A Kiss of Kvass

"Floracide" now available in PDF

2011-11-27T16:33:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it or do not like physical copies, Issue #60: "Floracide" of Leading Edge, in which my long story "Floracide" was published last December, is now available for purchase at reduced price as a PDF.

Upcoming WTF?! Anthology and Novella

2011-11-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

This is a rather perfunctory post since I obviously don't update my blog very often - I am hoping to get my own website maybe soon - but here goes:

My short story "A Divine Three Seconds" was accepted some time ago and will be appearing in the upcoming WTF?! Anthology from Pink Narcissus Press in early December. The anthology will be available in print and as an e-book and is currently available for pre-order from the publisher's website. Alternatively, if you are in Ottawa or know me and are interested in ordering a copy, I can probably sell one to you directly at a slightly reduced price.

In other news, my novella The White Pigeon was recently selected as the winner of my university's 48-hour novella-writing contest. (Definitions of "novella" are always a bit variable, but usually it's defined as at least about 15,000 words -- twice as long as what we were required to write. Thus it's really more of a "novelette," if you approve of that term.) The story is soon to be published in print with its own ISBN! Some copies are to be held at Cafe Alt and the English Dept. at the University of Ottawa, as well as at the Collected Works Bookstore on Wellington.

Social Experiment #3: Rock Talks. Dust Answers.

2011-04-29T00:38:00.000-07:00

Last week, after posting about the ‘Bad Ideas’ Contest at Ottawa U, I paid a visit to “Rock Talk”—the blog of Allan Rock, the President of the University—and searched for a post about the Contest so I could post something in response: namely, the hyperlink to my recent thoughts on the subject.

Rock’s only post pertaining to the Contest was from February, back when it was first announced. I would’ve preferred a recent post, for visibility’s sake, but decided it would be unproductive to post my comment in response to some other post of a different topic simply for the sake of that post’s recentness. Such a comment would not be as well understood and would seem like angry spam—and likely be treated as such by the blog’s moderator (i.e., Rock or one of his subordinate pebbles).

But—my mistake—I probably made my comment look like spam anyway, in being so laconic: all it consisted of was the direct URL to my post. To my credit, though, I filled in, along with the comment box, the “Name (required)” and “Email address (will not be published)” fields with my full name and university email address. I clearly identified myself, in short, as one of the students whose "comments and suggestions" Rock "welcomes."

Alas, as you can guess, like a bad kidney stone the comment could not pass through the Allan Rock. But I fancied this was due primarily to that spam-like appearance (poor judgment on my part—born of exam-period haste). For, however menacing the content of the essay lurking behind the submitted URL, one has to wonder how many people actually read Allan Rock’s blog, let alone would read a post from two months ago (and an especially inane post at that, being simply a mirror of the announcement of the Contest, which any eligible submitter—any student—would have first heard of elsewhere)? And, of those people, how many would actually follow the URL, and how many read my essay?

I would guess none and none. So what real harm (assuming he himself even followed the link and read the essay) did Rock perceive in letting this comment through? Surely it would be better to humour this complainer than, by denial, encourage him towards more ambitious future attempts? Even I had not thought much of the comment as I posted it. It was just a comment—a shot in the dark. I just didn’t realize just how dark the dark was. It seems indicative of Rock’s extreme arrogance and paranoia that he apparently thinks so many people read his blog that such a comment, harmlessly posted to an obsolete post that no one in the world need walk by again, could be harmful to his and his university's image.

For along the right side of Rock’s blog runs, among other things, a short list of “Recent Comments.” According to this, the most recent comment, as of today, came in response to a post dating January 27th. The next most recent: December 2nd (2010). This suggests either:

(1) virtually nobody reads Rock’s blog (even though every one of all 40,000+ students and staff is probably aware of it thanks to mass emails and other more elaborate admin-backed ads);

(2) some people do read Rock’s blog but his posts are generally so inane, most of them reproductions of announcements and news better and earlier available elsewhere (and lacking the putrid sense of one person’s self-aggrandizing corporate agenda), that they do not (indeed are probably not meant to) provoke thought, let alone discussion;

or

(3) people do read the blog and some, perhaps even all posts—even the inane—do provoke comments, but the blog’s moderator exacts such a stringent censorship policy that even the slightest hint of an alternate or, Rock forbid, opposing view—the basis for any true dialogue—is rendered invisible: lest the uOttawa brand incur even the faintest discoloration.

I would guess, Scantron permitting, some degree of all of the above are true. Or have been true at some point, for each is potentially the cause or effect of another: inane posts and refusal to engage in discussion, for example, both leading to reduced readership.

But let us be optimistic! The moderator was not overly paranoid; he simply mistook it for spam. Fast forward (backward) to last Friday.

Last Friday, when Mr. Christ was being hammered to the cross for the 2011th time, I was crucifying my thesis, for the 2nd time, onto another of Rock’s wooden posts. I’d just discovered that Rock had posted—as it happens the day right after I’d hammered the thesis on my own blog and tried to pass on the link to his—one of his blog’s characteristic reproductions: an announcement of the contest winners! Here was my chance, again, to show Rock my great ideas! After all, Rock seemed, in that very post, to be asking for them (unless my reading abilities, as a fourth-year English literature student at Rock’s university, fail me):

“As you know, improving the student experience is my key objective as president of the University of Ottawa. Hearing directly from students is the best way to learn how to reach our goal of creating a stronger sense of community on campus.... Your input and ideas are invaluable.”

So input my ideas I did—into the welcoming snowy fields of the “Leave a comment” page, so empty (and hence so pregnant) with possibility!—and signed my name and university email address once again. This time I prettied things up, dressed up my comment better than Kate Middleton: I offered a brief introduction, then copied the whole content of my thesis directly into the field rather than hiding it behind a possibly questionable-looking URL, and I even framed it as a citation using the {cite} XHTML function. Surely, now, there could be no question as to the earnestness, quality of presentation, and credibility of my comment! And remember—Rock was, after all, asking me for it!

But I suppose—if I’m being a judicious reader—what Rock strategically omits from his call for my—my! (oh my, does he really mean me? Me specifically?)—“input” is that, while “Your input and ideas are invaluable,” the output of them is not. Input all you like into Rock’s bottomless heart and suggestion box! Nothing will come out of it.

(Unless, of course, your idea isn't really an idea, or it's exactly what he wants to hear.)

The long weekend I permitted as a write-off, of course—I didn’t expect Rock or his pebbles to be rolling about the blog. Then, I had exams to deal with, so more time passed. But now I’ve checked back. It’s been a week. The comment’s not there.

The next step, evidently, is to approach the campus newspapers.

"Fulghum's Synthitar" on Kasma SF

2011-04-19T06:44:00.000-07:00

My story "Fulghum's Synthitar" got reprinted again, this time on a relatively new, Ottawa-based SF site that actually pays. There are no new edits to the story, but for those who missed it or want a good re/read, do check it out.

The "Bad Ideas" Contest at Ottawa U

2011-04-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

Two years ago I blogged about the faults of the University of Ottawa’s “Good Ideas” Contest, and about the idea I submitted in facetious attempt to topple the whole thing. (See “Social Experiment 2: Flinging Shit into my University’s Cyberspace” and its sequel.) This year, I decided to submit again, but a serious idea. Well, not any more serious than the previous, but something that I actually thought might win.

Alas, this has not happened. I won’t bother describing the ideas that did win. Some are all right, and most won’t be implemented anyway, but suffice it to say that none of the ideas target student health issues as mine did, and what’s worse, three of the ten ideas appear to be more or less the same: “Mini Art Shows,” a “Semaine des art et des talents etudiants,” and “Student Art Showcase.” One would think that an idea to encourage student health on campus would make it into this list — instead of at least one of the three campus art-related ideas!

Then again, my idea involved pointing out something wrong with the university. Evidently, they want innocent innovations that improve for the sake of improving, not innovations that call attention to and address actual problems or absences. To endorse my idea would have been to publicize one of the university’s points of neglect.

Now, I cannot remember whether the university acquires the complete rights for your idea upon submission, or upon selection, but my blogs from two years ago seem to say it was the former (back then, at least; but I can’t see why this would have changed — unless someone submitted a “Good Idea” to change it). If so, then it seems that the university could just as well consider and even implement my idea (“their” idea, now) without either having to (1) reward me for my intellectual production (i.e., actually “purchase” the rights to my idea — each “Good Ideas” winner receives $500), or (2) publicize the idea and therefore the points of neglect it calls attention to. In other words, the way the “Good Ideas” Contest is structured is such that the best ideas, the ideas that actually address shortages and points of neglect on the university’s part, have no reason to be rewarded or recognized. (What irony for an institution designed to provide incentives for intellectual production.) Why publicize these ideas, which draw attention to the university’s faults, when the university can anyway do with them what it will?

It is not that such ideas are intended solely to point out the university’s faults; it’s merely that, in order to suggest an improvement to faults, they must first suggest that these faults exist. Evidently, in the case of the subject of my idea (hygiene), the university (via its puppet student adjudication committee) was unwilling to contradict its shiny, air-brushed public image as a pristine and cleanly place of learning.

Well, consider for yourself. Here is my idea, which it may be now illegal for me to publish if it is, in fact, no longer my property:

uOttawa needs to make its computer and study stations hygenic. Research has shown the computer keyboard and mouse to be among the filthiest surfaces in the office and home, containing five times the germs of a toilet seat. Among the microbes: dangerous bacteria such as E. coli. [We only had 200 or 250 words, so it was somewhat difficult to include citations, but I think this research has been publicized enough that most people have by now heard something of it.] One can imagine, then, how much bacteria a PUBLIC computer terminal might contain. With uOttawa’s keyboards and mice, imagining isn’t difficult: you can see and feel for yourself the grease and grime, the particles of dirt, hair, dust, skin. [Anyone who has used Ottawa U's computers knows that this is no exaggeration.]

According to a BBC article—from 2004!—the problem’s not just keyboards, but work stations as a whole (desk, phone, etc.), which “contain nearly 400 times as many microbes [as] lavatories.” Students spend a lot more time at computers and study desks than they do in bathrooms. Why not enforce the same standards of cleanliness for work stations as we do for bathrooms?

There’s a feasible solution: (1) Include in our custodians’ duties the cleaning and/or inspection of keyboards, mice, and study desks; (2) Place near every cluster of computers cleaning spray or wipes, with which every user would be obligated to clean his/her keyboard and mouse after use—much in the same way as s/he would a machine at our gym; (3) Mount instructive signs or warning labels near computer stations.

Otherwise, with computers so integral to student life, we are harbouring an unnecessary, disgusting health hazard. Our lavatories are cleaned every day. Have our greasy keyboards EVER, even once, been cleaned?

Ottawa Arts Review 5.1 Launch

2011-03-23T18:59:00.000-07:00

The Ottawa Arts Review (OAR), the small literary and visual arts journal run out of the University of Ottawa, is launching its new issue tomorrow at the campus bar 1848 at 5:30pm.

I have been serving as the associate editor for the journal since October (although this is not reflected on our website; some staffing issues have delayed our updating it) and so this is my first issue with the review. It is also my first editorial publication of any kind. The issue does, however, also feature an 8-page essay of mine. It's a fairly hardcore yet entertaining critical "Re/view" of a forthcoming debut book of poetry, Until You Make the Shore by Cameron Conaway.

As I've said, the OAR website isn't updated, but you can find submission guidelines and so on, and contact information if you're interested in ordering a copy. Or, if you happen to be in Ottawa, you can come out for the launch or pick up your copy at some other time.

Anyway, it's all quite exciting.

New Story Published: "Floracide"

2011-01-16T16:19:00.000-08:00

My story "Floracide" has finally been published, in Leading Edge, issue #60: "Floracide". Yes, I'm overjoyed to say that the editors have chosen mine as the title story! Behold the awesome illustration on the front cover. There are also more illustrations in the issue itself.

As far as I know it's only available for order from the website, but the issue is going for cheap and the story is reasonably long, about three times as long as the one from Tesseracts. Also, of course, there are four other stories in the issue. I'm looking forward to reading them (I haven't yet received my contributor's copies), particularly the one by the name of "Cryonic Sushi."

I wrote the first draft of this story over three years ago and submitted it (a later draft) to Leading Edge almost two years ago. There would be many major revisions to follow, and I would like to acknowledge those who read and critiqued the story and influenced its development: Dan (kingmonkey), Graeme, Bill (then "Kyle," now "Jack"), Rick, Stephanie, Dad, and most of all the editors at Leading Edge.

Etymologically Misreading a Movie Magazine Cover

2010-09-27T17:57:00.000-07:00

Front-cover graphics that partially obscure the text of a magazine or newspaper's unabashedly widely-recognizable title have always somewhat amused me. Right now on my family room floor there's an issue of Famous -- the ad-powered mag they dish out in buckets at movie theatres -- with Sylvester Stallone on the cover. His botoxed face, courtesy of graphic design, has taken the place of the "a" and the first camel-hump, as it were, of the adjacent "m," so that the magazine no longer reads "F-a-m-o-u-s" but "F-[Sylvester Stallone's botoxed face]-n-o-u-s." "Nous" is the Greek root meaning "thought," or "mind"; as in the word "paranoia." In French, nous is the plural first-person pronoun: "we." Transposed into the sound system of English, the word might be phonetically rendered "noose." So there we have it, a working definition of Fame, defaming itself within itself; Fame: the noose of the collective mind. Stallone, however hard he and his graphic designer are trying to photoshop him into a transcendent-Derridean fantasy of hors-texte, must remain no more than a grapheme trapped within and grounded by that very word, famous, literally contributing to its spelling, its definition. He is, in other words, the "a" and the "half-m" of the word, jammed between the noose of the collective on one hand, and the "F" of the "F-word" on the other. He is Tennyson's Odysseus, only older, getting Fucked by his own I-deal. He is, in short, the face of Famous.

Poet, Seeking Corporate Sponsorship

2010-06-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

Mr. _____:

I am a poet seeking sponsorship for a sonnet I plan to submit to a contest organized by Geist, Canada’s most widely read literary magazine. The first, second, and third best poems will see publication — both online and possibly in print — and receive respective rewards of $500, $250, and $125 (CAN). I am offering advertising space to companies whose brand names were favourably suggested by my poem’s rhyme and prosody, and whose incorporation might compliment both poem and ad-poem.

Thus, your company’s potential slogan “Have a Bud Light” would locate in close proximity with the words “might” and “bite,” or “white” and “night”. As you can see, the former pair is quite well-suited to your product’s image. You will thus be pleased to know that the poem elsewhere features a drinking/swallowing metaphor.

Your patronage would be safely conditional, based on the poem’s sale price (if the poem is not bought, Budweiser Inc. pays nothing), which will determine the monetary value of the poem on a per-syllable basis. Thus, a poem containing 208 syllables (mine’s projected length), might be bought by the magazine for $500 (first prize), or in poet’s terms, $2.40/syllable. It is this same rate I am offering advertisers such as yourself, albeit modestly inflated — by a factor of 10 per stressed syllable, 5 per unstressed syllable. Thus, a slogan such as “Drink Bud Light,” containing three stressed syllables ($24.00 each), could make its way into the poem for as little as $72.00.* We also offer syllables in upper-case letters, at only double the per-syllable rate**, and possibly (the publisher has still to confirm this) in coloured fonts as well, or as text-embedded logos.

While I prefer slogans of 2-8 syllables, I do consider longer lengths (meter and Muse permitting). For more details, please review my terms and contract, enclosed — and, of course, the poem itself. I look forward to hearing from you. I would love to accomodate your message.

Sincerely,

K___ K___

*Syllabic stress to be determined by traditional poetic measurement systems, not linguistic theory.

**Unstressed syllables, if capitalized, are charged as if both stressed and capitalized.

Roger Ebert is a Douche

2010-04-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

The movie Kick-Ass is all the rage right now -- and for good reason! The reactions can be summarized as follows:

Negative: The conservative moralist argument: Amoral glorification of child abuse and violence.

