In Palinode's Palace

poems for Monsters #5: That Old Sith

2009-07-13T16:01:00.004-06:00

Palpatine has lost his lightning
Now he cons the Subway guy
For free sandwiches

Don’t even need my mind control he brags
Kid’s just a moron

He stoops to pluck a cigarette butt
smeared across the sidewalk

Six or seven babies like these
make a good smoke

Say he says
Want to split a meatball sub?
It’s on me

Poems for Monsters #4: The Mummy

2009-07-09T13:55:00.002-06:00

The Mummy
just downloaded Anchorman
Now he’s all “I’m kind of
a big deal” this and “rich mahogany” that

And we all have to laugh along
cause dude
he’s a mummy
he’ll rip your freaking head off

So let’s not let him watch
Knocked Up

or Blade 3

Poems for Monsters #3: Zombies

2009-07-08T15:20:00.006-06:00

Attention all staff
Please stop with the shopping cart
zombie races

Shoppers have complained
of finding zombie pieces
in their groceries

Furthermore

Management asks that
staff cease pretending the heads
are promotional items

Heads are not promo
Items – they smell and they bite
and some of them curse

Some of you no doubt
have nothing better to do
with your coffee breaks

Than use company
property like spoiled children
Nice attitude folks

We do not accept
responsibility for
the unsanctioned dead

And we are tired of
hosing down the parking lot
during zombie hours

Thank you

Poems for Monsters #2: Frankenstein

2009-07-07T14:27:00.003-06:00

Ten minutes left on our coffee break
But there’s no stopping Frankenstein's
Monster on a roll

Blah blah blah he says I was so misunderstood
Peasants and pitchforks and bolts in my skull
I just wanted my own set of Tesla coils
And a nice summer cottage
To play with children
And love goddamnit

Criminal tears trace scars on his face
Meanwhile the entire food court's gone quiet
They're wrapping and unwrapping sandwiches
Nesting birds at twilight
wondering if pine boughs and darkness will shelter them

Hey he says
Have you heard of dianetics?

Poems for Monsters #1: Dracula

2009-07-07T10:53:00.002-06:00

Dracula stop rising
From the grave to steal
My girlfriends

Why

You gotta cockblock
Like that? Humans

Need game too

Who invited you
to Brad's party anyway

because everyone else has written about michael jackson

2009-07-02T20:33:00.003-06:00

According to a biographer - or maybe a parasite - Michael Jackson wore fake sideburns at his wedding to Debbie Rowe.

Think about that for a moment. Fake sideburns. Did you even know that such a thing existed? Reason tells me that they must, as pieces of theatrical gear. But not until now have I been forced to conceive of fake sideburns as real objects.

Once you start reading the news stories that have begun to flow from the wound of Jackson’s death, you run the risk of drowning in the endless, insane details. He wore wigs, he took 40 Vicodin per day, he spent sixty grand per month on prescription drugs, he fell in love with a restaurant waiter, he weighed 112 pounds at his time of death. He forbade his children, of whom he was not the biological father, from looking into mirrors. He threw away his childrens' toys every night. He was gay, he was straight, he liked to fuck little boys, he liked to fuck construction workers, he was repulsed by the thought of contact with human flesh. It goes on.

Here’s another crazy detail: the best man at Jackson’s second wedding was an eight year old boy named Anthony. Jackson called him his ‘nephew’. But it’s the fake sideburns that get me. It’s the unflagging commitment to artifice, to acting as the impresario to every detail of his life, to the transformation of that life into a perpetual costume drama. But even more than that, it’s the fact that he chose sideburns. A wedding is a mature, adult moment (even though children always seem to have the most fun at weddings), so Jackson must have thought sideburns were an appropriate piece of dress-up. Like cufflinks, or a decent tie clip. It was the zenith of the natural as artificial, as decoration. I’m certain that, had the technology been available, he would have popped on a nice wedding face.

I’ve been thinking about Michael Jackson over the last week, passing through the stages of reaction to his death, from the seismic strangeness of the news to some dutiful reflections on his talent, and finally to the recollection of who Jackson really was: a pedophilic drug-addicted freak with a monstrous face and a breathing mask, a living grotesque, a sport of choice rather than nature. He had vitiligo, lupus, schizophrenia, a damaged septum, a burnt scalp, an arrested emotional state and a high sweet voice.

I remember first seeing the album at a friend’s house, one of a pack of twelve year old boys. My friend somberly unfolded the cover and we beheld Jackson’s gauzy image in white. I was never a fan of Jackson – at that point I was only a year or two away from discovering The Smiths – but Thriller was impressive, with its long-form videos and inexhaustible supply of singles. I’m pretty sure they just released another single from that album last month.

