food poisoning
» Friday, November 30, 2007

Last night I went to see No Country for Old Men. If I have anything to suggest about moviegoing, it's this: don't get poutine. I came home, felt queasy, spent the night talking to the toilet bowl. In between trips to the toilet my fever-touched brain kept running over strange scenarios and wouldn't settle down enough for me to sleep. My stomach settled around nine this morning, and I slept until 4:30 this afternoon. I still feel drained and old.

Why am I telling you this? Because I'm putting in my NaBloPoMo dues. Today is the last day, but I had nothing else on my mind besides my treacherous body. So my body it is.

posted by the palinode | comments (9) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 49 of 365: david c.
» Thursday, November 29, 2007

When you found out that I was over at your ex-girlfriend's house, you put a jack knife in your pocket, hid a frying pan under your jean jacket, and hitchhiked to Lunenburg in order to kill me, or at least do me some serious physical harm. I had left by the time you showed up. This was probably the lowest point of our friendship. Curiously, you're one of only two people I've kept up with from my high school days. The other person never tried to kill me. She did break my heart, mind you. I'm sensing a pattern here.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (4) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 48 of 365: the neighbour who killed my cat
» 

You are one my first memories. I was two years old. We lived on the second floor of the house on Vernon Street. My father answered a knock on the front door and I saw you standing there, holding a cardboard box. I think this may be yours, you said. I can't remember anything after that, but apparently you had left the hood of your car up and Macavity had crawled in. I don't remember Macavity at all - only you, holding out a box at our door.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (6) | permalink | subscribe

a short list of things that would not derive much benefit from a USB connection
» Wednesday, November 28, 2007

bar soap

bar lime

basket of wings

male nurse

kudzu vine

Good Times episode

Will to Power (insufficent voltage from USB port)

Labels: useless

posted by the palinode | comments (3) | permalink | subscribe

travels with greg
» 

For those of you who remember the glory days, I've gone back to Travels With Greg, my memoir of a 2004 six-week documentary shoot through western Europe. I'm going to be focusing more attention on the project over the next few months, so you can expect more frequent updates from now on. This is not a guarantee. So don't accuse me of being a blogtease.

In today`s update, I wander sleep-deprived through Heathrow like a drunk and wake up my producer at home for no reason.

Travels With Greg

Table of Contents

Latest Entry

Labels: metablog

posted by the palinode | comments (0) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 47 of 365: the couple out of time
» Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Monday night was the deadest night of 2007. It was probably the deadest night so far of the twenty-first century, at least in this town. The Riders had won the Grey Cup the day before, which had provoked a massive spasm in the guts of the city. Everyone disgorged into the streets in celebration. Now the partiers, the street whoopers and the basement screamers, had agreed to lay down on their backs and stare at the ceiling for the next twenty-four hours. I thought it would be a good time to go out.

I went to Abstractions, a coffee shop owned by a Syrian family. They brought to the neighbourhood a ready source of falafel, zaatar, and their strange overseas religion, which they called World Cup Soccer. I got a cup of coffee and sat down. The owner spent the time staring out the window and remarking that he needed to clean the ceiling. I was the only one in the place.

Fifteen minutes into my cup of coffee and my copy of The Public Burning, a man in his forties accompanying his mother, a toothless woman with a home perm and dye job, stepped in from the darkness. They were poor. Not just poor: destitute. The destitute have a way of looking like they've stepped out of some other time, wearing last decade's fashionable coats and T-shirt slogans. They look like they stutter through time, sticking bits and pieces to themselves as they go, a cap here, a pair of boots there, buttons from forgotten causes. They gave me a smile as they went by.

&mdash Long time no see! the man called out to the owner, as if he were addressing someone severely deaf. Over the next half hour it became clear that he spoke to everyone this way. They ordered two bowls of chicken soup, which they agreed was superior to the soup down at Soul's Harbour, the local mission.

&mdash Hey! the man shouted at the owner. Aren't you guys from Arabia or something?

I pulled my head behind my book. Somehow I thought that it would make the direction that this conversation was headed in a little less embarrassing.

