Oct 23rd, Hangover Breakfast Place

So much for my attempt at being a vegetarian.

Last time I was here I didn't have any bacon, but this morning I need the comfort. It's not the first time I've cheated and it won't be the last.

Yesterday's indiscretions don't seem so bad.

I mean, I warned her. I put all my crazy on the table, a straight-flush of insanity and melodrama, and it only made her more persistent.

I don't know how vegetarians can manage it, with sinful temptation everywhere they turn.

Sept 3rd

He spun aimlessly up the curving boulevard. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but knew he'd recognize it when he saw it. He did. Shading an area larger than his new apartment, its branches weaving their way to a hundred possibilities, sat a gnarled oak.
He'd never been in this park before; he’d never been in this city. And still he pointed his bars towards an old friend and nestled against its trunk. The folds of the rough bark jabbed his ribs, but he didn’t mind.

He started to write. He wrote about nothing in particular, simply watched as the ink bleed into the crisp paper. He smiled. The evening breeze rustled his hair as he peered up into the tangle of branches. His smile widened at the thought of introducing this old friend to the many new ones he’d strive to make over the coming year.
A few hundred words ticked passed. Finally, with the oak prodding him into motion, he scribbled a few final sentences and stood, leaving the last line unwritten, to be finished later…

...and he had really nice ankles too

I had the strangest dream last night. I was looking after my friend's pet polar bear. This polar bear was the most calm, friendly, dog-like polar bear ever. He really loved people. At one point in the dream we went to check out a winter parade, and somewhere in the confusion the polar bear got away from me and got lost. I ran around frantically trying to find him. Eventually, I came across a group of cops who told me they'd had to put the polar bear down, and that it was my fault because I'd let him get away. Then they tried to arrest me. I lost it, and started fighting with the cops, but eventually just broke down and began to cry.

This is when I woke up, and spent the next half an hour trying to convince myself that I was not actually responsible for a polar bear being killed.

It was a very odd dream. I'm sure a psychoanalyst would have a field day with it, but what struck me was that I've spent a lot of time this summer talking about dogs with people. I spent the summer housesitting, looking after a friend's aging black lab. Two of my other friends have new puppies. A third friend's family dog just passed away. Whenever we start talking about dogs, I always find myself bringing Jean-Guy into the discussion. Jean-Guy was a Great Pyrenees who belonged to one of my oldest friends, Keith. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Keith was largely responsible for feeding him, but in the truest respect of the word Jean-Guy belonged to us, to everyone from the community I grew up in. He was never a major player in any of the events of my childhood. Instead, in a lot of ways, he was my childhood. He was always there, in the background, like a big, white, security blanket that never forces his presence on you yet is always near. Whenever I start talking dogs with my friends, I tell of this character from my past and this image I have in my head of a giant, slobbering, hulking bear of a dog that would let a small and over-active Jesse climb all over him without muttering even the slightest protest. As the evenings of my childhood grew late and my parents, all of them, retired to half-empty glasses and old stories, I’d curl up next to this polar bear and sleep.

We’ve all got moments from our childhoods where we can, looking back, see the cracks begin to form in the rose coloured glasses. The day Jean-Guy was hit by a careless driver was the first of those moments for me. His was my first experience with death, and it hinted at the importance and fragility of life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and two final dog biscuits for the journey to Valhalla.

I have no idea why my subconscious decided to bring him up right now, but after so many years I suddenly realized how much I miss that dog, and in a way, everything about my childhood that he stood for. When my life is finally stable enough to afford me a dog, I’ll make sure he’s got a great pair of knees.

Who is he? Dusty-footed trooper home from the front? His capable shoulders imply it, but if so then Army boys are getting prettier, more well kept. The girl on his arm looks too happy to be the a soldier's girl. The confident way she trails his arm, too sure of his permanence. Tattoos of a grenade and Lady Justice glare at each other across his chest, her scales just slightly askew; his pin already pulled.
Reserves, that must be it. Hasn't been out into the world yet, still full of bombast and the promise of glory. Yes, his girl has none of that tight weariness that so marks the faces of the girls who wait at the airport, palms sweating. She's too happy, but it won't last.

Daisy Duke's Bikini, and other equally useless shit.

The store is calm. The books crowd protectively around me as the echo of my editor's hot wind beats itself to pieces on their shelves, his condescension trickling down their spines, forgotten. Tropical airs from Layo's flower shop float over the smooth expanse of sidewalk, past Kerouac's moorings and Melville's lifeboats, easing my bar-brawling mind. What a place to put to sea.

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"Dude, she's a girl version of YOU! She's perfect."

This one is. More than that she's the female version of who I used to be.
CD's...that was my thing.
Head first, all pistons firing, all options open.
Hopeless romantic.
That was my thing.
Hopeless.
What this one just said, the promise and adventure implied...that would have set my brain on fire, used to. Is that gone?
Did she, the other one, did she take it away? Did she kill it?
Stimulus-response, ring the bell enough and the dog will learn.
Roll the paper and he'll run.