Positive: The action-movie argument: Amoral glorification of child abuse and violence. Whoo!

Positive: The liberal argument: Satire of culture's amoral glorification of child abuse and violence.

Negative: The artistically sophisticated liberal moralist it’s-just-an-average-popcorn-flick argument: Amoral glorification of child abuse and violence masquerading as sophisticated satire of culture's amoral glorification of child abuse and violence.

The metacritical argument (mine): Satire masquerading as an amoral glorification of child abuse and violence masquerading as a sophisticated satire of culture's amoral glorification of child abuse and violence.

A main pivot of critical contention is that the film sells itself as “realistic” but by the ending jet-pack sequence has become as fantastical as every other superhero story that it seems to be placing itself in opposition to. According to groups 1 and 4, the film’s realistic elements thus only serve to lend validation to the violent fantasy with which they are indifferently blended, whereas a film like Spiderman, employing more “explicitly” fantastical elements in both plot (radioactive spider-bite giving super-human powers) and style (lots of CGI, little to no blood) seemingly draws a clear line from the get-go, with the “realistic”, human elements tossed in "only" to hold the thing together. Such an argument, however, must assume of the film exactly what it seeks to dismantle: that the film is, in fact, to some extent “realistic.”

In fact, the film is never any such thing. This is because the film’s “realism” is produced not in imitation of a real world but in counter-imitation of a fantasy world. Superhero movies present caricatures, and this movie caricatures those caricatures: the result does not equal reality. The opposite, or caricature, of fantasy, equals quite simply an opposite-of-fantasy. The fantasy-realism binary is not the only binary on which fantasy is poled.

The refreshing “realism” of the movie is thus refreshing precisely because it in itself constitutes fantastical escapism—from a reality whose basis is pure fantasy. This fantasy-based world, the film suggests, is not just the caricatured superhero world that it, in turn, is caricaturing, but our own world—the society that will prioritize the hottest YouTube image over what's happening downstairs; the society that glorifies, and thence all too greedily creates a new capital market for, the coolness of an amateur superhero’s deed and not the deed itself; the society that bases its own reality on such fantasies.

What the film satirizes, therefore, is our own assumptions about distinctions between realism and fantasy—such assumptions, in other words, displayed by the film’s critics. It is these assumptions that are fantastical.

Jeffrey Westhoff calls Kick-Ass “a movie that collapses under the weight of competing themes and subplots” and involving “too many ideas and comedy disciplines.” Its “ideas”, Westhoff goes on, do not “coexist gracefully”—as though the film were obligated to make clear distinctions between reality and fantasy, one genre and another genre, when the fragmented society and mish-mash everyday life from which it derives itself do no such thing. Hit-Girl’s “character should exist to disturb,” he claims, not noticing that the disturbing part might be that “disturb” is not all she does. He accuses director Matthew Vaughn of being unable to “decide if Hit-Girl’s gory rampages are supposed to be

horrifying or funny or cool” (again, as if they must be solely one thing or the other) when it is clearly he, the critic—and our culture, as the very presence of such ambiguity would suggest—that cannot decide.

Another example is one critic’s assessment that “Kick-Ass isn’t terribly good, nor terribly fun, nor terribly anything - not even terribly violent… If Kick-Ass were genuinely outrageous, that would be something, at least; but by and large, it’s just effing dull,” again seeming to say that if it’s not “terribly” something, if it’s not “outrageous”, if it’s not distinctively not reality, then it’s nothing. (Although the movie is, of course, all of these things. If this movie is “effing dull,” one must wonder what kind of cloying fantasies would meet this reviewer’s fancy.) He goes on to say that “There are plenty of opportunities for the film to make some sort of commentary on a number of subjects: it notices, but does not care, that Dave is almost more infatuated with his status as an online celebrity than with stopping crime, and it sure does seem at a number of points that it’s going to be about the real-world effects of fantasy violence. But instead of any thematic nieceties…Kick-Ass just wants to focus on action and dazzlement.” Ironically, this seems as much an accurate assessment of our society as of the film (“it notices, but does not care,” wants only “action and dazzlement”). Seeing as the film provoked such observations, what might that suggest of the film?

Many of these critics themselves, no doubt, after seeing the film, or disengaging from the virtual reality of their word-processors, returned home to find their son or daughter playing the very videogames to which Roger Ebert compares the film’s treatment of violence, or subjecting themselves to their fourth hour of bombardment from the fantasy images of a television or computer screen. (As for Roger Ebert’s comment, his website happens to bear a banner-ad for a kung-fu MMO game.)

Thus, isn’t the film’s irony that, as a mish-mash of themes, genres, and realism and fantasy, the film better reflects the nature of our reality and everyday life than the clear divisions critics would opt to impose? The very proof of this is that we can walk into such a movie and walk out and then write a very eloquent paragraph about it and life continues and it all doesn't really matter. As the movie frequently reminds us, it is we, the viewers, who are complacent; we, the viewers, who create in our assumed distinctions between reality and fantasy the "disconnect", as Westhoff accuses, when in fact there is, or should be, none. An 11-year-old girl massacring a bunch of drug dealers is shocking only if one still holds the delusion that such fantasies are not part of our everyday reality, where images reign supreme. What is really so much more shocking or amoral about an 11-year-old doing it than any other virtual hero? The fact that we find it so only testifies to the extent of our desensitization. That's what it takes for you to react?

"This isn't comic violence," Ebert writes. "These men [that Hit-Girl kills], and many others in the film, are really stone-cold dead. And the 11-year-old apparently experiences no emotions about this."

No, she does not -- not anymore than the 11-year-old watching the film might. Well, that's not true; she does feel emotions -- hatred and amusement are emotions, and it seems her hatred for these drug-dealers is well-founded. But Ebert's point seems to be that it is better for 11-year-olds to feel emotions towards something that isn't in any way realistic -- something like Spiderman, where "bad guys" get thrown across a room but don't bleed or you don't see them die, and where the human relationship elements seem calculated by a committee -- than to feel no emotions towards something vaguely realistic. It's not that I completely disagree with this conviction, but isn't the former cartooning of emotions exactly what is responsible for the latter absence?

Ebert and the other critics seem to be arguing that cartoonism and realism should be kept separate. Such an argument, however, supports the very ideology that raised the generation that could think to produce a film like this. Ebert thinks that violence should be "comic" -- as in "cartoon." But when all the violence you're shown is cartoon, when all you're taught is that bad guys are bad guys, what does that do to real violence? This is what these critics are arguing against -- that Kick-Ass is amoral in its failure to draw distinctions between reality and cartoon -- but they fail to realize that it is that very failure to distinguish that better reflects, and thus better calls attention to, the nature of our reality. Whereas drawing distinctions like they do is what fragmented that reality in the first place. For what these critics are really saying is that a proper 11-year-old girl -- a proper childhood -- ought to be staying home and experiencing this violence on the TV, videogame console, or movie theatre, not in real-life. In so doing, they the critics are the ones escaping into a fantasy where such juvenile distinctions still exist.

As William Wordsworth in 1816 said of Robert Burns' amoral tale about a drunk, "Who, but some impenetrable dunce or narrow-minded puritan in works of art, ever read without delight the picture which he has drawn...?" Such is my view of Kick-Ass. This is an incredibly enjoyable film. Remove the pendant's ruler from your moral ass and go revel in it. You'll be as happy as a pig in shit.

Reforgetting the Antonyms of War

2009-11-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

We maintain a mostly narrow definition of war. "War" generally means two or more types of people marching off to go shoot each other, both dressed up and schooled for that precise purpose. War means planes and tanks and submarines bombing cities and other siege engines in far away places. It's all very official: it's not war until people are getting shot or blown up with only the most explicit kinds of weapons, and in the most Hollywooden of ways. "War" thus defines a very specific kind of destruction -- a very specific kind of "war". For that reason, the word "war" itself gets wielded like a weapon.

I suppose there's enough "war" going around without our broadening the word's definition. But the point is that defining war as only something immediate and explicit means that we totally ignore its longer, vaster chains and networks of causes. "War" and its associated terms -- soldiers, weapons, POWs -- become only what we, or more precisely our culture and politicians, define it as. How appropriate, then, that "war" comes from the old Germanic verwirrren, which means "to confuse, perplex", as it is this very word "war" that is perplexing, and that is used to perplex.

A new study from Transportation of America is saying that 5,000 pedestrians and cyclists die each year getting hit by automobiles in the U.S. Not only is this number higher than the total U.S. casualties in the current Iraq War, but it is higher than the number of casualties in the event that supposedly lead to the Iraq War. And it is annual. Thus in the span of 6 years since the onset of the war, approx. 30,000 people have died in the U.S. in what I will term "benign automobile warfare". And this is just pedestrians struck by cars. (I need not mention the number of people who die in car accidents annually.) What is especially ironic about this, though, is that part of the reason the U.S. is occupying Iraq because of oil. Oil is the blood the U.S. needs in order to sustain its population of cars.

Given this knowledge -- and I'm sure one could write a much more detailed, convincing study -- could we not define automobiles as insidious Trojan horses sold to us from the Japanese, Germans, and our own local, immigrant-powered manufacturers? This sounds like a conspiracy theory, and I am saying it somewhat humorously, but given the statistics, it's perfectly reasonable that cars could be defined as "weapons" of a "war". In fact, it wasn't so long ago that a similarily difficult-to-pinpoint source of war was declared war upon: "We are declaring a war on terror," Bush II said.

(How can you declare war on an emotion?)

But seriously, anyone with a driver's license knows that there are "terrorists" on the roads -- in fact, I believe that is a descriptor my mother frequently uses. Recently in my city, talking on cell phones while driving was banned. In other words, cell phones were seen as a weapon contributing to the "mass destruction" of drivers!

And, by the way, where are we driving to when we're in our cars? We go to work, and what happens there? Nothing, supposedly. We go there, exchange labour for payment, then come home and forget about that second life and watch some form of tube, or talk about how war is bad. Meanwhile, our work has just contributed to the economy that is driving the wars, and when we're sitting around in our house we're not just sitting around eating supper -- we're paying for that supper, paying property taxes, utilities, the cable company -- and all this, this whole process, is part of the concept of "war" that we think we know: the bullet leaving the soldier's gun is only the last link in the chain. The person who works in the weapon factory is not the only contributor to a war. What of the food factory, feeding that worker? All these factories combine into one gigantic war factory that we call "society", and it is brimming with "war". We are all "soldiers".

We conceptualize war in a similar way as we conceptualize death -- as a sudden, ex nihilo event, even though it is really every moment of life which equally represents a moment of death, and every lifestyle decision we make, right down to the food we eat, that is contributing in some way to that death. We can see how the former definition of death is rather useless, especially to someone trying to avert certain kinds of death -- such as war.

What if Obama said tomorrow, "We are declaring war on cars, because they've murdered 5,000 American people this year." Would our definition of "war" not be changed? How is that different from Bush II's statement: "We are declaring war on terror, because terror just murdered 3,000 American people today." The difference is largely time span.

I am reminded of the famous Family Guy line: "Cigarettes murdered my father and raped my mother." Cigarettes could be another example. In fact, I remember making a short video back in high school that compared death tolls in wars to the total death tolls of cigarettes; it made, I now realize, a similar point.

Undoubtedly there are dozens of other death-toll statistics available that I could list off, and it would all be very nice to look at perhaps. But in the end we would only have numbers, and really, what does 3,000 or 5,000 mean? They are both simply symbols on a page, the signifiers of some abstract unknown. Whatever we think war is about, it is evidently not about casualty statistics.

So let us now bow our heads in silence, and remember the soldiers who died smoking tobacco and driving cars, who died from medical errors and improperly tested products, who died eating KFC. Let us now bow our heads in silence for the soldiers of futility. Yes, let us silence our tongues -- and close our eyes, too. Close your ears and listen to the silence of truth. I declare war not on war itself -- I don't know what that is. I declare war on the word, for they have declared war on the non-event. War is eventual.

FanExpo Photos

2009-09-04T09:59:00.000-07:00

Photos of the author at the FanExpo Festival of Fear, courtesy of Nancy Kilpatrick.

Tesseracts Thirteen Now In Stores

2009-08-31T13:37:00.001-07:00

Tesseracts Thirteen, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and David Morrell, is now available in stores. The official release date is a couple weeks from now, but it has for a week now been in stock in stores across Canada. It will probably be located in the Fantasy or Horror sections, or fantasy/sci-fi anthologies sub-section.

I just got back from the awesome Fan Expo in Toronto, where I saw the book. Unfortunately the publisher didn't end up getting a booth there, but the co-editor Nancy Kilpatrick was there doing a panel discussion on vampires and doing some mild promoting of the book. I am still debating going back to Toronto for a day in the near future for the official release party.

Review of Tesseracts 13 and Pics from WorldCon

2009-08-14T15:53:00.001-07:00

I was busy fulfilling the role of egotistic writer by googling my name (actually, I was looking to see if the new site for "Fulghum's Synthitar" would be picked up - it was not) when I came across some more tidbits regarding the Tesseracts 13 anthology. I found the blog of one contributing author who took some pictures of the promo event at Montreal's WorldCon this past weekend that I missed, and then through Bev Vincent's website got linked to an early review of the book, it would seem, one in which I am pleased to say my contribution ("An Abandoned Baby Carriage") was briefly but positively touched upon.

For the review, see http://wrfrbeameup.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-tesseracts-13.html.

For pics from the WorldCon promo, see http://davidnickle.blogspot.com/2009/08/au-revoir-montreal.html

Fulghum's Synthitar #2

2009-08-07T10:51:00.001-07:00

Behold! A story republished on another, even less flattering website:

http://abandonedtowers.com/blog/fulghums-synthitar-by-kevin-v-kvas/

So, in case you missed it the first time, you can now read it somewhere else on the Web. (It's actually still on the other site too). True fans can compare versions and pick out the revisions and -- some completely new passages! Wow!

August Writing Update

2009-08-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

I have been named recipient of another prize for unpublished writing. I won't name the prize, as the public announcement has not yet been made, but suffice to say I will receive $500 and, to my understanding, an unbelievable number of books. This for an esoteric piece of literary criticism composed originally for a course last semester. The judges offered the most astounding approbation, saying, among other things, that the piece constituted a truly valuable contribution to general literary discourse.

In other news, it looks like I won't be attending any of my publisher's convention booths. I've arranged to go to Toronto this month for Fan Expo, but I just received word that the publisher didn't get enough confirmation from authors to justify setting up a booth. I suppose there's still a possibility I could go to Toronto again in September for the official release party, but I don't think it would be much to my benefit.

Lastly, my story "Fulghum's Synthitar," which was published on Cezanne's Carrot last December, will be making appearance in another e-zine in the near future.

A Kiss Succumbs to Censorship

2009-07-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

Some short time ago, I composed a little number of the unlikely title "Bruce Wayne is My Sister Dressed in a Co-Signed Sweater Composed of a Toothache Showerdrain-Hair Nirvana PipeQuest." The "Sister" of said post is departing the country in a couple days and has asked the post now be removed for the reason that her departure would appear to nullify the post's argument, among other things. I have decided to comply, and will remove the post on Sunday, July 5. Consider this a last call for interested readers. However, after the post's removal, I will gladly provide the literature by email to any interested parties for a fee of $0.00 (US).

How My Girlfriend Killed and Resurrected Michael Jackson

2009-06-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend was helping clean my room today when she received a phone call from her sister. Gasping, my girlfriend relayed the message, "Kevin, oh my god, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson just died!"

"Michael Jackson? Who's Ferra Faucet?"

"The girl from Charlie's Angels. Well, she'd been struggling with cancer for a while. But Michael Jackson! How did he die?" she asked her sister.

"Probably his face caved in," said I.

"Ooh," she continued into the phone, "it's giving me chills thinking about it."

I made a spooky sound and started singing the chorus of "Thriller."

