my virtual dinner with Notfainthearted
» Thursday, January 31, 2008

A couple of weeks back, Neil Kramer of Citizen of the Month proposed The Great Interview Experiment, an interview daisy chain between fellow bloggers. By a fiendish arithmetic Neil came up with a list of interviewees and interviewers.

I was assigned the enjoyable task of ~~forcibly detaining and interrogating~~ interviewing Notfainthearted, a compulsive blogger and all-round interesting person from the Midwest. As you'll see from the answers below, Notfainthearted probably has a dog, leads a spiritual life, and saves candle ends for the purpose of making firestarters. Which suggests to me that she's trying to make a big wax sculpture of Drew Barrymore. And holy cow, she knows Grandpa Ken. That's a brimming ramikin of cool.

INTERVIEW!

Bloggers are an incredibly diverse bunch, but by and large we're all familiar and comfortable with the internet. Indeed, the internet has become so seamlessly integrated into our lives that it's hard to remember a time when it was strange and new. Tell me about your discovery of the internet.

In 1992 I was working as a temp for a wholesale drug company. They held the contract for pharmacies that were members of these new-fangled HMOs and state buying contracts. This company would send their catalog and prices out to the participating pharmacies on big floppy disks and the pharmacys would order via a BBS (or a bulletin board system). We had some email but it was text based only.

Around that same time, we got our second home computer (a MacSE) that included a modem and an email program. When my second son was born and I stayed home again, one of the things I tried was doing some research via this modem and libraries that had their catalogs available.

I remember being terribly disappointed that while I could determine that a library in Chicago or Paris had a book or (music) manuscript I was looking for, I couldn't read it. From home. I thought the whole idea would be a lot better if you could actually read the book or see the music from your own computer.

I spent a little bit of time on some early BBS groups (predecessor of chat rooms) but never really connected with any of the communities. Probably had something to do with the slow connection speeds coupled with two kids under three and at least two part-time jobs.

I see that you're part of Blog365. Blogging, even when you're writing short posts, requires a degree of concentration and creativity that can be draining and difficult to maintain. Share some of your strategies for blogging every day, without fail, for an entire year.

First, those who know me know that I am seldom at a loss for an opinion or the desire to express said opinion. Even at my darkest, bleakest, and most depressed I can always talk about how crappy I feel!

Second, despite my tending toward sucking up to people like Neil, and playing along with silly blog memes and scavenger hunts, my blog really is just for me.

I started this blog in November 2004 in a desperate attempt to succeed at keeping a journal. Partly because I was told repeatedly by my therapist to journal but mostly because I knew it would help me to have a way to process. I had tried repeatedly over the course of my life to keep a journal and to be consistent. And had failed repeatedly. Given up. The number of adolescent (and pre-adolescent) angst filled notebooks and "My Diaries" in my cedar chest is truly amazing. What's discouraging is how few of them have anything written past Valentine's day.

Internet journaling, blogging, has been a tool that for whatever reason has been successful for me. And I give consistent journaling a large amount of credit for dragging myself up from the bottom of the pit.

As I've come around the year from when I started to post regularly, I found it helpful (and interesting - from a self absorbed point of view, I suppose) to remember where I was "a year ago." Especially as I came up on the anniversaries related to my divorce and beginning to rebuild my life (not just the dating, but certainly not discounting that.) I found being able to look back to be a powerful motivator to keep writing for myself.

From a practical point of view, if I feel like I need to comment on something that happens, I write the post and date it for publication in the future. I can always change the publication date to fill in for a day I don't have a post written.

My cat likes to lick my laptop screen while I work and occasionally tries to eat the mouse pointer. Even though he'll never ever get to eat that pointer or even pin it down with a paw, he never gives up. Do you find that inspirational or creepy? I'm divided on this one and your input could really tip my judgment either way.

My dog likes to bark at the dogs on the TV and sometimes chases other animals around to the back of the set if they run off screen. That I find funny. I would laugh at your cat, too.

Ever notice how fish never do any of that weird stuff?

I used to be an interviewer for several television shows. I (almost) never appeared on camera, but whenever one of my shows came on, I was always aware that I was the off-camera end of the conversation. I was like a celebrity's shadow. What's your strange claim to fame?

You mean aside from playing the accordion on the Grandpa Ken TV show when I was 9?

Close your eyes and picture your favourite room in your house. Make a quick list of all the things you see in that room. Now tell me all the things in that room that you could throw away and not miss.

I'd love to say my favorite room was my bedroom. Sounds so much more sexy and self-actualized than "the kitchen." But the truth is, right now, my kitchen is my favorite room.

Quick list of what I see in my mind's eye.

Stuff I could throw out and not miss:

sheesh! Thanks for reminding me of the de-clutter I need to do!

What role has the church/religion/the spirit played in your life? In an age when belief is not a given, how do you maintain your faith?

Wow. This is a biggie. Let me try to sum-up.

