Metamorphstasis

Responsibility

2012-01-28T21:13:00.000-08:00

Responsibility. It's an interesting word. It once carried a lot of negative connotations for me. because I associated the word with my parents chastising me when I was younger for not being responsible for something, for not being responsible, or if I wanted something that I would be responsible for it, or of course, for being responsible for doing something wrong, that is - something I wasn't smart enough to blame my brother or sister, or smart enough to least create reasonable doubt in the jury.

But I'm older now, and I find the word fascinating. Response-ability. The ability to respond to environmental stimuli. Response-able. Human beings are able to respond to circumstance, which is completely different to react. Animals react. They are react-able; their 'reactability' is integral to the instincts designed to keep them alive. Animals in general do not have a choice. Humans do. We respond, even if our response is a reaction. Sometimes we 'respond' by letting our reactions take over, like a soldier in a firefight or a mother protecting her child. But more often than not we choose our responses.

So responsibility for me is about how we deal with the world, how we deal with the light and darkness that come into our lives.

Where are we going with this? I'll tell you. We're going straight to one of my pet peeves, something that drives me crazy: people not taking responsibility for their own mistakes. I absolutely hate the blame game, and from some people's mouths that is all you hear: I'm fat because of this, I'm late because of this, if it wasn't for this or that…, this stupid [blank] won't work, if only this and that would go my way… then -- you get the gist, people not taking responsibility for their own choices, for their own mistakes. It happens all the time. And I hate it.

Okay, nobody's perfect and I do the same kind of thing sometimes, but I take particular pride in owning my own shit. When things go badly for me, it's usually my fault, that includes my quadriplegia. I got hurt playing a sport, a rough sport: rugby. Could my injury "possibly" have been prevented had my coach instructed me properly? Yes, possibly. I sued him when I got hurt. I failed. I was 18 and living in a hospital and I was too stupid to know the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer (the difference is: a good lawyer has a big firm to back him up, a bad lawyer is on his own).

But, look, I played the sport. I knew people got hurt, same as anyone else who plays football, hockey, lacrosse, or any other full contact sport.

The other day I sustained a third degree burn on my arm because I had a new care aide helping me at night. But I got burnt because I did not double check her work. I know better. When they are new, they are new, and they don't know better. So I got burned, but I'm not about to call the office and blame her like a friend of mine suggested, that's ridiculous.

The victim mentality is quite common, even in the media or the culture. I've read about people blaming their circumstances on their upbringing or some kind of childhood trauma. A member of my extended family does not talk to his parents or ever visit them, because he thinks they abused him when he was younger, NOT sexually, rather in the way they punished and treated him. Maybe they did. But that doesn't mean you have to be a victim your whole life. We all make choices. We are response-able.

I guess maybe it's easy for me to say even though I had a fairly random accident that drastically changed my life forever. Why? Maybe because God blessed me with an awesome family, and I had a magical childhood. Maybe I would be different, I would think differently, if I felt I was betrayed as a child by those who were supposed to protect me and love me. I don't think it's an accident or coincidence that Jesus himself warns against harming children and even gets quite snappy about it (I think he only gets upset like that twice).

All I know is that many many people go through hell in their lives but keep fighting the dark side, the side of victimizing or being the victimized.

In the end, it could be a personality thing - like some people have addictive personalities - and some people find it irresistible to be a victimizer or a victim, there are some things out of our control, maybe.

Update to "My Absence"

2012-01-28T16:39:00.000-08:00

Yes after 29 days I'm still in bed. Maybe next week I'll be up for half a day or so a few times, hopefully. One part of my foot is completely healed. The other part is like 90%. My arm is still pretty badly burned but I can still get up with that, I just can't use my chair much because I can't put a brace on that arm. I'm going to have to think about how to celebrate my release from this maximum security stint I'm serving right now.

My Absence

2012-01-20T03:25:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in a while; it's been almost eight weeks. I'll tell you the truth, and the truth is that I haven't felt like writing anything at all, apart from maybe a few brief film reviews on face book and some random comments here and there on blogs and profiles. I'm sure it has something to do with my profound disinterest in reading fiction in the last few months. I surf around the Internet aimlessly, bored, or I played stupid computer games. I think I'm depressed.

In late November of 2011, I found out that my parents were going to Ontario to be with my sister to witness her profession of faith and the baptism of her newborn. They were going in the middle of the month of December, and around the time I learned they were going I was dealing with a pressure sore on my heel which had been getting progressively worse. The only way to heal pressure sores on my lower extremities is to stay in bed, because when my legs are semi vertical, the blood doesn't circulate in my legs properly, and no circulation equals no oxygenated blood to the area equals the sore stays the same or gets worse.

I had to stay in bed. But I couldn't be in bed when they left. I thought of waiting to heal the wound until they left and came back. The sore would get worse, but at least I could stay up in December, enjoy the season, do some shopping, the usual. I knew by then my foot would be a mess and too painful to tolerate. But I thought about it, about staying up.

I went to bed to try to heal up the sore before they left, before the Christmas season. I stayed in bed for almost three weeks, and I came pretty close to getting it healed. But it wasn't, not quite. They left for Ontario and I had to get up every day all day for seven days. It took that long for me to go back to square one. I will never get back those almost three weeks. And when they came back from Ontario, I felt a lot of pressure to stay up for the holiday season (much of the pressure was self imposed), but my foot just kept getting worse until there was a deep open wound on the back of my foot about the size of a dime.

On Christmas Day, after church, the lobby was packed with people and someone hit the joystick on my wheelchair and sent it flying into somebody else, tilting my left pedal which eventually caused another pressures sore on the same foot but underneath. It was just that added pressure for a day until I noticed the foot pedal was askew.

I went to the Boxing Day family lunch the next day. My foot was in bad shape. But my sister had just flown in to visit for 8 days. I stayed up for four of those days. But the day before she left I went to bed and I haven't been out since. My feet are getting better. It's been 17 days. A week and a half ago, I gave myself a third degree burn on my right forearm. So I'm dealing with that as well.

My two female friends come by to visit me once in awhile during the week. My brother a couple of times.

This staying in bed for long periods of time to heal sores is not new to me. I can't even describe, I can't even count the number of days I have spent in bed, getting fed by my parents like the paralyzed gimp that I am.

And the irony, the kicker, the festering wound in my head that no one can see -- the nasty reality is that while I'm laying here with almost unlimited time to read and write, i find the very thought of those things distasteful and abhorrent for some reason. I must really hate myself to make myself hate myself so efficiently.

Ups and Downs

2011-12-08T01:51:00.000-08:00

Life has its ups and downs. We all know that.

Sometimes things run smoothly at work, you get the promotion, you close the client with barely a hitch, and at home, you meet a lady, something you've been wanting for longtime goes on sale, you go to the dentist and you have no cavities, you visit your parents unannounced and your mom just happened to make your favorite dinner, for some reason, your girlfriend is horny all the time - sometimes life is great, and it can last for a while. Long enough for you not to notice how blessed you are, long enough to get used to it.

Sometimes life sucks and gets worse with each step, you step on dog shit and don't notice until you're halfway to work, the vending machine takes your money and gives nothing, your glasses just won't fit right for some reason, you can't sleep at night even though you dead tired, your transmission craps out and you end up driving a piece of shit loaner, your girlfriend breaks up with you, your boss finds you surfing porn at work, etc. - basically, Murphy's law: whatever can go wrong, will, and at the worst possible moment.

Usually it's not that dramatic, these ups and downs, but they exist, we've all been there. It's like runs of good luck and bad.

Well today is one of those days when I realize I've been having a run of bad luck for quite some time now. I like to call it the shadow. And do you know what is most annoying to someone living chained up in the shadow (because trust me, no one is there by choice)? What is most annoying, like fucking irritating, is either people who complain about their lives incessantly as if no one else is suffering OR people who talk about how great their lives are, how sunshine beams out of their ass and they always do what they want and get what they want.

My dad got me angry doing the latter. When I get upset, I don't rant and rave rather I get sarcastic and snappy. He came around with his look of great things are going attitude, and I did my best to get him upset. I feel bad about it now. That's the thing about selfish people, they don't even know it and they are almost impossible to train.

In fact, I'm sure I do selfish things and I don't even know I'm doing them.

I have to change my life somehow. It is hard to do when you have pressure sores putting a lockdown on your activities, on your ability to get out and do stuff. I wasn't really upset at my father; I was and is more upset with my circumstances, my lack of strength to force change.

I use the word luck, but I really don't believe in luck. I believe the world is made up of people making choices that affect other people who make choices on those affects and round and round. However, I also believe there is a force or forces beyond this chain of choices (it's not part of this world so it looks random), and that external force is God.

Of Love, and Plato

2011-11-28T02:19:00.000-08:00

Well, I talked about death last time so maybe I should talk about love this time. Although let me just briefly say regarding death that I have been meaning to make a Last Will and Testament, and I think I have been subconsciously avoiding it. If you're reading this and you don't have a Will, I would urge you not to be like me and write one out, even if it's brief.

Romantic love is not something I really know much about, except for a fairly successful series of hook ups and girlfriends in high school and a scattered number of failures since. I don't have a girlfriend right now, and I haven't for quite some time. I haven't given up on that part of my life though, because I'm actually kind of a romantic: that is, I can envision myself in love and in a fulfilling life-giving relationship.

I would love to have a girlfriend, but I'm on the other side of the fence and the grass is quite green here too - that is, I like being single, and being not-single kind of scares me.

I have quite a few friends that are women, and I find it easier to make friends with women than men for some reason. But when it comes down to finding a girlfriend, I have rarely found myself in a situation conducive to developing a romantic relationship. It sounds cold when I put it like that. But what I mean is that I have to find the girl attractive and she has to find me attractive, plus we must be in a setting where we can connect somehow. It's a complex dynamic.

I have a friend who just found someone she can connect with deeply, and I'm really happy for her, because I think it's quite rare. Personalities and situations align themselves to allow this connection - for instance, two people get on the same elevator holding cups of coffee from an obscure coffeehouse across town; they notice each others' cup and they share a moment etc. It happens more often than we think, this synchronicity, this alignment of circumstance and coincidence.

What a strange process, right? In some cultures, arranged marriages take some of the chance factor out of the equation. Or if you think about it, the chance factor is still there only now you have given up what little control you had.

You can always give yourself a better chance: you can join a gym or take a class or sign up to eHarmony or frequent bars to enhance the probabilities, but in the end, it's still flying on a hope and a prayer.

I haven't had this happen to me, this falling in love thing. I don't think I've ever been "in love". I did feel a lot of attraction for some of my old girlfriends, but I don't think it was romantic love, like real passion - it was more like an infatuation or a crush or lust. But not love, at least not what I think is love like that selfless-I would die without you-you are my whole world-type of love.

I feel sometimes I've missed out on an essential part of life. It's like when a woman hits her forties and she's never had a baby and it begins to dawn on her that she may never have a child, her time is running out. I feel like that sometimes, like my time is running out: I find a great wife, to have a family. It feels weird. You rationalize. You tell yourself, "Hey, that's the way things are." But you still feel empty.

Most people don't have to think like this every day. When you end up in a wheelchair early in life, you learn pretty quickly that some things are the way they are. You suck it up. You become a realist. I'm a realist but I'm also a romantic as well, but that's probably just a personality thing.

I asked a friend of mine if she thought there was such a thing as "soulmates." She said she didn't believe there was only one perfect mate for each person, so then I asked her if she thought people have more than one perfect mate or soulmate for each person. She wasn't sure and said that there were no perfect couples.

I agreed with her, but the word 'perfect' didn't accurately convey what I meant. What I meant was couples that fall in love and stay in love with each other, couples that complete each other, connected in some unexplained way.

Part of me wants to say this idea of the perfect couple is Hollywood bullshit. But I've seen too many happy couples who seem to be completely into each other to dismiss it. I'm sure it's not 24/7 all year long, but it seems to give them a sense of fulfillment, at least from the outside looking in.

This idea of a perfect fit has been around for thousands of years. It was Plato that said human beings were incomplete looking for completeness in the love of a lover: "every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet." THE SYMPOSIUM.

I know, how very JERRY MAGUIRE, but it's hard to be judgmental when it's 3000 years old. So if that sense of incompleteness was obvious to one of the most rational philosophers who ever existed, I'm not going to feel bad for feeling it. For feeling lonely, for "so ancient is the desire of one another which is implanted in us, reuniting our original nature, seeking to make one of two, and to heal the state of man."

In THE SYMPOSIUM, Plato uses a speech by one of his characters, Aristophanes, to give a beautiful definition of love. The following is taken from Diane Ackerman's book A NATURAL HISTORY OF LOVE, since she does a good job paraphrasing some of the passage in the original text.

When it is Aristophanes turn, he relates a fable - one that has influenced people for thousands of years since. He [Aristophanes] explains that originally there were three sexes: men, women, and a hermaphroditic combination of man and woman. These primitive beings had two heads, two arms, two sets of genitals, and so on. Threatened by their potential power, Zeus divided each one of them in half, making individual lesbians, homosexual men, and heterosexuals. But each person longed for its missing half, which it sought out, tracked down, and embraced, so that it could become one again - and thereby Aristophanes arrives at an astonishing definition of love:

"Each of us when separated, having one side only, like a flat fish, is but the indenture of a man, and he is always looking for his other half.… And when one of them meets with his other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy, and will not be out of each other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment: these are the people who pass their whole lives together; yet they could not explain what they desire of one another. For the intense yearning which each of them has towards the other does not appear to be the desire of lover's intercourse, but of something else which the soul of either evidently desires and cannot tell, and of which she has only a dark and doubtful presentiment.

Suppose Hephaestus, with his instruments, were to come to the pair who are lying side by side and say to them, "What do you people want of one another?" They would be unable to explain. And suppose further, that when he saw their perplexity he said, "Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night to be in one another's company, for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt you into one and let you grow together…" there's not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need. And the reason is that human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love."

The lengthy quote reminds me of the passage in the new testament where Jesus talks about lovers become one flesh, "and the two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one" (Mark 10:8). It is beautiful and strange and carnal all at once. It must be amazing.

In the end, I am forced to believe those oft-quoted lines from Tennyson's poem "In Memoriam": "it is better to have love and lost, than to have never loved at all" - a phrase that leaves me feeling lonely and empty.

But I will never close the door to the possibility of love. I don't mind being single most of the time. I don't mind, I really don't. Really.

Apology

2011-11-26T00:13:00.000-08:00

I hope you guys like the new color scheme. I thought it might be easier to read, easier on the eyes overall. The black scheme was pretty cool, and I really like black, but I think it was too dark to be read comfortably.

I have to apologize to all of my readers regarding the general lack of quality obvious in my blog posts. I have never professed to be a great writer or anything, but you guys deserve better quality than some of these entries full of structurally unsound prose that doesn't flow as it should.

I've read other blogs and they always sound better than the crap that I'm putting out, so I apologize. I think sometimes I am in too much of a hurry to post my entry before rereading or rewriting it to improve its craftsmanship. Maybe I should take more pride in the stuff that I let people read.

This need to do things quickly has been a problem for me for quite some time. As a student in high school and university, I consistently handed in projects that were finished but not fine tuned, and I can still feel the flush of blood rising to my cheeks when I read - or especially when I hear - them comment on my interesting ideas and my crappy grammar, style, and structure.

I find myself doing the same thing both when I'm writing for my day job and with these posts, so I'm sorry and I'll try to do better.

Death

2011-11-19T14:44:00.001-08:00

Who will remember you when you're dead? The next generation, perhaps your son or daughter, a nephew or niece, perhaps the son of your best friend? Will they really visit your grave? You will be forgotten after the next generation, perhaps sooner.

Will you be buried? Burned? Do you have a Will?

Do you have a DNR (do not resuscitate order)? Do you care if 'they' keep your body alive on a machine even though you are mentally dead?

The search for immortality is very powerful. For some artists, it drives them forward beyond the horizon of fear that marks the creative process. For some politicians, it gives them the courage and strength to do great things or to do evil destructive things. I read somewhere some of Ted Bundy 's motivation for being one of America's most prolific serial killers was to be remembered.

Immortality. I guess it comes down to how badly you want it. But in the end, it is an illusion and we all know that time is too huge and there is no stopping it or going back.

Death. This is Neil Gaiman's vision of Death in the Sandman comics; this particular image is from DEATH: THE HIGH COST OF LIVING #1.

A young girl, wise, sympathetic, whimsical and sweet. Gaiman's quite brilliant, and these comics are wonderful, intelligent and full of subtle beauty. I cannot recommend them highly enough.

Historically, death has been personified into some crazy and scary being or creatures. I found this website called the westgatenecromantic that provides a historical rundown of all the scary death figures from Azrael to Thantos, etc. The website is all about death, both weird and cool.

It is amazing to me how scary religion has made death: you would think joining God or becoming one with the Universe or whatever would be a good thing, right? It should not surprise, however. Fear and religion are powerful, and intelligent people have used them as tools of power and control, instead of enlightenment. Evil people or evil people with 'good' intentions - it's all the same.

I'm not afraid of death, at least that's what I tell people if the subject comes up in conversation. It feels true, but it's one of those things you never really sure about until you're on the threshold. I've come close to dying a few times.

When I first became injured with a broken neck, I nearly died of complications, pneumonia to be specific. I hazily remember being in the ICU. I don't think I was scared.

I've nearly died in traffic a couple of times. I think this is probably a common experience. It was more of a shock than anything, but I seem to remember being scared. I don't know if I was scared of dying or scared of the crash and the pain.

I've come close to dying doing risky things with my wheelchair like edging near a steep ledge or falling into a ditch while in the chair. Yeah, pretty stupid.

But I don't ever remember being scared of death itself, of crossing into the unknown country. I think there are things scarier than death. Losing my sight scares me, or losing my speech, or dying really slowly and in pain. Or having a degenerative disease like MS.

There are things worse than death. Living, for instance. Living in pain and deformity scares the fuck out of me. I already know what it's like, and it's quite unpleasant.

I mean don't get me wrong, I don't like the idea of losing my life. The world is full of beauty and wonder. And there are people on this side who need me or who will need me perhaps in the future; and I also don't like the idea of being forgotten.

I am a Christian, however, even though my attitude and words and deeds might indicate otherwise sometimes (a state of hypocrisy is inevitable for anyone who believes in anything). So when I think about death, I have to hope and pray (I guess hope + prayer = faith) that my God is merciful and loving and that Jesus saved me from myself.

It sounds kind of preachy, but this statement is about me, not you. I can recommend the good things about Christianity, but I'm not going to preach.

Life is a temporary thing; that fact is one of the things making it so special. But I think there is more to existence than the material world. I hope it's beautiful.

Guilt Trip

2011-11-17T02:19:00.000-08:00

Last week a friend of mine asked me to go to a birthday party held at a local bar. After feeling her out for information, I pretty much confirmed what I thought when she first invited me. It was going to be loud. It was going to be crowded. It was going to be full of people I didn't know. I found an excuse not to go, mixing some truth with some fabrication. I hate lying to her, but over the years I have come to realize I cannot function in loud crowded environs; moreover, it is actually unsafe and unhealthy for me to be in a crowded environment for too long. It sounds like hyperbole, I know. But let me explain.

Lack of mobility and an inability to project my voice both conspire to create serious problems for me when I'm in a crowd, especially if the crowd is loud, which more often than not is the case. I become a wallflower, a prisoner, since I cannot really talk to anybody even to ask for help or to instruct them how to help me. And since I use a fairly large power wheelchair, I become physically trapped in space. It's very unpleasant, a nightmare actually. So I told her a half truth and wiggled my way out of it.

I hate lying to people. I'm actually a terrible liar; I'm terrible at keeping a straight face which is probably why I never win staring contests. It's a nervous laugh or smirk. When I try to be serious or when a situation is tense and calls for me to be serious, I sometimes start to laugh. It is pretty inconvenient when people give you bad news and expect you to act a certain way, like if someone comes up to me and tells me that their mother has just died, there is a chance that I will either smile or laugh. I can't really help it.

But I had to lie a little. The birthday party would have been a nightmare. So I talked to her a couple of days later and she tells me she did not end up going to the party. I asked her why and she said because I backed out. Nice guilt trip. And I told her so. Whatever.

A guilt trip? Really? Why are some women so complicated? I don't get it. I mean we're just friends and she knows that, so what is up with a guilt trip, which, as far as I'm concerned, implies some strong obligation?

I'm just saying that if I flip it around then don't make sense in the context of "friendship". A quick review: she has a birthday to go to, a couple of days before the birthday she asked me to go along, I am unable to go, so she doesn't go and tells me later that it's my fault basically. What?

If one of one male friends did that to me - back out of a thing I had to go to - I think I would go anyway, especially if they were my friends, or if I decided not to go, I certainly would not blame him or give him a guilt trip about it.

The guilt trip is an interesting psychological tactic. It's common and effective. It conveys that an obligation, commitment, contractual arrangement has been broken, and it also conveys that one of the parties feels hurt or betrayed (this is the "why" of the feeling guilty). In other words, you disappointed or betrayed me and you should feel guilty about it.

Halloween

2011-11-07T02:24:00.001-08:00

We just had Halloween. I loved this time of year when I was a kid. I loved dressing up as Count Dracula. In fact I think he's still the coolest character you can dress up as on Halloween, although I've always wanted to be a werewolf or Darth Vader.

The central problem with being Dracula on Halloween now is the over saturation of the character and the many parodies leaching and ruining the mystique of Dracula. It was not like this before. In the eighties and nineties, the character of Dracula still could be frightening or at the very least darkly mysterious. Francis Ford Coppola's film, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA,

reinvigorated the story and character, but it did not take long before dark fantasy and horror writers took advantage of the popularity, beginning a media blitz.

It seemed every story possible was written about vampires, but then a couple of writers (Harris and Meyers) each began to write dramatic series about vampires in love, THE SOOKIE STACKHOUSE and THE TWILIGHT series. The fame of these two series, along with the many parodies already out there have reduced the character to a joke.

I don't think it's possible to restore the vampire as a serious character, especially Count Dracula. I think it has reached a point where people just don't go there on Halloween for fear of being mocked or looked upon as someone out of touch. It's like dressing up as superman.

When I talked to my friends who are parents about Halloween, I am always amazed at the vast varieties of parenting strategies and methodologies.

Some parents don't allow their children to dress up on Halloween and go trick or treating around the neighborhood collecting candies and chocolate bars. Some parents allow them to dress up but restrict them to parties. Sometimes allow them to dress up but restrict them to Harvest parties, costume parties, or some alternative variation - all of which are thinly veiled Halloween parties. Some parents restrict the costumes, the curfews, and/or the company the kid is allowed to hang out with.

I don't think Halloween poses much of a problem for kids, but how do you explain it to a four or five year old? "Dad, what's Halloween?" I can't think of a good answer, not for that age or even a little older.

It is possible to make Halloween into a game of dress up, where people give candies to kids with good costumes. Maybe that's what parents say to their young kids to explain Halloween: it's a costume game.

Anyway, I respect all these choices. In many ways, a variety of parenting styles is a good thing for society since it helps develop a wide variety of personas and personalities.

But guess what related subject really blows my mind when it comes to what parents will allow or not allow their kids to do?

The subject of horror: the ever-popular genre of the frightening, the horrific, the scary. For some reason, I find parents not letting their children participate in things like Halloween, but then they let their children watch films with elements of horror or play games based on horror graphic novels or movies.

Just yesterday I asked my friend if she ever thought of going on a brief vacation while her kids stayed at home to house sit. I was actually thinking maybe she and I could go to Las Vegas sometime next year. Her kids are 14 and 12 years old. But she responded right away that her kids are too scared to stay alone for too long. She said her daughter had just seen the movie PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 in the theater, and that it had scared her silly.

And it is not uncommon for kids as young as 8 and 10 years old to be watching movies that are frightening. Some parents don't think it's a big deal. I remember being quite young when I saw the movies JAWS and PIRANHA, both on the creature feature subgenre of horror films. I remember it bothered me quite a bit, and I've never been comfortable in open water since.

But let's be honest, the horror of the seventies is vastly different from the horror of the 21th century. Now the level of graphic gore, sex, and violence makes the older horror films look positively "Disney." The same counts for video games like HALF-LIFE and LEFT BEHIND. A film like HOSTEL is a good example,

a film about kidnapping girls that are traveling as tourists, taking them to an abandoned factory, and strapping them to a bolted chair to be tortured by rich clients that pay the right price. The torture scenes in this film are egregious and severe. HOSTEL and films like SAW are what pass for horror now.

Parents should not expose their children to such negative emotions and imagery when they are young. It can only be destructive, traumatizing. It is a big deal, and I'm going to make sure my brother and sister don't destroy my nephews innocence too early.

The Madoff Show

2011-10-31T00:55:00.000-07:00

I wonder if wealth engenders emptiness.

I'm watching 60 Minutes where Morley Safer is interviewing the Madoff family. I'm sure you've heard of Bernie Madoff, the ponzi scam artist. He scammed millions from people, destroying their lives. On the second anniversary of his incarceration, his younger son hung himself. It's an all-around tragedy, and of course, the news media is right there, johnny-on-the-spot - taking advantage of the pain.

The family is on the show - sans Bernie - plugging a book and distancing themselves from the crooked paterfamilias. I guess they are tired of being coloured with the same brush, and tired of fielding questions like 'how much did you know' and 'where did all the money go' and 'how can you live with yourself?' - the last question the younger son tragically answered with a noose.

I kind of felt 'judgy' when I first started watching, but I'm not qualified to judge anyone. It's easy to judge people on TV since they are completely vulnerable, and ironically those very people who are crucified in the media need that same media to try to clear their names. I feel bad for anyone caught in that vicious circle. They might be privileged and rich, but they are still people living a life of humiliation.

While we are on the subject of wealthy peeps, I find it interesting when wealthy people brag about their possessions or their trips or other blessings they have and think they deserve. It's not a common trait among people who have been wealthy their whole lives; it's more likely in people who have become wealthy within their own lifetime. But more than anything, this need to brag about their stuff stems from an insecurity of some kind.

For some wealthy people, it's enough that they have these things and enjoy them without the need to engender envy in others. Some people, however, feel this need to give their wealth - material wealth, familial wealth, or psychological wealth - significance at the expense of other people. I guess it's not enough to have these things; they have to make sure those who don't have them know the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

A member of my extended family is like that. They are exhausting. It's hard to even talk to them. A good friend of mine also has the same insecurities, resulting in symptoms of avarice, vanity, and self-centeredness. It's sad. There really is no fixing it.

