Liverquest

"It was all Pac-Man and board games"

2011-08-13T12:18:00.001-06:00

My latest at toronto.com

As of this writing, things seem to be calming down over in England after days of rioting; eventually, a point is reached where folks are just kind of done with smashing and burning, you know? Now comes the fun part: blame. And amid all the rhetoric, I've encountered only one person who's got it right, an unnamed cop who dares to acknowledge to power of video games:

“When I was young it was all Pac-Man and board games,” the officer told the Evening Standard. “Now they're playing Grand Theft Autoand want to live it for themselves.” A columnist for the Telegraphagreed, saying “The riots were like a video game that had kicked its way out of the Xbox.”

If you detect a tone of bemused, kids-these-days headshaking, they come by it honestly. Today's rioters have it easy, with photorealistic virtual worlds and instant online communication to inform and inspire their depredations. Back in the early Thatcher Days, though, young thugs looking to get stoked for a night's looting really had to apply their imaginations to the era's blocky mazes and bleep-blorp sound effects.

What do you think they had to be inspired by when they ripped Brixton apart in '81? Pac-Man — and its explicitly extralegal knockoff, Lock N' Chase — excellently modelled the tactics of darting down narrow alleys, gobbling drugs and occasionally turning the tables on the coppers, but games at the time were more concerned with outer space than the inner city. Berzerkand Kaboom! had to suffice, mostly by their titles alone.

Our nostalgic lawman does miss the mark a little, though, in naming Grand Theft Auto the culprit. Sure, the GTA games are a little rampage-y — and GTA IV protagonist Nico does use text messaging! — but their antisocial romps are exactly that: antisocial. Solitary, single-player sprees, without looting, amid indestructible buildings! Surely, the hoodie squad must be getting their inspiration elsewhere.

I can imagine only one scenario: there is in England an underground of would-be rioters passing around bootleg copies of 2002 riot simulator State of Emergency. That game's got it all: huge crowds of screaming humans-turned-animals, karate-versus-cops action, and a sickly veneer of “anarchist” justification. Disaffected, violent youth congregate in dingy “bedsits,” hunched over chugging old PlayStation 2s, working themselves into mob mentality through the most efficient means: their thumbs.

It's sad, really, that a few bad apples have been inspired by a 10-year-old bargain-bin title. It paints such a skewed view of their community as a whole. Every day, people in these neighbourhoods go about their lives under the influence of honest, work-positive video games. These places aren't just rat's nests filled with thugs who play State of Emergency; they're communities filled with people who live decent lives inspired by games like Cooking Mama, Bus Driver and, yes, even Police Quest.

Troublingly, authorities ignore the simple fact that, as well as inspiring antisocial violence, the mind-controlling properties of video games can empower civilized society's response. Mayor of London Boris Johnson broke off a vacation to return to the city and ... make some statements? What a missed opportunity! He should instead have been whisked to the nearest Super Nintendo and made to play a couple hours of Final Fight, the street-fighting simulator featuring pro-wrestler-turned-mayor Mike Haggar.

If violent video games could inspire a few thousand wannabe toughs to riot, imagine the effect Final Fight would have on an actual, real-life mayor! A few rounds in the role of the shirtless Haggar, cleaning up his town with nothing but a lead pipe and a single suspender-strap, and the game's irresistible mesmeric power could have turned Johnson into a living weapon, worked up to the point where he was ready to clear the riot zones singlehandedly. Or, at least, alongside a friendly karate expert.

I wish I could do something videogame-inspired to help. I could go and be inspired by Vigilante, say — except plane tickets are expensive and I unfortunately never got inspired by Airline Tycoon. No, all I can do is sit here, inspired by Reader Rabbit, following the story on the news sites before finally allowing myself to be inspired by Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing to comment upon a world that seems everywhere inspired less by LittleBigPlanet than by Run Like Hell.

"When work is done and drink is beer..."

2011-06-06T12:39:00.003-06:00

With Lover Boy loud all afternoon and the sun was even out all day.

Beer in hand and accomplished, these Hemingway sips.

Fucking hell if we didn’t meet challenges today

And overcome without overwhelming

And sail without sails, or a fucking rudder, for what and all that I know.

Whew. I love it when the tide does that.

Sid.

xoxoxo

I have an oddity.

2011-06-06T12:20:00.003-06:00

I have Mr. Rogers shoes.

I mean I have the whole fucking thing down solid and it just happened.

I come home and switch my postal uniform for my home uniform. I even swap shoes. Shirt and Jacket for a Montreal Canadiens sweater.

Slacks for plaid cotton pyjamas;

head for heart.

Man I am changing it out like that.

And fucking shoes, Mr. Rogers shoes.

I am a neighbourhood father.

And drunk.

-Sid

Eckhart Tolle, you fucking mentally-meandering dullard, Beauty arises from movement.

2011-06-06T12:17:00.003-06:00

The comets speed faster than anything we have ever even seen ever.

From a good and solid fucking, a human is made in 270 days.

Love is born in less time.

Cancer eats everything always at all times eventhough it means that Cancer will die, too. That’s fucked up. And it happens very, very fast.

Where is the stillness in that you fucking be-doted twat?

And how dare you hide behind the Dalai Lama. As who is he, Diaspora?

I am a Quebecois in Alberta; you are a German in Canada. We are all Diasporai.

The Dalai Lama knows nothing for you to hide behind, my man. He has never known drunken poverty or hated heart-break for a lover.

How can you be a man and never know the Herculean gut-punch of love?

The sick of a Sunday, 5 p.m. still drunk and fuck tomorrow’s going to suck.

All these things happen in spite of stillness.

These things are learned on the balls of the feet.

Do you think Cheetahs are made to be still to find their own beauty?

Let’s move, my man, let’s go.

-Sid

xoxox

Sometimes it would be better to work in the mines.

2011-06-06T12:15:00.001-06:00

Sometimes it would have been better to have been Elvis Presley, fat and stoned and finally dead.

Sometimes it would be better to be a lawnmower and at least useful twice a month; in the summer.

Sometimes.

After a few I am always ready to try the things that would sometimes be better sometimes.

But I get up and go to it again.

"Who doesn’t want a frog that says, “digum”?

2011-06-06T12:12:00.002-06:00

I used to love it all and walked like that for that exact reason.

I seem to have found it and really I mean really I never want to do that shit again.

Thank you, lovers, for sifting the shit and spitting me into the right pile.

Especially you, Sugar Smacks.

Thanks for being the cereal I could never have as a child but as a man and out of rebellion and misguided freedom bought a box and ate it all in one night.

There was a reason I never had it when I was young.

It’s only as a man that I can see that through free-action I am better off heeding wisdom than scuttling will-power.

-Sid

Priests wear blue collars.

2011-04-09T00:10:00.001-06:00

I work on the set of Taxi.

There is the short fat balding one,

there is the funny crazy one; the wacky guy. So zany.

There is that mouthy cunt, what’s-her-name.

And the accent-guy, fucking foreigners.

There is that one guy we can all relate to because he is us, detached and cool.

There is that vehicle in which we always envision ourselves. Like a soul.

It never says a thing because it is the last thing and sometimes the never thing that we ever think about eventhough the show brags it’s name: the taxi.

That quiet little cab just sits there and waits to carry these fools. It never says a thing.

It never moves a man to cry; but I do.

I weep for that little yellow taxi in that Taxi shop.

Surrounded by idiots and failures.

I work on the set of Taxi.

There is that mouthy cunt and there is the joker and there is the boss and there is the cool-jerk.

And here is the cab.

-Sid

xoxoxoxoxooxox

Discovering other paths ought to make us wander further into the woods, yes?

2011-01-15T20:05:00.002-07:00

What if our souls, after so many, many flights, never return to our bodies?

What if I never really got off that plane in 2008 from Tokyo?

What if I never left that ferry to Gibraltar?

What if I never stepped drunk from that train into the Serbian night in 1994 and never got turned back?

What would I know? Who would I be?

What if you never met me in Vancouver in September?

So much of everything would be different.

But you did; and I did all of those things, too.

I love vapour trails and looking up and thinking about the origin and destination of those planes and the passengers; all headed somewhere they were needed or even loved.

I wonder if they have had dinner yet or are wondering outside their view? Who is watching them fly past?

I am, on those clear Alberta skies.

And blowing kisses, too.

Because landing is the best thing ever.

-Love Sid.

xoxoxoxoxo

“The pine tree seems to listen, the fir tree to wait: and both without impatience — they give no thought to the little people beneath them, devoured."

2011-01-07T01:44:00.002-07:00

What is it about a pine that makes me feel better all the time with those soft arms out and reaching for a sap-filled hug?

What is it about a pine tree that makes me wander like that and hold you tight forever with a hug, my soft arms; boughs tight and sap-filled.

What is it about this existence that makes us all weep at the thought of it all and again the next night for the same reasons.

What is it all?

What is it about a woman? What is it that fucking drives me like a Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C turbocharged two-stroke diesel engine; 108,920 hp.

Fuel.

Fuel drives it all, be it love or sunshine or oil.

Hello, fuel.

-Love Sid

xoxoxo

“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

2011-01-07T01:43:00.002-07:00

I don’t think that flowers blooming make any noise or sound even.

I know for sure that fallen leaves crunch underfoot in retreat on October afternoons in Alberta.

I know that from chasing your scared soul across provinces, GMC Sierra in high gear over mountains; cigarette in clenched hand as you read maps and they all lead here all at once.

You are all the cherry blossoms all at once drifting down and snowing my earthed path.

You are my path.

I love you, Starfish.

-Love Sid

xoxoxoxo

The Nellie, she was a cruising yawl...

2010-12-07T00:14:00.003-07:00

Your eyes, man. Your eyes are filled with all the death and hate and sadness with missing girls and lost homes and distant parents and even siblings of any man with eyes like that.
And a rifle.
And, man, those eyes have seen it all.
How can you do it?
How can I agree to it?

If you ever need a country to help you out and soften those blows and bandage those wounds and help you deliver those letters to your dead friend's family, well, I have a bumper sticker.

I have a plastic wrist-band.

It's yellow and says that I support the troops.

Run now. Mourn later.

2010-11-28T19:14:00.006-07:00

Sometimes we are all ghosts and alone.
No feeling.

Sometimes we are the ghost bicycles.

But tonight.

I fucked it all up hard and you are in bed calling for me.

Remember Krazy Shack?

I think you are so much better than anything I could ever have loved or even be loved by.

Like the kayaks at Krazy Shack.

Like the beach at that cabin.

Like the time when we took off our shoes and threw them into the water for kicks...
Like then, when we kissed.

I am no longer afraid of your love.

And I will

ride

your ghost bicycle.

-Sid
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

Sports bars.

2010-11-18T11:44:00.004-07:00

Man, it snowed fucking hard yesterday. Winter miracles.
Anne and I walked to the bar and hit it.

Hard.

You never know why I don't quit.

It's my life.

You are.

Crowsnest Pass.

2010-10-15T01:17:00.005-06:00

I love your California hair
in my face.
The way that you love me, too.
In the truck and on the way, you kept those mountains high
and those passes cold.
Frank Slide.
Crowsnest, from Vancouver to Edmonton up 22 the Cowboy Trail.
You kept me warm those nights.
Cochrane hotels and drunk on each other.
Vodka, too.
I cry when I make you smile because it's been so fucking long...
Have I ever made anyone smile like that. Ever? Ever?

When you lit my cigarettes as I drove the straight line roads
I hit the brakes as rarely as possible
because I need your momentum
you fucking angel.

I love that California hair in my face when I sleep.
When I breathe.
When I dream.

When I am awake.
And I am awake.

Stars and bars.

2010-10-07T16:57:00.002-06:00

And here I am
All yours.
You brought me out and sought me through.
And poetry is the medium.
I love you and love you.
My city. My Edmonton.
I have been dreaming of you for years.
That river valley.
That flat land.
That hot sky.
I have been dreaming of you for years.
I am all yours.

Sometimes.

2010-09-04T18:18:00.002-06:00

Sometimes
When I am alone here
And the lights are out
I imagine a slow-dance with you.

Sometimes
When my hammer swings
And the nail is hit just right
There is a spark
And I imagine building a house for you.

Sometimes
While tying my shoes or washing the dishes
Alone, here
I imagine your hand on my back or neck or even on my ass
Lightly, lovingly, longingly.

Sometimes
I just want to crank the wheel of my truck
And drive to you
Openly weeping and yours.

I say sometimes
But
There are no other times
When
I don't think of these things.

"...the diver descends to maximum depth immediately and stays at the same depth until resurfacing..."

2010-08-28T22:43:00.005-06:00

Hit with it
Stung by it
Ruffled and fucked
by it.

Open your legs like an Alberta sky in August
Let me in.

I am all yours.

Hit with it
Stung by it
Ruffled and fucked
by you.

Open your heart like a Wild Rose in July
Let me in.

I am coming there, back there, for some kind of terminal end.
Some terminal finale, some everything. For you, just you.
I am yours, all yours.

Hit with it.

Stung by it.

Ruffled

and

tussled.

Get in love.

-Sid
xo

Winter Miracles.

2010-08-18T18:17:00.003-06:00

I want to freeze again on those long nights from 4 p.m. to 9 a.m. when the sun is gone.
I miss the drifts of snow and the instant sobriety upon leaving a place.

Boots and toques, icy lungs and cold fingers.

I want you to miss my warmth at 4 a.m. on an Alberta morning when I get up to piss and make coffee. I bet you'd call my name softly between sleep and wake states.
"Sid, come back to bed".

I would, too, cold and naked, leap under the covers and tell you I love you. I'd run my fingers through your hair until you fell back asleep.

I think I should retrace my steps, but in different shoes this time.

I want my winter miracle.
I want my spring lust and summer freedom.

The hard trees, the brown, the over-frozen everything. I want it.

I want it all that winter miracle.

Snow in my boots and frost-bitten ears so hot that I can't fucking stand it.

I want the drifts and wisps and shifts again.

I want to jump under the covers when you whisper my name on a farm in Northern Alberta.

"Sid, come back to bed."

-Sid

Dowshi, Afghanistan. The cunt road.

2010-08-07T11:12:00.005-06:00

Sentry was never done, but my shift was over at 0900. I needed sleep, water and new laces. I always needed to hydrate.

On my way back to camp I saw three boys playing soccer.
Their ball was a piece of shit. Cow shit, or something.
I didn't even care and hoped they would die before they were old enough to want to kill me.

When I thought that, though, that second, that fucking instant, I was suddenly beside you. Your scolding, your fantastic love, your compassion.
I was sorry for it, for thinking like that.

Dowshi is a tiny fucking town at the cunt-opening of a valley into certain death. A76 North, a suicide drive. We had patrols up there, but man, that road buttressed by mountains on both sides is death. Drones went ahead of us and we stopped every 500 meters for a sniff-check.

It rained all day Saturday and I was up it only 1500 meters. I kept the rear and made sure we didn't get flanked or pinched or drawn-in.

It was silent.

We drove and hopped and checked like that for days, for days.
I sang Neil Young songs and kicked rocks.

But fuck I loved you, through that dust. A76 was shit, deadly but so fucking shit.
Maybe the Terry had bucked it deeper into the valley.
Fuck, I hope so.
At night we tri-podded the M20 just for kicks.

I slept well on that road.
IEDs, mortars nor snipers riled us.

Two teams were on either side of the road at all times, sifting slowly and looking overhead.

But those letters from you.
They killed me.

You.
In Safeway.
In traffic.
In line to pay your SHAW and TELUS bills.

Fuck you.

I love you.

Us.

2010-08-07T03:00:00.005-06:00

I waited and waited again.
Not just for a rebirth of wonder
Not just for Christ to climb down
Not just for some fucking lines from God
But for you.

I waited for you and I came to thoughts of fucking you.
Again and again and again and again.

And again.

This is it, you know, my last stretch, my last grasp.
Keeping a man like me on the fence is like keeping a man like me on the fence.
One day, the whole thing is going to come the fuck down.

Like a Zimbabwean government
Like the Eiffel Tower without rivets
Like Marxism built by IKEA!

Like me.

Again and again and again.

The snow is going to be heavy this year, baby.
Are you sure you don't need some soft-shoe, soft-heart to clear that fucking drive?

This is it.

Are you sure?

Only after a few.

2010-07-30T16:20:00.003-06:00

I love you like a plane crash.
Those jet engines digging into the earth
and serving up everything for the last time.

I love you like a fucking car crash
glass everywhere and me hanging out the driver's window. Alone,
bloody, and even dead.

I love you like a firecracker or a nuclear bomb.

Everything is always exploding.

I love you like that.

Sometimes, a monster is loosed for want alone. It will take you and it will eat you and it will give you pleasure.

2010-07-24T10:43:00.008-06:00

I want flesh.
I want to fuck.
I want to be deep inside of you.
I want to cum in you and keep my hard cock pushed in there, filling you.
I want you and I will have you.

When your duvet or covers or sheets are pulled tight tonight, and you are drifting off to sleep, I will creep in there, into your secrets.

