S'long.

Holiday weekend here....

Had a big day at the track yesterday, BIG, but BBIIGG. I got two triactas, one exacta and only missed the Daily Double by a length (horseshoes and handgrenades, right): one $4 bet alone netted me $147. Sweet! Lost track of my winnings; came home; got caboosed.

Today I had the first look at another screenplay based on one of my stories. I'm a sucker. Artsie types and film school types call me up and want to turn my stories into no budget short films more frequently than publishers tell me they want to pay me to publish them. How does my work get into their scaly lizard-like hands?... no idea. I'll get Mannix on it ASAP. Anyway, another no money down screenplay and this one seems to miss the point of the story by a country mile. Should I care? Well, I don't. At least now there is a gratuitous nude scene - unless I'm reading it wrong. The screenwriter did manage to keep every single of word of dialogue from the story though, adding extra rather than changing what I wrote. That was nice of him.

Now, I have things to do: trim an archway, build a dresser, bounce my boy on my knee.

Adieu

I'm back.



























sort of

Yesterday I buried my best friend. He killed himself on the weekend.

I cut the pomp.

I no longer have an 18 inch haystack of pomaded hair on top of my head, and I have no more D.A. behind.

I don't miss it at all. I no longer have to primp for 40 minutes before I can leave the house. That's okay with me. Anyway, I'm getting too old for a pompador, even a few strands of grey spoils it, and I now have more than a few strands. I'm an anxious man, y'see. And the pomp was never really hat friendly, it flattened out and I wound up looking more like Ernest Aisnley than Robert Mitchum.

So now I have a kind of Samuel Beckett bristle,

but with a younger face beneath it.





Now, back to real life.

An Open Letter to Both Americas

Dear Democrat,

We apologize for the gusty weather you’ll be having today, but that’s what happens when the WHOLE WORLD IS SHAKING ITS HEAD in despair and disbelief. Looking back, it seemed that you had a shoe in even before you selected a candidate, after all 9/11, the jewel in the Bush/Cheney crown, was clearly, really an utter fuck up by that administration and its so-called intelligence, and the war in Iraq was quickly descending into a high-stakes parody of the Vietnam war, this time with the added effect of riling up an entire region not known for its stability or grace under pressure. The economy was not what it had been under Clinton either, and to ice the cake you had the righteous indignation of Democrats in Florida and, it turned out, in other “swing states” who felt that 2000 had been picked right out of their pockets. You know, anger is an energy, and it can be a useful tool even in politics, the coldest blooded game there is. Tell Al Gore to put that in his pipe and smoke it.

But I digress…

Your victory seemed likely, if not destined. Enter John Kerry. This is the man you chose to lead the party in 2004 and, if I may, he is this man who was responsible for the snatching of defeat from the jaws of that likely victory. We - and yes, for now I’m speaking for pretty well everybody else in the world - we never saw in him the flip-flop artiste that the Republicans wanted America to see, after all we all realize that democracy by its very nature requires that positions be continuously interrogated, that reality is a shifting sphere and only donkeys, fundamentalists and retards see the world as a pattern of absolutes. Flip-flopping is fine, in other words, if the flip-flops make sense given the addition of new information or the liberal use (yes, the L word) of a thing called REFLECTION. What bothered us was not that John Kerry might have flip-flopped, but that he was and is, to his bones, a waffler. Wafflers are born politicians but usually doomed to the lower ranks, this time, by virtue of his fortune, a dyed in the wool waffler was given a run at the top spot. (Here in Canada we have another such moneybags-waffle-meister who actually, while the fates were snoozing, made it to the PM’s office.) Wafflers, as a species, are so eager not to give offense to potential supporters that everything they say and do is couched in a Byzantine layer of evasive language and what they say in the end, is nothing valuable at all. To wit: John Kerry was determined to appear hawkish, to appease religious groups, to support backwards policies in order not to offend… Why, Democrat, why can your party not stop calling a spade a sliver tea service and just call it a spade? Why are you not the pro-choice party? Cut and dry. Why are you not the anti-war party? Again, straight forward. What about the party that supports gay marriage? The one that supports decriminalizing pot? The one that opposes capital punishment, supports Kyoto, and puts forward a policy on drug prices that isn’t as utterly phony as “we’ll bring in cheaper drugs from Canada”? If you want to be the alternative to the incumbent, there must be something that sets you apart, that makes you alternative. But apparently even the Democratic Party, the party of hope and intelligence, falls prey to the politics of fear. So, utterly terrified of losing, John Kerry tried to play tennis on both sides of the net, and tripped in the middle.

Our advice, from out here in the rest of the world, is to play hardball next time, to set out clear, hard, tough alternatives that are not dressed up in sophistry, but are clearly explained and strongly held. What the heck, why not just come out and say it next time, “I AM A LIBERAL” (meaning I am a liberal-minded person versus a closed-minded person), it’s not a badge of shame, not if that’s who you really are.

Better luck next time.

Dear Republican,

Well, you did it, you showed us that nobody’s going to tell you how to vote in your own elections. You came out for George Bush and Dick Cheney, proving that you like ‘em dumb and crooked, and you came out against gay marriage, you even voted for the guy who cheated during his debate. Excellent work.

Now that you’ve made the USA the least progressive nation in the free world it would be nice if the rest of us could say, so what, you’ve made your bed, now lie in it. Unfortunately, because your country is the biggest (some would say most bloated) and strongest ( some would say most aggressively bullying) we all have to lie in those same stinky sheets along with you.

Thanks a lot.

Halloween is the best day of the year.

I did laundry; what about you?

I'm reading Cities of the Red Night by William S Burroughs.
It sucks. It also blows. It sucks and blows at the same time. Kinda like Billy S. hisself. Anyway, science fiction, bleh.

I have marking up to my waist. I have pages of manuscript tacked up all around. I will be moving soon and my books are in stacks. What I need is a fucking Prospero hat.



I am so deadly with hands like cobras

LILLITATIANA did a google image search for her name and came up with this cool coffin


I found that so inspiring I did a Google image search for my own (real) name and discovered that everyone else with my name is REALLY FUCKING UGLY.

You know who you are.

Here:

A Short Story About Morrissey

Well, there was the lettuce story, and the Michael Stipe story and the Fridge story, now there is:

THE PUB THAT WASN"T GOOD ENOUGH FOR MORRISSEY

So yesterday was Thanksgiving in the bonny frozen northlands so my best gal (MBG) and myself went out so she could get herself a traditional turkey dindin (dindon dindin?). Now I don't eat turkey so my dinner was Guiness, and about three pints in who mopes into the pub with a pair of tattooed lads in tow but the mighty Moz hisself, no other.

Here, MBG says to me, don't you want to talk to him?
And I say, mmmm, no.
And she says, but he was a childhood hero, won't you kick yourself if you don't speak to him or buy him a drink?
And I say, mmmm, I dunno. Will I?
And she says, brother, if I know you, and I know you, you will.
So I say, okay give me twenty bucks.
And she does.
And I go to take a leak before visiting Morrissey, but when I get back, the mozzy fucker's gone and left!
MBG says, dude, you missed him.
And I say yeah, and out the window Morrissey and his friendss were sneering up at the pub that wouldn't do.

So, that's the story.