Knitting Ferocious Spiders

Nothing like being kicked in the ass by a tenacious case of the flu, just a couple of days after Christmas. I've been shivering under blankets and whimpering for the last three days. What remains of the illness is still making me a little achy, but I am no longer delirious or suffering vertigo, so that's something. This is not what I meant when I said I'd like some more quiet time at home by myself; but those Holiday Elves, always working with the tools they've got to give you what you want.... Bless their viral ways. "What's this, Ebola?" "No! Don't give 'im that, that's fatal. Besides, it's too rare 'round here to waste." "Fair enough." "I have some chicken pox!" "We gave that to him back in '91, during the Christmas recital, don't you remember?" " I'm not the one in charge of keeping notes." "No, but seems to me you are in charge of --" "Focus, fellows! W...

I like stripping. I do. It's just that there are certain factors which are impeding my ability to have a good time during my last month of peeling for the masses. Problems which walk, and talk and have minds of their own. Arg.

But read. Oh, and maybe write. This dissemination of power, octopussing out from the cap of the Americas, that crown-dome of the US of A, is really blowing me down. Merry fucking Christmas. Besides the continuity of it all (none of it is new, but now just so blatant and shameless), and digressing from the arguments that it may be the beginning of the end, the decline of an empire, we still have to live with it, festering all the way through the operations of a global economy, and constantly meddling, muddling and pounding us like a pestle in mortar. It's never about anything but control, and the will to dominate: imperialism cannot really disguise itself, but remains so laughable as it benefits such a small designation of any society, which remains in power as even the arms of its influence are just as bereaved and ravaged as its oppressed. Those lower classes kept poor, annexed, ghettoed, and then used as cannon fodder and filler. Michael Moore had something in that anti-Bush pro...

If I ever start posting lascivious pictures of slutty boys (even if they're of me) or glossy shots of the idealized male form , I'd like someone to come find me, and kick a petrified banana into my eye sockets. Please.

This man makes me rather happy.

I feel a little woozy after spending the better part of two hours at the travel agent with Mustardseed, booking our trip to New Zealand. Light headed after finalizing those life changing flights. Thank god for Italy and those beautiful bottles of Ripasso. I can travel a less threatening way: just a little snort, darling; barely a bottle, please. Something to calm my nerves. Better. So much to wrap my head around. So much to plan. It's very exciting. A few days in Hong Kong for the Lantern Festival, then on to a new home. Committed. I'm committed now, with the physical modicum of money. So small and yet so large. I leave Canada on the 8th of February, touch Anchorage, then down in that old bastion of the British Empire, stay a few days, and then on to Auckland. I have no idea when I will return. The next step is a flight to Australia, booked for the 20th of October, 2006. This is not like Paris . I have some money. Not as much as I would like, but then, no one in this blasted s...

My father’s family goes quite mad for Christmas, though my father himself doesn’t. The best way to describe their home during the holidays is to say that the whole lit and tinselled season comes into the home, swells like a giant balloon, and explodes, covering every wall and surface. It gets into every corner, takes over every stair... in a homey, inclusive sort of way. There are two Christmas trees up, lights about all the windows. This year there are white rain deer aglow on the front lawn, a red nose blinking defiantly on the nose of Rudolf. Santa shines at the end of the drive. Bears in red hats, angels and children, manifestations of a pantheon of festive spirits (and presumably the Holy Ghost, haunting somewhere), fill the shelves, sit on the steps, blink out from snow heaped, wintery scenes on mantles. The dogs get snowflake kerchiefs. The nog flows easy. There was a time when I thought this entire set-up some special kind of hell. Maybe a Buddhist vision: materialism gone crit...

Aeon Flux only barely resembles the wonderful strangeness of the cartoon which spawned it, though it wasn't nearly as bad as critics promised. The art direction was phenomenal. And the gadgets were super-cool. Now I want marbles that come when I whistle and blow things up. For Christmas.

"You don't tell them your real name do you?" "Of course not. I have a stage name." "So what is it?" "..." "That's pretty cheesy." "It's a cheesy industry. What's better though are the stories I make up when I'm talking to people." "You just make shit up?" "I need to pass the time somehow. It's personally entertaining." "And the best thing that you told someone?" "That I didn't really have a stable home growing up because we moved around a lot." "That's true though." "Yes, but it gets better. The guy asked me why we relocated so often." "And?" "Real estate fraud; Mom and Dad were a couple of crooks. You'd be surprised at how much money you can make scamming the poor, unsuspecting folks of sleepy, Northen Ontario towns. The downside being, just when you start to get settled -- bam! -- it's time to grift the rubes, ...

Thanks to the release of the new movie by Ang Lee , the New Yorker has reposted the original short story . Ah, cowboys falling in love. I read the story a couple of years ago, one summer afternoon by a lake, I think (as all good humanist short-stories should be read; or, if it is winter, by a fire with hot chocolate near by). I teared up then. When I read it over again last night, I teared up again. At its essence is a straight forward enough tale, complicated by the very regular dilemmas that stand in the way of intimacy (mostly communication) but the most poignant element of the story is that of language, or the lack of facility with language. The young men are constantly obstructed by a paucity of words to describe what they feel for one another, not just to one another, but also themselves. It's the frustration of being a couple of uneducated, rural lads who have only ever been given the tools to work, and drink, and fight; and make those decisions which would emulate the day t...

I cheated and used another prefab template from Blogger to tide me over on my journey to web-design-savvy. Who knows how long that could take, after all? Besides the formatting issues with the old one, those hovering dots (that had seemed so attractive when I set it up) were starting to annoy me. Clean black, that’s the way to go for now. Funny how there are some aesthetic biases that just don’t let go, even after you leave the drama club behind.