Is it better to tilt knowingly at windmills than to lay down the lance all together?
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More spenders wander in, a family. Mom's 300 lb body wades past the door, riddled with chinese characters who's meanings I doubt she knows. Dad's NasCar had stays outside, threatened by my skinny jeans. I can feel the sights of her 12yr old's M16 on me. The hat tree provides perfect cover as he pats the pockets of his flak jacket, searching for spare grenades. Finding none, he charges out, gun a-blazing.
"Ma-a-a-a-a-aam, I want some ice cream!"
"Where's the candy store." It's an accusation, her words tearing into the air around me.
I cast about nervously before answering, but Elvis stares just stares back from within cellophane prison. The radio tells me Daisy Duke's bikini's on top. Of what? I'm unsure.
"Down the street on the left. Have a nice day."
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Life's fucking complicated. Spend time worrying about shit. Shit sorts itself out. Invent more shit and continue to worry. Worry about the right shit, the wrong shit? Worry about how to get her, how to catch her eye. Get her. Worry about what that means, why she's not what Santa Monica Blvd promised. She's better, more real, has a taste for good music. Worry about that, she's too perfect, this is too easy. Is it? Isn't this what you've always wanted?
Zach Braff tells you it is.
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Michael Buble is a tool. That is all.
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Part Four

Motion; he was being dragged. His head bounced over the clumps of grass in the ditch. The vehicle lay on its side lay on its side, smashed. He opened his eyes and light stabbed them. The smoke from the wreck was strong in his nostrils. He tried to shake himself free, but his captor was strong, firm.
“Sssshh”, they whispered urgently. Whoever it was said more, but the meaning of the words was lost on him. He struggled again, and they stopped briefly. A face appeared before him. Friendly, confident eyes met his as a finger waved in his face and then towards the wreckage. They eyes, set in the dark face, seemed so sure. His own eyes rolled drunkenly as he looked around, trying to get his bearings. He took in this person, noted the strong, weathered hands and strange dark clothing that ruffled and luffed in the wind. His gaze settled again on the eyes, wise and nurturing, flanked by crows feet and laugh lines. Recognition a moment of recognition flashed across both their faces, and exhaustion and pain washed over him again.

He awoke to the smell of antiseptic, blinking in the emergency room’s fluorescent glare. Cheap pop music drifted to him from the hospital lobby .He winced, feeling the sand in his eyes. Indeed, it was everywhere, in his teeth, and mixed with the blood that now congealed in his hair. He tried to sit up, but a nurse pushed him back down, muttering something under her breath as she hacked at his pants with a pair of surgical scissors. Again he tried to rise, and again she pushed him back down, this time more firmly, saying “Wait, the doctor still needs to check you out.” She went back to cutting, exposing the ugly fracture in his leg. His head was throbbing, his eyes unfocused when the doctor entered the room.
“How’d I get here?” he asked.
The doctor simply pointed towards the waiting room. A TV hung on the wall near the door. Outside, an elderly Aboriginal man was being pushed into a police cruiser, his dark clothing flying like a flag of resistance in the prairie wind. The TV flashed images of a bombed out Afghan village burning in the setting desert sun. A black burka fluttered across the screen, blown by the hot desert wind.

Part Three

Willie Nelson claimed his hero’s had always been cowboys, as the boy sat staring at his plate. His eggs were cold. His orange juice tasted like it had been watered down. He chased the few remaining bits of bacon around his plate with his fork, disinterested. He looked at his father, his eyes questioning. His father met the boy’s eyes briefly for a moment before turning to the waitress to ask for more coffee.
“Y’all done here, honey?” she asked, smiling. The boy just shrugged.
“I’ll just box it up for you then, dear” she said and turned away, her ponytail bouncing.
“What’s the matter?” asked his father as he gathered his jacket and hat. The boy struggled for words, unsure. His father just motored on.
“Come on, lets get that feed back to the cows. I’m sure you ma’s gettin’ worried.” They stood to leave. As they cleared the diner door, the boy glanced around quickly, but the old man was gone. The boy was ashamed to feel relief. He was stepping down off the curb, following his father, when he heard laughter drift across the dusty street.
“Better get that kid back to the ranch, ‘else he’s gonna forget what a hard day’s work feels like.”
His father said nothing, but his face spoke volumes as he hauled himself into the pick-up’s cab. The boy climbed in beside him and they were off. As they rolled out of town the boy looked at his father and drew a breath to speak. Before he could, his father punched a tape into the deck and turned up the volume, Hank Williams making conversation impossible. The boy sighed and settled his head against the window to sleep.

The scream of the old Ford’s bad breaks jolted him awake in time to see the herd of elk scatter ahead of them. He felt the hit first, and then watched as a huge animal bounced over the hood, filling his vision and shattering the glass. The truck lurched to the left, his father frantically trying to regain control. The elk, well dead and spewing its greenish stomach contents everywhere, slid off to the right. His father wrenched the wheel hard, too hard, and the truck bucked back across the road. The tires bit into the gravel shoulder and everything slowed. In an instant of clarity the boy saw the torn flesh clinging to the remnants of the windshield, smelt the mix of shit and his father’s acrid breath as the vehicle heeled over like a wind-tossed ship. Sunlight refracted off the broken glass in the boy’s lap as the old Ford hung for a moment before collapsing into the ditch. Stars enveloped him briefly, and then the boy’s world went black.

He felt it before he saw it, like the full body punch of the baseline at a metal concert, crushing the air from his lungs. The shockwave knocked his helmet and coms off his head, the hot wind tearing at his face. The LAV screeched to a halt just inches short of the leading transport, now nothing but a fiery heap of tangled steel and bodies. Frantically, he wrenched back the hammer of his machine gun, trying to center it on his designated arc. He looked around wildly. At first, nothing, everything was still. He could see bits of offal littering the road, smelt the acrid smoke left by the burnt cordite of the IED. The first bullet passed near to his right, the wind of its passage slapping his cheek.
“Contact Right!” he shouted, at first not realizing that his headset was gone.
“What?” yelled his sergeant from below.
“CONTACT RIGHT!” he bent and bellowed directly into the cab before he opened fire. More bullets sang past his ears, others clanging into the LAV’s armored sides. He answered in anger and in fright, spraying fire all over his arc, still unsure of the enemy’s position. Shots materialized out of the billowing black. Somewhere in the smoke and sand someone was trying to kill him, and he worked his weapon madly. He watched as his bullets struck up showers of desert gravel and tore threw the low shrubs searching for a target. Suddenly his fire ripped a trough directly beneath him as the LAV bucked and lurched under his feet. His sergeant gunned the engine and roared across the road, away from their assailants. The others in the vehicle were firing from their seats, blindly. A sickening, wet smack announced the arrival of a new threat on the left, as the squad’s navigator slumped in his seat. He whirled his turret to face this new foe, and his heart stopped. Nestled in a depression not one hundred yards distant were three men, one shouldering an ugly black tube. An RPG crew. As he realized this he panicked. His vision narrowed to follow the stream of 7.62mm rounds picking their way across the dunes towards the crew. Too slow. He watched, helpless, as a flash hid the crew from view. He had no time to shout a warning. He wished he still had his helmet.