Off The Wall was a good album. Thriller was a great album, a giant rock rising out of the rapids of pop culture. Everything after Thriller was just an embarrassment, a tacky quasi-religious musical played out in five-minute installments over the next two decades. I remember the horror of seeing Jackson perform “Earth Song” at the 1996 Brit Awards, extending his arms to suffer a crowd of shuffling children to come unto him like a space-age Jesus saving his pre-pubescent Elect. Given that Jackson performed his neo-Jesus act not long after the first allegations of sexual abuse were cropping up, Earth Song came off as a singularly tasteless piece of theatre that Jackson undoubtedly regarded as vindication. See? I’m rising on a column of light above a crowd of adoring children. I can’t be a child molester! I have staged a redemptive three-minute set piece on television that clearly exonerates me!

Check out this clip of Jarvis Cocker running up on stage during Jackson's 1996 performance and graphically miming his opinion of the whole affair.

I don't even know why Cocker bothered. This is from 1996. Kurt Cobain had pretty much smashed a Fender over the skull of this kind of bombastic fantasy-addled pseudo-rock five years before. But I'm betting that Jackson probably checked out of reality somewhere around 1985.

getting to Ontario

2009-06-14T15:21:00.004-06:00

For the first hour or so of the 3 hour bus trip from Regina to Saskatoon I thought we'd gotten away with boarding a crazy-free bus, but then the man in the seat behind me began to talk to himself.

I'd seen him earlier in the ticket queue, a slight fellow in a white shirt and black shorts, a thatch of hay-blond hair sticking out from under his black baseball cap. He had an air of politeness, even deference, that probably came from living in and out of institutions. A white crust clung to the corners of his mouth, and the skin on one of his legs was a bright ham-like pink crazed with white markings. From his pores puffed a haze of cheap alcohol.

I'd met and struck up conversations with plenty of people like this one, and I could already map out the course of our acquaintance: a few innocuous remarks that would eventually get a reply from me, and then the chopped-up biography, rearranged and presented for maximum pity. Eventually he would ask me for a cigarette, which I would have to decline (being a non-smoker), and he would wind down our brief friendship and start up the show with the next person.

It's not quite accurate to say that he was talking to himself on the bus. At first I thought that some machine or system had developed an edge or started to heat up, because I could hear a strange humming sound that reminded me of the air conditioner in my office. Gradually the humming took on a kind of rhythm, pulsing with patterns that felt familiar but just out of reach. The sound reminded me of mumbled incantations, the buzz of far-off voices. And then I realized that the noise was issuing from the lips of the man behind me. Worse yet, I knew that the sound was meant partially for me, that it was designed to lure me in to a long and pointless conversation, a psychedelic retelling of all the wrongs done to him. I ignored the sound and turned back to my book.

After a while the mumbling fell away and he started in with individual words. Some of them were responses to a conversation going on in the rear seat of the bus between a young man and woman flirting with each other by trading a series of lies (he charged a hapless jerk six bucks for a cigarette, she was facing charges for beating up her stepfather), other words seemed meant to describe interactions between particles in the air. Cool, he said at one point. Hah at another. I kept my mouth shut. Even the least hint of a response would be an opening.

Halfway through the trip he leaned forward and addressed us directly.

"Excuse me," he said. That's when I caught the light fog of booze enveloping him.

"Yes, how can I help you?" I felt oddly secretarial saying that, but it seemed to formalize the situation.

"What highway is this? I mean, is this the Number One"?

I weighed my response for a moment. We were not on the number one highway, the East-West corridor that runs the length of the entire country. We were in fact over one hundred miles from the Number One, and rushing farther away from it with every moment.

"No, this is Number 11".

"Okay," said the guy, and sat back for a moment. Then he leaned forward.

"Because the Number One highway is the Trans-Canada, right?"

"That's right".

"Excuse me again, but will this bus take me to Ontario?"

This put me at a bit of a loss. Ontario is two provinces over, a solid twelve-hour drive to reach its western border. This was either the most graceless conversational gambit ever, or I was dealing with someone whose mind had been emptied or everything but a few sticks of furniture and some cryptic notes scribbled on the walls. I pictured a wall stripped bare, with the cryptic imperative "GET TO ONTARIO" scrawled in charcoal.

"No," I explained. "We're heading northwest to Saskatoon. Ontario is east of here".

"Okay," he said, completely unfazed by the news that he was heading in the entirely wrong direction, "so how would I get to Ontario from Saskatoon?"

"You can take the bus back to Regina, or just head straight for Winnipeg. Or you could hang out in Saskatoon. It's a nice city".

My shot at humour set him cackling. "Okay man, okay," he said. "Thanks a lot". He sat back in his seat and resumed his strange machine hum of a monologue.