Changing

2011-10-30T02:24:00.001-07:00

Can people change?

A friend of mine asked me that the other day in the context of a discussion about pedophiles and whether they can be cured or not. I have no idea if it's even an illness or an addiction or what it is. I know, it's a pretty heavy subject.

The conversation came around to the subject from the first question she asked me: how can a father sexually molest his children?

I thought about it for a minute.

She always asks me these impossible questions, which I don't mind because I really detest small talk, probably because I'm not that great at it. When I talk to people, I need to talk to them about something that they care about or don't care about, something stimulating. It's probably a product of my many years at school.

I told her this: molesting children, as far as I can see, is rape. It's a crime of power and violence, not sexuality. The line between violence and sexuality can be blurry, but not in the case of rape I don't think, because the pleasure originates from the act of violence on the unwilling.

It's bullying but much worse; it's the intentional destruction of innocence, violence to the unsuspecting. And even if the perpetrator manipulates his victim into consenting - like a father convincing a daughter that there's nothing wrong with this type of 'love' - it is still a violence, perhaps doubly so, since manipulation itself is a violence.

I know I don't know anything. What I'm saying is probably just popcorn psychology which I'm pulling out of my ass.

Anyway, that might be some of the "how" a parent could do that. The why has to be some kind of deep seeded rage, an anger perhaps at having been molested themselves, a perhaps uncontrollable wrath.

Can people change? Can this type of person change? I think people can change, but it takes some kind of cataclysmic or traumatic event to change people. Drunks have to hit bottom. I mean "real" bottom and want to change. The same formula goes for drug addicts. When people come close to dying, I have heard it changes them. I had a traumatic event happen to me, and I can tell you that I'm not the same person (I'm not completely different either). So I believe people can change, and I might be wrong about what it takes to change.

But as for whether a pedophile can change or not? I have no idea, but I would not want to take the chance, for them to even have the opportunity to prove they can't.

Dreams

2011-10-20T00:54:00.000-07:00

Do dreams mean anything? If I dream about wealth, does it mean that I want to be wealthy? That I will become wealthy? That I feel guilty about being relatively wealthy (I don't have a lot of ching-ching but I have three hots and a cot)?

Are dreams the unloading of our daily intake of information? We watch a scary film, and then we have nightmares. This phenomenon doesn't happen to me but it happens to people quite a bit. Does it happen to you?

Are dreams the remnants of a past life? If I dream about being an infantryman in Vietnam during the war, does it mean I was a soldier in that war and died before 1968 (it's possible as I was born in 1968)? Does it mean I was ever a soldier, perhaps in some other war?

I dream about being a soldier a lot. I also have seen many many films about war. But I'm not sure about a correlation, since I also have seen a ton of films about love and/or poverty and/or wealth about being a lawyer and con-artist and cop - and I almost never dream about these vocations. I dream about soldiering. I dream about being an assassin too sometimes.

Dreams are connected to us somehow. We do not know how or why, but I believe they are important. I wish I knew my own mind - that is, what I believe - about dreams and dreaming. All I know is that I feel they are important, but I can't say why, maybe because they are mine and seem to codify parts of me, parts of my personality and my thoughts and my waking dreams.

I wonder what dogs dream about. I wonder which animals dream and what do they dream about. Is it only the mammals? It probably has something to do with the size and sophistication of brains.

Some people interpret dreams. I believe there are people out there with extra sensory perceptions, the ability to read fortunes, to know the future, to interpret dreams. In the bible in the old testament, Joseph was sold to the pharaohs as a slave but rose from the inequities of servitude to political greatness thanks to his ability to interpret dreams. In the books of Carlos Castaneda, the wise old man Don Juan would take peyote to elicit a dream state because in this state he could see the realities underneath reality.

Why all this meditation about dreams? Because the other night I dreamed about being in hell. I can tell you it scared me. I've been thinking about it for a couple of days now.

I was a slave to this demon - at least, I think it was a demon - that looked like Jabba the Hut in the STAR WARS movies. The room was full of disgusting misshapen demons that barely looked like humans, their flesh was a pale sickly yellow and they were hairless. Throughout the room they were engaged in acts so depraved I refuse to even think about them, much less write about them.

It just felt evil (In this case, the definition of evil seems to be depravity to the point where the human being begins to disintegrate into something worse than an animal, something hateful that loves suffering). I knew if I stayed I would lose my humanity and my mind. I would become as they were. It was a strange feeling.

I dreamed of other things that night, but that one glimpse of evil haunts me. I hope I can sleep tonight. Pleasant dreams.

Steve Jobs

2011-10-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

I remember watching a documentary about APPLE in the early 90's. Yes, you read that right, the early 90's. It was an older (maybe filmed in the 80's) profile piece about a small company that was trying to compete against big corporations like Atari, IBM, and Motorola. I think Jobs was thirtysomething at the time; I forget most of the details apart from the open office spaces and general organized chaos that seemed to be the order-of-the-day.

The documentary played up the David vs Goliath story, talked to Steve Jobs briefly, and interviewed Steve Wozniak including a brief plug for the Apple III I think, or maybe it was the Macintosh. Yeah, my memory does not inspire confidence. Just go with it.

The brief interview with Steve Jobs was my first impression of this young entrepreneur, and do you know who he reminded me of? You'll never guess so I'll tell you: Tom Cruise in RISKY BUSINESS when he's being interviewed by Harvard U. while operating a brothel. Cool, confident, and enthusiastic - a visionary, the kind that inspires and invigorates. The kind of guy you want to emulate, hang around, or kill and eat and assimilate his power.

I saw another interview with him in the early 90's and he had been ousted from Apple, and he looked deflated slightly, promoting his new computer company NEXT while trying to avoid the elephant in the room. He had not lost his greatness however; it was weird, you could feel it through the screen almost.

Well, that light has blown out.

But he left the world a better place for the most part. I wonder if he believed in God or salvation. I wonder: where is Steve Jobs now?

Thanksgiving Day

2011-10-11T21:57:00.000-07:00

What am I thankful for? What are you thankful for? It was Thanksgiving yesterday here in Canada. Every day should probably be Thanksgiving Day, but we North Americans have picked a day for it, we like to do that kind of thing, one day for everything and if it's a big issue sometimes a week or a month. Anyway, you must be thankful for something. I am. I am thankful for a few somethings. Let's see if I can make a list.

I'm thankful I'm alive. Mostly.

I'm thankful for God and Jesus and the bible, a thankfulness that may not be as apparent as it should be for someone who calls himself a Christian, especially if you looked at my life.

I'm thankful for being brought up a Christian.

I'm thankful for my sight and hearing especially, but also for my sense of smell and taste.

I'm thankful for being born into a great family with parents and extended family that love me.

I'm thankful for being born in North America, where it is wealthy by any standard in the world, and where freedom and privacy hold sway over forces that would suppress and oppress; that sounds naive, I know, and it is, mostly.

I'm thankful for my friends even though some of them don't seem to have time for me, but instead have time for all kinds of other shit.

I'm grateful the extended families of both my parents get along quite well, and there's hardly any drama; it's a rare blessing.

I'm thankful for electricity and movies and computers and the Internet.

I'm thankful for my education which inspired and empowered me to read some of the great writers in the history of literature, for which I am also thankful.

I'm thankful for being born a male.

I'm thankful for my personality despite its problems.

I'm thankful for women.

I'm thankful for this world with all its strangeness and beauty.

I'm thankful we haven't completely ruined it yet.

I'm thankful for sleep.

I'm thankful for death.

I'm thankful for desire and for sin and honesty and love.

I'm thankful for love in all its forms, and even if love developed through some kind of biological chemical compulsion to procreate, I'm still grateful for it.

I'm grateful for freedom of choice when it comes to faith; I know there's a debate between free will and predestination in Christianity but I don't care, I'm going with free will (even though I may live to regret it).

I'm grateful for the great human beings inhabiting this planet with me, the good Samaritans, the caregivers, the humanitarians and those that love this planet and its animals.

That's about it. All the other things that I'm grateful for are related to the ones above.

I hope you fellow Canadians had a great weekend and a good dinner. My aunt from California came over. We had roast chicken, mashed potatoes, cauliflower with cheese sauce, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and very cold white wine.

Random Thoughts

2011-10-08T02:20:00.000-07:00

I worry about my Dad. I worry about my Mom too, but although physically she is more frail, I somehow sense she is the stronger one, tougher, a survivor.

These statements would surprise you if you knew my parents. My Dad, at 68, has more energy and things going on in his life than my brother, sister and I - all put together.

My grandfather was like this, like an Energizer bunny. He was always on the go, visiting people, traveling, baking and gardening and fixing up the old house. He was full of energy just like my dad. But he died early. I want my dad to stick around.

My aunt, my dad's sister, is visiting from California, and I asked her if she could explain my dad's need to be active constantly. She's not like that. She's very laid back, something you would expect from a Californian. She couldn't explain it.

Maybe there's no explanation. But I still worry about him. It has been on my mind.

It's thanksgiving this Monday. Yes, Canadian thanksgiving is in October. Doesn't that make more sense than having it so close to Christmas? The thanksgiving we have here originated as a thanksgiving for the harvest. I have no idea what Americans could be thankful for in November, late November.

Anyway, my brother and his family again will be missing a major holiday when my parents counted on them to have dinner at least one day on the long weekend. His wife, my sister in law, is making it quite clear she does not like coming over here. It puts my brother in a very awkward position.

I'm going to keep rambling, hope you don't mind.

Today I discovered some blood in my bed. I have a condition that isn't new but I guess is getting worse, so it looks like I'm going to spend most of this weekend in bed. I can only hope and pray it helps.

For some reason, it occurred to me this morning to read Psalm 23. Well, I woke up with it in my head but I wasn't sure if I was remembering correctly, so I checked it out. I was close. In case you don't know, it starts: "The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want," - you have probably heard it somewhere. It is quite beautiful.

It contains the famous line, "ye though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I shall fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me".

It's a strange song from David, partly because it's supposed to be comforting but comes across as dark and disturbing, at least to me. It's probably my mindset though. If my soul was a pool at the center of my Self, I currently feel as if a dark wind is making waves that I cannot control.

It's 2:00 AM. I'm not sleepy. I'm going to try anyway.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

2011-09-26T16:26:00.000-07:00

'Curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought him back'
- BUICK 8 by Stephen King

I went to a restaurant with a friend of mine last night. The name of the restaurant is Earl's; it's a Canadian chain of restaurants presenting a semi-casual ambiance, a presentation it semi-succeeds at presenting. I'm using the word 'presenting' too much, damn there it goes again. Don't worry, not even I find this funny, but I'm semi bored.

Anyway, I consumed a fair amount of alcohol in the form of a pint of beer chased by four double gin and tonics, my favorite drink. If you've never had a gin and tonic and even if you have had one, the drink often is concocted incorrectly in restaurants and bars, because typically they use inferior gin for some reason; so just as a FYI, it is important to specify which type of gin you want in your drink. Bombay Gin is an easy one to remember. Let me also add that gin and tonics have an interesting and refreshing combination of citrus and sweetness along with a touch of bitterness from the gin. It usually comes with either a lime or lemon which you should squeeze into the drink, the lime for little more bitterness, the lemon for more citrus sweetness.

Hold on, where was I going with this?

I have a few drinks. I start to wax philosophically about religion. I get talkative when I've been drinking unless of course I'm in a crowd like a party or a wedding or something like that. At the risk of another digression, I have a low voice, not a bass but low. And I don't have a very loud voice, so I usually keep my mouth shut in loud environments.

Some people are born naturally loud and some train their voices to project volume and power like actors. But even before my injury, I was not a very vociferous or boisterous person. My injury reduced it a little more.

But coming back to the restaurant, the interior was quiet enough for conversation, so we blew off the movie we were going to see - KILLER ELITE -and had a nice long dinner and a few drinks and hung out together instead of sitting in the dark watching a large screen.

I live in a city called Langley, and we have a lot of restaurants. Fast Food Restaurants. Bars with restaurants in them. Sports bars with restaurants. Family restaurants. Delis and grocery stores with restaurants in them. Semi-casual restaurants with sports bars attached to them. Fine dining restaurants, etc. We have a lot of restaurants in Langley, but the weird and disturbing thing is most of them serve almost the same food. It may look a little different, may have a different name, but in essence it's exactly the same.

It doesn't help of course that many of these restaurants belong to the same day corporation, so they probably buy the food at the same distribution center. They probably all train their employees the same way: treat the customer like cattle: get them in, get them fed, make sure they're happy, get their money, and get them out.

My point is we have a lot of variety but very little originality and uniqueness. It is sad. I guess that's what life is like in the suburbs where all the houses look like little boxes, little chicken coops. The homogenization is kind of oppressive but also comforting. Anywhere you look though, anywhere you live, can be construed as oppressive I suppose. The city, the country, the jungle, the desert wherever - they all have their negatives. I suppose the suburbs with its banal normality and commercialized crassness is one of the environs with the least negs.

My point here - yes, amazingly, I do have a point - that our culture is losing its ability for creativity and imagination and originality; small unique restaurants are replaced by Earl's and Olive Gardens; many films coming out of Hollywood are remakes of older films; small unique stores and markets are replaced by Costcos and Walmarts.

We humans have a curiosity for things that are new; we always look for a better way, a newer way, a faster way. It is this innate desire for improvement and challenge-completion that has helped us develop from the cave dweller to mud hut to wooden house to prefab townhouse or apartment building dweller. This need to make it bigger better and more has also generated huge wars for power and resources, of course, along with better medicines and in some cultures more choice and freedom.

Lately, I've noticed our desire for speed and access has started to push our other human needs aside once again. People spend so much time online, I think they forget how to act around their fellow human beings. The internet isn't really reality; it is a medium or mask behind which real people become different than their real life self.

Update: Fukushima

2011-09-21T11:39:00.000-07:00

My neighbor Jim is a marine biologist. He's in the 'know' and I don't think he'd lie to me, even though I would not put it passed the 'establishment' to lie to him and send him out to spread falsities. But I am a little paranoid when it comes to government coverups. I digress.

I met Jim while I was walking Daisy. We walk - well, Daisy walks and I roll lol - right in front of Jim's place. As I was going by he stopped me to update me on the radiation levels in fish off of the West Coast (I've been asking him about it). Apparently the BC fisheries have been testing all summer and fall. And thus far the fish are clean.

He is supposed to send my the report which I will publish here, if I'm allowed. I hope they keep testing because those reactors are still spewing hot particles into the sea and air.

Uncomplicated Friendships

2011-09-21T02:47:00.000-07:00

My friend Kevin, my best friend Kevin, is moving to the Philippines at the end of the month for around two years. His wife is a Filipina (yes, they use the feminine version instead of Filipino). They just adopted a five month old boy there and instead of waiting here for two years for the adoption papers to go through - I gather adopting from another country requires swimming through an ocean of red tape - they decided to take custody right away and spend those two years with their new son while the red tape is dealt with. I think it's a smart move. Why waste those two years.

So lately I have been spending as much time as I can with my buddy. His wife has left for the Philippines already, so he has some free time. I spent the whole weekend hanging out with him. It was great. On Friday we went to the movies and saw the movie DRIVE, one of those movies that has a lot of style but not much substance. Rottentomatoes gives it a 92% fresh rating which is inexplicably high. I went on the web site to check out some of these positive reviews and came away with the conviction that half of these reviewers/critics have completely lost their bullshit-meter. But I digress.

On Saturday, Kevin and I ordered pizza and watched the film THE DRIVER (1978) which is the film upon which DRIVE is based, albeit loosely. The authors and producers of DRIVE do not give the writer/director of the earlier movie any credit. But that's Hollywood. If you like car chases don't bother seeing DRIVE, instead try to find THE DRIVER either on the Internet (I downloaded from isohunt) or on iTunes or netflix. This older film contains three fairly exhilarating car chases in the style of BULLITT.

We watched the Philadelphia Eagles / Atlanta Falcons football game on Sunday night. My mother made a delicious meatloaf with potatoes and salad. It was another great night of food, beer, and friendship.

I don't know how it happened, but most of my friends are women, that's who I typically hanging out with: married women around my age. So I forget sometimes how great it is to hang out with my fellow brothers. The complaining is dialed down from 8 to 1. Same with the drama. Same with the pressure to be a 'gentleman' or funny but not too funny etc.

I'll give you a real example. About a month back I went to lunch with this friend of mine, and I spent most of the visit listening to her talk about her new boyfriend. She has found her soul mate. I can dig it. She was excited, and I genuinely was excited for her. But then a couple of days later her old boyfriend come sniffing around - she told me she hated this guy, verbal abuse, philandering, cheap, the whole ball of wax - and they go on a date and now she's confused because she still loves him. The seesaw goes back and forth for a couple of weeks. I cannot keep up, and I feel frustrated because I want to help but do not know how apart from listening.

I know two other women going through relationship problems right now. A woman I have known for a while but do not see socially told me after church that she was thinking of abandoning organized religion. A girlfriend two days ago facebook messages me to delete her ex-boyfriend from my "friend" list. And it goes on and on. I'm not generalizing; these are real-life scenarios.

I mean, I love women. I love the complexity of their mind. But there's a lot to be said for the simplicity of hanging out with men. Their complaints are pretty basic: am I going bald? I have to start working out. Work is killing me. My wife can't cook. Joe never calls me back, does he call any of you guys back? My wife will not shut up about wanting a new car. My daughter has an asshole for a boyfriend, and I have no idea how to get rid of him. You burned the fucking steak dumbass.

Apart from simply the content of the complaints, mostly you don't even hear the complaints in the first place. It's simple. We usually sort out (or try to) our own mess. It may not be healthy, but it is what it is.

The other thing complicating a male's friendship with a female is the sexual tension stemming from feelings of desire. In the friendships I have with women, I can always sense an ambiguity of desire. If I'm honest with myself, I occasionally think of my female friends sexually. I can't help it. On rare occasions, I have sensed an ambiguous desire coming from one of my friends. It's rare, but it's happened: Where I know they are gauging my suitability as a mate.

Well, my weekend was blissfully uncomplicated. I will miss Kevin deeply. I hate losing good friends. I'm going to have to find another male friend now. Maybe start hanging with my real bro more often; I'm sure he could use a break from family life even though he's got a good wife.

Piracy

2011-09-13T21:58:00.001-07:00

Media piracy is the common man's complaint against the shoddy products huge media conglomerates have been putting out for years now. Columbia Records, Disney, Sony, and others for years now could have been putting out products with unique cases, artwork, features, literature, and other interesting marketing features making their CDS AND DVDS worth purchasing and collecting. Instead they have been making products worth 5¢ and charging us $12.00 or more.

I personally am tired of getting ripped off. And I know there are many of us out there.

Imagine if you will a CD of your favorite band, and now imagine it in a unique molded case with cool artwork wrapped around it and inside, along with the CD of the music, you get a booklet of lyrics, and a companion disk with the files in mp 3 format and video of them in concert and video of the band being interviewed about the album, maybe a video of the band in the studio, maybe a video of them on tour, etc.

That would be collectible. Yes it would cost them some money. Yes it would cut into their profits. Yes it would be a product you cannot digitize. Yes they would be providing a superior product.

But instead of packaging it like that, they want to sell everything separately. They want to make money from everything. The CD separately in a crappie case. The concert on a separate concert DVD. The interviews might end up on the DVD, maybe not. No literature. No video of them on tour. The same goes for movies on DVD: all you get is the movie and nothing else, for any extras you have to buy the special edition.

You want an example? LORD OF THE RINGS. The production company through everything into those disks, along with cool packaging, making it impossible to collect the movie and all the features by downloading it. It's an extreme example, but applicable in a smaller scale to every movie made. Another example might be THE BAND OF BROTHERS series with the lunch bucket case and lots of extras. I can't think of a music CD that has attempted this.

Well, one of these days the conglomerate's will get it because they will be losing so much money they will have to create better products. Let's not forget that going to CD was their idea. Why? Because records and tapes were really expensive to produce, and I am sure it did not fail to enter into these executives' minds that tapes were just too durable and CDs are a lot more vulnerable. The gouging that has been going on for the last 30 years reminds me of the oil companies hiking prices for no reason. It cannot go on. But how else can we protest?

This Scares Me.

2011-08-23T22:23:00.000-07:00

Damn. I live in BC. It could be just paranoia and hype, but my bullshit meter has stayed mostly silent. Those reactors in Fukushima are screwed up still. The open-air pool of spent rods apparently are dry or close to it.

To track the news:

enenews.com/category/fukushima-reactors

Inform yourself and others. Here's my general plan of attack to deal with this news:

1. No fish, no sushi
2. Give up milk
3. No local fruit or veges
4. Not going into the rain

2 and 3 are going to be tough. We'll see.

THE PHONE RINGS

2011-08-23T20:12:00.000-07:00

TOP 10 TIMES THE PHONE WILL RING.

One. When you just about to turn a conversation to a subject YOU'RE interested in, it rings.

Two. During sex. The more rare it is that you get some, the more likely it will ring.

Three. While you're on the john, a job with no toilet paper, it rings.

Four. When you're waiting for an important call, but you have to step outside for a second, that's when it rings.

Five. During a film, either in the middle of a pivotal conversation in a spellbinding film or during the climax of an electrifying thriller. The better the film, the more likely will ring.

Six. When you're trying to eat a messy sandwich and sip a blistering hot drink, while typing a time-sensitive email. Ring ring.

Seven. While you're driving over patchwork roads, your phone will hide and begin to ring.

Eight. The one time you forget to turn your ringer off in the theater or a church, odds are it will ring. The odds go up if it's a funeral.

Nine. When you're in your housecoat and haven't had your first cup of coffee and the doorbell rings and the dog starts to bark and the delivery guys are early, it will always ring during these types of perfect storms.

Ten. When it's 3:00 AM and you're on the speakerphone with computer support and you're right in the middle of a complicated set of instructions, that's when you're call waiting starts to go nuts and doesn't stop. The longer it took to get through to support, (you guessed it) the more likely your other line will start ringing.

ADAPTATION

2011-08-20T02:37:00.000-07:00

"All the world's a stage
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts."

I'm going to AS YOU LIKE IT tomorrow at the Shakespeare festival Bard On The Beach, and the quote above is one of that plays' most famous. Coincidentally, I was listening to a lecture about teaching; the professor talked about the issue of teaching as a performance where the teacher cloaks himself in a persona, a persona likely resembling his own personality but in some senses quite different.

It's funny because I remember believing their personas were their personalities. It's a little paradigm shift for me.

Because if you think about it, we all put on and take off personas. You can see people do it, sometimes in the blink of an eye as when you're talking to somebody and the phone rings and they answer it and their voice changes, they become someone completely different, their personality changing before your eyes, shifting to engage with the audience on the other side of the phone.

I watched this nature show about squids and octopus and how they change colors to communicate. I do this all the time. I'm always changing. Sometimes the wise teacher. Sometimes the attentive listener. Sometimes the playful suitor. Sometimes the fraternity brother. Sometimes the older brother. To the point where even my family doesn't really know me.

What does it mean? Does it mean that we don't really have one personality? Who am I really?

I find myself constantly acting, most of the time unconsciously adapting to someone else who is in the process of adapting to me, and it goes around and around, a strange waltz of reading, adjusting and adapting as we talk to each other or even text each other, although in text there are a lot more gaps and more chances for miscommunication. From childhood we develop our dancing skills, our ability to read each other and communicate, and there's nothing simple about a simple conversation. Talking through text is like dancing under a slow strobe light; you can barely see what's going on.

The theater, as a live event, is an interesting representation of the human endeavor to communicate, because every night it's different, every performance is unique, different from the night before; and I've heard actors describe how audiences change and how they feed off and adapt to the energy of the crowd.

I guess in the end we all want to get along, and we all want people to understand what we say, but is that all we are? Do we have a true self outside our constant adaptations to other people and our need to frame our representation to others.

If one lived in seclusion with the people around, would they find their true self? What about taking a vow of silence? Would we find God waiting for us in the darkness? Do you have an idea of yourself? Do you change it at will? You might say, yes I change it a little but I know who I am. The only thing I know is that I pretend my way through life.

While on the subject, the movie ADAPTATION is a brilliant drama, and if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It stars Meryl Streep, Nicolas Cage, Chris Cooper, Brian Cox, and many more.

The Cell

2011-07-31T20:51:00.000-07:00

I love my cell phone. It's a BlackBerry Bold 9000 with a trackball and a pretty big screen. The model is the widest model available, making the keyboard a little easier to use than the other models. I needed the trackball since I don't have the dexterity or finger motor control for touchscreens. I hate APPLE products for their devotion to touch technology. I'm digressing again.

Yes, cell phones are great. They are a great way to keep in touch with friends. It's a new technology however, and I'm not sure social graces have caught up to it apart from not using cells in theaters or church. It's probably like that with every new technology or cultural artifact nudging its way into our lives. We have to find a place for it and develop social norms, customs, and social rules around the new item.

When it comes to cell phones, especially smartphones, I think texting or conversations in the presence of others is rude and obnoxious. It boils down to manners and courtesy. When a text comes into my cell, I feel an almost irresistible urge to check it and reply even when I'm with someone. But I try to ignore it.

Unless your waiting for an emergency call, it's disrespectful to even look at it. It's like looking at your watch when someone talking to you. It shows a distinct lack of class, maturity and character. I've had tweens and teens ask me why I don't answer my texts when they 'bing' - they look at me like they'd like to jack me for my cell just so they can answer it. Take it easy; it's just a machine.

It's manners and courtesy. When you are in a restaurant with your friend, brother, or partner, you have no business on the phone. I was out with my bud Kev yesterday at the restaurant Earls. I saw three of four people at a table buried in their cells. I saw a couple of idiots with their baseball caps on.

I think either they were never taught manners [their parents failed them, and they will continue to look foolish until someone tells them] or they are willfully ignorant dolts.

I love my cell. But I rule it; I don't let it rule me. The same goes for my house phone and television. If the phone rings, I let the machine get it unless I'm free and near the phone. Some of my family and friends scramble each time the phone rings. "Where's the phone? Where's the phone!?"

It looks hilarious.

Lending

2011-07-23T13:22:00.000-07:00

I try not to lend things to people, but when family asks to borrow something - a vehicle, tool, book - you have to give it up, in my opinion. Family is family. What are you going to do, right?

One of the things I don't like lending is my van. My Chrysler Caravan is equipped with a wheelchair lift, and although I cannot drive it myself, it is almost an irreplaceable fixture in my life. It is still just a 'thing' though. I could buy another (not easily, but I could). I could use wheelchair taxis or the public wheelchair bus system, which here in BC is called the HandiDART. But these options suck. I have been there and done that, and they are "last resort". So I hate lending it out.

