy every time Littlestar's uterus quivers. <a href="http://mfdh.ca/ingrid">Popsicle</a> says she doesn't like the smell of pregnancy. She wants <a href="http://mfdh.ca/baby">the baby</a> to come out so she can give him a kiss.<br>
<br>
The other day Popsicle was tobogganing with play-group. As Littlestar hauled a sled back up the hill one of the other mothers said, "Oh my god, you'll make yourself go into labour!"<br>
<br>
"Sounds good to me," said Littlestar. "Oof."<br>
<br>
For my part I'm always at the ready to stimulate her nipples, go for long walks, bring her to orgasm, pour her a glass of pineapple juice, or squirt jissom on her cervix. All of these things are supposed to help ignite the uterus into cycling up for the big expulsion. "Can I have another glass of juice?" she asks.<br>
<br>
I feel too lazy to get up. "How about I just stimulate your nipples?"<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>A Rose By Any Other $NAME</b><br>
<br>
The new child has been named. The endgame was not contentious. Never the less I am happy that I won't be facing this particular challenge again. From now on I'll only be deciding on names for human beings more fictitious than my unborn son.<br>
<br>
The last hurdle has been cleared. Baby: come out! (Only don't do it on Monday because I have two meetings to go to.)<br><br><br>Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1139279047393966852006-02-06T21:22:00.000-05:002006-02-07T18:44:28.170-05:00The Scary Cabin<br>
<strong>W</strong>hat can a derelict cabin the woods teach us that Hollywood can't? The <i>joie de vivre</i>, my friends, that can only come from a sacred hiatus of criticality.<br>
<br>
Also: how I keep fit.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>To Summarize My Tendency</b><br />
<br>
I get thirsty in my inner insides when it's gone too long between holy meanders.<br>
<br>
(<i>Thirsty</i> is used here metaphorically, because my inner insides do not actually require fluidic maintenance beyond the normal drinking I do with my mouth and peeing I do with my)<br>
<br>
((<i>Inner insides</i> is meant to convey a kind of intimate psychological space, such as a more supernaturally-inclined (or merely more concise) fellow would brand "the))<br />
<br>
(((<i>Holy</i> in this context (the context of a man without a literal belief in owning a magical ghost self who obeys metaphysical rather than physical laws) is essentially a theatrical way of saying "really special" in a world where exaggeration of so casually abused that saying anything is <i>really anything</i> risks misinterpretation as)))<br>
<br>
((((<i>Meander</i> is meant to support a lot of weight in this sentence, including a hint of definitions literal (both <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/nonfiction/Formal_Visual_Design.html">formal</a> and <a href="http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/meander">informal</a>) and figurative (both <a href="http://www.labyrinthsociety.org/html/other_labyrinths03.html">precise</a> and <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200508/plumly">poetic</a>). Since such an aura of quadruple-entendre cannot be reproduced with any kind of fidelity in simple text without resorting to drawing in the margins with crayons, one must explore additional ways to convey (parenthetical amplification, <a href="http://cif.rochester.edu/~dremeaux/art/drill.jpg">drill</a> <a href="http://www.sleepdelights.com/images/images/Down.jpg">down</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperlink">hyperlinks</a>) the basic))))<br>
<br>
wiener. soul." understatement. idear.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Geography & Case History</b><br>
<br>
The backyards in the little pocket of <a href="http://www.leasidetoronto.com">Leaside</a> in which I grew up backed onto a forested ravine connected to the <a href="http://www.toronto.ca/don/watershed.htm">Don Valley</a>, an intermittently green many-fingered ditch that is gouged through the metropoloid mush of <a href="http://www.tenpastmidnight.com/photos/toronto_2003/toronto_old_new_buildings.jpg">Toronto</a> from north to south.<br>
<br>
This murky watershed is born in the lush <a href="http://www.ormf.com/minfo.html">Oak Ridges Moraine</a> (near which I live today), splits and wanders through the checkered neighbourhood of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Mills,_Ontario">Don Mills</a> (where I lived as a teenager), and dies ignobly in a concrete trough that bifurcates <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverdale_(electoral_district)">Riverdale</a> (where I lived as a young man) and then, stinking, yellow and iridescent, scattered with condoms and grocery store bags, it drools out sadly between the thighs of two artificial spits heavy with industry at the rim of fetid <a href="http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/lakeont/2002highlight/basinmap.jpg">Lake Ontario</a>.<br>
<br>
Thus, my holy meanders have often taken me along the river. (Lots of people like to take walks through cities, but that's too much wildlife for me.)<br>
<br>
The time when I liked the ravine best was when it had no borders. When I was eight years old I could wander carelessly and find no fence. It was a land apart from adults in which one might stumble upon marvels (abandoned objects, dead animals, spooky glades lit by weird light) or adventures (erecting forts, playing war, running along broken trees to ford rocky gullies) or drama (conflicts without intervention).<br>
<br>
The ravine was limitless. It might have been <a href="http://tomscourses.tripod.com/emerald.jpg">Oz</a>.<br>
<br>
One day during a game of hide and seek I pushed far enough through the bush to arrive at the river. On the other side was <a href="http://www.toronto.ca/parks/parks_gardens/sunnybrook.htm">Sunnybrook Park</a>: joggers with Walkmen, cars sussing out illegal picnic parking, whizzing bicycles carrying fluorescent riders. A water fountain. A peeing dog.<br>
<br>
A border. I was chagrined. The ravine lost its magic.<br>
<br>
And then, with a friend who lived further north, a great fort was built in the Bayview Glen. We dug a hole and lined it with stones, raised a roof of thatched dried vine on wooden poles, cleared the underbrush around it and surveyed the green world from our perch high on a ridge overlooking a swamp, the source of Wilket Creek.<br>
<br>
My friend and I lost touch but I always remembered the fort, and when I was ten I set out to rediscover it. I knew where Wilket Creek joined the river. I believed I could find the way.<br>
<br>
Canteen, knapsack, granola bar, gum: I set out upon my quest.<br>
<br>
By following the river I found it. The roof had fallen in but I sat in the hole and ate my granola bar, washing it down with tinny, lukewarm water from the canteen. I took a certain male mammal's delight in peeing beside the fort's remains to make my territory marked.<br>
<br>
I reflected: though the river had pissed me off by showing me the ends of Leaside's ravine, I recognized that by following it either way were open-ended journeys that would never bring me to another dead-end since the city splayed apart to admit the water. Quests without end, to find what may be found.<br>
<br>
Everything makes way for the river, therefore everything would make way for me.<br>
<br>
I could walk and forget the world.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>A Sampling of Untold River Adventures</b><br>
<br>
CheeseburgerBrown and the Abandoned Factory; CheeseburgerBrown Explores the Brickworks; CheeseburgerBrown and the Woods Behind the Substance-Abuse Rehabilitation Institute; CheeseburgerBrown and the Trespassing Mistake; CheeseburgerBrown and the Scary Mansion; CheeseburgerBrown Gets Trapped on a Roof; CheeseburgerBrown and the Sewer Pipe of Doom; CheeseburgerBrown Wipes with Leaves; CheeseburgerBrown Versus the Naturists; You're a Blockhead, CheeseburgerBrown.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Corn Flakes on the Water</b><br>