Don't Tell Mom I Work In The Plants

The pike stared balefully at me. Through dying eyes he accused me of his inglorious demise, choking on mud and chemicals. I grunted, seized him ‘round the middle and with one deft whack I ended his life on the concrete wall of the pump house intake tank.
That was me for 10 days in June, waist deep in river silt and dying fish at the bottom of a 65 foot crypt, clinging to the business end a 10 000 psi suction hose.
“Fuck, we’re basically giving this entire plant the world’s biggest enema!” I shouted over the roar of the hose to Matt, who just shook his head and pointed to his ears.
The DMI Peace River Pulp plant does a shut down for 10 days every spring, and this year I was one of the hundreds of extra worker bees hired to clean out the hive. It was my first experience with heavy industry, and having heard all the horror stories and read all the books, I was pretty excited to see it for myself. A friend set it up, amid promises of hard work and good pay. I needed good pay. After all, I have a number of expensive habits to feed. 10 days of 12-hour shifts, with only time to feed both the crock-pot in the morning and thus ourselves at night. And of course, to tend to the blisters…mustn’t forget the blisters. Apparently we were supposed to report every little scratch and boo-boo to Safety- Loss (ironic given some other glaring breaches in safety protocol… but I’m getting to those), but I’d be damned if was going to complain of sore feet in the midst of these hardened guys. And hardened they certainly are, though whether by a lifetime of toil or the booze that come with it it’s hard to tell. Never shy to speak their minds, these guys and girls exemplify the ‘work hard and party harder’ lifestyle. After 10 days of bad coffee and a cramped lunch room it will take me a while to decompress and regain at least parts of my internal censor.
Tina was my tank-watch. Twice a mother, she has the wiry, gray-shot hair and cantankerous demeanor of a badger. Her rough-hewn hands have claws to match. As quick to laugh as she is to anger, she entertained us with tales of a lifetime on rigs and plant floors, spewing mouthfuls of smoke and expletives around broken teeth. She’d seen it all, or rather she’d almost seen it all, until her second day with my crew. Until then, she’d never seen a greenhorned kid come so close to losing a hand (something that would make it rather difficult to type for a living). Remember that old YTV show, Freaky Stories, I think it was called? “This is a true story, it happened to a friend of a friend of mine”? We dubbed the vac hose Maurice, after one of the show’s hosts, a sightless worm, to whom it bore an uncanny resemblance. Our Maurice had a voracious appetite. Sticks, mud, boots, rocks…just about any detritus that happened to find itself in the path of his 4-inch maw was immediately ingested with a profound indifference and a slight shrug. We were supposed to be using Maurice to suck up the three or four feet of silt at the bottom of the forebay. Trouble was, the reason for the forebay cleaning was to allow a welding crew to get in and fix a leaking floodgate. This floodgate is the only thing that stands between anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in the forebay and the whole of the Peace River, and it was leaking at around 100 liters a minute. Maurice, even with his awesome gulping power, could only do about 105 liters a minute. So there we were, waist deep the river’s effluence with our feet firmly cemented to the floor by what amounted to quick sand, fighting what seemed like a losing battle with a very big river. Now, Maurice was doing his best, but he was not what you’d call co-operative and he kept trying to eat things that he couldn’t swallow, like two foot dying pike and lost radios (which were useless in the concrete hole anyway). I was having an argument with Maurice about a particularly large branch when a rush of water pushed me off balance, and he decided to sample fleshier fare instead…my left hand.
I’ve known for a while that I’ve got a fairly loud voice. I can be pretty well heard when I need to be. It’s a good thing to, because at that moment I needed to be heard over 110 decibels of howling suction hose at the bottom of 65 feet of echoing concrete walls. I found out later that Tina had jumped so much when I started screaming for her to kill the vacuum hose that she fell our of her chair and tripped over Maurice in her rush to tell the vac truck operator to shut it down. By the time she convinced Maurice to go on a diet he had already ingested my safety glove and was working on my skin. He gave it up just as that scene from Star Wars where Hans is toying with Luke’s new robotic arm began flashing through my mind.
If Matt hadn’t been down there with me, I likely wouldn’t have been able to keep my entire arm from ending up inside the hose. If that had happened it would have been off to the emergency room for sure, and probably the end of my guitar playing, typing, bike riding, or anything else that requires more than five digits. As it was, our combined strength was just enough to keep my hand out of Maurice’s esophagus for the two minutes that it took to kill the suction. As close a call as I’ve ever had, that’s for sure.
For all her jagged edges, Tina was wonderfully concerned for me, and my continuing dexterity…more so than anyone of the safety staff, who all seemed more concerned with the flesh on their behinds than what was very nearly torn off my hand. The whole debacle exposed not only some major breaches in protocol with regard to Maurice, but with just about every aspect of the job itself. Later we joked that we should have filed two incident reports…one for Maurice’s appetite, and a second for the chair tipping and tangled hoses, among other things. As it turns out, messy ropes would be the least of our paper work concerns. By the end of two days of digging, we’d uncovered site hazard assessments that were six years outdated, lots of the ‘if I don’t see it I’m not to blame’ game and proof positive that when it comes to the bottom line, a few hundred dollars is worth more than workers safety to the hire-ups. Eveready, the company that owned the vacuum truck, had refused the job I was doing because DMI wouldn’t spend the few hundred dollars a day to rent a proper safety tripod and rig to extract workers in case of an emergency, say if that already broken floodgate had failed completely. No one really knew what was making it leak, or keeping it from leaking faster, and if my pike’s buddies had decided to pay us an unexpected visit we’d have drowned to death about half way up 65 feet of slimy, caged in ladders. As well as refusing to rent the safety rig, DMI had us (the hired help) in the hole running equipment for which we had no training or real understanding. Eveready’s policy states that only their employees are allowed to use their equipment, but when push came to shove and the boss wasn’t around, that didn’t seem to matter. After Maurice tried to eat my hand, all the companies’ safety folks sprang into investigative action, and commenced the single biggest jurisdictional cluster fuck I’ve ever seen. To their credit, Eveready and Bison (my company) were the most concerned with figuring out how to prevent something like this from happening again, even though they were both absolved of any wrong doing.
As I sat in the break room, surrounded by a mounting pile of papers and nervous officials, I was thankful for two things. First, that the people I was working with directly had been on the ball enough to keep all my fingers attached, and second, for the illegibility of the notes I was taking in my chicken scratch. I couldn’t help but wonder whether their knowledge of my journalistic tendencies had anything to do with all the hand wringing and finger pointing. After all, nothing bad actually happened; it only almost did. If I was just another grunt, would they have been so concerned, or was all this apparent contrition for the benefit of anything I might write about the incident (like this blog, for instance). With the exception of my fellow laborers, everyone was playing enough pass-the-buck to rival a parliamentary question period. As Paul Carter says in his book Don’t Tell Mom I Work On The Rigs, “everyone seemed more concerned with the legal implications of opening their mouths than solving the problem”
I guess that’s the nature of an industry that employs hundreds, and yet answers to only the a few shareholders. The hire-ups want results, and they push their managers, who in turn push their foremen, who in turn push the area operators, and so on down the line to the temporary grunts like me. With so much vertical pressure, it’s no wonder that you often do end up getting blood from stone. But still, I can’t help but wonder when I’ll be back. Matt’s will be back for sure, and Tina does shutdowns and site medicals for a living, traveling wherever the work takes her. I’m already looking forward to trading stories of toxic ponds for those of frantic deadlines and media scrums this time next year amid the ordered chaos of a lunchroom jammed with former strangers. That’s the flip side of all the bullshit and pay-grade tectonics…the pressure is enough to bond even the most unlikely of people in a surprising way.