I have been asked several times to borrow it, principally by family members or friends of seniors or the disabled wanting to take their charges out to the beach and weddings and what-have-you. I've relented. But it has to be a special case. And I do it grudgingly, and I feel guilty about worrying, about not lending it out more freely. Family or no, I should just give it up, especially if I'm not using it.

Why? Because all this shit around us is just that: shit. If you cannot let something go, you should examine your relationship with your "things" because none of this stuff is important. I think this idea lies close to the heart of the Gospels and Jesus' teachings. Take this quote from the Bible, for instance Luke 6:

32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Think about it. If you lend it away, you should let it go. Don't expect it back. From your enemies. So it follows this principal encompasses anyone closer than your enemies.

One could argue that by being so permissive with your things, you are 'enabling' a kind of behaviour of 'entitlement'. It's true. People, even family, will take advantage of your generosity. People are people, whether they are atheist, Christian, or Buddhist. But do you know what? You cannot control what other people do. You can only control what you do: your 'ability' to 'respond' to the world.

One of my favourite quotes is the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference

There is more to the prayer, but how liberating is that?

I have to work on this myself. I am going to try to let go of my attachments to the crap I've managed to collect. It's just stuff. Similarly, I have to work on my instinct to mistrust and to judge; I cannot control what people do and it's not my place to judge.

Cynicism

2011-07-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about cynicism today. I've had my own battles with cynicism, especially when it comes to religion or charities or politics, where you just know you can't trust what the people in charge or soliciting you are telling you.

I simply don't trust politicians, no sane person does. I don't think that's cynicism. I think it would be cynical to presuppose every politician goes into politics just to line their own pockets or to exercise power. I do think there are some good ones trying to do their best. Is that naive? Probably.

When it comes to charities like the cancer society for instance, I just don't see where all the money raised by the different cancer societies ends up. It adds up to millions of dollars, maybe billions. What do they do with it? Show me how it's doing some good, apart from giving the medical companies extra cash to research drugs and treatment that they will charge for anyway. Even if the breast cancer society, for instance, uses the money for research and finds a cure, does anyone really think they will provide a cure for free? So I am partially cynical about a lot of charities. The watchdog site charity navigator is an excellent cure for cynicism, however. It's a great way to make sure your money is used properly.

My battles with cynicism and religion are rooted in the messenger and not the message usually. When I hear pastors or preachers quote Revelations and try to scare people with political conspiracy theories and predictions of the end of times, I tune them out lickety split. And that also goes for preachers or people that are ultra legalistic about faith. Homosexuality, for instance. I find it really hard to believe that Jesus would damn any two people that loved each other and loved Him. I find zealots dangerous. We are supposed to love not judge.

I think a little cynicism is healthy as is a little skepticism. I mean, it's good to be a little naive about some things, and I have to admit I am a little naive when it comes to the power of love and my desire to believe most people have good intentions. But my cynicism, skepticism, and ability to think critically keep me from being stupid. For instance, when I give money to charities, I try to be the best steward possible with the gifts I've been given and pick charities that will do the most with my donation.

But cynicism and skepticism are dangerous tools. They can take over your life. They can ruin everything around you. Some people are brought up with cynicism, and they are never happy; they rarely have any joy in their life.

Being cynical about life is like living in a besieged castle. You starve. You slowly die of emptiness and despair. You live in denial and eat rationalizations. And when that dries up, you become a cannibal eating the people around you and then yourself. In the end, your mind follows your already lost soul.

My neighbor is like that. He doesn't believe or trust in anything. He is one of the loneliest people I've ever met. I've tried to talk to him; we've hung out together. I've tried to see if he would come to my church, but he would have none of that. He has fallen in love with the idea of being besieged.

A cautionary tale.

The End of Friendship

2011-07-10T16:32:00.000-07:00

Friendship comes in all sizes and shapes, and the scales of grey in friendships are legion, some friendships are simple and strong like those growing out of mutual interests or hardships, for instance friendships that develop in a class or between soldiers, and some friendships are complex and nuanced like friendships between the genders or between relatives or between ex lovers and many of the friendships between women fall into this category.

At the risk of generalizing, it has been my experience friendships between women are more complex, chimerical, protean than friendships between men, or perhaps I am looking at it wrong, perhaps all friendships are complex but with women it is on the surface and more apparent. I am no expert. But I have eyes and ears and my ears have eyes, and I have quite a few female friends and they tell me about the love and envy and suspicions and dread they have with their female friends.

these complications are foreign to me. My friendships are straightforward, even my friendships with women.

Some of these complexities are explore in Margret Atwood's novel CAT'S EYE, a book about a young woman growing up in Ontario.

But this blog entry is not about female friendships; it's about the end of a friendship I have had for over 25 years, before even the injury that landed me in this wheelchair. Like Eliot's "Hollow Man," this friendship is not ending in a snap, a sudden severance of civility, not with a BANG but with a whimper. And this friendship is the fourth long term friendship I've lost in the exact same way.

Here's the pattern, maybe you will recognize it:

Your friendship is in its Golden Age. You go out together. Hang out just doing nothing. You talk and no subject is taboo. When you see his name on your caller ID, you answer it. You offer to help each other out and you follow through. You invite each other over.

Your friend meets a girl and they start to date. He tells you about it. He is happy and you are happy he's happy, and you encourage him literally giving him the 'courage' to wade into fields of emotional uncertainty that is courting.

Your friendship begins to fade at this point. Your calls go to voice mail. Your emails don't get answered. Your texts go unanswered for hours. Schedules suddenly become more complicated. You have to work hard at getting together and when you do there is a third person at the table or in the room. It takes years to fade to the point where getting together is awkward because now you have nothing in common.

They get married. They have children. And you never see your friend again. He never has time, always too busy. But of course you hear about the couple showing up parties and double dinner dates and going to concerts with friends of friends.

And for all purposes, the friendship dies.

They are still your friends, you would help them in an instant, but in the back of your mind, you do it for who they were not the stranger standing before you.

More broadly, the end of friendships, community, the social fabric of our culture is a pattern that will continue as far as I can tell; almost everything we do is accomplished remotely. We buy stuff online. We talk online. We take courses online. We work online. Soon we'll be grocery shopping and going to church online.

It's sad really. It reminds me of a famous short story by Harlan Ellison called I HAVE NO MOUTH, AND I MUST SCREAM which is kind of about the ultimate digitization of society.

Summer 1

2011-06-19T04:04:00.000-07:00

In my mind summer began a few days ago when I saw saw the early sun lance through the young yellow green leaves in the backyard and fill the room with light. I sat at the table drinking a hot cup of mocha watching the bird feeder and its frenzied air traffic. It was quiet inside, and the only sound I could hear was the faint chirping of birds outside. Then something caught my eye, something drifting in the blinding sunlight: it was the cotton seeds from the cottonwood trees floating falling with leisure. These little clouds of promise are springtime's last erotic gesture. They mark the beginning of summer.

And in a couple of weeks, kids and young adults will emerge from the world of school wide eyed and ecstatic and already bored, the starring screen of facebook and twitter (and even the flashing screen of Call of Duty) no substitute for the dread and angst and glory of school.

Being Me

2011-06-17T03:02:00.000-07:00

The time is 2:00 AM in the morning. The week has not gone well, and it's not about the stupid hockey game and the aftermath because I don't really watch hockey anyway. Don't get me wrong, I love sports, I love watching sports, but I can't stand the commercials, so instead of watching football and basketball and hockey and tennis all of which I used to watch with gusto, I play fantasy sports and just watch the big games, the playoffs, the finals. Yes, I hate commercials that much and using a PVR or TIVO still means you have to fast forward or skip them which is almost as bad. If you can't watch sports live, you might as well forget it right?

Anyway, it is not sports that has ruined my week. I have chronic problems with my feet and they are acting up and one of them has developed a pressure sore. So I've been in bed all week. Yeah, I'm talking 24 hours a day.

It's the only way to heal pressure sores: you have to stay off the area or reduce pressure to it, which, in the case of my feet means I have to keep them somewhat level with my heart. Because if I lower my legs the blood will pool in my legs and feet and put pressure on the weakest spot in the skin, namely the sore. Also, the constant flow of oxygenated blood is critical for any sore or burn.

I don't know how long I will be in bed. These sores take their time, and uncertainty is a god that rules your world for as long as it takes.

I also figured out this week in a conscious way (I have suspected it for quite awhile) that I am a huge disappointment to my father.

I can't really express how painful it is to say it. So I'm not going to say much about that. He's not ashamed of me. And he still loves me. But I disappoint him. A son knows these things. I literally feel sick.

I would give anything to please him, to have him admire me and be proud of who I am and what I've accomplished with my life. But that's a problem. But honestly I have no life.

Let's put it in black and white: no job, no girl, no kids, no house, no health, no volunteering gig, and no real accomplishments apart from a couple of degrees. I still have hair and I'm not portly, still not quite a George but close.

The kicker? Oh yes there is a kicker. The above is pretty much permanent. I know, I have a pretty good excuse for having no life: some asshole ruined the only life I am ever going to get When I was eighteen. That excuse doesn't flush any more. That toilet is full.

Hockey Game

2011-06-16T03:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I had this nice blog about springtime, about the progression of spring from the winds and rain to the cherry blossoms to the baby animals and finally to the cottonwood cotton marking the beginning of summer up here in the northwest. I had it all written out nice and pretty on those sticky pads that you can use on the desktop screen of Windows 7, and I also had a fairly detailed outline of a short story whose details I cannot recall which is the reason why I wrote it down. Then I hit the delete key in an effort to edit my blog and I lost the whole works.

I actually went into shock when it disappeared. It didn't minimize in case you're wondering; it disappeared into the ether. This inadvertent mistake is the second time I've done this with these sticky notes. Shame on me.

In the end, it doesn't matter. I should really be writing an apology note on behalf of the assholes rioting right now in Vancouver over a stupid hockey game. I think Vancouver is one of the only cities that goes crazy over a stupid sports game. I remember when this happened in the mid nineties. It was shameful.

So now with my 100th post stupidity and circumstances have conspired to make this about something other than springtime beauty and the purity and innocence of nature. Rather, I have to talk about ugliness.

I don't think people are rioting because we lost the game; it's only a game; it's not enough to lose your mind over. I wonder where the rage comes from. This rage is the rage of the suppressed, of those whose lives are not free, of those who feel they have been victimized their whole life. The people full of rage are the ones instigating the violence feeding it like a flame when it threatens to go out.

What could possibly move them? What emptiness fills their being making them so angry? Is it that they feel insignificant, and this is a way to do something significant, something that people will notice? We all feel this insignificance however. No one really listens to our pain. No one really listens to anybody. The world is the same for everybody.

Maybe it's pride. Maybe they think that they should be heard, or that they should be significant and their biology or their world has conspired against them, conspired to keep them insignificant and without means or a voice. Maybe they think that they are something special and deserve a team that should win, whether by luck or skill, the stupid Stanley Cup.

Imagine having all that pride and being insignificant. It must be so hard to live in one of the top five richest and most free countries in the world. Don't they realize we don't even deserve that much. Talk about sad.

on writing and not being able to

2011-06-08T02:04:00.000-07:00

During the night, I lay on a alternating air mattress that prevents me from getting pressure sores. My mattress has a hole. I can hear the air slowly leaking out somewhere down by my feet, and I couldn't help thinking this leak is the perfect metaphor for my life at the moment, the air slowly leaking out of my life abandoning this inert container of flesh and thoughts and dreams to die of the pressure of its own slothfulness.

Literally, today was a total waste of time. I played this idiotic game called Civilization 5 for a few hours and then surfed around the Internet commenting on people's pages, tweeting about nothing, watched some shit programs and basically loafed around. I should've been doing some writing. But for some reason I just can't seem to get going on anything.

I even have a hard time getting into reading. What the fuck.

I watched the film a few days ago called LIMITLESS about a writer who could not seem to get anywhere with his writing until he met this guy he knew in high school who dealt drugs and was always a little shady. Since high school he had moved on to work for the pharmaceutical industry, a new company that had just developed a pill that could tap the previously unused portions of the brain. He said it could fix the writer's block. And it did.

The pill does not exist. And that free time I had today: I will never get that back. I have said this before on this blog, and I will keep saying it as long as it is true: I am an asshole.

I don't understand this whole writing thing. I think about it. I dream about it. I do it for a while putting out prose poems and short short stories and even once upon a time a couple of unfinished novels. But I'm never serious about it (well, there were a couple of years were I took it semi-serious). I read about writing almost constantly, and I guess this is part of the not uncommon obsession about writing fiction or poetry. It's a cliche. I'm a cliche.

It's sickening. I hate this about myself. This desire to write fiction burns inside my head and chest, a hunger and thirst almost obscene in strength and scope and impossibly difficult to quench and slake. I am Tantalus standing in the lake in hell with the water up to his chin and dying of thirst; and I was put here by gods of my own making: sloth, pride, lust, envy - these are the gods of my tiny world distracting me with culture and media and news. I literally watch myself put things off; it's like watching a silent film in slow motion.

I'm also becoming one of these guys who cannot finish things. I feel like taking this laptop by the screen and smashing it into the wall. I cannot do that of course because I am a cripple, but metaphorically, at one time I have thrown it all out: the computer, the dreams of being a writer, all of that shit. I canceled the Internet and stopped writing anything to anyone (this was years ago).

It didn't do any good. I was a moth yearning for the light. And without even knowing it, I was writing little poems longhand (I hold the pen with my mouth if you're interested). The dream is there; it's not going anywhere; and to paraphrase Glenn Close in FATAL ATTRACTION: it won't be ignored.

Amanda Palmer, lead singer for the Dresden Dolls, gave the commencement speech at the New England Institute of Art where she talked about the fraud police that sneak up on artists and make them doubt themselves. Maybe that's the problem: no confidence. It doesn't feel like that though; rather it feels like I've found the perfect way to torture myself. Here's the speech, it's pretty good.

It's not all that hard once you get going and start to feel the flow of the story coming together in your mind. I've done it before. I've even published three stories for actual money (not a lot, mind you), so I know I can do this. But when I come to write, I cannot, or I do and I stall. I've heard that God gives people challenges that they can handle. I think it's true. But that only makes my situation worse really, because I should be able to will my way out of this funk.

Naturally, I have prayed about it. God's timeline (if there is one for me and my petty desires) is a complete mystery which in the end might not be a mystery at all since I kind of suspect that God leaves a lot of these types of things up to us. He is not at our bidding, many people get this wrong.

Well, I don't really have a PLAN B. I guess the joke is on me.

The Robin

2011-05-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

For a couple of years in a row, my mother became enamored of wreaths, not funeral wreaths mind you, but the type of wreaths you put on your front door or garage door or front gate.

It started, I believe, with the wife of my Dad's best friend Doug; she was a highschool teacher professionally but she also made things like wreaths and other craft-thingys; and one year she gave my mother a pretty Autumn wreath with rust, yellow and orange colored silk leaves, and pine cones, and all the accoutrement of the harvest season.

We have a wreath for each season now. A couple of months ago, we changed the Christmas wreath on the front door to the springtime wreath, green leaves and sprigs crowning some silk flowers - colorful and joyous.

Then one day the wreath looked strange; something was odd, changed. It wasn't immediately obvious what had changed, but something.

And a couple of days later, it did become obvious: a robin had built a tightly woven nest about five inches in diameter on the lower loop of the wreath's "O".

It has been 4 days, and our guest has deposited three bluegreen eggs in there. We moved the wreath off of the door and onto the brick pillar beside the door. So we are not supposed to use the front door, because it disturbs the bird.

Well, I have to use the front. It's the only accessible ramp out of this dump, so if that bird or its advocates think I'm going to be held prisoner, they can forget it. The robin gets spooked, but it just flies onto the grass and chirps angrily and flies back to the eggs afterwords. No big deal.

An Asian friend of mine said the robin's eggs are an 'sign' of good fortune, each egg a sign of wealth. I don't, we don't, really need money, but a wealth of love, happiness and God's mercy would be welcome.

New Computers

2011-05-28T18:13:00.000-07:00

I had a blog written, and this ain't it. It was a rundown of the television renewals and cancellations; this is the time of year when the networks make decisions about next year's TV schedules. I had it all written down when my computer semi-crashed.

Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

So I went out and bought a kick ass system which then proceeded to give me the blue screen of death. I cannot stand all the garbage that new computers come with; I actually don't even understand it, because when I buy a new computer I'm buying it to have a clean, fast computer without all the programs and adwear and crap that was clogging up and slowing down the old system. But new systems are chock full of exactly that, complex systems and software that boot up with your system and slow it to a crawl. You can pay someone to take some of the junk out for you, but why should you? shouldn't the computer come nice and clean on its own? If I wanted Norton virus software, I would buy the program, which by the way I would never do because that program - especially Norton 360 - is an octopus that reaches into your whole system and magically turns (to stick with the animal metaphors even though I'm all over the fauna map) a jaguar into a sloth.

This is what I do to solve this particular dilemma. Keep in mind I'm not an expert, so if you wreck your new computer, I'm not responsible.

I have windows 7.

The first thing I do is go through the Quick Start checklist and get the system up and running. Once it's running good and I've tried out the Internet and the sound and the webcam and the battery etc., I restore my system by searching in the Start menu search: "restore system". You'll see a choice to go to "restore system or reinstall windows" and clicking that will take you to the System Recovery screen. It will say "open recovery", and below it will say "advanced" - you click "advanced" and on the next screen you pick "restore to the factory settings."

Follow the screens. At one point a window should pop up asking you if you want to restore your system to the factory setting or to basic windows settings which installs the basics of Microsoft Windows and your computer's devices. You want the basic install.

Remember, if you screw up and this doesn't work, you can always restore it back to factory where you began. You just go to the Start Menu and type in "restore system" again, etc, like above but you take restore to factory instead of the basic windows.

The restore will take awhile. When it's finished, go to your Start Menu and search for MSCONFIG. When you go see it, click it. A window will emerge. Click the tab labeled "startup" and unclick stuff like (my computer is an HP) HP quick launch, HP wireless assistant, HP Media, Synaptics mouse software, blue tooth software. Basically anything that is added on by another company or that functions with an unimportant device on a computer (Synaptics, for example, is a mouse program but Windows already has one). If you're not sure (OFTEN A GOOGLE SEARCH WILL TELL YOU IF IT'S SAFE TO UNINSTALL), then leave it alone. But your system will be faster and run smoother.

Good luck.

I would like to rant briefly about Bluetooth software on computers. It means nothing. Bluetooth software is unusable junk. It won't talk to your Bluetooth device unless that device is specifically from Microsoft. I have a high end Blue Ant earpiece and the windows Bluetooth simply ignores it. Why would they tie it to a certain brand? I don't know. To make you buy a Microsoft brand Bluetooth device? And you just know when you bring that puppy home, it will do nothing but lie there and piss on your shoes.

Box of Chocolates at the Hairstylists

2011-05-22T12:58:00.000-07:00

Oddly enough, Josh Barkley just posted something about hair on his blog a couple of hours ago. I guess great minds think alike, as the expression goes.

I rue the day when male baldness catches up to me. It will happen. I'm 43 and I still have lots of hair, so I'm not too worried about the next five years, but somewhere in the future, it will happen. Then again at some point in the future, I will be dead. It's not something someone can control, and when you can't control it, there is no point worrying about it. That's the type of fear that can control you.

But at the same time, I have to say that hair, my hair, drives me crazy sometimes. It grows fast. Once in while, I will get up in the morning and look at myself and the mirror (an image I'm starting not to recognize) and suffer a mild shock at how much my hair has grown. And going to the hair stylist inspires the kind of enthusiasm I would associate with going to the dentist or going to the proctologist for a colonoscopy.

What is the deal with hairstylists anyway? I've tried expensive ones. I've tried cheap ones. As far as I can see, there is no difference because every time I go to get my hair cut I describe what I want exactly the same way. Every time. And every time I come out of the hairstylists with a different haircut. While unpredictability might be inspiring to an idiot like Forrest Gump with his the meaning of life is a box of chocolates popcorn culture philosophy, I have always found unpredictability and inconsistency (I know, they're not exactly the same thing) in so-called professionals utterly frustrating.

Why am I ranting? I had my hair cut a couple of days ago.

When my hair gets too long (when it falls over my eyes and gets close to my shoulders), the back starts to flip up and the sides start to wing outward. A couple of mornings ago, I woke up and washed and conditioned my hair and noticed that my hair was starting to act unruly even though it was wet. It was time. So a couple of hours later, I headed down to the hairstylists, a walk in place called magic cuts.

Magic indeed. Magically unpredictable. But in my quixotic effort to find consistency, I try to go to the same place every time. How did Einstein describe insanity? Repeating the same thing and expecting a different result?

Well, the other draw to the place is the hair cutter. I get my hair cut by a cute single mom called Angela, dark eyes and milk chocolate skin and a slightly goth look: purple streak in her black hair, dark lipstick, and ironically gaudy jewelry. But the reason I go back to her is that she has great hands, warm and soft and strong, and they have a loving way of touching that is hard to explain. I know a couple of women like this, and I shamelessly find all kinds of reasons to get close to them.

Sidebar: when women ask me what I look for in my ideal woman, I try to explain the above phenomena and they usually look at me strangely as though I have started speaking a foreign language.

But Angela, despite the great hair wash, still cut my hair too short, so now I look like a meathead; it will look good in about two weeks. Every bloody visit is a box of bitter and sweet chocolate; oh well, at least I'm not bald and sitting at home shining my dome with snowboard Sex Wax, you wouldn't want the surfer stuff on your head lol.

Spring 3 - Dodging Arrows

2011-05-16T17:29:00.000-07:00

The air turned grey and a light soft breeze rose cool on the cheek, and I could smell the rain coming - that subtle aroma of fresh wet earth and mossy drainpipe. The sun pierced through the darkening clouds a couple of times as if mocking the iron clouds swelling in the horizon. Then the sun vanished in a blink. The breeze stiffened, making the dying cherry blossoms stream across the road; and I knew the rain was already in the air, riding the wind like arrows from a castle battlement. And just before I felt the first drops strike me I noticed the birds had hushed, their cacophony replaced by the tap tap tapping of the first wave sweeping through the trees and the crunch of gravel underfoot as I sped home.

Mother's Day

2011-05-10T01:24:00.000-07:00

Mother's day. I had a plan on how to be nice to mom today, and it worked out pretty good. Step one, I let her sleep in until 10.30 AM and when I woke her up (I was surprised it became that late), I took the dog for a walk while she enjoyed her coffee; step two, I sent her a talking card of a muffin in a turtleneck sweater saying that I loved her and thanking her for making me a muffin-top with her great cooking; and step three, I gave her a book from Amazon Kindle which is delivered instantaneously via wireless. It was this last step that proved a little more than I bargained for. All I wanted to do was something thoughtful but low maintenance. Yeah.

Last week, she finished reading ALL THE PRETTY HORSES by Cormac McCarthy, a novel I highly recommend for anybody: it's an amazing book, because unlike some of his other novels, it is completely accessible, balancing beautiful language and storytelling, tension, conflict, and a touching love story - all told by one of the finest writers of this century (if you think this is hyperbole, I assure you it's not, look him up). So my mother was looking for her next book, and without pressing, I steered one of our conversations last week to the subject of books hoping she would hint at the type of book I could buy for her. She did. Something a little more popular this time, a page turner with some action, maybe some crime fiction. I thought of a novel right away: HEAVEN'S PRISONERS by James Lee Burke, or BLACK CHERRY BLUES by the same author. My parents have very good taste in art and just about everything else.

When I found a minute, I zipped over to my computer and looked for it on Amazon; they had both novels but not in Kindle format which was hard to believe, so much so that I spent half an hour checking and rechecking. I settled for a novel called REMOTE CONTROL by Andy McNab; it is a Jason Bourne type of spy/crime novel which is close to what she wanted. Still it is not the one I wanted. Then later that morning I actually saw her reading on her iphone and thought to myself 'if she reads on her iphone then she can read an 'epub' document and I do have HEAVEN'S PRISONERS in epub format', so I emailed the epub novel to her phone and found the right app for her to install in order to read it. It worked. It was too easy. It was time to get suspicious/paranoid haha.

I was working on my laptop when I heard her talking to her phone in the other room. She was playing around with the icons on the phone, rearranging them or something. In my paranoid state, I called out and warned her not to fool around with them, and the next thing I knew she had hidden or lost the very app she needed to read the epub novel I sent her. I felt like saying "I told you ... " but I held it back, and I said "okay let's fix it" instead, which took me two hours.

If you own an iphone and ever hide an icon by mistake, you should reset all your preferences to default and it should reappear.

I realized right then my Dad is a genius. One of his friends had arranged a guys-only retreat to Mexico for a week starting the Saturday before Mother's Day. Who would do that, you ask? A real meat head douche. But finding a friend like that is not the genius part. My Dad is a master at efficiency. He bought her a potted plant for Mother's Day; he dropped it in front of her, gave her a kiss, and said, "see you in a week." That's efficiency.

My mother and I had a good laugh about it. The laugh was the best present I could have given her.

In general, humor is "funny" like that. :-) It has that quality. It can heal the worst situations; it can bridge gaps between estranged family or entrenched positions or the most awkward scenes. And even if humor bridges or alleviates the tension briefly, the moment is better and has a chance to heal.

I had an uncle that used to give me advise when he was drunk. He was wise but weak too. Anyway, he warned me about sex, the awkwardness of it, the tension if things do not go quite right - humor, he said, will smooth everything out like butter (he liked saying that, "like butta" he would say), and he was right. Keeping things light. Taking the serious out. Works like a charm. Humor cuts through tension like butta. If it can smooth out the messy awkwardness of sex and the pin drop tension of situations like public speaking, it must be a miraculous gift.

I am surprised there are not more positive remarks about humor in the Bible, because it restoreth the soul as well, perhaps not as much as green pastures and still waters but darn close.

Like butta.

So in the end, Mother's Day was great. My hat is off to moms. They are the best.

Working in Chaos

2011-04-28T22:12:00.000-07:00

I find it impossible to work in a maelstrom of activity where people are coming in and out and talking to me and asking me questions and telling me unsolicited personal stories while I'm sitting in front of a blank screen obviously trying to work, to think of a beginning or a character or how to spin an image into a metaphor without reducing it to a simile. Just this morning I have been trying to work on some water imagery as a metaphor for time and the fucking cleaning lady will not shut up about her son making the next round in his hockey playoffs and my Dad (and business partner) saunters up and starts chirping about having to take a business associate out for lunch today and that it would be fantastic if I came along because and I'm reading between the lines now the silences can become a tad awkward. Yeah, no problem; I'll be your conversation bluffer and comic relief if I can just get an hour or two of peace.

