sarah michelle gellar and the unbounded agony
» Monday, April 30, 2007

I've spent the last several days getting in touch with my feelings. By which I mean constant physical pain. My back, which has been dodgy for years and has now decided to get really dodgy around the L4 and L5 vertebrae, has been giving me weeks of ever-increasing pain. It's like a dial being slowly and steadily turned up until I'm whimpering and cursing at 4 am, trying to wrestle my consciousness into sleep from the grip of the pain.

I'm not complaining here. And I'm not looking for advice. Everyone has advice. Everyone's advice is well-meant, based on hard-earned experience, and ultimately not much practical use to me. Go to a chiropractor. Don't go near chiropractors. Get acupuncture. Needles are a joke. Massage is wonderful. Massage is useless. Go to Dr. X, he's the most experienced back specialist in the city. Avoid Dr. X, he's a noneganarian butcher who's so palsied he looks like he's doing jazz hands. Dr. Y is the best. Dr. Y is the worst. Try ice. Try heat. And so on.

I have tried this and that. I have gone to three doctors and booked an appointment for a specialist. I have tried ice, tried heat, tried chiropractors, gone for massages. My physiotherapy starts Wednesday. The only thing I haven't tried so far is acupuncture, which is probably the magic solution to my troubles.

And I have tried drugs. I have not shied away from assaulting my nerves with chemicals. Weeks divided into alternating days of Robax Platinum and days of acetaminophen-caffeine-codeine tablets. You have to ration out the codeine pills because pharmacies are stingy with their narcotics. In between, wherever prudent, alcohol in all its body-numbing varieties.

After those ran out and the pain hadn't lessened noticeably, I switched from off- the-shelf and over-the-counter to begging-the-doctor. Flexeril as a muscle relaxant (warning: dizziness, concentration problems) and Arthrotec as an anti-inflammatory (warning: dry mouth from hell, upset stomach, nausea, possible diarrhea), which left me a befuddled, burping mush-mouthed mess for the first day or so. Then, after a week, when I realized that I was stiffer and in more pain, hydromorphone in 3mg doses, a ramped-up version of morphine. Warning: constipation. So along with the little green morphine pills, laxatives. "That's right," Schmutzie said when I told her about the side effect, "Junkies don't shit".

Hydromorphone is my first experience with narcotics of this stripe. I can claim an acquaintance with drugs of all kinds, from the familiar to the downright weird (and I'm not counting the time me and my friends all smoked darjeeling tea, based on a rumor that it was a cheap and legal high) but I've avoided opiates in all their splendor (codeine tablets being the exception). I refuse to believe that any junkie with dignity would stoop to this stuff. After two hours, one pill produces an icy numbness in the affected area, a sparking cold running down pain-inflamed nerves. I can still feel the pain; it's just put on a different suit or something. Two pills produce a weird mental fog and turn my consciousness into a cold slippery thing that feels slightly repulsive to the touch, and even with all that, I can still feel the cold lines of pain streaking from my hips and spine down into the soles of my feet.

The pain is worst at night. All of my muscles from my lower back to my calves, are tense and screaming, and rebel at the thought of relaxation. They spasm, quiver, lock up and pull me upright every time I try to find a comfortable position. I shove pillows between my legs, under my back, prop up my shoulder, hold up my head, whatever will give me a moment's relief. And moments of relief are all I get. A twinge will bloom into a radiant ache, a slight pull on a muscle will suddenly tense up a leg, and a tiny shift in weight will flood my lower half in pins and needles. When sleep comes, it ambushes me.

I've discovered that constant pain is boring. To put it another way, pain and boredom have the same effect on my mind. Time is forced open by pain; moments are pried apart and pain pours itself into the spaces. Under this condition, the pain becomes weirdly bearable, because after a while you have to start thinking about something besides the pain. Even though it won't distract for long, strings of thought start weaving in and around the pain, but in the emptiness and sheer monotony of pain, the existential lightness of pain, my thoughts throw their weave over empty spaces.

For example, Sarah Michelle Gellar.