&mdash We are from Syria.

&mdash Syria! Hey, isn't that near the Dead Sea?

&mdash Very close. The Dead Sea is in Jordan.

&mdash You hear that, Ma? Irrigation! He shouted, as if they had been talking about irrigation. Nothing will grow around the Dead Sea. They have to use irrigation. It's too salty!

His mother, who had been silently spooning chicken soup into her mouth for the last ten minutes, raised her head from her bowl.

&mdash Macedonia, she whispered.

&mdash Yes, said the owner. At one time, Macedonia.

He pronounced it 'Mack-edonia', like macaroon. 'At one time' was a diplomatic way of putting it. The last time Syria or Jordan had been called anything like Macedonia, Alexander the Great had been running things, and Jesus was still three hundred years in the making. How old was this woman?

&mdash How's your soup, Ma?

Instead of replying, she picked up the slice of panini and began to turn it around in her hands. I watched her long fingers pick up and land on the bread as it rotated, as if she were mapping its shape.

&mdash They gave me unleavened bread, she croaked in her desert-dry voice.

&mdash That's because they're from Syria, Ma.

Yes, I thought, and she's here on vacation from the Byzantine Empire.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (5) | permalink | subscribe

one thing about me
» 

If I wake up with the memory of a dream still in my head, it's often about Aliens. The egg-laying face-hugging double-jawed kind from the Alien movies. No, I'll be more specific: other dreams, the non-Aliens kind, are ones I remember. The ones with Aliens are dreams that I experience. And I hate them. Those creatures scare the crap out of me. Last night, at least, I had some kind of plasma weapon, and I could shoot at the damn things when they came around corners. But I usually missed.

Every so often, in the midst of one of my Aliens dreams, I cross over into lucidity for a moment and I think, I wish I could stop having this scary dream. I never think, hey, Aliens aren't real, I'm gonna kick one between the legs and see what happens! Of course, I know what happens in those situations: goodbye face. I prefer my dreams pre-1985, when I'd never seen an Alien film.

Before 1985 I dreamed about bears. They menaced me, chased me around a bit, and sometimes they fought with goats. That's what happens when you grow up in the middle of nowhere.

Labels: dreams

posted by the palinode | comments (7) | permalink | subscribe

new dew
» Monday, November 26, 2007

According to Trademork, PepsiCo. filed a series of trademarks on November 8th for possibly upcoming Mountain Dew spin-offs (via BoingBoing Gadgets). Here are the trademark names and the special ingredients in each:

Mountain Dew Revolution - Every bottle contains a few grains of skin from the mummified corpse of Lenin. Nostrovya.

Mountain Dew High Output - with stool softener.

Mountain Dew Stimulus - Using state-of-the-art equipment, pornography is liquefied and distilled, then squirted lovingly into your bottle of Dew.

Mountain Dew Reverb - A network of pipes carrying the finest Mountain Dew is run through U2's studio to absorb those soulful vibes. Originally called Mountain Dew Delay and Mountain Dew Effects Pedals Can Substitute for Musicianship. And Mountain Dew Shut Up Now.

Mountain Dew Kilo-Watt - Real electric eel inside every bottle. Really high on sugar and caffeine electric eel.

Mountain Dew Rebellion - You can't tell this Dew What To Do. It's gonna smoke cigarettes, masturbate and hang out in front of the Burger King. You're not the boss of it.

Mountain Dew Extended Play - Mountain Dew soaked in a pile of discarded VCRs.

Mountain Dew Culture Blend - Go Green with Recycled Medical Waste! Petri-Powered Dew Will Gradually Knock Your Teeth Out Of Their Sockets and Shake the Blood From Your Eyes!

Mountain Dew Visionary - It's drugs.

Mountain Dew Supernova - From the dead space between stars, a sentient radio wave has embedded its instructions from the living Horsehead Nebula into the molecules of your Jug O' Dew. Take a swig and fulfill the Destiny of the Void.