I would have to say that I don't maintain my faith. I am full of doubt and cynicism. Some days more than others. But the truth of my life is that I am continually drawn back into that relationship with the Divine. I guess I believe that God is a God of second chances (times infinity) and that no matter how balled up of a mess I (we) make of things, something good can be made of it.

I've attended church, been a member since infancy. I had parents who argued about double-predestination and the nature of God. (Vengeful and just waiting for you to screw up so He can blast you was the underlying feeling.) I got in trouble with them (and my grandparents) when as a first grader I voted for Hubert H. Humphrey for president. Their objection was that he was going to give all their money away to help "those people." They were not amused when I said "But I thought Jesus said we were supposed to help the poor?"

These same people sent me to conservative Lutheran schools where, in addition to pushing them on an answer about our social responsibility to one another as Christians, I argued with the religion teachers about the role of women in the church (this was in the mid 70's when other branches of the Church were starting to ordain women) and all sorts of other things. I was told that if I didn't straighten out my thinking (i.e. shut up and go along) I'd go to hell along with the Baptists and Catholics. Well, I knew I wasn't going to hell, so I figured they were wrong about the Baptists and Catholics too. And probably about the Buddhists and Muslims and maybe even about those godless atheists. (but don't tell them that!;-) )

It's at that point, I think that many many people throw up their hands and abandon "organized religion" completely. And I honestly don't know why I didn't. I certainly understand why anyone would. But it seems to me that the best part of a community of believers is also the worst part: It's full of people. It's a paradox.

Instead of giving up on church/religion/spirituality, the path of my life has been deeper and deeper immersion into the spiritual and theological (let's not split hairs here) within the Church. And what I found is that 20th century American "Christianity" ignored or actively hid a lot of what I was looking for and needed.

I'm wired as a mystic. Part of that comes through my music, part through my spiritual life. Most of both of those can't be separated from each other.

I think that one of the greatest gifts of the late 20th century has been the collapse of the "modern" lie: that spirit and body and mind are separate things, that you and I are separate, that the physical existence in and of itself is less "ideal" than the ethereal realm. The re-discovery of complimentary medicines, quantum physics and global climate change are all demanding that we abandon that compartmentalization and mechanization of the Industrial Age. These are all spiritual matters.

All I can tell you is that I can point to instances where I believe God has acted mercifully toward me through people. That my faith is a gift. That I don't maintain it, it maintains me. Those stories are the stories of my life. Some of them are written in my blog, some aren't, some will be.

What do you want to leave behind when you exit this world?

Everything.

Once I went to a bar and ordered the house wine. It came in a can. Have you ever had wine in a can? It was categorically wrong and it tasted like alcoholic metal. It made the concept of wine in a drinking box seem innovative instead of ridiculous. I know I had a question in here somewhere. Okay, it's a two-parter. Have you ever had wine in a can, and if so, how was the experience? And would you date someone if, on the first date, they brought over a six pack of sauvignon blanc? What if they brought over a six-pack of wine and said, "Baby, you're a Top Ten Washing Machine and I'm a load of dirty whites"? Would you date that person? Or call the police? I'd do both.

Ha! I'd probably do both, too. If nothing else just for the good story it would provide.

Wine from a can, huh? I have never had wine from a can. I've given up drinking canned beer, so I doubt I would try it. I have had wine from a box. In fact, there are a couple of nice Australian box wines that got me through several tough months of the divorce process.

I've never tried the individual drink box sizes. I suspect my inner 5 year old would emerge and I'd end up squirting most of it at my date, just because it would be funny.

If a spiderpig really does do whatever a spiderpig does, what does it do?

The only existing evidence suggests that they poop a lot and leave footprints on the ceiling. I suspect that further investigation would prove that they also make damn fine bacon. Not to mention chops, ribs and a tasty, tasty tenderloin.

Labels: interview

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warning
» Sunday, January 27, 2008

Every time you sing while riding a bike, this happens.

Labels: video

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the secret grown ups
» Saturday, January 26, 2008

Now that I'm back to work (with the mysterious phone and everything) I have to figure out how to get there every morning. My office is within walking distance, but if I walk farther than five blocks, my left leg will fall off and I'll fall over sideways. And I'll be damned if I'm going to keep feeding my money to the cab company, which is what I did for most of 2007.

I discovered a bus stop half a block from my front door that connects me to another stop only a block from my office. This I something I can get behind. I don't care if the number 12 takes me downtown and the number 10 takes me back home, even if that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Not only do I have to hear about it, I have to live the stupidity every day. The 12 and the 10 follow identical paths; why do they have different numbers? Why? I bet that not even the transit company knows. They probably drew up the route plans, discovered their stupidity and left it there, out of sheer mortal embarrassment.

Anyway.

On Thursday I got to listen to a conversation between a teenage boy and girl. Bear in mind that the entire conversation was held in earnest.

