regarding the newman factor

mechanics

large cardinal property

we're impossible
ones to couple together
set theories proscribe

makes no sense (makes no sense)

The next book is about the fact that there is more human production out there than any of us would have time in our lives to read, watch, eat etc... it’s the new isolation. I love it.

hasten consumption? A new technology?

you can't allow brand names, except
ennio morricone is playing. After
a night of pulp fiction (yes embarrassed, even alone)
new year’s eve.
Santorini white,
for a few dollars more we
could both get panchos
why in the fuck is
jenna jameson so popular?
Half off cunt.

an award is presented
to the one who fucks the
best, in America.
Whores just off buses
reduced to coke stiffled tears
for the Best Anal

Stiffened by coke
is tight ass fun, yo

... later,

Steve Nash
pistons score 11 straight
they had the lead by one
they trail now, 3.5 seconds passed
95-91,
five straight by nash

smitch playing the gut

i wish people was like dogs

what happens to secrets

so, the minion (disturbs the circle)

ogden nash
sennacherib
archimedes death
on the beach

life's buffet

What the fuck is it with you wondering about how much I really know? Fuck you. I know a lot. Anyway, sitting there in the movies watching everyone fall in love so hard with Bill Murray like 10 years later than’s cool, I’m thinking, well, at least I don’t have AIDS. Seriously, what the fuck is with you and your fucked up celebrity crush thing? Anyway, i didn't figure you for someone who listens to gossip.

don't doubt me (hits the pavement hard)

for the last six or seven days i keep thinking, i should cover a pavement song. but you can't. you can't. they're so laid back and perfect. see, i remember buying slanted and enchanted and being blown away. and listening to brave new waves and heaing this (box elder)... holy fuck, stephen malkmus... you don't know that much about pavement, so you can't know that he's like (among) the greatest frontman of all time.... michale stipe was not close. lou reed, yes. iggy. i fucking accept a fundamental base here, you don't have to argue fucking first principles. fuck. anyway, i had no idea he (malkmus) was a guitar player. he's the greatest possible rock singer. how could he do somethign else? but i saw him on that last tour on guitar and he was something else.

[change]

i was dressed for success. but success it never comes.

[change]

you could wait for me or i could wait for you. but in the end, are you really the kind who wants to hang around? cause i'm not.


(*it's really wowie zowie)

too late to (night)

I thought I might do something
but I’m not going to do anything.
'Captain fantastic raised and regimented
hardly a hero', he sings overtop
of the clacking keys I’m depressing.
You can’t ask someone to be
everything all the time.
'Little dirt cowboys', that’s
what the song is called.

interested in this: 05/06

Role playing games.
Violin.
Ricky jay and magic.
Deadwood.
Golf.
Boxing.
Train robbers
con artists
Roy Gardner
John Dillinger
Violence
anxiety
Blogs
judaism.
Denmark.
Coureur des bois
LH Collider
Axis and Allies (Subsequent Versions)
Goldrush, Klondike.
Colonial courting habits
bix
and of course, endings.

bitter fingers

so what, you think you’re just talking to us now?

What?

Yeah, you wouldn’t give us the time in high school.

Did you ever ask?

...

(later)

Sex is like murder

Yeah. It’s like the only thing you get to do to someone else.

And it feels just as good when you get it done to you.

finding out that you're famous

bobby!

just listen again

They didn’t have Jameson.
Be good at what you can be good at.
What if you’re good at raping boys?
That’s the genius and tragedy of the double helix.
You’re so Lawful Neutral.
.... will you shut up with your DnD alignments.
...
Fucking dork.

my favourite

purple dark gray dark grey purple light gray
purple dark ray dar kray purple light ray
purple dark gray dark grey purple light grey

gas mileage cunt

oh fuck you precious.
you pretty stupid character
beauty, fuck you too.

to know it is to kill it

guilt depends on eye
witness testimony, but you
blind trust implicit.

con done

precious caterers
claim various shoulders as
french service genders
then again a
blame incoherent
finishes

lame duck

-alright bailey, here it is...

(use the ignore function. )

even though i have the ignore function... -ok, wait, i don't want to hear it back-

-you're gonna call her.

-no. because i feel right now like i felt when i quit smoking

-you mean when you went around to everyone asking for smokes?

-...rats

-haha!

birdie num num

swing the club softly
eighty percent of your strength
for straighter ball flight

frog and the scorpion

-sorry, i forgot if you said one or two sugars.

-thanks. don't worry, this is fine.

-...

-...

