spoken word

Well and that's close to being done.  Last final written, finish the last essay tomorrow.  Start work at the lake on Monday, and Oblong Country will go on hiatus...unless I find a decent internet connection up there....

Started my summer 'get fit' program today.  Hour long mountain bike by the river in Saskatoon.  Above, a distant pelican by the weir.  Below, a close up of said beast.

Out of shape for the biking, holee-shit.  During my high school years I used to power through the trails north of Prince Albert--today I was sucking wind...but a nice day for a ride, nevertheless.  Sunny and windy.  Geese ducks pelicans mud sand aching thighs.

Chelsea FC beat Barcelona in the Champions League semi-final.  Miracles do happen.

I'm feeling unprepared and scatter-brained.  Four days from now and I'll be back at 7:30-4, Mon. to Fri.

Listening to Messages by Frost.  I've alluded to the idea of a plan before.  The plan is...baby steps.  Incremental change.

Better blog posts...you know, something beyond the usual post-midnight rant.

Can't wait for everything to green up.  Right now the world is brown and dusty.

Anyway, I'm envisaging myself in my trailer at the lake, sweating over long-hand blog posts that will be transcribed to the interwebs at a later date, after many tearful editing sessions.

That's the plan, anyway.

The cranes of Saskatoon.  Toon-town boom town.  Saskatchewan a 'have' province.  We don't want your equalization payments!  In my life time we've gone from humble prairie back-water to natural resource mecca.  Summer is coming--you know how I know that there's money kicking around this place?  When the weather gets warm, the streets are purring with Porches, convertible Mercedes, sleek BMWs, etc...the summer cars are out...and when I was eighteen that shit was scarce.  Not anymore apparently...thank you oil, thank you potash, thank you rare metals....

Ah well, I'm going to be in Waskesiu for the next four months...I can't wait to be honest.

Pre-Study Break

So I've been obsessed with a recent internet (as an aside, I think I'm going to coin a new word: 'intercest'; denoting a certain kind of controversy that expands at an exponential rate, thanks to the special hothouse growing conditions of the internet) palaver--it goes without saying that the obsession arises partly from the desire to be doing anything other than studying.  Though it also piqued my interest due to the work I was doing on Heart of Darkness.  It concerns a television show which just premiered on HBO--I haven't seen the program, and it's possible I never will--I don't have a t.v. and I'm certainly not its target audience.  ANYWAY. 

 It's called Girls and it chronicles the lives of four well-off young women in New York City.  It had a lot of hype apparently.  The four principles are the real-life progeny of people who have already made successful careers in the American entertainment/media/arts world.  This fact has people crying nepotism...which on the surface seems like a valuable complaint--but I suspect that many of us would or already have used connections to get ahead in the world.  I first learned of it from the Gawker media sites, then checked out what Gavin McInnes and Benjamin Leo were saying about it on StreetbonersandTVCarnage.  One of the writers of Girls is Lesley Arfin, whose writing I've always enjoyed.  To get to the matter at hand--the main issue people had with the show concerned the fact that though it takes place in one of the most diverse cities on the planet, the main characters are all white, and the minorities that do show up are maids, doormen, bums, etc.  I have spent a few of the small hours pouring over blog articles and comments--some people are quite pissed--and this is after the airing of one half-hour episode.  I suppose the makers can be happy that a lot more people have heard of this thing now.

My main interest lies in the fact that many people were personally affronted that they did not see themselves represented in, what even the makers admitted, is a show about some very priviledged people who lack self-awareness.  As someone who is addicted to the internet, not television, where at least I have a little choice about the crap that assaults my eyeballs, I find it hard to relate to people who place that much importance in the products of mass media.  Nevertheless, I can understand that people might get pissed off if the majority of minority televisual representation is of the servant/underclass type.

I remember going to see the Lord of the Rings movies when they came out--I've loved the books since I was a kid, and ended up loving the films almost as much.  When seeing the books visually represented I was immediately struck by the colour binary between the forces of light and Sauron's minions.  I had long curly hair at the time and it occurred to me how much like the Uruk-Hai I looked--I certainly had nothing in common with the elves and Nordic men on display in the looks department.  I always wondered about that afterwards--I knew that academically, Tolkien studied the myths and languages of the English and Scandinavian peoples, so it wasn't such a stretch that his heroes would come out of that milieu.  But I did ponder if he had any racial theories, in the manner, say, of an H.P. Lovecraft.  Not that wikipedia is the Bible, but I read a bit about him on there a couple of weeks ago--to wit, he did not harbour any hidden racial agenda.  Even if he had, I don't think it would change my love of his books.  Lovecraft is full of overt racial sketchiness, but I bloody love his stories.