A Rant

http://www.colbycosh.com/

what is wrong with you? Bill O'Reily wasn't your prof in school was he? oh, wait...you did go to school, right?

I was in the midst of writing a paper on Aboriginal self-determination and sentencing circles when i came across your article about Christopher Pauchay from 2008. you've ruined my day... there's just about no way to salvage my good mood short of slashing the tires on my neighbor's hummer. I've read a lot of your work, and it's all the same kind of egocentric, misinformed neo-con bullshit that i can't stand. Really, you'd do a pretty good job as Harper's publicist, but this was too much. You totally misunderstood the idea of a sentencing circle, you didn't bother to get any quotes yourself or do any research, and you blithely ignored even a passing reference to the cultural dissonance that is the cause of so much conflict between Aboriginal Canadians and the justice system. I had it. so, i popped over to your blog to pass along my thoughts, and what do i find? a perfect example of the knuckle-dragging, inane youtubery-as-entertainment that typifies you're species.

figures. you know, if you'd like to laugh at some Afghan mine victim struggling to cross the street while Canadian soldiers taunt his hijab-wearing mother, i'm sure McKay could send you the video link.

it makes me sick that i aspire to the same profession as you claim to represent.

Part Two

The wailing hazzan woke him, mingling weirdly with the rock music that played through his headset. He cringed that it had no remorse for the hour. His sergeant glared up at him through the roof hatch as he shoved the stick into reverse and awkwardly maneuvered the LAV up beside the hulking transport.
He shook himself awake and looked around at the familiar surroundings. The mosque, its pockmarked walls and broken spire leaning dangerously; the burned-out school with its tattered flag shivering pathetically in the early morning breeze. He wished desperately to jump down from the turret and stretch his cramped legs. Instead he scanned the townsfolk, watching them warily as they began their morning prayers. Rituals completed, people milled around, nodded As-Salāmu `Alaykum, drank tea, smiled. A few waved, though whether to him or to the blue-bereted UN crew of the aid transport he was unsure. He waved back anyway.
With a crash, the hatch of the transport was let down, spilling it’s cargo of seed and flour sacks into the sandy street. People began to gather, first in ones and twos, then by the dozens, as word of the aid delivery spread. He watched as the crowd grew, as it became frantic, as it became a mob. The aid workers spread out with batons, their blue caps stained pink by the morning light filtering through a rising cloud of haze stamped up by hungry feet. He coughed and spit, feeling the grit between his teeth.
He glanced around again, scanning the mob nervously, eyeing hands and watching for a weapon. A group of women had gathered across the street. They too looked around nervously. Two young men succeeded in wresting a sac of grain from the throng, and raised it joyously over their heads as they escaped with their prize, only to trip, dropping it heavily in the street. The yellowed contents spilled forth like so much offal. The women ran forward, their burka’s billowing. They threw themselves on the spilled grain, at first ignoring even the curses and threats of the young men. They could not, however, ignore the boots.
He watched in shock as the mob suddenly came about face. He watched as the mob armed themselves with stones, as the first of those stones arced through the air. Without his sergeant’s command, he jerked back the heavy bolt of his gun and let a shattering series blast into the clouded air.
“Jesus Corporal, this ain’t our goddamn fight!” his sergeant’s voice splintered the final notes of The Banger’s Embrace into a mess of static.
“But Sarge, those women…”
“We ain’t fuckin’ authorized!” his sergeant bellowed, then instantly calmed his voice. “Command, package delivered. We’re Oscar-Mike. Let’s go boys.”
Furious, he pounded the roof of the LAV with his gloved knuckles. He caught a glimpse of an aid worker who threw his hands up in disgust as the rest scurried into the back of the transport. His sergeant slammed the LAV into gear and the convoy lurched forward, leaving the shrieks to rise above the cloud of dust churned up by their spinning tires.

