red-handed

C had Toastmasters this morning (a particular kind of crazy, which is getting up early to get ready and get out the door and then driving to a meeting to deliver a speech ... before work ... there was a time last week when she three Toastmaster meetings in the space of 24 hours ) so it was just Oona and I, which is always extra fun, because it means getting her up and getting her changed and getting her dressed and getting her fed and getting her in her boots and parka and snowpants (!) and toque and scarf and mitts and getting her into the stroller and getting her not to whine about the mitten clips on her parka and getting her to daycare and getting her out of her toque and scarf and mitts and parka and snowpants (!) and filling her cubby with extra diapers and pants and underwear and signing her in and then trying to get away without her throwing a fit and then putting away the stroller in the outside locker and then walking to work. Wait eight hours, then repeat in reverse. And I

Sir (and I use that term loosely), Why history? Sincerely, DJB p.s. Please stay out of the graphic novels section. p.s. Also, you smell like you're dying.

How nice it was, to see Ian Colford's review of my book in the current issue of The Fiddlehead . I have a special fondness for this New Brunswick magazine; it was the first outfit I ever sent my writing to -- a wee poem, called "The 7 of Cups" -- and it was, somehow, wondrously, accepted for publication. This is easy! I thought, for about five minutes, or until I sent the next thing out. (I've had poets tell me that they *hate* me for that anecdote, but then I tell them that I very quickly got out of the verse business, when I realized I didn't possess the necessary brain voltage.) Anyway: it's a very kind review, packaged with two other collections (R.W Gray's Crisp and Light Lifting by Alexander MacLeod) and the general premise that there is hope yet for the short-story form. Some excerpts ... Quirky does not even begin to describe these stories, which, though they take place in a world recognizably our own, depict that world through a series of skew

hearing the silence by Philomene Kocher; King's Road Press It's amazing to me that quiet little books like this even get made anymore. the sun enters my room tulip by tulip Or that the haiku form still exists in this restless, noise-diffused world. I catch him watching me watch someone else

Flickr is fairly groaning under the volume of naked girls, a great many of whom are submerged within the notion that they are creating 'art' (the rest are just sharing straight-up pornography, for whatever reasons). But mostly what you get is a lot of naked girls wearing antlers , naked girls in the cemetery , naked girls on the beach , naked girls in wheat fields , in the forest , in their bedroom, with a mirror, in an old car, smoking too much, etcetera, etcetera. So to see something original in the naked-girl genre is rather arresting. And this photograph does that with light and perspective. That's it. And with just those two elements, this girl becomes a tower of sinister mystery. * * * * * By the photographer April-Lea . You can see her flickr stream here , but I'll warn you that the content is adult.

A friend of mine blew up last week. Worse yet, she blew up all over Facebook. People don't deal well with anger/anguish anymore. It makes them deeply uncomfortable. Anger, especially, is bad . It's so negative! And being negative is about the worst thing you can be these days. Being explosive or enraged or negative on Facebook -- the great flattener, our new social amplifier and distiller -- is like performing Arthur Kirkland's opening statement for a children's birthday party. On a cancer ward. In an orphanage. Facebook is 'liking' things. Facebook is pictures of cats being hopelessly (read: charmingly) fat or destroying things. Facebook is inspirational sayings like, "What matters most is how you see yourself" (I think Kim Jong-il has that one taped to his bathroom mirror). Facebook is 'funny' quips like, "When life feeds you lemons, smile as you are having to pucker up!" (motivating and almost literate). Facebook is everyone tell

A million years ago, someone told me that I should rent The Fountain . So, the other night, when I needed a third rental (our video store has a three-for-five-bucks deal), I retrieved this slow-acting command like some kind of entertainment sleeper agent and checked the thing out. We watched it tonight. Well, *I* watched it, because I doubt that even C can take in a movie and snore at the same time. And um ... yeah. A very beautiful, slow motion rock video, only with dialogue instead of music. Death is life, love is eternal and there you go. Oh, and don't ever drink the sap from the Tree of Life.