Girl: I really like the new guy.
Boy: Yeah?
Girl: Most guys don't want to date me when they find out I've got a kid. They don't want to deal with it.
Boy: They probably don't expect you to have a kid.
Girl: This guy is really cool about my kid.
Boy: Do your parents worry about you dating?
Girl: No, they let me do what I want. They treat me like a grown-up.
Boy: But you're not.
Girl: I am. Secretly I am. I'm a mom.
Girl: And I turn sixteen next month, so I can have my license.

Labels: conversations

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the geeks
» Thursday, January 24, 2008

It is extremely fashionable - perhaps even imperative - to call oneself a geek these days. The word seems to have slid from guy who bites off chicken's heads to amateur/enthusiast in a relatively short time (this process, by which the meaning of a word slides up the scale of social acceptability, is called amelioration. The opposite phenomenon is pejoration. Isn't that just tuff?). People who roast their own beans may call themselves coffee geeks; the weather forecasters for Fox Boston call themselves weather geeks - although little alarm bells go off in my head when someone gleefully downgrades their professional life to amateur status. Many personal webloggers would call themselves geeks, and throw in a Hyuk-hyuk or two to seal the deal. And if they don't, then I will.

Maybe it's an ironic defense of specialization in this era of the technocrat triumphant. Or maybe people are marketing their hobbies in the big social agora. Whatever it may be, I think that geek as a term has spread too far. Like a broken yolk in a pan, it's ruining the sunny-side up experience for the rest of us. I'm a metaphor geek, hyuk-hyuk!

After visiting a comic book store today, I think it's time to restore the word to its best and brightest bearers: the boys and grown men who spend their days at comic book stores.

First I should admit that I was in the comic book store to buy a comic book, which is an undeniably geeky thing. Second, I was looking for a specific comic to complete a collection, which is doubly geeky. To top it off, that comic was the first issue of the new 'season six' Angel. That's right - I'm one of those quietly creepy Whedon fans, the ones who seem normal until they drop the term 'Whedonverse' into a conversation. Am I really a pale, lonely woman with a closet full of floral dresses, a cat named Miss Kitty Fantastico and a bad slash fiction habit? Let me check the mirror... waitasec... oh thank Christ.

It had been nearly a year since I'd visited the store, and the layout had changed substantially. If I had to guess, I'd say that revenues from comics had been dropping, and the real money lay in gaming. Fully one-half of the floor space had been cleared for gaming tables. There were grid maps and little castles and painted figures everywhere. Each table was surrounded by a little clutch of people, all male, mostly around fourteen years old, but the age grid had a few squares from the upper ranges filled in as well. The older guys dressed the same as the kids, so it was hard to tell unless their faces were in full view. They were speaking a language that sounded a lot like English, but it was as jargon-dense as an engineers' convention or a Scientology meeting.

It was entertaining to listen to while I flipped through the racks of comics and lusted after the Alan Moore hardcovers (the latest comes with a pair of 3-D glasses for the final chapter - how awesome is that?). But then they started to make fun of made-up creatures and their made-up weapons from some bullshit made-up world, screeching out "Nooo, I'm so scared" and "Ahhh run away" in smarmy, high-pitched faux-British accents, as if Monty Python comedy applied to the hexagon grid and styrofoam blocks of their game. They weren't even vocalizing events that were playing out at the moment - just chewing the fantasy fat. It was such a wholesale commitment to this collaborative fantasy world that I couldn't conceive of these people leading any sort of life outside. For the thirteen year olds in the crowd, this was not only forgivable but possibly commendable - the geekiest adolescents often turn into the most interesting adults. But the older guys in the crowd, the ones who made a social circle out of these boys, really stunned me.

There are plenty of grown-up gamers out there who lead grown-up lives. Even though I stopped with the Advanced D&D around the age of fourteen, I have lots of friends who have continued gaming into their twenties and beyond. For a while, Magic: The Gathering seemed to be a substitute for poker, complete with cigars and scotch, until Texas Hold 'Em took hold. Another group I know get together every Saturday, slap down a bottle of whiskey and a half-pound of pot, and go to town. They are hardcore gamers with adult interests and psyches of iron. Sometimes they invite me over for an afternoon of drugs and drink and moving little painted guys across a gigantic diorama, but I don't know how I could keep up with them (except for the drink. I can always drink).

Anyway, from now on I'm reserving the word geek for the truly deserving. And I'm going on to my next project: hardcoding subtitles into .avi files so I can watch downloaded foreign movies on my DVD player. Should I use the native subtitle filter with Substation Alpha in Virtual Dub, or should I try the VobSub filter?

Labels: geek

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I'm a printin' photos
» Wednesday, January 23, 2008

I printed a small selection of my photos. These ones ended up looking, to my crazed eye, absolutely smashing. I'm thinking they'd make nice prizes. If only I had a contest. Do I have an outstanding contest going?