I saw an interview with the novelist John Irving once, where they showed his workspace; I tried to find the video, because they showed his office and it was incredible. In his house, his kitchen, dinning room, and family room were all one long open room and his desk sat halfway between his dinning room and the family room with the couch and television. Irving talked about writing while his wife and kids went about their noisy lives around him; I still do not know how he manages it. Here's an interesting interview with him:

He seems to be able to switch from writing to family and back again while people are talking, banging away in the kitchen, watching TV. When I lose my train of thought, I also lose my motivation to write. And Stephen King incidentally has his own office but writes to loud classic hard rock. I've tried more than once to write to loud music, to any music, and I just cannot do it. The lyrics in the song messes up the words I hear in my head; and even if it's an instrumental piece like one of Chopin's Preludes or something, the music acts like a jamming signal to the voice in my head.

Speaking of... the vacuum starts up in the next room. Awesome.

I need relative silence to write: no music, no TV, no text alerts, no visitors walking through and eyeballing me or looking over my fucking shoulder to see what I'm writing, and no harpies squawking at or around me. I know, I sound awful lol.. bitter and pissed off. I'm not going to sugarcoat it; it drives me crazy sometimes.

On Sunday after church, I talked to a friend of mine who is a part-time professor at Trinity Western University and I told him I was taking a course there next month and I suggested that we meet for lunch or something before my class. He said he rarely made into campus during the summer. It sounded like the classic blow off, but this guy is cool, sincere, so I said, "where do you work? where do you do your writing?" and projecting my experience on him, I asked, "how do you get anything done at home? do you just close the office door and hang up the Do Not Disturb?" He said, "no, my wife brings me my first cup of tea or coffee actually and leaves me and I work for a bit until lunch." Wow... nice.

It sounds heavenly. One day perhaps I'll have silence and peace in spades, and I can imagine not being able to write because the house is too quiet and too peaceful. The bloody television is on right now and NORTH BY NORTHWEST is playing, and I had a great finish to this blog entry but Eva Marie Saint was just telling the detectives on the train that she did not even know the man she was talking to in the dinning car and I completely lost my train of thought. Beautiful women do that to me as well: signal jamming.

Easter

2011-04-26T03:40:00.000-07:00

I came across this passage this morning reading THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Dostoyevsy. Ivan, the skeptic, is talking to his brother Aloshya, the believer, and arguing God does not exist or if He does, He is a cruel God. Ivan explores the case of suffering children:

Can you understand why a little creature, who can't even understand what's done to her, should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice? Do you understand why this infamy must be and is permitted? Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much?

Ivan uses old examples of humankind's sins against the innocent, but if you want new ones, then you can read about the atrocities in Bosnia in the 1990s or the genocide in Rwanda.

I read CS Lewis' THE PROBLEM OF PAIN and his logical unraveling of the issue of suffering makes sense until you do a little research on what these killers do to their victims, the men, women, and children caught up in the onslaught. Then Lewis' arguments seem cold and abstract - inhuman or perhaps quite human. Part of Lewis' argument is God's goodness lies with our knowledge of good and evil and our ability to respond to this knowledge, to make choices, including whether to believe or not.

Ivan above asks the interesting question that would it not be better to be ignorant puppets if it prevents such suffering?

I'm a simple guy. I'm not a philosopher or a theologian, but I can really only think of one reason that would make such suffering worth it: a real afterlife so pure full and amazing it makes our sufferings almost insignificant in comparison, and innocent children receive a free pass to this land of light and wonder.

But Ivan knows his Gospels well enough that he should know firstly, that children hold a special place in Jesus' heart and they will inherit kingdom of God; and secondly, freedom to choose and love are the cornerstones of Jesus' preaching. It up to us to become better. God's not going to do it for us. How many parables include god telling the characters what do? God and Jesus weep and cheer us on to do the best we can with the freedom and salvation we have been given.

I've wondered before why God doesn't just extinguish us when we're finished living our earthly life. Is it the extra adulation? That wouldn't make sense. I thought once maybe it's difficult to extinguish a living spirit once it's been created, even for God. That would make sense either. It must be because He loves us. But I have no idea why He would love us; the closer you examine humanity the uglier we get. I liken this to HDTV, especially 1080p and above - Blueray and some programs: the resolution is high enough to show the actor's every facial flaw, every nose ear eyebrow hair, every bead of sweat, every wart and wrinkle - it's distracting, and it's disgusting. Now imagine your soul in Super HD.

But let's say He loves us, and He expects us to love our neighbors as well. I don't get it. I can deal with most people, in the short term or in the abstract; I can empathize with people suffering; I can want them to have peace or be fulfilled or or to have better lives. That's easy. But do I want them in my backyard? Do I want to know them intimately, in 1080p? Forgive me but no.

I want the best for people, for our world; I want the world to find a balance between wealth and sustainability, between peace, tolerance, and identity. I want love to be the lingua franca. But ironically I don't like people, in general, and especially up close and personal. I'm not a big fan of Joe or Jane Public. It's easier to deal from a distance, where the stupidity and obnoxiousness and ridiculous pretension and toxic cruelty and all the other things that remind you of yourself and which you hate - all kind of fade in the distance and look okay, look human, like a mirage.

But that wasn't Jesus. Some people might say, "oh, he's just some dude, what's the big deal... he's just spouting some crap he learned somewhere... another megalomaniac." Read the Gospels. Don't read Paul. Everybody quotes Paul; it's annoying. Read the Gospels. Yeah, I know there are some glaring inconsistencies, historical and otherwise. But don't miss the forest for the trees. Check Jesus out.

He loved people. He oozed love. He said He was God and hung out with the poor; He called out the rich and the noble and the privileged and told them to give up their wealth and follow Him. He shunned all the wealth and power and adulation that could have been His (the very thing the ruling priesthood was worried about) and willingly died as a peasant and a criminal. A villager who becomes a king, a messiah!, and who walks around in the dust and dirt and helps the lame and the broken spirited, talking about humility and love. That dude is totally revolutionary.

Easter is something I'm not. I don't think I could sacrifice what I have to help someone else, a little bit sure, but all of it? I don't think I could drop everything and follow Jesus in the way He would want. I know I don't love people enough to let someone crucify me. My love comes with caveats and conditions. If it even is love that I feel for my fellow human.

Jesus' death and resurrection gave us all the free pass to the lands of light and wonder; I only hope there's room in that land for a well-intentioned part-time Christian/professional sloth. We'll see.

Films of 2010

2011-04-23T03:59:00.000-07:00

I was looking at the movies that came out in 2010 to see if any of them deserved to be added to my best films lists on my media blog. It had not sunk in while I was watching the Oscars, probably because they were so bad, but last year was a horrible year for movies in general. I went through some of the movies that came out and only a handful stood out in terms of the qualities I like to see in films: 1, a great screenplay regardless of whether it follows a convention or not; 2, excellent acting even if it means non acting (Keannu, yes, I'm talking about you); 3, intelligent direction and cinematography that brings something fresh to the screen without obviousness and artistic pretension. So which of the films I saw in 2010 meet this criteria?

I've gone over the many movies that came out last year. TRUE GRIT is a very good movie, probably my favorite from Hollywood. INCEPTION also is well done even though I thought the side story of Dicaprio's wife was considerably more compelling than the main story of placing an idea into someone's mind. When a side story is more interesting than the main story, it signals that an opportunity was lost. I liked THE TOWN as well. But despite its intelligence and the serious treatment of its subject, the screenplay has more than a couple of clichés that rise to the surface, bloated and stinking. WINTER'S BONE is gritty and real and full of excellent tension, but it offers no wisdom, no depth apart from its portrayal. It's a classic exhibit of 'show don't tell' which in the end becomes nothing more than a sketch or a slice of life. Others deserve mention, including: RESTREPO, LET ME IN, THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST, and even THE OTHER GUYS.

But the best film from 2010 is a Korean film called POETRY. This drama will captivate you and make your heart ache; it is sweet and full of wisdom and beauty.

Play A Little Play

2011-04-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

It is 3:00 AM. The house is dark and silent except for the faint purr of the furnace which kicks in every so often. It's actually the perfect time to write fiction, and I should be working on a short story since I have a couple of ideas rolling through my brain like tumbleweed. But I don't feel like writing fiction right now; I'm restless and awake and it's driving me crazy and it makes me think of the Allen Ginsberg sitting up all night and writing "Howl" and waking up in the morning to look at what he had written and thinking dear lord what a beautiful disaster.

But I digress.

I emailed a friend I hadn't heard from in quite a while, and it turns out her whole world has turned upside down within the span of a couple of weeks.

That's how quickly your reality can become a nightmare. It is no joke. A family member dies. Your spouse tells you they are in love with someone else and want a divorce. Your Dr. calls you in after a mammogram or blood test. You drive home after a couple of beers and some kid scoots out into traffic on his skateboard listening to his iPod. What's that line? It could happen to you?

It's a cliche though right, so it's kind of a joke. I mean, doesn't every blog end up here? Talking about being unable to handle the randomness of the world, the X factor that keeps suffering unpredictable and generally unfair, and fucks up the weather? There should be a word for this blog topic … I got it = The What Ifs.

What if I had never been conceived, where would I be if my soul passed my parents over and move on to another couple? What if I had died in the womb, where would I be, would I be in Heaven and know what I had missed or escaped, would I get a second chance? What if i had been born to an 'untouchable' mother in the slums of Mumbai? And on and on like a teenager wishing they had been born into a different family because mommy won't let them play Call of Duty all weekend even though they have not done their chores or homework.

I think there is a randomness built into our world. And the randomness operating in our very lives and in the world around us doesn't bother me so much. I have no idea if God operates it or knows who it's going to hit next or what. I suppose He does, but then to do nothing about it makes Him cruel or is it a good thing? Could the randomness have another function? Make us less arrogant? Make us value the moment more (okay, I have to say it... wait for it... ) and give us the motivation to carpe dieum (ugh)? Make it easier for God to obscure His miracles? (I know, that sounds weird, but if God wants us to believe in Him through faith then He would not want us to see Him at work.)

In the words of the incomparable Philip Henslowe in Shakespeare in Love:, "I don't know, it's a mystery."

It's a cop-out, I know. And it seems like a surrender. But so what. Through the acceptance of our helplessness in the face of the random factor operating in our worlds (you can call it God's will or plan.. I may even call it that myself), we arm ourselves against the shock that can paralyze us when things go sideways. To collate a couple of my favorite soliloquies, we are but poor players in a little play worrying about our brief moment on the stage, where the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and its sea of troubles keep things interesting.

And occasionally, the randomness stirs in the mind and pen of a talented poet and we are blessed with beautiful disasters like "Howl."

On Africa and Aid

2011-04-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

Africa has always held a special fascination for me. I used to watch the nature programs from PBS, CBC, and the BBC about elephants and lions and cheetahs, beautiful panoramic cinematography that captured my imagination making me dream about adventures on the Serengeti or hunting in "The Green Hills of Africa". I still love those programs, and there were at least three pbs nature documentaries set in Africa this year. I also love films set in Africa. When I was younger films like "Born free", "The African Queen", "Tarzan", and many other films I cannot remember would enthrall me with thoughts of exotic wonders and adventures; modern films, as well, since the 70's including the recent "Blood Diamond" and "Invictus". Modern films with Africa as a subject have become more violent as time has sifted by, and it's no accident, since the continent has been a hot bed for military conflicts for decades and the explosion of modern media has brought to light in picture and video many of the things that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

My fascination with Africa (it's not fair to use one word for that continent) is media centered, I must admit, because I've only met a handful of Africans from Africa. They were lively and lovely people, but I did not know them for long, and unfortunately I did not get to ask them one of the questions about Africa that I have been wondering for quite some time: is foreign aid helping or hurting Africa?

I am writing about Africa, because I have been following the political disaster that is the Cote d' Ivoire, and I feel completely powerless by the horrendous state of affairs throughout the continent from the chaos of Somalia to the war in Libya to the atrocious conditions and religious conflicts of Sudan etc. So much money has been lent, gifted, and donated to all the African nations and what has happened? Life is worse there than in the 1970's. WTF?

Here's a Wall Street Journal article that sheds light on the issue.

I am at the point now where I refuse to give money to NGOs (nongovernment organizations) that supposedly help in third world countries (third world: another term I don't like but I'm going to use for expediency, forgive me). These organizations are simply not helping their host countries. Over the decades, the billions of dollars lent to the African nations (loans that were eventually forgiven) have created a revolving door of foreign aid that never gets to the people, because a lot of the money ends up in bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman islands under accounts set up by African leaders.

Dambiso Moyo, an African woman, wrote a book a few years ago exploring the damaged caused in Africa by the foreign aid policies of wealthy countries. The book, Dead Aid, is a fascinating read, and its ideas translate to a lot of recipients of foreign aid.

This 'free' money does not even trickle down; in fact, it merely gives the dictators and the elected officials no incentive to help their own people. Why would they? They know that NGOs will come in and build the schools, dig the wells, and vaccinate for malaria or HIV or tuberculosis - with each organization paying their part of the "corruption tax". The influx of money and goods has encouraged the use of bribes and payoffs as a way to tax foreign aid organizations for the privilege of doing what the government should be doing in the first place. The system enables and perpetuates itself, because after the organization fixes up an orphanage or opens a school and leaves the community, the government has no reason to maintain or encourage the maintenance of the school since it would discourage the aid org from coming back.

My father worked for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in Colombia and El Salvador in the 70's, the fishing project Canada developed and installed in El Salvador for instance at great cost turned to crap as soon as we left, and the local government kept the money designed to maintain the project. It's like that everywhere.

I was reading some blogs the other day and I came across a blog on Allison Mack's blog via Josh Barkley's blog (did you get all that?); anyway, to digress, I highly recommend Barkley's blog for its smooth writing, interesting perspective, and intelligence. Okay, back to this other blog.

This young woman in Senegal wrote a meditation/ blog about how the Africans she knows don't really believe in Time the way "we" do and "we" should not insist they follow our calendar. She seems to say their 'natural' calendar is equal to or superior to our calendar, because our way of telling time is a cultural construct. It is classic romanticizing of the 'natural man' where a people in tune with their natural environ retain a peculiar value not shared by the 'modern' 'industrial' man; romanticism of this sort has always struck me as a weird alchemy of guilt and nostalgic sadness... but I digress again.

You may have heard it before; I certainly have. Romanticizing the aborigine or the native does not hold up to scrutiny; for instance, thinking of time as a western construct or tool of colonization falls apart quite quickly. The Aztecs and Chinese developed sophisticated calendars without influence from the West. The stars and other astronomic bodies were all the influence they needed. And the development of a time standard citizens can agree upon and which translates to other cultures reliably is a cornerstone of civilization and trade.

But romanticizing and enabling someone's unwillingness to keep an appointment is similar to continuing a campaign of sending money to African nations to build basic infrastructures and services -- both actions release those who are supposed to be responsible from their responsibility, their accountability. Why would these leaders feel accountable if every time the World Bank lent them millions of dollars Bono scurries around calling for the forgiveness of this debt and they forgive the debt - where's the accountability? And as the WTJ article describes, when these same leaders approach the wealthier nations or the World Bank again for a loan, does anyone really think they feel compelled to repay the new loan? Why would they?

I do not mind sharing my blessings with people who need it; it is a right and a privileged God has given me. In fact, despite my occasional ranting I have a difficult time imagining a better life than the one I live. But what do I do when my charity hurts the people I'm supposed to help? If there is a beggar on the street who looks poor but who is rich and who has maimed his own child to use as a sympathy prop, am I supposed to give him money? Is the road to "no" a clear one, or is it murky? What if giving helps the maimed boy in the short term, but harms in the long term? Are we to judge how our charity is to be used? Did not Jesus himself say [I'm paraphrasing] that you should not lend expecting it back, but instead gift it, release it?

Well, I will tell you what I do, and it is a bit of a balancing act. First, I micro-lend funds through an organization called KIVA. They have a four star (the highest) rating at the watchdog site the Charity Navigator. Micro-lending is awesome, because it promotes commerce and fiscal responsibility but it also helps people who are helping themselves. I do not care if the loan is repaid or not; it is not about that. Second, I give money to my church. Finally, my father goes to Guatemala to help people with disabilities every year with a NGO called Hope Haven, and I give him a little stack of cash to help an individual person or place who could use it.

I would love to help the children of Africa, but I don't think I would be helping them if I sent them money. I will, however, lend them money at a micro level. And I will make sure those I lend it to are responsible borrowers.

Mangry

2011-04-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

I'm having one of those days.

I have felt like a volcano on the edge of eruption all day today. I'm just angry, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. Maybe I'm coming down with something. I have been wondering for couple of days now whether I have an infection or not; I just haven't felt myself. But today I'm angry at every little thing that doesn't go quite right like my computer giving me the blue screen of death or someone not dialing in my chair properly or people asking stupid questions or people talking too much… talktalktalk... fuck me.

But let me be clear. I have felt violent all day today, but I've kept it in check around people. I snapped at my dad a little bit when he asked me a stupid question (it wasn't even that stupid), but I said I was sorry right away. I don't get mad very often. I try never to get personal when I do get mad at people; I hope and pray I am successful at it because I know how damaging it can be. I have been on the other end of it, and it feels like someone has stabbed you with a poisoned spear, the lingering pain making your guts twist and spasm. I know I'm capable of that type of what would you call it, psychological murder or perhaps character assassination and psychological rape or destroying self esteem/self worth. I think everybody is capable of it, just like everyone is capable of the atrocities in Germany or Russia or Cambodia.

But things get tricky when people you know closely realize you are generally not an angry person, and then they take advantage of your aversion to confrontation and conflict. They think you're weak. And they try to talk you into all kinds of trouble or treat you like a serf or simply assume you will give in to their requests regardless of how inconvenient. I know a couple of people like this and they're really surprised when I stand my ground, when I say no, or when I call them on their bullshit. But fortunately today was not one of those days; today I was just pissed off at everything. The dog. My computer. The voice dictation software I use to write.

I just thought of another reason I have felt frustrated all day. I am putting things off lately, and by 'things'I mean I'm starting in English course in a couple of weeks and I have about six books to read. I started one of them, "The Abolition Of Man" by CS Lewis. But maybe my subconscious is telling me that it's time to get moving on my reading. I don't know for sure; however, I would not be surprised.

I'm a believer in owing your own shit. Today I felt wrathful, destructively so. At times I wanted to destroy something utterly. I know why it's considered one of the deadly sins. Not because wrath itself is a sin, but because when we're angry we tend to lose our bearing or 'lose our head' (if you'll allow yet another cliche) and lose sight of civility, consequences, God, in our need to vent - in short we devolve into a hurt animal that doesn't know what to do with itself, perhaps we even descend lower.

Fukushima: A 'nuclear sacrifice zone' - Features - Al Jazeera English

2011-04-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

This article will scare the hell out of you. It did me.

Fukushima: A 'nuclear sacrifice zone' - Features - Al Jazeera English

My Sister Had A Boy!

2011-04-10T11:53:00.000-07:00

My sister had a baby yesterday. They didn't want to know the sex of the child before it was born, but it's a boy. It's her first child. She and her husband live in Guelph Ontario. My mother and father are there with her, helping her or getting in the way, I'm not sure which. I wish I was there, and at the same time, I'm glad I'm not there, because the celebration and well wishes would accentuate the isolation and loneliness that have become my lot in life. I cannot believe I wrote that. I cannot believe how selfish I am. And now I've become a complete cliche: the whining man-child blogger. You should stop reading now.

My brother was over today with his only child, Logan, who is turning two years old this month. He said my name for the first time today, and it broke my heart. Logan is built like a little man, not chubby or husky or thin but rather like a regular guy who's in good shape but shrunk down. He has a great smile, one of those genuine symmetrical smiles that gives certain people charisma; he will be popular in highschool. And his laugh is outrageous: a loud explosion of hilarity that is irresistibly funny. I am awestruck by the pure innocence in a child's laugh and by Logan's two year old laugh in particular. But that too breaks my heart. In fact, I feel an undertow pulling me off the sandy bottom and out to sea and those I love on the beach become smaller by the minute.

Okay, perhaps that is a little dramatic but events like these in people's lives make one think about how far one has journeyed and how far one has to go, the decisions that were made along the way and the ones ahead. Births, deaths, weddings, divorces are all way points and signposts, telling you how far you have come and what lies ahead. I have made an art form out of avoiding reality. I don't like to think about where I am in life, because unlike what it appears above, where you are in life has a direct bearing on your future. They are not separate.

Our pasts haunt our future with the consequences of our decisions. Who we love. Who we hurt. Opportunities taken, and opportunities not taken. Who we marry and whether we have children. How we react to failure and to success. It all follows us into the future not only as baggage that we carry but outside of ourselves as well which we can control even less; for instance, you are in high school traveling on the bus to school and you spot a girl a couple of grades younger who is being teased by some boys her own age, so you go and sit beside her and ward off the bullies with a nasty look that translates to off limits, and later in life, as adults, you run into each other somewhere and she has never forgotten your kindness and you eventually marry this girl you helped on an impulse. The ripples we make travel out and bounce back to us off of the edges of our pond; it happens all the time; we just don't know it.

The crux of this post is I don't have children, and I don't think I will never have children of my own, and even if I did find a wife and she wanted children and we had children, my relationship with them would be tainted by my physical disability. I am unable to hold a child the way a child should be held. I am unable to play with a child the way a child should be played with. I am unable to comfort a child the way a child should be comforted. I could go on and on with the things I am unable to do. I know, it sounds like bullshit whining, but try this: spend a day sitting in a chair on your hands, now try a couple of days, now a week, now a year, etc. It's bad enough not to be able to touch a woman the way she should be touched, caressed, teased, fondled, rubbed, et cetera, but it is so much worse to imagine having a child and being unable to connect with them physically, to play tickle lift hold wash change cuddle etc with them.

I don't even have to imagine really. I watch my brother interact with his son, Logan, and so much of their interaction is physical, holding him in his arms, putting him on his shoulders, playing with him and his trucks or Legos, lifting him in the air to pretend he's an airplane, feeding him, changing him - you get the point. It breaks my heart. It's not that I just see the negatives; I mean, I'm sure I have things to bring to the table like love, compassion, attention - things that kids need, but there will always be that physical distance, and to me at least it means a lot. Even now, I love feeling my dad's hands on my shoulders, my head, my face. I love getting a hug from my mom. But when I was a child, his physical contact was huge; his love was amplified by his touch..

If you're reading this and you're a dad a mom an uncle an aunt or whatever, I hope and pray you touch your child and play with them and comfort them and show them how to use their hands to make things that are beautiful - do it for me, because I can't do it.

When my brother came over, he brought Logan but he also brought the daughter of a friend of his wife's. She was 10 years old, and her name was Ivory (which I kept getting mixed up with Ivy). She was adorable: brown hair cut in a bob, brown eyes, and a husky body that is not quite a boy and not quite a girl - and she was full of innocent curiosity about my accident and my wheelchair and all the other things related to my injury. I love talking to kids like this. They don't judge. They don't sneer at you. They don't get grossed out. These are the citizens of heaven. It's strange to think I was like that once. But they get right to the point. So of course one of the first things she asked me was "do you wish you were not in a wheelchair" and I nearly laughed out loud.

I said yes of course I wish I wasn't in a wheelchair. But (I have this answer for people who ask me and it has the benefit of being partially true) since I've been hurt, I've had a pretty good life and met a lot of good people and I've become really close with my parents, so I don't think I would want to trade that for an unknown future or past or whatever. It would be a whole different life, maybe I would be in jail, maybe I would be dead, maybe I would hate my life. So yes I wish I wasn't in a wheelchair, but I am and that's the way it is. She fired off a few more questions and told me a couple of stories about friends of hers or people she knew that were in wheelchairs. Then she was nice enough to semi - baby sit Logan while I visited with my brother.

When they left, my brother lifted Logan up for me to kiss which was awkward, and I thought of extending my arm and my unusable hand to shake hands with Ivory but I knew it would be awkward, so I didn't bother. It made me rethink that answer I gave her though.

So now my sister has a boy. I am happy for her. But I'm kind of happy to celebrate from a distance with my words since distance is all I have really. That is all I'll ever have. And somehow I think this is the only road we get to travel, so there is no point in thinking I'll get another chance to be 'normal' in another life.

Gray Things

2011-04-03T19:45:00.000-07:00

Today was one of those days you get in British Columbia where the clouds ride low and gray just above the evergreens, their dark spires almost scratching the thick cumulus. The rain falls in heavy and light waves, and even the yellow daffodils take on a gray hue; light and color are destroyed through dilution. And you find yourself turning the lights on at 1:00 in the afternoon.

In a way, it's a metaphor for a fear of mine: being diluted or having what little talent there is spread so thin that there isn't really anything left. I think this is already happening to me. The electronic manic culture we inhabit in the west has a way of distracting one to death, or a least into a state of stupor.

Sometimes (most of the time) I feel pulled this way then that way. I hate it, and I wish I could quit. But how do you quit a culture? How do you quit when it is around you 24/7? And in many ways it's pretty awesome too: you know, free films, books, music; google search, so the world is literally at your fingertips; Facebook and other solical networking. How do you quit all this when your life is intrinsically weaved into the same chaotic fabric? I'm sure people do it. It takes discipline and determination, I'm sure, a couple of traits I do not have in Spades I'm afraid.

My birthday was fun. I invited three couples over plus my parents to have dinner followed by drinks and karaoke. Well, of course a couple of snags developed right away: my brother's wife could not make it; Kevin's wife Scent also could not make it. Then my dad bought the wrong chicken, skinless chicken breast with a bone. So we had to cut it out which wasn't that big a deal. My friend Lisa brought some martini mixes and made everyone what she called Hawaiian upside down cake martinis. I don't know what was in them apart from pineapple juice and amaretto. Delicious.

The laptop I bought would not work once I took it out of the box. I'm not sure now if I want that model since there were a couple of things that I didn't like, for instance, it was really heavy and some of the USB connections were set in the wrong places. Good riddance. I'll take the money back.

