Month: February 2005

Categories
humor poetic

Bring Me A Dream

Two of my friends are down in Centralia today, doing some vintage clothes and antique shopping. They decided to go because they had both noticed, seperately, that the shopkeepers at these stores in Centralia are decidedly zombie-esque, and thought they could make a good day of both bargain and zombie hunting.

The names in the story are actually their really zombie-hunting aliases, at least for the day. So in a sense, this is all based on a true story … almost.

Oh, and I just threw in the robot thing to conform to Brief Lies standards. But I think it worked out pretty well. Also, Lee really does drive a Montclair. It’s pretty. On to the story. Enjoy.

————————

Bring me a dream
-Ahniwa Ferrari

Megan looked at the barren town over the rims of her sunglasses, eyeing the shop-fronts warily. A small cloud of dust rose from the street as her partner, D-Rock, pulled the car to a stop alongside the abandoned curb. The door of the Montclair swung open easily, and as she stepped out onto the sidewalk, a gust of wind blew against her face and pulled against the wide brim of her hat. D-Rock swung his door shut and walked up to stand next to her. He held out both hands, offering her a choice between the shotgun and the baseball bat.

“Such a gentleman,” she said, laughing, and took the bat. Today she preferred getting a little down and dirty.

D-Rock lowered his shades and eyed her up and down. Satisfied, he smiled. “Let’s rock this apocalypse.”

Megan gripped the bat, feeling its weight. She smiled back. “Let’s rock it twice.”

Having completed their mantra, they turned to the first antique shop on the street. Though outside the sun was bright like a spaghetti western, through the window the shop looked like it was covered in dusk. Old lamps rested fitfully, clothes hung on rusted wire hangers, and box upon box of old records lined one of the walls. They couldn’t see any movement inside, but that didn’t mean anything. They were used to this gig by now.

D-Rock lined up by the door and Megan stepped in front. As he began to nod to her, her foot was already through the door, cracking the frame and knocking it off one hinge. He raised an eyebrow at her, grinned a little, and pushed it open the rest of the way.

“Not bad for a Viscountess.”

“Yes. Well it’s not all social dancing and finishing school.”

“I guess not. Damn.”

He chuckled as she entered the shop, shook his head slightly, and followed her in, shotgun up and ready as his eyes adjusted to the murky light. They proceeded slowly, eyeing every garment and item suspiciously for movement. Megan sniffed the air, scowling.

“It doesn’t smell like death in here. Something’s wrong.”

“Maybe somebody already came? Did the job?”

“Don’t be daft. We’re the only zombie-hunters in the Northwest right now.”

“What about Dahlia and – oh right … they died.”

“They always were a bit careless. We’re not. Still, I don’t like this.” Megan frowned into the dark, rear of the shop. “This is the Viscountess Megan W. O’Leontiv the Second, and my partner Double Rock Apocalypse. If there are zombies in here, come out so I can knock your fucking heads off.”

“Language…”

“I can’t be a lady all the time. Not in this line of work.”

A sudden movement from behind the counter took them both by surprise. A man bobbed up and down slightly behind the register, the skin on his face half-rotted off. A few broken teeth hung limply from his gums as he opened his mouth and tried to form a word. The only word zombies seemed to know, “B … rrrrrrr … aaaaaiiiiiiiiii … nnnnnnnn … sssssssss.”

D-Rock pumped his shotgun and took aim, but too late. Megan’s bat was a blur as it swung through the air and struck with a sound, slightly metallic “THUNK” against the side of the zombie’s head. The head ripped off from the force, sending wires and bolts flying, and then glass as it crashed through the window and rolled onto the street outside. Sparks sputtered out from the vacuous neck-hole, and metal wires waved about like errant tentacles. Out on the street, the head mumbled another half-hearted “B…rr…a…….iiiii…eeeeeee-” and went silent.

“FUCK! Fucking hell! I knew it smelled wrong, D. It’s one of those fucking amusement park towns, forgotten about and abandoned, and they left all their little gadgets and toys here to rot.”

“So no zombies?”

“Nope. Nobody to zombify. Just a bunch of robots.”

“Well, fuck.”

“You said it. Let’s get out of here. Hey, what are you doing?”

“We’re here, we might as well make the most of it. Hey, check it out, a Chordettes LP.”

“Yeah, great. Bring me a dream. Oh hey, nice shoes …”

Categories
dance personal

Squared, Cubed, and Tikied

We were scheduled to meet the ladies at the Fenix Underground at 10:15. Being that we had to kick some ass at darts, and then finish our Guinness, and then wait to get money out of the ATM (I had done this before heading up to Seattle, but I guess no one else had thought ahead), we didn’t get there until about 10:45.

Fenix Underground is big. Big and in my opinion, pretty classy. Everyone in there seemed to be having a good time, and it wasn’t too packed, at least that early in the evening. We entered on ground level, and then went down the stairs. Having never been there before, I just tried to keep someone I knew in sight so that I didn’t get lost, abandoned and killed in some Seattle back-alley. Downstairs the music was pumping, there were light shows on every wall, and as people danced their shadows played in the light. It’s as much fun to watch silhouettes dance as it is people. We met up with our female cohorts, who had evidently had to put up with some unwanted male advances before we’d arrived, but who’d been having a grand old time without us nonetheless. Still, they were happy to see us, us them, and we immediately jumped out on the dance floor and got our respective grooves on. My groove goes a little like, “Bom-bom-bam-chica-chica-bom-chica-bom-bom-bam-bidda-bidda-bam-bidda-bom-bom-bop”. You know, but not in a porn music sort of way, which the word/sound “chica” always seems to invoke. Having practiced “dropping it like it’s hot”, I shook my bootie, to everyone’s delight, and we had a grand time.

I’d never been to a club with a date. I’d never really danced with a girl I liked outside of structured partner dancing (swing, tango, salsa etc). And frankly, I didn’t really like club dancing that much, until I had someone to do it with, and it became a whole lot more fun. I can see now how people pair up at clubs, if only because it’s a lot more fun to dance WITH someone than by yourself, and the tension can get sexual very quickly. I also think it’s the least constructive way to meet people ever, seeing as how you have no idea if you have anything in common other than you like to go grind it every now and then. But I guess for some, that doesn’t matter so much as what they got and how they can move it.