<br>
When I was twenty-one years old I stood at the mouth of the Don River and felt blue: it was over. For eleven years I had walked the banks and now I had seen the end: a rectilinear anus of concrete shaping the last curdy whorls of swill into a neat column to mux with the green harbour like a <a href="http://users.erols.com/ziring/mandel_images/julia-set-3.jpg">Julia Set</a> <a href="http://www.oregon-berries.com/cx2/Parfait.jpg">parfait</a>, something vaguely resembling Corn Flakes floating on its surface.<br>
<br>
I had no gum. I lit a smoke. (Like the noble savage, tobacco carried me on my spirit walks.)<br>
<br>
Traffic moaned above me on the overpass, the wind husking and huffing with wake. Seagulls dove at the harbour's swells to rescue bits of garbage and edible offal, squealing and wheeling. It was sunny. The air smelled like somebody else's fart.<br>
<br>
I doffed my hat and bowed my head a bit, in recognition of the river's terminus, then squinched out my cigarette and turned around to go home. I figured the river was exhausted for me now. A child's thing, maybe. No longer open-ended, certainly.<br>
<br>
Ho-hum.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>The River As Dildo</b><br>
<br>
I was not able to shake the habit. When I was twenty-seven my wife and I moved into a cute little house I despised in <a href="http://www.search.com/reference/North_York">North York</a> (we moved out none too long thereafter, but that is another story and has <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/scoop_diary_archive/03-0528.html">already been told</a>), which was situated in a sea of other little houses cross-hatched with busy avenues and low-storey businesses.<br>
<br>
Our landlords told us that if we didn't keep the grass as green as everyone else's we would be charged penalty fees. They were dicks.<br>
<br>
We were nowhere near the Don Valley. The best thing I could find was a corridor of <a href="http://www.mddep.gouv.qc.ca/changements/vehicule/tour.jpg">hydroelectric towers</a> that crossed our neighbourhood, ferrying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickering_nuclear_power_plant">Pickering's atomic glory</a> deeper into the megalopolis. That was my river substitute.<br>
<br>
(The only trees were periodic, self-same, metal. They hummed.)<br>
<br>
The path was too linear to be ideal and the only treasure came from the strange ways the people living on either side of the corridor encroached on the Crown land, building patios and erecting sheds and even planting little farms. (Who expects to find cornfields in North York?) None the less I needed it.<br>
<br>
Using the limits of my powers I could barely just imagine that the corridor might lead somewhere unexpected, and thus lose myself in the rubber journey.<br>
<br>
Once free, I would dream of my usual vices: teetering civilizations and the robots who love them; jokes to say when I'm nervous; whistling <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheherazade_%28Rimsky-Korsakov%29"><i>Scheherazade</i></a> and thinking about galaxies. The best things in life.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Les voyages de tortillard</b><br>
<br>
Trains are exciting and mysterious.<br>
<br>
When I was a kid I was dismayed that the red subways and the silver subways did not stick to a single direction (red southbound, silver northbound <i>or</i> red northbound, silver southbound) but rather arrived at Eglinton Station in random order. At a hobby shop I learned that sometimes grown men had model train sets which really moved. I was told that real trains could squish me and I should never play near tracks. On <a href="http://www.fortunecity.com/bennyhills/pun/190/mrhooper3.jpg"><i>Sesame Street</i></a> I saw a skit about a menacing train which bore down on poor <a href="http://images.fishstripes.com/images/admin/groveratconcert.jpg">Grover</a> from behind a closed door. I knew that in the olden days trains had smoke coming out of them.<br>
<br>
And then there was <a href="http://flightsim.andyjohnston.net/secretrailroad.html"><i>Les voyages de tortillard</i></a>, otherwise known as <i>The Secret Railroad</i>, an animated series from Québec founded on the premise that children weren't being <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/tvo2/rail3.JPG">exposed</a> to <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/tvo2/rail7.JPG">enough</a> <a href="http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/tvo2/rail9.JPG">psychedelia</a>. Every kid I knew watched it religiously.<br>
<br>
In the series a boy named Simon flew a magic train around a strange universe with an old man, a girl with star-shaped hair and a cat whose yawns caused reality to buckle.<br>
<br>
I enjoyed the idea of a railway whose tracks originated in a mundane place (like the basement of an apartment building) but proceeded to a weirder space (like the dreamy, looped-pulse cosmos Simon explored). I liked the idea that a passenger lulled into complacency might miss the transition.<br>
<br>
(I hoped to one day miss such a transition myself, or at least to let myself believe so for a precious hour.)<br>
<br>
A lot of people feel romantic about trains for various reasons. I feel romantic about them because I like imagine they can travel along unusual dimensions.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>The Abandoned Railway</b><br>
<br>
Politicians argue a lot. In my <a href="http://www.town.innisfil.on.ca">town</a> they argue about making a deal with the provincial government to re-open the railway, closed a decade ago by <a href="http://www.zmag.org/Sustainers/Content/2001-10/18klein.cfm">Mike Harris</a>' fiscal revolution. When they finish arguing they'll order erected a glass train-station with bilingual signs and free wi-fi and maybe even a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hortons">Tim Hortons</a>.<br>
<br>
(And then the abandoned railway that runs through my village with rumble with passenger freight once more: meat-wagons to and from the megalopolis, <a href="http://meltingpot.fortunecity.com/roberts/234/other/editorGO560.jpg">striped green</a> by default but occasionally painted more garishly by advertisers hawking razors or tampons or Hollywood movies.)<br>
<br>
But for now the politicians just argue. For now the railway is just a weed-grown path through the bush, its gullies thoroughfares for beavers.<br>
<br>
So this is where I meander, nowadays, when the urge strikes.<br>
<br>
I will eventually walk it to Bradford West Gwillimbury where the current station is, around the corner from <a href="http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com">KFC</a> and Beaver Gas. That is the end of the line, where the abandoned railway becomes an active railroad. When I reach this point I will no longer be able to imagine that around the next bend in the railway's corridor through the trees lies something unexpected.<br>
<br>
Until I get there and connect it to the busy world I know, the railway remains a land apart. I will savour it before it is chased out of the shadows and phase transitions to become mundane. I will relish it until every last drop of inflated mystery is gone.<br>
<br>
The land on either side of the ties is marsh, punctuated by gnawed trees, dams, lodges, trails. Even when the country is dry these pockets remain wet. They are fed by the springs that feed our well, and which form the source of the Don River as it percolates out of the Oak Ridges Moraine and heads south so Toronto can wipe its ass on it.<br>
<br>
I am still walking the river, in a way.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Scary Cabin</b><br>
<br>
There are not so many mysteries along the sides of a railway as along the manifold twists of a river through the woods. Where a forest might give rise to a true maze the railway remains a labyrinth: one path, turning but continuous, inexorably leading one from one end to the other -- a narrative of space. Any waystations of note become familiar once visited, an item in a serial list of scenery revisited with every back and forth excursion.<br>