I am staying by myself this week. My roomies are heading East to witness my sister give birth. I should organize a 'thing' with some friends, but it might actually be quite busy as is. I have to use some of this time to read the texts for my upcoming course on the Inklings. I downloaded and started to read Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" on my Kindle - wow, boring. I hope I don't hate this course. I know for a fact that some of the books in the course are not dull though: "The Place of The Lion," "That Hideous Strength" and "The Lord of The Rings" are not dull books (I've read them before).

Birthday & Other Stuff

2011-04-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

"They say it's your birthday/We're going to have a good time" from The Beatles, The White Album. I love their music; it's so simple and clear; it is great art. The best art is simple and clear on the surface hiding subterranean catacombs teeming with subtle complexities. Hemingway's work for instance. Or Joan Miro's child-like paintings. Warhol collages, or Pollock's instinctive inspirations. I'm not saying the only great art must be simple; I'm say great art can be simple, at least on the surface.

It looks like I'm headed back to school this summer. I'm auditing an English course at TWU exploring the writers group that unofficially called themselves The Inklings which included JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams along with a friend, Dorthy Sayers. The course is packed into three weeks: four classes a week, three hours each, for three weeks in May. I was surprised at the list of books we are supposed to read for it too. I don't have the full list (I'll put it up when I get it), but I picked up a couple of them for my Kindle today: The Abolition of Man by Lewis and The Lord of the Rings by Tolkien. Triniy Western is not cheap, by the way. I'm auditing a shortened summer course as a part-time student and they still want 700 bucks. Snap.

I had to order another laptop which, along with the above course, has rendered me poor. I could call the purchase a birthday present to myself, but honestly the laptop I'm using right now seizes regularly and has given me the "Blue Screen of Death" more times than I have fingers this month alone. It needs to retire as my main computer and cede its role to something newer and more powerful. So my birthday gift to myself is poverty for at least a month. Well, living within my means is not a problem for me.

My sister sent me a gift today. An April Fools day gift. Three individually wrapped stacks of empty unlabeled DVD discs. You see I download films and programs for her sometimes, burn them on discs and send them to her. This gift is her saying, "Get to work bitch. I've run out of shit to watch." Haha, Jessica, you are hilarious. I hope your baby takes eight hours to come out... haha. She sent a Starbucks card too, but who knows how much is in it. lol

Sunroom

2011-03-31T02:19:00.000-07:00

This province has a reputation for having no seasons, and I even have heard native British Columbians complain about the amorphous and nondescript nature of our weather. But it is not true. I have lived all over the Americas and in most places the seasons change with a similar ease and subtly as they do here; in fact, when I lived in El Salvador it was difficult to remember what month you were in because they all seemed the same, except the rainy season. My friend Earl spent some time in Brazil where according to him they seemed to have a similar two season year, rain and no-rain and heat all year. But it only 'seems' that way. Once you've lived in a place for a while, you begin to see the subtleties of the seasons.

But the differences are there, sometimes in the color of the evergreen trees, sometimes in the types of birds that are around. Robins usually start showing up in February. I don't know where they come from but sometimes they arrive in droves sucking back pounds of worms. The hummingbirds materialize in March, and they always show up hungry and cranky. I don't think they are ever happy; you'd think their tiny hearts would give out under so much stress. And the woodpeckers and the frogs are noisy in the spring, having active love lives.

We have just finished building a sunroom extending behind the house. It's beautiful. It's 12 feet x 12 with windows all around and a tempered glass ceiling. I can't wait to sit in there when it's cold outside and the sun is shining. I've been whining about getting a room just like this for about 20 years now. I'm not kidding. So it is like a dream come true in a sense. I'll be a great bird watching spot, just in case I want to keep track of who's dating who.

Spring 2

2011-03-31T01:47:00.001-07:00

Season of greens and dewy dreams, the evergreens must have an 'I told you so' attitude as they watch the grey trees stir, little emerald leaves bursting from branchy knuckles and joints; the gluttonous robins do not care, heads twisting, eye starring at a grassy nothing... like a diviner looking for water, they see beyond sight and plunge and pinch the subtlest of worms. The war cry of a hawk pierces the peaceful twittering, and the bird feeder empties. Then a blue jay drifts in and starts working the smorgasbord, sly impersonator.

If only I had half your talent, little artist, this passage would sing instead of stutter. And I could make you, dear reader, taste the blue French vanilla sky, and I could make you smell the bright green grass and transport you to another age, an age of innocence, of rolling and tumbling and running your hands through the grass with a love that you did not even know was love; if only I had a little talent, I could make you drink the light and heat of the sun and fill you with its unconditional warmth, and my words would make this unchanging incandescence into a metaphor of God's love and kindle a fading faith or revive a faith lost to the cold slab of science or human cruelty. With only a little talent, I could make the untrue true, and I could make my dreams a reality, and my reality into a dream that could touch the dreams of other dreamers like you.

Pleasure

2011-03-30T19:58:00.000-07:00

One of the best things in the world is a hot shower. I'm not talking about jumping in for a few minutes, burning yourself, then jumping out; I'm talking about a sustained hot shower for at least 20 minutes or more, usually more. I guess I got into the habit of long hot showers when I played rugby in high school. Rugby is played in the autumn and winter mostly, and since this is British Columbia, we would be playing in the cold rain and mud and sometimes ion frozen ground. A wet muddy field can turn a rugby game into a complete circus, and whenever we had visiting teams from California, Australia, Samoa, and New Zealand, we would smile and talk about what they will like during the game: like 15 farmers chasing a white pig. It was comical. When you learn to play in the wet, you learn not to panic when the ball is slipping around and you make your first grab count. But fair weather players take chances and look stupid, and they whine about the damp like schoolgirls.

Anyway, after every practice and game, I started to take long hot showers to normalize my body temperature, ease the bruises and abuse, and rinse off the sweat, mud, and sand (our school groundskeeper sprayed the fields with sand to improve drainage... it sucked). I was usually the last to leave the shower.

Pleasure is a funny thing. Hot showers is right up there for me. Some people like baths. Some are massage hounds that will drop down on the couch beside you and swing their feet onto your lap for a foot rub or start to wriggle their shoulders around trying to get you to massage them. Some people are foodies. They love food and/or wine; it's a sensual pleasure for them beyond just the taste. And of course there is sex which, like food, can be a rabbit hole of unlimited pleasure.

Well, the previous might be an overstatement. I'm not just talking about intercourse and an orgasim of course, because for a man, there is not much to it eventhough (or perhaps, because of its simplicity) men seem to need an orgasim in the same way they need food, like we are hardwired for this bodily function. This reality is the one I grew up with, at least, but everyone is raised with a different view of sexuality. I was raise Catholic and Protestant in equal measure, but I was never told sex was dirty or wrong. I heard it in school and at church, but my parents really only ever drew the line at sexual exploitation: porn. Apart from exploitation, I was not discouraged to explore my physicality. When I was a teen, sex (mostly masturbation), like eating or exercising, seemed to stem from a bodily need, and it was a source of pleasure under my control.

Later in life, a couple of things came together and opened my eyes to sex as much more than a bodily function: first, I heard a pastor talk about love between a couple as a type of worship; then I heard feminist Naomi Wolf give a lecture about her book "Fire with Fire" and the female orgasm; and finally, I saw the movie "Bliss". This flood of information or mis-information made me curious about the human being's capacity to experience pleasure, an almost bottomless well of ecstasy. I discovered true pleasure does not exist on its own. It lies beyond that limit which we don't think we can (or sometimes should) cross. The limit, the boundary, is demarcated by pain, pain whispers like a siren calling a ship to shore (or, if you prefer, provides a warning) that a threshold approaches. On the other side of this boundary, you can find bliss or if you go too far distress and trauma. Yes, you've read it right: pain.

I know, it sounds weird, and it is. It sounds harsh, and it is. And it sounds sadistic, and it is. The Marquis de Sade explores this holy/unholy union between pleasure and pain. But I must admit I don't know his work.

Regardless, it's true. Pleasure by itself is close to contentment, perhaps a little more.. It is nice; it feels good. But once you add pain, physical pain ("stop stop... don't stop") or the pain of guilt or dissatisfaction or loss or anger, pleasure takes a turn. I will stop short at calling this state 'bliss,' but I don't have another word. I used to wonder if this idea was not simply a product of my own personality or mental mal-adjustments. I don't think so anymore.

I'll take this full-circle to my long hot showers. I have experienced this 'bliss' in a couple of ways, so I'll share a rather benign example, probably an over-share but I don't care really. I have a spot on the left side of my head and shoulder that hurts and feels good at the same time (it's a little like dipping into a hot hottub), so when the hot shower streams down on it just so... well, I could stay there forever.

Isn't that the way though? Green is not that green without a little yellow nearby or intermingled in it. Pleasure with pain lead to a greater whole, a transportation to something else. But what of good and evil? I believe they exist just like I believe there are the extremes of everything, and if they, good and evil, are part of a whole - is that whole God? Does God, like bliss, contain both within Him. Or is evil not God? It seems to break down when you become metaphysical, because evil do not accentuate or amplify good, in our world especially. Good usually works in silence, unnoticed and quietly labouring amoung the Haitian, African, the homeless, those countless millions ready to change for the better and quit their addiction and those not ready. The good people in this world are silent and strong; the evil people grab the headlines with selfishness, self-righteousness, murder and mayhem.

I'm digressing into cheap philosophy. But let me leave you with a question (as I love to do): why do you think God created us to experience pleasure, and why do you think God designed us to experience this blissful union of pleasure and pain together, making each disappear and become something transporting, transforming, even spiritual? I don't know the answer. I simply know it's there, and it's strange and wonderful and mysterious. I'm sure a biochemical neurologist or whatever could explain it scientifically pointing to synapses and endorphins and different cerebral chemicals, but I prefer it as an undiscovered country.

Japan... what am I missing?

2011-03-28T06:59:00.000-07:00

I admire the Japanese. I always have ever since I took karate when I was 13 and my instructor was a wonderful old man, fat, soft-spoken with thick gray hair and multiple chins and a big pot belly that made his black belt disappear in the front. He taught us karate in the old style, the memorization and completion of forms and absolutely no sparring. We were not allowed to do a lot of things. It was discipline all the way. I remember him telling us many times that karate was not about self defense instead it was a way to learn about life. He would get all philosophical on us and I remember wanting to quit at first and instead sign up for Taekwondo which was more fun, you got to break boards and spar and learn flashy kicks. I learned a lot about the Japanese in the karate class. Their stoic strength, their discipline, their adherence to structure, and a sense that they were part of a larger whole - all these characteristics and others are on display during this catastrophe. They are the one people equipped culturally to handle this disaster and recover even stronger.

That is my prayer for them.

Having said that, I have no idea what the hell they are doing with these nuclear reactors. Right after the first plant exploded, they inform the public that there was no problem, that everything was under control, failing to mention that the other three reactors were in the same kind of trouble because the generators were dead. They have been mishandling this whole thing ever since. When I saw them using helicopters to scoop seawater and drop it on the plants, I knew they were in big trouble, because dropping water from a height wasn't going to do anything; it was completely cosmetic.

Can I ask this question? You're dealing with atomic fusion/fission, right? Would it be a good idea to have developed a type of suit - like a lead suit similar to deep sea divers - that would protect their workers completely? How about developing a robot on tracks with arms - like the ones they use for bomb disposals - that can go into a highly radioactive plant and do repairs? Japan have been at the forefront of robotics for years, so how hard could it be?

And what are they doing with the fire trucks and the wimpy hoses?? First of all, there are fire ships designed to spray huge quantities of water on burning ships from a distance (because burning chips generally can't be approached since they are too hot). Why aren't they lining up as many of these ships as possible or use the ones from the U.S. Fleet? And why don't they roll in some big pumps to pump substantial amounts of water into these facilities? Why did it take so long to get electricity into these plants? Honda probably has about 50 big generators sitting in their factory.

Watching them use fire trucks and fire hoses on these plants just makes me angry. They might as well use a garden hose. Look, NASA can send a satellite to Venus and have it orbit and function in extreme conditions of heat and atomic radiation, are they trying to tell me using a stupid fire truck is the best they can come up with?? They couldn't have figured out how to protect their workers in extreme radiation? Does the word Chernobyl ring a bell? And who's idea was it to put these reactors right on the western coast? This country receives earthquakes every month (I'm not exaggerating) so why would they put these reactors on the coast most likely to end up with a massive tsunami. Well, okay, so hindsight is always twenty-twenty right... I find it puzzling nonetheless.

I heard they refused help from the US. I hope and pray their immense national pride doesn't get in the way of the very strength and unity that would help them recover.

I find it totally frustrating to watch. I just have to remember that any information disseminated from Fukushima is crap most likely, because Japanese culture privileges appearance over truth, discretion over transparency. I suppose their populace is used to being kept in the dark, a challenge for those of us in the West used to information that at least appears to be straightforward. You can forget whatever they say; no, actually don't forget it, simple multiply it by 5 and you are pretty close or closer to the truth. Multiplying the current radiation figures coming from Fukushima as of this date is scary. But BBC just had the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency on the air and asked him if he believed the info coming to him from Japan, and being Japanese himself, he refused to say straight up that he was being lied to but it was in his tone and his double-talk.

I fear Japan is in big trouble.

Spring

2011-03-25T00:48:00.000-07:00

The clear spring sky burned bright blue for part of the day today and the world seemed to awaken, the jagged cascades standing out in relief after a long spell under cloudy blankets, the white hawthorne flowers opening their eyes, the hummingbirds alert and clicking at my presence as I watched a single bumblebee juke its way around the deck, obscenely beautiful, happily absurd.

But spring didn't come as a surprise this year, some years it arrives without warning, the bright green shoots of tulips surprising amongst the rusty disintegrating leaves of last autumn. But this year I was warned every morning at six for the last month and a half - ever since one of the damned woodpeckers decided that the best way to make himself heard above the others and assure himself a mate was to hammer a booty call on the metal chimney above our house.

Why I'm an Asshole

2011-03-20T19:27:00.000-07:00

I went for a walk with Daisy, the dog, a tiny shitzu-poddle that's been part of our family for 9 years now. The wind was blowing a little but the sun warmed the air so it was pleasant.

Since the dog's spring- loaded leash is hooked up to my chair, I do not have that much control over her, so within reason she does what she wants. This lack of control makes me a little anxious when I meet people on the street, especially people with other dogs, because Daisy does not like other dogs and she could conceivably wrap herself around my chair. She's done that before and all I can do is wait for someone to come by to help me get untangled.

So today, I turn the corner near our home and an older gentleman was walking my way. He was about forty feet away and walking on the other side of the road, but as he neared he began to cross the street toward me.

I knew instantly what he wanted; he wanted to talk, to converse. The elderly in this country are a disenfranchised lot. In general, no one cares about them; no one listens to them; no one visits them; they have very little power, and what power they have, they don't use, because they are afraid; they are patronized and then forgotten, unless, of course, their estate is worth something. So I knew what he wanted. He just wanted to talk.

He walked straight for a man of around seventy years old. He wore a dark green outerwear coat over grey track pants, and he carried an umbrella in the right hand and cloth bag in the other. He stopped to my right ahead of me and as I neared he said, "Beautiful day today." He wanted me to stop and engage.

But somewhere in a dark place of my brain, my mind said "how dare he impose upon me like this? who does he think he is? say something nice, but keeping moving." I did not want to stop. I was going to write that I was thinking about the dog, but I wasn't. I was thinking about myself, and the little bit of time and patience it would cost me to talk to this pathetic old man walking around with an umbrella and a bag as if those were his only possessions. I said, "Yeah, it beautiful. Have a great day," and I brushed right past him.

I regretted it right away. Was the old man lost? Homeless? I had no idea. I turned around but he had kept walking. The story of "The Good Samaritan" came to mind, and I felt like a complete asshole.

Escape

2011-03-20T12:39:00.000-07:00

It's kind of a prison, isn't it? These bodies we live in, bodies that begin to decay while we are young still. It's not just the bodies though, it's the world itself, the families we are born into, the countries we happen to live in.

We can escape. People find a way every day, a way to escape this flesh, the pain of existence and the suffering of knowing what the world is like, decomposing, devouring, destroying - humanity. What does Mr. Smith say in THE MATRIX that there is only one organisim on the planet that humanity resembles - a virus. one of my favourite movie scenes of all time, that conversation with Morpheus, check it out:

INT. PRESIDENTIAL SUITE (MATRIX) - DAY

Agent Smith sits casually across from Morpheus who is
hunched over, his body leaking and twitching.

    AGENT SMITH
I'd like to share a revelation
that I've had during my time here.
It came to me when I tried to
classify your species. I've
realized that you are not actually
mammals.

The life signs continue their chaotic patterns.

    AGENT SMITH
Every mammal on this planet
instinctively develops a natural
equilibrium with the surrounding
environment. But you humans do
not. You move to an area and you
multiply and multiply until every
natural resource is consumed and
the only way you can survive is to
spread to another area.

He leans forward.

    AGENT SMITH
There is another organism on this
planet that follows the same
pattern. Do you know what it is?
A virus.

He smiles.

    AGENT SMITH
Human beings are a disease, a
cancer of this planet. You are a
plague. And we are... the cure.

People can escape though; they do it all the time. They escape into books, films. They escape with drugs. People escape with obsessions that become addictions. Right now I'm a little addicted with a strategy game called Civilization 5. I was obsessed with chess for a while, and before chess, online poker. So yes, you can escape reality, but you are still here; the escape is only temporary, a reprieve, a break. The years melt together and you wake up here, still here. Death is the only way to really escape.

Death. I use to think about suicide. How I would do it; where I would do it; who it would affect; what I would say in the note; to whom would I will my things; ponder whether I should write out what I would like my funeral to look like; try to think what people would say about me if I did do it - basically, I would contemplate all the facets of killing myself. But it never really was an option. I think if I had a terminal disease and was looking at a long process of increasing debilitation I would seriously consider it.

But maybe only consider it. The thing is you never know how your illness changes the people around you. Here's a scenerio - and actually not a bad idea for a short story: you are diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, stage four, and you are the mother of three boys who don't get along for one reason or another. They lead separate lives. But your illness forces them to come together, forces their wives and families to meet each other for the first time. You could turn it into a novel now that I think about it.

Years ago I severed my spinal cord leaving me paralyzed. How many people have I affected in a positive way since then? It's impossible to tell, but I'm sure I've left a larger positive footprint than negative one.

But what does making the world a better place (even if only in the smallest increment) have to do with the desire to escape? This desire is palpable sometimes. Mr. Smith puts it succintly:

INT. PRESIDENTIAL SUITE (MATRIX) - DAY

Agent Smith leans close to Morpheus, whispering to him.
    AGENT SMITH
Can you hear me, Morpheus? I'm
going to be honest with you.

He removes his earphone, letting it dangle over his
shoulder.

    AGENT SMITH
I hate this place. This zoo.
This prison. This reality,
whatever you want to call it, I
can't stand it any longer. It's
the smell, if there is such a
thing. I feel saturated by it. I
can taste your stink and every
time I do, I fear that I've
somehow been infected by it.

He wipes sweat from Morpheus' forehead, coating the tips
of his fingers, holding them to Morpheus' nose.

    AGENT SMITH
Repulsive, isn't it?

He lifts Morpheus' head, holding it tightly with both
hands.

    AGENT SMITH
I must get out of here, I must get
free. In this mind is tlie key.
My key.

Morpheus sneers through his pain.

The world really is a shitty place, and we have made it that way. Do not waste your time blaming God. He did not 'inspire' the Japanese to put reactors right on the ocean. God did not make the tectonic plates snap or send the tsunami; these randoms are built into nature.

No I don't blame nature or God for random 'accidents' and occurrences, especially when the percentages are up. I was hurt playing rugby, a fairly violent sport. My coach did not know how dangerous the sport could be so he did not instruct me how to protect myself. So I chose the sport and the coach was ignorant of the dangers, both human errs that raised the percentages.

Humanity. Look around, it is like a zoo, a prison. Sometimes I want out, escape, the kind of escape you don't wake up from in this reality but in another reality (I believe in this other, but I'm not going to into it now). But look closer, there is so much beauty in this world, not just in nature which is a no-brainer but in humanity too in open hearts and kind words, in acts of heroism and redemption, in forgiveness and love. And we humans are the only organisms designed to appreciate this world's beauty; almost as if God designed us to inspire ourselves to rise above our animal natures. The world is shit but beautiful too. It's too much to leave this gilded cage.

Bullets and a Bow

2011-03-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

The world is a crazy place. The U.N. Security council voted to impose a no fly zone over Libya. One of the causes allows for the use of "any means necessary" to protect the civilians short of ground troops.

Once again the U.S. is playing in the sandbox. But they are in a quandary: if they help, it reinforces their imperialistic image in the Middle East; but if they don't help, it looks like they don't care about the very democracy they are constantly preaching about.

The problem is the war is a civil war, that's what civil wars look like. Civilians arming themselves and dying. I think it's a dangerous step. What if there's severe unrest in Saudi Arabia, and the citizens arm themselves against the security forces? You can bet your life Saudi Arabia would use air power. Would the U.S. push to enforce a no fly zone there? I highly doubt it. How about Bahrain? No. I don't think so.

So if they'll do it to Qaddafi, how will it look when they stand by and watch the Saudis subdue the population with bullets and a bow?

But perhaps that is why the big push to help the Libyans. It makes a statement to the other Arab states to take care how they treat civilian protesters and how they secure civil unrest.

Notice, however, the lack of quality journalism; I don't see anyone asking the hard questions. Where's the hard evidence he's killing civilians that are not armed? Those gov'ts can provide satellite photos and video, IF it exists. Why don't they? It would be compelling. Also you're so upset about Gaddafi breaking a UN resolution that's a few hours old, what about Israel? They have been breaking UN resolutions for decades. You don't think this looks hypocritical?

I heard a great word for this type of journalism where they simply report - churnalism. Perfect.

Pizza & Styles of the Rich and Infamous

2011-03-12T13:41:00.000-08:00

Ever notice the pizza that actors eat in films and TV shows? It is thin, floppy, and lacking any topping except cheese. Why? It drives me crazy. Huge budget, and they got crap pizza! I think this topic should be brought up at the next UN general meeting. I mean, I've had enough. You would think the director would want the audience to see the actors eat and enjoy rather than try to act their part and also pretend not to be disgusted by what they are putting in their mouth. It's really sad. It's like watching a kitten being electrocuted... okay, that's exaggerating.... it's like watching an actor (probably a bad one - how many classics have pizza for a prop?) being traumatized which is a couple of steps up from watching a lawyer being tortured. Not that bad, really.

The idea of using crappy pizza as a prop is a bad idea on so many levels that I don't have the time or energy to write an extended rant on the subject. Honestly, my brain is overtaxed already just trying to think of examples of the pizza theory. This whole damn blog post doesn't work without evidence!! Yes, more shoddy journalism. Where are the pizza scenes? Does anyone even keep track of scenes with pizza? Probably. People all over the world seem to have so much time to kill, ever notice that? I know, mildly hypocritical from a blogger but you would be amazed at the sheer amounts of people online doing one activity or another, from playing a shooter or strategy game for ten hours a day for years and years to people reading and writing on the various social networks to people surfing porn to people shopping for hours to people surfing youtube to people blogging to people simply "link happy" and going from site to site to web designers spending hours online everyday for their job.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Pizza in film. The levels of wrong = On an emotional level: why gross the audience out? On a culinary level: self explanatory, good food is good. On a humane level: why make the actor eat that junk, take after take? On a financial level: cross market with a major pizza chain and show their best and get funding, right? On an aesthetic level: good delicious looking pizza is pleasing to look at, it's artful, it stirs the emotions. On a practical level: bad pizza that gets cold is inedible, good pizza is still good and now probably easier to deal with. I could, but I'm not going to go on.

- - - -

My next issue is a small but vital one. You know Mummmar Gaddafi? The dictator dude from Libya who is worth billions and right now is (and has been for decades) torturing and killing civilians in the name of 'security'? What the hell is up with his face? He looks like plastic surgery gone wrong. His face looks weird like a Halloween mask type of weird. And for a guy worth so much money, what is up with his personal sense of style? Other dictators have the uniforms or the Armani suits but Gaddafi hits the town with a shawl and a moo-moo! He needs the Queer Eye for The Straight Guy peeps to set him straight (or bent) like now, pronto, schnell! Start with the stupid hat.

- - - -

The above items are simply the kaka one amuses oneself with when you realize that you're five minutes away from being erased by a natural disaster, your body not that different than the other junk swirling in a plugged toilet. :-/

- - - -

Japan, the quake, and the tsunami. I watched the news for the better part of the last eighteen hours and the pictures and video from Japan are awful and horrendous: houses and cars being tossed around, towns flattened, the broken corpse of a train [God be with them all] - and I think I'm taking an extended break from the news. I usually don't watch much news anyway, especially local news. It's not uncommon for everyone around me to know stuff of which I am blissfully unaware. Being clueless about some politician stealing money or banging his secretary or some cop shooting down an innocent man carrying a screwdriver or a serial rapist being set free because of some loophole in the law - being clueless about that shit suits me fine.

- - - -

All I can think to do is make myself laugh with pizza and styles for the rich and infamous.

Libya cont'd

2011-03-07T09:27:00.000-08:00

Let's talk about world politics.

First of all, the gas prices around here have hit 1.30 a liter which is completely unreasonable since Libya only accounts for 5% of the world's oil production and since Saudi Arabia has vowed to make up for any production drop and since the U.S. has talked about tapping into its strategic reserves which are huge. So what's going on? The usual of course: Exxon, shell, BP, and the other oil companies are cashing in on the world's troubles; this is their modus operandi. They are making obscene amounts of money. Can you believe that until a few years ago they were still being subsidized by the U.S. government? Thank you, George Bush sr and jr. Subsidize big oil but fight universal Health Care tooth and nail.

Yes, I understand Libya needs a no fly zone, but the problem is the U.S. can't use their planes to enforce it, especially since enforcing it means bombing radar sites and surface to air batteries and missile platforms. The U.S. cannot use their planes, because their image in the Middle East is an image of colonizer, of foreign invading power, and the image of U.S. planes bombing Muslims (regardless of which side or what the cause) will just incite more hatred. The British are in the same boat. Further, if the revolting citizens of Libya receive help from the west, they risk losing legitimacy amongst their Muslim brothers; they risk looking like the west's puppets.

I don't understand why the Arab League hasn't stepped in and issued their own no fly zone. Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt all have the power, the planes, and the training to do it. They are flying U.S. planes after all, and most of them were trained by U.S. pilots. And where is the U.N. Or the ANC? They should be organizing a coalition of African and Arab nations to stop the violence against civilians.