I'm getting on the bus again in a few hours and I won't be surprised if he's sitting there, asking people how to get to Ontario.

today is probably monday

2009-06-08T10:23:00.003-06:00

My office computer is labouring under the weight of my RAM usage (ye gods, Excel and Word at once!) so switching between windows is actually slightly time-consuming. What's more, windows don't pop up all at once, but instead paint themselves in sections on top of the previous window. First a frame goes up, then a title, then the main body goes in a glop, and finally the explorer bar and whatnot. It's kind of hypnotic and really pleasing. I feel as if the computer is really working. Because I'm not. I'm writing in my blog.

That's all for now.

photos for monday

2009-05-18T15:16:00.004-06:00

No one smiles for my camera. So I've decided to work with it. Enjoy!

Deb is Engaged

Lacey is Alone

Aaron is Mulling

Curtis is Not Really Inside The Glass

Curtis and Gina Are at a Brief Impasse

Jules Is Not Sure

Water and Ice

Additional Water and Ice

insulting the elements #12: roentgium to ununoctium

2009-05-14T15:44:00.002-06:00

Roentgium (Rg) – We’re all grown-ups here, roentgium, so I’d like to pay you the favour of being frank in the expectation that you will repay me in similar coin one day. Which is to say, I don’t think you’ve thought through the concept of being extant. When was the last time you passed through this this universe? Sure, you visited back in 1994, but since then you’ve made yourself pretty scarce. Here’s the thing, roentgium: we’re doing just fine without you.

Ununbium (Uub) – So you’re the first element with three characters in your symbol. Well la-di-da. I suppose you think you’re special. Don’t get used to it.

Ununtrium (Uut) – Hey shithead, someone I know at RIKEN was raving about that time in July 2004 when you showed up for a millisecond. July 23. My birthday. As I recall, you said you were too high-energy to come to my party, and now I find out that you went to Japan. You know what, I’m glad you didn’t show. There were so many synthetics there already that you would have felt ridiculous. Ununseptium showed up, and he doesn’t even exist. Way to make me feel like a friend.

Ununquadium (Uuq) – Who the hell spread a rumor that you had noble gas properties, Mr. eka-lead? Until you put up a photo of yourself, I’m not taking anything for granted. I’ve been burned by Craigslist before and I won’t put up with another six months of heartache.

Ununpentium (Uup) – Look, stop bragging about your ‘island of stability’. Everyone knows that you decay within milliseconds. You come on like you could outlast the universe, but the truth is, even a piece of fried chicken from 7-Eleven has a longer shelf life than you. Save it for the geeks.

Ununhexium (Uuh) – Great. Hey everybody, it’s Stevie Nicks. Hey, Stevie Nicks is looking pretty rough. Wait, it’s ununhexium again. Sorry to disappoint you.

Ununseptium (Uus) – You know, ununseptium, you’re not real. And I like you that way. Stay theoretical, buddy. Once an atom or two of you pops out of some insane reaction, all the scientists will make a big noise for a while. Then the inevitable backlash will set in when they realize what a wanker you probably are.

Ununoctium (Uuo) – I don’t mind admitting that you scare the living hell out of me, ununoctium. If radon is what radium farts out, then I don’t want to meet the radioactive ass whence you issued. And that’s what truly scares me: an ass with 120 protons, farting its deadly message into our cosmos from beyond space and time.

insulting the elements #11: mendelevium to darmstadtium

2009-05-13T16:35:00.002-06:00

Mendelevium (Mv) – Look, mendelevium, I know you’re busy rapidly decaying, but it’s time you lived up to your name. Dmitri Mendeleev made a massive contribution to chemistry, and you have yet to do a single worthwhile thing with your mayfly-like lifespan. Ah fuck, you’re gone already.

Nobelium (No) – "No"? This is the most pathetic grab at a cool nickname yet. I couldn’t come up with something more excruciatingly poncey if you put me in a ponce-o-tron and turned the dial up to Douchebag.

Lawrencium (Lr) – Your isotopes are grotesquely oversized. I know that some elements are larger than others, but I think you could stand to be bombarded with a little self-respect.

Rutherfordium (Rf) – You know what? I’m sick of everyone pretending that you’re not just hafnium with a beer gut and a greasy ponytail. You think you’re not hurting anybody, but you should see the look on hafnium’s face when you come stumbling into the room. Give it up already.

Dubnium (Db) – I hated that restaurant you opened with Kenny Rogers.

Seaborgium (Sg) – I don’t care that in your aqueous chemistry, you have been shown to resemble your lighter homologues molybdenum and tungsten, forming a stable +6 oxidation state. Molydbenum and tungsten could kick your ass once and come back for seconds.

Bohrium (Bh) – I’m sorry, bohrium. No matter how many times we get introduced, I keep confusing you with boron. Why is that, do you think? Have you considered picking up a personality somewhere?

Hassium (Hs) – We waited a long time for you to actually make an appearance in reality, hassium, and on behalf of reality, I don’t know why we bothered. You are one ugly element. I heard a rumor that you were deformed in some way, and you have yet to prove your detractors wrong.

