<< April 2005 | | June 2005 >>
May 31, 2005 >> Bubble-wrap and salveDear Everyone,
I have an unfortunate aptitude for crushing people.
Chrissie calls it self-centred arrogance, but I'm not convinced that's the case - see, I haven't lost the ability to empathize. I lie awake some nights, thinking and trembling ever so slightly, and I'll wrap myself up into a ball of morose anxiety over those I've trampled. The weight can be crippling and it's always piling, building upwards onto my shoulders and driving me down. Sometimes it's blind and sometimes it's necessary, but I never like causing pain; I never ignore the repercussions. I feel bad too, even if you didn't happen to notice. I hide it well. I don't know why.
I look out for number one, but I also love numbers two and three and four and five and six and... well, it stops there. If you care for everybody, the precious little you have to offer does nothing and you burn yourself out. If you care for nobody, you implode in selfishness. There's a happy medium in there someplace which few people seem to understand.
I am struggling to explain without sounding cold and calculated, but I fear I am failing miserably - fuck. Listen, I don't choose an elite group of people to love in some kind of lottery or checklist, and pointedly ignore the rest of the world. I am just painfully aware of the fact that we are all spread thin, like so much bubble-wrap over a vast expanse of delicate porcelain. You can't be emotionally responsible for every china vase or decanter you meet. You just can't, without running the certain risk of shattering yourself in the attempt. For me, it's not a conscious process of choice - that's where cold calculation would fit in, I guess - but sometimes I can still catch glimpses of the corners and edges of bubble-wrap expanding and receding, covering new friends and leaving the past exposed. It's always moving and, try as I might, I can't stop in any one place.
Arrogance would be thinking that anyone especially cares; believing that my sphere of compassion can shatter hearts and lives, or offer miraculous relief from the cruelties of fate. Self-centred thinking would be trying to cover yourself with your own bubble-wrap, rolling into a ball so tight that nothing else could possibly fit inside. Coldness is not giving a fuck at all. I don't think any of these describe me but, hey, I'm me. I have a vested interest in not thinking of myself as a bastard. I have high self-esteem, 'tis true, but if I was officially diagnosed as a dickhead I might have to reconsider. I used to be a Nice Guy, you see, back in high school, and I feel warm when I think that the ashes might still be smoldering somewhere deep inside.
So, for those who have been left out in the cold and those who might be stepped on in the future, I'm sorry. I need you to know that I don't prance gleefully onwards in life, unscathed and unscarred by your gradual and sudden passings. I take pieces of you into my breast, without warning or trying, and they scratch and burn at night long after your face has faded from view. Every once in a while I meet someone who leaves me with a salve instead, a cooling presence, and it gives me hope, lifts me back up, cracks my ribs and heals the guilt. I wish - one of my Great Wishes - that I could find a way to back away, to vanish, without hurt. I will always disappear; I would love to be a salve instead of a crushing heel, but I don't know how.
Love,
Christopher
Posted by Chris at 02:31 PM | Permalink
May 30, 2005 >> It's...
...A lazy Monday where coupling ducks hop quizzically up the front steps, webbed feet flailing as they follow the cracker trail.
...A red and golden throne, outside on the curb. The royal seat had hopes of being restored to its former glory ("I want... to be king.") but instead it will be just another gaudy piece of broken furniture at the junkyard. I'm so sorry.
...Working out of an "office" in CH Little House, spending the last days in Waterloo where I first began four years ago. The beds are smaller than I recall; Laurier residences (unsuccessfully) promote abstinence. Just make sure you're the one sleeping next to the wall, for the love of God.
...A free lunch on Dan The Man where we established that Jen does indeed take it like a champ. Thank you sir, and flawless victory!
...Today. And while I twist for meaning, it flows around me like a lover who just doesn't care anymore.
Posted by Chris at 06:20 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
May 29, 2005 >> Dirty Phil's is with you, always and forever
It's been a while since you pulled a Phil's double-header; long enough, in fact, that the last time you can recall spending an entire weekend in Waterloo's dirtiest basement was first year and you were hardcore making out on the dance floor. You got kicked out for using too much tongue.