In that place you will be free to take me like the lover you have always wanted to be.
You can have anything you want of me, as I will of you.

Your fingers will drift below your waistband and with self-muffled sighs you will imagine that those very same fingers are mine; my cock, my tongue and my heat.

And when your hips buck as you cum, you will say my name and gasp for it; clenched fists, curled toes and open mouth.

After it all, dear lover, you will shudder and shake and return to your senses and drift away into sleep.

But I will have had you then like that, using your own body to fuck you and make you twist.

Sometimes, monsters be loosed.

Tonight the jailer has opened the doors and the monster is out there. He is hunting you.

Check under your bed.
Close the closet doors.
Leave the lights on.

"She is the paragon of paragons of beauty, the reply to all desires, the bliss-bestowing goal of every hero's earthly and unearthly quest."

2010-07-16T20:55:00.007-06:00

It had been a long ritual. I cleaned out everything that meant anything to me. Under the seats, the buttons on the roof, the rosaries from Mexico and the Philippines hanging from the rear-view mirror, the clothing and camping gear and carpentry tools from the back, the Jesus and Mary stickers carefully lifted from the rear window using dish-soap and my bank card; even the small things like my favorite tapes which I had constantly played in you: David Bowie, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra.

On Saturday morning we took that final drive and I spoke to you softly; the radio stayed off as I wanted to hear what you had to say to me. Your V-8, 350 5.7 purred and roared at all the right times, when I asked you. You have never let me down. When we pulled off the collector and onto Highway 1 East I opened you up wide and was willing to take any ticket, any punishment; just for you. I opened you wide and was hitting 180km by the time I passed Canada Way and we swerved in and out and I thought we would die together as we lived. You have been my shelter, my home, my work-horse, my escape-pod, my darling in white. I have driven with you through the Rockies and slept in your lap, I have worked to feed you the things you need. Your new catalytic converter and muffler, your new tail-pipe. I love you.
You hauled me and my small number of belongings through Alberta and into Vancouver to begin my new life in Canada. I worked you hard those hauling days. And you took me back through Alberta and back again to Vancouver, too.

As we sped toward your final destination, our last drive, I began to weep and shake hard. I pulled over once to explain death to you and I knew you might never understand but I did it anyhow and I just wanted you to know how much I love you; so much.

We pulled into the wrecker and I did the sign-off, tears running down my cheeks and a hole in my little heart. They had to ask me several times for the keys before I complied. They knew why I was crying.

I couldn't watch you being driven off but I did sneak a small look as you rounded the corner and I blew you a kiss and hoped to God that you saw it; I think you did and your tail-lights were gone.

I left my favorite Elvis tape in your cassette deck.

I left you a love letter in your glove box.

-Sid

Not infrequently, the supernatural helper is in masculine form.

2010-07-04T15:02:00.004-06:00

Many years ago there was a young man with a broken heart, and a soul which could never be still. His spirit was strong, but never silent enough to hear the sounds that trees make when the wind kisses them. He was attached to worldly delights and measured his manliness against them and defined his godliness through them. The young man was well known in the small kingdom he thought he ruled and was sure that the women and flowers were pretty for him alone.

One day, while inspecting his possessions and counting his coins, he was approached by an old man. The old man walked slowly and was dressed in rags, yet there was a peace in his face.
"Is this your fine house, sir?", the old man asked.
The young man did not answer, but instead continued counting coins.
"I will give you a wish if you answer me, boy."

The young man told him that it was in fact his house, his land, and bade the old man to stay as many nights as he needed.
The old man smiled and said,"I knew you would be kind to me."
"How did you think that", said the young man, "when we have shared but mere words in exchange?".

"I am the future you", said the man in rags. "I have met the women and the money and the possessions and the hollow-nothing."
"I have returned to warn and encourage you".

The young man wept hard and fell to his knees.
"I have nothing", he cried.
"You never had anything", said the old man.

The young man became old.
But his love became grand and wide.

Being a man, he thought, is the greatest profession.

Aspen Tongue and Groove Plywood at 1&1/8".

2010-06-25T23:14:00.004-06:00

This shit is fucking great for building walls.
I like Aspen, it's soft but strong and has a low flammability rate.
The T&G ply just fits in so nice over some squared studs.
It's an automatic hoarding wall; and even cheaper than factory flat-edge.
You couldn't even fit a piece of paper through those joints.
Not even a fly's wing.

Today after some serious fucking around with a 12x12 timber support, I drove home mad with thoughts of all things carpentry. I drove home listening to the Frank Sinatra cassette, "Some Nice Things I've Missed", loud on my stereo.

The traffic was pre-cum at 4:00 p.m. near 1st Beach, not quite there but showing promise. I always drift to the days we used to be insane together, then. I wonder about you now and think you would love carpentry.

On Monday, I'll drive in some duplex nails for you. I'll bury the top head in Aspen and dull the point.

I wouldn't want to split the wood.

Roma by Night.

2010-06-24T18:49:00.003-06:00

There was a postcard on my floor when I came home the other day. The postman had slid it through my mail-slot and it landed picture side up. While I was taking off my work boots I examined the front and wondered who could have sent it to me. The entire front of the postcard was black except for the words, in gold and longhand, "Roma by Night". I thought it was a funny little joke.

When the boots were off I picked that postcard up only to find that it wasn't for me. It had the right address but was addressed to someone named James.

It read:

"I would have sent you a card from Paris, but Paris does not sleep. Have loved every bloody minute... Off to Barcelona tomorrow. Let you in on a secret, if we had gone to Paris instead of San Fransisco, you would have never returned.
-Love R."

The word "returned" was underlined three times.

I think it was the saddest thing I had ever read.

Postcards always say everything clearly.

I love it, I love it, I love it.

2010-06-19T07:58:00.002-06:00

I love the ways you make me
shake.

I love the ways you make me
break.

I love the ways you cook my head.

I love the ways we fuck in bed.

I love the ways that you love me.

I love the ways that I am free.

If you ever need a man to hold,
if you ever feel your love is old.

Voila. It's just me. A simple man, your levee.

Build, man, fucking build it to God.

2010-06-18T22:44:00.005-06:00

There is something so simple about construction and carpentry that always makes me return.
I love the feeling of a half-dozen 2x4s on my right shoulder as I leap from concrete post to foundation wall; always 6 to 12 feet from the ground.
There is something about building.
I love the feeling of hammering in duplex nails, or using an impact to put in 6 inch wood screws, even when 3 inch ones would have done the job.
There is something about washing it all away in the home-time shower and laying on the couch, still wet and naked and thinking of your lips.
I love how you make me feel like a carpenter; your man in uniform.
There is something about my hammer, my leather tool-belt, my square and chalk-line, my tape and pencil.
I love that you love me.
There is something so simple about building things that makes me a man.

Robertson, #2.

2010-06-18T22:07:00.003-06:00

There is a screw in my cutlery drawer. It is a wood screw, a Robertson.
I saw it when I was looking for scissors to open some brown sugar.
I wondered how it got in there and then I remembered how careless I was.
Always mixing things up and placing them poorly.

There is a screw in my cutlery drawer and I can't recall as to how it might have gotten in there.

It's like you. In my little heart. Out of place but there for certain.

I left the Robertson there and thought about it for days.
It's still there.

It's like you.

2010-06-18T21:23:00.002-06:00

I have come to welcoming myself home these days, as no one else is there.

“I’m home”, I say.

I wait a long while before answering, “Welcome home”.

It’s a little lonely.

Maybe I should do something about that.

"No, they did not bury me, though there is period of time which I remember mistily, with a shuddering wonder..."

2010-06-04T15:21:00.005-06:00

My older brother takes care of me.
He looks out for me and softens my falls.
He never scorns nor judges nor complains about my failings.
He just looks out for me.

And I never say "Thank You" enough.

I have never had an older brother before, but I bet I'd shoot straighter and be a better man if I had. I am trying. But man, let me tell you, older brothers are better than anything, better than everything.

Thank you.

Class Asteroidea.

2010-06-04T12:03:00.005-06:00

I want to make you feel like Otis Redding makes me feel.
How can I write like that?
What can I do, like that?

I wonder if it would be the same, in bed with you.
Would you tell me to try a little tenderness?
Or would you let me wrap my arms around you and pin you down with my hot love?

Are you always teasing me?
Or is it true?
Can I stroll your lane?

I want to make you feel like that music makes me feel; shaking and teary.
Gripping the wheel, shouting.
Legs keeping time with the bass-drum.

Asteroidea, fall down and rock out.

Liebesträume

2010-05-30T21:48:00.001-06:00

I wanted to tell you, I plugged in some old external hard-drives today and looked through the pictures. Man, you were beautiful then in my life and kept me in orbit. But we started drifting soon after those were taken, so I don’t like them too much. I do like how you looked at me through the camera lens though. There was love in those looks. And my aperture was just right.

I think that was the best beginning to a love story I have really ever known. It was sweet and true and we delighted in future possibilities and were always passionate. I smile when I remember how much you wanted me to be posted to Okinawa or Kagoshima so that it was tropical and a good place to have some kids. You really wanted me to teach them to surf.
But it broke, well, I broke it; I broke it officially by stepping out of what had become poison and awful. And I was never posted to Okinawa or Kagoshima.

I know you are still beautiful and you live with your new man in a house around 124th St. or so. I’ve even passed you two when I was taking a break from sledge-hammering a walkway at my father’s house, or when I went to the store for cigarettes. I know you saw me then. I sure saw you two.

That’s how it goes, though, isn’t it? You observe the time while remaining aware that it is mere observation, just as I am observing this now. But as sad as that story is, I am happy that it ended. I mean, with you. You see, I love love and love stories, but it’s a real trick to get them right. Maybe you’ve found a way. I have not.

Here in Vancouver, I am adrift and have been for two years. I just don’t feel like letting the roots touch the soil for too long. I have too much momentum behind me, perhaps. Maybe. What do I know of me. Really.

Well, I do know that it is all in here. In me. I know that all of these questions and answers and fears and cures and love and hurt and terrible dreams of success and failure, of you, they all exist in here and in here only. Memories, too. I observe them, running loops, overlapping.

It feels like there is a bug in there, in my brain, always scurrying and digging and fucking around.

I’m going to Tofino, I want to be a surfer.

"This was the unbounded power of eloquence -of words- of burning noble words."

2010-05-30T16:27:00.003-06:00

I've turned over a new leaf.
I am going up the river.

I am still young enough
to be terrified.
And old enough
to be terrified.

Up river, into it.
And I won't pull out
until we meet
me and I.

But I have turned over a new leaf,
didn't I tell you?

I want to be a HEAVY METAL songwriter!

2010-05-29T02:41:00.004-06:00

"I think that everything is going to be alright
but
tonight is out.

I think that everything is going to be safe;
but I sure fell in love with you quickly; dangerous.

I think that everything is going to be sunshine and oranges.
I think everything will be fucking great.

I think I can pay the rent, this time.
I think that everything is going to be golden.

You know that I'm yours, this time.
You know that I'm yours, beholden.

You're golden golden x 2

If you could understand what makes me be a man,
well, I can't help you at all!

You're golden x 2"

...that's all I have, now.

2010-05-28T22:48:00.005-06:00

This was sent from Japan.

Email.
9/20/06

From: Jody Cloutier
To: Everyone

I had the saddest morning.
I was in my car, parked on a country road, enjoying a 7-11 can of
coffee; a usual morning.

Suddenly this van came speeding by me, and this cat I had been
watching playing in the sun-drenched field ran out into the road.
The van hit it and it flew out into the middle of the road. The van
kept going so I jumped out of the car and ran over to the cat.
I picked her up and slowly walked, with her in my arms, over to the
side of the road. The cat was warm and soft and still breathing,
slightly.
I sat down in the grass and placed the cat on my lap. I pet it and
whispered sweet words to it.
At that moment in time, this morning, I
have never loved anything more than that cat.
She looked at me a bit, eyes wide, and I think she understood me.
Then, as we sat there, together, her eyes slowly fixed on a point I
couldn't see, a place happier than the one she had been; a lighter,
brighter place. Her breathing stopped and she died on my lap, in the
sun, at the side of the road in the country.
I was happy that the last thing to touch her were the hands of a man
who was filled with intense love and compassion for her, and not the
cold steel of a machine, uncaring.

I cried all the way to work.

I have been thinking about that cat all day. I miss it and I never
even knew it.

It made me think of my connections with those in my life; connections
made in a split second of compassion or over years of steady love. It
made me think of you, my friends and family. I am so lucky. Please
forgive me, my lack of communication. I am so sorry to have taken it
for granted. Please write to me, I miss you all so much. I love you,
too.

Yours.
Jody Cloutier
xoxoxox

I am going to sneak into your heart like Dave Brubeck's "Take Five".

2010-05-16T17:32:00.003-06:00

I am going to sneak into your heart like some damn wet animal on a thundering night.
I am going to sneak into your heart like a child on mother's day.
I am going to sneak, into your heart, like the sun always sneaks into your dreams and pulls you out again, lashes flashing and lips sticking.

I am going to sneak into your heart with winds.
I am going to sneak into your heart with brass.
I am going to sneak into your heart hard and mean every fucking second of that sneak.
Like a hard thing loves a soft thing because these things are the same, isolated by definition.

I am going to waltz into your life and give you the best kiss you have ever had and even, I bet, fuck you better and truer and deeper than you have ever been fucked before.
I am going to saunter into your life and provide rest for the ones who could never keep up with a beating-heart angel like you.
I am going to stroll the hell on into your life and be the man you always wanted me to want to be.

I am going to listen to Dave Brubeck, take five.

Περσεφονη

2010-05-16T15:20:00.004-06:00

I think that the worst thing I have ever done was to break someone's heart. Once, twice or a fucking thousand times. It was always the worst thing.
But I always got over it and moved, on.

Spring, though, always breaks me.
Thaws me and rids me of trapped leaves and twigs and shit caught in my ice.
Persephone, eat not the pomegranate seeds.

It will be so cold without you.

Until next time.

-Sid

Alan Wake: Don't let Ebert see it

2010-05-12T12:31:00.001-06:00

Five-odd years in the making, psycho-supernatural-action-adventure-mystery-thriller Alan Wake wants, more than anything, to be taken seriously. With every word, frame and pixel it wants you to know what a deep, heavy, meaningful work of cinematic suspense-gaming it is. But there's a terrible secret at the heart of Alan Wake. If this were a mystery story rather than a game review I'd let the reader discover that secret on their own, but what mystery writers call "creating suspense" newspaper editors call "burying the lede", so here it is: Alan Wake is silly.

Now that's said, let's call it foreshadowing and start at the beginning. As a game -- when it is a game -- Alan Wake isn't too bad. As the eponymous hero, a writer's-blocked bestselling mystery author who's retreated with his wife to a tiny mountain town, makes his way through the woods of the Pacific Northwest, he gets to engage in some typical but well-exectuted third-person gunplay against hordes of zombie-type enemies. The twist here is the flashlight action; this standard tool of survival-horror has been elevated into an integral part of the action armory, serving as both targeting sight and main weapon.

The possessed hillbillies are invulnerable until they have their protective cloak of shadowy evil burned away by light, and this illuminate-first-shoot-questions-later mechanic gives combat an interesting rhythm that does a lot to up the terror factor, at least through the first couple of chapters. After the first few showdowns against the same handful of enemy types, though, the novelty wears off and Alan Wake's action sequences show themselves for what they are, what action sequences so often are in games with cinematic ambition: tedious hoops that must be jumped through in order to advance the movie the game wishes it was.

Thing is, that movie's pretty dreadful; were it shown in a cinema, even the most dedicated so-bad-it's-good craphound would groan it off the screen. The mopey protag, whose only real character trait is a five-o'clock shadow (videogame shorthand for Aunguished Soul; see Heavy Rain et al.), fights to save a wife he didn't even seem to like very much before the spoooooky stuff went down. What we read of this supposedly mega-bestselling author's writing is so dire it could sweep the Bulwer-Lytton awards. The sub-Twilight Zone supernatural twist gives itself away early and often. Facepalm-inducing dialogue is delivered in affectless table-reading tones by indifferent voice actors and projected through dead-eyed, flappy-mouthed digital mannequins. Constant "references" and "homages" (read: "cribs" and "ripoffs") of other, better, games, movies and TV shows make the whole thing feel like a desperate collage.

All this could be forgiven or at least ameliorated -- Lord knows, I've given better games a pass on worse sins -- if Alan Wake didn't take itself so damned seriously. But there's no knowing wink, no sly elbow; the game/movie is totally, humorlessly committed to its unearned pretension to gravitas, and the undeflated tension between what it wants to be taken as and what it actually is leaves Alan Wake ridiculous.

The Good Book

2010-05-07T20:14:00.001-06:00

Another driving-composed song

It'll all be all right
It'll all be all right
I learned that in reading the Good Book at night

God must've been bored with just water around
so he split day and night and brought forth the dry ground
made fishes and birds and all things that creep
fashioned Man from the dust, woke him up from his sleep

Gave him a garden where the sweet waters flow
gave him dominion over all things that grow
but he left behind something Man might want to obtain
when sinful Man took it, God cursed him with pain

It'll all be all right...

