it's Venn time again

The only thing I forgot was the thin line of puke one of the cats left on my bathrobe last night.

bed is the poor man's opera

Two days of rain. A friend of mine went camping and found it cold and wanting. What happened to May? In a twelve-hour stretch, I inhaled enough paint fumes for a lifetime. Tonight the tape comes off. At nine I'll go pick up C from the train and she'll ask me about the cats. I only got one scratch.

nemesis girls

Put C on the train this morning ... she's gone to a conference in London (Ontario) for three days while I stay behind to paint the dining room. Hmmm. Among the ton of stuff I moved out of the way on the weekend was a box full of all our published work, including this chapbook C put out in 2005 with Black Bile Press. True to form, it's a collection about characters who are unmistakably tough, sharp and female.

tell me why

You know one thing that CBC radio is really good at? Not giving me an accurate weather report (never mind an actual forecast) ... Sunny and warm I'm told, when really I get out there to suffer from Wind Station Zebra ...

While I'm kicking CBC around ... I'm prepping the dining room this last weekend, getting it ready for paint during the middle of the week (while C and Peanut are out of town and out of fumes' way), desperately wanting something to listen to ... but instead I get GO!, maybe the most insufferable program ever created, a pop-culture show for people who are innately awkward around pop ... so instead I used C's laptop to listen to podcasts from the BBC – basically, a few people sitting around a table and discussing topics of interest ... you know, what the CBC should be doing?

summer relief

More digging through old boxes, throwing away piles of stuff (C says I'm being ruthless) but it's just time to let it all go. You know? Here's one thing, however, that I might keep for awhile, just because it reminds me of a guy I used to know. Guess who?

red jacket #3

*Sold* and mailed to a girl in Brooklyn; mixed media on canvas, 22 x 28 inches.

Victoria Day Gong Show

Someone thought that their pictures would cancel out my pictures. That same someone has a serious goofball addiction.

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Someone got a new sticker book last weekend.


Someone likes to watch Scooby Doo while her uncle makes supper.


Someone likes to eat pie and chill.


Someone likes to talk chicken. To the goose.

hardened with vinegar

My old friend Ali, re-drawn for a story.

just dropped by to bounce

My five year-old niece Stella visited me and C this weekend ... which meant we found ourselves wandering places like the Playtrium, Old Navy and Toys R Us (at least I forced a library visit at one point). She left us exhausted but rich in kitty-kat drawings.

Listening to DVNO by Justice.

ridiculous machines

Much better game-seven's last night. "They don't all go to game-seven, do they?" C asked. She's funny!


Still, last night was really just about two things: the chicken-vegetable-rice bake I made for supper and watching Coach finally bite the bullet on Survivor. Everyone hated Coach but really he wasn't so much villainous as he was simply ridiculous, a character who -- when he wasn't referring to himself in the third person (always a bad sign) -- gave himself the nickname "Dragon-Slayer", talked about himself like an action hero and interpreted every situation as an opportunity to further aggrandize his almost wholly fictitious reputation. He was like that kid who comes to summer camp with the expensive sunglasses and on the first day tells everyone who will listen that he's a black-belt in jiujitsu, then a week later everyone finds out this is bullshit and a week after that this kid wets his pants in the mess hall and by the end of camp so many people are lining up to take a poke at this kid that he won't come out of his cabin after supper.

the past is right behind us

Didn't watch much of the hockey game last night -- what a train wreck. And here I thought that kind of thing only happened in Philadelphia.

abstract

C gave me a hard time about this at group last night, saying (repeatedly) that she "didn't get it" and providing much stink-face along the way. It goes with with a story about a spinning chair and a witch in a river.

this is not a map

A bit heavy today, all in the middle, after three pints of Guinness last night. This is where I say something wise about getting older. But all I can think about is going to the pool last weekend, floating on flutter boards with C, while she described the noise of the shapes around us (no glasses, I couldn't see), these gangs of little girls who jumped and screamed and looked, when in the water, like octopuses made of hair. They had no middle, these girls, no bodies, no torsos -- just blurred ribbons of limbs, all looping arms and legs. Then the power failed, and for a few seconds it was wonderful darkness, before the lifeguards rounded us up at the edge of the pool.

monday morning cake

Someone (well, someone's mom) sent me a video to watch with my morning coffee. The plot was a little thin (these are all my stickers, these are all my toys) but I enjoyed the characters and dialogue. Thanks, Shawn!

The Incredible Print Show ...

... is up and running at artstream studios. Fifty artists, all work under $400. Most work under $50. Every type of printmaking imaginable, on all sorts of materials. On from May 1st to the end of June.

parading as agents of progress

Fred Astaire from Easter Parade. Sorry, I didn't have time for Judy Garland.

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*Gifted* to a little girl named Winnifred, who lives just up the street.

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Just watched The Reader. If you're looking for a narrative on the personal level, a story about secrets and shame and the way the past just hangs around, then you'll probably like this. C did. But if you're expecting something cathartic on the problem of evil (read: Nazis), then it just might make you mad. Ray Fiennes is tortured and Kate Winslet is naked, as always.

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Fern's sister. Seriously.

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C is very excited about the new Star Trek movie. Apparently, it's just two hours of Kirk and Spock eating cake!

passport into heaven

Jealous much?

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In other news: I watched my umbrella collapse into itself this morning, its spindles like broken spider legs, and then the rain *really* picked up. Of course, I was on a bridge.

a japanese ghost story

Last night, at writing group, I told a Japanese ghost story.

card drawing

A recent drawing for a sympathy card. These are incredibly tough to do (which is why the store-bought stock is all flowers and psalms).

okay but ...

Fine, but why is the doll going?

Mayday, May Day, *hierarchy*

Stormed all night. This morning: dark, soaked. Little black birds with coloured badges on their wings hopped around in the grass. Earthworms stretched out for death on the sidewalk, pink and grey and suddenly nothing. No clouds of midges until just before the office, the wind was something to turn into. I dug this picture out from an old pile, I have no more memory of it other than a vague sense of dread.

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The Illustration-Friday theme this week is *hierarchy*. And while it's easy enough to find clear lines to the usual suspects ...

... family (that's me on the left) ...

... social ...

... physical ...

... spiritual ...

... I think we all know that the only hierarchy that matters is the permanent iconography, the never-ending cool of the tragically doomed.

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Took this book out of the library, and inside it I found this postcard ...


Poor Mikko. They mooched so much that he didn't even have enough for a stamp. All he had left was the information about where the books come from. I always knew Finland was up to something.

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Alles klar, Herr Kommissar?