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Showing posts from February, 2010

goodbye february (go quickly)

So: last week, MIA. Most of it anyway. And here it was supposed to be a week where I finally caught up to things, where all the lists started ticking down. Instead I got Norwalk. It came to me, in its pneumatically poisoned way, on Tuesday night. Like Dante's version of waterworld, only internalized (and then not). Geysers of misery. Someday it would be fun to make a list of one's worst nights. I don't know if this would be top ten material, but it would definitely crack the twenty mark. It was a fitting episode to close out the month, which has lived up to its usual billing of just plain awful. Every year I try to brace myself for how bad it's going to be, and every year it wildly exceeds my expectations. Someday I'll just run away from it, hide myself on some beach. (By the way: when laid up/down like this, reading about castaways is quite helpful -- you've never got it quite as bad as some scurvy-riddled fool who had to scratch out five or ten years clubbing

water torture

Well: so much time spent screaming things from the inside out and never, ever, making a sound. Take the swimming pool, for example. The stalls in the family change room are super fantastic for all sorts of despair, these five-foot squares of charmless concrete real estate where your comfort and dignity are heavily discounted, all of this going back and forth to stuffed lockers and changing your clothes while hopping on one foot and taking these gruesomely half-hearted showers and that chlorine tang in your nostrils and the floors oozing with some miasma of discarded body water and spit. Just far, far too much nudity from everyone involved. I'm sorry, was that your ass in my face or my face in your ass? The place is surround sound, which is just excellent for the many decibels of screaming and crying children in all the stalls around you. Oona farting wetly in the background. And there I was, about to oh-so-gingerly pick up some seeping, filthy towels off the floor when C suddenly

the only possible answer is bacon

So: the weekend. Friday night pesto-tuna bake, a glorified tuna casserole that C will only eat *some of* because she's currently only eating vegetables, or at least mostly vegetables, and saying things like, "I just want to eat vegetables." I've been to this vegetable country before and it has many gyms and yoga places and is constantly populated with women running half-marathons. The supermarkets are all called Good Intentions and they only sell vegetables and hard things made out of whole wheat. Clear blue skies, new outfits and fresh shining skin: it's really a lovely place, bursting with dreams, and while no one stays for very long, everyone always looks forward to coming back as soon as possible.

and then there were three

Well, this is all that's left: cigar-tin stories #33, 52 and 50. All the rest are sold. I'll be doing a whack more for the writer's festival in the fall, these ones with brand new stories inside (believe me, I have enough to go around). That might be the end of it though, because (at least according to the excitable Asian guy at the cigar store) the government is bringing in new regulations to ban flavoured tobacco products, as it's deemed too tempting for the kids. Yes, once again, it's kids who ruin everything. * * * * * Meanwhile, *someone* was practicing her own brand of amateur mentalism at six o'clock in the morning.

dirty, secret valentine

So ... I came home on Friday night to find *this* on the front step. Uh- huh . "Is there anything you'd like to tell me?" I asked C. She acted confused. "What are you talking about?" I produced the note. "Who's Ivan?" I demanded. "Is this what he calls you, his 'Talking Computer'? Is that his pet name for you?" C read the note and laughed. Laughed! Another Valentine's Day ruined. Ruined! Damn you, Ivan! Focus!

odd man out

It seems like I'm always going off against the current Big Excitable Thing, whether it's a scare like H1N1 or the forced lovefest of Christmas or the dirty circus they call the Olympics . I don't know if it's something about me in particular or people from Saskatchewan in general but I just can't set my face on some sort of ragdoll grin and look the other way. I mean, the paper this morning had two whole sections devoted entirely to the Olympics, plus the front page, plus the first eleven pages of the front section (the first real news story was about Colonel Russell Williams, our newest homegrown serial killer, just an hour or so down the highway). I just don't know what, exactly, we are celebrating. Amateur athletics? Well, if you think Jarome Iginla needs a gold medal to toss in his vault filled with millions of dollars, then good for you. And if you think kids from inner-city ghettos pursue careers in alpine skiing, then you're simply deluded. And whe

I almost missed it.