As it turned out, of course, Michael Jackson died from cardiac arrest. But that's not the point. The question is, why did this news so surprise us? Why did we care?

I really wouldn't say "care" is the word to describe my own sentiment, but in a sense it's appropriate. Even though I prefer to distance myself from pop culture (or do my best to delude myself), I can't feign total indifference. Jackson's "ripe" age of fifty is not excuse enough for my surprise, though. I think my girlfriend, were she more particular in her analysis of the situation, would have qualified Jackson's death (as a result of his stressful life, and dependence on plastic surgeons and who-knows-how-many drugs) in the same manner as she did Fawcett's: "Well, he'd been struggling with himself for a while." Yes -- Jackson was certainly not "well", that we cannot deny (this un-wellness was at least half of his never-ending allure). Nevertheless, some part of me, if even but a small thrill-based part inevitable of this media-powered culture, did care -- probably not for Michael Jackson himself, of course, but for the news. I "enjoyed" the news -- not in a sadistic sense, but in the "ooh, news!" sense: the sense in which we're all guilty of enjoying news. This is no crime: news is news, not the people it represents. It is virtual, and most of its content, like popstars and homicides and wars in Iraq, never exist to us beyond those virtual media within our lifetimes. That is why Michael Jackson is not dead.

I have never met Michael Jackson, nor even seen him "live" and "in person" (not that either experience would have done much to make him more "real" to me); I have only met him virtually. I have met his music, his iconography, and undoubtedly, his indelible mark on culture. In short, I am well-acquainted with all the parts of him that will not die; the parts for which he has always been, and will remain, best known. His physical death...so what? I think you'd agree it would be much more shocking to learn that all of his records (not just his music albums, but literally all records of him) had suddenly disappeared off the face of the planet. Of course, in such a scenario this news would be hypothetically impossible to learn, for the scenario would mean that my memories of him would disappear as well. "Michael Jackson is dead"...what does that mean when he's still moonwalking in all of our heads, where he's always lived best?

A moment ago, my girlfriend, who was watching Access Hollywood (or some such drivel), which was covering the Farrah Fawcett story, said, "Oh, maybe he didn't actually die. There's nothing about him."

Suddenly Michael Jackson was alive again, come back from the dead like one of his own dancing zombies (what spooky foreshadowing that music video was!). But then she changed the channel to the news:

"Oh, look, he is dead."

Et voila -- "Michael Jackson" was dead all over again! With a word, the news anchor murdered the body of Michael Jackson, and with another word, my girlfriend put him back in the grave again for me -- that is, with 100% certainty.

But "killed" who or what, exactly? As I've been saying, a small aspect thereof, obviously. This is extremely ironic, because Jackson's physical body is one of the biggest icons by which we know him, of course, but the continued existence of this actual body (oh, by the way, which body? Michael has enjoyed several.) has little to do with its continued existence in actuality. The millions of images of Jackson, both visual and auditory, and the millions of copies of each of those images, ensure that Jackson -- barring a geological passage of time, a strange international totalitarianism, or global destruction -- will, for all practical purposes, never "die." You can say that Michael Jackson, just as everyone does, had a personal side that no one ever completely knew, or ever will know -- so yes, that part, like his mortal physical body, is dead. But the Michael Jackson as we knew him is, after all, how he was best known, as that is how the majority of people knew him. The only person who knew Jackson's "actual" "self" was Jackson himself, and to some extent the relatively few people who "really" knew him. Thus the "majority" of what Michael Jackson was is still alive and well -- better than ever, even. (This death will market many posthumous albums, books, tribute acts, and biopics, spreading Michael even further, and earning many people lots of money at the same time.) In the years of tomorrow, you and I will listen to Michael Jackson, watch Michael Jackson, and talk about Michael Jackson in much the same manner as we did when he was still alive. People will make money off him in much the same manner as they did. He is alive.

To mourn the death of Jackson's body now is as absurd as mourning the death of his African skin and facial features. (Oh wait, we did mourn it. We disapproved of it -- and disbelieved his claims of vitilligo. Was that what our disapproval was really about? Our disorienting disattachment from a familiar, more temporally consistent, "normally" classifiable identity?) Jackson's "body" has died several times before. All of ours do, actually. Old people mourn their younger bodies -- and go to many lengths to get them back. Many young people mourn their current bodies, envying celebrity bodies. Everyone laughs or cries at their old selves, beliefs, fashions. Celebrity bodies change in the same way, only in more extreme degrees -- botox, plastic surgery, face lifts, image changes. Of all celebrities, Michael Jackson simply stands as one of the most explicitly changing ones. His death, in a sense, is simply one last plastic surgery -- this is the absolution Jackson always sought. No more burden of body image, of melting nose. At best, Jackson is in the Roman Catholic Heaven right now, dancing up a storm and screwing all the altar boys he wants. At worst, he's still alive down here as a billion images -- and that's much more than any of us will ever achieve, despite our fancies. If we sympathize him, we do so as we do a character in a work of fiction, not a real human being. He is an image, always has been foremost -- let him remain so. Surely that is why his death is, like Elvis Presley's (who "lives" as well), so "shocking", so "hard to believe." Because all you've ever done is "believe" in him. He is not dead in your mind -- not by far -- and that is where he has always lived.

In conclusion, I'll leave you to ponder the following riddle: Where (and what) is Osama bin Laden?

Chilling Tales Forthcoming this Fall!

2009-06-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

"My book" (as I like to say) is coming out this September. It's called Tesseracts Thirteen, the fourteenth volume (it's Quebec's fault for that) in Tesseracts, a critically acclaimed series of Canadian horror anthologies. You can now check out the cover of the book and my name listing.

Apparently, world-famous authors Margaret Atwood and William Gibson have published in the series before. To name-drop some more, one of the editors who lovingly selected my story is David Morrell, New York Times bestselling thriller author and creator of the character Rambo. The other editor is Nancy Kilpatrick, who writes a wide range of things, from nonfiction to vampire stories to errotica to vampire errotica.

I've been invited to read exerpts from my story and sign copies at the publisher's booth at the World Fantasy & Science Fiction Convention, which is being held in Montreal this year in August. Unfortunately, as far as I know the convention only offers passes for its whole five days, meaning that, in addition to my transportation costs and the price for a five-day convention pass, I would need to pay for five nights of room and board (to make my convention pass worth while). That said, the modest monetary payment I am receiving for my contribution hardly justifies my attending the convention, even if for the networking experience. If I had a completed science fiction novel to try to sell to a publisher while I was there maybe it would be worth it, but I don't.

If I'm not mistaken, the book will be available in stores sometime in September for the average price of a paperback. Otherwise, it can be ordered (or pre-ordered) online, from the publisher's website or elsewhere. Unfortunately, I cannot get anyone a good deal or anything on the book as I myself will receive but one contributor's copy.

My Television-Show Reality Minus Reality

2009-06-07T13:38:00.000-07:00

The recent talk of the "look-how-many-kids-they-made" reality TV show Jon & Kate Plus 8's metamorphosis into Jon & Kate Plus h8 due to some rumours about Jon's infidelity, has gotten me thinking. There's a joke running, of course, about the possibility of the show turning into two spin-offs, John Plus 4 and Kate Plus 4, which could mean even more money for TLC if the millions of viewers are as in love with the eight Gosselin children as they appear to be. But this is just one of many possibilities! If the producers succeed in bringing Jon and Kate to divorce (after drawing the possibility out suspensefully for a strategically lucrative time--say, a season or so), then before we even get to John Plus 4 and Kate Plus 4, why not document their divorce trial and custody battle? TLC could establish a partnership with the networks of such already well-watched shows as Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown or any of the hundred other TV judges--thus simultaneously expanding their market base. To make the legal battle even more interesting, the producers could coerce Jon and Kate into deciding some of their legal issues via American Gladiator-type competitions. Then, following the outcome of these divorce proceedings, in addition to the two spin-offs, both spouses would, of course, suffer breakdowns. Jon would turn to cocaine--and thus eventually require the sophisticated aid of an Intervention-like show. (Though in reality, John's reasons for turning to Intervention, among other reality television shows, will have been to finance his reality-induced cocaine addiction, but the producers will edit that part out--at least until Jon starts falling in ratings.) Meanwhile, Kate will suffer a mental breakdown. The doctor on a medical reality TV show will prescribe Kate three weeks of day-time talkshow appearances--one week with Oprah, following one week each with Montel and Dr. Phil.

After recovering from their breakdowns, both Jon and Kate will then each appear on Extreme Makeover in preparation for their forthcoming respective bachelor and bachelorette series (because clearly the cure for post-divorce and post-drug loneliness is a new spouse). These shows will run for a while and include some celebrity contestants to keep the ratings ridiculous. For Jon, however, the producers will be sure to select only fertility-challenged women undergoing fertility treatment. That way, when Jon and the women of his choice (Jon recently converted to orthodox Mormonism and had a guest role on Little Mosque on the Prairie; he is allowed to--and will--select more than one woman as his wife) at last get around to having sex, the women (following dramatic stroboscopic shots of the many snapping condoms) are each sure to bear him more sets of multiples--thus ensuring that neither he, nor his scores of public-offered children, will ever go hungry again. This all angers Kate, of course, who suddenly finds herself out of the spotlight and losing money fast despite having married a celebrity, many royalties from syndicated reruns of John & Kate Plus 8, and, with her team of ghostwriters, having been putting out a bestselling self-help book/memoir every month. She is about to kill herself when the phone starts ringing off the hook--hundreds of filmmakers want to negotiate the biopic movie rights! There's no way she'll kill herself now and leave Jon to get all of the pie!

I'll stop my story there to increase your chances of buying the sequel...which will be called...The Future--where the "reality" beyond television is just another boring channel to skip over, and we plug ourselves in for hours to charge our emptiness....

Bruce Wayne is My Sister Dressed in a Co-Signed Sweater Composed of a Toothache Showerdrain-Hair Nirvana PipeQuest

2009-05-21T21:02:00.000-07:00

CENSORED!

Intermissive Filler for an Intermittent Blog: Writer's Updates and Videogame Art

2009-05-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I suppose it's that time of the month; I'm sorry it hasn't amounted to a higher frequency as of recent...not because I'm mysoginistic (I hate men and women equally), but because I would rather not have to resort to comparing my blogging to the ejecta of the uterus, even if it isn't the tip-toppest of my writing. I've been busy this past month, in April with matters academic, and of recent, of course, with a number of writing projects in all levels of completion--outlining, writing, editing, submitting--as well as freelance videography work.

This month I'm working on, of all things, a zombie story for an anthology whose submission deadline is a month from now. The theme of the anthology is the Mayan prediction of the end of the world in 2012. Don't get the wrong idea; my zombie story is like no zombie story you've ever read, and my integration of the Mayan theme is also not what the editor is expecting--hopefully he'll like it. The anthology is accepting one novella-length story, which my story might end up being, in which case it would be cool to get such a long work published, but since they're only accepting one, of course I'd be up against tighter competition, so depending on how long it turns out to be, I'll have to make a decision whether to cut it down to novelette-length or keep it as a novella. It doesn't really matter; I'll follow where my writing takes me, and if it doesn't find a home here, it will still be a good story for somewhere else. Anyway, I can't reveal any actual details about my story--that's the absurd reality of writing about writing on this blog, so I'll stop.

I actually have had a couple blog posts in the works, but they've turned out to be more complicated than I intended, so that is the real reason for the dryspell. They will either take some more work, or not find their way here. (I have a whole folder of unpublished or incomplete blog writings. Of course, I have a whole computer harddrive of unpublished writings.) In the meantime, I have compiled some old screenshots from Super Smash Bros Brawl, as a reminder of the times when I could play Wii without feeling anxious to be productive. Next post: What does that mean? To be "productive"?

So, a slideshow of videogame art: not my own, of course, just my angles, sort of like what we artists do with this "real" universe of ours. A few instances of genius...?

Another Life Wasted. With Honour, of course.

2009-04-15T21:09:00.000-07:00

Another Canadian soldier died in Afghanistan yesterday -- a twenty-one-year-old girl, just two weeks into her term there. She died, according to officers and family, living out her dreams.

That, to me, is the saddest part. How is it that anyone comes to have such dreams?

If she knew she was going to be killed, I doubt she would have gone. If she had the choice between two more weeks of life and sixty more years of life, I'm sure she would've chosen the self-utilitarian option. What would the Canadian military have chosen?

It doesn't matter. The point is, she must've thought she would survive; that's why she went. She went looking for adventure; the recruitment propaganda is good at enforcing that. Were her dreams her own? She couldn't have known the real danger. If she knew, she wouldn't have been able to function.

I bet every soldier goes there thinking that it won't happen to him. Why else would he go there? Every soldier goes there for the adventure, and some misguided sense of justice and honour. By the time they get out of boot camp, that's been drilled into their heads for sure. When they're done training, not only are they itching for the real thing, they think they're servants of some divine purpose. If they don't think so, then they probably don't pass the psychological exam.

Of course, that's not to say they're not aware of the danger -- that's all part of the thrilling adventure part. As I said, the belief that they're working for the Greater Good fills in any gaps of doubt left by the sense of danger. But two weeks? Not much of an adventure.

The truth is, the adventure is only worthwhile if you come home afterward. They all believe they're coming home. They aren't going there just for the adventure, they're going for the memory of the adventure: they believe they will come back. How absurd. Every one is as liable as the next to what amounts to chance, like the roadside bomb that killed this girl. So sure, this girl died according to her dreams -- her misguided, manipulated dreams. She was dreaming, to be sure -- she couldn't have been awake, or entirely "sane." Even if these soldiers decide the chance of dying is worth the chance of surviving and having that memory of adventure, someone still must have put into their heads this illusory concept of the value of "honour" and "adventure".

This girl has died for nothing. She has wasted her life. Two weeks of service is nothing. And even a year of service -- what would that mean? Who would she be helping, and why, what for? The amount of deception and self-deception required for one to take on such a venture is staggering. Dreams indeed. Wow, her corpse is probably getting buried with a medal! She probably thought she'd go to Heaven, too.

Perhaps she should have heeded the words of Yossarian in Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22:

"Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.... The enemy...is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on, and that includes [the officers who send us to be killed]. And don't you forget that, because the longer you remember it, the longer you might live."

The next line reads, "But Clevinger did forget it, and now he was dead."

Kvass Writes $1000 Story

2009-04-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

Happiness arrived in the mail today in the form of money (actually, a notification of money credited to my account, but let's keep this dramatic) -- and from none other than the University! (Well, technically the award donor, but I think the big U did the judging. In any case, I suppose I forgive them now for in the past not realizing the worth of my writing.) I wrote a creative essay (it was supposed to be an essay but I made mine into a kind of fiction story) as application for a financial award, and have now been officially declared the sole undergraduate recipient -- of $1000! It was a 6000-word or 10-page essay, so that's almost $2/word, or $100/page -- by far the most I've earned at writing. That's actually almost as good as rates get in the publishing world -- you won't find the average novelist making that much. What's worth much more to me than the actual money, though, is the publishing credit: that I can now say in my cover letters to editors that I have won $1000 is a fact better than the $1000 itself.

Interestingly, what's more is that they are not publishing the essay (not buying the publishing rights). So I can now submit the story to a high-profile publication and, with the backing of this award, almost certainly get it published -- exposed -- and thus get paid for it yet again at another, likely professional, rate.

A good start to a new year of Kvass, I must say! They even want to photograph me! Me -- a recalcitrant drop-out! Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something... School is a good teat if you suck it the right way?

A Year in Kvass

2009-04-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

A kiss goodbye, Mr. Zero--A Kiss of Kvass is now one year old! To me, it feels like my own premature birthday; as I've looked back through this year of posts, I've realized both how much and how little I've changed, and that another year is gone away. And what a year it was. I've gotten my first three story acceptances--two minor (1, 2), one major (3)--and gone from a full-time university drop-out to a part-time university drop-out. I'm a more patient and meticulous, albeit more insane, writer/human-person. I suppose I haven't talked much about my musical interests on this blog, but my band has gone through some significant evolutions as well this year, and that's been important to me too. It's been a year of change: a year of good living, in short, as superficial as that sounds to me; a year of painful moulting in preparation for yet another. While this blog is a catalogue of nowhere near all of my thoughts (if I revealed everything, I would have to kill you), it is a catalogue nonetheless, and one I hope anyone who has followed this, faithfully or sporadically, has at least sporadically enjoyed or, more importantly, garnered something from.