We spent a little over an hour at the Fenix, all told, which passed quickly. Then some of the girls wanted to move on, seeing as how we’d payed for an all-club pass, why stay at one? I would have been perfectly content staying there. I figure if you’re having a good time, why leave? But we left, anyway, and went to Tiki Bob’s. It sucked. The place was packed, so that walking from the entrance to a place to dance took five minutes, threading through hot sweaty people who either looked like they were wearing too much make-up or too much testosterone. Then we tried dancing, but kept getting bumped by people passing through the crowd. All the guys were wearing tight shirts and had very serious looks on their faces, as if by looking constipated they might attract a mate. The girls were, for the most part, in short halter-top style outfits and tight pants, sporting painted-on characterless faces and a frenzied need to exhibit gleaming in their eyes. If you can’t tell, I was a bit freaked out by the place, but tried to ignore the surroundings and just dance with the people I was with, which worked to a tolerable extent.

We didn’t stay there long, thankfully. Twenty to thirty minutes later we escaped into the crisp night air, breathed thankfully, and bought some really expensive sausages from a vendor set to rake in the dough from all the late-night partiers. We discussed going to another club, something to do with cowgirls (evidently someone wanted to ride the mechanical bull). But feet were sore, people were tired, it was after two in the morning, and we decided to call it a night. But not before we decided we’d hit Denny’s on the way home. Something I wasn’t ecstatic about, but I had four other people in the car I was driving, and by the time we got there some coffee and sugar to keep me awake was sounding very tempting. Better to be wired than dead on the side of the road, I always say. So we stopped about a half-hour south of Seattle, piled out of the car, and tumbled into Denny’s. Our other group met us there, and we sat around for a solid half-hour before our food got to us. You’d think that Denny’s management would realize that they’re going to get a crowd piling in just after two on a Saturday night / Sunday morning, but they seemed oblivious. So we were stuck with one, not overly competent server (he didn’t do too badly, really) serving about ten tables with a combination of about forty people. In a restaurant where everyone wants full coffee all the time, that’s not a good combination.

I chowed on my coffee and apple pie a la mode (I told you I wanted coffee and sugar), and felt much more awake afterwards, if slightly loopy. We chowed, we payed, we left, as often happens in Denny’s, and made our way back to Olympia without further adventure.

I doubt I’ll go up to Seattle every weekend to hit a club, but I did have a blast and I wouldn’t mind doing it again. Olympia has its share of clubs, but the best ones are all gay clubs, and sometimes it’s nice to get out of Dodge and try something new. Still, the nice thing about partying in Oly is that once the evening has wound its way down, you don’t have to drive an hour to get home. Thank god for Denny’s ….

Categories
dance personal

Pioneer, squared

So Saturday night we went up to Seattle, to Pioneer Square, to go to clubs and cause a ruckus. We succeeded admirably, I feel.

Two of my friends and I rode up together a little late, since I didn’t get off work until 6. We got to Seattle a bit after 8:00, and met our gang at the New Orleans for some good company and spicy jambalaya. We had to blow the joint before 9:00 because John Lee Hooker Jr was playing there, and they were charging an exorbitant cover to stay and listen. We had other plans, anyway.

The guys went to the Owl ‘N Thistle for some darts and Guinness. Which, of course, was Theo’s and my plan (mostly Theo), since we were really the only ones playing darts. I think all the guys had a good time, anyway. So Theo and I were playing a game of 501, and these two guys who had been watching us for awhile came up to me and asked if they could have the board when we’re done with our game. I had no idea how to respond, because the nice guy in me wants to get plowed over and say “Hey sure, of course” but really I didn’t want to give up the board yet because they only have the one real dart board and we had just started playing. So I stammered a bit, and then turned to Theo and asked him how he felt about trading off on games, and he turned to them and responded, “How about we play you for it.” And I was like, ooOooOoh, challenge. So Theo and I finished up our game, let the other pair warm up a bit whilst we sized up their skills, and started with a game of 501.

We maintained a good 50-100 point lead throughout the game, all the way down until Theo dropped us to 6 points and I started mad as hell trying to hit the damned double-3. And so they caught up, and the one guy of the two that didn’t seem as good knocked it down to 14 on his first dart, and then hit double-7 and his next. And we were like “W-T-F MATE!?”, but instead we said “Good game” and shook their hands. So after that we played a game of Cricket (the darts version, of course). They had a fairly solid lead on us the entire game, though thanks to Theo we managed to close our bulls early, while I caught us up on most of the other numbers. In the end, they had about 87 points, and we had around 17. They only needed one bull to win, and we needed three. The suspense was high. I got one single bull, which bumped us up to 43. We still needed two more. They missed, then Theo missed, then they missed again. My turn up. First dart flew low and to the right, smacking into the heart of 2. No good. I breathed, lined up, let fly, turned around and said “Good game” with a big smile on my face. My dart stuck smack in the middle of the double-bull, bumping us up to 93 and the win. We may not have kicked their asses in a major way, but I can’t think of a more satisfying victory.

So yesterday we cleared our garage a bit, moved the drum-set, and are ready to start throwing the darts around some more. We need a new board, and I could use some new darts, but Theo and I were both thinking that it would be a lot of fun to enter some local tournaments, either singles or doubles. My competetive edge likes to stomp opponents into the dust, and all the more if they’re strangers. And granted, I’m not that great at darts (yet), but riding off that double-bull win I feel like I could be. Besides, it’s fun as hell.

After the game, we finished our Guinness, and went to the Fenix Underground to meet our lovely ladies and do some dancing. Details to come.

Categories
news poetic

Fear and Loathing in Colorado

Farewell, Hunter S. Thompson. Thanks for changing the art of journalism. And, as is said here, being in a sense the patron saint of blogging.

You can find quite a bit more info here.