Blame it on Pain Week (Day Five, btw) but I *almost* missed one of my favourite holidays: the anniversary of Buster Douglas putting out the lights on Mike Tyson. Twenty years ago yesterday. Forget the Miracle on Ice; this was Belarus beating Sweden at the 2002 winter olympics. Times one hundred. This was No Chance versus Cakewalk. This was some lazy Saturday afternoon sports viewing, broadcast from Tokyo, that suddenly turned into something that can still make me cry.

day three and the birds don't sing

People are always going on and on about how great a nuclear winter would be but if yesterday was any kind of facsimile then I'm thinking I'll pass : dead sun, dead sky, stick-figure trees, dirt-smeared snow, torn bits of trash drifting across the empty parking lots. Too many guys with thick moustaches running around. I called in sick. Of course, all this really did was 'liberate' me for tons of Oona time ... but we didn't mind. Later on I made chilli. It seemed -- to me at least -- that chilli would be a good incubator for all the vitamins and medicines and herbs I'm taking. And today my nose does seem less radioactive.

pain week

Day Two of what I'm calling Pain Week , I'm sitting here with a kleenex stuffed up my left nostril, struggling to breathe and for some reason my teeth ache and my back hurts and my groin hurts and I've got a million not-so-fun things to do (although certain agents out there claim they should be fun, as in "Oh you design guys, you have so much fun!"), and between late feedings and three a.m. feedings and certain diminutive dictators demanding to be held and carried and generally celebrated in the new fantastic day that is 4:45 am ... (big wet breath) ... I figure I'm getting about four hours of sleep, which explains the headache I've had for about two weeks now, although I'm also suspicious of this pheromone thing that C has hooked up in the dining room, it's supposed to keep the cats from pissing against the back door and otherwise going crazy, although just last night one jumped up on the dining room table in the middle of dinner (I made pork) a

just push me over

So. This birthday thing. Many of you were insistent that I do *something* to celebrate, so I left work a few minutes early and went through downtown on my walk home and bought myself one of those five-dollar-vanilla-latte things that C is always having and I looked at videogames (bought none) and sale items at the Gap (bought two shirts, marked down to ten from fifty) and loads of comic books and graphic novels at the geek store (bought two books, one for the art and one for the foul language) and generally tried to take my time and appreciate not being loaded down with groceries for once and breathe God's good air and all that. People downtown are either too pretty or rather monstrous. The girl behind the counter at the Gap was so obviously a horse that I wanted to reach over and pet her nose. There was *some* kind of girl at the comic book store too (I was afraid to look), which made all the nerds in the back around the gaming table act especially loud and awkward, arguing about

burrthdeh

Je suis une monstre by Richard Rossetto; pen and ink on paper. This monster is part of a little book of drawings Ritchie put together called "Je m'appelle Richard". It's automatic-drawing stuff, which perfectly suits Ritchie in the is-that-guy-having-a-seizure? kind of way. Ritchie is the father of my niece Stella , and we have one of his drawings in Oona's bedroom. * * * * * It's my birthday today. To be honest, I don't pay much attention anymore. And what I *really* don't do is have one of those take-stock-of-your-life kind of days, because it's true of just about any of us that if we look at the ground hard enough, all we'll see is snow. * * * * * Why do I have to go to a meeting? Why can't you just tell me? Is there going to be any cake?

I dream olympic.

Uh oh. Don't look now but it's the Olympics. Most of the time they're farther up the street, making their godawful noise about something (money? power? genetics? *what* exactly?) but this year they've moved right into the damp basement we call Vancouver, so they can crank up the heat until it's unbearable for the rest of us, and go around slamming doors, and have parties pretty much all the time. Close your eyes and you'll feel the floor shake. And how awful it is, for those of us who never wanted them in the house to begin with, and just wish they'd grow up already. Let the grinning circus begin. Thankfully, our satellite subscription is just about to run out. And if I'm very selective with my radio listening, and quickly rip out the 'special' sections of the newspaper, and stay away from any news feeds on the internet, then I should be okay. But if the clerk at the liquor store asks me one more time if I'd like to contribute a toonie towar