There's a small poppy below the Google Search button this morning, to remind us that it's Remembrance Day. Also, I get the day off work. Most people will not. The library is closed. The colleges and universities are not. There will be many grand ceremonies, and everyone will wear that bit of red plastic, and the public consciousness will be improved very slightly, on the level of a manicure. I always thought we would be better off with a day of education, where the emphasis is less on the fallen-heroes business and more on taking a hard look at how awful the whole business actually is, complete with pictures of cities that look like graveyards and fellows with their faces blown off. Show us what it takes to make and deliver a proper bomb, and what happens when you drop it on someone's house. Tell us what's it's like to get shot through the neck. Yes, the poems and trumpets are fine, and that should all be part of it, but we should also know what it means to be on a

I had a woman come up to me in the supermarket the other day. In fact, she came right up to me and said, "Gosh you're tall. You're so tall." I looked down at her and smiled, and then waited for the inevitable request to get something off the top shelf. But she just turned and walked away. I think she was carrying a box of beans. * * * * * I see my home-province brethren voted in droves for the Saskatchewan Party on Monday. Oh dear. The last time they went at it blindly like this, for Grant Devine's Progressive Conservatives in 1982, it eventually led to 13 Conservative MLAs and staffers being charged with expense account fraud, and the party imploded ... to reinvent itself as the Saskatchewan Party. * * * * * I didn't see the election results in real time because I was too busy watching Mel Gibson's The Edge of Darkness . I had to watch it alone; on a personality chart, C places Mel Gibson somewhere between Idi Amin and John Gotti. Personally, I c

Joe Frazier died. "Smokin' Joe" was one of the great heavyweight boxing champions (back in the day when those kind of things were undisputed, or even mattered). In the ring, he was a stalking monster with loaded doom in his left hand. You'll hear a lot of nice things about Joe today, but what you won't hear a lot about is how much he hated Muhammad Ali. *Hated*. He could just as easily have hated George Foreman, who both took away his title and ended his career (and was a bit of beast himself back then, instead of the genial George we have today), but no -- Joe saved up all his venom for Ali. Frazier fought Ali three times, beating him once (with a trip to the hospital for good measure). In real terms, they beat each other senseless -- Ali called their Thrilla in Manilla "the closest you can be to death". Why all the hard feelings? Ali liked to describe Frazier with words like ignorant , gorilla and Uncle Tom . So Frazier went into the ring trying to k

So: today I had to go to the post office. The proper downtown post office. And because I love to learn, I came away from the experience with a few rules. Rule #1 Going to the downtown post office is a terrible idea . Never go to the main post office. The clerks at the main post office are werewolves, and they hate you. They want to destroy you. Consequently, the clerks at the main post office will always figure out the slowest and most expensive way to send your mail. Yesterday, for example, I had two small padded envelopes to mail, and because these envelopes were *slightly* thicker than the ones I normally use, the clerk gave me a price that was three times what I normally pay. We're talking less than a centimetre here. Maybe four or five millimetres. But she did that thing where she half-heartedly tries to fit it through the mail slot (who the fuck has a mail slot anymore, anyway? and what does this magical slot signify?) and it caught at the edges and all of a sudden it'

Well!!! Those Greeks. Balking at the idea of decades of indentured servitude. To the banks! The good-natured, well-wishing, let's-have-a-hug banks. Ah, the banks. Don't they understand that bankers need love (read: all your money), too? Don't they understand that nothing (read: slavery, dreams, etc) is free? Unless, of course, it's money for the banks. Then it's totally free. Wheeeeee!!! Also free is this 2012 laminated fridge-magnet calendar. Leave a comment below and I'll toss your name into a draw . Plus, for all November and December, this calendar is included with every purchase from my shop . Wheeeeee!!!