lumpy onion monophony

filling Station Subscription Sale

2012-01-08T17:11:00.000-08:00

filling Station Magazine is having a subscription sale. Subscriptions for three issues runs $17 (you pretty much get a free issue at that price) and you can buy gift subscriptions for just ten bucks. Go to http://www.fillingstation.ca/ for more information and to order online through Paypal.

Honest Graphics

2011-11-12T12:27:00.001-08:00

This one's for my COMS 363 students who've had to do the "analysis of a graphic" assignment. Enjoy.

2011-11-11T08:38:00.001-08:00

Western thinkers might do well to recall where their empirical science originated. Slavoj, the world demands better of you than this.

2011-11-10T19:41:00.001-08:00

Food for thought: here

Wasting and Wanting

2010-06-12T11:08:00.000-07:00

Recently, my darling dear had occasion to comment on my habit of reheating day-old coffee in the microwave while brewing a fresh pot. She asked if it's because I like the stuff. No, not really. She asked whether I do it to save money. Well no, I responded, I'm making a fresh pot after all. Ahhh, she said. So it's because you don't want to waste anything, waste not want not, hey?

Yes. She got me dead to rights. I can't bear to throw out anything that might still be used or consumed. I suppose I live up to the frugal Mennonite stereotype, even though I'm long past identifying as a Mennonite. But the term 'waste not, want not' got me thinking. I'm willing to bet that many people don't actually know what that phrase means. I've no doubt my darling, an expert grammarian and adroit user of the English language, has a clear understanding of the verb 'to want' and its etymology, but I clearly remember a time when I did not - and it wasn't so long ago.

I imagine when Poor Richard spit the little aphorism out, folks who read it - and enshrined it in our vernacular - understood it clearly. If you don't waste, you won't want. That is, you won't lack, or go without. A good Puritan sentiment, that. Be frugal, save and recycle and reuse and you'll never starve or suffer wanting of life's needs. Somewhere along the line, though, those needs became desires. I imagine that happened when North Americans conceptually lost the definition of the word 'need' and it's closely related pal, 'lack'.

Let's face it (another fun term, perhaps for another time). Those of us reading and writing these blogs don't know a thing about need. We didn't settle the savage land and we're not the people displaced by those setters. We didn't make it through world wars and great depressions - though some of us may have seen our nest egg get devalued during the last recession and have decided to work a few more years to ensure we get to keep that cozy retirement villa in Arizona or Nelson or wherever. We truthfully want nothing to ensure our continued survival.

Yet we keep using that term - waste not, want not - as though it still has relevance. Ask people what their wants are and you'll doubtless get an exhaustive litany of items and ideas, because we want lots of stuff. The word no longer means lack, though that's rather invisibly implied, but rather it means desire. I may not need that bag of chips or that deep tissue massage or that 1982 Porsche 911 (Targa, of course, with the off-white paint) but I sure want them.

So what do we mean when we use the phrase? I can't reasonably say that since I failed to waste a Porsche, I must not want one. That makes no sense whatsoever. Or, if we play with the negative form of the phrase, my wasting of food means I actually want that kind of food. While there may be some truth to that, that I fail to use what I desire implies that I'm wasteful and can afford to be, because I want not - I'll drink a cup of the fresh coffee too. Truthfully, I really have no needs that can't be easily met and I'm happy as long as I continue to consume, whether I need to or not. There's a lot of slippage in a term like this, a phrase we've used so long that even when its key words change meaning and its context becomes irrelevant, we continue using it.

My previous understanding of the phrase - one that a cursory search of its use online confirms as fairly prevalent, at least among the internet blogging and tweeting crowd - was simply, that if I waste it, I don't want it. Usually, the term comes flying out when the 'it', whatever it is, should, in fact, be wanted or desired. The term has evolved from its original context as an aphoristic truism, a cause and effect bit of wisdom that we can adopt to better manage our lives, to a sardonic prediction of future dissatisfaction; a snide statement that someday the waster will desire the wasted stuff and there won't be any left around.

I suppose that's ironic. Once more our language proves we've devolved into facile whiners regulated by our desires rather than any legitimate needs. We envy each other and curse people for throwing away that which we didn't actually want, ourselves, anyway - blighting those wasters with a future of unsatisfied cravings that we hope they yearn for so greatly that they read those aches as needs. This, of course, is how we form fetishes and let's face it: fetishes fuel North America in ways we can no longer wean ourselves from.

This saddens me, while at the same time, leaving me with a sense of personal gratitude. I'm saddened because I'm clearly entrenched in a society that suffers a significant psychological illness - one that no longer even understands the words it utters and uses that misunderstanding to lash out at its own members while it consumes at a rate it understands to be unsustainable. I'm grateful because, when I drink that bitter cup of day-old coffee while the fresh pot brews, I do so knowing that my darling understands that my frugal soul just wants to ensure I get an extra cup of coffee in the morning.

Child bride dies of internal bleeding in Yemen

2010-04-09T11:59:00.000-07:00

Child bride dies of internal bleeding in Yemen

Aren't we glad we no longer need feminism?

loss

2010-03-23T07:33:00.000-07:00

sometimes i think
of loss. not lost opportunity,
no - my faith precludes that
sort of thing. i never lose cuff-
links, wallets, travel mugs, passports.
can't lose what i don't have anyway.
i thought i lost a car once - my first porsche -
but i found i just lost the car.

a couple of times i lost races but
won them later so that's okay. a person
told me i lost my mind but that never happened.
i frequently lose my cool, having never had it.

sometimes, in the spring, the muck,
i think about loss. another, a love, a life
less loss, though i also miss Johnny Cash.
i lose friends all the time. hope, they call
that. a friend lost her mom.
and i cant find the
words for that.
sometimes i
don't think
about
loss

Free Exchange Fundraiser!

2010-02-03T17:33:00.000-08:00

Join us for a FREE PARTY in support of the UofC English grad. students'
Free Exchange Conference!

Live Music by the Ogden Owls
DJs Chris B & Arlen

Saturday February 13th @ 8pm
Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Centre
1320 5th Avenue NW
Walking distance from Sunnyside Train Station

$4.00 Beer & Wine
donations welcome at the door

Join the Facebook event & help us spread the word:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=281549791777&ref=ts

Free Exchange is an annual graduate student conference organized entirely
by graduate students at the University of Calgary Department of English.
Founded more than fifteen years ago, it has grown to attract participants
from across Canada, the United States, and elsewhere in the world. Due to
the current economic climate, it has become the responsibility of students
to raise much of the funds necessary for hosting Free Exchange. If you are
interested in supporting this conference, but are unable to attend our
fundraiser party, please feel free to contact conference organizers Carmen
Derkson and Colin Martin at freeex@ucalgary.ca. Visit
http://english.ucalgary.ca/FreeExchange for more details.

Harper's Penis Tastes Salty

2010-01-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

As many of you know, I'm the president of filling Station magazine. Over the last 15 years we've published - often for the first time - pretty much every major poet working in Canada today and a damn good selection of the prose writers and visual artists.

We don't meet these criteria. And we apparently don't publish enough work about beef insemination. Too bad for us. Follow the link, read the article, shit on your Conservative MP's porch.

call for work

2009-09-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

NōD Magazine [Poetry – Prose – Visual Art]

Call for open submissions

Issue 11 / Fall 2009

Deadline: Oct 31

E-mail: nodmagazine@gmail.com

mail: NōD Magazine
c/o Dep’t of English
University of Calgary
2500 University Dr NW, T2T 1N4

NōD, creative writing publication of the University of Calgary undergraduates, is looking for innovative works of poetry prose or visual art for its eleventh issue. Works from undergraduate students and also the community are eligible for publication.

New this year: NōD magazine is looking for submissions of 50-100 words for a feature on NUTV (UofC's on campus television). Eligible entries are selected monthly from the open submissions and will show regularly during the chosen month. Eligible entries are also featured in the Magazine.

fS Call!

2009-08-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

Call to Artists – filling Station Magazine

filling Station Magazine, now in its 14th year of publishing, is a Calgary-based, nationally-distributed literary and arts magazine. A non-profit, it is completely run by volunteers from the community invested in bringing great writing and art from Calgary and area into the national spotlight.

Both emerging and established artists are invited to submit images of their art, or articles, statements, rants and manifestos about art accompanied by images, to our Fine Arts Editor for consideration in upcoming issues of filling Station. Submissions can include visual art, photography, documentation of artworks and events, photo essays about arts events, happenings and more.

Successful contributors receive:
1) a one year (3 issue) subscription to filling Station Magazine
2) two complimentary copies of the issue in which you submission appears
3) exposure to readers across Canada
4) a new line on your CV
5) our everlasting good will

filling Station receives First North American Serial Rights, meaning it appears in our magazine before any other publication. The artist retains all other rights.

How to Submit:

Images may be sent in low (email-able) resolution to Debbie.lee Miszaniec at finearts.fs@gmail.com If selected for publication, the editor will arrange with you to receive high resolution files of images in 300 dpi or higher. Images appearing within filling Station’s pages would be black and white, but colour versions can be made available on our new website at www.fillingstation.ca Also, images selected to appear on covers would be published in colour.

Please include with your submission a short bio or artist’s statement, your mailing address, and your email address in the body of your email.

filling Station publishes 3 issues per year; therefore, please allow up 0-4 months for reply.

About the Fine Arts Editor:
Debbie.lee Miszaniec is an artist living and working in Calgary, Alberta Canada. In 2008 she completed her BFA in painting with distinction at the Alberta College of Art + Design. Further information about her work can be found at www.debbieleemiszaniec.com

Student Unemployment

2009-08-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

The hole is getting deeper and deeper. When will our elected representatives start addressing the problem of class education barriers with a productive response?

Never, under the current administration.

For Roy Everett Martin

2009-07-28T16:54:00.001-07:00

i wrote this poem for my grandfather during the spring. he died today. i hope, for his sake, that he sees grandma in heaven. i don't believe he will but she was always worth seeing.

there are two versions...

1

my grandpa’s watch stopped years ago

new batteries startled it into motion

but when it recalled the time it said nono

that’s all wrong

the watch changed dates

accorded a martial keeping,

awakened me at strange moments,

bit the hairs from my arm

with jumpy little twitchings

we synchronized our complaints

and proceeded

with our mission

my Grandfather’s watch

stopped years ago

new batteries startled

into motion but when it

recollected the time said

nono. that’s all wrong

the time is wrong

the watch changes dates

reminisces about the war

and awakens me at

strange moments to insist

something

its bracelet pinches and bites

the hairs from my arms

makes its complaints

my own, over time

i always vow to wear the watch

when i visit

so sometimes i just wear it

around the house and stuff

god bless you, grandpa. rest in peace.

Amber Bowerman

2009-05-27T07:04:00.000-07:00

One of the lead stories on the CBC this morning is about the scholarships created in memory of Amber Bowerman. I only met her once, as a moderator for a session she gave at an AMPA conference a couple of years back, but she struck me that morning as being a wonderful, compassionate person who had made all the choices necessary to pursue a life of publishing and writing that truly fulfilled her. Not all of us have the strength of character to do what she did. It is wonderful to see that her life is not a total waste, that a legacy of helping other developing writers do what she did continues for students across Alberta.

stolen from bp (martyrology book 1)

2009-05-25T13:50:00.000-07:00

we have moved beyond belief
into a moon that is no longer there

i used to love you (i think)
used to believe in the things i do
now all is useless repetition
my arms ache from not holding you

the winds blow unfeelingly across your face
& the space between us
is as long as my arm is not

the language i write is no longer spoken

my hands turn the words
clumsily

*****

my lady my lady

this is the day i want to cry for you
but my eyes are dry

somewhere i'm happy

not like the sky
outside this window
gone grey

*****
*****

this is the line between reality
when i hold your body
enter the only way i am

saint orm
keep her from harm

this ship journey safely

quick as it can

*****

no movement in the sky
from the corner where the four winds lie

& the colour of her eyes too
did i tell you how my lady moves?

holds me to her tight
she can

love to feel her
moving with me

into that sweet togetherness presses us thru

My Kind

2009-04-28T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Tragedy of the Winnipeg Jets

2009-04-27T08:03:00.001-07:00

I just want to thank Jon Ball for leading me to this glorious treasure on UbuWeb. Man, it really does hitcha where you live. Which, thankfully, isn't Winnipeg (a wonderful place to be from).

Colin's Last Montreal Performance (for now)

2009-04-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Quebec Playwrights Deliver

presents

a full-cast reading of Seymour Blicker’s crime drama FOUND MONEY,

a tale of greed and revenge.

Funded by FRED, the Foundation for the Recognition of Excellence in Drama

Seymour Blicker is a Quebec-based playwright. His work has been produced in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Never Judge a Book by Its Cover, translated into Dutch and German, toured fifty cities in Holland and Belgium, had an extended run in Vienna, and, in 1996, was given its Canadian premiere, directed by Emma Stevens, at Theatre Lac Brome. In 1997, Blicker received the British Council International New Playwriting Award for his play Pals, which was produced by Theatre 1774--Infinitheatre of Montreal at "La Cabane" in 2000, directed by Guy Sprung, who also directed staged readings of Blicker’s Home Free (1998) and Pipe Dreams (2000).

With Colin Martin, Karen Kaderavek, Stephen Orlov, Shayne Devouges, and Chris Nachaj.

Monday, April 27 at 7:30 p.m., PWM Studio, 5337 St. Laurent near Fairmount, Suite 214, Door code 930. (Go through door at top of stairs; turn right)

Produced by Quebec Playwrights Deliver (514-842-3208)

Refreshments. Free Admission.

The Scott Rises to the Top

2009-04-22T11:54:00.001-07:00

The word is out - to be considered a knowlegable, tasteful reader, one must emulate the people of London, ON...

William Neil Scott's Wonderfull has been named the winner of the 2008-09 London Reads competition. The announcement comes in celebration of international World Book and Copyright Day on Thursday, April 23.

Scott was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, but has spent the majority of his life in Calgary, Alberta.

Wonderfull, Scott’s first novel, tells the stories of Garfax, a place which has become the stuff of legend to outsiders, and reveals how this village’s unlikely past catches up to its inevitable future.

“Winning London Reads means a lot more than I expected it to, to be honest, because throughout the length of the contest I thought my prospects looked very slim,” says Scott. “I’m absolutely floored by the response that this novel has received, and I feel very lucky and grateful for all the people who have taken the time to read it and pass it along.”

Speaking of his winning novel, published by Edmonton-based NeWest Press, Scott says, “I've had people come up and tell me that certain parts of the book, the deaths that occurred, the difficulties of being in a family, really resonated with them and reminded them of their own upbringing.

“Despite its weirdness, I think there’s something honest, gentle and maybe even a little bit sad about Garfax that attracts people. We’ve all been there, after all. Garfax is the place in our lives we had to leave.”

The reading list for the 2008-09 competition also included The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards, Gratitude by Joseph Kertes, The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill and Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot.

As it was the all-star edition of London Reads, Alumni Western has invited all five authors to a gala event on Nov. 12, 2009 at the Great Hall for a dinner, public readings and discussion. The selections for the 2010 London Reads competition will also be revealed at that time.

Presented by Alumni Western, London Reads was originally launched as Western Reads as part of The University of Western Ontario’s 125th anniversary celebrations in 2003.

The competition promotes Canadian authors and the importance of literacy. Modeled after CBC Radio’s Canada Reads, the program invites the entire London community to read along with and engage local celebrity panelists as they consider and debate the merits of various works of Canadian fiction.

London Free Press Editor-in-Chief Paul Berton and Western alumna Adria Iwasutiak championed Wonderfull during the London Reads process that started in October with the first of five public ‘book discussion’ events.

Alumni Western’s partners in London Reads are the Book Store at Western, the London Public Library and the City of London.

Past Winners of Western/London Reads

2007-08 Joseph Boyden, Three Day Road
2006-07 David Bergen, The Time in Between
2005-06 Robert McGill, The Mysteries
2004-05 Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradmus!
2003-04 Alistair MacLeod, No Great Mischief

lookin for trouble

2009-04-18T11:16:00.001-07:00

If anyone's looking for a little timewaster, come take me on at http://cleo-catra.mybrute.com

Derek Weiler Obituary

2009-04-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Derek Weiler, editor at Quill and Quire has died. His obituary is here.

The American Novel

2009-03-29T06:47:00.000-07:00

On Academic Earth, lectures by Prof. Amy Hungerford...

one wonders...

2009-03-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

in the era where Canada is ruled by a man who hates Canadian culture and art...

this

Wonderfull up for London Reads - VOTE!

2009-03-17T05:36:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

As many of you know, my friend Neil had his first book published last year. What many of you may not know is that the book was included in London Reads, a competition like Canada Reads, but specific to London, Ontario. This is a huge honour and he's up against some heavy hitters like The Book of Negroes, which won this year's Canada Reads and the Commonwealth award.

Please take a moment out of your day to vote for Wonderfull by William Neil Scott here: http://www.londonreads.uwo.ca/vote.html.

And if you feel like forwarding this to anyone else, please do. The more votes the better. If you have not yet had a chance to read Wonderfull, I highly recommend doing so - both Chapters and Amazon have copies for sale.

15 albums that changed the way I think about music.

2009-03-09T13:20:00.000-07:00

A tough list to compile, given that it isn't really made up of my favourite albums but the ones that made those favourites what I listen to...

1. I hear a lot of talk about Raffi but for me, the story begins with Fred Penner's album The Cat Came Back. He covers John Cash, riffs on sleep as living metaphor, delights in sandwiches and, frankly, I still play guitar the way Fred taught. When I play at all, that is. Besides, he used to come play at our school.

2. One of the first to really get me is The Moody Blues' album A Question of Balance. For those who kvetch about the band forming to sell Hi Fi stereos I can only respond: precisely. I know the lo fi movement's all about glorifying the sound of shit, but it still sounds like shit. This is the album that taught me to pay attention to narrative in music and, I imagine like Pink Floyd probably did for lots of people, taught me to listen to entire albums as coherent productions.

3. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy. I learned to dance with my mom to their cover of Mr. Bojangles, the title of which was also my dad's CB handle. Rhythm and blues and folk all rolled into one, this album will always mean orange carpet, wooden speaker boxes, and the smell of diesel to me - and I will always love stripped down country music (I'm lookin' at you, Mr. Lund).

4. John Denver, Poems and Prayers and Promises. Men can also sing like angels. Turns out, John Denver was an angel of death and I really got a different read on his lyrics when I found out he was a navy sniper in Vietnam: "he was born in the summer of his 27th year, far away from a place he'd never been before", "sunshine, almost all the time, makes me hide".

5. Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen. Just like that, I became an American. The first album I ever memorized start to finish, this album will always keep me programmed for the work of a serious bard and I will likely never fully recover from the way it colonized my cultural sensibilities. And damn, can he rock.

6. Eliminator/Afterburner, ZZTop. Blues meets techno. Innovation can also be slick and there is nothing slicker than these two albums, with the possible exception of Robert Palmer's hair. The Afterburner tour was the occasion of my first concert, at the Winnipeg arena, and the band actually fogged the entire arena and flew the Afterburner spaceship around it in lasers. Holy crap. And to think, the show was a makeup for my mom going to see Tears for Fears with dad instead of me...

7. Platinum Blonde: Alien Shores. This was the first tape I bought with my own cash and completely changed the way I heard bass and rhythm in music. I recognise now that Platinum Blonde were kind of a Canadian love child of Yes and Flock of Seagulls but the syncopated driving synth and bass that powers their songs still echoes in my brain.

8. Born to Be Stupid, Wierd Al Yankovic. Everything can be mocked and all songs may be polkas. Every punk band that thinks their covers are funny needs to play Devo with an accordion. Every pop band that takes themselves too seriously needs to beware the accordion.

9. The Dead Milkmen: Death Rides a Pale Cow. Fuck their covers are funny. Their originals even better. Proof that lo-fi shit can blow your mind and justify your hatred of douchebags.

10. Katrina and the Waves: Walking on Sunshine. I blame puberty for this. Filthy, horrid little hormones. I would play the title track over and over, singing at the top of my lungs until I collapsed in tears. Living in a new city, an undersized weird little kid with no friends, convinced that my brothers and I were just bargaining chips in the hate-fuck that was our parents' divorce, I was desperately trying to feel good. There's goodness to be found in pop music.

