I'm getting to it...right now I have to go make some pies.

Thoughts on a New Harry Potter Movie

The task of relentlessly reminding the public that big time blockbuster franchises are largely hollow cash grabs with no artistic merit or longevity is a thankless task.  The fans of such films, unable to process any kind of criticism through the thick patina of their decade long idolatry for Harry Potter (often bought at a heavy price), are bound to respond to the slightest dissent with overly vitriolic teeth. 

I imagine this is because, if said fans were truly to reflect on how much money they had wasted on this nonsense, they would be forced to lament and possibly immolate themselves.  There is little that can be done for such people.  For the rest of us, however, a gentle reminder once a year that the Potter films are definitely *not* worth seeing under any circumstances is welcome. 

I offer you this caveat now: avoid this new Harry Potter film at all costs.

Potter haters take heart.  No doubt something just as awful will materialize in the near future, but at least this particular exercise in abject stupidity is almost at an end.

my love with the raspy breath of sleep
  rolls herself up in the blankets
like a caterpillar building its cocoon
  -snipping each bedsheet off me
like a new leaf from the stalk
  until I am left as a shivering bare branch

and she shows her affection by gnawing dents
  along the lines of my fingertips
felling them to drag back to her dam,
  no doubt

and like a surly crow-time crow she squawks no
  when I ask her to wed me
-although she's game as a doe when I ask her to bed me

and I pine constantly
  for the lithe twisting of her trunk
and the tangled twirls of her crown
  falling over her cheeks in unkempt curls

-such delights I won't trade
  for a thing in the world.

Nature report from Eldred, NY.

 

blackfly bites (really bad)

mosquito bites (actually not too terrible… they are out of season)

horsefly bites (sonofabitch!)

spider bites (ouch)

ticks (removed from my back with matches and tweezers)

ant bites (red, fire, carpenter but I don’t think the black ones got me).

stinging nettles (ouchie!  …but the suffering is brief).

poison ivy (all over my knees in big water filled blisters.  I took a boiling hot bath in old tea bags last night and that stopped the itching for almost an hour.  right now it’s soooooo itchy).

insomnia 90billion01 (k).

if i were just a bat
i could use these over long toe nails
i keep neglecting
to snatch up shivering mice
from the snowy fields
and lift them into the black
wind blasted sky

if i were just a bat
i could use these unsnipped talons
to dangle from the icy undersides
of wind squeaking branches
in the dark groaning woods

i could use them to scritch
at the roofs of caves
scratch damp lichens free
while my little pink tongue
lapped dripping drops of seeped salty water
free from the great vaulted walls of the unseen underworld

Exam Time.

It’s April 27th in Montreal.  I got a sunburn on my face on Sunday from being out in the lovely sunshine all day and now it’s Tuesday and it’s been snowing hard for the entire day.  What the hell?

***

Given that the speaker of the house ruled against the CPC, will Stephen Harper:

1) challenge the ruling in the supreme court--forcing one legislative branch to rule against another and launching the nation into years of chaos?

2) attempt to prorogue the parliament again, thereby establishing that the PMO is not to be held accountable for anything?

3) call an election that will largely be formed around the "support the troops and be a patriot" vs. "uphold democracy and scourge out corruption" rhetoric?

4) actually comply with the ruling, work with the opposition and make all the unseen documents visible to a parliamentary committee? (hint this answer is probably wrong).

5) none of the above.

…stay tuned to find out!

lamb’s blood, I say.

http://www.slate.com/id/2248901/

1:
This article posits that there are scientific explanations for all of the miracles attributed to the story of the Exodus; saying for example that the ten (or three depending on whom you believe) plagues were caused by a chain of events starting with a bacterial outbreak in the Nile that turned the water red, killed the frog eating fish, causing an outburst of frogs who were then poisoned by the dirty water, causing an outbreak of flies, causing all sorts of other diseases to spread, etc. Thus, the most miraculous thing about the miracles Moses are not the miracles themselves, but their timing.

There are a few ways to go with this:

Insomnia 900k.

dracula checks his e-mail one last time
before flapping into his lead coffin
and slamming the lid shut on the dawn

the boogieman fiddles with his crackling clock radio
trying to find a station that still works
before squeezing himself back under the bed.

the wolfman marks his territory one last time
preparing to wake, a naked civilian once again,
in the wolf cage at the zoo

Look at these Goddamn Olympic Zombies

I deleted my poem about the Olympics because, despite the sincerity of my sentiments (and even the thumbs up from LQ; to whom I recited the work while she baked me a Valentine’s day key lime pie) it was a bad poem, stylistically speaking.  Really bad.  That doesn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that I’m coming to terms with the Olympics.  I’m not.