Now you laugh at kids doing the exact same thing, and wonder if you looked quite that stupid and fish-faced back when you didn't give a fuck about anything but getting some. The answer is "probably". You try not to judge too too much, but every once in a while you'll catch the eye of a stumbler and the laughter will bubble up inside your skin. A few more rum and cokes and you won't be able to hold; composure is slipping.
Popular Jackie leans against a post, drunk as shit. STAMOS! you yell in unison. STAMOS! Every girl that walks between you two chooses to brush her breasts against Jackie's and not yours. STAMOS! She forgot her camera, and if she hadn't, there would've been pictures. For the record, you forgot your camera too.
Dave Wellhauser is in a corner, huge beard in tow, and waves you over congenially. Wellhauser is some kind of magic: by now you've gotten used to his random appearances. He's absent for months and suddenly, miraculously, he's there, here. Eventually there's no room for surprise. You ask him about how his campaign hat appeared on Trailer Park Boys and he tells you that he's working on bringing Ricky, Julian and Bubbles down for a kegger in early August. Dave is always, always, promoting - a tireless contributer to whatever project (or ten) he's got on the go. August, he says? You're totally there.
A fight breaks out (surprise!) and the dredlocked bouncer who lived beside you a few summers ago applies a fearsome headlock to one of the would-be combatants. From what you saw, he spent most of his time outside tuning his motorcycle and ferrying girls around on said motorcycle, but he must've been working out too. Encircled by a beefy arm, the kid's face turns beet-red and his limbs go limp. The battle is over quickly.
A very-feminist girl who once accused you of promoting misogyny and rape dances vigorously on one of the fine stripper poles that make Phil's so classy. You aren't sure if this constitutes irony, but you are very amused. She is a surprisingly good dancer.
For admitted non-dancers, Kate and green-eyed Scutt dance a lot. You spin. She spins. It's clumsy and amazing. Your idea of dancing usually constitutes playful mockery of 80s disco (the Shopping Cart! The Lawnmower! Sprinkle That Garden!) and retarded headbanging. Double-fisting makes things difficult, but you proudly spill ZERO drinks - an admirable feat amongst the wobbly-legged masses.
As the night dies, you and Tim watch for marijuana; the cupboard is bare at home. One by one you abandon opportunities - can't cockblock, can't impose. Eventually the quest becomes futile and the only thing you can do is shake your fists with comic abandon at the asbestos ceiling and vandalize posters on your walk home. The drink proves to be more than enough substance abuse for the night, and you gleefully smoke a cigarette inside because none of your roommates are around.
The next day, you write a synopsis of your night and cackle maniacally at those who will spend their precious minutes reading a post with absolutely no insight or redeeming value. Suckers!
Posted by Chris at 12:38 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
May 27, 2005 >> Mansplashing Hillbilly Jim
I am, as the saying goes, a straight-up, stone-cold sucker for wrestling video games.
Yes, I know wrestling is infantile and misogynist and a vehicle for angry, stupid American rednecks to vent their intolerance. I'll watch it once in a blue moon, because I'm wary of Vince McMahon and the sway he has over the masses. I need to keep an eye on this motherfucker. He's tricky. It's pretty terrifying - nobody takes wrestling seriously because it's admittedly not real - but the demented storylines that WWE spins basically teach halfwits to hate hyper-stereotyped arabs and gays, and that it's 100% justified to slap women around under the flimsiest of pretenses. Violence solves everything, and you can only be the big-belt champion if you're a juice pig. Wrestling is a microcosm of American society without any constraints, where extremism is rewarded with ratings hikes and hatred is A-OK because it's "fake". It wouldn't be so bad if people didn't take it so seriously, didn't bask in the one-liners and wait with bated breath for the next predictable plot point, but they do. They eat wrestling for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-nite snack, and they're not smart enough to separate parody from reality - aggressive, exclusionary mentality drips into their soft heads through the TV set and we all move a big step backwards when they mark their voting ballots. The WWE is totally fucked and not something to be treated lightly.
(Side note: I'm allowed to say all these mean things about wrestling fans because they're way too guillible, mostly American, and tend to form a huge Bible-belt voting bloc that continues to perpetrate intolerance. I'm being cruel for the purpose of promoting social equality. Plus God said it was cool - he's tired of these bastards smearing his Good Name.)