Meitnerium (Mt) – Say, what do you get when you bombard bismuth-209 with accelerated iron-58 nuclei for a while? Give up yet? Because when the answer is meitnerium, why not give up? Why not just sit at home and watch pay-per-view porn while discarding draft after draft of your suicide note? Because a world with meitnerium in it isn’t worth getting overly involved with.

Darmstadtium (Ds) – I remember the days when nobody cared about you, darmstadtium. You were just a few heavy atoms named after a German suburb. Then your decay level scheme got “leaked” onto the internet, and wham! Instant stardom. That must have been the trauma that turned you into a vapid fame whore.

insulting the elements #10: protactinum to fermium

2009-05-11T13:30:00.004-06:00

Protactinium (Pa) – Permit me to indulge in a thought experiment. Me, protactinium and the Jonas Brothers run into each other on the street. One of us is going to scream like a preteen girl being presented with a pony. And it’s not going to be me.

Uranium (U) – Plenty of elements out there are nothing but evil (chlorine, caesium – basically anything starting with a ‘c’ or ending with an ‘m’), but none of them have got the moustache-twirling, tie-the-lady-to-the-tracks routine down quite like uranium.

Neptunium (Np) – Dude, you’ve got no known hydrides. Don’t you think that a self-respecting element would take the time to get some hydrides before showing up? Go home and make yourself presentable.

Plutonium (Pu) – So it turns out that some scientists, having nothing better to do one day, threw deuterons at uranium until you appeared. You're the result of what is basically the most expensive basketball game in the universe. Do you know how much it costs to get you to make an appearance? You’re like the Linda Evangelista of atoms.

Americium (Am) – Americium, you’re what happens when the cosmos runs out of ideas. You’re a third-grade remake of a washed-out franchise of radioactive metals. Being more malleable than plutonium does not make you a ‘reboot’ of the series. We are done as a culture, and you’re the substance that proves it.

Curium (Cm) – I’m no knee-jerk liberal, curium, but I’ve had it with corporate welfare bums. You wouldn’t even exist without a nuclear reactor to perform neutron capture from americium and plutonium isotopes. In return, you destroy red blood cells and then you stick around for 16 million years. Minimum. Sixteen thousand millennia from now you'll still be freeloading off our advanced posthuman selves.

Berkelium (Bk) – For an element synthesized at Berkeley in 1949, you’d think there’d be a decent chance that you hung out with Philip K. Dick. But no. You haven't even read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. We had one thing to talk about, berkelium, and you blew it.

Californium (Cf) – Hi Californium. Remember me? I’m the guy who left a bunch of neutrons with you for safekeeping. My friends warned me that you’d just emit them, but I thought I knew better. I blame myself for my failure of judgment.

Einsteinium (Es) – Talk about false advertising. You are one of the dumbest elements I’ve ever met. Did you think you could fool people with that name? I could call myself Michaelphelpsium, but that won’t improve my butterfly stroke. Or will it?

Fermium (Fm) – I take back what I said about einsteinium being the dumbest element I’ve ever met. Fermium, you take the prize. No one knows who Enrico Fermi is. You should have named yourself after a celebrity with a sex tape.

insulting the elements #9: thallium to thorium

2009-04-30T16:41:00.002-06:00

Thallium (Tl) – Thallium, you’re like my first serious girlfriend in junior high: at first I thought we were made for each other, but the more I saw, the less there was to like. You’re toxic, you show up in crappy electronics, and as it turns out, you’re not allowed to visit the United States. Don’t get me wrong: I was attracted, even a little bit excited at first, but you’re more trouble than you’re worth. And I think you killed my dog.

Lead (Pb) – Oh man. You seriously think you’re cool, don’t you? Showing up in all those early Superman comics really went to your head, but I see right through you. I stopped for a drink at the Airport Sheraton and ran into a trivalent metal you went to school with. Is it true your name used to be plumbum? Because yeah. Plumbum.

Bismuth (Bi) – Just wanted to say thanks for that bit of gossip you dropped on lead when we ran into each other at the bar. Priceless! And when I say ‘priceless,’ I mean give me back my Mastercard, you skank.

Polonium (Po) – I would think that a metal with 27 different isotopes could produce one – just one – that isn’t highly radioactive. But not you, polonium. This above all: to thine own self be true. Even if you’re a one-note radioactive dick.

Astatine (As) – Pardon me, but how did you even get on the periodic table in the first place? Did you have to bribe a security guard at IUPAC? It couldn’t have been much if you’re stuck with the halogen group. Tell chlorine I said Piss Off.

Radon (Rn) – There’s no easy way to say this, radon, so I’ll just come out with it. You are what happens when radium farts. Forget sulphur; you’re the real candidate for the ‘silent-but-deadly’ label on the list. So from now on I’m going to call you Mr. Cancer Fart.

