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Showing posts from August, 2009

that's not the only music

cigar-tin story number 42 . On my way to work this morning I ran into a crazy person. I first spotted him about a block away -- dwarf-like, walking too fast, with too much bounce, those cheap-looking outdated headphones you pull from a bin, laces undone, backpacked and stretchy-faced -- but didn't feel like crossing the street. My mistake. I guess I gave him too much eye contact because just as he passed by he started screaming. THAT'S NOT THE ONLY MUSIC YOU FUCKING CUNT. I stopped in my tracks and turned to look at him as he continued up the street, screaming away, because I'm not so hot on turning my back on the violently insane. Read No Country for Old Men this weekend, pretty much all in one go. The book has more emphasis on motives and direction (and the particular hell of being lost, and/or subject to random prescriptions), and of course there's more explication, but otherwise is a remarkably similar creature to the movie .

sale

finally, she's ready ; mixed media on canvas, 16x20 inches. $100. *SOLD* At the end of October I'm moving out of my studio. It had a good run -- over the last two years I've produced and sold more art than I have in my entire life -- but now it must make way for soon-to-arrive Peanut ... and her pitiless time and budgetary demands. Besides, I'm working much smaller these days, and all I need for that is a desk or a table or C not asking me where the cats are every five minutes. I'm halfway there. Anyway, in the meantime I'll be having an online sale . Any piece that doesn't move in the next few weeks will be primed over and stacked away like it never existed. Hey, I'm the Genghis Khan of the art world: flatten and erase. If you see something you like, just email me with your particulars and I'll send you a PayPal invoice, then pop it in the post (or courier for larger paintings). The Adventure Costume Friendship Club ; mixed media on canvas, 6 x 6

head for the hills

I'm back. There's a Kids in the Hall sketch about two hopeless buskers who eat nothing but Kraft Dinner with ketchup every night and are suddenly, magically rewarded for this with a five-year supply of KD, ketchup and tapeworm food. I was thinking of this when I was sitting in the dark at around 1:30 in the morning on Tuesday night, freezing from the air conditioning, waiting for C's morphine shot to kick in so I could take her home. We were in a room at the hospital. Ah, the hospital. That's where I always go to talk to security guards in the middle of the night, and have interns and then doctors explain the nature of cholecystitus , because I always learn best under flourescent light, when I can no longer see straight, when the only real lesson is that the gravy train of Kraft Dinner, Revellos, ice cream and chips will be sitting in the station for a bit, while a certain blonde someone gets used to fresh fruits and vegetables, whole wheat and skim milk. The tape worm

on hiatus ...

... 'til further notice.

spellbound

untitled {1}, ink on paper (an old math book). We watched Spellbound the other night. This was the first time I'd ever seen Ingrid Bergman on film, and about ten minutes in I remarked, "Well, she's really very pretty," which almost made C's head explode. "They say she's the most beautiful woman ever to live in Hollywood and all you can say is that she's pretty? " "Yep," I said. "She's really pretty." untitled {2}, ink on paper (an old math book). C loves old movies and weird movies and anything to do with Gregory Peck so Spellbound was a big hit. It's a Hitchcock vehicle about a man with amnesia who assumes the identity of a dead man (a man he may have murdered) and picks up a gorgeous psychoanalyst along the way. She's an ice queen, see, but Gregory Peck has got all the right moves (including collapsing in a heap a lot). Being skinny and handsome may have helped as well. There's also a crazy, crazy dream seq

no fine friends this morning

Cigar-tin story no. 41. That could be me, only it would be money flying out of my mouth. Yes, I've been to the dentist again. What a racket: for the cost of some old Chatelaine magazines, some fax machines and furniture from the Marquis de Sade's fall catalogue, you get a license to print money. How can someone so good at one thing (fixing your teeth) be so bad at another thing (giving you an accurate estimate). I almost bit my tongue off at the stump when the receptionist handed me the bill, only the dentist had warned me against chewing for a couple of hours. Well that's it. I'm done. I've been on this road to some mythical dental Damascus for a dozen years now, and I just can't do it anymore. Whatever goes, goes. And I will never be mistaken for the American in the crowd, with his big, gleaming, murderous teeth.

and where are we today?

Cigar-tin story number 40. * * * * * Brett Favre is coming out of retirement . Again. And someone wrote a cheque with Michael Vick's name on it. And the sordid end to Steve McNair's life made news at the volume of a whisper. And this is American football, the slickest sport on the planet, and it's only preseason. C can't wait! * * * * * Finally some more temperate weather today, instilling more of an instinct to live. I feel sorry for C, who is becoming more and more like a dirigible, but she took some solace from when her niece asked me if I had a baby in my belly too, and I said Yes, I'm four months along, thank you for asking.

impediment

I think this heat wave is impeding my ability to think. I mean, it was never that strong to begin with, but now I seem to be at a loss for thought, for words. Yesterday was more of a blind heat kind of thing (I still carried a watermelon home for C -- three klicks or so, mostly uphill -- because that's all she'll eat, watermelon and revels and freezies) but today is just overcast or strangled with smog from Toronto and all your senses tell you that there's a gigantic wet diaper hidden somewhere nearby. It's exhausting. Management has compensated for a failure of the air-conditioning system by giving one of our fans to an office down the hall. Illo for a story, pen and ink composites. Somehow our writer's group managed to stumble along all summer, and here in the basement that is the end of August I'm more or less just pulling stories out of the air every Tuesday, feeling about as much imaginative power as an electric fireplace (or that fireplace channel you can