Anyways, believe it or not, this was all one big tangent from the get-go: I really wanted to talk about wrestling video games. See, the thing I find interesting about wrestling is the way the matches are choreographed. Momentum shifts from one battler to another, and back again. The ref will get knocked out by an "accidental" chair shot and an illegal eye gouge predictably turns the tide of war. You can almost see a wrestling match as performance art, constructed out of building blocks of reversals, rampant cheating and special finisher moves. The best performances keep an audience on edge: swinging control back and forth between combatants, varying tempo, springing a crucial surprise ("OH MY GOD! What...what is this?? Kane's MOTHER is coming down to the ring with a TUB of MUSTARD! And... OH MY GOD! She's SPREADING it all over his UNCONSCIOUS BODY! It's IN HIS EYES!!Oh the HUMANITY!" *sound of splashy vomiting*).
But oftentimes wrestling matches suck. They're boring and uninspired, and what appears to be obvious opportunities to do something new are ignored in favour of ten minutes of super-homoerotic grappling (to waste airtime without superstar exertion, you see). Me and Tim sit on the couch and criticize - why can't we write the stories and matches? Surely we'd come up with something better than this recycled poonani.
Enter the Playstation 2, and one very special WWE Smackdown! game. Make your own characters (Rasul's Mom is a popular favorite), make your own matches, control control control. It's not about the quick win, it's about stringing each other along and letting the tension build. Oh shit, the Rock just fell off a 15 foot steel cage! It would be relatively simple for Rasul's Mom to drop off the cage top and pin her unconscious competitor, but it would be way cooler if she tried (and failed) to land a massive moonsault instead. Wrestling is the only video game I don't mind losing in, as long as the fight was epic. It's all about the performance and, let's face it, the Playstation 2 probably knew who was gonna win right from the start. It's all fixed.
Anyways, if there's a point here at all it's that you can like wrestling or you can hate it, but the worst thing you can do is ignore it entirely. If you turn your back, it'll give you the low blow.
Posted by Chris at 11:21 AM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
May 24, 2005 >> He goes outside
The setting: Algonquin Park. A seedy campsite mired between a rock bathhouse and fresh water, surrounded by drunken idiots from North Bay. Three tents are set up on-site: one is the Taj Mahal of tents, a massive structure designed to shelter several adolescent elephants. Instead, it holds two girls, a giant air mattress and all their worldly possessions. They are truly "roughing it." The second tent is small and yellow - it is occupied by me and Chad. It smells bad inside for a wide assortment of reasons and the airtight tarp doesn't help matters. The third tent is a site of sordid debauchery, a sodomist's delight. That would be Kyle's.
The story: We're camping. Isn't it obvious? We are soaking up the prototypical May Two-Four Outdoors, surrounded by everyone else who had the same idea. I am not much of an outdoorsman at all; in fact I would firmly like to stress my deep and meaningful relationship with technology. It keeps me happy and alive, and I try not to betray it with notions of Back-To-The-Basics and Organic Lifestyles and Prancing Veganism and soforth. I'd say that it's a symbiotic friendship, as much as a boy can be friends with a nebulous concept of progress. But every once in a while I don't mind cheating on technology with Mother Nature. Somebody once told me that monogamy is a lie.
The other stuff: Ooooh yeah. At the top of Hardwood Trail Lisa lies on her back in a massive entanglement of roots and orange pine needles, uncomfortable in her body. The sun is raping her, she says, and then it leaves and the wind moves in for sloppy seconds. In Nature personified, everything is forceful. I laugh hysterically and have to bite my fingers as a family of bright-eyed Australians come up the hill. They can't know.
The highway stretches on forever. A line of us ambles down the shoulder, each carrying a very special walking stick that we have adopted (or maybe the stick adopted us). This is the longest road in the history of human transportation. Oooh, but look! A yellow seaplane! And a fox!
Mizzy Lake proves to be a hurculean effort. The trail frequently breaks off into vast expanses of mud which reminds me of a video game; find a path of barely visible stones peeking out of the bog and shimmy your way across. No bottomless pits, but the prospect of a foot of mud crawling up your shins is incentive enough to play the game right. The sticks come in handy. The sticks become bonded to our very souls. Mine and Sarah's became twin musicians on the boardwalk, scraping and thumping in staggered unison.