Mountain Dew Discovery - Do a Dew and discover diabetes, obesity, and the sadness of Making Love - Out Of Nothing At All.

posted by the palinode | comments (7) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 46 of 365: the cabdriver who misheard me
» 

Did you seriously think we were stopping for a jar of pickles on the way home from the bar on Friday night? Here is a brief list of the things you stop for at the 7-Eleven after a night of drink and loud talk:

beef jerky
those horrible chicken wings
more beer, if you live in one of those places where you can get beer at a 7-Eleven, which I don't, because most of Canada has Victorian-era liquor laws.
cigarettes, for the smokers
cigarette papers, for the upsmokers
random junk food, to taste
healthy Zima

Pickles is not on that list.

posted by the palinode | comments (6) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 45 of 635: the woman at the art show who'd met the dalai lama
» Saturday, November 24, 2007

My back was acting up that night, so I couldn't move away from you and the conversation with the dementia-addled old lady. With your tiny black shawl, skintight jeans and heavy purple eyeliner, you looked like an upper middle class vampire. — I just came back from Toronto. I met the Dalai Lama. He told that the road to happiness was hard, but you had to keep going.

Then you threw your arms upward, palms out, as if you were scattering your own personal sand mandala. I felt a stab of compassion for the Dalai Lama, who went from being essentially a living god to a peddler of homespun happiness to Westerners. Thank you, art show vampire.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (2) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 44 of 365: the sword swallower
» 

He lived in a trailer park in North Vegas, where the jets from the nearby Air Force base regularly destroyed the calm of the afternoon. In our printed instructions, we were told to look for a trailer with "a front yard full of robots". I was looking forward to this, since that morning we'd interviewed an "indoor skydiving instructor," which had been a drawn-out and tiring process. But I was discovering that Vegas itself was a drawn-out and tiring process.

After a few turns around the trailer park, we spotted a yard that was full of - something. It sure as hell wasn't robots. Were they toys? Wagons? What were they?

We pulled up. They were robots, after a fashion - the kind you find on Robot Wars, miniature painted vehicles decked out with armour and protruding metal spikes. On the shows, the robots looked shiny and cool. This stuff was cast-off experiments, guts of remote control cars, partly assembled bits and pieces, an intact machine here and there: junk. But definitely cool junk. The best one was an orangutan driving a little wagon.

And it was the home of the sword swallower, who turned to be a lean, rotten-toothed, jovial guy with a love for the camera. We decided to do the interview first and go with the sword swallowing and fire-eating later, so we set up our lights and sound in his tiny mobile home, which smelled like a water-damaged basement with a layer of human grime trowelled over the mildew spots. We had to finish the interview before his fiancée returned.

Like most performers, even ones who'd ended up in a smelly trailer, he had an instinct for the camera, for the correct tone of voice and widening of eyes. Why do you do what you do? I asked. For the kids in the audience, he said. Family-friendly anecdotes spilled from his mouth, and at one point he even smiled for us - a truly startling moment, as I caught a flash of fire-damaged gums and long yellow teeth. Every fire-eater gets these teeth after a while, he says. Circus performers clearly don't have dental plans.

He showed us a series of swords that had all gone down his stomach. The main danger is not cutting your gut but tearing at the lining of esophagus, which can catch on the tip. The most risky of the lot was a scimitar with a slight curve, which he blamed on more than a few esophagal tears.

He took me through his apprenticeship as a sideshow freak in a circus that toured the southern States. His job was to sit in a cage, wearing only a loincloth, and play with snakes. He also got to howl, growl, snarl and wave snakes in viewers' faces. That was pretty fun, he said. Then he glanced at the camera and leaned a little closer. And I'm not a racist, he said, which was a line I'd heard a lot in my American interviews, but you should of seen those niggers jump when I threw snakes at them.

I realized that for this guy, there was more dignity as a sideshow freak in a cage, provided you were white, than as a paying black customer on the other side of the bars. After the interview he showed us footage of sword swallowing from his Renaissance Faire gigs. Oncely! Twicely! Thricely! chanted the crowd, and down went the blade.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (6) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 43 of 365: alex j.
» Friday, November 23, 2007

Being a hospital patient is a bit like being a prisoner: you have to interpret the outside world through faint and unreliable signals. A nurse's voice, an alarm bell buzzing down the hall, a newspaper that someone's dropped off for your comatose roommate - you lie in bed, eyes on the ceiling, and slowly put everything together. It's like knitting with reality.

