Has anyone else noticed how political discourse has changed lately? To engage in discussions of a political nature these days seems to require some twisted, absolutist logic. It’s almost binary.
Consider it:
irrelevant/relevant
right/left
bad/good
black/white
0/1
The binary expression of the implication runs thusly:
The good news is that if you can count to two you can engage in political discussion. The bad news is that if you can count higher than two no one will understand what you have to say.
Apparently shades of grey are no longer recognized.
Moving on…
This entry is really just to make a few quick notes for people who are wondering what’s going on at the Buston/Gorzelak Compound in beautiful British Colombia’s not-so-beautiful central interior and to clear up a few things for anyone who may stumble across this blog by accident (run!).
First of all: I don’t want to hear any whining about the insensitive title. Any e-mails I get that that start, “I had a friend who committed suicide and…” will be deleted without being read.
And just so you don’t think you can slip one by me by saving your recriminations for the end of the e-mail, I’ll save you the trouble: I am an insensitive prick and shouldn’t make light of such a serious subject and the only reason you can see for my thoughtlessness is that I must be horribly insecure about something. Either that or I’ve got a severely grotesque sense of humour and therefore must be a thoroughly sick individual.
Feel free to reiterate or write variations on these complaints—but save them for the comments section. Don’t bother e-mailing them.
As far as an explanation of the title: the things you’ve heard about my being horribly insecure as well as a sick man with a grotesque sense of humour are true. Here’s how disturbed I am: I think we can deal with anything we can laugh at. That goes for suicide as well as anything else wrong with this world.
The difference between me and someone who is offended by the title at the top of this page is that I know that getting rid of the word will not make anyone less likely to take his or her own life. It will only make it harder to talk about.
Lenny Bruce once said, “take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government’.” By extrapolation, if you take away the right to say “suicide” then you take away the ability to say, “Hey Cho, don’t commit suicide and take thirty-some-odd people with you!”
And if you don’t think that’s an important thing to say go ahead, turn on your television to CNN or CBC Newsworld and watch the coverage of what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday.
Now, on to less troublesome topics.
My writing is going well. I’ve started work on something new that I don’t want to talk too much about just yet. It’s a pretty massive and complicated undertaking and I don’t want to jinx it in the early stages by nattering on and on about it. Suffice it to say that once there’s enough to say about it, I’ll talk.
Endlessly. Relentlessly. You’ll wish me dead.
As far as the novel, Redden Black; I am writing up a synopsis to include with the sample chapters. I’ll be getting that off to one or two publishers (at least) very soon. I can’t say I love it—but then I’ve looked at almost nothing else since Christmas.
And yes, I am saying this in public so that I can’t chicken out and not send it.
More important is a collection of short stories that I’ve been trying to compile. Again, I don’t want to tempt fate by giving you too much information but there is a very small chance that a very small press might be interested in putting out a very small book of short stories by yours truly. It’s exciting and I hope it works out. As soon as I know something definite I’ll let you know how you can pay me for it.
I should be finding out in the next few weeks how my flash fiction piece, Viesalgia, fared in the Short Grain contest. Wish me luck—a deadline extension by Grain magazine suggests I may be competing with more people than I had originally supposed.
I am also considering entering a contest run by sub-Terrain magazine. The Lush Triumphant Literary Awards Contest led Annette Lapointe to have her first novel—Broken—published by Anvil.
Looking back through the files which contain the entries for my old blog I can see how my opinions about this city have changed. I remember writing after moving here that the locals didn’t seem to trust me. I opined that something about me—perhaps a swagger—led folks around here to read something metropolitan and perhaps even populist into my person. I figured that people around here didn’t want to trust anyone who looked like they might have spent more than an hour in Toronto.
I don’t know if I’ve lost that swagger but I noticed while running errands this morning that people don’t react to me the way they used to. I don’t figure that I look any different. I still dress in black, I still wear big boots and spit into the gutter. I still shave my head and endeavour to look as unapproachable as possible. But for some reason people in Prince George smile at me now—wish me a good morning and wave.
What hasn’t changed?
I still say this is a lovely place to visit. I encourage everyone to spend a summer up here in northern BC. Unless you fear bears and physical exercise more than I do (which is unlikely) there’s nothing but adventure to be had. I’ll show you some things.
It’s just not a place you’d ever want to find yourself living.
I was twenty-six when I moved here. I’m twenty-eight now. I was beginning to think that my relocation might be a failed experiment. Which lead me to think that my early adulthood might also be considered a failed experiment.
That lasted about ten minutes.
The end of my residency here is in sight. Perhaps even closer than I imagined when I moved out here. Perhaps. And in that light, I can’t say I’ve failed anything. Oh sure, there have been set-backs and dark, dark days—but Gloria, let me tell ya, raven shit down the back of my neck is about the worst of it.
For the record, the first rule in the thinking person’s guide to suicide is this:
If you insist on taking yourself out of the equation, please, do us all a favour and go alone. We’ve all got enough to worry about with industry trying to poison us, religion trying to recover us, government trying to control us and business trying to buy and sell us—no one wants to have to dodge bullets on a university campus on top of it all.