-i'm just not attracted to people that are attracted to me. what can i tell you?

wolf the nibs

new world old world
candy makes it easier
old views, new windows
but i like your
records.

dial m for pocky (syndication cheapens us)

the unsuspecting pals enjoyed their pocky, without anxiety, until...
gotcha'! give us the pocky!
run for it!
leave me, save yourself!
stupid pumpkin. you should have given us the pocky!
the end.

run from crushes (redux)

through handling, objects are refined. sometimes, they are taken for granted. subjected to garage sales or abandoned apartments. when asked, people say the one thing they'd take from their burning home would be their photoalbums. Their pictures.

i would pick my guitar because i could probably get $2000 for it* and that'd be a stake. pictures can't buy coffee. but that's a negative side of me. anyway, you're lucky if you got a house to burn. god be praised. though his purpose seem vague.

you get better with a thing the longer you get to be with it. but you can come to hate a thing too, the more you know it. the more mysteries it surrenders, the more disappointed we get. to know it is to kill it.


*assuming that the force majeur was local and not global and that usual economies would remain in play.

best things are taken

my phone messages
are killing all over town
but at what expense?

here i go again

yes, metal lovers, that's a whitesnake reference. shameover, futilitarian, bitterati, karmageddon. these words are more or less the story of the last ten years. i didn't make them up. But i've been surrounded by them and i believe in them. look, they're not everything. everything can't be everything, as my niece pointed out to me while wriggling backwards along the marble floor, wolfing nibs. it's a sad thing when kids make you tired. but then again, kids have no idea what's about to happen.

out of character

it's true.

i just can't believe it. you really did it?

yep.

i didn't think you had it in you.

well, now she does.

nice!

out for dinner

-everything seems to be drizzled or infused these days.

-uh huh... sometimes a figure can be drawn that contains information that is incompatible with the visual processing system.

- uh, whatever reutersvard. .... so, are you a proponent of the baltimore trip or what?

-as compared to brooklyn?

-yeah.

vale tudo

ortiz slams elbows
pistons slash jackhammers on
shamrock's hall of fame

sensual pleasures

trysting the night away

king waterbed springs
sinking we swim for our lives
bad drowned oiled birds

forgot to bring it

...overall i'd have to say i'm unimpressed.

mmnm.

that's not to say there aren't, moments, where you're really getting close to something.

mmhmm.

but overall...

unimpressed.

yeah.

queen bitch

What do you want?

Everything.

No, I mean for lunch. I’m calling now.

Oh. I don’t care. Get me the opposite of what you’re having.

carson

petty crime? i don't care. i think about kids who figure out how to steal. i think that it demonstrates a throw-back resourcefullness. me and my friends all knew how to steal. we could trick you out of whatever you had on you. i was the weak link. i worried about the future. that's a detriment to the criminal.

where i grew up, nothing came easy. the houses were small squares. you could tell by the yards and the bushes who had money, and who had trouble. it wasn't irish, but it wasn't easy.

at school the kids were tough, like it was at home. but they weren't stupid. our parents were good people and smart with money and temper. they knew the cost of things. they knew how to punish too.

...

in school, carson was the king. one year, he had a seemingly endless supply of smoke bombs. he'd dole them out occasionally; his prices varied according to your status. fuck, if i could make a shirt it would say "carson". that guy. in grade eight, we had a quebec trip if you took french, so we all took french. one week in QC. then in la belle province teenagers could buy knives and dildos and porn at the head shops. we all bought switchblades when the teachers weren't looking. i think they didn't look on purpose. what you can't see you don't have to deal with, right?

anyway, you could do alot of things, but you couldn't smoke. if you got caught smoking cigarettees it meant you were sent home. so when i got caught out the window of our dorm window, i knew that was it.

so the teachers burst in the room and catch me basically red-handed and demand with pointed fingers: 'were you smoking?' and carson cooly says while we're all petrified, 'bailey doesn't smoke'. so they sent carson home and he never said a word. when i got back, i tried to give him the butterfly knife i'd bought but he goes: "it's cool b. it's cool."

woman you're a mess (dealer's perspective)

her dog bled from the head and died in a ferocious paroxysm. the tumour had grown for months and split the soft pelt weeks ago. she did nothing. i've been selling her for about nine years. she's never borrowed or asked for a spot. she's always had me in and her house has always presented well. most of my customers pride themselves on how you can't tell they use. they're in denial. but not her. with her, you'd never know. she was just no good with animals.

you can't choose your regulars

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august not march

lost weekend

all kinds of nothing

-which paul?

