(near) TOTAL RECALL

I’m told Paris Hilton is not a “popstar” per se. I suppose this term has been reserved for use on young famous people with at least a dubious amount of talent. Your Britneys, your Lindsays, your Hillarys and so on.
I submit to doubters that the two words that make up the compound “popstar” indicate that the recently liberated heiress does, indeed, fall into that category:
First word is “pop” being a shortened version of “popular”. Second word is “star” meaning not a burning, gaseous heavenly body (though some sources suggest this may also be true) but someone who is preeminent in a particular field. Paris is a preeminent party-girl heiress.
Paris Hilton, whatever else she may be, is a popstar.

A brief update on my doings of late:
Slouching Deathward has gone through two sets of revisions and will be sent (hopefully today) to disinterested third parties for critique. When I receive those comments a final revision process will begin.
In the mean time I’m thinking about getting back to work on Malvina Arms as its structure lends itself easily to being written on a part-time schedule. I’ll also be looking at some very smalltime indie publishers who might be willing to put out a dystopian novella written by a nobody.
Vacation starts in two weeks. I take the redeye from Prince George on the evening of July 9th and wake up on the tarmac in London sometime early on the 10th. If you’re looking to hang out, get in touch now because I’ll be going offline a few days before that.
I’ll be driving back to BC in early August. I’ll be journaling the whole way back and I’ll probably post those entries one at a time when I return. No specific plans or sights I intend to take in so if anyone is familiar with interesting stops along the Trans Canada let me know. I’m especially interested in anything that could be considered “bizarre.”

Being back at work part-time, certain things in my life have been forced down the ranks of importance. It used to be that as far as writing went, this blog was #2 on the list of things that needed to be kept up.
This has been the first casualty.
Actually, the first casualty was sleeping in. Blogging fell moments later.
Though I am taking a lengthy vacation beginning July 9th and intend to blog as much as possible during that time, I feel the need to update more often than I have been. I’ve been searching for a way to do that and I’ve encountered a few difficulties:
1) When I do have time to write I would prefer to work on fiction. Finding time to do both was not a problem when I had eight hours a day, five days a week to write.
2) On the off chance that I don’t have any fiction to work on in a given day I’d really rather relax than try to come up with a useable subject for a blog entry.
3) What am I going to write about? The superiority of a latex-base paint? The inherent problems with oil-bases?
It was as I was considering these things that I opened up the old MS Word file in which I wrote and revised entries for my previous blog, The King of Stinktown. I thought, maybe, I could remember how it was that I managed to both work and blog back then.
The answer was obvious: I wasn’t working very hard on fiction at the time.
This is not an option now.
But reading those old blog entries was enjoyable. It did cause me to chuckle from time to time. I enjoyed some of the wordplay and found myself a little saddened that these entries were no longer available.
Then it came to me: When I find myself going too long between blog entries I could post up with excerpts from the old blog. The folks who read the old blog can reminisce about those halcyon days of hyperbolic humour and newcomers can find out what I was up to a year or two ago at this time.
That being said, here’s the first one, written just about a year and a half ago, shortly after arriving here:


9/28/2005
You can all relax. Jesus has returned: he’s operating a recumbent bicycle-drawn rickshaw for donations in Prince George, British Columbia. The Rapture should start roughly on-time. He just has to scrape together enough cash to get himself settled into some digs suitable for the Son of God at the outset of a new century. After all, if he’s going to pass judgment on man, he ought not be doing it from a cardboard box, right?
The bad news is that none of you are going to make it. Sorry. Apparently heaven, like CBGBs has limited seating capacity so, regardless of the size of the act on stage (and God, I’m told, is a pretty big act), they can only allow so many people in and you just aren’t righteous enough. Again, my apologies—don’t shoot the messenger.
I suppose, if you’re crafty and determined, you might be able to grease St. Peter’s palm at the Pearly White Gates. I’m guessing you’re going to have to go with a denomination higher than the twenty bucks in your wallet. Especially if you’re paying in Canadian dollars.
I have a hunch that the standard accepted currency in heaven is Japanese Yen. If God really is all-powerful and all-knowing then his investment portfolio these days probably leans heavily to the east. They’ll also take Visa and Master Card. But not Discover or American Express.
I always knew Christ would return. Mainly because the only Clergyman I ever trusted told me so. Of course, Father Robert (French, pronounced: Roe-BARE) was forced to resign after taking a few too many surreptitious gulps from the communion wine. And the gin hidden in the toilet tank in the rectory. And there was that rumor about one of the alter boys…
Regardless, if Father Robert says the Son of God is on his way then I believe him. He had big hands that had done real work at some point and an impressive, mountain-man-type salt and pepper beard that screamed, “I can’t show it to you, but I have a huge dick!” I’ve never seen a priest like that since. If you go to St. Francis Xavier Church in Tilbury now the cleric has a smooth, chubby face and hands like a little girl’s: soft and delicate and not at all manly.
Or maybe I just distrust him because he gave a sermon about the evils of homosexuality at my cousin’s wedding. How a man so clearly gay can denounce his own like that I’ll never understand.
Either way, really. It’s not like he ever even suggested to me that Christ would return. I suspect that men of the cloth are growing a little less assured in their ludicrous convictions.
To that I say: About damned time!