The journey was arranged; the organization complete. I was Peevay (of English Passengers fame), the surly native guide with a tongue in the weather spirit's ear and a mind for bloody revenge on all White Scuts. I failed to kill my fellow voyagers, although I was able to satiate the Old Gods and drive the rains away on at least two occasions with my Authentic Native Tribal Chant (TM). We made it back alive, swinging through the branches, and my devotion to technology was duly repaid when I partially rolled my ankle bounding down some rocks. I sit happy with my scars, lazy and unfit.
Sarah and Lisa made a spectacular pasta salad, and Kyle was the meat man. Starting a fire began with the wood (3 bundles, not 6 - oh God, not 6) and pyromania quickly took hold. Our sticks were sacrificed to the blazes one by one; except for Kyle's and Chad's, which were fitted together in a most erotic way (for wood, at least) to hold up our tarp. As the night died, ashes turned into a tiny civilization and Kyle the Malicious Diety dealt death to the under-dwellers with dreadful streams of water from his mouth. The downtown core was decimated and the ruling aristocracy displaced again and again. We finally left a small clan of survivors spread evenly across the fire pit - a communist collective to rule the night.
That night, I slept in two sweaters and a jacket and it was cold. Chad wanted to spoon but I was all like, "Wouldn't Jen be jealous?" And then he was totally like, "Well, yeah maybe, but she wouldn't have to know..." It was fuckin' rad.
The much-anticipated conclusion: We came home and went back to our jobs. I am back from my illicit sojourn with Mother Nature, scratched up and smiling, the stick exchanged for the keyboard. The summertime is fleeting but our hearts are in all the right places.
Posted by Chris at 02:48 PM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
May 19, 2005 >> Belindicated
It's too bad that Belinda Stronach is so dumb. She interviews like a garbage disposal unit, spewing out recycled trash-speak like "partisan" and "health care" and "for the good of All Canada". Also "local infrastructure", in regards to "making money". What's with all these cliched politikal words, Belinda?? I was expecting so much moooooooooooooore!
heartbroken
Posted by Chris at 11:10 PM >> Commentations (3) | Permalink
>> What? Trees. Trees and TV.
The trees outside look dull and generally unimpressed with the rigorous task of living. Beyond the gaudy pleather curtains that mask our living room (and the debauchery within), the world seems to say "Ho hum, Waterloo fucking sucks. Who wants to go to the arboretum?" And then the world laughs, because nobody wants to go to the arboretum. Ever.
I feel that you should know our TV set looks somewhat like an alien transmitter. Three orange light bulbs sit symmetrically above the screen, ugly trophies from a joyous time long past. When the sunlight blasts through the pleather drapes and hits the bulbs just right, the ensuing light-show signifies that our TV shows are being beamed in from some Faraway place.
We disconnect the cable.
In Faraway Canada, the Faraway equivilent of Belinda Stronach just saved the ruling body of Faraway bipeds with one (very sexy) vote of confidence. That reminds me, I wonder what happened in the real vote this afternoon? Guess I'll never know, since our television set has been hijacked by cosmic media sluts!
We look at the cable, unscrewed, sitting pretty beside the Queen of Spades.
Oh wait a sec. The weather is dull and the lightbulbs are bleeding paint, certainly nowhere near the level of incandescence necessary for extraterrestrial TV. Fuck. I even told you that, way back. Consideration. It would appear that I was just watching the REAL Belinda Stronach maintain the REAL Canadian government. Not Faraway. Not different. Well. Hmm. That's pretty boring.
We reconnect the cable. Everything in the world except me and a dwindling number of arboretums fades to black.
Posted by Chris at 06:33 PM >> Commentations (1) | Permalink
May 17, 2005 >> C'mon, Yeah, Uh-huh, Do the Belinda Bump
NEWS: Belinda Stronach sassed up the hurtin' Liberal party today when she defected over from the Conservatives, dumping right-wing boytoy Peter McKay and ditching a fancy party in the process. POW! Holy fuckaroos! I rushed around the WLUSU office trying to find someone to gush with, but was met with blank stares and nonchalant shrugs. Dismayed, I turned to you, happy internet people, for comfort. And Here I Am.
