Restraint

07/14/1978 – 03/02/2006

March 3, 2010 – 3:02 am

Squid

You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me waiting for spring and summer
You will find me waiting for the fall
You will find me waiting for the apples to ripen
You will find me waiting for them to fall
You will find me by the banks of all four rivers
You will find me at the spring of conciousness
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain
You will find me if you want me in the garden
unless it’s pouring down with rain

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

37.5 million seconds

March 1, 2010 – 3:26 am

A little over a year and a month ago, I got a message titled “BFF 4 EVER” from an audrawilliams. She thought we’d get along, she said.

oh hai

After discovering that we worked across the street from each other, we met for lunch the next day, and spent a good two or three hours talking about politics, music, childhood.

Two months after that, we were presenting together at Podcamp in Toronto, and it wasn’t very long after that she found a ridiculous kitten to keep me company in my new apartment.

blinky

She’s smart, accomplished, hilarious, and so stunningly beautiful that I can’t really wrap my head around it. In the short time that I’ve known her, she has introduced me to incredible people, helped me tackle a lot of very daunting problems, caused an international incident, helped shape the progressive political dialogue in Canada through her work with the NDP, and impacted my life in more ways than I could ever expect to have words for.

She accomplished something really amazing today, and while I’ll leave it to her to decide if she wants to talk about it, I could not be more proud of her.

Congratulations, Audra. You’re incredible, you make the lives of everyone close to you better, and everyone who loves you knows they’re lucky to know you.

audra and jairus

I love you so much.

Posted in Writing | Comments (0)

Suck my diiiiiiick, I’m a shaaaarktopus

February 12, 2010 – 4:56 pm

Q: What’s badder than the Battle of Tannhäuser and more dangerous than a swimming pool full of thumbtacks and facehuggers?

A: ROGER CORMAN’S SHARKTOPUS, motherfucker!

Sharktopus

oh no little man what are you going to do it's a fucking SHARKTOPUS

News of Sharktopus’ imminent approach came to us by way of Karen O’Hara’s Twitter:

Just got off the phone with the legendary Roger Corman who’s doing a new movie for us this year. Yes, it’s the long-rumored SHARKTOPUS! . . . Spent half an hour discussing what a sharktopus should look like, how many mouths it should have and how it should kill.

THAT’S RIGHT

HOW MANY MOUTHS IT SHOULD HAVE

SO FUCKING AWESOME ASDJFIASDJFASIOFDOAFWKO

Posted in Geekdom | Tagged | Comments (1)

Cuuuuuuute!

February 4, 2010 – 10:04 pm

Work harder.

Posted in WTF | Tagged | Comments (0)

Sunset Queen

January 25, 2010 – 9:31 pm

Sunset in Ottawa, as viewed from Audra's office.

Posted in Ottawa, Photography | Comments (0)

On masculinity

January 24, 2010 – 8:34 pm

I wrote this reply to a question posed on LiveJournal asking about the contemporary definitions of masculinity, and what (if anything) separates the masculine from the feminine. No one responded over there, so I’m reposting it here, because I’m interested in other people’s thoughts on the subject.

Do not reply to this post to argue about feminism.

…

I suspect that there’s a lot to be said on this topic with regards to fatherhood, but I don’t have any experience in that area to draw on.

There are a few different questions here, I think.

1: What is the contemporary definition of masculine?
2: Can you construct a contemporary definition of masculine, using positive traits that are exclusive to men?
3: What traits should be deferred to men so as to consider those traits exclusively masculine?

The answer to the first question isn’t terribly flattering, and the nature of the second question makes it impossible to answer without being sexist (as it is equivalent to asking “what positive traits do women lack?”).

Personally, I don’t agree that a trait can only be ascribed to one or not the other in order for it to be masculine/feminine, because the context of the male experience and the female experience are so different that a trait (let’s say, promiscuity, or humility) is not the same thing for a man that it is for a woman. Saying that humility is a masculine trait might be positive, because to be humble men may have to recognize their own male privilege. Saying that humility is a feminine trait might be negative, because it’s morally elevating a symptom of oppression.