-the 'that's why i got pepper spray' paul.

-oh shit. i think i dated him.

-s.l.u.t.!

they're all leaving for the a____e____ show. (i want to get home before i forget all these great things that are happening in this moment, but obviously i didn't.)

-bailey! are you coming with us?

sometimes when you get in a fight or you take speed or crash a car or whatever, it's all for the same reason.

-yeah, i'll go.

bix

le mort d'arthur

i got some slivers in my hands this weekend as i was collecting spiny hedge cuttings from the yard. i anticipate how these painful slivers will cause major problems for my golf grip during tomorrow's round so i'm frantic to remove them. however, i could not locate a pin or tweezers with which to pick them out (SOP for splinters and slivers), so i tried sucking them out with my mouth, pressing the meat around them with my fingernails and even with my teeth but nothing works and mostly i just injure my hands even worse. this goes on for hours. finally, my friend says to me, what are you biting your fingers for? so i show her the slivers and she gets all excited and says, can i cut them out for you? i love taking out other people's slivers. i was like, no way!

that night, while soaking my hands in cups of water (thinking that this will soften the skin enough the the teeth method might actually work) i watched a national geographic special on monkeys grooming cats. i wonder if a cat can love a monkey. anyway, so, after some soaking, i get a pairing knife (pearing knife? i love homophones. like when we were kids and we had those pink, grade-school issued notebooks that said on the cover "etobicoke board of education" and we'd scrawl overtop "[the kids of] etobicoke [are] board of education". it was the 'board' that made it hilarious) and slice down into my fingertips to get at the slivers; which by this time are, like porcupine quills, working themselves deeper into my flesh in an attempt to get to my heart and kill me. beads of blood well up out of the gouges and i become slightly faint. the monkeys meanwhile have discovered how to comb the cats with crude implements like rough sticks and bunches of grass.

in the end, it all worked out fine. and i went back to drinking and lying like always. you never learn from things you can escape i guess.

apache

raised on promises

-you know what i want?

put your fingers up my ass?

-yeah, that. but also a clear conscience.

yeah, that'd be nice.

-let's get out of here.

one more shot?

-alright.

try some, buy some

more fw

prehensile.
rotunda.
teton.

so hot that

...zookeepers are feeding lions frozen blood to cool off.

the heater don't work (you're no mencken)

jonny used to smack me upside my head with his palm. 'are you stupid?' he'd fold his chin in and look around the fire at his friends like i was unbelievable. i had no comeback. mostly though they'd let me stick around without trouble. they'd send me into town for condoms, beers and cigarettes. they were older and darker and they'd let me keep the change. sometimes i'd drive their pick-ups home for them with their girlfriends. all the way they'd tell me how lazy their boyfriends were and how they were all so leaving all this small town shit. sometimes they'd tell me how cute i was.

one time, this girl named veronica had a ronettes tape and we listened to be my baby over and over on the drive back to the city. she fell in love with jonny after he left highschool to work at the plant. he had a telecaster and a paycheque and she was in grade 11. but she wasn't in highschool anymore. i had elastics on my braces and my pops had just given me his father's .22. he'd took off for florida the next day. she was wasted but her plan made sense. i mean, nothing ever happened in our shitty town.

anyway, everytime i hear the ronettes, this is what i think about. she sent me the tape my second year of the hitch. no note. just a pack of matches from the bar with her lipstick kiss on it. she actually married jonny's brother right after the murder, but he died of brain cancer at 32. left her with two kids and six payments on the trailer. i read about it in the paper. i don't blame her for rolling over on me. but i wonder about the brother. you think about time different when you're in a box.

(conscience is the inner voice which warns us someone may be looking.)

are you awake?

you know the pot i found on the floor at hero burger?

yeah.

it's fuckin awesome.

you're crazy.

so you're coming over?

i guess. you want something from the s'lev?