Francium (Fr) – I just think it’s sad that you can afford only one valence electron. I’d give you some of mine, but I'm not sure you'd put them to proper use. Maybe if you were a little more stable you could find a commercial application and really make something of yourself.

Radium (Ra) – You bastard. You killed Marie Curie. And you have radioactive farts, which is beyond disgusting.

Actinium (Ac) – I’ll give you and your actinoid buddies props for being heavier and more radioactive than the lanthanoids. But I’m getting awfully tired of telling you to get your crap out of the front yard. Property values are already in the trash, and I don’t need your rusty Corvette on cinder blocks stinking up my resale value.

Thorium (Th) – You know what’s really cool, thorium? When you reenact the entire ‘you-think-I’m-funny’ monologue from Goodfellas. If this is 1993 then that shit is hysterical. Oh hey, would you look at the date.

Insulting the Elements #8: lutetium to mercury

2009-04-27T15:02:00.004-06:00

Lutetium (Lu) - I don’t care that you can recite portions of The Canterbury Tales with an authentic Middle English accent. Breaking out with ‘Wawn Aprilluh weeth ets shoures soatuh’ is not going to get you laid. Just ask Cindy out for a drink already. Losers get her hot.

Hafnium (Hf) – When are you going to realize that zirconium is never going to sleep with you? At least lutetium has his Chaucer shtick.

Tantalum (Ta) – I know what’s going on here. You’re angry and envious of steel. Steel hogs all the news, you say. It’s just an alloy, you say. Sure, it’s not as hard or heavy or resistant to chemicals as you are, but you missed the boat on some crucial branding opportunities. That’s why I don’t refer to myself as 150 pounds of twisted blue tantalum. At least not when I’m flexing.

Tungsten (W) – Have you seen those new fluorescent bulbs? They are so energy-efficient and attractive. They may cost a little more, but they’re worth it in the long run. Oh, and they have a message for you, Mr. W: take your filaments and go light up a landfill.

Osmium (Os) – If you’re so expensive, osmium, why do you smell so bad? Perhaps you’re too invigorated from your morning run along your private beach to waste time in the shower. And since you’re surrounded by fawning yesmen and suckups like rhodium, I imagine no one’s taken you behind the woodshed and kicked your ass. Well, prepare for a little trip, osmium. Your time is now. No, no need to call security, we’re just talking here.

Iridium (Ir) – When iridium walks into the bar, you've got a twenty-minute window of safety before he starts asking you about the extinction of dinosaurs and then drops the little tidbit about coming to Earth on the giant meteorite that caused it all. It’s really impressive the first time you hear it. In grade four.

Rhenium (Re) – I looked up also-ran in the dictionary the other day, rhenium, and there you were: nearly the densest element, with almost the highest melting point, and earning the distinction of being the next-to-last natural element discovered. Congratulations, rhenium: you're almost interesting. I'm surprised they don’t make horseshoes out of you. Maybe they almost did.

Platinum (Pt) - I met you once at a wedding reception. You are the worst kind of snob. First of all, you showed up dressed entirely in platinum, which was a bit ostentatious. And you spent the whole time chatting with osmium and pointing in my direction, like I was so goddamn funny. Well, nuts to you, platinum. I don't care what you think of me. And those ‘investment tips’ you gave me? My ex-wife thanks you.

Gold (Au) - I'd like to think it's a coincidence that the world threw out the gold standard in the year that I was born, but if life has taught me anything, it's that a) Big Macs are poorly engineered sandwiches, and b) some elements just can’t age gracefully. You’re may be pretty, gold, but you’re not money anymore. I was embarrassed for both of us when you made that cameo in Battlefield Earth. How the mighty have fallen.

Mercury (Hg) - What a shifty ponce you are. Really. Last week when you ‘dropped by’ our family reunion? It was tough to keep the guffaws down when you reminisced about all the times we had fevers and how you felt ‘so blessed’ to help out. You sat around in a tube and reacted predictably to exothermic stimulus. And as I recall it, you seemed only too pleased to stick yourself in my mouth.

Nick bemused

2009-04-24T10:18:00.001-06:00

Nick bemused, originally uploaded by palinode.

Paul, on a guitar grunge-god jag, finally irritates Nick. In the background and just off-centre, Shannon and Jeff believe they are posing for the picture. Even though this shot of full or random flyaway details (not to mention two sketchy dudes standing around with beers), Nick's expression completely dominates.

My LX3 is teaching me to enjoy wider-angle lenses. I could never have captured this in a frame with my G10 or my old FZ8. I suppose I could buy a wide-angle lens for my SLR, but film has come to seem archaic, inconvenient and an unnecessary expense these days.

insulting the elements #7: promethium to ytterbium

2009-04-23T15:06:00.004-06:00

Promethium (Pr) – You have to be the most pretentious one of the bunch. Thanks, but I have no need to see your collection of King Crimson on vinyl. Or your Criterion Collection Blu-Rays. Give me a break.