Those civilian combatants are crazy; I mean, those dudes are going against jets and tanks with hunting rifles and AK47s, that's the kind of courage it takes I guess to forge a nation; how many nations around the world have had to have revolutions and civil wars to develop and advance socially? Unless they freed themselves from a colonial power peacefully, like Canada did, almost all of the highly developed western countries have had revolutions or civil wars. America, England, France, Russia have all had more than one.

Yesterday after church, I went to a coffee shop with my dad to meet this friend of ours, Mohamed, for a chat and coffee, and while we were sitting there, I told my dad that if Britain was smart they would already have the SAS special forces in Libya helping the rebels win or at least not get slaughtered. I posited the idea that they would probably have infiltrated the country while the British were trying to get their civilians out. It would be very easy for six or eight guys who looked Arabic and spoke the language to slip into the country with equipment. I knew they would do this. That's what these guys are trained for: to help rebel forces.

I come home to see that that's exactly what they did. Well, not exactly.

The British are not as smart as I thought there were, that or the politicians dragged their feet. Because the special forces, instead of slipping into the country at a port, parachuted in the middle of nowhere and got caught by some paranoid rebel forces. The rebels probably thought the western forces are invading to help Qaddafi. I can totally see them freak out because don't forget the populace is paranoid about Qaddafi's mercenaries. How would the rebels know those guys were there to help them? So, almost like a right out of a movie, the rebels turn over these eight soldiers and kick them out of the country. Now that's embarrassing. In the SF community, that's just about the worst thing that can happen, exposure and embarrassment in the media.

I hope those guys parachuted in with some good hardware though, because if they did, you can sure as hell bet those rebels kept it. If it's too sophisticated for them, I'm sure they will find the manuals online somewhere. lol

Greener Grass

2011-03-05T03:10:00.000-08:00

I watched a movie tonight, "Blue Valentine". I just finished it. It's about a young man who falls in love with a young woman who is pregnant by her ex boyfriend but doesn't realize it yet. They fall in love, and she tells the new guy about the baby. He says, let's do this, let's become a family. Now fast forward about six years.

She works full time as a nurse in a clinic. He has a job painting houses. Their daughter is talkative and amazing and your typical six year old. But the woman doesn't love him anymore; she resents him. He loves her intensely, but he's not very ambitious or growth-oriented. She resents him for being too giving and for not wanting to grow or change or better himself. at one point in the film, she asks if he ever had a dream or wanted to do something with his life. He responds by saying all he wants to do now is be a good husband and a good father. She accuses him of not using his potential.

It's a great script, beautifully written and acted. The complexities and nuances are too numerous for me to go into without spoiling the movie. But this scenario is fairly common, I think. I will use the male pronoun for convenience, but I think the thought process goes something like this:

Why isn't he more ambitious? Doesn't he want to grow? Is he ever going to change? I'm growing and changing, do I want them to drag me down? Why is he always hanging around? He is suffocating me with attention. He's still the same person that I met; he hasn't changed a bit. Why doesn't he have a life?

Or:

He's not the same person I fell in love with. I don't recognize him any more. He's never home; I think all he cares about is work and money. Actually all he cares about is himself, and making himself feel good. We're not lovers, we're not even friends anymore, we barely talk. He is changing so much I don't think there's any room for me in his life.

You either change too little or change too much or you don't change the way they want you to. I mean, this is only a movie and I've never been married, but somehow this "damned if you do and damned if you don't" scenario rings true for me. In speaking with people I know, after 15 to 20 years marriages seem to be 25% love 25 companionship and 50 frustration.

I guess it's not earth shattering news that people get tired of each other. But I would hate to watch that happen to my life, to watch my wife drift away from me and watch her affection become resentment. It is probably like when you drop something in a lake or in the ocean and it drifts away as if towed by an invisible hand. That is a sickening feeling.

But what is the alternative? To go through life alone? Or to brave the 50% divorce rate. To risk the 50% (approximately) infidelity rate (by either gender). Those numbers are pretty damn shitty.

But we are hardwired for love. And we are hardwired to want more, to think we're missing out on something, to think that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence (forgive the cliche). It's a bittersweet irony.

Book Club

2011-03-03T11:13:00.000-08:00

I finished the book "Still Alice" by Lisa Genova for my book club, and today we are meeting at Starbucks to discuss it. It's kind of weird to call it a 'book club', because it sounds so old, you know? Like we are a flock of old ladies sitting around a living room, reading and discussing books that Oprah recommends, trying our best to sound intelligent, bringing extra material we have researched and photocopied so that everyone knows how "on" you are. Those are the connotations and images that come to mind when I write the words book club down. But it's not that bad. There are only three of us. My best friend Lisa and Anita, an acquaintance I've known for a number of years now. They like to read, but I think we all like slightly different books which is good as it will force me out of my comfort zone, just like this last book.

"Still Alice" is about a Harvard professor that becomes beset by early onset Alzheimer's disease at fifty years old. The book is narrated by the prof herself which heightens the drama and brings the reader into the experience of Alzheimer's. The book is well-written. But it's not a very pretty book to read; the style is more functional than poetic. Yet the book compels one to identify with and empathize with the protagonist. I'm not a big fan of books that have a central subject or agenda at their core, like Alzheimer's or the Holocaust or slavery. But I applaud Genova for imbuing her characters with plausibility and verisimilitude.

Addendum

2011-03-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

From my comments on FB:
Usually there's something political at the Oscars; even if that political is satire or some kind of skit. But apart from the documentaries honoured, it was like the outside world didn't exist. No mention of afganistan, no mentioned of the fight for freedom in tunisia, egypt, or libya - I mean, a complete freeze out of the world outside of hollyweird - it had to be intentional.
‎13. Somewhere during the middle of the show, they stopped everything and two executives, a man and woman, walked out to a mic and announced that the network ABC had received the contract to show the Oscars until 2021 or whatever. WHO CARES? Were they actually expecting a standing ovation? One of the strangest Oscars simply from the level of unoriginality and lack of showmanship.
The organizers of the superbowl half time show screwed that up huge as well - what was the common ingredient? Either small thinking or trying to save money or no vision for what is awesome. There is so much comic talent out there to pick from. They couldn't get Dana Carvey or Robin Williams or even Tom Hanks to host it? Even the Wilson bros (Luke n Owen) would have been better.
Like I said on facebook, I don't know why I care. I should be thinking and writing about real human beings. I should be praying for the orphans of Dafur, or the citizens of the Middle East that are trying to better their lives by throwing out dictators that have stolen their future and threaten to do the same to their children.

Watching the Oscars is like watching a car race, you morbidly hope there is a wreck.

Os-scars

2011-02-28T01:58:00.000-08:00

Good grief. How did I manage to sit through the entire Academy Awards tonight? It was painful. Notable things that happened:

1. James Franco looked and talked like he had a full-body cast on. He is not funny; he is not charismatic; he is terribly dull. Epic fail.

2. Anne Hathaway looked strange. Pretty dresses, all 27 or whatever, but she looked sick and her makeup was fucked up, kind of clownish.

3. The show started and maintained a high level of tedium.

4. Kirk Douglas presented and even though he's a fossil, he had more charisma than the hosts.

5. The winner for best supporting said "fucking" on screen. No delay I guess. Sweet.

6. The Randy Newman performance was botched by the sound guy, because he voice was too low and music too high. He won, but gracefully didn't mention it, though he did mention his 20 nominations and only two wins.

7. Billy Crystal made an appearance (I guess he was backstage for emergency in case the audience started to fall asleep). He did a 5 minute stand up that was the best thing in the entire show. What? Really? He made Anne and James look like tedious bores.

8. The "In Memoriam" was beautiful as usual. Tony Curtis died last year. He was awesome to watch. Celine Dion sang, nice job too. But Halle Barry had to make a speech about Lena Horn who died this last year, and I guess inspired other black actors - ironically I don't think any black people won anything this year. oops.

9. Christian Bale and Natalie Portman won as they should have done.

10. I guess I should have seen the "King's Speech".

11. This year Barbara Walters interviews were replaced by coverage of the after-parties, where the celebrity worship goes full tilt boogie.

12. I think I survived b/c we started watching after dinner and using the PVR to fast forward the commercials. Must remember this strategy. Last year I almost puncture my eardrums with sharp pencils.

This was also posted on the media blog.

Hollyweird Lately

2011-02-27T23:06:00.000-08:00

In 2009 and 2010, Hollywood began producing less reality TV and more written dramas and comedies. In 2011, we are waist deep in a wealth of dramatic choice.

Good grief. How did I manage to sit through the entire Academy Awards tonight? It was painful. Notable things that happened:

James Franco looked and talked like he had a full-body cast on. He is not funny; he is not charismatic; he is terribly dull. Epic fail.
Anne Hathaway looked strange. Pretty dresses, all 27 or whatever, but she looked sick and her makeup was fucked up, kind of clownish.
The show started and maintained a high level of tedium.
Kirk Douglas presented and even though he's a fossil, he had more charisma than the hosts.
The winner for best supporting said "fucking" on screen. No delay I guess. Sweet.
The Randy Newman performance was botched by the sound guy, because he voice was too low and music too high. He won, but gracefully didn't mention it, though he did mention his 20 nominations and only two wins.
Billy Crystal made an appearance (I guess he was backstage for emergencing in case the audience started to fall alseep). He did a 5 minute stand up that was the best thing in the entire show. What? Really? He made Anne and James look like tedious bores.
The "In Memoriam" was beautiful as usual. Tony Curtis died last year. He was awesome to watch. Celine Dion sang, nice job too. But Halle Barry had to make a speech about Lena Horn who died this last year, and I guess inspired other black actors - ironically I don't think any black people won anything this year. oops.
Christian Bale and Natalie Portman won as they should have done.
I guess I should have seen the "King's Speech".
This year Barbara Walters interviews were replaced by coverage of the after-parties, where the celebrity worship goes full tilt boogie.
I think I survived b/c we started watching after dinner and using the PVR to fast forward the commercials. Must remember this strategy. Last year I almost puncture my eardrums with sharp pencils.

The State and Religion

2011-02-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

The separation of church and state is one of the key components of a democratized free civilization.

I mean, let's face it, the state already has too much power, and it is an organization that tries to censor opposition; it almost cannot help silence criticism, hide and cover-up mistakes and crimes against the people, and manipulate and manufacture consent and acquiescence. I know, it sounds cynical. But state power is simply a collection of people, after all, watching their own back just like anyone else would do, except in some instances they actually have the power to do it.

Now you add the power of religion to the above power wielded by the state, and you end up with a religious state that has tremendous power over its citizens; the state now has access to a "Truth" that cannot be opposed or contested. This union was used for centuries to justify wars and annexations and atrocities from the Egyptian Pharaohs to the feudal monarchies using Christianity to the Japanese empire to the use of Islam to incite violence against civilians of differing ideals and religious beliefs in Europe, Iran.

I know this post is rather simplistic. But I think the point is obvious to any open-minded thinking person. Yes, I'm a Christian, but I believe in free will too. Freedom is God's gift, and proof that He loves us all ("Problem of Pain" CS Lewis).

Kaddish

2011-02-23T13:49:00.000-08:00

I was listening to a recording of Allen Ginsberg recite his poem "Kaddish" in Greenwich Village in the seventies. A kaddish is a Jewish prayer of mourning, and Ginsberg wrote the book length poem for his late mother. The poem is a list of things of this world his mother no longer has to deal with: the pain, the suffering, the health problems, the injustice, the transient nature of joy and beauty, the family problems, politics, religion, the problems big and small. This year I am thankful I'm still around to deal with this life. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for the good things. But I'm thankful for the crap too as it is a constant reminder that I am blessed with the ability to choose how to respond to these challenges.

I love Ginsberg's poetry. The poems have a serene, wise tone to them that remind me of Walt Whitman. But Whitman had a larger vision; he visualized the earth and its people and how people could love it, and love themselves. Ginsberg's vision was a little narrower but still potent. "Howl" has a national vision; it laments the passing of an idealized America, an America that never was or an America that could have been - before Vietnam, Watergate, and the assassinations of Martin Luther, JFK, Malcom X, and Bobby Kennedy. The poem "America" also explores the author's disappointment and pain as he envisions both what is wrong with America and what could have been right.

Poems lamenting the destruction of a nation or the possibility of a nation is called a jeremiad, because the Book of Jeremiah in the Old Testament describes Jeremiah's lament over the destruction of Israel, a destruction they brought on themselves, for not listening to God.

Choir Boys

2010-12-14T01:52:00.000-08:00

Every year at Christmastime, the sound of a German boys choir singing hymns in German echoes throughout the house infusing the rooms and the hallways with a soothing peace. It's playing on the other side of the house, and I can just hear the undulating choruses enough to make out the occasional song. I was lying on my bed reading, but now I'm listening and watching the gray sky darken behind the black gnarled branches of the maple outside my window, finally stripped clean by the cold and the wind and a troupe of squirrels that had spent the last three weeks performing remarkable feats of balance and daring as they plucked all the helicopter seeds that had not yet fallen. I cannot see the rain against the gray, and soon the tree will disappear into the night, and I will be left with my book and the wafting echoes of innocence and peace.

Snowflake

2010-11-19T18:15:00.000-08:00

The first snowflake of the first snowfall kissed my hot cheek yesterday. I was outside, alone. It was dark, we have no street lights, yet I felt that touch and I was the only one there, the coyotes in the distance yelped and howled in love or loneliness but they didn't care, not about one snowflake. I was alone, outside. It was dark, there were no stars. The falling snow silenced my heartmind, and I leaned my head back for another kiss, outside, in the dark, alone.

Mist

2010-11-14T13:57:00.000-08:00

the light mist drifts over the backyard, and the world is in shades of grey. it makes me want to hold my breath, somehow it makes the stillness yet more still. the trees are quiet shapes; the evergreens dark pagodas, the maples and alders ...are silent naked sentinels to the approach of winter, their red and yellow leaves strewn across grass like a massacre, no, more like the hair around a barber's chair. yes that's better, I tell myself, it is the season of change, not death. the breathlessness, the stillness is my own. I am on pause, not the world. a flicker of movement to my right: a chickadee perches on the naked branch of a mountain ash, watching three small black squirrels sift the blades of grass under the feeder for nutty treasures. the mist rolls through brushing the grass, the black fur, the deck railing with wet innocence.

2010-11-04T01:58:00.000-07:00

When a good friend asked me what I could see outside, this is what I wrote:

blue skies with a warm bright sun and no wind so it deceptively feels early autumn until you slip into a shadow and a crisp cruel air kisses the skin of your neck. the trees are scarlet and pumpkin coloured, and mute, and I can almost feel them begging for a stiff wind to strip them and let them sleep finally. the blue spruces and cedars and pines watch and smile, I think. they're always happy. like the chickadees that flit from the feeder to the bush stashing food in places they'll never find.

Nightmares

2008-09-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Don't stop those slices of death that visit me every night:

the one I argue with my father on a high rooftop
under a burnt swirling sky,
I am naked and standing on the edge fighting the wind
my rage disappears into the rushing gusts
the impotence so heavy and longstanding...
I embrace the emptiness

the one where I sit naked in a metal chair,
the steel cold traveling up the back of my thighs,
my anus and testicles into my chest and just behind my eyes,
the cold so deep my every pore screams
and I watch myself from a distance,
perhaps from behind a two-way mirror,

and shiver

and wish it to end

and wake to a pounding
aliveness better than a near death
car accident

these little cuts and the black flow
are mercy sweet.

Autumn (second try)

2008-09-22T09:47:00.000-07:00

I breathe deeply watching Daisy sniffing the roadside,
thirteen pounds trotting forward and stopping,
her spring loaded leash reeling in and out,
as she reads invisible secretions,
which make me wonder, and smile,
the smell of pine lingering in the air
in the growing evening,
and the thick bush to our left
made me anxious,
the wild grey coyotes have struck before,
so I hurried her along
and I resolved to leave earlier the next day.

Then I felt the breeze cut across my neck, cold, part of the gloom,
and I heard a wet slap loud over the chirping birds.
I shivered and heard several more slaps, realizing the leaves were falling
for the first time this autumn,
the trees overhanging the road were letting go of their dead,
and I, a rare witnessing of the change of seasons, the everness of time,

the breeze became wind, thick and dark
and I hurried her along puzzled and wide-eyed,
sniffing without stopping now,
looking at me worried,
but it was too much for me,
that heavy wet slapping of the dead on pavement
like the amateur video of the falling
(oh God, how many dreams has this haunted)
the shouts and screams, the shaky picture panning,
and the crunching slap
as they hit the ground
zero.

Autumn (unfinished)

2008-09-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

I breathe the fresh freedom watching Daisy sniffing the roadside,
thirteen pounds trotting forward and stopping,
her spring loaded leash reeling out and in,
as she reads the invisible news written in secretions,
which make me wonder, and smile in blissful measureless ignorance.

The evening grew around us, and the thick bush to our left
made me anxious for her as we shared the neighbourhood
with grey coyotes which have struck before,
and I resolved to leave earlier when the light still comforted

Then I felt the breeze cut across my neck, cold, part of the gloom
and I heard a wet slap loud over the chirping birds.
I shivered and heard several more slaps, realizing the leaves were falling
for the first time this autumn,
I was witnessing the change of seasons, the everness of time,

but my sense of wonder darkened
as I recalled watching the video
the wet slapping of the falling
as they hit the ground
zero.

Lost and Found

2008-09-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

The previous post was supposed to be a declaration of health, that is, an imperative -- alas, God was not listening or, which is more likely, although I have reservations about the power of prayer as a way of conversing with Him/Her on a physical level, God heard my pathetic yawps and decided to toss a french clog into my machinations.

Last November, I had mended to about 95%. My feet were bothering me a little, but not enough to draw attention, not enough anyway to require immediate intervention. Or so I thought. I was wrong. I took care of the tiny spot on the outside of my right foot a few inches down from my pinky toe, and in my experience, these little spots become smaller and smaller and then dry up and disappear after a while. This spot was staying the same size and little did I know that it was a sharp scab burrowing into my foot.

Then one night I took my socks off and I had a bloodblister at the same spot. I deduced the role the scab had played and placed a foam donut around the blister to relieve pressure that might make it deeper. The donut gave me another bloodblister beside the existing one. Eventually, they became one large deep sore on the side of my foot. I stayed in bed for two months waiting for it to be fully healed. Two months. From late June to early September. My spiritual and mental health were too fucked up during this sentence to do anything positive. That's almost two years of my life I've lost to ill health. Not cool.

So in the spirit of self-destructiveness, I am refusing to finish my Master's thesis. It's 60 % done. But I spent days laying there thinking about it and have come to the conclusion that I don't give a shit. I finished the course work (which I loved) with great grades, but I'm not finishing it. The school wants another 1200 bucks and three months of my life sitting rereading boring critical texts about the Middle Ages and writing droves of proper kiss ass expositional prose. Don't fucking think so, holmes. Kaputzki.

The last week has been an adjustment as I try to accustomize my feet to shoes and my body to being upright for increasingly longer periods. It's coming along. All systems greenlit. The convalescence period will be longer this time, but it's not a prob. Last Saturday I went to a Shakespearean play (King Lear) at the Shakespear festival that runs all summer in Vancouver called "Bard on the Beach". Google it if you're curious. The sun, the tents near the beach, the sail-boats teetering in the waves, the varied gathering of language lovers, and of course Shakespear's honeyed verse -- all combined to make the day magical.

2008-06-19T16:40:00.000-07:00

Being one of the laziest bastards I know, this blog hasn't been updated in eons, but it's time. The favourites lists for movies haven't been updated either but nevertheless contain great rental ideas if you are interested in more than the constant stream of retarded films out of Hollywood where an infusion of lobotomized monkeys into the Writers Guild would drastically improved the quality of movies arriving in the theaters and rental establishments. That being said, I do not begrudge the Writer's Strike whatsoever. First, they were being underpaid by Hollyweird fatcats making millions. Second, I always enjoy seeing an industry come to its knees through union action, because it sends a clear message to the establishment that the masses will eventually hold them accountable (wish it happened more often). Third, the Strike and the downward spiral of the quality of TV demonstrated the essential nature of writers and how truly insipid and moronic Reality TV can become, if allowed. Finally, the drop in rating across the board (due in part to people refusing to watch Reality TV) will hopefully result in more written shows (and also gave me a glimmer of hope for civilization). Slomo

Tempus Fugit

2008-06-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

It's been a while again. But one can be reassured that this blog isn't the only one to undergo a brief pause.

Heaven?

2008-05-07T11:07:00.000-07:00

I was thinking about heaven just now. What if there is no heaven, per se? I mean, sure, it's pretty obvious to me that there is a God, and that this God is a moral 'good' God. And I believe the Bible is somewhat authoritative, especially the letters of the New Testament and most of the Gospels (let's face it, there are some major contradictions, but they don't detract from Jesus' prescence/power/message/Grace for me). But what do we know about heaven? Not much. I don't even count John's apocalyptic Revelation... it's a formulaic capstone to the narrative of the Bible and it's poetic sybolisms have no basis in fact, I think, apart from being a representation of the unnamable.

Vic

2007-11-24T10:49:00.000-08:00

I woke up last Saturday and someone had stolen my van.

Hiatus: The Seasons of Hell

2007-11-21T11:17:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know. WTF happened to me.

First, let me say to Graeme, who left a comment on my previous post, that if you are the 'old friend' I believe you are, then please email me - roboslacker at yahoo com - since I miss talking to you very much.

Fine. Where have I been? I'm going to give the short version as my penchant for overwriting will undoubtably morph the short into the medium length post.

In May, after a Spring of ill health and ending up in the hospital twice for minor surgeries, I began to convalesce and mend. But God, the Fates, whathaveyou had other plans, and my occasional respite in bed became a full-time state. The seat on my wheelchair is made of gel and especially designed to displace weight so that my immobility does not result in what is called a 'pressure sore' (basically the flesh dying in a certain skin area from lack circulation which is the result of immobility and pressure). Well, my cushion tore without my knowledge and I ended up with a sore under my thigh.

The only way to heal these sores is to stay off them. So I stayed in bed. For two and a half weeks straight. And since it's very difficult for me to type from a horizontal position, This blog among other things was neglected. The sore healed, but I had no cushion, so the occupational therapist I was dealing with arranged for me to "demo" another type of cushion she thought might even work better for me (despite the other one being fine apart from a misfunction).

The "new and improved" cushion was a disaster and gave me another sore in the same area. Three weeks in bed later, I got up again on another cushion but the sore returned. It's probably the middle of August now.

For a variety of reasons and miscues, the sore under my leg reopens two more times (for a total of four) costing me two more months of laying in bed. It is now November and I'm only allowing myself half-a-day sitting up in my chair. And this prolonged recovery/convalescence is the reason I haven't written in here forever. I wonder if I'll ever get back to where I was. Only by traveling it will I find out where I'll be however.

mh

Haitus

2007-11-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Volunteer

2007-05-21T11:36:00.000-07:00

I volunteer as a Bible study leader for young adult boys between the ages 16-18 (Grades 11 & 12) with my father, we do it together. I've done this particular task before, one year I lead by myself and then a couple of years with a couple of different guys around my age. But I hadn't volunteered for a couple of years before this year, and I had a "desire" to get involved again, so I asked the youth pastor if there were any leadership spots open (when I put desire in quotations, I think it's more than just a whim, I think we have a spiritual guide that suggests directions for our lives, a guide some call a guardian angel or animal spirit but which I call holy spirit). Pastor Dave was enthused, and it so happened there was a spot.

It was going to be a large group (around 12 guys). He was going to give me a partner, but I told him I had a couple of people in mind, two actually, a friend of mine with whom I had volunteered before and my Dad. Well, my friend already had too many commitments and when I pitched it to the 'old man' he was receptive if hesitent. This was all a year ago. My Dad has been a great addition to our youth culture, especially as he is pretty 'with it' and they like him and he likes them.

So I come to present day. A couple of days ago someone asked me to volunteer one night a month to take these mentally challenged guys out bowling. They're all quite high-functioning, so it's pretty hands-free. Haha, I'm thiinkin' I need a partner for this too and I'm setting the crosshairs of my scope on my brother's back. He needs this, I think. He rarely does anything for anyone and he's not involved in the church, actually he never goes which is tragic.

Tale of Two Lunches

2007-05-18T22:31:00.000-07:00

Well, that's A pretentious title for a couple of the events that were less than exciting, but I have an addiction to pretentiousness so why fight the flow and besides I am running on empty (a favorite movie of mine, by the way) when it comes to self-esteem and being pseudo literaryhelps a little. C'mon ... I'm kidding.

A couple of days ago, Wednesday, I took my cousin Heather out for lunch which has been something I've been meaning to do but haven't got around to it, but finallya

Slightly Discontented

2007-05-14T20:52:00.000-07:00

I hate those days when I feel slightly discontented; let me try to describe it and see if it sounds familiar. You feel bored and restless, yet you don't feel like doing any particular thing. You start doing something you've been putting off, because mostly you tell yourself that this is the 'perfect' opportunity. But after doing this 'something' (it could reading a novel, sketching, sewing, cleaning the fridge, whatever) for a while, you cannot maintain your focus. You interrupt yourself or quit early, and you revert back to the holding pattern of frustration at nothing.

That's how it is for me today. Close to finishing The Crossing but couldn't quite. Stopped watching a movie halfway through. Played some chess, but couldn't focus and kept resigning. Started writing in my blog, but became bored with myself and

Just kidding.

I had a strange dream last night which I thought might make a good SF short story, so maybe what's bothering me is my unconscious wanting to unload itself on paper. Hmmm, I better go write down that dream now.

2007-05-10T21:21:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing and here are a couple of passages:

He [Billy] went into the pantry and found some canned peaches and he stood in the dark at the sink eating them out of the glass jar with a cookingspoon and looking out through the window at the pastureland to the south blue and silent under the rising moon and the fence running out into the darkness under the mountains and the shadow of the fence crossing the land in the moonlight like a suture. (pg. 164)

Boyd sat staring into the fire. Coyotes were yapping out along the ridge to the north of the camp.
You'll just make yourself crazy, Billy said.
I'd done already have.
He looked up. His pale hair looked white. He looked fourteen going on some age that never was. He looked as if he'd been sitting there and god had made the trees and rocks around him. He looked like his own reincarnation and then his own again. Above all else he looked to be filled with a terrible sadness. As if he harbored news of some horrendous loss that no one else had heard of yet. Some vast tragedy not of fact or incident or event but of the way the world was.
The days following they crossed through the high gap at Apache pass. Boyd sat behind him with his thin legs dangling on the horse's flanks and together they looked over the country to the south. The day was sunny and there was a wind blowing and there were ravens in the mountains riding the updrafts over the southfacing slopes.
TheCrossing, 177.