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You’ll forgive me, of course, if this entry seems disjointed, disorganized and dissolute. After all, I spent the last week writing eight hours a day. Can I be blamed for feeling a tad burnt-out on words?
The longer short story I mentioned and excerpted in my last FIK-shuhn entry (05.31.07) has morphed into a full-fledged novella. Its current (though not necessarily final) title is Slouching Deathward: A New Myth. At this point it is one revision process away from the time when I will allow a few copies to be read by a few choice individuals. After that, the final rewrite will begin in earnest.
It’s a quick little read and it’s the first time I’ve written anything that could in any way be called “plot-driven”. That’s not to say that I sacrificed character development or forwent any sort of emphasis on style. It merely means that I’m attempting to improve certain areas that I once believed unimportant to literary fiction.
The story is a dystopian satire that owes a lot to my love of books like 1984 and Brave New World. It centres around an anonymous gentleman in the Detroit area who struggles to reconcile his disgust at what the world has become with his own role in turning the world into what it now is.
Most of the characteristics of the near-future world I’ve created are logical (to me) extrapolations on what I’ve been seeing on CNN and CBC the last few years. I don’t want to reveal too much but I will say that xenophobia, religion, vanity, corporate control and climate change play important roles in this world. I will also say that, yes, I do see what I’ve written as an inevitable future if things in this world remain as they are today.
In a philosophical sense I attempt to suggest that entropy—the tendency of systems to move from order to disorder—is not limited to natural systems but can also be applied to government, economy and religion. The idea is that the “Arrow of Time” dictates that everything must fall apart, that “the centre cannot hold”.
At the same time that I issue this clearly fatalist dictum I try to inject a sense of hope. I want the reader to come away with the feeling that, though these systems must fail, we as a species must make an effort to survive.
Usually I try not to talk about what my stories mean. As I’ve said more often than I care to remember, what I put into a story is less important than what you get out of it. However, since I’ve gone this far into the no-no land of explaining my themes I may as well conclude by saying that I hope that, upon finishing the story, at least a few people will ask: Should we try to survive because mankind is capable of behaving decently, or will we try to survive merely because self-preservation is a simple, biological imperative?
Other themes, if you care, include the uncertainty of the modern world; disgust at commercialism; the possibility of redemption and the devastation and experience of loss.

The writing of this novella was an exercise in writing a dystopia. As many of my friends know I have, for ages now, had this world living and growing in my mind waiting for the day that I could develop the skill (and find the time) to write the epic novel required to appropriately tell the story.
By no means am I saying that now is the time—I’m quite sure that novel is a few years off just yet. What I am saying is that I feel myself getting closer all the time. I really feel as though my ability as a storyteller has advanced significantly over the last year or so. When I read what I’ve written in just the last three months and compare it to the things I wrote at this time last year I’m shocked, frankly, at the improvement I’ve made.
I have to say, it feels good.

Now what I have to worry about is finding a way to publish a novella. It’s not exactly a popular form in North American literature. It’s too long for magazines and publishing companies don’t think it’s a profitable venture. (Probably because they can’t charge $20 a pop for a 120-some-odd page book, not because people won’t buy it.)
So I don’t know what will happen to Slouching Deathward but I assure you, if anything does happen with it, you’ll hear about it here.

Also: is anyone else hoping Conrad Black goes away for a long, long time? I get so sick of these rich, white, business criminals. Popstars, too. If only we could get Paris Hilton to commit a really atrocious crime… you know, something slightly more atrocious than her simple existence... like a warcrime.