Samarium (Sm) – Samarium thinks it’s a big deal that it ignites in air at 150 degrees Celsius. No offense, samarium, but 150 degrees is not really that hot. Maybe you could find some other property to brag about. Like your low to moderate toxicity. Yawn.

Europium (Eu) – I’ve been ragging on the lanthanoids a bit, but let’s face it: with members like europium swishing around and leaving their Sobranie butts everywhere, can you blame me? Europium was discovered in 1890 by Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran, who was attempting to isolate the elemental substance that made up fops.

Gadolinium (Ga) – Another paramagnetic substance, gadolinium has no personality of its own, forever seeking magnetic substances to hang out with and act as if it has its own magnetic field. Once I heard gadolinium bragging about how it was totally going to see Fountains of Wayne with iron. Gooood luck with that.

Terbium (Tb) – No matter how the night starts, if you’re hanging out with terbium, you will always, always end up at Denny’s at 2:30 a.m. listening to terbium talk about all the guys it likes so much who just treat it like crap.

Dysprosium (Dy) – Dysprosium thinks it’s cool to have sex with my girlfriend when I go to sleep because I have to work in the morning. Somebody’s got to pay for all that pot we smoke, you know. Or did you think the magic pot fairy dropped off that quarter-ounce last Saturday? God you are so immature.

Holmium (Ho) – Ho. Heh heh.

Erbium (Er) – Erbium, you have many good qualities. But if you refer to the lens on your point-and-shoot as ‘glass’ one more time I’m going to kick you in the neck.

Thulium (Tm) – Just because you’re rare and expensive doesn’t mean that you have anything to contribute to the conversation. People have lowered their standards to accommodate you for as long as I can remember, and you’ve definitely lived down to my expectations. I don’t know why I even bother.

Ytterbium (Yb) – True story: when ytterbium first found out that it absorbed near-infrared but not visible light, it thought that meant it was invisible. What a jumbo dumbo.

ride roughers

2009-04-22T09:41:00.001-06:00

ride roughers, originally uploaded by guidewire.

I am in awe of this. Go Ride Roughers!

insulting the elements #6: antimony to neodymium

2009-04-21T18:26:00.002-06:00

Antimony (Sb) – I'm sorry, did you say 'anti-money'? I won't have any of those anti-money ideas around here. I recommend you take your anti-money agitation and go somewhere there isn't any money anyway. Like South Dakota.

Tellurium (Te) – Let me tell you a little story. This used to be a nice neighbourhood. The elementary school was the envy of the district. The cheese factory anchored the local economy in place and the community theatre kept everyone smiling all summer long. Then tellurium came to town. I don't know if there's a connection, but you can't pay tourists to take a shit in this town anymore. You're the rarest stable solid element on the planet, tellurium. Why'd you have to come here?

Iodine (I) – People like to tout your benefits like you're the second freaking coming, iodine. Lack of iodine leads to goiter, they say. Lack of iodine in children leads to blindness, they say. I say if you really cared about those things, you'd be there in abundance. Guess you've better things to do. Or maybe you like blind children *coughamberalertcough*.

Xenon (Xe) – Before anyone brings up how xenon is a noble gas, let me tell you what goes on when xenon ends up in a vacuum tube with an electrical discharge running through it. I'm not going to get into the details, but if you saw what I saw, you wouldn't be so quick to call xenon noble.

Caesium (Cs) – Back in the horrendous shithole of a school I used to go to in grade 8, a couple of kids in senior year stole a bar of caesium and threw it in a toilet in the boy's bathroom. Boom. Exploded toilet. Anyway, I hear that's why caesium was first isolated back in 1860, when the emerging Victorian era was judged too slow and too Victorian.*

Barium (Ba) – I'd like to know at what point in history you and SO₄ got together for your sick little barium sulfate game. I met you in the hospital once and I was not impressed with the introduction.

Lanthanum (La) – This puffed-up element has a whole gang named after it. They call themselves the lanthanoids and they like to drive around on Harleys like they're bad-ass, but every year, without fail, they get beaten to a pulp at the Sturges Rally. Maybe it's those matching Swatches that mess with their game.

Cerium (Ce) – Cerium likes to noise off on how it's a rare earth metal, but get this: it's totally the most abundant of all the rare earth metals! What a joke! Oh, I'm so scared of you and your gang of lanthanoids. Oh no, please don't form oxides in my presence.

Praseodymium (Pr) – I'd hurl some zingers at you, but with a name like that you don't need any. Praise-ee-oh-what? Ee-i-ee-i-oh.

Neodymium (Nd) – Dude, you think you're getting away with something here, but you're not. You make great magnets for microphones and amps, but hanging out with the band does not make you part of the band. Only recording engineers go all weak in the knees for you, and I know that's not the kind of action you're looking for. Go hang out with your lanthanoid pals.