Categories
humor webcomics

Comicular Hilariousis

Every once in a while, a comic strip comes along and you’re like, “WOW!” And then other times, it’s more like, “OooOoooooh…”.

But sometimes, it’s more like “W-T-F Mate!?”

Even so, I say: flippin’ hilarious.

Categories
humor poetic

Microfiction #4: A well

Three seems to be the lucky number, when it’s not one like last week. I particularly enjoyed the submissions this week. A giant thanks to everyone who contributed!

Next week’s topic is: Robots

Enjoy the stories. Catch ya next week!

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Untitled
–Emily Jindra

“I don’t make wishes,” Lana said matter-of-factly, true to her usual inflection. “My father had a saying. ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’ My father was a very wise man.”

They passed the fountain that provided the pigeons of the park with a 24-hour birdbath and doubled as a wishing well to the city’s superstitious demographic. Each morning the two women walked past it on their way to work, and Maggie, the younger of the two, would toss in a coin and a tacit supplication to some unknown mystical force. The God of the Wishing Well. “I hate that saying,” she thought to herself on this particular morning, digging her hands into her pockets in the hope that she might make another offering. All she found was lint.

“It’s not like I’m tossing coins into the well and thinking seriously that the hand of fate will retrieve them and cause the wishes to come to fruition. It’s just…” Maggie searched for the words that would justify this frivolous action to her friend. She knew it was a lost cause even before she started to speak, but she tried anyway. Lana was someone who trimmed her fingernails three times a week, counted out a hundred hair brush strokes each night before bed, didn’t play cards, and never drank to excess. Frivolity was not a word in her vernacular. “Haven’t you ever wished that things had gone differently? Haven’t you ever wanted to feel the grass under your bare feet in the dead of winter? Don’t you dream?” Agitation was registering in Maggie’s voice and she cut herself off before she offended her friend.

Lana quickened her pace, pulled her collar close around her neck against the cold, and pursed her lips before making her reply. “No,” she said after a moment’s thought, but it wasn’t a convincing answer. The two walked the rest of the short route in silence.

The question repeated itself in her mind all day at work, like a needle skipping over the same broken record track again and again and again. “Don’t you dream? Don’t you dream? Lana. Lana. Don’t you dream?” The copy machine churned out a rythym that gave a sickening sense of life to this phrase that had taken residence at the front of her consciousness. At five o’clock she put her coat on once again, headed back to her studio apartment, and went to sleep.

When she woke it was past midnight. Lana hadn’t been outside past midnight for ages, but on this night she got up, dressed, and fumbled around in the dark for her purse. Once the bag was found she stepped carefully down the stairs to the front door. When she got to the well she had a coin in hand.

“I…” She looked around to make sure she was alone. The pigeons were her only audience, but her tone was hushed anyway. “I wish that tonight, I would dream.”

————————

The Well
–Theo Porter

Jose Cuervo meandered down the side of the road, his thumb in the air. The dusty desert highway rolled out in front of and behind him and on either side tall cacti mocked his desperate hand motions. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to survive another day like this, out on the road with no water. The bandolier he wore around his shoulder was starting to chafe but there was no getting around that. Being hired for a job means seeing it through to the end and there wasn’t any getting out of this one.

His left hand jerked up again at the distant sound of a car engine. He fingered the leather strap that kept his 45 Schofield in its holster around his waist. The car was a candy apple red convertible driven by a luscious brunette who he could barely see in the broiling sunlight as she approached at top speed. It skidded to a full stop on the gravely pavement, missing his knees by mere inches. Without a word, he got in, making sure to keep the edge of his duster over the gun. Together they drove on down the road.

A small village appeared out of nowhere and again, the brunette skidded the car to a stop in the middle of the town. There was no one, anywhere. The town was completely empty and void of life. Tumbleweed blew down the board sidewalk in front of the saloon. Still dying of thirst, Cuervo sauntered over to the town well, lifting the bucket to his lips and taking a draught. He kept his shifty eyes on everything that moved, which wasn’t all that much. He knew this was the place but his target didn’t seem to be anywhere around.

Cuervo knew he’d been shot before the report reached his ears. A sharp pain went through his chest, just below his left shoulder. He knew instantly that his heart had been torn through and wouldn’t work much longer. Taking shallow breaths, he turn, using the lip of the well for support. The brunette was sitting up on the back of the car, a smoking rifle lazily resting in her hands. Cuervo started to laugh.

She stood and hopped out of the car, landing lightly on her feet with a slight bend of the knee. She walked coyly over to the now convulsing cowboy. She grabbed his collar and lifted him to his now useless legs as if he were a feather. His moustache twitched as he smelled her cheap perfume on the dirty wind. She leaned in and kissed him gently on the lips. With that, his body slumped against hers, all of the life draining from it in a pool of blood at his feet. Deftly, the woman toppled Cuervo head over heels into the well and stood with her hands on her hips looking down into the murky blackness. Satisfied he was gone, she turned and drove off into the scorching afternoon heat.

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Wishing Well
–Ahniwa Ferrari

“Hey, guess what!”

“Didn’t I ask you to stop following me an hour ago? Scram!”

“Where ya goin’?”

“None of your beeswax. Now get lost before I tell mom about how you like to climb around on the roof.”

“No way! I’d get in trouble! Besides, then I’d have to tell her about how I seen you sneak out the window to go kiss Angie near the pond.”

“You don’t sleep enough, ya know? Fine. Just be quiet, okay? You really are a pain.”

“Where we goin? Hey, you never guessed what!”

“Alright. What?”

“Chicken butt!”

“You suck. I swear you were adopted. From aliens.”

“Was not!”

“Whatever. Be quiet. We’re almost there.”

“Where?”

“Ssshhhh.”

“Hey, what’s that?”

“It’s a well, Einstein.”

“What’s it doing out here in the middle of the woods?”

“Dunno. I think there used to be a house out here or something.”

“Huh. Is this where we were going?”

“We’re here, aren’t we? Now be quiet and pull up the rope.”

“What for? What ya gonna do?”