You've seen these photos before. But you like them.

The Kindness of Oxycontin

Pint of Keiths

End of Days

Fingah Meats

Snarf

Victory in Feldkirch

You're Too Close To My Apple

High Heels

UPDATE: Nate of Okay City is the first winner! That didn't take long at all. He has named the contest "Dibs". For his sins he receives a print of "End of Days".

Labels: photos

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back at work
» Tuesday, January 22, 2008

I started work again on Monday. Half days. I have about two more half days of people telling me I look great before they forget that I spent 2007 bent over like a paperclip.

The most intriguing change is the unusable phone at my desk. I have my regular old phone, the grey plastic box slowly acquiring dust and grime, and a shiny new one with a little LCD screen. Over the screen is a sticky note saying Aidan, Don't Use This Phone Yet.

No word on when the magic new-phone moment arrives.

Labels: work

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action-packed literature throughout history
»

Never mind Cloverfield or Transformers or The Passion of The Christ. For sheer action, with high production values and incomprehensible plot points, I recommend the following highlights from the Western canon:

1. Epic of Gilgamesh (~2000 BCE): The ultimate buddy movie. Grumpy King Gilgamesh and wild Enkidu get crazy in ancient Mesopotamia. They fight, argue, move mountains, kill monsters and do tons of things that make no sense at all. If Bad Boys II were a one-man show starring and directed by Nicolas Cage, Gilgamesh would be the result.

2. The Odyssey (~700 BCE): What happens when you irritate the gods on your way home from the Trojan War? You spend twenty years pinballing around the Mediterranean and smacking into every nutbar island the ancient world had to offer. Odysseus and his crew go from one bad situation to the next and handle it all with Jedi-like aplomb.

3. The Revelation of St. John (~68-95 CE): Even if you factor out the begats, the Hebrew and Christian scriptures probably contain more action per page than any work of literature on the planet. But there’s no Happy Meal quite so crunchy as The Revelation of St. John. Best summed up as "What the hell just happened? Beasts and signs and vials being poured out on the Earth? A harlot sitting on the water? Was I reading or did I just get beaten on?"

4. The Inferno (1308): Dante gets lost on a walk and ends up bushwakking through Hell with Virgil’s ghost. Stinging wasps, rivers of boiling blood and sinners abound. By the time he reaches the ninth circle at the centre of the Earth, he has the most freakishly overdeveloped legs you’ve ever seen. Does he challenge Satan to a kicking contest? I wish.

5. In Search of Lost Time (1913-27): A man bites into a piece of tea-soaked cake and his memory erupts like a volcano, spewing out a novel in seven volumes. Remarkably, none of the tea gets spilled.

6. Finnegan's Wake (1939): One drunken night the English language stages a riot at a stand-up comedy bar. The rest of the Indo-European languages join in, all of them screaming at once for more drink. This goes on for hundreds of pages. There must be some action in there somewhere.

Labels: books

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fud
» Thursday, January 17, 2008

Yesterday I walked* to the Italian Star Deli to pick up a sandwich and some dried porcinis** for my tomato sauce. On my way out, having also picked up some tuna fillets and kippers, cans of romano and white kidney beans, lamb sausage and a jar of salsa from Mexico - damn that deli - the guy at the till spotted the cane and asked me how I was doing. I told him briefly about my back surgery and my recovery.

— You know you're feeling better, he said, when you're cooking again.

Well, damn straight. He also pointed out that my recovery would be much more difficult if I were old, or morbidly obese, or made of titanium prosthetics. Wait, he didn't mention the prosthetics. And now that I think about it, my recovery would go way better if my torso were adorned with super-light diamond-hard prosthetic limbs. But I'm getting off-topic.

To celebrate my return to cooking form, here's a recipe. I adapted it from the Red Beans with Meat recipe in Mark Bittman's awesome How To Cook Everything. It is almost but not quite for vegetarians (I've included some alternate ideas for a vegetarian version). If you make it, you will be a better person for the experience. Plus you may not want to read my recipes again, because they are maddeningly imprecise and overstuffed. But anyway.

The Beans of Palinode

1 19oz can of black beans - You may want to choose your bean style for this. Maybe you like white or red kidney beans. Maybe you're all over the black-eyed peas (which I only recently discovered were beans - serves me right for thinking that peas had eyes). I like black beans for this recipe, because black beans mesh nicely with my active lifestyle and modern tastes. And they're black, which makes them mysterious.

some stock (optional) - That's right, some stock. 1/2 cup should do, or just use a small chunk of a cube, or a 1/4 teaspoon of powdered stuff. Chicken, mushroom, vegetable, beef, whatever. Homemade, bouillon - I leave it up to you. I've worked too hard to become somebody's stock nanny. Do I look like a stock nanny to you? I don't know what I'm talking about.