(ten minutes later)
Okay things are different now! Much hubbub. Responsible citizens and Vice Presidents Lyndsey Jones and Jen Mitchell came to save me, and we're getting a big portrait of Belinda in the Marketing Office:
It's not so much that Belinda is a masterful tactician or consummate policy wonk. She's a face, a Hottt figurehead face, and in today's democracy, leadership image is absolutely everything. Belinda draws crowds. Belinda grabs headlines. Belinda got Maclean's - a generally reputable news source - to write articles about her shoes and hair and vast social networks. Belinda is ready to fuck shit up.
Moving to the Liberals is an obvious powerplay for federal party leadership in the (somewhat) near future. Belinda has aspirations to the throne which the Conservative Party visibly wasn't willing to boost. Maybe they should've reconsidered; I mean, check out the ultra-zombified face of today's Canadian Conservatives:
Two words: Child Molestation. Stephen Harper just needs to accept the fact that he is a creepy, creepy looking man. I'm sure he's a great guy, a good 'ol family man, but nobody will be compelled to vote for the right wing because of Harper's grim face of statutory rape. Like I said, it's all imagery. And Harper's imagery smells like the undead.
So pretty Belinda's political hopscotch is potentially a Big Deal, bordering on CrazyMassive. I don't much care for the Liberal Party (I vote Green - oh snap!), but this is definitely a big check in the win department for the beleaguered Centre after a long series of rapings at the hands of one particular Gomery. This is gonna shift the vote. This is gonna give Canadian politics some pop.
Belinda is movin' and shakin', and leaving her Conservative boyfriend in the dust to pursue her ambitions (Jen likes that part). Say what you want about Stronach's questionable grasp of micro-issues, but the woman is doing things. She's big, and she's going to get bigger.
Belinda Stronach, will you be my sugar-momma?
Posted by Chris at 03:16 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
May 16, 2005 >> Pokerfingers
Sometimes you gamble and win. Sometimes you leave the table with fifty bucks.
The other night I was embroiled in gambling combat with a wide array of surly bizkids, bizkids who calculate the odds and know the percentages and waste their nights playing Texas Hold'em on the internet. Some were more sharky than others - two crept downstairs to join our table after hearing our raucous jokes: We were the Special-Ed Table, the short bus of poker. They sat down, business students with business faces, clearly looking to wipe us clean. We wiped them clean and their faces turned dark with rage as their stacks of chips left for greener pastures.
I laughed and had fun. They did not enjoy this: clearly poker is deadly serious and should be treated with the sombre reverence of a triple-bypass heart operation. They lost and they scowled and they left bathed in bitterness and a vendetta against Lady Luck. There's no fun in poker, not when you lose.
What a shitty mentality. I realize poker, particularly Texas Hold'em, has become the faddiest fad in fadtown. I realize that gambling is a terrible vice and that everywhere, every day, thousands of disheveled adults stumble to their parents' computer in their underwear to win back their shattered respect and savings online. But hey, what do I care about them?
Poker, as I see it, is a game. It's a chance to sit down with a bunch of random people and fuck with their heads, whether they're friends or complete strangers. Once you know the basics, Texas Hold'em is half luck and half psychology - sure, certain bizkids might argue that statistics are important too, but remember that those bizkids lost pitifully. Numbers are nothing all alone.
As a generation of apathetic, isolationist computer geeks, we need interpersonal competition and banter. Poker, no matter how trendy, fills those needs nicely - you sit around a table for hours, talking shit and gauging reactions. The problems kick in when competitive natures overwhelm the game; when winning is everything and losing is unacceptable. These are the angry elements at a table, the detrimentals and the sharks.
Poker is only healthy when you play with open-minded acceptance of the idea that you might *gasp* lose. The ten or twenty bucks that you dropped on the table? Assume that it's flying right out the window; that you dropped the cash for several hours of entertainment and that you'll never see it again. Oftentimes a poker game is more cost-efficient (I hate using that term) than other kinds of fun like movies or high-priced call girls, so why worry about winning and making your money back? Even if you lose, you got a pretty good deal out of the night. You got a twenty dollar lesson for next time.