“I’m goin’ down there, that’s what. Stop asking so many stupid questions.”

“But what’s down there?”

“George Bee told me that it used to be an old bandit hideout, and that they stashed their loot there. But then the cave collapsed on them, and they got caught inside and all suffocated to death.”

“Whoa.”

“Did you get that rope pulled up yet? Good. You might be worth something after all.”

“You really goin’ down there?”

“Don’t be such a chicken-shit. It’s just a well.”

“But it’s dark! How far down does it go?”

“To the bottom. Duh. I brought a flashlight. Look, it’s rigged so that even you should be able to help lower me down. Just pull and don’t let go.”

“But you didn’t want me to come. How were you gonna get down there without me!?”

“George was supposed to show up. I figured he’d skip out. I bet he’s down near the mill with Angie right now.”

“But I thought –“

“Yeah, well you think too much. Stop it, will ya? Once I find this loot, no way Angie will like that clown more than me. You ready?”

“But what if –“

“Shut up and hold on to the lever. Here I go.”

“…”

“Hey Ben? … Ben? … Hey Ben, how ya gonna get back up?”

Categories
humor montreal school

Guerilla warfare is for monkeys

And monkeys are awesome, so it’s all good.

I think we all need to do more stuff like this.
Imagine the possibilities.

Tickle-Me Elmos could stop giggling and start screaming “Bad touch! Bad touch!” to teach kids that it’s okay to speak out against their local priest. The Pee-Wee Herman doll could make lewd comments about how much he likes it when you pull his cord. But nothing’s quite as good as a G.I. Joe doll idly wondering, “Will I ever have enough clothes?” Thanks to Kevin for the link.

So I’ve been in absolute la-la land lately. A lot of those “complications” I mentioned in a previous entry have worked themselves out, and I’ve been having a blast. Last night I cooked borscht for the first time, and it actually turned out pretty well! Granted, we cheated a bit and used a food chopper device, which made the beets a little more minced than I would have liked, but the end product was superb. We sucked that down with some red wine and some warm bread, cleansed our pallettes with a raspberry liqueur (which was heavenly, oh my god), and watched a couple movies. Everyone had left after the first movie, and so just the two of us were left to snuggle through Gods and Monsters, which saw us both passed out within a half-hour. So I guess I can’t say I really watched it. But the first half-hour seemed quite interesting!

Something which may surprise some, dismay or anger others. I’ve pretty much decided that if I get accepted to McGill that I’ll defer for a year, during which time I’ll also apply to the University Of Washington’s MLIS program (which I was too late for this year, unfortunately). McGill would be awesome, and Montreal looks fantastic, but ya know … I gotta see about a girl. It’s not an easy decision, and nothing’s written in stone yet, but for now I feel like putting grad school back a year and perhaps not doing it in Montreal is a smaller sacrifice than letting this amazing woman possibly slip away. Hey, it’s a surprise to me too!

As Theo‘s mentioned, tonight we’re going up to Seattle for a bit of club-hopping. They have a deal in Pioneer Square where you can get a club pass (7 clubs) for $12. Not bad! We’re gonna start out with some grubbin’ at The New Orleans, a place I mentioned previously when I went up to Seattle with Christine and met some great swing-dancers, and then the guys are gonna swing over to The Owl ‘N Thistle for to take advantage of their nice dart boards and fine brews. Then who knows what the night may bring. I’ll be sure to let you know.

That’s it for now. I’m gonna go try and write a micro.

And now your moment of zen.

Categories
dance

Caught in a state of bliss

Woo, so our dance performances went great! The routine has a lot of spunk and character (it’s a valentine’s dance to “Tainted Love”, or course it has character!), and we all pulled it off with panache. Our backflips weren’t the most dynamic ever, but were landed without incident both nights. It’s really interesting to have someone trust implicitly that you can flip their body mass over backwards and not more than chest height and land them back on their feet. The follow’s only responsibility, really, is to jump hard, straight up, and keep her legs together. The lead does everything else. The left arm is a support at their upper back, around which they revolve. The right arm comes up as the follow is jumping in the upper-leg region, and pushes her up and around. It’s all a real trip to me, and despite having done it successfully multiple times now, without much difficulty, it still somehow seems like it shouldn’t be possible. I was thinking about having Adam see if he could backflip me, because I’m curious what the experience is like from the follow’s perspective (quite scary, I hear) and I feel a smidge guilty that I expect someone to do something that I’ve never tried. On the other hand, I weigh significantly more than all the follows on the team, so I certainly don’t feel too bad about it.

We’ve got it all on video, both performances. I’m going to try and transfer them to digital, and then maybe I’ll post them here for your viewing pleasure. They’re a lot of fun to watch. The crowds both nights were also very receptive, which was awesome. We put a lot of work into learning these, for a fairly short, non-lucrative (read, no money at all) pay-off. So it’s nice when people enjoy watching them. I like learning the routines just for myself, to gain a sense of choreography, musicality, and to learn new moves and stunts. Not to mention the swing team is, generally, a lot of fun to hang out with. Even so, I don’t think it would be half as fun if we didn’t get to show off every other month or so, to a throng of adoring fans. I don’t have any groupies yet, but I expect them to start calling any day now.

I’ll try to be more interesting later. Maybe post something funny. Until then, I recommend you read Theo’s blog today. The man turns a good phrase, you know?

While you’re there, oggle how pretty I made his blog.

Categories
dance love

Livin’ in Swing Time

A fresh bouquet sans roses
(I don’t particularly like the things),
a red vase holding oranges and scarlets.
The card read:

Dancing has given me great balance…

but I fell for you all the same.

Am I a sap? Absolutely.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
Whether you celebrate with the sappy or the irony,
I wish you the best of days.

Categories
poetic

Microfiction #3 : Being Invisible

I got fifty-nine submissions for this week, but unfortunately they were all written in invisible ink (hahahahahaha), so I’m afraid it’s just me. I hope you enjoy it!

The topic for next week is: a well.