As promised...

Drag The Waters echoed inside his head, Dimebag’s distortion-leaden riffs made tiny and weak by his headset speakers as he dozed in the turret behind his 7.62mm SAW machine gun.
“Wake the fuck up Corporal! There's no sleeping on my watch.” his driver’s voice crackled over the thumping bass line.
“Aw, shove it Sarge,” he drawled comically into his mic, applying his southern Albertan accent liberally. “There’s nuthin’ out here anyway.” He faded back into half-sleep, to the accompaniment of shrieking vocals as the LAV rumbled across the Afghan desert, leaving a cloud of heavy metal swirling amongst the dust plume in it’s wake.

The twang of Folsom Prison Blues' opening line caused him to stir from his gentle slumber, lulled as he’d been by the truck’s motion as it rolled lazily into town.
“I said wake up, Mark, we’re here.” Dust whirled and brakes complained loudly as his father rolled to a stop outside the feedlot. He shook himself awake and looked around at the familiar surroundings. Cecil’s tavern, with it’s swinging door hanging crookedly; the Co-Op with its florescent sign flickering feebly in the early morning light. He opened the door and swung his boots to the ground, pins and needles shooting up his cramped legs.
His father shoved the stick into reverse and expertly maneuvered the old pickup under the feed hopper. The boy hopped into the bed and, at his father’s command, jerked the heavy handle of the hopper’s mouth, letting the yellowed meal burst forth.
It took ten minutes to fill the truck’s bed. He stood watching the townsfolk begin their morning. People milled, said hello, drank coffee, smiled. A few waved in his direction, though whether to him or his father he was unsure. He waved back anyway. When the truck was full, he rapped the roof of the cap with his gloved knuckles and hopped to the ground. His father pulled the truck ahead, parked, and said “Let’s get some breakfast,” before striding purposefully towards the diner. The boy ran to catch up, his child’s legs too short to match his father’s gait.
As they reached the door, a stooped figure shuffled shyly around the corner. His dark skin matched his dark and dirty clothes. His weathered hands reached imploringly. The boy stopped and tugged at his father’s sleeve. His father turned around and, without a word, tapped the faded sign beside the diner door.
“No Indians.”
He pulled the boy inside, the door slamming shut behind them.

Co-Writing

I've got an idea. I'm going to post bits and pieces of a short story that I'm writing for a contest (a short story contest, believe it or not). Then you five (you know who you are...the ones who actually read my self-indulgent rants) can leave your comments about each part as I write it. You also get to play a game here too...try to guess where in the hell this story is leading. Hopefully by, oh I dunno...maybe the end of next week, it will be done in rough and you can then lambaste me with criticisms of the entire piece.

Think of it as a community writing exercise...mostly because I'm bored.

First few paragraphs will be up shortly, but first, I need more coffee.

Hey Nancy,
You left us on March 29th, 2010, off on the next leg of your great adventure. You came laughing into this world on June 30th, 1954, and forever changed it for the better. Constantly exploring, whether by paddle, foot or pedal, you never stopped. This will be too short to capture the true breadth and meaning of your life. The craftswoman and potter, the barista extraordinaire… you made everything from dog food to curtains, a true do-it-yourself spirit. As a cryptic crossword queen, truly uncanny you were. You were the consummate film buff and the lifeblood of local theatre. With no children of your own, your greatest achievement was as a second mother, sister, aunt, teacher, confidante and friend to so many kids in so many places. Even at the end, you made sure to take care of all of us.
From the get-go, you set out to live your own life, and in the process affected so many others. From Simcoe, Goose Bay, the Bend and Pancake Bay, to the little schoolhouse or the Caravan Farm Theatre, and a thousand places in between, the echo of yours, always the loudest of laughs, will remain with us forever.

Rapid Decompression

It's fairly odd, seeing something you took for granted from the outside. Being at home, in my office/ bedroom working on punk rock essays and sorting out my life while all my friends are in Whitehorse doing what i've done for years takes some getting used to. i can't help but find myself questioning the validity of something i only recently held sacred, but that in itself feels like a betrayal. i'd like to say that self doubt ceased when i left behind what it was i was doubting, but that would be a lie. it never goes away and, as paralyzing as it can sometimes be, i don't think i'd want it to. it was always there when i was racing, i was just afraid to give voice to it. now that i have it's forcing me to explore exactly who i am and what i want to do....something i've been putting off for 5 years.

what's more odd is that everywhere i look i see parodies of my life; the more accomplished ski racer/ writer who quotes Kerouac, the roving journalist who stands up for her captors human rights, hell even the super-spy who works in a department store seems to be a reflection of the places my life could go (minus the gun slinging and helicopters). it's scary having things so wide open, it's like my underbelly is exposed.