For years after moving to the T-dot, having spelunked my way down into the dark, early morning recesses of the city's after hours recreations, I was confronted with the slithery, sideways advances of both men and women. "Ooooh... such a little innocent. I want to corrupt you." I don't know if it was true, even then, but what's amusing now is that, after all the prodigious drinking, a good stretch of stumbling about in an aromatic, herbal haze of blue smoke, and then an enthusiastic relationship with a raver's chemistry set, even now, standing around stripped down to my skivvies or less under red flashing lights, I am still fielding comments and advances based on the same theme. This, better than anything, exemplifies the slightly fantastic nature of my work. Also, that I continue to look younger than my age.

A Short List of Things That Have Inspired Over This Past Year, including all that which has tickled, tackled or otherwise traumatized my poor little brain. In no particular order. Last Exile Firefly The Tulse Luper Suitcases Battlestar Galactica The Information Blogs Philip Glass The Relationship between Drugs and Technology Umberto Eco All Those Friends Serenity Losing Friends Ambitions Catherine the Great Experiencing the Symmetry of Coincidences Break, Blow, Burn Understanding that there is More to Absolutely Everything Nabokov (again) Carnivàle Realizing that even the Best of Dreams can be Spoilt Ladytron Felix da Housecat The Secret History of Square Pegs Fury Brian Greene Niel Gaimen Full Metal Alchemist the Oxford Interpol Sunrise over Lake Ontario Kissing One That You Love Gifts Given Lost Batman Begins The Edge Watching a Very Beautiful Boy Slay You with Bedroom Eyes While He Takes Off His Clothes Iceburgs floating out to sea, every last one.

This blog needs a redesign. I realize this as I access it from Cobra's computer, and it loads all funky; and stupid looking. It's time. (I look around.) It's time I learn HTML, grab the fucker by the horns, get a host, and launch myself into the universe of Movable Type. What better project to combat holliday cheer?

Although I keep politics out of this blog for good reason, in honor of the upcoming shotgun election , I thought I should announce my support for the only platform I feel has any value at all . Finally, some mindless rhetoric I can be proud of.

Body Worlds 2 at the Onatrio Science Centre This afternoon was spent regarding dead bodies . While we can thank the Swedish for freeze-drying them , it is the Germans we can congratulate for learning how to turn them into plastic. These are the real undead, or at least, the un-decomposed, halted on their journeys back to the elements of their creation. We can now watch them, suspended, as edifying entertainment: foisting a javelin; illusionally vivisected and spread; sometimes, sliced laterally and fanned into a deck of cross sections; and all the while imitating, or somehow referencing, the life that was there at one time, if life were to continue without skin, or fat... or movement.... Besides the ethical and moral quandaries that were disturbingly absent from the exhibit, so was the element which science is, although not incapable of, so often guilty of voiding from experience: a sense of reverence. The spectacle was purely clinical, and addressed innovation much more readily than ...

I had this text message bonanza with my sister yesterday. M. Spider : Knock knock. Turtle : Who's there? S: Bananas. T : Bananas who? S : I dunno. That's all I got, yo. T : You SUPPOSE to say knock knock again and then repeat banana several times then say orange. Don't you know ANYTHING? S: Orange ya glad I didn't say banana? T: There you go. You're not hopeless after all. So not until feb? Forgot that Chinese New Year is later or need more money? S: More money is defiantly in order. Life has been exceedingly strange lately... T: Details! If not here then in an email. S: An extensive email is defiantly due on both sides. T : I have an excuse. I'm writing my final paper. But it's due this week and then i free! S: You want that I should give you World of Warcraft for Chirstmas? T: Oh, that could be very bad for my school work. I don't know!? S: I thought I should check with you first. I really want to start playing myself... but it would be good t...

Sometimes we can't read the signs.

Even after a great deal of practice, the open bar is still my enemy. "Just one second." "Aren't we on our way out?" "I just need a martini for the walk to the door." "Of course! What was I thinking?" At least it was for a good cause .

There was a poem that struggled its way out into the world, then had a hard time of it; ultimatley, it didn't pull through. Not all of it, but part of it worked. Now it's just searching for that right way to be whole again. From the Dissolution of Weapons Well, how about that for a yard ? Like any staging ground too big, too troublesome to be of any use, you can’t really manage it, no rubbish to see for the ruined. Monstrosities lumbered the earth through war to make it here. Machines full of toothsome gears gnashed the air; throats of ragged pipes swallowed the sky, just to collapse from their last bulimic expiration. There’s enough material there to rust a project right out of its process, a bone out of its socket. Junk for miles and overgrown the past materials, the functions of last days. We’ve come this far though, haven’t we? Out of the scrubland with tools, slabs, iron; and now wet sand towers crumbled by this old sun; each horizon a playground of failure. Is this how we...

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. It's never completely silent in here; there are always sounds that occupy the vast corridors. If it's not being broadcasted from a device outside, then the music starts internally. The orchestra of voices and instruments down in the bowels, the foundations from which all the structures build, has always been a busy entity, and it doesn't always take my direction. I suffer and enjoy what might be considered auditory hallucinations from time to time. I can hear the music plainly, keeping time independant, just behind everything else. Sometimes songs I didn't even know I knew, lyrics I thought forgotten singing back from the archives. I don't know why she swallowed that fly. And it is often undeniably silly. Usually, it comes out as a contrast, against whatever it is that I'm doing. Out to mangle my composure. There are parts of myself that find absolutley everything ridiculous. Perhaps she'll die. Yesterday it happene...