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The Morning After
– Ahniwa Ferrari

Brandon woke up slowly, and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a long time, blinking at the bits of crust rubbing against the corners of his eyes. Finally he threw off the covers, stumbled naked into the kitchen, and opened cupboards to search for coffee. He found some beans, ground them, and yawned as he filled the coffee pot with water to pour into the machine. His eyes drooped a bit, his nose felt all snotty, and he tried to remember what he had done the night before.

The smell of coffee made him smile a bit. He poured himself a cup before the pot was done brewing, making coffee drip directly onto the heating-surface and give off an angry, burnt smell. Some splashed onto his foot, and he shook it off as he and his coffee mug made their way into the bathroom to take a shower.

It took two minutes for the water to get hot, which was ironically enough time for his coffee to cool down enough for him to drink. When he stepped into the shower, he got scalded, and he cursed as many things as he could think of before he got the temperature right. He leaned against the wall of the shower so that the showerhead was right over him, and let the water make rivers down the creases in his skin.

Famously groggy in the mornings, he felt awake after twenty minutes in the hot spray, and turning the water off he stepped out of the shower and reached for his towel. He dried his hair and waited for the steam to let go of the mirror so he could brush it to a fairly reasonable level of control. It wasn’t until the mirror cleared that he remembered; everything that had happened the night before, the week leading up to it, thinking if he just fell asleep he’d wake up and it would all have been a bad dream. But he was awake now – he was fairly sure of it – and it hadn’t been a dream after all.

He glared at the mirror for eight minutes and thirty-one seconds exactly, counting in his head superstitiously, but it did no good. Finally he grunted, turned out of the bathroom and back down the hall, muttered, “Fucking invisible…” as though it were something that might happen to anyone at any moment, and went back to bed.

Categories
cinema dance love montreal

If at first you don’t succeed …

… shoot first and ask questions later.

I watched The Boondock Saints for the first time the other night. I’d been avoiding it because of all the 1337 D3WdZ who said how awesome it was. I trust not the ‘leet doods. But then, some movies are enjoyable to many different kinds of viewers, doods and modest geniuses alike. Chances are (and wouldn’t it be ironic) that geniuses is not actually the correct word. I’m too lazy to check. The title for this post is in honor of the autistic bar-tender, for whom I mourn when he is shot, and all his mixed idioms.

————————

There’s a beautiful woman in my life now, with whom I connect amazingly well. This last week we’ve spent nearly every free moment together, without a trace of boredom or dischord. We’ve admitted openly that we’re completely smitten with each other, and have both acknowledged that we have an uncommon bond, one which very much entices the fatalist in me. Unfortunately, and perhaps I should say, of course, there are complications. I’ve a knack for complications, it seems. And in this case, the least of which is my moving to Montreal in the Fall. Funny, isn’t it?

I won’t get into particulars. My theory is that no relationship is perfect, and despite the fact that our connection honestly seems to be, chance has tossed in factors that make things tricky. So what to do? It’s only been a short while, so I figure it’s best to take things slowly, and see if maybe some of these snags work themselves out on their own, or with minimal tweaking. Which will leave others that will require care and attention. Who knows what the future holds? Each passing moment, and each day that goes by, I feel a little luckier to be alive.

My friends are alternately supportive and critical, and when they start to question me my response is: There may be the “one true love” out there; there are probably a few people, at least, that are extraordinarily compatible with you, but there are certainly not millions of them. When an opportunity comes along in such a way that it seems right and good and meant to be, to be put off by “minor” details is a matter of cheating yourself.

Which is not to say it will work out, necessarily, but that it is definately worth the effort. This is a brand new adventure.

————————

Supposedly we’re performing our “Tainted Love” routine on Tuesday. I say “supposedly” because I highly doubt that we’re actually prepared to do so (though I could probably muddle through it today, there are seven other people involved), and pushing back the date may be the best recourse to avoid someone’s head getting split open during a botched back-flip. Yes, swing dancing: fun AND dangerous.

Aside from that, I’ve been dancing my ass off even more than before, thanks to having a fantastic dance partner that loves to learn new things as much as I do. We lindy, we shag (dance *cough cough*), we salsa, we balboa, we charleston, we may learn tap, we sway (what I like to call blues dancing), and we have a rockin’ good time. My legs are getting tough, my arms are getting sore, and I tend to laugh a lot. Dance is a good thing, go try some.

In parting, one last bit of autistic Boondock wisdom:

“If you can’t get out of the kitchen …
… don’t cross the road.”

Categories
internet

Pimp my blog!

Xzibit and I pimped Theo’s blog. All it’s missing is a plasma tv –
ooh, and one of these.

Check it out.

Hopefully this means he’ll actually start updating it more.

Categories
humor

Now with his own laugh track

My dad sent me an email of taglines from Steven Wright. Surprisingly, I hadn’t heard some of them, and some of them are quite hilarious. Hence, listed here for your reading pleasures.

(I was going to pick and choose, but I’m lazy and quite tired today, so I’ll just list all of them.)

1 – I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize .

2 – Borrow money from pessimists — they don’t expect it back.

3 – Half the people you know are below average.

4 – 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

5 – 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

6 – A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

7 – A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

8 – If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

9 – All those who believe in psycho-kinesis, raise my hand.

10 – The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

11 – I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

12 – OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

13 – How do you tell when you’re out of invisible ink?

14 – If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

15 – Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

16 – When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane.

17 – Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

18 – Hard work pays off in the future, laziness pays off now.

19 – I intend to live forever — so far, so good.

20 – If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?

21 – Eagles may soar, but weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.

22 – What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

23 – My mechanic told me, “I couldn’t repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder.”

24 – Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

25 – If at first you don’t succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

26 – A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

27 – Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

28 – The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

29 – To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.

30 – The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

31 – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.

32 – The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.

33 – Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don’t have film.

Categories
dance humor poetic

Deux petits contes en Anglais

If you’re not reading the stories over at Brief Lies, you’re missing out. Some good stuff so far, and we’re just getting rolling. You should all get involved. For ease of access, and because I’d love some creative feedback, or even just little comments, I submit to thee my two stories so far, below. Enjoy!