1/2 pound good sausage - If you go to the supermarket and pick up some pale-ass strips of breakfast sausage for this recipe, you have failed. Go to a butcher's shop or a deli and find some good, locally made sausage. I recommend spicy Italian or Cajun for this recipe. The level of heat in the sausage will determine the spiciness of the overall dish, so go according to your tolerance. I like food that makes me sweat and cry because extreme spiciness is a middle-class substitute for labour and endurance, but you may prefer meals that allow you to keep your composure.

1 large onion, chopped

2 bell peppers, stemmed, seeded and chopped - The peppers are an important element of the texture of this dish, so don't chop finely or in thin strips. You want little squares of sweet pepper. As for colour, I prefer one yellow and one orange, but if you've got green and red peppers kicking around, be my guest. And if you're my guest, I'll be doing the cooking.

1 tablespoon minced garlic - Oh yes, you will reek of garlic the next day.

4 or 5 sprigs of thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme - That sounds like a lot of thyme. And it is, especially if you're using the dried stuff. You'll throw it in and the smell of thyme will smack into your nostrils and you'll think you've ruined the dish. Don't panic. The flavour will blend nicely with everything else. And use the fresh stuff if it's available.

2 bay leaves - These are the most lacerating foodstuffs I have ever known. I'd like to go back in time and witness the first attempts to cook with these things. There was probably blood and tongue tips everywhere.

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice - I never have allspice around, so I substitute a blend of equal parts nutmeg, ground cloves, cinnamon and black pepper. I like grinding up the cloves in a mortar and pestle, because hey - free clove smell.

1 1/2 cup diced canned tomatoes - Drain if you like. I recommend cooking off the extra liquid if you don't drain them, because this dish is one goopy mofo.

salt and pepper to taste

minced fresh parsley or cilantro for garnish - Schmutzie hates parsley more than anything else, except for cilantro, so I've never bothered with this step. But if you like parsley or cilantro, then this can't hurt.

hot sauce if you want

1. Place the sausage in a large skillet and turn the heat to medium. Cook, turning occasionally and pricking the sausage a few times (heh heh) to release the fat (also, heh heh, but only because I like to scream out "Release the fat!" when I'm making this). When the sausage is nicely browned, remove it. Don't worry if the sausage is cooked through. Cut it into small chunks.

2. Cook the onion, pepper and garlic in the sausage fat, stirring frequently, until the pepper is softened, about 10 minutes. Remove. Return the chunks of sausage to the skillet and cook, turning occasionally, until the sausages are browned all over. Return the vegetables to the pan, along with thyme, bay leaves, allspice and tomatoes. Turn the heat to medium-low and cook, stirring, until the tomatoes break up (10-15 minutes).

3. Combine the beans and the stock (optional) in a small pot and heat on medium-low, stirring occasionally until the beans are hot and slightly tender. Most canned beans will be soft right out of the can, but black beans are often a bit chewy. It is not fun to encounter chewy little beans in every mouthful. Stir the sausage and vegetable mixture while the beans heat up.

4. Throw the beans into the skillet with the sausage and vegetable mixture and continue to cook at medium-low until moisture (tomato juice, bean juice, ingredient juice) is reduced. Add salt and pepper to taste. Remove the bay leaves, because they turn into little whirring blades of death in your mouth. You may also want to pick out the thyme sprigs. Stop cooking. Eat. Use hot sauce if desired. Have it with rice if you're a rice-having sort.

If you've done it right (by which I mean, the way I like it) you'll have a dish where the beans and onions provide a basic mortar to hold together the peppers and sausage. Ideally you should be able to build a model of Devil's Tower at the table out of this meal (don't forget to say 'This means something' and then start weeping uncontrollably), but that's the ideal. The reality is, the sausage chunks ruin its architectural qualities.

For a vegetarian option, double the amount of onion. Cook vegetables and garlic in 2 tablespoons of olive oil until softened. Add chili powder to taste when you put in the bay leaves, allspice and thyme. Use 2 cups chopped tomatoes. Use mushroom or vegetable stock with the beans. Alternately, you could just crawl into a twenty-pound bag of textured vegetable protein and go crazy.

By the way, I'm a big fan of eating dishes cold the next day. Take it from me - this dish is horrendous served cold. I've tried twice now and it made me sad. I'll do it again, but that doesn't mean you should. Take a minute to heat the stuff up.

*'Yesterday I walked' is an incredibly important and liberating phrase for me. After months of being unable to walk further than half a city block, I love being able to lay claim to a stroll.

**Usually I take a moment to read up on an ingredient before I go out and buy it. Not so for the porcinis. I picked up a one-eighth ounce bag for three dollars. When I came home I looked in How To Cook Everything, and he had the following to say: "Buy from a reputable dealer in quantities of at least an ounce at a time; the small packages of one-eighth ounce for three dollars are among the world's greatest rip-offs". Pwnd.

