quixotic narcotic

And death, I think, is no parentheses

2007-04-22T03:09:58Z

we live like commas
spit and stop and
sidenotes
and never the sentence (just the continuation of)
we live in comas
and move in an iron sea
lethargic
and drowning and denser

so maybe it’s not enough
that these lips are my lips
not to speak wholly
(but to kiss slash curse you)

living deep beneath my skin
is that
(continuation
clear without the punctuation)

That is probably the clearest I have ever managed to express myself, ever.

welcome to the grindhouse

2007-04-08T18:57:32Z

Lately I've been a moviegoer, which is unusual for me. I normally am a partaker in the 'pirated movie', after it's been released in DVD, rather than paying 10 bucks to see it on a bigger screen. But I have seen recently TMNT and Grindhouse in theatres, due to having absolutely nothing else to do in the 'Loo. I'm not saying these movies were actually good, just that they were thoroughly entertaining for what they are. So if you want some mindless entertainment, I recommend the following.

TMNT: I saw this last Friday, and neglected to do a review then. You may think you are too old for this movie, or that it is going to be campy 80s live action shit made for 12 year old boys. But it is so much more! I hear this movie got a lot of flack for taking the ninja turtles too seriously; it actually has a plot, character development/distinctive characters in general, moral ambiguity. I mean, all of this on a very basic level. Plus, the CGI is absolutely awesome. It's goofy, which, if you are willing to accept your inner idiotic 12 year old boy, is pretty funny. The script is weak in parts, but lots and lots of ninjas (even of the non-turtle variety), and awesome fight scenes make up for this. You never would have expected bipedal turtles taught martial arts by a giant sewer rat to be so fucking bad-ass.

Grindhouse: I saw Grindhouse last night, which I, personally, was expecting to be pretty awful. Watching the trailer, there's a chick with a gun for a leg. Like, she is missing a leg, and some dude attaches a gun to it. To fight zombies. It looks absolutely fucking ridiculous. But it turns out, this (or rather, these) movie(s) were fanfuckingtastic. I have a longer review of Grindhouse 'cause it is has a bit more substance as a film than TMNT. Plus, it is basically two movies.

Rodriguez and Tarantino got together to step back 40 years and recreate that exploitation, ultra cheese, and gory campiness we used to love. It's actually got this really awesome idea. A grindhouse is an old style, gritty movie theatre that would show back to back films of the violent and pornographic variety. So Grindhouse, the movie, is based off of this; the whole film has this old skool movie reel texture to it, with lines and dots and everything. And it's honestly two feature length films back to back. Don't go expecting two short movies. And in between, it's got all these trailers, which are really, ridiculously funny, for grindhouse movies that are "coming to theatres". Which I thought was pretty brilliant. They do a good job of making it seem authentic. Wicked cool, I say.

So, on to the actual films. The first one is "Planet Terror", directed by Rodriguez. It's basically a zombie movie (with the grossest zombie everrr), with vague inkling of some kind of military conspiracy plot. It's like a classic zombie horror movie, like you would expect from Rodriguez, but funnier. It's just about the funniest thing I've seen in a while. Oh, and there's a chick with a gun for a leg. Oh, and Fergie gets her brain eaten out. So that made it worth it, if nothing else. Gruesome, bloody, hilarious, generally enthralling for being all these things. It's obviously a parody, but none of the parodizing is too obvious, so it keeps its charm.

Second was "Death Proof", directed and written by Tarantino. This juxtaposed quite nicely with Planet Terror, which was all dark lit gore and vaguely mocking zombie horror. Death Proof was sort of more like Reservoir Dogs, and that spaghetti western Kill Bill thing, but with chicks. I mean, it had that quintessential Tarantino banter; driving in a car, bantering. Sitting in a diner, bantering. One of the characters was honestly like a female version of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, which was really funny. But yeah, rather than non-stop blood spatter and puss-full undead, Death Proof had pretty ladies talking. It didn't have that classic horror movie feel. But it still had wicked car chases, a bad guy, gruesome death, and wicked car chases.

My brother is awesome.

2007-03-27T15:19:06Z

You have to have read Toothpaste for Dinner, and possibly my brother's Facebook wall, and possibly his Blog, to get this, but it was just too ridiculously awesome not to post.

My words & deeds

2007-03-26T17:09:23Z

In the Womb

I’ll be bleeding soon, knowledge and fight,
As they both ebb away.
I didn’t think the change would cut as deep as it did.
Tomorrow seems like as good a day as any
To catch a bus to the city,
If only this whole 'life' thing wasn’t getting in the way.
It’s all too easy, though, to plough right on through.
Then you and I can be together,
All these miles apart,
Isn’t that what they’d say in the movies,
Except for that last part?