I was admitted into the hospital around 6 pm on Tuesday. A porter wheeled my bed from emergency up to the neurology ward, where the nurses introduced themselves, adjusted my posture and promptly gave me sixty milligrams of codeine. Thank you, Randi. Thank you, Barb.

At eight pm the night shift nurses showed up. They certainly didn't look like the night shift nurses I'd seen in the movies, but by then I being washed back and forth by the codeine high, already beginning to feel as if my hospital room were a small chunk of the world that had broken off from reality and had now begun to drift out into god-knows where. From my bed I could see a slice of hallway, past which people in wheelchairs and walkers went, some in bathrobes, some with great zippered scars along their skulls. They looked as unreal as anything else.

I could also hear coughing. Ropy, phlegmy coughing, like someone trying to hork up fresh concrete from their lungs. Every so often the coughing would stop and I could hear a voice that could only come from the cougher - it was a series of deep croaks, like Tom Waits calling up from the bottom of a grain silo. I couldn't make out what he was saying, but he sounded cordial. A cordial croaking frog just down the hallway.

Around 10 pm the night shift nurse came in with more codeine. She looked at her chart.

— They're calling you Aidan, right?

— Yes.

— So why do I have you down here as Alex?

Even through the declining narcotic buzz, I felt a wash of panic. It was one of those tales of hospital horror, where you come in for an ingrown toenail but leave with a lobotomy, all because someone had filled in the wrong name in a box on a chart.

— An Aidan and an Alex. We'll fix that up, she declared, and decisively scratched out the offending name. Score one for human intervention.

I could still hear the coughing man out in the hall somewhere, or maybe he was in his room, still trying to clear his lungs. Then his voice again, croaking out incomprehensible small talk.

— It's good that you're coughing, Alex, a nurse said. You need to get that junk out of your lungs.

So that was Alex. He would be coughing me to sleep that night.

It turns out that hospitals are not great places to sleep. Even though the beds are comfortable and the drugs are plentiful, the unfamiliarity of the place, the constant traffic, and the subdued atmosphere of unease keep you up. I read into the night, and Alex accompanied me with his hacking cough.

I had gathered from overheard chit-chat that Alex was recovering from pneumonia, and that the hospital was monitoring oxygen levels in his blood. Apparently the congestion in his lungs had starved his brain of oxygen, and as a result he was a bit addled. Over the next couple of days, I discovered just how addled Alex could get.

Around 2:30 am one of the nurses walked past my door. She stopped dead - there really isn't any better way to describe it - and stared at something down the hall. Then she swivelled around and practically sprinted out of sight.

&mdash J-----, I heard. Alex is out of his bed. His pyjamas are spattered with blood.

A few seconds went by. Then three nurses marched past my door.

&mdash Alex, what are you doing? Get back in your room.

&mdash I'm just going to answer the door.

&mdash There's no door, Alex. Do you know where you are?

&mdash Sure I do.

&mdash Where are you Alex?

&mdash I heard Donna turning the key in the lock. I was just going to get the door.

&mdash You're in the hospital, Alex. Donna's not here. You have to stay in your room and keep the IV in your arm.

&mdash Okay.

&mdash You're going to stay in your bed?

&mdash Yes, I believe I will.

After a few minutes of silence, J---- walked by my door again, carrying a balled-up hospital robe. &mdash Goddamnit. The fucking guy ripped out his IV. He was fucking covered in blood.

Over the next couple of days the volume of coughing subsided, and Alex's voice grew lighter, although it never stopped sounding liked Tom Waits. He seemed to hang out in the hallway whenever possible, trying to stop each nurse for exceedingly polite small talk. I had a feeling that conversation kept him anchored and reminded him of where he was. I only heard him complain once, when he said to somebody No, I don't like it all. It's stupid, which reminded me of the horse from Ren & Stimpy.

On the day of my surgery, Alex tried to make another break from the neurology ward.