Labels: food

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getting betterer
» Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Remember, remember the thirteenth of December? When I wrote about my surgery and promised to follow up with further tales of recovery? And I didn't? Because I do this sort of shit all the time? Okay, here's the follow up.

Part I can be found here.

The first thing I think is: Why is it so noisy all of a sudden? Then: Does anyone else notice that the walls are a different colour? And then I realize that the surgery is over, I'm out of the anaesthetic, and I'm back in my adjustable bed, staring at a strip of fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Children are talking and yelling nearby. The echoes of their voices cheat my senses. I have no idea of the dimensions of the room, but the place seems huge. I imagine a space like a cathedral. Scenes from Flatliners mix around in my brain. A nurse sweeps by.

After a moment, I realize that I'm lying flat on my back, tucked tightly into blankets. It has been nearly eight months since I've been able to lay down like this without nauseating, bone-scraping pain. I guess that means success? I try on a feeling of relief, but it seems inadequate. All I can think is No more pain. As if someone had written the words down on a card and placed it on my stomach.

Not only do I not feel pain, I don't feel much of anything below the waist. I wiggle an arm underneath the blankets until I can poke at my leg. It feels like I'm poking through layers of canvas, or I'm poking someone else's leg and they're telling me via telegraph what it feels like.

I try to move my legs, but it doesn't feel right; muscles in my torso are hauling at the muscles in my hips, but everything's kind of numb and the blankets are pinning me in place with the weight and tenacity of a circus strongman. Then I try poking at my genitals. Numb. Well, hello, worst-case scenario! My pulse goes up, my throat constricts and panic blows into my brain.

— Nurse? Excuse me. Nurse?

The recovery ward nurse, who is actually dressed in white (or am I imagining that?), appears over the bed. — Yes?

I'm trying to keep the panic out of my voice, so I enunciate very carefully. I think it makes me sound like a crazy man. — I'm numb below the waist.

— Oh, she condescends. You feel that you're numb below the waist?

— I don't feel that I'm numb. I am numb. Now I'm trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. The anger feels better than panic.

The nurse promises to get the doctor. Someone comes and takes my temperature, and apparently it is worrisomely high. — But it's not untypical after surgery, the someone reassures me. Big deal. I can't feel my junk. Oh yeah, and my legs are numb.

My neurosurgeon pops his head over the edge of my field of vision. — The recovery nurse tells me you feel that you are numb.

Previous conversations with my surgeon have taught me to be as precise as possible. — I have extremely reduced sensation below the waist. I realize as I'm saying this that I can feel my butt. Except for my butt.

— You can feel your buttocks?

How often in your life are you going to be asked that question?

He pulls the blankets down and exposes my right side, then brushes his fingers very lightly on my hip and thigh. — Can you feel that?

He's brushing so lightly that it's hard to tell. — A little bit.

He pulls the blanket back into place and holds up his hands in a what-more-can-I-do gesture. — You are okay, then. We didn't work on any of the nerves in that area at all.

I am gobsmacked. Did my doctor just ask me a trick question?

We had to move aside a lot of nerves to get at the disc protrusion. It was very large. I'm not surprised that you're experiencing some reduced sensation.

What he is saying, I realize, is We tugged at those nerves to fix you and they're damaged now and that's too bad. Go reread your consent forms.

— I can't feel my genitals.

He nods, as if this is all expected.

Will I get the sensation back?

— Oh, possibly. Nerves regrow, but it takes some time.

— How long?

— A while. You will meet with the physiotherapists today or tomorrow, and they will help you. Do your exercises and you will be just fine.

He leaves before I can lift up one of my legs and smack him with it.

The recovery nurse, the one at whom I'd snapped earlier, looms over my head. — Let's get you back to your room now.

— He didn't do one thing to ease my mind.

— He's a very good surgeon, the nurse responds. Two porters push my bed out of its dock, and I'm off.

***

Is that enough for today? Yeah, let's end on that ominous note. More soon in the epic saga, which is now about my junk.

Labels: autobio, my stupid back

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the blurst of palinode
» Monday, January 14, 2008

Ah man, I'm blocked. Who likes to hear about writer's block on a weblog? You do, or so I'm hoping. Maybe you prefer my tireless efforts at bringing you fresh metaphors through comedy, but with blogs, you take this stuff with that stuff. I could talk about the new season of The Wire, or how I spent today in the apartment, walking around in only a beltless bathrobe and a Toronto Blue Jays T-shirt,* but do you really want to know that? How I ate sardines on triscuits and kept waiting for something exciting to show up in my RSS reader? God I need to go back to work.

Fortunately, I'm starting work next week. The joys of medical leave have all but evaporated, leaving behind the furtive filmy residue of idleness. Alas. Anyway, in order to break the block and come to the aid of youse guys, I'm distilling a Best Of category. It will also have the benefit of extending my tyranny over your tastes just a little bit. Note: this entry will not be included.

UPDATE: My Best of 2004-2005 is up and available for all the lookie-loos. Link on the sidebar.