<br>
("Loaf of bread; quart of milk; stick of butter.")<br>
<br>
This is why I was so surprised to discover the scary cabin last week -- because I had passed the point by far in my explorations south, and yet in every other season or weather it had remained obscured from my view by leaves or snow or shadow or imaginary robots or whatever.<br>
<br>
(The part of my mind most willing to suspend disbelief imagined that the cabin was always there but not always visible, a thing which revealed itself only when conditions in the world or in the stink of the witness were <i>just so.</i>)<br>
<br>
Though I was all out of gum and granola bars and my fingers were cold from jotting down notes which would become the short story <a href="http://mfdh.ca/writing/diary/06-0130.html"><i>The Stars are Wonder</i></a> I knew I had no choice but to stop to investigate the scary cabin: if this dildo river was willing to provide me a micro-adventure I would be a sorry snob to ignore it.<br>
<br>
The cabin had clearly been abandoned for some time. It lay just off the Crown land, nestled in a ring of firs, one of which had fallen and smashed through half the roof. Scattered in the lumpy snow around the threshold were iron frying pans and bottles that looked about a century old. The air was very still and crisp. The only tracks in the snow were those of deer and birds.<br>
<br>
I put away my notebook and climbed over the fence.<br>
<br>
And then came my sweet moment: as I drew nearer to the smashed entrance to the derelict cabin I began to feel afraid. The cabin was a very lonely place and eerily silent. The inside was thick with gloom. Could an angry vagabond -- some kind of rural bum -- be making his home there? I wondered. Could it have been chosen as a base for hibernating fierce thing?<br>
<br>
The undisturbed snow told me nothing lived inside, and I was about to dismiss my nervousness until I realized how precious it was.<br>
<br>
You see, there was truly nothing inside the cabin but damp kipple, old leaves and garbage. But for a moment while I hesitated it <i>could have</i> been host to anything -- even ghosts. I might have walked inside and found a corpse. I might have disturbed a monster. I might have awakened something worse.<br>
<br>
<i>Before you know, anything is possible.</i><br>
<br>
Well, not <i>really</i>. It was never any more likely that there was a cranky vagabond or a supernatural phantasm inside the abandoned cabin than it was that the abandoned railway might around the next bend lead to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Pan">Neverland</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverending_Story">Fantastica</a>. Never the less, whom would I serve by disbelieving?<br>
<br>
I hovered a while. I savoured it. I waited until I was unafraid and then stepped forward into the shadows to sample more spook. I convinced myself I was being watched by the cabin's unholy tenant, rasping breath held while it waited for me to make my move.<br>
<br>
I almost bolted from the spot so convinced a part of me became.<br>
<br>
(De-li-cious.)<br>
<br>
The suspension of disbelief is not a virtue in the West, the imagined enemy of a defensive kind of scepticism that we use to shore up the argument for our own intelligence. But it should not be so.<br>
<br>
In irrationality we can find treasure. I know because my three-year-old taught me so, and about things like this she is never wrong.<br>
<br>
I drink my proof, poised at the threshold of a scary cabin, the bubble of improbable fear taut and ripe and full of potential drama. It would be just a building if I were more concerned with what is real.<br>
<br>
(To any who were ever curious: <i>this</i> is where stories come from.)<br>
<br>
On my way back to the rail I pause to thank the cabin for a good time. I am grateful to be reminded of the vitality of inspired ignorance. I am happy to be able to use being alive for fun. I have enjoyed myself more than I do at most movies, and I didn't even have to pay admission.<br>
<br>
As I meander home in the twilight I keep a sharp lookout over my shoulder for phantom trains. Because you never know. (Or, at least, you shouldn't.)<br>
<br>
<br />Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4070235.post-1138742813822532182006-01-31T16:25:00.000-05:002006-02-23T08:51:56.650-05:00The Stars are Wonder<br>
<em><strong>T</strong>his is a new science-fiction short story, peripherally related to concepts introduced in </em><a href="http://mfdh.ca/simon_of_space">Simon of Space</a>.<br>
<br>
<b>Yo Ho Ho</b><br />
<br />
The sea heaves and so do I.<br />
<br />
It is much clearer to me now than it was three weeks ago why the life of the ocean-going man is shrouded in such a thick funk of romance. It is also clearer to me now how this reward is meant to punish me, and how I really lost what battles I had believed I won.<br />
<br />
I'm a fool.<br />
<br />
Let me tell you how I dreamed: proud tallships with billowing sails cared after by sturdy men adventure-bent, overseen by a shrewd and fearless captain-king surrounded by curvaceous mathematicians with flaxen hair and heaving bosoms.<br />
<br />
(Back to the heaving...excuse me while I yell something horrible into the wind, punctuated with bile.)<br />
<br />
I dreamed that being sent to sea on a mission of noble exploration was an expression of the prince's forgiveness for the entire nasty business between his cousin and me. The prince had assured me that it was all water under the bridge when he saw me to the wharf. I was so excited. He too seemed keen.<br />
<br />
I spotted Captain Stay as I strode up the gangway and he was every bit the picture of a noble commander until I came close enough to appreciate the smell. It would be the first in a series of sobering discoveries about the true nature of life at sea.<br />
<br />
It can be summarized thus: hard black bread in the company of the worst kinds of people who are all in an ill-temper and soaked and miserable from the rain or the spray or the dew, the tedium broken for me only by thirst and cramps and the urge to vomit or die.<br />
<br />
The mathematicians are not curvaceous. They are half-starved waifs on chains. They steal furtive glances at the menfolk as they comfort each other and rock or hum over their figures, plotting our place within the world.<br />
<br />
At night they give each other maidenlove, and I admit that overhearing this gives me wood.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Onion War</b><br />
<br />
Travelling at sea is very boring. The most interesting person on the ship is crazy, and I can't understand what the rest of them are saying most of the time. What I can decipher disgusts me, so I talk to the crazy one. His name is Onion War and he has a bad foot.<br />
<br />
(His bad foot might seem an insignificant detail, but Onion War would be the first to tell you, at considerable length, about how being bedridden for much of his childhood was a remarkable gift from the magic which first turned him on to the path of learning, so that while other little boys were skipping in the grass he read the folios of women and indulged himself in fantasies of calendars and catalogues. He has never been studded and claims he doesn't mind one bit. Think of that!)<br />
<br />
I have no idea how old he is but he smells worse than Captain Stay. His purple-black skin is lined like a raisin, his dreadlocks thick with life. His narrow frame is weighed down by all the trappings of his office, right down to the standard gargoyle codpiece that advertises a brand of masculinity I doubt he possesses. Like a woman he wears beads around his ankles and wrists, each inscribed with a rune. He shuffles them as the days pass.<br />
<br />
The crew is leery of Onion War. They avoid his eyes, and after he has passed them by they kiss their totems and frown.<br />
<br />