11. NWA: Straight Outta Compton. Sometimes having the way you listen to music change can be a bad thing. This album caused more adolescent bullshit misogeny than perhaps anything before or since. I wasn't immune and may still be trying to recover from the shit this put in my head. Gangsta is amazing, infectious, and in its day a vital resistance to authority. But it's no hip-hop and the message will only hurt us all in the end.

12. de la Soul: 3 Feet High and Rising. The solution. It's a crying shame there are so few decent hip-hop albums made anymore, though I will certainly give honourable mentions to the Fugees' The Score and, despite his subsequent descent into ridiculous arrogance, K-Os' Joyful Rebellion.

13. Rage Against the Machine: eponymous. The last original thing to happen to rock and proof that rage can matter. Tom Morello might actually be the best rock guitarist around (with Slash, somewhere up there) and Zach de la Rocha's rap/snarl/scream might sound thin compared to some of his newer, slicker imitators but none of them will ever, ever have the impact of this album. Like a sledge hammer to the fucking eyes: you're stunned but can't stop twitching.

14. Tom Petty: Greatest Hits. Who knew that a basic greatest hits album could actually blow your mind? Every song triggers an "man, I love this song, it's my favourite by him!" response, making me feel like a complete weiner by the end. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I lovelovelove the journeyman road through Petty's career that he built with this compilation - the artist as album.

15. Sarah McLaughlin: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. Love and beauty and rightness. One of the two albums on this list I still listen to on a regular basis because I will always need love and beauty and rightness.

Submit to STEPHEN HARPER

2009-02-24T08:24:00.000-08:00

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Announcing the formation of a new Canadian literary magazine!

STEPHEN HARPER: a journal of the literary arts

Dedicated to the publication of Canadian literary talent, STEPHEN
HARPER is looking for said talent to bombard our inbox with your best
writing. We are looking for submissions from across Canada in both
official languages.

Submissions should be made via email to
stephen.harper.literary.concern@gmail.com. Submissions should remain
under 1 page as budget constraints are also size restraints. Deadline
is as soon as possible! We will start reading as soon as submissions
start rolling in!

We look forward to reading your submissions!

ryan fitzpatrick & Natalie Zina Walschots
STEPHEN HARPER Managing Editors

About STEPHEN HARPER:

STEPHEN HARPER was started as the first magazine under new funding
guidelines made by the Canadian Periodical Fund. We believe that the
best response to these new guidelines is to try to produce a literary
journal streamlined enough to meet the new realities of today's
publishing industry. STEPHEN HARPER has an official subscription base
of 413 – each MP and senator in the Canadian government is a
subscriber, including our namesake! As well, STEPHEN HARPER will be
starting a list of unsubscribers (the SH! list) of people not quite
lucky enough to be members of Canada's own government, but who still
wish to receive the light of STEPHEN HARPER into their heart.

--
I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

~Emma Goldman

Harper to cancel funding for Lit Mags

2009-02-23T09:48:00.000-08:00

Quill & Quire

News

Litmags threatened by new funding guidelines
February 20, 2009 | 6:34 PM | By Stuart Woods

The Harper Tories have promised to maintain existing funding levels for
the countrys magazine industry ($75.5-million annually), but guidelines
announced this week for the new Canada Periodical Fund could put Canadas
small-run literary magazines in jeopardy.

The new Canadian Heritage-run program merges two other federal funding
bodies the Canada Magazine Fund and the Publications Assistance Program in
an effort to streamline operations and tie support of the periodical
sector to the reading choices of Canadians. This new system wont become a
reality until at least 2010, but when it does, funds will be allocated
using a formula based on paid circulation, and magazines with less than
5,000 annual subscribers will be shut out altogether.

The new formula would be a huge blow to the small number of literary
publishers that depend on Heritage to survive, including
respected journals such as The Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat
Review, and Matrix, which have typically received annual subsidies ranging
from about $15,000 to $20,000. As it currently stands, the minimum
circulation requirement would exclude pretty much every literary and arts
magazine in the  country, says editor Andris Taskans, whose Winnipeg
quarterly Prairie Fire relies on Heritage money for a significant portion
of its operating budget  and about half of its postage costs.

Taskans says the new guidelines are a deliberate slap in the face to small
magazines, and that he would like to see the special status of literary
magazines restored. Says Matrix editor-in-chief Jon Paul Fiorentino, whose
magazine has published early works by authors like Heather ONeill and
Pasha Malla, Theres value to what we do beyond the number of readers we
get per issue.

According to the Canadian Heritage release, the department is still
finalizing the guidelines, so theres still room to have them
revised, if not removed completely. People have to be realistic that there
will be some form of minimum,says Mark Jamison, CEO of the trade group
Magazines Canada, so the question is, how do we manage a specific
challenge for a very specialized sector?

Jamison believes theres reasonable hope that Heritage will ease its
restriction on small magazines if the literary community succeeds in
bringing its message to Ottawa.

http://www.quillandquire.com/omni/article.cfm?article_id=10538

Calgary Performance

2009-02-20T07:04:00.000-08:00

I'll be performing in Calgary next week at the following...

*MISC Presents #1

Friday, February 27, 2009

9:30 PM

The Palomino

109-7th Avenue SW

Cover: $10

Event Purpose:

*MISC Presents is a new events series celebrating the appreciation of more than one genre at a time. A night for evolved humanoids! *(Mutual Inspiration Society of Calgary) A portion of proceeds will go to Inn from the Cold charity.

Featuring Bands:

Gutterawl (rock), Dolly Sillito (indie), & Cowpuncher (roots)

Featuring: Poets:

Wakefield Brewster (Calgary Slam! Champion), Colin Martin (filling Station Magazine), Markus Overland (Gutterawl / Lucid 44), & beautiful newcomer Marie Specht.

Listing:

Fri Feb 27^th – *MISC Presents Gutterawl, Dolly Sillito, & Cowpuncher. With Wakefield Brewster, Marie Specht, Markus Overland & Colin Martin. 9:30, Palomino Smokehouse (downstairs)

Contact:

Laurie Fuhr, Event Manager

Mutual Inspiration Society of Calgary (*MISC)

meditor.fs@gmail.com

the dirty pants

2009-02-17T14:11:00.000-08:00

hey does anyone want a pair of wrongly used men's dress pants? i did something in them i'm trying to suppress and must divorce myself from ownership of the pants.

no reasonable offer will be refused.

for obvious reasons, pictures can not be provided, though i may permit you to fondle them in the alley while i videotape you.

NōD Launch

2009-02-12T14:26:00.001-08:00

Issue 9 Launch is a go!

We will be holding the launch party at Weeds' cafe, 1903 20 Avenue NW
Calgary (on the corner of 18 St and
20 Ave NW) at 7:30 pm on Friday, February 20th.

Readers include Tyler Perry, Lorne Macdonald, Sarah Gibbs and Derek Beaulieu

Also in the blast radius, music by James Dangerous and the CIA.
--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4

nodmagazine@gmail.com

Call for Submissions

2009-02-11T07:56:00.000-08:00

Calling all thieves, bandits and poachers,

Our theme for Issue #10 is "thievery"

NōD, University of Calgary's undergraduate-run magazine, publishes
poetry, prose and visual art, inviting innovative creative endeavors.
We publish the creative work of undergraduates, emerging and
established artists alike.

Deadline:

March 15, 2009

How to Submit:

Email: nodmagazine@gmail.com
By Mail: at the below address

*NōD cannot be held accountable for any legal action resulting from
intellectual or material theft.
--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4

No Surprise

2008-12-14T16:17:00.000-08:00

I, for one, was astonished at the level of ignorance that came up from people, bluntly, who should know better.

If you don't know what your government is, don't tell me what it should be.

call for papers

2008-12-06T14:44:00.000-08:00

CALL FOR PAPERS
Open Letter is seeking critical and creative submissions for a special issue dedicated humour in experiental poetry.

"Why Are You Laughing" will be guest-edited by Jonathan Ball and Ryan Fitzpatrick.

A common complaint of poetry pundits is that experimental poetry tends to entail a humourless flaunting of critical theory. Yet within this field, there are a number of poets that make use of humour as a literary tactic. How exactly is humour used in experimental poetry, and what are its effects? In what ways could we theorize humour in terms of poetry and language in general? Is humour useful as a destabilizing device, or is it politically benign? Can humour make difficult poetry more accessible to a general readership, or does it provide a pretext for dismissing such work?

Possible topics could include (but are not limited to):

* humour and pop references

* irony and/or the failure of irony

* the absurd

* humour as a coping mechanism

* political uses of humour

* humour as an attack on authority

* shock humour

* specific schools or movements for whom humour is important

Please send proposals (350-500 words) by January 1, 2009 to Jonathan Ball or Ryan Fitzpatrick. If proposals are accepted, final papers will be due June 1, 2009.

http://publish.uwo.ca/~fdavey/call.htm

untitled (from pronoun)

2008-11-28T06:59:00.000-08:00

you daunt me with your knowledge
breadth of reading i cannot know
all that you know

i know how to ride a bicycle
for six hours without
tiring

i know how to swim across
a lake filled with
shadows and teeth

i know how to run circles
around the bases
of mountains, and,
how to plummet from
their saw-edged peaks

i know how to raise the
fine hairs from any part
of a person's body
with my breath

i know how to drive a
car sideways, how to drive a
long nail straight, to climb a
tree without branches

i know how to read a book
for its spaces, a government
for the paper its poems
are printed on, a nation
for the colours its currency
bleeds

i know how to raise adults
and lower children
and why both are necessary

i know the tastes of woods

i know the tapping of guitar
string calluses, the sound
my voice in laughter, the angle
my mouth to mouthpieces

i know a three-year tan line
the cinnamon musk of a
sleeping puppy, the rasp of kittens
licking my ear while i giggle

i know a good photo, a moment
i'll never forget and how to love
a chance encounter forever

i know an idea
comprehended, a strike
of lightning, the
numbness that follows

i know the first person
hates poetry or vice versa

and

Poverty Gap

2008-10-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

Interesting: though I wish Canadian statistics were included in the article. If you want to look further, the OECD's website is here.

Of further interest is this article.

lego lesson #7

2008-10-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

this little brick laid foundation,

this little brick built a home.

this little brick's a two-car garage,

this little brick erected Rome.

and this little brick...

stopped the hole,
silencing their cries.

Filling Station Volunteers (Calgary)

2008-10-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

Filling Station Magazine is a locally created, nationally-distributed literary and arts magazine. Filling Station has no specific mandate for content, but we like to bring cutting-edge, risk-taking, and breathtaking work to adventurous readers. We're looking to expand our horizons and invite new members of the community to join us in creating Filling Station.

Visual Editor

Filling Station is on the lookout for a new Visual Editor for 2009. The Visual Editor would be responsible for compiling a section including cutting-edge visual art and write ups about the same. We are especially interested in a candidate who is a member of the visual arts community, can write with confidence about visual art, and who is not afraid to approach artists about the magazine. Those interested in becoming Visual Editor for Filling Station would be invited to our annual AGM in early 2009, when members vote on new editorial candidates.

Audio Editor

With the right editor on board, a new Audio Section could be created to review CDs that are literary in nature (spoken word or poetry), that have band members with ties to the publishing lit community, or that are literary in some way (great lyrics?). We would be most interested in a candidate who is into or involved with both innovative literature and independent music. Those interested in becoming Audio Editor for Filling Station would be invited to our annual AGM in early 2009, when members vote on new editorial candidates.

The Poetry Collective and The Fiction Collective seek members

These are the collectives that read submitted material. Editors email or hand off the work, you are given time to read it on your own, then all members of the collective have a meeting in which they present work to one another that they feel is worthy of going in this cutting-edge magazine. If you a writer or an avid reader, we would be especially interested in hearing from you. Collective members do not need to be voted in.

Filling Station Meetings

Once every two months or so, there are also Filling Station meetings where all editors and collective members get together to receive new submissions, and go through books submitted for review (everyone is welcome to review books and keep the books they review). Even if you are not a collective member, you are welcome to come be part of Filling Station as a contributor to our non-fiction section which includes book reviews, live reviews, interviews, and articles.

Flywheel Reading Series

On the first Thursday of each month at Pages Books on Kensington, Filling Station hosts the Flywheel Reading Series at 7:00 p.m. Flywheel could use some helping hands to make it all come together and to spread the word. Flywheel members do not need to be voted in.

These are all unpaid, volunteer positions (as is every position at Filling Station).

If you are interested in joining, please contact Managing Editor Laurie Fuhr at meditor.fs@gmail.com

Please feel free to pass this email along to anyone who might be interested.

Party of Canada

2008-10-02T15:51:00.000-07:00

Party of Canada

Our mandate is to get elected

by selling you to you

so we can profit off you.

We are a democracy party:

we offer lower taxes to more people

and call that a tax savings.

We keep our promise to lower taxes

by renaming old taxes and applying

them to new things that are cheaper.

Bread is next. We know

Canadians appreciate our mandate

and support lower taxes.

The Laurentian

2008-09-06T05:21:00.001-07:00

Saw an ad posted by the Laurentian Bank on the metro yesterday. A welcoming ad, with a little red-haired girl in a green sweater embracing a little Asian girl. And that's why Quebec institutions don't understand why they're racist.

The Asian kids have been here as long as the Irish ones. Reverse the paradigm and show the non-white kid having agency in the image, for a change. Even if it means taking agency away from the white kid. criminy.

For Better or Worse?

2008-09-01T07:15:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. It looks like Lynn Johnston has finished her strip. I grew up reading her books and the strip and, I gotta say, I have a tear in my eye right now while I think of it ending. She was my mom's favourite cartoonist and will always have my respect and admiration for the way she managed to drag the art form kicking and screaming into a new era of social life.

Vilified by readers for introducing the first gay character and harangued by Schultz for killing the family dog when it got too old to be believable, Johnston generally managed to do what so many of her peers fail utterly at - keeping it real. I've always seen her characters in my life and appreciated the wry wit she used to shake up the world around us with her craft.

Stifling the Critics

2008-08-31T12:37:00.000-07:00

The cutting of funding programs for interactive and multimedia projects in Canada should come as no surprise. The nation's creative communities have long harboured antagonism towards the sullen essentialism of the Conservative party and its corporate neoliberal political enterprise.

"But why," bemoan arts administrators and artists alike, "would they target relevant media like film and internet development?"

Notwithstanding the shot to poets and painters inherent in such questions, the truth is: because multimedia arts and training programs might provide a platform for able critics of the conservative project (for a background on Neoliberalism generally and aspects of its Canadian manifestation, read David Harvey's _A Brief History of Neoliberalism_ and Jeff Derksen's _National Literatures in the Shadow of Neoliberalism_).

Simply put: the possible effectiveness of critical generation that new media artists engage combined with their dependence on public funding and unwillingness to assign their skills to remolding the neoliberal project leaves them both vulnerable and undesireable to government censorship.

Suggestion: use your media to get the bums out of office and be thankful that A) you aren't a poet and completely irrelevant in today's socio-political context and B) you don't live in Russia.

Poking Holes in Montreal

2008-08-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

I have no doubt that all who know me have been breathlessly anticipating the hole-poking blog ever since my Darling's return to Montreal.

Well. Here it is. Yesterday we got on our bikes and went riding in the sunshine to the old port. Then we braved the service at a Victoria Square restaurant and ate and drank and generally felt quite romantic and not a little dizzy from sun and imported beer.

You ready?

Then we attempted to ride home only to find some jackass had stabbed holes in the back tires of our bikes and the tires of several other bikes along the street we had parked them. Somehow that dampened the moment.

I have this glorious vision of some seedy little shit giggling as he punks the tire on Ash's beautiful bike with a fleur-de-lis lapel pin. Then he gags on my wrist while I twiddle his tonsils - his hole firmly poked.

Fucking Montreal.

City for Sale

2008-08-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a copy of Age of Empires III to while away the lonely hours remaining until Ash gets home. Foolish boy. Even with the graphics settings at minimum quality, the physics generator that kicks in when buildings or ships are involved in the battle scenes overloads the capacity of my four-month-old Toshiba Tecra. Total shutdown, useless gameplay.

So I return the game to Bestbuy for a refund. Truthfully, I do not need new video games with all the work on my plate right now. I tell the service person that I need to return the game. She says "Why?" (I looove one-word sentences). I explain the problem to her. She says they don't refund video games that have been opened. I ask her how I could know the game doesn't work if I don't open it. She begins repeating herself, stating that this is clearly explained on the bill. I point out that I received the bill after the sales transaction completed - not before - and that it can therefore not be a legal contract.

Clearly, I am being difficult. But I just pissed two days away playing a game that doesn't work. The agent explains that I can swap it for another copy of the game. I point out that the problem lies not with the game but the erroneous working requirements printed on its packaging. She confers with a manager (by which I mean she goes out for a cigarette) and comes back saying I can exchange the game for another game. I look at games. The minimum requirements on all of those in the same price range are greater than AOE III. No good. She offers exchange for anything else in the store and we compromise with a store credit. All this means, of course, is that I have no game, no money, and credit at a store that sells nothing I require.

Round 2...

During a meeting with my graduate administrator, she mentions a sale on sporting goods at a Sports Experts nearby. Needing a pair of shorts for yoga class (yoga-another story, another time) I wander over. The sale items are mostly $90 board shorts with Velcro flies. Great for hairless boys with too much money but not really what I'm in the market for. I find a pair of Umbro soccer shorts that'll do the job - they're not on sale but, being only $24, they do fall within my fiscal grasp.

I take the shorts to the till where the sales rep runs the shorts through and thoughtfully informs me that they are final sale - before the transaction is completed. Still smarting from my wasted hour this morning, I ask why that is. She explains that all sale items are final sales. I point out that these shorts are not a sale item. She nods and says "yes but because we are having a store-wide sale, all inventory is a sale item, even if it is not discounted". This is performative language at its best. I ask for the 30-50% discount advertised on the fliers for the store-wide sale. No go. She calmly asks if I've tried on the shorts, disregarding my question completely. I shake my head, no. She offers to let me do so and I decline, satisfied that at least I've been bested by a pro.

The shorts are looking at me now. I have not tried them on, for fear they do not fit.

This pair of small adventures started me thinking again about Quebec retail. Montreal retail, especially. Nothing you buy here ever works. The brand-new Toshiba Tecra, in addition to failing to run any video game more recent than Starcraft (and even those graphics are wonky) also has a faulty webcam and approximately 75g of its 130g memory is sucked up by that horrid Vista OS, with all its incumbent problems (try running Yahoo chat with Vista some time). Furniture, appliances, food - you always wind up having to return to the Vendor to get shit straightened out in this city. Every sale is final because every retailer says so on their bills, whether they are legally permitted to or not.

Theories? Well, Bestbuy says they can't sell that game I opened. That's a lie. The stickers are intact and they assuredly have a shrink-wrapper in-store. I couldn't help but notice a couple of games on their shelves that had clearly been repackaged while looking for a replacement. Sports Experts? They know their staff cover ass before money changes hands. If you care to pick a fight over $30 or $40 worth of merchandise, you have an uphill battle that is simply not worth the stress or the effort. They know this and, because we understand that everything written is true, they preempt the effort with a line on the bill stating said finality with a red stamp for emphasis.

Retail advertising is expensive and in Montreal, where all advertising needs to be done twice by major chains who don't specialize in niche markets, the retailers simply cannot let go of a dollar, once received. And their employees, glad to have a job in this depressed city, work with grit, hanging onto that dollar with screaming nails. Add to this the clear shortcuts the retailers take with their own vendors and you wind up with sub-standard, over-marketed merchandise and a return policy that means you can do whatever you like as long as you don't want your money back...

...I think I'll wait until tomorrow to try on those shorts.

When Coffee Fights for the People

2008-08-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

So, at some time that isn't right now, I'm ordering a sausage on the streets of Toronto and a shirtless Dirty Hippie in a nasty backpack comes up and asks the sausage vendor and I where the nearest McDonald's is located. The vendor - a lovely old German woman - and I confer and give him what we think will be the best bet. He then shares with us why he would be such a dick as to ask a sausage vendor where the nearest McDonald's is located (rather than having a sausage).

He wants a cup of coffee. Assuming that we're incredulous at this pronouncement, he waves a hand at the five or six coffee shops within sight of where we stand and explains: "these guys all rip you off, man. They charge, like, two bucks for a cup of coffee and McDonald's is, like, a buck-fifty and you get a free refill. These guys are all so fucking corporate, they just rip you off and make you bleed."