— Alex, called a nurse.

— Alex.

— Where are you going, Alex?

— I'm going to see Bob the Plumber.

— There's no plumber here, Alex. This is a hospital.

— Sure, he's just down the way there. He's the one on TV.

I searched my brain for a TV plumber named Bob, but I was on a morphine drip, and nothing was breaking the surface of that slick.

— Do you want me to tell Bob that you're looking for him?

— Yes please. He's just down the way.

— Okay then. I'll look out for Bob and you go back to your room.

A thin old man in a yellow shirt walked carefully past my door.

— Alex? Your room is the other direction.

Alex looked over his shoulder, as if he couldn't quite believe that the conversation with the nurse hadn't ended yet. A bright sickle of a scar curved down the side down of his scalp. I realized that the yellow shirt was actually the top half of a firmly belted hospital robe.

— I know. I'm just walking down to the end of the hall.

— Well, you make sure to come right back when you're done. Brenda? Could you make sure Alex gets back to his room when he hits the end of the hall?

A few minutes later Alex passed by my door again, accompanied by Brenda in her maroon scrubs. We made eye contact for a moment. I smiled in an attempt to say, You're doing great and so am I! but he pulled his eyes away. He had no idea where he was or why he was here, and I was sure that any correct or lucid answers he'd given the nurses were a combination of luck and cunning. His extreme courtesy sprung from a deep fear of these alien creatures to whose safety he had been suddenly and incomprehensibly entrusted. I was no prisoner at all - I was getting out the next day. But Alex had been apprehended and locked away by agents that he would never see or understand.

&mdash Alex, where are you going? That's not your room.

&mdash I know. Thank you.

Labels: my stupid back, x365

posted by the palinode | comments (5) | permalink | subscribe

by request: something really, really gross
» Thursday, November 22, 2007

on the way to Stapl-B-Gon

This morning, one week after my back surgery, I went to have the staples in my back removed. In my usual life, I have the staples removed from a copy of a report on festival income generated in the UK, or maybe arts policy in Newfoundland & Labrador. But these days I'm not leading my usual life - it's the life where the staples end up in my body instead of paper. When did my courses in literary theory turn so literal?

A word of caution - some of these images (captured by Das Schmutz, natch), when I took the time to stare at them, made me want to throw up. This is wounded flesh and surgical metal, after all. But if you possess a gag reflex of steel, keep reading. And a big thank you to That Girl, who took us to the clinic and roamed the city with us afterwards.

One of the unexpected bonuses of living where I do is that I had to travel only half a block and around the corner to get from the hospital to my apartment. Easy peasy Portuguesey. The magic land of Stapl-B-Gon, though, where all the staple removal fairies cavort, is a building in the south end of the city with a combination Subway/TCBY through one door and a Domino's Pizza through another. You must choose wisely when you approach. Furthermore, the building is hugged by a Burger King and a Tim Hortons Coffee. Apparently this is also where you go to get fat and die on the sidewalk.

I am waiting with my walker for a call to the back, where the nurse with her remover will tear my staples out:



Pretty nice, huh? Just hanging out in the waiting room and Ahhhhfourinchcrustystapledwoundaaaahh —



Staple removal machine (as sung by The Cult):



If you look carefully - and why would you do such a thing? - you'll see that the nurse started by removing every other staple. The sensation of the removal was like the scratching of a deep, burning itch. It felt like each piece of metal was being flung out of my body.

The nurse was mighty obliging, and even shifted position to allow Schmutzie access to my gross, disgusting wound.

Give us a smile for the camera. Okay, be that way then.

Lost little staples, like poisoned birds littering the beach.



And now, even though this sort of thing is what the internet is for, let us never look at this entry again.