I saw a picture of Sarah Michelle Gellar the other day at the Tribeca Film Festival. The night before last, as the pain and the morphine were beginning to get together and make things really loopy, I thought about the picture of Gellar, bony and dark-haired and barely recognizable as the star of some pretty crappy movies and one good TV show from the early 2000s. I wondered what she'd been doing between the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival - not what films or jobs she'd picked up in the last few years, but what she had been doing. I tried to picture her in a kitchen, waiting for her toast, or walking down a street, or flexing an elbow or standing in a huge empty room full of plastic-covered furniture with her husband - and none of it seemed plausible. I just didn't buy the notion that Sarah Michelle Gellar had done anything between early 2004 and two days ago.

I don't think that Gellar is a bad actor, although her attempts at seriousness and depth on Buffy felt pretty flat to me - she had a habit of registering torment by bulging out her eyes, as if she were coming to grips with an intense need to vomit. She just struck me as one of those people who deactivate the moment they're not being looked at.

Normally this is the kind of thought that pops into my head and vanishes again before I can wonder if it's even worth writing about, but in bed the other night, with pain strongarming its way into my consciousness, the thought filled up the empty spaces in my mind. It seemed to stretch and fill everything, spilling over into all kinds of categories that Sarah Michelle Gellar should never spill into. Gellar, I thought, as a real person, the one we don't see, the one that I refuse to credit with existence, is absurd, and if she's absurd, then so are other people. All the other people and the things that they do, the clothes they wear and the children they pick up from daycare. And I was implicated, caught up in the same absurdity, the same stretched-out emptiness. I was as implausible as Sarah Michelle Gellar and the whole universe. None of it, not even the thinking of it, was worth the effort of belief.

Except the coffee. Suddenly I remembered that I was looking forward to coffee in the morning. A bodum's worth of the strong black stuff. Coffee concentrates time, knits moments together and reinvests the world with substance. This is something that non-coffee drinkers don't realize. Even the hope of a cup of coffee was enough to dispel the existential horror of Sarah Michelle Gellar.

It was a close call.

Physiotherapy starts in two days.

Labels: drugs, existential horror, pain, sarah michelle gellar

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potato gun
» Sunday, April 29, 2007

Morning. Palinode and Schmutzie in bed, recumbent and lying down (in case the recumbency doesn't do it). Covers all askew. Cats flanking each.

Schmutzie: When I was young there was this kid named Michael across the street. He had a potato gun.

Palinode: I hate potato guns. No matter what you aim at, you always end up hitting a potato.

Schmutzie: No -

Palinode: - Yes.

Schmutzie: No! That's not how potato guns work. They shoot potatoes.

Palinode: Every damn time.

Schmutzie: No! They shoot them out of themselves.

Palinode: ...

Schmutzie: ...

Palinode: They're good for finding hidden potatoes, though.

Labels: conversations, potato terror

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predictions for the next century
» Wednesday, April 18, 2007

If current trends continue as they are, we will see wonders in abundance. For example:

1)The internet

In the next century, the internet will be available in every home on Earth and the Inner System of Confederated Planets. Still no wi-fi in the Oort Cloud. Despite its reach, the internet will no longer be used by ordinary people. Instead, genetically modified howler monkeys will IM each other all day long, upload amateur porn and hurl insults at each other, which will allow the rest of us to lead productive lives.

2)Food

All food will, of course, be available from home replicators for pennies a month. In most countries, though, dining out will be mandatory, and exclusive use of the replicator for a 24 hour period will entail punitive loss of orgones.

3)Insects

There will be no goddamned insects. You hear me? Enough with that shit. But you can expect a sharp uptick in man-eating spiders.

4)Orthography

In one hundred years' time, no one will know the meaning of the word 'orthography'. The future marks the return of the Golden Age of Spelling, with lots of unnecessary e's and plenty of double consonants thrown in. This will be all Geoffrey Chaucer's fault (see below).

5)Baby boomers

Yes, they'll still be around. Anti-aging therapies will create a race of mummified gerontocrats who continue to wrestle popular culture into submission. From beneath the hollowed-out caverns of Colorado the Immortal Council of 12 will legislate all matters of taste. Their motto: "Take It Easy".

6)Religion

There will be only one official religion, the Church of Classic Hits And The Best of Today. Although services will traditionally fall on a Sunday, congregations are encouraged to “tune in” and “sing along” any old time, especially while driving down the boulevard in a snazzy convertible. This informal worship will be called “the snazz”. The Catholic Church will be reduced to a bunch of homeless men hanging around industrial parks.