Dinner Plans

2007-05-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

My Dad's in California this week for my aunt's 60th (he and his four sisters are all hanging out in San Fran for a week, beautiful city in which I spent a couple of weeks eating and drinking and shopping... the one week was a rugby tour of California in was on, and the other week was just friends), so he's there and I promised I'd take my mother out for dinner, a promise I'm making good on tonight by taking her to the Keg Steakhouse.

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The dinner above was great. Gluttony. Simply an aweful sin... lol.

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I went to dinner last week with an old girlfriend and I must admit I was nervous with anticipation of seeing her again and anxious about... I have no idea what... but anxious. So she came over and picked me up and we went to a local restaurant which I've been patronizing for close to twenty years; so the environment was a comfortable one, except the place was crowded and loud, and we had to shout across the table to talk, which in truth turned into less a conversation than a one-way talk, as my shouting voice is weak at its strongest, and so every attempt I made to be heard only resulted in a puzzled look, or a "what?" or the knot in my neck/shoulder growing and tightening down my back.

The place emptied out around eight thirty and finally I beckoned her over to sit beside me and we talked for some time. We talked about people we had known in school, where they were, what they were doing, why did't anyone organize a Grad party kind of conversation. It was nice. But when she started talking about my other girlfriends in highschool and some of the shitty ways I had treated her -- our relationship had been an on-and-off type thing and I had gone out with/dated/slept with a few girls when we were in the 'off' stage but not exclusively during that stage (a fact I am not proud of whatsoever) -- when she started down that road, I knew I was in quicksand, and fuck me if she didn't know the names of these girls and rattled them off the tip of her tongue like some kind of a practised mantra.

I felt like a total dickhead. I had obviously hurt her badly, and even though later that night she texted me and said "You know I was just teasing you, right?" to which I said "Of course, no prob, I know and I'm sorry I was such an asshole" -- eventhough, I know she had been waiting for years to tell me, to show me, how much pain I caused her.

COMEDIES

2007-05-05T16:32:00.000-07:00

These are my movie recommendations, incomplete and in no particular order. They typically are not suitable for children. Assume a R rating for each one.

COMEDIES

Zero Effect -- about a PI who is the best in the world, yet cannot help being a paranoid, neurotic recluse. 3.5/5

Barton Fink. An acclaimed dramatist moves to Hollywood to make his fortune writing for the movies but ends up with writer's block when he tries to write. A strange, surreal, but funny film. (see Drama) 4/5

Much Ado About Nothing -- romantic comedy by Shakespeare set in medieval times. 4/5

Being There. A story about a man whose only knowledge about the world has come from television until he has to leave his cocoon. A great cast and superb writing/story have made this film a classic satire. 5/5

The Big Lebowski. Cohen movie about a California bum who is mistaken for someone else and becomes entangled in a kidnapping/murder plot; hilarious story played by a star-studded cast. 5/5

Unstrung Heroes -— story of a young boy growing up with an inventor father and two crazy uncles, the latter at which he stays one summer. Coming-of-age. 3.5/5

Freeway -- satire, a white trash girl with bad temper gets into trouble. 3.5/5

Antz -- an animated movie with astounding graphics and premier actors. 4/5

Tampopo -- subtitled, a Japanese widow wants to open a noodle restaurant. Comedy. 5/5

Life is Beautiful -- subtitled, an Italian Jew in pre-Nazi occupied Italy meets and marries his wife, comedy/drama. 4/5

Shakespeare in Love -- a young Shakespeare tries to write Romeo and Juliet but then is inspired by love. 5/5

The Fisher King -- a radio show host feels condemned for inciting a homicidal psychotic on his show until he meets the man whose family was killed, about imagination and redemption. 4/5

High Fidelity. A unique and very funny story about an elitist record store owner trying to re-acquaint with his top ten ex-girlfriends. 4.5/5

Down and Out in Beverly Hills. A Hollywood bum (Nick Nolte) is saved by a rich family and is invited to live with them in their home. 4/5

Old School. Three thirtysomething buddies open a frat house. 4/5

Briget Jones' Diary. A British comedy about a thirty year old girl trying to juggle various pressures from boss, work, parents, and the lack of a love-life. 3.5/5

Adaptation. An original comedy-drama regarding a Hollywood writer adapting a book about orchids. Excellent acting and script. 4.5/5

Moonstruck. An woman of Italian descent falls in love with her fiancee's unpredictable brother. Romantic and funny. 5/5

Dr. Strangelove. A classic satire about the paranoia and madness during the Cold War. Kubrick and Peter Sellers at their best. (also in War Section) 5/5

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Steve Martin tries to get home on a snowy Thanksgiving holiday. 5/5

Working Girl. A classic comedy from the eighties about a secretarytrying to climb the corporate ladder. 3.5/5

Going South. Hilarious comedy about a horse thief (Jack Nicholson) that is forced to marry or hang for his crimes (Danny Devito, Chistopher Lloyd) 5/5

The Delicatessen. A french film. A black comedy set in an apartment building in a post-apocalyptic Paris. (also Foreign Sect.) 3.5/5

Say Anything. A high-school graduate falls for a quirky classmate and tries to work out what to do with her life. John Cusack is superb. 4/5

Tommy Boy. A boss' son (Farley) goes on sales tour with his wisecracking partner to save the family company. Simply... a classic. 4/5

Caddyshack. A golfcourse caddy must kiss various butts and win a tourney to get scholarship. Chevy Chase, Murray, Dangerfield, and Baxter make this a must see. 5/5

The Player. A satiric look at the Hollywood machine that churns out one crappy genre picture after another as it chews up executives and spits them out. Sharp and witty. 4/5

O Brother Where Art Thou?. Three escaped convicts on the lamb travel across 1930's South toward a buried treasure. Another Cohen masterpiece. 5/5

Young Frankenstein. A hilarious spoof on monster movies by Mel Brooks with Gene Wilder, Gene Hackman, and Peter Boyle. 5/5

Secondhand Lions. Two old bachelors take in a young boy without a father. Duvall and Caine. 3.5/5

A Fish Called Wanda. Thieves and thugs screw up extortion schemes. The monty python cast headline this film with Jamie Curtis and Kevin Cline as a hilarious paranoid assassin. 4/5

Do the Right Thing. Spike Lee's debute film, a series of comic stories set in Harlem. A brilliant independent picture. John Turturro is great as an Italian pizzaria worker in black harlem. 3.5/5

Good Morning Vietnam. Based on a true story. A radio host arrives in Vietnam and jump-starts a dreary military radio station with his comedy. 3.5/5

The Accidental Tourist. A beautiful film about loss and love. A damaged man becomes intrigued with a woman who helps him with his dog. 4.5/5

Amelie. French film. A young woman in Paris becomes intrigued by a 'secret admirer' and tries to discover who he is. A quirky, very original, and very romantic comedy. 4/5

Animal House. A hilarious comedy about a frat house full of malcontents and slackers bent on partying and cheating their way through school. Great movie, and an inspiration to my scholastic life. 4/5

Risky Business. This film shows a young Tom Cruise being left alone at home in the suburbs as his parents travel to Europe for a vacation; he tries and fails to resist the temptations of having the house to himself. 3/5

Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The classic comedy about a highschool student (a charming Matt Broadrick) skipping school with his girlfriend and bestfriend to hang out and have fun. 4/5

DRAMAS

2007-05-04T16:34:00.000-07:00

These are my movie recommendations, incomplete and in no particular order. They typically are not suitable for children. Assume a R rating for each one.

THE DRAMAS

Short Cuts -- nine interlocking stories set in contemporary Los Angeles. 5/5

Raging Bull -- the story of a boxer, boxing, and the dark side of human excess. 5/5

Bringing Out the Dead. A Scorsese film about an ambulance driver in NYC's slums (Nick Cage) who is falling apart with guilt over not being able to save a little girl and tries to come to terms with the past. 3.5/5

Deer Hunter. Three best friends go to Vietnam and the war changes them. Epic beauty and sadness. (also in War Sect.) 4/5

Oleanna. A Mamet film about a teacher and his student and their struggle for power, control, and good understanding. 3.5/5

Dead Ringers. Cronenberg's strange film about twin doctors, who cannot escape each other. Both brothers are played by Jeremy Irons who does an incredible job playing a dominant and submissive pair. 4/5

Ordinary People. Oscar Winner about the effect of a brother's death on a young man and his parents. Hauntingly beautiful. 5/5

An Angel at My Table. Based on a true story. It's about an Australian girl who strives to become a writer despite a misdiagnosed condition. Excellent story. 4/5

The Lion in Winter. Three sons struggle and manipulate for the medieval Kingdom of their aging father and mother. O'Toole, Hopkins, Hepburn are brilliant. 3.5/5

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. An Albee play. Richard Burton and Taylor depict a middle-aged couple battling each other intermingling of love and hate. Incredible script and acting. 5/5

Lone Star. A complex mystery/drama about a sheriff in a small contemporary town in Texas on the border of Mexico. 4.5/5

Breaking the Waves. A story about a woman whose overpowering love allows her to sacrifice everything for her lover. 4/5

The Shawshank Redemption. A wrongly accused man is sent to jail where he adapts and becomes indespensible to the warden. 4.5/5

The Red Violin -- movie traces a rare violin through history, chronicling its different owners. Drama. 3.5/5

Damage. A politician has a torrid affair with his son's fiance to ruinous result. Great script and acting. 4/5

Awakenings. A catatonic man awakes from years of incapacity and revels in the beauty of life. Robin Williams & DeNiro are excellent. 3.5/5

Barfly. A surprising story about a drunk (Mickey Roark) who lives from drink to drink and writes poetry on the side. 3/5

Mac. This hard-to-find film is about three brothers in construction who get sick of working for others and open their own company. 3.5/5

A Room with a View. Based on the Forrester novel, this simple love story is unforgettable. 3/5

The Lover. This beautifully scripted and shot love story is about the coming of age of a young woman in southeast Asia. Highly erotic. 3.5/5

Three Seasons. An elegantly filmed romance between two Vietnamese in modern Vietnam as well as two other stories. Multiple independent award winner. 4/5

The Unforgiven. Haunting Western about a retired killer that comes out of retirement to kill for money. 4.5/5

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Classic story about family, love, resentment, inheritance, and being true to one's self. 3.5/5

Night of the Iguana. A drinking, lecherous priest takes a Mexican tour of older women to a rundown resort operated by an old flame. There he tries to find redemption. 3.5/5

Slacker. A roving camera moves around a suburban city, following people listening to their daily lives before moving on to another person, a celebration of existence. 4/5

The Loss of Innocence. Intersecting stories about the various ways a person loses their innocence during their journey through life. Beautiful and haunting, yet uneven. 3/5

Female Perversions. Follows a female lawyer and shows the various ways women are pressured by society to conform to a certain undeterminate model. 4/5

Tully. Two brother in a small farming town find out something surpring about their missing mother. 4/5

Glengarry Glen Ross. A star-studded film about telephone salesmen under pressure. 3.5/5

Barton Fink. A theatre writer goes to early Hollywood to write pulp movies only to get writer's block. A strange, surreal film. 4/5

What's Cooking?. Four stories about four families (Black, Jewish, Korean, Hispanic) having thanksgiving dinner. 4/5

Thirteen. This film captures the traumas of being a female teen. 3.5/5

Kids. A poignant drama about urban teens bored and searching for sex, parties, and trouble. 4/5

Adaptation. An original comedy-drama regarding a Hollywood writer adapting a book about orchids. (also Comedies) 4.5/5

Moonstruck. An woman of Italian descent falls in love with her fiancee's unpredictable brother. Romantic and funny. (also Comedies) 5/5

The Conversation. Hackman stars as a surveillance expert that monitors a conversation he was not supposed to and worries about his safety. Coppola captures the paranoid seventies. 4/5

Schindler's List. An opportunistic German citizen seizes a chance to save lives during WW2. 4/5

The Right Stuff -- The New space program looks for the best of the best to send into space. Excellent cast. 4/5

The Hustler. Paul Newman plays a pool player whose pride costs him everything. 3.5/5

12 Angry Men. Henry Fonda and other play a jury arguing a murder trial. 4/5

Moonlight Mile. A pending wedding is interrupted by tragedy leaving the fiancee and in-laws in an awkward space. 4/5

Cinema Paradiso. Foreign, Italian boy grows up going to the movies. 5/5

Changing Lanes. Two men have an accident on a freeway and it changes both their lives. Ben Afleck and Samuel Jackson. 3.5/5

Amadeus. Bio of the famous composer Mozart and his struggles to get his work completed. 4/5

On the Waterfront. The mob and waterfront union join to suppress workers; one stands up against them. 5/5

Monster's Ball. The lives of a black woman and a white man prison guard intersect in the South. Excellent, complex drama. 4/5

Sheltering Sky. A married couple travel to the African desert with a friend who loves the woman (Debra Winger). 3/5

English Patient. A mysterious burn victim during WW2 becomes the center of intersecting stories. Inspired film from an inspired book, romantic and beautiful. 4/5

Shadow of the Vampire. A film about the making of the 1938 Nosferatu vampire classic. Good acting, inventive story. 4/5

Tender Mercies -- drama, famous cowboy singer stops drinking & changes his life, leaving everything behind. 4/5

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. A sane criminal gets himself into the nuthouse and makes mischief amoungst the residents. 5/5

13 Conversations about One Thing. Star-studded cast fronts this film of intersecting stories about happiness and contentment. 3.5/5

The Mission. A missionary converting aboriginies in the South American returns to his military past to defend the indians from conquistadors. 4/5

Dead Poet's Society. Beautifully told story about a new prof that changes lives in a rich prep school. 4/5

Lawrence of Arabia. A British geogrpher leaves his paper to join and lead arab insurgents against imperialistic Turks. 5/5

The Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind. A strange out-of-sequence movies about a guy so torn by a breakup that he goes to a specialist to have the memories removed. Amazing romance.

Leaving Las Vegas. Having lost everything, an executivetravels to Las Vegas to drink himself to death. 3.5/5

9 1/2 Weeks. Erotic flirtations abound in this cult classic. 3/5

Shadowlands. Playing CS Lewis, Anthony Hopkins acts superbly as a man who finds and loses the love of his life to cancer. 3.5/5

Naked. Raw and uncompromising, the film follows a young man who believes in nothing. 3.5/5

Grand Canyon. -A tow-truck driver (Danny Glover) saves a man (Steve Martin) from trouble and they become friends. 4.5/5

Like Water for Chocolate. Spanish. Multi -generational story about a family and how food has marked each critical moment in the family history. 3.5/5

When a Man Loves a Woman. This story centers around a man trying to get his wife sober. 3.5/5

Titus. Shakespeare's vicious revenge play. 5/5

City of Hope. Multiple stories intersect in this film that revolves around a strained father-son relationship. (Sayles writes/directs, see Lonestar above) 4/5

Driving Miss Daisy. 4/5

The Green Mile. 3.5/5

Signs. 3/5

My Left Foot. 4/5

The Rapture. 3/5
You Can Count on Me. 3.5/4
In the Bedroom. 4/5
Jesus' Son. A strange and unique story about a young, wandering, innocent man whose journey in life is full of love, laughter, and tragedy. 4/5
The American President. The US President, a single father, finds love in the white house. 4/5

Primary Colors. A presidential candidate campaigns through personal problems and dilemas which test his character and that of his 'team.' 3.5/5

Born on the Fourth of July. A young man goes to Vietnam and comes home disabled and confused. 4/5

Drugstore Cowboy. Thieves rob drugstores for drugs to party. 4/5

Running on Empty. Child finally finds out why his family never stays anywhere very long. 5/5

The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- drama, a torrid love affair in Czechslovakia leaves characters bitter sweet. 3.5/5

Howard's End. A love story in quiet, hesitant English society. 4/5

Remains of the Day. An English butler becomes fond of new housekeeper. 5/5

Empire of The Sun. A child loses his parents when Japan invades China, and he ends up in a camp struggling to survive. 5/5

Hiroshima, Mon Amour. French, subtitled, a french actress has an affair with a Japanese man, and they discuss each other's lives, beautiful writing. 4.5/5

Zentropa. German, subtitled, an American moves to Germany just after WWII, and gets a job on the trains. Strange movie. 3/5

THE WAR MOVIES

2007-05-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

These are my movie recommendations, incomplete and in no particular order. They typically are not suitable for children. Assume a R rating for each one.

WAR MOVIES

Saving Private Ryan. A squad of soldiers are sent to retrieve a lost soldier whose three brothers had already died in the war. 3.5/5

Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb. A satiric comedy about the Cold War and the militaristic paranoia it engendered. 5/5

Das Boot (Director's cut). German sailors in a submarine withstand the weather and the enemy in this outstandingly realistic portrayal. 5/5

Black hawk Down. Special Forces soldiers sent to capture rebel leaders become trapped and must fight their way out of Mogadishu, Somalia. 4/5

Jacob's Ladder. Psychodelic film about a Vietnam vet who is convinced he was experimented on during war. 3/5

Full Metal Jacket. Vietnam war film follows soldier through basic training and into The Nam. Stanley Kubrick film. 4/5

Platoon. A young man goes to Vietnam and joins a platoon that becomes like a second family. 5/5

Apocalypse Now. A special forces assassin travels up a river from Vietnam to Cambodia to kill a rogue colonel. 5/5

The Deer Hunter. Three friends go to Vietnam and the war changes them in different ways making their return home difficult. 4/5

Band of Brothers. The 101st airborne's story in WW2 from start to finish. Outstanding stories, cast, and film production make this film series the best war film ever. 5/5

Salvador. A fast-talking, end-of-the-road journalist goes to El Salvaddor to cover the civil war in the 80s. 3/5

Born on the Fourth of July. A young Tom Cruise goes to Vietnam and comes home disabled and confused. 3.5/5

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam. A striking and moving documentary documenting letters sent to and from Nam. 3.5/5

The Empire of the Sun. The son of rich British parents becomes lost when Japan invades China in the late 30's and struggles to survive. 5/5

Schindler's List. A German citizen and war opportunist/profiteer seizes an opportunity to save the Jewish workers in his sweatshop during WW2. Spielberg film. 3.5/5

Paths of Glory. Three soldiers in the First World War are accused of cowardice, but their colonel insists on a proper trail and acts as their legal representative. Stanley Kubrick's first big feature film. Exquisite on all levels. 4/5

Patton. The story of the infamous American General as he leads his men from Africa to Italy and then Germany. 3.5/5

A Bridge Too Far. The story of the Allied attempt to secure the various bridges that give access to Germany efore the German Army blows them and halts the Allied advance. 3/5

Twelve O'Clock High. A WW2 story told from the persective of the British-based bomber crews that bombed Germany daily with high losses. 3.5/5

English Patient. A mysterious burn victim during WW2 becomes the center of intersecting stories. Inspired film from an inspired book, romantic and beautiful. 4/5

HISTORICAL ACTION

Lawrence of Arabia. A classic epic about a cartographer who emerges as a natural leader and is sent into Arabia by the British to rally the Arabs against the Turks. 4/5

Master and Commander. A 17th Century British Navy vessel is charged to find and destroy a larger, more powerful ship. 4.5/5

Gladiator. A general in the Roman Legion is framed and sold to slavers where he becomes a gladiator and waits for a chance to return too Rome. 4/5

Rob Roy. A scottish tribesman defies an English Lord bent on suppressing the populous. 4/5

Braveheart. William Wallace makes his life-mission to avenge his wife and push the English out of Scotland with the help of unified clans. 3.5/5

The Mission. A missionary converting aboriginies in the South American returns to his military past to defend the indians from conquistadors. 4/5

Kingdom of Heaven. A blacksmith, in the time of the crusades, is visited by the father he did not know but who is a noble headed to Jerusalem to defend it from Muslim armies. The smith follows his father. Liam Nielsen, Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons.

Dogs | Sports

2007-05-03T13:27:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about dogs for a second. I love dogs. I personally think that God gave dogs a special mandate to help us humans be stewards of this planet, to keep us safe, to help us herd, to help us hunt and travel over ice, to teach us love and patience and death, to keep us connected to the animal kingdom, and finally to be our companions when we grow old and alone in our blind stumble toward the abyss. If you believe in a 'good' God (and I qualify it b/c some believe in a cruel malicious God, "a kid with an ant farm"), you have to see dogs as one of His emissaries placed here for us. Am I completely off-base?

One could make a case for horses as well, but canines specifically have been on my mind this last week or so, probably because the author, Neil Gaiman, of one of the only online journals I actually read, Neil Gaiman's Journal, found a dog which he is going to keep since the owner does not want it any longer. (Neil Gaiman. British fiction writer of fable and the fantastic whom I've admired for twenty years or so).This little story along with the latest PBS Nature Series and my recent viewing of Eight Below -- all have combined bring "[Humanity's] best friend" to the fore of my thoughts.

But I've loved dogs since a child. I've had ... nine or ten dogs in my life so far. I know that sounds bad, like some kind of canine serial killer, but cars, coyotes, disease, and accidents have taken them from me.

Proviso: I do not like cats. And the Canine Society of Canada in NO WAY has influenced my opinions with cash or any other recompense.

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You know, I used to watch sports on TV. Basketball. I loved to watch Chris Mullin or Magic Johnson or Larry Bird or Stockton and Malone. I loved the Final Four tournament. What a spectacle, a cornucopia of b-ball, unreal cardiac finishes. I loved watching Tennis. Wimbledon, French, and US Open. Football. Elway, Favre, Ray Lewis, Payton/Sanders/Smith. Baseball. Love good pitching, like Clemens, Pedro, The Unit. Hockey. Go Canucks. Go Team Canada.

But in the last five or six years, my sports viewing has dwindled to the point where I can barely sit through a whole hockey game even now even in the playoffs with the Canucks on the ropes. Kevin's coming over and we might stay here to hit the pub to watch tonight. Sigh. I'll never get those hours back win or lose. Not that I'd do a lot with them anyway being a SLOTHZILLA.

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A quick question that just struck me as I've been surfing looking for ways to learn meditation (I need to relax further as my journey to perfect slothfulness is not complete as yet): Far Eastern religions like Buddhism and Shintoism stress life-balance, and monks also have different yet similar views on the balance of work and prayer... but they rarely talk about accepting their bodies as having a sexual component that must e allowed to flourish as part of the balance... so can one be balanced spiritually/mentally/physically without sexual activity? They talk about directing that energy, but isn't that just a euphemism for repressing? I could be wrong... again.

ACTION AND CRIME MOVIES

2007-05-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

These are my movie recommendations, incomplete and in no particular order. They typically are not suitable for children. Assume a R rating for each one.

ACTION | CRIME

L.A. Confidential. An elaborately casted and filmed crime thriller about police corruption in Los Angeles in the fifties.

Bound -- a thriller about two women who try to rob a lot of money from organized crime with sex, murder, and smarts.

Jackie Brown -- Tarantino tells a smooth tale about crime, criminals, and money, where a bail-bondsman walks a tightrope with a career criminal and arms dealer (Samuel Jackson).

The Bad Lieutenant -- the descent and suffering of a corrupt, addicted policeman.

The Last Seduction. A beautiful woman with no conscience seeks power and money, using her sex appeal to manipulate men into her con games.

House of Games. David Mamet's complex movie about con-men who scam for a living, told from the perspective of a psychologist who is given a back-door past into the confidence world.

One False Move. A suspenseful crime thriller about three killers driving across southern United States toward a small town where a naive sheriff and two FBI wait for their arrival.

Chinatown. A classic post-noir mystery set in Los Angeles in the fifties. A private investigator (Jack Nicolson) becomes entangled in a murder and money scheme.

A Simple Plan -- three men find millions in a wrecked airplane nobody else knows about.

Silence of the Lambs -- a young FBI woman helps conduct an investigation into a serial killer.

Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer -- an intimate look at the day to day existence of a serial killer.

Memento. A tale about a guy with no memory who is looking for his wife's killer. The very original story is told in reverse.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. The story of a man with an incredile sense of smell who begins killing women to preserve their particular scents.

Irreversible. A story told in reverse order of a man and his friend looking for the thug that raped and beat up his wife.

The Vanishing (European version). A travelling couple stop at a rest-stop to gas the car and use the bathroom and one of them never returns to the car.

Thomas Crown Affair (Both versions). A rich tycoon relieves his boredom by manufactoring complicated heists until he becomes pursued by a seductive insurance investigator. Like The Getaway, these two versions are the same story with interesting differences.

The Getaway (Both versions). A man is doule-crossed and goes to jail, but the local mob need him for a heist so they have him paroled early; however, this time the man does the doule-crossing.

Sin City. From the comics by Miller, intersecting crime stories in a fictious hard-boiled city.

Bourne Identity. Jason Bourne, a highly trained killer, is tasked to kill a warlord on his yacht but is shot and tumbles overboard into the Mediterranean where he is picked up by a fishing vessel to find out he has lost his memory and the trust of the government that hired him.

Bourne Supremacy. Jason is hiding in plain sight in a small town in India when a contract killer shows up trying to kill him, the attempt killing the woman he loves. His search for answers and vengeance is full of twists and turns and high powered action.

2 Days in the Valley. Intersecting crime stories involving hitmen, mafia, cops, and bystanders.

Bullitt. A witness against the mob becomes a target of assassination.

The Usual Suspects. Local criminals are hired by a mysterious crime-lord to execute a major heist. Brilliant.

The Shawshank Redemption. A wrongly accused man is sent to jail where he adapts and becomes indespensible to the warden. 4.5/5

Italian Job. Team of thieves pull off a major job only to become betrayed.

Ronin. A mysterious irish woman hires ex-CIA and former spies to steal a silver briefcase from an arms dealer.

The Firm. A young lawyer discovers his new firm is crooked but cannot leave without endangering everyone he loves.

Ordinary Decent Criminal. A crime comic-drama about a charismatic criminal outwitting cops.

Runaway Jury. A major tobacco trial brings out the heavy-duty jury consultants and a couple of opportunists take advantage and threaten to tamper with the jury unless paid.

Scarface. A classic crime story about a Cuban immigrant becoming a drug lord.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. A classic spaghetti western about the search for a chest full of silver coins.

Goodfellas. The story of three friends growing up in the mob -- crime, Scorsese film about life in the mob.

The Proposition -- In the harsh setting of 19th century Australia, the younger of two outlaw brothers is captured and coerced into helping with the capture of his older brother with unforeseen results. Ray Winstone.