I fell into his association like this: only days out of port Captain Stay began making unusual requests of me, like assigning me to assist in pulling on sails or fetching things. I thought he was confused but when I reiterated <i>who I was</i> he just laughed and replied that he knew <i>exactly</i> my station. He beat me with a length of rope and asked me rhetorical questions about people who illicitly stud themselves with the cousins of princes. I tried to answer his questions at first but later on fell to examining the floorboards near my face and considering the whorls in the grain. Soon enough it was over.<br />
<br />
I have quickly learned that assisting Onion War is far preferable to any other shipboard duty, especially working in the galley where Mr. Spice's knives fly freely in concert with his temper. In contrast Onion War is tedious and full of malarkey but not at all murderous.<br />
<br />
He pays special attention to the sky so I often find myself on deck with him at night, Onion War casting his eyes into the spangled heavens and me casting mine into the twisted mirror thereof in the water. "Do you ever wonder about the stars?" he asks me.<br />
<br />
I shrug. "I'm not religious."<br />
<br />
"What do you imagine they are?"<br />
<br />
"Who cares? Sparks in the turning veil. Why are mountains craggy?"<br />
<br />
Onion War takes this as a serious point, which makes me groan. He closes his eyes and nods, puffing thoughtfully on his long pipe. "In my youth I often trained my wonder on the mountains. Indeed, indeed." Puff-puff-puff.<br />
<br />
"That I can understand," I tell him. "Mountains matter. If a man were to know a mountain perfectly he could move his armies quickly through its passes. The stars are counted only by women or magic simpletons."<br />
<br />
"They grant us the calendar."<br />
<br />
"We would have our calendar by counting something else if not stars. Why question the world?"<br />
<br />
Onion War puffs his pipe and peers briefly through one of his instruments, adjusting a knob three turns. "By questioning soil we learn to farm, by questioning water we learn to mill. Consider the greatness of the Empire! Would you have us live like the savages, all history forgotten?"<br />
<br />
I take a moment to reflect on the savages we have seen in our brief forays along the shore of the Second Continent: pale, gibbering, bestial primitives draped in unworked skins, living in the rudest circumstances, eking a living directly from the land without the benefit of real economies, without metallurgy, and without any appreciable understanding of the magic. We saw people throwing stones at one another and hooting -- people worshipping cacti or owl turds or waterfalls. Idiots.<br />
<br />
"Very well," I concede, "but should we not therefore question things which are to our profit? The stars are part of the deep magic, inscrutable. Why waste time trying to know the unknowable?"<br />
<br />
"We do not know what is knowable and what is not until we try to know it. If you awoke one day imprisoned in a cell and fed by automated means, would you not try to learn all you could about your captors and your wider circumstances? Without the benefit of a larger view, could you risk discounting <i>any</i> clue as unimportant?"<br />
<br />
"Perhaps, in order to escape. But who longs to escape from the world?"<br />
<br />
It is Onion War's turn to shrug. He looks up at the glittering sky and puffs thoughtfully on his pipe. "There are, perhaps, borders beyond our conception."<br />
<br />
I sniff. Like I said, he's crazy.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Magician</b><br />
<br />
We have a magician, of course. He's fat and deaf and very, very worried.<br />
<br />
He has a long face whose dour foundation is melded with his lost neck's cleavage. Starved on ship's rations his cheeks have lost any rosy pomp they may once have held and taken on the shape and the colour of melted wax. His eyes are small, the whites around them yellow.<br />
<br />
His sucks his teeth loudly when he is not fulfilling his vows with liturgical songs, and when he is attempting to fulfill this duty we are united in our wish that he would shut up and suck his teeth.<br />
<br />
He must once have sung beautifully. There is an echo of it in his toneless caterwauling, a memory of something inspired beneath the bed of ambiguous moans and shrill howls. "Kiss the magic," he grunts, and we all echo the sentiment with earnest relief: it means the song is done.<br />
<br />
From his makeshift pulpit he mumbles loosely and largely unintelligibly about his missions past as a highly respected and especially magical man of great influence. He seldom speaks of moral principles except to recount an occasion upon which he thwarted a sinner with particular pomp or glory, usually in front of adoring multitudes.<br />
<br />
(Personally I had never heard of him before this voyage, but I didn't tend to run in very magical circles, much to my mother's dismay.)<br />
<br />
It is dangerous to talk to the magician. He is theologically defensive. Coupled with his impaired hearing he manages to project an atmosphere of persecution wherever he goes. Once when I asked him to pass me a jug of water he accused me of spouting Reformist hypocrisy. On another occasion I asked him to cover my watch and he told me that if I ever threatened him again he would put a curse on me so black my children would be born as goats. I pretty much stopped talking to the magician after that.<br />
<br />
The men mock him, but he pretends he can't read their lips.<br />
<br />
He is a very light shade of brown, which makes me doubt the office he held was as lofty as he claims. No singing voice could be golden enough to earn a man so colourless the respect of a crowd. Not in the city, at any rate.<br />
<br />
(Perhaps he, like I, is being punished for something by being attached to this historic voyage. But who could a eunuch have bedded?)<br />
<br />
The magician sucks his teeth and tells us we can eat. The men lay in to the meal with animal relish, a dozen hands reaching into the bowl at once: fluffy rice, strings of conserved game, soil grapes and the broad, softened leaves of church frond. It is our reward for enduring the magician's murmurs about his greatness. Out of the corner of my eye I watch him pad out of the galley.<br />
<br />
He's gone back to stand vigil on the deck, waiting for our ship to fall off the edge of the world.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Ascending Valley</b><br />
<br />
My clothes are very filthy but the laundryman died after all his teeth fell out, and we were obliged to put his carcass overboard. This rather informal ceremony was presided over by the second mate, Mr. Valley, who hails from the east. His accent is swinging and hypnotic. Mr. Valley kindly loaned me some fresh laundry from his own supply and I took off my rags for burning.<br />
<br />
Mr. Valley has shown a generous interest in me lately, though only when the other officers aren't around. He has discouraged the other crewmen from beating me or stealing my rations, and now he says I can use the dead laundryman's hammock instead of sleeping in the bilgewater between the bunks.<br />
<br />
I am very grateful to Mr. Valley.<br />
<br />
He is a lean man with ropey arms and a long neck. He has scars across his back from somebody's whip, translucent pink stripes of healed meat interrupting the cocoa flesh. He has logos of the magic tattooed upon his chest. He has no fingernails on his left hand and he blinks more often than most people do. He speaks quietly, and he smiles only with his voice and never his face.<br />
<br />
The other day he had an argument with the first officer, Mr. Bailiff, which ended only when he tore Mr. Bailiff's mantle and thereby exposed the bottles of wine he had been denying stealing to augment the captain's horde. Mr. Valley declared that the first officer should be thoroughly searched, which the crew did with a kind of reckless abandon.<br />