[MORE]
God wanted sacrifice, obedience shown
Called down to Abraham, Put your son on that stone
with the sharp knife at Isaac's throat, God stayed his hand
said "I was just checking that you were My man."

It'll all be all right...

Forty years did Israel in deserts abide
evil idolators on every side
Then God said Go forth into that Promised Land
and take what you find there, you're my Chosen band

They marched forth in righteousness, and put to the sword
all heathens who would not bow down to the Lord
Canaanites, Midianites, women and babes
on their blood built a kingdom to sing the Lord's praise

It'll all be all right...

Then the Son came down from His Father above
saying All that's over, it's the time now for love
He fed starving multitudes, succored the ill
chastised the hypocrites, died on a hill

He said Love your neighbour, call your enemy friend
and I'll be back to judge you, but I won't tell you when

It'll all be all right
It'll all be all right
You learn that in reading the Good Book at night

The Perpendiculars, Pt 3

2010-04-21T14:33:00.001-06:00

Continuing for your delectation a work in progress. Part one is here, part two is here.

Adastra Morales is beautiful when she’s sleeping. I mean, she’s pretty cute when she’s awake, but when sleep hides the trouble in her eyes, when her mouth goes slack and those tight lines fade, when her dark curls frame her baby-doll face… yeah. I saw her mind moving behind her flickering eyelids, moving through dreams. She was beautiful in there, too. Too beautiful.

I could have stood a long time watching her through the dirty window of the Bunny, drooling gently onto her Bay blanket, driver’s seat reclined as far back as it could go and still be counted on to return to an upright position, but I really wanted to get as far away from that farm as I could, as fast as four German cylinders could carry me. Plenty of time to moon over sleepy sorta-ex-girlfriends back in town, away from angry mummies and their primordial punishments. One of the boons Sekhemkhet had granted me in gratitude for winning his arm race was that he would deign to delay his vengeance for “one solar hour,” just long enough to hustle fragile Addy out of the psychic blast radius. Plus, you know, I needed a drink. This action-adventure shit is thirsty work.

Addy started awake at my knock, brown eyes shedding panicky sparks. I had a brief vision of her as a tough-as-nails, pistol-packin’ mama, pulling a piece from under that drool-damp wool wrap and me flinching back, hands quick into the air, and she sighs out a big breath, letting in the hammer with her thumb and saying something like “Don’t ever sneak up on me like that again!”

Where did that come from? Addy hates guns. In every personal interaction I’d seen her have with a firearm, she’d picked the gun up between thumb and forefinger, like garbage, dangling it at arm’s length only long enough to pass it to me. Instead of a six-gun popping up from under the blanket, I got a sleepy scowl and a fuzzy-mittened hand popping the broken passenger-side door open from the inside. I slid onto the chilly seat.

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“What took so long?” She scrubbed at her face, blinking to clear the nap from her head. “I was getting worried.”

“Oh, well, you know… infiltrating the underground lair of an evil sex cult and all. I guess I probably should have been faster. Sorry.”

“Jesus! I was just worried, OK? You don’t have to be sarcastic.”

“I’m sorry, Addy. I’m sorry.” I really was. “It was just a fuckin’ ugly scene, you know? Another pathetic bunch of cheap, shitty assholes smearing the cosmos with their filth. I mean, that’s why I got out of the game. Too much dirt.”

“For someone who’s supposedly out of the game, you sure run a lot of risky errands for mummies.”

“Come on, babe… you know I’ve got no choice but to pay this shit off. I get the call, I do the job, and that’s one less old favor hanging over my head. Now, please… I’m tired and I need a shower, a smudge and, like… a gin and tonic. Some kind of clean drink. A wine spritzer, even. Can we just go?”

She leaned toward me, nose twitching in a tentative little sniff, crunchy-granola yak’s-wool V-neck giving a nice view of plump, cuddly cleavage. Too bad it’d probably be three days before I could get a useful boner. Between the expenditure of orgone that’d gone into slapping together that masking spell and the residual ick of Shafiq’s twisted orgy party, my libido was pretty pooched.

“God, you reek. It really was bad. How’s the pharaoh?”

“Mythically pissed off.” I glanced nervously out the window toward the farmhouse. “Seriously, could you please start the car and get us out of here? In about three-quarters of an hour the August Hand of Amun is going to be delivering some pretty nasty spankings. There’ll be migraines and nightmares as far as Wetaskiwin.”

Addy began the intricate and mysterious ritual of starting the Brave Bunny. “So,” she began, fiddling esoterically with the starter button; “any good news?”

“What, you mean besides retiring one more piece of soul-owning debt? Sure. Check this out.” I reached into the bag that had lately transported the pharaoh’s not-so-long-lost limb and pulled out an unglazed earthenware jar: “Homebrew!”

“Ugh. That stuff gives me the shits.” The Brave Bunny’s 22-year-old cylinders fired and caught. Addy threw her into gear and lurched onto the highway. “Anything else?”

“Not much. Only this.”

I unfolded my hand and held the pendant out to her, black opal shining dark on my palm. I could feel its heat sinking into me, knew it for more than just a pretty rock. From around his own neck the pharaoh had taken this charm, mumbling over it words older than time. It was, An object of power. The power to make problems disappear. I didn’t dare check it myself, but I knew.

Addy had slowed right down, senses absorbed. “What…what is it, Jason?”

“You tell me. After all the hocus-pocus I got up to today, I’m keeping eyes and ears shut until I know I’m in the clear. So, tell me.”

Her right hand came off the gearshift to hover over mine, her head turned to sniff, left eye on the road. The Bunny was crawling along. She concentrated.

“A lot of clear power... nothing spectacular, enough to be useful. Very nicely tied… elegant. I love this old style. The matrix seems open, but… um... oh. No.”

Addy glanced at me with a full dose of that worry, those lines. She dropped her hand back down to the shift knob, turned back to the road, gunned the Bunny up to highway speed.

“No. No? No what?”

“No to your next question. No, you can’t sell it. It’s yours. I almost unraveled it by looking too closely.”

“Oh. Well.” Road unrolled before us. Miles of asphalt through an infinity of sacred space, bearing us home. I looked down at the trinket in my hand, feeling its weight, feeling its heat wanting to work into my bones. I slipped it into the outside breast pocket of my action jacket, leaned back into the beaded seat-cover, closed my eyes against the midmorning.

“I guess it never hurts to have batteries around the house.”

The Perpendiculars, excerpt cont'd

2010-04-16T21:37:00.002-06:00

Work in progress, etc. Part one is HERE

As sanctums go, Sekhemkhet’s prairie pad had never been much to look at on the surface, but now it was a full-on dump, human trash mixed in with the garbage. Breathing shallow through my mouth and damping down other senses I couldn't lose if I tried, I still gagged on the flophouse stench, the corruption of decayed and eroded enchantments.

The place was filled with people and the shells of people, a wall-to-wall, room-to-room carpet of bodies in various states of narcosis, drunkenness, withdrawal, unconsciousness. In dim light refracted between heavy curtains I counted six people leaning against the stained walls of the dining-room, in the centre of which a big table buried in reeking food containers tilted on two legs. Nobody cared, was able to care, that I was there. Another morning after in three years of mornings after, thralls rocking a sick and stolen party. How could they know Daddy was coming home?

On the livingroom loveseat, under an obscenely daubed diagram that made my sloppy glyphwork look like the Seventh Seal, a jaundiced teenager lay passed out with her mouth slack around her scabby lover’s limp dick. Beyond this charming tableau, a greasy dude in ancient Ocean Pacific surfer shorts lay with his head propped up against a charred Ottoman, playing Grand Theft Auto with the sound off, bashing a virtual bag-lady with a golf club over and over again, digital bloodspatter replacing itself as fast as it faded from the screen. I knew that if I opened up I’d see the sick loops circling around his head; dude was in the zone.

Honestly? I was disappointed. I mean, what a waste – an ancient archbeing’s undying power usurped, a treasure trove of physical and mystic power free for the fucking around with, and all you can come up with is drink, drugs and whoring? I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of angry jealousy at this failure of imagination, knowing that if my buddies and I had dared to run a grift like this we’d have done so much better. Just thinking like that must’ve been the taint of the place getting to me, but... seriously. Even if we hedged fully half the money and mojo on spooky insurance and cosmic bribes we’d still manage a hundred years of wonder, maybe a millennium of might and majesty, before that inevitable, inexorable somebody showed up at our door to do exactly what I was about to do.

I hoped Shafiq had something more interesting set up downstairs in the vault. If a man might be judged by the caliber of his opponents, I was coming out of this operation looking pretty low-rent. Stepping over a pasty jerk with PRAIZE SATAN 666 branded on his distended belly, I clickety-clacked through an unbelievably tacky chicken-bone bead curtain and headed down down down into the dirty earth.

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* * *

I’d almost bailed a half-dozen times on the way down, slipping on not-so-mysterious fluids and stumbling over zonked-out bodies, but at last, 76 steep steps later, mathematically perfect steps crafted by tectonic elementals at near-genocidal expense, I stood on the grand landing before the massive beaten-brass doors that led into the inner sanctum. Here, a measure of respect had been preserved: the fly-swarmed pile of empties was stacked more-or-less neatly around the metal-shod feet of the pharaoh’s great Stone Guardian. The statue’s blazing green eyelights flared up and swiveled toward me.

That Shafiq had bothered to keep the old machine running was surprising, given the way he’d gladly turned everything else to shit. I guess having his own giant limestone robot was too cool an opportunity to pass up. And, man, it was and is indeed cool. Nine feet of articulated antediluvian rock, already ancient when the pharaoh inherited the keys. Atlantean technology: user-friendly, maintenance-free, deadly as hell.

How a lazy little fuck like Shafiq had managed to pool together the power to juice up its dozens of maintenance spells, though… I had a run of angry goosebumps, up arms and down back, when I thought about how he’d filled those thirsty circuits. Coursing with blood and pain it lumbered toward me, shattering its way through a four-foot drift of Kristal bottles.

There was no reason to fool around with this thing, no reason to stay cloaked and clandestine, not when the end of this whole shitty business lay just behind those shining doors. I was tired, and I wanted to go home. I let that little knot inside me relax, blanking my shoddy masking spell, feeling its hooks tear out of my being, noting the wounds for later first aid and forgiveness. The little wobble in the fabric of everything that’d kept my bag under wraps straightened itself out, and the sacred aroma of eleven super-old-school herbs n’ spices powered out the bottle-depot stench. With a crunch of glass and a grind of stone on stone, nine tons of paleotechnical deathbot knelt at my feet. The doors to the sanctum breathed open at my touch.

What can I say about the room beyond? It was cliché upon cliché, a caricature of debauchery, pimp-hop excess meets Caligula in the Playboy grotto after picking up a busload of dorks from a Stargate convention. What happened to all the classy sex cults?

In the middle of the muddle of bongs and bodies sprawled Shafiq. Shafiq the Weasel, Shafiq the Clever, Shafiq the Betrayer… Shafiq the sleeping stoner with about a minute of pain-free existence left to him. Above him, on a dais that once supported a throne of sunwood and inkjet, a plywood coffin was propped. In it, displayed like Dillinger, its right arm snapped off just below the elbow, was the dry and desiccated mummy of pharaoh Sekhemkhet.

My precious passenger began to sing inside its bag, a rising whine beginning below sound; the mummy began to sing back. Astral glow spread its spectrum into the visual, into the infrared, into the ultraviolet… shone straight through quality cardboard and fifteen-year-old German pleather. In case Shafiq was far gone enough to sleep through what was coming, I gave the special whistle I’d learned in Secret Scouts, the one we called the Deadwaker. Shafiq and every other living person in the room – only about three quarters of the party – spasmed into consciousness, unready eyes snapping open against their will.

“Hey, asshole!” I yelled. The weasel managed to focus on me, saw the light, gave me the look I’d put in two months of no-expenses bullshit detective work to see.

“Your boss wants a word with you!”

I pulled the Hand from my bag. The whine came up into a scream. My astral body got a transdimensional sunburn.

Continue to pt. 3

Shifts.

2010-04-03T07:28:00.010-06:00

Chapter 1.

Hardwood floors always feel cool if the sun hasn’t been hitting them all day,
and I liked that. It’s probably why it was my third night sleeping a stumble from my
desk. I doubt it had much to do with me being too drunk to do anything but fall out
of my chair; making it to bed had become as daunting as climbing a mountain or
running a marathon, in that state.

The floor was where I slept and it kept my face cooler than flipping my pillow
100 times a night. Although it wasn’t very soft at all and I hadn’t vacuumed it in a
while, it did keep me cool those nights. And I guess nothing more than wood could
really be as hard as you, so it was no change. Cold and wooden; yes, it was like I was
in your arms all over again. Except at least now I was drunk and unconscious and
didn’t care this time.

Showering always feels good, no matter what crimes you may or may not
have committed the night before; or even before that. I loved shaving that day, and
even tried to press the blades into my face just to see how much pressure it would
take to bleed-out and into the sink. It didn’t work and I just ended up looking well
groomed.

No breakfast today, I knew it would make me sick. I drove to Anon looking at
those fingers gripping my wheel. I could never get my fingernails clean. The Kendall
“ToughTac” and its “3% Moly” haunted my hands forever. Fuck that grease. And fuck
the long series of checks I had to pass through just to do a job.
I have lived in Bnei Brak since 2004. Five years, now. I have driven this road
a thousand times since then. They know me. I know them.

“Papers? Who are you? Why are you going to Anon? Do you have a pass? You are Canadian Passport, why do you come to Anon?”.

“My name is Sid Heart. I am the regional sales, repair and rep. for Caterpillar International. We sell you IDF boys the D9; you know? The dozer you call “Teddy Bear”?

“Ok, Mr. Heart. Please show me your company document and access permission. And where do you live?”

“I live in Bnei Brak, corner of OrHaHayim and Rashi, you know?”

“No. Show me your car. Get out, keys on roof. Please open the boot and doors.”

“Ok, here is the number of Rebbi Kats, he is my contact at the IDF, 972-3-821-8911. Please call him for verification.”

“Open your jacket and turn toward the barrier, slowly. Please do not move too quickly, Mr. Heart, my men will shoot you.”

“*sigh*…fuck you Silverman.”

I had seen, met and even drank with ‘Mamak’ Silverman before.
‘Mamak’ Silverman is a terrible poker player. He always stands his rifle up
and rests his chin on the stalk, lightly kicking the barrel when he is bluffing. It’s a shit tell.
But we have played together, many times; when the roads are down and the
lines are long, it’s best to make friends. Yet, he always gives me shit when I see him
on those desert roads into the territories; the settlements. The bull-dozed-invasions.
I’d get arrested for a fucking camera much, much quicker than I would for an AK-47
at these checks; IDF hates foreign media. A lot.

I fucking hate this desert. And I don’t get it; people actually kill and die for
this shit. If God gave you this land, well, I think God is either an asshole or God really hates you.

Of course, Silverman and the boys let me through.

“Yes, Mr. Kats, I understand. Sorry, sir.”

Silverman half bows and quickly closes the sat. phone. He gestures to the road ahead.

“O.k., Mr. Sid Heart, you are verified for access to Anon, please be careful…”

I turn up the volume on my radio while he speaks and before Silverman
finishes I weave through the concrete barriers and posted gunners, peeling out and
off. I head for Anon, again.

My car is a modified Audi 900 with a skid-plate covering the entire chassis
belly, armoured panels and bullet-proof windows. Diesel is costly, but the IDF pays,
so I can’t really bitch about that. That armoured car looked so feeble, though, when
IDF had its doors open and the hood and trunk were up, like some prehistoric metal
bird in its dying throes or looking for a mate; pathetic and floundering.

90 minutes late. Fuck.

Anon is a shit-hole. A bulldozed shit-hole, thanks to me; thanks to the D9.
Beit Shamesh, Anon’s mayor, welcomes me like a lost brother. The only
reason he wants my D9 expertise is to clear land that isn’t his.

“Shalom. Shalom, Mr. Heart. I trust that your drive was safe? Did you encounter any problems?”

Israelis tend to refer to intifada or rocket-attacks or suicide-bombings as “problems” in the same glib manner the IRA are referred to as “the troubles”, in Belfast.
Problems. Yeah, fuck you, Shamesh. IDF gives me more grief, and I sell you shit, than I have ever gotten from any Arabs in 5 years.

“Nope, it was a fine drive through God’s country Mr. Shamesh. And Peace to your town, Selah.”

In Anon I make the tired pitches;

“The Caterpillar D9 Bulldozer is Caterpillar's most well known piece of equipment. It weighs 54 tons, stock, and is powered by a 474 HP Cat diesel engine. Not only is it capable of razing an entire town with its 13 foot blade and optional ripper attachment, it also serves a very important position in the mining, forestry, construction, and waste management sectors”.

I started as a small engine repairman after a life fixing tractor engines and
combine hydraulics for Ontario farms. I left the farms and worked in Toronto on city
snowplows and graters. Finning hired me for Cat-troubles in Toronto. The, “Willing
to Relocate?” box has always been checked on every application I sent. I never really
meant it but I still checked it.
I was, and also am, still, willing to relocate.