hoop dreams (babyface)

i find this deflated basketball in the trash outside the bar and it totally captures my imagination. i'm so bummed from charlie v being traded, you know. with an idea, i start digging through other queen street trash and i find an empty cardboard box. it says: 'handle with care', but i'm not going to. so i set it up against a sidewalk tree trunk. and i start bombing shots. they're dropping like i'm A.I. ball don't lie. sometimes i throw a fred jones into it. (c___ fucking exhales this: it's an imac box. fucking on dirt roots of a sidewalk fucking curb tree, you suck dude) anyway, i'm into it. i'm breaking ankles. then a guy comes out and i want to have fun. i take a shot just as he moves towards the box and it hits him in the head! i put my palms up, but he freaks and throws the ball at me and it hits me in the balls. i lose it and go right at him. at the last second i figure i'll just wrap him up. he's kind of a punk. to diffuse it, i start up the game verbally. i try to make it loose and cut the tension giving him eye contact and calling out: 'hits the open man' but he doesn't get it or put his hands up and my pass hits him right in the chest. (no justice for squaring me but) i say, 'i'm not antagonistic!' but i'm figuring at this point he must not speak english because he puts his skateboard behind him and steps up. trying to ward off the inevitable, i pull out a movie quote -- despite my antipathy to all things celluloid: 'english mutherfucker! do you speak it?!' nothing. he's got that brutal stupid drunk look plastered in his eyes and all i can think about in that moment is babyface nelson. what would he do?

stripper deck (1d)

on a sunday night the last thing you should be doing is drinking maudite. i don't know what i feel more stupid for: telephone dating or paying for the booze with credit. i should totally be dating 'online'. at least i didn't fall for gnarls barkley! if this cd is in your collection, you have much to apologize for. sometimes you meet people who sound just like you used to sound. they say exactly the same wonderful, stupid things. they like themselves and they text. they order way too much at last call.

so tonight, nothing really happened again. bitter J___ from the next-door bar came in twice for jack daniels and toasted up his shots against women. then the hot brown girl, wearing gold heels, wobbled in hammered for a jack daniels, in a tumbler. she hates boys she said. she wants a sugar daddy. she's got a sister who's a lawyer and 'has nice clothes, a nice place, eats in nice restaurants, has nice teeth and drives a nice car but isn't happy'. how could she be? hbg says, 'like i smile like ten thousand times a week more than my sister. why go through all that eighteen hours-a-day shit when you can just get a guy to give you money?' that's what she said. i love it when you meet perfect modern people. i just nodded though and tried not to want to fuck her. the truth is, you can't talk to everyone. not that it'd matter. i'm broke and pale. plus, there's no such thing as smarter than pretty. so i ask her for her sister's number. the look i get is great. people think they have a sense of humour but they don't really. in the end no one remembers this shit anyway.

too old to party (you're fucking dead)

peacock drunk he's preening,
ten years burning down the road
the singalong actually
gets her.

my experience has been,
just because you pick the record
doesn't mean you get laid.

especially when
she's never heard of nebraska

(and they blew up his house too)

i hate it when you remind me about
the lowest common denominator.
you know how i don't
like to think about
how fucking true that is.

(itunes doesn't have the best songs.)

short game

ok, tonight was great. too great. i'm so fucked. tiger, you have no idea. promise me you won't let me forget ............ forget it

come home stupid

things disappear when you try to write them. it's the difference between a writer and not a writer. i can't hold on to anything. like you, when i'm there, it's clear and suspended. i know everything. seems like the perfect new yorker article.

stormy tomcat

flaked paint, sidewalk locked
leaning long forgotten ride
bicycle witness

parkdale related

the normal looking
crazy lady spins in circles
wearing an 'arm' shirt

cochise

cochise had no choice. i keep thinking that, while reading the sunday sports pages. giants versus the indians. interleague. giants killed them. bonds hit two home runs. they didn't have a chance. cochise.

i like barry bonds because there are so many people that have ideas about how he is wrong and owes apologies to them. 'he tainted the purity of the game'. but even if he is wrong for the chemicals, he doesn't ever break in front of them. barry bonds is my hero because he won't give in to anyone. he knows we all had a hand in making him. i actually think his ability to handle himself under constant sanctimony and righteousness proves something greater than his misdemeanours. anyway, you can't get rid of complicity by hanging your heroes.

it's ridiculous to allude to the genocide of the apaches and the betrayal and murder of cochise's family in context with the simple, if relentless, scrutiny of barry bonds for chemically enhancing his stroke. all i'm trying to point out is that, when america wants something, nation or baseball god, if you're in its way you are going down.

but what do i know? i just read books and twirl around on bar stools. the untelevised.

but... admit it, wouldn't you rather ride ponies and hunt buffalo and roam and smoke pipes on the plains than get fleeced for matchbox condos and smoggy asphalt? maybe not. statues and exposure are still hot. i know: $. but some of us aren't cut out for making money (good news for those that are). some of us get bounced around. maybe we fit our paradigms to our finances. but not so long ago, yellow metal made men crazy enough that they went and murdered a whole people. after promising again and again to let them be. is there any real difference these days? the crimes of then, the crimes of now. keep signing treaties and hope things at least won't get worse. way to go.