And so, when I pulled out a third-place finish and actually won something instead of contributing (as usual) to the winner's pool, I was astounded, not vindicated. I wasn't pissed that I had lost to two players who were obviously better than me. I took what I could get and it was a great deal more than I expected. I got more.
Would I be this enthusiastic about defending poker if I had lost miserably? Probably. If I've learnt anything from poker, it's to aim low, set the bar at knee-height, and revel in anything that goes your way. If things don't go your way, that's okay too - you wasted some time and did just as well as you expected going in.
Now go home and pass out, you gambling son of a bitch. Your wife will be wondering where the welfare check went, and you'd better be asleep when she gets back from drinking. Hide the cutlery.
Posted by Chris at 04:12 PM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
May 12, 2005 >> Breaking through
Lately I've been bombarded with epiphanies. My mind opens and I get a glimpse, just a peek, at something special. I think "Shit, I should really write this down. I gotta blog this!" And then I watch an episode of Futurama and pass out, drooling on my pillow like some sort of non-writer-guy-thing.
It's a little bit disappointing, this lack of motivation. I slated the summer as a time when I would break away from the academic bullshitting and my fingers would fly across the keyboard, hitting letters (and maybe numbers!) as I bent the world into my text file. So far the summer has bent me, shaped me into indolence and idle contemplation and fish guts. And that's okay, it's okay for now, but I need this time to make something that'll last. Fish guts won't keep for too long.
Philip K. Dick and his VALIS really did a number on my ontological awareness. My thoughts are full of third eyes and the Empire (that never fell) and various incarnations of Jesuses who may or may not be us from the distant future, where time = space and both are meaningless. Everything around me seems less opaque, like somebody turned down the transparency slider in Photoshop, and I often just wonder why. Just why. And how. There's always room for how in abstract existential questioning. It feels good to think and to expand and to wonder, even if South Park is ultimately right and the 'correct' religion is Mormonism. I don't much care for those fucking Mormons, but the important thing is that I care about the Big Questions again, the Great Unknown (to sound pretentious and aloof). I find that you don't get answers if you don't especially want to look for them.
I feel that select members of y'all should check out this book. It doesn't have any answers whatsoever, but it has a gravy boat full of chunky questions to mess yourselves up with.
******signal change******
3...
2...
1...
I'm at work right now, if work is really the term to use. Dan and Katty have fueled my apathy quite nicely, although every so often I go to war with laxness and write reports and make Foot Patrol posters and other intriguing shit. This is really a prime spot for summer employment and I must admit, with great shame in my heart, that my stabbity-stab attitude towards WLUSU is softening somewhat. Don't look for me to start cheering anytime soon; although if I do, I would hope that my friends out there in Internetworld would come and put me out of my occluded misery with a quick sever (sevvverrr) of my spinal column.
Give me an S and an E and a V and another E and an R and then perhaps a second R for rhyming purposes! Gooooo SEVERR! I really hope the O-Week theme for this year is "Various Ways In Which a Knife Can Be Employed For Abrupt, Fatal Endings." I predict sweet, slice-y victory for Team Disembowel in the Shinerama "Pay Cash To Wash Cars" Shine-off!
Posted by Chris at 02:45 PM >> Commentations (4) | Permalink
May 08, 2005 >> The green bead
Next day.
Tudor tells you about the moon and its hidden face. The moon has a brilliant emerald eye, which you can apparently see on alternate Sundays if you have a neutron telescope. Sunday can't come quickly enough, and you trek over to Laura's house as soon as dusk settles in. She has the finest neutron telescope you've ever seen, perched precariously off the edge of her roof and looking suspiciously like a mad scientist's lab. "I stole that telescope from NASA one day when I was bored," Laura announces proudly. You am proud of her.