I am the only person in Anon without an Uzi, without an automatic machine-
gun shoulder-slung. I decided long ago that carrying a gun was making a choice in
this war of attrition, and I don’t care enough to choose. I just work; and drink and
smoke. Those are the sides I choose. Those are the only sides I’ll ever choose and
work for. At least then the war and casualties are both mine, alone.

After the sales meeting, town meeting, I dined with Shamesh at his fortress.
Orthodox dinners are the worst. The food is fine but man, every fucking table
probably looks the same at the same moment over Israel. The head of the house, the
man, talks and talks and even starts yelling; challah in hand, soup dripping down his
beard.
The poor women, wife and daughter, just sit there, head down and serving
food.
Fucking awful; I like hearing other, less bearded voices.

I like silence. And I am fucking sick of talking business between bites and slurps. I just don’t care, really. I sell to these people but to me it’s just a pay-cheque; to them it’s life, death. But I don’t care at all. A part is a part and grease is just that. I hate this place. I hate being forced to choose a side on something I don’t give a fuck about.

I wanted to tell Shamesh that Fatah had ordered three stock D-9s. Not
just to ramp prices, but to shut him up. Just to have some silence.

On the drive back I think I smoked about 20 cigarettes, one right after the
other. I threw the glowing stubs out the window and watched in my rear-view as
they hit the ground and exploded in sparks.

Spock Days, 2009

2010-03-24T16:42:00.003-06:00

With Leonard Nimoy, Mr. Spock himself, making his long-awaited first visit to the town of Vulcan, I figured I'd go ahead and post this piece I wrote at last summer's Spock Days, which got the spike because I guess a Toronto newspaper somehow had something more interesting to run than coverage of a strange event that had already happened on the other side of the country. Go figure.

Abbot K'Obol Chang-K'Onor of Klingon Assault Group (KAG) Kanada, a fan club dedicated to the culture and costumery of Star Trek's fearsome warriors, is glaring at me through his space-shades, sun glinting off sharpened teeth. Handmade leather armor creaks as he sets his shoulders; a twin-headed flail, replete with wicked spikes, dangles menacingly from his gauntleted hand.

"Your understanding of Klingon philosogpy," he growls, "is... imperfect."

As a senior Klingon cleric, the Abbot (aka Doug Welsh of Halifax) would know. His head freshly sheared in the "Shave a Klingon for Cancer" event here at Spock Days/Galaxyfest in the town of Vulcan, Alberta, I made the mistake of asking how he reconciles such charity work -- and the dozens of other good-cause events, from MS fun-runs to fundraising daffodil sales, in which KAG Kanada participates -- with the apparent cruelty of survival-of-the-fittest Klingon culture.

"Klingon philosophy is not about destroying the weak," he explains, as patiently as is possible for a Klingon;"Klingon philosophy is about making the weak stronger. We think everybody should be Klingon!"

They're making a good start on it here in this farming community of 2,000 that's trying hard to turn the sci-fi cachet of its 94-year-old name into precious nerd-tourism dollars. A concrete-and-steel replica of the Starship Enterprise presides over the highway, in view of the seed-cleaning plant; the futuristic headquarters of the Vulcan Association for Science and Trek offers souvenir Spock Ears and a rather cheesy virtual-reality "Vulcan space adventure"; Trek murals dot downtown, and street signs are styled after Starfleet insignia. With the KAG's 20th-anniverasry gathering coinciding with Galaxyfest, the town's rolled out the blood-red carpet: a local cafe's menu board offers, untranslated, such Klingon delicacies as "Throck," "Mool" and "Bartas bir Jablu"; the tavern of the Vulcan Hotel is offering $1.50 mugs of refreshing "Klingon Beer" -- pisswater draft tarted up with lime juice and red food coloring.

It's a strange intersection of cultures. Without its spacey trappings -- out of costume, you could say -- Vulcan would be more or less the epitome of the dire little struggling farmtown, but GalaxyFest's combination of rural county fair and Star Trek convention makes for a surreal appeal. An elderly lady sporting pointy-eared prosthetics rolls by on a handi-scooter decked out in spaceship regalia. The local old-folks' home leads the parade with a replica Enterprise float, complete with command-bridge cockpit and laser sound effects. Characters like "Ysnap the Peace Klingon", her costume a combination of star warrior and glam hippie, line up along with weatherbeaten farmers and truckers for bratwurst Spock Dogs. Another Klingon tries to wipe away tears without smudging his makeup as a woman on the Community Stage karaoke-sings a country tearjerker about childhood cancer. Local dudes at the beer garden out by the softball diamond horse around with town mascot "Ee-Cheeya", a furry cat-thing modeled after Spock's childhood pet.

"It's amazing," says celebrity guest Lolita Fatjo, a veteran of Trek TV and movie production crews and now operator of a company that books guest appearances for Trek stars; "I've been booking talent for [Galaxyfest] for six years. Everybody I've sent up here has come back and said 'Oh my god, that was so fun.' Usually we go to a hotel, we never see the light of day, we're in that hotel for two or three days..."

Suzie Plakson, who's played several Trek aliens ("I'm a multiracial, global trekkie-gal") including Worf's half-Klingon mate K'Ehleyr, agrees. "A mainstream convention -- and I don't mean this as derogatory -- the description is 'mercenary'. Because it kind of has to be. But this is just pure heart. There's something more... organic about the Trekhood of this town. It's something woven into everything."

Still, this is Vulcan the out-of-the-way grain town, not Vulcan the planet of calculating space-philosophers. In front of the Cinnastop cafe, whose windows sport a mural of what looks to be Captain Kirk and Scotty running toward an alien mirage of giant milkshakes and hamburgers, a pair of shimmery-cloaked Talosians (the bum-head aliens from the original series, remember?) stroll by pushing a dummy replica of crippled Captain Pike, Kirk's predecessor. A trio of old ladies watch them pass, bemused looks on their faces.

"Well," one remarks, with that inimitable small-town cluck of the tongue; "there certainly are a lot of strangers in town today."

“The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty..."

2010-03-16T19:36:00.003-06:00

I think there is an animal in there, in my brain, walking and eating and laughing and shitting in there. I think it is gnawing wires for kicks.

I think I am losing control but I mean I really can't help it this time and I drink and do drugs and fuck to shake it but no; no, it is in control and there is nothing I can do anymore but observe and tell you about it.

I tried again to keep it under control but I made another mistake again and have to write a report about it. Again.

I'll write it in the morning. Tonight, though, tonight is time for a swim.

The still phosphorescence as I forward-crawl through the lake is enough. I mean I know I am mad, but why lights? Why at night?

But, do you know why I struggle so?

It's for you, my lost love. I swim for you.

And drown too.

The Perpendiculars, Book one, Part one -- excerpt

2010-03-12T18:40:00.003-07:00

“Char me the trunk of a giant redwood, give me pages of white cliffs to write upon, magnify me thousands of times and replace my trifling immodesties with a titanic megalomania… then I might write large enough for our subjects.”

-- Charles Hoy Fort, the Book of the Damned

1 - THE RETURN OF THE MUMMY’S HAND

A late October morning, see-your-breath cold. Frost on the ground and the dirt track feeling stiff underfoot. A morning for quiet contemplation of the coming winter, for watching the pinking east through a cloud of coffee-steam… or for staying in bed, cozy, until the sun softened things, chased off the frost.

Without coffee and without a bed – I’d rolled up my rim about twenty kilometers back on the highway, and my blankets were two chilly hours behind that – all I had on that country morning was a mission and a message, a bagful of mojo dynamite. I fingered the battered satchel at my side, feeling my own flimsy hocus-pocus over and around the dark and ancient secrets within. It felt transparent; only a lazy idiot could fall for this gimmick. Lucky for me, I guess, that laziness and idiocy are powerful constants in this unpredictable world. What else can you count on?

The house itself was unremarkable. Hardly the pulp-novel image of a wretched hive or a royal refuge, which was of course the whole point, since it was both. Vinyl siding, cedar deck, tar shingles… just another ranch-style farmhouse on a medium-sized acreage in a typically pretty chunk of some run-of-the-mill geography. A retirement plot, exactly.

Except this particular piece of Freedom 55 – Freedom 5,500, if you want to get cute – was a long way from country-kitchen fantasies of thanksgiving with the grandkids. I could smell it from the foot of the drive, mystic stink overpowering the molecular diesel aroma of Addy’s idling Rabbit, the Brave Bunny. Scent of decay, mouldering mansion… something majestic gone sick and wrong. Piss in the corner of a palace, a cathedral repurposed as a dungheap, and through it all a whiff of incense, of camphor, of clean reeds from my bag. I pumped as much will as I dared into my metaphysical odor-eater; I didn’t want the shitdwellers scenting the disinfectant. Not yet.

READ ALL>

I started up toward the place, heard Addy rattle and backfire away. Crossing an invisible line, a crude gouge in the network of other, subtler invisible lines that lay dormant all around, I watched a couple of dark lumps detach themselves from their stations in the shadows of the deck, lumbering their way down to meet me. Cheap thugs. First and probably only line of defense for an indefensible fortress.

“The fuck you want?” Alpha thug, a sleek slab in tacky black fashion leather, awake way too early. Or never gone to sleep? Probably the latter; his eyes were nasty pits of empty overstimulation. His counterpart, tank-top and tattoos in frosty pre-winter, was a zombie. Maybe literally. I didn’t dare open my third eye to check, and my third hand was busy holding my third nose. Corrupted beyond humanity, filthy, wrong. I hoped my cargo could behave itself in his presence.

“Delivery for Shafiq,” I said, right arm hugging fake leather closer.

“Oh, yeah?” He squinted over my shoulder to where the Bunny had been, with a vague interest that wasn’t quite curiosity, before focusing on the bag, reaching for it with one of his massive violence vectors. “What’cha got?”

I swiveled the bag protectively behind me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! You want to lose that nasty mitt? This shit’s eyes-only, Jack; dust it and learn.” .

After the requisite threatening pause-and-glare – do these assholes all mail away for the same Teach Yourself Goonery manual? – alpha thug pulled his tenderizer back, plunged it into the interior of his $199 Monsieur Antoine special, and after some rummaging produced a battered baggie bulging with about an ounce of ashy powder. I presented the parcel.

With exaggerated care, comical daintiness, the goon sprinkled his precious pixiedust over the bag. I tried not to hold my breath as we watched for the results while beta thug glared crosseyed at nothing to our left. The dull dust began to sparkle.

I almost broke and ran when I saw the seal resolving on the ratty surface of my old camera case. Channels of enchantment whole half-modes out of phase, zigs where there ought to be zags, anchor lines that should have been a bright net fading off at their tips… an obvious counterfeit, a mimeographed sawbuck, a twelve-year-old’s fake ID. Stupid. I was out of practice, out of conviction, and out of my mind for thinking this lobot lackey might be fooled by that weak piece of shit.

I figured I had about two seconds to live. Ten, if alpha thug was the type for Hollywood one-liners. Who’d have thought the end of my road would be the driveway of a suburban hobby farm?

Then came the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard: the goon gasping like a girl. I looked up from my pathetic handiwork to see him shuffle-stepping backward, making warding signs, dead eyes brought to brief life with fear.

Well, holy shit. These losers were even lamer than I’d thought; I might as well have shown up draped in a spooky sheet and scared them off Scooby-Doo style. They were almost too dumb to deserve that which lay a few minutes in their future. Almost.

“Damn right, buddy,” I said, keeping an adrenaline giggle out of my voice as I blew past the panicked heavy and his oblivious partner, double-stepped up to the deck. With a hoarse whisper of underlubricated patio doors, without a look back, I slipped into the defiled sanctum of the pharaoh Sekhemkhet, August Hand of Amun, Dread Lord of the Nile.

[Part two HERE]

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. "

2010-03-10T16:14:00.005-07:00

Sandra Concepcion interviews Sid Heart, one of this century's greatest fuck-ups.
Here is the full interview:

Concepcion: "Good morning, Sid, thank you for doing this at such short notice."

Heart: "...unh..."

Conception: "So, um, can you give me a break down of your recent writings and the success of them all?"

Heart: "...fuck, what?"

Concepcion: "It just seems with your last bit about mushrooms and regular proclamations of loneliness you are, well, not very interesting as a writer.

Heart: "Well that's something I go through all the time; I never said I was good, I just write. But 'polls', or shit like that, have never troubled me much."

Concepcion: "O.k., well, why do you always write about love and beauty and lost things?"

Heart: "What else is there to document? I mean, for me. These are the things which captivate me and send me. You know?"

Concepcion: "Maybe. And maybe I might be able to swim through that, it doesn't mean our readers will. Can you simplify it?"

Heart: "No. Look, if someone doesn't understand heart-break then there is nothing I can do about that. They just don't know. It's like describing a colour to someone who has never seen said colour. Impossible.

Concepcion: "Interesting. Another question people want to know is 'why are you single?'."

Heart: "I don't know and have stopped trying for love. I mean not in a bad way, but I have recently decided to focus on me and forget the women. You know?"

Concepcion. "Yes. I think so. Last question, Sid, as I know you are on your way out, is there any advice you would give to young men out there?"

Heart: "Yeah. Have friends like Fish and Darren and Steve and Dwayne. These men have always made me better."

Concepcion: "O.k. Thank you so much and goodnight."

"Even the river wanted him dead."

2010-03-06T18:17:00.004-07:00

I tried writing on a mushroom jaunt; not very good.
But I did take notes and tried to record the times as best as I could. Thank god for the digital 12-hour cllock on my computer or I would have been fucked in that respect.
I was fucked anyhow. This was all that I could get out.
Alone in my apartment after a 10 hour trip with my buddy Chris, walking through Stanley Park and uptown. We had some beers and then I came home and ate a ton of mushrooms; still buzzing and just wanting to see if it would work, or something.
This is unedited, un-spell-checked and untouched.

5:20 p.m.

At 20 after 5 I am feeling the pull.
I ate a half-ounce of potent mushrooms at 5 today.
I have no plans and nothing to do, which is good, as I am sure to be fucked for a solid 12 hours; fucked from doing anything.
And I have a 6 pack of beer, just to keep me grounded.

5:26 p.m.

I have closed the curtains now, though I had thought of looking at the Yoga-practicing redhead in the condo across Nelson Street; always when I am drunk and smoking out there on the balcony, she turns on the back-lighting in her kitchen and then stretches beautiful in the living room.
But I have closed the curtains tonight. Even she can't save me now.

5:32 p.m.

The mushrooms come in yawns and heightened awareness. As my pupils dialate the dark becomes more friendly; I can see better. I doubt I'll be interested in documenting this much longer.

5:39 p.m.
I was right, except I am really fucking terribly aroused. I guess if you eat enough mushrooms, your cock becomes an iron rod. I bet I could have worked the spike-line on the railroad with this thing. i am feeling very thoughtful about trains a

/awareness shift(?)

something felt different again. I mean it was the music this time it really is the music after-all.

6:28

I am ruined. But laughing because you are all fucking ruined, too.
E

wait, wait. it's just drugs.
Smoke? This is shameful. But how am I supposed to know the difference?
Nevermind.

6:48 What?
that was never just 20 minutes. was it? why does it look like everything has been painted by Robert Bateman?

6;54
this is stupid. fuck it. I need a bigger typewriter.

7;20 pm

I just made contact. She was waving something and by the fridge i thought it was awoman you know just forget it

i am so fucking high

that was just 15 minutes no fuckING WAY?????

7:46 p.m.
I have resumed control.
Rosanne Cash and a beer, rations.

Fuck this is like war.

I smoked some pot just now in hopes of getting sleepy.

8:00 p.m.
So, this is a never-ending trip broken only by time-checks?
fine.
let's go then. This is laughable. I need stronger drugs to challenge my MENTAL MONZTERR!!!

New reality show idea
nah

8:07 p.m. eh?

8:30 p.m.
still incredibly stoned.
Hilarious.

9:16 p.m.
I just ate so much food, feel better.
sleep soon I think, no?
not yet?

10:04 pm
I think I was on the phone but I never dialed and thought i was on hold the whole time.
I was reading before and am stsrting to chill out.
I dont know if I can sleep yet, but I am going to try. This experiment was shit.
Stupid idea I didn't write anything. Fucking fuck.

G'night.

-Sid

JUST SAYIN'

2010-03-02T03:21:00.000-07:00

Goodbye and Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish.

2010-02-27T17:11:00.004-07:00

It was so long since I had seen you.
I doubted you would know me and knew you had long forgotten my breath on your spine as we slept in that old house.

Goodbye dear book, I am sorry to have outlived you like this.
But you offer me nothing but bitter memories now; when you opened for me and I gleaned knowledge and joy from you, sequentially.

Goodnight. I hope your spirit is infused into the milk carton or legal pad you are destined to become in this recycled world.

Goodbye dear book.