*This does not sound like an insult, but caesium is ridiculously proud of its use in setting international time measurement standards. It's going to be royally pissed off when it finds out I didn't mention that.

foe-toes

2009-04-20T22:19:00.004-06:00

You can't argue with a photograph. You can only look, or look away. So behold! Or don't behold!

These are the passenger bay doors of an abandoned bus terminal. A huge new shiny white bus depot now operates only a few blocks away.

Distant hipsters walking south.

There is a hidden Jan in this photo.

insulting the elements #5: niobium to tin

2009-04-20T14:05:00.002-06:00

Niobium (Nb) – Niobium, that plucky element, mostly comes from Brazil. So how come it took a week to reply to my tweet about Terry Gilliam’s only undisputed masterpiece? And here’s what niobium said: “Is that the guy who made 12 Monkeys? OMG what a mindf**k 12 Monkeys was!! Did not understand.” Knob.

Molybdenum (Mo) – Molybdenum, you’re supposed to be a good lubricant at high temperatures where normal oils dissolve. I took your word for it. Now I've got a class action lawsuit to deal with.

Technetium (Tc) – Ugh. Technetium usually stays the hell away from humanity and does its thing in the hearts of stars, but ever since the advent of nuclear reactors, technetium has been showing up on Terra by the kilo. You’ll know technetium when you meet it because it can’t stop talking about Kraftwerk and Doctor Who.

Rhodium (Rh) – Let’s set aside your drippy name for a moment, which will always remind me of a sitcom spin-off. I understand you’re part of the ‘platinum group’ of elements. Get serious, rhodium. Those guys will drop you as soon as their investment house of cards collapses. And you know who’ll be holding the bill at the end of it all? Not palladium, that’s for sure.

Palladium (Pd) – Palladium, this is the fifth message I’ve left. You came over last Thursday and absorbed 900 times your volume in hydrogen. You impressed the hell out of my wife, but the fun’s over and I want my hydrogen back. I’ll take it up with rubidium, jerk.

Silver (Ag) – Between Echo & The Bunnymen and LCD Soundsystem, not to mention those people who’ve gone all grey-skinned from colloidal silver, I’m tempted to give you a pass. Then I remember that you’re mentioned in the Bible and I just know that there’s some sad deluded dope out there who’s wearing silver nippleguards in accordance with some throwaway line from Numbers, and I hate you all over again.

Cadmium (Cd) – Look, I don’t really care about you, cadmium. I don’t care what you get up to with all those other elements. Hey, different strokes, right? But when you take your ‘lifestyle choice’ and parade it in the streets and in our schools, you’ve gone too far. And stop picking me up in bars and sleeping with me. It’s disgusting.

Indium (In) – I bought a mirror for my bathroom the other day thinking it was coated with silver. But when I found out that it was coated with you, I had to return it to Home Depot. I’m just not that comfortable with the thought of you looking at me while I’m in the shower. You creep me out.

Tin (Sn) – Allow me to indulge in a syllogism. All items eaten by goats are either garbage or goat food. Goats eat tin cans. Guess what, tin: you’re not goat food. Modus tollendo ponens SNAP!

friendly weekend

2009-04-18T17:24:00.003-06:00

I will not be insulting the elements this weekend. Here is my stapler.

Wait, there has been an error. Hold on.

The stapler was a gift from Schmutzie. The rest of the office envies me my stapler.

No one envies the dead dry weed on the street. It is pitied by all.

insulting the elements #4: gallium to zirconium

2009-04-17T14:47:00.007-06:00

Gallium (Ga) - Good 'morning' gallium. I guess two in the afternoon is the new crack of dawn around here. Hey, while you're slurping up my Cheerios, could you let me know where the remote is? WHERE DID YOU PUT THE FUCKING REMOTE, GALLIUM? WHERE IS THE REMOTE? This thing is stuck on a Hills marathon and I can't even change the channel. At least come help me figure out if Lauren Conrad has a mustache.

Germanium (Gr) - Guten Tag, Herr Germanium. When did you show up in the table of elements? 1946? I suppose it was only a matter of time before you decided to annex the physical universe on an atomic scale. Next thing you know, Einsteinium is going to become Debyium and then the whole cosmos will turn into one Master Substance. Probably strüdel.

Arsenic (As) - Of all the elements, arsenic, I looked up to you for your toxicity and your place in classic French literature. But then I found out that you had your own alchemical symbol, and my respect for you pretty much sublimed into contempt. I thought you were bad-ass, arsenic, not another pathetic New Ager flailing against mediocrity.

