on dishonesty

cigar-tin story #56; one of the illustrations for the stories mentioned here.

* * * * *

Yes, I'm still pissed off.

Or perhaps just *more* pissed off.

It was just a few days ago that I posted a major bitch parade -- in the form of an open letter -- about a literary journal called The Antigonish Review. Now it seems I'm forced to stomp all over the same old ground, only this time it's about a literary journal called Grain.

Like The Antigonish Review (or TAR, as it's coloured in my mind), it really doesn't matter what I send to Grain. They are never going to publish it. Full stop. Stories about growing up on the prairies, about small towns and their characters, stories about youth and arrogance, about doomed relationships, coming-of-age age stories, life-affirming stories, dark-hole stories of nihilism and despair, magical fucking realism ... all of this is just inconvenient noise to the editors at Grain. Christ how I've tried. I could send them bubble envelopes filled with sloshing pints of my own blood -- they'd just put on dishwashing gloves and start fishing around for the self-addressed stamped envelope. Fine. Never mind that we should be some kind of not-far-enough-removed retarded cousins or something; I *did* grow up in the same fucking province, after all.

Yes, fine, fine. Reject away. But what I *really* don't like is getting that rejection slip just three weeks after I submitted to you. Three fucking weeks! Everyone knows that a literary magazine -- the efficiency equivalent of three giggling five year-olds getting dressed for kindergarten -- can't do *anything* in under six months.

Listen: if you're not going to read the stuff that people send you, then just fucking say so. Full stop. Just say: we are not accepting submissions at this time. Besides being honest (and polite), it allows people like me to waste our postage elsewhere.

Some people will say that I shouldn't be writing these sorts of things, because I can ill afford to make enemies or burn bridges or whatever you call it when you have to take shabby treatment like it's just more bad weather. Honestly: whatever. It's not like they'll even notice my book when it comes out, let alone review it. And even if they did, who would read the review anyway?

p.s. You should personally apologize to the tree that shed its inch of skin for the subscription form you so thoughtlessly stuffed into the envelope as well.

grey and blue and black and white

untitled; pen and ink on math paper, illo for a story.

Reading The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby . Books about reading other books are a bit like finishing a bottle of multivitamins before it expires -- good for you in a generalized, who-gives-a-shit kind of way. I wanted to get Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays by Zadie Smith or Lowboy by John Wray, and of course the library's computer told me they were IN before I experienced the usual double-psyche of finding them nowhere on the shelves. Or the to-be-shelved carts. Or at the desk. Psyche! Psyche!

Anyway, the Hornby book isn't so bad. At least he isn't precious about literature ... in fact, he spends a great deal of time explaining why other things -- like televised football, for example -- get in the way, or just move him more.

* * * * *

Came home from the studio last night, gave Oona a late feed at 11 and for once I think we all had a decent sleep. The payback, naturally, came when I found myself taking her downstairs at 5:30 am because she decided to get up early. Psyche! Nice surprise in the bathroom when I felt something larger and crunchier than usual between my toes, some artfully arranged cat shit spread lovingly around the entrance to the litter box. One piece was downright fucking poignant, hanging in two halves over the entrance ledge, held together by nothing more than some digested hair. A lovely break from the usual grinding bits of peed-on kitty litter shards embedded in my never-clean-again feet.

* * * * *

Just a few days after recognizing the relative mildness of winter thus far, it's all gone to shit. Snow storms, wickedly cold mornings, colder than a witch's tit. Minus twenty Celsius here today, a walk in the park compared to the minus thirty they're getting up the road in Ottawa. I'm wearing longjohns under lined jeans and I can still feel it.

Oh: and I almost forgot this.

groove is in the heart (and the mail)

Sometimes, these things just write themselves: this is a hand-drawn card from my good friend Susan, which I got in the mail along with many American stamps, as part of a wee swap we did. I needed American stamps (for the self-addressed, stamped envelopes that accompany manuscripts I send to the States) and she wanted a new journal/deskplanner. I sent her one with a fox on it.

A detail.

The whole image. Mixed media, no more than 5x3 inches.

The image on the journal, one of those purse-sized numbers (although I don't know if Susan is a purse kinda gal). She wondered how I got the canvas to stick so well ... the answer is, I didn't; I just painted the picture right on the book. The little white bleed is from the texture of the cover. Thanks, Susan!