-Sid

"What we do often feels more like zookeeping than film-making": Jordan Thomas on BioShock 2

2010-02-05T12:05:00.007-07:00

The raw text of my email interview with BioShock 2 creative director Jordan Thomas, in support of a piece for the Toronto Star.

Jordan Thomas, Creative Director, 2K Marin

Q: Well, how about I jump right into the heavy angle? BioShock -- it hit hard. It made people think, not just about the game but about games themselves. People fell all over themselves finding ways to praise it, it's paraded on the shoulders of gamers as "the [insert famous film here; Citizen Kane, etc.] of Games". A tough act to follow. Can you give me some insight into you mindset, your approach as you entered into the task of making a sequel to a game with that kind of profile?

I felt honored and humbled. My job is, in part, to treat the creative offspring of my former co-workers with respect – but also to avoid boring them with an excess of safety.

Without falling prey to hyperbole and overstating the challenge, in many ways calling any single, physical game BioShock 2 is to invite a parade of dissent. Because everyone seems to have sieved out different subjective rewards from the original, trying to please them all equally would have led to madness, as you suggest.

Fortunately, the artistic standards of my colleagues at 2K Marin and 2K Australia are unbelievably high, and I never saw them flinch. So it was more a question of picking our constants (returning to Rapture was a big one, we felt it had more to say) and making the game we personally wanted to play, knowing that a lot of smart people would queue with picket signs in the aftermath.

Q: Actually, that makes me think of a related question: What do you think of the sometimes hyperbolic laurels heaped on BioShock... was it, to your professional eye (and ear, and hand) the revolution/revelation it's made out to be?

I’m a little too close to it to comment meaningfully on long-term resonance, but I’ll try not to dodge your question completely, how’s that?

Certainly the depth of the story and the originality of the setting attracted me to work on the original as a level designer. And it was cathartic, in that Ken and the guys at Irrational had finally managed to bring this creative legacy of highly immersive, expressive niche games we all grew up on to a much wider audience.

I’m also interested in game scripts that play to the strengths of the medium, and I think the original BioShock did so in a way that was largely unprecedented. The BioShock 2 team have worked hard not to let that layered quality slip – hopefully fans will derive their own meaning from the sequel in a way that both inherits from (and yet departs from) the original.

Q: What would you say were the "keywords" that guided you (and your team) as you were conceiving the game's various aspects.

Well, one was ‘Expressivity’, and by that I mean that we want players to own the experience, to craft a play style which is all their own from a very broad array of tactical options.

Rapture is a living simulation which connects a diverse set of enemy behaviors to the game environment, and then supports hundreds of responses to the player’s dozens of weapons, tools, and other forms of input.

It’s especially rare in shooters, because, frankly, it hurts to get it right. With all that wild unpredictable player behavior to account for, what we do often feels more like zookeeping than, say, film-making. But the player’s feeling of self-expression is worth it.

The other is ‘Immediacy’, which distinguishes BioShock and BioShock 2 from some of their forebears. There’s a heavy emphasis on a punchy, readably concrete result to the use of any player tool. That helps you build a hypothesis, which becomes a strategy – even if you’re not a hardcore gamer.

If you zap a puddle of water in BioShock, highly visible electricity will crackle throughout the entire pool, making it clear that you’ve changed its state. Fire will cause an enemy to flee towards water. The player ‘does the math’ there, and feels clever for having worked it out.

Q: Like Rapture itself, BioShock felt very self-contained... when you started work on BioShock 2 (or even before that), what was the first angle you thought of in which to expand that hermetic world?

I was interested in a child’s eye view of Rapture … growing up in an insular, ultimately failed undersea utopia would be unlike anything our cultural norms could offer – the beauty and the horror of it.

That quickly became a much more zoomed-in, intimate story of a dysfunctional Father-Daughter relationship, opposed by a kind of ‘un-mother’ figure in the form of our antagonist. The first game was all about the setting. This one is more about a specific small group of people, each of whom gazed upon paradise and were consumed by it.

Q: "Player choice" and the discussion surround it -- what it means, how to implement it, whether it's even meaningfully possible -- is one of games' big topics. Within its linear flow, BioShock offered players some freedom (in upgrades, tactics, harvest/rescue) and then made a huge statement on the illusory nature of that freedom. What's your (and BioShock 2's) take on that? How are you running with /elaborating/repudiating that "Would you kindly..." philosophy?

Well, we’re taking it seriously – and it’s probably our biggest area of risk. Unlike the original protagonist, your freedom of will is precisely what distinguishes you in BioShock 2. And as you close in on your former Little Sister (the girl you were bonded to, way back in the city’s past) you continually make decisions about the fate of key characters – not just Little Sisters this time.

I can’t say much more about any intended subtext without spoiling the reward, but suffice it to say that these choices dramatically shape the story, particularly in the final act. That, too, we feel – is rare in the shooter space. So we’re proud of the power over the BioShock 2 narrative that the player has, this time around.

Q: Andrew Ryan's Objectivist Rapture verusus Dr. Lamb's Altruist Rapture... Big Brothers versus Big Sisters... a sealed place (mostly) lost to the outside versus a known (to some) place in which outside parties have an active interest... from what I know of BioShock 2 it feels very Mirror Universe. Am I feeling that right? To what degree is 2 a reflection, and how is that reflection distorted?

You’re absolutely right that because Ryan’s (following from Ayn Rand’s) philosophy of rational self interest was so extreme, his political rivals such as Dr. Sofia Lamb had to be similarly larger than life to pose any real threat to him. Lamb is indeed an altruist, based in part on John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx … but whose strategy was to couch her secular thinking in a kind of unity cult called the Rapture Family. Lamb’s organization, once suppressed, has now seized control of the city. And the player – an overwhelmingly powerful individual, no longer enslaved to the city – constitutes a very direct threat to that utopian vision.

The variable, I would say, is Eleanor Lamb – the former Little Sister who is caught between them. She adds a dimension that wasn’t really present in the conflicts between the player and the original game’s villains – someone to care about, other than yourself and your many toys. But knowing the elder Lamb, some players will ask themselves if Eleanor can be trusted.

Q: Nuts n' bolts: multiplayer. To what degree will (are) the BioShock philosophy (-ies) animate and inform the multplayer experience?

Well, the Multiplayer component takes place in a different time period than the single player story. The year between 1959 and 1960, which precedes the original game. Rapture was wracked by a civil war that was the direct result of ‘utopian’ self-interest leading to an inability to agree on a set of rules.

Corruption and addiction followed the discovery of ADAM (the precious genetic substance that allows for all the wild genetic powers the player wields). So because it’s directly integrated in the story, it is directly informed by much of the Rand-inspired philosophical exploration that the first game was based on.

And competitive MP allows you to earn ADAM and, indeed, grow your character to increase your odds of survival. Along the way you unlock unique audio diaries that describe how each of the MP playable characters fell from grace in the pursuit of their own aims.

The economy of multiplayer is about as laissez-faire as you can get. So it’s a pretty effective meditation on the fleeting, mercurial nature of satisfaction, if you take a step back and smile.

Q: On the personal (and maybe a little softball) side, what are you most proud of in BioShock 2? What was cut that you regret having to leave behind?

I’m probably the most proud of the aforementioned narrative ‘reflection’ that the game offers, I think it’s an example of taking our theme (which has to do with family) and turning it meaningfully interactive in both the broad strokes and the finer ones.

But I’m also proud of the improvements to the game as a shooter – the enemies are much more environment aware, using cover, leaping off of walls, picking up objects, etc. The Big Sister in particular is in many ways a dynamically-generated boss fight in response to your actions – she has to be able to fight anywhere you can, which distinguishes her from more scripted confrontations in other games.

Ironically, I regret having to leave behind the backtracking feature! Almost nobody actually did it in the original despite huge amounts of work to support it, and there were massive gains in trade for its removal in BioShock 2. But for a small, hardcore group of people, it’s a loss.

Q: Personal, again. What in your own professional experience most helped/informed you through the making of BioShock 2? I'm thinking here (as I often am) of Thief: Deadly Shadows, a game I loved almost beyond reason.

Well, it warms the heart to know that anyone actually played the poor thing! Certainly there’s a level I threw my heart into on Thief:DS, guided by Randy Smith, that formed the foundation of my game narrative ‘philosophy’. The same principles were applied to Fort Frolic in the original BioShock (the level I worked on), and any cogent guidance I’ve offered our design team on BioShock 2 has come from the same principles.

To sum it up quickly, I’m a big fan of embracing the subjective – that is to say, offering some compelling knowns, but holding back on a lot of the connective tissue for people to speculate and fill in with their own theories. Meaning in games is malleable – very participatory. You can guide it, but to force it is to betray its very nature.

Q: Meta time. Games like BioShock 2 -- and almost all AAA games -- are huge undertakings, and hugely expensive in consequence. The risk/reward terrifies accountants. Not to put too fine a point on it, but is the current model of development, with its attendant financial risks and its hard use of talent, viable? What do you see in the future of development at the AAA level. What would you *like* to see?

Well, with digital distribution, you’ll see a flexibility of format and price point. That is to say that games like Portal may end up being financially viable stand-alone works, even on console, only meant to provide a few solid hours of play for a lower cost – but hopefully bearing replayability in a way that is unique to games. Imagine physically participating in an episode of something like LOST, learning more each time you play through it, and seeing all the ways it can turn out? Sort of the ‘short-but-deep’ model.

Beyond that, I’d like to see us break down the barrier to entry. Learning to use a modern game controller is, for many people, like being dropped into a foreign country without a word of the local tongue. It’s just too much – passive mediums like film and TV allow them to just sit back and take it. There’s no progress gating. Look at something like the iphone, the Wii, or Natal. By and large, the interface is your body. I hope to see us evolve beyond the traditional forms of input and models of ‘challenge’ – then my Mom and I can co-op through Pride and Prejudice And Zombies, y’know?

“You don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her”

2010-01-29T21:25:00.006-07:00

I wish a woman were in my bed right now.
I would love to make out, hard.

Right now I would slam this fucking computer shut and run into the bedroom, tripping over my hastily-offed clothing like a mad man, insane. I would grab her immediate waist, directly above her hips and I would grab her with both hands, one on either side and grip her like that.

I think I would love the way she would sweat, too, and could tell when she was excited.
Her back would begin to get hot and I knew her biology was delivering a severe beating to her logic.

I bought new sheets and we could be the first to fuck on them.

Breakfast is my treat, I do love to get up in the early pre-dawn.
I'll have a few Bloody Mary's while I make you an omlette.
Or peaches and cream cheese on a cinnamon bagel.
Or more sex.

After a little red wine tonight, I'll go to bed and sleep.

I wish there were a woman in my bed tonight.
I'd put down the lid on the wine, and close this computer and just put it down and even if she wanted to just spoon well man, that's just fine.

But I wish that woman slept tight with me and stayed the night and kept me cold with her feet and iced hands and man I wish she were in my bed tonight.

"Sometimes up Sometimes down My life's so uncertain With you not around"

2010-01-16T18:51:00.003-07:00

When I finally got out of bed, sheets following, I was worn out and felt weak and was sweating hard. My stomach and thighs were cramping and man it was painful struggling to the bathroom. I didn't need to sit down but I did need to rinse the sweat from my eyebrows, keeping the salty sting out of my eyes.

I brushed my teeth slowly as my tongue was swollen and raw. The toothpaste was irritating to taste but I spit it out fast.

More water, colder this time.

A glass of milk and a quick hit of pot put me right and I could hear them as I walked back to my room.

They were laughing and sighing and talking about scandals. They cooed and hurried me back under the covers when I walked in.

Having an orgy with The Supremes required stoic and regular stamina.

We smoked.

"I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any."

2010-01-09T22:43:00.004-07:00

The HarperCollins Reference Library:

AMERICAN SLANG

“AMERICAN SLANG AT ITS RIP-ROARING
ZANY, ZAPPY BEST”
-Dr. Robert Burchfield.
Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
By Robert L. Chapman, Ph.d.

Abridged edition of the New Dictionary of American Slang

紳士。
KDDI テム。
このささやかな贈り物です。
あなたが一生懸命仕事をする。
してくださいバンクーバーでリラックス.
2010年冬季オリンピック。
日本の人々はあなたの努力のためにそれを見ることができます。
NBCのお友達
クルーティエ、ジョディ。

I left that for the KDDI guys from Japan today.
They seemed lost and really quiet, steam gone.
I spoke with the middle-manager on the sea-wall balcony while we smoked.

The second he saw that I knew a little about Japan he lit right up and almost ran; he skipped. He skipped over to the other guys who were cutting and capping cables to sat. links and servers to other shit I don’t know anything about.

We culture-flirted for the rest of the day and I am determined to get fucking drunk with them before this is all over.

For the four years of misunderstanding and stereotyping and racism and fucking unsolicited loathe Japan dished me even on my most broken and human nights and would give me the ‘gajin-gap’ on trains and busses and I could have really used a random warm touch, and have my existence acknowledged by something other than shock or invisibility, well, I got a little somethin’ for you, brothers and sisters.

A gift.

A book.

Words.

Funny ones.

-Love Sid.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxox

“Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.”

2009-12-28T19:12:00.005-07:00

I had a conversation with your ghost today. You were laying, elbow up, on the couch and we were talking about the strangest things. I liked how you had just shown up and started talking, asking me things.
It was good to see you again.
You looked so light-filled and beautiful.
That winter when you had your paintings on show at the Sugarbowl, the snow was heavy and thank fucking god I lived across the street. I used to run beers to Azif, the owner. Or rather part owner. But man, his mother made the best cinnamon buns and his father gave me the Bagavad Gita and that is an interesting book.
After your show I chatted-you-up and, I must have been maybe 20, I convinced you to come and drink with me in my room across the street. You stayed that night and we dated for a while after. You lived South of Edmonton, near Nisku or somewhere, was it Bear’s Paw?
I used to drive you home in a two-tone brown 1973 Duster, stock.
That was my first car and we made out in it all the time. That time when you took milk home and we made out in the front seat and the carton of milk exploded under my back as you sat astride and insane, well the smell of milk never came out.
I met your mother a few times and she was always happy that it was early. Your parents were so easy to please. Your father even decided to meet me once. He bothered to meet me, rather.
I guess I never told you how I felt about that. But I guess I never got the chance.
It was good to tell you the truth tonight.
When I heard that your new boots were left neatly in the fresh snow on the pedestrian walk-way of the High Level bridge that night and that you had jumped and broken your neck and fucking died well then I just went home.
I never saw your mother again, you know.
You killed a few people that night.
After all this time, though, I am still a little fucked up about it.
Thanks for the chat tonight.
It was good to see you.

B-24 Liberator.

2009-12-24T19:47:00.004-07:00

I don’t have many favorites when it comes to airports; things, I mean.

I love the embraces, greetings and the begrudging farewells.

I love the smoking sections, for those airports that have them.

I love the barrier between loves, thrust suddenly and before everyone. Within seconds you are scouting over a sea of in-line-leavers to spot your love; and she waves one last time before moving out of frame and life.

I love it when my bag comes first and I can collect it and move the fuck out of there.

Mostly, though, I love stepping out the automatic door into the new environment.

At times that door has led me to a small boy named Miguel who would carry my bag to the taxi, 3 metres away, and demand a hefty tip.

At times that door has led me into the heart of the jungle.

At times that door has brought me home to the prairies, vast, wind-swept and cold.

At times that door has led me into the Texas summer.

At times that door has led me into cars with you and we couldn’t wait to get to the hotel on Rue de Medics, and fuck.

At times that door has led me into the rainy night, alone and heavy-hearted, friends behind and an empty apartment ahead.

At times.

That door.

At times that door has led me into deeper sleeps and rougher nights than that door is supposed to have led me into but it did and I had to figure it all out and without you and man, never, let’s never do that again.

I love driving away and into it with blurred eyes and wet cheeks, you gone.

I guess the airport scares me, too, a little.

But I want to pick you up when you land.

An afternoon with the kids.

2009-12-19T13:39:00.003-07:00

(Open with Neil Young’s, “Campaigner”)

It’s a soft, sunny, August day. Not a cloud in the sky, just the chirps of the city, some birds and the buzz of the odd mosquito. We see a typical suburban neighbourhood, cookie-cutter houses, and all similar cars. We begin to focus on one house as a clean pick-up truck pulls in and up to it, parking crooked and assuming.
Sid rolls up the windows, gets out of the truck and straightens his self. Sid wipes his hands on his jeans, gathers some things and locks up; walks to the front door.
He knocks.

(The conversation is inaudible under the Neil Young song.)

Sid: Hi. I made it!

They exchange a brief hug.

Lacy: Hey there. We were worried about you. C’mon in!

We follow Sid and Lacy as they walk through the tidy, beautiful house towards the back and out the patio doors. Jim is manning the BBQ,, drinking beer and smiling warmly. We see their two boys, Josh and Stephen, playing, running around the huge maple tree in the centre of the yard.

Sid sits at the gestured request of Jim and opens a bottle of beer. Sid drinks long off of it and thanks Lacy and Jim with a nod and a tip of the bottle. They sit in content, appreciative silence. Jim has the local radio news on and the 14-day weather report is for sun and warmth.
We look away from the smiling, drinking trio and focus in on Josh and Stephen.