You take turns looking through the contraband telescope and your eye is nearly seared by the overwhelming greenness of the moon's hidden orb. You must have it. You must have the green bead for your bead-girl! Tudor and Laura make out lustily and roll off the roof into a finely pruned hedge below. Ignoring the scuffling below, you take the chance of a lifetime (how often does one have access to a neutron telescope, really?) and look directly in the face of God. He has brilliant blue eyes, but - "Don't even think it," He says. "These aren't blue beads, and even if they were, I need them to watch human suffering until the End of Days." He checks his watch. "Coming soon to an Earth near you." God has a dour sense of humour. You suspect him of being British, and tell him as much. He laughs and decides not to blind you for, you know, looking at him. You are thankful in a detached kind of way.
Tiring of God's antics, you roll off the roof army-style and land in the hedge, narrowly avoiding entangling myself in a three-way. Laura and Tudor have apparently been greasing themselves up with raw hot dogs. They smell like pork-sex. You say farewell to their glistening bodies and wander onwards.
Kyle once told you that they're building a great Space Elevator, bonded with stretchy molecules and fueled by lasers. This Elevator will stretch halfway to the moon - or three-quarters, whatever - and greatly reduce the amount of rocket fuel necessary for spacegoing craft to escape the Earth's voracious gravitational pull. You ponder. Anyone looking to steal a magnificent green bead from the moon's eye would likely do well to take the elevator up and hop-skip-and-jump their way up to the surface! The plan is foolproof.
The elevator isn't done yet, so you wait, and then you wait some more as the newly-constructed elevator takes thirty fucking days to get to the top. Laser technology is highly disappointing. You punch one of the technicians in the stomach as we reach the top. It's kind of like the NASA equivilent of those feedback cards at Wendy's - these science-types need our opinions on how well they're doing. Not very well, your punch says, we need teleportation. None of this conventional physics shit. The technician, doubled over, says he'll get right on it.
You jump on over to the moon, which is so mundane and uneventful that I won't presume to bore you with the minor details like How? You must begin my search for the perfect green bead. Bryn is there, cheerfully barbequing some kind of lizard over a fire in the middle of an immense crater. You are surprised to see him here, in the desolate airless wilds, only not really surprised at all. You're most impressed with his fire, which burns prettily without any oxygen or tinder whatsoever. Bryn is on the moon to protest Pepsi Corporation's revived plans to project their logo onto the face of the moon for every consumer in the world to enjoy.
"Oh honey, the Pepsimoon looks just as full and romantic as the night we first *did it* in the backseat of your Corolla!"
"Why yes dear, staring at the Pepsimoon bought me an extra five minutes that night. Every time I see the Pepsi logo on television or on a billboard or in my dreams, I think of you. And drinking a delicious ice-cold Pepsi, of course."
Bryn does both parts of the dialogue with great exaggeration. You laugh mightily, and snap the tail off the space-lizard he's cooking. It tastes like chicken. Space-chicken.
"This story is getting unexpectedly long," you tell Bryn. "I mean, I meant to write a couple of paragraphs and then all this fucking crazy shit just started going off... I always had problems with word limits though, you know that." Bryn knows. It's time to go, in the failed interest of brevity. You wish Bryn good luck in his protesting and he vanishes over the far side of the crater to shoot another space-lizard with a space-harpoon. Everything's space in space.
In the depths of the deepest space-crater on the space-moon, you trace rays of emerald light to a rusty-dank crevasse. In a world with no colour, green stands out quite nicely and you crawl downwards, reaching, grasping for the glow. You see the brilliant green bead and it's flawless. So perfect. So green. It is a left eye, waiting to grant my bead-girl the much-needed gift of sight. You are tired of watching her fall down - it's not attractive in the slightest. It reminds you, uncomfortably, of the time you accidentally fell in love with the girl from the short-bus.
You reach for the remedy and it asks you, in a green-bead kind of voice, just what you might be up to. You explain that, well, you need to jam it into a bead-girl's eye socket so she can see. You flatter the bead with tales of its bravery and beauty.
"I've heard this shit before," the bead responds crossly. "Do you think you're the first person to think about building a girl out of beads and then coming to the moon to find me and use me as a crowning jewel? I had three come just last Wednesday. I'm a popular bead, you know."