7)Women

There will be no women in the 22nd century. In January of 2072, all the men will wake up to find a note on the fridge saying “Take care”. Every six months a glittering alien spaceship will descend from the Oort Cloud and deposit a few thousand male infants, who will stare wordlessly and make mewling noises instead of human cries. An expeditionary force to find the putative Planet of Women will be launched in 2101. For all the men of 2107 know, the members of the expedition have located the Planet but elected to stay there.

8)Geoffrey Chaucer

The invention of a working time machine in 2009 will turn out to be the most decisive event of the future, even though it will have taken only one round trip to the 1300s before being destroyed within seconds of its return. The instigator of the destruction will be the time-travelling stowaway Geoffrey Chaucer, sometime medieval poet and tyrannical genius able to work his will on the minds of men by means of alien technology. After the decade-long battle with the Immortal Council of 12, a peace treaty will be struck in which the Council rule on matters of taste and Chaucer become Official Head of the Inner System of Confederated Planets And The Principality of the Oort Cloud (ISCPPOC, or Iskapok). Chaucer will then declare all history between 1400 and 2009 a dead zone, “a vaste Marshelande withoute Croppes, that is yclept a Middenne”. When greeted with the news of the 2072 departure of the women, he will say, “Lo, my nosethirles waxe wood”. His reign will never end.

Labels: lists, the glorious future

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the bad blogging habit
» Monday, April 16, 2007

One of the most annoying things that can happen to a blog is to have it reduced, bit by it, to a pointer. The blogger starts branching out into other projects, maybe starts a band or goes into professional writing, and the blog itself starts to lose its personality, become slighter and increasingly ghostly. Eventually the enterprise is reduced to periodic entries apologizing for the paucity of posts, and links to the other things that the blogger is doing. The entries ususally look like this:

Hey guys, sorry about the lack of posting around here. But between the baby and my e-commerce portal I've been so busy that I never get the time to sit down and write a really good entry. By the way, I'm hosting a Poetry Slam at Kickajama's next Thursday, if you're in town you should check it out.

And that's all you get.

All this is by way of saying that I've written another entry for Travels With Greg, my exhaustive account of a six-week documentary shoot throughout Europe.

Labels: metablog

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1st Vonnegut
» Thursday, April 12, 2007

Sirens of Titan. It's still my favorite. You?

Labels: literature

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departmental memo on new totems
» Tuesday, April 10, 2007

FOR IMMEDIATE USE

Our totem spirits are way out of date. Here’s the updated list. Please use the updated totem animal list in all future dealings with our common mythos from now on. Don’t forget to place your old list in a recycling container.

P.

Totem: Salamander
Attribute(s): fire, brilliance, inapproachability
Represents: celebrity

Newt
looks like salamander
celebrity impersonator

Owl
silence, speed, murder
Murderail, the monorail that kills

Cat
laziness, vapidity, eats anything, frequent vomiting
teenagers

Dog
Slavishness, perkiness, floor-shitting
P.F. Chang’s server

Wolf
ferocious forest-dwelling predator
Darryl Hannah

Pelican
disgusting feeding habits
ex-roommate

Cloned Seagull
exact genetic replica of another seagull
cloned hippie

Gopher
wears cardigans, eats own young
Joss Whedon

Squirrel
stores nuts in cheeks
Jenna Jameson

Rabbit
big ears, long yellow teeth, smell of urine
a kid I knew in grade three who used to let the air out of my bike tires

Badger
vicious, sharp claws, can actually turn around inside its skin
Dick Cheney

Robot Badger
same but robot
Dick Cheney’s post-apocalypse robot body

Meerkat
awesomeness
Superman or Edward Gorey character

Labels: lists

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the mall of cthulhu
» Monday, April 09, 2007

Today at lunch I watched the Women in White Coats come and go. They weren't nurses. They weren't estheticians. They weren't scientists. One of them walked by saying "Things happen for a reason" on her cell phone. I hope her interlocutor felt better about whatever. So anyway, while the Women in White Coats walked back and forth, reassuring their interlocutors and being mysterious, I wrote the following. You have to read it.

The Mall of Cthulhu
From a script commissioned by the National Retailer’s Association, described as a “cosmic horror feature based on the novels of Ayn Rand and the stories of Lovecraft, designed to appeal to the teen male demographic while delivering a tailored message concerning the importance of well-designed and accessible mass retail space”.