Josh: I’m going to get some juice.

Stephen: Me, too.

They race to the patio, equal. Josh is 1 year older than Stephen but Stephen, at 12, is bigger and looks older. They both see Sid and rush to greet him.

Sid: Hey guys…

Stephen: Sid, you’re back…

Josh: Sid!!! You were in a war?

Stephen: Afganesten(sic), dad told you not to ask about it.

Sid looks and smiles at Jim. Jim shrugs without looking up from the BBQ. Sid looks back over his shoulder and Lacy smiles, nods.

Sid: Yeah I went to Afghanistan. It’s war, that’s right.

Josh: You have a gun?

Sid: I had one, yes.

Stephen: Did you kill anyone?

Josh elbows Stephen in remind and Stephen blushes and gets a plate and dishes out some salad, turning from Sid.

(Neil Young’s #10, Time Fades Away)

(In Afghanistan) Sid remembers bunkers, playing sports, cleaning his rifle, checking his field gear, the green and black patch on his Kevlar, thick with the embroidered magnet and the pile of shit. Sid Hart, the shit magnet. In some barracks we see that patch being sewn on by giggling soldiers in their t-shirts and boxers. We see Sid getting shot at in various circumstances dozens of times, from an old Afghan woman’s hut to inspecting donkeys. Lastly, we see Sid shooting into an Afghan house, a woman crying and bloody stumbles out and falls to the ground. It’s silent.

Sid: I think I did kill someone, but it was an accident and I can’t sleep because of it. Were you guys playing war over there?

Josh: Oh. Was it a bad guy you killed?

Sid: No. No, I made a mistake…

Lacy interrupts with beverages and some hastily cut cheese.

Lacy: Have a snack, everyone!

Jim: Dinner’s nearly done, guys.

Josh and Stephen look at each other, then back to Sid.

Josh: We weren’t playing war, we were playing ‘sing-tag’. It’s like tag and if you get hit you have to sing a song.

Stephen: Yeah and it has to be loud, and a popular song we know. Dad sings old stuff and it sucks.

Sid: Is that right, Jim?

Jim: Yeah, the boys don’t like Neil Young…

Lacy: Maybe they would like it if you didn’t sing it.

Sid chuckles and puts down his beer. He stands up and addresses the boys, Josh and Stephen.

Sid: Let’s play this game, guys.

Stephen: Oh. You can’t play, Sid.

Josh: Yeah, sorry.

Sid: What? Why not?

Josh: Because you have killed.

Stephen: Yes, you do not respect the fleeting beauty that is life.

Sid: What?

Josh: You see yourself apart, separate from everything. This is why you shall live this life again, repeating mistakes until you learn that the defining moment is but yours to define.

Sid stares wide-eyed and drops his beer, it breaks in silence as Josh and Stephen slowly pose and morph into Siddhartha and Govinda; their clothes remain the same. Josh is Govinda, standing with his right arm up, bent at the elbow, tucked tight and only his index and middle finger, palm forward, extending from his closed fist.
Stephen is Siddhartha and is sitting cross-legged, silent, looking at Sid and smiling. Sid keeps staring, wide-eyed and motionless but for the tears streaming down his face.
Our focus shifts to Jim and Lacy, who hug and kiss in the foreground and hold the embrace.

Lacy: Do you think that Sid would be a good father?

Jim: Yes. I think he already is.

Lacy: I think so, too.

Jim: I love you.

Lacy: Good. I love you.

We pull back and reveal the entire back-yard. Everyone is laughing.

Fade.

Grace Kelly's Lips.

2009-12-13T22:21:00.004-07:00

Sid A. Heart
#303
Signal Fire Lane,
Crap-Town.
IaM-DuM
Covet-land

Dearest Karoline.
Right now I am smoking and drinking and listening to your flute; the recording you sent me. It is so fucking good. Really.
It’s all I can write to, with. But I think it’s the thought of your breathy lips, pursed like that, which make it so fucking good. I bet you’d be really shocked and turn red and get mad if I were to watch you play and record but instead I just leaned in and kissed you for about thirty seconds with my hand gently on the back of your neck, your hair through my fingers and down into my heart.
Anyhow, that’s what I thought about your music; I hope that helps.

Sincerely
And unabashedly,
Sid A. Heart.

Chris Hartley Stories.

2009-12-05T12:52:00.003-07:00

So it began, with litte more than three fingers worth of gin and blindingly, drunk ambition. Due to something simply referred to as 'liquor laws', that would have to do.

He mumbled or stammered, a difficult yet definitive difference existed between the two. As he was oft culpable of doing the mental tangent initiated by his uncertain call to arms was often followed closely by an exhubirant verbal molestation of any passerbys.

"Liquour laws. PFFFFT! A liquor law is what is made after you roll box cars!!"

"But this!!!!" Raising his arms above his head in a sweeping motion, almost taking out the glasses of a busness casually dressed man hustling by with a kiss from the bottom of the gin bottle.

"But this...." He muttered (and it was most certaintly a mutter) as the scorn of the morning crowds gaze began to bite through his wavering gin shield.

The gin bottled creeped to his mouth and the cognizent intrusion of waning self confidence washed slowly out of his stomach.

"Back to the bowels where you belong." He muttered before turning his eyes back to the crowd.

"But this!!!!" Letting a green mixture of residual gin and cigarrette tar fly at the glass window of the presently closed liquor store.

"This most assuredly should be known as an ANTI LIQUOR LAW!!! AND A SMALL SOCIALLY INEPT MANISH ONE AT THAT....or maybe a hen of old jezabels!!"

The gin bottle snapped once again to attention (conducted more for effect than purpose). A poetically misguided tingle of pride trickled down his spine and for awhile he just stood there. Feet firmly planted and hunched shoulders with what was left of the gin balanced against the lip of his belt.

"Jesus fuck..." he mumbled, while feigning an imbalanced kick at the door. He quickly recovered his footing and with what he presumed appreciable enough dignity resumed his objective. Heels squarely matched, shoulders broad, straight neck with nary a shred of his former demonstrated postural apathay apparent he spun around and purposefully met the conglomerated gaze of the crowd lingering near the transit stop.

"Fucking breakfast cereal eaters!" He chuckled, holding his taut posture.

He bellowed to the crowd "I know what you're thinking and could not be bothered one fucking bit to care!"

He spun the gin bottle like it was a gunslingers mighty iron. Whirling it round and round as he stared them down. The projection of graven focus and his unwavering, dark confidence was more than a match for the lot and an unstable wave crashed over the crowd. Eyes dropped nervously through the crowd while others were "looking at him without really looking at him".

He revelled in their pathetic cowardly retreat away from their moral high ground for but a moment, then locked his wrist halting the spinning motion of the bottle. As it began stalling upright he let the bottle slip down and in one fluid motion had secured his hand around then neck and spun the top off with his thumb. The cap shot off straight towards the transit stop. He couldn't help but allow a small grin to escape his lips.

-Fucking perfect-

He pulled his gaze back from the momentary self admiration and was pleased to see that they were indeed more uncomfortable, so he began again.

"As I was saying, I know what you're thinking and as an aside couldn't be fucked by it. You're all pretty damn pleased that you're not as bad off as I...I." He shook his head and chuckled.

"I swear swear to all the gods; false or otherwise, that the feeling is god damn-well mutual. As sure as half of you either have or are going to go pay at least 5 bucks more than you ought to for a damn cup of coffee, I would not for a minute go back to being one of you COCKSUCKING BREAKFAST CEREAL EATERS!!!!". The slouched posture had returned.

"The pay may sometimes be the shit, but the hours, I assure you are most excellent. I'm still sorting out the pros and cons of the other related benefits" He mused.

His eyes narrowed and he cast a gaze over his shoulder, while muttering
"Anit liquor laws aside, retirement has been doing me well."

With one last volley of phlegm in the stores direction he quickly sauntered into an alleyway mumbling something about "It being too sunny a day to waste debating philosophy with officer Luders or one of his blue monkeyed cronies." and with that he was gone.

With this, the assembled mass of the morning crowd regained their composure. A few crooked ball cap wearing younger men reinflated and hollered their battle cries, others began rounding the pity wagons, some began discussing who was going to fire up their cell and so on....All collectively rescaling the summit of mount superior, and many slurping on their disposable, logo-covered morning beverages.

What was compeletly missed were the eyes and the quiet demeanour of an estranged few. They merely peered at the mouth of the alley, eyes aflame like faerie creatures perched amongst a thick canopy. While it undoubtedly vairied even amongst them, there most certainly existed at least an unconcious second where the impulse to drop their cell phones and other belongings and simply follow this obviously flawed pied piper down into the gutter had taken hold. Instead, they simply maintained their compusre while exhauling the remaining vapours of a madness induced stranger's freedom.

-Chris Hartley

"I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect - in terror."

2009-12-04T20:36:00.005-07:00

04/12/09

S. Heart

#304,

1797 Walnut St.

Uberstracht, FC.

Dear Pan; companion of the Nymphs, God of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music.

I went into your woods today and returned home bereft of a sudden sense of terror. I apologize for being so blunt and to the point, but I know you have much to do.

That said, I would like to explain the antecedent to my letter, here.

You see, sir, I have always been delighted by terror; the primal terror that is in all of us the same. It makes me feel alive and I love it. One of my favorite memories of your services was when I went camping in June of 1998, when I tried to find my way back to camp after going to the toilet. Although I could see our camp and everyone talking, the raging fire, I felt a sudden and primal terror.

I ran, too scared to even yell or cry. I was pale and everyone thought I had seen a bear; after I told them I saw a bear.

But I lied.

It wasn’t a sight nor a sound, Pan, that alerted me, it was just base mammalian instinct. It was you.

Today, though, I must complain. Today I went into your woods alone and never once did I feel even concerned, much less terrified. I went into your woods, good sir, and I left there with no more sense of life and what I should do than before I ever worked up the courage to venture into those dark woods in the first place.

Rather a waste of my time, wouldn’t you say, Pan?

Befitting the recourse of a mere individual consumer of sheer terror, such as myself, I hereby require an apology from you and at least double, no, triple the terror when next I enter your woods.

Sincerely,

Sid Heart.

Deadstick landing (fragment)

2009-11-30T11:32:00.004-07:00

to take the yoke and make

the bargain we've been trained for

nose down against base instinct

trading altitude for airspeed

"To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images."

2009-11-20T21:57:00.003-07:00

"What do you mean? Why don't you obey?
Yes.
Why.

Why don't I jump when you moan?

Am I detached?
Maybe.
You seem to think I am some monster, devoid.
Cold, you say?
No. When you turn down the thermostat you engage the cold, it has nothing to do with me; except that I grow cold, too.

I can be made hot, too, you know.

I rode to a girl's place once, on a mountain bike.
I fell and broke my wrist on my way to see her.
When I arrived I pleaded for help and bandaged my wrist and drank beer and smoked pot and even visited her friend.

When we returned, though, we made love in her bed. I held myself up with my right arm and cradled my left.

Dignity? Fuck, who cares about dignity, who cares about broken bones, who cares about broken-fucking-sex-bones-while-in-pain-but-love-is-just-too-powerful sex?

We do.

-Sid.

"I awoke this morning with devout thanksgiving for my friends, the old and the new."

2009-11-15T23:05:00.004-07:00

Thank you, man.
My step is gait, like that.
No canter, no trot, just gait.

I still hit the track and hard.

Thank you, man.

"There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats; For I am armed so strong in honesty That they pass by me as the idle wind”.

2009-11-11T01:13:00.004-07:00

Attachment.
How does it happen like that?
Staying put?
Never sacrificing the most unsacrificable?
Day in and out, little adventures, maybe, but never grand movement.
I feel so alone and apart from it all,
as though I had peered too long into the abyss.
And it finally peered back.
I am always feeling gone again.

-Sid

9:30 a.m., November 5, 2009

2009-11-05T09:35:00.003-07:00

This kind of fall day

So much like the early spring

So goddamned distant

photo d. martineau

Pissing off the deck, 10-30-09

2009-10-29T20:26:00.004-06:00

Out on the highway

a rig double-honks;

I imagine it's for me

"Happy Birthday."

2009-10-24T23:26:00.004-06:00

I hid, tonight.
When I came back from the bar, I hid behind the garage.
I didn't want you to see me like that.
I didn't want to stink and be drunk and to have you think that I am as much of a loveless waste; the way I see myself.
I hid the way I hide from everything, afraid to take account; afraid to take responsibility.

My younger brother, I dream good things for you.
Learn from my mistakes; tragedies.

I wish I wasn't a broken man for your birthday, Bruno, but I am.

But you'll be better stronger and faster.
You'll be a billion-times the man I am.

You already are.

Happy Birthday, young brother.
Happy 12th Birthday, Bruno.

-Sid
xoxoxoxox

"A plainful story from a sist'ring vale..."

2009-10-24T13:48:00.002-06:00

Oh Alberta
With your big sky
And let-down eyes.
You killed me today.
Thank you for reminding me that I am
a fool.
I ought to be more careful with my love.
I ought to be a man, again, and alone.
Oh, Alberta, with your sky and the way you make me
weep.

xoxoxo
-Sid

“It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.”

2009-10-18T01:35:00.002-06:00

When I caught that cross-wind and the mizzen mast was spun, well, that's when I knew that I was in love with you.
Sails filled, weak willed, we put it down for the night, stern-strong.
But,
we finished that sail for the day and fuck the begging.
Time for beans and coffee.
And catch that free-rig, you fool.
Free-rigs, man.
Where would that take us?

-Sid
xoxox

"Let me but bear your love, I'll bear you cares."

2009-10-18T00:09:00.006-06:00

We slept through most of it, the storm, you and I. Oh, Thomas, you good cat, and all you wanted was a sip of milk and a touch of tuna; we have similar diets, oh cat.
I signed all of my letters with love, but some of them were made uncomfortable by that.
Some people will never accept love, you know, as they are afraid of their own.
Oh, Thomas, you gray sweet fucker, tell them.
Tell them what I can not, any longer.
Reign o'er me.
Oh love.
Oh gray cat, or forever, oh everything under the eyes of Buddha and even beyond that.
Oh nothing.

Oh, Sid.
xoxoxoxoxoxo

You.

2009-10-14T01:57:00.004-06:00

Well, even if you do
Or don't.

I am out like that.

Wanted/not wanted.

I do want you, though.

really.
I'll fit when you hit me, take the chalked place.

I really hate these 2x4s.

-Sid Hart
xo

7x My Size

2009-10-11T12:02:00.004-06:00

Another song...

They say I've got to fight it

Say that's what I've got to do

Say I can dream up my own weapons

Say, "We believe in you!"

They say I've proved myself against many lesser guys

But this is seven times my size

They say I need the prize

But must not think about the purse

Say I must believe I'm good

Or I'll only end up worse

Say I've got no chains on me but those I forge myself

Architect of my own cell

Sister, will you arm me?

I dreamed my knives away

Sister, will you fight for me?

I'll gladly pay

And now it sits on me and I haven't got the strength

And now it jumps away and I haven't got the length

And now it blinds me, but I don't need my eyes

To know it's seven times my size

Do not believe her, when she says that you are strong

It's all deceit, sir, when she tells you you are long

It's always there, sir, from the cellar to the skies

And it's seven times your size

"Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed and he was enthralled."

2009-10-10T11:31:00.004-06:00

As I flew over the roof-tops to you, your Northern nest, I noticed things.
It was a tough flight but I did it and I had the image of you in my mind's eye the entire time.
I noticed that the trees upon which I used to rest and sun my wings were cold and leafless.
But it mattered not, as I flew on and into your heart.

The flat lines of the prairie gave me lift and I caught those thermals and rose up and out of it all, and again, into your heart.

I noticed that the places I used to land were bare, but it was good to know it, as I found other places to settle from the night's bitter wind and chill.

I puffed my feathers and shook my head to soften the frost that had settled. I found an open place, free of ice, and drank. And then I flew again.

It was so strange to think of you far from me like that. I felt alone but I flew onward. Does that make sense?

So, when I do land and rest, will you warm my wings and let me stretch my legs?
Will you know a Bluebird when he lands and calls for you?

Will you take me once again into your nest and tell me of other birds and how I out-flew them for your softness?

I will tell you of an Albatross I met and how he can never rest.
I will show you the fanning and span of my winged love, I will chase away the cats and mend your little heart.

If only you would have me.

There.

In your Northern nest, my lover.

-Love Bluebird
xoxoxox

"O comfortable friar! Where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be, and there I am. Where is my Romeo?"

2009-10-09T23:18:00.003-06:00

I am right here.
As I have always been; no balcony.
Here.

While you wept on the gates, dear lover, I have been cleaning the lines of this engine and replacing all the weak seals. I tightened the alternator belt and changed filters and oil.

The hoses and clamps were tight, and we were off.

Oh, Juliette, what will they say when I run them over in a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado?
When they chase us by horse?
When they try to hunt us in the night but I am doing 98 MPH with your head on my shoulder and Chubby Checker on the radio, it's a joke, Juliette.