————————

Tacos aren’t romantic at all
-Ahniwa Ferrari

So last night my roommate’s girlfriend came over and they made tacos and I had some and they were amazing like tacos of divinity or ambrosia or something. So we were sitting around eating our tacos – mmmmmm – and I’d had some ice cream earlier and that was good too but not like a heavenly taco, and I was telling them the story of the Summer of 2000 when I walked across town in a state of pure romantic distress. I was also distressed because I had no tacos, mind you, but also flustered by romance. I like tacos but I don’t find them romantic. They’re sexy though, but I wouldn’t bother buying them champagne or taking them on a moonlit walk on the beach. They’re sexy and I’d just use them and then leave before they woke up, and I wouldn’t be able to respect them anymore afterwards.

So I was walking across town, all the way across, from the west end to downtown and then up the hill to the southeast, to see my friend who’s my roommate now and whose girlfriend made tacos last night – coincidentally he knows this story already – and about halfway there I was like “Well fuck, I’ve walked a lot, and if I turned around I’d have to walk a lot more just to get home, and that’s where I came from so I’ll keep walking forward and get to my friend’s house and then maybe he’ll drive me somewhere and we can have tacos.” So after like another hour or something I made it to his house and he wasn’t in his room asleep like I thought he’d be so I could easily wake him up and make him drive me somewhere. At first I didn’t know where he was and stood outside wondering how I might be able to find a taco at two in the morning walking – I’d be walking, not the taco – and as I was wondering I saw the light flashing in the upstairs window like you see when someone is watching a movie, all blue and the dark and then flash and flash and from outside it seems so bright you wonder how someone could watch it without going blind.

So I’d found my friend, but he was upstairs and I was on the ground outside and I couldn’t just walk in because he was living with his mom at the time and I didn’t want to get shot or hit with a frying pan or have anything else violent happen to me. I warily eyed the fence that ran around the little house and thought that if I could get up on it I would be nearly at eye level with the window upstairs and then I could throw little twigs at the window and get my friend’s attention, because surely he’d prefer my company and tacos to whatever movie he was watching. So I climbed up the fence, and then I fell off but I landed on my feet, and I had to climb up again, which I did. Then I could see my friend, but throwing little twigs at the window didn’t seem to be having any effect. There was a tree that loomed over the fence, and had branches that extended very nearly to the window, so I grabbed a branch and shook it so that it hit the window and made a big motion which my friend wouldn’t be able to miss. And so I guess he was watching a really scary movie and the branch hitting the window on its own – because he couldn’t see me – really freaked him out and he screamed. But then he looked out and he saw me, and we laughed about it and he drove me to Denny’s at three in the morning until five in the morning while we drank coffee and ate food.

But not tacos, because Denny’s sucks and they don’t have tacos, and I was bitter at first but then I got all strung out on coffee and cigarettes and romance and lack of sleep so then I was okay with it, and I had a sandwich instead. Sandwiches are okay, but they aren’t as good as tacos at all.

————————

Dimmer Switch
-Ahniwa Ferrari

Cal leaned against the wall and made an effort not to squint as light danced across the room and fake smoke drifted past his eyes. He’d heard that the parties senior year were bigger and better, but he’d never imagined they included light shows and smoke machines. Still, he knew that to the people who threw these parties image was everything, and the expense was the equivalent of pennies. In any case, he hadn’t come to see fancy special effects. He had a purpose.

Liza was the kind of girl every boy in school had dreams about. She was head cheerleader and valedictorian, and had already spent a year studying in France. She’d come back with a certain savoir faire that made her seem mysterious and unattainable, and an accent that over time had faded until you could only ever hear it when she got very emotional. It was fate’s cruel joke that her locker was right next to Cal’s, but he doubted that she had ever really noticed him.

If you asked someone at school what they thought of Cal, most people would sum his character up in a single, concise word: “Who?” . He wore clothes, ate food, walked about and talked, laughed, smiled and joked with his friends; all in such a way that no-one but his friends were ever inclined to pay him any notice. How he’d ever gotten friends in this state is a mystery, though could most likely be attributed to the fact that they’d been his friends since the third grade, before he’d realized that he was destined to a life of inexorable obscurity. He went about his business like a shadow, was never called on in class, got straight ‘B’s, and avoided school activities or doing anything in which he might stand out like the plague. Even his senior picture in the yearbook had turned out fuzzy, as if he were blurred around the edges; a ghost.

Tonight was different. The dimmer switch of Cal’s personality, halfway down his entire life, was now in the full “On” position. Dressed in a suit, he had a distinct outline, a physical presence that dominated a particular space. His hair, usually a bland brown and neatly parted, seemed to change in the light, one moment wild and the next, keenly sophisticated. His eyes, usually brown, were now hazel and chestnut and cedar, mahogany and driftwood, and they sparkled as they set upon Liza Anne Hartley and never strayed.

Liza had noticed him, too. Noticed, but not recognized, despite having the same lockers for the past four years. She laughed as a friend told a joke, excused herself, and let her feet follow Cal’s gaze across the floor. As she reached him, the music changed from a loud beat to something slow and intimate. She wasn’t used to being shy, but her breath caught in her throat and she was held transfixed by Cal’s presence. It was years of natural social instinct that allowed her to ask, “Would you like to dance?”

Cal smiled, his teeth flashed pearls. His brown eyes engulfed hers, blue, and the music flooded out the world.

As he left the party, all he could think was that if he hurried, then he and his friends could have a good long party themselves before the night was over. He ripped off his tie, threw it out into the night breeze, and grinned as he remembered his response:

“Sorry, I don’t dance with cheerleaders.”

Categories
poetic school

Deux petits chansons en francais

Elle est sans elephants,
sans soucis ou souris,
sans sens mais elle danse,
et pour moi ca suffit.

———————–

Tant pis? Tant mieux?
Je ne sais pas.
et toi?
Toi non plus.
Je danserai comme d’habitude,
en France ou non,
n’importe ou,
je m’en fou.