And the 'intercestuousness' of the whole Girls thing kind of blew me away.  Accusations of racism, the inevitable 'shove it up your politically correct ass' responses, the character assassination, etc etc etc.  Crazy...I mean, it is the internet, so everything should be taken with a grain of salt, but wow--it got me thinking that maybe the fuss isn't really just about the show, but that perhaps there is a snowballing of a certain feeling out there--now how's that for a clear, precise summation?  

It is interesting to witness the collision of the ironic hipster racism one encounters in places like Vice and Streetboners and the larger media world, populated by people who have no desire to be 'in' on the joke.  I can commiserate with the ironic pose up to a point--for I firmly believe that a strict politically correct stance that is unleavened by humour and yes, irony, is nothing but an ideological straightjacket. However, would I like it if someone was 'ironically racist' to my face?  I don't have an answer for that--well maybe I do--it really depends on who's making the joke.  Set and setting, as Timothy Leary used to say regarding psychedelic trips--is all important.  People started dredging up some things Lesley Arfin has said/written in the past, and taken out of context they really do not sound that pleasant.  The internet is a very unforgiving echo chamber that's for damn sure.  Here's a good take on the whole situation: http://oneuniquetoken.com/2012/04/22/girls-talk/

I'd hazard that it's fair to say that maybe it is after the coronation of a black president and increasing racial diversity in the midst of a worldwide economic downturn, that all our racial buggaboos will start to get a full airing....

Time to read The Woman Warrior.

Study Break

 Finally remembered to bring the ipod to the library...listening to some band called Weekend, album--Sports, cannot remember downloading it but it's alright.  Lots of droning gee-tars, soaring fuzzy vocals.  
Just had a moment...some guy walked in here, my brain recognized him before I did.

He was a grad student years ago when I was working on my first degree.  He was older than me and I figured at the time that he had it going on...knew his philosophy and was conversant in people like Nietzsche, who I wasn't at the time.  We hung out a couple of times, then when I was done didn't see him for a while..

Then sometime during the tree-planting and warehouse years I spotted him once on Broadway here in Saskatoon, and he looked fucked up.  He didn't see me, but I clocked him looking worse for wear on some single minded mission with a guy on a bmx...a cracked out mission, it looked like to me...which was jarring, for at uni he was the consummate self-collected stony voiced philosopher.
Seeing him makes me feel old.  He didn't catch my eye though.  I wonder what I would have said to him?
Blah, blah, blah, back to work...needless to say, that summer cocktail at the top has me anticipating some sweet summer sippings...

Friday Fizzle

 O well trying to fire off a quick post before riding the bicyclette to school, only to discover blogger has changed up the format for making new posts...no time to try to figure out how to order my photos, but it seems like it might offer more choice--once my luddite ass figures out how to use it...this 'Heirloom Cadillac' sign has had me intrigued for the past couple days until I realized--they're a band.  I'm guessing...country?

 Trying to figure out what exact point back in the mists of time when it was decreed that all morning radio dj's were required to be painfully cheery--

No matter, the local community station CFCR's morning show Green Eggs and Ham hosted by 'Brett' soothed me with some indy rawk.  Finally heard this Ketamine band and 'twas pleasantly surprised.

Happy 4:20 to all you weed lovers out there.  The CBC just informed me that it's also Record Store Day, so happy R.S.D. to the vinyl lovers amongst us.  My LP's are currently sitting in a box in my storage room, awaiting the purchase of a record player.

It's been a grey few days here in Oblong, that's why that green bark grabbed my attention...hopefully the clouds will rain soon then part their curtains for the sun.

 Was not planning on ending this post with a corpse, but--I'd like to know how it got there!  A couple feet away from the bird's nest and four feet off the ground...some bird of prey forgot its lunch last fall?  Sudden mouse death?

Four days til the final and an essay still to finish.  Groan moan throw me a bone.  Ciao!

Another Fine Specimen

Off to eat Asian food, then unto the library...just had to squeeze in this baby, saw it at Furdale today.

spring tribute

I spent a few minutes with each of these pictures, putting them through the various effects iphoto offers. But here they are, unvarnished.
Saskatoon, are you good enough? Of course you are. I've always been an imaginative dilettante. Nothing matches the gorgeous golden hedonistic hologram that exists in my mind...my fantastical history is a shuffling of metallic disco album covers...
but, and I'm sure you've noticed, my photos are of the same vistas, captured at different seasons, times of day, times of light.
My imaginary homeland amalgamates the Thames at night with central-northern Saskatchewan at dawn, at dawn, at dawn--or twilight.
Affected superfluity--there's no need.
Imaginative power--the real coupled with interpretive skill.