The nature of the posts themselves have gone through a kind of evolution, perhaps sadly the most obvious one that I can see being a decrease in length or at least volume. Alas, that is the paradox of the writer's blog, which I outlined in one early post. Whenever there is a gap of significant size between blogs, it probably means I'm being more productive with my "actual" writing. In any case, the blog has been helpful to me--therapeutically. It is fun to just write without such a paranoid editorial eye, and about whatever I want to. One can get lost in one's own fiction at times...not to mention academic essays (I have a tendency to pursue overly original and complex theses and to get driven half-mad in the writing process). Even if very few people read the posts, as with any art that's not really what it's all about. I intend to continue this unique, if unpopular, blog.

So this is the tally: 63 posts in 52 weeks. I was aiming for at least a post a week or four per month, so even with the occasional big break between posts, I've averaged over once a week. Good show. I estimate at least 30,000 words have gone into this blog. That's a novella. Should I have instead been writing that?

Anyway, I've looked through the archives and picked out the 15 posts that might be called "the best", whether for their humour, insight, or whatever. In short, the ones I think are the most (objectively) enjoyable/interesting reads and perhaps warrant review. For anyone who missed some posts, or had forgotten about certain posts, or were just itching for a compilation like this, here is a list for you. In turn, I might ask, Which were your favourites (from this list or otherwise)? While I generally ignore people, you never know--your comments just might shape the future content.

April-May

1. The First Post: Vhat is Kvass?: On Dreams, Feces, and Alcohol

2. There is no such thing as Art

3. The Wonderful World of Rodent Removal

4. The Anatomy of an 'Expensive' Lifecheater

5. Adulthood: Such a Childish Notion

June-August

6. Imagine a World Where Theists Don't Believe in God, Atheists Are Religious, And Everything Tastes Like Chicken / Criticizing Scientology is Like Criticizing the Whole Natural Order of Things...and What Ever Do We Have Against That?

7. Goodbye, Mr. Nineteen

8. A Thief in the Night!

September-November

9. Blood, Snow, and Maple Syrup: Why Canada Needs A New Flag

10. A Pinball, Caught in Bureaucracy / Bureaucracy--again

11. The New Pyramid of Capitalism

12. In memoriam: one domesticated banana

December-March

13. Confessions of a Cancerstick Counterculturalist

14. Obamada!

15. Social Experiment #2: Flinging Shit into my University's Cyberspace

Cheers to another year of Kvass!

When you look into the self, the self stares back.

The Blogg Kisses Itself a New Nosejob

2009-04-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

What's this? The blogg has a sexy new banner and colour scheme! The moderator has actually made the webpage unique! No longer is A Kiss of Kvass only a generic template! A new frosty vessel for a dawning age of new, even bubbly-er kisses of Kvass!

View the original post!

Social Experiment #2 (Reprise)

2009-03-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I received an email from the university, inviting me to attend the 'Good Ideas' contest awards ceremony next Wednesday.

Alas, I don't think my idea (see my "Social Experiment #2") was among the chosen, as I probably would've received a personal email saying so. (Though, then again, maybe not.) Nonetheless, I would like to attend, to find more reasons to criticize the administration and see which dean-sucking, bloodmoney-deserving good ideas aren't going to be implemented this coming year. It's good to know what one is missing.

Some of last year's 'winners' included: poetry in the elevators, indoor gardens, making the U's website more user-friendly, free French lessons, improving the admin-biased student satisfaction survey (that's a good one), a "buddy" system for new students, and a free bike-share program. However, if you go to the university website, you will now find that most of these ideas are no longer listed--or rather, there is no direct link to them. (I had to run a search and look through the web cache to find the page again to get that list.) The site now instead lists in its '2008 winners' tab only the ideas that have actually been 'implemented'! Ah, ye clever admins!

Could my hateful suggestion have influenced this unusually rapid update of a section of the university's website? I wonder....

(Examples of how un-user-friendly the website remains: 1) A few weeks ago, while applying to a financial award for which I had been instructed to apply online, I was almost done filling out the online form when I realized it was for the 2006 award. The 2009 award was nowhere to be found. 2) Two years ago in "part 1" of my post-secondary experience, English students had to apply for a change of program in person. The website assured this was temporary, that soon the change-of-program application would be available to everyone. Last month, when I added a music minor to my degree, I had to do it in person. They said they'd have it done within a few days. I'm still waiting. 3) You have to navigate through about twenty pages on the website before getting to where you want to go, only to find that what you want is not there.)

Anyway, this touched-up list of the proudly 'implemented' projects from the 2008 ideas includes:

1) A "201" week. A frosh week for second year students, I suppose? In other words, another excuse to get drunk. You got the admin to support that? Bravo, I guess... (Though really it's organized by students, so I think the admin is just claiming credit. Besides, most students find excuses to get drunk every week, special events aside, so I don't see why this is an accomplishment.)

2) The free bike-share idea. This in my opinion is an idea that sounds good but will be largely ignored in practice or difficult to implement effectively, so I followed the link to find more info. Sure enough, there are a few layers of bureaucracy through which one must venture before acquiring membership; so that's the first disincentive. (See my posts, "A Pinball, Caught in Bureaucracy" and "Bureaucracy--again".) Second, you can get a bike only for a maximum of a day -- from 0730 to 2030 hrs. I understand the reason for this, and I suppose there are some situations in which one might nonetheless find this service useful (I suspect there are more recreational applications than useful ones, and "201" weeks come to mind), but being restricted to a day means that the service is useless to anyone who lives off campus and wants to bike to school. So there goes the program's claim to saving greenhouse gases. Since most people live off campus and travel a fair distance by bus to get to there and have to carry books, most people would not use this service. As for on-campus use, it doesn't make sense to walk to one of the bike-loan locations on the opposite side of campus simply so one can bike from class to class. In conclusion, the use seems restricted to those who live close to campus and want to bike home between classes, or those who want to go for a bike ride on the canal between classes. As I've said -- few.

3) Website enhancement. I've been through this already. The homepage has a fancier look now, but it's the same poor maintenance and navigation.

4) The free French lessons idea. The university brags, "[T]he Student Federation's Bilingualism Centre...has increased the number of drop-in discussion groups...." Okay, fine, but don't all subjects already have free tutoring sessions available? I get emails all the time about essay-writing tutors, philosophy tutors, and sometimes there's info right on course syllabi. This 'implementation' seems only to be making claims on what's already there.

5) Eco-friendly washrooms. Good job, but why did you need a student to tell you this? Isn't the province mandating this for big businesses anyway? And it's your water bill that's being saved.

All that said, unfortunately I cannot attend the awards ceremony. I was going to, but then one of my midterms (I suppose it's more of a three-quarter-term) was postponed till next week at the same time. Oh well. I won't be missing much.

On a related note, here is a very funny and true mock-commerical about "Honest Colleges": http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1812947

The True War on Terror That Obama Should Start

2009-03-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

You've seen my two Obama songs, and have either been passively entertained or offended or both. Someone criticizing Obama? He must be racist. Haw-Haw-Haw. This is funny! It therefore must not be serious! 'Tis but a light political tickle to my toes.

A bouncy melody, sarcastic vocal timbre, calculated syntax timed towards humour--all wielded by a physically unkempt poet--can mask the actual semantic lyrical content of a thing in the same way that a man's black skin can mask his presidency. The manner in which a man speaks, and the manner of that man himself, can trump what that man does or says.

Yep, sounds like prejudice. But that's the election process.

Tell me: Has the spectacle subsided yet? How many Obama fans know or care about what the messiah has been up to behind his American Idolish galavanting? Are we over the fact yet that his skin has a darker tinge to it and his hair and facial structure a uniqueness? Are we ready now to actually examine him as a person and politician?

The End of Racism?

There is a delicious irony in the claim that, as in Obama's own words, "Change has come to America." The change to which he is referring primarily, of course, is his race--or rather, he could not reasonably expect it to be interpreted otherwise by the general public, and given what he has done so far in his term, there's been no sign of any other "change." That's what made his campaign motto--"Change"--so attractive: to many of the Americans who voted for him, it delivered the simple message, "I'm black. You're black too; vote for me." The irony is this: to have voted for, or promoted, Obama simply for the colour of his skin, is just as "racist" as to have voted against him because of the colour of his skin. When race, for many voters, is the issue of the election, clearly "racism" is still an issue in America. If Obama has plans of addressing issues of racism in his country, they should involve more than the flaunting of his own existence, or else having a black president could very well mask the fact that there are still issues of racism that need to be addressed. The fact that a black man can get elected as president in the United States is not the triumph that people think it is.

Race is one of those paradoxical issues that seeks to become, through raising awareness in the social mind, the non-issue that it really is. Which is why when you set aside, as you should, Obama's race, and examine the concrete, reality-affecting actions he is taking, not just for the issue of racism, but for the economy (incidentally, the two issues are linked), you will unracistly see that his black mask of change and hope is nothing other than that: a mask.

The Many Masks of America

How easily do we fall for the illusion of change! The leader of the U.S. changes and suddenly we think things are different? Two parties and two presidents to choose from, and we call that "choice"?

The names "Democrat" and "Republican" are little more than formalities. For all intensive purposes, the U.S. is one party, divided nominally into two factions for the public's sake. The factions are designed, are meant, to work together. We are witnessing now how the term of the disreputable George W. Bush will complement Obama's. It's really illusory to think of Obama as a "new" president. He's just another layer added to the whole presidential line, a different mask for the public-pacifying puppet. Guess what: Obama bears all the same much-criticized federal branch-merging powers self-endowed by Bush. The States is the same paranoid place where the government can arrest anyone without reason. Obama comes to the stage with the public on his side, and the promise of change, but these are little more than new masks for what Bush, and Clinton before him (and another Bush before him), has already put into action. They both represent America -- and America has not changed. All this unprecedented love for the new leader is really nothing but love for George Bush--America--with a different mask. The whole election process, more than being for the sake of "democracy" and respecting the public's "choice", is a means of pacifying the public through the maintenance of that very ritual. In other words, the election process is a nice way to rebuild the public's love for its leader/country, the public's readiness to serve. The President changes costumes and suddenly the public is happy again, because they got to choose what costume the President put on. Under that costume, the ideologies of America remain the same.

There are still a thousand other minority groups in the States that would not be considered. A gay president would be truly surprising. An atheist President would be an achievement. A black president is simply...the same as a white president.

Racism, Prejudice as Economic Issues

Calling Obama, as in the words of my American Literature professor, "finally, the end of the American civil war," recalls to mind for me the debates about political correctness that abound in Canada during Christmas time--sorry, holiday time. Many people, government included, become very focused on whether Christmas Trees should be called "Holiday Trees" or whether it's okay to say "Merry Christmas" to a Sikh or "Happy Hanukkah" to a Muslim that they mask the truly devastating effects of unfair treatment of minority groups in the country: prejudiced job interviews, unequal pay, unequal opportunity.

I needn't tell you that in the U.S. the majority of people living in poverty are not white males. According to Social Science Quarterly, "Americans have the highest income inequality in the rich world and over the past 20-30 years...have experienced the greatest increase in income inequality...." So, let's gaze behind Obama's mask and examine his planned longterm economic bailout, estimated to cost $700 billion to $1 trillion, and see how it will address this inequality.

Plutocracy: Rule of the Rich

First of all, what does "economic bailout" really entail? Well, if you want to stimulate the economy, you have to get money moving again between the big businesses--the biggest money-movers, the largest economic constituents. Thus big business is where the majority of the bailout must go. If you allow the big businesses to die, then the system will basically go into a dark age, because it would take perhaps decades to re-establish a healthy growth and flow of goods.

So where does this bailout money come from? The taxpayers, of course. The short-term $70-billion stimulus package that Obama just initiated is designed to create more investment incentives for working families, such as tax cuts, so that the government can begin amassing the money for its longterm bailout of big business. In short, Obama is setting the people working to bailout the big businesses of the CEOs who, through their longterm dishonesty and greed, distorted market incentives (created a false perception of supply and demand) and toppled the whole economy. Obama is setting the poor people working so that they can remain poor and keep the rich rich. Obama is doing exactly what any other U.S. President would do: maintain the increasingly two-class system. The bonuses that Obama's now siphoning back from AIG employees are drops in the bucket. Sure, these millions in bonuses seem like a lot to us, but they are very little to U.S. government: reclaiming them is only useful to Obama insofar as doing so reassures the public that there is justice in the United States.

The current crisis would be a perfect opportunity to not only begin reallocating funds in a different way, but to refine the system itself. Instead, having no conception of another way to live, and needing to maintain his country's global authoritarianism, Obama the Liberal will uphold America.

The Snake of Capitalism

Capitalism is a system whose success depends utterly upon its constant growth. If the economy is not growing, it is dying--in a "depression." So how does it maintain growth? By maintaining consumption: consumption that must continue to grow--indefinitely--along with its own growth's growing demands. I shouldn't have to highlight to you that such a philosophy runs absolutely counter to the global realities that are now irrefutable. I need not even mention global warming (given the opportunity to change the landscape of transportation, Obama and Harper instead put the money back into the hopelessly inefficient system of cars, and gas-powered ones at that); all you need to know is simple math: This planet does not have unlimited resources! It does not have unlimited carrying capacity for human life, or any kind of life. It cannot indefinitely support a society based on indefinite growth and consumption! But what instead is--and increasingly will be--the consumer's solution? Usurp other countries' resources! As long as the systems remain the same, as long as the populations and economies continue to grow, conflicts over resources will become more and more economically necessary. Obama's "Change" has changed nothing.

He is nothing special. His ideas are not revolutionary. His vision does not extend beyond the next 4 to 8 years. All he is doing is resurrecting the same corrupted system. A system that rewards greed and selfishness, power-lust and scam-artistry, but deserts honesty. He embodies the exact racist and prejudicial economics that black people and all non-white non-male non-Christian groups in his country have been trying to overcome for centuries. The saddest irony is that the many poor and uneducated who voted for him are blind, in their love for his skin, to the fact that he is not here for their benefit. And it does not matter if he puts every Wall Street terrorist in jail. It is as futile as assassinating the leader of a mafia. It is as futile as hunting for Osama bin Laden. Others will replace them; power will compel the new ones towards their own greedy schemes. The system encourages greed, and he is encouraging the system. Unless the system changes, any other change effected will be illusory.

Conclusion

I am not an idealist. Elitism is part of human nature: it is inevitable, especially with such a large population. (Do you think, though, that the fate of millions should be allowed at all to be placed in the hands of one person, or a few hundred persons? Is "leadership" itself outdated by our species' extreme size? Elites--especially nowadays with mass media--are simply humans whose positions of power permit the magnification of their mistakes a billion-fold. Would you put your fate in the hands of other humans?) I do believe, however, that some systems benefit and encourage extreme forms of elitism more than others, and that the current capitalism in America is one of them. I believe also that a society based on indefinite consumption is only, in the long run, consuming itself. And that's what's terrifying.

Social Experiment #2: Flinging Shit into my University's Cyberspace

2009-03-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

My university is currently running a "good ideas" contest for its students. Students may submit, in 250 words or less, an idea to improve student experience. A student jury will select the top 20 entries for prizes of $500 tuition each.

How deliciously tempting! I knew I had to write something, I just wasn't sure what. A few weeks ago during the student elections, some candidates had come round to one of my classes and sparked in me some ideas, but now I couldn't remember what they were.