This article is interesting, I think. It makes a lot of positive “men are” declarations about men that would be totally unremarkable status quo statements if said about women, (A man doesn’t point out that he did the dishes. A man looks out for children. Makes them stand behind him. A man can tell you he was wrong. That he did wrong. That he planned to.) and a number of fairly provocative statements that I don’t think translate as easily, for better or for worse. (Maybe he never has, and maybe he never will, but a man figures he can knock someone, somewhere, on his ass. A man knows how to lose an afternoon. Drinking, playing Grand Theft Auto, driving aimlessly, shooting pool. A man fantasizes that kung fu lives deep inside him somewhere. A man knows how to sneak a look at cleavage and doesn’t care if he gets busted once in a while.)

Personally, I don’t think contemporary society is terribly interested in buying into the idea of positive masculinity. It’s dangerous to say “this is male, this is good” if you’re adverse to the idea of inferring something bad about being not-male.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Redux

January 4, 2010 – 4:20 am

I’ve been staring at the insides of my eyelides for hours, and work starts too soon. Winter robs me of sleep and sanity.

Posted in Writing | Tagged , | Comments (0)

overdrawn at the irony bank

December 18, 2009 – 11:00 am

i⋅ro⋅ny [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
–noun, plural -nies.

  1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
  2. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
  3. pointing out to a heckler who is having a laugh because you’ve seen almost half of the Wikipedia list of films set in the future that not only is the heckler in one of the films set in the future, but that this film was in fact heckled by robots in the even more distant future.
Posted in Geekdom | Tagged , | Comments (0)

If I am not me, then who the hell am I?

December 18, 2009 – 9:27 am

A moment to remember screenwriting legend Dan O’Bannon, who left us yesterday:

Dan O’Bannon, one of the scriptwriters behind such seminal SF flicks as Alien and Total Recall, has passed away in Los Angeles following a bout of ill-health, at the age of 63.

O’Bannon was a lifelong SF enthusiast, and got his first experience of filmmaking when he worked as writer, editor and special effects producer on John Carpenter’s brilliant, cynical debut Dark Star. O’Bannon and Carpenter had studied together at USC prior to the film’s 1974 release.

He went on to do special effects work on the first Star Wars film and was involved in the early stages of comic writer Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unsuccessful attempt to bring Dune to the big screen in the mid-‘70s. But it was when he began to concentrate on writing over production and effects that his career really took off. O’Bannon is credited with writing the original screenplay for Alien (alongside Ronald Shusett), and his influence on that film extended to bringing into the fold a certain Swiss artist called H.R. Geiger, who had also been involved in the failed Dune project.

O’Bannon’s other hits included the gloriously OTT Schwarzenegger vehicle Total Recall, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s We Can Remember It For You Wholesale by the O’Bannon-Shusett partnership. He was also involved in a number of cult classics, including Lifeforce, Heavy Metal, and Screamers, while his Moebius-illustrated comic The Long Tomorrow was the inspiration for the art style of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

O’Bannon changed the face of science-fiction (and horror, inventing ‘fast’ zombies in his 1986 directorial debut Return Of The Living Dead), and I’ve been hoping for years that he’d make a return to the big screen (possibly with the perpetually-delayed Silvaticus 3015) to show all these modern ’sci-fi’ writers what’s what.

A public memorial for Mr. O’Bannon will be held sometime in the next few weeks at my apartment in the form of a movie marathon. Interested parties please reply within.

Posted in Geekdom | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

When I am walking down Rideau Street, I never ask what they are charging.

December 12, 2009 – 3:50 pm

The transcripts of the Senate debate on the recently-amended drug bill are pretty amazing:

Hon. Claude Carignan: People often bring up the hypothetical situation of a youth who gets sent to jail for passing a joint to a friend. This bill has nothing to do with situations like that. Have any of you ever seen a three-kilogram joint?

Senator Comeau: That would be huge!

Senator Carignan: It would indeed be a huge joint.

Posted in Politics | Tagged | Comments (1)
Page 1 of 8612345678910111213»...Last »