*I was careful not to pass by the windows, lest the ladies see me and try to break in to the apartment, all crazed with the lust. Seriously, it's like a sexy 28 Days Later with me and the ladies.

Labels: metablog

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the authorial stance
» Sunday, January 13, 2008

My friend Danny took this last weekend. I'm looking thoughtful, clean-shaven and downright authorial. And horribly drunk.

Labels: photos

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chemical reaction
» Thursday, January 10, 2008

Via Boing Boing: via Wired Science blog: This video made me shout involuntarily. Watch as the liquid goes from clear to amber to blue to clear to amber to blue.

UPDATE: A few people, plus at least two sentient robots and a self-aware Jovian gas cloud, have written in to ask just what the hell is going on in that glass. I would have thought the robots, with their advanced brains, would have figured it out, but here goes anyway.

What you're looking at is known as an oscillating reaction. If done properly, the reaction will continue to occur for several minutes, until the solution settles at dark blue. This particular one is called the Briggs-Rauscher reaction, after the two high-school science teachers who came up with it in 1973. The reaction occurs when three different solutions are mixed together. I would go into greater depth, but I don't understand the chemistry behind it. For detailed instructions on how to create this reaction, along with an explanation for its niftiness, can be found here. Remember that chloride ions suppress the oscillating reaction, so make sure to pick up all the chloride ions you've got lying around and put them in a bag somewhere. And use distilled water.

No matter what you think of this process, it's definitely the coolest possible way to create a jar of deep blue liquid.

Labels: science, video

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x365: 57 of 365: melba (ii)
»

Pink zip-up hoodie. Braces. Chemically burned strawberry blond hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail. A sprinkling of freckles and irritated pimples. And she's my bank teller. When did tellers get so young? Her nametag says Melba. I hand her a sheaf of cheques that I've been ~~too lazy to deposit~~ hoarding in order to keep myself solvent.

— You're a writer? she asks, holding up one cheque from a magazine.

— Huh? What? A whatnow? Yes, I finish smoothly. I do a bit of writing, reviews and stuff. But it's not my day job.

Then I remember that my day job involves writing.

— I'm a speechwriter, so I guess that makes me a writer of some kind.

Melba stops inputting. She looks at me like I've told her I'm an archer at the parapets of Minas Tirith or something.

— A what?

— A speechwriter. I write speeches for politicians.

— You mean... they don't write their own?

Melba swings her head around and announces to the teller at the next wicket: &mdash Hey, did you know that politicians don't write their own speeches?

The other teller gets a look on her face like the escalator she's riding on has suddenly come to a halt. I wonder how often Melba sees that look.

— Yeaaah, says the teller. She searches my face for a moment with an imploring save me please flash in her eyes.

— You two have a great New Year! I say.

Labels: x365

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x365: 56 of 365: melba (i)
»

In grade nine, the cruelty of young girls reaches a point so fine that it passes into near-invisibility, and it cuts with such efficiency that you don't even know what's going on until there's blood and bits everywhere. Melba arrived with certain disadvantages: she was taller and bigger-boned than everyone else, and she hadn't learned to move her body with grace. She bumped around as if she'd been stuck together from spare parts. You could feel the contempt of the other girls like the heat on the surface of a hive of bees. I've no doubt that Melba is beautiful now.

Labels: x365

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someone please order one of these
» Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Monsterhoodies! (via Kottke)

Do I ask much of you? Ever? No. But you should click on that link.

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why january sucks: a true story
» Saturday, January 05, 2008

Yesterday I took my recovering body out for a walk.

Walks, when you're rebuilding muscle and nerve, cannot be aimless. You need a specific goal. Otherwise, you'll find your body perilously close to giving out on you in the middle of a block, with nowhere nearby to rest. In my case, it's my left leg that I can't rely on; because the nerves are damaged, it's hard to gauge how much strength and endurance I've got.

Instead of measuring by distance, I measure (out my life) in coffee shops. Abstractions Café, where the coffee is hot and the zataar comes in sandwich format, is far and away the best. Second best is the atrociously misnamed Exotic Coffee World. Even though the place is festooned with signs about not allowing 'table games' and reminders about management's right to refuse service, it will do. The sandwiches are disappointing but edible, with half a loaf of rye protecting a few embattled slices of swiss cheese and luncheon meat. Beyond Exotic Coffee World, the options dip dramatically in quality, featuring places that serve coffee weak and tasteless as hot water, and food that should not be spoken of. And then there's the hospital cafeteria, which has good Chinese food on Wednesdays. Stupid semi-gentrified inner city. When will the yuppies come?

I walked the five blocks to Abstractions, but I hadn't bargained on January, that godforsaken month when cafe owners close their doors and jet off to their luxury island retreats. A polite sign on the door told me that Abstractions was closed until the sixteenth. Exotic Coffee World, when I reached it, was also closed for the holidays.