So I just started to write something, anything, and came up with the first of the two submissions you will find below. It turned out to be a playful joke, and it was not the one I submitted, but by the end of it my brain was in action and had thought of an idea for a real entry (a serious joke).

My publishing this entry is technically illegal, as the contest's rules state that all submissions become the university's intellectual property! It doesn't matter though--I'm making no money here. And I think you will see that by the nature of the submission, there could be nothing funnier than if the university actually decided to defend this "intellectual property." Enjoy:

Submission #1 (the fake one): We must take immediate action against the numerous dog-walkers and mini-doggie-in-purse-carriers overrunning our campus. Yes, most students, when asked about the dogs on campus, would probably furrow their brows. But the thawing of snow this spring is uncovering harsh evidence. The soupy, foul-smelling deeds of winter now plague every campus walkway. I propose we employ students as covert observers in tracking down the perpetrators. I say 'perpetrators' for I realize now that, if the presence of dogs cannot be proven, or is discovered to in fact be minimal, then we can only direct our sniffing suspicions towards our fellow humans.

Submission #2 (the one I submitted): The lords of the university should seek to transcend their doctrine of political elitism and dissolve this attempt to bribe a select twenty students $500 each for their "intellectual property." I propose that this net $10,000 is instead divided evenly amongst the whole student body: we should rather have pennies and fairness than blood-money and tyranny. I propose that this mysterious "student jury" publicly declare this contest a fraud--that it is neither "for us" nor "about us." It is solely about them, the members of the jury (the ones actually selecting the ideas), and for the university administration, to help keep the students pacified under an illusion of autonomy. (No wonder they're willing to invest money into this.) If student ideas were truly respected in a non-elitist manner, then every student would have opportunities to propose their ideas in a forum open to the judgment of ALL of the university's students, perhaps through e-polls. Dissolving this contest, and taking consideration of my mentioned alternatives, would improve student experience because it would show students that the purpose of generating ideas isn't just for their own personal $500 benefit and that of a dubious jury, but for trying to reward all. Who got paid to come up with the "good" idea for this contest? Let's hope he or she isn't on this hand-picked puppet jury. Oh, and I have yet to see any manifestations of last year's "winning" ideas. This is political bullshit.

The beauty of this submission is that, in the words of the contest's regulations, "Of course the University would love to implement all ideas. It will however be left to the discretion of the University's Central Administration to determine which ideas they implement [if any]." Thus this idea could potentially win, and the contest would still go on. The student jury, should they so choose, could publicize the idea on the university's website--after all, it's the students who decide who wins. It's the university who decides what gets implemented. So, in the unlikely event that the members of this student jury are brave or exciting enough to select my "good idea", they could demonstrate the truth in my idea, whilst slapping the administration in the face by (1) publicizing it on the university's own website, and (2) rewarding me $500 of the university's money.

But really, what should the university have to be bitter about? Their own professors are the ones who've taught me half of what I know about being a subversive civilly disobedient asshole.

Obamada!

2009-02-27T15:31:00.000-08:00

I didn't expect to make another song so soon, but one must not ignore inspiration. Enjoy.

O Come, Obamassiah!

2009-02-19T09:43:00.000-08:00

Obama's visit to Canada has inspired the hippie in me. Behold my hymn: "O Come, Obamassiah." I've provided subtitles and the lyrics below, so you can sing along with your friends and preachers. I hold the copyright to the lyrics and the final section of the song, but I grant permission to any street performer who wants to sing this in public. Watch!

On a related note, I found this: Judging by this video, perhaps Mr. Bush's famous inability to speak was related more to his failure to use a teleprompter. I wonder if Jesus and the Prophet M--- used teleprompters. I suppose the brain is a kind of teleprompter.

And...here are the lyrics:

O come, Obamassiah!

The world in silence waits the day

When economies shall spend again in excess,

And poverty flee away.

Sweet Saviour, haste;

Flash us your stimulus package

And help the Wall Street plutocrats

Get back on their feet and screw things up again....

And while you're at it, why not

Give more money back to the auto industry,

That way, we'll be living really comfortably

While the planet burns away.

Sweet celebrity god;

Come eat dinner at my house;

Dispel the plight, and flaunt thy race,

And bid us hail the dawn of your face. (Oh, must I really see it everyday?)

O come, Obamassiah!

The world in silence waits the day

When a magic cure will fix everything--

But you know what?

Humans of all races are only human

And just as bad at crunching numbers

Or understanding causality

And just because it might seem as though Americans are now slightly less racist

They're still as discriminating towards anything un-American and

They seem to misunderstand the real cause of their problems like

"God Bless America" when God doesn't exist and their real gods are Ronald MacDonald and Oprah and now it's Obama, and now it's and now it's and now it's and now it's Obama--

Compare: When you look at the actual lyrics for the song, they're just about as appropriate:

O come, divine Messiah!
The world in silence waits the day
When hope shall sing its triumph,
And sadness flee away.

Sweet Savior haste;
Come, come to earth,
Dispel the night and show Thy face,
And bid us hail the dawn of grace.

O Christ, whom nations sigh for,
Whom priest and prophet long foretold,
Come break the captive fetters;
Redeem the long-lost fold.

You come in peace and meekness,
And lowly will Thy cradle be;
All clothed in human weakness
We shall Thy Godhead see.

From Wine to Water to Whiny Editors

2009-02-16T08:53:00.000-08:00

Mark Twain once said, "My books are water; those of the geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water." The key, then, is to let the people think it's water--or grape juice--and have it not ferment till it's safely clamped to the placental walls of their stomachs. Let the readers' own brain-bacteria turn it to wine. Aye, maybe that's why Jesus Christ was such a good writer. ("good writer = good salesman. good anything = good salesman." -- The Book of Capitalism, 1:31-54)

If you tell someone they're about to drink Chardonnay, they're gonna drink it differently than if you say it's just something you whipped up yourself. If you don't tell them what it is, then there's room for surprise. If you tell them it's water, then they'll gulp it all down without restraint and absorb the full effect. If you tell them it's water, they just might buy it, both financially and emotionally.

Really, though, if I want to continue extending this metaphor, water's just too plain a thing. It's gotta have some flavour, for sure, otherwise they'll overlook it as mere hogwash of the grand river. It's gotta have some distinguishing feature. But once they buy it, the main thing is, you want it to go down smooth. Sweet is usually good--better than bitter--but not too sweet. So, sweet at first--don't let the aches come till it's gone from whence it cannot return. As I said, it can't ferment too soon--else they'll spit it up. It's like catering to a baby, or child--you often gotta pull a distraction, a sleight of hand, turn it into a game, not tell them what the thing really is. If you knew the flakes on this truffle were real gold, would you eat it? This truffle is trash, I say! And you, the public media trash compactor, say--"Mmm. I'm familiar with trash. I just might reat it."

Every day, I am continually bothered by the ridiculous world that is publishing. Just when I think it can't get any more absurd, it does, and I've barely gotten my amateur toes wet.

In early December, I received one of my most promising responses yet--a rewrite request for a story I submitted to a print anthology. They wanted some of the language simplified, but the main problem was the ending. They didn't understand it.

I admit, this ending was a little ambiguous, probably due to the bad influence of my English lit courses and hyperfear of perverting that writing maxim--Don't preach! Don't spell things out!--and a second reading showed me that yes, there were lots of unnecessary, albeit poetic, sentence structures, not to mention entire passages. They said to cut off 20%; I think I managed about 30, then had to add another 8 or 9 for the new ending. I tell you, I thought this new ending was killer--maybe a little too spelling-it-out in my opinion, but I knew I had to cater a little to their subliterary readership. My thoughts were, if I'm gonna do a rewrite, I don't wanna just meet these editors' expectations--I better exceed them, and get this thing goddamn accepted. With this ending, and with my extremely polished revisions, I thought I had it in the bag. Well, a month later (a month ago now...I'm a little late with this post), they email me saying they've been comparing the two versions endlessly, and find both endings equally confusing! And here I thought I had written a very blatant mainstream ending.

Anyway, this was their proposed solution....

(I was happy to find that it was not rejection. Apparently, they really wanted this story, because they seemed to be insistent on finding a good version of it. This was something totally new to me....)

....To use the first version of the story, and alter the last two lines slightly.

I was somewhat disappointed, given all the effort I'd put into the revision (which I'd now, strangely, come to like better than the original), and not overly happy with this new ending, but I decided against arguing it further and possibly losing this great opportunity. At the very least, I realized, the revision had succeeded in convincing the editors, somehow, of the original version's merit. And even if I wasn't entirely pleased with the final story, I'd ultimately be getting a really good publishing credit, and at this point in my career, it doesn't pay (quite literally), to have too much integrity. Beggars can't be choosers. Maybe one day when I have some sort of fear-inducing reputation, a rigged ball-and-chained readership at my disposal, I'll be able to afford to murder my editors. But for now, I'll just have to enroll one half-brain in the club of literary whores, and hope to one day publish my own short story collection with the versions I want. Aye--for now, I'll suck a big money-condomed, attention-grabbing audience cock.

As a final note, I came up with a good analogy about editors in the shower today. (I showered today. I wasn't just standing there. The water was on. I rubbed soap on myself.) Editors are literary critics who conform works to their own criticism. If they don't understand something in a story, they simply change it until they understand it.

This is a crazy, subjective business. When you're starting out (and I'm still starting out), you don't know what's 'good' or 'bad'. Eventually you learn, however, that most things get published simply because that editor happens to like it, and like it at that specific time, and there's nothing much deeper than that. So I suppose the best works are as Mark Twain says: the ones that the most editors will like.

This was only the third place I'd sent this story to. I think I'm getting better at this. Whatever that means.

Disclaimer: if for some reason the editors in question read this (they have the link to this blog), know that the word 'whiny' is misleading, used only for phonetic purposes, you weren't really whiny at all, you were quite helpful. Really.

Social Experiment #1 (Reprise)

2009-01-09T15:22:00.001-08:00

In November, I told you about a petition I drew up against the management of my old workplace. The time now seems right to show you that petition.

Back in November, the management responded with a formal letter containing predictably nonsensical side-stepping of the issues, and the "reassurance" that our employment was not being "terminated", but merely suspended until January 5, 2009. Well, that date has now passed, and, after a co-worker of mine called the manager to find out why she hadn't called us yet, we discovered that they now plan to not start up our employment again until February.

Well! I'm now debating writing another letter. To the Government of Canada; the Bureau of Labourer's Rights or something, I'm guessing. (I'd have to find out exactly where to send it.) That's what my lawyer uncle said I should have done in the first place, as it's illegal to lay people off without at least two weeks' notice. It would be an interesting extension to this social experiment, no?

Anyway, here is the petitition (names have been changed):

Re: Termination of Employment; Petition to Extend

Dear Madam/Sir:

It has come to our attention, upon short notice of a mere three days, that for not the first, but second time in just the past four months, our division of Work is to be terminated—as of this Thursday, October 30—leaving us, a roomful of students, suddenly without jobs.

Apparently, this early termination is due to an insufficient weekly output of survey data on our part. However, as most of the current staff reach the daily individual research quota on a regular basis, this insufficiency must actually be a result of a general shortage in staff. (Though indeed, if it were the result of consistent failure on the parts of any individual employees—as has been the case in the past—one must question why an employer would allow such individuals to remain employed.) In other words, given the number of employees, and that every employee cannot work every shift, the required collective output of weekly survey data was mathematically impossible to achieve. We were doomed from the onset.

Beginning two weeks ago, an additional hour of pay per shift was offered (in what we now know a final, desperate attempt) as incentive for employees to sign up for additional shifts. But, as most of our work schedules are not governed by preference but by the circumstances of our other commitments (namely, our strict commitments as students), it is no surprise that this incentive ultimately failed to yield results. It would seem that foresight might have compelled the management to direct these additional funds instead towards the hiring of additional staff. As this did not happen, however, we the workers are now the ones suffering the consequences.

We cannot stress enough that these consequences have arisen not based upon any of our outputs as individuals, but rather upon our total output as a group—an output, in other words, that is restricted not by a deficit in our own abilities, but by purely a deficit in our number. In short, this is a variable beyond the control of any individual employee; it is rather the variable whose maintenance is the responsibility of the management. And yet we are the ones being terminated.

The clincher of this is that we have so few employees to begin with because of the first unexpected termination, which occured just this past June. Upon the reopening of Work in September, not many employees returned, and, as said, the management apparently made few attempts to hire additional ones. It might be said, then, that this termination we are facing at present is a direct result of the last termination—and therefore, more broadly, a result of the managerial failure to react accordingly after (and likely even before) that first termination.

In conclusion, we offer you these observations in hope of two things: (1) That you consider them when deciding how to prevent more "unexpected" terminations of Work in the new year; and (2) That they improve your respect for us. By "respect" in this case, all we mean is job security. We are not asking that you improve your managerial methods; we are not even saying that Work must never be terminated again. We are only asking that we receive the same courtesy as we would give to you: two weeks' notice.

Below is a petition from the few remaining employees of Work, requesting two more weeks of work (Nov. 3-7, 10-14). Three days' notice is not enough to convince us to return in January. We would rather work in an environment where we feel respected, secure, and well-managed.

Sincerely,

The Staff of Work

Last Reflection for 2008

2008-12-30T14:56:00.000-08:00

This past month has been busy. I had two stories to polish up within a short amount of time. Bringing them to the desired level has all but exhausted my perfectionist mind, and convinced me to take a much-needed rest from writing. For the next few weeks, I'm going to catch up on my reading, finalize some of my musical compositions, and devote some time to a few utterly non-productive things, such as relaxing and playing videogames. Maybe I'll even work on remedying that social disease I've developed.

School will start up again soon, of course, but school's only stressful when I make it stressful by spending too much time writing; so it's no big deal. In short, I'll be playing it cool for a while.

Probably this means nothing to you, as you were unaware that I did any work at all, seeing as I have nothing substantial to show for it. So--till the future, then. I have quite a few high-hopes stories being considered right now. So even though I won't be writing, it's not as though nothing will be happening.

Chances are, I will be writing a little, though. In particular, by entering data into my computer from my many piles of longhand notes. As for this blog, I'm sure I'll post in the same manner as I usually do: whenever I get the urge.

Anyway, Happy New Year. Though I think it's more useful to see life as a continuous thing.

New Story: Fulghum's Synthitar

2008-12-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

It's up! I have a new story on Cezanne's Carrot, an e-zine that publishes sort of 'feel-good' spiritual (Christian?) fiction with an SF sentimentality. (Thematically, this story is pretty atypical for me.) Unfortunately, I submitted this story just before they announced the contest, meaning that since I didn't submit $5 along with the story, I wasn't considered for the prize. Blargh. Anyway, enjoy the bittersweet "Fulghum's Synthitar"....

Confessions of a Cancerstick Counterculturalist

2008-12-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, I received in the mail a handmade flyer from one of my neighbours, advertising a snow-blowing job for the winter. I decided to meet with the woman. After discussing some details, she requested that I compose a contract; she wanted to go about it professionally. When I met with the Client again, we went over the document and discussed minor revisions. The only major revision that was needed, the Client said, was (unsuprisingly) the Payment section. I had purposely overpriced my initial offer, but the amount she was hinting at was much lower than what I had been hoping to come out with. Well, she said to go home and think about it, which was a good idea, because despite the price, I still wasn't completely sure, given some other factors. Luckily, however, before I left, the woman brought me out back to show me the snow-blower I would be working with, during which I discovered something that made up my mind.

She confessed that she had never started the snow-blower on her own, so she brought out the instruction manual. While I was reading it, I found a big warning box about how inhaling the fumes from the snow-blower has been proven to cause cancer, birth defects, and reproductive failure.

The next day, I emailed the Client my apologies.