* * * * *

It seems like I'm always writing about my friend Kristal M these days, but when she's having a show I'm not going to resist. Here's wishing I was in Singapore on February 20th!

{Kristal Melson's first solo exhibition in Singapore, confetti in my eyes, showcases a body of work developed within a time frame of 29 days. Her works utilise colour palletes and graphical volumes as a means of detailing observed human forces, and the exerted pressures that follow. Through the use of jagged shapes and impassioned coloured pencil strokes, her illustrations appeal to our primal instincts by appearing unpretentious, honest and harsh. // Kristal’s work has been shown at galleries in both Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia. // To purchase exhibited artworks, please contact Ray: ray@29cornflakes.com / +65 97858613 // Exhibition opening event happens on 20 Feb, at 4pm. Artist signing and appearance begins at 5pm. // Supporting acts from the 29 Cornflakes roster include: Nick Chim; Vargus Pike // This event is hosted & curated by 29 Cornflakes. For more information, contact daren@29cornflakes.com or ray@29cornflakes.com.}

An Open Letter to The Antigonish Review

leopard girl; pen and ink on a page from an old math textbook; drawing for an illustrated novella.

Dear TAR,

Got your rejection letter yesterday. Same as all the other ones. Yep, I'm starting to get the picture.

To be honest, it doesn't sting so much anymore. I know I'll find my true love, in some other magazine or collection, some fine fall day. There are so many shiny fish in the sea. We're simply two kids at the same small-town dance, eyeing each other from across the Legion Hall. Or perhaps just me eyeing you. And you're never, ever going to say yes, no matter how many times I ask you, or how good the band is. I get that. There's just something about my face, my hair, my stupid shoes that you will never, ever accept. I get it (and don't worry: I'm not going to start circling your house in my pickup truck, waiting for the upstairs light to come on).

What I *don't* get is why you have to send back my manuscript with the first page ripped off. What, do you think I can reuse this? Do you think I have a whole stack of stories just sitting there, waiting to be reunited with their first pages? WTF!!??

If I sent you a cake, would you send it back with all the icing licked off? If I sent you some gloves, would you cut off all the fingers? If I sent you a Barbie, would you send it back with no head?

Jesusfuckingchrist woman, it's a bit cold, don't you think?

Just the pitiless note will be fine. Thank you.

Sincerely,
DJB

p.s. Soon none of this will matter anyway.

rain ... rain will tear me apart (again)

untitled; 6 x 9.25 inches, pen and ink on pages from an old math text book.

Big big rain today so the parka was pointless. Darker than hell, too. The wind was manageable until the causeway but then it was either me or the umbrella. C rather caustically remarked that it would be a fine day to own rubber boots. Yes it would, but the world just doesn't care about the few size fifteen bears out there.

Reached into the pocket of my rain jacket and found this.

It's either a butterfly or a nattily-hatted woman opening her coat.

* * * * *

Little article in the NYT about the fine citizens of New Hampshire and their growing resentment over the healthcare bill. Hoping that new senator in Massachusetts will just kill the thing. Because they don't like the government making them buy health insurance, and all the small businesses will go broke picking up their end, and the government is getting too big, and the whole damn thing is just un-American.

I'm only starting to understand that 'American' means: leave us alone (unless we're scared, and then you can tell us to do anything).

* * * * *

Watched Control this weekend, C's pick. A bio-pic of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis. Just really, really well done.

* * * * *

Bone dead tired these days, the first time this winter like it's seemed I could just lie down in the road. In the bath last night I woke myself snoring.

* * * * *

Celebrity Rehab is back, much to C's enjoyment. Amazingly, there are people on this show who look worse than Mackenzie Phillips.

KM

Got a lovely surprise in the mail the other day, all the way from Singapore (how great are their stamps?), sent by my fabulous friend Kristal M.

Two XL t-shirts for a guy who needs all the layers he can get. The original artwork is KM's, and besides being an infinitely talented illustrator, she pulled the silkscreens herself!

I've written about Kristal M before, usually when she's hanging out with the stars ...



or drawing her own universe ...



or publishing her fabulous work ...