Now, in fairness, among the many shops were a Second Cup (who ripped me off $20 for internet that they didn't actually provide, the fuckers - but that's another story) and a Starbucks, both of whom fit into the corporate paradigm presented by Dirty, the hippie. But the other three were independent operations. One of them was a free-trade enterprise that proudly announced their lack of internet access and clearly catered to the area's Dirty Hippies.

So how does a place like this get branded "corporate terrorist" in contrast to that real-values paragon of counter-culture down-home values, McDonald's? It's the free refill.

For years, nobody would drink the piss being served at Rotten Ronnie's unless it was cheap and free. But as McD's knew that to muscle all the family diners out of their locations, old-timers raised on free coffee and cheap gas needed a place to sit and kvetch all morning. So McDonald's played hardball, offering the same crap coffee for the same crap price to keep the noise of the revolutionaries to a dull roar.

Fast forward a couple of decades and you see something new happening in Coffee. Starbucks has overturned the cart and found a way to sell a five dollar cup of coffee and make people WANT to pay for it. The coffee is not better, but for a generation that considers Sex in the City and Desperate Housewives entertainment, the packaging of the coffee trumps all other considerations. We live in a moment where the most crucial consideration of lifestyle budget planning is the daily "Latte Allowance".

However, the small shops find a way to fight back. Understanding that foamy milk-swilling yoga-monkeys in Lululemon pants were taught better standards by their parents and would be less willing to whore out to corporate demands if the alternatives offered slicker absolution, the indy shops started selling better coffee at the same ridiculous prices with the same attention paid to coffee accessories - cookies, mints, craft breads, etc. (likewise, Lululemon markets seaweed in their pants, a double-marketing success when it's revealed that there is no yucky seaweed in their seaweed pants - making Lululemon both environmental and conscious).

McDonald's, gearing up for their challenge of Starbucks - the only franchise chain still capable of facing up to them since Subway mistakenly relied on Jared the shrill douchebag nerd for their marketing campaign - quietly goes a step further. They start selling decent coffee. At the same low price, with free refills. Then they market the other crap to combat the Starbucks brand and, at the same time, label all the coffee shops who mimicked Starbucks' model in order to survive as corporate ripoff artists. Only McDonald's has your best consumer interests at heart. Only they will give you, the little guy, a fair shake (they can't call it a milkshake due to the lack of dairy).

We see it everywhere. Wal-Mart, with their roll-back campaign that has devastated wages across the entire globe and lowered the standard of living in Canada and the US to the tune of 4% per annum - making the new poor increasingly dependent on Wal-Mart for their consumer goods and groceries. Fannie-Mae and Freddy-Mac, offering 45 year mortgages to those same poor people in order to give them the allusion of an American dream of home ownership at sub-prime interest rates. Never mind that the industry can't survive on sub-prime income. The government will bail them out. The American dream is a speculative fiction anyway.

And McDonald's and Starbucks, who offer benefits to their employees rather than money and trap them in a minimum wage quagmire that's nearly impossible to escape. You can't take time off to better yourself when you're living on $8/hr. You can't afford real food. Or a bed made of real wood. Or a car that won't break down and uses fuel efficiently.

But Mr. Dirty, frothing shrilly against corporate evil as he challenges both the woman trying to sell sausages for a living and the fair trade merchants across the street as corporate shills just out to gouge your eyes and steal your wallet, he can afford a cup of coffee at McDonald's. Try asking the owner of that franchise where you could find a good sausage on a bun and see what answer you get.

Fuck the revolution for all its stupid assholes.

Tune in next week, when we take a look at who pays Paul Watson's salary and why running down fishermen off Canada's coast is so very, very exciting.

fat kids

2008-07-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

So i’m looking at this American Apparel ad for “the slim slack” and i see what one generally expects to see in one of their ads – notwithstanding their usual pedophilic training project – a skinny girl wearing skinny pants that, we are assured, can be had in over twenty colours.

It occurs to me once more that the increasing apathy and diminished attention spans of the barely adult – and that label applies to anyone under forty – and the wannabe adults has to do with a necessary filtering out of the mixed messages in the media.

Advertising glorifies skinny people. Even the natural beauty campaign spearheaded by Dove generally shows fit models with big boobs and, naturally, firm round butts. Meanwhile, health experts across North America are telling people that’s not normal, that it is okay to be a fat fuck as long as you, you know, get on an exercycle a few times a week for thirty or forty minutes. That way you can be fat and lazy and still minimise your cost on government healthcare.

So, a mixed message. Complicated by airline fuel surcharges compensating for the extra fifty or sixty pounds the average American weighs now compared to ten or twenty years ago. Complicated by numerous studies showing that excess fat makes people more prone to cancer (like smoking!). Complicated by an ad trying to sell you a triple bacon cheeseburger following right on the heels of the ad for skinny jeans. Complicated by the illegality of tobacco ads and the fact that smoking makes you skinny.

The result? Fat kids in skinny jeans who can’t read ads because they stopped giving a shit about anything other than their urges. Know why? Because we can’t agree on anything other than their urges and THAT is what we sell them. You can mix that message but they’ll still get it.

Tune in next week when we return to AA and why showing the labia of a 14 year old girl in ads is actually not a good thing.

Blowout

2008-07-18T15:31:00.001-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

filling Station Magazine is thrilled to announce...

The Fourth Annual

CALGARY BLOW-OUT!

Thursday July 31 to Saturday August 2 2008

PLUS: NEW! Small Press Book & Arts Fair, Saturday August 2 1:00-5:00 PM

with media artist performances by local artists Travis Murphy & Anne Koizumi,

Samuel Garrigomeza and The Arbour Lake Sghool

FREE!

This explosive literary festival once again puts the spotlight on Calgary’s talented writing community, featuring twenty-five poets, performers, and fiction writers that are either locally-based or have strong ties to the city.

Four Amazing Events:

Event A: Flywheel Throwdown!

filling Station's regular reading series pumps us up for the Blow Out!

(Please note the new venue!)

Thursday July 31, 7:30 PM

Pages Books on Kensington

1135 Kensington Road N.W.

Readers: Christopher Blais, Emily Carr, Jocelyn Grossé, Jonathan Ball

Event B: The Big Fat Opera Takeover

Great big literary voices challenge the Pavarotti-sized acoustics of Arrata!

Friday August 1, 8:00 PM

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Readers: Christian Bok, Aritha Van Herk, Carmen Derksen, Glen Dresser, Ian Sampson, Jordan Scott, Julia Williams

Host: Jonathan Ball

DJ: Geosphere

Event C: Small Press Book & Arts Fair

New addition to the Blow Out! Includes media artist performances by local artists Travis Murphy & Anne Koizumi, Samuel Garrigomeza and The Arbour Lake School starting at 3:00 PM!

Saturday August 2, 1-5 PM

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Participants: Small pressers, artists, bands, and other folk hawk handmade books, glossy print mags, zines, broadsides, CDs, and other enticing you-name-its.

Event D: The Pantoum of the Opera

There may not be phantoms or even pantoums*, but all manner of words haunt Arrata tonight!

Saturday August 2, 8:00 PM

Arrata Opera Centre
1315 - 7 Street SW

Readers: Craig Boyko, Jason Christie, Melanie Little, Chris Ewart, Clem Martini, Andrew Wedderburn, Sheri-D Wilson

Host: Derek Beaulieu

DJ: Pilgrim

* The pantoum consists of a series of quatrains rhyming abab. The second and fourth lines of the first quatrain recur as the first and third lines in the following quatrain. Succeeding quatrains introduce a new second rhyme, i.e. abab bcbc. The form can include as many stanzas as the poet wishes as long as they follow this structure. The closing stanza opens with the second line of the previous stanza, but the second and fourth lines come from the first stanza. Hence, the last stanza is structured like this: Line 2 of previous stanza Line 3 of first stanza Line 4 of previous stanza Line 1 of first stanza. Most Blow Out readers won’t be reading these!

Of course, there’ll also be books, booze and plenty of filling Station Magazines available for purchase!

All events are absolutely FREE and open to the public. Join us in celebration of Calgary’s booming literary talent!

SPONSORS

filling Station gratefully acknowledges the kind support of the following sponsors of Blow Out! #4:

ALBERTA FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS

ARRATA OPERA CENTRE

CALGARY ARTS DEVELOPMENT
CALGARY COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS
PAGES BOOKS ON KENSINGTON
STEAM WHISTLE

CONTACT:

calgaryblowout.blogspot.com

EVENT HISTORY

The Calgary Blow-Out! was founded in 2005 as a celebration of Calgary’s vibrant literary community. The former Managing Editor of filling Station, poet derek beaulieu, founded the event out of good-natured frustration when he realized there was simply too much happening in the Calgary literary scene to see it all, and so he created the Blow-Out! as a fête for the community at large. This is filling Station’s fourth annual Calgary Blow-Out!

ABOUT filling Station

filling Station is a locally-based, nationally-distributed literary magazine that is dedicated to showcasing innovative poetry, fiction, drama, film and visual art, and promoting local and international arts communities.

telemark

2008-07-14T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot poetry and criticism by Louis Dudek lately and one of the inescapables is his ceaseless resistance to Marshall McLuhan's essential concept that the "media is the massage", that how the sign signifies is also what the sign signifies. Dudek rejects the idea of hot and cold media as inhuman at its best and dehumanizing at its worst. Any communicative project that effaces the creative or intellectual effort of the individual person is bad and any such project that celebrates (even poorly) the genius of the individual is good. Thus, Dudek privileges poetry over prose, film over television - especially films that communicate the vision of a single man, such as Chaplin - and conversation over politics.

Here's the kicker: there are two very different modes of thought mobilized by McLuhan here that Dudek rejects together, because Dudek - the eternal pessimist - only seriously considered the negative consequences of McLuhan's cold media. For instance, the TV, that one-way short-circuit to the brain via the optic nerve not only catalyzes the air we breathe into a sodden brain-blanket but it causes tunnel vision, permitting the viewer(s, ad infinitum) a limited, cardboard-tube sight line through its lens. So, by providing an omni - a saturation of the atmosphere - TV creates a uni- the peephole of the screen.

The paradox of the how and the how-perceived came to mind while reading a recent copy of the Mirror. In the classified section towards the back, the various jobs and apartments being advertised are organized in neat columns according to subject matter or city region. With an exception: the telemarketing ads. There are no text-only ads, they all have photo matter and all are larger than column-width, running from 1/16 to 1/4 page in size. The paper makes the effort to treat these ads as regular classifieds by running a line of column-width Telemarketing category-headers across the top of the ads - a confused and rather ridiculous looking endeavor. The bottom of each page is taken by a pair of telemarketing ads at 1/4 and the top of each page contains one ad - a 1/16 on the left page and a 1/6 on the right.

If we scan the ads in reading order then, we get the smallest ad first, the next smallest second and then, moving to our next line of "text" we read the large ads in a line left to right. The first ad features a b/g pic of a young woman's face in closeup with just the mouthpiece of her headset rig in view. The mouthpiece is small, translucent and so unobtrusive that from two feet away could be mistaken for a mole. In ad #2 the picture takes up the top 2/3 of the ad and is a front profile pic of a young black woman with short hair, a smart business collar and a lightweight rig attached to her left ear. On the bottom line, ad #3 has a small picture in the upper left corner of a young woman with a large clunky silver plastic headset of the variety that embraces her entire head. The rest of the ad is black on white text. Ad #4 has a somewhat larger greyscale b/g picture of a similar woman wearing a similar rig with black text overlay. Ad #5, on the right hand page, has a bubble inset of a tough to discern gender neutral person taken from the left perspective (the previous two ads show pics taken from the right) with the head-clamp of the rig omitted from the picture. The final ad#6 contains a large b/g picture, again left-aligned so that the gutter serves as the centre of the ads, of a young woman with short hair, a professional collar and a small ear-mounted rig, though one of lesser quality than the top ads, with an old-fashioned foam baffle on the mic. The only photo perspective that does not treat the page itself as built symmetrically from the gutter outward is the first, smallest ad.

Now let's take a look at the content of the ads, starting with the bottom line: the first ad is for research interviewers for a well-known polling firm. No wage is listed and the only skill required is "proficiency in computer keyboard usage". This ad speaks to the neophyte, the young person who has never done telemarketing but resists trying to sell stuff over the phone. The next ad is a sales ad but has the caption "Sports - Marketing - Sales" for a company that is "revolved around the sports industry [...] currently featured on ESPN.com" and the contact is a yahoo email address. The only skills required are "Sharp learning and listening skills". This ad is also geared to neophytes but clearly targets foolish young people with more interest in sports glamor than insight into what "featured on...com" means (it means they have an ad running there too). Ad #5 is the first ad to carry text in both French and English. Another research company, it is also the first to post concrete skills (type 30-40 wpm, bilingual)and the first to list renumeration ($9.25/hr plus incentives). Ad #6 goes further, seeking sales staff for a b2b sales centre with a guarantee of $14/hr plus commission and minimum 35 hrs per week. This ad, targeting experienced telemarketers, offers no email address, interview by appointment only, and uses insider jargon, mentioning that directory shooters are welcome (b2b centres targe businesses on behalf of other businesses and, while still a tough game, don't have the abysmal refusal rates that retail telemarketing suffers).

I focused on the bottom line of ads first because they are the first ads someone sees who might be looking for this kind of work. They are by far the largest on the page, laid out in a straight horizontal axis, left to right. The searcher's eye gravitates to the big pictures and carries across until an ad that matches his or her skill and interest level is found. Those experienced readers, once they have reached the end of the line will now double back to the start. The next largest ad, on the right page, will catch the returning eye. Ad #2 is directed specifically to experienced telemarketers: the copy notes that previous experience as b2b collectors is required. The numbers are a little shifty, offering up to $17/hr plus commissions for agents and states that a $4000/wk collection rate is attainable. Of course, that isn't actually income for the agents - that's the money they bring in for the company, from which they get a slice. For those pros who deem this a little bit to tough a game for perhaps misleading money, the eye continues to the first, smallest ad. This one simply states: "Hiring. Montreal's top shooters for the most lucrative B2B campaign in town. Minimum 3 years experience", with a phone number. This is the money pot for the veteran telesales agent. Very little fucking around, a direct shot for the career shooter (a directory shooter is one who has the toughness to cold call business listings). Many of the agents who call the company will likely know it already when they get the interview.

So. A couple of layers of reading. The layout of the ads, both internally and on the page according to the dictates of a back-paper classified section, offers a fairly comprehensive read for the discerning eye. The copy of the ads fills in context and collaborative detail. The paradox here is that there really isn't one. Reading text and reading the medium that employs it in this example doesn't actually employ a split in reading the way either Dudek or McLuhan would have you believe. You can read TV the same way. Ditto for the internet - likely the "hottest" medium around according to McLuhan's global village premise. Despite that, it may have the coldest read for no other reason than the overwhelming advantage it offers the individual user who, in Dudek's terms, can celebrate their individuality to an extraordinary degree. That advantage, being cheerfully pursued by what may actually be a majority of users, generates such a thick muting foam of static noise that nearly all of the content is lost.

More people will read those crappy telemarketing ads in the back pages of the Mirror than will read this blog. I fucking guarantee it. So the next time someone tells you that newspapers are dead - hell, the next time someone tells you that print is dead, point them to this blog and explain to them that we're still (really) a gen away from intelligent use of internet filters to remove the static and that the moment we reach that use as a general paradigm, the static will catch up and drown it out. Stay ahead of the crowd. Stay behind the crowd. Either way, as Dudek would heartily encourage you, avoid the crowd. It'll make a poet of you and THAT is the moment Dudek crowns McLuhan, though he generally failed to come right out and say it.

Tetherball

2008-05-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

I tie one end of the twine to you
the other to my sturdiest brown
belt then run away
bearing slightly to the left.

As i run i see the other poles
in the playground, their satellites
set to various speeds and distances.
Some change direction but that

usually knots the cord. Here and there
someone just hops in place. That's a strategy
but they don't seem to get very far.
When tired, they lean on the pole for support.

I run faster. If i strain enough
maybe the wire will stretch a little.

a poem by AM Klein

2008-05-17T14:06:00.000-07:00

Reading "the Rocking Chair" right now, seldom have i encountered a body of poems that hits the highlights and pitfalls of my desire in poetry so well. yes, write things if you like. search language. dream beyond sequence and imagine a home for real bodies - in hurt as well as celebration.

thot i would toss one up that made me very happy:

Commercial Bank

Flowering jungle where all fauna meet
crossing the marbled pool to thickets whence
the prompted parrots, alien-voiced, entreat
the kernel'd horde, the efflorescent pence, --

wondrous your caves, whose big doors must be rolled
for entrance, and whose flora none can seek
against the armed unicorn, furred blue and gold,
against the vines fatal, or the berries that touched, shriek.

How quiet is your shade with broad green leaves!
Yet is it jungle-quiet which deceives:
toothless, with drawn nails, the beasts paw your ground --
O, the fierce deaths expiring with no sound!

:0)
c

another killer drug

2008-05-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

by another leading multi-national pharmaceutical company:

Bayer anti-bleeding drug linked to 50 % higher death rate than alternatives

TORONTO - An expensive drug used to minimize severe bleeding during heart surgery actually significantly increased the risk that patients would die during surgery or in the 30 days following, a Canadian study comparing the drug to two far cheaper alternatives shows.

Called the BART trial, the study found people who received Trasylol or aprotinin (its generic name) were 53 per cent more likely to die than people who received the other anti-bleeding agents, tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid.

In absolute terms that means for every 100 patients who got aprotinin during high-risk cardiac surgery, six died. For every 100 patients getting tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid, four died, according to the study, published electronically on Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

"The risks of aprotinin are greater than its benefits," said Dr. Paul Hebert, a critical care doctor at the Ottawa Health Research Institute and one of the principal investigators in BART (short for Blood Conservation using Antifibrinolytics in a Randomized Trial).

"The two other drugs are safe alternatives."

Given the number of such surgeries performed around the world every year, the difference could translate into thousands of lives. It is estimated that roughly 250,000 high-risk cardiac surgeries are performed annually; use of one of the anti-bleeding agents in high-risk cardiac surgery is standard care, said Dr. David Mazer, one of the lead researchers.

"The BART study has changed the way heart surgery will be done in Canada and around the world," predicted Mazer, a cardiovascular anesthesiologist and critical care physician at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto.

Trasylol's manufacturer, Bayer HealthCare, suspended worldwide sales of the drug last November after Hebert and his research partners notified Health Canada and other international drug regulatory agencies that they were halting the BART trial.

The decision to end the trial early was made on the advice of an independent data safety monitoring board, which spotted the higher rates of death in the patients who received aprotinin.

Bayer has never said whether it plans to try to resuscitate aprotinin. And even with the release of the BART data, it is hedging its bets.

"Bayer will continue to carefully review this article, the editorial and (when available) the underlying data on which the authors have based their conclusions and continue to discuss both the restricted access programs for Trasylol and the worldwide temporary marketing suspension of the drug with regulatory authorities," the company said in a prepared statement.

"When further conclusions are reached, Bayer will communicate publicly."

But an editorial in the journal predicted the drug is done.

"In all likelihood this is the end of the aprotinin story," wrote Wayne Ray and Dr. Michael Stein of the Vanderbilt University Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics in Nashville, Tenn.

Aprotinin and the other anti-bleeding drugs have been used for years to try to lower the risk of major bleeding events during high-risk heart surgeries.

Cardiac surgeons and their teams are aggressive about trying to reduce the need for blood transfusions, said Dr. Martin London, an anesthesiologist who specializes in cardiovascular surgeries at the University of California, San Francisco.

"Bleeding in cardiac surgery has profound consequences and can cause mortality both acutely and then later on," London explained. "We've got plenty of observational data that suggests that the more blood you got during surgery the worse your outcome is long-term."

Over time it seemed aprotinin was more effective than the other two and Bayer marketed it aggressively, London said.

The drug cost substantially more than the alternatives. During the course of the study, aprotinin cost between $1,200 and $1,500 per patient, compared to about $150 per patient for tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid. In places where aminocaproic acid is made - it is not made in Canada - that cost could be less than $4 per surgery, the study noted.

No head-to-head trial had been done on the effectiveness of the drugs. So, with funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Ontario's Ministry of Health and Long-term Care, Hebert and co-principal investigator Dr. Dean Fergusson of the Ottawa Health Research Institute started the BART trial.

