ALSO! (unrelatedly):

Solange Knowles (who I only know because of the outstandingly entertaining words of the women at Go Fug Yourself [mostly Jessica, according to the "signature"]; I don't care about celebrity fashion at all --- whether atrocious or wonderful; but the voices --- the authorial voices --- of both Jessica and Heather are among the best of the blog writers whom I've read. I'll read what they have to say about things I care nothing about, and enjoy it.) was someone I just assumed was famous because she was related to someone famous. I was proven wrong by YOUTUBE. I'm not sure if you've heard of that (it's a pretty underground site --- you know: SECRET), but that's where I went after viewing purple feathers.
WHO IS THIS?!
So, I checked out Solange at YouTube. And learned that she, like her (probably?) more famous sister Beyoncé, is a singer (who, from what I've heard of both [which, to be fair, is not much] is much better). I listened to a song called "I Decided":

And I was, to be unabashedly (I've been reading a lot of E.A. Poe recently, so I'm diggin' adverbs like that. What are you gonna do?) honest, quite impressed; it's such a throwback. Do you remember Aretha? Diana? et cetera? And, at the same time, trying to push things forward. It's great. Also: the fact that the song doesn't really move anywhere (in that the main progression is repeated throughout the song's entirety) really excites me (I dig when things are repeated ad nauseam). When does pop music be so bold as to be so stagnant?! Dynamics and harmonic discrepancies are, really, the only variation. And it works. I dig the lack of variation. I dig the incessancy.
And the beat* is pretty swell, too.





*Who doesn't dig claps?

G.I. Joe: The Movie

This movie astounds me. It is incredible. In a sense, it is unbelievable. Some of the visuals, when viewed through the perspective of adulthood, are, to be entirely honest, quite horrifying. (And, to continue this thread of honesty, when viewed drunkenly, they are equally horrifying; perhaps even moreso.)
We watched this movie tonight. A celebration of sorts, I suppose; Taylor arrived in Toronto today, and drinks and G.I. Joe were, apparently, the only means available to us to properly recognise such a momentous occasion.
Watching the movie, I was inundated with MEMORY. Every character who flashed on the screen was met with a yell from me: "That's AVALANCHE!," "That's a CRIMSON GUARD!," "That's NEMESIS ENFORCER!" (et cetera).
The brain is a wonderful thing, huh? I mean, I hadn't thought of those characters in years. They had long since passed out of mind. (I even remember the last G.I. Joe I bought and, while buying him [Freefall], acknowledging that he would be the last G.I. Joe that I would ever buy for myself. This was, even while I was standing at the cash at Toys 'n' Wheels, quite an experience. I mean, knowing that you were in the death throes of your youth; knowing that you were experiencing your final hurrah as a child. It was quite an ordeal, really. I played with that guy as though the hounds of Hell were snarling at my heels; or something, to be sure, quite worse: the end of my childhood. Knowing its end was coming inspired such endeavours to maintain, to solidify, to make permanent, its presence. Though that's a story for another day, I'd say: this one's about G.I. Joe: The Movie.)
Suffice to say: that movie was an integral part of my childhood, and it has, quite apparently, remained entrenched in my memory --- to be excavated when Hasbro deems appropriate. Which is to say: when drinking a bottle of red wine and watching a children's movie (prefaced with instructions on how to correct VHS tracking issues).

We are opera-ing at peak efficiency.

Today, walking east on College Street (in front of the Leslie Dan Pharmacy Building [U of T, yo]), we happened to see a man coming toward us riding a bicycle (in the proper bike lane, of course). When I first saw him, I thought he was yawning; his mouth was opened; a cavernous maw. As he came closer, I heard a faint sound and, to be honest, I thought the yawn a trifle long. Then, when he was almost upon us, I realised what was happening: he was singing. A constant note. One incredibly long "oh," with a touch of vibrato in all the right places. It was magical.

Also, I really want one of these.

Drinking and RPGs

Is that really any way to spend a Friday (or Saturday, as the case may have been last weekend) night, you may ask. And, perhaps, it's a valid question; valid enough to warrant the asking, one would suppose. However, if you were to actually ask that most probing, that most in-depth, of questions, the correct answer, apparently, would be yes. A quite resounding one, in fact.