Consider it:
irrelevant/relevant
right/left
bad/good
black/white
0/1
The binary expression of the implication runs thusly:
The good news is that if you can count to two you can engage in political discussion. The bad news is that if you can count higher than two no one will understand what you have to say.
Apparently shades of grey are no longer recognized.
Moving on…
This entry is really just to make a few quick notes for people who are wondering what’s going on at the Buston/Gorzelak Compound in beautiful British Colombia’s not-so-beautiful central interior and to clear up a few things for anyone who may stumble across this blog by accident (run!).
First of all: I don’t want to hear any whining about the insensitive title. Any e-mails I get that that start, “I had a friend who committed suicide and…” will be deleted without being read.
And just so you don’t think you can slip one by me by saving your recriminations for the end of the e-mail, I’ll save you the trouble: I am an insensitive prick and shouldn’t make light of such a serious subject and the only reason you can see for my thoughtlessness is that I must be horribly insecure about something. Either that or I’ve got a severely grotesque sense of humour and therefore must be a thoroughly sick individual.
Feel free to reiterate or write variations on these complaints—but save them for the comments section. Don’t bother e-mailing them.
As far as an explanation of the title: the things you’ve heard about my being horribly insecure as well as a sick man with a grotesque sense of humour are true. Here’s how disturbed I am: I think we can deal with anything we can laugh at. That goes for suicide as well as anything else wrong with this world.
The difference between me and someone who is offended by the title at the top of this page is that I know that getting rid of the word will not make anyone less likely to take his or her own life. It will only make it harder to talk about.
Lenny Bruce once said, “take away the right to say ‘fuck’ and you take away the right to say ‘fuck the government’.” By extrapolation, if you take away the right to say “suicide” then you take away the ability to say, “Hey Cho, don’t commit suicide and take thirty-some-odd people with you!”
And if you don’t think that’s an important thing to say go ahead, turn on your television to CNN or CBC Newsworld and watch the coverage of what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday.
Now, on to less troublesome topics.
My writing is going well. I’ve started work on something new that I don’t want to talk too much about just yet. It’s a pretty massive and complicated undertaking and I don’t want to jinx it in the early stages by nattering on and on about it. Suffice it to say that once there’s enough to say about it, I’ll talk.
Endlessly. Relentlessly. You’ll wish me dead.
As far as the novel, Redden Black; I am writing up a synopsis to include with the sample chapters. I’ll be getting that off to one or two publishers (at least) very soon. I can’t say I love it—but then I’ve looked at almost nothing else since Christmas.
And yes, I am saying this in public so that I can’t chicken out and not send it.
More important is a collection of short stories that I’ve been trying to compile. Again, I don’t want to tempt fate by giving you too much information but there is a very small chance that a very small press might be interested in putting out a very small book of short stories by yours truly. It’s exciting and I hope it works out. As soon as I know something definite I’ll let you know how you can pay me for it.
I should be finding out in the next few weeks how my flash fiction piece, Viesalgia, fared in the Short Grain contest. Wish me luck—a deadline extension by Grain magazine suggests I may be competing with more people than I had originally supposed.
I am also considering entering a contest run by sub-Terrain magazine. The Lush Triumphant Literary Awards Contest led Annette Lapointe to have her first novel—Broken—published by Anvil.
Looking back through the files which contain the entries for my old blog I can see how my opinions about this city have changed. I remember writing after moving here that the locals didn’t seem to trust me. I opined that something about me—perhaps a swagger—led folks around here to read something metropolitan and perhaps even populist into my person. I figured that people around here didn’t want to trust anyone who looked like they might have spent more than an hour in Toronto.
I don’t know if I’ve lost that swagger but I noticed while running errands this morning that people don’t react to me the way they used to. I don’t figure that I look any different. I still dress in black, I still wear big boots and spit into the gutter. I still shave my head and endeavour to look as unapproachable as possible. But for some reason people in Prince George smile at me now—wish me a good morning and wave.
What hasn’t changed?
I still say this is a lovely place to visit. I encourage everyone to spend a summer up here in northern BC. Unless you fear bears and physical exercise more than I do (which is unlikely) there’s nothing but adventure to be had. I’ll show you some things.
It’s just not a place you’d ever want to find yourself living.
I was twenty-six when I moved here. I’m twenty-eight now. I was beginning to think that my relocation might be a failed experiment. Which lead me to think that my early adulthood might also be considered a failed experiment.
That lasted about ten minutes.
The end of my residency here is in sight. Perhaps even closer than I imagined when I moved out here. Perhaps. And in that light, I can’t say I’ve failed anything. Oh sure, there have been set-backs and dark, dark days—but Gloria, let me tell ya, raven shit down the back of my neck is about the worst of it.
For the record, the first rule in the thinking person’s guide to suicide is this:
If you insist on taking yourself out of the equation, please, do us all a favour and go alone. We’ve all got enough to worry about with industry trying to poison us, religion trying to recover us, government trying to control us and business trying to buy and sell us—no one wants to have to dodge bullets on a university campus on top of it all.
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