file under: the end

before we fly off to our snowy vacationland in the southwest, i'd like to take this opportunity to share some favorite video flotsam discovered this year.

in no particular order, here are some things i liked:

1) presets ruling it [intentional pixelation fuckups! yes!!!]
2) junior lipsynca nationals
3) rap cat holds it down
4) trash talking chickens
5) too much genius from chappelle to handle
6) [plus 1 to grow on]
7) [and maybe a forgotten laff attack for good measure]


happy holidays! let's make 2007 fun, okay?

file under: lessons learned

it is entirely possible, without resorting to the time-honored technique of soiling oneself, for one person to stink up an entire emergency department.

file under: ballad of the drunk asshole in bed 17 (in 3 parts)

part i:

"i'm gonna piss myself! I'M GONNA PISS MYSELF!!! I'M GONNA PISS MYSELF!!!"

[15 minute intermission]

part ii:

"nurse! NURSE!! HEY, NURSE!!! NURSE!!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! FUCK YOU!!!! FUCK YOU!!!!"

[15 minute intermission]

part iii:

"we'll see if it's funny... when you die!!! WE'LL SEE IF IT'S FUNNY WHEN YOU DIE!!! WE'LL SEE IF IT'S FUNNY WHEN YOU DIE!!! WE'LL SEE IF IT'S FUNNY WHEN YOU DIE!!!"

[fin]

file under: not so frightful, to be honest

i used to work with marcus, a guy from barbados who told me i had problems in my body because i actually enjoyed cold weather. to him, cold basically meant anything less than 80 degrees farenheit, so i didn't really pay attention to his assessment of my wellbeing.

but it's basically true: i do indeed like cold weather. i'd rather freeze than melt any day of the week. moving further north therefore was not a problem at all. it was something to look forward to, in fact. it would be colder, for sure! and for more of the year!

thus, it is with a healthy portion of both confusion and disappointment that i relay the fact that toronto's weather of late has been downright balmy. what is up with that?

thanks to a handy new google sidebar N installed on the computer, i can see, at a quick glance, that the lows in ABQ have been consistently lower than the lows up here (despite the highs also being higher - much higher when the sun is out). i have twice now relished that moment when the temperatures equilibrate (around 1am or so last time, i think).

which is funny, because most people innocently assume new mexico to be like mexico in the weather department: a warm and sunny vacation getaway for snowbirds who can't hang. maybe with fruity drinks! with maybe a little montezuma's revenge thrown in as well.

for reals, though: my ass has been more frozen on more occassions in the 'burque (usually hoping to GOD the car warms up before i actually shiver myself to death) than anything i've experienced up here. yet. i don't think the 20 lbs. of extra blubber i'm packing these days accounts for my new tolerance to frostbite entirely.

file under: pie plates in bible times

it's always nice to see someone's new apartment, and have drinks 'n' snacks and converse on a variety of topics. and exchange gifts! and even see a bad movie featuring the host's father as an extra in a pub scene.

but what may have been most intriguing was the chatty digression that may have revealed the host's firm belief in alien life forms having visited mankind throughout history.

i would not have guessed that about SD, and i really like that he felt comfortable enough amongst friends to reveal that little tidbit. i'm not 100% sure he wasn't kidding, though.

file under: canada saves the future (again)

now, it's not exactly a singular event in history, but reading this article (even though it wasn't about my own hospital) was VERY ENCOURAGING.

(announced on another anniversary of some note, funnily enough)

file under: masks of beattie (like shocks of mighty)

it's been on several times, and even i can't believe that i often stop to watch it, but those homespun one-man teleplays performed by actor rod beattie (aired on the bravo channel) fascinate me.

to watch an aging, slightly bug-eyed yet undeniably sonorous man dressed in overalls slog through what often feels like a community theater project borders on that "unwatchable" flavor of pathos at times, but the solo performance aspect of it adds something just surreal enough to hook me eventually.

he plays old men! women! himself, even! sometimes he throws in a few vocalizations for the various animals down on the farm - cows, chickens, sheep. it's entrancing, and i don't even like rural tales! [a later thought: maybe it's another one of those minor forms of possession i like so much.]

i can't explain it. it basically makes me reconsider my dislike for hee-haw after all these years....

anyway, there's something vaguely cultish about watching wingfield, like it's mere presence on the screen opens doors that shouldn't really be opened by people who dwell in the daylight world.

file under: a felicidade

the highlight of the night, easily, was watching black orpheus while N worked on some stuff.

beautiful! and it reminded me of how hard i fell for samba a few years ago.

file under: the deep end

although i used to enjoy likening the cold blackness of deep water with outer space, over the last few years my thinking of such environs has made a turn towards something like dread.

it's not that i'm an awful swimmer or anything; i'm no spitz the second, for sure, but i'm not exactly afraid of drowning in a bathtub, either. i actually used to like public swimming pools - there was something comforting about the overwhelming presence of chlorine and the clear, clear water that i can't quite explain.