A nice, relaxing, mellowing bunch of wine; yelling, cursing at a screen filled with somewhat blurred characters; hackin' 'n' slashin' with ruddy-cheeked glee. It's pretty much good times. Give it a go and report back to me.

+3 to Drinking Skill.

Writing

I haven't been doing much of today's title lately. In the past couple months pretty much all that I've done involved starting another story ('cause I don't have enough partly-finished things on the go, obviously). Maybe one and a half lines of bad poetry. And of course lots of things that make me go: "Oh hey, that's a wicked idea for a story! Write it down!"

ASIDE: ["Dream Lover," the aforementioned story (from the first paragraph, remember?!), is actually turning out at least slightly better than anticipated (which isn't necessarily saying much). And, essentially, it's completed. The ideas are, that is (and of course they're written up in that nice little WordPerfect file). It's been a long time since I've actually finished something. Even something very short (which this one won't be. Not really, anyway). It'll be nice. Not the story, but that finishing something deal.

Next on the list (once all my bigger things are finished): a play about Richard Wagner. Seriously. I mean, I spent all that time reading My Life, so why not put it to good use, right? That's a lie: I bought the book and read it with the express purpose of writing about Wagner. Which might be better than just reading about him for enjoyment. And that is why I wrote thirty-five pages of notes about this book in my little coil-bound notebook.] END ASIDE

I have a lot of notes for everything. An envelope that is burstingly full of little pieces of paper - receipts, pages torn out of vehicle driver's manuals (only the back pages - the "notes" pages; nothing important), little scraps torn off sheets of stuff that's already considered scrap paper, Post-It notes... you get the idea - sits on a lower shelf of my computer desk. Using my powerful gift of foresight, I've actually typed out (most of) the stuff written on these things in a WordPerfect file. But little ideas that make up about three lines of text do not a story make.

Lots of those little ideas written in little letters on little scraps do, however, when combined, tend to make up a story. Or, at least, that's what they try to do. Which brings me to my exciting news!

I worked on Jürgen today! For the first time in well over a month. Well, that's not entirely true, I suppose. But it is the first time I've added at least a thousand words to it in over a month. And the really good news? I passed fifteen thousand words tonight! It seems like a nice, simple, minor milestone. Well, for most writers, it, no doubt, is a minor milestone. For me it's large. Giant. I work at the same pace as that at which fossils turn into fuels. Jürgen, though, is probably pretty close to completion. Not in any written state. But in my head. Pretty much everything's there. It just needs to be excavated. And all the big bits need little bits to connect them. It's mostly exciting. For me, anyway. Frighteningly, I think that it wants to be massive. Probably(/hopefully) not Joseph and His Brothers massive (bless your heart, Mr. Mann) or even Infinite Jest massive ('cause I don't have any chewing tobacco), but massive enough. I'd like to finish it some day. If only so I can say that I've finished something that big.

Activate the corpses!

combatwoundedveteran, anyone?



These guys are my favourite band. When I'm listening to them. I think when their sounds overwhelm my auditory receptors (whatever: I don't care if you just call them ears [and auditory canals, semi-circular canals, cochleae, auditory nerves, eardrums {tympanic membranes}, mallei, incus and stapes]; I do what I want), they also beat the living snot out of my memory centres which relate to music. Think about it: some crazy squipony* running amok on all that soft brain tissue. HOOFS, guys! HOOFS!
So, the brain's gettin' all gooshed up by the aforementioned hoofs, and tentacles are probably fairly busily rending and tearing things asunder. And, quite obviously, after this devastation, I totally can't even remember that other music exists. The squipony's assaults are terrible and utter. Or maybe it's just that their music is astonishingly good.
I wish cwv still existed.

I will leave you with the lyrics for "Folded Space: Mapping Unexploded Ordinance" (a song whose lyrics are presented in good ol' Mac-Voice):

There were giant squid for 27 days in August & September. My bathwater multiplied into oceans when I blinked. It was always dark, and the moon followed the same pattern as reality. I built fear into unknown shapes, several, they worked in unison; coiling around my limbs, ribbon filaments that moved as invertebrates. Tendon and muscle, without joints.