————————

Today I need to bust ass on my McGill app and scholarship and financial aid stuff, so I’m gonna go get to it! Wish me luck!

Categories
news

New-Age Nuclear (not Nucular)

Wired magazine has this very provocative article on the future of nuclear energy. Or rather, the present of it. They make very enticing points. It’s not perfect, obviously, but we need to stop burning coal and soon. I say we go for it.

Any thoughts? Let’s discuss.

Categories
poetic

Microfiction #2: Food / Cooking

Only three stories again. Thanks to everyone that submitted this week. My big goal is to get ten stories a week, or so. Here’s dreamin’!

The topic for next week is: Being invisible. Either metaphorically, or literally.

Enjoy the stories!

————————

-Anne Jindra

Val comes in wide-eyed like usual, sporting her gap-toothed grin and maniacal (and always unprovoked) laughter. She sits down in one of my wooden office chairs, then immediately gets up to look out of the window, then sits down again and laughs. She smoothes out the folds of her worn wool jacket, tames the fly-aways in her hair, and finally rests her hands in her lap. I watch as she goes through her ritual, noticing that her fingers look like a Diego Rivera painting, and I stare at them.

A brief silence follows before I remember that I am her social worker, and she helpfully reminds me by offering, “I’m in a lot of trouble,” which she follows with another cackle.

She had been receiving unemployment for almost three months – she lost her job cleaning rooms at the college inn. Recently though, she got a letter in the mail from the Office of Job and Family Services telling her that she has to pay back her almost $2,000 award because they didn’t really mean to give her anything to begin with. After she relates all of this to me she says, “and I know I can trust you because you didn’t tell anybody about the other thing,” but I have no idea what she’s talking about.

She gets up again, looks out of the window in my door, stands for a moment, then sits back down in the stiff chair. She cuts right to the heart of the matter, with a swift decisiveness, “Do you have any cereal?”

To which I reply, “Yeah, we have Cornflakes.” She mulls this over and eventually decides that cornflakes are acceptable. She proceeds to verbally go over a mental list of items that she needs (chocolate chip cookies, toothpaste, sugar, potato chips, pudding) and I jot each down on a drab yellow post-it, my pen racing to keep up with her stream-of-consciousness. When she finishes, she rolls her eyes back and tries to recall if that was everything she came for.

She fixes her gaze forward again, and looks me in the eyes for the first time since this visit began. “I am tired of this shit. God. I am tired.”

I offer back a smile, and get up to procure her needs from the shelves of our emergency pantry.

————————

Sustenance
-Theo Porter

Martin sat on the couch and thought about food. He couldn’t help it. There was a poster opposite him of a perfect French crème Brule and the more he stared at it the more drool collected in his mouth. He arched his back, reaching into his back pocket for his tattered wallet, trying desperately to run over his monthly budget in his head. It was useless. He was a gadget guy and if the purchase of a mediocre doohickey for his home theatre meant he would starve for the rest of the month, it was worth the sacrifice. As he separated the corners of his wallet and peered inside, he imagined a little cartoon fly zipping from its empty interior at full speed. Feeding the habit had taken on a whole new meaning. The poster on the wall had never seemed so far away.

The need to eat filled Martin’s head. He knew how to cook, that wasn’t the problem. There was just nothing to cook. Anywhere. He rose from the couch, sighing heavily. “Old Mother Hubbard,” the old nursery rhyme, ran through his head at full volume. His own mother loved to repeat little rhymes while she cooked and Martin had taken up the wand when the beloved family matriarch was hospitalized for being too old to live on her own. Shoving loving nostalgia aside, Martin searched the empty cupboards for even the ghost crumbs of a forgotten loaf of bread. No such luck.

He pulled out his wallet again and there, at the very bottom, was his lone credit card. Fund management was a foreign concept, but somehow, probably through the influence of a micro-managing father, Martin had paid off most of debt owed on the thin, unobtrusive piece of plastic. Though he tried never to use it for technology, maybe food was worth it. Yes, it definitely was. Survival is paramount and these were dire circumstances. But, standing alone in the kitchen of his apartment, he couldn’t help but feel that if he was going to dip into the irresponsible jar, it needed to be for a good reason. He pulled out his cell phone and began to make phone calls. The friends lined up like bowling pins the moment he said that he was cooking. Several agreed to bring salad, bread, wine, dessert, and it was set.

His heart skipping a beat, he walked down to the store around the corner. It was a cool, clear night with the moon sitting just above the horizon in perfect counterbalance with the ruby red sunset. Martin couldn’t help but break into a smile. He could see it in his head: good friends, good food, and good music; it would be perfect. There was a perfectly good shopping list in his head and he went over it again in his head as he picked up a little red shopping basket.
The little card in his hand felt lighter as he exited the store. It hurt, but when it comes to sustenance, sometimes one must go to extremes.

————————

Tacos aren’t romantic at all
-Ahniwa Ferrari

So last night my roommate’s girlfriend came over and they made tacos and I had some and they were amazing like tacos of divinity or ambrosia or something. So we were sitting around eating our tacos – mmmmmm – and I’d had some ice cream earlier and that was good too but not like a heavenly taco, and I was telling them the story of the Summer of 2000 when I walked across town in a state of pure romantic distress. I was also distressed because I had no tacos, mind you, but also flustered by romance. I like tacos but I don’t find them romantic. They’re sexy though, but I wouldn’t bother buying them champagne or taking them on a moonlit walk on the beach. They’re sexy and I’d just use them and then leave before they woke up, and I wouldn’t be able to respect them anymore afterwards.

So I was walking across town, all the way across, from the west end to downtown and then up the hill to the southeast, to see my friend who’s my roommate now and whose girlfriend made tacos last night – coincidentally he knows this story already – and about halfway there I was like “Well fuck, I’ve walked a lot, and if I turned around I’d have to walk a lot more just to get home, and that’s where I came from so I’ll keep walking forward and get to my friend’s house and then maybe he’ll drive me somewhere and we can have tacos.” So after like another hour or something I made it to his house and he wasn’t in his room asleep like I thought he’d be so I could easily wake him up and make him drive me somewhere. At first I didn’t know where he was and stood outside wondering how I might be able to find a taco at two in the morning walking – I’d be walking, not the taco – and as I was wondering I saw the light flashing in the upstairs window like you see when someone is watching a movie, all blue and the dark and then flash and flash and from outside it seems so bright you wonder how someone could watch it without going blind.