I love having KM as a friend. And Oona thinks she stellar, too!

winter

Supposedly, Monday (or Blue Monday) was the nadir of winter, the most depressing day of the year. And while January-February is never a walk in the park (mostly because all the trees are frozen and barren and the ground is choked with snow), it really hasn't been that bad this year. I *thought* it was going to be awful, back in November, when it came on like a drunk looking for a fight, but since then it's more or less gone down for a nap. No massive snow banks, no face-freezing, no storms of wind. So now it's just the everyday sort of drudgery, with slippery sidewalks and weak sun and darkness wanting to rush in.

bathtime

Before bathtime ...

... and after. If only warm soapy water could make me so content (actually, it sometimes does).

More Bear Than Brains

Carried a dining table (yes: carried, as in by hand) from our house to my studio on Sunday morning, a distance of 1.2 kilometres. A big thank you to the low, wrought-iron fence on Cherry Street, the cement front steps at the corner of Division and Main, and the several fire hydrants which allowed me to set down a corner and take the weight off, if only momentarily.

And *why* was I hauling a table across the Sunday morning cityscape like some kind of apocalypse-shocked peasant? Because C finally found her new dining room set, on Saturday afternoon, at a store downtown. Not only that but, on the way home from Oona's swimming time, C bought some orchids that she'd been (apparently) thinking about all week. Banner day! Screw you Christmas! Needless to say, however, that the old dining room table, which must have most egregiously slandered *someone* at *some* point to earn so much malice, had to go. Immediately.

Ah, the things I've schlepped this past year. Like the six-foot Christmas tree from the corner of Bath and Princess (2.1 kilometres). Or the night I carried home an 8 by 4 foot banquet table from my former studio (1.2 kilometres). Or my seven-foot iron easle. Never mind the various chairs, boxes and about a thousand bags of groceries (and hundreds of gallons of wine).

All of which begs the question: why am I not skinnier?

C says I look disheveled. Rumpled.

The unwanted new/old table looks great in the studio, though. I tightened up the legs and it's very sturdy. And it's a welcome replacement for the paint-splattered card table that I was using before.

(I had bought the card table -- after a long search, not a lot of places carry card tables anymore -- when I was going out with a girl I'll call X. My apartment had a small kitchen, so we usually ate in the living room coffee table while watching television. Trouble was, X could not negotiate the distance from her plate to her mouth. She was like a fish at the bottom of the boat trying to spoonfeed itself oxygen. I couldn't stand it. I got the card table so we could set it up in the living room. I'm sure we used it at least once. I think.)

Anyway, all of this just to say that if you need a trunk or a piano or a desiccated corpse moved in the middle of the night and you don't want to hire a truck (or the mob), I just might be your man.

Postscript: I should say thank you, as well, to whoever smashed the beer bottle at the street-level entrance to the studio. I see you're drinking Stella Artois now, you upscale rapscallion you. And one last thank you to the tike-sized blonde woman who interrupted my going-to-get-coffee, Sunday-morning thoughts with an exuberant Jesus loves you, sir!. That's good to know, considering how he's never returned any of my calls.

Oh: and today's word is habit.

Oona Balloona (doesn't care about new tables)

Well, it's Friday, and since I'm pretty depleted in the chit-chat department, I might as well put up some pictures of Ol' Giggles At Ghosts before Grandma starts sending me hate mail.

Man, what a goofball. At this rate it's going to be, like, eighteen years before she has gainful employment and moves out of the house. I mean, come on.

* * * * *

C is especially crazy and frantic today. About two months ago she decided that she no longer liked our dining room table (take that, dining room table! no more BFF for you!). Since then she's switched the dining room and kitchen table (and all the rest of the furniture in the house -- about thirty times, but that's another story) as a provisional solution while she scoured area stores for an upgrade. And she thought she had found one, on Wednesday, at JYSK (Whatever, I said). But when she ordered it, JYSK called back to say that they were really low on stock, and that the stock they did have was damaged, and ... not so much with the wish fulfillment. So today she's *really* worked up, so desperate that she's hunting the second-hand ads and making appointments to go see stuff. Finally I had to stop taking her calls. She'll be completely unhinged by the time I get home, but she probably won't hit me if I'm holding the baby.

undead, shopping

Trojans; mixed media on a journal cover, 5.5 x 2.5 inches.