Call me a paranoid hypochondriac. That's what my family called me. "They put those warning labels on for the same reason they put the 'This is Hot' label on coffee cups," they told me. "Because one time, some dumbass stuck his head right up to the exhaust pipe." Feeling uncertain, I delayed the publication of this post (this happened a month ago) and let the theories I'm about to share with you sit for a while. My experiences of the past week are what have now revitalized the issue for me. I've been spending a lot of time driving in my car recently, and shoveling snow. When I drive, in this cold weather I can see the fumes I'm driving through. When I'm shoveling, I've seen my neighbour three doors down using a snowblower. My nose seems to ingest his fumes just fine.

What the experience with the woman did was get me thinking. A snow-blower's engine runs the same way as a car's does--on the same oil and gasoline. So...where's the warning label on my car? Where's the warning label on our car-driven society? And why am I still a part of it--why would I ever agree to sign this social contract?

It's not like we all don't already know this. This isn't so much a "discovery" as a rephrasing of what is already known but not consciously thought about. If you drink gasoline, you will die. If you stick your face in front of an exhaust pipe, you will die. In a somewhat more perfect (but still poisoned) world, hydrocarbons decompose into only carbon dioxide and water (vapour), but in reality, in addition to carbon monoxide (the invisible suicide gas), gasoline contains many toxins and unfriendly additives. What is really interesting is that the levels of the most dangerous toxins in gas--lead and benzene--get reduced by the addition of ethylene dibromide, a carcinogen. It would seem, then, that in our society, we can acceptably replace a fast and explicit killer such as lead or benzene poisoning with a slower, subtler, and more difficult-to-attribute killer: cancer.

When you're operating a snow-blower, or any similar device, your exposure to gas might be higher than when you're driving your car, due to your proximity to the engine. Then again, when you're driving your car, your exposure to gas might not be all that low, due to the extreme number of cars around you. It's not like you're in a sealed vacuum. All the air in your car's interior is the same air as outside (ever drive by a manure field?), especially if you have your AC on. That's why the car manufacturers, knowing that exhaust is harmful, conveniently put your exhaust pipe at the back of your car, so you won't get it in your face. Too bad, though, that like so many other things in this society, car manufacturers design cars with only individuals in mind. For, is there not always a driver behind you, and another in front of you? It might even be worse if you're on foot. A street full of cars is like a gigantic exhaust pipe in itself.

Remember when people didn't believe in second-hand smoking? Well, just imagine for an instant your society as one giant man with a thousand mouths, a thousand stab-wounds and orifices, where each throat is a road, a highway, and the smog-filled stomach is the city core, where all the maggots, even the ones from the farthest outskirts, the suburbs of the toes and fingernails, go to work every day, feeding a little off the corpse, yet ultimately giving more of themselves to it than it returns to them, and thus serving out their duties to renew this corpse infinitely, like the ravens of Prometheus. This little maggot went to work at the market, this little maggot stayed home to care for its larvae, this little maggot had salmonella, this little maggot had nothing, and this little maggot went "wee wee wee" all the way to the old-folks' home (the mausoleum for the living), with cancer, a pension-plan, a wheel-chair, an IV-pole, a litter of greedy debt-encumbered children waiiting for his inheritance, and fifteen different medical perscriptions. So, zoom away to an aerial, Hollywooden view of this giant man, addicted to his maggot-wrapped metal cigarettes, and what do we see? A city of lights, towers, exhaust pipes, and smoke stacks. Zoom out farther, and you see there are a million such corpse-colonies over-running the planet. They are 'corpse-colonies' because, unlike Prometheus, this is not a myth, and the maggots will not be able to perpetually renew the corpses on which they depend. Society is a dead cigarette addict trying to cash in infinitely on its own death.

I don't see how anyone could find it comforting to know that exhaust only hurts if you 'stick your face up to it.' That's kind of like being in a car that's slowly rolling towards the edge of a cliff and saying, "Don't worry; we won't fall until we hit the edge." Sure, breathing in exhaust while you drive to work won't kill you, but if death is the first symptom we look for when checking someone's health, then I dare say we have a problem. As I've already said, the combined volume of exhaust we encounter in a casual drive (ever heard of smog?)--or in a casual breath of city air (ever been to the refreshing country?)--does count for something. And again, this isn't surprising. We see the giant smoke stacks on the horizon that are killing our world, and we see the thousands of miniature ones driving around on the streets, right under our noses. Furthermore, we see the even smaller ones, sticking out of peoples' mouths. How'd you like to spend a day hanging out with smokers? You're doing almost the same thing when you hang around cars, or the bus stop. Don't you just love it when a bus drives by you and spews exhaust in your face?

It has taken the prospect of global catastrophe to begin the phasing out of gasoline-powered cars. But maybe this is just the thing we need to quicken the process, and convince people that global warming is real: "Cars Cause Cancer." No matter how much or how little merit that statement holds, what this all comes down to is that the spread of such an idea could be immeasurably helpful.

In Canada, Stéphane Dion's failed Green Shift campaign demonstrated an important fact: people do not take global warming seriously. Perhaps the economic downturn played a small part, but the people were ultimately unready, unwilling to make even small individual sacrifices for some 'abstract' greater good. Humans don't do well thinking in periods of time longer than their own lives. Thus how do we get them to care? Well, why not explain that it's their own lives that are on the line--not their children's lives, not anyone else's lives--but their own. And not sometime in the future, but now--with cancer.

If we want to save the environment, we cannot call it 'saving the environment': there are simply too many conservative people in this world. People who know only how to be lead in the blissful ignorance of tradition.

"Cars Cause Cancer." Why not spread the message like a cancer?

Budget Cuts

2008-11-22T11:22:00.000-08:00

The executive producer of A Kiss of Kvass (i.e., me) stormed into my office this morning and began rambling on about how the quality of the average blog post has diminished significantly in the past two months. "You've been sacrificing quality for brevity and quantity," he fumed. "If you keep going this way, people might actually start reading this thing--it's starting to look like other blogs! But oh no, not here. Here we have a strict demographic of Nobody, and we want to keep things that way--so make your posts longer and more esoteric! Your posts used to average a thousand words, while lately I've seen ones where there's no words, just fancy pictures or videos! And your social commentaries have become merely playful--like your silly obituaries on squirrels and bananas, for instance. I want impenetrable prose! I want you to attack the real issues, here! Forget your schoolwork, forget your other writing projects--those mean nothing. All that matters is doing things for the sake of themselves!"

Obituary: a Dog and its Sandwich

2008-11-19T07:06:00.000-08:00

The one venue in which my work has been published, the blog-zine Dog vs. Sandwich, died one month ago today. It was only ten months old. But such is life in the market jungle.

The site is still up, actually; it's just simply not accepting any more stories. I'm not sure how long it will remain up, though. Ah well.

So it goes.

In memoriam: one domesticated banana

2008-11-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

I was eating a banana in class today, and perhaps became too excited in my peeling, for sadly the remaining half of the banana slipped out of the peel and onto the floor. I was ever so sad to see it wasted. Thinking back, maybe I should have still eaten it.

So it goes.

Lest We Get

2008-11-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

"Finally! Rememberance Day is over with! Now we can focus on Christmas without guilt!"

Ode to Obama

2008-11-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

SEE

WHITE

HOUSE

AND

WANT

PAINTED

BLACK...."

(uh--better paint one room white for his mama)

"And my first order of business in office will be to revamp George W's pretty but wince-inducing garden colour scheme..."

Animal Cruelty, Part 2

2008-11-08T06:25:00.000-08:00

As per the last post, since the majority of pet owners are guilty in some way of (1) feeding their pets impoperly, (2) not exercising them, (3) neglecting them, (4) babying them, and of a dozen other things, could it be that there is a problem with domestication itself? Isn't domestication cruel? How would you like to be bred in captivity for food or for cuteness?

Oh wait--you are.

(Is ignorance bliss?)

Animal Cruelty, Part 1

2008-11-07T06:16:00.000-08:00

A man on the radio yesterday told me some animal rights activists could soon succeed in petitioning a law that will divvy out fines to the owners of fat pets. Not giving one's pet the proper food, or proper amount of food, or exercise, are forms of animal cruelty.

I couldn't agree more. But humans are animals too, you know--and more important animals than cats and dogs, most tend to think. So why not fine the parents of fat children? Why not fine anyone who hurts themselves a little by eating processed foods? Why not send cigarette smokers, and others who engage in suicidal tendencies, to asylums for recovery? Why not mandate a regimen of proper exercise and diet upon all?

Say, isn't the USA the fattest country in the world? Imagine how much money the government could recover from this nation-wide tax! Goodbye economic crisis! Hello skinny, diet-regulated, more efficient America!

Oh--last of all, why not fine animal rights activists, for neglecting their fellow man in favour of claw and fowl!

Why not?

Michael's Osama

2008-11-05T12:50:00.000-08:00

With Barack Obama at last named the next U.S. President, the real question we're all asking is, What about Michael Moore? Is he, like, out of a job now? I wonder if he voted Republican. I guess he can just take a vacation now.

Well, not quite yet. There are still two more months of Bush. So here's cheering for Michael. Here's hoping Bush stirs up some more vacation money for Michael.

Poor Michael.

But what is the equation, I wonder? How long will it take for the dust to settle, how long will it take for Obama's golden aura to disperse? Sadly, I feel the need to quote from a very awful rock band (a bad omen already): "Something's gotta go wrong 'cause I'm feeling way too damn good."

Social Experiment #1

2008-11-04T18:46:00.000-08:00

Just last week, for the second time in just the past few months, everyone at my place of employment (which will remain unnamed) was "let go" without notice. So I wrote up a petition--it was more than just a petition, actually, but a spelling out of many managerial wrongs--and by forwarding it to the company director, successfully frightened the management into extending our work term by a week, thus giving us the same respectful two-week notice we as employees are expected to give our employers.

It is my great desire to publish the petition here, but I will not do so, as others and a little part of my own self have advised me not to. It is possible I will publish it at a later date, when the safe cushion of space hath expanded, but for now, I will refrain, in respect of the annonymous manager's great sensitivity towards the issue.

I call this a social experiment because I was more interested in the writing part and its possible effect than in the actual job. Call me a shit-disturber. But a free country encourages all sorts of crap, so you might as well fling some. To not do so would be to be in Italy for the National Tomato Fight and stay inside all day. Wooh! Civil rights!

Why do the abused stay with their abusers? [Video]

2008-10-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

The New Pyramid of Capitalism

2008-10-25T07:25:00.001-07:00

A famous picture you will recognize (click here to enlarge):

A new depiction that you will also nonetheless recognize (click HERE to enlarge):

Daniel Quinn on Facts of World Hunger

2008-10-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

Some words from the author of Ishmael.

"Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person."

2008-10-13T10:55:00.000-07:00

If the classifieds ad of this title caught your eye, then perhaps you should become a pupil of Daniel Quinn's novel Ishmael, from which this ad is quoted. That novel's protagonist finds this ad in the newspaper, and follows it down a road of adventure. Well, good news -- you don't have to wait. You can become a part of that adventure today! Your mentor is waiting for you -- yes, you -- in a bookstore or library near you.

Why this book is not an international (or even national) bestseller is not much of a mystery. Fact is, most people just aren't that interested in saving the world, let alone are in "earnest" about it. But even if you don't want to save the world and, like me, are only interested in reading about how to save the world and having your already indulgently poor opinions about humanity only further corroborated, then I suggest you read it anyway. It's great entertainment.

Another fascinating thing is that this book was first published for the masses sixteen years ago. My honest opinion is that, for people who want to save the world, this book should be scripture. (No wonder I've never heard a politician quote it.) Maybe I haven't read many books directly dealing with the topic of saving the world, but either way, I can confidently say this is the best saving-the-world fiction book I have ever read. Admittedly, most of the information presented I already knew in some shape or form, but it is presented in such a clear and thorough fashion that it really shone a whole new light on the issue for me, and made me see it all much more seriously and interconnectedly than I had before. Now I can't get the ideas out of my head, and I am continually amazed at the extent to which our culture and entire way of life needs to be restructured -- and the amount of sacrifice on the part of individuals required to do so.

I've sort of based my life around reading up on divergent ideas though, so don't make the mistake of thinking that the majority of people in our society already know what's in here. They don't know, and they should read this. I might even go as far to say that everyone needs to read this. Because I'm still hearing of people who have problems coming to terms even with evolution and global warming. And that is the big first step: disillusionment. Enter the book and you take that first step. The feeling after reading it, I must say, is about equivalent to that of realizing this is all actually a computer program called The Matrix. So maybe that's a warning: if you get it, if you really get what Quinn is saying (which, through his excellent explanations, I don't see how you couldn't), then you will never see things in quite the same way. So if you value your present delusions, then by all means...stay back! Don't even tap the glass!

Sarah Palin is an Oxymoron

2008-10-07T07:34:00.000-07:00

We all know that Sarah Palin's image is based entirely around the young, folksy, not-impenetrably-academic middle-class single-mother boo-hoo-I-have-a-pregnant-teenage-daughter-and-Jesus-H.-Christ-is-my-second-cousin-once-removed archetype. But in running for Vice President, she is inevitably running to succeed that image--or rather, she already has. Class-A politicians (or even mere candidates) are anything but "middle-class." Their position in society and salary aside, anyone whose image is made intensely public can no longer be called "middle-class." "Celebrity" is not middle-class. Therefore her entire image is a paradox. All it's saying is, "Hey America, I was middle-class too, once--[before I started telling y'all I was]." Well, that's only what all politicians say ("I'm human, I swear!")--only in Palin's case, it's meant to be understood as something much more concrete, something more than mere voter-wooing. ('Cause hey, we all know that middle-class people are way too polite and humble and honest to play up their perceived social positions towards achieving their own selfish goals.) But that's exactly what Palin is doing, and that's what makes her smart--too smart to be called middle-class. That's why middle-class voters don't realize she's not middle-class...and will vote for her.

Debating Languages: A Letter to the Editor

2008-10-06T07:56:00.001-07:00

Polls have called Stéphane Dion the winner of the French-language debate, and Stephen Harper the winner of the English-language debate. Could fluency in languages have played a role in the debates' outcomes? If so, then Harper was placed, by fortune or conspiracy, at the clear advantage, as the English debate came after the French one, thus leaving Harper with the last best word. If having two debates, one English and one French, is not just a matter of political correctness but a matter of establishing fair odds between originally Francophone and originally Anglophone candidates, then perhaps in the future, the debates should not be separated exclusively into the 'French one' and the 'English one', but made into 'mixed' debates where the candidates must alternate between both languages. Maybe then the debates could deservingly be called 'fair' and 'bilingual.'

Bureaucracy--again.

2008-10-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

I was late registering for classes this term--as I've explained, registering was a spontaneous thing--and as a result, I had to pay a late registration fee along with my tuition. I paid my tuition weeks ago. But the other day I got an email, saying I had $38 more dollars to pay. Turns out this was the "late payment fee." I guess I not only registered late, but made the payment late as well, and these things are penalized separately. Instead of adding this late payment fee to your invoice on the day that the payment deadline passes, the network is programmed to not recognize that you're going to be a late payer until you actually become one--it waits until you've actually paid past the deadline and then adds on the fee. And so you're left with the inconvenience of having an extra $38 to pay. A fee liable to collect interest.

Now, normally this wouldn't seem too much trouble (a minor annoyance not beyond my particular institution's reputation for ridiculous administrative services), but my particular bank isn't supported by the university's finance system. So I decided I'd pay in person.

I got a cue number and waited about half an hour. I went to the desk, and they printed out a new invoice for me, displaying my outstanding fees. The clerk said, "How will you be paying?" I said, "Credit." She said, "We don't take credit." I said, "Really?" She said, "Really."

The finance office--that is, the office for processing finances--does not accept credit cards. Wow. I had no other method to pay with, so I asked her what I should do. She said, "You can take this freshly printed invoice to your bank and pay with your credit card there."

Huh????????

"So you will accept my credit card," I said, "but you just won't accept it here...because you don't have a card-swiper. I have to go to another part of the city for you to accept it."

"That's right," she said. "In this way, things are made efficient. This is the best society in the world. And you know something else?"

"What?" I said.