"The Canadians stepped up to the plate in terms of doing the necessary randomized trials," said London, who was not involved in the study. "If the BART study hadn't been done, we probably would still be using aprotinin."

The original plan was to enrol 3,000 patients. At the time the enrolment was stopped, 2,331 patients had been randomly assigned to receive either aprotinin, tranexamic acid or aminocaproic acid during surgery.

Aprotinin did appear to be slightly more effective in preventing major bleeds. But that benefit was outweighed by the increased risk of death.

Hebert said the research doesn't show why deaths were higher among patients who got aprotinin, but the researchers believe the drug's apparent superiority at inducing clotting was both a positive and a negative in this setting.

"Our hypothesis at this point, although we can't prove it, we speculate that it worked a little bit better in preventing bleeding. It also worked a little bit better in causing clotting. And that's why a few more patients died."

the olive

2008-05-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

this poem grunts
as it shoves itself into you
it pushes your head down
and slaps your mouth open

your open mouth
stuffed wetly says
nothing this poem
slobbers on chins
into course hairs
that don't dye
like they should

this poem bent double
can lick its anus
breathe its breath
and dream of the
holes where seeds were

this poem squirts juices
when pressed it explains
consumption as wheezing
as though class
meant caste

this poem sears
other people's meat
seals in their flavours
under glass it can't be seen
for the other poems

Back it up at the Truck

2008-04-11T11:01:00.001-07:00

Old School: Back it up at the Truck

Don't miss Old School: Back it up at the Truck!

Featuring readings by: Brea Burton, Emily Cargan, Carmen Derkson, Jill Hartman, Natalie Simpson, Lindsay Tipping, and Julia Williams!

When: Saturday, April 19, 2008
Doors open at 7:00
Reading starts at 7:30

Where: The Truck Gallery
The Grain Exchange (Lower Level)
815 -1st Street SW

Cost: Free!

Licensed: Hell yeah!

Brea Burton would like to report she is saddened by the fact that she can no longer wear jeans and Converse runners with skulls on them to work. She has recently become a downtown lemming, a strange little animal that feeds mostly on chai lattes and stale Easter candy. Her cubicle is small and dimly lit but her heart is big and her spirit bright. Sometimes, she makes jokes about ergonomically correct staplers and cleans under her nails with misshapen paper clips.

Calgary-based Mary Emily Cargan is now under new ownership, following the successful take-over of MEC Enterprises Inc. (formally D-Ed) by Turfcutters International of London and New York. Activist shareholders supported Turfcutters’ hostile bid for MEC Ent., which had shown poor returns for quarters two and three of 2007 predicated on last year’s sharp drop in bog futures. Heavily invested in bog futures, Turfcutters’ take-over of MEC Ent., a specialty player in detritus distribution systems, promises to steadily return shares to their former market value. Investors have so far reacted favourably to the newly installed Board of Directors and their projected restructuring of the company.

Carmen Derkson writes nomadic poetry.

According to Canada Council guidelines, Jill Hartman is a mid-career-writer. Does that mean her career will be over in 5 more years? Aw, who’s she kidding, she’s been at it for at least ten now. A lot can happen in ten years. Or not. Well, here’s to the next ten—it’s all downhill from here. Or uphill. Or maybe this is her hump-year.

Lately, Natalie Simpson spends her days annoying the cat, completing the bar, writing about writing, sporadically blogging, and publishing chapbooks through edits all over press. Her previous accomplishments include poems in Post-Prairie, Shift & Switch, Queen Street Quarterly, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line, and filling Station. Her recent publications include accrete or crumble (LINEbooks 2006) and Dirty Work (aboveground press series #4).

Lindsay Tipping did a lot of writing in Calgary before running away to become a TV star, horoscope writer and music promoter in China. She has been published in filling station, dandelion, house press and various ESL textbooks across Asia. She lives in Toronto...for now. She likes messing with confessional literature. She like lies that are more fun than truth. She likes that place between story and reality where the reader starts to wonder, "Did Lindsay really stab some guy in the heart in a back alley?" Don't worry, she didn't stab anyone.

Julia Williams writes poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in The Capilano Review, The Literary Review of Canada, Matrix Magazine and CV2, and was selected for the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. Her first book of poetry, The Sink House, was published by Coach House Books in 2004. She lives in Calgary.

10 Interesting things about sex.

2008-04-11T10:54:00.000-07:00

10 things you don't know about sex

Wing Sze Tang reports.

Provided by FASHION Magazine

Email This Article IM This Article Print This Article

1: Ready, set, go—there’s nearly no difference in the amount of time it takes healthy men and women to reach peak sexual arousal: roughly 10 minutes.

2: One per cent of adults have zero interest in sex and have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all. Asexuality may be an under-the-radar sexual orientation, but researchers have only just begun to study it. On the other end of the rainbow, an estimated 3 to 6 per cent of the population have some form of sex addiction.

3: Straight, gay or flexible? Recent research suggests women may be “intrinsically bisexual,” and the higher their libido, the more they desire both sexes. In another study, the female subjects—whether they considered themselves straight or gay—were physically aroused by erotic films of both men and women. In contrast, the straight men were excited just by women, and the gay men only by men.

4: Canadian men have, on average, 23 sexual partners in total (notably more than the global average of 13), according to one recent worldwide survey. Their female counterparts reportedly have 10. The hitch? Number crunchers say the finding that men have substantially more bedmates on average than women is mathematically impossible.

5: Beyond its unsexy smell and taste, smoking appears to double a man’s risk of moderate or complete erectile dysfunction.

6: Once upon a time, doctors treated women suffering from “hysteria” by stimulating them to orgasm—a service dubbed “medical massage.” By the 1930s, it was abandoned in favour of psychotherapy.

7: Why do I bed thee? Let me count the ways. U.S. researchers who set out to catalogue all the reasons why humans have sex came up with 237 distinct ones. Among the top 10 motives, women and men had eight in common. A notable exception: “I realized I was in love” came in at number nine for women, but at number 17 for men.

8: Having sex regularly—at least once a week—may promote fertility in women by regulating hormones and menstrual patterns.

9: Male sweat contains androstadienone, a compound that enhances mood and sexual arousal in women. Alas, it also boosts levels of stress hormones. The chemical has been used as an ingredient in men’s fragrances.

10: What’s love got to do with it? Sexual arousal and romantic love activate quite distinct areas of the brain—and love is clearly the more powerful. The latter turns on dopamine-rich regions linked with motivation, and falling in love is not unlike the rush of taking cocaine, hence the addictiveness of a new crush, and the withdrawal-like symptoms of love lost.

10 Least Accurate Movies - lifted from yahoo movies

2008-03-23T06:53:00.000-07:00

10,000 B.C.
Director Roland Emmerich is usually a stickler for realism (see: sending a computer virus via Macintosh to aliens in Independence Day). So we hate to inform him that woolly mammoths were not, in fact, used to build pyramids. Heck, woolly mammoths weren't even found in the desert. They wouldn't need to be woolly if that were the case. And there weren't any pyramids in Egypt until 2,500 B.C or so.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Gladiator
Emperor Commodus was not the sniveling sister-obsessed creep portrayed in the movie. A violent alcoholic, sure, but not so whiny. He ruled ably for over a decade rather than ineptly for a couple months. He also didn't kill his father, Marcus Aurelius, who actually died of chickenpox. And instead of being killed in the gladiatorial arena, he was murdered in his bathtub.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
300
Though this paean to ancient moral codes and modern physical training is based on the real Battle of Thermopylae, the film takes many stylistic liberties. The most obvious one being Persian king Xerxes was not an 8-foot-tall Cirque du Soleil reject. The Spartan council was made up of men over the age of 60, with no one as young as Theron (played by 37-year-old Dominic West). And the warriors of Sparta went into battle wearing bronze armor, not just leather Speedos.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
The Last Samurai
The Japanese in the late 19th century did hire foreign advisers to modernize their army, but they were mostly French, not American. Ken Watanabe's character was based on the real Saigo Takamori who committed ritual suicide, or "seppuku," in defeat rather than in a volley of Gatling gun fire. Also, it's doubtful that a 40-something alcoholic Civil War vet, even one with great hair, would master the chopsticks much less the samurai sword.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Apocalypto
This one movie has given entire Anthropology departments migraines. Sure the Maya did have the odd human sacrifice but not to Kulkulkan, the Sun God, and only high-ranking captives taken in battle were killed. The conquistadors arriving at the end of the film made for unlikely saviors: an estimated 90% of indigenous American population was killed by smallpox from the infected Spanish pigs.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Memoirs of a Geisha
The geisha coming-of-age, called "mizuage," was really more of a makeover, where she changed her hairstyle and clothes. It didn't involve her getting... intimate with a client. In the climactic scene where Sayuri wows Gion patrons with her dancing prowess, her routine - which involves some platform shoes, fake snow, and a strobe light - seems more like a Studio 54 drag show than anything in pre-war Kyoto.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
Braveheart
Let's forget the fact that kilts weren't worn in Scotland until about 300 years after William Wallace's day and just do some simple math. According to the movie, Wallace's blue-eyed charm at the Battle of Falkirk was so overpowering, he seduced King Edward II's wife, Isabella of France, and the result of their affair was Edward III. But according to the history books, Isabella was three years old at the time of Falkirk, and Edward III was born seven years after Wallace died.
Movie Info | Production Photos
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
In 1585, when the movie takes place, Queen Elizabeth was 52 years old - Cate Blanchett was 36 when she shot the film - and was not being courted by suitors like Ivan the Terrible (who was dead by then). And though the movie has her rallying the troops at Tilbury astride a white steed in full armor with a sword, in fact she rode side saddle, carrying a baton. She was more of a regal majorette than Joan of Arc.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
The Patriot
Revolutionary War figure Francis "The Swamp Fox" Marion was the basis for Mel Gibson's character, but he wasn't the forward-thinking family man they show in the flick. He was a slave owner who didn't get married (to his cousin) until after the war was over. Historians also say that he actively persecuted and murdered native Cherokees. Plus, the thrilling Battle of Guilford Court House where he vanquishes his British nemesis? In reality, the Americans lost that one.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos
2001: A Space Odyssey
According to this film, in year 2001 we would have had manned voyages to Jupiter, a battle of wits with a sentient computer, and a quantum leap in human evolution. Instead we got the Mir Space Station falling from the sky, Windows XP, and Freddy Got Fingered. Apparently the lesson here is that sometimes it's better when the movies get the facts all wrong.
Movie Info | Trailers & Clips | Production Photos

Concordia Grad Colloquium and Readings

2008-03-20T16:16:00.001-07:00

The Colloquium Committee proudly presents the sixth Annual Concordia Graduate Colloquium, "Anatomy of Passions."

The conference will take place on March 28 and March 29 in room H-762, and features graduate students from Concordia University and universities abroad. Please see the schedule below for more information.

We look forward to seeing you there,

English Graduate Colloquium Committee:
Bassel Atallah, Jennifer Baker, Jean-Francois Bernard, Lizzy Edwards, Megan Findlay, Caitlin Hartnett, Rachel Kyne, Jean-Marc Leblanc, Colin Martin, Valerie Medzalabanleth, Kathleen Ogden, Simon Reader, Katye Seip

------------------------------

----------------------------------------------------------------------

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY - DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
SIXTH ANNUAL GRADUATE COLLOQUIUM

ANATOMY OF PASSIONS

FRIDAY MARCH 28th

All panels held in Room H-762 (Hall Building)

PANEL 1: PENNING PERVERSION 11:30am – 1:00pm
Chair: Colin Martin

Sarah Cochrane, (University of British Columbia)
Psychopathic Feeling: Representations of Affect and Abnormality in Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley

Mariiane Mays, (University of Manitoba)
Blood Runs Thicker Than Water: Perverse Humour(s) in Jean Stafford's The Mountain Lion

Holly Luhning, (University of Saskatchewan)
Humanization of the Rake: Eliza Haywood's Love in Excess

PANEL 2: INSIDE OUTSIDE UPSIDE DOWN 2:15pm – 3:30pm
Chair: Caitlin Hartnett

Philip Koch, (University of Manitoba)
Dark Matters: Architectural Resistances and the Productions of Space

David Rozon, (Concordia University)
Architectural Personalities: Deviance in Norman Mailer's The Armies of
the Night

Jennifer Baker, (Concordia University)
Small Sources of Power: 18th Century Service and the Economy of
Information

KEYNOTE LECTURE 4pm – 5pm

Professor Allan Pero (University of Western Ontario)
"A Corporal Radioscopy": Lacan, Badiou and Baroque Love

EVENING RECEPTION 8pm
Irish Embassy Pub & Grill—1234 rue Bishop

SATURDAY MARCH 29TH

All panels held in Room H-762

PANEL 3: EXECUTION OF FEELING 10:45am – 12:15pm
Chair: Kathleen Ogden

Stephanie Yorke, (University of New Brunswick)
Affect and Representation in Two Accounts of the Execution of Mary Stuart, or Mary Stuart: Beheaded, and Still Talking Out Both Sides of Her Mouth

Nathan Szymanski, (Concordia University)
Anti-Catharsis and the Passions in Marlowe's Edward II

Rachel Price, (Concordia University)
Stoic Agency in John Donne's View of Death

PANEL 4: MASSIVE MANIPULATIONS 1:45pm – 3:15pm
Chair: Jean-Francois Bernard

Kate Trebuss, (University of Toronto)
Ordering the Elements of Affect: The Language of the Passions in
Paradise Lost

Chris Dilworth, (University of Montreal)
Drives and Affect: Motivation in the Theories of Butler and Sedgwick

Colin Martin, (Concordia University)
When Logic Fails: Nationalism, Marxism and a Place for Poesy

PANEL 5: SHOCK THERAPY: READING, REACTING AND REINTERPRETING 3:30-5:00pm
Chair: Valerie Medzalabanleth

Tine Appelman, (Concordia University)
Samuel Pepys: "all alone, like a man out of the world

Natalie Huffels, (McGill University)
Tracing the History of Trauma in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White

Joan Wry, (McGill University)
Shelley's Mont Blanc: Romantic Affect and the Negative Sublime

THIRD ANNUAL YEAR END GRADUATE READING 8PM
Arts Café—201 Fairmount Ouest

micheal taussig notes

2008-03-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

rough notes from march 13/08 talk at concordia...my commentsandthoughts in italics

no mic, no shoes, no service. mike problems solved by using the mic rather than standing apart from it.

anthropology of estrangement, lives in roland barthes, the third meaning lives on in what we're to hear today - filtered by taussig sketch in his field notebook filled working in columbia, july 2000.

the sketch shows pictures of cars out of alignment with the ruled page and a picture of a woman stitching a man into what appears to be a sleeping bag. it appears to have been drawn by a child, though apparently filled in with no small effort using watercolour paints.

july, 2000 in Medellin, Columbia. people sleeping in traffic tunnel because it was warm in the tunnel (according to my driver). a woman sews a man into a white nylon bag in a world of four million homeless - an epidemic caused by paramilitary activity and cows. no man's land, they have no land - and in this country all want land because all want cattle. even the president is a noted cattleman who, like others of his class, owns paramilitary to drive people off the land, that they can avoid being taxed on their cattle.

nylon cocoon in freeway canyon, inches between the cars and the people. what moth will emerge? a movement of enclosure writ at many levels as "freedom" implies homeless, no place. how is meaning subverted through barthes? square it away and then refute your square, as he, a restless thinker, does.

stifling deadly enclosures as a safety. stillness on a freeway. criticism a failed enterprise from its beginning: gap between meaning and picture, we have a silly understanding of understanding. this a drawing from life, real, but he draws it, makes an image but we have a fuzzy understanding of how the pictures we leave in give meaning.

carnival => barthes => surreal => benjamin

image and language take precedence. can reality out strip surreality? how strange is this normal? to be surreal is to go back and forth on this threshold between sleeping and waking. the region from which the surreal precision of poetry reports.

i see a young man waiting at an intersection. when the light goes red, he enters traffic, juggling flaming sticks with incredible skill. he circulates the intersection, juggling traffic with aplomb. animated, he juggles the sullen dummies in the cars - the tabla rasa for his surreal poetry, the way Breton's paris must have appeared when he juggled them also: as though an atom bomb has fallen in a fiery apparition amongst the sluggards. surreal is urban, through barthes' third meaning.

the third meaning is an interrogative meaning, living in film cells (stills) or panels from comic books. the drawing a reservoir of meaning. the french government attempted to return a preserved tattooed Maori head to new zealand for proper burial. but the minister of culture deems that the head may not leave france because it is a work of art and it is owned by france and is therefore french art and this man's head and thirty others of his brothers and sisters are artistic things belonging to the french people.

the head is not a body part. as french art, photos may no longer be taken of the head. drawings are permitted, as in a court room. in court, drawings - perhaps due to their temporal duration - fail to harm the living sacrifice the way photographic simulacra do.

...a mystery...

does the drawing, in its stillness, enter the realm of the sacred? bataille suggests cave paintings came after the hunt - made in celebration of the deceased - rather than before the hunt as previously assumed. celebration of the living rather than supplication to the immaterial for success in killing. bataille opposes greed, insecurity, survival of the fittest in favour of a wasteful, celebratory general economy.

perhaps barthes' study of signs tells us nothing, merely intellectualizes the image and ignores its imagicity. the power of image imaginary. but not so imaginary as incredible and shocking. the image a way to absorb shock, to mediate: image magic and the need to mark coexist in the words (as in taussig's sketch, written before the sketch was made) i swear i saw this.

to swear is to stand outside truth in order to insure truth. Bush aides will not testify under oath in the scandal over illegal influence peddling in the american judiciary and the Gonzales placing. they refuse to swear. foul language that can hurt the object of the foul language if misdirected. to be under oath could mean to turn the direction of the curse upon one's self, if the truth were not adequately dispensed by oath-makers.

to witness is needed only when no court available: but to whom do you swear? trying to heal a 17 year old from sorcery, taussig sang as he had seen other healers sing: but he faltered, unable to conjure the spirits. he put in real people to his mind, he imaged those who could help him sing and his imaging was good. seeing cannot be separated from singing, touching, but they differ from speaking. he struggled to write (speak) in his field journal of this healing song - too many "you's" appeared in the audience. he refigures them as spirits and can write.

all writers (especially diarists) write to spirits. i swear i saw this (witness) summons spirits. this is sketchy and ridiculous, despite Writing and Witnessing. all in this room are potential shamans, of freeway and traffic tunnels in negative capability; that curious state of the mastery of non-mastery.

regarding Primo Levi: writing the experience of Auschwitz as a weekly factory report. a factory built while he worked as camp labour at Auschwitz. can you witness (critically) your own witnessing? Levi realizes he writes a bunch of literature. "may your house fall apart - the curse, by the witness feeling the shame the just man feels at another's crime. does this shame disqualify the witness? it was the witness who survived, despite being (often) the least worthy person:

"We who survived the Camps are not true witnesses [...] we are those who, through prevarication, skill or luck, never touched bottom. Those who have, and who have seen the face of the Gorgon, did not return, or returned wordless."

taussig, through Levi, disagrees that Auschwitz lies outside language. the weekly factory report provided in _if this is a man_ creates a magical armature.

the taussig drawing? does it have a sacred quality? stupendous normality is what triggers the stupendous abnormality. levi no game but that of benjamin's story teller. forsake narrative for the still shot. remove the image from its succession: that removal is what barthes calls filmic. time stands still and is radically reorganized. this tension compresses time into space. allegorical reasoning stacks in the image, still despite the time taken crafting image, reading image. this is the eye of the hurricane.

taussig now reenacts a reenactment of a healing by a shaman who demonstrates how to heal a child of the evil eye (fright). the child is measured, the string is folded. the child is measured on another axis - the discrepancy indicates the length of the child's fright.

because children can see the other world, the spirit world, they are open to fright. to heal fright close the gap (length of fright) between those worlds and this. the result is a loss of fear and a conflation of the worlds. a third meaning.

QandA

Q - what do you gain making spirits of real people?

A - i started wondering what purpose field notebook drawings serve. does skill matter when drawing feels necessary? as anthropologists, we rely on truth of witnessing, i want to investigate that. as to why call it sacred and the implied demeaning of subjects this process could entail, i don't think it's romanticizing or exploitive but an adjunct or approach/tack to true witnessing. i swear i saw this invokes an external authority to underscore truth-telling and why wouldn't i include this?

there is no place in our urban language today for the human-spirit circuit except in metaphor of poetry, but in these other societies it is a triangle: spirits of living, dead, absent - that our language short circuits and thus stops meaning from working.