Not a lot of sleep for this bear last night ... didn't feel well going to bed and then every time I'd start to drift off, C would start snoring or Oona would wake up. I wouldn't have minded except for the whole utterly-exhausted thing.

Utterly exhausted after spending all afternoon shopping in the burbs, culminating in a stop at Zellers. Yes, I said Zellers.

Zellers is where merchandise goes to die but instead lives on in some kind of relentless and everlasting gloom, some kind of weird zombie kingdom where actors like Rob Estes and Lisa Rinna seem like actual movie stars because their horrible horrible videos float near the top of the bargain bin, where an entire wall is given over to beige plastic bins to hide the fact that the store is low on stock, where the mattress for the display futon has completely slid off and sits like a folded poop on the filthy muddy floor, where the chairs for the display table set have cracks in the cheap veneer, and where the cashier will always (always!) give you the thinnest, smallest bag possible for your purchase. Honestly, is that a bag or a condom with handles?

So of course we ate at the restaurant. Average age of the clientele? 103. I had the hot chicken sandwich. It was reminiscent of foam board with gravy on it. Plus some carrot chips. The place had a faux-fifties theme going on, which I guess is popular with the blue-hair set, although C pointed out that they the music was at least twenty years off target, which is like asking my mom to like the Ramones.

Sarah Sands Phillips

Numb; 2006; 
33” x 24 inches; oil and mixed media on canvas; 
*sold*
.

This painting -- by Sarah Sands Phillips -- is in our living room. It's dark, lovely, fits perfectly into our small, understated space.

I meant to blog about Sarah's work before Christmas but I simply ran out of time. I don't have any more time now but she sits there, rather accusingly, on a list and, like the Primo Levi title asks, If Not Now, When?.

I rather like these two as well ...

Wounds
; 2006
; 48” x 48”
; oil and mixed media on wood; 
$500

Being Back Together
; 2007; 
48” x 48”; 
oil on Canvas; 
*sold*

run resolution run

C did the Resolution Run at the Y on the weekend ... thought I'd better put these up before all those resolutions ran away ... {above} C and her friend Tabitha before the race (and no, they didn't run with the stroller, I stayed behind with Napster doing my own laps around the block) ...

... and the girls after the race. Then Tabitha ate all my cereal bars.

* * * * *

C *so* wanted the cat in the picture.

* * * * *

And now, for no particular reason ...

BAD NAMES FOR A NEW DAYCARE

Miss Dropsalots

We Play Crying Games

Flava Flav's Cave of Babes

Ciao, Baby

The Playlatariate

Ice, Ice Babies

Edges

Dante's In-fun-no

Little Boy Blues

Kid Naps

give that girl a ladder and a cause

Ahh ... Joan Jett, you irrepressibly androgynous rascal.

* * * * *

Almost flagged down a passing cop car this morning while walking to work.

There's a house in our neighbourhood (about three blocks away) that's a bit of a crazy house. Not *really* crazy, as in some old lady who comes out to throw cats at you, but crazy in a slow-mayhem kind of way. Two years to finish shingling the other half of the roof. Multiple ladders that seem permanently tied to the gutters. An uncovered motorcycle in the driveway. In winter. Various large and new-looking children's toys and equipment, scattered around the yard. A plywood addition. Tarp. Tools. A boot. Some wood. Only vague ideas about who lives there.

This morning a very angry and rough-looking girl (thin jacket, no hat, no gloves, tight black jeans over rooster legs) was circling the house and shouting. Jackie! Jack-ie! Jackie, are in you in there! Answer me! Let me in! Just tell me yes or no! Just tell me! YES OR NO, YES OR NO! And then she started moving ladders around, like she was going to climb up to a window.

I looked. And looked. And kept walking.

Around the corner, half-up the next block, along came a police car. I looked at their faces in the windshield, turned back to the house at the corner, motioned with my shoulders, then looked at them again. The cops looked back. And kept going.

I'll pass by on my way home again. If the house is a smoking ruin, I will not be surprised.

the rules 'til now

And there you have it: the entire sum of my knowledge. Too much for a t-shirt, not enough for a pizza flyer.