jackie and him

your problem is you always want to teach someone a lesson.

you always fuckin' know what's wrong with everyone?

he puts his hands up.

what should i do?

you could let it go. you know? fix yourself up. move on. you know? you look like shit benny. they miss you at the track.

yeah.

not everything's a battle. you don't have to fight everyone. not all the time. that's all she's trying to tell you.

yeah.

so, you gonna do it?

would you?

aw... come on. it's not the same thing.

it's all the same thing charlie. jackie and him. you and her. are you telling me you didn't want to kick my ass?

that was different back then. we were young. look at us here, this is not the same thing as back then.

well that's all i'm saying charlie. that's all i'm trying to say here.

things aren't like that man. you're crazy.

one-eye lopez is crazy. i'm exactly where i should be.

jesus, you are sooo crazy.

...

well, could we at least have a drink first?

sure. then we get him.

William Harrison Bonney

run from crushes

through handling, objects are refined. sometimes, they are taken for granted. subjected to garage sales or abandoned apartments. when asked, people say the one thing they'd take from their burning home would be their photoalbums. Their pictures.

i picked my guitar because i could probably get $1500 for it and that'd be a stake. pictures can't buy coffee. but that's a negative side of me. anyway, you're lucky if you got a house to burn. god be praised. though his purpose seem vague.

you get better with a thing the longer you get to be with it. but you can come to hate a thing too, the more you know it. the more mysteries it surrenders, the more disappointed we get. to know it is to kill it.

magic spot

-and her poetry, say it.
fine. I love jewel AND her poetry.
-ha ha! (pointing at me)

(hey man, that suit is you)

i'm going to get the whiskey because i just found my van halen records. C____ gave me her turntable so that's what i'm working on. next to the computer, it feels pretty backdated but i'll bet everyone figures out eventually that the oldies are the best. look, it's not that i would ever actually defend van halen, but at the moment i'm in an unapologetic frame of mind. and besides, what kind of life is it if you're going live in shame for the crimes of youth? it's not like i'm listening to coldplay.

"you know, you're semi good looking". that was our favourite lyric. i had a black cj-7 with a cassette stereo... i think 5150 had just come out, and between me and my friends we could pool pretty much all their records. 5150 had some killer tracks, but it was also sappy (not as bad as ou812 though. that was pretty much the last record i owned of theirs). for a while, women and children first was high-rotation, but diver down, fair warning and even 1984 also got lots of play. there was never any tension over roth/hagar. sort of how it never bothered us about bon scott/brian johnson. i only became a music nazi when i left the suburbs. sometimes not knowing what you don't know is the only thing that keeps you young. anyway, these records are great. i wish i still had that cj. jeeps were great for cruising and picking up, or even just sitting in the school parking lot for smoking and making plans. for some reason, thursdays were the best night back then. i just throw that in as an incidental.

years later, in paris, i saw halen and bon jovi together. in paris. le grotesque.

when we used to drive to grand bend in the summer, 'dance the night away' was the song. VH is perfect for summers and cottages, that much of their legacy is secure. "van whalen" covered them at the hotel bar one year. that was the golden era of cover bands i think. altho, get any distance out of 416 and if you can play CCR, you can make a living.

michael anthony was famous at their live shows for pouring bottles of JD down his neck to punctuate his bizarre bass solos. now it seems like vaudeville, but back then, we dared each other to try it; to gross effect. grand bend is where i saw my first texas mickey. 'big as an execution', that's what they said. one gallon of whiskey. it's amazing i remember even that. about ten years after the last time i was there (the bend), i was working a van halen show at the amphitheatre in toronto. i think it was gary cherone by then. I was assigned to Anthony's bass tent. I discovered that the jack daniels bottles he would famously chug were no longer (if they ever were) filled with jack daniels and his sound tech was the only one bumping naughty salt. plus, eddie's marshalls were, save one, all hollow showpieces. (which at least made them easy to load) i wish i didn't know these things. (i also wish i'd never seen elton john naked but what's done is done.)

anyway, these songs really bring it all back (especially unchained). ha. i just remembered another thing: i found out about collateral damage that summer at Coco's when some guy hit me in the face with his elbow as he went to punch some other dude in the face. broke my glasses. Very emasculating to rummage around a beach bar dance floor in search of a lens. i'm pretty sure panama was playing. that might have been the same summer i lost my other pair of glasses in the lake. not to mention i think that was also the year i flunked out of university. no wonder.