White Crosses....hmm. Funny how i'm personally offended that Tom Gabel went in a new direction given that i'm about to do the same. maybe i should give the disc a few more spins, and get over my anxiety of change. all this is coming so fast, this rapid decompression from my old life.

In which we encounter our true selves...

"We bring a better way, a handshake crushing bone."

It's funny, the raging patriotism of the past few weeks making headlines across the country and the world...and now this. Euphoria doled out in perfect accord to the prescription, and then snap back to the real world. Canada was on display as the perfect, shining example of fairness, respect and equality; we were the embodiment of the Olympic spirit. Well, some of us, anyway. Turns out that some of Canadians are simply more fair, more respected and more equal than others.

Did anyone notice how even our inclusion of First Nations into the Games was more a parade of pets than a celebration of our family? "sure, you can be part of the opening ceremonies, but we'll tell you how to dress, how to act." For all the armchair O'Riley's who decried the Games, even they failed to pick up on our collective paternalism. The Indian Act? Even the name is disgusting, and reflective of how backward and repressive we still are. We saw how we're willing to treat those with something to offer us. Look at how we still treat those we've taken everything from.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/10/native-status.html

Canmore World Cups

Wow…race day nerves…and I’m not even racing. Maybe that’s how you know you’ve outgrown something, when you no longer get nervous about it; when you don’t get butterflies on the start line, when she walks in the room. If that’s true, then I know two things. First, I know that I’m still very much in love with her. When she knocks on my door, even though I'm expecting her I still get a little twinge of excitement. Second, I know that, for the moment at least, I’ve outgrown skiing. When I look at my skis, I don’t get excited; when I smell wax remover I only get light-headed.

As for this writing thing? Well, it’s after midnight and I’m sitting at my desk, mind on overdrive, writing something no one is likely to read unless I get the nerve to post it in the morning. I’m nervous about writing tomorrow and so I’m writing tonight. It’s always been a nervous habit of mine, writing. How many pre-race plans did I scribble over the years, how many letters to Sara that I never got the nerve to send? This growing up business is tough, and at 23 I’m only just getting started.

Tomorrow will be good. Once the clock starts, and I’m committed there won’t be time for all this thinking, just acting. Hmm, did that last line come from a ski racer or a writer? Maybe both? We’ll find out eventually.

February 6th, 2010

It feels weird, this much free time on my hands. Wandering the halls and spinning the streets around this school where I could very well find myself next year is an odd experience…hell, even scribbling by hand with a pencil just to kill time is odd, something I almost never do any more. Still, after my impromptu meeting with Gene (full title already forgotten), I’m pretty encouraged. I think I’ll like it here.

Linnaea’s class is nearly over, and so consequently, is my anonymous wandering. That’s a little too bad, it feels like I’m giving up a very short-lived life as a spy, or some other mysterious persona. No one knows me here; my skiing past seems all the more humble for it. Riding around the campus grounds aimlessly, weaving in and around the crowds of students, I realize the glaringly inconsequential nature of our lives. Here, in this huge city, no one really matters. And yet, we each matter all the more because of that. My life is open ended as far as these people are concerned; my story could be anything I chose. I got hit by that truck I just so narrowly avoided, people would be in shock, at least until their phones buzzed and summoned them back to their lives. That makes my friends and family seem so much more important to me. What truly matters in this life is not the reaction of strangers to your presence, but that of your friends. How hollow that must feel who can fill a stadium with strangers, yet not his living room with friends. Will these presently nameless people one day soon fill my living room? I don’t know, but I do know it won’t be at the cost of those already there.

January 10th, 2010

Empty condos, vacant save for a pathetic collection of tetra-packs and other recyclables: our meager attempt at saving the world. Empty hotel rooms bother me. All that went on, all the good times and remember-whens are exposed by the rumpled sheets and hastily collected garbage; shown to be as fleeting and insubstantial as the race results that bred them. A series of last checks, once-overs to make sure nothing that doesn’t matter is left behind, for all that matters is. What defines a racing trip? All that happens in the condos and hotel rooms, jokes and laughs, the shared stress and pressure. People don’t reminisce about the time you took that left-hand corner perfectly, or the time you won. They remember seeing you in your boxers, laughing as you tried to force the lock on your own bedroom door, your best friend holding the latch on the other side. Are those things cheapened when denied the filtered lens of the contest? Are simple things made better, sweeter, by the fact that we pay it no outward attention, claiming in all honesty that we are here for the race and nothing more? The echo of laughter, the unmade beds and hasty departure reveal our true intentions: to better know each other. If you take away the people, a race loses it’s meaning, and isn’t meaning what we’re all after anyway?

January 8th, 2010

Is it possible to live entirely without regret? To “live each day to the fullest”, as we are so oft told to do? If each day is full, how do we find time for ourselves? Within this madcap world, the challenge seems to be more of finding that rare unfilled day to do with what you will. “Spend your youth on poetry, and spend your cash at play”…perhaps this is where the answer lies? That seems so frivolous, and yet we never have time for frivolity, we spend too much of it worrying about being happy. Worrying about being happy? What a useless thing, to spend energy fretting about fun, to be so obsessed with that ultimate pleasure that in the end we deny ourselves the very thing which we so dearly covet. Am I happy enough? Is my life fulfilling enough? Who the fuck cares? What’s the point of living without regret if we can’t even figure out if we do or don’t regret life at all? Am I wasting my time pursuing a sport with which my relationship has become increasingly complicated? I wonder if Dan has any regrets. 15 years spend having fun, but was it enough fun, was it worth the sacrifice? Was it actually a sacrifice at all? If the best-spent youth is the one you throw away, how do you justify the loss? Nihilism may be full of righteous exuberance, but it won’t protect you from the cold, comfort you when you realize you’ve got nothing. Then again, neither will a fast 10k time.