Labels: my stupid back

posted by the palinode | comments (16) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 42 of 365: shelley g.
» 

Ask Shelley. She knew. She knew a good many things, but best of all, she knew the secret of Wint-O-Green Life Savers and the blue sparks that crackled from your teeth when you chewed them in the dark. One afternoon, when her parents were in the living room, she took me into a closet in the basement. In the airless dark we pressed our bodies against each other, Life Savers in our mouths, and shot sparks across the gap.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (7) | permalink | subscribe

gene roddenberry has doomed us all
» Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Around fifteen years ago someone alerted me to the Star Trek Universe paradox - namely, that the history of Earth in the world of Star Trek resembles our own in every particular, except for that fact that the Star Trek television show could never have existed. Also, we didn't get involved in the Eugenics War and Ricardo Montalban never conquered Asia, but whatever.

Think about it for a second. Why would a fictional universe include in its fictive history a piece of pop culture that foretells the future? It would be the most earthshaking thing to have a series of shows, movies, novels and role-playing games that turned out to constitute a body of prophecy. It would be somewhere on par with finding a medieval manuscript that rated all the restaurants in New York in 1957. But if Star Trek as a cultural phenomenon appeared in the historical annals of the Starfleet Academy, nobody's talking about it. Maybe the horror of predestination caused them to expunge all records? I don't think so.

This evening, as I was watching Pretty In Pink with Schmutzie and Saviabella, the obverse face of this paradox presented itself to me - that the human race is doomed to extinction, or at best, to a ragged barbarism on par with that stupid Yangs vs. Coms episode* from the orginal series. And we have Star Trek to thank for it.

According to Star Trek lore, the discovery of warp power saved the Earth from collapse by initiating contact with a whole universe of habitable planets, living gods and different foreheads. But the existence of Star Trek effectively reduces that chance to nil, because what are the odds of a sci-fi movie starring a bunch of cheesy, technobabbling prigs being replicated precisely in the real world? Exactly. The discovery of warp power by a guy who looks like James Cromwell, the next leap forward for humanity, just isn't going to happen. It's been narrated right out of existence. I'm pretty sure Borgs are in the cards, but as for the rest of it, no way.

*This is my favourite Trek episode, because there is nothing funnier than watching William Shatner berate a roomful of cavemen for their terrible grammar and pronunciation of the US constitution.

Labels: star trek, the end of all things, the glorious future

posted by the palinode | comments (6) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 41 of 365: zareen a.
» Tuesday, November 20, 2007

For the first few weeks of our relationship, you refused to tell me your last name. When I found out one recess, I pulled back your hair and whispered it in your ear. Sure you smiled, but I missed your hand coming round to smack me on the side of my head. You were awesome.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (2) | permalink | subscribe

back update
» 

Hey, y'all,* I went for a walk today. An honest-to-goodness walk, out the door, down the street, two blocks west, stopping at the 7-Eleven parking lot. Why didn't I go into the 7-Eleven for a soda? Because that company actively campaigns for AIDS in Africa. If you don't believe me, ask the guy who lives behind the dumpster in the 7-Eleven parking lot. He's going to bring that evil empire down.

For most folks, strolling a few blocks to look at a 7-Eleven is no great accomplishment. For me, this is the equivalent of Spinal Tap finding a 15 on their amps. Granted, I had help. I need a walker to keep me straight, but already I can make it across the room without assistance. The main problem is not pain or muscular weakness (although I do need to build my core strength back up) but reduced feeling in my feet and legs. In other words, I can't quite tell when my body is straight, when my feet are properly in contact with the ground, or when someone is butting out a cigarette on my thigh. My legs are covered in burns left by somebody or other.

Over the last few days I've been asked a few questions about my surgery, my current condition, my imperviousness to drowning, etcetera. Here are a few:

So, how is the post-op back?

The post-op back contains: 1) a 3" vertical incision at the L4/L5 site, right where I was going to get a sexy back tatoo, with several staples holding the wound together. Beneath the skin, a reduced disc and shaved-down vertebrae are doing their job pain-free. Some stabilizer muscles are exhibiting neurological weakness, so I have exercises a-plenty to do.


How's your pain?

There is no pain. There is only boredom. And then there is a DVD of Pretty in Pink, which Abigail Road brought by today.


Just curious about one thing, though. You can't walk, you can't stand up straight, you can't work ... yet, the medical care system considers this to be elective surgery?