(one break, coming up!)

1971

met you on dupont
first impressions secured us
decades of bad taste

long story

if you're catholic
it's your father who hates you,
the comedian.

too small to lose

chicken yowling
gonna make me so crazy!
chicken circles, aii!

p.181 Z ataof MM

next to the grizzly
bull moose are most dangerous
some would say, the worst

charlie v

in the old days, when a pigeon was winning, you'd switch the dice. then, when the mark throws the win, the crooks would accuse the innocent of cheating. they'd tell the mark he was lucky to get out alive. when you want a thing, sometimes it's best to try not to have it.

come back charlie v!
come back! i can't move to milwaukee!

natural high polish

(young man, your transfer's expired.)

recreate

pictures through windows
never work out
you're always stealing,
my dear don't think of it as
stealing.

flight of white varietals...

standard brawn

balk at all dramas;
ask afar, madcap rants appall.
flashback ballads as bad
as ABBA harrass and
stab, grand mal attacks.
allay a black garland,
para-papal balms craft
grand chasms. (far away yachts)

ufc was on

sat next to the blonde
that caused all the commotion
back alley exit

supermundane

heavy no rain night
ate stew and drank coronas
with our friend cindy

and how

i'm listening to pollard and thinking about how to dispose of my albatross and how i'm going to get fired and how i love that bookstore babel and how i always have to have things hemmed and how paint flakes so fucking fast after you've painted and how you stop growing but life keeps taking more from you.

use your earwax to cut the foam (picked your sister up)

there are 54
steps from the terminal one
window to your spot.

thought you were past this

Try really hard to tell us what happened, please.

oh it’s so exciting and all those awesome people you met who liked everything you like.

And how that place was so great and everyone was so great.

and how they kept telling you how great you looked.

mean a thing

His goal one new
muscle every morning.
No matter what.

I try to equate that
like sit-ups to syllables
or pushups, memorized
fifty : meaning.

I can’t do either
because I have
a lousy, fat memory.

There’s so much
action live action
but here alone

nothing.

(Never add on)

captain vatican

it's smokey and i should have used force instead of humour to secure a pinball credit.

speak fucking english.

what can i do? the dude wouldn't move. i figure that deep down if i really loved Ripleys i would have figured out a way. maybe it was the universe at work...

NB: beware the discounted fashion magazine!

the opposite beer.

you're not going to change your mind or anything?

well, what choice do i have?

see you in ten.

killed by death

i'm not here to debate the merits or whatever of motorhead. i'm no completist. all i'm saying is that there's always another angle. no one's advocating anarchy exactly. i think i like coherence, or. it's just that i'm not sure that's what it's made for. you can like roy orbison AND ozzy. In fact, you sort of have to.

all get beaten down

she comes over so late. there's more to life than impromptu gratification? faith is as important as ______; which is more important than you think. (the rational)

time.

the tennis instructor

he misses courts
like bartenders miss love

bought some new racket
shoddy old batteries roll

from the porch i watch
you teach the things i

taught you. before
[xxxxxxx].

unlike coupons, we're not redeemable.
but you can't arrest a man
for the thoughts in his head.

star at the bar (bar star)

gorevale sting operation

sports

basketball is number three on my holy trinity of sports. it goes: boxing, golf, basketball. extra = baseball. In the old days, in Etobicke, i played tennis religiously. I was never that good but i loved playing and i showed well in the consolations each year. i understood the game but i was a junior just as the power game was coming in. i also couldn't control my emotions during tournaments. (YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS!)and being short, my serve didn't scare anyone. Now it doesn't matter. Play for fun at a good clip. You grow out of illusions, quick if you're lucky. Figure your level out. But i used to get frustrated. Being angry in sport is like blogging; it's embarrassing and doesn't improve your game.

I still play a little here and there in the summer with a couple friends, but less each year. Across from my first house are some ashpalt courts. When i move downtown, maybe ten years ago, there were only two rusty metal fences for nets. On only two of eight courts. The lines were so worn we'd bring chalk to mark the service line 'T' and the baselines but even then you'd have to trust the line calls because you couldn't see it unless you right up at the net. And by that time, I didn't have the legs for much serve and volley.

I'm not sure how we found out that you could buy your own nets. About the time we finally figured out what the cranks were for on the posts. Idiots. Anyway, we got our's at "the merchant of tennis". It was great because you could play anytime, as long as you wanted. For awhile. Then we realized that probably telling everyone who asked where they could get their own nets was counter-productive. By then it was too late. And in a strange way, all because of basketball.