<br />
Afterwards Mr. Bailiff was no longer fit for duty, and the sight of his injuries returned me to the queasiness that characterized my first weeks at sea.<br />
<br />
Mr. Valley has declared himself the new first officer, and Captain Stay has not emerged from his quarters to disagree. Onion War seems tense. The magician marked the occasion of Mr. Valley's promotion with magical fireworks and dazzling feats of holy prestidigitation. The men applauded and laughed, kissed the magic and sang. Despite the air of gaiety I am nervous.<br />
<br />
I try to have a word with Captain Stay but he is busy drinking wine, and pauses only to throw up on my sandals. He reaches for his beating rope so I back out of his cabin, stumbling at the threshold. Mr. Valley catches my elbow and helps me to my feet. He closes the door and shackles it.<br />
<br />
He wants to know if I'm okay. I tell him I'm fine.<br />
<br />
He catches me looking at the barred companionway and says, "We are going to have to make some hard decisions around here soon."<br />
<br />
"Yessir," I agree, and Mr. Valley walks away.<br />
<br />
What a strange kind of courage it takes to carry civilization across the savage wastes of the open ocean.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Captain Stay, Captain Go</b><br />
<br />
The ship lurches and I awake. The sunlit spot from the crew-berth's only port is crawling across the empty hammocks, bedbugs glinting like dust-motes. We are turning. As I stumble out of bed and dress myself I hear shouting from up on deck.<br />
<br />
The sky is red. Mr. Valley stands at the helm behind a line of crewmen holding blades, before them the captain on his knees. "We are too far to turn back," Captain Stay laments, his words slurred and whiny. He spindles the front of his shirt pointlessly as he blubbers, "We will die before we reach home!"<br />
<br />
"We are dying now," says Mr. Valley softly, eyes locked on Captain Stay.<br />
<br />
"Tell them!" yells the captain raggedly, gesturing imploringly at Onion War who is crouching beside the two terrified mathematicians. One has wrapped her own chains around her forearms as if to use the links as a shield. They quiver and hide behind his dreadlocks, their bleary eyes wide.<br />
<br />
Onion War turns to Mr. Valley wearily. "It is true, sir. The Empire is too far. Even the Second Continent is beyond the reach of our stores now."<br />
<br />
"It is an unholy quest we are on," replies Mr. Valley with calm precision, enunciating each word with characteristic eastern lilt. "It will end today, at my word or blade or the will of the magic, so help me saints."<br />
<br />
The deaf magician squints at Mr. Valley's lips and nods, sucking his teeth loudly.<br />
<br />
"It is natural to be afraid," says Onion War. "But still we must press on. Exploration requires faith."<br />
<br />
Mr. Valley blinks. "Do not presume to instruct me on faith," he replies. "I breathe with the magic, and the magic breathes through me."<br />
<br />
"Do you believe we will come to the world's end?" challenges Onion War. (I hold my breath, startled. Can he not see their blades? Can he not smell the seething vitriol?)<br />
<br />
Mr. Valley considers this for a moment, his eyes still fixed on the pool of captain on the steps up to the helm. "The world may not have a literal edge," he concedes, licking his thin lips. "The world may go on forever, for all I know. But I do know that the pursuit of this mythical Third Continent will kill every last one of us, and so damned is the commander who would see it through."<br />
<br />
"Damned is the commander!" chants the crew, as if rehearsed. The magician sucks his teeth.<br />
<br />
Captain Stay groans and sinks lower into his own capes. In the fine, rosy light of dawn I am able to actually see his sweat-glistening skin pimple in gooseflesh -- I witness the moment of defeat finding him. He does not resist when escorted back to his cabin, and speaks only to beg for a bottle of wine as the companionway is shackled shut.<br />
<br />
I notice a seabird. And then another.<br />
<br />
Onion War points to the horizon: the tops of grey-bellied cumulus clouds reach up like giant thumbs from a point off the port-bow. "Land," he reports tonelessly.<br />
<br />
Mr. Valley whispers to the magic and then barks orders at the crew. When they obey they call him "captain." I am commanded to help bring about the foresail and I hop to my duty. I call him "captain" too.<br />
<br />
The crew is cheerful. My hands are burned hauling on the ropes, but it fells great to be a part of the team. The men sing and the seabirds do too, almost loud enough to drown out the magician's awful hymning. For the first time ever, Mr. Valley is really smiling. His teeth are startlingly white and even.<br />
<br />
Onion War stands alone by the pilot, his lined face drawn tight.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>An Encounter with Savages</b><br />
<br />
After ten days of searching this magic-forsaken archipelego of lifeless islets and fetid lagoons we came upon an island whose trees yield a thin butter which is nine parts fresh water to one part tart mud. In less than an hour we had razed the glen and ferried every stalk to our ship by canoe. Even now Mr. Spice is pressing their precious juice into jugs so that we might also drink tomorrow.<br />
<br />
One of the light-brown shipmen managed to catch a small tortoise with his bare hands, which he then proceeded to consume raw after levering open the shell. Before we left the island the magician presided in a brief ceremony over the hungry crewman's corpse.<br />
<br />
Onion War has been giving me little pinches of powder to put beneath my tongue, as he himself does each morning and evening. "What is it?" I asked him, and he claimed they were the distilled essences of substances required for the healthy operation of a body. "Like what?" I asked, sceptical. His answer was nonsense -- rock dust and berry acid, traces of metal and beads of gummed oil.<br />
<br />
(Still, it cannot be denied that while we are wasting with the others we do not sicken as they do.)<br />
<br />
I dare not speculate how many more days we would have lasted had we not come upon the crescent-shaped island of savage people this morning. An enterprising tribe, they had little houses made of thatched grasses and primitive canoes made from trees. They shaved their colourless heads clear of hair and painted designs there in blue squid ink. They were ugly, of course. They hooted like apes when we first came upon them, brandishing wooden spears tipped with sharpened spikes of bone.<br />
<br />
I believe they were a fishing people, and this I judge not only by the bone hooks and barbs we can see scattered in their nests but also by the distinctly aquatic aftertaste of their meat.<br />
<br />
The mathematicians refused to partake. Captain Valley is worried they may starve, so he has sent some crew back to the ship to force feed them. In the meantime he's sitting on a boulder in the shade, watching us all with his blinking eyes and thinking whatever it is Captain Valley thinks. His mouth is a line. His limbs are motionless, like a lizard.<br />
<br />
When I ask Mr. Spice for a second helping he is light-hearted and relatively unprofane. He asks me which cut I would prefer, and I admit that I would be delighted to have more child. "Very tender!" agrees Mr. Spice, and I hold out my bowl.<br />
<br />
It can disconcerting sometimes to eat the flesh of an animal that looks very much like a man, but the rawness of my appetite proved a sufficient incentive. It is only after being sated and then continuing to chew that I find it necessary to remind myself that white people don't have soul.<br />
<br />
As with monkeys and eels, the magic is indifferent to the incarnations of savages.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Womanless Calculations</b><br />
<br />