FIN

Just kidding, that's pretty pretentious. I do love being annoying and cryptic, though.

Scattered stuff from my cluttered mind

2007-03-23T19:17:02Z

I'm reading Vanity Fair. Becky Sharp is one sassy lady. I mean, like, serious smarmosaur. She won't take your bullshit. Watch out.

“How would you rate your willingness to stare into the unblinking eye of infinity?”
“I’d say between amiable and obsessive.”

I am addicted to to the Iron & Wine Woman King EP. It is amazingly head-bop worthy hocky-in-the-hip-way folk rock. And the singer has such a pretty voice. These are honestly the happiest songs about dying I have ever heard.

This: http://www.stationerymovies.com/ is really difficult, but also very awesome. Who the hell thought to make movie scenes with stationary? I could only get 14/20, but I haven't really seen a lot of movies. Some of them are really obscure, too, I thought.

Yeah, that's it for now. I am going to Guelph for the weekend. Yay!

We were born to fuck each other one way or another.

2007-03-22T23:02:13Z

Can sexual attraction be built over time?

I don't believe in love at first site. Actually, I'm fundamentally against the concept. I am an active protester of love at first site. No one can see someone and know that they click with them; unless you are a super human empath, like, well, um, Empath stylez, which would be cool, but is also incredibly dubious. It would also be cool if we were all X-men with awesome evolutionary abilities. But you see where I'm going with the absurdity, right?

There is certainly such thing as lust at first site. Chemical stuff, like pheromones we give off make it pretty much inevitable. You can unconsciously smell a person from feet away and be viscerally attracted to them; which is why I find the concept of love at first site rather depressing. Its an illustration of how little humans understand their own emotions. We feel lust, we think its love.

I have always thought that everyone I have ever been sexually attracted to I always know I would be, immediately. One of the first things I notice about people is always whether or not I think they are pretty or handsome (aka. whether or not I would do them). And come on now, don't look at me like that. I have very good reason to believe that is what pretty much every other human teenager, and probably every other human, thinks when they lay eyes on someone they could potentially hanky panky with.

But have I ever met someone I haven't found particularly sexually attractive, but as I've gotten to know them, said attractiveness has increased? I really couldn't say. I wouldn't think so. Most people find personality relatively important in pair with attractiveness; someone who should be unbelievably attractive can easily become instantaneously revolting just by opening their mouth. But does this work in reverse? Sure, someone who I initially thought was hawtsome might become more so if I get to know them. But for someone I never thought of in that way to miraculously make themselves attractive solely through personality seems a herculean feet. Yes, that's right. Just that fucking epic.

Oh, the things I choose to think about. Truly life altering. Aren't you happy I updated, Sarah darling?

False assumptions

2006-11-30T06:46:43Z

Do I have a sign on my back?
Does it say flirt with me if you have no social skills?

Sometimes I write prose.

2006-11-29T08:56:34Z

Seriosuly, no one will read this.

Written for a contest on a forum I haunt, the idea is to write a short story about suicide without ever depicting or mentioning a scene of suicide. This is the very rough, unedited and very unfinished first draft.

Leisurely Suicide

I picked up the phone to call Laura, but by the time the dial tone reached my ears, I’d clicked the receiver back into its cradle already. I needed nicotine, and although I knew my pack of Du Mauriers was empty, I slid through the crack in the sliding glass doors onto the balcony, and stood with my hand in my pocket, fingering the edges of the empty box of fags. My breath puffed out around me as if I had lit one of my nonexistent smokes, and the cold seeped through my jeans and crept up my fingers. Intent on the chill, I brought both hands from my pockets to rest on the steel grating that stopped my from plummeting the epic three stories to the small strip of lawn below me. I held my hands there against the searing cold, waiting for my shot nerve endings to glitch from the pain and shoot electrical signals of hot up my arms in a millisecond.

I didn’t think about anything for a short time. My chilled palms finally felt like they were burning in dry flame. I released my grip on the cold railing, plunged a hand into my back pocket, fumbled to open my cigarette pack with my numbed fingers. It landed on the ground instead, and me still lacking my hit. I lifted a white socked foot to crush the uninhabited pack.

Back inside, I picked up my coat with an unimpressively clumsy grip and swung it over my reddened arms, swung the door open and slipped on my shoes in one motion. As an after thought, I checked my pockets for wallet, sunglasses, despite it being dusk, and car keys, and grabbed up the phone again. Attempting to dial Laura’s number, I found my shaking, seized up fingers couldn’t handle the most basic of motor functions. After a couple of wrong numbers, I finally punched out the digits and let the answering machine click listlessly. The hum of the recording made her voice sound welcoming, offering you to not only leave a message after the beep, but maybe your deepest secrets, too. I couldn’t stand that tone, hypnotizing as it was, making me want to mumble desperately that I needed to see her. Instead –

Laura, its Renton. If you wanted to stop by the Kathedral later tonight, I’ll be around. Don’t bring Cecilia, I-.