I had gambled and lost, lost horribly. The only two places left in walking range were Just Bean Brewed, a 24 hour coffee place catering to the schizophrenic runoff from the mental ward at the nearby hospital, or Value Pizza, a little spot next to a closed-up laundromat. I hadn't walked into Value Pizza since New Year's Eve 1998, where my girlfriend at the time had taken me for the purposes of ending our relationship. I thanked her for her time, left and promptly took a lot of drugs with another girl. I remember showing up at someone's house and playing Trivial Pursuit with a troupe of Christian camp kids as the chemicals took hold of my brain and recast my situation (dumped, gaming with Christian pre-teens) as appropriately absurd and itchingly, screamingly funny. Anyway, Value Pizza was all full of memories.

If ten years had elapsed outside, the interior of Value Pizza had ignored the passage of time completely. Same blue fabric in the booths that made it look like you were eating in a Greyhound bus, same hotel art prints on the walls. Same signboard with the Sprite advertisement above the cash register. And the same atmosphere, a kind of first-glance tidiness that starts to unravel by the time you've already ordered your food: stains on the walls, peeling trim, the woman in the corner booth who may be thinking or just sleeping. Or dead.

The woman behind the till seated me in a booth and brought me a cup of coffee and a menu. It is axiomatic that there are no good choices in a place like this; the best I could hope for was something so deep-fried that any harmful bacteria or radioactive isotopes would be long destroyed. On that basis I chose the pork cutlet sandwich and hoped for the best. As for the coffee, it tasted chiefly of soap, but behind the emulsion of cream and detergent you could make out the distinct flavour of something or other. Another sip and the coffee gave up its secret: instant.

I could hardly wait for the pork cutlet sandwich.

What arrived at my table in a few quick minutes was not really food. It was the token of an agreement between myself and the restaurant, a compact involving money and mastication. Pale regular fries that went straight from extruder to freezer to frier to mouth. Instant gravy the colour of milk chocolate, from a freeze-dried and hermetically packaged powder that could have travelled safely into space. Was this an agreement or a put-on?

And then there was the open faced cutlet sandwich: a slice of lightly toasted white bread - itself another con at food - and a corpse-grey patty of reconstituted pig bits, an assembly of slaughterhouse scrapings that a just society would have blasted into orbit. Luckily for me, the manufacturer had blasted it with enough heat to kill any bacteria, as well as any resemblance it may have once had to animal flesh. I wondered if it wasn't a put-on so much as a compromise: I couldn't be sure that my cutlet would nourish me in any way, but I could be pretty certain that it wouldn't kill me.

Wallace Stevens said that a poem should almost successfully resist the intelligence. There turned out to be a similar principle at work between my food and my knife. The toast came in handy for this, providing a spongy non-slip backing for the penetration of my pig bits.

[Here I've reached a bit of a crisis. As you can expect, the cutlet sandwich didn't taste very good, but it was kind of crunchy and kind of salty, and you're probably wondering why I didn't send it back or maybe order something less disgusting in the first place. In the immortal words of Jesus: 'I have no adequate response to that.' But that's not the crisis. Like a child genius who comes up with a revolutionary case for quantum-classical parity, I have witnessed the moment of my peak. I will never again uncover a sentence with the phrase 'spongy non-slip backing for the penetration of my pig bits'. Now I'm trudging down from the peak, and already the clouds are moving in to obscure the flag I planted there.]

Later that evening I told Schmutzie about my encounter with the cutlet sandwich. I told her about the distance to various coffee shops, how they were all closed, and how it was that I chewed my way through a frightening fake of a meal.

That's really, it's just, that's so gross, she said. Why do you always choose the grossest thing on the menu? I mean, I eat some gross foods, but you always go a step further.

Yes, I said. I will always be one cutlet sandwich ahead of you. And I felt my stomach start to twist, as if a ball of metal foil had begun to unfold there, into some unfathomable shape.

There's a moral in there somewhere. Something about proper diet, industrial food production and the wisdom of ordering things called 'cutlet sandwiches'. But I forget what it is.

Oh right: I hate January.

Labels: food, useless

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my virtual dinner with Notfainthearted » Thursday, January 31, 2008

warning » Sunday, January 27, 2008

the secret grown ups » Saturday, January 26, 2008

the geeks » Thursday, January 24, 2008

I'm a printin' photos » Wednesday, January 23, 2008

back at work » Tuesday, January 22, 2008

action-packed literature throughout history »

fud » Thursday, January 17, 2008

getting betterer » Wednesday, January 16, 2008

the blurst of palinode » Monday, January 14, 2008

the authorial stance » Sunday, January 13, 2008

chemical reaction » Thursday, January 10, 2008

x365: 57 of 365: melba (ii) »

x365: 56 of 365: melba (i) »

someone please order one of these » Tuesday, January 08, 2008

why january sucks: a true story » Saturday, January 05, 2008