'twas a night...

Well it's one week exactly until my last final. Have to finish an essay first, on the internalization of authority in Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners and Jeannette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry. Last Friday was the birthday...once in seven years Friday the 13th, and it was quite lucky. My friend Dutch missed it, but he took me out for wings and a beer tonight, after some hurried essay research at the library.
Anyway, back to last Friday--on our way to a birthday dinner at Amigos, Pam and I passed this fortuitous sign--there was my name! Why? Who tagged that? A nice beginning to a nice evening.
Post-dinner, Broadway at sunset. Unfortunately the camera phased out the deep orange of the sky. C'est la vie. The Lonely Londoners--not sure if I've mentioned it before, but quite a book--all about the immigrant West Indian experience in London in the 1950s. Exciting for me, for that's when my maternal grandparents immigrated to London from Trinidad.
I'm not sure yet how I'm going to approach the essay, but Selvon's narrative, if I remember it correctly, highlighted the economic challenges the immigrants faced. The grid of London as a map of economic power points. The ancient cold grey city as lock-box. How to access the money? The necessity of appearing non-threatening.
Below, my friend Sasha and I. He came here years ago from the old Yugoslavia, and has built a life for himself here.

I'm going to have to look into some of my Foucalt books. The internalization of authority. Arranging one's life so that it runs parallel with the dominant pathology. My grandmother loved the British Empire--admired the Queen and traditional British culture. As she grew older she grew angry at the new waves of immigrants moving into her borough of east London, Barking. Owain and I with a bottle of nice rum. I must say I'm blessed with fantastic friends.
And here's Bruce, owner of a legendary party place here in toon town. Wielder of a deadly squash racket, but nice enough to host some pre-bar birthday drinks for me at short notice.
Will have to read the novel again tomorrow. Time to buckle down once again. Foucalt's panopticon. The ideal of power is that we internalize authority and police ourselves. Here's Jordan and I--Jordan with the famous Glasgow flat, where Arthur Conan Doyle employed forensic techniques to solve a murder so I'm told. Jordie's synchronicity antennae were tuned in...there was an interview with Irvine Welsh recently in the Guardian, and lo and behold, Jordan gifted me with Reheated Garbage by Welsh. Trainspotting, shit. I remember reading that years ago for the first time in England--can't remember what made me pick it up. After I finally got used to his Scottish vernacular, I was blown away--after weaning myself on Burroughs and Kerouac it was a nice departure but still on the same airline, if you know what I mean. In the interview he said he writes like he drinks--binge style.
And Sexing the Cherry. Years ago I read a book of essays by Winterson--Art and Lies I believe it was called. I can't recall much about it, except that I liked it...I'm telling you, my powers of literary criticism know no bounds. If you want some pretty sweet lit. crit. check out this tumblr called popfop. Authority in Sexing the Cherry, hmmm. Puritans.
I think we did a pretty good job of resisting the puritan ethic on Friday. Blaine and Kristen enjoying a cigarette.

Sexing the Cherry has it all--time-jumping, transformation of traditional sex-roles, fairy-tale extravaganzas, reality as an accident-of-light...
This tree is actually an Ent. It got up and walked away when we were done.
This essay will be tough, but I'm excited to work on it.
Yeah I'm glad I went out. I spent the previous weeks telling people I didn't care and that I did not want to do anything. I was wrong. Again.
Rocker kicks at Vangellis to obscure dj noodlings. I liked it the music--so much so that I felt I had to go tell the dj guy, who I'm sure really appreciated my thoughts.
Classic Crown Victoria. My dad used to have one--it was all white. This car might look rough, but we all know it's a marshmallow ride.
Saturday afternoon. The plan was to sleep it away, but my dad ended up coming to town, so we went walking the dogs--much better than hiding away in bed all day. Hangovers--you gotta turn that fuzzy head into a memorable wise-cracking afternoon...
saw this bike after going through the Dairy Queen drive through for dipped cones.
Ha! A good start to a new year!

Pooder's Friday the 13th

His day began late, or early, depending on how you view midnight...
...that's his bath time. This afternoon, I accompanied him to Furdale, where I had a blinding realization: my purpose on this planet was revealed--I am merely Pooder's photographer. It's his world, I just live in it.
I do believe Pooder of the Serengeti concurs.