but natural bodies of water are another story. they freak me right the fuck out. i can't quite say why, but the thought of floating near the surface of some expanse with murky depths makes me want to, shall we say, lub the land. it doesn't really make sense, even to me.

within the last year or so, that dread has manifested a silver lining-like thrill of fascination in the form of tv shows about shipwrecks. my first real taste probably came with a documentary on the endurance, whose bleak story has literally caused me to lose some sleep on a few occassions.

after that, any coverage of divers flitting about graves of the sea could transfix me for hours.

thus, i was both thrilled and a bit nauseated to learn that a new, well-preserved relic has been found on the bottom of lake ontario, more than 60 meters underwater (shudder) with both masts still intact, rising "upward in the dark waters."

ack!

file under: hi-fiving la morenita

anyone festivating?

file under: a week with 2 mondays

it's occurring to me now that i haven't worked a double shift since i was a teenage busboy.

file under: the usual melodrama

yesterday my curiosity got the better of me. i found myself going to a matinee showing of apocalypto, after about 8 hours of deliberation on the ethics of such a move.

that's no joke, either. while at work, i spent a good amount of time thinking through whether or not it was acceptable to support a movie produced and directed by a religiously fanatical homophobic anti-semite, no matter how visually stunning the movie might be.

probably over a year ago, N and i had a very similar discussion in our kitchen concerning reggae performers. could we listen to buju banton with a clear conscious, for example? and if so, were we obligated to determine how other performers felt about gays? or women? or god? or the war in iraq? clearly, that very quickly becomes a ridiculously slippery slope that left us scratching our heads over where to draw the line on such things (open advocacy of hate notwithstanding, as "boom bye bye" helpfully illustrates).

we finally returned to that old, well-worn maxim - that artwork must be judged on its own merits, however morally relativist that may sound. how basic is that? it's application to possibly detestable artists is more involved than you might initially think, though.

and on this point, apocalypto might complicate mel's current status as sociopath du jour. the film turned out to be little more than an action movie, albeit set in a uniquely exotic time and place. yes, gibson does try to tie in the decadence and dissolution of the mayan culture with the state of affairs today, but any parallels he hoped to highlight only prove to muddle whatever statement he was trying to make with them. if we think of america today as the maya of yesterday, then whose sympathetic perspective are we watching this film from? the insurgents? is the film just a warning to our leaders about the history of empires? does that mean he's heralding the "new beginning" that christianity clearly represents in the timeframe of the movie at hand? does that mean that islamofascists will see this as an inspiring fable about the fall of the west? i doubt gibson intended that; whatever he did intend is equally unclear.

it makes one wonder whether all the leftover controversy stirred up from the passion of the christ was used to attract attention to an otherwise predictable movie. the only food for thought that apocalypto ultimately gives boils down to just that: whether or not gibson, who plays a good crazy person, would be savvy and manipulative enough to stir the entertainment pot so effectively.

file under: dream of oppressive weight

after lots of flitting, panoramic dreams of walking with N through massive apartment buildings, tying to decide which one we wanted to live in (probably inspired by a series of photos i ran across a few days ago of battleship island), i had a very short but disturbing dream just before waking up.

in this last dream, there is nothing to see - it's all black (i think i'm basically waking up). i know i'm in bed, sleeping face down. i have a very sudden memory of running after a red rubber ball as a baby (there is a photo of me, maybe 6 or 9 months old, holding the red ball that i'm dreaming about).

anyway, as i have this flash of past events, some unseen but very heavy thing sits on the edge of the bed next to me, its weight causing the mattress to dip downward severely. i try to roll over and sit up, but my body is essentially unresponsive. i try saying something to N, who is asleep beside me, but i can't get my mouth to form words. my brain is basically struggling against the dead weight of my body.

eventually, after long moments of focused effort, i'm able to sit up and grab a part of this amorphous thing that's next to me on the bed. i try to lean back and pull it down a bit, like a wrestling move, but it doesn't budge (too big, too heavy) and i think to myself, "what the hell is this thing?"

that's when i fully wake up. N is not, in fact, asleep beside me (she went out to run errands hours ago). there are no lights on in the apartment and it's completely dark (even though it's only 5:30pm or so - winter daylight!)

it's funny, because i ran across a website devoted to lucid dreaming earlier this morning. that feeling of trying to get my body to move is reminiscent of such things.

but the ominous feeling of that brief dream also reminded me of a recurring dream i used to have as a kid, where i'd be pinned against the ceiling of my room by something evil that i could not see. those dreams always scared me.

file under: way to go, brain (upcoming trip to ABQ edition)

while flipping past what looked like yet another city confidential episode, i just caught a slurred "-xico" from narrator paul winfield (who always sounds like he's never far from a tumbler of bourbon when narrating). three channels further down the line, i decided to turn back and check to see if, you know, he may have been talking about new mexico, because i'm always oddly proud of my homestate showing up in the news (runaway brides and UFC fighters included).