I don't know how to play basketball at all. I mean, i understand the game. I get screen and roll. I understand shortening the bench. And one. I love it so i learn it. But I can't play it in the real world. The few times I played in my thirties in a publich school playground with other men, it was like i was unintentionally humping them. i could not stop from jumping into them, from stepping on their feet. I was like a drunk ballerina trying to box. But that's why i love basketball. Because i can't play it at all. I can't make a shot. I know how to do it, technically. I watch hundreds of highlights and games and i read shooting manuals online. but i'm useless at it. Pretty much every other sport (terrestrial) I can do a little. At least enough to make a game with similar level contestants. Hockey, baseball, skeet shooting, golf. But not hoops.

It seems like the things most foreign and difficult are always more interesting. It also seems that you can admit shortcomings, and often, other avenues to explore your passions offer themselves. Like the invention of video games. Sports games are fantastic. I love to rename every player in the league. That takes weeks. Sometimes, I forget to save and the player freezes. It's brutal. Especially if i was on a hot streak.

Anyway... (i'm off to a party)

guard down (let my)

(or 'keys')

there's this moment
when you entirely remember that
you've completely forgotten
a whole entire thing.

do you know for certain
you can't remember.

can you do it for me?

there was an argument, briefly, over the merits of dancing in the dark. but then she follows it with jesse's girl and we realize she's only playing springsteen for the mass appeal, not the hidden genius (no one would follow springsteen with springfield unless they were really into seasonal compounds). but trying to penetrate the motives of others is dicey. i was more interested in the pulling power of my new white shirt. with the blazer, i really thought it might make the difference. nope.

mathematical equations almost are impossible to use at a bar. i mean, unless you're an expert. but if it's just one of those things you're interested in, forget it.

once again tonight, sin proved more interesting than sentiment.

oh what's the point in being oblique? they say to write something because you seem like you'd be good at it. if you're catholic it's your father that hates you. in this case, you'd hate yourself.

crime

cuz goethe gets it
and we know that it pays, well
make haste, let's rob

...able to make a mistake

doctor, your album is awesome.

i'm a fool to delay you.

goddamn.

i love you doctor. i'll never doubt you again.

everything is prepared (i'll put this up against you)

sometimes a fan can sound like applause.

i mean a mechanical fan. which as i think about it, could mean anything. fans are ridiculous by nature. they're sad things. the sadder manifestation is the object of the fan. people who let themselves be adored are preposterous. though there are many parties for them. everyone loves to be blown.

it's difficult when your friends are these people. what can you do? you're either jealous or bitter or both. there is never really love among them. there is status i guess. or it seems like that.

my best friends have a better sense of humour.

diatribe in effect dude, obviously i'm so fucking bitter. fans as a mechanical for cooling you down are totally ok.

mandelbrot and juliet III

Two gold coronas
Accompany comfort fare
white lilacs eavesdrop

the centipede threat
dispatched summarily by
my rolled magazine

cold porcelain bowl
welcomes the party’s vestige
salmon chunks abound

applicant albert
with a bad case of nerves, was
paler than his shirt

new couples annex
past lovers’ geography
fast as riffled decks

moderation in excess

so, banff can best be summed up i think by employing the title of my favourite Deep Dark United song: Downhill is Downtown. If i have learned anything in my small little life it is that I always trust myself too late; scuttling about the foot of alberta's mountains, this came through to me yet again, clear as the air. sometime as i get older i hope that i will be able to figure out an appropriate blend between conviction and humility.

anyway, i realized too that while i love my neighbourhood and the three generation roots of my home here in hogtown, i prefer even more the feeling of being a stranger in a strange land. Though how strange banff, eh? Laugh if you want but sometimes exotica isn't a requirement for inspiration. Just changing apartments can be enough. I don't want to belabour the whole 'wow are mountains' thing, but when you've schlepped around on the canadian shield for a decade or two, vertical nature can really pop.

a sidenote: I realize of course for DDU purists, 'Downhill' is the poppiest and therefore least trustworthy of the oeuvre. Mr. Lukashevsky I hope will forgive me this populist plucking of his catalogue. Of course, many will not recall DDU; a shame indeed considering the emergence of subsequent local collectives who have parlayed the esoteric genius of Mr. Lukashevsky's quixotic ensemble into mellow, easy festivals and sales catalogue success.