"Whenever I take a dump at my house, I have to go to the neighbour's to wipe my ass."

And suddenly it all made sense. Life, the universe...everything! Everything.

Somewhere Between Communism and Anarchism

2008-09-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

There was an article in the paper yesterday about where our political candidates rest on the political spectrum, based on the quiz at the website http://www.politicalcompass.org/.

I actually took this quiz a couple years ago for a politics class. I thought my position on the spectrum might have changed since then, but according to this it's pretty much the same: Politically speaking, I am still Ghandi. That is, I am somewhere between communism and anarchism. Now I just need an oppressed colonial country to liberate. And less food--so I can feign a food-strike.

Take the test and see if we're politically compatible! (Perhaps this is a good way to decide who to vote for?...or who your friends are? Most of the party leaders are in the same area (area I was in), except for Harper, who was right-wing (obviously), and a smidgen authoritarian.)

A Pinball, Caught in Bureaucracy

2008-09-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was just one of those days--a day when a spiraling chain of events conspires to wrap itself around your ankles and trip you, face-first, into unnecessary frustration and increased risk for heart disease (stress).

It all started when I went to the mall to get the black ink-cartridge for my printer refilled. I was doing this because I needed to photocopy an assignment for my music class, due at 4:00 that day, and I didn't want to spend money on the photocopiers at school. So I went around 12:30, and ate lunch in the food court while waiting for the cartridge. I was out of there by 1:00, at which point I drove immediately home, because I had to be at the university for 2:30 for another class.

Now, I wasn't quite done the music assignment, which was a bummer, because I could've finished it on the bus, but since I wanted to use my own photocopier (as I had just spent my last half-hour getting the ink-cartridge for it), I had to finish the assignment at home. But not only had I left more parts unfinished than I'd thought, but the second after I finished them, I realized I had made a most grievous error: for all of the different exercises, I had ignored the clefs and written all the answers according to the notes of the treble clef. Thus said, about half of my answers were wrong, as about half the questions were asking for the bass clef, so I had to go back and do them again. Meanwhile, the clock was ticking, and I knew that I would be late for class. For, once I finished my corrections, I still had to actually photocopy the pages--a simple task that is made slow on my particular printer, where often the best copy isn't made on the first try.

By the time I finished all of this and ran out to catch the bus, it was 2:10. I got to class around 3:00, a half-hour late, but relieved. I caught the gist of the lecture, so it had all seemed worth it after all. But when the lecture ended around 3:50 and I began to walk to my music class for 4:00, I checked my bag only to find that my precious photocopies were nowhere to be found: I had forgotten them on my desk in my rush to catch the bus.

Now, I did have with me the textbook with the assignments in it, but as the professor had recommended highly that we give him photocopies, and as I would have rather kept all the pages of the book in tact anyway, I decided I would find a photocopier -- they're all around campus, supposedly -- and do what all my past hours' efforts had worked to avoid. I went to the library, as this seemed a promising place to find photocopiers, and I found one immediately....

I had no coins on me, but the photocopiers now apparently only accept cards, anyway. Problem was, they only accept student cards. I had a student card on me, of course, but when I put it in the slot, it said it couldn't read it, and I knew I didn't have any money loaded on it anyway. So I stood in line at the "Copy Centre," which was just nearby, in hopes of loading money on it.

Glancing at my watch, I had already accepted that I would be late for class. Nevertheless, as I stood in line I flipped through my music book anxiously: the line was taking an awfully long time to get moving. But I made it to the counter eventually, of course, at which point the clerk informed that (1), not only is the "Copy Centre" not for making photocopies; but (2), in the case that the Copy Centre were the place to make photocopies, they would be unable to do so in my case, as music is copyrighted. I was just about to argue that this was hardly a musical composition that I was duplicating, but random strings of notes designed for exercise, when the clerk said nonchalantly, "Hey, I have this book, you know. I didn't even use it. It was expensive, eh? I could've sold it to you for a third of the price."

Thanks a bunch! thought I, cursing the universe inwardly. I had already written in it, so it wasn't as if I could've gone and exchanged it and taken up her offer no matter how much I would have liked to. Quickly, I changed the subject back to the matter at hand:

"So you can't just photocopy this for me?"

"No, but you can do it yourself at one of the copy machines."

"Okay," I said. "Can I put some money on my card?" I took out my student card and showed it to her.

"Oh," she said, looking grave. "You need the chip."

"The chip?"

"You need the new card. It has a chip on it. The chip is what lets you put money on."

Blast! No kidding! "Okay. How do I get the new card?"

"The infocentre," she said, and then added brightly, "You don't have to pay if you have the old card. Otherwise the new card is $20."

Great, I thought. One point for Me, ten-thousand points for Universe. But I was now in too deep to turn back.

I went to the infocentre, got a number, and to my relief was admitted right away. After the new card was printed, I asked the guy at the desk, "Can I put some money on it?"

His answer was "No, not here."

Apparently, in order to quicken the processing (from the administration's point of view) of certain administrative tasks, the many different offices of the campus administration are each specialized to such a degree that a student must go to a different building to complete each different step of the same process. Perhaps if the pertinent buildings were at least arranged in an assembly-line fashion, this could at least be perceived by the clients as somewhat acceptable, but as it stands, all this clerk did was give me a paper and say, "Here; read this paper, it explains the new card," which in turn directed me to another building on the other side of campus. I suppose they believe that by decreasing the wait-times at individual administrative offices, their clients will enjoy the pleasant illusion of expediency without noticing that having to wait on five different occasions at five different places collectively amounts to more than if the first office would have just been able to complete more than one task at once! But, as it was, I had to now go to another building to fill up my card with money. (I did not return to the "Copy Centre", because I knew the line there was long.)

But when I got to the other place, I found that their machine wasn't working, and only accepted cash anyway, so I had to go back to the Copy Centre, which was the only place on campus which accepted debit or credit for filling up one's card.

So I waited there another ten minutes, the time now 4:40 or so. When I got to the counter this time and said I wanted $20 on my card (in hopes of never having to come back here any time soon), the woman tried my card on four different machines, then announced that it didn't work.

"Come back tomorrow before four o'clock and go to the Reprography Service Office and they can fix it for you," she said.

I knew, then, that I was defeated. I went to class, arriving forty-five minutes late, and squeezed my sweaty way past eight people through the narrow space between the seats of the auditorium to the only seat available. I indulged myself in a long sigh.

The only luck I had was that the attendance sheet hadn't gone around yet, and that the Prof wasn't going to deduct marks if we handed in the assignment at the end of class, which for every class thereafter, he would. Throughout the whole class, I thought I might stay at the end and explain to the professor what had happened, and ask if I could hand in the assignment the next day without loss of marks, or perhaps borrow his photocopier, but in the end I decided I would just take the pages from my book (the assignment pages are cleanly removable) and hand those in, thus nullifying all I had toiled over for the past three hours. There remained the problem, however, of stitching these pages together. I didn't have a stapler or paperclip, and nobody else in the world did, either. Luckily, the pages did have holes punched in them though, so I looked in my bag hopelessly for a twist-tie or bread-tag or elastic--anything! At last I came upon a solution. I looked at my house-key and saw that there were two keychain-rings attached to it. I removed the extra one and hooked it to the top hole of the papers. I then wrote my name on each paper, in case they got detached.

And then, by God, I left that terrible place forever.

Post-Script: While looking for a picture to represent "bureaucracy," I found this Wikipedia article on a "Bureaucracy" computer game. I found the "setting" description rather hilarious.

In memoriam, Sciurus carolinensis

2008-09-24T08:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was riding my bicycle when three baby squirrels ran out onto the street in front of me. I had never seen baby squirrels before--now I have. I didn't slow down, though. They were traveling at such a rate that I knew they would reach the other side before I reached them. But as I was going by them, they suddenly turned back, and ran under my bike. One got squished under the front wheel. I don't know where I hit it, or how severely, but it stumbled off to the side afterward.

Let us bow our heads now, and take a moment of silence.

Blood, Snow, and Maple Syrup: Why Canada Needs A New Flag

2008-09-20T22:40:00.000-07:00

Ever since the laughable opening ceremonies of the Great Canadian Elections Games, I've had one ear stapled to the news reports, the other to my telephone, and it has come to my attention that this election is in desperate need of an issue. An issue that is not abstract: an issue we can understand.

Something more than 'Soldiers in Afghanistan; we'll remove them.' Something more than 'The earth is dying; let's save it.' Or heaven forbid, 'I spent less money than you did.' (How is the average citizen qualified to answer any of these issues?)

It's time we cleansed our political pallets and began afresh--right from the tip of the Peace Tower's flagpole.

Before we can get the things we want, we need a firmer way of understanding how to get them. We need a new set of symbols--a clear, unflitered message of what we can expect from our politicians.

My people of Canada, what we need is a new Canadian Flag.

Let's make this this election's deciding factor. Let the party with the best new flag-design win.

I'll get to how this will ease our big decision in a moment, but first of all, allow me to address the long, conveniently neglected fact that our current flag is racist.

As Canadians--or as people on their way to becoming Canadian by studying for a tenth-grade history-and-geography test--we're all familiar with the traditional symbolism found on the flag: two oceans of blood framing a land of ice and snow in which is contained our national treasure of treasures--pure maple syrup. But this curricular interpretation, though correct, omits something. Something racist.

How easily do we forget that the two colours of the flag also represent the flesh-tones of the country's forefathers! The white of French and English, and the reddish of First Nations. But now that we've well escaped the repressive 1960s (when this modern flag of Canada was born), dare this writer ask where the black is on our flag? Or the brown? The yellow? The mocha? The orange?

I sometimes wonder if the government decided upon a one-colour flag (white is not a colour) simply because of the cheaper fabrication costs. But, being a healthy shade of vomit green myself (after consuming an auspiciously named Maple Leaf product and reading too much news--or so said the stranger with the degree in medicine for whom I waited three hours to see at the walk-in clinic), I have always found the flag offensive, for I cannot relate to it. Yep--I was the green kid in school who was always asking the teacher, 'Hey, where's my colour on the flag? Where am I?'

How can we claim to represent minority groups in this country when the greatest single symbolic representation of our country holds no such signs? It is a sad day in democracy when Prince Edward Island, the smallest of our provinces, in bearing both red dirt and snow is by chance represented more distinctly on our national flag than any other province. Let that be the working analogy for just exactly how far askew is our flag's misrepresentation of its people.

But I speak not only of race, of course--but of sexual orientation, women's rights, foundations for disease. Where are these values' symbols? Symbols and colours from all camps must make their way onto the new flag: all of the awareness ribbons, the transgender symbol, the lesbian triangle, the Star of David, a cartoon Mohammed, the skull and crossbones, an embassy-like thumbnail of the flag of your great-grandfather's homeland....

It's a big list. But we can do it.

The only thing the current flag has done right is transcend language--but as with most things done right in this country, this was largely by accident.

While I'm on the subject of language, though, I should mention our national anthem. It should no longer be sung in only our two national languages. No, the lyrics should be removed, and it should strictly be hummed. This way, in addition to being cross-lingual, all the 'hmms' and 'hos' and 'huhs' of citizens would much better echo the sounds of decision-making found on Parliament Hill.

I wish political parties would just draw it out for us in a big nice clear picture, you know? Frankly, I'm too lazy and busy and uncaring and average and Canadian to bother reading up on every party's platform. Besides, half the stuff they say won't happen the way they say it will, so why bother, eh? Who can I trust? How can one individual possibly hope to filter through the bog of articles and blogs and opinions, and come out with an 'informed' decision? The more I become informed, the more doubtful I become.

As a result, I can only revert to my own weak and selfish intuition, and vote in the way I always have: on the issue of facial structure. That's right--I'm not afraid to admit that I think Stephen Harper has a more interesting skull-shape than Stéphane Dion. And since I know I could be looking at it in the newspaper every day for the next four years, that's something to seriously consider.

But that's why making this voting contest into a flag-making contest makes so much sense. It will make the voting so simple. All you'll have to do is look to yourself for your own symbols of value, and then try to match up those symbols with the symbols on one of the party's flags. You find the flag that seems to represent your values best--and that's the one you vote for. Just like a paint-by-numbers puzzle, really, but with gambling involved. Let campaign posters become flags!

It'll save the campaigners some stress as well. They'll be able to appeal to their target groups with unfiltered ease, and long before the election date, it'll be obvious which side will win, so no more fretting, and no more electioneering excesses.

In fact, this would be such an efficient system that it could be used to decide every future election! That way, the flag would change now and then, to reflect the changes of the country.

(Because God knows that Canada only works when there's a majority.)

So cast your ballots, citizens--and most importantly, politicians. Start drawing up designs, as I have done here. Just make sure you leave some space to sell to the advertisers. That'll really make the voting easy.

And if ever you feel in doubt, just remember this: It's only what we've all been doing since 1867 anyway: voting for posters, not politicians.

-----

Why did I even bother sending this to the Ottawa CItizen? (Yes, picture also. I worked hard on that, you know. I guess that's why they tell us to stay in school.)

First Story: Goldiclocks and the Three Hands

2008-09-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

My first story is up on Dog vs. Sandwich!--check it out:

http://dogvsandwich.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/story-goldiclocks-and-the-three-hands-by-kevin-v-kvas/

And (to be promotional) while you're there why not check out some of the other wacky tales they got going on?

By the way, more good news, a couple weeks ago I got another story accepted at another e-zine, due to come out in December, I believe.

Hope you enjoy this little faery tale!

Is that a Norton Anthology in your pocket or are you just suffering from femoral lymphadentitis?

2008-09-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

Being the type of guy who can't stand waiting in line for groceries or standing at the corner for a traffic light, I like to carry books around with me at all times. This means that I prefer portable books--books that can fit into your pocket. The Norton anthologies, the most widely used anthologies for English majors in America, are no such books.

How big are these books, exactly?

Well, last semester, my British Lit profs ordered the separated volumes, so that it actually wasn't so bad. But

as you can see in Exhibits A and B, I have piled all six volumes up atop of each other for effect (Lego minifig for scale). What you are looking at is first-year English, pretty much.

This time round, however, my American Lit prof ordered the all-in-one: a three-thousand-page volume, weighs about 10 Ibs. It is painfully

compressed, with tiny print and Bible-thin pages. (It contains more words than the Bible.) To call it unwieldy is an understatement. About the only joy it brings to me is the machismo of owning such a massive book, and getting to feel like a scholar whenever I even flutter through the pages meaninglessly, or glance at the glossy pictures in the middle, or simply rest it on the coffee table for people to ask, "Whoa. Is that a book?"

It's nearly impossible to read while lying down. I already put enough stress on my wrists from typing improperly and excessively and playing guitar; I don't need more encouragement for carpal tunnel. And if you rest the book on your chest, it actually inhibits your breathing. Best of all, I have almost dropped it on my groin area a couple times, only to realize afterwards that this book is dense enough to break one's balls.

Exhibit C: The All-in-one Norton Anthology of American Literature. (sunglasses for scale). (Wouldn't let me rotate it for some reason.)

Chickens Have Fingers and Milk Tastes Better From The Carton

2008-09-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

I ate some chicken-fries the other day. That's right -- chicken in the shape of fries. Have you tried these things from KFC? They taste exactly like chicken fingers -- just smaller with less breading. In other words, they are not fries at all. They're chicken. In the shape of fries.

KFC is exploiting a common marketing technique: the repackaging. The remix. In other words, epistemological trickery. Taking something old and giving it a fresh, appealing new look....

Whoa! Chicken-fries? What the hell, that's awesome! Hey, these taste awesome!