And zoom into it all you scared girl. Juliette, let go and fall in. I have a leather interior with custom bucket-seats from a Mustang and a dual-intake on the Carburetor. Two belts on the fan and a quick kiss and the wrench comes out and things need tightening.

Also, let's put the top down and make-out under the stars, Juliette.

-Sid
xoxxox

"And behold this day I am going the way of all the earth."

2009-10-09T18:16:00.002-06:00

I saw a dead body under a sheet under the wheels of a bus today. Everything was frozen in place and taped-off. I don't know if it was a man or a woman. But it was a dead body and it seemed to resonate like that. With me and with the crowd that had gathered, murmuring.

I crossed the street and wondered about my own death.

Would it come like that? Heavy and unannounced? Will I be under a sheet, under the wheels of a bus someday?

Fuck that. I want to die of a broken heart. I want to die from lack of love, or maybe too much love. I can never decide. Both can kill a man, you know.
But I want to die with love on my lips and want in my heart.
I want to croak your name with my last breath and reach into a dream.

My possessions scattered and none.
My legacy but a wave. In and out. Not the water at all.

I am drinking to you and also to me. With this small glass.

I love you, and if you want to kill me, please don't use a bus.
Under the wheels? Under a sheet?
Already we are sheeted, under the meat-wheels of conception.

Make it at least, and also, original.
Please.

-Sid
xoxoxo

Mea culpa.

2009-10-08T21:24:00.006-06:00

I needed it. At the time, I needed it.
And ought not to be mocked for it, because need defines reality.
And I needed it. Then.

And there it was.
A single star.

Home and dry.

2009-10-03T00:44:00.004-06:00

After it all, and then some. You couldn't even buy me a fucking beer. You may not have ever known it, or cared, but you left me a battered man, a wounded child.
Ouch.
Please, stop taking it out on me.
And please stop breaking my little heart.
Stop killing me, like that.

Sid (junior) Heart.

Sid Heart will love you better, baby...

2009-10-03T00:30:00.003-06:00

"Whence comest thou, shady lane? and why and how?"

Indeed.
Whence comest thou?
Now?

Later when the lights go down and I makest thee cometh?
When I kiss your neck and lower it all to a new place? A better country?
Hell, yes I would fight for that.
Hell, yes. I would kiss it all for that. I would fucking die in my sick drunken sleep for that.
I would do everything and also, everything else.
Because it's love, and that is the final place;
the best seat under the shade, on the lotus.
The best.

The sun is just so fucking bright.

2009-09-25T01:04:00.004-06:00

On the patio, this is the view from the bar on my block. When I drink and get crazy, this is my muse. I fall asleep to the sound of waves breaking.

Friends, lovers, please.

Come and fucking visit me.

I am only 4800 km's closer to you, now.

That's close.

-Sid
xoxo

Dans un autre pays.

2009-09-24T13:02:00.004-06:00

The rudder wouldn't move at all in the shoals. The keel skipped over them and I knew them by name. I would have gone aloft to see them out but I didn't want to tip her, even though she was keel stepped. Instead I leaned off the anchor pocket and put weight sea-side, and as she swung about, I caught the rigging and shook out the reefed sail. The wind blew into it and we were free.

I hated docking not because my skill was poor, not just because my skill was poor, but I hated docking because I left her there; with only the tides to play on.

The walk from the dock to the house was lonely until I opened the door and there was Thomas. Thomas the gray. A fine cat. Thomas and I would read the mail together, me with my whiskey and he with my heart-beat, as he lay on my chest while I opened the envelopes and read aloud, by lantern: "Dear Mr. Sid Hart, ...".
I had found old Tom one day while walking the streets, I bought him a can of tuna and we became fast friends. Thomas was a good and fine gray cat. When the wind blew hard and the rain made it so that you couldn't see outside Thomas would hide in the nook between me and the sofa.
Once I got a letter from you and after all these years I couldn't bear to open it. I knew what it said already. I could tell from the way the stamp was affixed, sloppy and crooked. Like you.

I am a man of the mast, now. I am sheltered in the lee, unfettered by the misdeeds of others.
My ship has no room for that cargo, even the lazarette is full.

These days, it's me, Thomas the gray, the house at the shore and the ship at the sea.
That is all I am, all I ever want to be: a sailor with a gray cat to whom I can read aloud after docking my ketch and leaving her deck with heavy heart.

"The Nellie, she was a cruising yawl..".

2009-09-24T02:26:00.009-06:00

How do I tell you that I love you?
How the fuck do I do it?

I have held you close and whispered sweet things, and how do I tell you
that
I love you.
I love everything about you.

I have dreamed of a woman like you, but I failed.
I have wept for a woman like you, and I wailed.
But, and yes, you are everything I have ever wanted in a woman who sighs, aloud.
I love you, make me a man, again.
Light my sails and heed my calls to stern, we are the same and good god you are the most beautiful ship I have ever seen in my life; you angel.
I will wait until you share a drink with me.
Darlin'.
Oh Nellie, with your mizzen mast to the sky.
My heart of darkness.
Let's sail.

A comatose person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to pain or light, does not have sleep-wake cycles, and does not take voluntary actions

2009-09-18T20:29:00.005-06:00

I think I have been sleeping. Maybe for a long time, even. I have no recollection as to how I came to be asleep, but I have awoken from this foggy prison, once for certain. Other than that time, though, it seems like twice, maybe more, I don't know.

But once for certain.

The light hit me first and the mountains levelled. My vision was lucid and I felt everything.

The flat-land felt good. I was waking up.

When she first touched my face, that nurse, that line-angel, she brought me to.

She bade me wash the sleep from my eyes and see. The river was cold and I just smoked.

And that's when I knew I was awake that one time. Once.

She spoke to me of lines and showed me love.

A line. The line.

I remember kissing her and now the fog begins to set and I just wanted to tell you once before it settles on my soul that I can't remember how long I have been asleep but I remember, oh god do I remember, that one time when I was certain that I was a-fucking-wake, certain that I had left the coma.

But it comes, the sleep. Again.

I'll dream of my lover, then, my nurse with the supreme line.

-Sid
xoxoxoxo

DSi "Flipnote" = AWEXXSOME

2009-08-20T20:19:00.001-06:00

For Darren. “People who don't drink are afraid of revealing themselves"

2009-07-28T19:43:00.006-06:00

I hated that picture.
But they always brought it in.

"Is that you? You're Detective Polowski, right?"

"Nope. I'm a dick now, a P.I.; where the hell'd you get that clipping anyhow?

"The library, Detec..."

"Just call me mister, is that alright?"

"Yes. Mister Polowski. Say, are you Russian?"

"No. Parents were from Eastern Europe somewhere."

"Somewhere?", they'd say, "What kind of private dick can't even trace his own heritage?"

Yeah. What kind.

"The kind who don't work for free, now you've asked me a few questions already but I don't see no cash. If you want business lay it out."

Sometimes they would and usually they didn't.

The lease was up on the flop so I slept in the office that night and almost every night.
I had just killed the lights and taken off my hat when the door swung open and I grabbed the .38 from my hip.

"Hello", she said. "Hello? Detective Polowski?"

She walked in a few feet and I kicked the door shut behind her. I grabbed her left arm and brought it up behind while I pushed her forward toward the desk.

"Who are you and what do you want?!"

"Ow, you're hurting me..."

"Don't you know any better, you dumb dame, than to be pushing open doors in this part of town after 10?"

From the electric lights outside I saw her profile and she smelled like money.

"I... I... I heard that you were the best, Detective Pol..."

"Mr. Just call me Mr. Polowski. You got that?"

I let her go and put the .38 on the desk. The silver caught the street-lights and glinted, she eyed it for a second.

"Don't you even think about it, doll."

I hit the lamp and poured two drinks.
We spent an hour talking and she cried about her brother who had gone missing before starting his gig on a merchant marine ship to England.

"So, he went AWOL, what should I do about it? Tell the MP."

"No they already know, I shouldn't have bothered you... I just..."

She was crying again.

"My brother, Nicky Clarke. You gonna write this down?" she sobbed, "He was supposed to sign in on the SS Byron D. Benson one week ago. The ship sailed and the MPs came to me about it. That's how I knew. Now, Det... Mr. Polowski, now I am coming to you. Please, I know you were a brass, a top, and you knew all the officers...".

"Listen here, we all have to make do in this war. I can see that your eyeliner on your legs is running, you lost nylon, I lost a lot, too. But I ain't got the stomach to go gunning for some AWOL coward, too afraid..."

She slapped me clear on the face and it woke me up, some. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring. I knew that because my cheek just stung and there was no blood.

"Why you lousy... Get the hell out of here". I yelled.

She started crying again and I knew that I was being a heavy.

"Look now, Mrs. Clark, was it? Look, doll, I'm sorry about that. I seem to get a little sore about deserters. I ain't saying that your brother is one, mind you, but I just get sore at the idea. A man has got to give it in for his country these days and I just hate to see men play it out like that."

She turned away and sobbed harder. I grabbed her shoulders and spund her around to face me.

"Look here..."

But it was too late and she pushed those ruby lips against mine.
We kissed in the glow of the street-light through my 3rd floor office window and we knew it was wrong.

She put down $300 on my desk and turned as she walked away. "I've included expenses. I'm staying at the Astoria, tell me when you have found Nicky."

I was in love and out of whiskey. I had three Lucky Srikes left and my gun was unloaded.

"Goddamn broads".

I went down the block to Louie's Tavern and got a triple, no ice, no groceries.
This was gonna be rough but I knew that if I was on the level it would sort out.

"Merchant marines" I said. "Hell".

Buddhists say that, "Before you can walk the path to enlightenment, you need a great teacher." I say, you just need to know how to walk.

2009-07-28T01:32:00.004-06:00

I couldn't figure it out at all.
There was a pole every 50 feet, but no wires connecting them. They just stood there, 150 feet tall.
The bus driver laughed and told me they were there to stop the planes going into Mexico and America beyond.
On the way down Highway #1 to Orange Walk, and beyond, I understood.
They had planted those poles to stop planes from landing on that highway.
It would have taken their wings right off.
I knew that the trip was going to be mad and insane and I loved it all and already.
Loved.

"If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.”

2009-07-24T00:05:00.005-06:00

I planted some seeds, one time.
And they grew into something that was more than me, more than I could handle.
But I knew how they struggled and I knew how they burst forth and I knew the soil.

We sat and watched them grow all summer and those flowers owned me and I loved them but they gave me peace like that.

I want to water you, too. I would soften your soil, dust your petals and even support your stalks.

I am Kannon-ed like that. I am Bosatsu-ed like that.

I am your man, solid and in love with love.

Crowley's Law

2009-07-22T19:12:00.008-06:00

From and old Dispatch, here.

Fuck the fucking moonbase. There is nothing there for us, despite what the ridiculous ‘40s-vintage helium-mining fantasies they’re spinning say. Here is a complete list of the moon’s benefits to humanity: it looks nice.

I mean, it really, really looks nice. Hanging there, waning away, outshining the stars on a cloudless night. Its only competition is the orange glowing steamcloud cloud of the pulp mill on the horizon.

“Come on, dad! Just do it!”

I snap back from space. Tough-guy Jody’s being goaded by the apple of his pugilistic eye into flipping off the deck. He peers over the edge like it’s the lip of a canyon rather than a six-inch drop into five feet of snow. Sense and sobriety do battle with whisky and lifelong daredevil instinct across his nervous-smiling face until his wife (or whatever; I just got here, myself) puts in her $0.02:

“For fuck’s sake, Jody! You’ve got a good job; don’t break your fucking back!”

FLOOMP into the snowbank, a perfectly cushioned backflop. Sometimes all it takes is the concern of a good woman to remind a man of his party responsibilities ... and these people take their responsibilities seriously.

“Justice denied anywhere diminishes justice everywhere.”

2009-07-19T00:54:00.004-06:00

Judge: Well, you have said that you wanted to postpone talking about this during the presence of attorneys, but now you are answering questions.

Saddam: No, this was regarding previous accusations. If you want to repeat them in the presence of attorneys, yes, I want to postpone them. But if you want me to sign then the attorneys, no, please, I wouldn’t do it. So my occupation of Kuwait, the seventh charge, unfortunately it is coming from an Iraqi. Is this just?

Judge: But this is law.

Saddam: Law? What law? Law that puts Saddam to trial because the Kuwaitis said that we would make out of every Iraqi woman a prostitute for ten dinars in the street. And I have defended the honor of Iraq and revived the historical rights of Iraqis against these dogs.

Judge: Do not insult anybody, this is a legal session.

Saddam: Yes this is a legal session, and I am taking responsibility for what I say.

Judge: Any impolite statement is not acceptable.

Is that right?

Well, then, I guess a good and solid "Fuck you" is out of the question?

You dumb cunts.

" Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. "

2009-07-18T22:41:00.005-06:00

The day will come, you know, when I am no longer around again.
And it did.
And here it is.

I left quietly in the morning. I remembered which boards creaked and to lift the door of the fridge so that the hinge didn't squeak.
I didn't make any coffee or even smoke any cigarettes. I wanted it raw, I wanted the morning to be raw and I refused to dull that with phony little pleasures or postulations.

The bedroom door was open and I looked in again but, and only, for the last time. She was still sleeping and dreaming about the fair I promised to take her to on Tuesday. She loved the roller-coaster and the thrills like that. She was on her side and facing the wall away from me. I cried to not see her face because I knew if did she would have seemed an angel and I would have made coffee and taken off those well-worn boots and put my keys back on the table and woke her up with a kiss and breakfast and the promise of a new day.

But she slept and was turned away in her dreams. And I wept solid like a man whose heart has broke again and for the last time.

By noon I was 360 km away from that bed. By dinner I was 1038 km away from a cold meal waiting at an empty seat at that table.

I made that table one fall. We had gone for a country drive and in a state of love I had ripped off the side of an abandoned barn-door. The planks were cedar and had already lasted one hundred years or more. After a date with my belt-sander and several layers of Tung Oil I pressed those planks together tight and left the clamps on for a week. Those barn-door-planks became our table on which we ate and fought and even several times fucked.

I knew that by this time, at 11:00 p.m., my dinner was still there. It was accompanied by a tear-smeared note telling me what a selfish prick I was, etc.

Sometimes, though, life needs medicine.

Sometimes, one needs to leave it all and everything and just go.

Sometimes, through tears and wails and fears and taboos, you have just got to get fucking going. Somewhere. Away and alone.

I changed my diet the most, though, in early February.
The Olancho Mountains were brutal in the winter and the rain nearly drowned me.
But I managed to build a place out of mountain pines.
Honduras was good to me and I had made friends in Catacamas.

I would hunt when I could and sell what I didn't eat or smoke.

Life was new and good and as time went on I forgot things.

I came across an old shepherd's hut one time, though, and took the door from the hinges.
I strapped it to my back and walked back up the mountain to my pine home.
I used bark with sap on it and spread it around evenly. I heated the pine bark on an open flame until the sap became liquid, then sprinkled sand over it ind doused it in cold water from the stream below. I used the crude sandpaper and smoothed the door from the shepherd's hut. I didn't even build a frame for that table top and had no finishing oil. It lay bare on my floor.

There was never a cold meal waiting on that table nor was there a tear-smeared note telling me that I was such a selfish dick.

I liked it in Olancho.

“This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”

2009-07-18T00:07:00.003-06:00

Hey, thanks, man.

I feel great

and so much better now.

You have made America great again and I will do everything in my humble power to aid you, to make sure that the good wins.

Thank you for the chance to be worthy of something.

Thank you for digging my stupidity and and thank you, for getting it right.

And thank you for the bumper-stickers. How else could I let my neighbours know that I am a fool?

And how else may I obey and comply and even deride my friends and family?

And thank you for a decade of fear.

And thank you for never giving me the courage to question your shit and if someone did well thank you for killing their voice before it made a difference.

Thank you very much.

I feel much better, now, master.

"Hwy. 2, Nanton to High River"

2009-07-14T12:43:00.004-06:00

grain bin

combine

nice cloud

asshole

BEEEEEP

Beyond "Asteroids": Four upcoming videogame films

2009-07-06T10:29:00.008-06:00

The other day, I was feeling really positive about the world. Maybe it was because I'd had a nice meal and my blood-sugar had risen above its usual level of what you'd expect in a shipwreck victim stranded with nothing but a crate of saltines and a drum of instant coffee, but for a while there it seemed like everything was going to be OK. Global depression, terminal ecological collapse, solar flares, invasion of the Moon Men... these things, if they came at all, would pass and we would survive. And not only would we survive, but we deserved to survive. Humanity was a bright, beautiful species with lots of good to offer the cosmos!

And then, this from The Hollywood Reporter:

Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game "Asteroids."

Oh, right. We're that species, too. Bummer. My first thought wasn't actually a despairing mental wail over how the main stream of our culture is a shit-eating Ouroboros with its mouth grafted to its own asshole, but this: why a four-way bidding war over a "property" the title of which is a common noun and which carries with it no characters or narrative? If they wanted to film 90 minutes of CGI space rocks getting blown all to hell -- "Armageddon grossed half a billion dollars, Chief, and they had only one lousy asteroid. Imagine Armageddon times, like, a zillion!" -- they could have optioned my ninth-grade Social Studies binder for a box of Hochtaler and a set of winter tires.