Paint-By-Numbers Social Commentary

Why is Avatar so goddamn popular? It’s set to break every box office record in the book, and no one seems to notice that it’s a gigantic pile of intellectual porn? How is it that a movie with such terrible screen writing, acting, thematic development; indeed a movie that by every cinematic yardstick is an utter failure, is making so much money?
Because it’s Twilight adapted for the big screen (Robert Pattison aside)…it’s trash entertainment masquerading as profound social commentary.
If you look at all trash entertainment, from the ‘penny dreadfuls’ of George Orwell’s day, to the plotline of every first person shooter video game, to James Cameron’s latest offering, you can see the formula emerging. All these forms gain success by doing a few things extremely well.
First, they’re custom tailored to succeed because they are geared to provide something that is always in demand. In a society where the concept of work has been so discredited, where people want to spend their “free time” in ways as dissimilar as possible to “work”, enjoyment has come to be seen as whatever pastime requires as little effort and as much distraction as possible. Enter the paperback crime novel/ video game/ cheesy action movie… ‘Come one, come all, BE Entertained!’
Second, and most troubling, these types of entertainment are incredibly adept at reaffirming for the reader things that they already know and wish to have proven again. For example, the detective novel is an incredibly easy thing to write. Start with a Hero, come up with a clever way for the Hero to solve a crime, invent a criminal to commit said crime, and then fill the rest with a few hundred pages of insubstantial and ultimately ‘excludable’ filler. The specifics of the twists and turns don’t really matter, so long as you eventually end up at your oh so clever solution. Most common is for the Hero to be on his way to solving the crime, get sidetracked by an unforeseeable complication/ dastardly trick (substitute whichever one you feel like), and then fall back on his integrity, gut instincts and general bad-assery to pull out the squeaker victory at the end. What this does for the reader is reaffirm a number of things. Firstly, it make for an easy read, which is comforting to people who want to simply “forget the world” for a few hours. It also supports the popular myth that ‘the good guy always wins’, whether the bad guy is a Nazi, Russian KGB agent, or some evil Megacorp. Fairly simple critique, right? Ok, lets move on to something fleshier.
This simple schematization also provides the fastest and easiest way to manufacture automatic, immediate meaning. Authors, screen writers, producers of trash entertainment exploit and promote the audiences imaginative laziness (i.e. refusal to “work” during free time) by simply plugging in which every pre-fabricated stereotype they feel meets their objective. This doesn’t just relate to characters or plot either. It is most common, and most damaging, when in relation to the generation of psudo-social commentary. Twilight obviously doesn’t constitute high calibre literature, but it’s also largely harmless…it’s not trying to say something profound or meaningful, it’s just entertainment. Something as pretentious as Avatar on the other hand, is more menacing. To look break down Avatar more carefully, let’s contrast it with another socially aware film, Green Street Hooligans.
GSH follows the story of a young journalism student, Matt, (go ahead, draw all the conclusions you like) who is expelled from Harvard when his roommate’s drugs are found in his closet. His roommate, the son of an unnamed powerful political figure cuts a deal with Matt, in exchange for his silence. Matt then takes off to London, England, where he falls in with a group of soccer hooligans and becomes part of their ‘firm’. The subculture he immerses himself in is incredibly violent, leaning on old ideals of pride, honour and glory. At first Matt comes to love this untapped vent for his anger and frustration, and, in the process, learns to stand up for himself. All that is shattered though, when one battle with a rival firm ends with the death of his close friend and firm leader Pete. GSH has a glaring, unapologetic moral message, as, it appears, does Avatar. So what is it that makes Avatar’s social commentary so dangerous and GSH’s so meaningful?
Avatar begins, as any good movie does, with a hook. In this case the hook is the environment of the movie itself. A visually very beautiful utopia of plants, with vibrant colours and animals, all presented in 3D serves to stun the audience, in this case forcing them to immediately relinquish all powers of questioning and reasoning, as they are immersed in the world we all wish could be. With the audience sufficiently sedated by their awe of the visual effects (see the numerous news reports of viewers feeling serious depression and ‘Pandora-withdrawal’ upon leaving the theatre), the producers are free to develop whatever narrative they want, which will be gladly accepted by the audience. The narrative in this case is a hodgepodge of well-established stereotypes, from the scared, leather-lunged bravado of the Colonel, to the snivelling selfishness of the Corporate Boss, to the hardened yet secretly sensitive Marine. Even the social comments that figure so heavily in the movie are anything but original: human greed, human bigotry, the dangers of militarism and imperialism, all have been hashed and rehashed many times before. ‘So? What’s wrong with that?’ you ask? Just as we should not believe these morals to be ground shaking or new, neither should we imagine that the conflicts motoring this narrative entail a real questioning or evaluation of such ideologies. There is no actual debate over these well known issues, they are simply used as pawns, introduced merely to be smoothed away, and so in fact validated. By giving the slightest of nods to the accepted issues of the day, and then blasting them away with the heart-warming victory of good over evil (as if we expected any less), Cameron is actually validating these social problems by virtue of his dismissal of them. He is saying that we don’t need to fret out little heads over the destruction of the environment, or the increasing militarism of our society, or corporate greed because ‘good always wins the day’…someone will always solve the problem for us.
This stands in stark contrast to a film like GSH. In that narrative, characters that are at first intentionally presented as having the depth of a pancake are in the end revealed to be much more complex. The seeming villain of the movie, who ends up killing Pete, reveals in that act the pathetic, broken and helpless person he has become thanks to his addiction to violence and power. Bovver, who the audience first sees as nothing but a whining self-preservationist is revealed as one of Pete’s most loyal friends, again through his actions. What is most moving about GSH however is that it is in no way a feel good movie. That shouldn’t be surprising. After all, how do you expect to provide a meaningful critique of societie’s negative aspects while still making the audience feel all warm and fuzzy? Instead, GSH leaves the audience looking inward at themselves and asking questions about their own feelings of self-righteousness, anger, and self-worth.
Some might say that Avatar is just pulp entertainment, and that to critique it as anything more is a waste of time and breath. The problem with that argument is that even pulp is less uppity, less pretentious than either Cameron or his movie. Pulp readily acknowledges its pulp-ness, and celebrates it. Take the example of Brad Pitt in Snatch, or the characters in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. There’s no social commentary there, nor is anyone pretending there is. Obviously, not all movies must be a browbeating lesson in morality. If that’s what Cameron was going for though, perhaps he should have spent 8 or 9 of the last 10 years learning how to write characters and plots with more depth than cardboard cut outs, and less time fretting over how many legs the Pandoran animals should have.