INT – DAY – Council of United Nations of the USA

Retail architect CHAD PELVINS mounts the podium. United Nations Chair'person' WISSEL MONTGOMERY IV gingerly takes a seat, scowling – he does not want to hear what PELVINS has to say. Character note: WISSEL is jealous of PELVIN'S freethinking spirit and hates him for it.

PELVINS: Ladies and gentlemen, I freely admit that that we do not know with certainty the source of the underwater quakes that have destroyed many of our coastal cities. But I believe that the worst may be upon us, and that Cthulhu, the sleeping beast that dwells in watery slumber in the stone city of R’lyeh, may at last be awakening to devour humanity. It is true that Cthulhu hungers for human flesh seasoned with human fear, but I have a hunch that he will hunger even more for quality goods at reasonable prices in an attractive and accessible setting.

WISSEL MONTGOMERY IV: Colleagues, I must protest against this nonsense!

Rumbling from the seated crowd. PELVINS gathers his strength for an all-out rhetorical assault on the crowd of feminized muscle-mystics and misguided altruists.

PELVINS: Brothers and sisters! True men and women of this great land! Here me now when I say that this is our time of decision. Our time of need. When we must swing our hammers of might and reason and forge a shopping space of mighty proportion and Cthulhu accessibility, with proper ramps, good parking and wide aisles, plus moistening stations in convenient areas for the Underwater Beast Who Will Devour Us All. First, I propose an atrium with tinted panes to shield our Monstrous Guest from the harmful effects of direct sunlight on His Unholy Skin –

MONTGOMERY IV: You are mad!

PELVINS: Oh, mad you say? Why, I oughta come over there just a' wrigglin and a' punchin til you're squealing for the mama otter what spat you out onto the Oregon beaches!

A pause.

PELVINS: Hang on a moment. You're right, I'm completely mad.

Labels: cthulhu, film

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a selection of zen parables
» Sunday, April 08, 2007

As long as we have had Zen, and parables, we have had Zen parables (and hockey). Even though the origin of the Zen parable, like the origin of fish sticks, is shrouded in mystery, we do know that the Zen parable is ancient technique designed to instruct the listener in the mysteries of Zen by clearing the listener's sinuses. Zen parables range from simple but deceptive questions (eg. "What is the sound of one hand masturbating") to long stories and even unusual items like the instruction manual for the '76 Chevy Basho, a family station wagon built with no doors. I have collected several of the rarest and most expensive ones for you.

*
One day a disciple met Zen Master Harold coming down the road, avoiding ants and eating a stick of cured beef.

"Zen Master Harold," said the disciple, "is there greater Buddha nature in a Slim Jim or a fish sandwich?"

"I have no idea," responded Zen Master Harold.

"Ah, you wish me to reflect my question back on me for further pondering," the disciple reasoned.

"No, I'm not actually a Zen master," said Zen Master Harold. "Zen Master Harold is my name".

"Oh," said the disciple. "But your book -"

"I wrote a novelization of a second-tier George Romero flick for some quick cash in the seventies," said Zen Master Harold. "What is wrong with you people?"

*
A man walks up to the owner of a horse and says, "I bet you 500 bucks that I can make your horse laugh and then cry". The owner says, "You're on". The man approaches the horse and tries every joke he can think of. When that fails to make the horse laugh, he then relates the most tragic stories he can think of, often throwing in noble but doomed horse characters for relevance. The horse neither guffaws nor sheds a single tear. Eventually the man returns to the owner. "Your horse is deaf," the man says.

*
It came to pass that two generals of mighty armies met on the field of battle. They discussed the best private schools for their children and speculated on the nature of financial markets. One reminded the other of a longstanding invitation to dinner with the family that had never been taken up on. Then they shed their human faces and revealed their trans-dimensional reptilian aspect, which allowed them to make out on several planes of reality at once.

*
A man walks up to the owner of a horse and says, "I bet you 500 bucks that I can make your horse laugh and then cry". The owner says, "My horse is deaf". "No problem," says the man, "for I am a practioner of le pantomîme". The owner gives the man five hundred dollars to go away. Oh, c'est drôle.

*
Once there was a well-known philosopher who decided to learn all that there was to learn about Zen and thereby become the next Grand Zen King. For many years he studied every Zen text known to humanity. He wrote copiously on Zen, opened up a school of Zen thinking and even gained the powers of immortality and levitation.