Q - re: singing

A - an essential part (with hallucinogens) without words to differ from speaking, making the song sounds (recordings with a curing fan as syncopated percussion, always shifting rhythms) different than speaking, it channels spiritual in so much of divinity throughout the world, even in contemporary pop songs. though i'm a great believer in language (i think it'll always get you there) this shadow of language can add a depth to the meaning of what you witness.

thinking is saturated with imagery.

talking is saturated with imagery.

but not really imaginary. drawings like this ask how picture-bound language is and how we take that for granted or how sometimes (Plato) we intensely fear it. this fear continues today, especially film and popular culture, when in conflict with 'real learning' - that is so suspect of what happens in an experiential environment.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Jeff Healey - Look at Little Sister

2008-03-03T16:54:00.001-08:00

Hey Perry, here's one for you.

Jeff healey band

2008-03-03T16:49:00.001-08:00

...

john giorno

2008-02-26T18:10:00.000-08:00

feb 4/08

some notes from john giorno master class (a mishmash and hastily scribbled hash):

"i'm seventy years old...and i became a poet when i was fourteen...you're all poets or prose writers - there's no difference. i went to school in the 40's, the middle ages, when nothing had happened yet.

concerned poetry is 75 years behind every other art form...time to try something new."

Journal Poetry Systems - "the idea that you don't have to be the victim of publishers. use the technology, from records to phones and so forth...nothing happens by mistake"

i.e. dial a poem...now telephone hotlines for love and dating, viral and reaching into the other world.

"painting and sculpture imprisoned by money but poetry, being worthless, enters a golden age. poetry is wisdom: nothing->wisdom->sound->word (poem).

- a great poem is that which releases the wisdom in other people's mind. Buddhism not a religion (practiced by giorno) but a way to train the chaos of the mind, to distill its ability to achieve wisdom.

bryan gyson
william burroughs

their return to NYC changed his world (they hated Warhol, his previous circle)

"i abandoned the lyric (beats) and i abandoned modernism (NYC aesthetic) and i don't really know what i am doing. poetry in translation. making the 60 pp score for a publication fit a later mode."

the poetry (scores) of performance, mediated for publication in terms of the greater body of work.

silk screen versions of the poems in production

a lot of people who would have been poets, like patti smyth, wound up picking up a guitar (tom waits)

60's onward: a loving golden age of promiscuity. then aids hit, a total catastrophe. "it felt like we failed" back then a gay poet was gide or proust. "then i read Howl and it was like reading of my mind. warhol didn't have the guts: in art, being gay was the kiss of death."

importance of public arts funding for small presses: crucial for the golden age of poetry...until the days of the NEA-4 and the conservatives slowly crushed it. they fought. i continued making poetry. i'm glad they fought but that wasn't for me.

as regards community: "wonderful when you reach the moment of feedback, of performance, but i prefer to be alone when making my poems."

re: money: actually, poets never have been paid, even when they are commissioned, in any culture, ever. even the poet-lamas were some how poor lamas. hou have to decide to be always marginal. someone as famous as william burroughs in visual arts would command $3-5million per year. he had to work for every penny.

if you choose to be a poet, you choose because you can't choose any thing else. this is a life.

call for sumbit

2008-02-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

The University of Calgary's student newspaper, The Gauntlet, and the UofC's creative works magazine, NōD Magazine, are working together to publish a creative literary insert later this March.

Which means...

Open Call for creative submissions!

Interested? Or know someone who might be?
Submit to the Gauntlet via email to- gauntlet@ucalgary.ca.

Deadline: thurs. march15. 08.

Please include a few sentences of biographical information with your submission.
Submissions over 1500 words will not be considered.

One last reminder:
NōD will be accepting submissions for Issue 8 until March 1st. Issue 8 will be viral themed. We will consider creative work that is parasitic, replicative, or related to computer viruses, sickness or epidemics.

Quickly, spread the word!

Cheers,

Ian Kinney,
Editor, NōD

--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4

WJT Mitchell

2008-02-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

Jan 17.08

Talk on upcoming book, 9-11 to Abu Graib, War of Images: Cloning Terror.

what an extraordinary attendance. I feel guilty for having arrived in time to get a seat. especially now that all my profs are showing up to stand in a crowded room. 9-11 sure is popular. a speaker for the new centre for interdisciplinary studies at concordia. that's nice for them.

reading images as interplay of the visible and the readable. uses such terms as horrific. 9-11 "designed to produce an image to traumatize a nation". circumscribed within a master metaphor: the war on terror. a logical impossibility, given you can't wage war on a tactic.

the realization that such a war is futile will not mark its end: vietnam lasted four years after that moment was reached and there can be no closure to a war with no enemy. (note to self: read his 2004 book through benjamin) the mechanical image production replaced with biological, viral production capable of replicating itself and being endlessly cloned in digital production.

image 1: frontis (text only)
image 2: table of contents

clonophobia: the fear of the simulacrum. modeled on homophobia.

torture the evil twin of terrorism: those who practice it are terrorists.

the war is over: there are no weapons of mass destruction in iraq
there is no al queada in iraq
there is no freedom from torture being offered by america

the taliban destroying buddhas in afganistan:

images (iconography) destruction of images, must be seen as creative distruction. taliban used image as calendar poster. the iconographic gesture. americans reproduce this act in iraq, toppling statues of saddam - masquerade activity as spontaneous gesture by iraqi people.

the virtual memorial in place of inability to actually mourn: remember 2nd commandment: that of no graven image before god. was engraved as text, the longest commandment. tony mavrakos creates image of twin towers as the stones of the commandments. image no longer circulated online.

documentary: control room. regarding saddam pull-down.

saddam's dental exam: get inside the "head of state", reveal hidden secrets. appropriated quickly by internet cloning community. it took 60 years for iwo jima picture to be destabilized, 24 hours for the dental exam.

iraq never had a suicide bombing before invasion. now the bombers parade.

the wmd trucks, it turns out, where actually used to launch weather balloons. david reese (tom tomorrow) the new world of journalism.

'war on...' a metaphor for maximum effort, now made literal.

imagine a war on poverty where poor people get shot and bombed. oh wait. that's what actually happens.

the digital dinosaur: clone and terror, jurassic park. where dna and code overlap in cloning project. step forward, remember the after math of 9-11 and the efforts to find cellular matter of the dead to bury and mourn. those remains still highly toxic.
iRaq, blue version

iRaq, green version

iRaq, pink version

iRaq, yellow version

ask how much the insulated culture of the ipod contributes to the continual war on terror. enjoy listening to your itunes and ask how the invasion of iraq came to be.

benjamin's concern: the mass man and clone army. george lucas makes it happen.

terrorism the rubric of american foreign policy. domestic concern: stem cells and cloning. the debate over who clones what and how far continues to rage.

etymology: clone first meant the entire series, not the individual unit. clone as graven image.

al parker, gay superstar. simulates (clones) ideal hetero man. rugged and vigorous. cloning (as science) allows homosexual reproduction and men (real men) become irrelevant.

the abu ghraib archive (re: rockwell) finds the transference of lynching to abu ghraib from its normative black american association. shortages of everything at the prison except panties. those are sent by the pentagon to use as hoods on male moslem prisoners.

a few more things to consider: the claim by the jailers that they followed SOP (standard operating procedure). image carries two strands, the obscene (sexual) and the sacred (victim as christ) and the image of liberty as hooded, as clan.

osama as recruiter: purpose of 9-11 was to lure america into invading an arab country and alienating the arab world in all countries. it appears to have worked.

last note: john kerry chose not to bring up abu ghraib during the 2004 election. complicity is not partisan in america.

fS call for submissions

2008-02-19T15:12:00.000-08:00

Submit to filling Station

filling Station is a literary magazine based in Calgary, Alberta, that is dedicated to showcasing innovative poetry, fiction, drama, film and visual art, and to promotion local and international arts communities.

We are now accepting submissions for 2008. filling Station accepts poetry, visual art, fiction, drama, film, interviews and reviews.

Spring Issue (#42)Deadline: March 1st.

Summer Issue (#43) Deadline: June 1st. The release of this year's summer issue will coincide with the fourth annual Calgary Blow-Out! literary festival. Theme: Ugliness and Undesirability. If your work engages in any way with with the aesthetics and poetics of disgust, ugliness, and revulsion, please send in work for this issue.

Fall Issue (#44) Deadline: September 1st

Please visit http://www.fillingstation.ca for submission guidelines.

birthday in montreal

2007-12-30T10:02:00.000-08:00

been an interesting year. started as a flunky for the phone company. turned that job in for one as a project manager at a marketing firm. wonderful job, really enjoyed it. left to abandon calgary and move with Ashleigh to montreal and attend grad school at concordia. a rougher go. i'm tiring of being poor and intellectual work in montreal pays half what one gets in calgary. and, contrary to popular belief, living expenses are not lower here. prices are lower. taxes much higher. end result is no change but a lowered income. myth busted.

concordia is good - i've struggled to get back into a productive school pattern and spent two months trading illnesses with Ash but have had some scholastic success - namely the Wynne Francis award. the payment comes in at the end of january - not a moment too soon. ALIS cut $4k from my student loans so i don't actually have enough money to get through the year without that help.

i teach english part time. for a third what i would make in calgary. the ELS market is very big here and wages quite low. grill cooks in calgary make more than i do. the experience, i tell myself. do it for the experience. i like the job, so doing for the experience isn't that bad, even though prep work = doing it for the volunteer experience.

ran a record time this summer in the chinook half ironman. record for me, any way. but i had to swallow the $600 entry fee for ironman canada when the start dates at concordia conflicted with the race. recovered from a stress fracture in my femur to beat my brother at the chicago marathon during a heat wave. someone died and 232 people were hospitalized but perry and i both managed to finish before they ran out of water and canceled the race.

housing prices in montreal nearly made it possible for Ash and i to buy a house this year. then it snowed (and i mean snowed) and the roof of the house started leaking. we'll hold off on buying it for the time being.

i'm 34 now. mid thirties. i don't think of 34 year-olds as young people. i guess i had better start since i'm not prepared to think of myself as middle aged. Ash is out of town until tomorrow. i feel lonely. that's new. i guess i'm not such an old dog after all, if i'm still learning new tricks. i wonder sometimes what it was like for my dad, living alone in BC after my parents separated. girlfriends came and went but i imagine he spent a fair bit of time flying solo, right about the age i'm sitting at now.

i never thought that sort of thing would matter to me. being alone. another new trick, or at least a variation. i don't want to be alone. i.i.i. i write that letter far too often. try it this way: solitude is over-rated. and i (dammit!) for one am not more productive in it. three weeks in an empty house have taught me that much at least. time to go to the gym. endorphins help.

2007-11-04T10:49:00.000-08:00

These are Dick Cheney's labs, Jackson and Dave. Jackson is black and Dave is white. Jackson is an evil overlord and Dave is the savior of the world. Jackson shares a name with a black political adversary while Dave shares his moniker with the king of Israel.

The white house released these photos, probably thinking they would be seen as a cute, humanizing picture of the life of the American President, Vice. Tastes rather like another shot from the good ol' boy to the 90% of the world he continues to oppress.

Hey Dick. Nice arrogance, you fat bigot sociopath. Fuck off and die.

thus since august and the Dalai Lama

2007-10-30T17:25:00.001-07:00

Haven't apparently posted a blog since August. That's interesting, given all that has happened since. There was the epic cross-Canada journey with heater blazing amid reddened dachshund nipples (which ended in a rather now-living-in-Montreal sort of state). A Concordianism ensued amidst fevered sweating runs through Jarry Park. That of course culminated in the bus-ride of ought-seven and included a 30th Anniversary Chicago Marathon with all the dead and hospitalized persons such an event demands.

This weekend brought more, some of it in Ottawa. On Saturday, Ash, myself and some of her friends from Concordia drove there and on Saturday, shopping and drinking happened. I shopped for poets at the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair and found quite a few. The girls did other kinds of shopping and later the many of us drank - some with poets who continued to be shopped well into the evening. A boyfriend named Geoff joined us and on Sunday morning we ate breakfasts (after, of course, we got out of the prison which had housed us until that time).

Then we went to see his holiness the Dalai Lama at the Ottawa Civic Centre. Here's a synopsis of the event and what was said (please remember that this is a recollection based on hastily written notes):

An introduction by Mark Tewkesbury, following a video highlight reel of his gold medal victory in the Olympics. A winning essay read aloud by a high school student, who states that if we remove bias and corruption, we can all be members of one world-country. I don't at this moment miss my naivete.

A Tibetan opera singer/musician performs. Ethereal, beautiful music swallowed by the 18, 000 people in the audience. After his song he tells us that he loves his Tibetan music. And to tell us that if we also like his Tibetan music - he pauses slightly as he contemplates the crowd - to come visit him at his table. Mark takes a moment later to tell us that the musician's few hundred spectators who watched the rehearsal and sound check were the largest audience he had ever had.

Members of the Tibetan Cultural Association of Montreal come out next to dance in front of a mural of the Potala Palace. They represent different regions of Tibet in their clothes and dance, though they dance together to a single song, they sing together a single song as they circle and weave around a solitary flag-bearer.

With a Starbucks coffee (proudly served) and some stale nachos in my hands I join the crowd in greeting the Dalai Lama. Interestingly, the crowd does not applaud the announcement that the Dalai Lama is a Nobel Laureate but gives a standing ovation at the news that he was awarded an American Congressional Gold Medal of Honour. Or Honor, if you spell it south of the border.

He welcomes us to the hockey arena as an honourary member of our country - having received honourary Canadian citizenship in June during his last (unofficial) visit. The Canadian government can ignore Chinese trade threats now, since they're just welcoming (officially) another Canadian citizen. He chuckles gleefully as a cheer rises up - once more, the home team wins.

In the seats to my right, the Regional Dancers of the Tibetan Cultural Association of Montreal quietly take their seats and their babies; the seats become a pot of brightly coloured flowers cuddling little fuzzy bees as the Lama takes off his shoes, grins, wiggles into a comfortable lotus position on his regal chair and dons a cap with visor that he may better see the audience. He hopes (grinning still) that we are warmer than the frosty breeze that welcomed him off the plane this morning. He introduces his chat with a request that we seek to understand with care his meaning, rather than his words, as he grapples with (his not so very) broken English.

His message: he has nothing to offer us. He is no healer, only a simple monk. He himself strongly doubts the powers of healers. When his neck developed a terrible dry itch, he asked for a healer to prove such powers and heal it. None appeared - but a doctor gave him an ointment for it which worked quite nicely.

He likes comfort and says the silver lining to being a refugee is the reduced standing on formality. Once, in Mexico, he saw a Japanese minister stiffly attending upon his role as a leader, working his way through a rosary. The string for the rosary broke, scattering beads everywhere but the Japanese minister maintained his appearance of formal duty. The Dalai Lama claims that had his own string done such a thing he would have giggled for certain.

He says of George Bush (Jr.) that he loves the US President. That George is a lovely man, a very nice person who shares the Lama's dislike of unnecessary formality. But the Lama does have some reservations about Bush's policies. Regarding Iraq: the invasion and subsequent activity was not necessarily led with bad intent but the policy method was very unrealistic and has now worsened the problems there.

Everything is interconnected throughout the world - including the Tibet problem. One must know the causes of the past to find proper methods to solve problems in the present. Right now, problem solving methods among nations are still based on negative emotions such as hatred, anger, desire for revenge. These are the modern theology. To reduce man-made problems, more holistic views are required.

18th and 19th century nations were more self sufficient than nations today and their populations were much lower than now. The idea of national ideology was more relevant then than it is today. It is no longer applicable, resources are limited in many regions, the quality of life in many, perhaps most, places has dropped in recent years. Where a community in India of three thousand Tibetans had three thousand acres ten years ago, they are now ten thousand on the same three thousand acres. That is not sustainable. We ask for more land and resources for the people but the Indian people suffer the same problem. The many communities of nations should work together as one entity. Our approach to problems must become more realistic - our perceptions still remain limited to "old thinking" and we continue to exploit one another.

This causes war. That is clear-cut. But we have lost our demarcation and do not realize that destruction of any member of the world is a destruction of self. We must keep in mind the interest, the right, in the human family and learn compromise. This shall take serious effort. We must learn first Inner Disarmament and erase inner hatred and jealousy. This leads directly to External Disarmament and removal of attitude of aggression and removal of weapons, nuclear arms, step by step.

This process can be aided by Unified Force. Once nations such as Germany and France share an armed force, they will no longer have a conflict. North America, the US, Canada and Mexico, should also create such a unified force. Move the EU to Poland, put NATO in Moscow. In other words, nations should give their arms to their neighbors, their enemies, to care for and effort should be made to nurture Russia's democracy.

Some force will always be necessary: there will always be mischievous people. The main point is: war is out of date, it is obsolete. It is like hitting oneself in the leg. Rather than send young people who are restless at home to other countries to wage war in order to channel their energy, it is better to create "adversity" for energetic young people by sending them abroad to learn and find a sense of purpose, that they may become educated and bring new skills and ways of living back to their country. They will also bring the languages and tools of trade with them. I (the Lama) feel very useful. So should your young people go to other countries and serve them and find purpose.

In the USSR in 1979 I felt an aggression to attack among the people and some leaders manipulated that motivation. And today, for instance, I feel that distance-attitude in Iran. We need more effort to come in closer contact to them and not just governments but from all individuals. As one of your citizens (chuckle) I feel some right to interfere in your community.

A really important matter: in order to be happy, person and community, we need to put aside money matter and political issues. In both person and government we should endeavor to find friendship rather than merely the behavior of giving gifts.

When I get a medical checkup, whatever place that I am in, some doctors ask me how I feel. Some treat me as a machine, something to have an illness. Trust will lead to healing. That's why a placebo can work. If there is compassion and warm-heartedness between patient and physician, healing will improve. The doctor must empathize with the pain of the patient. This results not from knowledge but from warm-heartedness.

When our lives start, a mother's state of mind will impact the unborn child. How does a puppy with eyes not yet open find the mother's nipples? Without that trust and affection, growth cannot happen. In medical experiments, young rats separated from their mothers had lower neuron development than other young rats. My own mother was a very compassionate,
uneducated person. A very warm person, even when we were poor, she shared what we had with all people. So today, I serve with compassion.

When I was six or seven, learning Buddhism was no fun but even then I had compassion. I learned this from my mother, not from religion. We all come from mothers wombs: we all have the same potential for compassion. That is the secret to happiness and it will strengthen our immune systems. People who spend their lives in the compassionate service of others have more active brains and bodies than other people. Many scientists consider compassionate feeling important for health whether the person is a believer or an unbeliever. You should take care of your health.

Some get the misimpression that this is a religious matter. That is a mistake. Some think that compassionate service may be good for others but not for the self. That is also a mistake. Sometimes, when I smile, people feel nervous rather than happy. They wonder why I am smiling without a cause - they are suspicious and become more uncomfortable, though I smile with warm-heartedness. Therefore, practice of compassion helps the self first before it helps others. It gives you lower stress, better circulation, better health.

Studies have shown that people who communicate mostly with words "I" and "mine" have greater risk of heart attacks. This reflects their minds. They are self-separate. When you consider others, you interact, you reduce stress and anxiety. Essentially, we should know each other. It brings peace of mind. When people have anger, that negative-ness is 90% projection and that brings disaster. When you make important decisions, remain open and you will see reality more clearly.

Use your intelligence and combine it with warm-heartedness. You will become a good citizen of the world.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

During the question period...

My day starts at 3:30 am. I exercise meditate, jog, do yoga until about eight or 8:30. And of course, breakfast. My brother who sleeps in, when I tease him he teases me back by saying that I get up so early to eat extra breakfast! I do not eat dinner so breakfast is very important.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When considering any situation from a Buddhist perspective one cannot merely follow the words of another. Buddhist Science leads one to analyze reality of which, there are two branches: quantum physics, or the reality of particles and matter and inner science, the science of logic, reason and meditation upon phenomenology. Reality is understood through reason, not by listening to me, or to any Buddha. Reason is the ultimate instrument to know reality. When interpreting what a religion has to say about a circumstance, remember the scripture is not a literal lesson.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We do not seek to separate from China but to find common institutions and to be autonomous. The Chinese population in Tibet is now bigger than the Tibetan population, many of whom are no longer in

Tibet. In the long run, the Tibetan community is very small: to them I say please produce more children! (laughs) That should be our response to the family planning strategy.