So I’d found my friend, but he was upstairs and I was on the ground outside and I couldn’t just walk in because he was living with his mom at the time and I didn’t want to get shot or hit with a frying pan or have anything else violent happen to me. I warily eyed the fence that ran around the little house and thought that if I could get up on it I would be nearly at eye level with the window upstairs and then I could throw little twigs at the window and get my friend’s attention, because surely he’d prefer my company and tacos to whatever movie he was watching. So I climbed up the fence, and then I fell off but I landed on my feet, and I had to climb up again, which I did. Then I could see my friend, but throwing little twigs at the window didn’t seem to be having any effect. There was a tree that loomed over the fence, and had branches that extended very nearly to the window, so I grabbed a branch and shook it so that it hit the window and made a big motion which my friend wouldn’t be able to miss. And so I guess he was watching a really scary movie and the branch hitting the window on its own – because he couldn’t see me – really freaked him out and he screamed. But then he looked out and he saw me, and we laughed about it and he drove me to Denny’s at three in the morning until five in the morning while we drank coffee and ate food.

But not tacos, because Denny’s sucks and they don’t have tacos, and I was bitter at first but then I got all strung out on coffee and cigarettes and romance and lack of sleep so then I was okay with it, and I had a sandwich instead. Sandwiches are okay, but they aren’t as good as tacos at all.

Categories
humor poetic

Pugnacious Pundit

Everyday puns to make your friends groan, with apologies.

Q: Would you like a Certs?
A: CERT-ainly!

Q: Want a piece of gum?
A: Hmm, I dunno. I’ll have to chew on that for a minute.

Q: Hey, is that a pirate!?
A: Arrrr! [run them through and steal their booty]

Sorry, I ran out of puns, and wanted to mention pirates.
Okay, okay, and booty. Mmmmmmmm, pirate booty.

Last, and least. A bad joke I made up.

Q: What do you call a freeway that runs underwater?
A: The Otter-bahn.

I hope you’ll all forgive me.

Categories
art montreal photo

More Montreal Madness

I steal all my Montreal links from the Montreal City Weblog, so you can always just go there and read more. But these are just the links I find of particular interest.

A man named Richard Florida talks about how Montreal has become a “creative center”, a “cutting-edge city that others would love to emulate.”

Over 2000 pictures indexed under “Montreal”. Woo, pictures!

A snazzy-looking journal from Montreal, with some slick film reviews.

David Carr of the New York Times talks about Montreal’s anglo-music scene, mentioning The Stills, Simple Plan, and others. One Montrealer scoffs at the attention, saying “What is going on here will continue to go on long after the attention has gone elsewhere.” Montreal is hip with or without attention from the New York Times, thank you very much.

The Hour talks about Montreal’s recent mention in Spin Magazine. More talk of music, and how the creative scene has been molded by the political background, though it sounds like Spin may have been a bit off the mark, there.

The following from Google News:

A tourist trip to Montreal,, and talk of art. Neat!

CTV offers proof that telemarketers are evil. Like we didn’t already know that. The shocker of this entire story is that people actually talk to telemarketers.

Ubisoft plans to create 1000 jobs in Montreal. Yay, video games!

And thus ends, for today, my obsession with Montreal.
À la prochaîne.

Categories
cinema

Diesel engine

I would like to take a moment to make a simple announcement. Vin Diesel is not another muscle-bound, no-talent hack. So you watched The Fast and the Furious and you watched xXx and they sucked. I know they sucked. I liked xXx, but I still know it sucked. But did they suck because of Vin? On the contrary, they sucked in spite of Vin. TFatF was just a stupid movie; I really don’t think I have to go into explaining why. xXx is your basic explosion movie, and like most basic explosion movies, it sucked mostly because of a weak script. Despite that, I feel that Vin did his best to instill his lifeless lines with aplomb and a cheeky sense of humor.

Think Vin sucks? Time for your re-education.

Vin did the voice of the giant in The Iron Giant, an animated film by Warner Bros now defunct animated-movie studio (Iron Giant was their final film, finished as Warner Bros was literally tearing the studio down around their heads. The big honcho is now heading Pixar), which nobody can’t love. From the extra features, it appears Vin achieved that voice without any digital modification. I think he did a superb job.

Pitch Black. Yes. It took me a while to watch this movie, because I thought it looked kind of dumb. It’s now one of my favorite movies ever, and mostly because of Vin. This is Riddick before Twohy went all Lucas and tried to make an “epic” adventure. He did much better keeping it small. Vin’s interplay in this movie with Cole Hauser, who plays Johns, is frickin’ awesome. His play with Radha is a little over the top at times, but bear in mind that he’s Riddick and usually stuck underground with a bunch of men, and I think you’ll find his interactions with her more believable, if not underplayed.

Knockaround Guys. This is a fairly small role for Vin, but an excellent one. He’s a quintessential tough guy, and he plays it straight. He doesn’t try to make the role bigger than it is, kicks ass when required, and in general pulls the role off with pinache. Listen to his “500” monologue. The monologue itself is fairly cheesy, but Vin pulls it off. And how many other people could?

Finally, watch his short film that he stars in and directed, called Multi-Facial. I doubt you’ll find it by itself, but you can watch it as part of this Shorts Collection. I think it displays Vin’s versatility well. Also, his role in Boiler Room, though tiny, is great.

Watch those movies, and if you still think Vin is a hack, we’ll talk. Just you, me, and my crowbar. Oh, and if you just want to look at Vin’s shiny muscles, go here.

“500?”

“500 what, douchebag?”

“500 fights, that’s the number I figured when I was a kid. 500 street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that’s what you are.”