Ideological Profile of a Neo-Con

http://communities.canada.com/calgaryherald/blogs/corbellareport/archive/2010/01/08/the-games-security-plays-are-mostly-just-for-show.aspx

Wow…and to think that I still want to be a journalist myself. I guess it is a little comforting to know that at the worst, my career could end with me doing poorly written, negligently researched, blatantly biased op ed pieces for some cheap right wing rag. You, Licia, seem to have that part of the job description well in hand.

I’m sorry; perhaps I’m overstepping my boundaries as a 20-something student. After all, aren’t we ‘Youths’ supposed to be (according to your tightly indoctrinated world view) rebellious kids with no grip on reality, bent on saving the world at the cost of all else? I mean, that’s what stereotypes are for, right, filing people into neat little categories like ‘naive student’, ‘jaded reporter’ or ‘Muslim terrorist’?

I thought your article The Games Security Plays Are Mostly Just For Show was a perfect example of right-wing propaganda. Maybe that’s what you were going for. After all, you’ve titled your columns The Corbella Report, a name which conjures clichéd images of soaring eagles, jumpsuit-clad Mexicans and Bill O’Riely’s self-righteous countenance. I’m sure Steven and the rest of Comedy Central appreciates your efforts.

But all hilarity aside, I feel I should point out some of the glaring hypocrisies and other weak links in your arguments. I did like how you attempted to disarm us on the ‘loonie left’ by so cleverly pointing out “We all know that every person born in a particular country is not a terrorist”. That was a real gem. ‘See! I am understanding of the complexities of clashing cultures, I am tolerant of other ethnicities…that cute little sentence proves it!’ The fact that you then go on to imply quite the opposite is something we’re just supposed to ignore? I am also a big fan of the first three paragraphs of your piece. You seem to be doing two things at once: demonstrating your outstanding cleverness, and proving that a technique which is so easily and successfully used by you, a familiar ‘one of us travelers’ must be sufficient for use as an airport security measure. Surely, if an untrained layperson like yourself can use ethnic profiling, it must be fool-proof! Even police departments do it! Tell me, how many murder cases have the Calgary Police been able to close, simply by stopping every African-Canadian man with wearing a bandana on the highway?

This leads me to my main critique of your arguments. You claim to be supporting profiling, but argue that ethnic profiling is in reality a shabby attempt at ‘ideological profiling’. Ha! ‘Careful what you believe, the Thought Police will get you!’ If that weren’t enough, the examples you chose actually prove your ideas folly, if only you’d taken the time to examine them closely. Instead, as any good neo-con would, you plow blindly onward in the face of overwhelming common sense. Ethnic profiling could not and did not pick out Richard Reid. How could it, he’s British! But Britain’s not on the list of Official Enemies…the sneaky buggers used his white skin as a disguise. Tell me, short of reading Reid’s thoughts, how would you have gone about picking him out of a lineup of travel weary passengers? Wait, let me guess…the Terrorist Watch List! If the might of Western Intelligence didn’t flag him, you somehow assume that a minimum-wage security guard will be able to? Ok, one miss…how about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab? Tell me, do you honestly believe that you’d be able to pick him out of a lineup of five or six good, clean, God-fearing African-Americans? Oh, right, his name must give it away. He’s got a funny name, so we should single him out, along with the hundreds of thousands of other people with funny names. Oops, that means that our heroic Barack should be subject to cavity searches too doesn’t it?

Apparently thanks to these dastardly deceivers from foreign countries, we’re now forced to endure a gross invasion of privacy…the ‘electronic strip search’! Good heavens, we can’t allow proper, upright Caucasian citizens like you and me to be subject to the same treatment as those Muslim creatures with funny sounding names! Did it occur to you that perhaps this pales in comparison to regressive, backward strategies you yourself are supporting?

And finally, as added proof that sacrificing our liberty is a small price to pay to feel safe, you toss in that little tidbit about patiently allowing an Israeli security woman to pat you down, before adding one last incongruous comment about western government’s stupidity, since you rightly assume that most of your readers hate the government.

You were correct on one score however. Airport security is mostly just a show put on to make the traveling public feel better and keep flying. Electronic strip searches, profiling, magic ‘you’re a terrorist’ wands…none of these things will make flying safer. The only way to do that is to stop giving the terrorists reason to blow up planes in the first place.

The man (or in this case right wing shill disguised as a journalist) who’d trade his liberty for a safe and dreamless sleep doesn’t deserve the both of them and neither shall (s)he keep.

Yours in youthful protest,
21st Century Digital Boy
Canmore, Alberta