Violence and non-violence are method. Most important is motivation and goal. Therefore some times violence can be useful, to stop harmful activities. The main difference is in motivation. But both are method and they will deliver your message. In Tibet, because we strictly stay non-violent, more Chinese now support us. If we became violent, that would be suicide.

The Tibetan people seek human harmony, religious harmony. I support the monks in Burma and hopefully some strong influence from China can save the monks from Tyranny.

Miss Lamp recommended by the Calgary Public Library

2007-08-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

A little news from the wire...

That's right! Chris Ewart's dazzling debut novel, Miss Lamp, about a lovely litigator who, among other things, really enjoys a properly made grilled cheese sandwich, is not just for people who buy books anymore.

The Calgary Public Library has made Miss Lamp one of its recommended titles for August 2007. We encourage readers in Calgary and outside it to take the CPL up on its suggestion.

Tri-Dicks

2007-07-24T11:43:00.000-07:00

So away from the office to go for a swim. Wonderful swim; I am (for me) slicing through the water like a hot knife on watermelon. THEN the tri-dicks arrive. They have four of the five lanes in the pool reserved for training. They number about twenty, about a dozen guys and the rest ladies.

I continue swimming, unconcerned and unaware; certain that my new speedo has gifted me super powers as I splash merrily along. A cluster of the biggest, least-clad male members of the group cluster in front of my lane (the remaining one of five, inhabited by myself and a couple of old Asian guys cheerfully frog-paddling), chatting in a semicircle - given the hand gestures (I hear nothing, being underwater) I assume they're talking about their abs and groins.

Then they hit the lane next to mine and proceed to hammer full-out, arms akimbo, warp speed. Nearly half the total group (I count seven during a breather and yes, they're all guys) take the lane next to mine and proceed to embarrass me with their wake. The remaining members scatter throughout the three lanes NOT next to me.

I'm sorry, did I pose a threat? Was I amusing to the "real swimmers"? Did they have some overwhelming need to put the poser in his place? Um yeah, I get it.

The tri-dicks: stubbled middle aged men with shaved legs who travel in packs and always park their exorbitantly expensive bikes next to the least pretty bike in the space. They wear matching jerseys and preface their conversations with "well, Cal says" and "have you tried" and "I really saw my time go down when I waxed my balls".

These spastic, inbred, bison-haunched leatherback ballcupping mouthbreathing droolers of impact-magazine-suggested-training-technique Coach-Cal-anus-sucking FUCKS make me retch on my cheap Louis Garneau's. Oh wait, no...effort and the determination to bitch slap members of Critical Speed do that.

Well listen up, you high-school football "glory day" jock dinosaurs: I'm walking away from a job you call a career to finish my manuscripts and read poetry. My tall, blonde, younger girlfriend is hot AND smart - and she pays her own rent (and may someday pay mine!). I've not only done Ironman, I quit the upcoming one because of a scheduling conflict. I founded a magazine. I can run your ass into the ground with a stress fracture in my femur, I know that shaving my legs does not make a bicycle go faster (it's all about the decals), I can make people laugh, cry and shout in under a minute, I've been a race announcer, radio personality, television writer, corporate sales manager, publisher, award winning IR project manager, lover, hater, traveler, teacher, learner...and I'm still seven years away from going to work for a living. My next book should be out some time next year.

So the next time you drop six grand on a bicycle and bitch about your boring job that you can't afford to walk away from, remember: some of us have chest hair (and the women in the far lane were swimming faster than any of us).

A Brief Note About Failure

2007-07-18T12:26:00.000-07:00

A brief note about failure.

On Sunday I grabbed my bike and went hill climbing. Nothing crazy; the hill I was doing laps on is less than 2k in length and never exceeds a six or seven percent grade. By the time I started my fourth lap, the burning in my thigh was excruciating and I pulled out halfway to ride flatland for a while before heading home.

On Sunday night I decided to pull out of Ironman Canada. My swim is strong (for me) but both my ride and run are well below what I hoped for despite the hamstring injury and the stress fracture in my opposing femur. The injuries have cut my training time and intensity and drastically reduced the strength with which I can push on hills and in the kick.

Ironman’s schedule, like so many of my usual races this year, directly conflicts with more important events and, given the possibility of seriously worsening my injuries, it really only makes sense that I withdraw and focus on the impending move to Montreal and Grad School.

Right?

I enjoy calling myself a triathlete. I enjoy being an “ironman”. I enjoy it so much I’ve let my writing wither, sacrificed time with my partner, ignored my friends and spent all the money I need to live on while I pursue my writing career. That’s unhealthy ego and I really don’t regret pulling out. It’s a long time coming and I’ve had a lot of trouble motivating myself to train this year.

But I’m quitting one of those rare things that makes me different and, in my eyes, special. There’s no good reason for doing it – it wouldn’t have been my first and may not even have been my fastest – but I’m a little less me, now. And that…that’s too bad.

Enough of the pity party. Bleagh. Tastes like shit.

Fest Thought Express

2007-07-16T09:52:00.000-07:00

Stampede is over and you are wondering what to do this weekend. Why not experience something different? Come see the wide variety of culture that Calgary has to offer. Calgary isn't just "cowtown" anymore.

Thought Express is an artist run company focused on bringing like-minded artists of different mediums together through collaboration and community. An artist run, performance company, that has been hosting monthly events since its inception in the spring of 2006. Thought Express showcases a variety of crafts and each of our shows is influenced by the cabaret style of performance. Within any given event, the audience would be prevy to a varied program of performances and in some cases a collaboration of mixed mediums. Having poets, dancers and the visual arts collaborate on a single piece is a common feature at a Thought Express event.

This summer we are proud to be hosting the first four-day festival in the downtown core. Highlights include Ken Swift (Dance) from New York and Members from the Canadian National Slam Poetry Champions. Below is a breakdown our events. Please take the time to come and support your local artists. Come to the Auburn on Friday Night to witness a true Thought Express event. The purpose of Thought Express is to encourage multi-disciplinary collaboration between artists. This sense of community enables our performance company to flourish and sustain itself within a growing market like that of our city. Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are the three major cities in Canada. This is usually the common census of all Canadians. The argument begins when Canadians are asked which city is fourth on the list of major Canadian cities.Ottawa, Quebec City, Calgary, Winnipeg, St.Johns, Victoria or...Edmonton? I am excited to be in Calgary and know that in the coming years, this city will be recognized as a world class city. I see this festival as an integral part of Calgary's progression and predict in the years to come that music, culture and art will help define this.

July 19th Event #1 Thursday night at the Well

Music by Roofeo and Mama Miche

Introduction to the festival. Volunteer party and Media Releases.

DKenvy and SHE lingerie

Art by Sonia Rakchaev and Photo by Heather Saitz

free event

July 20th Event#2

Fri july 20th at the auburn $10

Music by Roofeo and Rocky the Vinyl Idol

Lady Mot, Brian Batista, Shone Abot, sabo, Swallow a Bicycle Performance Co-Op, Oroonamamu, Jocelyn Grosse, Micah Stone,

Dance by Jaimie Marr, Ed Mitchell, Latin Corner, One Circle, Ken Swift, Cuban Casino,

Literature provided by Oxfam

July 21st/22nd Event #3

Saturday/Sunday afternoon at Eau claire market

Get Down 2007 Dance Workshops and Capoiera Gingativa

Indoor and outdoor showcases

Ken Swift and the Seven Gems

July 21st Event #4 at the Broken City

Spoken Word in conjunction with afternoon jazz jam 3-7

readings by Vancouver Poetry Slam, Sean McGarragle, Magpie Ulysses,Fernando Raguero, Chris Gilpin , Christain Bok, Jesse Switzer, Emily Elder

free event

July 21st Event #5 at the Broken City

Saturday night at 8pm. $5

Readings by James Dangerous, Melanie Haywood, Moe Clark, Sean McGarragle, Magpie Ulysses, Fernando Raguero, Chris Gilpin

Dance by Wilson Dance Projects, Ken Swift, Full Flava ,Triple7movement, Capoeira Gingativa

July 22nd Event #6 Sun and Salsa Kensington and the Latino Festival Olympic Plaza

Sunday afternoon

free

Come visit the Thought Express

Dance includes Latin Corner, One Circle,Cuban Casino

July 22nd Event #7 at the Tequila NiteClub

Sunday Evening $22

Music by Del tha Funky Homosapien, Grand Analog, Roofeo

Dance by Ken Swift, Latin Corner, Original Rudes,Aviva Fleising, Caroline Fraser, Wilsondanceprojects.

Readings by Wakefield Brewster and Sabo

seven songs

2007-05-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

A.Raw tagged me in her blog with a survey of seven songs in heavy rotation on my (mp3 player). One thing's sure, she lives a lot farther off the highway than I.

Hmm...here goes:

1: Fuck the System//System of a Down
2: Individual//Bad Religion
3: The Man Came Around//Johnny Cash
4: Big Lizard in My Backyard//Dead Milkmen
5: Freedom//Colin James
6: Right Hand Man//Joan Osborne
7: Black Curtains//Megadeth

If you see this, consider yourself tagged.

Of reversable belts and tire tubes

2007-05-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

Thursday was a hell of a day. It rained, I forgot my gaitors and my shoes and the feet in them got soaked on the way to and from work; it was cold, work was busy and I realized when I arrived at work that I had three client meetings scheduled and I had forgotten the belt to my pants.

The downside to not dressing at home.

At least the pants have a really high waist to 'em. Just call me poindexter. Or Woody - who, when I bemoaned my stupidity to him, pulled up his sweater, whipped off his belt and said "black or brown? hmmm...looks like brown". He then reversed the buckle from his black belt, whipped it to its brown nether region and handed it to me noting it was a good thing he wore a sweater that day.

Damn straight. Hell of a thing; thank you Woody.

On the way home, I stopped at the Chiropractor to have my hamstring stripped (if you know what I'm talking about, you KNOW what I'm talking about) loose from my sciatic nerve and swing by the pet food store to buy dog food. Yes; still raining and still cold.

The thing about rain is its adhesive quality. Small rocks, bits of glass, miscellaneous car parts; all remain glued to the road when your bike tire hits them. So rain inevitably leads to flat tires, as those little bits of debris fail to skitter loose when struck by bike tires. I was about 20 blocks from home when the back tire on my ten speed hissed flat. I had tools and a patch kit but no spare tube and patching road-tubes in the rain quickly illustrates its lubricating quality. Glue don't work in the wet, my friends. So, I wiped the water from my glasses and started jogging the bike home, cursing my darling baby's inability to drive the car to come pick my soggy ass up.

I was about six blocks from the house when an old pickup truck squealed to a halt on the far side of fourth street and an old flat-topped army drill sargeant of a man jumped out and hollared "need a TUBE?"

Dumbstruck, I nod...wondering what the hell he's talking about. Cognitive function had long since ceased at this point. He runs to the back of his pickup, opens the shell and rummages around in clinking bits for a moment or two. Then he comes running hell bent across the street and proudly hands me a Continental racing tube with a presta valve: the exact match for the tube currently lying flaccid in my back tire. He glances at my bike, notes the lack of quick-releases and barks: got a wrench. I nod yes. Hands me the tube - presta valve, remember, and barks again: got a REAL pump? I'm good now, in the conversation. I smile and nod once more. He nods back, turns around and marches back to his pickup. Tires squeal and he's gone.

I've been saved by the bike tube fairy. And he has a buzz cut and a whole lot of wrinkles.

My first thought is to get the bike home and fix it in the warm and dry. But no - you don't repay the bike fairy with that kind of pansy ingratitude. So I pulled out my tools and stripped 'er down on the spot, ignoring the (very wet, very large) dog poop I had apparently stepped in when I pulled off the sidewalk. My old Apollo isn't the easiest bike to change tubes on but I managed to get the job done before my fingers went completely numb and had the pride of riding my bike up to the front door.

Did 'er right; just the way the bike fairy would have wanted. You ride in crappy weather, be prepared to fix yer fricking bike in it too.

Day was a lot better after that - there are some great people out there and I look forward to paying some of that forward. Better start packing some extra tubes.

The Godfather is dead; long live the King.

2007-05-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

When James Brown died on Christmas morning I was heartbroken. That heartbreak intensified when my brother called in tears that afternoon to tell me that my Christmas present was two tickets for us to see the Godfather of Soul on January 10th.

Against much misgiving, he returned the tickets to ticketmaster for a refund - they're likely in the pocket of some employee now and waiting for their highly inflated emergence on Ebay. But he did it, assuring me that he would find a way to come up with something as cool.

Boy, did he ever.

BB King still has it. He barely walks; he performs the show slouched into a rickety little chair and his band aren't much younger than he. But the music is relentless; the emotional rollercoaster exciting and loaded with thrills, not least of which are BB King's voice, which hasn't ebbed a moment in all these years of using it and of course, Lucille. He still plays her sweet.

Yes, he brought out the hits in a show that was designed as a conversation between BB and his fans. He also brought out the chops, repeatedly showcasing the "young men" in his band (I'd put their average age around 60). He waxed nostalgic about growing up in the cotton fields of the south during the age of segregation - "one one side of the tracks was us. on the other side, all of y'all. on the other side were two fountains. one said 'colored'. the other was labeled 'white'. at night, when i had a beer and a half in me, i would sneak across the tracks and drink some of that white water. funny, it didn't taste no different. didn't even look different"..."sometimes, in july or august, which were the truly hot time down in mississippi, i would be plowing the cotton with the mule, big ben. he was a good mule, very kindly, very considerate. on a really hot 'un, when the air wasn't stirring at all, he'd be so kind as to give me a little wind to cool me down. that's a good mule".

Lots of talk, lots of play and a whole lot of seated-down dancing that repeatedly brought home to the audience that this showman is a far cry from finished putting on the show.

Thank you Graham; the concert was absolutely awesome.

a voice into space

2007-04-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

I've had this blog a couple of years now. I post from time to time. I also have a mySpace blog, where I post from time to time. I've had that some time less than this. Largely, I've used this space as the place where I post updates on me, on my life, that sort of thing. These days, I guess it gets funneled to my facebook profile. None of this is really new. I had a Bolt profile once upon a time. Pyroto Mountain - few of you likely to have been part of that but I was on it for a couple of years. Bulletin boards before that; before the term blog ever came into being.

I largely keep the impetus of the two blogs apart. Here, I post some semblance of Colin. On mySpace, I promote the culture events I take part in. In a couple of years, some 600 people have bothered to look at this blog; several thousand have read the other. I wish my life was more interesting than my lifestyle, but a lot more people take part in a lifestyle, I suppose. Whatever. I cheat all of you by writing the shit that really hurts or joys in a journal. Yes, paper. So it doesn't really matter what you read here because, really, it all is for show. It couldn't be any other way and I quite misunderstand those who fail to hold something out for the people who can touch their hands.

I've been writing most of the day today so I'm a little kvetchy right now. It takes a lot out of me, regardless of the type of material. Leaves me moody and unstable. Not really sure why. I certainly can't say it's a cathartic process, despite the avowals by others that nothing quite else can do.

Ash leaves for Victoria next week. I think that's good for all of us. I can write and not have to worry about the bitch I'm being meanwhile. She gets to hang out in Tofino with her best friend. The dog will stress out and behave remarkably well for a while.

Her dad is sicker than hoped. The lymphoma is in his bone marrow and the form has no cure. It can be managed. He's home with a cold right now and she respects it when he says he doesn't feel like having company. I...have a tough time with that. He shouldn't protect her from the bad things that happen anymore; it's time for him to understand that he needs to share those burdens; that she needs to be a part of his sickness as well as part of his healing process. The one doesn't work without the other.

Sometimes, when mom was in the hospital for long stays, I would climb into her cage and nap beside her. She smelled like formaldehyde. Her skin was tacky and her hair, when she had some, was lank and damp. Those naps were highlight moments for both of us. I wouldn't trade them for anything. We can't all be strong all the time. Even moms and dads.

I suppose there's a lot more I could say right now. I'll hold out a while longer.

bionic superdads

2007-03-31T09:52:00.000-07:00

been an upheaving time for the fathers of the Love Shack residents...

mines' been doing stuff like this:

or this...

or lately, even this!

apparently we need to do a better job of beating the old man down. the flipside to this coin is that we still await the results of Ash's dad's biopsy from last week. that he has lymphoma, we know...but the type and extent are still unknown.

i do not share my parent's faith in storybook tales - the very concept strikes me as particularly asinine - but i'm a big believer in parents, in and of themselves.

so from me to Ash's dad...you're what i believe in, man. and i don't think that's a misplaced faith.

stupid young people

2007-02-16T11:13:00.000-08:00

My friend Billy came to me at work the other day with a shocking development contained in some massive tome with results from a comprehensive study of young people aged 15-25. The results of the study amazed the scientists and marketing people who ran the study: apparently young people are stupid. And ignorant. And sexist, racist, limited neo-conservatives with little ambition beyond getting a shitty job that requires little training so they can buy a house and raise broods of stupid children.

You see, Billy has ideals and she hasn't been paying attention to what the young people think because her gen-X children are neither stupid nor lazy. She therefore believes that her generation fought the good fight in the 60's and the 70's and made the world a better place to live; or at least presented a template outlining how the world can be made a better place. She can't believe today's young people have no interest in a better place; that they don't give two shits about the environment. That what they do give a shit about is culture garbage like IPODS and Hurley Jeans and Jessica Simpson.

What does she expect? The parents of these children are not permitted to physically punish them and compensate by rewarding them for increasingly negligible levels of good behavior. The kids have to do less and less to be rewarded and eventually get whatever they like by merely doing nothing - knowing full well that the threat of bad behavior is all they need. The teachers of these children cannot hold them back or fail them anymore for fear of applying negative stigma to their delicate constitutions during these all-important formative years.

The consequence? Lack of consequence. These kids do not fear failure because, in their coddled developmental environment, they have never failed at anything (even the video games have become easier; imagine a fifteen-year-old you know finishing "Metroid"), no matter how little effort they applied to any given task. When they hit adulthood and its requisite challenges they are poorly adapted to coping with the demands grownup tasks place upon them. They have not ever had to assume responsibility in the face of adversity.

Does this mean failure for our delicate sun-dappled flowers? Hardly. If they got into University (thanks, Sylvan Learning Centres!) under the lower entry requirements, they need only achieve a grade in their courses for the first year to cash in the RESPs their doting parents put away for them. Not a passing grade. A grade. After the first year, they don't even need to do that - they just have to register and need never attend another class to have their living expenses covered for the school year.

If they leave school for the work force they can now earn more money than their parents by driving a truck in the oilpatch or answering the line at the phone company, where there really is no requirement that they be nice to people they don't know. And the aging baby boomer generation, now that they have reformed the world (they believe) for the better, are looking for the door and their increasingly desperate exit strategy depends heavily on the soft shoulders of the "me generation" to take the workload. The boomers have reformed the workplace to provide a gentle, caring work environment for the youngsters where their well-being and general level of happiness becomes paramount. Espresso machines and comprehensive benefit packages to cover the wee-me's masseuse needs become standard renumeration. The lunchroom at Telus has leather couches, pool tables, foosball, HD TV, X-boxes and a stack of pc's so everone can check their hit-counters on MySpace during breaks. The wee-me's are made to feel important in even the most entry level jobs, where their appalling lack of competence makes them drains on corporate resources, rather than contributors.

It gets better. The environment? Fuck that. Parents who bemoan their kid's desensitivity to violence on TV and in video games only look at one side of the coin. In a world where the sweet young daisies will never be allowed to go hungry, homeless or shirtless (except at the beach, of course) they can no longer accurately separate want from need. Thanks to TV and the internet, they learned young how to interpret social code and that in a world where nobody needs anything, what matters is the strata into which they fit, according to that skewed social code. That means status and that means money. Cheap t-shirts by expensive designers confer that status. Remember Degrassi Jr. High? The kids were ugly, had spots on their faces and bad hair, and they dealt with shit like getting knocked up at 14 and racial profiling in adolescence. In the new Degrassi TNG, the kids are all uniformly hot, there's not a pimple among them and they spend most of their time stressing about who fucks whom and for what petty slight betrayal becomes justified. Marshall Mcluhan told you so: kids get the message. They don't listen to the script, they absorb its presentation. So when some pretty, spotless youth yammers at them about the environment, wearing Hurley Jeans and giving them websites to visit on their cell-phones, they tune out the speech (which might disturb their slovenly equilibrium) and focus on the presentation. They don't become so much de-sensitized as re-sensitized.