The mathematicians have died. They looked dead long before they expired, bones and sinews under a thin glaze of yellowing skin. During the funeral the magician broke down and cried. The crew looked nervously about, fondling their talismans and kissing their tokens. Onion War would not speak to anyone, his eyes bloodshot and his mouth loose.<br />
<br />
They made very small splashes, I thought, for adult women.<br />
<br />
That was last night. Today Captain Valley has ordered me to enter Onion War's cabin and pry from him the feminine secrets of navigation so that we might find a way home. I imagine I have been chosen since I have assisted the old man with his toys, but I told everyone I hold no sway as an advisor. I still fail to see how I will persuade him. Captain Valley suggested I wear no shirt.<br />
<br />
When I go to Onion War he is lying motionless in his hammock, staring at the ceiling.<br />
<br />
For childish reasons I am afraid. "Are you dead?" I ask, stupidly.<br />
<br />
"I am not dead," concedes Onion War. "I am dispirited."<br />
<br />
When I try to steer the conversation around to navigation he interprets this as an attempt to inspire him, and responds by climbing out of bed and embracing me. "You're right -- I cannot give up!" he tells me, as if this is something I was trying to say.<br />
<br />
Onion War hobbles over to his trunk and opens the creaking top. He digs through his belongings -- jars, badges, codpieces, orreries, folios -- and tosses them aside until he uncovers and unlatches the trunk's false bottom. From this last compartment he withdraws an item I had always assumed existed only in legend.<br />
<br />
It is an artificial woman.<br />
<br />
Once unfolded she is only about three hand-spans tall, her tiny bronze face impassive, her canvas breasts proud, her wooden hips wide, utterly undecorated with the guild colours that would be covering any non-illicit mechanism. Onion War unravels a ribbon of pounded gold and gently feeds one end into the back of the little artificial woman's head.<br />
<br />
I start to say, "What are you --" but he says, "Hush now! Ah-ha, ah-ha..." so I close my mouth.<br />
<br />
"This is something I have been working on for years," he explains in a voice of special dignity; "a project that caused much damage to my dignity and my options, indeed. But, at last, I will have my chance to prove the value of my research."<br />
<br />
I tell him that sounds good. He asks me to read him a set of numbers from an open folio, and as I do he inserts a finger into a hole between the little artificial woman's legs and taps around in there. When I am done he pumps the artificial woman's arms up and down three times. The goldleaf ribbon is drawn inside the head and emerges from her mouth covered in arrays of tiny punctures.<br />
<br />
Onion War takes the ribbon and moves his fingers across its surface with his eyes closed, and then nods with satisfaction. "Today the sun will set a quarter hour before the ship's sunclock," he declares. Then he opens his eyes, raises one eyebrow and lets himself smile. "That is right, my friend -- you have just witnessed a <i>womanless calculation.</i>"<br />
<br />
"It boggles the mind," I tell him.<br />
<br />
He shakes my hand and then hugs me and then kisses me on the side of my neck, which is weird. I squirm away and try to change the subject. I ask him whether his revolutionary instrument can guide us safely to the Third Continent. Onion War chuckles and shakes his dreadlocked head. "You appreciate, of course, that the world is a ball."<br />
<br />
"I have heard that philosophy."<br />
<br />
"Heard it? Witness it! As we approach an island why do we see its peaks before its shores when the water we look across is flat? Why does it seem to rise out of the ocean?"<br />
<br />
"Well, that <i>is</i> a quandary..." I admit, rubbing my chin and furrowing my brow.<br />
<br />
"There are other proofs," says Onion War with a dismissive wave. "You may take my word for it, my friend. It is a fact. And it is also a fact that we have <i>already covered nine tenths of the journey</i> around the world's face."<br />
<br />
"You mean --"<br />
<br />
"I mean to say the next land we will see will be the far eastern shores of our own Glorious Imperial Continent. And, according to my womanless calculations, we shall be arriving there very soon indeed."<br />
<br />
"Kiss the magic!" I cry out of sheer joy. "We're saved!"<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The Water Walker</b><br />
<br />
We are not saved. We have passed again into the open sea and despite Onion War's confidence of landfall we have been abandoned by bird and cloud alike. The sky is a heartless blue card, the ocean an unthinking mirror bladed by sunglints. Again our stores are diminished. Again our water is bracken and smelly, and we drink our urine in the mornings with animal relish.<br />
<br />
We are all tanned like kings, even the inferior ones.<br />
<br />
Mr. Stay and Mr. Bailiff have both expired in their cabins, one by bottle and one by traditional suicide. Neither loss was felt as keenly as that of our spiritual leader, the deaf magician. He went to sleep one night and did not awake, an empty phial at his bedside. Criminal suicide is likely, but Captain Valley enters nothing in the log anymore. The remaining hands help to huck the three bodies overboard and no words are spoken. All magical pomp is ignored, for the men feel ignored by the magic.<br />
<br />
Captain Valley is grim. "He was no real man of magic," he swears quietly.<br />
<br />
Our rationality is eroding. I see it in myself. I can still hear the magician's amelodic sacred weapon between the slap of the surf against our hull and the seashell sussuruss of hot air. Twice under the weird purple sky of twilight I have seen a figure following the bubbles of our wake, stepping between the waves as if hiking in a meadow, faintly glowing, careless, impossible.<br />
<br />
I bring dismal rations to Onion War: green cake and bugs. I feel he may be our only hope. "Stick your finger in the little woman," I implore him. "Question the world! Find our way! Count the stars!"<br />
<br />
He is weary and his skin is ashen. His breathing is noisy. "I have run the figures through my vulvic triangulator a thousand times."<br />
<br />
"Then <i>when</i> will we get to the Empire?"<br />
<br />
"We should be there already...we should already be home." He trails off and stares with unfocused eyes out the port in his cabin -- nothing but unfathomable blue.<br />
<br />
I snap my fingers and jostle his shoulder. "Hey! Master War! We've awakened in a prison cell and are not being fed at all: what can we do to know the mind of our captors? <i>What can we do, man?</i>"<br />
<br />
He shakes his head sadly. "There are no captors, boy."<br />
<br />
We sit in silence a moment, and then a strange little smile plays briefly over the old man's lips. "She's so beautiful," he comments.<br />
<br />
"Who?" I ask.<br />
<br />
I trace his gaze out the portal and then stand up for a better view. I stand up too quickly, and falter in dizziness. I imagine I see the one who walks between the waves but my vision throbs with the spectral bruising of afterimages. I am weak. My tongue is thick and my throat very dry. I blink with effort. I cannot even see the sea -- only a wall of blue as if our ship were flying. My tortured brain will no longer render the image of the damned water.<br />
<br />
"I see nothing."<br />
<br />
Onion War chuckles mirthlessly. "And nothing sees you."<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>A Spot of Inclement Weather</b><br />
<br />
I miss Onion War. I miss Captain Valley. These are the days of decision by committee -- the days of blood on the deck and unmagical desperation. These are the days the burnt pork aroma of the third officer has oozed into our rags and refuses to vent, reminding us with our own pall of stink the abscess of our nobility.<br />
<br />