Moving on. Much was made during the conference of 'social networking' and the collectivization of culture, thought and creation, especially via 'the tubes of cybernettick' as my new swiss friend would say. i am not entirely sure i know what she meant by that. I do know that i continue to instinctively doubt the popular. I have explored this contrarian element of mine to determine if perhaps it is more a by-product of envy than an intelligently configured thesis. no verdict. Occasionally you snap awake in the night with the answer to all these questions and more; The Hollingshead-ian 'supreme knowledge of everything'*. But it doesn't last.

As always, at the end of all digital discussions, the big question: what happens then when the power goes out? I hope for all our sakes (most especially bran's sake), we're sufficiently backed up.

*see, Ian Brown's What I Meant To Say

continental kit fake soft top

i forgot how much fun it is to hang out in hostels. i've arrived a day early for the conference i'm supposed to be attending. met a lovely woman en route who it turns out is among the organizing committee. these sorts of encounters make me remember why any kind of travel is always better than sitting still.

i've never seen mountains before. for me it has always been oceans that have wreaked havoc on my convictions. but the cold misty peaks are giving my memory of the aegean and south china sea a run for their salt. tom stoppard is my read on this trip. arcadia, precisely. i'm always impressed by anyone who can drop fermat and claim that newton's greatest error was to omit sex from his laws of attraction. definitely a grevious oversight.

at the moment i'm eavesdropping on a deeply tanned, self-possessed (in that faye dunaway way) spaniard as she endures the tragic approach of a gawky-capped ingenue. she makes me think of bonnie and clyde, how they get done in the end. how perfect it was. or how we all should finally come to accept that hoping for answers in the afterlife is like pretending that the solutions to life's problems can be located in the back of some divine text book. Watching their little frisson, i wonder if maybe it isn't more important to recognize that ultimately in all things we must fail. Not to suggest we should forfeit our hope to schopenhauer (never him!), but because of the comfort there is that we are all limited and frail. Who is not a fool is not alive (here I paraphrase my favourite writer du jour, Mr. Milch). Meaning i think that we should not quit the struggle or fetch as an excuse for indolence the futility of existence.

Anyway, much like the unfolding of all our stories, i did not witness the result of the spied-upon courtship. It's trite (when has that stopped you before cb?) but I wonder -- as my mind shuffles through these strange non-sequitor snap-shots of others' lives -- who out there has pictures of my forgotten moments in their memories? What eavesdropper has relayed with hilarity (or scorn) my own pathetic advances? (or is this gross ego at play? assuming any should attend my presence? christ, another spiral!)

Which leads me to another unfinished thought. For a while now, i have been obsessed (or rather, terrified) by time. Handcuffed by its relentless forward grind. Desperate to obviate its omnipotent sway. However, now that Adam Sandler has bastardized Nicholson Baker's ultimate and delicious exploration of time-control (see: The Fermata) for his own sophmoric purposes, I think my next preoccupation will be to seek out all incidences wherein i have provided 'human background' to stangers' pictorial records. To wit, take a look at some of your own vacation photos. In the background lurk those unidentified extras; the accidentally captured. Playing the part of anonymous hub-bub. Unknown drinkers in bars, meanderers on sidewalks, sunbathers on beaches, or passing motorists who happened by at the moment of exposure. A single moment of their unknown lives caught in our own context.

I'm exhausted.

note, written later... this is so bad i'm ashamed to be alive. it's like a pirate shirt or those continental kits on fake soft top lincolns in florida.

june bugs

unreadable books
prop open cracked windows
like cattle-car slats

denmark

i like how things can come and go. you know, i know because i know, what i mean.

if we had been in this neighbourhood, my neighbourhood i mean, we would be having a lot of fun.

anyway. this note should be had exactly like a martini.

swedgin

smooth balls are cute

--upset at the eviction turn,
and duke has retreated
inside the closet to lick off
what's left of his fur.
my comforting cliche elicits scorn.
don't pull that 'change is inevitable'
bullshit, she writes back.
chastened i relay:
bobby says,
tell duke to throw a party,
invite the neighbourhood
cats. a going away soiree.
chicken will not attend. but she
sends meows and says to say:
hey duke, smooth balls are cute.

vermilion in the wind

her impala themed cruise
pilots acetate ignominy.
such salted standards ripple
unseemly weaves, like drunk
boats or heaving breasts.
crumbled coptic revisions
spur the termites of wooden faith,
the foregone doom of falstaff.

rejected

dude, watching shaq get blocked by ben wallace last night, and then crash to the floor like a giant hock of ham; it felt like seeing your father cry. i'm telling you, it profoundly shook my psyche. i don't think i can ever feel safe again.