A pause, brief, me struggling to find a phrase that wouldn’t make me sound like a pussy.

Yeah, she probably hates me. I think I did something to piss her off. Anyway, don’t call me back, I won’t be in.

I let the machine buzz in my ear for a few moments before realizing she’s probably hear me breathing on the other end. Then I was out the front door and into the dismal February air that wasn’t quite cold enough for a normal winter, which only made it more wretched. I would have driven because black ice slicked the unsalted sidewalks where the municipal vehicles hadn’t sprayed acrid salt, but I stumbled along towards the bar. My eyes adjusted as the sun set and I kept walking past the bar. My arm reached down from the left pocket of my jackets and groped around for my cigarette pack before I remembered where I had left it, crushed and vacant on the concrete of my balcony. There’s probably a corner store I could buy a pack somewhere in the next few blocks, but I find myself entering the low slung building of the Kathedral. Inside the pub it would be well lit, except for the haze of cigarette smoke, and the blurry vision one normally encounters after their fifth or sixth drink. It’s quiet, not many customers arrive until past eight o’clock, and my shift begins at six. I slide behind the bar, my back to a mirrored wall of booze, my eyes trained on a wall of white washed raw brick.

Hey Renton.

It’s Turk, his small, neurotic figure hurrying up to the bar and taking a seat on a stool. It twists to one side as he parks himself and he jolts slightly, hands slapping palms down on the marred bar top. He smiles slightly at me as I raise and brow and reply.

Hi, Turk.

It’s not his real name. Well, it is, but it’s not his first name. He’d told me the story of how in high school, there’d been two students by the same name in his class. They’d called both of them by their last, which had always bothered me slightly. I’d methodically inquired why they hadn’t called one by his first name and one by his last, since that was distinction enough. He’d just said the name stuck ever since.

I’d picked up a glass and poured him a draught already, and placed it between his two immobile thumbs, splayed on the aged wood. I’m pretty sure he isn’t nineteen, but the thought never curbed me. He stared at the liquid, drew in a breath, raised his tousled head.

Is Laura coming by later?

Sure. I moved a bottle of Vermouth towards the edge of the countertop, watched the gleaming liquid tilt from one side of the bottle to the other in evanescent waves.

You two have a thing going, I suppose.

My brows rise unnoticeably. He always stuck in something like I suppose or digress or other fancy word into his seemingly colloquial speech, like he was fucking English major. Either way, it was a question, just without the lilt of inquiry. I didn’t answer. I moved the bottle of Vermouth back to rest next to other bottles of liquor, lined up against the backdrop of the bar top like riflemen in a firing squad. My hand gripped smooth glass to my right. I guess I’d poured myself a drink, so I took a swig of what turns out to be whiskey, and the hungry gnawing that had been rising in my throat was pushed down to my sternum.

I suppose?

This time he had the balls to use a question mark.

Yeah, you could say that.

I immediately regret my decision to admit to this. Another gulp of whiskey, and I pour myself a fresh glass, this time my attention fully trained to the amber liquid dropping from slim bottle neck to open tumbler. Someone else is sitting at the bar, so I tilt my bottle upright and slide my eyes to rest on them. They order a dry martini, Bombay Sapphire gin. I mix the drink and slosh some over a thin, etched rim, and the strange cooling sensation of alcohol on skin nudges my knuckles as I watch Laura enter the pub. Turk rises from his seat, goes to wipe down unoccupied, immaculate tables. I start to wipe my hand on my shirt but stop at the last second and find a ratty wash clothe. Laura places her thin frame on the seat Turk had vacated moments ago, and I wince imperceptibly as it jerks to the side and she catches herself easily on the edge of the bar with a single hand, the other lowered, out of my range of vision.

I know Laura from college, but we never dated then. She graduated a year before I dropped out, the same year I would have graduated if I hadn’t gotten distracted. She still looked the same, slight, regal figure she stomped around in as if she would change the world. She probably could, if she wanted to. Her pale green jacket slid off her shoulders gracefully, and I heard the muffled sound of the tweed sinking onto the bar stool next to her.

You got my message?

A question. She smiles pleasantly and I smile back, barely noticing that it wasn’t a reflexive response.

Yeah. How are you, Renton?

Her tone is casual, I think.

Good. Fine.