But what is a 'fry'? (As a saying I just made up goes, While the French fry, the English chip.) At one time, it was a potato. A thinly sliced potato, fried. Which begs the question...is a McDonald's fry even a 'fry'? There is probably little 'potato' in it -- or for that matter, in most of the fries that we consume today. We've made 'real' fries at my house before, using pure potato, and they were damn good; you could taste the potato. But in truth, those potato-fries were less 'fries' than were the McDonald's fries I had at supper today (and what a paltry supper it was!). If the majority of fries consumed in our society contain more preservatives than they do potato (as exemplified in the rotting experiment in the special features of Supersize Me), and if the fast-food fry fits in better with the majority's perception of what a fry is, then it's innacurate to call my potato-fries just 'fries.' Fries of the Minority, perhaps, but not plain capital-F Fries. A more accurate description might be nineteenth-century fries. Or fry-shaped potatoes. Or better yet, especially in view of the advent of chicken-fries, why not exactly that--potato-fries?

"Fry-shaped potatoes?" you ask. "Potato-fries? Isn't that kind of..."

Redundant? Idiotic? Yes and yes. It's kind of like saying, "Mashed-potato-shaped potatoes," or "coffee-flavoured coffee." (For more on the latter, see Dennis Leary's comedy). But it's the truth. Because what's happened here is an almost complete reversal of the image and the reality.

If you think about it, the word 'fry' itself would have begun as a way of calling a certain style of potato. But now, when the word 'potato' is becoming harder and harder to define (even if a company does use a high percentage of 'potatoes,' it depends where they got them from--surely organic potatoes are 'purer' than pesticide-sprayed ones), but more importantly, when the word 'fry' is so common that it has become a thing purely unto itself, a thing that we perhaps no longer commonly associate with its raw material constituents (as happens with many things so far down the supply chain), it sounds almost silly to call a fry a potato -- and rightly so. Thus, especially in view of the KFC chicken-fry, it seems more linguistically prudent to call a fry that has been made with potatoes a potato-fry, rather than just a fry. The extra specifier seems necessary. In an age where I could cut up hot-dogs into little fry-shapes, stick them in a deep-fryer, and start marketing them tomorrow as Kevin's Weiner-Fries, the word 'potato' is as far removed from 'fries' as -- actually, it's hard to think of something that couldn't be made into a fry.

Speaking of hotdogs, though, that's another great example -- you can make a hotdog with just about anything and it'll still remain a hotdog. Got some raccoon handy? Sure, stick that in there. If there were vendours on the streets who vended a product called Reality, man-sized hotdogs would be lined up to kingdom-come to consume it. So in that sense, I guess we're all hotdogs.

Our languages, our symbolism, and our realities are slowly becoming saturated, merging into one vague blur of meaningless connections. There is a fine line between metaphor and perversion of language, but by now, both have been completely confused, thanks to those who bear just the right amount of creativity and business savvy to manipulate both ends -- the advertisers, the masters of media. Coffee shops don't sell muffins anymore; they sell giant buttery cakes disguised as muffins. And as Dennis Leary has said, neither do they sell coffee -- they sell many flavours of coffee. And at the bars -- guess what, you can get caffeinated beer! You can mix your stimulants and depressants; you can put Redbull in your vodka. But that's not all. At the office -- you can drink gatorade while you sit on your ass all day. You can take Tylenol until you start to get headaches if you don't take it. Go ahead -- "Dare to be stupid!" Obey thy horoscope! Join a new-age religion and call meat murder and animals sentient! It's only what they tell you to do!

But this extends far beyond simple food. These reversals are the nature of our whole reality -- this unreality, this hyperreality. Start off by thinking about your own packaging -- your outward appearance and gestures. Geez, if people think cakes are muffins, then just imagine all the false ideas they must have about other humans! Or imagine how often they confuse causality for correlation! Simplicity for complexity!

And through that, I think, one might begin to see why some things are they way they are. But don't go seeing them that way just because I told you to.

I think I'll go eat a hotdog.

Spontaneous Remission

2008-09-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well that was odd. Yesterday a claw-like appendage of the System (a servant otherwise known as my mother) grabbed me by the ear and told me I should register for some courses and try to finish my degree. ("You might as well be doing something. You'll still have plenty of time to write.") Not that she hadn't told me something along those lines before. But now, with the new term imminent, the request somehow seemed different. She was like a dying hobo spouting its last pleading whimpers. And then all at once I was doing it! I was registering for some courses! I called the university admissions office, listened to twenty minutes of classical music, got transferred to my faculty line, listened to twenty more minutes of classical music, and then finally had my online account reactivated so I could register for courses through the registration program while the university's server spluttered and crashed.

So I'm registered for three courses this semester: American Lit, Canadian Lit, and a music theory class. I have a class tomorrow! And here's the thing--believe it or not, I'm kinda looking forward to it!

I think part of the reason for my decision is based on the absurdity of that fact itself--that a disposition once held so strong can be suddenly reversed on a whim. Or maybe that's not true. (What 'disposition' am I exactly talking about?) The truth is, I never said I would never return to school. In fact, many of my plans have involved returning to some sort of schooling--and, if ever I finish this degree, I don't intend it to be my last. I don't know--I'm going to at least try it out. For one, other programs I've expressed interest in won't start for another year, and I won't be able to apply to them for months, so in the meantime...well, voilà. All of a sudden, I realized something I had always already known, only this time I explicitly acted upon it. This is what I realized: that it doesn't matter one iota of a fuck what you do. And it doesn't matter what you hold as valuable. You better do something that society knows how to suck on, and have a backup plan. Because no one is obligated to care about you, and no one should be. You are nothing. And so you are anything.

Yes, I will return to university, and I will enjoy it--simply because I want to enjoy it. Because I fucking feel like it. Do I need a totally unhypocritical reason? This is the post-modern era, people!

Perhaps this past 'holiday' ("of doing nothing," as my mom would say) has broadened my perspective. Not really in the sense that I now understand more concretely the uselessness of battling the religion of bureacracy and the deeply-rooted convictions of modern Western man--I always knew that--but mostly in the sense that I feel more free as I now re-engage with the System. Oh, I know I'm not free. I know I'm not (and we're all not) a lot of things. But once you know that fact, at some point you realize it is only the illusion that matters--and so you re-enter the matrix. Why feel the truth when you can feel free?

Oh, and just listen to the benefits! No more grumbles of disapproval, no more lectures from irate relatives. I have an easy answer to the question What Are You Doing. I'm getting a B.A. in English! Yeah, that's right; I'm in UNIVERSITY, so I'm goin' somewhere!

Translation: I'M DOING WHATEVER I WANT TO. FUCK YOU. MAYBE I'LL BECOME A FUCKIN' PhD, BITCH, AND I'M GONNA LIKE IT AND SO ARE YOU. I'M GONNA TAKE SOCIETY BY THE REINS AND SUCK ITS TEATS WHILE FUCKING IT UP AROUND THE CORNER OF ITS ASS WITH MY SMALLTIME BUSINESS ENDEAVORS!

It is a game. And there are two types of players. The general players, those who play by the rules without realizing it's a game. And the meta-players, those who realize it's a game and so transcend above it.

I sincerely believe that this is the reason most people do most anything: What Else Are You Gonna Do?

That's usually how my best ideas for writing come to me: not in some grand, dramatic spectacle of muse-fucking. But randomly. From very random stimuli, in the blip of less than a second.

Yeah, I've got dreams, I've got goals, I've got plans. But for now, I might as well go to university. Was that not what you were feeling, senior high school year?

A means to an end, a means to an end....

Accepted!

2008-08-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it happened: I sold my first story. Eight hundred words for a flat $10 Australian (about $9.25 Canadian). That's about two cents a word; a semi-pro rate. But that's not the point--I now finally have a legit publishing credit!

It's to be published, somewhat ironically, in a blog-based e-zine called Dog Versus Sandwich (great name). I assure you, however, that this blog experiences a much higher volume of visitors. Hopefully I'll be able to provide a link to Kiss of Kvass in my bio, if they ask for one.

It's not my most complex of stories (it's a parable playing on the Goldilocks tale), but it's short and sweet. I'll be sure to post the link once it's up. In the meantime, breathe in the anticipation. Hurrah!

A Thief in the Night!

2008-07-29T02:21:00.000-07:00

It was around 2 AM and I was awake, editing a story and about to take a break--go downstairs, walk around, get some chow and H2O, whatever--and, incidentally, had also just taken a look at my blog, debating whether to work on one of those ongoing yet-to-be-published posts, when what to my wandering brain should appear but a post ready to write itself.

Though my venetian blinds were down and shut, my window was still open from the evening, the night now providing a sobering air of cool. But then that waft carried also a mumble or a garble, and then, not soon after, another. In my native tongue, or one of many ethnicities that inhabit my suburb, I could not tell. All I knew was that the voices were uncomfortably close. Not the kind of voices you hear from the distance of a neighbour's yard. More like the kind you only thought you heard.

I took a peek through my blinds (my room overlooks the backyard), but could see nothing, of course, with my room's lights on. Another garble of dialogue (to me, it was two people), and that set me off. I quickly flicked off the lights, all sorts of scenarios running through my head. Of course, soon after I did that, I realized that my computer screens were still on and, if the one scenario in my head was correct, then the creatures outside were remarking on the glow from my window, through which a large concrete brick was about to crash and fall into my head, or worse, my computer, in which even more important data is stored.

So I shut down my screens, and looked out between my blinds, being veh-wy, veh-wy ca'eful not to make too much noise, and hoping these intruders wouldn't spot my glowing feline eyes between the slits.

At last, with a few sweeps across our lush landscaping (damn all those trees, blocking this watchman's vision!), I spotted it: the man in white cloth. (So there was only one.) No--was that a woman? I couldn't tell. It was dressed in white, swaying a little from foot to foot, and holding something in its arms that resembled a baby wrapped in a blanket. That possibility made this situation all the more eerie. The only relief was that it had its back turned.

Hoping for the best but expecting the worst, I realized with a white middle-class suburban amount of horror that the lights in the kitchen were on and--

Had we locked the back door? Had we closed the curtains?

Desperate for answers, my face hot with blood, I got down to the floor and stuck my head out my doorway and just behind the railings that overlook our living room. I took these furtive precautions because there is a large half-circle window over the main window of our sitting room. It has no curtains, and is positioned in just the right place for someone standing outside in the place where this intruder was standing to peek in and see someone walking upstairs. But ultimately, I couldn't lean my head out far enough to check the status of the back door. At least the alarm system was activated, though. So I went back to the window to look at the person again. He/she was still standing there, now inching further down the lawn at a very slow pace. I couldn't tell if he was bald, or wearing a burka. Three Afghani families live in the house next door to me, so this latter was a possibility. However, though the children there have demonstrated their incomprehension of the concept of "property" in the past, an adult never has. Besides, it was two in the morning.

As the man or woman inched forward at an agonizingly slow pace, my mind started running through possibilities again. This slow walk, combined with the initial mumblings I had heard, could indicate that this was a druggie of some kind. This was a possibility, as these are integrated areas, meaning there are low-rental units directly behind my street. (One Christmas, a neighbour caught a woman from that area trying to break into his house.) The point was, from my window, I could not tell with any certainty if this person was male or female, or even old or young. They just seemed spaced out.

Something had to be done, so at last, I reported to my parents' chamber to wake them.

My mother's first concern was that somebody might be messing up her garden. Her second concern was to call the cops. My father's first concern was to capture the intruder on video. His second concern was to capture some still photographs of the intruder.

But my first concern was whether or not I was more paranoid than I thought. My parents yanked their creaky, pyjama-clad bodies out of bed and urged them down the hall to the natural observation post of my bedroom window, only to peer outside and ask, "Where is he? I don't see him." At which point I looked outside again and saw this vague white blur which, by its swaying motion, resembled a bunch of white flowers swaying softly in the moonlight wind.

"Where is he?" they kept asking. (In hushed voices, of course.)

Oh no, I thought. This is it. Now my parents will know the truth--

But then, god bless, my mind clicked in and the bush of flowers changed into a man--or woman. Yes, it was there; there it was. Dressed in white. An intruder, there was no doubt.

"There," I said. "Behind the tree next to the barbecue."

"Ah." My dad could see him now. My mom still couldn't. But no matter, I don't think she ever actually saw him. Her eyesight is failing her. But this still didn't stop her from making the wildest assumptions out of all of us.

My dad thought it was one of the women from next door, from the Afghani families. His first theory was that she was the old woman, either confused, or just out for a walk, deciding to enjoy our garden while rocking her grandchild asleep. His second theory was more controversial. He thought it was one of the women--any of the women--hiding from an abusive situation. (I am not sure if that theory is appropriate to print, but please know that there is no racist intent here, or if one insists that there is, know that it is not my own, or that, for my father's sake, he is currently reading A Thousand Splendid Suns (the sequel to The Kiterunner) by Khaled Hosseini, an Afghani author. This book supposedly gives detailed depictions of the lifestyles and very contra-Western treatment of Afghani women. Anyhow, I don't believe this blog has a large Afghani following, so hopefully by now people are realizing the light intent of this disclaimer, not to mention this story. But on a final note, for the neighbours' sakes, aside from their sometimes wild children, they are nice people, and I don't think of them as Afghanis, but as people.)

"D'you think he's carrying a bomb?" my mother asked.

"Get the camera," my dad said.

I reminded my dad about the half-circle window, and how the intruder might be able to see someone coming down the stairs. But it was then that I remembered I had one of our video cameras still in my room from when I was transferring some data to my computer.

After some fiddling around in the dark, I managed to get it into record mode, only to find out that (1), this wasn't the camera with nightvision, and (2), you can't see anything at night without nightvision. Nonetheless, my dad opened a slit in the blinds and I stuck the camera through and recorded a few seconds. All I got was the two lights of the neighbours' houses behind us, and the reflection of the red recording light in my window. I put the camera away.

Then, seeing as the intruder's back was turned (he was still walking slowly towards the back of the yard), my dad ran downstairs to get the camera. He did not get the camera that had nightvision, but his new digital still camera, which, to his disappointment, did not have nightvision. And that's the end of the camera subplot.

"We better call the police," my mom was saying for the fifth time by now. "Call the police. Where's the phone, Kevin?"

I got the closest phone available, my cell phone. (...which is free for emergency calls!)

"What's the number for the police? Do you know the number for the police, Kevin?" I am not kidding. She actually asked this.

Anyway, I called and gave the usual information and answered the usual questions, blah-blah-blah.

Is it a man or a woman? What are they wearing? Do they have shoes on? Is there a fence at the back?

("Tell them we think he's probably armed," my mom whispered earnestly. "He could have a gun or knife. You never know. He's probably a druggie from those low-rentals behind us.")

...How can they leave the premises? Is there an old folks home anywhere nearby? ...All right, I'll leave you now; they're almost there. Keep an eye on him and call back immediately if he takes off to tell us which direction.

This guy was not taking off. He was walking so slowly, and pretty much staying in one spot.

In a minute, the cops arrived and went out back armed with flashlights and intimidating voices. My parents followed out close behind, once assured that it was just a harmless confused old man we were dealing with here.

I watched from a distance as they struggled to direct the confused man back out to our street. Apparently, he'd been trying to get somewhere and thought he'd be able to cut through our lawn. Then he met a fence and hadn't known what to do.

He was speaking a garbled, utterly incomprehensible version of something like French. We don't know where he was from. Somewhere not too far away, I guess. But for now the cops called the paramedics to check him out and take him to the hospital. He was cold and weak.

So who knows, maybe I saved a life by keeping my window open. More likely, I just made my life a little more interesting--and hopefully yours as well.

Oh, and that "package" he was carrying--it was just a blanket.

Thus spake Zuburbia.

The Immediacy of Realism as a Restraint

2008-07-24T13:12:00.000-07:00

As a footnote to my last post:

Film, it would seem, in engaging the senses directly (as opposed to the cortices), is more realistic: you actually see and hear the sights and sounds, rather than have them described to you: the process is one step shorter. But this means that in another sense, you are only further isolated from it: your position as observer is all the more blatant. Maybe in the future, as films and videogames merge into one fully immersive simulation, this will change. But for now, film restricts the ability to really get into a character's mind, whereas the slower pace, space for description, and ambiguity of the novel proves itself unlimiting in this respect and others.