We are depraved. Mr. Spice has broiled the calves of the dead into a soup, but if anyone tries to take any he cuts off their fingers. Then he puts the fingers in the soup. I have eaten my shirt, and like many I find it hard not to snack on stringy clods of the tar that keeps our hull fast against water.<br />
<br />
Some songs are sung but I dare not repeat the lyric.<br />
<br />
I do my best to steer. Come nightfall I awkwardly position Onion War's instruments on his floating tripod so that I can squeeze the stars between the tines of the register and thereby take numbers from the sky to flex into the vulvic triangulator with my sundried fingertip.<br />
<br />
For the first time in my life I find myself staring into the heavens and really asking myself what it all is -- why are the stars concentrated in a winding river from north-east to south-west, and why do some appear orange while others seem to be blue? I think of the blue gas fires in the swamps of my father's province, and wonder whether there could be any connection...<br />
<br />
Is it a mystery the magic <i>wants</i> me to penetrate? Is the world, in fact, a riddle?<br />
<br />
(Then again, were I to awake in a prison cell why would I assume the designers of my circumstances to be anything other than men? Captured by happenstance, would I not imagine authors rather than rail against mindless chance?)<br />
<br />
It is only by remembering the glory of the Empire that I manage to push on. I am so certain it lies just over the horizon that when I first see the black line of devil's weather cresting the sea ahead I am able to convince myself I see a bank of dark conifers. "We have somehow drifted north," I reason.<br />
<br />
The apparent conifers are backlit by spasms of silent lightning. They rise on spires of inky cloud, ascend upon a mountain of blue-grey shadow that begins to merge with the water at the horizon. I discern a curtain of rain lazily blurring the way between the storm and our ship a split second before we are punched by a fist of wind.<br />
<br />
I yell orders but no one will help me. Captain Valley stands at the prow of the ship like a statue, hands clutched behind his back and thighs quivering with exertion as he fights to keep his feet against the pitching deck. A skeletal crewman tries to reef in a flapping sail but discovers he is too weak, and settles down to tie himself to a canoe.<br />
<br />
<i>"Captain Valley!"</i> I scream, but he cannot hear me. When the wind rages in the right direction I catch snippets of his hymn. His range is good, and it occurs to me suddenly why he is so very private: Valley is an exiled magician, a castrato on the lam.<br />
<br />
As I consider this a wave smashes across the foredeck and washes Captain Valley away. His song stops abruptly.<br />
<br />
The ship is picked up by the next surge and balanced high. As I cling to a boom lightning flashes and illuminates my world: I see the heaving sea below, the cliff of frothing water on which we teeter, and the wall of jagged rocks upon which we are about to drop. I experience some horror.<br />
<br />
The lightning passes, thunder rolls. I am grateful to be unaware of my circumstances again. Everything is black and wet and then, briefly, very painful.<br />
<br />
I elect to take a nap.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Angel by the Wing</b><br>
<br>
I awake on a narrow tongue of beach nestled in the shadow of bluffs overlooking the sea. The splintered wreckage of our galleon is visible jutting from an irregular pile of rocks upon which it has been dashed, apparently unleashing of landslide of lichen-slick stones from the face of the cliff above.<br>
<br>
A flotilla of objects bob sedately in the vicinity: an empty bottle of wine, a codpiece, the upper deck of Mr. Spice's false teeth, the right arm of the artificial woman, a cabin boy, a seat cushion, a spoon...<br>
<br>
The sun has come out. The head of a pretty girl sits upon a pile of rocks next to me.<br>
<br>
I am not horrified, and I examine the head from where I lie with a kind of detached curiosity. The neck terminates in a smooth, bloodless line. Her eyes are closed as if in communion, her lips pursed as if at study. It seems to me to have been a very peaceful death, for a decapitation.<br>
<br>
I wonder where she came from. Despite the lightness of her skin it seems unweathered, like the supple faces of the Empire's most comely noble mathematicians. Her hair is black and short, feathery.<br>
<br>
Steered by a morbid compassion I reach out to her touch her apple-ripe cheek, and I scream like a child when her eyes snap open before my fingertips find her. I throw myself backward and land in the surf with a splash, gasping.<br>
<br>
The head shifts and the rocks beneath the stump ripple. I blink, my eyes irritated by the strange motion. The girl's eyes are fixed on me, lively and focused. A hand sweeps out of the rocks and extends on a pole of grey sand toward me, a tiny metallic device pinioned between dirty fingers.<br>
<br>
"Do not touch me," she commands, a bewilderingly toneless speech that comes a second after her lips move.<br>
<br>
"What are you?" I demand hoarsely, scrambling to my knees and crawling away from the menacing apparition. Even in my fear I note the crisp shadows the decapitated girl's arm of sand casts, as tangible and real as the wet locks of my own hair dripping before my eyes.<br>
<br>
She pinches her mouth tight, says nothing.<br>
<br>
I stand. Breathing hard I make a wide circle around the head on the pile of rocks that waver and discolour as my perspective changes. I settle down on my haunches and against the ocean and the sky it becomes clear: the girl's body is there, invisible, copying the light of the world behind it. Now her arm is a blue horizon, and if I raise my head it takes on the hue of the bluffs.<br>
<br>
I shuffle closer. She trains the device on me ominously. I hold up my empty hands and lean in closer again: I can perceive her camouflaged left leg pinned between two clots of the landslide's slurry. This girl -- whatever she is -- is pinned like a butterfly to a collector's felt.<br>
<br>
The device in her hand flashes and I reel back like a ragdoll, pushed by an invisible agency. I land hard on the sand and lose my breath. Croaking for air I kick out blindly and manage to strike the girl's hand. Her weapon flies free, skips twice on the water and then submerges with a fart of bubbles.<br>
<br>
"Faeces!" she cries.<br>
<br>
"That hurt," I accuse, rubbing my ass. In my abused state the whole affair leaves me a bit tired so I remain splayed out on the beach for some time, regaining my breath and watching the trapped girl watch me.<br>
<br>
I theorize that she is the being I have seen walking in our wake. Is she herself of the magic?<br>
<br>
After a while she sits up, her unadorned head seeming to float above the beach as she squeezes her hands beneath a large lip of rock weighing on her shin and attempts to prise it loose. She grunts, her face distorted not just by her effort but also by pain. Her leg, I imagine, has been broken.<br>
<br>
She leans back against the rocks again, exhausted, sweat glistening on her young brow.<br>
<br>
"You're stuck," I point out.<br>
<br>
She stares at me, and then whispers something. After the briefest pause the toneless voice sounds again: "I am not permitted to speak with you."<br>
<br>
"Oh."<br>
<br>
I crawl over to her and ignore the next battery of warnings. There is an edge in her voice that tells me she doesn't have another magic pushing device. I explore the distorted camouflage of her leg, moving downward until I find the crevasse in which she has become lodged. Her strange clothes, grey and shimmeringly visible at this proximity, are ripped there below the knee, exposing a length of soft calf abraded and bloody.<br>
<br>
(I decide that she is a mortal thing.)<br>
<br>
She chops her hand at my neck and kicks at me viciously with her free leg, and I am toppled over into the mud again. The surf comes in a moment later and washes over me, leaving streamers of dank seaweed. I sit up and rub my throbbing neck.<br>