Eaten anything yet today?

I run my tongue along my teeth inside my mouth. No, I don’t think so.

You should eat, Renton. I’ll take you out to breakfast when your shift is over.

Well thanks, Mom. She grins at my attempt at snide.

When do you get off, then?

Midnight. Dinner shift. Not that we serve dinner here. Turner is too cheap to pay a chef.

You don’t serve dinner here.

She gives me a rye look. I laugh slightly, nod my head to say I know, I’m not an idiot, I’m just joking around. The guy at the end of the bar waves his hand to indicate his martini, dry is now just an empty martini glass, and I measure him a new one sloppily, my fingers feeling a familiar numb, as though I’d wrapped them around steel grating. I barely notice the dispersing touch of gin on my fingertips. The bottles smack down into their militaristic line up again. Laura is chewing slowly on pretzels, and I notice Turk again, smoking in a corner, back against the whitewashed brick and a shoulder to the adjacent wallpaper. His beer sits half empty in front of Laura. His eyes are trained to her pointer finger which pulls idly at vaguely red curls that bounce back animatedly.

Have you been looking for another job?

She asks me this in the middle of a swig of whiskey from my tumbler. Deadened finger place the drink down and I try to form words with my lips, but they’re slowly losing feeling.

Yeah, I haven’t had a lot of time to look around.

You hate this job.

I wince. I know. But it pays the bills.

That’s a bit clichéd, Renton. She smacks her lips together, making a little popping noise, tosses another pretzel into her mouth, chews expectantly.

Why do I need another job? Stupid question, but it slipped out. The dead feeling has moved from my lips to my tongue. Laura glares at me, and I can see exactly what I think of myself etched in her eyes: moron, pansy, tit.

You know why. The hours suck, the pay sucks, the place is a dump. But of course you don’t want to leave, but of course you don’t want to leave. Look at what you’re surrounded by.

It’s not a dump. But it is. The pungent smell of must is constantly seeping in from the wallpaper. I can see parts of the floor where the hardwood is collapsing, mush hidden underneath what barely passes as solid oak. I finish my drink.

You can talk to my old boss, down at the Rosedale Diner. He’s looking for a waiter. It’s a nice place, no bar, but a really classy wine list.

I smirk. What do I know about wine?

That’s the point.

The air suddenly seems hazier, and I realize it’s because there are more people in the pub, lining the tables and spaced out along the expanse of the bar, cigarettes pluming into the air. A soft murmur is all around, like the buzz behind Laura’s answering machine.

*****

Hmm, I'm hungry.

Sometimes I write poetry.

2006-11-29T08:53:55Z

Hehe, no one is going to read this.

Sleeping In

It wasn’t until the final days of
Afternoon life
That I could remember the reason I wanted you here.
But I infringed on your ideas nonetheless.
A copy write would do you good,
But then again, so would a hair cut.

I don’t remember whether it was hot.
Being summer, I’d assume it was, but I doubt
In that case
I would have sat outside with you
On archaic wicker chairs,
While the sun glared over angled shingles.

You probably leaned forward in your chair
And rested your chin in your hand
And your elbow on the unkempt
Table top.
However, that image may be my mind regurgitating
A modern day archetype.

As it was, I couldn’t listen to your words
Out of necessity.
But I make no contrition for my lack of empathy.
It’s just that I wanted to remain safe within
Low, soundless snow forts
And marbles on cold blue carpeting.

It is now, in the first few hours of
Morning life
That I cannot forget that I still made no objections.
This, while standing in a doorway no more than
Twenty paces from where you inadvertently
Awakened a newer part of me.

Entropy

2006-11-24T05:22:40Z

If you could invent one national holiday, what would it be?

Mine would be National Abuse of the Second Law of Thermodynamics Day. Seriously, everyone grossly misinterprets it as it is.

synaesthesiaa @ 2006-11-22T19:07:00

2006-11-23T01:07:41Z

Shallow breathing
Makes for the most
Captivating curves

There is a raptor in my office.

2006-11-22T05:15:14Z

Dr. McNinja is a ninja and a doctor. You better believe it.

I think I could waste my entire life away on the internet. Scratch that, I'm positive I could. One day I'll make a list of all the things I could accomplish if it weren't for the internet, and it will be long, and probably give me a paper cut. Because it will be just that evil.

My computer is making very unhappy noises. I'm not sure why. I tried to turn it off last night to give it a break, and found that I couldn't sleep without that soft electronic hum in the air. This is probably not a good thing.

I'm going to go watch The Life Aquatic now. Good night, internet.

synaesthesiaa @ 2006-11-21T00:19:00

2006-11-21T06:19:36Z

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.