Clockwork Orange -- strange cautionary tale about violence and social science in a psychedelic 1970's setting.

The Unforgiven. Haunting Western about a retired killer that comes out of retirement to kill for money. 4.5/5

Drugstore Cowboy. Thieves rob drugstores for drugs to party. 4/5

Frailty. Crime-horror, men can see people's sins.

The Assignment --

Wild at Heart -- adventure, released prisoner and girl are hunted by girl's mother.

The Wild Bunch.

Miller's Crossing -- 1920's gangsters start a war between Irish & Italians.

Pulp Fiction -- dramatic-action, criminals & thugs pursue money and freedom.

Redrock West -- stranger comes to town and mistaken identity gets him in trouble.

Blood Simple -- crime, stranger comes to town and is implicated in murder.

The Cell. a woman goes into the mind of a serial killer to find hostage.

Runaway Train. suspense, Prisoners escaped from prison and hijacked a train.

To Live and Die in LA. -- suspense-action, a thrill seeking cop tries to arrest a counterfeit expert.

Mean Streets -- thugs on streets survive.

Lone Star. A complex mystery/drama about a sheriff in a small contemporary town in Texas on the border of Mexico. 4.5/5
Seven.

Kalifornia. A couple traveling across the southern states trying to visit historic serial killer places take along a brash young couple who become more and than they can handle. Brad Pitt, Juliette Lewis, David Duchovny.

Angel Heart. A down and out investigator is hired to find a woman but the search leads him to Louisiana where he becomes a target of voodoo witchcraft and becomes the suspect of a rash of the serial killings. Mickey Rourke, Robert De Niro.

Dead Calm. A couple out sailing are stuck in a dead calm when a stranger arrives in a blow-up boat with a strange tale of death and a deadly agenda.

Croupier. A roulette wheel dealer must decide whether to assist in the theft of the casino or do nothing or reveal the plot. Clive Owen.

Dolores Claibourne. A woman living with an abusive, alcoholic husband contemplates killing him during an upcoming eclipse. Kathy Bates, Jessica Jennifer Leigh.

The Edge. A highly clever billionaire travels with his entourage to the lodge in the great Canadian North. He becomes lost with the one person that would like to see him dead. Alec Baldwin, Anthony Hopkins.

Frantic. American tourist in Europe discovers his wife has been kidnapped and the authorities unwilling to believe him or help in searching. Harrison Ford.

The Princess & The Warrior. German film about two people with different lives - the girl is a care-aid at a medical facility, and the man is an army vet trying to pull off a heist - that intersect randomly and develop a strange love story.

When Night Falls on Manhattan. A young district attorney is assigned to a police shooting which turns out to be a widespread police corruption case.

Heat. A bank heist goes wrong for a career criminal.

Body Heat. A lawyer becomes involved in murder and love.

The Grifters. The mother and master grifter of a young con-artist tries to keep her son out of the business.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (THE TRILOGY). An adventurer/historian seeks lost treasure.

Criminal. Con-artists teach a up-and-coming grifter about the business of disloyalty.

Wedding

2007-05-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

Been a couple days since I've written in here. I went to a wedding last Saturday at a local golf course. I used to enjoy going to weddings but the whole ceremony/ritual holds no substance for me anymore, just a series of waypoints one has to endure before the music and drink being to flow and wash away the stupid suits and speeches. Waiting for the bride. The procession of bridesmaids. The fatherly handoff and the pastor's message (oh no, not Paul's letter to the Corinthians). Vows and rings. Receiving line. Calling of tables to go eat. Food. Speeches and toasts (you've gotta be shittin me, Paul's 'love' letter again). Slideshow/skits. Etc...

So I'm sitting at a table with the thirtysomething Pastor and his (forgive me) delicious wife with whom I've engaged in deep conversation about her two kids and her hobbies and she's digging it looking me right in the eye with her clear blues with her 'old man' looking around the room in a too obvious show of boredom, all pretty ordinary dynamic there, probably married 13-15 years and he's become bored with her too domestic ideas and issues and so she is starving for someone to listen to her to ask her about herself and I don't mind talking to her because I'm bored with the whole ceremony deal and how better to spend the deadtime while I wait for one more hack to bastardize Paul's letter to the Corinthians than to talk with a dark-haired, blue-eyed thirtysomething with a deadly smile. It's a good thing I couldn't take her out onto the dance floor; God, in all his wisedom, chopped that shit short and my dancing days are done, probably saved me kinds of sin (not including my penchant for terrible alliteration).

Weddings are funny that way though, the ceremony intensifies the emotional baggage people carry with them and when the music and drink begin to flow over these amplified emotions, you can see and hear these 'issues' emerge to conversation and behavior, you get a gambit of humanity including belligerence anger over-sensitivity garrulousness intropective happiness laughter tears sexual exhibitionism... you just never know. Weddings force evaluation of one's life, and that can touch a nerve or two, causing people to act out and release tension or whatever. It's no big revelation; it's pretty universal. Weddings can get crazy. This wedding reception was pretty tame, however.

I saw a couple of guys I went to highschool with at the ceremony/lunch. I didn't recognize them, much to my embarassment. Note to self: when you meet someone you're supposed to know but cannot remember their name, ask their name immediately. I didn't, and looked twice the fool later on.

-----------------

I started to read the novel The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy, one of my favourite authors and I think the best fiction author writing in America right now. I'm indebted to my friend Earl for this gift. He's a huge fan as well.

FOREIGN

2007-05-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

These are my foreign movie recommendations, incomplete and in no particular order. They typically are not suitable for children. Assume a R rating for each one.

FOREIGN

Camille Claudel. A french, subtitled movie about a female sculptor in the nineteenth century who was an apprentice to the famous Rodin. Beautifully acted and filmed drama.

Wings of Desire. A German drama about an angel that falls in love with a human woman and wishes he were human in order to love her.

Cyrano de Bergerac. A classic French drama about a robust, poetic soldier with an enormous nose who uses a handsome double to serenade a woman with his poetry.

Ran. A Japanese drama, subtitled, about a medieval shogun whose children betray him for power. Powerful and intense story.

Das Boot. German, subtitled, a story about German submarine crew in world war two.

Troi Coloures: Bleu. Three Colors: Blue. French, subtitled, about a woman who copes after a tragic car accident. First movie in the trilogy. The colours symbolize loosely the three tenets of French nationalism: liberty, fraternity, and elegality.

Troi Coloures: Blanc. White. French, subtitled, a man rebuilds his life after being robbed. Second in the trilogy.

Troi Coloures: Rouge. Red. French, subtitled, a model returns an injured dog and develops a relationship with its elderly owner. Last of the trilogy.

The Delicatessen. French, subtitled, a black comedy set in a post apocalyptic world.

Retribution | Evil

2007-04-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

My buddy Earl came over yesterday to watch the Canucks lose their first game of the second round of the NHL playoffs against the Ducks, and I asked him what he has been reading lately (he has been interested in and reading about genocide the last year or so). He said Faulkner's "Light in August" which we've both read before and admired immensely. He needed a break from reading about killing and other evils. We started talking about evil. What is evil? Is it real or a label we give the unspeakable? Is it what we think it is? Is it torturing and killing 30 people? Strangling a young girl? In Iraq today:

At least 30 tortured bodies were found, including 27 who had been shot to death and left in different parts of Baghdad and three decapitated bodies found south of the capital.

In Tikrit, police said the wife and daughter of a Saddam Hussein cousin were found slain at their home. The wife of Hashim Hassan al-Majid had been shot and the daughter strangled, police Capt. Samir Mohammed said. Their names were not released.

Al-Majid's brother is Ali Hassan "Chemical Ali" al-Majid, one of the most notorious figures of Saddam's regime, who is on trial for his alleged role in gassing Kurds and other abuses during a crackdown on Kurds in the 1980s. -- AP

Does it matter that it's retribution (sister-in-law to "Chemical" Ali)? L. retributus, re+tribuere: "to hand back," "restore," "repay." I guess it's just another day in Iraq.

Personally, I think "evil" exists. But not the way we think it does. I think we confuse evil and fear all the time. If I think it exists, do I think a being such as Satan exists, inquiring minds might ask. I think so. I can't prove it, of course, apart from pointing to the different world religions and saying they all think so.

I have felt it though, in me. It felt like I've heard heroin feels like the second time: a bodyrush of heat and excitement and pleasure. Power. Remember Platoon when Charlie Sheen shoots at a smiling one-legged guy making him hop up and down? When he stops, 'Bunny' played by Kevin Dillon takes over, from the screenplay:

But Bunny takes up the slack, moves forward on the young man.

BUNNY
(to Chris)
You chickenshit man, they're laughing at you, look at them
faces. That's the way a gook laughs.

The Young Man nodding affable to Bunny and mumbling ingratiating
words in Vietnamese.

BUNNY (CONT'D)
Yeah sure you are, you're real sorry ain't you. You're just
crying out your hearts about Sandy and Sal and Manny - they're
laughing at us! Their family is out there in the fucking bush
blowing us away and they're laughing at us!

O'NEILL
(checking out the hutch)
Forget it will ya, let's go ...

Chris standing there, watching, sensing something awful is going to come and unable to do anything about it. It comes - suddenly and without warning. Bunny is looking at O'Neill, the Vietnamese couple are muttering something. In one fluid move, Bunny swivels and with unbelievable savagery clubs the young one-legged man in the side of the head with the butt of his 16.

O'NEILL (CONT'D)
(stunned)

Hey what are you doing!

BUNNY
Fucker!

The young man is groaning on the floor of the hutch. Bunny
smashes him - again and again.

BUNNY (CONT'D)
That's for Sandy! And this is for Sal! And this is for
fucking Manny! This is for me!

Chris watches, horrified. Never in his life has he seen something
so horrifying as this. And yet he does nothing. He is part of
it.

BUNNY (CONT'D)
(stepping back, examines what's left of the head,
amazed)
Wow! You see his fucking head come apart? Look at that ...
I never seen brains like dat before. Jesus fucking Christ ...

The Old Lady is shrieking, hovering over the body of her son.
Bunny studying her.

BUNNY (CONT'D)
Betcha the old bitch runs the whole show. Probably helped
cut Manny's throat. Probably cut my balls off if she could.
(to Chris)
Come on, man, let's do her.

She cowers from him. Chris steps back, horrified. As is O'Neill,
more puzzled than horrified.

BUNNY (CONT'D)
(hitting her again)
Let's zap all these motherfuckers! Let's do the whole
village!

He backs out of the hutch, scared. Evidently Bunny is temporarily
insane.

Is it insanity? Evil hides in that excitement. It is the destruction of the innocent or of innocence. Evil loves the name "evil," because in it's naming and solidification as that other thing that separate thing, it knows that it is safe, safely forgotten. It is already there inside us, ready to use any rationale (self-defense, revenge, 'orders from above') to fill us with heat and pleasure.

How do you shoot the mother and strangle the daughter without being moved by evil? What does that mean, shoot one, strangle the other?

Which came first?

I think I know. God forgive them.

Environment kaputski

2007-04-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

I should be more positive, I guess. My posts are starting to depress even me. LOL. I think I'm a glutton for punishment, however, since the documentary An Inconvenient Truth was on Cable and I watched it. Much to my horror. I mean, it wasn't a huge surprise. I've been hearing about it for years ("it" being the warming of the oceans and the melting of the polar ice caps), but you don't really think about it until it's spelled out for you in black and white. Let me give you the good news, the sunny side up part: our planet is fucked, we are fucked, and it is too late.

Gore tried to put a smile on it. He indicated America is doing most of the damage to the environment and that with political and citizen 'will' things could change for the better. BUT WHO IS HE KIDDING? Anyone with an ounce of geopolitical acumen knows that the real challenge is the emerging countries like China and East Asia. China's population and economy is surging way ahead of the US. Their surge is based on their manufacturing and resource production, the latter which they fuel with coal (of which they have huge resources and which is cheap, allowing them to outproduce and underbid Western firms). Coal is terrible for the environment, there is too much carbon in the air already, that's the problem.

Okay, so China's economy and growing wealth is based in part on their use of coal. They have tons of it. And their huge population demands this energy (farmers already use coal because the country basically has been deforested for building materials and cooking fuel). How do tell a nation like China to stop using coal? To stop the money train? Forget about it.

I don't blame Gore for not saying much about China. He wants to be allowed to tour there, and he needs to tour there, for all our sakes. We can and should change. We MUST change. I am going to change my consumption habits. It'll help. I don't think it would take too long for the earth to heal itself.

But I don't think emerging countries like China, Indonesia, and others can or want to slow their economies (and their coal/oil burning) down. Who would, especially when their populations need the wealth. Emerging countries never make the environment a priority anyway. Look at Brazil's amazon forest, for an example.

I think it's too late. Gore doesn't want us to get depressed and give up. I agree. But here's a little survivor list for you or your children:

Hold the high ground: look at the map, find somewhere between the north and the equator, somewhere elevated, friendly, and hopefully with an aqueduct, and buy property. Build a fortress there.
Stockpile weapons and energy sources that don't need fossil fuel, ie solar panels, mini wind generators, whatever.
Stockpile clothes.
Stockpile water and non-perishable medical items.
Stockpile tools.
Transportation that works with electricity.
A desalination machine, and learn how to maintain/build one.

I'm semi-joking of course. But if both caps and Greenland keep melting fast, we are in for some unpleasantness.

Hmmm .. so much for being cheerful.. LOL. I saw a movie called Scorched (2002) with Woody Harrelson, John Cleese, and Alicia Silverstone. It was fun. A comedy-crimedrama about a bank and five slackers, three which work at the bank.

It's probably just me.

2007-04-22T14:50:00.000-07:00

Is it me or is this Virginia Tech shooting getting way too much press? My school, SFU, has sent out a few emails detailing where students who feel traumatized can 'talk' to a councellor. Schools everywhere are having 'vigils' where they can light a candle, sing some fireside songs, pray, and share 'feelings', 'silence', or whatever. And feel 'better' about themselves.

HELLO?! WAKE UP!

The day before 40 died in Bagdad, 50 in Somalia, 6 in Israel-Palestine, etc etc. A couple of days earlier, several trucks with heavy machine-guns rolled into a marketplace in Darfur, Sudan and mowed down 40 shoppers. These numbers are the norm. So, I'm sorry if I can't muster a tear for the innocent in Virginia... I'm all out of bodily fluid.

How about this little tidbit from today's news:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Gunmen in northern Iraq stopped a bus filled with Christians and members of a tiny Kurdish religious sect, separating out the groups and taking 23 of the passengers away to be shot.

The executions came on the same day that two suicide car bombers targeted a police station in western Baghdad, killing 13.
-- Associated Press

I watch the PBS NEWSHOUR almost every day. And at the very end of the hour, the news people leave about five minutes of airtime to show the pictures of fallen soldiers in silence, they give their name, rank, age, and hometown. They show them as they become available. And there is between 5-10 every day.

There is so much sadness in the world, I refuse to let CNN blow this tragedy out of proportion just because the victims were white and it happened in the US. Sorry, not gonna do it. Sell sorrow elsewhere, we're all stocked up here.

Working on The Movies Page

2007-04-21T10:31:00.000-07:00

I'm working on my movies page where I list some of the movies that have entertained me, simulated my imagination, or hit me like a runaway train. I have selected these movies in terms of film/cast quality, quality of writing/story, and originality (or bringing something original to a well-established genre).

I'm grouping my recomends in terms of genre: adventure/thriller/crime on one page; comedy on another; war & drama; and on the last page, minor genres: science fiction/fantasy/weird & documtentary.

I'm going to work on a classics page too.

Each film will have a small blurb and/or a link, so that you have an idea if it's for you, but I should emphasize that these films are to be considered R for Restricted, mostly for violence and language but nudity as well. Several are disturbing, I'll try to indicate which.

My choices in books and movies are similar in my gravitation to the strange and the disturbing. Iwonder if it's because I've become inured or desensitized to feeling disgust and shock and I need ... well, Kafka said it best about books but I think it applies for movies as well:

"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book does not shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”
–To Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904

Is the ice around my heart-sea from too much violence/horror like callouses or scars or does it stem from the banality and dullness of suburbia? Kafka wrote books that do this to a reader. His short stories stab deep into the gut and twist. His novel The Trial is simply brilliant in it's ability to worm into your consciousness and break you up from the inside.

Anyway, let me know if you find a movie you hadn't seen before and really enjoyed.

Drinking from Lethe

2007-04-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

Wake up with a headache, Advil dulls it a little.

The sky is overcast, the colors muted. I hear the birds singing but they bring me no joy. The brainthrob fades some more, but the dull ache and the grey flatness outside leaves me lethargic, bored, restlessness, and replete with what can only be called dread. Lethargy: lethe is Greek for 'forgetfulness' and argos is idle, hence lethargy, idle through forgetfulness.

My dread stems from having things, unpleasant things, to do and not wanting to do them. Wanting to forget them, wanting to drink from the River Lethe and forget the world. To drink and wander the banks with the damned, to not remember what paradises have been lost or the sufferings that approach on time's wings.

To drink and stare into the mirror of oblivion.

I throw on my headphones and fire up the metal and do some writing and it is sweet bliss. Three hours later the sun has burned it's way through the greyness and apart from what I've written here and elsewhere, I have managed to obliviate those things which needed to be done which I cannot even remember what they were and which will have to be done tomorrow in any case.

Something to Watch .... finally

2007-04-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

There is an excellent series on PBS right now called America at a Crossroads which engages the dilema the US is facing with the Iraq War. It's an eleven part documentary series spread over six days. It's on tonight at nine, I believe. Two one hour episodes called The Gangs of Iraq and The Case for War.

I watched the two episodes yesturday, Warriors and Homecoming, one which followed six soldiers in Iraq just to see what their daily lives were like, long moments of boredom with flashes of chaos; the other looked at soldiers that had come home and put their experiences on paper as stories or poems, and it talked with other soldiers from other wars that had done the same. Both shows were excellent.

Hockey is on too, but whatever.

Killing is Easy....

2007-04-16T12:49:00.000-07:00

It doesn't take much to get yourself a semi-automatic assault rifle and kill a bunch of students. Just watching the cell-phone video and hearing the shots, I could tell it was a medium caliber assault maching pistol (Tek-9)/assault rifle (AR-15, M-16), most likely a 5.56 or 9mm. I'm assuming a rifle, as those pistols are very inaccurate. He was shooting in semi mode, picking people off. Of course, he could've had a shotgun before or after the video too; something like a Browning or Beretta autoloader. Maybe he's packing a cheap 9mm handgun for cleanup.

It's easy. You could buy the whole works at a gunshow for cash. Or maybe order it online from somewhere like Guns America or one of the many other buy/sell gun sites. I saw a local investigative report where a reporter did just that. For cash. No wait period.

It's no secret. There are sites that'll tell you how to turn your semi-auto into fully auto for those fire supression situations once the cops arrive. Then there's the silencer sites so you can put down a bunch of targets before they know what's happening. Then there's barricade & bomb construction, etc.

But why .. is what I can't figure. Hostages, demands.. I can see. Trying to make a statement or change something or call attention to something.. I can kind of understand it. But random killing then (perhaps) suicide makes no sense. My sense of Columbine was the same. Gus Van Sant's moving docu-drama Elephant doesn't really shed any light on WHY, and neither has any of the articles I've read about that particular shooting.

CNN has 31 deaths so far. One shooter (appearently). That in a pretty short time. He might have had a suppressed weapon. Or maybe he was a marine, like in Full Metal Jacket, Kubrick's masterful anti-war movie. From the screenplay, in boot camp:

Later they are grouped around [Sgt.] Gerheim. "Does
anyone known who Charles Whitman was?"
Blank faces.
"None of you dumbasses knows?"
Cowboy slowly raises his hand.
"Private Cowboy?"
"Was he the guy that shot a lot of people
from a roof?"
"That's right, Private Cowboy. He shot and
killed twelve people from a 28-story observation
tower at the University of Texas, from distances
of up to four hundred yards."
The recruits look impressed.
"Does anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald
was?"
That's easy. Almost every hand goes up.
"Private Snowball?"
Private Snowball says, "He shot Kennedy, Sir!"
"That's right. And do you know how far away
he was?"
"It was pretty far. From that book
suppository building, sir!"
"Two hundred and fifty" feet. He was two
hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a
moving target. He got off three shots with a bolt
action rifle in six seconds, and got two hits,
including a head shot. Do you know where those
men learned to shoot like that?"
No one knows. Joker raises his hand.
"Private Joker."
"In the Marines sir?"
"In the Marines. Outstanding! Now those
people did not put their Marine training to a good
purpose but they showed what a Marina with his
rifle can do, and before I am through you will all
be able to do the same thing."
Leonard stares at Gerheim.

Yeah, I know it's cavalier but look at their culture, look at their gun culture. Why are these weapons available? Why haven't things changed there since Columbine? The NRA/gun lobby?

Well, it didn't take long for CNN to cash in, huh. Paula Zahn's set up interviews for this afternoon. Cooper on 360 probably has his shit together. Like a well-oiled machine over there. I'd love to see their protocol/contingency pllans for disaster/tragedies, their immediate tactical plans, list of things to do/people to call, their plans probable scheduled at first by the minute, then half-hour, then hour for a 24/36/48/72 hour block depending on severity of 'incident.' O yeah, they're doing the usual feeding the news in slow bite-size increments in order to maximize viewership depth and longevity.

I just find the whole thing sad. Just happened in Seattle as well. And didn't we have our own little version of this in Canada? And who is to blame? You don't see this in Europe.

Here we go again

2007-04-12T11:25:00.000-07:00

Here we go again, just like Somalia, just like Bosnia, just like Kosovo. Hey, I have my own issues with the US and how they manage their foreign affairs, sticking their dirty fingers in foreign governments' pies, and often with motives that lay beyond National "interests" and are more about multi-national corporation interests.

But they are the first to step up to the plate against the dictators around the world trying to kill off their own people. Yeah, they did drop the ball in Rwanda, but even the UN refused to acknowledge it unit it was too late. But I'm talking about Darfur in the Sudan where people have been getting slaughtered since 2003. Just like the genocide in Bosnia in the 90's, the European nations are nowhere to be seen on the issue. I mean even the Chinese (and they generally do not stick their neck out for no one) are rivaling the British and trying to convince the Sudanese president to stop the killing.

The killing has now spread across the border to Chad and this week finally the US Senate is convening to discuss ways to get "tough" with the Sudanese government and its president who continues to say the genocide is made up. The crisis is worsening. AU (african union) troops sent there as peacekeepers have been attacked and killed twice in the last month.

So who is stepping it up? The US. Yeah, they have their faults and a closet full of skeletons, no doubt, but thank the lord the USSR didn't win the Cold War and end up as the World's policeman.

Anyway, across the world from the death and destruction, Spring time has reached British Columbia, and the hummingbird are buzzing back and forth and the Japanese Cherry trees and Dogwoods are blossoming pink and white. And the air feels so clean and freshly washed by BC winter storms.

Another spring. More time under the bridge. Time renews all, erases all. We all die, our stories will die. Our actions and worries will die. Darfur will fade into history and fifty years from now no one will care except the children being raped and burned now. Perhaps even they will have passed on. What lasts? A symphony? A novel? A scientific discovery? Or will they simply take longer to disappear?

If you believe in having a 'soul' or spirit, then perhaps one's spirit may withstand time's ebbs and flows. Perhaps.

DVDs

2007-04-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

People ask me what kind of movies I like. And I usually say crime stories. But I'm also a huge sucker for stories of redemption where the hero/heroine rise allmost miraculously from an imposed or self-imposed 'hell' or low to save, heal, or help someone else in trouble. It is the Christ archetype or model. Apropos at Easter.

There was a sale on DVDs and I picked up a couple of crime classics:

The Godfather. Set in its period just after the second world war, the movie follows a mafia family as the old generation passes on its power and position to a newer generation, with the older gen epitomized by Don Corleone (Brando) and the younger gen by the son Micheal C. (Pacino). Long movie, but an excellent drama/crime story. Rated R.

Reservoir Dogs.Sparsely shot but intense story of a diamond robbery gone awry where the criminals are supposed to meet at a warehouse after the heist. Only a few make the meeting and the chaos of the derailed robery follows them to the warehouse, where each criminal suspects and accuses the other of betrayal. Rated R.

The Bad Lieutenent. Story of a corrupt cop (Harvey Keitel) who gambles and debauches himself into a pit of hopelessness, but just when he is at the utter bottom of his own hell, he manages to redeem himself and find some humanity and forgiveness within. It is a heart-wrenching movie that is hard to watch, but it touches me deeply for reasons that are my own. Rated NC-17. (warning: this one is not for everyone)

You can check considerably more eloquent reviews of these crime classics at

Roger Ebert Dot Com

which is one of the best sites on the net for length and depth of reviews and sheer volume of movies reviewed.

Blessed Easter.

Shame

2007-04-04T22:36:00.000-07:00

I bought something for myself today. I've entered the age of mp3 players. Pretty square I must be yesss... to not have had one before. Mostly a fear it is I have most that anything technological purchase will be worth half of it's purchase price a year later. Don't forget, having been around some thirty-nine years, I have in the past spent obscene amounts of mulla on computers, receivers, mini-disc recorders, dvd players, etc -- the worst of the lot being the PC. Processors incl, 286, 386, 486, Pentium 350, PII, III, etc etc... man, the money spent. Just shameful.

Now when I want something, I wait. And wait. Do some research and wait. Until it's safe, until the tech has surpassed the capability, until it has become ordinary. Then sometimes I don't even bother. I wish I could say the mulla I don't spend goes to UNICEF or Compassion Canada or CARE or even Green Peace. But it doesn't. I sponsor my church, which in turn sponsors other charities and I sponsor WSPA (world society for the protection of animals). It's not much, not compared to what I spend on myself. Avarice, gluttony. Is there an emptiness inside me I am trying to fill with 'stuff'? No, I'm not that bad. I've seen that out there though, amongst people I know. They are unhappy and nasty in their desire to be on top.

Now I'm a little bit more wired. Like I needed it. Whatever.

Okay, Yet another space for the Sloth

2007-04-02T10:20:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty much out of control. How many spaces do I need you might ask. I'm going to try as many as I can, time allowing, then decide where to make my lair.

mph

My Birthday

2007-04-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

It's a good day to have a birthday. April Fool's Day. It would seem problematic. A magnet for nasty jokes. Or worst, a prophetic day to be born. But no, it's a good day. People find it easy to remember.

I didn't do much, like most years. Spent the day recovering from the previous night.