"NOW," the bead declares grandly. "We will test you to see if you are worthy, we being the ROYAL we, of course. I'm the hottest badonkadonk on the moon and must be recognized as --
You grab the emerald bead and roughly shove it into a sack that you had handy. It was probably going to ask me something ridiculous, like "What is the meaning of life?" and seriously, you just don't know those kind of answers. What you do know is that beads fit in sacks, and fit nicely. Muffled cries from within the burlap are most likely shouts of approval for your logic.
Back on Earth, in your room, you give my bead-girl a shining green eye. She smiles dazzlingly and looks around in awe, her newly installed eye sullenly performing its new duties without so much as a peep. You're sure it will have plenty to say about its so-called kidnapping eventually, but right now you are just happy that it's finally shut the fuck up.
Bead-girl smiles and takes first one step, then a second. You hold your breath - this is the furthest she's ever walked without falling to pieces across the floor and under the bed. Vision was clearly the missing piece of the puzzle.
Suddenly your smile vanishes. Bead-girl is walking straight into the corner of the desk, seemingly without any clue that its sharp edges will slice her bead-body to ribbons. Before you can shout a warning, bead-girl catches her hip on the desk and - with a mournful wail - shatters across the room. You are heartbroken.
From under the desk, the green bead eyes you gleefully. "Depth perception, motherfucker! She can't judge distance correctly without two eyes."
You sigh and start rebuilding your bead-girl, beginning with internal organs this time. You like to mix it up or the whole thing starts to get boring.
Posted by Chris at 02:18 PM >> Commentations (6) | Permalink
May 06, 2005 >> A blue bead and a green bead
You collect beads.
When you go drinking with your roommates and a pretty girl hands out promotional strings of beads, you find a way to weasel everyone else's by the end of the night. It's surprisingly easy. You dream about Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the beads... oh, the beads. You frequently wake in cold sweats and lovingly finger the string of beads beside the bed for comfort. Every drawer in your room is full of beads of every imaginable colour, shining with the incandescence of hope.
Because, you see, you almost have enough. You're building a girl out of beads and she's hidden in the closet, beautiful and shining and perfect in every way except for her lack of eyes. Sometimes when she hears you come in, she tries to force her way out of the closet because she wants you so much, and ends up stumbling and tripping and breaking into a million beads because she can't see where the fuck she's going. Then you laugh and have to build her all over again, knowing that as soon as you can find two beads large enough to fit her luminous sockets, everything will be great. You need one green bead, and one blue one.
Posted by Chris at 01:03 PM >> Commentations (0) | Permalink
May 03, 2005 >> Shooting arrows
We meet here in this little blue box and I tell you things about my views, my world, my life. I tell you anecdotes and rants and garbage and, very occasionally, the painful truth. No matter what I tell you, it's just a piece of me, a small fragment of who I am outside this nebulous cyber-place. It's nowhere close to an entire story.
Blogging is not an innocent pastime. Blogging is not detached, not inconsequential, not an escape from the rigors of Real Life. The line blurs and then blurs again, and it's gone. You write about life and one day you notice that your language somehow, very stealthily, crept off the screen and it's here, it's shaping relationships and encounters. It's upsetting people with its silence and sparking random pixie conversations at Canadian Tire. It has crossed the boundaries that you always assumed were well in place. You wonder how big of a nerd you have to be to admit that a website is part of you, like a finger or toenail or tongue.
One by one, I've watched other bloggers come to grips with the fact that their online persona is very much a shallow forum for their deep character, a public parade. They've felt on-display and misunderstood. It's part of the medium, but it's also very disconcerting. People think they know you but all they've got is a handful of shards, shards that you carefully chose for them.
I'm telling you this now because you need to know that there's so much more than I could ever possibly describe. You need to know that I had sex with your mother last June while you were away at archery camp.
Posted by Chris at 01:52 PM >> Commentations (2) | Permalink
May 02, 2005 >> Carnivore
Is it wrong that I can eat a medium-rare steak with great satisfaction after a) just meeting the cows that the steak was formerly associates with, and b) being told the steak's name? (in cow-form, of course - nobody names a delicious slice of beef, no matter how juicy it may be.)
I laughed and chewed and asked for more BBQ sauce and thought about what a terrible naturalist I would make. There was salad too.
Posted by Chris at 01:33 AM >> Commentations (7) | Permalink