So what do they need? Moto-razrs, Ipods, Clearasil and clothes that push the fat around their stomachs up to their chests and into their pants without making them look like little Michelin boys and girls. And when they say they need these things, they're not kidding, pun aside. Employers will hire the ones that best look the part they apply for. Boyfriends and girlfriends are shopping for them right now on LavaLife and they damn well better look good at first sight because otherwise the first look will be the only one. And exercise is hard, so they'll likely need a little nip here and tuck there, because they eat like wee piggys and have the plump tummy rolls to prove it.

The best part is that they will likely never have to change. If they look the part, they will get the job - they need never get particularly good at doing it - and if shit goes wrong, they never need to take responsibility. They can sue someone, instead. They can (successfully) sue the restaurant for serving them hot coffee. They can (successfully) sue the bar for getting them impaired and leading them to the ruthless auto-slaughter of the neighbor's kids crossing the street. Our wee blossoms can (successfully) sue their mothers for not getting them orthodontics and chest implants, so they stand a better chance of "fitting in" and attracting mates and livelihoods. They can (successfully) sue the company when they get hurt while working without their safety equipment, they can (successfully) sue the car maker for not protecting them when they crashed without wearing a seatbelt, they can (successfully) sue artists and TV producers and movie makers and poets for disturbing their sensibilities.

Thus, they remain at the mercy of the marketing companies, who produced the TV shows they watched growing up, who find imaginitive solutions for helping them become exactly like each other and who train them to alienate any others who fail to assimilate correctly - the kids saw the after school specials and, rather than learn that hurting people who are different is wrong, they correctly learned to become the hurters and that punishing difference is proper protocol. These kids are sheep who have been told all their lives that they have a particular wolfish charm and, having been carefully maintained in their pens since birth, they remain simply too stupid to know better. They plug our classrooms and offices with their blissfully unaware "brilliance" and we're shocked to find out that our little treasures have rotted into trash.

That's a pretty general statement - I know many exceptions: for instance, you - if you managed to read through this much unrelieving text to the bottom, rest assured you're doing all right. No flash simulations or youTube videos to break up the nearly three minutes of monotony, here. Now go to work or to school and smack someone who's behaving like an ass - not the program-resistant ass; the making noise-without-meaning one. Then throw your Ipod in the trash, you fucking ass.

Artie Gold

2007-02-16T10:07:00.000-08:00

I like this poem - not my usual style but now that he's dead, we can support his work, right? Isn't that how it's supposed to go?

Don't Stop Clapping Till I'm Famous

It was the greatest poetry reading Canada ever had
AJM Smith was there with his Polaroid land camera
Earle Birney stood by the door flipping his lucky
both-sides-beaver nickel
The Governor-General smiled like a Parisian-born trick
you could hear everywhere hoofbeats of moose & windblown birch boughs
Everyone was related to everybody else.
Across the audience smiles broke like quebec bridges
I kept thinking the face on the very next guy to read was the
spitting image of an autumn-blown maple leaf atop Mount Royal
we threw the critics out early in the show
(they asked the poets the wrong kind of questions and we just knew
they'd leave early and cause trouble for us
/ at the banks)
famous people read aloud and no smart-asses coughed at crucial points
the concluding speech told you what the next fifty years of Canadian
poetry would be like, whereupon
All stood
And the flag
was raised & lowered by the unseen hands
of Robert Service's ghost who'd been with us since intermission.
I was proud
alka-seltzer-proud …

a patriot was stationed at each exit and it was the patriot's duty
to after each poet read / fling open the door to the subzero howling
winds which beat at all our faces and cold that turned the sweat on our
cheeks to icicles / while a sign was held up above the stage's dais which
read:
DON'T STOP CLAPPING FOR A MINUTE FOLKS
OR YOU'LL NEVER HOLD ANOTHER PENCIL BETWEEN
YOUR FROSTBITTEN FINGERS
- thank you
- merci

another day, more like a new one

2007-02-06T19:46:00.000-08:00

I went to Abbotsford last week to visit my dad for his birthday. Needed that. A lot. I thought I would cry like a baby when I saw him but honestly, he looks so much better and he's doing so well that all I could feel was happy. Maria and I went through some of the photos from the accident...the woman who called it in stayed throughout and took some pictures with her phone. As you can see from the last one, taken by Maria the following morning, there wasn't much left of the truck afterwards. At any rate, it was wonderful to see him, even if he does look like Frankenstein with the row of stitches running across his forehead - that scar will heal; many of the others already have.

I've started my new job at Merlin Edge - I work as an account executive now, putting together annual reports and such for our oil and gas clients. I love being in a self-motivated environment. Telus had some good people and the company tries quite hard to be a career path for its staff but the level of micromanagement they require just didn't make me happy. Now I micromanage; proofing and editing copy and layout. As my role expands in the next couple of months, I shall dramatically improve my skill set in publishing. A huge huge thing for me - I expect I'll be making books and other printed material of one kind or another for the rest of my life.

Meanwhile, I continue to try making friends of Jasmine and Shadow: the office cats.

In other news, Ash has been accepted into Concordia: one down, two to go (and two for me). An auspicious start. Hmmm....life in Montreal; heartbreaking prospect.

Now it's time for a rant. My topic today is Blogs and the apparent belief by web content providers that blogs constitute journalism. Get bent. When I go to my home page at Yahoo or Google or MSN, I expect properly researched articles written by people who have some kind of training or familiarity with the topics they write on. I do NOT think that news constitutes society gossip regarding Pickton, or the British Museum, or suicide bombers. A word to everyone who reads this: your opinion does not constitute news, journalism, or research. Your trite, poorly written, slang-ridden opine that Hilton and Moore should just, like, scrap it out has no fucking place as a cover story on my portal. My condemnation expands to include the pea-brained editorial staff who mistakenly believe I'm going to read that shit in that place. I come here for that, you dumb asses.

But don't feel bad, bloggers who think they're journalists...hearken to this little piece I found in the paper while visiting Abbotsford:

"Victoria kayaker's body found after search in canyon: It required nearly 24 hours, dozens of metres of rope, 14 rescuers and two devoted friends. But a search-and-rescue mission for a 36-year-old Victoria man still ended with a dead kayaker."

What a slap in the face to the friends and family of the man who died. The writer, Unnati Gandhi, in all his wry, cynical glory has dismissed this man as nothing more than meat, of interest only because of its packaging. He has ridiculed the efforts of the man's friends and the labours of the rescuers by saying they have no greater importance than rope. Post-modern sardonics have no place in this story: Mr Gandhi, you are not merely a bad writer, you are an asshole. Go to hell.

Darryl Janz once offered to pass me with a reasonable grade in Television Journalism at MRC on the condition that I never go into journalism. After all these years, I understand why. Until you know ,a little bit about suffering and humanity, you have no place reporting it to others. I took Darryl's advice and stayed out of journalism. I remain out and, given what passes for it these days, I wonder who else should have taken that course.

Take whatever you like from this blog. I don't call myself a journalist, even as I appropriate my father's experience as part of my online identity. That just makes me a blogger. I just wish others identified themselves a little more realistically.

PS, I really hate the way this fricking program randomly chooses what edits to accept. Nice interface. Enjoy the small text up top.

More Dad

2006-12-13T18:11:00.000-08:00

Dad says hi.

He's in Abbotsford now and while he'll likely be in hospital for a couple of months more, he's recovering well and has nearly become quick enough to beat my sister Kathleen to his desserts.

A lot of people have contacted me lately to share thoughts and feelings and support. If you place any worth in the adage "judge a man by his friends" all I can say is that I'm a god-damned rock star. To everyone who has called and emailed and written and visited in the last few weeks,

thank you.

We all thank you.

dad

2006-11-30T21:36:00.000-08:00

Ashleigh's dad took this pic of Graham, dad, and me at convocation, November 14/06. Ash and I got our BA's, Jeremy got his MA, Larissa her PhD, all super cool.

Dad could make it out because he has cashed out his RSP's and bought a couple of trucks: he's driving again for the first time in about 10 years. Or he was. On Sunday, driving through a blizzard on the Koke, another truck hit the brakes in front of him and he smashed into it. Three rolls of paper weighing 36 000 pounds went through the cab of his truck and deposited the upper half of it on top of the engine in the trailer of the other rig. Emergency crews took three and a half hours to cut him loose.

The impact snapped both of his legs, crushed his knees, and broke his pelvis in what they call a "suitcase fracture". He has two broken ribs and a broken cheekbone and he suffers a pretty thorough case of exposure.

No internal organs suffer damage. No major blood vessels burst - in fact, the doctors at the hospital in Merrit originally thought he just had a few bruises, despite the femur sticking out of his leg. After all, he kept walking on it.

The surgery in Kamloops on Monday to pin his leg and pelvic bones back together took six hours. The surgery on Wednesday to rebuild his knees took eight. The doctors say he'll make a full recovery and will likely be playing golf again next summer. When I spoke with him tonight he laughed and complained that the damage to his pelvis and soft tissue might hamper his love life a little for the next few months.

On November 14th my dad went out of his way to tell me how proud he is of me. Now, it's my turn. Who's the Ironman in this photo?

His name is Bill Martin. He's my dad and I'm damn proud of him. The thought of his broken body makes me shudder: fathers aren't supposed to break.

Turns out, dad hasn't.

The Chosen One

2006-10-31T16:32:00.000-08:00

My friends,

I have grave news for the writers, artists, movie-makers, and benevolent tyrants among us. The great one has arrived. His sense of humour is guaranteed, his prose inspiring and leavened by moral sensibility, his movies shall be superlative and his stewardship of North America and eventially the world will be mandated for the bettership of all. You can tell because he's from Halifax. Bask in the new leader. Go here. Now. He is destiny's hero. And a virgin.

In the Dark

2006-10-28T13:15:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

Just a quick note to let you know that the first batch of copies of In the Dark: Stories From the Supernatural has arrived and they look wonderful!

The anthology features, along with pieces from many other fantastic writers, an excerpt from my forthcoming novel Victor. Many of you at the NōD Magazine launch expressed interest in the book so here's how to get your hands on a copy:

1) You can order copies directly from me - they are $21.95 (trade paperback) plus $3.00 shipping, tax included. Yes, I will sign them, if requested.

2) You can order from the publisher, Tightrope Books or check out the list of Toronto booksellers currently carrying their titles here. This means tax but may be more convenient for those of you in the GMT area.

3) Copies of the book may also be purchased at Amazon.com The publishers don't make a lot of money this way but use whatever method of purchase is most convenient for you.

Feel free to spread the word to whomever you think would be interested in getting a copy of the book and I hope to hear back from lots and lots of you!

PS...Jason Christie's book of poetry, I Robot, has just been launched by Edge Books. It may be the best book of poetry you read this year. I highly recommend getting a copy.

The Last Supper

2006-10-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

Last night I was Judas Iscariot. No, I didn't betray my beloved brother, though he was maddingly obtuse as usual. The role of betrayer fell to Simon the Zealot (beware of zealots) while my girlfriend, Simon Peter, wound up writing the Revelations. Perhaps not surprisingly, I became a revisionist evengelist.

The premise, sitting around a large goblet of wine at the last supper, is to enjoy a meal with Christ the soon-to-be redeemer. The conversation, punctuated by revelations, or "ripples in the wine" shapes the desitiny of the apostles and their beliefs, resulting in a reshaping of the western world as Christianity forms beneath our tongues. The game is still in the development phase and we participated as a beta group at the behest of one of the religious study professors at the U of C, who is planning to present its use as a pedagogical tool at a conference in November.

The game has a lot of potential as a tool to relearn and re-imagine the tenets of Christianity and their later codification and as an intriguing world-building game for intelligent people who need not actually have a comprehensive knowledge of Christianity or even Judeaism. It does need streamlining; Christ as GM is an "anti-GM", he is deliberately vague and deals in parable and metaphor unlike your standard GM whose role is to crystalize meaning and environment. This puts a great deal of pressure on the imagination of the players and I think their characters need traits: beginning the free debate over supper would start more easily if the players had a starting ground with their own characters.

One of the players suggested that the game be removed from the specific setting of Christ's last supper and made into a more generic leader-and-followers model that could be liberally applied to any religious fundament. From the perspective of development of this game for market consumption, that may be a good idea, perhaps even a necessary one...but I heartily appreciated the specific opportunity to grill Christ on just what the hell his beliefs were anyway. Having said that, I think the desire to tackle Jesus would have characterized our group anyway...different groups would play vastly different games. This could be an excellent activity for Church groups, Seminarians, religioun students, intelligent groupings of people from many of the dominant faith backgrounds...I'd love to see what a group of Moslems would do with it.

The mission cards that Christ assigns to his followers at the end of their participation in the revelations are a great touch. The PC gets to choose what either their (future, after the supper) history will be...or what will be their fate. Christ supplies whichever one the player doesn't. I.e., during gameplay I had a revelation that a man who could not die would wander the desert forever, preaching to the sand until he lost the ability to speak. My fate as I related it at the end of my game was to live a great life, become renowned throughout the world in my lifetime, and reviled centuries after my death. Christ (very ably played by the Professor's husband who also teaches religious studies) related my history thus: I was the revisionist evangelist. My preachings and gospels brought many to the church and spread Christianity like wildfire. Everywhere I went, I was greeted with the News of the Lord and the redemption of the people. And the News steadily bore less resemblance to my gospels and the faith took on meanings I never intended and my efforts to stamp my own personality on the body of Christ echoed throughout the congregation as others followed my example. I will never die. I will never be believed again, as my context has been forgotten.

I played a lot of "ego" and "immanence" cards during my gameplay, when crafting my revelations. As you can see, in the hands of a clever Jesus, this really came back to bite me in the ass. The game was marvellous. I would play it again when the beta for a commercial version comes down the pipeline and if any of you folks out there are interested, let me know and I'll pass the info back down the grapevine to the designer who would likely be delighted to have a dedicated group of test subjects.

Some August for YouP

2006-09-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

The month ended with a bang. The sound of my head hitting an overhanging shelf at the Lazy Loaf and Kettle for the very last time. The bang was followed by a call to a friend with a sawsall and I sawed the shelf down and wrote a little note to my (former) co-workers. It didn't last an hour without someone editing the writing (loafiteers?) Since the restaurant wasn't about to give me a party (after seven years work) I shut the place down early and went drinking (the photo on the mug all too prophetic - time to hit the road). A few loafers showed up to get me going and the "gang" came en masse from the first night of the Calgary Blowout to help see me off and get ripped...

stone drunk is the only excuse I can possibly come up with for this embarassing little bit of sneakery my darling Ashleigh and her little dog committed upon my prostrate form.

Next day, Ashleigh and I hit the road for Penticton...Ironman weekend. No race for me this time around, but one has to be there in person to sign up for next year - the 25th anniversary race. We stopped to pick up our friend Cassidy's poodle...after all, travelling with a miniature dachshund can't possibly be manly enough (and I am one rugged motherfucker)...and hit the road.

After a spot of car trouble, we traded in the deSoto for something a little better on gas - a Dodge Caravan. I joke, but the minivan was actually better on gas than the "compact" Dodge Caliber that we rented for an earlier trip to Manitoba...basic common sense, really; you can't power a tracter with a lawnmower engine and expect it to be efficient. The upshot is that the Caliber is a piece of shit and the Caravan is a...minivan.
We stayed at the same Campground as last year and - for those interested - I've booked a site there for next year's race. If anyone wants to come out to cheer me on during the race, let me know and I'll add you to the list of folks who'll camp out with us...this pic shows a little taste of the view from our site. Next year's spot isn't right on the water but it's not bad...for the last availible spot at the campground. Our special secret place to stay has become a lot less secret. That and three RV lots have been closed down around Penticton to make room for condos...with another slated for closure this winter. The tourism board in the Okanagan better get off their asses if they still expect tourists. No place to stay=go somewhere else. Pretty basic.

I'm pretty fond of this particular sign...we managed to break every single one of the rules with our little party of women and girly-dogs (and me, now a gainfully employed union-member).

We managed to catch some of the race on Sunday; the swim start - a little smaller than last year's, only about 2350 swimmers - was crazy as usual and I was really impressed with the dedicated core of fans who stayed standing in the water for the 2:20 duration of the swim. Anyone who can't finish in that amount of time is disqualified from the race and given a DNF. There were two guys who were right on the bubble and the racer who made it in under the cutoff probably got the loudest support of any swimmer - including the world champion who was just one of several favorites to win this year's Ironman Canada.

Anyway, the guy who made it got the huge props - and you could see it help. When he heard the crowd screaming he hauled his fat ass out and sprinted through the time zone with less than 20 seconds to spare. His race continued (and I'll bet he rocked the bike) but the fellow right behind him didn't quite make it, though he sported a fine escort of kayaks and volunteers - the triathlon honour guard.

After the bikes started rolling out of town we went for a wander and killed the day roaming Penticton...and as anyone who's ever been foolish enough to disagree with me will attest, we found inviolate proof that Martin Street is a one-way. And that way is law; breaking it will cost you.

Before the race had even finished, racers had already begun camping in line to sign up for next year's race. You see, in order to sign up, you have to be present at 9:00 am the morning after the race - and next year's race is a very big deal. So, I had the joy of pitching my sleeping bag on the lawn (at 8pm, already three blocks from the entrance to the registration tent) and spending the night under the stars while the girls and dogs went back to tents and campfires.

Imagine my shock when the guy next to me turned and asked if I had brought him a Ginger Cream (a huge Lazy Loaf cookie). He was one of my regulars from the restaurant who'd moved to Vancouver a few weeks earlier and turned out to also be a triathlete. That place will haunt me til I rot into dirt. It was cool to see him - it meant I had someone to chat with and, later, someone to help me tackle the FUCKING FIREHOSE OF A SPRINKLER that went off at 1:00 completely soaking us all while we (briefly) slept. While I tried to fend the water off the line with my tiny, nearly flat air mattress, he and a couple of others jumped the sprinkler with a tent fly and some big rocks. We subdued it long enough for someone to find the shut-off valve and kill the water flow.

The night was much colder after that. But at least camping out was completely unnecessary. Turns out, since Ironman is expecting 3500+ athletes for next year, they've completely revamped their signup process. They had everyone processed by 11:00am - including the people who had a warm, sprinkler-free sleep and didn't bother to show up until 10:00. We're all delighted they finally got their system down.

After signup, I hopped into the minivan and returned to Calgary - the girls have a lakeside holiday planned but I had to start work at my new job on Tuesday. Yes, I work at Telus now. I'm back in the call centre. Yes it's as gay and culty as anyone would guess it to be...but they have a shower room in the parkade for cyclists and a deserted full-service gym availible 24-7. With training, writing, publishing, preparing for grad school, and making sure the rent gets paid, this job fits a whole lot of my bills. Job's a job and they were totally cool to hire me when they know I'm planning to leave in a year. Turns out, my training group are the first full-time CSR's they've ever hired. Crazy market in Calgary, man.

So...that's my last week, more or less...oh, except that I have a picture of Graham's naked ass and balls to post just as soon as I figure out what he did to my camera. Never bet against me over Winnipeg Jets trivia.

call for submissions

2006-08-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

NoD is ready to get back into action! He's had a pretty laid back summer, (and hopes you did too.) He's done a bit of traveling, blogging, relaxing and would now like to invite you all to submit to his fourth issue. NoD is quite excited to see all the amazing new work he knows you've been slaving over all summer.

The deadline for submissions for this issue will be September 20^th with the release and launch party around Halloween. Why is that you ask? Well, the theme for this next issue will be none other than 'paranormal phenomena'. You guessed it; we want rabid werewolves, hairy witches, gloating goblins, drunken UFO sightings, kleptomaniac ghosts, psychotic headless horsemen, undead murderers- I think you get the point-anything to do with the supernatural. Our mandate and submissions guideline is included below.

Looking forward to receiving your submissions,

Felicia Pacentrilli

PS- I will be taking over as editor of the mag and am excited for an awesome year! Hope to meet you all at the launch party, it's going to be killer! (sorry, couldn't resist)

Our mandate is to provide a nexus for creative communities in the literary and visual arts, on campus and off. To make a place where both new and experienced artists can publish and perform their work in a professional journal that encourages efforts to replace their creative boundaries.