Selenium (Se) - Say, didn't I see you on an episode of CSI once as a poison in dandruff shampoo? ROFLMAO. Because I remember when you were yapping about how you were going to 'make it big' in Hollywood. No one had the heart to tell you this, but just because you're an essential trace element doesn't mean we want to see your fugly metallic grey ass on TV.

Bromine (Br) - Hey bromine. Mah man, how's it going? Insult you? What? I'm not going to insult you - I fucking love you, bromine. Bro o' mine, get it? Just because you're an extremely dangerous nonmetallic liquid doesn't mean we can't be friends. Right? Oh god. Please don't turn to vapour or pour yourself onto my skin.

Krypton (Kr) - I did a bit of research, krypton, and it turns out that you are not the remains of Kal-El's home planet. You're just a trace gas present in the air at about 1 ppm. You're nothing, krypton. I can't believe I stood in line so you could sign my copy of Superman #75.

Rubidium (Rb) - If you didn't ignite spontaneously on contact with the air and react so violently with water, maybe we could have hung out. But I guess you're too selfish. It's all about liberating your hydrogen atoms and not enough about our friendship. Well I'm tired of giving, rubidium. I have to think about myself for a while.

Strontium (Sr) - You're going to like this, strontium. You were named after the Scottish village Strontian, which comes from the Gaelic name Sròn an t-Sìtheinn. Which means 'fairy nose'. Or even better, 'Point of the Fairies'. So congratulations, Fairywangium. Welcome to your illustrious history.

Yttrium (Y) - Yttrium, I didn't lend you my entire set of Y The Last Man so it could sit in the back of you car for a month. I thought you'd be flattered and interested. I mean, that is the single greatest run of comics in FOREVER. Didn't you say you were a fan of graphic novels? I should have known something was up when you didn't come see Watchmen with me and Chad and Kyle.

Zirconium (Zr) - Trashy. Barstar. Bitch.

Anti-Abortion/Chinese Restaurant

2009-04-16T19:19:00.002-06:00

I look forward to the referral stats.

Ass Bike

2009-04-16T19:09:00.001-06:00

insulting the elements #3: scandium to zinc

2009-04-16T15:19:00.003-06:00

Wow, people, I wish we had a better class of elements to show you. But sometimes you have to work with what you've got.

Scandium (Sc) – Not to be too harsh, but scandium is laughable. Scandium is commonly found in a mineral called thortveitite. WTF? Is that even a real mineral? Scandium, are you real? Or did I just drunkenly make you up in order to feel superior to something? And why am I covered in blood? Wait, that’s something different.

Titanium (T) – I’ll give you one thing, titanium: you’re nicely resistant to damp chlorine gas. You don’t lower yourself to suit chlorine’s abominable standards. But I prefer my metals with a bit more density, you know what I’m saying? Don’t you walk away from me. I own you.

Vanadium (V) – As a healthy adult male weighing about 150 lbs, I contain a whopping 0.002043 grams of vanadium. How disappointing. I wanted enough for a full-on vanadium skeleton. Vanadium, I showed up to the party with all my bones. You sent a crappy Hallmark card with some sad kittens on it. I can't believe Hallmark is doing lolcats now.

Chromium (Cr) – Don’t you have anything better to do than pose in photographs with classic cars and dead movie icons? You were cool in 1963. Now you’re as rebellious as Lawrence Welk, except I’d rather rub my body up against that grand MC of schmaltz than your shiny cool reflective surfaces. Hold on, I may not have thought this through.

Manganese (Mn) – Oh you talentless wannabe. You are no Magnesium. You know I paid 125 bucks to see Magnesium in concert last summer when I went to Vegas? I think you know what I’m going to say next. You've heard it from every fan who showed up that night with a souvenir T-shirt and a dream in their heart. I don't want my money back. It's not about the money.

Iron (Fe) – Hey, iron, can you see me waving from the twenty-first century? It must be nice back there in the Victorian era. Where you're still relevant. Yeah, stay wrought, Pony Boy. Stay wrought.

Cobalt (Co) – I have a word for you, cobalt, and you’re not going to like it. Are you ready? Marmite. That’s right, cobalt, I’ve discovered your dirty little secret. You’re the worm at the heart of the rose, except use ‘spreadable yeast extract’ for ‘rose’, and ‘sneaky metal’ for ‘worm’.

Nickel (Ni) – Oh this is just too delicious. You never thought you’d end up on a list like this, did you, nickel? But your time has come. You stay put while I find something to insult you with. You’ve got a weakness, nickel, and I’m going to find it.

Copper (Cu) – There’s not much to say about you, copper. You’re just kind of brown and bland. But I have to ask: why do you like being pipes so much? That’s kind of gross when you think about it.

Zinc (Z) – I have never seen such a blatant flouting of alphabetical order in all my life. Zinc, you should be right at the end of the line after yttrium, but you just had to jump the queue and get in at number thirty. What’s that? Zirconium? Why you smart-mouthed little son of a bitch.