My third thought, after I'd wracked my brain to come with the nearest accessible structure from which a fall would certainly kill me, was that if they're filming fucking Asteroids it's open season for videogame adaptations. The old world is dead. All rules of sense, taste and cultural necessity, however slight they may have been, are struck down. And thus:

QIX: The Movie (dir. Alex Proyas)

Tagline: "Infinite vectors. One victor."

The game: A big hit in 1981, QIX called on players to draw geometric zones on-screen while avoiding, and ultimately containing, a deadly Apple ][ screensaver.

Synopsis: In the year 2025, cyber-hacker Damien "Ghost" Gost (Chris O'Donnell) finds himself fighting for the survival of reality itself as he races against time to prevent a "techno-demon" dubbed QIX ("Quasi-Interfaced eXomorph") from corrupting and conquering the world's datashpere. Meanwhile, in the "meatspace" of the real world, the shadowy Corporation responsible for summoning QIX is closing in on Ghost's fiancee (Anna Paquin), a brilliant DARPA statistician who just might hold the key to humanity's survival.

Amidar (dir. Russel Mulchahy)

Tagline: "Who or what is Amidar?"

The game: Fill-the-zones games were a big deal in '80s arcades, and Amidar stood out by offering two bizarre alternating scenarios for its path-following gameplay. In one, players controlled an ape running from cartoon jungle cannibals; the other featured a paint roller pursued by angry pigs.

Synopsis: Unwilling to leave Fox's QIX alone to cash in on the fill-the-zones market space, Dreamworks rushed Amidar into production. Bob Balaban (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) stars as struggling poet Michael Amidar, whose life takes a turn for the weird after he discovers a strange map in the lavatory of an antiquarian bookstore. Following the path laid out in the map leads to surreal shifts of reality and identity as Amidar comes every closer to the greatest mystery of all: himself. Co-star Genvieve Bujold is unrecognizable under award-nominated prosthetics as Balaban's otherworldly porcine love interest, Squee Cochonne.

M. Night Shyamalan's Math Fun (dir. Alan Smithee)

Tagline: "Dying is easy. Math is hard."

The game: In 1980, kids played the "education card", holding up Math Fun to convince their stepdads that an Intellivision console would be something other than a mind-rotting gateway to delinquency. Basically, you had to answer arithmetic questions correctly or your gorilla got dunked in the river.

Synopsis: On the banks of a river with no name... surrounded by creatures of fantasy and nightmare... one child must race against time to decipher the equations at the heart of reality. Dexter's Preston Bailey stars. Noteworthy as the late Rutger Hauer's last credited screen appearance, in the role of the Malicious Mister Minus.

Wonder Boy (dir. Rob Cohen)

Tagline: "The Eighth Wonder of the World... is first in line for action!"

The game: Also known in its NES incarnation as Adventure Island, Wonder Boy featured a kind of kewpie-doll caveman in a grass diaper who had to throw stone axes at slow-moving animals, and sometimes jump a skateboard over campfires, in order to rescue a princess, or something.

Synopsis: Superstar rapper by day, secret agent by night, Simon "Wonder Boy" Wilson (Common) and the bicoastal crew of "hip-hoperatives" known as the Tomahawks face their greatest challenge yet when terrorist group S.N.A.I.L. threatens to foreclose on the mortgages of every orphanage in America. Features the voice of LL Cool J, who postponed an announced retirement to play the role of "Papa Choppy", Wilson's acerbic robot helicopter. Decried by Wonder Boy purists ("Wondies") as a betrayal of everything Wonder Boy stood for, this urban-action-spy-comedy nevertheless had boffo box office with the fifth-best St. Patrick's Day weekend opening of all time.

"Castle Orgies"

2009-07-04T03:18:00.005-06:00

On the walk home, after buying my ticket back to Canada, I was met with only smiles and winks. Now, as in the last moments of anything, like Joni Mitchell says, “…you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone…”, on death-bed, on prayer, I see it all. It was all me, always. Japan, you are happy being Japan. That’s cool. When, oh heart, did I become such a judge? Why do I compare? What is it that made me do it?
It was me, all along. The attitude, the hard feelings, the disposition from hell.

Japan, it was never you, baby. We all have problems, me especially.
Sweetheart, now that I am leaving you, and the sun is out and the skirts are short, I just want you to know I never meant to hurt you. I am so sorry I spoke of you poorly. I am sorry I hurt your feelings, baby. It was/is/was me; the whole time I slagged, whined, bitched about things - it was always my choice to take it the way I did.

Today, under your sun, I cried a little, on the train. I smiled at your sons and daughters, your mothers and fathers. We had fun, seeing the joy in each other’s face.
You’re a beautiful country, Japan, with beautiful people and a fantastic culture.
Please forgive this old man, he has been lost in his head, forgotten his heart.
You looked so good today, I am sorry we are breaking-up, Japan.

I know you will find another man, soon. Maybe he will be better to you than I was, it wouldn’t be hard to do.

Just so you know, when you lay your head on my chest, one last time, and I feel the sting from your sweet, true tears, I have always loved you, Japan. If I didn’t, I would have never bothered to criticize you, as I would not have cared enough to do so.

Sleep well, doll, have a good Saturday. Thank you for the best times of my life, I will remember you always, with a tender heart.

Goodnight.

-Sid Fucking Heart
xoxoxooxoxoxoxoxox

"The call to adventure signifies that destiny has summoned the hero and transferred his spritual center of gravity..."

2009-07-03T23:36:00.010-06:00

"...from within the pale of this society to a zone unknown. The fateful region of both treasure and danger may be variously represented: as a distant land, a forest, a kingdom underground, beneath the waves or above the sky, a secret island, lofty mountaintop, or profound dream state; but it is always a place of strangely fluid and polymorphous beings, unimaginable torments, superhuman deeds, and impossible delights."

"Yes, yes please", they would chirp in Japanese from doorways as we stumbled past, "Mr. Foreigner, please come and enjoy our company".
I never did.
Well, sometimes I did.
Sometimes I couldn't resist the sirens. The kimono straight and the lure of of being fawned over was too much. Those angels would light our cigarettes and pour our drinks and ask us to take them out for ramen when their shift was done.
I never did.
Well, I sometimes did.

"Ah, so, you are a school staff. English, ne?"
"Yes. English. Can I have another whiskey?"
They would shout to the bar-mama and the drink was brought over swiftly; held out for me in two soft hands and a bow.
Usually I would buy a bottle and drink it with the girls, those sweet fucking gorgeous girls.
I always went home with a broken heart.
I always did.
Well, sometimes I didn't.

At 11:00 p.m. I would catch the train into Sapporo, while it rocked and swayed and I would drink beer and chat-up local girls and meet up later in Sapporo with some other friends. Friends who knew that deal better than I could ever hope to.
Brothers.
Two of them were from Australia and one was from New Zealand.
Those boys saved me from certain death, and love, many nights and I'll never forget that. I can't repay that.

One summer night, during the Sapporo Beer Festival, where the entire centre of the city is turned into a giant fuck-off beer garden I met my boys and we got drunk and insane. One of our waitresses was an old high school student of mine.
It was at a high school in Shin Sapporo; an all girls school. I was hired on a 6 month contract to teach conversation and communication there.

Megumi. That was her name.
I remember thinking she was cute when I was teaching her but she refused to speak English.
One time in school, during our conversation class she spoke in fluid, unbroken English and she invited me to come and watch her sing jazz at a local Hilton Hotel.
She had a beautiful voice and sang Billie Holiday.
She was in a sleek black dress that night standing against the piano and was suddenly a woman and when she saw me after the show and spoke to me I know that I blushed; she knew, too.

We had her meet us later, after she had finished work.

When Megumi showed up she had a car with three other girls in it. She told us that she was taking us to Dream Beach, on the coast between Otaru and Sapporo.
Megumi said that there was a giant rave there that night and they would love our company.
"We just want to dance, Cloutier sensi."; it was a purr I swear to god it was a purr.
And we crumbled.
The seven of us, squished and drunk and heady went into adventure's lap.

Those soft, unspeaking lips.
I knew I had to kiss her. That goddamn Megumi.
That sweet Yukata.
愛しています。

We drove, passing a bottle of plum wine around, until we arrived at the beach.

The "heavies" let me and the boys in for free because were exotic, foreign.
The girls paid $50 each.
They made about $1000 a night so I didn't feel bad at all.

We danced and drank and kept going until it began to get light, there, on the coast of the Sea of Japan.

I feel asleep in a lifeguard's chair with Megumi in my arms, looking out to Russia, the world beyond. As my mind grew dim and my heart melted away into love for a night and I knew it was love then and there; but leaving was the only way.

But it was a dream, and I never did things like that.

Well, sometimes I did.

RIP Robot Michael Jackson, 23:43 6/27/09 -- 00:03 6/28/09

2009-06-29T11:32:00.006-06:00

WHOO-hoo!

That unmistakable hoot-howl, at once lilting and tormented -- I'm reminded of Werner Herzog's line on the Amazon jungle: "the birds do not sing; they shriek in pain" -- comes forth when you drop a credit into a Moonwalker cabinet. It used to be the loudest sound in the arcade, louder even than the theme music from the TRON game; you always knew when some poor sucker, his curiosity having got the better of him, was about to enter Michael Jackson's vitrual futuristic dance-battle adventure. Sometimes you'd get a savvy repeat customer, or a multiplayer group of them, who knew what a merciless quarter-sucker the game was, stocking up on continues right off the bat, as I'm doing right now:

WHOO-hoo! WHOO-hoo! WHOO-hoo! WHOO-hoo! WHOO-hoo! WHOO-hoo!

I'm not really standing in an arcade, and I'm not really feeding a week's worth of allowance into a real Moonwalker machine. This is all virtual, emulation. That's the beauty of digital media; it may exist, pristine, forever. We'll never see Nijinsky dancing with Les Ballets Russes, or John Barrymore's Hamlet, but long after the last physical Moonwalker cabinet is broken down and shipped to a Ghanian recycling centre to have the precious gold acid-leached out of its circuit boards, we'll still be able to play the game itself, on our laptops and iPhones, on any electronic device that can be coaxed or hacked into running an emulator, in perfect fidelity. As I am doing now. In memoriam.

Comix-style panels fly across the screen, setting up the scenario. An evil-grinning unsavoury type known as "MR. BIG The Boss" -- I know he's known as this because he seems to be wearing a sign to that effect -- is kidnapping children for some reason. It can't be a good reason; at best it could be a morally ambiguous reason. Perhaps MR. BIG The Boss is kidnapping children in order to save them from terrible circumstances, to give them a chance at a better life? MR. BIG The Boss might be to Child Protective Services what Batman is to the cops, a vigilante working outside the system to get the job done. Whatever, Michael Jackson's not having any of it. Besides, as MJ himself said, it doesn't matter who's wrong or right. He is going to show them how funky and strong is his fight. He is going to Just Beat It.

A little picture of the King of Pop comes on the screen -- this is 1990, and it's weird; at this point MJ's epic self-mutation is already as legendary and rubberneck-fascinating as his musical and choreographic accomplishments, but I'm looking at that picture going "Michael, you look fantastic! You can stop there!" -- and registers his displeasure in a two-frame animation. One defiant "HOOO!" later, and it is on, motherfuckers. On the streets.

Michael Jackson's not too keen on guns or knives or swords, or sword-guns, or any other videogame armaments. His weapon is Dance itself, augmented by glowing blue-white lightning bolts of pure will that he shoots out of his hands like a taser. He can also drop a funky Dance Bomb on the whole place; accidentally, fumbling around the keyboard trying to figure out the controls, this is the first move I trigger. A spotlight comes out of nowhere -- or maybe Michael has a fleet of choppers providing airborne pyrotechnic and lighting support? -- and the move is righteously busted, its power such that MR. BIG The Boss's henchmen, a weird mix of fat gangsters from the Twenties and sci-fi jumpsuit types, are compelled to helplessly dance along until it kills them.

Or does it? At the end there, Michael does this thing where he flings his hat and it flies around the screen trailing magical sparks before returning to him, boomerang-style. Maybe it's the hat that does the killing; maybe Michael borrowed the hat from Oddjob, or bought it at an auction to add to his Cabinet of Curiosities, knowing it would come in handy when MR. BIG The Boss made his play for the innocent children of Michaeljacksonville or whatever this weird city is supposed to be. Either way, I busted the righteous move too early; there were only two bad guys on the screen. A waste of precious righteousness, but at least I made an entrance, gave those henchpeople something to think about. I rescue a little girl trapped by magic rings like the ones Marlon Brando used to keep General Zod in the prisoner's box when the Kryptonian Science Council sentenced him to the Phantom Zone. She gives me a first-aid box in gratitude -- the parents and guardians of Michaeljacksonville are really into preparedness; all their kids are packing either EMS-grade trauma kits or Dance Bombs -- and runs off.

Dance, dance, dance; yaargh, yaargh, yaargh. These thugs go down pretty easy, but there sure are a lot of them. Are they really mercenaries, I wonder, or did MR. BIG The Boss just send out an open casting call and recruit every up-and-coming backup dancer in the state? A paycheck's a paycheck when you're struggling to the top, and some of these guys -- even the droids! -- display some pretty sick moves before the Dance Bomb (or maybe the hat) kills them for not being Bad enough. Hey, is that a chimpanzee in overalls and a longshoreman's jersey? It's Bubbles! Bubbles, over here! Whaddya got for me, little buddy? Maybe some more Dance Bombs, or... oh. Oh, OK. You turn Michael Jackson into a robot. I totally get it.

Michael Jackson's not too keen on guns, no. But Robot Michael Jackson? He fucking loves guns, laser guns especially. He loves laser guns so much that instead of hands he's got laser guns. Now he's just walking with his laser-gun arms outstretched like a mummy or a zombie, just lasering the living shit out of everything. BYOO-BYOO-BYOO-BYOO! It's kind of hard to aim, but who cares? Robot Michael Jackson's got lasers enough for everybody, but all the little kids trapped in those magic rings (note to self: MR. BIG The Boss a Kryptonian?? Investigate further) aren't even scared or anything. They just say a cheerful thank-you -- very polite, these Michaeljacksonian sprouts -- and hand over their first-aid kits, happy to help Robot Michael Jackson hand-laser his way to the end-level miniboss, which is a couple of Tilt-A-Whirl carriages with flamethrowers where the seats ought to be. Yeah!

Haters, step right off; Michael Jackson was fucking awesome. WHOO-hoo!

"The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil."

2009-06-29T03:27:00.003-06:00

Oh Cicero, shut the fuck up.

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”

2009-06-28T01:14:00.002-06:00

Oh God you were so beautiful that night.
I came out of the ground and I could hardly see anything.
Like Plato's cave allegory, Like Jason's Argonauts; astronauts.

I worked with a candle on my fucking head.
In methane pockets.

I am dirty but I just want to see the bluebird sing.
Hear it chirp and watch it love; nesting.

I came out and am free to watch love build life.

Touch that.

"...there's a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I'm too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody's asleep."

2009-06-27T17:50:00.005-06:00

Yes.
I am yours. Your sweet bluebird. I am yours.
Put out the seed, fasten the feeder, I am home for summer; hungry and thirsty.
Yes, I am your bluebird.

I whistled at you today but you were busy, I guess.

I pecked at your window today but you were busy, I guess.

I fucking died for you and screamed your name and cried and drank and fell and stood up again
I wept and wailed, failed and fluttered, and even waited for God, sometimes.
I kissed death and swam with monsters
but you were busy,

I guess.

I am your bluebird and the summer is so strange without you.

"It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry."

2009-06-26T02:03:00.003-06:00

Drugs. Insanity.
The battle and the victory.
MDMA, cocaine, mushrooms, exctacy, speed, mary-jane, beer, whiskey and tequila.
Eating, fighting and winning.
Thanks, kids, for the win.
In my tent I fought it alone, as usual, and won.
There was one who helped me, though.
A strange angel from the past.

She took me down through the mists and gave me socks to wear, even.
I loved her hard, but I could not be a lover for her.

You see, those trips, those tastes, those sick fucking wastes
I should be alone, I said.

Again, heart broke and face pouted.

Sorry.

But you know me, by now.
Burning through, ripping through, loving you.

I never knew you, too.
But I love you still and your Vietnam-chopper whinge.

The last one out.

Are you on it?

Toronto, September 2008, drunk lines on a balky typewriter

2009-06-19T12:20:00.003-06:00

DOWNSTAIRS

Brown is a short man;s world

Dragging a bulldog that,s don

done walking

Hot dark eyes and hot pink bo

ody

ITHINK I LIK E YOU

The body lushes lesgs blush

arms blush face blush feet bl

blush but eyes eys eyes eyes

black black

black blck

FOR 30 YERSS AND COUNT

ANDD COUNTING