Finally, when he was a very old man, the philosopher decided that he had attained sufficient Zen mastery to challenge the Grand Zen King for the his Zen crown and his royal fleet of solid gold horses. He climbed to the Castle on Top of the Mountain. When he arrived, the King's servants informed the philosopher that the King was visiting the Summer Palace on the Coast. The philosopher travelled to the Summer Palace, where he was told the King was out at the moment, but would he mind waiting? The philosopher said that he did not mind waiting, and sat in a comfortable chair with a magazine to pass the time.

That was five hundred years ago. The philosopher has read the magazine at least 200,000 times. He is still waiting. Meanwhile the Grand Zen King has gone to live on the moon.

*
Two Zen scholars were sitting around the apartment on a Friday evening. One of them said, "Let us play a game".

The other one said, "That sounds like a good idea. What game did you have in mind?"

The first one said, "I have already won".

The other one said, "At being an asshole?"

Labels: lists, zen

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crime tips
» Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Not many of you know this, but I have had a long career as a criminal. I’ve done all the crime things – the b&e’s, the bunko scams, the email scams, all the embezzlements (business, non-profit, nursery school), as well as montes of up to a dozen cards’ complexity. So behold the fruits of my wisdom.

Are you beholding my wisdom fruits yet, or are you reading this sentence? The education system has brainwashed you.

*
If you dip your fingertips in hot wax before committing a crime, the pain will keep you focused on your objective.

*
The worst crime gig is cat burglar. Cats have nothing. Nothing but sharp claws and unfenceable urine.

*
In order to steal from a crowded place during regular business hours, coat yourself in rank filth. No one will come near you, and you will be able to carry out your business (wink wink) unmolested (heh heh).

*
In a daring pre-dawn raid on December 11, 1978, over five million dollars in cash and jewelry was stolen from Lufthansa Air. It was the largest robbery in America at the time. Several murders attended the aftermath of the heist in order to cover up the trail of tainted money. In 1990, Martin Scorsese made the film Goodfellas, a biopic about a mobster who was peripherally involved in the robbery. Martin Scorsese profited handsomely from the film. He is a criminal.

*
A shiv is an improvised weapon made by sharpening or refashioning an otherwise innocuous implement, such as a spoon, a toothbrush or a stick of dynamite. A shank is a kind of shiv made from the metal shank of a boot. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about shivs:

• The character Richard B. Riddick in the films Pitch Black and The Chronicles of Riddick coined the term "shiv-happy". Shivs are a frequently used form of weapon in The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

I’m glad that future generations will get to know about the use of improvised weapons in a video game based on a couple of forgettable sci-fi flicks from the dawn of the 21st century. If Jimmy Wales made money from Wikipedia, he would almost certainly be put in jail. Wales’ criminal genius lies in not charging for access to Wikipedia. While this appears to be legal, he should still be punished. With a shiv.

*
Amass a large amount of money. Buy Sony. You lousy piece of crap, you.

*
A particularly hot area for novice criminals these days is stealing intellectual property. In order to steal intellectual property you will need the following easy-to-obtain items:

head of Cory Doctorow (fresh)

head-sized canister

portable buzzsaw

blender OR food processor

scoop

1 dozen or so planaria (flatworms)

mask, bag with $ sign

First, you need to find your Cory Doctorow, which will have the head you need. This is easy: just go to Disneyland or any seminar full of eggheads who want to pirate files without consequences. Eventually Cory Doctorow will show up. Remove head and place in canister for storage. Next remove the top of the skull with buzzsaw and scoop out brain with scoop. Mash up brain in blender and feed to planaria. If you are truly the criminal you make yourself out to be, the planaria will absorb Cory Doctorow’s memories and spell out his banking PIN with their bodies. Did I tell you to grab his wallet along with his head?

*
I am writing this in the middle of a workday. Some people call it stealing company time. I contend that I am appropriating corporate temporal resources.

Labels: crime, lists

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sarah michelle gellar and the unbounded agony » Monday, April 30, 2007

potato gun » Sunday, April 29, 2007

predictions for the next century » Wednesday, April 18, 2007

the bad blogging habit » Monday, April 16, 2007

other postings, other places » Sunday, April 15, 2007

1st Vonnegut » Thursday, April 12, 2007

departmental memo on new totems » Tuesday, April 10, 2007

the mall of cthulhu » Monday, April 09, 2007

a selection of zen parables » Sunday, April 08, 2007

crime tips » Wednesday, April 04, 2007