The magazine is currently published as a 5x8 perfect bound codex on white stock with a glossy cover. Interior work is black and white.

Submission guidelines for poetry: 6-8 pages/poems. Electronic submissions are acceptable as attached files, preferably but not necessarily Word files, jpegs, or pdf's with a density of 300dpi or greater. For fiction/prose, submissions under 1500 words will be given preference; they may be complete pieces or self-contained excerpts from longer works. Hard copy submissions are acceptable provided they are print-ready. If you want them returned, please include a SASE and be aware that hard copy submissions may be defaced in the editorial process. Any work submitted in languages other than English must include an accurate English translation.

Visual work follows essentially the same guidelines: 6-8 pages worth of material max, 300 dpi resolution for e-files, SASE with hard copy. Please note, that while we endeavor to alter submissions as little as possible, some reformatting may be required to publish submitted works.

Any work accepted for publication will be published with a 3 line author/artist's biography and a contributor copy will be sent to the artist. Any work that is deemed hateful or hurtful will be refused: NoD Magazine has a strict fuck hate policy.

We publish 3 times a year: in fall, winter, and spring. Individual copies are $6, subscriptions (three issues) are $15, plus a $1.50 shipping charge per copy. To purchase issues, contact us here, email us at nodmagazine@gmail.com or mail a cheque/money order made out to ELSS (English Literature Student's Society) c/o department of English, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW , Calgary AB T2T 1N4.

a good day in comics

2006-08-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

This about sums it up...

Welcome to the new normal.

CV2 Call for submissions

2006-08-20T14:13:00.000-07:00

Hey kids --

CV2 magazine is trying to break out of their mold by putting together an issue of the kind of poetry they don't normally publish. The call for submissions is here:

WINTER 2007 -- CONTRA VERSE

What's your beef with today's poetry? Can't see yourself in the modern lyric tradition -- doing something completely new and different? Then tell CV2 where we can find you!

Deadline for submissions: October 15, 2006

If you are writing anything you think fits the bill, I would encourage you to submit. CV2 is a good magazine that is fairly open to submissions, but for a number of reasons, gets a fairly narrow range of material submitted to them, when they are potentially interested in a wider range of material. So, since they are making a concerted effort to seek out the kind of stuff they don't normally publish, I would encourage you to support them. Their website is http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca and you can find their guidelines there, but this call for submissions is, for some reason, not yet posted on their site.

If you live in Canada, they will accept e-mail submissions. Contact Clarise Foster at cv2@mts.net if you have questions -- but as I said, the submission guidelines are available online.

-- jonathan

On Father(s)

2006-07-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

I wonder sometimes about the impacts of Fathers, present or absent. My dad was in town a couple of weeks ago to help my brother move. I love my dad. It's good to see him. Playing the most storm-ridden, swamp-mosquito infested round of golf with him and his sister Janet, I marveled at the amount of self that my father and I have in common; how easy it is for us to get along and how frankly comfortable we are in each other's presence.

And yet.

My father was the last of my four "parents" to convert to Christianity. My mother was born again at the behest of her sisters, while she lay in a hospital with morphine coursing through her veins, desperate to believe that she was a good person. She was. But her illness, combined with personal distaste at trying to align her life with a belief system she had earlier rejected, turned her into a crotchety old bitch. She died while selling herself a faith she didn't buy.

Her husband James was devastated by her death. Not one to turn to drink or drugs and always a man of his word, James involved himself in the church, helping youth groups, volunteering time and labour to the creation of non-alcoholic night clubs where kids could dance and party sober. James' faith renewed his hope in the people who surround him. I can not and will not ever fault that.

My dad's wife Maria had surgery a couple of years ago. A massive benign cyst was removed from her body and she emerged convinced that she'd had a near-death experience and she went burnin' to the nearest church to become a believer. Maria is a wonderful woman but surgery is a work of human hands. Controlled and not miraculous. For a more complete understanding of near-death experiences, I suggest becoming a Calgary bike courier. There is no need for an afterlife: the great scam of Christianity has always been the myth of the soul and its continued existence after death. Christ was a helluva guy with some great advice about how to live here on earth. Learn from him on that. Cram heaven. Write a book. Have some kids. Set a world record in cheeseburger eating. Live your afterlife here on earth where you know you truly have some investment in your surroundings.

My father, perhaps in order to save his marriage, perhaps as a way of forming another business network, certainly because he managed to convince himself fully that it's a good idea, has joined his wife in the holier side of their matrimony by joining a particularly virulent and noxious brand of evangelical Christianity called the Victory Church. I used to play some of their sermons during my Sunday morning show on XL radio. They're nuts. Or would be, if they weren't so calculating in their methodology. Perhaps it's more accurate to say they sell nuts.

Seeing my father succumb in this way hurt a great deal more than I possibly could have expected. My dad was the rebel, the strong man who lived his life his way, told you how it was, and showed you how he thought it should be. Yeah, he was the black sheep. That was the measure of strength in his personality. He would tell anyone to fuck off if they weren't shooting straight with him. So, after decades of telling organized religion to pound it, my dad becomes a bible thumping preacher-type. After our round of golf, he hands me a book called "Wild at Heart"; a treatise on how to discover your masculinity within Christianity.

There are two things I have to say about that. The first, dad, is that you never lacked masculinity. I always saw you as a man who represented a masculine ideal of strength. Sure, that ideal is flawed, but the book offers no solutions to those flaws. Its premise and methodology is pedantic, trite, and obvious. And it remains flawed. Second; I have no trouble finding my manhood outside the strictures of the Christian church. My life and body have been consciously shaped and moulded by my will for the last six years. I have an honours degree in the field of my choice, a national award for my work in that field, and a thirteen hour Ironman under my belt. And here's a not-so-secret: anyone can do it, male or female. All it takes is the ability to place your faith in your self. That faith will bring others to you, people who have gifts to match yours and the will to use them.

Dad, your life has been an inspiration to me. You've always been the guy who's done it all and who, on many levels, drove me to do more for myself. You are no less present in my work than mom or my brothers or my lover. Sometimes that work takes the form of a rant. One of the reasons I love you is because I believe you understand that when I tell you how I feel, positive or negative, I'm telling you that you continue to matter; that you still have relevance in my life. So many parents of adult children don't.

Somehow this has become a personal address, rather than a third-person account. Perhaps you'll actually read it. You're welcome to comment, if you do...I don't share your faith but I still want to hear what you have to say, even if we disagree. Have a good week and know that I'm thinking of you as I write my next piece, or drive across the country, or smoke a bowl at a party with some friends, or ride my bicycle up the side of another mountain.

dandelion

2006-07-02T15:32:00.000-07:00

dandelion has a lot of hair
says his daddy lion beams pride
dandelion smiles and winks
such a pretty birdy
ants frolic in dandelion's
beard he roars roars - mewmew-
shakes his head of majesty

oh dandelion nestled into my bed
you snuggle among the ruddy
clover's roots woody grin in drowsy
where puppys pee good girl, good girl!
seed grassy carpet stain deep beneath
lap up morning's fresh towel shower,
baby jesus likes brisk running

dandelion clever babies tucked
into your toes peeping peep peep
tonight's knotty rustling burst
loose pop pop spread the marmalade
right to the edges savory drip drip
sometimes on the crust fingers
sticky dandy for breakfast

dandelion stoops and groans
oh woe heavy headed dandelion!
dust covers his bed burning
sere blanket muffles drooping
family. taking back brings home the
hoary dandelion thinks it's
too hot for this kind of work

dandelion should shut his
tufts of teeth breaking
like white puss snap snap
snap the satisfying crunch
of bitter sweet christians
dandelion's maw crumbles open
falls, serpentine leaves clutch
at my fucking covers

good bye dandelion,
come again real soon.

a moment of fricking silence please

2006-06-24T15:59:00.000-07:00

A marvelous one has been lost. My baby is gone from me. Olga died this spring and yesterday I sold her body to another man. In all fairness, she had been unwell for a while. I rode her hard, too hard, perhaps and she wasn't young any more.

When I first got Olga in 1997, her name was Shitbox because I had to replace her transmission less than a week after I bought her. Those fuckers at The Beetle Shop took the wreck of my 1973 super beetle for $400 and upsold me to a 1984 VW Karman Scirocco. She was beautiful then; her body was mint and the interior immaculate. I paid $2300 for a car that, unbeknownst to me, had a 4 day life span. When I tried to return the car, they told me to go fuck myself. When I threatened to sue them, they laughed and said "go right ahead". I didn't. I was weak. I satisfied myself with series of complaints to the BBB about their business practices. Every shitty little thing I could think of that they had done, (both with my Beetle previously and with the Scirocco) I filed an official complaint about. I contacted other people who'd been screwed by them. They and others did the same. After a couple of years, the bastards went out of business.

Of course, I still had to replace the transmission in the meantime. I cashed out my RSP's and spent the next 6 months returning to the transmission shop until they finally got the thing installed correctly. Lesson 1 learned: take VW's to someone who knows how to fucking fix them. It took three years and two exhaust systems for Shitbox to earn her new, more loving name. That car could drive sideways down a dirt road at 100km and never leave me feeling unsafe. She road on a rail; I have never had a car that was more fun to drive.

That fun came at a cost and VW's aren't cheap to fix. Parts are expensive, labour is worse. Northland once quoted me $1000 to replace an axle spindle. I found the part I needed on a GTI at Pick Your Part for $14. That and a case of beer to tempt Trevor to come over with his torque wrench got the job done. Lesson 2 learned: the people who know how to fix VW's will rip you off every fucking chance they get.

Eventually, I left my lucrative sales job and returned to school to refound my life. With the money for her upkeep gone, Olga started to fail. Never fond of the commuter lifestyle, she began to overheat in the summer; she lurched and complained when driven to get groceries and perform other housekeeping tasks. Only truly happy when she hit the open highway, she blew her catalytic converter and demanded a straight pipe in order to race with the other girls. Her skin began to sag and develop blemishes. My baby was getting old and worse, she began to stop caring. On long trips, her transmission began to fail; she could no longer keep up though she still got me and Ash to Winnipeg in February 04, Penticton in July 05: when the chips were down, she still did me proud. I am not ashamed to admit that I have a tear on my cheek as I write this. Fuck you. Fuck all of you. She was a good car.

In Feb, one of her CV joints imploded while I was driving to pick up copies of the second issue of NoD. Having spent all of my money on the magazine, I could no longer afford to fix her. When the registration sticker expired I parked her on my lawn. Last week, faced with a need to pay my bills and not enough money to pull off the month and still have water and power to the house I caved and put her up for sale on Ebay. Yesterday, her new owner came by the house and paid me cash to take her away. He loves Sciroccos, she will be his fourth and he hopes to give her a new life in her new home. He might as well have kicked me in the stomach.

I'm glad she's not going to the wreckers. Only once in 9 years did I ever see a Scirocco at the wrecking yard: it was stripped to the skeleton in less than a day. My darling Olga has been spared that fate and I'm sure she'll be very happy in her new home with her new man and his two sons who really seemed happy to meet her. He has a good job; he can do better for her than me. That's the important thing; I just need to keep reminding myself that this will be for the best; the best for Olga.

Take a moment and remember her with me: feel free to reminisce and share stories about Olga and her adventures. Join me as I wish her all the best in her...her new life.

Toronto part 3 the award

2006-06-12T10:48:00.000-07:00

All right, I've talked about the reading (amazing) and some of the stuff we saw in the city (damn, I really like Toronto) now it's time for a bit about the reason I went there in the first place. I won an award. Natalie Walschots, bless her werdnerdy soul, nominated me for the inaugural Outstanding Volunteer award from Magazines Canada. She told me nothing of this, so when I got the call from Barb at Mags Canada, I was completely shocked. Nat, you are an evil little sprite. :0)

The award has come with some ups and downs. Winning a national award right at the moment when I finish my degree and hit the job market - definitely an up. Having to skip convocation to attend kinda sucked and Caralee Hubbel's insistence that dANDylion will dictate how the $1000.00 in professional development money will be used; a major down and, as it turns out, completely inaccurate. dANDy has no say in how I dispense the award; the cheque is made out to me and is non-transferable. I just need to apply it to one of Mags' approved training programs, ie Magazines University or the Banff Centre, etc.

Mags Canada offered to pay for my ticket and put me up for the night of the awards ceremony. Fantastic. Would be a pretty lonely ceremony without Ash along so we had to front for the other plane ticket and an additional night at the Hilton (we got a group rate fortunately, thanks to Mags U for that). I had thought that I'd be a shoo-in as a rep for dANDylion at the Mags U, since my plane ticket and accomodations were already paid for but not the case. Turns out we could only send two people and Jonathan Ball and Jordan Nail are both good choices. Jordon wound up not being able to make it because of a death in his family - a horrible thing and horrible timing; I really hope dANDy makes up to him and sends him again next year.

At any rate, the ceremony was nice; we got to meet some cool people: Cindy from Burnt Toast who was accepting for Tony Fouhse, Melissa Edwards from 3Day Novel who adjuticated the very first draft of my book Victor, and the Sellwood brothers who introduced us to a number of people and later (I think it was Dan (?)) gave us a lift back to the hotel. I also got to meet Jon Spencer who's actually coming out to Calgary in a couple of weeks to revamp the circulation program for dANDylion; he's a cyclist, I'm hoping we can hit the trails while he's out here.

Here's a couple of pics:
This picture of me and the awarders causing trouble: the photographer wanted a nice straightforward shot and we were far too busy horsing around. Drove her nuts but hey, when you're charging $7.50 a glass for the wine, better be prepared to deal with some entertainment value.

The actual award: full credit to Mags Canada for the class they brought to the entire event. They put us up at the Hilton, hosted the event at The Old Mill; a truly lovely space in Etobicoke and gave out awards that didn't come from Bob's Plaque Shop. Engraved glass suits me just fine, thank you very much! We shared a table with Cindy from Burnt Toast and Colleen Seto from AMPA who mentioned that the amount of feedback from member mags for these awards was quite limited...next year, we'll have to fire it up; I can think of a couple of very worthy individuals I'd like to see up on that podium next year.

Another shot of the award, back at the hotel room. If anyone is interested in learning more about the winners and the awards, you can check out the press release at http://www.cmpa.ca/news.php?nID=275&cat=fp_news

I think this is a hell of a good idea; not just because I won it but because this enables the small mags who rely almost exclusively on the labour of their volunteers just to remain alive to reap a little of the glory and reward their best workers in ways that they could not otherwise afford.

This trip was a fantastic experience and I'll tell you something that has quietly imbued the whole experience for me: it doesn't matter how old you get, you still need shiny things to bring home and show your mom. My mom died years ago but nothing changes...it just means I take a little pride in myself on her behalf. A huge thank you to everyone who touched this trip somehow and made it a wonderful experience for Ash and I...you made my imaginary mom happy.

Toronto, part 2 the city

2006-06-11T13:04:00.000-07:00

While in TO, Ash and I decided to knock off some of the sights and sounds; we visited City/Much, the CBC buildings and, of course, the CN tower. The tower is actually pretty darn big...the highlight for us though was stopping by the University of Toronto campus...magnificent; we were thrilled to find a university like this in Canada. Granted, it's no Oxford but it wasn't bad, not bad at all...and the UofT remains a possibility for both of us in our graduate studies.
One of the first sights to greet us in Toronto...this is why I love the playoffs in Canadian hockey.

St. Andrews Cathedral, right across from the Hilton, where we were staying. Very Scottish and very Cathedral...I'm fascinated by how fascinated Ash was with this place; she's a Buddhist but still gets draw to any Scottish culture icon.

University College at the University of Toronto; built in 1859 as a government effort to prove that advanced education could be supported by the secular government without interference from religious bodies. I still feel the urge to call it Balliol, though of course it's about 600 years out of date. At the far left, a young couple are having professional photos of themselves taken in a small shrub; we visited during convocation and photographers snapping rich kids abounded like bunnies in the grass.

A picture of the CN Tower from the grounds in front of University College. Unlike Calgary, the tower stands alone so you can actually see it from a distance; it isn't dominated by corporate head offices extolling business over civic exhibition.

Glenn Gould patiently listens while Ash and I take turns talking his ear off. I have to say, his accomplishments as a musician and composer aside, he is also one hell of a conversationalist.

The old and the new...the first pic shows the old TO city hall...

and like the city of Calgary, right across the way is the new city hall. I wonder; do they still use the old building for municipal government or has it just become a culture site, like Calgary's? This shot comes from the City building...I suppose the point is that their news staff are always hot on the scene for a story...perhaps a little too hot, though the job they did making this look realistic is quite impressive.
I took some pics from the CN Tower; we got lucky, the visibility was fantastic that day. So the total height of the tower is some 550 metres. We were up about 330 metres of that total height, or about 120 stories. The Hilton, where we were staying, sits in the centre left of this photo. The Hilton, some 4 blocks away from the tower, is 32 stories high. Very cool...we could see well past Toronto and scope out the clusters of towers that marked the central districts of other "cities" from Etobicoke to York.

Of course, you can't do the tower without taking the requisite shot of the ground through the glass floor. I had hoped that the glass floor would be, in fact a glass floor - that would have been very cool. But no, it comprised a few glass panels embedded in the floor. Pretty boring, though still too much for some of the people who were there. Ash herself couldn't work up the courage to stand on it even though she weighs much less than 14 grown hippos.

Toronto part 1, the reading

2006-06-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

Ashleigh and I flew out this week to Toronto for the Volunteer Appreciation awards being presented by Magazines Canada. We spent three days there and the highlight of day one was indisputably the impromptu reading hosted by Angela Rawlings at the picnic table behind Coach House Books. In the words of John Barlow...
The movge., Gio you'd have loved tonight's reading,
the quick and graced Impromptu II, 15 people were there for an only 24 hour announced reading at the picnic table and a majority read and read well. even as the light eased off into night. Arranged by Angela to quickly have a reading with Kevin Hehir so briefly (fwd to him i never wrote down anywhere stable his email when it switched here from St John's, and Colin M(artin) from Calgary "lumpy onion monophony/blogspot" but all these other spectacular others also reading in wild assessment of reading order i'd say it went kevin colin camille greg lynne marianne then 2nd set myself reading all from rotundai read tim posgate's 1st 2 paragraphs re multidiscipline arts and uncreative, then harold rhenisch 11 streams of poetry (read as naturally and for intake as anything, streaming with thrill through the poem, such a great poem, then ross priddle's Civil - with a talk of ross's writing style then rose umbrella and many already knew the poem which felt entirely comfortable inside reading after introducing it with rose's many dimensions as a writer and mind - i say mind now but was saying mystic 'applied mystic in the most thorough way' all the while weaving a thread through the diffrent pieces qua genre politics, (calling my own preference the totalizing of all era and mode 'anything exposed to' and ended with curry's "night frieight" from the cover)
then who read next at that point,
the last readers -
conor green read jason christie's ataxis
and canada post with such perfect insight nifting out like a sewer the pacing, then aaron G read, then Angela read a translation of a japanese poet i didn't hear the name then went into lepidopterist, and for those who havent
witnessed the intensity of wind poetry that erupts from other poetry of which they are incapable, they'd realize the kind of power they're dealing with, but even as it was now night people's enthusiasm continued up with further readings additional readings from previous readers, and Conor inspired upon discovering read Kemeny Babineau's
kovalev story from the back cover with a gravity
that wrung, and i think the final poem read
was camille's reading of her leafblower poem
that is just referenced along the edge
of her page in rotunda, a one line poem
poem and title in one, which i felt my collage style would make hard to understand and see for a one line poem/title in one so just edged it framing other poems off the edge of the page
then people talked festively and as we had no washroom use the impulsive led the way to see the last few minutes of carolina's 5-0 win, from the ferret patio with a sharp tv facing out onto the patio under the moon conor reading kemeny and jason from rotunda over the other works from rotunda seriously seemed to delight and all households represented by the people present have a copy

such a great reading, & night,

more on all other threads another time

john.

The reading was wonderful, the result of the hockey game terrible but mollified by good company and conversation; the sort of night my grandfather would call a Fellowship with all the faith and gravy. We call our faith Language but it still needs good company; once again, thank you to Angela and all the Torontonians who helped us feel welcome.