Always night, I step in a puddle it is an ocean, the rain starts and floods everything. The sinks fill, sea level is mine every night. 27 days of it.

I had these enemies and at the beginning the moon was small, I had no light, treading seas that exploded moments prior. I introduced myself to panic, I said hello. At this came motion beneath me, and the touch of smooth flesh, wrapping around elements of my body, and they touched my genitals, tightening around abdomen. Underwater, gagging and blind. REPEAT.

The time I spent in the agreed upon continuity found me getting dirty, as I had been avoiding liquids, and more irrational. I stopped brushing my teeth, no liquid soap. No bar soap with liquid catalyst. No one came near me, my odor was weaponry. Work had no more use for me and soon I slept outside sprawling in beds of dirt, hugging it to me. When the rains came, I was forced to use pills to battle sleep. But I could not win, and again I was killed.

And I struggled on trying not to die, to be drowned, strangled, and chewed, concurrently. My only comfort the patches of dry earth I found to sleep in, feeling strong. They killed me anyway, the moon opening now, them becoming visible, only to disappear. They had ways of creating their own shadows. I saw only the stray pieces that flashed outside the black cloud they projected. No weakness, and in their element, I was continually murdered.

I did not know how many times I could die, the deaths were growing tedious. Maddening. I tried to kill myself, at first water, as far down as I could go and did not go back up. My skull was just beginning to go numb, and it was on me soon eating most of my leg. Suicide was failure and I was truly fucked.

I woke up, walked to street and waited for a car. Fifty miles an hour, one was coming. I took a step, was off my feet for a few seconds, then face first, onto the road, with my legs coming down over my head, bent backwards, in half. I wanted it done, but it wasn't. There was no pain, nothing broken, get up, walk back inside. I took a knife out of the drawer and into my stomach. Nothing. My gun tried to put a bullet into my face and failed. I appeared doomed only to die with my nightmares, and now I knew. I needed as much light and emaciated earth as I could find my element and strength. The desert and the open skies followed the lunar cycle to the desert near the canyons and rock formations. My savior smiled back, parched and beautiful. The sun was falling. I gathered rocks and laid them out into humans. I took position among them. No water for miles. I closed my eyes.

The moon was bright overhead when I heard it coming, the first drops of rain beginning. It had come in on storm clouds that were fast closing in on the moon and casting great shadows towards me. The downpour started, attempting to flood me out. I stood and the long dead land resisted, shifting enormous tectonic plates, the water running between them. I turned to the stones. They formed and rose with me as it fell to the ground gasping and flailing parts. We stood over it, a feeble spray of ink marking paths in the defiant soil. A pile of pale flesh shivering and caking with dirt. I took a rock to one of it's eyes. The others long appendages from it and threw them to the sky. The fear was gone, I beat my fists on it. The rain stopped. The others backed away, howling and ripping everything from inside it's shell, I was covered in fluid and bits of organs. Again I turned to the stone men and we lifted the giant husk. We carried it to the rock formations and dropped it. The stone men dissolved back into the landscape. I climbed onto the shell and smiled. I waited for the sun.

*for the uninitiated:

Imagine! or: Soda-pop suffering in 10 simple steps.

Imagine going to a gigantic store like, for instance, IKEA.
Imagine ordering a Pepsi, filling the cup at the machine and getting some slightly browned water.
Imagine dumping that in the fountain pop machine’s drain.
Imagine filling the cup with something that more closely resembles Pepsi (and drinking the drink).
Imagine getting lunch at the restaurant, which resembles a university residence meal-hall, inside the gigantic store.
Imagine filling a glass with Mountain Dew.
Imagine taking a sip, and drinking nothing but syrup.
Imagine dumping that in the fountain pop machine’s drain, hoping that there will be enough space in that little tub for a glassful of pop-syrup (with little ice cylinders).
Imagine filling the glass with 7UP.
Imagine taking a sip of this and tasting heavily-chlorinated fizzy-ish water.

If you successfully complete these simple steps, you will have imagined my day.