Yup. The criterion for emergency cases is incontinence. I considered pissing on my doctor to get my surgery moved up.


I recommend taking this as an opportunity to manifest all of your worst personality traits and when people complain just point out that it's part of the healing process.

This is not a question, but it's an awfully good suggestion. Seriously. After I came home from the hospital, the pain and frustration began to pour out of me, as if the surgeons had nicked some bloated cyst during the operation. I felt anxious, angry and mean, a panic that followed me into and out of sleep, like a dolphin keeping pace with the prow of a boat. And then there's the ugliest question of all: what if my life is no better once the pain is removed? That one makes me sick to my stomach. But then I remember that I walked to the parking lot of the 7-Eleven with Schmutzie this evening, and we laughed all the way. And all the way back.


I don't mean to pry here, but a few paragraphs back you implied that your wife burnt you with cigarettes. Is this true?

Yes. She also chokes me during sex, except we're not really having sex when she does it. She calls it sex, but that's her code word for "trying to escape the apartment again". Please contact the police.

Labels: my stupid back

posted by the palinode | comments (8) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 40 of 365: wanda m.
» Monday, November 19, 2007

Good old grade nine. You thought I looked like Prince, circa Parade. The truth was, I looked just enough like Prince for you in a blond-haired town. It must have taken me a year to get your shirt off. Do you have any idea of how much effort a fourteen year old boy has to go through to make something like that happen? Do you think there are magical shirt-removal elves that come in and do the work? No ma'am. Seriously, what do U think?

I bet if I'd worn Prince's new perfume, that would have done the trick immediately. I understand that it contains fabric-dissolving chemicals, which would have done a number on your polo top. I had only will and patience on my side.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (8) | permalink | subscribe

x365: 39 of 365: katrina van b.
» 

My relationship with you lasted fifteen minutes, and not only did we not touch each other, we didn't even look at each other. Instead we sat on the monkey bars all recess, watching the rest of the class run around a distant part of the playground. We talked about whatever eight year olds talk about: whatever boys and girls talk about when the real subject is attraction. Our words seemed as distant as the children we were watching. Then the bell rang, and we jumped down. You ended up dating Brian.

Labels: x365

posted by the palinode | comments (2) | permalink | subscribe

hello
» Sunday, November 18, 2007

Still here. Still getting things done. By 'things' I mean sitting around in a daze, doing little exercises, drinking coffee, and periodically taking my walker for walks around the apartment. This, they tell me, is the key to recovery.

Last night I drank several Guinness. They did not tell me that Guinness drinking is the other key to recovery, since, to judge from the unpleasant texture of my guts today, it isn't. That was all part of showing my body who's boss around here.

It turns out that my body is who's boss around here. I'm thinking of forming a union of the soul to stand up to my fatcat of a body. Strike vote tomorrow! Who's with me?

Labels: my stupid back

posted by the palinode | comments (7) | permalink | subscribe

feels like home
» Friday, November 16, 2007

I'm back! Say, have you ever had four nurses jab you seven times with an IV needle? Apparently I have extremely tough skin and extremely mobile veins. Also, my arms have so many shaved patches that they look like giraffe necks. I felt like a junkie offering up his shriveled arms for that last elusive stab.

Anyway. I'm a bit groggy right now, but I'm back home. The pain that's dogged me for months has vanished utterly. I've suffered a lot of nerve damage, which has reduced feeling in my feet and legs, such that I need a walker to get around. It feels as if my legs have fallen asleep and they're just about to get pins and needles - but they never quite get there. According to those fancy doctors, though, my nerves should slowly repair themselves over the next few months. Not fun, but I can lay flat on my back and straighten out my body now. I'll take a bit of numbness and a walker over pain any day.

A lot of you sent good thoughts, wishes and prayers my way over the last few days. Did your positive energy help me through my experience? Or was it my indomitable will? Only time will tell.

Labels: my stupid back

posted by the palinode | comments (21) | permalink | subscribe

The Palinode Is Out Of Surgery And Flatter Than Ever
» 

Check here for more information.

Labels: metablog, my stupid back

posted by the palinode | comments (3) | permalink | subscribe