One thing LQ and I were talking about on Valentine’s day (because we went to her roommate’s burlesque show at the Cafe Cleopatra) was how difficult it still is for a man who wants to wear a dress to go to some places in public.  At Cleopatra there was a man in a dress who would get up on stage between the acts and dance; dance just a little, mind you, with not too flashy steps on the darkened stage, while the next act prepared behind the curtain.

Why the Sherlock Holmes Movie Sucks Ass

When I was a kid I got a really neat gift.  Someone who dug A Study in Scarlet had taken all the evidence described in the story and turned it into a dossier of police files and photographs and physical objects (e.g., a wedding ring in a bag and some poison pills) and so on.  The idea was that, if you were presented will all the evidence of the case, perhaps you, like Sherlock Holmes, could put the facts together and solve the murder.  I got that as a gift and I thought it was cool-o-rama.

The problem with the new Sherlock Holmes movie, the one with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law and all of them, is that there is no case to solve.  There is never any sense of things coming together.  In a good murder mystery you ought to be guessing the whole time who done it and being given false leads and wrong clues and you should feel your mind working on the case, trying to beat Holmes to the solution.

But, obviously the people who wrote/directed this movie are a bunch of mental pipsqueaks who couldn’t put together a good murder mystery if they tried (and it doesn’t appear that they did try); favouring instead to excite us with extended set pieces where lots of things go boom.  There is a 30 second bit at the end where Holmes explains to the villain how he figured out the mysterious parts of the mystery, but it's not like anyone in the audience has an honest chance to guess these things because we are never allowed to know the dimensions of the world in which Holmes lives—what is technologically possible and what is not—it's a shame, really, because a movie that actually had a plot and also wicked CGI would really be something.  Here, though, the sense of mystery is secondary to the action.  If the character were named something other than Holmes then it would probably never occur to anyone that this was a mystery film.

I guess it's okay because I didn’t waste any money on this film, preferring instead to download it "illegally".  It is my sincere hope that by watching as many of these bloated budget films on a lap top via a streaming site or via a bittorrent download, I can do my part to drive Hollywood out of business and usher in a world where people make small inexpensive films that have great plots…in fact, I should like to see the film industry go so broke that they can't even afford cameras and the only way that anyone can afford to make a movie is to rent out a hall and then build a bunch of flimsy sets and have people pay a pittance to come and see the actors performing the film live on a kind of elevated platform in front of the audience.  They'd be so broke, in fact that instead of having edited cuts between scenes they'd have to just lower a big piece of cloth and then quickly move everything around behind the cloth to set up the next sequence.

insomnia 44

I was still standing around on the cold mud
when the sun came up under my feet
and lifted me into the sky

my toes dug into the smouldering brow of Helios
and I perched there like a crow on a wheel

I could see ten thousand miles in every direction
and everything below me was hard and white

and the tree lines were brown shivering skeletons
stitching up the edges of the snowy fields

but I was warm with the sun as my elevator
and the clouds turned to steam as I passed through them
on my way to the stars

eyes wide

insomnia insomnia
has the best of me
rolling about in the grim grey light of the dawn
too tired to rise
and too active to sleep
kicking about in my sheets
and wishing exhaustion would pull me down into my pillows
or wishing consciousness would waft me up
and blow me out into the day
like a downy goose plume on the breeze

one or the other
but not this, please!

insomnia insomnia
you relentless son of a bitch
turn up the ticking clock
so I can hear it echoing in my skull
like a chorus of howitzers
at a rock concert
in hell

ruin my day and turn it backward
like i just got off a flight from australia
but without the fucking sun tan
or the cute photo with the baby kangaroo on it

make me feel like some nurse
accidentally poured her frappacino into my iv
and now ground coffee beans and sugar and white foam
are clogging my ventricles

insomnia insomnia
why do you amplify my troubles
and make me think i am mad
and that my life is a burning sopwith camel
spiralling down toward the mud caked craters of the somme
with a tail full of the red baron's lead?

insomnia insomnia
why do you mock me
you scandalous harlot
by making me privy to the flushing toilets
and hissing showers
of morning glory neighbours
who have sprung up from their beds
like they were tied to the rising sun
on big glowing bungee cords?

and why must i listen to them banging and clattering
their pots and pans
and whistling songs about jesus
during the last few pitiful minutes when i could have slept?