Bad Puns: Setting Sail on the Ownership

It’s hot—not sauna hot but boiler-on-the-fritz hot—and I’m peeling dried latex paint off my fingertips. Maybe it’s because it feels so much like peeling dried glue off my fingers in Kindergarten, maybe it’s because I’m stalled, but I’ve got the distinct feeling I haven’t gotten very far in the last twenty-three years or so.
The cigarette I borrowed from Andy dangles from my lip—more because of the saliva-paste than any actual effort on my part. I refuse to touch my sandwich until I’m certain there’s no wet paint on my hands.
This is how I know I’ve only been back at work for a few days. In a month I won’t care what’s on my hands, I’ll just eat my fucking lunch. Conscientiousness is always the first thing to go.
I’m sitting in the van. If you look behind me you’ll see the wreckage of my occupation: soiled drop sheets bundled rather than folded, spattered roller cages and empty cans, used up rags—it’s all standard faire in the van of a contract painter.
Finally convinced that my fingers are relatively clean I extract my soggy sandwich from the Save-On bag. What we have here is roast beef, cheddar and spinach pressed between two slightly stale slices of whole wheat. It’s not appetizing, but it’s what’s available.
I take a big bite—I figure if I can get through the sandwich in seven-or-so bites I’ll be done before I decide it’s inedible.
This time last week I was eating spaghetti, prepared in the Tuscan tradition. This time last week I was taking a break from writing. This time last week I was probably happier.
But today I’m going to tell myself that this is the better thing to do.
This work is more important.
I’m going to tell myself that I’m not miserable.

Once I’ve finished the sandwich I steal another one of Andy’s smokes. As I puff away at it Andy joins me in the van. He starts in on his sandwich—whole wheat, roast beef and spinach—before he says anything. When he does speak he says, “I think we should be able to knock this house off tomorrow.”
I don’t say anything. What’s there to say?
“After lunch,” he continues, “I’m going to run to the paint store, I need some Penetrol to thin out the oil paint I’m using on the doors. I want you to just continue with what you’re doing—cut-in the living room and roll it out. If you finish that before I get back move on into the hallway, through there and into the den. You know the drill.”
I ought to, I’ve first-coated it all. I’m on the second coat. I really don’t understand why he’s telling me this.

Back in the house, Andy’s left for the paint store, I turn the radio back on to CBC. I grab the cut-can, the roller and tray and my paintbrush and head up the ladder to cut-in around the ceiling.
This colour—this pale pink that I’m privately calling dead-baby—is actually sold under the name “Spanish White.”
In a daze I drag my brush along the wall. In a daze I dip my brush in the can. In a daze I move my ladder five feet to the right. In a daze I repeat ad nauseum.
I’m going to tell myself that this is a good thing I’m doing. I’m going to tell myself that this is right. I’m going to tell myself that it’s not so bad. I’m going to tell myself that it’s only for a little while.
And if one of the things I’m telling myself turns out to be true then I’ll tell myself it’s okay to lie if it keeps you alive. Keeps you sane. Pays the bills.


Okay, so, I’m back to work after a long lay-off. If that piece bored or depressed you then I did my job as a writer—I made you feel what I feel in doing the job. It’s shit work and I think the most important lesson I’ve taken away from doing it is that I should have gone to University.
It’s true, I regret the path I chose after high school. I used to refuse having regrets. I owned that tired old saw: “What I’ve done has made me who I am and I love who I am so how could I regret anything?”
That, by the way, is bullshit and I wish everyone would quit copping to it. If you’re over eighteen years old and you’re still bullshitting yourself and everyone around you just give it up. It’s really quite liberating to look in the mirror and say, “I made mistakes that I would gladly take back if I could.”
So the new plan is to go back to school. University this time, not college. I’m going to get my Bachelor’s (at least) in journalism. Unless I can cheat my way past the Bachelor’s to a Master’s as a mature student, in which case it’s MFA all the way.
Because I can keep telling myself whatever I want to. But sooner or later I’m going to have to own up to the life I’ve chosen and I think I’d like to choose a different one while I’m still young enough to do so.

So I guess the big thing I want to say here is that updates in this blog (which are already few) are probably going to be even fewer for a while until I get the hang of working again. Sooner or later I’ll be able to do both (write and work, that is) but for now it’s either or.
Don’t give up on me. There’ll be more.

There’s no certainty in philosophical circles that we actually have freewill. The fatalists and some more adamant determinists make strong points to suggest that we really are bound completely by our genetics and our environment to make certain choices and walk down certain paths.
Even I find myself thinking that whatever freewill we have may not be complete—though I held on desperately to the concept of total freedom throughout my youth.
So maybe, just maybe, you are fated to take your own life. I don’t like it, but if I’m to be honest I have to admit that it’s a possibility.
But perhaps there are a few moments where your will is free. Just a split second of inaction where you could go either way. If this is the case, an interstices where you have the power to make a real choice is something that should be taken seriously.
The fifth rule in the Thinking Person’s Guide to Suicide runs thusly:
Whether or not your will is free it seems unfair to blame others for the decisions you’ve made. If your life hasn’t turned out the way you want it to I feel for you. But don’t assign blame. If you’re going to check out, in that last moment, take ownership over your life. Remember: you are killing yourself.