<br>
"Get away from me," the girl commands. "Contact is forbidden."<br>
<br>
"I can help you," I say.<br>
<br>
"My colleagues are en route," she replies quickly. "Your surviving shipmates have walked north along the beach to a nearby village. I suggest you join them before my colleagues arrive."<br>
<br>
I can tell this is supposed to be a threat but the childish quaver in her voice robs it of much strength. "How do you know where my shipmates have gone?"<br>
<br>
"I can see them," she says, looking north and squinting.<br>
<br>
I look north at the solid face of rock beneath the turf-topped bluffs. I look back at the girl, whose brown irises are dialled out for far focus. She blinks, her pupils flitting rapidly. "Less than an hour away by foot," she tells me, still looking at whatever ghosts she consults for such bewildering mathematics.<br>
<br>
"You are a woman and I do not doubt your calculations," I say slowly, "but you are also possessed of powers such as I've never imagined and thus I have no basis to guess your motives. Tell me: are you from the Third Continent?"<br>
<br>
No reply. I look out at the small cove in which we have landed, noting the lines of dried brine on the faces of the cliffs. I also note how the depression of sand where I had awakened has become a puddle. I turn back to the girl. "How long until your friends arrive?"<br>
<br>
"Any moment," she lies.<br>
<br>
I sniff. "The tide is coming in."<br>
<br>
She raises her head to look for herself and I can see her elbows poking through other rips in her camouflaging skin. Her brow furrows. She bites her lip. She leans back again and avoids my eye. "Please help me."<br>
<br>
"My help is conditional. You will answer my questions."<br>
<br>
She assents. Her head drops. The rock camouflage of her bosom rises and falls with heavy breaths. "One question," she negotiates.<br>
<br>
"Two," I correct.<br>
<br>
(Onion War had spent decades squeezing answers -- unreliable answers -- drop by precious drop from the world. He never had my opportunity: I have an angel by the wing who begs my favour. Think of that!)<br>
<br>
With a frustrated grunt the girl sits up again and pulls frantically at her leg while stealing glances at the rising tide. Then she gives up once more and pleads, "I am forbidden from sharing information with you." Her eyes jitter, then moisten. "I will fail my class," she adds.<br>
<br>
"Two questions," I remind her.<br>
<br>
She bites her lip again and nods. "Two questions. Quickly! Please."<br>
<br>
When she has satisfied me we work together to topple away the debris pinning her leg. At the moment when she is freed I am close enough to discern the grey folds along her shin and calf inflate to become turgid sacs, correcting the position of the girl's mislaid bones with an audible crackle. She lets out a little yelp and squeezes my shoulder.<br>
<br>
When I look up there are five figures standing on the rising waters. Hobbling, she goes to them. For a long time I watch after them, long after they have walked away over the glittering horizon.<br>
<br>
The stars have come to horrify me, so when evening comes I cower.<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>My Wives Cannot Count</b><br>
<br>
I cannot pronounce of the name of our people yet, but I'm trying.<br>
<br>
Our lives are simple, and good. We have houses on little legs to keep them safe during the monsoons. Our boats are painted to resemble different fish, an idea whose origin is lost but whose tradition is artfully embraced. When people around here laugh they make clicking sounds with their tongues, a refrain more refined and subtle than one might suspect. I practise laughing every day, in order to fit in.<br>
<br>
I remember standing in the surf to see off my surviving shipmates as they set out upon their makeshift craft, determined to find civilization and greatness and all the glory that is the Empire. My wives, neither of whom can count, stood by my side.<br>
<br>
We waved and smiled as their vessel diminished in perspective and then sank below the edge of the world. I was in a great mood. I had no regrets.<br>
<br>
Whether or not my shipmates ever found the passage home is unknown to me. I don't really care. I eat nuts and berries and I wear a loincloth. When it's rainy I get a little bit wet, but most of the time it's sunny here.<br>
<br>
I cultivate edible roots, which is demanding but satisfying labour.<br>
<br>
I'm still quite handsome when unstarved. To the eyes of the colourless savages I am ugly, however, and thus have to work hard at my marriages. Likewise I cannot get by on charm, because to these villagers my ways are uncouth.<br>
<br>
They find my songs hilarious. They rib me about my civilized habits.<br>
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However they also view me as a man possessed of special knowledge, though I discourage it. The wonders of the Empire don't seem so wonderful to me anymore. I have no ambition to introduce them in any kind of detail to the magical precepts or the arts of masonry or feminine cartography. I would sooner tell them the truth, and that I will never do.<br>
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Who would want to know?<br>
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Who would want to know that the sky is full of suns? (When I learned that from my trapped angel a chill ran down my spine and in a certain way I have never felt warm there again.) Who would want to know that what was held as great is in fact paltry? (When I realized that the godlet cried for me.)<br>
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We call the world "the world" but its name is Eden, a globe where our founding blood travelled to live apart from knowledge.<br>
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I learned that she, like me, was an animal called a human being, bred by circumstance in a far away time at a far away place called Sol.<br>
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She told me she had come from the University of Callicrates where her professor was leading an audit of the cultural anomaly known as the Empire of Light and Conquest, a malignancy of complexity whose rapid influence over the face of this kindergarten had surprised so many.<br>
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I mourned, "My world is a joke. It is studied in school, by children. Our glories are insectile."<br>
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She replied, "All works are insectile. You cannot guess the true immensity and baffling complexity of the Everything. Your brain would bleed to imagine, and so would mine."<br>
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(It really puts things in perspective, when deities lament.)<br>
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My integration into the tribe continues. I have been assigned a totem and a spiritual animal buddy. I am learning all the moves for the big dance. I will be circumcised at the next solstice, which I admit I have mixed feelings about.<br>
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Around the fire I sometimes tell stories about my old life.<br>
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Like I said, I am viewed as a font but I do not flow freely. There are some things it is easier not to know. When I am lying on my back at night with the soft grass behind my head, surrounded by the murmurs of the jungle and the rustle of the sea, with a wife snuggled in on either side tightly, one or the other or both will ask, "Tell us, husband, what are the stars?"<br>
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I sigh. I squeeze them against against me. I breathe in the breeze. "They are wonder, my loves," I always reply. "Nothing but wonder."<br>
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<br />Cheeseburger Brownhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01384136287767500794noreply@blogger.com8