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

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!

"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.

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".

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

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

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

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]

The Perpendiculars, Pt 3

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.

READ ALL>

The Perpendiculars, excerpt cont'd

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.


READ ALL>

Shifts.

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.