sure enough, a familiar green roadsign marking the city limits was on the screen when i turned back, followed quickly by shots of central avenue (one featuring the sign for the house of pancakes where i first discovered the wonders of endless coffee refills accompanied by angsty journal writing).

not much later, still flipping around, N asks me to go back to a commercial for a show she's interested in checking out (which, we soon discover, features an actor from another show she has been known to obsess over. that actor - now that i think about it - reminds her of me. for the record, i don't see the similarities at all).

while watching the commercial, the background landscaping looks familiar - bright, arid, dotted with scrubby little trees. i say to N, "that looks like it could be shot in new mexico". the fact that the show has a paranormal theme makes me think it's set in roswell. but no. the show is shot, in fact, in my hometown. which we're visiting in a few weeks. brainulation otra vez! i'm telling you, it happens often around my wife.

also: holy shit. sign me up for this. like, immediately.

also: two surnames i ran across tonight i'd love to unravel the etymology of:

- seagraves
- tarbat

awesome.

file under: wave of brainulation

i've been working on this juvenile music project for the past couple of weeks. i've assembled the majority of the component parts, and the need for a working title has started to arise.

as i've been thinking about what to name this thing i'm working on, it occurred to me that something related to sonography might be a good place to start. after googling "sonar map" and other such permutations of possible keywords and then scouring wikipedia articles on related topics, i came across the term echolocation, which seemed like a good thing to write down for future title consideration.

imagine my surprise, then, when i dropped in on slate to read their daily summary of major u.s. newspapers to find this on the main page.

that, my friends, is what has come to be known as "brainulation" (named after a "therapeutic device" we saw demonstrated in a streetfair during one of N's first trips to NYC. the name of that device? "the orgasmic brainulator", whic was little more than a metal claw with rubberized nubs attached that grip and release the subject's head).

brainulation has become a commonly used term in our household (as has the mildly sarcastic comment, "way to go, brain", when the brainulation is not entirely appreciated) because i am halfway convinced that N has very strong brain waves which somehow skew the direction of pop culture in strange ways. believe me, it's happened a little too often for these instances of brainulation to be nothing more than simple, random collisions of coincidence in this cold, cold universe we call home.

anyway, that echolocation thing is a textbook example of brainulation: i became mildly obsessed with an idea over a day or two and then i found the idea reflected back at me quite unexpectedly in some media outlet in a location i have a habit of checking.

now, i'm sure this happens to everyone. of course it does. and of course everyone goes "whoah! dude!" when it happens and then promptly forgets all about it, because it's invariably too trivial to even qualify as trivia.

maybe conspiracy theorists are born from stuff like this; the susceptible ones among us come across some weird anomaly and then get lost in a chain of flawed reasoning welded together with "and if so!" statements that make less and less sense the longer the chain gets.

but does it happen more often to some people than others (because it happens to N, like, ALL THE TIME)? and if so, is it simply some kind of subtle environ-mental (see what i did there, dude?) cue they're tuning in to, like picking up neglected pieces of the future that don't matter? if so, could that propensity be used to, for example, pick winning numbers for some upcoming lottery? OR is this really how people become full-blown crazy, rushing out to buy lotto tix based on nonexistent connections and meanings we're weaving into our own private mediaverses?

file under: my debt to the hoff

had to get a new OHIP card this morning, which means a new OHIP card photo was in order. as much as i hate having my picture taken, i was more than happy to "re-do" my current photo, if only because it was taken on the first day of a temp job many moons ago. i was therefore wearing a tie. and it wasn't a cool tie, either. it was a mediocre, inoffensive workplace tie. those are the worst kind of ties, if you ask me. they're the turkey subs of ties, if you know what i mean.

so this morning, as i'm standing in front of the white backdrop at the OHIP office and wondering if my shaggy hair is completely out of control (it was windy this morning), it occurs to me that i'm going to need to produce a halfway convincing smile in a second. there was a long moment where i just didn't have much of a smile in me, and the fear of a strained and blatantly fake smile forever captured on a piece of identification began to bloom in my heart.

UNTIL i noticed the small photo of david hasselhoff snuggling with 2 puppies, taped discreetly on the front of the camera. crisis averted!

clearly, those ministry employees must have dealt with years and years of bad photos before ultimately deciding to intervene against the endless moments (numerically speaking) of desperation and dread lived out in front of cameras in ministry offices nationwi - no, worldwide. see that? socialized medicine really can work!

file under: postponed!

as alluded to here, some last minute glitches and uncertainties resulted in a cancelled trip to nyc. thus, calvin remains our feline expat for a while longer.

we can't tell if the ordeal has been any more draining than his regular existence, due mostly to the rigorous 20 hour per day sleeping regimen he's been maintaining for the past 11 months.

file under: going home (almost gone)

it's hard to believe, but the little man is leaving us today.